Digital Bulletin - Issue 30 - July 2021

DIGITAL BULLETIN Issue 30 | July ’21

UNILEVER’S 4.0 JOURNEY Increasing productivity while boosting employee wellbeing

JAMES HENDERSON Content Director

W

hen you write about enterprise technology that’s often on the bleeding-edge, it’s not often you’re called on to cover an industry sector whose roots date back to the 15th century.

But that’s exactly the case this month, with our cover article featuring Talon Outdoor, a pioneer in Out of Home (OOH) advertising - first put on the map around 600 years ago when flyposting began being carried out in Europe.

While OOH might be considered something of a legacy sector, the Talon Outdoor story is very much a modern one, with a three-year programme of technology transformation, leveraging big data analytics, data science and artificial intelligence.

Since 2018, Talon Outdoor has launched three tech platforms to help its employees and varied customer base.

Speaking to Digital Bulletin, Chief Transformation Officer Josko Grljevic tells us: “The world is moving down a digitisation route, everything is going online. So, we had to solve how to transform the world’s oldest advertising medium - a legacy and offline medium - into a digital one, not just in the way that the screens are digitised but the entire end-to-end business journey.”

In our second case study, we check in with Unilever to find out how it has rolled out an industry 4.0 programme at its ice cream facility in Caivano, Italy.

You’ll also find a fascinating interview with Huawei Deputy Chairman Xu Zhijun, insight into the Fastly internet outage and much more.

I hope you enjoy the issue!

PUBLISHED BY STRANGERS MEDIA LTD, Norwich, UK Company No: 11454926 DIGITAL BULLETIN

TALK TO US editorial@digitalbulletin.com business@digitalbulletin.com

Talon Outdoor’s Chief Transformation Officer, Josko Grljevic, talks to Digital Bulletin about the company’s technology transformation programme and its commitment to digitisation

INSIDE VIEW

Contents 08

Month in Review

22

Case Study

38

Security

46

News, regulations and analysis

Talon Outdoor

22

Changing the face of outdoor advertising

Debate Can ransom payments ever be justified?

Case Study Unilever An industry 4.0 transformation

08

46

+

64

84 6

88 64

74 74

Future BT Enterprise Tracking the progress of volumetric video

Connectivity Huawei Interview with Deputy Chairman Xu Zhijun

84

A Life in Tech

88

Closing Bulletin

Lucile Ripa, Analytics & Data Science Partner at WT UK

An exclusive column from Slack’s Head of UK, Stuart Templeton

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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 Wheeler, veterans of Google, Apple and Baidu. NVIDIA will continue working with DeepMap’s ecosystem to meet their needs, investing in new capabilities and services for new and existing partners.

Headline: Rockwell Automation swoops to buy Plex for $2.2bn Info: IRockwell Automation has bolstered its industrial cloud offering with the acquisition of cloud-native smart manufacturing platform Plex for $2.2bn. Plex provides applications in manufacturing execution, supply chain visibility, and quality management across discrete, hybrid, and process industry segments. Plex will be reported as part of Rockwell’s Software and Control operating segment.

Headline: NVIDIA to acquire autonomous vehicle startup DeepMap Info: NVIDIA has agreed to acquire DeepMap, a startup dedicated to building high-definition maps for autonomous vehicles to navigate the world safely. DeepMap was founded five years ago by Wu and Mark

Headline: Accenture swoops to acquire umlaut Info: Accenture has agreed to acquire umlaut, an engineering consulting and services firm headquartered in Aachen, Germany. The move will significantly scale Accenture’s deep engineering capabilities to help companies use digital technologies like cloud, AI, and 5G. The acquisition will add more than 4,200 industry-leading engineers and consultants across 17 countries to Accenture’s Industry X services.

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FUNDING Headline: Autonomous driving company WeRide raises $310m, valued at $3.3bn Info: Autonomous driving company WeRide has raised $310m in this latest round of funding. In total, the company has raised more than $600m in the past five months, bringing its valuation to $3.3bn. It is the second investment on WeRide from Alliance Ventures, the venture capital fund of the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance. Alliance Ventures took part in WeRide’s Series A funding round in 2018.

Headline: Graph database platform Neo4j raises $325m, valued at $2bn Info: Graph-centric database platform Neo4j has completed a bumper funding round, bringing in $325m. The series F round was led by Eurazeo, with additional investment from GV. The capital, which brings the company’s total raised 10

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to date to over $500m, will be put used to expand Neo4j’s platform, workforce, and customer base. The latest funding brings the company’s value to more than $2bn.

Headline: Deep learning startup Eightfold AI raises $220m, valued at $2.1bn Info: Deep learning and AI startup Eightfold AI has raised £220m in a Series E funding round. The funding was led by Softbank Vision Fund 2 and values the company at around $2.1bn.

The funds will be used to continue the growth and development of Eightfold’s AI-powered Talent Intelligence Platform and expand its partner ecosystem.

General Catalyst and Capital One Ventures also participated in the round.

NEWS UPDATE

PEOPLE Headline: Intel announces restructure and exec appointments Info: Intel has announced a significant restructuring and executive appointments. Current Intel executives Sandra Rivera and Raja Koduri will each take on new senior leadership roles, and technology industry veterans Nick McKeown and Greg Lavender will join the company. As part of these changes, Intel’s Data Platform Group will be restructured into two new business units.

Headline: Dell Technologies appoints Chuck Whitten as co-COO Info: Dell Technologies has announced Chuck Whitten as co-COO, effective August 16, 2021. Whitten joins Vice Chairman and co-COO Jeff Clarke and Chairman and CEO Michael Dell to lead the business. Whitten joins from Bain &

Company, where he spent the last 22 years with the last decade focused on the technology sector. Whitten worked alongside Dell to help shape its strategy and growth initiatives.

Headline: Big Tech critic Lina Khan to chair the US Federal Trade Commission Info: Lina Khan, a 32-year-old professor and outspoken critic of big tech has been appointed by President Biden to chair the US Federal Trade Commission. Khan is highly respected by progressive antitrust thinkers. The appointment comes as the federal government and groups of states have issued an array of lawsuits and investigations into the tech giants.

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

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A new

Tax

Each month, Digital Bulletin analyses one of the digital policies that countries are enforcing with the goal of regulating the online world. In this issue, we look at the G7’s proposed corporate tax

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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DIGITAL POLICY

Current global tax regulation is out of step with the way things work today” Zoë Morris

T

his June, leaders of the world’s seven largest “advanced” economies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US) met in Cornwall, UK. Besides walks by the beach and tea dates with the Queen, the uncontested protagonist of the summit was tax reform and the target, big tech.

The tax agreement signed by G7 representatives was deemed to be “seismic”. It was the first international agreement that established a basic global tax on ‘stateless’ multinational corporations, affecting mainly technology giants. These corporations are said to have over $6 trillion in offshore profits, potentially avoiding the payment of $240 billion in taxes. Although the new tax would only be voluntary, the G7 has presented it as a path towards more equitable wealth management, and even

suggested sending 40% of the money raised to less well-off countries.

“New antitrust and taxation reform is long overdue,” says Joel Hyatt, founder and CEO of AI company Globality.

Thoughtful regulation reflecting the current challenges of monopoly power and growing economic inequality is critical to having a truly sustainable and inclusive global economy. We must assure competition that levels the playing field and allows companies to win based on the merits of quality, price, performance, sustainability and inclusion. Doing so will create economic growth while at the same time contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive global economy.”

The proposal has two main pillars. On the one hand, it will enable countries to tax some of the profits made by big companies based on the revenue ISSUE 30

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Zoë Morris President, Frank Recruitment Group

Joel Hyatt Founder and CEO of Globality

Charlotte Sallabank Tax Partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman

Bill Blain Market Strategist at Shard Capital

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they generate in that country, rather than where the firm is located for tax purposes.

This amount was set at 20% of the profits exceeding a 10% profit margin. On the other hand, the G7 countries agreed to establish a minimum global corporation tax rate of at least 15%. However, the conversations with countries beyond the G7 are still ongoing.

“These tax reforms have been discussed for many years and it is good that the G7 agreement appears to have been reached,” says Charlotte Sallabank, tax partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman. “However G20 approval is still needed and the details still need to be agreed at the OECD level. The simplified proposals put forward by President Biden’s government seem to have been key to reaching an agreement but whether the simpler framework will make it to the final version remains to be seen.”

The proposal has already been modified significantly from its original form. Although President Biden’s government was pushing for a 21% rate, the OECD limited it to a range between 12.5% and 15%. Moreover, the measure is still at an early stage, as G20 countries will need to discuss it further and it is expected that some, such as Irelandcould put pressure to reduce the rates or seek exemptions. Some experts even doubt that the proposal will be established at all.

“If any European country ever receives anything close to a cheque for 15%

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of the profits made by a big digital tech company selling in their borders, I shall eat my hat,” says Bill Blain, Market Strategist at Shard Capital. “Accountants, tax-planners and bankers will be dissecting the deal’s underpinnings with a fine tooth comb, to look for the back doors, engaging lobbyists to push for advantageous clauses, and get set to arbitrage every facet of it.”

There already have been doubts about which companies will be affected by the measures, particularly regarding Amazon, whose 6.3% profit falls under the profit margin included in the new tax rules. However, according to US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen both Amazon and Facebook are expected to fall under the global minimum rate. In total, the OECD has estimated that the new rules could bring in as much as $81 billion in additional tax revenues each year, a feat that can only be achieved by a collaborative effort to address the issue.

“Current global tax regulation is out of step with the way things work today,” says Zoë Morris, President, Frank Recruitment Group. “Tax architecture reform could buy government-led schemes that actively work to upskill the workforce, support innovative new companies and industries, and generally help countries across the globe catch up with advancements in digital transformation. The digital economy is growing faster than any other, and new regulations like these will go some way to ensuring that everyone— vendors, customers, and citizens alike— can benefit from the opportunity it offers.”

The G7 countries seem determined to help the global taxation systems catch up to the requirements of the digital economy. Only by bringing the regulation up to date can they adequately address the changing business landscape, and create a more equitable system that will bolster the entire economy. The next stop? G20.

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RETHINKING

INTERNET INFRASTRUCTURE June saw one of the most significant internet outages in recent times, caused by a simple configuration error from content delivery network Fastly. Could the incident be a watershed moment for the internet’s infrastructure?

AUTHOR: James Henderson

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n June 8th, a number of high-profile websites were taken offline in one of the most significant internet outages of recent years.

Amazon, PayPal, Reddit and UK government site Gov.uk all went dark, as did a number of news sites, including the Financial Times, CNN, The Guardian, New York Times, BBC and Le Monde.

After the recent spate of cyberattacks, it was easy to fear the worst - a largescale assault designed to extract millions of dollars in ransom payments. But the reason for the downtime was less salacious, with the fault coming from a content delivery network hosted by cloud computing services provider Fastly.

David Warburton

NEWS ANALYSIS

The incident was relatively brief, clocking in at less than an hour. Fastly says that within 49 minutes, 95% of its network was operating as normal again and blamed an “undiscovered software bug” which was triggered by a configuration change.

It apologised and said the fault should have been anticipated, while pledging to deploy a bug fix across its network as quickly and safely as possible and conduct a complete post mortem of the processes and practices it followed during this incident.

The outage has led to questions about delivery networks and the small number of companies that are responsible for delivering content to our screens in double-quick time, known as content distribution networks (CDNs).

Other CDNs include Akamai, Cloudflare and Amazon’s own CloudFront.

Fastly is a platform preferred by many enterprise customers, which explains why so many of the sites impacted were high-profile.

Speaking to Digital Bulletin, David Warburton, Principal Threat Research Evangelist at F5 Labs, points out that much of the internet is around 40 years old and was originally built to be decentralised, meaning internet traffic could still reach its intended destination in the event of an outage.

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decade, however, is the unintentional centralisation of many core services through large cloud solution providers, like infrastructure vendors and CDNs,” he says.

“We can think of these cloud solution providers as the supermarkets of the web. Many of us appreciate the ease of buying groceries from one large store rather than visiting a dozen different ones on the high street.

Similarly, these cloud solution providers deliver many benefits, such as simpler application deployment, reduced management complexities and economies of scale.

“Cloud solution providers provide immeasurable benefits to their users, but we shouldn’t forget the lessons of

Stephen Magill

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the past. The “re-centralisation” of the internet through these cloud solutions is now causing the very problems the original design of the internet was intended to avoid through redundancy. It’s important we consider an approach that moves us away from single points of failure or we will likely see more issues.”

Justin Augut, VP of Marketing at iland, says that it is difficult to overstate the reliance modern enterprise

NEWS ANALYSIS

has on global network uptime and data availability.

“Whether we realise it or not, over the last few years we have seen a dramatic change in the cloud discussion shifting from focusing on the (positive) impact of cloud on businesses, to the (negative) impact of cloud downtime. In fact, many firms now forecast the costs of outages due to hardware failure, data loss, and cybercrime as part of their overall IT budget.

“We know the tools and solutions exist to better prepare for, and respond to, downtime. But because of the sheer number of internal and external variables at work against us, the conversation needs to shift to accepting that downtime is inevitable and focus our efforts on reducing the frequency, duration, and impact of downtime.

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CDNs

IN NUMBERS

54

The number of exabyes of internet traffic delivered by global content delivery networks recorded in 2017, as measured by Statista

252

The volume of exabytes of internet traffic predicted to be delivered by global content delivery networks by 2022, bolstered by video and streaming services

$24.7

BN

The value of the global CDN market is predicted to grow from $11.85 billion in 2019 to $24.7 billion by 2025, at a compound annual growth rate of 13.4% (ResearchAndMarkets)

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is no hardware or software silver-bullet to eliminate downtime (or guarantee uptime), so achieving the highest levels of data access and availability requires several physical, logical, and process-oriented systems working in parallel.”

Dr. Stephen Magill, VP, Sonatype, believes that the Fastly incident is a timely warning of the impact that general code quality issues can have.

“We’re used to focusing on security vulnerabilities, which can allow attackers an opportunity to affect critical systems.

But Fastly shows that high-profile incidents do not require attackers and malicious intent. In this case, a general coding error coupled with a valid user configuration caused unintended and catastrophic behavior,” he says.

“To help protect against this, it’s important for companies to adopt broad spectrum code analysis technology that covers security as well as reliability, performance, and code quality. The best approach involves integrating these tools directly into the development process, so that code quality goals can be met without slowing down development.”

With the downtime fresh in companies’ minds, what are some of the steps that can be taken to ensure their infrastructure resiliency strategies are as robust as possible?

NEWS ANALYSIS

“First, companies can implement redundant infrastructure from multiple vendors. Second, they can implement automated tools to quickly shift traffic away from vendors experiencing major issues,” says Kris Beevers, CEO of NS1.

“And third, for companies where absolutely no downtime or service impact is acceptable, network and application teams can establish dynamic steering

policies to automatically shift traffic based on data about real time conditions experienced by end users, ensuring that the applications and their customers are not impacted by a provider outage.

“Together, redundant infrastructure, appropriate configurations, and dynamic traffic steering will ensure that companies - and their customers - are not impacted by a provider outage.”

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CASE STUDY

AN OUT OF HOME EVOLUTION Talon Outdoor is bringing advertising’s oldest medium, Out of Home, into the 21st century. Digital Bulletin speaks to some of the company’s brightest minds about how it has embraced technology and data to build a range of innovative tech platforms to move the company and entire industry forward

PROJECT DIRECTOR: Callum Hornigold AUTHOR: James Henderson VIDEOGRAPHER: Fraser Harrop PHOTOGRAPHER: Krystian Data

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TALON OUTDOOR

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I

n the world of advertising, Out of Home (OOH) is the granddaddy of them all, with its origins dating all the way back to the dawn of time when flyposting was first used to drum up interest in products and services. Today the medium looks very different, with imposing billboards complemented by dynamic digital displays that we see on the streets we walk, the transport systems we navigate and our places of work. But the aim remains the same - to grab the attention of consumers.

Its omnipresence means that in the UK, OOH reaches 98% of the population at least once a week, with around $1.6 billion spent in the market each year, and billions more globally. The power of OOH is not in dispute but it is historically a sector that has proven difficult to measure, thought 24

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of as a passive advertising method when compared to online or television.

But the march to digitisation is disrupting every area of industry and Talon Outdoor believes there is an opportunity to fundamentally change OOH, bringing the sector into the 21st century. Despite only being established in 2013, Talon Outdoor is now the UK’s leading OOH agency, having built a reputation for working seamlessly between agencies, clients and media partners.

Talon handles OOH media for several of the UK’s leading advertising brands including Omnicom Media Group UK agencies, Havas Media Group and others including AMS Media Group, JAA, Goodstuff, Ptarmigan Media and Republic of Media, while the business has also recently opened a North American operation.

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Understanding the need to digitise, it appointed Josko Grljevic as its new Chief Transformation Officer in 2018 where he found a business bursting at the seams with talent boasting expert knowledge of the OOH market. Talon Outdoor had a wealth of IP, but, he says: “It was all locked up in people’s heads.”

As one of the sector’s leading lights, there was clearly an opportunity to digitalise not just the company but the wider industry as well.

“The world is moving down a digitisation route, everything is going online. So, we had to solve how to transform the world’s oldest advertising medium - a legacy and offline

The world is moving down a digitsation route, everything is going online. So, we had to solve how to transform the world’s oldest advertising medium - a legacy and offline medium - into a digital one” Josko Grljevic

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When we began creating Ada three years ago, what we wanted to do was build a platform that would enable advertisers to look at outcome-based measurement to create opportunities for omnichannel planning in Out of Home, and to build behavioural audiences” Georgie Rumble

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TALON OUTDOOR

medium - into a digital one, not just in the way that the screens are digitised but the entire end-to-end business journey.”

The decision was made to press ahead with a company-wide technology transformation, to code this highly valuable and specialist knowledge into digital platforms that would be of huge benefit to the company and its clients and partners.

Today, Talon boasts a trio of proprietary tech platforms that allow internal and external users to engage seamlessly with OOH and simplify what can often be a fragmented and complex environment.

One of the jewels in the crown is Ada, an OOH data management platform, which collates billions of data points to create meaningful insights on customer

behaviour, campaign management and audience targeting. Grljevic calls it “the best Out of Home data management platform in the UK, if not in the world”.

Talon’s Product Strategy Director, Georgie Rumble, tells Digital Bulletin that Ada has and will continue to be an integral part of its strategy. “When we began creating Ada three years ago, what we wanted to do was build a platform that would enable advertisers to look at outcome-based measurement to create opportunities for omnichannel planning in Out of Home, and to build behavioural audiences.

“We have built the platform with the ability to report on footfall data, which has been a really interesting element for our clients to understand people who are

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seeing an Out of Home campaign and therefore taking an action and visiting a certain location. They’ve been able to understand not just their own footfall, but also those of their competitors. We’ve seen great results and insights by using the platform in that way.”

McDonald’s was one of the launch partners for the platform and has utilised Ada consistently over the last three years, generating quantifiable return on investment, while Google has also been a regular user. It is an impressive roster of clients.

“When it comes to more varied key performance indicators, we’ve also run a project which looked at campaigns that

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have used Ada to optimise their schedules versus general distribution out of home campaigns. And what we’ve seen by using Ada, we can increase consideration by 53% versus normal Out of Home campaigns.”

Alongside its multinational clients, Rumble says the platform is helping smaller businesses reach their desired audiences.

“A jewellery brand came to us with an audience it wanted to reach for Valentine’s Day weekend. It ran the Out of Home campaign in proximity to the store it wanted to drive footfall to and saw a huge increase when compared to its competitors. Compared with pre-campaign, it achieved a significant increase, so it really

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Nitin Dhall Managing Director (UK), Sahaj Software

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Speed and efficiency are absolutely integral to everything that we do for our clients. Increasingly, we need to be able to turnaround proposals for clients more and more quickly. And in order to be able to do that, we need to have information at our fingertips” Amy Horton

shows that Ada can be used to reach the right people and really drive those important metrics.”

A central theme of Talon’s ambitions is to improve both itself and the industry is to utilise technology to automate, simplify and optimise outcomes, removing many of the historic overheads from day-to-day advertising operations.

It is that philosophy that led to the creation of Plato, an automated trading platform which aggregates all OOH

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inventory into a single, intuitive campaign planning and delivery system. It allows users to explore, plan, check availability, reserve and trade paper and digital inventory across multiple markets.

But as with any digital transformation, the technology is only as good as the people using it.

“Tech is a fantastic catalyst for digital transformation but it has to work in harmony and symbiosis with the culture. If the culture is not ready to adapt, and change, it doesn’t

TALON OUTDOOR

matter what you do on the tech front, it is not going to be successful,” says Grljevic.

The ambition for the Plato platform was “tough”, admits Amy Horton, Chief Product Officer, with the goal being to drive 100% of its UK bookings through the platform.

“When we started towards that target at the beginning of last year, we were probably putting through less than 5%.

And we hit 100% of UK bookings through Plato by July. It was also about having everybody on board, making sure that

everybody feels empowered to be part of the process. And to be honest, I think if we didn’t have a strong people culture, it would have been quite difficult because people really wanted the platform to work.”

Horton says the two platforms have made a demonstrable difference to the level of service it is able to offer its partners and clients.

“Speed and efficiency are absolutely integral to everything that we do for our clients. Increasingly, we need to be able to turnaround proposals for clients more and more quickly. And in order to be able to do that, we need to have information at our fingertips. Through our tech development, we’re able to access live availability, and to be able to option and book at the touch of a button.

“Previously, those processes would have taken literally days because, now we can literally do that at a click of a button.

One of the senior people here always uses the example of if I wanted to find 48 sheets in Sheffield in June, it would take me three days to do that. And now we can do that in 30 seconds.”

Off the back of the success of Ada and Plato, Talon most recently launched Atlas, a transparent and completely automated audience-led planning and buying platform, that allows advertisers and agencies to activate campaigns intelligently all from within a single browser.

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TALON OUTDOOR

It has been built to remove traditional great backgrounds, with deep skills in data, complexities in the advertising space by engineering and data science. connecting advertisers and agencies “They understood our business and they directly to media owners and to be fully were keen to work with us as collaborative transparent and accountable so that partners. And that partnership has built clients only pay for confirmed impressions. over the last three years to such an extent The build of the three platforms reprewhere we don’t treat them as an external sents a colossal undertaking, company, they’re an extension requiring no shortage of data of our business.” science and engineering skill.

Grljevic calls out the build of all But Grljevic says three platforms as being that those skills were highlights of working simply not available to with Sahaj, with much of the business when he the work carried out to joined the company in the tightest of deadlines.

2018. “We didn’t really “Together, we built an have anyone in the MVP version of Plato organisation that really in four months, under understood technology immense pressure or how to execute and and challenging build products.” circumstances. We A decision was made also managed to build a to look for external complete data managepartners to fast track the ment platform in a year, Josko Grljevic digital transformation agenda, while transitioning the engiand after an extensive search, neering from an incumbent Talon partnered with Sahaj Software and making multiple architecture and engiSolutions. It has proven to be fruitful collabneering modifications in order to introduce oration for both parties, to say the least. a heck of a lot of efficiency and scalability.

“The reason we went to Sahaj was we “The showcase of scalable engineering believed they had the hardcore engineering and collaboration was the manner in which skills. We trusted them to do what we existing Plato and Ada services were needed them to do,” says Grljevic. “They extended to build a brand new DOOH were a fantastic outfit; great individuals, [Digital Out of Home] programmatic

The reason we went to Sahaj was we believed they had the hardcore engineering skills.

We trusted them to do what we needed them to do”

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platform in six months. Atlas was truly a product of digital innovation being executed in very challenging circumstances. We did it with Sahaj’s help and the reason we were able to do it so quickly is because they understood the challenge facing our core capabilities and the business as a whole.”

Such is the symbiotic nature of the relationship, Sahaj has previously approached Talon with ideas that it believes could help the business. Unable to commit time and resources to something at the concept stage, Grljevic reluctantly declined.

“They said to me, ‘Fine, we’ll do it as a project with our graduates, put a first iteration together and spend our own money on it. If at that point you think it flies, let’s pick it up’. We’ve done that with one

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of our key products, which is an inventory management platform, where they spent a couple of months building it at their own cost, showed it to us and proved that it had legs. We then invested in it, carried on, and it’s going to be a fully-fledged product that will be launched globally in the next couple of months.”

A global pandemic has added another layer of complexity, with Grljevic labelling much of the work done over the period as “a transformation within a transformation”.

It is an experience that will surely hold Talon in good stead as it embarks on the next stage of its transformation journey.

“We are very ambitious so everything that was really hard to do to begin with became even harder, because we had to

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The things that would normally take us 12-18 months to build, were built in six months” Josko Grljevic

do it even quicker, we had to do it faster and we had to do it with everyone working remotely. The things that would normally take us 12-18 months to build, were built in six months. We launched a brand-new platform, a programmatic trading platform no less, and we went from concept to actually being a physical tangible asset in six months, and we put revenue through it a month later - that is unheard of.

“That’s a testament to the people that we have, the technology that we’ve built and our ability to think strategically and

come up with great, innovative ideas that were forced on us by our circumstances.

And the reality is that over the next two to five years, change is going to be constant.

Unless we can adapt to change, and unless we can adapt to new circumstances, we’re going to struggle.

“I think we’ve proven over the last 12 or 18 months that that’s in our DNA, and we’ve been very successful with it. We’ve demonstrated it, we’ve built great tools, great platforms, and our culture has shifted significantly.”

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SECURITY

TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY? In every issue, Digital Bulletin picks the brains of experts in a particular sector of the technology world. This month, we ask: “Can paying millions in ransom to cyberattackers be justified?”

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DEBATE

YES Jen Ellis,

VP community and public affairs at Rapid7

In an ideal world, we’d ban ransom payments and with no pay out, attackers would lose interest and find other pursuits. No one would be saddled with the moral conundrum of choosing between keeping the business running or funding organised crime.

The problem is, we don’t live in an ideal world. In the world we actually do live in, banning payments would very likely result in a nasty game of ‘chicken’, whereby criminals would shift all their focus towards organisations which are least likely to be able to deal with downtime - for example hospitals, water-treatment plants, energy providers, and schools. Criminals know that the broad negative impact of downtime in these critical

sectors will apply the necessary pressure to ensure they get paid. The sad reality is that due to the existence of Safe Harbour nations that make prosecutions highly challenging, attackers have very little to lose by doing this - and potentially a big payday to gain.

Even in a scenario where the government creates a fund to support essential service providers so they don’t have to pay - which was one of the recommendations of the recent Ransomware Task Force report - there is still a dilemma. No one wants to see tax pounds or dollars used to fund crime, but if organizations do not pay, they will still face disruption until systems and data can be otherwise recovered or rebuilt. This can take months and again, in critical sectors, that continued disruption has a significant negative impact for society.

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no Richard Hummel,

ASERT Threat Intelligence Lead for NETSCOUT

Ransomware is the biggest, baddest thing in the cybercriminal world right now and has been for the past five or six years, with untold millions of dollars extorted. There’s probably no part of the world that hasn’t spawned this kind of criminal activity, and these attacks have only become more sophisticated over time. So now the question is, should businesses who have been victimised pay the ransom? The answer is no.

I understand this is a very difficult decision to make, and that there’s a pressing need to quickly restore business. But paying the ransom can have several negative consequences so I highly recommend never paying when struck by a ransomware attack. In some cases, paying the ransom can be seen as supporting a criminal enterprise so you’d then be hit with sanctions. Even if you do pay the ransom without any legal repercussions, the cybercriminals don’t always follow through with their side of the bargain to provide the encryption key to unlock your systems. Even worse, 40

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since the attackers have successfully breached your defences and solicited a payment, what’s to stop them from returning again with a different attack and more demands?

Indeed, we have recently discovered that threat actors are employing triple extortion tactics on their targets. A triple extortion attack involves combining file encryption, data theft and DDoS attacks into a three-headed monster, designed to increase the possibility of payment.

These multi-pronged attacks show how persistent malicious actors are when they see an opportunity to extort money and show that the threat of attack doesn’t simply disappear if targeted organisations choose to pay the ransom.

DEBATE

Even if targeted organisations do pay, the damage is already done as the files are already encrypted, so the attackers can still post the stolen data on underground forums and find other ways to extort the victim. Sometimes, when organisations don’t pay the ransom, the cybercriminals don’t bother going through with their threatened attack and instead just move on to their next target in the hopes of securing the ransom elsewhere. But there is no guarantee that the attackers will leave you alone if you pay or don’t pay and paying causes more problems than it solves. It is much better to invest time and money into defences against ransomware attacks and not give in to their demands.

Even if targeted organisations do pay, the damage is already done as the files are already encrypted”

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It depends on the circumstances

Jonathan Wood, CEO C2 Cyber

When you’re faced with a ransomware attack, most organisations have no idea how to regain access to their data and systems. So it’s this level of uncertainty that often prompts many to pay the ransom. However, before you jump ahead and issue payment, make sure you assess the situation and consider the alternatives.

While paying the ransom may seem like the easiest option, bear in mind that not all companies get their data back, even if they pay up. This would put you at an even greater loss. Therefore I would only recommend paying if it is absolutely the last resort. By asking yourself a few key questions, you can understand the potential impact of paying versus not paying, then work out the best course of action.

Are you likely to expend more resources in recovering from the attack, than the amount requested by the criminals?

If this is the case then it might be easier to pay the ransom, but bearing in mind there’s no guarantee you’ll get your data back even if you do pay.

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Do you have a backup of core systems?

While you might not have a backup of ‘everything’, can you piece together enough to start a clean data store, with improved security? This would avoid you having to pay.

Does your system need an upgrade to safeguard your business from attacks in the future?

If you pay and get your data back, you’re still not fixing the vulnerability.

This could leave you open to repeat ran-

DEBATE

somware attacks. For example hackers might maintain access to your network after the first attack, allowing them easy opportunities for repeat attacks.

If you don’t pay, will this attack impact the industry/wider population?

Consider the wider implication of what happens if your business is offline for several days. Take the recent attack on the Colonial Pipeline Company which forced many systems offline, disabled the pipeline and caused panic across the US

resulting in price increases and oil shortages. In this case I think Colonial was right to pay the ransom to resume operations as quickly as possible to stop panic buying and minimise the impact on the industry.

The FBI even managed to retrieve a lot of the bitcoin ransom paid over.

While paying ransoms is effectively funding crime, in certain situations paying is necessary. Organisations should avoid knee jerk reactions and carefully assess each attack on a case by case basis before making a decision.

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RESIST THE TEMPTATION Zeki Turedi, EMEA CTO, CrowdStrike

One of the biggest mistakes that a company that falls victim to a ransomware attack can do, is believe that paying the ransom will make all your problems disappear. What most organisations are completely unaware of, is that not only paying the ransom will more than likely result in another attack in the future, it leaves them in the situation of still needing to fully recover from a catastrophic event as well as further fuelling the cybercriminal system. Of course, there are many factors that make paying seem like the easiest route for a company.

A data breach can cause irreversible brand damage, huge fines from data regulation and law violations, long-term liability and customer compensation costs. Not only that, the ransomware attack recovery period

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often takes months, even years to fully address, resulting in loss of income due to technical downtime. Another crucial aspect to consider is that paying the ransomware attacker doesn’t always mean that you will get your data back.

There have been many instances where bad actors have received payment but refused to provide access to the decryption key. In some scenarios, the ransomware attacker receives payment, but due to their lack of technical ability or knowledge, they themselves lose access to the company’s locked data or even accidentally corrupt the files.

DEBATE

A data breach can cause irreversible brand damage, huge fines from data regulation and law violations, long-term liability and customer compensation costs” So, even if a company decides to hand over their money to the hacker, there is no certainty that the criminal will uphold the initial agreement.

In many instances, the attacker will hold on to the data, even after receiving payment, and either sell the information to a third party on the black market or attempt to extort the business for the second time in the future. Also, reaching an agreement with criminals and providing them with payment does not rid companies of

their data protection and regulation requirements.

It is an incredibly challenging task to prove that the attackers no longer have access to the data, and in most cases, regulators will still enforce non-compliance fines even if they have had ‘assurance’ that sensitive company information has been retrieved. Companies would be wiser spending their money on more robust protective measures that would allow them to prevent a similar situation from happening in the future.

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THE ROAD TO 4.0 What happens when digital transformation meets ice cream manufacturing? Antonio Tuccillo, Process Engineer and Digital Lead at Unilever’s Caivano site, and his team tell Digital Bulletin how they have brought the fourth industrial revolution to the Italian factory and the impact it has had on its workers’ lives

PROJECT DIRECTOR: Jack Walsh AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía VIDEOGRAPHER: Ewan Donaldson

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F

rom water and steam engines to electricity and computers, the manufacturing sector has a history of constantly revolutionising itself. The next step? Industry 4.0.

The fourth industrial revolution will bring digital transformation and automation into the manufacturing industry, with the goal of creating the smart factories of the future. One area that this transformation will greatly affect is food manufacturing. In fact, the market for applying technology in the food industry is predicted to reach over $250 billion by the end of 2022. This digital transformation will see manufacturers take full advantage of data analytics, IoT and autonomous vehicles to streamline operations, make predictions and increase the overall safety and productivity of the sites.

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Many companies have already taken the first steps towards this vision, and Unilever is no exception. The consumer goods multinational has over 300 factories in more than 100 countries, producing an enormous array of products, from food and refreshments to beauty, personal care and home care. But even huge projects start local.

To witness some of the company’s first transformative projects, we have to travel to the south of the country, to a city 14km north-east of Naples named Caivano.

“Caivano is one of the most advanced sites at Unilever in the refreshment category,” Antonio Tuccillo, Process Engineer and Digital Lead in Unilever’s Caivano site, and the face behind the site’s digital transformation initiative, tells Digital Bulletin.

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The Caivano site is one of the largest Unilever ice cream factories in Italy. The factory was built in 1975 and it employs up to 900 workers during its busiest season. Over half of its ice cream production is distributed within Italy, while the remaining 40% is sold in Europe and the United States. The site is known for its innovative nature, as well as the large range of ice cream products it produces.

Its handling of a wide variety of ingredients, including caramel, roasted nuts and coffee, is a rarity in the sector.

In fact, the factory is a member of Italy’s Consortium Meditech, a consortium formed by the largest companies in the south of the country, including FCA, Nestle, Boing and Hitachi, as well as research institutions such as the universities of Naples, Bari and Salerno. The programme, funded by a central government, combines the best brains of both the business and research world to support innovation in the area.

Because of this, Caivano is often the testing ground for any Unilever innovative products, and three years ago the site was

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Caivano is one of the most strategic factories we have” Paolo di Giovanni

selected to lead the company’s ambitious digitalisation and automation project.

“Compared to other industries, Unilever is quite behind in terms of digital transformation,” says Paolo Di Giovanni, Works Director at Unilever’s Caivano site. However, he explains that this is not true solely of Unilever, but also of the ice cream manufacturing business in general, which has long 50

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relied on traditional business practices.

For decades, its operations have been manual, without any need or desire for automation. Nonetheless, the time for change has now arrived.

“Unilever wants to cover that gap,” Di Giovanni says. “To do that, we have built a robust digital roadmap that covers everything, from cybersecurity to the most advanced applications.”

The implementation of this digital roadmap began last year, and it is expected to be completed in 2023. Its benefits are endless. The transformation will support the workers, freeing them from repetitive and routine work and allowing them to upskill, but also accelerate processes, reduce operating costs and improve the overall efficiency of the factory as well as the safety of its operations.

Unilever’s digital transformation has one key element: automation, and within it, the Caivano site is a fundamental piece. It is in this factory that two of the most innovative digital transformation projects are taking place: the robotisation of the site implemented by Elettric80, and a digitalisation of data and information systems carried out in partnership with Engineering Group.

“Caivano is considered one of the most strategic factories we have, because many innovations are implemented here, with all sectors and all technologies represented in our production,” says Di Giovanni. “Since

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2018, our factory has been a priority in Unilever’s automation initiative.”

The journey to transform Caivano’s logistics began with the installation of an automated storage solution, and it has significantly accelerated in the last two years thanks to the collaboration between Unilever and Elettric80.

Established in the 1980s in Italy, Elettric80 specialises in the development

of automated and integrated intralogistics solutions for daily consumer goods manufacturing companies with the goal of facilitating the development of smart, interconnected and sustainable factories.

Elettric80’s vast experience and high level of innovation makes the company a perfect fit for Unilever’s goals. As of today, the Group has completed 300 smart factories and has installed over 2000 ISSUE 30

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robotics systems and more than 5000 laser-guided vehicles (LGVs) in different parts of the world, as well as 35 high-density automated warehouses since 2016.

“We chose Elettric80 because their solutions are customised, resilient and reliable,” says Martina Rita Troncone, Site Maintenance Coordinator at Caivano.“They design projects based on customer’s needs and goals, using their specific technology and know-how to identify the most efficient solution at the offset of the project.”

The journey to transform the logistics at the Caivano site by employing Elettric80’s expertise started in 2012 with the

installation of an automated warehouse, totally integrated with the production cycle and automated with three trilateral laser-guided vehicles equipped with artificial intelligent technology. The journey continues today with the installation of seven more LGVs that handle material from different pickup points and move them to set positions between the production lines, running in very narrow spaces.

“The type of solution that we have implemented has been specially designed to meet our needs for storage and material movements in various small places,” Troncone says.

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This requirement for vehicles to navigate the narrow corridors of the factory - as small as two metres wide - without hindering operations and while ensuring maximum safety for operators was one of the biggest challenges of the project, according to Troncone. The implemented solution is highly reliable thanks to the fact that all laser-guided vehicles are equipped with safety systems, above and beyond the international standards 54

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established by the regulations in force, able to detect the presence of obstacles moving along the path.

“A 3D-mapping technology designed by Elettric80 teams that diagrams the actual plant floor enables us to understand the space in detail, to identify the correct LGV trajectories and maneuvers, and to anticipate any issues,” Troncone says.

Automating these tasks has allowed Caivano to increase its efficiency,

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of factory work. The operating of these machines accounts for around 85 deaths every year and over 34,900 serious injuries in the United States alone. The human cost of these activities is huge, and smart and integrated automatization can significantly reduce it, alongside costs.

“We have started on a transformation path involving automated vehicles to reduce the safety risk to our people,” Troncone says.

“Elettric80’s systems are robust, smart and safe. They develop pragmatic and turnkey solutions, as they have a real vision of how to integrate their technologies within the system already present inside the factory, and they understand the cost of maintenance. Furthermore, they support and guarantee the implemented solutions over time by providing 24/7 support.”

Safety, efficiency, and collaborative partnership: the automatisation project has sustainability and productivity, by knowing the quantity and location of all of its materials at all times, guaranteeing the total traceability of the products handled, and increasing storage density and product availability. All this while also increasing safety within the factory, both in terms of human-machine collaboration and with respect to operations and products.

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brought these huge benefits to the Caivano site. But it is just one step in a much larger path towards digitalisation.

“The most important need of Caivano is to be competitive on the market, to be flexible and quick to meet the market demands,” Tuccillo says. “The best way to do that, of course, is to transform Caivano into an industry 4.0 plant.”

As Di Giovanni pointed out, up until a few years ago, Caivano was only hardly 56

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digitalised. The factory had installed a digital application to handle process control operations but, in all the other departments, the systems were not smart and user-friendly. The automation project was a huge step towards improving this situation, but there was still plenty of work to do to reach 4.0.

“We started the transformation with automation in particular with the LGV project,” Tuccillo says. “But the most

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important thing is that, in parallel to the automation that addresses and improves the material flows, we invested also into digitalisation of the information flow in order to bring Caivano into industry 4.0.”

But Unilever is not entering that project alone.

To do that, Unilever has partnered with Engineering Group. With over 12,000 professionals in more than 40 locations, the company combines specialist skills in next-generation technologies, technological infrastructures organised in a single hybrid multicloud and the capability to interpret new business models to bring innovation to the ground. Together, the companies have developed a call off system that will handle all the information flow of the materials, from the inbound to the line supply, and integrate it with the existing systems on the site.

“Thanks to the call off system we have detailed traceability of the materials in the factory and we have improved our quality standard, reducing the risks of human error in the material flow,” Tuccillo says. “But call off was not just that. It represents the pillar for the digital development of the Caivano site. It is a really flexible application that can dialogue with almost every other software. Since its installation, we have integrated the app with almost all the other informatics systems in Caivano.”

The solutions that we have implemented have been specially designed to meet all our needs” Martina Rita Troncone

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The call off system is only one of many projects that Engineering Group and the Unilever Caivano site has been working on for the past few years. In fact, Engineering has become the supplier for the digital system in the site’s processmaking area, helping Unilever Caivano navigate the complicated path that leads towards industry 4.0.

“The reliability and the flexibility shown

by Engineering in this relationship has been huge,” Tuccillo says. “This is the main reason why we have decided to work with them also for the digitalisation or in the banking area and in the overall site. We have chosen them not just as a supplier for our project, but we started a deep collaboration as a partner.”

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One of the main goals of this collaboration is the drive to digitalise the totality of the site’s information flow, from planning to production. The vision is to be able to create a unique repository of information that is easy to access, easy to use and paperless. It is a huge project that will see a digitalisation of most of the site’s processes and, as a result, will reduce manual activities, potential human errors and delete all the paper archives.

For example, over the last year, this project has allowed Caivano to implement data analytics solutions to fully automate the data that comes from the shop floor and shipments and automatically control dosage of ice cream according to the demand, without human intervention. And this is just the beginning.

“All of this could be only done thanks to the call off software installation that created the backbone for the digital development of Caivano,” Tuccillo says.

“And the objective of this kind of project is to take insight from data never analysed before in order to improve the performances to create value added and to be more competitive on the market.”

However, Caivano’s digital and automation transformation is not a story of machines, but people. The digitalisation will increase worker’s safety, eliminate all their routine tasks and also simplify access to the information needed to perform their tasks.

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“Digital helps to improve the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of Unilever people,” Tuccillo says. “Our workers can use mobile solutions to have the right information in the right location at the right moment. For example, our forklift driver has a tablet on their forklift where our call off application is installed and he has whatever he needs at his fingertips.”

Nonetheless, the biggest impact of digitalisation for Unilever workers comes in relation to their own job transformation.

The automatisation of the factory has allowed its employees to upskill themselves and become “digital workers” able to properly leverage all the tools and solutions of a factory 4.0.

The benefits of this transformation are undeniable, but they weren’t always welcomed.

“To be very honest, when we approached the digital automation transformation, the reaction of people wasn’t good,” Di Giovanni says. “This was simply because they thought that it was something to steal their job or to reduce the number of people.

However, when we decided to implement a training programme, a very good package in terms of upskilling and rescaling, the consideration changed.”

This new package is part of Future of Work, a Unilever-wide programme launched last year to improve the working

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Digital helps to improve the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of the Unilever people” Antonio Tuccillo

conditions of the company’s 149,000 employees. The programme aims to support the upskilling of Unilever’s workers but also to improve their mental health and motivation. In less than a year, it has proven to be significantly popular, and successful.

“We have embraced the entire population,” Di Giovanni says. “We have dedicated the training not only to the operators, but also to the technician, to 62

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UNILEVER

the middle management without forgetting the leadership team. And this has been really appreciated, as demonstrated by the performance we had last year and in the first quarter of 2021.”

Now, with a new workforce and improved digital systems, Unilever is looking towards a future that looks brighter than it has ever had. But there is still work to be done to achieve it.

“Caivano is one of the most advanced

sites at Unilever in the refreshment category but, to be honest, digitalisation is a journey that never ends,” Tuccillo says. “Technologies are always changing, improving, and our internal processes also change and adapt to respond quickly to the market demand. Therefore, we always work from a continuous improvement perspective, always looking to the next improvement to be done.”

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A NEW

Dimension Viewing content in 3D using just our eyes has long been the stuff of science fiction. But leaps in technology mean volumetric video is making huge strides, with vast potential for consumers, public sector and businesses alike. Digital Bulletin speaks to Phil Baulch, Corporate and Public Sector Director, CTIO, BT Enterprise, to find out more

INTERVIEW: James Henderson

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W

hat is volumetric video and why is it important?

Volumetric video is a way of capturing a person, object or environment in three dimensions so that it can be seen remotely in 3D from any perspective – a bit like a holographic representation. It is one of the technologies BT is experimenting with at Adastral Park, an innovation centre backed by the UK government’s 5G Create funding initiative. There we have the “5G Edge-XR” – a diverse consortium of six specialist companies engaged in what, until recently, would have been unimaginable. And it’s not just volumetric video, it has also propelled forward other collaboration tools such as the Hyperbat which is the world’s first 5G virtual engineering model.

Volumetric video is an incredibly exciting way for people to interact with each other, even when they can’t be physically present. This is significant for so many industries as it provides scope for users to access high quality, immersive content from the comfort of their own homes.

Recently, we’ve all experienced what it means to live in a world powered by virtual interactions, but volumetric video could completely transform remote working for all business industries. Take architecture or manufacturing, for example. Employees will 66

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be able to virtually gather remotely around 3D virtual models of buildings or products and be able to collaborate and make adjustments.

How is 5G pushing the medium?

The low latency connectivity offered by 5G and paired with compute power sited at the edge of the network enables volumetrically captured objects, be that musicians performing on stage or a boxer fighting in a ring, to be seamlessly streamed to a display – and experienced in the same way our brains perceive an object moving in front of us.

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Volumetric video needs 5G because the sheer amount of processing power required to render and display a high-resolution three dimensional image places too much pressure on even the latest smartphone” Volumetric video needs 5G because the sheer amount of processing power required to render and display a high-resolution three dimensional image places too much pressure on even the latest smartphones. The collaborative work of 5G Edge-XR is opening up whole new areas of possibility.

Edge compute facilities paired with high-end graphics processors placed at the edge of the 5G network means the intensive processing is done on remote computers before then being streamed to your device over 5G with super low latency.

Phil Baulch

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Could you outline some use cases of how volumetric video will evolve or transform sectors/industries?

Volumetric video could transform a whole range of diverse industries, from communications and entertainment to health and education, who stand to benefit from this technology. For business, small and large, it can bring new ways of collaborating, enabling virtual offices to be created – rather than colleagues communicating on a flat screen. Full-scale models can be created and shared in 3D, allowing everyone in a production line to properly assess a 68

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final product. Presentations and meetings can be held without the need to fly across the world, lowering a business’ carbon footprint.

If we consider retail, we will be able to virtually enter a high street boutique and try on clothes to make sure they fit and look good before ordering the physical garment. We could even tour the interiors of homes for sale without entering the space itself.

In schools, teachers will be able to create worlds within a classroom for their pupils to explore. For scientists, it will improve the ability to collaborate,

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experiment and share research across continents that will be enriched by the creation of virtual labs, allowing them to discover new information.

How is volumetric video going to change broadcast media and how people consume it?

Volumetric video provides a new way to share information and content to audiences in a more interactive and immersive way. This is particularly important for sports broadcasting where events can be viewed in real time, in three dimensions, from anywhere in the world.

For the consumer, it transforms the way they engage with content and ensures they are not missing out, despite not being physically present. The power of volumetric video therefore improves the consumer experience dramatically and is set to transform the broadcast media landscape globally.

How might volumetric video reduce carbon footprints?

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or colleagues, depending on the situation, and experience it all in real time.

This means broadcasters and sports fans would no longer need to travel around the world to watch a 90-minute football match or a 10 second boxing round, as they can receive the same experience from their living room. Employees wouldn’t always have to commute into work every day or travel abroad for a global meeting.

Thirty per cent of the EU’s total CO2 emissions comes from transport, of which 72% comes specifically from road transportation so the need to lower road use to reduce carbon foot-

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prints is evidently crucial. Reducing time spent travelling reduces carbon footprints – volumetric video therefore goes beyond changing just the virtual world and has a positive impact on the physical world too.

Are there also opportunities for volumetric video to be used in healthcare environments?

Yes. In hospitals, multi-disciplinary teams will be able to study 3D scans of a patient’s body. They might even be able to view a hologram of a patient’s heart, helping them to form a clear diagnosis. What’s more, it could also help

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researchers with collaboration, as well as the potential volumetric study of microscopic organisms, which can improve diagnosis and develop new medicines and vaccines.

Which other technologies are important to the emergence and growth of volumetric video?

Volumetric video has the ability to capture and livestream everything.

Say we’re broadcasting a concert, volumetric video captures the performer, their clothes, facial expressions and surrounding objects.

What’s more impressive is it can all be done using one or very few cameras and in real time. This is all because of deep learning.

Deep learning is a technology or technique that trains a computer to recognise and predict the shape of objects, materials and how they move. It takes huge amounts of data to make guesses based on previous experience and so you have to feed the computer a lot of data and think about how you can make updates.

All of this is then underpinned by 5G and edge computing.

Where does BT come into this and what are its ambitions for volumetric video?

Volumetric video is one of many new technologies we’re experimenting with at Adastral Park and under the banner of 5G Edge-XR, we are working hard to ensure virtual and augmented experiences like volumetric video are ready for the real world.

BT provides the 5G infrastructure for these new technologies but the innovation is only possible by the way the consortium of companies work together and pooling our shared expertise.

How soon do you believe it might become a visible part of our day-to-day lives?

We’re on the edge of a new era of three-dimensional technology. It’s still in the early stages of development, but volumetric video and the associated AR and VR new technologies we are working on at Adastral Park have huge transformative potential. They have the ability to change our everyday lives for the better, just as broadband has.

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Imagine being able to stand a few feet away from two heavyweight boxers in the midst of a title bout. Or on the edge of a tarmac as MotoGP bikers fly past in the heat of a Grand Prix – all from the comfort of your sofa”

Our incredible new network capabilities, accelerated by 5G and FTTP to name a few, combined with the collaborative work of leading specialists such as the 5G Edge-XR consortium, means that the technology is in touching distance.

For example, we are also making vast advancements in wearable technology such as enhanced glasses that, while appearing to be simple reading glasses, are capable of supplying a viewer in the 72

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stadium with all the data and commentary of a home viewer. Soon technologies like these will be a visible part of our day-to-day lives – it’s hard to pinpoint a date but all we know is it’s a very exciting time for the virtual world.

The pandemic has been a driver for a number of technologies - is that the case with volumetric video?

Maybe just 12 months ago, it was hard-

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importance on making our virtual world as seamless and intuitive as possible.

Whilst plans were already in motion for the development of volumetric video, the pandemic has certainly accelerated the pace at which we look to launch this technology. It’s also cemented the need and development of collaboration tools such as Hyperbat, which is creating virtual 3D life sized graphics in real time to make it easier for people to work together. It’s a pivotal time for all technologies and digital transformation as accelerated hugely across all industries.

er to imagine such virtual technologies would be possible. But due to the current landscape caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re starting to appreciate how important virtual technology is and the possibilities it holds. Due to enforced remote working and lockdowns that kept us apart from loved ones, we now understand how meaningful virtual connections are when we can’t be together. That’s why there’s increased

How would you expect people to be utlising volumetric video in 2030?

Volumetric video and other associated augmented technologies aren’t ready yet, but amazing new network capabilities, combined with the collaborative work of leading specialists, are moving us closer to launch everyday. One area we see real potential in is live sports broadcasting which will transform how we immerse ourselves in live sport, forever. Imagine being able to stand a few feet away from two heavyweight boxers in the midst of a title bout. Or on the edge of a tarmac as MotoGP bikers fly past in the heat of a Grand Prix – all from the comfort of your sofa. 2030 might not be a definite but it’s certainly something to aim for.

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Overcoming THE BAN

Xu Zhijun, Deputy Chairman at Huawei, breaks down how the company is diversifying its business and maintaining its leadership of the telecommunications sector despite the US ban

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

T

he longest-lasting companies are those able to turn setbacks into opportunities.

At the start of 2019, Huawei was predicted to become the world’s largest seller of 5G technologies and smartphones. The company’s 5G network infrastructure was considered the best and most affordable on the market.

However, this was also the year when concerns about the company’s links with the Chinese government spiked, leading to accusations that Huawei would use its equipment to steal 74

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technological secrets and spy on other nations. Although no hard proof was ever provided, the company’s reputation still suffered.

The “Huawei ban” began in 2012, when a US intelligence report concluded that using equipment made by the company could “undermine core US national security interests.” But it was not until May 2019 that the company was added to the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List, which effectively banned any US organisation from doing business with Huawei without the

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government’s permission. As a result of the ban, Huawei’s business took a hit and was forced to change its business strategy.

“These are uncertain times for Huawei, rife with challenges from geopolitical tension, the resurgence of COVID-19, and US bans,” Xu Zhijun, Huawei’s Deputy Chairman tells Digital Bulletin.

“In this context, business resilience is our guiding principle. We want to boost the resilience of our entire business, and since last year we have been working to optimise our portfolio with this goal in mind.”

Xu joined Huawei in 1993 after completing his PhD. Since then, he has served the company in many roles,

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from President of the Wireless Network Product Line to Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer and Rotating CEO. Last April, Xu was a keynote speaker at Huawei’s HAS2021 Global Analyst Summit, where the company’s leadership outlined their plans for the future of the telecommunications giant.

“Huawei was a topic of focus throughout 2020, and 2021 will continue to be a challenging year for us,” Xu says. “However, it’s also the year that our future development strategy will begin to take shape. We spent most of our time last year responding to one ban after another. This year, we have more time to explore our next steps and where we want to go.

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“Huawei made its name by developing outstanding smartphones. We are incredibly proud of our record of innovation and leadership in the sector and remain resolutely committed to continuing to set the bar of excellence in that sector. But our business has for many years been diversifying, and our developments in new categories continue to fuel our growth.”

Over the last few years, Huawei has been on a transformational journey, from a network equipment manufacturer to a software-centric company. In November 2018, the company spent $2 billion in upgrading its software engineering capabilities and reducing its reliance on semiconductors, which it used to purchase from the US. Two years later, software is a key element of the company’s future plans.

“Software is at the core of cloud,” Xu says. “We aim to build a stronger software organisation and ensure it’s decoupled from hardware. Going forward, we will invest more in software to pave the way for ongoing growth in the future. It’s precisely because of the results we’ve achieved over the past two years that we want to keep building on this progress to reduce our demand for and reliance on chips as we seek to make our products more competitive.”

At the heart of Huawei’s software-enabled hedge are HarmonyOS and

Huawei was a topic of focus throughout 2020, and 2021 will continue to be a challenging year for us” Xu Zhijun

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HMS, the foundations of its distributed operating system. The company began its development following Huawei’s addition to the US Entity List, when Google announced that it would restrict the company’s access to its products, including the Android operating system.

Since its launch, more than 20 hardware manufacturers and 280 app providers have joined forces to build the HarmonyOS ecosystem. According to Xu, Huawei expects to provide the “HarmonyOS experience” to more than 100 million devices by the end of the year. Although the operating system was originally designed to only be used in IoT products, Huawei is also planning on launching the first phones powered

by HarmonyO2 in 2021.

HarmonyOS is based on Linux, the same open-source platform on which Android is based, meaning that both systems can share compatibility with one another. Should a developer want, they could make any Android app work within HarmonyOS. However, Huawei claims that its system solves some of the issues Android had, including the slowing down and lagging of devices.

“A common misconception of HarmonyOS is that it is simply a clone of Android, but this is not the case,” Xu says.

“HarmonyOS has been designed for an interconnected Internet of Things world.

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with as little as 128K RAM, as well as on super-powerful computing devices with upwards of 4GB RAM. Android really only works on smartphones and tablets.

Harmony works on cookers and TVs and all sorts of smart home appliances as well as watches and tablets.”

However, Huawei is not losing sight of the technology that fueled its success.

Despite the restrictions that many countries have imposed against awarding contracts to the Chinese manufacturer, Huawei is still a frontrunner in the 5G race.

Huawei has already finalised more

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5G contracts than any other telecoms company, half of which are in Europe. In addition, Huawei has built 70% of Africa’s 4G networks, where it is currently negotiating 5G contracts. Moreover, since the addition of the Digital Silk Road to China’s massive Belt and Road Initiative, the company has increased its share of global telecom equipment by 40%.

“Global 5G development has gone far better than we all expected,” Xu says.

“However, we are well aware that the key to the commercial success of 5G doesn’t stop at consumers but includes

the business sector as well. We need to push forward in both areas to address the varied demands of consumers and industries alike.

“First and foremost, we have to redouble efforts to drive consumer adoption and boost the 5G user base. By encouraging more 4G users to make the switch, we can divert more data traffic to 5G networks. At the same time, we are optimising 5G solutions for businesses to drive their commercial adoption at scale and ensure that they benefit all sectors of society.”

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As of December 2020, more than 140 5G networks have been deployed worldwide, with over 330 million users. But Huawei doesn’t want to stop there. The company is working with partners worldwide to drive 5G innovation at scale. Last year, it supported over 3,000 innovation projects worldwide and worked together with carriers to secure over 1,000 5G contracts from companies across more than 20 industries.

“These efforts have brought efficiency gains to our customers and have created greater social benefits too,” Xu says.

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value with 5G in business domains.”

But, eventually, even 5G will fall short.

That is why the company is investing in 5.5G, the next milestone in 5G development. While the deployment of 5G technologies has focused mainly on large bandwidth, massive connections, and low latency, 5.5G will provide three additional use-cases: Uplink Centric Broadband Communication (UCBC), Real-Time Broadband Communication (RTBC), and Harmonised Communication and Sensing (HCS).

“A major initiative of ours is to maximise 5G value and define 5.5G

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with industry peers, to drive the evolution of mobile communications,” Xu explains. “From our experience, we’ve found that downlink capabilities are more important for consumers using 4G or 5G networks, while uplink capabilities are more important for industrial 5G use cases. So we need to increase the uplink capabilities of 5G by at least 40% to meet industrial demand.”

UCBC will enable over 10 Gbps uplink bandwidth, meeting the challenging demands of manufacturing applications like machine vision and broadband IoT. In contrast, RTBC supports large bandwidth and low-latency interaction, which would be able to increase certain bandwidths by 10% and support XR Pro and holographic communications, to provide users with a more immersive experience in the virtual world.

Finally, 5.5G will harmonise communication and sensing capabilities to provide centimetre-level accuracy and low-power indoor positioning. Through 5.5G, HCS will improve navigation services in areas where the signal is weak, such as indoor parkings. But, despite the promising possibilities, it’s still early days for 5.5G. “Right now, we’re still in the beginning stages of 5G development and we should keep pushing forward,” Xu says.

“We need to define 5.5G, expand 5G’s potential from three key scenarios to six,

Going forward, we will invest more in software to pave the way for ongoing growth in the future” and better meet the needs of all different kinds of industries.”

Before the telecommunications sector can take advantage of the benefits of 5.5G, it has a much larger challenge to face. The increase in demand of electronics over the last two years has severely impacted chip manufacturers, and created a global semiconductor shortage. As a result, multinational car manufacturers such as Ford and Nissan have had to slow production or close factories in order to stretch their chip supply. Even Apple has had to stagger the release of the new iPhone. Experts estimate that the crisis will last until 2022 and cost the automotive industry alone $110 billion.

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According to Xu, the sanctions the US imposed against Huawei did not only hurt the Chinese manufacturer’s business but also “caused greater damage to the global semiconductor industry” by disrupting the trust that governments placed upon their technology suppliers.

The huge orders that companies placed in preparation for the ban created a situation where the demand for chips far outweighed its supply.

“We need to get the semiconductor industry back on track,” Xu says.

“Leaders around the world need to take this seriously and make the wise political choice to rebuild trust and help the global supply chain get back on track as soon as possible. If we can rebuild trust and restore collaboration across the global semiconductor supply chain, we can make the most of our collective strengths and maybe the problems we

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face at Huawei could be resolved as well along the way.”

But Huawei is not depending on regulators. Instead, the company is building a way forward based on diversifying the business and becoming self-sufficient.

One of the sectors in which the company has its eyes set on is the automotive industry. Cars are increasingly becoming more connected, intelligent, electric, and shared; characteristics that can greatly benefit from a telecoms innovation. Although autonomous vehicles might still be years away, Huawei is already developing on-board chargers, ePowertrain, and battery management systems for electric cars.

“With intense investment in autonomous driving software, our hope is to drive these trends forward as they facilitate the integration of the automo-

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A major initiative of ours is to maximize 5G value and define 5.5G with industry peers, to drive the evolution of mobile communications”

tive and ICT industries, which in turn creates long-term strategic opportunities for Huawei,” Xu said.

In addition, Huawei is also turning the focus to the optical network, which constitutes the foundation of 5G technologies. The fast broadband speeds, massive capacity and low latency of 5G cannot be achieved without adequate optical networking products. But this is just one of their many use cases.

Huawei has pledged to invest heavily in researching the applications of optical technologies in communications, augmented reality head-up displays, intelligent headlines and fibre sensing in order to create new business oppor-

tunities free from the controversies and constraints of 5G. “In a nutshell, we are using existing technology to explore new opportunities and create new businesses,” Xu says.

“We will keep innovating and driving digital transformation forward with our customers and partners to bring digital to every person, home and organisation for a fully connected, intelligent world.”

Against all odds, Huawei has not only survived the ‘Huawei ban’, but continued to thrive. With its vision turned to software, connected cars, and optical networks, it seems like the company will keep going strong for many years to come.

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A life in tech Lucile Ripa, Analytics & Data Science Partner at WT UK, tells Digital Bulletin about her passion for statistics, the importance of female leadership and why learning never stops

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LUCILE RIPA

I

studied Maths at University for six years. For some that might sound like their worst nightmare, but I love the logic and structure of mathematics. It probably reassures me somehow in a very unstructured and chaotic world.

When it comes to data, I am a statistician. Passionate by the power of tech and data and the countless opportunities it unlocks, which comes with being curious, open to change and a tendency to challenge the status-quo.

The power of abstraction is captivating: as an analyst or data scientist you manipulate concepts and objects a human mind cannot visualise. You analyse data, discover unseen information and extract hidden trends I joined my first role straight after university and stayed there for nine years! It was a startup in the finance industry, and I was a statistician, applying a mathematical approach to financial investments.

I loved the start-up mindset. There is a real sense that everyone can have an impact, we all contribute to the success of the company, and no one can take the backseat.

The company was young, every idea was a new opportunity which really helped shape my ability to be efficient and think outside the box.

The tech and data industries are still largely dominated by males, which can mean many smart women feel they don’t belong.

I am very grateful to have powerful and influential women in my network.

Leaders in their field and companies who have shown me that nothing is impossible; you can be ambitious with your career and have a family life.

The fact Wunderman Thompson UK has a female CEO, Pip Hulbert, was a big influence when I decided to join the agency two years ago.

I hope that by being a leader in my field I can do the same for other young women entering the tech and data world.

I am certainly the happiest when I feel part of a community of smart and motivated people who support each other.

You learn so much being surrounded by intelligent people.

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Female leaders in their field and companies have shown me that nothing is impossible; you can be ambitious with your career and have a family life”

it’s clearly shown that you don’t need to be in the office five days a week to do your best work.

being in the same physical location, using a set of white board and post-its is inspiring.

At Wunderman Thompson we’ve demonstrated we can be extremely efficient and effective when working remotely.

Data ethics and data protection will become fundamental. Customers understand the importance of sharing their data with brands, but they are getting increasingly concerned about their privacy and what businesses do with their personal information.

When you are developing a code that is hundreds of lines long, trust me you need a quiet environment to concentrate and be protected from distractions.

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The legal framework is well in place with GDPR and we are moving to a cookie-less world to protect people’s activity online. Though a lot of grey areas still exist.

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But it is exciting. We are just at the beginning of the journey; the future of AI is in front of us.

Wunderman Thompson is investing in our AI offering to positively influence society and fix bias.

AI models learn from the data they’re trained on, so it’s imperative for people to be aware of biases or imbalances in the data. Being aware of bias in data and fixing them could contribute to a more diverse and inclusive society.

The piece of advice I would give to aspiring data scientists is to be curious and ready for constant learning and changes – new tools, techniques and new ideas.

I started my first role as an analyst but now that’s what we’d call a data scientist, the software was totally different to what we now operate on and what we called big data would be blown out of the water now.

I would be lying if I said I have a 9-5 job.

But preserving my mental health is crucial to me and I am very strict with my use of tech: when my day is done, I switch off all my devices so I can properly check out.

My days are busy and demanding but being able to draw a line and preserve a life outside of work is crucial to be efficient in the long term.

My epitaph would be: ‘Loves London, data and French food!’

I constantly self-train, read articles, books, talk to my peers and team members, it is a constant learning curve.

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Slack’s Head of UK, Stuart Templeton, writes about how technology is continuing to strengthen business ecosystems and customer experiences

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rom the start of the pandemic, organisations around the globe have reworked their businesses in order to keep serving customers in a changing world.

While it’s been one of the most challenging years in history, by accelerating important transformations in response, we are now in a position to cement the long-term changes that will help businesses thrive in the future. Let’s be mindful not to go back to the pre-pandemic status-quo.

The most immediately obvious of these changes are employee centric. From flexible and hybrid working to a greater 88

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onus on wellbeing, employee experience will be at the centre of the future of work.

However, beneath the surface, tech teams have been helping lead a rethink to workplaces in other ways. While employee-centricity is key, the businesses best placed for the future will also have re-thought customer experience, and the ecosystem that underpins that experience.

The shift toward an Ecosystem Economy The pandemic has demonstrated clearly that we are all part of a closely connected, global, community. And,

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as the recent cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal illustrated, those global (sometimes fragile) connections are vital to businesses and trade.

The pandemic and the cargo ship are macro examples of how global ecosystems impact us all. However, on an individual level, every business is part of its own Ecosystem Economy. That means that value isn’t created from a single business; it relies on a network of partners and suppliers.

Pre-pandemic, partnerships in those ecosystems were geared towards longterm contracts. A lengthy agreement was set out, everyone signed on the bottom line, and the next few days, weeks, months, or years were spent with the partners working in isolation to hold up their end of the deal.

However, this isn’t always helpful in a world that can change in the blink of an eye.

As recent events have made clear, supply chains can be precarious.

Moving forward, organisations will seek a more collaborative, fluid, and

integrated approach to partnerships that can adapt to change. This is why technology tools which facilitate real-time collaboration both within and between organisations, and break down silos around communication formed by legacy systems like email, will be at the heart of more agile and resilient ecosystems.

Waiting for days on a response or trying to get through to the right person on the phone will be replaced by live problem solving by cross-organisational teams. Tools like Slack Connect enable this approach, bringing communications between partners, vendors, or clients out of the sluggish, siloed, inbox and into the channel where everyone can collaborate on them in real-time.

Using technology to boost customer experience A focus on fluid and unified ecosystems doesn’t only improve internal processes or external collaboration, it also has a positive impact on the customer.

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While it’s been one of the most challenging years in history, by accelerating important transformations in response, we are now in a position to cement the long-term changes that businesses need to thrive in the future” customer doesn’t want a fragmented experience. Whether their query requires both the sales and customer service teams of a company, or the business and one of its suppliers, customers want to feel like they are dealing with a single entity.

To achieve that, organisations need to focus on dissolving internal and external walls. The shift to remote work enabled by the pandemic may have spurred this in some businesses 90

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already. With teams working from home, different functions can come together in a shared, and transparent digital platform to collaborate, rather than in cordoned off physical spaces.

Having a centralised digital hub to manage those interactions also enables an organisation to consolidate software and touchpoints from different teams. While function-specific technology can be a powerful tool, having disparate apps for each department can slow things down when cross-functional problem solving is needed to help a customer.

Workplace messaging apps can pull all of these information sources into one integrated space, along with tools like chat bots, to ensure all everything needed to deliver a great customer experience is at an organisation’s fingertips.

Beyond direct interactions with customers, a lack of cross-functionality can also impact internal development, which could damage the end customer’s experience.

Ocado, the online supermarket, is one business that has put a cross-functional, digital workplace into action. Ocado uses Slack to keep tech teams connected wherever they are, providing them with transparent access to all the

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information they need to continuously innovate. Using Slack’s API, the central operations team, for example, is automatically notified when a change is made to one of the hundreds of systems across the company. Making sure everyone internally knows what’s going on and giving them instant access to real-time information has been key to building Ocado’s culture of agility and innovation—ultimately aiding their ability to offer a fantastic customer experience.

With broken down silos and a single source of truth, customers and employees should never again spend hours on-hold bouncing between departments or sending emails into never-checked inboxes.

A fluid, silo-free future of business After a year in which it felt at times like the world was put on pause, the future of business will be about responding faster, with greater fluidity. There’s a simultaneous need to both manage ever-more complex interconnected ecosystems of partners, and deliver a unified, responsive experience to customers and employees. These contrasting needs, however, have a shared solution.

By embracing technology that breaks down silos and boosts cross-company, cross-functional collaboration, businesses can embrace the agile approach to work which our interconnected and rapidly changing world demands.

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