A long legacy of engaging with CIOs

Dataquest was launched in 1982 when most Indians hadn’t even heard of IT. Since then, it has been chronicling the role of the IT Manager to the CIO for decades now.

The CIO Handbook 2012, published in the Dataquest March 31 edition was a power-packed one that saw the interviews of dozens of global and Indian leaders. The CIOs from the US Department of Transportation, Daimler AG, Standard Chartered Bank, Deloitte, Reliance Communications, Shoppers Stop, etc participated.

Snapdeal had just been established and Co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahal talked about the new company’s strategy. An interesting quote was: We are absolutely technology savvy and data paranoid. Data continues to be a key talking point when it comes to e-commerce firms. He also said: I am hopeful that this e-commerce industry with a size of $0.5 bn will grow up to a size of $15 bn in the next 5 years. Well, last year we crossed $80 bn and optimistic estimates show it crossing $150 bn in 2026 itself!

Jonathan Lu, CEO & and Executive Director of Alibaba.com talked in detail about the SME sector and how India was becoming both a supplier and a buyer market. Sir Richard Hadlee, the ace New Zealand cricketer, promoted IT trade between the two countries and also talked about tech and sports. Dataquest also covered HP’s 2012 first quarter results in the US when Meg Whitman was the CEO.

That year the CIOL C-Change edition for CIOs was held in Kollam. Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev, founder, of Isha Foundation, and Dr N Santosh Hegde, former justice, Supreme Court of India and former solicitor general were some of the star attractions.

Later in the year, in the October 15 edition of Dataquest, we interviewed the interview of Patrick P Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware. VMware has seen great success of late, becoming one of the tech companies to have a valuation of $100 bn plus. Since then, Gelsinger has moved to Intel.

We are reproducing the cover of the March 31, 2012, Dataquest edition and the Gelsinger interview in the same year as part of our 40-year celebration.