Be an au courant CIO for the Organization's Enrichment

By Eric Ho, CIO & Co-Owner, Hong Kong Broadband Network

Eric Ho, CIO & Co-Owner, Hong Kong Broadband Network

One need not be a business genius to realize how digital technology is radically changing the way the world regards the role of a CIO. For a Chief Information Officer of an organization, making sure that the in-house technology is at par with the changing industrial science, is no walk in the park because most CIOs have concerns for their businesses as they run on a medley of applications that are heavily modified and intertwined, leading to maintenance and replacement issues. With the Big Data frenzy in the technology terrain, this need for constant technology updation has become all the more crucial, expediting the CIOs to think about effective measures of data storage that ensure the integrity and reliability of the data sets.

Volume, Veracity, Velocity and Variety of Big Data

A CIO has to stay ahead in the game and cannot let used and outdated technology hold them back whatsoever. Which is why according to me, there is no application that cannot be replaced if one has the dedication and determination to change it for the betterment of the organization. While many out there were hesitant to take up the idea of Cloud Computing and experiment with it, the more prudent and passionate CIOs took up the risk and showed that if one was to count the multifarious blessing that cloud computing offers to the business; data standardization and data portability would seem to be on the forefront as they almost solved the Big Data issue.

With the evolution of a wide availability of cost-effective cloud computing services working with data and data storage has been made much easier leading to innovative ways of decision making. Keeping in mind the four V’s (Volume, Veracity, Velocity, Variety) of Big Data, the CIOs have to be sure that there is a perfect synchronization in the data that is being streamed in. This is where outliers in Big Data pose as a threat. From personal experience, I would suggest that proficient analysts, who can analyze the data, simplify it and make accurate graphical representation of the same to take exceptional judgment decisions to classify the data as inclusive or exclusive to the company information should be appointed. Why is good judgment call a prerequisite? Because, outliers vary from organization to organization. For example, Hong Kong follows both, the Chinese calendar and the Western calendar, thereby making our grounds for data differentiation distinct from the others. At HKBN, we date our data sets and the financial analysts along with other proficient analysts generate a graphical representation that projects future trends like output trends, subscriber trends etc and based on these projections we make judgments.

Resource conservation is as important as technology updation to a CIO and that is why implementing IoT in an organization should be for the betterment of the organization. Just because all the other companies have implemented IoT doesn’t mean that you have to. It might not suit every institution. One has to take into account the benefits it has to offer to the company before taking a decision on it. The concerned people will have to weigh the pros and cons, to make sure that the risks that they are about to take is worth the benefits. For instance, at HKBN, apart from a limited number of employees who have been issued company owned phones, only the sales men and the engineers have company owned iPads. They use it to communicate with the headquarters to make new sales, confirm on the go sales and delegate. In case of any mishap with iPad, they can repair it with the information that they have acquired about the product. This has made most of our work paperless in addition to increasing productivity, efficiency and increased customer satisfaction. This has also helped in reducing costs to a considerable amount in addition to making the work environment easier for our employees. Even so, an organization has to make it immune to the threats that IoT pose. I would suggest that isolating the IoT network from the corporate network and constant updation of firewall and routers would take care of most of it.