Digital Bulletin - Issue 24 - January 2021

DIGITAL BULLETIN Issue 24 | Jan ’21

GREEN FLAG THE ROAD TO TRANSFORMATION The architects of Green Flag’s five-year technology programme discuss the UK breakdown recovery provider’s ambitions to be the market leader and offer even more for its customers

JAMES HENDERSON Content Director

T

he year may be drawing to a close - and for many that will be a cause for celebration - but there is no slowing down at Digital Bulletin as we come bearing gifts in the form of another packed issue!

Our cover feature this month - and what a cover it is, by the way - takes a deep dive into a technology transformation programme at one of the UK’s biggest and most popular roadside recovery businesses, Green Flag.

The business is slap bang in the middle of a five-year initiative that has been created to fundamentally change Green Flag from a traditional financial services outfit into something that more closely resembles a mobile and agile fintech.

In the piece, Dean Keeling, Managing Director at the company, tells us the programme has been put in place to future-proof Green Flag.

“We need to now make this generational leap, into having an operating model that’s fit for purpose for what the next 10 years are all about,” he says.

Elsewhere, we have a number of other standout stories and interviews for you, including an exclusive conversation with Rick Baldridge, who recently moved into the CEO seat at communications giant Viasat.

It’s a fantastic feature that explores the recent reshuffle in the boardroom, its acquisition of Euro Broadband Infrastructure and how its new satellite constellation will bring affordable connectivity to many of the world’s developing areas.

“We are excited about bringing connectivity to villages so we can bring educational content, healthcare, commerce, banking transactions, and more, into markets where people have had to travel, and many times by foot to other regions to get stuff done,” Baldridge says.

You’ll also find a bumper-sized debate this month, where no fewer than nine industry experts talk about the technologies and trends that they believe will go some way to defining 2021.

For all of that and much more, read on and have yourselves an enjoyable festive period and a Happy New Year.

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

Green Flag’s Jeremy Bristow talks to Digital Bulletin about the company’s multi-year technology transformation programme

INSIDE VIEW

CONTENTS

22 CASE STUDY

GREEN FLAG Driving a technology transformation

08

7

MONTH IN REVIEW NEWS, VIEWS AND ANALYSIS

CONNECTIVITY VIASAT An exclusive interview with new CEO, Rick Baldridge

50

60 FUTURE

DEBATE Our expert panel on the tech trends that will shape 2021

96

DATA INTELLIGENCE REDIS LABS The world’s fastest unicorn

76

0

IT SERVICES

RACKSPACE Simon Bennett on his new role as Rackspace’s CTO for EMEA

104 A LIFE IN TECH

Louise Lunn shares her knowledge and life lessons

86 108 SECURITY

OKTA Fighting the rising threat of deepfakes

CLOSING BULLETIN

An exclusive column from CGI’s Director of Digital Transformation, Sumant Kumar

MONTH IN REVIEW

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

NEWS 8

DIGITAL BULLETIN

NEWS UPDATE

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

E

S

alesforce is to buy Slack for $27.7bn. The deal marks its biggest-ever acquisition and puts it head-to-head with Microsoft in the remote working and collaboration space. Slack has 12.5m users but has struggled to compete with Microsoft Teams. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff called the deal a “match made in heaven”, while Stewart Butterfield, Slack co-founder, said “the opportunity is massive”.

Technology workforce development company Pluralsight is to be acquired

by Vista Equity Partners in a deal worth $3.5bn. Pluralsight provides technology workforce development solutions, including skills intelligence, skills development and engineering management capabilities. Pluralsight Skills and Pluralsight Flow, are used by more than 17,000 customers, including 70% of Fortune 500 companies.

The European Union’s antitrust regulators have conditionally approved Google’s buyout of Fitbit.

The $2.1bn acquisition was under scrutiny because of anti-competition and data concerns. But Google has pledged not to hinder rivals, while it

will also not use Fitbit-gathered data in advertising. The rules will apply for a decade. Google has previously said “the deal is about devices, not data”.

Hyundai Motor Group is to acquire controlling interest in Boston Dynamics, valued at $1.1bn, with the goal of “advancing robotics and mobility to realise progress for humanity”. The robotics technologies will lend synergies to autonomous vehicles and smart factories, and will create a robotics value chain ranging from robot component manufacturing to smart logistics solutions.

Aurora Innovation, the autonomous vehicle startup backed by Amazon, has reached an agreement with Uber to buy its autonomous vehicle business unit, Advanced Technologies Group (ATG). CNBC said the

ISSUE 24

9

MONTH IN REVIEW

deal values ATG at approximately $4bn, and will see Uber invest $400m into Aurora, which will give it a 26% stake in the combined company. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO, will also join the Aurora board.

Cisco is forking out $730m for UK cloud communications firm IMImobile.

The acquisition is designed to improve Cisco’s customer experience with the use of AI across customer journeys.

IMImobile’s software and services cover social, messaging and voice. The deal is set to close in the first quarter of 2021, when the IMImobile team will join Cisco’s Contact Center unit.

Cybersecurity company NortonLifeLock has agreed to pay $360m to buy Avira from Investcorp Technology Partners. Avira provides a consumer-focused portfolio of cybersecurity and privacy products and technologies.

Upon deal close, Avira CEO Travis Witteveen and CTO Matthias Ollig will join the NortonLifeLock leadership team.

Viasat is to acquire networking tech company RigNet in a deal worth $222m. The comms giant says RigNet’s solutions will help it deliver broadband to hard-to-reach locations, while also allowing it to extend into different industries. “We are accelerating the diversification of our connectivity portfolio,” said Viasat CEO Rick Baldridge.

10

DIGITAL BULLETIN

FUNDING Software startup Zenoti has raised $160m from a new funding round, giving it unicorn status. The company delivers SaaS solutions to the salon and spa industries, combining ERP and CRM tools. It has around 12,000 customers in more than 50 countries, and is now valued in excess of $1bn.

Advent International led the round, with involvement from Tiger Global and Steadview Partners.

Healthcare analytics software developer LeanTaaS has landed a Series D funding round of $130m. LeanTaaS’s main predictive analytics software links up patients and clinicians with assets such as operating rooms, beds, clinics and infusion chairs. Its resource utilisation software is used in over 300 hospitals in the USA. The funding round was led by Insight Partner, and involved Goldman Sachs.

NEWS UPDATE

ClickUp has pocketed $100m from a Series B funding round. The startup, which was only founded three years ago, has created a productivity platform now used by over 200,000 teams worldwide. This round, led by Canadian-based venture fund Georgian, values ClickUp at $1bn. Google, Nike and Uber are among the businesses that use ClickUp. The startup recently launched its new mobile app.

Wiz, a cloud security startup founded by former Microsoft senior engineers, has emerged from stealth with a $100m funding round. Sequoia Capital is among those to have poured cash into the firm, which is aiming to reinvest cloud security. It says it can onboard enterprise clients in just 15 minutes. The company only began work nine months ago but Wiz support is already available for AWS and Azure.

Digital radar company Uhnder has raised $45m, taking its finding to date to $145m. The round was led by Uhnder’s newest customer and partner, Sensata Technologies, with partici-

pation by new and existing investors.

Sensata intends to use Uhnder’s digital imaging radar chip in applications for markets where they are a key supplier, including mining, agriculture, aerospace, and construction.

Firebolt has emerged from stealth with $37m in funding which it says it will use to “redesign the cloud data warehouse experience”. Firebolt says it is able to deliver the fastest analytics performance – up to 182 times faster than other data warehouses. The funding included participation from Zeev Ventures, TLV Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Angular Ventures.

Orca Security has been boosted by another funding round. The security startup, which offers complete visibility across cloud environments, raised $20m only in May. Now it has landed an additional $55m from a Series B round led

by ICONIQ Growth. Orca was founded in 2019 but has raised more than $82m since. It offers security and compliance for major cloud providers AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

ISSUE 24

11

MONTH IN REVIEW

MOVERS AND SHAKERS An uncharacteristically quiet month in the personnel department in December.

Arvind Krishna has been elected as IBM’s chairman. The tech firm’s CEO, who replaced Ginni Rometty in April, will now also succeed Rometty as chairman. Rometty is retiring at the end of the year but will continue to consult for IBM. Krishna has been with the company for more than 30 years.

12

DIGITAL BULLETIN

As CEO, he has already announced the spin-off of IBM’s $19bn Managed Infrastructure Services business.

Nutanix has appointed Rajiv Ramaswami as President and CEO. Ramaswami will succeed co-founder Dheeraj Pandey, who previously announced his plans to retire as CEO of Nutanix upon the appointment of a successor. During his 30 year career,

NEWS UPDATE

Ramaswami has held senior executive roles at industry leaders including VMware, Broadcom, Cisco, and Nortel, having begun his career at IBM. Nokia’s executive reshuffle continues apace with the news that long-serving CTO and head of Bell Labs Marcus Weldon is leaving the organisation. He tweeted: “After 25 years, 11 as CTO and almost eight as president of Bell Labs,

I have decided it is time to seek pastures new and hand the reins over with a peaceful transfer of power.” CMO Barry French will also be leaving at the end of the year.

Stay right up to date with the latest news shaping the enterprise technology sector with The Bulletin, available at digitalbulletin.com ISSUE 24

13

MONTH IN REVIEW

A force to be reckoned with?

Salesforce made a blockbuster announcement in December after agreeing a $27.7 billion deal to buy Slack. Digital Bulletin speaks to four industry experts to get the intel behind one of the year’s biggest stories

AUTHOR: James Henderson

14

DIGITAL BULLETIN

NEWS ANALYSIS

O

n the first day of the last month of 2020, Salesforce revealed that it had agreed terms on the biggest software acquisition of the year to snap up collaboration platform Slack for an eye-watering $27.7 billion. It is a price that raised eyebrows across the technology world, but Salesforce appears convinced of Slacks’s value as it maps out a path in “the all-digital, work-from-anywhere world”, as described by its founder and CEO Marc Benioff.

It represents the most expensive deal that Salesforce has ever brokered and brings together two companies with one common target - Microsoft. In 2016, Microsoft was rumoured to be considering a bid to buy Slack, but instead opted to build its own workplace collaboration tool, Microsoft Teams.

At the time, Slack welcomed the competition, taking out a full page advert in the New York Times to mark Micro-

Angela Ashenden, CCS Insight

soft’s arrival into the space with some “friendly advice”. But with the might of Microsoft behind it, Teams has left Slack in its shadow and boasts more than 115 million daily users - a number supercharged by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For its part, Salesforce has had its own run-ins with Microsoft; the companies went head-to-head for the acquisition of LinkedIn, with Salesforce ultimately losing out. Salesforce has said that it plans to combine Slack with Salesforce Customer 360, its CRM platform and an area where it completes with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. If passed by regulators - and there is no reason to think it won’t be - the acquisition will bring to a conclusion a years long search by Salesforce, during which it has considered buying a number of platforms, including Twitter in 2016.

“At $27.7 billion, this is a huge acquisition to wrap up 2020, and highlights the importance to Salesforce of extending its reach

Monica Barton, Winston & Strawn ISSUE 24

15

MONTH IN REVIEW

Matt Watts, NetApp to all the employees within its customers’ organisations,” says Angela Ashenden, Principal Analyst, Workplace Transformation CCS Insight. “Salesforce says that Slack will become the new interface for its solutions, indicating a shift towards a more flexible experience for users that adapts to their different processes and workflows, underpinned by collaboration.

“Salesforce has long been eyeing the employee collaboration opportunity as far back as 2010 when it launched Chatter, later followed by Community Cloud, but neither really provided that extended reach outside sales.

Its acquisition of Quip in 2016 was another step in this direction, but Quip hasn’t really expanded its reach within customers either.”

With its efforts to build its own collaboration platform proving fruitless, the importance of finding the right external solution has been brought into sharper 16

DIGITAL BULLETIN

Simon Haighton-Williams, Adaptavist focus by the pandemic. The pace at which workforces are changing their behaviour meant there was no longer any time to waste, according to Matt Watts, EMEA Tech Evangelist at NetApp. “I think that the pandemic and our increased need to collaborate remotely probably made Salesforce realise they had to do something sooner rather than later and Slack is a solid application and does have a pretty strong user base already. It just goes to show the massive value of data and increasingly making sure this data is in the right place at the right time so that people can get the most value from it, and increasingly this data will be stored in multiple clouds.”

What is clear is that Salesforce sees the integration of Slack - and introducing its millions of daily users to its wider ecosystem - as being key to getting vast numbers of users to utilise the rest of its enterprise application portfolio through

NEWS ANALYSIS

seamless integrations. This could help eat into Microsoft’s dominant position in the SaaS market, although there are a number of other companies that Salesforce is also competing against.

“In the world of software interfaces, companies can tap into specialised services without buying a single bundle of software,” says Monica Barton, Partner at Winston & Strawn. “In the era of a consumerisation of IT, Slack plays a unique role allowing employees to access a suite of services – leading their employers to pay for more full featured versions of the service for their employees later on. The approach opposite to Microsoft - offers Salesforce

a tool in its competition with Microsoft.

“Additionally, the acquisition allows for greater opportunities to sell bundled deals and step up against its competitors. Where Salesforce sells its software, using communication software like Slack is complementary, which is likely to open more opportunities for Salesforce to sell bundled deals and to step up against its competitors, which are Microsoft, SAP and Oracle.”

Barton says the blockbuster deal also opens up more opportunities for Salesforce in the customer relationship management (CRM) space. “If the integration of Slack is done effectively and it gives product innovation more weight, it

ISSUE 24

17

MONTH IN REVIEW

can use Slack to become the dominant player in the customer relationship management software, where Microsoft is a distant challenger.

“Microsoft is progressing in communication software with Teams and already has a CRM software, Microsoft Dynamics.

Salesforce competes with Microsoft’s CRM SaaS applications and the opportunities to sell bundled deals will definitely foster Salesforce’s ability to step up in the competition with Microsoft.”

If Salesforce is better for having Slack on-board, then the reverse is also certainly true. Having once welcomed Microsoft’s Teams rival into the collaboration space with what some might now look back on 18

DIGITAL BULLETIN

as an act of hubris, it has seen Teams growth significantly outstrip its own. But with the might of Salesforce now on its side, it will hope it can start making up some of that lost ground.

“The Slack app ecosystem hasn’t been maximised for monetisation as Salesforce’s ecosystem has been, and bringing these modern tools to the Salesforce’s user base is an obvious opportunity for growth,” comments Adaptavist CEO Simon Haighton-Williams.

“I think the fact that they weren’t able to accelerate growth at the same level as their competitors during the pandemic just as their tools should have become critical was a real awakening. Microsoft

NEWS ANALYSIS

Teams was a very strong adversary and they were able to take market share and stunt Slack’s growth. Teaming with Salesforce to go head-to-head with Microsoft puts it in a much stronger position.”

“Slack still has some considerable points of differentiation over Teams,” says Ashenden. “But the effects of the pandemic and the shift to remote working have made the competition with Microsoft even tougher, especially given Microsoft Teams’ strength in video meetings, an area that has become business critical this year.

“With strong ambitions, Slack now needs a way to step up its market reach and product investment, but doing that as an independent can be very challenging.

Salesforce could provide a great platform for Slack and has plenty of experience and success in integrating major acquisitions, which would give Slack’s customers confidence if the purchase does go ahead.”

NetApp’s Watts says companies such as his own are an illustration of the opportunities Salesfroce will look to leverage. “Microsoft with Teams has a pretty healthy lead over Slack in terms of active users right now but there’s a lot of companies that use Salesforce today that could be convinced to start using Slack as their collaboration platform, especially if the integrations are good and offer powerful new capabilities. Then once you’ve got people onto Slack you can start to upsell them on the rest of the Salesforce portfolio, that creates opportunities for Tableau for example.

“It’s about creating a collaboration platform that’s integrated with the rest of the Salesforce portfolio. If you take my company for example, we use Teams and many of us also use Slack, but we also use a bunch of other tools that these don’t really integrate with, we use Salesforce, Tableau, Zoom and many more.

There are many companies like mine and it’ll be companies like us that will be a big focus for Salesforce once the integrations start to happen.”

The talk of bundling and integrations of Slack in the wider Salesforce ISSUE 24

19

MONTH IN REVIEW

offering has the added dimension of an anti-competition complaint Salesforce made to the European Union in June 2020 over Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with its Office365 suite. If Salesforce intends to do something similar with Slack, that would appear to spell the end of that case.

“I think this changes things pretty significantly, at the heart of the antitrust case from Slack is that Microsoft unfairly 20

DIGITAL BULLETIN

bundles Teams with its cloud productivity suite,” says Watts. “I think that one of the ways that Salesforce will try to increase the usage of Slack will also be to bundle it with their productivity tools.

I’m not a legal expert so this is just my opinion but I would think it would be hard to continue with an antitrust motion that might also be the way that Salesforce themselves attempt to increase the adoption of Slack across the industry.”

NEWS ANALYSIS

With the announcement less than a month old, Haighton-Williams says we should already be considering where Salesforce will look next as it seeks to close the gap to its rivals.

“The interesting question will be who does Salesforce buy next?

That will give you a signal as to how they look at their larger strategy. Could it be GitHub or maybe Asana? That would be a strong signal that they’re

really moving to service productdriven enterprises.

“It also builds a worthy third foe outside of Google and Microsoft in the battle for the future of work. It’s often been Google, Microsoft, and everybody else, with showings from Facebook and even Dropbox. Salesforce and Slack aren’t on the level with the two giants just yet, but they are certainly now approaching in their rearview mirror.”

ISSUE 24

21

CASE STUDY

22

DIGITAL BULLETIN

GREEN FLAG

TECH TO THE RESCUE Already one of the biggest and most popular roadside recovery businesses in the UK, Green Flag is reconstructing its technology and operating model to offer an even better service to its customers.

Managing Director Dean Keeling, along with Chief Technology Officer Shakeel Butt and Chief Product Manager Jeremy Bristow, tell Digital Bulletin about transforming the company into an “agile fintech� and why it is laser-focused on data and talent

PROJECT DIRECTOR: Callum Hornigold AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer VIDEOGRAPHER: Fraser Harrop PHOTOGRAPHER: Krystian Data

ISSUE 24

23

CASE STUDY

E

very driver has been there. A stuttering sound normally comes first, or a flashing dashboard warning.

Then you slow, and slow more. Stop. We all expect our vehicles to be bulletproof reliable, to never let us down. But of course they’re not, and they do.

In 2019, vehicle breakdowns in England hit a five-year high. Highways England recorded a 14.8% jump in breakdowns on the country’s motorways and main roads over a 12-month period, compared to the previous year. As the average age of cars on the road increases, the need for reliable breakdown cover has never been higher.

In the UK, competition in the roadside recovery space is fierce. The sector’s main providers constantly look to chip away at each other’s customer bases by evolving 24

DIGITAL BULLETIN

their pricing and services. In times of often acute need, drivers stranded next to their broken-down vehicles want to be back on the road as soon as possible, and with minimum fuss. It is truly a customer-centred industry.

And Green Flag is right in the middle of it. The third-biggest provider of roadside recovery in the UK, Green Flag - part of insurance giant Direct Line Group - has more than 3.5 million members. Its approach differs from that of its closest competitors, The AA and RAC, in that it utilises a network of over 250 businesses and 4,000 technicians to rescue its customers. The model works: Green Flag’s Net Promoter Score, the index that measures the willingness of customers to recommend products or services,

GREEN FLAG

is in the high 70s. A score above 50 is normally considered “excellent”, with 80 “world-class”.

Yet as Green Flag prepares to mark 50 years of 24/7 service in 2021, its determination to be even better has never been more apparent. Right now, the company is in the middle of a five-year change programme: it wants to transform from a traditional financial services business into an agile and ambitious fintech. It wants its customer experience to be faster, simpler and better.

By overhauling its technology and putting data at its core, Green Flag is aiming to be the biggest and the best.

––– In April 2017, Dean Keeling walked through the doors at Green Flag as Managing Director. He found a successful business, a roadside recovery provider with a solid customer base in the UK and a growing reputation. But as a corporate leader with experience in digital and IT modernisation, he also recognised that Green Flag’s incumbent technology was a problem.

Straddled with on-premise infrastructure built for legacy monolithic databases, Green Flag was in no position to improve the quality of the service it delivered to its subscribers, who were increasingly

ISSUE 24

25

CASE STUDY

Fundamentally, Green Flag is and always has been a good company. It’s got a great model, we’ve got people who are passionate about customers, and we go the extra mile. But I think it’s fair to say we’ve done that with [technological] capabilities that are 20, and in some cases, 30 years old” Dean Keeling

26

DIGITAL BULLETIN

demanding a more personalised experience through digital channels. After assessing Green Flag’s model, Keeling quickly decided that change was necessary, as he explains to Digital Bulletin.

“Fundamentally, Green Flag is and always has been a good company,” he says. “It’s got a great model, we’ve got people who are passionate about customers, and we go the extra mile. But I think it’s fair to say we’ve done that with [technological] capabilities that are 20, and in some cases, 30 years old. Really, we need to now make this generational leap, into having an operating model that’s fit for purpose for what the next 10 years are all about.”

To that end, Green Flag set about a root-and-branch overhaul, looking not just at its base technology but also the makeup of its teams and the design of its processes. On the tech side, at the end of a comprehensive due diligence process, Keeling and Green Flag’s leadership team made an important decision: it was to leave behind its legacy IT and lay foundations for a digital future in the form of a completely new serverless platform based out of AWS. In explaining the decision, Shakeel Butt, Green Flag’s Chief Technology Officer, says he wants technology to become the “lifeblood” of the organisation.

Ultimately, he sees a scalable, cloudbased platform as essential for Green Flag to be able to meet changing

GREEN FLAG

In Partnership: Green Flag and Contino To accelerate its technology programme, Green Flag partnered with Contino, an engineering-led technical consultancy with specialism in cloud transformation

ISSUE 24

27

Digital Transformation Starts Here contino.io

We Advise

Assessing your maturity and creating a cutting-edge strategy to help you succeed

We Build

Building everything from initial lighthouse projects to enterprise-grade platforms and products

We Upskill

Giving your people the skills they need to be competitive in a cloud-native world

“Working with Contino has enabled us to take a giant step away from our old legacy systems and make a fresh start in the cloud. We now have a delivery pipeline fit for a modern digital business and are making great strides in building up a set of application teams to match. Best of all, these developments are already helping deliver a fundamentally better service to our customers.�

Jeremy Bristow, Chief Product Manager, Green Flag

CASE STUDY

business and customer needs.

“I want the solution to remove technology challenges from the table,” he says. “What I don’t want is for us to come up with a new idea down the line and we can’t do it because of technology. You ultimately need the flexibility to pivot, and while you do have a sense of direction for the next five, eight or 10 years, you must recognise that true business value comes from the agility of being able to take a sharp left turn two years into that roadmap.”

The roadmap started in earnest at the end of 2018. To support its technological shift, Green Flag partnered with Contino, 30

DIGITAL BULLETIN

an engineering-led technical consultancy with specialism in cloud transformation.

Contino helped Green Flag map out its plan, and ultimately build and launch its platform inside only five weeks. It also supported its early-stage recruitment and worked side by side with Green Flag’s people to train them on AWS best practices and cloud-native working.

“I had some very senior Contino engineers on the shop floor, embedded in scrum teams, actually working with permanent Green Flag employees, completely seamlessly,” says Butt. “So that was very valuable, because actually

GREEN FLAG

In Partnership: Green Flag and ECS Green Flag enlisted the help of ECS, a digital transformation consultancy which has a long-standing partnership with AWS, to support its roll-out of cloud telephony platform Amazon Connect

ISSUE 24

31

Become customer-first with ECS.

Being customer-first is part technical setup, part mindset and most importantly, the resilience to change.

Sustainability, diversity and customer service will define the successful enterprises of the next decade. But with changing customer behaviour, CX strategies are having to look beyond traditional methods.

Omni-customers leave behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs.

These help you understand why they get in touch and where your CX strategy needs attention. But too few organisations are leveraging this data effectively.

ECS is a digital transformation specialist, trusted by the world’s most heavily regulated enterprises. ECS helps you get closer to your customers, gain more value from your data, innovate faster and optimise costs. All with a single, integrated approach.

Green Flag approached ECS to help accelerate the build of their strategic platform — Amazon Connect.

Within months, ECS had pushed the new customer-first platform live. Green Flag now has a completely programmable, cloudbased telephony platform that is responsive to its customers’ needs. It has revolutionised how Green Flag does business.

Become customer-first with ECS.

omnicustomer.co.uk Transform your CX strategy today hello@ecs.co.uk

“

ECS played a core role for Green Flag in being able to help us envisage what our telephony capabilities could be and how we enhance our end-toend customer journeys.

Dean Keeling, Managing Director, Green Flag

CASE STUDY

it means that it’s one team and we’re all pulling in the same direction. Very quickly Contino was able to help with accelerating our build of pipelines, test automation, infrastructure-as-code, and then hand that over to the new resources as they were being onboarded.”

The teams had a lot to get up to speed with. Green Flag’s new architecture was based on standalone microservices to enable an ongoing “build-and-run” approach to software development. It was also fundamental to the business agility Butt was so keen to introduce; with microservices, he says, making changes to only small components means less risk and faster deployments.

With well-defined APIs joining the dots, 34

DIGITAL BULLETIN

Green Flag created an autonomous and specialised architecture that set it up to innovate and accelerate time-to-market for new features. It is light and day compared to the legacy that previously weighed Green Flag down. Software development is now faster and far simpler.

“Each of these decisions were designed to stand within Green Flag as a principle that we would always try to honour - the idea being that with the right principles in place, we would never paint ourselves into a corner with technology,” says Butt.

“Having API-led connectivity meant that every component spoke to every other component in the same way, using the same language, and to continue that metaphor, I didn’t have to worry with

GREEN FLAG

having lots of interpreters and translators involved. That has simplified the architecture.”

The platform has given Green Flag unprecedented opportunity to use cutting-edge technology to drive business value. Butt has relished being part of it - “I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun with new tech as I have in Green Flag” - and since the beginning of 2019, the company has rolled out a series of AWS services that have either reduced costs, increased stability or made product development more efficient.

One programme area the team is excited about is the integration of Amazon

What I don’t want is for us to come up with a new idea down the line and we can’t do it because of technology” Shakeel Butt

ISSUE 24

35

CASE STUDY

Using data is fundamental to everything that we want to do�

Jeremy Bristow

36

DIGITAL BULLETIN

GREEN FLAG

Connect. As a largely telephony-based business, Green Flag is always looking to streamline the process for customers who have been left high and dry by the side of a road. Amazon Connect is an omnichannel, cloud-based contact centre which AWS first launched in 2017, and Green Flag is already making use of some of its capabilities under the hood.

“A common reason for customers to call through to us is they want to know where their breakdown technician is,” says Chief Product Manager Jeremy Bristow. “We’ve said ‘we’ll be half an hour to 45 minutes’, it’s got to half an hour, and they want to know where we are. So, they’ll ring us, and then they might have to sit in a queue just to find out where the breakdown technician is. We’ve launched a service now with Amazon Connect where they can get an automated ETA via a phone call with AWS Lex technology interrogating the platform, so you don’t have to sit in a queue.”

Having a cloud-based telephony solution also allows Green Flag to very flexibly support remote working, providing a huge benefit to the business. But when first exploring the possibilities of Amazon Connect, the leadership team knew it needed some outside support to effectively manage the integration. That is why it enlisted the help of ECS, a digital transformation consultancy which has a longstanding partnership with AWS.

“From ECS’s perspective, it was something it was able to jump onto very quickly,” says Butt. “It had a very strong case study of another large financial services organisation that it had worked with to deliver something similar, which provided a lot of reassurance for us. And its operating model was very much aligned to the way that we were working - it likes to deliver in an agile environment, and it likes to implant all of its talent into your teams.”

––– Keeling uses a phrase to highlight one of the biggest challenges Green Flag currently faces: “We are data-rich, but insight-poor”.

In a way, the company’s whole digital transformation has been architected around solving this issue. Data, and using data in real-time to help its customers, is

ISSUE 24

37

CASE STUDY

GREEN FLAG AND COVID-19 Like most businesses, Green Flag has had to be fast and agile in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Dean Keeling, Shakeel Butt and Jeremy Bristow share their insights on the challenges and achievements of the last 12 months:

Dean Keeling –––

“2020 has been an interesting year, hasn’t it? I think with everything that’s gone on, with COVID-19, with all of the working practices, challenges that we’ve had, with all of the customer dilemmas, and the health and safety of customers, our technicians, our staff and employees, we’ve achieved some amazing things. It took us four days, from going from being 98% office-based to being 100% home working and productive. Which is phenomenal. And a lot of the preparation work that we’ve been doing as part of the transformation actually came to fruition as a consequence of the challenge of getting everyone to be safe working from home.

And yet we did not drop a single call in that time, and our NPS [Net Promoter Score] as we’ve gone through this year has been its highest-ever. When you take a moment to reflect on that, that’s remarkable, when you 38

DIGITAL BULLETIN

think of the circumstances and the challenges that we’ve all had to work with.”

Shakeel Butt –––

“From a work perspective, there’s not really been an impact. We made a lot of our technology choices around using the cloud, a lot of the tooling that we had set up was all cloud-based, so that’s all been great. You do still have the challenges around mental wellbeing, and the impact that being stuck at home for a prolonged period of time can have on your lifestyle, but actually from a work perspective, it’s been relatively seamless. I think it’s fair to say that we probably did experience a bit of a dip in our velocities and outputs when everybody was asked to work from home, but we very quickly stabilised.

I know that people are now missing the daily interactions and collaboration with people in an office environment, but actually technical-

GREEN FLAG

ly, from the perspective of being able to do the day-to-day work, being able to continue to service and support our customers and our partners, we’ve largely been able to see this through from a technology, process and people perspective.”

Jeremy Bristow –––

“One thing that we’re really proud of is that we launched a proposition during the pandemic to offer free breakdown cover for NHS staff, which was something that we all felt incredibly strongly about. We wanted to contribute towards the national effort and give back to the NHS heroes. And that idea actually came from one of our front-line agents, who took a call from an NHS worker who was highly distressed because they wanted to get to hospital to get to work to help save lives. So, we launched a proposition to provide free breakdown cover for NHS staff, and we actually helped nearly 2,000 NHS staff during the pandemic to get to hospital and get home from hospitals. Having had probably quite a stressful and fairly harrowing day at work, for them to be able to then get home and be able to rest and relax before they then go through that experience again the next day, kind of really brought it home for us and it was something we felt very strongly that we wanted to do.”

a strategic necessity for Green Flag. It wants to make better decisions, and automate decision-making, on the basis of data.

“Using data is fundamental to everything that we want to do,” says Bristow. “As an organisation today, data is stored in lots of different places. We need to bring all of that data together in the right way, with the right controls and the right permissions, to the point where we’re able to start to gain really valuable insight on what our customers are telling us and then to really improve the products.”

This represents a big undertaking for Green Flag, but it knows that if it is able to improve its approach to data, the effects will be game-changing. Not only will it be better equipped to understand the trends and behaviours of its customers, it will also be able to benefit from the data of its expanding portfolio of partners.

One company assisting Green Flag on this part of its journey is Segment, which has built a customer data platform for collecting, cleansing and controlling data.

Green Flag has been able to plug Segment into its websites and customer journeys, integrating the platform with a number of data points, including New Relic and Google Analytics, and delivering business value with the clean and governed data.

“Segment’s offering is slightly unique,” says Butt. “It is able to offer a cloud data warehouse that requires you to have one ISSUE 24

39

CASE STUDY

integration into your user experience that you can then link off to multiple destinations. At the moment, there are over 300 integrations that you can plug Segment straight into, and it’ll feed all the data through seamlessly. Then you’ve got data schemas that you can apply and personas that you can then overlay.

It suddenly means that from a data perspective, we’re able to get a lot more richness almost immediately.”

Data intelligence will also be vital to Green Flag meeting one of its principal objectives: to go beyond roadside recovery and add new layers to its service. Portfolio diversification is only made possible through data consolidation, especially having access to metrics and data that are related to partnership operations.

40

DIGITAL BULLETIN

Broadening its scope is critical to Green Flag’s customer-centric business plan and the next major step for the company is to use its refreshed technology stack to rapidly develop different and innovative products for the benefits of its users.

Bristow, as Chief Product Manager, oversees this area and is excited by the potential.

“Looking after the customer is absolutely fundamental to our business, and we recognise that if we don’t look after our customers, then we operate in a competitive market and those customers won’t stay with us,” he says.

“We want to be more to the motorist than just to be brilliant in a rescue. That’s the core of our business, and we have to be brilliant at rescue if we want to do other things, but we want to ensure that you,

GREEN FLAG

In Partnership: Green Flag and Segment Green Flag uses the Segment customer data platform, which collects, cleans and controls data from a range of different integrations

ISSUE 24

41

The lea

Customer Da

Join 20,000+ busin Segment’s software an clean, and control the

Segment’s CDP makes organize your customer the teams that need it. Fi CDP can work for yo

segmen

ading

ata Platform

nesses that use nd APIs to collect, eir customer data

s it easy to clean and r data, then get it to all ind out how Segment’s our organization at:

nt.com

CASE STUDY

Green Flag is a fantastic place to be at the moment. We have absolute clarity on what the medium and long-term visions are for the business. We are very clear on how we can add value and support customers, not only in a breakdown but as motorists in general�

Dean Keeling

44

DIGITAL BULLETIN

GREEN FLAG

as one of our customers, can keep your vehicle on the road so you don’t have the inconvenience of a breakdown, by starting to offer other products and services. We want to help customers not just in a breakdown situation, but also in everything you need to do as part of using and maintaining your vehicle every day.”

The automotive world is changing before our eyes, with electrification and connected, self-driving cars just around the corner. Green Flag wants to launch new products even faster, so is developing a community of “Green Flaggers” to beta test products and give live feedback on the user experience. As its industries are revolutionised, it sees staying at the bleeding edge of innovation as key.

––– Green Flag might still be in the early stages of its five-year initiative, but the organisation is already seeing the benefits of its work. Over the past three years as a whole, Green Flag’s market share has grown and it has halved the number of complaints it receives from customers, leading to an 80% reduction in the amount of compensation it has had to pay out. Its customer engagement scores are also at a record high for the last five years.

It would be easy to view technology as the magic ingredient behind these successes, but Keeling and his

colleagues know that bringing about positive change comes down to far more than the nuts and bolts of infrastructure, or the strength of machine learning models. For CTO Butt, a lot of his focus has been on people and teams. He views talent as the number one priority.

From the get-go, Butt was deliberate with how he organised his people and processes so they aligned with the technology architecture. Having insourced its technology, Green Flag insourced its people, and over the last two years, it has built up a 100-strong technology team. Wedded to a scaled-agile (SAFe) operating model, Green Flag now boasts skills and processes that are far more advanced than ever before.

“Because our architecture is based on a number of discrete platforms that are linked to specific technology domains, I was able to allocate a designated scrum team to each one, overlaid with our SAFe operating model,” says Butt. “Each team has its own discrete platform they are responsible for the build, development, support and maintenance for end-to-end.”

“So I have a scrum team that looks after our website, I have a scrum team that looks after our customer-facing mobile app, I have a scrum team that looks after our rescue platform, another team that looks after pricing. And each one of these different platforms is completely self-contained yet integrated. It’s great because that ticks a lot ISSUE 24

45

CASE STUDY

of boxes from an agile perspective around empowerment and ownership.”

Butt says the investment made in choosing and developing the right people has “paid back 10 times over” when you measure the teams’ output. Additionally, the success of SAFe has also gone beyond anybody’s expectations.

46

DIGITAL BULLETIN

A framework that gives Butt a programmelevel view of his scrums, he says SAFe has preserved agile development at the team level while still giving Green Flag all of the non-agile requirements that you need in a regulated financial services business, such as governance and audit and risk management. After just 12 months of

GREEN FLAG

running SAFe, Keeling made the call to roll it out across the entire Green Flag business.

“It’s been very successful,” says Butt.

“There’s been an awful lot of excitement from the business teams who are adopting agile for the first time. It then means that when those teams interface into the technology programme, suddenly everybody’s

talking the same language. Everybody understands the delivery model and concepts around prioritisation. It’s been a very, very inspirational journey for me in seeing a non-technology part of the business suddenly take on scaled-agile.”

Butt clearly feeds off the energy of Green Flag’s people, and it’s the same ISSUE 24

47

CASE STUDY

To be involved in the next evolution of Green Flag, as we turn 50 in 2021 and have gone through this big technology change, is super exciting and the possibilities are really endless for us�

Jeremy Bristow

48

DIGITAL BULLETIN

GREEN FLAG

for the rest of the leadership team. The company has an exciting future as it looks to use its newly-acquired talent and technology to disrupt the roadside recovery sector - and fulfil Direct Line Group’s ambition of building each of its businesses into market leaders.

“Green Flag is a fantastic place to be at the moment,” Keeling says. “We have absolute clarity on what the medium and long-term visions are for the business.

We are very clear on how we can add value and support customers, not only in a breakdown but as motorists in general.

We’re not completely there yet, we’ve got a gazillion things that we need to do over the next five, eight, 10 years, but it’s all there to be done and we believe in ourselves that we can go after it.”

Bristow adds: “To be involved in the next evolution of Green Flag, as we turn 50 in 2021 and have gone through this big technology change, is super exciting and the possibilities are really endless for us. Now we can grow, we can launch new products, we can start to help customers in new and innovative ways, and we can start to interact with them in new and innovative ways as well, and that’s the bit to me that’s really exciting.”

Green Flag has always been proud of its challenger mindset. As it marks a half-century of service to its customers, the next era could very well see it move from challenger to leader.

ISSUE 24

49

CONNECTIVITY

BRINGING INTERNET DOWN TO EARTH

Viasat has a simple plan: to provide connectivity to the whole globe.

Digital Bulletin speaks to Rick Baldridge, Viasat’s recently appointed CEO, about the its new satellite constellation, the acquisition of Euro Broadband Infrastructure and plans for global expansion in light of a new generation of companies entering the satellite space

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

50

DIGITAL BULLETIN

VIASAT

ISSUE 24

51

CONNECTIVITY

T

he Earth’s orbit is quite a crowded space.

In addition to the Moon, 6,000 satellites circle the Earth every day. Out of these, only 2,666 are currently operative and are used to obtain information about the blue planet and its weather, as well as a whole array of commercial solutions.

In fact, over half of these operational satellites (61%) provide communications services, including satellite TV, Internet of Things connectivity and internet.

The global satellite industry is growing at an annual rate of 6.51% and it’s expected to reach a worth of $508 billion by 2024. Although in the past it was dominated by governmental organisations and large corporations, rising demand for digital connectivity has driven many newcomers to this industry with roaring success. The most blatant example is Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has become the world’s largest satellite operator despite having launched its first satellite only five years ago.

But traditional players like Viasat are ready to take on the challenge.

After 30 years providing high-speed satellite broadband services and secure networking systems, Viasat is taking steps to continue to lead the market through a leadership change. Last month, the company’s Co-Founder and CEO Mark Dankberg stepped down 52

DIGITAL BULLETIN

from the role, although he is staying as Executive Chairman. Rick Baldridge, previously Viasat’s COO, has taken on the leadership of the company.

Speaking to Digital Bulletin, he explains the reasons behind the transition and Viasat’s plans for the future.

“The transition just seemed logical to Mark and me,” Baldridge says. “Running the business has been mostly in my camp for a while, so it was a natural step. What it will do is extend the amount of time that Mark can be part of the company and

VIASAT

continue to influence where we’re headed strategically. I’m more enabling that than I am stepping into his shoes.”

Soon after Baldridge’s appointment, Viasat announced its intentions to buy the remaining 51% share of Euro Broadband Infrastructure (EBI), a wholesale business the company had created alongside Eutelsat, for $167.5 million. With this deal, Viasat steps up its presence in Europe ahead of next year’s launch of its ViaSat-3 global satellite constellation, which will provide global and affordable internet.

“It had become a little bit of a difficult situation, with misaligned interests between us and Eutelsat,” Baldridge admits. “This gets the disruption off the table. We will be competitors, that’s fine.

There is plenty of room for both of us.”

Although analysts including Jefferies’ Giles Throne have argued that Eutelsat got the better end of the deal, Baldridge disagrees: “I think it’s good for both of us. I look forward to working with Eutelsat in the future when our interests are aligned.”

ISSUE 24

53

CONNECTIVITY

The deal will allow Viasat to make distribution agreements and start testing its next generation of satellites, the ViaSat-3, without Eutelsat’s approval. Moreover, the agreement gives Viasat control of EBI’s high-speed KA-SAT satellite, which Baldridge considers to be able to bring significant value, despite belonging to a decade-old generation.

“We’re really glad to have it because it helps with redundancy, it helps to provide back-up, and I think we can do as good a job as anybody in trying to get value out of that satellite for the long run,” Baldridge says. “We have done it in the past again and again.”

The company is indeed known for having extended the life of several other 54

DIGITAL BULLETIN

older satellites, such as the WildBlue-1 and Anik F2 that Viasat obtained alongside its acquisition of WildBlue Communications in 2009. Viasat’s network approach blends the capacities of multiple satellites, allocating resources between them and extending their useful life and the economic value that the company can obtain out of them.

However, these satellites will soon be relegated to supporting roles for Viasat’s new generation star player: Via-Sat-3.

Over the next two years, Viasat will launch the ViaSat-3 constellation, a trio of satellites that will provide internet connectivity all over the world. Each of them will offer one terabit or more of total network capacity, which constitutes

VIASAT

a substantial jump from the company’s previous models: ViaSat-1 (140 Gigabit per second) and ViaSat-2 (260 Gbps).

The first satellite, covering the Americas, will be launched next year, while the launches of the ones covering the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Asia-South Pacific regions have been scheduled for 2022.

“We need to get ready for that launch at a scale that we’ve never had to be,” Baldridge says. “And so we need to be up and running and ready, with distribution and leadership in place for many of these countries over the next year.”

One region where Viasat is expanding significantly is Europe. The company already provides retail broadband services to European countries such as Spain, Norway and Poland, and high-speed in-flight connectivity (IFC) for airlines including Finnair, EI AI and KLM. However, the acquisition of EBI and the launch of ViaSat-3 will significantly increase its presence in the continent and strengthen its capabilities in regards to video content, the main driver of the demand for digital connectivity in Europe at the moment.

“Think of an electric utility, it has to have enough capacity to serve the users during the time of highest stress. In satellite, that highest stress is really driven by video; it’s 70-80% of the traffic during the busiest times. We do that very well with these

We need to get ready for launch at a scale that we’ve never had to be before” Rick Baldridge

ISSUE 24

55

CONNECTIVITY

We had to move away from traditional satellite architectures from a payload structure to a complete, much more digital highly-integrated facet, and there just wasn’t enough real estate left in those satellites’ payload structures to be able to accomplish what we’re accomplishing”

56

DIGITAL BULLETIN

VIASAT

new generations of satellites: multiple users within a household can watch their content at higher speeds than we think any other provider can provide.”

The ViaSat-3 satellites will also bring connectivity to many developing regions of the world at an affordable cost point, expanding Viasat’s offer in Latin American countries such as Mexico, Brazil or Guatemala, and reaching new ones in places like the African continent.

“One thing that is really exciting for me is that, with the type of capacity we’re bringing into that marketplace, we can do things at a cost-point that has never been available before,” Baldridge explains. “We are excited about bringing connectivity to villages so we can bring educational content, healthcare, commerce, banking transactions, and more, into markets where people have had to travel, and many times by foot to other regions to get stuff done.”

Baldridge also stresses Viasat’s commitment to work with local authorities and run the local branches with local people, to avoid disrupting these communities. “If we do well, then the result isn’t just this American company showing up to extract a bunch of money, but a partnership in those regions with people that want to accomplish things that they can’t do,” Baldridge says.

This desire to accomplish things believed to be impossible is also what’s driving the technology behind ViaSat-3: the first payload module structure.

“We had to move away from traditional satellite architectures from a payload structure to a complete, much more digital highly-integrated facet, and there just wasn’t enough real estate left in those satellites’ payload structures to be able to accomplish what we’re accomplishing,” Baldridge stresses.

Since no company had the necessary technology, Viasat took it upon itself to develop these new model structures in-house, which has been used in the design of ViaSat-3. Over the next few months, this new payload structure will be shipped to Boeing to be integrated into its 702 platform.

Although Baldridge feels proud of this achievement, he reveals that Viasat “would have bought” that technology had it been developed by other satellite companies. For this reason, he welcomes the disruption that the space industry is undergoing at the hands of newcomers such as SpaceX. “I think the new entrances make the marketplace exciting,” Baldridge says.

“Some older players might have a more difficult time with that, but we have been disrupting this area ourselves for a long time. We have ViaSat-3, ViaSat-4 ISSUE 24

57

CONNECTIVITY

The real question is ‘Can these new entrances provide what customers want at a price point that’s competitive?’

We have designed our entire system to do that”

and Via-Sat-5 designs that have even significantly higher capacity per dollar invested; so we like this race.”

According to Baldridge, the arrival of these new companies is a sign of the growth of the satellite market and its benefits in providing internet access to regions otherwise considered to be inaccessible. Instead of feeling threatened by these new players, Baldridge challenges them: “The real question is ‘Can these new entrances provide what customers want at a price point that’s competitive?’ We have designed our entire system to do that.”

58

DIGITAL BULLETIN

In the connectivity industry, customer needs are simple: they want their connection not to fail. The most common cause of buffering and congestion in a network is primarily video-rich content, from streaming platforms to social media applications, which has been a focus of Viasat’s new capabilities and satellite designs.

Despite the increased competition, the arrival of these new entrances could also provide innovative solutions for the industry. Baldridge stresses one technological development in particular

VIASAT

that, in his view, will “drive cooperation” between newcomers and traditional players in the satellite space: cloud. And Viasat is keeping its eyes out for companies that might be able to enhance its technology in that regard.

“We’re very known for buying earlystage companies that have a technology that we think is absolutely critical to what we’re trying to accomplish,” he stresses. “But we’ll do the other vertical stuff as well. We bought our customer WildBlue as a way to help jumpstart our move into the broadband retail services.

So, we’ll do that in verticals that we think our time to market is quicker in that route, as long as there’s someone out there that we think is good.”

Keeping an eye on these new technologies, and with the launch of these new satellites in the horizon, the first year of Baldridge’s leadership of Viasat is set to be an exciting one. However, his vision for the company lies far beyond 2021.

“You don’t want to be known as the person who walked away from something and it fell apart,” Baldridge says.

“You want to have built something that continues to grow and grow better than it was when you were there. So what I’m hyper-focused on is getting the next generation of talent in and refocusing Viasat’s future on the customer.

I think internet service providers just don’t have a great reputation. They’re one of the most hated retail services out there. We want to change that, with our company.”

Viasat’s goal with its new satellite constellation is to bring connectivity where it’s needed and wanted most: to homes all over the world, to faraway communities, to soldiers in the field, and to people in the air and at sea. Baldridge might be shooting for the Moon but, after all, the Moon is just one of 6,000 satellites circling the Earth.

ISSUE 24

59

FUTURE

TECH TRENDS

2021 Gartner recently made its predictions for the top tech trends of 2021. We speak to a panel of experts to find out about the technologies that have been tipped to have a breakout year

60

DIGITAL BULLETIN

TECH TRENDS 2021

Hyperautomation Bob Bailkoski, CEO of Logicalis

No one could have anticipated the impact the pandemic and subsequent lockdown would have on supply chains and workflows. The crisis revealed internal vulnerabilities that some businesses didn’t even know existed, but the organisations that had a robust agile infrastructure managed better than those without.

As companies revisit their disaster recovery plans and prepare for future uncertainty, automation will play a key role in business continuity to prevent further disruption. McKinsey predicts 30% of all work activities to be automated by 2030. Adding to McKinsey’s forecast, Gartner believes we will see an increase in automation technologies deployed at scale and increased use of workflow automation and robotics – otherwise known as hyperautomation.

Hyperautomation was a top strategic trend for 2020, has evolved over this year, and will undoubtedly continue in 2021. Hyperautomation complements RPA to ensure supply chain resilience,

supporting the development of smarter workflows by automating processes that augment human capability. It will help businesses carry out their responsibilities in a much shorter time by going beyond imitating human tasks and filling the gaps left by RPA. It won’t replace the human workforce but rather free up their time and enhance their roles to focus on more valuable tasks.

Hyperautomation will play an increasingly important role as businesses shift from automating repetitive mundane task-based processes to elevated level business processes.

It will enable organisations to scale operations and efficiency while tracking capabilities to help understand performance levels. Automation at scale means companies can increase business uptime, boost digital assurance and significantly reduce costs. Indeed, Gartner anticipates that companies will minimise their operating costs by 30% with the help of hyperautomation technologies by 2024.

By deploying hyperautomation technologies and ensuring business processes are optimised and connected, businesses can rest assured they are on the right path to digital transformation and business resiliency as they prepare for any future disruption.

ISSUE 24

61

FUTURE

Distributed Cloud Jad Jebara, President & CEO, Hyperview

The pandemic has prioritised the necessity for business continuity and agility, along with maintaining security and compliance. All the while, under tighter infrastructure and operations (I&O) budgets and with less on-site staff.

The public cloud giants have built a formidable machine of IT infrastructure and platform services that allow for the acceleration of digital delivery. The power at the hands of developers, business analysts or IT professionals with these services was unimaginable only a few years ago. Organisations are leveraging these services to gain a competitive advantage and accelerate time-tomarket, while leveraging the billions of dollars invested by the giants in security, compliance, and programmability.

Despite these advances, there is still a requirement for solid operational processes, cost management, and security. One can argue that the management burden gets even more complicated and important.

62

DIGITAL BULLETIN

Today’s I&O teams are increasingly adopting a complex hybrid IT infrastructure consisting of workloads across on-premise, edge, colocation, and/or cloud. When managed well, organisations realise tremendous performance gains and cost savings.

However, many of these I&O teams, particularly within midsize enterprises, do not have available resources to add the cloud to their management domain. The rapid growth in cloud tooling and services is proof that they are grappling with this

TECH TRENDS 2021

Cybersecurity Mesh The public cloud giants have built a formidable machine of IT infrastructure and platform services that allow for the acceleration of digital delivery� new reality. The current pandemic has forced I&O teams to accelerate remote work, and change infrastructure and processes at a neck-breaking pace.

Hybrid and distributed clouds are here to stay. The world got a taste, and they like it. This is giving rise to a new breed of software tools that understand this convergence and are emerging to help I&O teams amplify their abilities and streamline operations.

The key themes we see emerging are focused on advanced observation tools, automated operations with AI ops tools, and security and data governance. We see these tools being API-first and highly open for automation and integration.

The right tools in the right hands are a force multiplier.

Chris Goettl, Senior Director, Product Management at Ivanti

The prediction by Gartner that by 2025 the cybersecurity mesh will support more than half of digital asset control requests seems completely aligned with what we are experiencing. Since COVID, perimeters have changed drastically. The breakdown of the traditional company perimeter means an increase in cybersecurity mesh is inevitable.

Historically, we would consider anything inside the walls of the company secure.

2020 turned this notion on its head. With scattered workforces working from a multitude of locations, we’ve seen more phishing attempts and data breaches in 2020 than ever before. Workforces, including IT, will continue to work from home long after the pandemic is over.

We can expect threat actors to continue to target remote workers in 2021 and well beyond it. Traditional security technologies like Remote Desktop Protocol and Virtual Private Network alone will leave companies exposed in this new era where people are accessing data from everywhere, at any time. To regain control ISSUE 24

63

FUTURE

With scattered workforces working from a multitude of locations, we’ve seen more phishing attempts and data breaches in 2020 than ever before�

and ensure employees can securely access that data, companies must provide more fluid perimeters to securely control which personnel have access to applications and data, through Zero Trust Access Control.

Zero Trust is a security concept that is centred on the belief that companies should not automatically trust anything inside or outside their perimeters.

Instead, it is imperative to verify anything and everything trying to connect to their 64

DIGITAL BULLETIN

systems prior to granting access. In a Zero Trust Access Control environment, the person attempting to access, regardless of location, becomes the perimeter.

This directly correlates with the increase of the cybersecurity mesh; you can only give people access to digital asset security despite where the asset, as well as the person is, if they can be properly identified. Only after adopting Zero Trust Access Control can companies honestly say they have taken every

TECH TRENDS 2021

measure to fully prepare for the year ahead to contain breaches and minimise potential damage.

To further layer security around the individual, elimination of passwords in favour of passwordless authentication will further eliminate the attack surface that an individual presents to attackers.

Identity is the new perimeter and passwords are a fundamental user weakness.

They are typically too weak, can be easily captured, and are often reused across

different sites allowing an attacker to exploit them quite easily.

Passwordless authentication is the next evolution in Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) and eliminates the weakest of MFA options (the password). It also presents a more seamless and simplified experience to the user. Think of a world where you do not have to memorise, reset, or struggle with typing in passwords. And the cybersecurity mesh becomes stronger for it.

ISSUE 24

65

FUTURE

Anywhere Operations Geoff Forsyth, CISO, PCI Pal

If ever there was a catalyst for change, the experiences we have all learnt during 2020 will be a key trigger. The Covid-19 pandemic thrust most organisations into having to make swift changes to the way they operate, to allow them to continue working as safely as possible for both customers and staff.

For some organisations, they already had remote working policies and procedures in place however many were left feeling uncertain and underprepared. For example, if you look at firms that operate large contact centres, this new ‘anywhere operations’ environment may have been

66

DIGITAL BULLETIN

completely foreign territory for them.

Research from Contact Babel’s Inner Circle Guide to Contact Centre Remote Working Solutions found that only 4% of UK-based contact centre agents were working remotely full time, up until recently. Further findings found that in 2019, out of more than 200 UK contact centres, around a quarter (26%) had passed-off remote working altogether, making 2020’s mandatory lockdowns an unwelcome surprise for many.

For those with on-premise technology infrastructure, this would have been compounded, compared to those working via cloud-based solutions, which offer greater flexibility on where, when and how systems can be accessed.

Aside from the physical IT infrastructure however, ensuring an organisation continues to maintain strict security protocols and adheres to industry compliance regulations is vital.

TECH TRENDS 2021

For example, for those handling customer’s sensitive information such as processing credit card payments over the phone, they have had to adapt and adjust compliance strategies without negatively impacting the overall customer journey. Being able to protect customer data not only from potential cybersecurity threats, but also ensuring staff are not unnecessarily exposed to customer’s sensitive data, is a priority – particularly given the strict parameters of the GDPR and PCI DSS rules.

This is where technology comes into its own; fast forward to 2021 and many firms will have made adjustments to accommodate working from home and are likely to continue with many aspects of this approach, based on the many benefits it brings to staff and customers alike.

With Gartner predicting that 40% of organisations will have applied ‘anywhere operations’ by the end of 2023, it is clear that this trend will continue beyond the pandemic, however at a time where cyber criminals are attempting to exploit organisations operating across distributed infrastructure, it is vital that organisations do all they can to ensure that customer data is handled as securely as possible and does not end up exposed in remote workers systems, which may be seen as low-hanging fruit for hackers.

Customer Experience Michael Scharff, CEO, Evolv

No one could have predicted how COVID-19 would disrupt entire industries and business models. Looking at the Customer Experience (CX) alone, companies are still navigating nearly endless possibilities amid a backdrop of constant change to find the best experience for their customers. Many have had to consider new possibilities such as curbside delivery and how to provide an omnichannel experience complete with touchless transactions.

As a result, industries are having to adapt to new habits not only from an experience perspective but also from a supply chain point of view. It is having lasting effects on customers, employees, users, and in many cases even the facilities which are being transformed.

This is where Total Experience (TX) starts to take shape and elevates CX to the next level. I see this ushering in a new era where customers benefit from a substantially easier and more satisfying experience. It would be anchored by a digital experience using an app, ISSUE 24

67

FUTURE

the web, or any type of kiosk -- I think interactions should be compelling, inspiring, and frictionless. Three of the most important factors to TX’s success are data, privacy, and usability.

Data There is so much data out there about consumers that delivering a truly differentiated experience is only possible if you connect all that data. With TX the key is having the processing power and intelligence to sift through the data and only use what is important, when it is relevant. It is about the breadth of what can be accessed and making smart use of technology to predict needs and anticipate opportunities.

Privacy That level of access to data immediately leads to concerns about privacy. There are solutions that do not necessarily need to rely on personal information to be effective. Many benefits can be gained from using aggregate data and micro segmentations, where trends and common needs are identified, without driving down to the level of an individual.

Usability The world is rapidly combining different types of interactions including in store, 68

DIGITAL BULLETIN

digital and omnichannel. This is adding a layer of complexity when it comes to impacting and shaping what a customer will experience, where and how. This is again where technology needs to inform users on what is working and what should be improved.

TX has to be all about engagement.

In my opinion it dictates the need to leverage technology that can help with automation to deliver intelligent insights. These can quickly turn into new ways to delight customers, employees and users.

TECH TRENDS 2021

Composable Business Kelly Goetsch, Chief Product Officer, commercetools

Composable commerce allows users to choose specific aspects of technology from individual vendors, and ‘consume’ them independently through APIs. This means users, such as retailers and brands, are more in control

of how their commerce technology is set up, and therefore the quality of the online shopping experience they can offer customers.

Brands can ensure each piece of commerce technology is best-of-breed, or in other words, that each part is carefully selected from vendors that do one thing only but one thing well.

No longer do organisations need to rely on a ‘take it or leave it’, one-sizefits-all technology stack; composable commerce means they can pick and choose the ideal provider of technology

Over the next 12 months, we will see an increase in new market entrants that are fully cloud and SaaS-based, and which focus on getting specific functionality right”

ISSUE 24

69

FUTURE

for everything from product search to product filtering to checkout. For example, a retailer could choose a company that focuses solely on selling technology for date parsing, which enables IT teams to input a string of data to return a date that charges per API call.

Continued advancements in cloud computing will be the driving force behind increased use of composable commerce. More powerful cloud services will make it easier for developers to design and create outstanding online experiences. Over the next 12 months, we will see an increase in new market entrants that are fully cloud and SaaS-based, and which focus on getting specific functionality right.

As competition in the online retail market intensifies, brands know they need to find new ways to improve the shopping experience no matter the customer channel of choice.

With composable commerce, each vendor supplying individual pieces of the puzzle, brands can be safe in the knowledge that each and every part delivers exceptional performance to realise high customer satisfaction and loyalty.

2021 will undoubtedly be the year of composable commerce.

70

DIGITAL BULLETIN

Privacy-Enhancing Computation Rajesh Ganesan, Vice President, ManageEngine

Data protection has always been a matter of strategic importance to companies and with the new regulations in place specific to each region, privacy has become a make or break phenomenon for businesses. Especially as the role of the data protection officer is now mandated, and one of their significant responsibilities is to ensure the tripod of the regulatory requirements, tech-

TECH TRENDS 2021

nology infrastructure and the business objectives stay balanced. Specifically the case for pushing the adoption of privacy enhancing computation with the technology leaders along with the buy-in from the business leaders, by articulating the need and the benefits.

All the productivity that technology brings in, also opens up easy channels for attacks, making data protection extremely challenging as the channels of exploits could be vulnerable in the technology and intentional and inadvertent errors by users. It is no longer enough just for data protection officers to deploy privacy enhancing technologies, they should also play an influential role in training, ensuring all users have sufficient levels of awareness and knowledge.

For example, when employees use tools for internal collaboration and communication, the tools should be augmented with technology that detects and identifies when content that violates privacy guidelines is posted. Or even better, the tool can be programmed to stop content being posted based on the role of the employee. If there is uncertainty, the technology should allow the content to be temporarily published, but obfuscate the private information within minutes.

It is also important to ensure continuous training and education in using the technology and running regular assessments that are tailored to each user, instead of running mass class room sessions. Such contextual

ISSUE 24

71

FUTURE

and personalised training using technology goes a long way in achieving privacy holistically.

For the technology infrastructure, encryption serves as an able defence mechanism against privacy violations and the responsibility of enforcing it rests equally with the data protection officer. Companies should consider deploying homomorphic encryption, which allows computations on encrypted data without the need to convert them to plain text, in turn greatly reducing privacy risks.

Where this is not possible, data protection officers should utilise AI and ML powered monitoring in order to continuously run analytics on user and entity behaviour in the infrastructure to catch potential privacy violations, without the need for human intervention. Where human analysis of data is mandatory, they should ensure they have technology with smarts that will obfuscate all private information and make sure that no user ever sees any private information in plain text.

“Data protection is a continuous journey and not a set goal that can be achieved to stop and move on.

Deploying privacy aware computation is one of the many critical layers to strengthen the overall data protection posture of the company in that journey.”

72

DIGITAL BULLETIN

AI Engineering Jai Gandhi, VP of Consulting, Ciklum

Research shows that three out of four executives believe they risk going out of business in five years if they don’t scale artificial intelligence (AI). This majority sentiment could make you think AI is really ruling the way companies think and operate.

However, as Gartner recently indicated, the reality of delivery shows that only 53% of projects make it from AI prototypes to production and predicts AI Engineering as one of the top strategic technology trends in 2021.

To most technical minds, AI Engineering as a term might sound somewhat vague. So what does it really mean and what’s the challenge?

The problem usually starts at the very beginning. Senior management often don’t clearly see or understand the value an AI project will bring to the business.

Technical teams lose on the all-important buy-in from the company Board.

The objectives of your AI project need to align with the strategic business goals of the company - management needs to

TECH TRENDS 2021

understand how the project will deliver their strategy. An AI data strategy is a critical first step to getting the budget and resource support needed for creating a robust AI engineering culture.

Once you have the support of key stakeholders and a clear understanding across the company on why the AI project is crucial, you can then approach the PoC stage - proving which technologies should be invested in.

This is very different to a pilot, where it is already assumed the technology is going to work and when there are issues, management support is lost.

Those who embrace the proof of concept (PoC) stage avoid a ‘state of paralysis’ - in the mindset of management and the business, it serves to validate the use of AI. The true winners of AI delivery use an implementation strategy that is planned and developed with a product-based approach: they look at developing AI as if developing a product - AI is built and deployed in small iterations based on the agreed use cases defined by the AI strategy.

This brings us to the initial point about management buy-in. By releasing AI in

ISSUE 24

73

FUTURE

‘bite-size’ pieces, management continually observes the benefits and continues to provide their support. A virtuous cycle is created.

End-user companies that want to use AI - and emerge ahead of the competition after what’s been a rollercoaster of a year - need to think strategically and make sure the whole company, especially senior leaders, understand the value of AI. The support in resources coming from senior management, based on strategic business goals, will allow them to create meaningful PoCs and overcome the point of stagnation, allowing for a product-led scaling and deployment of AI into their operations.

74

DIGITAL BULLETIN

Internet of Behaviours Craig Foster, CEO, LeakBot

While Gartner refers to the Internet of Behaviours growing within the context of marketing and government programmes, the mapping and connection of behaviour through devices will also continue to gain in prominence within sectors such as insurance next year.

When associated with other areas of life, the Internet of Behaviours can sound ominous, but within insurance, ‘smart telematics’ – which is a form of behaviour monitoring – is an overwhelmingly positive development. It was first introduced within the automotive space; whereby smart devices could be installed to monitor a car and the driver in exchange for lower premiums. This allows for personalised premiums that are based on the individual’s own level of risk, which is a much fairer way of writing policies.

Within the home, the same smart monitoring of ‘risk’ can prevent a huge structural disaster from happening.

Again, this leads to lower premiums

TECH TRENDS 2021

for homeowners as they are able to proactively prevent major issues by monitoring using smart devices. Leak detectors, for example, watch and alert customers to escape of water issues in the home – something that is often hidden and can become hugely damaging if left undetected for too long. Escape of water claims are the most common and expensive home insurance claims globally. Therefore, on top of reduced premiums for homeowners, smart home telematics leads to reduced underwriting costs for insurers.

Next year, this will be particularly important for insurers, since many have suffered underwriting losses as a result of the pandemic. Consumers too are increasingly seeing the benefit as more ‘smart home telematics’ products are being offered to them. It is slowly changing the personal lines insurance sector for the better and is allowing for more of a two-way interaction between customers and insurers. Customers are more open to talking about policies and deals that can be had off the back of proactively installing devices and ensuring that problems are identified and fixed before they become bigger problems.

Although currently it’s not mandatory for a homeowner to install devices that monitor risk in their property, there may be more calls from insurers to make

this a condition of certain policies – particularly for homeowners with high net-worth properties where the average cost of claims is naturally higher.

Consumers are also seeing benefits from the role data insights can play in their lives; just consider the popularity of Amazon and Netflix, where data-powered recommendations enable more convenient and personalised experiences. As such, it will soon feel more natural to accept the idea of data insights informing insurance policies – particularly if it leads to lower premiums - and opens up a new, more collaborative relationship between insurer and customer.

ISSUE 24

75

IT SERVICES

GUIDING RACKSPACE INTO A NEW ERA After 20 years at IBM, Simon Bennett is relishing his new job as Rackspace’s Chief Technical Officer for EMEA. In conversation with Digital Bulletin, Bennett reveals the motivation behind his career change, and discusses Rackspace’s role in the fast-evolving technology world

AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer

M

oving jobs is often hard. After all, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. But choosing to take on a new challenge after 20 years’ service to one company is an especially bold decision. Very recently, Simon Bennett did exactly.

Over two decades, Bennett worked his way up through the ranks at IBM. He first joined Big Blue as a solutions architect in 2000, before taking on different leadership roles in which he brokered global deals and worked with some of IBM’s major clients. Many in his position would have settled for continued 76

DIGITAL BULLETIN

success at IBM, and a clear path for the rest of their career.

Yet Bennett had a scratch to itch. When it emerged that IBM was planning to spin off its managed infrastructure business - creating a new and independent company called IBM NewCo - he sensed it might be time to move on.

And one rival had caught his eye.

Rackspace was one of the earliest players in managed cloud services. When cloud was breaking through in the late 2000s, Rackspace - which had formed in 1998 - spotted an opportunity. Today,

RACKSPACE

ISSUE 24

77

IT SERVICES

I thought, from my own point of view, wouldn’t it be great to be part of that? In deals, I was watching Rackspace being much more dynamic in reacting to circumstances, whereas IBM is formulaic by comparison” Simon Bennett

78

DIGITAL BULLETIN

it serves thousands of customers across various industries and Bennett is its Chief Technical Officer (CTO) for EMEA, having moved from IBM last August.

He says he noticed Rackspace’s “dynamic” approach to pitching while at IBM, and that it stuck in his mind.

“I could see a fleet of foot when competing against Rackspace for IBM, with mid-market customers,” Bennett tells Digital Bulletin. “I thought, from my own point of view, wouldn’t it be great to be part of that? In deals, I was watching Rackspace being much more dynamic in reacting to circumstances, whereas IBM is formulaic by comparison. For a big company IBM is quite agile, but relatively speaking it’s not. With Rackspace, I saw a company evolving at a very fast pace.”

Nimbleness is an essential quality for technology companies of the age, especially post-pandemic. Rackspace has seen a surge in demand for its services because of COVID-19. Generally the pandemic has forced a pace of transformation that has made agility and flexibility a necessity, so the company was in good shape to deal with the extraordinary events of this year.

Moving from IBM, which has an established ecosystem of technology and services, to Rackspace, which pivots readily to meet customer demand, was an attractive proposition for Bennett.

RACKSPACE

“We can take direct feedback from customers on what they like and don’t like, and we’re very agile to change,” he says. “Our agility is our massive strength. IBM was a leviathan, a supertanker - call it what you will. What I love about Rackspace is its nimbleness. And also because the management structure is flat, if we need to change or do things, it’s very easy to get a decision.”

Still only a few months into his role, Bennett says he has had to hit the ground running. Since landing in the CTO chair, a lot of his activity has been “transactional” due to the weight of customer demand during COVID-19, with not a lot of time for longer-term planning. But he’s been warmly welcomed by his fellow

“Rackers” and has already discovered strengths of the business that he wasn’t aware of previously.

“The breadth of the things that we deliver has changed my perception of the company,” he says. “And I’ve learned a lot about projects we’ve undertaken that are maybe not well advertised, but cover a real breadth of technical solutions for customers. The innovation going on is much better than I thought it would be. There are bits and pieces around IoT, edge, a little bit in the 5G space, and some really interesting Big Data work.

“The enthusiasm of fellow Rackers is great. Given I’ve not yet met anyone face-to-face, everyone’s been really welcoming and helpful, and the culture

ISSUE 24

79

IT SERVICES

of the company of having video on has made that tolerable. I’ve seen more of people’s bedrooms, offices, dogs, cats and children than I’d ever imagined I would in my working life. But that has helped a lot because it gives you that bit of someone’s personality as well as their office persona.”

Bennett has big ambitions for Rackspace. The majority of its clients are medium-sized enterprises setting out on their cloud journeys, and he wants to use his experience of engagements with larger businesses from IBM to add some hefty new clients. But Bennett is also looking to realign Rackspace’s approach to business development with changing customer demands.

He calls this “selling business solutions in the vertical”. Bennett says Rackspace has previously fallen into the same trap as many technology companies, that of selling their solutions horizontally; so building the technology, and then searching for use cases for those solutions.

“What I like to think I’m bringing is knowledge of how to devise solutions that are vertically aligned to business challenges,” he says. “Ultimately now, businesses are buying solutions to problems. They’re not being told by the technologists what to do anymore. Before, the technologists would say to the business, ‘well we can do this, 80

DIGITAL BULLETIN

can you use it?’. Now the boot is on the other foot, and the business is saying ‘I need you to find a way to do this’. I think the business is much more empowered about wanting more from technology, and COVID-19 has accelerated that.”

COVID-19’s rocket-boost effect on digital transformation is well reported. Bennett says the pandemic has shone light on a number of areas where it has been able to help clients improve. Among these has been the shift to remote working, and how many of the customers in Rackspace’s mid-market range simply weren’t ready to roll out remote working at scale.

RACKSPACE

What I like to think I’m bringing is knowledge of how to devise solutions that are vertically aligned to business challenges”

Where the company has been able to have the most impact with its range of technology solutions is, according to Bennett, with clients that only had rudimentary plans for digital change and who have had the need to quickly accelerate over the past 12 months.

“We were probably most effective in helping those customers pick bits of a strategy off a shelf for an industry, and give them some of the jigsaw pieces to put together their own picture,” he says.

“Maybe they had a simple jigsaw of 20 pieces, and we were able to give them 10 or 12 pre-cut pieces to put in that

puzzle. This allowed them to work faster than they did, because we could provide the guidance.”

Rackspace’s agility as an organisation has also helped during COVID-19, with Bennett adding: “There’s no changephobia in this company whatsoever, and that’s brilliant. People will pivot. We’ve got that mentality and a mindset that says ‘there are lots of MSPs [managed service providers] in the market, we’ve got to keep ahead of the game’.

“Vital is the need to keep up with the pace of change of the hyperscale cloud companies, and everyone accepts that ISSUE 24

81

IT SERVICES

we have to do that. Sometimes the customer demand is ahead of the capability, but that doesn’t matter in some ways because we can create the right thing, build it on top and then reuse it.

It needs guardrails, it’s got to be technically robust, it’s got to be articulated in a way that maybe a salesman can talk to a business leader about it, but if you’ve got those things, don’t stop the enthusiasm to innovate.”

82

DIGITAL BULLETIN

Rackspace’s relationships with the cloud hyperscalers is growing ever more important to its business. Around 85% of its revenue now comes from managed cloud services, and distributed cloud adoption is set to soar again in 2021 as the transformation trend continues. Rackspace has well-established strategic partnerships with the likes of AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, alongside tie-ups with

RACKSPACE

There’s no change-phobia in this company whatsoever, and that’s brilliant. People will pivot.

We’ve got that mentality and a mindset that says ‘there are lots of MSPs [managed service providers] in the market, we’ve got to keep ahead of the game’” key cloud players such as VMware and Pure Storage.

Many Rackspace customers are adopting multicloud models, so it has to work closely with all the large providers - but Bennett says the relationship is symbiotic, and doesn’t just involve Rackspace acting as the conduit between customer and hyperscaler.

“The relationship is great because for us to be successful, we need their [hyperscalers] help, and we help enable the required pace of change for them to be successful. We are delivering value, but getting value at the same time. I think it’s a very complementary partnership.

As a hyperscaler, you don’t want the day-to-day operational hassle. Our gig is to take that away from the customer. It’s a good relationship; of course though, like any relationship, it maybe has its rocky days!”

ISSUE 24

83

IT SERVICES

Bennett gives a scenario Rackspace often finds itself in where it wants to help its customers use the cloud, but also keep their cloud use to a minimum. He says this has cropped up more than ever during COVID-19 - some organisations have had to scale their cloud capacity rapidly, while others badly-affected by the pandemic have had to substantially shrink usage.

“We deliberately created an offering that we call Optimizer+,” says Bennett.

“If you think about what’s happened with people moving more and more to the cloud, how do you keep control of the costs? How do you review? As an MSP, we’re in a good position to bat on 84

DIGITAL BULLETIN

behalf of the customer, to make sure their consumption of cloud is optimised.

“I like to call it the “next-generation” cloud use. We’ve had cloud wave one, where people moved workloads to the cloud. The second wave is: ‘I’ve accelerated my digital journey, but have I done it efficiently?’ It could just be as simple as turning things off, but it could be rewriting chunks of applications to make them truly elastic.

“Taking stock is vitally important, and also making sure that you’re still secure, you’re still resilient. But there have been some real Herculean efforts from customers [in 2020], to move and

RACKSPACE

evolve their business faster than I’ve ever seen before.”

With a knowing laugh, Bennett says IT teams will now be expected to continue the pandemic-induced pace of change in 2021 - “that in IT is the new normal.

I hate that phrase, but it’s right” - but what will his own priorities be as the new year unfolds?

He says there will be a concerted push to market for Rackspace’s own products, including its private cloud offerings, but that most of his time will be dedicated to making sure the company continues to expand its presence in EMEA through content localisation.

“As we broaden our customer base, we need to make sure that we’ve got not only local language but that we understand the regulatory framework in those countries,” he says. “It’s content that takes a standard offering, and localises it for deployment and use in those countries, from a language, culture and regulatory perspective. That’s a big piece of work but that’s my initial prime focus.

“And at some point it will be nice to have a cup of coffee with some key customers and my senior colleagues in those countries, to ask what they need from the CTO in 2021 and beyond. That’s something I’m so looking forward to.”

ISSUE 24

85

SECURITY

FIGHTING THE DEEPFAKE THREAT Ben King, CSO EMEA at Okta, speaks to Digital Bulletin about deepfake technology and tells us why it’s the next big security threat we should be paying attention to

H

INTERVIEW: James Henderson

i Ben, thanks for speaking with Digital Bulletin. We hear a lot about deepfakes in the world of entertainment and social media, but what is the threat to enterprise?

Deepfakes manipulate trust implicit in voice and images, resulting in three large threats for enterprises. Firstly, deepfakes could be used to create misinformation to attack an executive, product or brand perception and destroy public confidence, which could flow naturally onto short selling stock manipulation for profit or be the basis for a hacktivist campaign. Secondly, payment fraud, where the traditional 86

DIGITAL BULLETIN

11th hour CEO email requiring an immediate payment could be replaced with a synthesised phone or video call. And lastly, social engineering techniques, such as phishing, vishing or whaling, can be enhanced by deepfakes, coming from a known and trusted source and leading to a credential and network compromise, followed by a data breach, ransomware or any other attack.

Can you tell us how deepfakes are created, is it a sophisticated technology?

Deepfake technology is being developed by a wide range of groups with differ-

OKTA

ISSUE 24

87

SECURITY

Biometric-based deepfakes are one of the most mature forms of the technology, in that there have been real world attacks against biometric systems using deepfakes” Ben King

88

DIGITAL BULLETIN

ent motivations. Deepfakes are primarily informed by machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). The technology ‘learns’ what a person looks or sounds like using multiple videos, images or voice clips from various angles and combines this with computer graphics to tweak the original as desired. The more access the technology has to relevant audio, image or video as a dataset to learn from, the better the quality fake produced. Consequently, politicians, executives and others often in the public eye are more exposed to this risk than others, but increasingly members of the general population are making more of their content available online. While most people immediately think of fake videos when they hear the term ‘deepfake’, the technology is being used in several different ways.

Biometric-based deepfakes are one of the most mature forms of the technology, in that there have been real world attacks against biometric systems using deepfakes. There is a typical pattern in the criminal underworld whereby new technology which has a clear financial reward always matures faster than other experimental technologies. Given the reliance on biometric systems as a validation of identity, we should anticipate more of these attacks and take steps to move away from especially vulnerable biometric identifiers.

OKTA

Image-based deepfakes are a natural evolution from photoshopping, where AI is used to create much more seamless fake images. So far, this technology has been largely unsuccessful in fooling facial recognition systems, but it has had success in creating images for use in false news and political attacks. As misinformation grows and the technology to create these images matures, we should anticipate that this type of deepfake will accelerate and become more sophisticated.

Finally, video-based deepfakes are the most widely discussed category, generally used to discredit or implicate a target in things they had nothing to do with. While the technology is still quite immature, it is evolving fast,

alongside the operational procedures behind its use. Large, long fake videos are still a little out of reach but using the technology to make subtle changes to a video works well at present. With the help of AI, these videos can be extremely convincing.

Are there any examples where deepfakes have been used to carry out financial fraud?

A notable case in 2019 saw attackers use biometric-based deepfake technology to imitate the voice of a chief executive in order to carry out financial fraud.

A UK CEO believed he was speaking on the phone with his boss, recognising his accent and the melody of his voice. This is an example of sophisticated deepfake

ISSUE 24

89

SECURITY

fraud that will continue as attackers eye the financial incentives. In this case, the criminals managed to con the business out of £200,000.

Presumably, deepfakes also represent a threat to governments and public administrations?

The possibilities of deepfakes offer a considerable amount of risk for governments.

Recent history has shown a proliferation of attacks to both manipulate democratic elections and destabilise entire regions.

The implication being that a deepfake appearing to come from a trusted authority could artificially enhance or destroy public confidence in a candidate, leader or perception of a public issue, such as Brexit, global warming or COVID-19 vaccinations, and influence an outcome beneficial to a malicious state or actor.

This is where an evolution of deepfake technology could become extremely dangerous as misinformation can destroy public confidence. It is certainly possible that deepfakes could become the basis of future disinformation campaigns.

Could you talk to explain how deepfakes are being used to spread disinformation and the dangers this could represent?

To explain this, it’s important to identify the difference between misinformation 90

DIGITAL BULLETIN

and disinformation. Misinformation is spreading false information, something humans naturally do all the time, whether they intend to or not. It’s easy to see something on social media that may not be true and tell a friend or family member, subsequently spreading misinformation.

Disinformation, on the other hand, is knowingly spreading information that is biased, misleading or false. Thinking about this from a government perspective, this could easily be used for political propaganda. What’s better for creating a scandal against your opponent than a

OKTA

We have already seen the emergence of ‘disinformation as a service’, where cybercriminals sell disinformation services and craft advanced campaigns to help push the client’s particular agenda”

video showing them doing exactly what your allegations call out?

In many cases, disinformation campaigns do not need to use sophisticated fake images or videos. Their target audience is almost always biased towards the narrative being pushed and they want to believe the material is real. Additionally, it only takes a video to circulate very briefly for immense harm to be done.

We have already seen the emergence of ‘disinformation as a service’, where cybercriminals sell disinformation services and craft advanced campaigns to help push

the client’s particular agenda. As these campaigns increase and tools become more accessible, we should anticipate that deepfake technology could be used to enhance their objectives.

If you’re a CSO/CISO, what should you be doing to best guard against the threat of deepfakes?

Security teams will clearly struggle to technically identify deepfakes. As techniques improve, an arms race will ensue as malicious actors innovate to stay a step ahead, leveraging imbalance where cyber teams must defend all sceISSUE 24

91

SECURITY

narios while an attacker needs to find only a single weak point to exploit. Likewise, as security teams innovate with new technology to identify deepfakes, techniques to circumvent this identification will proliferate and unfortunately serve to make deepfake creation more realistic and harder to detect over time.

For CSOs and CISOs, a strong security and compliance culture, backed up by well understood processes, should be implemented in order to combat deepfakes effectively in business. This can be helped by adopting the zero trust principle of ‘never trust, always verify’. Simply following a dual authorisation process to 92

DIGITAL BULLETIN

transfer money, or verifying instructions received with a well-known truth, such as calling someone’s direct line, can expose deepfake fraud. These processes are not new, and many organisations will already have them in place, with regulators already demanding them.

Another solution could be to use biometrics as proof of possession of a device and combine this with additional factors. These could be attributes like known behaviour, contextual information, and things that the authorised user alone would know, as well as a pin code or multi-factor authentication (MFA) on a phone. By creating additional layers

OKTA

of security, simply faking one aspect of an identity will not be enough.

Is this also an issue that the wider public needs to be better educated about and, if so, how can that be organised?

We have seen how quickly misinformation can spread. The best defence right now is to teach members of the public to be wary of material without a trusted pedigree and to challenge things that make wild claims. If we are all a little bit more sceptical, then the attackers looking to fool us will have a much harder job.

Many organisations have a role to play here, from businesses and governments to schools and hospitals, and I believe the challenge will be creating a consistent and simple message for the public.

Over the longer-term, I expect this sort of technology to become well understood, if not commonplace within society. If everyday social apps included

this sort of functionality, the public would naturally be much more wary of what they see online or in the media.

Trust would naturally then have to be verified by a second factor between parties which, similar to businesses, may have the public using MFA or biometric input via mobile devices as a simple and scalable solution to authentication. This shift to a public zero trust mentality by not trusting video or voice media alone would reflect and follow the business frameworks in place now.

As well as education, what role does regulation have to play?

There are currently many existing and proposed pieces of legislation which can be applied to, or are specifically designed to, control the use of this technology. Copyright, fraud and privacy laws will apply in certain instances when breached, but do not combat the wider problems posed by deepfakes.

ISSUE 24

93

SECURITY

Specific legislation seeks to assert a measure of control by either proving authenticity of media, with digital watermarking or fingerprinting of data asserted as ‘true’, or requiring digitally adjusted or synthesised media to clearly label itself as such, known as digital accountability. This is the next logical step following on from social media platforms such as Twitter flagging untrusted, synthetic or manipulated media in posts. Potentially though, flagging trusted media is a more difficult burden than flagging untrusted media.

While this may work for ‘official’ media, it would be challenged by the vast volume of publically generated content every day. In addition, such a formal assertion of digital truth would have to

94

DIGITAL BULLETIN

be enforced strictly by governments, or run the risk of being forged at scale.

Regarding existing controls, one of the challenges we face is that most of this legislation was not developed with the idea of covering deepfakes in mind. We will need to review the things that are in scope for legislation, such as GDPR, to make sure the right buckets of personal data are covered. For example, while GDPR does cover aspects like biometric data, it is more focussed on the storage than the use. Likewise, copyright legislation may cover things like video but for an entirely different purpose, and when the purpose differs, it can be hard to prosecute under this.

Determining and policing the true from the fake raises a new host of problems

OKTA

We have seen how quickly misinformation can spread. The best defence right now is to teach members of the public to be wary of material without a trusted pedigree and to challenge things that make wild claims” in itself. Who decides what is true?

And how do we ensure the availability and integrity of the truth? As with so much regulation, variances in approach between countries can lead to confusion and difficulty in enforcement on a global scale, so working towards ‘global norms’ is incredibly important here, as with cybersecurity more generally.

Policing social media is also a challenge for similar reasons. History has shown that different platforms will respond in different ways and at different speeds, even under common regulation, while misinformation may propagate much more rapidly.

We know that cyber criminals are constantly working to modify their threats and attacks, how do you expect the deepfake method to evolve?

There is a feedback loop with all emerging technologies like these: the

more they generate success, the more that success is fed back into the technology, rapidly improving it and increasing its availability.

Much of the defence against deepfakes is going to come from research currently being actively driven by universities, security companies and think tanks. There is a significant amount of work taking place to expose deepfake videos, most aiming for the goal of releasing tools that can discord fake videos.

The best deepfake detector to emerge from the recent Facebook-led competition only caught about two-thirds of the 100,000 sample videos tested against. Even using AI and ML to develop deepfake detection over time immediately comes up against the same technology being used to develop deepfake algorithms to avoid detection.

It’s a battle of AI versus AI. ISSUE 24

95

DATA INTELLIGENCE

A UNICORN BUILT FOR SPEED Having officially joined the unicorn club in 2020, Redis Labs CEO and co-founder Ofer Bengal tells Digital Bulletin about the company’s plans to go public, its improved relationship with cloud hyperscalers and why the future of databases is tied to AI AUTHOR: James Henderson

T

he last year has proven that what we think we know about business can be turned on its head in a mere matter of weeks. We have seen industry sectors pivot to new operational models almost overnight, driven by the mass move to remote working. But this historic period has done little to deter tech investors, still keen to get in on the next big thing. Money has continued to pour into funding rounds, with the second and third quarters of 2020 proving to be particularly strong.

96

DIGITAL BULLETIN

By mid-October, 76 companies had passed the hallowed $1bn valuation to officially join the unicorn club. That number has grown since and could yet hit the 100 mark by the time the year draws to a close. And while it won’t reach the heights of 2018 and 2019 when 126 and 122 companies became unicorns, it will still rank as the third most successful year on record when it comes to unicorn creation.

REDIS LABS

ISSUE 24

97

DATA INTELLIGENCE

One of the organisations that officially became a unicorn in 2020 is Redis Labs, the provider of lightning-fast open source database Redis. It was a bumper $100 million Series F funding round in August that took Redis Labs’ valuation past $1 billion, while also taking its total funding to date to just shy of $250 million. The raise was seen by many in the technology world as a precursor to taking the company public.

Speaking to Digital Bulletin, the company’s CEO and co-founder Ofer Bengal confirms the round will give the business a shot in the arm to strengthen its teams and offerings before an IPO in one-to-two years’ time.

“For a company like us, the very natural path is to go public. When you look at other companies that have gone public in recent months, growth is very much the name of the game. We’ve seen companies like Snowflake, like MongoDB, which are peer companies to us, losing a lot of money, but growing very fast, which means that the market basically rewards hypergrowth.

“We’ve been able to grow 50% yearon-year in the last three years, and that is something we want to continue, although it becomes more difficult to sustain. Now, in order to grow very fast, we need to invest in all areas of the company. We’re planning to invest a lot of money in scaling 98

DIGITAL BULLETIN

For a company like us, the very natural path is to go public. When you look at other companies that have gone public in recent months, growth is very much the name of the game” our salesforce, really increasing the size of our marketing operation, and much more.”

A great deal of the growth Bengal and his team has achieved can be put down to the bold changes made to the company’s database proposition. Having originally started life as a database caching platform when the company was established nine years ago, Redis has been adapted and improved to become a full database operations service, enabling a number of the world’s leading enterprises - including seven Fortune 10 companies - to better process, analyse and make predictions with the data they create. Bengal calls this “the full database experience”.

A key selling point of Redis is its rapid speed, with the combination of Redis

REDIS LABS

on Flash and Intel NVMe delivering record-breaking performance of three million operations per second with sub-millisecond latencies - genuine market-leading speeds.

“From day one, we thought that the future of the database industry is in very fast databases,” Bengal says. “You had this weird situation, and in some cases still do, where databases are accelerated with a caching layer, which is an in-memory layer where you put all the most frequently, most requested objects of data.

“And we always thought that this was a method that worked, but shouldn’t the database be fast in the first place so that it doesn’t need a caching layer? So basically Redis is a database which does not need any crutches to do the job - it’s very fast.”

With his sights set on leading the company into an IPO, Bengal and Redis Labs have every right to be optimistic.

But the co-founder’s route into the technology space is not your typical one; before starting network management systems company RiT Technologies in

ISSUE 24

99

DATA INTELLIGENCE

From day one, we thought that the future of the database industry is in very fast databases”

1989 - Bengal took the company public in 1997 through NASDAQ - one of his passions was the development of toys, which he took from prototyping through to production.

It is an approach that serves him well with product development to this day, but it could easily have become his career.

“My background is that I’m an aerospace engineer and I worked for years designing airplane modification and installations, starting my own private consulting 100

DIGITAL BULLETIN

company in this area. And as a side hobby, I was developing toy concepts and sold several concepts to American companies, such as Hasbro and Mattel, as well as businesses in Japan.

“And at a certain point, I decided to not just develop the concepts, but actually manufacture them and sell them. So I started my company, and was actively looking to raise money.

I came across a guy who was one of the pioneers in the Israeli high-tech

REDIS LABS

scene in the 1990s and I went into a meeting with him with the intention of asking for investment for toys but he ended up convincing me to start a high-tech company,” Bengal says with a wry smile.

His mind consumed by tech, not toys, Bengal’s and Redis’ relationship with the public cloud hyperscalers is central to its success. As an open source company, those links have become strained in the past but it has recently made great

progress with persuading the cloud giants to work directly with it rather than taking the open source and attempting to build something of their own.

Earlier this year, Redis partnered with Microsoft to integrate Redis Enterprise directly into cloud service Azure. It says enterprise offering on Azure Cache for Redis will improve developer productivity, offer greater operational resilience, and increase peace of mind for companies migrating their databases from on-premise infrastructure to operating fully in the public cloud - a key selling point in these WFH times.

“When Redis started out, we had a very permissive license which basically enabled anyone to take the open source and use it and make any online service out of it, which all the major cloud providers did,” says Bengal. “But as we’ve developed our commercial offering, Redis Enterprise, we’ve added a host of really valuable features, so the open source component is probably only about 10% of the proposition.

“Microsoft is building this service by themselves, so we provided the Redis enterprise software. They will sell it, they will market it, they will promote it, and we are sharing revenues, which is a great achievement for us. Microsoft has only committed to this type of intimate relationship with two companies in the past ISSUE 24

101

DATA INTELLIGENCE

- HashiCorp and DataBricks - and we know that these two companies benefited tremendously. So we are very optimistic.”

The Microsoft tie-up follows a blueprint set by Redis Labs and Google in 2019, when Bengal and Google Cloud CEO appeared on-stage together at Google Cloud Next 2019 to announce Redis Enterprise was to be offered on Google Cloud Platform as a managed service. That partnership has been in full-flow for more than 12 months and Bengal says Redis has been buoyed by the results.

“We’ve started the fourth quarter of this service and we see that it is going fantastically well. We’ve seen our revenues in this area increase by

102

DIGITAL BULLETIN

300%, which is more than we expected, and we are continuing to invest in the service. Google is now building its UX into service, which will make it a more ‘Googlised’ service. So it’s going very well, we’re really happy.”

One of Redis’ most significant product launches of 2020, and one which it hopes will drive the organisation forward in 2021, and beyond is RedisAI. With the AI serving engine inside Redis, RedisAI reduces the time spent on these external processes and can deliver up to 10-times more inferences than other AI serving platforms and at a much lower latency, says Bengal.

Redis is confident that many of the leading AI-driven applications such as

REDIS LABS

As we’ve developed our commercial offering, Redis Enterprise, we’ve added a host of really valuable features, so the open source component is probably only about 10% of the proposition” fraud detection, transaction scoring, ad serving, recommendation engine, image recognition, autonomous vehicles, and game monetisation will achieve dramatically better business outcomes with these performance improvements.

“This is a very new area known as AI serving or AI inference, which is predicted by McKinsey to be worth $15 billion in five years, and there is no clear leader at the moment,” Bengal says.

“RedisAI is an inference engine for AI models of any type and we see it as a very natural extension or expansion of Redis because Redis was always about serving data to the application in a very efficient and fast way.

“The only difference here is that you serve the data with an AI model and what we show is an amazing, tremendous performance advantage over any other technology available today. I think that AI inference represents a huge opportunity for any database company, but specifically for Redis because of the speed of serving. It’s an area we’d really like to establish ourselves as a leader in the coming years.”

ISSUE 24

103

A LIFE IN TECH

A LIFE IN TECH

In the hotseat this month is Louise Lunn who leads FICO’s newly created Global Analytics Delivery organisation. Lunn oversees teams of data scientists worldwide who develop custom analytics solutions and exploratory analytics projects for the world’s top banks, as well as retailers, telecommunications firms, insurance companies and other businesses

104

DIGITAL BULLETIN

LOUISE LUNN

T

he five words I would use to describe myself are: Tenacious, energetic, positive, curious and team-centred.

My degree was using mathematical, statistical and computer models to understand, plan and make decisions in complex situations that occur in industrial and commercial organisations.

I was initially attracted to the modelling side of the credit risk world but quickly realised that software and models go hand-in-hand when I joined Scorex, and started working directly with users of analytics.

Jean-Michel Trousse, who founded Scorex in 1986, was a huge influence. He was a visionary and inspirational leader who realised that Scorex needed to support its core services (analytics) with a host of advanced software solutions, each integral to the decision process – providing credit grantors with the means to implement decision support systems and to track their continued impact and performance.

The core values of the business were customer service, collaborative development, quality consultancy, value

demonstration and treating company money like your own. These are all values that I continue to live by today.

Unfortunately, Jean Michel died in a plane crash in 2001 which was a great loss to the credit world, and he didn’t see the true impact of his bureau-independent solutions.

Bringing together predictive analytics, decision support technologies and strategy optimisation to enrich customer data and allow organisations to proactively manage their relationships with customers was my first role which felt a huge challenge at the time, straight out of university with only theory to pull on.

Providing complete solutions requires a thorough understanding of business problems faced by clients, which I have developed over the years.

My curious nature is why I have stayed in the consultancy space for so many years, as I enjoy demonstrating how our products and services help address our client’s challenges.

The most exciting development in data science at present is explainable/ interpretable AI, i.e., platforms transparent enough so that a human expert can identify how decisions are made. It ISSUE 24

105

A LIFE IN TECH

will enable people to understand and act responsibly, as well as creating effective teaming between humans and machines.

The emphasis on transparency in financial services is driven in part by provisions in legislation like GDPR that require companies to offer consumers the right to ask how AI tools make decisions about them.

It is absolutely right to expect AI to be used as a force for good — but we also have to be careful. Applications of AI in industries such as financial services are not just time-saving but have a major impact on customer experience, setting brands apart from others with a relevant and meaningful offering.

This might include tailoring services and solutions to individual needs based on data around their circumstances, needs and preferences, which will be the start of a good relationship based on understanding of the customer.

But we need to make sure those AI systems are developed to be explainable and ethical – we have to use AI to fight bias, rather than let the bias already in data be encoded into the algorithms.

The coronavirus outbreak is causing widespread concern and economic 106

DIGITAL BULLETIN

hardship for consumers, businesses and communities across the globe.

COVID has been the biggest challenge I have seen in my career but also a big opportunity to support our clients and provide thought leadership through these uncertain times, helping them with their customer and business priorities.

The pandemic has accelerated our customers’ digital transformation programmes and at FICO we have adapted well and stayed connected with our colleagues and customers through the use of technology and delivered to our clients’ needs and timescales.

The biggest achievement of my career is being in a position to attract and retain the stars of the future in analytics and software. Giving people the opportunity to grow and develop and see them go on to achieve great things themselves.

My advice to aspiring technologists is not to be intimidated by people who have experience. Speak your mind, offer your ideas and solutions because that’s what organisations need and want from you – drive change!

LOUISE LUNN

The most important technologies of the next decade will be AI-based – the applications are limitless.

I switch off by switching technology off and spending time outdoors in the countryside with my family walking and talking. In the last nine months we have done so much more of this – escaping Zoom!

At FICO, we do three things really well, and those three things have already changed the world and will do even more in the future. First, our analytics help businesses make better, fairer decisions, replacing guesswork with science, including AI. This helps more people around the world get credit, for example.

criminals from laundering money that can then be used for drugs, human trafficking and other offenses against humanity. We will continue to make crime less profitable and harder to hide!

Third, our decision management platform will finally give businesses one connected, coordinated way to attract, grow and protect customers. No more silos, no more missed opportunities, and customers will work with firms that treat them right.

I’d like to be remembered for ‘doing the right thing’ and treating people how I want to be treated myself.

Second, our fraud and financial crime solutions have saved lenders and consumers billions, and stopped

ISSUE 24

107

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

Writing exclusively for Digital Bulletin, CGI’s Director of Digital Transformation, Sumant Kumar, outlines how to apply the four Vs of Big Data

A

s data complexities increase at a rapid rate this year, businesses are facing bigger challenges. It’s been estimated that more 80% of data will be unstructured over the next five years, and the total amount of worldwide data will reach 163 zettabytes.

While this is a massive number and there are certainly many challenges and hurdles businesses need to overcome, it’s also a situation abundant in data opportunity. All of which means it is critical for businesses, big and small, to have better access to, and a better understanding of, data if they wish to succeed.

At CGI we firmly believe that by using the four V’s of data, organisations will be in a better position to use data and differ108

DIGITAL BULLETIN

entiate themselves, creating a roadmap driving them quarter by quarter to their desired outcomes.

What are the Four Vs? I first want to caveat the Four Vs of data by highlighting that data complexity is by its very nature complex, meaning it can be difficult to understand. At CGI we believe the first thing you need to do is break it down. As a business, you need to work out and develop what it is you want your data to achieve. Once you know how you want to exploit your data, you can then begin to build the desired roadmap and start the journey to success.

Once this value is established, then can you use the Four Vs to break down

SUMANT KUMAR

the exact complexity and develop your plan.

1. Volume: The IDC predicts that the total worldwide data will swell to 163ZB by 2025. To put it into context, that is 10 times the amount it is today. That’s an incredible jump in a short moment of time and indicates that the level of data you as a business will have will, in turn, will continue to increase and build on itself.

2. Velocity: Customer needs and expectation, combined with digitalisation, has led to the growing number of sensors and devices. This, in turn, has created greater requirements to handle a large amount of real-time streaming data.

3. Variety: In the next five years, more than 80% of data will be unstructured. This trend will only continue to increase at an incredibly rapid pace as it’s led by sensors, smart devices and content-based data. All of which are continuing to grow in what they collect and where they exist.

4. Veracity: One of the biggest issues facing the tech industries is a lack of trust in data. Research has revealed that one in three business leaders don’t trust their data. What’s more, poor data quality is expensive, it’s assumed that it’s cost the US economy a staggering $3.1 trillion annually.

Once you know how you want to exploit your data, you can then begin to build the desired roadmap and start the journey to success” Making sure your data is reliable and of high quality not only benefits your analytics but can save you money.

How to use the Four Vs While I’ve outlined what the Four Vs are, you may be wondering why you need to be aware of these factors, and that is simpler to explain.

The continuing change in customer expectations means it’s no longer a choice to be data-driven as a business. If you want to be relevant, if you want to be cutting edge, if you want to be competitive, you ISSUE 24

109

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

need to use data smartly and efficiently.

In a world of seven billion people, five billion of them use mobile devices – 60% of which are smartphones. This means chances are your customer base is made up of digitally native users who understand technology more than any other generation before. And with the rise in millennials and Gen Z – perhaps the first genuinely digitally native generation ever – they expect a personalised product or service, specifically tailored to their needs.

Being able to effectively use the data you have as a company, in a way that allows you to provide a personal service will give you a competitive edge now – but it will also be standard practice in the future. We tell all clients that implementing a data-driven practice now means that in five-years-time what you’re offering is a streamlined, efficient and more productive service. Like the adage says, if you can’t be first, don’t be last.

There is no denying that this can be a daunting experience. However, emerging technologies like big data, machine learning and AI all play an integral part in advanced analytics. It represents a genuine opportunity for organisations to differentiate themselves now and get familiar with something complex before everyone else.

110

DIGITAL BULLETIN

Inspiration There are plenty of tech giants out there leading the way, who serve as excellent examples for inspiration.

Amazon and Netflix, for instance, are the biggest names that jump to mind in this instance. They are renowned for being businesses who use data to drive customer experience. There is a reason why your Netflix account looks entirely different to your friends and loved ones. Even subscribers with several accounts on their system for different people will look different. This is because the data Netflix gath-

SUMANT KUMAR

ers from its users is used to drive what they promote and how they promote it.

What seems like a unique offering to you, is the same programmes and films on offer to everyone else, but the personal touch of preference means when you log on you can access what you want almost immediately.

With time and careful evaluation, any business can achieve similar results.

You have to understand your customer base and provide something that seems unique and personal to them to keep them engaged.

Agility at the heart When we’re advising clients on how to achieve this and recognise the Four Vs to use data to drive an experience, product or service, we highlight that agility is at its heart. It’s a learning curve that will continue to change as customer expectations and needs evolve.

Being able to be nimble will allow your business – regardless of size and funding – to create a streamlined operation which will inspire, engage and encourage customers to keep coming back.

ISSUE 24

111

CONTACT US COMMERCIAL ENQUIRIES

BUSINESS@DIGITALBULLETIN.COM BUSINESS@DIGITALBULLET.IN

EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES

EDITORIAL@DIGITALBULLETIN.COM EDITORIAL@DIGITALBULLET.IN