IT is Evolving, so is the CIO

Dhiren Savla The author is CIO, Kuoni Travel Group, India

While we talk about the evolution of the technology industry in India over the last 2-3 decades, somehow we dont give due attention to the evolution of the IT function in Indian organizations. Most certainly, evolution has been keeping pace with global trends but in some cases, it has even outperformed its counterparts in the matured markets.

Looking back, the IT function was largely an EDP function, mainly responsible for MIS, traditional IT systems reporting into finance. That time Indian IT companies were also in the nascent stage and all needs were largely fulfilled by internal IT teams and some project/product work was given to the third party. This can really get classified as the in-sourcing period.

The next phase was when having computing facility, using email for regular communications and more so, connecting offices over some network became part of almost all enterprises. This phase brought IT in the limelight. This just coincided with companies starting offshore development work in the disguise of body shopping. By now, EDP had become IT and the new IT heads started offloading work to third-parties.

This time 2 significant things happenedthe dotcom boom and Y2K!! With this, the IT function became strategic for business. Organizations went beyond the humble IT heads, and a new progressive breed of CTO/CIOs took charge of the future of businesses. This also brought the concept of managed services. Now, the CTO/CIOs started to focus on strategic IT roles and also, adopted managed services like managed data center, managed infrastructure, managed network, etc. This was a radical change from erstwhile sourcing of manpower. These arrangements were SLA and result-driven, and they were here to stay.

All IT functions which are commodities and not giving any competitive advantage could very well be outsourced to a third-party. Anything which is too core for a business and creates huge competitive advantage, for that knowledge should be retained internally. This way, CIO and his/her team can focus on the future and BAU can be managed through a partner.

One of the innovative and futuristic trends observed in some of the matured organization is strategic outsourcing. This model is driven more by business strategy and delivers IT strategy. In this long-term engagement, partner works on complete transformation with measurable deliveries. IT partner invests in automation and gets paid on success. Biggest driver for success of this arrangement is partners interest in your success!

So will the internal IT function lose its relevance? Is outsourcing one medicine for all problems?

The IT function will get stronger and more effective in the coming days, focusing on business needs. The CIO will be the key management executive across industry. With all the hype around cloud, computing is anyway going to be a service, so smart rightsourcing will be adopted by more and more organizations. In any case, it will be interesting to watch how the industry moves.