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SHEIKH MOHAMMED SANCTIONS UAE ACTION PLAN ON DIGITAL ECONOMY
During a meeting with the ‘Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Teleworking Applications Team’, this week, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President,
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Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, has sanctioned the UAE’s action plan on
AI and digital economy, according to a report in WAM.
Sheikh Mohammed said, “Our priorities are the development of the digital economy that will contribute to our national economy, reinforce the country’s smart infrastructure, ensure our digital readiness and maintain the continuity of business of the UAE
Government under all circumstances.”
“The digital economy is a key driver in the growth and development of many new national economic sectors, and will help reinforce our competitiveness in the global market and future economy.”
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid made this statement while 42 TO BOOST AI AND CLOUD INNOVATION IN THE UAE In the presence of HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), and Peng Xiao, CEO of Group 42, Digital DEWA – the digital arm of DEWA, announced a strategic partnership with Group 42 (G42), an Abu Dhabi based leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing company.
reviewing the future working plans of the UAE Government in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, AI, the digital economy and teleworking applications, which was introduced as part of the new structure of the UAE Cabinet announced in July and under the new government development plans for the post-COVID-19 era, especially in light of the growing strategic role of the digital economy, smart technology and teleworking in managing businesses in many sectors and fully organising supply chains, both locally and internationally.
The partnership with Group 42 enables Digital DEWA companies – Moro Hub, InfraX and DigitalX – to introduce and implement digital and data transformation initiatives. It aims to foster new services around AI and enhance innovations across Digital DEWA’s service portfolio.
HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, said, “The partnership with G42 will strengthen Digital DEWA offerings, as they can now extensively collaborate on technological endeavours, to co-create services in the clean energy and IoT, leverage AI-led solutions for government entities and enterprises across different sectors as well as explore the commercial and operational feasibility of such opportunities.”
The new services will be hosted on Moro Hub and G42 cloud infrastructure to ensure data security and superior customer experience. The services will be managed in Moro Hub’s Smart Cities Command and Control Centre, offering 24/7 support to future clients.
His Highness Sheikh Mohammed noted that the contribution of the digital economy to the country’s GDP in 2019 accounted for 4.3 percent, noting that a minister of state was appointed to increase this figure.
“The digital economy has proven its efficiency, and the world’s need for it is very obvious during the global health crisis. The digital economy does not need large establishments and significant financial resources. However, it requires minds, ideas and imagination. The future will involve many changes in health, education and trade, and we must be ready,” he said.
During the discussion, Omar bin Sultan Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, briefed Sheikh Mohammed on a comprehensive plan that focuses on providing tools and infrastructure to support the UAE’s leadership in anticipating and preparing for global changes.
Future plans for the digital economy sector will focus on developing financial cooperation, the freelance economy,
DIGITAL DEWA, GROUP
digital markets, and digital content.
Peng Xiao said, “We are thrilled to team up with Digital DEWA and play a key role in the digital transformation objectives and initiatives of the country. Our expertise in the fields of AI, Big Data Analytics and cloud computing, combined with our specialised industrial know-how, allow us to develop progressive and holistic solutions to problems in every sector, empowering businesses to transition to digital environments effortlessly. The UAE government is committed to the digital growth and development of the nation, and we are proud to contribute to this goal in every way possible.”
Regional clients can look forward to new service innovations addressing several market segments such as AI Research & Development, Cloud and Data Centre services, Industrial solutions, AI Video Analytics as a Service, Healthcare solutions such as COVID-19 detection and diagnostic devices, technical support, professional and other digital services.
SAUDI HOSPITAL ENHANCES INTEGRATED CLINICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM
King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre (KFSH&RC) has collaborated with Cerner during the COVID-19 pandemic to fully upgrade its Integrated Clinical
Information System (ICIS) to the latest available Cerner software version.
The conversion of this code upgrade broke new ground by being supported entirely by virtual means.
KFSH&RC manages three facilities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and plays the role of a tertiary health care provider for specialised medicine services such as oncology, cardiology, transplants and fertility, with approximately one million outpatient visits each year. This strategic upgrade will enable the hospital to continue innovating care delivery and hospital operations. In addition, it has yielded significant enhancements in the system performance of KFSH&RC’s ICIS with the Cerner Millennium electronic health record. The Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge (ADEK) has announced the UAE capital will open the first GCC campus of the internationally renowned 42 Network of coding and computer programming schools early next year.
A major enabler in Abu Dhabi’s strategic vision to create a diverse and inclusive education infrastructure that empowers and enables a future-ready workforce, 42 Abu Dhabi will welcome students in February 2021. The new campus is an initiative of Ghadan 21, Abu Dhabi’s three-year government accelerators programme that aims to fast-track the emirate’s economic transformation through investments in the economy, knowledge, and community to support business, innovation, and people.
The purpose-built 42 Abu Dhabi campus will offer a revolutionary approach to divergent and gamified learning in the heart of the UAE capital’s historic Mina Zayed warehouses district.
“This pandemic has forcefully disrupted the day-to-day operations of healthcare organisations and put pressure on all providers to create novel ways in keeping patients at the centre of health care. Physical distancing and staff safety combined with the value realisation and impact this upgrade would have on KFSH&RC’s healthcare delivery model forced us to rise to the challenge,” said Osama Al Swailem, MD, MA, Chief Information Officer of KFSH&RC. “We had confidence that our healthcare IT staff, clinical department leaders and Cerner would come up with an innovative approach in getting our system upgraded with minimal downtime.”
“This virtual upgrade has exposed the KFSH&RC informatics staff to a new delivery model,” Al Swailem explained. “In addition to the hardware and software enhancements we had with the upgrade, this project aimed at continually enhancing the patient and caregiver experiences, 42 Abu Dhabi will follow the tuitionfree model of coding and programming education pioneered by French billionaire Xavier Niel, who founded the Network’s inaugural campus in Paris, École 42, in 2013. In only seven years, the expanding 42 Network of schools has grown to over 20 globally. 42 Abu Dhabi, the first of its kind in the GCC, will accommodate up to 750 students once fully operational.
Her Excellency Sara Musallam, Chairman, ADEK, said, “By making coding and codethinking accessible to people of all levels and abilities, 42 Abu Dhabi embodies the emirate’s vision for a tech-enabled business ecosystem and contributes to our leaders’
increasing safety, reducing cost and the elimination of manual processes . I have challenged all that were involved in continuing this innovative way of thinking to help define the new-norm in healthcare.”
The upgrade has introduced more than 500 software enhancements. Moreover, the KFSH&RC roadmap projects will significantly increase the availability of valuable data for analytics, such as chemotherapy timings, oncology protocol compliance, transplants survival rates, medication administration information through bar coding and integration with supply chain systems. This will empower KFSH&RC to further personalise care plans and proactively manage the health
ADEK ANNOUNCES ‘42 ABU DHABI’ CODING SCHOOL
of its patients. vision to build a secure and confident society that is competitive, sustainable and open.”
Operating a project-based, problem-based and peer-to-peer learning methodology endorsed by global tech luminaries including Evan Spiegel, Co-Founder & CEO of Snapchat, Jack Dorsey, Co-Founder & CEO of Twitter, Keyvon Beykpour, Co-Founder & CEO of Periscope, and Brian Chesky, CoFounder & CEO of Airbnb, amongst others, 42 Abu Dhabi students will learn at their own pace and develop through collaboration and creativity.
Candidates interested in applying to 42 Abu Dhabi, must be 18 years old and above, and can register at www.42AbuDhabi.ae to conduct an online pre-selection assessment which evaluates cognitive capacity via logic and memory tests. Successful pre-selection candidates are then invited to ‘The Piscine’, an immersive month-long program testing motivation, endurance, and commitment. Successful candidates will be invited to join the inaugural cohort of 42 Abu Dhabi after all ‘The Piscine’ assessments are completed.
His Excellency Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), has witnessed the signing of an agreement between Etihad Energy
Services Company (Etihad ESCO), a wholly-owned subsidiary of DEWA and
Moro Hub (Data Integrated Solutions), a wholly-owned subsidiary of DEWA to join MORO’s newly launched Smart
Cities Command and Control Centre.
Etihad ESCO will now benefit from
Moro Hub’s world class digital, cloud and secured services while bringing its expertise in measurement and SENTINELONE UNEARTHS IOT VULNERABILITIES SentinelOne has announced that Barak Sternberg, SentinelLabs security researcher, has identified four unique vulnerabilities in HDL Automation smart devices. The vulnerabilities exposed thousands of HDL devices to remote control by adversaries, leading to possible network intrusion, secret exfiltration, and even ransomware attacks. SentinelOne alerted HDL to the issues via the responsible disclosure process, and the vulnerabilities have been patched.
IoT devices are ubiquitous in the home and the workplace, connecting lights, air conditioning, and even heat-sensors to home or corporate networks. IoT devices are also potential security weak points that attackers target to exploit internal network configurations, change arbitrary controllers,
verification, energy monitoring and management and facility management.
As a Dubai 10X enabler, Moro Hub’s Smart Cities Command and Control Centre provides services in Intelligent IoT Platforms, Cyber Security and Managed Services to support the Government and Enterprise customers in their digital transformation journey.
The agreement was signed by Mohamed Bin Sulaiman, CEO of Moro Hub and Ali Al Jassim, CEO of Etihad Energy Services (Etihad ESCO).
HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, said, “We work according to the vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to make Dubai the city of the future. We congratulate Etihad ESCO on joining Moro hub’s integrated Smart Cities Command and Control Centre. Now Etihad ESCO will have complete access to all the advantages of the command and control centre without compromising on data security and and cause software or hardware damage. With enterprises adding more and more connected devices to their networks, vulnerabilities like those outlined in SentinelLabs’ research are concerning as every connection to the enterprise network is a potential vulnerability.
“IoT can pose a significant threat to enterprise security because, while anything you connect to your network is a potential point of ingress, not everyone considers that IoT devices contain unintended vendor-created backdoors” said Sternberg. “Many organisations don’t design smart thermostats or refrigerators with security in mind. However, even mundane devices business continuity. This collaboration is in alignment with Dubai 10X initiatives and UAE’s Sustainable Development Goals.”
HE Al Tayer added, “Through the UAE’s Green Agenda, the country aims to catalyse regional and global cooperation for a green economy transformation. This aligns with our mission at Etihad ESCO, to make Dubai built environment a leading example of energy efficiency for the region and the world and make the city one of the most sustainable globally. In this regard, Moro Hub’s Smart Cities Command and Control Centre is a perfect platform that could offer us innovative digital capabilities to meet our objectives. We are thrilled to be a part of this growing ecosystem.”
Under this agreement, Etihad ESCO will accelerate their businesses and management services powered by emerging smart technologies to facilitate valuable savings. Moro Hub’s cutting-edge Smart Cities Command and Control Centre enables Government and Enterprise clients to fast track the adoption of new-age digital technologies such as IoT, Cyber Security, Cloud and more. The centre allows digital leaders to make well-informed decisions
based on data-driven analysis. such as this can be open to attackers, making it critical to understand exactly how many devices you have connected to your network and to harden every endpoint.”
SentinelLabs identified two vulnerabilities that enabled account takeover; a flaw in the “forgot your password” function and a takeover of the debug email account. Two additional vulnerabilities relating to endpoint APIs were also identified. Due to these flaws, SentinelLabs researchers were able to compromise remote servers used as proxies for configuring smart devices and worked with HDL Automation on patch solutions. If attackers were simply interested in causing chaos, they could do physical damage by raising the temperature in a server room, disabling security cameras, or disabling sensors designed to detect leaks or voltage surges. The four new-found IoT vulnerabilities highlight the sensitivity and cost of IoT cyberattacks in impacting our digital way of life.
MOST BUSINESSES SAY CLOUD IS A PRIORITY IN THE COVID-19 SHUTDOWN: REPORT
Kanaiya Vasani, Infoblox
Infoblox and Zogby Analytics have unveiled a research into the ongoing IT challenges posed by the COVID-19 shutdown. Half a year into the shutdown, companies are still playing catch up to optimise their remote work experience. Based on 1,077 responses from the US, the
UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain,
China, Japan, Australia, and Singapore, key survey findings show that: • The borderless enterprise is here to stay. More than 90% of decision-makers consider digital transformation and cloud-managed services a priority. The percentage of companies with a majority of employees working remotely more than tripled from 21% before the shutdown to 70% after. 40% of companies, twice the pre-COVID-19 rate, are permanently keeping a majority of workers remote. Organisations are still building out their IT infrastructure and security controls to optimise remote work. Organisations say distributing sanctioned devices (35%), building network infrastructure (35%), and securing the network (29%) are top IT challenges when transitioning to remote work. Threat mitigation and network visibility remain the top security concerns for the remote work environment. 68% say better threat detection and or mitigation technologies would enable more remote work for their organisations. Specifically, respondents are looking for better visibility into devices on the corporate network (65%), cloud applications workers are using (61%), and compromised devices (46%). Security incidents are rising. Half of the surveyed businesses are seeing more cyber-attacks—with the biggest jumps in China and Australia—while just a quarter are seeing fewer. Companies are reversing policies to allow the use of personal applications to foster collaboration. 63% of companies are allowing workers to connect with each other using applications like WhatsApp, Zoom, and Houseparty. Companies are using cloud security tools, particularly from the DDI family (DNS, DHCP, IP Address Management), to secure the borderless enterprise. 59% of companies plan on making additional investments in DNS to secure their expanded networks.
“While most organisations can now accommodate the basics of remote work, this report highlights the need for more security controls,” said Kanaiya Vasani, Executive Vice President, Products and Corporate Development at Infoblox. “To meet that need, a majority of surveyed companies are turning to DNS to rapidly stand up a foundational layer of security for employees working from home. “Using a hybrid DNS security solution like BloxOne Threat Defense, enterprises can create a ubiquitous layer of visibility and security across their expanded infrastructure.”
NEW DIPLOMA TO ENHANCE SKILLS OF SMART CITY EXPERIENCE SPECIALISTS
Smart Dubai has launched a Professional Diploma to enhance the skills of the city’s ‘Smart City Experience Specialists’, according to a report by WAM. The new diploma will introduce best practices to improve the design and quality of experiencing current digital services and help create new ones to drive Dubai’s digital transformation and build a smarter city.
Students can expect to learn the use of current and emerging technologies, which will be the foundation of the course. It will help accelerate innovation, and directly contribute to continued improvements of the economy, the environment and the quality of life in Dubai, said the report.
The first of its kind in the region, the Professional Diploma is offered online by Smart Dubai in collaboration with the University of Dubai and the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation, DIDI. It is accredited by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, KHDA, and brings together 35 Smart City Experience Specialists from 27 government, semigovernment and private sector entities.
Taking place from the first week of September until the first week of November 2020, the Professional Diploma PURE STORAGE TO ACQUIRE PORTWORX Pure Storage has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Portworx, the Kubernetes data services platform, for approximately $370 million in cash. This deal
Younus Al Nasser
forms part of the new phase of Dubai’s Happiness Agenda, which His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai announced in December 2019. The launch of the latest phase of the Happiness Agenda aims at improving people’s experiences in the smart city of Dubai, and emphasises the role of Smart City Experience Specialists as a key component of the way successful smart cities function.
“As the government entity tasked with driving Dubai’s transformation into a full-fledged smart city of the future, Smart Dubai is committed to supporting the education sector in its efforts to create new specialisations and programmes that represents Pure’s largest acquisition to date and the company’s deeper expansion into the fast-growing market for multi-cloud data services to support Kubernetes and containers.
“As forward-thinking enterprises adopt cloud native strategies to advance their business, we are thrilled to have the Portworx team and their groundbreaking technology joining us at Pure to expand our success in delivering multi-cloud data services for Kubernetes,” said Charles Giancarlo, Chairman and CEO, Pure Storage. “This acquisition marks a significant milestone in expanding our Modern Data Experience to cover traditional and cloud native applications alike.” that are needed to build successful smart cities,” said Younus Al Nasser, Assistant Director General, Smart Dubai and CEO, Dubai Data Establishment, noting that the new Professional Diploma was designed with this exact objective in mind.
The Professional Diploma consists of four modules and a capstone project, where all of the Diploma’s learnings and takeaways are applied towards a reallife project. The first module is Digital Technologies, which covers the basics of key emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence, AI, and Blockchain, and also covers dynamic service integration and information security. The second module, Design Basics, follows with insight into primary topics in design methodology such as design thinking, information architecture, user interface, and content design.
The third module is Research Methods and offers a practical review of important research methods, while the fourth module, Service Design, brings all the threads together to create high quality digital services towards and exceptional experience, and covers the difference between product and service design, as well as the difference between digital and analogue services. In this way, the Diploma ensures that future digital services will be offered keeping in mind the manner digital services are designed
and meant to be delivered.
Portworx is the Kubernetes Data Services Platform most used by Global 2000 companies to provide persistent storage, high availability, data protection, data security, and cloud mobility for containers deployed in hybrid cloud architectures. By combining Portworx container data services with Pure’s industry-leading data platforms and Pure Service Orchestrator software, Pure will provide a comprehensive suite of data services that can be deployed in-cloud, on bare metal, or on enterprise arrays, all natively orchestrated in Kubernetes. With Portworx, Pure delivers the industry’s most complete platform for every stage of the cloud native journey.
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LULU GROUP INTERNATIONAL HAS RECENTLY MOVED ITS SAP HANA ENVIRONMENT TO IBM INFRASTRUCTURE AS PART OF ITS TECHNOLOGY MODERNISATION DRIVE. PIYUSH CHOWHAN, GROUP CIO, EXPLAINS HOW THE RETAIL GIANT PLANS TO DIGITALLY TRANSFORM TO MEET THE FLEXIBILITY AND PERFORMANCE ITS BUSINESS DEMANDS.
What is Lulu’s blueprint for digital transformation?
One of the things we want to do is to transform and be more customer-centric. Our digital strategy is centred around how we can engage with our customers better. We were predominantly a brickand-mortar retailer, and now the focus is on giving our customers an omnichannel experience. I don’t want to emphasise only e-commerce because that is just one part of the ecosystem we want to build.
We are also looking at how to capitalise on data to drive business growth. We have many customers walking into our stores, we supply merchandise from 22 odd countries, so there is a lot of data being generated across the supply chain, stores, and warehouses. We want to use this data for more meaningful insights and reduce costs.
We have more than 190 stores and our business strategy is to expand in a major way in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Far East, and India. To support this growth strategy, we are now working on technology modernisation, which will be underpinned by the transition to the cloud and more scalable and resilient solutions.
Do you see an accelerated shift towards e-commerce in the region?
Unfortunately, in the GCC countries, digital commerce penetration was lower than any other geography. However, because of Covid-19, there has been a sudden spike in digital commerce. And while some of it might be temporary, the projected e-commerce growth that would have otherwise happened in 2025 may be realised as early as 2023.
We want to make sure we ready for this, but we don’t want to be a pure-play e-commerce player because our strength is in physical stores. Our strategy is to merge online and offline journeys and offer a seamless omnichannel experience to the customer.
Why did the group decide to move to IBM Power Systems?
We were one of the early adopters of SAP HANA, our core application, and we have brought in a lot of innovation working alongside SAP. Ever since 2005, we have gone through two rounds of a refresh, and we are almost three-times bigger since the last upgrade in 2014. Running one of the largest SAP implementations in the region is not an easy job, especially in retail, where the customer behaviour is very dynamic. We required much more powerful, flexible, and scalable systems that are ready for the future as part of our technology landscape.
We did a thorough evaluation and reached out to our peers all over the world to understand where technology is moving in terms of core infrastructure. We had two choices - one was to look at the cloud, which we realised is not feasible at the moment for the kind of workloads we have. So it was a conscious decision to host this in our own data centre. The main points of our evaluation criteria
WE WANTED TO TIE UP WITH A VENDOR WITH A DEEP INTEREST IN CREATING ECOSYSTEMS AND PLATFORMS BECAUSE YOU CAN’T RUN ONE OF THE LARGEST SAP INSTANCES ON A MEDIOCRE SYSTEM. IT NEEDS TO BE RELIABLE, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, MODULAR. AFTER SOME VERY DESCRIPTIVE AND QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT, WE ZEROED IN ON IBM AS OUR PARTNER.
were - How resilient and scalable are the systems? Have they been proven in the landscape out there? And how futuristic is the underlying technology?
We wanted to tie up with a vendor with a deep interest in creating ecosystems and platforms because you can’t run one of the largest SAP instances on a mediocre system. It needs to be reliable, and more importantly, modular. After some very descriptive and quantitative assessment, we zeroed in on IBM as our partner.
We migrated from x86 platforms to IBM infrastructure. Right now, we have 16TB of SAP HANA workloads running on it, and we may double the capacity over the next few years based on our expansion plan. As I mentioned earlier, part of our digital transformation journey is to create data points and consolidate all hard data from core ERP, supply chain, and store systems on to this platform and make it accessible to the business. We will also extend it to future-proof, cloud-ready data lakes over the next couple of months.
How long did it take to migrate?
The whole migration took us around three months and was carried out in a tremendous collaborative manner with our partners. You have to keep in mind the fact that we placed the order just before the pandemic broke out, and the conditions were challenging because these are not out-of-box systems but custom-made. We also moved to the latest version of storage, which has a sophisticated virtualisation layer on top, and this helped us consolidate all our storage.
Moving all workloads from old systems to the new one was a bit like changing parts of an aeroplane while it is in motion. We made sure that the core ERP system downtime was kept at a bare minimum with the help of parallel systems, and the transition was smooth without any glitches.
A migration like this requires collaboration between application
and infrastructure teams. How did you manage to do that during this pandemic?
That is where digital resilience comes into play. Digital workforce transformation means how you react to different situations, and we proved ourselves in having done that. We were able to work with a diverse set of people spread globally. We take pride in the fact that we have deep application experience in SAP and HANA platforms. A lot of heavy lifting was done by our team here, and I am immensely proud that we could pull this off despite all the challenges.
Have you been to reduce your infrastructure footprint as a result of this shift?
We were able to reduce the server footprint in the data centre, and also consolidate storage requirement onto modern storage infrastructure. The management of SAP workloads and storage is so much easier now, and we can do it with fewer people. However, the most significant advantage is our ability to scale up and down. To give you an example, during the lockdown, we had to import three times more volume to ensure the food security of the country, and our system had to scale up very quickly. We are living in an increasingly volatile world, and our ability to venture into unchartered waters will depend on how quickly we can scale up or scale out systems without any friction, and resiliency towards diverse workloads.
Are you able to do real-time data analytics now?
One of the paradigm shifts we want is to move away from batch processing to real-time analytics to shape the customer experience. Now we can capture and process data in real-time from in-store transactions. The key to success in retail is to be data-centric. We will keep improving our data management and churn hard data to create more insights for business teams and create better customer satisfaction.
We see increased cloud usage due to Covid-19. Are you looking at a cloud consumption model, or will you selfmanage?
Cloud is going to be an important part of our journey. However, it has to be a choice that needs to be made on its merit, and I say this for multiple reasons. One is that the cloud is not ready for mission-critical workloads. We did a thorough cost-benefit analysis working with all the major cloud players in the region and realised that the cloud is not the right choice for us. If you don’t have cloud-native apps, then you don’t get the benefit at all. You will fail if you lift and shift monolithic applications to cloud environments, and it can prove to WE WERE ABLE TO REDUCE THE SERVER FOOTPRINT IN THE DATA CENTRE, AND ALSO CONSOLIDATE STORAGE REQUIREMENT ONTO MODERN STORAGE INFRASTRUCTURE. THE MANAGEMENT OF SAP WORKLOADS AND STORAGE IS SO MUCH EASIER NOW, AND WE CAN DO IT WITH FEWER PEOPLE. HOWEVER, THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ADVANTAGE IS OUR ABILITY TO SCALE UP AND DOWN.
be very costly. This is why we are going to follow a hybrid model – we are going to run our monolithic apps on-premise, and all new-gen applications, which are cloud-and mobile-first, will be hosted in the cloud.
Has this pandemic made you rethink some of your tech investment plans and priorities?
Not much. One thing that we see during this pandemic is that the pace of digital investments has accelerated. Cloud, automation and customer engagement technologies based on AI and ML were there before COVID too. But it is no longer a choice for organisations now; it has become a must-have to grow business. In our case, because the customer transition towards digital commerce is happening at a rapid clip now, we are reacting to the trend by adding more fulfilment centres, delivery fleet, etc. Now, we have a world-class platform that allows us to focus more on the e-commerce ecosystem.
