Core business strategy drives technology: CIOs

CHENNAI: Chief Information Officers cutting across all industries have

opined, it is the main core business strategy that drives the technology in an

organization rather than technology-driven business.

Interacting in an open forum on 'Getting your business application idea

through: Best Practices — CIO's best practices executed in order to have a

project idea / business application idea accepted,' at the CIOL

Enterprise Connect CIO Seminar here on Friday, the CIOs felt that the future

of technology would be driven by the core business, unlike yesteryears.

The forum, chaired by Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Professor, Department of

Electrical Engineering, IIT (Chennai), saw three CIOs from different backgrounds

sharing their experiences with the audience.

Expressing his views first, S Ravi, General Manager (Systems and IT) with

Rane TRW Power Steerings Ltd said that his company took at IT as a fallout of

taking the total TQM strategy. He said that the Japanese who had overseen their

operations were much astonished to understand that the whole of IT and Systems

team was driven by just three people.

“The visiting Japanese team were also astonished to see all our day-to-day

processes being automated and especially a software made for our needs by one of

our trainees who was later inducted into the main system,” Ravi said.

Talking next was Dhandapani T.G., CIO, Sundaram Clayton Limited, who said

that IT is not in isolation from business; it has rather become a part and

parcel of the core business, thus driving the technology change in a business.

“We will have to identify the pain areas and overcome it,” he added.

Vishweswaran M, CIO of Macmillan India, and winner of last year's best CIO

award said that the role of CIO in a few years would be become as important as

next to that of a CEO.

Dr Jhunjhunwala, who chaired the panel, concluded the session by saying that

there was a dearth for new knowledge, which is an essential factor in today's

world. “The new knowledge can only be found in academia and the industry

should take the initiative to involve the academia into the main business,” he

said.

Dr Jhunjhunwala also spoke about optimizing the cost of technology so that it

is affordable to the common man. “If you are making something for the Indian

market then set the prices also which the Indian's can afford to pay or else

the technology is of no use,” he said adding that retaining the talent in an

organization was also a major challenge for these companies.

Earlier, the session began with Dr Jhunjhunwala delivering his keynote

address, in which he felt that vendors drive the industry, which was half-truth

and the other half was hypes. “All companies should not only think of

innovation and technology but also work on the Operational Expenditure and

Capital Expenditure, as that would give the clear view of what the feasibility

of the project would be,” he said.

In this context, Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala also gave some illustrations on how

the teledensity was increased in India by a small thought of changing from

conventional copper wired system to that of Wireless in Local Loop system and a

similar case of making low-cost ATM's.

Rakesh Kharwal of Microsoft India, spoke about the vulnerability and the

security initiatives being taken by Microsoft in its forthcoming software's to

reduce the risk of being vulnerable to external attacks and at the same time

making computing an easier task.

Anand Srivastava of Citrix Systems presented the tactical and strategically

inclined approach for keeping one's data secured in the future years. “The

future lies in a comprehensive and integrated threat management system rather

than relying on one product alone,” he said, adding security should be built

upon and not bolted on.

R Anil Kumar, associate vice president, CIOL delivered the vote of thanks.

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