Digital Bulletin - Issue 29 - June 2021

DIGITAL BULLETIN Issue 29 | June ’21

RAN ON THE CLOUD

Nokia is on a mission to cloudify radio

CYBER WARFARE To pay or not to pay?

DIGITAL INNOVATION AT

SALLING GROUP How teamwork and technology helped Denmark’s biggest retailer build its first grocery home delivery service at astonishing speed

JAMES HENDERSON Content Director

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elcome to Issue 29 of Digital Bulletin, we’ve got a cracking edition for you this month packed full of enterprise technology, analysis, insights and exclusive interviews.

We lead with Salling Group, the biggest retailer in Denmark, which embarked on a technology transformation in early 2020 to conquer the home delivery market.

As with many tech programmes, its delivery was significantly accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic, which made it more important than ever that Salling Group’s customers could rely on fresh produce dropping on their doorsteps.

“We needed an actual presence, we couldn’t wait any more, so there was real urgency,” Steen Kronborg, Chief Enterprise Architect, told Digital Bulletin as part of this in-depth case study.

“Then the real challenge was that we had not only one project, but actually

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we had a new building project, we had a new warehouse supply chain project, we had a new front-end project.”

Elsewhere, we take a look at how AWS is partnering with sporting companies around the globe to make sport better for fans and some of the world’s premier associations, such as F1, NFL and Germany’s Bundesliga.

“AWS technology really is changing the game of sports by enhancing and enriching the fan experience before, during, and after games through rich data and insights and second-screen experiences,” says Matt Hurst, Head of AWS Sports Marketing and Communications.

We also speak to Jane Rygaard, Head of Dedicated Wireless Networks at Nokia, about the company’s 5G cloud RAN project and its partnership with all of the leading public cloud providers.

For that and much more, read on.

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

24

Case Study

48

IT Services

60

Connectivity

News, regulations and analysis

Salling Group

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A rapid transformation in the grocery sector

How AWS is taking data in sport to the next level

Nokia’s grand plan to ‘cloudify radio’

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48

8

80

105 70

Future

80

Data Intelligence

90 90 100 100 105

Debate Future technologies for the enterprise

Q&A The rapid rise of digital twins

Security Optimising and securing smart cities

A Life in Tech Michel André, CIO of Banking Circle, speaks to Digital Bulletin

Closing Bulletin An exclusive column from Synapse360 CTO John Pickford

MONTH IN REVIEW

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

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NEWS UPDATE

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS $3.3bn, with the newly formed business getting proceeds of $500m, including a private investment of $150m. PlusDrive uses advanced sensing technologies, including radar, LiDAR, and cameras to provide a 360-degree sensing system.

Headline: Dell has agreed to sell its cloud-based integration platform as a service, Boomi, for $4bn to Francisco Partners and TPG Capital.

Info: It is the latest business unit to be hived off by Dell, with its vice chairman Jeff Clarke saying that the company is focussed on fueling growth by continuing to modernise its core infrastructure and PC businesses and expanding in high-priority areas including hybrid and private cloud, edge, telecom and Apex.

Dell recently revealed that it is to spin off its 81% stake in VMware with a view to paying down debts.

Headline: Selfdriving truck technology company Plus has announced it is merging with SPAC company Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. V. Info: The deal values the company at

Headline: Cisco has announced a deal to buy Socio Labs.

Info: The company said the modern event technology platform will advance its vision to deliver inclusive experiences during in-person, virtual and hybrid events. Socio Labs will expand Webex offerings with capabilities that include live streaming, sponsorship, participant networking and advanced analytics, along with attendee engagement.

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FUNDING Headline: Cybersecurity company Acronis raised $250m in funding.

Info: The funding round takes the company’s value to more than $2.5bn. A significant portion of the investment will also be used to further enhance Acronis’ go-tomarket initiatives by expanding its broad partner network – most notably managed service providers.

Funding was led by CVC Capital Partners VII with participation from other investors.

Headline: Industrial software startup Cognite raised $150m with growth equity firm TCV, valuing the company at $1.6bn Info: Cognite said the investment marks one of the largest funding

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rounds for a SaaS company in Europe and “confirms industrial digitalisation as a global megatrend”. As part of the transaction, Jake Reynolds, general partner at TCV, is joining the Cognite Board of Directors.

Headline: Zeta, an Indian fintech, has achieved unicorn status after receiving a significant investment from SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

Info: SoftBank has poured $250m into Zeta to help it scale its technology stack for financial services.

The startup offers credit and debit processing and BNPL, along with core banking and mobile experiences.

It now wants to accelerate its expansion in North America and Europe.

NEWS UPDATE

PEOPLE Headline: VMware has named Raghu Raghuram as its new CEO. Info: Raghuram will step up from his current role of COO, Products and Cloud Services, at the beginning of June to replace Pat Gelsinger, who has taken up the reigns at Intel. “VMware is uniquely poised to lead the multi-cloud computing era,” Raghuram said. VMware also announced the exit of Sanjay Poonen, COO for Customer Operations, who was widely tipped to take up the main role at VMware. Its network virtualisation and data centre engineering leader Ravi Kagalavadi is also heading for the exit door after 17 years with the company to take up a leadership role at Alteryx.

Headline: JPMorgan has appointed two new CIOs for its technology divisions.

Info: James Reid will take the role of CIO for a new unit focused on developing and modernising

tech for the bank’s employees and is also the company’s first ever Black CIO, said the report. Melissa Goldman has been appointed as CIO for the renamed Finance, Risk, Data and Controls technology unit.

Headline: Apple has hired former Google AI scientist Samy Bengio.

Info: Bengio recently left the company after controversy about its Google Brain unit. A report from Reuters says that Bengio is expected to lead a new AI research unit at Apple under John Giannandrea, senior vice president of machine learning and AI strategy.

Giannandrea also joined Apple in 2018 after spending a number of years working for Google.

Stay right up to date with the latest news shaping the enterprise technology sector with The Bulletin, available at digitalbulletin.com ISSUE 29

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DIGITAL POLICY

SAFEGUARDING THE INTERNET In our regular feature, Digital Bulletin analyses one of the new digital policies that countries around the world are enforcing with the goal of regulating the online world. This month we look at the UK’s Online Safety Bill

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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he internet can be a dangerous place. A survey made by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky showed that 84% of parents are worried about their child’s safety online, while Office for National Statistics data shows that 764,000 children have faced online bullying.

To fight this, the UK has introduced a new law, known as the Online Safety Bill, which was presented by the Queen at the State Opening of Parliament. The piece of legislation, previously known as the Online Harms Bill, has been two years in the making. During its presenta12

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tion, the government said the new laws will lead the way in ensuring internet safety for all, especially for children, whilst harnessing the benefits of a free, open and secure internet. Many educators have expressed their support for this bill, particularly as digital learning becomes more and more commonplace.

“It’s important that legislators understand why it’s more crucial than ever to protect children online, given the increasing role that technology is playing within our education system, something that was brought to the fore during the

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pandemic,” says Melanie Thomson, Online Safety Representative at RM. “While many schools have adapted well to hybrid learning, many parents admit to not always applying parental controls to internet-enabled devices that their children use. This presents a significant challenge in ensuring that every child is safe online when it is not always clear who is responsible.”

But who is responsible for ensuring the safety of the internet? In the UK government’s perspective, it’s online platforms.

The Online Safety Bill will require online service providers such as Facebook, Twitter and Google, to detect and delete harmful content including disinformation, online scams, racism, sexual exploitation and terrorism; even

where the content is not illegal. And the law will not only affect social media giants. Any blog, business or educational website that invites user content and debate will also need to regulate their content. Failure to do so will result in fines of up to 10% of annual turnover or £18 million, from Ofcom.

“Companies providing platforms for user generated content will have to invest a lot of time, effort and funding into creating and completing risk assessments and developing policies to make sure that user generated content they host can be taken down if it is deemed ‘harmful’” says Daniel Lloyd, partner at UK law firm TLT. “They will also be faced with the enormous task of constantly policing their users’ content.

Daniel Lloyd

Melanie Thomson

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While the bill offers the opportunity of a safer internet, it also has the potential to end free speech online.”

Lloyd’s concern regarding free speech is shared by many other technological companies, who will have to be the judges of where free speech becomes harmful content. Nonetheless, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Home Office stressed that the new laws will not affect UK citizens’ rights to freedom of speech, and added a new duty of care for social-media sites to protect content defined as “democratically important”, which includes political content and news reports.

“The Internet is only as good as the people using it,” said Ian Stevenson, CEO of Cyan Forensics and Chair of the Online Safety Technology Industry Association. “The introduction of the

Online Harms Bill will go some way to establish a strong framework to regulate digital platforms and tackle the spread of harmful online content, and so we fully welcome it. However, its success in the UK is entirely dependent on the strength of the appointed regulator.

“Online harm has no geographical borders, and in an international setting, collective action against illegal content will be far more effective in protecting the public. It is vital that the UK now works collaboratively with other countries so that the reduction in harmful content can continue apace. This Bill marks the start of that journey.”

Moreover, the Online Safety Bill will also promote the safeguarding of, not only children, but all internet users, against fraud. Currently, fraud costs the UK economy £190 billion per year, and scams

Ian Stevenson

Steve Ritter

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DIGITAL POLICY

are sweeping the country, from dodgy delivery texts to fake investment opportunities. Following the announcement of the bill, plans for social media companies and search engines to face fines over scam adverts are under consideration.

“When it comes to implementing this new legislation, technology has a significant role to play,” says Steve Ritter, CTO at Mitek. “We can no longer place the blame on consumers for ‘falling’ for scams. While tech-savvier generations tend to see past the illusion of phishing emails or dodgy texts, no one is free from these risks. So why can’t digital service providers – whether it be messaging apps, mobile manufacturers,

email providers, or phone networks – warn us when a suspicious link or message is shared? This would go a long way to protecting consumers, and all it takes is AI and machine learning algorithms that are trained to spot scams before they reach the consumer.”

Until the day comes where behavioural biometrics – which assesses behaviours to create a unique digital footprint, acting as another line of defence – is used across all digital services to spot fraud and hate, we will need to rest on laws such as the Online Safety Bill, and the social responsibility of internet platforms, to make the internet a safer place.

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HELD TO RANSOM The month of May saw the targeting of critical infrastructure systems by cyber gangs, with millions of dollars in crypto payments being made. With increased numbers of threat actors arriving on the scene, the issue is getting more severe by the week

AUTHOR: James Henderson

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NEWS ANALYSIS

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nother month and another string of high-profile cyberattacks, none more so than the breach of the Colonial Pipeline’s computer systems, which took one of the most important fuel lines in the U.S. offline and led to spikes in aviation fuel prices. That a criminal gang was able to force the shutdown of such a vital piece of infrastructure for a number of days - leading to a regional state of emergency to be declared - should raise serious concern.

Elsewhere, we’ve seen hackers wage a catastrophic attack on Irish Department of Health and the country’s Health Service Executive (HSE), causing many patient cancellations and fears that confidential data could be leaked. Irish government minister, Ossian Smyth, labelled the attack on its HSE as

Bill Harrod

“possibly the most significant cybercrime attack on the Irish state”.

The attacks are the latest example of threat actors targeting critical national infrastructure, a trend that will only increase. Terry Olaes, Technical Director of Skybox Security, believes that cyber gangs now view critical infrastructure as “low-hanging fruit”.

“With the rise of Industrial IoT sensors coupled with outdated legacy IT systems not designed to withstand blistering hacks, this makes critical infrastructure a perfect target for cybercriminals,” he said.

Recent research from Skybox found that these types of attacks continue to trend upward as operational technology (OT) - commonly found in critical infrastructure - breaches jumped by 30%

Jon Niccolls

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in 2020 alone and IIoT flaws increased 308% year-over-year.

“Leaders in this space are often in a Catch 22,” said Olaes “OT-reliant industries, such as utilities and manufacturing, can’t afford to shut down for comprehensive overhauls of legacy technology; freezing operations means lost dollars. Hackers are seizing the opportunity to attack OT-reliant organisations, enterprises, and governments, knowing they will pay hefty ransoms to prevent disruption.

“Additionally, OT device vulnerability scans and remediation often happen only once or twice per year, if at all, limiting visibility on the constantly evolving threats and leaving vulnerabilities unpatched for

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months. Years of computer and network neglect only compound the urgent need to shore up security.”

While the methods behind the attacks are still relatively unsophisticated, the groups behind them are anything but. The attack was carried out by the DarkSide, which operates a ‘Ransomware-as-aService’ model where it sells ransomware tools to would-be cyberattackers. In the days following the Colonial Pipeline attack, the group claimed it was shutting down operations, but it is unclear if it plans to start back up in a different guise once scrutiny from law enforcement agencies such as the FBI subsides.

“Ransomware has been a favored attack vector of cybercriminals because

Terry Olaes

NEWS ANALYSIS

of its effectiveness and return-on-investment,” said Marty Edwards, VP of OT Security at Tenable. “That’s precisely why bad actors have recently set their sights on critical infrastructure. Shutting down OT environments can cost hundreds of millions of dollars which forces providers to outweigh the costs.

“We should not underestimate these groups. Many of them now have help desks, technical support, payroll processing and subcontractors. They are essentially full-fledged criminal corporations operating in the digital world. While it’s unknown how this attack played out, it’s yet another

reminder of the increasing threats to critical infrastructure we all rely on.”

Since the attack, Joseph Blount, the CEO of The Colonial Pipeline Company, has confirmed that he authorised a payment of $4.4 million in cryptocurrency to be made to cyberattackers in return for a decrypting tool to restore its disbaled computer network.

“I know that’s a highly controversial decision,” said Blount in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I didn’t make it lightly. I will admit that I wasn’t comfortable seeing money go out the door to people like this. But it was the right thing to do for the country.”

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Figures from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic claim that the DarkSide group received around $90 million in cryptocurrency ransom payments before its apparent shutdown. In its breakdown, it said that that figure has been achieved in just nine months, with 47 victims paying an average of $1.9 million apiece.

Paying criminals is an unedifying thing to do, but as was clearly the case with the Colonial incident, it can often feel like the only option, especially when it impacts critical infrastructure and systems woven into the fabric of national security. But even once a payment is made, how much can you really trust a group of hardened criminals?

“Paying ransom doesn’t guarantee the recovery of your files or ensure the code is removed from your corporate systems,” says Bill Harrod, VP Public Sector, Ivanti.

“For that reason, government cybersecurity authorities, like the NCSC, don’t advocate emptying your wallet.

Additionally, by paying ransom greedy cybercriminals will only be encouraged to continue their plight. But a ransomware strategy that priorities defence and thorough recovery should mean that you won’t need to pay. If an organisation doesn’t have a recovery plan in place, then the ability to not pay the ransom is highly jeopardised.

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“Preparing for ransomware attacks with drills to make sure a thorough recovery plan is in place is crucial.

Simply restoring data from a backup onto corrupted systems isn’t an option.

You need to reimage hundreds or thousands of systems, prior to putting the data back on. A blueprint will be needed for what can be a huge operation.”

But despite a Sophos State of Ransomware 2021 report finding that just 8%

NEWS ANALYSIS

of companies paying ransoms get all of their data back, it also found that the number of organisations deciding to pay a ransom has risen to 32% in 2021 compared to 26% last year.

The amount companies are paying is also going up and at time of press, Bloomberg broke the news that U.S. insurance giant CNA Financial Corp. paid $40 million to wrestle back control of its infrastructure systems

after a cyberattack, one of the largest payments of its kind ever.

It is an issue that is not going away, with one of the many unwelcome side effects of the global pandemic being a spike in cyber attacks. “It is likely the increase in the rate of attack has been fuelled by the influx of new ransomware actors, the expansion of existing affiliate schemes and pursuing improved revenues by established cyber-crime ISSUE 29

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actors. And, unfortunately, no one is safe,” says Harrod.

Jon Niccolls, EMEA Lead - Incident Response, Check Point Software, tells Digital Bulletin that if businesses want to give themselves the best chance of avoiding being attacked and subsequently shaken down for ransom, a far more proactive approach is in order.

“It’s always been the case that defenders need to be right all the time, attackers only need to be right once,” he 22

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says. “The organisations that became infected could often have done something about it, but hindsight is always great and it’s easy to point the finger and say someone could have done more. A lot of the recommendations that organisations get after the incident are the same, and focus on prevention, protection, detection and response.

“Organisations need to be more aware that they’re at risk, and where the risks are. Most organisations that

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we deal with during incidents didn’t think that they would be a target and often weren’t aware of what their attack surface was.”

Harrod concludes: “Educating all levels of an enterprise is possibly the most important mitigator when protecting your business from Ransomware. Cybercriminals monitor employees’ online behaviour to gain access to an organisation’s network.

Creating an enterprise-wide cyberse-

curity education and training strategy is key to mitigating ransomware attacks.

“Organisations should start with the basics: educate employees to practice safe clicking, recognise phishing and social engineering attempts, and report suspicious emails and activity to the IT department. This should be treated like fire safety, schedule regular drills to test and monitor the efficacy of your employee training. Even offer rewards for spotting fake phishing emails.”

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TRANSFORMATION,

DELIVERED Thor Jørgensen and Steen Kronborg tell Digital Bulletin how Danish retail giant Salling Group successfully built its first grocery home delivery service at turbo-speed during COVID-19, and why the company is set fair for the era of digital and personalised commerce

PROJECT DIRECTOR: Jack Walsh AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer VIDEOGRAPHER: Fraser Harrop

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SALLING GROUP

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s Denmark’s biggest retailer, Salling Group prides itself on keeping one step ahead of demand.

To satisfy customers in each corner of the country, it operates discount stores, supermarkets and hypermarkets, and now even restaurants and coffee shops.

The company, which also has presence in Poland and Germany, serves 11 million people every week and is growing fast.

In the area of technology, for more than a decade it has invested heavily in digital commerce and Salling Group now also offers a seamless online shopping experience through its Føtex, Bilka and department store brands. By integrating online and offline retailing, establishing popular e-commerce sites and rolling out a click-and-collect service for grocery 26

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buyers, the group has moved smoothly into the digital age.

There was, however, one area Salling Group hadn’t conquered: the home delivery of grocery goods. Already a low-margin business, grocery retail is well-known for being difficult to translate into home delivery; there are significant supply chain and logistical challenges to overcome in order to land fresh food on the doorsteps of customers. But last year, it decided to make the leap.

“Our brands need to be where the customers are,” says Thor Jørgensen, Salling Group’s Executive Vice President for Digital & E-commerce. “So with the changes in consumer behaviour, we are changing along the way. As a result of that, our engagement and our commitment to

SALLING GROUP

becoming a strong e-commerce player is at a completely different level now than it was two or three years ago.”

The catalyst for this home delivery project was COVID-19. With customers unable to visit stores due to lockdown restrictions, the industry saw a huge spike in demand for deliveries. Initial planning discussions took place early in 2020 but when the severity of the coronavirus outbreak

became clear, Salling made a bold commitment: it was to condense what would in normal times be an 18-month programme into just six months of work.

“We said ‘the volumes are so big that we just have to be there’,” says Steen Kronborg, Chief Enterprise Architect. “We needed an actual presence, we couldn’t wait any more, so there was real urgency.

Then the real challenge was that we had

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Our commitment to becoming a strong e-commerce player is at a completely different level now than it was two or three years ago” Thor Jørgensen not only one project, but actually we had a new building project, we had a new warehouse supply chain project, we had a new front-end project - so it was more the combined effort of making a completely new business that was a concern [when Salling Group started].”

Salling Group took steps early on to make a highly ambitious programme achievable. The team set a go-live date and worked backwards, and decided to launch home delivery initially only for its Føtex brand in the greater Copenhagen area, knowing that a wider roll-out wouldn’t be possible in the timeframe.

One aspect it wasn’t prepared to 28

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SALLING GROUP

compromise on though was the quality of service it was to offer its customers.

It wanted to build a “minimum lovable product” from the outset, knowing that users would be expecting the same choices and products as they would get in a brick and mortar store.

“The key point is really to do what you have said you would do, so when you offer fruit and veg to customers, they expect you to deliver them fresh,” says Jørgensen. “When you tell them that you can come within a certain timeframe, they expect you to do that, even if there was traffic on the way. The customer expects you to fulfil what you promise.

“With the right strategic and tactical choices, I think we felt comfortable that it potentially could be done, but we knew of course that there was a risk of us being delayed.”

Salling Group assigned the very brightest talent from its teams so the project could quickly gather momentum. But it knew that to tackle the many key elements of a home delivery programme at this speed, it would have to get some outside help. The company opened its doors to a number of strategic partners, adopting an approach that would involve integrated teams and an “as one” mentality. One such partner was Westernacher Consulting.

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Westernacher is a technology consultancy specialising in the SAP stack. The foundation of successful digital commerce is reliable back-end operations and Salling Group had a long-established, SAP-based system which Westernacher helped optimise for grocery home delivery, working on order fulfilment and internal process optimisations around its new “dark store” - a conventional supermarket in stock but with an optimised layout to fulfil online orders.

Taking learnings from a similar project with a retailer in Norway, Westernacher Consulting was also able to offer its services around transportation execution

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and the “last-mile” delivery, areas not so familiar to Salling Group. The breadth of support from Westernacher Consulting proved invaluable to Salling Group’s teams, says Kronborg.

“Westernacher really can go very deep in the technical areas as well. It’s not just reverse processes, transportation processes or optimisations, but also the core technologies at the same time, so they’re really our trusted partner in this area. The partnership is a mix between traditional technology and business processes, but also actively consulting on a more management level. That has been super.”

SALLING GROUP

In Partnership: Salling Group and Westernacher Westernacher supported Salling Group by optimising its SAP stack for grocery delivery, while also offering services around transportation execution and the “last-mile” delivery

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company.

CASE STUDY

Another essential element of the build for Salling Group was to ensure its underlying architecture was flexible and adaptive.

As the organisation has grown its digital presence in recent years, it has eschewed end-to-end platforms in favour of a modular services architecture. According to Kronborg, who has led much of this work, this offers the means to more easily improve products and “copy and paste” services into other use cases.

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He likens it to the build of a house and only using the “bricks” - or microservices - that you need to launch any given product. This approach has been fundamental for Salling to make the economics of grocery home delivery work, and was also the decisive factor in the company partnering with Naveo Commerce for its e-commerce solution.

Naveo Commerce’s platform has been developed around the idea of “headless

SALLING GROUP

commerce”; namely an e-commerce solution which is API-led, dovetailing with Salling’s modular services architecture.

Also offering modules around order and warehouse management, along with pricing and last-mile fulfilment, Kronborg describes Naveo’s platform as the “glue” binding Salling’s home delivery tech stack together.

Jørgensen adds: “Naveo represents for us a very important part of the tech stack.

There is a lot of logic built into that layer, and we know that doing that right has tremendous value both customer experience-wise and operations-wise.

I think it’s been a great partnership where it contributes with its tech components and we can leverage that and what it has built before. It has allowed us to come to market fast.”

No e-commerce project is complete, however, without a front-end that brings the service alive for customers who want a simple and fast way to order a shopping delivery. With today’s users expecting seamless, omnichannel experiences on websites and mobile apps, this was a critical part of the programme for Salling Group and led to it enlisting the help of Accenture.

Accenture, through its global design and innovation consultancy Fjord, took ownership of the UX design and front-end build to produce a new site and app.

We needed an actual presence, we couldn’t wait any more, so there was real urgency” Steen Kronborg

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Salling Group also tapped Accenture’s vast expertise in digital consulting, allowing it to take control of project and process management for the entire home delivery tech stack. Kronborg says it also provided invaluable insights on the commercial and good practice sides.

“Accenture basically did end-to-end from the outside-in perspective,” he explains.

“If you look at Accenture’s size and teams, there are many people involved, but they utilise their capacity well. It is a modern web company now and the flexibility and agility of Accenture has been a really superb experience because we’ve not 36

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been easy, everything has been so fast, and so agile in an active way. That’s just been the nature of the programme.”

The pace of the project was both the highlight and the biggest challenge for Salling Group and its partners. All sides dived straight into design and development after Easter last year but it wasn’t an easy ride. Kronborg admits that in late summer Salling Group’s “top-down, just do it” approach meant that some difficult conversations were had as the teams neared the crucial phase of the programme.

Extra complications came from the fact that people were also working fully

SALLING GROUP

In Partnership: Salling Group and Naveo Commerce Naveo Commerce delivered the end-to-end e-commerce platform which now powers Salling Group’s grocery home delivery

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It’s been a really fascinating journey to experience in my view, because so much talent and energy has been unlocked or have had to show a lot of leadership in this part to get to where we are now” Thor Jørgensen

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SALLING GROUP

remotely because of the pandemic.

Stakeholders met virtually at the same time each week to keep each other informed on the state of the project, and to jointly tackle any issues that might slow things down. Salling Group had already established a work-from-home culture before COVID-19 which also helped to keep individuals motivated.

“In reality we had hard times, we had dark periods, as everybody will feel,” says Kronborg. “We are stepping out of the shadows now and doing the final fighting together, as one combined. So now we are a combined group and I’m really, really proud that somehow we managed to find each other virtually, because it’s never been done before in reality.”

Jørgensen adds: “I would say remote collaboration is part of the DNA of how we work, so in that sense it’s been...

I wouldn’t say business as usual, but there have been similarities with the way we ran this project and how we run other parts of the business for sure. We are working with various methods on sprint planning and scrum and all the classical ways of working, but we have had to do that spending less time together physically for sure.”

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soon offer the service in other Danish cities, with the next challenge to scale the system for deliveries in more rural areas.

In the wider e-commerce space, Salling Group is also expanding its efforts in the meal box market following its 2017 acquisition of Skagenfood and it continues to operate a sizeable non-food e-commerce business through its supermarkets and hypermarkets. Jørgensen believes its ambitious grocery home delivery programme with Føtex represents a very exciting phase of Salling’s journey in digital.

“You can argue that on the food side we are still on an immature curve, but I would say we are picking up the pace very fast,” he says. “It’s a very inspiring journey to be part of, because we truly 42

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can see value in taking all our known skills from our company, and applying them in a new setting online. I think that’s why the situation right now is strong and the future is I think extremely interesting and bright for us.”

Both Jørgensen and Kronborg are clearly proud of what Salling Group has achieved over the last 12 months, in launching grocery home delivery in an extremely short timeframe. The bulk of their praise is reserved for their own team, which has deployed its strongest resources from across the business to progress the project at turbo-speed.

“We’ve had experienced people, young talents, people that have a store background, knowing in-depth how the service

SALLING GROUP

In Partnership: Salling Group and Accenture Accenture has been a key strategic partner to Salling Group, designing the new site and app and offering its vast expertise in digital consulting

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Let’s create a more sustainable future It’s time to reimagine, rebuild and transform our global economy into one that works for the benefit of everyone. By embracing change, and scaling our ambitions, we can create 360° value for all.

Let there be change

CASE STUDY

We are moving into a multi-year competitive space, and in my personal opinion, that’s super exciting. We’re bringing in more on the data science side of it, introducing more AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning, and we will develop a new user experience” Steen Kronborg

should be towards the customer, and commercial people that understand the range,” says Jørgensen. “On the logistics side, I could mention many, many people that have done an extraordinary effort to get this up and running. The same has been the case for our digital and IT teams, which have been fundamental.

“It’s been a really fascinating journey to experience in my view, because so much talent and energy has been unlocked or have had to show a lot of leadership in 46

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this part to get to where we are now. And personally I am having a blast every day I go to work. I think it’s extremely interesting, challenging, , and I’m learning new things and pushing the boundaries every day.”

In Kronborg’s view, through this cuttingedge work Salling Group has proven itself as a modern retailer fit for the future.

One of the organisation’s core values is to stay competitive and “to win in all areas of the business, seize opportunities and resiliently overcome challenges

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together”. Salling has demonstrated those qualities in abundance throughout this programme - and wants to continue to do so in the future, with technology at the forefront.

“We’ve made a foundation, a strong foundation, but from a technical point of view, there’s also a little bit of feeling that we can do even better, and that really brings some excitement,” says Kronborg. “I’m really looking forward to it because we are moving into a multi-year

competitive space, and in my personal opinion, that’s super exciting. We’re bringing in more on the data science side of it, introducing more AI [artificial intelligence] and machine learning, and we will develop a new user experience.

“It is a new kind of ball game and it is quite exciting. We’ve proven to ourselves we are now in a modern state, and actually also proven that we can do it at a fast pace. So yes, we are one of the leading ones, but as always, we want more.”

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EMPOWERING SPORT WITH CLOUD Amazon Web Services is partnering with sporting companies and leagues around the world with the aim of enhancing the experience for all stakeholders

AUTHOR: Stuart Hodge

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ports and data have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for decades but, for a long time, data was used mainly by sporting institutions or the teams, and mainly internally, to gain competitive insights or advantages.

Nowadays though, data and analytics are also at the heart of enhancing the fan (or customer) experience and, increasingly, holistically bettering the sports themselves either in terms of safety improvements or technological advancements which further competition.

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range of sports, than Amazon Web Services (AWS) to that end.

In the first half of 2021 alone, it has announced partnerships with the NHL (National Hockey League) and PGA TOUR golf, and has also revealed new advanced analytics with Formula 1 racing and Germany’s Bundesliga football league, amongst others.

In fact, AWS has more existing sports partnerships than any other provider on the market, including with the Seattle Seahawks NFL team, the NFL itself, NASCAR racing, the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team, Pro Football Focus

AMAZON WEB SERVICES

and Second Spectrum (American sports analysis platforms), Six Nations Rugby, Churchill Downs racecourse and the PAC-12 conference of collegiate athletics in the United States.

However, it’s not just the volume and variety of what AWS is doing that is so interesting, it’s what they’re doing and how they’re doing it that’s truly exciting.

Take Formula 1 for example: the fastest-moving, fastest-changing, most data-laden sport in the world.

Rob Smedley, Director of Data Systems at Formula 1, joined Priya Ponnapalli, Principal Scientist and Senior Manager on the AWS Machine Learning Solutions team, recently to discuss how F1 is using Amazon’s technology to enhance fan experience.

Smedley said: “Formula 1 is such a data-rich sport and when we decided, as a league, to try to understand how to expedite, and use that data to look for broader fan engagement, and a more immersive experience with our fans, that’s when our partnership between Formula 1 and AWS really kicked off.

“We generate between 2.5-3 billion combinations of timing transponder events in every single race. Then we’ve got weather data, car telemetry data, the metadata, and lots more besides, all of which helps make up this massive live stream of data. Then it was (up to

Cutting-edge technology empowering enhanced fan and sporting experience • Machine learning is producing advanced stats such as NFL’s Next Gen Stats, F1 Insights, and Bundesliga Match Facts • High performance computing is helping to redesign vehicles such as F1 race cars and America’s Cup boats • Organisations such as the NHL are using artificial intelligence services to automatically tag and categorise archives • The Internet of Things is connecting sensors from the field and track in various sports to deliver real-time data which partners can then use

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By using data, we can get behind the story in such a technical sport, in such a datadriven sport, using graphics to bring everything to life” Rob Smedley, F1

us to find) a way, esoterically, of trying to build something out from that in an engaging and usable format for the fans.

“That’s why, over the last few years, we’ve built this suite, this library of data analytics, and stats that sit on screen throughout any Formula 1 event.

“Formula 1 is such a unique sport in as much that the linear TV feed can only ever concentrate on one or two stories at the same time. But by using data, we can get behind the story in such a technical 52

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AMAZON WEB SERVICES

sport, in such a data-driven sport, using graphics to bring everything to life.”

Smedley goes on to enthusiastically describe just one of a host of new graphical insights being unveiled this season for F1 fans.

“Listening to the feedback on the new braking performance graphic we’ve introduced this year, for example, it’s been absolutely great,” he says.

“This is a visceral display through data and analytics of just how potent

an F1 car is. Braking at more than 5Gs (gravitational force) – so, if you take Monza, turn one, as an example, that famous chicane, decelerating from 350-360 kilometres per hour down to 40, 50 or 60.

“These Formula 1 cars, they’re absolute monsters and we can bring that to life now. We can engage our fans by using that graphic (to show) exactly how late drivers brake. The breaking point, even one or two metres closer to the corner, ISSUE 29

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The Amazon technology chain underpinning it all AWS’ respective partners build cloud-based video archives that will automatically tag specific frames, from hours of video, with metadata so that they can easily search historical footage and surface pivotal moments.

Then, as new data is collected, it gets ingested using Amazon EC2.

That cloud product is scalable depending on the amount of data each partner has, and data is then transferred via live APIs (application programming interfaces) into a data lake created using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and processed using Amazon EMR (the company’s big data platform).

Partners can then take the data and develop graphics in real-time to bring sports analysis to life on-screen. The AWS cloud is integral to making everything work: it means that data can be processed, streamed, stored and analysed in real-time.

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(demonstrates) about a level of bravery that is just difficult to comprehend.”

Formula 1 is also using its data partnership with AWS to enhance the standard of the cars themselves.

It has been using Amazon’s cloud computing platform, Amazon EC2, for ‘Computational Fluid Dynamics’ (CFD) to simulate race car aerodynamics, essentially achieving the performance of a super computer at a much lower cost and reducing simulation time by an average of 70 percent, from 60 hours down to 18 hours.

Within that project, Formula 1 used over 500 million data points to study downforce loss when two vehicles race in close proximity (a car’s downforce increases its tyre grip and cornering speed, thus reducing lap time) and the sporting world’s elite wind-tunnel aerodynamicists are now taking this data into consideration for the design of future F1 racing cars.

That F1 partnership example is merely focusing on a couple of angles within a single sport. Some of the other ways that AWS’ technological infrastructure is being used by various sports are arguably even more intuitive.

Matt Hurst, Head of AWS Sports Marketing and Communications, explains: “Our strategy in sports is no different than in every other industry: we work backwards with our customers

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to help solve business problems through innovation.

“For instance, in 2020, the NFL had invested millions of dollars in creating a major fan experience for the 2020 NFL draft and COVID-19 placed all of that investment in jeopardy. They came to AWS to develop a reliable, secure way of hosting its first virtual draft during the global quarantine and we partnered with them to create the mostwatched NFL draft in history.

“AWS technology really is changing the game of sports by enhancing and

enriching the fan experience before, during, and after games through rich data and insights and secondscreen experiences.

“But AWS technology is also transforming more than the fan experience – leagues and teams are using AWS to innovate like never before across a range of sports.”

A prime example of this is with the NFL, which uses data collected through RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags on player’s shoulder pads, in pylons, first-down markers, on the

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in-game officials, and even within the game ball. These all transmit location data to wide-band receivers, specific to the inch. It is a game of inches after all.

Data points such as (quick sporting jargon alert) air distance, target separation, sideline separation, pass-rush separation, passer speed, player velocity, acceleration, orientation, direction, and time to throw are calculated and stored in the AWS cloud – amounting to over 3TB of data per game week, and over 300 million data points during a full NFL season.

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The stats buffs are obviously the first to take advantage of this vast plethora of information, but there’s a bigger picture at play as well. By combining the NFL’s vast trove of data, specialist knowledge and insights about the sport itself with AWS’ machine learning and cloud computing expertise, the partnership is working together to transform player health and safety by generating new insights into player injuries, game rules, equipment, rehabilitation, and recovery.

The data generated will eventually be available to researchers, equipment manu-

AMAZON WEB SERVICES

Our strategy in sports is no different than in every other industry: we work backwards with our customers to help solve business problems through innovation” Matt Hurst, AWS

facturers, trainers, coaches, and medical professionals to serve as a framework for future innovation. It’s all fascinating stuff.

Of course, the most popular of the global sports is undoubtedly football (or soccer, depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re on) and in the Bundesliga, in Germany, they’ve been partnering with AWS to provide what are being called ‘Match Insights’ for fans, which enhance the viewing experience and provide additional material for analysis.

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Positions’ made their debut in February this year, joining ‘Speed Alert’, ‘Average Positions’, and ‘xGoals’, bringing the total number of insights available for Bundesliga fans to six.

Again though, there is a bigger picture.

Together, the partnership is building a next generation advanced statistics platform that covers historical data from over 10,000 Bundesliga games. The Bundesliga powered-by-AWS statistics

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service will be the only official source, deliver data in real-time and provide a new user experience and visualisation on mobile devices. The idea is to create a truly personalised fan experience which will enable real-time recommendations and adjustments based on the user interactions with Bundesliga platforms.

“Every Bundesliga match generates data that can improve play and help fans better understand team strategies,

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The advanced statistics that we’re creating with AWS give fans an even deeper appreciation for how the game is played” Andreas Heyden, DFL and we are making tremendous strides in leveraging the vast amount of data in our archives and from our league’s current games to develop and roll-out new Match Facts. The advanced statistics that we’re creating with AWS give fans an even deeper appreciation for how the game is played,” said Andreas Heyden, Executive Vice President of Digital Innovations for DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH. “Together with AWS, we’re delivering a new perspective on what happens on the field and offering a new and engaging way for fans to follow their favourite teams.”

“Expanding our work with Bundesliga means more fans will gain an appreciation for the incredible talent on the field and the decisions made by teams, at

the same time as the league differentiates itself through the use of advanced analytics to improve the quality of play,” said Klaus Buerg, General Manager for AWS Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL. As ever, the bigger picture is always part of the thinking on both sides of the partnership.

The final word on all of this, we will leave to veteran NBA coach Stan Van Gundy.

“Understanding the assumptions behind any statistic ‘makes you think’ about your own views,” he says. “That’s the essence of analytics: don’t trust, but verify – with data.”

And the capacity to do that, thanks to AWS and the strong partnerships that it is developing, is undoubtedly greater than ever before.

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CLOUDIFYING

RADIO

Imagine having access to a private network that combines the best of 5G, cloud and edge technologies; that’s Nokia’s new goal. Digital Bulletin speaks to Jane Rygaard, Head of Dedicated Wireless Networks at Nokia, about the company’s 5G cloud RAN project and its partnership with AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

Y

ou can’t get time back, but you can make sure not to lose it.

For a regular internet user, the time that passes between typing a question on a search engine and the moment the search results appear on the screen are barely perceptible. A few milliseconds more or less won’t make an impact. But when you’re dealing with more high stakes situations, such as large manufacturing operations, or even

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connected cars, they do. That is why the faster speeds that the combination of new technologies such 5G, cloud and edge computing allows is so valuable.

A successful implementation of 5G comes alongside new levels of flexibility in architecting, scaling and deploying telecom networks including radio access networks (RAN). New solutions such as Open RAN provide an architecture with open interoperable interfaces

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and hardware-software disaggregation that enable big data and AI-driven innovations in the RAN domain. However, these solutions cannot be adequately scaled without the cloud.

From allowing multi-access edge computing to cloudifying the core side, Nokia has continued to use 5G technologies to break barriers. The company’s latest objective? Putting RAN on the cloud.

Back in 2016, Jane Rygaard, the Head of Dedicated Business Networks and Edge Clouds at Nokia set out with the goal of developing 5G Cloud RAN. After several years of research and development, her team is now ready to partner

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with cloud service providers to make this idea a reality, driving 5G connectivity and advancing services to enterprise customers at the network edge.

As a result, Nokia recently announced its partnership with Microsoft, AWS and Google Cloud to enable the development of cloud-based radio 5G solutions.

Although 5G and cloud technologies are two trends that are individually shaking up enterprise, Rygaard stresses that its true value comes from the combination of the two. Without 5G, there would be no promise of edge clouds.

“In the early days of 5G, we talked about it being more than just a consumer network,” she says . “As we move into

NOKIA

5G, we get an architecture that allows us to disaggregate the edge. For a long time we talked about how the cloud centralises everything in computing. But if we want to be able to have low latency and use cases where data is local, we also need to start thinking about where the computing is being done.

“And this is where 5G, from an architectural point of view, gives us the opportunity to really decentralise all your workloads, and decide where the best place is for us to have the workload running, depending on the use case that we’re going to use it for. And this was the starting point of really talking about edge clouds.

“5G really combines this edge application-hosting thinking with the idea of running the network itself also on its cloud. And therefore, we can start getting the combination of using a common cloud, or for the network infrastructure itself, as well as for the application that sits on top.”

The first and most obvious use case for this technology is for dedicated wireless networks, where the real-time capabilities of 5G RAN make a significant impact. Although many industrial clients already have an edge cloud line that manages various applications, whether it is for IoT, robotics or data analytics cases, what Nokia wants to do is allow

5G gives us the opportunity to really decentralise all your workloads.

And this was the starting point of really talking about edge clouds” Jane Rygaard

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them to also add radio to these sites and run the whole system on edge clouds.

“Having said that, it’s early days, especially from the cloud RAN perspective,” Rygaard says.

The most challenging aspect of Cloud RAN - and one of its most valuable benefits - is the real-time capabilities.

But, to have real-time functions, speed is fundamental. Computational tasks need to be done in less than milliseconds. For this reason, it is necessary to be able to combine the “real-world” spectrum and frequencies with the scheduling tasks with extreme precision.

The general market consumer, who uses Microsoft Teams or watches Netflix, will not be affected by a one, or even 20 milliseconds delay in a package. But that is not the case with computer-hungry use cases, such as high stakes industrial machinery, or connected cars. For them, time is an extremely prized possession, meaning Cloud RAN could change everything. However, in order for it to be a reality, there still needs to be a significant hardware acceleration, as regular clouds are just not quick enough yet.

Cloud 5G radio has two main software components: a virtualized distributed unit (vDU) and a virtualized centralised unit (vCU). The former is responsible for the real-time computational capabilities of Cloud RAN. To achieve this, the lower 64

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layers of compute are done very closely to the physical radios themselves. In contrast, the vCU, which includes the non-real-time capabilities, is composed of the higher layers of the radio, which can sit further away from the physical radio. Eventually, the goal is to automate the full process, to achieve real real-time capabilities. To do that, clouds need to be much quicker than they currently are.

“We need to be able to ensure that this real-time aspect is a good ‘cloud citizen’

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in that sense,” Rygaard says. “And that is why we need to understand, in the bigger terminology, what is needed to be able to run cloud RAN not only in where radio is the only application. That’s easy.

But what happens if it’s not the only application? This is where you could see a lot of new things come together; but it’s also where things get complicated.”

Last November, Nokia partnered with AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to combine the Finnish corporations’s

Open RAN and Cloud RAN with the CSPs’ edge and cloud platforms to deliver additional 5G monetisation opportunities. The goal was to make Nokia’s RANs completely cloud-agnostic, as well as develop the automation and distribution levels that need to exist for these kinds of applications to become a reality.

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that means, from a network perspective, that you suddenly got thousands upon thousands of small clouds. What we now need to explore is how to actually manage that performance wise. If you need the network to run these real-time requirements, and you need to be able to get the network performance of the 5G network, then we need to explore things together. And that’s really where we’re saying we have the need for collaboration, because this is not something that any of us can fix alone.

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“We come with very different competencies of doing this. And this is really the strength of the collaboration; solving different parts of the puzzle and understanding what we can and what we can’t do, but also what is the best way of doing it.”

The research and product development that Nokia is doing alongside these companies aims to open the door for new consumer-focused 5G-based applications, from industrial automation to augmented and virtual reality and

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beyond. Digital Bulletin spoke with representatives from AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud, about their commitment to the project and their belief on Cloud RAN. “As the industry continues to transition to 5G, it’s important for every player in the telecom value chain to embrace the best available technologies and commit to advancing innovation,” says Amir Rao, GM, Solution Portfolio and Tech Alliance, Telco BU at AWS. “At AWS, we believe the best way to achieve innovation is to work backwards from the customer challenge or business goal, and we’re thrilled to work with partners, like Nokia, who share our customer obsession to build solutions.”

“Together, Microsoft and Nokia are helping operators and enterprises accelerate the adoption of cloud-based technologies to reduce costs, open new revenue streams and future-proof their 5G networks,” says Yousef Khalidi, CVP, Azure for Operators at Microsoft.

“Through our partnership, we’ll not only deliver the next generation of software-defined, cloud-based mobile networks, but also collaborate on other opportunities to reimagine enterprise scenarios and integrate Nokia’s offerings with Microsoft cloud solutions.”

“This partnership with Nokia will combine both of our decades of mobile communications expertise to deliver

Looking forward, we want to ensure that we are as cloud agnostic as we can be” new solutions that help CSPs enable business transformation at the network edge,” says Bikash Koley, VP, Google Global Network and Head of Technology for Telecom Products at Google Cloud.

All of these partnerships have a very clear use case in mind: private networks.

Whether that is in warehouses, harbours, factories, or any other logistics space, these private networks basically operate on their own, but still need to be managed from afar, creating an incredibly exciting opportunity. In many of these situations, it’s important to not only manage a network but also ensure that the applications that are placed on top of it - such as digital twins - work efficiently. It is then when network co-hosting comes into the picture, facilitating the management of the network from an enterprise perspective.

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us if we want to have the mobility within a network and be a producer,” Rygaard says. “Apart from pure technology knowledge, the main use cases are learning where the applications are sitting locally and allowing the co-hosting of applications on the edge.”

Through this co-hosting, Nokia will integrate its 5G vDU and 5G vCU with Google’s, AWS’ and Microsoft’s edge computing platforms. The goal is, according to Rygaard, to become “cloud agnostic”, that is, for Nokia’s 5G cloud RAN to be able to operate with any public cloud server provider, and therefore have the ability to fully migrate or scale with minimal disruptions to a business.

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“When we started out with the radio side four years ago, it was quite clear that we couldn’t run on any cloud; we had to build a cloud for radio,” Rygaard says. “So our system was not independent on the hardware side, and not independent on the cloud infrastructure side. Looking forward, we want to ensure that we are as cloud agnostic as we can be, with a realistic knowledge that we’re not today. There is still work that needs to be done. But we cannot innovate for the future, unless we understand where we are.”

The next step in Nokia’s development of 5G cloud RAN is to move from what Rygaard calls “an academic exercise on technology” into business discussions.

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Collaboration is the only way forward” The announcement of these partnerships and projects has stirred quite a lot of market interest, and Rygaard and her team are now looking at ways of monetising this technology and continue fostering the ecosystem that will drive it forward.

“If we want to be successful in building this future society, and not only little pockets of technology; collaboration is the only way forward,” Rygaard says.

“We can’t just sit individually. For me

this is a very key point for becoming successful on the edge, and I don’t mean successful in terms of Nokia or our partners, but in terms of making sure we do the right things for the right reasons.”

The digital future is not mobile anymore, but IoT. Smart cities, connected cars, private networks, all of these will fundamentally change the way we live and how we do business. All they will be operated on 5G cloud RANs. ISSUE 29

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THE NEXT BIG THING In every issue, Digital Bulletin picks the brains of experts in a particular sector of the technology world. This month, we ask: “Which emerging/future technology will have the biggest impact on enterprise over the next decade?”

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DEBATE

Nish Kotecha,

Co-Founder & Chairman Finboot

Blockchain

Warren Buffett, the world’s most famous investor, once said “It’s only when the tide goes out you discover who has been swimming naked.” The COVID-19 wave flooded business models, damaging historic operating practices, and now the tide is retreating, we have a unique opportunity to build back better. What is better?

Better is resilience and sustainability.

Resilience requires agility. The ability to dynamically change your operational processes to adapt to new working conditions, such as your workforce switching to remote working or a supplier shutting down because of Covid. The rigid just-in-time supply chain model has come up short during times of stress, such as Covid - and before that during changing political landscapes (remember “America first” and “Made in India”), trade barriers or sanctions. According to The Economist, since the pandemic, countries have passed over 140 special trade restrictions and tightened foreign investment rules. Supply chains of yesterday need updating - and fast.

The build back must prioritise resilience over efficiency. Implementing the new normal requires a different set of tools.

Overnight, digitalisation has become a survival imperative, as organisations rethink their supply chain design to both respond to the pandemic and understand that resilience comes from diversity of supply. This will drive a restructuring of supply chains that will help bring about widespread acceptance of blockchain as a technology that enables cross-enterprise transformation and digitalisation.

Blockchain technology offers transparency and creates the supply chain agility required in the new normal. For companies, blockchain can be used as a private permissioned framework for a group of stakeholders, such as suppliers, customers and regulators, to manage the sourcing, production and movement of goods dynamically throughout the supply chain. Unlike public blockchain networks,

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private ones could be more efficient than current legacy systems when you consider the amount of processing, time and money spent checking the data.

Most trading organisations are active in two supply chains: physical and financial. The financial supply chain has the advantage of being born digital while the physical one remains analogue and therefore significantly slower. According to IBM and Maersk, 25% of containers, carrying about 80% of goods used by consumers each day, are late by one to three days. Furthermore, the administrative costs of moving goods around is about 20% of the cost. This just proves how far we still have to go and the opportunities to be harvested by new technologies such as blockchain.

Unsurprisingly, a majority of executives in large global enterprises consider blockchain to be one of their key strategic opportunities in the next 12-24

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months, particularly in their supply chains or for sustainability.

Building a dynamic supply chain with inherent resiliency requires visibility and data that includes evidence-based delivery. Every component and process should be visible to ensure that the final product can be verified and tracked, identifying where workflow can be optimised and whether organisations are operating in the most efficient way possible while complying with labour standards and regulatory requirements.

This will put companies in better stead to react faster to future shocks and offer a buffer for unforeseen events.

A new tide is coming and the smart companies are those that are looking to future proof and see blockchain as a route to accelerate digital transformation and to build trust within the supplier ecosystem as well as among consumers beyond.

DEBATE

Justin Borgman, CEO, Starburst Data

X Analytics

The inherent rise in online activity has led to companies gathering, storing, and analysing data like never before, and while analytics is data’s killer app, the journey to truly impactful insights is still a challenge for most organisations. Furthermore, as organisations continue to move towards data-driven business models, and demand more from their data, this challenge will remain a significant problem in the future without the right access to data.

Enterprise data is extremely scattered.

Some data is in the cloud, other data is on-prem, and for global organisations, data is also stored across different geographical places too. In fact, almost half of enterprises are storing data in five or more data storage platforms.

It’s been the natural way that data storage has played out over the years through the evolution of data lakes and data warehouses, but when it comes to accessing that data for analytics, it must be collected and stored appropriately to be able to apply analytics – a process that can take a long time. And with enterprises struggling to gain insights on data before

X Analytics provides the key to unlocking access to all data, regardless of where it is stored”

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it’s outdated, it becomes a race against time to gather and analyse data properly.

The solution? X Analytics. Coined by Gartner in 2020, X Analytics refers to the ability to run analytics on a wide range of structured and unstructured data, combining new data sources with existing core data by implementing a query layer that functions as a singleentry point. Wherever data is stored, whether it’s on-prem, on the cloud or elsewhere, X Analytics provides the key to unlocking access to all data, regardless of where it is stored. This gives data scientists and analysts quicker access to data, allowing for faster analytics that help to drive business decisions.

As companies look to build back from the economic damages of the pandemic, companies now have the opportunity to capitalise on the data accumulated throughout the pandemic to better prepare for the future. By adopting X Analytics, they will be armed with the ability to mine all of their data for insights to adapt and stay on track with fast-changing business demands, allowing them to not only survive but thrive in the future.

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Rene Pomassl, CEO, Salamantex

Cryptocurrency

Adoption of software that enables SMEs to accept digital currency payments directly via its blockchain protocols will be a key development in the enterprise tech space. Payments take up a prominent position with many digital transformations underway right now.

The adoption of tokenised digital assets as a central element of economic activity in the form of payments, investments or as a value token are conceivable use cases. Their decentralised aspect lowers or even eliminates barriers of entry and increases transaction transparency, thereby lowering cost. Their programmability opens up new forms of economic transactions. If digital assets are easily integrated into existing payment infrastructures, they are likely to be at the forefront of momentous change.

Already larger institutions have made attempts at accepting Bitcoin. Microsoft has been accepting Bitcoin for use in its online Xbox Store since 2014. Tesla first went all in, now seems on the way out. Central banks are experimenting with different protocols for digital fiat currencies.

DEBATE

However, SMEs rarely would commit valuable resources to a completely new payment method still in its infancy.

Yet, digital convergence creates new business models. SMEs must adapt today to future-proof themselves by enabling a secure and user-friendly digital currency payment experience.

The priority should be simplicity, for both the consumer and the business.

With the right technology, by using complex QR Codes, crypto payments can become straightforward, risk free

and trusted, outperforming credit cards on cost and functionality.

For SMEs, this no longer needs to feel like an insurmountable challenge.

Forward-thinking technology providers already offer innovative, user-friendly software that doesn’t cost millions to implement or a revamp of existing payment processes. Moreover, additional functionalities, customer loyalty tokens or ID verification can be added on top with little effort across the entire payment network.

If digital assets are easily integrated into existing payment infrastructures, they are likely to be at the forefront of momentous change”

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Franki Hackett, Head of Audit and Ethics, Engine B

Knowledge Graphs

Corporate data can be a huge strategic asset. However, the sheer volume and different types of data can make analysing and using it to make better operational decisions extremely challenging.

Not only is the amount of data accessible to organisations increasing all the time, but the types of data can vary hugely. Data spread across multiple silos, for example in ERP and payroll systems, makes the efficient collection, aggregation, and analysis of data expensive and time-consuming.

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Data quality as well as quantity is also likely to be a challenge for those looking to harness its value. Data in organisations will never be 100% accurate. Databases can and often do contain the wrong information, house duplicates and contain contradictions.

This is problematic as it’s unlikely that data of inferior quality can bring any useful insights or unearth opportunities for the rigorous and precise demands of business analysis. Organisations need to ensure that any analysis is based on robust, good quality data.

Fortunately, as technology evolves, the insights that are hidden in all types of data are becoming more accessible.

Knowledge Graphs in particular, help to resolve many of these challenges by combining and uncovering connections

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The potential for Knowledge Graphs to revolutionise the way we use data is enormous” across silos of information so data can be analysed in a meaningful and more intelligent way.

When it comes to a simple definition for a Knowledge Graph, unhelpfully, definitions vary. We like to think of Knowledge Graphs as rigorous digital mind-maps, connecting data from otherwise siloed sources and capturing the relationships between different objects and data points. Knowledge Graphs integrate data across the whole organisation to show the context and connections within information much faster than any traditional database.

This supports complex decisions and also forms the foundation for potentially game changing AI technologies.

This might sound highly remote and very complex, but for the past decade, Knowledge Graphs have already been part of our daily lives. For example, Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant all use Knowledge Graphs. For businesses, Knowledge Graphs use AI and graph technologies to analyse structured and

unstructured data, which is then served up visually, providing context and highlighting complex relationships between data entities.

The potential for Knowledge Graphs to revolutionise the way we use data is enormous. In audit, for example, they are already being used to great effect in fraud detection where they can not only rapidly uncover and detect fraud, but they can also unlock hidden risks in data so faster decisions can be made.

They can detect anomalies, make sense of huge data volumes and discover the most valuable links and relationships to fully understand the context.

A connected enterprise is one where data, no matter where it is stored, is connected so that all parts of the enterprise can make decisions based on knowledge. Put simply, Knowledge Graphs are the secret sauce, making this happen and powering the connected enterprise. It is hard to overstate how impactful their wider use is going to be.

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Richard Timperlake, SVP of EMEA at Alteryx

Dynamic demand forecasting

Predicting customer needs and reacting to them is key in an uncertain business environment, but too many firms lack the foresight needed. In the coming decade, it will no longer do to make operation-critical decisions on the basis of instinct and opinion alone.

And as recent events such as the pandemic and the Suez Canal blockage have shown, our global supply chains are highly fragile. Disruptive events are happening with greater frequency, and so enterprises, especially manufacturers and retailers, must remain vigilant in case of another crisis in the future.

To address these issues, supply chain professionals are expected to invest more in modern technology in the coming years, prioritising advanced analytics and artificial intelligence/ machine learning. Combined, analytics and machine learning enable enterprises to create models of their entire operation and accurately predict future supply and demand.

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Dynamic demand forecasting enables businesses to anticipate product shortages and buying trends before they happen, allowing them to better plan and manage inventory. For example, this model can provide insights such as whether or not to defer a planned mark down of winter stock days before a major cold front, help prevent a stock shortage in key leisure locations during a warm weather public holiday by planning an extra midday delivery (no running out of swimsuits during the high peak in summer) and analyse the adjustment strategy of the space allocation for seasonal fashion products in city stores or luxury products in more temperate locations.

Dynamic demand forecasting works by combining internal data with external data, such as weather forecasts, shipping traffic, holidays and events, you can prepare predictive models that dynamically forecast demand. When you can model supply and demand, a business can focus on putting its inventory in the right places and prevent shortages by analysing which products have the highest volatility.

In addition to the ability to forecast demand, enterprises can access other advantages by modelling and analysing their supply chain. For example, using anomaly detection can improve collaboration with

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partners and create a more resilient, agile supply chain. They can also shorten lead times using accurate forecasts and thus increase efficiency throughout their supply chain.

For instance, as demand fluctuates, it’s crucial to be able to quickly analyse and secure additional freight capacity at short notice. Predictive analytics can help planners and buyers understand carrier options and optimise trade routes, as well parse data from geospatial sources — including realtime satellite positioning, tracking and

geo-fencing — to give an overview of goods in transit.

Without the power of data analytics, it is extremely difficult to get a clear view of your global supply chain and offset unforeseen scenarios.

For any business operating a supply chain, embracing the power of big data will be crucial in the years ahead. Without razor-sharp analytics and dynamic demand forecasting, enterprises risk being left behind in an increasingly unpredictable business environment.

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TWIN TWIN PEAKS PEAKS Digital twin technology is one of the leading industry trends of 2021 so far. Digital Bulletin speaks with Philip Farah, AVP Head of Digital Transformation Services, Global Accounts at World Wide Technology to find out about the evolution of digital twins and its future role in enterprise digitalisation

INTERVIEW: James Henderson

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igital twins are big business right now - what is driving this trend?

The idea of modelling the physical world has been around for centuries. This is what applied mathematics is about. With the emergence of electronics, scientists started applying various wave functions to an electronic black box to derive the architecture and composition of electronic components inside the box.

In 1982 Richard Feynman proposed the idea of simulating how atoms ‘physically interact’ using quantum computers.

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together to enable us to replicate the physical reality in the virtual world. The drivers behind this trend is the omnipresent human thirst to accelerate and de-risk – one can run many more simulations at low to no risk in the virtual world.

How much has the emergence of hyper-automation furthered digital twin technology?

Significantly. Automation is the result of adding a software layer (and intelligence) on top of physical items (cars, networks, cities, etc). The problem with automation is that the productivity savings that it enables come at a risk.

The concept of the ‘nuclear option’ is one where an automation engine brings

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an entire infrastructure down on a large scale because of a bug or an un-forecasted reinforcement loop.

For example, think about trading bots creating flash crashes in the capital markets. As such, extensive simulation to test automation at a scale never required before drives the need for virtual environments designed with that purpose in mind.

recognising a customer within a bank branch (based on mobile phone or facial recognition) and showing relevant content on digital displays based on this customer’s prior interactions online or via mobile.

More recently advances in IoT, cloud computing and AI have contributed to taking the digital twin concept to the next level and 2021 could be the inflection point.

How has WWT seen digital twin technology evolving over the last 12-24 months?

For the longest time, the financial services industry has used simulation to try and model market changes, credit risk or business risk. Five years ago the concept of omnichannel came to life, it meant bringing physical and virtual interactions together – for instance by

To what extent is 2021 the year it moves beyond early adopters and becomes a must-have?

Today the combination of AI/machine learning and IoT are coming together to take these concepts to a new height with the ability to replicate the physical world and simulate multiple scenarios and responses from financial services organisations.

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Recent studies have shown that analysing 300 likes on Facebook enables the AI to forecast one’s preferences better than their spouse” Philip Farah

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We see this trend across conventional physical assets e.g., connected cars, homes (in insurance), technology assets e.g., IT Infrastructure (traffic generators in networking), security (simulated cyber attacks on physical IT infrastructure), mobile, wearables, and even humans i.e., creating a digital twin of a person (which can be used for credit decisions or to train conversational bots) How can digital twins be used to accelerate and augment decision-making?

The recipe for success is to connect data harvesting to AI/machine learning to derive insights, and then generate a response based on those insights (whether acted upon by humans or automated).

Examples in the Insurance industry include predictive and prescriptive maintenance on your car, your building (and in the future possibly your body).

Within IT infrastructure we’re seeing the same opportunity in AIOPS. WWT is engaged with clients in understanding and modelling key IT infrastructure events and potential responses to them, all while helping the same clients accelerate their infrastructure automation capabilities. Ultimately these two ideas will merge so that key infrastructure actions are automated.

A few years ago, digital twins of selfdriving cars were created in virtual envi-

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ronments to test the vehicle’s AI systems over millions of miles of simulated roads.

The learnings from these trials resulted in autonomous vehicles driving on our realworld roads today. Very soon, sensors connected to our infrastructure will enable us to replicate physical environments and people, test multiple scenarios in the virtual world and only replicate the successful ones in the real world.

Recent studies have shown that analysing 300 likes on Facebook enables the AI to forecast one’s prefer-

ences better than their spouse. It’s easy to see how our digital twins will rapidly move from limited imitations to high-resolution replicas. From there, they could even start representing us more effectively than we can ourselves.

How are digital twins being used to advance autonomous vehicles and smart cities?

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through this year is that of the failure of the power generation and distribution grid in Texas: simulating the impact of changing load conditions due to an increase in population density, weather conditions or cyber attacks are all examples of what is feasible today.

Emergency and public services will be key beneficiaries of this technology as will be all the commercial functions that power cities.

How are digital twins being leveraged by enterprises to enable digital/tech transformations?

The specific use cases are very industry-specific. However the process and the underlying infrastructure (sensors, AI, data management, skills etc.) are quite similar, so the current focus is on building the underlying human and technical infrastructure required to take advantage of digital twins to generate competitive advantage.

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

Compliance is closely linked to risk management, so simulation and digital twins are key enablers of improved scenario analysis and risk management policies and strategies. Digital twins 86

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have the potential to ensure organisations are more resilient to technical (including cybersecurity), nature-made or man-made risks.

What work is there to do in terms of interoperability, integration and industry standards when it comes to digital twins?

Interoperability will be key even more so as we go forward, such as the aforementioned system optimisation example.

I anticipate the ‘standardisation’ to be driven by the major innovators (leaders in

gaming, transportation, etc.) and hyperscalers in a similar model to the one we have seen evolve in AI and automation.

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

As IoT expands, and the ability to automate advances in parallel, the scale and complexity will increase and with it the need to optimise at a system level.

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As IoT expands, and the ability to automate advances in parallel, the scale and complexity will increase and with it the need to optimise at a system level”

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understanding (and simulating) the impact on related services that will be impacted (from charging station locations to emergency services, to road design, to commercial services like lodging, food or entertainment). All of these factors will ultimately impact investment flows and banking.

Our ability to optimise larger interconnected systems is still in its infancy.

This is about to change fuelled by the expansion of the cloud footprint and machine learning advances. A key technology to monitor carefully on that front is Quantum Computing.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Digital twins, modelling and simulation are often designed to optimise an outcome defined by those who own the model. As a civilisation, we need to be very conscious of the side effects of optimising a limited set of outcomes – for instance, what will happen to the environment if we over optimise our ability to extract non-replenishable resources. There is a reason why nature (and biology) has so much redundancy built into it. We should be very conscious of the limits of over-optimisation and the tradeoffs between reducing the frequency of negative events while significantly increasing the severity of those we miss.

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SMART CITIES, INTELLIGENT TRANSPORT Commercial and private transport is about to move through perhaps its most transformative phase.

Autonomous vehicles and urban digital ecosystems will deliver connected smart cities with intelligent transportation at their centre

AUTHOR: David Howell

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hat does the future of transport look like? The answer to this question is multifaceted, as transport, whether municipal or private, is about to take a quantum leap forward as several digital technologies mature and converge.

Smart mobility, particularly in urban environments, will continue to evolve.

The smart city is quickly coming into focus as technologies such as 5G, AI, IoT, AR, Wi-Fi, and edge computing are all components of an intelligent, efficient and secure transport system.

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The digital infrastructures that an intelligent transport system needs to operate are being constructed. Smart parking, intelligent mobile real-time route planning, cashless payments, and integrated control systems are all in various stages of development. Businesses like Uber have shown how decentralised transport managed with a smartphone can transform how individuals’ access transportation services.

Intelligent transport systems, though, offer much more than just calling a taxi: The smart digital ecosystem that

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all transport systems need to operate effectively creates a digital environment where even more innovation can occur.

There is also a commercial aspect as the report from Juniper Research concluded, smart traffic management systems will save cities $277 billion by reducing emissions and congestion globally by 2025. And the key technology behind these savings could reduce by over 33 hours the time spent in traffic per annum per motorist.

In its report, Arup summarise how a range of technologies converge to

create the digital spaces transport can use to deliver efficient services to citizens: “Mobile phones, parking sensors, congestion charging zones and smart card ticketing all yield valuable data about how and when people are moving around the city, and how these patterns are affected by variables like traffic, weather or public events.”

Speaking to Digital Bulletin, John Cowan, CEO, EDJX, outlined how the Autonomy Institute – a cooperative research consortium focused on advancing and accelerating autonomy and AI at the edge, announced plans to launch the Public Infrastructure Network Node (PINN) in Austin, Texas.

“The PINN is the first unified open standard to incorporate 5G wireless, edge computing, radar, lidar, enhanced GPS, and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) as a single unified system,” says Cowan. “PINNs are designed to rapidly deliver a multitude of advanced edge sensors and computing capabilities urgently needed to support autonomy and IoT. PINN is a breakthrough in digital infrastructure, solving the current challenge of delivering low-latency computing and sensors at the edge while avoiding unsightly urban infrastructure sprawl.”

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Our public transport system should be frictionless; efficient, deterministic, an improvement on our air quality and supportive of the natural environment” Paul Thomas

operate efficiently is a critical first step.

And these systems are taking shape.

For example, citizens in Hamburg, Germany can use an app on their phones that tracks their current location and constantly matches this to available buses and trains. The app also allows tickets to be paid for, making the use of their transport systems more efficient for everyone. Helsinki has WHIM that goes even further and integrates public transport access with bike and car-sharing services – all accessed via a citizen’s smartphone. And Copenhagen has smart traffic lights it claims can reduce bus travel by up to 20% and can even prioritise cycle users.

Structure and technology One clear prerequisite for smart cities and the intelligent transport systems they contain is fast, reliable connectivity. Here, edge computing comes into play. Moving data storage and processing away from decentralised data centres closer to the devices they serve (such as autonomous vehicles) is a fundamental component of creating an intelligent transport system.

Autonomous vehicles need access to low-latency data networks. Edge computing delivers that performance.

A byproduct of a smart transport ecosystem is data. Masses of information are generated within this digital environment.

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The value of that data is its ability to offer transport companies, governments, automotive manufacturers, and mobile broadband providers the insights they need to evolve their services.

PwC, in its overview of the challenges building a smart city with an intelligent transport system, places data and its analysis at the core of these systems: “Once the core infrastructure – roads and railways – is in place, what matters then is understanding, anticipating, and meeting users’ needs.

Smart use of data is vital in shaping the system to do this. So, the vision for

the smart future is focused on people, enabled by transport, and powered by technology and data.”

Paul Thomas, head of proposition development at North that designs and delivers integrated technology solutions for complex and critical environments throughout the UK, stated to Digital Bulletin that data is the key to intelligent transport systems: “Our public transport system should be frictionless; efficient, deterministic, an improvement on our air quality and supportive of the natural environment. It should also prioritise commuter experience and ISSUE 29

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A robust transport system is critical in supporting economies and increasing productivity, so ease of use and efficiency is paramount. To deliver this, we need a baseline of data acquired from a connected city” Paul Thomas

adoption. A robust transport system is critical in supporting economies and increasing productivity, so ease of use and efficiency is paramount. To deliver this, we need a baseline of data acquired from a connected city.”

As intelligent transport systems develop, they have a symbiotic connection to the environments they move through. Autonomous vehicles may grab the news headlines, but the vehicles themselves are just one small compo96

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nent of a smart digital network that enables them to operate safely.

The transport systems in development across the urban landscape are becoming complex networks of sensors and data analysis systems that the personalised transport services cities need are being built upon.

Connect and protect Intelligent transport systems inherently use complex networks to deliver their

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services. The security and privacy of personal data is a core debate as smart transport systems develop. According to BAI Communications, who looked closely at how rail transport could be created, concluded 81% of respondents are at least somewhat comfortable with their anonymised data being used to improve transport systems. Similarly, three-quarters of rail users (75%) are at least relatively comfortable with their data being used to predict travel pat-

terns to provide them with a personalised transport service.

Also, Hatem Oueslati, CEO and Co-Founder of, IoTerop, makes the salient point that interoperability with systems and data is fundamental to developing integrated smart transport networks. “5G for connectivity and Lightweight M2M for security and data standardisation are strategically important. Not only do they reduce the technical and economic barriers ISSUE 29

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spurring innovation, but they rationalise and future-proof investments as well.

By adhering to the standard of these devices, systems, security, and data become interoperable.”

The data generated by intelligent transport systems must also be protected. Robust and flexible security is a critical component of any smart city and the intelligent transport systems they contain. There has been much debate around the lack of security within the IoT space.

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According to ABI Research, by 2026, it’s predicted there will be over 23 billion active IoT devices. However, the recent announcement from the FIDO Alliance’s proposed Device Onboard standard could offer a more comprehensive security platform as IoT expands, which will benefit the burgeoning smart transport networks as they evolve over the next few years.

Whether using private vehicles or accessing public transport, the pervasive networks needed will disap-

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Ultimately, the roads beneath us will communicate with smart cars, most likely through indestructible sensors embedded within the road” Kevin Curran

pear into our built environments. For citizens, their smartphones become their connection to these systems, which are fully integrated and deliver the personalised travel services they need on demand.

“In the future, we need ‘smart cars’ to become more integrated with national intelligent transport infrastructures to ensure vehicles can operate safely and efficiently,” concluded Kevin Curran, IEEE senior member and professor of cyber security at Ulster University.

“Satellite navigation and traffic signal control systems will ensure vehicles know when to stop, slow down and speed up as well as identify hazards in good time. This communication will result in better traffic management and significantly reduce the number of accidents. Ultimately, the roads beneath us will communicate with smart cars, most likely through indestructible sensors embedded within the road.”

For a transport system to be genuinely transformative for its users, the technical components must be fully interoperable. Systems that couple IoT with 5G are a powerful combination. Transport systems serve their customers. For them, seamless and transparent access to mobility is their holy grail. In the next few years, that goal will become a reality.

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A LIFE IN TECH

A life in tech Michel André, CIO of Banking Circle, speaks to Digital Bulletin about how ‘accidentally’ falling into a role in financial services more than 20 years ago has led to a rich and varied career

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MICHEL ANDRÉ

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he five words I would use to describe myself are: energetic, passionate, and a pragmatic technology leader.

A drive and desire to learn new things attracted me to technology originally.

I thought that using technology to solve problems for businesses and people would mean that I would be on a continuous learning path – and thankfully, that’s proven to be the case!

Technology is evolving every day and my role means I’m exposed to so many advancements. I truly love figuring out ways of applying new tech to business

problems as it means I’m on that journey to lifelong learning.

My first few roles - probably more by accident than by conscious decision led me into financial services in varying shapes and forms. I even founded my own software company at one point where I headed up strategy and sales alongside consulting a range of clients in the financial services industry.

In turn, I discovered FinTech and found that working at financial services companies with technology at the core of their business and operating mode was my sweet spot. So those early days

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shaped my career in the sense that it proved I could bring my technology skills into the world of financial services and FinTech.

I’ve met a lot of people who have inspired me throughout my career, and they all typically share the same traits. They are very competent, intelligent and able to make quick and smart decisions in their area of expertise.

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practical pragmatism to move things forward and apply their skills.

I would say I am definitely a driven and ambitious person and I have chosen to move companies for various reasons throughout my career, where I’ve had some long and short tenures.

Switching companies has seldom been because of a particular plan, and has been based largely on opportunities showing up along the way.

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competency and an understanding of the technology landscape, then it’s knowing how to apply technology to business challenges that becomes really key. The combination of business sense and technology skills is crucial to success.

You also need to be a strong leader.

Having good communications skills coupled with integrity and independence helps a lot. Your team will look to you for answers so if you’re equipped with sound managerial skills and the ability to work both strategically and tactically and link all parts together, you’ll be a successful mentor.

I always want to be learning and expanding my horizons, which is why in the past I’ve jumped at the chance to do something new. This led me to many different opportunities and experiences that have been helpful in shaping me as technologist and it’s why I’m ultimately in a role I thrive in today.

There is quite a broad palette of skills needed to be a successful CTO. First and foremost, you need technical

Soft skills such as communication, mentoring and leadership are critical to be able to drive and build technology in a business, and they are just as important as technical competency. Not only do soft skills help manage a team effectively, but they also help instil a large degree of trust across the whole organisation, from board level to interns.

This is crucial because as a CTO you’re making decisions that keep the company running and you need to reassure people that you’re making the right choices. That is largely achieved with knowledge paired with humbleness and listening skills.

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I think it’s a given that the pandemic will accelerate digital transformation and change the way we interact in business and society at large.

From running a company, to keeping connected to friends and family in our day to day lives, we have all been forced to adopt digital tools and they are here to stay. In particular, the reduction of travel and face-to-face meetings is likely to be a lasting change as hybrid work becomes the norm. All this is possible because of increased digitalisation and the amazing tools at our fingertips.

In the payments space specifically, digital transformation is thriving. As a direct result of the pandemic, customers are becoming more demanding and their expectations for real-time payments, particularly cross border, and a range of

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services, from lending through to foreign exchange, are increasing all the time.

FinTechs and financial institutions must step up or they risk getting left behind. Speed as well as compliance is of paramount importance and that’s why Payments businesses turn to Banking Circle.

My advice to aspiring technologists is to be curious. Always strive to learn new things about both technology and the business you’re solving problems for.

There is not one single technology that will be the most important, but I think there is a ‘new’ set of technologies coming to the fore that have the power to transform parts of financial services. I’m talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

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We are already making major inroads, especially when it comes to fighting money laundering and fraud, which is incredibly exciting. AI and ML dramatically increase rules precision, providing a series of indicators which point to something being higher risk, highlighting patterns and red flags the naked human eye could never spot.

More broadly, we’ll also see various uses of blockchain technology, and there will be a continuous move to cloud to cater for scalability and growth.

I switch off by going out for long cycle and run tours. I’m also a bit of a foodie and enjoy dining out from time to time, which is an ultimately non-digital experience with a nice meld of art, creativity and craftmanship.

My temperament isn’t one that looks back and regrets things. I am confident that most of my decisions have been made to the best of my knowledge at that point in time, and I largely enjoy looking and moving forward.

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Synapse360’s Chief Technology Officer John Pickford explores how public cloud isn’t a magic wand for every IT issue, and why to reap the benefits, businesses need to be very clear about their objectives

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any business leaders would love to run their application environments like a startup; with cloud-native apps that deliver rapid innovation and at the same time require low maintenance. This is the cloud-first dream.

But back on planet Earth, most businesses aren’t startups, and they are largely dependent on heavily-customised legacy applications which were never intended for a cloud world. To that end, businesses looking to live the cloud-first dream need to adopt a ‘build or buy’ approach.

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bilities, and re-setting expectations of what modern applications can do.

Suddenly everyone has a cloud-first ‘something’ strategy. But for most businesses, this strategy is so poorly defined that it does very little by way of modernisation, and is better described as a ‘server migration’.

Recent analysis from Gartner suggests that only 5% of enterprise applications are currently cloud-native, with a predicted increase to just 15% by 2024. These figures suggest that right now 95% of enterprise apps are running across a mix of private and public cloud.

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Lift and shift era Lift and shift is the quickest way to tick that cloud ‘something’ box. In fact, almost 40% of applications running in the public cloud today arrived through a lift and shift method. Moreover, 50% of those migrated apps have undergone zero post-migration optimisation, and instead have continued to run as if still on-premise.

IT expenditure on unmodified applications can be three times greater than those that go through the necessary post-migration tasks. But it’s the preparation (or lack of) in building and testing the right migration platform that rings the loudest alarm bells. It’s ridiculous to think that in 2021 we are still regularly seeing public cloud environments where applications and data are not secured behind a firewall – something that we have never seen in an on-premises environment.

Rule 1: Build the landing zone properly before migrating, building or buying any application This is a job for specialists, not generalists.

The reason for these poorly configured landing zones and non-optimised applications boils down to a simple fact: the cloud is still not very well understood.

People assume that it is always perfectly built, secure, and good to go from day

Suddenly everyone has a cloud-first ‘something’ strategy. But for most businesses, this strategy is so poorly defined that it does very little by way of modernisation” one. And this is a misconception which leads to oversights and mistakes.

There’s no magic wand, and IT tasks don’t simply disappear by moving to applications in Azure or AWS. There are new skills to learn and lots of work to be done before the benefits can be seen - which is where the use of a cloud managed services partner (MSP) is recommended.

To compete in the market, IT services businesses need to become cloud services businesses. But with over 600 services running in Microsoft Azure alone, cloud partners should be carefully considered on a job-per-job basis.

There are now 26 different combinations of Microsoft SQL in Azure – so you’re spoilt for choice, and you can hire the right experts to get the best possible outcomes with cloud-native services.

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Keep in mind though, it’s horses for courses - the best partner for your landing zone is not necessarily the best for your application modernisation.

Rule 2: Make sure your partner has the right skills and outcomebased products Could you, should you, will you?

If you’re leading a cloud migration project, you should carefully consider workload placement as part of your cloud strategy. It’s important to ask yourself whether you can move, as well as whether you should move, because public cloud is not totally without limitations. For example, only recently we had a customer unable to migrate two applications because their required disk throughput and disk IO was too high.

Interdependencies between applications need to be carefully assessed,

modelled and tested. Custom-built applications usually have plenty of moving parts, and will require many hours of downtime. Consider the connectivity and performance requirements during migration, communication between different cloud platforms, and the implications of any downtime on the business – what is the true business cost of the migration?

Rule 3: Think before you move. Just because you can move, doesn’t always mean that you should Consider the reasons for migrating an application, and the outcomes you

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JOHN PICKFORD

want. You should evaluate whether these outcomes can be better achieved with a solution that fits you better, like private or hosted cloud.

Public cloud may be the preferred destination, but the advantages over a hosted cloud only kick in when you’re using cloud-native features, and not IaaS. A private cloud might well offer better value, less risk and provide better protection. When hosted it will also remove the hardware and data centre burden, giving you control, consistency, and an easy migration.

Any private cloud provider should deliver a public cloud-like experience and features. At a minimum these

would be zero hardware or hypervisor management, with self-provisioning, and metered or subscription-based billing.

Rule 4: Use public cloud for innovation, private or hosted cloud for IaaS Migration to cloud is just the start.

Modern apps need modern tools, and modern environments need modern skills. IT leaders need to carefully think about the immediate run phase following a cloud migration and consider the full implications of running both IaaS and cloud-native application environments.

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There’s no magic wand, and IT tasks don’t simply disappear by moving to applications in Azure or AWS. There are new skills to learn and lots of work to be done before the benefits can be seen”

will be responsible for the day-to-day. IT leaders can expect to be working with managed service providers alongside the process of upskilling of internal staff, all the while balancing the use of cloud-native and traditional tools during the transition phase. And in addition to their current tasks, your upskilled teams will be responsible for things like: • Modern monitoring and reporting tools; providing detailed analytics across cloud environments is now 110

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required, as you have cost control and compliance to carefully measure.

• Connecting and securing your cloud environments; this extends to identity services as well as the basics such as firewalls and antivirus, which you now need to integrate as part of your overall cloud operation.

• Data protection; one of the biggest cloud myths of recent years is that data is protected in cloud applications.

Selecting the right availability tiers and

JOHN PICKFORD

number of data copies per application is a key design step, but this is a balancing act with your cloud budget.

Rule 5: Pick the right people, processes and tools to run the cloud Even three years from now ‘lift and shift’ migrations combined with new-build IaaS will still be running 85% of enterprise applications. Whether migrating legacy workloads, or building or buying cloud-na-

tive applications, the cloud platform, run phase operations and required management tools are often overlooked.

By following these five rules, you will ensure you have the right landing zone before you migrate anything: Choose a specialist partner for your needs; challenge yourself as to why you should move your applications; choose the right platform; pick the best people; and make sure you have the right tools for your cloud success.

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