The IT industry is going through a never-before-experienced trend of having to align itself increasingly to business needs of an organization. There is participation of people beyond the IT department, such as the line-of-business managers or even CFO's getting involved in the setting-up of the core infrastructure that supports the business of a company. A good solid IT infrastructure is no longer a luxury or something "nice to have." The technology infrastructure of an enterprise defines its capabilities to strategically leverage its IT assets, and thereby ensures that it can generate the competitive advantage needed to succeed in today's highly competitive environment.

Often enterprises are unable to see the shortcomings of complex infrastructures that have evolved over many years. There are still countless incidents of IT projects going wrong, and this continues to cost companies millions of dollars and months of precious time. The situation raises the obvious question of whether CIOs are effectively auditing the efficiency of their infrastructure, and whether they are measuring its flexibility and agility to cope with the dynamically changing needs of the business.

New business models demand a more flexible and dynamic IT environment, which will require different building blocks and management techniques. As a CIO, you have to make the overwhelming choice of whether to embark on something that offers major cultural and operational shifts, or to continue on the well-trodden, and apparently "safer" path. Unfortunately, the "perceived" safe path is no longer an option, as the risk of failure and disruption is very real.

The CIOs are keen to avoid a poorly designed, yet complex infrastructure, which is the biggest hindrance to an organization's attempt to use IT strategically. They look at IT Infrastructure as a commodity that would be secure and scalable and would achieve the following goals:

• Reduce costs
• Improve business efficiency
• Simplify by reducing the complexities
  

CIOs are experiencing increased pressure to provide greater reliability, availability, security, and flexibility in delivering IT services to the business at the same time keeping spending constant or even reducing expenditure on IT. These trends are resulting in significant changes in the way IT abilities are procured and managed moving forward.

As the leading IT market research company of the region, IDC recognizes your aim to have a simplified IT infrastructure that would be smarter and more cost effective. Consequently it has come up with an inaugural event, "IT Infrastructure for Business Innovation 2005, Simplification, Security & Scalability - Building a Smarter Future".

The foremost challenge for CIOs today, is to establish priorities that will not only meet their organizations' requirements but also will be sufficiently flexible to adapt to the ever- changing business environment. The event will help you to define these priorities and showcase ways by which a new scalable and secure infrastructure can be designed that would meet your needs.

Do not miss this event, which provides a wonderful opportunity to learn more about:

• Integration to reduce costs
• Improve efficiency,
• Outsourcing for maximum optimization of investments and
• Current storage priorities.