Outside IBM’s large, grey, Stalinist complex on London’s South Bank, the squally March weather is blowing umbrellas inside out, and sending discarded newspapers, food wrappers, and other detritus to the four winds. Tourists scurry into the nearby National Theatre, Hayward Gallery and other attractions, sprinting to escape the latest caprices of nature.

Inside, Graham Spittle is reflecting on a different type of sudden change. After two decades working in software development at IBM’s famed Hursley campus near Winchester, Hampshire, Spittle is taking up a new challenge, as IBM’s Software Group vice president for the UK, Ireland and South Africa.

Leaving beautiful Hursley, IBM’s software development lab set in 100 acres of South Downs countryside with a gorgeous manor house and providing access to thousands of IBM’s finest developmental brains, might be considered a bit of wrench for most of us. If it is, Spittle is not showing the pain.

“Hursley is a fantastic resource,” he says. “It’s years ahead of what anyone else can muster. It was set up in 1958 and has grown every year since, and it’s where CICS, MQ Series, Message Broker and IBM’s storage networking products were developed. As IBM’s business changes, and we’re obviously more software and services than we were in the past, the fabulous thing is that I now have the opportunity to look at another side of the business. The timing couldn’t be better.”

Bearded and bespectacled, Spittle might have something of the look of an academic boffin but he is quick to laugh and he is too modest a man to mention the legions of influential positions he has held, many of which have focused on making information technology more accessible to non-techies. These include a news-making appointment in 2004 that made him the first chair of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Technology Strategy Board, a £320 million attempt to discover what innovation can do for UK business.

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