CHENNAI, INDIA: Are the vendors intimidating the CIOs, the end users of technology, by bombarding them with their products? The anguish on the faces of IT heads, who volleyed the queries at the vendors at the panel discussion organized by CIOL, as a part of its EnteriseConnect Series, was the eloquent testimony. The CIOs were unanimous in expressing their plight to convince the management to buy versions and generations of products from various venders, with RoI justification.
With CIOs coming out openly with their problems at the event held at Taj Connemara, vendors had to take great pains to explain their side of things. Submitting himself, Murali Krishna, Technical Head, HP Software, said, "If innovation intimidates somebody, then yes, I am intimidating." According to him, once an enterprise buys technology, updating that would be the next step, and technology only pays with the timely improvisation of systems and applications.
N.S. Parameswaran, Head-IT, Wheels India, wondered aloud that when business intelligence (BI) is very much in place, why is there even a call for having business service management (BSM). While BI and BSM do more or less the same thing for the business, what should be the criterion for the right option; was his question. He gave an instance, while making his point, that a vendor vanished into thin air after delivering a product! An assent nod for this from the other CIOs reflected that they too were sailing on the same boat!
While technology advocacy and training the workforce are themselves posing tough challenges, handling the representatives of service providers, who change frequently -- thanks to the attrition that is dogging IT sector -- is even more a daunting task. Dwelling upon this issue, G. Muthu Krishnan, Chief Manager-IT, Madras Cements, opined that it was hardly possible for a service provider to provide a solution when the user himself was not sure of his requirements.
Taking part in the discussing on business continuity planning (BCP), N. Rajagopalan, Manager Systems, KONE, suggested that data recovery centers (DRCs) be provided for the small and medium businesses, who are not able to afford to have one on their own. Senthil Kumar, Regional Practise Manager-Storage, Wipro, who spoke about the company's solutions for BCP, reminded the CIOs of the exercises in achieving shared data recovery centers. He added that DR sites were generally maintained as cold sites. One CIO inquired whether there were standards and best practices that were being followed.
The discussion on intrusion detection, which was mindboggling, was led by Abhishek Bedi, Professional Services Security Consultant, Datacraft and Ivan Issac, Head, Tamil Nadu Region, Datacraft. The CIOs were quite alarmed over the internal threats to data security, rather than external elements. A point made was that the discrimination based on hierarchy only helped in the breach of security. P. Shobhana Ravi, Associate Vice President, IT, TAFE, suggested that top managers could be brought under the scanner to better control security and data thefts. There was also a call for having forewarning systems, which could warn of impending attacks.
Pradeep Chakraborty, Executive Editor, CIOL, moderated the discussion. Representatives from HP, Wipro, and Datacraft were on the panel.