By Ann Bednarz
Network World, 12/24/01

Smell that, enterprise users? It's your buying power. Tech vendors whose heads were turned by young service providers and competitive local exchange carriers with long shopping lists are turning their attention back to enterprise users now that it's clear many of the fledgling service providers and CLECs can't pay their bills.

Mike Brady
FIRST VICE PRESIDENT OF GLOBAL NETWORKING SERVICES, MERRILL LYNCH

Brady works with a team of 106 and a budget of $300 million to provide global support for Merrill Lynch's voice, data and video networks; e-mail and Internet applications; nontransactional Web sites; and 21,000 of Merrill Lynch's 70,000 desktops. In 2001, the firm launched its new dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) network connecting 10 sites in two states with high-speed Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel connections. The DWDM network replaces telephone company-provided time-division multiplexer connections, and it enabled Merrill Lynch to eliminate its entire router backbone by tying the Gigabit links directly to its high-speed switched core. "We simplified the network, greatly increased capacity and decreased overall costs," Brady says.

When the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center disabled the public network, Brady and team sped up completion of a back-up Gigabit laser system that was under consideration. Within a week, the free-space optics system was ready for business use. At the same time, the network group built out a new trading floor in just four days after the company's primary trading site was destroyed and its alternate site evacuated.

William Friel
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CIO, PRUDENTIAL FINANCIAL

Prudential continues to flex its e-commerce muscles under Friel, this year revamping and relaunching its Prudential Securities Web site and launching a Web-based business-to-business platform, PrudentialXpress. For its 25,000 telecommuting employees and business partners, the company created a massive VPN that halved Prudential's annual $14 million remote access bill — and earned it Network World's top User Excellence Award for 2001. Prudential also continues to grow its offshore software development company in Letterkenny, Ireland. Prudential opened Prumerica Systems Ireland in July 2000 to reduce its reliance on consultants and bring some of its outsourced IT work in-house.

Lt. General Michael Hayden
DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY/CENTRAL SECURITY SERVICE

Power security user Hayden and team need the latest gadgets and the most sophisticated, dependable technologies to keep up the country's information-gathering tactics — and to keep adversaries from getting at U.S. information systems. They are tasks made more difficult by the wide availability of encryption products and services, and the overwhelming amount of data the agency intercepts in its eavesdropping efforts. One new project reportedly in the works at the super-secret NSA is Trailblazer, a computer system designed for more effective processing and culling of useful intelligence from data collected.

Dennis Kirchoff
ANX DEVELOPMENT LEADER, FORD MOTOR

Dennis Kirchoff is a founding father of the ANX, the world's largest VPN-based e-commerce network. Ford, General Motors and Chrysler (now DaimlerChrysler) built the ANX with their trade association, the Automotive Industry Action Group, in 1996 to provide a secure, IP-based network for sharing supply chain data among channel partners in the automotive industry. In December 1999, AIAG sold ANX to Science Applications International. Today, 900 companies subscribe to the network service, which SAIC has expanded to include other industries such as financial services, healthcare and manufacturing.

Kirchoff continues to define Ford's role in the business extranet, and his counterparts at General Motors and DaimlerChrysler closely follow his work.

John Nallin
VICE PRESIDENT OF IS, UPS

The media loves to ask Nallin what two or three IT issues keep him up at night. It's not an easy question to answer when you're juggling 100 to 200 projects at any one time, Nallin says. "When you have a tech budget of $1 billion, you do a lot of stuff," he notes. Issues rising to the top lately have to do with business continuity, in light of the terrorist threat, and wireless and voice-recognition initiatives.

For Nallin, evaluating new IT projects is a balancing act: "You have to be aggressive about changing technologies.  However, you also have to minimize risk and the impact of that risk."

Gary Reiner
SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CIO, GENERAL ELECTRIC

Reiner has spent more than a decade with GE and continues to lead its IT and e-business efforts — which are at full-throttle despite the slowed economy. Even as other companies are tightening their IT budgets, GE reportedly plans to increase IT spending 12% in 2002. The company's e-business approach is three-pronged and covers internal processes, procurement and sales.

Internally, GE is trying to digitize everything possible, eliminating manual and paper-generating processes along the way. The company hopes to lop off $10 billion in its operational expenses in the coming years through these internal efforts.

On the buy and sell sides, GE worked to shift 30% of its purchasing online and to increase its online sales to 15% of total revenue in 2001.

Ralph Szygenda
CIO AND GROUP VICE PRESIDENT OF IS AND SERVICES, GENERAL MOTORS

Recruitment has been a key part of Szygenda's strategy since he joined General Motors as CIO in 1996 and was charged with reclaiming the IT projects the company had outsourced to Electronic Data Systems. He told one publication, "Technology is secondary to finding good people." Helped by the good people he's found, Szygenda has effected a cultural change at GM and earned the support of top management for his e-business initiatives, including launching Web sites for consumer and business customers and investing in procurement exchange Covisint Communications.

Most recently, GM absorbed its business-to-consumer Internet division, e-GM, back into the corporate organization. The company says it's not a withdrawal from e-business, but part of its original plan to pull the Internet division in-house once the corporate business was ready to handle it.

Lt. Gen. John "Jack" Woodward
DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION AND DEPUTY CIO, U.S. AIR FORCE

Woodward's responsibilities include strategy, policies, architecture and standards for Air Force IT systems — a role that puts him atop a crew of 74,000. Under his watch, the Air Force is making military history with its MyAirForce portal, which will serve up data pulled from 28,000 legacy information systems and 1,500 Air Force Web sites and intranets. Woodward announced the project, now in its third phase of development, in August 2000. Within the next few months, 1.2 million users will have access to the MyAirForce portal.