Digital Bulletin - Issue 13 - February 2020

Issue 13 | Feb ’20

AI: A FORCE FOR GOOD?

TABLEAU

Four industry experts have their say on one of technology’s burning issues

Embracing startup thinking for data analytics

POWERING MULTI-CLOUD PERFORMANCE Rubrik’s Martin Brown tells Digital Bulletin how the company is setting new standards in the backup and cloud data management space, maximising value from an increasingly fragmented market

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

GARTNER FORECASTS WORLDWIDE IT SPENDING TO REACH $3.9 TRILLION IN 2020 Gartner has said that global IT spending will reach $3.9 trillion in 2020 - up slightly on last year’s total of $3.8 trillion. The growth is driven by enterprises investing more in cloud software and the end of support for Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. Every IT segment is predicted to see growth in 2020, with software-as-a-service coming out on top with a potential growth of 10.5%.

(16/01/20) 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.

A

t first glance, cloud data management and backup-as-aservice might not seem like the sexiest areas of enterprise technology. But Rubrik is on a mission to change the way companies think about this particular corner of the market.

Martin Brown first heard of Rubrik when it pinched a few of his major clients at a former employer. His interest piqued and he ordered a report into the company.

“When I got the report back the thing that really came through was just how brilliant the technology was,” he recalls.

Today he works for Rubrik as its Regional Vice President for the UKI, MEA region - a happy coincidence, he insists.

“What we’ve done is delivered everything in an automated fashion in a service-level agreement, so clients choose what you want with a certain application when it comes to backup,” he says.

Technology as a positive force is the theme for this month’s debate, in which we ask four industry experts: can we

realistically expect AI to be used as a force for good?

As you’d expect, opinions are mixed, but what is undeniably true is that how AI behaves will be directly linked with the information it is using to make decisions and how we as humans instruct the technology to behave.

Elsewhere you’ll find a cracking interview with LexisNexis Software Solutions VP and General Manager, Scott Wallingford, who speaks in-depth about data-driven decision making within the context of CRM and business development.

There are also deep dives into Sumo Logic, AR specialist Scandit and Maddox Events - the pioneer of the groundbreaking Women of Silicon Roundabout conference and the Women in Tech World Series.

Lastly, in this month’s Closing Bulletin, Tableau’s James Eiloart writes about the advantages of the value of embracing a startup mindset for your data analytics strategy.

Enjoy the issue

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 Ginni Rometty is stepping down as CEO of IBM after eight years. Rometty led the firm away from its mainframe business but ultimately struggled to transform it for the cloud era. She will be replaced by Arvind Krishna, currently SVP for Cloud and Cognitive Software

CONTENTS

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CONNECTIVITY RUBRIK Revolutionising the backup market

IT SERVICES LEXISNEXIS Unlocking data insights for professional services

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DEBATE Industry experts on AI as a force for good

34 PEOPLE

MADDOX EVENTS Digital Bulletin speaks to co-founder Michaela Jeffery-Morrison

58 42 EVENTS

FUTURE

SCANDIT AR is helping businesses streamline their operations

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DATA INTELLIGENCE SUMO LOGIC Enabling continuous intelligence for enterprise

The biggest and best technology events for your diary

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An exclusive column from James Eiloart, SVP EMEA at Tableau

CONNECTIVITY

CHANGING THE BACKUP GAME Rubrik is on a mission to revolutionise the backup market, as Regional VP, UKI, Middle East & Africa, Martin Brown, tells Digital Bulletin...

AUTHOR: James Henderson

M

artin Brown can distinctly remember the first time he became aware of Rubrik. In his director role at Dell EMC, Brown found himself in the unenviable position of having lost two important clients in quick succession.

“I wasn’t completely sure who Rubrik were, so I asked one of my team to do a bit of background research because I wanted to know more about the company that had just taken a couple of important customers,” Brown recalls, speaking to Digital Bulletin. “When I got the report back the thing that really came through was just how brilliant the technology was.”

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In a twist of fate, a message from a senior figure at Rubrik followed, asking Brown if he’d be interested in joining – a pure coincidence in terms of timing, he insists. The proposition was originally rebuffed, but Rubrik came back again with a compelling offer and clear vision for the company which proved too good to turn down for a second time.

Two years on, Brown holds the position of Regional VP, UKI, Middle East & Africa at Rubrik, which, just six years since its inception, is making quite the name for itself in the cloud data management and enterprise backup space.

RUBRIK

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Rubrik’s mission is to enable enterprises to maximise value from data that is increasingly fragmented across data centres and clouds. To do so, Rubrik delivers a single, policy-driven platform for data recovery, governance, compliance, and cloud mobility.

Brown refers back to the research report – the author of which has since joined him at Rubrik, incidentally – when he explains how the company has managed to develop such a prominent position in its chosen market sector in what is a relatively miniscule amount of time.

“The report that was produced was so clear about the simplicity of the automation that the platform offers. The backup market hasn’t really changed in 20 years and it’s a pretty complex architecture

I wasn’t completely sure who Rubrik were, so I asked one of my team to do a bit of background research because I wanted to know more about the company that had just taken a couple of important customers” Martin Brown, Regional VP, UKI, Middle East & Africa at Rubrik of various products and vendors, that require very highly skilled people. IT departments aren’t keen on working in the area, because it doesn’t always work particularly well,” Brown reveals.

“What we’ve done is delivered everything in an automated fashion in a service-level agreement, so clients choose what you want with a certain application when it comes to backup. It takes out all that complexity and scheduling of jobs and capacity management that previously had to be done manually by people. It’s all delivered by the software.”

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RUBRIK

Brown says that businesses are reaping the benefits, saving time, money and resources. He references a customer in the Middle East market that he says has been able to instruct an IT graduate to oversee the smooth running of its data protection service that sits on the Rubrik platform, such is its simplicity.

Over the last six to nine months, Rubrik has also found success in the security sector, capping off 2019 with the Best Data Security and Data Protection award at VMworld 2019. The award was in recognition of the innovative automa-

tion, increased efficiency, and significant business value achieved by customer LKAB – the Swedish State Mining Company – using Rubrik Edge, a software appliance built for extending data protection and management to virtualised and remote back office environments.

“LKAB has an in-house delivered application that tracks all specs of the mining production line, but if that fails, it is looking at a shutdown of 24-48 hours, which is really costly. It can cost upwards of $1 million just to shut down for one night,” says Brown.

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

HUAWEI PERMITTED LIMITED ROLE IN UK 5G NETWORK DEVELOPMENT Huawei has been told it will be allowed to take part in building the UK’s 5G infrastructure, although it will face restrictions. The Chinese company will not be permitted to supply equipment to “sensitive parts” of the network, known as the core. It will also only be allowed to provide 35% of the kit in a network’s periphery, which includes radio masts. (28/01/20) 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.

RUBRIK

When you think of some of the big ransomware attacks, the big cost is the mediation, so finding out what the bad guys did. If you don’t know what has been done you have to lock up all your data, which is a huge cost” “What we have enabled LKAB to do is automate and simplify all of its data security and protection systems and given it the ability to restore really quickly, which has resulted in 90%+ management time savings, 90% faster resource so they can react more quickly, and 90% quicker ticket resolution as well.

“We’ve also given them the ability to protect their data with a software product as an enabler to use for the existing hardware they have in all their remote offices. So, they can bring their data back to their core data centres.

Thirdly, we’ve given them the ability to utilise Azure, and make it really easy for them to move to the cloud and enjoy the benefits of having the data in the cloud environment.”

Brown says that the capability of Rubrik’s modern software can prove the difference of millions of dollars when it comes to restoring data in the event of a ransomware or phishing attack –

a scenario that all areas of enterprise are having to mitigate against.

This is due to the immutable nature of Rubrik’s software, whereas more traditional infrastructure, often hosted in Windows file systems, are more vulnerable if they end up in the wrong hands.

“When you think of some of the big ransomware attacks, the big cost is the mediation, so finding out what the bad guys did. If you don’t know what has been done you have to lock up all your data, which is a huge cost,” he says.

“What we’ve been able to do is track where the bad guys have been, so it will know if they only got to 11% of the data, for example, so you know the remainder is fine. We can help restore back to the last version of the 11% and help companies remediate really quickly.

“In that scenario, you could be looking at the difference between a cost to the enterprise of $100 million and $10 million. I think it was ASL Airlines which ISSUE 13

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Companies have been analysing data for a really long time, big data is not something that is really new, think about the success Tesco had in the 1990s with the Clubcard, that was all from data it had on its customers�

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RUBRIK

said ransomware becomes a minor inconvenience when there is an ability to instantly restore and then understand what has been done.”

A key component to the Rubrik offering is helping companies make sense of their vast datasets, something that many organisations are struggling to make sense of as the quantities of data multiply at a rapid rate. Those companies that are able to effectively manage and analyse their data will more than likely leave their competitors behind.

But, says Brown, while the parameters and scales have shifted, the concept is not a new one.

“Companies have been analysing data for a really long time, big data is not something that is really new, think about the success Tesco had in the 1990s with the Clubcard, that was all from data it had on its customers,” he comments.

“But the process of collecting data from different places, putting it into a specific format and analysing those sets is really time consuming, complex and expensive.

What we are building here is almost like a meta datalake, which allows customers to drive value.

“We have brought our SaaS and other applications that deliver value, but what we’ll also be doing is opening up our API to other software vendors to create software to deliver value from that data.

“Customers don’t need to move the data as it is there already, it is in a format that it is easy to get access to and it is not in production. We are developing an application for continuous data protection, it is almost live data, it is not sitting on any production platform, so you can do all sorts of things with it.

Brown cites The Economist as saying that data is the world’s most valuable resource but it is only valuable if you can do things with it – “We are that enabler for our customers,” he says.

It is a customer base that is spread across practically every business vertical and includes the likes of Cisco, Experian, Facebook, Towers Watson and Schroders, an impressive roster for a company established in 2014. But there will be no resting on laurels.

“We’ve had unprecedented growth, but it hasn’t been easy and we’re competing with companies that have established technologies and long-term relationships.

The reason organisations are working with us is that we have revolutionised how companies are working with data protection,” he concludes.

“All of our releases are driven by demand from customers and that is how we develop. I think that innovation is unrivalled in the backup market, but we think it is really required because the demand is there.”

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IT SERVICES

RAISING THE BAR LexisNexis’s Scott Wallingford helps Digital Bulletin highlight how technology and data insights can unlock growth for professional services firms AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

T

he axiom that “every company is now a technology company” is heard so often that it’s shifting dangerously close to business cliché.

It is, of course, rooted in the hard truth that without a strategic approach to modern technology, organisations will find themselves lagging behind digital-savvy competitors. A throwaway saying maybe, but nobody can dispute the underlying message.

A good number of industries have spent many years adapting to this 16

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seachange but others have been slower to bring about technology transformation - and one example is the professional services sector. Usual barriers to technology adoption for firms pitching knowledge-based services like accountancy, consultancy and legal assistance include immovable legacy practices, cultural change resistance and cost concerns.

There is evidence, however, that these professions might finally be waking up to technology’s potential. Take the

LEXISNEXIS

legal sector as one; in 2018, investment in legal tech sky-rocketed by a barely believable 713% according to Forbes.

In its reporting, Forbes said the figure is indicative of an industry that has switched on to the likes of automation and artificial intelligence (AI).

For legal professionals, the focus is commonly around efficiency; how can technology give firms the space to grow and carry out a premium service? A recent survey by LexisNexis, a prominent legal tech player, took the key area of

business development and found that to support this imperative in 2020, 70% of respondents will be making significant investments in digital. Collaboration with IT departments will also increase as demands of the work do the same.

Scott Wallingford, VP and general manager of LexisNexis Software Solutions, was involved in the research, which gathered insights from legal marketing and business development leaders and C-suite executives across the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific.

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IT SERVICES

Once you establish that foundation of data and insights in order to drive better decisions, you can really crystallise that into your business development strategies” Scott Wallingford at LexisNexis In an exclusive interview with Digital Bulletin, Wallingford starts by shedding more light on exactly how technology and specifically data - can be the secret sauce for professional services.

“We do this survey every year around what’s changing in the market, and really there are three key takeaways for this time,” he says. “Firstly, it’s about deriving the right insights from your client data to make sure that the firms deliver excellence for their clients. That’s the goal and all firms struggle with it.

“Then, once you establish that foundation of data and insights in order to drive better decisions, you can really crystallise that into your business development strategies and make sure you’re not only talking about what you want to do with 18

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a better strategy, but also measuring it.

At the end of the day, if you have a strategy but don’t measure against it, you really have an idea, not a plan.

“Thirdly there’s the client perspective; their expectations around experience are going up. What you did last year isn’t going to be successful this year. That is really where the data comes in and makes sure you have rich insights to be the trusted advisor.”

Achieving ‘trusted advisor’ status is the holy grail for fee-earning lawyers, according to Wallingford. In his own words, professional services is a dif-

LEXISNEXIS

ferent breed of industry where services are “bought, not sold”. Relationships go far beyond the transactional tieups associated with product-centred businesses, with this is especially true in the legal sector where confidence is essential and partnerships can stretch across decades.

Technology can help firms but many still stumble when it comes to implementation. In Wallingford’s view, it all comes back to data and using analytics to glean insights and inform decision-making - yet a lot of organisations keep making mistakes.

“What firms struggle with is that they don’t use data to build their business development strategies or client engagement strategies,” Wallingford explains.

“So they’re brainstorming - they come up with a list, but there’s no real coherence

to it. They don’t put metrics against it.

From our survey, we found that only 9% of firms are using analytics to track business opportunities, and it’s a similar level for using analytics to glean insights from the data that they captured. The insight is the power, it’s not just data collection.

“The other thing many firms do is launch a tonne of initiatives but don’t connect them to their strategies. If the firm is clear on “this is how we intend to grow the firm”, it’s easier to get clarity on investments, clarity on priorities and clarity on who is going to do what.”

Wallingford speaks with authority having worked with businesses cross-industry on using technology to streamline and grow. He recently passed four years in post at LexisNexis, where he directs its software business unit and oversees the iteration of its InterAction platform ISSUE 13

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

AZURE INCHING AHEAD OF AWS, NEW RESEARCH FINDS Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform is inching ahead of AWS when it comes to cloud infrastructure and platform as a service, according to Goldman Sachs. A survey of more than 100 IT executives from Global 2000 companies found that 56 were using Azure for cloud infrastructure, with 48 saying they used AWS. Sixty-six CIOs said Azure will be their main cloud service in the next three years. (13/01/20) 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.

LEXISNEXIS

widely recognised as the de-facto CRM for professional services.

Designed to confront the challenges firms face in client satisfaction and attraction, InterAction - used by 450 clients in 32 countries - offers contact and pipeline management, engagement scoring and crunches data to provide relationship intelligence and dashboard reporting for fee-earners. Wallingford believes it packs far more in than a rudimentary CRM system.

“CRM is a loaded term. It’s been around for a while and I think of InterAction as so much broader,” he says. “We’ve changed the focus to be much more of a data and client insight platform. The real goal is to capture everything your firm knows about current clients or prospective clients.

“Number one is to take care of your existing clients. If you do that, you have reference customers, you have repeat business - that really sets the table. So I think of it as “protect the core”. The second thing is to add new capabilities that matter to some, extending your value proposition to the firms that value it. The third is how you grow, and that’s really finding new business. What we do is work that throughout InterAction, solving the question of how law firms and other professional services firms continue to develop.”

CRM is a loaded term.

It’s been around for a while and I think of InterAction as so much broader” InterAction already helps save fee earners “several hours per month” but LexisNexis has built data intelligence into its platform to keep it one step ahead. Another Forbes report published in August made the case for AI’s disruptive potential in CRMs, listing five areas for transformation: data ingestion & retrieval, sentiment analysis, data integrity, predictive lead scoring and prescriptive account-specific recommendations.

In LexisNexis’s case, AI is being deployed to solve an age old problem and banking many hours of fee earners’ time in the process, as Wallingford outlines.

“We leverage some AI capability that can automatically match contact records to understand if it’s the same person. It sounds like a small problem, but if you’re a big firm you will have literally hundreds of thousands of contacts in your database. What you really want to do is make sure that this is the same person before ISSUE 13

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IT SERVICES

I think you will see more interest in cloud-delivered capability. Many people think this is binary and a foregone conclusion - we’ve actually seen some firms that prefer an on-premise database capability where they want to own their data and keep it within their walls. But they are torn, because they also want the benefits of a SaaS model or the software application itself”

who was at firm X, or is this a completely new person?”

Last April, the company took another major technological step forward by launching InterAction for Office 365.

The new application embeds InterAction client relationship data into existing workflows across Microsoft Outlook, Excel and Word and allows users to access and consume that data both at their desk and remotely while out in the field.

“Your clients’ insight data is right there: news feeds on what’s new with a particular firm or individual so you’re always up to date,” adds Wallingford. “It also 22

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lets you automatically capture activities all in one place, so that no-one has to jump anywhere else, and the real magic about this is that it works across devices so you don’t need to be sat in your office to make this work.”

InterAction for Office 365 is delivered through a unique hybrid cloud model which leverages patented LexisNexis technology, guaranteeing both the flexibility of the cloud and the bulletproof security of local environments. Security concerns have previously made legal firms wary of embracing public cloud but Wallingford is adamant this solution eradicates any lingering worries.

LEXISNEXIS

“I think you will see more interest in cloud-delivered capability,” he predicts.

“Many people think this is binary and a foregone conclusion - we’ve actually seen some firms that prefer an on-premise database capability where they want to own their data and keep it within their walls. But they are torn, because they also want the benefits of a SaaS model or the software application itself.

“This hybrid model simplifies things for firms who say they want to move and move seamlessly - they can easily add any capability from the cloud and they don’t have to do massive, year-long services projects. I’ve yet to meet a CIO

who wants to do a massive year-long services project!”

LexisNexis is actively laying the foundations for continued leadership in its sector - but what does Wallingford view as the other future trends in the CRM arena, aside from the emergence of cloud? Statista projects steady growth for an overall CRM software market that it estimates will be worth in the region of $40 billion by 2023.

“Is a company’s proposition that it should be the end-to-end CRM provider or is it that it should be the best-in-class client insights platform for legal and professional services, for example? Is one right or wrong? You can debate those merits all day long. We prefer to partner extensively and integrate with many,” he concludes.

“Will there be growth? Absolutely. Will there be M&A? I expect so but I certainly don’t think it will be Salesforce coming into this market and buying up a couple of players.

“Overall, I see analytics continuing to be a point that matters more to law firms and other professional services firms. As they get further down this path, they will start to understand the magic that the analytics applied to their broad sets of data can help power.”

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AI

WHAT IS IT : GOOD FOR?

Each month, Digital Bulletin canvasses the opinion of some of the tech industry’s leading minds. Here, we ask: Can AI realistically be used as a force for good?

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AI

“ All tech needs to be viewed through an ethical lens” Kathy Baxter, Architect for Ethical AI practice at Salesforce

We’ve barely scratched the surface of how AI will impact the way we live and work. It has huge potential to transform industries and shape the way people interact with one another. It’s up to humans, businesses and societies to determine that what we do with technology influences positive change now and in the future. We must ask not just can we build this, but should we build this.

Technology should always improve society rather than weaken it. The application of AI is no different. Organisations need to carefully examine the ways they’re planning to use it through an ethical lens, not only looking at the intended outputs but also the likelihood of unintended consequences, particularly harmful ones.

The ethics of using AI must be rooted in a company’s business values – delivering value to customers in a transparent way should be the primary goal.

Organisations need to recognise that what they do has an impact beyond profits, and that this impact on the ISSUE 13

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world matters. Approaching AI with this mindset makes ethical considerations much more important.

AI is only as effective as the data it has at its disposal. It is a mirror that reflects bias which already exists in our society.

As a result, AI can highlight bias in existing business processes, thus enabling businesses to address it. Working to address this starts by building an ethical organisational culture. Developing inclusive teams can help bring in the different perspectives that might otherwise be overlooked when designing algorithms to sort and select data, because internal teams are more reflective of the diversity of wider society.

Following ethical development processes may require teams to work differently from the way they’ve been used to operating. Questioning their own internal biases and world views is important. But by being upfront and open in these discussions, biases in fundamental assumptions about the problem space and issues of representativeness in data sets are more likely to be identified and remedied.

Transparency is another key step in building an ethical AI practice. This includes transparency in decision making, data sets used, predictive factors used in the model, potential unintended consequences and harms, as well 26

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The ethics of using AI must be rooted in a company’s business values – delivering value to customers in a transparent way should be the primary goal” as the mitigation measures that might have been taken.

AI, particularly deep neural nets (DNNs) and convolutional neural networks (CNNs), can be ‘black boxes’ – the data inputs are clear enough, but how it generates insights through layers of decision webs and algorithms can be often opaque. Similar to data privacy, consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about how their personal data might be used and manipulated by artificial intelligence systems. To earn customer trust, businesses need to develop explainable and interpretable models. When this is not possible (e.g., DNNs, CNNs), businesses should seriously reconsider their use, especially in applications where health, safety, and justice are at risk.

We believe that AI can augment and extend the bandwidth of employees,

AI

help them make better decisions and be more productive. AI could also help companies make better business decisions through data, and interact with their customers in a more helpful way.

This can only happen, however, if the technology is developed, implemented and supported with the goal of being inclusive of society’s values.

Like all technology, consumers will come to reject AI if they cannot trust that it is being used safely and with their best interests in mind. By being transparent in how they are handling customer data, implementing AI in decision making, and empowering society to give feedback, organisations will earn their customers’ trust. Anything short of that will reinforce societal fears that AI is too risky to be widely used.

“ It is not a black and white issue” Peter van der Putten, Director, AI, Pegasystems and assistant professor Leiden University

Can we expect AI to be used for good? Yes, absolutely. Equally so, we can expect it to be used for evil. And that AI can turn out to be less intelligent than we think.

First let’s talk a bit about what AI really is, and we will start with an outside-in perspective. People are wired to ascribe intent and intelligence to other systems – regardless of whether the system is

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using any techniques at all that are considered to be part of AI, such as machine learning and reasoning. A chatbot, for example, could just be triggered by some handcrafted patterns of words.

Or AI washing could deliberately be used to hype a particular technology, without there even being any intent to create systems that are perceived to be intelligent. For example, many software robotics implementations are simply about workflow automation. So, it is good to realise that the AI emperor overlord does not always have clothes.

Turning now to true AI systems and techniques, specifically machine learning has always fuelled the dystopian imagination. In 1965 the scientist Irving J. Good stated that creating intelligent machines is an intelligent task itself,

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We do not need to wait until the singularity for negative aspects of AI to kick in.

The future has already happened, and stupid applications of AI are more to fear than super-intelligent ones, even if applied with the best intentions� leading potentially to an explosion of intelligence. He stated that such an ultra-intelligent machine is the “last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control�.

However, we do not need to wait until the singularity for negative aspects of AI to kick in. The future has already happened, and stupid applications of AI are more to fear than super-intelligent ones, even if applied with the best intentions.

For example, a study in Science last year reported on a predictive model used across the US to identify patients for preventive care and care management programs, clearly an example where AI was used with the best intentions. The

AI

problem is that the model predicts future healthcare costs, and in the historical data used to build the model considerably less money is spent on black patients that have the same health conditions as white patients.

So, is all lost then? Absolutely not.

But AI will not automatically lead to good things, it is up to us to humanise AI, keep it under check and balances, and apply it for the good of customers and citizens. For example, by correcting for the bias in the healthcare data set, more than two and a half as many black patients would be eligible for a care management programme. Such an evidence-based and data driven approach to care would be preferable over pure human based decisions.

When done right, consumers will perceive AI driven enterprises as more understanding, intelligent and empathic. To ensure that interactions driven by AI are seen as morally just, and not just benefiting the company, we will need to move beyond pure machine learning based systems and use some of the good old-fashioned rule-based AI to set boundaries, define trade-offs and constraints, and build capabilities into the AI so that it can explain its decisions.

Unfortunately, humans are the only ones who can ensure that AI will be used for good.

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“ Humans have to take responsibility” Leila Seith Hassan, Head of Data and Analytics at Digitas UK

This question isn’t about AI really, it’s about humans. Artificial Intelligence is an extension of the living, breathing intelligence of humans, so the question we really need to ask ourselves is, are humans a force for good?

It matters because, as Jeff McMillan, chief analytics and data officer at Morgan Stanley, said: “AI is not magic, it is just math. It’s complicated math.” With this in mind, it’s hard to imagine even the most advanced AI demonstrating human emotions like love or hate, and as Max Tegmark said: “There is no reason to expect AI will ever become intentionally benevolent or malevolent.”

So, in the end, it’s all on us. AI is goal orientated and will continue to optimise until it achieves the goal that humans have set for it. So, if you use AI to get a drone to deliver a package as fast as possible, and forget to add in the “do no harm” constraints, you can’t be shocked when said drone knocks over your nan or causes a traffic incident.

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AI is getting more and more intelligent, so we can’t necessarily keep track of how far it will go to achieve the goals we set it.

This particular challenge has thrown up a whole new field of research, called “Value Alignment,” which designs ways to prevent AI from inadvertently acting in ways that clash with human values.

Not that our human values are easy to agree on, as evidenced every day in the news. Right now, our fellow humans are setting AI goals that some individuals might consider evil. AI can drive sales and votes, cut costs, automate roles, and command more power and resources for their operators, increasing the divide between the super-rich and the rest of us.

AI

It took less than a day for Microsoft’s benevolent Tay chatbot to turn racist, thanks to some undesirable influences online”

It took less than a day for Microsoft’s benevolent Tay chatbot to turn racist, thanks to some undesirable influences online. And then there was the Google image-recognition algorithm that tagged black people as “gorillas.”

There’s no doubt that the people who build and train AI may harbour biases that are difficult to swallow, but if we dare to believe that humans are essentially good, then couldn’t we use AI to check those biases and see off prejudice?

This might require some positive action, like making sure that diverse teams are creating and managing the AI, but if we work towards fairness, there’s no reason why AI can’t deal with problems that hu-

mans have been unable to solve alone.

AI has the potential to cure diseases, develop drought-resistant crops, grow more food, provide healthcare for those in remote parts of the world or in parts of the world where it is prohibitively expensive.

AI can surely be used to bridge – instead of exacerbate – the gap between the super-rich and the very poor, as long as we humans pull together with to make it a force for good.

Arguably, 2020 has got off to a rough start, so right now I need to believe that humans are inherently good, that the force will guide us, and AI will guide the world in what I consider to be the right direction.

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“ There is potential for catastrophe” David Baskett, Technical Strategy Manager, SolutionsPT

AI can be used as a force for good, but it can also be used for malicious purposes by people seeking to exploit it for their own gain, and a major problem with it is we have no way of knowing what it might become capable of in the future or how it will evolve over time.

Technology is never deterministic – people or countries can choose to utilise it for good or bad. The internet, for example, can be used to share information and help keep in touch with friends, but it can also be used to spread fake news, misinformation and hate. Similarly, while AI and algorithms that run on personal data and a user’s personal preferences can ensure the targeted adverts people see are relevant and of interest, that same data could also be used to cause harm via targeted cyberattacks.

If a country decided to weaponise AI using this approach, other countries would naturally seek to defend themselves against it by doing the same, creating a dangerous domino effect that would have dangerous consequences.

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AI

If a country decided to weaponise AI using this approach, other countries would naturally seek to defend themselves against it by doing the same, creating a dangerous domino effect that would have dangerous consequences” AI could also pose a threat on a smaller scale. While it is true that, in theory, it can be coded to not cause harm to humans, what would happen if an organisation wanted to use AI at an industrial site to make its operation as efficient as possible and AI determined that human workers were preventing the company from achieving maximum efficiency and were therefore a threat?

In future, if the decisions made by AI were given precedence over those made by humans, could the AI cause the workers harm in order to achieve the target it had been set? Would it be possible for AI to falsify information to get an individual fired?

The fact that AI needs coding by humans in the first place could be another potential problem in future as there is no legislation for human error. AI output is

only as good as the data it is fed so it is vital to ensure the data which is inputted is valid, free from error, bias and discrimination, and includes all the variables required to make a decision. If irrelevant data is inputted, the AI could make incorrect and potentially dangerous decisions as a result. Because humans are inherently flawed, it is impossible to guarantee that the inputted data will always be correct.

The success of AI will rely on the alignment of goals - if AI’s defined goals are not aligned to humans’, the actions it takes could be catastrophic, even if it has been coded not to cause harm.

Whatever safeguards are put in place, there will always be ways in which the goal orientated nature of AI could conflict with what we consider ‘good.’

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PEOPLE

CHAMPIONING DIVERSITY IN TECH The technology sector’s need for greater diversity is well-known to us all. Maddox Events, pioneers of the groundbreaking Women of Silicon Roundabout conference and the Women in Tech World Series, is doing its bit and Digital Bulletin spent some time with one of its co-founders, Michaela Jeffery-Morrison

AUTHOR: BEN MOUNCER

M

ichaela Jeffery-Morrison is a self-professed organiser.

“To organise stuff has always been a passion of mine. Whether it’s my life, my mum, my work - it seems quite natural for me.”

Back in 2015, Jeffery-Morrison - then aged just 25 - was organised enough to kickstart her very own business. And not just any business, but one tailored to her specific set of managerial skills: 34

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an events company. Maddox Events, co-founded with brothers Patrick and Freddie Lewis, was born.

Five years on and Maddox Events has made a sizeable impression on the technology industry, an impact even the ambitious Jeffery-Morrison and her colleagues wouldn’t have foreseen.

Their team is the driving force behind the popular Women In Tech World Series events, including the flagship

MADDOX EVENTS

Women of Silicon Roundabout - a conference due to attract around 8,000 visitors when it takes over London ExCel later this year.

Championing the role of women in technology, and encouraging greater sector diversity as a whole, were the founding principles of Maddox Events and remain the core values of this fast-growing business today. Jeffery-Morrison, who now holds the joint

role of COO and Head of Production, picks up the story. “We wanted to create events that championed diversity in all its forms while pushing forward the idea that we were not just looking at diversity but personal development and networking opportunities, all the time getting involved with some of the most progressive and impressive companies in the world,� she explains to Digital Bulletin.

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Tech just kept coming up. I wasn’t a woman in technology so I wasn’t aware of it, but it was never pushed to me as an opportunity - so it piqued my interest. I explored it and saw that there was no-one doing what we could potentially do, and we started from there” “We definitely didn’t know where we were going with it [from an industry perspective], but tech just kept coming up.

I wasn’t a woman in technology so I wasn’t aware of it, but it was never pushed to me as an opportunity - so it piqued my interest. I explored it and saw that there was no-one doing what we could potentially do, and we started from there.”

It is a bare fact that the technology sector faces an enormous problem with gender diversity. Women are chronically underrepresented both in technical roles and on the C-suites of the tech organisations taking the business world by storm.

A recent McKinsey study found that only 26% of the computing workforce in the United States were female, and women accounted for just 11% of the leadership teams in technology companies.

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behind such damning statistics, but in a time where gains are finally being made around awareness and change programme delivery, Maddox Events can claim to be at the forefront in the UK and Europe.

“When we first started there was nothing out there like it so it was a breath of fresh air for a lot of people,” says Jeffery-Morrison. “There was no forum where people could come together and see people like themselves. When you are part of that, you only want to go more and more. Our first event was 300 people; then we doubled that, then we tripled it, then we quadrupled it.”

Maddox claims the Women of Silicon Roundabout event has grown into Europe’s “biggest celebration” of the successes and innovations pioneered by women in technology. This year’s conference will host more than 200 speakers, including female leaders from

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the likes of Microsoft, IBM and HPE, with over 12,000 workshop spaces alongside tracks and seminars touching on the all-important industry topics.

Through taking this show on the road, the Women in Tech World Series has spawned and additional events are now hosted in Cape Town, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Boston and Dublin. According to Jeffery-Morrison, the rapid growth of Maddox’s portfolio can be put down to its laser focus on the twin priorities of content and networking - and the progressive nature of its event agendas.

“Initially I was reaching out to people who said they didn’t want to be part of an event that was moaning about the situation,” she reveals. “It’s not about moaning about the situation; it’s about

coming together and looking at solutions, and celebrating the success of women in tech.

“Once word of mouth got out, we kept listening to what our community wanted and we kept providing the right content.

I think, in terms of attracting lots of different people, it’s because we cater to different people too.

“You can jump into an inspiring main stage talk with 8,000 people around you to listen to a woman from the C-suite on how she went from secretary to CIO. Then you can jump out of there and go into a workshop on Python, and it’s a masterclass, and you can sit down with likeminded people and create some code. Then you go away from there and go into a workshop that tells you how to

Michaela Jeffery-Morrison

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HIGHLIGHTS

HPE CHIEF MOVES TO INTEL AS CIO Intel has hired former HPE Chief Technologist, Archana Deskus to be its new CIO. Deskus will join Intel on Jan. 30 and will run its global technology as well as leading the company’s digital transformation efforts, including the use of analytics and machine learning. Deskus will report to Chief Financial Officer George Davis and manage around 5,000 employees. (14/01/20) 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.

MADDOX EVENTS

Karren Brady speaking at the Women of Silicon Roundabout event be a successful remote employee - it’s a one-stop shop for everything.”

The rate of expansion for Maddox’s events and the anecdotal evidence offered up by Jeffery-Morrison - “it’s almost weird to see everybody happy and smiling at a B2B conference” - points to a movement that is fast gathering momentum. But what are the ultimate barriers it is trying to break down?

Jeffery-Morrison is adamant that far more can be achieved in making minority groups aware of the opportunities available in an exploding technology sector.

“When you think of tech, you think of coders, people who can code websites

only, and that’s completely wrong because you don’t have to be good at technology to be in tech, there are so many other options available to you. There’s an incredible lack of awareness,” she says.

“It led me to then push deeper into the reasons why and it’s got a lot to do with statistics, it’s got a lot to do with what’s actually out there compared to the stereotype of someone who works in technology. Every big company has a massive tech department now, but that’s also why the numbers are bad - because tech is in every company and you can’t hide from it, and the dominant sex is male.”

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It’s about moving away from the idea that change is going to happen quickly, because it’s just not. When you’re educating people and creating awareness, it takes a long time”

nies in point, and a number have worked directly with Maddox Events to show their support for its diversity campaigning, including Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon.

Another collaborator, Google, publishes its own diversity report every year but the most recent version showed only small signs of progress. The percentage of female hires at the Silicon Valley giant increased slightly from 31.3% in 2017 to 33.2% in 2018 but diversity actually declined in its “organisational leadership”.

Jeffery-Morrison admits the change that’s required is going to take a significant amount of time, and she believes that every business must evolve diversity strategies in their own way with a “one-size fits 40

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all” approach impossible to action.

“Every company will be in a different place; they’re going to have different numbers of employees, different people at the helm - it’s really important to be aware of that,” adds the Maddox co-founder. “When you’re looking at taking steps to create a more diverse and more inclusive workforce, you have to strip the company back strategically and work out where these initiatives, networks and hiring strategies come in.

“It takes time to hire the right people.

When you think of that, and you look at a 150-year-old company with 200,000 employees, the change is going to be very, very slow. It’s about moving away

MADDOX EVENTS

from the idea that change is going to happen quickly, because it’s just not.

When you’re educating people and creating awareness, it takes a long time.”

What does change look like for Maddox Events in 2020 and beyond? It plans to take the Women in Tech World Series to more parts of the globe while at the same time striving to fight an even wider range of diversity challenges through richer, content-heavy events and conferences.

“In 2019, we put on lots of events and hired a lot of people but we spread ourselves quite thinly, to be honest with you,” says Jeffery-Morrison. “In 2020, we want to grow our community by giving them more content and we also want

to broaden our event offering. We need to make sure people understand that even though this event will always be called “Women In” or “Women of”, diversity in tech is more than just gender.

“We’re looking at building out more features as well: hackathons, pre-event days - basically building things around the event and establishing ourselves as the leaders. When people think of fizzy drinks, they think of Coca Cola. What we’re really trying to get to here is the point when people think of D&I (diversity and inclusion) and events, they think of Maddox Events.”

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FUTURE

SCAN WITH A PLAN Christian Floerkemeir, VP Product, CTO and co-founder of Scandit, tells Digital Bulletin how enterprise is leveraging AR to streamline crucial day-to-day tasks

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SCANDIT

H

i Christian, could you tell us a bit about your role at Scandit?

I am one of the co-founders and worked initially on the development of our algorithms which were originally very focussed on barcode scanning and the scanning performance of smartphone devices. I’m the VP Product, CTO and co-founder, so I look after all product development, solution consulting and product marketing, that’s everything around what we do strategically, how we position ourselves in the market and how we sell to customers.

Could you give us a flavour of Scandit as a company, its position in the market and main activities?

I always say that we started off in the unsexy area of barcode scanning, which is the predominant identification technology in areas like retail, healthcare and logistics. Our focus is offering reliable and swift barcode scanning data capture on smartphone devices.

There has been concern in the past you can’t scan reliably and swiftly on a smartphone and we’ve been addressing that. What we’ve been doing is taking a technology-centric approach; in past companies dedicated vendors that did a superb job, but they focused on hardware, custom image sensors and camera systems to provide barcode ISSUE 13

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We compute the image backward, in the same way that Photoshop does when you have a blurry photo, so out of a low resolution image we compute a high-resolution image, and we were doing this before machine learning and AI became buzzwords, we should take some credit for that!”

Christian Floerkemeir, VP Product, CTO and co-founder of Scandit scanning performance, because in the early days you didn’t have the computing resources that you have in today’s smartphones.

We are taking different approach; we compute the image backward, in the same way that Photoshop does when you have a blurry photo, so out of a low resolution image we compute a high-resolution image, and we were doing this before machine learning and AI became buzzwords, we should take some credit for that! But it was essential to do that to get our solution to work, because it solved the problem of how reliably and swiftly scanning barcodes on low end devices, that is our bread and butter business.

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Can you tell us about some of Scandit’s AR technology?

To begin with, we didn’t like the term AR because it was linked with gimmicky things like scanning QR codes in magazines and you’d get a monster or something jumping out at you. It’s funny but you’re not going to do it again because it doesn’t offer any value.

AR scanning has to be about creating value. One example is ‘Search & Find’ in the back of a truck for a parcel. For logistics companies, one of the most important things is how quickly they can deliver. We know that volumes are increasing and companies want to make the process more efficient and simplify some of the tedious tasks for my employees.

SCANDIT

The idea is rather than looking with your eyes for the number you need to deliver, or having to scan each package individually, we provide what we call MatrixScan, which leverages the camera in the device. The computing GPU uses the device to scan multiple barcodes at once and then shows digital content over the top of the image on the smartphone screen.

We are really focussed on how we can use technology to change processes, meaning they are more efficient across industry verticals. The same thing translates to retail where store associates stand in front of terminals multiple times a day to see which items of stock are available or whether there are duplicates. That is being done with bits of

paper or scanning items individually, which has the potential to miss things.

What we provide allows them to simply hold up their smartphone and it highlights all the barcodes that are being scanned, details on items, it shows duplicates and if items that you need are missing. That adds real value for our customers and helps them to evolve their business processes, enabling them to take advantage of the camera and ML capabilities of today’s smartphones to streamline processes.

Where do you stand on AR being integrated into wearable tech?

We are interested in the longer-term in deploying our software on digital eyewear and other wearable devices, and ISSUE 13

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HIGHLIGHTS

ZENUITY AND HPE JOIN FORCES TO DEVELOP NEXT GENERATION AUTONOMOUS CARS Zenuity, a joint venture between Volvo Cars and Veoneer, has selected HPE to provide the infrastructure it needs in order to develop next generation autonomous driving systems. HPE will provide Zenuity with core data processing services, and end-to-end IT infrastructure via HPE Greenlake. The launch is expected in summer 2020, and will be exclusively available in Sweden before a global rollout. (21/01/20) 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.

SCANDIT

we test on all of the new designs that are released. But what we’ve seen from the first Google Glass to the latest Microsoft HolloLens is that they are not quite there from a scanning performance perspective that would allow them to be used everyday. It really comes down to how much value can it add, how much inconvenience it represents and how much does it cost. A driver that needs to do 100 scans is going to prefer to do it on their phone.

If you’re in a picking scenario in a warehouse, it doesn’t add enough value or have a high enough performance from a scanning perspective that you would deploy it. We’re super interested in wearables and deploying our technology on those devices in the longer-term, but we don’t quite feel like the hardware is there yet.

Can you tell us about the work you do with Hermes and Ingenica?

Hermes is all about last mile delivery and how to make that process more efficient, in last mile delivery there are two processes in particular that we are optimising. One is finding that parcel that needs to be delivered at that location, so the driver pulls up and our technology will tell the driver which parcels need to be delivered and display any address changes that have been made on the fly.

The other point we try to speed up is the loading into vehicles. When the de-

What we’ve seen from the first Google Glass to the latest Microsoft HolloLens is that they are not quite there from a scanning performance perspective that would allow them to be used everyday” livery drivers pick up the parcels at the depot for traceability reasons you need to scan every package to prove it has been picked up. The idea is that you can actually place the parcels in containers facing the same way and swipe all of the codes at once, and again it will show if any address changes have been made.

Ingenica is a client in the healthcare market and our work with them is an inventory management system. In healthcare many items get stacked, and it can be tedious to track all of those items.

Using our technology, those items can be scanned and information on expiry dates and manufacturer information can be accessed. This AR aspect helps with the data captures but also superimposing additional information over the top, which just makes the life of the person tracking inventory that much easier.

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Could you tell us a bit about the collaboration with Samsung?

Samsung is an important partner because we don’t have hardware ourselves.

Samsung has enterprise devices that are rugged and IP protected, and while we need a platform to run our platform on, it’s also true the other way around, so it needs a reliable scanning and data capture software, so it’s really a win-win for both parties. We provide the base capabilities in terms of reliable data capture and barcode scanning and provide the AR scanning, and Samsung brings in the rugged devices with the enterprise capabilities, security updates.

Which industries do you think have potential when it comes to AR? We definitely see it in retail; the future of retail is a mix of bricks and mortar and ecommerce. What that means is that if you want to bring that ecommerce experience into the store, AR is crucial. Think of a vegan; if I’m online and I want to see all my non-vegan options gone then all I do is click a button. In a store, I need to turn around every package individually, and that’s where AR has huge benefits.

The same is true for healthcare - so much important information can be gleaned just from scanning, it is very powerful. We have already addressed 48

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logistics, and I would say these are the three most powerful verticals.

How do you see AR developing for enterprise over the next three to five years?

It’s all about creating value around AR because it has been something of a buzz term that people have been excited about for a while now. But you have to be able to create lasting value for users. Once you have identified those areas, it is then about making the user experience better. For us, that means leveraging the CPU, GPU and NPU capabilities of the phones to create better experiences.

SCANDIT

Our message is that companies don’t need five or six different pieces of hardware all for different jobs - you can do everything with a tablet and software” The evolution of AR is going to continue and if we can get to a place where wearable devices with credible AR capabilities are available it will be a game changer, but that is very technology dependent. There are AR companies out there that have received a great deal of funding but what has been created still isn’t what you’d call amazing, so I do struggle to see when that timeline will arrive. Will it be three years? Will it be ten years? I think it is really difficult to say.

What are some of your goals for Scandit over the same time period?

Alaska Airlines has is able to use an iPad and our software to do all check-

ins, and we’d like to do that with other companies and make it more of a mainstream technology trend. Our message is that companies don’t need five or six different pieces of hardware all for different jobs - you can do everything with a tablet and software.

Regarding AR, a lot of our success has come from retail operations on the employee side, and I think we can increase customer adoption in stores so it’s about working with retailers to make sure their information is really accurate.

That’s something we’ll definitely be continuing to push.

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SUMO LOGIC

TURNING DATA INTO GOLD A decade ago, a team of machine data enthusiasts embarked on a mission to empower businesses to generate intel and insights using data - Sumo Logic was born. Here, one of its founders, Bruno Kurtic, speaks about how that dream became a reality

I

AUTHOR: James Henderson

n today’s enterprise IT environment, it seems only practical that data can be analysed in real-time, with intelligence and analytics used to determine trends, spot vulnerabilities and pinpoint operational issues. But rewind a decade, when cloud was an embryonic technology, and eyebrows were raised at such functionality being offered as a service.

But that’s exactly what a team of self confessed “machine data nerds” landed on when they came together in 2010 around one simple idea: to empower

digital business through real-time analytics delivered as a service. Bruno Kurtic, Co-Founder at Sumo Logic, was one of that team that was able to see where the enterprise world was heading.

“When we started the company, we could see a transition happening in the technology world. The market was going through a transition with companies moving from on-premise software and hardware to a cloud migration. Instead of buying technology they were leasing it and letting others operate it,” Kurtic tells Digital Bulletin.

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The founding partners’ vision was prescient, with companies shifting from traditional business models to digital business models, pivoting to increasingly agile operating methods that allow for greater innovation and flexibility. In turn, this has demanded that business implement new technologies to oversee these new structures and tools.

“As businesses became increasingly digital, it became evident that the data was becoming extremely useful to analyse customer relationships. Relationships for digital businesses are completely driven by software, rather than previously where it was something driven by human beings,” Kurtic comments.

“We observed that software is the primary interface for digital businesses to their customers, and that what we call the ‘digital exhaust’ coming off applications should tell a company everything 52

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they need to know about the strengths and weaknesses of their own businesses, too.

“That information won’t just help a company become more secure, but also offer tens of millions of insights into what their customers do, how they behave, when they do things, how they are using my products and services, and do they consider what I’m producing to be useful. We saw this transformation into digital as a whole new path and way to help enterprises run their business.”

It is a vision that is paying dividends for Sumo Logic; today the company’s cloud native machine data platform is utilised by more than 2,000 enterprises, more than 100 petabytes of data and more than tens of millions of requests processed every day, helping achieve the vision of enabling users to make data driven decisions in real-time.

SUMO LOGIC

2019 proved to be a watershed year for the business, with a $110 million funding round taking Sumo Logic’s official worth to more than $1 billion, thereby confirming its status as a technology unicorn. Rarified air, indeed.

That funding will be used to fuel Sumo Logic’s business – spanning engineering, sales, and global operations – with an emphasis on extending the platform analytics capabilities of its service, which is used by the likes of Adobe, Infor, airbnb, and BBC. It also counts global billion dollar gaming company Pokemon as a customer, which hosts hundreds of millions of users within its multi-tenant AWS environment.

Sumo Logic’s brief has been to provide a unified source of all user data in order to operationalise agile security and DevOps teams, and implement the proper security and privacy controls.

“We work with the guys at Pokemon to help them manage the security of their platform; they have around 800 million users, which is staggering,” Kurtic says. “It is cloud native architecture and played by lots of kids, which makes governments extremely paranoid, so it is highly complex.

“We’ve spent a lot of time ensuring that we’re capturing all of the telemetry from their systems and infrastructure to make sure they can monitor

AS BUSINESSES BECAME INCREASINGLY DIGITAL, IT BECAME EVIDENT THAT THE DATA WAS BECOMING EXTREMELY USEFUL TO ANALYSE CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS” Bruno Kurtic, co-founder of Sumo Logic

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HIGHLIGHTS

SERVICENOW TO ACQUIRE PASSAGE AI ServiceNow has today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Passage AI. ServiceNow hopes to use Passage AI’s deep learning models to advance its machine learning capabilities, and accelerate its vision of supporting all major languages across the company’s Now Platform and products.

ServiceNow expects to complete the acquisition by the end of Q1 2020.

(28/02/20) 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.

SUMO LOGIC

access, fraud, abuse and all sorts of relevant things.

“It’s about making sure that people are interacting in a safe way because all you need is one example of something nefarious happening and then the whole thing falls to bits, it’s much more sensitive than a B2B environment, so we have to monitor some very specific security issues.”

To keep its finger on the industry pulse, Sumo Logic releases an annual report looking at key themes shaping the data intelligence and cloud industries.

One of the key takeaways from the company’s 2019 ‘Continuous Intelligence: The State of Modern Applications and DevSecOps in the Cloud’, was that the fastest-growing customer segment for Sumo Logic was from multi-cloud customers.

“We wanted to understand why we were getting more customers sending data from different cloud providers and one reason was the adoption of microservices in Kubernetes,” comments Kurtic. “What is fascinating to understand is that if a customer of ours is on-premise only, they have a single digit percentage likelihood of running Kubernetes.

“On a single cloud there is a 20% chance, if they run two clouds it is 40-50% and if they run in three public clouds, it is more than 80% likely that they’re running on Kubernetes. So enterprises are investing in this technology that’s giving them movement and ease between clouds.”

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WE WORK WITH THE GUYS AT POKEMON TO HELP THEM MANAGE THE SECURITY OF THEIR PLATFORM; THEY HAVE AROUND 800 MILLION USERS, WHICH IS STAGGERING”

of ‘Continuous Intelligence for Kubernetes’, building on capabilities that were already in place.

The platform provides users with a unified and customisable solution that offers real-time visibility and navigation based on incoming data and metadata from their unique Kubernetes implementations.

Built for DevSecOps, this approach allows site engineers, platform engineers, cloud architects, developers and security analysts to quickly identify and resolve issues impacting their applications.

“Kubernetes was a very strategic decision for us, we scan an insane 56

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amount of data every day and we pay attention to what that data is telling us,” says Kurtic. “It was evident three years ago that Kubernetes was on an uptick and we had to make a bit of a leap of faith, because there were a number of other technologies that were germinating to own the microservices architecture.

“We thought it was going to be Kubernetes and based on what our customers are telling us and what the data is telling us, Kubernetes is going to be the multi-cloud operating system for microservices and data applications.

SUMO LOGIC

“Sumo Logic believes that microservices is the architecture of the foreseeable future and the architecture beneath it is containers managed by Kubernetes, while we’re also seeing more serverless activity. Kubernetes will be fundamental in the multi-cloud environment - I think the market has spoken, at least in terms of the next couple of years.”

Kurtic says the embrace of Kubernetes illustrates the company’s philosophy to invest in new technologies and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to development. This mission to stay ahead of the game, rather than looking

backwards, has been key to winning new business from enterprise in a highly competitive market.

And there is a confidence that existing customers will become long-term partners of Sumo Logic as they themselves evolve into increasingly digital-centric businesses.

“Where companies typically begin with us is the areas we have always specialised in, so DevSecOps,” Kurtic concludes. “But many customers that have been working in this area for a while are now looking to the future by adopting datasets and building methodologies, leveraging tech like ours to deliver them intelligence across all of their departments.

“Every interaction with a customer generates thousands of data points that can help really understand how to better run the business and I think the market will mature there over the next five to ten years, and that’s where a lot of transition will happen for businesses.

“For us, we will continue to be maniacally focused on customer satisfaction and retention, and want to grow even further in terms of the regions around the world we can support our customers. We are driven by our customers and want to continue to provide excellent coverage of new technologies across the cloud providers.”

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EVENTS

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

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.

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FEBRUARY – APRIL

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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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 training and tutorials, groundbreaking innovation programmes, state-of-the-art product demos and countless networking opportunities.

FEBRUARY – APRIL

CLOUD EXPO EUROPE 11–12 MARCH 2020 EXCEL, LONDON Cloud Expo Europe, one of the UK’s biggest and best attended technology events, returns on 11-12 March 2020 at ExCeL London. Technology enabled change is on the boardroom agenda for businesses of all types and sizes. Cloud Expo Europe is the UK’s leading event for connecting technologists, business leaders and senior business managers with experts, solutions and services to help accelerate digital transformation plans. Whether you are cloud-first, scaling up, refining, or just getting started, Cloud Expo Europe is an unrivalled opportunity to meet with leading technology innovators and service providers.

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AI & BIG DATA EXPO 2020 17–18 MARCH, 2020 OLYMPIA, LONDON The AI & Big Data Expo Global, the leading Artificial Intelligence & Big Data Conference & Exhibition event will take place on 17-18th March 2020 at the Olympia London. It is a showcase of next generation technologies and strategies from the world of Artificial Intelligence & Big Data, an opportunity to explore and discover the practical and successful implementation of AI & Big Data in driving forward your business in 2020 and beyond. The AI & Big Data Expo will showcase the most cutting-edge technologies from more than 300 exhibitors and provide insight from over 500 speakers sharing their unparalleled industry knowledge and real-life experiences.

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FEBRUARY – APRIL

GARTNER DATA & ANALYTICS SUMMIT 23–26 MARCH, 2020 GRAPEVINE, TX Gartner Data & Analytics Summit 2020 is the must-attend conference for data and analytics leaders. Leading organisations in every industry are wielding data and analytics as competitive weapons, operational accelerants and innovation catalysts. New business models and sweeping technology change, including AI, are driving the need for a data and analytics-centric culture. Trust and ethics must be established and supported.

Data literacy is an imperative. New behaviors and skills will be required. Creative thinking must be cultivated as a fundamental competency. Leaders must evolve their organisational culture by design to support and foster the creativity necessary to survive and thrive in these times of change.

GOOGLE CLOUD NEXT 6–8 APRIL, 2020 MOSCONE CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO Join thousands of IT professionals, developers, and executives at Google Cloud Next for three days of networking, learning, and collaboration. Attendees will get a behind-the-scenes look at the latest Google Cloud innovations and hear from some of the world’s leading brands on how they’re using the cloud to solve their most important challenges and transform their businesses and industries. Those in attendance will get the opportunity to explore the latest tech and business trends through immersive learning experiences and 500+ sessions.

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IOT WORLD APRIL 6–9, 2020 SAN JOSE CONVENTION CENTER, CA Internet of Things World is North America’s largest IoT event, bringing you the top technologies, strategies, and case studies for the key industries implementing IoT. Over four days, you will meet 12,500+ leaders and innovators from across the IoT community. The ultimate opportunity for you to get out of the office and build valuable connections all in one place. The conference agenda includes keynotes and tracks covering industrial and consumer verticals, and technical focused sessions.

Whether you are just starting out or want to scale your IoT projects, there is content designed for you.

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FEBRUARY – APRIL

DUBLIN TECH SUMMIT APRIL 22–23, 2020 THE RDS, DUBLIN Dublin Tech Summit is a two-day global tech conference that sits at the heart of the Irish tech scene. In just three short years DTS has emerged as Ireland’s largest tech event as well as “Europe’s fastest growing tech conference”. DTS brings together some of the most influential tech and business leaders to Dublin for two days of growth & development, knowledge sharing, covering the latest trends, and networking. Exploring a myriad of themes and topics such as emerging technologies, diversity, scaling for startups and much more, we have built a community of innovators, co-founders, developers, and c-level decision makers that are turning ideas into reality and affecting global change.

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THE CLOSING BULLETIN

THE CLOSING BULLETIN James Eiloart, SVP EMEA at Tableau, discusses the value of embracing a startup mindset for your data analytics strategy

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uilding a company from scratch isn’t easy. Neither is launching a new data analytics programme.

Successful startups need a determined, flexible and creative approach especially for overcoming hurdles in the early stages. Generally, the most effective startup leaders are inspiring, unafraid of failure, empower their teams and put creativity at the heart of their strategy.

There’s a strong parallel between these qualities and those needed to deliver a successful analytics programme.

The following is a series of lessons, drawn from applying a startup mentality, that organisations of all sizes should 66

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consider ensuring the successful roll out of any new analytics strategy.

Lead from the front Every effective data analytics programme needs a strong leader, unafraid to take risks and innovate. This person needs a forward-thinking mindset and a healthy dose of determination to help others see the benefits change will bring.

Research has shown that when leaders are the first to embrace new policies, their employees are more likely to follow and succeed. To avoid being held back by the naysayers, it is important to

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articulate the vision, so that the ultimate benefits of change clear, even if they aren’t immediately obvious.

It is also critical to lead by example, so fostering a collaborative learning environment by taking on tasks that offer quick wins, landing results and sharing these back with the organisation.

Thirdly, be patient: Adopting an analytics strategy is a big change for both process and people. Meaningful change can’t happen overnight, so patience and persistence are essential.

Move fast, fail fast, move on, repeat.

Every startup founder is familiar with failure. It should always be recognised as part of the risk and reward balance of doing something for the first time.

When launching a data analytics programme, the fear of failure must be overcome. Early frustration is no excuse to

abandon the plan. A good analytics programme will make learning from every setback that much easier.

It’s just as important to embrace feedback. A direct line to your internal business teams, product development for example, makes sure you have contributions from your most valuable audience — the people who use your product day in and day out.

So, leadership should set themselves the following tasks: Draw a map: Layout your plan for the analytics programme rollout with tangible goals and anticipated risks.

Take chances: Be willing to experiment and encourage your team to try new things (and maybe fail, too).

Listen and learn: Embrace every setback as a rich source of data to learn from. Establish lines of communication where feedback can be captured.

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Build a community of internal advocates Early adopters are among the most powerful evangelists for new technology or ideas. This is commonly recognised among customers or users, but it’s equally important for internal teams.

For any new analytics programme, the most enthusiastic adopters of new processes can have a powerful influence into driving better practice and thinking across an entire organisation. They are also easier to find than you might think.

A 2018 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Tech at Work survey of over 12,000 global workers found 84% were willing to spend up to two days a month upgrading their digital skills.

Every startup founder is familiar with failure.

It should always be recognised as part of the risk and reward balance of doing something for the first time”

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When it comes to activating internal advocates, remember: Spot the early adopters: Not everyone is motivated by change. Identify the people who are energised by learning new skills and exploring new ideas.

Build them up: Create platforms where experts can showcase their work and encourage people to join the movement.

Prove it: Pull specific and tangible results from early wins to strengthen the argument for change.

Foster an environment of creativity Startups often have an edge over the industries they’re trying to disrupt because they are either creating something new or challenging a status quo.

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What’s the biggest ‘status-quo’ barrier to creativity in analytics? Siloing. In a traditional business information landscape, only a handful of people have access to data. This prevents collaboration and makes some insights impossible to find.

If you want your business to spend more time innovating with data, here are the keys to sparking creativity: Set challenges: Start an analytics programme with set items to prove or disprove.

Break down silos: Consider all the data you discover for how it could be applied in new areas.

Capture creativity: When data reveals something that will save time, money or offer better customer experience, be ready to put it into practice.

Embrace risk and rewards As with any startup, embarking on a programme of transformational change carries risks. Where a data analytics overhaul differs is in how much it helps make those risks calculable.

PricewaterhouseCoopers 2019 Risk in Review study revealed that the most successful, ‘digitally fit’ leaders leverage data-driven functions to take calculated risks and ‘engage early in digital initiatives.’

Change is nearly impossible if you always play it safe. Approaching your analytics programme with a startup mindset takes guts, but the benefits from encouraging experimentation, inspiring your workforce and uncovering new insights far outweigh any challenges you may face.

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