Identifying the CIOs and CISOs in IPL 8

MUMBAI, INDIA: It’s been more than a fortnight since the IPL 8 fever gripped the nation. This India ka tyohaar has also mesmerized the IT decision makers of top companies, some of who cannot help but underline the technology in a team’s strategy.

Here’s a look at their best teams and players.

Dr Sharat M Airani, CTO, Intellinet Datasys:

Kings XI's biggest strength is their teamwork. It is like a new technology of software-defined networking (SDN), programmed and capable of expanding when needed.

Murali Vijay is like a DMZ—who can be relied on to give safeguard-solid starts along with the explosive Virender Sehwag at the other end like a firewall.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that MS Dhoni is Captain Cool. He is like a CIO struggling for a up-time and decent performance on the day of year ends with the same resources throughout the year. Dhoni’s fatigue due to excess cricket over the last few months in Australia might affect the uptime and performance in the last quarter where high targets and computation is required.

I believe that Kings XI Punjab has all the ingredients to click again. Three bowlers Sandeep Sharma, Axar Patel and Mitchell Johnson are like extra bandwidth, CPU/RAM on demand to meet the extra power to deliver the performance to the end users. An injury to Axar Patel may be like a malicious worm and need to be cautious. Sanjay Bangar is a CIO who seems to have moulded a team which is balanced in overall business process and technology. He reflects the Change, Innovate and Orchestrate (CIO).

Glenn Maxwell, is a CISO in the team. He is up-to-date with the technology and returns to the IPL with a higher fear factor than before. Not to forget, the presence of explosive batsman Sehwag could chase down any total. Sehwag is a forensic auditor in the team. The lack of a specialist spinner is like missing a big data analyst in INFOSEC to defend real-time. The strength of the team is its batting.

Ravikiran Mankikar, GM, IT Shamrao Vithal Co-operative Bank:

My favorite team is the Rajasthan Royals even though typically I should be a die-hard Mumbai fan.

The reason being they play as a unit with each member positioned for his strength irrespective of their country of origin. Overall, it is a well orchestrated setup working in harmony irrespective of the product family.

Samiran Ghosh, Asia Technology Leader, D&B:

My favorite team for the IPL is the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and the favorite player, Gautam Gambhir. The reason is that like a CXO, he has justified his captaincy by taking the team to top four in 2011 and the titles in 2012 & 2014; a great batsman and a great CEO for KKR.

Vivek Dharia, CIO, KNP Securities:

KKR is the best team so far. However, I think Rohit sharma is in form this year. He was one of the five players retained by the franchise into the 2014 season plus this right-hander made several telling impacts last season – not least of which was an ODI double-century. One of the most naturally-gifted batsmen in the world.