Today we are talking to Fletcher Previn, the CIO at IBM. And we discuss how to progress your career, what IT modernization looks like in the government sector, and how to balance the long-term effects of remote work.

All of this, right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

About Fletcher Previn:

As IBM’s Chief Information Officer, Fletcher Previn leads a global team of over 12,000 employees whose mission is to prioritize user experience and provide secure, global IT, at scale for ~350,000 IBM employees worldwide. The CIO organization operates in a highly centralized shared services model as IBM’s single IT department, enabling IBM’s transformation to an AI and cloud platform company – a cognitive enterprise.

Under his leadership, IBM pioneered new ways of delivering IT across the world’s largest network, established an agile culture of breaking down big problems into small ones, and embedded design into operations (DesOps).

Fletcher was the first to identify opportunities that enabled IBM to offer a device choice program at the enterprise level, leading to consistently reduced IT support requests and record high customer satisfaction. This allows for new and creative ways to deliver support, including a number of Think Desks where IBMers can get personal service from experts. In October 2019, he announced IBM’s plan to open source the “choice program” code to help others transform how they enable IT for employees. His team also established a program to allow employees to purchase their workstation after a four-year period which resulted in a substantial reduction of tickets for damaged machines. And, with Watson AI technology, Fletcher’s team is reducing the IT burden of managing its network of complex systems and over a half million devices.

Fletcher joined IBM in 2006 and has held several key roles in sales and technology. His extensive experience spans reinventing desktop computing environments (Windows, Mac, Linux), industry leading solutions for sellers and mobility programs, transforming IT infrastructure, delivering productivity tools and Agile transformation.

Prior to joining IBM, he managed the Enterprise Systems Group at Walmart.com.

Fletcher holds Microsoft and Cisco certifications and is a graduate of Connecticut College with a degree in Political Science.

About IBM:

At IBM, work is more than a job – it’s a calling: To build. To design. To code. To consult. To think along with clients and sell. To make markets. To invent. To collaborate. Not just to do something better, but to attempt things you’ve never thought possible. To lead in this new era of technology and solve some of the world’s most challenging problems. 

IBM is a leading cloud platform and cognitive solutions company. Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are the largest technology and consulting employer in the world, with more than 350,000 employees serving clients in 170 countries. With Watson, the AI platform for business, powered by data, we are building industry-based solutions to real-world problems. For more than seven decades, IBM Research has defined the future of information technology with more than 3,000 researchers in 12 labs located across six continents. For more information, visit www.ibm.com.