DeltaSpike Global Services, one of the top in-international players in IT security, had their annual partner conference at a southern beach hotel recently. The conference was aimed at bringing their partners up to speed on the latest in cutting-edge security and data centre technology in cyber space.The conference touched on the theme “Stronger Together” and one of the technologies introduced was Algo-Sec, a perimeter security management system that could be managed and con-trolled at a fingertip.
Reliance on cloud-based services continues to increase with evolving IT environments.
While the overnight conference helped DeltaSpike Global Services to get their local partners accustomed to their newer products and services, serious discussions took place with regard to issues in the IT sector.“Whilst focusing very much on the products of DeltaSpike Global Services, we also created an atmosphere for discussions on a wider scale and we were very happy to note that there were many system integrators who openly discussed situations in a widely evolving market. The conference was largely representative of the whole Sri Lankan market as we had almost all the systems integrators in Sri Lanka in attendance,”says Director of DeltaSpike Global Services, Shihan Annon.
Top among the discussions was ‘cloud’ and as the dialogue continued, it was clear that piracy would no longer be an issue if cloud were to become a strong tool in data stage. The ever present question of the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) was also discussed.“The role of the CIO has become widely important today in comparison to a decade ago, where a CIO was there to only look after IT infrastructure. The role of the CIO in the region has started to move from a role of a mere technological role to a seat on the board where his opinions and input is vital to the strategic decision making of the organization. With the gradual move to the information era, the role of CIO is to co-relate the information, which is available within the organization, outside the organization and even in social media, and to process them to provide strategic background for CEOs.
Therefore, it is important to transform our business from being an IT infrastructure provider to be a solutions provider to enable our customers to “do better business,” by proving business“insights” using data models, so that companies can make intelligent decisions,” says Chief Operating Officer of N-able Imal Kalutotage. According to Director – Sales and Marketing of Softlogic Information Technologies (PVT) Ltd Sidantha Peiris, IT has become more than a cost center today. The role of a CIO is to ensure that IT plays a more strategic role, enabling the organization to make right decisions in a competitive field. Therefore, CIOs empower the organization by automating and establishing robust IT systems that provides the business users with tools to make important business decisions in order to be ahead of its competitors thus giving the company an edge in the respective industries they represent. This has compelled successful organizations to have productive CIOs who work closely with the top management and contributes directly to the strategic directions of their company. Unlike earlier, platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have become business tools surpassing their traditional role as social communication sites.
Therefore, most companies now hire social media advisers not only to collect data from these social media sites but also to process them to be used as productive inputs.“The importance of social media to the modern business world is no longer debated. Most of the blue chip organizations currently hire social media advisers. The power of social media is a well accepted norm through a business perspective and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are increasingly used in the business context. The immediate requirement involves the development and execution of proper systems and procedures to use social media to aid companies to reshape their business decisions,” says Chief Operating Officer, KBSL Information Technologies Limited Silmy Ahamed. With different mechanisms and new technologies coming into play such as cloud computing, big data and virtualization, the role and duties of a CIO has not only evolved to be more efficient but also to be more cost-effective, enabling companies to do more for less. The CIOs role has never been more important than now – its undergoing a paradigm shift with the tech savvy CIO enabled companies to use data more proficiently to maximize their business.