'Indian Cos Can Be Leaders In Making Right Decisions'

Ken McGee, VP and fellow, Gartner, in a tête-à-tête with Biztech2.0, talks about the concerns and trends relating to the Web 2.0 space and how companies can reap the maximum benefit out of Web 2.0 during the times of slowdown.

How are companies leveraging Web 2.0 technologies for business needs?

To identify technologies that serve business needs requires being multi-lingual i.e. speaking the language of technology as well as business. Thus, instead of just sitting and waiting, one can go ahead and recommend which technologies could be used to improvise on processes.

How can CIOs aggregate the data generated from different media?

The need to collate data existing within one’s organisation has always been an issue. This is one of the reasons why BI (Business Intelligence) and tools within BI are becoming so important. Information has always been there, but using BI to mine the data is becoming more and more critical to organisations. Presently, BI is being used predominantly to find data within organisation; however, it should also be used to find data outside the organisation. BI must head in that direction.

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How is social mining evolving in India?

Social mining is emerging as a very interesting area. Gartner has been receiving many queries, which is a very favourable trend, related to social mining. However, social mining in India is in extreme infancy right now. The good part is that it is heading in the right direction.

How is the mashup scenario evolving and how are organisations managing mashups?

The issue with mashups in organisations revolves around a fundamental decision that organisations must make about whether they wish to develop all software in-house or partly rely on software developed by a third-party outside the organisation. Therefore, using mashups as a solution to meet enterprise software needs is entirely up to the organisation’s discretion. There are a lot of questions that need to be answered before exploiting mashups. For example, can software developed outside the organisation be trusted? How do you know that it is safe and secure? Also, it has a lot to do with where you are taking the organisation.

Where do Indian organisations stand in terms of leveraging Web 2.0 technologies?

Indian companies have an advantage in the fact that they can learn from the mistakes of global companies. They have the luxury of not being the leader who experiments, but being the leader, who nonetheless makes the right decisions.

How can organisations use unstructured data in an informative way?

We have created a titanic amount of unstructured data throughout the world. The remedy for it is not close at hand, but trying to focus resources on it is the right first step. Also, while creating new data in the future, organisations should use more structured approaches like metadata etc. However, there is a profound amount of unstructured data, which will take a lot of time and resources to manage. The best way to approach it is to stop compounding the problem by creating more unstructured data.

How can RoI be defined for CIOs going in for mashup developments?

Being able to identify RoI is one of the most important questions in the future of applications development. Either an organisation will do everything in-house or use applications that are developed outside. An organisation already knows the internal costs of development; however, it has a choice to select applications from a number of software sources. Thus, for the first time there is a means available to calculate internal cost v/s external cost. RoI is always a challenge in IT. However, it is just a skill that has to be developed because competition has arrived.

What trends do you foresee in the application development space?

It is very concerning to see the current trends in the application development space. Despite many countries experiencing economic difficulty, their organisations are reporting that their application developers are very busy. There seems to be an imbalance somewhere between recession and being very busy. The reason for concern is that organisations, during these times, are supposed to save money; however, from the looks of it, at the end of the year, they are going to find out that they have spent too much. There are no positive reports that these application development projects are geared toward growing the business. Unfortunately, it is business as usual.