CIO wish list for Santa this Christmas

Another year winding up with a bright-lighted Xmas tree in the sight.

A precise time for the child in you to spell out your gifts-list for Santa.

And definitely the right occasion for CIOs to pen a letter to Father Christmas in a year that was disruptive from ‘Core to Cloud’.

The year of 2019 witnessed some of the biggest breaches, after-math of GDPR, many big (unexpected) M&A in tech world, Rise of CDO (Chief Digital (Data) Officer), and demystification of digital transformation.

Here’s a notelet of top twelve wishes (in random order) by a next-gen CIO of India for Santa to fulfill at least one wish per month in 2020.

Dear Santa

1. A practical guide with ‘easy-to-implement’ steps to digitally transform our business fast (really fast) with a detailed chapter on ‘How to Actually Survive Fintechs and startups’.
2. A master class in data management for that peace of mind of all (ever-growing) data to stay optimised and secure in the cloud, on-prem and everywhere on the planet.
3. Strategy to fool-proof our security framework to beat the hackers as we work with CSOs and business leaders on best practices around digital risk, compliance, and cybersecurity.
4. Reassurance that RPA, blockchain and AI will finally pop out of the overhype spell in 2020 and more use cases with clear benefits across industries and geos come to the fore.
5. Evangelise the skillsets in the market to help us recruit data scientists, AI engineers cloud specialists, EDR experts and new roles that are easily available and at realistic salaries.
6. Priority Check on emergence as digital-first, cloud-first, RPA first amongst industry peers and business stakeholders or customer first remains the classic approach.
7. Detangle the reporting protocol with emerging C- Suite poster boys like DPO, CAO, CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) including clear demarcation of IT budget spends, KRAs for each.
8. A Crash Course on the ‘soon-to-go-live’ Personal Data Protection Bill in India and its direct and indirect implications on Indian businesses – large and small – across industries.
9. Demystify the tech vendors’ mergers and acquisitions blueprint as IBM buying Red Hat, Broadcom gulping Symantec, VMware buys Carbon Black to name few rattled the industry.
10. Foretell the future of IT channel (implementation) partners as Riverbed, F-Secure (B2B), WinMagic scaled down sales & channel ops in India with ‘Direct-From-APAC’ model in 2019.
11. Accelerate the momentum on Govt. of India’s initiatives on smart cities, digital India to strengthen the nation’s digital fabric towards becoming a 5 trillion dollar economy soon.
12. A crystal ball for the year 2025 with light patterns to indicate technologies that will take off (green) or die down (red) as our IT / DevOps teams are well versed with blinker lights.

+ Bonus Wish: Please continue to travel the globe every year as a jovial, portly white-bearded human with red coat avec white fur collar and cuffs, and your trademark ‘Ho Ho Ho’ echo. Or a Santa Robot is in the works? Hope Not.

Wishing you a Merry Xmas and hope our fulfilled wishes will lead to a ‘digitally transformed’ 2020 that benefits everyone on the planet Earth.

We have been well-behaved techie professionals (kids on the inside) fine-tuning to market trends and juggling between IT needs and business demands of our customers.

We and our teams deserve all the goodies on the eve of 24 December.

Psst. The chimney is all cleared up!

Yours Sincerely

CIO, India