Gary Steer is Technology Director of Hermes Datacommunications International Ltd.
Hermes Datacomms is a specialist supplier of IT and communications networks to the oil and gas industries.
Headquartered in Shropshire in the UK, the company has local teams in Russia, Central Asia, North Africa and Malaysia as well as partnerships in the Middle East, the Americas and Asia-Pacific regions.
Which gadgets do you always carry with you?
I always carry a PDA phone. It’s a Windows-based 3G handset and it has more or less everything I need built in: I can read email, watch a video or play MP3s. I do have an iPod but I use the phone most of the time. I also always carry a high-quality compact digital camera.
What would be your dream gadget?
What I would really want is something that means I no longer have to carry a laptop. The screens on PDAs are fine for web browsing but they are limited.
A personal communicator with high bandwidth and a high quality camera would be useful. We visit locations such as oil rigs and we always take pictures of how our equipment is installed.
Which web sites do you regularly visit?
I take news feeds from the BBC. I do use Expedia and Lastminute for flights and hotels. In a business like ours, you do spend a lot of time looking at the manufacturers’ websites. If I am looking for something specific, I’d probably start with Google.
In my own time, I do like iTunes and Autotrader.
Which blogs do you read?
From time to time I look at forums and wikis; it would be good if more suppliers had areas where we could ask them questions. But even though the average age in the office is 25 in general people don’t use social networking. Most people don’t have time for that.
What do you see as the key business technology issues of the future?
For us, the real issue is that technology is coming up against bandwidth limits. The best camera phone on the planet is no good if all it can use is GPRS. If you had 10mbps to the phone, you’d not even need a TV at home. Bandwidth is the key issue for business. ADSL is not bad, but there would be real gains if businesses could increase their bandwidth.
What are the key technology challenges facing your organization right now?
It’s not strictly a technology challenge, but there is a real skills shortage facing technology companies. Finding suitable people is very difficult. There is a difference between engineers and technicians. A technician repairs something an engineer has built. We need people who can engineer solutions.
What are the key tasks a CIO needs to carry out to ensure IT projects come in on time, within budget and deliver a good ROI?
Careful planning is very important. In our company, we use web-based project management and tagging systems that allow our engineers to be mobile.
You also have to be flexible. You can plan on the basis of what you think is sensible, but, especially in our line of work, the customer’s requirements will always come first. Our clients in oil and gas are always pushing the geographic boundaries of their operations, and of course that does make it more difficult from an IT and communications point of view.
Do you subscribe to the idea that business is becoming ever more virtual? If it is, which technologies are driving this and how do they affect the role of the CIO?
If you look at services such as booking a flight on Expedia or tracking a package on DHL, absolutely, and that virtual world is fantastic. But when things go wrong, if you don’t have the people to support your services it falls apart. You still need someone you can ring up, to get it done today. But in three to five years’ time, I expect to see more presence-based systems in business communications.
Tags: BBC, communications, enterprise, gadgets, Gary Steer, IT, networks, open, openminds, siemens
