CIOhio Morning Keynote – John Seral, VP and CIO, GE Energy Infrastructure

I do have his full presentation. If you would like a copy, please email me - email@kevingadd.com

· John is a member of the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG)

· He moved through the ranks at GE since coming in during early 80’s

· Energy infrastructure is the fastest growing GE line of business

o 07 revenue was $31B, 65K employees in 140 countries

· Energy and water needs in other countries will continue to grow rapidly

· GE has created the ecomagination focus

o Double R & D to $1.5B by 2010

o Grow revenues to $25B in 2010

o Reduce greenhouse gas emissions

o Reduce water usage by 20%

o Inform the public on GE efforts.

· IT Challenges at GE – Supporting global growth

o Grow GE Talent – find and grow the best people

o Globalization – put our people there

o Drive global ERP programs – close the books on Oracle/SAP and remove point solutions

· Focus on performance and availability

· Focus on systems that can help the business grow

· Do what you do but more cost effectively

· 1.3% of GE revenue goes to IT now, hoping to get to 1.7%

· Security

o John has a TS clearance and less than 10 people have it at GE

o Focus on stopping attacks. Hackers are looking to steal data now

o Soon they will be conducting regular assessments

· Disaster recovery is a big area

o Tier 1 goal of <>

o Tier 2 goal of <>

o He suggested that it is a great idea to ask business lines what they believe is acceptable and doable for getting systems back up and online after an emergency. This aligns expectations

· Demand growth is still outpacing deflation

· Moore’s law still working!

· It is a goal of GE to have all employees connected at all times

· GE is focusing on finalizing the Oracle and SAP integrations

· There is a challenge with the number of advanced PDA’s

· GE uses Cisco Telepresence, which is very cool

o They have 9 locations now with 7 more coming soon

· GE is moving to Star Office. They have frozen Microsoft Office purchases

· They are moving to cloud computing eventually

· GE has created their own MySpace type intranet

o People can tag themselves and others with their interests

· Virtualization is big and growing – it is like FREE MONEY

· He is freezing some purchases to force more virtualization to occur

· His group was spending $21MM on telephone calls annually. Moving more to VOIP to reduce this

· GE is working on “PC on a Stick” so people can take what they need with them, plug into any machine, work, then remove and nothing stays resident on the workstation.

· When outsourcing, they are looking at low cost CITIES, not just low cost COUNTRIES. Rural Outsourcing is a big innovation for them

· This is actually keeping more development here as some cities here have a lower cost than some of the larger Indian cities

o Places like Erie, PA and Macon, Mo

o 10% of their contractors are in these low cost cities

· GE defined a few areas where open source would be best. Then they moved the freed up licenses elsewhere in the country

o John recommended picking 2 or 3 apps to go deep on.

o He recommended that you then must hang around people who think differently than you to learn more about these open source apps

· GE partners with 40 universities, including OSU

· John felt that the Midwest could be a place that is big on manufacturing again, but in the new innovations such as wind turbines and solar