IBM's New CIO Takes On Powerful Role

Veteran IBM executive Pat Toole was recently named corporate CIO at the company and given much broader responsibilities than his predecessors in the post, which now oversees a far more centralized IT operation.

Toole, who joined IBM in 1984 and was most recently general manager of IBM's intellectual property unit, takes over an IT operation that has already reduced the number of data centers from 155 to five, and the application portfolio from 15,000 to 4,500 -- so far.

The massive consolidation effort includes a shift to centralized IT management, a move completed this year by outgoing CIO Mark Hennessy, who now heads strategy for IBM's sales operation.

IBM's corporate CIO had previously focused on strategy and governance while working with the CIOs in the company's business units. In the new arrangement, Toole is responsible for IBM's overall IT strategy and operations, which means he handles everything from IBM's emerging strategy for cloud computing to worldwide crises and mundane daily operations.

Toole said the broader charter will enable large-scale IT transformation, such as a current project to revamp IBM's SAP application infrastructure to match global processes. "In the past, SAP was optimized on a local level," he said.

Centralization of IT operations may be the wave of the future. In an IBM survey of 2,500 CIOs worldwide, three-fourths of the respondents said that they "anticipate having a strongly centralized infrastructure in five years."

IT centralization also helps CIOs focus on activities that spur innovation and use information for competitive advantage, IBM said.

In the survey, 83% of the CIOs cited business intelligence and analytics as the top area to focus on to enhance competitiveness.

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