CIOL Enterprise Connect Program membership crosses 300

BANGALORE: Cyber India Online Ltd. (CIOL) has announced that its Enterprise Connect program, the first-of-a-kind program in India that was launched in July 2002, has over 300 chief information officers of large Indian enterprises as registered members.

The CIOL Enterprise Connect Program has the objective of identifying the IT needs of CIOs of the Top 1,000 enterprises across India and to become their preferred source of information for studying, comparing and selecting the most appropriate IT products and solutions for their organisations.

As of date, over three hundred CIOs from some of the best-known Indian organisations have registered as program members. The Program aims to have 1,000 member CIOs by March 2003, which would make it by far the biggest and most exclusive club of CIOs in India.

The CIOL Enterprise Connect Program will help a CIO achieve his/ her key professional goals—selecting the best possible IT product/ solution for his/ her organisation in terms of TCO and the best possible RoI while guarding against technology/ product obsolescence.

"As the business environment turned hostile over the last 2 years, the role of the CIO increasingly came into the limelight across all segments of industry and government. Today the CIO has to not only justify IT investments, but to also come up with new, creative solutions to the problems faced by business and governments", says E. Abraham Mathew, President, Cyber India Online Limited.

Member CIOs can customize content by technology area and vertical industry segment and share their learnings with other members through the CIOL Enterprise Connect Discussion Board. They can also choose to receive answers to their technical and product queries through the CIOL Tech Expert service, the RFI/ RFP service or by partner vendor experts on specific areas like ebusiness, network security, datawarehousing, Linux etc. Members would be invited to attend CIOL Enterprise Connect CIO events in their city and could also choose to receive invites to tech events/ seminars of their interest.

Of the organisations whose CIOs have registered as members so far, 90 per cent or more have 100 or more employees and over 85 per cent have an annual turnover in excess of Rs 50 crore. Over 75 per cent organisations boast of an annual IT budget in excess of Rs 20 lakh and all members are involved in evaluating, recommending or in deciding which IT product/ solution is to be purchased for their organisation.

"Based on our experience with the CIOL Enterprise Channel and through discussions with CIOs of user organisations, we felt the need for an exclusive program for CIOs and other IT purchase decision makers of large organisations across various vertical industries. The Enterprise Connect Program has been created to address this specific need of CIOs," Mathew added further.