EDITORIAL
by Jean Pommier, Vice President - ILOG Professional Services

ILOG offers a wide range of products. Brought together, they result in unmatched performance and business agility that have a direct impact on the bottom line through greater revenues and lower costs

ILOG Professional Services delivers the talent, know-how and best practices to obtain the highest ROI from our products. IPS consultants are experienced in working with customers to determine the best solution to a problem through optimal recommendations and implementations of ILOG technologies for powering business applications.

The end result is a concert of ILOG technologies and skills ideally suited for working together in furthering your competitive advantage.

ILOG-IE Roundtable
Strategic IT Key to Success
As companies search for ways to cut costs in these current economic times, many are reducing their outlay for information technology. ILOG CEO Pierre Haren recently participated in an Intelligent Enterprise magazine (www.intelligententerprise.com) roundtable discussion in San Francisco, on the strategic advantages of IT in staying competitive.

Titled "Strategic IT - The Key to Profitability Forum," the conference was moderated by David Stodder, editorial director of Intelligent Enterprise. It brought together 10 leading figures in the technology community, all of whom agreed that now, more than ever before, strategic IT should serve a crucial role in running companies.

The conference followed a survey jointly conducted by ILOG and Intelligent Enterprise to determine the impact of IT on business. Of the companies contacted, 72 percent of those that claimed to use IT strategically said their operations ran more efficiently. Conversely, 62 percent of the respondents that said their companies did not use IT strategically answered that their companies were not efficient.

The survey also showed that while 73 percent of CIOs and CTOs felt that it was important to plan, build and deploy strategic IT applications to maximize profitability, only 39 percent of CEOs agreed. Only 11 percent of CEOs felt IT for supply-chain management was important, compared to 45 percent of CIOs and CTOs.

The survey and the forum concluded that CIO and IT executives need a greater voice in business to define strategic IT and communicate its benefits. They also observed a shift in the buying strategy for IT, and that now is a crucial time for strategic IT to make its biggest impact on the software industry.

"A lot of CIOs know how to use technology to be more productive and efficient," says Ronda Louise Hocker, CIO of BEA Systems and roundtable participant, "but not many use IT as a differentiator. Dell, Amazon and other leaders are known for using IT as a strategic benefit."

Strategic applications have a direct impact on essential business processes, customer interaction, and planning, forecasting and decision-making. They give businesses the flexibility to react quickly to changing market conditions, identify new opportunities for serving customers, maintain high-value relationships with customers and business partners, and optimize business processes to derive greater efficiency and cost performance.

Other forum attendees:

• Stan Sorensen, director of SQL Server Business Intelligence Marketing, Microsoft
• Don Campbell, vice president of Product Innovation and Technology, Cognos Inc.
• Kevin Cavanaugh, vice president of technology, Unica Corp.
• Bernard Liautaud, president and CEO, Business Objects
• Sanjay Poonen, vice president of Worldwide Marketing, Informatica Corp.
• Tom Rosamilia, vice president of Worldwide Data Management, IBM Corp.
• Chuck Teller, general manager and vice president of Enterprise Performance Management, People Soft Inc.

To obtain all the survey results or learn more about the roundtable meeting, please visit our website: www.ilog.com.