Insight of My Company and its IT Strategies Emaar MGF is a real estate company, jointventure of Emaar PSJC Dubai & MGF construction India. IT is one ofthe main facilitator into decision making and integral part of this organizationsince the inception back in 2005.
We are currently on Oracle Apps 11i asERP, IBM Lotus Domino for emails and totally on IBM infrastructure acrossWintel and AIX platforms and VMware technology.
Views on new technologies As an individual and Organization we arein a total acceptance mode for cloud and virtualization to reduce the ITinfrastructure cost at the outset. We have already adapted the virtualizationwith the usage of VMware technology in our initial stages itself
At present we are evaluating the possibilityof shifting the emails on cloud and already in talks with few market playersfor the same.
Resources to Keep Updated with Latest Technologies Attending the frequent seminars and conferencesheld by OEMs and by conducting the knowledge discussion on new technologieswith our vendors from time to time. Team Size We have a combination of on-rolls and consultantsat present. Have a 20 member no-roll team who take care of all the IT functionsare it Infra or Applications. We have outsourced our FMS services to Wipro. Biggest Pain Point Pain point lies both internally and externallyactually. Internally real estate industry still prevails on the primitiveand traditional ways of working and is just in very initial rather a growingstage and the adaptability towards technology and IT services is very slowand biased. Though cash rich and good to have profitable businessindustry we as IT have to work differently as any other IT in any otherdomain.
Externally knowledge of real estate asa domain to most of the OEM is one of the concern we always come across.There would just be a handful who actually understands the real-estatein terms of functionality, processes and the way they actually work inIndia.
Technology to Address Pain Points Why not! When we make Organization awareof the benefits and cost analysis they are willing to adapt any new technologybut as already stated before this sector are not very friendly with technologyadaptation. It takes time make people understand and move up the things.
Slowdown Impact on IT Innovation Sure they do, the recent recession whichactually had affected real-estate in a bad way it becomes more criticalfor IT to always have some innovative ideas to carry forward the businessand which in turn save some expenditures as a company. To mention hereIT always facilitate the business to implement their ideas, to be specificin a layman language a business plan is like a blue print from architectand IT is a worker to but bricks and cement to bring that to reality butit’s the ability of worker that in what innovative ideas he can make itfast and in a minimum expenditure. Challenges Faced One of the most crucial and challengingjob is security and to be more precise data & information security.People are reluctant to any new changes or restriction in their accessto information they were accessing since long. This a typical industrythat believes in the power of excel and physical customer files at presentand forever and then when we introduce system like ERP , CRM & DMSpeople take time to adapt to it and have many constraints to use it.
Adoption of Cloud Policy With a gradual increase in the space andresource as we are growing big bigger to huge day by day and as world ismoving a step further from their own office spaces to cloud to make samepace even Emaar MGF has adopted the cloud policy.
Role of Cloud Just recently for one whole day my Organization’semail services were down and in evening when email services went up wecame across close to 100 corrupt user databases who have actually lostwhole of there server email data fortunately no one from band 1 else someonewould have loose there jobs for this but this is one of the instance wherecloud will actually help me to secure the information, continuity of businessand services and many more.
Expenses on IT Systems IT budget actually get closed to 4 to 5Cr every year but expenditure may vary from 2 to 3 a year or even closeto budgeted amount. Factors effecting are many and we always have to takecare of 11th hour requirements from any influential person andcater to requirements.
IT Leader – Manager First or Technologist First An IT leader should be a Technologist atfirst who eventually have the managerial skills to provide the best ofthe innovation and solution to the business. As we all have readthe basis definition of computer “An electronic device which takes inraw data & give us meaningful information” same has to be the IT leadera blend of technology and management a TEHCNOMANGER but definitely a technologistat first.
ROI on the Technology Position of Emaar MGF today in market andprosperity in business is what it explains it all. All the major technologyinvestment were made at the time of inception of Emaar MGF back in 2005/6and I don’t see we need to further spend on at least the infrastructurefor even next 2/3 years.
Latest Technology Currently we are planning upgrade of ourOracle Apps 11.5.10.2 to Release 12.1.3. BI and CRM are in pipeline.
