ING Americas CTO uses plug-and-play to allow company to respond to new opportunities around the world In 2003, CTO Raymond Karrenbauer brought plug-and-play to app dev and systems deployment at ING Group, the $450 billion worldwide financial-services company. He created architectural diagrams — encompassing applications, hardware, networking, and integration — that focused on reusability and adaptability of both data and design. “Someone can look at the patterns in the component-based reference model and see how a Web application is deployed and just snap together the pieces,” Karrenbauer says.Because data is shared, ING will enjoy significant benefits in terms of data quality and business intelligence. The result, deployed across 27 lines of business in America and ready to go worldwide, gives ING the flexibility to be responsive to new business opportunities. Some competitors, he says, are working on similar concepts, but he and his company are the first to deploy it. Technology Industry