Going digital has helped the company make significant cost savings while expanding its reach without significant investments
SYED PEERZADE
RELIANCE ENTERTAINMENT
We started our digital transformation SMAC journey four years back, migrating from traditional data centre to Cloud which resulted in success for our business. While our server footprint has reduced from 450 to 16, at the same time our operating costs have gone down by 30 per cent.
Going digital is increasingly getting top priority, even from the CEO’s office. And more so in organisations that work in online space. Reliance Entertainment, a fast-growing company within the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, is taking lead in digital space by completely transforming how IT is delivered internally.
After the launch of global gaming and content business, the company adapted hybrid cloud strategy, building self-designed analytical setup to improve the products and to take data driven decision-making. “We adapted mobility by building and publishing mobile content and have integrated social platforms in all our products. Also, SMAC stack adoption is 100 per cent for us,” explains Syed Peerzade, Group Chief Information Officer, Reliance Big Entertainment & Reliance Entertainment.
Reliance Entertainment was also among the earliest adopters of OPEX-based self-designed private Cloud which only a few global organisations have adopted yet. The advantage of adapting digital for Reliance was time to market with a flexible approach. “You do not have to bother about capex any more after setting-up a server for a business launch. With the Cloud journey, we can launch any product of any scale within no time,” opines Syed.
Analytics has similarly helped the company get insights into why users were dropping and what improvements were needed at what stage. Social integration further helped in taking the product to a larger user base. These all results in direct increase of revenue. To achieve this, Syed believes a rip and replace approach should be avoided. “I have completely transformed my setup to Cloud. However, every CIO may not able to do so. He may face unavoidable challenges like how to abandon recently brought infra? In that case, I suggest CIOs need to adapt phase-wise strategy. There is no need to transform all at once. You can start small and take it to conclusion over the years. The key is to plan it well in advance,” says Syed.
External collaboration is helping the company in its digital transformation journey. “We are an aggressive organisation,” says Syed, adding, “Also, we have collaborated with a start-up when I started my Cloud journey successfully. Digital transformation for any organisation needs the thought process of a start-up, otherwise it is difficult to adapt change with a traditional approach. CIO is the one who can lead, convince and achieve it.”
The journey of innovation is continuing and organisations must keep improving efficiency and reduce costs. That is innovation and that is magic. Citing an example of such improvements, Syed says, “I have adopted an open stack and moved from traditional licenced virtualised product and adopted flash when creating parallel setup and migrated. This way, I have archived more efficiency and reduced my Cloud cost to one-fifth. I am planning to move my SAP setup to private Cloud now to give it more flexibility and growth sustainability. It is all about your attitude, your mentorship to your team and guts to adapt new techs. I have seen better results and success during this journey.”
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