Affiliated Computer Services to be bought by Xerox

You many wonder what in the heck that title has to do with Disney and a blog named ‘All Things Disney’…  but then again, if you’ve found my little blog on the internet then you are, my friend, not your NORMAL Disneyana fan.  No?!

And given that premise you’d know then that I wouldn’t suggest something unless it was related, and of course you’d be correct…

Far strung throughout the Disney empire is a highly technical shop.  They make all kinds of things happen that bring people together, work tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure things are running smoothly and that everybody has a good time (or is being productive).  Who might that be you say?  Imagineering?  Parks and Resorts folks?  Neh, I say…  it’s really none other than Disney IT!

See not all that long ago, or so the story I’ve been told goes, Disney let each of the BU’s (that’s business units in management speak) run their own IT operations.  Each BU was like it’s own little ‘kingdom’ shall we say, to abuse a metaphor given the subject. 

But for a company the size of Disney that’s not always the most efficient or effective way to manage your resources.  So they began to coordinate the IT centers inside each of the BU’s.  Michael Eisner also named Michael Tasooji the first Disney CIO in 2000.  Michael stayed on until leaving Disney in 2003 for The Gap Inc., and just recently left there according to LinkedIn to start his own company Digital Innovation Technology.

Frankly it’s not exactly clear what happened next from the outside, but given the turmoil in the company at the time, it’s probably safe to assume that the official CIO job went empty until Disney hired Tony Scott from GM (yes, THAT GM) in early 2005. 

A lot of stuff was made out of Tony’s GM days, but the REAL answer was in his previous years at the drug maker Bristol-Meyers Squibb.  A speaking profile says this is where he ‘led the transformation of their technology infrastructure organization to a shared services model and the development of a corporate infrastructure to support implementation of SAP and web-based technologies.’ 

And that’s where ACS comes in.  Yep, you knew we’d get there eventually no? 

In June of 2005 Disney announced that they were outsourcing almost all of their IT services.  And guess you’ve figured out by now who won?  ACS of course.  At the time the contract was for 7 years and approx. $610 million. 

Tony (and probably some others as well) also brought with them from those drug industry days a passion for IT services management.  Today the most widely known standard here is the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (or ITIL) which was published in 2006 under v2 and more recently in v3.  Which of course is how Disney now operates most of their outsourced IT services as well (ITIL that is), including the contract under which ACS operates. 

Disney also has other outsourced IT services contracts covering other parts of their infrastructure requirements.  Where ACS does the ‘services’ side of the offering for instance, HP does all the print services.  Cell phone, land lines, etc. etc. etc… all come under the umbrella at some point of Disney IT.

Tony left Disney in 2008 to go work for Bill as his CIO.  And in May of 2008 Bob Iger and crew appointed Susan O’Day, the current CIO of Disney to her current position.  It’s probably little wonder by the way, that Susan also came from the drug industry, where she also spent 12 years at a little drug company named:  Bristol-Meyers Squibb. 

So there is how today’s $5.7 billion offer for Dallas based ACS by the Norwalk, CT based Xerox affects the world of ‘all things Disney’.