Quelle: CIO, Asia
Talking to Rick Devenuti, CIO of Microsoft, one is gently reminded that telling the IT organisation which he heads at the world's largest software company that they are the "ultimate beta testers" is not a good idea.
Instead, Devenuti, who holds one of the highest-profile CIO positions in the world sees his organisation as coming at the CIO conundrum from both ends of the question. On the one hand, Devenuti's brief is to deliver robust IT infrastructure and services to support Microsoft's day-to-day operations, on time and on budget.
But in deploying a slew of new products, solutions and technologies, Devenuti and team also aim to be a showcase of that technology, and influence the development and customer adoption of Microsoft's technology by being the organisation's best case study, if you will.
Still think technology CIOs have it easy? "The challenges are no different from any other CIO," argues Devenuti, who is also corporate vice president of Operations and Technology Group (OTG). "We have to ensure that the environment is secure, productivity and business value is delivered to investment, and we have to stay aligned with the business. We're not into doing IT for IT's sake. Technology has to bean enabler, and like most CIOs today, we have to do more with less."
In fact, the challenges may be more complex at one of the world's largest technology organisations. The OTG's ambit entail all matters pertaining to Microsoft's technology infrastructure around the world, its corporate and product information, production, distribution as well as ensuring the availability of key internal systems.
Theirs is an IT environment for which complexity may be too mild a word: 150,000 plus PCs, more than 7,000 servers, 72,000 mailboxes processing 4.5 million e-mail messages per day internally. And all this while keeping a workforce of nearly 50,000 employees, 6,000contractors, 17,000 vendors and 1,062 IT employees, among others, happily connected and talking to each other.
Besides availability, security is high on that agenda, including an objective which Microsoft has pushed for some years now, trustworthy computing, which aims to mitigate risk through the implementation of a number of strategies.
"On the network perimeter, we use a mix of technologies such as secure wireless connections and smart cards to ensure that only people who have been given access to the network get in."
Inside the network, Microsoft administrators are able to track how machines connect, by what corporate and group security policies they are enabled for, what anti-virus they use and how patches and security updates are managed. For instance, he says, "If the machines are not updated, then they go through automated shutdowns."
Automated patch management technology also ensure that corporate machines are up to date. A clear benefit is that users do not necessarily have to download security fixes and service patches themselves - if need be, and if policy dictates, machines are proactively kept up-to-date via the servers, through "force patching" if necessary. Devenuti feels that companies benefit tremendously from this, as users get the specific patches they need.
But more than just strategising and supporting IT services, the organisation also collaborates closely with product development groups, providing an enterprise view of upcoming solutions, in a real-world operational environment, and provides valuable insight and first feedback to the development teams. The OTG, according to Devenuti, is on the look out for IT pain points, and it is often from these, say, for example, in identity management tools, that his organisation can help improve and enhance the designs of solutions that will eventually be released to the customer base.
Used to dealing with newer-than-new software and solutions, what gets him excited these days? Plenty. Using Microsoft Office 2003 and other new applications, and consolidation efforts, have paid off as Devenuti has been able to see plenty in savings and productivity gains.
He also spotlights Share Point, a set of products and technologies for facilitating collaboration and sharing of information within an organisation, as having brought dividends. The tools provided allow business units and teams to have access to up-to-date information through thousands of Team sites, or collaborative websites. "You're basically sharing information that used to sit on your hard disk. We're now into totally paperless meetings, and the workflow is different."
A typical meeting for Devenuti features a wireless Tablet PC, equipped with OneNote, a Microsoft Office feature that acts like 'digital paper', helping him take and organise notes, as well as allowing him to have access to the latest versions of documents and information he needs to get the job done. Its tight integration with Office applications, for example, e-mail, allow notes and action items to be shuttled immediately to those who need to know, where before, the notes would often get lost in a small mountain of paper and e-mail.
"[These technologies have] changed my workflow," he says. "I'm now able to subscribe to [files, documents and information] from colleagues, for example report files from Asia Pacific. As long as they are shared, I can see them. It lets us collaborate better."
His game plan for the coming years will revolve around a number of priorities and strategies: making the organisation an example of trustworthy computing; ensuring privacy of data; and ensuring high availability. Data and server consolidation will also be key, and he is excited by developments in the Storage Area Network (SAN) space. "Every CIO will be embarrassed to have his storage utilisation rates published, because you can end up with more disks than you need," he quips. Finally, his focus will continue to be on inculcating strong values in his organisation, through training and encouraging consistency of approach, with the aim of building a collaborative, learning organisation.
On the Boss(es)
Unsurprisingly, expectations of a Microsoft CIO are very high. Reporting to the very top of Microsoft's management, Devenuti characterises his relationships with (Microsoft CEO) Steve Ballmer and(Chairman of the Board and Chief Software Architect) Bill Gates as "very different".
"Steve Ballmer expects the CIO to keep the business running smoothly, and to lower TCO." This can include working with Devenuti over budget matters and so on, in a very business-oriented conversation.
With Gates on the other hand, Devenuti talks technology, about where Microsoft's pain points are, what the organisation is having a hard time doing, and to thrash out what can be done quicker. "These are more fluid conversations," says Devenuti. These meetings are a good chance for the product and IT groups to explain their viewpoints, and another step in the effort to be Microsoft's "first and best customer", he adds.
It is relationships such as these that are key to the success, not only of his role, but of that of any CIO. "Ultimately, it's about building strong constituencies. If you'd told me four years ago that the IT role included this, most people would have laughed. But you have to build relationships across the organisation, and you need to understand and foresee where the business is going."