What should be CIOs outlook for 2009?

CIO Challenges in 2009

What should be CIOs' outlook for 2009?

Really smart CIOs will do serious introspection on their IT strategy and they may realize the need for an enterprise architecture!

V.S. Manikkam

Thursday, December 11, 2008

BANGALORE, INDIA: Like the fragmented spaces in the computer memory gets compressed and made available for applications, the under-utilized data centers across regions will be rationalized / consolidated.

Within the data center, the under-utilized servers will again be consolidated and virtualized to save cost and space.

The companies that have always endorsed licensed products will embark on the iniatives to evaluate everything from the Open source community, right from OS to application frameworks. Every COTS product in the company will be evaluated for their necessity and alternatives.

The application portfolio will be under manifying glass to see the alignment and value. Poor performing apps will be evaluated for layoff!

The high-expensive on-premise software apps will be questioned and SaaS offerings will be tried out in pilot mode. This will be a perfect opportunity for SaaS vendors to prove and get their new clients!

As the IT ecosystem welcomes new entrants like Virtualization, Open-Source and SaaS, there will be re-newed focus on existing IT security practices. However, this activity will not be a choice, but a mandatory activity!. If any enterprise chooses to skip this step are putting themselves into danger!. We may see new set of enterprise IT security products emerging in this area!.

In fact, these factors will also lead to re-look of licensing models of products within the enterprise!.

How do we get money to do all this?. Who is going to pay for it?. That’s where the innovation lies. No vendor will do it for free. Neither the CIO would wish to pay for it. Here comes the testing time for the relationship maturity of CIO office and IT outsourcing/offshoring vendors. There will be a call for new contracting models where the vendors will be required to innovate and come out with options for rolling out these cost-conserving initiatives in a multi-year roadmap. Whichever vendor gives a helping hand to the CIO will go a long way!.

The CIO would question his own management on the way the IT is being managed for efficiency and effectiveness. New way of demonstrating the business value of IT needs to be in place to get funding for new development projects. Which means, get ready to be number-savvy!. This will have implications on PMO-centric organizations as well as Enterprise architecture centric organizations.

Product license newels/upgrades will be challenged and asked for alternatives. If a cost-effective alternative is feasible and can be developed, the IT will not hesitate to say good bye to those products!

Really smart CIOs will do serious introspection on their IT strategy and they may realize the need for an enterprise architecture! And certainly they will not implement all the above 9 steps in bits and pieces but within the framework of their rejuvenated IT strategy!
The author is Head, IT, Henkel Information Technology, Mumbai, INDIA

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