NEW DELHI, INDIA: Compared to CIOs in other parts of the world, budget is not a constraint for most of the Indian CIOs, says finding of IBM CIO study 2009.

“We have found that Indian CIOs are not just visionaries but they ensure in getting things done. We did not find them acknowledging budget a constraint as far as they were confident that they are on right track,” said Nipun Mehrotra, vice president, Global Technology Services, General Business, Asia Pacific, IBM India, at the launch of India version of this study here today.

“Around 45 per cent of global CIOs in this study saw budget as challenge while only 28 per cent of Indian CIOs considered it a constraint,” he added.

The study has found that Indian CIOs spend about 13 per cent of their time taking costs out of the ongoing technology environment.

IBM conducted this study across 78 countries and 19 industries and interviewed around 2500 CIOs across the globe. In India around 100 CIOs were interviewed from across the region.

The study findings show that Indian CIOs are ahead of their global peers in many aspects. CIOs in India have shown more willingness to go for green IT solution than the CIOs in other part of the world.

“There is a public sector which has three data centres across India. The energy bills from each data centre runs over Rs. 85 lakh per month. Same is the concern across verticals, especially in case of telecom operators,” added Mehrotra.

“Hence saving on energy bills and going green is one of the main agenda of CIOs in India. In our study 59 per cent of Indian CIOs have expressed interest to adopt Green IT as one of the main agenda where as only 43 per cent CIOs in other parts of the world expressed to do so.”

Present at the launch ceremony, T Sivaram, vice-president and CIO, GMR Airport Developers, added that power is a big issue for their company and they never hesitate in investing money on green technology that can help them save power.

“In Hyderabad, we have 8 kilometers street light. All these lights are connected with optical fibre. We have made an automatic system to control this light. If there is no traffic, it will automatically switch off. We are digitizing out buildings,” said Sivaram.

There are 70 per cent Indian CIOs that are integrating business with technology to drive innovation. This shows that responsibility on the shoulders of the CIOs has, over the time, increased in Indian scenario.

This report has acknowledged that CIOs in India are not just IT infrastructure managers but they play a crucial role in every decision taken by senior management of the organization. Around 56 per cent of Indian CIOs have been found to be involved with senior management in India to decide upon business strategy compared to 33 per cent in other countries.

“Earlier CIO were called when budget used to be cut or sanctioned but now CIOs are involved in almost all the decision. We are now involved with a lot of innovative technology at Delhi Airport to monitor commercial and passenger vehicles to avoid unpleasant incidents,” said Sivaram.

However, global CIOs and Indian CIOs commonly recognize the need of business intelligence and analytics application in running business and improving performance of organization.

Sivaram said the prime task for us today is business intelligence for two reasons. “The first one is to manage the cost and second thing is that I want to grow. BI is being used to make atmosphere at Airport more user friendly. BI is going to play a very decisive role in positive looking organization.”

Along with this , virtualization and risk management are other two area of focus for both global and Indian CIOs, he added.