Story: Building Solutions for India - A Crazy Company In Pursuit of Excellence
Aniruddha Sarkar
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Story: Building Solutions for India - A Crazy Company In Pursuit of Excellence
Aniruddha Sarkar
22 May 2023
#01
In the late 1980s, while every other Information Technology solutions company was busy providing Y2K solutions for the world, this company kept on building mission-critical solutions for its country, India.
Sometimes during 1987-88, suddenly there was a call from the Government Manufacturing Establishment.
They asked our organization to present our capabilities in the various Project Executions in the Manufacturing Sector and Wide Area Networking (WAN) Technology areas.
Mr Perry Shastri, an expert in Government Manufacturing from our Bangalore (now Bengaluru) Development Center came down to Kolkata.
Dr V Ramanan, a distinguished expert in satellite communication from our Corporate Networking Group in the New Delhi office spoke to me.
He said, 'Aniruddha, why don't you go and take care of this presentation? You have sufficient exposure from the ongoing Private Network Design project. Talk about that.'
'I am confident you can do it.'
I told him, 'You are the real expert. Why don't you go?'
He said, 'If you go, you can spend a day or two at home.'
The towering personality that Dr. Ramanan was, I could not say, No, on his face.
#02
As we met in our Kolkata office, our Marketing Head B S Menon (aka Menon da), Government sector Marketing Representative, Ali Ershad (aka Ali Bhai), our Regional Manager Jayanta Maitra ( aka Jayanta da), and Systems Integration Head, Barun Deb (aka Barun da) briefed us on this engagement.
A foreign consultant's group wanted to offer their ERP to Govt of India. However, Government wanted their help in selecting an Indian Solution Provider cum Systems Integrator. The government also shortlisted a few such Indian Systems Integrators. All were interviewed. Now it was our organization's turn.
#03
We started the presentation.
The venue was the Government Manufacturing Head Quarters premises at Esplanade East, Kolkata.
In a large conference room, there were thirty-plus Scandinavian experts from the consultant's group and a few experts from the Government.
Mr Perry Shastri presented an elaborate account of our organizational capabilities in the Manufacturing domain.
Our automation experiences in the domains/ sectors e.g., Iron and Steel, Coal and Mining, Port and Cargo, Power Sector, Railways and Water Transportation Sector, London Underground Metro Project., etc., came in handy.
The consultants quizzed Mr Perry Sastri on his implementation experiences in MRP, Shop Floor Planning and Scheduling, etc. His in-depth knowledge of the subject and detailed answers laced with live experiences were highly convincing.
Next was my presentation on the capabilities of Wide Area Networking and distributed computing.
I talked about the ongoing nationwide Private Voice cum Data Network Design Project for a Steel Major in the Public Sector.
Discussions were on voice and data traffic analysis, our all-India voice and data traffic collection drive, data consolidation, measuring point-to-point projected traffic data volume, computations in the unit ERLANG, and then our logical backbone network design and capacity sizing.
I gave them a rundown on how we selected the specific Satellite Communication Technology and computed transponder bandwidth capacity.
I also discussed the localized Radio Communication Network connectivity design and selection of digital exchanges for this nationwide network.
The consultants quizzed me a lot. Finally, the team of experts had a wide grin. They were through with the question-answer session.
Possibly they also made up their mind.
We were already late for lunch.
领英推荐
Post lunch, our organization demonstrated a Wide Area Networking application-based Distributed Spare Management System, OLPICS, that was developed in-house. This application was deployed in all India customer locations as well as in our central spare storage points in major cities. Our nationwide mission-critical Hardware Maintenance activities were fully dependent on this distributed database application.
This application was hosted on our own Public Data Network and was operational 7×24 basis on an IBM SNA distributed computing environment.
Our Field Engineers could requisition any spare from any storage point across the country for mission-critical computer hardware maintenance.
The consultants were highly impressed.
#04
Our organization finally won this project.
Subsequently, we built a mega ERP for the Government Manufacturing units encompassing a wide variety of product manufacturing.
This solution was built as a common prototype first in our Bangalore-based development centre and was subsequently localized in all individual clusters of similar Manufacturing units. It took two years and consumed massive resources.
What did that mean?
A solution of enormous complexity was delivered in two years with a huge team build-up and rapid deployment.
What was the outcome?
This solution was ported into the open-source Operating System Environment which was new in India in the early 1990s. These installations were subsequently maintained and also upgraded multiple times for the next three decades by the Government's in-house team. All through, our organization stood like a solid rock by the side of this customer.
This is sustainability.
Our organization took up a massive technology and knowledge transfer drive. The in-house IT team from the Government had to manage the show. For any issue, the customer would always consult our team.
In between, there were major impediments and roadblocks.
After Pokhran testing of India's nuclear capabilities, there was an embargo on any sale of computer hardware to all major Government Establishments.
In the meantime, the customer asked us to upgrade the hardware. Our team ran the last mile to assemble high-end hardware for our customer installations.
Later, after the Kargil war, again, our team assisted the customer in upgrading the system for higher computing capabilities.
Our R&D Networking Team provided Wide Area Network Design consultancy support to the Government's network design expert team. This was another important service.
Subsequently, all installations came under one computer networking umbrella.
The purpose was served.
The Government was happy.
#05
Then, this precious company was suddenly disinvested after a change of Government at the centre.
The organization, CMC LIMITED, a Government of India Undertaking, ceased to exist by 2001.
A profit-making unique Solution Provider company in the Government Sector was lost forever.
Did anybody in Government care to know before selling this organization, what pain was involved:
MY ANSWER: NOBODY WITHIN THE GOVERNMENT CARED TO KNOW.
THE RESULT:
A GOVERNMENT-OWNED PRECIOUS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COMPANY, WITH AN EXCELLENT SOLUTION-PROVIDING MINDSET, WAS LOST FOREVER.
WHAT A LOSS FOR THE NATION!!
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