Google CIO Runs IT on Trust and Transparency

Google CIO Ben Fried says the entire company is geared toward consumerization. Google employees can use any research that they want-even devices or software produced by rivals just as Microsoft and Apple. Devices are distributed to "Googlers" on an honor system too-computer peripherals are stocked on a wire shelf and are free for the taking, no questions asked, Fried said Thursday at a company-sponsored symposium, Atmosphere, in New York. Nevertheless that level of acceptance is leavened by a firm commitment to accountability.

"You can take it. We trust you. We give people the possibility to make the right call for themselves and the company, and they do," he said. Fried, an IT veteran who spent years at NASA and Morgan Stanley, said he is a long-standing champion of new approaches to innovation, especially cloud computing and the use of consumer research in the business environment. "I thought, we can make these technologies work for the enterprise if I can do it, others can too," he said. However in order to facilitate such changes, "We believe the social contract between IT and users needs to change."

The Google IT system

That doesn't mean there's no accountability in the Google IT system. Nevertheless it is achieved by transparency, not fiat. "We don't force people to use anything at Google, yet we measure what they do use," Fried said. Once a month, employees receive a "bill" for the research and services they have consumed-from phones and data plans to conference rooms that they have booked for meetings. The knowledge of how people use resources-and how that usage compares to those of their peers-tends to make people more efficient, not less. "We let you compare your results to others, and the net result is good decision making," he said.

"We believe in a different social contract," Fried said. "My department's job is to give people the tools they believe they can be most productive with," he said. "They can choose Mac, Windows, Chrome or PC computers. If they want to use Office or iWork, they get Office or iWork."

Fried says he as well pushes as much of his infrastructure as possible to the cloud. That might seem obvious for a cloud vendor just as Google, however the move to the cloud was challenging, even there. A few years ago, Fried says, there were nevertheless seven email systems in use at Google. "Some even predated gmail," he said. It was difficult to phase them out, because each one had meanwhile one champion who said it was perfect for a particular business. Yet he in the long run compelled the entire organization to move to gmail and Google Apps definitely.

"I no longer have to worry about those things. That gives me incredible focus," he says. "Instead of worrying about systems that we don't get thanked for" even when they run properly, "we can focus on research that makes a difference, which is what IT should be doing."