Lynne Ellyn, Senior Vice President and CIO, DTE Energy

Honey, They Shrunk My Budget

Driving Out Complexity, Driving Down Cost$

At DTE Energy, a US$9 billion-per-year diversified energy company serving Detroit, Michigan, the pressure to pare expenses began five years ago following its acquisition of Michigan Consolidated Gas Company (MichCon), one of the nation's largest natural gas utilities. DTE Energy's largest operating subsidiaries are Detroit Edison, an investor-owned electric utility serving 2.2 million customers, and MichCon, which serves 1.3 million customers.

At the heart of the effort was the elimination of complexity wherever it lurked throughout the IT infrastructure. "Our approach focused on two areas: managing assets to reduce the cost of delivery and delivering services that make the most difference to corporate performance and customer service," says Lynne Ellyn, senior vice president and chief information officer (CIO) at DTE Energy. "We worked diligently on process, technology standards, and how we manage people. We also focused on developing clear corporate standards for IT governance, security, email, archiving, and data storage." First up: a consolidation effort meshing a culture that favored outsourcing (MichCon) with one that preferred a higher ratio of internally managed systems (Detroit Edison).

The strategy paid off: DTE Energy pruned more than US$20 million a year from its IT tab. Since then, DTE's IT organization has taken more steps to deliver better services and introduce efficiencies across the infrastructure, resulting in a 50 percent reduction in the IT budget over the past five years.

Ellyn's team moved forward on multiple fronts. Adopting more tactical strategies such as server consolidation and capacity planning decreased total cost of ownership. Investing in thin clients, meanwhile, generated savings in terms of purchase price, longer life cycle, scalability, and administration costs. It also yielded an enhanced security profile and improved management of the delivery of systems. "On the storage side, we divided the application portfolio into applications that require the highest availability and are the most expensive and those that need less," Ellyn says.

Symantec solutions have played an important role. "One of the most unproductive things to do is fix security problems, so we've made significant investments in security technologies," Ellyn says. "Transferring a complex task from people to technology drives down the labor cost and allows fewer people to do more work. Symantec is a great partner for us in that regard."