Insurance Industry and IBM Vet Breeds Success

Success has followed Fred Amoroso his entire career and in his latest endeavor, the trend looks to continue.

Amoroso, instrumental in IBM's turn around in the mid '90s and the growth of IBM's Worldwide Insurance Business Unit into the top performing IBM unit in sales, is the current president and CEO of CrossWorlds Software (Burlingame, CA), a business integration software provider.

Since Amoroso joined the company in 1999, it has increased revenue from $19 million to $50 million and also tripled the number of CrossWorld's customers. Leveraging some of his experience in the industry, Amoroso has formed alliances with some of his former employers, including IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), where Amoroso worked in a number of roles after PWC acquired a company Amoroso founded in 1977; and EDS, where Amoroso began his career in 1973. CrossWorlds also has alliances with Accenture and CSC.

Despite moving from arguably the largest technology company in the world to CrossWorlds, Amoroso finds the job remarkably similar. "In one word, CrossWorlds is 'refreshing,' but the adjustments are not that different from when I joined IBM," says Amoroso. "When I joined IBM, I was an early, new executive coming in to transform the company.

"At CrossWorlds, we are watching industries transform," Amoroso adds. "The transformation issue extends across all CrossWorlds customers," which are mainly telecommunications, manufacturing and insurance companies. "In insurance it is linking all lines of product, and in manufacturing, it is linking inventory, suppliers and partners together. The implementation is different, but theobjectives are the same across all industries," he adds.

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio