Your Company's Computer Guy

The NCTA’s CIO tract drew good crowds in its sophomore outing at the ’07 Cable Show, perhaps signifying IT’s increasing importance as cable integrates across platforms and sells new services. At one panel, Time Warner Cable CIO Frank Boncimino said the cable industry’s triple-play push has forced IT to shift its focus to "being mobile in the marketplace and launching new products." Cliff Hagan, svp, enterprise IT at Cablevision, said decentralizing the IT processes while not causing disruptions has been key. "If you don’t have controls, you very quickly get into a quagmire," he said, noting that CVC averages a major IT implementation every week. Rob Reynolds, Comcast’s vp, software dev and systems engineering, said the push to merge systems comes from a desire to be nimble in rapidly changing markets. "The time to market is very important and has never been as critical." Meanwhile, Vince Roberts, evp, worldwide technology and operations, at Disney-ABC Television Group, said repurposing media several times creates major IT challenges- especially because resources don’t increase in tandem with market demands to release content on multiple platforms. "That is no small task."