Digital Bulletin - Issue 15 - April 2020

Issue 15 | Apr ’20

HEALTHY AI Against the backdrop of a pandemic, technology is dramatically improving healthcare provision

THE CONNECTIVITY COUNTY Making Norfolk the UK’s best connected rural county

INNOVATING INSURANCE Group CTO Mike Hinton takes us inside the wholesale digital transformation of Innovation Group, a global service provider to the world’s largest insurers

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

TECHNOLOGY LEADERS TEAM UP WITH WHITE HOUSE TO BATTLE COVID-19 A group of technology’s leading companies is teaming up with the U.S. government in the fight against COVID-19. IBM is heading up the initiative, with assistance from Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The group of tech giants will provide 16 computing systems, providing power of more than 330 petaflops, 775,000 CPU cores, 34,000 GPUs to help researchers everywhere better understand COVID-19. (23/03/20) 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.

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here else to begin this month than the COVID-19 pandemic? It seems scarcely credible how little time it has taken to change the world as we know it, for the time being, at least. We hope that you are all well and staying safe during this testing time.

What has been heartening has been the reaction from the world’s foremost technology companies. There are too many initiatives to detail here, but Big Tech has stepped up in a meaningful way, with old foes collaborating to ensure the information we are consuming is accurate and that its full arsenal of technology is being used to fight back.

Before the crisis, Digital Bulletin was able to see a small example of the potential of tech in the healthcare sector when we visited an AI hack hosted by Microsoft, ICS.AI and UI Centric to get a glimpse into how cognitive technologies could radically improve healthcare provision. You can read about the event from page 22.

Our cover star this month is Mike Hinton, Group CTO of Innovation Group, a company that serves the world’s biggest insurers. In a wide ranging interview, Hinton speaks to us about the decision to make Innovation Group a digital-first business and how a technology transformation is taking the organisation to new heights.

Elsewhere, we speak to Norfolk County Council’s CTO, Kury Frary, about the organisation’s goal to become the UK’s best connected county. The Norfolk-native highlights a groundbreaking IoT project that is being rolled out and how it is integral to creating a truly connected county.

You’ll also find a number of other indepth pieces for your perusal, covering Pegasystems, Software AG and the second part of our interview with cryptocurrency’s most outspoken personality, Charles Hoskinson.

We hope you 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

Innovation Group’s Chief Technology Officer, Mike Hinton, speaks to Digital Bulletin at the company’s London base about how the decision to become a digitalfirst business is paying off in spades

CONTENTS

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CASE STUDY INNOVATION GROUP A digital-first transformation

CASE STUDY NORFOLK COUNTY COUNCIL Connecting up a county

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5 22

DATA INTELLIGENCE HEALTHY AI Hitting new heights in healthcare

48 IT SERVICES

PEGASYSTEMS The rise and rise of low code

56 266 SECURITY

Debate Putting data governance front and centre

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A LIFE IN TECH

KPMG UK’s Chief Digital Officer, Lisa Heneghan, tells her story

PEOPLE QLIK Making the case for wide-scale data literacy

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74 8 96 82

EVENTS

The best digital technology events for your diary

CONNECTIVITY

SOFTWARE AG The importance of digital twins for enterprise

FUTURE

CHARLES HOSKINSON The blueprint to take crypto to the mainstream

CLOSING BULLETIN

An exclusive column from Jerome Wagner, Head of Cloud Transformation, Virtusa

CASE STUDY

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INNOVATION GROUP

Bringing innovation to insurance

Three years ago, Innovation Group made the bold decision to remould into a digital-first business and build out a cuttingedge technology platform for insurance claims management.

Group Chief Technology Officer, Mike Hinton, and Group Chief Revenue Officer, Andrew Considine, tell Digital Bulletin a tale of true transformation

PROJECT DIRECTOR: Romily Broad AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer PHOTOGRAPHY: Krystian Data VIDEOGRAPHY: Joe Murray & Adam Turner

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he business landscape is evolving at quite a rate. A sharp focus on technology is seeing organisations dig up their roots and sow fresh seeds for a future dominated by digital.

To leaders with their hands on the wheel, technology transformation means different things at different times and the scale of change varies in each instance. In fact, the only constant is the requirement to change.

Those who failed to adapt for this enterprise era have been left behind and harbour little hope of making up lost ground.

Innovation Group is one company to which transformation has been the plain objective over the past three years. Since launching in 1996, the UK-founded BPO (business process outsourcing) provider has supported some of the world’s big10

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gest insurers with its services and products. For two decades, technology was merely a means to that delivery - but in 2017, everything changed.

Saddled by around 350 disparate applications across its business, Innovation Group grasped the nettle and set about a true transformation. Under the guidance of Mike Hinton, its new Group Chief Technology Officer, a plan was formed that would see this BPO adopt a digital-first strategy centred around a single platform that would bring exciting capabilities to its 1,200 clients.

Three years later and that platform - named Gateway - is live. When the switch was finally flicked last November, Innovation Group made one giant leap forward. With efforts now concentrated on pushing its offering to market, Hinton

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took some time out with Digital Bulletin to go over the whole story, to reminisce and remind himself how far his teams have come in a relatively short period of time.

“It was probably the hardest task that I’ve come across to date in my technology career,” begins Hinton, who started out in pure tech with Oracle before moving into senior roles in financial services and then insurance.

The picture Hinton paints isn’t a pretty one. Before 2017, Innovation Group delivered its BPO services in North America, South Africa, Australia and Europe, yet lacked a coherent approach around its technology. This led to the steady implementation of hundreds of regional applications on their own architectures and operating systems, each generating support

costs that added up to an OpEx spend of approximately $38 million.

The unsustainability of that model quickly became clear to Hinton, who spent his first six months in the role auditing every technology region, each led by its own Chief Information Officer, and mapping how things should be reorganised.

“It was very much about understanding what each of those regions had, what their strategies were and understanding the amount of people we had and what their skill sets were,” he recalls. “At the same time it was very important to understand what we as a business needed to deliver. It was pretty clear that Innovation Group had been talking about innovation, in particular software product applications, for some time but hadn’t really delivered.”

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It was probably the hardest task that I’ve come across to date in my technology career” Mike Hinton Innovation Group boasts an impressive roster of clients, with the likes of AXA, Aviva and Zurich relying on its services to successfully process tens of thousands of claims and guarantee a satisfactory experience for their customers. Between 1996 and 2017, it became a well-established player in the BPO space primarily covering motor claims, small and large-loss property claims and service plans and warranties.

All the while, however, the BPO market was edging towards a tipping point. The low-cost, labour centric model, for so long the backbone of BPO, was under threat from technology with the capacity to shake up the industry’s very fundamentals.

“I think the BPO industry itself is quite fragmented,” says Andrew Considine, Innovation Group’s Chief Revenue Officer.

“I think you’ve got a combination of companies that have been around a long time, which have perhaps not invested as much as they could in technology, and you’ve got 12

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a lot of startups that have focused on the front-end, digital side of things but not necessarily paid enough attention to the backend management and the foundations of their platforms.”

Considine only took on the CRO job in December, having previously overseen the development and rollout of Gateway in his capacity as Global Head of Product.

Alongside Hinton, Considine has been a driver of technology transformation at Innovation Group, calling on 20 years’ experience in telecoms, financial services and insurance.

Once Hinton had made sense of the firm’s complex structure, the pair began work on untangling it and creating teams to realise their vision of a consolidated single application for claims management - and one that would be groundbreaking for the insurance BPO sector.

“We really went back-to-basics with Gateway to look at what we wanted to deliver,” Considine adds. “What we haven’t done is a lift-and-shift approach where we’ve taken legacy applications and put them up in the cloud. We really have started from scratch.”

Hinton and Considine knew that making Gateway cloud-native was the only option if Innovation Group wanted to meet its global requirements through a single platform. It chose Microsoft Azure as its cloud partner, Hinton having enjoyed a positive experience with Azure in a previous role.

INNOVATION GROUP

Innovation Group leverages Microsoft Azure technologies and PaaS products to deliver complete application performance. “The partnership with Microsoft works because not only have they got good tech that we can use, but from a relationship perspective, we’ve got executive sponsors right at the top in the UK.” ISSUE 15

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We really went back-to-basics with Gateway to look at what we wanted to deliver. What we haven’t done is a lift-and-shift approach where we’ve taken legacy applications and put them up in the cloud. We really have started from scratch” Andrew Considine Innovation Group worked closely with Microsoft from the very beginning and Gateway leverages a number of its PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) products to deliver complete application performance out of Azure, from the security layer with Microsoft ADFS to continuous integration through CI/CD and database services with SQL and BlobStorage.

“When these services are readily available and served to you on Azure as PaaS products, it enables you to transform quicker. I think the speed of transformation was absolutely key to Innovation Group in terms of achieving its goals,” explains Hinton, who also highlighted the number of Azure Availability Zones worldwide as an important factor.

“The partnership with Microsoft works because not only have they got good tech that we can use, but from a relationship perspective, we’ve got executive spon14

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sors right at the top in the UK, going all the way down to engineering resources out in Redmond. That enables us to implement their products very quickly and it enables us to solve issues very quickly.”

Gateway exists to offer end-to-end management to every stakeholder involved in an insurance claim, from FNOL (First Notice of Loss) to settlement.

Policyholders are able to log a FNOL from any device, with Gateway recommending certified body shop or home repair contractors based on factors such as location, quality of service and customer preference. All parties are then able to monitor the progression of the claim through to completion.

Innovation Group says the platform is built on the principles of “simplicity, connectivity and collaboration” and that it fits the future of an insurance industry intent on putting customer service at its heart.

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Automation is the glue that holds Gateway together, with a number of previously manual processes now automated and enabling huge strides in operational efficiency.

“Previously, a lot of the operational processes were being managed through call centres and there was a lot of hand holding of policyholders and customers.

With a single platform, we’re able to bring automation into that entire journey,” outlines Considine. “We’ve moved from a very manual environment into one where we have centres of excellence, where we’ve got app support and experts who are able to guide the customer through the journey.”

For its automated recommendations capability in Gateway, Innovation Group has tapped rule-based machine learning and smart data analytics technologies that help it offer instant and accurate suggestions to users, a core function that greatly improves workflow and helps it build a compelling case to insurers by personalising the experience for customers.

“Machine learning gives us quite a big advantage within the marketplace,” Hinton believes. “And it also enables us to drive efficiencies within our own business.

Sometimes we as a company need to take the risk financially around a product. In order to calculate that financial risk, there are some very complicated, manual processes. Now we have machine learning 16

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and the ability to pull in so many other data sources, it’s far easier.

“Overall, the best way to think about Gateway as a product is to think of it in terms of Amazon. We are joining insurers, clients and customers together with suppliers.”

Those onboard with Gateway are already relaying their positive experiences back to Innovation Group, with clients suggesting that the visibility offered by the platform is adding tangible value into their own environments while improving how they treat their customers, how they look at their data and how they make decisions for the future.

Considine is now steering the company’s wider go-to-market strategy. Innovation Group processes four million claims annually but he says it is aiming to drive that number up quickly through the open nature of Gateway as a platform.

“We built the platform to be agnostic.

We can open up the platform into any network that’s running within the insurance space, applying the same kind of services, features and capabilities within Gateway directly to our clients as well.”

It is this SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) capability in which Hinton sees the real potential for Innovation Group to capitalise on the technology it has spent the last three years meticulously building. He believes it “critical” that it is able to sell the Gateway product to the market directly, separate from its BPO business.

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Overall, the best way to think about Gateway as a product is to think of it in terms of Amazon. We are joining insurers, clients and customers together with suppliers�

Mike Hinton

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“We want Gateway to be a true SaaS platform for the insurance industry across claims in motor, service plan and warranty and property,” he asserts. “Ultimately, I see Microsoft being in partnership with Innovation Group as a platform for selling our SaaS offerings through their marketplace. That’s something we’re talking to Microsoft about at the moment.”

Agile software development methodologies have been put in place by Hinton to ensure that Gateway is continuously improved, which will be especially impor18

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tant over the next 12 months as Innovation Group sees an upsurge in users on the platform. As part of its agile cycle, it releases fresh code every two weeks.

The firm is also bringing its Development, Product and Infrastructure teams under one roof in London - a move that is close to completion and which will result in a setup a million miles away from the global spread of talent previously encumbering the business.

“We’ve centralised to drive transformation,” adds Hinton. “The team that has

INNOVATION GROUP

helped me support that has helped to change quite a lot.

“In London we’ve got access to a much bigger talent pool and a different demographic of people. Development is absolutely key when we’re talking about our product so our Product and Development need to work extremely closely together. Having them in one area within one office has potential gains for us as we move forward.

“Product used to sit directly within the business; the problem with that was they are fed and watered by the business and

therefore the product they are designing traditionally would be to just that part of the business, there would be no wider picture of what Innovation Group as a global company needed.”

The pieces are falling into place for Innovation Group to attack and disrupt the claims management industry. At the beginning of March it unveiled a complete brand refresh to tally with what CEO Tim Griffiths calls its standing “as a technology platform business supported by a worldclass services capability”.

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It’s really exciting to be here at Innovation Group now. We work with some of the largest Tier One insurers in the world, we work with the largest original equipment manufacturers in the world” Andrew Considine

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INNOVATION GROUP

Considine is adamant that, with its combination of a robust platform and first-class client base, Innovation Group is in position to realise the ambitions that it set out at the start of its technology transformation in 2017.

“It’s really exciting to be here at Innovation Group now,” he says. “Looking at the capabilities and the skill sets of the technology team and our services organisation, looking at what we’ve invested in technology over the last two or three years and will continue to invest, and then also the breadth of the clients that we work with globally - we work with some of the largest Tier One insurers in the world, we work with the largest original equipment manufacturers in the world - for me, those three elements, are a real recipe for success going forward.”

Hinton concludes: “We’ve had three years of fixing, of stopping, of saying no a lot of the time - we’re now in the process of growth, which is much more exciting.

“I think the future for Gateway as a product and indeed Innovation Group as a business is very much to become that partner of choice within the motor, property and service plan space. Really the only way we can do that is to get our name out there, and have an enterprise-class application. I believe we’ve now got an enterprise-class application.”

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HEALTHY

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Digital Bulletin went along to an AI hack hosted by Microsoft, ICS.AI and UI Centric to get a glimpse into how cognitive technologies could radically improve healthcare provision AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

HEALTHY AI

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s the human race continues its collective fight against the coronavirus pandemic, healthcare systems all around the world are operating under unimaginable strain.

The rapid outbreak of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19, its associated disease, has, like nothing in recent history, tested the people, infrastructures and practices that enable our healthcare services.

Technology’s leading companies have taken unprecedented steps to help,

working alongside the World Health Organization and relevant healthcare institutions and agencies in the most affected areas. Whether it’s advising the White House on strategy, supporting the rapid development of new solutions or creating multi-million dollar COVID-19 funds, few could accuse Silicon Valley of failing to do its bit.

This has brought the interrelation between healthcare provision and technology back into focus - a relationship

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Of all the public sector areas that we deal with, health is easily the most difficult” Martin Neale

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that has historically struggled to realise its potential to improve delivery and change people’s lives. Why is the healthcare sector often viewed as behind the curve when it comes to technology innovation?

“Of all the public sector areas that we deal with, health is easily the most difficult,” says Martin Neale, CEO and co-founder of ICS.AI, a company whose very purpose is to introduce cutting-edge technology - specifically artificial intelligence (AI) - to fields like healthcare.

“I don’t mean it’s the most difficult problem, although it is a difficult problem, it just seems the least able of all of the areas to step up and address these changes because they are essentially in a quagmire.”

The “quagmire” Neale refers to is how the constant struggle to meet demands - never more evident than in the current COVID-19 emergency - is a roadblock to positive change, particularly in nationalised models like the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS). With budgetary constraints and a relentless focus on patient care, digital excellence has most often taken a backseat.

This problem is echoed by Neil Howell, a cardiothoracic surgeon with more than 20 years of frontline NHS experience who has developed a special interest in how AI can lead to clinical

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and organisational transformation in healthcare services.

“I think the big issue with healthcare in general is that there have been problems of such inordinate scale and complexity that, mostly, people haven’t even tried to solve any of those problems,” Howell explains. “What we’ve tended to do is use manpower, asking staff to do an inordinate amount of work just to make the system work.

“The problem is that there’s never been a need previously to make these pathways efficient, because why should you when you can ask a keen young doctor to work another six hours? But the bottom line is that it has become unsustainable because medicine has become too complex.”

Neale and Howell each gave up their time to Digital Bulletin at an event designed to actively highlight how AI can go some way to resolving this historical problem. Hosted by the Microsoft UK Health Team, ICS.AI and UI Centric at London’s Microsoft Reactor - pre-pandemic - earlier this year, the “Azure Health Hack” pitched experts from the three companies with their customers and partners.

The aim of the hack was to demonstrate how AI can be applied in healthcare organisations to power transformation, with hack streams looking at the scope for digital assistants and the potential in mobile medical consultations.

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

ALIBABA CLOUD OFFERS AI PLATFORM FOR CORONAVIRUS INSIGHTS Alibaba Cloud is opening up its cloud and AI services to fight the coronavirus.

Applications will be offered to medical personnel worldwide, with innovations based on insights Alibaba gathered when the virus first broke out. Solutions have been developed by experts from Alibaba’s DAMO Academy and its collaboration tool DingTalk. Tencent and Baidu have also made cloud services freely available.

(19/03/20) 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.

HEALTHY AI

I think the big issue with healthcare in general is that there have been problems of such inordinate scale and complexity that, mostly, people haven’t even tried to solve any of those problems” Neil Howell

a splash around AI in health to kickstart 2020,” says Rob Orwin, Technology Strategist at Microsoft and a speaker at the event. “There’s lots of pre-canned stuff we could have done which is just Microsoft content, but by getting specialist partners in like ICS.AI to show what kind of value-added services they have on top of it and what tools and skills they have, participants would definitely get more out of it.”

The idea was fairly simple: for groups of developers to link up with experts from the three hosting companies and thrash out their AI concepts, all over the course of an afternoon.

One company was able to develop a bot for checking medicines; the technology could scan a medicine pack to ascertain if it was in date, whether it

was authentic and if it had already been pre-dispensed to another patient. “This was creating a bot-based user experience at the front-end meaning that a nurse on a ward could check medicine packs using their mobile device,” explains Orwin.

Another attendee in the ICS.AI hack stream presented the issue of their IT service desk being bombarded with requests during a cloud migration. Information could be found in a lengthy Q&A document but workers simply weren’t using it - so it was converted into an intelligent bot that could respond with answers.

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strate that the benefits of AI don’t necessarily have to come with the commitments that many might expect.

“There’s a fear of the unknown but the whole point of the hack was to show that AI doesn’t have to be a complicated data science project,” he states. “You can just use it to take away the onerous tasks from humans while you’re running these projects. It can be low-cost, easy to set up but reliable, compliant and secure.”

Howell backs up Orwin’s point from a healthcare perspective, adding: “There’s a multitude of areas that AI will be able to transform medicine, without a doubt, but I think actually where the immediate 28

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wins are is in making processes more efficient, allowing doctors and nurses more time to practise medicine and nursing. That’s absolutely the first way we should be looking at implementing AI into all sorts of healthcare systems.”

For Neale and ICS.AI, achievability is also one of its core messages. Potential customers commonly associate AI projects with long lead-in times and high costs but Neale says the reality is different.

“The hack was really about letting people know that things which two or three years ago were science fiction are now available at a price point that allows them to use them. The cost is nothing

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like what you might imagine it is - people again assume that because it’s AI it’s millions of pounds, but you can actually do quite a lot with tens of thousands of pounds because hyper-vendors like Microsoft have democratised it.”

ICS.AI is the UK’s first Microsoft AI Inner Circle Partner. The partner programme is for companies who provide custom services or enhanced AI product solutions that utilise Microsoft’s own AI technologies. The team behind ICS.AI was previously in the intelligent automation market before adding AI capabilities through its FLEX AI bots. It now works with a host of public sector bodies to revolutionise user experiences.

Neale and ICS.AI firmly believe that AI transformation will overtake digital transformation as machine learning engines combine with AI-based conversational interfaces to solve issues faster for users and drive new efficiencies.

“AI technology will supersede digital transformation technology and the typical problems that you seek to solve using traditional technologies, you will now use AI technology,” asserts Neale.

“With digital transformation, it requires that you go through all the logical steps in order to be transformed. You can’t really jump over things, but the reality with AI transformation is that you can do quite a lot without having to do that.

There’s a fear of the unknown but the whole point of the hack was to show that AI doesn’t have to be a complicated data science project” Rob Orwin

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For example, one of the most attractive elements of the conversational interface is that you’re completely abstracted from the system that is providing the data or the function.

“If I’m in a hospital, I’ll have loads of backend systems. But I don’t have to modernise my platform to provide a conversational interface, firstly, and I don’t have to modernise my platform to provide a consolidated data source because that’s what knowledge graphs do. I’m able to leave all that in situ and create intelligent automation and workflows amongst it. Sud30

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denly you have a realistic chance of solving a problem.”

Neale’s passion for cracking the issues around technology adoption in healthcare shines through, and together with Microsoft, ICS.AI is making genuine inroads. Digital assistants are now on the market to provide conversational healthcare experience at scale to patients, ward staff and medical staff, while clinical knowledge graphs and neural networks exist to pump out insights at hyper-scale.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has also made healthcare one of his organisa-

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The Azure Health Hack was held at the Microsoft Reactor in London and hosted alongside ICS.AI and UI Centric

tion’s key priorities, so evidence is there that trend lines are finally leaning in the right direction for healthcare provision and technology. The final question to Neale centres on where the future is going, both in the short and long-term, and the number one AI concern: jobs.

“It’s a self-service future,” he concludes. “We as consumers are used to buying what we want on Amazon, for example. What we’re trying to do is provide that level of digital engagement in sectors like healthcare and that’s the immediate future. The reality of more complex AI taking our jobs is

just way, way out in the future. There’s no technology that is currently available that allows that to realistically happen - and ultimately none of us want that to happen.

“I saw an underreported and enlightening piece done by McKinsey which looked at the impact of AI on jobs, and there was a net huge increase in jobs as a result of it because there are new categories of work being introduced. The jobs will change - and there definitely are jobs that are likely to be replaced - but the net position is an increase.”

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DRIVING A COUNTY-WIDE TECH TRANSFORMATION Norfolk County Council is driving ahead with technology innovation in every area it touches, all underpinned by one ambition - to become the UK’s best connected rural county. The organisation’s CTO, Kurt Frary, tells Digital Bulletin about his burning desire to leverage technology to improve the lives of every citizen and business in Norfolk

PROJECT DIRECTOR: Richard Durrant AUTHOR: James Henderson PHOTOGRAPHY: Krystian Data VIDEOGRAPHY: Emily Amos & Guy Turner

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NORFOLK COUNTY COUNCIL

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T

he East Anglian county of Norfolk in the UK might not automatically come to mind when you think of technology innovation. Sprawling over almost 1.3 million acres, it is the UK’s fourth largest county, with great swathes of rural land punctuated by market towns and boasting some stunning coastlines.

But while residents and visitors often delight in what can be a slower pace of life, the county’s largest public sector organisation is looking to catapult Norfolk into the technology fast lane.

With its HQ set in the county’s only city, Norwich, Norfolk County Council (NCC) is the top tier local government authority for its population of just over 900,000 people, providing vital services to citizens and businesses in the area. But behind 34

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the scenes, the organisation’s technology team is implementing a range of initiatives to turn Norfolk into a technological blueprint for other counties to follow.

Kurt Frary is Assistant Director of ICT & Chief Technical Officer and a key player in its technology transformation efforts.

A Norfolk-native, he is acutely aware of the organisation’s responsibility to make the county more digitally connected.

“We’re on the journey to deliver the foundation of connectivity we need to provide digital services in Norfolk,” he says. “That includes improving broadband, which we’ve improved significantly across the region so people who live in Norfolk will have faster speeds in their homes.

“One of the challenges of living and working in Norfolk is that it is rural; you haven’t

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got connectivity, you haven’t got that foundation to access the internet, use digital services. We are cognisant that if we’re to help people in the adult social care arena, help people live in their homes longer, live independently longer, we need to use digital to enable that.

“In terms of businesses, if they haven’t got connectivity where they want to operate they’ll go somewhere else. So, we are keen as a local authority that we give businesses the foundation to digital services, which is connectivity.”

Frary’s teams work concurrently on any number of projects and initiatives, but they are all underpinned by a wider goal: to become the best connected rural county in the UK. Central to that ambition is a £500,000 programme that kicked off less six months ago which is installing a comprehensive long range wide area network (LoRaWAN) made up of 220 Internet of Things (IoT) gateways, 110 in Norfolk and 110 in the neighbouring county of Suffolk - the largest of its kind in the UK. “The IoT network will be free for people to use, whether you’re a private citizen, a business or public sector, which is an approach no-one else has taken across the country. It will be the largest in the UK, and we’re actually almost the largest already,” says Frary.

“It is a technology widely used in Europe; however when you look at Europe compared

In terms of businesses, if they haven’t got connectivity where they want to operate they’ll go somewhere else.

So, we are keen as a local authority that we give businesses the foundation to digital services, which is connectivity” Kurt Frary, CTO at Norfolk County Coucil

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with the UK, we were behind a year and a half ago. We’re now catching up significantly and that’s because of the initiatives Norfolk has taken, and other people are following us.”

NCC is responsible for maintaining Norfolk’s 10,000-kilometre (6,200 miles) road networks and bus routes, and is leveraging IoT technology in built-up areas of the county to make better informed decisions and save the organisation significant amounts of money.

“We spend £3.4 million on gritting runs every year to keep the roads safe, protect people and make sure they’re not icy,” says Frary. “Each run costs around £25,000, so we’ve put sensors in the roads in both Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn. These are lowcost IoT sensors but they are able to tell us the temperature and that helps us grit when we need to grit and not grit when we don’t need to grit, which saves £8,000 per grit run.”

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As a rural county, agriculture is hugely important to Norfolk, adding millions of pounds to the economy and supporting thousands of jobs. And now agritech firms are benefitting from NCC’s LoRaWAN IoT roll-out, with five farms in the county using the technology to monitor their crops and factors such as moisture levels and precipitation. Information is fed into a dashboard and an associated app is able to give farmers guidance on when apples need to be sprayed, for example.

Norfolk Trails, which provides information on the county’s walking, cycling and horse-riding routes, is also leveraging the network, tracking the most popular choices and helping NCC to decide where to place funding for the service.

“The most exciting thing about the project is every time we talk to anyone about it, another 10 use cases come out, so we

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Rachael Beer – Sales Director, Local Government sector, Capita Technology Solutions ISSUE 15

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Delivering better outcomes with the power of digitally enabled technology At Capita we work with our clients to solve complex challenges, increase productivity, enhance their use of technology and harness the power of data to improve customer and public services.

We’re delivering operational change and pre-empting the risk of industry disruption with the latest technological trends: digital optimisation, automation, cloud computing, the Internet of Things and data analytics.

We bring together practical, hands-on experience and expertise spanning technology platforms, start-ups and academia to design and implement the very best solutions to the challenges our clients face.

To do this, we rely on talented individuals from all areas where we live and work.

We are a global company, with a local heart, committed to sustainability and ethical design and keen to play our part in creating prosperous and thriving communities. And, with more than 55,000 people spread across the UK, we have the resources and talent to help make this happen.

We are Capita.

www.capita.com

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The IoT network will be free for people to use, whether you’re a private citizen, a business or public sector, which is an approach no-one else has taken across the country. It will be the largest in the UK, and we’re actually almost the largest already” have all of these use cases and we’ve had to slow it down rather than speed it up,” Frary comments. “Rather than deal with the 30 or 40 use cases we’ve got on the books, we’ve had to do two or three at a time and make sure they deliver, which is a very nice position to be in.”

The project is already benefiting a number of the county’s companies, and has piqued the interest of other local authorities in the UK, keen to take a look at how Norfolk is utilising technology to become a better connected county.

“Having a connected rural county is really important, especially for businesses,” Frary continues. “If we want them to come and start a business or move to Norfolk and run their business and help the economy, we need the right connectivity here in this region.

“We have taken strides to make that happen with our technology and the projects that we’re running, but we’re also doing

innovative stuff that the rest of the UK isn’t necessarily doing. We’re getting eyes on us from all over the place, we have Leeds coming to see us, we have Leicester coming to see us, and they want to see how they can follow our strategy.

“And our partners, such as Capita, are saying: “Look at Norfolk, it is amazing what they’re doing, they’re doing things differently, they’re not the usual local public sector authority”.”

The network will give NCC a dynamic, real-time dataset, tracking a number of metrics across the county, which it will then be able to drill down into to derive meaningful insights and intelligence. With this trove of information at its fingertips, NCC will be in a position to make better informed decisions about spending, services and initiatives to improve the lives of its citizens and trading conditions for businesses.

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free for businesses and citizens to use as they see fit.

“We’re getting a lot of data and what is really interesting is putting that data together and making better sense of it and making better decisions,” he comments. “For instance, if we’re monitoring air or rainfall quality across Norfolk, other services can use it but so can other businesses.

“It means it becomes public record that gives something back but also allows us to look across the county and become a real digital county, a smart county. Being a smart county, we have a dataset we can build on and the more data you put in the more better information you’ll get back.

You can make really smart decisions if you have the data you need to hand.”

Frary is clearly passionate about the work the organisation’s technology teams carry out and mentions more than once the

autonomy people are given to be creative and innovative. He is also quick to credit NCC’s Leader, Andrew Proctor and its other executives. “We have senior backing all the way to the very top,” Frary says.

“One of the things I’m really proud of is that Norfolk County Council is really different to other public authorities to work for. We’ve got a ‘just try it’ attitude. If it is low cost and you can try something and prototype it, just get on and do it, and if that is successful you can then initiate a project or pilot.

“Other authorities in the past have taken a view that they have to do 99% or 100% and work up all the details before they try something, which may have been wasted effort. We don’t do that here, we get on with stuff.”

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mobile coverage across Norfolk. The decision was taken to hire a private firm to drive across the county with mobiles fitted with the various network operators’ sim cards to see if the coverage matched up to the operators’ claims.

In some instances, the coverage was not the same as that claimed by the operators, but rather than castigate them, Frary and his team put their heads together to come up with a mutually beneficial solution.

“We’re not in the game of beating anyone up, we’re in the game of working together to improve things for the citizens of Norfolk,” he states. “We got the operators back in to discuss how we can improve coverage and bring in those gaps, and 44

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one of the stances we’re taking that is very different to the rest of the country is allow them to use our public sector buildings, but we’re not charging them for that, we’re allowing them to do it for free or the cost of the installation.

“That allows them to look at their commercial model and deliver something for us without beating them up and actually is quite a nice approach to it. We’ve seen some movement there and we’re getting better coverage in Norfolk as a result of the initiative.”

Working collaboratively with other organisations, public or private, to benefit the county is a theme that shines through when talking to Frary. Key to achieving the aim of

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establishing Norfolk as the best connected rural county in the UK is ensuring partnerships move beyond supplier-type relationships into deeper and longer-lasting affiliations with shared interests and goals.

One of the very best examples of this approach in action is NCC’s partnership with Capita, the internationally renowned consulting and professional services company.

Capita has supplied the council with more than 130 LoRaWAN gateways to support its deployment of IoT devices, while in February the two agreed a new contract to upgrade NCC’s fibre network and the extension of their existing deal for network and IT services. The fibre contract, valued at £6 million,

involves an upgrade for the county’s existing hybrid network to a local full fibre network.

Frary is effusive in his praise for the partnership NCC and Capita have developed.

“If I reflect on the partnership and relationship I would probably say it is outstanding. I’ve managed many suppliers over many years in my roles in Norfolk and elsewhere and I haven’t seen any partnership like this working this effectively ever... ever,” he says.

“If you’d asked me four years ago were they playing in this game in terms of strategy I’d probably have said no. But I’ve worked very closely with our team of directors from Capita and their ambitions, and being very clear about what our ambitions are for Norfolk County Council, and they align and gel very nicely.

“We have spent a lot of time working through what we’re trying to achieve, they’ve spent a lot of time understanding us as a customer and now they put significant effort and time into achieving those things.”

Frary says that Capita has gone the extra mile with its relationship with NCC, “doing things you wouldn’t expect to see a supplier do”. Those things include attending events such as Norfolk’s County Show with NCC to speak to customers to get a better understanding of what they require, part-funding NCC’s Social Value Fund, and attending ‘Step Into Tech’ events where ISSUE 15

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We want to look at every single service, kick-start innovation and find out where we can change them and transform them, so we can deliver more for less money and actually make a difference to the people of Norfolk�

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children are encouraged to get hands on with technology and understand how it can shape their future careers.

“I think some of the things we are delivering would not have been achieved without Capita helping us,” Frary states, simply.

With a number of the technology teams’ initiatives in full flow, the journey to becoming the UK’s best connected rural county is well underway, but, says Frary, in the longer-term that will be the foundation for even greater change.

He and his team are looking further afield, keen to explore how technology can help transform the services it is offering to its citizens - none of which are more important - as adult care.

“We need to be looking at how we transform our services and make them more digital. One really good example is how we are looking at Adult Social Care; as an authority we spend £1 million a day on adult social care and as a rural county we have a lot of migration from the older generation who are retiring, so that challenge is going to get bigger.

“One of the things we are doing with technology is to see how we can help people live independently longer. Some of it is around putting sensors in people’s homes if they are agreeable to it that monitor whether somebody gets up in the morning and makes a cup of tea. If they don’t get up by a certain time, with a cer-

tain tolerance, do we need to send a trusted neighbour around to take the strain off public services?”

Speaking more broadly, Frary concludes by saying that the ambition for NCC has to be to improve services through the innovative use of technology in every area it comes into contact with citizens and businesses.

“We want to look at every single service, kick-start innovation and find out where we can change them and transform them, so we can deliver more for less money and actually make a difference to the people of Norfolk.

“We also want to encourage businesses to start and stay in Norfolk and that relies on us promoting Norfolk as a good place to live, work and deliver services from. That means we have to deliver all of the work we’ve already done around connectivity.

“And finally, we want to make sure that we’re delivering services to the public so they can choose to create a business in Norfolk, upskill themselves and become better informed if they need to be, and can do the things you’d expect to be able to do anywhere else in the country.

“I believe Norfolk is leading the way on these things and I believe people across the country are coming to look at what we’re doing, because we seem to be doing the right things.”

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BRINGING TOGETHER IT AND BUSINESS TEAMS AUTHOR: JAMES HENDERSON

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Low code is one of the key trends in the enterprise technology world. Pegasystems’ CTO, Don Schuerman, tells Digital Bulletin how it can help businesses overcome the programming skills gap, bring together business and IT teams, and rapidly take concepts from ideation to reality

ffective software forms the very backbone of enterprise, and with the growing importance and potential of technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), the need for rapid software innovation, development and integration has never been greater. But against that backdrop, the skills gap is getting more pronounced, compounded by less than 1% of the world’s population being able to code, while IT teams are in many cases being asked to do more with less.

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This combination of factors has seen the concept of low code - a term only thought to have been coined in 2014 - become one of the disruptive movements in the enterprise technology world over the past couple of years. The premise of low code is a relatively simple one: take out the complexities of coding, allowing business teams to build applications and platforms through simpler tools, often made up of graphical interfaces and configurations.

By deploying low code platforms effectively, companies can faster scale

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digital and technology transformation programmes, while freeing up IT teams to concentrate on the areas of the business that truly require their expertise.

Pegasystems (Pega) is a company with low code expertise in its DNA; its low code platform is a key facet of its wider intelligent automation offering and its Pega Infinity Digital Transformation Suite, which has been built to bring together the needs of IT and business

- two areas that often clash in the enterprise environment.

Pega’s CTO, Don Schuerman, tells Digital Bulletin that a number of factors have converged, bringing low code to the fore in the technology world.

“There is more work to do in software than developers to do it; every IT organisation that I talk to has a backlog of things that they haven’t gotten to.

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The combination of the demand for IT, the demographic shift and then the availability of cloudbased software is really what is driving low code” Don Schuerman

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to has a backlog of things they haven’t even brought to IT because they know they’re not going to get the time on the development calendar. I think that is a gap that we are beginning to address with low code,” he says.

“There are two other notable forces, one being that we have a generation of people entering the workforce for whom technology is not a foreign thing, they’ve been surrounded by it their entire lives. Even if they don’t know programming, they’ve done programming-like things before, they’ve built worlds on Minecraft, they’ve set up alerts on their social media channels, they’ve used ‘If This, Then That’ with Alexa to change the temperature.

“We have people in the workforce who might not be properly trained but are willing and able to take on some of the roles of helping define the software businesses are going to run. Thirdly, we have a distribution model via the cloud that makes it faster and easier to get this software in front of people. The combination of the demand for IT, the demographic shift and then the availability of cloud-based software is really what is driving low code.”

Pega’s low code platform is utilised by companies of all sizes, according to Schuerman. Notable among them is Siemens, with the two organisations having worked together on a number of projects.Thousands of Siemens employees

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utilise Pega technologies to enable its ultimate goal - end-to-end digitalisation.

“Siemens uses Pega to manage all of their data management processes, almost as a low code factory,” states Schuerman. “They’ve reduced customers on boarding time, they’ve standardised processes that were different in various areas of the business, and they’ve mitigated a bunch of risk with consistency. But they are also delivering this with what they call ‘one tenth the cost and ten times the speed’. It’s a great example of doing this at a significant scale.

“Another example I like is the work we did with an Australian telecommunications company, where we tackled a really specific problem they had. They wanted

a way for customers to self-put service case requests into them and allow customers to do that on a mobile application.

“Very quickly in an agile way, we were able to roll out a mobile app that captured their customers’ service requests, routed them to the right people in the business, got the work done and transparently showed the customer what the results were. Their combined business and IT teams were able to iterate through that very quickly because they were working in this low code environment.”

It is this ability to bring together business and IT teams that really brings low code into its own. The two have always made for uncomfortable bedfellows, driven by different objectives; the

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

COURT FILING REVEALS AWS GRIPES IN JEDI SAGA AWS has accused the Pentagon of “gerrymandering” in its efforts to resolve the Project JEDI debacle. The cloud giant has launched a legal case contesting a US government $10 billion contract award to Microsoft. The Pentagon has promised a review but AWS says this would only give Microsoft a “do-over”. AWS went on to list the parts of the agreement with which it has taken particular issue.

(25/03/20) 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.

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business looking to grow revenues and cut costs, while IT teams - often undermanned - are tasked with large scale migrations of technology, for example, that often have significant legacy issues.

“What low code allows us to do is resolve that by shifting the working relationship between business and IT,” comments Schuerman. “For certain applications it becomes less of a service provider relationship, where it might take three months to develop something that isn’t really suitable, and more IT and business becoming a partnership working together in agile based projects to quickly deliver the applications the business wants.

“IT is becoming the enabler using this low code platform model, it is able to give the business something that it can build guards and other components into that allow business teams to develop the applications they want or need. It is shifting the working model completely.”

It is clear that the visual nature of low code and the ability to rapidly pivot from ideation to execution is integral to its growing popularity, allowing teams to actually see how their applications will look and work in a live environment.

Known as ‘design thinking’, Schuerman says professionals with no coding experience can put themselves in the headspace of customers, rethinking their products from a different perspective.

Low code allows my customer value manager or my customer experience professionals to define the experiences they want even if they are not data science experts” “Low code is such a great fit for design thinking. You have teams exploring and coming up with new ideas which result in mock- ups, apps and experiences, and because low code is visual they are able to put those ideas directly into low code platforms without having to translate them.

“Think of design thinking sessions where by the second day, we are in the platform, building out the app and doing immediate playback, we can show the team what the customer experience really looks like. Once I get through the initial conversation, I can go very quickly from blue sky mode to making it real.”

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creasingly looking to AI, RPA (robotic process automation) and ML to glean insights from growing datasets, supercharge transformation programmes and free up employees to work on initiatives that require critical thinking. But, says Schuerman, low code could arguably be classed as AI in its own right.

“I would say low code is a form of AI, because what we’re basically doing is automating programming for customers.

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automate work, low code is automating programming. Under the hood, we are dynamically generating the code and Javascript that is going to run your application.”

In addition, while companies are keen for these tools to be used in every corner of their operations, there simply is not the necessary number of professionals skilled in AI, ML and the like to deploy across every area of their operations. Indeed, businesses will have to carefully pick and choose where they

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set their most highly skilled programmers to work, leaving low code to potentially pick up the slack.

“We’re also seeing a shift to what I call citizen data scientists. More of what organisations need to do in how they market and engage their customers is around using data to predict customer behaviour and dynamically make recommendations to them. We call that model ‘Next Best Action’ and behind that are some really sophisticated data scientists.

“But in the same way there are not enough programmers, there are not enough data scientists in the world. By using visual tools, such as Next Best Action Designer, it allows a marketer to design out a strategy while at the same time under the covers it is building out the data science model that is needed.

“I think that this low code approach is going to become increasingly important with AI and ML because you’re not going to have the specialised skills in the business at the scale you’ll need if you want to contact your customer on every touchpoint. Low code allows my customer value manager or my customer experience professionals to get in there and define the experiences they want even if they are not data science experts.”

Summarising, Schuerman is steadfast in his belief that enterprise will be defined by the platforms they build over the next five year cycle, integrating various technologies and services from multiple vendors to be all things to all customers.

“We have built that capability to weave all of that together to create coherent experiences for customers, coherent experiences for employees. And being able to present in a low code way that is fast and accurate, and involves the business, is absolutely essential to building what we’ve been calling that ‘platform for platforms’ for enterprise,” he concludes.

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SECURING ENTERPRISES’ CROWN JEWEL - DATA Each month, Digital Bulletin canvasses the opinion of some of the tech industry’s leading minds. Here, we ask: To what extent will data security concerns drive enterprise cybersecurity approaches in 2020 and beyond?

“ Reducing available datasets is at the heart of the matter” Tim Mackey, principal security strategist at the Synopsys Cybersecurity Research Center

Data privacy and security are sides of the same governance coin. When regulators define new or amend existing regulations, they are in essence making a statement that existing data governance practices were insufficient. While recent global trends are biased towards nationalism, modern society is based in 56

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large part on services from distributed technology companies.

When these technology companies are headquartered in different jurisdictions, the potential for adequate data protections becomes incredibly complicated.

After all, it’s rare for even the smallest of companies to only have local customers.

Far more common is a scenario where a company’s customer base includes users from multiple countries.

It’s against this background that cybersecurity teams need to function. To be successful, it’s not sufficient to simply adopt new tooling or define new security targets. Rather new investments and changes in process need to factor in both the data management requirements and the pain involved in non-compli-

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ance. In essence, change the paradigm from one where resistance to security workflows is replaced by shared responsibility and ownership of processes to reduce compliance pain.

When you consider that the only data ever subject to a cybersecurity event is data that was either currently being processed or retained under corporate policy, it becomes obvious that reducing risk of any breach starts with reducing the available datasets.

For example, while it may be convenient for a customer service rep to have access to the entire profile and order history for a customer, the reality is that such detailed access only increases the potential for excessive data being part of a cybersecurity incident.

From the perspective of the customer service rep, how their customer application works isn’t a concern so long as it enables them to address customer concerns. This means the architecture of the application needs to align with both user requirements as well as those of privacy and security regulations.

Due to the patchwork of global regulations, legacy applications are likely accessing far more customer data than required under current regulations or best practices. They aren’t the only concern however. Questions like data retention and availability of training 58

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Due to the patchwork of global regulations, legacy applications are likely accessing far more customer data than required under current regulations or best practices” data for machine learning models are equally important.

Modern businesses thrive on data, but the data that’s valuable to a given business is equally, if not more, valuable to an attacker. Given the reality that attackers define the rules for an attack and exploit available weaknesses, companies should look at their operations through the lens of data value (e.g., what data would an attacker want in my company?).

Armed with that information, it then becomes possible to create a strategy to alert when unexpected accesses occur while simultaneously limiting access to only recognised business purposes. Such a strategy offers an ability to limit risk regardless of whether an attacker enters via ransomware, phishing attack, vulnerability exploit or even social engineering.”

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“ AI will form an effective weapon against growing threats” Steve Mulhearn, Director of Enhanced Technologies, Fortinet

Cyber adversary sophistication is not slowing down. Cyberattack methodologies have become more sophisticated in recent years, magnifying their effectiveness and speed. This trend looks likely to continue unless more organisations make a shift as to how they think about their security strategies, particularly when it comes to safeguarding their data.

Over the past few years, the rise of swarm technology, for example, has shown new potential in attacking an organisation’s data. Swarm technology can leverage things like machine learning and AI to attack networks and devices, and can have powerful implications in the fields of medicine, transportation, engineering, and automated problem solving.

When used by cybercriminals, bot swarms could be used to infiltrate a network, overwhelm internal defenses, and efficiently find and extract data. Eventually, specialised bots, armed with specific functions, will be able to share and corISSUE 15

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Investing in AI will not only allow organisations to enable an automated system that can look for and discover attacks, but – by studying underlying patterns – enable the AI system to predict an attacker’s next move”

relate intelligence gathered in real-time to accelerate a swarm’s ability to select and modify attacks to compromise a target, or even multiple targets simultaneously.

The advent of 5G may also end up being a catalyst for the development of functional swarm-based attacks. This could be enabled by the ability to create local, ad-hoc networks that can quickly share and process information and applications. By weaponising 5G and edge computing, individually exploited devices could become a conduit for malicious code, and groups of compromised devices could work in concert to target victims at 5G speeds.

As organisations attempt to upgrade their cybersecurity approaches to meet these threats, investing in AI will not only allow organisations to enable an auto60

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mated system that can look for and discover attacks, but – by studying underlying patterns – enable the AI system to predict an attacker’s next move, forecast where the next attack is likely to occur, and even determine which threat actors are the most likely culprits.

There’s no doubt that attack methodologies have become more sophisticated by integrating the precursors of AI and swarm technology. However, if more organisations use the same sorts of strategies to defend their networks that criminals are using to target them, the trajectory can shift. This will require a unified approach that is broad, integrated, and automated to enable protection and visibility across network segments as well as various edges, from IoT to dynamic-clouds.

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“ Collaboration and shared responsibility are key” Nigel Hawthorn, EMEA director of cloud security business at McAfee

Data security should be absolutely front and centre in informing any enterprise’s cyber security approach. Without ascertaining where sensitive data resides and how it is used, it is simply impossible for organisations to have an accurate picture of their security posture.

Recent McAfee research revealed that enterprise data is often dispersed beyond organisations’ control, leaving many at risk of sensitive data loss or regulatory non-compliance. What’s more, shadow IT continues to amplify risk, with 79% of companies allowing access to enterprise-approved cloud services from employee devices. Worse still, one in four companies have had their sensitive data downloaded from the cloud to an unmanaged, personal device, where they can’t see or control what happens to the data.

Data loss prevention (DLP) must be central to the cyber security strategy of any organisation using the cloud. By

implementing rules that limit the sensitive information employees can share outside the corporate network, security teams can get a much better handle on the dispersion of data across the business. However, our research found that only 37% of companies surveyed are monitoring their cloud services with DLP, despite the fact that those that do so see an average of 45,737 incidents per month.

In a regulatory environment dominated

by GDPR and its associated reputation loss & fines, it is good news that 93%

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of CISOs understand that it’s ultimately their responsibility to ensure data in the cloud is secure. However, 30% of organisations say they lack staff with the skills to do this, a figure that has spiked 33% from this time last year. In other words, both technology and training are failing to keep pace with the rate of cloud adoption.

With this in mind, it is particularly crucial that organisations recognise their role within the shared responsibility model of security. Cloud security requires a layered defence, and from service providers to enterprises and individual users, everyone is accountable in some way.

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A good way to illustrate this is to think about a family renting a car. The manufacturer is responsible for the build quality and the airbags working, the rental company takes ownership of servicing and keeping the car roadworthy, while the driver is ultimately responsible for driving the car safely and carefully.

Everyone has a shared responsibility and a part to play.

When managed correctly, cloud is the most secure place to do business and an incredible driver of business growth and innovation. Collaboration, strong data governance and regular training are the keys to making this a reality.

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“ Zero-trust combined with holistic tools are the way forward” Ian Raine, Vice President of Product Management, iManage

In recent years, we’ve seen cyber criminals and threat actors exploit almost every attack vector with increasing sophistication and technological dexterity to get at the ‘crown jewels’ of organisations. For businesses that are operating in highly competitive areas – e.g. law firms, financial services organisations, corporate consultancies – where ‘documents’ denote the ‘product or advice’ the firm offers, data security has become a top priority.

Historically, organisations would rely on robust perimeter defence models with open security within the company boundary. This worked when the IT infrastructure was simpler, but with the emergence of cloud computing, mobility, instant messaging and collaboration tools, the access or potential penetration points increased exponentially.

Given the business value associated with data, a more sophisticated approach was needed, and the emergence

of the zero-trust security framework proved a pivotal point. It provides IT controls to better secure, manage and monitor devices, applications and networks by not trusting any entity, inside or outside the perimeter. Although well documented, zero-trust is now gaining mainstream adoption as organisations see the benefits of a more closed security posture.

Whilst zero-trust is a solid foundation, a more holistic view needs to be taken to build a true layered approach to security.

More granular methods are required to ensure security isn’t breached by individuals who have access to data and ‘needto-know’ – i.e. where practically all information, across all formats, repositories, locations and the cloud – is sealed off and access only granted based on enforced policies across categorised data is a model that will gain momentum.

Simultaneously, enterprises have been implementing two-factor authentication and are taking this further with biometric corroboration to reduce the incidence of stolen or ‘phished’ credentials. But even this cannot stop the rise of insider threat, where data is stolen by a current or departing employee. Enterprises will need to start monitoring user behaviour and firms are adopting AI technology to build a fingerprint of user activity, by employee. Any deviation outside of those ISSUE 15

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norms, automatically gets flagged to IT administrators or even locked down.

Often breaches are down to human error. Accidently sending a confidential email to the wrong individual or emailing sensitive documents to a person who has left the organisation, isn’t uncommon. Data Loss Prevention, originating from where the data resides, is starting to be taken seriously. Enterprises will adopt technologies that encrypt data, both in transit and at rest, alongside offering fully auditable interactions – to64

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gether with Digital Rights Management approaches, where policies around who is authorised to see the content, will travel with the documents.

Fundamentally, enterprises need to provide their employees a ‘safe place to work’, adhere to the increasing regulatory landscape and provide assurance to clients that their data is protected.

This requires keeping all the high-value enterprise data in a centralised, secure repository that is gated with multiple layers of security – from perimeter right

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Enterprises will need to start monitoring user behaviour and firms are adopting AI technology to build a fingerprint of user activity, by employee”

down to individual document level – so that in the event of a breach at any layer of the network, risk can be mitigated.

Today, COVID-19 presents a heady opportunity for criminals to exploit people who are most vulnerable. An innocent ‘click’ on a weblink that offers to explain ‘how to’ access their bank account during the lockdown or request a mortgage reprieve, could potentially result in a breach. With wholesale remote working, extra vigilance on the part of enterprise IT is imperative.

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DATA FOR ALL Building data literacy throughout the enterprise is an immense challenge but Jordan Morrow and Qlik have made it their mission. In an exclusive interview with Digital Bulletin, Morrow makes an impassioned case for why every one of us should take notice of the numbers

AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

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ast October, a crack team of data experts descended upon the headquarters of the United Nations. The reason? To hold a symposium on the future of data at the UN. One of the panel members that day in New York City was Jordan Morrow. Some months later, Morrow agreed to speak to Digital Bulletin for an exclusive interview, in which he talked enthusiastically about how a self-labelled “massive nerd” ended up debating data’s merits and challenges inside the walls of the world’s foremost intergovernmental organisation.

Morrow works for Qlik, a data analytics and integration specialist, in the ca-

pacity of Global Head of Data Literacy.

In short, Morrow’s responsibility is to preach the value of data and demonstrate how data can embolden normal employees in any business or sector.

Data literacy was one of the prominent topics at the UN symposium and, for Morrow, it has been the great passion of his working life since 2016, when he left his role as a senior manager in data analytics at American Express to join Qlik.

“A few years ago my boss and I, back when data literacy wasn’t even a term, wanted to attack this big skills gap and this problem,” he reveals. “Qlik took a chance and started a data literacy project. Thankfully the industry agreed, because data literacy is now everywhere. When we started in 2016, it wasn’t anywhere.”

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QLIK TOOK A CHANCE AND STARTED A DATA LITERACY PROJECT. THANKFULLY THE INDUSTRY AGREED, BECAUSE DATA LITERACY IS NOW EVERYWHERE. WHEN WE STARTED IN 2016, IT WASN’T ANYWHERE” Jordan Morrow

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Morrow defines data literacy as “the ability to consume data to help make effective decisions”. He is at pains to keep it separate from data science, which is often used as a catch-all term to describe any kind of professional data practice. The whole point of data literacy, Morrow says, is to bring data to the unqualified masses and not just to highly-trained specialists.

“When you think of the world we live in today, it’s digital and it’s data-driven,” he adds. “Data literacy allows organisations to harness that power, and it allows every individual to have a seat at the table. Historically it might be IT or another group, but now everybody can have a seat at the table because they’re confident with data. That is what this really boils down to.”

This ambition has a clear end goal: to close the growing chasm between the amount of data available to organisations and the depth of workers able to make use of that information. As the enterprise world becomes more interconnected and reliant on data-rich automation and AI technologies, it is an issue that needs combatting as a matter of urgency.

Countless studies highlight the scale and complexity of this challenge. One example is a recently commissioned report by Qlik and Accenture on behalf

QLIK

of the Qlik-founded Data Literacy Project. The research looked at the human impact of data literacy, surveying 9,000 employees from a range of industries around the world.

Results showed that the data skills gap is costing businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity. One finding that Morrow was particularly keen to highlight was that even though 87% of those surveyed recognised that data was an asset, only 21% felt confident in their data literacy skills. The problems run deep, as Morrow expands upon.

“How often is a company buying new software and telling its employees that it’s rolling it out? How many times is

a company sourcing new data?” he asks. “What we found in this study is that people are literally overwhelmed by this. They’re stressed by it, they will avoid it.

“We also found that more than one third of people said they would find an alternative method to complete the task without the data, and 14% said they would avoid the task altogether. Why is that? It’s this overwhelmed feeling that people have, and the numbers bore this out. The numbers are startling. You can’t just throw money at data and analytics and think it’s going to do something. People need to have data literacy so they don’t have this overwhelmed feeling.”

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RUBRIK TAPS FORMER SERVICENOW EXEC DAN ROGERS AS PRESIDENT Rubrik has appointed former ServiceNow executive Dan Rogers as President.

Rogers will lead Rubrik’s GTM Operations, driving product, marketing, and GTM strategy. Working in partnership with Rubrik’s CRO, Brett Shirk, Rogers is responsible for continuing to build upon Rubrik’s momentum and accelerating its next phase of global growth. Rogers will report to Rubrik’s co-founder and CEO Bipul Sinha. (12/03/20) 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.

QLIK

THE ONE THING I ALWAYS TELL EVERYBODY IS THAT NOT EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE A DATA SCIENTIST. AND IT’S NOT EVEN CLOSE. LESS THAN 1% OF THE POPULATION NEED TO BE DATA SCIENTISTS, BUT EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE DATA LITERATE” In the four years since Qlik hired Morrow, the company has been relentlessly pressing home this message. But it’s not just been all talk and little action - the company has backed up its assertions with some significant progress in the field of data literacy, mostly linked back to the Data Literacy Project.

The project was inaugurated by Qlik to create an open, global community for data literacy, driving home its core beliefs and creating a pool of learning and educational resources around data that enterprises could access. The Data Literacy Project is supported by tech industry blue chips Accenture and Cognizant as well as a host of other partners, each dedicated to creating a data literate world.

Qlik’s core business of building data platforms hasn’t stopped it developing its own efforts around data literacy either in the form of its Data Literacy Program, which delivers end-to-end services covering everything from assessment

and certification to online courses and instructor-led training.

“Even our competitors can use our products within data literacy at no cost and that’s because we have this full belief that everybody needs to be empowered with this. It’s not just our customers who run our products who have access - it’s about giving everybody the empowerment,” Morrow says.

Morrow has been the driving force behind Qlik’s efforts; he is on the advisory board for the Data Literacy Project and, when he’s not making his voice heard during major symposiums for the United Nations, he can be found extolling the virtues of data literacy through a regular blog and in public settings, such as TedX Talks events.

Central to his push to make more people aware of data’s potential is his identification of a particular set of skills and characteristics that employees must adopt on their path to data literacy.

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IF YOUR C-SUITE DOESN’T HAVE A CDO [CHIEF DATA OFFICER] OR THE LIKE DRIVING THE DATA AND ANALYTICAL STRATEGY, YOU NEED TO GET ONE. YOU CAN’T PIECEMEAL IT”

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QLIK

“The first skill individuals can take on is just developing a more curious mind,” explains Morrow. “If you develop curiosity in your life, it gives you the ability to ask a lot of questions. And when we ask a lot of questions with curiosity, it gets you down to the root as to why things are as they are.

“Couple that with creativity and critical thinking, and these are the things that people need. These are those starting points that allow you to really build out your data literacy initiatives, and then you determine what skills you want, which could be data storytelling, it could be data visualisation, it could be statistics. I call those the three Cs of data literacy and they are the core principles.

“The one thing I always tell everybody is that not everyone needs to be a data scientist. And it’s not even close. Less than 1% of the population need to be data scientists, but everyone needs to be data literate.”

From a leadership perspective, Morrow says harnessing the right culture for data adoption is absolutely critical to success.

“The number one roadblock to any data or analytical success is culture. It’s not technology, it’s not sourcing the data, it’s culture,” he adds. “You have to have the right leadership buy-in. When I say buyin, it doesn’t mean just throwing money at it. You have to have leadership pushing

the envelope and empowering people.

“But don’t tell people you’re going to change the culture, tell them you’re going to evolve it. You need to weave the DNA of data into everybody’s work so they feel like it’s helping them, not taking over their world. You should also share the “why” behind it. That will help people feel smarter and feel more empowered by everything.”

To finish, Morrow emphasises that businesses must move quickly if they’re to fly in the slipstream of the data revolution - and that data expertise must be present at the top table for an organisation to become data literate, whether it’s the United Nations, an enterprise player or an ambitious startup.

“If your C-suite doesn’t have a CDO [Chief Data Officer] or the like driving the data and analytical strategy, you need to get one. You can’t piecemeal it. Get that one source of strategy,” he concludes.

“We are seeing a shift in evolution in the C-suite, which I think is necessary. If we’re basing a C-suite off something that worked 40 years ago, guess what? Technology 40 years ago wasn’t nearly what it is today. If we keep the same C-suite in place, that’s going to be a problem.

We’re seeing different roles pop up and these different positions need to exist so that companies are not left behind. In five years, it might be too late to really evolve.

The world moves faster than that.”

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THE POWER OF

TWO TWO TWO

Software AG’s Vice President for Strategic Programmes, Philip Hooker, tells Digital Bulletin why enterprises are increasingly leveraging the capabilities of digital twins

C

ould you introduce yourself and your role Software AG? As the Vice President for Strategic Programmes at Software AG, I lead a range of structured and ad hoc initiatives at the company to accelerate the corporate exploitation of cloud.

I have over 25 years’ experience working on numerous strategic, business development and transformation programmes, and have been working with CXOs at the likes of Orange, Barclays and Nokia throughout this period I was the instigator of one of the innovation initiatives inside Nokia which became 74

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Cumulocity GmbH in 2010 until being acquired by Software AG in 2017.

What are digital twins and why are they important?

A digital twin is a digital representation of a real-world system. It can be a representation of a product, structure, facility, living being, or system.

The concept of a digital twin has been inherent in software design from the outset, representing external resources such as screens, printers and human machine devices. The changes over the recent years have been related to the

SOFTWARE AG

collective understanding of the required sophistication of these software representations and the various ways we want to interact with them. The digital twin itself acts as a single-source of truth, comprised of various components such as master data, visualisation data, life data, forecasting models, and many more.

Could you speak about Software AG’s ARIS technology and how it can help enterprises with digital twins?

Digital twins are being introduced across all lines of business as an “En-

terprise digital twin” — one that illustrates your business operating model from end-to-end. Many organisations are using it to coordinate the critical interdependencies between people, processes and IT within complex digital business transformations.

ARIS is uniquely positioned to help businesses create an Enterprise digital twin to accelerate their path to digital transformation and put a magnified view on business operating models.

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Digital twins bring full control of overall processes, compliance and risks by addressing all risk and compliance activities, quickly initiating improvements and controlling risk assessments and audit execution” Philip Hooker

provide sophisticated process analysis and modelling capabilities, facilitating the task of designing-in digital twin capabilities and driving value as part of the digital transformation journey.

Similarly, Software AG’s Alfabet supports portfolio management activities relating to the provisioning of digital twins across processes and their underlying IT/OT landscapes.

What sort of technology platforms do digital twins typically operate on?

Digital twins can represent both micro and macro environments, with the latter being much more commonplace. With the macro environment digital twin, multiple heterogeneous entities can co-exist, whether it’s stages in a production line or vehicles on a highway.

A representation of a digital twin typically requires the consolidation of data across multiple systems into a single view which can be interacted with. For example, customers like Siemens use Software AG’s WebMethods Integration technologies to provide consolidation and aggregation of the data from multiple heterogeneous systems into a single view.

Which industry sectors have been quickest to embrace digital twins?

There are two notable examples of enterprises with explicit strategies to

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leverage technology and lead the exploitation of digital twins. Those enterprises which strategically leverage technology for the design of new products (like industrial robotic paint station manufacturers Durr), and those that do the same for the efficient delivery of services (like water utilities provider Thames Water).

Both of these enterprise types exploit the digital twin to perform scenario analysis to speed the identification of insights and proactively create solutions for possible future events.

How can a digital twin help companies better carry out a technology or digital transformation?

A digital transformation requires an enterprise to consider the entirety of what it currently is, determine what it wants to be and a series of transformation steps of getting there. Typical transformation initiatives consider change in the domains of processes, organisation, technology and information.

A digital twin of the current state of an organisation allows the transformation team to easily identify areas of immediate improvement, experiment with transformation options prior to implementation and monitor the operation of those changes against a forecast, making refinements as needed.

Can you talk about the close relationship between IoT and digital twins and whether there is any crossover?

Digital twins can resample IoT devices, allowing for the management of the devices to be performed in different ways.

This includes intermittent communications, historical data interrogation, future state prediction, full device management, among others. On a higher level of complexity, larger real-life assets, processes or facilities need to be virtualised on the business’s demand. Here, besides the IoT data and IoT devices, contextual ISSUE 15

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HIGHLIGHTS

TOYOTA AND NTT PEN $1.8 BILLION SMART CITY AGREEMENT Toyota and NTT have reached an agreement on the development of smart cities.

They will co-invest $1.8 billion and take a small stake in each other. The pair plan to develop a smart city data platform, with the intention of building a new smart city in 2021 on the site of a former Toyota plant in Japan. Toyota and NTT also own a joint project for the development of connected car technologies.

(24/03/20) 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.

SOFTWARE AG

knowledge of the assets is necessary.

Through cross-referencing insights, forecasts and complex operations on the real-life asset can be performed.

Data for digital twins of products is often spread across several domains, IoT included. Ease of integration across these pre-existing domains and systems and the digital twins of Cumulocity IoT platform is essential - and provided by Software AG. In addition, businesses require their capabilities to be extended with analytical models for real-time and predictive analytics of the status and behaviour of their real-life assets. Here, streaming analytics and predictive model execution engines come into play, allowing for the real-time execution of analytics and machine learning models on incoming data streams.

Compliance is a burning issue for enterprise, can digital twins be used to better oversee compliance issues?

Business is complex and regulations are rigorous, too much risk is bad for business and too much governance is just as problematic. Risk & Compliance digital twins can be created to strike a balance between control and business performance. This can be achieved by establishing appropriate controls and acceptable levels of risk, Identifying, documenting and evaluating risks, and defining measures to minimise risks and simplify audits.

Here, digital twins bring full control of overall processes, compliance and risks by addressing all risk and compliance activities, quickly initiating improvements and controlling risk assessments and audit execution.

How do you see digital twins developing and improving over the next three to five years?

The adoption of digital twin capabilities is set to grow significantly over the coming years. Managing their rollout will be an important requirement in IIoT deployments.

Digital transformation will mandate business process changes and the demands of onboarding/managing fast-growing portfolios of IT & OT assets could stretch existing business functions.

Over the next five years, the importance of digital twins will rise enormously since they will be an internal enabler for additional services and an external enabler for product sales. As customer digitalisation progresses, they will want physical assets to be accompanied by the digital twin for internal documentation requirements. At some stage, the delivery of digital twins as the product documentation will be a mandatory requirement.

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Over the next five years, the importance of digital twins will rise enormously since they will be an internal enabler for additional services and an external enabler for product sales�

Execution Systems. The digital factory twin will allow for replanning/rescheduling and the extension of production processes, based on process simulation and the deployment of the virtually optimised processes, going beyond monitoring and prediction. Here, data from the shop floor will be relevant, but also dynamic staffing of field teams and integration of the supply chain compulsory. Therefore, information from the business layers, like ERP systems, will be needed on the plane floor to create optimised shift plans that incorporate the current status of the factory in a holistic manner.

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Considerable improvements in efficiency are likely to be gained through the adoption of predictive models based on digital twins. However, the machine learning models themselves will need continuous refinement as the underlying data sources will be increasingly influenced by the processes that create them, being directly related to AI models rather than human behaviour.

What are some of Software AG’s goals in this area over the same timeframe?

In the same timeframe, our priority is to ensure Software AG is best prepared to

SOFTWARE AG

satisfy the evolving requirements of our customers. Driven by the demand for self-service advanced analytics for process engineers, one of our key focuses involves adapting visualisation capabilities to cover other verticals like discrete manufacturing.

This will improve digital twin approaches for process engineers, helping them identify the ‘golden fingerprint’ for the perfect production and synthesise the related data model in downstream systems.

Making the data insights from the digital twin available at the ‘point of use’ in an appropriate form that provides the relevant context is another key focus.

For example, this could be the physics of the related components of industrial air compressors. For human operators, it could also be an AR representation of a mixed measured, simulated and predicted model of the asset. Ultimately, with the capabilities of digital twins always growing, we want to ensure that our customers can drive success as their use becomes more widespread across other industries.

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CHARLES HOSKINSON

SETTING CRYPTOCURRENCY STANDARDS In part two of an exclusive interview, one of cryptocurrency’s most outspoken figures, Charles Hoskinson tells Digital Bulletin about improving standards, decentralising platforms and what needs to be done to take crypto mainstream AUTHOR: James Henderson

B

y his own admission, Charles Hoskinson is a man in a hurry.

The cryptocurrency entrepreneur has filled recent months dashing between the United States and Africa, meeting the great and the good at Davos and overseeing IOHK, the research and development company he co-founded and from which he launched Cardano, the open-source, decentralised public blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Hoskinson’s story in the crypto space is well documented, but worth briefly revisiting. One of the co-founders of

Etherum, he left after disagreements before regrouping with former Ethereum colleague Jeremy Wood to establish IOHK, which builds and develops cryptocurrencies and blockchains for corporations, government entities and academic institutions.

Central to IOHK is Cardano, home to the Ada cryptocurrency. Cardano can be used to send and receive digital funds, but is also capable of running financial applications currently used every day by individuals, organisations and governments all around the world.

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These systems are not interoperable, so we need our WiFi moment. We currently have around 3,000 cryptocurrencies and they don’t talk to each other” Charles Hoskinson

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Hoskinson says his team has been writing scripts for Cardano since 2017, resulting in a number of launches this year that he says will address some of the weaknesses he sees with cryptocurrencies.

The next launch, known as Shelley, will make Cardano fully decentralised, allowing owners of Ada to help power the network and process transactions in return for rewards.

“We believe the system will be somewhere from 50-100 times more centralised by validators than Bitcoin and Ethereum,” Hoskinson tells Digital Bulletin. “The system gets more performant over time as it becomes more centralised, so that is a sustainable model as we go from millions of users to billions of users. It also gives users a guarantee that we’re always going to be resilient.”

After Shelley will come Goguen and the promise of smart contract capabilities, and then Basho, which will introduce the scalability necessary to maintain a truly global system. Finally, Voltaire will be rolled out, aimed squarely at delivering the operability and scalability that Hoskinson says cryptocurrencies desperately need.

“These systems are not interoperable, so we need our WiFi moment. We currently have around 3,000 cryptocurrencies and they don’t talk to each other and that’s just in our industry. You then

CHARLES HOSKINSON

have legacy payment systems like Visa and Mastercard, as well as legacy banking systems.

“It is not reasonable to say, screw the old stuff, we’re going to throw it all away even if it has trillions of dollars in it. You have to be able to talk to it and work with it in a graceful way. Finally, every time we have a dispute in the cryptocurrency space, we seem to end up with a Bitcoin cash or an Ethereum Classic or Bitcoin SE. “Disagreements ending in community splits and product forks is not a sustainable model, you need a way to resolve disputes and grow your ecosystem.

You need sustainability, interoperability and scalability and we’ve bundled these three things together and we see that as the third generation.”

The aim is to introduce all of the releases before the end of 2020, although it is hard to imagine how that will not be impacted by the current climate. But either way, Hoskinson says the roadmap for 2020 is a culmination of years of hard work that will make Cardano stand out in a crowded market.

“We are chipping away at this generation by generation and we think we’ll get most if not all of it done by the end of 2020 because we have a great code base,” he comments. “That will give us a global and sustainable system capable of meeting the needs of millions of users and paying for itself and evolving itself. It’s a really exciting project and the result of five years of engineering and research.

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INTEL PITCHES LATEST NEUROMORPHIC COMPUTING SYSTEM FOR AI WORKLOADS Intel has released Pohoiki Springs, its latest neuromorphic computing system.

Neuromorphic computing is a revolutionary approach using chips that function similarly to the human brain. It replicates the way neurons are organised; Pohoiki Springs has a computational capacity of 100 million neurons. Intel says this power will solve AI-related problems. The systems remain in the research phase.

(19/03/20) 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.

CHARLES HOSKINSON

What has really disturbed me about my industry is that some of my competitors have made statements about the performance of their systems, the scale and the capability of their systems with no evidence at all, no scientific evidence, no scale, no benchmarking, no prototyping” “Once we ship these elements, we can start working on the next five years to make Cardano even better. But what we can ship just this year will be better than anybody else in the market.”

It is a market that Hoskinson himself admits is somewhat dictated - in public consciousness at least - by Bitcoin, a legacy of its dramatic spike and subsequent fall in value in 2017 and 2018. But there is a confidence that other platforms can step out from Bitcoin’s shadow.

“Bitcoin is still the market leader and drags the industry along and for the cryptocurrency model to be successful, it has to stick around a while longer.

Over time, we foresee a gradual decoupling, and we first saw that with Ethereum which began to move counter cyclical to Bitcoin.

“There’s real industry confidence that in three or five years we could see a decou-

pling of the major projects so that Bitcoin is one component, but it is not going to be a pricing mechanism for infrastructure.”

One thing that comes through clearly when talking to Hoskinson is how important he believes it is to simplify the experience for consumers if cryptocurrency is to become the mainstream hit it has the potential to be.

IOHK recently announced a partnership with sneaker manufacturer New Balance with the stated goal to utilise the Cardano blockchain to ensure that New Balance shoes are authentic. Hoskinson says the launch was a perfect example of how consumers should be using these platforms and technologies.

“The users of that system had no clue that they were using a cryptocurrency or a blockchain, they just had a card and a shoe. I attended the launch event and saw the buyers pulling the card out of ISSUE 15

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the box and tapping it on their phone to authenticate the shoe, and that is the point of what we’re building.

“If we really care about these things having billions of users, we shouldn’t force the user to understand how private keys work, how crypto works or how blockchain work, we should just be talking about problems that they want to solve.

“The technology has to fade to the backdrop, we cannot be successful if we expect users to understand all the intricacies. What you have to have is consumer experiences which focus mostly on the problem that you want to solve.

That was a great experience to see those sneakerheads authenticate their shoes using a product based on a cryptocurrency, that was a great moment.”

But while progress is being made, Hoskinson says there are individuals and companies that threaten to halt that journey, consigning cryptocurrencies as a whole to the periphery of society rather than to its centre.

“What has really disturbed me about my industry is that some of my competitors have made statements about the performance of their systems, the scale and the capability of their systems with no evidence at all, no scientific evidence, no scale, no benchmarking, no prototyping.

“They are making these statements to appreciate the value of their token at the 88

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expense of retail investors and at the expense of the credibility of our industry as a whole. For every Ethereum and Bitcoin that we have, we have a Bitconnect [a scheme that abruptly shut down after taking $2.5bn from investors] or a OneCoin [a notorious cryptocurrency scam].

“We are not going to be successful in convincing governments of Fortune 500 companies in the developing world to adopt our technology if all of our industry is perceived to be just about making money as quickly as possible from whoever possible, which in many cases is the most vulnerable people. So I am

CHARLES HOSKINSON

I’m the luckiest man in the world; I’ve been to 52 countries, I’ve met heads of state, I just had dinner with the PM of Georgia in Zurich, I’ve been interviewed by Larry King and it is absolutely amazing and surreal” a very outspoken critic and I won’t apologise for it, because I think there are higher pursuits of value for our industry.”

Hoskinson’s fire, he says, comes from wanting to drive up standards that will stand the test of time, and despite having considerable frustrations and considerable wealth, he is clearly as passionate about what he does now as when he started out, probably more so.

“I’m the luckiest man in the world; I’ve been to 52 countries, I’ve met heads of state, I just had dinner with the PM of Georgia in Zurich, I’ve been interviewed

by Larry King and it is absolutely amaz-

ing and surreal,” he concludes.

“I feel a lot of responsibility on my shoulders that my movement is probably going to decide how private rights, data rights and other key things for the 21st century are going to work for the world.

And when these standards are set they are going to exist for 50 or 60 years. So if I’m tired one day, I have to keep going as I have a job to do and I will do so until the market tells me to stop.

“I’ve got decades of work to do and I’m going to be here fighting hard for as long as I can.”

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Lisa Heneghan, Chief Digital Officer at KPMG UK, reflects on a storied 20-year career, which has been punctuated by digital transformation initiatives at the likes of Deloitte, Oracle and Dell

LISA HENEGHAN

T

he three words I would use to describe myself would be determined, resilient and loyal.

My dad had a huge role in me working in the technology space. He was in the UK computer industry’s first wave of mainframe computing growth and he instilled in me his passion in technology’s unlimited possibilities, by bringing me into the business early on.

Working across both the hardware and software spectrums for leading technology firms such as Oracle and Computer Associates gave me a broad understanding of the commercial dynamics associated with technology. It also opened my eyes to the transformative impact it could have on the wider business landscape.

One of my biggest influencers was a former KPMG partner who helped me recognise the enormous potential that bringing industry knowledge together with technology could deliver. They really encouraged me to think outside the box and be open to new things which resulted in me producing work that I wouldn’t have imagined possible – that’s stuck with me.

I’ve risen with the ubiquity of the internet, mobile technology, and cloud

computing - key drivers in the fourth industrial revolution. Obviously the adoption of the internet changed the world as we knew it. Use-cases like the cloud have gone on to break down the barriers that used to create fortresses around IT, and have driven technology into every part of every business.

For lasting impact it’s important that initiatives are born, and grow, from a real desire to diversify the technology sector. It may start at the top with a mandate and sponsorship, but must then drive into the heart of your workforce.

At KPMG our women in technology initiative - IT’s Her Future, is just one example of succeeding by becoming a movement with its own impetus for change in the talent pipeline and the industry, rather than a standalone initiative.

I’d describe my leadership style as collaborative. I have always recognised that it requires an immense breadth of skills to understand technology. I’ll never be omniscient so have adopted an inquisitive leadership style.

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and challenging careers. That is how you create a diverse team that delivers – and that’s why mine is made up of people that I actually look up to.

My message to those looking to work in the technology industry is don’t let the stereotypes of the past influence your view of tomorrow’s technology. You no longer need a deeply technological background to succeed. With an open-mind, passion and desire to learn in your arsenal, a career in tech can take you anywhere.

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big-tech as well as the impact on users.

And unfortunately, new products and solutions often become targets for those intent on harm. So we must have a forward-thinking approach and mind-set.

AI’s growing capabilities has understandably sparked concerns about job security in the future workplace within the context of automation. But professionals must look to leverage the immense value that AI could potentially deliver.

A recent KPMG/Harvey Nash survey found that 90% of Chief Information Officers surveyed expect AI/automation to replace up to one in five jobs or more

LISA HENEGHAN

enough on ‘transformation’. By focusing on the technology itself, businesses can lose sight of the advantages for people and many transformation programmes are in reality, little more than system integrations.

If I was starting over, I’d tell myself: never constrain yourself by what you know you can do today – be open to what you can learn to do tomorrow.

within five years, although two-thirds believe the number of jobs created will compensate for those lost.

Looking at the impact that technological solutions have had on our daily applications in business, environment, healthcare, financial security and more over the last 10 years – it’s a whole new world.

I absolutely believe tech should be a force for inspiration, innovation and yes – for good.

Boundless opportunities in the coming decade excite me - particularly how technology can help organisations and individuals deliver greater purpose.

AI can fundamentally unlock inhibitors and enable change at a pace we have never seen before. Tech skills in leadership will also become a core capability needed to demonstrate the ability to drive future strategy.

Seeing digital transformation top the business agenda is great, but I worry that you hear the term so often it’s in danger of losing its meaning. There’s too much emphasis on ‘digital’, and not

I have no regrets. Technology has given me the most exciting 30-year career.

There’s always a new challenge and I can honestly say ‘who knows what I’ll be doing next?’

We should be asking: “How do we develop and deploy AI to learn from data and help to further our existing systems?

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EVENTS

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EVENTS

Industry conferences and exhibitions are off the table for now, but there are still many digital events worth making time in your diary for...

IBM THINK MAY 05–07, 2020 Think 2020 will be an exciting combination of live streamed content, interactive sessions and certifications and locally hosted events, which will highlight IBM’s technology and industry expertise for developers and clients without the risk of travel. Tune into 200+ sessions broadcast over multiple channels. Chat with experts and participate in real-time Q&As during live-stream sessions exclusively available during the conference.

Then access on-demand content complete with study guide resources and takeaways. Think will also focus heavily on leveraging technology to respond to the challenges posed by COVID-19.

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MICROSOFT BUILD MAY 19–21, 2020 Experience the latest technologies and learn new ways to solve your development challenges. Microsoft says the event will bring together its community of developers in this new digital format to learn, connect, and code together Topics will include: developer tooling and language innovation; cloud development and containers; AI and machine learning; DevOps automation; cross-platform apps; IoT; building Microsoft 365 extensions; and low-code tooling.

AUGMENTED WORLD EXPO 2020 MAY 26–29, 2020 With over one billion users and most of the Fortune 1000’s on board, Spatial Computing is finally entering the mainstream. Get awe-inspired where industry leaders get together to shepherd the AR and VR industry into the next decade. Hear from those solving major technical challenges, bringing AR/VR into new sectors, considering ethical and legal issues, promoting diversity, and working on the cutting edge of AR/VR development. Wherever you are, you’ll still be able to experience the highlight of the AR/VR

MAY – JUNE

calendar, with 200+ speakers, 200+ sponsors/exhibitors, and the annual ‘Auggie Awards’.

CISCO LIVE JUNE 02–03, 2020 Cisco Live, the company’s premier in-person customer and partner experience of the year, is being relaunched as a complimentary, full-scale digital event, enabling remote participation from anywhere in the world. Cisco said its digital experience would build on the original event’s history of delivering high energy live broadcasts and technical on-demand training.The digital event will feature: live-streamed keynotes, innovation talks and technical content; On-demand technical deep-dive sessions; interactive opportunities with Cisco experts; and social media contests.

AGILE + DEVOPS JUNE 08–11, 2020 TechWell has morphed the popular Agile + DevOps West conference into a fully virtual experience this year.

From the comfort of your own digital device, you will have access to all of the same great content and experts you have come to expect from an Ag-

ile + DevOps West conference. Agile + DevOps Virtual will be streaming over 80+ talks—including five keynotes, 25 tutorials, and 50+ sessions all in an engaging and interactive premium virtual atmosphere.

COLLISION FROM HOME JUNE 22–25, 2020 Collision from Home brings together the people and companies redefining the global tech industry.Collision from Home attendees will participate from wherever they are in the world, livestreaming talks from tech CEOs, international policymakers and global cultural figures. They’ll chat and connect with each other through the bespoke Collision from Home app and they’ll engage with some of the world’s most influential companies and fastest-growing startups. Some 250 speakers have already been confirmed, including senior execs from Samsung, Microsoft, Uber, Google and Whatsapp.

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In a column exclusive to Digital Bulletin, Jerome Wagner, Head of Cloud Transformation, Virtusa, tracks smart infrastructure and the evolution of our networked world

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ll of the world’s digital services are supported by technical infrastructure - a vast collection of elements including servers, networks and storage. Depending on how and where it’s used, this infrastructure can run on-premise, on the public cloud such as that provided by Google, Amazon or Microsoft, or on hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) - software-defined infrastructure, using virtualisation.

The past decade has seen a profound transformation in the way this infrastructure is managed, controlled and marketed.

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While this has historically relied heavily on human supervision, the growing adoption of automation, cloud and, most recently, machine learning (ML) is weakening that dependency. Indeed, this year we can expect the ecosystem of smart infrastructure to begin growing and evolving.

Everything changes Architects and administrators have long been responsible for manually creating and managing infrastructure, along with its various configurations and governing policies and processes. But in

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2006, the nature of infrastructure technology underwent a major change in the wake of the launch of the first public cloud by AWS, followed two years later by Google’s application engine, which introduced technologists to self-service infrastructure.

The most significant step-change regarding manual infrastructure maintenance occurred in 2011, however, with the introduction of automation application Jenkins, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). AWS also released CloudFormation in the same year, allowing engineers to define cloud infrastructure in code, and spin-up the necessary infrastructure resources on Amazon’s servers.

The level of automation this made available provided early-adopters with more manageable infrastructure, which required much smaller teams to oversee it. Operations and implementation were simplified as a result, which had a positive impact on its running costs. A trend was set in motion - software-defined in-

frastructure (SDI) soon led to the emergence of HCI in 2014, and the concept of well-managed infrastructure minimising the need for human supervision.

Such was its popularity that, by 2017, tech giants including Cisco and Hewlett Packard had launched their own HCI offerings to the market.

Taking a different approach The next phase in the evolution of infrastructure has been termed “smart infrastructure”. Cloud machine learning was originally introduced as a market proposition in 2014-15, and began to be adopted around a year later.

Since then, infrastructures including the cloud and HCI have implemented the ability to use the full capabilities of ML. And, as uptake of these infrastructures began to grow massively in the global tech market, so the volume of data available exploded. This data recorded every type of engagement by software and hardware - within the ISSUE 15

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infrastructure, making it highly amenable to ML. Now, the possibility of using ML to capture and analyse all (transient) infrastructure data via the logs has become highly desirable, due to the valuable insights it provides.

Smart infrastructure uses this data differently, however, instead leveraging ML to report and highlight potential optimisations in how any given infrastructure should be operated. In these cases, ML is used to look at database optimisations, network and security recommendations, observed security threats and fixes, and cost optimisations.

All of this represents significant value to a business, as having an autonomous driven resource that can be replicated, and that runs 24/7, can be considered a cost optimisation. What’s more, it could also continuously check the systems for further opportunities to optimise costs, creating more efficient infrastructure, and offering ongoing security and performance observations.

Current developments We’re already starting to see examples of smart infrastructure on the market.

HPE, for example, is looking to differentiate itself in the HCI space by using an AI tool called HPE Infosight which assesses and reports on virtual machine usage and enhancements for streamlining and 98

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simplifying infrastructure set-up.

AI-driven continuous performance optimisation appears to be gathering industry support for its ability to look at application resource requirements directly. Also impacting infrastructure requirements, this concept is currently being developed by The Cloud Native Computing Foundation in partnership with DevOps specialists Opsani.

AI-driven principles are set to affect both cloud and data centre infrastructure too, although this will initially take a more suggestive format as opposed to AI-directly-controlled infrastructure. Examples of where this can already be seen on the market include Nutanix’s AI-driven optimisation solutions, and its Prism Pro, which advises on operational refinements.

Furthermore, at its re:Invent 2019 cloud conference, AWS unveiled several new

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As businesses continue to look for ways to reduce costs and extract greater intelligence from their data, they have progressed from utilising software and technology located on-premise, in data centres, to running remotely on hosted servers or in the cloud. AI and ML are set to be the step in the evolution of infrastructure” PaaS offerings which use ML behind the scenes. These include Amazon Detective, which uses ML to identify security threats within a customer’s infrastructure; Contact Lens, a set of ML capabilities for AWS Connect to drive insights into customer sentiment, trends, and compliance risks; and Amazon Fraud Detector, which uses ML to enable companies conducting business online to quickly identify fraudulent activity.

These announcements all serve to underline how AI- and ML-driven infrastructure offerings will begin growing in popularity during the course of 2020.

Looking to the future As we’ve seen, the nature of infrastructure is developing rapidly. As businesses continue to look for ways to reduce costs and extract greater intelligence from their data, they have progressed from utilising software and technology

located on-premise, in data centres, to running remotely on hosted servers or in the cloud. AI and ML are set to be the step in the evolution of infrastructure.

Eventually, both the operation and management of smart infrastructure will become seamless. Over time, these smart architectures may have the ability to self-govern, self-optimise, and self-heal all with limited involvement - resulting in highly optimised, fault-tolerant, and lowcost infrastructures.

Companies will begin exploring scenarios which involve AI-enabled networks which means that, as these AIs become trained on real and simulated environments, they’ll become as much a cybersecurity asset as a cost-optimisation solution for compute and storage.

And with the first signs of this highly optimised ML-driven infrastructure likely to become visible this year, this future isn’t as far off as we may think.

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