Science
Written by Alma Anonas-Carpio / Correspondent
Sunday, 11 January 2009 20:31

As the financial crunch is expected to continue to affect businesses’ corporate chief information officers (CIOs) face the challenge of fueling growth while scaling down information-technology (IT) costs, said a recent survey conducted by IDC, an information technology consultancy and research group.

IDC group vice president for Asia-Pacific systems, storage and software research Avneesh Saxena presented a study titled “Datacenter Transformation: Building a Dynamic IT,” which was commissioned by computer manufacturer IBM. It was conducted in November and covered 54 respondents from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand who hold upper-management IT executive roles from the banking, insurance, manufacturing, transportation and telecommunications industries, as well as from various government agencies.

Saxena noted that power consumption is one of the areas where CIOs may find opportunities for large cost savings, by streamlining data centers and unifying computer databases to maximize existing hardware and network capacity.

The IDC survey found that aligning IT with business goals is a priority for many businesses, followed by the need to revamp IT facilities to consume less power and occupy less space.

Saxena said aligning IT with business involved having CIOs and their personnel understand the rest of the business, as well as the IT aspect. “If you have a bank, the CIO is also a banker and is someone who understands how the business as a whole runs so that he can make the IT end responsive and useful to overall business operations.”

One of the leading IT issues raised by respondents includes building a green IT framework with lower carbon footprint, power consumption and heat emissions. Another area of concern for the respondents is outsourcing IT infrastructure or business processes to cut costs.

IBM IT strategy and architecture consulting leader for the Asia-Pacific region, Michael Shallcross, said the IDC survey results “point to the similar findings from IBM on the need to align IT with business goals, especially to the value of transforming datacenters today.”

“IDC believes that end-users who are looking to transform their data centers will have a more wholistic approach of not only making the facilities more efficient and cost-effective, but also integrating parts of the business in order to achieve total synergy,” Saxena said.

Respondents also noted that information, business processes, people and overall strategy and vision are areas that need more attention from CIOs.

* Published by BusinessMirror newspaper