Brad Anderson’s Lunch Break / s4 e5 / Simon Cheng, Lululemon

Simon Cheng is the Manager of Corporate Technology at Lululemon and he was nice enough to make the trip down from Vancouver so that he and Brad could drive around and ostensibly get lunch.

The work Lululemon has done with their infrastructure is fascinating: The IT team has built a network tailored to the needs of a mobile and widely distributed workforce. This means they understand that corporate devices will also have personal uses, that data is going to move back and forth across the perimeter constantly, and that their security and identity management has to account for all of this.

Simon also has a very interesting perspective on early adoption – much like Accenture, Lululemon was using Office 365 back before it had a name. Any early adoption comes with risks, and Simon has worked first hand with these benefits and setbacks. As he explains it: You have to balance “what you get” with “bumps in the road.”

Next week, the guys talk about how Lululemon uses technology to support its culture, the steps they took to build an infrastructure that supports a wide variety of work styles, and how he uses Shadow IT as a learning tool.