For the best part of the past decade, JP Rangaswami has been one of the highest profile IT leaders in the UK, first as global chief information officer (CIO) at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DKW), more recently at BT as CIO for its Global Services division.

But following a recent move to the BT Design unit, where he is managing director, Rangaswami says he’s left IT behind ­ even if he is keen to stress he hasn’t abandoned technology, merely broadened his scope. As part of BT’s embrace of convergence, it was necessary to move beyond the traditional approach, where IT and networking were regarded as separate, he says.

“If you start talking about CIOs, it is like you’re making a judgement that IT won. That’s not a message that our network guys want to hear, and it’s not one we want to promote,” he says. “We’re serious about the convergence of IT and networking, and these subtle messages are an important part of reinforcing that.”

Rangaswami is clearly also passionate about the company’s NHS work (see below) ­ it fits with his motivations for joining BT in the first place. After a decade of working at a large bank, he wanted a move into an area that would continually excite, challenge and inspire him.

He saw the concept of universal access to affordable connectivity as the most exciting challenge in technology ­ capable of improving the lives of everyone, as this connectivity could underpin radical improvements in healthcare provision and welfare. BT’s plans to build its 21st Century Network (21CN) seemed to embody that quest for affordable connectivity, he says.

When he joined BT in 2006, no other global telecoms firm could match its vision for delivering a converged network, says Rangaswami ­ hardly surprising given the corrosive impact of the dot-com bust on the sector and the huge capital outlay required to build a completely converged network. And he is in no doubt that building 21CN and delivering valuable services on the back of it remains a huge project for BT.

Rangaswami sees BT Design playing a critical role in making 21CN a success. The unit enforces two key measurements of project success that drive improvement across the telecoms giant. One is the extent to which it can deliver what the customer wants first time; the other is the degree to which it can reduce the cycle time for delivering innovation.

Underpinning these are a series of principles governing expected margins, and cost reduction through the use of offshore development ­ as well as having to comply with regulator Ofcom’s ruling on prices for various services.

Rangaswami is adamant that sticking to these principles will ensure BT is moving in the right direction. And to improve BT’s ability to deliver value for its customers, Rangaswami is keen to embrace lessons from the open source community.

Understanding the dynamic of how communities prioritise their efforts and how consensus is achieved in often febrile atmospheres is playing a central part in BT’s efforts to spur innovation. And the only true way to understand that process is to participate in those communities, says Rangaswami.

Through its July acquisition of web telephony company Ribbit, BT has gained a foothold in a vibrant open source community, which it hopes will be a hotbed for new products and services in the telephony market. “You never hear of an open source project that has failed,” says Rangaswami.

BT confident relations with NHS will improve over time

The most obvious pain point for BT Global Services is its contracts with the NHS, which form part of the £12bn National Programme for IT.

BT’s involvement has been under the spotlight following problems at one of the main trial sites in London for the vital care records application. And last week, Computing revealed that the NHS had already rebuffed one bid from BT to add the troubled Southern region to its portfolio of deals after the original co ntractor, Fujitsu, had its contract terminated.

But Rangaswami is adamant that the situation will turn round soon.

With any major contract there is some “heavy lifting” that needs to be done at the outset, he says. The profits come from migrating to a standardised software setup, cleaning that up and normalising operations, and that takes time. Rangaswami is confident that both parties will soon see benefits from the deal.

“If you look at all the firms that have been involved in the programme, we’re still in there, we’ve stood to be counted, and I’m very proud of that,” he says.