SSG's Vaho Rebassoo plans for the infrastructure of collaborative teaming

BY R. JEFF WOOD


It might come as a surprise to those who don't know what network architecture is, but CEOs around the world are suddenly paying attention to network architects. Business leaders are hoping to position their companies for the strategic advantages promised by business-to-business e-commerce, the virtual workplace and collaborative teaming between geographically separated sites.

As the chief technology officer at Shared Services Group, Vaho Rebassoo leads the team developing the computing and network architecture plan for Boeing. This plan provides the foundation for expanding and enhancing the services delivered to all the business units via the Boeing network.

This work contributes to efforts by the Enterprise Network Centric Architecture team, led by Boeing Chief Information Officer Scott Griffin. Computing and network architecture is an important component of this companywide initiative to apply, within Boeing, network-centric strategies similar to those that Boeing is proposing and delivering to the U.S. military in support of the Future Combat Systems program.

"Whenever we talk about e-enabling employees and moving toward network-centric operations, we're talking about network architecture," Rebassoo said. "The challenge is to design and install the common 'plumbing' that allows computers and systems throughout the company to share information, while giving the various business units flexibility to purchase or develop information technologies that provide strategic advantages."

Rebassoo cites the wide variety of wireless devices becoming available—Internet-capable cell phones, wireless notebook computers, personal digital assistants and hybrids of these devices—to illustrate the challenge. "A business unit could determine that any one of these is essential to the unit's competitive advantage," he said. "When that happens, the network must be ready to accommodate those devices."

The first phase of the architecture plan recently received a favorable response from the corporate technology council and the Office of the Chairman, a milestone Rebassoo counts among his team's most significant achievements.

Rebassoo came to the abstract realm of network architecture from an early fascination with the much more concrete world of computing and telecommunications hardware. "It's all based on the silicon chip—essentially a piece of hardened sand," he said. "You etch a microscopic pattern on it, run a little electricity through it, and it can store data [and] perform logic functions that transform bits of data into useful information."

Designing ways to connect those chips into working systems was the challenge that took Rebassoo from a bachelor's degree at Harvard to a master's degree and a doctorate from the University of Washington.

Rebassoo gained experience applying his learning at the Pentagon Telecommunications Center, where he helped design the pioneering electronic messaging hub for the network that links U.S. military ships, bases and embassies around the world. Rebassoo then accepted a position at Bell Laboratories where he wrote the business case for the Class 5 Electronic Switching System, which is still at the heart of the U.S. voice telecommunication network.

Rebassoo came to Boeing to lead the Boeing Telephone Service Modernization Program. "The Boeing telephone network is one of the largest privately owned and operated telephone networks in the world," he said. "The chance to get in on the design and implementation of the network architecture was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

Asked if he worries that network technology might hamper Boeing's airline customers by making travel unnecessary, Rebassoo said he instead sees it as removing obstacles to travel. "You won't have to worry about being out of touch while you are away."

Shared Services Group is leading the way in adopting the virtual workplace. Rather than converging on a fixed workplace every morning, SSG employees are connecting to the Boeing network from designated "hoteling" stations in many Boeing buildings. From locations outside Boeing, including customer and supplier facilities, employees connect via secure Internet connections.

"This is a great example of how networked communications can help the company become lean, agile and collaborative," Rebassoo said. Collaborative technologies, such as Virtual Team Room, add another dimension to this efficiency.

Rebassoo sees wireless networks, along with biotechnology, as the most exciting technologies in the next 20 years. "Advances in biotechnology may make it possible to live for 100 years," he said. "But network technology will give you the ability to decide how you use all that time."