New tech deployment tops CIO concerns

BANGALORE: Around 70% of CIOs rated deployment of new products and technologies as a top concerns, according to a recent PC Quest survey. Issues like managing service providers and vendors (37%) and integrating IT with business and people management issues (20%) made up for the rest of the major areas of concern.

Elaborating on this, Shyam Malhotra, director and editor-in-chief of CyberMedia, said," Not all these issues are technology related. These are mostly management and people issues which can be solved." He urged CIOs to make use of IT tools like business intelligence, which can help add value to business. "From the traditional view of using IT to on costs, IT can be used as a business driver." He opined that business integration could happen effectively if business heads play a role in monitoring technology implementation."

In his presentation at the CIO summit, Prasanto Kumar Roy, chief editor, Dataquest, said that IT spending by large enterprises would grow by over 25% in 2004-05. He cited trends such as increase in domestic outsourcing by Indian companies and the spread of mobility and wireless technologies would be areas where IT spends would go. "CIOs can make savings of above 20% by outsourcing their IT requirements." He also predicted that IT investments would also go into information security, WAN and wi-fi connectivity.