"Never flood your enterprise with too much data, which basically will be too difficult to manage and also never run out of data, which will result in a major disaster"

Niranjan Bhalivade
CIO
CEAT

Proven ability to bring the benefits of IT to solve business issues while managing costs & risks, Niranjan has led development and deployment of custom applications. He comes with 16 years of IT experience in which 8 years SAP/ ERP experience including four full life cycle ERP strategic direction to senior management on technology and best business practices.

Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations

Basically, there are two things in my mind- one is the big data analytics and the second one is the cloud offering. With the kind of applications that we have today, the support is comparatively less to meet the enterprise needs, at a strategic level. These data move from one platform to another, like from the customer centric platforms such as HRMs to the manufacturing platforms. Enterprise data differ in many ways like structured data to the unstructured ones and then to the conventional ones. So there is a huge amount of information that is being continuously accumulating and today the enterprise is not that supportive to managing this humongous amount of information.

When it comes to cloud offering, public cloud is a real challenge. Even though we can see companies going for private cloud, managing and maintaining a public cloud is really a hectic task. Challenges regarding public clouds vary from security, bandwidth to implementation. Another difficulty is the ever evolving technology, where the enterprises are finding it hard to keep up with pace.

The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier

Business is certainly a very fast- paced environment and for businesses to keep up with the pace is certainly a difficult task. I believe the technologies to meet these needs are still under developed and I support for the fact that a much needed change is necessary. Putting it in a box, what I see is the agility or the faster technology developments and the heavy skill sets to be the challenges for any business centric environment.

Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment

Mobility and business intelligence are the two main factors that can impact any business in today’s enterprise environment. With hand- held devices like mobiles and tablets getting more and more popular, the need for an app or a simple and interactive dashboard is a must in every business.

My roles and responsibilities as a CIO

CIOs basically come under two categories- information and technology. But in recent years, CIOs are getting more and more inclined towards information rather than technology. These CIOs work on various summits such as information gathering, information delivery and use of information into strategic decision making. Today the industry is not only about applications and technology, its more about business information that mainly deals in strategies and scenarios.

Lessons learned and advice for fellow CIOs

The best advice for my fellow CIOs is to always keep a stern and sturdy vision. Never underestimate or overlook yourself. Also, always keeps a good eye on the information being passed across your business. Never flood them with too much of data, which basically will be too difficult to manage and also never run out of data, which will result in a major disaster.

Also another advice will be to maintain a strong communicative channel within and outside your enterprise premise, such that your strategic views support your message heavily.