OC CIO Minutes December 9, 2010

1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
December 9, 2010 meeting

Present: Cameron Cosgrove, Subbu Murthy, Jim Sutter, Joe Desuta, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Jeff Reid, Jennifer Curlee, Dave Phillips

We toasted Paul Gray, IS Professor Emeritus, Claremont, on his 80th birthday on 12/8.

Our thanks to Sean for supplying an egg and bacon breakfast for those who wanted it.

The following have volunteered to introduce topics through April 2011:

1/13/11 Business Intelligence update Sean Brown
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht

Topic: The lack of standards in mobile computing

Cameron Cosgrove started by giving a quick overview of First American Financial – title insurance and escrow co., $4B, 900 offices, 12,000 US employees, 4,000 abroad. They have 4.500 cell phones now consolidated to 3 carriers, each with I account and pooled minutes – 90% Verizon; AT&T is the back up carrier and iPhone support; Sprint has their push-to-talk walkie-talkie for the security team. The 4-person support team supports 196 different devices – no standards prior to consolidation in 2008. Eliminating the yearly upgrade saves $235,000. To get the full flavor of Cameron’s presentation, please check his slides. In summary, there are standards issues – Active Sync follows their security policies; Active Directory account settings cause support problems and First American security policy demands password resets every 90 days. Blackberry devices require more support – potential savings if they could eliminate them. Their security standards include all devices must be registered to send/receive mail; mobile users need rights in Active Directory to sync to exchange server; all devices are encrypted; passwords have 4+ characters; auto wipe after 10 password attempts; device must lock after 10 min. inactivity; ability to remote wipe a lost/stolen device; removable storage is disabled; ability to push updates to device. After consolidation, the support team audited all accounts (creating a master wireless database) and cancelled hundreds of terminated users, for initial savings of $432K. They continue to do monthly audits, which result in substantial savings. Warranty replacement rebates amount to $12K per month. Savings from zero usage devices is $150K/year. Their ongoing team goals include being proactive in reducing costs, providing excellent levels of service (in the US and globally), maintain accurate database (can’t rely on vendor records), and partner with the business.

The discussion was free flowing and very active. The general impression was that the presentation was very effective and stated in straightforward terms – well worth reading for those of you who were not in attendance.