Client software has to be upgraded. Need more people for system maintenance...

...Money needed for additional bandwidth

Old outdated PCs have to be replaced and additional state-of-the-art PCs required...

Let's talk numbers. In 2000, LG Electronics India Limited (LGEIL) had offices in 40 locations, 1,200 employees and a turnover of Rs 900 crore. Today, it has 75 offices, 2,900 employees and a turnover of Rs 4,500 crore. In August 2001, when private general insurance player ICICI Lombard started operations, it had seven offices, processed 30 policies a day, had less than 50 employees and boasted a turnover of Rs 22 crore. Today, it has 700 offices, processes 3,000 policies every day, has 1,000 employees and expects to touch a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore by the end of this year.

Such impressive growth presents a key challenge: companies have to ensure that all business processes continue to function as smoothly as ever. And given that most organisations have automated their business processes, the challenge has to be met by scaling up existing it systems.

Elementary. But that's easier said than done. For instance, to enable all LGEIL locations to act in concert, Arindam Bose, CIO of LGEIL, decided to implement an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system developed by LG CNS, a sister concern. However, even after deployment of the ERP, low bandwidth kept invoicing time excessively high: a full five minutes for a transaction entailing 10 steps from sales to dispatch. Considering that LG conducts thousands of transactions every day, five minutes was just not on.

For LG, the problem could have been solved by hardware and software upgrades, and additional bandwidth. But that meant huge investments, something that the organisation was not willing to commit. It wanted to extract full benefits from the ERP, while retaining its existing infrastructure.

It was then that Bose zeroed in on MetaFrame Presentation Server, an access infrastructure software developed by Citrix Systems. Result: invoicing time reduced from five minutes to 40 seconds. Bose is thrilled: "It met two of our immediate objectives: Lowered bandwidth cost and speeded up processing time. There were long-term advantages also. Citrix technology allowed us to expedite deployment of monthly application updates, operate effectively with low bandwidth and extract more value from our legacy systems, including even 386/486 computers."

That would be sweet music to most ears. To put it in simple words, access infrastructure makes it possible to install just one copy of any software, such as Microsoft Office for instance, on the company's server and have it accessed by client PCs across the organisation. Which means upgrades to software are needed only at the server, needing only one licence for an application as opposed to many required with desktops. This makes system upgrades easier, faster and less expensive. Besides, since applications are not stored on the client, the company can continue to use older machines.

It also helps reduce training costs, something that ICICI Lombard has benefited from. Says Sanjay Motwani, National Manager (Technology) of ICICI Lombard: "We have grown from less than 50 people to 1,000 people in the last three years. If we had to get somebody each time to a centralised location to train them, the costs incurred would have been huge. What Citrix's MetaFrame software has done is to enable us cut down on bandwidth cost, utilise legacy hardware investments made and enable smoother information flow that can be accessed from anywhere."

Providing access: Citrix's John C. Burris

Another organisation going the access infrastructure way is Indraprastha Apollo Hospital in Delhi. Having successfully implemented such a solution for its finance department, the hospital is now implementing a similar one for its doctors and nurses. Says R. Srinivasan, Head (IT), Indraprastha Apollo: "We were looking to upgrade our dos-based Hospital Information Systems (his) to a Windows-based system. At the same time, we were also concerned about the continuing obsolescence of hardware, particularly the worry that the new version of his might be incompatible with older systems." Citrix's MetaFrame, scheduled to go live by October 2004, will ease his concerns, Srinivasan reckons.

And this isn't just an India phenomenon. According to John C. Burris, Senior Vice President (Worldwide Sales and Services) of Citirix, companies around the world are realising the advantages of having access software. He says, "In a dynamic and competitive environment, information is power. Employees need to be able to access information anywhere, anytime, in any format, and from any device. That is what Citrix aims to do. Across sectors, it is our effort to provide competitive advantage through access infrastructure."

LGEIL, it appears, has achieved just that. Bose estimates that over the past three years, LG has saved more than Rs 2 crore, with Rs 70 to Rs 80 lakh per annum in bandwidth cost alone. "At LG it is a very high priority. We believe that if it stops, business stops. It is this technology edge which has given an advantage to our 2,900 employees and helped us achieve a turnover of Rs 4,500 crore last year." He's got a point.