William C. Doscas, VP-Global Services Sales, ibm.com, on how the concerns of the Indian CIO are different from his US counterparts.
Balaji Narasimhan
http://www.cio.in/features/viewArticle/ARTICLEID=4292890
William C. Doscas, VP-Global Services Sales, ibm.com, is responsible for driving sales, marketing programs, and initiatives to create services product sales over the web and through IBM's telesales centers. He says that while CIOs around the world have similar concerns, Indian CIOs are in some ways different from their US counterparts because Indian CIOs are pushing growth, while US CIOs are focusing more on cost reduction.
How is IBM helping customers with their procurement plans?
IBM has a policy of helping clients acquire services the way they want to--so, clients can interact face to face, or on the Web, or use a mixed mode approach, based upon their requirements.
Where do you see Indian companies as compared to companies in the US and Europe?
I would say that it is quite similar. I think that the concern of companies worldwide is similar. They all want to significantly leverage technology. There is a growing trend to acquire over the Web, and this is a worldwide phenomenon that is not restricted to any single geographic location. Customers are using the Web more and more to not just purchase services, but also to do research and determine what they want.
One of your primary mandates is to push services product sales over the Web. How do you achieve this?
We deal largely with IP-led component-based offerings. The services division, with which I'm associated with, has grown robustly over the past few years -- and here, it is secondary weather these services are delivered over the Web or not. Our focus is on solutions that drives high value for customers. To achieve this, we have taken our sales processes and optimised them for the Web so that it is simpler and more efficient for our customers and better for us.
What are the major concerns of CIOs in India?
I think that, in India, CIOs are managing growth, while CIOs in the US are managing costs. In India, I have found the focus to be more on managing infrastructure growth, mitigating risks, and exploring new business models. The CIOs in an emerging country like India are poised for growth.
How do you propose to address the concerns of CIOs?
We have recently come up with around 25 new services offerings. These concern cutting-edge technologies like virtualisation, cost reduction, risk mitigation, going green, and so on.
Talking about green technologies, can you tell us where India stands? Are Indian CIOs interested in going green?
I think that today everybody is interested in going green because the environment is important for all of us. A lot of our clients are using our technology to go green, but they don't always want to be quoted because they don't want to admit that they are green today and imply that they were not green earlier. Given the problems we have with power generation and consumption, CIOs have realized that one of the biggest challenges is the IT department. When we at IBM speak to CIOs, we have seen a lot of interest. CIOs in India want to know how we run our green data centers and they are interested in using our technology to replicate our success.