April 15, 2005
On The Road With Tata Steel's CIO Varun Jha, the CIO of Tata Steel in Jamshedpur, India, wins the prize for the longest trip to and from InformationWeek's Spring Conference in Amelia Island, Fla. Over dinner Tuesday night, as he prepared to return home the next day, Jha jotted his itinerary for me on the back of his business card: Amelia Island to Jacksonville to Detroit to Amsterdam to Delhi, where he had an overnight stop, then on to Calcutta and, finally, Jamshedpur. Jha's six-city adverture -- 40 hours one way -- is a testament to what lengths business-technology people will go to meet with their peers. Here's what he had to say. During our Day Two session on "The View From India," Jha talked about his company's technology infrastructure and strategy. Tata Steel runs SAP as its primary business software, in addition to production-planning and E-procurement applications. Jha prefers off-the-shelf to custom-built applications. The company has outsourcing agreements with HP and IBM. Jha says 2,800 suppliers and other business partners are tied into the company's systems. Top priorites include using IT to establish what Jha calls "customer value management," or providing new kinds of value to the company's customers, and building upon the company's existing busienss-intelligence capabilities. Jha says the CEO-CIO gap that plagues some North American businesses is not much of an issue in India. "Most Indian CEOs have a technical background and an understanding of what IT can do," he says. Tata Steel runs Windows and Lotus' SmartSuite on desktop computers. I asked Jha about his view on the Windows versus Linux debate. "May the best software win," he says. "[Why] do I care?" Tata Steel runs Windows because that's what its employees expect. "They found it more convenient," he says. The CIO views open-source software as a potential opportunity but says a lack of internal expertise for self-support remains an issue. Over dinner, Jha told me that he's thinking about ways Tata Steel might fit Weblogging into the picture. He has two potential applications in mind: as a channel for customer support and communications, and as a way to facilitate internal knowledge management. For more, see "India-China Pact Could Make Asia The Next IT Hub" Posted by John Foley
at April 15, 2005 02:38 PM
Comments
This is a public forum. CMP Media and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. CMP Media makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers. Community standards in the message center do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this forum becomes the property of CMP Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in CMP Media's Terms of Service. Important Note: The Message Center is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business.  
| |||
