(23:08)

In this podcast, C.K. Prahalad, author of The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value Through Global Networks, and Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profit, talks about how CIOs can use innovative technology to reshape their company's business model, as well as drive new opportunities for poverty-stricken area. (He calls the latter the bottom of the pyramid.)

Despite the downturn in the economic, this's a great time to be a CIO or CTO. That's the conclusion from C.K, Prahalad, the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy and the author of best-selling management books such as The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value Through Global Networks, and Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profit. He says, "Because some CIOs must work under the pressure of shrinking budgets and don't have much time for innovation, this might be a tough concept for some CIOs to grasp."

Prahalad lists four fundamental drivers that can create new opportunities for all kinds of businesses - everything from retailing to financial services to manufacturing. These drivers include the convergence of technology, convergence of industry boundaries of technology, the emergence of social networking, and the globalization of things such as the global supply chain, global markets, and global research and development in third-world countries.

He says, "Convergence of technology is all around us. For example, the cell phone and the PC are now merging into one device. We're seeing a dramatic reduction in the cost of digital technology. Social networking sites such as Facebook didn't exist five years ago. Meanwhile, many companies have taken advantage of global opportunities by expanding to new markets in China and India."

In this podcast, Prahalad provides specific examples of how senior IT executives can address new business opportunities for their companies, how new technology initiatives can drive business opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid, why companies should embrace the concept of open innovation, and what the CIO role will be like 10 years from now.

Bio
C.K. Prahalad is the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and a globally recognized management thinker. He has consulted for the top management of many of the world's foremost companies, such as Ahlstrom, AT&T, Cargill, Citicorp, Eastman Chemical, Oracle, Phillips, Quantum, Revlon, Steelcase, and Unilever. Prahalad serves on the board of directors of NCR Corporation, Hindustan Lever Limited, and the World Resources Institute.

His best-selling management books include The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-created Value Through Global Networks, Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profit (rereleased in 2009), Multinational Mission: Balancing Local Demands and Global Vision (co-authored), and Competing for the Future, and The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers. He has authored numerous award-winning articles, several of which won the Harvard Business Review McKinsey Prizes. Other prizes include European Foundation for Management Award in 1993, 1994 Maurice Holland Award as the Best Paper, and the 1997 ANBAR Electronic Citation of Excellence.

Resources
C. K. Prahalad Talks about How Changing Business Models in the New Age of Innovation Will Impact IT, Enterpriseleadership.org
http://www.enterpriseleadership.org/blogs/Articles/2008/07/23/c-k-prahalad-talks-about-how-changing-business-models-in-the-new-age-of-innovation-will-impact-it

C. K. Prahalad Talks about Business Models Driving the New Age of Innovation, BTM Institute
http://www.btminstitute.org/LeadershipInsight/CKPrahalad.html

How Strategy Guru C.K. Prahalad Is Changing the Way CEOs Think
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_04/b3968089.htm

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

(19:12)

In this podcast, Steve Cakebread, the former president of Salesforce.com, takes the mystery out of cloud computing by explaining the complementary relationship of Salesforce.com, Google's Apps Engine, and Amazon's Web Services.

When Steve Cakebread joined Salesforce.com in 1999, the company had not even introduced its first product. That event happened two years later with the introduction of the single CRM product called Singular Edition people. Today, Salesforce.com has moved beyond CRM to become a diversified company in platforms such as knowledge management and service support. Cakebread says that these new platforms will help to spur the growth of the cloud computing industry.

Meanwhile, cloud computing has got a shot of adrenalin with the likes of Amazon.com's Web Services and Google.com's Apps Engine. Amazon.com built its business around store fronts and logistics, while Google.com's built its business around a consumer's ability to search. Cakebread says, "Amazon's Web services help businesses create those storage fronts on the fly through collaboration or cloud computing, as well as to provide businesses with additional storage and computing power. If you look at Google.com's Apps Engine, it is now creating developer platforms that make it easier to add information for consumers to share in businesses network."

Cakebread says that these three entities have a complementary relationship with each other through various relationships and partnerships. "Each of these technologies, even through they are considered cloud computing, all have different strengths. Salesforce.com is the business platform provider. Google.com focuses on search, while Amazon.com focuses on store fronts, logistics, storage, and computing power. All of these technologies are internally designed on the same technology platform as Oracle Solutions and blade services. The reality is that their architectures are very different, but they can be used by platform developers to achieve service and reliability."

In this podcast, Cakebread also discusses the key technologies that will benefit from cloud computing, the other areas in which both cloud computing and Web 2.0 will enable innovative enterprise applications, and the issues that need to be resolved before companies can deploy cloud computing widely.

Bio

Before becoming CFO of Xactly Corp., Steve Cakebread was the president and chief strategy officer at Salesforce.com. He had been the company's CFO for six months. During his tenure as Salesforce.com's CFO, Cakebread helped to grow the company from $22 million in annual revenue in 2002 to about $749 million in revenue in fiscal year 2008. He also led the company through its initial public offering in 2004.

Cakebread came to Salesforce.com from Autodesk, where he served as senior vice president and chief financial officer. Prior to joining Autodesk, he was vice president of finance for Silicon Graphics. He has also held many key positions at Hewlett Packard.

Cakebread holds a B.S. in Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a MBA from Indiana University.

Resources
Podcast -Steve Cakebread on SaaS, sales performance management, IT Knowledge Exchange

http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/voices-of-crm/steve-cakebread-on-saas-sales-performance-management/

SaaS & the CFO: A Special Webinar with Steve Cakebread

http://www.opsource.net/event/saas-cfo-%E2%80%93-special-webinar-steve-cakebread

Salesforce.com exec named Xactly CFO, Silicon Valley Business Journal
http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2009/02/09/daily51.html

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

In this podcast Vid Byanna, executive director of Accenture's internal IT infrastructure, talks about his company's and collaborative computing, and cloud computing initiatives.

Each day the 177,000 employees at Accenture, a $19 billion global IT services company, must communicate effectively with 1,000 of customers in more than 120 countries. In fact, Accenture executives often find themselves looking for internal experts who can support specific customer engagements.  The traditional process has involved emailing one's network of colleagues to help with the search. Now these executives can use Accenture People, an internal version of LinkedIn, to search the company's global network of employees.

Accenture People comprises Accenture Collaboration 2.0, a global set of technology initiatives to improve knowledge sharing, enhance communication, and allow for dynamic collaboration within the organization. Technologies in this collaboration platform include social networking applications, greater search functionality, telepresence, and unified communications.

Vid Byanna, the executive director for Accenture's internal IT infrastructure capabilitities and Web 3.0 initiatives, says that Accenture Collaboration 2.0 allows employees quickly to get access to the information from experts who can help resolve an issue, or kick start things that deliver value to customers better than through traditional methods. For example, 30 minutes after looking in Accenture People, an employee was holding a telepresence sessions with an Accenture expert on digital media communications."

Meanwhile, with the help of the Accenture Cloud Opportunity Assessment Tools, the internal IT Accenture organization also has developed a cloud computing strategy. It consists of both internal and external cloud computing initiatives. He says, "We think of cloud computing as dynamic resource allocation of computing capacity, storage and other resources. It gives us the ability quickly to provide these resources for peaks and valleys in IT resource demand. We have heavily invested in our internal cloud by consolidating all of our business applications in a single data center. We also have virtualized our servers, databases, and storage. We are now looking at what external cloud providers can give us. Will these services supplement what we have, or will they give some more scale capabilities?"

In this Enterpriseleadership.org podcast, Byanna talks about the following:

• the catalysts for Accenture Collaboration 2.0 platform,
• the key technologies that comprise this platform,
• the different ways Accenture plans to extend its internal collaboration initiatives to partners and customers,
• the Accenture cloud computing strategy,
• and the benefits the company plans to derive from cloud computing.

Bio

Vid Byanna is the executive director for Accenture's internal IT infrastructure capabilities. He reports to Frank Modruson, Accenture's CIO. Byanna also drives the implementation of IT products and services to support the company's mergers and acquisitions organization.

Before stepping into his current role, he held other IT leadership position in Accenture's CIO organization. From 1989 and 1998, Byanna was part of the company's communications and high-tech operating group, where he directed large solution-oriented projects for global telecommunications providers.

Byanna received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana, and a M.S. in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Before joining Accenture, he worked at Bell Laboratories.

Resources

Accentures Topples Communicatons Barriers, InfoWorld

http://www.infoworld.com/d/networking/accenture-topples-communication-barriers-745

http://www.accenture.com/Global/Services/CIO/LeveragingNeeds.htm

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer

Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

In this podcast, Dr. Peter Beckman, director of leadership computing at Argonne National Laboratory. talks about both cloud computing and green IT at the Lab.

Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) oldest and largest national laboratories for science and engineering research. ANL uses its annual $540 million operating budget to support 100's of research projects of interest to numerous federal agencies, and academic research institutions. ANL is one of DOE's two largest supercomputing centers. The other one is at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

In addition to supercomputing, ANL also offers its researchers some less expensive alternatives, namely, grid computing, and soon, cloud computing. Peter Beckman, the ANL's director of leadership computing, says that grid computing is best suited for running applications at multiple sites in cycles available to users in many locations. He says, "On the other hand, cloud computing will enable scientists to build their own solutions as they need them and run them in the cloud. It will also enable the consolidation and sharing of Linux clusters hosted on our cloud. For example, hosting will enable you to expand your 32-node cluster to a 200-node cluster for a few days. "

Opportunities for cloud computing at ANL include everything form studying the genome to looking at data from CERN's supercollider to understanding the smallest particles in the galaxy.

Cloud computing at ANL will eliminate the need for scientists to do their work on a $100 million supercomputer. Beckman says cloud computing is very appealing to some of ANL's researchers. He say, "Cloud computing's bursty, pay-as-you go for cycles model will lower the cost of getting some projects done. It will allow for demand-driven, large allocations of resources, such as a 1,000's of processors for the next couple of week, better than going to a supercomputer. It will also eliminate the need to upgrade equipment." Beckman adds that ANL would like to push some of its cloud capabilities to commercial service such as amazon.com.

In addition to cloud computing, ANL is saving money by optimizing data center technologies, such as water-size economizing, to keep the supercomputer cool and energy efficient. In fact, the chip architecture of ANL's supercomputer uses the least amount of power possible to do its scientific calculations. Beckman says, "Our data center is a factor of two less power data centers that have a different architecture." During some of the winter months, ANL uses water-side economizing to reduce energy costs. The process involves sending the water outside to be cooled by the cooling tower, and then piping the cooled water through heat exchangers in the machine room. He says, "We can cool the machine for free. We'd like to expand the number of months we can do this for."

Bio
Since 2008 Peter Beckman has been the director of leadership computing at Argonne National Laboratory, where he oversees its supercomputing facility. After receiving his Ph.D. in computer science from Indiana University, Beckman helped found the university's Extreme Computing Laboratory, which focused on parallel languages, portable run-time systems, and collaboration technology. In 1997 he joined the Advanced Computing Laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he founded the ACL's Linux cluster team and launched the Extreme Linux series of workshops and activities, which helped catalyze the high-performance Linux computing cluster community. In 2000 he founded a Turbolinux-sponsored research laboratory in Santa Fe that developed the world's first dynamic provisioning system for cloud computing and HPC clusters. The following year, he became vice president of Turbolinux's worldwide engineering efforts, managing development offices in the US, Japan, China, Korea, and Slovenia. Beckman joined Argonne National Laboratory in 2002, as director of engineering, and later as chief architect for the TeraGrid. He designed and deployed the world's most powerful grid computing system for linking production HPC computing centers for the National Science Foundation.

Resources

Argonne's supercomputer named world's fastest for open science, third overall, Physorg.org
http://www.physorg.com/news133014256.html

Argonne Computer Goes Green, Power Management Design Line
http://www.powermanagementdesignline.com/news/212501723;jsessionid=1S14SOXKCF1QYQSNDLRCKHSCJUNN2JVN

Getting Control of the Cloud, Processor.com
http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2Fp3114%2F69p14%2F69p14%2F69p14.asp

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

In this podcast, Theresa Lanowitz, former Gartner Group analyst, provides some down-to-earth discussion about cloud computing as a disruptive technology, moving one step closer to pervasive utility computing.

Every household doesn't need its own energy grid. If you follow this logic, then each enterprise does not need to be in the business of creating massive infrastructure. Why not take advantage of the some of the world's largest infrastructure offered to you by Amazon.com's Web Services or Google Apps Engine? That is the view of Theresa Lanowitz, a former Gartner Group research analyst and the founder of voke, a research firm focused on breakthrough technologies, such as cloud computing.

She says that while Salesforce.com has revolutionized customer relations marketing by elevating it as a platform as a service, Amazon.com and Google.com have the opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise with every enterprise. She adds, "By making their massively scalable, highly available, high-performance environment, and a solid security infrastructure available, both Amazon.com and Google.com have moved one step closer to software as a service and pervasive utility computing. As a result, companies will be able to lower the cost of doing business and to remain innovative, competitive, and profitable. Enterprises of all sizes need to focus on delivering value to the marketplace of their core competency, regardless of what it is."

In this podcast, Theresa Lanowitz discusses the following:

• What type of impact Amazon.com Web Services and Google Apps Engine will have on cloud computing;
• What other areas of cloud computing and Web 2.0 will prevail;
• Why CIOs are hesitant to embrace cloud computing; and
• What three cloud computing takeaways CIOs need to think about in making decisions about this app?

Bio
Theresa Lanowitz, is founder of founder of voke, inc., an industry research firm specializing in breakthrough technologies. From 1999 through 2006, she was a research analyst with Gartner, where she was the lead analyst for Mercury. At Gartner, Lanowitz was the founder, creator, and chairperson of the highly successful Application Development conference. She is the founding member of AppSIC (the Application Security Industry Consortium), a member of the German ComputerWoche.de "Expert Panel on Quality IT Practices" and a frequent guest on SD Times "Week in Review" podcast.

She began her professional career with McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) where she worked on the C-17 transport plane. While at Borland Software, she shipped the ground breaking Java development tool JBuilder. Lanowitz also played instrumental roles at Taligent in the areas of product management and international marketing. At Sun Microsystems, she was responsible for the strategic marketing of the Jini project – a precursor to emerging convergence market.

Lanowitz holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Resources
Theresa Lanowitz's Blog

http://voke.blogspot.com/

Ka-ching! Don't Sell Your Test Team Short, Software Test & Performance

http://www.stpcollaborative.com/users/195-theresa-lanowitz

N requirements.net, Exclusive Podcast: Theresa Lanowitz on the Economy and IT Spending

http://www.requirements.net/2008/12/04/exclusive-podcast-theresa-lanowitz-on-the-economy-and-it-spending/

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

Sponsored by BMC Software

Soon, it will be 4G wireless. This technology will not only provide a staggering amount of bandwidth, but it will create new business models, as well as a new platform for innovation. As a result, CIOs to become 4G wireless savvy immediately. That's the advice of Dr. Scott Snyder, author of The New World of Wireless: How to Compete in 4G Revolution. Now let's meet Dr. Snyder, author, professor, and CEO of Decision Strategies International.

Every now and then a disruptive technology comes along and dramatically changes the way we live and work. In the mid-1990s it was the Internet and TCP-IP, and in 2000, it was the iPhone. Soon, it will be 4G wireless. Consider, for example, how it could make healthcare more pervasive. A doctor in Africa doesn't need to make a dangerous trip to treat patients at a remote village. With 4G wireless technology, he can treat these patients remotely.

Since the 1990s, 3G wireless has been in place, providing us with increasing amounts of bandwidth, speed, and the ability to download multi-media content in a more efficient way. Dr. Scott Snyder, author of the New World of Wireless: How to Compete in the 4G Revolution, says that many people think of 4G wireless, which is the next logical step in the progression of the technology, as just more bandwidth. "Yes, 4G wireless will offer up to 100 megabits per second to mobile users and one gigabit per second to fixed users. You are talking about a wireless connection that is 50 times faster than what you get in your home broadband connection. This is only part of the story. 4G wireless will provide a new paradigm that will alter the network and the handset, by enabling users to have more control over what type of content they get, and what type of services they can get from any location they might be in around the globe."

Snyder adds that user-centric capabilities will be the defining feature of 4G wireless. "Extremely intelligent handsets will have the ability to make decisions on your behalf, just like a remote control for your life. Because it is based on the cloud concept rather than a fixed network, 4G wireless has the capability to follow you around. You will have access to many networks without going back through a network. That's a scary proposition for wireless carriers that make money from people going through their network. This feature enables a whole variety of digital swarms or group behavior. Users can self-organize in this cloud without going through the structure of traditional networks."

As CEO of a Decision Strategies, a technology consulting firm, Snyder came across many executives who lacked awareness of what 4G wireless technology could do, not only to their business, but to their industry as a disruptive force and an innovation platform. The need to educate these executives propelled Snyder to write The New World of Wireless. His book is not just about what's happening with the technology, but how this technology could have broader social and business interactions to create new business models, new industries, and transformational type events.

Meanwhile, new standards for 4G wireless and experimental handsets loom on the horizon. Even aspects of the iPhone sheds light on what new business models might look like. Snyder says that because these weak signals will explode very fast, CIOs need to prepare for 4G wireless right now. "They need to start building wireless into their organization as a competency to be explored both as a communication platform, but also an innovation platform. They need to put the infrastructure in place to support both platforms and to leverage both to build an ecosystem with their customers, partners, vendors, and even your industry. They have to also start fostering wireless content, connectivity and allowing the digital swarm to take place both in your organization and in your ecosystem."

In this podcast, CIOs will learn the following:

• The top three things they should be doing to prepare for 4G wireless
• Some of the ways they can innovate around 4G wireless to become more profitable and derive more marketplace,
• The new business models that 4G wireless will enable, and
• And the security issues that will confront this technology.

Bio

Dr. Scott Snyder is the president and CEO of Decision Strategies International, a strategy firm focused on increasing the strategic aptitude of organization. He has held executive positions with several Fortune 500 companies including General Electric, Martin Marietta, and Lockheed Martin. He has also started business ventures in software including OmniChoice, a CRM/Analytics software applications provider. He was selected as a candidate for Entrepreneur of the Year for the Philadelphia Region. He has worked with numerous Fortune 500 clients on business and technology strategy including General Electric, NCR, Verizon, as well as government organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration, National Security Administration, and the US Navy.

He has also contributed as a co-author to the recently released Future of BioSciences 2020 Report from DSI and the Wharton School and is the author of The New World of Wireless: How to Compete in the 4G Revolution.

Dr. Snyder is a senior fellow in the management department at the Wharton School, an adjunct faculty member in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and has lectured at MIT and RIT on decision-making, business and IT strategy, telecommunications, product design and development, and business intelligence. He holds a patent for on-line decision aids and has been quoted as a thought leader in numerous publications. Dr. Snyder earned his BS, MS, and Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from University of Pennsylvania and has an executive degree from USC in Telecommunications Management.

Resources
Profile of Decision Strategies International, INC magazine

http://www.inc.com/inc5000/2008/company-profile.html?id=200819430

How Failure Breeds Success, BusinessWeek

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_28/b3992001.htm?campaign_id=nws_insdr_jul1&link_position=link1

Put on Hold: Why Telecoms Can't Get Consumers to Bond More with Their Cell Phones, Knowledge Emory

http://knowledge.emory.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1138

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

In this podcast Shields talks about how this roadmap closed the gap between a project's initial budget and its real cost. Now let's join Gerald Shield, senior vice president and CIO of Alfac.

Who would think that TV commercial featuring the antics of a wisecracking duck could improve a company's brand recognition by 90 percent? That's what a few quacks did for Aflac, a Fortune 500 disability insurance company. Now, Aflac associates have no trouble getting accepted into new business accounts. The payoff has meant a double digit annual growth rate since 2003, and there's no end in sight. For 2008, Aflac had revenue of about $16.5 billion and more than 8,000 employees. The company insured more than40 million people in North American and Japan.

Of course, Aflac isn't resting on Nielsen ratings from the TV commercials to stay competitive. Accelerating growth continue to drive IT to find ways key departments can provide better value and services to external customers. In fact, in 2008, Gerald Shields, Aflac's senior vice president and CIO, received an InfoWorld CTO 25 for adding a future IT projects roadmap into the company's existing IT governance process. Shields says that this roadmap has helped to close the gap between a project's initial budget and its real cost.” During Shield's tenure, both Computerworld and InformationWeek 500 have consistently named Aflac as one of the Best Places to Work in IT. Meanwhile, he was also selected as one of Computerworld's 100 Premier CIOs for 2006.

In this podcast, Shields talks about the following:

• How the future IT projects roadmap has helped to improve IT's relationship with the CIO,
• What payoffs the company has received from doing this type of roadmap,
• How the future IT projects roadmap has changed the governance process,
• What other CIOs can learn from the Aflac experience,
• How Shield's measures and communicates the business impact of IT to Aflac's constituents.

Bio

Gerald Shields joined Aflac Inc. in 2002 as vice president, IT enterprise services. He was promoted to senior vice president, CIO in 2004. Before joining Aflac, Shields served as CTO, and director of information services for LifeWay Christian Resources and held senior IT positions at Electronic Data Systems (EDS). He holds bachelors degrees from Baylor University in accounting and computer science. He also holds a Fellow Life Management Institute certification from the Life Office Management Association.

Resources

2008 InfoWorld CTO 25: Gerald Shields, Aflac, Infoworld

http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/2008-infoworld-cto-25-gerald-shields-aflac-838

Symantec Podcast with Gerald Shields, Aflac

http://www.symantec.com/podcasts/detail.jsp?podid=ent_aflac

Balancing Act - How Aflac keeps the lights on while finding time—and funding—for IT innovation, Smart Enterprise

http://www.smartenterprisemag.com/articles/2007spring/casestudy.jhtml

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software

After becoming CIO of Walmart.com in 2005, Rangan had the challenge of making sure that the online store stayed up and running around the clock. He said, “It had experienced a number of unexpected outages. My challenge also included carrying out the value proposition of the Wal-Mart store brand – Always Low prices, Always, and Save More, Live Better. When you shop at Wal-Mart, either in the stores or online, we guarantee that your purchases will cost less than if you bought the same goods from another source.”

Once Rangan’s team got through taking the necessary remedial steps, the online store just wasn’t opened all of the time, but it could also scale significantly to handle peak periods. In fact, on the day after Thanksgiving in 2005, Walmart.com surpassed amazon.com as the site with the highest traffic in the e-commerce space. Rangan says, “We had more than 3.5 percent of the nation’s population shopping the store on that day. It was a proud day for all of us.”

The following year, the Arkansas team asked Rangan and his team to create a global dot.com format. The transformative nature of the project would position Wal-Mart has having both a bricks and mortar and online presence in 12 different countries, including Canada, Mexico, the five countries in Central America, Brazil, Japan, the UK, Germany and Korea. He says, “The key question was how to institutionalize the largest brand in the brand world by turning the initial dot.com format into a global format. We had the challenge of ensuring a single format with multi-language, multi-fluencies, and multi-distribution capabilities. We also had to spearhead the global format from incubation to inception to proof of concept.”

In 2007, Rangan’s team proved that the online global format would work.  He said, “We blueprinted the entire concept so that it would be carried out over the next couple of years. Like Walmart.com, our global online store was another transformative initiative for this major brand.”

Although Rangan officially retired from being a CIO in 2008, he is still creating business impact of IT, as well as communicating how other CIOs can achieve it. He is currently the chief information technology officer for MarketShare Partners, an industry leading analytics firm that makes marketing more measurable and accountable than never before. He says, “We are enabling some of the largest brands in the world to determine how best to make their investment decisions, and how to measure these investments. In addition to his role at MarketShare Partners, Rangan has also written a book, called Tomorrow’s CIO: Strategic Executive Conversations. Rob Carter, the global CIO for Fedex, says that Rangan puts forth “much sound advice around how to navigate this complex and continuously changing space [of IT].”

In this podcast, Rangan explains the following:

• How to communicate business impact of IT to constituents,
• How to successfully measure the impact of IT,
• How to deal with the politics of being a CIOs,
• Why it might not be necessary for a CIO to be a regular board member, and
• How to develop IT professionals to speak the language of business.
• What business transformations he has lead

Bio

Ashwin Rangan is the chief information technology officer for MarketShare Partners (MSP), a private-equity backed company. Before MarketShare Partners, he assisted Bank of America’s Consumer Banking Sector in defining and developing new Web strategies that leveraged Web 2.0.  Rangan served as CIO for Walmart.com global. He previously was senior vice president and CIO of Conexant Systems Inc. He was a member of the founding team that spun-out Rockwell Semiconductor Systems and created Conexant.  Before Rockwell, he served in various senior management positions at AST Computer. He is a member of the governing body of both the NorCal and the SoCal CIO Executive Summit.  He frequently addresses the CIO institutes at the Haas and Anderson Schools. He has a Masters in Industrial Engineering and Management with an emphasis on IT and Operations Management from NITIE , Bombay, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the Bangalore University, India.

Resources

SIPAcon 2008 – Interview with Ashwin Rangan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR2Q-1cY7dU

Interop – Podcast with Ashwin Rangan

http://interop.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=307719

Tomorrow’s CIO

Supply Chain Matters

http://www.theferrarigroup.com/blog1/?p=855

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer

Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

Sponsored by BMC Software