P 80 Continuation of GIS services

P  80


Continuation of GIS Services

Having established systems & procedure, my job as chief executive ran smoothly. I undertook extensive tour of all state capitals where our GIS state leads were present. Visited Delhi, Lucknow, Chandigarh on one long trip to address  the important cable junction points of national backbone to sort out the duct changeover from back bone to intra city routing. Having experienced that , carried out a survey of southern states- Madras(Chennai), Hyderabad, Bangalore, Cochi and interacted with state CTOs and corresponding construction teams.  Undertook one special trip each to Ahmedabad & Kolkatta. One can say, though my company responsibility was limited to GIS, we literally played the role of project engineering management.  Rather my network team helped M/S KH Mankad and Vipin Jain to develop an APP for intra city routing for last mile connectivity to homes. Things were going on and more&more intra cities  &towns were getting added for telecommunication services.  At that stage, we started looking into extending the services through microwave towers. Mr Gopalan and Mr Mallikarjun were literally on us to seek land base data for tower location identification and elevation requirements etc. So the service department of my group was always on their toes.

Somewhere in middle of 2004, Mr Lalit Jalan of BSES called me for  study of extending these GIS services for BSES power distribution within Mumbai city. Myself and Milind took the help of Mr Don Carson  to develop the job specifications and scope of work for ESRI,USA. On our recommendation, BSES recruited Mr Kale for handling that project. We effectively participated in finalising that deal and the project was launched. Unfortunately, that was the time Reliance Group split into two and we could not continue to contribute our expertise.

As the split issue was family dispute, my company was in trouble and myself was in a fix! Discreetly I got in touch with MDA and VVB and they asked me to move out of company without any transfer letter. That made me to send a hand written request to ADA(Anil Ambani) to allow me to come back to industries group which he honored in couple of days. That was a great relief for me but got into an awkward situation!

It so happened, seeing our world class GIS development carried out in India, Saudhi Aramco were looking for our services and extended an invite. As I was on the move I hesitated how to convey the NO to them! But MDA intervened and  advised me to undertake that visit with a team  to Damman and Riyadh; at the same time do not commit any promises to undertake the responsibility. So a team of 6 undertook the journey and we shared our experience in developing the digital map of India and database administration + provisioning of new connections etc. The client understood our situation and thanked us making that trip.  That is how my GIS experience got wound up.  I shifted my office location from G Block to NHQ building within DAKC, waiting for some project assignment in RIL. That was sometime in the beginning of 2005.
                                                                                                               Contd......

KeyAspects :- Delegation, Incident analysis, Ups&down Surprise&shock 

P 79 Forming Reliance Digital World

P  79


Formation of Reliance Digital World

On return to India, as courtesy demanded I took the shields and certificates to MDA's office to share the pleasure and joy of company's achievements with him. He asked me one direct question!
Ramu, do you now realize your strength and values? Three years back, you said that you do not know the spelling for telecommunication but see what you have achieved!

But, with some other back ground at that time I was still morass He got annoyed and queried, what is wrong with you; why are you not enjoying the occasion? That forced me to bring out the facts about my pay scale, status in society &living conditions etc. On hearing that he was perplexed and immediately lifted the phone  and contacted  Mr V V Bhatt, that time HR chief of Reliance Corporate and enquired 'why this disparity issue have not been resolved yet! Ensure that is done today itself '.

After that when I returned to my office, there was a surprise message from VVB waiting for me!
His instruction to me was to develop a full fledged organisation chart  with responsibilities and available personnel filling various positions so as to form full fledged company for GIS services, not only for Reliance Communications but to serve others also. As my confidants were full of energy and enthusiasm, they could develop that chart and report in matter of hours on the same day. The company was formed on 1st Nov.2003 as a private company under company  law and registered.
We selected and christened it as Reliance Digital World and I was asked to head that set-up with job title Business Head. At the start, we had 48 employees spread all over India and balance manpower drawn from agencies to continue OSS /BSS services for Reliance Communication. Since it was formed under Company law, all statutory  and legal requirement formalities were established and operated as an independent set-up but within Reliance premises. So we were servicing both Reliance Communications and BSES- a power distribution company in Mumbai which was taken over by Reliance. By that time,operations were streamlined, the functioning was smooth  and our value in
GIS domain was growing day by day.

As GIS awareness and its utility functions usage in public was in early stages then, every Government department both at Delhi level and Maharashtra state level started utilizing our services for consultation. Even the local bodies like CIDCO and NMMC ((New Mumbai Municipal Corporation)used our expertise in land usage, infrastructure establishment, public gardens/park , water distribution network etc. DG Police Maharashtra used to share ideas for the city transportation network and signal establishments. Even the central Election Commission of India took our services for assembly constituency mapping and corresponding voter population statistics etc. booth wise. That took us to Education fraternity also.  PadmaSri  Dr Majumdar of Symbiosis contacted me through Mr Rajesh Mathur of ESRI,India and requested me to join the Board Of Governors for establishing a fresh curriculum named Geomatics . I was one of the person who participated in framing the syllabus and my team M/S Milind and Sanjay Shrivastava took classes on GIS at Pune.
                                                                                                                              Contd.......

Key Aspects :- Accountable, Communication, Conviction, Faith, Human relations, Initiative,
Leadership, Motivation, Recognition, Reputation, Surprise&shock Team building, Ups&down 

P 78 GIS/NE Award &Recognition

P  78

GIS/NE Award &Recognition


As the GIS/NE group developed this application and established services to both BSS/OSS, the good message spread across the world  like wild fire. We started receiving congratulatory messages from our well wishers, service providers, Ministry of Communication and from Ministry of Science &Technology. Rather I had the privilege to have  one to one meeting with the Union Minister Mr Kapil Sibal and obtained his best wishes.


The group had the honor to make two important milestones in Digital Technology -  developing digital map of India from satellite imagery that too having 1M resolution data for the important cities & towns of India and  innovatively developing an application for cable cut management, thereby reducing the communication break down time with quick restoration efforts. To recognize the company &the team, world GIS forum led by ESRI presented Reliance two awards at San Diego in August,'03.


Going to that award ceremony is a different story! As the working level management did not realize the values of those awards, told me to depute only the working team to USA, which I did. At that time none of us were  knowing that even MDA  was personally invited to grace the occasion. After a few days of that invite, he called me to his cabin  and requested me to represent him also &convey his thanks message to Dr Jack Dangermond, President & CEO of ESRI. When I expressed to him that I am not going, he was shocked &questioned me!  When I explained to him  the back ground, he took the phone, instructed the concerned that Ramu should go as honor representing Reliance as well as MDA. That made the team complete  and we proceeded. Rather me, Milind and Jaydip enjoyed the round trip halting at France (while returning)to spend few days with my sister Dr Viji  and went round Paris site seeing. Next comes the big story -turn &rise  in life
                                                                                                                         Contd.....

Key Aspects :-  Communication, Leadership, Recognition, Reputation,Surprise&shock 

P 77 GIS/NE Cable cut management

P  77

GIS/NE Cable cut management

As my NE group was looking for some opportunity, they were exchanging thoughts with the national backbone engineering&operations group about the estimated downtime &efforts required for restoration of a broken cable in remote backbone in Hi-ways. Leaders who earlier worked in BSNL/ MTNL indicated that it may take days together for  identification of the break point  and their coordinates are the main challenge and time consuming. They also added that once the spot is approximately known, then the difficulty arise for the tracing of duct and the cable/fiber pairs and characteristics-to decide whether that stretch requires a replacement or a simple joint will do. That input gave the team enough dope to dream!
Milind as top leader always ably assisted by Jaydip developed a written process and brought to me.
Myself , being an auditor by nature thoroughly scrutinized that draft  and gave some value additions.
Keeping that as start point, they wrote a flow diagram and identified what parameters in GIS database are required and what external network data and alarm contacts should trigger this application and how the overall output can be shared with the ultimate stake holder  and what inputs are essential for him to carry out the cable cut maintenance and restore ASAP.

As this team including Don& Michael were systematic in database domain generation  and accumulation of field construction data in terms of Lat/Long co-ordinates for backbone trench alignment, cable characteristics including type and number of fibers, uploading the corresponding test certificates, cable length from MCN to MCN (Nodes in back bone), where the loop provisions are made while laying the cables, color and location of duct in trenches where that cable is drawn etc. in GIS  database. All these came handy for this application development.  They interacted with operations & maintenance group  and introduced an intelligent device which can emit laser beam to travel along this cable fiber. As laser has got the specific characteristics of returning to origin itself  whenever there is break in its travelling path, that phenomenon was effectively utilized in this cable cut management application. Next came how to measure  this laser travelling distance?  With that device manufacturer they directly interacted and got introduced a counter.

With that they had all the requisite inputs available in GIS database. Thereafter, they devised  the mathematical logic and arrived at an equation. The laser beam  travel distance was co-related with the linear cable distance  in that stretch of trench taking into account all the slag and loops etc. That data was further analyzed to arrive at the trench length  and corresponding GPS coordinates. Once that application was developed , we tried that in actual field in various states. To our satisfaction, the results and accuracy factors of field execution and data collection etc. have got validated using that tool. While commissioning, wherever the operations team found attenuation of signals causing them weak, they took this team's help to investigate and rectify them in field &updated the database.

Then came the question of how to generate and issue the ticket to concerned maintenance stake holder
and what all data are essential to him. We established a link to SAP database with GIS database and developed a work order development.  End result: What it used to take several hours/ days earlier has been brought down to flat 12 minutes!! We ensured that the WO for that coordinate will identify the responsible stake holder  and help him with complete cable data and location coordinates where the break has taken place etc. The location accuracy was +/- 11Mtrs. This  discrepancy range was mostly dependent on field data accuracy what construction team furnished. But since we were providing service to customer(maybe internal only) we took that precaution.

Entire management and all stakeholders from business/ operations & maintenance were overwhelmed with this innovative application development. People took only maximum 4 hours for restoration of cable failures, which used to take days together in earlier days.
                                                                                                                     Contd....

Key Aspects :-  Accountable, Communication, Initiative, Innovation, Leadership, Opportunity,
Proactive approach, Technical issue, Team building, Recognition

P 76 GIS/NE Last mile engineering

P 76

GIS/NE Last mile Engineering
When I said that both BSS and OSS team wanted the address data base of every city that too with potential value proposition, let us look at ,what factors they were looking from business angle and services?

Business group  gave us the probable pockets in a city but were looking for arriving at the listing of potential customers, their address location, number of tenements in a building, number of storeys  etc.  When it came to OSS, they were looking for density in a building, spread area of that building, height of the building,  if feasible approach road/path data from the nearest tower pole etc.

The business group used that information for forecast and begin canvassing with would be customer.
Whereas OSS group for Last mile engineering planning wanted that information badly for arriving at cable routing, selection of the devices to be installed where Fiber to Copper cable  change over to take place etc. Keeping all these into consideration  we developed a detailed XL spread sheet.  On trial basis, we engaged two local parties in Mumbai- M/S BonAce  & PowerTec and gave them to carry  out pilot trials for data collection.  Their first output was shared with both the business group and network planning group for last mile- M/S KH Mankad & Vipin Jain. The client teams were so pleased that they jumped with joy!

Since the trial exercise was successful, we asked these two parties to go to every state and train the local agencies & asked our State GIS Leads to supervise and manage the data accumulation. That process went on and we could collect the address data for 212 cities over a period.  The selection of city for last mile engineering was prioritized by the business group inputs.  In the bargain, GIS/NE group became an intermediary for  business development and customer service provisioning.

In the process, GIS/NE server became the channel for final customer provisioning! Our Oracle expert Arunmoi with Milind and Jaydip used to face the SOS calls from every state daily that too after 7PM to rescue them and ensure bulk provisioning of service for  end customers in their cities. Though  that was causing stress and tension to the team, the leaders  used to pacify the working team members to identify the trouble in data base uploading  and sort out then&there. So that was one more feather in GIS/NE group cap!
Once this process and procedure was streamlined, the NE group could not keep quiet! Typical of Milind and Jaydip, they were looking for What next? After a few days , they came out with an idea to develop  maintenance application.  As all of them are electrical and instrument engineers, their focus fell on cable cut management! That is quite an invention and world GIS &Telecomm group appreciated  and rewarded Reliance at San Diego in 2003.
 The development of that application is dealt in next...
                                                                                                                Contd.....

Key Aspects :- Incident analysis, Initiative, Innovation, Recognition, Reputation,Responsible                                                       

P 75 GIS Network Engineering

P  75

GIS Network Engineering

In last edition , I just mentioned the term Network Engineering.  But what realistic development and some sensitive applications developed made the team as Global Champions in GIS &Network Engineering ?

During the course of Telecommunication  project progress, the management engaged international consultants like Accenture,  CapGemini... for Business database and Business Support System  and Telecordia for Operation Support system.Even they employed some specialists from Hindustan Lever. My team was feeling that there are nobody in management who noticed their GIS /NE  developments and potential to meet the challenges of BSS and OSS in telecommunication field! Typical of my Network leads, they started brooding to come out with some world class application development in GIS/NE.

They identified the requirement  for formatted address data base and need for populating them for BSS. At that time in India, we did not have standards for address data.  So, with the help of Don Carson & Indian Post&Telegraph Dept. data, they developed a standardized format for address data. Then came the challenge of how&who/which team will undertake that responsibility of data acquiring  the field data all across various cities of India. So the map wing was asked to assign unique ID for each object/ building  in every satellite image  digitized  output for every city. This challenging task  was undertaken  and the work method went on just like a newspaper printing press !

Then came the field data collection! The business group was looking for the potential business  building wise in identified pockets in a city. As at that time, mobile phone capacity & capability were not known to anybody, it was thought that this service may be picked only by affluent customers&hence identification of value potential arose.But today, even the ordinary folk in rural areas cannot live without a mobile phone! That is the beauty of Digitization revolution.

To start with, the management gave that responsibility to  M/S Mudra Communications , a group company of Reliance for data collection. That exercise became a joke! While gathering data in Hyderabad city, for potential  Rs 1 lac. worthy customer listing, they even included a mediocre barber saloon. This came to light when we were validating the data. As we could not afford with those data for network provisioning of last mile to a building , we took over that responsibility also.

 The responsibility was taken over by me under my direct supervision and Mohit Jain helped me.
We shall see how that task was executed and identification of last mile engineering progressed.

                                                                                                                                    Contd....

Key Aspects :- Incident analysis, Innovation, Recognition, Reputation, 

P 74 GIS Execution

P  74

GIS Execution
As explained, our team was about 450 personnel, most capacity drawn from agency manpower. The team responsibility was divided into wings.
One wing responsible for generating maps out of satellite imagery-both Ikonas and ISRO satellite imagery data. Ikonas was opted for the cities/towns identified by Business group and for the rest of India, Indian satellite imagery of 10 M resolution was used.  The same group was also responsible to review and approve the digitization agency output. The Basic digitization was carried out using Bently/Autocad map software.Some vendors opted for MicroStation.We accepted all the three versions. For cartographic data, basic GIS analysis, Edge matching, Geo Referencing, Planimetric Accuracy check etc. the team used Arch GIS and Erdas Imagine  and did wonders! For importing these finished product into GIS server, they utilised Arch GIS software.
Here I have to mention a few Champions name, which I can never forget in life. Rather they lifted the group's image across India  and beyond! They are: M/S Anbumani, Kumaran, Badri and Ms Bharathi.  Out of that Ms Bharathi was super champion & Badri was ready & fit for any challenge.

The other wing was lead by Milind Deshpande, ably assisted by Jaydip Gohel. Since they were all old Reliance hands, taking calls and exhibiting proactive decisions were easy for them. Somehow they felt at home though they were carrying out net work engineering first time. Their next line in hierarchy was Harshad Acharya  Sridhar Krishnan, Dhomkar..... To start with the system administrators were Prashant Kapre and Chetan Vartak. Later Kaustabh Roy and Arunmoy, an Oracle specialist managed the same. For managing the system integrity and validate the field data collection, we have posted  GIS engineers in every state capital where Network operations team were there. To name a few I remember J Dinakar at Hyderabad, Nilay Desai at Ahnedabad, Manoharan at Chennai
who were really taking care of the network development data collection in their respective domain responsibility. Since all of them were basically Instrument engineers by qualification, communication exchange was fluent. Under Don& Michael guidance, that wing used .Net and Jawa  for data base creation  and ensured data porting and integrity checks with Oracle.  Rather in process both Milind and Jaydip became champions in Oracle data base management also. Sridhar Krishnan acted as pivot in data creation and porting.

The end beauty was none in the team did have an iota of any idea about GIS ,its Software or Network engineering in beginning but in the end, they became the real backbone of Network operations. How that magic transformation took place? We shall see in next edition.  Mr Mohit Jain, a post graduate structural engineer acted as my executive assistant for coordination with all departments-both business as well as network planning. Development of Network engineering is a big story by itself &where it led us shall be addressed next.
                                                                                                                                     Contd....

Key Aspects :-  Communication, Proactive approach, Recognition, Reputation, Team building