Helmuth Ludwig

Professor of Practice for Strategy and Entrepreneurship (former CIO)

Take bold architectural technology decisions: they pay off in the long term – sometimes much faster than you expect.

Transformation Journey

Currently a professor at Southern Methodist University, former CIO Helmuth Ludwig saw that the 64% of network traffic at his last company (a multinational conglomerate) was going to the internet, making the internet the company’s new corporate network. He partnered with Zscaler to provide direct internet access, improving productivity and reducing MPLS cost by 70%. This initial relationship and a cloud-first strategy enabled subsequent leadership and teams to successfully pivot to enable 300,000+ employees to securely work from anywhere. Helmuth Ludwig and his team laid the foundation for an ongoing digital transformation that is user-focused and centered around providing agility and structural flexibility through innovation and smarter and secure operations.

Lessons Learned

For me, Zscaler started out as a point solution for a cost reduction program and developed into a key strategic partner for a digital transformation strategy securing all communication and taking full advantage of the benefits of the Zero Trust concept.