Management of Change as Basic Philosophy : Paul Faisal, Country Manager- HPC and Linux-Open source

“For the government, HP provides several IT solutions which include development of new applications for document management with ISV’s (independent software vendor’s), e-Procurement, document capture retrieval system in digital library, teacher/student portals, State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) and security prospects,” says  Paul Faisal, Country Manager, HPC and Linux-Open source

What are the value propositions of HP since the last five years?

Today HP is the largest IT product and service providing company in India. It is around “twice the size of its nearest competitor.” One third of the revenue comes from HP TSG (Technology Services Group), which is responsible for HP servers, storage and services. TSG also contributes one third of revenues globally as well.

Since the last five years, HP has focused on the public sector from a very different perspective. HP recognises public sector as a separate entity. In its experience with Public-Private Partnership, HP has developed models such as Build Own Operate (BOO), Build Own Operate and Transform (BOOT), and Build Own Operate and Refresh (BOOR). These models have become the basis of structuring all the large government projects across the country, which typically span for over five to ten years period. The Return-on-Investment (ROI) is based on pay-per-use system. All these Public-Private Partnerships, which HP helped in building, are based on the basic philosophy of Management of Change (MoC) which, involves a systematic migration from the existing way of doing things to a well structured organised way of doing the same. This philosophy is being adopted both in central and state governments, as well as in defense organisations.

In addition to these, HP is involved in total comprehensive projects with Bank of India, Bank of Baroda etc. In its e-Procurement projects and e-Health projects, HP helps in recording, documenting and storing documents. Thus, in all these projects HP offers umbrella of services comprising all components like solutions, architecture, implementation, support, 3-party solution component and management. In these kinds of multi-year projects, products become incidental as these projects are strictly governed by Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

With the central and state governments, HP is implementing several connectivity projects such as the State Wide Area Network (SWAN), connecting the central and state offices, capacity building programme, which involves large scale processing and data transactions. Apart from these, there are other projects  like content creation which are in the areas of health care, education and agriculture. HP is also involved in cyber laws project, defined by central and state governments.

HP also deals with pure product play deals like – NIC (National Informatics Centre) and NICSI (National Informatics Centre Services Inc.) rate contracts, for all volume products like servers, storage, networking products apart from PC’s, notebooks and printers etc. Further, HP’s commitment to open source based software stack solutions and integration of  operating system, middle-ware, database and application areas significantly brings down the overall costs of a multi-year project as compared to a solution built around the commercially available software stacks. In turn this keeps the maintenance cost low and makes it affordable to the government as well as the consumers. Moreover, HP’s financial services provide a return on investment (ROI) and pay back mechanisms. It supports and finances the initial project costs with a clear recovery plan spread over the life cycle of the projects.

What are the different projects that HP is involved with the Government in India?

The public sector and Government of India  are the key Accounts Strategy for the HP. This space of interaction has HP focus areas such as the central government, state governments and the defense sector. In this space HP is present in different directions and divisions within the government.

With the central and state governments, HP is implementing several connectivity projects such as the State Wide Area Network (SWAN), connecting the central and state offices, capacity building programme, which involves large scale processing and data transactions.

Apart from these, there are other projects  like content creation which are in the areas of health care, education and agriculture. HP is also involved in cyber laws project, defined by central and state governments. Then there are aspects like the citizen-government interface, which has evolved in the last few years.

Here HP deals with projects which involve licensing, income tax filing, registration, land accounts, passport and visa.

HP also has projects involving fund location, fund processing, approval sanctions, and disbursements from the central to the state governments. These are some of the areas in which HP is working with both the central and state governments.

What are the IT Solutions that HP provides for the government and the defence sector?

HP provides several IT solutions which include development of new applications for document management with independent software vendor’s (ISV), e-Procurement, document capture retrieval system in digital library, teacher/student portals, State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) and security prospects. HP worked in developing the SWAN applications both in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, where the state data centres were operated and security  managed.

The defence sector, whose requirements are very different from the normal government is a niche segment for HP. HP’s work on defense security projects started six years back. Among these some of the projects include home land security project, creation of real-time database information to catch various areas, development of the command control portals at the front which provides with a  secured platform for interaction and secure messaging system with the field officers and also vehicle tracking system which is a GPS based equipment to locate the position and track the movements of the military vehicles deployed.

Please elaborate on your e-Procurement solution.

HP through its e-Procurement solutions intends to solve the lack of efficiency and transparency in the  procurement division in the government offices. The need was to develop a centralised system. HP developed a system which could be used for centralised registration of contractors, suppliers, event management in auction, services cataloging, accounting and management of stationary updates. HP thus deployed security solution use of PKI infrastructure for access and document security.

HP solution is based on open source components like Redhat ES-Linux OS, Apache – Web  Servers, JBOSS JEMS – Application Servers, MYSQL – Database Servers, Archiving and  Backup – Amanda. With the implementation of these systems, HP brought down the cost of  transaction for the consumers. Along with that, it also ushered in the benefi ts of  transparancy, effi ciency and predictable Service Offering. Another benefi t of this system is  that, this solution can be repeated and hence can be implemented in all government sectors in the state.

What is HP’s experience in working with Karnataka
Government in implementing e-Government solutions?

The partnership with the private-public projects with the Government of Karnataka was a  good experience for HP. The projects have been completed on time and has been an enriching  experience leading to a good partnership with the government.

Comment on HP’s High Performance Computing
Solutions

High Performance Computing problems are characterised by computational, data or  numerically intensive tasks involving complex computation and visualisation of large data  sets requiring exceptionally fast throughput. The areas where these solutions can be utilised  include Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), Electronic Design Automation, Product Life  Cycle Management, Digital Content Creation, Oil and Gas-Exploration and Production, Life  Sciences and Biotechnology, Scientifi c Research , fi nancial services,  government, defense etc. HP’s HPC Solutions are deployed by various organisations across the world especially in  the area of Computation, Data Management and Visualisation. Large HPC companies use all  the 3 aspects of HPC specially in the domain of CAE and O and G upstream. This HPC Solution approach by HP is integrated solution spanning computation, storage and visualisation.  Further, this solution provides with a choice of industry standard platforms, operating  systems and interconnects. It provides with engineered and supported solutions that are easy  to manage and use. These scalable applications perform on complex workloads. The extensive use of open source software is seen in clustering, parallel fi le system and graphics. It is used in  extensive portfolio of qualifi ed development tools and applications.

What are HP’s plans for capacity building and content
generation?

The central and state governments have a huge repository of knowledgeable people who have  in depth knowledge of administration. Capacity building involves planning and training of  these resources to leverage technology for effi cient administration. On the issue of content  generation, HP is involved in areas like health-care, education, technical areas, agriculture.  The aim is to create and store the content in such a way so that the common consumer can  access and gain benefi t.

Please tell us about HP’s partners.

HP works in close association with its partners. It directly delivers the core aspects of the  projects like solution architecture, project management, project solution integration, data  centre design, security and management, the WAN network design etc. While it works with  its solutions eco-system partners to deliver their share. Further HP implements wide area  networks with its partners. HP tries to provide with complete transparency to its customers and it does so by providing more and more industry based solution to customers which is  achieved in co-opearation with its partners.

e-Procurement Platform in Karnataka-Powered by HP

The Government of Karnataka and Hewlett-Packard (HP) have entered into a partnership to  enable a key e-Procurement project. The initiative has received positive response and  increased adoption among the contractor community. In their pursuit to bring in  transparency and reduce transaction time the following departments in Karnataka have successfully adopted the HP-enabled e-Procurement platform:

• Public Works, Ports and IWT Dept (PWD)
• Sarvasiksha Abhiyan (SSA)
• Karnataka Drug Logistics Warehousing Society (KDLWS)
• Krishna Bhagya Jala Nigama Limited (KBJNL)
• Center for e-Governance (CEG)

The solution running on HP infrastructure, including industry standard blade servers,  storage area network (SAN) and enterprise classapplications based on open source technology  has already resulted in tangible benefi ts to these departments. Proof Points from the point of  view of benefi t to the government, include a reduction of the tender processing time from  estimate preparation to tendering, in the case of PWD there has been a reduction of up to 40% in transaction time. For the contractor community, specifi c benefi ts include the  reconciliation of earnest money deposit (EMD) and other payment related parameters by  50-60% as all payment transactions are now enabled online and the return of EMD to  contractors is now quicker and simpler. One of the leading benefi ts of the e-Procurement  initiative has been the standardisation of public procurement practices across departments for  works and goods procurement. The initiative has also led to greater transparency. Tenders above INR 5 million in Karnataka are being handled by this e-Procurement project supported  by HP.

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