Featured presentation by B. Lee Jones at the BIT Conference-UCLA Anderson School

1. Delivering IT Services to a Global Enterprise:
Delivering IT Services to a Global Enterprise:
The CIO’s Perspective
The CIO’s Perspective
B. Lee Jones, CIO
B. Lee Jones, CIO
Stratex Networks, Inc.
Stratex Networks, Inc.
BIT Conference on Globalization and Technology on July 22-23, 2005 1

2. IT’s Potential Impact On Globalization
• Information Technology (IT) services can
enable a company to grow world-wide by:
Enhancing corporate competitiveness
Reducing administrative and coordination costs
Improving business process efficiencies
Making performance in local markets more effective
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3. IT Structures and Approaches
• Global - Independent operations
Little interaction with headquarters IT staff on applications or
hardware and software acquisitions
• Multinational - Headquarters driven
Implementation of worldwide applications to reduce
development and operating costs
• International - Intellectual synergy
Subsidiaries control IT while headquarters ‘tries’ to guide the
choices of the subsidiaries
Reduces duplicate development efforts and encourages
resource sharing
• Transnational - Integrated global IT
Headquarters specifies certain applications as common
systems and allows limited customization
Systems design requires input from around the world
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4. Key Deployment Factors
Locally driven development may lead to
duplicate efforts or poorly conceived and
designed systems
Common systems take advantage of
economies of scale but may be
impossible to implement across countries
with different laws and regulations
In designing applications, real and
perceived unique features are important
in each venue
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5. Principal Technical Challenges
• Hardware and Systems Integration
Developing global systems based on core systems raises
questions about how new core systems will integrate with existing
applications
• Connectivity (or not!)
Telecommunications is heart of international systems, linking
systems and people in global firms into a single, integrated network
Potential solutions including putting together leased private
network, building one’s own network, or creating global intranets
over Internet, all very expensive options
• Software
Developing new core systems poses unique challenges for
software, involves problems of human interface design and system
functionality
Many firms increasingly turn to supply chain management and
enterprise systems to standardize business processes globally
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6. Principal Business Challenges
• Particularism
Making judgments and taking action based on narrow
or personal features, rejects the concept of shared
global culture
• Transborder data flow
The movement of information across international
boundaries in any form
• National laws and traditions
Create disparate accounting practices in various
countries, impacting how profits and losses are
analyzed
• Additional factors
Cultural differences about technology, different
languages, and currency fluctuations
International compliance requirements
BIT Conference on Globalization and Technology on July 22-23, 2005 6

7. Facing the Regulation Dilemma
Facing the Regulation Dilemma
• Government regulations can impede the
development of global information systems
A requirement to purchase specific equipment in the
foreign country that may not be compatible with the
equipment in other places the global firm operates
A requirement to do certain kinds of processing in the
host country before data can be sent electronically to
another country
Restrictions on the use of satellites and special
requirements for building private networks
Limited access to flat-rate leased lines or a requirement
that all transmission be made on variable cost lines
Restrictions on Internet access and efforts to censor
Web sites
BIT Conference on Globalization and Technology on July 22-23, 2005 7

8. Political and Technology Issues
• Politically imposed constraints
Hardware purchases and imports
Data processing
Data communications
Transborder data flows (TDF)
• Operational data
• Personal data
• Electronic funds transfer
• Technical and scientific data
• Technological problems
Unreliable power
Slow telecommunications
Software copyrights and black-market products
• Lack of support from subsidiary managers
View corporate HQ (and IT) as an ‘outsider’
Drag their heels to improve local profitability
4-8
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9. The Top Ten List – Managing Global IT
1. Build a flexible, ‘vanilla’ infrastructure
2. Agree on common user requirements
3. Introduce changes in business processes
4. Concentrate on inter-organizational linkages
5. Establish global systems development skills
6. Leverage liberalized telecommunications
7. Develop and maintain uniform data
8. Develop and enforce guidelines for shared versus
local systems
9. Coordinate applications development and
software releases
10. Cultivate local users to support global systems
BIT Conference on Globalization and Technology on July 22-23, 2005 9

10. But in the end…
• Challenges in an international
environment include, but are not
…there is limited to language, cultural and
No Silver time differences, non-uniform
Bullet…. data, government regulations and
standards, and availability and
quality of telecommunications
• Implementing international
applications of technology can be
very difficult, even impossible
BIT Conference on Globalization and Technology on July 22-23, 2005 10

11. Any questions?…
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