Digital Bulletin - Issue 0

Issue 0

GLOBAL LOGISTICS REDEFINED Zinnovate International is quietly upending the business of global logistics.

CEO Håkan Nilsson tells us how

TUR NKE Y A I

Im a g ine a A i ’ s gam e-cha n g i n g a rtificial int e l l i g e n c e m a rket p l a c e

J U S T D O I OT

C i sc o ’ s M ac i e j K r an z on connecting t h e w o r l d - an d y o ur c o mpan y

T H E C L OS I N G BULLETIN

E x c l us i v e c o l u mn fr o m t h o ugh t l eader Sc o t t A my x

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

‘A game-changer’ – IBM to acquire Red Hat for $34bn

IBM is to acquire Red Hat for a company record $34bn. Integrating Red Hat’s world-leading open source software will strengthen IBM in hybrid cloud.

“The acquisition is a game-changer,” said IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. “It changes everything about the cloud market.” IBM’s stock fell by 5% on the news, with Red Hat’s rising by 50%. (29/10/18) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

The winds of change are blowing. Politics, economics, the environment, society itself; subjects that are being increasingly engulfed by division and debate, slowly defining this age of transience.

But while thousands of stories are written on these topics every week, another tectonic shift is rumbling below, arguably underreported to the public and yet impacting just as much on their lives.

Technology has existed across generations and in innumerable forms. Scientific innovation has repeatedly been the catalyst for the human race to achieve the unachievable, usher in different eras and, in the process, revolutionise our world.

Right now, the newest technological revolution is taking hold - and Digital Bulletin is here to follow the journey.

Organisations of all shapes and sizes are feeling the might of what has been termed the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Practices for so long the cornerstone of successful enterprises are being uprooted and replaced by a new methodology, one underpinned by major technologies that stand on the cusp of changing everything.

We will delve deeper into these forces of change, not only unpicking the technologies themselves but also uncovering real-world use cases, analysing the ramifications of the revolution and meeting its protagonists.

For our opening case study, we had the pleasure of being invited to Stockholm to interview Håkan Nilsson, the award-winning CEO of Zinnovate International.

Håkan opened up to our team, revealing some of the secrets behind his company’s outstanding achievements as an IT and management consultancy in the logistics sector.

At Digital Bulletin, we believe in bold and beautiful storytelling. Complementing our article about Håkan and Zinnovate on page 16 - which includes exclusive video from Sweden - is a broad collection of unique features, each delivering insights into the technologies reshaping the business landscape.

We hope you enjoy our first edition.

PUBLISHED BY BULLETIN MEDIA LTD Norwich, UK

Company No: 11454926 www.DigitalBullet.in

TA L K T O U S

editorial@digitalbullet.in business@digitalbullet.in

PU B LI S H I N G M E D I A PRO D U CT I O N D I G I TA L M A R K E T I N G

INSIDE VIEW Stockholm, Sweden

Uncovering the power of people and partnerships to transform global logistics, with HÃ¥kan Nilsson.

Turn to page 16

IGITAL BULLETIN

IMAGINEA

Issue

08 Networks

Cisco

CONTENTS

46 AI

Imaginea Ai Taking artificial intelligence to the masses

78

Clarizen

Brexit and the challenge of business communications

6

Maciej Kranz helps clear the path for your IoT journey

54 Data & Security

PhoenixNAP

Ian McClarty on the evolving data security landscape

38

16

People

Viga

Case study

Zinnovate International

Delivering transformation in global logistics

62 Services

Dr. Kristen Sosulski

Enhancing your business with data visualisation

86 Events

The biggest and best technology events on the horizon

Using AI and EI to empower the workforce

70 Future

Slyce

Leading the market in visual search and image recognition

94 The Closing Bulletin

An exclusive column from pioneering thought leader Scott Amyx

NETWORKS

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MACIEJ KRANZ

JUST DO IoT The Internet of Things. We’ve all heard of it. Some of us may even know all about it. But, as IoT rapidly becomes a game-changer, it remains difficult to define. So we spoke to industry leader and best-selling writer Maciej Kranz at Cisco Systems to get the lowdown on its enormous global impact – and how to start your own IoT journey

R

emember learning about the industrial revolution at school?

It was all thick smoke billowing over cities, workers sweating away in backbreaking conditions and dark satanic mills.

Luckily for future generations of schoolchildren, there is something

infinitely cooler and far less grim about what has been dubbed the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ - and one of the vital organs of this change is the Internet of Things (IoT), a vast network of physical devices connecting our world.

Mobile phones, jet engines, traffic lights, headphones, fridges, bins. There is no limit to objects that can identify themselves to other devices via the internet.

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NETWORKS

It is fundamental to digital transformation across industries, and research from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found that 35% of American manufacturers are currently collecting and using data generated by smart sensors to enhance processes. Alongside that, 34% of manufacturers believe it is “extremely critical” that US manufacturers adopt an IoT strategy in their operations; 60% believe it’s “moderately or slightly critical”.

And yet, it can be a rather vague, unwieldy concept to many. At its simplest, it is collecting data, analysing it and creating value from it. Although it can mean very different things to very different companies, the foundation of its utilisation across all industries is that if you have a data-driven enterprise, IoT can provide the data.

One of the leading experts and proponents of IoT is Polish-American Maciej Kranz, Vice President of Corporate Strategic Innovation at Cisco Systems – which has over 14,000 IoT customers.

Kranz wrote the IoT bible Building The Internet Of Things in 2016. Tellingly, it became a rather unlikely New York Times bestseller, and he recently released its follow-up: Building the Internet of Things – A Project Workbook, a step-by-step guide for business and operations managers going through their IoT journey.

Involved in IoT since the turn of the

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century, Kranz states it was only relatively recently that things began to accelerate. “I would say six or seven years ago, we actually decided the timing was right for us not only as Cisco, but us as an industry to really accelerate our work for a couple of reasons,” he says.

“One was that we saw that in our line of business and operational technology organisations, folks not traditionally heavy adopters of the first wave of internet technologies emerged as a major buying centre for IoT technologies.

“The second one was that we saw the migration in the market structures from what I’d consider vertically-integrated companies – the traditional companies that emerged in the 1960s, 1970s – into more of an open ecosystem, driven primarily by customers and their desire for scalable solutions at a reasonable cost.”

It was clear that IoT was becoming not only accessible to a select range of industries, but rapidly branching out. “IoT started on the B2B side,” Kranz states. “It started with large enterprises, but now in many parts of the world, definitely in the US and western Europe, but also I would say China, India, and parts of Asia, and South America, you now have a fairly robust ecosystem

MACIEJ KRANZ

SIX OR SEVEN YEARS AGO,

WE ACTUALLY DECI DE D

TH E TI M I NG WAS

RIGHT FOR US NOT ON LY AS CI SCO

BUT US AS AN I N DUSTRY TO

REALLY ACCE LE R ATE

OU R WORK

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

HSB Group buys IIoT company relayr for $251.7mn

HSB Group has bought global Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology company relayr for $251.7mn. The transaction was funded through a capital contribution from Munich Re. relayr provides IoT middleware, customised software and consulting to support the digital transformation of industrial and mid-sized commercial companies. (26/10/18) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

MACIEJ KRANZ

that would help people with step-byof integrators and specialists who step instructions on how to prepare can help small and medium-sized businesses start an IoT journey because for the IoT journey, how to maximise the chance for success for their first they’ve done these projects.”

IoT project, but also how to help them This acceleration meant something position themselves well for the future.” else bubbled to the surface: people And so the follow-up, Building the needed to, understand what on earth IoT was. To do that, they needed a handy Internet of Things – A Project Workbook, was born. The real challenge was book to help them grasp it. writing a one-size-fits-all guide “Clients and partners kept when IoT is different things to asking me to recommend different industries, all with a book to help them,” says Building different problems to solve.

Kranz. “So I looked around, the Internet But there are hurdles that and there wasn’t one. So of Things bind most industries at the end of the day I together when starting decided to write one.” out on their IoT journey.

Three years later, “There are many and Building the shared challenges,” Internet of Things: Kranz says. “The first of Implement New Buy Building The Internet Of Things HERE those are technology Business Models, challenges. You have Disrupt Competitors, Building The Internet legacy infrastructure, Transform Your Industry Of Things – A Project Workbook HERE you have new technologies was top of the New coming up. Even IP for a lot of York Times Best Sellers and these folks are sort of new technologies. translated into 15 different languages.

“Then there are cultural challenges.

The message was clear: the Internet When you think about the way a lot of of Things had moved from something these industries have been operating, slightly nebulous and future to you basically have to get them to something very real and now. change to the mindset of constant So, from writing a book explaining IoT, learning and reinventing themselves came the next stage: “I started getting every couple of years. That is what other questions. ‘Okay I like the book. we do in the technology industry, but I read the book. Now I’m ready to get now that every industry is becoming started with my first IoT project’,” adds a technology industry, people have Kranz. to change the culture, change the “It became apparent that it would mindset. be helpful to produce a workbook IoT Workbook

A project workbook

Maciej Kranz

BUY THE BOOKS

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NETWORKS

WE’RE STARTI NG TO “Then there are market structure challenges. Traditionally if you want to build, say, a station you would go to one company or two companies, and they would basically do everything from A to Z. But IoT is an open set of technologies which are driving the adoption of this whole economy model where you have multiple horizontal and vertical models and regional specialists working together to develop these sort of things.”

Whatever the industry – industrial, healthcare, agriculture, smart cities – and wherever they are in the world, initial IoT projections are almost always about connecting operations.

“They want to provide remote operations, remote asset management or remote operating,” says Kranz. “They are using analytics for predictive analytics or preventative maintenance, and that is part of the guidance we give: if you are new to IoT, then don’t reinvent the wheel. Make sure that you focus on the business process first before developing a technology solution.”

And the reward? Streamlining operations and making and saving

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SE E – AN D

I KNOW I SOU N D LI KE

A CLICH É

– EVE RY I N DUSTRY

B ECOM I NG A TECH NOLOGY

I N DUSTRY

MACIEJ KRANZ

money. There are case studies in all four corners of the globe. “There are people who have done preventive maintenance in South America in the oil and gas industry,” says Kranz, “and now you can actually go to these specialists and get this kind of a solution in the organisation at a fraction of the cost it would have taken even five years ago.”

Initially, that reward can seem quite distant. When pitching any new concept, one of the immediate challenges is proving an ROI case.

Especially with new technology, this can often be hard to justify shortterm. There is big-picture persuasion to be done, and Kranz is well aware of this. Which is why you will find an IoT ROI calculator on his site in order to help plan the business case for adopting IoT in your organisation or for particular projects.

There seems to be no going back, now. The Internet of Things revolution will just become the norm, like using electricity became the norm, making phone calls from your house became the norm, watching TV shows in your living room became the norm, accessing the internet on your phone became the norm. The fun, of course, is taking educated guesses at where IoT will be in five years. Global research firm Gartner has said that by 2020 there will be 26 billion connected devices; to Kranz, that’s 26 billion possibilities.

MACIEJ KRANZ TALKS IOT WITH NASDAQ

“We’re starting to see – and I know I sound like a cliché – every industry becoming a technology industry,” says Kranz. “And we’re starting to see industries merging. Obviously the most hyped one is technology and cars, but we’re also starting to see manufacturing and retail, for example, starting to merge.

“New industries are emerging like the drone industry, but also new business models. Now that you have all this data flowing across your enterprise, you can make an intelligent decision, and instead of building you can just rent the capacity that you need and basically move all the savings straight to your bottom line.

“So we’ll see a fairly dramatic migration over the next five years from what I would say are the traditional hardware business models into service business models.”

The revolution is here, folks.

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CASE STUDY

Success NETWORK THE SWEDISH COMPANY QUIETLY TRANSFORMING GLOBAL LOGISTICS AUTHOR: STUART HODGE

Zinnovate is a company born of a powerful idea and great collaborations. The specialist IT and management consultancy has set out to lead the way as the global logistics industry adapts to the new technological revolution.

With one hand on emerging exponential technologies and the other guiding its partners, teams and clients, Zinnovate is striding forward through the power of its extensive global network and offering solutions that nobody else can. Digital Bulletin visited Håkan Nilsson, the company’s figurehead and award-winning CEO, in Stockholm to discover exactly what makes Zinnovate unique.

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ZINNOVATE

17 Issue 0

T CASE STUDY

he Chinese military general and philosopher Sun Tzu once said: “The line between disorder and order lies in logistics”.

Some 2,500 years later, no-one knows that more literally than Håkan Nilsson.

The captivating, softly-spoken leader of five-year-old Swedish IT and management consultancy Zinnovate is quietly going about upending the way global logistics companies do their business. He’s won a panoply of awards in that short time while leading a core team of logistics-industry veterans to rewrite the rulebook for how large, unyielding organisations can transform themselves for the new industrial age.

After a 23-year career including roles as CIO at Geodis Wilson and TNT Freight Management, Nilsson created Zinnovate in late 2013 with a singular mission: Digitally reinvent the business processes of his industry for the

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betterment of all.

Since then, armed with a crack team of individuals with an unparalleled depth of knowledge in their field, Zinnovate has been able to unseat numerous multinational consultancy firms from comfortable contracts by offering something altogether new.

The key for Nilsson was to provide something he had failed to find in his leadership roles on the client side: Expert consultancy that was as nimble and responsive as a start-up but as scalable and tooled-up as a global heavyweight.

He explains: “When you’re on the buying side, either you go with the small guys that were on their toes, flexible – where you’re the most important customer on the planet – but they’re incapable of doing things to scale. Or you go with the big ones, like the IBMs of the world. You know they are there tomorrow, they have everything – but they are a very square box, they are not

ZINNOVATE

“We tap into

THE BEST OF THE BEST that are out there already.”

HÅKAN NILSSON ON THE POWER OF PEOPLE AND TECHNOLOGY

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CASE STUDY

Network of Independent Cargowise Experts

WE DELIVER Reduce Risk

Save Time

Control Cost

Hundreds of years combined logistics technology experience Global expert network – we’re with you, wherever you need us World leaders in EDI, Interface & System Design and Integration Always-on support & board-level consultancy 5 DIGITAL BULLETIN

ZINNOVATE

“When a single entity can’t get the job done, you need a flexible global partner that specializes in combining world class skills” TRUSTED BY

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CASE STUDY

flexible to your needs.

“You have this either/or choice. In other areas also, you either have cuttingedge technology or in-depth industry domain competence, very rarely both. So, I wanted to a create a ‘both’ company to deliver much more value to customers.”

Nilsson’s strategy has broadly involved pairing Zinnovate’s laser-eyed focus on executional excellence in his domain with an often-radical thirst for added innovation. Central to being able to do that - and in so doing build Zinnovate’s rapidly emerging reputation as a force for positive industry disruption - has been the creation of a global network of partnered individuals and companies who can come together quickly and respond to any challenge a client may face.

WiseTech Global’s CargoWise One platform is a first-choice for companies striving for an edge in a digitising logistics industry, and it’s here that Zinnovate found a key motivator. The company’s experienced team of consultants understand CargoWise’s proper implementation better than anyone, but rather than bringing a roll-call of practitioners onto its payroll and then passing those overheads to clients, Nilsson instead began methodically growing a network of experts already working at the top of their game.

“We can scale up much faster. We don’t have to be 100,000 people and

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then add another 50,000 to do things.

We tap into the best of the best that are out there already,” says Nilsson.

One of those is xWare, a Swedish technology integration specialist with its roots in Cold War military communications applications. It was amongst the first names on the teamsheet, and Zinnovate works handin-hand with xWare to provide best-inclass integration solutions for its clients.

Further, to enable Zinnovate to deploy elite-level expertise anywhere in the world, it has teamed up with the

X WAR E xWare provides the integration solutions Zinnovate needs to deliver successful outcomes for clients.

“I want the customer to have value from us as quickly as possible, but also to become independent from us as quickly as possible.

You can only that if you’re at an elite level in integration. That’s the glue of the partnership with xWare.” - Håkan Nilsson

ZINNOVATE

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CASE STUDY

“When you’re helping

OTHERS TO BE SUCCESSFUL , it gets back to you.”

24 DIGITAL BULLETIN

ZINNOVATE

Network of Independent CargoWise Experts, or NICE. Unashamedly specialised, NICE boasts experienced product managers and engineers – many operating as separate companies themselves – on every continent and is working closely with Nilsson to continue to expand the network.

By co-ordinating this web of collaboration, Nilsson and Zinnovate are able to work at scale while operating as closely with customers as a dedicated neighbourhood agency.

The result has been an expanding honour roll of big-name contracts, with Zinnovate often entering the fray to rescue stalled digital transformation

N ICE The Network of Independent CargoWise Experts. Zinnovate’s global grid of elite practitioners.

“We’re present in some 25 countries on all continents. It is truly a synergetic network.” - Håkan Nilsson

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CASE STUDY

PARTNERING WITH

E MP OWERIN G T E A MS WITH WO RL D -L EADIN G N E U RO P SYC H O LO GY Game Intelligence brings cutting-edge neuroscience from the worldrenowned Karolinska Institute into the heart of your organisation.

Gain unparalleled insights through smart cognitive testing and profiling, giving you the tools you need to maximise the executive capacities of your teams and power your company to the next level of performance.

WHAT WE DO

We provide state-of-theart testing tools to assess cognitive capacity. We provide companies with the science they need to predict performance and behaviours, and the tools to deliver elite coaching and development to ensure people and teams are performing to the peak of their abilities.

THE FRONTAL LOBE

We focus on the brain’s executive functions, helping customers understand and access their full capacity, unleash their talent and achieve their maximum potential.

GAM E I NT EL L IG EN C E. CO M

26 DIGITAL BULLETIN

ZINNOVATE

BENEFITS

Heightened awareness of oneself and others, leading to improved performance and skills in leadership and teamwork for individuals, leaders, teams and the whole organization.

OUR SERVICES TRAINING ASSESSMENT COACHING CONSULTING R&D

HOW WE DELIVER

BRAIN INFORMATION PROCESSING

4.

EXECUTE

3.

MONITOR

1.

We support full integration with business and HR strategies, leading to transformation in areas such as leadership and teamwork, workplace satisfaction, performance and innovation.

GATHER

2.

ACTIVATE

“Game Intelligence is about the powerful understanding, prediction and development of behaviour and performance by accessing our full cognitive capacity.”

A ND E R S NO R É N, C E O A ND C O - F O U ND E R

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CASE STUDY

projects before taking a place at the table as a trusted partner in the delivery of successful change.

R E TU R N ON COM PE TENCE

Operating in this way doesn’t come without its challenges, Nilsson readily admits. While being able to leverage the power of distributed talent brings new rewards for customers, its overhead is the need for mindful and deliberate management and control.

Nilsson himself perhaps best embodies Zinnovate’s approach to that challenge. Digital Bulletin met

technologies. But it is almost even more important now to also better understand the human being in this man/machine relationship, otherwise that becomes the breaking point.

“My goal from the get-go with Zinnovate was to create a global team that embraced all of these skills because they are completely interdependent. If you do not embrace them holistically, the odds are very high that you will not be successful in your global transformation project.

“If I add that glue of personal chemistry between the teams, we can

“ START

WITH EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION , that in turn will drive the ability for employees and teammates to deliver

VALUE TO THE CUSTOMERS. ” with him during a partner conference in Stockholm and witnessed him lead an event whose most salient characteristic was its constructive informality and openness. Hugs over handshakes. Dialogue over diktat.

It’s a people-first approach to business that’s been woven into Zinnovate’s core principals from the beginning, says Nilsson, in respect to both colleagues and how it provides value to clients.

“For us to be successful in delivering value to our customers, we need to be at the forefront with exponential

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deliver something that is unique.”

Nilsson has codified his people-first approach into the DNA of Zinnovate. He eschews profit as a primary measure of success, preferring instead to benchmark his company on what he calls ‘return on competence’.

“This is one overruling guiding light in terms of KPIs,” Nilsson says with a smile. “I think if you start with employee satisfaction, that in turn will drive the ability for employees and teammates to deliver value to the customers, which in turn will drive your financial performance.

ZINNOVATE

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CASE STUDY

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ZINNOVATE

“So, in my world, it’s employees first, customers second and shareholders third, because they follow that logical cause and effect consequence in that chain.

“What I’m looking forward to is being able to take this ROC mantra and build it stronger and stronger. It is already proving a successful ingredient, but I think we can do even more in this.”

Zinnovate delivers technical solutions to large logistics clients with extremely complex problems, but in prioritising the people interacting with that technology – the “fluffy-fluffy side of

GAM E I NTE LLIGE NCE World-leading neuroscientists at Game Intelligence are bringing their transformative peoplemanagement solutions to Zinnovate’s clients.

“With Game Intelligence I think we are tapping into an opportunity that makes us truly unique when you compare us to the competition.” - Håkan Nilsson

business” – it is able to offer more than the sum of its parts.

Nilsson sees his mission being much more than the delivery of systems and processes alone, but rather helping people become better themselves.

Successful digital transformation, he says, is as much about the HR department and influencing human behaviour. One success metric for Nilsson is to help organisations reach a level where they don’t need Zinnovate at all.

“It doesn’t have to be about Zinnovate delivering a value that the customer was unable to deliver themselves. It may also be to ignite some things, enable the customer to deliver something that they potentially could have already delivered even before we enter the stage. I think this bridging between silos is also the fastest way… if you can connect the dots that are already there in the network, it’s a faster way forward.”

R ADICAL I N NOVATION

Zinnovate’s network of partnerships has led it to rapid success on the executional side of IT and management contracts with clients, but it’s a network Nilsson is broadening in sometimes surprising ways to include novel new competencies.

His devotion to a people-first mantra is what led him to the doors of the famous Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, home of the Nobel prize, and a group of world-

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CASE STUDY

“WE’RE LOOKING AT FOREFRONT TECHNOLOGIES, we’re looking at the latest neuroscience and,

ABOVE ALL , we’re looking at how

can we make our TEAMMATES HAPPIER.” leading neuroscientists aiming to revolutionise how organisations can better hire, manage and empower their workforces. Its company, Game Intelligence, worked with elite footballers such as Andres Iniesta as part of its research and development, and is now working with Zinnovate to bring the power of cutting-edge cognitive science to the projects Nilsson’s team undertakes.

Even further off-piste in the context of logistics IT, on first glance, is an investment Zinnovate has made in a company called Starflow.

Starflow has built a blockchainbased platform to enable artists and social media influencers to draw revenues from fans via secure microtransactions, helping them circumvent the vice-like contentmonetisation grip of the likes of Facebook and Google.

Nilsson has foreseen the direct relevance that strand of technology could have in his area of interest: “I moved into this space to learn about

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micropayments. I think that also applies in logistics. Where you have situations where you need to make numerous transactions and it would be prohibited by a transaction fee because the fee is too big in relation to the payment itself.

“Working with Starflow reflects Zinnovate’s ambition to be at the forefront, to learn about other economies, to learn about blockchain technology.”

Enigio Time is another blockchain pioneer working with Zinnovate. A fellow Stockholm native, the company has spent the last six years applying distributed ledger technology to the world of finance. While the company is primarily focussed on cutting out the paper – and furious costs and delays – still belabouring the consumer mortgage industry, its growing list of patents promise much for Zinnovate’s ability to transform its customers’ capabilities for the better.

“I thought, okay, Enigio Time is leading and it has some really smart

ZINNOVATE

TRANSFORMING BUSINESS

with blockchain technology

Simplify and modernise your business by digitising all paper-based processes logistics digital bills-of-lading legal proxies

we ensure the immutability, integrity, traceability and ownership of your digital information

testaments

corporate agreements

e:archives

time stamps

secured copyrights

digital mortgages

leasing contracts

digitised services meeting a new generation’s expectations secure legal paperless mortgages and other bearer contracts digital information proven, secured, and protected from manipulation independent proof of what happened, when and in what order

www.enigio.com

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CASE STUDY

E N IG IO TI M E Blockchain pioneers bringing fintech expertise to bear on logistics in partnership with Zinnovate.

“We can take things that have already been developed for the finance industry and find use cases in the logistics industry that nobody in the logistics industry has ever thought of.” - Håkan Nilsson

patents in blockchain for fintech. I believe, in logistics, we are a few steps behind that, so if we can team up with them and cross-fertilise our logistics knowledge with its leading fintech blockchain knowledge, we can create a really strong win-win,” he says.

“We can take things that have already been developed for the finance industry and find use cases in the logistics industry that nobody in the industry has ever thought of.”

The potential blockbuster impact of blockchain on the sector is front of mind for Nilsson, so in addition to Enigio Time’s capabilities he has also partnered with

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ShipChain, the high profile, US-based logistics platform aiming to ‘track and trace’ the entire supply chain with blockchain contracts.

“ShipChain is currently very much driven from the US, but from that aspect we combine ourselves with the European strengths we bring to the table and the American strengths that ShipChain brings. ShipChain is definitely a company with global ambitions.”

From its strong, core partnerships with leading vendors such as WiseTech and XWare, to seemingly tangential relationships with brain scientists, Zinnovate is leveraging its distributed,

ZINNOVATE

network-based operating model to explore every possible avenue of added value for its clients.

It’s how the company is “disrupting with honesty”, as Nilsson puts it. But when asked what the future looks like for his company, Nilsson is quick to return to the people-centric mission at the beginning of the journey. “We want to expand,” he says, but it’s heavily qualified.

“We are not on a growth journey in terms of number of employees. We will grow our global partner network.

“It’s not just a desire to be global; we are helping global customers… so it’s

almost in-built in that we need to have global presence. That’s one dimension.

“The other dimension is definitely to grow in terms of expanding our capabilities. We’re looking at forefront technologies, we’re looking at the latest neuroscience and, above all, we’re looking at how can we make our teammates more passionate, happier, and help them find even more joy in their profession.”

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VIGA

LEWIS REEVES (CENTRE) LAUNCHED VIGA BACK IN 2016

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I PEOPLE

t’s in the best interests of any company to ensure its workforce is engaged, focused and determined to succeed.

In fact, research by the Hay Group has shown organisations with engaged employees make two-anda-half times the revenue of those which don’t. That’s easy math, but the challenge of actually creating that level of engagement can be a little more complex.

A strong company culture; clear definition to an employee’s role; the offer of opportunities for training and career advancement; the empowerment of employees - these things and more are part of the equation of how to ensure an employee feels valued.

Two of the principle tenets of ensuring engagement are to make the employee feel validated and valued as an individual and to allow them to express their creativity within the bounds of a supportive, clear structure.

But as well as having everything in place to bring the best out of your employees, organisations also have to allow for human factors which could affect performance. Issues in any facet of a person’s wellbeing can have an

influence on their productivity at work, and often these are private matters which require considerable discretion.

A good employer will be able to drill down into what makes its employees tick, and as a result ensure the best levels of performance from the workforce by giving them the support and motivation needed to succeed – especially when employees experience difficulties.There are now more tools than ever to keep track of how employees are performing, more metrics to measure against, and more discrete ways of monitoring all of these aspects. But how exactly do you balance their use with the human compassion needed to ensure success?

USI NG AI AN D EI

One company taking a novel approach is Viga , a data collection and market research specialist which has made a big splash since its formation in 2016, taking a consultancy-based strategy which aims to provide data faster and more efficiently than ever before using proprietary software.

After making an impact in the industry following its formation, the firm has gone from strength

The beaut y that I ’ve seen from things like ar tificial intelligence is it allows us to spot trends with our staf f and in our business , allowing us to get information to the top much , much faster 40 DIGITAL BULLETIN

VIGA

REEVES LEADS VIGA’S EXPERT TEAM OF RESEARCHERS, ANALYSTS AND TECH SPECIALISTS

to strength under the guidance of 26-year-old CEO Lewis Reeves’ He credits the company’s people as driving the success of the business and makes it his mission to ensure his employees feel valued. In order to help make that happen, but also to ensure the best levels of performance from the workforce, Viga combines two different forces.

Firstly, it has adopted artificial intelligence tools for the monitoring of employees’ performance and engagement levels, while secondly it has recruited a workplace psychology specialist whose role is to give the workers someone they feel comfortable talking to about absolutely anything.

Automated analysis meets human compassion, right?

“I think it’s around being able to gain information at a much faster rate and then act on it,” says Reeves. “I’m very traditional and I think for all forms of personal interactions and relationship building, there is greater value in that being human-to-human. But I think the beauty that I’ve seen from things like artificial intelligence is it allows us to spot trends with our staff and in our business, allowing us to get information to the top much, much faster.

“When we look at the data that we have within our business, we can start overlaying a good amount of intelligence that enables us to spot trends with our own people’s performances in order to evolve and ensure that we’re staying relevant for our people. And I think that what we use

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

HCL Technologies set to add up to 30,000 to its workforce

HCL Technologies plans to recruit nearly 30,000 new employees this fiscal year. The Indian IT services giant has rapidly grown its client base, signing 17 major transformation deals in recent months. Localisation has improved for HCL, with 65% of its workers in the US being local, reducing reliance on H-1B visas. It currently has close to 130,000 employees globally. (26/10/18) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

VIGA

that level of intelligence for is to get us into a position where we can better utilise our time to go and spend with individuals on a one-toone basis.”

Viga is able to track all manner of performance metrics to see how individuals are performing over time and can then relate that to “For me, ongoing employee satisfaction growth generates Lewis Reeves excitement. And I’m levels. Additionally, there are alerts the sort of person that gets programmed into the company’s bored very, very easily. I system which allow them to see dips need to have constant “I enjoy work in performance and efficiency. change and as probably my excitement” But is there not a danger of greatest hobby. creating a ‘Big Brother’-style setup Mixing those two things where employees feel like they together make me very passionate are under constant vigilance from “Having been about work” management? Would that not in a very safe spot and having a great prove counterproductive in the end? job, I decided to take “It’s not that we are doing the plunge and set it because we are running a up Viga” sweatshop and we want everyone to be working 20 hours a day and harsh approach to utilising data’ but delivering,” Reeves explains. “But we we use that data with our psychology find incredible correlations between specialist, someone who is obviously people’s desire to be working for us, very emotionally engaged, to prompt their enjoyment working for us, and the conversations. It’s very much for a amount that they’re putting in. quiet conversation where our specialist, “Yeah, I think if you look at it in a certain Annie, who’s very approachable way, you can go, ‘Wow, that’s a pretty

IN MY OWN WORDS

It’s the furthest thing from cynical in terms of the use of data. It’s much more to know where we need to focus our attention in a very humane manner to allow individuals to feel as free and as calm as possible in the workplace 43 Issue 0

PEOPLE

and very trustworthy, will say, ‘Hey, employee, fancy coming in for a coffee? Let’s have a catch up’. And it’s amazing how very, very rarely is the communication ever, ‘So I’ve seen that this is dropping. Is there anything you want to tell me?’

“It’s the furthest thing from cynical in terms of the use of that data. It’s much more to know where we need to focus our attention in a very humane manner

individual,” he adds. “And I think that that is huge. It’s something that is very, very close to my heart.

“But when you’re time poor like me, and driving the business forward to grow at some of the triple digit rates that we continue to grow at, it’s not always easy to take your foot off the gas and have the level of sympathy that is required in those situations. By having a specialist on staff, she’s able to do that very naturally and give people the time and attention that they need.”

AN ENGAGED WOR KFORCE ABOUT ANNIE BUCHANAN-KILBEY – VIGA’S PSYCHOLOGY EXPERT

Annie Buchanan-Kilbey has a real interest in workplace psychology.

She gained a BSc in Psychology from Queen Mary University of London and is a member of the British Psychological Society.

Annie is qualified in psychometric training and plans to continue her development in industrial and organisational psychology. She is currently undertaking her CIPD.

to allow individuals to feel as free and as calm as possible in the workplace.”

Reeves jokes about the TV show Billions, where a company psychologist becomes privy to information about illegal schemes and plots but concedes that Viga’s setup is not quite like that.

“Annie is incredibly good at providing management with information that they need whilst protecting the

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That’s something which is at the root of just about any guidance notes which surround how to keep employees engaged, particularly the younger segments of the workforce. Millennials are now the largest generation of workers and studies demonstrate that employers find it hard to foster a workplace which caters to their needs.

They have grown up in the digital age and are more tech-driven, leading to a balancing act between appeasing the needs of these workers – most of whom, statistics show, are dissatisfied due to a lack of recognition and a lack of work/ life balance – while ensuring they don’t get swept away in the new wave of technology.

Viga employs millennials and Reeves reckons being one himself gives him a keener appreciation of what they require to stay motivated. “Sometimes I think millennials have a reputation

VIGA

VIGA PRIDES ITSELF ON THE WAY IT TREATS ITS EMPLOYEES

of misbehaving and changing the dynamic,” he says. “And there seems to be this sort of mystery around that segment of the workforce.

“But I think if we can create environments where they have the freedom, that trust to go and explore something, and they can receive rewards for doing that, then it creates an environment where they are willing to really buckle down and buy into it, because they feel like they’re part of it.”

No doubt Viga seems to be finding success with its approach and Reeves is understandably proud of the environment he’s created for his workers. For a company of Viga’s size, it appears to be working beautifully. But is it scalable to larger organisations?

Reeves ponders the question for a minute.

“I think it’s scalable from the ground up,” he suggests. “So I see no issue of it with an organisation 10-times the size of Viga. I think it could be offered in exactly the same manner. You would need a few more specialists to go and do the human interaction side, but that’s highly scalable.

“At the end of the day, I think it’s an ingrained culture within our organisation that’s been there from the start, and people know who they can go to to talk to. They’ve grown up, and the business has grown up with those individuals. And hence, that trust exists, and that trust continues to exist.”

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AI

PUTTING AI IN THE

SHOP WINDOW As Imaginea Ai prepares to take its collaborative platform to the world, founder Nav Dhunay outlines why he’s convinced it will fire a new dawn for artificial intelligence in enterprise

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IMAGINEA AI

av Dhunay is a man who isn’t afraid to chase a dream.

An innovator in every sense, Dhunay has repeatedly demonstrated an entrepreneur’s nous by creating, scaling and selling technology ideas. His biggest successes - CanFlix, a trailblazer for the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime, and NavNet, a pioneer in control and home automation - have positioned him as a highly-respected figure in the space.

His newest ambition, however, might yet represent his most formidable challenge. As founder, president and CEO of Imaginea Ai, Dhunay is aiming to provide the answer to a long-held question: How can artificial intelligence, and the transformational impact it has on the enterprise, be absorbed by a broader market?

This great hurdle - one that sprouts ethical, philosophical and commercial debate - has been tackled on countless occasions. Often mistakenly bucketed along with upstart technologies like blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT), AI is a founding father of the so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’.

But even though it was first defined as an academic discipline over 60 years ago, fluctuating waves of funding and research have left its journey to widespread business integration far from complete.

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According to Dhunay, Imaginea Ai, with its groundbreaking collaborative platform and marketplace in the pipeline, could take the reins from here. “We want to make it easy for organisations to access AI,” he tells Digital Bulletin. “The mission behind Imaginea Ai was to democratise artificial intelligence. That’s really what we’re all about.”

Calling on experience gained in AI implementation at Ambyint, his previous startup in the oil & gas sector, Dhunay formed Imaginea Ai alongside business partner Suzanne West in late 2017. West had created the Imaginea brand with Imaginea Energy, a company founded in 2014 on the premise of balancing hydrocarbon production with zero emissions, pollution and fresh water use. The pair set about combining their expertise to exploit a gap in the wider market - and

IMAGINEA AI AIMS FOR ITS PLATFORM TO BE APPLICABLE ACROSS INDUSTRY

to possibly change the world.

Tragedy struck in March this year, however, when West passed away after suffering with brain cancer. Her death significantly affected Dhunay, but also provided him, now as sole proprietor of their organisation, with renewed motivation and extra purpose to take forward their vision of democratising

Not only are we going to give our users, our customers and the world a platform where they can build artificial intelligence – a suite of tools on there that allow for accelerated AI development – we’re also giving them a marketplace”

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IMAGINEA AI

AI. Ever since, Imaginea Ai has been working on turning that vision into a reality.

“To accomplish this, we’re building an AI ecosystem,” Dhunay explains.

“We call it an ecosystem because it’s comprised of an AI platform and a marketplace, and this is where it gets really exciting for me. Not only are we

going to give our users, our customers and the world a platform where they can build artificial intelligence – a suite of tools on there that allow for accelerated AI development – we’re also giving them a marketplace where organisations will be able to put their data or problems up into this platform and hand them to data scientists all over the world working to solve those problems.”

Initially, Imaginea Ai is to prioritise the industry verticals most familiar to Dhunay: oil & gas, mining, construction and Canada’s newly proliferating cannabis sector. Having already led on the development of AI tools in those areas, Dhunay plans for them to be housed on the Imaginea Ai platform.

Each of the platform’s modules currently run off Python programming.

“These are tools that I have designed over 12 years working in AI,” he explains.

“Tools like a synthetic data generator, tools like an AI bot that helps you train your own AI bot.”

For Dhunay, the key to growth is the platform’s scope to add value across industries, all around the globe. “We are not restricted by geographical domains so we are looking to go global with this entire ecosystem,” he adds.

“That gives us access to a broad range of talent that allows us to scale AI overall. We’re talking about tapping into some of the great data scientists that exist in places like India, Singapore, China, Vietnam, the UK, even in Canada

49 Issue 0

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Atos and Google Cloud launch AI lab in London

Atos and Google Cloud have launched their first AI lab under the Atos and Google Cloud’s global partnership. The lab in London will bring together expertise in AI alongside private and public sector organisational capabilities to collaborate and unlock cross-enterprise opportunities. The new lab will be available to businesses and public-sector bodies across Europe to utilise AI technologies. (16/10/18) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

IMAGINEA AI

and the United States. It’s very much like a network effect model. The more people we have working on the system, the more organisations we have, the more problems we can solve, and that just continues to snowball.”

Dhunay is fully aware of the challenges potentially impeding those expansion plans, as the requirements of every business are different to the next. This is especially applicable to disruptive technologies, with companies facing up to a lack of knowledge and an absence of plans to implement strategies in this field.

AI is the most profound technology of our time and organisations should dive heavily into it now so they can benefit early”

That is why education is going to be a major priority for Imaginea Ai. Dhunay is particularly keen to see the potential an increase in knowhow could hold in sectors lagging behind in the digital era. “There are still some fears associated with AI, like there are still some concerns with cloud computing,” he says. “They exist in many different sectors, so we’re going to be doing a lot of education. AI is the most profound technology of our time and organisations should dive heavily into it now so they can benefit early.

“From a technology perspective, we also have a challenge in building

a platform that can host various different types of AI. It’s something that can be overcome, but we’re in the early stages of running into some of those roadblocks – or hurdles more than anything else. How do we get computer vision, natural language processing and neural networks all living together, and have people able to access various different types of

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technologies very quickly, via a single platform? No-one’s ever done that before.”

In June, Imaginea Ai opened its whitelist for a fully-regulated Security Token Offering (STO) ahead of an imminent launch in Canada.

This marked a big step towards its objective of introducing a blockchainbased payments system for its users and collaborators operating in different parts of the world.

Via “ICE Tokens”, Imaginea Ai will be able to provide access to its platform through the use of distributed ledger technology, facilitating secure transactions for bought or sold services across its AI ecosystem.

Users will negotiate a smart contract, or ‘Live Contract’, with those terms then locked in until the agreed work is completed and relevant parties paid.

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Our goal is simply to be making people more aware of AI , understanding its benefits and getting them more comfortable with what artificial intelligence can do for them”

Dhunay says this represents a longterm strategy to develop a backbone to his company’s platform, not a half-baked attempt to associate with an in-vogue technology. “We’re going to all the different countries that we want to roll out to and getting jurisdictional approval for our token,” he reveals. “Our token will be a secure

IMAGINEA AI

NAV DHUNAY

token that will be regulated. So it’s not a here-today-gone-tomorrow type of cryptocurrency story, it’s an ecosystem we’re building with a real, tangible use for a token.

“Now we don’t need to worry about cross-border payments, foreign exchange rates or jurisdictional taxes.

You as an individual sitting in Africa

working on some great data science, when the job is done, you get some tokens. And then it’s your responsibility to take those tokens and convert them to your local currency.

“We didn’t do this just because we wanted to add another buzzword into the organisation. We did this because it actually really made sense for us to use blockchain to manage the trust within our ecosystem.”

The critical jigsaw pieces are certainly falling into place for Dhunay and Imaginea Ai, but what does the serial entrepreneur sense as the required catalysts for his latest startup to break through?

“Getting the right partners involved will really accelerate that platform growth,” he concludes. “That’s going to be vital. I’m not looking for slow adoption. And the reason I say that is because as I look around at more and more organisations using AI, as I look at various different companies, I look at how they can really become a dominant player in their sector if they leverage it.

“Our goal is simply to be making people more aware of AI, understanding its benefits and getting them more comfortable with what artificial intelligence can do for them.”

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DATA & SECURITY

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IAN MCCLARTY

FINDING THE D TA SECURITY FORMULA With data growing at an exponential rate, data security and operational risk management are more important than ever before.

Ian McClarty, President of global IT firm PhoenixNAP, is a self-professed “technologist to the core” and talks us through the state of the data security industry and how it’s changing

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DATA & SECURITY

he vast amount of data being created and stored nowadays has created unique opportunities for companies to gain an advantage in their marketplace – but it also leaves them arguably more vulnerable than ever before. Just ask the board of Equifax, as the credit report heavyweight is only now finding out just how costly its massive data breach last year is going to be, and we are talking hundreds of millions. Even with insurance.

The proliferation of data is staggering.

To offer a little context, Google processes three-and-a-half billion searches a day, and that’s just over three quarters of the total number of search engine queries. Every single minute, over four million videos are watched on YouTube and nearly half-amillion tweets are sent.

But it’s not just about search engines and social media. Overall, at least 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are being created every day when you factor in global e-commerce and everything else that comes with the growth of the internet.

And it’s an exponential equation.

Over 90% of the data in the world was generated in just the last two years, showing the spiking curve. But these figures also underline the need for those involved at the highest levels of business and enterprise to show

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It’s actually easier nowadays to secure data than ever before. What creates a complexity is that not everybody is at the same pace” the necessary prudence and threat awareness.

Stéphane Nappo, CISO of banking giant Societe Generale, put it best when he said ‘it takes 20 years to build a reputation and few minutes of cyberincident to ruin it’. Even with more awareness out there about the type of threats and how organisations can be vulnerable, the landscape is always evolving and it’s important to keep up with the beat of change.

Ian McClarty, President of Global IT Services provider PhoenixNAP, is a firm believer that it’s more important than ever for companies to have a strong focus on data security.

“The data now becomes a liability in a lot of ways,” says McClarty. “Companies are not geared to embrace that, so they’re going to third parties for

IAN MCCLARTY

ABOUT PHOENIXNAP AND PRESIDENT IAN MCCLARTY

PhoenixNap Global IT Services is a firm which specialises in most aspects of IT and computing across the world.

help. We are seeing more and more demands in the market because of that reason alone. And the risk factors have got bigger when it comes to the management group, it can be the ending of your profession. It’s no longer taking last place. It’s a very real thing.

“You see more C-level executives also getting fired, and they will continue to get fired for major compromises that happen to networks, so that’s also very real. There are more threats, more active threats, more pressure.”

This all sounds pretty scary, but it doesn’t have to be as bad as that. One of the first rudiments is to ensure that you don’t handle or process data that you don’t need. But that in turn creates another issue in terms of being able to control data, for a number of reasons.

McClarty explains: “It’s not that it’s

It offers resource and assistance with all aspects of IT management, including providing specialist advice when it comes to The company, operational risk founded in 2009, management. employs a staff of over 600 operating in 9 separate locations: two in Phoenix as well as in Los Angeles, Charlotte, PhoenixNAP’s Valletta, Malta, Belgrade, President and Novi Sad, Amsterdam CEO Ian McClarty and Singapore. holds an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management. He has over 20 years executive management experience He is a keen in the cybersecurity student of the and data centre history of IT and tries industry.

to implement those learnings in situations encountered during the present day.

getting harder and harder to secure.

It’s actually easier nowadays to secure data than ever before. What creates a complexity is that not everybody is at the same pace of technology adoption.

That’s the issue. And you also rely on third parties nowadays. Every company now relies on some piece of another

57 Issue 0

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Cross-industry coalition pledges $85mn to cybersecurity venture Team8

Cyber resilience and data science firm Team8 has attracted $85mn in funding from companies such as Walmart, Airbus, Microsoft, Cisco and Nokia. The cross-industry coalition wants to accelerate digital transformation initiatives currently Inhibited by security challenges. Funds will be used to develop technology-based tools to allow organisations to thrive in the face of growing cyber threats. (23/10/18) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

IAN MCCLARTY

company to do business.

“This is talking about the IT part, not even the other business parts.

A company that today used to do all these things in-house and now basically uses Software-as-a-Service, they’re a third party, and it means the data is out there somewhere. You

have your data all over the place now. A lot of companies, by their own doing, are channelling data into multiple sources. From a data control perspective, that makes it harder.”

So what is the answer? With the vast number of threats out there – whether from a social engineering

WHAT HISTORY CAN TEACH US ABOUT GDPR The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has standardised data protection law across all 28 EU countries and imposes strict new rules on controlling and processing personally identifiable information, replacing the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive.

No doubt it’s going to be a game changer in the same way that PCI was when it came to credit card transactions - and PhoenixNAP was an early adopter of PCI, going on to establish CCBill, a successful credit card processing company.

Ian McClarty has been there throughout that journey and he can see many parallels between the challenges in the EU adopting GDPR and how PCI started. There is also a similarity when it comes to the stringency of the regulation in PCI nowadays. He says: “PCI gets harder and harder every year.

What’s happening today is there is more and more regulation happening from different sources. You have Card Association, for example.

“Visa, MasterCard and all the other credit cards have come together and they police themselves. They do that on purpose, because they don’t want the

governments to come in. And they do a very good job of policing themselves.

They have very strong clients and they will come after you. They are also extending the fines to auditors now, so the bar gets raised every year. It gets harder and harder and they do that on purpose because there are more compromises happening every year.

“That’s a lot of business risk that it puts on the ownership group. If you have shown that you have poorly managed customer data, the governments can come after you as a business owner.

That’s also very real and you can get black-balled.

“And so, it’s the beginning of it and it’s very undefined right now, but GDPR itself is very cumbersome. It reminds me a lot of how PCI started in the beginning. It was very undefined.

GDPR, over the years, if it sticks around, will get more and more defined.

It will get challenged in court. It’ll get negotiated. But it’s creating a posture of data protection and data sovereignty. It’s also making sure that data is expunged, so there are a lot of pieces that are being laid out from that perspective as well.”

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DATA & SECURITY

Artificial intelligence is a big trend right now in intrusion detection.

A lot of companies are trying to figure out ways to forecast the next virus or the next major attack vector through their use of AI” perspective such as phishing attacks and use of ransomware to fully blown zero-day exploits – what else can companies do to try and stay a step ahead of the attackers?

From McClarty’s point of view, there is a clear correlation between learning from the history of computing and IT throughout the ages, and utilising the most advanced technological tools out there right now.

He’s been involved in the sector since what he calls “the wild west” days in the 1990s and describes himself as a “technologist to the core”.

McClarty’s latest passion is AI but he believes things go in cycles within the sector he’s been immersed in for over two decades, all of that time with

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PhoenixNAP. “There’s a lot to be learned from the past and the history and people forget about that,” he observes. “You look at a lot of the cloud systems that are set up today and there are a lot of concepts were already in place. Maybe not the financial models, but the actual ID concepts had already evolved even 20 to 25 years ago.

“Artificial intelligence is a big trend right now in intrusion detection. A lot of companies are trying to figure out ways to forecast the next virus or the next major attack vector through their use of AI. Because they have a roadmap already of how these things have developed over the years, it’s almost like filling in the gaps for what

IAN MCCLARTY

the next element is going to be in that equation.

“From a profile perspective, they’re already gearing themselves up for the next version of attacks that will be coming through. Technology is trying to get ahead of it. The reality with security and attacks is that they always leapfrog each other. We may be in a leapfrog methodology because of pressure to try and get ahead again. Which is going to make it, again, harder more complex.”

McClarty is excited about the future and the abundant opportunity in the data security sector. He believes the main growth in the next few months and years will come in blockchain and data encryption, with more companies daring to venture into those areas.

He adds: “They’re going to try these component pieces of blockchain for identity management. They’re going to try to use blockchain for protection of chain of custody of information so that you know who did what, when, with that data. So that’s important and you’ll see a lot of the evolving technologies trying to get put into the

mix of security as well. That’s artificial intelligence, deep learning, all those buzzwords that get used over and over again, but they’re real. I mean, people are actually really doing these things, right?

“You will have your next generation of software developers and companies coming online and some of them are going to pivot into the security field.

They’re going to see opportunity there and they’re going to try and make a name for themselves and so they’re going to try to do something unique and different.

“Identity management and chain of custody issues happen with a lot of data security, because encryption is only one piece of it. You also want to know where it went and who touched it and why and when. And those answers aren’t so easy to answer all the time. You want to see a life cycle of that data, from cradle to grave, and that’s almost impossible in many ways.

“It’s one thing to have encrypted data but if your encrypted data moves around from point A to point B and a lot of people have access to those keys, how secure is your data, really? You’re going to see a lot more development around that.”

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SERVICES

VISUALI AUTHOR: DR. KRISTEN SOSULSKI

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DR. KRISTEN SOSULSKI

ISE THIS For centuries we’ve been using graphs and charts to enhance information and data. Recently, this old practice has got a modern makeover, with data visualisation now a vital key for communicating insights and tracking behaviours.

Dr. Kristen Sosulski is an expert in the data visualisation field. An Associate Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the Director for the NYU Stern

Learning Science Lab, she consults and leads workshops on data visualisation techniques and best practices.

Kristen has a new book out, Data Visualisation Made Simple: Insights Into Becoming Visual, which you can pre-order here.

Here she gives the lowdown on how you can use data visualisation to get the most out of your employees, help enhance your business and communicate more effectively with your audience.

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SERVICES

equip and train executives to mine and visualise data. My area lays at the intersection of what I call business analytics and learning science. I design digital platforms, I analyse those analytics and visualise those results.

Visualisation is a process of creating data graphics to tell a story, and communicate insights with information. Translating data into information means we can level the playing field and allow for a better and clear comprehensive of the message.

I have three ways of describing it: transforming data into information, communicating insights and, lastly, but not least, providing evidence.

Visualisation’s been around since William Playfair in the late 1700s. He invented the line graph and the bar graph, so it’s been a tool used a lot in statistics and economics. Edward Tufte really popularised the idea of using information graphics in one’s practice.

I’ve been involved in this ever since I was at business school – the idea of always having to sell a message. Being able to really sell my idea or message always came with not just showing a pretty picture, but having a picture that says something backed up by data.

I think visualisation is now an interface that allows us to understand the world; anything from your smartphone to

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30 WAYS TO VISUALISE DATA SOURCE: KRISTEN SOSULSKI (2018)

I think visualisation is now an interface that allows us to understand the world; anything from your smartphone to your smart cities”

DR. KRISTEN SOSULSKI

your smart cities. It’s really been a way to allow us to navigate, explore and synthesise simple and complex data.

Charts and graphs are the currency in which PowerPoint exists, so we’re used to showing some information and some numbers in graphic form. But they don’t always hit the mark and the way I describe it in my book is ‘putting the extra 20% in’ to ensure you can really see the value of the proposition one is making.

Using visualisation to help grow your business starts with the information access, and then you have to change the culture of your organisation to encourage information sharing – that’s the foundation of this.

You have to make sure you have that data access across the various departments, from marketing to operations, to be able to use that data effectively.

I would say visualisation applies to all industries. It’s really agnostic.

Some people describe it as a tool, but I like saying it’s a process. It’s a process in creating a new way of communicating, and in any field you need to communicate and use data that is applicable.

For example, let’s take an HR consulting company. They would work with other businesses and organisations to answer questions such as ‘how are we paying our employees in relation to market rates?’. If you imagine a large corporation with, say, 4000 employees, it involves access to broader market data, nuanced things like employee seniority, job functions and other variables. So as an HR company, I could show you a spreadsheet of numbers, or I could show you a visual interface that easily presents to you and your 4000 employees those which are within the pay-grade range and those that are outside the range. It will also show you where we need to make some adjustments. So it signals an action one can take.

Another example is a big brand digital strategy firm who might be questioning what the value of mobile is and their clients’ digital strategy. We know mobile is really important and we need to know where customers convert: they fill their shopping cart online in one place, but are they converting using that same technology? It seems like a straightforward question, but you have to understand the linkages of behaviour. So, as a customer, I fill my shopping cart up online on my lunch hour on my desktop, and then on my commute home I’m going to convert and checkout on my mobile device. So

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

AWS announces data centre plans for South Africa

Amazon Web Services is to open an infrastructure region in South Africa in the first half of 2020. The new AWS Africa (Cape Town) Region will consist of three Availability Zones. It will enable more African organisations to leverage advanced technologies such as AI, Machine Learning, IoT, mobile services, and more to drive innovation. (25/10/18) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

DR. KRISTEN SOSULSKI FIGURE 5.14 (BEFORE)

AN ALTERNATIVE WAY OF PRESENTING MULTIPLE TIME SERIES IS TO CREATE A MATRIX OF CHARTS. TUFTE (1991) HAS COINED THE TERM SMALL MULTIPLES TO DESCRIBE THIS TYPE OF CHART PRESENTATION. FIGURE 5.14 (AFTER) SHOWS A SNAPSHOT OF EACH COUNTRY AND THE POPULATION GROWTH OVER THE PAST DECADE WITH ONE SMALL CHART FOR EACH COUNTRY. KEEP THE X-AXIS AND Y-AXIS VALUES THE SAME FOR ALL SMALL MULTIPLES. THIS ENSURES EQUAL COMPARISON AMONG CHARTS. THIS ALSO SOLVES THE DATA DENSITY ISSUE PRESENTED IN FIGURE 5.14 (BEFORE).

THIS IS A USEFUL WAY OF COMPARING VARIABLES TO ONE ANOTHER.

showing those pathways visually to a client that mobile is a really important part of their digital strategy is critical – you can say it, but actually showing the percentage of how many people convert on mobile is such a clearer way of showcasing that call to action.

FIGURE 5.14 (AFTER)

You need to know your audience. That’s classic. You have to figure out what I call the party favour – the takeaway you get from a party that helps you remember the occasion. So in this field, the party favour is the one thing that will make your audience remember your message and take action.

An audience could be people in the boardroom, it could be somebody you’re trying to convince at lunch next to you. Once you get to the point of having a message, you have to make sure your audience isn’t working too hard to interpret what you show them. It has to be presented in a way in which the

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SERVICES

insights are apparent immediately.

I talk about 10 standards in my book to improve readability, accessibility and clarity. I’ll give you a couple: Use colour to highlight rather than decorate. You don’t want to highlight all data points, just highlight the point that might be a last-quarter sale, for example.

Also, readability: you don’t want to be showing something at 14-point font. Everything has to be readable, including the axis. And you really want to make sure that you explain what you show – you want to take the time to explain; tell people what the axes are and guide them through it

A RADAR PLOT SHOWING THE CAPITAL BIKESHARE RENTALS DURING THE SUMMER MONTHS FOR REGISTERED AND CASUAL USERS KRISTEN SOSULSKI (2018)

There are four categories of tools to create visualisations. Your first

A SCATTER PLOT MATRIX SHOWING A CLUSTER ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF PLAYERS WHO PLAY ONE OR MORE CASINO GAMES KRISTEN SOSULSKI & HARRY CHERNOFF (2018)

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Using visualisation to help grow your business starts with the information |access, and then you have to change the culture of your organisation to encourage information sharing – that’s the foundation of this”

DR. KRISTEN SOSULSKI

category is your basic productivity applications – Excel, Google – basic stuff that most people have access to.

Then you have your visualisation tools that experts are using, like Tableux or ArcGIS or ClickView.

These are platforms specifically for visualisation.

Then you have business intelligence tools that executives might already have, like Microsoft Power BI or IBM Watson Analytics in which you are using visualisations to make decisions based on types of machine learning algorithms and statistical analyses. And finally there are programming-based packages – you’re starting with the data and manipulating that data using a series of models, and the output is the result of which model performed best, and you’d have a visualisation showing that. You can do that in Python, in R, or maybe even JavaScript.

with all of the wireless hotspots. Well, Excel isn’t going to do that so you’ll need to upgrade to a Tableux or an ArcGIS. It’s such a fast-moving field, and there are two major trends we are already seeing. One is storytelling. I’m frequently asked to give a workshop on how to tell stories with visualisation – using data as evidence and how you use that to create a compelling narrative, including drama and conflict to create a story.

The second trend is interactive data graphics. You can almost think of this as user-driven storytelling, where you add to the story. You have your own inputs; you can even see this when you log into investment accounts.

You’re given pie charts and bar charts, but things are going to be more sophisticated in terms of showing predictive paths or alternative paths for how you can invest and make decisions on finances, for example.

There is definitely less resistance to visualisation now. People are beginning to really understand the benefits. I’ve had executives come back to me and say ‘I’ve hired a whole visualisations team!’

I always say use the tools that work best in your workflow. For example, you might want to show a map of London

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FUTURE

S

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ing is b

SLYCE

believing Goodbye keywords, hello images?

The tech behind visual search is

growing at a staggering rate, with

image recognition specialist Slyce

leading the charge. Its CEO Ted Mann

tells us why some of the biggest retail

I

brands in the world are getting on

board, and why it will become a vital tool in B2B markets

t takes just over 10 milliseconds from you viewing something to your brain processing exactly what it is you’re looking at.

Car. Scissors. Clock. Monkey.

Pen. Your brain takes an instant snapshot and instantaneously processes whatever it is you’ve locked eyes on. It’s an awesome natural operation, and for the last few years the technology to replicate that process in your smartphone has been expanding.

As culture becomes more and more dominated by images, so the necessity and hunger for the implementation of visual search has increased. There is a growing belief that the future of search will be images rather than keywords.

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FUTURE

Google is, of course, at the forefront with its Lens app that allows your phone to work as a visual search engine. Take a photo of a restaurant and it will give you reviews, whether it delivers and whether your friends have been there.

It’s all part of Google’s plan to turn your smartphone camera into a “visual browser for the world around you” and it appears to be working – research by Moz in 2017 found that image searches make up for almost 30% of all searches on Google.

Pinterest Lens is also making waves, allowing you to discover everything from recipes to new clothing styles just by taking photos on your smartphone.

Earlier this year Pinterest reported that more than 600 million visual searches are carried out every month across Lens. That’s some pretty serious numbers.

Elsewhere, ASOS launched a visual search tool last year that takes a customer’s uploaded image of, say, a jumper and goes through its enormous inventory to find matches. It is therefore unsurprising that it is in the retail sector where visual search is having the greatest impact.

This is where Slyce comes in. The market leader in visual search and image recognition, Slyce is embedded in around 35 major retailers’ apps and has roughly 50 retailers who have licensed one or more of its APIs to power image recognition. They already work with more retailers than

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anyone else in the visual search industry, including Tommy Hilfiger, Urban Outfitters, Macy’s, Abercrombie & Fitch, JCPenney, while they’re now expanding into Europe – aggressively.

CEO Ted Mann moved to Slyce in 2016 when it acquired SnipSnap – the coupon recognition company he founded.

It immediately became clear that retailers were licking their lips at the prospect of integrating visual search and snapto-buy technology (go to a retailer’s app, launch the camera, take a picture of something, and you’re taken to a product page where you can buy it or you can find it in the store).

“One of the first retailers that we signed was [American department store] Neiman Marcus,” says Mann. “They called their snap-to-

SLYCE

Tommy Hilfiger came to us with a ver y ambitious – and at the time I thought a lit tle bit of a risk y – use case… it worked phenomenally well ”

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HIGHLIGHTS

Apple confirms $30m takeover of AR startup Spektral

The $30 million takeover of Danish augmented reality startup Spektral has been confirmed by Apple. Spektral’s technology efficiently removes unwanted background from images and video. The acquisition is believed to have completed in late 2017 but has only now been confirmed. Apple has also revealed a $600 million ‘asset transfer and licensing’ deal with chipmaker Dialog Semiconductor. (11/10/2018) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

SLYCE

buy feature Snap-Find-Shop – that’s how they marketed it. They did it in their app and did it as well on their mobile website and it enabled people when they see a fashion item they really like – a handbag or a pair of shoes on the street and say ‘I wanna have those’ – to Ted Mann on BBC Business Live take a picture of it, find it, buy it.”

While a lot of retail snap-to-buy’s starting point for the consumer is uploading screenshots, the technology can be used in many different ways. Different strokes for different companies.

“Tommy Hilfiger came to us with a very ambitious – and at the time I thought a little bit of a risky – use case,” SLYCE WORKS says Mann. “They wanted to enable WITH MICHAELS, consumers to be able to take a picture NORTH AMERICA’S LARGEST ARTS AND of a model at one of their fashion shows CRAFTS CHAIN and be able to identify and shop the ‘look’ of that model.

“The asset we launched with them, which was called TOMMYNOW SNAP, would allow you to take a picture of Gigi Hadid, their celebrity spokesperson at the time, or upload a screenshot I think as we grow we may decide to have our from a video of her and identify the own standalone B2B division . look that she was wearing on the Truth be told , we do consider runway. ourselves to be a B2B Sof t ware “It worked phenomenally well as -a -Ser vice company. It just and continues to work to this day so happens that most of the because when they launch a retailers we’re working with new fashion line one of the biggest are doing it in a consumerchallenges they have is showing facing application” people they can buy the clothes right off their runway. Consumers used to have to wait six months for the clothing

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If you think where voice search was a year ago, I think visual search is actually get ting faster adoption and the technology is improving at a faster rate than voice search ”

to get to the store, but now they have this whole new go-to-market strategy where it’s ‘see now, buy now’.

“This app created a totally frictionless way to do that and it’s done phenomenally well. They’ve been absolutely crushing it on this new strategy and the brand has been revived in part because of it, and we’re a piece of that by activating the promotion.”

From fashion to something more homely, Slyce works with America’s biggest arts and crafts chain, Michaels.

It wanted to use the technology to not only identify products but to suggest

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projects you can use the product for.

For example, the customer takes a picture of a power tool. The technology identifies what brand and type of power tool it is, but also shows you, say, five examples of projects that can be built using them.

Whatever the branch of retail, the two key questions for Slyce when working with brands are always: “What would you do with this tech?” and “What sort of problems would you solve?” The answers are always varied.

“Some retailers we work with, especially in the grocery space, gravitate to list building,” says Mann.

“The idea of being able to build a shopping list is very compelling. And we even work with publications. We’re actually working right now with a publication in the UK which is going to be live soon. They were very excited about identifying the ‘look’ kind of experience, identifying all the different

SLYCE

items and pieces of clothing that this particular model was wearing.

“It’s up to the brand to tell us where this can really add value. We have some brands that frankly don’t even see that much value in embedding this technology in a consumer facing app, but instead they use it for their own internal merchandising teams.”

Mann believes there’s tremendous potential for visual search in B2B. “We have retailers that use visual search in their merchandising team to help their buyers to make better decisions about which product to buy and which product to carry next season,” he says.

“We also have industrial partners that are using visual search to be able to manage their inventory and things like that.

“There are plenty of B2B applications.

I think Slyce is still a fairly early-stage startup and we have about 60 employees. I think as we grow we may decide to have our own standalone B2B division. Truth be told, we do consider ourselves to be a B2B Software-as-aService company. It just so happens that most of the retailers we’re working with are doing it in a consumer-facing application.”

The growth potential is enormous, and the pace is likely to pick up rapidly.

The Samsung S9 came equipped with a visual search mode in the camera.

Samsung called it the Shopping Mode, and it sat alongside a portrait mode and a panorama mode. When visual

searches are being integrated at that level, you know it’s not going away.

“I think the big exciting thing for me is that the technology works like it didn’t work that way five years ago,” says Mann. “I think it’s a little bit like voice search. If you think where voice search was a year ago, I think visual search is actually getting faster adoption and the technology is improving at a faster rate than voice search.

“So everybody is seeing a million Amazon Alexa devices or Echo devices, and I think you’re going to see a similar ubiquity for visual search, whether it’s on the mobile devices themselves, or connected cameras, all over people’s houses and elsewhere.”

Whereas some have described visual search technology as disruptive, Mann doesn’t particularly believe that to be the case. Instead, he sees it as supplementary.

“Occasionally you talk about technologies that are replacing something else,” he says. “I don’t think of visual search as replacing text search, I think it’s just enabling a new kind of search with pictures.

“I think that’s very exciting. It’s a catalyst, an eye-opening kind of thing for all the opportunities it’s going to create.”

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CLARIZEN

KEEPING TEAMS TALKING AS EUROPE DIVIDES Communication at businesses could become even more fractured post-Brexit. Clarizen’s Product Director, David Goulden, tells Digital Bulletin why companies should carefully consider the tools they need to navigate Brexit-flavoured disruptions

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BREXIT

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A CLARIZEN

t the time of publication, Theresa May and her government in the UK are continuing to lock horns with both the EU and their own party to force through a tortured plan for Brexit.

The United Kingdom is staring the once unthinkable prospect of a no-deal exit directly in the face.

The country’s Prime Minister will be concerned, not least by the prospect of a no-deal rocking confidence in the UK’s economy, leading to multinationals to consider their position. London is the HQ for a number of international businesses, particularly in the finance and banking industries.

One of the original and strongest arguments against Brexit was always the impact it could have on London’s position as the financial capital of Europe, even in the scenario where the UK could agree a set of favourable exit terms, something that now appears wholly unlikely.

Nearly 20 banks have committed to launching new European Union

Organisations that are simply relying on

email or Slack could well find themselves in trouble if they don’t move quickly.”

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BREXIT

hubs in Frankfurt since the Brexit vote, according to German officials. The economy minister for the state of Hesse, where Frankfurt is situated, said the city was confident it would attract more, with another 60 firms yet to decide on additional EU headquarters.

“We’ve got 18 entities... that have committed,” Tarek Al-Wazir said during his most recent trip to London, adding that Frankfurt had taken over London as the ‘number one’ choice for companies working in the finance space.

Whether that is yet true is up for debate, but the warnings about Brexit acting as a catalyst for businesses to consider the locations of their European and worldwide HQs were not without basis. What will also be of concern is that Brexit has sparked a dramatic fall in the number of French, Dutch and Belgian businesses registering in the UK, in a further illustration of Brexit’s impact on the UK economy.

A recent report by the The Guardian found that figures from Companies House show that French companies registered 48% fewer businesses in the UK in 2016-17 than the previous financial year, while companies in Belgium registered 38% fewer.

But companies looking to move their main operations out of the UK’s financial hub, perhaps considering Frankfurt, Paris or Luxembourg, have more to ponder than where to position their new headquarters, according to David Goulden, Product Director at

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Samsung and NEC partner to lead on 5G development

Samsung and NEC Corporation, the leading Japanese IT firm, have teamed up for the development of 5G systems. The pair are now set to ‘explore new business opportunities in the global market’ as the commercialisation of 5G looms. Samsung already holds a leading position having rolled out 5G in the US, while NEC recently penned a 5G equipment supply deal with NTT. (24/10/18) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

BREXIT

Clarizen, a company that specialises in project management software that lets businesses manage work, automate processes and collaborate across the enterprise.

“With so many businesses contemplating shifts in staff from the UK to continental Europe, it is likely that Brexit will lead to many teams being scattered across numerous locations and more employees are likely to be working while on the road or from home,” he says.

“This could have unwelcome consequences for businesses in the UK and across mainland Europe if they do not prepare for it by equipping employees with tools that foster effective communication and collaboration among dispersed teams.”

Indeed, Clarizen’s own research

recently found that some of the most prominent issues staff struggle with when working remotely include: communication issues with colleagues; difficulties in remaining efficient; limited access to current files and data; and struggling to prioritise work.

Specifically, the survey showed that 81% of respondents said that, despite taking steps to improve communication among employees, they still lack a way to keep projects on track and provide management oversight. And only 16% of the companies surveyed said productivity levels were ‘excellent’ – while a nearly quarter said they we ‘just OK’ or ‘we need help’.

“These issues hamper productivity and business agility, and companies need to have strategies and solutions

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in place to resolve these issues before Brexit takes place – or the challenges will only get tougher. Organisations need to ensure all employees have the collaborative tools they need to succeed as they navigate not just their own internal shifts in staff and reorganisation of operations, but those of partner businesses, suppliers and clients,” says Goulden.

It means that companies will rely to some extent on collaboration tools to communicate and ensure work streams are progressing as planned.

This is not a new phenomenon; for some time, the likes of Skype, Facebook, WhatsApp and Google Hangouts have been utilised to enable

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communication between employees.

But, says Goulden, these are not particularly suitable mediums for business use, and can often become a distraction, with conversation deviating away from work. “Businesses are going to need a solid platform of communication outside of email and chat. You need something that’s asynchronous because time zones are different, people are on or off-site, people are mobile or working from home or working remotely or working from desks and so on.

“You cannot count on a synchronous type of technology like the chat technology, which of course is very prevalent in all organisations, which

BREXIT

is fine and great – we all use it. But for more structured information you need something a bit more than that.

And email’s not cutting it so you need that heavily ties in or nicely ties in with the business information itself.”

Despite the March 2019 Brexit deadline drawing ever closer, Goulden says he is yet to see large-scale change being undertaken to prepare for it. He warns: “Organisations that don’t have Clarizen or a similar tool and are simply relying on email or Slack could well find themselves in trouble if they don’t move quickly.

Brexit has the potential to really accentuate problems such as document fragmentation.”

He continues: “Access to information and people is very important. Once you’ve got that information the other thing that you need, of course, is the visibility across the business. What’s going on? What are people working on? We frequently have people coming to us who have local visibility but they’ve often got global resources they want to help with setting up a new offering, product, or business line.

They are not aware of what projects are going on across the business – they are operating little islands of business rather than working together.

“Bringing that together is hugely valuable if you’re looking to spin up new capacity or capabilities or new business lines. Certainly Brexit will shake some of those things out over time. They’ll get new requirements from their customers, they’ll need to come up with new propositions for them and new offerings.

“Having that human side as well, that access to who’s worked on what and being able to leverage that - so you say, ‘here’s who I need involved with this new proposition’ - is going to be really valuable. Having a central system of record but also the ability where you can easily communicate and contact those people and collaborate with them is kind of a key thing that people are coming to us for. “

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EVENTS

EVENTS DIGITAL BULLETIN ROUNDS UP THE INDUSTRY EVENTS THAT ARE WORTH CLEARING YOUR DIARY FOR…

28-29 NOV EUROPEAN WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY 28-29 NOVEMBER, 2018 RAI, AMSTERDAM Join 3,000+ tech leaders and professionals at Europe’s vibrant centrepiece for women in tech.

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Attendees will hear from the best speakers in the industry, enhance their entire skills portfolio and celebrate gender diversity in the world’s fastest growing industry. Through inspirational keynote speakers, personal development workshops, technical classes and networking opportunities, this conference provides all the content women need to progress and flourish in the tech sector. The event will include input from a number of tech industry leaders, including Google, Nokia, Adidas, Atos, HP and Yelp. European Women in Technology enables the sector to connect, learn and act on gender diversity by sharing the experiences of industry leaders and developing women’s skills, both soft and technical.

WWW.EUROPEANWOMENINTECH.COM

NOVEMBER-APRIL

29 NOV MACHINE LEARNING INNOVATION SUMMIT 29 NOVEMBER, 2018 O’CALLAGHAN ALEXANDER HOTEL, DUBLIN The role of machine learning has evolved significantly, as implementation is expected to make critical decisions on business performance and transformative projects. This summit is a must attend for those looking to master these responsibilities, and deliver prosperity in today’s challenging economic climate.

A number of topics will be up for discussion during the summit, including data science innovation, structured data, statistics, data mining and predictive analysis.

Speakers from the likes of Apple, Amazon, HSBC, Facebook, Microsoft and NASA have been confirmed.

WWW.THEINNOVATIONENTERPRISE.COM

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30 JAN WOMEN IN IT AWARDS 30 JANUARY, 2019 GROSVENOR HOUSE, LONDON Following the fourth annual Women in IT Awards on 31 January 2018 was the largest technology diversity event ever staged in the world. The Women in IT Awards will return 30 January 2019. The Women in IT Awards is the world’s largest event dedicated to tackling the technology industry’s disheartening gender imbalance. It does this by showcasing the achievements and innovation of women in technology, identifying new role models and promoting further dialogue around diversity among industry influencers.

WWW.WOMENINITAWARDS.COM

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NOVEMBER-APRIL

8-14 FEB BLOCKCHAIN WEEK FEBRUARY 8TH - 14TH, 2019 GRANGE TOWER BRIDGE HOTEL, LONDON In its fifth edition, Blockchain Week arrives in London in 2019. Last year saw record market caps for crypto and thousands of ICOs. This year the excitement is still there but a lot of the hype has faded. Blockchain/DLT is starting to gain traction.

Who will be the winners and losers?

Over 3,500 participants will be taking part througout the week, with the main conference taking place at the Grange Tower Bridge in the heart of London.

The event will include evening receptions, workshops and the Blockchain Hackathon, with earlybird tickets for the two-day conference/exhibition available now.

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05-06 MAR LOGISTICS CIO FORUM 05-06 MAR 2019 HOTEL NOVOTEL AMSTERDAM CITY, AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS Hotel Novotel Amsterdam City, Amsterdam, Netherlands The Logistics CIO Forum: Europe brings together 200 senior IT executives and industry experts from Europe’s leading logistics providers to discuss the biggest challenges and opportunities that technology disruption is creating for the industry. Boasting what it says is an “unrivalled” line-up of speakers, the likes of Markus Sontheimer, CIO, DB Schneker, Marcus Würker, CIO of DHL Supply Chain and Mario Harik, CIO of XPO Logistics will also address delegates, giving their view on the technology subjects shaping the future of logistics.

WWW.EVENTS.EFT.COM/CIOEU/

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NOVEMBER-APRIL

12-13 MAR 12-13 MAR CLOUDEXPO EUROPE 12-13 MARCH, 2019 EXCEL, LONDON Cloud Expo Europe, the UK’s biggest and best attended technology event, returns to London in March. Remaining agile in today’s fast-paced, everchanging world has never been more demanding or important. CloudExpo Europe is a platform in the UK where the brightest minds come together to help businesses accelerate their digital transformation plans.

Whether you are a business leader, technologist, market-leading solution or service provider, thought-leader or expert, if you are a part of the tech universe, Cloud Expo Europe is an event to attend.

SMART IOT LONDON 12-13 MARCH 2019 EXCEL, LONDON Smart IoT 2018 is an event that looks to make sense of the accelerating world of technology, and it comes to London in March, 2019. Wherever you are on your digital journey, and however large or small an organisation, all the answers, all the inspiration, all the ideas, are here, acoording to organisers. Whether you want to focus on internet security or machine learning integration. Whether it’s big data analytics, APIs or Blockchain. Or whether you’re looking to create more seamless transactions or reduce costs, this is most definitely the place.

It’s the one place where, quite literally, things come together.

WWW.SMARTIOTLONDON.COM

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10-11 APR

14-15 MAR DATA INNOVATION SUMMIT 14-15 MARCH, 2019 KISTAMÄSSAN, STOCKHOLM

DUBLIN TECH SUMMIT 10-11 APRIL, 2019 DUBLIN, IRELAND

This year’s event will focus on practical case studies on Applied Innovation, Analytics and Visualisation, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Data Management, Data engineering, IOT insight and technology. With over 100 Nordic and international speakers on six stages, six workshop stages and plenty of learning and networking activities in the exhibition area, the 2019 summit is the place to be for all professionals and organisations working with utilisation of data for increasing profit, reinventing business models, develop data-driven products, and increasing customer satisfaction.

In two short years the Dublin Tech Summit has emerged as one of Europe’s largest tech conferences, and has been labelled Europe’s fastest growing tech conference.

The event will showcase some of the world’s most influential tech leaders and brands to Dublin for two days of growth and development, knowledge sharing, and networking. Attending companies and participants will include Airbnb, Google, Cisco, Google, SAP and Dropbox.

WWW.DATAINNOVATIONSUMMIT.COM

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WWW.DUBLINTECHSUMMIT.COM

NOVEMBER-APRIL

25-26 APR IOT TECH EXPO GLOBAL 2019 25-26 APRIL 2019 OLYMPIA, LONDON The World’s Largest IoT Conference Series; the IoT Tech Expo Global event in London will bring together key industries from across the globe for two days of top level content and discussion. Exploring the latest innovations within the Internet of Things and covering the impact it has on many industries including Manufacturing, Transport, Supply Chain, Insurance, Logistics, Government, Energy and Automotive, this conference is not to be missed. Key topics examined include: smart building & facilities management, building the connected supply chain, intelligent city and transport management, smart grid data management and analytics, asset monitoring and management, delivering smart connected new products, and more.

WWW.IOTTECHEXPO.COM/GLOBAL

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THE CLOSING BULLETIN

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

E

In a column exclusive to Digital Bulletin, Scott Amyx, Managing Partner of Amyx

Ventures and a global thought leader in smart, sustainable cities, comments on the potentially seismic impact of robotic process automation (RPA) nterprises are under incredible pressure to innovate, reduce costs, and increase revenue and market share.

And that pressure is coming from all directions.

CEO turnover has reached a record high, according to Strategy&, formerly

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Booz. In 2015, 17% of the globe’s largest public companies saw their CEO leave, which is more than in any of the previous 15 years. Of those that left, 10.9% were planned, 3% were forced and 2.8% attributed to M&A. Some of this is the baby boomers retiring but there is heightened pressure. CEOs being fired over ethical violations alone was 5.3% from 2012 to 2016.

In some cases, the leader at the top is aware of performance or ethical

SCOTT AMYX

issues but there are also cases where leadership is blindsided.

How can automation help?

Automation can help with compliance, transparency, accountability and identification of irregularities.

Organisations are confronted with significant pressures to embrace and optimise digital transformation.

Many, including yours, have likely engaged firms such as McKinsey or Bain, who have more or less told you the same thing: Your company has to become more digitised in order

chain on a real-time basis to feed your AI algorithms.

But here’s the reality. The allure of AI and IoT are compelling, no question about that. But when organisations come back from conferences and conduct an introspection, they often find that they are not ready for primetime. Questions come up, such as does it mean we have to sunset our legacy systems and put in shiny new stacks? Do we need to invest millions to create a new data architecture and data analytics infrastructure?

RPA can help your business to improve the effectiveness of your processes faster and at a lower cost than current methods to avoid becoming a commoditised business and lose market share. Your organisation has to move along the digital transformation curve.

One of those digitisation trends is AI. AI is often referred to as the electricity of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But for AI to work, you need data. Lots of it. More specifically the 3Vs - volume, variety and velocity. That’s where the Internet of Things comes in. It allows for quantification of your entire value

Do we have to change our business processes? Will employees resist the change? Do they even have the right skills? Do we need to hire an army of data scientists and AI engineers or depend on expensive outside consultancy?

Similarly, no matter how great new technologies such as AI and IoT are, unless we can adapt them to your organisations in a way that your company’s IT systems, processes and

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people don’t reject them, it won’t work.

So how can your organisation cross that chasm?

No matter your current state with all its legacy mess, there is a way to cross over to your desired state. And that’s through robotic process automation (RPA).

RPA can help your business to improve the effectiveness of your processes faster and at a lower cost than current methods.

Sometimes as organisations, we read analyst reports or our consultants pressure you to adopt great new technologies such as AI. But implementing AI is more than consuming API services, using libraries or SDKs. On your side, there are a lot of organisational, structural, financial and mindset changes to overcome.

The chart shows you a logical maturity roadmap that can help your organisation grow into AI.

DESKTOP AUTOMATION

Manual operator

initiates a sequence of automated steps

Source: Accenture.

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Robotic desktop automation (RDA) and RPA are realistic solutions with high ROI that gets you closer to the promises of AI and IoT. Some activities are beautifully suited for automation, such as collecting data, processing that data, performing physical activities in predictable environments. 60% of all jobs have at least 30% of activities that are automatable.

RPA is on a growth tear -- $1.2 billion to over $3.1 billion by 2021.

RPA is not new. It’s already used by major enterprises globally. The security, software, maintenance, cost and ROI have been well-vetted.

An Everest Group study indicated that 78% of RPA customers responded that their RPA implementation met or exceeded their expectations in terms of return on investment. And nearly one third indicated that it exceeded their expectations. This is profound.

ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION

VIRTUAL ASSISTANT

mimics execution of manual

persona provides

Scheduled virtual worker

repetitive activities without intervention or assistance

Computer generated guidance via

conversation

SCOTT AMYX

We just don’t hear responses like this for most technology investments.

What it’s telling us is that the value realised is disproportionately higher relative to the cost and effort to implement and maintain RPA. In logistics and supply chain, front, middle and back-office operations performed on workstations by human workers can be automated through RPA. This significantly increases the velocity of business processes and workflows while minimising human errors.

Digital transformation isn’t easy.

It’s complex, it’s messy, it’s costly. It’s about people change as much as technology change.

RPA provides the economies

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE System gains

knowledge from ‘experience’ and

adapts itself to execute more processes more efficiently

of scale - it is bringing down the cost of automation and digital transformation towards AI. AI is more than ML, NLP or computer vision. Much like electricity was transformational, it requires an ecosystem, heavy investment, new skills and capabilities, and new approaches. RPA is that path forward without the risk of heavy upfront CapEx or uncertain outcomes.

Never before is the expected return so certain and the risk profile so well mitigated. RPA rolled out across your enterprise would squarely translate into significant wins for your organisation, and for you. With the microeconomics well laid out, it’s time to scale.

Scott Amyx is an internationally recognised thought leader, venture capitalist, speaker, and author on smart, sustainable cities, exponential technologies, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. He has appeared or spoken on TV, New York Times, TIME, Forbes, TechCrunch, TEDx, CIO, Washington Post, WIRED, Forrester, G20, European Commission, United Nations, ITU, Pew Research Center, Environmental Defense Fund, and other major media and events.

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