Klaus Straub, CIO of the BMW Group has resigned. This was confirmed by a spokesman for the company in an interview with CIO Magazine. The information that the successor is to come from the company’s own ranks has not yet been confirmed.
Klaus Straub has been CIO and Senior Vice President Information Management of the BMW Group in Munich since August 2014. Previously, he was CIO of Audi AG and Siemens VDO. BMW does not currently want to give any reasons for his surprising departure from the company. Straub himself does not want to comment either. From well-informed circles it is said, however, that he had been fond of facing new challenges towards the end of his career for quite some time. At one of his last appearances at the DSAG annual conference in Nuremberg, the word “soon to retire” also crossed his lips. However, it is doubtful whether this was meant seriously.
According to a BMW spokesman, the position of CIO has not yet been filled. The spokesman did not want to comment on a possible successor to Straub. From well-informed circles, however, the successor should come from his own ranks.
In recent years Straub has pushed ahead with a fundamental change in the BMW IT organisation, which has ultimately led to a domain and product structure. Until 2015, the BMW Group IT with its approximately 5,500 employees was still oriented towards the classic “plan-build-run” model. In mid-2015, the company began integrating design and build functions, and in October 2015 Straub launched the 100% Agile initiative. Another change project, Back2Code, followed in 2017, with which the BMW Group wants to strengthen its own performance in software development. In the “CIO of the Year 2018” competition, CIO Klaus Straub won the Innovation Award.
Klaus Straub will deliver the laudation for his successor at the Innovation Award ceremony in Berlin on 21 November.