Six months into the job of CIO at Air New Zealand, Alastair Grigg (pictured) is enjoying the different focus from past roles, many of which were on the other side of the supplier fence.
"Being inhouse presents new challenges," says Grigg, who took over the CIO role on a temporary basis late last year and has been permanent CIO since January.
"The airline is an excellent organisation to work for, because of the breadth of its operations - there are two major ERP systems, PeopleSoft and SAP, the core reservations system, a data warehouse and business reporting tools."
Immediately before joining Air NZ, Grigg was a partner in Cobalt Partners, an investment advisory consulting group which did some work for the airline. He has also worked at IBM, Geac, Telecom, Microsoft developer Glazier Systems (now part of Advantage Group) and a UK-based online energy trading venture.
When then-CIO Rob Fyfe became Air New Zealand's group general manager for airlines, "the opportunity existed for someone to take the CIO role", and Grigg took it.
"It was a challenge I couldn't turn down."
The biggest IT project at the airline is its $37 million PeopleSoft implementation, of which the financials module is installed and the human capital management and payroll are to come.
"They're scheduled to go live in the middle of the year."
Grigg is involved "at steering committee level" with the implementation, and while it is being run by a team outside the official Air New Zealand IT structure, "we have a PeopleSoft application centre group within the new structure, which will be working on the ongoing management of the completed implementation".
Other projects Grigg is overseeing include moving applications from Sun and Unix bases to a Linux-Intel platform.
"Linux is part of a technology roadmap - we've deployed a Linux-Intel infrastructure capability for mid-range and web app processing.
"We've migrated some apps, mainly NT ones that were running on VMWare, successfully and are now in the early stages of the planning and piloting [moving] more of the larger Unix-based back office apps.
"There are still some steps to take on moving the larger apps to that platform, to fully test the performance profile, but we're comfortable with what we've experienced to date."
At the front end, Air New Zealand is upgrading its desktop operating system to Windows XP and moving to Exchange 2003.
"That represents an important step for us in the office environment."
There has been much speculation that Air New Zealand is to get a new reservations system, but Grigg says there are no immediate plans to replace Carina, the inhouse-developed, mainframe-based system that has been in use for some time.
"We're reviewing the system roadmap for that area."
He acknowledges the airline has looked at the reservations system in the past, but says "the business environment has changed significantly, the airline's strategy has changed and technology options around current and alternative platforms have changed significantly".
Air New Zealand will "revisit the options" regarding reservations systems, but in the meantime "a reasonable level of investment" will be maintained in Carina.
Looking further into the future, web services may have a greater part to play in the airline's systems.
"We're at the early stages understanding its application and believe it can provide us with real benefits in wrapping some legacy systems and providing a more open and modern connection for both the sales channels and [interactions with] other airlines."
SAP's R/3 is used for supply chain functions in the engineering division and Air New Zealand, like other large SAP users, is looking at a possible upgrade to the next version, 4.7.
"We do a lot of engineering for other airlines and customers and the capability in later versions of SAP is certainly of interest.
"We're looking at what's involved [in version 4.7] and are in the planning phase, going through the business case."
Grid and utility computing "has application in the airline industry but we don't have a strong view on which variant or vendor it would be best to adopt".
IBM provides Air New Zealand's storage, with both SAN and NAS are in use and Air New Zealand is closely eyeing moves by vendors to make the two less distinct.
"The investment you make in storage is significant and long-term and we're watching with interest as the two converge."
IT is an integral part of Air New Zealand's business and not a separate field, he says.
"We're operating in the context of a strong business strategy and IT is a key enabler of that strategy."
Examples include the online booking system and quick check-in kiosks.
Air New Zealand has a permanent IT staff of just over 200 and much of the work
is outsourced to IBM, Gen-i and other providers.
The number of outside providers has been slimmed down considerably from a few years ago "and there are significant opportunities for further consolidation".
Grigg reports to chief executive Ralph Norris, whose background is in IT and who was CIO at ASB Bank before he became chief executive and subsequently moved to Air New Zealand.