Tomorrow's IT Bulls

INDIA:

Which technology breakthroughs in your opinion can be game changers for tomorrow?

Mature cloud services where plug n play kind of environment is possible between vendors. Shifting to one service provider to another should be matter of hours only and without disruption in services. Mobility-Adoption of Mobile platform in business will be game changer for any organization. Tier 1 business apps will move to mobile platform and advance usage of GIS GPS in business apps and video chat etc. Then 3D & 4D holographic images without glasses which will revolutionize the TV, computer monitor, cinema screen and mobile display too.

Do you see hardware, software, networking and security changing their relative worth in any company's IT strategy in the coming years?

Due to maturity of virtualization technology hardware software networking are losing the priority in IT strategy as used to be. New deployments are by default considered in virtual environment where the provisioning, deployment and management are rather easy and fast in consolidated manner. Maintenance and management are also much easier with very less dedicated manpower. Security is the only area that still has importance till the data center is owned by organization.

But all these became irrelevant when servers are co-located at service provider’s space. In the similar way the adoption of cloud also move the security at the provider’s premises and users are accessing apps over thin client. Company focus will be more on managing SLA’s and monitoring those SLAs.

Will IT continue to be a support function?

Only networking, user’s infrastructure management part will be major IT function will be left with the organizations (if not outsourced). IT will be more and more will be used strategically and heads of IT will spent more time in defining IT services, working with business head at one side and with business partner other side to manage demand, time taken to market to gain competitive advantage in the market place, managing cost and running the IT like business.

What can CIOs focus on when they are planning IT blueprints for next year?

Main focus should be for IT value creation means enterprise function should commit to using IT strategically and exploit the IT infrastructure it builds and runs. CIO must focus on the ways for business process automation and highly integration of processes at corporate level.

How important are soft skills for any CIO? Is the industry facing skill gap on other fronts too?

Business sense and understanding business per se for the CIO will be most relevant so future CIOs should focus on acquiring the soft skills related to that. Some of the soft skills are Board room etiquettes, finance for non finance executive course, business communication etc.

Any other industry observations that you might like to share?

In coming years IT usage in construction companies will increase dramatically. This domain is not having much of domain specific apps to automate the whole business processes. Now due to decreasing margins, higher interest cost and to reduce time to market of constructed units and the regulatory compliance which is due any time (Regulation Bill) automation will play major role in bringing efficiency and transparency and also reducing cost.