CIO's Shopping Guide

Company : NSHM Knowledge Campus, Business School (NBS)

Location : Kolkata

Profile : NSHM Business School (NBS), was founded jointly by the SPS
Group, Synergy Group and Multicon with over Rs 1,000 crore turnover and has
stakes in various sectors like steel, media, bio-technology, renewable energy
and health and knowledge promotion across the city.

NBS, an integral part of NSHM Knowledge Campus prepares its graduates and
later its post-graduates. Partic­ular attention is paid to the e-learning
process involved here as students are exposed to developing their own
personality through thorough exposure to language labs, e-governance and
e-commerce projects and have an extensive network of Wi-Fi connection.

Operating in four branches-Durgapur, Kolkata, Gurgaon and Pune, the college
is about to launch four other branches shortly by the end of this year.

Current IT infrastructure

As the academy boasts of Wi-Fi-enabled campus and modern techniques of
education, IT has a big part to play. NBS, at present has 15 dedicated computer
personnel to serve the network configuration and hardware maintenance teams.

The academy has eight Microsoft servers having websence, Trend-Micro and
others allocated in each of them. The focus is, however, on the 3.5BMC active
directory service backing 250 desktops in the computer lab at a go.

Subhrendu Guha Neogi Head-IT Infrastructure and Network, NSHM Knowledge Campus-Business School

IT infrastructure for 2009

NBS is planning to re-engineer the computer lab for students and the language
lab to integrate more space and hence, more students. Moreover, the system
configuration may change to make it more secure. Data centers in NBS will soon
be upgraded from version 2 to 2.5 and an additional three Linux servers are
going to be installed. This will give additional protec­tion to the data flow in
the Wi-Fi network and will decrease the chances of vulnerability to external
data threats. Also, the online library facility will soon be revamped after
September and additional storage and memory capacity will be installed.

Current system suppliers

At present, NBS is in direct contact with the vendors for product
installation. The OEM has installed the servers and the network only as it is
the policy of NSHM Knowledge Campus throughout the country.

However, for the mainte­nance, NBS has appointed Avaya GlobalConnect in
charge of the Wi-Fi, LAN, language laboratory and the online library facility
while Microsoft looks directly into the wired network with it's support
representatives. Also, Acer has been appointed to take care of the laptops and
other functional areas.

Desired qualities in supplier

The first quality that NBS takes into account is the support system the
supplier has. The second consideration is the price factor. Supplier prices are
first compared and their service backup with records analyzed. For maintenance
also, the same procedure is followed.

Avishek Rakshit

avishekr@cybermedia.co.in