This time, we received 200 IT project nominations for the PCQuest Best IT
Implementation Awards, which have been presented as the cover story. While you
go through the projects at your own leisure, I wanted to spend some time and
bring out my key observations from these IT projects.
My first observation is that most Indian enterprises are gearing up their IT
infrastructure for growth. This is a good sign and a clear indicator that the
market is getting back on its growth trajectory. For some industries of course,
such as automotive, telecom, and insurance, the problem is reverse. They've
achieved stupendous growth during the slowdown, and are now under pressure to
leverage IT to sustain it.
The second observation is that most organizations are moving toward a
centralized IT infrastructure instead of a de-centralized one. The reasons are
simple. A de-centralized IT infrastructure requires more manpower to manage.
There are security issues, and problems related to enhancing them, like adding
new features, deploying new applications, etc. A centralized infrastructure
alleviates all these problems, and helps save a lot of cost. So if you haven't
yet centralized your IT infrastructure, then this is the right time to do so.
The other aspect of centralization is consolidation. Once you've moved all your
servers into a single data center, then you need to consolidate them further so
that you don't end up managing a server sprawl. Hence technologies like
virtualization become important.
The next observation is to integrate. You might have lots of business
applications, viz. ERP, CRM, SCM, etc, but if they don't talk to each other,
then you're in for trouble. You'll be slow to respond to customers because it
would take forever to pull out the right data. It would require an exercise to
clean up all the data, remove all the data silos, and make sure it's easily
accessible.
Another observation was that despite having so many business applications,
organizations were still following manual processes. The solution is of course
to automate them, which can either be done by adding more modules to your
existing business application or putting in a completely separate solution. We
found organizations doing both.
The point here is that there are so many new technologies that have emerged,
which could really help you leverage the economic recovery. But if your IT
infrastructure isn't ready to adopt them, you'll be left behind.
Anil Chopra, Editor
anilc@cybermedia.co.in