Agility is the Name of the Game

Indias Silicon Valley, Bangalore, played host to the most awaited event of

the yearthe CIOL CChange 2008 which saw participation from Indias top 100 CIOs

and CTOs brainstorming on the theme for the year: How to create an agile

enterprise using IT?

Hailing from diverse backgrounds like manufacturing, technology, and

services, participating CIOs learnt about the role of emerging technologies from

eminent technology and brand building experts like Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO of

Rediff.com; David Nishball, president, Airtel Enterprise Services; R Sridhar,

CEO of Brand-Comm, Suresh Menon, country business manager, HP, and Kaushik

Bagchi, country manager, Information Management, IBM India.

Day one kick-started with an interactive and informative session by Ajit

Balakrishnan, who underlined the need for agility, which results from changes in

the external environment such as industry structureuser goals in the

enterprise, business process changes or change in expectations.

He stressed that the challenge in 2008 will be to make systems respond to

change. Touching on the changes in the Internet industry where Yahoo!, Google,

and MSN are grappling with a changing user base, he said: We live in a time of

quick and massive change in user preferences. Many companies are like deer

caught in the headlights. And this, he said, was because platforms that Yahoo!

and Google built were for a particular user base, and that has since changed.

Providing pointers to how CIOs can learn from the experiences of the Internet

industry he said that the starting point to become an agile enterprise is to

locate the use case.

Green Focus



Meanwhile, a quick snap survey revealed how Green IT has finally been able

to get its rightful position in the priority list of the CIOs, with most CIOs

concerned about making their IT infrastructure energy efficient for saving costs

and improving their corporate image.

ALL EARS: Prince Azariah, CIO, MRF	Making a Point: Pradeep Gupta, chairman & MD, CyberMedia

Out of the sixty CIOs surveyed, 55% said Green IT was the way forward for

08-09. The survey also found that cutting energy costs will decrease opex and

capex, and increase corporate social responsibility.

While deliberating on the survey, Prasanto K Roy, president & chief editor,

Cyber Media Publications said, Energy efficiency is one of the top three KRAs

for CIOs for 08-09. Giving a larger picture of Green IT initiatives in India,

Roy said the economic sense, rising cost of power, shortage of power, high

backup capex were driving the Green initiative among Indian enterprises.

Enterprises are now investing more on TFT monitors as against CRT, buying more

laptops as against desktops, and focusing more on application consolidation to

save costs, added Roy. CIOs and CTOs across BPOs, telecom, IT services and bank

vendors were more concerned about these issues, he said. Going forward, Green IT

would make a great sense for CIOs who face severe power shortage in their

enterprises.

Going Agile



Continuing with the theme of the forum, that of making an agile enterprise,

the CIOs discussed how an organization can deliver agility and what are the

problems faced by enterprises when organizations diversify into new business

territories or innovated in products in a big way.

Lighting for a Green Tomorrow: Prasanto K Roy, president and chief editor, CyberMedia Publications

Titan discussed its journey from watches to jewelry and Moser Baer shared its

experiences as it forked into areas like solar technology and pre-recorded CDs.

Lauding the benefits of SOA in this context, Naveen Gupta, VP, Tech Sales and

Services at IBM explained how SOA has raked in investments worth $1 bn a year in

his company.

As it turned out, the key player in this change in management process is the

CIO, who, being the custodian of information, has a central role in driving the

vision of an agile enterprise. The CIOs role is to get all the information and

disseminate it quickly to the people who are at the center of the

decision-making process. Agility is about responding in time. Information needs

to be relevant and disseminated fast, reflected Prince Azariah, CIO, MRF.

The participants also deliberated on the rampant growth witnessed by

enterprises in unstructured information that is creating new issues today for

CIOs. Today, the need to make information available at a time when it is

required, has gained critical importance. However, most enterprises have

software that can handle only a few applications. So the question that is in

every CIOs mind is how to incorporate unstructured information, said Kaushik

Bagchi, country manager, Information Management Software, IBM India.

Putting Thoughts Together...

Manoj Paul, vice president and business head, BFSI vertical, Airtel

Enterprise Services, gave insights to technology options that guides an

enterprise to stay agile where he mentioned merging of new systems with the

incumbent system, scalability, bringing costs down with incremental revenue and

product portfolio, customizing and personalizing products and ensuring quick Go

to Market.

In a session on synchronization, CIOs were urged to go a step ahead from

being just chief information officers to chief in-sync officers. This was

accompanied by various dimensions like inside-out, outside-in, etc, that a CIO

should keep in mind while steering a well-synchronized organization.

Innovation is the Key



In order to succeed in todays competitive world, innovation has to be

ingrained in the DNA of a company. Companies need to continually innovate, drive

excellence, value integrity, and be positive influencers to become successful

entities in the new global order. Innovation is key to growth. Innovation has

to be the pillar and corner stone of a companys rudiments, said Pradeep Gupta,

CMD, Cyber Media.

N Kailashnathan, VP & CIO, Titan Industry	Arun Gupta, CTO, Shoppers Stop	JP Yadav, GM, IT Division, Maruti Suzuki

And this is where SOA, Web-Oriented Architecture (WOA), Mashup services and

Web 2.0 come into the picture. However, according to a recent report, these

enterprise technologies fulfill only about 10% of the requests.

Making a presentation on IT Empowering Business with Agility and Innovation

through SOA and SaaS, Mahesh Subramaniam, regional product manager, Serena

Software said, One must ask questions like: Can my EPR talk to the SCM system?

To enable business means to write applications that can fulfill their needs.

Pit-stop



Over the three days, all the participating 100 CIOs were split into four

teams and were required to make well-researched presentations on what CIOs can

implement in their respective organizations.

Grid Lords, the team led by Venkat Iyer, director, Business Technology and

Distribution at Pfizer India, beat the other three teamsSpeed Demons, Butane

Burners, and Circuit Breakersin the final team presentation on Leading an Agile

Enterprise. Pradeep Gupta, chairman and managing director of the CyberMedia

Group, presented the trophy to the winners.

The victory was a joint effort of the whole team who all contributed with

valid inputs/suggestions that led us to the final victory, said Iyer.

Winning Strategy: Grid Lords, led by Venkat Iyer, director, Business Technology & Distribution, Pfizer, bags the trophy in the final team presentations

During a session on an Agile Enterprise, Ramanujam Sridhar, CEO of Integrated

Brand-Comm said that innovation is the heart of agility and Indian enterprises

need to drive innovations within their organizations. Agility is about

responding in time. Information needs to be relevant, and disseminated fast,

said Prince Azariah, CIO, MRF. Delivery in anytime and every time is the key,

said Arun Gupta, CIO, Shoppers Stop, bringing in another angle.

People issues emerged as another area that keeps CIOs occupied. Also talked

about were issues related to business processes. There is a gap between the way

the business process flows in an enterprise, and the way a customer or user

would actually like it to flow.

Learn, network and enjoy, is what E Abraham Mathew, president, CIOL, said

at the onset of the event and the event provided the participants the

opportunity to do just that.

Anantha Sayana, head, IT, L&T

Team DQ


maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in