CIO success keys unveiled at a ‘Great Debate’ conference
By Ross O. Storey
17 Mar 2009
One of the many things that I love about my job is attending roundtable discussions, seminars and conferences relating to information technology, because I always learn something new from the usually very-clever people who present at these events.
For the very first time, CIO Asia magazine this year held its annual conference in Kuala Lumpur, with the Singapore version to be held this week, on Wednesday, 18 March 2009.
The KL event had the theme ‘Enterprise Executive teamwork for Efficiency and Profit’ and, true to form, there were some very interesting speakers with valuable information for senior IT executives. Our thanks go to CommScope, NetApp, QlikView and Sophos who were the key sponsors. Thanks too, to EGUARDIAN for the delicious lunch.
Stand-out quotes
Checking my notes after the event, some of the stand-out quotes that caught my intention included the presentation by Stan Singh-Jit, senior vice president, IT, with MUI dotcom and a councilor of PIKOM, Malaysia’s government IT body.
“You have to behave as if you own the business and it is your own money,” said Singh-Jit, who spoke on the vital importance of executive communication for enterprise success. Singh-Jit was also the captain of the YES team, for the conference’s inaugural ‘Great Debate’ which argued the proposition that ‘CIOs have very effectively explained, to their enterprise executives, the business value and competitive advantage offered by information technology’. The captain of the NO team was Bobby Varanasi, the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) Malaysia chapter head and CEO of Matryzel Consulting.
An entertaining insight
Adjudicated by Subrato Basu, vice president, executive programs, Asia Pacific, for Gartner, the first ‘Great Debate’ provided an entertaining insight into the thinking of the current IT industry. Delegates voted on the result, and, perhaps as no surprise, the YES team was victorious. You can find out more about the ‘Great Debate” here.
James Young, technical director, Asia Pacific, with CommScope’s enterprise solutions division, gave a presentation on optimising your network infrastructure, predicting that the number of transistors per computer chip doubles every two years and warning that cabling infrastructure should support at least two generations of equipment. Young warned that ‘re-cabling once in 10 years doubles your carbon footprint’, and ‘re-cabling twice in 10 years, triples your carbon footprint’.
A single version of the truth
‘Business intelligence provides a single version of the truth for everyone,” Jason Bissell, managing director, Asia Pacific for QlikView, told the conference.” The aim is to enable people to be empowered and to simplify analysis (of business metrics) for everyone.” Bissell said QlikView’s systems enabled him to know that they attracted 14.5 new customers every day.
Andy Woo, regional channel manager, ASEAN, for Sophos, gave a presentation entitled ‘Think Your Are Protected? Think Again’ in which he said that 19,200 websites are infected with malware everyday, about one every 4.5 seconds. He painted a scary picture of a world of malware, Trojans and malicious code enabling SQL injection and invisible downloads.
Woo said sending infected attachments was no longer a popular tactic, because everybody now knows the dangers of opening these; the risk through e-mail is now clicking on links, which can generate a chain of events, including phantom downloads, that result in your bank account being depleted.
Sometimes I wonder why more senior IT executives don’t take up the opportunity to attend such informative and valuable conferences, because there is always practical and targeted advice that can improve any company’s business performance.
Ross O. Storey, currently the Managing Editor of Fairfax Business Media Asia, is responsible for the editorial content and production of MIS Asia, CIO Asia, Computerworld Singapore and Computerworld Malaysia magazines.
