Digital Bulletin - Issue 1 | February 2019

A 20 9 IPsoft’s Europe CEO Jeff Heenan -Jalil foresees a giant leap forward for AI in 2019

FORTINET

Unifying the approach to network security

PURE STORAGE

Enabling the journey to the hybrid cloud

Issue 1 | Feb 19

AI

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Microsoft and Kroger to pilot ‘futuristic’ grocery stores

Microsoft and Kroger are partnering to introduce cutting-edge digital solutions for the retail industry. Two grocery stores in the US will deliver a ‘connected experience’ for customers using smart technology run on Azure and connected by IoT sensors. Innovations include digital displays for shelves, with Kroger eyeing the potential to sell the ‘retail-as-a-service’ technology to other retailers. (07/01/19) 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.

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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.

DIGITAL BULLETIN

For most, the start of the business year means getting back into a groove while setting out your vision for the upcoming 12 months. For technologists, it’s quite different.

In the second week of January, CES 2019 - the world’s biggest consumer technology show - marched into Las Vegas, household names in tow.

With 4,400 companies exhibiting new products and services, onlookers were given a glimpse of the emergent trends for 2019. On a gadget level, we saw everything from scrolling televisions to ‘cybershoes’. On a larger scale, one of the major subjects to cut through the noise was, once again, artificial intelligence.

Our Issue One cover star, Jeff Heenan-Jalil, isn’t holding back with his predictions for AI in 2019. As IPsoft’s newly-anointed Europe CEO, Heenan-Jalil is helping to oversee new product launches that he insists will reinforce the company’s leadership in enterprise AI. We took a photographer to its Leadenhall Building base in London, where HeenanJalil talked us through his plans to push IPsoft through this exciting stage of its growth.

There’s plenty more to get your teeth into in this edition; we’ve tapped thought leaders from Pure Storage, Fortinet, VMware and more, bringing insights that will certainly get you thinking for the year ahead. We hope you enjoy the read.

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Discussing the route to AI ubiquity with Jeff Heenan-Jalil Turn to page 8

INSIDE VIEW

IGITAL BULLETIN

IMAGINEA

Issue

08 AI

IPsoft

CONTENTS

26 Networks

Evoko

Upgrading meeting spaces all over the world

50 Future

Blockchain

A deep dive discussion on blockchain in the mainstream 54

Jeff Heenan-Jalil on the tipping point for artificial intelligence

18 Services

Pure Storage

34 Data & Security

Fortinet

A platform approach for delivering network security

58 Events

The biggest and best technology events on the horizon

Leading the charge towards a hybrid cloud strategy

42 People

Game Intelligence

Using neuroscience to discover and develop talent

66 The Closing Bulletin

VMware’s Alanzo Blackstock on the ‘Virtual Cloud Network’

AI

FROM ‘THING TO EVERYTHI

– the rise and rise of A Artificial intelligence is on the cusp of ubiquity, with the world’s largest privately-held AI company, IPsoft, leading the charge. Digital Bulletin speaks to its recently appointed European CEO, Jeff Heenan-Jalil, to find out more

AUTHOR: JAMES HENDERSON

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IPSOFT

G’ ING

AI

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L AI

ong spoken about as a ‘future’ technology, artificial intelligence (AI) appears to have reached a tipping point, with both enterprise and consumers integrating it into their daily lives. The message from the recent CES event in Las Vegas was clear – AI is no longer a ‘thing’, it’s everything.

The projected spending figures are enormous: global spend on cognitive and AI systems is forecast to continue its trajectory of robust growth as businesses invest in projects that utilise their capabilities. According to the International Data Corporation, spending on cognitive and AI systems will reach $77.6 billion in 2022, more than three times the $24 billion forecast for 2018.

The journey to proliferation for AI is similar to that of cloud. That’s the view of Jeff Heenan-Jalil, the recently appointed CEO of IPsoft, the world’s largest privately-owned AI company.

Speaking to Digital Bulletin, he says: “There was a time when nobody was really sure about cloud, nobody had a grasp of the price structure of cloud or the tangible benefits it offered. Once people got to know the benefits and uses of cloud it took off in a big way, and we are now at a stage where it is a central part of business and a wellestablished technology. AI is currently in a similar place.”

You can be sure that when Heenan-

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Jalil says this, he means it, having made the decision to resign his position at Wipro to join IPsoft late last year after being persuaded that AI has reached the level of maturity where companies understand the benefits and use cases for the technology.

“I was approached on a few occasions by IPsoft, and the message each time was that it was a great opportunity, that the company was getting stronger and the market was there. It was in October last year that I accepted as I could see that industry had an understanding of the benefits of AI and I could envisage what we could do from both a company and social point of view. I could see what a great opportunity it was.”

Heenan-Jalil says that in his first months at the business he has observed the acceptance of the technology, particularly in the European, North American and Latin American markets. The questions for those businesses are now centred around how to make AI enterpriseready, taking it beyond pilot projects and integrating AI into their IT, supply chain or customer service offerings. As a result, IPsoft is launching a number of propositions to the European market in 2019.

“We’re keeping it very basic because we believe that we have got the platform for the evolution of AI to be robust, and able to be rolled out across an enterprise. It is no longer about

IPSOFT

I was approached on a few occasions by IPsoft, and the message each time was that it was a great opportunity, that the company was getting stronger and the market was there�

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putting Band-Aids on to actually provide a form of efficiency in one singular process, but to actually have the ability to roll out a dynamic enterprise application or technologies that can cut across multiple functions.

That’s where the roll out of our technology is going to be important in Europe.”

The roll-out will complement IPsoft’s current suite of products, spearheaded by Amelia, its AI-powered digital colleague which is capable of conversing as humans do, meaning it can handle service requests without the need for human intervention. The company also offers its automatic IT management platform IPcentre and 1Desk, an enterprise-scale autonomic framework that integrates IT operations and shared services into a single platform.

In January, it introduced 1RPA, which IPsoft says is the world’s first Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solution powered by conversational AI. The pitch is a tantalising one, which it bills as a watershed moment in the evolution of RPA technology. As users guide 1RPA’s digital colleague, Amelia, through each step of a business process, it builds an automation for them. There’s no need to write new code or structure unstructured data, while Amelia understands a specific task and creates a bot in minutes. IPsoft says that AI technology

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powered by Amelia makes 1RPA’s bots the most intelligent on the market, and that bots created with 1RPA can read web pages, emails, programmes or any unstructured text put in front of them, just as a human would.

The product is already being used by companies, as well as internally at IPsoft, says Heenan-Jalil. “We got 16 different use cases that were created in the space of one week around taking manual processes and automating it with our own RPA product,” he reveals.

“A specific example is IPsoft’s own guest network Wi-Fi, which unfortunately we hadn’t automated.

IPSOFT

I think this vision of the war of the robots, or the Terminator, is a long way off, it is a thing consigned to the past”

In three hours, we got that fully automated; the guest sends us their email address, name, and when they’re actually arriving, after which our secretary can simply send a command through to our central server. That whole process is now automated. When the person arrives in the building the guest Wi-Fi password is sent to them and they can log on.

Now that sounds very simple but there were 11 steps to that process previously – now it’s just one simple email.”

In 2019, IPsoft will also launch an Amelia proposition for IT helpdesks, a 1Desk platform for HR on-boarding, and an automation product for enterprise

ticketing with the capability of connecting to the likes of ServiceNow, .NET Core, or Remedy, again with the purpose of taking a manual process and making it automated with the click of a button.

Taken together these products have the potential to make a company’s processes eminently more efficient, says Heenan-Jalil. “The 1Desk proposition takes a company’s enterprise applications – IT, ERP, CRM – and connects them up in the backend, which is supported at the front end by Amelia as the conversational agent.

“Then take one simple process, for example, HR on-boarding. The

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AI

The 1Desk proposition takes a company’s enterprise applications – IT, ERP, CRM – and connects them up in the backend, which is supported at the front end by Amelia as the conversational agent”

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IPSOFT

process can take six weeks, you have to register the individual, apply for their national insurance number, verify their background, organise a start date, order and install equipment, and so on.

It’s really mundane but critical stuff.

What the 1Desk programme allows you to do is take that complex but simple manual process of on-boarding, but by connecting all the systems in the back end, one simple command can be made and that process can now be done in one day.”

Against this backdrop is a tough economy, with the C-suite under increasing pressure to grow revenues and ensure shareholder satisfaction – something that may very well benefit IPsoft.

“CEOs realise they have to use technology to enable their business to be more effective, and be aware of the next wave of technology that will help them become more profitable, more efficient, and more socially responsible. And at the level below, CIOs are being told to increase productivity by 15%, to make businesses more effective and nimble. We’re at a point that all discussions around labour or normal IT productivity norms have been exhausted. It is actually now technology like AI that is going to enable those ambitions and demands.”

Heenan-Jalil comes back to the point of ubiquity with AI on both a consumer and enterprise level, taking in security,

analytics, machine learning, chat bots and so on. And as consumers have welcomed these tools into their dayto-day lives, business has become increasingly confident that it too can benefit. This acceptance has also changed the perception of AI, with scare stories of robots taking jobs being replaced by evidence that they can enhance a home or workplace.

“I think this vision of the war of the robots, or the Terminator, is a long way off, it is a thing consigned to the past. We are really beginning to see with a lot of the general applications that are out there that consumers are using on a daily basis, they see it as an enhancement to their life as opposed to a threat. I very recently read a piece about Alexa and how it was being used as a device with healthcare benefits.

AI is being seen as an enhancement to get valuable and time critical information in a quicker fashion.”

Once a fiction of fantasy, the business argument for AI has now been effectively made, with many use cases proving it can make businesses more efficient and effective. With companies battling to find an edge in their markets, enterprise AI is unquestionably on the crest of a wave. And IPsoft is in the perfect place to ride it all the way.

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SERVICES

PURE STORAGE UNIFYING CLOUD SERVICES

The proliferation of critical data is pushing companies towards a hybrid cloud strategy – Pure Storage is helping to enable those journeys

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AUTHOR: JAMES HENDERSON

peak to any IT manager or CIO across industry and odds are they’ll tell you that the propagation of data across their organisation is getting out of control. It is likely to be their outstanding challenge.

That challenge has been exacerbated by emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning

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and deep analytics, which have fast become strategically important to enterprise. Applications of all types – both traditional and emerging – demand flexible, location-independent data accessibility, and this has had a profound impact on infrastructure.

Modern organisations need realtime access to any and all data, which requires applications to move freely between on-premises and the

PURE STORAGE

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SERVICES

cloud. Historically, a lack of purposedesigned, strategic integrations between on-premises storage and the cloud have been a primary inhibitor of application mobility.

The end result of these factors has been a clear cloud divide, with an almost universal acceptance that the cloud is not an optimum environment for enterprise solutions, while enterprise infrastructure isn’t considered to be as user-friendly as the cloud.

It is against this backdrop that when considering the trends that will shape the world of enterprise technology in 2019, the convergence to hybrid cloud has been a hot tip, with tens of billions of dollars to be spent on the transition.

One of the companies that will play a big part in this sea-change is Pure Storage, which was established nine years ago with the goal of bringing back growth and innovation to the enterprise storage market.

In November, Pure Storage announced Pure Storage Cloud Data Services, a suite of new cloud offerings that run on Amazon Web Services (AWS), making headlines across the technology industry. Its claim – that customers can invest in a single storage architecture to unify application deployments on-premises and on the cloud, flexibly turning data into value virtually anywhere – is one which will have piqued the interest of IT professionals the world over.

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The service is made up of three components which work together to deliver a unified cloud, the first of which is the beta availability of Cloud Block Store, based on Purity software running natively on AWS. Cloud Block Store is an industrialstrength block storage offering, enabling mission-critical enterprise applications to run in the cloud with all the capabilities that customers expect from high-end storage arrays. Cloud Block Store also provides new capabilities and resilience for web-scale, cloud-first apps.

Patrick Smith, Field CTO EMEA at Pure Storage, who has spent 25 years in the world of IT, tells Digital Bulletin: “Cloud Block Store is a block storage platform that really takes cloud services to the next level in terms of availability.

“It is focused on reliability,

PURE STORAGE

efficiency and performance. The aspect of reliability comes from the ability to improve on typically the storage platforms provided by the public cloud, while improved efficiency is enabled by better performance than our users can currently get from public cloud providers.

“This is not a case of installing our physical arrays in the public cloud, but rather a 100% software product.

It provides all the efficiency that

people are familiar with, with our technology including duplication and compression, while also offering space-efficient snapshots which can be very difficult to do in the public cloud.”

The second pillar is the announcement of the general availability of CloudSnap, which delivers cloud-based data protection built right into Pure Storage’s flagship FlashArray software. CloudSnap, says

21 Issue 1

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Fiserv to acquire First Data in $22 billion merger deal

Fiserv is to acquire First Data Corporation after the companies agreed a merger deal worth $22 billion. The transaction unites two premier companies to create one of the world’s leading payments and financial technology providers. Under the terms of the deal, Fiserv shareholders will own 57.5% of the combined company, and First Data shareholders will own 42.5%, on a fully diluted basis.

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.

PURE STORAGE

Smith, makes it easy to copy snapshots directly to the cloud for both data protection and application migration.

“What CloudSnap allows our customers to do is to take those snapshots as they become older and potentially less likely to be used as a restore point and push them into the public cloud. They get that durability and the reliability that public cloud provides.

“The other thing that’s particularly

primary storage from the public cloud, with CloudSnap or within the public cloud with CloudSnap. It really provides the best of both worlds.”

The third component is the beta availability of StorReduce, a cloudfirst deduplication engine for modern backup. This software is designed to enable simple backup, rapid recovery, and cost-effective data retention in public cloud object storage. When combined with a FlashBlade on-prem,

You always you know as a technologist within a large enterprise, you always hold your breath when restoring data” interesting about CloudSnap is when combined with Cloud Block Store, it provides an easy way to re-instantiate that snapshot in the public cloud, rather than unnecessarily having to copy the data back on-prem to do a restore. So, you have that opportunity to do both on

the solution provides “Flash to Flash to Cloud” data protection enabling both rapid restore and low cost, long-term cloud retention.

This, says Smith, represents a true paradigm shift. “So, we looked at data protection over the last 20 years, and

Patrick Smith is Pure Storage’s Field CTO for EMEA. As a senior technical advisor, he provides crucial input and leadership across engineering, product management, sales, marketing as well as presales. With a 25 year career in financial services technology, Patrick has held roles at Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Nomura in London and New York. Most recently, he was responsible for core infrastructure engineering at Deutsche Bank. Patrick’s career began as an electronic design engineer at STC Submarine Systems, where he worked on underwater telecommunications systems. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in electrical and electronic engineering from Staffordshire University.

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SERVICES

saw a transition to using purposebuilt backup appliances, the disk to disk, VTL model and then pushing out backs up to tape and moving them offsite for long-term storage.

What we’re now finding is that restore speeds are too slow to meet today’s requirements, and our customers are having to utilise multiple silos of backup infrastructure which makes it expensive.

“And if we look at the offsite protection, tape retention is fragile.

The ability to guarantee that you can restore from a tape is not strong. You always you know as a technologist within a large enterprise, you always hold your breath [when restoring data]. We looked at all of that and thought ‘we have to find a better way’.”

Pure Storage is betting that its ‘Flash to Flash to Cloud’ solution is just that, and will become the industry standard, superseding the ‘Disk to Disk to Tape’ model.

“The technology is all about properly supporting primary flash storage with fast recovery and cost-effective initial point of back-up. So rather than having a legacy purposebuilt backup plan, we have now the capability to back up to flash and then push those backups into the cloud for long-term retention. It provides the best of all worlds in that you can get faster recovery,” says Smith.

Absolutely central to the wider cloud

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We have a very proud track record and this move into Cloud Data Services allows us to take our next step as a company”

conversation is security, a subject that Smith says is the top priority for “pretty much all of Pure Storage’s customers”, and one he says has been paramount to the business since it began trading nine years ago.

“All of the data we carry in FlashArray is encrypted, it’s always on. I think that really shows how seriously we take the security topic. If you look at the storage markets, typically encrypting data at rest is an option and a cost option, but it’s always on with FlashArray and with FlashBlade and we are taking those

PURE STORAGE

technologies into the cloud where the same is true – the data is always encrypted,” says Smith.

This new suite of solutions represents a real shot in the arm for the storage industry and cements Pure Storage’s reputation as one of the sector’s early movers, a reputation that has remained intact since it became one of the fastest-growing IT storage companies in history just a few years after it started operating.

“We have a very proud track record and this move into Cloud Data

Services allows us to take our next step as a company. And it’s not just a small step, what we have done is introduce a considerable set of capabilities for the public cloud. We believe these solutions will allow our customers to really take their use of public cloud to the next level both for their mission critical tier one applications as well as their data protection requirements going forward.”

It is an approach that has not gone unrecognised; Pure Storage was positioned within the Leaders quadrant of the July 2018 Magic Quadrant for Solid-State Arrays by Gartner for the fifth year in a row in 2018, an achievement Smith says can be attributed to the philosophy of the business and its employees.

“We really do encourage all of our employees to push the envelope on innovation.We’re a small company, we have just over 2,500 employees here and everyone is motivated to adopt the culture of the company, which is all about technology innovation, customer support, and business model innovation. That’s what the founders wanted when they established this business and that’s what we expect to this day,” Smith concludes.

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NETWORKS

MEETINGS MADE MAGNIFICENT Evoko’s CEO Richard Glückman on how the Swedish manufacturer enhances the workplaces of the world’s biggest companies AUTHOR: BEN MOUNCER

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EVOKO

t is a dilemma that you probably never stop confronting: how do you streamline your company’s operations for maximum efficiency, while at the same time making the continual, and sometimes radical, improvements needed to stay relevant?

The answer, more often than not, lies in the shape of technology. Whether through a piece of software that improves the output of a desk worker, or a major upheaval put in place to transform every aspect of the business, technology enables enterprises to transition from stagnant and bloated entities into lean, agile organisations.

Today, no single strand of a company

is too small to be protected from the disruptive nature of new technologies.

Under pressure from an expectant boardroom above and an ever-more demanding workforce below, leaders are adopting a forensic approach to creating the optimum business environment for prosperity. Little changes can make big differences.

That is why Evoko, a Swedish engineering firm, has enjoyed great success in its own niche market. Leaders in technology for the smart office, it has a vision to become globally-recognised as giving ‘pleasurable, professional advantages in the modern business world’. By prioritising a strong returnon-investment (ROI) alongside a

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NETWORKS

seamless experience for its products’ users, it is driving both efficiency and enhancement for clients.

“We always work to find the combination of those two things in our products,” Evoko’s CEO, Richard Glückman, tells Digital Bulletin. “What we really mean by ‘pleasurable, professional advantages’ is that we want to make sure that all of our products have the professional side by bringing in a good ROI to the company.

They should be able to save time, save money and be more efficient.

“It should solve those kinds of problems, but it should also have the pleasurable aspect in it, for the employees. It should make their everyday work life a bit more fun, a bit easier and more delightful.”

A subsidiary of SMS Smart Media Solutions, Evoko has developed a suite of cutting-edge products that are upgrading meeting spaces all over the world. From its flagship Room Manager to the advanced MINTO conferencing phone, Evoko’s collection of intelligent solutions has firmly established it as a leader in the smart office sector and it now boasts a client roster that includes Nike, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola.

As with most startups in the technology industry, however, Evoko has grown from humble beginnings.

When Glückman initially joined in 2012, he linked up with only one other employee. But the company already had the key ingredient for success: a

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EVOKO’S MINTO

novel product that was bought into by businesses.

“Back then, I got really excited about the job because Evoko had a rare opportunity of having a great product with a possibility for growth,” explains Glückman. “It had an innovative solution in a new business segment, yet it was still a small company.

“Evoko only had one employee, somebody working in sales. But at the same time, it had great support from the parent company SMS Smart Media Solutions, being able to use its distribution network and of course lots of other services, from accounting to HR.” Over the course of the last decade, Evoko has worked diligently to turn its ideas into robust products. Alongside MINTO, its GROUPIE illumination lens transforms the video conferencing

EVOKO

experience while in the first quarter of 2019, it is putting PUSCO - an all-in-one system for improving public space communication - to market.

It has also upgraded its original Room Manager into LISO, a next-generation solution to optimise meeting management - and it is this example that Glückman chooses to illustrate the exact benefits its clients can reap from Evoko’s product data.

“Let’s say that you have five employees in the average meeting,” he says. “You come up to the room that you think that you booked, but another group of five people come up and you start arguing for five minutes about who actually booked the room.

“Multiplying those ten people with five minutes, you’re wasting 50 minutes of time. Staff costs and personnel costs are one of the highest costs that a

EVOKO’S LISO

29 Issue 1

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Smartworld and Honeywell to develop smart cities in UAE

Smartworld has signed an MoU with Honeywell Building Solutions to implement digitally transformed, sustainable, safe and efficient buildings across the UAE. The MoU is non-exclusive. Smartworld and Honeywell Building Solutions will collaborate to promote joint initiatives enabling building operators, facility managers, consultants and contractors to build greener, safer, more secure buildings. (21/01/19) 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.

EVOKO

With our systems, you get data and analytics to

show you how you’re using your meeting space”

company has. The loss of productivity there is pretty big, and multiply that by how many company meetings you have every week.

“You then look at the office space that you’re paying for. With our systems, you get data and analytics to show you how you’re using your meeting space.

You might get a lot of complaints that it’s always difficult to find a meeting room, but when you dig into the data, you might realise that you have 100% utilisation rates on Mondays but it’s almost empty on Thursdays and Fridays. Then you need to change your culture or better arrange your meeting spaces.”

For the technology itself, on top of in-house development Evoko has utilised a partnership model to ensure the integration of the very best solutions relevant to each of its products. Powering MINTO is

a patented sound improvement algorithm built by another Swedish company recently acquired by Google. Additionally, for PUSCO it has integrated PLAYin’s digital signage software with its own hardware.

Glückman acknowledges the importance of collaboration to Evoko’s success, adding: “It is very deeplyrooted within our company culture.

We know that we cannot be the best at everything, so we’re very careful with focusing on what we can do, where we can add value.

“Things are happening so quickly in today’s world with technology development that you risk becoming overrun by someone else. If you’re a small enough company that can rely on one technology, one product, great - but if you want to grow, one of the most efficient ways to do so is through these collaborations.”

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NETWORKS

Evoko has earned awards for both the technical excellence and slick design of its products, but the next stage of growth for the company will be to elevate the communication between them, in turn helping clients move towards having a true ‘digital workplace’.

Internet of Things (IoT) deployments in the office are proliferating as organisations seek to not only connect their spaces but also increase their attractiveness to prospective employees. Recent examples of smart office projects in Germany revealed a level of technology investment that included a network of sensors to measure motion, temperature and lighting backed-up by self-learning software to analyse the data.

Evoko wants a slice of the pie, as Glückman outlines. “Our products have been fairly standalone but now we are starting to integrate them more and more.

“With the PUSCO, there are some really interesting combinations with the LISO. The PUSCO, for example, can show an overview of all of your media.

In the lobby or the reception, you will be able to see where you’re going and when your meetings starts. It also makes it very easy to find a free room, you can see which rooms are available and which ones are occupied.

“For the LISO, we’ve also extended it to a smartphone app to make sure that it’s easy to book rooms on the go.

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We have some other exciting new product releases relating to the smart office and smart ways of working, coming out this year”

EVOKO’S CEO RICHARD GLÜCKMAN

EVOKO

Then we have some other exciting new product releases relating to the smart office and smart ways of working, coming out this year - but that’s all I can say right now!”

That culture of innovation is, according to Glückman, essential to thrive in a landscape that is continually shifting. New rivals are emerging all the time but he says the primary challenge he faces as CEO is to meet the demands of the end-user.

“The purchasing pattern is changing quite a lot. The average end-user today is doing so much more homework before even approaching the channel or the manufacturer,” he says.

“We’re experiencing the same kind of behaviour coming from businesses today. I read in one study recently that 80% of the purchase decision is already made when the customer contacts the channel manufacturer. We need to become more active, making sure that we are visible and that we have the resources to support the end-user and meet their demands on the purchasing side.”

Evoko works with its customers through a strict distribution model

where its trusted channel partners sell to integrators. With the trend of international companies now centralising their purchasing departments, however, clients are increasingly insisting on a direct line of communication with the manufacturers.

Glückman spins that into a positive, highlighting the authenticity of feedback received from endusers. Though it is still its European distribution model that forms its core business, Evoko is aiming to conquer more markets globally.

“Our biggest growth market right now is in the United States, where over the last couple of years we have been investing a lot in building up our business and starting to establish a channel and end-user base,” Glückman concludes.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of things happening for us in the United States over the next one to two years.

Even though we have some sales in South America, Asia and Africa, those haven’t really been focused markets for us yet but we have been looking more and more into Asia, too.

“As CEO, I get really excited about building businesses and growing businesses, and I see that we have so many years of growth ahead of us.”

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DATA & SECURITY

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FORTINET

JOINING THE DOTS Networks are growing fast, from the centre right out to the edge. Paul Anderson, Regional Director of UK&I for Fortinet, believes a unified approach is now essential to guaranteeing their security

AUTHOR: BEN MOUNCER

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DATA & SECURITY

t’s an industry cliché and he knows it, so when Paul Anderson references the ‘single pane of glass’ to describe his customers’ desire for a fully-integrated security solution, he does it with a wry smile.

But in a period where security providers are innovating to meet the increased client demands associated with ever-more complex networks, delivering as simple an answer as possible presents a big challenge while also being a crucial factor in keeping pace in the market.

“If you look at Fortinet’s approach to the marketplace, we’ve grown up, as have some of our competitors, in that core firewall and data centre space,” explains Anderson, who took up the role as the company’s Regional Director for UK & Ireland in May last year.

“Over that same period of time, what we have seen - and it’s no news to anybody - is that where you keep your data and what we think of as the ‘perimeter’ has completely changed.

Data is now everywhere; it moves rapidly, it changes its location, there is no ‘perimeter’. The perimeter is now where you are.

“When I go out to talk to customers,

Paul Anderson, Regional Director UK & Ireland, Fortinet 36 DIGITAL BULLETIN

the big challenge they have is that they feel like they potentially need to have conversations with 30 or 40 different vendors, each with a different capability, each telling them that they need their niche solution to fix their new problem. The simple reality is, there are very few [security] organisations on the planet, if any, who can truly manage everything.”

Fortinet is attempting to get close with ‘Security Fabric’, a service that links all of its security technologies into one platform. By using a common

FORTINET

When I go out to talk to customers, the big challenge they have is that they feel like they potentially need to have conversations with 30 or 40 different vendors”

operating system and open standards, Fortinet is able to offer a single system that, integrated with its most advanced threat protection technologies, offers customers a simplified view of their network security.

The ‘fabric’ covers multi-cloud environments to Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints, as well as smaller network access points like email and web applications. Broad visibility and integration are two of the three keystones upon which Fortinet has built its flagship product, with automation

the third. Underlying artificial intelligence powers immediate, coordinated responses to threats across the network.

Anderson believes efficiency as well as simplicity is achieved through this means, which is a major consideration for customers who may be concerned by the cost and resource-draining that comes with a multi-vendor approach.

“You need to try and do more things under a singular umbrella, which means you can utilise your resource better and do more with less people,” he

37 Issue 1

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Cybercrime set to cost $5.2trn over the next five years

A new Accenture report says cybercrime could cost businesses up to $5.2 trillion over the next five years. The consultancy’s global study found just 30% of organisations feel ‘very confident’ about their online security. The increased dependency on internet-based business models will be behind more cyberattacks, says Accenture. (17/01/19) 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.

FORTINET

adds. “Obviously, it also has the upside where if some kind of event happens in one part of the infrastructure, the rest of the infrastructure can respond.

“We know that we may never have absolutely everything you need in one bucket, but also any infrastructure, or any company, that’s been around for more than a year will have some kind of legacy infrastructure. We need to be able to integrate and talk to other parts of your ecosystem.

“In terms of the problems that I’m hearing, people need to be able to have a joined-up approach across all

which slows response rates and increases the likelihood of an infected device precipitating a far greater problem.

FortiClient, Fortinet’s endpoint protection software that is a key component of its ‘Security Fabric’, tackles this head on by leveraging machine learning to proactively defend against malware. But Anderson accepts that there are still questions to answer when it comes to IoT security, especially in relation to the sheer number of endpoints that will exist within organisations.

You need to try and do more things under a singular umbrella, which means you can utilise your resource better and do more with less people” of those traditionally siloed parts of the business. This dissolves silos.”

The rise of connected devices, both on a consumer and industrial level, has changed the landscape for security vendors, perhaps influencing their strategic planning more than any other factor. IoT security is only going to become more critical throughout the enterprise too, with Bain projecting the IoT marketplace to double in overall value by 2021.

Rising amounts of data and IP are being stored outside of the core and on endpoints, which has hackers licking their lips. Historically, threat intelligence from endpoint solutions hasn’t been shared with the rest of the network,

“It’s one of those areas that is kind of grey, if that’s the right word,” he explains. “When people talk about IoT, it can mean lots of different things. For example, it could be how you secure a connected device like a thermostat or it could mean something on a much larger scale. Is the approach to go that we need to embed something in every single device, or does it need to come through some kind of gateway?

“The problem is in the future, when every single electrical device in your home, or that you experience from walking down the street, is going to be connected to the internet. What’s the cost to embed a security device into a lighting system, for example? I’m not

39 Issue 1

DATA & SECURITY

sure where the breakpoint comes.

“I think you need to approach the problem differently. You’re not going to embed security into each intelligent light. It probably all comes back to a building where you have a choke point, a firewall - and that’s where you build the security.”

Fortinet works with customers who are deploying connected devices on a far more industrial scale, however, and this is where a bespoke approach is vital according to Anderson - even though more often than not they are operating with unsuitable legacy infrastructure.

“Imagine a hospital where you’ve got MRI scanners and other medical systems which run physically on old operating systems; that is a point of vulnerability,” he carries on. “From our perspective, we would say that,

40 DIGITAL BULLETIN

in the future, we’d work with the manufacturers of that equipment to embed security into their devices but at the moment, we would put a firewall between that device and the rest of the infrastructure.

“As soon as you get to a situation where the device that is enabled to be intelligent reaches a certain price point, clearly there’s a long-term value to the customer and the vendor to make that industrially secure with its own embedded solution.”

As Regional Director for UK&I, Anderson’s remit stretches beyond Fortinet’s technical capabilities. As a global entity, Fortinet achieved $1.5 billion worth of full-year revenue in 2017 and the California-headquartered company has its sights on challenging the biggest fish in the pond.

Since assuming his position in May

FORTINET

last year, Anderson has been working towards the specific objective of using Fortinet’s platform-based approach to increase penetration in a saturated regional market.

“We have fairly aggressive growth objectives but the marketplace itself is expanding rapidly. You’ve got a number of adjacent markets that are colliding together.” he outlines.

“Also, the UK marketplace is seen as, for want of a better phrase, an ‘icon’ market from an IT perspective. A number of things go on within the UK marketplace and within our business that often lead to thought leadership across the enterprise.

“For me, it’s about creating the right structure for the next three to five-year journey that enables us to exceed the growth and objectives that the company is giving me. We have the ability here to grow more significantly than we have in the past, and more significantly that our primary competitors.”

One stumbling block to growth vendors are repeatedly coming across is a widening skills gap within the industry. As networks become

ever more intricate and segmented, the pool of suitable professionals to manage them becomes shallower, with the biggest companies having to scrap it out for the best talent.

This also translates further into the workplace, where a dearth of basic technical knowledge can lead to issues. One of the most common causes of a breach remains something Fortinet and its rivals struggle to have control over: human error. That is why the company is investing in training to educate key stakeholders within its client organisations, while also running its Network Security Expert (NSE) programme aimed at technical experts.

“People are sometimes unknowingly stupid, if that makes sense,” says Anderson. “We’ve all done it, there are lots of examples of how people easily get phished - they give their password information away, that sort of stuff.

“All too often, we’re so busy with our lives that we don’t take time to think about what we’re receiving. If we can get some basic education out there on this subject, I think that really helps solve the core problem. So far, we’ve had over 163,000 people come through the programme. It’s been a real success.”

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PEOPLE

AUTHOR: STUART HODGE 42 DIGITAL BULLETIN

GAME INTELLIGENCE

BRAIN P WER IN ACTI N What if you could build your company based on the brain chemistry of employees and their individual abilities? Game Intelligence is setting out to revolutionise how organisations find and develop talent by predicting performance. CEO Anders Norén tells us more

F

or any transforming business, the value of bringing together highperforming and engaged leaders and teams cannot be understated.

Despite that, attempting to calibrate what makes certain individuals both perform well individually and dovetail well in a team is an area where there can be a huge variance in both how well it is done and how it is approached.

But by using cutting-edge neuroscience techniques and technology, Swedish startup Game Intelligence is looking to revolutionise exactly how organisations find and

develop talent.

The research team, made up of Karolinska Institutet neuropsychologist Torbjörn Vestberg alongside neuroscientists Professor Martin Ingvar and Associate Professor Predrag Petrovic, has taken research techniques normally used for the assessment and treatment of behavioural and neuropsychological conditions and applied them instead to understanding performance by using cognitive testing.

They study how the executive functions in the frontal lobe of people’s brains – encompassing abilities such as problem solving, memory, verbal ability and impulse control – help them to

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PEOPLE

carry out their job, both individually or in teams.

The highest profile cognitive testing the company has done so far was with two of the most decorated and talented footballers of their generation, former Barcelona and Spain midfield duo Xavi Hernández and Andrés Iniesta.

The two players spent over a decade operating at the very top of their sport, winning everything from the World Cup and two European Championships internationally to well over a dozen club honours each.

The Game Intelligence team sought to discover how the pair’s neurological makeup helped them maintain their astounding levels of performance, utilising testing which is standardised and normalised for the entire world population and is scientifically proven with the highest level of validity.

Game Intelligence CEO Anders Norén

believes the studies conducted on the two sporting superstars, along with its scientific testing, showed the potential of the business and also exactly how cognitive profiling can help explain performance.

“The results from that study were amazing,” says Norén. “It gained a lot of attention from media all over the world because of the fascinating results. The researchers had shown to the world that there is a way to better understand ‘game intelligence’, why someone constantly shows the ability to be in the right place, at the right time and do the right thing.

“The first study showed that you can predict, on a very high level, success in football. The researchers also found very clear, combinative profiles of the different positions. And we also realised you can use this to select, build and coach teams to perform better, with the ANDRÉS INIESTA

44 DIGITAL BULLETIN

GAME INTELLIGENCE

XAVI HERNÁNDEZ

Transformation means change and change, for almost all of us, is something we don’t like” cognitive profile playing an important part.”

But it’s not just footballers and sportspeople with whom Game Intelligence has been cooperating; it has also been working with companies such as Atlas Copco, H&M and Volvo to prove the benefits of their work in the business world.

“What the researchers did was to correlate the cognitive test results and the capacity of specific executive functions with the company’s own judgment evaluation,” Norén explains.

“There’s some depth in the evaluation of their managers and coworkers.

“We found a very strong correlation between the capacity level of specific executive functions and what they considered being a good leader, or a good manager, with result and goal orientation.

“Adaptability, stress resilience, team building… those were other indicators the scientists looked for and found strong statistical correlation between specific brain functions, their capacity, and these indicators. That’s a very important tool when we work with businesses, to look at this capacity. It’s a way of bridging things.

“When it comes to successful teams,

45 Issue 1

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Facebook to add 1,000 jobs in Ireland this year

Facebook says it will add 1,000 jobs in Ireland over the course of 2019. COO Sheryl Sandberg made the announcement in a Dublin speech. Facebook has 60 teams across the capital, County Meath and County Cork. The additions will take its total workforce in the country to 5,000. The news comes after Salesforce said it would build a new Dublin campus and create 1,500 jobs.

(22/01/19) 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.

GAME INTELLIGENCE

ANDERS NORÉN

we do see executive functions that, between team members, coincide independently of how high or low they are but with most teams we’ve looked at, they seem to be similar, or the same, on a few of these functions. But, in almost any team, there are also very clear differences.”

Game Intelligence studied some of the most successful founders in IT and life science throughout Sweden, and in many instances it comes down to pairings incorporating a strategic ‘thinker’ and a more focused ‘doer’.

Another perspective is that it often comes down to a more peopleoriented individual along with somebody who maybe lacks some interpersonal skills but has the vision to engender success.

There will often be lots of areas in common in a partnership and then one clear deviation in their

cognitive skills. Norén describes there as being “big room” for very different profiles working together in teams, but also strong evidence exists for complementary profiles collaborating, providing people that can accept and create benefits from the cognitive differences.

In a transformative world where the very fabric of how business is conducted is constantly subject to change, Game Intelligence’s work could provide huge value.

“Basically this is a way of using modern cutting-edge science to actually systemise and integrate this cognitive science into the day-to-day life of individuals, leaders and teams at organisations,” says Norén.

“The whole world of business is going through digitalisation in some way or another. In some trades, it’s a dramatic change where digitalisation

47 Issue 1

PEOPLE

We’ve been a niche consulting firm with psychology-led testing and coaching, but we’re now starting with the digitalisation of the complete process”

48 DIGITAL BULLETIN

means that many jobs as we know are disappearing and replaced by new ones or digital processes. For those leaving and for those staying, this often means a huge transformation.

“Transformation means change and change, for almost all of us, is something we don’t like because it’s seldom you who chooses to change.

We are creatures of habit, so this is where our tools come in handy.”

Norén says that the things an individual can understand about themselves, when it comes to how they react to changes in the environment and how it causes them to feel and react, is key to extracting the most from their ability.

By understanding this on a deep level, people can much better choose their environment and situations where they actually have the best possibilities to succeed.

“Let’s say that you realise that ‘Okay, I don’t have the best attention and memory,’ then you can find ways to compensate by using different techniques, develop different skill sets and so on,” he adds.

“As a leader, you can use that to combine the knowhow with the better understanding of what’s under the hood. ‘What’s actually the capacity beyond this overt behaviour that I see, that I want to bring forward independently of the behaviour that may make it difficult to lead this person?’

GAME INTELLIGENCE

“By knowing, respecting and encouraging the capacity that you want each person to use, this person will feel more appreciated and that can drive transformation and change.

In that kind of environment, you need more than ever to have the right kind of leaders with the right abilities, who can see what’s important and give people the leadership, support and development they need.

“For example, in software development you need testers and they need to be very sharp. Maybe, the testers don’t need to be good at interacting with people. They don’t need to have a very high level on flexibility or attention and memory, but they need to be extremely sharp when it comes to correcting and finding the problems.

“Companies can make very specific expert profiles and feel much safer.

When individuals have a certain capacity in these abilities, they can do this specific job very well. You can then be much sharper and more insightful in your recruiting, and in your building of teams and organisations.

“If you combine that with selfinsight and the ability and support to complement it then it can definitely help.”

Amongst all the science and learning, Norén has a vision which is not just to create a bespoke consultancy; he also wishes to build a global database of information and

data which can be used not just by businesses but everyone, from elite sports organisations to universities and other educational institutions.

“So far, we’ve been a niche consulting firm with psychology-led testing and coaching, but we’re now starting with the digitalisation of the complete process, from the testing to the advanced analytics of big data and also correlation with other data,” he concludes.

“You know that what we can tell you can be used to improve your behaviour, to improve your teamwork, your leadership, et cetera. What is the outcome? What is the effect?

The action and the outcome is very interesting for the future. This database is what we intend to build over time.

“We will have these two (elements to the business). So far, it’s been the consulting – which will of course continue. It will be deep, qualitative, focused on management teams, leaders, high performers. And then, we will have the digital business.

That will be broader, for selection or screening and so on, working with big data, advanced analytics and visualisation tools. They will work nicely together, we think.”

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FUTURE

ON THE CUSP

With the worlds of business and blockchain ready to collide, the technology’s impact looks set to ripple throughout the enterprise. But does reality justify the headlines? To uncover the challenges and expectations facing decision-makers everywhere, Digital Bulletin gathered views from a number of industry experts on three major blockchain topics: scalability, interoperability and mainstream integration

50 DIGITAL BULLETIN

BLOCKCHAIN

51 Issue 1

FUTURE

THE SCALABILITY CHALLENGE

“Mass adoption won’t happen if

some blockchains, including Bitcoin,

most people will not accept slower

scalability features, without either a)

blockchains can’t scale, simply because applications. Blockchain was not initially designed with the widespread use

and the number and different types of

adaptation now in mind. As the number of daily transactions continues to rise, an increasing number of issues are

popping up especially with regards to

the potential speed in which transactions can be processed,”

JACQUELINE WATTS, blockchain-in-law expert, A City Law Firm.

“In general, blockchains by their

nature are affected by a tradeoff

between security, decentralisation and scalability. Only two of these

three attributes can be prioritised;

the other sacrificed. This is why open

public blockchains such as Bitcoin and

Ethereum - which were designed to focus on decentralisation and network security - suffer from relatively low transaction

processing speeds compared to the likes of Visa or Mastercard, whilst consortium blockchains have higher speeds but at the cost of centralisation.

Because of the decentralised model,

52 DIGITAL BULLETIN

are difficult to upgrade to add new generating very strong consensus

between existing participants, or b)

disagreement between factions causing a split - otherwise known as a fork - that creates a new blockchain altogether,

one with the upgraded features and one without,”

Andy Bryant, COO at bitFlyer Europe.

“One of the practical constraints for

enterprise scalability is privacy control.

While permissioned blockchains are great at controlling access to online applications and documents, most

blockchains lack the ability to control

what specific fields of data are or are not accessible to different authorised users.

Stated differently, all permissioned users should not necessarily have access and

visibility to all of the data. Various industry forums and blockchain technology

providers have begun looking at options to address this need, but most come

with concerns about scaling complexity, and operational performance as utilisation grows,”

FRANK WIENER, CMO, SEPIOR APS.

BLOCKCHAIN

Mass adoption won’t happen if blockchains can’t scale, simply because most people will not accept slower applications” 53 Issue 1

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

NASA looking to secure flight data on a blockchain

NASA is exploring the use of blockchain technology to secure aircraft flight data. The proposed framework would offer certificate authority, smart contract support and higher-bandwidth communication channels. A prototype of the system reportedly contained the Hyperledger Fabric. NASA says that this method could be rapidly deployed in a scalable, modular environment. (11/01/19) 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.

BLOCKCHAIN

THE INTEROPERABILITY CHALLENGE “Blockchain interoperability is another

specific blockchain right now, you’re

concern over privacy control, imagine

of choice becomes less popular, less

key issue. Following up on the scale how difficult it will be to achieve

blockchain interoperability if privacy control is implemented differently

for each blockchain technology. It’s

clearly a non-starter to have different approaches for each technology. So

technologies which provide a bridge between different implementations,

making a bet. In case your blockchain effective, or a new one that is much better appears on the horizon, you will need to switch at some point.

Right now it’s a painful and expensive process. The solution that Accenture proposes makes such moves a lot easier,”

or better yet technologies which

LADIMIR TOMKOM, CEO and game producer of Blockchain Cuties.

blockchain platforms, will go a long way

“From a legal perspective, whenever

natively work off-chain across different in achieving interoperability,” FRANK WIENER. “In my opinion, Accenture’s solution proposal that enables integration between different blockchain

platforms by introducing standards

that different platforms agree upon,

and allowing the transfer of tokenised assets on these platforms, is huge. It

would allow interoperability between different platforms and would make

building business that uses blockchain easier and less risky. New blockchains appear quite often, some of them get

traction and user base, some of them

lose it. If you’re making a business on a

there is multiple party involvement

there is an increased risk of litigation, as each party, without doubt, seeks to blame the other. It is essential from the outset that roles and

responsibilities are clearly mapped

out and that all parties clearly agree on the intellectual property right

ownership in the new solution. It is vital that developers agree who

is responsible for each part of the

solution, especially if something goes

wrong. Developers should ensure they enter into a properly considered joint

venture agreement which reflects the complexities of the arrangement,” JACQUELINE WATTS.

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FUTURE

THE MAINSTREAM CHALLENGE

“It’s only a matter of time until the march towards mainstream picks up and I think 2019 could be the tipping point. If we look at the definition of ‘mainstream’ from a value perspective, I’d argue blockchain is catching up with the other large payment processing companies. Where it’s lagging behind is volume. However, there are other challenges facing blockchain.

The model is also facing resistance from incumbents, misinformation causing negative publicity, regulatory apprehensiveness and a basic lack of awareness of its transformational potential. Much more education is needed to introduce blockchain to the day-to-day. But looking back 25 years, we would have said exactly the same for mass adoption of the internet,”

ANDY BRYANT.

56 DIGITAL BULLETIN

“Permissioned blockchains used for enterprise applications will go through a period of ongoing and sustained innovation rather than a single event. There are too many knobs and variables to have one solution address all of the constraints.

But it will be refined and proven on use cases where it can add compelling value, with only a moderate degree of technology complexity. As it becomes more established and systems align to more natively work with blockchain, the scope and complexity of projects will expand. I expect that the various constraints will be addressed in parallel, resulting in moderate adoption for select use cases within three years and more mainstream adoption within five-plus years,”

FRANK WIENER.

BLOCKCHAIN

It’s only a matter of time until the march towards mainstream picks up and I think 2019 could be the tipping point.”

“It is clear that blockchain has definite disruptive potential, but it is currently at a very immature stage.

It will need to evolve through several more stages before it becomes a useful tool for enterprises and consumers. For this evolution to take place, and blockchain to become commercially viable, enterprises and organisations need to fundamentally change the way corporate IT is delivered.

This means moving away from hardware, and embracing software.

This new paradigm doesn’t mean the need for reliable and secure infrastructure disappears. In fact, the more distributed the application, the more important the network and underlying infrastructure becomes,” CRAIG TAVARES, Director of Product

Innovation and Technology at Cogeco Peer 1.”

57 Issue 1

EVENTS EVENTS

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

08-14 FEB BLOCKCHAIN WEEK 08-14 FEBRUARY, 2019 GRANGE TOWER BRIDGE HOTEL, LONDON In its fifth edition, Blockchain Week arrives in London in 2019. Last 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

58 DIGITAL BULLETIN

and losers?

Over 3,500 participants will be taking part throughout 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.

WWW.BLOCKCHAINWEEK.COM

FEBRUARY-APRIL

12-15 FEB IBM THINK 12-15 FEBRUARY, 2019 MOSCONE CONVENTION CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA IBM’s flagship technology conference is back, and it will feature over 2,000 business and technical sessions led by industry disruptors and innovators. Big name speakers include NFL quarterback Joe Montana, legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk, and astronaut Steve Smith. This is the second-annual Think conference, which largely unites many of IBM’s previously separate conferences. CEO Ginni Rometty typically keynotes Think, while GM of Global Business Partners John Teltsch typically keynotes PartnerWorld.

WWW.IBM.COM/EVENTS/THINK

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EVENTS

25-28 FEB MWC 19 25-28 FEBRUARY, 2019 FIRA GRAN VIA, BARCELONA Formerly known as the Mobile World Congress, the recently re-branded MWC19 is back in Barcelona at the end of the month. It is the largest mobile event in the world, bringing together the latest innovations and leading-edge technology from more than 2,400 leading companies, with a highly-rated conference programme assembling today’s visionaries to explore the hottest topics influencing the industry. The event also features extensive learning opportunities from dozens of partner-led programmes, GSMA seminars, summits and more.

WWW.MWCBARCELONA.COM

60 DIGITAL BULLETIN

FEBRUARY-APRIL

05-06 MAR LOGISTICS CIO FORUM 05-06 MAR, 2019 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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EVENTS

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. Cloud Expo Europe 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.

WWW.CLOUDEXPOEUROPE.COM

62 DIGITAL BULLETIN

FEBRUARY-APRIL

12-13 MAR 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, according 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

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

WWW.DATAINNOVATIONSUMMIT.COM

63 Issue 1

EVENTS

10-11 APR

09-11 APR GOOGLE CLOUD NEXT ‘19 09-11 APRIL, 2019 MOSCONE CONVENTION CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA Google Cloud Next is where customers, partners, developers, influencers and the greater global cloud community come to get inspired and learn about Google Cloud Platform, G Suite, Maps, Devices and more great technology and solutions from across Google.

Learn from customers and partners, and dive deep through hundreds of breakout sessions, code labs, demos and hands-on training. Next ‘19 will offer more than 500 breakout sessions, led by more than 1,000 Google, customer, and partner speakers.

WWW.CLOUD.WITHGOOGLE.COM/NEXT/SF

64 DIGITAL BULLETIN

DUBLIN TECH SUMMIT 10-11 APRIL, 2019 DUBLIN, IRELAND 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.DUBLINTECHSUMMIT.COM

FEBRUARY-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

65 Issue 1

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

N

In a column exclusive to Digital Bulletin, VMware’s Alanzo Blackstock says businesses could be transformed by adopting a software-powered network one of us know what the future holds. That’s why technology innovation is about turning the narrow into the wide; about keeping your options open; about covering all eventualities. Businesses know they need to be adaptable so that they can deal with the inevitability of the unexpected and embrace opportunity on the fly: they need more flexibility,

66 DIGITAL BULLETIN

lower costs, greater openness.

It takes a lot of pieces to complete this puzzle. Yet, of all the innovations ‘du jour’ – think robotics, automation, AR and VR, IoT – ‘networking’ is too often overlooked, even though it’s the medium through which everything else happens.

It’s also the one that offers real business potential for the partner community. Just as every organisation is different, every organisation’s network is different. Think of the consultancy and expertise required

ALANZO BLACKSTOCK

to optimise speed, security and scale, not to mention the configuration and implementation aspects, that come with transforming an entire network infrastructure.

But why are we talking about this now? It’s because organisations are demanding more from their networks today; they’re realising the stranglehold an outdated network can have on their agility, velocity and efficiency as their business struggles to transform. They’re doing so at a time when the concept of a transformed network – a Virtual Cloud Network, if you will – is set to radically change the networking game, by providing an evolutionary path to consistent, pervasive connectivity and security for apps and data, wherever they reside – from the data center, to the cloud, out to the branch and on to the edge. All these elements together add up to a fantastic opportunity for the channel to add real business value for their customers.

TODAY’S NETWORKING BOTTLENECK Until now, organisations have operated using Local (LAN) and largely physical Wide Area Networks (WAN) to carry data traffic over their local, campus

and branch networks. These are related but fundamentally different technologies, optimised for very different purposes. LANs are typically cheap, commoditised, built to a wellestablished industry standard and in general, deliver fast, high-bandwidth within an immediate geographic area – i.e. within a building or small campus.

Businesses have been virtualising these for a while, bringing all associated scalability, performance, management and security benefits - but only up to a point.

That point is the wide area network router that connects your LAN to a WAN – extending the network beyond just the building. Today, router technology is one of the last areas of infrastructure still largely dominated by hardwareoriented solutions, with the WAN itself normally still based on legacy technologies such as leased line frame relay and T1 connections. Organisations are effectively renting dedicated capacity on a shared network, where connectivity is fixed, through cables and leased lines that are expensive, slow and, crucially, offer only a limited capability to scale linearly and quickly as the business requires.

Organisations are demanding more from their networks today; they’re realising the stranglehold an outdated network can have on their agility, velocity and efficiency” 67 Issue 1

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In a business world of constant change where most of your advantage comes from how much faster you can react to market opportunities than your competition, this can have huge implications. Say you’re a major bank with global operations, demanding zero downtime, colossal bandwidth to support millions of instantaneous transactions, and total resilience in every aspect of the business. You’re also under huge pressure to innovate your front-end in line with evolving customer demands. You might move to the public cloud or implement a hybrid cloud for greater flexibility and agility – to innovate at speed – which is A Virtual Cloud Network can be applied across many vertical markets to improve performance” fine in theory. However, without having similarly flexible enterprise-grade connectivity across your entire network (your LAN and your WAN), you’re only going to be as good as the slowest link in your networking chain. You’ve brought in all this great new technology but remain hampered by a networking bottleneck preventing you from realising all the benefits you’re pursuing.

THE SOFTWARE-DEFINED ALTERNATIVE Here’s where the Virtual Cloud Network

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comes in. A Virtual Cloud Network is a network powered entirely by software: a secure, universal fabric into which any data centre, device, sensor or cloud can be plugged. It’s an entire network virtualised; no more compulsory hardware routers or leased lines, just turbo-charged end-to-end performance, with security built into the beating heart of it all, right out to the very edge of the network.

It enables any organisation to connect, secure, and optimise the delivery of applications and data in an era when an increasing number of workloads will exist outside the data centre. A Virtual Cloud Network can be applied across many vertical markets to improve performance.

In healthcare, for example, it could ensure high performance for real-time applications such as voice and video for telemedicine and provide secure access to data for mobile healthcare.

In retail, it could support increased customer engagement with in-venue technologies that have high bandwidth demands, ensuring connectivity for POS applications and electronic payment transactions.

Savvy organisations are already reaping the benefits. Take a European telco company, which deployed and activated its entire SD-WAN infrastructure in less than a week. By establishing SLAs over secure VPN connections between Europe and America, it was able to bring together

ALANZO BLACKSTOCK

locations in Berlin, Germany and Mountain View, California via an agile, responsive end-to-end network. This meant it could deploy advanced architectures supporting next generation industrial networking for robotic applications in a simplified, cost-effective manner, without a complete technology ‘rip and replace’.

THE PERFECT STORM FOR PARTNERS The opportunity for partners lies in helping their customers to get all this right. If your customers aren’t already demanding better, cheaper, more flexible and reliable networking, then they soon will be – and if they don’t, they’re going to start losing out to their competitors, and quickly.

Networking is such an exciting element for the channel because it makes everything happen – and has

become relevant to any partner that is having conversations with customers that are looking to digitally transform.

A Virtual Cloud Network is the next logical step towards opening the door to IoT technologies and edge computing.

Building a Virtual Cloud Network requires technical expertise. It’s not necessarily about ripping out existing physical WAN connections, but instead about incorporating this software layer to sit alongside existing infrastructure, to support and optimise an evolutionary journey between today and tomorrow. This is the real opportunity for the channel: working with organisations to best deliver an evolutionary Virtual Cloud Network, ready to usher in the next wave of business transformation.

Alanzo Blackstock is the Director, Partner Organisation for UK and Ireland. He is responsible for driving strategic alliances and managing VMware’s partner ecosystem within the region, by ensuring the company’s innovative solutions help its partners differentiate and drive profitability.

Having joined the business in January 2017, Alanzo has a track record of building strong relationships with partners in the region. He demonstrates passion and an ability to understand how partners can embrace new and innovative technologies to help their customers drive digital transformation efforts, whilst opening them up to new revenue opportunities.

Alanzo’s career extends over 25 years in the IT industry, and prior to this appointment, he was responsible for managing Cisco’s largest partners in the UK. Having worked with the company for over a decade, he has a wealth of experience in helping sell services to financial services, industrial, retail, telecoms and media companies with a focus on managed services, security, cloud services and mobility.

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