“In my professional life, I’ve seen the evolution of IT from punched paper tape to the cloud,” says Nikolaos Costaras, CIO of WIND Hellas, Greece’s second largest carrier of fixed, mobile and Internet telecoms services. And during this career, which so far has spanned almost three decades, the audacious pursuit of cutting-edge innovation has been a dominant theme.

There have been plenty of firsts: Costaras was involved in installing the first computerized systems at Greece’s Credit Bank in the 1980s and developing the systems for one of the country’s first pay-as-you-go mobile phone services in the 1990s.

He became hooked on IT as a teenager in the 1970s and obtained a degree in Computer Science from Teesside Polytechnic in the UK, and subsequently a master’s in Computer Science and Software Design from nearby Newcastle University.

“In those days, the study of computers as an academic discipline was still a relatively new thing. There were around 80 Greek students in my year at Newcastle, but while most of them were studying naval architecture, I was the only one doing computer science,” he recalls. “I’m someone who is always attracted by novelty.”

And his interest in breaking new ground continues today. As the Greek economic crisis rumbles on, he’s been working on systems required to support a new service for cash-strapped WIND Hellas customers, which enables them to set a budget for their monthly mobile phone bill.

When customers approach their stated monthly limit (for example, €50), they are sent a warning by SMS. When the limit is reached, another SMS is sent, which gives them the option to extend their limit by €10, €20 or €30 to cover them until the end of the month.

While the proposition is simple, he says, the technology architecture that underpins the service is not. “It’s taken a lot of time, a lot of careful systems integration, a lot of talking to vendors and a lot of testing.” Launched earlier this year, the service is unique in the Greek mobile phone market.

Turbulent transitions

Telecoms is a sector in which Costaras has been working for almost two decades, since joining a small start-up called Panafon (a subsidiary of the UK-based multinational Vodafone) in 1993. Prior to that, he worked for computer manufacturer Digital Equipment Corp for five years, and before that, for Greece’s Credit Bank.

The transition from university to professional life, however, was turbulent. On completing his studies at Newcastle in the early 1980s, he was undecided on his career plans and as to whether he would return to Greece at all. The issue was complicated further by the fact that the he was considered a “deserter” by the Greek Army, having failed to return to his homeland to do compulsory national service.

The sudden illness of a favorite uncle decided the matter and Costaras made plans to head home. The army, however, was one step ahead. As his plane landed in Athens, it was boarded by military police who arrested him and took him directly to the conscription center.

“I was told I couldn’t leave the country and was ordered to present myself for basic training in Corinth,” he says. He complied, and spent the next two years as a soldier. Looking back, he is now broadly positive about this enforced career break.

Computerizing the banking industry

On leaving the army in 1985, he found that Greek companies were desperate to recruit IT professionals and he obtained a management position almost immediately at Credit Bank.

The banking system in Greece was completely manual at that time. “Bank branches relied totally on index cards and paper forms, and managers knew that computerization was badly needed,” Costaras says. He became part of a team charged with identifying and implementing the bank’s first computerized system for handling current accounts. They chose one that was already working in the UK at the Trustee Savings Bank (now part of the Lloyds Banking Group).

“I was mainly involved in writing the code needed to customize this system to fit the requirements of the Greek market,” he says. “I still talk to colleagues from that time and they tell me that some of the transactions the bank’s computers perform today are based on code that I wrote more than 25 years ago. At that time, we used to write comments in our programs, so today’s application developers will still see my name and comments in the code that they’re working on.

“I took a great deal of pleasure in that job,” he continues. “It was very satisfying to write code that changed the way people worked and the way the bank operated.”

In 1988, he was lured away to Digital, where he spent five happy years. “It’s a fantastic thing to live through a period of growth, when everything is happening: when employees are well paid and the company grows and you get promoted each year,” he says. “Customers were knocking on our door, asking for computers. We’d tell them, ‘Sorry, not today, we’re too busy, come back tomorrow.’”

And living the good life was part of the deal. “Our motto was: We are the best, we deserve the best,” Costaras says. “So we flew business class around the world, stayed in the best hotels and drove company cars — something that was virtually unheard of in Greece at that time.”

Start-up culture shock

It is hardly surprising, then, that joining mobile phone start-up Panafon in 1993, on the invitation of managing director George Koronias, whom he had first met at Newcastle University, was a “massive culture shock.” The offices were housed in a vacant Athens apartment and Costaras was obliged to buy his own desk and chair on the day he joined and claim the money back on expenses. But, once again, he was in hot pursuit of novelty and mobile phones were the big new thing in the Greek market.

Did he get the money back for that office furniture? “Oh yes,” he laughs. “I got a lot of money back.” The company became one of Greece’s leading mobile phone providers. Costaras was employee number 33, but by the time he left nine years later, there were 2,500.

As Panafon’s first head of technology, he was faced with a distinct paucity of packaged software available to support the new business. “We had to develop absolutely everything from scratch,” he says.

In 2002, when it became clear to him that parent company Vodafone was planning to outsource various aspects of IT, he moved to Panafon’s biggest competitor at that time, STET Hellas Telecommunications (which used the brand Telestet). Since then, he has worked under six different owners, four different CEOs and seen the company change its name twice.

(Following a change of shareholding, Telestet was rebranded as TIM and consequently WIND in 2007. In December 2010, the company was acquired by a group of six international private equity funds, currently managing more than $80 billion dollars globally. To take over WIND Hellas, the new shareholders swapped almost a billion euros of bonds for equity and injected €420 million in cash into the company, committing to a long-term exit strategy.)

Simplification and innovation

Throughout all these changes, IT has steered a steady course, says Costaras. “As a department, we’ve been audited more than 30 times while I’ve been here. Every time, we’ve managed to convince the auditors that IT was doing just fine and should be left alone.”

He says he has kept his eye on two goals, regardless of what else was going on in the business: staying sensitive to costs and keeping a clean house, in IT terms. “I inherited a spaghetti plate of complex infrastructure,” he explains, “so my strategy has been to clear all that up, install new systems, use the default functionality of software packages wherever possible, rather than customize, and maintain a streamlined, up-to-date infrastructure.”

His major achievements include implementing a complete customer relationship management package, creating a data warehousing and business intelligence environment and reforming billing systems to handle the challenge of providing individual customers with one invoice for fixed, mobile and Internet services.

With the rise of data services, the whole mobile industry is looking for new opportunities to generate revenue, he says, and IT must play a role in this process. “If we are going to be seen as helping to drive the business, my department needs not only to deliver new products and services to our customers, but also to come up with the ideas behind them.”

Despite this heavy and complex workload, Costaras believes it is important to have regular periods of quality downtime. Every weekend, he escapes the noise and pollution of Athens and retreats 150km to his country house in the Peloponnese.
“I have a lot of land where I grow fruit and vegetables and make very good wine,” he says. “Every Friday night, I switch off, and spend the next two days working on my garden, swimming in the sea and walking in the mountains — and I don’t switch back on again until Monday morning.”

Nikolaos Costaras: The résumé

2007-present
CIO
WIND Hellas Telecommunications

2004-2007
CIO
TIM Hellas Telecommunications

2002-2004
CIO
STET Hellas Telecommunications

1993-2002
Head of technology
Panafon (Vodafone Greece)
(Mobile telecommunications)

1988-1993
Pre-sales executive/consultant
Digital Equipment Corp (Greece)
(Computer manufacturer)

1985-1988
Systems programmer
Credit Bank (Greece)
(Financial services)