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Seventy-six percent of executives surveyed at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium in May 2008 said they didn't have a committed budget for a greening policy, even though 90 percent said that greening their data centers is crucial to meeting their companies' business objectives. This wasn't the case for Avnet Inc., $14 billion worldwide distributor of electronic components, computer products, and technology services. In fact, Avnet received Computerworld's Best Practices in Green IT Award for a three-year project to create a more energy-efficient data center.

Avnet's 13,000-square-foot data center houses 1,200 logical servers, more than 200 terabytes of disk storage, a central tape backup system and redundant UPSs, generators, and switch gear. For Brad Kenney, vice president of infrastructure at Avnet, the greening of the company's data center wasn't another IT project, but an on-going process that has saved the company thousands of dollars in unnecessary power consumption, under-utilized servers, and inefficient UPSs. He says, "Most of all it's saved us the millions of dollars it would cost to build out our data center to house more servers we didn't need."

Kenney began the process by looking at every piece of equipment on the data center floor. Two important factors included the age of the device and its energy efficiency. Because manufacturers have become more concerned about energy consumption, Kenney found it more cost-effective to replace older air conditioners and older UPSs with new devices that were at least 20 percent more energy efficient. He even looked at replacing floor tiles, lighting, and making adjustments in air handling. He says that little things like these can save up to 30 percent in energy consumption.

Server virtualization enabled Kenney to liquidate about 300 severs. Twenty-four physical ESX hosts now represent 378 virtual servers, and 39 AIX servers have more than 200 servers on them. Other consolidated efforts include moving to a centralized tape backup system and a storage area network.

Kenney is also amazed by the improved energy consumption that has resulted from virtualization, as well as from the other system consolidations. He says, "We went down by 44 percent in kWs per server. We've freed up more than 5,000 square feet on the data center floor."

Bio

Since 2004, Brad Kenney has been vice president of IT infrastructure at Avnet Inc., where he oversees the data center facility, computer operations, desktops, data storage, networks, messaging, and mainframes. Kenney started his career with Avnet in 1987 and has served in a variety of positions, including supervisor, manager, and director of data center operations. He received a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Arizona State University.

Resources

Blade.org Establishes Venture Capital Advisory Board to Guide Blade Standard and Future Solutions The Data Center Journal


Avnet Gets Green Certification Purchasing.com


Avnet Adds Virtualization to Growing Services Portflio ChannelWeb


Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer

Tom Parish,  Host and Audio Producer

 

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When Don Hopkins retired as chief information officer at NCR, he decided to join SunGard Availability Services, a business unit of the $5 billion SunGard  Corp. SunGard Availability Services provides the company's more than 10,000 customers in North American and in Europe with solutions that ensure uninterrupted access to mission-critical data and systems. By reporting to SunGard's CEO, Hopkins has insight into the company's strategic initiatives and, as a result, has the opportunity to understand what technologies would be good enablers to those strategic decisions.
 
In 1979, Hopkins joined NCR where he moved up the IT ranks from the director of general-purpose products to vice president of technology and infrastructure in NCR's IT services group, and to his last position as chief information officer. In fact, he played a leadership role in NCR's transformation and performance turnaround. In 2007, he successfully completed the very complex IT spin-off of Teradata as a separate company. Although this event happened during a very aggressive timeframe, Hopkins and the management team did it under planned budgets, both before and after the spin-off.
 
In this podcast, Hopkins talks about how he has translated his IT experiences at NCR and applied them as CIO at SunGard Availability Services. He also talks about NCR's strategy to cut its IT infrastructure costs and increase the company's profitability, its process for making investment decisions in technology, and its methodology for measuring the value of those investments.

BIO

Don Hopkins is vice president and chief information officer at SunGard Availability Services. Before joining this business unit of the $5 billion SunGard Corp., he was CIO at NCR Corporation and the vice president of technology and infrastructure in the company's IT services unit. He joined NCR in 1979. He holds master’s degrees in mathematics, school administration, computer science and business administration from the University of Dayton, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics/physics from Miami (Ohio) University.

Resources

Specialists Share Transformation Models with Tech Providers, Industry Peers - Manufacturing Business Technology

E-vaulting Clears Hurdles to Vital Data - IDG Accelerate

CIO of NCR Is Retiring - Dayton Business Journal

 
Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer

Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Doug Marcis - Audio and Music Editing

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Despite the downturn in the economy, some financial services companies are holding their own and hiring people, especially in areas such as IT. Genworth Financial is one of those companies. Genworth Financial has more than $103 billion in assets and 15 million customers worldwide. Genworth has earned the highest company ratings in its industry. It is a leader in long-term care insurance and annuities.

Christina Hollingsworth will be the first one to tell you that IT resides at the core of Genworth Financial's business operations. As corporate IT director at Genworth Financial, she oversees the strategy, planning, and execution of the company's enterprise finance technology acquisition and integration. Hollingsworth has earned a stellar reputation for leading global teams and initiatives and partnering with multiple suppliers.

Like many IT executives, Hollingsworth has to be sure that she has a well-stocked pool of qualified personnel who are not only technically savvy but can lead IT projects. She says, "In the past, IT professionals have been very good about executing on initiatives, or basically carrying out what they were told to do. Today, things have changed. Given the speed at which technology is evolving, we need people who can develop strategy based upon trends in the industry, can translate those trends into action, and then can execute on those initiatives."

In fact, Genworth Financial has deployed new technologies such as desktop video and software as a service, which manages travel expenses and investment portfolio expenses. The company also has a social networking pilot underway that is similar to Facebook. In fact, they call it Spacebook. Hollingsworth says, "As a global company, we have both employees and contractors working at a variety of locations. The best way to get good ideas is to have many ideas coming from our global talent pool. Our Spacebook will make it very easy for people to tap into these resources."

In this podcast, Hollingsworth talks about what skills people in IT need today, how recent IT graduates can chart a course for leveraging their skills, and what unemployed IT professionals need to think about when looking for a job. In addition, she also talks about Genworth Financial's career development program and the company's green initiatives. 

BIO

Christina Hollingsworth is the corporate information technology director at Genworth Financial, where she has worked for seven years. The company recognized Hollingsworth's leadership skills by awarding her the 2005 Platinum Compass Award for excellence in performance execution. Before coming to Genworth Financial, she held technology leadership positions at Minerals Technology and GE Financial, before it became Genworth Financial. She has a Masters in the Management of Technology from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School and Penn Engineering.

Resources

Genworth soars on possible spinoff

CNN

Kognitio and Genworth Financial migrate 12 million policies

Banking Technology

Uniting process and tech at Genworth

Insurance & Technology

 
Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer

Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Doug Marcis - Audio and Music Editing

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What is the chief concern of chief information officers? According to a recent annual survey by the Society for Information Management, the number one concern of CIOs is attracting, developing, and retaining good IT professionals. So, if you’re looking to move up the corporate IT ladder or you’re a first-time IT job-seeker, consider sharpening your enterprise software skills at SAP, or working for a SAP partner, or getting SAP training and then going to work for an SAP customer. With revenues of about $10.5 billion and 50,000 employees, SAP ranks as the world’s second largest business software company and the third largest independent software provider in revenues. SAP ERP deployments can be found in more than 41,000 companies, in more than 25 industries, and in about 120 countries. Unlike Oracle, which has grown through 30 acquisitions, SAP has grown organically by hiring people.

No one knows more about the SAP hiring picture, as well as the hiring needs of the IT industry, than Mark Steinke, vice president of global recruiting at SAP. He oversees SAP’s recruiting and staffing for professionals, senior executives, university graduates, interns, and contingent staff. According to Steinke, the demand for IT professionals with SAP knowledge has never been greater than today. He says, “The quantity of IT candidates has dropped off because of the demands of skills in our space.” While Steinke strongly suggests that IT candidates at all levels consider SAP training, he says that technical skills might get you in the door, but won’t give you staying power. He says that today’s business needs demand that IT employees at all levels know how to manage change, to think strategically, and to communicate effectively. He says, “Universities do a good job of incorporating the IT skills in the curriculum, but fall short in those other areas."

In this podcast, Mark Steinke, vice president of global recruiting at SAP, talks about the global challenge of finding qualified IT talent, provides tips for IT job seekers at all levels, and gives an overview of hiring and training opportunities at SAP.

Bio

During his more than five years with SAP, Mark Steinke’s experience has grown from business ownership of recruitment to vice president of global recruiting. His 20 years of recruitment experience includes positions at several Fortune 500 companies.

Resources

SAP e-recruiting Webcast

Yoh Talent Solutions Chosen by SAP Americas for Contingent Workforce Management Services

Bloomberg.com - Expansion Leaves Workers Behind, Creates Fed Friction

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Doug Marcis - Audio Editing

The failure of Washington Mutual Bank, along with 100's of other U.S. banks on the verge of failure, has caused consumers to question if a similar event could happen to their bank. However, consumers who bank with Farmers & Merchants Bank (F&MB) in Long Beach, California, don't have cause for alarm. Rating services, such as Weiss Rating, Highline Data, and others, consider F&MB to be the strongest bank in California and one of the strongest in the nation. The bank has assets of $3 billion and a capital ratio four times higher than the FDIC limit and sufficient liquidity to pay every depositor in full.

Financial strength has formed the underpinning of F&MB from the day it was founded in 1907 by C.J. Walker, great grandfather of Henry Walker, the current CEO. For example, F&MB didn't need any government assistance. When Gus Walker, Henry's grandfather became the bank's chairmen and president in 1938, he started the important tradition of transferring much of the bank's annual earnings into capital and reserve accounts. This wise practice enabled F&MB to flourish during the inflation-riddled 1970s, the fluctuations of the 1980s, the recession of the early 1990s, and even to grow despite today's problems.

Today, Henry Walker, along with his brother Daniel, who is chairman and president, continues to carry out his family's legacy, but with one difference - a heavy emphasis on capital investments in technology and facilities. The goal of these investments says Walker is to provide new services and to improve the bank's quality of customer service. Enterpriseleadership.org recently sat down with Henry Walker to talk about the business processes and the investments that've helped F&MB to earn its coveted reputation for financial soundness.

EL. What motivates you to follow in your great grandfather's footsteps?

HW. The bank has three executives:

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Ace is the place, especially if you're looking for home hardware in the U.S. or in Saudi Arabia. And no one knows this better than Paul Ingevaldson. After a 25-year with Ace Hardware, Ingevaldson retired as CIO and senior vice president of international and technology for the $3 billion dollar global hardware wholesaler. Its more than 5,000 retail hardware stores do $12 billion in annual sales. Ingevaldson was responsible for Ace's IT needs for the entire corporation, including the retail stores in more than 70 countries. Of his many accomplishments, Ingevaldson is most proud of having become an officer of the company, heavily automating all aspects of the retail operation, and having the full corporation of executive management to align IT with the business. He attributes much of his success in these areas to a stint where he moved out of IT and handled distribution for Ace Hardware. He says, "The experience enabled me to see IT from the user's perspective. I realized that we had to spend more time training people how to interact with IT."

Since his retirement, Ingevaldson has written a variety of tutorial IT management articles for both CIO and Computerworld. His topics have covered everything from improving governance to delegating authority. He also has cranked out many articles about how CIOs should report to CEOs. In fact, his article, IT Cheat Sheet for CEOs, helps a CIO to explain the mechanics of IT to a new CEO.

Ingevaldson says that there are many reasons why it's important for CIOs to report directly to CEOs, than CFOs, and to be on the executive leadership team as a peer with CFOs. He says, "When it comes to corporate funds, CFOs take a risk adverse position. If you want to move the company forward through automation, then IT has to assume certain risks. If IT isn't willing to take a chance, then it will be a follower. If you work for a CFO, you have to go into much detail about every aspect of IT. Most of all, you aren't a peer with the rest of the leadership team. I'd never take a CIO position reporting to a CFO."

In this podcast, Ingevaldson talks more about why it's important for CIOs to sit at the corporate leadership table, and how they can maintain their place at this table.

Bio

In 1979, Paul Ingevaldson began his 25-year career at Ace Hardware as director of management information systems. He moved up the ranks to become Ace Hardware's chief information officer and senior vice president of international and technology. In 2004, he retired from the $3 billion corporation, but he didn't retire from IT. Ingevaldson writes IT management articles for both Computerworld and CIO magazine.

Resources

Computerworld - IT Survival Guide

CIO - How Do You Know You Delegate Enough?

CIO - Five Things I Learned After I Retired

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Doug Marcis - Audio Editing

The proliferation of the Internet, the pressure of a global economy, and the need to remain competitive have transformed businesses all of sizes into extended enterprises. As a result, many companies have a complex network of matrix relationships with permanent employees, with contract staff, with customers, with partners, and with suppliers. Because customers and suppliers might need to have access to information, such as sales forecasts and inventory projections, companies also need to extend enterprise applications to these constituents, thus creating an interconnected network of information.

John Baschab, the president of TechniSource, says that the key to managing an extended enterprise is good collaboration. Baschab's company provides outsourced IT talent, ranging from CIOs to CISCO networking specialists, to privately held companies with revenues between $50 million and $600 million. Baschab, who also teaches part time at Southern Methodist University, and Jonathan Piot, his TechniSource partner, have written two editions of the 600-page book, The Executive Guide's to Information Technology.

Enterpriseleadership.org recently sat down with Baschab to discuss what companies must do to better manage their extended enterprises and what role collaboration plays in this process. Here is what he had to say:

EL: What types of investments are you seeing in collaboration to extend the enterprise?

JB: We're seeing much IT investment going into extending the enterprise through collaboration. When it comes to internal collaboration, we're seeing improvements in the various ways people interact with each other. External collaboration looks at ways to leverage technology to bring suppliers and or customers closer together. The big difference here is who are your customers? If you're customers are consumers, then you can deploy social networking to drive more collaboration. On the other hand, if have business customers, then you have to look at how you can create a platform to

Mark D. Lutchen knows what it takes to unleash the full potential of IT so that organizations can derive the maximum benefit from it. As the former global CIO at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), one of the largest professional business services firms in the world, Lutchen oversaw an IT organization of more than 2,500 professionals serving more than 120,000 employees in 144 countries. Today, Lutchen is a senior practices partner in PwC's IT Effectiveness Practice, where he helps clients get more value from their IT investments and their IT strategies. In 2004, he wrote Managing IT as a Business - A Survival Guide for CEO's. Many graduate school professors have used his book in MBA courses on IT management. Lutchen says that the basics IT management principles in his book haven't changed much since it was published.

Enterpriseleadership.org recently spoke with Lutchen, for the second time, to discuss what disciplines CIOs must put in place if they want to run IT like a successful company. This is what he had to say:

EL: Why did you write the book in the first place?

ML: I wrote the book because the IT clients I worked with seemed to have similar issues. It became clear that technology wasn't the problem. Instead, it was about managing IT and being disciplined about doing it. If you look at the failures that have occurred, you start to see some of the patterns. People have not instilled within IT the disciplines we use in other parts of the business. If you're a CIO running a billion dollar IT organization or even a half billion IT organization, that's the equivalent of running a business. To this end, you need all of the kinds of things in place for running a business. The book was to put this idea

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As chief scientist for Accenture, a $19 billion global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing firm, Dr. Kishore Swaminathan tries to understand the major trends that will shape the technology landscape over a 3- to 5-year period. According to Swaminathan, CIOs can't afford to ignore three major trends: cloud computing, light systems, and analytics.

He defines cloud computing as the sourcing of some capability from somewhere out there, typically through the Internet, and you, as a user, neither know nor care where this capability is coming from. The four types of cloud computing include software clouds, such as software as a service; hardware clouds, such as data backup; desktop clouds, such as google applications, and business process clouds, such as PayPal. Swaminthan says he isn't sure where cloud computing is going because of the unresolved issues in areas such as data security and performance.

Swaminathan calls the second trend light systems because they allow the IT organization to use independent, but related technologies to push data from multiple streams so end users can manipulate it. Technologies such as the RESC protocol, mashups, and widgets free the IT organization of a lot of unnecessary work, especially having to build a new system or a new application.

In the last 18 months, major software companies such as IBM and Microsoft have acquired analytics companies. Swaminathan says that this third trend will take the drudgery of getting analytics out of backup systems, and build the analytics capability right into the technology platform, such as Oracle Enterprise suite or SAP. As a result, people won't have to depend on the IT organization or a small number of research gurus to get the analytics they need. They'll be able to access the analytics capability.

In this podcast, Swaminathan also talks about why CIOs have failed to contribute to the innovation process when it comes to pursuing new revenue sources.

Bio

Dr. Kishore Swaminathan is chief scientist at Accenture where he defines the company's technology vision and helps to set the company's research and development agenda. He also heads Accenture's Systems Integration research located in the United States, France, and India. Swaminathan joined Accenture in 1990, taking a position in Accenture's Center for Strategic Technology Research. He has a bachelor's degree in technology and aeronautical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras and holds a master's and Ph.D. degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was a Smithsonian Fellow. Media outlets ranging from the ABC Evening News to the The Wall Street Journal have featured his work.

Interview Questions for Kishore Swaminathan, Accenture's Chief Scientist

1. Can you briefly describe your role at Accenture?

2. Creativity and innovation are recurring themes in your role at Accenture.  Looking across the board, how would you rate the effectiveness of the CIO's role in supporting innovation to pursue new revenue sources, such as new markets or new products?

3. What are the top three technology trends that CIOs can't ignore and why?

4. During the next five years, what major shifts will we see in the CIO's role and the responsibilities of the IT organization?

5. During the next five years, what important skills will CIOs be looking for in the people they hire?

6. You have been quoted as saying that the closed or proprietary world of Second Life won't exist two years from now. Can you say more about that?

7. What types of social networking should CIOs be considering for their companies and why?

Bio

Computerworld - The Grill: To Kishore Swaminathan, CIO means 'chief intelligence officer'

Enterprise 2.0: turning consumer-driven Web 2.0 technologies into business value, Kishore Swaminathan, Accenture

ZDNet - Accenture: Time is ripe to test cloud computing

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Doug Marcis - Audio Editing

Today, companies must maximize their time, their talent, and their tools to create value in the global economy. To better leverage these things, many companies have begun to design new business models and new workplace models based on one concept -- collaboration. However, too often companies say they have a highly collaborative environment because they've encouraged employees to use specific tools, such as Microsoft's SharePoint. Evan Rosen, collaboration strategist and author of the award-winning book, The Culture of Collaboration, says, that there's a hidden danger in making this type of statement. He says, "You need the culture to support the tools. Just introducing tools into an organization doesn't create collaboration."

Using examples from some of American's top collaborative companies, such as Boeing and Toyota, Rosen, in his book, explores how organizations of all sizes and types can adopt a collaborative culture to create value. Rosen, a former television news reporter and news anchor, spent much time visiting with all of the companies. He is the chief strategist for Impact Video Communications in San Francisco, California.

Enterpriseleadership.org recently sat down with Evan Rosen to discuss the benefits of collaboration, the trend toward real-time collaboration, and the essential elements that go into effective collaboration. Here's what he had to say:

EL: What prompted you to write this book?

ER: I've been involved with collaboration for many years. I planted the seed for the book back in 1999. At that time, I was in Munich, Germany, where BMW was preparing to launch the X5 Sports Activity Vehicle. It was using a highly collaborative process to do so. BMW created what I call mirror organizations between the manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the design and engineering center in Munich. By extending the workday and using the workday in both places, BMW wanted