Suncorp's 1450 IT staff are about to turn their attention from the organisation's computing infrastructure overhaul, which was completed this month, to a reworking of Suncorp's business processes.Jeff Smith, group executive business technology, said in an interview that the overhaul of IT infrastructure over the last two years or so delivered more than $53 million of savings, reduced the IT headcount by 550 and cut IT operational costs by 20 per cent. Smith joined Suncorp from IT vendor Majitek in early 2007. He served as chief information officer of Telstra from 2002 to 2005, and is also a former CIO or CTO of IstarSystems, Allied Signal and Ingersoll-Rand.On joining in 2007 Smith had to tackle the mess of legacy computers and software inherited as a result of mergers with GIO (earlier in this decade) and Promina (in 2006). The merger with Promina also delivered a swag of separate IT systems supporting the AAMI, Australian Pensioner's Insurance Agency, Vero, Tyndall and Asteron business units.Over the last two and a half years Smith has focussed on getting the infrastructure right. "We now have a single desktop platform and can log-in with a single password across Australian and New Zealand. We have reduced from seven to two data centres (including the Springfield centre which Smith claims as the only Tier4+ data centre in Australia) and from 3200 servers to 200 in a virtualised environment. "We are down from 85 Unix boxes to five, and from four mainframes to two. We have moved from five data and voice networks to one and have IP telephony in all offices and call centres." Optus is the supplier of the data and voice network for Suncorp. A Tier4+ data centre is one that has more redundant cooling and more security features, such as more extensive "caging". The big virtualisation push on both software and servers means that systems utilisation and efficiency has also increased significantly. "My first day was the day of integration of Suncorp and Promina. We knew we could drive a lot of cost out by consolidating the infrastructure. We committed to $53 million in savings and we exceeded that."With the infrastructure decks cleared, Smith's new, and bigger, challenge, issued by new chief executive Patrick Snowball, is to overhaul the computer systems supporting business processes. "Patrick's got clarity of purpose around what to do. Before that we had a temporary CEO and three or four lines of business operating independently," said Smith.Snowball's address at the recent Suncorp AGM stressed that "The potential of these brands and businesses can only be fully utilised when there is the appropriate balance between the power of a single group structure and the autonomy of individual brands."That meant that "Reducing business complexity will be an immediate priority."Whether it is at the front end of the business in claims policy handling and the management of customer data or at the back end in the way we manage claims, manage our finances and manage our people, we have built in too many systems,