Tech To Web

Google Australia & New Zealand Engineering Director Alan Noble On The Importance Of Technology To Business

As part of the Robert Half CIO Masters Series, a senior IT executive from one of the world’s most influential technology companies talks about the impact of what he does on today’s business model.

“Technology is actually crucial to the success of every business,” says Alan Noble, “it’s just that some businesses don’t realise it yet.” These are important words for those pursuing technology jobs or technology careers.

As the Engineering Director in Australia & New Zealand for Google, Noble knows his stuff. Google Inc. is the American multinational corporation invested in internet search, cloud computing, advertising technologies and search engines. Not to mention the numerous internet-based services and products it develops.

Noble has lived and worked in Australia, Japan and the United States for multinationals and startups alike. He has founded or co-founded internet software companies and served as CTO of network performance software developer Foursticks. In 2005 he founded NWAN Optimisation solutions company NetPriva, itself acquired by Expand Networks in 2007—the same year Noble joined Google.

“Coming from a technology company like Google,” he says with no small amount of wonder, “it’s actually hard to get my head around the concept of technology in a support role because it’s so intrinsic to what we do.”

“But I’ll set that aside.There are tremendous opportunities for businesses today to focus on what’s important to their business. The technology should be the technology that really enables the business to differentiate itself and succeed. That’s very, very exciting.”

And Noble cautions that now is the time for business to focus on this, as the rate of change is accelerating dramatically and will create a huge challenge for the CIOs of the future. “Interesting statistic,” he says. “in 2009 the amount of digital information finally reached eight hundred exabytes. That’s eight hundred, followed by eighteen zeroes. But within a couple of years it’ll be almost a zettabyte, which is another three zeroes. How do you manage information flow? Fortunately, technology can play a huge role there.”

Inevitably, Noble believes, CIOs will migrate to the CEO’s office. “Our CEO is an engineer,” he points out proudly, referring to Google’s Eric Schmidt. “It’s probably a minority of companies like that today. I think you’ll see more of that in companies where either the technology is the lifeblood of the business or CIOs and CTOs themselves become more generalist, spending more of their careers outside of just IT.”

The corporate chain of command is mutating as well. “Google has a very large matrix organisation,” Noble explains. “So we do have the traditional VPs reporting in to the CEO. We have multiple VPs in engineering, we’re probably unusual in that there’s not a single engineering VP, there’s four VPs at last count. The CIO reports in to one of those senior VPs, so it’s a very senior position close to the top.”

“I think the reason we have more engineering VPs than other companies is because of the importance of technology to Google. I mean, at the end of the day we are a technology company first and foremost. And Google uses a lot of technology.”

As young IT professionals approach technology recruitment, it is imperative they understand the importance of technology to modern business.