Is it time to understand a Smart Transformation?

Perhaps, traditionally, IT penetration and its uses in the Real Estate / ECO companies, at least, in India continues to be underutilized and even if they have deployed the technologies then the technologies continue to work in silos and independent of each other.

For example, the engineering department designs and undertakes structural analysis, the outcome of their activities is CAD drawings which are in paper form. Now, at times, when you construct there are changes that need to be incorporated in the design resulting in communication and a lot of to and fro between the parties involved - architects, contractors, sub contractors and the material suppliers. Many a times, updated and revised CAD drawings are not available at the site thus resulting wastage, delays in delivery, cost overruns and most importantly, customer dissatisfaction.

It maybe argued that today, in India, there are many an ERP implementations in Real Estate / ECO companies and it very true that these implementations have played rich dividends to the companies in form of streamlining and effective transaction capture and structured data flow.

But now, with changing times, Real Estate / ECO companies in India need to look at the next step - transformation of their business and value extraction from existing enterprise data available in the advent of the SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analysis and Cloud) technologies.

Well... the transformation has to be - internal and also in the way customer interactions take place.

One approach to the transformation could be - implementing a "project centered approach", a "centralized platform" with mobile computing. The silos need to be broke down. There is a need to shift to a "project centered" approach and a need to collaborate in real-time... a need to bring together the silios - design, structural analysis and clash detection, energy analysis etc. on a common platform wherein they all see how the project unfolds itself and most importantly all see the "same" picture.

In a real-time "collaborative" environment on a "centralized" platform, the teams need to work together efficiently and need to be able to share data across computing devices - be it a desktop or laptop or a mobile device. This is where cloud computing can help wherein - the rendering, various anaylsis can be undertaken anytime, anywhere; the project plans are updated instantly using mobile devices... this is where one could combine CAD design and BIM and extend it to the project team.

And then apart from the traditional ERP solutions automating the transaction trail, there are in-memory computing solutions that can help Real Estate / ECO companies improve their bottonline through:

• analysing project variance data for a better understanding and early identification of possible cost overruns
• linking the Construction Operations & Finance for a project performance analysis
• streamlining design to have better pipeline visibility

The need for transformation further becomes importantly because the customer is changing and the customer expectations are changing too. For example, today, we are seeing the real estate buying going through a change with "disruption" as the main name of the game. today, there are housing projects been sold "online",  there have been tie-ups with the traditional e-commerce companies and portals to sell property, "online property fairs" and "online offers" on property sales.

I believe in the next 2 or 3 years the "real estate agent" will have no role at all, the middle-man will have to go, customers will want to look at available properties in the comfort of their homes - online (which they can do today too) but through a virtual reality (VRC) headgear, maybe they may want a virtual reality (VR) walk-through or perhaps choose a virtual agent to take them through the project details and its features; further they may want to visualize how their existing furniture and other stuff will look into the new space, may want to add their bit of customizations to the new space. All of this even before they decide to buy the home.

Works and projects are been developed wherein an intelligent machine program (of course, with explicit permissions) could track the customers movements, learn from preferences based on likes and dislikes to intelligently suggest the possible dream homes that one could take a look at.

In the post decision "to buy" stage, if the customer is seeking a home loan, the customer may want the real estate company to line a virtual interview. Alternatively, there could be a linking of the customer's income tax account and PAN details with the Banking Loan Approval department to give instantaneous loan approvals and sanctions. Also, given the Governmental initiatives on e-enabling of services, there could be a portal that will accept online property registration and documentation. Now, the real estate company needs to ready for such "disruptive" initiatives such may not be within the scope of the working of the Real Estate / ECO companies but could impact their operations and functioning.

And then there is the the safety aspect of the home - everybody wants to ensure safety of their dream home, their family and the furniture and all the stuff in the home. So, here come in technologies around the concept of "smart connected homes" and stuff like - automatic door locking and unlocking, motion sensors, voice activated appliances, smart energy switches and smart lights and bulbs etc. Though today, Real Estate / ECO companies charge a premium price for such amenities but days are not too far away in the future when customers will demand this as a "given" as part of their dream home. 

So.... if the world is changing and if the customer expectations are changing, the question is - Is it time for you to undertake a Smart Transformation of your Engineering, Construction, Operations activities or risk your business by waiting for others to be the first initiators of the change and lose?

Your Answer is....????

Smart Infrastructure Services - Second Step to a Smart City

Let us assume the city planners have used the necessary digital tools to look at the "big picture" and there are smart building owners and smart facilities operators who have implemented a Building Automation System (BAS). This will take care of the planning and some aspects of the management pieces of Smart Cities and Smart Buildings. Furthermore, also let us assume that, perhaps, to ensure uniformity and consistency in the approach to planning a "Smart City" the city authorities and planners have also considered and made it a mandatory requirement for digitized filing of all building construction plans for all statutory governmental approvals and for the subsequent maintenance of buildings constructed.

However, this could only be the first step... A Smart City needs to have more...a Smart City needs "Smart Infrastructure Services" in form of - "Smart Energy", "Smart Water Management", "Smart Transportation".

When we talk about "Smart Infrastructure" what we are really talking about is the deployment of smart solutions through use of technologies such as - cloud computing, analytics and sensors in a way to be able to detect wastage and "leaks". It is about been able to visualize the issues and then to be able to proactively act to correct the same, thus conserve the resource and ensure sustainability.

For example, using smart meters and sensors by the water or electricity distribution companies in a city, one would be able to understand and analyze the losses in the distribution system and then correct it to save and conserve the water or electricity resources. Furthermore, I believe it can also throw up interesting statistics such as - the volume of water demand or the electricity consumption pattern and can also facilitate things like - leak identification, leak prevention, grid performance optimization, prevent outrages, restore outages faster, time-based billing to the consumer and facilitate better planning. Also, the fact that the data is made available in real-time to the consumer, the consumer can now be proactively involved and educated about his / her individual consumption patterns of water and electricity and further incentivized for its conservation.

It all sounds very simple and easy and there is huge potential but the challenge is finding the right business model. As such there could be four business models through companies can engage and work with along with city authorities and utility companies: Build Own Operate (BOO), Build Operate Transfer (BOT), Build Operate Manage (BOM) and Open Business Model (OBM).

Also, it is foreseen that participants to the creation of the "smart Infrastructure" will primarily operate in one of the following roles: - integrators (the end-to-end service provider); or network operators (the M2M and connectivity providers); or product vendors (hardware and asset providers); or managed service providers (third-party providers overseeing management / operation of smart solutions / services).

I believe that the business models and the necessary ecosystem will evolve over a period of time, but are an absolute necessity if India has to achieve its objective of creation of 100 Smart Cities.

Smart Buildings - First Step to Smart Cities

A Smart City needs - Smart Buildings, Smart Service Providers, Smart Electricity Meters, Smart Water Meters, Smart Traffic and Road Safety Management, Smart Waste Management, Smart Security...

Now, the challenge is - existing cities and new and upcoming ones. Well... it would be relatively easier to incorporate everything "smart" in a new city but what do we do about the existing cities. The question is - How do we connect and bring in all the diverse and proprietary systems be it the heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), the lighting, power, plumbing and water, if ONLY they are always deployed in a building. Well... the solution is simple - Building Automation System (BAS).

If a BAS is not deployed in a commercial and / or industrial building then there is a need to deploy that in the first instance and to be "smart building owners" and "smart facilities operators". Now, in the event, the building owners and /or facilities operators have been "smart" and have an existing BAS deployed then there is need to protect that investment and keep capital expenditure (CAPEX) to minimal.

The point to be noted herein is - A standard BAS has its own limitations and can normally manage and maintain individual systems but may not be really able to interlink between systems and hence not able to leverage the BAS infrastructure to report a status change in one system. For example, a standard BAS may not be really able to modify the operations of a lighting system or a HVAC unit based and thus optimize energy usage and consumption based on the say the number of people in an office or a commercial building.

To be truly "smart", we need a modern BAS with basic requirements that include:

• Device-to-Device Connectivity and Data Exchange
• Remote Manageability
• High Reliability
• End-to-end Hardware and Software Security

The Solution, perhaps, is - to look at Internet of Things (IoT) and incorporate a BAS Gateway that supports multi-communication protocols to provide connectivity between the device networks and the backend infrastructure network to the existing BAS. Furthermore, the BAS Gateway also needs to have a monitoring framework which is cost-effective.

Today, BAS gateways are available that can connect to various sensors say - a Smart Parking sensor, Office Air Quality sensor, Environment sensor (checks on the CO2 levels, temperature, humidity, etc.), Energy Management sensor, etc. all over a wireless (WiFi) network to the existing BAS. Once deployed, these sensors can and will help measure and realize energy and cost savings over the lifetimes of buildings.

The benefit for us in India today, is that we do not have too much automation in our buildings and building processes, so we can actually jump-start couple of steps on our journey and dream to create "Smart Cities". It very much possible to "convert" existing buildings into "Smart Buildings" and "build" new "Smart Buildings" using Internet of Things (IoT).

Smart Buildings is the First Step to A Smart City!!

Sorry... was away from blogging for a little more than a year now... but was busy...

It is been quite sometime since we have been touch and just thought of sharing a quick update with you.

Last week, I have been selected to the Core Team, and will be on the "Future of the CIO Role" Working Committee and also a member of the Working Committee Group on the Special Interest Group "Defining the CIO" at CIO Index (http://www.cioindex.com). CIO Index is the World's Largest Professional Community for Chief Information Officers and Technology Executives with over 60,000 members.

I was invited to and participated on a series of six CIO panel discussions in January 2014 to be webcasted soon to the CIO Community on efficient, future-ready and environmentally friendly data centres in association with the "CIO Magazine" and "Schneider Electric".

In December 2014, I was nominated to be possibly selected amongst the TOP 50 CIOs for the honour of "India's Best CIOs - 2014".

I was invited to be on the selection panel at "Welingakar Institute of Management", Mumbai, India for evaluating aspirants to the fulltime programs at the WeSchool in April 2014. The programs included were : 

• PGDM / PGDM e-biz / PGDM Business Design

• PGDM Retail / PGDM Healthcare / PGDM Rural & Emerging Markets

• PGDM Executive

I have been a member of the "IM Advisory Council" by S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai, India for the last 2 years running. The IM Advisory Council is responsible to review the course curriculum of one year and two year management courses in Information Management and recommend and suggest changes to the curriculum to align it to industry requirements.

In September 2013, I was nominated to the Expert Committee on Electronics, Telecommunications & Information Technology (ET&T) at the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI). Established in 1836, the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry is one of the oldest Chambers in India with an illustrious history of 178 years. The Chamber has over 4500 members from large, medium and small companies. Members of the Chamber contribute to almost 25% GDP of the country.

Smart Cities - Do you have the Big Picture?

Of late, there is a lot of talk of Smart Cities, Smart Communities, Smart Everything and the use of Internet of Things (IoT) in India. Most infrastructure developers, builders have projects announced which are smart.... from smart townships to smart buildings etc... Smart is the newest buzzword...

"Smart" is really not about just putting and integrating a few electronic tweeks and teasers in a residence or commercial building... Smart is integrating technology and technological tools in all aspects of planning, designing, construction and maintenance management of the constructed structure... Yup.. one can argue, of course technological tools are currently also been used in the designing aspect at least... but then there is need to an integrated approach... need for bringing all of it under roof and seeing the Big Picture as it will ultimately span out to be... In the long run, it really would be very beneficial commercially too...

Also many a times, when it comes to Smart Townships, there is a wanting need - to start at a very fundamental level of Town Planning and putting in a complete blueprint demarcating and plotting as to where the residential area, business area, roads and bylanes, railway connectivity, inter city metro / monorail connectivity are been proposed and integrated in the blueprint; how utilities, service providers, waste management, etc about be facilitated in the entire Smart City beforehand; in short there is need for a Master Town Plan and then on this Master Town Plan there is a need to in fact do capacity planning for the present and the future needs of the Smart City. When the Smart City is designed and laid out, there is a need to doadvanced planning optimization to ensure that the Smart City does not start decaying the moment the so called well laid Town plans are put in place.

So... in smart townships / cities if we do not have a Master Town Plan with all its planning and visualization (of course, there are technological tools that can facilitate that) then what we would be doing and really would end up is creating a receipt for disaster. Most of the time infrastructure companies have the land banks, they have the resources, but no Master Plan... they built as the need be and built as they think appropriate and that is what can spell disaster.

A Smart City needs - Smart Buildings, Smart Service Providers, Smart Electricity Meters, Smart Water Meters, Smart Traffic and Road Safety Management, Smart Waste Management, Smart Security...

Having said all this, the best part is in the execution... that is a very very critical piece of the success story!!

Are you an IT Savvy Business Leader?

Most of the time we hear of Business Savvy CIOs and there is much written about how and what a CIO should do to understand the business needs and how much the CIO align IT to business needs. There is much discussion on how a CIO should run "IT as a business".

But have we ever heard of there is need to a "IT Savvy Business Leader"? Perhaps not, because a IT Savvy Business Leader is a rare commodity. Of course, Business Leaders / CEOs are primarily responsible for business strategy and business growth... why should they bother about IT? What do they gain from being IT Savvy?

Well... firstly let us attempt to define what is a "IT Savvy Business Leader"? There is no definition in technical terms but in a very broad sense it means - a business leader who communicates the organization vision which affords and defines a central role to leveraging IT for value creation; business leaders who engage themselves in strategic IT decisions and who insist that their top management does as well. IT Savvy Business Leaders construct an equal partnership between business and IT and through such a partnership achieve superior results for themselves, their team and the organization.

It is important to realize that most of the time the blame for deficiencies for leveraging IT investments is on the CIO, but I believe that the business people should be equally blamed for their failure in their role to own and to extract value from IT investments and leverage technology. I have seen business people discounting and disowning IT systems and procedures even before the blueprint is put down on paper and before it is approved by the senior management / board; I have seen business people forming their perspectives around technology beforehand itself. I believe that such a lack of IT Savvy Business people leads to underperforming IT assets.

In fact, there needs to be a realization and acceptance to the fact that in the last three decades, IT have moved from being the back-office function to a front-office function, from the bottom level of the firm (remember, the good old "EDP" days) to the board of directors and from physically massive objects to small-form devices with enormous power that can be carried around in a pocket  and can extend and connect you to anyone, anyplace, anytime and anywhere in a matter of split second. Today's integrated and global platforms have the ability and capability to run complex processes and are in contrast to the stand-alone systems with limited functionality.

Because of the above, business leaders get drawn into decisions that were purely considered technical in nature. Irrespective of their understanding on technology, today, business leaders have to think and expand their business horizons to include decision-making on IT investments. With the advent of evolution in technology and its new forms and opportunities - Cloud Computing, Mobility, Social media and Big Data, the "Business-IT relationship" has been undergoing a change and business leaders have to take the same into account and factor it in their decision making processes. There is a need for business leaders develop their organization architecture to guide IT decision making, a need to directly relate business performance to leveraging IT effectively i.e. to becoming a IT Savvy Business person.

IT Saavy means the mind-set and capability to see the world through "digital" lens; it is all about a behaviour, a thought-process. IT Savvy Business Leader directly engages in IT decision making, assume responsibility for extracting value from IT investments, encouraging others to use and understand technologies that underpin their business responsibilities, engage in cross-enterprise IT innovation. It is NOT about building IT but about bringing IT closer into the activities of the business on an everyday basis through personal involvement and not delegation. IT Savvy is definitely is NOT about "use of IT" and technology devices.

Here is a kind of yardstick (of  course, one can add to this list) against which one can measure if one is a IT Savvy Business Leader or otherwise -

• Do you establish business targets with IT capability in your company strategic plans?
• Does Management Job Performance and Evaluation in your company / department include accountability for performance of IT Investments
• Have you put in place Rewards and Incentives that promote information and systems sharing?
• Do you share data, information and knowledge with your peers and colleagues? Do you promote the sharing of the same?
• Do you encourage innovative use of IT in your department / company?
• Do you help create and ensure that the information systems and information resources are accurate, reliable, relevant, accessible and shareable?

Just a new one I heard - CEO Disease. Have you got it?

Wow!! It is good to be back. It is been four months since I last wrote something. But these four months have been pretty dramatic in my life - lost my dear dad to cancer, have a new job and am in a distant relationship (do not worry folks.. still married and faithful to my lovely wife) I just work in a different town now and she just stayed back home taking care of our boys...

Well... in these last four months I have been thinking and doing a sort of retrospection on why and what was it that made me change a job every time I did it... What answers did I give during the interview to the typical interview question - Why are you looking for a change?

And I came up with these few standard answers that we all may give or may have given during that job change interview (depending at what stage of your career one is)...

• I am moving for a better opportunity
• I am looking for a challenging and rewarding assignment
• I am looking for a challenging, fulfilling and satisfacting assignement wherein I could contribute more to the business
• I wanted to be an entrepreneur

and the list can go on depending how innovative one is in coming up with something better... 

Well... here is one that I heard about recently... a person let go a job because his / her boss suffered from the "CEO Disease". Wow!! "CEO Disease"... now what's that?

Well... "CEO Disease"... as the literature defines it is - 

A behavior pattern that has been observed among Chief Executive Officers (CEO) who become intoxicated with power and perks of office. Symptoms include believing in their own omnipotence, surrounding themselves with yes-men and responding brutally to any opposition. (http://www.termwiki.com/EN:CEO_disease)

This behavior pattern (again as available literature on the subject says) could be but not limited to -

• treating the company as his / her private fiefdom
• believing that the s/he and the company is one and hence can take what s/he wants and when s/he wants

More importantly, the question is - How does one tell if one is suffering from it or have early symptoms of the "CEO Disease". Well... here are some pointers to find out by taking a look at your own practices as an executive...

• Are you changing direction so very frequently that you seem to be driving your spouse, your colleagues, or your clients "up the wall"?
• Are you giving an impression to your colleagues that you can do no wrong, refusing to concede any mistake?
• Is the decision more important to you than the decision-making process and details?
• Do you like people who yes your every whim?
• Are you overly concerned where you sit in a meeting or expect people to rise when you enter a room?
• Do you relish media attention - not especially for the company but for personal gain?
• Do colleagues think that you treat practical concerns about stability, capacity, and leadership as signs of disloyalty, laziness, or the most deadly sin of all - technical and managerial ignorance?

Now... wait a minute.. can a CIO ever be infected with the "CEO Disease"? Well.. perhaps yes... in fact the "CEO Disease" can get to anyone.

Imagine... the result of a case of Top Management Executive suffering from a real "bad" infection of the "disease" on the overall company performance - the company turnover could tremble and go downhill and employee turnaround could soar, investors could get nervous, and sales may drop because the salespeople may end up not been sure what to sell. Project Management could stall and employees may have a glazed-look most of the time. It can get really worse if all the "vision-lacking" employees  are fired in the hope of getting "better" ones. More importantly, when the money would run out, the Top Management Executive believing in his / her "Midas Touch" could attempt to simply go out and get more millions taking the company in deeper and murky waters and towards a major financial crisis and even a complete closure of operations.

Imagine - what could happen if an company's problem is not a lack of vision but too much of it? what could happen when the vision changes monthly or even weekly?

Scary right? But, there is a cure and hope...

Though I am no expert on this, I believe that the cure is pretty simple and easy if, 

• you are willing to accept that you have a problem on hand, and
• you really want to do something about it and you really really mean to 

I believe it is important to create an environment of inclusive growth wherein the ideas and opinions and views of one's team members are sought for and the team members too feel confident and comfortable in sharing their views / concerns and giving their opinions. Ask questions - is there a better way to do it? how can it be handled differently? Get the team's buy in on your project / initiative. 

Secondly, learn to admit and fix your mistakes. This takes a lot of courage to do this. Remember, we do not live in a "perfect" world and most importantly, we are human beings and human beings are not "perfect". As the Hindu mythology tells us, if you are perfect you are GOD and invincible and human beings are not invincible. Learn to say - "I made a mistake and I was wrong".  

Thirdly, please please for GODsake discourage those sycophants who try to "suck up" to every word you say, who make you feel good with their seductive accolades. If you really want to make the difference - Fire the sycophants!!

Reward mistakes because at least the people tried to make a difference, help them understand and learn from the mistakes. They were different and may really have a genuine and possibly the "real" solution but may have failed because of other reasons. Encourage a culture of experimentation and continuous learning and innovation.

Communicate, communicate, communicate across reporting lines... Please remember as a Top Management Executive the information that you receive has been filtered and fine tuned multiple times by multiple people and subordinates. The ground reality may be quite different and all you have is the filtered information and not the really "juice". It really helps to have your ear to the ground.
  
Lastly, respect your people. Every person of the team has a role to play and the corporate engine works smoothly, efficiently and effectively when all - the BIG and SMALL pieces of the corporate structure work together and insync. Every person's role is important and needs to be respected for the role s/he plays.  

Is Cloud Computing a way out to strangle-hold on IT Budgets?

If you were to ask any CIO today to list out his / her priorities, the list could look something like this -

• been customer-centric and enhance customer experience
• a few experiments with mobility
• business process automation
• ensuring business continuity
• business intelligence applications
• IT Security

If one looks at the list above, it is very clear that CIOs are primarily looking at their so-called "traditional", "core" functions of  - automation, business continuity from the IT perspective and IT security as their priority. 

Today, majority of the IT functions continue to be performed in-house. The other reason for the list seems to be skewed towards the "traditional", "core" functions of the the IT department is because IT budgets are likely to remain consistent and no major budget increase is anticipated. This thought is further supported by the fact that overall there is a strangle-hold on any new investments made by the businesses due to the current uncertainties about policy and the regulatory environment and rising costs. So, it is all about "keeping the lights on". There is no money for the CIOs to "play" with newer technologies.

So what is the way out?

The "traditional", "core" functions are already optimized by the CIOs, but still are on the list up here. So, what is that a CIO could be thinking in here? Well... perhaps - look at new and emerging technologies which help reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) and improving the turnaround time (TAT). Well... there is cloud computing that the CIO can tap into.

But how... 

Well... as a CIO with stagnated budgets, one could look at moving the data centre infrastructure on the cloud and availing of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) from one of the cloud service providers. What the possible IaaS will do is - help replace the data centre infrastructure, it can help create that much needed disaster recovery (DR) site strategy to ensure business continuity using at a much cheaper cost than otherwise. The IaaS will allow, the CIO, an ability to be quickly provision servers and all necessary infrastructure for different projects and applications. IaaS could be a good model for hosting web services based applications and applications that require a quick increase in infrastructure availability. The IaaS facilitates further cost savings in terms of amount of power consumed and in terms of time and efforts for server provisioning. 

courtesy: cioresearchcenter.com

Also, a CIO could consider the platform as a service (PaaS) as a great model wherein the management of the infrastructure becomes the job of the cloud service provider and could free the in-house IT team to focus of building solutions that can help transform the business, focus on customer-centric business solutions and enhance the overall customer experience. This will help the CIO bring in a business focus to the IT function and an opportunity to work along with the CEO / COO and other senior management team on the "real" and "burning" business concerns and issues.

Another alternative and most commonly used model for cloud computing initiatives is - software as a service (SaaS). The CIO could deploy his / her business critical applications on the cloud or use off-shelf business applications. Whilst doing so, it is important to take a cautious approach and the CIO would have to consider aspects such as performance experiences and do a detailed cost analysis with comparative sheets for the future plans. This is a model wherein the CIO can save not only on infrastructure but also software application licenses and move to a "pay-per-use" model. So, in this manner, a  CIO could provide the business with much needed solutions on a OPEX model and save the business big money in CAPEX and lower the turnaround time (TAT) considerable.

However... there is no "one size fits all" in here. So what model do I use for my business? How do I figure it out?

As a CIO, it is important that I understand my infrastructure and business application footprint and then adapt and use the various models and options available. This will allows the CIO to effectively shift and reduce the up-front CAPEX expenses in the IT Budget and spread the costs over a longer period using a OPEX model and still be able to satisfy and meet the business needs of solutions from IT. Some business benefits of cloud computing initiatives that CIOs can use to convince  the CEO / COO and the other senior management team could be -

• Shifts fixed to variable cost model (CFOs would love this)
• "pay-per-use", "scale-up when needed", 'try before use" models possible (CFOs would love this too)
• Provides flexible cost-effective computing to support growth (COOs and CFOs love this)
• Enables faster "go-to market" strategy (the CMO and Sales folks will love it)
• Support experimentation
• Drives new potential businesses
• Can enable user-defined experiences

Of course... the CIO will need to detail out the "real" business cost savings and monetize the benefits before putting it to the CEO / COO and the other senior management team.

Great... but what about IT Security on the Cloud? Is it not something the CIO should be worried about? What happens to my data on a "public" cloud because a cloud service provider has so many customers and may also have customers who are in similar line of business as mine. One needs to understand that the cloud computing infrastructure is not fundamentally insecure, it needs to be managed and accessed in a secure way. There are ways - data encryption techniques, designing and defining mitigating controls, cloud authentication and authorization solutions that one can use to ensure that the data on the cloud infrastructure is secure and safe. Most critical is to - protect the API keys.

So.... is there merit for a CIO to look at cloud computing in these times of strangled-held IT budgets? With all its worth, I strongly believe that it is an option that the CIO should look at and if planned and executed well it has considerable business benefits and also impacts the way the business is done - it facilitates the customer involvement in what kind of a product the customer will like to see and use. Also, yes... it is very much doable with the support to the CEO / COO and the other senior management team. It is important that the CEO / COO and the senior management team understand that it can be done and invite the CIO to the "strategy table" and share the business issues and concerns with the CIO. They need to give the CIO opportunity to find a solution to the business issues and concerns, give the CIO an opportunity to innovate and experiment (of course within the defined IT budget) and to optimize and cost savings for the business.