CIOs in the Asia Pacific Expect Economic Recovery in 2010

Recession took everybody by surprise last year but a large number of chief information officers (CIOs) in the Asia Pacific were very optimistic about economic recovery in 2010. This revelation is apparent from a newly released report by Hitachi Data Systems, which showed that about 86 percent of the respondents felt confident about economic recovery by 2010.

Gartner: CIOs Don’t Expect IT Recovery

Andrew Sampson, general manager, Hong Kong and Macau of Hitachi Data Systems, noted that while times are changing for the better, several CIOs have to struggle with managing the surge of data in a flat IT budget.

Flexible, business-centered units

Hitachi Data Systems’ new report ‘The CIO Roadmap to Recovery’ reveals the many challenges faced by CIOs in 2010 and suggests that businesses transform into leaner, greener, yet more flexible and business-centered units.

It suggests that CIOs and IT professionals should use their allocated budget for targeted, specific areas to get the greatest possible strategic business value from IT. The focus should be on areas that can help towards the building of a resilient IT framework that will enable organisations to make the most of the good economic times.

Hitachi Data Systems provides services oriented storage solutions that enable heterogeneous storage to be dynamically provisioned according to business needs and centrally managed via Hitachi storage virtualisation software. The company can help enterprises to achieve this goal by utilising existing assets to drive redundant costs out of their storage implementation.

Andrew Sampson, general manager, Hong Kong and Macau of Hitachi Data Systems, said companies can easily align IT and business goals by the strategic use of technologies such as virtualisation and dynamic provisioning to automate performance and increase utilisation.

Cost management

Operating within a limited budget has always been a challenge for CIOs and in 2010, Asia Pacific CIOs are searching for ways to adopt a storage strategy that lowers operating expenditure. Hitachi Data Systems asked the respondents what they value most in their organisation’s IT strategy and about 50 percent pointed towards the reduction of operating costs.

The majority (73 percent) of CIOs in this region understands and showed interest in adopting new technology but 50 percent were unable to calculate the return on investment of an improved information infrastructure.