INDIA: A few years ago, organizations were busy deploying individual applications for individual needs, with great pomp and show. Now, those same applications have become a nightmare to manage, because employees have to toil with hunting for information through multiple interfaces. End result - lower productivity per employee. However, the positive side is that there are enough solutions available that provide a standards based single sign-on solution to all applications.

A few years ago, companies were deploying lots of hardware to cater to the individual applications that were installed. Suddenly, power and equipment management become big issues, because there's so much equipment in your data center and it's really consuming a lot of power. End result - you can't add more equipment to your data center, even if your organization has a dire need for it. The good news is that most of the IT equipment available today is designed keeping the power efficiency in mind.

A few years ago, many organizations were comfortable running their business on spreadsheets and individual accounting packages. Suddenly the economy is booming, and those same companies are seeing growing customer demands and exponential growth. As a result, their existing systems are not able to handle the load. End Result-loss of business because of slow and un-integrated systems. The good news is that ERP solutions have become more affordable, and deploying them takes months instead of years.

The key observation here is that today, IT has taken a different turn altogether. The same IT that we were busy implementing feverishly a few years ago, has become a monster to manage today. That's why; your concentration is now split between managing a mammoth infrastructure and thinking ahead for it. That requires some careful planning, creative thinking, and strong execution. In essence, you need excellent project management skills to be able to straddle both boats. Another key skill required here is forward thinking. We know all the hot buzzwords in the market today. Keep a close track of them and ensure that you're not left behind when those buzzwords become the most popular technologies. Ensure that you follow standards as much as possible.

To help you with this monumental task of taking your IT infrastructure forward, in this very special issue, we've compiled for you more than 160 IT projects of various kinds and from just about every industry. These have been presented in a very crisp, concise and well-indexed format, so that you can quickly browse through them and gain the maximum information. Plus, we've taken advice of some leading implementation partners, looked at some hot trends happening in IT deployments around the country, and a few favorite products and technologies of CIOs.