"For an engineering company like us, spread internationally, the challenge is building a robust platform for communication and collaboration."

V Venkatasamy
GM- IT
VA Tech WABAG Ltd

Venkatasamy is an Industrial Engineer with 30 years of work experience in Information Technology, Quality Management and Industrial Engineering. Graduated in Industrial Engineering from Regional Engineering College, Tiruchirapalli (Now NITT) in 1982. Soon after graduation he served BHEL Tiruchirapalli for more than a decade in Industrial Engineering.

He Joined VA Tech WABAG Ltd, in Aug 1998, and currently serving as General Manager– Information Technology. This portfolio covers Information Technology Management including ERP implementation and Maintenance.

Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations

For an engineering company like us, spread internationally, the challenge is building a robust platform for communication and collaboration. Enterprise mobility is another challenge where the LOB applications are heavy. We have invested in SharePoint, Lync and making these tools vibrant will be the focal point this year. We have planned investments in the virtual desktop solutions for enterprise mobility.

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

Well, in the information landscape in our industry (EPC), ensuring predictability of the numbers, rather- confidence level of forecasting is a challenge. In a project management scenario where engagement in infrastructure projects are spread in different countries, measuring and wiring the variables into a dash- board that can help to increase the confidence level of the forecast will make life simple.

Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment

We are seriously pursuing BYOD over the next two years. Collaboration over Share Point, BI are in our plans in the short term.The maturity of cloud will have a definte impact on our operations and also analytics that are capable of handling unstructured data.

My roles and responsibilities as a CIO

In our company, the IT focus over the last decade was moving the pointer from infrastructure, to applications, then to enterprise solutions and now rests squarely on the user experience. Accordingly my role also changed.

Lessons learned and your advice for fellow CIOs

No CIO can shrug the responsibility of change management and also making life simple for the last mile employees.