IS 2004 provides radical benefits to the CIO community

Keeping with the tradition of being the best source of information management and strategy learnings for Indian CIOs, Network Magazine organized its annual event: Infrastructure Strategies 2004 (IS 2004).

The event was held in three Indian cities Bangalore, New Delhi, and Mumbai on July 13, 14, and 16 respectively. And the most talented and successful CIOs in

Indian companies were invited to attend. Hitachi Data Systems was the main sponsor of the event. And Canon and adrenalin were co-sponsors.

The seminar halls at the IS 2004 venues of the three cities were full to capacity with CIOs of the leading companies in India.

Survey findings

The findings of a nationwide survey that was conducted among around 250 CIOs were released at the event. This provide the CIOs a number of fruitful insights into aspects like the size of IT budgets among enterprises, the most popular area of technology investments, the most important management areas of companies of particular verticals, and the critical concern areas of CIOs.

Speakers

The events at the three cities feature a number of distinguished speakers.

Val Souza, Editor - Express Computer, Indian Express Newspapers spoke about the trends and patterns in IT spends and discussed the findings of the IS 2004 survey. In his presentation he said, "In the earlier years only the tech-savvy companies like banks aligned business with IT. This year it's happening across all verticals."

In the area of storage he feels that the CIO is not only looking at the technicalities of the solution, but also the business value.

And talking about departmental communication, he feels that the level of interaction between the CIO and the higher management differs with the function units (business units) depending on the stage of the project.

IDC

Sanjit Sinha, Head - Hardware Research Group, IDC India spoke about the trends in storage management. He said that 15 percent of information in archives in future will be reference data.

"A new market for storage services will emerge. We expect a 21.2 percent CAGR for the storage market. And by 2007 the storage market will grow by 37.5 percent," he said.

He also said that though telecom and banking companies are early adopters of storage, there is big potential in the manufacturing sector.

HDS

Hicham Abdessamad, Senior Director - Storage Area Management Hitachi Data Systems made a presentation titled Storage Are Management (SAM) - The next step in Storage Management.

He said, "CIOs are concerned about reducing costs, improving service levels and managing risks. And to do this, they need to drive automation and operational efficiency."

He walked the audience through the phases of storage automation. He also said that the use of software was the only way to make storage management more efficient.

Speakers at the cities

At the IS 2004 conference in Bangalore, Jitendra Sangharajka Lead System Administrator Infosys Technologies made a presentation on the 'Best practices in Storage Management'.

At the conference in Delhi, S. Balasubramanian, Vice President - Information Systems, Hero Honda Motors Limited spoke to the audience about his views on the best practices in storage management.

And at the conference in Mumbai, P. K. Vohra, Head - Retail Technology Group, ICICI Bank Limited spoke on the same topic.

PK Vohra, ICICI Bank, spoke about the areas in storage management and how to cope with storage management challenges. He said that storage is growing exponentially in India. And as storage grows the problems associated with storage management also grow.

"You need to be able to identify what is transaction-centric (OLTP), and what is not.

You can shut down some applications for maintenance if they aren't so critical or transaction-centric," he added.

Vohra also spoke about some of the IT challenges faced by the banks. He mentioned exploding storage requirements, interoperability issues, and skilled manpower as the most important ones.

At the end of the event, the satisfied CIOs discussed the benefits received by the speeches and presentations over cocktails and dinner.

Susan D'Mello, CIO of Siemens Ltd said, "IS 2004 was very interesting and fruitful. Forums like these keep me updated about new technology and strategy developments. I look forward to more application-focussed information."