Companies need to plan today to thrive tomorrow It may seem like hubris for a 110-year-old construction and engineering company to benchmark its IT against the likes of Amazon, Google and YouTube. It might seem excessive to undertake a major IT transformation after having just completed a massive three-year overhaul that itself resulted in 30 percent IT cost savings. But that’s just what Geir Ramleth, CIO at Bechtel and an admitted challenger of the status quo, has done. As Ramleth looked at the realities of how his company’s operations were changing (more complex, more distributed, engaging more people and organizations with varying relationships with the company), he knew he’d have to take it up a notch. His ambition: to change the way IT serves business on a global basis, offering ten times the capacity at existing costs. That’s right: ten times. Seem impossible? Well, in his unconventional benchmarking, Ramleth discovered some astounding things. Bechtel was paying at least 50 times what YouTube was paying for networking and 40 times what Amazon was charging for storage. Google systems administrators managed about 200 times the number of servers that Bechtel’s did. And so on. Ramleth believed Bechtel could do a whole lot better. It all boiled down to high-bandwidth networking practices, a standardized server approach, extreme virtualization techniques and a multitenant application support strategy. Such a radical approach may not be right for you. Or maybe it is. We live in disruptive times. Every CIO should be asking himself or herself: Is this a time for incrementalism in our organization or transformation? And what do I do about that? For Ramleth, the answer was clear. “I truly believe that we as a company can do business very differently in the future by changing the way we do our IT service offerings,” he says. He convinced Bechtel’s other senior leaders that if they wanted to be around for another 110 years, that’s just what they needed to do. Ramleth is one of this year’s inductees into the CIO Hall of Fame. See who the other groundbreaker’s are. Related content brandpost Sponsored by HPE Aruba Networking Bringing the data processing unit (DPU) revolution to your data center By Mark Berly, CTO Data Center Networking, HPE Aruba Networking Dec 04, 2023 4 mins Data Center brandpost Sponsored by SAP What goes well with Viña Concha y Toro wines? Meat, fish, poultry, and SAP Viña Concha y Toro, a wine producer that distributes to more than 140 countries worldwide, paired its operation with the SAP Business Technology Platform to enhance its operation and product. By Tom Caldecott, SAP Contributor Dec 04, 2023 4 mins Digital Transformation brandpost Sponsored by Azul How to maximize ROI by choosing the right Java partner for your organization Choosing the right Java provider is a critical decision that can have a significant impact on your organization’s success. By asking the right questions and considering the total cost of ownership, you can ensure that you choose the best Java p By Scott Sellers Dec 04, 2023 5 mins Application Management brandpost Sponsored by DataStax Ask yourself: How can genAI put your content to work? Generative AI applications can readily be built against the documents, emails, meeting transcripts, and other content that knowledge workers produce as a matter of course. By Bryan Kirschner Dec 04, 2023 5 mins Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe