What is your first memory of using a computer? I took a computer class in 1982 on a TRS-80 Model III. I immediately started saving my lawn-mowing money and purchased an Apple II Plus. My father runs a CPA firm; I took out a loan for half of the amount from him, and wrote a program that calculated the amount of mortgage interest that people could take off on their 1040 forms at the end of the year. I sold enough copies of that program to repay my loan.
What have you done recently that you're proud of? Working with the World Council of Credit Unions, Corporate One developed software for a shared branching system for Bolivia. We donated the software and went to Bolivia to install it. Seeing a developing country gain the ability to transfer money between credit unions, and how it affects people's lives, is the proudest moment that I've had in computers.
What are the high-level business goals at Corporate One, and how does IT support them? We're trying to provide the products and services that will be needed in the future. For example, we were one of the early adopters of digitizing checks when the Check 21 Act was passed in 2003. But the financial services industry is not about implementing groundbreaking technology. It's about making sure that the technology you have is will work consistently and securely. On a typical day, our computers are processing close to $2 billion, so security and availability are very hot items.
What are some of the challenges that you face in your industry? The wholesale financial industry has extremely thin profit margins. Many people look at financial services as a commodity, especially in the wholesale environment. So finding the most cost-effective solution to realize the benefits we want to achieve is a huge challenge.
If the business should drive IT decision making, as many IT executives say, how do you accomplish that at Corporate One? It helps to frame decisions in terms of dollars and cents. Recently we transferred the budget for computer hardware and software to our business units' cost centers. So this year, we sat down with them and said, "We suggest you replace a third of your workstations. Here's how much it will cost. We'll help you make the decision, but the ultimate responsibility is yours." The results were amazing. We shaved about 12 percent off the number of software licenses that we use.
How are you currently using Linux in your environment? Approximately 35 percent of our servers are Linux-based, running specialized applications. Beyond that, Windows® is our default operating system. That's mainly because of the availability of support: we can get a lot of outside help with Windows, which is a huge benefit.
At one time there was a push to move everything that we could to Linux. However, during our testing, we found that interfacing a Linux-based domain controller with Windows Server® did not support the level of security that the law requires for financial institutions. The vendor agreed it was a problem, but said that it could never guarantee that the open source community would implement a fix. That was really the end of our big Linux initiative. I'm confident that if I were to call Microsoft with a similar problem, it would be in a position to say, "We can guarantee that a fix will be included in the next release of Windows." That's the difference between being a Microsoft shop and being a Linux shop.
What's the appropriate role for Linux in the enterprise? Linux is good for things that don't change often, such as batch processes. I don't think it's efficient to have two platforms that are both very dynamic, because that doubles your integration issues. We decided that, for us, Linux will be a static environment, and our Windows environment is the one that will be open to change.
What are your thoughts on virtualization? A lot of people cite tremendous hardware cost savings from virtualization, but when I look at my costs, the real expense is in software maintenance. Virtualization doesn't address that issue for me because it doesn't result in fewer servers—they're just in a different environment. When people talk as if virtualization is going to solve all of our problems, I tell them that I could wrap all of our 19-inch rack systems in $13 worth of crepe paper and blinking lights and say, "Look, it's one big virtualized server." It would have the same effect on our environment and would be less expensive than any solution on the market.
What advice would you give to someone who is just entering the IT field? Get the governance structure right first. Too many people want to jump right in and start solving problems. I think it's much more important to nderstand the environment that you're in, talk through the issues, discuss different possibilities, and create a framework for coming up with solutions.
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