The red carpet is being rolled out and beating in gaiety are the drums, all for welcoming the new year. As we write this, Santa is empting his goodie bag, and, after a tiring trip around the world, is heading back to the North Pole, only to come back again next year. Now, it is our turn to set the momentum for a brand new year, with new resolutions, higher expectations, and a refreshed spirit to don different hats and set new goals for ourselves. So, while the oft asked question about our New Year resolutions compels us to have a ready reply, even if we do not intend to stick to it, there are a few who are going beyond just resolving to do a thing or two. And they are the Chiefs of Technology.

The ball for technological innovation and integration in an organization is in the court of mascots of information technologyChief Information Officers. Over the years, having evolved from mastering only the technical know-how within an organization to laying stake in functional business process as technology experts, some of Indias leading CIOs are setting new benchmarks in terms of technology adoption, bracing for fierce competition, and promising to take their organization to a new level with IT as the anchor. Gearing up to brighter prospects and bigger challenges in the field of information technology, in 2008 are twenty-one upbeat CIOs. They will make fresh investments, explore new technology frontiers and revisit strategic priorities.

Being the focal point of business transformation, these twenty-one CIOs, across the health, insurance, hospitality, banking, retail and other verticals, told Dataquest their priority areas for the year 2008. We asked these CIOs five simple questions: on what technologies would you like to invest in 2008; what areas would you like to explore; what strategic priority areas would you like to focus on; five enterprises that have successfully integrated IT with their business; and your biggest challenge for 2008. Here is giving you an exclusive look into their agenda for the new year, unplugged!

Investment with Aplomb
Undoubtedly, in 2008, security tops the minds of the CIOs and hence proved to be their favorite investment area. A majority seventeen out of our twenty-one respondent CIOs opted for security as one of their crucial areas of investment in 2008. Among the growing array of security treats, it has become necessary for CIOs to beaf up their present security systems and to invest in new ones. The year saw Microsoft providing comprehensive security solutions and officially entering the security market with the launch of Forefront Client Security. The launch reflects on the growing pains of security, spreading its wings intently in the cyber world as well.

Close on the heels of security, storage and data center management were other favorite areas CIOs invested their moolah in. Ten CIOs would like to invest in these two areas and it isnt a surprise why. With companies storage requirement for data amounting to multi-terabytes, storing the data and managing it becomes an obvious yet crucial task. Adding another dimension to storage in 2008 would be storage virtualization, which, though in its formative stage, has become a buzzword. Sun Microsystems and Hitachi Data Systems, already known for their high-end storage portfolio, have expanded their storage virtualization portfolio this year.

They want to invest in Security
Khushru D Siganpuria, director, IT, Taj Group of Hotels	Meheriar Patel, GM & head, IT, Globus Stores	Sudipto Majumdar, CTO, Zapak.com

Another focus area that seemed to have emerged a priority for CIO business strategies in 2008 is energy efficiency. Aligning to this is another goal that storage virtualization may be seen as fulfillingmaking IT more environment friendly. In a report by PC Quest magazine, ensuring high availability is the biggest challenge for CIOs and more than 50% have outsourced monitoring and management to a third party. Outsourcing, setting up their own data center or for future readiness, investment in storage is priority for CIOs.

Its natural to expect companies investing in a data center or in managing it, to choose rack and enclosures and blade servers as an area of investment. However, companies like Elbee, India Today, SLR Ranbaxy, Arvind Mills, Bank of India would put their money, literally, in blade servers, barring data center management or storage. The total number of companies opting for blade servers and racks and enclosures is seven.

Enterprise Resource Management (ERM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) are the chose areas of investment only for seven of the respondents. It reinforces that most Indian enterprises are now mature enough and, therefore, have progressed beyond standard enterprise applications. But, with the huge SMB market trying to automate their internal processes, ERP might be the right answer. If 2007 was the time for CIOs to access whether an enterprise needs ERP or CRM, 2008 will see them going ahead with it, especially among SMBs.

In our annual DQ Top 20 Vol II issue, this year, convergence of communication technologies presents a lucrative market of close to $40 bn worldwide, but raised a question. While Unified Communicationsis certainly hot, is it burning? And CIOs seem to be echoing the sentiment. The market adoption of unified communications is currently low, but since UC signals the beginning of the convergence of communication technologies like audio-video conferencing, on to a single platform, in turn leading to seamless communications, CIOs, world over, are gradually moving toward this space; Precisely the reason why eight enterprises, including Arvind Mills, Henkel CAC, and Oriental Insurance, have shown interest in investing in UC.

They want to explore Virtualization
Manikkam VS, head, IT, Henkel CAC	Shirish Gariba, CIO, Elbee	Ketan Parekh, CIO, ShareKhan	Anwer Bagdadi, senior VP & CTO, CFC India

Another market projecting huge growth is Business Intelligence. According to IDC, the market for BI software is already worth more than $7 bn. Another survey conducted by Merrill Lynch said that BI software topped the list of tech spenders in 2006, while a Forrester Research projected 44% companies worldwide adopted to have BI software in 2007. This years encouraging growth is reason enough to explain why Pricol Software Services and IFFCO would be investing in BI in 2008. Some key technology trends in BI that CIOs might see emerging will be SOA-enabled BI and open source BI. In our survey, though only two companies have expressed interest in BI, 2008 might just be the year of change.

Windows Vista is also catching the eyes of CIOs as Globus, ShareKhan, Eagle Seals, IIFCO, Thomson Press, SLR Ranbaxy, and FCB Ulka are companies opting for it in 2008.

They want to focus on Compliance Confirmation as a strategic area
Radhakrishna Pillai, CIO, SLR Ranbaxy	Ritu Madbhavi, VP, IT, FCB Ulka	SC Mittal, executive director, Management Services & IT, IFFCO

Exploration 2008
Chiefs of technology are not shying away from exploring new frontiers. Linux, virtualization, SaaS, SOA, and social networking were the new areas explored though virtualization proved to be the popular choice. Shoppers Stop, Kuoni Travels, Pricol, Zapak.com, Fortis among others did not express interest in venturing into this territory, though it is hot property. Linux was next in line with six companies choosing to explore this leading, or so far, un-contested leader, of open source. Ten companies would be exploring SOA and SaaS, while nine would like to explore social networking, especially, as words on social networking through different social media for enterprises is spreading fast, with the likes of IBM and Microsoft entering the picture.

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