A few months ago a CIO twitted: "It's hard to be strategic with your pants on fire." Most CIOs will resonate with this phrase. CIOs are less strategic and more 'fire-fighters'. This is not a generic comment but based on facts and experience. Those CIOs who are moving out of technology manager's role, and taking up strategic position, are preparing for the long-term.  

There's a lot to learn from people around us. Today's blog is about a different kind of learning. Parvinder Singh, Corporate VP, Head IT Services and Technical Control at Max Life Insurance Company ran the full Mumbai Marathon and stood 162nd among the 4000 runners who completed it. He focused on the aim, gathered the strength and ran to complete it. Join me in congratulating his success which is inspiring for all of us.  

The introduction of the new year brings new challenges and new technologies to propel your business to the next level if used properly. Here is a list of enterprise software trends and technologies around ERP, mobile, big data, Cloud/SaaS and others. These predictions and trends should play out over the rest of the year not only within the enterprise space but mostly within the ERP software market. 

For most organizations, the capacity to take challenge related to IT transformation seems out of reach. Many Indian enterprises are still struggling to keep up with everyday operational challenges and nothing else takes priority. Mostly, the IT organizations are found in reactive mode to keep the infrastructure going. But is doing nothing about the future-readiness an option? 

In 2010 an IBM survey, with 1,500 CEOs worldwide, revealed a disconcerting hole that close to 80% of them believed their environment would grow much more complex in the near future, but less than half of them thought their companies were well equipped to deal with this paradigm shift. Now totally out of the hype and well within reach of the users, Cloud Computing is 'help at hand' for those who couldn't catch the bus early in transforming their IT delivery models.  

I want to share a story with you. Its a story about how an approach to "incentivizing" professionals turned a highly functioning team into a team focused on 'checking boxes' and functioning as a group of individuals rather than a team. This is a true story...and happens more than most of us really want to admit. 

The CIO role spans and must influence all parts of an organization without directly controlling them. Today's trends -- global, mobile, data-driven virtual business -- increase the stakes and make CIO influence not only important for the CIO's personal success but for the success of the company as well. There are two main trends that are driving a shift in power in IT. 

Indian CIOs are at the risk of losing business credibility if they do not improve their understanding of business technology (BT). This is the key finding from the Latest Report that John Brand and I just published. For this report, we surveyed 130 companies in India, using Forrester's BT Leadership Maturity Model.  

As environmental protection and sustainability issues top the agenda of many organizations today, there is a new designation in place - Chief Green Officer. The role involves systematically monitoring environmental impact on entire value chain, reducing carbon footprints, inducting clean technologies and bringing innovation into product design. This is besides creating awareness and offering sustainability experience to customers.  

At a time when good education comes with a hefty price tag and is confined within the premises of elite institutions, a handful of individuals are using the power of the Internet to take it beyond borders. A silent wave of democratization of education is sweeping the world, pulling down the social and economic barriers that restrain access to good education.