InformationWeek CIO Corner: Dun & Bradstreet CTO Mike Manos

Modernizing a company with more than 180 years of history is not just about buying new tech from vendors. In this video interview, Mike Manos, CTO for Dun & Bradstreet, spoke about his company's transformation journey from its early days gathering inventory information about local stores and blacksmiths to providing customers with modern-day data analytics and business intelligence services.

Significant change and transformation of Dun & Bradstreet's footprint were the objectives given to Manos when he joined the company as CTO in 2021. Part of his job was to assess the company's history in tandem with the organization's adoption of technology over the years. "When I came in, it was really a bit of an archeological investigation of thinking about all the parts of the business, both internal IT and technology, as well as our commercial products," he said.

That journey included further migration from on-prem resources to the cloud and upskilling in-house talent. "You can't make that infrastructure journey without really going in and addressing the tech debt -- or the heritage, if you will -- of the application infrastructures," Manos said.

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With new resources available, he had to set standards for the end architecture and assess the ROI of vendor services and applications. "It's really about getting very focused on what you need," Manos said.

He breaks down his transformation approach further in the full interview.