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Based in Singapore, Trent says every single one of his past working experiences has had an impact on what he has learnt and accomplished today. "I have used every one of those experiences over my 35 years in technology," he notes in an e-mail interview with ZDNet Asia.
Judging simply from his e-mail responses, one gets a sense of the man's exuberance for technology. "I have always had a fascination and a driving curiosity for technology," Trent says. "I also have a vivid imagination about how technology can impact the way we learn and connect to others.
"I discovered that IT was a place that allowed me to not only quench my curiosity of technology, but also use technology to connect to the people and the things that I care about, no matter where I am located," he adds.
Trent says Cisco is the perfect playground for those who love nothing more than to dream up new possibilities--and, to actually have them materialize.
"I've been very fortunate in my career to have business leaders that allowed me the freedom to look for new ways to marry technology and the business. As it turned out, I'm in the perfect place today with Cisco, because we use technology to change the way people live, learn, work and play," he notes.
In this wide-ranging interview, Trent outlines his regional team's structure and highlights the importance of a good human resource strategy--an area he believes would better prepare IT professionals, including himself, for their careers if it was taught in school.
Q. What is the structure of Cisco's Asia-Pacific IT organization?
Trent: Cisco's Asia-Pac IT organization is structured as follows:
Network and data center services: This group focuses on network services, global data centers, capacity planning, and Cisco IT's deployment of Cisco technologies.
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Business services: This team is focused on those IT capabilities and processes that provide the glue to address Cisco's ability to deliver business capabilities holistically across all areas of IT. These include application data management, release management, program management office, software configuration management and business resiliency.
Client services: Their focus is on holistically addressing the individual client experience. For example, laptop and Cisco unified-IP phone support, the technical response center, global shared services, vendor management, client applications such as e-mail, and global service delivery and support.
Operations: This team focuses on incident management, problem management, change management and the operations center.
Technology and architecture: The focus here is on holistic technology strategy, integrating infrastructure, application and experience technologies; aligning with business architecture and strategy; and creating incubation approaches for innovation. These include enterprise architecture, infrastructure architecture, and enterprise data warehouse.
How do you make sure things move like clockwork?
Cisco's IT organization is tightly integrated with the business, and we maintain this focus through four broad initiatives: IT as an enabler for Cisco's business strategy; IT to drive productivity in the company; IT as a facilitator of Cisco innovation; and IT as a showcase for Cisco's technology. We use an IT operating model that encompasses all aspects of how we work--from the company vision to IT operating realities like keeping the lights on.
The first aspect of the operating model encompasses Cisco's vision and strategy. The next aspect of the model is Cisco's business architecture and capabilities. Then we move to technology architecture, which is the heart of IT's functional responsibility. We ensure that Cisco remains agile, reliable and innovative.
Lastly, and most importantly, is resource strategy. Resource strategy is critical to the operating model because everything we do is done by people. It makes sure we have the right people with the right skills, at the right time. Essentially, we pay attention to and invest in people, process and technology. Our ability to deliver to the business is only as strong as each of the elements. Think of this as a three-legged stool. If each leg is balanced and strong, the stool can hold many times its own weight. But, if any one of the legs is unbalanced or weak, it can't even hold its own weight. We pay attention to all three legs.
What are the top three things you've learnt about running an IT organization across a region like the Asia-Pacific?
First, the importance of globalization and standards does not eliminate the need for localization. We need global consistency, but we also need local responsibility, accountability and execution.
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