If we were to describe this momentous event in one word, that one word would be ‘exemplary’. That's because there has never been a time when CIOs from South Asia have come together to share their challenges and thoughts. With an overarching theme of “Leadership Beyond Boundaries”, the congregation of a large number of CIOs reiterated the fact that cross-border learning is not only the call of the hour but also helpful in many ways. A majority of CIOs expected the event to be a platform to learn from the experiences of each other.

It was decided that the group would meet more than just once in a year. During her welcome address, Anuradha Das Mathur, Co-founder and Director of 9.9 Media, emphasised the fact that such a platform was the need of the hour. “We are overwhelmed by the response. Hopefully, this group will grow bigger, better and stronger,” said Mathur.

Are CIOs heading towards the Boardroom?
The one big question everyone is talking about is whether CIOs are walking the pathway which takes them into the boardroom. Are CIOs thinking like a Business Strategist? Vijay Mehra, Former Global CIO of Essar and Amit Kumar, Founder and CEO of Kasper Consulting shared their thoughts on how CIOs can climb up the ladder in their session on “Changing Face of CIO – Rise of the Business Strategist”

“Traditionally, CIOs have been considered as good resources to manage technology, vendors, risks and align IT with business. But that’s not enough to grow to the next level. CIOs have to become more ‘business number’ oriented. They need to reach out to the customers and most importantly, look out for job rotation opportunities to get a better hang of other areas in their enterprises,” said Kumar.

Vijay Mehra, while quoting a Harvard Study, said that since the time human being is born the brain processes patterns to do certain things in a certain fashion. “Similarly, if CIOs have grown up doing certain things, it is extremely diffcult for them to come out of those comfort zones. To become CEOs, CIOs have to come out of those comfort zones and take a commanding position,” said Mehra.  

Unleashing the Leader in You
CIOs are considered a part of ‘top management’ – but are not yet on corporate boards. They seldom lead businesses or move across functions. How can the CIO emerge as a business leader? What are the skills that CIOs will need to fnd a place in the boardroom? To answer these questions Santhosh Babu, Managing Director of Organisation Development Alternatives, took a workshop session with the delegates While Babu made the CIOs work hard to demonstrate their management skills, the subtle message was that systems infuence human behaviour. “The biggest challenge facing organisations today is about the inability of teams to work together to solve a problem. The biggest impediment in this is the structure of an organisation and our inability to overcome those structures to move ahead,” said Babu.

Are You Communicating Enough?
In today’s diffcult economic circumstances, showing the value of IT is more important than ever. Manoj Arora, Global CIO of Bilcare said that creating or improving the business value of IT requires good management of people, processes and technology. “CIOs need to emphasise on creating a vision for business. IT is incidental and will always be a means to an end,” said Arora.

Larry Adams, CTO & COO, Network Communications Pvt. Ltd., Adams Group, Sri Lanka suggested that CTOs/CIOs  behave like entrepreneurs. “When the economy breaks down, it is entrepreneurs who rise up to the occasion and not the business conglomerates. Speak the language that a businessman understands and half the battle is won,” said Adams.

Technologies to Help Shape Business
In a session on virtualisation, S.R. Balasubramanian, Executive VP IT, Godfrey Philips India explained how adoption of server virtualisation has saved his company nearly Rs. 50 lakh. Ganesan Arumugam, Director – Partners, VMware told CIOs about the benefts of desktop and data centre virtualisation. Prosenjit Bhattacharjee of Cisco demonstrated how Cisco can help enterprises in adopting virtual infrastructure.

Rod Grigson, Director Marketing, Novell APAC provided a perspective on how IT optimisation can lower operational costs.

Speaking during the session ‘Securing Enterprises - Securing Peace of Mind’, Kapil Awasthi, Security Consultant, Check Point Software Technologies said that 2,500,000,000 information security incidents takes place every day, or an equivalent of 30,000 security events per second. Awasthi demonstrated a recent Check Point innovation wherein a USB Flash Drive with applications residing on it could work as a secure hard disk. “This could possibly be the best defence against data theft,” he said.

The last session of the Summit was “Enterprise Collaboration: Key to Entering the Future Zone”. The session, chaired by Vijay Mehra, was also addressed by eminen speakers from IBM and Cisco Systems. Raj Lakshmipathy, Collaboration Specialist, Cisco Systems, Sri Lanka questioned the delegates whether collaboration was just a technology or something beyond it. “Organisations need to empower their employees with the right set of collaboration tools so that they can harness their true potential,” said Lakshmipathy.

Gaurav Garg, Websphere Commerce Leader, IBM India also shared IBM’s vision in collaborative technologies during the session.