May 11, 2011

Jawed Ahmed: Winner of Top 100 CISO 2011 Awards

Jawed Ahmed, Head of Information Technology at the Power Transmission Business of Sterlite Technologies has been selected as the TOP100 CISO 2011 in India.


Its a vindication of the excellent work done by IT team at Sterlite Technologies. The achievement is commendable in the sense that there are very few large manufacturing organisations in India which have such an organised and structured IT Security Program. Sterlite Technologies has achieved this without the use of any directory/security tools like Active Directory or LDAP(May 2011). The policy is implemented and maintained painstakingly by going to the individual desktops across multiple locations.

The awards have been instituted by InfoSecurity Magazine. Jawed Ahmed has been selected out of 3000 Information Security professionals across the country. The jury included eminent persons from Industry as well as Academia.


The particular security project which has been appreciated and recognised is regarding the central control of high-end firewalls through use of scripts without the use of ready-made solutions. This facilitates application of uniform security policy across multiple locations at the same time.

Sterlite Technologies has been at the forefront of IT Security innovation for a long time now. The IT security framework that is implemented at Sterlite Technologies is based on ISO 27K1 and is stringently enforced.

The TOP 100 CISO awards for Sterlite Technologies is an unique achievement because unlike other winners who are either into banking or IT services Sterlite Technologies is a manufacturing organisation.



Feb 26, 2011

Feb 20, 2011

Tuktuk: Closeup

Very rarely she stays still long enough to click a sharp photograph. She'd just finished eating papaya so she sat still giving me this opportunity.

Feb 17, 2011

Sterlite Technologies: IT Enables Business

Sterlite Technologies: IT Enables Business




Sterlite Technologies has always been at the cutting edge of technology. One of its businesses, which manufactures Optical Fibres and Optical Fibre Cables is one of the most advanced and backward integrated in India. However operations is not the only area where Sterlite Technologies has latest technology. Specifically, Information Technology (IT) is one area where latest technology and innovative application are reaping rich dividends for Sterlite Technologies.




Sterlite Technology's core systems are running on SAP ECC 6.0. But the fibre production system is managed by an inhouse developed system which stores data locally and then pushes the data onto SAP in a batch mode. By customising this part Sterlite gets two major advantages. First, the system becomes independent of the rigid restrictions imposed by SAP and SAP runs in its pristine standard format without extensive customisation. Second, the system agility is improved and its much more easily configurable and can change fast compared to SAP. Today, the planning, production, physical control of robots and the despatch automation through Barcodes, all of these processes are enabled by IT to go the next level.




Its both a matter of pride and satisfaction that none of the competition have such advanced levels of IT integration with the processes.

Here I have illustrated only one such instance. IT enablement runs throughout the organisation. Be it Customers, Investors, Statutory Compliance(all external), Business Planning, Reporting, Analytics(High end data representation) or simple communication systems like emailing.



In all off these areas Sterlite Technologies has achieved a very high level of integration with the inherent business process. All the things which were not possible earlier are now taking place through the smart use of IT systems. Its IT enabling Business in the true sense !

Feb 6, 2011

Jawed@hotel rama

Jawed: travelling to Aurangabad

I am on my way to Aurangabad. Would be there for two days(7th and 8th). A development program has been organised and am going to participate in it. Jinius Shah too is travelling with me.


Sent on my BlackBerry®

Jan 30, 2011

Jan 25, 2011

Jan 24, 2011

Baby Parrots: Shot by Darshan Date, Sterlite Technologies

Darshan Date, who is my colleague at Sterlite Technologies has clicked this wonderful photograph.

Jan 23, 2011

Jawed Ahmed: Visit to Haji Ali, Mumbai

Jawed Ahmed at Haji Ali
Last November we had visited Haji Ali Shrine in Mumbai.

Jawed Ahmed: In SriLanka

I had been to Srilanka recently and it was a wonderful trip. I had been there to participate in an event called 'CIO- The year Ahead 2011'.
We were there for 4 days in the first week of December 2010.



--
x

Md. Jawed Ahmed
Cell: +91-9326513878, +91-9970688743


Jawed Ahmed: Royal Enfield Bullet

Jawed Ahmed on his Royal Enfield Bullet
This is my 33 year old. Has done more than a hundred thousand kms and still going strong.

Jawed Ahmed: Working at Sterlite Technologies, Pune




Sterlite Technologies has been using all the major modules of SAP ERP ECC 5.0. Additionally there are other systems which use either VB or some other frontend with Oracle backend. Recently Sterlite Technologies have upgraded their Central Component to ECC 6.0.





Very shortly I will complete 4 years of my working at Sterlite Technologies, Pune. I joined in April of 2007 as Head of IT for the Transmission Business Division(TBD, as it was called then). Initially I was posted for a few months at the manufacturing plant in Rakholi, Silvassa. This is because, Sterlite Technologies had gone live on SAP just a month back and the SAP Core Team was based out of the plant at Silvassa.


In addition to the core systems, Sterlite Technologies uses lots of peripheral systems which are hosted out of the cloud. Primarily among them are the Google Apps cloud and the Salesforce cloud. While working at Sterlite Technologies, I have seen the transition from the traditional in house systems to a pre-dominantly public cloud driven applications.

Working at Sterlite Technologies is quite challenging. Especially if you are heading a critical function like Information Systems and you are based out of the corporate office. Sterlite Technologies is distributed across some 10 locations with the majority of users being concentrated at Aurangabad and Silvassa. Keeping all the different units together and making them work as one combined function is what makes it complex and difficult. However, the silver lining is that we have got very capable people managing the IT departments at the unit level. Had it not been for them, this would have been infinitely more difficult.






While working at Sterlite Technologies, I have gained a deeper insight into the fine art of change management and how to make new systems acceptable to users. Inspite of being an young organisation with a relatively young workforce, Sterlite Technologies too has its share of stubborn users who are used to working in a particular way and see no merit in a change. End user buy in is one such area wherein as the Head of Information Technology dept I have had to play a critical role. I have managed to get the users to accept the new systems in most cases.



At Sterlite Technologies, innovation is valued. In my various interactions with the senior people I have seen on more than one occassion innovation being rewarded and appreciated. Working at Sterlite Technologies has been wonderful and rewarding for me.