Fairfax CIO resigns for greener pastures

Fairfax CIO Andrew Lam-Po-Tang will work his last day at the media company towards the end of March after completing a three-year technology transformation.

Andrew Lam-Po-Tang

Lam-Po-Tang joined Fairfax in 2012 during a period of significant internal structural change and external pressures, immediately embarking on a mission to overhaul the company's approach to IT in line with a new leaner, tighter business environment.

He convinced the company to address the silos under which IT was operating at the time and shift it towards a shared service model, in which frontline IT and digital teams would be housed together.

Lam-Po-Tang's influence saw Fairfax become one of the more aggressive adopters of cloud technologies, cementing the media giant as one of the first Australian businesses to move entirely to Google for desktop productivity.

Fairfax is also rolling out its new CQ5 content management system - the new basis for digital and mobile-first publishing - in the Amazon Web Services public cloud. 

Lam-Po-Tang's list of achievements in the three years is long. Aside from the Google Apps and CQ5 rollouts and centralisation of group services, the CIO introduced activity-based working, digital subscriptions, a new enterprise-wide CRM, increased the use of agile and fostered DevOps, and kicked off the company's big data efforts.

Now that he has completed the majority of the work he set out to achieve, Lam-Po-Tang is eyeing off a new opportunity overseas. 

London and Zurich specifically are in his sights - as are potential opportunities in the US. He is looking for a new three to five year challenge similar to the one he faced at Fairfax.

"The obvious thing would be another digital transformation," he told iTnews. "There seems to be the work out there, and my current experience seems to add up to a legitimate play at that kind of work."

A varied background - including experience in IT, graphic design and management consulting - leaves Lam-Po-Tang's path wide open.

As for his replacement, Fairfax is currently recruiting to fill the role.

The new CIO should have an easier time of it - with the three-year transformation drawing to a close, the focus will now be on leveraging the work already done to shift the business more strongly towards digital and to jump on trends towards mobile and video media consumption.