Technology Senate 2005

Network, Network, Network

Kusum Makhija on the highlights of Technology Senate 2005.

Technology Senate, the annual event hosted jointly by Express Computer and Network Magazine, was held in Bangkok, Thailand this year, and saw the number of participants double from last year when the event was held in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The event was attended by top-notch CIOs/CTOs and IT heads of the country from large as well as emerging businesses. The annual IT conclave saw 400 CIOs from across the country.

TS 2005 was special in more ways than one. The scale of the event this time for one was much larger than it has been on the previous two occasions [Sri Lanka in 2004 and Kochi in 2003]. The event went a step ahead by bringing to the table the best in the industry and dividing the event into two categories—large enterprises and small and medium businesses.

Sessions and tracks

Leading IT vendors across domains presented six sessions and nine fast tracks over the three days—the sessions for both the industry segments were held separately, running to packed houses.

Gartner Asia Pacific Vice-president, Mark Hollands set the stage by spelling out strategies large enterprises need to follow and the need to streamline and consolidate storage resources. Gartner’s prescription was elaborated by IBM’s presentation on the need and benefits of storage consolidation and storage virtualisation. The presentation talked about challenges businesses are facing today and business drivers of storage consolidation and storage virtualisation. The second session was on smarter document strategy. Janaki Narasimhan, VP, Hexaware Technologies gave a CIO’s perspective on implementing a successful document management strategy with optimum cost benefits later in the day, coupled with sessions from Xerox.

The fast tracks on enterprise bandwidth management, network-sharing applications, video conferencing and business continuity gave capsuled yet power-packed information for the CIOs.

SMB CIOs, on the first day, got insights into change management and enterprise mobility. James Hansely, CTO and VP Solutions, Avaya Asia Pacific spoke about the various trends in the enterprise mobility space. Parijat Chakraborty, Senior Manager, User and Communication Research, IDC India pitched in with the analyst’s side of the story.

The second day saw Amit Sinha, Director Marketing, Avaya Global Connect speak on intelligent communications followed by a presentation by Sunil Chandiramani of Ernst & Young on IT in corporate governance. Meanwhile, SMB CIOs were presented with strategies to build an intelligent IT infrastructure by HP and an effective desktop management strategy by Novell and Hughes Escort Communications.

Business intelligence and its opportunities were highlighted by SAS followed by Symantec on building a resilient enterprise and the need to maintain uptime at data centres by Emerson Network Power.

Security was the buzzword for the second half with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Microsoft chipping in with secure infrastructure strategies. The fast tracks on identity management and 64–bit computing for enterprises were quick and crisp too.

The panel discussions on outsourcing of managed services for the large enterprise CIOs and desktop server storage issues for the SMB CIOs invited many thought-provoking issues that CIOs have to grapple with on a daily basis.

The concluding day of the event focussed on best IT infrastructure management practices with Hindustan Lever (HLL) sharing its experiences mingled with solutions approach taken by HP.

In the large enterprises sessions, the tracks on IT service management was addressed in detail by respective presenters. Right from Gartner analysts and vendors, the stress was on effective IT infrastructure management that can eventually lead to a situation wherein ‘adaptive enterprise’ becomes the name of the game.

Upcoming technologies like 10-Gigabit Ethernet and protecting data in case of a mobile workforce were discussed. Other topics like identity management and 64-bit computing for the enterprise were explored in detail.

Among the emerging enterprise segment, the presentations that saw the most participation were document management and data transformation ecosystem by Canon, differentiating the IT business infrastructure by Apara and optimising battery usage by Amara Raja Batteries.

Som Gangopadhyay, Senior Marketing Manager, Canon India stressed on the need for a document management system to overcome the information deluge that has become a major issue in most companies.

Analysts’ perspectives made TS 2005 special. Whether it was Gartner, PwC or IDC, the CIOs had their share of interactions with them discussing business strategies. Senior speakers such as Bob Hayward and Andrew Rowsell-Jones from Gartner spoke on issues like infrastructure management and IT governance.

If you thought that all work and no play would make CIOs dull boys, an evening of fun and excitement was in store for them with the Intelligent Enterprise Awards interspersed with dance and drama performances from the Land of Smiles.

It was crucial to give some break to participants who were attending back-to-back sessions. In parallel with the sessions were theme pavilions that showcased technology that vendors expect will soon change the market. At each pavilion, the passport had to be stamped. At the end of the event, valid passports, which had all the stamps and feedback, were collected and a lucky draw was held.

The high point of the three-day event was a cruise party on the Chao Phraya river flowing across the city of Bangkok. CIOs had a good time letting their hair down after days of technology sessions.

To recognise talent

TS took the opportunity to honour the CIOs/CTOs and IT heads who have played a key role in technology deployment. SecureSynergy sponsored Security Strategist Awards and was given for the best security implementation. SAS sponsored the Intelligent Enterprise Awards while the Uptime Champion recognitions were sponsored by Emerson.