Get 'Bold and Beautiful', a cue for CIOs

BANGALORE, INDIA: It's time to get bold.

From redefining IT in a pressured economic environment to balancing the delicate equation between new ideas and constrained Budgets, CIOs may reap much better benefits, if they got spunky enough.

As it turns out, 'get bold' is the new formula, that most experts have started to suggest.

When Sameer Garde, country manager, Dell India, whipped up the call for CIOs to 'get bold' with their IT strategy in the changed economic climate, there were many who seconded, and many who debated, but digested a new thought here.

In an upturn, being bold might have some side-effects or risks, but all that gets notably reduced in a downturn, supported Avinash Vashishtha, chairman, CEO, Tholons. “The negative fallout is minimal in a downturn, so why not go bold. It's a short window to prepare for the upturn.”

He also urged enterprises to look at downturn with a new lens. “It is something that has happened, but almost behind us now. We now have some visibility on the shape of things to expect and at the same time we know that recovery will happen soon, even if we don't know, exactly when.”

They both were sharing these views at a panel discussion at the first pit stop of CIOL Enterprise Connect Series today, that kick started at Bangalore. The series would travel to Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai next.

“Innovate your way through the downturn rather than worrying about how to spend your way through it,” said Van M Diamandakis, VP, corporate marketing, Riverbed.

As to the other side of the fence, were CIOs who shared their own set of challenges, misgivings etc here. From issues like security, control for SaaS to problems like visibility for cloud infrastructures, they put forth many issues. Sudesh Agarwal, from Lifestyle International Pvt Ltd also talked about how he is trying to reduce costs and explore workflow IT, M-commerce, earn-your-points-anywhere to burn-your-points-anywhere offerings to customers with various IT leverages.

For Ezhil Buddhan, BSNL's deputy GM for Data Networks, the prime issues that came up were 'how to educate people', 'how to put the right processes in place' and 'how to use BPM (Business Process Engineering) to help CIOs sail through the slowdown.

Earlier during the day, Dr.Vishy Poosala, head, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent highlighted innovation in the context of enterprise optimization, the theme of the series, in a new flavour. He simplified the conundrum and right rope balance between fresh-continuing R&D and battling Budget constraints very interestingly.

“Reduction in costs does not mean a reduction in IT benefits,” he said as he cited how companies can use freely or cheaper available offerings like mails services or social networking platforms without necessarily investing in a big way. He also touched upon cloud computing and exemplified how multiple labs can be brought on a single layer of visualization.

Later on Avinash V from Tholons took over the theme forward by discussing IT business alignment, new value matrix and how there are different brackets of companies when it comes to attitude towards IT investments now.

“Some see it as an operational resource, some as a strategic resource, and some as a strategic weapon. And yet we have about 44 per cent of companies who say they need help to automate and improve business processes, specially in today's times.”

Today's event also had speakers like Anish Malhotra, director, Salesforce.com; and Brad Rinklin, VP, Global marketing, Akamai Technologies. The next stop of the series would be in Mumbai on June 17.