Bill Maguire, Virgin America CIO
Position: 25 Last year: Not ranked
Why? Building a new airline IT infrastructure from scratch in just 18 months
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From a standing start, Bill Maguire has built a lightweight and flexible technology set-up for the new Richard Branson-backed US domestic low-cost airline, Virgin America, which took to the air in August this year.
Since joining the airline at the beginning of 2006 through an advert on online classifieds service Craigslist, Maguire has built a green-field IT infrastructure on a relatively modest budget with an in-house tech team of just 20 people.
He has managed to accomplish this feat through a combination of open source and outsourcing. The airline is running more than half its applications on Red Hat Linux and outsourcing its reservation system and network infrastructure.
Maguire's career spans 23 years in the US Postal Service where he managed one of the agency's largest data centres. More recently he was CIO at Legato Systems and then CRM software company Aspect Communications, where he reduced IT costs by $4m a year.
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Content featuring Bill Maguire
From Paul Coby at 11 and Bill Maguire at 25 - airline CIOs at BA and Virgin America respectively - to Rorie Devine at 26 over at Betfair and even the BBC's Ashley Highfield at 5 and BT's JP Rangaswami at 48 - two whose time is also spent providing...
From Paul Coby at 11 and Bill Maguire at 25 - airline CIOs at BA and Virgin America respectively - to Rorie Devine at 26 over at Betfair and even the BBC's Ashley Highfield at 5 and BT's JP Rangaswami at 48 - two whose time is also spent providing...
The other airline CIO, at 25 on the list, is Bill Maguire at Virgin America, the Branson-backed US domestic low-cost airline start-up, which made its maiden customer flights this summer. Maguire's achievement since joining the airline at the...
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