The $8.4 billion revenue network infrastructure provider CommScope has promoted its vice president of digital transformation, Praveen Jonnala, to the chief information officer role, effective immediately. Jonnala has been with the company for more than a dozen years.
In his prior post, Jonnala led all aspects of strategy, development, and delivery of the company’s digital transformation efforts partnering with sales, marketing, supply chain, manufacturing, finance, HR, and quality.
CommScope is focused on developing its next-generation wireless networking and communications infrastructure businesses. In recent years, CommScope grown tremendously through acquisition, requiring simplification of business processes and enterprise systems. This has included steps like consolidating to a single, global ERP to improving operational efficiency and improving customer experience digitally. Areas that Jonnala and his team will focus on in the near-term include enhancing the company’s product catalog and better tracking of product orders. The business teams will have access to more artificial intelligence capabilities to build better revenue projection models and predict and manage global supply chain risks.
“Working for a leading edge technology company in the networking equipment space, CommScope’s CIO plays a critical role in not only optimizing our own operations, but also serving as a test bed for cutting-edge technologies and new customer solutions,” said Alex Pease, chief financial officer. “Through advanced analytics, automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence, Praveen will help us optimize our business operations as well as serve customers better. With his depth of experience and broad knowledge in advanced technologies, Praveen is uniquely positioned to drive value both within CommScope and externally.”
“Establishing the role of IT as a business and innovation partner is critical given the rate of change in our business and customer expectations,” noted Jonnala. “I believe we have a great opportunity to add value through technology across CommScope—by providing an exceptional digital customer experience, partnering with product teams to drive more software capabilities into our products, and transforming our factories and supply chain for improved quality and reduced costs. I am excited about Artificial Intelligence and its transformational potential, particularly in our product development, manufacturing and customer service operations. Building hybrid AI teams made up of both IT and business partners will unlock new opportunities for CommScope and our customers.”
CommScope has Global IT capability centers in the U.S., India and China. Having global IT centers enables the company to tap into the best talent across the globe.
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written two bestselling books, and his third, Getting to Nimble, will be released in March 2021. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
On January 13, 2020, Victor Koelsch was named Chief Digital Officer of Polaris, Inc. a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based Polaris. The company is a $6.1 billion (as of 2018) revenue leader in powersports, founded in 1954. The CDO role was newly created for Koelsch. He will be responsible for digital strategy for the company and for accelerating Polaris’ development and integration of digital technologies into its products, services, and experiences, as well as leading the creation of new business solutions and digital offerings. Koelsch will dual report to Polaris Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Scott Wine and Polaris Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Mike Speetzen.
Wine noted, “We have been building industry-leading digital capabilities for several years and are excited for Vic to take our digital efforts to the next level and deliver more value to customers and shareholders. He has made a career of developing and implementing market-leading technology solutions, and we are excited for him to leverage that acumen to augment our existing initiatives and spearhead Polaris’ digital future. We continuously evolve how consumers experience our brands, and Vic’s leadership will significantly enhance and accelerate that process.”
When asked about the opportunity before him, Koelsch said, “I look forward to joining Polaris and leveraging my background in bringing innovative, digitally enabled business models and solutions to market that will drive significant transformation and impact across our business and deliver breakthrough value and new experiences for our customers.”
At NetApp, our mission is to help our customers change the world with data. As we kick off a new decade, it’s clear that data, and the technologies to manage it, are at an inflection point: AI is seeing real use-cases; the advent of 5G is poised to revolutionize edge computing; hybrid multicloud is giving organizations more control and flexibility over their data than ever before.
Kim Stevenson has been named General Manager of NetApp’s Foundational Data Services Business Unit, reporting to Brad Anderson, the Executive Vice President and General Manager of the NetApp Cloud Infrastructure and Storage, Systems, and Software business units.
This represents a continued climb for Stevenson, who was once the Chief Information Officer of Intel. While at Intel, she rose to become the Chief Operating Officer of the Client, IoT and System Architecture Group. Most recently, she was the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Data Center Products and Solutions at Lenovo.
Former Honeywell Aerospace Chief Digital and Information Officer, Sathish Muthukrishnan, has been named Chief Information, Data and Digital Officer of Ally Financial. Muthukrishnan will lead Ally’s technology, data and digital transformation teams, with a focus on advanced technical capabilities, including cyber security and infrastructure, as well as accelerating Ally’s growth as a leading digital financial services provider.
Ally’s Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey J. Brown said about Muthukrishnan, “Ally’s success is the direct result of a relentless focus on offering consumers the best digital platforms developed by some of the brightest and most talented resources in the financial services industry. Sathish’s track record for delivering industry-leading digital solutions within the financial services sector as well as other industries makes him ideally suited for this highly important and critical role as we look to enhance our technology vision to further cement our leadership position in the sector. I am excited to welcome him to the Ally team.”
Prior to Honeywell Aerospace, Muthukrishnan spent 10 years at American Express leading their digital transformation efforts.
Richard Cox, Jr. was recently named Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Cox Enterprises. In this role, he provides oversight and direction to corporate IT and business leaders on strategy, standards, and opportunities for data analytics and business intelligence, development and support, infrastructure, security and technical services. This is Cox’s first role as CIO of a company, though he had previously served as Chief Operations Officer of the City of Atlanta.
Dallas Clement, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Cox Enterprises noted when reflecting on Cox’s appointment, “Richard’s leadership skills and ability to build strong, productive relationships with corporate and technology partners will help us drive innovation and adapt to the evolving needs of our businesses. We’re thrilled to begin the next phase of our technology journey with Richard at the helm.”
There were many great technology books published in 2019, but here are ten that I found particularly insightful. If you are unfamiliar with these works, I suggest you give them a read.
Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age,
by Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne
Microsoft President Brad Smith together with Carol Ann Browne provide a story of the evolution of technology from their vantage point at Microsoft. They highlight challenges that have arisen, including cybercrime and cyberwar, social media issues, moral issues related to artificial intelligence, and even the challenges to democracy. Smith provides interesting insights into the decisions Microsoft leadership, himself included, of course, have faced, and the broader implications for society at large.
Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction
by Tom Siebel
Tom Siebel argues that the confluence of four technologies—elastic cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things —will change the way in which business and government operate going forward. As he also noted in my recent interview with him, there is a blueprint companies can follow in order to take full advantage of these four technologies and sustain competitive advantage in the process.
The Metis Strategy team was honored to participate in the 2019 Forbes CIO Next conference, where chief information officers, technology and operations leaders, VCs, and artificial intelligence experts shared their insights into the evolution of AI in the enterprise and gave us a glimpse of where things are headed in 2020. Here are a few lessons we brought home:
“Digital immigrant” companies leverage their strengths. Organizations not born in the cloud, often referred to as “digital immigrants,” continue to face challenges that many of their digital native competitors do not. But as legacy firms upgrade their technology environments and make progress on digital transformation efforts, they increasingly are able to make use of their inherent advantages: stockpiles of valuable data, decades of industry expertise, and the scale to enter new markets quickly.
At Rockwell Automation, for example, the convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) and an increased focus on data has helped the company improve its on-time delivery, optimize and automate many internal processes, and shift its business model toward services such as telemetry and predictive maintenance. At insurance firm Travelers, aerial photos paired with geospatial data and claims information help the company quickly assess potential losses and deliver help to customers.
In 2020, we expect digital immigrant firms will continue to use their data and scale advantages to optimize internal processes and deliver tech-enabled products and services that can compete with their startup rivals. New technology investments will focus on business capabilities that truly differentiate companies from their competitors.
New ways of working take hold, but developing talent remains a challenge. The line between IT and the business has all but disappeared as firms embrace cross-functional, agile product teams. Many executives noted that this way of working has allowed them to respond more quickly to market changes and provide better customer experiences. We expect this cross-functional collaboration to increase in the year ahead.
At the same time, the battle for talent shows no signs of slowing down. Conference attendees listed talent as a top priority for 2020 as they look to recruit, hire, and retain new people while re-skilling existing employees for jobs of the future. Executives said they continue to seek and develop “T-shaped” employees who have a breadth and depth of skills that span technology and operations. They also recognize the need to create work environments that promote continuous learning at all levels.
We’re still in early innings with AI. Enterprise adoption of AI and machine learning is accelerating as companies explore new use cases and pursue applications that drive concrete business value. In the year ahead, we expect many companies will work to hone existing use cases and develop mechanisms to scale advanced analytics capabilities across the enterprise. Indeed, as many traditional organizations called themselves tech companies in recent years, some panelists suggested we might start hearing them refer to themselves as AI companies.
But significant work remains to be done. Companies continue to invest in their core data infrastructure, and executives are looking for new ways to measure and communicate ROI for their AI initiatives. There are also fundamental issues yet to be resolved, such as how to create explainable algorithms, how to reduce inherent bias in data sets, and whether certain AI technologies should operate without a human in the loop.
The pinnacle: using data to drive growth. Both winners of this year’s Forbes CIO Innovation Award used their companies’ rich data sets to develop new services and drive tangible financial growth:
As we enter 2020, we expect CIOs to play an increasingly visible role in the development of corporate strategy. Many are likely to expand their purview as organizations look to new technologies to drive operational efficiency, deliver top-line growth, and create a differentiated customer experience. CIOs also will continue to be agents of cultural change as they foster new ways of working and develop technology talent across their organizations. We look forward to the year ahead!
Forrester has produced a report entitled “Predictions 2020: CIO” in which it predicts what the year ahead will mean for chief information officers. The report highlights a number of key opportunities that CIOs can seize during a year of economic uncertainty, but also notes that the gulf between leading CIOs and average CIOs will be remarkably big.
CIOs will automate 10 percent of their IT tasks and look to upskill displaced personnel
Forrester believes that economic volatility will influence CIOs to focus on cost control measures of their departments. The company’s report goes on to say that it does not believe that IT departments will lay off workers, as it predicts flat IT staffing forecasts for 2020. A more likely outcome, Forrester posits, is that CIOs will train their teams to do more complex tasks associated with Agile and DevOps. The report notes, “While automation technologies erase a net 1.2 million jobs in the United States alone, CIOs will first look at IT jobs that are highly standardized and repetitive, such as first level technical support and simple technology provisioning. For example, a financial services CIO we spoke with plans to automate all level one technical support.”
Former Monsanto CIO and Bayer CIO and Head of Digital Transformation for Crop Science Jim Swanson has been named Executive Vice President and Global CIO of Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest healthcare company. Swanson is responsible for amplifying Johnson & Johnson’s business impact and shaping its direction through the strategic use of technology. He will be based in New Jersey at the company headquarters.
Joaquin Duato, Vice Chairman of the Exeuctive Committee at Johnson & Johnson said about Swanson’s appointment, “As a broadly based healthcare company, technology is critical to helping Johnson & Johnson better reach the patients and customers we serve. We are thrilled to welcome Jim to lead our technology organization. His experience advancing technology for global companies with large research, manufacturing and distribution needs – along with his proven commitment to talent development – will help us remain competitive both now and into the future.”
The Boeing Company named Ted Colbert CEO of Boeing Global Services. He succeeds Stan Deal who was named president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Vishwa Uddanwadiker was appointed to Colbert’s former role as chief information officer and senior vice president of Information Technology & Data Analytics on an interim basis.
“Our entire Boeing team is focused on operational excellence, aligned with our values of safety, quality, and integrity, and we’re committed to delivering on our commitments and regaining trust with our regulators, customers and other stakeholders,” Boeing President and CEO Dennis Muilenburg said. “Ted brings to our Global Services business an enterprise approach to customers and strong digital business expertise—a key component of our long-term growth plans.”
