But more than just strategising and supporting IT services, the organisation also collaborates closely with product development groups, providing an enterprise view of upcoming solutions, in a real-world operational environment, and provides valuable insight and first feedback to the development teams. The OTG, according to Devenuti, is on the look out for IT pain points, and it is often from these, say, for example, in identity management tools, that his organisation can help improve and enhance the designs of solutions that will eventually be released to the customer base.

Used to dealing with newer-than-new software and solutions, what gets him excited these days? Plenty. Using Microsoft Office 2003 and other new applications, and consolidation efforts, have paid off as Devenuti has been able to see plenty in savings and productivity gains.

He also spotlights Share Point, a set of products and technologies for facilitating collaboration and sharing of information within an organisation, as having brought dividends. The tools provided allow business units and teams to have access to up-to-date information through thousands of Team sites, or collaborative websites. "You're basically sharing information that used to sit on your hard disk. We're now into totally paperless meetings, and the workflow is different."

A typical meeting for Devenuti features a wireless Tablet PC, equipped with OneNote, a Microsoft Office feature that acts like 'digital paper', helping him take and organise notes, as well as allowing him to have access to the latest versions of documents and information he needs to get the job done. Its tight integration with Office applications, for example, e-mail, allow notes and action items to be shuttled immediately to those who need to know, where before, the notes would often get lost in a small mountain of paper and e-mail.

"[These technologies have] changed my workflow," he says. "I'm now able to subscribe to [files, documents and information] from colleagues, for example report files from Asia Pacific. As long as they are shared, I can see them. It lets us collaborate better."