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With BCCI’s new web site, cricket fans can watch
their favorite matches live on the Internet.
Thanks to TCS’ backend architecture for the
hosting servers with adequate load balancing
features, the site has served fans without a
glitch. Soon, fans will be able to create their own
profiles on the site.
PLUS
INTERVIEW
Anantha Krishnan, VP & CTO, TCS
says Innovation is not just about
ideas. It’s about extracting value
from ideas by bringing them to
market before others do.
TRANSFORMERS CASE STUDY
BCCI
SCORES
with
NEW WEBSITE
Company
Board of Control for
Cricket in India
Industry
Sports & Entertainment
Offering
National governing
body for cricket
With BCCI’s new web site, cricket fans can watch their
favorite matches live on the Internet. Thanks to TCS’
backend architecture for the hosting servers with adequate
load balancing features, the site has served fans
without a glitch. Soon, fans will be able to create
their own profiles on the site.
CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP
TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES
an a Sachin Tendulkar fan get to watch
all his movements during a high-drama
India-Pakistan match? Can he watch
a video that captures the match with
Tendulkar in spotlight, whether or not
he scores a century? The answer depends on who
you ask. If it’s a spokesperson from a TV channel,
the reply will, most likely, be a no; citing that
broadcast capabilities are yet to take that
leap. But if you ask Gaurav Saxena,
Project Manager, BCCI, the answer
is “yes, in the very near future.”
FINE START
This drive to delight the Indian cricket fans with
something special was re-ignited around a year
ago by an assessment of what BCCI stood for. In
June-July 2010, the working committee of BCCI
decided to review the expectations that Indian
cricket fans had on them. By August, they had
decided to rope in TCS as their consultant. “BCCI
recognized that the huge fan base is the
building block of this great sporting
edifice and facilitating the involvement of well-wishers and folThe futuristic
lowers of the game is essential
video-feed option
to the well-being of the sport,”
EIGHT MONTHS,
opines Prof Ratnakar Shetty,
NOT OUT
would take
Director–Tournament, BCCI.
Saxena’s optimism is welladvantage of the
Headquartered at Mumbai,
grounded. For more than six
numerous cameras BCCI
is the national governing
months now, BCCI has been
on the field.
body for all organized cricket
streaming live video of matchin India. As a member of the
es that the Indian cricket team
International Cricket Council (ICC),
plays. As of now, no one has had
it has the authority to select players,
any reason to complain. The video
umpires and officials to participate in
broadcast project has emboldened BCCI
international events, and exercises total control
to plan more ambitiously, and a user-controlled
over them. Without its recognition, no competitive
interactive video footage seems very much within
cricket involving BCCI-contracted Indian players
the realms of the possible.
can be hosted within or outside the country. No
The futuristic video-feed option would take addoubt then, the manner in which BCCI promotes
vantage of the fact that there are numerous camthe game has a direct
eras on the field. A television
impact on rousing the
broadcast shows feeds from
excitement levels among
only one of them based on
cricket fans.
the broadcaster’s judgment
of which camera will capture the game best. “How
A NEW INNINGS
can we utilize other camWhat BCCI needed was
eras?” Saxena pondered. In
a revamped website that
the scenario where a viewer
could act as a one-stop
wishes to watch feeds from
place for all matters peronly a specific camera (for
taining to Indian cricket.
example, the one that trac“Whether a user wished to
es Tendulkar’s movements),
relive the golden moments
can it not be provided? Viewfrom sporting history or be
TCS answered
ing video feeds on a PC is
updated about all the latest
technically possible. “And
developments, our aim was
our call for
with TCS as the technology
to have the content easily
efficient
arm, that, too, is practically
accessible,” Shetty says.
designing and management
possible ” Saxena says.
The challenge for BCCI was
of our new portal with a
If the feeds from all the
to find one company that would
cameras were offered to the
provide design, technical and
willingness to collaborate
viewers, they would have a
CMS services, and, at the
with our in-house team”
lot to choose from. “With the
same time, which had a keen
Internet, it is easily possible
sense of evolving technology.
PROF. RATNAKAR SHETTY
to pick and choose” Saxena
For this to be possible,
Chief Administrative Officer, BCCI
says. “In that sense, the InBCCI felt that it was critical
ternet has an advantage.
that a dedicated team of
TRANSFORMERS CASE STUDY
professionals, responsive to the
organization’s ideas and needs,
be present. “TCS answered our
call for efficient designing and
management of our new portal
with a willingness to collaborate
with our in-house team on all
key areas on a regular basis,”
says Shetty.
The vendor’s ability to provide
a complete solution for the
BCCI portal was another key
factor. “We were looking for a
long-term partner who would
complement our rich stores of
content – archived and current
– with user-friendly platforms,”
Shetty says.
BCCI wanted an assurance
of being provided the best
quality and service all year
round. “The need for a reputed
company with an unblemished
record governed our decision
to hire TCS,” Shetty says.
streaming on the site. “We
have never had a problem
with the streaming of the
video,” says Rego.
“We wanted an interactive, user-generated, live
streaming and live broadcasting platform. The idea
was to provide free coverage on the Internet so as
to build a fan base and also
establish our Internet brand
- BCCI.TV,” says Shetty.
We have been
streaming live
video of matches
on our portal for the past
few months. So far, we
have never had a problem.“
BEHIND THE
SCENES
For the BCCI site, TCS used
the ‘Agile approach’ which
breaks tasks into small
increments with minimal
planning, and does not
directly involve longterm planning. Iterations
JAMES REGO,
are short time frames
Director - Broadcast, BCCI
that typically last from
one to four weeks. Each
iteration involves a team
A FINE PITCH
working through a full software development
The TCS-designed portal, www.bcci.tv, went live on
cycle, including planning, requirement analysis,
the 4th of October, 2010. The site covers all major
design, coding, unit testing, and acceptancetournaments involving India, providing commentesting when a working product is demonstrated
taries, statistics, reports and other features. Comto stakeholders. This minimizes overall risk
plete information on cricketing venues, upcoming
and allows the project to adapt to changes
fixtures and information about national, women’s
quickly. Stakeholders produce documentation
and junior sides is also provided. Apart from keepas required. An iteration may not add enough
ing users updated, the site also aims at engaging
functionality to warrant a market release, but the
users in meaningful discussions and capturing usgoal is to have an available release (with minimal
ers’ opinions on key issues.
bugs) at the end of each iteration. Multiple
The most attractive feature of the site is
iterations may be required to release a product
, undoubtedly, the facility of live streaming.
or new features.
“Implementing video on BCCI’s own platform was
TCS could foresee that, thanks to the popularity
challenging,” Shetty admits. With the advent of
of the sport, the site was going to have a
TCL’s (Tata Communications Limited) live
lot of visitors soon. To take care of
streaming service, BCCI began providing
the high number of visitors, TCS
broadcast services on the Internet to
used hash code algorithm which
viewers. “We were able to broadcast
To manage the
generates a unique hash code
the New Zealand tour of India
large traffic on the
for each video at runtime and
across our worldwide network –
website, TCS has
enables playing video on the
all without a hitch. The traffic was
browser itself.
huge but we were able to sustain
used multiple web
To manage the large traffic
it with seamless audio and video
servers and a load
on the website, TCS has used
broadcast,” says Shetty.
balancer
multiple web servers and a load
James Rego, Director-Broadbalancer which distributes the
cast, BCCI, says that the video
traffic appropriately, so that the site
feeds that they get from the camwould not get down due to high traffic.
eras are processed and sent to TCS for
CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP
TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES
SNAPSHOTS OF INDIA’S MOST POPULAR GAME
BCCI’s new website (www.
bcci.tv) has articles and
features about Indian cricket,
announcements about
upcoming matches, a photo
gallery and readers polls.
The organization streams live
coverage of matches involving
the Indian cricket team. The
site has been largely popular
in India. This is fuelled by the
fact that the popularity of the
game has always been rising
in the country.
Indian cricket has indeed
come a long way. Once an
BCCI’S NEW WEBSITE
“We have designed the project architecture in such
a way that at any point we can add more web servers to the load balancer with minimum down-time,”
Shetty explains.
SOCIAL NEXT
Over the past few months, BCCI has garnered
a fan base of more than 1.5 million cricket fans
on the organization’s Facebook page. It also has
a verified Twitter handle (@bcciindia) to cater to
the fast-paced and communication-tools-driven
audience.
BCCI’s piece de resistance, when it comes
to social collaboration, has yet to make an
appearance. TCS has designed a tool that will
enable fans to create their profiles and interact
with other fans using Facebook-like features.
This module is currently in the testing stage. “We
want to have an application that lets fans group
together, post discussions and create their own
groups,” Shetty says.
TCS also helped BCCI understand key user
demographics for content optimization and
gather important user insights through web
analytics. Site traffic was improved through
better Internet visibility.
amateur game, cricket has
emerged as a billion dollar
industry worldwide. The
cricket industry is spread
out across all cricket playing
nations of the world. Cricket
accessory manufacturers,
sponsors, broadcasters, and
major tournaments like the
World Cup and ICC Trophy
form this industry. Australia,
England, India, New Zealand,
Pakistan, South Africa, Sri
Lanka, and West Indies are the
main centers of this industry.
Kenya, Canada, Netherlands,
Bangladesh, and Zimbabwe
are the emerging markets.
Puma, Slazenger, Gunn &
Moore, Duncan Fearnley,
Gray Nicolls, Kookaburra,
and Surridge are the major
accessory manufacturers.
BCCI’s customer business team was able to view
the “funnel visualization” of visitor behaviour
which helps determine the reason for visitor site
abandonment. The website got hits not only from
fans in India, but also from the UK, the US, the
United Arab Emirates, Canada, etc. The high point
for BCCI was when the website touched the traffic
of one lakh visitors a day.
BCCI is also working on a multi-channel
delivery platform. “Soon, the BCCI WAP version
will be released and the iPad version will follow
suit,” Shetty confirms. The organization is also
normalizing content and encasing it in a layer of
rich metadata to make syndication simple and
conform to RSS & XML. “RSS feeds and push
e-mails are also in the pipeline. Consumers are
increasingly moving towards subscription-based,
content-on-demand channels,” Shetty says. As
matters stand, customers have come to expect
content delivered directly to them. “This forms
the basis for a long-term customer relationship.
Whether speaking to them via email, newsletters,
podcasts, online video, or through RSS readers,
the ability to maintain a dialogue with them is
crucial to customer retention which is where our
focus is,” says Shetty.
TRANSFORMERS INTERVIEW
INNOVATION
HELPS
EXPERIENCE
CERTAINTY
Innovation is not just
about ideas. It’s about
extracting value from
ideas, big or small, by
bringing them to market
before others do, says
K Ananth Krishnan
K ANANTH KRISHNAN
Vice President &
Chief Technology Officer.
Tata Consultancy Services
CUSTOM SOLUTIONS GROUP
TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES
As part of the TCS corporate think tank, how do
you drive innovation?
Do you believe in early adoption of technology?
What are its pros and cons?
At TCS, we recognize that innovation is not just
about ideas, big or small. It’s about extracting
value from those ideas by bringing them to market
before others do. We have built a systematic roadmap
to innovation. Our Innovation Engine comprises the 19
Innovation Labs we have across the world. Through our
internal social network, we run a very large idea platform
and encourage all our associates to contribute to the
ideation process. We also take the ideas which originate
outside the company, from our co-innovation network
which include our partners, our start-up firms, academic
institutions etc. We ensure that the resulting business
outcome clearly improves the capability of either TCS or
our stake holders. It could either be an increase in our
revenue, measured in profi ts, or measured in customer
and employee satisfaction. Innovation process is ‘ideas
in and impact out’. The impact could be across three
segments — derivative innovation by which we continually
provide improvements on current services and solutions,
platform innovations by which we swiftly move to visible
adjacencies in terms of emerging technologies as well
as markets, and disruptive Innovation by which we create
breakthroughs and evolve potentially game-changing
business models.
New technology is always exciting, and everyone
would like to experiment with it to check how it
can be applied to existing or future tasks. Going back to
the three categories of innovation, each of them would
treat early adoption of technology differently. In case
of derivative innovation, the focus is on introducing an
innovation which can deliver results quickly, without
disrupting existing service levels and quality. The
tolerance of risks and failure is very low in this category
and the possibility of adopting a completely new
technology is reduced. In case of platform innovation,
since the projects take anything from 18 to 24 months to
execute, the risk tolerance is a little higher. So we have
the time to adopt new technology, try it out in pilot, make
sure it fulfills its promise and then deploy it in the form of
a new platform. In the case of disruptive innovation, the
risk tolerance is the highest and we can leverage radical
new technology. Here, the early adoption of technology is
certainly required; otherwise it will not be disruptive.
Can you give us an example of some products
that are a result of the innovation labs?
The software engineering tools program is an
excellent example of derivative or sustaining
innovation as it has resulted in a faster, better, cheaper,
business outcome. These tools help in software
development, requirements management and software
lifecycle. Though this is not available commercially,
we use them extensively in the TCS labs, software
engineering and platforms development. The internal
social network platform allows our over two lakh
employees to collaborate easily and is a good example of
transformational improvement or platform innovations.
Demographically, we are a very young company with an
average age of 28 years, and the usage of this platform
is extremely good. We have now taken the next step of
applying social network capabilities to different business
processes across customer verticals such as banking
and manufacturing. The iON and the mKrishi program
are examples of products resulting from disruptive
innovation. The mKrishi program connects farmers
with an ecosystem that empowers them to make sound
decisions about agriculture, drive profi ts and conserve
the environment. This is still work in progress.
How do you see the CIOs’ role evolve in the face
of ever-changing business scenarioes?
CIOs are now seen as business leaders who not just
run IT, but are advisors to business, and that is the
predominant role that they would play going forward. In
fact, about a year ago, we had collaborated with the Center
for Information Systems Research - MIT Sloan, where we
surveyed global CIOs and CEOs about how they view the
evolution of a CIO’s role. The results showed that running
IT is less than half of the job description for a CIO. The
other half is connecting with the business, evangelizing
new technology, connecting with the customers, looking
at the impact of technology through business processes,
and playing a transformative and innovative role in the
organization. CIOs should be able to solve existing IT
problems in a credible way. Only then will they transform
from being just a trusted partner to being an advisor to
the business. That will give them the perch to talk about
the impact of new technology and how new business
problems can be solved with technology.
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