by Hamish Barwick

Q&A: Jetstar CIO

News
Aug 29, 20112 mins
CareersIT Leadership

What does an average work day involve for you at Jetstar?

Tame: As the fastest growing low-cost carrier in Asia Pacific, comprising four independent airlines businesses, 95 per cent of my time is the management and delivery of the Jetstar business programs and outsourced service suppliers.

A large percentage of this is in developing and mentoring the suppliers to deliver quality and cost outcomes back into the business. The remaining five per cent is allocated to our business and IT innovation programs. This makes the rest of the day’s investments worthwhile.

What are some of the major challenges you face in the role of CIO?

Like every business, my challenges are managing capital, cost and carbon. Depending on what is included, IT represents between two per cent and seven per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions.

The additional challenge I have is to respond to an agile organisation. I am focusing less on building architecture and long-term strategies, and more on the delivery of business agility, creativity, capability and options.

What are some of the major projects you have been working on?

  • Setting up the core business systems and platforms to scale the Jetstar business franchise.
  • Further rollout of the Asia Pacific points of presence for voice and data.
  • Virtualizing the voice/PABX offering.
  • Designing the PC on a memory card to finally complete virtualization down to the appliance.
  • What are the three biggest issues facing CIOs today?

    Delivering agility, flexibility and commoditisation through leadership and across the IT/business organisation.

    What is your favourite gadget?

    At this stage, the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 Tab.

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