CIOs' Foresight on Integrating the IT Strategies for Betterment of Companies

Bangalore: IT and its systems have become so important that the CIO has come to be viewed in many organizations as the key contributor in formulating strategic goals for an organization. To bring together these CIOs at one platform Siliconindia organized CIO Strategy Summit on June 29, 2012 at Bangalore. This summit was an excellent platform for CIOs to exchange information on current topics, as well as, interact with a variety of industry vendors.

The event kick started with a Keynote Session on “What CEOs and the Board expect from the CIO”, which was addressed by Rajen Padukone, CEO, Manipal Health Enterprises. His insights were like CIO should know who the ultimate customer is (In case of hospital, it is patient). Current Challenge is synchronization of database and centralized data availability.

Forging Stronger Business-IT Relationships

The IT organization's relevance depends on its ability to leverage understanding of current business needs and future direction – and then deliver technology solutions and services with greater impact.  Such key points were discussed by the panelists, like, Ramesh C S, VP – IT of Titan, Sudhakar Bhagavatula, CIO of GE Lighting Asia, Muralidhara H S, Head IT of TTK Prestige and Sriram Krishnan, CIO, ING Life Insurance, India. He said, “All across, there seems to be a visible gap between the Business community and IT. In order to bridge this gap, the CIO and the IT team need to clearly demonstrate business leadership through a deep appreciation of the business landscape, of the regulatory environment, of competitors and then articulate the differentiation that technology can bring about to the organisation’s business. This will foster an environment of true partnership between IT and the Business.” The moderator, Subramanian Chittur, Head – IT from Metro Cash and Carry, threw some light on the IT key pointers and said, “Aalignment is an ongoing process. It is a journey and not a destination. Have personal touch with other cultures in case of multi country operations. Offline relation compliments to a stronger on line relationship with business. Manage customer expectations which are the biggest challenge for forging stronger relationships. Be part of the business process discussions and decisions for evolving appropriate IT solutions”.

Alok Sinha, Head IT Solutions & SI Business, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, gave an interesting perspective for the topic “Enterprise Mobility, Collaboration & Cloud: A New Horizon. “Turning Technology Innovations into a Business Advantage”, was addressed by Nitin Bhandari, Associate Vice President - New Products and Partnerships, Vodafone India.

Rajesh Nair, Principal Technology Consultant, VMware Software India, threw some light on the topic, “Accelerate your Journey to the Cloud”.   Next session was carried out by Nirmal Puranik, Solution Specialist – Datacenter, Microsoft Corp on a topic, “Microsoft Infrastructure Management and Private Cloud Solutions”.

The Business Impact of IT Consumerization, Mobility and the Cloud

The summit moved towards its next panel on -The Business Impact of IT Consumerization, Mobility and the Cloud. This panel discussion came with a broad  message that a trio of mega-trends in mobility, social and cloud computing are converging on the IT/business landscape today, as discussed by the panelists, Arun Prakash Goyal, Sr VP & IT-Head of MPS, Raghu Kumar Paruchuri, Head-ERP & IT of Tata Power (Strategic Electronics), Shashank Saxena, VP - Application Services - Global Technology of Deutsche Bank Group  and  the moderator Alok Sinha, Head IT Solutions & SI Business, Huawei Enterprise Business Group gave his fruitful insights by saying that enterprise today are standing at a key juncture where they can leverage mobility, consumerism and cloud to take the organization to next level. As Aristotle once said, “The Whole is greater than the sum of its component”. In real world, while you can independently derive value from each of the components (mobility, consumerism, cloud etc), the net result/impact on organization is much more significant. The panelists discussed the key inhibitors and key drivers to adoption of these and ventured to predict a rapidly progressing technology and business impact. Raghu Kumar focused on points like Cloud & Mobility are here to stay & bring enormous Benefits to the Business by offering Scalability, Agility & Cost Savings. The Gen X Workforce in all likelihood continues to embrace Mobility & hence all the Application Vendors would have to ensure that their Applications are portable on various kinds of Devices & the IT Teams will have to work continually towards strengthening Information Security.  Shashank ‘s views were that consumers (employees) have reversed the trend of being controlled by Enterprise IT policies. Their preferences are increasingly driving organizational policies around mobility, BYOD and virtualization. Organizations will have to quickly adapt and respond to this cultural change, to hire and retain top talent.
 
The CIO Summit was a forum for senior level IT executives to engage in clear and focused dialogue with their peers and examine their management objectives in a relaxed and vibrant environment. The conversations between CIOs helped to validate CIO related issues in different manners. The best part of the summit was that it was a focused meeting for the CIOs and all of the discussions and topics were of interest and relevant. This event was sponsored by Huawei, Vodafone, VMware, Sonata Software and Thought Works.