In November 2009, Impetus Consulting was in the midst of expanding its reach to northern India. A Chennai-based KPO offering consulting, technology, and outsourcing services for financial services, telecom, tourism & hospitality, Impetus wanted a KPO infrastructure for a three-storey building in Noida. The company signed contracts for KPO related work for two companies – one in financial services and other in hospitality. These operations were to be managed from the upcoming KPO at Noida.

“It was a huge challenge as JFM quarter was extremely crucial for these clients as this KPO had to go live by mid- December,” recalls Rajeev Natarajan, CIO, Impetus Consulting. “There was a dire need to establish an end to-end IT infrastructure with a commitment of efficient and timely after sales service within India,” he says. The new CFO at Impetus Consulting in his earlier job role had experienced the expertise of Delhi- based Futuresoft Solutions. “The senior executive worked with us at Anik Technologies, a part of Quattro wherein we executed projects across various technologies like migration of Windows/Open Source, archival, storage,” adds Manish Bharti, DGM –Technology, Futuresoft Solutions. With strict timelines and no time for tender procedure, Impetus Consulting engaged with Futuresoft. “The goodwill gesture helped us break into the account,” agrees Bharti.

THE COST FACTOR

“Executing the project in less than a month was not the lone challenge. Operating for domestic clients and a cost-conscious KPO/BPO industry, we had ‘cost-per-seat’ budget in mind,” says Natarajan. Impetus needed a scalable and efficient partner to keep pace with varying levels of IT infrastructure deployment, seamlessly interfacing with quicker rollout to assist with the geographical growth. Bringing the cost per seat low was the biggest driving factor for Impetus. “Their first proposal asked for a technologically advanced solution which would reduce upfront cost and operational cost. This was a bottleneck as they had prefixed an IT budget of approximately Rs 15,000 per seat,” recalls Bharti. Open Source was the obvious choice to keep IT budgets down in this project.

Natarajan says, “We were working with Open Source technology at our Chennai KPO within smaller clusters. But we needed Open Source on a centralized server environment as scalability was an issue in Nodia.”

“Though Futuresoft Solutions has worked on Open Source deployments, it was a first of its kind project for us. It was a niche project wherein our team needed to demonstrate a lot of responsibility to deliver the project within time and within the cost constraints of the customer,”says Bharti.  A lot of calculations for various technologies were carried out to ensure the ‘cost per seat’ did not shoot up, he adds.

BEYOND OPEN SOURCE

The project started with a passive networking at the Noida office which included laying of CAT 6 cables and enabling them with voice and data flow, furnished I/O ports, Installation and Configuration of L2 manageable switches, Rack implementation and Patch panel with cable dressing. Passive networking was then followed with adequate and optimal server sizing with HP, IBM and Intel servers.

SUSE Linux was used as the operating system aligning with the objective of keeping the per seat cost low without compromising with the end user operational performance. “Beyond Open Source, the desktops at terminals of agents had to be kept at the minimal,” says Bharti. After testing a few machines on Celeron, Atom and other processors for a pilot POC of 15 desktops, Atom was selected primarily for cost factor. Voice quality should be good rather than not OS or processor version, says Natarajan. Bharti elaborates, “When a KPO agent takes a call, processor speed is not much but memory needed is higher since minimal call drop is desirable. Though it was an Atom-based desktop, we installed a higher RAM of 2GB. The idea was to bring cost-per-desktop down without impacting call performance. If the Atom-based systems did not run, we had the backup of thin client architecture with Microsoft as a backup option,” he says.

The Implementation

‘OUTSIDE THE BOX’ SOLUTION

Continuing with a customized solution on an Atom-based desktop, Futuresoft Solutions was consulting with Asterix for issues related to dialer set up. They gave feedback that the time to unlock a call was much less with a Supermicro Motherboard than with Intel when it came to dialer applications. Futuresoft did their homework and comparison of Intel based motherboards versus Supermicro motherboards. The challenge was the rare availability of Supermicro products and related information as the team interacted with a Mumbai-based partner for the same.

Identification of components was an exercise but not a real challenge. The internal team of Impetus, Asterix and Futuresoft worked in sync to ensure identification and implementation of alternate solutions was perfect. “The data transfer rates are critical for us as we record 100 percent of our calls which made us prefer Supermicro. We did pay a premium for it to make sure technology is in place and performance of the KPO was not affected,” says Natarajan.

Natarajan recalls, “One specific challenge was the use of non-commodity hardware as there were some issues getting some components of the servers”. There was a freeze on Intel-based server with Supermicro Motherboard and Crucial RAM specifications on all servers and the same were procured for Dialer and Database purposes.

STICKING TO DEADLINES

With tight timelines, Futuresoft Solutions submitted a clear defined proposal at a cost point demanded by the customer. “Apart from site mapping and other pre-sales procedures, we executed a thorough POC as we had not attempted such a KPO set up based on integrated dialer and voice database. Our team was in constant co-ordination with the Impetus team to avoid delay in this time-strapped project. There were multiple timelines kept at specific intervals for network testing, service testing, bandwidth testing, data & voice testing,” says Vipul Datta, CEO, Futuresoft Solutions. The pilot for 15 desktops was run for two weeks including networking to gain customer’s confidence.

Datta also says that apart from maintaining low cost, this project was a case of real business level consultancy as they helped the customer outline their IT roadmap. The project was built on a non-existent option available in the market, says Datta. “We realigned our senior management resources to make sure that the project goes up and running,” says Natarajan. The deadline of December 10 was met as the project went live on December 8.

THE TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP

“Application wise, Open Source offers flexibility on voice-related architecture where we are able to offer functionality like payment of credit cards and IVR in larger environments at fraction of a cost,” says Natarajan. The main business benefits for Impetus are higher uptime and less call drops. “Their demand to keep initial and operational cost low for the project will help them offer better services at better rates than their competitors,” says Bharti.

On the possibility of deploying thin client rather than desktops to reduce costs, Natarajan says, “We did an  initial test on thin client a few years ago, which did not yield good results as voice become jittery and external IP phones added to costs. We are speaking to Futuresoft Solutions in this aspect.”.

Natarajan highlights a further advantage of Open Source, “A couple of weeks ago, we received a client request to provide ad hoc IVR within a notice of 48 hours. In a proprietary set up, it would take time due to sufficient licenses and ports. Open Source made it possible to adhere to this request.”

“It was a well-defined project as we undertake one only if we can deliver value to the customer’s business need,” sums Datta at Futuresoft Solutions.

Extra: The Inside Details

‘NO CUSTOMER IS SMALL FOR US’

Impetus Consulting was keen to set up IT architecture initially for 80 seats at its upcoming KPO at Noida. Delhi-based Futuresoft Solutions took the plunge. Since Impetus was in extension mode, it was more of a volume game than margin play for Futuresoft Solutions. “A set up of 100-150 seats is pretty tiny in our kind of KPO business. But we were confident of Futuresoft team to deliver a competent solution for future business needs. We have worked more as a partner than vendor client,” agrees Natarajan.

However, the initial platform set up included cabling (Data / Voice & electrical for 300 seats), Desktops (80 Nos.), Servers (7 Nos.), UPS, Racks, Switches resulted in a order worth 25 lakh rupees for Futuresoft Solutions. The 80 desktops have risen to 130 today. Futuresoft Solutions would charge Rs.15,000 per desktop added in the infrastructure as per contract. “An additional 220 desktops will be added over a period of time at Noida for an additional cost of Rs. 33 lakhs,” says Vipul Datta, CEO, Futuresoft Solutions.

Furthermore, Impetus Consulting is replicating IT infrastructure at Noida for a 30-seat pilot KPO in Mumbai though Futuresoft Solutions. “The idea is to standardize a common architecture across locations wherein we can introduce technologies like remote management,” says Natarajan. The company is planning to ramp up its Chennai capacity from 130 to 200 soon. “We are not sure if existing cluster model will work there. We would reinvest like the model at Noida, adds Natrajan.

Futuresoft Solutions built a highly scalable infrastructure on Open Source by tweaking non-standard components like Atom processors and SuperMicro motherboards. “No customer order is small for us was a key learning for us,” says Datta at Futuresoft Solutions.