Cloud tech to skyrocket productivity, innovation: John Keells exec

By Shiran Illanperuma

As Microsoft has pledged to help shape IT policy in Sri Lanka, John Keells Executive Ramesh Shanmuganathan, a few weeks ago, spoke on the revolutionary significance of cloud technology.

Cloud technology was singled out by Shanmuganathan as an opportunity to streamline businesses by outsourcing data management services to the cloud through companies like Microsoft.

Recalling the early years of the infiltration of tech based industry, Shanmuganathan says: “We saw more passion in terms of people looking at technology as a front office strategy than a back office strategy.”

That however has drastically changed as companies now seek to relieve the burden of managing increasingly complex IT infrastructure in order to focus on what Shanmuganathan refers to as their ‘core competency’.

“Companies need to ask themselves what their core competency is. Is it money and infrastructure, is it managing capacity, is it becoming control freaks or is it enabling people’s processes and methods? Ensuring we create a platform to enable innovation?” he asked, rhetorically.

“There are certain core processes you need to run but the rest can be outsourced to aggregators like Google or Microsoft,” he asserted.

A point of inflection

Shanmuganathan remarked that the cloud was a significant turning point in the development of information technology, and one that would revolutionise business and the social sphere in the same manner as previous innovations such as PCs and mobile phones.

“In the last two decades there have always been points of inflection such as PCs, the internet, and mobiles phones. With the iPhone there was democratisation of the IT function itself. Now the cloud is the next step,” he said.

Hailing the cloud as a technology that could allow for staff to work from anywhere in the world Shanmuganathan says, “The challenge is how to liberate and put the employee in the driving seat without losing control. Migrating a portal to a share point is a start.”

“Everything from appraisals to payslips and remunerations can be in a portal. All the employee needs is an internet connection and an access point with authentication. Now we can even move this to the cloud,” he asserted.

“Employees could become productive anywhere in the world not just in Sri Lanka. In the mobile world if your employees rush to office for a simple email or approval, the entire value chain gets stalled. We have to move at the speed of thought,” he charged.

Bring your own device

With an ever increasing catalogue of devices tailor made for particular user experiences and needs, Shanmuganathan commented on the difficulty of regulating the technology used by employees in a high tech environment.

He said, “Today we’re not in a position to tell employees what to use. We need to manage the user’s desire to bring their own device and empower their decision. We can’t put blinders and reject this.”

Expanding on this, Shanmuganathan refers to the importance of enabling new employees to ease into productivity as soon as possible, preferably on their own terms.

“If the employee takes about three to five days waiting to get functional then there are productivity issues. Challenges we have are about in-house infrastructure, you’ve got to manage your inbox sizes and your licensing. Every employee must have an e-mail account an internet connection and a social media account if possible. Maybe even a mobile phone if it is a requisite”.

Keells’ cloudy vision

Touching on John Keells’ plans for the future and its overall strategy to keep abreast of the rapid developments in the IT sector, Shanmuganathan stresses the importance of stakeholder empowerment.

“As world moves on today it’s important for every stakeholder to be empowered. From John Keells’ point of view how do you empower such a large community of over 4500 white collar workers and over 10,000 blue collar workers in seven industries and 80 companies?” 

“There is no one size fits all formula,” he asserted while emphasising that the key was to, ‘liberate stakeholders to do what they are best at’.

 “Our whole vision is this: if an employee can work anywhere with any device without being in our office, then we need to enable that. Today we’ve achieved about 60% of that journey,” said Shanmuganathan.

Pic by Bhanuka Kirinde