April 4, 2020

Our IT colleagues slogged for days
to enable us to work from home

Ever since Sharekhan announced the work-from-home (WFH) policy in the wake of the country-wide lockdown triggered by the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), one department of the company that has been working for 16 to 18 hours a day is the IT department. That is because these folks are responsible for the few essential things that every employee needs in order to work from home. Think a laptop (or desktop) in working condition with requisite software; access to company e-mails on the laptop or mobile (or both in some cases); a secured remote access to data or applications residing in company servers; and quick technology support. Enabling over 400 employees to work from home in a matter of 8-10 days is no mean feat and today, we will tell you about the Sherus who made this possible.

Arranging PCs and access to company e-mails

Let us start with laptops. After all, can’t work from home without one, can we? But the thing is not all of us have one, be at office or home. It seemed, therefore, a tough task to organise a system for all those who needed one. But Rekir Parekh from the IT Asset Management team provided important data to ensure the inventory of desktops and laptops were clearly identified to be mobilised for the WFH solution. Satish More, Prashal Sanil, Lahuraj Ghorpade, Mohammad Zaid, Akshay Kadam, Md Kamil and Naushad Khan from the IT Helpdesk team were constantly present in the head office (HO) locations to configure all the laptops and desktops with necessary settings and issue them to the HO staff. At the same time, Narendra Kyatam from the IT Infrastructure/System team experimented with disk encryption alternatives to cut short timelines and allow employees to take their office desktops home. Access to company e-mails on these laptops, desktops and phones was the next most important requirement which was ably met by Ghanshyam Detake and Sanjay Wankhede.

Ensuring secured remote access

As working from home meant allowing users to connect remotely, it brought cyber security risks into play. Hence, an immediate action plan was drawn to address the situation on the technology side. The action plan was scrutinised and refined with guidance from the BNP Paribas Group in an ultra-short time of four to five days when it could typically take a month. The action plan demanded the implementation of technologies in record time. This included creating a secured virtual private network (VPN) with advanced authentication as well as securing e-mail and Internet access of the VPN users. The challenge was that 90% of the staff were desktop users which made it difficult to provide a VPN access -- we were looking at arranging laptops/desktops with security controls for 300+ users! Tough but two Sherus, Akhil Wadhavkar and Atul Mishra from the IT Security team, with architectural guidance from Izadyas Irani from the IT Infrastructure team worked night and day to set up a VPN and provide remote access to all these employees.

Atul Mishra, Akhil Wadhavkar, Sachin Vengurlekar, Durvesh Kadam and Vishwesh Satpute from the IT Security team, and Ashish Patil, Sandesh Bhojane, Rajdeep Shetty, Bharat Mahadik, Ghanshyam Detake and others from the Network and System teams put in smart efforts to provide the BNP Paribas-compliant security requirements necessary to quickly go in the WFH mode. Keeping track of the system needs, on the one hand, and assigning systems to the key people as soon as the set-up was ready, on the other, was made possible by Suresh Babu by his systematic way of tracking and frequent communication mechanism!

Providing technology support round the clock

The Application Production Support team led by G Karuppasamy and assisted by Ponraj, Nipul Patel and Varadrajan was told to work from home from day one of the lockdown in the interest of social distancing. When they learnt that they would need to work remotely, their first thought was how they would stay connected to provide technology support to all in these difficult times, given the sorry state of our mobile phone networks. So they brainstormed and came up with the idea that they would all connect every day via WebEx for one hour in the morning (8:30am to 9:30am) and one hour in the afternoon (2:30pm to 3:30pm), the two very crucial periods for the stock market. The idea worked very well and soon they extended the WebEx sessions to not only the entire period of the stock market but a good part of the commodity market too, though in audio mode only. This allowed them to solve the small issues immediately and reduced the turnaround time for the bigger problems.

The Application Production Support team was very well supported by Nukul Hinger and Shakir Khan from the Sun Admin team, and Kiran Kadam, Rehan Qureshi, Nasruddin and Farooque from the Database Administrator team who all joined over a virtual WebEx war room every day to ensure quick communications and solutions.

Taking care of IT infrastructure at office

Sherus Narendra Kyatam, Deven Gharat and Naushad Khan from the IT Infrastructure and System teams ensured uninterrupted functioning of the servers and applications, took back-ups and monitored critical processes round the clock.

Now, even as most of us have switched to work-from-home mode, the System teams are overseeing the necessary systems configuration and making sure the numerous (but critical business-as-usual) tasks continue remotely. Thanks to them, the Beginning of Day activities in the wee hours of the morning are running as normal even in these abnormal times.

This being Sharekhan’s first experience of remote working, these Sherus did not have much time to plan the work mechanism in this new context. Yet, their positive mindset, hard work and dedication turned this into a successful collaboration platform which is working almost as efficiently as people being in office! One more thing, save the Application Production Support team (who had been told to work from home for strategic reasons), all these Sherus risked their health and braved the government authorities on roads and angry, concerned family members at home to reach office at a time when the rest of the city was fast turning indoors. That speaks volumes for their courage and commitment. Three cheers for them. They are all COVID-19 Heroes!

Meet the COVID-19 Heroes

Akhil Wadhavkar Chief Information Security Officer, IT Risk	Akshay Kadam System Engineer, Lauren Information Technologies Pvt.Ltd.	Ashish Patil Team Leader - Network, IT Foundation	Atul Mishra Manager - Identity & Access Management IT Risk
Bharat Mahadik Senior Manager - Infra, IT Foundation	Deven Gharat Senior Team Leader - System, IT Foundation	Durvesh Kadam SOC Analyst, IT Risk	Farooque DBA, IT
Ghanshyam Detake Assistant Manager - System, IT Foundation	G Karuppasamy Associate Vice President - Program Management, IT	Izadyas Irani Head - Enterprise Architecture, IT Foundation	Kiran Kadam Associate Vice President - DBA, IT
Lahuraj Ghorpade System Engineer, Lauren Information Technologies Pvt.Ltd.	Md Kamil System Engineer, Lauren Information Technologies Pvt.Ltd.	Mohammad Zaid System Engineer, Lauren Information Technologies Pvt.Ltd.	Narendra Kyatam Manager - System, IT Foundation
Nasruddin DBA, IT	Naushad Khan System Engineer, Lauren Information Technologies Pvt.Ltd.	Nipul Patel Senior Project Manager, IT	Nukul Hinger System Administrator Manager, IT
Ponraj Team Leader, IT	Prashal Sanil Senior Team Leader - System, IT Foundation	Rajdeep Shetty Deputy Manager - Network, IT Foundation	Rehan Qureshi Senior DBA Manager, IT
Rekir Parekh Senior Manager - Security, IT Risk	Sachin Vengurlekar Senior Manager - Security, IT Risk	Sandesh Bhojane Assistant Manager - Network, IT Foundation	Sanjay Wankhede Head - IT Infrastructure, IT Foundation
Satish More Assistant Manager - System, IT Foundation	Shakir Khan System Administrator, Human Resources	Suresh Babu IT Continuity Officer, IT Risk	Subhash Prajapiat System Engineer, Lauren Information Technologies Pvt.Ltd.
Varadrajan Project Leader, IT	Vaibhav Salunkhe System Engineer, Lauren Information Technologies Pvt.Ltd.	Vishwesh Satpute Team Leader - Security, IT Risk

Inn COVID-19 Heroes ko salute kar, Sharekhan kar

NOTE: If you too have an exceptional COVID-19 story to tell, please mail it to us
at priya@sharekhan.com and copy your HOD.