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In My Opinion: Sajan Pillai, UST Global VC Talk: Bijul Somaia, Lightspeed Venture Partners Enterprise Security Special

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BUSINESS & TECHNOLOGY IN THE U.S. & INDIA JANUARY - 2011 SILICONINDIA.COM

Karl Mehta, CEO

 siliconindia JANUARY - 2011
Contents January 2011
Editorial
Publisher

T
Harvi Sachar

Swipe or Wave? A Dilemma!

Editor-in-Chief
Pradeep Shankar
Cover Story

Leading
Managing Editor
ill now, we swiped our credit or debit cards to make a purchase.
14 playspan

Innovation
Christo Jacob
In the coming years, this concept may disrupt and we will see
Deputy Editor consumers waving their mobile phones for the same purchase.
Jaya Smitha Menon Mobile payment platform is busting with activities and Near Field Com-
munication (NFC), a short range wireless technology is opening new
avenues for service providers, banks and new players for commercial-
in the Global Payment Industry
Editorial Staff
Eureka Bharali ization of new technology. What is clear is that the market is still in flux By Vimali Swamy
Hari Anil as users are doubtful about how secure this might be.
Vimali Swamy But those developing this technology confidently vouch about the
security since consumers will be able to instantly lock all the mobile wal- Karl Mehta, CEO
Sr.Visualizer Raghu Koppal let services on their phone if the device is lost or stolen and then have the
Subscription Manager P Magendran services automatically transferred onto a new phone. They will also be
able to use their phone to make payments even when the battery is flat. 04 [In My Opinion] 22 [Management] 34 Securing the Cloud
In Korea and Japan, the potential of these services have already been re- Beyond the Metros: Bringing Managing Compliance Through Phys- By Ravi Shankar, Navales
Mailing Address alized and is already available for commercial use. One in every 15 today IT Opportunities to Tier II and ical Identity and Access Management
there makes a purchase using NFC enabled phones. III Cities By Ajay Jain, Quantum Secure 36 [Technology]
SiliconIndia Inc Just how digitization of content earlier leveraged credit card and on- Successful Integration of
By Sajan Pillai, UST Global
44790 S. Grimmer Blvd line payment usage, mobile phone penetration is sure to give a similar 24 [Technology] Technology in Schools- Op-
Suite 202, push to the rapid adoption of NFC enabled phones as a mode of payment Evolution of Mobile Devices
in the coming years. Moreover, it is expected that the worldwide ship- 06 [Infocus] portunities and Challenges
Fremont, CA 94538 and Services
ments of mobile phones with built-in NFC capability will rise to 220.1 By Sanjiv Pande, NIIT
million units in 2014, up by a factor of four from 52.6 million in 2010. 10 [VC Chakra] By Arun Samudrala,
T:510.440.8249, F:510.440.8276 Appnomic Systems Receive United Mobile Apps
In 2014, 13 percent of phones shipped will integrate NFC, up from just
$ 2.5 Million in Series B Funding 38 IPR Issues in Cloud
4.1 percent in 2010. While Nokia has declared that all the new smart Computing
phones that will be introduced in 2011 will support NFC, Google has
iYogi Raises $30 Million 25 [Business]
Verismo Networks Secures Indian Startup Founders Are By Rahul Chaudhry,
announced support for NFC in Android 2.3. However, a bigger push
$17 Million Funding Lall Lahiri & Salhotra
could come from Apple as it has been pouching the NFC experts and They Serious on Sales?
siliconindia has already filed several NFC related patents since early last year. Apart
SnapLogic with $10 Million in Series By Eureka Bharali
January 2011, volume 14-01 (ISSN 1091-9503)
from these bigwigs, there are a lot of startups experimenting on creating
B Funding 40 Open Source ERP is Ready
Published monthly by siliconindia, Inc.
new modes of payment platform. RiseSmart Raised $3 Million in Equity
26 [Technology] Willing & Able
Santa Clara based PlaySpan is one such company. In an era where Security Challenges in Using By Tom Rodgers, CIGNEX
the global payment industry is morphing rapidly especially going digi- 12 [CEO Spotlight] Social Media
tal with all the new devices, PlaySpan has made the much alluded mi- Desktop Virtualization & Cloud By Gary Bahadur, KRAA Security 42 ERP Implementation for
cropayment services digital and versatile over a myriad of devices by Computing: Building blocks of Nex Midsize companies
leveraging on social network. Today, the four year old company has gen Technology
To subscribe to siliconindia
28 Enterprise Level SAN Features Necessary Expense or Strate-
Visit www.siliconindia.com or send email to made much headway in this industry and is competing almost neck to It is the Social Era for Internet
gic Investment?
subscription@siliconindia.com neck with Golaiths like Google, Adobe, Yahoo and more, who are try- Dynamic content sparks growth of new and Solutions at SMB Prices
By Tad Lebeck, Huawei Symantec By Vinay Singh, Vital Wires Consulting
Copyright © 2009 siliconindia, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction ing to grab a large chunk of the pie. tools and technology
While this digitization of payment industry is a good news for the
44 Secure Cloud Computing The
in whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without writ-
ten permission from the publisher is prohibited.The publisher assumes
Goliaths of the industry, the scope of commercialization of new tech- 30 The State of the Cyberstate
no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustra-
20 [VC Talk] By Amit Yoran, NetWitness future of Information Tech-
tions. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not neces- nologies like NFC will also give a platform for the Davids to be the new Financial Services & Education Po-
Goliaths of this emerging industry in the coming years. nology Management
sarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed by
tential Areas for Startups
32 Mobile Data Growth in Indiaan
the publisher thereof.
By Kartik Shahani, RSA
siliconindia’s circulation is audited and certified By Bejul Somaia, Lightspeed
by BPA International. siliconindia is available through Wish you all Happy New Year!
Venture Partners
Opportunity and a Challenge
mainstream retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble, Borders, and By Anjan Ghosal, IntelliNet Technologies 46 [SI 20 Profile]
Please do share your thoughts with us.
Tower Records. It is also available at ethnic Asian Indian stores in
major Indian hot spots across the U.S.The magazine is also dis-
tributed at major trade shows and conferences, including Comdex, Internet
Christo Jacob
|3|
World and PC Expo.
Managing Editor siliconindia January 2011

editor@siliconindia.com
 By Sajan Pillai
The author is CEO, UST Global
displacement—the need for people to
immigrate to find work. The Tier I
cities were becoming saturated with
Beyond the Metros: Bringing IT people and were nearing the limits of
their infrastructures. It became very
apparent that these limits would have
Opportunities to Tier II and III Cities
in my
an adverse impact on our ability to re-
duce costs while operating in these
opinion locations.
Tier II and III cities were a re-
freshing alternative, once the model
was seen to work. Suddenly, there
were a whole lot of them to invest in.
Competition among these cities is in-
tense, and this is where key differen-
tiators can come into play to help
with cost reductions. In terms of so-
cial displacement, the use of Tier II
and III cities makes use of what you
might call an IT “necklace strategy”
that builds mega-centers offering em-
ployment opportunities to the masses
W
in more dispersed areas around,
rather than in the country’s biggest
cities. Eliminating much of the social
displacement in this way is one of the
biggest social benefits of Information
Sajan Pillai Technology. And being a service in-
dustry, there are no environmental
concerns to worry about, either.
hen we started our opera- the potential of a service economy. We de-
Attrition is a costly affair in most
tions in 1999, we were cided: Kerala had to be the right place.
looking for the perfect loca- Today, we have grown to 500 times our organizations—the cost of replacing
tion for our offshore devel- original strength, largely because about 60 per- an employee is estimated to be 1.5
times the employee’s annual compen-
opment centers. Our choice cent of our workforce is located in Kerala.
sation. UST Global has been success-
surprised everyone around us. “Why would When we looked at the big cities—what we
you choose Kerala?” asked our well-wishers. now call Tier I, at least in the Indian context— ful in keeping attrition to a level well
Kerala’s industrialization in 1999 below industry standards, primarily
included ER&DC, Keltron, and a Attrition is a costly affair in most due to efficient employee engage-
ment practices. Since employment
few small private companies pep-
organizations—the cost of replacing an must have consequences more far-
pered over Technopark. No global
company had a significant presence employee is estimated to be 1.5 times reaching than simple contentment
in the state, and prospects were hes- the employee’s annual compensation with a job well done, a well-engaged
itant to take the plunge. workforce results in happy employ-
We decided to look at the facts ees, which in turn reduces attrition.
rather than believe the propaganda. The qual- we saw the advent of a whole lot of industrial Traditionally, businesses have tried to
ity of education in Kerala is among the best in clusters, corridors, estates, hubs, and other speak the language of “employee sat-
this part of the world. The people, too, are sur- business units. When looking at possible target isfaction,” but that is being rapidly re-
prisingly cosmopolitan from years of exposure sites, we envisioned a model that took two placed in favor of “employee
to different cultures and from considerable mi- basic elements into consideration. First, that engagement.” In this context, en-
gration to and from the state. The workforce is the concept of outsourcing was primarily gaged employees are an essential fac-
highly stable and productive, while the gov- driven by the desire for cheaper talent and re- tor for any business, but the
ernment at the time was slowly waking up to duced operational costs. There was also social requirements don’t end there.
siliconindia
|4| January 2010
For sustained commercialization
and confident investment, we need an
amalgamation of four fundamental
aspects: government support, re-
sources, quality talent input, and fa-
cilities. There is no substitute for any
of these, but investors should be
made aware that these are available
together in one place. This calls for
solid marketing on behalf of the gov-
ernment. While a beautiful country-
side is nice to have, it is hardly
enough. Investors need to be con-
vinced of the commercial advantages
they can expect from investing in a
country like India. I can speak from
UST Global’s experience of expand-
ing operations into Manila, Philip-
pines and Chile. In both cities, the
governments welcomed us with open
arms. They promised us the best re-
sources, and most importantly, deliv-
ered on their promises with prompt
follow ups. These are the kind of
cities that are competing with India
for investments.
Traditionally, businesses
have tried to speak the
language of “employee
satisfaction,” which is now
being replaced in favor of
“employee engagement”
Most cities in South East Asia
have a rich culture and heritage like
the one we often boast of. Cities like
Thailand and Shanghai offer the same
or even better cost advantages than
India does. So these two points will
no longer set us apart from the crowd.
India still needs to work on a few crit-
ical aspects like education, industry
regulations, and communication.
When I speak of education in Tier
II and III cities, I should emphasize
that important personality develop-
ment is taking place during high
school. Schooling should be more
oriented towards communication
skills right from that level. If the ba-
sics are in place, the skills and con-
cepts required in professional life can
be learned from the employer organ-
izations. We at UST Global have spe-
cial career development programs,
many of which focus on the new gen-
eration. We believe in giving our as-
sociates the gift of lifetime
employability.
The government, for its part,
should ensure that we have the right
kind of infrastructure to showcase to
potential investors. Although we do
have some infrastructure, it is not
enough to support the amount of busi-
ness that can potentially come to our
shores. What I mean by “infrastruc-
ture” in this context goes beyond of-
fice buildings and telecom facilities
to include aspects such as a decent
way of life, civic amenities, enter-
tainment options, and security. Em-
ployees must be confident that there
is a sufficient supportive infrastruc-
ture in town to justify bringing their
families to live there.
In fact, some of our clients, after
they have seen Kerala while visiting
our facilities, are so impressed that
they want to bring their own busi-
nesses here. Unfortunately, a bit of re-
search into the geographical,
political, and economic climate of the
state reveals an unattractive side as
well. While we might have convinced
them in earlier times that the advan-
tages we have to offer easily out-
weigh the disadvantages, there are so
many options available today that
they just don’t have to take the risk.
What we do have in our favor is
the abundance of skilled talent and
the cost factor. If the government
steps in at the right time, bringing in-
vestment to our cities will be a cake-
walk. But we cannot afford to wait
another decade for the effects to
trickle down. We must strike while
the iron is hot. India has many prom-
ising locales for an IT destination.
Let’s make it work! si
siliconindia
|5|
January 2011
in
I
Indian Companies Adapting Best Global Practices
ndian companies are keen in
adapting best global practices
and are increasingly doing so,
says an expert, though he warns that
these companies need to have regu-
lar evaluation at all levels to sustain
good corporate governance. “Cor-
porate governance has evolved enor-
mously in India and many big
companies in the country are com-
mitted to embrace global best prac-
tices for their business,” said
Stephen Wagner, Chairman Emeri-
tus of global consultancy Deloitte’s
Global Centre for Corporate
Governance.
“Good governance at companies
usually translates into good finan-
A
Diamond Studded Planet Discovered by U.S. Indian
Astronomer Led Team
stronomers led by an Indian
American have discovered a
giant planet with an atmos-
phere and a core dominated by carbon.
Nikku Madhusudan, a Banaras Hindu
University (BHU) alumnus who
works at Princeton University, New
Jersey, and his colleagues have ob-
served that an extremely hot planet
discovered last year has a never before
seen characteristic of having more car-
bon than oxygen. They said that this
actually raised the prospect that dia-
mond-studded stars may exist.
A computational technique devel-
oped two years ago by Madhusudan,
while he was at the Massachusetts In-
stitute of Technology (MIT), used to
analyze the atmosphere of the planet
which orbits a star about 1,200 light-
years from Earth. The surface tem-
siliconindia
|6|
January 2010
cial numbers while just having good
names on the (firms’) board need
not ensure the same,” he said. It was
the `14,000 crore accounting fraud
of Satyam by its founder-chairman
Ramalinga Raju that brought the
issue of corporate governance into
sharp focus in India. Wagner
pointed out that regulations, espe-
perature of this planet, named WASP-
12b, seems to be 2300°C, which
makes it hot enough to melt stainless
steel. Madhusudhan, who is now a
postdoctoral scientist in the depart-
ment of astrophysical sciences at
Princeton, said that WASP-12b is
cially those associated to corporate
governance, should be framed after
taking into account the view points
of all market participants. He also
suggested that there should be an
annual evaluation process in place
to assess the effectiveness of the
board as well as the corporate gov-
ernance in companies.
“Entities should anticipate and be
more prepared to tackle risks and
shocks, mainly since the world is
getting more interconnected that is
also resulting in connectivity of
shocks,” Wagner said while talking
about the change in taking and man-
aging risk by the companies in the
recent years.
made largely of gas and only its core
contains carbon-based minerals such
as diamonds and graphite. This planet
was discovered in 2009 by re-
searchers in the UK-based consor-
tium called Wide Angle Search for
Planets (WASP).
He also added that the structure of
this planet might make us rethink our
long-ingrained ideas of planetary for-
mation and that with much hotness
and no solid surface the planet could
not support life. “If life exists on such
planets, it has to sustain low oxygen,
low water and lots of methane and
other hydrocarbons that would be in
the atmosphere,” Madhusudhan said.
Scientists used U.S. space agency
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to
observe light emitted by the planet
WASP-12b. si
in
T
e-Waste Recycling
Startups-VCs Confident, Yet Too Many Loopholes
By Eureka Bharali
he green statement has
been luring a lot of
startup to grab a pie of the
huge e-waste market. The
computing devices, elec-
tronic garbage that piles up within
every company, have always been a
source of the quick cash, thanks to the
scrap dealers, and currently, just five
percent gets recycled in an organized
way. In such a scenario, how would a
company venturing into the realm
bring in a better return on invest-
ment? Sachin Maheshwari,
who has recently joined
the boards of Zephyr Pea-
cock as its Director
quickly pinpoints, “The
amount of recycled goods
that comes out of a product cov-
ers all the recycling cost.
Whether it’s metal or gold, the
open market has a good price for
it.” During his stints in Draper
Fisher Jurvetson Maheshwari
himself was a part of one of the re-
cycling startups.
There are 58 million television
units in India which is expected to
reach 234 million by 2015. On the
other side, there are 75 million com-
puters in India since the life cycle of a
PC has come down to 3-4 years from
7-8 years a few years back. Similarly,
the Indian mobile handset market is
set to zoom across the 100 million
mark soon. E-waste management
firms claim that now it is possible to
recycle around 98 percent of a cell-
phone. If a general consensus on or-
siliconindia
|8|
January 2010
ganized e-waste recycling is achieved
then there is no looking back for any
firm in this sector.
The biggest snag is the lack of
awareness and the urge to socially
come to a conclusion. “One is paid for
giving out the garbage to an unorgan-
ized recycler. Even if being socially
conscious about pollution is kept on
the sidelines for a minute, there are
also issues on security. For instance,
recently, many of the U.S. companies’
crucial data were found openly dis-
tributed on an online site of Nigeria.
This happens as there is no track of
the products once it reaches the unor-
ganized scrap dealers’ hands. Herein,
the work of the organized recycling
companies comes. We, for instance,
use a specific technology to re-format
the hard-disks to ensure no data can
be retrieved from the product. Also
the hazardous bi-products are dis-
posed safely,” says Rohan Gupta, Co-
founder of Attero Recycling. It serves
more than 200 clients which include
Wipro, HCL, Tata Tele Services, and
Google among others. To some
extent even electronic manu-
facturing firms have started
taking a notice of the re-usabil-
ity part. For instance, Nokia
claims that 65-80 percent of the
materials in their mobile phones
can now be recycled and given a
second life. Best practices can even
recover 100 percent of the materi-
als - partly as energy. The market is
huge, yet till a complete agreement
from every nook of the society
comes it may not grow big.
A sneak view of the recent laws
show that the government has intro-
duced legal compliance whereby
every company will have to give out
the goods to the authorized recyclers.
Yet till 2012, the law will not be im-
plemented on a full force. As per At-
tero’s Founder, Nitin Gupta, the
country may also be seen as a hub for
e-waste management considering the
fact that it takes $2 to recycle a single
PC in India compared to $20 in U.S.
But will it happen before 2012,
chances seem to be meek. si
ICT Can Reduce GHG Emission by 10 Percent
nformation, Communication and
Technology (ICT) solutions have
the potential to reduce India’s total
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by
10 percent by 2030. According
to a report this will result in
energy cost savings of
around Rs 137,000 crore
per annum. India is
presently the third largest
emitter of GHG after China
and the U.S. The report named
‘ICT Contribution to India’s
National Action Plan on Cli-
mate Change (NAPCC)’, at-
tributed the maximum potential
of saving of carbon dioxide emission
to the construction industry with a
whooping 42 percentage, followed by
road transport with 30 percent while
power sector came third with 16 per-
cent. The NAPCC was released by
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in
2008 as part of the nation’s strategy to
manage GHG emission.
I
India Third Largest Cloud Service User
ndia is the third largest cloud
service user in world and is
ahead of U.S. The ranking is
based on Cisco Connected World
Report, a new study commissioned
by network equipment vendor Cisco.
The study was conducted by the U.S.
market-research firm InsightEx-
press. The countries that lead the list
by taking maximum advantage from
cloud computing today are Brazil
(27 percent) and Germany (27 per-
cent); followed by India (26 per-
cent), U.S. (23 percent) and Mexico
(22 percent).
The report by the Digital Energy
Solutions Consortium India (DESC)
and CII-ICT Centre of Excellence for
Sustainable De-
velopment in-
vestigated the
possible
GHG reduc-
tion opportu-
nities via ICT
solutions in
three mitiga-
tion-related
missions of
NAPCC - National
Mission on En-
hanced Energy Efficiency
(NMEEE), National Mis-
sion on Sustainable Habitat
(NMSH) and National Solar
Mission (NSM).
NMEEE has set targets to reduce 100
million tonnes of carbon dioxide emis-
sion by 2015, of which 31 million
tonnes reduction comes as a result of
The study assessed how IT managers
are evolving their data centers and
taking advantage of new technolo-
gies, at the same time working to ac-
commodate new trends in the
workplace like social media, device
proliferation, video and an increas-
ingly mobile workforce. It maintains
that globally 52 percent of the IT
professionals have stated that they
use or plan to use cloud computing.
Higher cloud adoption rates are pre-
dicted in Brazil (70 percent), China
(69 percent) and India (76 percent)
in the near future.
in
the adoption of ICT in buildings,
transport and nine sectors under PAT
(Perform, Achieve and Trade). This
contributes to about 30 percent of the
overall reduction. “Till date, no report
in India has quantified the specific
savings possible using ICT solutions.
The report allows industries to quan-
tify their potential energy as well as
monetary savings by adopting ICT-
based solutions,” said Rahul Bedi,
DESC Chairman.
The high technology costs, inade-
quate energy benchmarks, weak regu-
latory norms on carbon emission
standard and low research and devel-
opment support are the main factors
that are preventing the country from
ICT adoption. The report recommends
to create a platform for green jobs, un-
dertake steps to develop ICT adop-
tions, rationalization of direct and
indirect taxes, funds allocation, and to
encourage research and development,
as remedies to these ailments.
The study conducted in 13 coun-
tries also revealed that just about 18
percent of respondents are using cloud
computing today, while an additional
34 percent plan to use the cloud. Also
a large majority (88 percent) of IT re-
spondents expect to store some per-
centage of their company’s data and
applications in private or public clouds
in the next three years. si
siliconindia
|9|
January 2011
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
Appnomic Systems
A
Receives $2.5 Million
in Series B Funding
ppnomic Systems, a provider of
application aware IT infrastruc-
ture management solutions to
large and growing enterprises, has closed
a $2.5 million Series B round of funding
led by existing investor Norwest Venture
Partners (NVP). NVP had previously in-
vested $4 million in the company. “NVP
has been very supportive of Appnomic’s
growth and we are happy to be extend-
ing our relationship with them with this
round of funding,” said D Padmanabhan,
CEO of Appnomic. The company’s total
financing to date stands at $6.5 million.
The company plans to use this series B
funds to further enhance its sales pres-
ence in the U.S., launch operations in
Europe and enhance the application
aware IT infrastructure management
platform.
Appnomic’s Application Aware In-
frastructure Performance Management
solution has been adopted by many cus-
tomers including one of the largest banks
in India, a leading travel portal and a
mid-sized bank in West Africa. Appme-
i R
iYogi Raises $30 Million
Yogi, the first consumer service brand
from India, has raised $30 million in
a new round of funding lead by Se-
quoia Capital. With this investment iYogi
will expand services outside the existing
consumer market and the Windows Op-
erating System platform. It will provide
the company with the capability to ex-
tend its platform to the global SME mar-
ket and also aggressively address the
growing need for supporting mobile con-
sumer devices.
iYogi is the world’s largest inde-
pendent remote consumer tech support
company which has driven an impressive
siliconindia
|10| January 2010
ter, the cloud based
version of their so-
lution, has been
featured on the
Rackspace and
Amazon cloud for
monitoring trans-
D Padmanabhan
action performance of cloud-based ap-
plications. Their existing clients include
Rediff.com, Tata Business Support Serv-
ices Ltd, Tata Sky, Yatra.com, Ramco,
DataCore Software, Everest Bank Ltd,
and Karnataka Bank. They have also ac-
quired key U.S. customers such as Cy-
press Semiconductor, Stratus ASP, one
of the leading hosting and cloud compa-
nies, and continue to experience high de-
mand for its services offering.
The company headquartered in Palo
Alto also has its presence in India with
offices in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyder-
abad and Mumbai; Europe and Middle
East. “We believe Appnomic continues
to be well positioned to address IT man-
agement requirements of growing enter-
prises that are working with both
on-premise and hosted/cloud-based
technologies. We look forward to part-
nering with Appnomic to help grow the
company further.” said Promod Haque,
managing partner, NVP.
300 percent growth
for its premium an-
nual subscription
service alone, and
solved more than
two million tech
Uday Challu problems for con-
sumers since its in-
ception. The company’s existing market
includes North America, Canada, the
United Kingdom and Australia, and with
the funding the company has plans to in-
creases its services to other countries in
the Europe, Middle East and India. “We
have invested significantly in extending
our game changing platform-as-a-
service delivery model and believe that
we have established the new market stan-
Verismo
Networks
Secures
V
$17 Million
Satish Mugulavalli Funding
erismo Networks, an Internet
TV Platform headquartered
in California and with devel-
opment centre in Bangalore, India,
has raised a funding of $17 million in
a round led by Intel Capital. Verismo
will use these funds to accelerate its
growth and expand operations to con-
tinue to deliver its technology to its
customers and channel partners
worldwide. The company will expand
its research and development (R&D)
and sales efforts and has plans to de-
velop its next generation product fo-
cused on service providers and Multi
System Operators (MSO) both in the
U.S. and international markets.
“The digital media landscape is
very big. The VCs are interested in
large markets. Verismo is a platform
company and thus plays in a lot of
digital media verticals. VCs love this
as opposed to a consumer electronic
dard for tech support and related services
through a consistent user experience. Our
planned expansion includes making our
services available in any geography,
across any platform, for any device, and
at affordable price-points,” said Uday
Challu, Co-founder and CEO of iYogi.
“I believe that iYogi will be cited
amongst case studies of disruptive busi-
ness models delivering world-class
service to global consumers from
India,” said Shailendra Singh, Manag-
ing Director of Sequoia Capital India.
Apart from Sequoia Capital, iYogi’s ex-
isting investors Canaan, SVB Capital
Partners, SAP Ventures and Draper
Fisher Jurvetson, also took part in this
round of fund raising. si
firm trying to sell devices in retail.
Verismo has healthy revenues and the
technology risk is eliminated since
the product is already deployed by
many customers,” says Satish
Mugulavalli, Co-founder and Chief
Architect, Verismo Networks. The
connected devices market is very
large and is expected to grow to 140
million units by 2014. The company
has built a platform for such devices
and the demand for the same is
worldwide.
Mugulavalli adds, “We offer a
complete solution as opposed to
many companies that develop just
middleware or set top devices. How-
ever, our customer devices will com-
pete with boxes made by Boxee,
Roku and others.” Unlike Boxee and
Roku whose focus is on creating con-
sumer devices, Verismo is focused on
service provider market helping them
deliver triple-play services. He be-
lieves their main differentiating fac-
tor is Verismo’s service platform, to
which the Verismo powered set-tops
connects to and separates content
quickly without programming the de-
vice. The company presently runs
with 90 employees.
RiseSmart Raised
$3 Million in Equity
iseSmart, a San Jose based out-
placement and recruitment process
outsourcing (RPO) company has
completed a $3 million equity financing
round. The company plans to use this fund
to continue its expansion into new markets
and further the development of its technol-
ogy platform for bi-directional matching of
jobs and job candidates. “RiseSmart pro-
vides talent management solutions at the
two most critical talent transition points:
joining and leaving an organization. We
leverage a common technology platform
to ensure next-generation efficiency and
SnapLogic with
S
$10 Million in Series
B Funding
napLogic, a San Mateo based
cloud integration company,
has raised $10 million in Se-
ries B funding led by existing in-
vestor Ben Horowitz of
Andreessen-Horowitz. In accord
with the funding, Ben Horowitz has
joined the company’s board of di-
rectors. The funds will be used to
expand internationally, for product
development and help expand the
team’s marketing branch. The ex-
pansion plans particularly involves
expansion into European territories.
Floodgate also took part in the fund
raising round just behind An-
dreessen-Horowitz.
Founded in 2006, the company is
led by Gaurav Dhillon who was the
former CEO of data integration
giant Informatica (now a public
company with market cap of $4.1
billion). Like Salesforce’s customer
relationship management (CRM)
software and Google Apps, Snap-
superior results for our
clients’ recruitment and
outplacement pro-
grams,” said Sanjay
Sathe, founder and
Sanjay Sathe CEO, RiseSmart.
“Through our
methodology, we have consistently re-
duced time-to-hire for our recruitment
clients and time-to-placement for our out-
placement clients. This is ultimately the
key to our continued growth and success.
We are grateful for the support of NVP and
Storm Ventures as we work aggressively
to expand our market position,” added
Sathe. Formerly, in 2007, the firm had
raised $ 11.85 million from Norwest Ven-
ture Partners (NVP), Storm Ventures and
Logic also
runs an app
store that pro-
vides connec-
t i v i t y
software for
various cloud
applications.
It helps in the
transfer of
data effec-
Gaurav Dhillon tively be-
tween those
cloud applica-
tions and makes sure definitions are
the same across multiple applica-
tions.
The developer community has
strength of about 50 developers who
publish applications to SnapLogic’s
app store. The revenue sharing
model is the same as other app
stores with 70 percent reaching the
developers and 30 percent remain-
ing with SnapLogic.
The company previously raised
$4.8 million in funding from several
high-profile investors, including
Andreessen-Horowitz and Flood-
gate. The company presently runs
with 30 employees.
angel investors. “RiseSmart has developed
recruitment and outplacement solutions
that are truly unique in the talent manage-
ment space – utilizing its proprietary tech-
nology which leverages Web 2.0 and social
networking features and capabilities to
provide a richer and more compelling so-
lution to its growing roster of Fortune 500
enterprise clients,” said Venkat Mohan,
General Partner at NVP.
Founded in 2006, the company cur-
rently deals in three solutions, Transition
Concierge, an outplacement service to help
exiting employees find new positions, Re-
cruit Concierge, a recruitment process out-
sourcing (RPO) solution for finding new
talent and SmartRedeploy which is a Soft-
ware-as-a-Service solution. si
siliconindia
|11|
January 2011
 CEO SPOTLIGHT
Desktop Virtualization & Cloud Computing:
D
Building blocks of Nex gen Technology
Rao Cherukuri, Founder & CEO, DeskStream
esktop Virtualization (DV) is the
hottest trend in the field of vir-
tualization. According to indus-
try analysts, the market for DV in 2011 is
expected to outpace the market for the
hugely successful server virtualization
market. DV holds the promise of en-
abling any user to have their desktop
anytime, anywhere, on any device – in-
cluding mobile devices — without com-
promising on the user experience. From
a corporate perspective, DV dramatically
lowers the total cost of ownership as well
as power requirements, while enhancing
the security and provisioning of corpo-
rate desktops.
Rao Cherukuri
There is a continued push from cus-
tomers to reduce Desktop Management
costs, support new mobile devices, and
at the same time, deliver desktop soft-
ware on-demand and improve user pro-
ductivity. The latest trend is to leverage
DV and cloud-based delivery models to
provide Software as a Service (SaaS) or
Desktop as a Service (DaaS).
The challenge for enterprise comput-
ing is to deliver legacy and corporate ap-
plications to end users with the same
level of flexibility and rich user experi-
ence as Apple has brought to consumers
with its iTunes, iPad and the App Store.
Mobile computing is the future. DV
and cloud computing will be the build-
siliconindia
|12| January 2010
ing blocks for delivering secure corpo-
rate applications on-demand to a new
generation of ultra-thin mobile devices
designed for standard desktop applica-
tions. One example is Intel’s Mobile In-
ternet Device line running the Atom
processor, providing a quantum leap in
the utility of mobile computing.
Funding and personnel will always
be critical challenges for entrepreneurs.
While building an app for a Smartphone
does not require much capital, building a
product for corporate use is vastly differ-
ent. Venture capital is not as readily avail-
able as it used to be, so entrepreneurs
with a great idea for technical innovation
must work harder than ever to secure fi-
nancing capital from a variety of sources.
Once initial funding is obtained, the
product or service must demonstrate
early proof points with successful beta
deployments or early customers. And,
since no product or service can stand
alone, startup companies need to estab-
lish meaningful partnerships with an
ecosystem of companies that offer com-
plementary technologies and go-to-
market capability.
Building an organization that is for-
midable and self sustained is especially
difficult if you don’t have the right peo-
ple. Everyone in Silicon Valley, from
small start-ups to giant companies such
as Google, is scrambling to fill critical
jobs, mostly in engineering, with a talent
war underway for the most in-demand
specialties. Companies are on the hunt
for those with the right skills, especially
programmers, mobile Internet specialists
and social media experts. Having com-
petent team players on staff is essential
to the success of any startup. But with the
proper funding, the right products, the
right partners, and the right people, the
future is indeed bright for entrepreneurs.
Gautam Godhwani
It is the Social Era
for Internet
O
Gautam Godhwani, Co-founder
and Chief Executive Officer,
SimplyHired.com
ver the last two decades, we
have seen first the emergence
of the Internet as a commer-
cial medium, followed by the advent
of Web 2.0 after the dot-com bust.
Now we are entering a new era of the
Web, which will be shaped by the sig-
nificant new trends we have seen in
recent years.
The Web is no longer just about
connections between websites, but has
become centered on connections be-
tween people. This new era, often re-
ferred to as the social web, will redefine
the online landscape both by changing
how we communicate, and by facilitat-
ing the creation of applications that
leverage these new social connec-
tions. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter,
for example, all have different social
graphs and create interconnections be-
tween people in unique ways.
In addition to its changing focus,
the Web is now accessed in many more
ways. Mobile is dramatically changing
how we access information online, not
just with mobile browsers, but with ap-
plications on platforms like iOS and
Android as well. These apps leverage
both the Web and the social graph.
More people are now on the Web all the
time, with the mobile device becoming
the main way we stay connected.
Another significant trend is the
emergence of rich online media. Video
has taken the Web by storm, stemming
primarily from the rise of YouTube.
Video is an increasing part of our lives,
creating changes in communication (for
example, Apple’s FaceTime) and enter-
tainment (for example, Hulu). We are
going to see continued innovation as
video production and distribution be-
come easier and more cost-effective.
This is a very exciting time for
entrepreneurs because innovations
are occurring at every level. Cloud
computing is reaching scale with
the significant adoption of both its
infrastructure and related applica-
tions. It’s easier than ever to create
a Web company with an array of
tools and open source offerings. So-
cial media continues to revolution-
ize the distribution of online
applications, using payment sys-
tems, advertising revenue, and ac-
cess to a large, engaged audience.
Entrepreneurs have a wealth of op-
portunity right now. The economy is
just regaining strength, and entrepre-
neurs that get started now will have a
running start as the economy gets trac-
tion. Raising capital is still a challenge
in this environment, and businesses are
tentative about making large invest-
ments. Entrepreneurs must ensure that
they create offerings with a degree of
longevity to carry them through what
may be a very slow economic recovery.
Each day, more people are on the
Internet from more places around the
world than ever before, a growth that
will ramp up as global adoption of the
Internet continues to rise. It’s important
to recognize how early a stage of de-
velopment, the Web is really in. We are
just getting started.
Dynamic Content Sparks
Growth of New Tools and
Technology
C
Vijay Srivastava, President & CEO, Coaxial Network
able technology has evolved cable infrastructure will emerge as
in the last decade many social media and over the top appli-
folds. Adoption of digital cations such as Facebook and Net-
technology has provided Multi Sys- flix drive away customer from
tem Operators (MSO) and cable op- traditional cable.
erators to deliver services that
traditionally only Telecommunica-
tion companies could provide. With
this digitization of the cable spec-
trum and adoption of DOCSIS 3.0
cable operators can deliver band-
width upwards of 150 Mbps along
with hundreds of standard and on
demand video on the same cable in-
frastructure that earlier delivered
few operator defined programming.
As MSO’s and cable operators
increase download speeds, new so-
cial networks and over the top video
in return will gain momentum. It
will be challenging for the MSO and
cable operators and interesting to
see how they maintain their ARPU
and also invest in infrastructure up-
grade. It is a dual edge sword, up- Vijay Srivastava
grading to provide faster download
speeds which in turn enables Changing dynamics of the mar-
providers and media giants to push ket creates more challenges for en-
contents directly to the subscribers. trepreneurs. As user habits remain
But ultimately the winner is one unpredictable in a dynamic market,
who controls and owns the masses entrepreneurs have to react quickly
eager for entertainment. and bring newer products to life
Access to content is no longer within a shorter time span. Products
static, you want your content to fol- have to be timed very well as prod-
low you and move with you. This ucts that are both early and late can
shift will spur the growth of new fail in the market. As leaders and en-
technologies and products. Coaxial trepreneurs in our R&D process we
Networks’ products help in enabling have to keep developing key com-
and delivering this paradigm shift. ponents that we can quickly produc-
Newer methods of monetizing the tize and bring it to market. si
siliconindia
|13| January 2011
Cover Story

Quick Facts:
Founded: 2007
CEO: Karl Mehta
Headquarters: Santa Clara, CA
playspan Other Offices: Charlottesville (Virginia),
Mumbai (India)

Leading
Customers: 27 million consumers and

Innovation
1000 plus enterprises
Employees: 135+
Investment: $43 Million (in the 3 rounds
of series funding)
Investors: Easton Capital,
Menlo Ventures, STIC Investments,
Novel TMT Ventures, Vodafone and
SoftBank
Website: www.playspan.com
www.corp.playspan.com

in the Global Payment Industry

T
By Vimali Swamy

he headquarters of Santa Clara based PlaySpan

is bustling with activity and everyone including
the CEO of the company, Karl Mehta seems to
be on their toes. And why not? Within four years
of its humble beginning in 2007, the company
has raised three rounds of venture funding from leading
investors in the valley and large mobile operators, the lat-
est being in August 2010 for $18 million. And today it is on
its way to disrupt the 50 year old global payment industry
with its payment platform — UltimatePay™. With this the
company is also in the path of revolutionizing the e-com-
merce industry by leveraging both online/mobile gaming
and social networks on its platform.

Karl Mehta

siliconindia
|14| January 2010
Today, with over 28 million users file capabilities that is needed by needs in an out of the box PCI com- PlaySpan has built and emerged as a
globally (growing at over 100 per- both consumers and merchants. pliant hosted infrastructure. Be it a global leader in a complex industry..
cent annual rate) and hundreds of Hence, it is this gap PlaySpan hoped startup or a billion dollar enterprise, For years, several large payment
millions of audience across its mer- to bridge by developing a next-gen- any one can use this Application Pro- companies have been spending bil-
chant networks, PlaySpan has em- eration payment platform. gramming Interface (API) based pay- lions of dollars to build this infra-
powered merchants and consumers ment platform and transact across structure internally but PlaySpan
across 180 countries with over 90 Developing a Disruptive Product million users globally. The service built the platform over the past four
different payment options with multi- So how does PlaySpan make this shows that the software-as-a-service years with an agile culture and
channel devices. Its clientele varies happen? The company’s payment in-
from small businesses to globally frastructure has two sides to it.
recognized brands including Face- Firstly it offers a wallet infrastruc-
book, Warner Bros., Nexon, Perfect ture, a next gen PayPal type platform
World, Hello Kitty Online, Disney, where both consumers have in-app
Adobe, Revision3 and Nickelodeon access to accounts in virtual currency
to name a few. and merchants have easy to integrate
SaaS based monetization platform to
The Technology Gap in Payments monetize their mobile or online sites
The company originally started with across multi-channel. With one click,
a simple idea to provide an easy to this virtual currency can be spent on
use single-account of virtual cur- various content across multiple de-
rency based on aggregation of multi- vices. Since the wallet is also
ple in-game accounts and currencies. portable, it is placed right with an ap-
The idea caught on especially with plication/content so that the user trend — which started with enter- proven engineering teams working in
younger users who needed one ac- need not navigate away from the web prise companies such as Sales- 24 hour cycle (US/India plus inte-
count that they can be funded by page she is in. “Usually while mak- force.com — can be extended to the grating two payment companies it
their parents and can be used at mul- ing an online transaction, users gets business of providing services for had acquired over the past three
tiple games. The lack of a secured diverted to a new webpage by the online games. years. Mehta made bold moves to

With digital content going cross-plat-

wallet or a digital vault that enables payment gateway thereby causing a The greatest feat amongst follow an aggressive M&A strategy
an in-app/ in-game purchase that disconnect in the users mind. We PlaySpan many technological to build out the platform, team and

form from open web to social web,

works fast and across all profiles/ have observed that since lots of these achievements is the speed at which market traction rapidly, to maintain
avatars was simply not available purchases are im- its first mover advantage against es-
from any existing payment providers.
mobile devices, console and web TV pulsive, this dis- tablish players.

now, e-commerce is in the way of

Upon further research, they found joint in usage tends Today, apart from traditional pay-
out that game developers were strug- to make the user ment gateways, PlaySpan’s biggest

getting a makeover.
gling to keep users engaged and re-evaluate one’s competitors are the internal engi-
complete a purchase without friction, decision. This neering teams at large merchants. Ul-
but the chargebacks associated with could lead to a loss timatePay has gained considerable
digital goods and existing out-of- of revenue. Our UltimatePay traction as users in 180 countries use
the past few years. There has been a digital goods space by offering Face-
game ecommerce flows were some lightbox technology was designed it to pay for their virtual goods in
significant increase in the consump- book Credits, Game Cash, Game
of the biggest technical challenges. to ensure that a gamer/user does games. The company also brings
tion of interactive media like online/ coins, and other online accessories
These pain-points were big enough not have to navigate away from services such as fraud prevention,
mobile games and social networking. for one’s virtual gaming profile.
to convert the idea into a real solu- the app and complete the entire merchandising, and promotion to
With digital content going cross-plat- Players today are wiling to pay for
tion and PlaySpan was founded as a transaction within the applica- game companies, helping them to op-
form across open web to social web virtual currencies to buy virtual
platform where developers and users tion,” explains Mehta. timize more Conversion (Paid Users)
to mobile devices, console and web goods. But these goods cost as low as
could enable a secured in-app pay- Secondly, it took the complex- and ARPU (Average Revenue Per
TV now, there has been tremendous 25 cents to 99 cents. Since, tradi-
ment. But eventually, Mehta saw a ity of managing payment for en- user) out of their games.
interest amongst developers, pub- tional payment gateways like credit
much bigger opportunity envision- terprises/merchants by creating But this success, though quick,
lishers and merchants to sell digital card charge anywhere between 3-4
ing that this solution will be needed a monetization platform known as was not an easy one for Playspan.
goods,” says Mehta. percent access fee per transaction
for all digital content or physical MaaS (monetization as a serv- About four years ago, there was al-
From social network biggie Face- which are cost prohibitive for a sub
goods and across all devices. ice™) platform, with all the com- most no interest in the platform.
book to online gaming publishers $2 transaction, and lacks the in-app,
“The entire digital space has been ponents of both online and mobile “Being a startup, the greatest chal-
like Zynga, all have ventured into cross-platform portable wallet/ pro-
undergoing a remarkable change in payment solution that a merchant lenge for us was we were entering a

siliconindia
|16| January 2010 siliconindia
|17|
January 2011
market that no one had treaded.
There was no company that previ-
ously attempted to create a platform
like this, thus we did not have any
model we could emulate,” explains
Mehta. The 50 year old traditional
payment industry too has been secre-
tive about its operations and to break
their business model with micropay-
ment platform was a challenging
task. Along with this, also came the
challenge of being accepted in the
market by both the consumers and
merchants. For Playspan it was a typ-
ical ‘chicken and egg cycle’. But
with persistence, the company con-
tinuously worked in close quarters
with both customers and merchants;
evangelizing them about their prod-
uct and also improving it with their
Building a
world-class team
and an agile,
entrepreneurial
style risk-taking
culture are the keys
to success in a fast
growing space,
besides great
technology and
market-traction
feedback. “We have built a great
team and more importantly a com-
pany culture that works on each and
every feedback we get from our users
in a super-iterative mode to respond
in 24 hour cycle with a new release,”
he adds.
With the success of virtual goods
and micro-transactions in Asia and
with the impact of the recession on
U.S. gamers, the virtual goods busi-
siliconindia
|18| January 2010
entire new arena. The challenge lies
Karl Mehta: A global CEO driving entrepreneurial culture in anticipating the market need be-
fore even the users themselves real-
ize it. “With consumers shifting
across platform, we too have contin-
uously evolved our wallet platform
both in terms of its in-app capability
and portability. Also the payment in-
dustry is the most targeted sector in
cyber space. Thus the challenge is
also to continuously evolve our plat-
form’s security threshold,” says
Mehta.
To conquer this continuous chal-
lenge of anticipating and evolving
with market demands while keeping
user confidence intact, the company
has invested heavily in the technol-
ogy and compliances (PCI Level 1
and SAS-70 certifications). The com-
pany prides in the fact that it has the
It is very rare to catch Karl Mehta not juggling multiple tasks a time. At any latest and best state of the security
given time, he is flitting between customer and product development meet- processes in place. Also, to gain a
ings. But the few minutes one manages to catch up with him, one can see leadership edge, it has recruited the
the passion that is filled in him. Ask him of his ambition, and he states the best of minds in the payment indus-
try. Its management at present is
desire to break open the decades old traditional payment industry and take
PlaySpan to dizzying heights that perhaps no one has yet reached. But this filled with technology team who ear-
jet set CEO, is aware of the challenge and the risk that lies in the way for lier worked with PayPal, Visa, Ora-
he is not perturbed that to maintain the numero uno position he has to cle, Yodlee, Nextag, and others. The
continue to partner with majors like AMEX, Master Card, Visa and Pay Pal company also has a strong team of
who ruled the roost till date and giants like global mobile operators who 135+ across its two offices in the
are trying to make a dent in this industry too. U.S. and one in Mumbai, India.
A true entrepreneur, Mehta has over 18 years of experience to
PlaySpan in founding, building and funding technology start-ups in the U.S. The Present and the Future
Today, apart from its monetization
and international markets. Prior to founding PlaySpan, he was part of the
founding team at MobileAria Inc. (acquired by Wireless Matrix) based in platform PlaySpan has several capa-
Mountain View and co-founder/ CEO of OmniLabs Inc., based in Singapore bilities layered on top of each other
and India. Prior to that, he held executive positions at Hughes, leading new in a “multi-layer architecture”. It
business and technology development. provides merchants with one-stop
Apart from his other accomplishments, the latest feather in his cap is service when it comes to introduc-
the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year 2010’ Award from Ernst & Young for North- ing their own virtual currency, sub-
ern California. scriptions and microtransactions.
The company has prospered as pub-
ness has skyrocketed. Today, try, Mehta feels, the real opportunity lishers flock to the free-to-play busi-
PlaySpan has bagged over 28 million for the company lies in the next few ness model, where users can play
wallet accounts as against PayPal’s years. The digital space is an ever games for free but pay real money
80 million accounts that it bagged in changing one. The gaming industry for virtual goods such as better
a decade; and enjoys 1000 plus de- especially has journeyed from open weapons. PlaySpan provides virtual
velopers and 2-3 million transactions browser to portable and connected currency and virtual goods platform,
a day. devices like smart phones and Inter- offloading the task of creating this
Despite the company’s quick run net TV and consoles like Xbox, infrastructure from game develop-
to the top echelon in payment indus- PlayStation and Wii; opening up an ers. It also provides the UltimatePay
payment system that allows compa-
nies to offer a fast, in-app and se-
cured transaction system. And it
sells Ultimate Game Card gift cards
at 50,000+ retailers so that users
who don’t have credit cards can pay
cash for the cards at stores and then
enter a code to get virtual currency
in a game.
The mobile phone
is the new wallet
and that will
change everything
in the 50 years of
payment industry
“Also, executives at our mer-
chant partners can use PlaySpan to
tune their sites in real time, figuring
out how to raise average revenues
from paying users and get more
non-paying customers to pay. How?
A one-percent increase in conver-
sion of non-paying customers to
paying customers can result in a 25
percent increase in revenue. Simi-
larly, reducing the rate of credit card
fraud can yield big profits,” explains
Mehta.
What is different now is that game
publishers should be able to imple-
ment features such as a virtual goods
store, a payment system that works
around the world, anti-fraud systems,
and other features that online games
need in just a matter of days.
PlaySpan doesn’t have to babysit the
customers as they implement it man-
ually over a period of weeks. Rather,
the process is automatic. Customers
can login to a web service and just get
it all done. CEOs and game designers
alike can use the dashboard to see
how their games or videos are doing
at any given moment.
Millions of gamers are using the
Ultimate Game Card and PlaySpan’s
own PlaySpan.com marketplace.
Revenues have grown more than
100 percent a year in the past three
years with 50 percent from U.S., 25
percent Asia and the rest from Eu-
rope, Middle East and South Amer-
ica. Keeping up with its business
expansion, the company has made
two acquisitions till date, adding to
its technological prowess and has
raised a total of $43 million in three
rounds of funding. Its investors
today include Easton Capital, Menlo
Ventures, STIC Investments, Novel
TMT Ventures, Vodafone and Soft-
Bank.
Karl believes that the global pay-
ment industry is up for a whirlwind
transformation in the next three
years and this will be a crucial time
for every player, especially
PlaySpan. With the advent of NFC,
the physical plastic card is expected
to become obsolete; the mobile will
be the new wallet. It is no wonder
that Vodafone and Softbank, re-
cently joined the company’s invest-
ment round.
Also TV is going to become the
next big internet device. This opens
up a lot more opportunity for con-
tent developers and aggregators, in
return shaping up the e-commerce
industry. Hence, it is no surprise that
all major credit card companies,
large mobile operators and Internet
giants like Google, Adobe, Apple,
and , Facebook are trying to grab a
piece of this pie.
But what keeps Mehta optimistic
about this situation is its first mover
advantage. “To develop a robust
payment platform takes a minimum
of three years in a super-agile envi-
ronment and we are already three
years ahead of the new entrants,”
explains Mehta. In short, he is look-
ing to continue to lead the ‘moneti-
zation platform’ category that he
created in the payment industry. si
siliconindia
|19| January 2011
VC Talk: By Bejul Somaia
The author is Managing Director, Lightspeed Venture Partners

ferent ways, unlike a sector that sets a
single target market. It is still at the
ground floor in terms of innovation,
products and services that are pro-
vided and so the number of businesses
that are going to grow out of this sec-
tor will be significant.
preneur has to find the right way to
serve those needs.
There are opportunities for real in-
novations across the board. The power
related sectors are going through a lot
of changes now. One of our recent in-
novations is in Power Exchange. This

Financial Services & Education Entrepreneurs need to make sure that

they are solving a large painful problem.
Potential Areas
Startups
When a financial recession comes is a company that is now a couple of
there is generally nowhere to hide, but years old so it is essentially a start up
what an entrepreneur must to do is and it is being a transparent competi-

for stay focused as if there is a large tive market for electricity. That is

T
Bejul Somaia unmet consumer need. If you are solv- something that India needs, to create
ing it well, then over time you will be the right kind of incentives for invest-
look at education sector, one can see a
able to build a business that can sur- ments and price signals. Now this is
lot of companies trying to leverage the
vive recession. Financial services were an innovation in a very large, very ma-
current teaching or school infrastruc-
quite badly hit by the recession but it ture market but still it is a disruptive
ture to improve the quality of educa-
also recovered very strongly and fun- innovation that has a significant im-
tion. So curriculum services,
damentally whether you look at credit pact on the industry.
curriculum products and technology
he areas we invest in India are fairly cards or home loans or insurance prod- In India where ever you look there
products would be distributed through
broad. Currently we focus on four in- ucts the penetration is tiny compared are opportunities to innovate and
the existing school infrastructure
vestments— power sector, financial to any other markets including other apply technologies in interesting ways.
rather than trying to create an all to-
services, education and media. These emerging markets. This means that the The limitations are only by the entre-
gether new infrastructure. This is an
sectors seem to be reflective of the op- head room is significant and an entre- preneur’s imagination and knowledge
area of new trend.
portunities set in India. Even though these sectors of a sector, so it is not fair to say that
In financial services, we are see-
sound like traditional sectors we have actually in- there are only limited ways to inno-
ing increasing opportunity for niche or
vested in the non-traditional segments of these sec- vate.
specialized lending businesses. For ex-
tors. In these large traditional sectors there are Entrepreneurs need to make sure
ample, the banks typically lend to the
pockets of emerging subsectors that create a lot of that they are solving a large painful
cream of the crop in any particular
opportunity for entrepreneurs. For example, in Research firm, Gartner, problem. Sometimes we see solutions
area, and a shift from housing finance
power we are investing in the Power Exchange and predicts a strong double- looking for problems and sometimes
or construction finance or student fi-
in the financial segment we have invested in a pre- digit growth in revenue for we see really interesting technologies
nance to microfinance is being seen
paid card company. Then there is technology and the enterprise Software-as- or ideas that no one is willing to pay
and at the same time specialized
technology enabled sectors like the internet and e- a-Service (SAAS) applica- for. In India the willingness to pay is
lenders are coming to the market as
commerce, which are seeing a revival of activity. tions market soon. often a challenge. That is why it is im-
well. The same trend is beginning to
The same is the case with mobile sector with 3G Worldwide revenues for en- portant to solve a large and painful
be seen in the Indian market too. Fi-
and BWA rollouts. terprise applications will problem, because if it is painful then
nancial service to me is very exciting I
This is a growing trend. A lot of activities are reach $10.7 billion in 2011. people will pay. Another thing is to
read an article recently according to
being registered around the cloud, though it is not In 2010 it is expected to have a great team. This helps to in-
which from $15 billion seven years
generally focused on the domestic market. Areas generate $9.2 billion.As the crease your chances of success. Build-
ago, the bank consumer credit out-
that are gaining speed more than others would be "SAAS model matures and ing businesses are not easy, it is an
standing had become $100 billion a
Internet and e-commerce. converges with cloud serv- unnatural act to build something from
couple of years ago. An increase of
We are also witnessing a lot of activity in the ices models," the break- nothing and so the human capitol that
this magnitude in five years! and we
education sector, not just schools but in IP related down could exceed 90 you assemble is the most prudent
are just at the beginning. Financial
businesses and content driven businesses. Take a percent by 2014. weapon you have. And finally the
services touch every one’s lives in dif-
focus should be on execution. si

siliconindia
|20|
January 2010 siliconindia
|21|January 2011
Technology: By Ajay Jain
The author is President and CEO of Quantum Secure
Managing Compliance Through Physical
T
Identity and Access Management
Save Time, Money While Streamlining Global Compliance Management
he turn of events at the
beginning of this millen-
nium will be etched in the
memory of global secu-
rity practitioners for the
next few decades. While 9/11 ush-
ered in a spate of changes in physical
security management at government
institutions and airports, it has also
prompted businesses to assess their
own risk exposure as they operate
multiple locations spread throughout
the world. Internal threats such as
employee pilferage and collusion
pose even a greater threat for corpo-
rate entities, educational institutions
and other non-government entities,
creating new elements of cost and
risk.
For organizations in today’s
global economy, compliance has be-
come much more than a simple buzz-
word; it has become a way of life.
Regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley
(SOX), ISO 27000, NERC/FERC,
CFATS, GLBA, SAS 70, Basel II,
U.S. government-mandated FIPS-
201/HSPD-12 and numerous interna-
tional and EU privacy laws have all
driven the need to regularly enforce
strict governance in financial report-
ing and security controls, across both
physical and IT infrastructures.
To compound these challenges,
many physical security policies and
various administrative tasks are exe-
cuted manually by the security staff,
leading to costly, error-prone data
siliconindia
|22|
January 2010
entry that can lead to duplication and
erroneous identity information within
the system.
As most security processes are
manual, security practitioners often
need to spend additional efforts to en-
sure that compliance-related controls
are operating effectively. They are
also expected to prepare reports as-
serting their compliance. All these ef-
forts spent may go waste if due to
some oversight, compliance excep-
tions are reported by third-party agen-
cies. These exceptions can not only
result in fines and penalties for the or-
ganization but they can also dent the
organization’s reputation.
Today, there are few means by
which to ensure that compliance-re-
lated exceptions are not allowed in the
first place. Off-boarding is a manual
process which means that an em-
ployee can still have physical access
despite having the logical access ter-
minated. Delay in removal of physi-
cal access for a terminated employee
can lead to compliance exceptions.
Similarly, access management is a
manual process which can be error-
prone and lead to compliance viola-
tions.
In this environment, physical se-
curity practitioners need a centralized
and streamlined approach to manag-
ing compliance and risk—on a more
holistic level—to assess and deal with
risk in a more proactive and corpo-
rate-wide fashion and meet govern-
ing, organizational and industry
regulations.
The SAFE Approach to Managing
Compliance and Risk
One thing is certain: the traditional
way of solving physical security
problems simply will not suffice. Ad-
ditional hardware, standalone soft-
ware solutions and adding more
manpower will only compound the
issue.
These challenges can be ad-
dressed by a unified approach to-
wards physical security management
using policy-driven software that can
seamlessly manage identities, their
physical access, and their correlation
with physical security events in a
multi-stakeholder environment while
providing real-time compliance.
Using a unified approach involves
centrally managing the following as-
pects of physical security:
 Identities through various
stages of their lifecycle including
on-/off-boarding, access provi-
sioning, badging
 Integrations with all types of ex-
ternal systems (logical and phys-
ical) for ensuring one identity
definition
 Policies which are rules govern-
ing relationships of identities
across different systems, with dif-
ferent stakeholders (like IT, facil-
ity, physical security) and with
physical security events
 Compliance and reporting as it
relates to physical security
Specifically related to compliance,
this unified approach should allow se-
curity practitioners to enforce gover-
nance across diverse systems, and to
create a transparent, traceable, and re-
peatable real-time unified compliance
process. The solution should allow
users to centrally define controls as
per external regulations and internal
policies. It should subsequently auto-
mate the measurement, remediation
and reporting actions against these
controls.
At Quantum Secure, we have cre-
ated the industry’s first and most
comprehensive physical security
management software: the SAFE
suite. SAFE is designed to connect
disparate physical security and IT and
operational systems, automate manual
security processes and reduce both
costs and risks.
Quantum Secure SAFE Compli-
ance and Risk Management solutions
allow security practitioners to enforce
governance across diverse and dis-
jointed physical access control sys-
tems (PACS), creating a transparent,
traceable and repeatable real-time
global compliance process.
SAFE Compliance and Risk Man-
agement solutions provide a compre-
hensive range of functions across the
entire lifecycle of internal policies
and external regulations, including:
 Centrally managing all the regu-
lations and associated controls
and automating assessment, reme-
diation and reporting as per de-
fined review cycle
 Defining, auditing and enforcing
Segregation of Duty (SOD) poli-
cies across your physical security
infrastructure
 Enabling physical security change
management based on regulatory
policies
 Automatically triggering compli-
ance-based actions based on phys-
ical access events
 Managing infractions/violations
and rule-based generation of ac-
tions/penalties
Managing internal watch list of iden-
tities who pose threat to the organiza-
tion along with their risk profile and
historical details
Detailed reporting and risk analysis
SAFE Compliance and Risk Manage-
ment solutions allow organizations to
automate compliance initiatives in
real time. By quickly identifying and
mitigating compliance concerns —
such as ensuring that cardholder ac-
cess is driven by policy, that change
history is always available and dor-
mant/orphaned accounts are reliably
deactivated — physical security prac-
titioners can create a robust security
infrastructure that keeps pace with
today’s ever-increasing compliance
regulations.
Additionally, SAFE Compliance
and Risk Management solutions can
enable security practitioners to define
both traditional and electronic corre-
spondence (letters, emails, faxes, etc.)
to be distributed by policies, process
workflows and access events. For ex-
ample, if a manual signature is needed
to satisfy internal governance or ex-
ternal reporting regulations, that sig-
nature may be easily captured as part
of the automated process.
If infractions occur against pre-de-
fined policies, SAFE Compliance and
Risk Management solutions provide the
capability for an organization to log any
type of security policy infraction
against managed identities, triggering
notifications or automating access priv-
ilege changes. This level of automation
is especially important with regards to
internal governance, as many organiza-
tions need to enforce global policies
across a diverse employee, contractor
and vendor base.
SAFE Compliance and Risk Manage-
ment solutions also include customized
assessment reports, whereas deviation
to deployed policies can be reported
across global locations to a single Web
console. Additionally, daily, weekly and
monthly operational reports can be au-
tomatically generated and sent to re-
spective individuals within the
organization, providing security practi-
tioners with the information needed to
optimize staffing, budging and other re-
lated resources.
Smarter Compliance Control With a
Very Clear ROI
SAFE makes physical security compli-
ance a real-time, repeatable, sustainable
and cost-effective process. Since it
eliminates manual compliance initia-
tives, it helps organizations avoid any
penalties and ensures that the organiza-
tion does not face any embarrassment
because of compliance exceptions.
As a software-based solution for
Physical Identity & Access Manage-
ment, SAFE also enables physical se-
curity department to ensure a more
secure and risk-free workplace. Au-
tomating policies using SAFE elimi-
nates human-led errors and delays.
Dashboards showing consolidated and
correlated events reduce time and im-
prove quality of response from security
staff. SAFE delivers security practi-
tioners unprecedented control over a
scattered infrastructure, creating real-
time benefits for the entire organiza-
tion and a measureable ROI. si
siliconindia
|23|
January 2011
Technology: By Arun Samudrala
The author is President & Co-Founder, United Mobile Apps
T
Evolution of Mobile Devices
and Services
he rapid growth of Mobile
usage in India is indeed
remarkable. In the past
few years, mobiles have
penetrated the most re-
mote sections of our country where
getting a landline used to be a distant
dream. This phenomenon is a reflec-
tion of the global ubiquity of mobile
phones. This decade has witnessed not
only strong proliferation of mobile
technology, but also phenomenal ad-
vances in innovation.
From being a voice only device,
the ‘mobile’ is now a personal data and
media repository. It is hard to find a
device in the market that does not have
a high resolution camera, and a pow-
erful processor. Being a convenient
handheld device with such capabili-
ties, the mobile has ushered in an era
of information and content creation
and sharing such as never before. I can
snap pictures on my holiday trip and
siliconindia
|24|
January 2010
software platforms, each vying to be
the market leader – Google Android,
Apple, Symbian, Qualcomm Brew,
Blackberry, Windows Mobile just to
name a few. In order to present a
comprehensive solution, each com-
pany has its own suite of software
that’ll enable Users to backup and
share content. Video call with Face-
time is limited to iPhone 4, Ovi is for
Nokia devices alone, Mobile Me is
for Apple devices.
Seamless data and media sharing
across devices of any make (of course
limited by their hardware capabili-
ties) is still not available. At United
Mobile Apps, we solve precisely this
problem. Our cross platform software
Unify combines a rich set of features
that leverage the native device capa-
bilities and present application devel-
opers with simple interfaces to
develop innovative information shar-
ing and distribution software that cuts
across this device-data barrier.
Unify enables individuals to not
only share their content across Mo-
bile devices, but also across desktops,
instantly share them with my friends
laptops and ipads. Some salient com-
all over the world. mobile phones have
ponents of Unify are – a module that
emerged as gateways to create, share
syncs data on multiple devices and
and consume personal content.
keeps them all up to date, a module
Two parallel developments have
that provides an intuitive interface to
contributed to the transformation of
share content, a module that enables
mobiles into all-in-one information
remote management of devices.
sharing and storing devices. While the
While the industry waits to herald
capabilities of the devices themselves
a leader with a steadily increasing
have improved on the one hand, ad-
share in the platform space, there ex-
vances in the deployment of faster
ists a significant opportunity to im-
data transfer Technologies such as 3G
prove user experience in leveraging
and 4G have considerably enhanced
cross platform capabilities and share
user experience on the other hand.
content regardless of the recipients
However, this convenience of personal
phone make.
content creation and sharing is not
Mobile phones have transformed
without limitations.
how we communicate. Now the sec-
Race to grab the biggest market
ond wave of innovation using Mobile
share, has led device manufacturers
phone as platform will transform
to focus on improving networking
how we use computational abilities
and data sharing among their own de-
in our day-to-day activities. The
vices, while inter-platform data shar-
scope of innovation in this space ap-
ing remains unaddressed. The
pears limit-less. si
industry has several hardware and
BUSINESS By Eureka Bharali
Indian Startup Founders
“I
Are They Serious on Sales?
f a product can not be
sold by the makers
themselves, no sales
team perhaps can
make the sale,” says
Bharat Goenka, the Tally Chief.
Goenka jumpstarted the accounting
software firm by selling the first 700
products on his own, before passing on
the league to a set of sales managers.
But how far are today’s startup
founders and CEOs in India willing to
put their hands on sales?
“One has to sell the vision of the
company at every point. Whether it is
to the employees or to the investors,
the selling does happen. In direct sell-
ing of the products, at times CEOs are
not ready and rely on a more business-
experienced person,” says an ex-busi-
ness developer of a loan startup.
What is not realized, if one has a
company, one is in some way or the
other involved in selling whether in a
conventional or in an unconventional
way. The deterring factor is always
about doing for the first time. “They
are initially hesitant as it takes time to
move out of their comfort zone,” says
Abhishek Goyal, Associate at Accel
Partners. They move forward with a
better goal in mind and as their hands
get full with the other core activities
they tend to sideline the sale proposi-
tion.
And of course, a look at product
companies, we would see more of
technocrats towing the entrepreneurial
line. “In terms of sales and marketing,
the CEO doesn’t handle any of it he is
a core IT person,” says an Associate
VP of a learning solution provider. In
such a scenario, they are more oriented
towards building a taut product with-
Computer shipments to
India are expected to in-
crease by 24.7 percent to
total 13.2 million units in
2011 over 2010, driven by
increasing demand from
smaller cities in the coun-
try, according to research
firm Gartner. The desk-
based PC market will grow
five percent totalling 7.2
million units year-on-year,
while mobile PC shipments
will grow 61 percent with
5.9 million units.
out much loopholes instead of moving
across the market and making the sales
pitches. “When we as VCs look to-
wards investing, the company needs to
have an amiable CEO. Look at every
big product firm, Sony, LG and you
can see CEOs with significant sales
experience, who have also contributed
immensely. So, for a startup it’s im-
portant that they do look at the sales
proposition of the CEOs. However,
only if the CEO has unmatched tech
knowledge, sometimes sales might be
compensated by bringing in an ex-
pert,” says Gaurav Saraf of Epipheny
Ventures.
However, there are also founders
who have plunked their hands on
every possible domain. Gautam Rage,
Founder and Director of Josh Software
quickly pinpoints, “We make sure that
either me or the other co-founder are
the only ones who become the face of
the company while doing sales. Infact,
at times, we tend to work on the prod-
uct development, do the coding and at
the same time make time for proper re-
search to pitch in for sales”. si
siliconindia
|25|January 2011
Technology: By Gary Bahadur
The author is CEO, KRAA Security
S
Security Challenges in Using
Social Media
ocial media sites have
gained popularity in the past
ten years as a medium to
keep in contact with loved
ones, business associates
and friends. However, there can be
drawbacks to the usage of the said media
when one is employed in certain career
fields, such as the healthcare industry.
Utilizing social media networks can in-
advertently give way to the sharing of
confidential patient information with
people that may not have a need to know
which would then cause the company to
violate HIPAA Security Rule compli-
ance. The compliance risks increase with
uncontrolled social media utilization.
Social Media has become part of the
user community several years ago.
Today we have social media in the cor-
porate environment. The main prob-
lem we have is how social media has
evolved. It has evolved to become a
bottom up approach. By bottom up I
mean that the consumer has determined
how to use a technology and the corpo-
ration is playing catch up. But the social
norms that are appropriate for a con-
sumer “product” are not appropriate in
a corporate environment.
Social media applications are not
just a part of one’s personal lifestyle;
this has also become incorporated in
the corporate climate. Many places
use social media applications for
marketing, file sharing, commu-
nication, and employee recruit-
siliconindia
|26|
January 2010
ment. While these applications can open
up a great many doors for communica-
tion, some form of guidance or gover-
nance is necessary. Because banning the
use of such sites is most likely unen-
forceable or impractical, a hospital or
other such entity that must shield private
information should at least ask or force
their employees to adhere to some So-
cial Media Policy guidelines.
We can take a lot of security re-
quirement from traditional IT secu-
rity practices. For instance, when
utilizing social networking
sites, one should use separate
passwords for the different
sites, as an individual
can easily hack
all of one’s accounts if they know the
one password. A security breach of one
account could snowball. Passwords
should be complex and change every 90
days. Accessing social media sites
should be over SSL and only from
trusted network connections, not coffee
shops especially for business purposes!
When looking at confidential infor-
mation, apply the same security require-
ments. A company would let an
employee send out confi-
dential information to
someone who didn’t
have authority
to read it, so when using social media
sites, do not let your employees post in-
formation that is confidential. In order to
block them from doing that, you have to
have social media monitoring tools in
place to actually know what information
employees are posting on the Internet
Another thing one should not do is post
his or her own identifying information
publicly, such as date of birth, his or her
social security number, or an employee
ID number. If a site requires this infor-
mation, 1) it is most likely not a rep-
utable site, and/or 2) one could make
something up or ensure that it is not
going to be displayed in a profile that
will be public. If your employees post
too much personal information about
themselves and your company, this
could entice an attacker to try and gain
access to your company with the infor-
mation the employee has posted.
Some information may not be con-
sidered confidential; yet not posting
these items to public social media sites is
probably a good idea. This can include
anything from rumors, to purchases the
company plans on making, anything
about the technology one’s company
uses or will use, and any projects the in-
dividual may be working on. Develop
and follow practical posting guidelines
and do not share more information than
is necessary in corporate social media
activities.
If an employee’s personal posting
about the company can be considered
defamation or are targeting a customer
or competitor, HR has to know to take
action even if it’s difficult to measure
the value of defamation. Laws already
cover the social media posts of em-
ployees when it comes to things like
defamation, confidentiality and intel-
lectual property theft. There should be
some level of monitoring off hours
postings by employees.
Employees should be made aware
through training and written social
media policies that the company will be
monitoring for confidential and propri-
etary information and activities such as
defamation. Employees have to be
made aware of the polices on the cor-
porate brand image, intellectual prop-
erty, who they friend, who they
endorse, customer information, and
other confidential information. Human
resource monitoring should be strictly
controlled. It can go wrong as was the
case in 2006 when Hewlett Packard il-
legally used pretexting to gain infor-
mation on employees. A number of
senior managers were in trouble over
the poor judgment in how to manage
employee monitoring.
Social media usage is being retro-
fitted into the corporate environment.
But the consumer is already used to
using social media in an insecure, “in-
formation must be free” manner. Em-
ployees who have been used to giving
up all their information in places such
as Facebook and Twitter must now be
retrained to use social media in a whole
different manner to meet corporate
standards. (Assuming we have a corpo-
rate standard for social media security)
But what is a corporate standard for
using social media in an appropriate
fashion that does not put the company
at risk? Corporations have not made a
concerted effort to define that secure
social media strategy, or even a strategy
for training their employees in the “cor-
rect” use of social media. A social
media policy is required to address all
the concerns about employee posting,
training in appropriate usage and mon-
itoring and reporting of social media
activity.
Social Media Policy Infrastructure
What is a good starting point for im-
plementing a social media policy? Here
is a basic guideline.
1. Define a policy – You cannot assume
employees will do the right thing with-
out guidance. You already have things
like Expense Policies, Acceptable Use
Policies, and Internet Use Policies.
Write a basic guideline. What’s in that
guideline will vary from company to
company.
2. Information Classification – You
have to explicitly define what informa-
tion can be shared and what information
should not be Tweeted or FaceBooked.
If your employees do not know how
valuable information is then you cannot
blame them for inadvertently being
sucked into the blogosphere.
3 Keep It professional – If you allow
your employees to Socialize information
about your company, you have to give
them standards to follow. Things like
cursing, grammar mistakes, casual con-
versation style discussions might not be
the image you want to portray when dis-
cussing anything related to your com-
pany.
4. Tracking and Monitoring – If you
are going to have a policy, you have to
have a mechanism for tracking compli-
ance, reporting on activity and have con-
sequences for breaking that policy.
Conclusion
A baseline set of requirements has to be
agreed upon between IT and HR and
Legal departments to implement a se-
cure social media strategy. This list of
requirements can include:
 Defining the necessity for monitor-
ing community managers and em-
ployees use of social media
 Understand and update security
threats to social media platforms
used by the company and monitor
employee activity on affected plat-
forms
 Monitor reaction and change in be-
havior based on training
 Monitor sites mentioning the com-
pany
 Track tools used by employees in
social media usage
 Monitor activity of other organiza-
tions in your industry
 Monitor and report on what online
communities are saying about your
company
 Track the influencers in your indus-
try and those specific to your brand
 Monitor your competitor’s use of
social media si
siliconindia
|27|
January 2011
 TECHNOLOGY By Tad Lebeck
The author is CTO, Huawei Symantec
A
Enterprise Level SAN Features
and Solutions at SMB Prices
storage area network
(SAN) comprises the
most powerful technol-
ogy available for block-
level storage and has
been used by enterprises for years. For
many small to medium sized businesses
(SMBs) though, SANs were long out of
reach due predominately to their high
cost. In addition, many SMBs simply
did not have the need for large amounts
of scalable storage space and were
therefore able to function adequately
using direct-attached storage.
Two underlying factors have
siliconindia
|28|
January 2010
changed the storage landscape and have
made SANs more important and acces-
sible to SMBs. The first is the recent ex-
plosion of digital data, and the second is
the increasing availability of entry-level,
feature-packed SANs that are specially
priced and designed for SMBs.
Managing storage in an age of data
explosion
According to research firm IDC, the
amount of digital information created,
captured, or replicated in 2010 will
amount to 1.2 zettabytes (1.2 trillion gi-
gabytes). By 2020, IDC estimates this
will balloon to 35 zettabytes or, in other
words, 35 trillion gigabytes.
As a result of this massive growth in
data, SMBs will face a number of chal-
lenges in the coming years as they try to
deal with the increasing flow of infor-
mation.
First, SMBs do not necessarily have
standardized data storage, backup, re-
covery, or archiving methods. This is
due in part to cost constraints, and due
in part to existing behavioral norms.
While there is more digital content to
handle now more than ever, resources at
SMBs have stayed at the same levels.
With limited resources, many SMBs are
forced to be very cost-conscious and
might not even have someone on staff
dedicated to IT backup. Additionally, IT
staff at SMBs may not be able to keep
up with the increasing flow of data.
Given the limited resources, many
SMBs may not have developed system-
atic ways to handle backups. Disk space
is relatively cheap so many SMBs sim-
ply buy more disk space on an ad hoc
basis and neglect to consider the mo-
ment when they might need to perform
a comprehensive backup. Those who
have had the misfortune of having to re-
cover data are exposed to the nightmare
caused by haphazard backups and the
existence of fragmented information lo-
cated across multiple servers and stor-
age elements. Lucky SMBs would have
been able to recover data after spending
an excruciating amount of time, while
many more are confronted with the re-
ality that their inadequate backups have
caused them to permanently lose im-
portant business data.
Second, as the amount of data
grows, data protection becomes crucial.
Backups, as noted above, are vitally im-
portant, but additional redundancy in-
frastructure is now a necessity, given the
constant inflow of data. It is crucial to
keep the amount of time it takes to re-
cover data in case of a failure (a concept
called “recovery time objective” or
RTO) as short as possible so that down-
time is minimal. In addition, it is im-
portant to do backups frequently in
order to minimize the amount of data
that could be lost (commonly known as
“recovery point objective” or RPO). If a
SMB performs a backup at the end of a
business day but its system fails in the
middle of the next day, a half day’s
worth of valuable data is lost.
Third, data does not necessarily
equate to useable information unless it
can be easily sorted and readily ac-
cessed. Without the means to catalog the
growing amount of data, it merely be-
comes a steadily growing collection of
bits and bytes that can suffocate SMBs
who rely on manual methods to access
it. In addition, many SMBs are scattered
across multiple locales, and trying to or-
ganize and access data in multiple loca-
tions and jurisdictions can be a doubly
impossible task without the right tools.
Fourth, SMBs need to utilize re-
sources efficiently to squeeze, what they
can, out of their investments. This is a
key point in the context of data storage.
Preventive care is essential in order to
minimize total cost of ownership. Fail-
ure to address storage and recovery is-
sues with foresight can mean that an
SMB is one catastrophe away from en-
during a devastating loss of valuable
business information. Preventive care is
not only prudent, but it is an effective
use of resources that will maximize re-
turn on investment.
Enterprise level features and solu-
tions at SMB prices
Look around the marketplace today,
and you will see that a large number of
vendors now offer middle-range and
entry-level SANs that are both priced
and scaled for SMBs. SANs have be-
come commoditized and plummeted
in price while their feature sets have
gone better and better. It is to the ben-
efit of SMBs that they learn as much
as they can about the options available
in the market.
Huawei Symantec, for instance, of-
fers the Oceanspace S2600, a next gen-
eration storage solution for SMBs that
was designed with the intention of al-
lowing SMBs to have access to enter-
prise-level technology in one small
box. It allows SMBs to reduce total
cost of ownership by buying a piece of
consolidated equipment that will keep
both long-term capital expenditures
and operating costs low. Most impor-
tantly, the S2600 provides superior
data protection with value-added, cost-
effective features such as an advanced
snapshot interface that enables SMBs
to keep RPO and RTO extremely tight.
This level of data protection was never
before even considered by SMBs, but
is now attainable; the barriers have in-
deed come down.
Vendors now recognize that SMBs
constitute a significant constituency,
and have therefore scaled their wares
accordingly. The S2600, for instance,
is both scaled down and scalable, and
can accommodate between 12 and 96
SAS or SATA disks. In addition, it of-
fers multiple options of host interfaces,
including fiber channel (FC), iSCSI, or
a combination of both. This means that
a SMB can attach multiple servers—
mail servers, database servers, file
servers, backup servers—and provide
hierarchical storage using either the FC
or the iSCSI networking mode.
This type of next generation SAN
aligns itself perfectly with both the re-
sources available to and the needs of
SMBs. The future is now for SMBs:
enterprise-level data protection that is
cost effective, secure, scalable, energy-
saving, economical, and easy to use,
install, and maintain is well within
reach.
Entry-level SAN solution for SMBs
Growth of data continues at an expo-
nential rate. Certainly, in the near fu-
ture, there will be seismic shifts in the
way SMBs approach data storage,
management, and protection in order to
deal with this reality. SMBs will begin
to explore virtualization strategies and
will try to control the tide of data
growth using data deduplication. In ad-
dition, cloud computing will play a role
in data storage, as online storage serv-
ices will become more prevalent and
affordable going forth.
That said, it is vitally important that
SMBs do not get too lost in the big pic-
ture or in hypothetical scenarios. SMBs
simply need to look at their data stor-
age, management, and protection situ-
ations here and now, and ascertain
what is necessary and viable to grow
their businesses in an efficient manner
today. The answer lies not in some
complex solution but instead, in an
entry-level, next generation SAN. si
siliconindia
|29|
January 2011
Technology: By Amit Yoran
The author is CEO of NetWitness
The State of the Cyberstate
2010 In Perspective
Cybercrime and other politically and eco-
nomically motivated attacks on public
and private networks have crossed the
line from a looming threat to a cost of
doing business. The infamous Aurora at-
tack on Google, Intel and other compa-
nies underscored both the potency of data
theft and the acknowledgement by corpo-
rate America that, for now, the battle is
being lost. Recent SEC filings – from
Google to Northrop Grumman – are now
including shareholder risk language to
protect corporations in an environment
where cyber defense is an inexact science,
and where online pillaging presents ex-
plosive growth opportunities for adver-
saries with little upfront investment.
In 2010 the Kneber botnet, provided a
perfect representation of the state of the
cyberstate. A medium sized instance of
the well-known ZeuS botnet, the opera-
tors behind Kneber
slipped past what
should have been more-
than-adequate defenses
within over 2,500
companies.
siliconindia
|30| January 2010
They remained entrenched in these com-
panies for more than 18 months, and in
one month alone managed a massive data
theft totaling 75GB of sensitive data. But,
for all that was said to be average about
the malware involved in Kneber, and Au-
rora, these attacks on corporations are
representative of new “offensive-in-
depth” methodologies that are multilay-
ered, multifaceted, advanced threats.
Gaps In Effectiveness
Surveys by Verizon and the Ponemon In-
stitute provide insight into what organi-
zations are seeing and doing, in terms of
the state of cyber security. The survey re-
sults highlight systemic failures in people,
process and technology that are too stark
to ignore. Among the most prominent
findings are:
 The need for change is compelling
(Ponemon Survey):
 81 percent felt that their leadership
lacked awareness of the serious-
ness of advanced threats.
 Only 32 percent report that their
current security-enabling tech-
nologies are adequate to deal with
the growing threat from unde-
tected malware
 Only 26 percent report that the
training of their security personnel
is adequate to deal with advanced
threats.
 Insider threat is compelling too (Ver-
izon Survey):
 48 percent of data breaches are
caused by insiders
 48 percent are the result of privi-
lege misuse
 61 percent were discovered by a
third party versus the victim or-
ganization
 Detection of advanced threats is low
(Ponemon Survey)
 46 percent took one month or
longer to detect an advanced
threat
 45 percent discovered these
threats “by accident”
How have organizations found them-
selves in this untenable position, and
why has this evolution of powerful ad-
versaries and unstoppable malware
seemingly taken them by surprise? Ul-
timately, the answer lies in the fact that
attackers live in an unbounded and rap-
idly innovating environment, while
many security programs have based
success on the inadequate requirements
of compliance programs or have im-
plemented security paradigms lacking
agility and headroom for new threat
vectors.
Born in the days of slow moving
viruses and “inconvenience attacks,”
such as distributed denial of service
(DDOS) and web site defacements,
many security programs have pro-
ceeded along a simple, response-stim-
ulus mentality. The goal has been to
attempt to keep pace with attack and
exploit development – an approach that
from inception has relied on tolerance
for acceptable losses and collateral
damage. In the current doctrine, an at-
tack had to occur before cyber-defend-
ers could conceive of a proper defense,
and there was no allowance in this par-
adigm for the geometric increases in
attack velocity and complexity.
At the same time, attackers have
become more sophisticated, targeted,
and better financed. Adversary net-
works are intelligent enough to typi-
cally fly below the detection radar and
make effective use of common tech-
nology advances – multilayer attacks,
redundancy, and both peer to peer and
cloud computing concepts. Attackers
also continue to prey on the weakest
link – human nature and good will – to
circumvent even the best enterprise
defenses. Cases in point, Aurora ini-
tially breached defenses through a
phishing attack via webmail, and
Kneber used competing botnet tech-
nologies – Zeus and Waledac – to pro-
vide “backup” redundancy.
The anonymity, flexibility, and
complexity of the Internet and the cur-
rent technology landscape favor the ag-
gressor and severely challenge the
defender. Unfortunately, the combina-
tion of conventional wisdom, designer
malware, fear mongering, and margin
protection has perpetuated a security
model that has long been rendered ob-
solete.
The Way Forward
Apart from discussions of specific
technologies, there are three critical
areas both government and commer-
cial organizations must address to
achieve a deeper level in cyber defense
footing:
Understand the criticality of detec-
tion in enterprise cyber security strate-
gies. It would be great if organizations
could implement a silver bullet pre-
vention technology that would kill all
malware, data leakage, and other un-
wanted network communications. But
such technologies clearly do not exist
today and will likely never be 100 per-
cent effective due to the problems
stated previously in this article. Any
Indian companies will in-
crease their budget on infor-
mation security this year,
according to an Ernst &
Young report.The top five
priorities for all organisa-
tions, both in India and
abroad, are business continu-
ity, data leakage, information
security risk management,
compliance with regulatory
requirements, and corporate
policies.
forward-leaning cyber security strategy
must include a comprehensive tech-
nology architecture committed to net-
work analysis and visibility.
Achieve defense in depth, not pro-
tection in pieces. There must be an ex-
ecutive level commitment within all
organizations to mapping, understand-
ing and addressing global business
risk, not knee jerk threat protection
through point security solutions. Or-
ganizations must deploy solutions that
are robust, and that offer the agility to
adapt and respond to any threat on the
horizon. The goal is real-time situa-
tional awareness and the variety of an-
alytics required to detect and thwart
new attacks as they occur.
Continue to patch the human vul-
nerabilities. All staff must understand
the true nature of current threat land-
scape and be engaged in the process of
identifying real risks to the enterprise,
at both policy and technical level. Or-
ganizations must decrease their re-
liance on blinking lights as an indicator
of a problem and empower everyone
on the front lines to be an analyst con-
tributing to the collective cyber intelli-
gence of the organization.
Conclusion
The state of the cyberstate became
more challenging in 2010, due to an
increase in better-equipped adver-
saries and the lowering limits of pre-
ventive technologies. But all is not
lost for cyber defenders in govern-
ment and commercial organizations
in 2011. By making detection a fun-
damental and well-funded security
strategy, and leveraging the vast
amount of network data that can be
recorded, fused, and analyzed in real
time, organizations can find every-
thing from unwanted data leakage by
misbehaving employees or external
attackers, to the kind of zero day mal-
ware that was previously believed to
be undetectable. The answers are in
the network – organizations just have
to ask the right questions. si
siliconindia
|31| January 2011
Technology: By Anjan Ghosal
The author is President, CEO and Founder, IntelliNet Technologies
player high-definition gaming and
videoconferencing which can become
Levels Description

technology. Both these technologies a major revenue generator for them.

Unmanaged Offload Cellular devices (i.e. phones, dongles) detect the presence of available carrier or

allow data to be moved at a fraction of Another important factor that is

partner hotspots and automatically connect to them after authentication against
the operator’s subscriber database. Traffic is routed directly to the Internet using

the cost – though Wi-Fi can be an order likely to drive up data traffic is India is
the Wi-Fi operator’s infrastructure.

of magnitude cheaper than deploying general internet access from mobile de-
Managed Offload Post authentication, the traffic is routed via an ‘edge’ device that is managed by the

femtocells. vices. While India has a rapidly growing

operator. This edge device allows the operator to ‘control’ the subscriber’s internet
traffic without having to route the traffic back to the core networks. It allows

India has been late to the 3G party mobile subscriber base, the low penetra-
operators to implement volume based billing, enable prepaid subscribers, perform

but is fast catching up. Earlier this year, tion of laptops and personal computers
legal intercept, enforce traffic shaping and policy controls, etc.

seven private operators paid a whop- means that the primary source of internet
Converged Offload In addition to the above establish seamless connectivity with the core network – so
that as required traffic can flow between the two. The enables carriers to deliver

ping $14.6 billion to buy 3G spectrum. access are likely to be mobile devices.
premium content and walled garden services to their subscribers via the Wi-Fi

A number of operators like Reliance Whatever be the driver, the focus on mo- In parallel with the 3G roll out, al- Service (QoS) for mobile data sub-
interface. This is extended to provide seamless handoff between the two networks.

and Tata have already launched their
3G services. As of end of September
2010, the wireless subscriber base in
India stood at 687.71 million, second
only to China. However, iSuppli fore-
casted that 3G will garner 250 million
subscribers by 2012.
While there are similarities be-
tween India and other 3G enabled na-
tions, there are some very significant
differences. Due to fierce competition,
voice tariffs in India are one of the low-
est in the world. The Telecom Regula-
tory Authority of India recently
bile data is likely to become a double
edged sword, quickly outstripping net-
work capacity. These factors, coupled
with the limited spectrum allocated to
operators in India, may lead to a ‘perfect
storm’ where the networks get over-
whelmed.
Operators are already aware of this
problem and are actively seeking solu-
tions to this problem using offload tech-
niques. Femtocells are a valid
proposition for them but they are pricey
and are still not proven in the current de-
ployments. A more appropriate solution
ternative wireless services are being de-
ployed to address the demand for
wireless Internet services. Companies
like Tikona, a recent startup, are build-
ing all-IP wireless networks using unli-
cenced spectrum. The technology,
referred to as WI-BRO - a variation of
WiMAX, is built on meshed networking
routes traffic over wired and wirelessly
meshed access points. The iSuppli study
forecasted a subscriber base for such
services to reach 19 million by 2012.
By deploying a Wi-Fi data offload
solution, mobile network operators can
scribers
 Seamless transition between 3G and
Wi-Fi – no need for subscribers to
manually register or log in to use the
network
 Utilization of the existing mobile
billing and charging infrastructure
 Subscriber access to secure content
provided by the mobile operators –
known as “walled garden” services
However, some work must be done
to implement this functionality. Based
on the operators’ requirements we have

M
Mobile Data Growth in India
an Opportunity and a Challenge
obile data continues
to grow at a phe-
nomenal rate in
countries that have
already deployed
data centric 3G networks. AT&T for
example has noted a data growth of
over 5000 percent in just three years.
Most of this growth is attributed to
high bandwidth video related services
like video chat, IP TV and access to
video content over sites like YouTube
on the Internet access. The continued
price pressure on data rates together
with an unprecedented growth in de-
mand has created a major challenge for
operators around the world forcing
them to seek ‘unconventional’ solu-
reported a year-over-year decline in
Average Revenue per User (ARPU)
per month of 33.9 percent for GSM
subscribers and 19.6 percent for
CDMA subscribers. As of June 2010
the ARPU for GSM was Rs. 122
($2.71) and for CDMA INR 74
($1.64). This can be compared to an
tions.
ARPU of more than $50.00 for post
One such solution is a ‘small cell’
paid service in the U.S. Hence, to re-
approach where operators deploy fem-
cover their huge investments in 3G, In-
tocells in locations with poor cellular
dian operators will have to increasingly
coverage. The data is backhauled via
look at data services to drive revenue
the existing broadband network using
growth.
standard IP providing a more cost ef-
Indian operators do have a great
fective data coverage. The alternative
track record in generating significant
solution that is gaining favor is to en-
revenue from VAS services like ring
able the Wi-Fi radio on the user’s smart
back tones, music downloads, SMS
phone and deoliver data over that in-
and a variety of downloadable applica-
terface rather than over licenced spec-
tions. Most of these services are of-
trum like UMTS/3G. Data in this case
fered through a strong web portal as
is also backhauled via the pubic Inter-
‘premium services’. So it is reasonable
net. Studies have shown that the ma-
to assume that as 3G gains momentum,
jority of mobile data is generated by
a lot of these services will be supple-
smart phones in indoor settings which
mented by high bandwidth services
make Wi-Fi an excellent data offload
like video sharing, mobile TV, multi-
for the Indian market is data traffic of-
fload to Wi-Fi networks.
With this in mind operators are looking
at developing Wi-Fi zones of their own
or partnering with Wi-Fi operators and
aggregators to see if some of the data
can be offloaded to these networks.
Both, Tata Communications and Bharti
Airtel have been actively deploying
hundreds of Wi-Fi hotspots across the
country as a service to their broadband
subscribers. BSNL, Reliance and Spec-
tranet are also offering Wi-Fi Internet
access.
Vikas Singh, CMO for Telemedia
Services at Bharti Airtel was quoted as
saying: “Airtel Wi-Fi hotspots will be
strategically located at leading premium
hotels, hospitals, chains of restaurants,
coffee shops and corporate buildings
that are the hub of corporate, commu-
nity and social activities. For us, this is
an initiative to increase customer stick-
iness and enhance average revenue per
user (ARPU) of our broadband cus-
tomer base.”
provide: classified them into the following three
 Improved coverage and Quality of categories.
The 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards
bodies have published specifications for
these techniques and some companies
have developed products to enable seam-
less integration of Wi-Fi and Cellular net-
works. IntelliNet has been actively
A recent survey conducted by
involved in a commercial trial with a
CA Technologies found that
leading edge operator in India and the
businesses are losing more
initial results are promising.
than a quarter billion dollars
However, successful deployment of this
annually due to IT system
solution will require the vendors and the
downtime with small compa-
operators to work closely to implement
nies suffering the most. North
a complete end-to-end solution which
American businesses alone re-
will not only address the technological
ported a loss of $26.5 billion in
aspects but also all the operational issues
revenue each year from IT sys-
in deploying this service such as the in-
tem downtime with the biggest
tegration with the backend OSS systems.
impact on SMBs. Financial
This technology will not only assist
services are impacted the most
operators with 3G licenses offload their
by downtime, with the average
excess traffic but also will help operators
company losing $224,000 or
with 2G licenses to provide their sub-
more in revenue each year.
scribers a 3G-like experience - and do so
Public-sector organizations are
at a fraction of the cost of deploying 3G
impacted the least.
infrastructure. si

siliconindia
|32| January 2010 siliconindia
|33| January 2011
Technology: By Ravi Shankar
The author is Co-Founder & CEO, Navales
Cloud
Securing the
T
he term cloud computing
has become ubiquitous in
the tech world and even
SMB companies are lead-
ing the pack to opt for
cloud services. Of course they are con-
cerned about the security implications
of making the transition to cloud com-
puting.
In fact the perception of threats for
cloud computing is diverse. Some
CIOs worry that the data is not safe on
a cloud as it can be hacked into. Oth-
ers feel that the cloud service can act
as a wormhole for hackers to attack
their own networks.
But here’s a newsflash for them.
The cloud can’t be secured. And if you
stop to think about it, is there a need
to secure it? For a SMB business
owner cloud computing is attractive
from a cost point of view. But on the
flipside, its security is yet to be proven
convincingly.
SMB owners need to focus on how
to secure their assets and resources
which connect with the cloud and
are within their control, as a first
step. This will ensure that they have
a more efficient network to securely
leverage benefits of the Cloud.
There is still some distance to go be-
fore Cloud is recognized for safety,
till then SMB owners must focus on
taking the first step of securing the
access points at their end to the
cloud.
One of the compelling reasons
that vendors have been using to get
their customers to shift their
processes to a cloud is the freedom
from managing the security of their
data assets. When a customer sub-
scribes to a cloud service, the onus
of ensuring the security of this data
gets transferred automatically to the
service provider.
At a time when IT budgets are
dissolving, this will come as music
to the ears of IT managers and CIOs.
But before they pop the champagne
they need to bear in mind one fact –
just because the service provider is
taking the charge for the security of
the data on the cloud, it does not
mean that they will also take the re-
sponsibility that the data complies
to various international regulations.
How secure is a cloud?
There is no denying that cloud com-
puting security is considered to be
an issue and vendors of all hues are
trying their best to come up with
ways to make it completely secure.
For instance, Nevales provides
SMB owners a security services
platform which is on demand to
connect securely and access the
benefits of the cloud. By doing so,
the SMB company can protect its
own assets and better leverage
cloud services.
We believe that the services de-
livered from the cloud will be ex-
tremely compelling for SMB
owners in the near to medium term,
given the investments in this space
continue to be significant and that
customers will be made very attrac-
tive offers at throwaway price
points. A first step to this will be for
the SMB to ensure his connectivity
with the cloud.
SMB owners need to focus on how
to secure their assets and resources
which connect with the cloud and are
within their control
One of the reasons why cloud
computing is throwing up challenges
for security is because the data re-
sides on a single service provider’s
cloud and can be accessed through
various shared computing sources.
The Indian online advertis-
ing market comprising of
text and display advertising
will grow to 993 crore in
this fiscal from Rs 785 crore
in the financial year 2009-
10, a study says.The total
online display advertising
market is expected to grow
by 28 percent to touch Rs
534 crore in 2010-2011 from
Rs417 crore in 2009-2010.
Banking, Financial Services
and Insurance (BFSI)
emerges as the leader in
both text and display adver-
tising spends with 24 per-
cent in each category. Travel
is close behind and FMCG a
new entrant to this space.
The Cloud Security Alliance
(CSA) was commissioned by HP to
conduct a research to detail the po-
tential threats surrounding the use of
cloud services. This resulted in the
research paper, ‘Top Threats to
Cloud Computing Report,” where
information security experts across
29 enterprises, solution providers,
and consulting firms shared their
feedback about cloud environments.
This survey highlighted the follow-
ing as the leading threats for cloud
computing:
 Abuse and nefarious use of
cloud computing
 Insecure application program-
ming interfaces
 Malicious insiders
 Shared technology vulnerabili-
ties
 Data loss/leakage
 Account, service and traffic hi-
jacking
 Unknown risk profile
In the end, to be able to fully
leverage on the benefits of cloud
computing it is essential that organ-
izations invest the right resources to
appropriately secure their data as-
sets. The cloud service providers
will definitely do their bit to ensure
that the right levels of security is
built into their service models. But
customers too need to realize the se-
curity implications associated to
cloud services before they shift the
processes to it. After all, it is always
better to be safe than sorry, espe-
cially where data security is
concerned. si
siliconindia
|35| January 2011
Technology: By Sanjiv Pande
The author is President - School Learning Solutions, NIIT
schooling system have shown limited
results. India’s 75000 odd private
schools account for 7 percent of total
institutions but enroll 40 percent of
country’s 219 million students. About
142 million children are not in the
schooling system.
and half-baked solutions, at the click
of a button. Well meaning and well in-
tentioned schools who really want to
make a difference to the learning
ecosystem for their students unfortu-
nately end up burning their fingers. It
is therefore extremely important for
any institution to be very careful in se-
lecting the right technology and con-
which can address the needs of all the
stake holders like students, teachers,
management etc with a single solu-
tion. A school as a result has to either
deal with multiple vendors for differ-
ent solutions or at times develop in-
house solutions. This leaves the school
management with the trauma of inte-
grating the piecemeal solutions into
has obvious issues of irrelevance to the
curriculum being followed by the
school.
IT skilling and Change management
These are perhaps most critical factors
for successfully integrating technol-
ogy in the learning ecosystem of a
school. It is easier to get children used

There is a severe
sider its consequences in detail. They their system and sub-optimal utiliza- to technology however the bigger
may not only end up wasting huge tion of resources. challenge is to impact the mindset of
problem of lack of sums of money but also playing with teachers and support staff. A simple

an integrated
the lives of hundreds of young minds Lack of right pedagogy in learning hardware support does not work.
whose future is trusted to a school by solutions Teachers need a specific type of sup-

solution which can

parents. For technology to make sense to its port which may be more academic
users in educational institutions, it is than technical. While office staff may

address the needs of Challenges in successfully integrat-

ing technology solutions in schools:
imperative to have a strong pedagogi-
cal framework. After all it is not about
need detailed training and re-training
on features of a solution. One size
all the stake holders ‘Wonders of technology’ is a theme
For technology to make sense to its users
like students,
that every teacher and every student
would have spent reams of paper writ-
in educational institutions, it is imperative
teachers, manage-
ing on. However we need to under-
stand that technology in itself in to have a strong pedagogical framework
ment etc with a

I
neither a genie nor a master. It is what-

single solution
ever we make out of it. NIIT has been
Successful Integration of Technology in involved in bringing up people and technology but about education. It has does not fit all is the mantra here.
computers together successfully for been observed that off-the shelf tech-
Schools- Opportunities and Challenges over 27 years now. Our work in tech- nology solutions end up impacting the Total Cost of Ownership
Other major business opportunity nology in K-12 education space in learning ecosystem negatively by cre- Many times a school, while going
t is very rightly said that ‘Nothing is permanent but change’. However if exists in the form of tutoring and many India over the past decade has given us ating a passive learning environment. ahead to adopt a solution, overlooks
we look at how the world has changed around us in the last few
mom and pop stores are making merry. some rare insights into kind of chal- Technology over-shadows the real the total cost of owning a solution.
decades, it would be right to say that more than change, the pace at
which change happens, is fascinating to watch. One of the most impor- How much does this appeal to the con- lenges that schools faces in integrating purpose of learning. There may be lots of hidden costs in-
tant contributors to this mind-boggling change and its pace has been science of an interested corporate technology successfully: volved in use of a solution. Sometimes
technology. As in other spheres of human life, the impact of technology in player has to be seen since tutoring is Hardware focus without emphasiz- even if it is considered, the cost is
how we educate our kids or how they educate themselves is also of great sig- looked down upon by many. Lots of Lack of integrated solutions ing on content highly underestimated. These costs
nificance. In this write up we shall dwell a bit on the challenges we face as players are also operating in areas like Schools as a rule always fail to see the Generally schools like to believe that can include hidden costs like higher
well as opportunities that lie ahead of us in integrating technology successfully pre-schooling, school ERP, text- bigger picture while trying to integrate more the hardware, the better is the so- electricity bills, consumables, security
into our learning ecosystem in schools. The focus will be on private schools of books/stationery items and provision ICT into their system. Their approach lution. Nothing can be farther from etc.
India since the govt. K-12 education institutions are still in the infancy stage of other technology enabled learning at best is piecemeal. Normally a truth. Be it in classrooms or in labora-
as far as integrating technology is concerned.
solutions etc. Other business opportu- school spends on setting up a com- tories, the content, is the key to the ef- Obsolescence of technology
nities have just opened up and many puter lab and creates a small computer fectiveness of a solution. Even in the Technology gets outdated very fast. It
School education market in India: a bit deeper we shall know that this players are entering these segments department that takes care of computer case of content schools are led to be- is very important for a school to con-
Opportunity paradox sector may show lots of promise but every day. Technology enabled learn- education program of the school. lieve that more the content the better sider before purchase, which is an ap-
There have been so many studies and challenges over-shadow the hope and ing solutions space has seen a lot of When it comes to automating the it is. This happens to push aggregated propriate technology to invest in.
estimates which have painted a very opportunities that exist. Education excitement in the past few years. More back-office operations, it is seen as a content to un-suspecting schools under Newer technologies are being rolled
rosy picture of India’s School Educa- continues to be a Not-for-Profit in- and more schools are experimenting separate activity and without fail some the garb of covering entire syllabus out which reduce the impact of obso-
tion market. It is currently pegged at dustry in India which makes many with technology solutions to make use local player holds the key to their ad- and all topics. Customers also tend to lescence. It is better if a school goes
more than $40 billion promising a genuinely interested private players of tools that positively impact learning ministration engine. If it comes to in- get carried away by look and feel. One through an extensive exercise of defin-
double digit annual growth rate. So stay away from the core business op- in schools. However, as happens with tegrating technology in classroom needs to understand that quantity of ing the vision and scope of IT integra-
far so good, however anyone who portunity of setting-up and running any great business opportunity, lots of there will be another vendor vying hardware and content in a learning so- tion program and involve other parties
gets smitten by this side of story, brick and mortar schools. At the same small and big entrants try to make a their attention. There is a severe prob- lution is the last thing that a school who can help them in coming up with
needs to be highly careful. If we look time, efforts by Govt. through its quick buck by churning out unmindful lem of lack of an integrated solution should look for. Aggregated content a well defined plan. si

siliconindia
|36| January 2010 siliconindia
|37|
January 2011
Technology: By Rahul Chaudhry
The author is Partner, Lall Lahiri & Salhotra
IPR Issues
Cloud Computing
C
in
loud Computing is the
new buzzword for busi-
nesses. While it is not an
entirely new concept, its
application to businesses
in new and unique modes along with the
scale of adoption of new techniques have
made it a fairly current subject. Consider
your regular email and social network-
ing sites; these are all examples of cloud
computing in their simplest manner.
However, today we see a proliferation of
new tools of cloud computing that have
made businesses turn around and take
notice of the immense advantages that
cloud computing has to offer. A range of
operations can now be performed on the
cloud without the need for capital in-
vestments in purchasing, setting up, op-
erating, and managing systems within
the business.
Cloud computing covers a gamut of
services and can broadly be categorized
as Software as a Service (SaaS), Infra-
structure as a Service (IaaS), and Plat-
form as a Service (PaaS) modes. All of
these services require storage of infor-
mation, at times of a sensitive nature, in
the ‘cloud’. Businesses have readily em-
braced these modes of services. As a
consequence, an immense quantum of
business in innumerable industries and
various business operations, from the
day-to-day mundane tasks to collabora-
tion and operative tasks, are being per-
formed ‘in the cloud’. In such a scenario,
it is imperative that the legal implications
of using cloud computing services be un-
siliconindia
|38| January 2010
derstood by a business and that steps be
taken to overcome the challenges and
mitigate the risks presented by it.
The legal issues arising out of cloud
computing can be broadly categorized as
operational, legislative or regulatory, se-
curity, third party contractual limitations,
risk allocation or mitigation, and those
relating to jurisdiction.
Operational legal issues concern
legal issues that arise from the use of
cloud computing services on a day-to-
day basis and include concerns such as
access to information of the business and
manner of storage of the said informa-
Cloud computing is an unregulated field with a patchwork
of legislation here and there. Data concerning individuals
of a certain jurisdiction may warrant certain standards that
may not be necessary at the jurisdiction where the data is
being stored or processed or accessed
tion. It is imperative that such issues be
addressed prior to availing services of a
service provider and be adequately dealt
with in the contractual negotiations.
Also, included in operational issues are
those of upgrade and vendor lock-in.
This would imply that the business must
consider as to whether, while perform-
ing its operations, it would be able to up-
grade to newer operating procedures and
systems and who, and to what extent,
shall be responsible for the process.
Another operational concern that a
business must consider is data portabil-
ity. Would it be possible, in the event of
discontinuation of relationship between
the vendor and the business or in case of
technical, financial or other difficulties,
for the business to access its information
through other applications or service
providers? It is essential for businesses
to consider such a scenario, since there
have been several instances of data being
lost due to technical hitches or due to the
vendor closing up shop. Such contin-
gencies, if provided for and dealt with in
the contract between the parties can go a
long way in eliminating risks and also al-
locating liability in case of loss.
Legislative and regulatory issues are
another aspect of cloud computing that
present an area of considerable ambigu-
ity. Cloud computing as such is an un-
regulated field with a patchwork of
legislation and regulation in limited ju-
risdictions. The problem presented by
this is that data concerning individuals of
a certain jurisdiction may warrant certain
standards that may not be necessary at
the jurisdiction where the data is being
stored or processed or accessed. For ex-
ample, any data that relates to nationals
of the European Union must comply
with certain basic guidelines on data pro-
tection as provided for under the Euro-
pean Union’s Data Protection Directive.
However, such considerations are not es-
sential for data stored in India and nei-
ther is the service provider bound by
such regulation.
The question that arises here is how
does one ensure compliance with the
myriad legislative and regulatory
frameworks? A form of ‘hybrid system’
is required to be formulated and imple-
mented wherein the regulatory require-
ments of all jurisdictions are taken into
account and this can be the best evalua-
tion and implemented at the stage of
contractual negotiations.
Security is probably the biggest
concern for any business. When opera-
tional data is stored online on an out-
sourced server that is accessible in a
controlled manner or otherwise, to mul-
tiple users, there is bound to be anxiety
among data owners of its safety and
protection from manipulation. For In-
tellectual Property owners, the anxiety
is greater with respect to the protection
of valuable data and trade secrets. In ad-
dition, legislative and regulatory poli-
cies in some cases require certain types
of data to be protected with certain pre-
scribed standards. In such cases, re-
gardless of the location of the server or
the service provider, it is essential that
the business ensures that these guide-
lines are met. However, every user must
ensure that their service provider is reli-
able and would ensure safety of the
data. Here the rule of ‘Caveat Emptor’
would prevail.
Another question that arises is re-
lated to the ownership of the intellectual
property in the information. The man-
ner of storing information and databases
themselves are copyright protected in
most jurisdictions. The challenge that
cloud computing presents is that the
data is stored on the service provider’s
system and the owner of the material
cannot exercise more control over it
than to merely access and manipulate
and process the data.
Contractual negotiations
with a cloud computing
service provider are impor-
tant in protecting data and
intellectual property. Clari-
fying these issues is the first
step towards establishing a
relationship with the vendor
In certain situations, there exists no
doubt, such as a cloud computing serv-
ice provider owns the infrastructure and
any applications being run on it, while
the user owns the content, data, and re-
sults obtained from using those applica-
tions. However, in cases where results
are obtained by converging software or
by multiple users working on segments
of a work, the questions of ownership of
IP in the work may become worrisome.
While no straitjacketed rule may be pre-
scribed and it depends on each case, it is
important that every business must first
obtain clarity on these issues before data
is made available to the vendor.
Risk allocations and mitigation is an
important consideration that can mean
the difference between advantageous
use of the cloud computing model or
disadvantageous. Certain questions of
risk allocation, such as liability in case
of breach of security by a third party,
may present difficulties for the business.
The question of who would be liable in
such a case, despite adequate safety
measures by the vendor, is a question
that remains unanswered and depends
upon the law in various countries. It is
also essential, for both the business and
the service provider, to ensure that ade-
quate safety measures are taken by it
and to be transparent about them. This
can go a long way to establish the lia-
bility of the vendor at the time of a trial
or discovery process. Contractual nego-
tiations also play a vital part in deter-
mining liability of the parties for
inter-parte faults and resultant losses.
Another question that may be trou-
blesome for intellectual property own-
ers is related to jurisdiction. Any data
stored in a cloud, by its very definition,
is on the Internet and accessible at any
location in any part of the world. How-
ever, the proprietor of the information is
at one location and so is the server of the
service provider. Questions of jurisdic-
tion are bound to arise in such a sce-
nario. Here too, the myriad rules of
various jurisdictions have to be taken
into account. The parties can, through
contract, determine the governing law
and jurisdictions. However, in certain
cases, even this agreement may not be
able to oust the jurisdiction of multiple
courts, especially when legislation in
this respect specifically provides for ju-
risdiction.
Contractual negotiations with a
cloud computing service provider are of
immense importance in protecting data
and intellectual property over the cloud.
These issues must be clarified, with pro-
fessional assistance if necessary, as the
first step towards establishing a rela-
tionship with the vendor. How much li-
ability a vendor accepts for the data and
its protection shall be a question of vital
importance in case of breach in the data
or service.
However, it must also be stated that
while cloud computing does in fact
present challenges to the business
world, the advantages that it provides
are many. The issues concerning intel-
lectual property that arise and the risks
that emerge for intellectual property
owners, while being serious, are no
more greater or challenging than those
posed by use of the Internet even prior
to cloud computing.
siliconindia
|39| January 2011
Technology: By Tom Rodgers
ERP
OpenSource
F
or many years Open
Source ERP has been qui-
etly maturing. With a
large following from im-
partial sites like Source-
Forge.net and Open Source ERP
Guru as well as the sites sponsored by
Open Source ERP integrators and
commercial Open Source companies,
the information and collaboration is
remarkable. The key to ERP is matu-
rity and stability. While not all avail-
able Open Source ERPs are mature,
many are and it is those that deserve
a serious consideration.
The world of ERP has been dom-
inated for years by the likes of SAP,
Oracle, PeopleSoft and Baan. These
ERP systems are broad and deep in
functionality, but as we all know, are
difficult to implement and often ex-
pensive to support. For the sake of
argument we can say these are the
1,000-pound gorillas and are com-
monly known as Tier 1 ERP. Tier 1
software is meant typically for com-
panies that have over $200 million in
siliconindia
|40|
January 2010
is Ready
Willing & Able
revenues with multi-location and
country presence and these providers
do a good job of meeting the majority
of the functionality requirements
across most industries. Then there
are several Tiers of ERP that accom-
modate the needs of smaller compa-
nies and certain industry niches.
They typically focus on user experi-
ence but have the same traits as the
Tier 1 providers – closed systems
built on proprietary development
toolkits. That is not to say they can-
not be integrated with other software,
they can and are every day but it is
more difficult and requires special-
ized functional and technical knowl-
edge, all of which adds to the Total
Cost of Ownership (TCO).
About 11 years ago an early
adopter of Open Source technology
within the ERP space began a jour-
ney. Who would have known what
would spring from this start. Started
by an ex-Oracle employee, Compiere
ERP began a journey that included
splits in the road that brought life to
other ERP Open Source projects such
as OpenBravo and ADempiere. Then
there is OFBiz an Apache project
with a much different architecture but
strong to those who desire the spe-
cific benefits. Each project or com-
pany has its own approach and focus,
but all have a common theme - an
open technology stack that is easily
accessible and modifiable. While
functionality is broad, typically, it is
not as deep as Tier 1 ERP. Is that re-
ally important? It depends, but for
thousands of companies world-wide,
including SMBs and large Distribu-
tors, the answer is a resounding NO
(it is not that important).
Why do we believe Open Source
ERP Is Ready, Willing and Able?
Stability
First, let’s focus on overall stability.
For the most part, all of the Open
Source ERP products mentioned
above are stable. But stability comes
in several flavors. Stability means
that the project or company provides
a consistent product that works and a
methodology and toolset that can sup-
port new functionality when it is re-
leased. Not all Open Source
providers are able to pass this test and
this is one of the most important fac-
tors in Open Source ERP evaluation.
Next focus would be on the sta-
bility of the technical tools the ERP is
built on. All the software mentioned
pass that test, but the approach may
be different in how they have crafted
their architecture.
Functionality
If you are one of the thousands of
companies world-wide that distrib-
utes or manufactures products and
services then there are stable and ma-
ture Open Source ERP products that
meet your functionality needs. Gen-
erally speaking you will see all of the
Open Source ERP provide the core
Order to Cash, Supply Chain and Fi-
nancial functionality in an integrated
manner. Some, like Compiere, pro-
vide robust multi-national and orga-
nizational hierarchy structures that
can support most organization’s busi-
ness requirements. However, it is im-
portant to mention that most products
available do not dive deep into the
pool of functionality such as true ca-
pacity planning for manufacturers.
Integrating with Other Software
As most Open Source ERPs are built
on modern and mature Open Source
architecture, the services they employ
for integrating with other software is
both open and flexible. Whether a
company requires additional features
and functionality to support Customer
Relationship Management and E-
Commerce or requires comprehen-
sive reporting tools, there are robust
Open Source options that can be eas-
ily, and cost-effectively, integrated
with the chosen Open Source ERP, a
utopian dream with most proprietary
ERPs.
Adoption and Partner Programs
By definition, Open Source software
is a community effort and in many
cases free. Increasing Enterprise
adoption of Open Source systems has
created a niche for Commercial Open
Source – Open Source software with
the support levels and commitments
that enterprises need, but at a fraction
of the cost associated with proprietary
tools. Open Source ERP also comes
in several flavors from free to com-
mercial subscription programs. The
subscription programs are typically
managed on behalf of the ERP
provider by partners or VARs (Value
Added Resellers). The VAR Guy
(www.thevarguy.com) ranks Open
Source software in general and sev-
eral of the Open Source ERP products
mentioned earlier in this article make
the list for the second year. Compiere
and OpenBravo both made the top 25
in a strong group of Open Source
companies that includes RedHat, Al-
fresco and SugarCRM. The annual
survey tracks Open Source compa-
nies based on a range of variables, in-
cluding size, influence and growth of
their partner programs. As for Adop-
tion, look to the universe of people
and companies that have downloaded
software:
Commercial Versions Generally
Payoff
To ensure peace-of-mind, we recom-
mend the adoption of Commercial
Open Source ERP (or Enterprise Edi-
tion), as opposed to the Community
Edition (CE). For a nominal annual
subscription, you would be entitled to
the latest functionality, tested well be-
fore release and supported by the
company or a representative partner.
Adopting commercial Open Source
ERP has yielded reduced TCO in ex-
cess of 90 percent - truly a com-
pelling case for its adoption.
You get the Code
Open Source ERPs provide you ac-
cess to the source code. We have all
experienced situations where propri-
etary ERP companies have been ac-
quired with the sole intention of
killing competition or have filed for
Chapter 11, leaving customers with
no support or an upgrade path! Ac-
cess to source code ensures that you
are in control of your ERP system.
Well, if that isn’t an important differ-
entiator we don’t know what is.
In summary, Open Source ERP is
ready for thousands of companies
world-wide. We would recommend
you do your homework and involve
a partner that can help you identify,
roll out and support the Open Source
ERP that is the right fit for your or-
ganization.
Open Source ERP has come of age
and is Ready, Willing and Able to meet
your business needs. Are you? si
About Author
Tom Rodgers is Director
of ERP Sales and Services
for CIGNEX
siliconindia
|41|
January 2011
Technology: By Vinay Singh
The author is CEO, Vital Wires Consulting
E
ERP Implementation for Midsize companies
Necessary Expense or Strategic Investment?
nterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) has become quite an
established term over last
couple of decades. For most
of us it means a tool that
helps an organization run various func-
tions of its day to day operations and also
help drive strategic decisions. ERP Sys-
tems have the potential to cover a wide
arena from functions as Human Re-
sources, Supply Chain Management,
Customer Relations Management, Fi-
nancials, Manufacturing functions and
Warehouse Management functions.
Evolution of ERP followed the gen-
eral evolutionary trend of Information
Technology (IT). Long ago organizations
worldwide started realizing how adop-
tion of an ERP system makes some of
them distinctly competitive and others an
exact opposite. On the other hand ERP
product development over last three
decades has ensured that ERP products
are not just a competitive differentiator
siliconindia
|42|
January 2010
for large companies, but a critical enabler
for midsize companies as well. For every
midsize company, not enabling itself
with a good ERP system today is like try-
ing to conduct business without using
basic technological tools like emails.
To clarify for the uninitiated, Enter-
prise Resource Planning (ERP) is an in-
tegrated system which facilitates the
required collaborative effort for various
departments of an organization such as
marketing, sales, production, quality
management, materials management, lo-
gistics, financial accounting and financial
control. At the very basic level, integra-
tion of such a system helps in ensuring
accuracy of information, productivity, ef-
ficiency, scalability and above all relia-
bility. This system unleashes possibility
of implementing management practices
that make one organization fundamen-
tally different from another.
The main problem faced by SMEs
when it comes to ERP is that their re-
quirement is limited while the product
offered exceeds their specifications in all
ways (including the costs).The gap be-
tween these two needs to be analyzed by
the companies and SMEs. It is not possi-
ble for the vendor to bring down their
standards for the sake of the company
neither is it feasible for the later to up-
grade for the sake of the former. So, for
a proper management their should be a
balance between the two. The company
should discuss with the vendor to analyze
the pros and cons of every possibility to
match their requirements.
Basics of guaranteeing on the invest-
ment
Not every collection of features is an
ERP product: ERP is a software prod-
uct. ERP product market has evolved
over last two decades to have clear mar-
ket leaders and a host of other products.
Choosing the right product is very basic
to ensuring that one gets highest return
from the investment. Implementing an
ERP system and fine tuning it to be a
business enabler over a well defined
roadmap requires that the product cho-
sen by you does not exhaust itself as you
go beyond operational execution and
look to enable your strategic insight,
competitive edges and USPs. Just as it is
well understood today that developing a
software system from scratch as your
own ERP is a big waste of energy, choos-
ing a product that covers 75 percent of
your operational execution is similarly
imprudent.
Explosive growth and high returns
come from your ERP system when you
are able to take beyond operational exe-
cution and use for one of following:
 Operational Excellence
 Strategic Decision Making
 Competitive advantage
 Scalability Enabler
It’s important for the product that you
choose as your ERP system to be able to
enable all of the above over a period of
time. Most immature ERP products ex-
haust themselves at the level of Opera-
tional Execution itself, and leave no
scope for growing to subsequent steps of
evolution.
Implementing the Product well is as im-
portant as the product itself: Implemen-
tation is a crucial exercise in ensuring
the success of an ERP initiative. Imple-
mentation process does not mean just
setting up the transactional parameters
and master data for a product so that it
can function for a specific company. It’s
a purely business driven exercise of
bringing about a change and taking the
organization along with it. It’s too elab-
orate a topic to address in a few para-
graphs but just as a word of caution,
like any other change initiative all the
following are critical success factors –
1. Selection of a worthy partner who
can bring definitiveness to your
project in terms of time lines and
ability to give you the best solution
for your business
2. A clear solution strategy and imple-
mentation plan
3. Buy-in and support from company
leadership
4. Buy-in on the solution features from
all function leaders
5. Communication strategy for every
section of ERP user
6. Commitment of right resources to
the project
7. Single minded pursuit to finish the
project on original schedule
8. A project control procedure that
leaves no room for lack of account-
ability and has the ability to incen-
tivize everyone involved
Where do you get the return on in-
vestment from?
 Lower Cost of Operation – Higher
productivity and efficiency leads to
lower cost of operation across the
organization.
 Higher Serviceability to Customers
– A company that operated at 85 per-
cent serviceability ratio to its cus-
tomers can operate at 95 percent of
serviceability as a result of collabo-
rative efficiency between sales, pro-
duction, quality check and logistics.
This translates to 10 percent more
revenue collection and proportion-
ate profits year after year.
 Higher Throughput – Getting more
out of your installed capacity could
mean crores of saved capital invest-
ment. With a good ERP product and
a well implemented solution one can
optimize its production capacities
and coordinate with sales to achieve
higher throughput.
 Faster Inventory Turns – Most man-
ufacturing companies have 70 per-
cent of their cost in the raw material.
Faster inventory turns means signif-
icantly lower amount of working
capital and its cost.
 Lower Cost of Compliance – Accu-
rate and demonstrable operational
execution means higher statutory
compliance. This translates into sav-
ing significant amount of money on
ensuring compliance and manage-
ment time.
 Control on intended inefficiency –
As the organization grows, visibility
and transparency is sacrificed. Trust
based system leads to scope of mis-
management. A good ERP system
brings a huge deterrent of audit trail
and traceability into the system. This
leads to crores of money saved over
a period in material handling itself.
Dr. Mahesh Taneja, AVP- Finance and
Information Technology at Munjal
Showa and a doctorate in Inventory Op-
timization says – “For a company that is
past `50 crores turnover, cost of the best
ERP solution can be recovered from the
material handling efficiency itself”.
Apart from tangible benefits there
are plenty of intangible benefits. Can we
really think of implementing vendor
evaluation or distributor management if
we can’t measure a few key result areas
accurately in real time. Can we possibly
incentivize our dealer network if our
marketing department’s vision of a re-
bate system cannot be automated
through our ERP system. Is it going to
be possible to sell to an OEM in Europe
if our ERP system does not help us in
tracing the component supplier in case
our client had to unfortunately recall its
product. What if my USP is fastest
order-to-delivery, if I cannot make it
happen through my ERP system. Can I
ever ignore the fact that a core of well
defined processes that is embedded into
my ERP system can free my manage-
ment to drive the company to a growth
target in four years time that was other-
wise to be achieved in five years time.
The list of ROI elements goes on. On
one hand ERP is as necessary to a busi-
ness as an email system. On the other
hand a good ERP system can be source
of sustainable competitive advantage,
higher profits and scalability. For an In-
dian manufacturer growing beyond
about `50 crores turnover, having a good
ERP solution is a must. The great news is
that it is actually a wealth creator. si
siliconindia
|43|
January 2011
Technology: By Kartik Shahani
The author is Country Manager – India & SAARC, RSA
C
Secure Cloud Computing
The future of Information Technology Management
loud computing delivers
convenient, on-demand
access to software appli-
cations, and services. The
cloud computing para-
digm—made possible by sophisticated
automation, provisioning and virtual-
ization technologies—differs dramati-
cally from today’s IT model because it
decouples data and software from the
servers and storage systems running
them and allows IT resources to be dy-
namically allocated and delivered as a
service, either in component parts or as
an integrated whole.
While the cloud provides organiza-
tions with a more efficient, flexible,
convenient and cost-effective alterna-
tive to owning and operating their own
siliconindia
|44|
January 2010
infrastructure, it also makes mitigating
risk more complex as it erases the tradi-
tional, physical boundaries that help de-
fine and protect an organization’s data.
However, at RSA, we believe that
Cloud Computing will turn the way we
deliver security inside out. And infor-
mation security will enable cloud com-
puting to take full advantage of the
Internet turning current IT models in-
side out as well. This means we can de-
liver new waves of efficiency, agility
and collaboration for organizations of
all sizes since many of the physical op-
erations and roles will converge with
virtual machine administrators playing
the roles of network, storage and server
administrator simultaneously.
Moving to the Cloud
In order for organizations to move their
high-value business processes and reg-
ulated data into the cloud, the following
points need to be tackled appropriately
and adequately by service providers and
cloud developers
 Organizations have the onus of
proving, on a continuous and reli-
able basis, that the infrastructure
supporting their data and processes
is secure. For this, the IT industry
and cloud providers need to de-
velop real-time monitoring solu-
tions that provide configurable
reports of actual conditions within
the cloud.
 When companies outsource parts
of their IT infrastructure to cloud
providers, they effectively give up
some control over their information
infrastructure and processes, even
while they are required to bear
greater responsibility for data con-
fidentiality and compliance. Many
times, the consumer is carried
away with the generic statements
of compliance to industry standards
by the cloud service provider. To
satisfy requirements, a generic
statement of control compliance
may not be sufficient. Given that
organizations have little option but
to go by the word of the service
providers or the service level
agreements (SLAs), accountability
needs to be affixed on all members
to the contract to ensure there is no
breach or lapse of processes
 Organizations running private
clouds need to factor their cloud
providers’ practices into their over-
all security and compliance assess-
ments. For these assessments to be
thorough and reliable, organiza-
tions need to learn as much as pos-
sible about their cloud providers’
security policies, procedures, sys-
tems and controls, some of which
may be different from or incom-
patible with their own. Access to
certain transactions, events and
audit logs may be crucial for audi-
tors. In a cloud, the accessibility of
a company to audit security con-
trols is low. In many cases, one
may need to rely on the results of
an audit performed by an inde-
pendent third-party auditor, which
are made available to all customers.
 The cloud introduces new risks re-
sulting from co-residency, which is
when different users within a cloud
share the same physical equipment
to run their virtual machines. The
adoption of cloud-based services
affects the level of control that an
organization has on data security
within the cloud. The shift toward
cloud services is more than just a
shift in technology. It fundamen-
tally alters the way business and IT
systems function. Creating secure
partitions between co-resident
VMs has proven challenging for
many cloud providers. Challenges
range from the unintentional – such
as when a VM’s activities consume
so much processing power and
memory that it starves co-resident
VMs of resources – to the deliber-
ately malicious, such as when mal-
ware is injected into the
virtualization layer, enabling hos-
tile parties to monitor and control
all the VMs residing on a system.
 Finally, cloud services are typically
virtualized, which adds a hypervi-
sor layer to the traditional IT serv-
ices stack. Any new layer in the
services stack introduces new op-
The next frontier
in cloud security
and compliance
will be to create
transparency at
the bottom-most
layers of the
cloud
portunities for improving security
and compliance, as well as new
planes of exposure to risks. Organ-
izations must evaluate the new
monitoring opportunities and the
evolving risks presented by the hy-
pervisor layer and learn to account
for them in policy-setting and com-
pliance reporting.
Cloud Security and Compliance –
What the future holds
The next frontier in cloud security and
compliance will be to create trans-
parency at the bottom-most layers of the
cloud by developing the standards, tools
and linkages to monitor and prove that
the cloud’s physical and virtual ma-
chines are actually performing as they
should. Verifying what’s happening at
the foundational levels of the cloud is
important for the simple reason that if
organizations can’t trust the safety of
their computing infrastructure, the
security of all the data, software and
services running on top of that infra-
structure falls into doubt.
There’s currently no easy way for
organizations to monitor actual con-
ditions and operating states within
the hardware, hypervisors and vir-
tual machines comprising their
clouds. However, cloud providers
and members of the IT Industry are
collaborating on a conceptual IT
framework to integrate the secure
measurements provided by a hard-
ware root of trust into adjoining hy-
pervisors and virtualization
management software. The resulting
infrastructure stack would be tied
into data analysis tools and a gover-
nance, risk & compliance (GRC)
console, which would contextualize
conditions in the cloud’s hardware
and virtualization layers to present a
reliable assessment of an organiza-
tion’s overall security and compli-
ance posture. This type of integrated
hardware-software framework
would make the lowest levels of the
cloud’s infrastructure as inspectable,
analyzable and reportable for com-
pliance as the cloud’s top-most ap-
plication services layer.
With this unprecedented level of
visibility, we believe clouds can de-
velop the infrastructure-level policy
controls and the end-to-end security
attestations to handle even the most
demanding security requirements for
applications and data. Ultimately,
this will enable organizations to take
advantage of the cloud’s benefits in
supporting a much broader range of
business processes. si
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|45|
January 2011
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