A good year for the CIO

As the year draws to a close I would like to thank all our readers for their support and commitment to Network Magazine.

The year has been good for the CIO. Companies in most industry verticals, and especially for the BFSI, telecom, and public sector have initiated new projects in IT, and subsequently have made significant investments.

This only means that these organizations are seeing more benefits from the use of IT, and as a consequence now attribute corresponding importance to the CIO.

Technology Senate 2004

We at Network Magazine have had our share of successes too. Our annual CIO Conclave, the Technology Senate 2004, which was held at Colombo in Sri Lanka was a resounding success, and was attended by some of the most talented and respected CIOs in India.

The event was held on a scale never imagined by any technology media organization in Asia. We flew around 200 CIOs from various cities in India to Colombo (the pearl of the orient) and hosted three days of conferences, roundtable discussions, analyst meetings, and theme pavilions.

Technology Senate was also about recognition. It recognized CIOs for their security initiatives and technology innovations by means of the Security Strategist Awards and Intelligent Enterprise Awards.

We have written all about the Senate in this issue on page 60.

Intelligent Enterprise Award

The cover story this month is all about the winners of the Intelligent Enterprise Awards. The awards, which were presented at the Technology Senate honor the organizations that have made innovations with IT and have used it in an intelligent manner to address their business needs.

The basis of establishing this award is that technology by itself does not provide sufficient competitive advantage to an organization. CIOs need to innovate with new technology or apply it in interesting ways to solve business issues.

Read about such successful organizations on page 22.

The hotshot

Finally, this month's Hi-Tech Hotshot is L Sundarrajan, Senior Vice President- Corporate Information Technology, Aditya Birla Management Corporation Ltd. He talks about his responsibilities, professional, and familial.

Sandeep Ajgaonkar
Associate Editor