Face to Face
Erv Barnes
Chief Information Officer

Erv Barnes moved to Alaska last year to become Alyeska’s Chief Information Officer. Barnes has 26 years of experience in the information technology field including a stint with IBM, Inc.

What do you view as IT’s primary responsibility for the company?

Information is one of the major resources needed to operate the business. It’s our job to get the skills, resources and systems in place to make appropriate business decisions. We can’t get too enamored of the technology for its own sake. We need to determine the right level of information and technology to do the work efficiently.

How does your department keep up with all of the changes in IT?

We need technology that is relevant to our business. We can never really keep up with all of the changes in technology so the challenge is to determine the best technology for the job. Many businesses have gone bankrupt because they put too much emphasis on keeping up with technology. Today, technology is changing so fast that the challenge of IT in a business is to not overlook how the business works.

What do you consider the most challenging issue facing IT at Alyeska?

I would like to see Alyeska as a company realize the power that IT can bring to revolutionizing the business. Technology alone can’t make it happen, the business must change too.

What will change the most in IT in the next several years?

The full impact of the Internet and wireless communication. The next level of IT for the pipeline will be instant access – information on demand. We currently capture all kinds of data about the operation but the challenge is how to use it. There is tremendous value in providing that information instantly to some of our upstream and downstream customers. I like to think of this concept as the digital pipeline.