Microsoft appoints new CIO

Reed Stevenson

SEATTLE: Microsoft Corp., looking to save more than $100 million off its own internal technology costs

appointed a new chief information officer responsible for managing one of the most complex information technology systems in the industry.

Ron Markezich, formerly responsible for managing call centers, help desks and other IT infrastructure at the world's largest software maker, will now be responsible for making sure that Microsoft's own 300,000 devices -- including desktop personal computers, laptops, networked server computers, and other machines -- work without glitches.

"We're a fairly complex company," Markezich said in a telephone interview. "We've got a quite a few demands that the growth of the business puts on us."

Adding to the complexity of the task is Microsoft's longtime habit of "eating its own dog food," or using software still in development for testing purposes, before it is sold to customers.

"We use Microsoft products very aggressively," Markezich said, adding that there would be no change to that policy.

Microsoft is also aiming to take more than $100 million out of the cost of running its infrastructure, Markezich said, by adopting its own technology to consolidate hardware and software systems.

Microsoft Chief Financial Officer John Connors, who is responsible for the group including internal IT support, promised investors in the company's latest earnings conference call to shave costs from Microsoft's operations and improve profitability.

Expertise gained from adopting its own technology will also be passed on to customers, a practice spearheaded by Markezich's predecessor and current boss, Rick Devenuti. Devenuti now heads Microsoft's global services, which provides internal and external support services for the Redmond, Washington-based company.

Another challenge for Markezich will be to make sure that the software running on Microsoft's systems is kept up-to-date, particularly since the company's own servers were hit last year by the SQL Slammer worm that slowed world global Internet traffic and caused disruption in flight systems and even automatic teller machines.

When SQL Slammer, targeting machines running Microsoft's SQL database software, hit a year ago, several machines in Microsoft were affected because they had not been patched with the necessary software updates and fixes.

"One of our priorities as an organization has been to make sure that we embrace trustworthy computing in everything we do," Markezich said.

© Reuters