It takes a congregation of  great minds, an array of  challenging topics and an out-of-the-world venue to bring out a treatise of  any subject. The 10th Annual CTO Forum held during August 23-26 at Beijing was just that. While the documentation was a tad short of  a treatise, the sessions brought to  light  the real-time challenges a CIO  faced.The presentations made at the event will sure be a lesson for the CIOs in better times.

While the focus of  IT in business is globally improv-ing market responses, reducing operational costs and controls that mitigate risks, a lot needs to be done in the area of  transformation strategies. Also, harmo-nising IT infrastructure is a must, which implies an increasing importance of  a rationalised enterprise IT infrastructure that enables operational flexibility, increased productivity and business agility.

Though there is a positive turn in the market as we see the light at the end of  the tunnel, CIOs had to bear the brunt of  the global economic meltdown.They had to battle the pressures of  reduced resources, cost cuts, more focused approach into IT investments and increase interference of  top management into the business impact of  IT. There was also an impend-ing danger of  the significance of  IT pared down to maintenance function. This is why the theme of  our 10th anniversary conference was  ‘The CIO’s New Challenge: Keeping Technology Transformational’.

Among  the key  speakers were Neal Peterson, adventurer, author and  leadership  speaker who enthralled the audience with his experience of  travelling across the world on a ship. Chris Curran, CTO of Diamond Management and Technology Consultants and Editor of Ciodashboard.com, set the stage for the 3-day discussion with his insights on CIO’s technol-ogy agenda for 2010. Pravir Vohra (Group CTO of ICICI Bank), Homi Kushrokhan (Former MD of Tata Tea, Tata Chemicals and Glaxo), Sumit Chowdhury (CIO, Reliance Communications), Prof  S Sadagopan (Director, IIIT Bangalore), V S Parthasarathy (EVP –M&A and IT, Mahindra & Mahindra),Raghu Raman (CEO, MSSG), Tamal Chakravorty (CIO, Ericsson) and Vijay Mehra (Group CIO, Essar Group) all helped make the content of  the 10th CTO Forum very interesting and interactive. Ashish Rajpal, Co-founder and the CEO of  iDiscoveri Education did a session on personal development and leadership development throughout the session that was very well accepted.

Finally, the CTO Forum awards ceremony  felici-tated eight heros from the CIO community. They led the pack by being visible, hugely profitable and effi-cient, effective in operations and a case study for best practices.

With a promise  to do more, achieve more, and build the community with health interactions, the 10th CTO Forum ended with grandeur. For all those who missed, this issue carries session highlights and a complete report on the conference.