Girish Varma appointed as VP, CIO of Qwest Communications

By SiliconIndia | Thursday, January 5, 2012

Qwest Communications International announced the appointment of Girish K. Varma as Vice President and Chief Information Officer (CIO) from September 25, 2006. He will report to Barry K. Allen, Qwest executive Vice President-operations.

Replacing Balan Nair, who left Qwest in June, Varma is currently with IBM and has 28 years of IT experience within the communications industry. At IBM he serves as Vice President-global applications services and telecom center of competency, where he is responsible for developing new telecommunications businesses and practices and provides leadership to IBM customer teams. Commenting on the occasion, Allen said, "Girish is an experienced leader and CIO with a vast knowledge of communications systems and the industry. His background will be beneficial to the Qwest IT organization as it continues to meet the increasing demands of new applications and operational efficiencies."

Earlier in his career, Varma served in technical leadership roles at Bell Labs for 12 years. He then advanced through a series of IT and technology leadership roles at AT&T to become vice president-service management systems and CIO, responsible for systems engineering, development, systems integration and vendor management for AT&T business, network and local services.