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