DS Constructions has built the ambitious Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, and is
responsible for managing it. In recent times, the company has become a household
name, at least in the NCR region, because of the fiasco in managing the
expressway. A lot of questions have been raised on poor service and inadequate
infrastructure setup. The company claims that the services are improving rapidly
and will very soon be flawless. In an interaction with VOICE&DATA, CR
Narayanan, VP, IT, DS Constructions, talks about his company's IT backbone and
the future requirements and goals of the company. Excerpts
How much importance is given to the technology infrastructure in DS
Constructions?
DS Constructions is a large organization; at any point of time several
projects are executed at different locations. It creates the need for advanced
technology at each and every place. Technology is gradually becoming an in-built
and understood function in our infrastructure. For a company like ours, a common
business application running across all locations and project offices is the
need from the business point of view, which requires a sound and reliable
infrastructure. Technology has to be such that it is secure and scalable in
short notice.
How has technology infrastructure taken shape from the earlier days?
I joined this organization in March 2007. At that time, the company had many
disparate IT tools but most of them were lying unused. The tools individually
are good products but most of them had been dumped. These applications were not
integrated and were operating in silos. My first task after joining the
organization was to take stock of the inventory of tools and applications and to
assess their usability for the organization. Based on the findings, I had to
propose the integrated solution with the necessary infrastructure to make the
solution operational. We have an MPLS VPN solution from Tulip IT Services for
all our bandwidth requirements. Since the span of Tulip is very high, with a
last mile connectivity on the radio, it is the only service provider that we
have considered. However, for the Internet services, we have another service
provider for the redundancy need. For all security needs, we have gone for a UTM
solution from FortiGate. We went for a UTM solution because most of our
locations are small, and going for a box for each need like content filtering,
anti virus, secured VPN, etc would have been very expensive.
How difficult was it to adopt a solution and how did you deal with it?
An important prerequisite for various options being considered was to have a
minimum number of service providers. Also, every location was to have the same
technology and equipment so that the requirement for spares was minimized. We
also wanted to have the same equipment at all locations so that I don't have to
maintain staff for various technologies. Because of this, the number of vendors
and equipment to be considered got considerably reduced. It also provided better
understanding to our vendors about our needs and solutions. As a result,
services have become more effective with low downtimes.
After the recent fiasco at Gurgaon-Delhi Expressway, is your organization
ready to deal with disasters?
People who work for a construction company are generally not very
tech-savvy. So, disasters do take place within the organization. We clearly
mentioned to our service providers about these challenges in the beginning.
Thankfully, service providers understood our setup and equipped us with
appropriate solutions. Only on the last mile there is no redundancy. Due to our
diversified business nature, we have a proper backup strategy in place and we
store all our data backups at remote locations.
How do you choose a service provider, and how satisfied are you with the
services?
As I said earlier, we believe in one vendor policy. Accordingly, there are
not many solution providers for our requirements. We don't have a particular
communication solution from any service provider because of the wide geography
of sites and offices. It is up to every individual to use a communication tool
that suits the purpose. For the Internet, VPN and all other needs, Tulip is the
only vendor. Till now, Tulip has been able to meet our expectations well and we
are satisfied with their offering.
What do you expect from your IT and telecom vendors?
Quality of services has now become mandatory for both the service provider
as well as the user. I think the major thrust should be on cost-effective
solutions. Vendors should be able to bring down prices and provide more value
added services. Higher bandwidth and faster speed are very much in vogue. But
the real delivery of bandwidth on demand in actual sense would be a boon.
What are your future plans regarding your existing IT and telecom
infrastructure?
Since the infrastructure is just being put into place, we will look into the
improvements at an appropriate time. We are in the process of deploying an ERP
solution from SAP. The solution will be up and running by April. We are also
looking at content management solutions in the near future.
We have some projects of building parking stations at different places. Our
aim is to control all new constructions through the ERP system. We have deployed
best technologies in the Gurgaon-Delhi Expressway and we intend to improve them
further according to the requirement.
Kumar Anshuman
anshumank@cybermedia.co.in
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