AI - February 2022

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The AI Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

CATHERINE GRAY DEPUTY EDITORS

ALEX TUCK

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA ELLA CHADNEY

CREATIVE TEAM

PRODUCTION EDITOR

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

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

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VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

PROJECT DIRECTORS

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MOTION DESIGNER

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MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

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SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

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CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

AI to take centre stage in the metaverse From a dystopian vision to the metaverse, how AI will disrupt our lives for the better

“With many eyes looking at the metaverse and its ability to revolutionise the way we live our lives, this is where AI technology will take centre stage”

AI MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

Alphabet’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, believes the impact of AI will be greater than fire or electricity on our development as a species. An ambitious claim? Yes. But the potential of this technology to tackle major business and human challenges is not to be sniffed at.

2022 will see AI continue on its transformative journey and showcase itself as one of the most impactful technologies we’ve ever seen. As the media narrative encouragingly moves from a dystopian vision of dominating robots to a more sensible, and accurate, picture of data and automation, AI is now gearing up to act as the lynchpin in the metaverse.

With many eyes looking at the metaverse and its ability to revolutionise the way we live our lives, this is where AI will take centre stage. Giving VR technology the ability to unlock a new degree of verisimilitude, AI will soon permeate our everyday lives, and Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri will seem like child’s play in comparison.

CATHERINE GRAY

catherine.gray@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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SHAPING THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 12 Big Picture 14 The Brief 16 Timeline: Hanson Robotics 18 Trailblazer: Larry Muhlstein 22 Five Mins With: Mazen Sobh

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AI Strategy

Formulating AI strategy with support from the private sector

28 Lyft

The universe and the internet of everything

54

CEPH

Democratising Data Storage

74

Machine Learning

AI and ML: Mitigating risks in cyber security

82

VMO2

First steps to an autonomous network

110

Randstad UK

A human forward approach brings rewards for all

126

Data & Analytics

Improving efficiencies through the power of AI and IIoT

134

Ferrexpo

100

AI Applications

Autonomous Vehicles: Reducing Fatalities with ML Technology

Ferrexpo fires up decarbonisation and autonomy

Enabling educators.

Empowering students.

Explore how we accelerate student discovery, learning and innovation with our Digital Education 3D Experience.

EXPLORE THE 3D EXPERIENCE

172

CURE Insurance Ethical car insurance for the community

146 Top 10

AI Platforms for RPA

184

Muang Thai Life Assurance Public Company Built on trust and Sustainability

158

Taurus

Open platforms, HPC & Industry 4.0

198 Bell

Harnessing AI to efficiently serve Canada

COMING SOON FO LLOW N OW

EDU C ATE • M OT IVAT E • E LE VAT E

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FO LLOW N OW

BIG PICTURE

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February 2022

Expanding Human Reach

Las Vegas, United States of America

Hyundai has outlined its vision for robotics in the real world and metaverse. Its ‘Metamobility’ concept envisions that distinctions between future mobilities will become blurred through extended robotics technologies such as AI and autonomous driving. The concept goes beyond physical movements through robotics and the metaverse to affect change in the real world.

hyundai.com

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THE BRIEF

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Head of Strategic Business Development & Supply Chain, Lyft 

The significance of combining human expertise with AI, machine learning, natural language processing, and pattern recognition to augment foresight across organisations.

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Zach Greenberger

BY THE NUMBERS

s

“ Most people know Lyft as a rideshare company. Right? But, the truth of the matter is we are focused on improving people's lives with the world's best transportation”

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?

“ Transformation is also about process transformation and then people transformation” Abdul Manik

Chief Technology Innovation Officer, Randstad  READ MORE

“ There's a recognition that AI is playing a bigger role in society. The technology has been around for decades” Lee Tiedrich

Ethical Technology Professor, Duke University  READ MORE

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February 2022

Veriff: enabling trust with intelligent and automated IDV

Following the announcement that Veriff has joined the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner Network, we take a look at the work the company has done with AI READ MORE

LambdaTest launches a smart testing platform, HyperTest

LamdbaTest’s new cloud-based website and web app testing platform, HyperTest, is up to 70% faster than any other traditional test execution platform READ MORE

Nauto: Creating predictive vehicle safety technology

We take a look at Nauto, the enterprise AI company aiming to predict collisions before they occur and give drivers more reaction time with AI-powered sensors and alerts READ MORE

How important is natural language processing really?

Natural language processing (NLP) is so embedded into our daily lives we hardly notice it. When you use Alexa, you are conversing with an NLP machine and when you type into a chatbot NLP technology takes charge to support your query. The list of things this technology is used for is almost endless.

NLP market size The NLP market is fast expanding. According to the research firm, MarketsandMarkets, the NLP market will grow to USD 35.1 billion by 2026 from 11.6 billion in 2020.

Adopting this technology with caution Although it is clear that this technology is here to stay, and brings a significant amount of benefits to the organisations that embrace it, technologists need to make note of some drawbacks when adopting this technology. An important consideration for practitioners is the choice of natural language. Most models are good at the English language while performing below par in several other languages.

With this technology permeating throughout society, it is clear it is going nowhere any time soon and as it grows in magnitude and significance, considerations around language and efficiency need to be made.

 DEEPMIND Following a successful 2021, DeepMind is now moving into the world of NLP with the creation of its AI algorithm that can perform a wide range of language tasks and claims to be better than any existing similar software.  NVIDIA Leading graphics chip company NVIDIA has been named as a top AI stock to watch in 2022 since it has taken advantage of the AI boom. NVIDIA’s graphics cards could someday be supplanted by more specialised processors designed for AI.  AI GOVERNANCE Technology experts predicted that 2021 would mark the year of AI governance. However, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs stated that AI systems and algorithmic technologies are being embedded and scaled far more quickly than existing governance frameworks are evolving.  TRUE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Elwin Loomis, Head of Digital of Bremer Bank argued that our current artificial intelligence is not really intelligent. By terming the technology we have as ‘intelligent’, this creates a false narrative and underestimates the work needed to materialise the ‘real’ AI.

U P

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TIMELINE THE CREATION OF HANSON ROBOTICS’ MOST ADVANCED ROBOT, SOPHIA Sophia the robot is a unique combination of science, engineering and artistry. The human-crafted science fiction character depicts the future of AI and robotics.

As the world’s first robot citizen, and the first robot Innovation

2007

2016

FOUNDING OF HANSON ROBOTICS

ACTIVATING SOPHIA

Hanson Robotics was founded in 2007 by David Hanson and was originally based in Texas. Since its founding 15 years ago, the team has built a worldwide reputation for creating human-like robots. Hanson founded the company to pursue his fascination with art, science fiction and philosophy that pushed him to think about what the future of robots could look like.

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Ambassador for the United Nations Development Programme, Sophia is a global name having made appearances in worldwide conferences as well as daytime TV shows in many countries.

Here, we look at how Sophia has been developed over the years.

February 2022

In February of 2016, Hanson Robotics activated Sophia and the robot made its first public appearance in mid-March of the same year. Just one year later, Sophia was given Saudi Arabian citizenship, becoming the first robot to receive citizenship of any country. One month later, Sophia was named the United Nations Development Programme's first Innovation Champion.

2018

2019

2021

ADDING MORE FEATURES TO SOPHIA

CREATING ‘LITTLE SOPHIA’

JOINING THE METAVERSE

Following the launch and activation of Sophia, Hanson Robotics released “Little Sophia” as a companion that could teach children how to code. During the same year, Sophia displayed the ability to create drawings, including portraits displaying the robots ability to improve as it makes more and more interactions.

More recently, it has been announced that a virtual anime version of Sophia will be released in 100 nonfungible tokens that can interact autonomously with people in a gamified environment.

As of 2018, Sophia's architecture includes scripting software, a chat system, and OpenCog, an AI system designed for general reasoning. In the same year, Sophia was upgraded with functional legs and the ability to walk.

Hanson also embedded Alphabet’s speech recognition technology which is designed to get smarter over time. With this technology, Hanson hoped Sophia would be a suitable companion for the elderly at nursing homes or be used to help crowds at large events or parks.

Jeanne Lim, the former CEO of Hanson Robotics, who is now the co-founder and CEO of beingAI, the startup that created Sophia’s official virtual version for the interactive NFT, said she hopes the new AI being will bring together humanity and technology “to help humans attain our true nature of unconditional love and pure possibilities.”

TRAILBLAZER

Larry Muhlstein Artificial Intelligence at Google

Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Industry

E

xperienced machine learning engineer and scientist, Larry Muhlstein, previously specialised in recommender systems and natural language understanding for both research and production.

Currently working towards his PhD, Muhlstein works as an Artificial Intelligence Engineer at Google.

With a rich educational background, Muhlstein explained that he did not set out to work in the artificial intelligence (AI) field: “I ended up in the field by accident,” he said.

“I'm interested in AI because it reflects this beautiful relationship between ideas and almost a philosophy about how the world works and how things can actually have a real impact,” continued Muhlstein.

Despite having a keen interest in philosophy, Muhlstein explained that he felt “the tools in this field are very limited as to how they can really reach into the world.”

Turning to AI-enabled technology to pursue his career in both 18

February 2022

academia and industry, Muhlstein said: “With AI, we have this tool that allows us to frame things in terms of observations and data. As a result, we can design this tool to reflect what we care about or want to see and so it can then have a real and powerful impact. We've seen the importance of this with the massive increase in the amount of AI being used in the industry in the last 10 years or so.”

He added: “My interest stems from both the beauty and power of this technology and how that all ties nicely into society.”

“My interest stems from both the beauty and power of this technology and how that all ties nicely into society”

At the University of California, San Diego as a PhD Researcher, Muhlstein designed siamese deep neural network algorithms for collaborative filtering and next item recommendation.

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TRAILBLAZER

“ I still continue to learn from my job at Google.

Using this knowledge from industry allows me to really focus on this personal project.

It is really important to me and where I think I can make an impact” 20

February 2022

Having worked both in industry and as an academic, Muhlstein is now keen to bridge the gap between the two as he believes this would result in a better outcome when AI technologies and products are created. He explained: “At the surface level of academia, you tend to have a lot more time to think about problems in terms of the fundamentals, in terms of really focusing on getting a good understanding of what is happening and how things work.”

“In industry, when you have practical considerations, you need to build something that works and has some sort of impact on the company, on your users, on society.

So depending on where you work, you're almost incentivised for different kinds of work, but really it's important that they happen together because the impact that industry has is pretty massive on our society. Yet, if it's not informed by a better understanding of the world, it's blind in a lot of ways.

As a result of this, we end up just

building things that ‘kind of’ work and then we have to replace them pretty quickly,” added Muhlstein.

Having worked at Google for nearly a year now, the Artificial Intelligence Engineer looks at problems and challenges from both an academic and professional outlook, as he explains: “When I do work in industry, I always try to look at problems in a more fundamental way. I really look to sketch out the task to consider exactly what we are caring about here? What are our tools, what is the fundamental nature of the thing that we're trying to do?

As opposed to a more surface-level relationship, I think this approach creates things that work better.”

Lending to his passion for AI, computer science and physics, Muhlstein is now working on a book looking into computational learning theory. Within it, he plans to explore what is possible to learn, how we define knowledge, and how we truly answer questions he doesn’t believe have been answered definitively within his field. aimagazine.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Mazen Sobh Q. Can you tell me about your company and your role?

» Cognetivity Neurosciences is a Vice President, Commercial Development at Cognetivity Working to transform cognitive testing to help millions around the world, the Cogentivity team has developed a solution that spots early signs of cognitive impairments in individuals. With deep sector experience in neuroscience, artificial intelligence (AI), medicine and neurology, AI Magazine speaks to Mazen Sobh Vice President for Commercial Development at Cognetivity to learn how the company is delivering a new paradigm in global healthcare.

company that was established in the UK and is a spinoff from Cambridge University. From the university, two scientists PhD students collaborated and developed an application that specialises in identifying early or subtle signs of cognitive impairments in individuals. This application, CognICA, which can be used on an iPad or smartphone, combines cutting-edge neuroscience with artificial intelligence. The technology which has been patented and also peer-reviewed, displays 100 images in quick succession, asking patients to simply identify whether they see an animal in each or not. Due to the ‘fear or food’ response, humans react strongly to animal imagery, activating large areas of their brain.

AI analysis compares their reactions to how others in their age group responded and this generates a result that indicates how healthy a patient's brain is when compared to

“ We have big plans for expansion” 22

February 2022

normal, mildly impaired and severely impaired individuals.

I am the Vice President for Commercial Development and I’m based in Dubai. I'm responsible for the growth of the business in the Middle East with further plans to expand to the Far East and beyond.

Q. Can you talk me through other solutions Cognetivity has developed?

» Our CognICA solution is a

technology that empowers clinicians to make better decisions that can dramatically improve patient outcomes. We want the solution to be the de facto assessment tool for clinicians who want to look at cognitive behaviour and cognitive

development for humans. The company has also developed a mobile app called OptiMind that can be downloaded on your iPhone.

This app is a wellness app that objectively measures your everyday cognitive performance for personal use. OptiMind can highlight personal lifestyle correlations with your cognitive sharpness and provide scope for optimisation.

Through this application, we provide a graphical view of the relationship between a user’s lifestyle and mental wellbeing. It allows users to assess what factors improve their cognitive performance and empowers them to alter their lifestyle choices to optimize their mental health. aimagazine.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Q. How can the solution be adopted and applied in the UAE region?

» We opened an office in the

UAE in the middle of July 2021.

Demographic wise, the population in the UAE are blessed with a younger population. As our solution is looking to support dementia diagnosis and older populations that the AI platform has been trained on is not the primary driver as to why people are looking at our solutions. The demographics in this region are more interested in the wellbeing part of what our technology offers. The uptake has been amazing. We have been in discussions with the Ministry of Health, the Dubai Health authority and big chain hospitals like Mediclinic. All of these players have a very strong interest in adopting the technology in various scopes of its service, being the clinical application or the lifestyle wellness development app.

Q. How has the company been evolving the recent years?

» Our solution is fully

commercialised, is CE marked and an FDA class-II medical device. It has been adopted by the NHS for remote monitoring and detection of cognitive impairments and we are now in the process of widening our presence globally. We have always been active in continuing to validate the technology consistent research and collaboration with bodies like the NHS and Alzheimer's Society in the UK. 24

February 2022

“ Our solution is perfect and it has been adopted by the NHS for remote monitoring and development of cognitive impairments”

Cognetivity Cognetivity was founded as Sina Habibi and Seyed-Mahdi KhalighRazavi bonded over how dementia had touched their lives while studying for PhDs at the University of Cambridge.

The pair shared an overwhelming feeling that their loved ones had been diagnosed too late to reduce the disease’s devastating toll. Recognising an issue in dementia diagnosis, they set up Cognetivity to fix it.

Q. What can we expect from Cognetivity in the future?

» At Cognetivity we have very big

ambitions. Over the next 12 to 18 months we aim to significantly increase our global footprint and enable our technology to help more and more patients across the world.

Although we are still in the early stages of commercialisation, we have had incredible feedback from our customer base across the different continents that we serve and will continue to aggressively seek new opportunities. aimagazine.com

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DISCOVER WHO MADE THE CUT. Top 100 Companies in Technology Read Now

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Creating Digital Communities

Lyft, the universe and the internet of everything

WRITTEN BY: SIMON HOWSON-GREEN PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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February 2022

LYFT

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LYFT

Zach Greenberger explains Lyft’s growing ‘rideshare’ business and how it is hitting super aggressive targets, in partnership with Oracle

N

o digital enterprise is an island entirely of itself. They need strong, well-suited partnerships, realistic but ambitious targets, and some creative “beyond the box thinking.”

That’s how Zach Greenberger approaches his pivotal role at Lyft. Greenberger is a supply chain guy. He knows it link by link. He hails from an impressive background. IBM and Tesla. He’s been with Lyft for three years.

“My focus is delivering value to the endto-end supply chain for our broader business and then fostering partnerships that drive incrementality and loyalty to our customer base,” he says. In other words: growing a business step-by-step and ensuring you don’t lose your loyal customers along the way.

To do that Greenberger says he needs working relationships with suppliers who become long term partners, with similar goals and a matching culture.

“I’ve always been one who believes mature supply chain organisations play critical roles, not only driving efficiencies to the business through its supply base, but also becoming trusted advisors, operators and problem-solvers for our stakeholders.

“Most people know Lyft as a rideshare company. But, we are focused on a broader mission improving people's lives with the world's best transportation,” says Greenberger.

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February 2022

Example of an image caption aimagazine.com

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When your usual course is blocked, how do you find new streams?

ey.com/tmt

HOW EY IS HELPING LYFT RAISE ITS POST IPO GAME

designing their internal controls, redesigning the chart of accounts to scale with their targeted growth, and supporting the company’s financial transformation.

Lyft raised more than two billion dollars in its 2019 IPO. Timing these events is often a hit or miss affair. Lyft nailed it with huge success. But keeping up that growth momentum and spending the money wisely while steering a route through the new regulatory constraints going public took serious teamwork.

‘Sanjay is spot on,’ says Greenberger.

EY brings a ton of expertise to support and augment our team and make sure we are building that proper foundation for long term success.’

And if that wasn’t enough, Lyft and EY had to exploit the benefits of a successful funding round just as the global pandemic took hold.

According to Khunti, with so many separate business lines and units being developed under the Lyft banner – from rideshare to scooter hire to product delivery to name just three – EY needed to take a holistic approach.

‘The IPO was a super exciting time for us,’ says Greenberger. ‘It necessitated a level of maturity and growth we needed to properly scale business operations.’

He says this is where Lyft’s relationship with EY became so critical.

Khunti agrees. ‘Absolutely. Lyft being in hyper-growth mode…but then having to face the requirements of being a public company meant it found itself in an interesting position. Working with EY at the Speed of Lyft, as we call it, meant they had a successful IPO and built a strong partnership.’

‘Operating in the public domain with a host of new regulations, laws and expectations from investors was just the tip of the iceberg.’

‘EY helped them through setting up their internal audit and SOX functions,

‘One major step was to implement Oracle Financial Accounting Hub (FAH)’, he says. This gave Lyft a more scalable accounting system which was auditable, traceable and provides a complete and accurate picture of their financials and the data they need to make the right business decisions.

‘That was really the first step in getting this transformation journey started and it’s providing successful outcomes for our ongoing work together,’ says Khunti.

Learn more

LYFT

How Lyft Is Raising The Stakes In The Supply Chain

Sounds good? But what does that mean?

“We are developing and innovating products that address the end-toend value chain of all of our customers' transportation needs. From our core rideshare business to micro-mobility, we offer everything from on-demand vehicles, bikes and scooter solutions, and even vehicle servicing and rentals.

Ultimately, our goal is to create products that effectively eliminate any barriers to transportation and make them accessible and enjoyable for everyone.”

This may sound like a well-rehearsed mission statement, but behind these words is a culture where providing the best services is deeply engrained.

“At its core, we need a supply chain that delivers the best experience to our customers and stakeholders, so we are, in fact, able to focus on how we progress against our mission.”

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February 2022

“ Mature supply chain organisations play a critical role, not only driving efficiencies to the business through a world class supply base but also becoming trusted advisors, operators and problem solvers for our stakeholders” ZACH GREENBERGER

HEAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT, LYFT BUSINESS

LYFT

“This vision really ‘jives’ perfectly with Lyft’s mentality as a broader company. We have an exceptional culture that promotes healthy debate,” he says.

Greenberger expands on this and what he means when it comes to setting goals: “I take significant pride in the trust and reputation that we have built with our internal team members, and to me, that defines the power of our team's ability to deliver against super aggressive targets.”

“Super Aggressive Targets?” That sounds impressive but what does that mean?

Greenberger explains: “Data-driven decision making and focusing on our core competencies is priority thinking. It’s that mentality that is really a supply chain team’s dream, and helps us focus on hitting aggressive goals we set for ourselves.”

Greenberger is driven to ensure his teams at Lyft are undeniably ‘best in class’.

“They really differentiate themselves from other supply chain teams in the industry,” he says. “Not only does that play out in our results as a supply chain team, but I also see how we support our internal stakeholders has unlocked efficiencies for the business to deliver against the company’s core mission without distraction.”

The upshot of this, according to Greenberger, is allowing his people to ‘hyper focus’ on customers and make sure they are being delivered the best products day-to-day.

TITLE: H EAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY: TRANSPORTATION LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO Zach Greenberger is the Head of Strategic Business Development & Global Supply Management at Lyft, where he leads efforts on Lyft’s growth partnership strategies and delivering value to the end-to-end supply chain.

Zach has not only brought a strong procurement background to the role, but he’s also always had a passion for emerging technologies and prioritised a customer-centric approach. Prior to joining Lyft, Zach was integral to the Global Supply Management and Operations team at the Tesla Corporation and before that, he spent 3 years at IBM as a Strategic Sourcing Consultant. With an impressive list of over 20 technology patents under his belt, Zach stays committed to driving loyalty to Lyft's customer base while continuing the company’s mission to improve people’s lives with the world’s best transportation.

EXECUTIVE BIO

2012

Year founded

ZACH GREENBERGER

LYFT

“ It was critical that we took every step we could to effectively run our business, while also building a foundation that would allow them to scale, and this is precisely where Oracle came in” ZACH GREENBERGER

HEAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT, LYFT BUSINESS

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February 2022

Consulting with Oracle Greenberger says he wants the driving force behind Lyft’s supply chain to always be its ability to influence decision making and truly partner with stakeholders to help drive the best results for Lyft. “Growing businesses survive and prosper by nurturing the right working culture and innovative thinking.”

At this point, it is clear Greenberger can’t take this narrative any further until he talks about Oracle. The two businesses ‘hitched a ride’ together some time ago and the journey has become more comfortable and successful with each passing year.

“Oracle was the foundational solution that was able to solve our end-to-end needs

LYFT

and really give us the tooling that we needed to scale business operations long term,” says Greenberger.

“So, one of the main things that we've really enjoyed by having a very strategic partnership is the ability to discuss and roadmap solutions that historically haven’t been offered in the market.”

“Oracle is very focused on helping unlock infrastructure efficiencies for Lyft every day.

The partnership overall has been fantastic and I do believe a lot of that is because we see so many similarities within our cultures.”

Greenberger says Oracle was a fundamental element of Lyft’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) journey. aimagazine.com

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LYFT

“ Ultimately, I believe as IoT develops, we are going to see the offerings that we've built become crisper and easier to consume” ZACH GREENBERGER

HEAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT, LYFT BUSINESS

“It was critical that we took every step we could to effectively run [the] business, while also building a foundation that would allow it to scale, and this is precisely where Oracle came in.”

“Implementing Oracle's ERP infrastructure really unlocked access to data that our finance and supply chain teams needed while simultaneously providing leadership a more holistic view of how we conduct resource planning and execute strategies through our evaluation of the market.’

Focus, focus, focus Zach Greenberger attributes Lyft’s ability to step up several gears to the company’s successful IPO just before the pandemic.

He also believes Lyft had a head start over its competitors by originating as a digital platform. aimagazine.com

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Oracle Native Applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Oracle’s cloud native services driven modern application development by using standards-based technologies giving developers a comprehensive, standards-based platform for a building, deploying, and managing applications.

CONSULTING THE ORACLE Lyft Reimagines the Future of Transportation with Oracle “Oracle’s culture is all about innovation - It has been from the beginning. Forty years on and it is still leading the way.” That’s according to Trey Parsons, Group VP at Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure Group.

“Our mission statement is to help people, our clients and partners, see data in new ways, gain valuable insights and discover endless possibilities” says Parsons.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has created a platform for companies to innovate and Oracle’s own culture of innovation translates to the accounts that our Cloud Venture team covers: ‘Unicorn’, cloud native, high growth accounts.

Oracle’s four-year relationship with the ride share business, Lyft Inc. is a

perfect example of how this brand of collaboration and partnership works.

“Lyft is a ‘cloud first’ company,” says Parsons. “Oracle’s Enterprise Fusion ERP application is one of the best in the business. It is an integrated, scalable suite. Lyft has gone from running hundreds of thousands of transactions to billions. Oracle’s scalable platform played a fundamental role in achieving this.”

Lyft’s first collaboration with Oracle was by adopting its Fusion Accounting Hub. This was implemented in a record 4 months.

They then successfully implemented Oracle Cloud Applications, Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse and Oracle Analytics Cloud.

When Lyft successfully implemented Oracle Cloud it had the capability to close its books in half the time and to significantly improve relevant processes.

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“ One of the unique things that Lyft provides is building is the fleet management capability to be able to maintain and operate autonomous vehicles in a way that most effectively utilises them, given the daily supply and demand signals in the marketplace” ZACH GREENBERGER

HEAD OF STRATEGIC BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & GLOBAL SUPPLY MANAGEMENT, LYFT BUSINESS

“The initial public offering has certainly benefited us,” he says. “One of our differentiators in the market is that we are hyper-focused on our mission. We don't get distracted with other things that aren't directly tied to that mission of improving people's lives with the world's best transportation. Every day, we are ruthlessly prioritising projects and products that continue to bring us closer to our goals.”

To infinity and beyond So, that was then. We’ve covered now what of the future?

No interview with a leading supply chain ‘guy’ is complete these days without drilling down where they see their business going in the future, especially in the Covid age. So, where does Zach Greenberger expect Lyft 42

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DID YOU KNOW...

LYFT

LYFT MARKET SHARE AND GROWTH SINCE IPO Ride-hailing startup Lyft Inc raised US$2.2bn in its initial public offering on T pricing 30.77 million shares at US$72, the top of its already elevated US$70 to US$72 per share target range.

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LYFT

to lead the charge in innovation, particularly in the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) as driving forces?

Greenberger claims Lyft is uniquely placed to take the market into uncharted territory here and can overcome perhaps the biggest obstacle to the expansion of automated transportation: Economics, not technology which will hold the market back.

“We've seen a tonne of progress in the acceleration of autonomy within vehicles, right?” he says. “One of the unique things

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that Lyft provides is the fleet management capability to be able to maintain and operate autonomous vehicles in a way that most effectively utilises them, given the daily supply and demand signals in the marketplace.”

“We see that with the vehicles that are operated on the platform today. Even though the vehicles are progressing towards full autonomy, there is also a lingering question on how the economics will pencil out long term.”

This is where Greenberger thinks Lyft comes into its own. Creating demand is one

thing. Turning that demand into a viable business is another. The two don’t always travel together.

“Not only do we have millions of customers looking to connect to transportation needs daily, but we are also providing the necessary fleet management capabilities that are ultimately required for a vehicle to be able to operate at maximum efficiency in the marketplace.”

“This is probably one of the most interesting parts of where we're headed with autonomy, but of course, it's a long road to get there.”

Greenberger brings this narrative back down to earth at this point. He’s back to his key skills in supply chains.

“These are natural progressions of technologies [referring to AI and IoT] that are going to be incredibly critical to every business' strategy, but I think more specifically as it relates to supply chain,” he says.

“I have a very strong conviction that evolving tech such as IoT and AI will play a key role in upskilling supply chain professionals to be more strategic and less transactional than they've historically been. We've seen a transformation on the impact that supply chain organisations can drive to an enterprise over the past decade.”

“I believe IoT and AI in the supply chain can give businesses the tools they need to execute against transactional needs without too much intervention. They are critical factors in how we think about long term product offerings - whether that is simply through connectivity, or the role played in autonomous vehicles.”

“My mentality on these technologies is that, as they develop, they expand the art of the possible. We’re cultivating what can be offered both in the supply chain and from a broader business innovation perspective.

That includes embedded systems that are providing better telematics to our owned and operated fleet or IoT devices deep within the heart of our supply chain hardware – our vehicles – making it easier to assess and predict optimal vehicle positioning, asset utilisation, more accurate ETA estimates and so on.”

“Ultimately, I believe as IoT develops, we are going to see the innovative offerings that we've built, become crisper and easier to consume.”

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FORMULATING AI STRATEGY WITH SUPPORT FROM THE PRIVATE SECTOR As more governments incorporate AI technology into strategies, we explore the crucial relationships needed between the public and private sector WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

U

ndoubtedly, artificial intelligence (AI) holds great economic, social, security and environmental potential. Promising a better future for populations with the creation of national wealth and jobs, AI can enable both the private and public sectors to do more with less, fostering rapid development.

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As previously shown by AI Magazine, nations are now investing in AI, quantum computing and synthetic biology to bolster their security defences as national security threats across the globe become more complex.

Now, nations across the world have woken up to the power of AI and as Lee Tiedrich, Ethical Technology Professor at Duke

AI STRATEGY

University comments: “There's a recognition that AI is playing a bigger role in society. The technology has been around for decades.

We've seen a lot of developments recently in large part because of the proliferation of data, the availability of algorithms, and the lowering of computing power.” Echoing this, Larry Lewis, Vice President and Director

of the Centre for Autonomy and Artificial Intelligence at CNA, said: “AI is the latest technological solution to give governments an edge, it is believed to be particularly potent in both its ability, but also the many roles that it can play. It's a natural thing for governments to be looking for the next big thing, and it turns out that is AI.” aimagazine.com

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AI STRATEGY

As nations across the globe formulate AI strategies and incorporate this technology into existing ones, it is imperative that considerations into ethics and regulations are made to ensure that it is effective.

Forging good relationships between the public and private sector AI continues to be a key driver for digital transformation within the private sector.

The uptake of this technology has grown exponentially over the past decade, however, governments now largely lag behind with its adoption of this technology.

Discussing this disparity, Lewis said: “Governmental resources and research is dwarfed by what the industry is doing and so that changes the dynamic in a fundamental way. Now governments really are dependent, in a new way, on what industry is doing and what it's developing.”

In order to close this gap and ensure the public sector successfully incorporates AI into its strategy, Tiedrich explains the relationship between the public and private sectors has never been more crucial: “This will help them understand how the technology works, get those perspectives, understand what industry's doing, what civil society's concerns are and those of academia and other stakeholders.”

“To forge good relationships between the public and private sectors, round tables can be important for real-time dialogue.

Academia can play a really important role in terms of bringing people together to try to forge these dialogues and these exchanges of information to lead to better-informed policy,” she added.

These dialogues will educate policymakers and government leaders and without this education, the technology will not be harnessed to its full potential.

“ POLICYMAKERS SHOULD NOT VIEW REGULATION AS PRESENTING AN “EITHER/OR” CHOICE BETWEEN PROMOTING INNOVATION” LEE TIEDRICH

ETHICAL TECHNOLOGY PROFESSOR AT DUKE UNIVERSITY

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Commenting on the importance of this education, Lewis said: “There needs to be education on a number of different fronts.

So education on the governmental side to what AI is and what AI really can do, and what AI is not. Because there are lots of misconceptions out there and fears. Some are founded and some are not.”

“But then on the flip side, we also need the private sector to understand what these uses for governments are,” he continued.

The need for AI education permeates throughout society. Without education at all levels, citizens won’t understand the benefits of this technology within society and the younger generation will not be able to tackle the new jobs the development of AI technology will bring.

“We want to make sure that the next generation of students has chances to learn but also educate the public,” said Lee. She added: “We're not at a point right now where we have general AI on the marketplace and education will help us get there.”

Creating direction with regulation As many nations across the globe adopt this technology, nations are in a race to become an AI superpower. “There should be speed, but there should also be direction. Right now, we're all speed and no direction,” said Lewis.

To gain some direction, policymakers need to consider the regulation and laws around creating and implementing this technology.

Within many nations, laws have evolved incrementally and are updated regularly.

AI and the regulation around it should be treated in the same manner, as Lee explains: “It’s just really important to get some good incremental steps down.”

“One key step is getting some of the standards in place and I know a lot of organisations are working on that and 50

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Lee Tiedrich An electrical engineer, lawyer, and educator with a deep understanding of technology and the legal and policy landscape, Lee Tiedrich is currently at the forefront of artificial intelligence, data, digital transformation, and ethical technology and has served on the Biden Campaign Policy Committee.

“ TO FORGE GOOD RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SECTORS, ROUND TABLES CAN BE IMPORTANT FOR REAL-TIME DIALOGUE” LEE TIEDRICHV

ETHICAL TECHNOLOGY PROFESSOR AT DUKE UNIVERSITY

we need to continue to forge more collaboration around that,” she added.

Many of these standards need to focus on the ethical considerations that come with AI technology. Policymakers need to strike the right balance within their policy to tackle ethical issues such as bias, privacy and discrimination.

Tacking the ethical issues and bias that comes with AI technology Bias within AI is an issue faced by many data scientists within the public sector as this aimagazine.com

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“THERE SHOULD BE SPEED, BUT THERE SHOULD ALSO BE DIRECTION. RIGHT NOW, WE'RE ALL SPEED AND NO DIRECTION” LARRY LEWIS

VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR OF THE CENTRE FOR AUTONOMY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AT CNA

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AI STRATEGY

Larry Lewis Larry Lewis spent a decade analysing real-world operations as the project lead and primary author for many of DOD's Joint Lessons Learned studies.

For example, he was the lead analyst and co-author (with Dr Sarah Sewall) for the Joint Civilian Casualty Study (JCCS).

General Petraeus described the study as "the first comprehensive assessment of the problem of civilian protection."

issue can originate from one of two ways. An AI algorithm can contain data bias due to the algorithms being trained using biased data.

The algorithms can also contain societal AI bias where assumptions and norms within society can cause analysts to have blind spots when it comes to analysing datasets.

Discussing AI bias and policy, Lewis said: “We need to be mindful. We need to be deliberate about both understanding potential biases and what those effects will be. It's also useful to remember not all biases are bad. You can actually build in biases for certain applications to actually get better performance. However, we need to be deliberate about addressing biases that will lead to bad things.”

Lewis outlined the steps that needed to be taken to ensure issues around regulation, ethics, privacy and equality are balanced whilst promoting innovation in this space.

She said: “Policymakers should not view regulation as presenting an “either/or” choice between promoting innovation on the one hand and fostering ethical use, fairness and equality, and privacy on the other. Instead, they should strive to craft regulations that accomplish both goals. For example, organisations are more likely to purchase and adopt AI products if they know that they can trust them. Individuals are more apt to use AI products that they can trust.”

Concluding, Lee stressed the importance of aligning both innovation and regulation as it will, in turn, create a better technology system for government organisations: “Recognising that these goals are complementary and not mutually exclusive provides a good framework for crafting risk-based and proportionate regulations and standards that promote fairness, explainability, transparency, safety, and accountability as well as innovation.” aimagazine.com

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DEMOCRATISING DATA STORAGE WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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CEPH

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Meet Ceph: the open source data storage solution helping decision makers find the flexibility, reliability, and scale to navigate a changing IT landscape

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t should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone who hasn’t spent the past decade living under a rock that data has become the backbone, the body, the soul (the metaphor of your choice) of the modern world. Data storage, analysis, recovery, and management are mission critical capabilities for any enterprise - and the core value proposition for more than a few.

The data centre industry is experiencing an explosion of capacity throughout both mature and emerging markets, datasets are growing exponentially like some 1950s sci-fi special effect, and emerging tech trends like 5G, the IoT, artificial intelligence, machine learning, HPC, cold storage, and edge computing all conspire to pour gasoline on an already raging fire. Yet, the more critical that an effective data storage solution becomes to organisations and enterprises of all shapes and sizes, the more apparent it is that the solutions dominating the market today aren’t necessarily the right tools for the job.

“In retrospect especially, but even at the time there was a glaring hole in the market.

There was a clear need: everybody needed storage, it needed to be scalable, and there was no open source option; you had to buy expensive proprietary solutions,” reflects Sage Weil, Principal Ceph architect at Red Hat, and the founder and chief architect of Ceph. “There needed to be an open source alternative that was good, and that's the niche we've tried to fill.”

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CEPH

Title of the video

The Ceph Foundation Since the first prototype of Ceph was launched back in 2007, the community of enterprises, organisations, and users that use it has grown to touch a huge number of spaces, from small businesses to large scale enterprises; from the scientific community to regional telecom carriers.

In November 2018, a cluster of organisations actively involved in the development, support, and commercialisation of Ceph formed the Ceph Foundation, launching the new initiative under the umbrella of the Linux Foundation.

The founding members included Amihan, Canonical, China Mobile, DigitalOcean, Intel, OVH, ProphetStor Data Services, Red Hat, SoftIron, SUSE, Western Digital, XSKY Data Technology, and ZTE.

“I was pretty naive back then. I thought you just built something, open sourced it, and people would just start appearing to develop it, fix bugs, etc. and that's not how it works,” laughs Weil. “We had spent several years trying to add all the features that we thought Ceph had to have before people would be willing to use it,” before the launch of the Foundation in 2018.

“There are a lot of industry stakeholders that are selling or using Ceph as part of their business. So the Ceph Foundation became a way for those organisations to contribute funds that could be managed and spent to further Ceph's development and the community. Prior to the Foundation, it felt a lot more like begging going around asking 'who wants to pay for X or Y',” he adds. aimagazine.com

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“ Ceph is designed to provide a reliable storage service out of unreliable components” SAGE WEIL

CEPH PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, RED HAT

“The Ceph Foundation is essential to the Ceph community and our customers because its members are all invested in the development and progression of Ceph,” says Aaron Joue, founder and CEO of Ambedded Technology - which combines Ceph technology with its own line of decentralised Arm servers.

The power of the Foundation, continues Kyle Bader, a Data Foundation Architect at Red Hat, lies in its ability to drive the industry to “deliver on the promise of democratising software defined storage through open source in a way that’s very similar in the way that Linux led to the democratisation of the operating system.”

That democratisation, adds Craig Chadwell, VP of Product at SoftIron, creates the necessary competition (centred around the foundation itself) to push the Ceph commercial ecosystem 60

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to even greater heights. “The Ceph community is very large and robust.

The Ceph Foundation helps to enliven and support that community, which in turn ensures that there will always be other options out there so that we can maintain that no vendor lock-in value proposition,” he explains. “It really forces us to continually challenge ourselves to deliver solutions that are uniquely solving customer problems, because the reality is, if a customer can move away and there's something providing more value out there, they will. It keeps us honest and on our toes.”

Philip Williams, Product Lead at Canonical, reflects that “a funny thing about the open source world is that essentially we’re all competitors, but we're also all working together to make something that is available for free even better.”

CEPH

Meet Ceph: Reliable, scalable, affordable. open source Developed by Weil - in collaboration with data storage researchers at the University of California: Santa Cruz, as well as at researchers from the country’s leading laboratories in Los Alamos and beyond Ceph is a distributed, open source data storage solution that grew to fill that glaring hole in the market Weil and his colleagues saw back in the 2000s.

“Ceph is designed to provide a reliable storage service out of unreliable components.

You take a bunch of individual hard drives that can fail, a bunch of networks that can fail, switches, servers that all individually are very fallible, you put them all together with Ceph and the net result is something that's highly reliable that tolerates any single point of failure - or in many cases many points of failure. It's highly available and highly scalable as well,” Weil explains, adding that Ceph is

also capable of providing object, block, and file storage all in one system on the same hardware.

Ceph’s distributed approach to data storage is hugely fault tolerant. Like a commercial airliner that can continue to fly with all but one engine out of commission, Ceph is robust enough to handle all but the most catastrophic of outages.

As a storage solution, Ceph’s appeal also lies in its open source, software defined design that - in addition to delivering reliability and flexibility at scale - excels at adding up to far more than the sum of any somewhat meagre parts you might happen to have lying around. “Ceph is open source, software defined, and meant to be run on any commodity hardware you want to buy or already have,” Weil says. “It doesn't matter which vendor you're buying your hardware from, whether you're using hard drives or SSDs, what kind of switches are in your network; it's fully software defined,” aimagazine.com

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and therefore a legitimate and long-awaited answer to market demand for alternatives to restrictive, proprietary storage solutions.

“Storage is quite an interesting industry.

It's kind of hidden; people don't really think about storage until it's either too expensive or it's not available and, worst case, all your data has been lost,” says Philip Williams, a Product Leader at Canonical. “So, it's this funny little world that's dominated by a number of very large players. The whole aim of the Ceph Foundation is not just to shepherd the upstream projects and this collaborative development work on Ceph itself, but also to demonstrate to enterprise users that there is this viable alternative to the big players, and that their organisations don't have to be developer centric to make use of Ceph.”

Open source is the core of everything that happens inside Canonical. “All of our work is out in the open; it’s free to use, which I think is super important for storage technology, because you can understand what is actually going on inside the system.

That’s impossible when you’re using closed source or proprietary technologies,” says Philip Williams, Product Leader at Canonical.

“One thing that you see with traditional storage systems from the big players is that their growth is usually around scale up.

They'll have arbitrary limits on the number of disks you can add to a system.”

With datasets inside every organisation growing larger every day, Williams notes that “for people with quite significant amounts of data, public cloud and those traditional proprietary storage options typically aren't cost effective or feasible.”

As a result, Canonical - along with the rest of the Ceph community - is embracing the infinite scalability of Ceph to “demonstrate to enterprise users that there is this viable alternative to the big players, and that their organisations don't have to be developer centric to make use of Ceph.”

Ceph’s open source, software defined nature means that organisations looking to deploy it can “choose any hardware you like, choose any vendor you like - or even no vendor at all - but if you build a Ceph system and you want to switch vendors or run things on your own, you can do that very easily.” aimagazine.com

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SOFTIRON - DELIVERING 21ST CENTURY INFRASTRUCTURE THE RIGHT WAY At its core, SoftIron asks the question of how to deliver 21st century infrastructure to meet the evolving demands centred around factors like resilience, performance, accessibility, and environmental impact. “We want to meet customers where they are. And we do that through building a set of task specific appliances that solve a variety of problems inside the data centre,” explains SoftIron’s VP of Product, Craig Chadwell. SoftIron’s solutions range from software defined infrastructure solutions that touch the computing and networking spaces to specific solutions for media encoding.

“If you take a holistic view of solving a problem, you can deliver a solution that is resilient, but with performance that’s way beyond what a traditional commodity based solution could provide,” says Chadwell.

SoftIron’s suite of storage solutions are powered by Ceph, but the entire company’s ethos is firmly aligned with the open source community as well. “One of the core premises of SoftIron’s value proposition is this notion of no vendor lock-in. We provide solutions that enable our customers to effectively swap us out if they choose,” Chadwell continues.

“Because of the way Ceph works and because organisations that comply with Ceph’s operating model can have products that work together seamlessly, it means that you can swap out a particular vendor's hardware without ever having to swap out Ceph, which means that everything above the Ceph layer from a service delivery perspective is unaffected by the lower level technology changes.

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“ Everybody needed storage, it needed to be scalable, and there was no open source option; you had to buy expensive enterprise solutions” SAGE WEIL

CEPH PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, RED HAT

In addition to offering the unparalleled freedom to start from scratch, move freely within its ecosystem, and avoid both the vendor lock in agreements and cumbersome, expensive upgrade cycles that define managed, proprietary storage solutions, Weil adds that the beauty of Ceph is that “Because it's so flexible and built to scale, Ceph doesn't require a lot of foreknowledge about where your organisation's going to be in a couple of years time. You can just expand your hardware footprint in whatever direction you end up growing.”

Large storage systems - the kinds that are increasingly coming to define the cloud and data centre industries - are fundamentally dynamic. They grow and change in new and unexpected directions in response to the market and, with Ceph, organisations can grow and change with as little friction as possible. “You might start out with 10 servers from one vendor, and then five years later you're storing 12 times

CEPH

KEY PARTNERSHIPS SAGE WEIL TITLE: CEPH PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, RED HAT Sage Weil is the lead architect and co-creator of the Ceph open source distributed storage system. Sage helped design Ceph as part of his PhD research at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Since finishing in 2007, he has continued to refine the system with the goal of providing a stable next generation distributed storage system for Linux. Sage co-founded Inktank in 2012 to bring enterprise-quality open source storage to the enterprise. After Red Hat acquired Inktank in 2014, Sage has worked in Red Hat's Office of the CTO to improve Ceph and help shape Red Hat's overall storage strategy.

PHILIP WILLIAMS TITLE: PRODUCT LEADER, CANONICAL Philip is a Product Leader at Canonical responsible for Ceph and other storage solutions. He has over 15 years experience in the storage industry, having previously been responsible for storage infrastructure and products at a number of leading technology companies.

AARON JOUE TITLE: CEO, AMBEDDED Aaron Joue is the founder of Ambedded Technology. He is responsible for the business strategy and ensures the product development and support satisfy customers' needs. He accumulated experience when he worked for the defense and information technology industry.

His experience spans product design, hardware, software, storage, computing, and Manufacturing.

Aaron founded Ambedded in 2012 to create an innovative platform for software-defined storage to improve energy efficiency, availability, and performance. Before this, he was ever an outstanding engineer, factory manager, and VP of product.

KYLE BADER TITLE: DATA FOUNDATION ARCHITECT, RED HAT Kyle is the Data Foundation Architect covering both OpenShift Data Foundation and Red Hat Ceph Storage products at Red Hat. His focus is at the intersection of open source, distributed storage systems, data engineering, and machine learning.

CRAIG CHADWELL TITLE: VP OF PRODUCT, SOFTIRON Craig has spent over a decade engineering, marketing, and leading product management of cloud and softwaredefined data center solutions. Craig has held positions at Lenovo, NetApp, and High Point University where he gained first-hand buyer and administration experience across the lifecycle of data center operations.

Craig has degrees in computer science, history, political science, and business administration.

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CEPH

as much data and you've been through three different hardware revisions all from different vendors, you've had to migrate data, change policy, and now you're storing a different type of data than you were before - it's all a total mess,” Weil laughs. “Often, your net system is going to be a mixture of all sorts of different stuff, and open source lends itself to solving those problems really well because you have the neutrality to be flexible and adaptable. If you're buying a proprietary solution from a particular vendor, you're going to have to buy more of the X solution that they allow you to interoperate with. You're locked into a particular path.” Ceph, he adds, not only frees organisations from those restrictive, vendor-defined upgrade paths, but opens up a huge, mature ecosystem of enterprises and community members to its user base.

Harnessing the Ceph community When it comes to harnessing the true value of Ceph, its commercial ecosystem and user community are pivotal. From companies like Red Hat that deliver Ceph solutions to Fortune 500 companies, to SoftIron which simplifies the Ceph adoption process through curated, in-house designed

RED HAT - CEPH AT PETABYTE SCALE Kyle Bader, Red Hat’s Data Foundation Architect, comes from an operations background. As such, he’s no stranger to the headaches that can accompany endeavours to be flexible in a large IT environment. “If you have a handful of proprietary appliances, that's probably fine and quite manageable, but at Red Hat we have several customers that are managing north of a hundred petabytes of data,” he explains. The growth in the amount of data being stored and managed, he continues, “is not stopping by any means. So, it becomes challenging once you get to larger scales.”

Red Hat’s business brings the power of open source ecosystems to large scale enterprises, leveraging everything from OpenShift to Kubernetes in order to take its customers’ IT infrastructure to the next level. Engineered for data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, Red Hat’s Ceph Storage delivers software-defined storage on industry-standard hardware to organisations at any scale.

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AMBEDDED - ROBUST AND LOW POWER CEPH APPLIANCE "We think reliability, scalability, and simplicity are keys to our offering to the enterprise storage market," explains Aaron Joue, founder and CEO of Ambedded Technology. " Ambedded integrates Ceph software, the Arm microservers, and its tailorbuilt ceph manager GUI (UVS manager).

With the nature of arm microservers, enterprise storage customers could start deploying ceph from a tiny cluster to a petabyte-scale without an entry barrier.

Also, this ARM-based appliance results in an easy to operate, ultra -robust, minimum failure domain and low-power offering that enables customers to operate their desired cluster in a cost efficient way without complications.

"We had a project in Hong Kong where a customer wanted a very high availability storage system for CCTV applications," Joue continues. "The storage system needed to keep working, even if up to four storage servers failed at the same time. It will be costly by using a traditional storage solution and hard to achieve to keep the cluster running with 4 servers failing at the same time.” However, leveraging the ceph storage and the Ambedded microserver architecture, this HK customer easily achieved their goal even with a relatively small scale cluster.

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hardware that’s tailor made to support its deployment, Ambedded, Canonical, and beyond, the Ceph commercial ecosystem provides support and services that allow companies of any scale, maturity, or specialisation to deploy and benefit from distributed storage - all built on Ceph.

“When it comes to getting started with Ceph, it can be an issue knowing which servers to buy, which hard drives and how many,” Weil acknowledges. “That's where companies in the commercial ecosystem really add a lot of value, not to mention the open source community at large.”

CEPH

you're going to want something with a nice GUI that just works,” Weil notes. “So, over the last three to four years, there's been a huge investment of time and resources in the Ceph community on the usability front.

We've created a whole new, integrated GUI dashboard for Ceph for management.

We've also developed an orchestrator layer for Ceph that can call out to whatever tools you use to deploy it, so that you can do just about anything you need to do from the new GUI. I think we've made huge progress.”

Ceph for everyone Since the dawn of the open-source approach to software design, open source solutions have often garnered “a reputation for being really complicated to use,” Weil admits - adding that he and the Ceph team have spent the past few years painfully aware of that fact. Now, however, “A lot of the stigma surrounding open source in general has gone away in recent years,” he explains, something that perfectly aligns with the latest evolution of Ceph’s General User Interface (GUI).

“These days, if you're a small business and you need 100 terabytes of storage,

Challenges Enterprise storage is full of challenges.

Apart from the obvious spiralling quantity of data being generated, the applications that create and use that data are also increasingly diverse and changing almost daily. Storage, of course, is also not immune to the broader IT skills crisis that enterprises find themselves dealing with every day. Add to that the constant revolving door of mergers and acquisitions in the storage industry and it's hard not to find a storage manager that hasn't been burned by obsoleted or sidelined proprietary solutions that have fallen out of favour. It's little wonder then that a platform like Ceph - able to flex and grow to meet ever changing demands across a huge variety of use cases - and do all that from within a vibrant open source community eliminating the lock-in problem, becomes deeply compelling.

The Ceph decade Looking to the future, the intersection of market trends with Ceph’s constantly developing capabilities (Weil stresses that a sizable portion of the Foundation’s role is keeping up with cutting edge hardware developments to ensure Ceph continues to run smoothly, no matter what you plug it aimagazine.com

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CEPH USER TESTIMONIALS FUTURE PLC NAME: TOBY JACKSON, TITLE: GLOBAL SRE LEAD “Future PLC has grown in recent years through acquisition of over a dozen media brands and technology companies, bringing a complex and diverse data ecosystem. Future operates services on both cloud and on-premises infrastructure, leveraging technologies that need to balance value and flexibility. Future's technology team has also grown and diversified to meet these demands, requiring their SRE team to provide ever more robust and flexible solutions without compromising on stability or performance. As a content publisher, data is integral to Future's operation, and Ceph was the clear choice to ensure its technology teams had the tools at their disposal to manage data at scale.

Ceph allows Future to deploy storage across its datacenters, trusting that its data is distributed and available while enabling its development teams to self-manage storage requirements from Kubernetes with ease.

Future requires a storage solution that can not only grow in volume, but can handle diversity of locality, performance, distribution and access models; Ceph affords this flexibility under a common platform, reducing deployment complexity and simplifying its operational costs.”

DATACOMM CLOUD BUSINESS NAME: M R. LUK PHIN TIRTOKUNTJORO, TITLE: CTO “We have deployed, run and tested Ceph storage in our development environment for 2 years.

Once confident with the solution, we decided

to build Openstack Cloud using Ceph storage to provide IaaS, PaaS and SaaS to SMEs in Indonesia.

We have considered several storage solutions to work with our OpenStack cloud, including legacy storage and software-defined storage. As our cloud service targets SMEs, we need a solution that is cost-efficient, cloud-native ready, scalable, reliable, resilient, and with good performance.

We found Ceph storage to be a perfect fit after 2+ year trial experience. Furthermore, as we have three data centers located in 3 different sites, the RBD mirroring and simplicity to backup data from one data center to another in the Ceph cluster enhances our belief in choosing Ceph storage.

BLOOMBERG NAME: MATTHEW LEONARD, TITLE: E NGINEERING MANAGER, STORAGE Data is at the heart of Bloomberg’s technologies, which produce and distribute some of the most critical and valuable data in global business.

Maintaining the systems which store and process this data requires a unique mix of commodity hardware, open source software-defined storage, and vendor-agnostic appliance-based storage solutions.

In our diverse storage ecosystem, Bloomberg utilizes Ceph’s enterprise-level scalability and durability to support different applications and varied workloads across our organization. Ceph plays a significant role in Bloomberg's OpenStackpowered private cloud computing infrastructure, as well as underpins Bloomberg’s private S3-based object stores. As Bloomberg works toward contributing back to the Ceph project, we feel it is the right distributed storage technology for us -- both now and into the foreseeable future.

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CEPH

“ Because it's so flexible and built to scale, Ceph doesn't require a lot of foreknowledge about where your organisation's going to be in a couple of years time. You can just expand your hardware footprint in whatever direction you end up growing”

into), as well as an ever-expanding ecosystem of vendors, users, and developers positions it ideally for a decade of meteoric growth. “Ceph is a pretty mature piece of software at this point,” Weil reflects. “All of the important stuff is there and, in addition to building it out further, we’re starting to add a lot of polish.”

Craig Chadwell, VP of Product at SoftIron, reflects that “open-source infrastructure has rapidly evolved and matured over the last decade and is in all likelihood going to be the way that most organisations deploy their IT footprint going forward.”

“People like to call Ceph the Linux of storage, which I think is appropriate,” adds Weil.

“Nobody thinks about which Unix they should buy because the open source one is the best, everyone's using it, and everyone is constantly improving it. Ceph is moving into that position in the storage space.”

SAGE WEIL

CEPH PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, RED HAT aimagazine.com

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AI and ML: Mitigating risks in cyber security Cyber attacks in modern enterprise environments are massive, and it’s continuing to grow rapidly, here we look at how AI and ML can stem the tide WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

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ybercrime presents a major risk to global prosperity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As these attacks grow in volume, artificial intelligence (AI) not only supports under-resourced analysts but also provides a wide range of protection from malicious attacks.

Combating these attacks is becoming increasingly important, research into cyber security has shown that 64% of companies worldwide have experienced at least one form of cyber-attack and every 39 seconds there is a new attack somewhere on the web.

As cyber-attacks become more complex, information security professionals are turning to AI due to its ability to identify threats early and work as a preventative measure. As a result, AI and machine learning (ML) is becoming essential tools for information security professionals.

Noting the complexity of cyber security challenges, Martin Tyley, Head of Cyber at KPMG UK said: “New technologies, including AI itself, bring with them a growing list of new challenges for cyber security. The growth in ML is posing new questions: How has the ML algorithm been trained and what

MACHINE LEARNING

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MACHINE LEARNING

Martin Tyley Head of Cyber at KPMG UK In his role at KPMG UK Tyley leads KPMG's Cyber Security practice across multiple client groups and connected across geographies. He also works with clients on security transformation projects, defining and implementing security strategies, building solutions and providing assurance and certification services.

biases have been introduced? How can we supervise behaviour to ensure it’s operating within ‘acceptable’ parameters? How could the technology be manipulated by an adversarial AI technique and what would the consequences be?”

“Whilst AI as a concept isn’t new, the maturity today is such that these ‘rules’ are still being defined and they require a new blend of skills including data science, security and ethics, advanced programming and behavioural change – there are many unknowns that security teams should be mindful of,” he continued.

The introduction of this technology also reduces issues relating to burnout and fatigue within information security professionals

“ With Machine Learning (ML) specifically, security teams are able to search across disparate data sources and correlate numerous data points so that anomalies can be identified” MARTIN TYLEY

HEAD OF CYBER AT KPMG UK aimagazine.com

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Bruce Mazza Senior Vice President of Technology Alliances at Blue Prism Mazza’s specialties include P&L management, solution and development, B2B enterprise and government solution sales, channel management, professional services, financial value propositions and technology partnerships.

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MACHINE LEARNING

“ Cyber security teams need to turn to ML capabilities that can identify new, maybe anomalous behaviour, and act accordingly to manage the most urgent threats” MARTIN TYLEY

HEAD OF CYBER AT KPMG UK

whilst increasing the pace of execution, as Bruce Mazza, Senior Vice President of Technology Alliances at Blue Prism explains: “The exponential growth in the technology landscape and the advancement in capabilities of cybercriminals means humans can’t operate on the scale at which they need to on their own. AI enables companies and cybersecurity professionals to augment their resources and execute threat prevention, identification, and analysis on a much larger scale.”

Adding to this, Tyley said: “The drive for new functionality and ways of working means that mapping out all possible behaviours is impossible. Instead, cyber security teams need to turn to ML capabilities that can identify new, maybe anomalous behaviour, and act accordingly to manage the most urgent threats.”

This is particularly significant as in the KPMG 2021 CEO Outlook Pulse Survey, cyber risk was ranked as the number one organisational threat by global CEOs and security teams are becoming more overwhelmed by threats every day.

Responding to the increased rate of cyber attacks Undoubtedly, the coronavirus pandemic has increased the rate of cybercrime across the globe.

Deloitte has outlined that the increase in remote working calls for a greater focus on cyber security as more people are exposed to risk, and in different ways, highlighting that 47% of individuals fall for a phishing scam while working from home.

“With phishing and malware threats continuing to affect organisations at increased levels, enterprises would be disserving themselves by not enhancing their security credentials with the use of AI-enhanced intelligent automation,” explained Mazza.

He also noted that the introduction of this technology is not only significant for mitigating risk but for business strategy too: “Without strategic investment in automation and digital transformation, their competitiveness relative to these leaders will degrade seriously and possibly irreversibly over the next five years.” aimagazine.com

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MACHINE LEARNING

“ The exponential growth in the technology landscape and the advancement in capabilities of cybercriminals means humans can’t operate on the scale at which they need to on their own” BRUCE MAZZA

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY ALLIANCES AT BLUE PRISM

“In the same way, enterprises that aren’t investing in AI-enhanced solutions can help tackle the growing threat of cybersecurity will undoubtedly open themselves up to an increasing amount of risk as cybercriminals’ capabilities continue to progress,” he continued.

Key considerations with AI among information security professionals When utilised for cyber security purposes, AI can be used to sift through large amounts of data to identify suspicious irregularities across systems and user activity.

“With Machine Learning (ML) specifically, security teams are able to search across disparate data sources and correlate numerous data points so that anomalies can be identified. Just one of these anomalies could be a threat actor infiltrating a cloud network or another part of the IT system,” says Tyley.

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Mazza said “Digital robots equipped with the latest AI capabilities are able to analyse phishing emails up to 80% faster, analyse malicious URLs up to 96% faster and analyse intrusion events up to 80% faster.”

Although the benefits of this technology are undeniable, particularly as AI can protect organisations from the snowballing scale of sophisticated cyber crime, Tyley did stress the importance of data models and the understanding of the cyber environment: “There is a risk that otherwise innocent activities are wrongly interpreted and instead of preventing attacks, innocent business processes are halted. Extrapolate that out to critical business systems and in some industries, the consequences could be severe.”

“As we’ve seen with data science and other fields, this approach also requires a new skill-set and way of working that can’t

be learnt overnight. Consequently, the perceived benefits in time and cost may take longer to achieve, which leads to frustration when the advantages and the ‘future vision’ are sold to those charged with leading the organisation, who are naturally looking for fast results,” he continued.

Additionally, as professionals need to make other considerations when implementing this complex technology as Mazza explained: “A major factor to consider is that given AI systems become more intelligent through the use of data sets businesses must collate lots of specific malware codes, non-malicious codes, and anomalies throughout implementation, it takes a lot of time and needs a significant amount of investment.”

“Many organisations struggle to fund this.

Without this ability to bring together data, AI tools can deliver incorrect results and/or

false positives and getting inaccurate data from unreliable sources can even backfire.”

Adding to this drawback, cyber security management defences are often fragmented across multiple different vendors. Tyley explained that with this, only some of them talk to each other: “This makes it even more difficult for those tasked with protecting the organisation in preventing the snowballing scale of sophisticated cybercrime. In this landscape, protective systems need to be able to monitor and automate response at scale.”

He concluded that ML capabilities are the key to overcoming challenges with automated technology and cyber risk: “ML can form a substantial part of the solution – we have seen in recent years multiple technologies that are able to capture patterns of behaviour, then, through the use of algorithms, run scenarios with the data to detect unusual patterns of activity.” aimagazine.com

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FIRST STEPS TO AN

AUTONOMOUS NETWORK

WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING 82

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VIRGIN MEDIA O2

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Self-healing autonomous network will deliver a seamless customer experience as Virgin Mobile O2 rolls out 5G following £31bn merger rust is the most valuable commodity in the world, according to Matias Quintanilla, Head of Customer Experience Monitoring at Virgin Media O2, who is working to ensure a seamless move into an automated world where networks can run via Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms and a service orchestration layer.

Quintanilla points out how Virgin Media O2 is already working to achieve autonomous networks through data analytics and AI “one use- case at a time” as such a monumental shift cannot be resolved with a “big bang”.

“It is a journey where you need to build your automation by defining one use-case at a time - what I call the magic triangle - which is data, processes and platforms,” comments Quintanilla, who joined O2 (Telefonica UK) in 2018, transferring from Telefonica in Argentina.

Two years later Quintanilla was working in London when the £31bn merger, by O2 owner Telefonica and Virgin Media parent Liberty Global took place in June 2021 - one of the biggest UK mergers in a decade and the largest UK telecoms deal ever. According to O2’s website, O2 and Virgin Media will continue to exist separately, as well as together as they move forward.

“The merger sees the largest and most reliable mobile network combined with the fastest broadband provider in the UK with a very clear mission to upgrade the nation,” 84

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Virgin Media O2: First steps to an autonomous network

“ It is a journey where you need to build your automation by defining one use case at a time - what I call the magic triangle - which is data, processes and platforms” MATIAS QUINTANILLA

HEAD OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MONITORING, VIRGIN MEDIA O2

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said Quintanilla whose role is to focus on customer experience monitoring.

“The shift to an autonomous network is a marathon not a sprint,” said Quintanilla. The future network is designed to run with minimal human intervention, and is able to configure, monitor, and maintain itself independently.

For a man who has the human touch always working to ensure the welfare of his colleagues and customers - Quintanilla is now focused on building trust in the future of autonomous networks as the repercussions of the merger start to settle.

MATIAS QUINTANILLA TITLE: HEAD OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MONITORING COMPANY: VIRGIN MEDIA O2 INDUSTRY: TELCO

How Virgin Mobile O2 will supercharge the market As two of the most iconic brands Virgin Mobile and O2 - which combine 47 million+ broadband, mobile, phone and home subscribers, and around 18,000 employees - have come together in the merger to give the UK more choice, value and pave the way for 5G across the UK. O2 is the UK’s biggest mobile phone operator with around 41.6 million customers across its networks, which also include giffgaff, Tesco Mobile, Sky Mobile and Lycamobile.

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Young, dynamic and risktaking, describes Matias Quintanilla, Head of Customer Experience Monitoring at Virgin Media O2.

Quintanilla started working in teleco at 19 with his father who founded Skynet Communications, a small ISP company in Buenos Aires while studying for his Telecommunications Engineer degree.

He then worked for Alcatel Lucent and Huawei before joining Telefonica Argentina and rose to Head of Planning while finishing his MBA. Quintanilla transferred to the UK in 2018 to head the Performance Management & Data Analytics team at O2 Telefonica UK. In 2019 he was appointed Head of Customer Experience Monitoring at Virgin Media O2.

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NETWORK INTELLIGENCE FOR THE MODERN ERA Ookla’s solutions help you transform wireless network measurements into actionable insights across the full network lifecycle, from planning and building, to optimization and monitoring, to communicating performance and availability to customers.

Learn more at ookla.com Visit us at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 28 to March 3, 2022 - Hall 2, Booth 2i28

HOW VIRGIN MEDIA O2 IMPROVES CUSTOMER NETWORK EXPERIENCE Matias Quintanilla, Head of Customer Monitoring at Virgin Media O2, shares how Ookla® Spatialbuzz helps prioritise network improvements Evolving network technology now makes it easier for operators to deliver lightning-fast network speeds and broad coverage. So how do the world’s leading mobile network operators differentiate their services in highly competitive markets?

Virgin Media O2 has transformed their business by connecting data from digital customer interactions to the Service Operations Center (SOC). By partnering with Ookla, the global leader in network intelligence, and adopting the Spatialbuzz™ platform for customer-driven network improvement, VMO2 empowers their customers with self-serve digital tools — and provides proactive, transparent communication to customers. As a result, the operator has emerged as a leader in the U.K. for customer network satisfaction.

Network prioritisation driven by customer data Every mobile network operator must manage ongoing service disruptions. Most prioritise network fixes based on traditional network alarms or escalations from the call centre.

However, leading-edge operators like VMO2 know that network improvements should be prioritised based on the volume and severity of impacted customers.

Spatialbuzz provides consumers with a simple interface to check their network status and receive network updates. It connects this subjective network feedback with device radio measurements, and delivers the data to the teams who need it most: the Network Operations Centre (NOC) and SOC. By putting customer experience at the heart of their network operations, VMO2 delivers network improvements where they matter most to customers.

“Spatialbuzz has made a tremendous impact on our customer satisfaction scores,” Quintanilla says. “We’re fixing and improving the things that matter most to our customers, faster. We are giving them crucial information at the right time — so that they don't even need to pick up the phone to tell us something's wrong.”

Happier customers on a better network To the customer experiencing a disruption, clear and proactive communication means the difference between a happy customer and a dissatisfied customer. Since adopting Spatialbuzz, VMO2 has seen vast improvements in Net Promoter Score™ (NPS). Customers report a high level of satisfaction with the increased transparency of VMO2’s messaging.

By communicating that they’re working on the network — often before a customer even realizes there might be an issue — VMO2 delivers both a superior network experience and a superior digital customer experience.

LEARN MORE

“ The tools allow us to self heal the network whenever we are having a problem if certain parameters are in place” MATIAS QUINTANILLA

HEAD OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MONITORING, VIRGIN MEDIA O2

Virgin Media has around 5.7 million customers.

“The merger is a 50/50 joint venture between, Liberty group and Telefonica group, who decided to take us on this adventure which is very exciting,” said Quintanilla who will be overseeing the customer experience during this journey and is keen to focus on the future of autonomous networks, the rollout of 5G and how the merger will benefit customers.

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“We are supercharging our proposition with our service called Volt and the best thing is that simply being a customer of both brands already gives you benefits, such as twice the broadband speed, plus twice the mobile data, and supercharged connectivity at home or on the move.”

A total of 210 UK cities currently have access to 5G, but Quintanilla says there is a drive to upgrade by 2023 which will benefit its business and domestic customers.

“We already have 99% population coverage with 4G and we have made a promise to upgrade our fixed network to full fibre to the premises (FTTP) by 2028, which is a huge upgrade of our network, and see 50% population coverage with 5G in 2023.

By offering 5G and gigabit broadband all under one roof, Virgin Media O2 customers can experience next-generation connectivity both in and out of the home,

VIRGIN MEDIA O2

SUPERCHARGING WITH VOLT

KEY PARTNERSHIPS

Supercharge your world – Volt from Virgin Media O2

“ We are supercharging our proposition with our service called Volt and the best thing is that simply being a customer of both brands already gives you benefits, such as twice the broadband speed, plus twice the mobile data, and supercharged connectivity at home or on the move” MATIAS QUINTANILLA

HEAD OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MONITORING, VIRGIN MEDIA O2

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VIRGIN MEDIA O2

June 2021 merger of Virgin Media and O2

47m+

broadband, mobile, phone and home subscribers

£2.6m

Revenue in Q3 (0.7% YoY)

15.5m+ premises with broadband

DID YOU KNOW...

ON TARGET FOR 100% GIGABIT BROADBAND IN UK

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Virgin Media O2 predicts it is on schedule to complete the rollout of gigabit broadband across its entire cable network of 15.5m homes.

It has been reported that 1.6 million properties, located across Lincoln, Bath, Lancaster, Fife, Huddersfield, Ipswich, Slough, Salisbury, can now access the company’s fastest speeds of 1.13Gbps, bringing the total number to 14.3 million which means they are now on track to reach the target of 15.5m.

Lutz Schüler, Chief Executive Officer at Virgin Media O2, said: “We’re making great strides ahead in upgrading the UK and are within touching distance of bringing the benefits of future-proof gigabit broadband to everyone on our network.

“With our gigabit rollout progressing at an unmatched pace, we’re building the next-

February 2022

generation broadband network that’s ready for the technology of tomorrow.”

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport – using ThinkBroadband data – revealed that more than 50% of UK homes now have access to gigabit broadband and praised Virgin Media O2 for its major contribution.

Virgin Media O2 has also recently announced its intention to upgrade its fixed network to full fibre to the premises (FTTP) with completion in 2028. This technology is capable of delivering symmetrical 10Gbps download and upload speeds meaning Virgin Media O2 will build on its existing leadership position today and be well equipped for the decades ahead as the demand for speed and capacity continues to rise.

“ The shift to an autonomous network is a marathon not a sprint. But you have to start and take it one use-case at a time” MATIAS QUINTANILLA

HEAD OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MONITORING, VIRGIN MEDIA O2

allowing them to take advantage of the latest technology on offer.

“We believe this is what our customers need,” said Quintanilla. “I think 4G and 5G are

both very important pillars in this merger. We have upgraded more than 85,000 postcodes this year with 4G and reached 210 cities with 5G. Plus we have started delivering low band spectrum sites, which will increase the coverage that 5G offers to our customers, especially indoors.

Magic triangle of autonomous networks “The shift to an autonomous network is a marathon not a sprint. But you have to start and take it one usecase at a time,” said Quintanilla.

An autonomous network is designed to run with minimal intervention, and is able to configure, monitor, and maintain itself independently. Automation itself, and the idea that technologies could be self-provisioning, aimagazine.com

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VIRGIN MEDIA O2

“ In the end it all comes down to whether your customers and partners trust you to do business with you and help you achieve your potential as an organisation” MATIAS QUINTANILLA

HEAD OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MONITORING, VIRGIN MEDIA O2

self-diagnosing, and self-healing, has been around for some time. But with advances in AI and cloud technologies, it is rapidly becoming a reality.

“There is not a big bang solution - you do not go from not being automated to suddenly being fully automated. It is a gradual journey to build your automation, through data analytics and AI, by defining one use-case at a time - what I call the magic triangle - which is data, processes and platforms.

“You start by automating one part of your day-to-day work. Make sure that you have the right data, the right processes and the right platforms in place, once you have that you develop that use case, and then you start the next and then the next one until you get to that fully autonomous network of the future that we all think about today.”

Quintanilla commented it is vital you engage your employees on your journey to autonomous ways of working. “One of the biggest problems is that people believe their jobs are going to be taken over by machines.

In fact automation should be about enabling people to do more interesting jobs - rather than repetitive jobs - that can deliver better value to the company.”

Self-healing networks Commenting on how far Virgin Media O2 is on their road map to an autonomous network Quintanilla said they are “where they need to aimagazine.com

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99%

population coverage with 4G

210

UK cities delivering 5G

18k+

Number of employees

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“SpatialBuzz is a platform that allows us to monitor our customer status checks - it’s all about putting the customer's lens on everything we do” MATIAS QUINTANILLA

HEAD OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MONITORING, VIRGIN MEDIA O2

be” and highlighted how they are already using tools to self heal the network which is improving the customer experience.

“The tools allow us to self heal the network whenever we are having a problem if certain parameters are in place.

DID YOU KNOW...

FOCUS ON SUSTAINABILITY WITH ELECTRIC VEHICLES [EVs] Virgin Media O2 has revealed the first electric vehicles (EVs) to be deployed across its fleet. The company has also ordered 280 new Vauxhall e-Vivaros to help engineers carry out installations and services, with a view to making its entire fleet of 4,300 vehicles electric by 2030.

“With a fleet of 4,300 vehicles visiting millions of homes and businesses every year, we have a responsibility to swap to cleaner, more sustainable alternatives as soon as possible,” said Tracey Herald, Head of Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability at Virgin Media O2.

Virgin Media O2 is also a participant in the 5G Connected & Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) testbed and has a jointventure called Liberty Charge which will use its cable infrastructure and expertise to support the deployment of charging points.

For example if you were in the centre of London, where you have a lot of sites nearby, and one of the sites suddenly goes out of service the rest can pick up the load and make small adjustments to ensure coverage is maintained.”

Quintanilla said it is vital for Virgin Media O2 to focus on autonomous networks today as the rollout of 5G across the UK will create more complex networks so they need to be ready.

“The future for VMO2 and the rest of the industry should look simple and see less from a customer experience perspective.

The network should be able to ensure the highest level of service availability and the customer should not even care about which technology they are using. The only thing that should matter is whether they have connectivity or not and that’s it. Having connectivity should allow our customers to use all the services they require whenever they want it.”

Why trust is the most valuable commodity Quintanilla points out how Virgin Media O2 is working to reinforce the trust of its customers and partners. “When we talk about the most valuable commodity, I thought at one point it was having the data to make the right decisions, or even money, but I came to realise the most valuable commodity you can have in the world is trust. In the end it all comes down to aimagazine.com

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“ The dramatic change has been in being able to send bespoke messages telling our customers what was happening while they were having the incident” MATIAS QUINTANILLA

HEAD OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MONITORING, VIRGIN MEDIA O2

whether your customers and partners trust you to do business with you and help you achieve your potential as an organisation.”

Commenting on how the newly-merged company is focusing on this Quintanilla said it was all about clear communication, openness and clarity. “It is also important to 98

February 2022

be timely for our customers.

This means getting a message to them before they realise they are having a problem and that gives them the confidence that Virgin Media O2 is dealing with it.”

Power of partnerships Quintanilla pointed out that Virgin Media O2 has two very specific partners who are helping them on their customer experience journey. These include Ookla, who recently acquired Spatialbuzz, and Nokia.

Ookla's Spatialbuzz platform combines digital customer engagement tools with real-time insights into network issues and customer dissatisfaction. With Spatialbuzz,

VIRGIN MEDIA O2

network improvements are prioritised based on customer impact — resulting in happier customers on a better network.

“Spatialbuzz is a platform that allows us to monitor our customer status checks it’s all about putting the customer's lens on everything we do. If there's a lot of customers telling us something's wrong with the network, we set up an investigation for that area and we try to understand what's going on. At the same time we give customers the possibility to sign up so we can keep them posted with messages directly sent to their mobile phone.

“The dramatic change has been in being able to send bespoke messages actually telling our customers what was happening while they were having the incident, keeping them updated and then telling

them the problem is solved which has been absolutely fantastic,” said Quintanilla.

“Clear and timely communication is vital for a positive customer experience and this was highlighted in our NPS surveys. I believe that this has been critical for the work we do from a customer experience perspective and helps us to build their trust.”

Virgin Media 02 is working with Nokia on the Customer Service Operations Centre tool which will allow them to bring together data sets from different data feeds that focuses on performance, configuration or active incidents in the network.

“With Nokia, we are in the last stages of implementing the solution which will give us the capability to be able to look at our customer services one by one. The perspective of data, and different services within data, will enable Virgin Media O2 to do a variety of things that will help us understand our customers better and give them better propositions. For example, enabling us to send more bespoke messages to them whenever we see that something's wrong. We will also get that root cause analysis that we need in a very automated way.

“We have been working with Nokia on this for the last two years. It has been a fantastic collaboration exercise and we are now starting to see its fruition.”

Commenting on plans for the future Quintanilla said; “There's a lot of benefit in bringing the mobile world and the fixed world together. Both companies have a wealth of experience so now that we're Virgin Media O2, we need to find a way to get the best out of the two former organisations.”

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AI APPLICATIONS

Autonomous Vehicles:

Reducing FATALITIES with ML Technology As more manufacturers develop selfdriving technology, AI Magazine looks at the key technological and ethical considerations that need to be made WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

A

utonomous vehicles, or self-driving cars, are being developed and tested by a number of manufacturers across the globe. These vehicles use a combination of sensors, cameras and artificial intelligence (AI) to travel between destinations.

Research has shown that the production of self-driving cars is expected to reach 800,000 units worldwide between the years 2023-2030.

Despite concerns around the technology and its ability to safeguard passengers from harm, KPMG has predicted the adoption of self-driving vehicle technology could reduce 100

February 2022

the frequency of accidents by approximately 90%. Now, as the technology matures and autonomous cars become commercially available, technologists and car manufacturers need to dispel concerns around the ethics and safety of self-driving technology.

Noting the benefits of this technology, Gilberto Rodriguez, Director of Product Management - Artificial Intelligence and Ethernet Connectivity at Imagination Technologies said: “One benefit would be the ability to reduce the need for drivers. This can significantly reduce the cost per mile of driving and, with it, the need to own a car.

Robotaxis will eventually become extremely cheap to use, making car ownership questionable for most people in towns and cities. With more people travelling and more goods being delivered to the doorstep, the technology will alleviate backlogs.”

“Secondly, with smart mobility we can get better use out of vehicles, with models like Car-as-a-Service rolling out in the future.

This unlocks better prediction, control and management of traffic. This can bring significant improvements such as adding flexibility to deliver goods outside rush-hour and managing car fleets according to actual

demand – further improving the overall traffic experience,” he continued.

Adding to this, driverless technology has the ability to increase traffic efficiency by reducing network congestion as the technology can communicate with each other and react to real-time events and flow options.

Mark Nicholson, CEO and Co-Founder of Vivacity Labs comments that the core benefits of this technology are safety and convenience: “With human error, the cause of 94% of crashes, self-driving cars reduce the risk of misjudgement and making mistakes that can result in negative outcomes.” aimagazine.com

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Modular Design for a Diverse World eStruxture Delivers Flexibility Vertiv solutions, including the Vertiv™ Liebert® DSE economization system, allow eStruxture to bring equipment online faster and support the unique service level requirements of its customers.

Read the Case Study

AI APPLICATIONS

“Robotaxis will eventually become extremely cheap to use, making car ownership questionable for most people in towns and cities” GILBERTO RODRIGUEZ

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ETHERNET CONNECTIVITY, IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES

Neural networks feeding ML algorithms When developing this technology, car manufacturers use large amounts of data from image recognition systems along with machine learning (ML) and neural networks.

Neural networks are key for this technology as they identify patterns in the data to feed the machine learning algorithms.

“The richness of these datasets is such that traditional technologies (created before neural networks) can't cope. Simple heuristics (rules saying "if this, then that")

can't cope with the messiness of real life.

This is why neural networks are very good at encoding this messiness but need the training to do so,” said Nicholson.

“So the top autonomous vehicles now have billions of hours of simulated training under their belts, and millions of hours of real-world training, in order to give the neural networks the material they need to encode real-world messiness,” he added.

As with any AI technology, datasets are imperative to train deep learning models and achieve high levels of accuracy. aimagazine.com

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AI APPLICATIONS

“Why own a car when it is so easy and cheap to call up a driverless vehicle which is guaranteed to be safer than a human-operated vehicle?”

GILBERTO RODRIGUEZ

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ETHERNET CONNECTIVITY, IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES

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AI APPLICATIONS

Gilberto Rodriguez TITLE: DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT - ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ETHERNET CONNECTIVITY COMPANY: IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES Gilberto Rodriguez has over 20 years leading global teams and organisations. With this experience, he brings expertise in multidisciplinary product development in areas of telecommunications, video processing and artificial intelligence to Imagination Technologies.

With self-driving vehicles, Rodriguez explains: “The data needed comes from information captured from surroundings.

This can be dynamic coming from sensors such as Radar, LIDAR, cameras, Infrared or static from 3D maps in combination with GPS. As all sensor data is processed, the car is placed into a virtual replica of the world, giving it a frame of reference for positioning and for what is happening dynamically around it (cars, trucks, motorcycles, pedestrians). AI will help work out the safest path through the road using path planning algorithms. This is then converted into controls for the car’s acceleration, brakes, steering and so on.”

Overcoming challenges to fully commercialise the technology Although many companies are developing and testing driverless technology, including Audi, Tesla, Google and BMW, there are still significant technical challenges the industry will face.

Testing these systems is crucial to the development of the technology and algorithms within autonomous vehicles.

Bringing a financial challenge to the table, some believe technology and automotive companies could spend up to $10 billion to test and perfect their technology.

With the huge expense that comes with developing this technology, Rodriguez says it is important that “OEMs understand where they fit in the value chain. Driverless car technology can go from capturing data to full validation/certification of a vehicle.”

“With the neural network accelerator performing most of the computer, it’s important to pick the right one. However, machine learning is evolving very quickly, so flexible programmable hardware is also a requirement,” he added. aimagazine.com

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Vivacity Labs Vivacity Labs aims to make cities smarter, safer and more sustainable.

The company’s AI sensors and ‘Smart Junctions’ signal control gather detailed and anonymous data 24/7 on transport modes, traffic flow and travel patterns, supporting strategic decisions to help optimise the transport network and improve urban infrastructure.

Despite these challenges, Nicholson believes this technology is ready to be rolled out, although it may still be a number of years until it has the ability to replace humans in all different types of routes.

He said: “The technology is mature and ready for commercial use but just not in the way we would imagine for normal cars. The technology is 99.9% there - but the question is always how many 9s do we need to add to be confident in a safety-critical situation?”

“They've been deployed in small segregated areas; they're now operating in large scale parts of cities, but the cars still require exhaustive testing in that city before they can be unleashed, so they can't be deployed just anywhere yet. We're still a number of years away from a world where 106

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AI APPLICATIONS

“The technology is mature and ready for commercial use but just not in the way we would imagine for normal cars” MARK NICHOLSON

CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, VIVACITY LABS

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“With human error, the cause of 94% of crashes, self-driving cars reduce the risk of misjudgement and making mistakes that can result in negative outcomes” MARK NICHOLSON

CEO AND CO-FOUNDER, VIVACITY LABS

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AI APPLICATIONS

you can enter a destination hundreds of miles away and your car will take you there.”

Ethics and misconceptions: what needs to be considered?

Within all applications of AI, be it AI in healthcare, military operations or facial recognition, bias and ethics is and will remain a huge issue.

Outlining these ethical biases, Nicholson stated there is a number that need to be considered: • “Avoid visual bias, such as whether it can spot a person of colour just as well as a white person or a woman compared to a man • Avoiding technological bias, such as whether it can see a cyclist because they have bought a device that broadcasts the cyclist's location, but the cyclist who can't afford that device has a higher chance of being hit • Decision-making bias is also crucial, with questions around whether there’s a 10% chance of hitting a male or a 10% chance of hitting a female, making sure that there isn't any bias in the choice of action • Finally, self-preferential bias such as if a car is a Google car and it gives way to a fellow Google car as opposed to a Ford vehicle at the next junction.”

Misconceptions in the media mean that many people see AI as a threat to humankind.

To overcome these misconceptions and fears within autonomous vehicles, Rodriguez believes the narrative should be more open and testing needs to remain rigorous: “It is important that the technology is proven under controlled environments before we deploy driverless solutions globally. Each road across every city and country has its own specific nuances which bring a variety of navigation challenges.”

He concluded: “One of the key elements will be acceptance of the technology. This may be somewhat generational as the younger generation, being less car-centric, are happy to adopt new tech that makes their lives easier and less costly in towns and cities. Why own a car when it is so easy and cheap to call up a driverless vehicle which is guaranteed to be safer than a humanoperated vehicle?” aimagazine.com

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A HUMAN FORWARD APPROACH BRINGS REWARDS FOR ALL WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

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Recruiting giant unites from within to drive a superior service for clients, candidates and employees.

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hen Abdul Manik, Chief Technology Innovation Officer at Randstad UK&I, joined the company two-and-a-half years ago, he was tasked with helping the recruitment giant to completely transform the front, mid and back office technologies and associated processes.

After his initial observations, speaking to a multitude of people across the business at different levels, he realised that while Randstad UK&I was a very complex business, it was more complex than it needed to be.

As Abdul recalls, this “made serving our candidates and clients much harder. Building the relationship was much harder too.”

After a collective discussion as a leadership team, Randstad UK&I looked at how it could simplify the business from all angles, from a change, technology and process perspective. This is how the change programme began; incorporating people, process and products.

The five core pillars of the Randstad digital transformation Governing Randstad’s digital activities are five core pillars. The first, according to Abdul, is the “client pillar”. It means transforming the whole customer engagement from top to bottom; transforming the experience that clients have when they do business with Randstad day-to-day, whether it's a SME aimagazine.com

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RANDSTAD

Randstad: A human forward approach brings rewards for all

“ We are combining multiple front offices into one single front office, on multiple brands” SHONA RILEY

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT, RANDSTAD

client or it's an enterprise client, or it's a new client or an existing client.

“We really wanted to transform the experience they have with us. We also think about the client space, and this is where automation machine learning plays a key role.

The second is the talent pillar. This is all about our candidates. Again, we follow their journey and experience, not just 114

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for a transactional event, but also repeat engagement and repeat connection with us as a human resource provider. The UFO project ties in with both the first and second pillars.”

The third pillar is based around the employee: “We do have recruitment consultants who will provide the recruitment, but we also have shared service functions, such as our resource teams, candidate teams or fulfilment teams.

ABDUL MANIK TITLE: CIO & CTIO INDUSTRY: RECRUITMENT/HR SERVICES

Pillar four is cyber security and pillar five is change Abdul also looks at things from a threedimensional viewpoint, saying “you have products when you're transforming anything or changing anything. It's the product change.

If the process changes, people change and it varies in the impact on each other.”

It’s not just digital transformation, but actually a business transformation, according

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UK Abdul Manik is the Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Innovation Officer for specialist recruiter, Randstad (UK & Ireland). In addition to owning Randstad’s technology strategy, Abdul also drives overall business transformation; including change management and strategic programme delivery.

Prior to working at Randstad, the global leader in the HR services industry, Abdul had experience with digital transformation for magic circle law firm Clifford Chance LLP and AON Consulting. He was also the Director for Avon Cosmetics for Europe, the Middle East and Africa regions - covering 34 countries.

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The Temp Worker Everything I need, on any device...

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We accelerate the digital transformation of the Staffing Industry

M|ployee: Making people’s lives easier M|ployee and Randstad UK create a winning combination for the staffing industry Roel Waals founded M|ployee in 2009, with a vision “to build staffing software in the cloud that connects every stakeholder in the most agile and accelerated way.”

M|ployee was recently voted for the second time in a row as one of the top 50 fastest growing tech companies in Benelux by Deloitte in 2020.

Recently, M|ployee have partnered with Randstad UK, one of the leaders in the UK Market.The staffing company was undergoing a massive digital transformation, and the company needed a partner it could rely on to tackle such a large technical challenge.

Under one vision Chief Operating Officer, Diana van der Boon, explained that the partnership was strong from the beginning: “When we started the project with Randstad UK, we quickly understood their difficulties with the previous technology. They needed to automate the front and mid office. They determined the scope of the project with a clear vision and managed the change on their side.”

The M|ployee staffing platform has been built from the ground up to give consultants everything they need. It’s fully developed and easily tailored to business workflows.

Solutions built around client’s needs The staffing industry is a big industry globally, and according to CEO Pieter Smits, Mployee’s highly scalable solution is built to be implemented in every country across the globe: “That means that in every country it works with the same solution, same core but different configuration for customisation. We keep on being focussed on staffing, be it long-term staffing or short term staffing - it’s going to grow.”

Van der Boon added that “when you look at the average staffing company, they use six, seven, maybe 10 different solutions to manage that process and a lot of manual inputs. What you need as a staffing company is control. So when people come into the company, you want to know who they are and when they’re going to work. The drive to make sure that more staffing companies manage their core processes in one solution and on one platform - making people’s lives easier.”

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RANDSTAD

“ Our core integration engine is all built around microservices and API, bringing our front office, middle office and back office systems together” ABDUL MANIK CIO & CTIO, RANDSTAD

to Abdul: “transformation is also about process transformation and then people/ cultural transformation. So change looks at all three angles.”

As Abdul openly admits, change cannot come through just one person. The tech element often proves easy, it’s the change buy-in/adoption/management that’s hard.

Shona Riley is Director of Business Transformation and Continuous Improvement.

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to working with the business and leadership team to drive initiatives that increase productivity and business performance.

Shona says, “we are combining multiple front offices into one single front office, on multiple brands. What has come out of it so far is that we’re different, but the same. The first challenge was each vertical market, as they have very different needs to the others and very different problems. We actually started the journey with the real users, but when you put any new technology forward, you will hit some change resistance and limiting beliefs. We actually interviewed 60+ consultants throughout the UK to find out what their challenges and their key problems were.”

Shona knew the size of the task at hand.

She had to field questions like ‘how do we embrace change as leaders?’ and ‘how do we get behind the change leaders?’ and ‘how are we going to drive it?’

As Shona sees it, change must be communicated through to senior management and to branch management level to drive the change. Starting topdown, taking leadership on the change journey, equipping it with the right tools to support the managers who will drive change.” She adds that “change approach

needs to be top down, bottom up and peer to peer.”

Mindset is key for Shona and her team, making sure everybody is ready for the change: “we had a clear communication strategy to ensure we communicated consistently and regularly, we led workshops with the business and ensured we reviewed our processes to ensure they did not conflict with the adoption of the technology and the new changes.”

Underlining the importance of a clear vision, Shona adds “from the beginning of the aimagazine.com

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journey as a business, it is your responsibility to own the requirements and your vision and share that. And the supplier needs to be on the journey with you, so they deeply understand and can support you with the solution because they’re the experts.”

Another question is how the organisation manages that change. Shona has the answer, saying “you have to make change personal, you can't blanket change. That’s very much part of our tech and touch approach. It takes effort from all people involved. The change has to be perceived as a business initiative, not as a project. We work very closely with managers to coach and support them.

We mentor them in terms of combating a limiting belief to draw out the benefits to that particular individual on how it's going to help achieve their targets.”

M|ployee the key partner for Randstad With its roots also in the Netherlands, M|ployee has been a key consultant and enabler with its highly innovative staffing software solutions, the company was a logical fit. As Caryn Barnes, Head of Talent Technology & Innovation, states: “We've been working heavily with M|ployee to develop those technical processes. They're advising us, especially on how to build things.

They not only helped Randstad UK get to the launch stage of UFO but they are helping us get into that ‘business as usual’ process.

We're developing, creating and producing things every two weeks.”

The partnership came at an important time for Randstad, in terms of utilising many new technologies: “We wouldn't be able to do it without them at the moment, especially as we grow our team.”

It’s clearly a relationship for the foreseeable future, according to Barnes: “M|ployee will be heavily involved with how 120

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“M|ployee will be heavily involved with how we're integrating products like smart artificial intelligence” CARYN BARNES HEAD OF TALENT TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION, RANDSTAD

we're integrating products like smart artificial intelligence (AI) as well. They understand the goal; we want to get to the vision of one place for everything. That's the overall vision for me. We're looking to grow with Salesforce and M|ployee.”

Microservices, machine learning and RPA Microservices is a fundamental part of Randstad’s digital transformation strategy.

As Abdul remarks: “The reason for that is microservices bring everything together. It allows you to integrate legacy, non-legacy and internal and external systems and processes in a much more flexible way. Our core integration engine is all built around

microservices and API, bringing our front office, middle office and back office systems together. It brings the multiple front office data input and output together.

Abdul and the team combined used Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as a big driver for legacy system & data integration as well as efficiency improvements.

Abdul insists that automation plays a big role alongside machine learning and data intelligence in Randstad UK's digital transformation plan: “we are definitely benefiting from having very experienced, knowledgeable experts in those areas internally, but also working very closely with our partner channel in that space.”

Swimming in a data lake We need to find a way of aggregating that data into our data lake. So we can then join data from multiple platforms to create meaningful insight and dashboards. We aimagazine.com

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“ We're really focusing on hyper automation to really drive the efficiency” ABDUL MANIK CIO & CTIO, RANDSTAD

slightly changed our approach now with aggregating the data within the data lake where we can surface them into Tableau, for users to access. We would now ask the question of ‘what problem are you trying to solve & what is your desired outcome?’, so we can make sure that we're providing the right solution rather than just providing more data in the form of a report. So we can make sure that by orchestrating the data, combining it from multiple systems in the data lake, we can drive better behaviours in the SIS, in the business.”

Pandemic accelerates programme The pandemic has changed the market dynamic for Randstad. While they had a digital transformation plan before the pandemic happened, the pandemic expedited it. Abdul: “It was supposed to be a two to three year programme, but the low period caused by the drop in demand from candidates and clients in 2020 gave us an opportunity to really fast-forward that transformation plan.”

He went on to say the market has moved from being client-led in 2020 and the early part of 2021 (where there were not a lot of jobs available and a lot of candidates available with a lot of follow-up), to now seeing a lot more candidate scarcity and a lot more client demand.

“When we come out the other side and the demand starts to grow, we’re in a much better position to grab the market growth, as we’re a lot more lean and a lot more efficient and agile as an organisation to react to it,” he continued.

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IMPROVING EFFICIENCIES THROUGH THE POWER OF AI AND IIOT

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AI technology is growing exponentially within the manufacturing industry, here we look at how by combining it with IIoT it can bring more efficiencies

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WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY he internet of things (IoT) is now commonplace in society. By collecting masses of data, IoT devices can offer users insights to save time and money.

This technology can be extended into the industrial sector to enable better efficiencies and reliability in operations. The industrial internet of things, or IIoT, and its devices provide greater data visibility, improved performance, and opportunities for automation.

By combining IIoT and artificial intelligence (AI) manufacturers will be better equipped to manage the influxes of data collected by the smart sensors and devices to support operations.

These advantages brought to manufacturers through the combination of AI and IIoT will ultimately bring forward new insights into how operators manage data in manufacturing.

Due to the benefits it brings, smart sensor IIoT technology has grown significantly in recent years and is expected to grow in the future.

To remain competitive, manufacturers and supply chains are looking for technological solutions to keep them agile and competitive.

“Before IIoT, factories were operating semiblind and in reactive mode. Being able to apply machine learning (ML) or AI to factory data allows manufacturers to predict and plan for future outcomes,” said Jose Favilla, Director, Global Industrial Sector, Industry 4.0 Leader at IBM. aimagazine.com

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DATA & ANALYTICS

“This includes things like identifying potential safety hazards and adjusting procedures accordingly or applying predictive maintenance to minimise the impact of unplanned downtime and extend asset lifecycle,” he continued.

AI technology and IIoT infrastructure allow manufacturers to maintain complete digital continuity across all stages of a product’s lifecycle. In doing so, it makes it possible to correct and optimise the design and quality of a product and can be particularly useful for complex production processes.

Miro Kostov, Product Manager at iBASEt, highlights the importance of increasing efficiency but adds: “The greatest benefit that the IIoT brings to manufacturers is providing greater access to important operational data, made available in near real-time. This information can then be used to make smarter decisions, faster.”

“One other benefit is higher productivity.

Should an issue arise on the shop floor,

“ Being able to apply machine learning (ML) or AI to factory data allows manufacturers to predict and plan for future outcomes” JOSE FAVILLA

DIRECTOR, GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL SECTOR, INDUSTRY 4.0 LEADER AT IBM

operators can be notified quickly to take proactive steps to avoid unplanned downtime. IIoT can also take predictive maintenance to an even higher level: sensors can collect data from machines using vibrational or infrared methods, warning of potential machine failures before they even happen,” he said.

Jose Favilla Jose Favilla brings 30+ years of extensive experience working with clients in over 30 countries to help them improve operational and business performance to IBM. Over his career, he has accumulated an in-depth understanding of the asset-intensive industries, including natural resources, process and discrete manufacturing.

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DATA & ANALYTICS

Collecting data to improve manufacturing AI and IIoT, used with connected machinery, can collect a vast amount of data as well as detect defects along the production line. On the condition the data is of high quality, ML can be applied for a number of use cases, including: • Predicting whether a component requires maintenance • Identifying root causes of quality issues • Calculating where efficiencies in the production line can be gained.

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Outlining use cases of this technology, Favilla said: “Taking maintenance as an example, sensors can feed data into a predictive analytics model that can determine if a machine is likely to break down in the next few weeks. The AI model can then assess the possible root causes and severity of the breakdown and automatically arrange for it to be solved.”

Through intelligent maintenance optimisation, manufacturers can prioritise all repair requests along with the availability of

DATA & ANALYTICS

“ Developing a data platform, or ‘fabric’, that connects the organisation’s systems on a hybrid cloud architecture is a key part of the data backbone that needs to be in place to enable a digital factory” JOSE FAVILLA

DIRECTOR, GLOBAL INDUSTRIAL SECTOR, INDUSTRY 4.0 LEADER AT IBM

technicians with the required skills and the availability of spare parts needed to perform the repair.

Undoubtedly, this technology is invaluable for the industrial sector with its ability to reduce the operational cost of waste management, improve sustainability credentials, and enhance safety measures but manufacturers need to understand the technology to fully reap the benefits.

AI and IIoT: Business strategy and vision “The impact of AI’s exploding digital power is being felt throughout the manufacturing world. More than just another technology, AI is fundamentally changing the way manufacturers can automate tasks with greater insights and sophistication by providing data analytics and manufacturing intelligence that can reveal trends, identify correlations, predict outcomes, and guide decisions,” explained Kostov.

With the rapid uptake of this technology, particularly as it works with IIoT, throughout many sections of the manufacturing industry, manufacturers need to develop a comprehensive strategy and understanding of how it works to implement it effectively.

Noting what considerations manufacturers need to consider when adopting this technology, Favilla said: “Manufacturing companies first need to be clear on their business vision and what they need to do to achieve it – whether that’s improving competitiveness, gaining market share, or creating new offerings. Then, they need to define which key enabling technologies they need to help them realise that vision.”

He continued: “As they move ahead on that digitisation journey, it’s also important for businesses to understand where they are starting from. For example, do they have the foundational technology infrastructure aimagazine.com

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“An ideal approach is to combine the data collection capabilities of the IIoT with modern Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to provide a powerful, robust framework to best manage complex operations” MIRO KOSTOV

PRODUCT MANAGER AT IBASET

iBASEt iBASEt provides manufacturing software solutions that are digitally transforming how complex products are built and maintained. The company brings together the necessary real-time data for a 360-degree view of production, quality, and sustainment operations.

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in place to build their digital manufacturing operation? Developing a data platform, or ‘fabric’, that connects the organisation’s systems on a hybrid cloud architecture is a key part of the data backbone that needs to be in place to enable a digital factory.”

As with any AI-enabled technology, there are vast amounts of data that organisations need to process, analyse and store. To accommodate this effectively, manufacturers need to either build or find infrastructure that ensures they process the data required for their AI and ML applications.This ensures that costs are controlled and unused data is continually assessed in case it has value for future use cases that may drive efficiencies.

Kostov offers a solution that many manufacturers have discovered to improve the production line with IIoT and AI devices: “An ideal approach is to combine the data collection capabilities of the IIoT with modern Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to provide a powerful, robust framework to best manage complex operations.”

Adding to this, he explained: “This type of strategy provides the performance promised by ‘Industry 4.0’ strategies as an ideal foundation to start building a datasharing strategy that is current and accurate, with a single source of truth. An MES creates a common foundation to run and review production and quality processes that are augmented with the necessary data, delivered by the IIoT.” Commenting on the future of the industry as this technology takes hold, Favilla concluded: “Looking ahead, the next evolution in digital manufacturing will be the ‘Industry 5.0’ era. This will be characterised by a greater focus on sustainability and expanding value beyond shareholders to ordinary workers and all of society, significantly contributing to the planet’s sustainability goals.” aimagazine.com

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FERREXPO

WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS PRODUCED BY: ASHLEY KIRBY

FERREXPO FIRES UP DECARBONISATION AND AUTONOMY

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Interim CEO Jim North is firmly focused on decarbonisation, renewables expansion and autonomous fleet development

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errexpo Interim CEO Jim North’s “big three” are probably not that dissimilar from many of his counterparts: growth, decarbonisation and technology.

But the fact that we spend the best part of an hour discussing them underlines their vital importance to the iron ore pellet company’s overall strategy.

North has been with Ferrexpo for seven years and Interim CEO since 2020. He speaks clearly and in an assured manner, which again is indicative of his focus.

As Group COO between 2014 and 2020, operational efficiency and discipline were priorities, but now as CEO, the task is how best to execute the growth and decarbonisation strategy for the Swiss-based commodity trading and mining company, listed on the London Stock Exchange, whose operations are in Ukraine; North is actually speaking to me from central Dubai, which seems strangely appropriate too for such an international entity (the Gulf city serves Kiev with two flights a day).

So to growth first. In its half-year results for 2021, revenues rose 74% to US$1,353 million, profit after tax came in at $661 million, and pellet production totalled 5.6 million tonnes; the pandemic-defying figures were attributed to a ‘multi-year investment programme in our assets’.

North remains humble though. “You never conclude business improvement – there are

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“ Transitioning from a manned operation to autonomous is not just a case of buying the technology, bolting it onto the truck and letting them go. It’s about learning to live with autonomy” JIM NORTH CEO, FERREXPO

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different rates of implementation,” he reflects.

Operations and sustainability are now clearly two sides of the same coin.

Ferrexpo is aiming for 30% reduction in combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030 and to be carbon neutral by 2050. After achieving 16% and 6% reductions in 2020 and the first half of 2021 respectively, North is confident it will get there “well before” the scheduled date.

“We’re well down the path to achieving 30%,” he said. “We have no intention of using carbon offsets – we want to do real carbon reduction. We like to be conservative and over deliver. As we progress, you need to put more work in to get smaller gains.”

There are substantial amounts of renewables in the Ukrainian grid already but that will only take the company part of the

FERREXPO

JIM NORTH TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY: MINING LOCATION: DUBAI Jim joined Ferrexpo in November 2014 and since then he has successfully managed the Company's operations and introduced world class operating practices. Previously, Jim was Chief Operating Officer of London Mining plc, where he was accountable for setting the company's operational and investment strategy around the world. Prior to this, he held a variety of senior operational management roles in multiple commodities with Rio Tinto and BHP.

EXECUTIVE BIO

way in addressing Scope 2, so it is targeting solar and wind as possible solutions. It is already trialling a 5MW solar plant, and so far North is happy with the performance.

“We want to run it for a period of time to test the seasonal variations before we do more internal investment in renewables.”

It is also developing a small hydrogen test plant, and initially use it to replace natural gas in one of four pelletiser lines. Construction and commissioning will start by the end of next year.

Green hydrogen, for Ferrexpo, has two uses: as a gas replacement in the pelletisation process, and possibly to provide an alternative power source for mining auxiliary fleet.

“In terms of the overall renewables strategy, there has to be a blend. It isn’t cost effective to use hydrogen for power generation.

“We don’t want to take on significant tranches of debt. The commodity price will determine the rate of implementation of our decarbonisation plans.”

Electrification and energy efficiency are increasingly key subjects, especially as its fleet of 86 trucks is forecast to grow to 134 units. It has set a deadline for the first diesel engine replacement by 2027, though no manufacturer has been selected yet, and he said the “expectation” is that its primary mining fleet will decarbonise by 2032.

Meeting its own emission targets is just one element in the sustainable equation, and there are many uncertainties in the wider steel industry.

“We recognise that steel industry will need to significantly reduce carbon inputs to meet their obligations. We’re seeing car manufacturers under pressure to have carbon-free steel by 2030, which will be tough – 2040 to 2045 may be more feasible.” He said the bigger question is

FERREXPO

“ As we expand our business, we need to add lab and analysis capacity, and robotics is well advanced in these areas” JIM NORTH CEO, FERREXPO

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Autonomous trucks

how are steelmakers going to fund the transition from traditional blast furnace technology to processes with reduced carbon inputs?

“China has invested a lot in traditional steelmaking processes over the last 20 years – for them to scrap all that, and implement direct reduction processes, would be a significant cost. It's not yet clear how European steelmakers are going to fund decarbonisation – that’s going to be multiple billions of dollars. Ultimately the cost of this transition will be passed onto the end consumer and steel will be more expensive, but it’s clear it’s needed.”

Autonomous focus drives digital growth Autonomy is an increasingly core focus within fleet development, and currently six trucks (CAT-793, 220 tons) are self-driving. aimagazine.com

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“We broke the project and robotics is well RISING TO EMISSIONS into two phases, the first advanced in these areas.”

CHALLENGES is six trucks, the second is With pellets firing nine. We’re holding off the at 1,400 degrees, AI is Currently, global steel deployment of the further also being courted to production accounts for 7% nine until we’ve operated measure variability in the six for a significant of global carbon emissions, off-gases to manage representing more than all of period,” he said. process variation. the emissions from the world’s “Transitioning from a “That will be a cars put together manned operation to significant advantage autonomous is not • Ferrexpo’s iron ore pellets for us in future. AI can reduce carbon emissions by 40% just a case of buying manage more variables for every tonne of sinter fines the technology, than a traditional control replaced with pellets bolting it onto the room operator.”

• Ferrexpo has invested over truck and letting He doesn’t envisage them go. It’s about US$2.9 billion in its operations in that jobs will go in the Ukraine since its IPO in 2007 learning to live new digital age, more • It invested $17 million with autonomy. that skills will evolve. in environmental projects The computer “A good example in 2020 doesn’t have any of this is we employ judgement – it will 12 surveyors who are only do what you ‘autonomous road tell it to do.” builders’ mapping the routes – that’s a Productivity is very important, role that didn’t exist before autonomy. and using robotics is going to play an We also have more network engineers increasingly key role. Jim says Ferrexpo in our business now to manage the is thinking about implementing communication networks – and if you’d robotics in its future mining labs. said to me 10 years ago we’d have a team “As we expand our business, we of drone pilots today, I wouldn’t have need to add lab and analysis capacity, believed you.”

“ I changed the leadership development programme, which was largely focused on hard skills, and now there’s a greater focus on cultural change” JIM NORTH CEO, FERREXPO

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TOP 10

AI Platforms for RPA With more businesses turning to robotic process automation (RPA) to improve efficiencies, we take a look at the top AI platforms for RPA WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

T

o streamline enterprise operations and reduce costs, many CIO’s are turning to robotic process automation (RPA). With this technology practice, businesses can automate processes allowing for employees to focus their time on other higher-value work.

Due to its effectiveness, the global RPA market has been estimated to show significant growth from 2021 to 2028 with a compound annual growth rate of 32.8%.

The Coronavirus pandemic has been a key factor in this expected growth as pandemic-induced working has transformed business needs and more organisations are looking for ways to automate processes.

With this increase in popularity, we take a look at the top artificial intelligence (AI) platforms for RPA.

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Laserfiche

With its global community, Laserfiche offers a platform that enables organisations to digitally transform their operations. The company is a leading provider of intelligent content management and business process automation.

Its RPA solution automates repetitive tasks, integrates legacy applications and improves data accuracy. This solution allows customers to easily build and scale automations code-free as well as unlock more value from legacy systems. As a result, it makes staff more productive and improves the efficiency of existing automations.

09

Pega Platform

Pega Platform provides RPA solutions that scale beyond tasks, can implement quick automation and deliver fast outcomes. By automating repetitive work, Pega Platforms removes the need for its clients’ employees to carry out repetitive tasks and instead, focus on their own customers. The technology bridges the gaps between systems and as a result eliminates time spent navigating multiple applications; this is because the RPA solution integrates legacy systems and removes silos. Finally, the technology is a digital transformation enabler as it speeds up processes and eliminates errors allowing customers to move on from outdated processes.

TOP 10

08

Power Automate

Formerly Microsoft Flow, Power Automate is an online tool with the Microsoft 365 applications and add-ins. Customers can use this platform for the creation of automated workflows between apps and services to synchronise files, get notifications, and collect data. Due to its Power Automate platform Microsoft was named a leader in the July 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for RPA as well as a leader in the Forrester Wave: Robotic Process Automation, Q1 2021. Microsoft’s RPA technology increases efficiency, offers unlimited possibilities, reduces costly mistakes and improves security.

07

Laiye RPA

Since its founding in 2015, Laiye has been helping its clients achieve digital transformation with intelligent automation. The company develops software that mimics human intelligence to help organisations operate at new levels of productivity and efficiency. As a result, Laiye is able to drive new levels of success for its customers. The RPA company has a global presence in Europe, the Middle East and Africa as well as Latin America and AsiaPacific. With its chatbot solutions, businesses are able to optimise human-machine collaboration. aimagazine.com

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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

CiscoSecure

TOP 10

05 06

Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere allows customers to harness the power of RPA and cloud with its Automation 360 platform. The company has been named a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader and offers RPA services that scale three times faster at a fifth of the cost of legacy platforms. Its cloud-native end-to-end intelligent automation platform is used by the world's top enterprises to double their amount of automated processes.

This technology can be used in both the front and back office as well as a tool to improve the employee experience.

Rocketbot

Founded in 2018, Rocketbot is a Latin American RPA company. Its framework to build RPA, which is compatible with Linux, Windows and Mac, is easy to use, offers cloud management and can be deployed instantly. By uploading its technology to the cloud, Rocketbot reduces infrastructure costs and can be applied to multiple industries including healthcare, retail and logistics. The company was also the first Latin American RPA company to be featured in Gartner.

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04

Aiwozo

Aiwozo is an intelligent process automation platform offered

by Quale Infotech Pvt. Ltd, an end-to-end consultancy and IT company that focuses on AI and RPA. The Aiwozo team is composed of experienced practitioners championing innovation. With its technology, the company is able to successfully integrate AI and automation strategies for its clients across a number of industries including banking and insurance. Aiwozo wants to empower organisations to become AI-driven enterprises, to do this, they help customers understand and adapt to digital needs through RPA.

03

akaBot

Aspiring to accompany organisations with overcoming pressing business challenges, akaBot offers comprehensive options of RPA end-to-end services. On top of this, the company also provides its customers with mini solutions to help with automation efforts. akaBot aims to build a new generation of process automation to enhance the application of RPA to automate business processes in Vietnam. 2021 saw the company being recognised for its outstanding performance with its products and won Gold Globee’s accolade for the Best Deployments and Customer Success of the Year in Asia-Pacific.

02

TOP 10

UiPath

UiPath offers a platform that provides customers with end-toend automation. With this solution, clients can discover and manage every automation opportunity with full transparency and control as well as automate more processes, faster, with drag-and-drop AI and ready-to-go templates.

The technology also provides governance, security, scalability, and performance that customers require. Founded in Romania in 2005, UiPath was named a leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for RPA and a Forrester Wave leader for RPA in the first quarter of 2021. Since its founding in 2005, the company has launched free courses for UiPath Academy and started teaching RPA to over 35,000 now certified developers, propelling its rocketship growth.

We believe in using the transformative power of automation to liberate the boundless potential of people aimagazine.com

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SHAPING THE FUTURE OF SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

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Øistein Jensen

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Chief Sustainability Officer

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Blue Prism Product Portfolio

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TOP 10

We create value with new ways of working by unlocking efficiencies and returning millions of hours of work back into their businesses Blue Prism Founded in 2001, Blue Prism is a global leader in intelligent automation. The company’s AI-powered digital robots offer scalable intelligent automation.

These robots are secure, smart and accessible to enable a digital-first, people enriched workforce that frees up humans to re-imagine work. Blue Prism’s enterprise-grade digital workforce means organisations can accelerate operational efficiency and agility by allowing employees to focus on business goals rather than mundane tasks. The company is dedicated to innovation and strives to progress this type of technology to further support its customers, it aims to be at the forefront of the intelligent automation space by utilising the latest AI advancements. Blue Prism’s technology also means customers gain better insight and control over their work and enable them to create new and transformative ways to operate.

Eric Tyree, Head of AI and Research

TAURUS GROUP

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OPEN PLATFORMS, HPC & INDUSTRY 4.0 WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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TAURUS GROUP

TAURUS GROUP

2005

Year Founded

Computer Hardware Industry

120

Number of Employees

180mn

Revenue (Euros)

TAURUS GROUP

Arun Garg (Taurus Group), Menno Kortekaas (Circle B), Alex Ninaber (ClusterVision), and Jitesh Kohli (Solulever) discuss their collaborative ecosystem

B

eing in the technology business for over two decades, Arun Garg heads Taurus Group as its current CEO. "We have multiple disciplines within our company with a physical presence in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and India.

Founded in 2005 in the Netherlands, the business has been expanding since 2016, as it makes successful investments and acquisitions in several companies: 2BY2, Taurus Germany, Circle B, Solulever, and ClusterVision. Today, we proudly stand as an ISO 9001 company and are in the process of being ISO 27001 certified."

Taurus Group is a specialised and focused company that operates in a niche market with a good reputation. It provides its customers access to its global distribution infrastructure and, together with its enterprise integration, offers softwaredefined data centre solutions.

"As the parent company, Taurus Group has six operational entities. Taurus Europe is the main entity that carries out the distribution aspects," mentions Garg.

"Acquiring ClusterVision, Circle B, and Solulever coincided with our vision to grow and expand our product offerings. We have a great circular economy within these entities.

In The Netherlands, we all operate from the same office and make good use of each other's expertise and knowledge. Taurus performs the role of 'component supply'; Circle B designs, builds, and manages rapidscale sustainable data centre OCP server aimagazine.com

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“ Taurus Group has six operational entities.

Taurus Europe is the primary entity that carries out the distribution aspects" ARUN GARG

FOUNDER & MANAGING DIRECTOR, TAURUS GROUP

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infrastructures. Solulever is developing a whole software-based AI analytics suite which happily runs on OCP hardware whilst ClusterVision is a turn-key solutions provider for HPC, AI and data at scale. ” Garg adds, "Being a business that very much revolves around storage components, the majority of our revenue comes from storage products, which we sell as a barebone product or as a complete solution." He explains, "we do not have any standard storage solutions for our customers as we offer tailor-made solutions based on the specific requirements of individual customers."

"Our business interests are split into two broad areas: the first being distribution, and the second being solution, development and R&D. Our core products and services include

TAURUS GROUP

ARUN GARG TITLE: FOUNDER & MANAGING DIRECTOR

COMPANY: TAURUS GROUP

Arun, Founder and Managing Director of Taurus, has over two decades of extensive experience working in the technology business. With a strong focus on a niche IT market, he strives to be a specialist in this domain. He believes in making successful business investments and acquisitions of companies dealing in specialised services to build a holistic business solution. His mantra of success lies in the few keywords: dedication, perfection, commitment, and meeting deadlines. His unabated dedication towards his goals from the beginning has led him to monumental success.

ALEX NINABER TITLE: CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR HPC, CLOUD & STORAGE COMPANY: CLUSTERVISION Alex, Co-founder and Director ClusterVision, has vast experience of over 20 years in developing high-performance computing solutions. Having completed his PhD at Birkbeck College (London) with his colleague, he was inspired by large scale calculations in molecular dynamics, which led him into developing innovative HPC solutions. Owing to a strong background in chemistry and physics, he believes in being practical and always attempts to find answers to complex problems.

MENNO KORTEKAAS TITLE: FOUNDER & CTO

COMPANY: CIRCLE B

Menno, Founder of Circle B, has a vast experience in OCP and aims to deliver the power of open compute to most organisations as a scalable solution. Having an extensive background in IT and networking and being acquainted with the concept of OCP in his consulting years, he looks further to apply OCP hardware for data centres as an innovative way of building servers. The founder believes in combing sustainability with innovation which he delivers in his solutions.

JITESH KOHLI TITLE: CO-FOUNDER & CEO

COMPANY: SOLULEVER

Jitesh, the CEO and co-founder of Solulever, has 18 years of experience working with IT services and consulting giants. He leads a rich team of Industry 4.0 thought leaders, technologists, data scientists and domain experts, with a passion for bringing unparalleled platforms and solutions to the manufacturing industry by building unique Edge Platforms and industryspecific solutions. Over the years, he has built trusted relationships with customers, colleagues, advisors, and partners across a multitude of industries and countries in Europe and beyond.

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Taurus Group: Open platforms, HPC & Industry 4.0

“ Typically, we provide software solutions to complex business environments, along with HPC installations and knowledge to make these environments successful” ALEX NINABER

CO-FOUNDER & DIRECTOR HPC, CLOUD & STORAGE SOLUTIONS, CLUSTERVISION

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the distribution of key components, building and managing HPC infrastructure, EMEA OCP specialists, and software application focused on Smart Industry 4.0 with a development office in India," says Garg.

“Taurus Group is also a specialist in software-defined networking. The solutions we bring to our customers involve using software layers that provide flexible, efficient network fabric management when used to define the functionality of the hardware.

Hardware agnostic partner solutions such as those from Pluribus Networks help network operators manage the entire network consistently and holistically," says Garg.

He also adds, "Taurus is a great company uncovering endless possibilities of growth.

We can now offer end-to-end solutions to our customers, from components procurement to seamlessly managing

TAURUS GROUP

their infrastructure. The journey has just started, and there is a lot to achieve. We are confident of bringing greater offerings to the market, making us a stronger company and a stronger brand."

DISCOVER TAURUS GROUP'S ROBUST ECOSYSTEM OF PARTNERS Circle B With a background in IT and networking, Menno Kortekaas, Founder of Circle B, was introduced to the OCP hardware during his consulting years. Looking further into the application of OCP hardware for data centres, Kortekaas found that a particular company was using Facebook designed hardware for their own open stack solutions.

"But, I found that this was not readily available in Europe, apart from a few smaller

companies in the US. So, I founded Circle B to operate in this space," says Menno.

Kortekaas explains that Circle B sells solutions based on specific building blocks, providing its customers with hardware.

“We have the IT rack that goes into the data centre, that's our biggest building block, which we then integrate into the rack, the power infrastructure, converting AC into 12 Volt DC. Then we add servers, storage, networking, cables and external connectivity.

We work with the customer based on their application, workload, and software application to match the hardware design to meet their requirements. We help them design a certain system layout, rack layout, or multiple rack layouts. We have also recently released a new service called 'Eclipse' which allows customers to choose between a CapEx model and an OpEx model, including aimagazine.com

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housing and connectivity to the internet or their public/private cloud."

Being focused on the technical aspects — getting knowledge and making technical solutions work along with concentrating on promoting OCP hardware adoption, Circle B combines its expertise with the financial capabilities and logistics capabilities of Taurus Group to deliver its solutions. "Circle B makes use of Taurus Group's financial department, marketing department and logistics department, which includes its warehouses, contracts, shipping companies, insurers, website managers, and event 166

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" [OCP is] more energy-efficient, easy to maintain, and more scalable. But this type of all-inone solution wasn't available in Europe" MENNO KORTEKAAS

FOUNDER & CTO, CIRCLE B

TAURUS GROUP

and more scalable. But this type of all-in-one solution wasn't available in Europe."

Sustainable operations form a core pillar for Circle B. It is committed to taking sustainability a few notches up, promoting more energy-efficient and easier to maintain solutions. "By offering these solutions that are efficient and easier to maintain, customers can easily replace parts so that they don't throw away a whole device when a small part ceases to work. With the modular design, it is much easier to make replacements of parts for the customers," says Kortekaas.

"We are also working on open-source firmware development," says Kortekaas, who compares this service to a mobile phone. "At some point, the manufacturer stops supporting the operating system, so the device no longer has new applications.

The open-source firmware initiative called OpenBMC offers customers much longer support in these scenarios, supporting the firmware and updates to extend the life of the product."

organisers. By combining these skills, Circle B can focus on providing its customers with valuable solutions," says Kortekaas.

Inspired to do something innovative, Kortekaas founded Circle B in 2015. When working for a large consumer goods company, he began to see the shift from physical load balancers handled by a single person to an application that a team can manage. Kortekaas adds, "I saw that shift happening and was introduced to OCP hardware, which led me to the thought that it was a more innovative way to build servers.

It's more energy-efficient, easy to maintain,

ClusterVision Founded almost 20 years ago by Alex Ninaber, Director of High-Performance Computing (HPC), ClusterVision specialises in high-performance computing and managing extensive scale data. "Typically, we provide software solutions to complex business environments, along with HPC installations and knowledge to make these environments successful," says Ninaber.

Ninaber adds, "one of the challenges in HPC is that generally, we are dealing with relatively large installations; between €300,000 and €20mn. So, one of the challenges is that one needs a good financial underpinning to provide reliable solutions to the market. Taurus Group provides the aimagazine.com

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financial infrastructure and distribution services to complete various solutions, ranging from small to huge scale. Solulever opens up different paths for us as it provides us access to specific types of customers we otherwise would not normally be dealing with. Circle B typically takes care of the colocation and data centre for us, which is something that we didn't use to do."

Studying his PhD at Birkbeck College (London), Ninaber found that he had a specific need to do large-scale calculations in molecular dynamics. "At that time, large HPC installations were usually located centrally in a country. To do large scale calculations, one had to request time on these machines.

So, we figured that we could be much more efficient by buying off-the-shelf hardware, 168

February 2022

together with a network and software to create our own HPC installation. This led us to be approached by a business customer to install an HPC division for them within their business. It turned out to be extremely successful, and three years later, we started our own company in the Netherlands."

When it comes to harnessing HPC in manufacturing, Ninaber says: "typically in manufacturing, HPC is used in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations of airflow and similar complex yet intricate calculations. For example, wind turbines that we spot everywhere are carefully planned as before they are built; calculations are performed to identify the optimal wind shape in that area. In addition to this, HPC is used heavily in the automotive

TAURUS GROUP

industry. Any process that requires a lot of CPU or GPU calculations, HPC comes to its use. For instance, manufacturing, physics, chemistry, finance, anything AI and even psychology are using HPC solutions today.”

Solulever Jitesh Kohli, CEO of Solulever, co-founded the company in 2019. "We operate within the space of industry 4.0, in particular digital manufacturing. We build industrial platforms to simplify our customers' journeys as they digitally transform their manufacturing operations. Our core products are called Brabo Edge Platform and Brabo Factory Cloud. This proposition is called Brabo Edge Platform, a unique platform that makes multiple layers of technologies required

to digitise manufacturing operations redundantly. We focus on batch and process manufacturing companies in Europe and India and have started making inroads in North America," says Kohli.

He mentions, "founded in 2019, Solulever, since its inception, was invested into by Taurus Group. Being a part of the family not only provides us with investment into its product development and market expansion, but we also benefit from the collaboration with sister companies, ClusterVision and Circle B, to drive the digitalisation of manufacturing."

Delivering hybrid solutions, Solulever offers its customers large scale manufacturing capabilities in batch and process control to digitise their plant aimagazine.com

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operations with real-time insights. "Our foundational product Brabo Edge platform covers 'all nine yards' of digitalisation needs when it comes to manufacturing.

Brabo helps manufacturers optimise their manufacturing operations through realtime insights, automation, and transparency into finer operations. Brabo is an open architecture and microservices architecturebased platform. These architectural choices set the platform aside from generic industrial platforms and offer unparalleled flexibility and scalability at a fraction of the cost otherwise possible. Brabo offers comprehensive integration possibilities covering varying complexities found in a shop-floor situation." adds Kohli.

Dividing manufacturing into three pillars, Kohli explains that "you are either trying to improve the utilisation of assets, which have been invested into or trying to improve the quality of production or trying to reduce the variable cost of manufacturing. To achieve any of these, there has to be a consistent architecture that is data-led and a continuous innovation programme is driven by common principles. Our platform essentially operates as that common architecture for continuous innovation and continuous optimisation."

Taurus Group:

ClusterVision:

Circle B:

Solulever:

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Ethical

CAR INSURANCE for the

community

WRITTEN BY: JOHN O'HANLON PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

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CURE AUTO INSURANCE

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CURE CIO, Douglas Benalan, discusses the commitment to providing affordable car insurance using cutting-edge technologies to serve its customers

H

eadquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, CURE auto insurance is a not-for-profit insurer founded in 1990 by former New Jersey Insurance Commissioner James J. Sheeran and awardwinning insurance expert Lena Chang, Ph.D. Originally heralded as the “cure” for the auto insurance crisis in New Jersey, the CURE business model is different in many ways. The insurer prioritises how a person drives versus their socio-economic status.

This unique approach is shaped by the philosophies of its founders and current leadership. The risk assessment model of most car insurers takes into consideration a host of different factors. Among the typical factors include driving history and driving record, but there can be others, such as education, occupation, credit score, and home ownership. Sadly, and unknown to to most drivers, is that most car insurance companies often charge more to drivers who are more likely to have lower incomes than those that are wealthier, regardless of their driving record. Is this fair? Even those who may know very little about car insurance would say no. CURE agrees, and with the help of its 200+ employees, has insured hundreds of thousands of drivers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and now Michigan as of 2021, without taking these socio-economic factors into account.

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CURE Insurance on its ethical auto insurance policy

“ Under my leadership, our IT team successfully achieved 70% of the planned projects within a few months, with the remaining 30% scheduled for completion before year end” DOUGLAS BENALAN

CIO, CURE AUTO INSURANCE

Solutions for an unprecedented challenge In direct response to New Jersey’s comprehensive PIP reform, CURE has become an unrelenting proponent of offering fair rates, based on driving record, and not socio-economic factors. “CURE has a responsibility to the community and, since 1990, we have continued to offer affordable car insurance to responsible drivers,” affirms 176

February 2022

Doug Benalan, who joined the company as CIO in 2020. “We base our rates on how well a customer drives, not their education, job or credit history.”

With more than 20 years of experience in IT leadership and digital transformation and having worked for major insurance and financial service businesses, such as Insurance Service Office (ISO), UBS

DOUGLAS BENALAN TITLE: CIO INDUSTRY: INSURANCE LOCATION: USA

Financials, Chubb and NJM Insurance, Benalan’s goal is to put his expertise to work at CURE. Yet despite his initial plans of upgrading IT and driving the transformation, when he first joined CURE there were more immediate challenges to face: “As a traditional work environment, almost all our employees worked in the office before the pandemic. The Covid crisis required our IT

EXECUTIVE BIO

Doug Benalan is the Chief Information Officer of Cure Auto Insurance responsible for building efficiency for business operations through automation and innovation. As a technology executive and visionary thought leader, he is recognised for bringing cost-effective solutions and speedto-market tools for enterprise-wide technology solutions.

Doug has 20+ years in the Information Technology, during which time he has architected and managed complex, multimilliondollar transformation projects to drive competitive advantage and return on investments for various insurance and financial organisations.

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CURE AUTO INSURANCE

“ In my eyes, being transparent, building trust, appreciating good work and making employees key players is what will transform a good organisation into a great one” DOUGLAS BENALAN

CIO, CURE AUTO INSURANCE

team to develop a cost-effective and secure remote solution so that all employees could work from home without any business disruption. Timing was critical.”

Despite the life-changing nature of Covid, the pandemic provided opportunities, it catalysed cloud-based solutions and stimulated the IT team into resilient and flexible working patterns. “IT has taken centre stage for some time and the pandemic only catapulted it further.

Almost every aspect of the organisation – from sales to operations – now relies on digital processes. As CIO, I had to make quick decisions, balancing strategic and tactical growth opportunities. But it wasn’t me alone. I have to applaud the way my IT team handled the pandemic with a creative approach, always supporting both internal and external customers.” As in many businesses, it made people acutely aware of the value of a trusted and dependable technical team!

The Guidewire implementation CURE and CIO, Doug Benalan, have a clear goal for its digital transformation – one that delivers customer-centric, omnichannel, cost savings with easy-to-use tools which provide measurable business value and ultimately customer satisfaction as a test of its success.

The first and most important driver for this transformation was the imminent expansion of CURE into Michigan. “We considered expansion based on the growth potential as a result of the state’s personal injury protection (PIP) /no-fault reform, some of which took effect in July 2021. The state’s prior mandatory unlimited PIP medical benefits proved too expensive for many Michigan families and some drivers just couldn't afford costly unlimited coverage,” Benalan explained. “We strongly believe CURE will make a difference in Michigan and provide affordable car Insurance there as we have done for 30 years in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.” Immediately after the launch, CURE saw a tremendous response from the public. The very first policies were for a mother and son in Pontiac, Michigan who had been paying a combined $3,600 annually. With CURE, their rate dropped to aimagazine.com

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$1,820, a pattern repeated across the state and reflecting an average savings of more than 50% for many drivers.”

This positive response was made possible largely by the recent and successful Phase 1 implementation of a new suite of Guidewire products. This includes adopting InsuranceNow to accelerate speed-to-market and business growth. “Speed-to-market was an important driver when considering a new system to help facilitate our goal of further expansion into new markets. Specifically, Guidewire InsuranceNow met our criteria – scalability, configurable, user-friendly and affordable,” said Benalan. “Also, its cloud and all-in-one aspects were both attractive and critical to help our IT staff increase efficiency by shifting maintenance and support to Guidewire so they are now able to focus on mission-critical business objectives that will accelerate our growth.”

“The system architecture runs in a highly scalable AWS cloud with all the DevOps for deployment and monitoring.” Benalan adds.

“Based on open API technology, integration is efficient with opportunities to share data between systems and came with Business Intelligence and a Looker tool for data reporting and dashboards. This program was delivered on time and within budget, while never losing sight of enhancing customer values. With the automation and scalable Guidewire system, management and internal users are now confident we can continue to explore expansion opportunities.”

Benalan has great hopes for the Guidewire InsuranceNow product, which allows insurers like CURE to launch innovative enhancements in weeks – meeting rapidly changing customer needs and quickly scaling up with a single core system. “It's a multi-million-dollar initiative, where our entire policy, claims, and billing system are moving from legacy 180

February 2022

“ As a technology leader, I enjoy being part of business growth and finding creative ways to further satisfy both our internal and external customers” DOUGLAS BENALAN

CIO, CURE AUTO INSURANCE

platforms to a modern system.” The transition required thorough planning and coordination across business units with user testing and acceptance. “My vision for this modern system is long term ROI, increased automation, scalability and the flexibility to be used across different platforms and browsers. I also seek to deliver better data reporting to help make quick yet well-informed decisions.” Expansion and growth would be far more difficult using the previous, less scalable system.

Root and branch transformation Change is not always easy, or welcome.

However, by showcasing detailed projected

Eric S. Poe CEO, CURE Auto Insurance and Cade Cunningham, Detroit Pistons

ROI over a five-year period, Benalan illustrated the value of his proposed changes and convinced CURE’s various business units and key stakeholders. “The application design is a microservice architecture pattern, also comprised of small reusable services running in AWS cloud. It has a disaster recovery zone and a highly scalable database for faster performance. The application connects to complex third-party integration services with REST API. The design also has database replication for live reporting, where tools like Looker are used to slice and dice the data for the customised dashboard. One example is our use of the DocOrigin tool for

designing complex insurance forms, which has increased accuracy and efficiency.”

At the same time, Benalan is establishing best practices for quality agile development.

Since some of the integrating modules are out-of-the-box solutions with little flexibility for customisation, Benalan and his team architected expandable interfaces that were quickly implemented and accepted throughout the business. The CURE CIO keenly recognises any technical transformation has to be accompanied by a culture change. “The most important factors to this project’s success were user awareness and corresponding training aimagazine.com

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programs. We used a tailored awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement (ADKAR) model, in which all our business users were involved in each step in the systems development life cycle (SDLC), and their feedback was integrated throughout the process.”

IT delivering value today and tomorrow Changing and modernising the IT infrastructure was another key task, such as leveraging CISCO technologies like Meraki and Umbrella to improve the health and security of the CURE ecosystem. Upgrades 182

February 2022

to the communication systems were also required to handle the expected growth in business and technological needs. To ensure the call centre had the tools needed on the digital journey, the IT team implemented a modern Genesys Cloud solution through which the number of dropped calls decreased while efficiency increased by 10%.

Benalan emphasises that every change he and the IT team introduced were designed to serve the organisation's mission: to provide affordable car insurance based primarily on one’s driving record. To achieve this end and ensure constant improvement

CURE AUTO INSURANCE

Thanksgiving food drive donatons

to the applications, the team implemented a monthly feedback process involving review by all business stakeholders in order to improve IT strategy. Customer input was also part of the ongoing development and enhancements. “We have a number of measurable goals. One is a system where customers can buy policies online, reducing the need for manual operations and call centre costs. Under Benalan leadership, IT team successfully achieved 70% of the planned features for the online sales portal within a few months, with the remaining 30% scheduled for completion before year end.”

Although maintaining the old system was costly, the Guidewire implementation has already delivered measurable efficiencies, Benalan says. Because CURE refused to use certain socio-economic factors for rating, the need to consider credit history, occupation, college degree, and related factors is eliminated. The IT solution brings automation and easy customisation to policy generation, billing and affordable payment plans, delivering lowering premiums for customers with a good driving history.

With these new systems in place, Benalan has now turned his attention to the customer experience, investing in interactive voice response (IVR), chatbots, secure claims submission and other advanced solutions so customers can access information 24/7. In the very near future, he will introduce predictive analytics for customer retention, and OCR technology to scan and upload policyholder information for complete automation. This will be complemented by seamless processing and integration with third-party partners for claims assistance such as Enterprise car rental and Safelite® AutoGlass.

Since its start 30 years ago, CURE has remained wedded to the principle of ending unfair practices and discrimination in the insurance industry. The IT team, under the leadership of Doug Benalan, has furthered that principle while simplifying every interaction with its ever expanding customer base. Since CURE does not consider credit score, occupation, or education level as factors when determining rates, it's no wonder that it has been able to steadily grow its footprint nationwide.

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MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

BUILT ON TRUST AND

SUSTAIN 184

February 2022

NABILITY WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY aimagazine.com

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MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

At 70 years young, MTL has laid a strong foundation and is now moving towards a digitally-driven future set to revolutionise InsureTech in Thailand

M

uang Thai Life Assurance has been providing life insurance services to the people of Thailand, under the principle of integrity and fairness, for the past 70 years. It is now building on this strong foundation by creating digitally-driven, innovative products for ‘forward-thinking people’.

MTL is a major Thai life and health insurer and has exchanged ‘smiles’ with its customers, employees and agents since it was founded in 1951 by Chulin Lamsam.

Current Chief Executive Officer Sara Lamsam took the time to celebrate the company’s success with InsurTech Magazine.

“Innovation and forward-thinking has always been the DNA of Muang Thai Life Assurance,” he said. Lamsam has led the company for the past 17 years, as it has evolved from a life insurance provider founded with the intention of providing a social safety net, to investing in its own AI-as-a-Service firm to help it realise the full potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the insurance space.

“The most important thing in life insurance is trust and honesty. Trust in the company, trust in the product, trust in the team as this provides sustainability for both our customers and MTL,” said Lamsam, speaking from the company’s head office in Bangkok.

“We aim to be a partner that customers trust through innovation. We have a dynamic pricing product, which not

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Muang Thai

“We aim to be a partner that customers trust through innovation”

many life assurance products, saying “it’s companies offer,” said not just about sales and Lamsam, who also margins.” One example highlights the fact they of this is The Muang are a very strong brand Thai Smile Club, which in Thailand because of a offers customer focus, belief in working with the the ability to respond to customer at the centre. the needs of customers “We are the regional and is considered to be life insurance leader, more than a standard SARA LAMSAM which is strong in terms loyalty programme.

CEO, MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE of finance, service and “MTL started off as image and under a a family business, and good governance and risk management although we still have shares, we now have system. We deeply understand the needs partnerships with banks and multinational and behaviour of our customers to deliver companies. We have a transparent suitable products and services to create governance structure, but we still have the financial stability and complete the lives of sentiments of working as a team. During a customers throughout their lifetimes.” time when everything is very dynamic we are Lamsam points out MTL — a familiar horizontal in the way we work as opposed to and friendly name visible throughout having a silo mentality,” said Lamsam.

Thai society — focuses on the lifetime of “We have a very strong brand in Thailand, the policyholder with dynamic pricing people always recognise us, and internally 188

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MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

we have a very strong team. We are starting to connect to an ecosystem of partners, especially hospitals or nursing homes that are beyond life insurance.”

How Aigen will revolutionise MTL Two years ago, MTL established Aigen, a subsidiary company of MTGH, which

TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER INDUSTRY: INSURANCE LOCATION: BANGKOK, THAILAND

EXECUTIVE BIO

Digital transformation Dr Sutee Mokkhavesa, President of MTL, spearheaded the company's own AI -as-aService company and has driven the digital transformation.

“We've come a long way in the past five years, but we view our digital transformation as a never-ending journey that requires perseverance. It’s not a project, it's more like a continuous transformation that the company is undergoing as we experience this fast pace of change in technology.”

Mokkhavesa, who has been with the company for 18 years, pointed out the digital journey started with MTL creating a robust customer service platform that was unproven in the industry and faced questions over whether people would use the apps.

“When COVID-19 hit, people couldn't go to our branches, they couldn't go to hospitals, so the adoption rates skyrocketed and this has fostered the belief that consumers can change and they can change radically once you get it right.

“We were fortunate that we built the digital asset prior to the pandemic and it has a telemedicine app embedded within it. Typically, 70% of all hospital visits are for simple diseases which can be served by telemedicine. During the pandemic, more customers found it convenient and it was cheaper for us, so it was a win-win all around. I believe COVID-19 accelerated our digital adoption by at least a decade.”

SARA LAMSAM

With over 28 years of experience, Sara has led MTL to become a leader in Thailand’s life insurance industry. Sara has taken the leading role to enhance the life insurance business with innovative ideas, holistic thinking, and change management and transformation leadership in order to tackle major business challenges today. In addition, he has been involved as director in Fuchsia Venture Capital (Leading Financial Conglomerate in Thailand and SEA) for the longevity of life through innovation and technology.

Moreover, Sara has been actively involved in the enhancement of rules and regulations. He has worked as the president of the Thai Life Assurance Association and worked with the Office of Insurance Commission (OIC) to set a strategic roadmap to set new standards for the sustainable life insurance industry. In his professional experience, he has also served in many business positions in the financial sector.

In key, his examples are the chairman and director of the Thai Financial Planners Association and the chairman of the Federation of Thai Insurance Organisations.

MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

“ We recruited 30 best-inclass experts for Aigen and the mandate would be to work together with MTL and solve any technology problems and once they have this brain established they can sell this service to other industries” PRESIDENT, MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

have this brain established they can sell this service to other industries.

“The first use-case was on a death claim which used to take a claims manager 55 minutes. With AI it took six seconds - which is a massive productivity gain. I can then redeploy people to work on harder cases that need human intervention.

“Aigen is maturing nicely and what we are proving is the right people with the right culture and right incentives can innovate on the edge and create a high-value enterprise,” he said.

specialises in AI as they felt this was going to have a big impact on the insurance industry.

“We built a strong capability with 30 bestin-class experts for Aigen and the mandate would be to work together with MTL and solve any technical problems and once they

How AI can detect fraud Mokkhavesa said they are seeing great potential in AI helping MTL with Optical Character Recognition (OCR). This technology can help decipher an itemised bill from a hospital and identify any

DR SUTEE MOKKHAVESA

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TIMELINE OF MTL 1951 As a financial institution that has been providing “Life Insurance” to the Thai society since its establishment on the 6th of April, 1951, MTL has been operating its business through quality life insurance product and service development, together with asset management. In addition, MTL is the first company to receive royal garuda.

DID YOU KNOW...

1998 MTL divided its insurance business into life (MTL) and non-life insurance (MTI).

Also, MTL shaped the look o the logo and changed the slogan to “Company of forward-thinking people.”

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2004 Muang Thai Group Holding joined forces with an important business partnership, “Ageas”, formerly known as “FORTIS” and started a bancassurance business with Kasikornbank Public Company Limited (Kbank). Moreover, MTL launched “Muang Thai Smile Club” as the first CRM programme for the life insurance industry, and MTL was rebranded.

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2009 Kasikornbank increased the shareholding proportion in the company in order to enhance the potential for developing the bancassurance channel in full scale.

2012 The company was converted into a public limited company to reflect upon its stability and compliance with good corporate governance. Its performance has been disclosed to the public while being audited to ensure that they are following the standards of the public limited companies.

2017 MTL launched “Fuchsia Innovation Centre” and “Fuchsia VC”, a new dimension of innovation to pioneer and develop products and services, enhancing accessibility and tailor-fitting them to each customer segment, and investing in startups focused on insurtech and wellness tech within the life and health spaces.

2019 Launch of subsidiary company Aigen specialising in artificial intelligence and building capability with best-in-class recruiting

MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

“ The most important thing in life insurance is trust and honesty. Trust in the company, trust in the product, trust in the team as this provides sustainability for both our customers and MTL”

SUTEE MOKKHAVESA, PH.D. TITLE: PRESIDENT INDUSTRY: INSURANCE LOCATION: BANGKOK, THAILAND Sutee is the President of Muang Thai Life Assurance Public Company Limited (MTL), overseeing all management operations, investment, risk management, strategic direction, and digital initiatives.

Sutee holds a PhD in Applied Mathematical Finance from Imperial College, London. As a professional with more than 18 years of experience in financial services. He set up Aigen, a subsidiary of Muang Thai Group.

Aigen is an AI-as-a-Service company focusing on using deep learning to create solutions for the group.

He also teaches at various academic institutions and focuses his research in areas of Asset Management, ALM, Risk and Optimisation.

SARA LAMSAM

fraudulent claims, which can be in excess of 20% of total claims for the whole industry.

“We can see any fraudulent claims, such as any other medicines being prescribed, and analyse all sorts of things that we were not able to do before. Not because we didn't have the data, we had the data, but not in the right format.

“We are now working on OCR to read a doctor’s handwriting and contextual information. You may ask why we need this when hospitals will be digital in the future.

The answer is in Thailand, we have many sophisticated hospitals and those which are basic and still use pen and paper.

“It is estimated abuses and fraud in life insurance probably constitute for up to 20% of the total claims. MTL is a big company so even if we fractionally reduce this by 2%, that's a huge saving, so it makes a lot of sense.”

Thai Chatbot using NLP MTL has also built their own Thai chatbot using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and have seen some “spectacular” results

EXECUTIVE BIO

CEO, MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

1951

Year MTL was founded

2020

Hall of Fame by the Office of Insurance Commission (OIC)

2,500 Employees

20,000 Agents

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“We can see any fraudulent claims, such as any other medicines being prescribed, and analyse all sorts of things that we were not able to do before, not because we didn't have the data, we had the data, but not in the right format” DR SUTEE MOKKHAVESA

PRESIDENT, MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

when used against the complex Jumbo Health Policy.

“The chatbot makes the interaction from the agent to the customer seamless. It basically has two loops. The agents ask the questions, we train the bot, and by looking at the questions, we can go back and retrain the agents on the questions they should work on, for example ‘is physiotherapy included in the policy?’.”

Mokkhavesa said AI has the power to take on mundane jobs and provide higher value tasks to the team at MTL. Power of partnership with Loxley Orbit MTL also partnered with Loxley Orbit, a provider of cutting-edge cloud technologies and services, offering scalable solutions for companies. Mokkhavesa said, “we use Loxley Orbit to develop our services, such as our inventory systems, temporary receipt systems for our vendors to carry and they also helped us with the regional migration of our Google workspace platform for our 6,000 users from Lotus Domino.

The life insurance and health insurance industry is probably one of the biggest aimagazine.com

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MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

DID YOU KNOW...

MTL FOCUS ON THE FOLLOWING PRODUCTS AND SERVICES • Ordinary life insurance • Life insurance with payroll • Small tickets life insurance • Group life insurance • Accident and health insurance • Credit and mortgage Insurance • Selling life insurance through various channels such as through agents, through branches nationwide, through banks, through online channel and via tele-seller • Customer service centre • Customer loyalty program (Muangthai Smile Club)

industries in the world, yet it's the one most resistant to change. But I do believe that with the right incentives and the right demand by our consumers, it will change and it will change quickly, so everyone must be prepared for this.”

How collaboration with ZA Tech will innovate the InsurTech industry Sara Lamsam, CEO of Muang Thai Life Assurance, revealed that MTL has teamed up with ZA Tech Global Limited (ZA Tech), 196

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which is Asia’s leading technology venture company founded by ZA International and is supported by Softbank’s Vision Fund 1.

This synergy is made possible by the commitment of both organisations to create new experiences and innovations for the life insurance industry, including making it easier and more flexible for Thai people to access insurance products in line with the new world and changing needs.

Lamsam commented: “Throughout the past 70 years, the company has never ceased to be a leading player in the development of products and services for customers. During the past four to five years, the company has continuously developed in the digital field. Whether it is the establishment of the Fuchsia Innovation Centre, the launch of the MTL Click application, MTL Mini Click, the

MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

“ We deeply understand the needs and behavior of our customers to deliver suitable products and services to create financial stability and complete the lives of customers throughout their lifetimes” SARA LAMSAM

CEO, MUANG THAI LIFE ASSURANCE

MTL Fit application, and many other services, and most recently, MTL has decided to take the next step on the digital path together with ZA Tech, one of the most famous InsurTech companies in Asia.

“This collaboration is an important combination of strengths. With Muang Thai Life Assurance having strength in innovation and product development, together with the strong capabilities of ZA Tech in the field of insurance technology, innovation can be carried out seamlessly, and we can create experiences that meet specific needs (personalised) of customers and various partners in the ecosystem comprehensively.”

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HARNESSING AI TO EFFICIENTLY SERVE CANADA

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WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

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Marco Sciarra, Director of Operational Planning and Technology, discusses Bell Canada's diverse workforce and development of AI-powered technology

C

anada’s largest communications company, Bell, leads the way in broadband and media innovation with its world-class wireless and fibre networks.

Looking at different ways to advance how Canadians connect with each other and the world, Bell consistently works on its own strategy to build on its own competitive strengths while embracing the new opportunities of the integrated digital future.

With its commitment to bring the best digital connections and next-generation services to Canadians, Bell is made up of three factions, as its Director of Operational Planning and Technology, Marco Sciarra explained: “There are three main segments to Bell, there's Bell Wireless, Bell Wireline and Bell Media.”

He continued: “We have a wireline division that supports internet and TV, wireless for mobile devices and then we’ve got Bell Media.

From a telecom standpoint, you would think that we're in the tech space, we’ve evolved over the past decade as a data-centric company, data is at the forefront of everything that we do. When we think about the future, everything really is linked to data.”

Customer experience is at the centre of everything Bell does to ensure the company delivers continued success in a fast-changing communications marketplace. Adding to its people-first culture, Bell is also dedicated to combating mental health issues in Canada with its initiative, Bell Let’s Talk.

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“BELL IS ABOUT SHAPING THE FUTURE”

Sciarra expanded: from governments and “Bell is a steward in corporations that have the community that joined the cause. we serve and support.

At the end of 2020, we Creating diverse were fast approaching and agile teams about $121 million in To ensure the company MARCO SCIARRA investment from a mental maintains its innovative DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONAL PLANNING health standpoint.” edge, Bell strives to AND TECHNOLOGY, BELL CANADA This initiative has create agile teams to been in practice since improve efficiency. As 2010 to increase awareness and create new well as a strong customer-first culture, the conversations around mental health. Through company is also dedicated to ensuring that Bell Let’s Talk, millions of Canadians, including its employees are in an environment that leading personalities, engaged in an open cultivates productivity and efficiency. discussion about mental illness.

“We're really focused on engagement During these discussions, many offered and that is extremely important from a Bell new ideas and hope for those who struggle standpoint. We want to make sure that we and the number of people joining the have engaged employees. We know that initiative grows each year. folks that are engaged tend to perform As a result, institutions and organisations better and tend to stay longer. Engaged have received new funding for access, team members tend to commit more to the care and research from Bell Let’s Talk and cause,” said Sciarra.

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He then added how the company’s diversity initiative feeds into this: “It's really important that we create the sort of an environment that is inclusive and diverse across multiple dimensions. Bell truly believes that it helps to create a more agile workforce that learns faster and is able to perform much better. We have realised that diverse culture leads to better results and a higher engaged workforce, so that is extremely important to Bell.”

“By hiring a diverse set of skills, as well as diversity from a cultural standpoint, you get different perspectives and on how to approach opportunities. This tends to deliver better results,” he continued.

MARCO SCIARRA TITLE: DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONAL PLANNING AND TECH INDUSTRY: COMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: CANADA

Marco Sciarra is an accomplished business leader who has held multiple senior leadership roles within the telecommunications industry.

Over the past two decades, he has accumulated vast expertise in the fields of financial and operations management as they relate to large, global, and complex customer support organisations. Today, Marco holds the title of director operational planning and technology, supporting one of the largest client support divisions in Canada, Bell Canada.

#1

Bell 5G was ranked as Canada's best by network analysts Global Wireless Solutions

121mn+

Bell has committed $121,373,806.75 to mental health initiatives through its Bell Let’s Talk initiative

EXECUTIVE BIO

Bell’s innovation with artificial intelligence Like many technology companies, Bell is dedicated to continuous evolution to ensure it remains best-in-class and offers its customers cutting-edge technological solutions.

“Bell is one of the most innovative companies out there,” said the Director of Operational Planning and Technology.

“In my department, we created our own set of applications. We have millions of lines of code and we're tied to almost every facet of the business. From an innovative standpoint, building our own applications has really given us the opportunity to develop capabilities that are just not available today,” added Sciarra.

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In 2020, the global RPA market size was valued at USD$1.57 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.8% from 2021 to 2028. A big driver for this growth is the pandemic-induced work-from-home situation, that caused a big shift in the ways in which businesses operate and accelerated blueprints for faster, leaner operating models.

Intelligent automation in Telcos According to Gorske, Telcos have put every aspect of human interaction front and centre, as much of it moved online and forced staff to work from home:

“We supplemented that human workforce with our digital workforce to transform the end-to-end workflow, including handling of manual repetitive tasks. We have developed a ‘single pane of glass’ user interface, which provides the agent with a 360 degree view of the customer.

This is where we’re really focused and seeing significant results back to our customers, in terms of efficiency.”

Blue Prism has already formed strong partnerships with Telefonica and Bell, leaders in their primary markets of Spain and Canada.

Contact centres are a key driver for telcos in terms of how they build their brand recognition, but Gorske remarks that “the strategy and the vision need to be aligned to the wider business needs, rather than just focusing on short term tactical types of activities to remove and develop efficiencies. We provide a pivotal and sustaining, enterprise-grade scale programme. We call it the Robotic Operating Model (ROM).”

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One of these applications is Bell’s Virtual Manager. Created by Sciarra and his team, Bell’s Virtual Manager is tied to the company’s applications, and at the time of development, was incredibly ahead of the curve in terms of artificial intelligence (AI) powered technologies within the workplace.

This Virtual Manager helps to manage the client operations division, reaches out to the employees in a real-time fashion.

“BELL IS A STEWARD IN THE COMMUNITY THAT WE SERVE AND SUPPORT” MARCO SCIARRA

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONAL PLANNING AND TECHNOLOGY, BELL CANADA

Sciarra said that he was keen to develop something that would respond effectively as the company began to respond to larger volumes of data, he explained that: “In the past, most organisations out there would rely on a workforce management team who are staring at dashboards.”

“Dashboarding is still ‘in’ today, but my philosophy is that if you're dealing with the amount of data that is coming at us in waves and streams, staring at screens is just not going to cut it. Our Virtual Manager now reaches out in real-time to make game-time decisions.

We've found that it's really improved our overall output across a number of different dimensions,” he continued.

Recognising the importance of data and analytics to the company’s growth, Sciarra and his team are using different technologies within its applications to improve client operations.

Already, the company has seen benefits from utilising AI and ML-enabled technology: aimagazine.com

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“ FROM AN INNOVATIVE STANDPOINT, WE’RE BUILDING OUR OWN APPLICATIONS AND THIS HAS REALLY GIVEN US THE OPPORTUNITY TO DEVELOP CAPABILITIES THAT ARE JUST NOT AVAILABLE TODAY” MARCO SCIARRA

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONAL PLANNING AND TECHNOLOGY, BELL CANADA

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“Since incorporating this technology into our operations we've noticed better sales and churn results from our employees. We're all about trying to not just predict the future, but rather leverage the opportunities that exist that appear in real-time.”

Sciarra added: “Acting upon the opportunities as they arise is the most important aspect of AI/ML. So this is why we have introduced our Virtual Manager. When we step back and think about the outcome, better client experience leads to better results.”

Outlining a use-case for this application, Sciarra said: “Let's say as an example we needed to add additional staff to deal with service level challenges or a spike in demand, our ML capabilities are where we re-run our forecast where we're looking at information in real-time.”

Developing automated processes with Blue Prism Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has become increasingly popular amongst businesses with its ability to automate repetitive tasks, freeing workers up to spend more time elsewhere.

In 2020, the global RPA market size was valued at USD$1.57 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.8% from 2021 to 2028. A big driver for this growth is the pandemic-induced work-from-home situation many workers are in which has caused a big shift in the ways in which businesses operate.

Recognising this shift, Bell is keen to be a key player in the development of RPA technology. Sciarra explained: “Robotic process automation technology has really

come into play and it's going to represent an even bigger new sort of digital workforce in the years to come. We're really excited in terms of what we've been able to accomplish on this front. Ensuring that the opportunity is shared between all business units within our division” To support this desire to automate and robotise many of its processes, Bell has partnered with Blue Prism and recognises them as a key partner in its AI journey.

Blue Prism is the global leader in intelligent automation for the enterprise. Its technology transforms how companies carry out work and accelerates operational efficiency and agility by making it easy to automate processes.

Bell was recently awarded BluePrism’s highest honour of the Pinnacle Award for 2021, given to organisations that are leaders in the automation space. aimagazine.com

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“WE'RE FAST APPROACHING ABOUT A HUNDRED PROCESSES THAT WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO ROBOTISE” MARCO SCIARRA

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONAL PLANNING AND TECHNOLOGY, BELL CANADA

Sciarra explained that Bell is keen to partner with companies that have “already mastered certain aspects of what Bell is trying to achieve.

By selecting the right partner, we’re able to focus on what we do best and incorporate what they do best.”

He added: “Blue Prism has done a really good job of developing a suite of applications that are leading in terms of their capabilities.”

Not only do Blue Prism and Bell work together to support Bell in its quest for automation, but Sciarra himself is also on the customer advisory board at Blue Prism and as a result supports the company with its own mission.

“We do realise that Blue Prism has much bigger clients out there that they do business with, yet they've always listened to us,” explained Sciarra.

“They've always given us the opportunity to work with them and from our feedback, they've made some changes on their side, which has worked quite well for us,” he added.

Readying Canadians for the metaverse The internet today is often the main entry point for millions of us to access information and services, communicate and socialise with each other, sell goods as well as a form of entertainment.

As Canada’s largest communications company, Bell is ready to adapt to the

changing landscape with the introduction of the metaverse. Sciarra himself explained he is keen to expand his knowledge in this area to be readily equipped to understand the application of a virtual environment “Bell is about shaping the future. We're at the forefront of technology, especially from a 5G standpoint. The immersive experience with the metaverse is going to be extremely important.” he said.

Sciarra concluded: “We also want to continue to deliver the best experience to our client base. Bell is a very big company in Canada, and so we do have a responsibility to support our communities and I think that's also extremely important. We're heavily involved in SDG initiatives and looking at how that plays a role is extremely important as well.”

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