CIO Panel Discussion

IS the role of the CIO in an information technology company any different
from that of non-IT CIOs? Does the CIO of an IT company carry greater
responsibility on his shoulders? Or does being in an IT-savvy environment make
it easier for him to drive technology decisions? The fourth chapter in the
Dataquest IT CIO Panel Discussion Series reached some interesting findings,
simply because the focus was different–rather than get CIOs from enterprises
and the user industry to tlak on a chosen subject, we got together a panel of
CIOs from IT companies to check out what challenges the drivers of technology
themselves faced in implementing technology within their organizations.
Participants from six leading IT companies, including a consultant, were invited
to provide us with an insight into how they went about their jobs. The
participants (from left): Mahesh Mehendale (Texas Instruments India), Gopi Garge
(Exacore Consulting/IISc), Rohit Ghai (Computer Associates), Prasanto K Roy
(chief editor, Dataquest Group), Tamal Das Gupta (Wipro), Anil Valluri (Sun
Microsystems) and AN Rao (Digital India). Among the findings was an interesting
conclusion–working in companies that are the primary drivers of technology and
therefore being at the cutting edge of technology, IT CIOs cannot afford to lag
behind in implementing new technologies in their organizations. Admittedly, a
CIOs task of getting the management to clear new technology initiatives is far
easier if he belongs to an IT company. These were the bread-and-butter
questions... but how about the real nitty gritties of these CIOs’ job? How,
for instance, do they approach buying decisions and migration of applications?
What about security, procurement, outsourcing, obsolescence–how different are
these facets for the IT CIO? For these and some other interesting findings, read
on...

On STANDARDIZATION:

Tamal Das Gupta (Wipro): We have different nodes
catering to different functions, so we have fixed on a minimum standard
configuration for every desktop. After this, depending on the requirement, we
upgrade to whatever levels we have to. As far as sales personnel are concerned,
their needs are completely different from those in the technical arena, and
therefore, our approach to standardization of configuration is very
role-specific. Someone carries information on his laptop to share with customers–his
needs are entirely different from those of someone who logs on from external
points and works remotely on technology requirements. It is, therefore, specific
needs that we take into account while deciding on the specs. Internally, across
the company, we have a minimum spec.

AN Rao (Digital India): We had decided after much
brainstorming that we would replace all our desktops every three years. The
ground reality, however, was very different, and we had to go in for an upgrade
much earlier. Three years is a long time, in terms of memory, hard disk and
other specs. Our new desktops, of course, come with a pretty standardized set of
specs and therefore, there’s not too much of a problem with those.

Gopi Garge (Exacore Consulting/IISc): I would like to
start off with an anecdote–when I went to my finance department once and asked
for money to buy storage upgrades, the finance manager, who is pretty IT-savvy,
popped me a question.

"How much free space is available in all the machines on
campus," he asked of me. I said it might total up to a terabyte. "Why
are you asking for more upgrades if we have a terabyte of storage space in our
campus," he asked.

The sad part is that while we have the view that centralized
resources are the way to go, there are several things that force us to
decentralize. For instance, our faculty has the independence of bringing in
projects from various sources. So, you have people who have high-end SGIs on the
one hand, while on the other, you have people who have ES2000s in their labs. It
is a variegated mix. There is also a centralized model at the computer center,
but one ends up maintaining both kinds of resources. This can be expensive, in
terms of time, number of people involved and so on.

Prasanto K Roy (chief editor, Dataquest Group): Gopi,
among the enterprises that you consult to, how would you rate the approach to
standardization?

Exacore Consulting/IISc: By and large, I’ve been a
consultant for small and medium enterprises on Intranet infrastructure. And you
will be surprised to know that the level of awareness among these companies is
quite high. Most of those I work with belong to the development community; their
needs are very specific and they need to have computing power on their desktops.
Given the fact that the time to market is serious factor for them, they prefer
to invest in computing resources, rather than take a risk on time to market.

HANDLING SW licenses:

Anil Valluri (Sun Microsystems): We pretty much know
who is getting connected and from where and how many people are on the network
and at what time. Therefore, most of the times, we go in for a corporate-wide
license from Oracle or SAP. Sometimes, we do subscribe to a floating license for
1,000 or 500 people, depending on the requirement, projects in hand etc.

Digital India: There are two sides to this issue. The
standard licenses are easier to control–let’s say, you have a 200 licenses
of MS Office for 1,000 staffers. That's okay and manageable. Where it becomes
tough is disallowing non-licensed software. Our approach has been to take a
tool-switched approach–there is no way you can supervise every individual
desktop. As the users grow, it becomes impossible to keep a track on every
desktop, to determine exactly what unlicensed software is running on which
machine.

DEALING WITH OBSOLESCENCE:

Wipro: I know what Infosys does with its old PCs–they
are donated them to educational institutes. We were working with the government
and some schools for the underprivileged in the same way. And there are hundreds
of these schools in Bangalore that are looking for PCs. Azim Premji’s
foundation has done a lot of work here. Of course, we upgrade the machines
before donating them, for there would be no point in donating absolutely-useless
PCs to anyone.

Rohit Ghai (Computer Associates): One of the
strategies that we use in the US is that even if our PCs are not very powerful,
we give them to universities and schools and they, in turn, put many such
machines together in a cluster. And if you have about ten 386s streamed
together, you have a powerful enough machine to work on. Many big companies just
get together their obsolete PCs and ship them off to Africa. You can’t just
dump PCs, for that would raise environmental concerns.

Dataquest: What I think is that things are a bit
better here in India as we do a great deal of upgradation here. We tend to
squeeze every last bit out of the PC. So, instead of dumping our PCs every year,
things are stretched on here. What happens in some enterprises is that you even
upgrade the motherboard, change the video cards and some hardware. And you keep
on doing this over a period of time, and therefore, you don’t have this
baggage of a whole lot to PCs to dump all at once.

Mahesh Mehendale (Texas Instruments): What I think is
that we can look at a lease-versus-buy kind of strategy. At the end of the lease
period, you give the PC back to the vendor and let the vendor figure out what to
do with it. We do that with many of our PCs.

CIO in BUSINESS PROCESSES:

Digital India: When we started two years ago, we had a
clearly defined solutions map to satisfy our requirements. Top cap that off, the
CIO and his department decide on the pieces that go into this map, apart from
taking an active role in the process definitions. For instance, as we got into
new areas, we had to discard older processes–here, it is driven by the IS, but
with the collaborative assistance of the respective function heads. IT for us on
one level is just a utility; on another, it is much more in terms of enabling
the business itself; and in more extreme cases, it actually gets us the
business. For example, while into the remote management of someone’s
infrastructure, one would go overboard in terms of building a high availability
data center, a LAN that never fails and with all kinds of backups. Sometimes, we
have to move on to a newer version of Windows not because we need it but because
of the image we have to project in front of someone who understands technology.
Therefore, the compensation is not just based on what we need but also on the
image we portray in front of the customer.

Dataquest: Gopi, in the SMEs that you have been
consulting, what role does the IS head play in the long-term planning of
applications, and in the business process itself?

Exacore Consulting/IISc: My own experience is that
while the IS head has a high level of participation in the business purpose of
the organization, there is a good deal of planning as far as implementation
goes. This has been my very general observation. Let me give you an example.
When you are managing the systems chain within the organization, one of the
things you need to do is create and manage the user profile. What is the kind of
user, what are his needs, what are his comfort levels... all have to be taken
into account. What I find is that there is a bit of cost-cutting that happens
and at times, it gets a bit embarrassing because sometimes things get bad. And
this is one of the reasons that the people to whom the maintenance is outsourced
are complaining. You don’t buy the required infrastructure, you cut corners
and then we are to blame. This is the kind of story that I have seen, and
although CIOs do participate in the business process, the more managerial have
many things going on in their minds, a bigger share there being of cost cuts.

Dataquest: That’s an interesting aspect. Today,
there is a slowdown, so budgets are being cut down and the CIO is also the guy
who is implementing technology. Is he also sufficiently involved in the
business, is there a conflict that comes to play at the CIO level?

Wipro: I don’t think that the CIO can be deprived of
involvement in the business; we are all here for the business. The purpose of
any business is to make money, so we can’t deny that at the end of the day.
The CIO’s role, therefore, is two-fold. He has to impress upon the management
that this is the minimum that has to be there, getting the hype separated from
the absolutely necessary. The CIO has to build up a lot of credibility with the
management. It is not only the investments that determine the effectiveness of
the CIO, but how he reorganizes the working of the company really makes the
difference. At the end of the day, if the business processes turn out to be
wrong, then it is the CIO who would be ultimately responsible. Somewhere,
therefore, the CIO has to take the call.

Exacore Consulting/IISc: I think the perception that
the senior management has in most companies is that the CIO is mainly a
facilitator for infrastructure and mostly for routine operations.

Sun Micro: If you look at an organization like Sun,
most of the CIOs are on job rotation. These are people who have been leading
technology and business centers and are in the CIO role for a limited period of
time. And all are fairly well aware of these technologies and participate in
most of the brainstorming sessions that happen at the corporate level,
especially in terms of technology. They interact closely with the chief
scientist and the chief technology officer. Very rarely do we see something that
we preach but don’t implement. Of course, there are always issues like
bandwidth, CPU speeds and response times which are critical from the user
perspective, which we keep getting feedback on.

Computer Associates: This is a double-edged sword. One
viewpoint is that the end-user in IT companies is more tech-savvy than in other
organizations, so it does impact on the CIO’s role in the sense that the
training programs or user awareness programs that he might have to engage are
high on the priority list. Another aspect is that in a software development
organization is that the CIO also has to handle and evaluate applications
developed in-house and strategize the deployment of the same. That is a complex
process and unless managed right, it can turn out to be pretty messy.

Who drives IT: CIO or CEO?

Digital India: What you really look for from a CEO is
sponsorship, because that is what ultimately needs to come from him.

Sun Micro: I can tell you about some of the customers
that we have, and I have seen a huge scale from 0 to 100. I have seen extremes
where the CEO drives everything and takes the decision and implements it,
irrespective of whether the same is good or bad. And I have also seen very
tech-savvy CIOs deciding what they want and getting the management to buy and go
forward with that.

But most often, what I have seen in most organizations is
that the CIO ends up being the punching bag. If you look at the hierarchy of the
organization– with all the directors, executive presidents and vice-presidents–the
CIO would be at a much lower level than all these people, but nevertheless, he
is still given due importance. There are also organizations where very senior
people are heading the IT planning, strategy and the IT infrastructure
divisions, and they have fairly good control on things.

The final purchasing authority

Exacore Consulting/IISc: I am not too sure who
actually makes the decision, but what I do know is that CIOs more than often
play a recommendatory role. They will say, "This is the technology I need
to use and these are the vendors that I suggest, and this is a good packaging as
a product." But after that point, I see the CEO taking a decision on most
counts.

How do you ensure buy-ins from the user department when you
are looking at a strategic kind of a decision like a major application shift or
business process change?

Digital India: Over a period of time, we have to be
seen as business-friendly, rather than just being technology freaks. If that can
be established, subsequent trust comes in automatically, and people feel that
whatever is being done is for their own benefit. But if that can’t be
established, then that guy is in trouble. What I feel, therefore, is that if you
are useful to the business, the rest of the things fall into place quite easily.

Computer Associates: I would like to make the comment
that it is ironic that you have to do internal selling. And to do internal
selling of technology these days, you can use technology. These days, therefore,
Intranets and a portal-type of approach help a lot in terms of evangelizing a
solution within the user community and the organization.

Wipro: If a CIO does not understand his business, then
there is trouble, both for the business and for the CIO concerned.

SHOULD the CIO & CFO portfolios BE combined?

Wipro: Since I am involved in proposing solutions for
the customer outside, I see that many a times, these two functions are combined
in some organizations. But my impression was of a very poor response from those
organizations where the CIO and CFO functions get combined. Decision-making
becomes very slow, or the right decisions are not taken, and what we also have
is a lot of confusion, especially as the right technologies are not used. I can
say this from personal experience, because I started my career as a finance
person, and then moved into IT. Both jobs have become important and exhaustive
and I would go to the extent of saying that it is literally not humanly possible
to do justice to both roles.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE CIO’s role

Texas Instruments: In my mind, anyone carrying out the CIO’s
role will have to be savvy both from the business and technology points of view.
If I were to really go out on a limb and give a straight answer, a one-sided
role will not be a recipe for success.

Exacore Consulting/IISc: I have two things to say, but
I these should not be construed as a pessimist’s view. I feel that the CIO’s
job function is going to get more and more complex with time, not easier. As I
mentioned earlier, a CIO is a facilitator, someone who understands business, and
that is where the complexity stems from. The third dimension comes in because
the typical CIO has to drive his team–so there is a dimension of HR that also
comes in, and all these put together will make the job tougher. Amongst other
things, a CIO needs to be a good marketing guy too.

Computer Associates: I will go back to what I said
earlier about the issue of risk management. It is easy to perform your job when
you have a relatively elevated budget, and it is only in times of adversity that
you get to show your real capabilities. By this yardstick, risk management would
end up playing a very dominant role in the CIO’s portfolio, and this will only
increase with time.

Wipro: I agree with all this. I think that the CIO’s
role is going to become even more challenging in the years ahead. Sure, it has
been evolving but it is going to get much more intense and will stretch further.
The role can never be perfectly defined. Along with HR skills, marketing skills
and strong leadership skills, I think a CIO will also need to have a very good
team. And the success of the CIO would depend to a great extent on the
competence of that team.

Sun Micro: My perspective would be on a couple of
technology related issues. In the slowing market scenario, there is a tendency
to look at point solutions, to cut costs and corners just to ensure that your
cost of ownership and cost of acquisition remains low. But I would also say that
one should look at the architectural blueprint. You might make small investments
today, but you should make them in such a way that you become scalable at any
point of time. A lot of people believe that the slowdown has been sudden and the
rebound would be similarly fast-paced, so you need to be very scalable in terms
of applications, networks and connectivity and so on.

Digital India: I have four parts to my summation to
this point–the role of the CIO has to be that of a trusted adviser and
facilitator, so much that business should have complete trust in him; there has
to be a very direct and visible correlation between what IT does and how
business gains from it; the third is more relevant, particularly when costs are
becoming an issue, in terms of driving the processes, driving the productivity
and how

technology is going to be used for that; and finally the biggest challenge would
be just staying in touch with what’s happening around us, and picking up the
relevant pieces and trying to see how we can put them together and use them to
the best advantage for our respective businesses.

CIO QUOTES

Wipro: It is not only the investments that determine
the effectiveness of the CIO, but how he reorganizes the working of the company
that is important. At the end of the day, if the business processes turn out to
be wrong, then the CIO would be held responsible. Somewhere, the CIO has to take
that tough call.

Digital India: IT for us, on one level, is a utility
and much more in terms of enabling business. In more extreme cases, it actually
gets us the business. Sometimes, we have to move on to a newer version of
Windows not because we need it but because of the image we have to portray in
front of the customer.

Exacore Consulting/IISc: My own experience is that
while the IS head does have a lot of participation in the business purpose of
the organization, things get bad when there is cost-cutting. At times, it gets a
bit embarrassing. The client doesn’t buy the required infrastructure, the
client cuts corners, but when things go wrong, it is we who are to blame.

Sun Micro: I have seen extremes where the CEO drives
everything and takes the decision and implements it irrespective of whether it
is good or bad. And I have also seen CIOs deciding what they want and getting
the management to buy that. Most often, I have seen that the CIO has been used
as a conveniently available punching bag.

Computer Associates: It is a double-edged sword. The
end-user here is more tech-savvy than other organizations. The other thing is
that in a software development organization, the CIO also has to handle and
evaluate applications developed in-house. That turns out to be a very complex
process.

Texas Instruments: In my mind, the CIO will have to be
savvy both from the business and technology points of view. A one-sided role
will not be a recipe for success.

A Dataquest Report