DQ-IBM Roundtable: Delivering the Right Business Value

Recently Dataquest and IBM hosted a CIO roundtable in New Delhi on Cloud: Preparing to Deliver the Right Business Value which brought forth several CIOs concerns with regard to cloud computing. The roundtable was organized to understand how CIOs from different industries take cloud, whether they are using it and how their relationship has fared.

During the discussion, most CIOs said that they were exploring cloud and trying to figure out how it can help their organizations in the best possible way. Only a handful of CIOs acknowledged that they were using it. Even in such organizations, it is being used in a pick-and-choose manner such as email services and storage, etc. We are using cloud since 2005 for different departments and different needs. For example, we are using cloud for storagestorage on demand, accepted Ajay K Dhir, Group CIO, Lanco Infratech.

Challenges that stare in the face were equally debated and took rounds across the table. Cloud comes with challenges of its own. How to optimize it for different user groups and ensure same SLA by IT department; and sizing of infrastructure for peak loads, still remains challenging, said Kanwar Kishore Arora, senior VP, data center managed service, security enterprise services, Bharti Airtel.

Adding to concerns that cloud comes bundled with, other CIOs expressed concerns for security of their data and network outages. Whether our data will remain secure on the cloud worries us. Unless we are sure about the ways we can make our data secure over the cloud, it will be difficult for us to climb on the cloud bandwagon, said Dheerendra Srivastav, associate vice president, IT, Bajaj Capital.

Whether the cloud will eliminate the IT department in the future, was also one of the concerns. However the discussion revealed that it would not happen. Cloud is an evolution, not a revolution. It is a journey, which aims at simplifying networks and enabling enterprises to be more efficient. The question is where are you in that journey. Are you keen to tread the path that promises you a better and easy business environment? said Dharanibalan Gurunathan, cloud computing services sales leader, IBM India.

In the discussion, it also surfaced that unlike in the conservative West, where business value creation is all about enhancing efficiency and productivity, Indian market is a growth market that does not reject new technologies but likes to experiment with them at first. The inherent strength of cloud is that it a beautiful, simple and powerful business model. Well like to experiment with it, says a consultant. Going further, the discussion rests on private and public cloud models. Private cloud is an oxymoron. It gives companies the freedom to embark on the private or public cloud or hybrid cloud. All of them are for different business environments, said SS Mathur, GM, IT, Center for Railways Information Systems, a unit under Indian Railways that is responsible for creating IT solutions.

The panelists who participated in the roundtable were: Rajeev Seoni (CIO Ernst&Young), S S Mathur (GM-IT CRIS), Ajay Dhir (Group CIO Lanco Infratech), Vishwajeet Singh (VP IT, International Corp Solutions), Dheerendra Srivastav (AVP-IT, Bajaj Capital), Kunwar Kishore Arora (Sr VP-Data Center, Bharti Airtel), Prakash Kr Pradhan (Head IT, Jagsonpal Pharma), Virendra Kr.Bansal (CIO, Luminous Power Technologies), Bikram Seth (CIO VLCC), Rahul Mehra (GM-IT, JAI Suspension Systems), Shyamanuja Das (Editor, Dataquest) and Dharanibalan Gurunathan (cloud computing services sales leader, IBM India).

In essence, the roundtable turned out to be a healthy platform where CIOs ably discussed the challenges such as understanding of cloud concept for a particular business environment, security, reliability, regulation/compliance, sunk-in investment, job loss in the IT departments, availability of applications, and fear of vendor lock-in.