Atrue techie at heart, Gary Scholten, senior vice president and CIO at The Principal Financial Group, doesnt get his fill of technology just at the office. I do elaborate things at home, he says, referring to his personal technology setup, and hes the one doing tech support for the family. Its actually a lot of fun, he admits.

Besides family tech supporthis wife is a vigorous user, he sayshe builds Web sites for youth sports organizations hes involved in, teaches his kids the idiosyncrasies of digital cameras and CD writers, and generally keeps everything running. Just like at the office.

Scholten started his career at The Principal when he graduated from the University of Northern Iowa in 1980. It was a long and winding road, with interesting scenery along the way, but he never strayed from the path. He has spent his entire career at The Principal, the Des Moines, Iowa-based financial services behemoth.

With his bachelors degree firmly in hand, Scholten started off as an assistant planning analyst in the area now known as IT. As he moved up the ranks, his career path meandered through most of the major business divisions of The Principal. Exposure to all those units gave him a good view of the insurance landscape.

As a Fortune 500 company, The Principal offers lots of lush scenery to take in. With more than $100 billion in assets under management, its clearly a financial services heavyweight. The Principal is the countrys largest in its core business handling 401(k) accounts, according to CFO Magazines annual rankings of insurance companies, banks, and investment companies. It has, in fact, business entities and divisions in every aspect of financial services except for property/casualty insurance. Other large divisions include life insurance, annuities, group insurance, mutual funds, mortgages, and even banking. Customers total more than 13 million worldwide.

New Head of IT

Two months ago, Scholtens career path led to his current position at the top of IT in the company. He officially took on his two titles at The Principal after CIO Carl Williams retired. Scholten is responsible for 1,800 of The Principals 16,000 employees, including seven CIOs of various operating companies.

Im charged with making this a world-class IT operation,_he says, and, in many ways, were already there. That statement, delivered in a matter-of-fact manner, isnt a boast at all. The Principal already has an award-winning IT shop.

One current focus, according to Scholten, is architecture planning. As we implement business solutions that are technology enabled, he says, its important that we do them in ways that are repeatable, efficient, and effective. Its also important, he continues, that architecture planning support integration.

Enterprise application integration is a major area for him. We want to make sure our customer experiences are common ones, he states, so that we dont appear as separate business silos to them. In other words, a customer would have similar navigation and user interfaces when looking at his 401(k) or his mutual funds and be able to move between them.

Scholten likes to keep an eye on emerging technologies but says his company doesnt implement new technologies until there is a business case to do so. The litmus test, he says, is this: If the name of the needs analysis includes the name of the new technology, thats a red flag.

So what kind of personal technology does Scholten use? Quite a variety, it turns out. First, he uses an IBM ThinkPad as his notebook computer, taking it with him when he goes home at night. Contrary to many, Ive never been able to justify the extra effort of using a PDA or BlackBerry, even though Ive tried, he says. He uses the Microsoft Office suite of products on his notebook.

Scholten has high-speed access at home through MediaCom (formerly AT&T @ Home). I got tired of hassling with a wired network, though, so I recently installed a wireless network at home. He has three PCsnot counting his notebookfor his wife and two kids. His choice of wireless standard for his home network is IEEE 802.11b.

Steeped in technology at home and the office, Scholten makes certain to keep an eye on newer IT trends. There is a whole class of technologies, beyond wireless, that allows customers and marketers to interact with us the way they want to, on their terms, he points out. Hes avidly monitoring developments in natural voice recognition and other forms of telephony, he says. When might he deploy some of these newer tools? Displaying the careful conservatism that has kept The Principal growing and profitable when so many others arent, he only would commit, Its on the very serious watch list.

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