Most of us still remember Moser Baer as the company that brought us affordable, original CDS and DVDs of movies that we couldn’t catch in theatres. Of course, today the company is a lot more than that. Headquartered in Delhi, Moser Baer was founded in 1983 and is now the world’s second-largest manufacturer of optical store media such as CDs and DVDs. It has also made a mark in other storage formats such as Blu-ray discs and FD DVD and has expanded into areas such as solar energy, home entertainment, IT peripherals and consumer electronics. With a presence in over 82 countries, six marketing offices in India, the US, Europe and Japan, the company obviously has more than just a robust IT infrastructure that connects over 6,000 employees and multiple manufacturing facilities. Muthukumar Vaidyanathan, senior vice-president-IT, Moser Baer India Ltd, spoke about the importance of the same and how cloud features in the company’s scheme of things. Excerpts from the interview:
Could you give us a lowdown of Moser Baer’s IT infrastructure?
We have a captive data centre, except a few ones that are hosted in other data centres, but the hub remains the one at Greater Noida. We also have a data centre server room there, as well as at our head office. We also have an array of hosting services. Now we are working on consolidating our server footprint. We are working on it because of ageing hardware and to ensure we get out of the operating expenses and maintenance of the same. As a result, we are looking at consolidation and virtualisation and are working on the cost-benefit analysis and assessing the same. When we do virtualisation, it will be a private cloud model. For now, we are looking at the key performance indicators and other performance measurements.
What are the assessments so far, regarding virtualisation?
The findings are good, so far. Our primary focus is to assess the tangibility perspective. The proposal has been given to the top management and cost benefits are being done. For us, consolidation is the main purpose and cloud is a part of that agenda.
When do you plan to implement it?
Most probably, in the next couple of months. We are planning to convert all private standalone servers into the virtualisation model as well as shift multiple applications there. It would have taken more powerful servers to accommodate all these applications. We are talking of really high density here, something like 1:10.
How easy or difficult was it to talk to your top management about using cloud computing?
Where merely cloud is concerned, you have to understand that our engagement with top management has not been with respect to cloud but about consolidation and cloud is a part of the project. We are looking at the operating expenses model of the same and it has been an easy sell so far.
And once we are able to establish private cloud and give services to different businesses and make our servers ready for apps, things should really move forward. We believe that once you are talking of servers, the underlying architecture is services. Through our app footprint, we are trying to assess whether apps need to talk to each other and go from a standalone server to a cloud or consider a parallel evaluation. We will also ensure appropriate apps are used and are rendered to the end user. We are not only looking at the usual computing devices such as a laptop or a desktop but are also assessing a mobile strategy. There are two possibilities for the same – use mobile apps or go through GPRS. Here, we are trying to identify the service provider, look at interoperability as well as standardising and streamlining the apps. The motive is to go for a hybrid model where we will look at both private and public cloud and the long term view is to shift to a public cloud ultimately.
How big a role will the manpower have to play in this transition?
Our IT team will have a significant role to play. We are already in the process of identifying, standardising and streamlining the services offered and consumed across different media. From the capability perspective, we will have to break up the pieces and then deliver and move the apps to all computing devices. This will happen over the next five to 10 years and more and more apps will be on handheld devices.
Not too much staff-readiness will be needed once we shift to the private cloud because IT infrastructure doesn’t have much to do with the company people and they don’t really ask if the data is stored in standalone servers or on virtual platform. The IT infrastructure members are satisfied as long as they have control over the deployment of technology. The actual challenge will be when we move from private to public cloud. It is then that the business side of our people will be asking questions pertaining to security and so on.
When did the entire process of consolidation start?
It came up as an item in the functional scorecard last year. The evaluation of virtual platform is almost complete. This April onwards, we will finalise it and the capability pieces that still need to be streamlined will be looked at. We are identifying a mobile agnostic platform.
Personally, what excites you more – the bird’s eye view of the project or the daily nitty-gritty?
I’m excited about the project overall, but the larger picture is more appealing. There are critical things that we are trying to achieve which I believe will make us cloud-ready and allow us to be a giant and help us take care of our ever-changing business needs. We are waiting for the critical breakthrough to come through so that we start having those capabilities.