Javed Mushtaq, CIO, Pakistan Telecommunication cooperation Limited, Pakistan, Wired and wireless telecommunication.
IT professional, with 24+ years of IT leadership experience in Telecommunication, Financial, Health Insurance, Software House, Petroleum industries and in governance sector. Experience in business-IT alignment, designing, developing and implementation of state-of-the-art IT solutions to support business.
For the last seven years, I have led two telecom operator’s IT department - one for a green field operator and one for the largest and the oldest Telco (130 years) of Pakistan. During this period a state-of-the-art infrastructure was designed and developed, which includes the establishment of a tier III data centre, Security / Risk management, DR site and business continuity procedures. In the area of customer service and agile product development, CRM solutions for wired and wireless products.
The Center for CIO Leadership has requested CIO members and other industry experts to answer three questions regarding predictions for the CIO in 2012. Here are my answers to these three questions.
What are your top 3 CIO priorities for 2012?
- Cost Rationalization
Year 2012 will continue to see IT cost rationalization due to the financial crisis and political instability around the world. The IT industry will transform from CAPEX model to OPEX model of spending, with more of a revenue share model than a typical customer- vendor relationship model. Hardware and Software services will become more commoditized and will be consumed as service, rather than as company assets.
- IT Commercial Lab - Cloud Computing
IT will be taking a more proactive role in the area of product development than before as a business enabler; IT will transform from fulfillment role to concept to market role for the organizations. Especially in the telecommunication sector, where the conventional revenue streams are drying up, more ICT products are required for stickiness and revenue enhancement. For ICT projects, IT will take the lead on concept to market the product process. During this process IT will implement the product in their labs, mature the process of marketing/selling and supporting the product for commercial use, with IT department being the first customer of the product/service. One of the examples is public cloud.
- Security / Business Continuity
The enhanced role of security will be seen in the next years; security will not be limited to securing the network from hackers, but will also be extended to ensure operational continuity with agreed SLA with business, in order to manage business expectations.
How will 2012 be different from 2011 for you as a CIO?
IT will be the differentiating factor for the business, more process agility/automation and more business intelligence will be required to compete in the market by business. CIOs will need to prepare themselves and the IT department for this transformation.
What organizational or industry shifts are you expecting in 2012?
Convergence will happen between the products, technologies and roles. With reference to telecom post- and pre-paid will be converged and payment method will only be the differentiating factor, with all other factors common like customer care/tariffs etc. The communications and information technologies will be truly converge under ICT one domain.
