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“Whilst focusing very much on the products of EGUARDIAN, we also created an atmosphere for discussions on a wider scale and we were very happy to note that there were many system integrators who openly discussed situations in a widely evolving market. The conference was largely representative of the whole Sri Lankan market as we had all most all the systems integrators in Sri Lanka in attendance,” says Shihan Annon, Director of EGUARDIAN Sri Lanka.
Top amongst discussions was ‘cloud’ and as the dialogue continued, it was clear that piracy would no longer be an issue if cloud were to become a strong tool in data management. With cloud coming in to centre stage, the ever present question of the role of the CIO was also discussed.
“The role of the CIO has become widely important today in comparison to a decade ago, where a CIO was there to only look after IT infrastructure. The role of the CIO in the region has started to move from a role of a mere technological role to a seat on the board where his opinions and input is vital to the strategic decision making of the organization. With the gradual move to the information era, the role of the CIO is to co-relate the information, which is available within the organisation, outside the organisation and information even in the social media and to process them to provide strategic background for CEOs. Therefore it is important to transform our business from being an IT infrastructure provider to be a solutions provider to enable our customers to ‘do better business’ , by proving business ‘insights’ using data models, so that companies can make intelligent decisions,” said Imal Kalutotage, Chief Operating Officer of N-able.
According to Sidantha Peeris, Director - Sales and Marketing of Softlogic Information Technologies Ltd., today IT has become more than a cost centre. The role of a CIO is to ensure that IT plays a more strategic role, enabling the organisation to make right decisions in a competitive field. Therefore CIOs empower the organisation by automating and establishing robust IT systems that provides the business users with tools to make important business decisions in order to be ahead of its competitors thus giving the company an edge in the respective industries they represent. This has compelled successful organisations to have productive CIOs who closely work with the top management and contributes directly to the strategic directions of their company.
Unlike earlier, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have become business tools surpassing their traditional role as social communication sites. Therefore most companies now hire social media advisors not only to collect data from these social media sites but also to process them to be used as productive inputs.
“The importance of social media to the modern business world is no longer debated. Most of the blue chip organisations currently hire social media advisors. The power of social media is a well-accepted norm through a business perspective and social networks such as a Facebook and Twitter are increasingly used in the business context. The immediate requirement involves the development and execution of proper systems and procedures to use social media to aid companies to reshape their business decisions,” said Silmy Ahamed, Chief Operating Officer, KBSL Information Technologies Ltd.
With different mechanisms and new technologies coming in to play such as cloud computing, big data and virtualization, the role and duties of a CIO has not only evolved to be more efficient but also to be more cost effective, enabling companies to do more for less. The CIO’s role has never been more important than now, it’s going through a paradigm shift with the tech savvy CIO enabling companies to use data more proficiently to maximise their business.
