Former Schering-Plough CIO Lands -- At GEIS's Spinoff Co., GXS

GXS (which is short for what was once "Global EXchange Services" Inc.) is a privately-held B2B e-commerce firm in which GE still apparently owns a ten percent stake. GXS recently announced plans to merge with Inovis, in a transaction GXS tells us will "create the world’s premier service provider exclusively focused on B2B e-commerce and integration". Um, Okay. Karl Salnoske, former CIO of Schering-Plough was named GXS's CIO overnight:

. . . .Before joining GXS, Mr. Salnoske was the CIO at Schering-Plough, a global pharmaceutical company, where he managed a staff of over 1700 and the company’s global IT infrastructure. At Schering-Plough, he was responsible for driving change across the organization through a series of strategic business initiatives enabled by IT.

Prior to Schering-Plough, Mr. Salnoske was President and CEO of a start-up software company (Adaptive Trade). Mr. Salnoske also served as Vice President in IBM’s Global Services division where he was responsible for e-business services, including the B2B and EDI services. At IBM, he co-led the team that developed the Ariba/i2 relationship to jointly enable electronic market places. As a General Manager in IBM's Software Group, Mr. Salnoske developed and launched IBM’s e-commerce software suite, WebSphere Commerce.

Before joining IBM, Karl was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, Director of Network Management Products at Telenet, and a Manager of Systems Development at Exxon Office Systems. Mr. Salnoske received a bachelor of science in electrical engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. . . .

Inovis must also already have a CIO, right? Inovis does -- though it calls the role Chief Technology Officer. His name? Erik Huddleston. That is to say, I wonder how long this relationship will last -- for Salnoske, as CIO, once the merger occurs. [Finally, in grumpy fashion, allow me to note for the record that naming companies solely by initials is a generally unhelpful marketing communications approach. GXS, GEIS, EDI, B2B, EDS and on and on.]