Definitely not, according to Telstra's chief technology officer Hugh Bradlow, who argues that Google Docs doesn't contain enough functionality.

"Google Docs as a word processing and spreadsheet application [which] is great if you want to do simple things, but it is simply not up to the capabilities of a Microsoft Word or even an Open Office for doing serious work," he said.

But surely it has enough features for a small business? Apparently not.

"It's very limited in my view. Even for small businesses, I think you want to do a lot more than that," he said.

Bradlow dislikes Google Docs so much that earlier this year he threatened to throw his laptop at the company's then CIO John McInerney if he implemented it.

"That was probably one of my more regrettable remarks but I said it," admitted Bradlow.

Despite this, he wanted to clarify that he wasn't anti-Google and likened the applications to consumer and professional DSLR camera models.

"By the way, I am not knocking Google, I love what they do. It is not a go at them; it is just not the same thing. It is like the difference between your Canon 1D [MKIV] and me wanting to get a Canon 500D, right? Different purposes.

A Canon 1D MKIV camera costs around 10 times more than a Canon 500D.

But Bradlow's comments were a surprise, especially since during the IT Priorities Roundtable events, panellists seemed very keen on Google Docs.

In Mumbai, Yogesh Dhandharia, administrator from manufacturing firm Rashi Peripherals, said that his company's move to Google Docs was "working like a charm".

Almost half the panel members in Sydney had already migrated to Google Docs while in Melbourne, but Kevin McIsaac revealed that although IBRS uses Google Docs for email and calendar, he keeps a copy of Microsoft Word handy for sending proposals to potential clients, the majority of whom still use Office.

So is Google Docs good enough to be used as a core business productivity suite? Unfortunately, the answer isn't clear cut.

As with everything in IT, it depends on your needs. After all, even after everything he said about Google Docs, Telstra's Bradlow admits to using it regularly.

"I still do use Google Docs at home for various things. Every time I do something on the computer I make a note of it on Google Docs because I know if I have to do it on my wife's computer I can look it up on the browser, wherever I am. So I use it as a form of note taking but it is not a proper word processing application," he added.

Do you agree with Bradlow? Is Google's word processor good enough for everyday use? Can you relate to McIsaac, who uses both, depending on specific needs?

When it comes to education and tech skills, the differences between the haves and have-nots is just as disparate — one-third of the country's population is highly educated, and yet another third is illiterate.

The poverty on display is shocking — especially through the eyes of a pampered westerner. It doesn't matter how many times I go to India, it's impossible to not be overawed by the desperate conditions endured by so many.

This was my first visit to India on business, which meant that instead of hanging out with the tourist crowd, I had the pleasure of conversing with Indian CIOs, technology experts and business leaders.

The few days I spent in Mumbai and Delhi have taught me that, despite India's meteoric rise as a global software powerhouse, the country is still a very long way from fulfilling its full potential in this field.

One very important fact about India is the demographics of its population. Around half of the country's 1.2 billion citizens are below 25 years old while two thirds are below 35. In 2020, it's estimated the population will hit 1.6 billion, but with an average age of just 29.

Even though only a small fraction will be fortunate enough to gain a quality education, the sheer volume of home-grown talent will ensure that over the next decade, when it comes to software engineers, India will have an embarrassment of riches.

India's tech sector is growing at a phenomenal rate. Corporations such as Microsoft recognised this trend more than a decade ago and started building development teams in towns such as Bangalore, Hyderabad and more recently, Pune.

Intel's Sudhir Setty admits that what first kicked off India's software development industry was the abundance of cheap labour, but now he says times have changed.

"We came to India about 10 years ago, obviously the two drivers then were cost and availability of skills. Now, from 2000 to 2010, cost is something we don't even really talk about ... it is the skills availability which is still driving us to grow in India.

"I really don't want to tell 'mother Intel' to come to India for cost [savings] ... Intel needs to come in and invest in India because you find the skills, the people here are innovative and they are technical leaders," said Setty.

I asked him if there was a risk India would price itself out of the market.

"There is always that risk and we always watch it. We see how fast we are progressing against the other emerging markets: Brazil, Russia and China, but the [availability of] English speakers is still very much in favour of India. You can't go to another country and find this kind of skills base," he said.

However, Shekhar Ranjankar from Unitop Chemicals, which runs an almost entirely Linux shop, said it was still difficult to source and retain staff with specialist open-source skills, especially in big cities such as Mumbai.

"It's not that easy to get the Linux guys in Mumbai compared to other cities like Pune and Bangalore," said Ranjankar.

One reason, the panel agreed, was loyalty among skilled staff is a rare commodity.

"Today, suppose a Linux techie has started his career, after three or four years he will have very good experience, so then he will go and work with some MNC [multi-national corporation]. You will not find the same guy here for a very long period," said Ranjankar.

Vijay Pradash from the Project Management Institute, said Silicon Valley has previously experienced similar problems.

"This is what Silicon Valley was like; there was high attrition even then because there were so many opportunities. [Employees would think] 'I'm going to do the ladder thing. I'm going to go and get a 10 per cent raise and then two years later, I'll get 20 per cent ... eventually it will settle down. It becomes a more mature job market," added Pradash.

This problem of recruiting and, more importantly, retaining skilled staff will be familiar to chief information officers the world over. In India, where the majority of people live in extreme poverty, companies can expect rivals to regularly try and lure away quality employees with offers of more money.

Indian companies need to seriously look at alternative benefits, such as subsidised housing, better working conditions and clear career paths in order to keep hold of their most valuable assets.

Cesare Tizi
(Credit: Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia)

The panel members listened intently to experiences shared by Cesare Tizi, country manager for Gentrack, who has over 20 years industry experience and has been the CIO of organisations including AGL and Transurban Group.

Tizi said that he currently mentors a number of CIOs and that in most cases they share the same problem: they strive for technical perfection.

He admitted making the same mistake himself — until he started taking an interest in his employer's core business.

"The minute I started talking about [business] issues with my colleagues, the relationship changed ... all of a sudden I could get my IT ideas on the table.

"If I came with the IT ideas first, then it would just bore them," Tizi told the panellists.

So how does one dispose of a company's IT strategy and still ensure its business IT systems continue to evolve?

Tizi explained that traditionally, the executive team creates a business strategy and then passes it over to IT. The techies then create an IT strategy that is "oriented and synergistic to the business strategy".

However, Tizi joked that the original business strategy was often flawed and the IT staff were usually too interested in deploying the latest cool kit, which is the perfect recipe for a disaster.

The key, according to Tizi, is for the CIO to influence the development of the business strategy and advise where IT could be most efficiently used to realise the organisation's goals.

"I was in the same room when the business strategy was being put together. As they brainstorm what to do with the business, I could say, 'that is a good idea, I could automate it fairly easily'," said Tizi. He would reject other ideas that, although they might make good business sense, could be unrealistic or too expensive from a technology point of view.

"There was no longer an IT strategy, there was a business strategy that had IT elements in it," he said.

This concept of CIOs becoming more involved in the business is certainly not a new one, but I was very impressed with Tizi's explanation of how to actually execute the theory.

Another panel member, Kevin McIsaac from IBRS, said that there are essentially two CIO "types".

"There are CIOs who are basically a service delivery arm. They are an in-sourced IT provider. They are told what the business strategy is (and they have very little input to that) and their job is to provide a commodity service as best they can.

"If [the CIO] is in a strategic role and involved in the strategic planning, they can help [the business] understand how IT can help them with their strategy," he said.

So if you are a CEO, which of these CIO types is running your IT system? Have you hired the correct type for your needs? If you are finding your IT projects are not providing the expected result, maybe it's time for a change.

Green IT was the topic du jour in Singapore but in Sydney, panellists at the 27 July IT Priorities Roundtable event couldn't get enough of the cloud.

Cloud computing relies heavily on big datacentres along with fast, reliable connectivity. So I was surprised nobody mentioned the NBN, which featured prominently in the Melbourne discussion the following day — look out for the video from that event, which will be published here very soon.

Panellists in Sydney did, however, express concerns about the costs of running these increasingly dense and power-hungry datacentres.

However much vendors like to hype green computing, there can be no escaping the fact that we are using more electricity and, according to Jens Butler, principal analyst at Ovum Research, the cost of electricity is expected to increase significantly over the coming years.

"In New South Wales, electricity costs are going to increase by at least 22 to 30 per cent a year, over the next three to five years," he said.

When chief financial officers start realising that over a three-year period, the cost of powering a blade server will cost around the same amount as purchasing the hardware, some CIOs will have some explaining to do, Butler said.

This extra cost is hidden from the IT budget for most companies because they generally share the electricity bill over all departments equally, according to David Scott, managing director of Emerson Network Power Australia.

I asked him how many of his customers monitored the power usage of their IT department.

"I would say very few," replied Scott, explaining that it was mainly co-location and hosting specialists, like Equinix — who did this as standard practice because it was part of their revenue model.

"They have to separate them because they then have to charge that on to a particular customer, so that is measured down to the watt," added Scott.

So if CIOs want to know exactly how much their new hardware is costing them — including hardware and power — this practice of lumping all powers costs together needs to evolve.

The problem is, according to Ovum's Butler, prehistoric accounting practices.

"It is a lot easier for the CIO to account for an individual server that will save them 25 per cent in energy savings than the overall datacentre components that are associated with that. Traditionally, accounting costs have been focused on the datacentre but don't absorb a fair proportion of electricity usage.

"So very often [the CIO] is fighting over traditional accounting standards which to some extent were set over 100 or 150 years ago. You can start to see where there is a potential conflict there," added Butler.

Does your organisation know exactly how much it spends on powering its IT department compared to the rest of the company? Is there another solution? Use Talkback below or start a conversation with me on Twitter @mkotadia.

Singapore is a relatively tiny country and its datacentres are running out of space. On top of this, its tropical climate means the cost of keeping cool is big business.

However, with an IT administrator from the country's Ministry of Defence on the panel, I thought it inevitable that at some point, the conversation would turn to security.

As it turns out, I was wrong and security was hardly mentioned.

For someone responsible for keeping Singapore's most valuable secrets ... a secret, Andrew Tan was very relaxed.

Initially, I thought he was simply keeping his cards close to his chest but after hearing what other panel members had to say, I'm not so sure.

Phil Devlin from HP summed up the situation perfectly (Phil is an Australian who has been living and working in Singapore for over a decade): "I measure a country's security awareness based on the questions they ask me — some countries don't ask for a lot. Singapore is probably one of my more challenging countries in the entire region."

According to Devlin, Singaporean companies are keen followers of security standards and the government education campaigns are excellent. Another advantage, said Devlin, was the government's willingness to pass tough laws at lightning speed.

"In Singapore, I have seen an idea become law probably within a week or so... Consequently it means that things like cyber attacks ... you probably wouldn't want to do it here. Because if you get caught..."

At this point, he hesitated just long enough for at least two panel members to finish his sentence.

"You are hanged," they said, laughing.

The panel may be laughing but I would bet the criminals are not. There are far easier targets than Singapore. Last year, the government set up the Singapore Infocomm Technology Security Authority to help protect it against cyber-terrorism and cyber-espionage.

Domestically, if the government feels IT security is getting out of hand, I have no doubt it will swiftly pass laws to make even the most hardened cybercriminals think twice before launching an attack.

(Credit: Munir Kotadia/ZDNet Australia)

During a chat with one of the panellists, Chris Cheong, the regional IT director of Lowe & Partners, the conversation turned to cloud computing.

Cheong explained that although the cloud has many benefits, he was weary of implementing cloud projects in Malaysia (and a few other countries in the region) because internet connectivity just wasn't reliable enough.

Cloud computing is "a trend that we should look at seriously in efforts to save money and go green, but I still have some concerns in countries like Malaysia where bandwidth can be problematic", he said.

Unsurprisingly, he was worried about his corporate executives being left without access to critical information.

I got a personal taste of this the very next day, when the otherwise reliable internet connection in the hotel went down for about five hours.

As I rely heavily on Gmail and Google Docs, being without a connection, at any time, is ... well, it's a bit of a nightmare really.

For over a year now, I have taken it for granted that the internet would always be available. If the corporate network, or even my home connection, should fail, I could simply tether my laptop to the 3G connection on my mobile phone.

In KL, my initial reaction would have been to reach for the iPhone but I didn't have a local SIM card and was still roaming on the 3 network. Although that arrangement provides me with a monthly 2GB of relatively cheap data in Sydney, it would cost me $20 per megabyte (yes, megabyte) when in Malaysia.

Now in the past I have achieved 3G download speeds at hundreds of kilobits per second — if I had replicated that for a few hours while roaming in Malaysia, I dread to think what my next phone bill would have been.

Suddenly Chris' concerns about the region's problematic bandwidth seemed very sensible indeed.