From maintaining an application to explaining a commitment

Mandate

Maintain useful internal computing capability with a credible account of entitlements, recoverability, investment and retirement.

Outcomes

• Separated 28 permitted subscription reassignments from 13 cancellations reducing annual expense by ₹39 lakh
• Rebuilt 22 of 24 historic environments after ₹62 lakh additional work, retaining two explicit blocks
• Approved a ₹1.32 crore mixed workstation purchase against a ₹1.80 crore uniform proposal
• Retained two annual-process interfaces through an authorised replacement and owner acceptance

Decisions in context

As CIO I am responsible for the account connecting technology commitments with useful business capability. My fifty-eight colleagues work through three heads; I report to David Rovelian and present relevant matters to the board without holding a director's seat. The recent cases on this site show why I resist a single measure of efficiency. Reassigning a licence, cancelling one, restoring an old environment and retiring an interface involve different rights and obligations. They should not be collapsed into a general success percentage. I want our investment papers to explain the comparison, the cost that remains and the person who accepts a changed service. That approach requires collaboration with finance, procurement and engineering owners. It also leaves me accountable for the limits of our tests, rather than allowing technical confidence to stand in for evidence about every future use.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; preparing selectively for external oversight subject to permission and capacity.

Mandate

Make computing provision supportable across three locations while preserving justified differences in workload needs.

Outcomes

• Established supported equipment configurations with stated purposes
• Brought application owners into renewal planning
• Separated capital purchase decisions from continuing support expense

Decisions in context

The larger remit made me more cautious about standards that were easy to write and difficult to live with. Three locations needed a supportable service, but identical equipment was not always the sensible answer. I worked through two managers to make configuration choices understandable and to distinguish justified variation from an unmanaged exception. The operating and capital figures were separate envelopes, each requiring its own account of commitments. Application owners became more involved in renewal planning because the support team could not infer future business need from activity alone. This period also changed how I reported to executives: a list of technical improvements was less useful than an explanation of which business dependency had become more reliable and at what continuing cost. The CIO appointment extended that responsibility to direct discussion with the chief executive and board.

Reason for the move

Appointed CIO as technology investment and service dependence became a standing executive responsibility.

Mandate

Support the specialist computing needs of engineering-software delivery teams without taking over their technical approvals.

Outcomes

• Connected support diagnosis to representative engineering tasks
• Distinguished processor, memory and graphics constraints
• Clarified the boundary between a usable environment and an approved engineering result

Decisions in context

Engineering-computing support introduced me to workloads that looked similar on an equipment list but behaved differently in use. A colleague asking for a faster machine might need more memory, a different configuration or help with the workflow before a purchase made sense. I learned from the application specialists without pretending to become the authority on their engineering conclusions. My eighteen-person team and ₹4.2 crore expense responsibility were large enough to require a clear service method, but small enough that I could still follow individual support decisions. I also saw how a configuration that worked well for one engagement could become difficult to reconstruct later. The promotion in 2013 widened my remit to infrastructure and internal applications, with the expectation that these lessons would become part of ordinary investment and support decisions rather than remain personal knowledge.

Reason for the move

Promoted to oversee infrastructure and internal applications across a larger company.

Mandate

Keep inherited client applications supportable and make their dependencies understandable to the maintenance team.

Outcomes

• Documented versions and supporting components during handover
• Separated retained software copies from permissions to use them
• Built a repeatable escalation route for unsupported dependencies

Decisions in context

Supporting applications written by people I had never met was a useful education in the cost of incomplete handover. Our twelve-person team could often repair the visible fault, but the harder task was to understand what else the application assumed about its environment. I began asking for version and dependency records that another colleague could use, rather than a set of notes meaningful only to the original author. The ₹1.6 crore expense envelope covered my team; it did not make me accountable for the employer's full revenue. I also learned to involve commercial colleagues when support required rights that a technical team could not grant itself. Moving to Orelvi offered the chance to work with one internal community over time and see the consequences of purchasing, supporting and eventually replacing its computing environment.

Reason for the move

Joined an engineering-computing business to take responsibility for an internal capability over its full working life.

Mandate

Maintain the small applications used to schedule service work, track parts and prepare customer reports.

Outcomes

• Recorded application dependencies alongside operating instructions
• Introduced a clearer handover for recurring support issues
• Coordinated three programmers without claiming company technology ownership

Decisions in context

My first programs sat inside a service operation, so colleagues judged them by whether they could finish a practical task. I learned to ask about the missing file, the unavailable peripheral and the instruction that the developer had assumed everybody knew. Coordinating three programmers from 1997 added a modest responsibility for scheduling and handover, not a budget or a senior technology mandate. The company had ninety-six staff and ₹12 crore revenue by FY 1999; those figures describe the employer rather than the scope I personally controlled. When I left, I wanted to understand maintenance across more than one business. The experience remained useful because it taught me that a technical fix is incomplete if the person doing the work cannot repeat it without the original programmer standing beside them.

Reason for the move

Moved to a specialist application-support business to work across a broader maintenance portfolio.