CXO Review: Technology Highlights of 2007
By Abhinna Shreshtha
Mumbai, Dec 31, 2007

Focusing on the constant changes demanded by the market and the customers, CIOs keep experimenting with new technologies to try and find the right formula for achieving business success. Here are some opinions by CIOs and IT heads on the technologies that were the highlights of 2007.

One technology that was the buzzword last year was virtualization. Satish Syal, CIO of NIIT Technologies, is not exaggerating when he says, "Virtualization technologies including storage, server, networking and operating system virtualization, grabbed the headlines in 2007."

Web 2.0 and its component technologies have also been much talked about in recent times. No one expected CIOs and business executives to take much notice of Web 2.0. Hardly anyone must have thought that Web 2.0 principles could be effectively applied to improve business, but they all have been proved wrong. Web 2.0 has allowed the transition of some websites from isolated information silos to interlinked computing platforms that function like locally available software in the perception of the user. In the last few years, this has created a boom in the economic value of the web as users can do more online.

"Through 2010, the enterprise Web 2.0 product environment will experience considerable flux, with continued product innovation and new entrants, including start-ups, large vendors and traditional collaboration vendors," said Sayal. However, social software technologies will increasingly be brought into the enterprise to augment traditional collaboration.

With the growing popularity of Skype and advances in IP telephony, Voice 2.0 is the buzzword being used to describe the trends, technologies and applications used to bring IP telephony to the Web to create a new class of voice-enabled applications. Used primarily as a means for businesses to communicate with each other and with clients, Web services allow organizations to communicate and exchange data without intimate knowledge of each other's IT systems behind the firewall.

Satish Pendse, CIO of Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) says, "Acquisitions by SAP and ORACLE were one of the major highlights of the year. It sets the tone of consolidation within IT industry in the future. SOA is still in the hype phase; however the maturity levels have gone up considerably during the year 2007. One would have expected major advent in terms of mobile computing technologies; however delay in 3G deployments has adversely affected these developments. Blades have got stabilized and hence they now have got significant acceptance."

But the question arises: With new technologies coming up in a steady stream, has the mentality of the IT heads managed to keep pace? Rajendra Dhavale, director (Technical Sales) of CA India, is of the opinion that more than the emergence of new technologies; it was the change in how technology was viewed by organizations that was the major highlight of the year. Consolidation of software vendors, and gradual realization on part of organizations that IT should be aligned to business needs were important changes in the mentality of the executive think-thank, according to him. Dhavle says," Technologies used are only as good as their implementations. Processes & best practices play a major role in addition to technology & people. Last year we saw more and more companies realizing this."

Adding on to this Dhanalakshmi R.K. head - ISG & Technology, of Aditi Technologies is of the view that the industry has come a long way from when it started. The positive changes faced by the industry include better and stable technology, tandem working in terms of standardization, and focusing more on customers.

(With inputs from Aarti Shah, Pankaj Maru and Priyanka Akhouri)


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