QandA: Ann Moyer, IBM Global Services

VARBusiness: What is a distinguished engineer?
Ann Moyer: Distinguished engineers are the super geeks. They are people who are extremely technical among a broad range of topics.

In IBM there are dual career paths. You could go up the chain to director, then vice president, then senior vice president, then general manager. A distinguished engineer is roughly equivalent to a director-level executive, but on a technical side. What was heartening was they were starting to recognize distinguished engineers from our services engine.

VB: What position did you hold when you joined IBM?
Moyer: A junior programmer. One program that IBM has is its executive resource program. You more or less are identified, as you move along, as being a key technical resource. Between their training programs and mentoring, IBM has created an excellent career path for the services division.

VB: You worked on IBM's first outsourcing agreement?
Moyer: We started off with an offering called NWS--Network Station Management. At that point we took care of the company's desktops and servers. It was very tough to explain to my family what I did as an IBM outsourcer. I used to call it babysitting other company's computers.

The first company was a pharmaceutical and chemical company. We created this offering that basically took our, at that point, 15 years of experience and put it in effect, and commercialized IBM services. We were all so excited because, for years and years and years, we had said, "We can do this. We have done it for the IBM customer, the internal [team, which is perhaps the most customer difficult to deal with." We continue to do that: Before an offering goes out the door, we have a captive audience.

VB: What are some of the issues you're working on now?
Moyer: With the e-business on demand project, the portion I'm working on is the integration of the various pieces to make them perform a business process. The challenges are dealing with legacy applications that are within a company but need to continue to exist. How do you get the new technology talking to some of the legacy technology and leverage the best of both, and present it seamlessly to that customer's customers. The additional challenge is how can we do all that, which is highly customized work, and do it in a utility fashion?

VB: What would you say are some of the highlights of being a DE?
Moyer: When they came back about a year or 18 months ago and said, "We need to understand the infrastructure that [e-business on demand could run on and how to leverage our various pieces across all the groups, beyond services. Put it together or give us an architecture."

In addition, we have some very large customers that are soup-to-nuts. To be called in on that and told, "Figure it out," is very exciting.

VB: And do it by tomorrow...
Moyer: My children and I have a very good system worked out for those "I need it tomorrow" situations. They know how to scan their homework and mail it to me. I get it each night and fax it back. I traveled one year with a whole second set of books from my daughter's school so I could help her out. I have a second pager and they know that they can page me and, within 15 minutes, I'll return their call no matter what.

VB: Do you find the schedule a downside?
Moyer: The only downside is now I have visibility to about 20 things I want to do. If you want to be at the beck and call of customers, you lose track: I mean, they kicked me off of every volleyball team I ever joined.