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Bill Maguire

K Bharat Kumar

Not too many IT vendors would want to get down to nitty-gritty when negotiating with this Chief Information Officer. As he says so himself, with a chuckle, “I am a CIO with a degree in law.” That combination is potent enough to help Bill Maguire, CIO, Virgin America, to keep his IT vendors on their toes. Virgin America is a new airline that wants to use technology to beat down costs. The Cybernet Slassh Support (CSS) group provides remote infrastructure management (RIM) and high-end tech support to Virgin America. Facilitating a chat between eWorld and Maguire, Shiva Ramani, CEO and co-founder, CSS, says, “Virgin has high-end, in-flight features but continues to remain a low-cost airline.” And much of that credit could go to Maguire. Let’s see what he says:

Before you came to Virgin, you were with Aspect Communications where you had the entire IT infrastructure redesigned to save more. How did you manage that while managing increased investments that a redesign triggers?

I studied the architecture of the key components of the IT infrastructure from ground up — network, security, applications space and operations management to look at where are key opportunities for improvement, where are the business requirements I can deliver on to give a strategic advantage to a business group (engineering, sales, finance, etc). Basically I drive technology business to the solution. That’s how value is created to the business. I re-architected the network — there was a lot of old, inefficient equipment that was expensive to maintain. We made communications better, automated ordering and procurement processes. The company was about 2,000 employees then. Improving productivity for the company by 3 per cent is equivalent to adding 60 people every year!

How did you come upon CSS for the RIM?

I have been dealing with Indian companies for a number of years now, doing offshore software development work. I wanted to see how we could partner with an offshore company from an operations perspective, having previously achieved success from a development perspective. I did enough research on this front and looked at a number of companies, including big companies. I was looking for a company that was more agile, that has the strict discipline we need for operations and could deliver what I needed to, and monitor our infrastructure and systems.

What really pushed me to CSS was the extensive work they are doing with open source. We are using two dozen open source products, thanks to which we have saved close to $6 million for Virgin America in the last two years. Products today are mature enough to not cause undue risk. Our e-Commerce site, which does 80 per cent of our business today, runs on open source.

Virgin America tends to position itself differently from a lot of other airlines. Does it make a difference to the way the CIO looks at IT implementation?

Our airline is very technology-focused. As a result of that, we needed to build an infrastructure that was very scalable, integrated and dependable, that could change frequently and still remain manageable.

For example, we use our Web site as a vehicle for generating revenues and taking care of our customers. The integration of that to our guest services system, IVR (Interactive Voice Recording) system and how that ties back into our reservation system and how we manage the business today and how we can adapt to change are critical aspects.

Because of how we put those features together, when we have spike in business or when we are going to run a promotion, it is as simple as picking up the phone and notifying the partner as to what is going to happen. The partner will make a change to the IVR or add a few more resources. I can handle the spike in business without disruption. Part of it comes from the carefully built architecture. Again, Open Source actually has helped us in this regard.

Is this the first time you have opted for Remote IMS. Can you let us know the thought process in your decision to offshore?

This is the first time we have chosen to do remote infrastructure management services. CSS helps manage our helpdesk during off hours and through the weekends. They analyse issues very quickly, have good processes in place and execute very well. That’s very critical. Because, in our business, if there is an issue from the operations control centre, which manages the planes, we need to be responsive right away.

Team Size at Cybernet — SlashSupport (CSS) and period of engagement?

That team varies according to the spikes in business. Also, the CSS team is growing, because we are expanding. This is set as a multi-year (three years) relationship with yearly renewal system.

In evaluating offshore partners, did you consider the big players in this space?

Having been in the business for 30 years, I have come to know what to expect from Tier-1 players. There definitely was a concern with the kind of attention that Tier 1 players would provide us. We are a big start-up but are still not a monster with regard to revenue dollars. I needed someone to be a partner with me in our growth, who would give us the attention and be responsive to us.

Do you work with other vendors as well, from India?

We work with NIIT (Technologies). They built the back-end of our Web site and help maintain that. They partner us on the development side, like CSS does on the operations support work.

IT budgets of Virgin America?

We have only been flying since August. From this year to next, IT budgets will be up 30 per cent. There will be a jump because we are a new company and we are opening up new stations and adding more planes.

You are looking to grow from 10 cities to 30 cities over five years. What does that mean to your outsourcing relationship with CSS or your software partner NIIT?

We have an architecture/infrastructure that can scale horizontally. What that really means is that with the application that we have today, we can handle 10 stations or 30 stations, similarly 10 planes or 1,000 planes. So, there are more services to monitor and manage. CSS has the opportunity to grow as our operations grow and to be an integral part of managing those operations. Also, they have the opportunity to provide more of their open source management solutions. As we grow, software testing will become even more critical than it has been up to now.

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