COMPUTERWORLD 100 PREMIER IT LEADERS 2005.

INFORMATION technology; HEWITT Associates LLC; REGIONS Financial Corp.; DICK, John R.; UNION Planters Corp.

This article presents information related to information technology. Two years ago, Hewitt Associates LLC decided to implement grid technology to handle the CPU-hogging pension calculations that it wanted to make available online in near real time to its clients. Pension calculations had been sucking up about 20% of the company's mainframe processing cycles, and the Lincolnshire, Illinois-based provider of outsourced human resources services needed a more efficient and economical option. The success of any large merger depends on what's delivered after all the parties sign on the dotted lines. That's the challenge for John R. Dick, 47, of Birmingham, Alaska-based Regions Financial Corp., which completed a merger with Union Planters Corp.