TXPEG

International IT

February 22, 2012

Speaker:

Erik Arnold of PATH

Ingvar Petursson of Nintendo

Discussion Topics:

  1. Use network to resolve latency
  2. Regional difference when expanding internationally
  3. Approaches from a startup perspective to expand in Europe and Asia
  4. Pragmatic challenges: Onsite support abroad; country variance in solving problem
  5. Business partnership and ways to manage techniques that makes IT easier
  6. The culture issue: the way to interact with people,
  7. Currency exchange
  8. How to support people aboard with sustainable IT infrastructure

Presentation 1 from Erik Arnold

  1. Path is headquartered in Seattle and has partnership with a variety of different corporations and institutes.
  2. Company culture: transparent, flexible, common; Aim at building the credibility to get more funding
  3. Identify the talents, and develop smart people. Try to build physical presence in almost all offices possible. Provide resource based on need, and sometimes is not paid for by IT.
  4. Central procurement system, which works with offices internationally
  5. Establish a role called regional RSA; partner with project administrator in regional office to help contract setup, vendor managers etc
  6. The flexible service model demonstrates the way to split out support effort. Path spends a lot of time optimizing, and coordinating.
  7. Very simply and common network configuration.
  8. Policy issue: rely more on policy than implementing controls.
  9. Provide standard PC and laptop configuration and replace PCs at regular intervals
  10. Any decision has to be applied not in the headquarter, but also in the field. e.g.SMSS application. As Path moves forward, it will consider mobile applications.
  11. What works: RSA, standardized infrastructure; tools: site visits, meeting etc.
  12. 40 different metrics to measure the operation and show value back.
  13. Q: What would you done differently:

A: Underestimate the amount of organization resistance. It turned out the resistance was more from customers’ side (business partners) than from the IT team.It could be done a lot quicker and smoother.

Presentation 2 from Ingvar Petursson

  1. Cultural, behavior, technological, regulatory (CBTR) issues are key considerations when manage the world business
  2. A lot of large companies have US headquarter in Seattle.
  3. It is important to manage people based on local culture
  4. Example of Corbis, Nintendo
  5. Even US IT does not manage global IT, the expectation is to get US Nintendo involved in Global IT maintenance.
  6. Language difference: in EU, nearly everybody speaks English. Language issue is much lighter than that in AUS/ASIA. E.g. communicate a technical issue to an IT head in Asia who does not understand technology. A solution is to be more balanced..
  7. Regulatory issues are always the biggest question with various opportunity and challenge. Sometimes the decision depends totally on regulatory considerations, e.g. tax issue, enforce PCI rules to manage payment, PII (IP address is PII in EU, we need to design system to accommodate it).

Briefing time: Jonathan Marsh of WS02

Integration strategy and five disruptions in the middleware market

Disruption 1: message

Disruption 2: Lean

Disruption 3: Componentized

Disruption 4: Cloud

Disruption 5: Commercial open sources