General Motors’ CIO Ralph Szygenda talked with Network World senior editor Denise Pappalardo about what AT&T is doing for GM and how that fits in with GM’s overall globalization plan.
AT&T inks $1billion contract with GM, carrier’s largest to date
GM has worked with AT&T for the past five years, and part of the new contact is an extension of existing services. Could you talk about what’s new with this contract?
AT&T is now managing network performance for GM’s other service providers globally. There are many telecom providers throughout the world that support our overall network. It would be nice to have one provider that has a network across the world to support you totally. That’s not in the cards right now. But I want consistency across the network throughout the world with a common monitoring environment. . . . AT&T is now doing this for GM.
Has GM been doing WAN monitoring in house or trying to buy from other providers?
The reason you haven’t been able to buy this service is because of fragmentation in the telecommunications market. Now I’m running a real-time operation where my processes are global across the world I don’t have the time to do [network performance monitoring]. I’ve been trying to do this for five years, and AT&T has now matured to this level. Now GM can say to AT&T, manage this environment across suppliers and make it look like one.
AT&T should be supplying common processes, common ways to monitor the environment, making sure this all works together. We selected the company we thought had the greatest bandwidth to do that, and that’s AT&T. It’s a very different model. I’m not sure if any other company in the world has moved to this model. But it’s an important thing if GM is going to be successful.
GM is also extending its contract with AT&T for MPLS VPN, local and long-distance voice and Internet access services. Are there any other new data services that are part of this contract?
It’s about making all of that work. The good thing is we have [MPLS] throughout the world, including places like China. And I’m not too sure anybody has a common infrastructure throughout the world.
The contract does include advanced technology migration over the next five years working with the labs at AT&T. We will continue to upgrade technology — and for AT&T to use General Motors as a test bed for future worldwide technologies. It puts us a little bit on the bleeding edge of technology, and I will have to determine if I want to deploy [any of the new technologies]. Let us have an agreement that basically evolves and lets us take advantage of technologies over time.
In regards to GM’s MPLS VPN service, do you expect to add a significant number of sites to your worldwide network over the life of the contract?
We want AT&T to be able to support GM and whatever footprint it has. It’s driven by GM becoming more efficient around the world. Ten years ago GM wasn’t in China; today it’s the No. 1 automotive company. It shows you how fast the world changes. The big thing is the agility and flexibility to adapt to any environment throughout the world immediately that’s all part of this contract. GM is not planning to add thousands of nodes to its MPLS VPN network, but if that’s something that develops, AT&T is expected to be in a position to support growth.
Do you anticipate subsequent announcements about GM’s secondary telecom carrier contracts?
Not really. They will be there, and we will have contracts with them.
Last year GM announced its multibillion-dollar contracts with a handful of systems integrators, including Capgemini, EDS and IBM. Over a five year period that represents half of GM’s overall IT spend. What piece of the pie does telecom consume?
The system integrators is one part of the third-generation IT model. Telecom is another part. The last part is new application development and deployment, which is bid individually. All we can do is let AT&T give the number. We typically never give out that financial information.
How does wireless services fit into GM’s IT model?
Right now it’s separate. It’s being bid right now. The assumption is over the next five years it will be integrated into this environment.
