The CIO Forum: Budgets Byte Back

Chief tech officers discuss how they are using their data to beat the competitition.

 

This year's first IT commandment: Use what you've got. And the second is like unto it: Data is king. Those are the strong themes that emerged from this year's CIO Forum. Fortnightly interviewed three chief information officers at three diverse companies: a traditional utility, Cinergy; a merchant generator, Calpine; and an independent system operator (ISO), the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

Calpine and Cinergy weren't immune to the economic woes of the industry, nor were their information technology (IT) departments. At Calpine, CIO Dennis Fishback focused on taking information the company already had from multiple systems, and combining it in different ways for competitive advantage-without extra spending. Cinergy's chief technology officer (CTO), Bennett Gaines, spent most of last year trying to maximize the returns from prior years' heavy technology investments. Even though ERCOT had what CIO Ken Shoquist called a healthy year, the budget wasn't limitless. "We watch every penny," he notes. "We have a fiduciary responsibility to do that." Shoquist's time over the last year was taken up with hiring staff to replace ERCOT's heavy reliance on consultants and improve the ISO's bottom line.