Digital Bulletin - Issue 19 - August 2020

Issue 19 | Aug ’20

AUTOMATING IT Freshworks’ Prakash Ramamurthy on its Flint acquisition and optimising cloud delivery

CRACKING THE CODE Putting AWS’s Honeycode platform under the microscope and exploring the potential of no-code

WIRED UP

Ciena’s EMEA CTO Jürgen Hatheier explains how adaptive networks will superboost connectivity in our digital world

JAMES HENDERSON Content Director

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ello and welcome to Issue 19 of Digital Bulletin - the publication that satisfies your every enterprise technology need!

We have another jam-packed magazine for you, dear reader, with news, views and the very best technology deep dives the industry has to offer.

Digital Bulletin’s lead story this month features Ciena, where we speak exclusively with Jürgen Hatheier, who was appointed as Chief Technology Officer for EMEA in February.

Hatheier had barely got his feet under the table when COVID-19 hit, leaving him to get to grips with his new role remotely.

He tells us how he has navigated that challenge while driving the company’s modern connectivity initiatives, as well as opening up on his vision for “adaptive” networks powered by automation and orchestration.

Our regular news analysis feature looks at low/no-code - an area that has generated a lot of buzz in recent months, and AWS’s entrance into the market with its Honeycode platform.

We look at some of the market leaders

it is taking on and speak to experts to understand what has driven AWS’s decision to take the no-code plunge.

The promise of these tools is an enticing one, empowering business teams to build out their own ideas into functional applications and tools, especially at a time when many IT teams are having to tighten their belts.

Elsewhere, you’ll find an in-depth interview with Freshworks’ Chief Product Officer Prakash Ramumurthy, where he talks about how the company will integrate its recent acquisition of Flint, and the wider importance of automating IT processes.

Finally, we’ve got pieces on Brain Corp’s 10,000-strong industrial robotics fleet, Mimecast’s blueprint to fight back against COVID-19 phishing attacks and a Life in Tech that looks at eyeo’s Jutta Hostmann’s 25 years in the technology industry.

We hope you enjoy this month’s offering, and we’ll see you back here next month for Issue 20. Until then, you can keep up-to-date with all the latest news at digitalbulletin.com and techforgood.digitalbulletin.com.

PUBLISHED BY BULLETIN MEDIA LTD, Norwich, UK Company No: 11454926 TALK TO US editorial@digitalbulletin.com business@digitalbulletin.com

Intel’s head of hardware, Dr. Murthy Renduchintala, looks to be carrying the can for delays of the company’s 7nm product roll-out, which has been put back to 2022. Renduchintala is leaving the company with immediate effect, although it is not yet clear whether he walked or was pushed.

(Credit: Intel Corporation)

INSIDE VIEW

CONTENTS

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MONTH IN REVIEW NEWS, VIEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATA INTELLIGENCE FRESHWORKS Combining acquisitions and automation

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CONNECTIVITY

CIENA Modern networking in action

36 PEOPLE

DEBATE Experts on how tech is changing performance management

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A LIFE IN TECH

IT SERVICES

APTUM Tracking the evolution of IT infrastructure and the importance of data

eyeo’s Jutta Horstmann on 25 years in the technology industry

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EVENTS

FUTURE

Q&A Brain Corp and the rise of industrial robotics

SECURITY MIMECAST Fighting back against COVID-19 cyber attacks

The best digital technology events for your diary

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An exclusive column from Patricia Hume, CEO, Canvas GFX, on ageism in technology

MONTH IN REVIEW

NEWS UPDATE Digital Bulletin rounds up the news that shaped the enterprise technology space over the last month

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NEWS UPDATE

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

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&A activity was quieter in July than the previous three months, although a number of significant deals were still either announced or rubber stamped.

HPE has accelerated its edge-tocloud strategy with the $925 million acquisition of SD-WAN company Silver Peak. Silver Peak will be combined with HPE’s Aruba business and extend Aruba’s position in the large and fast-growing SD-WAN space. “HPE was an early mover in identifying the opportunity at the edge and that trend is accelerating in a post-COVID world,” said Antonio Neri, CEO, HPE. DXC Technology has sold its healthcare software provider business to Dedalus Group for $525 million.

Dedalus is one of Europe’s leading healthcare software providers. DXC is doubling down on enterprise technology by “rationalising” its portfolio.

“The transaction promises to be beneficial to all our key stakeholders,” said DXC’s CEO. The deal is expected to close early next year.

Linux and cloud company SUSE significantly boosted its Kubernetes capabilities with the acquisition of

Rancher Labs in a deal worth a reported $600 million. There were a number of interested parties in Rancher Labs, which helps enterprises to run software in virtual containers across multiple servers, specifically supporting Kubernetes distribution.

VMware continued its acquisition spree with two more announcements, the first being its intent to buy Datrium. The deal will expand the current VMware Site Recovery disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) offering with Datrium’s cost-optimised DRaaS solution. It also plans to buy the True Visibility Suite team and products

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from Blue Medora. Upon close of the acquisition, VMware said customers can expect to benefit from the tighter integration of vRealize Operations and the True Visibility Suite—which VMware said it plans to continue to invest in, sell standalone and support.

Customer engagement software firm Freshworks has acquired Flint, an IT orchestration and cloud management platform. The deal will bolster Freshwork’s service IT service management and IT operations management capabilities.

Microsoft is acquiring vision system company Orions Systems in a bid to expand its Microsoft Dynamics 365 capabilities. The company offers image and video analysis. Muhammad Alam, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Dynamics 365, said the agreement will “help organisations maximise the potential of their observational data”. No financial details of the deal have been disclosed.

IBM is to acquire Brazilian RPA provider WDG Automation, the company has announced. The acquisition further advances IBM’s AI automation capabilities, spanning business processes to IT operations. IBM plans to integrate WDG’s capabilities into its IBM Cloud Pak product offerings on Red Hat OpenShift, starting with Cloud Pak for Automation.

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FUNDING Google has become the latest technology company to sink money into Reliance Jio, the Indian telecoms leader owned by Reliance Industries. Google has invested $4.5 billion in return for a 7.7% stake. Reliance Jio has attracted almost $20 billion in funding since April.

RPA company UiPath closed a $225 million Series E funding round, taking the company’s value to $10.2 billion.

The round was led by Alkeon, with participation from Accel, Coatue, Dragoneer, IVP, Madrona Venture Group, Sequoia Capital, Tencent, Tiger Global and Wellington. The funds will be used to advance the company’s hyperautomation platform and develop and expand its cloud offerings.

NEWS UPDATE

Anduril, which produces controversial defence technology for public sector contracts, earned $200 million from a new funding round. The startup is backed by Peter Thiel and produces surveillance towers and drones. It is now expected to expand its work with the US government.

Andreessen Horowitz was involved in the latest investment round, which also included a number of venture capital firms.

Network chip company Innovium, which is looking to take on established players like Broadcom, has raised $170 million during July. It takes the company’s funding to date to $350 million and takes its valuation to around $1.5 billion.

Innovium said the funds would accelerate its R&D innovation and expand customer engagements with Innovium as a trusted long-term partner.

Fintech outfit Revolut extended its Series D funding round to $580 million with an additional injection of $80 mil-

lion. The new funding has been made by TSG Consumer Partners, and values the company at around $5.5 billion.

Online education platform Coursera has raised $130 million in a funding round, valuing the company at $2.5 billion. The platform offers online access to courses taught at leading universities. The round was led by NEA and joined by existing investors Kleiner Perkins, SEEK Group, Learn Capital, SuRo Capital Corp, and G Squared, and brings the company’s total funding to more than $300 million.

Cloud data platform Qumulo became tech’s latest unicorn after a $125 million funding round, which values the business at $1.2 billion. BlackRock led the round of funding with participation from Highland Capital Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Kleiner Perkins and new investor Amity Ventures, meaning the company has raised $531 million to date.

Qumulo can run on AWS and on-prem.

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MOVERS AND SHAKERS Michael Kratsios, Chief Technology Officer for the United States, is also taking over as acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering at the Pentagon. This will involve Kratsios overseeing tech and R&D for the military.

Previous Pentagon CTO Mike Griffin left earlier this month. Kratsios looks set to focus on applications of 5G, AI, quantum computing and microelectronics.

Indonesian ride-hailing company GoJek has appointed former Amazon and 12

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Microsoft executive Severan Rault as its new Chief Technology Officer. Rault will take over from the previous CTO, Ajey Gore, who last month revealed that he was stepping down for personal reasons.

Rault’s previous position was director of software development at Amazon, while he also worked at Microsoft for four years.

Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) has named Mike Maresca as its new chief technology officer. Maresca joined WBA at the end of June from Accenture,

NEWS UPDATE

where he most recently served as global managing director leading business transformation and IT operations for global business applications and enterprise analytics. Maresca will lead and coordinate technology decisions across the enterprise.

Mixed reality company Magic Leap has appointed Peggy Johnson, a veteran tech executive and Executive Vice President of Business Development at Microsoft, as its new CEO. Magic Leap

said Johnson will accelerate its growth plans and “bring transformative enterprise solutions to market”. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2014, Johnson spent 24 years at Qualcomm, holding various leadership positions.

Ian Campbell is stepping down as interim executive chair of Innovate UK. He will leave for an unnamed health and life sciences organisation later this year. Innovate UK is the research and development arm under the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) umbrella.

“We are incredibly grateful to Ian for all his work,” said a spokesperson. The UK government is viewing R&D as a critical part of its remit.

Treasure8 has appointed Chris Cowart as its new chief innovation and strategy officer. The firm is using technology to help fight global food waste.

Cowart has previously consulted on a variety of tech projects and has been a long-time IDEO product designer.

Treasure8 is now aiming to raise around $50 million from a funding round, Cowart told TechCrunch. He started at the company in June.

Stay right up to date with the latest news shaping the enterprise technology sector with The Bulletin, available at digitalbulletin.com

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CRACKING THE CODE? AWS has followed its cloud competitors into the no-code market, despite myriad challenges. Digital Bulletin looks at the thinking behind its Honeycode service and why no-code could change the developer landscape for good

AUTHOR: James Henderson

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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mazon has jumped on one of enterprise technology’s key trends of 2020 with the unveiling of its no-code development tool Honeycode.

The AWS service promises to give businesses the power to build mobile and web applications without writing any code, using simple interfaces.

The service is being pitched at analysts and programme managers who have typically used basic tools such as Excel to track deliverables before passing on development work to IT teams or contractors. Increasingly, these are overworked resources, meaning bottlenecks can build up.

The no-code movement is a reaction to this issue, helping business teams to build their own apps and freeing IT teams up to focus on more complex work programmes.

Alex Smith

While it is one of technology’s preeminent organisations, Amazon has a fight on its hands if it is to carve out a significant slice of what is a crowded market.

Gartner estimates there are around 200 vendors in the no-code/low-code space.

As the clear leader in public cloud, AWS’s move into no-code is typical of the company’s desire to consolidate its market position and wed people to its wider enterprise ecosystem, according to Andrew Davis, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Copado and Salesforce DevOps specialist.

“AWS aspires to be the dominant player across every aspect of the cloud marketplace. And with the rise of low-code platforms such as Salesforce, it’s clear that AWS needs an answer to this as well.

Not every one of AWS’s products can be considered best-in-class,” he says.

Andrew Davis

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“For example, contrast AWS WorkMail with Gmail. But once a company adopts the AWS platform, and has a team skilled in building and automating on that platform, choosing a service that is second or third best in class may still be the most cost-effective option overall for these companies.”

It is a view echoed by Alex Smith, Global Product Management Lead for iManage RAVN, who believes that AWS found itself having to follow the lead of its main cloud rivals, Google and Microsoft, both of which are actively building no-code/low-code teams.

“It’s about consumption and economics,” he comments. “AWS is a big 16

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hosting environment, they have a lot of good tooling, but without Honeycode, that tooling is primarily for the global developer community. Typically, with no-code, entire business communities worldwide can potentially start using technology platforms more constructively and productively.

“But Honeycode will face challenges. People don’t go into AWS to create processes or documents, and neither do they use it to collaborate – like in the case of Google or Microsoft.

“AWS very much serves the developer community, so they are likely to struggle in attracting the business community, who don’t have a reason to even go

NEWS ANALYSIS

into the AWS environment. Business users work in the Microsoft and Google environments, so adopting no-code to improve processes or create new workflows is intuitive and logical.”

Davis also highlights the difference between AWS and the likes of Microsoft PowerApps, Google’s AppSheet and AppEngine, and systems like Salesforce and OutSystems, which have have all spent significant time and funds to develop no and low-code tools and all started from business application suites, which were subsequently built outwards.

AWS has eschewed that approach, building entirely independent, API-driven services and relying on companies to integrate these independent services, which has proven effective in ensuring standalone products and services are not lost in its wider offering.

“AWS has adopted another modern product development mindset in keeping tight silos around each of their products and requiring integrations to make them work,” Davis comments. “That greatly limits AWS’s ability to provide a one-stop shop for companies that need a simple way to get started. But it ensures that AWS can scale its products independently and not be caught in the morass of coordinating development across a massive and increasingly monolithic product suite.”

Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, the embrace of simpler development tools that democratises app design is in keeping with the wider trend of digital transformation. Smith believes that while efficiency is an obvious driver, the imperative to transform the workforce in a post-pandemic world so that it can effectively and productively perform in the evolving digital environment, will be a major adoption factor for no-code tools.

“Enterprises will be looking for ways to optimise their current technologies, platforms and product suites by getting more people in the business to use them. Adoption of no-code tools is a good way to do that and in doing so, enterprises will empower their workforce to find new ways of working,” he predicts.

“To illustrate, there has been much discussion about training employees in data science. Enterprises aren’t wanting to turn their employees into data scientists. They merely want to empower their people who are experts in certain areas to do things better by utilising toolsets that employees are already familiar with and the organisation has already invested in or has access to. Excel for data modelling is a case in point.”

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shift in coding responsibilities and how businesses approach development work, with professional developers being increasingly tasked to build platforms and tools that can be leveraged by the wider business.

“Developing no-code tools isn’t easy to say the least, so almost certainly the professional developers creating these products will be in great demand. Putting user experience and easy to use interfaces on top of complex applications to create no-code tools requires tremendous technical skill,” says Smith. “In the business environment however, it’s likely that the need to build complex applications from 18

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scratch will disappear, given the time and cost involved in such projects.

“In an environment where flexibility and agility are critical, no-code tools offer enterprises excellent capability to meet the majority of their technology requirements – which are often related to creating repeatable or automated processes for efficiency, productivity and other similar business gains. They will find it empowering.”

Looking forward, Davis predicts that the rise of no-code will fundamentally alter the current development status quo. Professional developers could be forgiven for being wary of such a step-

NEWS ANALYSIS

change, but this suspicion is likely misplaced, he believes. “no-code applications represent yet another layer of abstraction on code, similar to the move from Assembly code to C to Java. Just as the vast majority of programming today takes place in higher-level languages, we can expect a similar shift to no-code applications for the majority of future use cases.

“A likely transition will be in the form of professional developers mixing nocode builders to accelerate certain aspects of their application, which we can call low-code. Examples of this include frameworks such as D3.js on JavaScript

that allow programmers to access rich graphics libraries to greatly accelerate their application development and prevent them from having to reattempt solutions to well-known problems.

“Professionals developers may need to expand their skills to make use of these no-code platforms. But as they grow, there will be an increasing need to integrate no-code applications and to provide modules that accomplish unique functionality. Expect the world of no-code applications to open up new avenues for professional developers.”

Summarising, Davis opines that lowcode’s ability to offer enterprise increased control, consistency and oversight of development programmes represents a huge boon and will go a long way to making it a long-term success. “low-code applications provide a mechanism for a new segment of society to build systems to ease their workflow. As with any complex system, self-organising structures gradually emerge to bring order to what might seem like chaos,” he concludes.

“The self-organising capability that nocode systems provide allows businesses to bring order to their work, a sense of predictability and reliability, even outside of the hierarchical control of the IT department. As a result, the trend is here to stay.”

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DYNAMIC NETWORKING Ciena’s EMEA CTO Jürgen Hatheier chats COVID-19, modern connectivity and his vision for “adaptive” networks powered by automation and orchestration

AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

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or all of us, COVID-19 and the move into lockdown caused at least some level of workplace disruption. For Jürgen Hatheier, the timing couldn’t have been more unfortunate.

Appointed as Ciena’s Chief Technology Officer for EMEA in February, Hatheier had barely got his feet under the table at his new employer when the realities of a global pandemic struck. Lockdown.

And with it, permanent remote working.

“In the first couple of weeks of a new role, all you want is to get to know people and learn the technology - then you end up being sent home after 10 days in the office! At that point, you’re like ‘how am I going to take it from here?’” he reflects with good humour in an exclusive interview with Digital Bulletin.

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CIENA

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The adaptive network is not so much about applying this technology here and this technology there, it’s about what you need to do to respond to the demands of the network that you might not be able to forecast” Jürgen Hatheier

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“But I have to say, I’ve had an amazing team around me; seasoned professionals and some other newcomers who had the joy of starting at a company remotely, and we have really come together as a team. I was very lucky because Ciena is a truly global organisation that is perfectly set up to work virtually.”

The seniority of Hatheier’s position meant his in-tray was full right from the off. Ciena delivers hardware, software and services to the world’s biggest network operators, and Hatheier - previously Chief Product Officer for Technetix and with two decades of experience in the networking space - is in charge of its team of technologists and engineers across some of its most important markets.

While he admits the constraints of remote working have made it harder for him to fulfil certain aspects of the job, mainly around the high-level relationship building with the rest of Ciena’s leadership team, Hatheier has still managed to hit the ground running. He reveals that the pandemic hasn’t too badly hindered Ciena’s technology programmes and timelines.

“On the product development side, we have seen very little impact, and that is mainly based on the fantastic IT infrastructure that we have in the company,” he states. “Our CIO, Craig Williams, has implemented a strategy to really set us up to be 100% seamless when we

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work remotely. We have perfect remote access into the labs and into the equipment. Our R&D team has really worked hard to keep our roadmaps on track.

“In the supply chain, by design we focus on partnering with leading manufacturers. It’s all about qualifying those partners and having long-term relationships, which involves looking at their business continuity planning. We have delivered more products than ever and we have maintained support levels for all of our customers. I am quite proud that we have delivered what we set out to do.”

Not only has Ciena managed to achieve close to business-as-usual during the COVID-19 crisis, but it has also

continued to support innovation. The company specialises in coherent optical transmission, a technique that greatly boosts the capacity of fibre optic cables, and last year it launched the latest iteration of its technology, WaveLogic 5.

In the face of a pandemic, Hatheier reveals Ciena has managed to go through with software releases and further upgrades on WaveLogic 5 and its customers have reaped the benefits. In May, Deutsche Telekom’s wholesale division turned up the first 800G (gigabit) network in Europe using Ciena’s solution, while Vodafone enjoyed a similar launch in New Zealand in July.

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“I’m really proud of the accomplishment there because the last thing our customers needed to worry about was delays caused by Ciena at a time when they’re focused on business continuity and keeping their networks up and running,” says Hatheier.

“We were the first to release 800G commercially to the market, as we were with 100G and 400G before. We have got some great feedback. A lot of our customers learned a lot from WaveLogic AI [WaveLogic’s previous iteration] and our Liquid Spectrum application, which allowed them to tune the bandwidth up and down based on demands. Now they just love this increased speed on offer with 800G.” When discussing the question of what drives excellence in modern network architectures, however, Hatheier prefers to steer clear of the nitty-gritty detail. Ciena’s technology is just a small cog in a huge machine working to deliver us the connectivity that we need and demand in the digital world.

The Austrian native believes network operators must take what he calls a “helicopter view”; one tied closely to business objectives and one that offers both scale and cost-efficiency, with a clear focus on how they want to serve their customers and understanding their needs and use cases.

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“We call it the ‘adaptive network’,” he explains. “The adaptive network is not so much about applying this technology here and this technology there, it’s about what you need to do to respond to the demands of the network that you might not be able to forecast.

“So for example, there might be 10,000 people at a rock concert and everybody uploads their videos to social media. All of that is something that the network needs to be able to handle, but you can’t always scale for it because that wouldn’t be economic.”

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The main error operators make, according to Hatheier, is trying to achieve everything by themselves and attempting to plan for the unpredictable and unexpected, rather than striking a balance between what they know and what they can work with, and how they manage the unexpected. This is why partnerships are a critical part of how Ciena operates in the vast and fast-moving networks arena.

For Hatheier, it’s really about achieving flexibility, agility and scalability in the best way you can. He breaks the vision down into three distinct areas.

“The first is programmable infrastructure, so starting with the optical air.

I mentioned our WaveLogic 5 solution which can adjust the speeds as required, obviously within the limits of physics.

Secondly, you need some analytics and intelligence, so big and small data, with AI and machine learning. And then you need some software controls which are actually implementing the changes on the fly, in your network, as you need them.

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ries of your business parameters. And that’s the big vision and big idea we’ve got. That might be scary to some because you might not want to give control to the network to reroute traffic, but that’s where we need to be.

“We have deployed some of those concepts, we have worked with a number of operators on defining their vision. But it is a journey you go on, it’s not something you can implement overnight.”

Automation and orchestration are the critical pieces of the puzzle that Hathei-

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er keeps coming back to. According to Gartner, organisations that automate more than 70% of their network change activities will reduce the number of outages by at least 50% and deliver services to their customers 50% faster.

It has been and remains one of the standout trends in networking, and Ciena’s EMEA CTO believes automation will become pivotal to delivering the model customer experience.

“It’s not new by any means, but it’s still not the reality in every network,”

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We’re talking about an ecosystem which is proactive and able to heal itself and optimise itself, within the boundaries of your business parameters. And that’s the big vision and big idea we’ve got. That might be scary to some because you might not want to give control to the network to reroute traffic, but that’s where we need to be” says Hatheier. “It really helps you to react to the changes in the network quickly and is the key ingredient to keep your user experience high. Net Promoter Score is what most executives are getting paid on.

“Let us put ourselves in the shoes of the consumer - what makes our lives easy? If we buy Netflix, we want a very simple user interface, we don’t want to deal with any network settings. The front end needs to be there and the processing all needs to happen in the background. That’s where automation and orchestration come in. It’s the calm on the top, and pedalling like crazy under the surface.”

The pedalling is only going to intensify as pressure on networks ramps up even further over the coming years. Connectivity is the backbone of the digital revolution, and with the onset of 5G and the rapid growth of the Internet of Things,

companies like Ciena cannot afford to take their foot off the gas.

Hatheier is passionate about the power of collaboration, with one of his objectives being to encourage his team to buy into the “codevelopment” of architectures, working around the specific visions and strategies of Ciena’s customers. Ultimately, he believes the industry needs to see challenges as opportunities, pandemic or no pandemic.

“I really believe that where we are right now, we have a lot of dynamic in the market, and it’s really up to the telcos and service providers now to make a difference in the way they approach network architectures,” he concludes.

“I encourage everyone to put a bit of courage into adopting new technologies and new methods, and also operational models to help and stay relevant in a marketplace that is very competitive, and to stay ahead.”

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AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE

Freshworks’ Chief Product Officer Prakash Ramamurthy talks to Digital Bulletin about the company’s recent acquisition of Flint, its integration of AnsweriQ and Natero, and why he believes automating IT processes is a must for enterprises AUTHOR: James Henderson

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ven before the world was turned on its head with the COVID-19 pandemic, enterprises were increasingly looking to automate elements of their IT operations. But the spread of the virus and the ensuing move to remote working for great swathes of the global workforce has accelerated that need.

Freshworks, the customer service engagement company, had seen the demand for self-service and workflow automation tools pre-COVID and decided to make an acquisitional play for IT orchestration and cloud management platform Flint, a company that it already had a close relationship with having integrated a number of its tools into its Freshservice IT support software.

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FRESHWORKS

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Like many companies today, we felt the pressure of today’s remote environment as we went from 13 workplaces to 3,000+ home offices in a matter of days” Prakash Ramamurthy

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Speaking to Digital Bulletin about the agreement, Freshworks’ Chief Product Officer, Prakash Ramamurthy, says the impact of the pandemic has not been lost on the company, which has seen its workforce become distributed in a way that could never have been imagined.

“Like many companies today, we felt the pressure of today’s remote environment as we went from 13 workplaces to 3,000+ home offices in a matter of days,” he comments. “IT automation is vital to help accelerate the transition to a remote workforce and resolve service issues faster.

“If you’d have said just six months ago that we’d be onboarding employees without having ever met them, it would have seemed completely ridiculous, but we’ve hired a new head of product marketing and a new CFO [Chief Financial Officer]. It shows that a lot of IT processes need to scale, we need IT to be far more automated and set up for self service.”

The acquisition of Flint was finalised and announced at the beginning of July, some six months after the two parties opened discussions about the deal. Ramamurthy says there are three clear key factors that made the purchase so attractive.

“We firstly looked at the service automation element, so regular things like being able to reset someone’s password or automating in the backend when

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you have new employees onboarding and you need certain things to be provisioned. That reduces costs as well as getting rid of the need for humans to carry out what can be tedious and repetitive tasks,” he states.

“ITOM - IT operations management is the second area. If you want us to run standard runbooks in response to alerts coming in and you want to build the intelligence to correlate them and order an action - running a script to spin up a container, for example - this orchestration will allow that.”

The third area that Ramamurthy pinpoints is cloud management and the optimisation of cloud delivery and spend, with Flint offering IP around discovery across the leading public cloud providers.

It is an offering that is hugely valuable for customers that demand visibility of workloads across various clouds, which in turn can be used to drive cost optimisations.

“Flint has these capabilities and has built a number of adapters into cloud providers that we can use to bring everything together under a unified pane of glass.

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IT folks are better off spending time in data analysis, bringing data together for their businesses to get valuable insights rather than resetting passwords” grate and get out of the market,” he says.

With many IT teams having their budgets reviewed because of falling revenues, automating certain processes and tasks makes more sense than ever. Automation tools are being used to free up often expensively assembled tech teams to work on more complex platforms and projects.

“IT folks are better off spending time in data analysis, bringing data together for their businesses to get valuable insights rather than resetting passwords, for example. Increasingly, business leaders are beginning to appreciate that so the tools that provide that are actually welcomed by the users. They realise that for a lot of our everyday tasks we just want to be able to use tools like Slack or Teams and be done with it,” says Ramamurthy.

The Flint acquisition is Freshworks’ third in just over 12 months after previous deals to buy AnsweriQ, a provider of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) for larger enterprises, and Natero, a cus32

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tomer success platform that merges ML for predicting behavior and big data analytics for deep customer insights.

Bringing AnsweriQ’s capabilities into the company has strengthened Freshworks’ AI engine, Freddy, by enabling enterprise organisations to fully leverage their existing customer data to scale self-service experiences and automate complex customer workflows.

Its Freddy platform incorporated AnsweriQ’s AI in May to learn from ticket data and agent actions within the Freshworks Customer-for-Life Cloud and improve customer self-service capabilities. Freshworks says that Freddy will extend its capabilities from a knowledge base-dependent AI engine to learn from ticket conversations on the fly.

“AnsweriQ is now part of our Freddy platform, which is a key differentiator across all of our product lines, and suite of AI capabilities that we have,” says Ramamurthy. “The AnsweriQ acquisition

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is being used in both customer support and ITOM so some of the technologies that we have will be used in ITOM, such as FAQs, can be used in for both an employee and customer context.”

Natero was integrated a few months earlier in February, a “huge rebranding success”, according to Ramamurthy, with its capabilities now baked into its Freshsuccess customer support platform. Its magic, he explains, is flagging up potentially significant customer issues before they become so big that they could scupper a business relationship.

“Natero has become an important component of our customer experience and customer engagement business unit where companies can proactively support clients. A lot of reactive solutions like ticketing, call and chat are social media based on the premise that customers will actually complain,” comments Ramamurthy.

“But customers usually express their displeasure through their actions and deeds, not their words. If a customer is unhappy with a tool, what is the first thing they do is not complain, but rather

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There was a swathe of companies already on the edge that had multi-month initiatives to think about these decisions but those decisions have clearly been accelerated because of what is going on in the wider world�

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reduce their usage. We have the ability to help our customers integrate some of the key health metrics of their solution into Freshsuccess, which is the Natero product and have a health score that they can monitor proactively.

“If that score begins to deteriorate they can intervene and address any issues the customer may have well before the contract is coming up for renewal. That is a big part of our proactive support in the customer support business.”

At a time when many businesses are fighting to keep their heads above water, such tools could prove to be invaluable for their short to medium-term outlook. Looking forward, Ramamurthy believes one of the lasting impacts of the current global situation will be to have provided many enterprises with the springboard to enact lasting digital and business changes.

“Moving to the cloud and using cloudbased SaaS [Software-as-a-Service] solutions are accelerating because of COVID-19,” he surmises. “There was a swathe of companies already on the edge that had multi-month initiatives to think about these decisions but those decisions have clearly been accelerated because of what is going on in the wider world.”

“People increasingly want to use a SaaS solution rather than running

them themselves on-prem. Take Freshworks as an example, we have nothing on-prem, so what we were able to do at the stroke of an email was move to a remote working model within a day and that is extremely powerful when times are so uncertain.

“There are a lot of trends that companies or executives can claim they saw coming but nobody can say that about COVID-19, so it has been a wake-up call for acceleration and transformation.

To be fair, many companies have been thinking about digital transformation, and I don’t think the pandemic is especially making companies who had never thought about it all of a sudden consider it, but for those who were it has certainly proven to be a catalyst.”

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A NEW ERA FOR PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT Each month, Digital Bulletin picks the brains of experts in a particular sector of the technology world. This month, we ask: How will technology change the way enterprise carries out performance management over the next five years?

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“ Companies have to embrace a new era” Mark Seemann, CEO of StaffCircle

Let’s not even waste time talking about remote working, it’s happening and it’s here to stay. What’s more important is the way effective, transparent communication takes place among employees and management within a company.

It’s easy to get excited about the latest technology and everyone is pretty much set when it comes to video conferencing or the latest buzz that keeps people talking remotely. But when it comes to actually managing employee performance without the office - what due diligence is really being done by businesses to put something in place?

The good news is that we’re already seeing a positive shift from businesses.

Some are already at the ‘implementation’ stage because they want to be ahead of the game while others are showing ‘interest’ but it won’t be long before investment in the right technology is made.

Enterprises are leading the way in this shift most likely because of the sheer

size of their workforce and it’s these organisations that are likely to have monthly and quarterly staff reviews before the big annual one where performance is discussed.

Typically these take place in person and in the office, and surprisingly still with paper forms but with the new remote way of working that is likely to remain in years to come, adopting an online approach to this is definitely something we will see more of.

Performance management requires ongoing monitoring but this shouldn’t be mistaken for ‘snooping’ on employees in the absence of the physical office environment. It’s more about ensuring staff can meet their tasks and deliverables

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Performance management requires ongoing monitoring but this shouldn’t be mistaken for ‘snooping’ on employees in the absence of the physical office environment” in an online environment where performance can be updated and rewarded.

Going paperless to set KPIs or objectives through technology will add to the changes we’re going to see and this should be the case whether people are in the office or not.

Having the right technology in place will allow performance to be understood in real time without relying upon a physical location and provide management with an overview of their employees in one central place.

This removes any need for email trails, paper forms or lost communication that often happens with some of the more traditional means of internal communication. The sooner organisations get on board with this, the more ‘normal’ it will become in the next five years.

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“ Future tech is about to come into its own” Dr Alex Young Founder and CEO at Virti

Tech has a huge role to play in delivering high quality training and education to a large base of users to improve performance. When experiential reality (XR) tech is used to promote and facilitate workplace learning, it can be usefully combined with artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the way we measure engagement and productivity.

By implementing the tools to drive learning and effectively monitor it without biases, employee performance in our workplaces of the future has the potential to look better than ever.

DEBATE

Companies and institutions are now able to use XR platforms like Virti to manifest sustained change in employees’ skill sets and competences. Augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies offer management and HR teams the tools to transform learning by offering a real-life environment, virtually.

Medics, for example, are able to develop and hone their skills outside of hospital and clinic environments. We’ve organised several trials amongst clinicians to uncover the data behind the effectiveness of XR compared with traditional in-person demonstration learning.

We found that those who used new immersive technology are 230% more likely to see an increase in performance thanks to sustained knowledge and skill gains.

At a time when businesses need to develop and adapt to meet our new world, XR and AI combine to facilitate a fast-paced change. Our needs and requirements are evolving faster than ever before and enterprise must meet updated demands.

For many businesses this has meant a significant shift towards digital – which often requires new software and processes for their teams to accommodate.

Upskilling existing workforces is therefore increasingly necessary, and due to COVID-19, training is having to take place remotely. XR training is more effective than traditional remote learning.

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Augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies offer management and HR teams the tools to transform learning by offering a reallife environment, virtually”

tent platform. XR training offers a simpler and faster solution to acquiring the necessary skills your business needs.

In the future, the same technology can be used to roll out consistent training that’s easily assessed. The technology is backed up by AI, which monitors user engagement and performance. Managers and executives are able to see how productively people are using the technology and what kind of progress they’re making.

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AI becomes especially useful when enterprise leaders are trying to assess more subjective competences. Softskills are notoriously hard to measure, but AI takes out the inherent biases that come with human evaluations.

Tech has a huge role to play in boosting and managing employee performance in our workplaces over the next five years.

It’s up to those in charge to adopt, embrace and maximise its potential.

DEBATE

“ It’s time to digitally transform the experience” Derek Irvine, SVP strategy, Workhuman

Back in the day, performance management was a once-a-year affair, with an individual manager critiquing an employee’s performance – something neither party particularly looked forward to.

Employee expectations have changed, with workers wanting more openness with managers, and a workplace that is more responsive to their needs. The traditional method of annual, or even semi-annual, performance management simply isn’t cutting it.

With a remote workforce, performance management technology has become a necessity. But whether employees are remote or on-site, technology is crucial to enabling organisations of any size to seamlessly build in opportunities for feedback, coaching, and connection.

These solutions allow companies to move away from ratings and one-sided reports as the primary means of managing employee performance, in favour of frequent and regular check-ins between managers and employees.

Time spent on check-ins is well worth the investment, with workers who consistently check in with their manager reporting higher levels of trust, respect, and engagement, per the 2019 Workhuman research.

Exchanging useful feedback and recognising the contribution employees are making motivates employees to perform at their best; and research shows that more than 80% of workers who were recognised in the last month report that they trust executive leadership (81%) and find meaning and purpose in their work (82%).

Organisations will increasingly be opening up performance management to include peer-to-peer feedback because work is increasingly done in cross-functional teams, as opposed to top-down hierarchies.

Performance development platforms can create opportunities for the entire

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Organisations will increasingly be opening up performance management to include peer-to-peer feedback because work is increasingly done in cross-functional teams, as opposed to top-down hierarchies” working team, not just a select few in management, to provide feedback and give managers much broader insight into the work their direct reports are doing. It also adds more voices to the mix – something which helps remove implicit bias by eliminating singular opinions and ensuring that the individual contributions of employees are not missed or overlooked.

Given that only 2% of HR leaders say that their current performance management systems are effective, and more than half of employees say performance reviews don’t improve performance, it’s clear that performance management is ready for digital transformation.

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DEBATE

“ The tech is there to ensure workers thrive” Vivek Chaduri, Global Head of Digital Innovation, BAT

Digital is enabling new ways of working, and tech as tools to enable our best performance. So, performance management isn’t an annual test to pass, but a constant evaluation of our team’s motivation.

Performance management is motivation management: if an employee is motivated, they will perform. So, if I may, I’d like to rephrase the question to: how will digital and tech motivate teams over the next five years?

One digital way of working that we embrace at BAT is Agile. Of course, the concept of agility came from software development, but it now applies to all areas of a business. Agility motivates a team by allowing them to see the whole picture, not just the work of their function.

Agility provides teams with clarity, transparency and accountability and also means that something is produced at every sprint, giving members of the team a greater sense of achievement.

And at the end of a programme, a retrospective “show and tell” is a very simple way of assessing performance – did you do what you said you would? Was it successful?

Since lockdown, remote working – love it or hate it – has shown us that technolo-

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gy can bring us closer together as a team.

We can have remote meetings, share stories, like and encourage posts using collaboration tools. Remote meeting platforms also demonstrate the democratisation that technology can bring: remember, the CEO has the same size video tile as everyone else.

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believed – people who work from home actually work from home! In fact, I’ve had to put guardrails in place to make sure that I do switch off at the end of the day, that I do take a lunch break – and have encouraged my team to do the same – as we all get used to no commute and less structure.

I can’t write about the future of technology without talking about automation

DEBATE

Since lockdown, remote working – love it or hate it – has shown us that technology can bring us closer together as a team”

and motivation. Yes, we read about fear of losing jobs to robots but generally, the rise of automation will mean taking away repetitive tasks from team members, freeing up more time for creativity.

Having more time to do the job that you were hired for is incredibly motivating.

It’s a chance to understand the skills that our teams have, and the skills gaps we need to plug.

I predict that digital ways of working and improved technology will continue to change performance management in the future. I am an optimist and see technology not as a Big Brother, spying on our teams to make sure they are at their remote desks at 9am, but as tools and methods to enhance trust, productivity, creativity and care.

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DATA-ASINFRASTRUCTURE Digital Bulletin speaks with Aptum Technologies’ Alberto Da Anunciacao to get a view on how IT infrastructures will evolve as transformation demand skyrockets and why data will be all-important

AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

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“W

e are in unprecedented times”. Surely one of the most overused lines of 2020?

But it is, of course, correct. We have lived through an event lots of us never believed we’d live through. And many things have changed forever.

The phrase certainly rings true in the world of IT. Digital transformation in enterprise was already moving along at a rapid rate before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Now, as many technologies become mission critical to operations, organisations are fast-tracking digital change programmes to stay agile and reimagine different ways of working.

Pressure on IT teams and infrastructures has never been higher, with business leaders expecting to have the capacity to manage this change. Most modern infrastructures will have been pushed to their limits as remote working became an overnight normal and demands on applications soared.

A new study from Aptum Technologies, the Canadian firm specialising in solutions for hybrid environments, found that between March and June - the peak lockdown phase in most countries - 38% of businesses scaled infrastructure to meet new levels of demand. Their survey of senior IT professionals also revealed that nearly half (48%) of companies adopted cloud solutions to deliver critical services.

Decisions that probably would have taken months are being made in weeks. It’s a kind of speed that’s unheard of and leads me to believe there is going to be a huge amount of work compressed in a very short period of time” Alberto Da Anunciacao

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“It hasn’t been a quiet time at all,” Alberto Da Anunciacao, Aptum’s Chief Infrastructure Officer, tells Digital Bulletin.

“Businesses are adapting and really moving decisively. Decisions that probably would have taken months are being made in weeks. It’s a kind of speed that’s unheard of and leads me to believe there is going to be a huge amount of work compressed in a very short period of time.”

It certainly hasn’t been quiet either for Da Anunciacao; he was only appointed to the job in April, right in the midst of the pandemic, and was forced to familiarise himself with a new role and organisation during full lockdown.

The former Bell Canada VP has been brought in to oversee Aptum’s global IT

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infrastructure and managed IT capabilities. The company offers a range of data centre, cloud, hosting and connectivity solutions to enterprise, as well as managed and professional services. It works with more than 3,800 customers across North America, Latin America and Europe.

Given his extensive infrastructure background, Da Anunciacao is well positioned to assess the impact of COVID-19 on IT provision. He says the principal challenge thrown up, especially by the shift to remote working, is distributed technology.

“Normally you’d have a centralised architecture and design around how you operate your business from a technology standpoint, but now you have a distributed architecture,” he explains.

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The next wave of activity and innovation is based on data. But in order to do all of that, you need to make sure that the data is there and available” “With that comes a whole bunch of challenges, like ensuring your endpoints are secure and that data is being appropriately managed.

“But overall it’s a problem that can be solved and is being solved right now.

Where we’re heading is that technology will find a way to solve these problems, and organisations are going to be far more comfortable going forward.”

When discussing the optimum IT infrastructures for this post-pandemic era of rapid digital change, Da Anunciacao outlines how Chief Information Officers (CIOs) must first ensure a “rock-solid” foundation which delivers constant availability, and one that can scale and manage complex workloads.

“As a CIO, you actually get fired for infrastructure, right?” he asserts. “It becomes so incredibly visible to your internal stakeholders and customers when it fails or doesn’t work that it’s a massive issue. It’s like electricity going out.

“Our view of the world is that you first have to make sure the infrastructure is rock-solid, whether that’s in our data centres, on-premise for customers or in the public cloud, and that you’re able to scale up and scale down across those environments. Once that’s done, it gives the customer the opportunity to start driving meaningful value.”

By introducing the prospect of “meaningful value”, Da Anunciacao brings the conversation around to data. He is a firm believer in the power of data-as-infrastructure, an idea that Aptum embraces in its client relationships and in its delivery of products and services.

Data’s impact on the world is well-documented - the World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025 463 exabytes will be created each day globally - but it has become increasingly clear that enterprises can only realise data’s potential if their infrastructures are built to suit.

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tional data work, alongside the integration of tools to deliver business value, is essential. Only then, he says, will data become a real asset for CIOs going forward as they go about building larger and more agile environments.

“The next wave of activity and innovation is based on data. But in order to do all of that, you need to make sure that the data is there and available,” he explains.

“Firstly, you need to make sure that you’re protecting against a catastrophic failure, like ransomware. It’s vital to build a proper security infrastructure around 50

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that data. Then there are disaster recovery systems; they are all about how quickly and effectively you can get the business operating again [after a compromise], and minimising damage. Having a disaster recovery strategy is really no longer optional, given the value of the data.”

Data is now precious to CIOs. Da Anunciacao goes one step further and emphasises that technology leaders should get their data strategies in place first before deciding on their setup - flipping the traditional method of only gathering data from existing infrastructures.

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That strategy should then be tied into the wider business goals, as he goes on to describe.

“I’m thinking about being in our customer’s shoes,” he adds. “They have their business drivers, and they recognise that data is going to be critical. You’re going to need a strategy that looks like this: you’re going to run certain applications and data on bare metal in a facility, and then run certain things in the public cloud because the developers need access to microservices that are readily available on AWS or Google or Azure.

“Then you decide the type of scale you need, the type of recovery you need and all of these things. And then you’ve got to have a really solid data strategy that flows back from your business strategy.

At that point, organisations will get into a good place.”

Underpinning any data-led strategy should be sound data governance. Key to ensuring the right data is available to the right people at the right time, data governance is now being embraced for the business value it delivers and not just so organisations comply with data regulations.

Da Anunciacao says this is an area Aptum has focused heavily on with its customers during what he terms the “data explosion” of recent years. According to recent research, companies that have comprehensive data governance programmes show more than 30% greater confidence in their data accuracy.

“Whether it’s storing, moving, managing or protecting that data in your infrastructures, you’re going to have to make sure you’ve got the right compliance strategies,” he says. “I think the governance around data is absolutely critical. But it’s not something for the faint of heart. If you want the right level of compliance, do you want to build that yourself, or do you want to seek out a trusted partner?

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I think the governance around data is absolutely critical. But it’s not something for the faint of heart. If you want the right level of compliance, do you want to build that yourself, or do you want to seek out a trusted partner?�

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is why we at Aptum have really invested in that space.”

Data governance becomes even more important when automation and artificial intelligence are added to the mix.

While Da Anunciacao admits that Aptum hasn’t built any specific products or services in this area, he is fully aware that many of its customers are beginning to tap into these advanced technologies for their data-led infrastructures.

“I see it as an evolution of where we’re at today. But it’s exciting. There’s a lot of data floating around but a lot of companies have not figured out how to leverage it fully. As that day comes, organisations that adopt these toolsets sooner are going to drive competitive value and competitive differentiation.

Very few customers are leveraging that today but with the acceleration we’ve seen, I think this is going to happen in the next few years.”

Da Anunciacao is convinced by the capability of data to not only future-proof IT infrastructures, but to also help the economy emerge from the wreckage of the pandemic. He is adamant that businesses and sectors that had previously invested in data-led transformation are now a step ahead, evidence he says has been borne out in the stock market.

The example Da Anunciacao cites is Tesla, a data-first organisation that has

seen its value rise significantly over recent months.

“Whether you love the company, hate the company, love or hate Elon Musk, the reality is that the company has logged billions of miles of data to improve their cars. And they’re using that to achieve autonomous driving quicker, as an example,” he concludes. “Why are they so ahead of the curve? Relative to the other car manufacturers, they have been able to build a digital-first strategy and are able to take advantage of the data.

“Our view at Aptum is companies that harness data and embrace digital transformation will ultimately outmanoeuvre their peers.”

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BRAIN CORP

BRAIN CORP THE CLEAN TEAM H

Michel Spruijt, VP & GM, Brain Corp Europe, speaks to Digital Bulletin about what it takes to develop a 10,000-strong robotics fleet, building an operating system with machine learning capabilities and the company’s recent funding round

i Michel, thanks for speaking with us, can you begin by giving us an overview of Brain Corp and its main activities?

Brain Corp is an AI company creating transformative core technology for the robotics industry. Our corporate headquarters are based in San Diego, California, and we opened up a European headquarters in Amsterdam last year.

Instead of building robots from the ground up, our aim is to operate as the “Microsoft of robotics” and provide equipment builders with the AI and autonomy systems necessary to successfully produce their own robotic solutions. The company has over 10,000 BrainOS-powered cleaning machines

enabled or in use by end-customers such as Walmart and Kroger.

Could you tell us about BrainOS and its capabilities?

BrainOS is a commercial operating system for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).

BrainOS provides original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) with a comprehensive and scalable solution for robot production and deployment. The technology features everything from advanced autonomy capabilities and machine learning algorithms, to detailed diagnostics and a sophisticated cloud reporting system. Effectively, any company that wants to turn one of their machines into a robot can do so successfully with the help of our technology.

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How has COVID-19 had an impact on Brain Corp and the sectors it works in?

With cleaning being a major application of our technology, we’ve seen COVID-19 accelerate interest and usage of solutions equipped with BrainOS. The idea of “clean” has changed and become a new brand value. Companies must now effectively show their commitment to a more frequent, consistent cleaning programme and provide their employees with effective tools to get the job done and that’s where robots can really help.

BrainOS-powered cleaning machines have seen a usage increase of 24% in April 2020 compared to the same month last year and an 18% increase overall.

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What’s more, a significant percentage of this uptick (68%) is occurring during day time hours, showing that businesses are cleaning more frequently and operating the technology around the clock.

How do the robots you power interact with humans?

It’s always important to design new technologies with the end-user in mind. The autonomous cleaning solutions powered by our technology require a human in the loop to “teach” the machine initial routes and help it if it happens to get stuck. The training and set-up process is very easy, with anyone able to set-up and deploy quickly with no infrastructure requirements. Competitors in the field typically

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require more complicated guidance and involvement from a specialised engineering team. Most providers in this space have also elected to build a machine from the ground up vs. partnering with manufacturers who have been in the business for decades. In my opinion, this significantly limits their ability to scale, work efficiently in both autonomous and manual modes - which is often a practical advantage on site - and establish a high-functioning service network.

What are some of the challenges in developing a robotic fleet?

Getting a few robots to work effectively in a lab setting is one thing. Getting them to operate safely and smoothly in busy, dynamic environments at scale is an entirely different matter. Brain Corp has spent substantial time addressing and testing the huge number of scenarios and obstacles that may develop in real world settings. Robots powered by BrainOS are all embedded with an advanced understanding of their surroundings, largely due to this collective time in the field and overall “fleet experience”.

What’s more, Brain Corp’s clear focus is on developing and providing the very best software on the market. As mentioned, we are not in the business of building robots; instead, we’ve chosen to partner with best-in-class manufac-

Instead of building robots from the ground up, our aim is to operate as the ‘Microsoft of robotics’ and provide equipment builders with the AI and autonomy systems necessary to successfully produce their own robotic solutions” Michel Spruijt

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turers to successfully commercialise AMR technology. Our team of software engineers can work directly with OEMs who have specialised in the equipment business for a long time. By leveraging our respective areas of expertise, we’re able to create products that combine the highest level of innovation with the most respected industry brands.

What are the main trends and technology innovations in the robotics space?

Advances in chip and sensor technology

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have greatly enabled robot development and propelled the evolution of the AMR space. As these components mature alongside edge processing, we are able to run increasingly complex algorithms that lead to lower cost systems.

The low-latency 5G promise stands to enable a new wave of cloud computing to support robotics technologies. However, core autonomous capabilities such as obstacle detection and navigation should continue to be computed onboard to ensure the high levels of op-

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erational safety necessary in dynamic, public environments.

Which industry sectors do you believe have the most to gain from robotics?

While we’ve seen the value that automation can bring to the industrial space for several decades now, robotic applications in commercial verticals are just starting to gain traction. Agriculture, healthcare, logistics and retail, amongst others areas, are all seeing increased testing and adoption of robotic solutions.

How is Brain Corp leveraging machine learning to develop its robotics?

BrainOS-powered machines utilise a complex set of machine learning algorithms coupled with off-theshelf sensor suites in order to ensure smooth, safe performance. Machines map their environments when being trained and remember these routes when operating in autonomous mode.

When robots encounter obstacles or people, they effectively navigate around them and adapt the route

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Machines powered by BrainOS are always learning and improving - the machine you’re working with today will be a new and improved model in six months”

accordingly. What’s more, any edge cases encountered in the field (reflective glass, windy doorways) can be solved and applied to the entire BrainOS-powered fleet via cloud-based software updates. Machines powered

by BrainOS are always learning and improving - the machine you’re working with today will be a new and improved model in six months.

How do you believe robotics and the ecosystem around them will develop over the next three to five years?

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particularly healthcare, agriculture, and retail. Aside from the day-to-day tasks these robots complete (cleaning, delivery, crop watering, etc.) they can also be viewed through a broader lens - specifically that of “mobile IoT” hubs, collecting data and generating insights across a variety of use cases.

In the case of retail, these robots could conceivably measure room temperature, check for dangerous spills, scan shelves for inventory management - the possibilities are vast and still largely unknown to us. These additional capabilities could provide managers with valuable reporting used to further streamline operations.

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cellular connectivity will enable our portfolio to effectively expand.

Brain Corp recently announced a $37 million round of funding, how will the company utilise the funds?

Brain Corp’s recent funding round will be used to support sales and operations in new geographies and accelerate innovation in new applications for BrainOS.

As more companies adopt these innovations, we’ll likely see an increase in the use and consolidation of digital dashboards, allowing users to manage their staff, robot fleets, consumption, and cost all in one place in the most optimal way.

You recently announced a partnership with AT&T, could you tell us a bit about that deal and how it will help Brain Corp’s product offering?

AT&T and Brain Corp are working together to support data-rich IoT applications for autonomous mobile robots. As BrainOS powers additional form factors and applications, AT&T’s highly secure

It takes total funding to $160 million +, what are some of the benefits from having the likes of Softbank and Qualcomm Ventures as investors?

Softbank and Qualcomm have been instrumental in the company’s growth and fully support the vision of our CEO Dr. Eugene Izhekevich, who seeks to “make the lives of people safer, easier, more productive, and more fulfilling with the help of robots”.

What future plans do you have for your robotic products?

Brain Corp opened its European offices in 2019, so we’ll be focusing a large portion of our efforts on scaling our operations and supporting our manufacturing partners throughout the region. On top of that, we are poised for strong growth in additional verticals where autonomous mobile robots can add value - primarily delivery and retail shelf scanning.

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COVID-19 A GIFT FOR

CYBERCRIMINALS

Cybercriminals are using the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to hold people and businesses to ransom.

Digital Bulletin speaks to Dr. Kiri Addison, Head of Data Science for Threat Intelligence & Overwatch at Mimecast, to find out which scams to watch out for, the elevated threat for remote workers and how enterprise can better protect itself from online predators

AUTHOR: James Henderson

T

he COVID-19 pandemic has largely inspired people to come together to help fight against a once-in-a-generation threat. The same is also true of the technology sector, with some of its biggest companies collaborating to help organisations in both the public and private sectors in their efforts to contain and ultimately eradicate the virus.

But in times of trouble, there will always be a minority looking to use the situation for their own nefarious means, and coronavirus is no different.

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criminals have turned their attention to large-scale phishing scams related to COVID-19.

Between the months of January and March, researchers at cybersecurity firm Mimecast saw an increase of 27.85% in detections, with a total of 118.7 million in March alone. There is no evidence that it is a subsiding trend, with phishing threats being highly adapted and tailored to the COVID-19 pandemic and increasingly following what is topical in the news agenda.

Among the most common attacks are scams purporting to be from

the World Health Organization, phishing emails offering government advice on safety measures and airline refund scams for those who have booked holidays but are now unavailable to travel. “The development of the COVID-19 epidemic into a global pandemic has presented a unique once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for fraud and predation

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The development of the COVID-19 epidemic into a global pandemic has presented a unique oncein-a-lifetime opportunity for fraud and predation which cyber threat actors, both criminal and otherwise, have been quick to exploit to the fullest” Dr. Kiri Addison

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which cyber threat actors, both criminal and otherwise, have been quick to exploit to the fullest,” says Dr. Kiri Addison, Head of Data Scientist for Threat Intelligence & Overwatch at Mimecast.

“From furlough phishing campaigns, financial and tax refund scams to guidance on how to return to work safety, these are just some of the attacks that have been and still do have the potential to catch people out. It’s important that employers educate their staff on the threats that are out there and that they are in constant communication with their workforce.”

But educating teams of employees represents a huge challenge for enterprise at present, with the number of people working remotely at an unprecedented level. Recent research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) reported the average proportion of the workforce conducting their roles from home continuously was more than half, at 54%.

“Generally, when people are not in the office, they tend to be more relaxed, the comfort of home settings can lead to people letting their guards down – which is exactly what cyber actors are looking to exploit,” Addison comments.

“That’s why it’s important that enterprises focus on cybersecurity awareness training. Our research shows that

An example of a COVID-19 phishing scam disguised as a World Health Organization email enterprises that don’t utilise awareness training are five times more likely to click on malicious links than to those companies that do. The most effective training tends to be short, fun and engaging in order to help change security culture.�

There are many who now feel like the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to home working. So often viewed with suspicion, there is now a large-scale use case that shows most employees perform just as efficiently, if not more so, from home,

leading many companies to reconsider rigid working arrangements and expensive commercial rent agreements.

Many of the major tech giants have indicated that its staff, where possible, can continue to work from home indefinitely if they wish. Additional figures from the CIPD show that employers expect the proportion of people working from home on a regular basis to increase to 37% once the pandemic is over, rising from 18%, while the percentage of employees ISSUE 19

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that exclusively work from home is set to jump from 9% to 22%.

“The lockdown has radically transformed our relationship to work: there is no separation between the home and the office; personal and professional laptops and phones are substitutable.

Although workers shouldn’t be sharing sensitive data over WhatsApp or personal email accounts, the fact that their personal and business devices are interchangeable makes preventing this much harder,” Addison states.

“IT teams need to consider which communication services they want to sanction for secure work at home. They should strongly consider deploying a cloudbased web gateway as this plays the important role of integrating crucial security functions such as URL filtering, malware

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protection and data leak prevention.

“The cloud-based gateway is also especially useful as they are quick to deploy, easy to operate, infinitely scalable and perfectly designed to fit around distributed workforces. They keep employees secure.”

A direct result of the WFH trend has been an enormous spike in video conferencing tools, as teams have scrambled to keep the lines of communication open.

Once again, it is a pattern that is expected to endure; a report from Global Markets predicts that the video conferencing market will increase significantly in value over the next three years, from $14 billion this year to $50 billion in 2026, representing 50% year-on-year growth.

But such rapid adoption has tested the security and infrastructure capabilities of

MIMECAST

Although workers shouldn’t be sharing sensitive data over WhatsApp or personal email accounts, the fact that their personal and business devices are interchangeable makes preventing this much harder” these platforms. Zoom saw its number of daily users jump from 10 million in December to 200 million in March. But the platform was hit by a number of security and privacy issues, leading to its CEO, Eric Yuan, issuing a public apology, admitting that the pandemic had resulted in “challenges we did not anticipate when the platform was conceived.”

“Mimecast has observed a number of phishing attacks purporting to be from popular video conferencing tools,” says Addison. “Techniques used by a hacker may include receiving a meeting invite from a spoofed co-worker and once the link is clicked the malware is launched.

“On top of being extremely vigilant and cautious about such links, users typically hover the URL link without clicking it and see the actual links to see where they lead or what they are launching.

Video conferencing tools weren’t designed with security measures at the forefront of their mind, so the scope for malicious actors to infiltrate such plat-

forms is heightened. Always make sure any meeting is password enabled.”

Many security technologists will find themselves in increasingly challenging positions in recent months, with IT spending set to be cut at many companies - worldwide IT spending is expected to reach $3.5 trillion this year, a 7.3% drop from 2019, according to Gartner.

Over the same period, the spread of cyber threats is almost certain to grow, meaning many will have to make some difficult decisions.

Considering where CISOs should be thinking about prioritising their spending over the coming year, Addison states: “Brand spoofing is on the rise, so this is one area that needs more attention and resources dedicated to it. According to our State of Email Security Report, 48% of CISOs hold the budget for securing their organisation’s corporate brand from web or email spoofing, exploitation and impersonation and so it’s critical that CISOs look to put effective measISSUE 19

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ures in place to prevent such attacks happening, especially when reputation is everything in this day and age.

“Our research shows that the typical enterprise has an average of 75 solutions active at any one time. So, there is an issue around there about the return of investment and getting value for money for the solutions bought. It’s important that CISOs look to declutter their security environment and make sure they are getting the most out of solutions that they have invested in and that might require doing a full audit.

“CISOs will always have an important role to play but it’s true that the pandemic has highlighted their importance more than ever. CISOs need to consider themselves guardians of their company’s brand image, especially at a time when brand spoofing is so prominent.”

In recent months, we have seen hackers successfully target public sector institutions and private businesses alike with the goal being to receive ransom payments to hand back or unencrypt data. And while official advice is never to cave to demands, some organisations feel it is the lesser of two evils compared with losing vast datasets, or having them made public and risking huge levies by regulators.

In June, the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine paid 68

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a portion of the $1.14 million ransom that the attackers demanded in order to regain access to the encrypted servers.

Addison believes that these successes will ultimately fuel copycat attacks.

“Cybercriminals generally try to do the most minimum they need to, we still see quite often criminals trying to exploit old vulnerabilities that should have been patched up a long time ago. Organisations should proceed in auditing and reviewing their existing security infrastructure.

“We expect to see an increase and evolution of ransomware attacks, so now rather than encrypting or destroying your data, cybercriminals will be looking to make copies of your data and may threat-

MIMECAST

With the volume of threats that are coming in, unless you have huge teams of analysts, it won’t be possible for a human to analyse everything and detect everything – it will be massively important to invest in machine learning and AI to keep up with the latest threats”

en to release it and so we’ll see more of that as this is a current attack vector which is working well for them at the moment.

“Also, the continuation and evolution of malware as a service, making malware more widely available. They have skilled developers that are available to make rapid updates for the techniques that they are using.”

Concluding, Addison says that enterprise must take a multi-dimensional approach, blending best practice in training, technology and governance.

“With the volume of threats that are coming in, unless you have huge teams of analysts, it won’t be possible for a human to analyse everything and detect

everything – it will be massively important to invest in machine learning and AI to keep up with the latest threats.

“And as important as it is for businesses to think of alternative ways of tackling the problem, it’s also pivotal that enterprises look to layer up their solutions, making sure that they have coverage across all areas so that includes protection inside the perimeter and also securing outside of the perimeter. Organisations might consider pen-testing to see which solutions work best for them.

“As always, investing in education and upskilling your current workforce will prove to be crucial for effective defence and a deterrent of cyber attacks.”

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A LIFE IN TECH

A LIFE IN TECH

Jutta Horstmann, COO of online advertising software company eyeo, tells Digital Bulletin about 25 years in the technology industry, the people who have influenced her and her career highlights

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JUTTA HORSTMANN

T

he five words I would use to describe myself are: strategist, feminist, open source evangelist.

I was first attracted to working in the technology space in 1996 when the professor I worked for as a student-assistant asked me to hook up his telephone system to “that Internet”. I figured out what he aimed for, how to do it, and became completely hooked.

I started in first-level support, then system administration, then software development. This means I started off with acquiring an in-depth understanding of users’ problems with technology, which helped me to provide better fitting solutions for customers in the later stages of my technical career.

As a kid, my father gave me a headstart with providing me access to a computer when I was only four years old and introduced me to programming a year later.

As a young adult getting into tech, I benefitted the most from a network of tech women I participated in. I also got into a couple of open source communities, whose contributors inspired and supported me.

These individuals influenced my thinking about tech the most: Lawrence Lessig, Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Schneier, Edward Snowden, Richard M. Stallman, Linus Torvalds.

As a female tech leader, I also want to strongly highlight Sheryl Sandberg’s influence on how I approach my leadership roles.

When I think about when in my career I was happiest, I am lucky enough to be able to mention three highlights: In 2003, the success of the Linux on Desktop Usability Study I co-authored, and afterwards the rise of the Open Usability project.

In 2013, closing some larger deals with my own company and being able to grow staff beyond the first ten employees.

In 2020, finalising a major restructuring effort at eyeo (even during COVID-19), and now seeing its positive effects accumulate.

I deeply believe that technology must be used as a force of good and I am very happy that throughout my career I was always able to apply it that way.

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community need to weigh in whenever we can to make sure it is.

who can solve the problem, but without their joint efforts, it will never happen.

It is our responsibility to educate, to lobby for, to create and to apply technology in a sustainable, open, and accessible way.

People talk about how technology will have changed the world in 10 years’ time.

But no technological change will be of any value or matter if we do not change now how we act in the face of climate change.

Technology as a whole is not doing enough to attract women into the industry. As long as there are less than 50% women active in the industry - on all levels - it is not doing enough. It is also not a problem that can be solved by the industry alone.

Politics and society need to change to allow women equal opportunities, provide equal payment, and motivate girls for getting into STEM. At eyeo, we invested strongly in ensuring 50% women in leadership positions. Our next effort will focus on increasing the female ratio in our tech organisation.

The same is true of BAME representation from top to bottom in technology. As long as representation is not reflecting distribution in the population, technology is not doing enough.

I want to stress that the industry as well as the tech communities are responsible for creating and maintaining diversity. They are not the only ones 72

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We are responsible for changing the way we do business, which technology we create and how we use it, for becoming sustainable, and to weigh in with politics and society to try to avoid the worst.

The one piece advice I would give to aspiring technologists at the beginning of their career is: You are not your user.

Focus on understanding their needs and always providing value. eyeo is a very diverse company, so making sure that in a very diverse and international company everybody is well supported to cope with the crisis, was a major effort.

The one thing you would tell myself if I could go back in time and speak to myself would be: “This bitcoin thing is worth a closer look at.�

I am able to switch off with regular yoga and meditation practice.

JUTTA HORSTMANN

Monetisation on the internet is fundamentally flawed. Paywalls and ads don’t work, publishers are incentivised to create cheap content and clickbait headlines, advertisers need to be intrusive to stand out, solution providers are struggling. eyeo has disrupted online advertising by putting the users in control of their advertising experience.

Now we are creating a sustainable, fair ecosystem for all participants - by

creating and distributing ad blocking and monetisation technologies that can be implemented on a large scale, affecting hundreds of millions of users.

We understand that by giving users the choice over which ads they see, we can incentivise better advertising practices and create an ecosystem in which users have a more pleasant browsing experience and publishers can make more money in the long run with fewer and more high-quality ads.

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DIGITAL

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...

BLACK HAT USA 2020 AUGUST 01–06, 2020 Now in its 23rd year, Black Hat USA is the world’s leading information security event, providing attendees with the very latest security research, development and trendsBlack Hat USA virtual will offer a robust lineup of content including nearly 80 Trainings, 90 Briefings, community and sponsored programming, a virtual Business Hall, Arsenal program, PWNIE Awards, CISO Summit, and networking opportunities. With the shift to an all-virtual event, information security 74

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professionals can participate in the same high-quality experience they have come to expect from a Black Hat event.

ENTERPRISE CONNECT 2020 AUGUST 03–06, 2020 Enterprise communications and collaboration decision-makers and business leaders face daunting new challenges: Emerging technologies like the Cloud, Team Collaboration and Speech Technologies promise to disrupt the environment, while end users and customers continue to demand new

AUGUST – OCTOBER

tools and media. One event provides you with the in-depth, objective, vendor-neutral expertise you need: Enterprise Connect.

Whether you need to upgrade or replace a legacy system, or you’re looking to more fully deploy and integrate next-gen communications, everything at Enterprise Connect focuses on one overriding goal: To help you maximise your investments in communications and collaboration systems, services, apps and networks.

INTERNET OF THINGS WORLD AUGUST 11–13, 2020 IoT World Virtual is a new, online platform bringing together the global IoT community to transform business in the new digital world. As industries and businesses develop towards a new normal, there is no longer a question of if to digitally transform, but how quickly can it happen.

IoT provides the foundations for transformation, by utilising next generation networks to collect data from mass connected devices and drive actionable business insights, operational efficiencies and data driven product offerings through AI. IoT World Virtual showcases organisations leading the way in IoT adoption, enabling them to propel into a new world of business quicker, with more accurate data, ISSUE 19

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ensuring their business can thrive through new technology adoptions.

KUBECON + CLOUDNATIVECON EUROPE 2020 AUGUST 17–20, 2020 The Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s flagship conference gathers adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities virtually in August. Join Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, CoreDNS, containerd, Fluentd, Jaeger, Vitess, TUF, OpenTracing, gRPC, CNI, Notary, NATS, Linkerd, Helm, Rook, Harbor, etcd, Open Policy Agent, CRI-O, TiKV, CloudEvents, Falco, Argo & Dragonfly as the community gathers for four days to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing. You will have the ability to network with other attendees, attend presentations with live Q&A, interact with sponsors real-time, and much more.

INTELLIGENT HEALTH 2020 SEPTEMBER 10–11, 2020 The Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s flagship conference gathers adopters and technologists from leading open 76

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source and cloud native communities virtually in August. Join Kubernetes, Prometheus, Envoy, CoreDNS, containerd, Fluentd, Jaeger, Vitess, TUF, OpenTracing, gRPC, CNI, Notary, NATS, Linkerd, Helm, Rook, Harbor, etcd, Open Policy Agent, CRI-O, TiKV, CloudEvents, Falco, Argo & Dragonfly as the community gathers for four days to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing. You will have the ability to network with other attendees, attend presentations with live Q&A, interact with sponsors real-time, and much more.

GARTNER SECURITY & RISK MANAGEMENT SUMMIT SEPTEMBER 14–17, 2020 In today’s risk reality, you have to anticipate new cybersecurity threats, understand the ongoing implications of COVID-19, deal with disruptive technologies and build resilience in a world where nothing is certain. The virtual Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit 2020 is the one conference where you can hear independent experts on what matters most now and how to prepare for the new normal.

You’ll learn how to create agile security and IT risk management plans to man-

AUGUST – OCTOBER

age the risk inherent in digital business and be better prepared for the next global shock.

VMWORLD SEPT 28–OCT 01, 2020 As a digital event the week of Sept. 28, VMworld 2020 will enable remote participation and collaboration from anywhere

in the world. VMware is committed to ensuring that the digital event reflects the VMworld experience that so many in the industry have come to know and love. In this new format, attendees can still hear about innovative new technology solutions, perspectives from VMware executives, dive into educational and technical content, and engage with experts across the industry ecosystem.

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THE CLOSING BULLETIN

Writing exclusively for Digital Bulletin, Patricia Hume, CEO, Canvas GFX, argues passionately that technology is neglecting some of its most capable talent because of ageism and outlines how it must be tackled

A

s a woman who has spent over 40 years working in the technology sector, my career path has not always been straightforward or smooth. On many occasions I have had to challenge preconceptions about gender and fight against the tide to progress and seize opportunities. These are experiences I have no doubt many of my female peers would recognise.

But I was always optimistic, and I’m pleased to see that today there are so many more high profile and well-established female role models within the sector for younger women to look up to and emulate. I am fortu78

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nate enough to mentor some younger female CEOs and their fierce intellect and drive is truly impressive.

That said, I have come to realise over time that, once you overcome one hurdle, another is often waiting just around the corner. After 30 years in business and having achieved seniority, I felt I had won my battle. After 40 years I came up against a new one: Ageism.

In a sector often presented as being dominated by young, high-profile entrepreneurs, ageism is particularly prevalent. Research from CWJobs for example, identified that well over a third (41%) of IT and tech-sector work-

PATRICIA HUME

ers in the UK have experienced age discrimination in the workplace - which is significantly higher than the average of 27% across other industries.

The study also revealed that tech sector workers are confronted with ageism at an earlier stage in their careers than in other industries. The average across the workforce is 41 years old. In the IT and technology sector, according to this research, ageism kicks in at 29! When you consider that according to data from the Office of National Statistics, two-thirds of people working in the UK technology industry are over 35, there is clearly a disconnect to be dealt with.

There is, of course, a well-worn narrative about older age people strug-

gling to grasp modern technology.

And during the past few months of lockdown, the elderly relative failing to navigate a Zoom call has become a comic stable. But I don’t buy it. And, particularly within the technology sector itself, it’s simply not true. To the contrary, I have found that the longer you spend surrounded by technology the more open, receptive and adaptive you become to change and learning.

I am also convinced that people with more years of experience in the technology industry have a much wider understanding of the impact technological innovations have had over time and are well positioned to offer valuable insights on how tech can be best implemented,

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improved and leveraged to drive future efficiencies and positive outcomes.

One of the biggest strengths of technology is that it makes a wealth of data, much of it complex, accessible, understandable and actionable.

Combine that with the benefit and wisdom of experience, it becomes even more powerful.

Over the last five years or so I have had first-hand experience of the technology sector’s age bias. During that time I have been given unvarnished judgements that I was too old to take on specific positions and I’ve had 80

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doors closed in front of me.

Fortunately, I have been able to work hard and create other avenues and opportunities for myself, but I know that not everybody will have that possibility open to them. This is why I have concluded that ageism can be a silent career killer. And, at a time in our collective lives when the value and importance of diversity has never been more prominent, we need to include ageism in the conversation.

There needs to be more education on the value of age diversity and the benefits it can bring not only to

PATRICIA HUME

I have been given unvarnished judgements that I was too old to take on specific positions and I’ve had doors closed in front of me�

the technology industry, but across all sectors. The more time people spend in collaborative environments, the more likely they are to be inclusive and the more they will benefit.

A well-rounded team is considerably better placed to deliver the best possible service to an increasingly varied customer base.

I strongly believe that supporting each other and networking is vital. We should all network more; it helps unite interests, promotes different cultures and build strong businesses. There are significant benefits to be gained

from joining or developing networks that empower and enable employees of all ages.

Everyone can learn from somebody else and making new connections can open doors and provide a great deal of value throughout your career.

Perhaps most important of all, It behoves and benefits everyone - whatever their age - to ensure that ageism is eradicated. After all, the best case scenario is that, one day, you’re going to be the oldest person in the room.

How do you want to be treated when that day comes?

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