Cutting-edge defense technology provider transforms IT from order taker to business enabler

Supporting a data-centric organization

For over 50 years, Leonardo DRS has provided cutting-edge defense technology and innovation to support the US military. CIO Wally Wilinsky has led the company’s IT efforts, transforming the department’s role from order taker to business enabler. Through Wilinsky’s proactive leadership, the IT department has centralized core infrastructure, reduced spend by 60%, and developed business-enabling solutions.

“We adopted your periodic table – the Info-Tech IT Management & Governance Framework. It really helped my team to think about maturing the IT organization.”
– Wally Wilinsky, CIO, Leonardo DRS

From research to IT

Wilinsky’s career began in research and engineering, where he built and wrote custom hardware and software. After his company was acquired by Leonardo DRS, he joined the IT department based on his experience building data models and data warehouses. Wilinsky had an early passion for computers but hadn't planned for a career in IT: "When I was in college, I was always interested in computers, but I also had an interest in science, so I got a degree in Applied Physics." He noted, "As it turned out, I ended up making a name for myself on the IT side."

In 2013, Wilinsky became CIO of Leonardo DRS and was tasked with three main priorities: reducing IT spend, consolidating IT services, and acquiring exceptional IT talent to move the business forward.

“The architecture is important. If you have a bunch of independent solutions that don't build on each other, you don't get that exponential return.”
– Wally Wilinsky, CIO, Leonardo DRS

Raising the bar for business enablement

When Wilinsky assumed the new position, he saw an opportunity to raise the bar for IT, leveraging technological capabilities to improve operational and strategic tasks across the organization.

But first, Wilinsky was faced with the challenge of centralizing 20 separate IT departments, resulting from a divisional structure and a legacy of acquisitions: "We had about 20 different IT organizations with 20 different internet points of presence, 20 email servers – redundancy everywhere. There was a lot of difference in maturity between the organizations and a lot of differences in technical capabilities. The consolidation allowed us to raise the bar for everybody." He added, "We ended up cutting 60% from IT spend after we did the consolidation."

Consolidating 20 IT divisions and streamlining IT processes was initially met with some pushback. Wilinsky had to show other team members the benefit of strategic problem solving: “One of the things that I’ve been able to do working with one of our other executives is really convince people how similar we are from a system standpoint. That prevents us from solving the same problem 10 different times.”

As one of his priorities, Wilinsky was able to retain all IT staff with some skill-based shuffling, showing them the importance of a continuous improvement mindset. Together, they have implemented a centralized IT infrastructure in less than two years, built automated workflows, improved reporting, significantly reduced IT budget and spend, and repositioned IT as a strategic partner and business enabler. Wilinsky had this to say about the team: “We haven't grown staff-wise proportionately to the capabilities we've added. And that's a testament to the team and to that continuous improvement mindset. So today, instead of just keeping lights on, we have people reaching out to us all the time … We provide the service of not just keeping all the IT stuff working but helping solve business problems for people.”

Changing the game ahead of the future

Ahead of the pandemic, Wilinsky’s team had rolled out a collaboration platform that became a game changer for the business. This capability enabled interstate collaboration like never before. By the time COVID-19 hit, they had the network and collaboration infrastructure to support remote work with only a few adjustments required. “It was business as usual,” said Wilinsky.

The team’s preparedness caught the attention of the executive leadership, further cementing the department’s role as a business enabler. Wilinsky and his team are now focused on building more capabilities on IT architecture, bridging the gap between exponential technology and IT’s competencies.

Supporting the CIO

To support his initiatives and accelerate IT results, Wilinsky leans on trusted partner Info-Tech Research Group.

Although Wilinsky had previous experience with an IT advisory firm, he finds Info-Tech’s resources, tools, and events to be much more valuable for his day-to-day needs. He considers Info-Tech Diagnostics (to identify gaps, benchmark performance, and guide resource allocation) a key resource that guides his business decisions: “Info-Tech Diagnostics are always valuable because you get good grounding information and a consolidated view of where you're at compared to other companies.”

Wilinsky also noted that the Info-Tech IT Management & Governance Framework helped to support core process maturity: "We adopted your periodic table – the Info-Tech IT Management & Governance Framework. It really helped my team to think about maturing the IT organization,” said Wilinsky.

Maximizing exponential opportunities

As emerging technologies open the door to exponential opportunity and innovation at Leonardo DRS, Wilinsky notes the importance of a solid foundation: "The architecture is important. If you have a bunch of independent solutions that don't build on each other, you don't get that exponential return. For the last 10 years, we've been building a solid foundation and building capabilities on top of it, to be able to do more and more."

Wilinsky’s plans include continuing data centricity and increasing trust within the business, migrating the company’s on-premises Microsoft BI solution to the cloud, leveraging other tools for business process automation, and investigating large language AI model capabilities and machine learning for business use cases.