Digital Bulletin - Issue 11 - December 2019

Issue 11 | Dec ’19

THE FUTURE WORKPLACE Philipp Kristian Diekhöner on succeeding in the trust economy

OPERATIONAL

AI

Deep learning models fit for the real world

n e n o o P y a j n a S : e v i s u l c x E

n ulleti B l a it o Dig f Pivotal t s k o ea O sp quisitions ting O C p re ac disru to Mwa mpany’s , V k c e a o Bl Th ion mbit the c Carbon a t u s i o ab dh nd are a curity, an illion w t f So int se to $20 b o p es end venu e r w gro

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HIGHLIGHTS

AWS CONFIRMS IT WILL CONTEST $10 BILLION JEDI CONTRACT DECISION AWS has confirmed that it will contest the decision to award Microsoft a $10 billion contract to modernise the Pentagon’s IT systems. It cited clear deficiencies, errors, and unmistakable bias in the tendering and evaluation process for the JEDI contract. AWS was strongly tipped to win the contract, and will take its case to the Court of Federal Claims. 15/11/19 MORE ON THIS STORY

The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

S

anjay Poonen is a man with big plans. VMware’s COO of Customer Operations took time out at VMWare’s European summit, VMworld, in Barcelona in November to speak about a number of the company’s recent announcements, and its plan to grow revenues to $20 billion.

In an exclusive interview with Digital Bulletin, Poonen says that VMware’s $2.1 billion purchase of Carbon Black will allow the company to disrupt end-point security, a sector he clearly feels needs shaking up, calling it “staid” and saying that innovation had ground to a halt.

Successfully integrating one multi-billion dollar business would be enough for most organisations, but the $2.7 billion Pivotal Software play is part of VMware’s ambition to lead the way in containers and Kubernetes.

Done properly, building a number of highly profitable businesses within the VMware ecosystem will result in significant growth, says Poonen.

“We’re going to have a number of goals for our core products and each of them are on their way to or are already billion dollar businesses. If you get multi-billion dollar businesses inside a $10 billion or $11 billion company, you get a quicker path to a $20 billion,” he tells us.

For more insights into a company that hasn’t been out of the technology headlines over the last 12 months, turn to page eight.

Elsewhere, we have a number of other fantastic interviews with experts from across the enterprise technology spectrum.

Björn Brinne, Chief AI Officer of Swedish firm Peltarion, speaks to us the potential for enterprise-wide adoption of models based on the likes of deep learning and neural networks, while Roger Atkins, one of the foremost voices on EVs, tells us how the road to electrification is progressing.

We hope you enjoy the newest issue of Digital Bulletin.

PUBLISHED BY BULLETIN MEDIA LTD, Norwich, UK Company No: 11454926 www.DigitalBullet.in TALK TO US editorial@digitalbullet.in business@digitalbullet.in

PUBLISHING

MEDIA PRODUCTION

DIGITAL MARKETING

INSIDE VIEW

Bear Grylls gives the keynote address at the second day of VMWorld Europe 2019 in Barcelona on November 7, 2019. During his presentation, the well-known television survivalist discussed his 4 f’s: failure, fear, fire and faith.

CONTENTS

3 08

NETWORKS VMWARE Exclusive interview with Sanjay Poonen, COO

AI PELTARION Neural networks for the enterprise

16 24

PEOPLE Philipp Kristian Diekhรถner Succeeding in a trust economy

32

DATA & SECURITY CLEARSWIFT The ransomware dilemma for business

58 42 EVENTS

FUTURES

Roger Atkins Driving to an electric future

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SERVICES WOVEN Innovating in the BPO industry

The biggest and best technology events for your diary

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An exclusive column from Martin Fleming and Maureen Norton, IBM

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Building a

$20bn

Tech Rockstar AUTHOR: James Henderson

Digital Bulletin speaks exclusively with VMware COO, Sanjay Poonen, about the company’s acquisitions of Carbon Black and Pivotal Software, leading the way in the container market, and taking the company to $20 billion in revenue

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VMworld event is like a Rolling Stones concert, because we don’t do many of them,” smiles Sanjay Poonen, VMware’s COO of Customer Operations. “It’s a great chance to meet with our closest friends and partners.”

In which case, VMware has a pretty big group of friends: 14,000 attended the company’s European set piece event, VMworld Europe 19, held in Barcelona in November, which at various points felt part technology event, part exhibition and, in keeping with Poonen’s analogy, part 8

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rock gig – the three days are closed out with a set played by the Stereophonics at ‘VMfest’. Bear Grylls is also drafted in to give a keynote address, which he does to a captivated and capacity audience.

But the true stars at over the show are VMware’s executive team, who are met with packed halls for their own keynotes, presentations and announcements during the event. VMware has been called a ‘virtualisation superstar’ and is aggressively pursuing the position of market leader within the hybrid cloud software space,

VMWARE

Sanjay Poonen, VMware COO

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working closely with all of the industry’s hyper-scalers, more on which later.

But arguably the biggest buzz is being generated by two huge acquisitions that VMware has recently undertaken, which combined are worth the best part of $5 billion – the company’s biggest M&A activity in some time.

The first is the $2.1 billion purchase of Carbon Black, which it sees as central to its ambition to disrupt the end-point security sector. Speaking to Digital Bulletin in a quiet corner of one of the centre’s many breakout areas, Poonen explains why VMware wants to do more in the end-point security space.

“I’d argue with you that 50% of our 13,000 customers in networking, 40% of our 80,000 customers in computing use our products, so we have a business in security that is non-trivial, but we don’t

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really have a brand that is well known in this area. Now we’re going to create a brand on pure security by doing things more deliberately in that space and getting to know CISOs,” he says.

“We felt like while we had made significant progress in the networking security area, we were missing some of the capabilities that an end-point security solution had, and many of the existing players weren’t innovating anymore. Some were getting gobbled up by hardware players, while many signature-based AV solutions and legacy solutions were arcane and dying.”

The answer, Poonen and others felt, was to expand and formalise the relationship that had already been developed with Carbon Black, a cloud-native platform for end-point cybersecurity.

“Carbon Black is a next-generation security cloud that does this with

VMWARE

a different architecture, is cloud native and AI-based, and could deal with data lakes. It was already a partner of ours for a couple of years, and we could see that it was thinking about security in a way that hadn’t been done before – the timing was perfect,” he comments.

It was announced at VMworld that Dell, which owns the majority shares of VMware, is making Carbon Black its preferred end-point security solution, which now will be provided to its millions of commercial customers. Poonen says that Dell has experimented at length with other vendors in the past, but saw the link-up between VMware and Carbon Black as the “perfect storm”, and hopes that other ecosystems will follow in its footsteps.

The second acquisitional play is the $2.7 billion buy of Pivotal Software, a cloudnative platform provider, which it plans to bring into the fold before the end of its 2020 fiscal year. As with Carbon Black, the two companies have a long history of collaboration reflected in the co-development and launch of VMware Pivotal Container Service in February 2018.

It feeds into VMware’s mission to become the ‘world-standard’ for containers and Kubernetes, with the purchase of Pivotal to complement the acquisition of Heptio, and the Kubernetes founders, which VMware completed in December last year.

We want to take those 3,000 people, $750 million revenue from Pivotal and put all the weight of VMware and Pivotal behind the effort on Tanzu” “We’ve really embraced open source and the guys from Heptio - Joe Beda and Craig McLuckie - have helped us a huge amount. We wanted to make Kubernetes more mainstream, but also integrate it to a hypervisor like VMWare and that’s what we felt we could do [with Pivotal]. If you add to Heptio and VMWare’s efforts, Pivotal has 3,000 people that are making sure that the entire movement is all based on containers now,” says Poonen.

Tanzu is VMware’s recently announced brand name for its modern apps portfolio, which is to include Pivotal projects and products, and will be integral to its wider goal to help customers build modern applications, run Kubernetes consistently across environments and manage it all from a single point of control.

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

ERICSSON: 5G SUBSCRIPTIONS TO HIT 2.6 BILLION BY 2025 Ericsson has said there will be 2.6 billion 5G subscriptions by 2025. There are just 19 million subscriptions now, but it believes growth will be driven by “by sustained momentum and a rapidly developing 5G ecosystem�. The report also projects that 5G will cover up to 65% of the global population by the end of 2025 and handle 45% of global mobile data traffic. 25/11/19 MORE ON THIS STORY

The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

VMWARE

Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEO, gives his keynote “We want to take those 3,000 people, $750 million revenue from Pivotal and put all the weight of VMware and Pivotal behind the effort on Tanzu. We think it’ll be a much better product than Openshift, Anthos or anything else because of the incredible innovation by the founders of Kubernetes, who are going to be driving that project roadmap going forward.

“It also has the go-to-market muscle of VMWare and Dell and other partners in the hardware space that are going to push it as a developer-ready architecture, and we are also going to take the elements of Tanzu and bake it into V-Sphere (VMware’s cloud computing virtualisation programme).

“The sky’s the limit on where we can take containers to, just in the same way the sky’s the limit on what we can achieve

with security. We just keep adding more layers into the application layer and it becomes effectively like the new Java.”

It is fairly obvious that VMware’s relationship with the cloud hyper-majors is absolutely critical, and it is an area of responsibility that Poonen himself has taken on over the past three years.

It has been an overwhelming success with partnerships signed with Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle and Alibaba, to go along with contracts that had already been inked with IBM and AWS, which was VMware’s first and preferred cloud partner.

“Our goal was to get all of the major cloud providers embracing VMWare because we have 70 million virtual machines, and customers might choose to move those virtual machines and ISSUE 11

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run them on-prem or on public cloud,” he says.

“We need to be able to build a freeway into that global cloud that is monetisable on VMWare, and provide them a path into that cloud on or off; it’s the on ramp and the off ramp. We’ve been working really hard at a public cloud motion that will allow us to embrace those clouds and them us, and I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made.

“Companies are going to pick their clouds based on things we may or may not be able to control, so we need to be sure we can be there based on which provider they’ve chosen as a public cloud partner.”

The short-term priority, says Poonen, is to make sure the recent acquisitions are successfully integrated.

They have not been cheap, he admits, and represent the biggest outlay by VMware in some years, meaning that tremendous focus and effort will go into ensuring Carbon Black and Tanzu become hugely important pieces of the VMware ecosystem.

Longer-term, Poonen says he will continue to focus his energies on growing the organisation’s core products in batches of 10,000 customers, targeting growth in its NSX network virtualisation and security platform, and its hypersonic architecture platform, HCI. 14

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Companies are going to pick their clouds based on things we may or may not be able to control, so we need to be sure we can be there based on which provider they’ve chosen as a public cloud partner” “NSX has got 13,000 customers, let’s help it get to 20,000. HCI has 20,00025,000 customers, let’s get that to 30,000.

We have 80,000 customers, tens of millions of devices, so we want to get to more than 100 million devices that we manage.

Carbon Black has 6,000 customers so we want to get that to 20,000, for example.”

Poonen says that approach means VMware can set a realistic goal of achieving $20 billion in revenues in the medium to longer-term.

VMWARE

“We’re going to have a number of goals for our core products and each of them are on their way to or are already billion dollar businesses. If you get multi-billion dollar businesses inside a $10 billion or $11 billion company, you get a quicker path to a $20 billion,” he states.

“Today, VMware has compute, networking, management, end-user computing, and HCI – five businesses that are sizeable businesses with a number of customers. We are adding two more,

the modern applications business that comes in with Pivotal, which is Tanzu, and we’re adding Carbon Black, so that makes seven businesses we can run at scale.

“These are not small businesses, they all are or have a path to $1 billion+, and if we can grow them to become substantially big businesses beyond that, we’re going to have a really rich portfolio.”

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AI

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Data-driven strategies will be elevated by AI, machine learning and even more complex subsets - but how close are we to enterprise-wide adoption of models based on the likes of deep learning and neural networks? Peltarion’s Björn Brinne helps Digital Bulletin paint the picture AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

s we look ahead to a new decade that will see technology tighten its enterprise grip, is there a more exciting field to be involved in than data science?

Those armed with potent and highly desirable skills around data are sitting pretty ahead of the 2020s. Gartner recently found that data-centricity is a high priority for CEOs: industry has well and truly fallen for data’s charm, lured in by the promises of deeper insights, increased efficiencies and attractive cost-savings.

The work of data scientists is impacting us all, whether we know it or not.

They have been the architects of countless transformations, both at the micro-level within organisations and mac16

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ro-level across entire sectors. But this is just the beginning.

Data science itself has been transformed by advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). And it is the potential of the latter, especially in subsets like deep learning and neural networking, that is firing the imaginations of data science experts as they look to the future.

Björn Brinne is one of those whose hands are on the wheel. Brinne is Chief AI Officer and Head of Data Science at Peltarion, a Swedish company which operationalises ML for the enterprise.

He has had a fascinating career; from deploying early ML technology for fraud detection at an online betting company,

PELTARION

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AI

Most companies and most approaches are trying to train more people to be data scientists. Being a good data scientist takes a long time, it’s not easy and it takes a lot of experience. I think that approach is quite difficult” to leading business intelligence for the likes of Electronic Arts and King.

At Peltarion, Brinne is a vital cog in a team tackling the wider adoption issues around complex ML, deep learning and neural networking models - and he’s absolutely loving it. “That’s been my life for the last three years, and they’ve been the best three years of my working life,” he enthuses during an interview with Digital Bulletin.

Those of a curious mind are stimulated by the biggest challenges and Brinne is a case in point. Countless studies have highlighted many different barriers to ML adoption, including skills, fear of the unknown and the quality of data. Brinne himself points to the obvious talent is18

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sue - “Google and Microsoft and those guys quickly hired everybody, so now it’s much harder for everybody else to find the people” - as well as a shortage of tooling, which is where Peltarion enters the fray. Yet the difficulties don’t end there, especially in deep learning and neural networks.

“There are a few,” Brinne adds. “One is the lack of theoretical understanding; many don’t actually know how the algorithms work in detail. This means it can be very hard to predict what model will actually work well on what data. It’s also hard to predict how long a project would take because of that.

“Another is explainability. You can see a good result through statistics, but you don’t really know how the model actually works. What’s its reasoning? In health

Björn Brinne, Peltarion

PELTARION

A deep learning model allowed one wind energy company to better predict weather conditions

and med-tech, for example, that’s obviously important because they need trust.

Then there is the cost as well - they are huge models and they run on specialised hardware.”

It is a refreshingly candid analysis from Brinne - and serves to illustrate the magnitude of the job still to do before these technologies are truly pervasive. When the conversation turns to solutions, Brinne first reaches beyond talk of products or platforms and touches on organisational structure and culture.

Subject knowledge is typically contained tightly within data science teams and turning that expertise into successful implementations within an organisation can prove tricky.

“The way companies are set up is important. If you can get the domain experts in all parts of the company to solve

problems, then that is much better,” says Brinne. “We’ve actually spoken to a lot of companies that tried to get on the AI bandwagon quickly, and the way they did that was to hire a group of ML experts, put them in a team and try to get them to solve problems in the company. They’ve realised now that it doesn’t work; the distributed fashion of doing it is necessary.

“Usually the data scientists’ goals are different from the organisational goals, so finding a match for that has been an issue. Getting the domain experts - who care about the problems - empowered to solve the problems will be super useful.”

Removing exclusive control of these solutions from data scientists and putting them in the hands of others is central to Peltarion’s proposition.

The company’s seeds were first sown in 2004 when co-founders Luka ISSUE 11

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

GOOGLE IS BRINGING ENTERPRISE AI TO THE CLOUD TensorFlow, Google’s open-source machine learning framework has been given an enterprise upgrade. The hands on, optimised, and fully supported version of TensorFlow will be deeply integrated into Google’s own cloud services, and will even offer AI engineering support from Google Cloud and TensorFlow teams.

“This makes TensorFlow Enterprise the best way to run TensorFlow.” - Google announcement. 04/11/19 MORE ON THIS STORY

The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

PELTARION

Crnkovic-Friis and Måns Erlandson graduated from the Royal Technical Institute in Stockholm and immediately began working on market-worthy AI and neural networking solutions. Soon they were collaborating with the likes of NASA, Tesla, Dell, and Harvard.

Since then Peltarion has grown into Sweden’s foremost AI innovator - no mean feat in the technological hotbed of Scandinavia. It has been driven by a sky-high, ‘AI for all’ ambition and the latest iteration of its platform allows users to deploy their own models without the need for professional knowledge on the intricacies of deep learning and neural networks.

“We want to build tools that can handle any type of data and can be relevant for companies in any industry and ensure they don’t need to change too much. We don’t want them to have to hire the hardto-find people, rather making sure that they have tools so their domain experts can solve the problems,” explains Brinne.

“Most companies and most approaches are trying to train more people to be data scientists. Being a good data scientist takes a long time, it’s not easy and it takes a lot of experience. I think that approach is quite difficult. The approach of how to work with these methodologies really is at an abstraction level where it shouldn’t be. Trying to make it

Peltarion helped a radiotherapy company with tumour detection

easier and more understandable, where you need to know less about it to use it, is the way forward.”

Brinne draws an interesting comparison to Adobe’s Photoshop software, a hugely popular raster graphics editor that has become the industry standard in digital art.

“A photographer can use Photoshop and do awesome things with it, it has very complex mathematics behind it but you don’t have to understand that mathematics to use it. It’s the same here - right now, you do have to understand a lot of it [deep learning] but once we have proper tools, it won’t be necessary any more.”

He says this methodology also frees up data scientists, reducing the amount of time spent on managing experiments and models in production and allowing them ISSUE 11

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AI

One of the things that I think is very important is that we need to get society and everybody to learn about AI and what neural networks are about. In the media, there’s a lot of confusion about what’s going on”

to engage in solving other problems.

Peltarion has seen its platform back up these claims in a range of use cases operationalised with its clients.

Brinne previously hinted at the caution that must be applied when bringing AI to critical processes in healthcare, but Peltarion details one case study where deep learning’s image recognition capacity helped a radiotherapy company with tumour detection. It built a segmentation model on its platform that trained itself to recognise the cancer cell pixels 22

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in an image, creating a faster and more reliable process.

It has also had an impact in the clean energy sector by helping resolve the need to balance consumption with production in wind energy. Peltarion’s model helped better predict weather conditions, informing the client whether to turn hydropower up or down.

“Weather models before were based on physics simulations and a model of the wind turbine that was also based on physics simulations, and you’d combine

PELTARION

those two to predict how much energy the wind power plant would produce.

That’s a huge calculation - it takes supercomputers a long time to do it,” explains Brinne. “The idea from our founders was that we should do this in a data-driven fashion and there’s a huge gain in time and accuracy.

“We’ve also done sales forecasting for merchants, we’ve done metadata generation for a music company and also generating music - that was hard and didn’t really succeed, but it was very

interesting to work on. We’ve worked on house valuation, market research, the manufacturing industry… so we’re trying to cover everything.”

Brinne is evidently convinced by Peltarion’s prospects and truly engaged in his work - but he still admits that there’s plenty to be done for industry excitement around data science, AI and ML to be reflected in the wider public consciousness.

On the overriding issue of trust, he concludes: “One of the things that I think is very important is that we need to get society and everybody to learn about AI and what neural networks are about.

In the media, there’s a lot of confusion about what’s going on.

“There are some initiatives in that direction. We support ‘Elements of AI’, which is a basic course for anyone. You understand the principles and it’s very worthwhile to push that out and get the general public to understand what AI is, and show how AI should be working with people and not the scary pictures that you often get in the media.

“It’s super exciting though. I’m in a job where we can focus on this and try to affect the rest of society, and enable companies to make use of it - that’s a really nice place to be in.”

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REIMAGINING THE FUTURE WORKPLACE Philipp Kristian Diekhรถner is a trust futurist, innovation strategist and millennial voice on trust and innovation in the digital age. So with that in mind, Digital Bulletin spoke to him about the transformative effect Gen Z and millenials will have on the workplace, succeeding in a trust economy, making technology work for us and much more...

AUTHOR: JAMES HENDERSON

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PHILIPP KRISTIAN DIEKHÖNER

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echnology is unquestionably uprooting the way that business and wider society works. We are in the midst of what many experts consider to be a golden age for transformative technology, which is driving change in sectors right across the enterprise. The role and importance of the likes of AI, machine learning and RPA is set to increase rapidly and fundamentally change the way many work functions are carried out.

But it is not just technology that is going to change the business landscape. Over the next few years, the make-up of the workforce is going to change dramatically, with millions of younger millennials and Gen Zs (those born between 1995 and 2015) altering the dynamics of enterprise.

There are few people on the planet better placed to speak to about this potentially seismic shift than Philipp Kristian Diekhöner, a trust futurist and innovation strategist. Investigating how the digital economy changes the way we trust (and our resulting behaviour), he believes intergenerational challenges at work boil down to different trust attitudes.

Diekhöner spends the majority of his time working with some of the best and largest names in business on building a more trusted future, and has been part of establishing two Fortune 500 innovation labs and one of Asia’s fastest-growing technology scale-ups.

In short, Diekhöner is a busy man but he has been kind enough to carve 45 minutes out of his schedule to speak with Digital Bulletin, during which time he manages to discuss the effect of a digitally-native generation entering the workforce, the skills race, and generally how technology has the potential to change the world, all while navigating Singapore’s notoriously chaotic rush-hour.

Diekhöner starts off on the issue of trust – he is big on trust and its function in the world of work. “The younger generation is used to operating in the digital economy and they expect to be trusted up front,” he says.

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THE FACT THAT YOU’VE HIRED SOMEBODY WITH THE RIGHT SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE IN THE MARKET SHOWS THAT THEY’VE ALREADY PROVEN THEMSELVES, SO THEY DON’T HAVE TO CONSTANTLY RE-PROVE THEMSELVES.” Philipp Kristian Diekhöner

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longer term, and that can lead to clashes in companies on a daily basis, especially when the younger generation are supposed to be led by older generations. It creates confusion and uncertainty.

“The best organisations are the ones that collaborate most effectively, usually based on shared trust and that usually also means they are faster in getting things done. There is a lot more alignment, so everyone is moving in the right direction.

“For me, this has a lot to do with creating an environment where there is autonomy, which is just trusting people to do their job, because you hire people for their skills, and nothing is less motivating than being hired for your skills and expertise and then being told what to do.

“People need to be trusted to do the jobs they are employed to do, and trusting people first before they prove themselves. The fact that you’ve hired somebody with the right skills and experience in the market shows that they’ve already proven themselves, so they don’t have to constantly re-prove themselves.”

One of Diekhöner’s specialist subjects, one he frequently covers in his keynotes, is ‘Trusting the Future of Work’ – that word again, trust. He argues that with business complexity on the rise and new generations at work, established management structures and philosophies are reaching their limits, and that we are seeing before

PHILIPP KRISTIAN DIEKHÖNER

us a move from a centralised system to a decentralised system. On the future of work, Diekhöner picks out three themes that he believes will act as paradigm shifts.

“Centralisation used to be done by classic bureaucracy, but centralisation is now happening in the technology space.

Billions of us use certain technology platforms to facilitate our lives, but the actual commerce portion is very decentralised. The value creation takes place on a very decentralised decision-making model,” he says.

“It is interesting because while it is still called decentralisation, it has actually led to new digital monopolies emerging, and the reason they are monopolies is because they facilitate this decentralised and powerful commerce, so the levers of control are shifting to digital and shifting to the digital citizens that use these infrastructures.”

Diekhöner then comes onto how companies can no longer control their reputation in the digital age, something he refers to as the age of ‘democratic experience-based reputation’. A company’s reputation now, he argues, is the sum of the experiences that the brand or business creates.

“Companies have very little control over this. People are not as trusting of traditional media, there is a lot of scepticism about what information is real or what is fake, and that creates a level of uncertainty and ambiguity. It means that only the fittest messages will survive, which feeds into simplicity, because if your message is not simple, it has less of a chance to boil up,” Diekhöner comments.

“From a communications standpoint, companies are way less in control and sometimes don’t understand why certain things are said about them. The ISSUE 11

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

CYBERSECURITY VETERAN JEANETTE MANFRA LEAVES GOVERNMENT Jeanette Manfra, one of the most senior U.S. cybersecurity officials, is leaving the public sector after more than a decade. Manfra was senior Director at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Manfra told TechCrunch that it was a “really hard time to leave� but would give her successor time to settle in before the 2020 elections. She joins the private sector in the New Year.

22/11/19 MORE ON THIS STORY

The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

PHILIPP KRISTIAN DIEKHÖNER

best thing they can do is create a message that can survive in this day and age, which is simple and compelling.”

Any conversation about the direction of business, economy and the wider world wouldn’t be credible without talking about sustainability, something Diekhöner says is “the biggest priority of our generation”.

It is clear that the days young people simply join a firm – technology or otherwise – simply for the pay cheque are gone.

Gen Z and millennials feel passionately that the companies they work for should have similar ethics and values to them, and in an industry where there is such competition for the best young talent, technology businesses can ill afford to ignore those views.

“If we think of this mantra of ‘doing good is good business’, we can get a better idea of why purpose and sustainability matters so much. It matters first of all because if you are doing the right thing and making money in a sustainable way, you don’t have to worry so much about what is being said about you, because it is likely to be positive,” says Diekhöner.

“The younger generation is taking far more ownership of the world and making people accountable, whether that’s people, companies, politicians. We are being far more demanding, so this relates to the point that a company that

THE YOUNGER GENERATION IS TAKING FAR MORE OWNERSHIP OF THE WORLD AND MAKING PEOPLE ACCOUNTABLE, WHETHER THAT’S PEOPLE, COMPANIES, POLITICIANS” pursues a real purpose has less to hide.

“A company that has purpose and operates on principle is going to be better off because when their pants are pulled down they have nothing to hide. In a world where we have so much distrust because of scandals, that is a winning strategy, and many technology companies have learnt this the hard way.”

The message is clear: companies who ignore these topics do so at their peril, and will lose out in the fight for the very best technology talent. That issue will only be exacerbated by the increasing emergence of a digital freelance economy. But even for those companies that are satisfied with their recruitment, a sea change in the way they work and utilise technology is still necessary, says Diekhöner.

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“Even companies that consider themselves digital are based on paper and stamps, which means that those corporate structures are not of this time, not built for knowledge and not built for flexibility. Companies have to be willing to accommodate the way we live in the 21sts century, and how we think in our private lives if they are to get the best out of their employees and technology.”

Despite the emergence of potentially game-changing technologies over the past couple of years, Diekhöner believes that as a society we are fast approaching a “productivity ceiling”, and that companies need to pivot to a new era, where technology – and more specifically RPA – takes on a significant role in day-to-day operations.

“Productivity gains are getting smaller 30

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each year and that’s because there are too many rules, there’s too much rigidity.

Technology should be used in business as much as we use it in our private lives is because it is a far better administrator than people; it is flexible, it is highly scalable and it is unbiased. That’s why we need to use it as an administrator,” he says.

“People are not built to be robots and we should never endeavour to be that way, so there is an entire challenge for people to adapt but there is also the opportunity for huge liberation, you don’t have to be bogged down in administrative work, and that is going to make your work a lot more meaningful. We have to look at technology as a human assistant in the simplest form.”

With our time running down, Diekhöner ponders the question: what

PHILIPP KRISTIAN DIEKHÖNER

PRODUCTIVITY GAINS ARE GETTING SMALLER EACH YEAR AND THAT’S BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO MANY RULES, THERE’S TOO MUCH RIGIDITY” skills will people need in this imagined future work space? While you’d usually expect answers such as ‘AI skills’ or ‘cyber security expertise’, the response is a broader one, in keeping with the rest of the conversation.

“That’s an interesting question, because it always comes back to that,” he says. “The first skill I think will be really important is integrative thinking, so being able to two conflicting issues and find a creative solution that makes everyone happy, which takes underlying skills such as creativity and strategy.

“It’s a core skill for the world’s leading executives. The reason it will become more important is because while the corporate world has no choice but to take an oversimplified approach to decision-making, the complexity of the wider world we

live in will only increase.

“The other thing is that I believe in is the ability to form effective networks, and you can call that influencing, you can call that making connections or socialising. The ability to build relationships that are mutually beneficial and form partnerships is going to be more important than ever. We are no longer looking at vendor to customer and supplier relationships, increasingly we are looking at integrated partnerships.

“Partnerships allow companies to take their reputation and capability in one space and take it to another industry. You are borrowing the trust that you’ve built in your traditional space and working with a company that is trusted in an adjacent space to create a symbiotic relationship – that’s going to be really valuable.”

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FIGHTING THE RANSOMWARE WAR The number of cyber attacks waged on enterprise is growing at a rapid rate, many with a view to stealing data and extorting a company for a ransom before it is returned. Digital Bulletin speaks in-depth with Clearswift’s CTO, Dr. Guy Bunker, to find out how companies can best protect themselves from this ever-growing threat

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an you begin by telling us a bit about yourself and Clearswift?

I’ve been here for seven years as CTO and prior to that was at HP Semantics, Oracle and some other replaces, generally in IT and security. Clearswift can be traced back to the early 1980s, but was officially established in the early 2000s. I arrived in 2012 with a view to reinvigorating the organisation around email and web security.

Email and web security are predominantly gateways and they deal with advanced threats coming in and then data loss prevention (DLP) on the way out. We also offer DLP on end-points and information governance, which is around tracking and tracing, and there32

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fore applying policy to information as opposed to just files.

Could you speak about some of the technologies and tools you offer enterprise?

One of our key pieces of technology is something called Adaptive Redaction.

One of the frustrations from businesses is technology blocking business instead of enabling it. We created something called Adaptive Redaction, which is part of our adaptive DLP, and that is the ability to remove the piece of information that breaks policy, and therefore allows the communication to go through.

A really simple example is somebody rings up an insurance helpdesk and

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The key thing we found from the Insider Threat Index is that with the recent fines to British Airways and Marriott, GDPR is beginning to gain some traction” Dr. Guy Bunker, Clearswift’s CTO

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end up having sent in their credit card number in order to get a change made through email. Traditional DLP would find the credit card number and would block the email from going out, but that creates a number of problems.

With our solution, we would just take out the credit card number, just leaving the last four digits and everything else remains the same. So, you keep that piece of collaboration going and in 99.9% of cases, the information that is being sent out is done so in error so removing it solves all of the problems. The communication continues, the good data is kept safe, the world is a happy place.

How else can Clearswift help enterprise from cyber security perspective?

With electronic documents, there are other pieces of information that shouldn’t leak, and it could be that you have a spreadsheet where a column is hidden with all the credit card numbers, or it could be even that the document properties and comments are hidden.

In order to look for these threats, we go down to the nth degree and we will even look inside an image. If somebody has taken a picture of the credit card a screenshot and tried to send that out, we will use character recognition to detect whether there is information in that which should not be leaked.

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Another advantage of Adaptive Redaction relates to active content. This is where you get a malicious or weaponised document where somebody has embedded a script or some other code inside the document that activates when you open it, and that is the most popular way in for ransomware. We can strip that out and make sure that the copy that goes through is dewaponised or safe for people to look at.

You recently conducted a report following an in-depth survey – can you tell us what you found?

The key thing we found from the Insider Threat Index is that with the recent fines to British Airways and Marriott, GDPR is beginning to gain some traction. These particular fines coming out show that the ICO has some teeth and has made

people realise that it’s not just lip service, companies are realising that they really need to take GDPR and compliance in general seriously.

Despite all of the best efforts of vendors and the media, it is only when things come down to money that organisations sit up and take notice, and that has come through in the survey. The real takeaway is that money talks, and if you’re taking money away from your shareholders then it’s a big deal. Money is focussing the minds of boards around the world.

What were some of the other main points raised?

The survey also reinforced that the threats companies and people are facing are changing on a very regular basis.

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HIGHLIGHTS

IBM UNVEILS SECURITY PLATFORM FOR HYBRID ENVIRONMENTS IBM has launched Cloud Pak for Security, a new security platform for hybrid and multicloud environments. The platform is incorporating open-source technology which can search and translate security data from a variety of sources. It can integrate with both AWS and Azure. “We’re helping to lay the foundation for a more connected security ecosystem,” said an IBM spokesperson. 22/11/19 MORE ON THIS STORY

The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

CLEARSWIFT

parts of the globe has been sped up and people need to be more aware of the threats and solutions that will mitigate a lot of those threats.

With ransomware, if you go back to 2016 there was a massive set of ransomware attacks against the German public health sector and we’ve seen that trend increase, notably in the UK’s National Health Service. The health care sector is under a barrage and for a lot of these health care organisations, the way that their IT systems are set up, attacks put them back to pen and paper. It has the opportunity to actually kill people when it jumps across the gap to control interfaces.

Where do you stand on organisations paying ransoms to have data or information returned?

I’ve always said that you don’t pay ransoms, but for some organisations that haven’t understood the impact about what ransomware can do and therefore are not prepared, they have very little option but to pay it.

But even if they are fortunate enough to get their data back – it’s something like less than 70% who do – they then need to ensure that all other plans are in place to protect that data because you can virtually guarantee that another attack will come, because nothing has

If you can get inside an organisation rather than putting in some ransomware, put in some insidious changes, that is going to be effective” been done to remove the malware or virus on the system.

With GDPR, the criminals also have another option, which is to say that if a company doesn’t pay a ransom, then they’ll leak the data because they know a company faced with a $100 million fine for a GDPR breach might be inclined to pay $10 million, but actually they can just take the money and release the data anyway. People forget that they’re dealing with criminals.

Are companies taking this threat as seriously as they should be?

Yes, but because of the threat of fines.

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it’s not just small companies who are guilty of this. This example is in a sector where traditionally it hasn’t been attacked.

Back in the day, a cybercriminal would look at whether they could get hold of a credit card that could be monetised immediately, but if they can’t attack a bank they will go for a new sector that hasn’t previously been a target. That is low hanging fruit for cybercriminals and some of the companies in these sectors think they’ve got away with it, they think 38

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they’re immune, but clearly they are not.

When there is an inkling of an issue, they start looking at their issues and ask, ‘Is it a bit late?’, and the answer is, of course, yes.

What are your thoughts on what enterprise has to do to educate its workforce?

Security has lots of old adages, but one of them is ‘defence in depth’ and part of that is you start with the people. People have to start with their awareness train-

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has to include cyber, and ransomware is a key risk and threat that people know how to deal with.

Last but not least is technology, which should be enforcing policy and process and backing up the people.

People make mistakes that can result in security issues, so tech should help stop those mistakes becoming largescale incidents that companies can do without.

ing and best practice, risks and consequences need to be understood. It’s often the feet on the street as opposed to the managers who understand where risky behaviour is, they can point out where they believe weak spots are.

It’s then about processes and policies, particularly around what to do if you think there is a problem, so when something pops up to say there’s been a compromise or a ransom is demanded, at that point the person needs to know who to call to sort the issue. Disaster recovery

How are technologies like AI and ML being used to battle ransomware With AI, there are some things that it is very good at, and much of that is around ensuring that the data you’ve got is a representative sample of what you’re looking for, in effect. There is no doubt that there is a place in the future for AI, even within small organisations, if you collected up all the incidents that happen, trying to find the wood for the trees is hard work and AI can help you narrow it down so at least you are looking at a tree, rather than the entire forest.

However, there are a number of challenges in making that happen, which is getting a baseline that is actually workable. Take a finance department, for example, we’ve got a baseline and we’re looking at what people are doing and there’s an anomaly detection picked up by AI. ISSUE 11

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Security has lots of old adages, but one of them is ‘defence in depth’ and part of that is you start with the people”

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CLEARSWIFT

But, on the day that someone is sick or is on holiday and their workload is spread across other people, that will show up as an anomaly because that isn’t standard practice. That is going to happen all the time so getting to stage where you’ve got something that is more useful than not is an issue.

How do you see this game of cat and mouse between cybercriminals and enterprise developing over the next three to five years?

There will be a move towards changing some of the information to create disruption is going to grow. If you can get inside an organisation rather than putting in some ransomware, put in some insidious changes, that is going to be effective.

The example is gaining legitimate credentials, and every day I change one digit in a phone number in one percent of the data. You won’t notice it and when you do, it might look a bit strange, you won’t realise a bigger change is happening, and that is going to become a real problem. Once you can start to do that changing, you can change all sorts of things, and that can go into personal reputation or corporate reputation.

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FUTURE

DRIVING AN ELECTRIC REVOLUTION Roger Atkins, one of the leading voices in the electric vehicle community, speaks to Digital Bulletin about the future of the automotive industry, wireless charging, China and Elon Musk...

AUTHOR: JAMES HENDERSON

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here can be very few industries that are currently going through such a disruptive period as that currently playing out in the automotive sector. Never before in its more than 160-year history could a perfect storm of factors have had such a significant effect in such a relatively short amount of time.

A convergence of technologies, the falling cost of cell batteries and grave concerns over the environmental im-

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pact of the combustion engine have set the automotive industry on a path to electrification. The move towards electric vehicles (EVs) has seen some of the biggest car manufacturers in the world collaborate on next-generation vehicles, with investments totalling hundreds of millions of dollars.

Roger Atkins is a man who knows all about EVs and the metamorphosis taking place in the automotive arena.

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I’m a believer in wireless technology and I have been for 10 years. I spoke to Elon Musk six years ago about this, about the battery swapping and wireless charging and what we thought would ultimately prevail” Having by his own admission spent a couple of decades singing the praises of combustion engines, he changed tact around 15 years ago and is now intimately engaged in all things electric.

His evangelisation of EVs has seen Atkins become one of the best-connected experts on LinkedIn, with almost 288,000 followers keen to get his take on the latest developments, while he personally knows practically all of the key players on the EV scene, and is on first name terms with the likes of Elon Musk and Richard Branson.

Central to his role as an EV advocate is Electric Vehicles Outlook, which he established four years ago, while he also acts as an advisor and brand ambassador for other organisations, events and businesses such as the Geneva Motor Show, Rimac Supercars, Energy Disruptors and ZeroAvia, which is attempting to build the world’s first zero-emission aviation powertrain.

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“I have an outlook on EVs borne out of the 15 years I’ve spent in and around the industry,” Atkins tells Digital Bulletin.

“I actually started off working on hybrid taxis with London Taxis, and then joined a startup called Modec, which was very innovative and potentially really successful for a time until it ultimately failed for a number of reasons, with the financial crisis that began in 2008 being the really obvious one.”

From there, Atkins joined Ricardo and was charged with heading up its development of EVs, which he credits with giving him “an education” in better understanding engineering capability and the technology and science around the automotive industry in general. That knowledge allowed Atkins to set out on his own journey five years ago and begin building a narrative and audience around EVs. As that audience has grown, so has the number of companies in the EV

ROGER ATKINS

space who want to benefit from Atkins’ knowledge. One of the the companies he works with is Momentum Dynamics, where he is Member of the Board of Advisors. Momentum’s goal is to develop commercially viable, high-power automatic wireless charging systems for the automotive and transportation industries.

“I have a vested interest, so people can take my thoughts and say: ‘well you would say that wouldn’t you’, but I really believe that wireless charging should come to the fore,” he comments. “I’m a believer in wireless technology and I have been for 10 years. I spoke to Elon Musk six years ago about this, about the battery swapping and wireless charging and what we thought would ultimately prevail.

“I’ve become a lot more informed about it since then and it has a place and an opportunity, and is part of a wider conversation we need to have about the future and how we can future-proof the infrastructure around EVs.” There have been forays from the likes of Tesla and Volva into hybrid or electric fleet vehicles in recent years, but the commercial market is and remains a niche one compared with the private vehicles space, where practically every large scale automotive business has a vested interest and large-scale budgets.

Atkins says that such an approach is “perfectly logical and rational” but adds: “To some extent, I think we’ve made a big mistake.

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HIGHLIGHTS

ADIDAS ABANDONS ITS AMBITIOUS ROBOTIC SPEEDFACTORIES Adidas has announced that it will close its two robotic Speedfactories in Atlanta and Ansbach, Germany - but promises to repurpose the technology used at its existing factories in Asia. The factories were set up in 2016 and 2017 with the aim to decentralise the company’s manufacturing processes. But the rush to innovate and automate when the technology simply isn’t ready seems a likely cause.

12/11/19 MORE ON THIS STORY

The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

ROGER ATKINS

“Take Tesla as an example. They’ve been a major player in this, they started with expensive cars in small numbers and have used those customers to fund the next level of vehicles and have slowly trickled down to the mass market. But that doesn’t address one of the principle challenges, which is the need to clean up the air quality of our cities.

“But it is the vans, trucks, taxis and buses that create most of the pollution.

They are predominantly diesel – especially in Europe – and are run all over the world with combustion engines. In fact, they should have been the first vehicles to be switched because they are typically urban operating, defined mileage and ‘back-to-base’, which all fit more neatly into the current state of EVs and have done for many years.

“So, we’re in a bit of a pickle, but what we shouldn’t do is slow down the progress with EVs, but instead massively accelerate the adoption of electric taxis, buses and vans.”

Atkins believes that the influences and driving forces around change within the automotive space need to be “carefully considered”, and he quotes the World War Two motivational slogan ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ to encourage the community to keep on course with its progress, although he cites a few key challenges.

China is the driving force around EVs because it has less of a legacy with the internal combustion engine and also has a different social structure” “Legislation is a key driver because it creates a level playing field, whether it’s European legislation, or in Asia, or North America, or something that’s a global feature. That all helps people have a level playing field and helps manufacturers develop and design and bring to market at scale the automotive solution. That’s worked pretty well for some time, but that’s fragmenting very much,” he says.

“The reality is that authorities and Mayors of cities like London and Paris and New York are having quite an impact on what can and can’t work in a city. This makes it very difficult for national and international policy and cuts across where we’ve got to so far.”

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While China is the number one emitter of carbon in the world, it is also leading the EV revolution, leveraging its rich history as an electronics manufacturer. Its government has thrown its weight behind EVs, making the industry one of the 10 pillars of Made in China 2025, a state-led plan for the country to become a global leader in cutting edge technologies.

And such is the country’s enthusiasm for EVs, more than 500 Chinese EV companies have been formed since 2013 to hit the country’s targets and benefit from state subsidies, according to a report from the Technology Review.

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“China is the driving force around EVs because it has less of a legacy with the internal combustion engine and also has a different social structure. It is rapidly adopted city dwelling, city living and working, even faster and quicker, on a much bigger scale than the rest of the world. Therefore, they focused on what they call new energy vehicles. So, they’re focused very much on clean air technology within vehicles that operate in those cities,” says Atkins.

“The Chinese government has seen both a national need to address that, but they’ve also seen a commercial oppor-

ROGER ATKINS

China is the driving force around EVs because it has less of a legacy with the internal combustion engine and also has a different social structure”

tunity, which they’ve embedded in policy with Made in China 2025. It wants to lead the world in bringing EVs to the market.”

As well as the march towards electrification, Atkins recognises a concurrent paradigm shift in the form of autonomous vehicles that could fundamentally change the conversation around car ownership, and could potentially see a vehicle being utilised 90% of the time, as opposed to the reality currently, where most vehicles sit idle for the vast majority of the time.

“That would have a big impact on how a vehicle operates, its components and life cycle, it would really flip everything

on its head. Automotive companies would have to redesign their business model or risk going out of business. No company has a guaranteed ticket to the future, they have to be prepared to bend and adapt,” he concludes. .

“The key, imperative now is to change and it’s not just about wanting to change anymore, we have to. One of the great things about human beings is that when our backs are against the wall, we can come together and achieve extraordinary things.”

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SERVICES

CHANGING THE GAME A historic shortage of innovation is leaving today’s BPO industry flirting with irrelevance. The newly-formed Woven Group aims to offer something different and Andy Griffin, the company’s CTO, reveals to Digital Bulletin that technology is its enabler AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

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t has been felt for some time that the business process outsourcing industry, or BPO, is being slowly upturned by the onset of technology.

Traditional low-cost, labour-centric models for BPO delivery are being made redundant by new capabilities powered by automation and robotics - and a sea change in the expectations of customers who demand more and more value from their providers.

Andy Griffin, CTO at Woven Group, is even more emphatic in his assessment. “The underlying model of the BPO market is clearly broken,” he claims as he kicks off an exclusive interview with Digital Bulletin.

Griffin and his colleagues at Woven have made it their mission to haul BPO into the digital age.

Founded only at the beginning of 2019, Woven is a UK-based roll-up company that has, via multiple acquisitions, gathered under a single roof some of 50

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the strongest and most relevant talent and technology. Focused on contact centre outsourcing, it has quickly built a workforce of well over 1,000 across four sites and is determined to, in its own words, “redefine service”.

Central to its proposition is tPoint Solutions, a technology firm founded by Griffin. Ten months of fruitful partnership was followed by Woven completing the full acquisition of tPoint in November and it is using its platform as the engine of its service model. After well over a decade of fine-tuning, Griffin believes tPoint’s solution is ready to disrupt BPO. “This brilliant partnership with Woven gives us the platform to really use the product to its fullest potential,” he says.

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“The journey in total has been nearly 12 years, so we’ve been doing this for a long time and are ready.” tPoint’s no/low-code offering gives contact centre advisors increased speed-to-competency and claims to create a surge in both customer experience and business outcomes. It tackles head on the challenges of data silos, disconnected systems, restrictive data structures, technical resource dependencies, disparate contact environments and lengthy project timescales.

Its technology folds in each part of the user journey, from any channel, and processes everything into one single layer, guaranteeing a far smoother process for both customers and human agents. Such

WOVEN GROUP

capabilities should underpin any modern BPO, believes Griffin.

“Technology is absolutely fundamental to what the company does,” he comments. “There are a lot of players within the BPO space, a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon of innovation… but it’s very rare to see it actually being used to impact at scale. It’s unheard of for it to be the focal point of what that business is doing. Woven was born to be that business.”

Woven has kept Griffin busy overseeing a programme to first integrate the Azure-based tPoint within its acquired businesses, with 100% of their activity to eventually pass through the platform.

This will expose tPoint to Woven’s 900plus global client base across industries.

Previously, it had gained real traction in regulated markets like financial services, supply chain and utilities.

Griffin has also overseen the deployment of a comprehensive workforce management solution, another piece of the jigsaw for the company as it builds foundations for what it believes will be an exciting few years. Yet Griffin is under no illusions about the challenges of taking to market a BPO designed wholly around service value through innovation rather than price.

“Most people in the industry would see that as reducing your own revenues,” he

Technology is absolutely fundamental to what Woven Group does. There are a lot of players within the BPO space, a lot of people jumping on the bandwagon of innovation… but it’s very rare to see it actually being used to impact at scale” says. “You have to be really clear about your vision and aggressive about taking risks to do that, and also be open and challenging about commercial models.

It’s very difficult to be a BPO business and generate the full value, because a lot of what you’re doing is reducing the cost-to-serve. We do it because we have the experience but you have to be pretty brave, and you have to be a believer.”

It doesn’t take long in conversation with Griffin to understand that risk-taking and innovation run in his DNA. A technologist in every sense, Griffin’s excitement is clear when the topic turns to the emergence of automation and artificial intelligence (AI).

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SALESFORCE MOVING MARKETING CLOUD TO MICROSOFT Microsoft and Salesforce have announced plans to expand their strategic partnership to help customers meet the evolving needs of their businesses and boost team productivity. Salesforce has named Microsoft Azure as its public cloud provider for Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Salesforce will also build new integrations that connect Salesforce’s Sales Cloud and Service Cloud with Microsoft Teams. 14/11/19 MORE ON THIS STORY

The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

WOVEN GROUP

Griffin is very much aware of the potential these technologies have to generate the data and insights often seen as the silver bullet for organisations striving for better customer service. Lifted into a BPO proposition, Woven is primed to pounce on the opportunity.

“It plays into a platform such as ours,” Griffin says. “It’s very difficult to do smart automation if you can’t see in real-time all of the interactions you’re carrying out with your customers, and that’s what we do. I think it’s fascinating. With robotics in particular, we have a vision where we’re growing the business, we’re growing the number of advisors but, at the same pace, we also want to grow the number of digital workers.”

Woven breaks robotics down into four areas: chatbots that communicate with customers; bots that make up the workflow engine; RPA bots that use another system and pass that information on and finally what it calls ‘coaching bots’, which work with advisors to make them more efficient and informed.

“It’s really how you bring all four of those together to make the experience for the customer better, faster, more seamless, more informed, and then you embellish that with the use of human advisors where necessary to create the perfect experience,” adds Griffin. “It’s very easy right now to build a bot, let’s

With robotics in particular, we have a vision where we’re growing the business, we’re growing the number of advisors but, at the same pace, we also want to grow the number of digital workers” be honest, but to actually make that bot cognisant to your experience with your customer, that’s what’s difficult.

“We’re at an early stage as an industry where people are interested in that, there are lots of examples of early bots but there are very few examples of bots that are connecting the experience for the customer. That’s where we come in and that’s what we’re so excited about.

“We’re also doing some really interesting stuff around the virtual assistant too, in terms of using AI in the allocation of agents. We want AI that provides a whole lot more intelligence in terms of who you connect to and when you connect to them. There’s a lot of work going ISSUE 11

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We’re a motivated, driven BPO that wants to be different, we have the technology to enable that and the consulting skills and the CX strategy skills to bring it all together. It’s a really powerful blend”

on around that and more generally we’re heavily engaged with the roadmap and alignment with the BPO journey.”

Commonly, a desire for absolute customer centrality drives technology innovation and, as Griffin has illustrated, this is very much the case at Woven. Indeed, the broader outsourcing industry has been flooded with higher-value services in recent years as providers seek to meet and surpass increased expectations.

Evidence that consumers are shifting towards experience over price is stacking up. A recent PwC study found that 42% of respondents would happily pay more 56

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for a better experience, and 73% said that a good experience influenced their loyalties. Woven itself cites a Consumer Experience Index report that puts the first figure at 66% in the United States.

“I have a real passion for the customer experience,” reveals Griffin. “Every time I get served somewhere, I think about how that service could be better.

“The pace and expectation created on the consumer side is being pushed out into the B2B world. These are all things that we should have always been thinking about, but the difference now is that the option to not think about it is being

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diminished. Here we are, in 2019, and the thing that’s actually making businesses think about it is the fact that every customer they deal with is empowered.

“You can be a huge bank, for example, but how you deal with that customer still matters, whether that be in a branch or online. We’re all powerful now, aren’t we? Industries are being dragged in that direction and that’s good for everybody, ultimately.”

Every sector has gone through this realisation but it is indisputable that BPO, especially, will have to base its future around a dual-focus on service

and technology. Griffin and his newly-acquired colleagues are undoubtedly enthusiastic about their prospects.

“We’re really excited about what we can build with the combination of companies that have been acquired and the people that have been brought into the executive team and elsewhere,” he finishes. “We’re a motivated, driven BPO that wants to be different, we have the technology to enable that and the consulting skills and the CX strategy skills to bring it all together. It’s a really powerful blend.”

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EVENTS

EVENTS Digital Bulletin rounds up the industry events that are worth clearing your diary for...

AWS RE:INVENT 02–06 DECEMBER, 2019 LAS VEGAS, NV AWS re:Invent is a learning conference hosted by Amazon Web Services for the global cloud computing community. The event will feature keynote announcements, training and certification opportunities, access to more than 2,500 technical sessions, a partner expo, after-hours events, and much more. The event is ideal for developers and engineers, system administrators, systems architects, and technical decision makers. Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, takes the stage for the main keynote to share his insight and the latest news about AWS customers, products, and services.

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DECEMBER – FEBRUARY

FINTECH JUNCTION 11–12 DECEMBER, 2019 STATION BERLIN, GERMANY Now in its third year, FinTech Junction has become a leading conference on technology and innovation in the financial industry. This year, for the first time, FinTech Junction is coming to Europe! And this time you will enjoy not one, but three co-located events: FinTech Junction, Future of AI and Chatbot Summit. Attendees will be able to meet global leaders and decision makers from banks, financial institutions, payment and lending companies, insurance companies, fintechs, startups, hubs, accelerators and VCs from the private and public sectors.

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CES 07–10 JANUARY, 2020 LAS VEGAS CONVENTION CENTER CES is the world’s gathering place for all those who thrive on the business of consumer technologies. It has served as the proving ground for innovators and breakthrough technologies for 50 years — the global stage where next-generation innovations are introduced to the marketplace. Owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association, it attracts the world’s business leaders and pioneering thinkers. Topics for the event will include 5G, IoT, blockchain, robotics and autonomous vehicles.

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CISCO LIVE! 27–31 JANUARY, 2020 BARCELONA, FIRA GRAN VIA Cisco Live is Cisco’s world-renowned annual customer and partner conference that is designed to build the foundation for your digital future by providing you with education, connections, and inspiration. Transform your outlook, career, and potential by learning directly from Cisco’s best and brightest. From technical education to future-focused thought leadership, 1:1 meetings with Cisco experts to connecting with Cisco partners, having fun at the Cisco Live Celebration to networking with your peers - Cisco Live 2020, Barcelona is the place to experience it all.

DECEMBER – FEBRUARY

MICROSOFT IGNITE THE TOUR LONDON 16–17 JANUARY, 2020 EXCEL LONDON Microsoft Ignite is the place to learn from the experts, connect with your community, and explore the latest technology. It promises to help attendees learn innovative ways to build solutions and migrate and manage their infrastructure. Those attending the event will have the opportunity to connect with other individuals focused on software development, security, architecture, and IT. Attendees are invited to explore new hands-on experiences that will help them innovate in areas such as security, cloud, and hybrid infrastructure and development.

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN SPORT SUMMIT 29–30 JANUARY, 2020 SAN FRANCISCO, USA The Digital Transformation in Sports Summit will provide the platform for world-leading insight on how global and domestic sports, media and technology brands can optimise digital technology for improving fan engagement and experience whilst expanding revenue streams through digital innovation. The programme showcases the latest in data analytics, fan engagement, next generation sponsorship, and immersive digital products for the ‘Big Four’ North American Pro Sports; international competitions and in Esports leagues.

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DECEMBER – FEBRUARY

DEVELOPER WEEK 12–16 FEBRUARY, 2020 SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA DeveloperWeek 2020 is San Francisco’s largest developer conference & event series with dozens of week-long events including the DeveloperWeek 2020 Conference & Expo, 1,000+ attendee hackathon, 1000+ attendee tech hiring expo, and a series of workshops, open houses, and city-wide events across San Francisco Because DeveloperWeek covers all new technologies, its conference and workshops invite attendees to get intro lessons on technologies like VR Dev, Artificial Intelligence Dev, Blockchain Dev, IoT Dev, serverless technology, microservices technology, new JavaScript frameworks, and more.

GARTNER CIO LEADERSHIP FORUM 23–25 FEBRUARY, 2020 JW MARRIOTT DESERT RIDGE RESORT AND SPA, PHOENIX, AZ Today’s leading CIOs are more than technology experts. They’re cross-functional change-makers, guiding business strategy at the highest level while building the culture and digital dexterity to support innovation. Gartner CIO Leadership Forum is an unrivalled experience for this new type of leader - your place to dissect the challenges and opportunities of digital business among select peers so you can drive competitive advantage for your organisation.

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O’REILLY SOFTWARE ARCHITECTURE CONFERENCE 23–26 FEBRUARY, 2020 HILTON MIDTOWN, NEW YORK While newer trends need to be leveraged, legacy code and systems must also be accommodated. The O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference gives you the training you need to stay at the forefront of this ever-changing field. Join hundreds of senior developers, engineers, and software architects in New York to learn new skills and technologies with a focus on microservices, cloud computing, and serverless— as well as emerging trends in AI, machine learning, and data analytics. Whether you’re a seasoned architect or aspiring to become one, this year’s O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference is designed to help you go next-level.

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DECEMBER – FEBRUARY

RSA CONFERENCE 2020 24–28 FEBRUARY, 2020 MOSCONE CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO Be part of a conversation that has the power to change the world. Join top cybersecurity leaders and a dedicated community of peers as we exchange the biggest, boldest ideas that will help propel the industry forward. Get access to expert-led sessions, thought-provoking keynotes, in-depth trainings and tutorials, groundbreaking innovation programmes, state-of-the-art product demos and countless networking opportunities.

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THE CLOSING BULLETIN

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

Winning the war for talent starts with data scientist professional certifications, according to Martin Fleming, VP, chief economist and Maureen Fitzgerald Norton, global data scientist profession leader, IBM Corp

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ecent data from Glassdoor indicates that ‘Data Scientist’ was the most sought-after role in the US for four consecutive years. What’s more, the role is increasingly identified as essential for business growth. But what exactly does the role of a Data Scientist entail, and why has it become so important? And what will formalising the profession and introducing an industry-recognised certification programme do for professional development within this field?

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The business case for data science Fundamentally, data scientists work with business leaders and key decision makers to solve problems by preparing, analysing, and understanding data. They are then able to predict trends, provide insight and make recommendations to achieve the best business results.

Traditionally, data scientists have come from academic backgrounds in a quantitative discipline such as mathematics, statistics, operations research, machine learning, or economics. But more recent-

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ly, many universities have begun to offer specialised degrees in “data science” or “analytics”.

IDC has reported that the global volume of data generated is set to increase tenfold, to 175 zettabytes (ZB) a year by 2025. Sixty percent of this data will be created and managed by organisations, and so therefore data scientists will be crucial to make sense of it and drive business value.

Clearly, those enterprises that invest now in the skillsets and tools that can understand the data and provide insight are naturally better positioned for growth. The increasing amount of data outlined by IDC will, in turn, only increase the demand for data science professionals with relevant skills such as problem solving and the ability to identify new opportunities.

Data scientists use a variety of data platforms and programming languages. Data science applications range from traditional transaction analytics to natural language processing and computer vision. The results can vary by sector. For instance, in healthcare data scientists are using cognitive computing technologies to help support physicians who deliver personalised and precision medicine.

A level of business acumen is an important skill that data scientists need to cultivate. Not only will they be in a position to identify a business-spe-

IDC has reported that the global volume of data generated is set to increase tenfold, to 175 zettabytes a year by 2025” cific problem and formulate a hypothesis, but they will also be able to test conclusions and determine appropriate methods to influence strategic choices.

To then take this to the boardroom and effectively relay the findings requires vital storytelling skills to provide solid consulting, communication and visualisation for business leaders.

Recognising the value of data scientists It’s important to recognise that data science is a relatively new profession, and one that’s becoming more accessible.

On the one hand, experienced technical professionals can see the opportunities that data science offers and choose to reskill. While on the other hand, many ISSUE 11

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The data science landscape is evolving at an incredible speed and organisations can be left struggling to identify, train, and retain employees” young professionals are attracted to the role as a result of its growing business importance, ability to impact results, and lucrative salaries.

Having several career paths available for those wanting to access the profession is helpful given the current talent shortage. The data science landscape is evolving at an incredible speed and organisations can be left struggling to identify, train, and retain employees – especially given the disparity in the experience and skills that individuals can have across the profession.

To ensure consistency, compliance, and service quality across the board, a global certification programme is essential for the data scientist profession, especially given the mission critical 68

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nature of the support that they provide to organisations. This framework would not only provide guidance around how a certification can be used and recognised by world leading organisations, but would also give employers an objective, reliable measure of a candidate’s skills and qualifications – equipping them with the tools to provide a better path for career progression.

Creating a certification programme A certification programme presents data scientists with an opportunity for enhanced value and visibility, and is a way for candidates to differentiate themselves as an experienced professional with proven results. For businesses, certification also helps identify the best candidates for highly valuable roles, while ensuring that current or prospective employees are working

MARTIN FLEMING & MAUREEN FITZGERALD NORTON

to the high-standards that are required.

Similar certification programmes have already been successful in a variety of professions, such as for Business, Enterprise and Solution Architects who can attain a specific, peer-reviewed, vendor-neutral and globally recognised credential through The Open Group OpenCA programme. Now for the first time, working with IBM, The Open Group and its members have developed the Open Data Scientist certification programme which is already available.

Another proof point for the value of these programmes includes a recent study, ‘Facing the storm: Navigating the global skills crisis’. This found that when it comes to the development of policies that bolster labour market competitiveness, certification programmes

have the third highest impact. Yet, at 24% adoption, the business community has yet to adopt the tools and practices needed to address existing technical skills shortages.

Looking ahead A data science certification programme will give all organisations the tools needed to begin extracting insights from their growing data volumes and start making data-driven decisions. In addition, as artificial intelligence continues to permeate all aspects of business, demand for these skills and practices will continue to grow.

Ultimately, a certification programme will arm organisations in the fight for the best talent, but will also make sure that data scientists have the skills needed to fulfil this vital business requirement.

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