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Technology executives discuss playbooks for resilience

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Monday, 19 September 2022 05:17

September 19, 2022 – Just as organizations operationalized pandemic-driven change, the shadow of inflation, resource constraints, and risks of a consumer-led recession loom large over the corporate agenda. Yet, despite these uncertainties, CIOs must continue to focus on transformation to ensure that IT meets their business priorities.

Critical to success is the requirement to implement IT infrastructure and application development approaches that remain resilient to rapidly changing industry and market dynamics. As a result, CIOs need to sustain investments in initiatives that enable flexible and secure delivery of their IT services.

With these principles in mind, on September 14, 2022, The IT Media Group brought together 14 cross-industry IT executives for a virtual roundtable entitled 'The CIO Playbook for Resilience.' The session provided an opportunity to discuss CIO strategies and approaches that facilitate resilience in an evolving economic environment.

Jeff Ishii, Chief Technologist at The IT Media Group, moderated the roundtable. Also participating were executives from the session sponsor, Hitachi Vantara, Client Director Charles Canfield and Field CTO Tim Aguilar.

The interactive session included a combination of live polling and panel discussion about the challenges and best practices for the following topic areas:

1. "Cloud smart" versus "cloud first" strategies

• Cloud challenges and lessons learned
• Hybrid-cloud approaches

2. Protecting data assets

• Modern data risks and exposures
• Cloud and on-premises data protection strategies

3. The application modernization mandate

• Application portfolio assessment frameworks
• Microservices and containerization best practices

4. Addressing the talent shortage

• Automation insights and guidelines
• The promise of AIOps

IT executives described their cloud journeys, including operating models and strategies based on lessons learned. "Data stewardship is critical," said Tim Aguilar. "Data must be protected and federated. Organizations must know where their data resides and who owns it." Aguilar explained that proficiency in these areas enables companies to monetize their data, find new revenue streams, and ultimately gain a competitive advantage. "We are an IT company with a rich history of delivering business value by maintaining federation, modernizing applications, and de-mystifying the cloud. We take a holistic approach to help our customers along their journeys."

Charles Canfield noted, "The biggest value I received was the executive insights from a wide spectrum of industries. These insights showed me how organizations plan to modernize and advance their enterprise architectures." Roundtable participants emphasized the importance of people in a climate of scarce resources and expertise. Canfield described strategies that solve CIO challenges, "We work with industries to understand how to minimize workloads by injecting AI and automation capabilities into our management tools. We also leverage ML and analytics to automate processes. This breadth of experience allows us to drive success for our partners and customers."

All participants will receive a strategic insights report containing more than 85 tactics and best practices discussed during the roundtable.

For more on how The IT Media Group fosters collaboration amongst the CIO community, please visit our events page. Interested parties can subscribe to our Youtube channel to watch a host of CIO roundtable highlights and executive interviews covering leadership, technology, and operations topics that address compelling issues.

The IT Media Group is an award-winning producer of events and content for senior IT executives. Based in Toronto, our leadership team includes some of the most experienced and well-respected media, technology, and business professionals serving the IT executive community.