CIO brainstorming and IT Strategies explained in Chennai Date:   Thursday , August 04, 2011 What are our CIOs busy doing? What are the challenges they face today? These are the questions which brought together some great minds in the “CIO Strategy Summit” conducted by Siliconindia on 14th August 2011, at Chennai. After the resounding success of the Bangalore and the Mumbai editions, this time around CIO’s from different organizations and sectors in Chennai gathered to attend the summit. What CEOs and the Board Expects from the CIO and IT Head IT management can become saturated by supply-side thinking, what the IT industry will offer next and how best to assimilate that? “The CEOs and the Boards no more look at IT as support system, but one that would help in establishing competitive edge in the market place. And the expectation is not “when” would the ROI yield be but “how” would it manifest. It is through an order of magnitude improvement in productivity & analysis in finger tips to be able to make the right business decisions” said Chandrasekaran N, CIO from Ashok Leyland who kick started the first panel discussion. The panel also addressed issues like ‘What are the boards and CEOs thinking and what business agenda must IT leaders deliver to?’ The other speakers in the panel were Manavalan MK, DGM- Technology from Sankara Nethralaya, Amol Vidwans, Group Head - Information Technology, MARG and the Moderator for the panel was Biji Varughese, Head IT (West & South), McDonald's India. Business drivers, Strategy and Solution for next-generation Enterprise IT was discussed at length when Sethu Madhavan, Director Marketing & Strategy from Huawei came on stage. Then Shoaib Ahmed, President from Tally solutions took over and spoke about ‘Design – Bringing Efficacy To Enterprise Solutions’ and Speaking on the principles of Design of the Product Tally.ERP 9, he said that successful products work with the Law of Conservation of Complexity – that complexity cannot be minimized – it can only be moved. The Competitive CIO How can CIOs retain their IT role, while effectively using their skills and passion to provide value within several divisions of the company? Balakrishnan Venkataraman, Ex CIO from Polaris Software said, “The importance is of being competitive and not just competent. CIO's today, have to drive cost benefits for business in the employment of IT - and be visibly cost effective over external sources of solutions, so that businesses see the value of the internal IT setup and the CIO.” Further the panel set up a debate on the aspect and importance of keeping business in the driving seat, with CIO understanding and supporting the business need, and helping businesses get the project budget and a good Business ROI. Emerging Technologies and Trends: IT game changer? Adoption of new technologies such as cloud based services, social media and virtualization have accelerated and is accelerating changes in the role, structure and purpose of IT. “Emerging technologies have a lot of potential to create a niche for any business in the market. However, organizations should be careful in evaluating what is right for them. What is good for a certain industry segment may not be good for another. At the same time every organization should evaluate what they want and what they could achieve in logical units of time.” said Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, CIO, Apollo Hospitals which was appreciated with a huge round of applause. Adding to the same thought our co-panelist Harinath Chakravarthy, CIO, TVS Logistics said, “Emerging technologies, especially the social media tools like twitter are game changers, but the effectiveness of these technologies needs to be supported by a strong business case". ‘Cloud Computing is the next big thing! Caution . Be cautious. It has its usage. Use it where no of transactions are not huge i.e., Email , CRM etc’ said Chandran R, CIO, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles(Benz). Broad Takeaway: Summing up the whole experience,“A CIO's job is something which one has to learn the hard way as there are no quick fixes to success. The key to success of any IT project is how well the IT and the User department collaborate.” said Prem Kamble, Management and IT Consultant (Ex- CIO - Sutherland Global Services). The event had a great ambience, with the speakers coming from diverse background made it a good mix of thoughts from all industries. This event was sponsored by Huawei, Tally Solutions, Sonata Software and Clover Infotech.