CIO May 2011 Issue
Cover Story
Gambles That Paid Off
Four CIOs took risks few of their peers would dare. But the results would set them apart from the pack
Star Union Dai-ichi Life Places Its Bets On Cloud Platform
With the I.R.D.A breathing down heavily on Star Union Dai-ichi Life Insurance to set up a DisasteR recovery site, Head-I.T., Harnath Babu chose a path only a handful of his peers would be willing to take: Go public cloud.
BSES Wins Over Customers With CRM
When K.B. Singh, VP-I.T., BSES, introduced IT-driven measures to an ailing power utility, little did he know the size of the can of worms he was opening.
Fidelity's Gamble With Server Virtualisation Pays Off
When the I.T. head of Fidelity Business Services wanted to virtualize his servers—at a time when a few were—two forces defied him: The recession and management’s resistance. he had no choice but to prove them wrong.
Hero MotoCorp Banks Upon GRC Tool
When Vijay Sethi, VP-I.S. & CIO, Hero MotoCorp, decided to implement a G.R.C tool in 2009, implementations worldwide were scarce, so if he failed there was no back-up plan. But if it was going to make his company more secure, it was a risk he needed to take.
View from the Top
LinkedIn by IT
Hari Krishnan, Country Manager, LinkedIn India, talks about how IT connects the dots on some of the best ideas at LinkedIn.
Case Files
K. C. Kapoor Gives India its First-Ever Online Voting Platform
How Gujarat's State Election Commission gave India its first-ever online voting platform and increased voter turnout by almost 20 percent.
How Uflex De-risked a Global ERP amidst Political Instability and Cyclones
A decision to centralize their datacenter helped Uflex leverage India's low costs and build its datacenter at one-fourth the cost the company would have incurred otherwise.
Glenmark Generics Learnt From Its Mistake of Rushing Towards Virtualization
In a hurry to virtualize its desktops, Glenmark Generics banked heavily on its system integrator—a mistake that led to an IT meltdown. Here’s how they cleaned up that mess.
From the editor-in-chief
From the Editor-in-Chief: The Rot Within
Business-IT alignment is often doomed when business imperatives are interpreted in the light of vision statements.
CIO Debate
Who Should Lead Social Initiatives: CIOs or CMOs?
Feature
7 Dirty Consultant Tricks (And How to Avoid Them)
Consultants have been with us since the days of cave paintings, and over that time they've learned a few tricks to extract money from their clients.
Turf War: Staff Management
IT pros do battle every day—with cyber attackers, stubborn hardware, buggy software, clueless users, and the endless demands of other departments within their organization. But few can compare to the conflicts raging within IT itself.
Column
Why You Don't Need A Cloud Computing Strategy
You must view cloud computing as part of a complete IT strategy, argues Peder Ulander, CMO of Cloud.com. He shares five guidelines to use as you identify the right areas for cloud adoption your business.
The Metrics Quest
Under pressure from the CFO to quantify IT benefits, a CSO finds measures that matter.
What Business Partnership?
While many suppliers talk about best practice and sustainable advantage in their marketing material, their actions are often at complete odds to this.
Trendlines
Social Networking and Tablets Key Web Traffic Drivers
Social networking, video and browsing will be the major drivers of web traffic this year, according to a new study by research house Ovum, conducted jointly with Telecom Asia.
Infosec: Cloud Computing ‘Explodes’ the Security Perimeter
Poses difficulties for IT in reporting an organisation's security posture to the business
Social Media Reports Terror
The US government may start issuing terror alerts using Facebook and Twitter.
Phishing Scams Dupe the Most Active Online Users
People who make a lot of online transactions, are popular online and who respond to most of the emails they receive are at the highest risk for being duped by malicious phishers, according to a multi-university study.
Contrasting the CFO-CIO Brain
Spivey and Karnes theorize that, for the most part, accountants fall into the "concrete sequential" category, with IT workers classified as "abstract random."
Taming the Long Arm of the Quake
Taiwanese PC makers recently announced that product prices would hold steady this year despite disruptions to raw material supplies after the massive Japan earthquake in March.
IBM’s Smallest, Fastest Graphene Processor
IBM recently demonstrated its fastest graphene transistor, which can execute 155 billion cycles per second—about 50 percent faster than previous experimental transistors shown by the company's researchers.
The Fine Art of Networking for Jobs
When you're looking for a job, meetings with contacts can help you uncover job opportunities.
By The Numbers: India Investing in Intelligence
Gartner’s annual global CIO survey reveals that revenue from the BI market in India is expected to increase by 16 percent from last year.
QUICK TAKE: Moving Your Core to the Cloud
Cloud Computing The recent trend of cloud-based ERP offerings from software vendors like Ramco Systems and more recently Microsoft, have begun to pique the interest of Indian CIOs. Sneha Jha spoke to M.K. Manavalan, DGM-technology, Sankara Nethralaya, to find out more about this emerging trend.
Voices: Do Security Vendor Breaches Bother You?
Few things have made more headlines this year than scams and breaches. But when security vendors themselves are under attack—like RSA and Barracuda were recently—it puts the security strategy of CIOs on the spot. Anup Varier asked your peers how these breaches affect their trust in security vendors, and how they plan to insulate themselves from such incidents. Here’s what they had to say:
Mentor
Everything-as-a-Service
There’s a chance for BPOs to use cloud computing to evolve to the next set of services: Business Process-as-a-Service.
Alert
Alert: Damage Control | How Deep Is Your Regret?
Exposing sensitive personal information means always having to say you’re sorry. But some people do it better than others. Here are four examples of data breaches and the resulting apologies. After each apology, a team from the Perfect Apology website ranks their apologies from one to 10.
Alert: Breach Notification: The Fatigue Sets In
Early last month, more than 50 companies were involved in a massive heist of names and e-mail addresses from Epsilon Interactive. With millions of customers of companies such as Best Buy, Brookestone, Dell, Marriott and many others affected, the question is: Are so many breach notifications from so many companies numbing their impact?
Essential Technology
Make Your CRM Shine
You'd kill to get some really good face time with the CEO. But when he wants CRM training, you get just five minutes to deliver value. Here’s how to make good of that time.
No Walk in the Cloud
CRM is one of the more popular enterprise choices when it comes to the cloud. But there are challenges of walking on thin air. Here’s what to watch out for.
