15/01/2011 Dabur’s Spoonful of the Cloud – As sw…

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Dabur’s Spoonful of the Cloud – As sweet as

it’s honey!
January 13, 2011

in Cloud Computing Knowledge Circle

As an FMCG major, Dabur’s Cloud computing story has been rather interesting. The organization
has been a strong user of IT systems for a long time and is a firm believer in IT being an important
business enabler. The IT department at Dabur has been instrumental in facilitating the planning,
testing, and deployment of new ideas for the business. Continuing this trend, Dabur has recently
ventured into Cloud computing in a unique way. Anil Garg, CIO, Dabur India, tells us more.

Anil takes pride in the organization’s current IT landscape that serves the manufacturing, sales, finance, and
procurement functions well with SAP R/3 as the ERP. The company also uses applications for secondary
sales tracking, claims management, master data management, media tracking, and employee management.
Cloud computing was not on Anil’s roadmap for Dabur. But one introductory session to the benefits of the
technology, changed that for him and his organization.

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“It was a timely introduction to the space,” says Anil candidly. Dabur was in the process of consolidating
email and Microsoft Exchange applications for its entire geographical footprint, which would bring the
organization and its wide-spread subsidiaries under the common domain of Dabur.com. This involved
auxiliary servers at each location, relevant infrastructure and admin support, backup facilities, leased lines, and
firewalls, in a phased operation across the globe.

An introduction to Cloud computing threw up possibilities of leveraging the technology to meet this immediate
need. Anil commissioned a Proof of Concept (POC) immediately. “The POC was completed in 15 days and
within one and half months, we had 8 locations of Dabur connected on a common platform, at 5% of the cost
we would have otherwise incurred,” adds Anil. “And, the conventional solution would have taken us at least a
year.”

Customized for optimum leverage

Dabur’s example is unique because the company has a customized design and approach to deploying
Exchange on the Cloud. Dabur still retains its main Exchange server in its own Data Center. The international
subsidiaries access an auxiliary mail server on the Cloud. This server synchronizes with Dabur’s main
Exchange server at the Data Center.

“The advantages to us are clear – no third-party providers, access through just an internet connection, all
locations email IDs are @Dabur.com and share the same address book.” Anil adds further, “With Microsoft
Unified Communications, we also have audio and video conferencing – all on a single network. Even the
sever on the Cloud is managed by my Data Center administrator, all in one place.” With 350 users on this
network, Dabur’s IT has India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Dubai, Egypt, Nigeria, and soon-to-be-
integrated Turkey and the US, on the Cloud.

Although his adoption was totally de-risked with no investments, Anil’s different approach stemmed from his
apprehensions about unchartered waters. Today however, he describes his Cloud stint as “timely, exciting,
and an experience” and says it’s only a matter of time before the organizations realize the futility of running
Data Centers. He has plans to move Exchange completely to the Cloud, followed by intranet applications and
other Microsoft technologies. “The future belongs to the Cloud and hosted Data Centers. Ideally there will be

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a mix.”, he says.

The magic lies in the mindset

The biggest bottleneck to the adoption of the Cloud, he feels, is the existing CIO mindset, which has to be
slowly chiseled away. “People tend to feel that their might is in controlling the DC. It’s as simple as the trends
in personal computing. The PC is giving way to a tablet today, with storage on the Cloud. If you do this for
yourself, taking it to the corporate level is easy.” Anil’s simple example elucidates the sea change in
computing. Are organizations however, still apprehensive about taking their databases online? “Culturally
Dabur as an organization is open to change as long as there is a strong business case. It is a matter of proving
the same. The time will come for others too.”

The road ahead

Very satisfied with his initiation of the Cloud, he acknowledges the speed with which subject matter expertise
in the domain is growing. Over the last six months he has found in-depth knowledge in the vendors he works
with and praises their ability to provide service support through multiple other trained vendors as well.
Confident and ecstatic, he closes with an apt message to his peers, “Most of our fraternity works as CTOs
not CIOs. If we free ourselves from infrastructure hassles by using outsourcing and moving to the Cloud, we
can truly become business enablers and move from being a CTO to a CIO. This is the opportunity. Go
ahead without inhibitions, it works!”

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Tagged as: Anil Garg, CIO, Dabur India, Data Center, Data Centers, ERP, FMCG, India, POC, US

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Satjeet Singh 1 day ago

Thats great..! Congrats Sir - Satjeet

radars1 1 day ago

Hi,

How about cloud computing for critical applications? What is the kind of backup services for the data is assured?
What is the SLA and NDA's that have been signed?
What is the cost per user id?

Rgds

Deepak Hanspal 1 day ago

@ radars1 please share your email ...i will be more happy to give you all details of exchange.

deepak.hanspal@live.com

radars1 1 day ago

Hi,
Thanks for the support, I have provided my contact details

With best regards,

Sathya Gautham
Head IT & Business Information & Controls
DORM A India Private Limited,
No.14, Pattulous Road,

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Chennai - 600002, Tamilnadu, India.
Tel.: +91 44 42227039
Fax: +91 44 42227017
M obile: +91 9884495764
M ail to: sathya.g@dormaindia.com
www.dormaindia.com

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