CIO Profiles: Tasos Tsolakis Of Iron Mountain

Career Track

How long at Iron Mountain: Almost two years at this provider of records management and data backup services.

Career accomplishment I'm most proud of: I was part of the team that launched AT&T Internet Services. During our first week of operation, we got 10 times the demand that the business anticipated for the first six months of the service. Scaling the service while supporting customers was a big challenge and a key accomplishment.

Most important career influencer: Hank Bergmann, my first mentor at Bell Labs. He helped me focus on practical results and simplify plans and design.

On The Job

IT budget: $102 million

Size of IT team: 480 employees

Top initiatives:

How I measure IT effectiveness: Some of the key metrics we use are measurements of business team and customer satisfaction, expense to revenue, and on-time delivery and defects in the first month of production.

Vision

One thing I'm looking to do better this year: In the past year, we made significant investment in talent acquisition. This year will stabilize the team by focusing on key deliverables and delivering on schedule for our key projects and initiatives.

Lesson learned from the recession: You can be more effective with less of a budget, still meeting your goals and delivering results.

What the federal government's top technology priority should be: Make the government more open--use technology to make more information more accessible to more people.

Kids and technology careers: Although I don't have children, I would definitely steer them toward technology. It's pervasive in our society, and you need to be proficient in it to be successful.

Personal

Degrees: Virginia Tech, MS and Ph.D.; Wharton Business School, MBA

Leisure activity: Motorcycling

Tech vendor CEO I admire most: Sam Palmisano of IBM

Pet peeve: Reliance on big budgets; it's possible to do more with less

If I weren't CIO, I'd be ... the CEO of a startup technology firm

Ranked No. 47 in the 2011