Diversified Agency Services (DAS), the largest company in the Omnicom Group, is the ultimate in federated organizations, made up of more than 100 totally independent agencies that provide customer relationship management, public relations/public affairs, and specialty communications. As CIO of DAS, Jason Cohen has been unifying the IT groups from each of these agencies into a single IT group with a unified architecture. This, he says, “allows us to provide state-of-the-art IT offerings” that the agencies’ customers need, while allowing the agencies to continue operating independently. Essentially, he says, “we are a private cloud service provider.”

This huge project has been driven by basic changes in the agency business over the last decade, caused by the disruptive effect of the Internet. “As late as a decade ago, there was TV and radio and print. Now we have Internet blogging, YouTube, social media, etc., and the tools our agencies need to support their clients have changed drastically,” Cohen said in an interview in The SiliconAngle Cube from HP Discover 2012.

The response from the agencies to this unification of DAS IT has been very positive. The smaller to midsized agencies are very happy to get access to the kind of IT services they need to support their clients effectively in this fast-evolving environment. And the larger agencies “want to integrate larger offices and larger teams of people.”

However, the challenge is tremendous. “Our agencies are very independent,” Cohen says. “We had to change the mindset for IT to thinking as a group and using technological tools to effect that change.” Creating a single unified team out of 100 different IT groups took a lot of time, but today they work with unified technical standards and a unified message “so we can go to market at any level and ensure we are providing top-notch service.”

It has also been important to show the agencies, their customers, and their partners what IT is doing to support them with state-of-the-art technology. That requires more than white papers.

Through this long project, which he says may last beyond his tenure, HP has been involved. “I have partnered with HP for the last 15 years, and have only gotten closer to them in the last 12 months. Senior executives give me their home numbers so if I have an issue I can call them at home.”

The turbulence at the top of HP over the past decade has not effected that partnership. He has been fortunate in having the same general rep for the last nine years. “As they have acquired companies and evolved, they brought in new folks, but I have John at the head of the train, guiding me, and it has all been seamless to me.”

As a result, DAS is totally HP including PCs, servers, and storage and in the last year added a major commitment to HP networking. HP’s major competitors – EMC, IBM, VCE – are “all very smart, blue-chip companies,” he says. But, “HP understands the customer, what it’s like to make a huge transition. They provide what’s most important, the customer care.”

That is important to Cohen because he is very aware that the total transformation he is leading is very risky. DAS IT is a pioneer in the size and scope of its private cloud at a time when most enterprises are only starting down that road and are working from a unified IT data center base.

“You don’t make changes on this scale without hitting significant bumps. When you hit those bumps, HP is the partner that is going to be with you through the whole journey.”