ASIA
Pemex ’ s technological landscape , which Becerra Mizuno stresses needed streamlining with a degree of urgency . “ We needed to kickstart this immediately because we are working on the political clock , so we had to hit the ground running .”
Becerra Mizuno is referring to upcoming presidential elections which , depending on the result , could signal further reform at Pemex . The need to demonstrate the viability of the 2017-2021 Business Plan to any incumbent administration , and indeed the Mexican public , is therefore paramount .
THE GREAT ENABLER
Tangible progress has already been made . According to Becerra Mizuno , $ 50mn of savings have already been realised through strategic moves such as telco asset stripping , and by the end of the year Pemex will be relieved of its data centre management burden , instead operating on a hybrid cloud model and paying on demand for what it uses . Becerra Mizuno also points to a shift in spending priorities . “ When
I arrived , our budget was 90 % focused on investment , 10 % on operational excellence . That means that 90 % of things we did here with our budget was purchasing , which is how we arrived at this point where we have amassed a large amount of infrastructure .”
“ This year , we ’ re shifting that mix to 70 % opex , 30 % capex . We ’ re still not done , but we have changed the way we ’ re doing business now . We ’ re hiring service , not buying it .” The CIO points to the influence of both CEOs he has worked under – Jose Antonio González Anaya and now Carlos Treviño Medina . Without their leadership , much of this change would not have materialised .
This shift in priorities is better demonstrated by the recent Pemex Drive event , which invited key industry stakeholders to learn about the company ’ s new technologydriven strategy . “ We also wanted to create excitement around the company , which had been lost . It ’ s only now been revived by this and many other factors as well , including the efforts of the CEO .”
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