Computerworld - February 27, 2012

CIO, Financial Markets and
Treasury Services, BNY
Mellon and Pershing, a BNY
Mellon company, New York
Andrew J.
Lang
Senior vice president
and CIO, WellPoint,
North Haven, Conn.
Your rela-
tionship
with a key
business
leader:
Career highlight:
A quick-ROI
project:
We recently
launched a
set of new
capabilities
across our portfolio of sys-
tems. We delivered the first
production release of IBM
Watson for Healthcare to help
provide medical research for
clinical requests. Additionally,
we launched new online ap-
plications for our senior and
group membership that have
shown remarkable results.
Our online activity increased
dramatically and our opera-
tional efficiencies are exceed-
ing expectations.

Sam
Lamonica
Vice president of IT and CIO,
Rosendin Electric, San Jose
Mario Leone
A MASTER JUGGLER MANAGES MULTIPLE PRIORITIES
What’s
the most
important
task you’ve
delegated
this year?

Vice president and CIO,
Aerospace Systems Sector,
Northrop Grumman,
Redondo Beach, Calif.

An example
of your
personal
leadership
style:
How do you make sure
your most talented work-
ers stay put?

TECHNOLOG Y DEPAR TMENTS prefer to handle projects one at a time. But at Ingram Micro, where the goal was to set up a stable computing environment that would accom- modate the company’s growth on the SAP platform for two r three years, time was a luxury the IT shop couldn’t afford. The global technology distributor needed to make some long-overdue changes that were crucial to running a fast-mov-
ing, low-margin business, and to retool for new market opportunities.
So executive vice president and CIO Mario Leone, 55, and other ex-
ecutives decided to undertake multiple strategic projects at the same
time. Initiatives ranged from application and infrastructure transfor-
mation to network upgrades and the development of new Web and
customer-facing technologies, all on a global scale.
The riskiest component is the customer-facing piece, Leone says. “In
the distribution [business], you’re not creating product — you’re moving
product,” he explains. “The customer you’re facing has many options. So
when you make a mistake, you pay a much higher price than you would
in a traditional product-type business.”
Bob White, senior director of strategic program management and
compliance, calls Leone a macro-thinker — one who is always consid-
ering which technologies will support emerging business trends.
But beyond the vision, “he has a phenomenal sense for execution
and detail,” White says. “He sees us all bigger than we see ourselves.
We look back on the year and say, ‘I can’t believe we did all that.’ ” u