Destined to be an IT professional

Chandrakesh Rai, Head - ITIM, Quinnox Consultancy Services, has 15 years of experience in the field of system integration, information security and IT governance. By Nivedan Prakash

Chandrakesh Rai

Coming from an engineering background and having gathered hands-on experience and expertise during his career, Chandrakesh Rai, Head of ITIM at Quinnox, has subsequently graduated towards the Project Management and Consulting function in the Systems Integration (SI) industry and is currently involved in IT governance and operations (lifecycle management).

“My entry into the IT world was always by design or rather planned as I had mapped my career-trail at quite an early stage,” said Rai, “I always wanted to be hands-on and that defined my strides from engineering to project management and consulting and then on to a leadership role where the main focus is on building a strong corporate strategy from the short and long-term perspective.”

Road to a successful career

Rai started his career with Comptel Network Systems as a trainee engineer and subsequently graduated to perform various roles in networking technologies including project management, consulting and pre-sales. Later on, as a Project Manager, he successfully delivered some critical and challenging assignments in the area of building IT data center infrastructure for customers along with handling consulting assignments pertaining to audits and recommendations on network capacity plans.

He then moved to Mashreq Bank at Dubai where he joined as a technical specialist; here he was primarily responsible for ensuring high uptime of the bank’s system infrastructure, thereby supporting the core banking application.

In 2000, Rai worked with Tata Info Tech as a pre-sales networking consultant. His job was to handle the complete pre-sales process right from opportunity generation, responding to RFPs, preparing technical proposals and bill of materials, assisting clients in identifying appropriate networking and network security technology solutions, right until the closure of qualified leads on networking technology related opportunities.

“After my successful stint with Tata Info Tech, I joined Capgemini Consulting India as the Information Security Manager. In this role, I led the organization at the country level to comply with BS7799:2002, SAS-70, PAS-56 standard compliance,” said Rai.

Later on, Rai joined Tata Interactive Services in the capacity of a Deputy Head - IT. He was responsible for developing and executing the enterprise-wide IT strategy, managing the IT CAPEX and OPEX budget and successfully led the organization through BS7799 information security certification.

His role at Quinnox

As head of the ITIM team at Quinnox, Rai has designed and executed the infrastructure technology project strategy and a tactical roadmap for the organization from ground zero. He built the IT organization by creating vertical technology functions, inculcated a process oriented working culture, and modeled a SLA-driven IT service organization in tune with end customer expectations and closely aligned it with the business growth engine.

“One of my key job responsibilities is assuring the global customers of Quinnox of a robust Offshore Development Center (ODC) infrastructure and process compliance along with building and ensuring customized IT and security infrastructure as per ODC compliance requirement. I have also contributed and led planning and compliance of the information security management framework at the corporate level,” pointed out Rai.

He added that, to date, zero security breaches and non-compliance had been reported during various customer audits. Besides, he has modeled and executed security solutions to prevent and control data leakage and malware infiltration from internal and external sources. He has also driven ISO27001:2005 standard compliance and information risk mitigation strategy.

Rai has been involved in building a converged voice-data-video backbone on an IP based network infrastructure connecting Quinnox’s global offices. He has led the team to evaluate and deploy a virtualization platform resulting in high availability and optimized investment. The introduction of application virtualization instead of just desktop virtualization enabled the company to control costs and compliance on software license distribution.

He has been responsible for driving the incubation of global helpdesk and remote IT infrastructure management services. Reengineering telecom and network architecture and infrastructure equipment helped the organization reduce the telecom operating cost by 36% per annum and data network operating cost by around 18%. CAPEX on server infrastructure has dropped by 76% and OPEX by 26%. The renegotiation of yearly contracts during challenging times helped them save 10% of network operating cost.

“From the beginning, I have always focused on identifying suitable IT process investments that are closely aligned to the core business environment and have driven them at the execution level. I believe that my strong technical background coupled with my ability to align business with IT has always enabled me to identify key strengths and weaknesses of any particular technical solution, and map it to business from a product or a service hype cycle,” asserted Rai.

Focus on new technologies

Rai firmly believes that cloud computing is an area that holds a lot of promise for the future. Besides, Thin Application Infrastructure is another such area which will go a long way in managing end-points effectively. As per his views, Thin Application platform will gain momentum, as it will help an enterprise manage its end-points effectively.

Server virtualization will also gain prime importance in the IT infrastructure management, as it enables cost-optimization and platform management along with effective DR (disaster recovery) management. Moreover, consolidation of storage is the way ahead as fragmented data across the enterprise poses a high risk and management issue in a typical enterprise.

According to Rai, as the business environment is becoming more global, it is imperative that the new business models and global operating environment are supported by an equally dynamic IT service portfolio. Web-enabled unified computing infrastructure and collaborative tools will definitely be the key business enabling platforms from the technology side.

What to expect in 2010

As far as this year is concerned, Rai felt that cloud computing would see a lot of action and consolidation of IT infrastructure was going to gain importance. Going ahead, organizations would adopt ERP into their business applications and this would be prevalent even at the SMB level.

Additionally, organizations would adopt a more cost-conscious approach, and as a result, the market would see a surge in demand for technologies like IP telephony, Web-Conferencing and other similar collaboration tools that can give assured ROI in a short period of time.

“Going ahead, priority-based investment is going to be the mantra. Quinnox, being primarily an ITES company, will consciously focus more on collaborative tools and knowledge management infrastructure in the near future to provide best-in-class solutions,” said Rai.

In his message to the industry, Rai said that technology had to be closely aligned to the business aspiration and it had to reflect a clear cut ROI. A tech manager should carefully evaluate upcoming or new technology platforms by avoiding the hype cycles. As a tech-professional, one should have a complete understanding of the organization’s core business process and financials in-depth. A key ingredient of a leader or manager is how successfully one keeps folks or the team together.

nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com