'The only value in IT is what it does for people, and technology is evolving faster than we can imagine it. So the faster we deliver the quicker the innovators can be rewarded. It's a race against time for IT to be valuable in the market.

'We want to provide that infrastructure to deliver.' Fisher took personal satisfaction in her role in the development of IBM's public sector business. 'I was responsible for the start-up phase in the public sector. Last year, I decided to focus on global government, working with governments in open source and Linux.'

Things like TCP/IP, Apache and Linux are rock-solid open source technologies, she said.