Zero One Infinity Round 2

Instructions for Submission

Selected Teams should make presentations on the solution for the given case in this
document.
Teams should have maximum 12 slides in presentation (excluding Title slide, Table of
Content and References). Any other files (including spreadsheets) can also be sent.
The title slide should carry
1) Team Name
2) Details of the Team members (Name, Course, Email IDs, Phone nos.).
The naming convention to be used for presentations is
TeamName_CollegeNam.ppt/pptx.
The deadline for submission of the case solution is 04th November 2016, 11:59 PM
All the files shall be zipped and dropped to
https://dropitto.me/zerooneinfinity (Upload password : iris_zoi@2016)
Or can be directly mailed to zoi@iris-iimi.com

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Introduction
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence exhibited by machines. In computer science, an ideal
"intelligent" machine is a flexible rational agent that perceives its environment and takes actions
that maximize its chance of success at some goal. The term "artificial intelligence" is applied when
a machine mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as
"learning" and "problem solving". The picture top Indian IT Firms are displaying now is more
about how their own industry is at risk of being overrun by self-learning machines.

Background
On 4 June 2015, N. Chandrasekaran, chief executive officer of Indias largest software exporter
Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) flew to New York. Unlike his earlier visits to the USthe
largest market for TCS and other Indian IT firmshe was not scheduled to meet any clients. In
the evening, Harrick M. Vin, TCSs chief scientist and global head of innovation and
transformation, and a few other executives joined Chandrasekaran at the upscale Mandarin
Oriental hotel in Manhattan to showcase what some within the company bill as one of the most
significant technological innovations to come out of the $15 billion company: An artificial
intelligence (AI) technology platform. Code-named Neo while in the development phase, it took
over 100 scientists from two of TCSs research and development labs three years to build Ignio.
About a dozen analysts and 20 clients who attended the event called it a bold vision after
evaluating the benefits promised by Ignio, which TCS expects to start selling both as a standalone
product and along with its service offerings in the coming months.
While TCS expects machine-learning Ignio to help its clients build applications quickly, its
competitors believe their AI-powered platforms will help them get more business from existing
clients and win new outsourcing deals. For TCS, Ignio offers a differentiating delivery and strategy
planning capability for infrastructure management today (application and business process
management in the future) in what has been a very challenging and competitive service market.
TCS is looking at providing services related to Artificial Intelligence as an opportunity to expand
its client base, to improve margins, to become a market leader among Indian Software Firms in
providing AI as a Service and also to become a sustainable business. In order to enter into this
segment, it is important to evaluate the entire value chain, the scale of business, revenue and
margins, industry pain points, opportunities, challenges, entry barriers, competitor analysis etc.

Cognitive Software Industry

The worldwide cognitive software platforms market will grow from $827 million in 2014 to $3.7
billion in 2019, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35%. Cognitive software platforms
are the tools upon which organizations and software vendors are beginning to build intelligent
applications that provide advice, recommendations, and predictions for a wide range of uses
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from healthcare diagnosis and wellbeing to operational decision making and automation of backoffice processes such as system administration and monitoring. Examples of these cognitive
software platforms and the companies that are building them for commercial use include IBM's
Watson, TCS's ignio, and Cognitive Scale.
Artificial Intelligence: Sub Industry Heat map (2011-2016)

TCS Ignio:
Information Technology (IT) is transforming and automating how businesses run. Yet, planning
and running of IT continues to be quite manual. Automation is seen as the panacea for improving
agility, effectiveness and efficiency of IT operations. Unfortunately, traditional approach to
automation, referred to as robotic automation, has failed to deliver scalable or sustainable
benefits. This is because, robotic automation, which performs an activity by executing an end-toend-prescribed procedure, works well when there are a small number of standard ways of
performing each activity, and the procedures for performing activities do not change over time.
Both of these assumptions dont hold true in the case of ever-changing business contexts and IT
operations
To deliver scalable and sustainable benefits, automation must be intelligent and adaptive. This is
what ignio does. By blending AI with modern software engineering, ignio converts IT operations
services into an intelligent software, and replaces point automation tools with a cognitive
platform. Ignio thinks and acts like experts; automates complex knowledge work, and not just
repetitive activities; reduces dependence on tacit or tribal knowledge; and reduces operational
risks. This also changes the role of people, from doers of work to creators and curators of
knowledge. Adapts easily to enterprise technology diversity and changes, and delivers quick and
sustainable value.

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As shown in Figure, the types of problems that ignio has been addressed to solve are primarily
infrastructure management challenges.

Challenges
While Indian IT service firms have come up the value chain, revenues are still linked to manpower.
However, with Indian IT services firms adopting emerging technologies like artificial intelligence
and robotics, this trend seems to be changing gradually. As clients demand faster delivery of
software solutions and at a lesser cost, Indian organizations are focusing heavily on building
autonomic and cognitive technology enabled platforms that can do routine tasks quickly and
efficiently. Besides alliances with specialist firms that specialize in autonomic technologies, Indian
IT firms are also building capabilities internally either organically or through acquisitions.
The biggest challenges ahead of Indian IT firms remain in areas where all of them are renewing
their focusre-skilling the existing workforce and how many IT firms are able to monetize their
new products and platform offerings.

New Expertise: Converting insights derived using AI techniques into actions requires deep
knowledge about the business domain and the enterprise context. Without this, the outcomes
of AI technologies remain as mere observations or suggestions. People who understand the
business functions and domain are generally not experts in machine learning and AI, and vice
versa; this makes it difficult to train. Hence, rapid acquisition of knowledge about a business
domain and context is, perhaps, the biggest hurdle in adopting and benefiting from AI
technologies in businesses.

Accelerating Pace of Change: Keeping pace with and conquering the rising complexity in
Enterprise technology and operations. As data continues to grow exponentially and Moores Law
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is still in full force, Enterprises will continue to introduce new technologies rapidly to support
their business and operational activities. AI tools and deployments will need to keep pace with
this to remain relevant

Shift from Traditional Business Model: IT Service firms like all other providers of traditionally
based outsourced-managed services, will need to make adjustments to the business model of
outsourcing. By definition, automation should cannibalize traditional services models, which will
require providers to pursue new markets

Adoption of AI Practices: Supporting clients in their digital transformation requires broad

investments in skills and capabilities. Indian providers remain selective in their investment
strategies. The more heavily regulated that an industry is, e.g. banking and insurance, the
harder it is to sell a radical change in fundamental approach. Hence only a few companies are
capable to monetize their new product and platform offerings.

Human Resource: Talent management, including both training and re-skilling existing
employees, will remain a key investment initiative as the development and delivery of new
technologies require different skillsets compared with legacy outsourcing services.

Critical Case Questions

1. Study the market trends, key drivers in this sector and describe whether it is attractive for
TCS to venture in AI practice and robotics automation, stating clearly market potential,
capabilities required and key areas to target.
2. At this point in time, the market is still in its infancy and service providers need to start
educating the market on the implications of these. Develop a Business Model and Marketing
plan for TCS to enter into this domain
3. How will you help address the above mentioned concerns in the case and drive adoption of
the AI Technology and Products (specifically for ignio)?
4. What are the various services that TCS (ignio) can look to expand where application of AI will
provide TCS (or other Tata companies) an edge over its competitors and how?
5. Given the current scenario of Artificial Intelligence in Indian IT Industry, evaluate the
feasibility for projects relating to application of AI, potential risks and opportunities,
challenges, entry barriers, etc.

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