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Driving success through your IT in 2014

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Sharath Kumar
New Update

BANGALORE, INDIA: CIOs are currently at a juncture wherein they can define their roles based on two standpoints. They can view IT as something detached from competitive advantage or they can view it as being pivotal to innovation and business success.

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The former path leads to stagnation whereas the latter leads to the path of a leader driving success for the organization. Considering the consequences, the former cannot really be considered an option. The advent of Cloud Computing, Mobile Computing, Big Data and Social Media is taking the world by storm and organizations are hard pressed to keep up or fall out of the running. This increase in technological applications is what is largely sustaining the necessity for a change in the role of the CIO.

Today, the CIO has to be mindful of consumer needs and also deliver sufficient results while maintaining a tight IT budget in this economically unstable world. TO add to this application technology like Information Governance, Compliance, eDiscovery, Security, E-governance, Data analytics and Business Intelligence leaves the CIO with too many options to choose from.

With the advent of this New Year, 2014 looks like a promising year for CIOs Following are some ways by which CIOs can evolve from their traditional roles and subsequently change the role of the IT department within the organization:

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Convergence is the way forward

In May 2012, a Dell commissioned Forrester Consulting study found that a total of 95 pc of IT leaders and storage admins indicated that they see value in buying storage from the same vendor from which they buy server, networking, system-management or IT services. Respondents indicated that a deeper relationship with a smaller number of vendors can build trust, provide technology synergies that ease management and streamline support relationships, making it easier to manage the big picture. Converged infrastructure solutions popular is the opportunity to increase efficiency and agility in operations, applications and service management. Benefits of Converged Infrastructure solutions include reduced cost of running applications, faster infrastructure deployments, simplicity and speed of management, and improved time-to-value for application and cloud deployments.

Use Cloud and Big Data to your advantage

Despite, the numerous benefits, the Indian market is still wary about moving to the cloud. CIOs need to buck up and start their move to the cloud in an efficient and responsible manner. And the quicker the better, as the slower the move the more they are impeding their organizations from realizing the benefits. Cloud computing improves not only the speed, but also the quantity and quality of resources available to an organization. Going beyond the limits of traditional IT infrastructure and datacentres, offers more choice, flexibility and agility - and becomes a competitive advantage. Additionally using Big Data as can help making profitable use of the pools of your unstructured data and a ready way to convert a challenge to an opportunity. Big Data is an effective way of deriving consumer insights and generate greater value from marketing campaigns.

Embrace BYOD and BYOx:

The concept of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) made quite a buzz during its day, but the new kid on the block is the concept of BYOx. Unlike BYOD which only talks about devices, BYOx comprises of all things associated with the device like the applications, the data, the services, the ports etc. that the person brings with them. While many organizations are still debating about the security concerns of BYOD/x, it is high time for the CIO to harness this concept. Most organisations are BYOx shy due to security threats from employees wandering beyond the firewall with sensitive data. But technology in security has also evolved and the company need only enhance that to avoid security concerns

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Adopt next generation development and deployment methodologies:

A successful CIO has to be on his toes and adapt to next generation development and deployment of new software. Organizations no longer have the luxury of long and expensive deployments so it is upto the CIO to utilize pre-built solutions that enable user requirements to be met in a matter of days or months as opposed to years.

Be proactive and keep pace with new developments:

CIOs have to not only meet challenges that come their way but also anticipate them so that they can be tackled head-on. They have to identify, develop and support next generation solutions, thus meeting the needs of enterprise users. They also need to keep pace with the latest developments including social media movements, cloud and mobile computing and Big Data.

Bringing business value and enhancing productivity:

It is not enough for the CIO to be technically proficient but rather have a keen insight as to how that technology can be used to leverage total outcome of the enterprise in terms of its productivity, revenue growth, profitability and overall business value. In this new era, the role of the CIO largely includes his or her ability to gauge the capability of any and every new development in technology to add to business productivity.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that CIOs are well poised to become the business strategists in their companies, adding value to the company top-lines and profitability. With the onslaught of technology trends and the need for developing business strategies with a new and fresh outlook, the value that a CIO can bring to a company is vast. Delay in adapting to their changing role will only make situations for the CIO unsteady. However, the CIO has the option to rise to the challenge and embrace these changes thus making them the agents of change for success in 2013 and beyond.

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