Digital Bulletin - Issue 28 - May 2021 by NODE

DIGITAL BULLETIN Issue 28 | May ’21

AI IN 2030 How will the technology have changed the world as we know it?

All you need to know about next-gen connectivity

HYBRID TRANSFORMATION Telecoms solutions giant Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has transformed in order to help transform its customers. ALE tells us how it is utilising its own experience to help businesses embrace change

JAMES HENDERSON Content Director

hen you’re covering the technology space, it can often feel like the sector is made up almost exclusively of bright young startups and unicorns. But our cover story this month features a company whose roots can be traced back over a century. Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) has made a habit of adapting over the years and has set its sights on its next evolution - to become more than just an IT partner. In this case study, we speak with two of the main protagonists of this transformation, Jean-Pierre Roullin, Director of Information Technology System, and Sebastien Juras, Director of Digital Studio. “What we do is go beyond just providing technology in the form of apps or infrastructure,” Roullin tells us. “We provide support to all departments in a company, so we know its processes and its touch points. That gives us the

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possibility to not only answer a specific need, but to see how it integrates in the whole chain, to anticipate the impact it might have.” Elsewhere, we look at the burgeoning market for industry-specific cloud platforms. The public cloud market is growing at a rapid pace and with fierce competition for business, providers are diversifying their offerings to ensure they are completely aligned with the needs of their customers. We speak to five experts to find out where these industry clouds leave catch-all services. There’s plenty more to enjoy, including a Q&A with Keysight Technologies’ Roger Nichols about the potential of 6G and how to make it a reality, a debate about the impact of AI over the next decade and an exclusive interview with Dell Technologies CTO, UK, Arash Ghazanfari about telecoms at the edge. I hope you enjoy the issue.

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

Contents 06

Month in Review

Case Study

People

Future

News, regulations and analysis

ALE

A hybrid transformation in the telecoms sector

Skills Emotional Intelligence crucial for CISOs

Keysight All you need to know about 6G

96 60

Security

Data Intelligence

80 80 90

CYE Hacking for good

Debate Where will AI be in 2030?

Connectivity In conversation with Arash Ghazanfari, Dell Technologies CTO

A Life in Tech

Closing Bulletin

Huawei’s CEO of R&D, UK, Henk Koopmans, shares his expertise

An exclusive column from James McLeod, VP EMEA for Faethm AI

MONTH IN REVIEW

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

NEWS 6

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NEWS UPDATE

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Headline: Microsoft announced a $19.7 billion deal to buy speech recognition company. Info: Microsoft has made no secret of its desire to tap into the global healthcare market and last year rolled out its cloud for healthcare companies. Nuance Communications provides conversational AI and cloud-based intelligence for healthcare providers, so aligns perfectly with Microsoft’s wonder ambitions. Nuance could also be integrated into its Teams platform.

Headline: Dell confirmed the long-awaited spin-off of computer visual-

isation giant VMware. Info: The spin-off of VMware has been on the cards for some time, with Dell actively exploring the option for at least a year. You only have to look at Dell’s debt

levels to see why the deal makes sense, and a sale would net it somewhere in the region of $9.5 billion. Customers are unlikely to see much change in the medium-term, with the companies signing a five-year agreement to continue the close working relationship.

Headline: Panasonic made its largest acquisition of the last decade with the purchase of AI supply chain outfit Blue Yonder for $7.1 billion. Info: Panasonic obviously liked what it has seen from Blue Yonder after buying 20% of the business last year for around $790 million. Blue Yonder is perhaps best known for its Luminate supply chain platform and counts the likes of Asda, Best Buy, 7-Eleven, ABB and 3M as enterprise customers.

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FUNDING Headline: Automation technology platform UiPath raised $1.4 billion from the launch of its IPO, valuing the company at $29 billion. Info: Robotic process automation is white-hot at the moment and UiPath’s IPO was one of the most anticipated tech flotations of the year to-date. UiPath says its platform is utilised by more than 60% of the Fortune Global 500, reducing costs and operations errors by learning how employees complete tasks and then enabling software robots to replicate them. Headline: Cloud data protection company Druva Inc. has completed a funding round worth $147 million, taking its value past the $2 billion mark. Info: Global investment outfit CDPQ led the round, with participation from three existing shareholders Neuberger Berman, Viking Global 8

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Investors and Atreides Management. As part of the agreement, CDPQ is joining Druva’s Board of Directors. With the new H round of financing, total funding in Druva has reached $475 million.

Headline: Redis Labs has closed $110 million in financing led by a new investor, Tiger Global, which brings the company’s valuation to more than $2 billion. Info: The company’s Series G round also includes participation from another new investor, Softbank Vision Fund 2, and existing Redis Labs investor TCV. Additionally, Tiger, Softbank, and TCV acquired additional ownership as part of a $200 million secondary transaction. The company has doubled its valuation in less than 12 months.

NEWS UPDATE

PEOPLE

Headline: Splunk appointed well-known AWS exec Teresa Carlson to the newly created role of President and Chief Growth Officer. Info: Carlson is leaving AWS after more than a decade as its Vice President, Worldwide Public Sector and Industries, a key role for the organisation. Carlson will lead and work closely with Splunk’s sales, customer success and marketing leaders to drive its business transformations across Splunk’s go-to-market business segments. Headline: Info has named Dawn Jones as its new VP of Social Impact. Info: Jones is a 24-year Info veteran and will lead the company’s global diversity and inclusion strategy as well as Info’s investments and programmes driving positive global

impact. Jones will report to Sandra Rivera, Info’s executive vice president and chief people officer. “Dawn Jones is a leading advocate of actionable change who has demonstrated deep expertise and experience leading diversity initiatives on a global scale,” said Rivera.

Headline: Chris Poole, the founder of the controversial online community 4chan, has left his role at Google. Info: Poole joined the tech giant in 2016 after over a decade at 4chan and has been in different positions within the company. His last role was reported to be product manager. Prior to that, he had been a partner at the company’s startup incubator Area 120. The reason for his departure is still unknown.

Stay right up to date with the latest news shaping the enterprise technology sector with The Bulletin, available at digitalbulletin.com ISSUE 28

MONTH IN REVIEW

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DIGITAL POLICY

THE UK VS BIG TECH Each month, Digital Bulletin analyses one of the new digital policies that countries globally are enforcing with the goal of regulating the online world. In this issue, we look at the United Kingdom’s Digital Markets Unit

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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an governments control Big Tech? Should they? Europe believes so. Only a few months after the European Union submitted a proposal to regulate the behavior of tech giants within the single market, the United Kingdom has announced a similar legislative initiative: the creation of a new regulator, the Digital Markets Unit (DMU). The DMU is tasked with the responsibility of scrutinising the dominance 12

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of technology giants such as Google and Facebook in the country, as well as developing legally binding codes to regulate their activities and relationships with advertisers. It will be based in the Competition and Markets Authority and it will aim to grant consumers more choice and control over their data, promote online competition and identify unfair business practices. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwateng has described

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the new watchdog as “unashamedly pro-competition”. “The key factor in play here is that the DMU is trying to tackle monopolies within digital markets,” says Alex Hazell, Head of UK Legal at Acxiom. “As history tells us time and time again, monopolies are good neither for economies nor democracies. Attempts to regulate tech are slow and arduous and having legislation such as this one is an important step in ensuring the digital economy operates in a fair and healthy way.” Big Tech’s control of the market is undeniable. A 2019 report published by the Digital Competition Expert panel already described Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple as monopolies and threats to competition, innovation and personal privacy. And COVID-19 has only reinforced this. In the first seven months

of 2020, the stocks of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook, rose 37%, while all the other stocks in the S&P 500 fell a combined 6%, according to Credit Suisse. While the pandemic and its related restrictions have caused a great deal of damage to small and independent businesses, Big Tech companies have not only survived in this crisis environment, but thrived in it. The announcement of the creation of the DMU brings hope to Big Tech’s competitors. However, the regulator now faces the hard task of meeting the expectations placed upon it. “Whilst I wholeheartedly support the need for the DMU, given its position within the Competition and Markets authority, I, and many others, hope and expect that the DMU will expand its role to look at the impact Big Tech is having

Simon Hansford

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in smaller, mid-sized UK companies,” says Simon Hansford, CEO of UKCloud. “These should be given opportunities to demonstrate their considerable capabilities and compete in their field – in doing so, generating wealth, revenue and employment within the UK. A diverse marketplace hosting a wide range of players is what UK businesses need to help reset and rebuild within a thriving digital economy.” The DMU has many hurdles to overcome before achieving this goal. Currently, the watchdog is operating in a limited capacity and will not be able to take action against tech companies until the UK government has approved legislation to officially establish its oversight powers.

“The DMU launched last week with precisely zero legal powers,” says Verity Egerton-Doyle, an antitrust lawyer at global law firm Linklaters. “An ‘early 2021’ consultation on the code of conduct powers is yet to be released and the broader regulatory agenda is nowhere to be seen. The delay can be partially explained by COVID-19. But at a time when the UK is critically dependent on US goodwill in trade negotiations, some may question whether becoming a world leader in regulating US-based Big Tech is an unequivocally good thing. Which of the proposed reforms actually become law, and when, therefore remains an open question.”

Alex Hazell

Verity Egerton-Doyle

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DIGITAL POLICY

The Digital Markets Unit is not the UK’s first attempt at regulating online platforms. In the first few months of 2021, the CMA has launched several antitrust investigations into tech giants such as Google and Apple, and it has stopped Facebook’s acquisition of Giphy until it can undergo an in-depth review. At the same time, the ICO continues to issue high fines for privacy breaches and, after the Online Safety Bill is passed later this year, social media operators will be held responsible for the illegal content posted on

their sites, facing fines of up to 10% of turnover for non-compliance. However, if successful, the DMU would address all of these issues at once. “The UK’s regulators are at the forefront of global efforts to curb the power of Big Tech,” Egerton-Doyle says. “The promise of a new regulatory regime is that it could allow divergent policy objectives to be addressed holistically. The creation of the DMU is a step in this direction, but until it gets some powers, it is less a ‘modern regulator for the digital age’, and more a think-tank.” ISSUE 28

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INDUSTRY CLOUD FAD OR FUTUREPROOF?

Sector-specific services are one of the biggest cloud-centric trends right now, with Microsoft, IBM, AWS and Google Cloud all working to define their offerings in an increasingly bespoke manner. But is it a trend worth pursuing? And where does it leave more catch-all services? We spoke to five experts to better understand the implications

AUTHOR: Jonathan Dyble

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NEWS ANALYSIS

he cloud isn’t new, but it is constantly evolving. While the likes of blockchain, cryptocurrencies, driverless vehicles and 5G grab many of the tech headlines, cloud computing continues to take on a major role in empowering enterprises behindthe-scenes. To underestimate its potential would be naïve. Cloud computing is still a heavy hitting technology – a pivotal part of any digital transformation strategy. While Amazon’s initial release of its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) marked the advent of cloud in 2006, the technology has since expanded to encompass exponential service provision and customer adoption, Synergy Research Group revealing that 2019 saw enterprises spend more on cloud infrastructure services than on data centre hardware and software for the first time.

Harjott Atrii

Its uptake is only expected to grow. Data from Canalsys maps its latest rise as companies have grappled with covid and digitalised to meet the demands of the “new normal”. In Q2 2019, total cloud infrastructure services spend stood at $26.3 billion; by Q1 2020, this had jumped to $31 billion; and come Q2 2020, spend again grew to $34.6 billion. Further, Gartner forecasts more of the same for 2021, anticipating worldwide spending on public cloud to expand by nearly 20% this year. The numbers speak for themselves: cloud is big business. Some of the world’s largest companies dominate the market, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and AWS accounting for 63% of global spend. Yet as the opportunities become more lucrative, competition continues

Sid Nag

Mark Cox

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Kumar Mehta to hot up and providers jostle and innovate to try to cut above the noise. It is against this context that industry specific clouds were born. In April, Microsoft revealed it had acquired Nuance Communications – a leading provider of conversational AI and cloud-based ambient clinical intelligence for healthcare providers – in a deal valued at $19.7 billion. The company’s aim? To bolster its healthcare-specific cloud offering. “Today’s acquisition announcement represents the latest step in Microsoft’s industry-specific cloud strategy,” the announcement read, the Redmondbased tech giant having also launched three spin-off Azure offerings focused 18

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Tommy Langnes on financial services, manufacturing and not for profit just one week earlier. It’s not just Microsoft rolling out industry-specific clouds either. From AWS and Google Cloud to smaller industry players, it is a trend that is emerging rapidly within the current global market. The question is whether the cloud’s vertical move is a logical next step? To understand the extent of the benefits of industry specific clouds, we first spoke with IBM’s Mark Cox, Public Cloud Leader, UK & Ireland. Cox is an individual familiar with the inner workings of such offerings, IBM itself having launched specific clouds in the form of IBM Cloud for Financial Services, IBM Cloud for Telecommu-

NEWS ANALYSIS

nications and more recently OpenBuilt – a platform designed to assist the construction industry in securely connecting fragmented supply chains. “Every sector has a unique set of needs and challenges and a cloud platform that is tailored to address these is going to add more value for businesses than a generic platform,” Cox says. “This is becoming more important as businesses expand their use of cloud services as part of their overall digital transformation strategies.” For Cox, cloud platforms that are custom designed make it possible for enterprises to accelerate their digital transformation journeys more efficiently and securely – a process which opens up a range of benefits, from cost reduction and faster innovation to business growth opportunities and enhanced security. Indeed, the latter point is particularly prevalent. Cox affirms: “It’s possible to design an industry cloud platform that helps to de-risk an entire industry supply chain. “One of the key sources of risk for organisations migrating to multi-cloud settings is the disparate nature of the supply chain, which can often comprise a myriad of technology vendors. In the rush to take advantage of the cloud while maintaining their systems of record, many firms have ended up with systems

“ The key question here is: what does the customer want? They want something tailored to work for them and their business needs, as that’s what will help them stay competitive and stay resilient. “ Customers don’t want to be offered the cloud features they don’t need, or be told “we can ask the team to look into that feature but can’t promise anything”. Those companies that can offer a highly tailored, scalable cloud solution from the get-go will be in a great space going forward. “ The cloud is about far more than data hosting now. It’s about integrated business support that can help a business get where it wants to be tomorrow.” Tommy Langnes, Co-founder, LYTT

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riddled with complexity and disconnected parts. “This is why the SolarWinds cyber-attack that occurred in 2020 was so successful.” Here, the usefulness of a single platform with a common set of industry-specific compliance and security controls pays dividends. Companies can onboard technology vendors in just weeks instead of years, allowing them to develop new offerings for customers much faster, enhancing overall abilities to innovate and, therefore, competitiveness. Further, compliance can be demonstrated to specific regulators on an automated, continuous basis rather than doing it manually every few months, saving companies time and money. Where does this leave traditional cloud offerings? Be it eased complexity, security enhancements of cost savings, there are multiple arguments to be made for industry specific offerings. So, where does this leave more generic cloud offerings? Do they still have a place? Enter Sid Nag, Vice President of Cloud Services and Technologies at Gartner Research. A member of Gartner’s Cloud Leadership Council, he is well placed to comment on the wider impact of industry specific clouds, doing so by 20

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first iterating the continued viability of more generalised clouds. In Nag’s view, nuanced alternatives aren’t the holy grail. Rather, they are a nice-to-have that will typically leverage many of the same features as broader offerings. “It is worth remembering that industry clouds are not being built from the

NEWS ANALYSIS

ground up,” Nag says. “Often, they’re leveraging an existing cloud platform with the same core offering. “Many of the technicalities in terms of features and functionality are not new – they’re the same as those of the mothership with an additional layer of nuance.” Nag also advocates caution among the providers themselves, pointing out

that industry specific solutions could result in a degree of rabbit holing with limited end benefits. “It’s important that industry specific cloud providers don’t become too bogged down in their industries,” he says. “They need to avoid trying to kill the goose to lose the golden egg so to speak. ISSUE 28

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Five key reasons for the increasing trend towards industry-specific clouds from Harjott Atrii. 1. Easy adoption because of availability of ready-to-use environment with tools and services tailored to a specific vertical’s operational requirements. 2. Efficient handling of data sources and workflows, and compliance with an industry’s unique standards like HIPAA, FedRAMP, etc. 3. Support for industry-standard APIs to connect easily and securely like FHIR for Healthcare, Open Banking APIs 4. Access to best global industry practices and use of optimised resources as per industry specific requirements. 5. Enhanced operational efficiency and customised holistic solution though combination of different industry specific modules which each customer may pick and choose.

Harjott Atrii, Executive Vice President and Global Head of the Digital Foundation Services, Zensar Technologies

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“If all cloud providers begin to direct all attentions to industry specific clouds to differentiate themselves with the intellectual property which they might have, then the impact is square one. You’ll be competing against the same set of people that you competed with in the core offering, but in a much more nuanced way.” Regional nuances are likewise highlighted as an area of potential limitation by Nag. He points out that an industry cloud tailored for US manufacturers might not meet the needs of sector players in the Eurozone, thereby reducing the overall market potential of any single bespoke solution. Indeed, many iterations would have to be developed for specific sectors, specific economies, and specific needs. There are also drawbacks to be considered on the customer side. In the view of Kumar Mehta, Founder and CDO of Versa Networks, industry specific clouds are more likely to entrench companies with specific providers, and therefore creating complexities if they wish to move to a new provider in the future based on costings, alternative services or otherwise. He outlines several such considerations as follows: “The key concerns of industry specific clouds are vendor lock-ins because of specialised technology,

NEWS ANALYSIS

cloud-agnostic security, programmable application aware networking, optimal middle mile transit and integration with third party solutions.” There is, therefore, a strong case for both industry specific clouds and their broad-reaching counterparts. While the former undoubtedly offers numerous benefits, the latter can provide an equally sound service through the delivery of many of the cloud’s key

features and functionality, and enable providers to capture markets at large. In Nag’s view, the bulk of cloud demand will continue to be accounted for by existing cloud offerings for the foreseeable as a result. Yet, as the cloud further matures, its providers continue to innovate, and the new normal materialises through the persistence of digitisation strategies, specific solutions are likely to consolidate their new-found role. ISSUE 28

CASE STUDY

FOLLOWING ALE’S LEAD ALE transformed itself, and now it is transforming its customers. Jean-Pierre Roullin, Director of Information Technology System, and Sebastien Juras, Director of Digital Studio, tell Digital Bulletin how the telecommunications solutions giant is using its own experiences to help businesses across the world

PROJECT DIRECTOR: Callum Hornigold AUTHOR: Daniel Brigham VIDEOGRAPHER: Fraser Harrop

IMAGES COURTESY OF ALE

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ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

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nless you’ve lived an experience, can you teach it? Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (ALE) had ambitions to become more than just an IT partner. One of the world’s biggest telecommunications solutions companies, it wanted to offer more. It wanted to provide connectivity solutions to help businesses in their digital transformations. First, though, it needed to look inwards. This is the story of how ALE transformed itself in order to transform others. –––– Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise has never had any resistance to change. Its story spans over a century, and any company that remains at the forefront of its industry for such a long period of time does one thing better than those who fall by the wayside: they adapt. 26

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Headquartered in France, ALE connects over 50 million people at over 830,000 businesses in 100 countries across the globe. Its mission is to offer businesses of all sizes a tailored service that connects them through digital networking, communications and cloud solutions, whether it’s on-premise, in the cloud or a hybrid of the two. Its 102-year history is one of expansion and innovation. The latest transformation has been driven, as always, by an ingrained desire to get ahead of the curve. Once again, ALE wanted to offer a deeper service. So it became more than just an IT partner. “We are a company that has been through a lot of change and transformation and I think adaptation is really part of our DNA,” Jean-Pierre Roullin, Director of Information Technology System at ALE,

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tells Digital Bulletin. “I see us as an agent of transformation. “What we do is go beyond just providing technology in the form of apps or infrastructure. We provide support to all departments in a company, so we know its processes and its touch points. That gives us the possibility to not only answer a specific need, but to see how it integrates in the whole chain, to anticipate the impact it might have. So we are able to push and help the processes themselves to be more efficient. Then we bring the technology to make it work.” Roullin says ALE has a big advantage when meeting with customers to talk them through the transformation process: they’ve lived it themselves. ALE’s own digital transformation – a process that

never ends – means it can go to clients with models which work, because they have been successful inside its own offices. Tasked with leading the latest change at ALE was Sebastien Juras, Director of Digital Studio. As anyone who has been involved in a digital transformation knows, it’s never a smooth process. Things go wrong. It’s how you learn from the errors that will ultimately define its success. “This is my favourite story,” says Juras of the transformation. “Because, like all good stories, this began with failure. We at ALE were thinking about our own digital transformation for a very long time – very in advance of when digital transformation was a buzz phrase. We identified the tools, the architecture, the framework that we wanted to put in place in order to support

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CASE STUDY

We have a set-up that is in place to accompany the transformation so that now it can occur rapidly and help us to be better and always move forward” Jean-Pierre Roullin the digital transformation. Unfortunately, we failed. Nobody would understand what we wanted to do. “So our first lesson was that a digital transformation must not be imposed. Digital transformation comes from a change of the culture at a company – so we must transform by example. Only then did we have great success.” That example meant targeting a specific department, transforming its processes until the outcome was successful, and using that as a blueprint to spread the best practices throughout the remaining departments. “This was absolutely marvellous,” Juras says. “I’d never seen so much enthusiasm 28

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ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

from both the IT and Business departments to apply this digital transformation, and the outcome was amazing.” Juras leads ALE’s Digital Studio and Digital Factory, where digital transformation best practices are aligned. The Studio brings together small teams of multi-skilled experts from the Business and IT departments, with teams assigned targets and given the autonomy to make decisions in order to meet them. Success or failure is based on short cycles of development, using data-led insights to measure how close each iteration is to meeting KPIs. If the trend is positive they carry on in that direction, if it’s negative the team pivots.

When targets have been reached, the team moves across to the Digital Factory, which is focussed on customer optimisation. It’s called a factory for a reason, as it manages a high-volume transaction process with a well-defined structure. “What I like about what we are doing with the Factory and Studio is that they are offering on one side stability, and on the other side change,” Roullin says. “And we are doing that at the same time, so it’s not one or the other – it’s both of them. We have reliability and innovation, and the combination of the two is what I think will help us go forward and transform even further.” ISSUE 28

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As Roullin and Juras both point out, a digital transformation must enable a process that leads to a specific target. So, what was ALE’s? What solutions to what problems has its transformation provided? “What we wanted to achieve was really to streamline our opportunity management process, but also rework our partner relationship management process,” says Roullin. “Finally, for our customer, a new way to aggregate all of the information that we have in all the different places into one single place. On these topics we have delivered concrete results and we are now deploying them. “This process of experiment, fix, improve, repeat has been key for us to deliver our transformation. So I won’t say that right now we have finished transforming because

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you should always be transforming. But what we have is a set-up that is in place to accompany the transformation so that now it can occur rapidly and help us to be better and always move forward.” –––– Data. It makes the world go around, and as soon as organisations embrace that, the sooner they can transform. Data being gospel is one of the key lessons ALE has learned from its own transformation, and now it applies this to its clients when talking through their specific solutions. Data provides evidence that tools are either improving or hindering a process, and identifies where the value of the process is. This is just one of the digital transformation best practices that Juras evangelises about: you can’t successfully transform

ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

ALE and TCS ALE partners with Tata Consultancy Services, a global leader in IT services, consulting and business solutions, to help drive its transformation and growth

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I see us as an agent of transformation. What we do is go beyond just providing technology in the form of apps or infrastructure. We provide support to all departments in the company, so we know its processes and its touch points” Jean-Pierre Roullin

without the necessary data. Collaboration is also high on Juras’s list. “It is important to build a team of experts from both the business department and IT, to enable a strong collaboration, and to give the means to this team to decide what is to be done,” he says. “It’s key that the experts have the full autonomy to take the decisions. To enable the transformation, you 32

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experiment quickly while developing in agile mode with short-cycle development. Thanks to the data, you can identify if you are going in the right direction or not.” ALE’s transformation has allowed the company to adapt at pace in a challenging and changing environment. While it’s kept its traditional offerings to customers, it’s added more as-a-service products, and

ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

has revamped the customer experience to make it more accessible, leveraging new technologies. Because ALE understands the importance of collaboration, it knew it needed a strategic partner to help drive the transformation and its next wave of growth. It chose one it already had a longstanding relationship with: IT services giant Tata

Consultancy Services (TCS). The Indian multinational comes armed with tech expertise and business intelligence, and the partnership with ALE was a perfect fit. “For us it was really critical to bring in a partner who would bring us several things,” says Roullin. “First, a deep understanding of our business model, second an extensive experience in end-to-end ISSUE 28

Tata Consultancy Services

A Q&A with V Rajanna, Senior Vice President & Global Head, Technology Business Unit

What are the market dynamics in the technology industry? And can you explain TCS’s point of view on the importance of the programme for ALE? The technology industry is shifting away from selling siloed hardware products and legacy revenue models to selling bundled, outcome-based solutions, in a subscription-based business model. This is driven by a growing demand for hyper-personalised experiences and rapid advancements in digital technologies, taking technology companies a step closer to embracing “the experience economy”. In the Subscription Business Model, the customer is at the centre of everything. Therefore, creating memorable and highly customised experiences across the value chain will translate to greater brand loyalty, providing a significant edge over competition and delivering business outcomes. ALE is going through this change and transforming traditional products into an As-a-Service model. Being a B2B company, it needs to completely transform the customer engagement

and empower its channel partners with simplified and intelligent processes to deliver personalised customer experiences. Why TCS? We have been a strategic partner with ALE over the last 10 years. TCS has been ALE’s key partner of choice for many strategic initiatives across Digital Transformation, Product Engineering and Business Process Services. With our partnership, we helped them in co-creating next generation unified communication platforms, rolling out digital platforms to foster an agile business environment, and driving next-gen digital marketing initiatives. This deep contextual knowledge of ALE’s business, coupled with TCS Business 4.0 thought leadership framework, positioned us as a suitable partner for this Growth and Transformation initiative. TCS is at the forefront of helping customers across industries, with their Subscription Business Model transformations. TCS’ Customer Experience Transformation Services simplifies customer journeys and drives business value from business strategy to operations. Our business outcome-focused approach allows us to gain deep insights into end-customer behaviour and competitive play in the market, helping us define contextualised product offerings, create intelligent customer engagement processes, and simplify business operations. On the technology front, TCS has a strong, market-leading Salesforce practice. With our extensive experience in the technology business domain and all leading CX technologies, we strive to deliver rapid innovation, shortened product cycles and continual improvement by leveraging our adaptive agile delivery processes.

How does TCS approach CX transformations? At TCS, we believe that each customer is unique in terms of their needs, wants and experiences aligned to their vision and strategies. We focus on creating iconic and customised experiences, by harmonising design, creativity, and technology to their market advantage. The key aspects of our approach are • Design Thinking: We leverage our 20 + design studios that we have across the globe. We engage our customers at these design studios and, using design-thinking framework, help them reimagine their end customer journeys to provide unified, consistent, and predictable experiences across all touch points and channels. • Agile Frameworks for Experience Design: Based on Digital Bulletin.pdf 1 28-Apr-21 8:19:30 PM our experience of working with various customers

CMY

across industries, we continuously improve our best practices in user experiences and enhance them by incorporating the feedback from the business users in an iterative and incremental manner. • Data Driven Insights: We rely on data-driven insights to monitor the quality of experiences, efficiency in business operations, and deliver mass personalised experiences to stay relevant and competitive. • Location Independent AgileTM: We deliver results through TCS’s Location Independent Agile Methodology that ensures uncompromised Agile values and principles, while effectively utilising the talent from anywhere any time. We have helped 500+ customers with their Customer Experience transformation resulting in superior business outcomes.

Every business is born out of belief. The belief that you can make an impact. That you have an idea that ma�ers. At TCS, we go beyond helping businesses transform through technology. We help them make a meaningful diﬀerence. Transla�ng their aspira�on into reality. Building on belief Visit tcs.com

CASE STUDY

services, from design to delivery of customer experience transformation. And, finally, a proven expertise in Salesforce technology with many customer engagements already performed. TCS, with whom we already partner on several projects, brought us a unique business transformation approach, enabling agility, and delivering this programme under a tight schedule and timeline. “Our partnership with TCS helped us to achieve agility by adapting to the rapid change in business needs. We managed 36

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to drive revenue growth thanks to the analysis of our large database, which allowed us to increase the renewal of recurring business but also do up-sales. And finally we significantly improved the sales conversion by leveraging integrated customer insights.” TCS is also a core part of the Studio and Factory, as Juras points out: “Thanks to their experience and their wide amount of resource available, they are able to quickly provide us expertise in some domains in whatever technology we are requesting.

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That was very appreciated. They are also able to provide us advice in some technology where we think that the technology can make a difference to the processes. “Thanks to their agility we can implement short cycle development with them. They very quickly understand our needs and are able to realise some development within two weeks.” –––– The rapid increase of cloud-based storage options means telco solutions companies are at a hosting crossroads. ALE has embraced this, by once again calling on its own experience. ALE used to have a communications system that was on-premise only, before adding a layer of cloud service on top of it. That layer has been increasing ever since. This provided ALE with a hybrid landscape, which allows the company the flexibility to move from one model to another without anything going wrong or being lost. “Our strategy is clear,” says Roullin. “We want to host a maximum of our applications in the cloud so that we can reduce our costs and benefit from the flexibility of the cloud. “I think this solution and the way we sell it and implement it is something that is really an advantage for our customers. I think this is what offers our customers a smooth journey in their transformation to the cloud

So our first lesson was that a digital transformation must not be imposed. Digital transformation comes from a change of the culture at a company – so we must transform by example” Sebastien Juras

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while leveraging their existing material and allowing them to succeed.” Roullin stresses there is no single answer, though. It’s not a one-size-fits-all process; customers’ needs are all unique, and their transformation may be best served by either on-premise or cloud, or they may be suited to a hybrid option. Due to ALE’s own adaptability, it is in a position to provide all three options to its customers. Whichever methodology ALE’s customers opt for, one thing is clear: organisations have to choose a path or risk being left behind. It is a situation ALE could not countenance, which is why it was so aggressive with its own transformation. “Nobody right now has the luxury to stay put and wait to adapt or change,” says Roullin. “This is true for big, medium, and small players, and I’m talking about the mindset and the willingness to change – the questioning and challenging of what you do. And by not changing agile methods or mindsets, you will at some point, I think, be out of the game because things are going too fast and you can’t stay still and wait for them to go through.” ALE needed to adapt to stay relevant, and its story is one of great success. Because of this, it is now a story ALE is spreading to its millions of customers, helping businesses across the globe to embrace their own digital transformations. It has lived it, and now it is teaching it. ISSUE 28

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SKILLS

Emotional intelligence the next frontier for CISOs? Do CISOs need an emotional approach to their duties and responsibilities? Are soft skills now just as critical as technical knowledge?

AUTHOR: David Howell

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mpathy and emotional understanding have not traditionally been part of a CISOs skillet. Today, however, as CISOs look to evolve their enterprise’s security stance in a post-COVID-19 business environment, the approach to security as a whole must change. The addition of softer skills that focus on the human component of network security, is now just as critical as ensuring the latest security patch has been deployed. How vital these new soft skills are for CISOs, is the focus of a recent F-Secure report. The report is enlightening, as it defines how the role of CISOs has changed. As cybersecurity has shifted

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Today, CISOs are expected to understand and mitigate a wide variety of risks, and then relay that information - regardless of how technical it is to everyone” Roger Jollis its perimeter to many workforces’ homes, the human element of security has become imperative to understand and manage. CISOs who want to be influential leaders, must quickly mature their emotional intelligence to ensure they are fully supporting their business’s workers as they navigate what can be a complex environment of digital security. F-Secure’s Tim Orchard, executive vice president, Managed Detection and Response, commented: “Today, CISOs are expected to understand and mitigate a wide variety of risks, and then relay that information - regardless of how technical it is - to everyone,

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from boards and company employees to external security professionals, regulators, and even law enforcement. The shift to relying more on `soft’ skills began years ago. However, the pandemic highlighted how CISOs that proactively work with people inside and outside their organisations can be leaders for their companies.” Improving the emotional intelligence (EI) of CISOs is critical. All enterprises understand their human capital is their company’s most precious asset. In their survey of emotional intelligence in the

workplace, Capgemini concluded nearly three-quarters (74%) of executives believe EI will become a ‘must-have’ skill over the next five years. Speaking to Digital Bulletin, Bindu Sundaresan, director, AT&T Cybersecurity, explained why high levels of EI are vital if businesses are to thrive post-pandemic and remain cyber secure: “As an industry, we have seen a common problem with empathy. We work diligently to put ourselves in the shoes of the people we are trying to protect, albeit difficult sometimes.” ISSUE 28

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Without solid communication skills, it’s nearly impossible to be a successful CISO” Bindu Sundaresan

Sundaresan continued: “Without solid communication skills, it’s nearly impossible to be a successful CISO. Beyond cyber-speak, a CISO must be able to understand and explain the risks to the business operations when a security control fails. Soft skills go beyond technical skills and are essential to the successful implementation of a security program.” CISOs and EI and technical skills are now symbiotic. Businesses, their workforces and customers have all evolved. To be a successful CISO today means being in tune with their business’s strategic security goals and how the human component is the foundation of those ambitions. Says Neil Thacker, DPO and CISO at Netskope: “I believe CISOs realised many years ago that soft skills are critical to their success. As soon as information security and cybersecurity appeared on the board room agenda, strong soft skills were key in explaining how the role of the CISO was critical to the organisation’s success. CISOs have moved beyond technical discussions and have become focused on the business risk and storytelling.” New perspectives The F-Secure report made abundantly clear that the role of the CISO has

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Neil Thacker changed to one of operational oversight and strategic security planning. Appreciating the levels of security anxiety many across their workforces have developed, is new for CISOs, but an essential skill to ensure security post-COVID-19 is robust, agile and comprehensive. Indeed, the report reveals 66% of CISOs clearly understand that each of them must develop the mature emotional intelligence skills required to understand better, empathise and negotiate with other people – particularly as globalisation continues apace. CISOs have often remained invisible within their companies. This is rapidly changing. CISOs are shifting their profiles

Paul Baird to become essential contributors to the strategic planning within their companies. A vital component of this strategy is a deeper engagement with employees who need support today than at any other time in their employment with their companies. CISOs need to raise their profile and show they appreciate the concerns of their workers and are taking a leadership role to support them. Employees are often the weakest link in an enterprise’s cybersecurity. In its report, BT makes the astute observation that when security incidents occur, do employees feel confident they can report their error without fear of discrimination. ISSUE 28

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“The pandemic has magnified the need to deploy your human firewall. How easy is it or someone to confess to a cyber-error in your organisation? What’s the process and the payback for reporting? To what extent do leaders in the business set an example?” says BT in their report CISOs Under the Spotlight. 46

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Quentyn Taylor, director of information security for Canon EMEA, also commented: “Applying EI to establish an open and supportive company culture for security is critical. If there is a breach, it is important that employees feel comfortable coming forward to share their mistakes. If an error is out in the open, it can be fixed. Also, through employees

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sharing their experience, businesses can pool learnings from attacks and make faster progress in crafting new defences.” Also, AT&T’s Bindu Sundaresan points out that EI delivers more effective security: “Empathy allows a CISO to effectively connect with the business leaders, customers, and employees that ultimately determine the right level

of risk tolerance. Without empathy, cybersecurity becomes the department of ‘no.’ EI is connected to security and trust at the same time.” Emotional security Paul Baird, chief technology security officer UK at Qualys, concludes the close emotional bonds CISO should develop ISSUE 28

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If there is a breach, it is important that employees feel comfortable coming forward to share their mistakes. If an error is out in the open, it can be fixed” Quentyn Taylor with their staff leads directly to more robust and comprehensive security business-wide: “I’ve worked on both sides of the divide here, both as a security analyst and as a leader, so this topic is close to my heart. “The biggest lesson I have learned is that you can’t treat team members as solely staff members, as tools to get a job done. Instead, you have to treat people as friends, and that means understanding what makes them tick and how they make decisions. Why is this important? You have to trust them on those decisions that get made at 3 am when 48

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a potential security risk is identified that they will make the right decisions with the information that they have available.” And what of the future for the CISO? Martin Jartelius, CSO at Outpost24, acknowledges the job has radically changed but definitely changed for the better: “Organisations need a different CISO. So, who we hire for the jobs has changed, organisations have evolved to put a price on those skills, and thereby the organisations has also driven the morphosis we observe, the security guy that can actually talk to

a customer without insulting them or disrupting business – who understands his part of the organisations functions and appreciate that human relationships are key to success. The role of the CISO has changed, and hence, who fills the role.” As the security landscape has changed, so has the approach businesses have had to take to secure their workers – their remote teams in particular – and their distributed network nodes. Evolving threats need new approaches to human-based security that starts with empathetic CISOs. ISSUE 28

FUTURE

THE POWER OF

With expected download speeds approaching one terabit per second, one microsecond latency, and unlimited bandwidth, 6G will enable ingenious ways for people to interact not only with each other, but also with their surroundings and for machines and systems to interact with each other too. This might include instantaneous communication, connected robotics and autonomous systems, and wireless AI interactions. To understand more, we asked Roger Nichols, Keysight’s 6G programme manager, about what is needed to make the vision of 6G a reality

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hat is 6G, and what is its biggest application opportunity? 4G gave us the mobile internet and enabled the smartphone. 5G will allow for use-cases that go beyond the smartphone into industrial, healthcare, transportation, and finance. 6G consolidates mobile wireless communications - no longer as a novelty or a special set of use-cases, but as an integral part of society. The use-models range from holographic communications that include information beyond sight and sound, to making digital twins far more sophisticated and thorough, to changing the way that we leverage data through machine learning (ML) and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI). There is also an intent to leverage 6G for sophisticated emergency and disaster management, as well as huge scientific applications. Much of what is being described today looks like “5G, but better” and some of that will be the case. We will see new use-cases evolve from the advancements of 5G that while being “introductory” in 5G, will become mainstream in 6G. These will have to do with systems that are more flexible, more efficient, and can intelligently handle orders of magnitude data. 6G will make two advancements on time-sensitive networking. First, 52

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the maximum latency KPI for critical applications for 6G is as low as 100 microseconds. This will have a significant impact on new use cases that are not just about getting information there quickly, but also leveraging for location-based services that are more precise. Second, is the concept of a minimum latency requirement; in other words, precise timing of information transfer even if the latency is long. Some information can arrive too soon to be useful, so time-engineering in networks means knowing that a message may arrive before a certain amount of time

KEYSIGHT

Most are targeting a 2030 commercialisation timeframe. Like 5G, we could see commercial launches happen before the turn of the decade. This will be determined by that magical mix of technology, policy, and business model” passes, as well as the ability to plan exactly when the information will arrive.

Roger Nichols

How will 6G impact daily life? 6G is about mobile wireless being an integral part of society. One could argue that this is the case with 4G, but most societies adoption of 4G is constrained to entertainment and advertising. So, think of mobile wireless as being a fundamental part of driving to work, making your evening meals, educating your children, gaining access to your healthcare needs, shopping, banking, mining, manufacturing everything from staples - to paint ISSUE 28

FUTURE

- to jet aircraft engines, and research in all fields, the list goes on. Think of what it was like in 1905 when Charles Howard couldn’t sell a single car in San Francisco. Now, the automobile pervades life. Who or what will be the breakthrough driver for 6G? What will make a difference in the success of 6G as a technology generation will be a few key elements. First, a single global standard is necessary for scale and consistency. 5G is the first example of a generation developed with no competing standard. For 6G to be a breakthrough, the industry should not allow geopolitical tensions to create work on a standard that splits into competing technologies. Second,

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the research happening now must yield affordable technologies for use during the evolution of 6G from the late ‘20’s to the late ‘30’s. Lastly, the advancements in security technology must keep up. Without high levels of trust in the system, “an integral part of society” will never manifest. Most are targeting a 2030 commercialisation timeframe. Like 5G, we could see commercial launches happen before the turn of the decade. This will be determined by that magical mix of technology, policy, and business model. In any case, like all previous generations, commercialisation will start from small regional implementations to nation-wide networks with all the fits and starts of any new system. Also, like 5G, the first

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Mobile benefits from 5G being designed from the ground up as an IPv6-only system. However, the true value of 6G will come from a better marriage between mobile and fixed networks” manifestations of 6G will be a far cry from today’s vision - we are a good five years away from seeing 5G in full, based on vision-setting that was completed eight years ago. What are the biggest challenges to move into the 6G era? There are several technical challenges that span the five areas of technical investment: next generation radio, integrated multi-heterogeneous technology networks (ITU’s ManyNets), time-engineering in networks, AI-enabled and optimised networks, and next generation security. There are enormous challenges in each of these areas. The following are a few examples: Next-gen radio The move to 100-330GHz as carrier frequencies and information bandwidths of up to 30GHz (some have suggested more). These bands and bandwidths

come with a set of issues analogous to those that confronted (and to some extent still confront) the 5G Frequency Range 2 (FR2) space - RF semiconductor technology yielding limited amplifier power levels, efficiency, linearity, and noise. Digital baseband issues in which the requisite sample rate has now far exceeded the state-of-the-art field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and even application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) clock rates that we are running out of ideas about how to address baseband data rates of hundreds of Gbps. This is not to mention the challenges of mobile-system antenna technology for wavelengths that are below 2mm. ManyNets Global fragmented spectrum policy means radio systems of different technologies operating in varying-width slices of spectrum that vary from country to country. Between existing wireless ISSUE 28

FUTURE

communications systems and newly added bands and technologies, the available communication bandwidth is quite large. However, it is very difficult to tap in an efficient manner - during parts of the day, some bands lie completely fallow while others are at their capacity limit. The vision of ManyNets is for a seamless use of these systems that is flexible depending on location and demand. The challenges are that many of these systems were never designed to work in conjunction with each other. 56

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Time-engineering Very low latency combined with precise timing of message flow will be key to opening new use models. The concept of a high-latency situation, but one that has very precise and guaranteed timing is quite difficult in today’s networks. Today’s networks tend to operate in a stateless and “best effort” manner with overlay protocols, to give the impression of time-sensitive networking. The redesigns needed for true time-engineering impact not just 3GPP, but also Internet

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Engineering Task Force (IETF) and other bodies. I read a recent paper from European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) that stated the percentage of use of IPv6 in fixed networks is still in the single digits. This means that transitioning to new fundamental protocols in the IP and transport layers is glacial. Mobile benefits from 5G being designed from the ground up as an IPv6-only system. However, the true value of 6G will come from a better marriage between mobile and fixed networks.

AI-enabled networks AI is enabling breakthroughs in medicine, quantum research, and even software tests. However, we have a way to go. The complexity of today’s networks and the data associated with operations is a great environment for AI to be applied, to optimise performance and efficiency, while increasing flexibility. The networks will be a more integral part of society and the network management equivalent of AI misidentifying a photograph or executing emergency automobile braking in ISSUE 28

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There is speculation that 5G was the last ‘monolithic’ generational transition and that 6G may look more like an evolution. This is not true because of the dramatic changes in system behaviour”

an open motorway is something that our networks cannot afford. Security The headlines of the last few months should make it clear how critical network security is. Can somebody break it? Can they get in and get your data? Will you even know if they did? How quickly will your network recover? Even for 5G, the security situation is not mature, and much work is required. Given that the security threat surface for 5G is far beyond that of previous generations, one 58

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can expect that 6G will be even more so. Government and private entities have teams of smart innovative people developing malicious intrusion capability for networks and that level of innovation is constant. So, the challenges are to make the network secure at all levels, to know when someone is trying to breach it, and to recover quickly. From a Keysight perspective, we have capabilities in each of these areas and while we hardly have a full suite of 6G solutions in these spaces, we see opportunities to collaborate with

KEYSIGHT

industry leaders and develop solutions alongside these experts to make 6G real in every sense. 5G is struggling to arrive because of its infrastructure requirements, while 6G will build on 5G Infrastructure and enhance connectivity – on land, or even in space. When will that infrastructure be in place around the world? Operators and vendors aren’t struggling to make 5G arrive. The rollout of this technology is consistent, if not faster than that of previous generations and it

is paced by policy and economic factors because these investments are high and those making the investments have shareholders to please in the near-term. It is not too soon to begin the 6G conversation, these evolutions take time. The technical hurdles are significant, and many innovators must contribute to overcome these hurdles and develop systems that will work consistently around the world. People my age were in their 20s before the idea of carrying a radio in your pocket to communicate with someone in another country moved from science-fiction to reality. It may not seem that long, but the 10-20 years that it takes to work out a new generation means you start working before the previous generation is mature and sometimes before it is mainstream. There is speculation that 5G was the last ‘monolithic’ generational transition and that 6G may look more like an evolution. This is not true because of the dramatic changes in system behaviour. Like 5G, some of 6G will be an evolution, but some will be revolutionary and taken as a whole; we can expect a step-function in technical capability. 5G and 6G interest developed a good decade apart from each other. There are no R&D projects on 6G now – only research. The same was true when I started working on 5G in 2014, no development, just research. ISSUE 28

SECURITY

HACKING TO DEFEND Security firm CYE employs an innovative approach to cybersecurity which includes “hacking” their clients and recently received a $120 million investment to fund a global expansion. CEO Reuven Aronashvili joins Digital Bulletin to tell his and the company’s fascinating story

AUTHOR: Stuart Hodge

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CYE

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euven Aronashvili has always been obsessed with solving problems and standing out from the crowd – and to understand the man himself, helps you understand his business. The CEO of Israeli cybersecurity firm CYE has a compelling story. He has consistently excelled throughout his life, firstly as an award-winning student and later as a co-founder of the Israeli army’s Red Team (Section 21) and Incident Response Team in Matzov (the Hebrew abbreviation for Center of Encryption and Information Security), and more recently as an entrepreneur. Such was his academic prowess in his youth, he admits he became bored by the standard curriculum and sought diverse ways to stimulate and engage his brain. The included watching card games where he became intrigued by the probability and risk factors and how someone playing could create a situation where they would always, or more often than not at least, win. “You learn very quickly that being an attacker is much easier than being a defender in life,” says Aronashvili, reflecting on the formative years of his life and career. “So, when I got to the Army and I got to, in some way, shape my own destiny, 62

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that was quite nice to achieve. I was one of the founders of the Israeli Red Team, where we got military-grade training to be able to use offence tools, offensive capabilities to demonstrate the cybersecurity maturity level of the organisation. “I think my contribution to the Israeli nation and to the Army was significant, and that’s something that was also important to me on a personal basis as well, contributing to improving cybersecurity capabilities, the defensive capabilities of our nation.” Aronashvili, who now serves as a trusted advisor for executives in leading

CYE

Fortune 500 companies, admits there were multiple occasions where he and his team were on one hand impressed by the level of offensive capabilities, from a technical standpoint – but they were also acutely aware that the impact could be counted in the millions or hundreds of millions in some cases. In other cases, there was also a potential risk to human life when critical infrastructures (such as electricity, the oil and gas environment or nuclear environment) were under attack. “In the first 12-to-24 months of the team, we were able to get to touch the

most important parts of the Israeli infrastructures and critical systems. “With that experience, you start to understand the power of what you do, because you’re getting tools or weapons, which in the wrong usage can be harmful. You learn how to develop both capability, integrity, and to know what is wrong, what is right – and that’s a very important thing that still has influence on what we do today.” It was a highest level national defence-critical cybersecurity remit. And when he left the army, it was very quickly clear that Aronashvili would ISSUE 28

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You learn how to develop both capability, integrity, and to know what is wrong, what is right – and that’s a very important thing that still has influence on what we do today” Reuven Aronashvili

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have to go his own way to continue to operate in a way which proved stimulating to him. Aronashvili, who is unsurprisingly certified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as a world-class ICS and SCADA cybersecurity expert, describes the one job interview he had after leaving military service as being rather dispiriting with the company involved operating at a “significantly lower level” than he expected. He talks about how he didn’t want to end up in a situation where he felt “like a lawyer charging billable hours”. Instead, he founded CYE, firstly as a small shop in October 2011, before the company was incorporated at the beginning of 2012. Just over nine years later and CYE – which stands for “cyber-eye” but is pronounced “sigh” – has over 200 customers across the globe, including the likes of UBS, Investec, the World Economic Forum and General Electric. “It’s part of my approach and part of my character, to always be above and beyond,” he says. “The urge to excel and be really excellent at everything that you do, that’s something that is part of my culture. If you can’t do it to the best of your ability, don’t do it at all. “And when I founded this company, this was and still is the approach. We’re

CYE

CYE’s Hyver platform

not doing everything, we’re only doing the things that we can be the best at and can provide the best value-add for our customers and our partners.” CYE employs 70 “ethical hackers”, each with at least six years of military experience, using its proprietary software, Hyver, and the company employs around 100 people overall globally. But what makes CYE so interesting is the innovate, offensive approach the company takes to cybersecurity, breaking into clients’ systems with the same approach rogue hackers would take, in order to deliver an adaptive

solution which can prevent any multitude of threats. It does that “by utilising data, numbers and facts”, to predict risks. And then, by employing critical thinking and “producing disruptive ideas”, CYE tailors practical solutions which focus on the areas most critical to customers’ key business assets. An interesting aspect is how Aronashvili’s military experience has translated into a commercial context. He describes an engagement where, from beginning work with a pharmaceutical company to help improve its cyber ISSUE 28

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We are looking to build a very significant capability in the market and be a significant influencer in the cyber security market”

security level of their manufacturing lines, CYE then worked with private equities and helped the same company to make a $1 billion deal. There was a specific opportunity in which cybersecurity was set to scupper the deal. CYE came in and ramped up cybersecurity capabilities and six months later the deal happened. Aronashvili cites an example where, simply by hacking into an airline client’s security ecosystem, CYE was able to identify a specific foreign government attack, where private information of citizens worldwide was breached. 66

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“We were able to identify this specific hacker, which was in the organisation while we were doing our own security assessment,” he says. “We were attacking the organisation to identify the gaps, and then you get into a specific place and you see that someone is already there. “We exposed a nation-level attack and we found ourselves then managing the situation and actually taking the organisation through the steps to remediation and eradication of those specific threats moving forward.”

CYE

Aronashvili though, is an advocate of prevention instead of cure, and there is a three-step methodology which comes into play when CYE engages with a client. The first stage is visibility. CYE starts by evaluating the organisation, identifying the business-critical assets, then the potential threat sources that can threaten those specific assets. CYE then executes an “offensive exercise” to uncover all the relevant vulnerabilities that we are able to identify in the organisation. The second stage is to assess the realistic threat level of each risk and

how vulnerabilities and business critical assets may be exposed. CYE generates a structured and graphical demonstration of what can happen in the organisation, what would be the potential modus operandi of the attackers that will be used against the organisation. Its tool provide an accurate measurement of how likely this is to happen and what the financial impact would be of compromising each specific business asset. The organisation’s overall exposure is also assessed at this point, with real-time support and real-time risk evaluation is provided, as the situation is always fluid. The third stage is then mitigating those risks. That involves evaluating the cost for fixing the items that were identified, what the order should be in terms of addressing those issues and how to optimise the cybersecurity investment for the client using optimisation algorithms. It’s at this point that Aronashvili mentions the company’s proprietary platform, Hyver. “Those three steps take the organisation through a cybersecurity improvement process which can be implemented in a way that we can measure success and demonstrate that the organisation has actually improved their cybersecurity,” he says. “The Hyver platform works in the same order. The first part is the offensive ISSUE 28

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system, the second is the risk translation part in which we are looking at the technical instabilities, and the third part is the mitigation optimisation platform, which uses predictive analytics allowing us to anticipate the next potential threats against the organisation and, based on that, we can estimate the costs and the effort needed in order to mitigate.” Hyver certainly has some very impressive cutting-edge technologies built-in and CYE is constantly improving the platform.

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“We have machine learning capabilities and AI capabilities in our system,” Aronashvili continues. “We have a lot of subsystems in which we use a lot of AI capabilities in order to evaluate social networks and Google hacking techniques in order to identify the data and to evaluate which assets belong to which organisation. That’s something which used to be manually done and required a lot of resource; today we do that in an automated way that provides very high value to what we do. What took weeks

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before, we now do in less than an hour. “That’s very, very significant from our point of view. Not everything that we do is based on AI and machine learning though. There are some things that are very deterministic. For example, when we evaluate what is the priority of mitigating items, ‘what is the risk level?’. That’s something that we won’t use artificial intelligence for.” It’s an impressive platform, a company with a very innovative way of working and CYE is also poised now for some rapid expansion following a $100 million investment in a round led by global investment firm EQT.

But Aronashvili reveals to Digital Bulletin that the total cash injection was actually around $120 million, when taking into account other investors who joined under various specified parameters. “It was really the balance between creating something that is interesting enough for our partners, and to work with them, while making sure that we are not diluted too much,” he says. “Now, instead of doing things one-by-one, we were doing things in parallel. That means expansion to different parts of the world. “We always want to expand to new markets. Now, instead of doing that one-by-one, we are going to do that in parallel, going after different markets at the same time. “More than that, we are going to look at new acquisitions, potential acquisitions for acceleration of the technology development or the go-to-market capabilities if we want to develop. “We have a very strict and ambitious plan at the moment and hundreds of percentages of market cap and specifically access to different markets that we have now as target markets. So, this is a journey of forces that we are executing at the moment and it’s a very exciting one! “We are looking to build a very significant capability in the market and be a significant influencer in the cyber security market.” ISSUE 28

DATA INTELLIGENCE

2030 Vision

In every issue, Digital Bulletin picks the brains of experts in a particular sector of the technology world. This month, we ask: “How will AI have changed the enterprise and wider world by 2030?”

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DEBATE

“ From support role to centre stage” Matt ArmstrongBarnes, Chief Technologist - AI, Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Eighty percent of all the data in existence today has been generated in the last two years, however, most of this data is unstructured and our traditional ways of formatting it no longer work. What I observe the democratisation of AI doing is making new transformative technology available to everyone. Organisations both large and small are taking advantage of how AI can play a role in handling the tsunami of data created every day, and this is the trend we are seeing now.

Today, a lack of trust in the technology means that AI is mainly used for workload prioritisation. AI is hidden inside a blackbox and cannot answer the question: why? Why did the model recommend that application was approved? Why did the AI think it was that illness? Over the next 10 years, as many of the ethical considerations are ironed out and AI transparency is achieved, AI will move from decision support to making recommendations. Once we allow the decision cycle to be fully understood not only will it change the perception of AI, it will also have a game changing increase in the performance of enterprise processes. The COVID-19 pandemic has been the biggest driver in digital transformation across enterprises, raising the question - why not AI? Through my experience of the ongoing work HPE has done

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with the Medical University of South Carolina, we have been able to build an AI that accelerates drug discovery. This is the first step in enabling AI to look at an individual and an illness and match the drugs that will have the highest impact with the lowest number of side effects. What we have witnessed throughout this pandemic is a healthcare system not yet ready to collaborate with AI systems, but one that wants to. My aim is that through work such as ours, if or when the next pandemic hits, AI will be viewed as a key recovery tool. Currently we generate in excess 1.2 quintillion bytes of data globally everyday. With AI on the rise within organisations, it is likely that by 2030 it will be the only technology capable of addressing the challenges presented by an unparalleled explosion of unstructured data. AI is here and will continue to expand to solve an endless list of challenges, from decisions as mundane as driving a car, to its deployment into agriculture to help reduce herbicide use, to running workloads on the International Space Station as part of NASA’s latest Mars programme. AI is laying the foundation for humans, and by 2030 much of the world will become algorithmically enabled with data informing better decisions at a global scale. 72

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“ Workplace revolution” Be Kaler Pilgrim, Founder, Futureheads

AI is already prevalent in our everyday lives - it corrects our email typos, it’s behind the face ID that unlocks our phones and the algorithms that shape our social media feeds - and increasingly, it will become a tool for optimising the way we work. Headlines often tell us that AI might replace human workers and cause a jobs shortage, but these fears can distract our attention from the ways in which AI can also help us in the workplace. AI tools will revolutionise workforce efficiency, helping with repetitive, low judgement tasks and allowing us more time to focus on the creative, analytical and social aspects that develop and grow our businesses. For enterprises to get the most out of new AI tools it will be essential that workforces are continually reskilled as these technologies develop. Employers should see this as an opportunity to gain an edge on competitors. As recruiters, AI will transform the way we gather talent, alleviating admin pressures and affording us with more time for improving candidate experience. It will also help us to locate hard to find or in

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As recruiters, AI will transform the way we gather talent, alleviating admin pressures and affording us with more time for improving candidate experience” demand candidates, as well as being a tool for informing decision making. For instance, AI has the potential to support EDI efforts, helping us to collect and understand data and informing how these findings can be best translated into policy and procedures. Although it is worth noting that the success of AI for EDI efforts will be reliant on existing diversity within the teams building these tools, as well as the data going into it. There’s a very real danger that, if these considerations are not properly built into these technologies from the start, biases attached to race, gender and other protected characteristics will be perpetuated.

Every day, AI technologies are improving - facial recognition tools are learning to read human emotions and voice technology is moving beyond Alexa song requests into the realms of healthcare and customer services. Soon, the internet of things will be working to optimise all areas of our lives and, as these technologies gather force, we must remain alert to ethical considerations. We need to continually ask ourselves: does this technology serve everyone? How can we ensure AI has a positive impact on the way we work and the way we live our lives? ISSUE 28

DATA INTELLIGENCE

“ Transformation of enterprise tools” Rick Rider, VP, Product Management, Infor

So far we have seen a general reluctance to change how a business system works, primarily because technology has been there to facilitate the business rather than transform it. Large scale replacements of technology (that typically include the introduction of AI) are a once-in-a-career event for most technology leaders. However, as influential and non-traditional CIOs become less risk averse and begin to experiment more and more with AI/ML they will quickly see that it really is more sophisticated analytics that can unlock new areas of tangible value. For example, our customer Pilot Flying J has made huge strides with its financial close process. Instead of continually referring to the ERP system, it views the process completely via analytics, following the data, not the operations. In the first instance this creates true management by exception and that can then lead to management by opportunity as technology leaders can suggest options to proactive changing the business. 74

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A lot of the misunderstanding around AI results from the fact that most vendors focus on sheer power at the moment, when the market just isn’t ready for it. There is more concern with shareholder value than customer value, whereas we would argue it’s those organisations that focus on the small wins and grow incrementally, but quickly, that will prove that AI isn’t a fad. These could be departments of larger enterprises or smaller businesses, but regardless of background, these early adopters are characterised by faster decision-making away from extensive

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approvals. This results in a nimbleness, speed and agility that drives growth that then creates the acceptance of users as the technology becomes proven quickly over short periods of time. The main impact in the working lives of these users is that business interactions mimic their commercial and social experiences. By 2030 AI will become so widely trusted and accepted that ML and other advanced technology will just be “computers doing what computers do”. Combined with better user interfaces, tools like ERP won’t look like ERP. Instead, it will feel as familiar as

the technology within an employee’s daily life, but just in a work setting. This means users will be able to jump into roles with limited training because the underlying analytics run the majority of the complexity and tactical overhead of their role. This will allow employees to focus on their creative endeavours that can produce more value for the company and free the business to trust the technology and hire those candidates that have a real passion for their operational elements of their role – a very human impact of AI technology.

Combined with better user interfaces, tools like ERP won’t look like ERP. Instead, it will feel as familiar as the technology within an employee’s daily life, but just in a work setting”

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DATA INTELLIGENCE

“ AI will plot career paths” Al Smith, CTO, iCIMS

AI has the ability to solve and reduce problems in the enterprise beyond human scale – and it’s going to have a profound impact on recruitment and careers. AI holds the key to understanding more people, better. It will help companies build and maintain relationships on a vast scale and it’s going to improve our satisfaction and experiences during the interview process and throughout our careers. Human bias is hard to undo. Despite their best intentions, updated policies and talent attraction campaigns, companies still lag behind their diversity, equity and inclusion targets – and

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they’ve been struggling to see why. By 2030, AI will hold us accountable for bias. Diversity, equity and inclusion product developments are showing great promise, particularly with intelligent redacted hiring and DEI pipelining. This kind of technology can help remove unintentional bias, and uncover talent that may have not been previously considered, due to non-traditional backgrounds, experience, or education. When dealing with high volumes of candidates, humans resort to filtering talent based on who ‘ticks all the boxes.’ AI can automate ‘understanding’ and tell us when to look outside the box. Finding the ‘right’ person for a job has always been a challenge. In 2021, it’s harder than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic and its ensuing lockdowns resulted in widespread job losses across the globe, and even as businesses prepare to reopen, there are hundreds of well-qualified candidates for every vacancy. The media has called recruiters out on ‘ghosting’ unsuccessful candidates – but they’re simply overwhelmed with applications. Over the next several years, AI will continue to play a role in automating early-stage interviews using conversational AI with voice or text-driven bots, plus smart interviews using video and conversation

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By 2030, AI will hold us accountable for bias. Diversity, equity and inclusion product developments are showing great promise”

analytics. AI will also help businesses to keep strong ‘silver medal’ candidates engaged over time, until the perfect role opens up. Hiring managers and recruiters will have far fewer manual administrative tasks, and more time to focus on the work they enjoy. Few candidates continue to feel as special to their employers as they did in the moment they received the job offer. When employees start feeling unappreciated, stagnate in a role, or lack direction on the next step, they begin considering external opportunities. AI has potential to significantly increase that honeymoon period, and in turn, average employee tenure. AI will give us a better understanding of

skills, including implied and derived skills, transferable skills and real-time employee skills collection, helping us to develop a better understanding of candidates and employees (for internal advancement). This will help to develop talent, increasing career mobility and job satisfaction. AI will move beyond ‘recommender engines’ which suggest a current role/candidate match, to predictive engines, which predict a future fit – and there will be ‘career pathing’ products to help employees get there. AI will be as effective in suggesting your next professional steps as it is in recommending your next Netflix series. ISSUE 28

DATA INTELLIGENCE

“ From automation to autonomy” Mark Haywood, VP EMEA at AppZen

In the last 10 years, AI has moved from the research lab into our daily lives, both in business and at home. Given the rapid pace of AI innovation, it’s hard to predict where we will be next year, let alone the next decade. But one thing is certain, people and enterprises alike want technology to make their lives easier. The AI of the future will take human-assisted decision making out of the equation and independently carry out the tasks it’s assigned to do. Ever since 2005, when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency challenged the world to create a selfdriving car, we have seen real headway being made towards autonomy. But autonomy isn’t just about self-driving cars, it’s also the future of enterprise and our everyday world. The terms ‘automation’ and ‘autonomy’ are often used interchangeably, but in practice, they mean very different things. Automation technology can take action on a given task based on a predefined set of parameters and rules. Automation 78

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tools like RPA are great at extracting and processing predictable, structured data – such as the data from form templates – and streamlining labour intensive, repetitive tasks. Autonomy through AI is the next step forward, applying context clues and previous experience to learn, improve and make decisions without human intervention. Substantial inroads into autonomy are being made in sectors like the finance industry. AI is already being applied to more complex finance processes, such as accounts payable (AP). Using some of the same tools as self-driving cars, autonomous AP processing utilises computer vision to extract information from invoices, and semantic understanding to make sense of them and apply the right categorisations, e.g., what is being bought, who is buying it, how it should be classified and accounted for, etc. Autonomous AP can then process invoices and assign next steps like further review or the gathering of missing information. Currently, enterprises are at varying stages of autonomy. The Autonomous Index, developed by AppZen, illustrates the levels of autonomy for finance operations, starting at lower levels of autonomy (levels 0-3), which automate certain tasks but still require human intervention, to the highest levels of autonomy (levels 4 and

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5) where software is capable of making almost all process decisions autonomously. This index demonstrates the steps anticipated, over the next decade, to reach this fully autonomous state. AI is poised to make a dramatic impact on business operations, and all signs point to many enterprises achieving levels 4 and 5 on the Auton-

omous Index by 2030. While only time will tell which sectors rank highest on the Autonomous Index, it’s clear that the next decade will usher in a new age of autonomous (or ‘self-driving’) enterprise operations, building on current gains in the automation of manual processes, and leveraging AI that learns and grows more intelligent over time. ISSUE 28

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DELL TECHNOLOGIES

TRANSFORMING

TELECOMS

Arash Ghazanfari, UK CTO at Dell Technologies talks to Digital Bulletin about the role that 5G and edge computing play in digital transformation strategies and how IT vendors can drive innovation in the telecommunications industry

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

he shadow of telecom giants is long, and it can often obscure many of the actors involved in providing connectivity or facilitating innovation in the sector. However, they are often the protagonists that create lasting change. Many telecommunications companies are currently held back by costly and complex traditional network architectures. McKinsey’s annual telecoms IT benchmarking survey shows that many telcos consider themselves to be “trapped in a vortex of spiralling complexity”. Cloud, edge and 5G technologies can change that. However, in order to leverage these

technologies successfully, telcos will need to undergo a complete transformation of their systems and architectures to embrace more modern and open solutions that provide a platform to innovate. Network infrastructures need to become more agile, flexible and scalable, and telecoms companies need partners that can support these new open standards, actively develop architectures and bring innovation to market; partners like Dell Technologies. “We believe at Dell Technologies - and we’ve held this view for a number of years now - that technology should be and will be used to drive the progression

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of humanity,” says Arash Ghazanfari, UK CTO at Dell. “I think that, as we are moving towards more hopeful times and towards a point where we can recover and take advantage of the digital future, edge computing and 5G are going to be fundamental to the growth and running of more sustainable business models.” Transformation is always beneficial but, during a global pandemic, it is essential for survival. This is true of all companies, but especially telcos, which need to embrace these new technologies and take advantage of their benefits in order to keep up with last year’s increase in demand for global connectivity.

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Although Dell is not a telecommunications provider, Ghazanfari believes in the increasingly important role that IT providers will play in the provision of connectivity technologies in the digital future, and particularly in the postCOVID world. “There is now an unprecedented demand for communication and, at the same time, telcos are experiencing unprecedented levels of stress on their finances,” he tells Digital Bulletin. “We can help them move from proprietary architectures to more open standards and allow them to virtualise some of the differentiated services that they need to

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deliver and move towards a more software-defined and open architecture.” Currently, the majority of telecom providers are having to deal with the “technical debt” created by proprietary technologies based on old closed standards controlled by a handful of vendors. This situation significantly reduces the ability of telcos to innovate and ties it to the innovation cycles of those hardware manufacturers. The move towards open standards is a clear way out. “Essentially, what you are doing is decoupling the hardware and software capabilities, and freeing them from the shackles of old proprietary infrastructures,” Ghazanfari says. “And this is actually fundamental to our telecom strategy here at Dell Technologies.” South Korea offers a glimpse into this possible digital future. Last January, Dell and SK Telecom announced an innovative new partnership in a country whose telcos don’t suffer the burdening legacy of old architectures. Both companies have found a way to monetise 5G by creating the world’s first fully integrated MEC solution, named OneBox MEC. OneBox MEC combines the SK Telecom’s 5G MEC Platform, Dell Technologies’ PowerEdge and PowerSwitch technologies, and VMware’s vSphere and Tanzu Kubernetes into one single, fast and reliable MEC platform.

We believe that technology should be and will be used to drive the progression of humanity” Arash Ghazanfari

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“In emerging markets like South Korea, they don’t have that sort of technical debt,” Ghazanfari explains. “They have had from the start a very robust capability that they built for the future of more mature economies. “We have this period of transition that we need to go through in the West. And the reality is that Dell Technologies, with the mindset that we have around creating open platforms for more collaborative capabilities and extensive partnerships, we can help telcos move from those old proprietary architectures to more open and extensible standards going forward.” Getting started on this path towards a connected future can be daunting. In order to avoid getting lost in the sea of possible innovations, Ghazanfari recommends starting with the end in mind, taking into account the present needs but also the potential for the future. Although small starts are beneficial to prove the concept and understand the best places to generate value with the minimal effort, having scalability in mind at all times proves very beneficial in the long term. Every decision, from whether to build security intrinsically into the systems or to adopt a standardised platform, can have a significant impact into making the deployment of a technology at scale and at the edge significantly easier and 84

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safer. Moreover, lifecycle management can also come with significant licensing and operational costs that should be taken into account from the start in order to be reduced. “If our customers execute your services on demand at scale across multiple platforms and multiple cloud environments, it’s really important that they think about having the flexibility to deploy their workloads closer to where they need to deploy them, closer to where their markets are, closer to where the talent is, and allow these workloads to exist without having to worry about securing them afterwards,” Ghazanfari

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says. “If they start from the beginning and have security built into the fabric of the architecture, they can create a digital platform that is trusted. And, of course, they can intercept the threats if they get breached very quickly because they have automated policy-driven systems in place. “Working with a vendor that is experienced in running a distributed operating model, that’s essentially what we bring to market. We are built for that distributed world and leveraging our experiences would be also beneficial to helping them reduce the risk associated with not thinking about that from the start.”

But although the demand for connectivity makes transformation essential for telecoms companies, many other industries can benefit from innovative solutions such as 5G and edge computing, particularly in the post-COVID world. Companies can deploy these technologies closer to where the data is generated; the same place where work gets done and value is created. This, in turn, allows for leaders to make decisions in real-time based on accurate data. “I think what the pandemic has shown is that almost every company needs to be a technology company,” Ghazanfari says. “There are a lot of opportunities for ISSUE 28

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generating competitive differentiation, as well as delivering better services to the market through the use of technology.” Alongside the pandemic has also come a new way of working, one that relies significantly on connected solutions in order to facilitate remote work and ensure the communication between teams as well as with external clients. Although this has been a challenge for most companies, Dell’s business structure was prepared to face it head on. “Funnily enough, because of the way that we have been running our business, we were actually really well placed to deal with the challenges of the pandemic,” he

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says. “Over the years we have created a broad range of responsible partnerships and established resilient supply chains. That has allowed us to support our employees and our partners and help them come together in a secure digital workspace where they can collaborate and deliver services to our customers.” “We managed to overnight create an environment where our employees, including myself, can be safely working from home, delivering services and interacting with our customers. But, at the same time, it has actually given us a glimpse into the future in terms of what our customers’ needs are. And

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There is now an unprecedented demand for communication and, at the same time, telcos are experiencing unprecedented levels of stress on their finances” we are seeing the rapid acceleration of the adoption of remote working, rapid acceleration of digital initiatives.” Alongside this new way of working, new market demands have also emerged. But while 5G, cloud and edge computing might be able to meet these customer needs, they only reach their full potential when combined. Only by leveraging all these technologies together can companies fully take advantage of their benefits and achieve a successful transition to the digital future. “I absolutely think that there is a danger in thinking of the edge in isolation,” Ghazanfari says. “The old 4G network did satisfy certain use cases. But, moving forward, as we are digitising society more extensively, it’s really important that we consider the intersection of edge with 5G. Edge computing capabilities need 5G to be able to create more immersive experiences, and due to the nature of having weaker frequencies

and needing more distributed network and infrastructure in order to make 5G happen, you need to have more investment in edge computing.” Thanks to the benefits that 5G brings, companies can gather more data points and take fundamental steps in the path towards complete automatisation. One of the most common use cases of these technologies that Ghazanfari has seen is present in the manufacturing space. Automatisation requires the collection of granular digital information from the whole environment, a network of connected sensors and the ability to make decisions in real-time. Therefore, only through combining these technological tools together can retailers take full advantage of its potential, and fully automate their processes. “In manufacturing, you need to have a better digital representation of your manufacturing environment, and 5G can enable that,” Ghazanfari explains. ISSUE 28

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“You can now monitor industrial control systems, the temperature of the device or oil pressure in the pipes; make better decisions and create a safer environment.” However, the impact of these technologies goes beyond manufacturing. 5G can also be incredibly beneficial for the financial sector, allowing enterprises to correlate data from security cameras and body language analysis with realtime transactional information to identify potential fraudulent behavior and 88

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prevent it, instead of having to track it once it has already happened. “Richer data sets and more relevant information can be captured in a better digital representation of the environment that we are trying to manage,” Ghazanfari says. “5G really fuels all of that.” From vertical farms to F1 races, Dell Technologies is using these tools to provide all its clients access to a wide pool of data sets that they can use to optimise their operations and be able to make decisions in real-time,

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The pandemic has shown that almost every company needs to be a technology company”

allowing companies to fully embrace the digital future. When it comes to thinking about this future, Ghazanfari believes that there are two characteristics that will definitely drive it: resilience and sustainability. “Dell Technologies is built for this distributed digital future that we are moving towards. We’ve got resilient supply chains and efficient capabilities. And at the same time, we are hyper-focused on developing, delivering and

deploying our products and services in a sustainable way. “I think that we need to be very cognisant of the ethical implications of technology. We shouldn’t forget our core values and we must do everything we can to avoid falling into a technical autocracy. At Dell Technologies, we have this optimistic view that technology should be used as a driving force for the progression of humanity. And I’m very proud to be part of an organisation that has this mindset and core values.” ISSUE 28

A LIFE IN TECH

A life in tech Huawei’s CEO of R&D, UK, Henk Koopmans, is in the hotseat this month. He reflects on his life lessons from a 25-year career in tech that was sparked by the first man to walk on the moon

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HENK KOOPMANS

see myself as a positive team enabler in strategic innovation. I think we all need time to develop ourselves and discover our true passion and find out what we are good at. When we are able to combine both, then magic happens. Throughout my career I have had the good fortune to be part of, create and lead, amazing groups of people who have created some fantastic innovations. It is what I enjoy most, enabling teams to achieve a step-change in innovation.

I remember vividly watching grainy black-and-white images of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the surface of the moon and for some reason the word ‘computer’ stuck in my head. I didn’t have a clue what it was, I was a six-year old. Subsequently I set about making a ‘computer’ out of a cardboard box, batteries, and old bike lights. My desire to pursue the unknown is inherited from my mum and studying technology was the perfect fit. I ended up with a degree in electronics and

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computing and was really proud of that. Only later did I realise I wasn’t very good at the actual techie stuff myself but that I was good at bridging that gap between technology and commercialisation: innovation.

Ionica, which was Cambridge’s first unicorn (before ARM, before Autonomy or any of the other big names), was born in our meeting room and we created its technology and designed its products. It was an exciting time.

One of my first jobs was designing a hand-held explosives detector in response to the Pan Am Lockerbie disaster, which was exciting, but my career and thinking were truly shaped when I joined five guys who had just set up Symbionics, an electronics design consultancy.

Of the five guys, I have to mention Jim Derbyshire. We decided to invest in developing the DECT technology and he drew the strategy as a diagram on one sheet of A4. Years later, everything he had drawn had come true, including spinning out and selling a company based on the technology. The guy is a true visionary.

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Right now I am always inspired by Simon Sinek. The guy is much younger than me and he just gets it: don’t chase the money; look after the people that create the magic that generates the money. I just love it when a younger person inspires me. There is no question the pandemic has accelerated the use of digital technology. It has also brought home the fact that innovation can happen at a much faster pace. One example is in the field of medical training, in particular training in surgical procedures. This involves advanced techniques and has, until now, required training to be done in-person with experienced surgeons.

But, with lockdowns still in place and the fact that some surgical procedures are not performed very often, training is neither straightforward nor in abundant supply. However, new remote-guidance AR technology, which I expect to take-off this year, will allow surgeons to teach remote procedures by vocal instruction and by having their hands shown virtually on a screen, pointing to the ideal point of incision, for example. Back in March 2020 we were part of a consortium of companies thrown together to come up with a COVID early warning system for health care workers. The demonstrator was up and running in a matter of weeks whereas in normal circumstances we’d still be discussing NDAs. Remote working and digitalisation changes will endure, not just because we technically can – the technology has been around for years – but because the pandemic has made it more ‘normal’. It’s now normal to work remotely, normal to shop online and so on. Don’t get me wrong, there is something very special about face-to-face interactions, but the office as we knew it will never be the same again, just like the High Street will never be the same again. ISSUE 28

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I believe it is realistic to expect AI to be used as a force for good. Consumers expect tech to be used for good and therefore businesses are expected to use AI for good. In that respect it is no different to other new technologies, but there is a greater consciousness about tech now, a deeper engagement with it, because it is so much a part of our everyday lives now. Of course AI is novel. Whereas many technologies have made individuals more efficient, for example the word processor, and businesses too, for example CRM, AI is going to help us make decisions, and in many cases make decisions for us. Trust is therefore central to ensuring that consumers use AI technology, products, and services. Getting technology working is challenging, getting your work funded can be difficult and bringing technology to market isn’t easy either. Therefore my advice to aspiring technologists is to persevere, communicate and enjoy.

the natural environment will be a winner. There is a huge swell of innovations in energy management, the use of materials and the protection of the natural environment, and ICT is going to be a big enabler of these.

Saving the environment is going to be significantly more complex than beating COVID-19. Any technology that makes a material difference to saving

I find switching off difficult because I’m naturally inquisitive and I just love technology. However, I do have an old boat, built by my Dad in 1971. When we

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take that out, we are truly away from it all. We moor up at night and sit there watching the sun go down; life doesn’t get much better than that. I guess we can all do with a bit of that. Over the next five years the global investment in ICT is going to increase hugely with so many organisations implementing a digital transformation of their business. AI will play a huge role

in enhancing decision-making in many organisations, in every industry. I’d like to be remembered as a good person. I don’t mean good as in the opposite of bad, but as the opposite of selfish. When a colleague or former colleague says that he or she has really moved on a notch in their career, and grown as a person, then that makes me extremely happy. That’s when it’s all worthwhile. ISSUE 28

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

James McLeod, VP EMEA for Faethm AI, says society has the means to ensure that the introduction of technology enhances, rather than hinders, our ability to work

ver since the concept of employment came to exist, workers have thrived on ingenuity and invention. From the advent of the steam engine through to the creation of the internet, we as humans regularly seek ways to make maximum use of the resources around us to create more productive, and ultimately more efficient ways of working. There’s no sign of this changing any time soon. Technology continues to evolve, churning out new inventions at pace and changing the world of work daily. Artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation, once the stuff of 96

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science fiction, are being adopted at an astounding rate, and data shows this could yet continue. Faethm AI’s recent forecast of the UK’s workforce, for example, found that the equivalent of 1.4 million full-time roles in the UK could be automated by the end of this year. That’s the equivalent of 4.8% of work currently undertaken across the country. On its own, that might not sound like a big number. But let’s put it into context. Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) indicate that as of December 2020, 1.5 million Britons were employed in the Financial Services and Insurance

JAMES MCLEOD

industry. So automating 4.8% of all work in the UK is akin to automating almost the job of almost everyone working in finance in this country. These figures make clear that automation may have a huge impact on the UK workforce. But how exactly do employees and employers prepare for this change? Shaping our own future It would be foolish to ignore the fact that certain skills – and large portions of existing job roles – are likely to become redundant due to technological change. But rather than fear such change, we should embrace it. Why? Because technology isn’t replacing the future of work. It IS the future of work. The capabilities of technology are incredible, but it cannot capture the entire spectrum of innately human qualities that make us so unique. Every role in the future will see humans and technology work together, hand in hand, augmenting one another. The reality however is that many staple UK jobs may cease to exist in the near future. Our forecasts suggest large portions of work undertaken in the retail and financial services industries, for example, have the potential to be fully automated in the next year. The notion that it’s the sole responsibility of those who work in affected roles to

The future of work is bright, and humanity should be able marvel at the capabilities of emerging technology with hope rather than fear” retrain themselves and find new jobs is misguided, however. As a society we have the collective means to ensure the introduction of technology enhances, rather than hinders, our ability to work. What we need is a plan that reclaims humans’ role in the future of work; one that ensures employees are looked after in the short and medium terms as technology is introduced, and can be transitioned into new roles in the long term as it begins to take on more of their previous responsibilities. This plan will require employers to identify transferable skills in affected ISSUE 28

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employees and proactively enrich their existing skillsets with training, so technology doesn’t simply replace human workers, and maintain current levels of output, but enhances the productivity of the workforce. Making it a success will require two things. Firstly, a combination of insights, data and analysis to unearth the pinch points and opportunities on the horizon. Secondly, and most importantly, concerted intervention from businesses and government to future-proof the UK’s workforce. Targeted programmes that seek to retain, retrain, and redeploy employees so they complement technology, and vice versa, will be critical to ensuring we deliver an equally distributed future of work for all. Going sector by sector Success will also depend on a few key factors, one of which is prioritisation. As mentioned, we know certain sectors are at greater risk of automation, with the wholesale and retail and financial services sectors two prime examples. Together, these sectors comprise almost five million UK workers, and our forecasts suggest over 9% of work undertaken in each – the equivalent of 932,000 full-time roles in total – is potentially automatable. So with automation disproportionately affecting different industries, efforts to 98

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mitigate its impact must be focused first on those who need it most. Fortunately tools are available to help businesses identify at-risk groups well in advance, and devise strategies to address potential issues before they lead to redundancies and unemployment. Starting from the top Another key success factor is the degree of support afforded by senior leadership. We all know those at the top must instigate change to ensure its results are truly impactful. In the case of the future of work, leaders have the best view of operations across an organisation, so it’s their responsibility to create a strategy that deals with the possibility of automation replacing certain roles, and allays the fears of those at risk. Investing time

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and money into identifying which roles are most likely to be affected is the first step, before then coordinating the necessary training needed to help transition at-risk employees through ‘job corridors’ into new, more in-demand roles. Making it mandatory These business leaders must have governmental support, however, if their efforts are to succeed. Based on our current trajectory, the issue of technology replacing jobs could begin to cause unemployment issues across the UK if action is not taken soon. The government must therefore act to incentivise businesses to engage in proactive workforce planning, if they are to prevent the introduction of technology to the workplace causing an employment crisis. Advancing investment into programmes that promote the retrain-

ing and reskilling of employees will ensure that citizens remain employable, and also addresses the issue of skills shortages for new, technology-focused roles. The future of work is bright, and humanity should be able marvel at the capabilities of emerging technology with hope rather than fear. But for that to happen a strategy that addresses the future role of automating technologies in the workplace is needed. Both businesses and governments must consider a positive, targeted plan of action that ensures humans and technology complement one another in future, and proactively transitions those in at-risk roles to new forms of work before it’s too late. Success here won’t come from indifference, but from definitive action to create a future of work that we can all be proud of. ISSUE 28

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