B. V. Meshram
VP - IT
Shipping Corporation India
Company Profile and its IT Policies
The Shipping Corporation of India Ltd. (SCI), a Government of India
undertaking, Navratna company today has a significant presence on the
global maritime map with an annual turnover of about Indian Rupees 36.5
billion (approximately US$ 820 million). It is the country’s premier
shipping line owning a fleet of 77 vessels of 3.15 million GT (5.57
million DWT).
IT Strategy: We have implemented all modules of
ERP-SAP and specialised shipping packages across nine locations in
India. Our worldwide agents and ships are accessing these software. We
have our own data centre in Mumbai which is virtualised and have state
of art IT infrastructure. We have implemented MPLS for connecting our
branch offices.
Perspective on Innovative Technologies like Cloud and Virtualization
Cloud computing is gaining importance particularly the private cloud.
Many organisations would be having hybrid cloud. Email, web filtering,
web applications would be shifted to public cloud. SME would use cloud
for competitive advantages. Virtualisation has become essential in
todays data centre.
Keeping Pace with Latest Technologies
I am updating myself in latest technologies by meeting IT vendors,
attending seminars/conferences, and reading IT publications on web and
magazines.
Personals in your Team
We have team of about 44 persons out which 10 persons are managing IT
infrastructure and rest are managing SAP and other packages.
Biggest Obstacle
Biggest pain point is managing the SLAs with multiple vendors so that business users are getting continuous IT service.
Technology as a Rescue Act
To some extent technology can help in monitoring but commitment of vendors is very important.
Decisive Role of IT during Recession
IT innovation is important all the time. IT helps in improving the productivity and reduce operational costs
Contemplate Ways to Prevent Security Breach
The major challenges in security are integration of various tools and educating users about the importance of IT security.
Importance of Cloud in the Organization
We have implemented private cloud to some extents and planning the private cloud at disaster recovery site.
Using cloud to Secure Database
Private cloud has helped in reducing footprint of servers and we intend to implement more virtualisations in our data centre.
Funds Allocated for IT(annually)
Our annual IT budget is Rs.70 crores which includes IT infrastructure and AMC for hardware and software.
IT Leader must be Manger or Technologist First.
IT leader should be the manager first and should also have the technical and business knowledge.
Welcoming New technologies
We are exploring cloud, Big data, mobile computing, BYOD.
Outlook
Sometimes new IT technology may not be successful but it could be tried
on small scale. It is better to try rather than wait for its success.
