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Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Welcome to the Senate
Publication: Express Computer, Edition: National, Journalist: Varun Aggarwal, Page No: 25, Location: Fullpage
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Welcome to the Senate
Technology Senate 2008 attracted ClOs from across the nation for a series of interactive and exciting learning sessions, writes Varun Aggarwal
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data centers, application management, total IT out­sourcing and value-added services. The second major customer need is quick and quality management of downtime. He showed how Tulip could cater to both these needs.
The last session of the day was a round table panel discussion on Collaboration v 1.0 moderated by Sunil Chandiramani, Partner & National Director-Advisory Services, Ernst & Young.
The second day's sessions were laden with statistics. Ashit Panjwani, Director Marketing, SAS India, making a presentation on BI, shared the results of a survey that engaged participants from large enterprises: 44% of respondents claimed that other departments were not forthcoming with data, while 38% said that they were constricted in using data because they first needed to weed out duplicate information.
Ramesh Krishna, Senior Product Manager, Microsoft, made a presentation on 'Greenovation'. There were large financial gains to be had from making intelligent use of power-saving features that many vendors now provide. A study found that simply enabling the 'sleep state' of desktops helped the typical enterprise with 1,000 desktops save between Rs 28-38 lakhs per year. For those with a green bent of mind, the carbon dioxide reductions from such a step were the equivalent of tak­ing 100 cars off the road.
Other presentations included those on network imaging by Alok Bhardwaj, Sr VP, Canon India and S Gangopadhyay, Director BIS, Canon India, the effect of cloud computing on corporate IT by Akash Saraf, CEO, Zenith Infotech, a discussion on enterprise unified com­munications by Jason Anderson, Director, Astra and one on remote access by Souma Das, Area VP - India Sub Continent, Citrix Systems India.
The third day's sessions found the speakers present­ing their views on the current trends in IT space and what needs to be done to ensure that an IT infrastruc­ture is sufficiently robust. Moorthy K. Uppaluri, GM-Developer and Platform Evangelism, Microsoft India talked about the footprint of a successful global IT set­up, emphasizing upon five strategic focus areas, which CIOs should focus on and the drivers that would trans­form the IT landscape.
Sharing his thoughts, R Vasudevan, VP-Enterprise Solutions, Emerson India talked about the role of a CIO in today's business, both as a technology as well as a business enabler. He also pointed out the current server trends, wherein the blade server is poised to grow at a CAGR of 54% during 2004-09. In 2009, blade servers are expected to account for over 30% of the overall server market. As for data centers, he explained that 56% of these were built during 2000-06 and 68% are either expanding or consolidating. Meanwhile, 96% of data centers will run out of capacity by 2011.

Other presentations included those on the shifting the role of CIO by Digvijay Singh Chudasama, VP -Sales, Cyberoam; enterprise data protection by Sanjit Shah, Director - Worldwide Business Development, PGP; a presentation on protecting vital information by Captain Raghu Raman, CEO, Mahindra SSG; the impor­tance of going green by Yugal Sharma, Regional Director - India and SAARC, Polycom; and on the new approach to SOA by Deekshith Khandavalli, Sr Business Consultant, Infor.

varun.aggarwal@expressindia.com

T he sixth iteration of Technology Senate was held at the Dhow Palace hotel in Dubai. CIOs from across the country gathered at the event to update their knowledge about technology and at the same time kick back and relax in the exotic city of Dubai.
The event began with a welcome speech from N P Singh, Director-Corporate, The Express Group. In the first session of the three-day event, Krish Sridhar, Executive Senior Vice President, Reliance Communications, Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, talked about delivering tangible business benefits via telecom infrastructure for large companies. He highlighted how a CIO works, trying to innovate irrespective of external disturbances like inflation.
Next up was an interactive session by Sanjay Deshmukh, Country Manager, Business Objects. He highlighted the importance of integrating of strategic initiatives and the execution process using the right business intelligence solution. Then there was a session focused on enterprise security wherein Sanjay Bahl, Chief Security Officer, Microsoft shared his company's security and privacy strategy. He urged the need of focusing on application-level security as applications, rather than operating systems, are a significant target for security researchers or hackers.
The next session was presented by Lt. Col. (Retd.) H.S. Bedi, VSM CMD, Tulip Telecom. He laid his focus on two major customer needs, viz., a single point of contact for all data needs to minimize conflicts and maximize ownership, which would include bandwidth requirement, network integration, managed services,