As chief information officer at telecoms giant Cable & Wireless (C& W), Mark Dearnley has to have a global perspective on IT management. He is directly responsible for 250 UK staff, plus an additional 350 employees based in the US, Asia and across Europe, as well as all the IT functions in these locations.
"I spend a lot of time in India, where our main development hub is," Dearnley said. "We have access to longer support and development days as we work across our geographical locations."
The IT department is a key function at C&W, according to Dearnley. "It's a separate organisation but it’s not an island on its own," he said. "I sit in the middle of the core business team and suggest business projects. We try to practise agile IT, which means being able to respond quickly to change and deliver it without having to spend millions. It’s about fast, cost-effective change in line with the business cycle."
Over the past year, the IT organisation has undergone some major changes. Part of this has been to outsource the support function, which joined areas such as solution design and development that were already being farmed out. “I hate the term outsourcing though it sounds as if we’re throwing our problems at them,” Dearnley added.
A current objective is to reduce the number of applications used across the company, which Dearnley argued would help improve development and support around a smaller number of systems.
"We're in the process of switching off the Energis billing systems. That will leave us with two core billing platforms, one for voice and one for data," Dearnley said. "Customers will get a better service, as there is only one place with all their tickets, orders and data."
As well as streamlining existing applications, Dearnley has plans for deploying new technologies. "We have 200 Wyse terminals to replace the desktops. And 300 of our 800 applications are available on thin clients, which covers 85 per cent of all staff," he explained.
Dearnley is also interested in expanding the telco’s use of open source. “We’re using a lot of Linux on our server estate, and I’m looking forward to deploying it on desktops as well,” he said.
Dearnley advises using internal resources for piloting purposes. Prior to rolling out new technologies across the organisation, he tests out the services on his colleagues. "Six months before opening up access to our online portals, I started letting the internal staff use them to report faults," he said.
Although chief information officers are often advised to gain a seat on the board, this does not interest Dearnley. "In any large organisation, you don't just focus on positional power. It's important that the role is business transformational, and has the influence to make things happen," he argued.
