GE Employee: Meet Our People: Profiles Jim

In most companies, the need for an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system is critical. In fact, a recent CIO Magazine survey said businesses couldn't live without them, as they are paramount to integrating all the data and processes of an organization into one single system.

While the idea of an ERP system may seem easy to grasp in theory, the reality is often quite different, as most companies have a plethora of different systems and procedures, as well as hardware and software, designed specifically for each of their department's needs. Integrating these systems is often easier said than done. No one knows this better than Jim Giordano, ERP Leader for GE Technology Infrastructure.

"My current role as ERP Leader is one of the most exciting and challenging positions I've ever had," says Jim. "My team manages 19 production ERP systems, running over 200 databases across 128 UNIX services, using 250 terabytes of storage."

These systems are responsible for GE's Aviation, Energy, Transportation, and Oil & Gas's accounting and financial applications, procurement, order processing and supplier management, inventory management, HR management and payroll functions - all of which demand 24x7 availability.

"The scale of these systems is enormous and the need for seamless integration is paramount," says Jim. "What makes it manageable is the tools and resources GE provides my team to do their jobs well, and the encouragement we receive across the company to stretch our thinking and come up with creative solutions to keep availability high, and costs low."

A great example of this is our Intelligent Diagnostics & Repair project. Through this effort we were able to automate the cloning of our ERP environments from production to development and testing. This effort reduced our cloning time from 24 hours down to 4 hours. Given that we perform over 550 ERP clones a year, this resulted in almost 1,000 hours in productivity savings.

Jim joined GE in 2005, and has over 20 years of IT experience and delivering database support for large ERP implementations.

The best advice he has for an IT professional embarking on a technical career, "Take the time to master a key technology. Far too often, people try to move up the company ladder without taking the time to ground themselves first. Become an expert on one piece of the technology stack. For me it was databases, and I have never regretted the time I spent learning about them."