CIO & LEADER-Issue-11-February 2018

Face Off 

Should information security function 

be independent of Enterprise IT? Pg 18 

Insight 

Indian CIOs Mull Over 

Enterprise IT Agenda In 2018 Pg 20 

Volume 06 

Issue 11 

February 2018 

150 

TRACK TECHNOLOGY BUILD BUSINESS SHAPE SELF 

2018ˇs Focus: 

WOMEN 

in 

IT 

A 9.9 Group Publication 

Why this year will define 

a new order for gender 

equality in enterprises? 

Pg. 12

EDITORIAL 

Shyamanuja Das 

shyamanuja.das@9dot9.in 

Gender parity: 

Keeping the 

issue alive 

D 

While men and 

women are equal, 

they have their 

differences and the 

current workplaces 

and cultures 

have been built 

around the needs 

of men. So, nondiscrimination 

is not enough. 

Proactive, positive 

intervention 

is needed 

Does putting gender issues regularly on cover 

knowing fully well that not much has changed 

on the ground make good editorial sense? With 

no dearth of hot topics—from seasonal flavors 

like AI and blockchain to evergreens like CIO’s 

role and leadership—why a non-issue like gender 

should be on cover? 

I can take a high moral ground and tell you that 

it is precisely the reason why we are championing 

it; implicit in that statement is that our efforts 

will make a sizeable impact. 

In reality, my expectation is fairly subdued. 

India just slipped 21 positions in the World 

Economic Forum’s 2017 Gender Gap report to 

stand a lowly 108 globally, below our smaller 

neighbors like Bangladesh. So, pinpointing 

the enterprise IT community 

specifically for this gap is neither 

fair nor an accurate assessment of the 

real issues. 

Yet, the reason we must discuss 

it is that the world is becoming 

increasingly sensitized to it and a 

young, populous country like ours 

can make a big difference. And our 

community is one of the best suited 

to lead that change. 

I do not want to go into specific 

issues. Shubhra in her story deals 

with the actual challenges. All I 

would like to tell is that the issue 

should not be trivialized. Even now, I 

hear the same arguments that I used 

to hear 10 years back. And some of 

them are from young women themselves. 

‘Why should women be give special consideration?’, 

‘Does it mean we are less capable?’, ‘If men and 

women are equal, why create this artificial gender 

divide?’ 

Yes, I still listen to those arguments and even at the 

risk of sounding redundant, I will like to state for 

the umpteenth time that while men and women are 

equal, they have their differences and the current 

workplaces and their rules and cultures have been 

built around the needs of men. So, non-discrimination 

is not enough. Proactive, positive intervention is 

needed. They are very small but crucial. 

Another lesser discussed issue is the tendency to 

take refuge under a superficial statement like men 

and women are equal. This makes us shy away from 

recognizing the differences and thus failing to leverage 

them. If there are more women in marketing, HR 

or PR, it is because they have some strengths. Rather 

than rejecting the observation as stereotypes, a business 

must use it to its advantage. 

I will even argue that if we do not do that, the gender 

issues within a business will never become a strategic 

priority. They will at best remain an idealistic goal. 

All I will like to tell you is that it is an issue worth 

tackling. Just do not yet throw it out of the window 

February 2018 | CIO&LEADER 

1

Face Off 

Insight Volume 06 

Should information security function 

Indian CIOs Mull Over Issue 11 

February 2018 

be independent of Enterprise IT? Pg 18 Enterprise IT Agenda In 2018 Pg 20 

150 

TRACK TECHNOLOGY BUILD BUSINESS SHAPE SELF 

A 9.9 Group Publication 




Pg. 12 

CONTENT 

FEBRUARY 2018 

COVER STORY 

12-17 | Why this year 

will define a new order 

for gender equality in 

enterprises? 

advertisers ’ index 

Netmagic 


in 

IT 

WOMEN 

Cover Design by: 

Shokeen Saifi 

BC 

Please Recycle 

This Magazine 

And Remove 

Inserts Before 

Recycling 

COPYRIGHT, All rights reserved: Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from 

Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. is prohibited. Printed and published by Vikas Gupta for Nine Dot Nine 

Mediaworx Pvt Ltd, 121, Patparganj, Mayur Vihar, Phase - I, Near Mandir Masjid, Delhi-110091. Printed at 

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This index is provided as an 

additional service.The publisher 

does not assume any liabilities 

for errors or omissions. 

2 CIO&LEADER | February 2018

AROUND THE TECH 

04-07 

What CIOs Love Most 

About Their Job? 

www.cioandleader.com 

COLUMN 

08-09 

Why Enterprises Need A 

Digital Transformation 

Strategy? 

By Jay Kinra 

10-11 

DevOps for Better 

Collaboration 

By Muneesh Kumar 

INSIGHT 

23-25 

Two Of The Five Most 

Likely Risks In 2018 Are 

Cyber Risks 

30-31 

What Indian CIOs 

Can Learn From 

America’s Broken IT 

Processes? 

SECURITY 

36-37 

How IoT Security Is 

Integral To Gaining 

And Retaining 

Consumer Trust 

BANKING 

38-39 

Deriving Maximum 

Benefit From AI- 

Powered Solutions 

MANAGEMENT 

Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha 

Printer & Publisher: Vikas Gupta 

EDITORIAL 

Managing Editor: Shyamanuja Das 

Associate Editor: Shubhra Rishi 

Content Executive-Enterprise Technology: 

Dipanjan Mitra 

DESIGN 

Sr Art Director: Anil VK 

Art Director: Shokeen Saifi 

Visualisers: NV Baiju & Manoj Kumar VP 

Lead UI/UX Designer: Shri Hari Tiwari 

Sr Designers: Charu Dwivedi, Haridas Balan & Peterson PJ 

SALES & MARKETING 

Director-Community Engagement 

for Enterprise Technology Business: 

Sachin Mhashilkar (+91 99203 48755) 

Brand Head: Vandana Chauhan (+91 99589 84581) 

Assistant Product Manager-Digital: Manan Mushtaq 

Community Manager-B2B Tech: Megha Bhardwaj 

Community Manager-B2B Tech: Renuka Deopa 

Associate-Enterprise Technology: Abhishek Jain 

Assistant Brand Manager-B2B Tech: Mallika Khosla 

Regional Sales Managers 

South: Ashish Kumar (+91 97407 61921) 

North: Deepak Sharma (+91 98117 91110) 

West: Prashant Amin (+91 98205 75282) 

Ad Co-ordination/Scheduling: Kishan Singh 

PRODUCTION & LOGISTICS 

Manager Operations: Rakesh Upadhyay 

Asst. Manager - Logistics: Vijay Menon 

Executive Logistics: Nilesh Shiravadekar 

Logistics: MP Singh & Mohd. Ansari 

OFFICE ADDRESS 

9.9 Group Pvt. Ltd. 

(Formerly known as Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Pvt. Ltd.) 

121, Patparganj, Mayur Vihar, Phase - I 

Near Mandir Masjid, Delhi-110091 

Published, Printed and Owned by 9.9 Group Pvt. Ltd. 

(Formerly known as Nine Dot Nine Mediaworx Pvt. Ltd.) 

Published and printed on their behalf by 

Vikas Gupta. Published at 121, Patparganj, 

Mayur Vihar, Phase - I, Near Mandir Masjid, Delhi-110091, 

India. Printed at Tara Art Printers Pvt Ltd., A-46-47, Sector-5, 

NOIDA (U.P.) 201301. 

Editor: Vikas Gupta 


3

around 

thetech 

WHAT 

CIOs ARE 

TIRED OF 

HEARING... 

“Cloud is the 

answer to all 

your legacy IT 

problems” 

IT’S TECHNOLOGY, CUPID! 

What CIOs Love Most 

About Their Job? 

CIOs today are leading change 

and driving digital transformation 

in their respective organizations. 

Their love for experimenting with 

new technologies dates back to the 

back-office days. However, this love 

was realized only when they moved 

to the front lines, handling cost 

reductions, strategic responsibilities, 

and more recently, investing in digital 

technologies to enable business 

outcomes. On Valentine's Day, we 

asked Indian CIOs, rather candidly, on 

what they love the most about their 

job? Jayantha Prabhu, CIO at Essar, 

who has spend over two decades in 

the industry, said,“Work is Worship 

– This has been the mantra that I’ve 

followed in my professional career. 

This approach has practically made 

me fall in love with each and every 

phase of my work life." CIOs have 

made significant improvements 

when it comes to developing their 

leadership and business alignment 

capabilities. However, they don't 

want status quo to slip between the 

cracks. Almost all CIOs agree that 

the liberty to innovate is what they 

love the most about their job. Anjani 

Kumar, Global CDO & Senior VP at 

Collabera, loves his interactions with 

employees. Avinash Velhal, Group 

CIO- India , Middle East & APAC - Atos 

International, enjoys the change that 

IT brings to the business landscape. 

There's no doubt that experimenting 

with new technology continues to 

make their hearts skip a beat. 


Around The Tech 

BY THE BOOK 

Daniel Coyle, New York Times' bestselling 

author of The Talent Code 

unlocks the secrets of highly successful 

groups and provides tomorrow’s leaders 

with the tools to build a cohesive, 

motivated culture. 

Have you ever thought about 

strengthening a culture that 

needs fixing? 

In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle 

goes inside some of the world’s most 

successful organizations—including 

Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs, and U.S. 

Navy’s SEAL Team Six—and reveals 

what makes them different from others. 

He identifies three key skills that 

generate cohesion and cooperation, and 

explains how diverse groups learn to 

function with a single mind. Taking a 

leaf out of various organizations such 

as Internet retailer Zappos, Upright 

Citizens Brigade, and a gang of jewel 

thieves, Coyle offers lessons in strategies 

that spark collaboration, build 

trust, and drive positive change. The 

Culture Code is a revelation into the 

organizations that have successfully 

created an environment within for 

innovation to flourish, discover solutions 

to problems, and exceed expectations 

where there were none. 

This book gives you an insight into 

organization culture of other organizations. 

The Culture Code puts the power 

in your hands. 

makingheadlines 

In his budget speech, finance minister, Arun Jaitley, announced that virtual 

currencies are no legal tender and that the proliferation of its use for illegitimate 

financing will be curbed. However, the government sees an opportunity 

and plans to utilize Blockchain. 

The government in Andhra Pradesh is working with Swedish startup ChromaWay 

to set up a blockchain-based land registry system that allows people to 

collateralise property, get loans, and invest against that asset. Tracking property 

ownership using blockchain allows people to circumvent disputes, frauds, 

and errors, while also lessening the administrative hassle of registrations and 

title transfers. 

Recently, the Maharashtra government called upon industry leaders, 

researchers, and others to devise ways of incorporating blockchain in e-governance 

operations. 

Globally, women generate 37% of global GDP despite 

accounting for 50 percent of the global working-age 

population. The global average contribution to GDP 

masks large variations among regions. The share of 

regional GDP output generated by women is only 17% 

in India, 18% in the Middle East and North Africa 

(MENA), 24% in South Asia (excluding India), and 38% 

in Western Europe. In North America and Oceania, 

China, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the share is 

between 40 and 41%. 

Women are actually one of the largest pools of 

untapped labor: globally, 655 million fewer women are 

economically active than men. And while they make 

up over 50% of the world's higher-education graduates, 

only 25% of them occupy management positions. 

The entry of more women into the labor force would be 

of significant benefit to countries that face pressure 

on their labor pools and therefore, potentially, on their 

GDP growth. 

gender 

bender 


5


MOBILE CONGRESS 

2018 SPECIAL 

matter of 

twitter 

One of the year’s largest tech events is set to unfold in Barcelona 

later this month, as Mobile World Congress and its more than 

100,000 attendees come to learn, network, and see the future of 

mobile technology. 

So what kind of impact will that have on enterprise mobility? It 

begins with the event’s focus areas, and how those themes will be 

capitalized upon to create worthwhile discussion and content for 

those in attendance to bring back to the office and apply for realworld 

use. 

The event will kick off on Feb. 26 and run through March 1, boasting 

eight separate themes, some of which will certainly show more 

specificity to the enterprise mobility world. Those themes include: 

The 4th Industrial Revolution, Future Services Provider, The Network, 

The Digital Consumer, Tech In Society, Content & Media, 

Applied AI and Innovation. Additionally, Blockchain has earned a 

spot on the agenda at Mobile World Congress 2018. 

VITAL 

STATISTICS 

Which AI-powered 

solutions are 

gaining popularity 

across business 

functions? 

Finance function – percentage of decision makers 

indicating that AI-powered solutions are highly impactful 

Automated research and information 

aggregation 

Machine learning 

Automated data analyst 

Decision support systems 

Automated sales analyst 

Automated communications 

Virtual private assistants 

Automated operations and 

efficiency analyst 

22% 

22% 

22% 

33% 

33% 

44% 

56% 

67% 

Accounting – percentage of decision makers indicating 

that AI-powered solutions are highly impactful 

Virtual private assistants 

Machine learning 

Decision support systems 

Automated research and 

information aggregation 

Automated communications 

Automated operations and 

efficiency analyst 

Predictive analytics 

Automated sales analyst 

Source: PwC’s Feb 2018 Report: Artificial intelligence in India – hype or reality 

17% 

17% 

17% 

17% 

33% 

50% 

50% 

50% 



CIO Movements 

Puneet Kaur 

Kohli 

IS NOW 

Group CTO, 

Manappuram 

Finance 

WAS 

Group EVP-IT and 

CTO at Bajaj Capital 

Limited 

Puneet Kaur Kohli, who 

served as the Group 

EVP-IT and CTO at Bajaj 

Capital Limited for the 

last four and half years, 

has joined Mannapuram 

Finance as its Group 

CTO. Manappuram 

Finance (MAFIL) is a 

non-banking financial 

company situated in 

Valapad, Thrissur in 

Kerala. 

Swami 

TV 

IS NOW 

CDO, Nissan Motors 

WAS 

GE Digital's 

Regional CIO 

Swami TV has taken 

over as the Chief Digital 

Officer of Nissan Motors, 

based in Yokohama, 

Japan. A GE veteran, he 

was with the company 

for more than 12 

years before joining 

Nissan.The Japanese 

automaker also hired 

Tony Thomas, who 

also served in GE and 

Vodafone India, as 

the global CIO of the 

company. 

Nilesh 

Shah 

IS NOW 

Group CIO, 

Prabhudas 

LiladharLtd 

WAS 

Group CIO, 

Symphony 

Nilesh Shah has 

joined as the Group 

CIO of investment 

management company, 

Prabhudas Liladhar. He 

will be based in Mumbai. 

Sanjay 

Kotha 

IS NOW 

Joint President and 

Group CIO, Adani 

Group 

WAS 

Information 

Security Officer 

(CISO), Life 

Insurance company, 

Max Life. 

Sanjay Kotha has joined 

Adani Group as Joint 

President and Group 

CIO. He will be based in 

Ahmedabad. Kotha was 

earlier with Hindustan 

Coca Cola Beverages. He 

has earlier worked with 

Walmart India, Bharti 

Retail, Thomas Cook and 

Spice Telecom. 

Chandresh 

Dedhia 

IS NOW 

Head-IT, Ascent 

Health & Wellness 

Solutions 

WAS 

Deputy General 

Manager - IT & IS, 

Fermenta Biotech 

Chandresh Dedhia 

has now joined Ascent 

Health & Wellness 

Solutions Pvt Ltd as 

Head of Information 

Technology. Ascent 

is a pharma supplychain 

company 

focused at improving 

the accessibility and 

affordability of effective 

healthcare. 


7

COLUMN 

By Jay Kinra 

Why 

Enterprises 

Need A Digital 

Transformation 

Strategy? 

The success will certainly depend on 

their pace to adapt and transform quickly 

Jay Kinra, Partner, Hokuapps, India 

and leads the digital transformation 

of businesses with a sharp focus on 

enterprise mobility. 

T 

Today we are in the age of digital disruption and the constant evolution 

in technology is making everyone work on the go. It is all the 

more imperative for companies of all sizes including emerging startups 

to grasp that no one is immune to this reality anymore. Across 

every industry, customers, and employees alike are demanding 

greater mobility; easier and more transparent access to information 

of all kinds; and flexible, pleasing user experiences. Internal operations, 

too, are being transformed as companies look to digitize and 

automate everything — the factory, the supply chain, marketing and 

sales, HR, administration, even maintenance and ticketing. 

The success of organizations and emerging startups will certainly 

depend on their pace to adapt to a digital transformation strategy 

including the adoption of enterprise mobility. Partnering with the 

right technology company to automate their systems and execute 

this strategy quickly is imperative. However, if you think your company 

should be cautious in its approach to digitization, think again, 

because even if you are moving slowly and carefully, your competitors 

aren’t. According to a recent Forrester study, a large percentage 

of executives think that almost half of their revenue will be influenced 

by enterprise mobility by 2020. 

A good digital transformation strategy will help you synchronize 

your business by seamlessly improving the interactions between 

your people, processes, and products. In addition it will help you 

to streamline processes like unnecessary double manual entry 

into various unconnected systems and facilitate the best internal 

practices within all your teams. This not only cultivates a cohesive 


Column 

working atmosphere but also ensures 

that every team is on track to meet 

their goals and more focused on being 

thought leaders rather than doing 

mundane manual work. The separate 

components of your digital transformation 

can work together to help 

you achieve a holistic environment 

that benefits you, your employees, 

and most importantly, your customers. 

At this point, few people would 

argue against the importance of a good 

digital transformation strategy— and 

mostly everyone understands that 

having a mobile-ready team is indispensable 

for a modern workforce. 

While your technology partner will 

help you to streamline your business 

activities, it is equally important 

to keep a track on the overall cost 

effectiveness of implementing this 

technology. Here are some methods of 

determining the effectiveness of your 

mobile strategy: 

Revenue vs. costs: Once you have 

decided to embark on a digital transformation 

strategy and deployed 

the platform with the help of your 

technology partner, you can start 

calculating the financial benefit it has 

on the organization as a whole. Some 

key metrics would include company 

process efficiency, less man power on 

manual processes, increased sales figures, 

profitability and time to market 

Turnaround Time (TAT): Another 

aspect of the ROI of your digital transformation 

strategy includes how much 

time does the organization saves on 

cost. Automation plays a huge part in 

allowing your team to save time and 

execute multiple activities simultaneously. 

Since technology helps you to 

capture raw data, you can easily track 

the improvement on the turnaround 

time of multiple tasks in your organization 

right in the palm of your hand 

and on the go. 

Increase in Productivity: Automation 

enables your employees to concentrate 

on larger strategic roles, while 

the mundane work is on auto pilot 

You will need to make sure that 

technology deployed is customized to 

your business needs 

mode. It ensures that your employees 

have more time to think creatively 

rather than wasting time on tedious 

day-to-day activities. Reducing the 

need for employees to travel—and 

cutting back on the time they take to 

complete tasks—are also distinct ways 

to increase the ROI of a good digital 

transformation strategy. 

Adoption rate: You have to make 

sure that technology deployed is customized 

to your business needs. This 

way your employees spend no time to 

adapt to new processes, which ensure 

less wastage of time. Involve your 

team members and take suggestions 

on the kind of platform and processes 

that will suit their working style. An 

ideal technology platform will ensure 

a smooth transformation from tradi- 

tional to the digital route tailor 

made to the way that your company 

operates. Looking at how quickly 

and actively your employees adopt the 

new technologies that you roll out can 

help you understand the strategy’s 

effectiveness. 

Customer experience: Your customers 

represent your company. How 

loyal are your customers is as important 

as the loyalty of your employees. 

The improvement in your company’s 

internal performance automatically 

reciprocates how your customer feels 

about you. Timely delivery, of products 

and services, prompt replies to 

customer complaints, timely resolutions 

to customer complaints, etc. are 

all the parameters by which you can 

gauge the customer experience 


9

COLUMN 

By Muneesh Kumar 

DevOps 

for Better 

Collaboration 

Muneesh Kumar, Vice President, 

XcelServ Solutions discusses DevOps in 

detail along with its benefits 

D 

Muneesh Kumar, VP, XcelServ 

Solutions discusses how DevOps can 

help create collaboration between 

developers and IT execs 

DevOps, normally mistaken to be either 

a tool or a profile in an organization, 

is neither. It is a set of principles and 

practices that helps in continuous integration 

and development. DevOps is an 

application development method that 

stresses communication, collaboration 

and integration between the developers 

and Information Technology (IT) professionals. 

So, DevOps is a response to the 

interdependence of software development 

and IT operations that aims to help 

organizations to rapidly produce software 

products and services. 

Given all its definitions and delusions, 

it is indeed more than interesting to note 

that if practiced correctly, the DevOps 

process has a few key practices that can 

help organizations to innovate faster 

through automating and streamlining 

the development and infrastructure 

management processes. 

Now all the innovations in the process 

or the product are only possible if the 

methodologies are followed precisely, 

some of which are detailed below: 

One of the major and important 

practices is to perform very frequent 

updates. This help organizations to 

innovate faster for end customers. These 

small releases are usually more incremental, 

make development less risky, 

and help the teams identify and address 

bugs quickly. 

Another way of making your application 

more robust and flexible is to 

use microservices. The combination of 

micro services and increased release 

frequency leads to significantly more 

deployments which can present operational 

challenges. DevOps practices such 

as continuous integration and continuous 

delivery solve these issues and let 

organizations deliver rapidly in a safe 

and reliable manner. 

Infrastructure automation practices 

such as, infrastructure as code and configuration 

management, help to keep 

computing resources elastic and responsive 

to frequent changes. In addition, 

the use of monitoring and logging helps 

engineers track the performance of 

applications and infrastructure, so they 

can quickly react to problems. 


Column 

Continuous Integration (CI) is nothing 

but software development practices 

that require the teams to merge 

their code into a central repository 

regularly, after each check-in automated 

build and test are run. But the goals 

of continuous integration are to find 

the defect quicker and improve the 

software quality, thus building more 

efficiency in the process. 

Continuous Delivery (CD) is a software 

engineering approach where the 

code is automatically built, test and 

released to the environment for testing 

or in production. This is a very important 

step in the development cycle as 

this entire hole cycle ensures the reliability 

of the software at any point. 

DevOps Culture is about removing 

the barriers between two traditionally 

siloed teams’ development and 

operations and stresses on small, 

multidisciplinary teams, who work 

autonomously and yet take collective 

accountability for how actual users 

experience their software. For a DevOps 

team, there’s no place like production. 

Everything they do is to improve 

customer experiences. 

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) helps to 

manage the development, production 

and testing in an efficient and repeatable 

manner through the management 

of virtual machines, networks, load 

balancers and connection topology in 

a descriptive model. The big advantage 

that IaC achieves this is by using the 

same versioning as the DevOps teams 

for source code. 

Infrastructure as Code has evolved, 

over a period, to solve the problem of 

environment drift in the release pipeline. 

Teams with integration of IaC in 

the process can deliver stable environments 

rapidly and at scale and can 

avoid manual configuration of environments 

with enforcement of consistency 

by representing the desired state 

of their environments. 

Microservices, especially the 

microservices architecture is a design 

approach to build a single application 

as a set of small services. The concept 

DevOps Implementation 

Six Trends That Will Shape DevOps Adoption In 2017 And Beyond 

“Has your organization implemented DevOps? Where does it stand in relation to DevOps?” 

Implemented and expanding 

Planning to implement 

(within the next 12 months) 

Planning to implement 

Interested but no immediate plans 

(within next 12 months) 

Base: 237 DevOps pros 

Implemented 13% 

Not interested 

DevOps is a response to the interdependence of 

software development and IT operations that aims 

to help an organization to rapidly produce software 

products and services 

is to develop services like mini applications 

where each service runs in its 

own process and communicates with 

other services through a well-defined 

interface using a lightweight mechanism 

which is typically a HTTP-based 

application programming interface 

(API). This builds a huge capability in 

the system to develop, detect, manage 

a large product in small phases and 

yet maintain the impact on the system. 

Monitoring, as it implies, provides 

feedback from production and is obviously 

the most important aspect of 

the DevOps process. One of the bigger 

goals of monitoring is to achieve 

higher availability by minimizing 

time to detect and mitigate along with 

building the capability of “validated 

learning” by tracking usage. O The 

DevOps toolchain is a combination 

of tools that enables DevOps lifecycle 

design, development and management 

of applications. These tools automate 

the manual tasks and help teams to 

manage the complex environments. 

1% 

9% 

27% 

50% 

Source: Forrester’s Q1 2017 Global DevOps Benchmark Online Survey 

Most of DevOps aspects won’t be possible 

without tools such as, Jenkins, 

Ansible, Docker or Puppet. Still, tools 

such as, Team foundation Server and 

Teamcity only facilitate the process 

and allow to achieve the goal. 

Some of the benefits of DevOps are 

as follows: 

Frequently and fast software delivery 

in the marketplace 

Minimizing the chance of outages; if 

anything goes wrong, the team can 

handle quickly 

Better collaborations between Business, 

Dev and Ops teams 

Stable environments 

Less complexity to manage 

Time to focus and quality improvement 

The purpose of DevOps is not to 

create silos but to create a strategy for 

better collaboration between various 

cross-functional teams. So, DevOps is 

not a team but a concept; however, if 

you still want to label a team as DevOps, 

think again! 


11


WOMEN 

IT 

in 




By Shubhra Rishi

Cover Story 

Next month on 8th March is International 

Women's Day. And on this niche platform, we 

can only go so far as to explore why there are 

still so few women in enterprise IT. Through our 

brief research last year with Headhonchos.com, 

we spent time analysing the women pipeline in 

enterprise IT. The result was somewhat expected. 

At 35%, most women were likely to be hired in the 

field of HR while only 12% were likely to get a job 

in enterprise IT. 

Around the same time last year, we wrote to at 

least a dozen women IT leaders in India. Only one 

spoke about the 'burning' issue at hand. As an IT 

leader at a global professional services firm Genpact, 

Vidya Srinivasan, Senior VP - IT & Infrastructure, 

has a mandate to hire at least 20% women in 

Genpact's internal IT workforce. 

In many ways, Genpact's philosophy is the same 

as its former parent, General Electric. Last year, 

the company announced that they are setting a 

goal to create a workforce of 20,000 technical 

women by 2020 and recruit 50% women and 50% 

men into all of their entry level technical leadership 

programs. Another organization worth mentioning 

here is multinational computer software 

company, Adobe, who undertook a review of its 

job structure and analysed its compensation practices, 

and announced in January 2018 that it has 

achieved pay parity in the US, and in India, which 

is Adobe’s second largest employee base. Fortune's 

100 Best Workplaces for Women list also 

revealed something interesting. Their research 

found that women employees’ perception of 

work-life balance actually had a minimal effect on 

their decision to plan long-term careers at their 

businesses. Instead, women prefer workplaces 

that promote employee advancement through job 

responsibilities and imparting new skills. 

In enterprise IT, the percentage of women leaders 

globally—from CIOs to chief technology officers 

to vice presidents of technology —remained 

at 9% in 2017, the same as 2016, according to 

analysis by executive intelligence tool, Boardroom 

Insiders. In large organizations, that number was 

10%, which was identical to the global average 

rate of women in IT. In India, however, only 7% 

women were hired for CIO positions in 2017 as 

compared to 19% at entry level and 14% in middle 

IT positions, according to a Headhonchos.com 

exclusive research for CIO&Leader. 

At the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual 

Meeting in Davos, Switzerland this year, gender 

equality precipitated into almost every topic. Chinese 

major Alibaba Group's executive chairman 

told a prominent audience comprising world leaders 

and CEOs that women accounted for 47% of 

the company’s 50,000-plus employees. One third 

of Alibaba Group founders are women, one third 

of partners are women and one third of its management 

executives are women. Canada also has 

set an example in diversity where the country’s 

prime minister, Justin Trudeau himself is championing 

diversity by setting up a gender equal cabinet 

comprising 50% men and 50% female. Canada 

currently ranks 11 in WEF's Global Gender Gap 

Report 2017. In many ways, the #Metoo movement 

has also pushed the topic of gender equality 

back into the limelight and sparked conversations 

in multiple directions. 

In an enterprise IT setting, companies are slowly 

starting to take a more structured approach to 

hiring, to overcome implicit bias and to assimilate 

gender equality as a norm into the organization's 

core culture. 

This will require work. 

Here are four reasons why 2018 will bring us 

closer to the tipping point for gender equality in 

enterprise IT. 


13

Cover Story 

Many years ago 

when cloud 

deployments were 

at their peak, during 

an interview, 

an Indian woman CIO was talking 

about how tough it was for her to 

say goodbye to legacy hardware and 

deploy a hybrid cloud strategy. She 

made a reasonably strong case for the 

hybrid cloud and indicated a growing 

acceptance among CIOs to reposition 

their cloud strategy—from purely private 

to hybrid. 

Incidentally, it was the first time that 

we were interviewing a female IT leader 

and we used the opportune moment 

to throw the 'glass ceiling' question 

at her. To our utter amazement, her 

reply wasn’t quite expected. She said 

that she had never faced gender bias – 

unconscious or conscious –in her two 

decades of technology experience. She 

didn’t advocate gender equality norms 

but hired in a meritocratic manner. 

At the very least, one would expect 

women to be advocates of gender 

equality in the workplace. But that’s 

where one can be wrong. In the 

course of time, we interviewed several 

women leaders in enterprise IT – and 

almost all of them said that they didn’t 

position themselves as “a woman in 

technology”. 

In the years that followed, we posed 

this question to male CIOs who 

responded rather evocatively. A male 

CIO of a large retail conglomerate told 

me then. He said that men are uniquely 

positioned to advocate gender 

equality in the workplace. “Keeping an 

open mind and showing willingness 

to understanding the gender inequalities 

facing women is the first step,” he 

added. 

It reminded me of a quote by a 

renowned Nigerian author, Chimamanda 

Adichi, who said, “It would be 

a way of pretending that it was not 

women who have, for centuries, been 

excluded. It would be a way of denying 

that the problem of gender targets 

women.” She further said that the 

problem was not about being human, 

but specifically about being a female 

human. “For centuries, the world 

divided human beings into two groups 

and then proceeded to exclude and 

oppress one group. It is only fair that 

the solution to the problem should 

acknowledge that.” 

When push comes 

to shove 

Today world leaders are committed 

towards making gender equality a 

norm. Canada’s prime minister, Justin 

Trudeau, was in news for creating 

a gender equal cabinet in 2015. This 

year, the Government of Canada has 

announced that it will introduce 

In which industry are women IT 

leaders most hired? 

48% 

in Mobile 

and VAS 

applications 

49% 

in quality 

assurance 

0.6% 

in Mobile 

and VAS 

applications 

0.8% 

in Telecom 

Software 

0.7% 

in Education 

0.9% 

Others 

“The corporate 

world has started 

looking at gender 

diversity with 

a different lens 

today and we are 

very hopeful that 

this will eventually 

move the needle,” 

–Geeta Kannan 

Managing Director, ABI, India 


Cover Story 

proactive pay equity for workers in 

federally regulated sectors. According 

to reports, it is estimated that through 

this legislation alone, the gender wage 

gap can be moved from 88.1 cents to 

90.7 cents in the federal private sector 

alone. 

Iceland is another example of a 

government that’s taking stringent 

measures to curb gender inequality – 

prohibiting pay gap between men and 

women. 

If countries and governments can 

alter their laws, so can enterprises. 

However, the push has to come from 

the top. 

14% 

of Indian 

women 

were hired 

at middle IT 

positions in 

2017 

For which positions (HR, IT, 

Marketing) are women hired 

the most? 

35% 

HR 

13.5% 

Marketing 

12% 

IT 

13% 

Operations 

7.1% 

Sales 

15% 

Finance 

Gender diversity is a 

business imperative; 

inclusivity is a strategic 

imperative 

What does that mean? 

According to a study by McKinsey 

Global Institute in 2015, advancing 

women's equality could add USD12 

trillion to global economic growth in 

a decade, raising it by 11%, compared 

with the business-as-usual scenario. 

The Indian economy would be the 

biggest gainer of gender equality as its 

GDP could be 16% higher in 2025, the 

study claimed. 

Geetha Kannan, managing director, 

Anita Borg Institute (ABI), India, 

says, the corporate world has started 

looking at gender diversity with a 

different lens today and we are very 

hopeful that this will eventually move 

the needle. 

ABI has worked to improve the 

representation and advancement of 

women in computing for two decades. 

It was founded by a computer scientist 

Dr. Anita Borg in 1987 who wanted to 

start a digital community for women 

in computing. Over the years, that 

community has grown and changed 

to become the leading organization for 

women in technology and in spreading 

the message of keeping women in 

the technical workforce. 

It’s been more than 40 years since 

women joined the corporate workforce 

and more than 20 years since organizations 

drafted their first diversity 

policy in the workplace. According 

to Mercer’s global research in 2015, 

women make up only 35% of the 

average company’s workforce at the 

professional level and above and only 

20% of its executives. Even worse, the 

average organization still isn’t on track 

to achieve gender equality seven years 

from now. 

For years now, the report stated 

that women have been underused in 

the workforces of emerging economies. 

This is due to factors such as 

lack of mentorship or support on the 

job from colleagues or bosses, child 

and elderly care. 

For a long time now, the business 

case for having women in decisionmaking 

positions is quite obvious. 

Catalyst research in 2017 revealed that 

companies with a higher percentage of 

women in executive positions have a 

34% higher total return to shareholders 

than those that do not. The value of 

diversity on the decision-making table 

is common knowledge. However, easy 

consensus often makes the business 

outcomes sub-optimal, if not altogether 

disastrous. 

According to Kannan, a lot of companies 

have started seeing women in 

their organizations as resources for 

leadership and innovation. As a result, 

there has been an increase in interest 

from the upper ladder. In enterprise IT 

circles also, some of the top positions 

are occupied by women. 

ABI organizes partner meetings 

includes representatives from companies 

who are looking to shape a 

diverse workforce with robust representation 

of technical women at all 

levels. Kannan said that in the last few 


15

Cover Story 

Closing the Gender Gap at Work 

DIGITAL FLUENCY IS THE ACCELERANT 

2015 

STATUS QUO: 

50yrs to reach gender equality 

2065 

2040 

2X SPEED: 25yrs to reach gender equality 

25 

YEARS 

FASTER 

2015 

STATUS QUO: 

STATUS QUO: 



2100 

2060 

2X SPEED: 45yrs to reach gender equality 

40 

YEARS 

FASTER 

the organization is serving. Right now, 

this is not the case. IT organizations 

that have an imbalanced workforce 

are less able to anticipate and proactively 

address customer needs,” noted 

Accenture in the report. 

Accenture has 150,000 women, 

which is nearly 40% of its global 

workforce. Over the past several years 

the company has devoted itself to creating 

new milestones on the path to 

gender equality which includes growing 

its percentage of women managing 

directors to 25% globally by 2020. 

Kannan said that increasing the 

number of women in leadership teams 

could allow CIOs to improve gender 

equality and access the skills they 

need to be successful. 

Developed Countries 

If governments and businesses can double the pace at which women become digitally fluent, we could 

reach gender equality in the workplace by 2040 in developed countries and by 2060 in developing countries. 

years, these meetings are attended 

by top executives in decision-making 

positions who take an active part in 

the dialogue. 

Skill gap is widening 

Women make up half the world’s 

population and only a little more than 

a quarter join the workforce, and less 

than 10% are in leadership positions. 

According to Accenture’s new report 

titled ‘Getting to Equal’, the digital 

fluency scores provide an overall measure 

of the impact of digital on working 

men and working women today by 

country and by generation. 

Although women are beginning 

to achieve gender equality and close 

the gender gap in IT by developing 

digital fluency, they remain underrepresented 

in the workforce in most 

developed countries. The report found 

that India’s low levels of digital fluency 

are hindering the progress of 

women. Increasing women’s access to 

the Internet as a first step to improving 

fluency should help open-up new 

work opportunities. 

The report found that India’s low 

levels of digital fluency are hindering 

the progress of women. “Organizations 

are most effective when gender 

composition aligns with the audience 

Developing Countries 

19% 

of Indian 

women 

were hired 

at entry 

level in 

2017 

It will take us 217 years to 

gender parity 

And that’s why we must start now. 

Employers have a critical role to 

play in creating gender parity. Many 

research bodies over the years have 

indicated that higher female representation 

in the workplace and various 

company performance measures, 

including better financial performance; 

higher return on sales, equity 

and invested capital; higher operating 

results; better stock growth and more. 

One of the companies in the IT/ITes 

to do it first in 2015 was Intel CEO 

Brian Krzanich who pledged USD 

300 million to increase the company’s 

workforce diversity with the goal of 

reaching equal representation among 

its 50,000 U.S. employees. 

Companies are finally putting the 

money where the mouth is. Not only 

has Intel used this money in training 

and recruiting female and other groups 

of under-represented computer scientists. 

Since the diversity pledge, the 

company’s business has seen a 65% 

improvement in the representation of 

female and minority talent. 

However, the icing on the cake 

was when it announced that it had 

eliminated gender pay gaps between 

employees in 2015. This sent a clear 

message to the rest of the industry. 

Equal pay among male and female 

workers is possible. Intel proved that 

prioritizing gender parity in tech is 

possible, without sacrificing revenue 

or results. 


Cover Story 

7.4% 

of Indian 

women 

were hired 

at senior IT 

positions in 

2017 

The other bigwig in the tech circles is 

GE, who is one of the tech companies 

doing the most to reach tech gender 

parity with an aggressive goal set to 

reach a 50-50 gender ratio in its technical 

entry-level workforce by 2020. 

One the major problem in technology 

is the interminable STEM gender gap. 

GE promises to bridge this gap by hiring 

5,000 more women in STEM roles 

in the next two years. The initiative is 

expected to increase the representation 

of women in its engineering, IT, 

and product management roles. 

Clearly, there is a lot of work yet to 

be done. GE’s announcement came 

within the past year so while there are 

no results to show just yet, the very 

public announcement is definitely a 

step forward and it enables a level of 

accountability on a major scale. The 

industry is inundated with examples 

comprising companies with the lack 

of female leadership. Adobe India, on 

the other hand, has achieved gender 

parity in India, and therefore, stands 

alongside Intel and GE, in becoming 

case studies for other organizations 

to follow. A majority of tech companies 

including mammoths such 

as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft 

have more work to do when it comes 

to equal representation of women on 

their tech teams. While both Facebook 

and Microsoft have eliminated the 

gender pay gap among their male and 

female workers. Google, still hasn't 

reached full gender parity in tech. 

In a joint paper released by IMF 

Chief Christine Lagarde and Norway's 

Prime Minister Erna Solberg at 

the World Economic Forum (WEF) 

annual meeting in Davos this year, 

raising women's participation in the 

labour force to the same level as men 

can boost India's GDP by 27%. Unfortunately, 

India has seen a decline in 

its overall Global Gender Gap Index 

ranking, largely attributable to a widening 

of its gender gaps in Political 

Empowerment as well as in healthy 

life expectancy and basic literacy. 

Take Iceland for instance, which has 

closed more than 87% of its overall 

gender gap. On 1st Jan, the Nordic 

country became the first in the world 

to 'paying men more than women' illegal. 

The legislation on gender pay in 

Iceland states that companies and government 

agencies employing at least 

25 people will have to obtain government 

certification of their equal-pay 

policies. Companies and agencies that 

fail to prove pay parity will face fines. 

To eliminate gender parity in India 

or the rest of the world, countries need 

strong laws on pay parity. After all, 

the first step is providing equal pay for 

equal work, regardless of gender. 

What better than the enterprise 

IT community to lead this change 

in 2018? 


17

FACE OFF 

//SHOULD INFORMATION 

SECURITY FUNCTION 

BE INDEPENDENT OF 

ENTERPRISE IT? 

I agree that the Information Security 

(IS) function should be independent of 

Enterprise IT. 

It is a myth that IS is limited to IT 

and information stored in IT infrastructure. 

No doubt, IT has a very big 

(and major) role to play when it comes 

to Information handling and therefore, 

it has a lion’s share in the IS aspects. 

However, Information and its security 

aren’t limited to IT alone. Secondly, 

when we talk of Enterprise IT, the 

inclusion or exclusion of shadow IT 

would depend on the said organization. 

Regardless of any organization 

treating Shadow IT as part of Enterprise 

IT or not, the application of IS 

definitely is necessary for Shadow 

IT. In most organizations, Shadow IT 

mushrooms up only because Enterprise 

IT does not have enough manpower 

or they are heavily loaded with 

their enterprise priorities due to which 

the operations or business functions 

directly engage and avail services of 

third party IT service providers and 

finally supervise and run the show by 

themselves. 

Having IS independent of enterprise 

Quick View 

Milind Mungale, 

Executive VP & CIO, NSDL 

e-Governance Infrastructure 

Limited, says information 

and its security aren’t limited 

to IT alone 

IT would help in avoiding 

the risk of misunderstanding. 

Shadow IT is excused 

from the discipline of IS and 

this is only a “good to have” 

thing. Next in line is the 

physical security. Almost 

all the physical security 

measures have IT interfaces 

and lot of this information is 

stored, processed, and used 

within certain IT systems. 

It is also observed that like 

Shadow IT, these kinds 

of set-ups are generally 

MILIND 

MUNGALE 

Executive VP & CISO 

NSDL e-Governance 

Infrastructure 

Limited 

owned and managed by the 

Administrative department who evaluates, 

installs and owns the Building 

Management Systems. If information 

security is independent of enterprise 

IT, there would be lot more co-ordination 

required between the Shadow IT 

owners and physical security set-up 

owners as this function is not considered 

mixed up in Enterprise IT. Last 

but not the least; the IS function should 

be particular to the security of data 

and information as well as remaining 

sensitive about delivery deadlines etc. 

It should not get bullied down to overlook 

or compromise certain controls 

that are necessary or critical from an 

IS perspective. That can be facilitated 

only if IS is independent of Enterprise 

IT. While all this is being discussed, 

not to forget that Enterprise IT, being 

a major Information handling set-up, 

will definitely respect and follow the 

principles of Information Security 

aspects to IS domain. 

"Having IS 

independent of 

enterprise IT 

would help in 

avoiding the risk of 

misunderstanding" 


Face Off 

MANI KANT 

SINGH 

Head-IT & CISO 

Orbis Financial 

Corporation 

"I believe that 

every CIO wears 

the CISO’s hat 

before venturing 

into any 

technology" 

I do not agree with this view. Information 

Security function has been 

ever evolving since its conception. 

However, depending on the size of 

the organization and the way the 

security function or the CISO role 

is structured, in my view, giving 

independence to security function 

has its own complications. 

In an organization, the brand does 

not understand information security 

and fixing the loopholes needs 

the support and involvement of the 

CIO for strategic deployment without 

impacting business as usual. 

The CIO and CISO usually serve as 

advisors to the organization. 

In a scenario where the security 

and IT roles are handled by two different 

leaders, this independence 

can lead to accountability issues 

and increase inefficiency. Being 

handling the twin roles of the CIO 

and CISO, I believe that every 

CIO wears the CISO’s hat before 

venturing into any technology. 

For instance, security is a critical 

element of any organization’s IT 

strategy. To respond to increasingly 

sophisticated threats, CIOs have to 

think security-first before embarking 

on digital initiatives. The general 

psychology is that a CIO doesn’t 

understand security and budgets 

are spent only on security tools. 

This is incorrect. A CIO spends 

enough time on understanding 

risks and considers all stakeholders 

before implementing any control or 

strategy. The benchmarking of level 

of information security cannot be 

Quick View 

Mani Kant Singh , Head- 

IT & CISO, Orbis Financial 

Corporation, says that both 

security and IT roles go hand-inhand 

for the CIO 

done in silos and needs focused thinking 

which can arise only when the 

CIO handles the enterprise security 

function. The CIO is now in charge of 

enabling secure digital transformation. 

Both Security and IT roles go hand-in 

hand for the CIO. While deliberating 

before investing in digital technologies, 

the CIO wearing the CISO hat can 

focus on analysing the total business 

risk. The CIO while making sure that 

information is available and accessible 

can also ensure information 

is only available to only authorized 

users. Today the CIO wearing the 

CISO hat can also manage and protect 

information and assets. Clearly, the 

convergence of knowledge is good here. 

Many security controls are tailored for 

common users, and that can hinder 

business-as-usual. Independent enterprise 

IT and security functions will 

generate more conflicts and disruption 

in operations. A CIO wearing the CISO 

hat, on the other hand, can resolve 

any disruption. The combined role 

will ensure reduced financial loses, 

reporting security incidents, agility in 

services, visibility, and transparency 

within budgets. 


19

INSIGHT 

Indian CIOs Mull 

Over Enterprise IT 

Agenda In 2018 

In 2018, the CIO will have to revisit their priorities and 

introduce new and interesting "to-dos" in their agenda 

By Shubhra Rishi 


Insight 

TThe world 'digital' was probably the most abused word of 

2017. In the last one year, we have seen CIOs round off all 

technology implementations to famously calling them ‘digital 

transformation’. Most companies today have at least one 

ongoing digital initiative being spearheaded by IT. 

In 2018, the CIO will have to revisit their priorities and 

introduce new and interesting "to-dos" in their agenda. During 

a tweet chat, Indian CIOs revealed their agenda this year. 

CIOs in the automotive sector have been experimenting 

with a number of new technologies such as IoT and machine 

learning, leading to the sector's transformation in the last 

few years. From connected cars to self-driving cars, to disrupting 

public transportation, and to using robots in manufacturing, 

the CIOs have a huge opportunity to innovate in 

accordance with the growing demands of their customers. 

According to Jagdish Belwal, CIO-International at GE 

Transportation, the auto industry is moving beyond products 

to solutions for customers’ success. 

"We have many digital products which solve operational 

issues of customers such as, fuel efficiency, uptime, routing, 

among others," said Belwal. 

As an overlying agenda for 2018, Belwal said that it will be 

the yin and yang of operate and innovate."We need operational 

excellence to keep business going, and innovation to 

Jagdish Belwal @Jeyceebee . Jan 19 

A1 - It will be Yin Yang of Operate and Innovate. We need operational 

excellence to keep business going and innovation to break new 

ground. Reduce cost on once hand and increase value on other hand. 

#CIOAgenda2018 

Shyamanuja Das @shyamanuja 

Q1 - First things first. This is for all the panelists. What's the agenda for 

2018? Before we get into the details, it will be great if you can articulate 

if there's a theme–an overlying strategy that is common to your action 

items? #CIOAgenda2018 @avelhal @ashokjade @Jeyceebee 

1 4 5 

break new ground. On the one hand, the idea is to reduce 

cost and on the other, it is to increase business value," 

he added. 

Status quo is known to have been the biggest impediment 

to innovation and CIOs know well not to let it stand in the 

way of digital growth. Today, the manufacturing industry 

has seen some of the best examples of using robots in warehouses 

and big data analytics for predictive maintenance. 

Ashok Jade, CIO at Shalimar Paints, said that they are 

exploring the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve 

sales, and machine learning to streamline manufacturing 

processes in their organization. In 2018, Jade also plans to 

invest in digital technologies for enhancing supply chain 

and warehouse management. 

Chandresh Dedhia @chandreshd . Jan 19 

Replying to @shymanuja @itnext_ 

Top priorities to have technologies in place which can gives us the insights 

that will help us to identify, assess, improve and innovate. #CIOAgenda2018 

@DigitalAgenda2018 

3 3 

“For us digital is not just a buzzword but it is a force 

enabling business transformation in the organization,” 

said Jade. 

So are we quick to assume that the CIO’s Agenda is primarily 

accelerating digital transformation in 2018 or is that 

over simplification? 

According to Avinash Velhal, Group CIO - India, Middle 

East & APAC - Atos International, digital transformation is 

about extending your technology core to the digital ecosystem. 

To say the least, Bimodal IT is integral part of a CIO’s 

digitalization agenda as he/she has to take care of operational 

IT and innovation IT together. 

Velhal said that DX requires migration from legacy systems 

to newer platforms. CIOs need to build a flexible and 

scalable collaboration environment and enable reskilling of 

IT workers. 


21

Insight 

Keyur Desai. CIO- Essar Ports & Shipping and Head Info- 

Security, Network & Communications at Essar, also feels 

that the CIO Agenda2018 is a subset of the CIO’s digital 

agenda in 2018. “The CEO and the CDO also contribute to 

this digital journey,” he added. 

CIO Challenges in 2018 

These CIOs cited a number of challenges that they will have 

to tackle in 2018. 

Apart from modernizing legacy systems and reskilling for 

technical and soft skills, digitalization, business alignment, 

security and business technologies are also seen as priorities 

by the CIOs. 

According to Belwal, some of the biggest challenge 

will be repaying technical debts i.e. modernising old technologies 

that slow us down, talent retention, and prioritizing 

demand. 

“Resources will be constrained. We need to cut costs from 

running operations and reinvest in innovation. Technologies 

such as cloud, SaaS, and PaaS, allow doing both. We 

have to shift the balance of run versus transform cost ratios 

rightwards to do more with the same,” he added. 

The decision to hire versus contract will be another 

challenge. 

Ashok Jade @ashokjade . Jan 19 

If #CIO shows Business value proposition then, getting #budget is not big 

challenge. #CIOAgenda2018 

Budget Vows 

Desai said that there has been an increase in budget spend 

on new technologies with a focus on optimizing the IT landscape 

and developing a robust IT security strategy. 

According to Gartner, top businesses are already spending 

34% of their IT budget on digital, with plans to increase that 

to 44% by 2018. 

“Our digital spend is increasing with focus on DevOps and 

hybrid cloud,” said Chandresh Dedhia, Head - Information 

Technology - Ascent Health & Wellness Solutions. 

For the longest time, CIOs have said that they need to ratify 

their technology investments with business outcomes. Jade 

said that if the CIOs can showcase business value proposition, 

getting the budget sanctioned is no big challenge. 

Reskilling 

From a skills standpoint, what is the CIO’s Agenda2018? We 

have known for quite some time that IT jobs will suffer at the 

hands of cognitive technologies. This doom was long coming. 

However, hiring developing and retaining top skills has 

been a CIO’s challenge for decades. 

Anjani @anjaniglobal . Jan 19 

Replying to @cioandleader @keydesai @umanathtrip 

With #technology shelflife reducing and too many dimension being addedd to 

newer technologies like #AI, @IoT and #Blockchain, skill is one of the major 

struggle most of digital leaders have - Hire Vs contract. #CIOAgenda2018 

3 1 

CIO&Leader @cioandleader 

Do you agree, @ashokjade? Just elaborating on the earlier one. 

How does the budget look like - compared to 2017? What are the 

fundamental changes in terms of how you spend INRI mean the 

allocation primarily – betn new tech & running ops; betn Infra & business 

tech #CIOAgenda2018 @avelhal @ashokjade @Jeyceebee 

1 1 

According to Velhal, the key driver for success will involve 

linking digital initiatives to organizational performance 

Shadow IT is a usual suspect that will intensify the CIO’s 

worries further. 

According to Belwal, Shadow IT is a sometimes a signal 

of weak partnership with business, and at others, of weak 

financial governance. We need to strengthen the trust and 

partnership and also to partner with finance and procurement 

teams to bring better spend governance. 

Keyur Desai @keydesai . Jan 19 

IoT has been the there since quite some time now and many organisations 

have initiated next steps of embracing teach adaption - how is #security 

taken care off during the #sensorization approach #CIOAgenda2018 

6 4 

According to Belwal, the CIO’s Agenda in 2018 has to focus 

on reskilling and not just in digital technologies, but also the 

development frameworks like agile, product mindset and 

architecture. 

Dedhia also asserts that no amount of technologies will 

help us if the users aren't empowered and trained well. 

“This gets most and ongoing attention,” he added. 

Like Dedhia, some CIOs have found better alternatives to 

deal with this skill situation. 

Velhal said that developing strong bench strength with 

external mindset is very crucial in the digital age. “So are 

creating collaborative teams with a focus on governance as 

well as techquisitions,” he added. 

According to Gartner, techquisitions are acquisitions of 

digital or IT companies by enterprises in other conventional 

industries that have not created or sold information and 

communication technology-based products or services 

before. CIOs must play a prominent role in making techquisitions 

more successful and maximize the benefits from all 

financial and intellectual resources deployed. 

Desai said that maintaining the skill-set has always been a 

challenging task and he has found resolve in managed services 

to address the skills part to a large extent 


Insight 

Two Of The Five Most 

Likely Risks In 2018 

Are Cyber Risks 

Despite concerns about AI and robots, adverse 

consequences of technological advances are still seen as a 

comparatively lower risk 

By CIO&Leader 


23

Insight 

TTwo of the top five most likely global 

risks are cyber risks, according to the 

Global Risk Report 2018, released 

yesterday by World Economic Forum. 

Risks of cyberattacks and data fraud 

or theft are seen by WEF members as 

the third and fourth most likely risks 

in 2018, next only to two environmental 

risks, extreme weather events and 

natural disasters. . 

The events of 2017 have also led to 

cyberattacks being seen as the 6th 

most impactful perceived global risk 

in 2018. This is the highest rank for a 

technological risk in the list of most 

impactful risks since the beginning of 

the publication of the report in 2012. 

This means cyberattacks are seen to 

impacting the earth more than food 

crises, biodiversity loss, large scale 

involuntary migration (refugee crisis) 

and spread of infectious diseases. 

As in previous years, this year’s 

report also draws on WEF’s annual 

Global Risks Perceptions Survey 

(GRPS), which is completed by around 

1,000 members of its multi-stakeholder 

communities. 

According to the GRPS, cyber threats 

are growing in prominence, with largescale 

cyberattacks now ranked third in 

terms of likelihood, while rising cyberdependency 

is ranked as the second 

most significant driver shaping the 

global risks landscape over the next 

10 years. 

“Although in previous years respondents 

to the GRPS have tended to 

be optimistic about technological 

risks, this year concerns jumped, and 

cyberattacks and massive data fraud 

both appear in the list of the top five 

global risks by perceived likelihood,” 

observed the report. 

The fear is real, illustrates 

the report 

Cyber breaches recorded by businesses 

have almost doubled in five 

years, from 68 per business in 2012 to 

130 per business in 2017, according to 

Accenture 2017 Cost of Cyber Crime 

Study. Having been choked off by law 

enforcement successes in 2010–2012, 

“dark net” markets for malware goods 

and services have seen a resurgence, 

noted an IBM report in March 2017. 

In 2016 alone, 357 million new 

malware variants were released and 

“banking trojans” designed to steal 

account login details could be purchased 

for as little as USD 500, says 

the report quoting Symantec ITR. 

In addition, cybercriminals have an 

exponentially increasing number of 

potential targets, because the use of 

cloud services continues to accelerate 

and the Internet of Things is expected 

to expand from an estimated 8.4 billion 

devices in 2017 to a projected 20.4 billion 

in 2020, according to Gartner. 

“What would once have been considered 

large-scale cyberattacks are now 

becoming normal,” the report notes. 

In 2016, companies revealed breaches 

of more than 4 billion data records, 

more than the combined total for the 

previous two years, according to an 

IBM whitepaper quoted by the report. 

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) 

attacks using 100 gigabits per second 

(Gbps) were once exceptional but have 

now become commonplace, jumping in 

frequency by 140% in 2016 alone, says 

Akamai report. And attackers have 

become more persistent—in 2017 the 

average DDoS target was likely to be 

hit 32 times over a three-month period, 

according to the Akamai report. The 

financial costs of cyberattacks are rising. 

A 2017 study of 254 companies 

across seven countries put the annual 

cost of responding to cyberattacks at 

GBP 11.7 million per company, a yearon-year 

increase of 27.4%, according to 

Accenture. The cost of cybercrime to 

businesses over the next five years is 

expected to be USD 8 trillion, according 

to a Juniper research. 

Ransomware attacks accounted 

for 64% of all malicious emails sent 

between July and September last year. 

Notable examples included the WannaCry 

attack, which affected 300,000 

computers across 150 countries, and 

Petya and NotPetya, which caused 

huge corporate losses. 

Beyond its financial cost, the Wanna- 

Cry attack disrupted critical and strategic 

infrastructure across the world, 

including government ministries, railways, 

banks, telecommunications providers, 

energy companies, car manufacturers 

and hospitals. It illustrated a 

growing trend of using cyberattacks to 

target critical infrastructure and strategic 

industrial sectors, raising fears 

that, in a worst- case scenario, attackers 

could trigger a breakdown in the 

systems that keep societies functioning. 

Many of these attacks are thought 

to be state sponsored. WannaCry’s ultimate 

impact was relatively low, largely 

because a “kill switch” was discovered, 

but it highlighted the vulnerability of a 

wide range of infrastructure organizations 

and installations to disruption 

or damage. 

Since the 2015 attack on Ukraine’s 

power grid—which temporarily shut 

down 30 substations, interrupting 

power supply to 230,000 people— evidence 

has been mounting of further 

attempts to target critical infrastructure. 

In 2016, for example, an attack 

on the SWIFT messaging network 

led to the theft of USD 81 million from 

the central bank of Bangladesh. The 

European Aviation Safety Agency 

has stated that aviation systems are 

subject to an average of 1,000 attacks 

each month. Last year saw reports of 

attempts to use spear-phishing attacks 

against companies operating nuclear 

power plants in the United States. 

“Most attacks on critical and strategic 

systems have not succeeded—but the 

combination of isolated successes with 

a growing list of attempted attacks suggests 

that risks are increasing. And the 

world’s increasing interconnectedness 


Insight 

The Global Risks Landscape 2018 

4.0 

Weapons of mass destruction 

Extreme weather events 

Natural disasters 

Failure of climate-change 

mitigation and adaptation 

Water crises 

Food crises 

Biodiversity loss and 

ecosystem collapse 

Cyberattacks 

3.40 

average 

3.5 

Spread of infectious 

diseases 

Critical information 

infrastructure breakdown 

Fiscal crises 

Failure of regional or 

global governance 

Failure of critical 

infrastructure 

Interstate conflict 

Profound social 

instability 

Unemployment or 

underemployment 

Failure of national 

governance 

Asset bubbles in a major 

economy 

State collapse or crisis 

Large-scale 

involuntary migration 

Man-made environmental 

disasters 

Terrorist attacks 

Data fraud or theft 

Energy price shock 

Failure of financial 

mechanism or institution 

Adverse consequences of 

technological advances 

Failure of urban planning 

3.0 

Impact 

Unmanageable inflation 

Deflation 

Illicit trade 

2.5 3.0 4.0 4.5 

Likelihood 

3.48 

average 

5.0 

plotted 

area 

Source: World Economic Forum Global Risks Perception Survey 2017–2018. 

1.0 5.0 

and pace heightens our vulnerability 

to attacks that cause not only isolated 

and temporary disruptions, but radical 

and irreversible systemic shocks,” says 

the report. In addition to cyberattacks, 

other technology risk identified by 

the report include critical information 

infrastructure breakdown, which still 

ranks low in terms of both impact and 

likelihood but with AI and robotics 

developing fast, it could emerge as a 

bigger risk in the years to come 

–(Part of the text here is rephrased from the 

WEF Global Risk Report) 


25

Insight 

Banking on 

Public Cloud 

In 2018, the spending on public cloud services will 

be driven by Banking (USD 1.85 billion), Professional 

Services (USD 1.75 billion), and Discrete Manufacturing 

(USD 1.63 billion) 



Insight 

AAsia Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) 

spending on public cloud services and 

infrastructure will reach USD 15.08 

billion in 2018, an increase of 35.66% 

over 2017, according to the latest 

update of the IDC Worldwide Semiannual 

Public Cloud Services Spending 

Guide. Although annual spending 

growth is expected to slow over the 

2016-2021 forecast period, the market 

is expected to hit a five-year compound 

annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.58% 

in public cloud services spending, or a 

total of USD 32.27 billion in 2021. 

In 2018, the spending on public cloud 

services will be driven by Banking 

(USD 1.85 billion), Professional Services 

(USD 1.75 billion), and Discrete 

Manufacturing (USD 1.63 billion). 

Telecommunication and Process Manufacturing 

combined are also expected 

to spend more than USD 2.39 billion 

on public cloud services in 2018. These 

five industries are expected to remain 

Figure: Top Secondary Market Based on 5-year CAGR 

(2016-2021) (Vendor Revenue (Constant)) 

as the highest spenders in 2021 due to 

their continued investment in public 

cloud solutions. However, the industries 

that will see the fastest spending 

growth over the five-year forecast period 

are Construction (37.36% CAGR), 

Professional Services (36.84% CAGR), 

and Personal and Consumer Services 

(36.65% CAGR). 

"While digital transformation 

does help to drive the overall market 

growth, the rapid expansion of datacenter 

presence from global public 

clouds services providers at APeJ 

region does attract enterprises to 

migrate more workloads to the public 

cloud environment as that helps to 

address their concerns in data sovereignty 

and latency,” says Liew Siew 

Choon, Senior Market Analyst, IDC 

Asia/Pacific's Services Research team. 

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) 

will be the largest category of public 

cloud spending in 2018, contributing 

about 47.60% to the overall cloud 

spending in the region. This is due to 

the fast expansion of datacenters by 

global public cloud service providers, 

followed by Software as a Service 

(SaaS), which is very close to the Infrastructure 

spending on cloud, with a 

share of 45.83% on the overall spend. 

29.9% 

35.8% 

35.1% 

38.6% 

41.3% 

50.3% 

Applications Platforms Collaborative Applications Data Management Software 

IaaS spending will be fairly balanced 

throughout the forecast with server 

spending trending slightly ahead of 

storage spending. PaaS spending will 

be led by Application Platforms, which 

will see the fastest spending growth 

(37.93% CAGR) over the forecast period. 

Data Management Software, Data 

Access, Analysis, and Delivery, and 

Integration and Orchestration Middleware 

will also see healthy spending 

levels in 2018 and beyond. 

China will be the largest country 

market for public cloud services in 

2018 with its USD 5.44 billion spending 

to account for about 36.10% of 

APeJ spending. Australia (USD 2.85 

billion) and India (USD 2.12 billion) 

will be in second and third place 

respectively in terms of Cloud Spending 

in the region. 

"China and India, the two largest 

markets in APeJ will account for about 

60% of the region's Cloud market size. 

The Chinese government has been 

actively promoting the development of 

the high-tech industry, and continues 

to implement its Internet+ strategy is 

a leading factor for China's adoption 

to cloud technology, for India accelerated 

demand by enterprises and govt. 

towards the implementation of new 

technologies like Blockchain, AI, IoT 

etc is making the cloud a bare necessity," 

says Ashutosh Bisht, Research 

Manager for Customer Insights & 

Analysis, IDC Asia/Pacific. 

The IDC Worldwide Semiannual 

Public Cloud Services Spending Guide 

quantifies public cloud computing 

purchases by cloud type for 20 industries 

and five company sizes across 

eight regions and 47 countries. Unlike 

any other research in the industry, the 

comprehensive spending guide was 

designed to help IT decision makers to 

clearly understand the industry-specific 

scope and direction of public cloud 

services spending today and over the 

next five years 

Data Access, Analysis, 

and Del... 

Basic Storage 

Others 

–The author is Regional Director, 

CompTIA India 


27

Insight 

The Blockchain 

Bubble Burst 

Fintech investments will also remain strong in regulatory 

technology (regtech), artificial intelligence (AI) and 

Internet of Things (IoT) enablement. 



Insight 

In 2018, fintech investments will 

remain strong in regulatory technology 

(regtech), artificial intelligence (AI) and 

Internet of Things (IoT) enablement 

22017 was a great year for fintech 

mainly because global investors are 

making targeted investments on value 

and long-term sustainability in the market. 

Global research firm, KPMG, has 

said that the total global investment in 

fintech remained steady in 2017 at over 

USD 31 billion, year-over-year. 

The report also found that technologies 

such as Insurtech and blockchain 

accounted for USD 2.1 billion across 

247 deals and USD 512 million of 

investment across 92 deals res. 

In 2018, fintech investments will 

remain strong in regulatory technology 

(regtech), artificial intelligence (AI) and 

Internet of Things (IoT) enablement. 

One of the important findings of the 

survey was that fintechs are maturing 

beyond their niche beginnings. According 

to the report, fintechs are maturing 

in areas such as payments and lending 

while more established fintechs are now 

looking to move beyond niche markets 

to offer adjacent services and, in some 

cases, full stack solutions. 

Blockchain is being seen as a major 

technology investment in 2018. 

According to the report, Blockchain 

garnered a significant amount of attention 

from investors in 2017, with VC 

investment in particular achieving a 

record high of USD 512 million. 

The report highlighted that 2018 

may be the year when companies finally 

see production capable blockcha 

in solutions. 

Insurtech, on the other hand, is 

expected to hit its stride in terms of 

investment, according to the report. 

In 2017, insurtech was a hot area of 

fintech investment globally, with VC 

investment in particular reaching a 

record high of USD 2.1 billion in 2017. 

KPMG notes in the report that traditional 

insurance companies are expected 

to take innovation up a notch, while 

blockchain consortia are expected to 

expand and further develop and test 

specific use cases. Additionally, enterprises 

are also expected to increase 

their focus on the application of AI in 

insurtech in order to make processes, 

such as underwriting, more efficient. 

B2B focus continues to be 

a key investor priority 

Fintech focused on the B2B market, 

including payments platforms, SME 

lending platforms and SaaS solutions 

aimed at making back office processes 

more efficient and effective remain a 

priority for fintech investors. Globally, 

many financial institutions face significant 

financial pressures and challenges, 

particularly related to regulatory 

reporting and compliance. With 

regulatory requirements only expected 

to rise in most jurisdictions, regtech 

solutions are becoming key focus area 

for B2B investors and corporates. 

Characteristics of fintech 

investors changing 

While venture capital (VC) fintech 

deals volume has declined significantly 

over recent years, particularly at the 

angel and seed stage levels, this decline 

is partly a result of the evolution of 

fintech as a whole. Both fintech companies 

and investors have matured significantly 

— with maturing companies 

looking for bigger rounds of funding, 

and investors shifting their focus from 

making widespread investments into 

placing bigger bets aimed at achieving 

value or sustainability. 

Corporate investors 

becoming more strategic 

Globally, corporate investors have also 

changed their approach to investing 

in fintechs. Initially, many corporates 

took a portfolio approach to fintech 

investing — providing smaller pools of 

money to a larger group of fintechs in 

order to develop a better understanding 

of opportunities and innovations. 

Now, corporate investors have become 

confident as to how fintech can help 

them achieve real value and are focusing 

on making strategic investments 

that can help defend their profit pools 

or help them explore or expand into 

adjacencies 


29

Insight 

What Indian CIOs 

Can Learn From 

America’s Broken 

IT Processes? 

However, whether it is India or the US, the onus of attrition 

isn't on the millennials alone 



Insight 

IIn the last few years since "making the 

workplace attractive for the millennial 

workforce" became a CIO responsibility, 

I have asked several Indian CIOs on 

how they plan to make their workplace 

smarter and future-ready? Most of 

them are well-intentioned to deploy 

policies and tools that will help them 

retain this rather, restless workforce. 

However, whether it is India or the 

US, the onus of attrition isn't on the 

millennial alone. 

In a rather interesting survey of 

1,000 US full-time employees across 

industries and departments by Intex 

titled 'Definitive Guide to America’s 

Most Broken Processes', broken corporate 

processes are sending good 

employees out the door. 

According to the survey, of the 

employees surveyed who are actively 

looking for new jobs, the vast majority, 

about 86% say their company’s broken 

processes are a factor behind their 

decision. Millennials are particularly 

likely to be influenced by broken processes 

to look for other work. 

"Broken processes play a 

significant role in my decision 

to look for other jobs" 

(Departmental breakdown) 

58% IT 

41% HR 

37% Finance and Sales 

33% Customer relations 

29% Operations 

The majority of employees surveyed 

complain about broken internal processes 

across IT, on-boarding and 

administrative functions. This is seen 

as a reason why non-IT employees 

engage in shadow IT. 

So who do employees blame? 

Colleagues? Their supervisor? Or 

the CEO? 

According to the survey, when it 

comes to broken IT processes like 

technology troubleshooting, 73% of 

respondents are quick to blame IT 

staffers rather than corporate higherups, 

followed by 43% who blame 

the CIO versus the 30% who hold IT 

workers accountable. Only 13% of total 

respondents blame their company’s 

CEO for IT shortcomings. For all of the 

broken processes, the survey uncovered 

a lack of prompt IT service, citing 

that a mere 16% say their IT department 

is extremely prompt in handling 

service requests, while more than 1/4 

say their department is either not very 

prompt or not prompt at all. 

According to the study, if these 

corporate broken processes remain 

deeply embedded in corporate culture, 

employees will feel limited in their 

roles and will actively look for other 

jobs. Eventually, they will leave. 

To tackle these problems, the study 

has identified four areas where companies 

can make significant strides 

towards stopping the cycle of attrition 

by proactively addressing broken processes. 

More closely tie IT to line of business 

workers. Most employees in 

organization turn a critical eye to the 

IT department. This finding of the survey 

suggests that workers perceive IT 

as its own entity, separately accountable 

from the rest of the company in a 

The majority 

of employees 

surveyed 

complain about 

broken internal 

processes 

across IT, onboarding 

and 

administrative 

functions 

way that HR and sales are not. The gap 

between IT and the lines of businesses 

needs to close. The study suggests 

that businesses must examine their 

internal workflows with an eye toward 

identifying and repairing the sources 

of disconnect between IT and the rest 

of the business with the help of new 

tools and technologies. 

Identify processes that can be 

streamlined and automated. With 

many of the broken processes we highlighted, 

there are opportunities for 

streamlining and automation to play 

transformative roles. 

Clearly define a process for 

advancement. 61% of employees with 

clearly defined advancement processes 

are very happy on the job. That stark 

contrast speaks for itself. To clearly 

define a process for advancement, companies 

must evaluate and evolve the 

administrative processes that are tied 

to career progress – namely, annual 

performance reviews, promotions 

and raise negotiations.The study is 

a wake up call for CIOs to get their 

basic IT processes in place. The right 

processes and policies need to trickle 

from top-down and provide employees 

a clear path for growth and continued 

success. Are the well-intentioned CIOs 

listening? 


31

Insight 

Cybersecurity 

Skills Rank First 

In Both Demand 

And In Talent Gap 

According to the Capgemini survey, the demand for 

cybersecurity talent will intensify in the next 2-3 years 



Insight 

The majority of employees 

surveyed complain about 

broken internal processes 

across IT, on-boarding and 

administrative functions 

DDeveloping digital skills is probably 

the biggest impediment to the adoption 

of new technologies in enterprises. 

The same holds true for finding and 

retaining cybersecurity talent. According 

to a recent Capgemini survey titled 

‘Cybersecurity Talent: The Big Gap in 

Cyber Protection', over half (55%) of 

companies say that the digital talent 

gap is widening and cybersecurity 

skills rank first in both demand and in 

talent gap. Organizations, according to 

the survey, must have two priorities: 

1. Improve the retention of cybersecurity 

talent 

2. Step up the acquisition of cybersecurity 

talent 

The demand for cybersecurity talent 

is not likely to diminish in the next few 

years. The survey highlights that 68% 

of organizations acknowledge demand 

for cybersecurity talent is high in their 

organization today and will intensify 

in the next 2-3 years. 

The survey highlights that India and 

the US have the largest (16%) cybersecurity 

talent pool, followed by the UK 

and France. Among industries, insurance 

has the highest proportion of 

cybersecurity talent followed by banking 

and consumer products. According 

to the survey, 80% of cybersecurity 

talent prefer to have the flexibility to 

choose their own training programs 

and training calendar. 66% also prefer 

learning through a massive open 

online course (MOOC) than their organization’s 

training programs. 

A lot of large organizations in the 

industry today are developing this 

talent pipeline using bug bounty 

programs. The survey highlights 

that every four in five cybersecurity 

employees want to join a firm that uses 

innovative hiring practices. Tech firms, 

such as Apple, Facebook, Google, 

Microsoft, and Intel, and companies 

outside the industry use bug bounty 

programs - a way of rewarding individuals 

for reporting security bugs, 

and using this approach as a recruitment 

opportunity. 

Gamification is another approach 

that is being used for hiring cybersecurity 

talent. For instance, a non-profit 

organization, Cyber Security Challenge 

UK, conducts yearly gaming 

competitions to recruit cybersecurity 

talent. The rewards for winners range 

from prizes to job opportunities. 

Similarly, Marriott International 

has deployed a recruiting game that 

is specifically targeted at millennial 

employees. 

The third approach used by organizations 

is anchor hiring—recruiting 

experts in an area to attract more talent 

from that area—to attract digital talent. 

Employees want to join firms with 

charismatic leaders. According to the 

survey, Over half (58%) of employers 

we surveyed say they believe hiring 

senior executives, such as CISOs (Chief 

Information Security Officers) can 

bring new talent along with them. 

The survey recommends four steps 

that organizations can take to retain 

cybersecurity talent. 

1. Incentivize employees to upgrade 

their cybersecurity quotient. 

2. Promote gender inclusion by 

changing the perception of the 

cybersecurity field. 

3. Ensure Gen Y and Gen Z cybersecurity 

talent can visualize their 

career path. 

4. Automate the mundane tasks to 

free up cybersecurity talent’s time 

to focus on value-adding activities. 

The survey highlights that the implications 

of a cyber breach for organizations 

are potentially devastating. But 

organizations are struggling with a 

shortage of cybersecurity talent and 

the problem is certainly not going 

away. The survey suggests adoption 

of methods, such as acquisition, training, 

and retention strategies that will 

appeal to cybersecurity talent, organizations 

can take an important step in 

upgrading their cyber protection for 

the current and emerging risks 


33

Insight 

Mismatched 

Priorities 

for DX 

Only 17% organizations 

have fully-formed digital 

transformation strategies 


TThe need for digital transformation has reached 

critical levels, as per CA Technologies Asia Pacific 

& Japan Digital Transformation Impact and Readiness 

Study. The study, conducted in late 2017, 

examined digital transformation strategies of 900 

business and IT leaders across nine APJ markets: 

Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, 

Singapore, South Korea and Thailand. 

According to the survey findings, 78% of 

respondents felt that their organizations have 

been impacted by digital disruption. Similarly, 

78% of respondents felt that their jobs have been 

changed due to digital disruption. The majority 

also agreed that these changes will be augmented 

in the next three to five years. 

Mismatched Pressures 

and Priorities for Digital 

Transformation in APJ 

In a new world that is defined by digital engagement, 

the competitive differentiation for organizations, 

and even governments, is increasingly 

determined by their ability to transform themselves 

digitally and build software into their 

business strategies. 

The survey found that fast evolving economic 

conditions, meeting of changing customer expectations 

and using digital transformation as a new 

edge in winning against traditional competitors 

were listed as the biggest pressures for digital 

transformation in the region. 

However, only 17% have fully-formed digital 

transformation strategies, and only 9% are looking 

at fully digitizing their entire organizations. 

This finding mirrors the top three business priorities 

that organizations in APJ are focused on solving 

today, namely improving workforce collaboration, 

and reducing operational costs. 

According to the findings, priorities such as creating 

different business models and/or revenue 

streams; developing new products and services; 

improving customer experience; and attracting 

and retaining workforce are deemed to be less 

important. This demonstrates a clear misalignment 

between the business priorities that leaders 

are focused on achieving today and the top pressures 

that are driving their organizations’ digital 

transformation journey 


SECURITY 

How IoT Security Is 

Integral To Gaining 

And Retaining 

Consumer Trust 

Dr. Rizwan Ahmed, President of Technology QM Computech, 

discusses the challenges that IoT faces and the possible solutions 

needed to ensure security in IoT 

By Dr Rizwan Ahmed 


Security 

TThe Internet of Things (IoT) is used 

to describe a network of objects (or 

“things”) that have sensors or hardware, 

and software to enable objects 

to connect to the Internet through 

wired and wireless networks. Early 

experiments conducted during the 

1980s and 1990s started showcasing 

“things” that could be connected. 

The term IoT was invented in 1999, 

initially to promote RFID technology. 

IoT didn’t become popular until 2010- 

2011. In 2011, Gartner, which invented 

the famous “hype-cycle for emerging 

technologies”, included a new emerging 

phenomenon on its list: IoT. 

In 2014, IoT reached mass markets 

when Google bought Nest for USD 

3.2 billion and Consumer Electronics 

Show (CES) in Las Vegas was held 

under the theme of IoT. Today billions 

of “things” can “talk” to each other – 

from TVs, fridges, cars, smart meters, 

health monitors and wearables. As per 

Gartner’s forecast, 8.4 billion connected 

things were to be in use worldwide 

in 2017 -- up by 31% from 2016, and 

will reach 20 to 30 billion by 2020, 

with total IoT spending on endpoints 

and services to reach almost USD 2 

trillion in 2017. 

A wide variety of IoT objects and 

applications are currently available, 

with many more to come. Here is the 

list of most popular IoT applications 

in use today: 

Smart Home 

Wearables 

Smart City 

Smart Grid 

Industrial Internet 

Connected Cars 

Connected Healthcare 

Smart Retail 

Smart Supply Chain 

Smart Farming 

Technology is only adopted when 

it actually gets enmeshed with our 

everyday life; considering this, IoT 

still has a long way to go. As for the 

future, it is impossible to offer precise 

predictions as to what devices will be 

developed. As a paradigm, IoT should 

further simplify our lives by utilizing 

connected devices. 

On the one hand, IoT opens up exciting 

new business opportunities and 

a trail for economic growth. On the 

other hand, it also opens the door to a 

variety of new security threats. Since 

IoT involves networking of “things” 

or objects that are relatively new and 

their product design doesn’t always 

consider security an important factor. 

Most of the IoT products in the market 

are often sold with old and unpatched 

embedded operating system and software. 

It is generally observed that purchasers 

of these IoT devices often fail 

to change the default passwords or fail 

to select sufficiently strong passwords. 

IoT also faces a greater number of 

possible threats as compared to earlier 

internet technologies due to the various 

reasons: 

With ever growing number of connected 

IoT devices, applications, systems 

and end users, result in greater 

scope for vulnerabilities. 

Every compromised IoT device 

becomes a new possible attack point 

increasing probability of attacks. 

There is a plethora of IoT standards 

and protocols, which creates security 

blind spots. With more connected 

devices in many applications 

i.e., hundreds of different use cases 

build on different standards, interact 

with different systems and have 

different goals, especially critical 

infrastructure applications where 

there is a rise in the impact of attacks 

(i.e., damage to the physical world 

and possible loss-of-life), the stakes 

are much higher for hackers which 

increases the threat level. 

Due to more complex technology 

stack for IoT, multiple threats are 

possible from across the stack (e.g. 

hardware, communication, and software 

elements). 

IoT devices are collecting lots of data 

and this “data” can get into wrong 

hands, fuelling privacy concerns. 

In order improve security of IoT 

devices, the following measures 

should be undertaken: 

Security must be the foundational 

enabler for IoT. 

IoT devices that need to be directly 

accessible over the Internet, should 

be segmented into its own network 

and have restricted network access. 

These individual network segments 

should be then monitored in order to 

identify potential anomalous traffic 

so as to take further action if there is 

a problem. 

IoT device manufacturers should 

enhance privacy and build secure 

devices by adopting a securityfocused 

approach, reducing the 

amount of data collected by IoT 

devices, and increasing transparency 

and providing consumers with 

a choice to opt-out of data collection. 

IoT solution architectures require 

multi-layered security approaches 

that seamlessly work together to 

provide complete end-to-end security 

from device to cloud and everything 

in between throughout the 

lifecycle of the solution. 

Encryption is an absolute must. 

IoT standards are important catalysts 

and should further mature as 

per IoT security requirements. 

The continued evolution of IoT- specific 

security threats will undoubtedly 

drive innovation in this space, enabling 

us to expect newer IoT- specific security 

technologies to appear in the creation 

phase in the near future. Many of these 

technologies may align around vertical 

and industry for specific use cases such 

as IoT in healthcare or IoT in industrial 

applications, etc. IoT security is integral 

to gain and retain consumer trust 

on privacy and fulfil the true potential 

of IoT, thus safeguarding IoT for our 

secure future 


37

BANKING 

Deriving Maximum 

Benefit From AI- 

Powered Solutions 

According to the latest report by PwC titled Artificial intelligence in 

India – hype or reality, machine learning is the most popular AIpowered 

solution in the IT/ITes industry 



Banking 

AArtificial intelligence is a unique 

branch of science and technology—has 

been in practice for over 60 years. The 

field has seen many periods of heightened 

expectations, only to be followed 

by disappointing results and drying 

up of investments. The ‘hype’ of AI 

and the eventual necessity to face 

‘reality’ have been a part and parcel 

of AI’s progress. Many of those who 

have been involved in AI for decades 

believe or hope that ‘this time it is different’. 

The survey results highlighted 

in this report show that consumers 

and businesses have high expectations 

from AI and that it has the potential to 

transform our individual lives, work 

and society. The success of AI in enterprises 

has the potential to usher in a 

new era of abundant, highly personalised 

products and services, unbiased 

and rational decisions, and lower costs 

of delivery and development. At the 

same time, if not implemented in the 

right way, AI could also result in the 

widening of income disparity between 

skilled and unskilled workers. Consumers, 

businesses, governments and 

international bodies—all have to consciously 

make policy decisions to help 

with the success of AI and passing on 

its benefits to all. 

According to the latest report by 

PwC titled Artificial intelligence in 

India – hype or reality, machine learning 

is the most popular (63%) AI-powered 

solution in the IT/ITes industry, 

followed by decision-support systems, 

Virtual Private assistants (VPA), 

robotics, etc. This sector is at the forefront 

of AI research and commercial 

deployments, it is likely to cater to 

multiple client industries with a range 

of AI-powered solutions. 

The banking, financial services 

and insurance (BFSI) industry, however, 

considers robotics, along with 

machine learning and automated data 

analysts (44% of the participants for 

each), to have the highest impact on 

their business. 

In the manufacturing sector, decision 

makers/influencers seem to lean 

towards a mix of machine learning 

solutions (50% of the participants), 

decision support systems, and automated 

communications and automated 

research and information 

aggregation solutions (40% of the participants 

each) in terms of how they 

perceive the above solutions to impact 

their business over the next few years. 

The banking, financial services and 

insurance (BFSI) industry considers 

robotics, along with machine learning 

and automated data analysts (44% 

of the participants for each), to have 

the highest impact on their business, 

which could, in theory, be owing to a 

number of solutions aimed at automation 

of processes, customer support, 

regulatory processes and other back 

office operations. AI solutions, combined 

with other enabling fields such 

The success of 

AI in enterprises 

has the potential 

to usher in a new 

era of abundant 

and highly 

personalised 

products 

as industrial Internet of things (IIoT) 

devices and platforms, are expected 

to play a significant role in paving the 

way for smart manufacturing and 

Industry 4.0. The success of AI in 

enterprises has the potential to create 

new opportunities for the worforce, 

leaders and the organization as a 

whole. At the same time, if not implemented 

in the right way, AI could also 

result in the widening of income disparity 

between skilled and unskilled 

workers. Consumers, businesses, 

governments and international bodies 

(like the UN or the World Economic 

Forum)—all have to consciously make 

policy decisions to help with the success 

of AI and passing on its benefits 

to all. 

With the initiation of automation 

and the implementation of AI 

in organisations, there have been 

concerns regarding displaced jobs; 

however, the long-term benefits of 

leveraging AI in businesses to boost 

productivity, stimulate growth and, in 

turn, create higher value involvement 

opportunities for the workfoce might 

outweigh the potential short-term 

employment concerns. 

While employment-related concerns 

cannot be dismissed altogether, there 

is likely to be a shift from traditional 

jobs to more evolved, high-involvement 

roles for humans in the future 

as efficiency, safety and standardised 

quality is expected to take precedence 

in certain services over the natural 

course of 

development. Overall, the survey 

results have indicated that business 

decision makers/influencers perceive 

machine learning solutions, virtual 

private assistants followed by decision 

support systems, automated research 

and information aggregation solutions 

and automated data analysts 

to be the most impactful for businesses 

in the near future, with approximately 

36–51% of the participants 

vouching for each of their expected 

impact potential 


39

CIO &amp; LEADER-Issue-11-February 2018

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CIO & LEADER-Issue-11-February 2018