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Past Symposium/ITxpo
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Disney Using IT to Keep the Magic Running Friday, 11 October 2002 View the Webcast People who attend the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo held at the Walt Disney World Resort every year can attest to the sheer size and scope of the Disney property in Lake Buena Vista. The concept of using IT to connect and integrate what is essentially a large city — the Disney World Resort encompasses 47 square miles, equivalent to the size of San Francisco — would seem to be challenging enough even if that were the only thing the Walt Disney Company did: run just a single vacation resort. Disney, to say the least, expands its mouse ears far and wide, worlds beyond central Florida, into countless and varying ventures. So the challenge is much greater — and important. During Thursday's Mastermind Keynote Interview at Symposium/ITxpo 2002, Disney CIO Michael Tasooji discussed how his company uses IT to try and pull all those products and services together. Joining Mr. Tasooji were Roger Berry, senior VP and CIO of Information Technology for Walt Disney World, and Tony Tamburo, senior VP of management information systems for ESPN of which Disney is the majority owner. Mr. Tasooji became CIO of Disney Company two years ago, heading a team of more than 20 CIOs from other Disney business units. Often, the various Disney businesses were doing similar things but working independently. The company was involved in nearly 1,000 projects, supporting more than 4,000 systems and sourcing from over 1,300 technology vendors. This unwieldy landscape led, early in Mr. Tasooji's first year, to a two-week workshop on how to streamline, integrate and leverage IT throughout the entire Disney enterprise. "It was critical for us to come together as a CIO leadership team and define the Disney IT strategy," Mr. Tasooji said. "In the end, the goal was for IT to help us generate value from our products and services." Those products and services are numerous. The diversified worldwide entertainment company, started by the visionary Walt Disney in 1955, has operations in four business segments: Media Networks, Parks and Resorts, Studio Entertainment and Consumer Products. Media Networks is comprised of the ABC Television Network and the ABC Radio Networks. Disney also owns or is a majority owner of Disney Channel, Toon Disney, SoapNet, ESPN, Inc., A&E Television Networks, Lifetime Entertainment Services and E! Entertainment Television. The Internet operations of the Media Networks groups develop, publish and distribute content for online services such as ABC.com, ABCNEWS.com, Enhanced TV, ABCSports.com, ESPN.com, Disney.com, Family.com and Movies.com. Parks and Resorts is comprised of the Walt Disney World Resort and Disney Cruise Line in Florida, the Disneyland Resort in California, ESPN Zone facilities in several states and Anaheim Sports in California. The Studio Entertainment segment produces live-action and animated motion pictures, television animation programs, musical recordings and live stage plays. The Consumer Products segment licenses the company's characters and other intellectual property to consumer manufacturers, retailers, show promoters and publishers throughout the world. From that single groundbreaking 47 years ago in the middle of, when was then, miles of empty orange groves in California, to all that. "This is a creative culture, and the IT people here are so great," said Mr. Berry, who formerly served as CIO for Campbell Soup. "And it works because of the executive support of the technology and the realization that creative technology brings all of our products and services to life." For instance, Mr. Berry showed off a demo version of a Mickey Mouse doll that uses smart technology. Inside the doll is a sensing chip that can pick up signals from, say, different parts of an amusement park. "Your four-year-old can carry Mickey around Magic Kingdom, and Mickey can tell your child everything about the park as you navigate through all the areas," Mr. Berry said. "Mickey receives all kinds of information — even, as an example, whether there's a long line or short line at Space Mountain. This way, the experience is that your child becomes the tour guide with Mickey, and your child becomes the expert." The Mickey doll is scheduled to be released in the middle of 2003. Another example of technology at work: A family vacationing at Disney World can use the hotel room key for everything — payments and transactions at any hotel, any restaurant, any park or attraction, anywhere on the company property. If that same family is then bound for a Disney Cruise, when they check out of the hotel, the next time they will see their luggage is on the ship. And they can still use that same hotel room key on the cruise ship, for check-in and check-out and everything in between. Making life easier and more convenient. Streamlining and integrating processes. That's the dividend that technology delivers when used right. Mr. Tamburo has worked for Disney for 20 years and for ESPN since 1993, helping the cable sports network become a living example of the real-time enterprise through leading-edge IT deployment. ESPN viewers receive up-to-the-second updates on scores and results from hundreds of locations worldwide. It wasn't always that way. In 1996, ESPN broadcasting executives wanted to develop a real-time, on-screen clock for college football games. Tamburo and his team used a video-recognition system and trained a special camera on the onsite stadium scoreboard. The information was instantly received by the production team and presented on the TV screen in what's called a "mini board." ESPN now has this capability in place inside 229 college and professional stadiums throughout the country, with the information being directly wired to and stored in a large data center at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. "So, in essence, you had achieved the real-time enterprise even before we introduced the RTE concept a few months ago," Jamie Popkin, group vice president and research fellow for Gartner, informed Mr. Tamburo. Mr. Popkin was joined on the panel by Marianne Broadbent, group vice president for Gartner EXP. John Allen Gartner Staff |
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