AI - April 2022 by ai-magazine

SPECIAL INSIGHT DELOITTE: AUTONOMOUS AI IN END-TOEND BUSINESS OPERATIONS

April 2022 | aimagazine.com

AI Applications: In the cloud: the reality of AI and IoT for smart cities intelligence AI/ML: Combatting climate change with artificial intelligence

Brewing giant AB-InBev joins forces with NTT DATA and Microsoft to revolutionise sales, refreshing the beer market’s supply chain

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BIG DATA

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The AI Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

CATHERINE GRAY

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA ELLA CHADNEY

EVELYN HUANG JACK NICHOLLS MARTA EUGENIO ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD DREW HARDMAN

CREATIVE TEAM

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

MARKETING MANAGER

DEPUTY EDITORS

ALEX TUCK

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON JORDAN WOOD DANILO CARDOSO

PRODUCTION MANAGERS

KIERAN WAITE SAM KEMP

MOTION DESIGNER

TYLER LIVINGSTONE

INDIA BERRY

PROJECT DIRECTORS

KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO CRAIG KILLINGBACK GREG ST QUINTIN JOE MARRITT

MARKETING DIRECTOR

ROSS GARRIGAN

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JAMES WHITE

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

What do We Mean by True AI? Artificial intelligence is being applied to all parts of our lives, but have we reached true AI or is it just machine learning masquerading as such?

“But in the future, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — that possesses a deeper level of understanding — could be the pathway to helping machines to simulate emotion in a similar way to us”

AI MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

In this issue, Lex Coors, Chief Data Centre Technology and Engineering Officer at Interxion, argues that true AI is yet to exist - but what is it and how do we know? Social and emotional intelligence comes automatically to humans, but this type of intelligence is a lot harder for machines to generate. True artificial intelligence is autonomous and it does not require human maintenance, operating silently in the background. But in the future, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — which will possess a deeper level of understanding — could be the pathway to helping machines to simulate emotion in a similar way to us. Current forms of AI cannot have their own emotions but rather ‘mimic’ them. Some experts believe that simulated emotion, by definition, makes AI emotionally intelligent, whereas others question the level of understanding behind such simulations. We’re some years away from creating AGI, as experts predict its emergence by 2060. In the meantime, AI magazine takes a look at the ways current iterations of AI are being integrated into businesses' systems and processes, and the innovations sustaining them. Enjoy!

CATHERINE GRAY

catherine.gray@bizclikmedia.com

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Shaping the Future of Technology & AI

2022 23rd - 24th June

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Watch our 2021 Showreel

Join us at Technology & AI LIVE Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at Technology & AI LIVE 2022.

From keynote addresses to lively roundtables, fireside discussions to topical presentations, Q&A sessions to 1-2-1 networking, the 2-day hybrid show is an essential deep dive into issues impacting the future of each industry today.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group, the hybrid event will be held in London co-located with sister events: Cyber LIVE and 5G & Cloud LIVE between June 23rd24th and broadcast live to the world.

Global giants and innovative startups will all find the perfect platform with direct access to an engaged and active audience. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity.

With a comprehensive content programme featuring senior industry leaders and expert analysts, this is an opportunity to put yourself and your brand in front of key industry decision makers.

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 12 Big Picture 14 The Brief 16 Timeline: Amazon Alexa 18 Trailblazer: Kamila Hankiewicz 22 Five Mins With: Sri Ambati

AI/ML

Combatting Climate Change With Artificial Intelligence

50 28

NTT Data

Beer gets a new buzz in the brewing revolution

Yext

AI Search for the Enterprise

AI Applications

Why AI and IoT Need Cloud Technology for Smart Cities

Deloitte

AIOPS.D: Enterprise Autonomous Operations in the AI Age

Ivanti

Making the Everywhere Workplace a Reality

108

Technology

Managing the mass data influx coming from AI capabilities

116

Automating healthcare with AI and ML to drive efficiencies

Providing Turnkey Solutions With AI

IOT

NetApp & Samsung SDS

154

Alder Hey Children's Hospital Innovating to advance children’s healthcare

130 Top 10

Companies Offering AI Solutions via the Cloud

142

DXC Technology

Autonomous driving solutions for the future

168

Spark Compass Bridging the Digital and Physical World

The Global Cloud & 5G Conference

2022 23rd - 24th June

STREAMED & IN PERSON TOBACCO DOCK LONDON

Get tickets

Sponsor opportunities

Watch our 2021 Showreel

Join us at Cloud & 5G LIVE Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at Cloud & 5G LIVE 2022.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group, the hybrid event will be held in London co-located with sister events: Cyber LIVE and Technology & AI LIVE between June 23rd-24th and broadcast live to the world.

Global giants and innovative startups will all find the perfect platform with direct access to an engaged and active audience. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity.

With a comprehensive content programme featuring senior industry leaders and expert analysts, this is an opportunity to put yourself and your brand in front of key industry decision makers.

Get tickets

See you on:

23rd-24th June 2022

Sponsor opportunities

BIG PICTURE

ESA’s RAT rover OUTER SPACE

AI has proven its great potential and is a game-changer in space exploration. The technology has the ability to chart unnoted galaxies, stars, black holes, and study cosmic events. The European Space Agency’s RAT rover navigates around obstacles by autonomously finding its way across ‘unknown’ fields. Intelligent data transmission software onboard Mars rovers remove human scheduling errors, which can otherwise cause valuable data to be lost. This increases the useful data that is gathered from our planetary neighbour and improves our space exploration endeavours. 12

April 2022

European Space Agency

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THE BRIEF “We wanted to give our BDRs the tools to help our retailers’ businesses grow; to sell more products, to sell more beer and effectively thrive” Ricardo Padula

Product Lead - BEES Force, NTT 

BY THE NUMBERS Investment and deployment into AI

<15%

90%

LEFT: What percentage of leading businesses have invested in AI? RIGHT: How many have deployed these AI capabilities into their work?

“ Our business strategy and growth plan stem from Yext’s bold mission to transform enterprises through AI search” Deepika Rayala

Chief Information Officer, Yext  READ MORE

“I saw the potential in Ivanti. There was a strong foundation for adding some smart acquisitions” Nayaki Nayyar

Top 10 companies utilising AI to support the supply chain

As more companies across the world struggle with supply chain disruptions, we take a look at organisations utilising AI to prevent such challenges READ MORE

HCL Technologies combining AI and cloud for business success

HCL’s Kalyan Kumar, Chief Technology Officer and Head Ecosystems, outlines the company’s drive to use AI to create conducive-to-business solutions READ MORE

UST and o9 Solutions partner for AI supply chain solutions

President and Chief Product Officer, Ivanti 

UST has announced a new partnership with AI company, o9 Solutions, to provide supply chain management and propel digital transformation for enterprises

April 2022

 PEGASYSTEMS For the 12th consecutive year, Pegasystems was recognised as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Engagement Centre. The AI software company believes this is due to its scalable and adaptable solutions.

What is AR and how does it work? Augmented reality, commonly noted as AR, adds digital content or features on live camera feeds, making it look like it is part of the physical world around you. This can be anything from making a person’s face appear as a cartoon to putting ‘virtual’ furniture in a space to check out how it looks before purchasing. But, how does this work? AR technology uses computer vision to understand what is in the world around the user from the content of the camera feed. In doing so, this allows it to show digital content relevant to what the user is looking at. Although the human brain is good at understanding images, this still remains tricky for computers. As AR requires this understanding, computer vision is imperative as it understands the world around the user, in terms of both semantics and 3D geometry.

 TESLA Electric car company Tesla, which has its own range of autonomous vehicles, now plans to look at modernising traffic management systems with AI. In doing so, the company will be able to measure traffic, map it, and make streets safer.  AI IN HEALTHCARE Despite its proven benefits in the industry, research by Burning Glass Technologies shows that there has been a low rate of job postings for AI technicians in healthcare, suggesting the technology is not being as widely adopted as it should be.  C3.AI C3.ai, provider of Enterprise AI software for accelerating digital transformation, has seen its shares fall as Deutsche Bank analyst Patrick Colville cut his rating on the stock to Sell from Hold, with a new price target of US$18, down from US$36.

U P

APR22

D O W N

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TIMELINE Known simply as Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant technology is largely based on a Polish speech synthesiser named Ivona, bought by Amazon in 2013. Here, we look at how the technology has developed over the years. ANNOUNCING ALEXA In late 2014, Amazon announced Alexa alongside its new Echo device. Alexa was inspired by the computer voice and conversational system on board the Starship Enterprise in science fiction TV series and movies, beginning with Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

COLLECTING DATA TO PERFECT ALEXA’S TECHNOLOGY Amazon partnered with rental home company Appen in 2013 to collect more data. Amazon filled rooms with Echo devices and temporary contract workers were then paid to walk through the rooms, reading scripted openended questions from tablets. This generated data for Amazon to use and feed back into Alexa to improve its response capabilities.

2014

2013

THE FIRST PITCH First conceptualised in 2011, Jeff Bezos pitched the first Amazon Echo device, which he wanted to be controlled completely by voice. However, Amazon Executive, Dave Limp, upon seeing the pitch, was doubtful and recalled thinking: “This is going to be hard. It foretold a magical experience. But it would require a lot of inventions.”

2011

April 2022

How Amazon developed its famous virtual assistant,

Amazon Alexa

2015 2016

THE ALEXA FUND Less than a year after the launch of Alexa, Amazon announced the US$200mn Alexa Fund, a programme that would invest in companies making voice control skills and technologies. In the following year, the Alexa Prize was announced to further advance this technology.

2018 2019

INVESTING IN THE RIGHT PEOPLE TO BOOST ALEXA’S TECHNOLOGY As of November 2018, Amazon had more than 10,000 employees working on Alexa and related products. In early 2019, Amazon's devices team announced that they had sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices. 2019 also saw Amazon launch many new devices to compete with the world's smart home industry, such as its Echo Studio.

PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES OF VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS With continuous innovation, Amazon has been able to further develop its Alexa products, offering a whole host of different technologies. Now available in a number of languages, Alexa’s technology has been applied in smart displays, home entertainment devices, voice control smart plugs, headphones and smart doorbells.

2022

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TRAILBLAZER

KAMILA HANKIEWICZ: CREATING A SPACE FOR WOMEN IN TECH Name: Kamila Hankiewicz

Job Title: CEO/Co-Founder

Company: Untrite/Oishya

ounder and CEO of her own It was a boutique branding company, company, Untrite, Kamila but I always felt a connection and Hankiewicz is passionate I always felt good working with about improving the world through technology. I wanted to utilise demystifying data insights. Her this, do something greater and do software company, which focuses something bigger,” Hankiewicz adds. on AI and dealing with unstructured Similar to many other women data, helps companies find the right navigating their careers, Hankiewicz information for the right purpose. explains that, in the early years of her “I’m the CEO but as it’s still a career, she was often given certain startup, I wear lots of different tasks or encouraged to take part hats, though I’m mainly focused on in recreational activities that are strategic partnerships and business typically considered ‘female’ and, development,” says Hankiewicz. moving through her education, very Hankiewicz’s journey to becoming little changed: “I've now been lucky CEO and Founder of Untrite has been to meet lots of amazing women who filled with a number of work in technology - but it different roles in different wasn't always like that.” sectors - mirroring her “When I was growing current hat-swapping up, I never had a female situation: “I was trying role model in technology. I to find myself, and now didn’t see maths or physics Oishya was founded after Hankiewicz wanted I know the technology as something I could to buy her partner a space is where I want to move into as a potential Japanese knife, but be,” she explains. career, but then I moved to wanted to find something “I've always felt like I London from Poland and beautifully authentic and want to do something on it opened my eyes - I saw affordable - something my own. So when I was at more women in these fields she struggled to find. University, I already had and my curiosity led me to my own small company. explore what was possible.”

April 2022

“ I'VE ALWAYS FELT LIKE I WANT TO DO SOMETHING ON MY OWN” aimagazine.com

TRAILBLAZER

Keen to become a role model herself, and create an informative environment for women in technology, Hankiewicz worked with NGO Girls in Tech where, since 2015, she has been running dedicated start-up programmes. “As I felt like I never had a role model, I started researching more and more, and I was happy to find some organisations and nonprofits that were creating those communities around, like women helping other women in technology. It was great to see other women who wanted to change something in their career, or who wanted to enter the STEM market, but they didn't know how to start. They had the same problem - which still happens - in that they didn't have a role model in their company. So they felt misunderstood, demotivated, and most of them were leaving the company. We want to prevent that, we want women to grow in tech,” says Hankiewicz. One event that Hankiewicz organised was a series of ‘Startup F*ckups’ events. Here, women could learn from a number of CEOs, such as Dr Ali Parsa of Babylon and Tom Blomfield of Monzo, about the various roles available in technology and how failure is often a key ingredient for success. “I just felt like there's so much potential in those girls and women that, together, show we can do much more and we should support each other more,” comments Hankiewicz. As an eager businesswoman at heart, Hankiewicz - on top of her work at Untrite - has also founded another business with her good friend, Anna Szymczak, called Oishya, a Japanese kitchenware company. 20

April 2022

“ IT WAS VERY, VERY DIFFICULT IN THE BEGINNING, BUT WE PERSISTED”

Impassioned by her love for Japanese culture and kitchenware, Hankiewicz was determined to connect with suppliers in Japan to create traditional and beautiful products, though this did not come without its own obstacles: “Working with Japanese people, especially in such a market, is not easy for women. It's very patriarchal and very conservative. You have to have a male agent. As younger women, we are the opposite of what they look for as their ideal business partners.”

Concluding, Hankiewicz explains how, despite Oishya’s challenges in the beginning, she and Szymczak doggedly ploughed on, with the result being the creation of a successful company: “It was very, very difficult in the beginning, but we persisted and we found some blacksmiths who were more openminded, and we started working with them. Right now, we are trying to educate and share with people in Western countries all the amazing things that Japanese people do.”

Untrite applies state-of-theart tech that empowers teams to use that data to improve first-time resolutions, assess and mitigate risks, optimise service performance, and drive exceptional client experiences.

aimagazine.com

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Sri Ambati CEO & CO-FOUNDER, H2O.AI

ounded in 2011, H2O.ai has grown to become one of the leading artificial intelligence (AI) cloud companies and is now recognised as a global visionary and thought leader in automated machine learning (autoML), time series forecasting and responsible AI.

Q. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT YOUR COMPANY?

» H2O.ai, the AI Cloud leader, is

working on its founding mission to democratise AI. The world’s leading data scientists and engineers including over 20 Kaggle Grandmasters - come to work at H2O.ai to deliver on our vision of making AI accessible to any business, government entity, nonprofit or academic institution in the world. More than 20,000 organisations and millions of data scientists trust H2O.ai as their AI provider. Customers include AT&T, Citi, GlaxoSmithKline, Hitachi, Kaiser Permanente, PwC, Unilever, Walgreens, and many more. H2O.ai is picking winners in every vertical, on every continent, and making them AI superpowers to take on the tech giants with the H2O AI Cloud. Our innovative maker culture and customer obsession have won the trust and love of our customers. We recently closed US$100bn in Series E 22

April 2022

funding led by Australia’s largest bank, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. We’ve now raised over US$250mn, and are the latest AI unicorn valued at US$1.7bn.

Q. WHAT IS YOUR ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITY AT THE COMPANY?

» The team at H2O.ai, every person,

is a maker and we are all there to build and create for our customers. As the CEO and founder, I started H2O.ai to lead a global movement to democratise AI. I look after the strategic direction of the company, product development and guidance of our global customer base’s AI-driven digital transformation initiatives. My passion is our ‘AI for Good’ initiatives, where we are working to solve some of the biggest problems in the world, like climate change and health equity. But the success of H2O.ai is about the makers—the thousands of data scientists and professionals from the community of customers, investors, partners, current and future shareholders, the opensource community,nonprofits and government entities. The goal of this work is to democratise AI and make the world a better place.

“ We are like the Tenzing Sherpas of the AI mountains helping our customers to traverse and conquer AI peaks”

aimagazine.com

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Q. I N YOUR OWN WORDS, CAN YOU OUTLINE YOUR PLATFORM AND HOW IT SUPPORTS YOUR CUSTOMERS?

» We are continuously making our

software easier (democratising) low-code, reusable recipes and automation through AI Cloud and building data pipelines, AI AppStores and delivering AI as a service that our customers can use to improve their customer experiences, brands and communities. Our open-source platform gives customers the freedom and ability to build their own AI centres of competence and excellence. We launched the H2O AI Cloud in 2021, offering customers a single, unified platform architected from the ground up to support our core mission of democratising AI. The AI Cloud is available in a fully-managed version, bringing enterprise-grade, secure AI cloud to any organisation, even SMBs and startups who might have been price constrained and unable to reap the benefits of an AI Cloud before. Additionally, customers can choose a hybrid version and choose whatever deployment model they wish. The H2O AI Cloud simplifies the making of responsible AI that users can trust, operate efficiently and innovate rapidly with pre-built AI applications from our AppStore. Our open source platform gives freedom and ability for customers to build their own AI centres of competence and excellence. 24

April 2022

“ The team at H2O.ai, every single person, is a maker, and we are all there to build and create for our customers”

Before founding H2O.ai, Ambati co-founded big data analytics company Platfora (acquired by Workday) and was director of engineering at DataStax and Azul Systems. His academic background includes sabbaticals focused on Theoretical Neuroscience at Stanford University and U.C. Berkeley, and he holds an M.S. in Math and Computer Science from the University of Memphis.

Q. H OW DOES THE COMBINED POWER OF CLOUD AND AI IMPROVE BUSINESS OPERATIONS?

» Globally, brands, the public sector

and non-profits are looking at cloud and AI to increase revenue growth, optimise operations, mitigate risk and personalise customer experiences. Many are using AI technologies to drive such transformation. And the use of worldclass autoML from us means innovation - from initial idea to real-world impact gets to happen so much quicker. As a result, we are enabling organisations to apply AI for virtually any use case, streamline machine learning operations and democratise AI across the organisation.

Q. WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM H2O.AI IN THE FUTURE?

» H2O.ai is working with innovators and category dominators in every vertical on every continent to make them AI superpowers with the H2O AI Cloud. I really hope we continue doing that, and I also want to see us continue to win the trust and love of our customers. We are 100% focused on our core vision that we can make the world better by serving our communities and customers with AI. We are like the Tenzing Sherpas of the AI mountains, helping our customers to traverse and conquer AI peaks. And we are just getting started! aimagazine.com

The ‘Risk & Resilience’ Conference

2022 27th - 28th April

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70+ speakers. 1,000+ attendees. One global conference.

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Previous Speakers Include:

Aurelien Faucheux

Senior Director, Procurement Performance, Systems & Excellence

Charlotte de Brabandt Technology and Negotiation Keynote Speaker & Host

Aston Martin

Lufthansa

AMAZON

Ninian Wilson

James Westgarth

Group Procurement Director Vodafone Procurement

CPO

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AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: SIMON HOWSON-GREEN PRODUCED BY: GREG ST QUINTIN

April 2022

NTT DATA | AB - INBEV | MICROSOFT

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NTT DATA | AB - INBEV | MICROSOFT

Beer giant AB-InBev joined forces with NTT DATA and Microsoft to put even the most remote beer retailers in the picture

hen it comes to enjoying a beer,not all countries and palettes are the same. Managing the vast range of wants and needs of the beer drinkers across the globe presented almost insurmountable challenges to even the biggest brewing conglomerates. Not anymore. Beverage giant AB-InBev has joined forces with NTT Data and Microsoft to put even the most remote beer retailers in the picture Three generations ago the great English writer, George Orwell suggested the people of the world could be defined by the way they liked to drink their beer. Some things never change. Here in the allegedly sophisticated, technology driven 21st Century First World we are used to an almost inexhaustible range of hops, barley and yeast-based beverages — delivered in a mind-boggling variety of ways. Across Europe computerized Key Kegs can blast out fresh craft beer under pressure from plastic drums, through valves and tubes and into pristine, sparkling glasses, newly washed in digitally programmed machines. In the UK, beer drinkers are still partial to pumps and taps attached to wooden barrels. Ironically, in this modern age even beer in a can is making a comeback. But take a trip across the Caribbean, or to Latin America or South Africa and you are a world away from Orwell’s Moon Under Water public house. 30

April 2022

Example of an image caption aimagazine.com

Bees gets a new buzz in the brewing revolution

April 2022

NTT DATA | AB - INBEV | MICROSOFT

“ We wanted to give our BDR’s the tools to help our retailers’ businesses grow; to sell more products, to sell more beer and effectively thrive” RICARDO PADULA PRODUCT LEAD, BEES FORCE

In this part of the world, they drink their beer out of bottles: Ice cold bottles, from ice cold coolers containing ice cold beer. It’s been this way forever. The hotter the region, the colder they like their beer. Brazilians alone glug their way through more than twelve billion litres of beer from coolers annually. But unlike most ‘Western leaning’ countries, the majority of this beer is bought from small retailers or in small bars which often double as the local — and only — shop. Keeping an accurate check on sales and stock and ensuring these small retailers are maximizing returns on their turnover presents a huge challenge. The market leader in these regions — the multinational drinks group AB-InBev — has found a way to revolutionize its sales and refresh its supply chain in these parts other beers find hard to reach. In Europe and the US, we recognize the company’s leading brands Budweiser, Corona and Stella Artois. In the Caribbean it’s Presidente and in Brazil: Skol, Brahma and Antarctica dominate. AB-InBev was formed following the acquisition of American brewer Anheuser-Busch by Belgian-Brazilian brewer InBev, which itself came into being after a merger between AmBev and Interbrew. So, put simply. This is a big global company. However, being big and dominant does not mean one approach to the market fits all. The Caribbean, South America and South Africa have unique challenges. This is where the workers at BEES come in. BEES is the e-commerce platform for Ab-InBev. Ricardo Padula, Product Lead BEES Force explains how the latest image recognition technology, supply chain analytics and algorithms are now being used to bring the beer maker’s more ‘out of the way’ retailers into the 21st Century aimagazine.com

DANIELA SANTANA GRIECCO

EVANDRO LUIS ARMELIN

CARLOS PORTO FILHO

TITLE: D ATA & ANALYTICS DIRECTOR

TITLE: H EAD OF DATA & ANALYTICS

COMPANY: NTT DATA

COMPANY: N TT DATA AMERICAS

Carlos has been working at NTT Data for 4 years, where he works as a leader of machine learning projects in different areas such as banking, telecom, retail, industry as well as research projects. He has a background in Biomedical Informatics with a master's degree in Bioengineering, having over 10 years of using data to generate value.

Daniela works at NTT Data since August 2015 leading a team of over 130 employees, acting on several projects in consumer goods and retail companies, implementing data strategies, big data platforms, advanced analytics, and data visualization solutions. She has over 20 years of experience working with Data and Analytics solutions, performing complex projects especially for companies with significant expression in different areas, mainly in financial, telecom, consumer goods and retail sectors.

April 2022

Evandro is responsible for consulting services ranging from Data strategy, Artificial Intelligence, Data Platforms and Data Democratization. He is in charge of more than 600 people dedicated to implementation of Data products. Graduated in business administration, Evandro has been working for more than twenty years in the development of analytical solutions for large companies, adding the technical aspects and the business vision, to leverage the value of the data.

TITLE: DATA SCIENCE LEAD

NTT DATA | AB - INBEV | MICROSOFT

FREDERICO DE MARCHI

JEAN BRANT

RICARDO PADULA

TITLE: A B INBEV GLOBAL ACCOUNT LEAD

TITLE: D ATA & AI CLOUD SOLUTION ARCHITECT

TITLE: PRODUCT LEAD

COMPANY: MICROSOFT

Frederico has a rich and diverse expertise on global sales, marketing and tech industry in different countries and cultures over the last 25 years on companies like Infor, SAP, Startups launches in Latam and Microsoft Western Europe, combined with 10+ years as a professor on renown MBAs and Universities in Brazil. Frequently invited to speak in customer-facing conferences and/or with C-level executives about industry trends and how to translate innovation into business success. Proven track record working with C-level executives and corporate leaders, mainly blue chips companies on key industries, to push innovation and build success stories: Financial Services, Retail, Utilities, Telecom, Manufacturing and Retail.

Jean is a Cloud Solutions Architect who works with global customers, supporting their data journey. His expertise includes architecture design, data engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other data-related fields. He enjoys working as a trusted advisor, helping people to understand how to handle data, how to find a solution to achieve their goals and how to improve their environment to better handle all sorts of data. In recent years he has focused on building data platforms for different industries/business areas such as Telecom, Marketing, B2B, among others.

COMPANY: BEES FORCE Ricardo Padula Jr has worked in Big Data projects for most of his professional career. He currently leads a team of 150 engineers, product managers and designers at the BEES division of AB-Inbev. He is responsible for the BEES Force development. Ricardo has been with AB-InBev in various roles since 2016 where he was responsible for a range of cloud-based initiatives which used ‘Advanced Analytics’ and Big Data. He has been in his current position — heading up BEES for the past two years.

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NTT DATA | AB - INBEV | MICROSOFT

— without upsetting their well-established beer drinking culture. This is all thanks to a new technology called BEES Force. “BEES is a B2B platform we have created to help our sales staff interact in the most efficient way possible with our small and medium sized retailers,” says Padula. But as Padula explains, once BEES got past the proof of concept for a new Image Recognition solution, it was clear it had the potential to totally change the way his company interacted with its retailers. This was not just a technological rethink. The potential of the technology meant Ab-InBev — through the BEES Force system — was able to completely overhaul the way it treated and incentivized its sales teams and its retailers. “BEES Force was designed to help our retailers buy beer from us, get it delivered and then sell it efficiently and effectively from the coolers in their premises,” he says. “But it also gave us an opportunity to re-purpose the sales model. “This technology has enabled us to turn our sales staff from order taking reps to consultants with a mine of data at their disposal to improve, streamline and enhance the sales process and maximize returns for the retailer. We now call our former salespeople Business development Representatives (BDRs).’ So, how is this concept groundbreaking and technologically advanced? Padua explains: “We had to ask what technology we needed to address the specific challenges we faced with retailers in these regions. We needed to re-invent the supply chain and the way we monitored it from a retailer and consumer (beer drinker) angle. “We wanted to give our BDR’s the tools to help our retailers’ businesses grow; to sell more products, to sell more beer and effectively thrive. Once we decided to do 36

April 2022

“ It may sound simple, but no one ever did this in the past….We even thought we’d have to employ the CIA or the FBI to achieve this” RICARDO PADULA PRODUCT LEAD, BEES FORCE

that it started a whole change management process. It was a huge transformation for the company and the future of the sales.” BEES had to ask itself what technology was needed to allow the new BDR to effectively run their own teams. BEES Force was born and would be with them all the way through the sales process. Padua is a Star Wars fan; in case you hadn’t guessed.

BEES Force technology uses image recognition via the retailer’s mobile phone. “We are able to use this to analyse the coolers, the way the shelves are arranged, and the pricing being used by our retailers,” says Padula. “We can then ensure everything is presented to the customer — in near real time — to make the products the most attractive in the market.” aimagazine.com

Ironically, despite the digital intervention, the pricing is displayed on printed posters in these outlets. So, the cost to the consumer of a bottle of President or Skol is written by hand by the retailer after consultation with his or her BDR. This may sound incredibly simple but, as Padula explains, this image recognition mixed with remote consultancy for the retailer has solved one of the biggest problems Ab-InBev had with its sales process in these countries. “This was one of our biggest problems in the past which, until this technology came along, we were never able to solve. We never had a trustable way to audit our stock accurately — until now.” “In a nutshell, we take pictures, and they will recognize what's going on inside the 38

April 2022

cooler and on the shelves and in the local advertising and we can say ‘okay this Point of Consumption (retailer) is doing well’…or not.” Building this software, proving the concept, and getting it into the marketplace was not down to the efforts of BEES alone. This was a three-way project. Running in the background is Microsoft providing components of your solution architecture, and joining its software to the BEES front end is NTT Data, who is responsible for implementing the Data Engineering and AI solutions across the entire BEES Force technology environment. NTT Data is a consultancy, which provides technology services. It’s skill set includes working in a ‘Big Data’ environment, developing advanced analytics with AI services. For BEES NTT’s providing Image

NTT DATA | AB - INBEV | MICROSOFT

recognition and data visualization solutions was vital. NTT’s team working with BEES is its Data & Analytics Director, Daniela Santana Griecco and its Data Science Lead, Carlos Porto Filho. “We were responsible for defining and implementing the Proof of Concept for BEES and the big challenge was to propose an Image Recognition solution for the entire BEES Force platform”, says Daniela. “In just three weeks the results were incredible, because it not only matched but exceeded the initial acceptance criteria, surprising the executive board for its innovation and ability to scale the solution.” Daniela says the importance of keeping the operation running with quality and efficiency, increased user adoption to

BEES Force platform. “Nowadays, after performing this Proof of concept, we are also responsible for evolving the solution in other countries for BEES and establishing the entire operation to support those countries where the solution is already implemented. “BEES is a fantastic use case for us to become a reference, not only in Analytics, but also in Digital Transformation solutions.” One of the ways NTT helped BEES was by developing Planogram. “So, you have this cooler with products inside,” says Filho. “Then the retailers use a mobile phone to take pictures. Then our technology can validate or invalidate several things from posters, as we said, to the way the beers are arranged and displayed. This is the Planogram. aimagazine.com

NTT DATA | AB - INBEV | MICROSOFT

April 2022

“ BEES is a fantastic use case for us to become a reference, not only in Analytics, but also in Digital Transformation solutions.” DANIELA SANTANA GRIECCO DATA & ANALYTICS DIRECTOR, NTT DATA

“Using image recognition, ensures the retailers are presenting the products in the correct way to maximize sales.” Jean Brant from Microsoft says "by using Azure Custom Vision, a cognitive service from our platform, it was possible to establish an image recognition solution adaptable to the different needs of any region of the world which greatly facilitates the process of scaling the solution to other countries.” Ricardo Padula says he cannot sing the praises of NTT and Microsoft enough in how they helped deliver this project. “I’m not a technical person but working with Carlos and the rest of the team enabled us to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify not only prices but a whole host of elements which need to be right to maximize sales,” he says. “It may sound simple, but no one ever did this in the past. We struggled in the past

for more than five years trying to recognise images, but we have never had success before. We even thought we’d have to employ the CIA or the FBI to achieve this.” “Now, with NTT and Microsoft we have a huge amount of data collected from the field to do thousands of pieces of analysis to really add value to the customer and retailer experience. “ “Projects like this are perfect for highlighting the real possibilities of Artificial Intelligence in transforming our customers' businesses. AI is not just a technological hype that one day will pass like many others, AI is an extremely powerful tool to deliver better experiences to our customers, be more efficient internally and consequently more competitive. ABInbev gives us an excellent example of how we should be disruptive, using the best that technology has to offer.“ says Evandro Armelin, Head of Data & Analytics Latam from NTT Data. The synergy between the three groups was key in ensuring the project was executed correctly and the culture of the Ab-InBev sales teams and its retailers was fully understood to ensure a successful implementation. Frederico De Marchi from Microsoft explains: “We immediately had a connection, a cultural match, when Ricardo introduced our team and gave us the Bees Force challenge. It is a good example of how we apply our mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more. We say we don't want to be cool, we want to make our customers cool.’ An appropriate choice of words given cold beer served from a cooler is at the heart of this project.”

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AI/ML

COMBATTING CLIMATE CHANGE WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE As issues around climate change become increasingly significant, we look at how AI can support businesses to develop robust sustainability strategies WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

rom automation and natural language processing (NLP) to robotics and augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI) can be applied to help organisations tackle a multitude of business challenges. One thing that unites people and businesses across the globe is climate change and the impact it's having on communities and biodiversity. As well as being key for business prosperity, executives in a number of different industries are now turning to AI technology as a tool to both improve their own internal sustainability strategies and to develop technology that targets key challenges faced as a result of climate change. Looking at the significance of this technology to sustainability, Prashant Natarajan, Vice President, Strategy and Products at H2O.ai, comments: “AI’s biggest role is using data to create a more engaged and informed global society. From producers of goods and services to 42

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governments caring for their citizens, we’ll be much better at grasping opportunities for identifying new sustainability options. These options will both increase environmental protection and set the foundations for truly responsible growth.” Adding to this, Christina Shim, VP and Head of Strategy and Sustainability at IBM, outlines that sustainability requires much more than measuring emissions within organisations. With supply chains, the life of assets and the impact of environmental conditions on operations also needing to be taken into consideration, AI takes centre stage: “When you can apply data and AI to these areas, companies can make smarter, more sustainable decisions.” As an asset to sustainability teams by providing a new perspective into sustainability, “AI works at its best when it's used to increase or augment our decisionmaking capabilities. That’s the sweet spot for climate action,” says Martin Migoya, Co-Founder and CEO of Globant.

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Enabling educators. Empowering students. Explore how we accelerate student discovery, learning and innovation with our Digital Education 3D Experience. EXPLORE THE 3D EXPERIENCE

AI/ML

“USING AI-DRIVEN INSIGHTS, ORGANISATIONS CAN EXTEND THE LIFE OF CRITICAL ASSETS SUCH AS MACHINERY, BUILDINGS, AND EQUIPMENT” CHRISTINA SHIM

VP, HEAD OF STRATEGY AND SUSTAINABILITY AT IBM

AI: improving the energy sector and business practices Research by PwC models the economic impact of AI’s application to manage the environment across four sectors – agriculture, water, energy and transport. It estimates that using AI for environmental applications could contribute up to US$5.2 tn to the global economy in 2030, a 4.4% increase relative to business as usual. Looking specifically at the energy sector, Natarajan outlines how it is particularly useful within the industry, which in itself is a significant contributor to climate change. “Optimising the power grid and increasing its efficiency, not just in production but also reducing the loss that happens in distribution, will mean we can do more with less. With machine learning, you’ll soon know in incredible detail if there is a certain time of the year when more energy gets lost, for example,” he says. AI can be invaluable to the renewable energy sector, not only because the automation capability of AI can drive operational excellence in many crucial areas but because, with its power predictions, AI

Prashant Natarajan Prashant Natarajan is a best selling author, whose books, Demystifying AI for the Enterprise and Demystifying Big Data & Machine Learning for Healthcare, look to illustrate the power of cloud, data, analytics, AI/ML, and digital transformation for business leaders, domain experts, and nontechnologists.

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AI/ML

will lead to improved demand forecasting and asset management. “Understanding the impact of decisions from multiple perspectives in the utility space is a place where AI/ML will make a big difference,” adds Natarajan. The research by PwC also found that AI could create 38.2 million net new jobs across the global economy, offering more skilled occupations as part of this transition towards AI technology. With the ability to transform how businesses can tackle their sustainability efforts, this multifaceted technology can help companies achieve more efficient, resilient and sustainable operations that have an impact on their bottom line. “Using AI-driven insights, organisations can extend the life of critical assets such as machinery, buildings, and equipment; create more efficient and resilient supply chains to protect and optimise inventory, reduce waste and added emissions from ineffective shipping and delivery routes,” says Shim. Additionally, businesses can utilise AI technology to monitor for disruptive environmental conditions, predict potential impacts, and better understand the impact of their own operations on the environment. “On a cognitive level, AI enables us to assess challenges that are typically complex or costly to quantify and analyse. For example, we can build an AI that estimates the CO2 output of different combinations of hardware, the impact of how we structure code in our programs, or the emissions generated by different activities,” explains Migoya. Is AI a business imperative? Nations across the world have signed various agreements, pledged to reduce carbon emissions and agreed to sustainable 46

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Since Globant’s inception in 2003, Globant went from 4 founders to a company that currently employs more than 16 thousand professionals working in 16 different countries worldwide. Globant has been recognised by prestigious institutions like MIT, Harvard and Stanford, and Fast Company Magazine recognised Globant as one of the most innovative companies in the world.

AI/ML

“WE NEED TO BE HUMBLE ENOUGH TO BE CONSISTENTLY MEASURING AND REASSESSING OUR ACTIONS SO THAT WHEN WE LEARN, WE ARE APPLYING THAT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE” MARTIN MIGOYA

CO-FOUNDER AND CEO OF GLOBANT

development goals. With these commitments, businesses are facing increasing pressure from investors, regulators, and consumers to demonstrate more sustainable and socially responsible operations. It’s no surprise that environmental sustainability is emerging as a top priority for stakeholders across the business and as a result, creating more sustainable operations isn't just good for society - it's also a business imperative. “According to a recent survey, 80% of consumers indicate sustainability is important to them and 60% are willing to change their shopping habits to reduce environmental impact, a proportion that could very feasibly continue to rise as climate change gets worse. In addition, organisations with successful sustainability programs are able to attract better talent as, according to an IBM survey, 71% of employees and employment seekers surveyed say that environmentally sustainable companies are more attractive employers,” explains Shim. aimagazine.com

To further bolster its sustainability efforts, IBM acquired Envizi - a leading data and analytics software provider for environmental performance management - this year. This acquisition will help IBM’s customers accelerate sustainability initiatives and achieve environmental goals with Envizi’s automation software.

As Migoya explains, with this drive to create more sustainable businesses, AI provides a solution to this transition to sustainable business operations without disrupting business as usual: “The efficiencies that AI provides enable an escape from the cost/benefit binary, and a focus on the upside. There are still many places where the choice or pursuit of sustainability is a matter of principle, values, and vision. But we are not far away from an era where sustainability is imperative to remain competitive. Having the tools to incorporate these goals without friction enables companies to pivot faster.” AI, Natarajan explains, will give organisations the ability to understand the impact of a business move from both a 48

April 2022

sustainability perspective and an economic perspective. “The assumption is you can't separate the two: AI changes that,” he says. Supporting the UN’s sustainable development goals with AI Although climate change and its impact is a top priority for businesses, so are many other sustainable development goals, as outlined by the United Nations (UN). The 17 goals, adopted in 2015, are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity. “The development of these social initiatives are mainly human and they require many aspects, concepts and planning that are not necessarily related to technology. However, technology can

AI/ML

“WITHOUT THE SUPPORT OF AI-ENABLED TECHNOLOGY TO MITIGATE CLIMATE CHANGE, A SIGNIFICANT PERCENTAGE OF THE POPULATION WILL LOSE THEIR HOMES, THEIR LAND, AND EVEN THEIR COUNTRIES” CHRISTINA SHIM

VP, HEAD OF STRATEGY AND SUSTAINABILITY AT IBM

contribute to elevating them:AI can help these different aspects to align, and it can also ensure access to relevant forms of knowledge, promoting fundamental skills and critical thinking among the community,” explains Migoya. With the ability to elevate these initiatives, Shim believes that AI will be revolutionary as the world looks to end poverty. “A crucial part of this is enabling AI technology the ability to address these issues via public-private partnerships and broader applications of it across business, social, environmental, political and other spheres that are strongly interconnected and have interlocking impacts. In other words, it is impossible to decouple environmental issues from social issues. Climate justice and refugees are an example here, where without the support of AI-enabled technology to mitigate climate change, a significant percentage of the population will lose their homes, their land, and even their countries,” she says. Migoya, despite celebrating the significance of AI to climate change, stresses the issue of techno-optimism whereby businesses believe that simply integrating AI into sustainability strategies will solve all problems: “There is no excuse for not appropriately analysing the scope of the objectives and their effects, involving people affected, subject matter experts, and so on. AI needs to be used “from the inside” to improve the way things work; not “from the outside” where there may be a lack of understanding the nuances of the systems involved and how they work. He concludes: “We need to be humble enough to be consistently measuring and reassessing our actions so that when we learn, we are applying that as soon as possible.” aimagazine.com

YEXT

SEARCH FOR THE ENTERPRISE WRITTEN BY: SIMON HOWSON-GREEN

April 2022

PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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YEXT

When it comes to a more sophisticated and accurate online search Yext’s AI engine has all the answers ouldn’t it be nice if every business website we visited could answer our questions easily, directly and correctly? That’s what the AI search company, Yext, is asking us to consider — and not just for websites, but for all business owned platforms, both internal and external facing. And it’s a question Deepika Rayala, Yext’s Chief Information Officer, can answer directly: “It can,” she says. “But you need Yext Search Platform to do it.” Today, using search on our laptops, mobile phones, and other devices is second nature to us. We often do it without even thinking about the complex process that takes place behind the scenes in order to deliver a direct answer to questions about topics ranging from the best winter shoes to Omicron variant symptoms. We’re accustomed to getting our results within seconds. “Our online day is punctuated by multiple visits to a search engine,” Rayala says. “Most of the time, that will be Google.” We all know on one level that a simple Google search will do the trick. That’s because, over the past few decades, the search giant has led the way on consumer search, introducing a satisfying AI-powered search experience that billions around the world have been accustomed to. 52

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Deepika Rayala Chief Information Example of Officer, Yext an image caption aimagazine.com

YEXT

“ Our business strategy and growth plan stem from Yext’s a bold mission to transform enterprises through AI search” DEEPIKA RAYALA

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, YEXT

April 2022

At the same time, when we search for information about a specific business on Google, we are all at the mercy of its algorithms. Those algorithms can surface ads as results — including those for competitors — as well as third-party blogs and websites boosted by SEO that may contain spam or outdated information. For some of us, that experience might still be preferable to going to a business’s official website, which is also typically powered by an outdated technology called keyword search. Keyword search typically returns a list of irrelevant hyperlinks that people have to scroll through to find an answer to their query. Rayala says. “It’s an extremely frustrating experience that happens all the time, all around the world.”

YEXT

So, what if we could leave keyword search in the past, take only the best parts of Google’s AI-powered consumer search, and use it to transform the enterprise search experience? This is where Yext comes in. Founded in 2006, Yext (NYSE: YEXT) is a global enterprise search company that builds AI-powered search solutions for businesses to plug into their websites, customer support sites, apps, intranet, and more. While it might not be as much of a household name as Google, it’s a major fixture in the enterprise search space — one you’ve almost definitely used before while browsing sites. “Our business strategy and growth plans stem from Yext’s bold mission to transform every enterprise in the world through AI search,” says Rayala.

DEEPIKA RAYALA TITLE: EVP, CIO (INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS CENTRE)

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: NEW YORK Rayala has more than 20 years of experience building IT organisations. Prior to Yext, she was Vice President of Enterprise Applications and PMO at Apttus, where she doubled the size of her team and established a best-in-class enterprise applications team. She has also led large IT transformation programs at Broadcom and Genentech, executing strategies to modernise and align the IT application landscape with the companies' business goals. Rayala manages all aspects of IT from apps and Business Development operations to security and compliance. She also leads Yext’s ‘shared services centre’ out of India which was opened last year. She is responsible for leading the company's global IT organisation and driving the enterprise applications, data and analytics, infrastructure, and operations that enable Yext to deliver its platform to businesses around the world.

Business-led and cloud-forward transformation. It all adds up to The New Equation. Learn more at www.theNewEquation.com

© 2022 PwC. All rights reserved. PwC refers to the US member firm, and may sometimes refer to the PwC network. Each member firm is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details. This content is for general information purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional advisors.

FROM QUOTE TO CASH - PWC AND YEXT CREATE THE PERFECT TRANSFORMATION BLUEPRINT PwC has been at the forefront of global business’s journey into the cloud. Its recent collaboration with AI search company Yext provides a powerful case study for how to get digital transformation right.

According to Yext’s CIO Deepika Rayala, working with PwC has helped to improve the efficiency of Yext’s business, saving many hours that sales staff would have otherwise spent producing detailed quotes to customers and providing contract support.

Starting in 2020, Yext turned to PwC to help overhaul its systems, specifically its ‘quote to cash’ (Q2C) operation, especially as the company had made a strategic shift to a consumption-based pricing model that its existing quoting tools could not support.

Samrat Sharma, US & Global Marketing Transformation Leader at PwC US, says that with such projects, there always should be an element of pragmatism and focusing on what really matters, from experience to outcomes.

‘Yext needed to build a solution that was more agile, automated and catered to their various business segments to unlock operational efficiencies, would automate their process overall, especially in configuring pricing and quoting,’ says Jen Yanoff, Cloud & Digital Principal at PwC US. ‘They also needed to increase productivity and efficiency, because of the high volume of transactions that they have. Finally, they wanted to improve the customer experience overall.’ The collaboration ultimately resulted in key innovations across three areas: productivity gains (reducing processing time by 50%), workflow improvement efficiencies, and support for the new pricing model.

At the same time, it’s important to leverage technology and data in order to be able to really focus, amplify, and simplify the company’s ability to deliver, tackling that with empathy and trust. ‘We need to be clear that we need to build infrastructure in a sustainable way with a clear intent to help drive the customer experience, drive growth, and drive profitability,’ he says.

Learn more

YEXT

“We often say, if you’ve ever searched for information about a company online, chances are you’ve interacted with Yext”. Yext currently works with more than 2,500 businesses and organisations around the world to transform their digital experiences with AI search.” AI is the key word here, since it’s the foundation of Yext’s search platform — and what differentiates it from typical keyword search experiences. It starts with Yext’s knowledge graph technology, which can consolidate a business’ facts from different sources into a brain-like database that can be mined. “Every company knows its own data the best, and they should be the source of truth for that data,” Rayala says. “By storing and structuring their data in a company-specific knowledge graph, they can power a Googlelike search experience that is powered by their own knowledge graph.” Once an Answers search bar is implemented on a website, AI also comes into play with the ever-evolving machine learning models and algorithms that continue to learn from the queries on your site. By understanding even the most complex natural language queries, the platform can deliver a direct answer. Sometimes, this answer can be accompanied by images, videos, or even action buttons like “get directions.” While the backend technology is impressive, Yext is most excited about the variety of ways that their platform can be used. AI search has broad applicability, so we’re setting our sights not just on horizontals like marketing, customer support, developers, and workplace but are also focused on verticals like financial services, healthcare, retail, the public sector, and more. 58

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“ One of the cornerstones of Yext’s success is strong partnerships” DEEPIKA RAYALA

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, YEXT

2006

Year Founded

AI/SEARCH ENGINE Industry

2000

Number of Employees

$354.7mn Revenue

Indeed, Yext recently expanded its AI solutions to new areas, enabling businesses to implement modern search experiences in key area such as customer support sites and support agent dashboards. These solutions are also optimized for their specific industry. For healthcare organisations during the pandemic, for example, Yext’s Find-a-Doc solution proved extremely helpful. “ One such example is our ‘Find-a-Doc’ AI search solution for healthcare organisations that is designed to improve the preappointment patient experience by enabling patients to identify the right provider quickly and easily on a healthcare organisation's website,” says Rayala. When a patient searches for a specific doctor speciality, location or other criteria, Find-a-Doc will rely on advanced NLP to actually understand the patient's query and return the doctors that match their criteria — complete with headshots, contact information, and helpful prompts like ‘make an appointment’ and ‘get directions.’” According to Rayala, Yext — as a global company — is committed to constantly expanding the number of languages its search platform caters for. Currently, its site search product exists in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese. It’s easy to see how Yext’s solutions can offer a seamless, digital experience for end users. But for businesses, Rayala explains, there are even more benefits to reap: increased conversions, reduced support costs, expanded insights, greater productivity, and more. Samsung, for example, turned to Yext to transform its help centre. First, Yext helped them build a robust knowledge graph that consolidated all their help articles, FAQs, YouTube videos, and more, then implemented an AI search experience on the site. aimagazine.com

YEXT

“Now, when a customer asks Samsung a complex question, the Yext algorithms powering the search experience understand the question and provide a direct answer,” says Rayala. “They surface dynamic content like photos, help articles, and calls-to-action — not a list of blue hyperlinks.” Ultimately, within eleven weeks of launching with Yext, Samsung experienced significant growth in every major customer satisfaction metric, increasing its Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 45%, Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) by 33%, number of resolved issues by 15%, and number of completed surveys by 8x. Tapping into Yext’s performance analytics, Samsung was also able to boost click-through rates (CTR) by 40%. All told, Samsung increased customer engagement with its help site by 19%, streamlining the path to resolution and delighting customers along the way. While it may seem like building this kind of search experience — knowledge graph and associated integrations — would take months, Rayala provides a real-life example of how quickly customers can be ready to go with Yext Answers. “We have the technology, integrations, algorithms, and expertise necessary to deliver a world-class search experience out of the box. We’re able to get businesses up and running with AI search relatively quickly so they can start enjoying its perks.” Another example she offers is Yext’s work in the public sector during the early phases of the pandemic. “Within the span of 60 days, when the world was scrambling for information, we were able to build custom information hubs to help the World Health Organization (WHO), the US State Department, and the states of New Jersey and Alabama deliver accurate, up-todate information about COVID-19,” she says.

“ Many businesses in every industry continue to use an outdated technology called keyword search” DEEPIKA RAYALA

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, YEXT

aimagazine.com

YEXT

Yext: AI Search for the Enterprise

“We have the technology, integrations, algorithms, and expertise necessary to deliver a world-class search experience” DEEPIKA RAYALA

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, YEXT

It’s clear how proud Yext is of its customers and the incredible success it has facilitated for them. In order to realize that success, Yext had to enable more efficient business operations – and so, under Rayala’s IT leadership, the company implemented a comprehensive IT transformation program that required working with multiple IT partners. Take Yext’s relationship with professional services network and accounting firm PwC, for example, which Rayala says strengthened when Yext needed to implement updated product and pricing strategy to support an ever-increasing volume of transactions. 62

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“PwC helped us with complex challenges by integrating technology, business, and employee experience,” Rayala explains. “They brought strong technology expertise and the ability to affect global transformation at scale, ultimately helping us drive meaningful changes to our processes and ways of working.” In terms of meeting the challenges of managing a rapidly growing SaaS environment, Yext turned to the software-asa-service (SaaS) management platform, Zylo. “Implementing Zylo has also enabled us to have a more streamlined and decentralised management where certain SaaS apps can

be procured and managed by the lines of business,” she says. “However, all apps are still managed under the purview of the overall governance process when it comes to contract renewals, compliance, spend and usage tracking. This allows for quicker time to market and efficiency.” Yext is also working closely with San Francisco-based workflow management company, Pipefy. “By using a tool such as Pipefy, we’ve been able to automate complex workflows in one unified platform with an easy-to-use interface,” says Rayala. Alongside her duties as CIO, Rayala

serves as the executive sponsor of Yext’s Employee Resource Group (ERG), Embrace, which supports employees of colour and contributes to the broader inclusive culture behind Yext’s products — one that Rayala says she is very proud of. As an executive sponsor, Rayala advises a core team of employees on events and activities and joins safe-space meetings to understand how employees are doing on the ground, especially when external events impact them. Rayala says, “Leaders should step outside of their daily work and dedicate time to learn aimagazine.com

April 2022

YEXT

“ (Yext helps) businesses deliver truly exceptional search experiences to their end customers, partners, and employees”

from, work with, and support employees, especially in endeavours such as running ERGs. These forums help employees feel more connected and go a long way in building company culture.” Rayala believes that the most important leadership quality is being genuine. “When you’re leading a team, it is critical for people to trust you enough to come along with you on the journey — and authenticity is the key to building that trust.

DEEPIKA RAYALA

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, YEXT aimagazine.com

Why AI and IoT Need Cloud Technology for Smart Cities WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

April 2022

AI APPLICATIONS

We take a look at how AI and IoT work together to create smart cities and the vital role cloud technology plays when it comes to data and storage

t the same time as businesses are digitally transforming, cities across the world are becoming more technology-focused in order to serve communities more effectively. The internet of things (IoT) applications are enabling smart city initiatives to provide areas with the ability to remotely monitor, manage and control devices. By generating massive streams of realtime data, these devices also create new insights and actionable information for governments to unpick and use to create better spaces to live. IoT and connected devices are becoming pervasive to the point that knowingly or unknowingly, we all rely on IoT for several parts of our day-to-day lives. Playing a vital role in smart city applications, IoT delivers up-to-date data about what is happening in a certain place. This abundance of data is one of the biggest benefits a smart city brings. As with artificial intelligence (AI) technology, IoT can deliver better-informed communication across devices. This means appliances will be able to customise their interactions with a user automatically based on their communication with other machines within a network. Dai Clegg, Technology Evangelist, EMEA, at Yugabyte, comments on the significance of AI with IoT devices in smart cities: “IoT can work with AI by streaming data from many, many devices into a database from which aimagazine.com

Get reliable network coverage and security protection, fast. A modern network must be able to respond easily, quickly and flexibly to the growing needs of today’s digital business. Must provide visibility & control of applications, users and devices on and off the network and Intelligently direct traffic across the WAN. Be scalable and automate the process to provide new innovative services. Support IoT devices and utilize state-of-the-art technologies such as real-time analytics, ML and AI. And all these must be provided with maximum security and minimum cost. This is the power that brings the integration of two cloud managed platforms, Cisco Meraki and Cisco Umbrella. This integration is binding together the best of breed in cloud-managed networking and Security.

cisco.com

cisco

CiscoSecure

AI APPLICATIONS

“ IoT can work with AI by streaming data from many, many devices into a database from which the AI is deriving its insights” DAI CLEGG

TECHNOLOGY EVANGELIST, EMEA, AT YUGABYTE

the AI is deriving its insights. Where we’re using multiple datasets, we will be merging, moving and replicating that data to get it in the right place and format to make decisions on it. The data and processing network will be key.” Generating city data with IoT and AI AI is inherently a big part of how integrated IoT currently functions and will continue to advance in the future, as data is the biggest output of IoT connectivity. The technology is also integral to the improved time and cost efficiencies with which IoT has become synonymous. This is mostly due to the automation of tasks that AI enables without the need for human interference. Adding to this, with 5G capabilities - and 6G possibly just around the corner - the new ultra-speed networks many cities operate add to improved connectivity across IoT devices: “This will also help identify interdependencies that exist between the operation within these devices and network operations in near real-time. While the

Yugabyte’s co-founders are database builders and operators who met at Facebook, where they scaled the platform from millions to billions of users in just a few years. The team made a bet that the trends they experienced – microservices, containerisation, high availability, geographic distribution, APIs developers love to use, and an appetite for open source – would affect most, if not all, businesses over time. They came together in February 2016 to build YugabyteDB, the distributed SQL database built to power global-scale, cloud-native applications.

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AI APPLICATIONS

technology and infrastructure needed to integrate the various aspects of IoT into smart city infrastructure are still nascent, we already have myriad capabilities in place,” says Fusemachines Founder and CEO, Sameer Maskey. “For example, the ability to remotely monitor, manage and control devices, and to create new insights and actionable information from large streams of real-time data is currently possible,” he adds. Coping with large datasets with the help of cloud technologies In smart city environments with IoT, everything from vehicles to hand-held devices are constantly interacting with each other, generating not only a large volume of data but also different variants of datasets. To ensure this data doesn’t go stale, the management of these datasets is a foreseeable challenge as technologists band together to build scalable smart city ventures. Traditional and conventional data warehousing techniques can be timeconsuming and limiting as a result. Many technologists now look to the best of cloud and edge computing as a critical solution in managing data. “Like AI, and 5G/seamless connectivity, cloud too is integral to the large-scale implementation of IoT into a city. Cloud computing essentially enables the storage and exchange of the very data generated by the multitude of smart devices that will make up a smart city,” says Maskey. “For example, with the help of cloud computing, various services from healthcare, energy and transportation to governance, retail and education can be available for the smart city ecosystem via the cloud and will be only a device away. With everything 70

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“ Cloud technologies that promise secure, uninterrupted and cost-efficient offerings will be in high demand” SAMEER MASKEY

FOUNDER AND CEO AT FUSEMACHINES

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in New York, with operations across North and Latin America and Asia, Fusemachines is an AI talent and education platform and service provider. The company brings together engineers and PhDs from around the world to develop and drive AI strategies, create cutting-edge AI-powered solutions and act as strategic partners to companies that need help realising their digital transformation visions.

moving to the digital space, the place where an abundance of data and information is currently being stored is, in fact, the cloud. As a result, cloud technologies that promise secure, uninterrupted and costefficient offerings will be in high demand. Hyperscalers like AWS, Google Cloud and Azure are already exploring this space.” Adapting to change with IoT, AI and the cloud Two of the most common barriers cities face when implementing smart city solutions are the in-house capacity to design, implement and manage cutting-edge technology and the investment needed to do this. aimagazine.com

“ The use of AI in data management also enables realtime analysis of a large pool of data” DAI CLEGG

TECHNOLOGY EVANGELIST, EMEA, AT YUGABYTE

April 2022

AI APPLICATIONS

Cloud-based solutions allow cities to use managed IoT in the smart cities services to scale their According to Markets and Markets, the limited resources and global IoT in the smart cities market size reduce the total cost of is set to grow from US$130.6bn in 2021 to ownership (TCO) for smart US$ 312.2bn by 2026. Various factors such city solutions. as increase in adoption of IoT technology Clegg also notes that cloud technology gives for infrastructure management and city smart cities the flexibility monitoring and an exponential rise in and ability to adapt more urban population are expected to drive the swiftly to change: “We need adoption of IoT in smart cities solutions and services. to be flexible about the data network. We’ll potentially need edge computing to move processing close to the data so we can respond with low latency. We may need to replicate and migrate data around the city to provide services to mobile devices - think smart vehicles. It’s all very well being smart, but if we can't make the insights available where they’re needed, when they’re needed, it could just become stale data sitting on the shelf that adds no value.” He goes on to explain that, although storing data is a first important step, it is also equally as important to cleanse the data to curb inaccuracies and erroneous outputs, which are often generated in unstructured formats. “Superior connectivity and the ability to handle data variety, alongside an AI-powered data management system, can add efficiencies to the process of connecting to all devices and abide by specified protocols to gain access to the needed data in time. The use of AI in data management also enables real-time analysis of a large pool of data and can even help spot anomalies. Similarly, AI can help with spotting data drift, which can often be attributed to system updates,” he concludes. aimagazine.com

Making the Everywhere Workplace a Reality WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

April 2022

PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

IVANTI

aimagazine.com

IVANTI

President and Chief Product Officer, Nayaki Nayyar, says the phenomenal growth of Ivanti over the last two years is rooted in vision and strategy

hen current President and Chief Product Officer, Nayaki Nayyar, joined Ivanti in 2020, the US-based IT Software company had few existing products to manage and secure devices. While the company had strong patch management, endpoint management and some capabilities in service management, the reality was that “in each of the pillars that Ivanti was playing in, it did not have the depth and the strength to be top two or top three in those markets,” said Nayyar. One of Nayyar’s first tasks over two years ago was to help Ivanti put together a very strong vision and strategy. She helped the company to look of itself in the mirror and ask questions of itself: ‘Where are we heading? Where are we going?’. The result was a refreshed mission around the ‘Everywhere Workplace’, accelerated by the global pandemic, and a vision for Ivanti Neurons Automation Platform to Discover, Manage, Secure, and Service IT assets from Cloud to Edge. Working in an addressable market of 30 billion, the aim was now to double this figure and work towards a 60 billion addressable market. Charting through a period of high growth Under Nayyar’s leadership, the vision, the strategy and the growth for Ivanti’s three main product pillars, along with its flagship Ivanti Neurons automation platform, has achieved significant success over the last 12 to 18 months. 76

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IVANTI

IVANTI: Making the Everywhere Workplace a reality

The Neurons platform connects the company’s industry-leading unified endpoint management, cybersecurity and enterprise service management solutions, providing a unified hyperautomation platform that enables devices to self-heal and self-secure and empowers users to self-service. Nayyar’s vision included an inorganic and organic growth strategy. Over the last 12 months, Ivanti has made five acquisitions across the product portfolio. Far from being random, Nayyar reiterates, these were “all very deliberate moves to strengthen our capabilities in unified endpoint 78

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“ It's just been a pleasure for me to be at the forefront of enabling Ivanti to go from less than half a billion to a billion plus in revenue” NAYAKI NAYYAR

PRESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, IVANTI

NAYAKI NAYYAR TITLE: P RESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER LOCATION: SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

management, in cybersecurity to evolve beyond just patch management into the entire zero trust framework, and service management, providing a great end to end service experience for employees, not just in IT but in every line of business”. Ivanti today has doubled the total addressable market from 30 billion to 60 plus billion, just as it set out to do. “Phenomenal growth, phenomenal success, phenomenal momentum. It's just been a pleasure for me to be at the forefront of enabling Ivanti to go from less than half a billion to a billion plus on revenue,” said Nayyar.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Nayaki Nayyar is the President and Chief Product Officer at Ivanti. She is responsible for Ivanti’s strategy, innovation and growth in Cybersecurity, Automation, Edge and Endpoint Device Management, and Service Management. She was instrumental in Ivanti’s significant growth through acquisitions, the launch of Ivanti’s Neurons Platform, and doubling its total addressable market from US$30bn to US$60bn in the last 2 years. Nayaki currently serves on the boards of TD Synnex, Veritone, Inc., Solutions, and Corteva Agriscience. She holds a B.E. in mechanical engineering from Osmania University (India), M.S. in computer science from the University of Houston, and is a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program.

Backup and data recovery for any scenario Ninja backup is a ‘set and forget’ solution – with just a few clicks we can rely on Ninja to protect client data without spending hours per day babysitting the solution. VP of Technology and Services, DSN Group

We Simplify IT Operations www.ninjaone.com

NinjaOne: The leading unified IT operations solution Dean Yeck, Chief Revenue Officer at NinjaOne, helps IT teams to monitor, manage, patch, secure and backup all their endpoints at scale. Dean Yeck is the Chief Revenue Officer at NinjaOne, leading the global sales and marketing efforts worldwide. A year into his tenure, he’s been part of a team that has doubled the revenue of the company, also doubling the sales team and launching into new geographies and verticals. The winning relationship with Ivanti Patch management is a priority for NinjaOne. They have formed a longterm strategic partnership with Utahbased Ivanti, who provides solutions for IT asset management. “We are proud of our relationship with Ivanti, who have helped us deliver the best-in-class patch management solution in the marketplace. Patch management is increasing and so is its importance to our customers for their operations; whether it’s for compliance or for the hygiene of their software.

Our partnership with Ivanti has given us a best of breed approach. And our customers say that as well,” said Yeck. Enhancing customer value add with evolving products Moving from outdated on-prem tools to cloud tools like NinjaOne is key,” adds Yeck: “Our customers receive world-class customer support with industry leading CSAT scores, with a dedicated account manager and unlimited support, post-sales. “Our post-sales account management support is how we unlock lots of great features on a monthly basis for our customers, so they are truly getting the full value of NinjaOne. That’s a transformational relationship, not just transactional,” said Yeck. “The more that customers can do with NinjaOne and a single pane of glass, the more value they’re going to get and the longer the relationship with us. And then on top of that, expanding our VAR / reseller relationships so we can get NinjaOne into more hands across the globe,” he said.

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IVANTI

The Ivanti #EverywhereWorkplace Contest Highlights

April 2022

IVANTI

“ I saw the potential in Ivanti. While we were very small and we didn't have a lot of strong assets, there was a strong foundation for adding some smart acquisitions” NAYAKI NAYYAR

PRESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, IVANTI

The Ivanti Neurons automation platform Ivanti’s flagship Neurons automation platform discovers, manages, secures, and services IT assets from cloud to edge. Nayyar adds: “Neurons helps customers to truly leverage additional transformation in a post-COVID world. They can discover all types of assets that they have in their landscape,” she said. “When you have such a diverse workforce working from all over the world, working from different locations, whether it's from home or while they're on the move; knowing what devices they own is the number one priority for every enterprise. We help secure the devices, the users and the end-to-end access management. We’re also trying to provide that contextual, personalised experience to every employee in an enterprise.,” said Nayyar. Even the word ‘neurons’ was chosen because it evoked a mental image of small, intelligent, bots that can self heal devices. “So these self-healing bots can detect an issue before the end-user knows about it and prevent those issues from happening, so the end-users don't experience it. And they get a very personalised, ambient experience,” she said. In regards to this type of intelligence, Nayyar takes inspiration from modern cars, that can learn who we are and what our likes and dislikes are, and self-heal before an issue manifests. Ivanti bases its technology on automation by AI/ML, deep learning capabilities and supervised and unsupervised learning capabilities. They create these self-healing bots which provide a contextual service experience to end-users. “The innovation that we brought to market, that's what drove our growth. I would say we’re now a leading vendor, but the brand wasn't even known two years back,” said Nayyar. aimagazine.com

April 2022

IVANTI

“ The innovation that we brought to market, that's what drove our growth. I would say we’re now a leading vendor” NAYAKI NAYYAR

PRESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, IVANTI

Ivanti well received by analysts The past 18 months have seen some extremely positive reviews flood in from industry analysts, often the independent and trusted measure of quality in IT. “When we initially launched Neurons in July of 2020, they were very positive about that vision and strategy. But what really got us the credibility with analysts is our ability to deliver what we said we will do. It's one thing to have a vision and strategy, and a whole

different thing to be able to execute on that promise. Additionally, with the acquisitions we did, this created all the inorganic momentum, and every quarter, without missing a beat, we released more and more organic innovations,” said Nayyar. “When we pair up our execution with the vision, that's what really gets the analyst communities excited. So today we are a leader in cybersecurity, unified endpoint management and enterprise service management, or what we refer to as ITSM. With the existing strength Ivanti had in patch management, we were able to evolve beyond just a standard capability into riskaimagazine.com

IVANTI

based patch management, where we enable our customers to prioritise the vulnerabilities and the risk they are exposed to in their landscape, and proactively patch to prevent ransomware attacks,” she said. Nayyar acknowledges how big an issue ransomware is and how it is disrupting every organisation, no matter if it's large, medium or small. She adds that with the Ivanti Neurons for Patch Management product, those ransomware attacks can be prevented by prioritising and applying those patches using robust automation. A large ecosystem of technology partners Ivanti has rapidly built a large ecosystem of partners, specifically OEM and channel partners, a traditional strength of the company. Ivanti works with most major security vendors and its software is embedded into the vendor’s stack. The company partners with device vendors, such as Intel and major telcos such as AT&T and Verizon. This large ecosystem of partners, according to Nayyar, “helps us scale and take our product beyond the direct selling model and into an indirect selling model, through these large device vendors, security vendors, and telcos - bringing us to thousands and thousands of customers worldwide, both in large enterprise and also in the mid-market space.” “We become even stronger as a vendor and player in the entire cybersecurity space, in unified endpoint management, service management and bringing the digital experience to every employee in a B2B context, similar to how they're already used to in the consumer world.” Again, for Nayyar, everything is based around the guiding vision and translating this vision to employees, customers, partners and investors: “The success I've had personally, 86

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“ The success I've had personally, both here at Ivanti and in my prior life, is all based around having a strong vision and strategy” NAYAKI NAYYAR

PRESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, IVANTI

IVANTI

IVANTI STATS 2020 - 50 most powerful women in technology 2021 – top 100 women in technology Cyber Security Global Excellence AI & Machine Learning Awards

both here at Ivanti and in my prior career, is all based around having a strong vision and strategy; putting that upfront and helping your entire ecosystem to get excited about it and execute towards it. This is extremely personally fulfilling for me and the entire executive team, to see that come to life for our customers and for our partners.” Potential clear at Ivanti from the outset “I saw the potential in Ivanti. While we were very small and we didn't have a lot of strong assets, there was a strong foundation for adding some smart acquisitions. And so, with organic and in-organic investments, we quickly grew in size over the past two years. It's been a great journey so far,” she added. After spending more than three decades in the industry, Nayyar is all too aware that things don't happen overnight. Her early journey started as a customer in the oil and gas industry, spending over 10 years at Valero Energy Corporation, a Fortune 500 international manufacturer and marketer of transportation fuels, other petrochemical products, and power. Five years prior to that at Shell, where she gained a deep understanding of a customer's mindset, consistently seeking to apply technology to transform these industries. “So with that foundation, I came into the software and the tech space, beginning with SAP for five and a half years, BMC for three and a half years; affording me a great mix of both industry knowledge and also technology knowledge. As a senior leader in the tech space, I’ve been lucky enough to have some great mentors and supporters along the way, who have given me these wonderful opportunities,” concluded Nayyar.

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AUTOMATING HEALTHCARE WITH AI AND ML TO DRIVE EFFICIENCIES 88

April 2022

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In the wake of the pandemic, AI technologies in healthcare are becoming increasingly popular. Here, we ask why and explore the benefits it will bring WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

espite catalysing the uptake of digital technologies within hospitals, many healthcare organisations had already been utilising technology to transform operations prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Already having a profound impact on many healthcare providers across the world, artificial intelligence (AI) has the ability to automate tasks, improve efficiencies and roboticise processes. Across the globe, doctors, hospitals, and researchers use automation to lower costs and improve the quality of care. It can also act as an aid in analysing patient and operations data. Commenting on its significance to the industry, Dr Hamed Al Hashemi, Digital Health Program Lead at Abu Dhabi’s Department of Health, says: “Automation and AI have a profound impact on healthcare processes and can serve to reduce medical errors and improve diagnostic capabilities. We see great potential for impact across the board, including areas such as scheduling, clinical assessment, diagnosis, prescriptions, follow-up care, and billing.” Built on a complex ecosystem of legacy infrastructures, systems, and technologies, healthcare organisations rely on data extrapolation to gain insights into things such as patient data. To support this, many aimagazine.com

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utomation and AI A have a profound impact on healthcare processes and can serve to reduce medical errors and improve diagnostic capabilities DR HAMED AL HASHEMI

DIGITAL HEALTH PROGRAM LEAD AT ABU DHABI’S DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH

organisations rely on highly trained staff and manage the data as it is generated, which can be both time-consuming and costly. Adding to this, Patrick Shephard, Head of Healthcare at Blue Prism, explains: “The solution to the challenges that healthcare organisations face across the world is to do more for patients with the same resources or less. Intelligent automation enables healthcare organisations to bring in digital robots — software designed to model human roles — to execute rule-based tasks such as appointment bookings and referrals.”

at ways to implement it to transform patient care and improve the day-to-day lives of healthcare professionals. “While healthcare organisations say that their adoption of automation has grown, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that propelled them to achieve more in months than they had in the previous few years,” says Shepard. “Necessity truly was the mother of invention in the crisis, with hospitals reorganising resources and building layouts, moving consultations online and, in some cases, adapting non-medical facilities to deliver care to those who needed it. The pandemic has encouraged leaders to accelerate their use of automation, with a majority using the solution to replace paper documents and innovate patient pathways,” he continues.

Responding to the changes in healthcare following the pandemic With these benefits, AI in healthcare is projected to reach US$194.4bn by 2030, having grown from US$8.23bn in 2020. COVID-19 is a huge driver for this growth, as the pandemic highlighted the crucial roles AI plays in healthcare with its ability to detect and diagnose the virus. AI in healthcare is not a new notion but, now that the technology has proven its capabilities, many companies are looking aimagazine.com

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Abu Dhabi’s Department for Health In 2019, Abu Dhabi’s Department for Health launched the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab, a first-ofits-kind initiative by a healthcare regulator in the region. The AI Lab fosters a culture of innovation and inspires cross-industrial collaboration in the healthcare sector. It is a safe platform of co-creation where DoH as a regulator can collaborate with service providers, insurance payers and technology companies to develop, test, and launch stateof-the-art healthcare solutions powered by emerging technologies.

At the forefront of Abu Dhabi’s response to the pandemic, Hashemi explained that this technology was vital to facilitate government-coordinated containment processes such as testing and contact tracing. Quick to adapt to the challenges posed by the pandemic, Abu Dhabi was able “to do this by doubling down on research and development, investing in healthcare technology and digital platforms, engaging in global partnerships, strengthening human capital in the sector and advancing healthcare services through a patientcentred approach,” says Hashemi. 92

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Utilising RPA and wearable technology in healthcare Robotic process automation (RPA) is proving an invaluable tool for the healthcare industry as it removes the need for people to complete mundane, repetitive tasks, allowing them to focus on those that are more critical. By automating these tasks, RPA can help build and retain an engaged workforce by filling their days with enriching, highvalue tasks. Shepard explains that “due to inefficient and outdated systems and operating models, most healthcare staff are having to spend significant amounts of time dealing with mundane and repetitive process-driven work”.

IOT

“Enhanced with the latest advancements in AI, intelligent automation can be extremely effective in boosting collaboration across multiple healthcare stakeholders and ICSs. With patients demanding more joined-up services, staff and clinicians requiring better visibility into patient pathways and histories, and the acute need for cost efficiency, more collaborative approaches using intelligent automation could hold the key to unlocking greater value for all parties involved in healthcare service provision,” he adds. Hashemi, while championing the benefits of RPA in healthcare, stresses the importance of striking the right balance between humans and machines. “Machines will not replace professionals but instead, diagnoses will become increasingly automated and driven by

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Digital transformation must be the ultimate ambition for any healthcare provider. To ensure this, they must use intelligent automation as a strategic lever to transform their entire operational and resourcing models PATRICK SHEPHARD

HEAD OF HEALTHCARE AT BLUE PRISM aimagazine.com

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massive amounts of accessible patient data. These big data sets will be captured, stored, analysed and interpreted in realtime. In the process, healthcare will shift and become far less reactive.” Wearable technology is also proving its worth in healthcare. With the ability to provide data and insights into an individual's medical condition from wherever the patient may be, wearable technology can reveal the physical and chemical properties of the body to evaluate wellness. These small electronic devices allow healthcare professionals to be more proactive with diagnosis and empower the individual to continuously measure their health and wellbeing without the need for visiting a clinical centre, and immediately take action when needed. “The proliferation of wearables and other medical devices combined with AI is also being applied to oversee early-stage heart disease, enabling doctors and other caregivers to monitor and detect potentially life-threatening episodes at earlier, more treatable stages,” says Hashemi. Understanding AI to utilise it effectively The implementation of this technology has the potential to become tricky, particularly as in healthcare, professionals are dealing with highly sensitive data and information. As with any new technology, there are still some barriers that organisations and individuals need to overcome. Hashemi notes the importance of regulation and understanding: “First and foremost, there needs to be an education process on all levels – trainers, healthcare professionals and of course end-users need to understand not only how to best utilise these technologies, but also why a given technology is being used. Here we 94

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Blue Prism Blue Prism is at the leading edge of healthcare transformation, going beyond RPA to provide intelligent automation that enables organisations to meet their strategic business priorities, support their people and create exceptional patient experiences. By supporting its customers, Blue Prism bridges system gaps and assists patients with its digital workers.

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While healthcare organisations say that their adoption of automation has grown, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that propelled them to achieve more in months than they had in the previous few years PATRICK SHEPHARD

HEAD OF HEALTHCARE AT BLUE PRISM

must question: does the technology really support or elevate a healthcare process, or is it purely offering “bells and whistles” that are otherwise unhelpful?” “Cultural adoption can be a key hurdle within an organisation’s automation journey. Employees can be wary of automation at first. Naturally, major change programs raise concerns that any organisational change brings with it, including fear, uncertainty, and doubt,” says Shepard. Commenting on the technological side of the implementation, he adds: “A frequent mistake is for automation products to fall under the IT umbrella and its acquisition to be monitored through the lens of traditional IT procurement. Because automation is first and foremost a business tool, automation should be recognised as digital labour that is managed by the business — not a piece of software implemented by IT.” Concluding, Shepard stresses the importance of correctly utilising AI for the benefit of healthcare professionals and patients: “Digital transformation must be the ultimate ambition for any healthcare provider. To ensure this, they must use intelligent automation as a strategic lever to transform their entire operational and resourcing models and prepare their organisations for the future.” aimagazine.com

AIOPS.D: Enterprise Autonomous Operations in the AI Age An interview with Jag Bandla, AIOPS.D Leader at Deloitte Consulting, on how Autonomous Process Operations can improve the work experience

WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

April 2022

aimagazine.com

DELOITTE

Jag, can you tell us about AIOPS.D, and why enterprises are taking a fervent interest in the integration of AI and operations? First – it’s certainly an exciting time for AI as we emerge from COVID. In the last few years, enterprises have seen the biggest disruptions in the way that they work – resilient enterprises are now elevating the importance of decision support whether it is conventional or remote work. Data management and optimal decisions, and responses, are becoming more complex, while asking the person next to you may not be a workplace staple of the future. Taking a holistic view of the enterprise – across enterprise application landscapes and business processes, and I say this with deep understanding and empathy of the nuances and complexities – organisations at large, historically, are only incrementally evolving, regardless of organisation vision or goals. Operations, and the workforce, are still laden with manual processes, manual tasks, and a heavy reliance on human integration to understand and solve for data gathering, understanding, and process completion. Automation rose in the last half-decade to tackle specific tasks and use cases, not the entire end-to-end process – the span for improvement to close the gap to human support remains wide. For example, for some enterprises, digitization is limited to manually-managed email – many employee actions and requests are done through the inbox. How do you know what to tackle first? How do you know what is the correct optimisation of your immediate time and priorities? These kinds of questions, which require true, actionable intelligence, are why we had to think through the detailed design that goes into creating the AIOPS.D autonomous process 98

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assets, in the form of unique yet integrated à la carte microservices. We’re fundamentally changing the way our clients conduct business - we want them to achieve true autonomous operations via microservices, which are essentially the ‘digital assistants’ that will run the enterprise. Our vision around creating these autonomous process assets is built on four main foundations: 1. A utonomous Operations, with less human intervention in end-to-end business processes 2. R ules-based Touchless Transactions, where human decision-making is supported and focused on exceptions 3. Full Ecosystem Orchestration, with no ERP left behind 4. A focus on Human-Centred Work, by redesigning work and the workforce experience to focus on high-value, high-impact actions and decisions

“ It’s 2022 – the need to do everything by hand, by document, is coming to an end, and the companies that do not capitalize, this will impact their workforce experience, recruiting and retention” JAG BANDLA

AIOPS.D LEADER, DELOITTE CONSULTING

AIOPS.D

What is AIOPS.D?

The Four Foundations

AIOPS.D allows organisations to focus on high-value processes, utilizing Deloitte's autonomous process assets to run major business functions, shaping the “future of work.”

Autonomous Operations

AIOPS.D is a first-of-its-kind business and subscription offering designed to help organisations quickly and easily implement AI-fueled, end-to-end autonomous business processes via a microservice portfolio, agnostic to industries and functions. Built on a plug-and-play modular microservice platform, AIOPS.D empowers organisations to achieve highly intelligent and resilient operations in weeks, not months or years. Organisations are increasingly turning to microservices to quickly build, test, and deploy cloud-native applications. AIOPS.D delivers a microservice platform and subscription-based managed services that combine with deep domain experience from Deloitte and its ecosystem collaborators, to help deploy full-service enterprise AI applications at scale. Designed to be highly standardized, yet configurable to the specific needs of each organisation, organisations can drive efficiency and capitalize on human and machine collaboration to create value and meaning through work.

Discover More @ AIOPS-D.com

Do more with less. Get back to focusing on what matters. AI-augmented, in-transaction, real-time insights supporting decision-making and intelligent design to run end-to-end autonomous operations with minimal user inputs. Capitalize on true artificial intelligence, enabling fully autonomous business process operations and allowing organisations to do more with less.

Touchless Transactions From start to finish, deliver the true autonomous process. Dynamic rules-based ingestion, analysis, and processing of routine transactions with human intervention on an exception basis. Elevate the IQ of an organisation to make decisions for the business, from start to finish.

Ecosystem Orchestration No ERP or boundary system left behind. Connect to a broad range of ERP and non-ERP applications to seamlessly orchestrate across the ecosystem. Deliver autonomous process assets that empower the enterprise to achieve highly intelligent and resilient business operations, even with complex system landscapes.

Human-Centered Work Bring work to people, not people to work. UX/UI that isn’t just advanced, but also readily accepted, to elevate the human experience through more productive interactions and decision-making. Address workforce challenges of transactional systems and embed human capital perspectives to enhance the human-work experience with machines.

aimagazine.com

DELOITTE

AIOPS.D: Enterprise Autonomous Operations in the AI Age

What do you see as the mission of AIOPS.D? How can it help the enterprise? At Deloitte Enterprise AI Operations, more specifically AIOPS.D, we believe in simplicity and improving workforce happiness by letting people do what people do best – make complex decisions – and letting machines do what machines do best – managing a growing stack of data – that, inevitably, is at or near the edge of human non-manageability. Our mission is to deliver autonomous process assets to empower our clients to achieve highly intelligent and resilient business operations. It’s time to think about AI in terms of end-to-end business outcomes; the early successes of targeted solutions such as RPA have been great accelerators, but there is more that happens between RPA and a business outcome that still requires substantial human intervention. 100

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This new era – it’s about bringing the work to the people, with digital workflows, and clear prompts for human intervention. We want to enable machine-learning from workforce interaction – not to reduce labour, but to improve accuracy, so that an employee can have strategic conversations, not debate the calculation method across different operating groups, or conduct calls with three separate departments to resolve a single data point. We were struck by the evolving definition of AIOPS in the market. Can you explain how AIOPS.D is different? Important question. I can’t say enough about the excitement here about the portfolio of capabilities we have completed, and our framework for the portfolio of microservices we have in development, all of which will speak to each other. It’s one, interconnected modular web of capabilities, just as operations should be.

DELOITTE

“ We believe in simplicity and improving workforce happiness by letting people do what people do best – make complex decisions – and letting machines do what machines do best”

JAG BANDLA TITLE: AIOPS.D LEADER LOCATION: DALLAS, TX, USA Jag Bandla is a Principal at Deloitte Consulting LLP with 20+ years of experience assisting companies with improving business performance using Digital ERP solutions. Jag is currently Deloitte’s Enterprise Performance’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and leads the AIOPS.D business, driving organisations to integrate autonomous business processes and operations at scale. As Innovation & Assets Leader, Jag drives the Enterprise Performance Innovation and Asset agenda to enable Deloitte to innovate, incubate, and scale emerging technologies, assets, and solutions for leading enterprises of today and tomorrow.

JAG BANDLA

To your question – the idea of AIOPS was originally defined in the context of how AI can help IT manage systems reporting – maintenance, updates, performance, and so on. When we thought about it, our approach is that with technology so much at the heart of operations today, just as how IT improves with better collaboration between systems and humans, so can operations. With AIOPS.D, this is our take on how we manage operational data modernisation, our language for an API-first approach, frictionless development, and human-centred design. We want people to actually use the systems that are built, and derive meaning – via an ideally delightful experience – in being able to gain insights from actionable data that used to require massive effort to achieve. When we say human-centric, it’s not a byword, we mean it. We want to take clients on that journey of addressing the black box of AI, and integrate employee enhancement deep into our initial planning – that is how we differentiate. Our commitment and our value to clients are interwoven – we plan for AIOPS.D to be subscription-based – once enterprises see the value, we believe they will continue to explore the portfolio. Our cards are on the table – their gains come first, and our solutions will continue to evolve to meet operational and market needs.

EXECUTIVE BIO

AIOPS.D LEADER, DELOITTE CONSULTING

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DELOITTE

Going back to the fourth foundation, one of the biggest fears and interpretations is around how AI impacts the workforce – how do you see this evolving? Let me answer your question with a historical reference point on automation. Yes, there was a tremendous shift in societal constructs, including the nature of work, as we evolved from farming to industrial. However, the rise of AI in the enterprise is more aligned with addressing specific, tactical problems in the routine, rising-volume, and human-error prone 102

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components of work today – we are improving productivity and accuracy. Take, for example, the ‘automated banker’ fear from 30 years ago – we use this term all the time today – ATMs – and yet, the freeing of humans from counting-centred tasks has led to a net increase in bankers and an explosion in financial services offered. AIOPS.D is about what machines and humans each do best. Employees’ knowledge of the firm can be applied to solve more enterprise and career-enhancing challenges than untangling data. A machine

DELOITTE

cannot devise a strategic plan for any action large or small – that requires cooperation with the workforce, one that has been properly trained to understand how AI solutions can plug into their daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual – and so on – routines. Think about what you and I do in any day – how much of our time is spent managing routine tasks. We all know this is a significant time sink and has only trended upward in recent years. All of us – I guess – probably spend more than half of our time managing operational outcomes that are puzzling in terms of process efficiency. Absolutely! That is what we are here to solve – invoicing, financial planning, human resource capability delivery. It’s 2022 – the need to do everything by hand, by document, is coming to an end, and the companies that do not capitalize, this will

“ The rise of AI in the enterprise is more aligned with addressing specific, tactical problems in the routine, rising-volume, and human-error prone components of work today – we are improving productivity and accuracy” JAG BANDLA

AIOPS.D LEADER, DELOITTE CONSULTING

impact their workforce experience, recruiting and retention. Companies start by talking about their strategy and perks but a well-run, efficient organisation in core operations – that is a differentiator and class of its own. We have read your website’s overviews of AIOPS.D – what do you mean by ‘beyond predictive?’ When we say this, we are referring to the different eras of data management, in terms of how users have interacted with data sets. Historically, data has just grown in volume – so, a workforce had no choice but to be reactive and non-integrated in their response – enterprises made critical business decisions based on the best available information. Not quite the era of going with your gut, but not really the era of real-time data-based decision-making, either. Then, technology solutions promised proactive monitoring. This is a fantastic progression but what does the user do with the information once they receive it? The response could differ by employee, by department, by what was going on with that person that day. We want to have system recommendations that are actionable, to generate more predictability in operational outcomes. Humans can decide the parameters of decision-making - and technology can optimize those choices, operating within these rules. We are choosing to have a more manageable and engaging workday – that is what AIOPS.D can offer – the ability to have a human and machine workforce responding in a coordinated manner to real-time events, to drive decision-making support. Not only does this raise the IQ of your enterprise in realtime, it enhances the EQ responses from your employees by freeing them of the frustrations of the ‘process of’ vs. the outcomes they were trained and hired to achieve. aimagazine.com

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AIOPS.D Microservices in Action Procurement as a Service

Invoicing as a Service

Have you prepared your digital and human employee workforce strategy of the future?

What happens when employees are provided with decision support? How does the workforce experience evolve, post-manual process management?

Imagine an operating environment where an AI buyer manages purchase requisition creation to purchase order monitoring without manual intervention. Item availability, pricing, and delivery lead time is instantly available. Requisition steps are clearly outlined, and correction steps are prompted to users. End users receive their items on time, and autonomous systems remind users to complete final documentation close-out. The human employee is now able to focus on higher-value, core-competency areas vs. increasing frustration with what should be a straightforward process designed to make employees' lives easier. Today's Workforce / Process Snapshot Today's enterprise Procurement lifecycle is manual, time-consuming, and error-prone. Data inputs are frequently incomplete, resulting in inefficient purchasing, invoicing and spend insights. Procurement operations can also lack a core managed services platform. The net result is delayed or incomplete payment cycles, and impacted relationships with vendors, partners, and alliance members. What could become a core differentiator remains an often-overlooked, nondifferentiated experience across the competitive landscape.

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Imagine an A/P specialist who is able to convert a workday of manually processing invoices to one where computer vision accurately captures invoice data, identifies errors and populates missing data. In the event of an invoice exception, the specialist has guided workflow on the decisions needed. In addition, suppliers have access to the latest information on payments via an AI-enabled chatbot, which can guide them through open items, keeping all stakeholders operating on the same real-time data set. Today's Workforce / Process Snapshot Invoice processing today is a tiered, time-consuming process that can frequently hinder timely, accurate payments to suppliers. Many enterprises lack a managed service platform for Invoicing operations. Many invoices contain incorrect data used during requisition, that can delay invoice processing, and exception handling can be backlogged. Attempts to streamline, including OCR services, are frequently at sub-standard performance levels due to training challenges, one of a multitude of gaps leading to the inability to identify variation in data, or populate missing information.

DELOITTE

Supplier Data Management as a Service

Material Data Management as a Service

Are you demanding enough from your AI data management strategy, and can Machine Learning (ML) solve data gaps?

Is your cross-platform data management strategy keeping stakeholders and vendors aligned?

Imagine a Business Data Steward who is able to access one, true Supplier Master Data across the enterprise. Reference templates, and data are readily available, minimizing manual data entry. The Steward is able to validate data in real-time across business and regional units, and provide recommendations to optimize enterprise outcome. Solving data gaps becomes a function of the past, as ML connects the dots for commonalities across the business.

Imagine a Business Unit's Analyst, who is able to eliminate phone calls and email-based data aggregation, with data governance, collection and resolution being managed through chatbotbased workflows. Vendor attributes and owners are cleanly aligned, with automated prompts across the diverse stakeholders to keep records up to speed.

Today's Workforce / Process Snapshot

Material Data Management for new material procurement, today, requires a complex work process across a multitude of internal groups, including Finance, R&D, Sales, Supply Chain, and Procurement. The Business Analyst today frequently is faced with managing and resolving inconsistent, inaccurate, or incomplete data entries, made more complex by nonstandardized data governance or data approvals processes. The net result is poor reference data, manual data population, missed vendor negotiating opportunities, as well as an inconsistent, internal book of record.

Supplier data streams and operational steps are increasing due to higher vendor counts and reporting / data requirements. Today's processes are managed over communications, email, and manual recollections and data entry, frequently with low levels of data governance. Poor data governance accelerates repeat entries and missed commonalities across business units, impacting Procurement, lost opportunities for contract optimization, and different product orders placed within or across business units or regions. Business Stewards' job satisfaction is impacted, as their time is absorbed in manual retracing and entry of data, frequently being caught in the middle of internal debate, due to incomplete or manually over-written master data.

Today's Workforce / Process Snapshot

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“ Our mission is to deliver autonomous process assets to empower our clients to achieve highly intelligent and resilient business operations” JAG BANDLA

AIOPS.D LEADER, DELOITTE CONSULTING

Let’s turn to the executive perspective. How should an enterprise leader be thinking about Operations for the coming decade? Executives should be thinking of Autonomous Process Operations in the 4 foundations I referenced earlier – Autonomous Operations, Touchless Transactions, Ecosystem Orchestration, and Human-Centred Work. I’ve discussed parts of that already, so I’ll say a few words on Ecosystem Orchestration – this is a way of saying that an end-to-end autonomous process must occur across platforms to solve for and answer workforce questions without platform gaps. For CIO / CDO / CTOs and their teams – this is where we talk about self-healing architecture, APIs for interconnectivity, frictionless design, no ERP left behind and conversational AI. What we are saying here is the user experience matters, the technology infrastructure must be inclusive and also feature the capabilities we ascribe to AI – so that we do not deliver a wonderful front end with many people behind the scenes pulling the cords per se. We don’t want a simulated Wizard of Oz, we want real autonomy, built with an elevated human experience.

Are all operations areas open to autonomy? Are some more manual or inefficient today than others? Well, we see the biggest opportunities in the Office of the Chief Data Officer, Procurement, Finance, Financial Planning, and recently we have seen the pervasive Supply Chain challenges. Without going too many levels in, we see this as much an issue about inflexible systems and a disconnect between machine outputs and human decision-making as it is about production gaps. One challenge may be the root cause, but operational disconnects are the root amplifier. If you were to recap AIOPS.D’s impact in a few key phrases, what would that be? I’d say that at the 30,000-foot level, it’s about moving data to a viable management strategy as we shift from linear process to an exponential, interconnected one. On a more tactical level, I’d say that AIOPS.D is about: • A self-driven Enterprise –AI-enabled monitoring of operations 24/7, and generating actionable insights • Elevating the workforce with prompts for human decision-making and action – enabling the right action at the right time • Delivering AI at scale – aligned to end-to-end business processes and operations AI has had so many associations over the years – science fiction, targeted data engines, and a black box of workforce and societal implications. We want to unpack all of that with AIOPS.D and demonstrate that it's time to ‘plug in’ at scale, and that AI delivers, what we call, your Operations, Unchained.

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MANAGING THE MASS DATA INFLUX COMING FROM AI CAPABILITIES As more and more data is generated with the introduction of connected devices, AI Magazine explores how AI can manage the predicted influx of data WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

oined over ten years ago, the term Data Gravity refers to the attraction between data and applications. Just as with the law of gravity, data gravitates towards applications. Now one of the most high-profile trends in the data centre and cloud industries, Data Gravity impacts businesses significantly and, as enterprises feel a more significant pull towards data, new technologies will come into play. As with a number of industries, the data centre industry has woken up to the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and many colocation providers are reaping the benefits of this multifaceted technology. Reflecting on the impact already made, Tim Loake - VP of Infrastructure Solutions Group, UK, at Dell Technologies - said: “By far the biggest impact is in the Business Value delivery space, AI technology is becoming a necessity for many datadriven businesses. The implementation of AI allows businesses to deliver increased insights, provide better forecasts, identify patterns and anomalies, and ultimately improve performance. It also brings with aimagazine.com

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it significant compute demands to process that data, often in real-time, requiring everhigher levels of service provision from our data centres.” Interestingly, Lex Coors, Chief Data Centre Technology and Engineering Officer at Interxion, is more sceptical about the capabilities of AI: “AI has not yet impacted the industry as true AI does not yet exist. For true AI – and we should not take less as an objective – we need emotion, intuition and feeling.” He does argue that intelligent machine learning (IML) is what we are seeing in the technology space and outlines two ways this is benefitting the data centre industry: • “Optimised the power usage effectiveness (PUE) of data centres • Cutting the maintenance costs by means of ‘Condition-based Maintenance’, where analysis of wear and tear and run-time data identifies the maintenance needed.”

“ AI has not yet impacted the industry as true AI does not yet exist. For true AI – and we should not take less as an objective – we need emotion, intuition and feeling” LEX COORS,

CHIEF DATA CENTRE TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING OFFICER AT INTERXION

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AI and the Zettabyte era Along with Data Gravity and the influx of data-connected devices that are generating information for enterprises, businesses also need to address challenges brought about by the Zettabyte era. The way devices connect with each other, the way data flows is changing and enterprises are beginning to feel the effects - particularly as the impact of the internet of things (IoT) becomes more significant By 2025, connected devices alone will generate an estimated 79 zettabytes of information. If you take into consideration that, in 2016, the entire volume of all data on earth amounted to just 18 zettabytes, the scale of this growth becomes astounding. 112

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Commenting on this, Loake said: “The data decade is dramatically reshaping lives, reinventing the way we work and live. IDC predicts 175 zettabytes of data worldwide by 2025. Leveraging that data, identifying patterns and deriving value from it is critical for enterprises.” This is where AI comes into play: the technology has the ability to transform the way we gather, store, and use data and, as a result, enables businesses of all sizes to answer bigger questions and make more discoveries, as well as keep up with the pace of change of competitors. “As the volume of data grows, organisations need to find a way to effectively manage and process that data,

Lex Coors

Lex Coors has supervised the design and build of over 70 data centres and developed close to 600,000 m2 of gross space with over 300,000 m2 nett space across Western Europe and Africa. Over the past 30 years, he has built exceptionally strong credentials in the design of versatile, costeffective and energy-efficient data centre infrastructure.

“ In the case of true AI, companies should draft a first problem statement taking into consideration the company’s goals, objectives and social corporate view” LEX COORS,

CHIEF DATA CENTRE TECHNOLOGY AND ENGINEERING OFFICER AT INTERXION

as well as derive actionable insights from it. Accelerating intelligent, automated outcomes means putting that data first, managing the data lifecycle and using that data to inform decision making. Within the next few years, IDC expects AI to begin permeating business processes for most enterprises. Essentially, more data will drive better products and services, improve customer experience, and create ever more relevant business insights,” added Loake. Concerned about the impact of the Zettabyte era if AI isn’t developed to its full potential, Coors explained: “The Zettabyte era as such could further enhance and ease life for humans, but there is a caveat that it could only further increase the production aimagazine.com

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of work and this will then lead to burn out. In this case, IML will not be able to protect the workforce as it installs programmes set to further the optimisation of the company.” Regardless, he continued explaining the profound impact that true AI could have with this predicted influx of data: “AI will have the intuition that might be needed to be able to balance each and every aspect brought about by the Zettabyte era. It will be able to realise the emotion of the situation,show feeling for the personal situation of the employee and help to make decisions

At Dell Technologies, the company has made essential innovations in power, thermal, cooling and more to reduce the carbon footprint of Dell PowerEdge servers to ensure their high performance is matched by high sustainability.

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– or give advice - to balance company expectations and human health.” Creating the right strategy to enable AI to cope with the influx of data Loake urges that, as business models become more data-driven, enterprises develop an end-to-end AI strategy that is integrated across the underlying IT infrastructure: “Those effectively deploying AI will have their AI infrastructure distributed across edge, core, and cloud deployment locations. Getting the underlying infrastructure right is key to

TECHNOLOGY

“ By far the biggest impact is in the Business Value delivery space, AI technology is becoming a necessity for many data-driven businesses” TIM LOAKE,

VP, INFRASTRUCTURE SOLUTIONS GROUP, UK AT DELL TECHNOLOGIES

the long-term success of AI. To maximise ROI from AI, businesses need to move beyond proof of concepts (POCs) and get to production and scale.” Echoing this, Coors also believes in the importance of a robust and rigid strategy when it comes to AI technologies: “In the case of true AI, companies should draft a first problem statement taking into consideration the company’s goals, objectives and social corporate view; AI will be able to provide businesses with a few options seen from various angles and so accurately explaining/predicting what the impact would be is important.” This is particularly significant as less than 15% of AI models transition from proof of concepts (POCs) to production, and even fewer are taken to operate at scale. To create the right foundation for a robust strategy, Loake outlined that there needs to be a focus on data culture, data quality and data privacy. AI: saving time and money in the data centre industry As the influx of data causes issues for the data centre industry, AI can control workload through automation. This could lead to the creation of several smaller, interconnected edge data centres, all of which would be managed by a single administrator. Concluding, Loake outlined the potential use cases of AI within the industry: “AI will save time and money by automating and optimising routine processes and tasks. AI will increase productivity and operational efficiency by allowing businesses to make faster decisions based on outputs from cognitive technologies. AI systems, when correctly deployed, will also help businesses avoid mistakes and reduce ‘human error’ – which is perhaps the biggest potential short-term benefit. aimagazine.com

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WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: GREG ST QUINTIN

Providing Turnkey Solutions With AI 116

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NetApp’s Russ Sagert and Samsung’s Patrick Bangert explain how the companies’ partnership provides a best-in-class AI solution for manufacturing

he manufacturing industry is going through a significant transformation that is impacting all aspects of operations, from the supply chain through to production. As the industry turns to technology and software providers to support them with this transition, NetApp brings manufacturers best-in-class solutions that address crucial workloads in the cloud and on-premises. With a sound understanding of its own capabilities, NetApp partners with other key players in the technology industry. Through its partnership with Samsung SDS, the company believes it has formed an effective collaboration to support manufacturing companies as they continue to digitally transform. Outlining some of the changes in the industry, Russ Sagert, NetApp Business Development Lead for Manufacturing, says: “In manufacturing, everybody is looking to improve top-line revenue or profitability. They’re trying to improve their bottom line – that's the goal of every operation: Can we do better? Where can we apply technology? And where does it make sense? It has to be cost-effective and has to have a real business impact.” Technology has already enabled more streamlined and comprehensive manufacturing operations. Greater detail can be effectively inspected, and

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“ One of the things I really appreciate about the whole Brightics AI Accelerator platform is that it came from Samsung’s best practices” RUSS SAGERT

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT LEAD FOR MANUFACTURING, NETAPP

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machines now perform repetitive tasks faster and more efficiently. By utilising artificial intelligence (AI) and the industrial internet of things (IIoT), manufacturers are gaining real benefits in terms of efficiency, cost and safety. “In these high-speed production lines, you need the ability to do quality assurance on everything,” says Sagert. Adding to the streamlined product quality checks, technology can also contribute to improving environments for workers. “If you're looking at potentially hazardous environments in assembly plants, your goal is to keep your employees safe, while improving efficiencies. Technology enables systems that monitor the workplace and

NETAPP & SAMSUNG

RUSS SAGERT TITLE: BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER – INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING: IOT/INDUSTRY 4.0 COMPANY: NETAPP LOCATION: ALBERTA, CANADA Russ specialises in developing, and bringing to market, Digital Transformation solutions for manufacturing plant operators across the oil and gas, mining, power utilities, automotive and high-tech fabrication industries. His focus on strategic partnership and value-added solutions enables organisations to improve operational efficiency, drive down costs, maximise top-line revenue, improve product quality, and site safety. As a result, organisations can justify and prioritise deploying technology where it makes the greatest difference. After holding executive and business development roles in global consultancy firms, he served as a senior solutions architect focused on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for GE.

NETAPP:

1992

Year Founded

Technology Industry

11,000

Number of Employees

$5.74B

can provide early warnings when staff are fatigued. You can also start looking at models around how employees interact with their environment, leading to innovations that boost efficiency and worker satisfaction,” outlines Sagert. Maintenance is another key area where technology is playing an increasingly vital role in manufacturing. With the ability to be more proactive with maintenance, AI and IIoT can help manufacturers minimise outages and get the right people and parts for their specific needs. “Pre-planning eliminates the wait for a downcycle, which leads to general efficiency gains on any form of manufacturing production line,” adds Sagert.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Revenue

NETAPP & SAMSUNG

Combining NetApp’s and Samsung’s offerings By partnering with Samsung SDS, NetApp has access to its Brightics AI Accelerator platform that offers data collection and preparation, AutoML and AI model training, and data and image analysis. With such a robust platform, NetApp customers can be assured that both companies are prepared to solve issues around maintenance, internal communications and disruptions. “One of the things I really appreciate about the whole Brightics AI Accelerator platform is that Samsung developed it to meet their own needs, and it has evolved by incorporating their own best practices. They are a major electronics manufacturer.

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Now you've got a platform that has all the credibility of Samsung, but it also has that evolution and that pedigree that comes from a well-recognised producer,” says Sagert. "The methodologies for streamlining the training data categorisation implemented within Brightics AI can be applied to many other industries,” Sagert continues. “We see the uptake of AI and recognise the benefits Samsung themselves are experiencing can be realised by our other customers as well." Equally invested in the benefits this partnership will bring the industry, Patrick Bangert, VP of Artificial Intelligence at Samsung SDS comments: “One of the secret sauces of the Brightics AI accelerator application is called Distributed Training,

NETAPP & SAMSUNG

“ The keyword is turnkey. We will save the customer a lot of time and effort with assembly and integration we deliver it all”

PATRICK BANGERT TITLE: VP OF AI LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, US COMPANY: SAMSUNG Patrick heads the AI Division at Samsung SDSA. He is responsible for Brightics AI Accelerator, a distributed ML training and automated ML product, and AutoLabel, an automatic image data annotation and modelling tool primarily targeted at the medical imaging community. Among his other responsibilities, he acts as a visionary for the future of AI at Samsung. Before joining Samsung, Patrick spent 15 years as CEO at Algorithmica technologies, a machine learning software company serving the chemicals and oil and gas industries. Patrick obtained his machine learning PhD in mathematics and his Masters in theoretical physics from University College London.

PATRICK BANGERT

EXECUTIVE BIO

VP OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, SAMSUNG

Connect your supply chain for Industry 4.0, powered by NetApp Learn more about NetApp AI solutions for manufacturing g

www.netapp.com

As industry turns to technology and software providers to accelerate digital transformation, NetApp delivers a consistent data connectivity platform for intelligent supply chain management.

In today’s global economy, manufacturers can’t afford to be isolated. To stay competitive, plants must be directly connected to the entire supply chain infrastructure. Manufacturers need data mobility and governance to move data from on-premise to the cloud and everywhere in between. Success depends on managing production across the entire lifecycle, all the way to the customer. NetApp is an industry leader in enabling Operating Technologies/Information Technologies (OT/IT) convergence to connect plant operations to outside suppliers, vendors, and customers. By leveraging a data fabric powered by NetApp, manufacturers can achieve complete connectivity from production line to enterprise. With product inspection and equipment condition monitoring inferencing happening on the edge, and enterprise resource planning databases operating in the cloud, manufacturers need to be able to move data efficiently and synchronize analytic models seamlessly from the cloud. NetApp provides the capabilities to connect real-time insights from AI analytics to deliver actionable data

to stakeholder across the enterprise. Raw materials providers, production line operators, plant managers, vendors and customers join the communication network. When analytics report problems in production, the system notifies the appropriate people allowing immediate intervention, and planning for remediation. Managers have a real-time activities monitoring system for product quality, production throughput, and worker and environment health and safety. Succeeding in the modern manufacturing landscape means eliminating siloes and achieving complete connectivity – production line to enterprise. NetApp has the solutions, tools, and expertise that manufacturers need to create a connected supply chain built for Industry 4.0

Learn more g

NETAPP & SAMSUNG

which means that for a single training task, you use multiple computers, each of which has several GPUs. “The hunger for data goes up exponentially and the storage system, which is generally just the one system, must be able to feed all of this. So you distribute the compute, but the storage remains a monolith. But now it has to feed the multitude of GPUs,” Bangert explains. “NetApp is perfectly positioned to accomplish that task. At Samsung SDS, we just write the software, so we rely on our hardware partners to be able to ensure it is performant, resilient and cost-efficient. NetApp has been extremely helpful for us,” he adds. Both Sagert and Bangert recognise that NetApp and Samsung SDS are better together as they can combine their expertise to develop a solution that will deliver real benefits to their clients. “We do artificial intelligence, but that's really just mathematics. It's a bunch of lines of code,” says Bangert. “But, when we need to run the code, we need computing infrastructure. Data is really the heart and soul of artificial intelligence, and that needs to be on storage systems that are large enough and efficient enough to serve that data to the compute side of things in a timely manner. “The ONTAP platform, the software layer within the NetApp storage systems, is capable of serving the data very effectively with a high rate of throughput and low latency, which is exactly what we need for AI because we want to eat as much data as quickly as we can,” he continues. Supporting industries as they turn to AI technology Adopting AI into any business strategy is no mean feat. It is time-consuming and complex, and the implementation of AI 126

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threatens to bring a lot of challenges to uninitiated technologists who have never worked with these types of enterprise systems before. “We’re trying to offer a more holistic solution than other people, to take away that organisational effort from our customers and say, ‘We're going to offer you everything at once. Here's a computer, storage, a software environment: everything's ready to go. It's all been tested. We can solve your problem more readily’. I think this kind of partnership is very helpful to the customer. They can trust that they get a holistic solution to their problem,” explains Bangert.

RUSS SAGERT Sagert most recently joined NetApp from GE, where, as a Senior Solutions Architect, he focused on Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) digital transformations. From his first function as a geophysicist for Shell Canada, his 30-year career in the Oil & Gas industry included executive roles for consultancy firms, business development leadership, and portfolio management roles for Schlumberger before becoming Vice President for Oil & Gas software at IHS.

NETAPP & SAMSUNG

While the solution will address the specific needs of the manufacturing industry as it transforms, Sagert explains how this joint solution can be scaled and implemented to support a wide range of industries: “Looking at the benefits, it depends on the industry. For healthcare, we know that Samsung SDS has proven technologies that help identify anomalies in x-rays and CT scans. We also know that the same technology can be used for parts identification, whether it's food and beverage or automotive assembly, anything along that line. We already know that the technology for anomaly detection will be directly applicable.”

“ As technology evolves, we're going to have more and more opportunities together. It's just going to be a natural evolution” RUSS SAGERT

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT LEAD FOR MANUFACTURING, NETAPP

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NetApp and Samsung: providing turnkey solutions with AI

PATRICK BANGERT At Samsung SDSA, Bangert directs the AI Engineering and AI Sciences teams. The AI engineering team develops the Brightics AI Accelerator that provides distributed training and automated machine learning to speed up the creation of an AI model. The AI sciences team makes models and provides expert consulting services. Together with his team, Bangert supplies the full spectrum of AI model development backed by state-of-the-art technology and human expertise.

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Samsung and NetApp: learning from each other to create a best-in-class solution Interestingly, the partnership was created when NetApp reached out to Samsung SDS to sell infrastructure. Explaining how both companies discovered a greater interest in a partnership, Sagert says: “It really came back down to our account managers seeing the benefits of not trying to sell Samsung something and instead asking ‘Why don't we go to market together? Why don't we bake our capabilities into their go-to-market solution?’ “With common industries and geographies that we operate in, it's a win-win for both companies,” Sagert explains. “And I think there are far more things we can do together as a joint solution for manufacturing than if we stop at just selling each other things.” Still in the earlier stages of the partnership, NetApp and Samsung are keen to continue learning about each other's capabilities to ensure they can benefit as many industries as possible. “One of the ways I want to evolve the partnership is by learning a lot more about the Brightics AI Accelerator platform. What are the actual technical challenges? How do they differ for each industrial application? When it comes down to image recognition and pattern recognition, how broadly can we apply this?” outlines Sagert. He is also focused on learning more about how NetApp can support the platform as well as the “business challenges Samsung SDS’s AI can address”. “As technology continues to evolve, we're going to have more and more opportunities to learn together, and better understand where our platform is of greatest value. Now, it’s all about making sure that, in our labs, we have really understood how best to support the Brightics AI suite, and the data management challenges we will face in the joint go-to-market. Once we really

“ We’re trying to offer a more holistic solution than other people to take away that organisational effort from our customers” PATRICK BANGERT

VP OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, SAMSUNG

have fleshed that out, it's a matter of taking a turnkey solution to customers. It's early yet, but looks very promising,” adds Sagert. “The keyword is turnkey,” says Bangert. “We will save the customer a lot of time and effort with assembly - we deliver it all.” He concludes: “The solution has been fine-tuned so that once it is delivered and installed, it works faster, better, and more efficiently. All the software has been certified by us both to provide the assurance that it's actually going to work, as opposed to being a guinea pig for that type of new assembly.” NetApp:

Samsung:

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Companies Offering AI Solutions via the Cloud As both cloud and AI offerings grow, we take a look at the top companies providing AI solutions in their cloud offerings to improve clients’ operations WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

loud technology and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming commonplace in enterprises across industries. With AI products being particularly expensive to develop in-house, many companies look to outsource this technology to cut costs and improve efficiencies. To fulfil this need for AI technologies, many cloud computing providers offer cloud-based AI products. Consulting giant Accenture believes that AI has the potential to boost rates of profitability by an average of 38% and could lead to an overall economic boost of US$14tn in additional gross value added by 2035. Here, we take a look at the cloud computing providers that have AI-enabled provisions within their packages with the aim to help boost profitability in their clients. aimagazine.com

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10 Wipro Holmes Leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, Wipro Holmes, harnesses the power of cognitive computing, hyperautomation, robotics, cloud, analytics, and emerging technologies to help clients adapt and thrive to the changing landscape of the digital world. The Wipro Holmes AI and automation platform covers all aspects of deploying AI, from building to publishing, metering, governing and monetising. Among its features are digital virtual agents and process automation, as well as support for robotics and drones.

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09 Salesforce With its AI platform, Einstein AI, Salesforce offers AI solutions that are fully integrated with other Salesforce cloud offerings. In doing so, the company enables its customers to build apps using ML and predictive analytics as well as utilising their Salesforce data. With this, customers can build apps such as chatbots and sales prediction. By providing deep sights from its customers’ data, Salesforce empowers customers to use these insights to strengthen relationships, prioritise leads, cases, and campaigns to drive the business forward.

TOP 10

08 Oracle With AI and ML options for every skill level, Oracle offers a number of different services for building and deploying models, custom trained models, and support services for a coherent ML experience. Oracle’s solutions also help its customers build, train, and deploy models with open-source frameworks such as PyTorch and Tensorflow. It also lets clients add prebuilt chatbot, anomaly detection, natural language processing (NLP), speech, and computer vision capabilities to applications and operations.

07 DataRobot Boston, Massachusettsbased DataRobot operates an enterprise AI platform to provide businesses access to machine learning. The platform features automation capabilities across the building, deployment, and management stages of creating machine learning models, as well as AI implementation, training and support services. With its AI Cloud for Industries platform, DataRobot allows customers to harness the power of AI across the entire lifecycle, and this end-to-end platform is designed for the challenges and opportunities facing key industries today. aimagazine.com

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Kuul Evolution FirePro® Evaporative Cooling Media Keeping data centers at optimal temperatures using U.S. sourced, inorganic materials with innovative technology. Durable and sustainable evaporative media designed to keep the cloud going.

™

TOP 10

05 Alibaba Cloud

06 H2O.ai With offerings stemming from its H2O AI Cloud platform, H2O. ai provides its customers with AI technology that allows them the freedom to innovate. The platform is powered by worldclass automated machine learning (autoML) and plays a pivotal role in driving innovation efforts all the way from initial idea through to real-world impact. The singular platform solves complex business problems with endless solutions. With a fully managed cloud platform, H2O.ai provides an easy way for businesses to start on their AI journey.

Across Asia, Alibaba Cloud is the leading cloud computing platform and offers its customers a sophisticated Machine Learning Platform for AI. The platform provides clients with a visual interface for easeof-use. With this functionality, companies can drag and drop various components into a canvas to assemble their personalised AI functionality. Alibaba’s platform also includes scores of algorithm components that can handle any number of chores, enabling customers to use pre-built solutions.

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04 Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure has a collection of AI solutions that can be split under three categories: AI Services, AI Tools and Frameworks, and AI Infrastructure. AI Services is anything from pre-built capabilities - such as Azure Cognitive Services - to custom AI development with Azure Machine Learning (AML). With AI Tools and Frameworks, customers can utilise a number of Microsoft’s AI services such as Azure Notebooks and Visual Studio Tools for AI. AI Infrastructure includes different services such as Azure Data Services and Azure Kubernetes Services.

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03 IBM Cloud As a leader in AI for a number of years, it comes as no surprise that IBM has made this list. With a number of cloud and AI acquisitions under its belt, IBM has a whole host of AI offerings available. In fact, under the Watson brand for AI services, IBM has no less than 16 services, and its Cloud AI services start with Watson Studio for building and training AI models, preparing data, and performing analysis on the data. IBM Watson Services for Core ML allows enterprises to build AI-powered apps that securely connect to their data and run either on-premises, offline or in the cloud.

TOP 10

Google Cloud

Leaders in AI and data analytics, Google has acquired a number of companies and startups to improve its AI capabilities for customers. Google Cloud sells several AI and machine learning services to businesses, with an industryleading software project in TensorFlow, as well as its own Tensor AI chip project. The Cloud Vision API can identify objects, logos, and landmarks within images, text within an image, can find similar images on the Web, or detect faces and read expressions. The company also offers a Cloud ML service where developers can train highquality machine learning models - such as customer service tech - using Google’s existing APIs. For more experienced ML developers, Google offers ML Engine for bringing machine learning models to production, using TensorFlow models that need to be trained for various scenarios.

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What is AWS? | Amazon Web Services

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AWS The clear leader in cloud computing, AWS offers both consumer and businessoriented artificial intelligence (AI) products and services. Many of its professional AI services build on the AI services available in consumer products. Its Alexa - embedded into the Amazon Echo - introduces AI to the home with its intelligent voice server. For AWS, the company’s primary AI services include: Lex, for building conversational interfaces into any application; Polly, which turns text to speech; and Rekognition, an image recognition service. Amazon Machine Learning provides visualisation tools that guide customers through the process of creating machine learning (ML) models without having to learn complex ML algorithms and technology.

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AUTONOMOUS DRIVING SOLUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE

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DXC TECHNOLOGY

WRITTEN BY: TILLY KENYON

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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As the progression of self-driving cars continues, DXC Technology and Luxoft are providing autonomous driving solutions

f we believed cartoons and sci-fi films from back yonder, 2022 would be a world rife with automated flying cars, beyondcomprehension tech capabilities, and a fully-digitised world replete with true AI and AI robotics – take The Jetsons, for example, a kooky cartoon comedy from 1962 that imagined life in the future. While this imagined world is still a fair way off in the future, many companies around the world are researching, integrating and assessing digital technology’s role in autonomous processes, such as driving, in order to realise this technologicallyastounding predicted world of the future. Dr. Hans Beck, autonomous driving advisor and Coordinator of Data Science and AI at DXC EMEA, is particularly interested in the ways AI can revolutionise and propel the development of self-driving cars and autonomous driving solutions. This is especially true in the wake of the global pandemic, which saw a quick turnaround of innovation to speed up machine learning and AI processes across everyday applications. For many businesses, this period turned into – or spurred on – a complete digital transformation. aimagazine.com

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As digital transformation continues to drive change in the automotive industry, Beck added: “I think the industry realises how AI changes everything. Car companies have shifted from assembling parts for their suppliers to become software development companies themselves. One of the biggest changes is with the major manufacturers transforming to focus more on software-driven development and processes. Not everything is around the vehicle anymore. It's more around the software which is in the vehicle. So that needs big changes in the thinking and approach of car markers. It requires a radical shift in how they develop and organise themselves.” Innovating across vital areas of automotive technology Autonomous driving (AD) refers to selfdriving vehicles or transport systems that move without the intervention of a human

“ Not everything is around the vehicle anymore. It's more around the software which is in the vehicle” KARSTEN HOFFMEISTER

HEAD OF AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, LUXOFT

driver. AD has the power to transfor the sector and prompt major shifts within the technology stack and the customer experience inside the vehicle. It’s one of the top discussions regarding future mobility. Experts have defined five different levels in the evolution of autonomous driving. Each level describes the extent to which a car takes over tasks and responsibilities from its driver, and how the car and driver interact:

Autonomous driving solutions for the future

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EXECUTIVE BIO KARSTEN HOFFMEISTER TITLE: HEAD OF AUTONOMOUS DRIVING LOCATION: GERMANY Karsten Hoffmeister is Luxoft’s newly appointed head of Autonomous Driving in its Automotive Sector, he was previously the chief technologist

for the same area of the Luxoft business and has worked with key customers on their transformation to develop software defined vehicles. He has over 20 years' experience in the automotive and software industries, this includes more than 14 years in technical management positions at worldclass companies.

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AWS for Automotive: Accelerating the Automotive Industry’s Digital Transformation From product and service innovation to resilient operations and enterprise-wide productivity, customers can bring advanced and differentiated products and services to market faster and more cost effectively with AWS.

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Level 0 - No Automation – where the driver controls the car without any support from a driver assistance system Level 1 - Driver Assistance – the vehicle has at least one driver support system such as steering assistance or braking and acceleration assistance Level 2 - Partial Driving Automation – this applies to vehicles with advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) that can take over steering, acceleration and braking in specific scenarios Level 3 - Conditional Driving Automation – the jump from Level 2 to Level 3 is significant from a technological perspective. Level 3 vehicles have ‘environmental detection’ capabilities and can make informed decisions for themselves, such as accelerating past a slowmoving vehicle April 2022

DXC TECHNOLOGY

•

Level 4 - High Driving Automation – this level does not require any human interaction in the vehicle’s operation because it is programmed to stop itself in the event of system failure, however, a human still has the option to manually override Level 5, Full Driving Automation – the final stage means a vehicle can drive itself everywhere in all conditions without any human interaction

Luxoft enables automakers to innovate across vital areas of advanced automotive and mobility technology. Combining the agility, energy and speed of a startup with the reach, positioning and manpower of an enterprise, it delivers highly complex solutions, at speed, in critical environments.

“ We are a unique company offering this end-to-end service” KARSTEN HOFFMEISTER

HEAD OF AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, LUXOFT

Head of Autonomous Driving at Luxoft, Karsten Hoffmeister, said: “Many global car makers are facing increased competition from the disruptors, newcomers and changes in the market. They’re redesigning their organisations and shifting strategies towards digital-first and software-first topics. They compete for automotive software talent. At Luxoft, we solve these

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DR. HANS BECK TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER LOCATION: GERMANY

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Dr. Hans Beck received his Ph.D. using Machine Learning, analyzing petabytes of CERN data. During his research career, he joined the management board of the third-largest scientific collaboration worldwide. At DXC Technology, Hans became CTO of DXC’s flagship autonomous driving program, analytics CTO for an automotive account. He is also responsible for several autonomous driving engagements and designed autonomous driving solutions. Hans enjoys analyzing data from autonomous vehicles and advising managers from automotive companies on analytics, AI, and Autonomous Driving.

DXC TECHNOLOGY

problems by helping OEMs accelerate into real software companies.”

A Fortune 500 global IT services leader, DXC Technology (DXC) delivers mission-critical IT services across the Enterprise Technology Stack to drive business impact. With more than 130,000 employees in over 70 countries, DXC helps global companies run their systems and operations while modernising IT, optimising data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds. Luxoft, a DXC Technology Company, is a digital strategy and software engineering firm providing bespoke technology solutions that drive business change for customers. Luxoft combines a unique blend of engineering and deep industry expertise, specialising in different areas, including automotive. “DXC and Luxoft come from different, but complementary, backgrounds for autonomous driving. DXC historically brings in more of the artificial intelligence development to the data centre. We combine this with Luxoft’s expertise for in-vehicle software development,” said Dr. Hans Beck, autonomous driving advisor and Coordinator of Data Science and AI at DXC EMEA.

Providing automotive manufacturers with autonomous driving solutions Luxoft Automotive offers a wide range of expertise, spanning across AD, connected mobility, digital cockpit, UX, testing and validation, and silicon and technology. Its AD solutions give automotive manufacturers and their key suppliers the ability to focus their product development and business on the needs of their customers. These solutions support the most critical development domains — data-driven development, in-vehicle embedded software, car virtualisation, and system design and validation. The company creates, integrates, tests and checks in-car series software for multiple sensor ECUs and systems. The teams also design and deploy HPC software for fusion, perception, environment-model and ADAS/ AD driving functions, plus end-to-end network architecture and service-oriented middleware. “We’re a unique company by offering this end-to-end service. You equip your vehicle with measurement equipment to collect data and then you ingest the data into a data centre, into the backend and into the cloud. Then you process the data and create something out of it: Algorithm-based driving functions for example, or AI-based perception, object detection, and things like that. It’s there that we have our strong in-vehicle knowledge within Luxoft – we work on the embedded part and help in implementing complex functions. We also help test these functions, virtually and in the vehicle” commented Hoffmeister. DXC’s Robotic Drive; data-driven development, virtualisation services and platform de-risk and accelerate the complete ADAS/AD development process aimagazine.com

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to support Level 2+ through Level 5 autonomous functions. It leverages on-premises and cloud infrastructure, methodologies, tools and accelerators for a highly automated AD development process. The importance of the cloud in autonomous driving Data and the cloud are key in the development of AD. An autonomous vehicle (AV) processes the data it receives from various sensors to make a driving decision and this needs to be stored somewhere. With Luxoft’s connected mobility solutions, customers are able to establish hybrid cloud environments, extend existing assets, migrate applications and employ modern development methods. The solutions’ data analytics capabilities make it possible for customers to collect, process and manage large amounts of vehicle data in real-time and help shape new services. “The cloud is really critical and none of our autonomous driving engagements work without it. We have recently announced a strategic partnership with AWS and the cloud provides us with the flexibility, scalability and reliability that our customers need in all areas of autonomous driving,” said Beck. One of the key benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity to replace infrastructure expenses with low variable costs that scale with your business. With cloud computing, users can access all of the features and files of the system without having to keep the bulk of that system on their own computers. “DXC really has a strong partner network and we have partnerships with all hyperscalers. Our collaboration with AWS, for example, already starts before any project is contracted, where we advise our clients on the best solutions for the autonomous driving project. AWS has a strong automotive and autonomous 152

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driving team and it’s a pleasure to work with them. This not only happens in the design phase, but then also in the implementation phase of these autonomous driving projects, where we often have mixed DXC and AWS teams” added Beck. Challenges facing DXC Technology and Luxoft in the next year Reflecting on the past 12 months, Beck explained that as a company, one of the biggest improvements was the growth of their customer base. “We started our autonomous driving engagements around six years ago with our first significant autonomous driving programme. But since then, we’ve really grown. I think there's barely any car

DXC TECHNOLOGY

manufacturer or tier one supplier that we're not engaged with” he added. The progression of self-driving cars has excited public imagination and inspired unprecedented collaboration between carmakers and tech innovators. Recent autonomous vehicle forecasts call for sales of more than 30 million autonomous vehicles in 2040, according to Deloitte. Commenting on challenges facing the company within the coming months, Beck said: “I think about the continuation of this growth of people and skills needed for autonomous driving and AI; that's a big challenge because the whole autonomous driving market is exploding. We need to manage this growth together with our partners and our customers.”

The continuing evolution of safety technologies is setting the foundation for developing intelligent software-defined automated systems capable of navigating roads with little to no human intervention. “On the tech side, one of the biggest challenges in disruptive change is fleet-based data-driven development. This will require a lot of changes in the architecture for, staying connected, but also in the development process itself. And of course, the major step is towards autonomous systems. The key challenge is to technically implement all those things. The second challenge is changing the organisations’ way of working,” Hoffmeister said.

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Innovating to advance children’s healthcare WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

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Alder Hey’s Claire Liddy and Iain Hennessey discuss the hospital’s unique culture and drive to become world-renowned healthcare innovators

s one of Europe's busiest children’s healthcare facilities, Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust treats more than 300,000 children and young people each year. Offering 20 specialist services, the hospital is dedicated to children's health and trains over 900 medical students each year. With an international reputation in a number of disciplines, Alder Hey is passionate about becoming a recognised leader in healthcare innovation. In 2016, the hospital transformed and its new building now includes state of the art digital infrastructure where clinical entrepreneurs and the dedicated commercial innovation team can actively engage with industry, academia and the local community. Continuing on its path of innovation, Alder Hey is now looking to develop and execute its new 2030 innovation strategy named ‘Today’s child, tomorrow’s healthier adult’, as Claire Liddy, Managing Director of Innovation at Alder Hey explains: “Our strategy is all about how we're going to give children of today a better chance using innovation and technology to have a longer healthier life. Within the strategy, we have two big objectives. One is about tackling healthcare inequalities, which we know are linked to poverty and cause a lot of chronic conditions in childhood, leading to chronic conditions in adulthood.” aimagazine.com

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“The second part of our strategy is how we're going to use technology to optimise the hospital. That's anything from how we can eliminate and reduce safety through augmenting clinical decision making or it could be automating and reducing admin burdens in the hospital,” she adds. Alder Hey’s digital platform, Alder Hey Anywhere, will allow the organisation to revolutionise the way it delivers healthcare. “The main thrust behind the new digital platform is around prevention, empowering children, young people, their families and their carers to stay well at home. So the vision is if we have a platform that is able to universally link with any wearable, implantable, or any other device, anything that the children and young people can wear at home, we are able then to communicate and transmit data in real-time to our platform,” says Liddy. 158

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With the data extracted from the wearables, Alder Hey will be able to create digital biomarkers as well as utilise the data to create artificial intelligence (AI) models to augment clinical decision making. “[These AI models can] individualise and predict which children, for example, are going to have lung disease and we can almost identify these children perinatally. So it will allow us to deliver healthcare in a more proactive way that is more focused on preventative intervention to give children and young people better life chances,” Liddy continues. On top of his work as a surgeon, Iain Hennessey is also the Co-Founder and Clinical Director of Innovation at Alder Hey. Impassioned by the power of AI for the trust, Hennesey outlines more use-cases for the technology: “With RPA, you can get enormous benefits and optimisation as AI automates low-level decision making.

CLAIRE LIDDY TITLE: M ANAGING DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Claire has over 20 years of healthcare expertise and is a proven healthcare innovation professional. Her passion is to solve unmet healthcare needs through the harnessing of cutting-edge technologies. Her current role is as an Executive and Managing Director of Innovation at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and Commercial Director for non-NHS business activity. At Alder Hey, Claire heads up the award-winning Innovation Centre, which includes a large team of over 30 healthcare open innovation experts. Claire is an experienced open innovation expert with a track record of innovation pipeline curation, solutions development, deal structuring and commercialization. Her innovation dream is to bring the technology power of industry, academia, and health together to Advance Global Child Health.

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“Diveplane has demonstrated the ability to produce synthetic data that can be quantifiably measured for accuracy and privacy ensuring patient information and confidentiality are still secure and not accessible for third parties” Claire Liddy – MD Alder Hey Innovation

ALDER HEY

Also, when people lay out the data to look at healthcare inequalities and where these are happening, you can just see the power of it. It's great to watch in the clinician's eye, just everything lights up and then they suddenly realise that's where the problem is, that's where we fix it. That's the power of visualisation of data and having data and analysing data is that it can help you take that next step.”

“ The main thrust behind the new digital platform is around prevention, empowering children, young people, their families and their carers to stay well at home”

Innovation weaving throughout Alder Hey Although the facility for the Innovation Centre is coming up to its sixth birthday, Hennesey explained that it has been running within the hospital itself since 2014, meaning that there's a strong culture of innovation throughout the trust. “We're so lucky here to have this culture, this permission and support from above. You need to have the C-suite onboard driving this. We get better by having new ideas and pushing things forward. I love the quote that ‘all good ideas start out being ridiculous’ and it's true. In so many hospitals, not just in NHS, this is worldwide, the healthcare mindset is to just keep on doing what you're doing, whereas actually, innovation needs to be pushed for,” he explains.

CLAIRE LIDDY

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION, ALDER HEY

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IAIN HENNESSEY TITLE: CO-FOUNDER AND CLINICAL DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM I am a consultant paediatric and neonatal surgeon at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in the United Kingdom. In addition to my clinical practice, I am the Clinical Director of Innovation. A role that involves the co-creation and exploitation of medical technology in partnership with academia, industry and clinicians.

ALDER HEY

Echoing this, Liddy outlined how innovation is embedded into every aspect of the hospital: “Having that dedicated team with expert resources has enabled us at Alder Hey to create almost like a system of innovation. So rather than innovation being a nice thing to have, innovation now is embedded as a core function and service in everything we do at Alder Hey. It's part of operational delivery. It's part of the strategy. Anybody at Alder Hey is given permission to innovate. I think having the innovation centre has been the secret to that success.” One of the centres earliest success stories was created using AI technology where Alder Hey co-developed the first deployed hospital chatbot in the world. Originally named Ollie, now Artie, the chatbot is embedded within Alder Hey’s children digital play environment. “We also invented a technology called Alder Play. When the hospital was opened the place was not designed to be like a hospital. It's designed to take the fear away from children when they arrive. In doing that, the children told us they wanted digital friends. We developed the Alder Play app, which is there for children to use, to distract, to educate and to reward. The app is still live and has gone from strength to strength,” explains Liddy. With a dedicated innovation team driving forward the hospital for the past eight years, Hennesey notes there are too many examples of innovation to note, but does add: “It is nice to look at the things which went from crazy sketches on board to the final product that is being deployed now. With the neonatal virtual visiting, I've still got the picture of the first sketch. It went from this little drawing and now you've got the unit set up with it.”

Partnering with the correct organisations to drive success What has been key for the Innovation Centre and its development is the support from external partners. Having previously worked within the Finance team at Alder Hey, this was a new challenge for Liddy to overcome. “Partnerships just didn't cross my desk as something that was really critical. We saw industry as suppliers, some people who sold us stuff. Innovation's totally different. The success of healthcare innovation is about having the right partners who have the brightest and the best technology and the

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right values that fit strategically with what we're trying to achieve here at Alder Hey,” she explains. Now, Microsoft acts as an important tool for Alder Hey as it looks to rationalise the huge data sets it now has access to. Liddy comments: “From a values point of view, they share a lot of our values around tech for good, AI for good and there was a real match there. We have always had a good partnership with Microsoft. For the two things that we wanted to do — one was the digital platform, and two was, moving forward with AI — they became the natural partners and we have been able to unlock a more innovative partnership model with Microsoft. We co-invent, which is very different to them supplying us technology. That's going really, really well and we've got some exciting stuff coming around our Alder Hey Anywhere platform product.” Diveplane also works as another key strategic partner with its unique synthetic data technology: “With our ambitions around our big data, AI and using data across organisational boundaries as well to really give children and young people that individualised intervention, we knew it might be really interesting to have a synthetic data tool. One of the biggest challenges in the data space is around GDPR and other datasharing regulations. The synthetic data tool gives us the opportunity to use digital twin technology to innovate but without the risk of privacy issues. So we partnered up with Diveplane,” outlines Liddy. Taking lessons from the pandemic to harness new innovations Comprised of four expert labs, the Innovation Centre has the infrastructure in place needed for prototyping new ideas, harnessing AI technology, exploring 164

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immersive technologies with its augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) capabilities and user experience (UX). The prototype lab has been imperative for the innovation team's more recent projects, despite not yet being live across the globe. “We have been able to design and develop a transparent mask for PPE. There's a big problem with mask wear and COVID-19, around communication and being able to provide equal communication. So we were able to prototype the transparent mask, which has now been commercialised. Our hope is to get that mask out there as a new global product,” says Liddy. During the pandemic itself, the innovation team were able to pivot to solve COVID-19 related problems. “I think having the innovation centre almost gave our profile a massive boost because everybody suddenly realised they could look to innovation to help solve problems. So it really helped with our credibility in the hospital and we did a fantastic job to support the hospital. We also didn't

“I suppose it's an easy thing to be proud of, this hospital. It's just got everything, it's got a real soul to it, but also it's got the expertise of staff and the equipment to give parents confidence in their child’s care” IAIN HENNESSEY

CO-FOUNDER AND CLINICAL DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION, ALDER HEY

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“ On a day to day basis I see children, young people getting the benefit of our innovations and that's what makes me proud and passionate to be part of such an amazing thing” CLAIRE LIDDY

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION, ALDER HEY

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NEW HOSPITAL Alder Hey’s new hospital features 270 beds, including 48 critical care beds for patients in ICU, HDU and Burns, together with 16 digitally-enhanced operating theatres. The majority of the children and their families have their own room and en-suite facilities and park views outside their bedroom window; while each ward has its own kitchen providing patients with freshly cooked food to order.

turn innovation off. As soon as we'd done the pivot and helped with the immediate emergencies, we cracked on with our innovation strategy, we continued to write it. We continued to work with our partners, we kept the programme going, we didn't stop innovation. That was critical because now it feels like we're ahead of the curve because we didn't stop,” Liddy explains. Hennessey adds: “We did so much stuff and it was great because everything just aligned. It was amazing for proving that this methodology and this way of finding problems, iterating solutions to them and then figuring out how to generate value for them is a good way of doing things. I personally love the fact that when people in the hospital had a problem, they would come downstairs to us. From a problemsolving point of view, it was a great challenge.” Looking ahead as the hospital recovers from the pandemic, Hennesey shared his excitement for what may be next: “The fun bit is that you don't know what the future holds. Every time I try and predict the future, sometimes you get it right, a lot of the time you get it wrong. So it's that potential for what might come that you don't know, but you've got to be prepared to seize it when it arrives. That for me is a key to innovation because our human bodies aren't getting any better, we're not going to evolve in the next 1,500 years. So the only way you're going get better doctors and nurses and speechlanguage therapists is actually augmenting them with better training, with better technology, with better science. This is how we get better.”

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SPARK COMPASS

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: GREG ST QUINTIN

AND

THE

BRIDGING DIGITAL PHYSICAL WORLD aimagazine.com

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Formerly of NASA and Qualcomm, inventor Erik Bjontegard improves lives through Spark Compass, an augmented intelligence communications platform

rik Bjontegard is a man on several missions. With countless patents to his name for his inventions, the former NASA Rocket Scientist has had involvement in creating and testing digital twins for rocket ships, sat around the table at Qualcomm when they were contributing to the roadmap of 5G, and now leads Total Communicator Solutions and its flagship, data-driven platform, Spark Compass. In 2014, Bjontegard attended the White House to receive the silver award for its entry into the SmartAmerica Challenge with the White House Presidential Innovation Fellow project, where Spark Compass created a campaign around healthy eating and healthy behaviour for office workers. ABI Research identified Spark Compass as the fourth most innovative beacon-tech company in the world in 2016 – ahead of Apple and Facebook. A beacon is a small, physical object that receives location data from nearby devices via Bluetooth, so they can engage with customers. Bjontegard’s gift with technology has led to some extraordinary ‘activations’, as he calls them, where some of the world’s largest brands have used the Spark Compass capabilities to engage their customer in new, novel and useful ways to elevate the experience: be it at a sports stadium with the Dallas Mavericks for AR activation, Hollywood PR event with popstar Selena Gomez and Puma, working with Apple and Samsung at international airports and even

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Spark Compass: bridging the digital and physical world

in the quiet surroundings of an English care home in partnership with AWS and its Alexa speaker for NHS Digital; there are very few limits to what Spark Compass can achieve in an augmented or virtual realm.

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The inventive company has the entire customer journey in mind with any product development and campaign, starting with end results, as Bjontegard explains: “We aggregate data from a variety of sources and deliver outcomes based on the data. But we have fun while we do it.” Inside the walls of the business, Total Communicator Solutions and its flagship communications platform, Spark Compass, are driven to help clients and partners act on real-world data and deliver outcomes that are measurable to the end-users. Spark Compass enables integration of location and standard campaign management solutions, bringing the ability to understand the actions and the results generated. “Many technical companies are enamoured by technology and how cool it is to get a 5% improvement in performance or 5% reduction in power consumption. But it really doesn't necessarily matter that much to the end-users. We always ask how results can be useful for them,” he said.

“THAT'S REALLY WHAT THE FANDOM IS ALL ABOUT. IT'S ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS” ERIK BJONTEGARD

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, SPARK COMPASS

ERIK BJONTEGARD TITLE: FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT LOCATION: SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA Erik Bjontegard is an entrepreneur, technology leader, innovator, former rocket scientist with NASA and technical lead for numerous FAA and international airworthiness certifications of critical commercial aircraft components. A former R&D senior executive at Qualcomm and Rohr Aerospace, he is also a certified California real estate broker and a holder of multiple patents globally. An established public speaker and advisor to governments, he’s been awarded for his campaigns at the White House and was named Top 20 Global Digitalization Leaders by CGI, Top IoT Inventor 2019 and Entrepreneur to Follow in 2019.

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Spark Compass Data Driven eSports Fan Relationship P4P

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Spark Compass activating worldwide and driving results Hollywood would come calling for Spark Compass when Puma wanted to announce a new line of shoes. Puma approached the company to help them engage with people locally while extending the engagement into social media: specifically Instagram. So popstar Selena Gomez was drafted in, with her 135 million friends on Instagram, for a two-week period that anyone in Beverly Hills, could download the Puma Defy City app and engage at various physical locations, where posters with Gomez wearing the shoes were placed. “If you had downloaded the app, you held the phone up against a poster you had discovered and she would come alive in an augmented reality (AR) experience. If you found all five, you would be entered into a contest. We filled the backlot at Paramount Studios. The lucky winner got to spend two hours with Selena. Myself included. The way she communicated with the fans and took time to talk to people, whether they were young or old, and let people take pictures, was very touching to see,” said Bjontegard.

“ THE YOUNGER GENERATION IS ALREADY MULTISCREENING LIKE CRAZY” ERIK BJONTEGARD

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, SPARK COMPASS

IBM Watson and Wimbledon Spark Compass is proudly a fully fledged partner of IBM Watson. Back in 2019, Bjontegard was asked to assist in activating the All England Lawn and Tennis Club (commonly known as “Wimbledon”). “There were long queues to get in. The grounds have a lot of history. And so we engaged the people in the line by activating plaques containing memorable historical moments around the site. We also animated and activated the grandstand and a series of popup partner booths and tents for sponsors” he said. aimagazine.com

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“ THAT'S REALLY WHERE THIS BECOMES EXCITING, WHERE WE CAN CONNECT THE PHYSICAL WITH THE DIGITAL” ERIK BJONTEGARD

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, SPARK COMPASS

Bjontegard and his team had the user’s journey through the iconic site in mind throughout, thinking of ways to enhance information in specific areas and at the right moments, so they could entertain fans and maximise the time, money and effort sponsors and partners give to be associated with the event. “The ROI that we provide is what we call ‘Results of Implementation’. That’s really what Spark Compass does. It is an implementation that activates and delivers results,” he said. Bjontegard has his own take on AI too, preferring to call the systems ‘augmented intelligence’, rather than artificial intelligence. 176

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Ole Miss and Results of Implementation In America, there’s no problem selling out arenas at the college level. At the University of Mississippi, nicknamed ‘Ole Miss’, when the boys are playing football, they can attract over 64,000 into the arena. Plus, there are thousands of people outside watching the game at the local “Grove”. But when the girls would play soccer, nobody would watch. So Spark Compass built an ecosystem in 2014, where the results of implementation were to get more fans in to watch the women play. The activations increased attendance by over 21% driven by a custom-built loyalty reward and relationship platform called Rebel Rewards.

“We integrated the IoT system with hundreds of beacon sensors across campus with our blockchain. So we drove behaviour, verified it and recorded it on an event-based ecosystem – delivering reward points for the fans. We stored those interactions real-time on our blockchain. So now all of a sudden we have all over 140 million real-world data points stored on our blockchain to verify, prove, and authenticate behaviour; not digitally, but in the physical world,” said Bjontegard. “That's really where this becomes exciting, when we connect the physical with the digital. Once we have the digital world with our metaverse, which we're

building right now, we can take the physical and replicate it with the digital twin to create an interactive metaverse, where interactions between fans and those that are playing can also parlay back into the physical world,” he added. aimagazine.com

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Digital fan activation moves from intrusive to immersive While sports fan activations have played a major role in the rise of Spark Compass, the reality back in Bjontegard’s days as Senior Director of Business Development at Qualcomm’s Corporate R&D, there were healthy debates about such technologies as AR and how it may detract from what’s happening on the field. “The younger generation is already multiscreening like crazy. That’s translated into sporting events. This led to our first activation of augmented reality, for the NBA team Dallas Mavericks,” he said. When they first started,

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WiFi or cell coverage was poor in the stadium. Now it's a prime component - and a bragging right - for a stadium to have 5G or a private 5G, according to Bjontegard. These technological leaps have given Spark Compass the ability, on behalf of their clients, to reward fans for being present at the stadium. Not just by points, but via a nonfungible token (NFT) that is airdropped and memorises that moment in time, creating a digital pin. This can unlock memorabilia exclusive to those in attendance. “We provide that communication between the team and the star players too. Imagine if a player is injured, but they

SPARK COMPASS

can communicate their daily actions on feed straight to fans. All of a sudden you can engage deeper, growing that relationship. That's really what the fandom is all about. It's about relationships. You want to support, you want to engage, you want to activate and feel involved,” said Bjontegard. Speed, agility and flexibility of deployment stretches beyond sport Away from the glitz of Hollywood, Spark Compass has also activated various public sites across the UK too, including a collaboration with the University of Salford, Bjontegard’s alma mater – where he is now

on the Advisory Board of Directors and an Honorary Fellow – to activate, engage and deliver information to visitors for the City of Science campaign. Bjontegard said at the time: “Our digital magic highlights the city’s position today as a world-class leader through these technology-driven experiences.” “We unlock experiences. It was on the dockside, which is obviously now fantastic, but when I was there in the eighties, not so much! We were able to show the chequered past of the Docklands in the old days, adding a stark contrast to today’s wonderful developments,” he said. Another area of innovation has emerged within international airports. “You have a sports match once or maybe twice a week, with a massive amount of people in attendance for a few hours, but airports have an even greater cumulative amount of people every minute and hour they're open. Our work with the airports is all about delivering and enhancing the journey, from home to the moment passengers are in the seat, engaging and enhancing their transit from their homes to when they touch down and head to their accommodation on the other side. This includes making purchases easier, reducing payment friction for the travelers when they shop, dine and drink before departure” he said. The data aggregator and partner integrator At San Diego Airport, Spark Compass integrated with shuttle buses through an app, so passengers could see how far away it was from the taxi drop-off or car park. The company helped to monitor the cleanliness of restrooms, as it is one of the metrics that airports are rated by, directly influencing the rates that are charged for the airlines. aimagazine.com

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Spark Compass Fan Engagement Platform for Platforms AR On Site Demo for NY Islanders w Platform Data

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“We're the aggregator, we're that third party, as middleware. So we can leverage the input and information from two parties that would not work directly,” said Bjontegard. An example of this was an indoor navigation solution launched with Apple that combined with an enterprise-level wearable watch from Samsung. This helped IT staff members to be more responsive by reducing calls and emails, while the closest staff member could be identified by their watch, as it related to the Apple indoor navigation. Spark Compass provides a singlepane dashboard, combining multiple separate vertical technology solutions into one single control dashboard. Their clients don't care about the individual components, according to Bjontegard, as they simply want a common dashboard where the data is seamlessly integrated into a complete picture of the facilities. The company’s patented contextual understanding and contextual awareness, combined with knowledge, is infused into a platform that therefore is able to deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time and in the right place – on the right device. Invention as standard with each new customer One of the distinguishing features of Spark Compass is that every time they do something with a new customer in a new vertical, it is an innovation. A passionate Bjontegard stated: “We build something that hasn't been done before, such as using a smart speaker with AWS to engage and understand a senior citizens’ condition when they wake up in the morning, through to understanding dispatch problems for the care providers and care homeworker in North Somerset attending to the seniors.

“ WE CAN INTEGRATE WITH ANY PARTNER” ERIK BJONTEGARD

FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, SPARK COMPASS

When the speakers weren’t present anymore, the residents really missed them, which means we must be doing something right.” Bjontegard continued: “We can integrate with any partner. We can aggregate the data and we can act on the data. Because we look at the ecosystem in its entirety. And then during the build, we plug in the different components to fit that whole journey. We look at the entire ecosystem – and we always start at the end with the end-users experiences.”

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