KATHMANDU, NEPAL: These are abnormal times and abnormal times call for extraordinary measures. To survive the downturn unscathed, CIOs need to restructure their IT infrastructure and be doubly efficient in detecting, diagnosing and resolving problems and then formulating automated processes to these so these problems do not get surfaced again.

This formed the crux of the speech of S. Krishnan Thyagarajan, managing director, Quest Software, delivered to top notch Indian CIOs at C-Change 2009 today.

Commenting about the current downturn, Thyagarajan said that there was tremendous pressure on CIOs to show ROI on every IT investment with immediate effects.

"These are challenging times and CIOs are expected to do more from less. Regulators environment is getting more complex and you are asked to do same things with twenty percent less money," said Thyagarajan.
Stating a Gartner study, he said that  CIOs more than ever are expected to contribute to the benefits to the organisation.

Thyagarajan said while the typical approach of financial engineering, increased outsourcing, tougher negotiation with technology providers and delaying your IT decisions were legitimate and logical ways to ward of recession, an apt approach would be CIOs don't see downturn only as means to cut cost.

He urged CIOs to go for 'Smarter IT management and Automation; which entailed:

* Automatically provision users.

* Migration to new versions and automate the processes.

* Single dash board for overseeing critical processes.

* Empowering end users with self service.

* Extending existing capabilities to manage cross platforms.

"Getting more from same investment, focusing on value instead of cost, and increase in IT staff productivity will help CIOs in long term," Thyagarajan concluded.