Enterprises are now facing a new reality where traditional work practices are being challenged. Organisations are looking to address business complexities and identify new patterns in consumer behaviour to survive and evolve. CIOs must leverage cutting-edge technology solutions to tackle these challenges and create new opportunities for business in a post-pandemic world.
Recently, Cloud4C and Intel jointly hosted Global CIO Leadership Conclave “Future of Technology: Beyond Covid-19,” a platform for the domain experts, innovators and leading industry CIOs. The conclave focused on how to harness secure and scalable cloud solutions to tide over disruption and create future-ready enterprises.
The discussion was led industry leaders like Balaji Rajagopalan, Technology Head – CoreBanking, Digital services, Trade & Intelligent Automation, ICICI Bank; Richard Curran, Chief Security Officer, Global Cloud, Enterprise and Government Group Sales, Intel Corporation; Samuel Varghese, Vice President Marketing- Global (CtrlS and Cloud4C); Saumer Phukan, Director Sales, India Key Accounts, Intel Corporation; Mike Loginov, CISO & CPO, NEOM and John Gonzales, VP & Head, Enterprise Digital Solutions, PLDT. The discussion moderated by B S Rao, Vice President Marketing, CtrlS Datacenters.
Future of technology
B S Rao kick-started the virtual conclave by sharing his views on the future of technology in various industries, from the manufacturing sector, where the robots will be managing the automotive processes by themselves to AI powered medical care, AI based diagnostics and VR based doctor consultation in the healthcare sector. From the use of robotics and AI bases tools for agriculture to the use of drones over the construction sites for video surveillance or industrial inspections and experiencing virtual reality at a museum, while AI driven robotic processes will aid banking, insurance and retail sectors.
Further Rao spoke about the role of technology in the boardrooms. Predictive and prescriptive analytics for informed decision making or deploy robotic process automation for AI enabled decision making.
Rao quoted Satya Nadella, Microsoft, “Two years worth of digital transformation is happening in two months.” Hence, innovation is the key driver for the future of technology. Prioritising innovation today is the key to unlocking post crisis growth. About 90 per cent believe that the Covid-19 crisis will fundamentally change the way they do business over the next five years.
CIO mindset: The future Chief Information Officer has to be a strategist and should evolve to ‘Chief Information Strategy Officer’, focusing on enabling business strategies through information technology.
Decision makers have to be flexible and adaptable in making business decisions around initiating the progress in moving forward.
“We have automated our processes, we’ve had 30 per cent of product enhancement and 50 per cent of outage reduction. We offer multi cloud management services- hyper cloud management portal and platform based managed services,” Rao added.
Richard Curran said CIOs will have to transform themselves into business leaders and strategists as they impact all aspects of the company.
CIO roadmap to be future ready
B.S.Rao recommended the CIOs to go by a 5-Step methodology for CIOs to be future ready. To begin with he suggested that CIOs must align with the goals and objectives of the organization, work closely with the strategy team of the organization to align the IT strategies with that of the organization. Get the buy-in of the board and lines of businesses for the laid down IT strategy for the future. Additionally, Rao suggested that the IT department and its people should be re-skilled for the future, CIO should allocate both time and funds to re-skill the teams, help them acquire news skills to work on new technologies that will shape the future of their organization. “Change in CIO mind-set – that of spending 80% of their time in IT operations and 20% in IT strategy should shift to 80% in IT strategy and 20% in IT operations will help CIOs transform guide the organization to be Future Ready”.
Data led decision making
Curran stated, “In the last two years the amount of data generated is equal to the total amount of data ever been generated, however we have only utilised 2 per cent of that data. So the opportunity to analyse and make better decision making around the data is fundamental. Technology companies working with the partners need to drive better capabilities to allow companies to make better decision making.”
By 2024, digitally advanced organisations will remove the vault guards, and create an in-housed environment rather than a capex orientation. The organisations will have to consider the cloud economics, the multi cloud strategy and be more flexible.
“We are enabling access to healthcare with the maximum data, to offer them better decision making. So at the research level, we are looking at the genomics based analysis to identify the potential cures. Also the opportunity for advanced medicines is also going to be profound,” Curran added.
As there is an increase in cyber crime, Curran shared his perspective around Business Resilience. With the ability to share information, at the same time keep the PPI, applications and IPs secure is fundamental. Hence, security and privacy are going to evolve to ensure the regulation doesn’t deplete the innovation advancement of the technology.
Saumer Phukan spoke about the responsible piece associated with technologies. Phukan said that they are developing a secondary substation platform for technology to address the power and energy consumption. Enabling the healthcare sector with telemedicine and robots to reduce the physical contact between the doctors and patients, during Covid crisis.
Mike Loginov said, “NEOM will pioneer a new relationship between humans and machines. By 2030 robots will constitute nearly 15 per cent of NEOM’s population, the largest robot community in the world.”
While concluding the discussion, Curran affirmed that CIOs need to understand the ways echnology can add values to the company, rather than just a tool. CIOs also need to identify their skills and understand from the financial perspective to improve the top line.