PROJECT ON SUCCESS STORIES BASED ON STRATEGIC

MANAGEMENT OF MAHINDRA & MAHINDRA

Master of Commerce
Semester- I
2015-2016

Submitted
In Partial Fulfilment of the requirements
For the award of degree of
M.Com
By

Seat No.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Tolani College of Commerce

Sher-e-Punjab Society,
Andheri (East),
Mumbai - 400093

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Ms. Shirley Marks of M.Com

Semester I (2015-2016) has successfully completed the
Project on Success Stories Based on Strategic
Management of Mahindra & Mahindra under the guidance
of Prof. Ms. Sangeetha Pandey.

Project Guide :- Ms. Sangeetha Pandey

Course Co-Ordinator :- Ms. Sadhana Venkatesh

External Examiner :-

Principal :- Dr. A. A. Rashid

DECLARATION

I Ms. Shirley Marks the student of M.Com Semester-I

(2015 2016) hereby declare that I have completed the
project on Success Stories Based on Strategic Management
of Mahindra and Mahindra in the course Xxxxxxxx xxxxx
xxxxxxxxx.. The information submitted is true and original
to the best of my knowledge. References have been cited
whenever necessary.

Date :- 8th October 2015.

Place :- Mumbai

Signature of Student

(Shirley Marks)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Preparing the project on Success Stories Based on Strategic

Management of Mahindra and Mahindra has given me
extensive practical knowledge related to the course.

I would like to thank our Principal Dr. A. A. Rashid, for his

valuable support in preparing this project.

I express my deep sense of gratitude to the Course Co-Ordinator,

Ms. Sadhana Venkatesh for the valuable guidance and support
during my project work.

I am thankful to my guide Ms. Sangeetha Pandey for providing me

the guidance throughout the course of this project. I am also thankful
to her for her patiently and critically evaluating the content of
this project.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all

the staff of library and Computer Lab for their support.

Success Stories based on Strategic Management of

Mahindra & Mahindra

What is Strategic Management?

Strategic Management is all about identification and description of the strategies that
managers can carry so as to achieve better performance and a competitive advantage for their
organization. An organization is said to have competitive advantage if its profitability is
higher than the average profitability for all companies in its industry.
Strategic management can also be defined as a bundle of decisions and acts which a manager
undertakes and which decides the result of the firms performance. The manager must have a
thorough knowledge and analysis of the general and competitive organizational environment
so as to take right decisions. They should conduct a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats), i.e., they should make best possible utilization of strengths,
minimize the organizational weaknesses, make use of arising opportunities from the business
environment and shouldnt ignore the threats.
Strategic management is nothing but planning for both predictable as well as unfeasible
contingencies. It is applicable to both small as well as large organizations as even the smallest
organization face competition and, by formulating and implementing appropriate strategies,
they can attain sustainable competitive advantage.
It is a way in which strategists set the objectives and proceed about attaining them. It deals
with making and implementing decisions about future direction of an organization. It helps us
to identify the direction in which an organization is moving.
Strategic management is a continuous process that evaluates and controls the business and the
industries in which an organization is involved; evaluates its competitors and sets goals and
strategies to meet all existing and potential competitors; and then reevaluates strategies on a
regular basis to determine how it has been implemented and whether it was successful or
does it needs replacement.
Strategic Management gives a broader perspective to the employees of an organization
and they can better understand how their job fits into the entire organizational plan and
how it is co-related to other organizational members. It is nothing but the art of managing
employees in a manner which maximizes the ability of achieving business objectives. The
employees become more trustworthy, more committed and more satisfied as they can corelate themselves very well with each organizational task. They can understand the reaction
of environmental changes on the organization and the probable response of the organization

with the help of strategic management. Thus the employees can judge the impact of such
changes on their own job and can effectively face the changes. The managers and employees
must do appropriate things in appropriate manner. They need to be both effective as well as
efficient.
One of the major role of strategic management is to incorporate various functional areas of
the organization completely, as well as, to ensure these functional areas harmonize and get
together well. Another role of strategic management is to keep a continuous eye on the goals
and objectives of the organization.

Strategic Management Process:

The strategic management process means defining the organizations strategy. It is also
defined as the process by which managers make a choice of a set of strategies for the
organization that will enable it to achieve better performance.
Strategic management is a continuous process that appraises the business and industries in
which the organization is involved; appraises its competitors; and fixes goals to meet the
entire present and future competitors and then reassesses each strategy.
Strategic management process has following four steps:
1. Environmental Scanning- Environmental scanning refers to a process of collecting,
scrutinizing and providing information for strategic purposes. It helps in analyzing the
internal and external factors influencing an organization. After executing the
environmental analysis process, management should evaluate it on a continuous basis
and strive to improve it.
2. Strategy Formulation- Strategy formulation is the process of deciding best course of
action for accomplishing organizational objectives and hence achieving organizational
purpose. After conducting environment scanning, managers formulate corporate,
business and functional strategies.
3. Strategy Implementation- Strategy implementation implies making the strategy
work as intended or putting the organizations chosen strategy into action. Strategy
implementation includes designing the organizations structure, distributing resources,
developing decision making process, and managing human resources.
4. Strategy Evaluation- Strategy evaluation is the final step of strategy management
process. The key strategy evaluation activities are: appraising internal and external

factors that are the root of present strategies, measuring performance, and taking
remedial / corrective actions. Evaluation makes sure that the organizational strategy as
well as its implementation meets the organizational objectives.
These components are steps that are carried, in chronological order, when creating a new
strategic management plan. Present businesses that have already created a strategic
management plan will revert to these steps as per the situations requirement, so as to make
essential changes.

Strategic management is an ongoing process. Therefore, it must be realized that each

component interacts with the other components and that this interaction often happens in
chorus.

About Mahindra & Mahindra

Mahindra and Mahindra Limited (M&M) is an Indian multinational automobile

manufacturing corporation headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is one of the
largest vehicle manufacturers by production in India and the largest manufacturer of tractors
across the world. It is a part of Mahindra Group, an Indian conglomerate.
It was ranked as the 10th most trusted brand in India, by The Brand Trust Report, India Study
2014. It was ranked 21st in the list of top companies of India in Fortune India 500 in 2011.
Their flagship company is India's premier utility vehicle (UV) and farm equipment maker.
They enjoy a truly global presence today, with their vehicles traversing roads, paved and
unpaved, in Australia, Europe, Latin America, large parts of Asia, and South Africa.
"Mahindra" is the largest selling tractor brand, by volume, in the world. You will find our
tractors cultivating dreams in all the continents on earth.
Since assembling their first vehicle in 1947, theyve grown rapidly. They commenced their
exports in the 1960s, and today, you will find their vehicles and tractors in all six continents
of the world.
Its major competitors in the Indian market include Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, Ashok
Leyland, Toyota, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz (Merc) and other

History
Mahindra & Mahindra was established on October 2, 1945 when K.C. Mahindra visited the United States
of America as Chairman of the India Supply Mission. He met Barney Roos, inventor of the rugged
'general purpose vehicle' or Jeep and had a flash of inspiration: wouldn't a vehicle that had proved its
invincibility on the battlefields of World War II be ideal for India's rugged terrain and its kutcha rural
roads. Swift action followed thought. The Mahindra brothers joined hands with a distinguished gentleman
called Ghulam Mohammed. And, Mahindra & Mohammed was set up as a franchise for assembling jeeps
from Willys, USA.
Two years later, India became an independent nation and Mahindra & Mohammed changed its name to
Mahindra & Mahindra. Ghulam Mohammed migrated to Pakistan postpartition and became the first
Finance Minister of Pakistan.
Mahindra & Mahindra is the only Indian company among the top three tractor manufacturers in the
world. The Group has a leading presence in key sectors of the Indian economy. The Group employs over
50,000 people and has several stateoftheart facilities in India and overseas.
Mahindra & Mahindra has comprehensive manufacturing facilities with high level of vertical integration.
Catering to the Sector's diverse customer base spanning rural and semi urban customers, defence
requirements and luxurious urban utility vehicles or SUVs. These manufacturing plants keep abreast with
the latest technology to meet the growing market expectations. These manufacturing facilities have some
of the best technologies and equipment in India and provide for a very challenging and satisfying work
environment. Its plants in Mumbai and Nasik manufacture multiutility vehicles and engines are
produced at the Igatpuri plant. Utility Vehicles, Light commercial vehicles and 3 wheelers are
manufactured at the Zaheerabad plant in Andhra Pradesh and threewheelers at the Haridwar plant.

THE BUSINESS AREA OF THE COMAPNT SPREADS TO :

Automotive sector
The company manufactures & markets utility vehicles, light commercial vehicles that includes three
wheeler vehicles, namely; Scorpio, Bolero, Champion and many more. The company also exports its
products to several countries in Europe, Africa, South America, South Asia and the Middle East. M&M
has a tie up with Renault for production & marketing of Logan. Mahindra International is into producing
trucks and buses. The company has entered into a joint venture with Navistar for production of diesel
engines & trucks.

Farm equipment
M&M's farm equipment segment has presence in six continents and has a worldwide network of 800
dealers .Its total combined production capacity is 1,50,000 tractors a year from countries like India, USA,
China and Australia. The company is also into agri business.
Trade, Retail & Finance
Mahindras Intertrade Division provides steel & steel related services. It offers steel raw materials,
metals, Ferro alloys, etc. It also processes Cold Rolled Grain Oriented (CRGO) and Cold Rolled Non
Grain Oriented (CRNGO) steels that are required for transformers & compressors. Mahindra Retails is
into distribution business and has tie up with big names like Lego, Disney, Mattel and others. Mahindra
Finance is into financing of tractors and other vehicles and is also into Insurance broking.
Infrastructure
M&M has also entered Infrastructure development that operates in real estates, SEZs, hospitality,
project engineering and design. Under this it has created Mahindra Holiday & Resorts, Mahindra
Lifespaces & Mahindra World City.
Information Technology
Tech Mahindra provides solutions & services to telecommunication majors namely Alcatel, AT&T, BT,
Convergys, Ericsson and O2, among others. It is also into business process and technology consulting
services through Bristle.
Systech
It is into supply of automotive components. It produces forged and forged / machined components,
gears and composites.
Speciality Business
Under this division it has companies like Mahindra Defence, engaged in manufacturing defence
related vehicles & Mahindra Ashtech.

40 years ago... and now: How M&M was driven to innovate

On October 7, Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), Flagship Company of the $16.5 billion Mahindra Group,
announced the acquisition of the loss-making scooter business of French automobile major Peugeot. The
transaction will help Mahindra Two Wheelers gain scale, and both companies plan to leverage each
other's strengths.
This is not the first time M&M is growing its business via acquisitions. In 40 years, M&M has perfected
the art of combining innovation and acquisitions to grow from a single-product company, the famous
Jeep, a few decades ago to a multi-product conglomerate with a global reach.
The innovation and acquisitions has helped M&M grow to an Indian multinational with Rs 85,000 crore
of market value. It logged in Rs 74,000 crore revenue and Rs 4,300 crore of profits for fiscal 2014 in the
last two decades.
Most of M&M's acquisitions are quite recent relative to its 70-year history. It took Punjab Tractors in
2007 to become a well-entrenched player in the tractor segment. In 2009, it bought crisis-ridden Satyam
Computers and merged it with its technology arm Tech Mahindra. In 2010, M&M bought Ssangyong in
South Korea to get into the international markets. Later, the company saw an opportunity in the electric
car segment and took over Reva in 2010.
To get into the highly competitive two-wheeler segment, Mahindra bought Kinetic scooters in 2008 and
has now topped it by buying Peugeot's scooter business.
Yet acquisitions were not the foundation of Mahindra's success story: It was innovation. And almost every

innovation was born following a crisis.

In 1973, at the peak of oil crisis, Mahindra was left with no option but to come out with a new engine for
its best-selling model - Jeep. As oil prices zoomed up from $3 to $12, the company had just few months
to shift from its World War II- era petrol guzzler Hurricane engine to a diesel engine.
From selling 14,000 Jeeps in 1973, Mahindra was selling just 7,000 vehicles within just three-and-a-half
years by 1976. Mahindra's innovation skills came to its rescue as the company assembled a team under
its director Kumar Sardesai to convert its high-power, low speed, tractor engine to a high-power, highspeed diesel engine.
The engine was an instant hit because rural mechanics found it easier to service the Jeep since locals were
very familiar with the Mahindra tractor engine. Recalls Bharat Doshi, Director, M&M: "That engine
continued in operation in our utility vehicles as late as the year 2000. So, an innovation born out of
necessity actually became a long-term demand and competitive advantage for us."
During the oil crisis, Mahindra had two companies: the auto company that was suffering from the low
mileage of Hurricane petrol engine and the tractor company which was haemorrhaging due to regulatory
requirements and price controls. The tractor company was unable to sell products because the government
was dictating the selling price even when the costs were shooting up due to the seventies' hyper-inflation.
Thanks to innovation, both companies survived. Mahindra Tractors simply started selling its engines to
Mahindra's auto company, which were fitted on its Jeeps. "This is the ability and DNA of the group, to
fight and emerge winners in a difficult environment and when odds are against us," says Doshi.
Similarly, as passenger vehicles sales started going up, Mahindra hit upon another idea. In 2002, the
company launched its SUV (sports utility vehicle) - Scorpio, and followed up with a better-looking,
upgraded SUV - XUV5OO in 2011. Both vehicles were instant success as the product quality was high
and the pricing was right. Compared with rival Tata Motors, M&M's products were instant success
stories. In the utility vehicle segment, Mahindra's market share is 36 per cent against Tata Motors' 4.9 per
cent in the April-September half-year, according to Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers. But
M&M has had its share of setbacks too. The company had limited success in passenger cars and failed to
make a dent in the segment in spite of marquee tie-ups with Ford and Renault.

Group chairman Anand Mahindra says in India every company should seed internal disruptors to view the
same issue with different perspective. One of the internal disruptors that Mahindra has is the "Shadow
Board." All Mahindra group companies are required to form a Shadow Board made up of people under 35
years of age, who meet every quarter and behave as if they were the board of Mahindra and discuss what
they would be doing differently.
"One of the classic examples of their performance I give is, when we were not bidding for Punjab
Tractors at one stage, at our annual conference, during these Shadow Board presentations, one of them
did a very interesting skit. They pretended that they were from a competitor, and they play-acted as if they
had bought over Punjab Tractors. They demonstrated that if they bought it and Mahindra didn't, what
would happen in the market," Mahindra said in an earlier interview.
"At that time, we had been looking at IRRs (Internal Rate of Return), our walkaway price, our strategic
synergy value etc. I came away frightened out of my mind. I have no doubt in admitting that all of us
there who eventually bought Punjab Tractors were affected by that, because a bunch of people took time
out to think about what would happen. That forced us to think differently. Punjab Tractors today is among
our most successful acquisitions," he says.
On Reva, Mahindra says electric cars are an innovation that can disrupt the automobile sector. "When the
future comes, it doesn't come with a very long overture. It comes with the curtain just about rising or
dropping. Today, if someone asks whether Tesla (a US-based electric car maker) will disrupt the
automotive business in India, I'll answer, "Mahindra won't be worried!"

Success Stories based on Strategic management of Mahindra & Mahindra

STRATEGY FOR OVERALL OVERHAUL AT MAHINDRA & MAHINDRA
In all businesses today, aligning human resource management with business strategy has become an
important element to succeed. And Mahindra & Mahindra group is no different. Organisational
restructuring, managing key resource requirements, performance management systems, career and
succession planning have all been re-aligned to form synergy with the companys overall business
strategy.
A Choudhari, executive vice president, human resources & corporate services, Mahindra & Mahindra
group told the Financial Express Newspaper that the re-alignment was necessitated by changing dynamics
in the business environment. He said that the objective was to grow leadership positions in the UV and
tractor market and developing successful businesses in relatively new business areas like IT, financial
services, realty and infrastructure development and also service industries like Time share (Club
Mahindra). Keeping in mind the new business objectives the challenge was to re-orient the human
resource management towards these objectives, said Mr Choudhari.
Organisational Restructuring
For the group, organisational restructuring posed the greatest challenge keeping in mind the changing
dynamics in the business especially the tractor and automotive division. In the last three years, the
emphasis was development of the long term strategy and fixing clear business goals. Taking the example
of tractors, the long term goal was to be the largest manufacturer in the world. Thus the process began by
changing internal benchmarks of excellence to global standards. Benchmarking all business processes
from product development to customer care and commercial controls to JUSA (Japanese Union of
Scientists and Engineers) was implemented.
We are targeting the Deming award through these initiatives, which encompass the entire gamut of
function of the company including the HR function and similarly the automobiles business is targeting the
TPM award from the Japanese Institute of Plant Management, said Mr Choudhari.
To achieve these objectives the company began a full reassessment of organisation and management
structure with the help of consultants like Mckinseys, Arthur Anderson and Korn Ferry. The outcome
was, clear roles and responsibilities were identified and the competency required for each role was
mapped. The officers went through individual assessments of competencies against the requirement of
each role. An external consultant as well as internal assessors ran assessment centres and each individual
was then placed based on competency and role fitment.
The restructuring also led to the pruning of the staff. In 2001, there were 3970 officers in 13 grades and
levels which was brought down to 3400 officers in five responsibilities namely strategic, executive,

department/unit head, managerial and operational in 2003. This organisational restructuring based on
business needs was later extended to smaller businesses in the group. For example, Mahindra Engineering
services have recently been established by combining key engineering and design resources from the
Tractors and Automotive division. Given the numbers involved the challenge was to manage
expectations, feeling of threat that is intrinsic to such an exercise, communications and counselling. HR
function played an important role as it led the exercise with co-opera/tion from all line managers,
explained Mr Choudhari.
Managing Key Resource Requirements
The reassessment of organisational requirements brought in gaps in terms of management resources.
While many of the roles were filled through internal promotions and parallel moves, certain gaps like
inability of the senior management to fit in the role due to the rapidly changing business environment
emerged. Therefore the company began inducting senior management resources from diverse companies
like Xerox, Marico, Enron, Hindustan lever Ltd as well as from engineering, tractor and automobile
sectors. This enabled the company to induct a talent pool with rich background which was suitable to the
changing business requirements of the group.
Also in order to bring in young talent keeping in mind the long term objectives, the group has started a
formal Management Trainee Scheme through campus recruitments. The move threw up an interesting
observation, that of acceptability of young blood working initially at operational level jobs with older
experienced people. To avoid the feeling of animosity and in order to build camaraderie, the group has put
in place a Mentoring system, where each management trainee has a senior executive who plays the role of
mentor. The mentor reviews the progress made by the trainee every two-three months and provides
guidance and counselling if the need so arises. Further in order to encourage existing management
resources to seek internal opportunities beyond their immediate business group, a formal internal
advertisement has been established which puts up vacancies on the Mahindra intranet.
Mr Seqeuira explained that a three tier approach is in place to develop the capabilities of the management.
The management developments have been structured to meet the needs at each responsibility band of
management, said Mr Seqeuira. So, if the emphasis in the top management is on strategy, leadership and
change, for the strategic and executive management band, the focus is on team building, people skills,
understanding and managing technology and financial and marketing orientation. Similarly for
department and unit head management band, the emphasis is on general management skills, managerial
and personal effectiveness and multi-functional understanding.
Apart from the in house management development programme, the group also utilises selective outside
programmes for high potential managers. These include management programmes run by Harvard
Business School, London Business School and India School of Business - Hyderabad. The idea is to take

the management development programme to the lowest level of the hierarchy to bring out the leadership
potential, which is extremely crucial for the companys growth as it moves ahead, said Mr Seqeuira.
Managing Succession
A key HR function at Mahindra group is the career and succession planning. The objective of this
function is to chart out a detailed career path of each individual at the senior most levels. The career path
taps both the strengths and weaknesses and aspiration of each individual executive.
The detailed career planning also leads to identification of incumbents as successor to a specific
responsibility.
What we try to do, through our succession planning is the early identification of potential successors and
both formally and informally, begin to provide expanded responsibilities so that there is an on-the-job
development of a larger perspective and understanding, elaborated Mr Choudhari.

MAHINDRA & MAHINDRAS SERVER VIRTUALIZATION SUCCESS STORY

For Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (M&M), its server virtualization efforts have been a journey to combat
various issues, from cost to space utilization. This journey started with Mahindra & Mahindra's need to
build a scalable infrastructure for itself as well as its group companies.
Over the years, M&M, the flagship company of Mahindra Group, has transformed itself into a group that
caters to Indian as well as foreign markets. Today, the organization has business presence in vehicles,
farm equipment, IT and infrastructure development. As a result, in 2007 Mahindra & Mahindra's IT and
strategic management team felt the need for scalable infrastructure to accommodate this business growth.
With the increasing need for scalability, cost reduction and SAP consolidation, Mahindra & Mahindra
decided to set up a new green data centre at Kandivali in Mumbai. At the time, Mahindra & Mahindra had
a hosted setup at Reliance Data Centres Navi Mumbai facility, as well as an in-house data centre at
Kandivali (for its enterprise applications, such as SAP) in Mumbai.
The data centre initiative's main business objective was to build up scalability for Mahindra & Mahindra
as well as any group companies. "Cost was another factor that led to the decision. In addition,
management had become quite cumbersome, since Reliance Data Centre was hosting our servers."
explains Vijay Mahajan, the general manager of corporate IT at Mahindra & Mahindra.
Driven by these needs, M&M decided to create its own service-oriented infrastructure on the lines of
service-oriented architecture. This concept restricts itself to infrastructure synergy for different
applications to traverse. Wipro Technologies was chosen as the data centres implementation partner.

Server virtualization came in as an option at this time, since Mahindra & Mahindra wanted to take the
green route for its new data centre.
Work on M&M's data centre started in late 2007. The new data centre was complete in three months, and
it went live in March 2008.

Selection criteria
Once server virtualization was selected as the new data centres core driver, Mahindra & Mahindra's
Centre of Excellence evaluated various options. Server virtualization platforms such as Xen, Microsoft
Hyper-V and VMware were evaluated, before the team zeroed in on VMware.
According to Mahajan, VMware was selected since it is a very robust solution and has a good
management console. "VMware was expensive compared to Xen, which is freeware and offers an open
platform. However, we found VMware to be a very robust platform." Yet another factor that influenced
the choice was the simplicity of moving physical servers to VMware.
The new data centre went live in March 2008, with VMware as the server virtualization platform. "We
were able to create service-oriented infrastructure using VMware as an underlying layer for virtualization.
Then we redeployed various applications which were earlier distributed across numerous hardware
platforms on to a smaller subset of scalable hardware," says Prasad Patil, the manager of corporate IT at
Mahindra & Mahindra. Avnet Technology Solutions assisted with the implementation.
Virtualization power
Mahindra & Mahindra's server infrastructure currently has 80 virtual machines implemented on eight
physical servers, in addition to various standalone servers. These eight physical servers include a disaster
recovery (DR) server.
Three different VMware setups are in use at Mahindra & Mahindra. The first VMware setup consists of
12 SAP 4.6B servers running on a single enterprise-class server attached to a disk enclosure. Group
websites that were earlier hosted at Reliance Data Centre now run on seven virtual machines as part of the
second setup.
Mahindra & Mahindra has a server replacement cycle of four to five years. Since the rollout of server
virtualization, it has been able to redeploy obsolete physical servers on virtual machines on the third
VMware setup. These three virtualized server setups are managed through a single console provided by
VMware Control Centre.
Challenges

When Mahindra & Mahindra started its server virtualization journey two years back, the team faced
challenges such as application conflicts. The most common setbacks on this front were backup issues.
According to Patil, these have been solved by using two backup methodologies. The first approach uses
EMC Corp.'s Legato clients on the virtual machines as a backup solution. Mahindra & Mahindra also uses
EMC's Avamar, an appliance-based backup device that completely backs up the virtual machines.
Another major challenge for Mahindra & Mahindra was the use of databases on VMware. This challenge
is more from a licensing perspective than a technical perspective. "Databases like Oracle do not recognize
a virtual machine as a server. This is a problem since deploying these databases on a virtual machine
increases our costs. So we are consciously not deploying databases on VMware," Mahajan says.
I/O intensive applications have been yet another challenge. Since Mahindra & Mahindra has not yet
virtualized the network layer, all 12 SAP servers share the same I/O. This creates challenges when high
I/O happens on certain applications. VMware's vSphere 4.0 has an integrated vSwitch that solves this
problem, but it has yet to be deployed.
Accruing benefits
Today, Mahindra & Mahindra has been able to set up a high-availability DR infrastructure (local failover
scenario), which has been made possible due to VMware. Tremendous savings have also been accrued in
terms of power and management, as well as optimum server utilization.
"In a standalone server, the CPU utilization is at the most 20 percent. Due to virtualization, the utilization
has gone up to 60 to 70 percent. Now, the physical server count has come down and management is easier
since you are focusing on the solution through a single console. Besides, lesser the number of servers,
lesser is the required power and cooling," Patil says.
The annual management cost (AMC) cost of old hardware has also come down substantially. Earlier, SAP
archival data servers had to be maintained for seven to eight years, escalating the AMC of 13 servers
along with the licenses. This cost gets eliminated when it is put on a single server. In addition, load
balancing is easier now since more resources can be rapidly allocated to the virtual environment.
Looking into the future
Although SAP has been virtualized using local partitioning, Mahindra & Mahindra's IT mission for the
near future is to deploy these applications with the same aggressiveness as VMware. This will maximize
benefits from AIX-based virtualization.

REFRENCES
http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/40-years-ago-and-now-how-m-m-was-driven-toinnovate-114101400010_1.html
http://www.managementstudyguide.com/strategic-management-process.htm
http://www.managementstudyguide.com/strategic-management.htm
http://archive.financialexpress.com/news/strategy-for-overall-overhaul-at-mahindra-ampmahindra/86524/0
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.in/feature/Mahindra-Mahindras-server-virtualization-success-story