Ramesh's Executive Blog...

The ICT Era -Is Sri Lanka ready?

2011-10-08T07:26:00.001+05:30

My view on the above on Benchmark. You can watch the recording @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr3YO-lskvI&feature=youtu.be

Why "Social Networks" has become viral??

2011-10-04T15:46:00.002+05:30

Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace, etc have become such an integral part of our lives in such a short span. Anyone thought how? why?

Because, these obiously are addressing the aspirations of the users and has evolved with them taking into consideration the features, functionalities, integration that each of the user has anticipated as well as wished for across a wide spectrum of them transcending boundaries, communities, languages, etc. What more it is open, cost-effective, user-friendly, easy to learn and provides a seamless platform of collaboration for friends, families, communities, businesses and "you name it for what or whom so ever".

There lies a learning for all us in Technology Leadership/Management and that is to make what ever solutions and/or systems that we make let them be simple, flexible, user-centric and training-free then you have the potence to get what you make become viral as much as the social networks!!

Question that we need to ask ourselves is " How do I make the splatforms and systems within my organization viral?". Hope you willl find time to ponder over it since there lies your success as the IT Leadership.

Leveraging Cloud Com

2011-06-05T14:51:00.001+05:30

Leveraging Cloud Computing for Greater Business Agility", a paper I presented is available at http://www.ramesh24.com

Cloud based Crowdsou

2011-06-01T11:20:00.001+05:30

Cloud based Crowdsourcing. Will it be the next paradigm shift? Read more on http://bit.ly/99zC2D

The ICT era - Is Sri

2011-05-18T08:28:00.001+05:30

The ICT era - Is Sri Lanka ready ? - An interview with Ramesh Shanmuganathan on " The Benchmark" on 15th May 2011. The recording of same is available on Youtube @ http://htxt.it/Uzxp

My mother is a poem

2011-05-08T23:05:00.001+05:30

My mother is a poem I'll never be able to write,though everything I write is a poem to my mother - Sharon Doubiago

"Live as if you were

2011-04-16T06:34:00.001+05:30

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." - Mahatma gandhi

"One of my best move

2011-04-14T07:49:00.001+05:30

"One of my best moves is to surround myself with friends who, instead of asking, "Why?" are quick to say, "Why not?" That attitude is contagious." - Oprah Winfrey

Wish a "Happy and Pr

2011-04-14T07:14:00.001+05:30

Wish a "Happy and Prosperous New Year" to all those who are celebrating the Sinhala and Tamil New Year!!

"There is no better

2011-03-14T06:21:00.001+05:30

"There is no better medication for the Ailing World today, than to contagiously spread the virus of Love every day." - My humble dedication to the Earthquake/Tsuname victims and survivors of Japan

"When one door close

2011-03-08T22:09:00.001+05:30

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us." - Alexander Graham Bell

Google made one of t

2011-02-27T07:30:00.001+05:30

Google made one of the biggest ever changes to its search engine algorithms which would immediately effect many who rely on Google to drive traffic to their sites through traditional means of SEO optimisation

Google made one of t

2011-02-27T07:26:00.001+05:30

Google made one of the biggest ever changes to its search engine algorithms wich would immediately effect many who rely on Google to drive traffic to their sites through traditional SEO optimisation!

It is amazing what y

2011-02-26T09:55:00.001+05:30

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit - Harry Truman

Today's focus of IT Organizations: Business Opportunities

2010-01-08T09:08:00.009+05:30

More and more we are finding that IT is at the core of the businesses than at the periphery, and more so as the core enabler of businesses. Given this, it's imperative that the IT organization thinks, acts and lives like a Business - ie as a Profit Center rather than a Cost Center.

In the recently concluded "The State of the CIO survey 2010", IT's contribution in the order of priority is as listed below,

1.Improve end user productivity
2.Lower company operating costs
3.Re-engineer core business processes
4.Improve quality of products
5.Provide innovative market offerings and business practices
6.Improve risk management
7.Manage customer relationships
8.Acquire and retain customers
9.Support global expansion
10.Enable regulatory compliance

If you look at the above list, it's very obvious that the IT priorities are fast becoming business driven rather than IT specific. It's time that our IT Organizations come alive to meet these expectation or run the risk of fast becoming extinct!!

Open Innovation and Crowd Sourcing

2009-11-26T11:53:00.001+05:30

An organization which wants to encourage OPEN INNOVATIONS has to necessarily look at the process of innovation within and adapting it from a CLOSED process to a more OPEN process with predefined metrics for processes, procedures, steps, controls, etc. This also warrants a class of LEADERSHIP which can create the required OPEN culture within and extend same outside with the ability to drive synergies across in realizing the set vision goals and objectives.

Once an organization is able to create the OPEN culture within then extending the boundaries and making it an virtual organization becomes a more realizable option.We need an input focused approach in organizations, which in most will be a paradigm shift in itself, with finite action plans within the organization to create the commitment to implement Open innovations in a TRANSPARENT and PREDICTABLE manner.

Once an ORGANIZATION has built the basic foundation for OPEN INNOVATION then it can leverage on CROWD SOURCING, a corporate notion of outsourcing to more loosely specified body of people, to tap into the potential of virtual groups of specialists to constructively contribute in the INNOVATIONS of the organization and be rewarded in a commensurate manner.

BOUNDARIES ARE DRAWN BY US, IT'S OUR CHOICE TO EXTEND SAME and REAP THE BENEFITS of ENTERPRISE 2.0!!

Leading for Success in Program Management

2009-11-21T05:27:00.003+05:30

Leadership is the corner stone of Successful Program Management in delivering "Business Value". In most cases the Programs and Projects fail not due to lack of knowledge of Project Management and related knowledge within the PMO, but more so due to lack of forethought in ensuring CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS for PROGRAM MANAGEMENT not being addressed as well as COMMON PITFALLS in PROGRAM MANAGEMENT not being managed or avoided. Recently I delivered a lecture on same at the Sri Lanka Chapter of the Project Management Institute and the detailed presentation can be downloaded from my site at http://www.ramesh24.com

Leaders must create a Shared Vision to be successful

2009-11-13T08:33:00.002+05:30

Successful "Leaders" are the ones who are able to challenge the status quo, envision the future through exciting possibilities and successfully enlist others in a shared vision of the future.

In order to be able to do this, one must be able to establish his/her credibility as a "Leader".This can only be achieved by building an organizational culture around a core set of values that people believe and endorse. Couple of the values which have a critical bearing on this are honesty, integrity, mutual respect, professionalism, walk the talk, zero tolerance on politicking, etc. A "Leader" has made his mark when he/she is able to condition the culture of an organization based on a core set of shared values since then he/she has been successful in creating a platform to nurture and build a shared vision. Once a Shared Vision is created its all about going after it with passion, commitment, energy and drive!

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!!

LEAD the WAY as if there is NO TOMORROW, but PAUSE to PONDER as to what YESTERDAY could have been !!

Thought Leadership - A vital DNA for Organization's survival

2009-11-05T10:32:00.005+05:30

What makes an organization stand out of a pack? The key differentiator is "Thought Leadership". Contrary to popular belief that Thought Leadership can only emanate only from the top executives of an organization, many organization such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Youtube, etc have been able to create an environment which is conducive for Thought Leadership to emanate from any part of their organization.

Is this the secret to their success? Is it obvious or oblivious? Why aren't other companies following in their footsteps in creating a similar environment & culture which will foster Thought Leadership? There are many factors contributing to it and key reason for this is that we have organization who have got themselves entrenched into hierarchical structures, traditional practices, protocols/procedures sealed with red-tapes, bureaucracy coupled with tunnel-vision, etc which inhibit the organizations benefiting from a free-flow of ideas. Thoughts lead to Ideas, Ideas lead to Change, Change leads to to Organization Development and so on.

Its apparent that we need to create an environment where people are able to challenges the status-quo, immaterial of ranks & profiles, based on rationale thought process to help the organization create ideas that will help the businesses take on the next point of inflexion or the quantum leap. We need to change how we lead since the future of our organization depends on how successful we are in creating "Thought Leadership" at every level of the organization.

LETS DARE TO THINK DIFFERENTLY, BUT ACT IN UNISON!

Project Management Organization - A necessity for Corporate Success

2009-10-22T10:02:00.009+05:30

Project Management Organization(PMO), irrespective of the discipline, is a necessity for Corporate Success since it helps organizations to achieve their corporate goals and objectives. To this end, one must establish the need for one, assess its maturity, measure and benchmark to realize the full potential of its existence.

PMO's maturity can be broadly classified into 5 and they are,

Ad hoc processes with reactive response
Repeatable processes with reactive response
Standardized processes with proactive response
Optimized processes with measurable/proactive response
Agile/Optimized Processes with predictable/proactive response

The best performing PMO should maximize business value and minimize business risks!

Cloud Storage comes of age with IBM's new offering !

2009-10-09T10:32:00.007+05:30

IBM recently unraveled a new disk-based archive array called the IBM Information Appliance that can scale to 300TB and offers retention rules and customized policies. The SAN Volume Controller storage virtualization appliance now supports solid state disk drives, greatly increasing the throughput of the device. IBM's new Smart Business Storage Cloud private cloud service uses commodity components such as x86 servers in IBM's BladeCenter rack, and a scaled-down version of the IBM's high-performance General Parallel File System to offer a preconfigured rack-mountable file-based cloud storage offering.

IBM plans to ship its Information Archive appliance that uses the XIV management software, its Enhanced Tamper Protection tool and IBM's BladeCenter seBrvers to offer users a pre-configured, rack-mountable disk-based archive system in the first quarter of 2010.

The world of 2.0

2009-09-02T06:57:00.002+05:30

Social Networking as come of age with Web 2.0. There is no option but to embrace it with open arms since everyone needs to ride this wave if they are to survive in the World of 2.0.

Thought its opportune to share some notes on Web 2.0 as a platform since it is deffinitely an enabling platform for both individuals and enterprises alike in addressing their respective objectives whether it be social networking or leveraging on its capabilities to extend the boundaries of your enterprise to extend the business benefits of same.

Cloud Computing Options

2009-08-26T07:51:00.000+05:30

As the discussion of Cloud Computing and the possibilities dawn to organizations, I thought it would be opportune to put on the table the spectrum of options which may open out to organizations at different stages of adoption of this emerging trend.

Private.Public.Hybrid are broadly the options.

Many would be confortable establising their own clouds within their data centers as proivate clouds and then slowly moving to Hybrid model where the web applications are hosted in the public cloud where as the rest would be in the private cloud. As the concept matures and concerns with regard to governance and security gets addressed we would see wide spread adoption of the public cloud.

The scale ultimately will drive the cost of the cloud down in enabling a wide-spread adoption like the Internet.

Framework to assess Organization's SOA maturity

2009-08-26T07:38:00.000+05:30

The Open Group's SOA Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM) provides organizations a framework to assess its SOA maturity level. The model consists of 7 levels of maturity and 7 dimensions of considerations that represent significant views of IT and Business capabilities.
This helps organizations to assess the current state and desired state of adoption of SOA.

IT intensity as a measure of IT enablement in organizations

2009-08-26T07:08:00.000+05:30

IT intensity is a company's IT expense as a factor of its Operational expenses. A higher ITintensity would mean that businesses would be using IT innovatively in its value chain to drive its growth.

It's a good practice for organizations to benchmark their IT intensity with peers in the same industry segments with a view of establishing a competitive landscape vis-a-vis their objectives and KPIs.

Organizations who have low IT intensity will look to outsource IT for greater efficiency, availability, costs as well as thought leadership from the outsourced partner to leverage business benefits of IT.

Organizations who have high IT intensity will look to establishing a strong IT organization internally primarily to drive its business strategies since they see IT as a strategic business lever.

CIO: Chief Innovations Officer?

2009-05-27T11:25:00.000+05:30

In today's context, CIO plays a pivotal role in providing stewardship for Businesses to leaverage business benefits through investments in innovative technologies. CIO's ability to lead innovations in and organizations is key for an organization stay competitive.......................read more on this @ http://www.mitcio.com/

Are you ready to embrace the Cloud ?

2009-05-27T11:00:00.000+05:30

Cloud Computing is gathering momentum in SME as a cost effective way to host your applications. Is your organization ready to embrace that wave?

Some interesting views expressed at a panel discussion on Cloud Computing at the recently clocluded MIT Sloan's CIO Symposium 2009 @
http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2009/05/25/mit-sloan-cio-symposium-keynote-panel-part-four-cloud-computing/

Business/IT Alignment - How critical is it for the success of business?

2009-05-26T17:07:00.001+05:30

This has been a hotly pursued topic and I have spoken in length on this subject at various forums and wish to share my views if anyone is interested.

You can also view one of my recent presentations at a CXO Summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka conducted by ISACA, Sri Lanka Chapter @ http://www.isaca.lk/node/59