Nkone resigns as Old Mutual CIO

By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent

Cape Town, 04 Oct 2007

Old Mutual SA has appointed Eileen Wilton as its new CIO to replace Theo Nkone.

Nkone has left the company to focus on his community development work, says the financial services group.

Wilton is the first woman CIO appointed by Old Mutual, after having held a similar position with mineral resources group Anglo American. She joined Old Mutual in March as general manager of technology within Old Mutual's services, technology and administration division, a responsibility that Wilton retains.

Nkone was appointed to this position in early 2004 and replaced long-standing former CIO Vic Lumby, who was transferred to run Old Mutual's US businesses.

During Nkone's three-year tenure, he oversaw three projects that are expected to transform Old Mutual's IT infrastructure: Project Rosa, Project Merlot and the migration of its desktop operating systems to Microsoft Vista.

Rosa winner

Wilton said today the winner of Project Rosa, which would see the renewal of an outsourcing services agreement, is due to be announced within the next two weeks.

The three tending companies are IBM, CSC (the incumbent) and T-Systems. The deal is worth an estimated R5 billion over the five-year period and it could be extended by another two years, if necessary, she says.

"Project Rosa was to have included Old Mutual, Mutual and Federal and Nedbank; however, now it only includes Old Mutual and Mutual and Federal. The project is to replace the original contract we had with CSC, which has come to the end of its natural life."

Merlot bottled up

Project Merlot is a joint project between Old Mutual and Nedbank. It was awarded to a consortium of CSC, as the project aggregator, and Telkom, last year, with the objective of upgrading voice and telecommunications services. Wilton says the project is already producing its projected savings and benefits. It is worth an estimated $275 million.

Old Mutual was one of the first global organisations to sign a deal to upgrade to Microsoft's Vista operating system, with Nkone signing the contract in July. The plan will see Old Mutual SA and some of the group's overseas affiliates migrate an estimated 20 000 PCs from the middle of next year.

"We have to ready our own internally developed applications for Vista as it is a re-engineering of Microsoft's operating system. One of the benefits of being an early adopter is that we will have access to the first patch by the time we start implementing the system," Wilton says.