GM plans outsourcing trim

CIO of General Motors, goes about his workday, he carries with him a well-worn calculator, Information Week writes.

It sits in front of him in the place of prominence that most people reserve for a smartphone.

Mott, who has been CIO at Wal-Mart, Dell and Hewlett-Packard and joined GM in February, believes in numbers. And as he tries to transform GM's IT operations, he plans to flip one set of numbers on a scale that no CIO has ever done before.

Today, about 90% of GM's IT services, from running data centres to writing applications, are provided by outsourcing companies such as HP/EDS, IBM, Capgemini and Wipro, and only 10% are done by GM employees. Mott plans to flip those percentages in about three years - to 90% GM staff, 10% outsourcers.

Last year, GM announced plans to invest $130 million to build an enterprise data centre at its Technical Centre campus, in Warren, which will allow it to reduce operating costs by consolidating its IT infrastructure into a more efficient facility, Data Center Knowledge reports.

GM estimates that the energy-efficiency improvements at the new data centre will reduce its operating costs by as much as 40%.