"They put in all their parameters, and within less than a minute started to see all the trending along the screen, the different aspects of the deal like pricing and interest rate scenarios," Certoma says. "It lets them be much more productive, and model more scenarios."

Mapping to the business

To get the SOA ball rolling quickly, Certoma recruited 265 technologists with expertise in SOA and building financial services apps.

Starting in 2004, she also made sweeping changes to how IT and the business worked together, repurposing CIB's central architecture group into a robust 50-person team with a product management orientation that would build and evangelize an initial set of components and services. Those services would then be available to business unit developer teams, which report to divisional information officers and form the bulk of Certoma's 900-person technology group.

Simultaneously, Certoma set out to strengthen IT's connection to the business and change IT's mindset. "We wanted technology to become an advisor to the business, not an order-taker," she explains.