CIO

IBM CIO adjusts to his 'first pure-technology job'

CIOs need bigger focus on business strategy than ever before, IBM CIO says.

IBM CIO Mark Hennessy took on his current role in July, after 25 years of holding sales, marketing, and general management positions at Big Blue. In his "first pure-technology job," Hennessy is responsible for the technology needs of 372,000 employees worldwide, along with eight million square feet of data centers and thousands of servers and applications. Hennessy sat down with Network World's Jon Brodkin at IBM's Manhattan offices this week to discuss how IBM is using virtual worlds and Web 2.0, the company's progress with virtualization and consolidation of data centers, and Big Blue's obsession with the word "innovation."

What are the two or three biggest technology projects you're working on?

We have a number of projects around enterprise applications we're working on, trying to integrate across geographies and across business units. The virtualization< of some of our systems to reduce our power consumption and costs is another big project we've embarked on. And [we're working on] innovation tools and technologies to drive up the productivity of our teams.

IBM's done a lot of data center consolidation over the last decade. What's going on right now, and what are your goals for the next year, three years?

In August we announced we were going to take 3,900 servers down to 30 [mainframes]. And we're in the middle of that right now. We've modeled what we think the outcome is going to be, the savings in terms of administrative requirements, in terms of software, in terms of floor space, and in terms of power and cooling requirements reductions. We're working with the business units to identify the right applications and the right environments moving forward. We've gone through quite a few of the migrations already. We're working very closely with clients on it.

How long will the project last?

A couple years.

IBM has done a lot internally with Web 2.0 and collaboration technologies, with blogs, wikis, a virtual world, and massive collaboration exercises such as last year's InnovationJam, an online brainstorming session that involved 150,000 people. How well do you think you're doing with Web 2.0 so far?

I'm excited that we have such a large early-adopter community in IBM, that we have so many people interested in utilizing those tools, sharing whether the tools are effective or not, or how to make them more effective. That's terrific.

People talk about an age divide in technology adoption. Are the older members of your workforce on board with Web 2.0?

Absolutely. I mean if you look at the jams and the success we've had with those, if you look at ThinkPlace [a site where any IBM employee can suggest ideas and comment on them], and the success we've had with that, there's all generations of our workforce that are involved, all geographies are involved. These tools facilitate that collaboration, unlock the value, the skills, the passion, the energy, the capability, from people all over the world in all sorts of different environments.

I was just in Asia a couple weeks ago. I was in Shanghai, and it's growing very quickly. So, how do we make sure those folks have access to the ideas, skills and capabilities from the rest of the world, and vice versa? That is a very strong element of integrating the global enterprise.

IBM is in the early stages of developing a virtual world in which employees are starting to collaborate and hold meetings. How extensively will IBM use virtual worlds to do real work?

We had a lot of interest and activity around Second Life. I spent a fair amount of time with retail clients I had [before becoming CIO] trying to work through how to really leverage this virtual world, get access to those communities, and get the feedback, if not purchases, that those communities could provide. We got a lot of traction, a lot of good ideas, visibility through that. This internal world [we're developing for IBM employees], we'll learn from that as well. We'll use it for communications, we'll use it for education and a lot of different topics. But time will tell just how pervasive it'll get.

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You've been CIO for five months. What were you doing before?

I've been with IBM for 25 years. Right before this I had responsibility for the distribution sector, which is all of our largest clients in retail, consumer products and travel and transportation. I was the general manager. This is the first pure-technology job I've had.

What type of technology expertise do you have?

I've worked for a technology company for 25 years and spent the majority of that time working with clients to use our technology to solve their problems. I think also one of the key requirements for CIOs these days is to drive real collaboration between the IT community and the line of business to make sure we are addressing the requirements of the line of business, we're helping to set strategy.

You write a blog on IBM's intranet. What do you blog about?

I have blogged about my initial observations in the CIO role, I've blogged about conversations I've had with clients, I've blogged about our search capabilities, I've blogged about trips I've made to Europe and Asia, a number of things that are on my mind and would be of interest to the community. I also have started to use it not just when I initiate the blog but in communication and dialogue with other blogs.

So you post comments on other people's blogs?

Yes. Especially when they relate to the technology or tools we're providing. It allows me to get very direct feedback from users on what's working well and what's not working so well.

Can any IBM employee post comments? Are they edited or censored?

Yes. Anyone can comment, it is not edited, it is not censored. I usually get comments to what I blog about, and it's always constructive. If somebody says, 'Look, you're doing it this way but you ought to do it that way,' I'm happy to enter into that discussion. Sometimes I may ask them to talk to somebody who's more of an expert on the subject. But I always read them and I usually respond, and I think they're very helpful for me to keep a real view of what's going on rather than a filtered view.

You mentioned a project to integrate applications across the company. Can you give us some specifics?

We're focusing on key business processes. One example I like to use is around workforce management. More than 50% of our revenue is in services. We're very focused on hiring good people and understanding what resources and skills we have, making them available with clients very quickly.

We've kind of broken down the key processes for workforce management, how do we recruit, how do we identify the skills that are there, how do we link the skills to client contracts we have. What we try to do is simplify those processes and come up with the best-of-breed approaches we have from around the world. And then we have a simplified, consistent process across business units and across geographies. We have a number of key processes like that that we're focused on integrating across our business.

Do you have a lot of freedom to use non-IBM technologies, particularly in cases where IBM has a competing product?

We do. And there are certainly situations where we're using non-IBM products, sometimes through acquisition. That's a perfect example, where we'll bring a company in and they'll be using some tools or capabilities that didn't originate with IBM. At the same time we have standardized on [IBM's] WebSphere and DB2 [database products] and many of the key elements of our middleware, and they work very well for us.

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Do you use products from, say, HP or Oracle?

There is some in the environment. I'm sure there are some unique requirements, certainly in some of the accounts we've outsourced there's also some of that type of non-IBM equipment. For the most part, no, it's our environment, it's all IBM.

How many computers do you support as CIO?

With PCs, since we have 370,000 employees and at least another 50,000 contractors, we're well up over 400,000 devices we're supporting. So, it's big.

When you talk to IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, what are his major edicts to you?

I think there are a couple. We talked a little bit about making sure we were linked with the business strategy. That kind of plays into a couple specific things, one is to drive long-term revenue growth, integrating our enterprise. He expects me to drive innovation within IBM, to provide the tools, the processes, to drive innovation and innovation that matters.

Do you get complaints from Palmisano, and is there a lot of back-and-forth discussion?

He's very involved, he's very engaged, he likes technology, he likes the new tools and capabilities that we're driving and he's very interested in integrating our enterprise, our global enterprise to drive more productivity to better serve clients.

You guys use the word innovation a lot. Is that because of the commercials or vice versa?

I think innovation is really core to our business and who we are. It's one of our values, innovation that matters for IBM and for the world. There are a lot of different definitions, but for me one that's always resonated is, it's not just about invention, it's also about insight. It's being able to apply new leading-edge technologies, processes, tools, business models, to solve business problems or environment problems. That's what we really pride ourselves on. If you look at the InnovationJam we did, that's exactly how it was structured. We had a set of technologies that we made available to whoever was participating.

Is there anything a CIO at a smaller company can learn from what you're doing at IBM?

There's probably a lot of similarity in what I'm trying to accomplish with what all CIOs are, regardless of the size of their organization or the type of their organization. When you're trying to match your IT capabilities to the strategy of the company, it's very consistent. When you look at trying to integrate your company -- whether it's a big company or a small company -- to partners, suppliers, clients, that integration role is going to be common. And driving innovation, unleashing the energy, ideas and capabilities of your employees around the world, those are all common objectives. The role of the CIO is changing. It's getting exciting.

Were there any surprises in your first five months?

I think maybe what we just talked about, how common some of the issues were, and how fundamental the changes are. It's funny, when I first told some of my old clients that I was going to be IBM CIO, they kind of smirked and said, 'well, now you're going to see what it's really like.'