CIO 100 COMPANIES IN Communications and IT Services

4. BT Group

BT’s IT function has had an impressive 12 months. It has ‘upskilled’ more than 5,000 IT professionals, so that now 3,100 are engaged in customer-facing, revenue-generating work rather than internal IT projects. It has also achieved a first-time, net reduction in the systems estate, savings of approximately 19 per cent in unit costs two years in a row, while simultaneously tripling its output, and doubling its delivery speed.

24. Reuters

It has been a very busy, but successful year for David Lister, CIO at Reuters, and his team. After a two to three year period of recovery, the company is showing good performance, increased growth and getting moving again.

25. BBC

Keith Little has been CIO at the BBC since October, following six months as acting CIO in a hand-over period before CTO John Varney left the organisation. In that time the corporation has been concentrating on bedding down its outsourcing relationship with Siemens, while it prepares to focus on director general Mark Thompson’s Creative Futures vision as the BBC prepares to turn off analogue broadcasting and make the most of the multi-platform world.

49. Virgin Media

Finishing the Virgin Media infrastructure integration while supporting the continuing growth of the business are the twin challenges for Howard Watson, chief technology and information officer at Virgin Media, over the year ahead.

63. Orange

Orange, the internet and mobile phone arm of France Télécom, is seeing revenue growth in emerging markets. But in its mature markets – France, the UK and Spain – the picture is not so good. In 2006, average revenue per user (ARPU) was down and revenue gains were slim.

70. WPP

WPP is made up of around 100 different companies, the largest with 15,174 employees, the smallest has 17, and operates in 106 countries around the world. Because of the structure of the organisation and the competitive nature of many of its clients WPP has an unusual IT challenge, as it will never be able to completely consolidate its IT offerings.

71. T-Mobile

T-Mobile is the UK network of T-Mobile International, one of the three strategic growth areas of Deutsche Telekom.

74. WS Atkins

WS Atkins is the UK’s largest consultancy to undertake engineering and design projects in markets such as rail, highways and defence. In 2005, the organisation set up two steering committees to align IT more closely with its different businesses and to streamline IT decision-making.

76. Vodafone Group

Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile operator, is still in the process of implementing its One Vodafone programme. The initiative, which started in 2005, is intended to boost revenues while simultaneously reducing operating expenses to fiscal 2004 levels during fiscal 2008.

87. Group 4 Securicor

Group 4 Securicor is the largest security systems and services company in the world. It was created in 2004, following the merger of Securicor and Group 4 A/S, and provides a range of cash-related services such as processing and transportation as well as security services to both the public and private sector.

99. Cable & Wireless

Cable & Wireless purchased rival Energis in August last year for £594 million cash, in a move that made it the second largest telecommunications provider in the UK after BT.

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