MAINTAINING APPLICATION READINESS FOR ONGOING BUSINESS INNOVATION.

Line of business owners in the enterprise are demanding more applications of greater complexity for a greater number of operating environments and devices, and they want them delivered quickly. If you can’t give them what they want, they may go around IT and acquire the applications on their own, a phenomenon known as “shadow IT.” That not only drives up acquisition and support costs but also jeopardizes security and compliance.

Adding to the challenge is the increasing strategic use of mobile apps in the enterprise. Thought leadership articles warn about security risks that result from mobile applications leaking data outside the enterprise such as through the use of cameras, copy-paste operations or connections to cloud services. Yet IT organizations have little or no institutional knowledge of how mobile apps behave when deployed and used, or how to shape that behavior to support enterprise standards. And there are few tools or techniques available to assess the mobile applications in use.

To address the challenge, IT must achieve and maintain a high level of agility and be prepared for continual change. The goal is to position IT to provide business owners with all the applications they need, when they need them, on the operating systems and devices they choose — while still retaining control.

To meet this goal, you must maintain a portfolio of applications ready for immediate deployment to a wide variety of operating systems and devices, and keep the applications current with the latest updates and patch levels. You also have to migrate applications to new operating systems and devices, to new versions of existing platforms, and to virtualized environments. In addition, you have to continually add new applications to the portfolio. At the same time, you need to drive down costs by maximizing efficiency such as by automating processes and enabling end users to serve themselves in requesting applications.

Considering the complexity of today’s applications, the number of operating environments and devices, and the rapid release of new versions of applications and environments, maintaining continual application readiness is a tall order. Maintaining Application Readiness in today’s complex and continually evolving technology environment is challenging, but essential to enabling ongoing business innovation. You have to be prepared for change and to provide line of business owners with the applications they need, when they need them, and on the devices they choose. And you have to ensure that your enterprise has the latest technology at its disposal to maintain its competitive edge.

For more details visit us @http://www.urssystems.com

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BUILD A MANUFACTURING ECO-SYSTEM: "THE MAKE IN INDIA" SLOGAN A SUCCESS

The need for Hybrid Cloud

Businesses are demanding more than ever from IT. They want choice in devices, rapid creation and deployment of new services, and flexibility as to where applications live, how they are managed and by whom. Against this backdrop, they want to do more with less, lower their costs and have the ability to scale instantaneously. To meet these expectations IT organizations must deliver IT as a Service (ITaaS) via a well-run Hybrid Cloud that brings together the performance, security, and control of private cloud with the flexibility and cost advantages of public cloud.

IT to be a broker of trusted cloud services while maintaining the freedom to choose the Management and Orchestration technology upon which the hybrid cloud is standardized. The result is a hybrid cloud solution capable of supporting traditional and next-gen applications, financial transparency so IT can prove its value to the business, and a seamless and secure management experience.

 “India manufacturing is not cost competitive to global manufacturing benchmarks. There is an 8 per cent landing cost disadvantage of serving India from India compared to import. In addition, there are costs of switching manufacturing from existing locations to India,” said an industry executive.

Seeks tax waiver

For example, the company has asked for a waiver of tax on royalty payments. When a global technology vendor transfers technology to a domestic entity, currently there is an incidence of 5 per cent R&D cess on royalty, 12.3 per cent service tax on royalty and 10 per cent royalty withholding tax.

Proposed changes

To make ‘the Make in India’ slogan a success, the Ministry of Information Technology has proposed changes in the two-year-old special incentive package scheme.

The revisions include lowering the eligibility threshold and extending the benefit to new product categories such as air conditioners and refrigerators. The changes have been proposed with the objective of widening the scope of the scheme and removing procedural bottlenecks.

The industry had earlier told the Government that more needs to be done to achieve the target of zero net imports of electronic goods.

Domestic demand

However, the domestic demand of electronic goods is projected to grow to USD400 billion by 2020, of which domestic production can cater to only USD100 billion.

The minimum investment required to be eligible for the incentive has been brought down to help smaller players take advantage of it.

For more details visit us @www.urssystems.com

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THE WAY FORWARD: IT ADOPTION IN A MAJOR WAY TO MOVE TO A PAPERLESS ENVIRONMENT

Information and Communication Technology has played a crucial role in speeding up the flow of information from the government to citizens, transforming the way the two parties interact and communicate. Government bodies have shifted or are in the process of shifting from a traditional paper-based system to a fully automated set-up, with the aim of enhancing transparency and accountability. Telecom tools are being increasingly used in the governance process, not only to perform key functions, but also to provide information in a structured manner. The most important aspect in this regard is e-governance, an IT-enabled route to achieve good governance, as it integrates people, processes, information and technology to enhance the delivery of basic services. For utilities, IT brings resource efficiency gains by managing information flows and analyzing data. Thus, utilities involved in the water, power, piped gas, liquefied natural gas and waste disposal segments are banking on telecom for the effective delivery of services.

At present, government bodies as well as utilities are looking forward to the adoption of new technologies to achieve business goals more readily and cost effectively. They are focusing on strong broadband networks for supporting advanced applications and communication.  The announcement of the Digital India Initiative by the government reaffirms the government’s commitment to creating an enabling platform for the delivery of education, health care, entertainment and e-commerce services to citizens. Apart from connecting rural India through broadband services, the initiative will work towards building a digital governance framework to equip local governments to ensure improved administrative ability, as well as lend transparency to administrative work.

The telecom networks for the government and utility agencies are generally based on IP-wide area network (WAN) connections. Their triple-play service ability makes them a suitable choice for government agencies and utilities, as they provide access to voice, data and broadband on a single platform. They facilitate information flow, support the use of spatial and geospatial technologies, and facilitate the use of remote sensing satellite images for inventory and mapping of resources. They also support technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS). Of late, government organisations have also started deploying ISDN, IP-VPN, Ethernet WAN and multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) services, aside from IP-WAN.

Further, many web-based applications, along with audio- and videoconferencing, are now being used by organisations. Various utilities depend on technologies like optic fibre cable and radio frequency in order to connect with their end-users. With the enhanced operation complexity of the utilities, the use of IT- and software-based applications has also increased. The most commonly used applications in public sector organisations include enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). 

Organization and government bodies are planning to expand or upgrade their IT infrastructure by investing in hardware and software applications. Many organisations have recently expanded their fleet of desktops and laptops, and many others plan to add to them in the near future. With most government organisations being based on the NIC, their decision to adopt IT is not independent. However, this has its upside, since their dependence on the NIC ensures continuous support from IT experts.

IT enablement helps utilities in the power, gas and water distribution sectors to move to a paperless environment, and ensure improved connectivity and increase operational efficiency.

URS Systems provides solutions that are tailor-made for the needs of manufacturing, distribution, retail, hospitality, and services, including customized business software for a comprehensive range of industries and vertical markets. One size does not fit all, which is why the unique “business layers” approach of URS allows our next-generation business software solutions to support the smallest start-up to the largest multinational, as well as the differing complexities in industries from metal fabricators to automotive distributors to general business services firms and cross-channel retailers. Identifying the need to leverage geographic diversity on both the revenue and cost sides of your business, comprehensive, industry-insightful business software solutions from URS enable you to outpace the competition with more effective operations and world-class customer service. 

For more details visit us @www.urssystems.com

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IT “VERY STRATEGICALLY IMPORTANT” TO THE BUSINESS:

Today’s challenging and hyper-competitive business environment offers CIOs a unique opportunity to assume an expanded role as a strategic technology expert collaborating with the business toward greater success, more revenue and happier customers.

It’s in IT’s hands at the moment, but the window of opportunity is closing as lines of business get tech-savvy, spending more of their budgets on IT projects and re-examining the role that IT plays in advising them. IT can either define a new role for itself which embraces this change, or ignore it and risk becoming increasingly irrelevant to the business.

The survey of 1,300 senior IT leaders worldwide revealed 39% of respondents now see IT as a service broker or consultant to the line of business rather than a full-service provider of all IT services; and 35% of IT spending is occurring outside of the IT department today—and that number is expected to grow to 44% in three years. Other disturbing findings show that just 11% see the role of IT as a developer of new, innovative services and only 14% consider IT as a driver of new business initiatives.

IT should want more than to be the keeper of others’ IT investments, on call to fix problems as they arise. IT leaders should use their knowledge, experience and technology expertise to guide the business toward opportunities that otherwise would not exist if not for IT’s innovation.

There has been some progress for IT, with more than 40% in 2013 (versus 35% in 2011) identifying IT as “very strategically important” to the business, but more must be done to solidify IT as the strategic technology leader within the business. The opportunity is now, and this research report will help IT leaders, including CIOs:

• Understand how their role is changing and how to plan for the future;

• Assess how the organization views IT and its contributions to the business;

• Set strategies for the investments required to re-position the role of IT;

• Use technology to measure, quantify and report on the value IT provides to the business;

• Provide guidance on disruptive technologies to drive competitive advantage;

• Evolve their position from IT support to technology strategist.

We’ll help you verify the functionality of standardized interfaces and identify what you need to do to get your multi-vendor network in the best possible shape. We help consolidate, transform and evolve your service delivery platforms into a strong asset that lets you grow, reduce operating expenditures and offer new end-user services.

For more details visit us @www.urssystems.com

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