CIO of the Month: Integrating Technology with Business

Simplify the Business Processes

Amitabh Singh, vice president & CIO, industrial group, Alghanim Industries

With cloud, virtualization, tablets, and smartphones, the CIOs phone does not stop ringing. Today, every CIO is in demand to create and judiciously manage the humongous volumes of data and information to cater to the demands from these platforms. The CIOs role has gained a different dimension from what it was beforeof implementing the best available technology and bringing down the overall costs to understanding the business needs and the processes and trying to integrate technology to end processes to stay ahead of the competition. The simplification of the IT platform has to be accompanied by the the integration of technology

to avoid unnecessary duplication of data, believes Amitabh Singh, vice president & CIO, industrial group, Alghanim Industries.

Singh feels that virtualization although is in nascent stages, his own group of companies have witnessed a sea change with its deployment as the number of physical hours and servers have reduced drastically. It has resulted in 20-25% reduction in the overall cost of operation. And as far as the cloud platform is concerned, CIOs are steadily moving towards it by partnering with hardware providers who can take away or to whom they can sell off their remaining/redundant IT infrastructure.

In fact, Alghanim Industries will have 100% virtual environment by 2012-13 and will also move to hybrid cloud for their confidential data. Cost savings is achieved after deploying virtualization or cloud platform because of the reduction in real estate cost for the storage of servers, electricity, and other maintenance heads.

Today, there are many applications available for various platforms, therefore the CIO should only selectively use those applications that can enhance the end-user experience and also keep a check on the rising IT costs. Understandably, says Singh, over a period of one-and-a-half years, Alghanim industries has decreased the number of apps from 400 to 65.

Speaking about the tablets and smartphones, Singh said that his organization will soon be providing tablets to senior management, while smartphones with suitable apps will be given to the sales and marketing workforce to ensure visibility and transparency of data without restricting their mobility.

Singh rates simplification of business process and adherence to the process through technology deployment and usage of hand-held devices as a big challenge. In addition, social media platform also poses risk to the intellectual property and business as even though an explicit external policy is in place in most organizations, but internal policy is still missing. The CIOs have to go that extra mile in order to reap the benefits of social media with the help of appropriate apps and policy, but he would also have to create awareness about the use of social media.

Cloud Solutions Fit the Bill

Veneeth Purushotaman, head, technology, HyperCITY Retail India

Even though recession has become a thing of the past, it has taught most enterprises the significance of mobility. Mobility is increasingly becoming an integral part of an enterprise as tablets are flexing its muscles to make their presence felt with the usage of tablets expected to be higher on the shop floor. Tablets will support another reason for the cloud computing services (back-end) market to thrive, which is the best way to extend the apps to a mobile.

Cloud, currently on a hype cycle had been used earlier though under different labels. Cloud solutions fit the bill for solutions that need a lot of storage; DR on the cloud, backup on the cloud, etc; the benefits are immense for these on the cloud as the storage space required is increasingly linear and exponential, says Veneeth Purushotaman, head, technology, HyperCITY Retail India.

He further adds, Before deciding which applications could be transferred to the cloud, a CIO could re-look at the entire infrastructure and security architecture and explore whether the existing policies and infrastructure allow anyone from the user community to access an application on the cloud? Or are changes required in policies and/or network infrastructure? All CIOs will be keen to move non-critical apps on to the cloud but then the word critical is a very relative term.

Social media is more a social subject than a technology subject; it has become one of the most important and effective channels for connecting with consumers. However enterprises have not been able to fully leverage on this medium and in future it is expected that they will change their usage much to their benefit. There is still a story waiting to unfold in India on social networking and enterprises using the medium.

Mobility has infused simplification, thus enabling seamless functioning to improve efficiency not just restricted to boundaries for users in offices, shop floors, and homes. A CIOs role is much beyond the role as an IT enabler; a CIO has a greater visibility of the end-to-end processes over his business counterparts and therefore has a big role to play in influencing and tweaking business processes, shares Purushotaman.

In the tablet space, Purushotaman is working on 2 projects in order to build applications to bring in mobility and efficiency to the workforce. However his organization still hasnt utilized the services of cloud computing for any of its services, but wouldnt hesitate if the right opportunity and need comes its way.

The Cloud Based Services Offered are Secure Enough

Thomas Varghese, CIO, Bajaj Allianz

iPad, cloud, and social media are generating a lot of buzz, but much of it around the iPad says Thomas Varghese, CIO Bajaj Allianz is not worthwhile as it has still not transformed into a mature market. Hence adoption of an immature market would prove to be an unstrategic move. Otherwise how would you describe a market where one can get tablets for `40,000-50,000 and now there is buzz of offerings in the range of `2,000+. Hence the unstable nature of this market itself negates the need to adopt tablets, feels Varghese.

In fact Bajaj Allianz is still evaluating about the adoption of tablets and is monitoring how the market develops. Tablets have not yet become powerful enough to replace laptops in the workplace as they lack processing power. Cloud and social media are platforms that are mature and have witnessed a greater degree of successful adoption. There are certain software services that the company has hosted on the cloud.

Any organization needs to adopt social media if it wants to grow closer to its consumer. It does not require many changes to be made in the infrastructure thus, resulting in easy adoption. In the future, social media will become the voice of the customer and every company will have to increasingly adopt it.

The power of mass media to create a massive impact cannot be undermined. This implies the need for organizations to adopt virtual offices catering to all types of services. A virtual office is necessary to offer services that go beyond the standard list of services. These offices enable to properly attend to customers with necessary improvements much to their desire.

Adoption of cloud services and social media require not much to be done but for tablets, simplifying and integrating applications for adoption of tablets would not be advisable as it is not known what is going to happen in the future, shares Varghese.

In the future, there are many services that may not be currently known as cloud services but will be known as cloud based service. There are many cloud based services that we as an insurance company will be adopting after due prodding. The cloud based services offered are secure enough and it would be preferable to adopt cloud based services rather than building a repository, informs Varghese.