OCTAVE Consulting: 8 Reasons Why your SME business needs a CIO

Every business be it small, medium or large is employing technology to cut costs and stay efficient.  Its kind of a norm now. But is it only about that? Surely not. Here are the top 8 business reasons that will compel you to think that researching, comparing, procuring, deploying and maintaining technology solutions across your business or organization is an ongoing process and you should have a dedicated resource to execute the same:

1. Technology is penetrating every vertical of the business. 

Some of the key areas would be:

a) Security & Surveillance
b) HR Management
c) Purchase & Procurement
d) Finance & Accounts
e) Sales & Marketing
f) Legal Affairs

2. Owner / Director level of training & understanding of technology is paramount for business success.

3. Use of technology is solving many old problems but creating another set of new problems which owners/directors may not be able to foresee.

4. Most new solutions / cutting-edge technology solutions are low cost / open-source solutions or you or your Company already owns them
(Eg. If you have paid subscription of Gmail you are entitled to a host of other Google Paid services which hardly few are aware of) are not advised by current market players as they have no financial interest in implementing them.

5. Certain day-to-day or week-to-week operations of technology have to be monitored at owner/director level and cannot be outsourced to the IT Team.

6. Every technology solution comes with an inherent risk. Managing that risk in a cost-effective manner is critical.

7. More often than not a holistic approach to technology management and security should be taken in terms of defining a governance strategy and policies to give a general direction to the digital transformation efforts.

8. Adopting Technology and upgrading to better tech solutions is an ongoing process.

As mentioned previously its simply not a one time job. The market is flooded with new and cheaper solutions everyday. Meticulous evaluation and putting up a business case for tech-upgrades can become a challenge to the business owner or the management team and that's where a CIO can step in!

Eminent IT / IS Managers from Industries in Central India participate in VMWare open forum on Business Innovation


Recently VMWare organized an Open Forum on Business Innovation at Nagpur. I am glad that I was invited to share the discussion panel with other IT Managers from leading industries of Vidarbha some of them being Mr. Sanket Joshi, Head IT, Vicco Laboratories & Mr. Pramod Pampatwar, Director Technical, Jhulelal Institute of Technology. The forum was moderated by Mr. Vikas Gupta, Head IT (Spend Management) at Essar Group.

Going Digital & Going Green: Evaluating Energy Consumption of Laptops / Desktops and other Networking / IT Devices



Power tariffs in India are still on a higher side and do demand a certain attention from the owner's end so that their power bills do not skyrocket ! With processing power of CPUs on the rise alongside the need of more and more IT gadgets like projectors, LCDs, Wi-Fi routers, Firewalls, Network Switches etc etc , which are switched ON 24x7, it is a good idea to have a first hand idea of their power consumption as well. 

Lets quickly run through why a Small & Medium Enterprise would bother about Energy consumption and energy conservation by IT hardware / gadgets:

SME vulnerability to data leak & security breach: Why Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking is getting important even for smaller organizations



In this post we shall discuss why even smaller organizations need to be careful when it comes to data security and why someone would be interested (read ethical hacker!) doing so.

1. Easy availability of Tools for Ethical Hacking & Network Penetration

Image result for kali linux
A simple google search will give tools for Wi-Fi Hacking
Itis not new - China employees thousands of personnels who are continuously spoofing and monitoring networks and corporate / government servers around the world. But who are these people and what are their qualifications. These are young talented teenagers or would be teenagers who are just playing around with tools on the internet and have an affinity to technology. No formal degree or education is needed. All you need a simple laptop/desktop with a dedicated internet connection. Thats all! There are videos on Youtube to train on Ethical Hacking. Freely available tools and websites which will scan IP addresses for open ports.