“Chief Information Officers (CIOs) can increase their organisation’s performance by improving efficiency. Many CIOs have tried to cut costs by outsourcing services to low-cost partners overseas, but that has added inefficiency into the communications process and led to critical issues taking much longer to resolve,” according to Sarah-jane Peterschlingmann, Managing Director, ATechnology International Pty Ltd.
“Interview with: Sarah-jane Peterschlingmann, Managing Director, ATechnology International Pty Ltd”
ATechnology International Pty Ltd is a sponsor company at the marcus evans Australian CIO Summit 2015, taking place in the Gold Coast, Queensland, 3 – 5 August.
How can CIOs increase organisa-tional performance, reduce risks and ensure compliance using your cloud technology?
Improving efficiency is key. CIOs can do that by choosing a vendor that meets their risk and compliance requirements and helps reduce costs.
Risk reduction can be achieved by ensuring an adequate disaster recovery plan is in place. CIOs should not only be confident that the infrastructure is able to handle a disaster and the vendors have that capability, but also ensure the plan is well formed and all stakeholders know what is required. In the event of a disaster, who will perform what actions?
Many organisations have these capabilities for their cloud infrastructure, but when it comes down to it, the individu-als responsible have not been adequately trained on what needs to happen and when.
In case of a disaster, how could they ensure a speedy recovery?
This all comes down to preparation and people knowing what to do. That is what makes the difference between a couple of minutes of downtime and a couple of hours.
We have noticed that many CIOs are looking for ways to cut costs, but they are not willing to compromise on risk and quality. The only answer is to find vendors that can provide that high level of compliance and risk reduction, but still meet the cost factor.
To be efficient, they must cut out the middleman from transactions. Many of the large managed service and hosting providers outsource service components overseas, which creates inefficiency. The more organisations involved in the process and the more communication needed to pass around, the longer it takes to resolve an issue. Connecting directly with a high level engineer the first time, dealing with just one person, would resolve an issue much sooner and reduce cost all along the pipeline.
CIOs need to find such clever ways to get efficiency in the service pipeline, while still meeting compliance and getting the level of reduced risk they need.
How can vendor selection impact compliance?
When it comes to compliance, CIOs have to show company directors how exactly they are reducing risk and ensuring compliance. For example, our data centres are certified for information security, have fully redundant genera-tors and fuel holding cells, so even if both power grids go offline, the centre would continue to operate for at least ten days. It is the attention that is paid to quality and risk reduction that helps CIOs go confidently to the board and demonstrate compliance.
What are the benefits of data staying on home soil? Why are some shared hosting environments not good enough?
There are numerous benefits. Some organisations are legally required to do that. Ownership of data is another issue. It is very rare to find an organisation, such as ourselves, that performs everything in Australia. When you are looking after mission-critical systems, you need to know what you are doing.
How can CIOs build competitive advantage?
There is a division between the information services department and other departments, and sometimes a lot of the decision-making comes through the information services pipeline. However, other departments often develop very good partnerships with particular vendors. To add value to the organisation, CIOs should be looking to tap into those relationships happening outside their function.
About the Australian CIO Summit 2015
The Australian CIO Summit is the premium forum bringing elite buyers and sellers together. The summit offers enterprise and government chief information officers and IT solution providers and consultants an intimate environment for a focused discussion of key drivers for IT innovation. Taking place at the RACV Royal Pines Resort Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, 3 – 5 August 2015, the Summit includes presentations on re-architecting models to digitally enable the organisation’s assets, unearthing the vast potential of data analytics, mastering the role of strategic business partner and protecting the organisation against security threats.
