What are the various end-user computing services provided by HCL Infrastructure Services Division, and how are these different from desktop management services?

Our gamut of services, under end-user computing goes beyond desktop management services. Desktop, laptop, tablet, PDA or BlackBerry is basically the interface — there is a lot of technology behind it that includes not just the hardware (the devices) but also the application that sits on the device, messaging and collaboration (e-mail, Lync or chat platform), and Citrix-based VDI or a VM-based VDI. So, there is a lot of data center technology and network that sits behind end-user computing.

Our service in end-user computing is not just the management of the device but all of the encompassing end-user computing technologies. It also includes user provisioning — you have the Active Directory so you define policies around users. It is a fairly complex piece but one integrated offering.

Today, the user is looking at a great experience with any device, and the enterprise is looking more at provisioning, policy, security, ubiquitous access, control, and compliance. We have put together a holistically integrated service because we want to create the user experience and not just manage the device. So there is a set of people who first address the clients, which is service-desk-as an offering. Then you have a Desktop Management team, which manages your applications. After that, there are subject matter experts who enable the entire technology, which involves virtualizing your application delivery to desktop. Finally, there is messaging and collaboration because 80 - 90 percent of our work today happens on e-mail — we are using less of phone and more of chat, social collaboration, social networking and messaging. We call this entire gamut of services as Managed End User Computing.

We started with the mainframe way of functioning, then we moved to the client-server model. How has this model evolved over the years?

If you go back 30 years, the proposition was mainframe, where everything was centralized, and you had those dumb terminals. But now the world has moved from the mainframe to client–server; the great benefit of client-server is that desktop workstation takes the processing power away, makes it cheaper, and enables you to communicate on a network. You can keep the graphic interface here, part of the application can reside on the front-end and the processing can happen there. So, we changed the mainframe — we said it is junk, the technology is outdated, and everything will now be client-server.

What has happened now is that we have again moved away from the client-server model towards the mainframe model, saying that app virtualization and device virtualization is nothing but everything done centrally, irrespective of the type of device which is used for accessing apps. The moment you say virtualization of app, it means the entire app is actually sitting in the data center now. The technology has become a little more open ended. The browser has become the ubiquitous kind of interface, and there is a lot more evolution that has happened in that technology. Obviously, the user experience is a lot better. So, if you really look back at our mainframes to the current days, it is basically cannibalization of one after the other. The IT industry has remained where it is because of its ability to cannibalize itself, and then again re-invent itself.

What are the major trends you are witnessing that have the potential to drastically change the way IT has been functioning traditionally?

A key trend that we clearly see is the consumerization of IT, which means that the device is no more enterprise determined. More enterprises are also letting the employees buy their choice of device as it takes away the burden of supporting that hardware. While the user manages the device, the enterprise delivers the applications seamlessly. This is driving BYOD and blurring the lines between consumer and enterprise technology.

Lot of activity is happening on the security and access control front. The security policy that governs my personal work is different — I use a different image there. And when I connect to my enterprise, I use a different image. All the security controls and the compliance are controlled at the network, firewall and data center levels. To control access, one may implement many policy-driven restrictions.