At Intergraph, A Changing of the Guard

Yesterday, I met with the newly appointed president of Intergraph’s Security, Government and Infrastructure (SGI) division, Ben Eazzetta and CTO Peter Batty. Eazzetta, having done stints at Intergraph’s Process, Power, and Marine (PPM) division as COO and as president of Intergraph’s Public Safety division, has spent the last several months serving as the COO of SGI before moving into the top leadership position with the retirement of Preetha Pulusani.

The move to put Eazzetta in charge of SGI, with Batty engaged as the CTO not only signals a changing of the old guard at Intergraph, but perhaps the emergence of a team of executives that could radically alter the fortunes of their company. With Eazzetta having spent most of his time in the PPM division and Batty a relative newcomer to Intergraph coming on board just last summer, the company looks to leverage the operational background of the former and the geospatial experience of the latter. Together, I expect them to look deep into the domain expertise that Intergraph has in mapping/geospatial technologies, especially in the federal sector, but also to look for synergies across Intergraph’s platform solutions. This approach will depend on Batty’s ability to identify the unique competive advantages that Intergraph has stored away in its various divisions and Eazzetta’s operational knowledge to bring solutions to market. This last part has hindered Intergraph in the past. They’ve had the right ingredients, but they’ve never been blended well enough to come up with the right "sauce."

The Eazzetta/Batty tandem has certain challenges but it’s not for lack of opportunity, as they see it. With the geospatial market growing, especially with money available for security and a sound ROI in field service management sectors, the company could easily muster many of the company’s existing platforms to grow the business beyond the 5% annualized pattern that it has had in the recent past.