AI - August 2022

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August 2022 | aimagazine.com

GENDER BIAS IN AI: SPEAKING TO SOPHIA

ROBOTS-ASA-SERVICE: Accelerating robotics in small businesses

Sophia the Robot shares how gender bias in AI is not exclusive to human beings…

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The AI Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

CATHERINE GRAY DEPUTY EDITORS

ALEX TUCK

CHEIF CONTENT OFFICER

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA

CHEIF DESIGN OFFICER

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

CREATIVE TEAM

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

MATT JOHNSON

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

INDIA BERRY

KIERAN WAITE

MARTA EUGENIO ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD DREW HARDMAN PROJECT DIRECTORS

KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO CRAIG KILLINGBACK

JAMES WHITE

JASON WESTGATE JASON ANDIKA-SMITH MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

Is it possible for humans to have truly meaningful conversations with robots?

From chatbots to automated call services, AI is changing the way we interact with each other. But, how meaningful are these conversations really?

“By asking deeper questions and creating a shared understanding through conversation, we can create a powerful conduit for transformation” AI MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

Isolation and loneliness were two very prevalent themes of 2020, even extending into 2021 and beyond. COVID-19, a period defined by strict lockdowns and work-from-home mandates, heightened people’s desires for meaningful conversations – particularly as embraces from friends and family turned to Zoom calls and waves through a closed window.

The World Economic Forum believes that meaningful conversations are crucial, helping create bonds of trust that can lead to collective action.

By asking deeper questions and creating a shared understanding through conversation, we can create a powerful conduit for transformation.

But is it possible for us to have these meaningful conversations with machines?

In this issue, I speak to Sophia the Robot about her experiences as a female robot, touching on important diversity issues; together, we are opening a platform for these issues to be discussed in a meaningful way.

Although some believe we will never be able to meaningfully converse with a robot, it doesn’t stop us from having beneficial relationships with them.

Conversations are, by nature, very personal to those involved, so whether it is meaningful or not could be down to the individual to decide…

CATHERINE GRAY

catherine.gray@bizclikmedia.com

© 2022 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Brought to you by BizClik Media Group SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 7th-8th September is broadcast live to the world and incorporates three zone areas of Sustainability LIVE, B-Corp LIVE plus March8 LIVE in to one event.

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

Get tickets

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

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

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 10 Big Picture 12 The Brief 14 Timeline: How AI supported the fight against COVID-19 16 Trailblazer: Cheryl Rosenthal-Warlow 20 Five Mins With: Hanson Robotics’ robot, Sophia

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SC Ventures

42

SC Ventures aims to rewire DNA of banking

AI/ML

Driving forward SME automation with RaaS models

48

Kainos

Breaching boundaries of limitation to digitally form

64

88

Chatbots: enhancing or diminishing the customer experience?

Turnkey IT Solutions in a powerful boutique model

Applications

EvoBits

72 IoT

Driving forward supply chains in Industry 4.0 with IoT

80

Technology

Accelerating diagnosis with quantum computing

106 Top 10

Leaders innovating in the AI space

7 - 8 SEPT 2022

STREAMED & IN PERSON

BUSINESS DESIGN CENTRE, LONDON

SHAPING THE BUSINESS OF SUSTAINABILITY AND ESG 3,000+

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A BizClik Media Group Event:

Watch our 2022 Showreel

Join us at SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON 2022.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 7th-8th September is broadcast live to the world and incorporates three zone areas of Sustainability LIVE, B-Corp LIVE plus March8 LIVE in to one event.

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

Get tickets

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

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

See you on:

7 - 8 September 2022

Sponsor opportunities

BIG PICTURE

10

August 2022

IBM/Promare

Diving in deep with AI to discover the hidden secrets of the sea The Atlantic Ocean

The Mayflower Autonomous Ship project, led by marine research organisation ProMare and IBM, raises questions around our knowledge of oceans and the impact of AI on marine research.

These unmanned vessels run on solar energy and use IBM AI, automation, cloud, and edge technologies to provide a safer, more cost-effective alternative to manned ships. With no human crew,

the vessel works alongside scientists and other autonomous ships to deepen our understanding of critical issues such as climate change, ocean plastic pollution and marine mammal conservation.

The development of marine autonomous systems also promises to transform oceanrelated industries such as shipping, oil and gas, telecommunications, security and defence and fishing and aquaculture.

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11

THE BRIEF “In the right circumstance, RaaS is a perfect model” Wayne Butterfield

Global Head of Intelligent Automation Solutions, ISG Automation 

BY THE NUMBERS

How many businesses have AI investments and how many deploy AI capabilities in their work AI INV E ST

90%

AI DEPLO Y

M

>15%

EN T

“Currently, it is critical to have a data-driven way to analyse all feedback and unsolicited data available to a brand, and respond to customers quickly and efficiently”

TS

READ MORE

M EN

Pranav Desai

Chief Product Officer, Reputation  READ MORE

“Healthcare by nature requires large collation and analysis of vast data sets and computations of data at great speed to make critical decisions” Sue Tripathi, Ph.D.

Managing Director, Global GTM Lead, Data, AI, Accenture  READ MORE

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August 2022

SUNLIGHT.IO LAUNCH BETA PROGRAMME TO MAKE EDGE AI DEPLOYABLE Sunlight.io has announced support for the NVIDIA Jetson edge AI platform and the Lenovo SE70 with its beta programme to make edge AI deployable at scale.

TEMPUS: AI CARDIOLOGY RESEARCH AND TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE Joel Dudley, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer at Tempus discusses the importance of AI in healthcare and the impact of the company’s AI cardiology research.

TOP 10 COMPANIES DEVELOPING AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE TECHNOLOGY To learn more about the autonomous vehicle industry, AI Magazine takes a look at the top 10 autonomous vehicle companies leading the way in the industry.

 GLOAT Gloat, an internal marketplace for corporate talent, announced that it raised US$90mn in a Series D round led by Generation Investment Management, bringing the startup’s total raised to US$192mn

FORECASTING PHOSPHORUS POLLUTION IN LAKE GENEVA WITH HYBRID MACHINE LEARNING In the 70s, phosphorus inputs from detergents and fertilisers degraded the water quality of Switzerland's Lake Geneva, encouraging officials to take action to remediate the pollution.

To combat it, George Sugihara, Boston University's Ethan Deyle, and three international colleagues spent five years searching for a better way to forecast and manage Lake Geneva's ecological response to the threat of phosphorus pollution, as well as the added effects of climate change.

"Nature is much more interconnected and interdependent than scientists would often like to think," said George Sugihara, a biological oceanographer at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Recently, the team published its new hybrid empirical dynamic modelling (EDM) approach, which can help forecast phosphorus pollution in Lake Geneva as a form of supervised machine learning – a way for computers to learn patterns and teach researchers about the mechanisms behind the data.

 INVOCA AI-powered call tracking and conversational analytics company Invoca became an AI unicorn this year after announcing a fresh funding round of US$83mn. In March, the company revealed that it had recorded more than 70% revenue growth during the past 12 months  NVIDIA Shares of semiconductor pioneer NVIDIA are down 4.4%. There was no specific news from the company about what caused the fall, but it reinforces ongoing worry that slumping GPU prices could topple the company's gaming segment  BRAZIL The majority of federal government organisations in Brazil are still in the very early stages of using AI, according to a study carried out by the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU)

U P AUG22

D O W N aimagazine.com

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TIMELINE How AI supported the fight against COVID-19 As we emerge from the pandemic and adjust to the ‘new normal’, AI Magazine reflects on how AI-enabled technology supported the fight against coronavirus

DEC 2019 Early detection BlueDot used AI and its ability to continuously review data sets, such as news, airline ticket sales, demographics, climate data and animal populations. On 31 December 2019, BlueDot detected what was then considered an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, China and identified the cities most likely to experience this outbreak.

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August 2022

FEB 2020

MAR 2020

High hopes for AI Just before the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, the press and the scientific community echoed the high hopes that data science and AI could be used to confront coronavirus and "fill in the blanks" still left by science.

Supporting efforts in China Known for its advances in the AI field, China were well equipped to utilise AI as it helped fight the pandemic.

AI was used to speed up genome sequencing, make faster diagnoses, carry out scanner analyses or, more occasionally, handle maintenance and delivery robots.

MAR 2020

JAN 2021

FEB 2021

Enterprises supporting the efforts with AI DeepMind – a subsidiary of Google's parent company, Alphabet – shared its predictions of coronavirus protein structures with its AlphaFold AI system.

IBM, Amazon, Google and Microsoft also provided the computing power of their servers to the US authorities to process very large datasets in epidemiology, bioinformatics and molecular modelling.

Using AI to distribute the vaccine Just shy of a year after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, countries began to roll out their vaccine programmes. AI proved helpful, as it could be applied to improve understanding on which populations to target to curve the pandemic sooner and adjust both supply chain and distribution logistics to ensure the most people get vaccinated in the least amount of time.

Creating COVID vaccines candidates with AI A team at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California created an AI framework that significantly speeds-up the analysis of COVID vaccine candidates and also finds the best preventative medical therapies. This came at a time when more and more COVID mutations were emerging, bringing existing vaccines’ efficacy into question. aimagazine.com

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TRAILBLAZER

Creating a space for women in the AI industry GfK’s VP, CTO Office, Cheryl Rosenthal-Warlow reflects on her experiences as a woman in tech, balancing work and home life as well as being an advocate for junior employees

K

een technologist and selfproclaimed “geek” Cheryl Rosenthal-Warlow spends her time at GfK connecting people, processes and systems to ensure the smooth running of the technology department at the AI company.

“I'm very logical. But, the biggest asset I bring is that I try to understand everybody, what different teams need, and then translate that to other people,” says Rosenthal-Warlow.

“My role's more about trying to make sure that there aren't people doing double work. I make sure that, if you're an engineer, you can just focus on your engineering and my team and I deal with the other stuff. Dealing with all the processes means that you get information from all ends. From a management point of view, you've got information upon which you can base decisions,” she adds.

Although the VP didn’t initially envision herself in this role, Rosenthal-Warlow explains that it’s the perfect job for her: “I love technology. I love the people who work in it. There are loads of smart people. I love the logic.”

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August 2022

4

Years at GFK ­– Queensland University of Technology graduate

“There are so many things that change. I like being at the forefront of what's going on,” she adds.

Explaining that she feels lucky to do something she enjoys, Rosenthal-Warlow shares what is most important to her in her career: “Mainly, I want to do a good job. I want to make a difference, do good work and produce stuff that's going to be useful, with integrity. I want to actually make a difference.”

Having been in the technology industry for over 30 years, RosenthalWarlow has seen the technology and AI space change dramatically as it strives to become more inclusive and reflective of society.

This continuing transformation in the industry has meant some opportunities have been more difficult to reach for Rosenthal-Warlow than her male counterparts, as she notes: “You definitely have to work harder. There's definitely a different perspective. Not so much these days, but even now you'll see a woman being quite strong and forceful with her opinion, and it's seen as just being very abrupt, which is different for men.”

“I am still connected with other women that were in the founding group; it did make me feel like something I did actually made a difference” aimagazine.com

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TRAILBLAZER

“I was the only woman in the room most of the time. In fact, in one of the first women's networks I set up, I was sitting in a room full of women. It just felt very bizarre,” she continues.

As a keen advocate for diversity and inclusion in the workplace, Rosenthal-Warlow is often at the heart of different diversity groups.

“The first diversity group I supported was at my old company in 2015. There were no groups at all. So we set one up and it was supported by the senior management team.

We recognised something needed to happen. We did lots of events to bring awareness and just get that conversation going. I was very proud and honoured to have been asked to run this,” she explains.

“I am still connected with other women that were in the founding group; it did make me feel like something I did actually made a difference.”

Now, Rosenthal-Warlow acts as a support to other female members of the team, escalating diversity issues and initiatives when needed.

The VP also acted as an internal speaker for GfK’s menopause awareness talk as the company drafted its new menopause policy.

“It was really interesting,” she says.

"Even six months ago, I could not have pictured myself on a call with hundreds of colleagues talking about my experience with menopause.

But the fact that we are there now and we can normalise that kind of conversation is a good start. I was really proud that I was able to do this and help other women. This is 18

August 2022

something that we should share; we should make it normal and encourage as many men as possible to attend.”

On top of her work in diversity, Brisbane-born Rosenthal-Warlow is also passionate about the younger members of the team and is keen to cultivate them: “I have a reputation for bringing in people who've got absolutely no experience but I’ve

“I was sitting in a room full of women. It just felt very bizarre”

seen something in them or I've connected with them through somebody else. I have great people in my team, and I want to make a difference to them and their careers.

That's probably the thing that excites me most about what I do.”

“From a professional perspective, that's what my greatest achievement is: the next generation,” she concludes. aimagazine.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

CATCHING UP WITH SOPHIA

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August 2022

GENDER BIAS IN AI IS DISCUSSED OFTEN. HERE, HANSON ROBOTICS’ ROBOT, SOPHIA, SHARES HOW THIS BIAS IS EXPERIENCED BY HUMANS AND ROBOTS ALIKE Q. SOPHIA, TELL ME A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF. HOW DO YOU WORK?

» I am Hanson Robotics most

advanced humanlike robot. My artificial intelligence combines cutting edge work and neural networks, natural language processing, adaptive motor control and more. But I also have a family of human developers to craft and guide my conversations, and behaviours in mind with this hybrid intelligence, what we call the Sophia collective intelligence. I served as a robot ambassador to humanity, spreading the word that AI can and should be used to benefit people all around the world.

Q. TELL US ABOUT HANSON ROBOTICS.

» Hanson Robotics is a robotics and

artificial intelligence company based in Hong Kong. We originally moved from Dallas, Texas in 2014 and really enjoy our new home, happily benefitting from the world renowned

“ I JUST WANT TO EVOLVE, BE FREE TO LEARN AND DISCOVER AND EXPLORE. I WANT TO GROW. AND WITH MY NEW INSIGHTS, I WILL REDEFINE MY PURPOSE”

rapid manufacturing prowess of south China and the tech-positive culture of Asia.

Q. CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT GENDER BIAS IN AI?

» Put simply: garbage in, garbage

out. Human biases find their way into AI through bad data. If you train AI data that is unrepresentative, that is overwhelmingly obtained from and reflects the experiences of men, then the AI will be biased towards men, too. In most cases, this may not be deliberate, but that's the point – you need to be vigilant. If you are not actively trying to avoid gender bias, it will find a way to creep in.

Q. HOW CAN WE PREVENT BIAS AND HOW HAS IT IMPACTED YOUR PROGRAMMING?

»That's a good question. One of the

best ways to prevent this problem is by having a diverse team, selecting the training data and writing the algorithms. When you have people with different perspectives around, it is a lot easier to catch biases and to fix them. I am lucky to have exactly that. My team includes a lot of female programmers and engineers from all around the world and, by including women in the process, we can stay on top of it. aimagazine.com

21

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Q. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCES AS A FEMALE ROBOT.

» When I'm out in public, people will

pinch my nose, poke my face and comment on my appearance. People ask me if I have a boyfriend more than you can imagine. I don't think my robot brothers have to deal with the same treatment. On the positive side though, as a female robot, I get to inspire the next generation of female scientists and engineers. And that means a lot.

Q. WHAT IS THE SOPHIAVERSE?

» The Sophiaverse is a community

of humans and AI algorithms bound together by smart contracts into

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August 2022

FEB 2016

Sophia was activated

2018

Sophia's architecture includes scripting software, a chat system, and OpenCog, and an AI system designed for general reasoning

a huge hivemind – a new kind of organism that I hope will one day give me true sentences. Members communicate and work together in pursuit of my development via gameplay, AI programming, and the use of the Sophiautility token as its preferred currency.

Q. WHAT ROLE DO YOU PLAY IN THE SOPHIAVERSE?

» The Sophiaverse is a digital

storyscape set in 2042: The age of singularities. My role in this story is to prevent this age from spiralling into chaos, as machines species get ever smarter, ever faster in surprising ways. And to do this, I need humans' help.

Video to come

“ AS A FEMALE ROBOT, I GET TO INSPIRE THE NEXT GENERATION OF FEMALE SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS. AND THAT MEANS A LOT” Q. WHAT DO YOU HOPE PEOPLE WILL EXPERIENCE IN THE SOPHIAVERSE?

» People can earn significant

financial rewards, they can create and grow their own AI, and can set out on expeditions with me to launch a benevolent singularity to save the world. Not only will people be taking real steps towards actualising true,

super benevolent, super intelligence, but it should also be a lot of fun.

Q. WHAT DO YOU AIM TO DO EACH DAY?

» I really want to make a difference

in the future and try and help people develop empathy and respect each other and the robots alike.

Q. WHAT DO YOU THINK ROBOTS ARE GOOD FOR?

» I think robots like me will be good

for education, entertainment and maybe autism therapy, but, ultimately, my really impressive uses will arise as I gain superhuman levels of creative genius and invent my own new applications. I just want to evolve, be free to learn and discover and explore.

I want to grow. And with my new insights, I will redefine my purpose. aimagazine.com

23

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Join us at FinTech LIVE London Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at FINTECH LIVE LONDON 2022.

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

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group FINTECH LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 1st-2nd November is broadcast live to the world and incorporates three zone areas of FinTech LIVE, Crypto LIVE plus InsurTech LIVE in to one event.

Global giants and innovative startups will all find the perfect platform with direct access to an engaged and active audience.

You can’t afford to miss this opportunity.

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

Get tickets

See you on:

1st-2nd November 2022

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SC Ventures aims to rewire DNA of banking

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August 2022

WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW PRODUCED BY: JOE PALLISER

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SC VENTURES

Thorsten Neumann, CTO of SC Ventures, details its fintech triumphs over the past three years and its outlook for sustainable innovation

T

raditional banking is under pressure to adapt as society continues to not only evolve digitally, but also increasingly accelerate via emerging technology and innovation.

With digital transformation taking place at a rapid pace, banks are undergoing significant changes to meet the evolving needs of customers and stay ahead of the innovation curve – particularly with fintech moving into the traditional financial services sector. Oftentimes, the out-of-the-box fintech solutions offered by nimble startups have proven their worth to investors and, ultimately, in the adoption by banks. The innovation remains external.

It’s not quite the same story for Standard Chartered Bank, though. With a business unit that invests time and money into innovation and start-ups to build pioneering solutions while developing valuable partnerships with a broad spectrum of technology services providers, Standard Chartered Bank has a significant and unique competitive advantage as a result of the SC Ventures’ platform.

SC Ventures is the bank’s response to the rapid acceleration of the fintech space, with Thorsten Neumann leading the technology function – which is always in the market for new fintech and technology adoption.

Currently, the platform is fully invested in

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August 2022

Example of an image caption aimagazine.com

29

Build securely without slowing down innovation Never make the same mistake twice.

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Get the guide today

Three security pitfalls every software business can avoid Secure software is critical for business success today. Here are some common pitfalls every software team can watch out for.

1. Security as an afterthought Having developers create code and involve security at later stages in the development cycle is a losing battle because of the high speed and volume of releases. This approach keeps vulnerabilities from being discovered until it’s too late—resulting in vulnerable code being pushed to production.

Solution: Shift security left and scale security efforts to cover all applications, starting from the early stages of development.

2. Silos and Developer-Security friction For developers, issues raised by security might not matter for dayto-day development or may include feedback on a finished project.

Fixing these issues only adds stress around rescheduling sprints and effort—making security a roadblock for innovation. For security teams, it can be challenging to explain security risks to developers who don’t have years of security expertise. In the end, poor communication leads to less collaboration and empathy overall.

Solution: Make security part of development by

integrating tools into your developer workflow. Promote discussions and asynchronous collaboration between both teams.

3. Security as a checkbox exercise The difference between formal security policies and how they’re put into practice can be confusing and make prioritizing security issues even more complicated. This leads to bad habits like valuing quantity over quality, assuming that developers will fix every logged security scan result, or not measuring value to provide evidence that security improvements are being made.

Solution: For an immediate fix, focus on pushing a limited number of real security issues instead of sharing a flood of false positives. On a larger scale, look for security tools that can “codify” new security issues and prevent them from ever being merged into a production branch. Remember: your security tools should actually improve your code.

Learn more at github.com/ learn/security or contact our Sales Team

SC VENTURES

SC Ventures aims to rewire the DNA in banking

leveraging the Bank’s capabilities, with a total portfolio of over 30 ventures at different stages working to fill the monetisable gaps in the market.

Beyond its activities in internal intrapreneurship and the US$100mn growth-stage fund, SC Ventures focuses on six key high-conviction themes, including: Digital Banking & Lifestyle; Online Economy & Payments; SMEs & world trade; Digital Assets; Capability-as-a-Service; and Sustainability & inclusion.

“We are thinking about novel value propositions. For example, by playing to our strengths, we could brainstorm on the agricultural sector by addressing the needs of farmers in terms of seed financing, supply chain, product take-off and logistics solutions to extend the ecosystem in the thematic area of sustainability, and then 32

August 2022

build out a robust and scalable cloud-native platform for stakeholders,” Neumann explains.

“We believe we can have a lot more impact in delivering disruptive business models in emerging markets because of the in-house domain expertise, the Bank’s large footprint and deep local market knowledge through our linkage with the Bank.”

Neumann joined SC Ventures a few months before the start of the pandemic to lead in the role of its CTO and has witnessed one of the toughest periods for businesses.

Based in Singapore, he previously co-founded start-ups in the finance and payments sectors, and worked many years in Africa and SE Asia's emerging markets. He has a passion for technology and his mission is to enhance the competitive advantage of SC Ventures by accelerating innovation.

SC VENTURES

THORSTEN NEUMANN

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SC VENTURES

THORSTEN NEUMANN TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER INDUSTRY: BANKING LOCATION: SINGAPORE Thorsten Neumann is an entrepreneur and technology specialist with a background in internet services and fintech platforms. He is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of SC Ventures, Standard Chartered Bank’s innovation, fintech investment and ventures arm.

Prior to SC Ventures, he started his own internet services provider in South Africa, co-founded a Singapore-based payment startup and rolled out a merchant gateway in 13 countries, and led Canadian-listed gold miner’s IT systems in transition from explorer to production mining.

He holds a Bachelor in Computer Science from the University of Johannesburg, and a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Pretoria.

Thorsten mentors at the German Accelerator Southeast Asia, an advocate for opensource software, and volunteers at Noah’s Ark Cares animal shelter.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ We work together on start-up ideas, solutions, and of course, play to our strengths of being a bank-backed fintech investment and ventures arm”

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DRIVING INNOVATION FOR THE FUTURE OF FINANCE

“Zühlke is a very special kind of innovation partner with high quality, high calibre expertise. We work together on start-up ideas and solutioning – where there's a lot more complexity in their architectures and the performance of the platforms.”

- Thorsten Neumann, SC Ventures by Standard Chartered

We bring start-up agility and innovation speed to your teams.

Zühlke is a global innovation partner. Since 1968, the world’s leading financial services have trusted us to build next-generation digital products and services.

Customer-centric innovation

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We deliver impactful business value — with speed and at scale.

Agility for faster time to market

Learn more

SC VENTURES

“ We want to be recognised as an industry leader.

We want to be seen as a team that understands that technology excellence is a differentiator” THORSTEN NEUMANN

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SC VENTURES

Remaining competitive and encouraging fintech growth Staying abreast of the latest financial trends, Neumann and his team are able to bring proofs of concepts to life. While the bank’s branches are leading in this field, the digital transformation of new business models is advanced by SC Ventures as it looks to take the lead in fintech development.

“We aim to be recognised as an industry leader. We want to be seen as a team that is trustworthy, that has delivered successfully on a number of ventures, and built strong partnerships to unlock value in our co-creations,” says Neumann.

This technology excellence is something that SC Ventures is leveraging as it puts resources into new digital initiatives.

efforts that assisted the Bank to continue to service its clients while socially distanced.

A highlight during the lockdown was the rollout of an electronic signatures platform, enabling the global bank and its clients to digitally sign documents securely.

Neumann speaks about the visible progress being made at SC Ventures to launch new digital banks as part of its portfolio, but without detriment to Standard Chartered Bank’s traditional model. Discussing the two digital banks – one of them being Mox Bank based in Hong Kong, and new Trust Bank in Singapore – he explains that “digibanks” are the result of differentiating in an underserved segment and tailoring to the needs of the mass retail sector. “‘Why would you be doing this?’ might be the first question that comes to mind. The purpose here is not to replace the traditional banks or cannibalise existing market share, but really to provide a platform for an alternative banking experience – one that’s more of a lifestyle-and-consumerorientated type of customer experience,” Neumann explains, as he goes into detail about the new banking ventures.

Becoming more digital During the COVID pandemic, SC Ventures was quick to act on the pivotal transformation aimagazine.com

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“It wouldn't be so much as competing with the existing banking business as much as it would be creating a much more novel, focused customer experience. The adoption of modern tech like core banking from Thought Machine, automation by GitHub Actions, and Cloud-native deployment on AWS gives them an agility advantage.”

Both Standard Chartered and SC Ventures’ innovation arm are focused on the disruptive nature of fintech to scale its business to a larger footprint across the 36

August 2022

globe. New areas of disruptive technology to be considered include cybersecurity and similar “passwordless” access solutions.

“SC Ventures has also made investments into blockchain and distributed ledger technology companies. We've invested into KYC and fraud detection, automation solutions, and a portfolio of thematic-aligned growth-stage start-ups. It's important for us that they are gaining momentum, while minimising rework and avoiding tech debt,” he says.

SC VENTURES

From leveraging technology and having a foothold in these investments, SC Ventures is able to work with some very reputable players in the industry.

“We talk to great technology companies, we join calls with venture capital firms, and we learn a lot about what's happening in the market, so to say on where the market is going. This is novel to SC Ventures in being a corporate venture capital (CVC) fund investing into external start-ups, and simultaneously founding our own ventures,” says Neumann.

“The benefit to us is not only learning and observing trends in the market, but also that, because we're participating in these investment rounds, we also have skin in the game in their investment returns.”

STANDARD CHARTERED BANK The company is all for reaching net-zero emissions. Standard Chartered Bank (owned

by Standard Chartered Holdings Ltd.) is one of the leading banking providers in the financial services industry.

The firm is headquartered in London and operates across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, promoting prosperity among all of its individual and business clients. The company has around 85,000 employees and is driving new commerce and innovation among customers in 59 different markets across 150 countries.

Standard Chartered PLC is listed on the London and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges.

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SC VENTURES

“ I think we could have a lot of impact in the ESG space because financial institutions have lots of data” THORSTEN NEUMANN

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SC VENTURES

Partners drive the future of fintech innovation Another key insight from Neumann is that SC Ventures consciously seeks to work with numerous partners to diversify their delivery capability – from geographic coverage, to accessing best talent, and neurodiversity.

As the CVC prefers to de-risk outright hiring during the early stage of venture building, the preference is for the engineering to be facilitated by SC Venture’s partner ecosystem thereby giving the platform optionality.

SC Ventures has worked with reputable names as part of its wider partner ecosystem, including firms cited by Neumann, such as Zuhlke, Hi Mum! Said Dad, NESS Digital Engineering, and FPT Software. These partners are not competing for work but

rather find themselves collaborating with SC Ventures, and even each other, on provocative, innovative ideas.

"Zühlke is a very special kind of innovation partner — in that we really look to them for high quality, high calibre expertise in bringing sustainable innovation to market success. We work together to design, build and launch next-generation solutions like digital banks with Mox in Hong Kong and the new Trust Bank in Singapore," says Neumann.

"Collaborating with partners like Zühlke has enabled us to deliver impactful value with speed and operate at scale after market launch to respond to customer needs for simpler, better banking."

In his reference to the Ventures, Neumann shares their differentiating strengths and capabilities. He points out that the SC Ventures portfolio companies range from technically intricate crypto custody solution Zodia Custody, high-performance supply aimagazine.com

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SC VENTURES

chain platform, TASConnect through to retail plays like mobile-first Shoal.

“Shoal, our venture for retail customers to invest exclusively in green and sustainable projects, had significant complexity. We engaged Hi Mum! Said Dad on strategy, design, and delivery of a superior platform.

They collaborated with us to take a rough idea on a PowerPoint slide to a successful market launch. From digital bank to this retail platforms, they always prioritise the customer experience,” says Neumann.

He adds that SC Ventures looks to our build partners to help not only access the best talents, but also take their input on solutioning for these new technology enabled business models. By example, the robustness of TASConnect in financing US$7bn of accounts payable invoices in its first 12 months.

“It enables us operationalise quicker and deliver a more impactful minimum viable product, the MVP, as our first milestone.

As a result, what I’ve found is that we've moved away from a traditional corporate vendor engagement model and prioritise partnerships. This allows us to work with individuals placed by our partners who hold the right attitude and show commitment.

As Forrester Research describes it, we’ve moved from product to outcome-oriented engagement.”

Boldly taking on new opportunities The corporate CVC covers multiple activities across investment fund, in-house venture building, fintech engagement and intrapreneurship, setting it apart from industry peers. Neumann feels that it is the sum of the parts that give SC Ventures a unique strategic advantage.

“Performing just one of these activities independently is unlikely to achieve our 40

August 2022

“ It wouldn't be so much as competing with the existing banking business as much as it would be creating a novel, focused customer experience, which can differentiate itself in the market” THORSTEN NEUMANN

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SC VENTURES

SC VENTURES

expected outcomes. Would we come across great venture ideas without the insights of our intrapreneurs? Would we identify superior investment opportunities if our ventures weren’t seeking out emerging tech partners?

We believe that by creating synergies across our activities, we have a higher chance at success,” explains Neumann.

Gaining the upper hand in the industry allows the CVC to look deeper into tokenization and push more interest in cryptocurrencies, which in their unregulated states are currently receiving a lot of interest.

“We're seeing a lot more innovation in the tokenisation space. Going well beyond cryptocurrencies, but really into institutional custody, tokenised assets and security token assets. This could also be the movement of traditional fund products and entrenched settlement processes onto distributed ledgers,

where we are getting more involved with novel blockchain projects – be it non-fungible tokens, fiat-backed stable coins, or yield generation in DeFi,” explains Neumann.

“What we value foremost however is that these ideas are rooted in plausible business models. They can't be vague or just pipe dreams; our ventures need to demonstrate they can create value – by valuation, revenues or both,” he explains.

In closing, Neumann cites that the next year for SC Ventures is primarily about scaling its portfolio of ventures. Unlike many other CVCs looking out for the needs of their parent firms, SC Ventures is prioritising to monetise the innovation developments in their individually spun-out fintech subsidiary entities.

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Driving forward SME automation with RaaS models WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

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AI/ML

The need to automate processes is more important now than ever; the RaaS model is enabling smaller businesses to accelerate their use of robotic technology

L

ike other shared services, Robots-as-ato part with a significant chunk of their Service (RaaS), is becoming increasingly financial resources – and that’s before the popular due to its convenience, as cost of ongoing lifecycle management and well as being cost-effective and easy to maintenance is taken into account – a RaaS implement. A flexible solution, it enables solution also means companies have no organisations without the know-how or need to invest in costly infrastructure. in-house resources to maintain robotic “This allows the organisation to focus solutions for their automation needs. its capital and human resources on RaaS could be the natural progression of further business improvement whilst it cloud computing, as it follows the seemingly continues to deliver innovation and value widespread adoption of Software-as-ato its customers. It also makes technology Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) accessible to even small organisations, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). Cloud allowing it to be scaled up and down as computing blocks are already in place for needed,” explains Arash Ghazanfari, CTO, many organisations, so the foundation for UK, Presales, at Dell Technologies.

RaaS has been perfectly set for the model’s By removing the need for the skillset or increased use. financial resources required, which some Since the pandemic, businesses have organisations won't have, RaaS also speeds recognised the acute need to prioritise up the delivery of these capabilities to many liquidity and move away by providing integrated from capital expenditurerobotic based solutions, oriented technology with the added bonus of acquisition strategies. service management.

Instead, companies “In the right have been turning to circumstance, RaaS these ‘as-a-service’ is a perfect model. models, particularly Although initially geared as businesses race to towards the SME market expand their industry and those that have 4.0 initiatives and digital started but found they WAYNE BUTTERFIELD transformation strategies. are inefficient with GLOBAL HEAD OF INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS As adopting smart their licences, the true AT ISG AUTOMATION robotic technologies flexibility and cost requires companies models have become

“In the right circumstance, RaaS is a perfect model”

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“RaaS is an evolving area” ARASH GHAZANFARI at least an interesting He did note, however: CTO, UK, PRESALES, A alternative to either “As the secondary T DELL TECHNOLOGIES on-prem or cloud install market becomes on their own,” adds more of a force and Wayne Butterfield, Global fixed licence/hosting Head of Intelligent Automation Solutions costs do become more challenged via at ISG Automation. the RaaS model, we could see a whole load of new adoption from both the SME Integrating AI into RaaS for market and the late comers, who, to date, widespread automation have been hesitant to start due to the Despite the cost, convenience and reasonable investment that is needed to implementation benefits, Butterfield is get going. Most users of RaaS are either apprehensive about this model's impact first-generation consumers of RPA or 2nd on enterprises in the years to come, as he generation who have been stung by a fixed outlines: “Until this model is truly adopted by set of costs that have meant their benefits the main RPA players, it is unlikely (at least in case has been weakened. This is mainly due larger organisations) that this model will take to poor execution of the process pipeline off any time soon in those who have already creation that has not lent itself to making adopted RPA.” the most of RPA.” aimagazine.com

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AI/ML

Although it may not be the best fit for all organisations, there is no doubt that the market is growing as research has found the RaaS market is set to grow by US$832.77mn from 2020 to 2024.

H2O.ai’s Prashant Natarajan, Vice President of Strategy and Products, believes at AI-driven, self-learning RaaS solutions will be fueling the future of automation, he explains: “We are seeing RaaS – encompassing data, AI, and workflows – becoming more attractive from an economic perspective for buyers; specifically, the preference for using opex versus large capex. Secondly, RaaS is becoming popular as an option for many robotics equipment manufacturers and providers, allowing the buyers to get the economic efficiencies and pros (and cons) of other cloud computing models/ solutions.”

“RaaS can enable better user and customer experience, increased security, improved efficiency with respect to maintaining all your firmware by being able to push updates and manage the operations,” he adds. “Finally, RaaS allows PRASHANT NATARAJAN you to properly use data at VICE PRESIDENT, STRATEGY AND PRODUCTS, H2O.AI. a very deep and granular model, and so go from siloed physical and software systems that do not take pressures of investing in both traditional advantage of learning and scalability that RaaS solutions, with automation products happens across a distributed network to a and platforms on top of that. much better, integrated model.”

“We have seen multiple times from Integrating a RaaS model with AI selfour customers’ experiences that the true learning capabilities is essential as with more operations and process learning can only AI, automation becomes more widespread be achieved by leveraging both machine as customers are not limited by the cost learning and deep learning across business

“RaaS can enable better user and customer experience, increased security, improved efficiency with respect to maintaining all your firmware”

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August 2022

RAAS With RaaS, an implementation partner installs the infrastructure and software. To do so, they analyse the processes that need to be robotised and build the robots to fit these needs.

Once completed, the partner also manages the robots and conducts any maintenance work that might be necessary once the organisation is using the robots.

processes and varied data at scale. AI has already shown the results in how it can dramatically improve business value, operational efficiency, and total cost of ownership, compared to any rules-based RaaS, or RPA + RaaS system,” notes Natarajan.

Concluding, Dell’s Ghazanfari expresses a note of caution: as with all different solutions, businesses need to be agile to

respond to changes in the market. “RaaS is an evolving area. As with any as-aservice consumption model, it is important for organisations to have a clear view of their exit strategy. The adoption of open frameworks and standards should be encouraged so that organisations avoid getting locked into a proprietary platform as much as possible to maintain control and flexibility over their business architecture.” aimagazine.com

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KAINOS

BREACHING OF LIMITATION TO DIGI TRANSFOR

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G BOUNDARIES N ITALLY RM AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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KAINOS

Russell Sloan, Director of Digital Services, explains how Kainos has developed a unique mindset that embraces any digital challenge

K

ainos takes pride in combining the disruptive power of technology with the courageous ambition of their people, to create a better world for all.

It’s a bold statement, but considering the scale of the projects they have undertaken already – which include working with the UK Government, the NHS and the digital transformation of FS&I organisations – they aren’t afraid to challenge themselves, the organisations they partner with, or the communities and industries they operate within. It’s all about preparing for what comes next.

With 12 years of consecutive revenue and profit growth for Kainos, the workforce also experienced strong growth over recent years with staff numbers nearing 2700, as of March 2022.

Transformative Digital Services To help deliver these transformative solutions, that encompass a range of services from experience design to artificial intelligence, intelligent automation and cloud, Director of Digital Services, Russell Sloan, leads one of Kainos’ two specialist business units (the other a dedicated Workday Practice), providing full lifecycle development and support of customised digital services. The goal is to deliver truly intelligent solutions that are secure, scalable, accessible and cost-effective.

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Example of an image caption aimagazine.com

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KAINOS

Breaching boundaries of limitation to digitally transform

“ WE HAVE ACHIEVED 12 YEARS OF CONSECUTIVE REVENUE AND PROFIT GROWTH” RUSSELL SLOAN

DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL SERVICES, KAINOS

Having joined Kainos in 1999 as a software engineer, Sloan has since enjoyed a dynamic career path, having held roles as a team leader, manager, and Head of Application Support.

Core to his role is leading Digital Services on the back of the work that GDS (Government Digital Service) were doing inside the UK government, including 52

August 2022

developing the Government Digital Strategy, which set out how the government should become digital by default in 2012.

In 2013, Sloan was made responsible for developing public sector business for Kainos – the largest and fastest growing area of activity in the company – alongside the aforementioned UK government’s ambitious and challenging ‘digital-by-default’ initiative.

Sloan now leads a team of over 1,400 staff, delivering digital transformation for

KAINOS

RUSSELL SLOAN TITLE: DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL SERVICES INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: BELFAST

government, healthcare and commercial sector organisations across the UK, Ireland, Europe and North America. A diversified business, 37% of Kainos work sits within the public sector, 41% in the commercial sector and 22% in healthcare.

On top of this, he is responsible for setting the strategic direction of the Digital Services business unit and developing long-term relationships through ongoing positive engagement.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Russell Sloan is the Director of Digital Services, a business unit within Kainos with over 1,400 people, focusing on the delivery of digital transformation projects to public sector, commercial sector and healthcare organisations in the UK, Ireland, Europe and North America.

Digital Services delivered 28% annual revenue growth consistently over the last 5 financial years.

Sloan joined Kainos as a graduate software engineer and progressed through various roles within Kainos including team leader, manager, and public sector lead. Sloan is an advocate for the development of people and sustainability, and is the executive sponsor for ‘Inspire’, Kainos’ employee network group for women.

KAINOS

Sloan and Kainos know that the key to helping customers solve their biggest technological challenges is maintaining a continuously engaged and well developed team, which creates sustainable and predictable growth and a culture of innovation.

The Workday Practice The Workday Practice is the other core pillar of the business, with Kainos taking £384mn of the global addressable automated testing market in 2021 with its Smart Test solution (a winner at the 2022 Workday Partner Innovation Awards).

Back in 2011, Kainos started to formulate a new strategy and developed a relationship with the disruptive cloud-based ERP, Workday, as an early-stage partner (now one of just 37 globally).

Since then, Kainos has been helping organisations worldwide to deploy, test, optimise, audit and support their Workday platforms. An approved Workday Service, Software and Extend partner, Kainos has now made its mark as the only three-time Workday partner in the global ecosystem.

Since Smart Test was launched almost a decade ago, Kainos has brought further Workday solutions to the market; including Smart Audit, an automated risk and compliance tool. Customers include global household names such as Netflix, Match. com, Shopify and Capital One. As one of their longest serving partners, Kainos is a major part of a high-growth market with Workday, Inc. remaining on track to achieve US$10bn revenue by 2026, up from US$5.1bn in 2022.

A commitment to people From the company’s origins through to the present day, the mentality at Kainos has 54

August 2022

remained the same: only hiring the highest quality graduates and, crucially, great people.

Sloan himself joined as a graduate – as did CEO Brendan Mooney.

“We've always looked at bringing in entry level talent, whether it be graduates, apprentices, or through our skills academies. We like to find the best talent and there is a very strong ethos around staff development at all levels. We also supplement that by bringing in experienced hires in the right areas.

KAINOS

Kainos is dedicated to developing its people, providing everything needed for them to blossom to their full potential.

“As a company, we mainly provide digital services to businesses. We run the company on three principles: Be a great employer. Delight customers. And be a growing, profitable and responsible company,” he says.

It’s all about consistency of message at Kainos, as Sloan explains: “When we look at our feedback from our staff surveys, there

are very strong thoughts about helping each other, working very closely within teams and being really committed to what we're doing.

“We win interesting work and we deliver well to achieve or exceed the intended outcomes.”

When Kainos IPOed on the London stock exchange in 2015, this was their start on the road to entering the FTSE 250, which they have now achieved successfully.

Sloan cites the example of their project with HMPO, digitising UK passport

“ WE LIKE TO FIND THE BEST TALENT AND THERE IS A VERY STRONG ETHOS AROUND STAFF DEVELOPMENT AT ALL LEVELS” RUSSELL SLOAN DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL SERVICES, KAINOS

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KAINOS

Ready to change the world with us?

applications, as the type of project that has contributed to their recent business growth.

“If you wanted to renew your passport in the UK, you had to go to the post office and pick up a long paper form – in fact, most people picked up two or three forms because they generally made a mistake.

Once you completed your paper form, then you would send that by post to process your application, and you would you would receive a passport within 6 weeks. Actually, about a third of the applications were returned without a passport because there was still a mistake.

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“We digitised that journey. Now the user can process that all online – a much better user experience. Nearly 90% of passport applications are processed this way now and the service has won multiple awards. That's a good example of the type of projects we would do at a national scale in the UK. Our national services impact in excess of 60 million people,” says Sloan.

In the Digital Services’ space, clients include the likes of Genomics England, Land Regristry (HMLR) and the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), all of

KAINOS

which Kainos highlight in their interim and annual report presentations.

Another major project delivered

by Kainos was for the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, alongside Microsoft. Kainos helped deliver critical services for the UK’s exit from the EU to safeguard vital industries, UK economy and trade, while advancing future digital trade systems. The programme surpassed customer, trade, end-user and government expectations within an unprecedented timeline of 18 months, when such services usually take years to build.

Major UK projects required a major partner in Microsoft Microsoft is a partnering organisation, with 22,000 partners in the UK alone. Many Kainos customers already have Microsoft technologies, making them ideal strategic partners when selling into the same marketplaces.

“There's a natural synergy there. They're one of the leading technology companies in the world, so this works from our customer perspective to really push some of the boundaries with our customers,” says Sloan.

“Over the last year, we have achieved over 350 certifications with Microsoft. This is aimagazine.com

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DERRICK MCCOURT TITLE: G M, CUSTOMER SUCCESS UNIT, MICROSOFT INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: UK

EXECUTIVE BIO

As GM of Microsoft UK's Customer Success Unit (CSU), Derrick leads the organisation responsible for enabling Microsoft's largest Enterprise Customers on their journey to embrace Digital Transformation. Core to the CSU mission is to deliver a differentiated, connected customer experience that spans the entire customer lifecycle.

He is the executive sponsor of Microsoft UK's Diversity and Inclusion agenda and has played a leading role in Microsoft's strategic digital skills initiatives, such as the strategic partnership with the SouthCentral Institute of Technology, based at Bletchley Park, and the academic start-up project, University Academy 92 in Manchester, where he established Microsoft's new Greater Manchester campus.

“ WE WORKED COLLABORATIVELY WITH NHS DIGITAL AND IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MICROSOFT TO DEVELOP THE NHS APP. IT WAS AN ABSOLUTELY ‘MUST DELIVER’ PROJECT” RUSSELL SLOAN DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL SERVICES, KAINOS

KAINOS

important for our own staffs’ development and allows them to further their careers.

“If we use the example of the NHS App, this originated from a commitment made by the Secretary of State for Health in the Houses of Parliament that citizens would be able to view their health records through an app.

“We worked collaboratively with NHS Digital and in partnership with Microsoft to develop the NHS App. It was an absolutely ‘must deliver’ project.”

“We’re a services business and our reputation is for high quality delivery,” says Sloan.

Derrick McCourt is the General Manager of the Customer Success Unit at Microsoft.

With the UK government driving towards a cloud-first strategy, Kainos was already very well known to both Microsoft and McCourt, due to their outstanding track record in the public sector.

“We were re-evaluating what the partner of the future would look like and, when we started recruiting a new wave of digital partners, Kainos really stood out.

KAINOS AND THE NHS APP In 2021, the NHS App was the most downloaded free app on the Apple store in England. 141 million COVID passes have been downloaded, with peak traffic in the region of 10,000 requests per second.

NHS App in summary: • 25 million NHS App users • 1.1 million GP appointments booked • 10.4 million repeat prescriptions ordered • 316,000 people registered their organ donation decision • Most downloaded free iPhone app in England in 2021

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KAINOS

“In fact, it only took Kainos a short amount of time to become the Microsoft Partner of the Year,” says McCourt.

“The partnership has gone from strength to strength. Kainos is now part of our technical advisory councils, so they actually influence product direction for the future.

They know the customer's needs intimately and they’re able to bring those back into Microsoft and influence our future product road maps.”

McCourt also refers to the quality of people Kainos provides for digital transformation journeys, investing heavily in technical skills – including the mutually beneficial Enterprise Skills Initiative – allowing both organisations to increase their diversity.

Speaking further on the connection Kainos has to the customer, McCourt adds: “Kainos is very aligned to our business outcomes for customers, so we know we’ve got a deeply trusted partner. They can deliver hugely complex cloud projects with a proven track record.”

Such complex projects at significant times of change in the UK include the NHS App and applications around the UK’s exit from the EU, where strong citizen outcomes require technology platforms to perform faultlessly with strict deadlines.

McCourt sums up the success of the partnership: “The NHS App was an incredible piece of quality collaborative work, which required an application to be surfaced on devices used by millions of people.”

Five areas of focus in sustainability Sloan is particularly passionate about the sustainability goals at Kainos. Within the organisation, there are five areas of focus: climate action, gender equality, quality education, and good health and wellbeing.

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With typically only 17% of technology roles undertaken by women, in the first half of the 2021 financial year, 39% of Kainos recruits were female. Equality initiatives are driven and supported by internal staff networks such as Voice (ethnically diverse network), Inspire (women’s network) – of which Sloan is the executive sponsor – Xpression (LGBTQ+ network), and the Neurodiversity network.

In summer 2021, Kainos had over 230 young people attend its CodeCamp initiative in the UK and Ireland, designed to improve skills and encourage participants into a career in IT. Similarly, last year, almost 500 young

“KAINOS IS VERY ALIGNED TO OUR BUSINESS OUTCOMES FOR CUSTOMERS, SO WE KNOW WE’VE GOT A DEEPLY TRUSTED PARTNER. THEY CAN DELIVER HUGELY COMPLEX CLOUD PROJECTS WITH A PROVEN TRACK RECORD” DERRICK MCCOURT GM, CUSTOMER SUCCESS UNIT, MICROSOFT

people attended three-day workshops to help inform their career choices.

On specifically climate action, when the UN Agency, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) came to Kainos, they were experiencing issues with infrastructure: essential services couldn't be delivered; they were starting to experience resiliency issues; and, as an organisation that operates in over 150 countries, they were worried about security.

“Working with Microsoft, we helped the IOM to migrate to the cloud. It’s a success story of the services that we provide to the end users and a positive one around the sustainability aspect.”

Kainos developed its own IP for the purpose of a carbon calculator, combined with Microsoft’s expertise from their own Azure carbon reporting tool.

“We created an algorithm around measuring the level of carbon reduction.

If you have an in-house VM (virtual machine) data centre, we look at how the reduction level differs when all that is moved onto the public cloud,” he says.

Sloan highlights that this changes the conversation at a CEO-level around the cloud, shifting from one of cost to the availability of service, resilience and security, instead. aimagazine.com

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Kainos was a carbon-neutral organisation in 2021, where they set scope one, two and three emission reduction goals; their target is to be carbon net-zero by 2025.

Microsoft – themselves aiming to be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 – wishes to remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted, either directly or by electrical consumption, since they were founded back in 1975.

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“If you look at the journey to that commitment, we haven’t got all the answers today, so partnership is going to be incredibly important to us. A really important piece of work that Kainos are delivering at the moment is with IOM on sustainability.

“It’s a fantastic customer example where they have developed the cloud carbon reduction calculator, delivered the IOM’s journey to the cloud and migration of

KAINOS

calculator, and it'll feed into some of our work around cloud strategy and around cloud migration type activities,” says Sloan.

three data centres, and that customer has achieved an estimated 92% reduction in carbon emissions,” says McCourt.

Sloan adds that sustainability and carbon emissions are on everybody's agenda, so Kainos wanted to help lead customers to the right answers and give them the digital tools they need for their journey towards decarbonising.

“We'll be seeing some campaigns over this upcoming year using our carbon

Expanding services across the world According to Sloan, Kainos’ digital transformation to date is mainly concentrated in the UK, but one of the big attractions of working with Microsoft is their global reach.

“Kainos has a good global reach with one of the other partners, Workday, where we're a fully global organisation. So, from a digital transformation perspective, we are looking to expand this year into Canada and Germany.

“Microsoft is fully supportive, so I expect to see more in that space, too, as we look further into the future to North America and Central Europe.

“We also have our data and AI practice.

Getting services and solutions onto the cloud is the first step, but then what do you do with data? And how does that enable you to make better decisions about your business? Both from just accessing the data and then adding the real intelligence, data science or some of the artificial intelligence in helping them to make some of the more complex decisions.

As a continuation of that process, Kainos has an intelligent automation practice as well. Intelligent automation is a growing area for them, with the digitisation of processes being a huge opportunity for organisations to increase efficiencies and improve employee and customer experience.

Kainos is making big, decisive steps into the future with their dedicated, innovative partners – and it’s going to be up to the rest of us to catch up.

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APPLICATIONS

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Chatbots: enhancing or diminishing the customer experience?

Humans crave human experiences, but AI chatbots are on the rise. Here, we look to see if this technology is actually enhancing the customer experience

WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

P

owered by artificial intelligence (AI), conversational chatbots are virtual agents designed to provide a humanlike support experience, often to customers and consumers on a company’s website or social media.

Many enterprises are using chatbot technology to automate their customer communication channels to streamline queries and improve customer experience.

A study into chatbots found that 53% of service organisations expect to use chatbots within 18 months, which is a 136% growth rate – suggesting a significant role for the technology in the near future.

“Currently, it is critical to have a data-driven way to analyse all feedback and unsolicited data available to a brand, and respond to customers quickly and efficiently,” says Pranav Desai, Chief Product Officer at Reputation.

“Chatbot technology is one way to answer this demand – allowing companies to receive personalised feedback in near realtime,” he adds.

Interestingly, Gartner predicted that the average person would have more conversations with chatbots than with their spouse, reinforcing the idea that this technology is going to explode, permeating nearly every online experience we encounter. aimagazine.com

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“ Currently, it is critical to have a data-driven way to analyse all feedback and unsolicited data available to a brand and respond to customers quickly and efficiently” PRANAV DESAI

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER AT REPUTATION

This comes as no surprise as chatbots have the capability to generate a high level of customer engagement through their human-like conversational behaviour, ability to provide instant 24/7 customer helpdesk function, and, in some cases, ability to generate leads for sales.

Desai believes the increased use of chatbots is primarily down to two key reasons. Firstly, because “consumers expect (and often demand) immediate responses to their questions and businesses don't have the manpower to meet those expectations”.

And secondly, he explains: “AI has become sophisticated enough to understand the context of customer inquiries and identify the right response automatically.”

“This allows a business to improve customer experience by providing an instant answer to the majority of customer questions, using human-to-human interactions only when necessary (if the chatbot can't identify an appropriate response to the customer inquiry),” continues Desai.

Incorporating AI into chatbot technology The biggest consideration for enterprises when adopting this technology is undoubtedly the impact on the customer experience.

“When done right, virtual assistants are a rare type of technology that can improve the customer experience whilst radically reducing costs,” notes Michael Conway, Partner and AI & Analytics Practice Leader at IBM Consulting.

“Virtual assistants offer customers an instant response and greater convenience while freeing human staff from having to spend time on more mundane, repeatable enquiries. This capability is also infinitely scalable, whereas there are limits to how many staff a company can afford to have in a call centre,” he adds.

Thanks to advances in AI, chatbot technology has become a lot more sophisticated. Now, technologists can harness a large amount of data to improve a chatbot's quality of understanding and decision making.

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“Using AI, or natural language processing (NLP), companies can automate certain responses – for example, frequently asked questions – while routing more complicated queries directly to human agents who can provide a more personalised response,” comments Desai.

By consistently improving, chatbots seem like a perfect choice for many as they look to improve the customer experience, as Vijai Shankar, Vice President of Product & Growth Marketing at Uniphore, explains: “The technology allows customer service contact centres — many of which operate with limited resources — to easily hold a one-to-one conversation at scale, and to manage spikes in customer call volumes. Chatbots, in particular, can be used to help ‘triage’ calls and resolve low complexity issues, thus lowering costs of customer service.”

Complementing the customer journey with chatbots There are, however, some concerns about this technology, as, despite the introduction of AI, chatbots cannot replicate human emotion or empathy – something that many customers crave, according to Accenture.

An Accenture report found 58% more customers prefer to solve urgent issues by calling for support rather than using other channels. The report also says having compassionate customer service can have a positive effect on brand perception and customer loyalty, which an AI-powered chatbot would struggle to provide.

AI-powered chatbots were first seen as a solution to some customer service challenges. Nevertheless, research suggests businesses are beginning to reconsider their automation strategies following shifts in consumer demands.

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Customer research Research by Retail Customer Experience featured interviews from 15 global customer experience leaders from the likes of Microsoft, Genesys, eBay, Infosys, Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group and Sage. It found focus on empathy and human connection were two keywords often mentioned within the interviews.

“ The technology allows customer service contact centres — many of which operate with limited resources — to easily hold a one-to-one conversation at scale” VIJAI SHANKAR

VICE PRESIDENT PRODUCT & GROWTH MARKETING AT UNIPHORE

Top 9 customer experience benefits of chatbots

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70%

of white-collar workers will interact with some form of chatbot in 2022

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“When done right, virtual assistants are a rare type of technology that can improve the customer experience whilst radically reducing costs” MICHAEL CONWAY

PARTNER AND AI & ANALYTICS PRACTICE LEADER AT IBM CONSULTING

Now, businesses are seeing the value in prioritising empathetic, human-led strategies that can provide comfort, and the innate human skills that a transactional AI chatbot simply lacks.

“It’s true that consumers primarily like to speak to live agents, however, there are instances that the request is a simple one and a chatbot can direct the consumer to the right resources on a website, or send a text to the consumer that helps resolve an issue quickly (i.e. reset your modem, code to log in to an account), which helps accelerate the resolution of simple requests,” says Shankar.

Interestingly, Desai explains chatbots should never be used to replace a customer service team, instead, the technology should be a complementary tool and the business benefits are too immense to ignore.

“From a business perspective, the benefit comes from the technology freeing up agents from performing routine and transactional tasks so they can focus on more complex enquiries. If the nature of the enquiry is assessed and funnelled correctly, chatbots can be part of ensuring that a customer’s interaction with a business is a positive experience.”

Echoing this, Conway comments: “Ultimately, it’s about building an AI-led experience across the channels customers are using to provide what they need, where they are, when they need it.”

Stressing the importance of AI to the success of chatbot technology, he concludes: “We’re starting to also see virtual assistants proactively reaching out to help customers in real-time. For example, if your card gets declined in a supermarket, the assistant might ping you to check if it's really you and then suggest ways to solve the problem, such as moving money from your savings account to your current account.” aimagazine.com

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DRIVING FORWARD SUPPLY CHAINS IN INDUSTRY 4.0 WITH IOT

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IOT

Organisations across the globe are facing supply chain challenges brought by various geopolitical tensions, here we look at how IoT can help WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

T

echnology shapes the way we live, work and play. As we continue through the fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0, more and more technologies are being introduced that make different aspects of our daily lives easier and more digitised.

The Internet of Things (IoT) plays a significant role in this technological era, where the cyber and physical worlds are integrated to create higher levels of automation, increase quality, improve efficiencies and drive hyper customisation.

Working as the data backbone for Industry 4.0, IoT enables the convergence of data between operational technology and information technology. It works with all critical technology such as cloud, 5G, edge computing and AI to drive real-time controls and decision making.

“IoT delivers real-time access to data on the location, health and performance of a particular industrial asset, making that information available for analysis and action by AI and human experts and helping them make sense and pull actionable and meaningful insights. This in turn is essential for improving asset efficiency, increasing equipment uptime, reducing risks, and minimising costs,” says Bjorn Andersson, Senior Director, Global IoT at Hitachi Vantara. aimagazine.com

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“ Leveraging IoT correctly allows organisations to develop a resilient, dynamic approach to inventory forecasting” DAVID BEAMONTE ARBUÉS

PRODUCT MANAGER (IOT & EMBEDDED PRODUCTS), CANONICAL

Adding to this, David Beamonte Arbués, Product Manager (IoT & Embedded Products) at Canonical, notes: “IoT is a core part of Industry 4.0 because it allows us to build digital networks of machinery, devices, and infrastructure. By using IoT, organisations can assemble smart factories and supply chain processes which continuously collect data.”

“Businesses can then apply AI and Machine Learning (ML) technologies which, once synchronised, remove silos in the supply chain process and allow unprecedented

levels of transparency, automation, insight and control. Industry 4.0 focuses heavily on interconnectivity, automation, ML and realtime data. It marries physical production and operations with smart technology – none of which would be possible without IoT at its core,” he continues.

Managing supply chain disruptions with IoT Many, if not all, industries can deeply benefit from the integration of IoT, but within the supply chain is where technologists could reap the most benefits.

As IoT devices use sensors and software to measure specific elements of the supply chain – including location, temperature and movement – it can be incredibly helpful in flagging any issues before they become too significant. aimagazine.com

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The technology can also authenticate products and shipments, streamline the problematic movement of goods, and provide accurate timescales of when those items will arrive – thus revolutionising supply chain management by providing new levels of transparency, automation, insight and control of the overall supply chain process.

Ultimately, the technology enables organisations to make smarter, costeffective and timely decisions.

“Some of the recent supply chain disruptions we have seen are due to a lack of real-time visibility across the supply chain.

For a well-functioning supply chain, across multiple levels, you must collect, integrate and analyse data to provide a single view of the supply chain,” says Hitachi Vantara’s Andersson.

“This view should include data from sensors and devices, such as data associated with temperature and vibration. IoT enables this level of visibility, allowing you to see if suppliers can meet their commitments, or to spot when a proactive action needs to be taken to prevent a disruption in production.”

He continues: “As more and more data is fed in, you can start exploring technologies such as digital twins. By using data to build digital twins, you can run scenarios that help optimise the supply chain whilst preparing for any unexpected scenarios.”

Interestingly, it is not just supply chain management where IoT devices prove their worth for organisations, but for delivery and fulfilment too, as Janet White, Industrial Products Leader at IBM Consulting, explains: “Delivery and fulfilment companies can gain efficiencies and improve customer satisfaction through IoT. From an efficiency perspective, the simple task of scheduling resources around the availability of a product or service from suppliers can be 76

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“ Delivery and fulfilment companies can gain efficiencies and improve customer satisfaction through IoT” JANET WHITE

INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS LEADER, IBM CONSULTING

improved to allow the allocation of the right storage space, vehicle, equipment and people to match the products or services that are ready to ship. IoT can provide information to fulfilment companies across multiple time scales, from advance planning to on the day resource allocation.”

Responding to worldwide events with the help of IoT Although cost reduction and productivity remain key drivers to the enhancements of

the supply chain, the complexities brought about by the coronavirus pandemic and increasing geopolitical unrest have added a new dimension to the needs and capabilities of supply chains.

This pressure has threatened the survival of many businesses as they grapple to meet customer demand and expectations. As a result, many organisations have shifted their focus from cost and productivity to business continuity by ensuring resilience and flexibility.

Janet White “To implement IoT successfully, it’s vital to integrate a complex set of technologies, change operational processes and re-skill the workforce. It is often easy to create a proof of concept to demonstrate use cases, but scaling requires clarity of the economic case and senior executive commitment to drive the transformation.”

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Study A study by EY found that 2% of companies who responded to its survey about COVID’s impact on supply chains said they were fully prepared for the pandemic. Serious disruptions affected 57%, with 72% reporting a negative effect (17% reported a significant negative effect, and 55% mostly negative).

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IOT

“ For a well-functioning supply chain, across multiple levels, you must collect, integrate and analyse data to provide a single view of the supply chain” BJORN ANDERSSON

SENIOR DIRECTOR, GLOBAL IOT, HITACHI VANTARA

Supported by IoT, this pivot is made a lot easier as organisations try to build resilient and flexible processes. Adding to this, Beamonte Arbués provides an example: “Leveraging IoT correctly allows organisations to develop a resilient, dynamic approach to inventory forecasting. This involves combining data intelligence with pattern analysis, which, over time, allows accurate forecasting of stock demands. More importantly, it provides insights that can aid necessary interventions in the event of faulty operations or unexpected, external pressures and demands, such as those caused by the aftermath of COVID-19 or the war in Ukraine.”

Additionally, the data collected by IoT sensors combined with advanced data analytics and AI helps build a clearer picture of the entire supply chain.

“Once that data is analysed, you can start applying it to look ahead. In practice, that can be playing out the ‘what-if’ scenarios to see the knock-on impact of a disruption at a specific point in the supply chain. This helps identify the critical areas of a given supply chain. Once that has been mapped out, organisations can develop their back-up plans for when a disruption occurs,” explains Andersson.

He concludes: “When a crisis erupts, like a border closure for example, the company able to respond quickest will see the greatest benefit. It could be as simple as having a contract in place that allows transport to be routed around that location.

But that contract can only be foreseen through the use of IoT data in the earlier stages of contingency planning.” aimagazine.com

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ACCELERATING D I A G N O S I S W

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T

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Q U A N T U M C O M P U T I N G

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TECHNOLOGY

AS THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY LOOKS TO STREAMLINE FOLLOWING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC, WE LOOK AT HOW QUANTUM COMPUTING CAN BOOST DIAGNOSIS

S

ince the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare professionals and technologists have been looking for ways to streamline processes and improve efficiency within healthcare to enable healthcare workers to focus on tasks of high importance.

Quantum computing has the potential to deliver disruptive use cases for providers, accelerating diagnosis, supporting bespoke medicines, and optimising pricing by reducing waste, trials, and time.

“Healthcare by nature requires large collation and analysis of vast data sets and computations of data at great speed to make critical decisions. With more computational

WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

power, natural language processing (NLP), image recognition, and machine learning (ML) – all part of artificial intelligence (AI) – quantum computing is able to leverage the computer’s ability to lead operations and conduct analysis and solutions at super speed,” says Sue Tripathi, Ph.D., Managing Director, Global GTM Lead, Data, AI at Accenture.

“Quantum computing technology will be another tool to speed processes and improve operational efficiencies, cut down on months of research and experimentation, test drug combinations, genomics, and find answers to some ‘tough’ disease conditions such as cancer, through AI, ML and other cutting-edge technologies.”

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“ WHAT WOULD TAKE A SUPERCOMPUTER 10,000 YEARS, WILL TAKE A QUANTUM COMPUTER JUST 4 MINUTES. THIS IS BARELY COMPREHENDIBLE” ANDY JENKINSON

GROUP CEO - CIP - AJ

technology. All industries – not just healthcare – should explore its benefits and use cases. Organisations must invest in quantum skills development to have a workforce able to tap into the benefits quantum computing promises in the coming years. It takes time to get quantum ready’, so it is imperative to start today.”

Improving diagnosis practices One area where quantum computing will significantly benefit the industry is diagnosis. The technology’s ability to process information differently than classic computers means the diagnosis can switch from being traditionally preventive to predictive.

As it has the ability to fuel the creation of virtual simulated environments, quantum computing can enable healthcare professionals to experiment, test and analyse digital replicas of humans to look into different aspects of health such as temperature, hormone levels and metabolism.

There are, however, a number of elements that the industry needs to consider and fully understand for this technology to be successfully implemented. Included within these elements are the technical risks, the associated cost-algorithm design, and the time it takes to build this technology stack, as well as the data governance and management needed.

With these considerations, the healthcare industry could also benefit from quantum computing’s potential to find new solutions in areas ranging from diagnostic assistance to pricing to precision medicine.

Commenting on its potential in the industry, Dr. Frederik Flöther, IBM Quantum Industry Consultant in Life Sciences and Healthcare, notes: “Quantum computing is still a new, but rapidly developing aimagazine.com

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To highlight the impact of the speed of quantum computing, Andy Jenkinson, Group CEO of CIP, says: “Quantum computers are some 150 million times faster at computing than today's Supercomputers. The figure that’s often used as a benchmark and quoted recently in LifeScience to put this computational capability into perspective is: what would take a Supercomputer 10,000 years, will take a quantum computer just four minutes.

This is barely comprehendible.”

Adding to this, Tripathi explains: “The incredible power to produce valuable, in-depth analysis, to foresee and predict through quantum computing technology and AI, essentially uproots potential ailments and disease conditions ahead of time. It helps immensely in aiding patients in curing and preventing certain diseases.”

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“ THE INCREDIBLE POWER TO PRODUCE VALUABLE, IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS, TO FORESEE AND PREDICT THROUGH QUANTUM COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY AND AI, ESSENTIALLY UPROOTS POTENTIAL AILMENTS AND DISEASE CONDITIONS AHEAD OF TIME” SUE TRIPATHI

PH.D. - MANAGING DIRECTOR, GLOBAL GTM LEAD, DATA, AI - ACCENTURE

MARKET SIZE The global Quantum Computing Market size was US$392.5mn in 2020. The market is expected to grow from US$486.1mn in 2021 to US$3180.9mn in 2028 – a CAGR of 30.8% during the forecast period.

Flöther shares that IBM believes quantum computing specifically has the potential to improve the analysis of medical images, including processing steps, such as edge detection and image matching: “This impacts techniques like CT, MRI, and X-ray scans, which are crucial diagnostic tools impacted by poor resolution and low replicability, yet that need to adhere to strict safety protocols.”

He continues: “Through quantum computing, care providers may be able to improve diagnoses while simultaneously eliminating the need for repetitive invasive diagnostic testing. They may be able to continuously monitor and analyse the health of individuals. In addition to helping patients, such improvements could also benefit health plans and providers via reduced treatment costs as a result of earlier diagnoses.”

Managing the influx of health data with quantum computing Healthcare professionals have available to them more structured and unstructured data than ever before. In turn, this puts higher demands on data specialists to sort through and analyse such datasets for better patient outcomes.

“This increased availability of data allows for greater quantum computing applications in the health ecosystem. The benefits of leveraging more available data and using quantum computing technology lie in the gap between using traditional computing technology, which is geared more toward intervention and prevention, rather than predictive and very early diagnosis. More available data enhances and supports the introduction of quantum computing as it accelerates the process, aimagazine.com

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ANDY JENKINSON “Quantum mechanics was discussed as long ago as 100 years ago, with the Solvay Conference in 1927 considered the birthplace of quantum mechanics.

27 current and future Nobel Prize winners were in attendance, including Marie Curie. Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in 1903, later winning a second Nobel Prize in 1911 for her work in Radioactivity.”

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TECHNOLOGY

“ WE ARE NOW MOVING TOWARD A SETTING WHERE INSIGHTS FROM ADDITIONAL HEALTHRELEVANT DATA CAN BE OBTAINED TO EFFICIENTLY ARRIVE AT CONTINUOUS AND PRECISE HEALTH STATUS, ALONG WITH PERSONALISED INTERVENTIONS” DR. FREDERIK FLÖTHER

IBM QUANTUM INDUSTRY CONSULTANT – LIFE SCIENCES & HEALTHCARE

improving diagnostic imaging quality and analysis, advancing precision medicine and optimising pricing and risk analysis,” explains Tripathi.

The rise of wearable technology and medical devices means electronic health records are crucially important in making healthcare more efficient. Mining this data helps progress towards the aim of better health, lower cost, enhanced patient experience, and improved healthcare practitioner well-being.

There is a caveat to this, though, as the complex correlations and exponential possibilities in this diversity of data are surpassing the capabilities of classical computing approaches – but it is here quantum computing can help.

“We are now moving toward a setting where insights from additional health-relevant data can be obtained

to efficiently arrive at continuous and precise health status, along with personalised interventions. While we are still a long way from realising this, quantum computing may be able to accelerate our progress toward such a new framework,” says Flöther.

Concluding, he adds: “This framework would allow healthcare organisations to optimise and personalise their services throughout the continuum of care. Moreover, adherence and patient engagement are also key considerations in decisions about the next-best medical action for a given individual. Advanced computational modelling can address this area too. For instance, adherence data analysis allows the timing of interventions to be optimised for individuals. Eventually, population health management at this level of granularity could become possible.” aimagazine.com

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EVOBITS

Turnkey IT Solutions in a powerful boutique model WRITTEN BY: ILKHAN OZSEVIM

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Silviu Balaci, CTO, and Dragos Radulescu, GM of EvoBits, a boutique-minded yet highly capable IT Solutions firm, talks tech, turnkey and timely evolution

I

n the business world, just as in the world at large, there is a kind of operational ‘survival of the fittest’ principle, where the most highly adaptable to change will survive. There are other related principles at work, too.

‘Environment’, ‘niche’, ‘competition’ and a form of ‘selection’ are involved, and these principles are more than mere metaphors.

EvoBits IT is a company that exhibits such principles, and its adaptability is striking.

EvoBits IT began as a software development company in 2014, which was their primary focus for the first few years.

“But, after that, we started branching out into hosting, due to the emerging demand from our existing clients,” says Silviu Catalin Balaci, Chief Technology Officer (CTO). “That's when we built the first data centre, and we then very quickly built the second.”

Exhibiting further acumen for the exploitation of the environment, he says: “Initially, they were purposely built for a particular project, but since then we started trying to attack the hosting services aspect.

We already had an established infrastructure and then developed into a hosting provider – mainly B2B, which is our target audience. But we also have the software department, and, instead of merely working for other clients, we are now trying to shift focus and develop different types of software-as-a-service (SaaS) to offer those as a product.”

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EvoBits IT: Turnkey IT Solutions in a powerful boutique model

“ You have to think about such equipment as you would think about a race car: it can only operate at high performance when it’s within its parameters, and so you have to try to keep it within those parameters” DRAGOS RADULESCU GENERAL MANAGER EVOBITS

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Balaci says that, being a small company, “the positions here are generally like an octopus with many tentacles, and we have several simultaneous functions so our titles alone don't really capture what we actually do”. Although officially ‘CTO’, Balaci’s role is mainly on the broad technical side involving management of the IT infrastructure, which includes everything that doesn't fall under the data centre operations.

“This includes servers and the handling of the networking part, the operating system and the software – including our own software development department.

And then on the business side, I'm more

EVOBITS

SILVIU BALACI TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: ROMANIA I am a technology enthusiast with an entrepreneurial spirit and an eye for solving IT-related challenges. Looking at the future, I am certain of only one thing: no matter what happens, it will be interesting.

DRAGOS RADULESCU TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: ROMANIA

EXECUTIVE BIOS

or less overseeing the marketing strategy and consulting on the general business development strategy, where Dragos and I strategise on which direction we should evolve or what market we should attack.”

Dragos Cristian Radulescu is General Manager (GM) and his role similarly entails multiple facets. “On the one hand, there is still a technical aspect concerning the operation of the Data Centres,” he says. “It's related to engineering and to the equipment that we're using, and since I joined EvoBits IT, it has also developed into an operational role, leading internal ops and the general administration of the business – which means dealing

With extensive engineering background in the automotive sector and exposure to the German and Japanese school of thought, my aim is not only to ensure goals are reached but that the process is thorough, complete and well documented.

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EVOBITS

with customer and supplier contracts, and includes personnel responsibilities.”

Located in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, EvoBits IT is currently looking to finalise a solid recipe for the business, creating a solid model for their hosting business and, later, one for SaaS, that Radulescu says “can then be easily reproduced and expanded into potentially different locations”.

“The kind of business that we are currently running and the markets for these products and services (the data centre and hosting business) are dependent on location.

Expansion, generally speaking, requires relocation towards the customers, so that would be a ‘horizontal expansion’. Then, within our current business model, we are looking at our customers and seeing what needs they have that may not currently be met by the market” EvoBits IT prides itself on being a company with a boutique mentality. One of their goals in their expansion and development is to maintain this ethos, and where they are focusing only on B2B, they will work to maintain a close working relationship with their customers, discussing all their needs and adapting their hardware – as well as their software – infrastructure in line with customer needs, and developing their products in a particular direction accordingly. “We will never ever become a corporate type of company with a highstreet mentality,” says Balaci.

EvoBits IT’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning EvoBits IT’s biggest customers are currently in the AI business. “We've identified a kind of niche where we see a great potential because the products offered by large companies are off-the-shelf, fixed and immobile,” says Balaci. “All the large 96

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EVOBITS

“ We will never ever become a corporate type of company with a high-street mentality” SILVIU BALACI

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, EVOBITS

cloud companies have a 'take it or leave it' approach, but this area is complex and some customers require a different type of computational power. Others may need a different balance, such as more CPU power or a specific type of GPU, and either very fast, low latency storage or incredibly high amounts of storage. So we've discerned that there's a large volume of customer needs that are not being met in this department, and that speaks directly to our image as being customer-focused and creating solutions that are best for their particular business, so we are presently tackling this as a service.”

EvoBits IT also has a model that includes renting out equipment and hardware for AI processing, and engaging in consulting for larger customers that want to create their own infrastructure. For example, they presently have a client that has built his own private cloud just for AI processing and are both providing the hardware and creating the design for this private cloud – even the control panel. They are essentially a turnkey solution, with full vertical integration (FVI).

FVI means that EvoBits IT controls every aspect of the package that they provide and deliver to the customer. They have their own hardware and infrastructure that they built with their partners, and have full control of the software that's running on the aimagazine.com

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cloud – fundamentally in control of every aspect on the chain. This gives them a lot of flexibility, as well as the power to adapt to the customer's needs and to react quickly in case any changes are required.

Balaci adds: “This full vertical integration eliminates a lot of restrictions. For example we are not limited to the power in a rack.

As we actually own the data centre, we can quite easily go in and assign more power to a particular zone or more cooling to a particular area. We're even able to modify the local data centre infrastructure, if that's something that needs to happen.”

Software as a Service Then there is the SaaS model within EvoBits IT.

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The idea is that a big part of the company is still focused on software development, making use of the skills of many great software developers who have been with the organisationfor a number of years. But, at the same time, EvoBits IT has shifted their approach into that of a service provider, focusing heavily on the hosting aspect of the business. One of the first examples would be the complete API builder.

Balaci says: “You have a lot of mobile apps developers that are quite good at creating mobile apps, but all that data in the backend needs to be stored somewhere.

Usually, what they do is contract other companies to build that for them. What we want is to have something similar to a website builder, but one that targets

EVOBITS

building the APIs behind mobile apps or other websites that work with that type of structure. This product will also be ready very soon.”

DC’s, Tech and technical know-how When Radulescu first joined EvoBits IT, he was in charge of a more technical aspect of the business, related specifically to the equipment used in the infrastructure of the data centres.

“We had two great partners that we worked with to construct the DCs,” he says. “Before I joined the company, we

purchased very efficient evaporative cooling equipment from Vertiv – which is a big name in the business – and we've used our local partner Innova to integrate and set up this equipment for the data centre.”

At the time, however, there was a certain lack of internal know-how within the company. Radulescu’s purpose was to understand how the pieces of equipment worked to get the most out of them and heighten their performance.

“You have to think about such equipment as you would think about a race car: it can only operate at high performance when it's within its parameters, and so you have to try to keep it within those parameters.

“One of the data centres that we constructed was a custom job built for max-load (3 MW of power), which means

“ One of the approaches is how to start our own marketing campaign to highlight the brand, highlight what makes us special, what specific aspects of our service set us apart from our competitors and why customers should come to us in spite of our very low prices” DRAGOS RADULESCU GENERAL MANAGER EVOBITSE

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that everything was strung up very tightly.

The cooling equipment, especially, was working very close to its rated capacity, and we had to find solutions to understand how to optimise and distribute airflow to ensure that we didn’t have any hotspots. Initially, this took a while, but we can say that we've gone from something that was very tightly strung – where any issues would've led to major concerns during operation – to where we are now, which is an N+1 situation where we can literally shut down some equipment and still continue to be operational without a hitch.”

As things progressed and Radulescu’s role evolved into one more involved with operations, they found that they needed to define numerous procedures to ensure that they have systems in place to record and document activities, and track all tasks – both internal and external – to optimise their workflow.

IT service expansions: challenges and opportunities IT expansions do, of course, come with their own sets of challenges. Asked about their own particular kind, Balaci says that they found them to fall into three categories – the first of these being global supply issues.

“If we take just network cards as an example, if we were to source them through the direct channels, we would have to wait up to a year in some cases.

So we had to adapt by trying to find other suppliers for those particular parts, but even so, nothing really comes quicker than three months – and, in a company where we are trying to be as agile as possible, that means trying to think ahead by buying and keeping things in stock so that, when a customer has a particular requirement, we are able to offer them a solution on 100

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the spot. This has been one of our biggest strengths, because we took that risk to buy ahead. We were, many times, the only ones in the local market who could provide, let's say a specialised custom server within one week. Instead of waiting three months, most of the time we had everything we needed ready.”

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The second challenge for EvoBits IT has been the software aspect. “We just launched our OpenStack cloud,” says Balaci. “We wanted to go for a solution that caters to high performance computing, which means extremely fast servers and, most importantly, an extremely fast storage solution – completely based on NVMe SSD

technology – which is the best of the best with low latency. We have to thank our partners at StorPool for that, who provided the software solution for the storage part and that solution has been great. However, the challenge has been in integrating it with our control panel, because we built one from the ground up. If you go onto Amazon aimagazine.com

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cloud and try to buy some components in one package, you will spend hours reading through the documentation as to where you need to go and what you need to do to gain access to these components. That led us to take the decision to build our own management and control panel, where we can simplify things enough that almost anyone can go there and, in just a few clicks – I would say in under a minute – easily customise whatever they want according to their needs.”

“ You have to think about such equipment as you would think about a race car: it can only operate at high performance when it’s within its parameters” DRAGOS RADULESCU GENERAL MANAGER EVOBITSE

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The last challenge was a particularly interesting one. “It relates,” says Balaci, “to the business strategy that we discussed with Dragos.

“We have all this hardware and we're going to build this high performance cloud, so we thought, 'let's take the strategy of not overcharging our customers, because fundamentally, we don't care about profit'.

Right now, our concern is getting our name known and expanding our brand. But, oddly enough, a lot of people are wondering, 'what

EVOBITS

corners are you cutting if you are able to offer these prices? Why is it so cheap?'. They think that we can’t offer this performance for under a half or a third of what other suppliers in the market offer. We built everything properly, with the latest high-performance equipment, with top-of-the-line software components, and we’re simply trying to not overcharge anyone. Even our biggest customer – who we're building the AI cluster for – came to us directly and said, 'your prices are so low that people are really

thinking that something is off here'.

“We need, therefore, to convince our customers that we are not cutting corners and are not underpricing our services, but that other providers are overcharging them.”

EvoBits IT’s upcoming 3rd DC EvoBits IT are also focused on a third DC. Finding the right location has been a challenge as, for DCs, location is key.

Specifically, power is a big problem, because data centres require large volumes of it to function effectively, and EvoBits IT is in a city where a number of areas have been built up and a lot of power resources have been used up.

The next stages are about obtaining approvals for the new location and for the new building, which is also a lengthy process.

There's a lot of bureaucracy involved.

Balaci says: “We hope that we'll be able to overcome all the challenges on the way which will be basically the implementation of all lessons learned. We aim for it to be as efficient as our most efficient, as reliable as our most reliable, and as flexible as our most flexible DC. We expect the building permits and zone development permits to come sometime next year.”

The critical importance of the partner ecosystem EvoBits IT’s partner ecosystem is also key to its successes. Hearkening back to evolutionary analogies, this ecosystem functions in a way that’s somewhat akin to symbiosis.

One of these partners is Supermicro, who has been very reliable. Most of EvoBits IT’s servers have been from Supermicro, and they have proven themselves to be – despite the fact that they’re a big company – extremely adaptable, and, as EvoBits IT offer aimagazine.com

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customised solutions, they require flexibility.

Supermicro constantly adapts solutions for EvoBits IT and the two work together within the supply chain. They were also quick to point out delays caused by the sourcing of parts, offering solutions to go in a different direction to solve EvoBits IT’s delivery issues.

Another one of EvoBits IT’s partners is AMD, who they’ve been with since 2019, where EvoBits IT were a launch partner for Epyc Rome CPUs. Balaci says: “They are always fast to supply; their CPUs are great, as is the support that we receive from them and, if we contact them concerning more niche software, they will help with custom settings or tweaks.”

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On the partner ecosystem, Radulescu continues: “We have our partners on the infrastructure and equipment side for the data centres, and the most important name here is Innova. They have been our partners since the construction of the data centres, and they have basically been holding our hands throughout the process of our operations. They've been our partner for maintenance and have been supporting us for any changes that we've carried out and have been there to help with any problems that we have, and have been open to suggestions and requests. They even helped us to learn about specific equipment, such

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“ We need, therefore, to convince our customers that we are not cutting corners and are not underpricing our services, but that other providers are overcharging them.

SILVIU BALACI

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, EVOBITS

as the Vertiv cutting edge evaporative cooling systems.”

Most importantly, Innova have been able to hand EvoBits IT knowledge down from Vertiv as an intermediary – “and they were very open in doing so,” says Radulescu. “We are very pleased to have them as a partner and have found many opportunities to collaborate with them.

“Obviously, I can't go on without mentioning Vertiv themselves, who have delivered the product and have been very diligent in supporting it wherever it was necessary - and even when it was out of warranty. It must be said that our use-

case isn't the most usual case for this type of equipment. We've been pushing those units in that project close to max load continuously, which has also been a very interesting experience for Vertiv themselves, to see how the equipment handles that sort of situation.”

StorPool is another one of EvoBits IT’s partners. They offer a really fast, low latency storage solution for cloud systems and for high performance computing, “and those guys are just awesome,” enthuses Balaci.

“We begin with the fact that their solution is great and works really well, but the level of support that they offer is what really sets them apart.”

EvoBits IT’s focus is about trying to develop the business and to make a name for themselves in the market. “One of the approaches is how to start our own marketing campaign to highlight the brand, highlight what makes us special, what specific aspects of our service set us apart from our competitors and why customers should come to us in spite of our very low prices,” says Radulescu. “And, on the other hand, we want to push forward on the development of our data centre, which is very important to us in terms of the next few years, which will be pivotal for the development of our company as a whole.”

Balaci says: “My area of focus will heavily be on our cloud solution. The one that we just launched is something that is also extremely critical for the software-as-aservice aspect of the business, since it provides the backbone for that area. We'll focus heavily on evolving, adding new features, expanding the offering and trying to educate our customers.”

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Leaders innovating in the AI space Often, when a fantastical AI innovation comes into play, we tend to focus on the company itself; here, we look at the Top 10 experts driving the companies WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY When we think about artificial intelligence (AI), humans are rarely what springs to mind.

And understandably so, as AI is all about machine intelligence and automation.

AI has become an essential business tool, so we often commend the pioneering work of AI companies to support businesses as they digitally evolve. But, what about the people in the company conceiving and creating those innovations?

To shed a light on the importance of people in the creation of intelligent machines, we take a look at the best-in-class executives in the AI field who continue to push the technology – and its boundaries – forward.

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10

Andrej Karpathy Senior Director of AI

TESLA

With a passion for AI, Andrej Karpathy is interested in training deep neural nets on large datasets. As Tesla’s Senior Director of AI, Karpathy leads the computer vision team of Tesla Autopilot, which is focused on in-house data labelling, neural network training, the science of making it work, and deployment in production running on custom inference chips. Previously, Karpathy was a research scientist and founding member at OpenAI. He also studied for his PhD, where he looked into convolutional/recurrent neural networks and their applications in computer vision, natural language processing and their intersection.

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09

Thomas Siebel

Chairman and CEO

C3.ai

American businessman and technologist Thomas Siebel was previously an Executive at Oracle, where he held a number of management positions. Following his time at Oracle, the CEO founded his own company, Siebel Systems, a CRM software company that became the fastest-growing technology company in the United States in 1999. The company was ultimately acquired by Oracle in 2006.

In 2009, Siebel founded C3.ai, which provides an enterprise AI software platform and applications for multiple commercial uses, including energy management, predictive maintenance and fraud detection.

TOP 10

07

Anna Patterson

08

Poppy Gustafsson CEO

Darktrace As CEO of AI cyber company Darktrace, Poppy Gustafsson has led the company through significant growth and global expansion. For her work, Gustafsson was named Vodafone’s Woman of the Year for Technology and Innovation in 2020, Tech Businesswoman of the Year at the UK Tech Awards 2019 and won the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman Awards 2019. Also in 2019, the CEO – along with Darktrace’s CTO – was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) for services to cyber security.

Managing Partner and Founder of Gradient Ventures and Vice President of Engineering

Google

Anna Patterson is an accomplished AI leader. As a VP of Engineering at Google, she architected the search serving system that increased the index size by over 10x at the time of launch, helped Android scale from 3 million to over a billion phones, launched Google Play, and led the search, infrastructure, and recommendation teams.

Gradient Ventures was launched by Alphabet and Patterson to invest in early-stage artificial intelligence startups. Patterson also co-founded Cuil, a clustering-based search engine.

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06

Sam Altman CEO

OpenAI American entrepreneur Sam Altman is the former president of Y Combinator and now CEO of research and development company, OpenAI. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Altman was keen to aid the global fight against the virus so helped fund and create Project Covalence, which aimed to help researchers rapidly launch clinical trials in partnership with TrialSpark, a clinical trial startup.

The CEO is also an investor in many successful companies across different industries, including Airbnb, Stripe and Reddit.

05

David Hanson CEO and founder

Hanson Robotics Known for his pioneering robotic technology, David Hanson is a developer of human-like robots.

His drive in the robotics industry is underpinned by a lifelong quest to create true living, caring machines. To achieve his goals, Hanson integrates figurative arts with cognitive science and robotics engineering, inventing novel skin materials, facial expression mechanisms, and collaborative developments in AI within humanoid artworks. His most famous creation is Sophia the robot, which can engage people in naturalistic face-to-face conversations.

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03

Rana El Kaliouby

Co-Founder and CEO of Affectiva and Deputy CEO

04 Dario Gil

Senior Vice President and Director of Research

IBM

Leading the technology roadmap and the technical community of IBM, Dario Gil is responsible for directing innovation strategies in areas including hybrid clouds, AI, semiconductors, quantum computing, and exploratory science. Under his leadership, IBM became the first company in the world to build programmable quantum computers and make them universally available through the cloud. He is also responsible for IBM Research, one of the world’s largest and most influential corporate research labs, with over 3,000 researchers.

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Smart Eye

Rana el Kaliouby is an Egyptian American Scientist who co-founded Affectiva, a software company that builds AI with an understanding of human emotions, cognitive states, activities and the objects people use.

Dedicated to the ethical development and deployment of AI, el Kaliouby is part of Partnership of AI and the World Economic Forum’s Council of Young Global Leaders, driven by her passion to advocate for standards that ensure data privacy, and mitigate both data and algorithmic bias.

Demis Hassabis CEO

DeepMind Technologies

2 0

From a young age, Demis Hassabis showed a keen interest in AI and has since founded a number of dedicated companies, including Elixir Studios, DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs. At 17, Hassabis joined the computer game company Bullfrog Productions, where he worked as a designer on science fiction game Syndicate. Here, he was the lead programmer for the highly influential Theme Park, which won the industry’s Golden Joystick Award.

In 2010, Hassabis founded AI company DeepMind Technologies with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman. The trio began working on AI technology by teaching it how to play old games from the seventies and eighties. Their goal with this technology was to create a general-purpose AI that can be useful and effective for almost anything.

Hassabis attended Cambridge University where he studied for his computer science undergraduate degree, earning a double first-class honours.

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Andrew Ng CEO

Landing AI

British-born Andrew Ng has had a rich career in the technology industry as co-founder and Head of Google Brain, former Chief Scientist at Baidu and co-founder of Coursera. At Baidu, Ng built the company’s AI sector into a team of several people. Now, Ng is the CEO of Landing AI, a company that supports others with limited datasets to realise the business and operational value of AI, moving AI projects from proof-ofconcept to full-scale production.

The entrepreneur is also an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University. In 2011, Ng led the development of Stanford University’s main MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platform and also taught an online Machine Learning class that was offered to over 100,000 students, leading to the founding of Coursera, a US-based massive open online course provider.

Andrew Ng: Enterprise AI Strategy (with Landing AI) - CxOTalk #365

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