A few years ago, organizations were busy deploying individual applications
for individual needs, with great pomp and show. Now, those same applications
have become a nightmare to manage, because employees have to toil with hunting
for information through multiple interfaces. End result-lower productivity per
employee. However, the positive side is that there are enough solutions
available that provide a standards based single sign-on solution to all
applications.
A few years ago, companies were deploying lots of hardware to cater to the
individual applications that were installed. Suddenly, power and equipment
management become big issues, because there's so much equipment in your data
center and it's really consuming a lot of power. End result-you can't add more
equipment to your data center, even if your organization has a dire need for it.
The good news is that most of the IT equipment available today is designed
keeping the power efficiency in mind.
A few years ago, many organizations were comfortable running their business
on spreadsheets and individual accounting packages. Suddenly the economy is
booming, and those same companies are seeing growing customer demands and
exponential growth. As a result, their existing systems are not able to handle
the load. End Result-loss of business because of slow and un-integrated systems.
The good news is that ERP solutions have become more affordable, and deploying
them takes months instead of years.
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Anil Chopra, Editor |
The key observation here is that today, IT has taken a different turn
altogether. The same IT that we were busy implementing feverishly a few years
ago, has become a monster to manage today. That's why, your concentration is now
split between managing a mammoth infrastructure and thinking ahead for it. That
requires some careful planning, creative thinking, and strong execution. In
essence, you need excellent project management skills to be able to straddle
both boats. Another key skill required here is forward thinking. We know all the
hot buzzwords in the market today. Keep a close track of them and ensure that
you're not left behind when those buzzwords become the most popular
technologies. Ensure that you follow standards as much as possible.
To help you with this monumental task of taking your IT infrastructure
forward, in this very special issue, we've compiled for you more than 160 IT
projects of various kinds and from just about every industry. These have been
presented in a very crisp, concise and well-indexed format, so that you can
quickly browse through them and gain the maximum information. Plus, we've taken
advice of some leading implementation partners, looked at some hot trends
happening in IT deployments around the country, and a few favorite products and
technologies of CIOs.