CIO topmost agendas for 2008

• A drive towards SOAization: Migration to Service oriented Architectures is among the biggest plan of action in the CIOs list for 2008 according to the McKinsey Quarterly report. Enterprises need the business agility to react to ever-changing business requirements, and continually implement new programs to attract and retain customers. SOA's benefits are fundamentally about improving business processes The ability of an SOA based IT system is to be able to leverage existing application assets, and expose them using service level abstractions that are loosely coupled, and standards based, thereby working with Business objectives in mind and hence driving innovation and creative thinking. The concept has been around for years, but as more organizations adopt Web services standards, interest in these architectures has grown. This would be the prime focus of CIOs in 2008 and the next few years to come, by when its assumed that SOA would become a part of organizations' culture, instead of a separate work stream.
• Aligning IT and business: IT and business should work as partners when planning their objectives and goals, in order to make an organization competitive. This understanding has been prevailing in the industry for years together, however, with the increasing pace of the business world becoming flattened by dynamic economics, technology and regulations, businesses are not left with any choice but to align the IT and business goals as early as possible. Two things are certain: first, IT is now at the center of most businesses; second, business is a moving target. The demand for coordination across value chains, functions, markets, and geographies will continue to accelerate, and it will be impossible to respond to this challenge without driving new ways of thinking through corporate silos and working closely.
• Introduction of lean-manufacturing principles to data center operations: Data centers have grown tremendously over the past 10 to 15 years as IT spending has increased and cost-conscious CIOs have consolidated smaller centers into fewer and larger ones. According to Mckinsey Quarterly survey, 2008 will witness a drive towards application of lean principles to help reduce waste and improve labor productivity by as much as 40 percent in some processes.

Building a global IT Organization

• Communication is the key- Between:
• Client & Service provider management
• Client & Service provider personnel
• Properly structured contract/outsourcing agreement - To ensure both the parties are at the common platform of understanding and the scope of confusions regarding scope and efficiency of work is minimized.
• Strategic Vision- The offshore partner should relate to the organization's long-term goals, thus going beyond understanding the transactional picture. This would help the offshore company define, build and manage the service best suited to the client's objectives.

Outsourcing trends in 2008

• Focus on core business & Improvement in services- With trust on operational efficiency in an offshore engagement model building up gradually in the industry, 2008 will witness a greater speed with which core business areas' operational processes would be outsourced. This would be almost similar in nature for Life Sciences, Banking & Financial industry and others. Companies would strive to derive improvements in services through outsourcing. Best practices and use of methodologies such as six sigma would be almost taken as granted while outsourcing so as to ensure the present processes are improved upon.
• Knowledge process outsourcing- KPO is one step ahead of Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO). KPO firms provide domain-based processes and business expertise, rather than just process expertise. Cost savings, operational efficiencies, access to a highly talented workforce and improved quality are all underlying expectations in offshoring high-end processes to India. According to trusted resources, India has a large pool of knowledge workers in various sectors ranging from Pharmacy, Medicine, Law, Biotechnology, Education & Training, Engineering, Analytics, Design & Animation, Research & Development, Paralegal Content and even Intelligence services. This talent will soon be discovered and tapped by leading businesses across the globe resulting in the outsourcing of high-end processes to low-wage destinations.