The new digital transformation project is bringing together social engagement, mobility and analytics to advance business processes
NATARAJ N
KPIT
Digital applications involve complexity like digital platforms driving microservices architecture which scales dynamically, performs real time in-memory computing, works on structured and unstructured data sources, simultaneously providing real time search capabilities, connecting with different data sources like IT, OT, IoT technologies and working on hybrid Cloud architecture.
As companies adopt digital technologies, there is huge transformation required in underlying IT infrastructure to support digital initiatives. This is mainly due to the substantial difference between architecture of digital applications and traditionally monolithic applications. It is, therefore, important for KPIT Cummins which provides technology consulting and product engineering services and solutions to automotive, manufacturing, energy, utilities and life sciences industries to transform.
Digital transformation, known internally as “smart enterprise”, KPIT's digital transformation initiative aimed to advance the company's business processes using social engagement, mobility, predictive analytics and container technologies. But before those goals could be achieved, the company needed to modernise its infrastructure and application environment. This is what was done at KPIT. Digital infrastructure became strong backbone to ideate business and fictional needs. Since business processes touched each function of an organisation, it involved stakeholders from IBUs, SBUs and corporate functions.
“We look at ourselves as a highly automation driven, agile and transformational company and every function supporting the business needs to be quick enough to support the current business scenario,” says Nataraj N, Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer and Global IMS Business Head, KPIT. “With this goal in mind, we have been working to increase our operational agility,” he adds.
As the speed of application delivery is the key differentiator for KPIT and, in turn, its customers, the company implemented Private Cloud five years ago to allow its developers to provision their own compute resources. However, all other infrastructure services that have been mentioned are a part of gradual plan. “We continue to invest on technologies as we understood these quite early. Concurrent connections and data flow can vary drastically every day and can come from many sources supporting millions of transactions per second. Cyber security risks are growing exponentially and traditional security architecture does not protect organisations from risks arising from digital applications coming from smart devices,” he opines.
KPIT, being an early adopter of most of the infrastructure technologies, developed excellent skill set on leading Software Defined Infrastructure technologies. “Over few years' time, we have built SMART Infrastructure “Software Defined Anything Approach” which is mainly based on underline infrastructure - compute, storage, network, security and backup tech; software defines everything - software defined compute, software defined storage, software defined network and software defined HA.
With the help of these transformational projects, KPIT can respond quickly and efficiently to new application requests and business requirements — for both internal and external customers. It can build multitenant environments that simultaneously cater to the needs of multiple customers while delivering consistent security and performance. It can offer better and more competitive service-level agreements to the marketplace. “For example, we have done a transformational project for end customers under IMS SBU using the learnings we got rolling out Hyper Converged and Digital Infrastructure,” Nataraj says.
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