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"IT is a business within a business," said Tom Sanzone, senior vicepresident at Booz Allen Hamilton and a former CIO at Credit Suisse,during a panel discussion. "It should be run that way." "When you look at IT services you say, can I deliver these servicesat my scale, at a price the market can bear," Sanzone added. But at the same time, CIOs can no longer sacrifice quality, otherpanelists said. "We have accepted a very poor quality of product for a very longtime, and that has been the major filter through which the businessperceives us," said Steven John, strategic CIO at cloud ERP(enterprise resource planning) software vendor Workday. "We need tochange that." Global systems integrator Accenture fits its IT spending into "twobuckets," one for operating expenses and another for investments inIT, said CIO Frank Modruson. Each year, his teams are urged to findways to lower operating costs and move the money over toinvestments, according to Modruson. There are some likely targets, he added. "Email costs, every yearthey should go down." But the company isn't afraid to spend big if there's enough of apayoff, according to Modruson. For one thing, Accenture "blew up its whole network" in 2007,consolidating and modernizing the system. While the job cost US$100million, it paid for itself in just a few years, he said. "Nowwe're getting ready to do it again." Those improvements are laying the groundwork for other innovationsat Accenture, particularly in communications. "Nothing really important happens in email," Modruson said. "We'veactually moved a lot more to video to get that [personal]interaction. My remote meetings are on video now." "Desktop video has gotten pretty cheap," he added. "It costs usless than a penny a minute. It's next to free. It's going to showup everywhere." Sometimes CIOs can't persuade business executives to fund what maybe worthwhile projects. If that happens, those eager to stay thecourse have some options, according to Bill Krivoshik, senior vicepresident and CIO at Time Warner. "You're in a position of fiscal responsibility," he said. "You needto align your goals with the company's. You're not going to hidethings. But there are alternative ways to fund it." CIOs should look to get a proof-of-concept exercise off the groundfor the idea, Krivoshik said. If it works, then company leadershipcan be persuaded to fund it, he said. "If not, then you only spenta little bit of money." But Time Warner is also making a fundamental change to its IToperations. The company is now in the process of migrating its human-resourcessoftware operations to Workday's HR module companywide, Krivoshiksaid in an interview after the panel discussion. Workday willreplace a wide variety of HR systems, he said. The first implementations will be done in the Time Inc. divisionand corporate headquarters this year, with other business unitscoming later, he said. The project is scheduled for completion inearly 2014, according to Krivoshik. Workday is hoping to also lure large multinational conglomerateslike Time Warner to its financials software module. Krivoshik isn'tready to commit to that, though. "We'll look at it," he said. "We only want to focus on one big ERP[area] at a time." That sense of restraint is reflected in how Krivoshik views therole of today's CIO. "I don't think it's changing," he said. "I think the good CIOs havebeen ones who use technology to help the business. It's just thatthe tools in the toolkit have changed. The underlying tenet, tohelp grow the top line, is the same." Chris Kanaracus covers enterprise software and general technologybreaking news for The IDG News Service. Chris's e-mail address is Chris_Kanaracus@idg.com. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Alloy Steel Round Bar , China Forged Steel Rings, and more. For more , please visit Cold Work Tool Steel today!
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