Kemble: DELL still is AN AMAZING COMPANY. I am recovering from shoulder surgery and am just starting to use a keyboard again. Recently I read an interesting article in the December 1st issue of CIO Magazine. I am posting a passage with some insights from DELL's CIO Jerry Gregoire. Michael clearly has some tremendous talent in his IT organization. DELL's CIO and his team have helped build a foundation for hypergrowth!! I hope you and your family have a great holiday. 1999 will be a rewarding year for DELL shareholders. --Scott
<<I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can //CIO Magazine (12/01/98)
It all comes down to customers, after all, and these
companies have a lot of them. Gregoire estimates that Dell's
sales grow by a billion dollars every six to eight weeks. On
the one hand, Gregoire doesn't want to be the one to explain
to Michael Dell that the system is down. On the other hand,
how the heck do you plan for growth like that without making
a mistake? Here's where life in high-tech gets a little tricky,
best expressed as small chunks and big visions.
To be successful, high-tech CIOs recommend biting off
projects in small chunks. Cisco Systems won't schedule a
project for longer than nine months, says Solvik, and most
are done in three to six months. (There's an added advantage
to that, he notes: "Create small wins to build from rather than
taking on megaprojects that cost too much, take too long,
don't deliver and make people skeptical.")
Gregoire notes that Dell is growing so fast that at the end
of an 18-month project, the company would be significantly
different from when it began. "A project has to take less than
six months [to complete]. That's the only way we can make
sure [it stays] with the business," he says.
He also advocates what he believes to be a highly
unpopular idea. "The day of the large central IT organization
is over. This'll generate a lot of hate mail, but you have to
push IT down as close to the business as you can." If you
don't, Gregoire warns, shadow IT organizations pop up to fill
needs that a centralized plan doesn't. "Pushing IT into those
departments isn't perfect, but it's closer to a model that allows
your company to grow. It's time for CIOs to let go."
But at the same time, you have to keep an eye on the
future. "When you learn to fly," says Gregoire, a weekend
pilot, "the instructor lets you stay three mistakes high." That is,
you can screw up three different ways and still stay in the air.
In Dell's case, that means planning for computer capacity
where the sky's the limit. For instance, Dell's inbound 800
lines operate at between 50 percent to 60 percent of their
capacity, just to accommodate spikes. "Having someone call
and not get an answer is bad, and 70 percent capacity is way
too close," says Gregoire, acknowledging that most CIOs
don't have that kind of luxury. "But that's part of our success.
The only thing that can slow down Dell is IT. I'm laying down
track in front of a locomotive going 100 miles per hour." >> |
