Technology Magazine - February 2023

Pinsent

AI technologies and risk resilience in digital manufacturing

SAM CASTRO Senior Director at SAP, on how enterprises can handle real-world challenges with AI and the cloud

Investing in human capital for the future of work

Famously, an organisation is only as good as its employees. And as technology continues to change the way the world works, improving human capital has never been as important.

The World Economic Forum has estimated 77% of all jobs will require digital skills from workers by 2030. However, businesses currently face a global shortage of digital skills already, with only 33% of technology jobs worldwide filled by the necessary skilled labour.

To support organisations’ digital transformations, human capital needs to be up to scratch. Half of today’s organisations agree that the current ‘digital divide’ is widening, with 54% of business leaders noting that they have lost their competitive advantage due to talent shortages, according to a recent global survey by Capgemini and LinkedIn.

With Generation Z and Generation Alpha set to make up around a quarter of the workforce by the end of the decade – and nine in 10 of those jobs will require digital skills as a minimum – the most immediate challenge for today’s businesses is how to empower these emerging generations with the tools they need for the future of the work.

MARCUS

marcus.law@bizclikmedia.com

LAW

Without digital skills training and guidance for young workers across all sectors, organisations run the risk of being left behind as technology continues to evolve past them

“Half of today’s organisations agree that the current ‘digital divide’ is widening, with 54% of business leaders noting that they have lost their competitive advantage due to talent shortages.”

BIG PICTURE

Learning to code in Minecraft

Washington, US

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, computer science careers are expected to grow by over 600,000, a 15% increase, by 2031. Unfortunately, computer science courses are not available for all learners in US schools. Presently, only 53% offer computer science (CS) courses.

Minecraft: Education Edition gives learners the opportunity not only to create, survive, and work together in immersive game worlds, but also to explore CS, a critical skill for the future of work. Designed for learners from pre-literacy through high school, Minecraft’s CS progression offers opportunities for students to develop computational thinking and practice both block-based coding and Python.

THE BRIEF

BY THE NUMBERS

Research by Apogee finds organisations’ current IT setup is preventing effective collaboration, putting remote workers at a disadvantage and driving up cyber risks

48% admit remote staff don’t have access to the same solutions as office workers

63%

63% of IT directors are not very confident in their IT estate’s ability to fully support the hybrid workforce

48%

Younger consumers drive shift in how to earn and spend money

Technology is helping drive dramatic shifts in the way different generations earn and spend money in a post-COVID world, according to new research.

“I think the biggest compliment and reflection of that is when people around the business don't see you as a cost centre, but as an enabler”

Nigel Tranter CTO, Pinsent Masons

“The potential of leveraging new technologies that augment the work of our clinicians to enhance, extend, and, ultimately, save lives make my job truly exciting”

Michael Elley CIO, Baptist Health

IDC's Consumer Pulse, a survey of consumers in seven countries, has revealed how stark differences between the generations promise to transform the tech landscape over the next decade.

Adaptavist and Rozdoum deal shows Ukraine’s tech resilience

Global technology and innovative solutions provider Adaptavist has announced its acquisition of Rozdoum, a Ukrainebased Atlassian application and solution consultancy, and the first resident of Ukraine’s Diia.City initiative to be acquired by a foreign corporation.

Created by Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, as part of the country’s Ministry of Digital Transformation that he oversees, Diia.City is a programme that provides legal and tax incentives making it easier to develop technology businesses in the region and was introduced only weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The Diia.City initiative is now vital for improving the wartime resilience of our technology sector, and Adaptavist’s acquisition of Rozdoum illustrates that,” Fedorov says. “As we rebuild our economy, Diia.City will continue to play an important role in attracting foreign investment into technology businesses within Ukraine.”

 GOOGLE

Search giant Google announced at its annual conference in India that it’s working with pharmacists to explore ways to decipher the handwriting of doctors. The feature, currently a research prototype, allows users to either take a picture of the prescription or upload one from the photo library.

 KYNDRYL Kyndryl has unveiled new cloud-native services that it says will help customers accelerate their cloud application modernisation journey at scale.

 JOB LOSSES

Numerous high-profile tech companies, including Facebook’s Meta, Twitter and Amazon, announced mass layoffs at the end of 2022. Job cuts in the US were on the rise, with a 6% increase for the first 11 months of 2022 in comparison to the previous year.

 UBER Rideshare company Uber recently suffered a data breach after Teqtivity – a software company that provides asset management and tracking services for Uber – was targeted in a cyber attack.

U P D O W N

FEB23

TIMELINE

THE CUTTING EDGE: EDGE COMPUTING TRENDS TO WATCH IN 2023

As the IoT has grown and the volume of data generated has increased, edge computing has become increasingly important. We look at the edge computing trends to look out for in 2023.

1 2

Edge spending to continue According to research by ReportLinker, the edge computing market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.6% between 2022 and 2028 to hit an estimated $132.11 million. The "2022 Global Edge Computing Market report" put future growth even higher, estimating the market will hit $90 billion by 2030.

The rise of 5G 5G will deliver the ultra-low latency required for many edge computing applications. Improvements in networking speeds open possibilities for far-away sensors to instantly give updates about the connected devices. That increase in real-time processing will require new equipment with enhanced capabilities.

More and more

data

Market and consumer data firm Statista estimated the number of IoT devices worldwide will jump from 15.1 billion in 2023 to 29.4 billion in 2030. IDC put the figures even higher, estimating that by 2025 there will be 55.7 billion IoT devices, generating nearly 80 zettabytes of data.

3 5

Containers to be key

Containers and Kubernetes make an ideal platform for the edge, and hyperscale cloud providers are taking note. Containers and container-native storage can provide core services, persistent storage, high availability, and durability. It also can enable seamless migration between the cloud and edge with minimal effort.

Edge is a target

With the growing number of IoT devices and edge computing use cases, threat actors are increasingly seeing them as prime targets. The AT&T Cybersecurity Insights Report: Securing the Edge found that 74% of the security, IT and lineof-business leaders they surveyed said the likelihood of their organisation being compromised was likely.

4 6

6G on the horizon

Sixth-generation wireless, or 6G, networks will leverage higher frequencies and higher capacity than 5G. And just as 5G provided capabilities that boosted edge computing and supported new use cases involving edge computing, 6G will offer new possibilities, with distributed computing to play a major role.

Mohit Joshi

Since Mohit Joshi joined Infosys in 2000, the organisation has been through a dramatic transformation. Now President of the company, he speaks with Technology Magazine about his career highlights and Infosys’ plans for the future

Please could you introduce yourself, and tell us about your role at Infosys?

My name is Mohit Joshi and I’ve been with Infosys since 2000. I live in London with my wife and two children. My role at Infosys is President, which means I am responsible for our Financial Services, Healthcare and Life Sciences businesses. I am also responsible for our own internal IT function alongside large deals sales training for our business and sales effectiveness.

Tell us about some of your highlights in your time at Infosys

I joined Infosys back in December 2000, when it was a US$180mn company. The company has since grown a hundred-fold from a revenue perspective, and the employee count has risen from around 10,000 to over 350,000. We are now present in multiple countries around the world, and it’s been a truly remarkable journey. A journey that has seen growth, client relevance and, for me personally, one that has given me the ability

2016

to work across multiple countries and continents.

During my time, I’ve also had the opportunity to work in the US, Mexico, and London. It’s been incredibly exciting to have had the chance to meet people from all around the world, working with a range of cultures and clients. It’s been nothing short of a truly international experience with Infosys.

Another highlight has been witnessing and playing a role in progressing the significant transformation that we’ve seen in both enterprise technology and within some of our global clients’ businesses.

What are you most proud of in your career?

I’m most proud to be a part of this exciting growth journey that has seen the company grow from

“Everyone at Infosys has this deep sense of purpose, and working collaboratively with such like-minded people has certainly been a high point in my career”

US$180mn to almost US$18bn. We’ve been able to transform many careers and play an instrumental role in the digital transformation of so many of our clients, which will always make me proud.

Everyone at Infosys has this deep sense of purpose and working collaboratively with such like-minded people has certainly been a high point in my career.

What technologies excite you most about the future?

All open-source technologies, all cloud technologies, and everything happening from a cybersecurity perspective is exciting me about the future. At Infosys, we’re also particularly excited about the opportunity to scale digital solutions for our clients. When progressing this effort, we think carefully about customer experiences, and transforming customer and employee journeys. We think about the promise of data to drive hyperpersonalisation, great insights and next-best actions for our customers.

Innovations such as IoT and vertical platforms also hold great promise, and I’m interested to see how these develop over the coming years. Cloud is another truly exciting technology that must not be forgotten. It has been exceptionally important in driving scale, costs and availability, as it drives speed for companies across the world.

Obviously, we are excited about the promise of AI and automation to really simplify landscapes and really drive value for businesses.

Generally speaking, the world of technology is always changing so I’m excited to see developments in all areas, including the ways AI and automation can continue to simplify our lives and drive value for business.

Today we’re discussing AI, but tomorrow it could be the metaverse – and blockchain always comes into it somewhere! Regardless of these changes, at Infosys, our deep understanding of our customers and their business context makes us relevant to them in being able to apply these new and exciting technologies to their business. That truly is the promise of Infosys.

What exciting plans do you have coming up as an organisation? As an organisation, we’ve been doubling down on the digital as we’ve seen the huge promise this has for our clients. We’re also doubling down on simplifying the legacy systems many of our clients use by using the power of AI and automation and simplification. We’re also very focused on learning, building out significant physical learning centres in Indianapolis, India and elsewhere in Dusseldorf, but also leveraging our digital platforms to support the training of our employees. Finally, we’re excited about the promise of localisation – becoming an even more global company by hiring in the markets in which we operate.

I think Infosys is on a significant growth trajectory and we feel that the journey’s just begun.

“Generally speaking, the world of technology is always changing so I’m excited to see developments in all areas, including the ways AI and automation can continue to simplify our lives and drive value for business”

SIMON WALKER

KUBRICK’S CO-FOUNDER AND CCO SPEAKS TO TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE ABOUT HOW THE COMPANY INNOVATES WITH CLIENTS AND TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS

Simon Walker founded Kubrick with Managing Partner Tim Smeaton in response to the expanding technology skills gap, which has continued to accelerate with an acute shortage in the data, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud space.

With 20 years of experience as a business partnership, Walker and Smeaton shared a vision of an alternative model that could solve this most pressing issue for businesses and society at large, helping organisations to evolve and embrace next-generation technology, while kick-starting the careers of our future workforce and leaders.

Q. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES?

» I am the Chief Commercial Officer and Co-Founder at Kubrick. In terms of my role within Kubrick, I work closely with clients and technology partners to understand and anticipate upcoming challenges in the rapidly evolving world of tech. A big focus of mine is improving diversity and inclusion in data and AI – Kubrick is on a mission to remove the significant financial barriers preventing many people from upskilling and entering our industry.

Q. WHAT IS YOUR POINT OF DIFFERENCE AS A BUSINESS?

» Kubrick creates a specialised workforce to help solve the digital skills emergency and meet immediate business needs, as well as build teams for long-term transformations. We actively seek smart, adaptable, and

diverse talent from a diverse range of backgrounds and experience including graduates, junior professional and career pivoters.

Our process is unique in that we provide successful candidates with employment with Kubrick, an intensive 15-week paid training placement and equip them with practical digital skills that will support

our clients to innovate and thrive in the fourth industrial revolution. Once Kubrick consultants are onsite, we continue to provide support from senior Kubrick consultants, tech specialists and performance coaches. Additionally, Kubrick’s Blended Squad offering provides clients with flexible resourcing solutions that provide Kubrick consultants with leadership, removing any strain on their management bandwidth.

Q. WHAT TECHNOLOGY ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO USING MORE OF?

» While I’m not a direct user of the technology, we are continually innovating with clients and our technology partners to meet the increasing demand for solutions that drive value from data. For example, we have been working more closely

“I AM ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT BUILDING A BUSINESS THAT IS DIVERSE; PULLING ON THE STRENGTHS OF EACH PERSON’S UNIQUE EXPERIENCES, CULTURAL BACKGROUND, AND CAPABILITIES TO WORK TOGETHER TOWARD A COMMON GOAL AND VISION”

with Collibra – a data intelligence company that specialises in finding the perfect balance between powerful analytics and ease of use. We will also be working closely with them on data cataloguing, data quality, and data governance solutions to synthesise data across multiple dictionaries and help businesses make more accurate, informed decisions.

Q. WHAT WAS YOUR CAREER HIGHLIGHT PRIOR TO YOUR CURRENT ROLE?

» Prior to starting Kubrick, I joined forces with my business partner, Tim Smeaton, in 2000 to launch a search business that specialised in finding talent with both technical skills and business literacy – a much soughtafter combination of the time. This experience was invaluable, we grew a business from a small, niche operator to a global listed company that traded in 70+ countries with over 500 members of staff.

Q. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR CAREER HIGHLIGHT IN YOUR CURRENT ROLE?

» A real highlight has been witnessing the amazing progress of our alumni. I’ve seen individuals with little or no background in data rapidly attain senior positions in amazing organisations and drive real change within them. In fact, 92% of our alumni agree that Kubrick accelerated their career faster than a typical organisation. It is also great to hear from our alumni that Kubrick is becoming a benchmark in quality and,

even after they have left, association with us continues to help them in their career.

Q. WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

» I know it may sound cheesy, but I’m incredibly collaborative and take the time to understand my team on a personal level so I can decipher their needs and embrace their differences. I am enthusiastic about building a business that is diverse; pulling on the strengths of each person’s unique experiences, cultural background, and capabilities to work together toward a common goal and vision. I enjoy seeing my team understand the vision and what their individual

“IT IS GREAT TO HEAR FROM OUR ALUMNI THAT KUBRICK IS BECOMING A BENCHMARK IN QUALITY AND, EVEN AFTER THEY HAVE LEFT, ASSOCIATION WITH US CONTINUES TO HELP THEM IN THEIR CAREER”

role is in helping to achieve our wider objectives. I believe this drives an empowered culture where people enjoy a high level of accountability and responsibility

Q. WHAT EXCITING PLANS DO YOU HAVE COMING UP AS AN ORGANISATION?

» Given the success we have seen in the UK, we are looking forward to expanding our operations globally – starting with the opening of our first US office in New York and plans to hire another thirty consultants in June. We want to tap into the American market –training consultants but also helping

businesses harness the power of data and next-generation technology. Another important development is our online consultant training platform, which will be open to our alumni. The platform offers interactive skills development, all our training resources, and an online community for our consultants to connect with each other. Our goal is to make Kubrick a career partner for life and, with the rapidly changing technology landscape, having an online space with all these resources ensures that our people’s skills continue to evolve beyond their time in their training and beyond Kubrick.

Executives from Appian, AWS, and Xebia share their collaborative efforts and excitement about their partnership in low-code, cloud, and sustainability.

Technology is instrumental to achieving next-level capabilities across industries. But organizations that want to operate sustainably must choose technology that lets them adhere to strong environmental, social, and governance principles.

Appian Corporation, a process automation leader, is a critical piece of the digital transformation and sustainability puzzle. The enterprise-grade Appian Low-Code Platform is built to simplify today’s complex business processes, with process mining, workflow, and automation capabilities.

“By quickly building apps that streamline and automate workflows, organizations are using Appian to make their processes for monitoring and reporting on ESG initiatives faster, simpler, and more effective,” says Meryl Gibbs, Emerging Industries Leader at Appian.

“Both AWS and Appcino are amazing partners of ours,” says Michael Heffner, VP Solutions and Industry Go To Market at Appian. “We have an extremely long legacy engagement with AWS as our trusted, go-to-market partner and Appcino builds “meaningful, business-focused applications on the Appian platform and is amazing in all things ESG.”

Digital transformation in ESG.

As an AWS leader enabling sustainability solutions built on the cloud, Mary Wilson, Global Sustainability Lead at AWS, talks about the partnership with Appian.

“Our objective is to help our customers achieve sustainability goals across their business operations,” says Wilson. “[This means] looking at data availability, meaning access to more data, and enabling actionable insights. “Lowcode, cloud-enabled, technologies will allow organizations to build fast, learn fast, iterate, and continue to improve these insights to drive their sustainability outcomes.”

Tarun Khatri, Co-Founder & Executive Director of Appcino (product part of Xebia), explains just how critical ESG is in the face of digital transformation. “The investment community now considers ESG reporting as a major factor for measuring performance,” says Khatri The collaboration will continually uncover new insights and provides customers the opportunity to accelerate their ESG goals with speed and security.

How DATA unlocking the POWER of information

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

is

With its information management solutions, OpenText enables organisations to reduce risk, cut costs and grow revenue, and gain an information advantage

Founded as a project out of the University of Waterloo in Canada in 1991, OpenText has grown into the global market leader for Information Management, empowering its customers to organise, integrate and protect data and content as it flows through business processes inside and outside their organisation.

OpenText provides hundreds of products including enterprise content management, digital process automation, security and AI and analytics tools to a range of audiences, from small and medium businesses to enterprises and governments.

“One of the things that we offer is a very robust cloud services business where a lot of our products are either on the business network or our cloud services business,” explains Anthony Lloyd, VP of Technology Services at OpenText, who is responsible for all of OpenText’s infrastructure operations and financial reporting for corporate IT, covering everything from data centres to networks, storage and compute service desk, end-user services, and support.

“Those products are online and available as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution, or in our public cloud or in the private cloud,” says Lloyd. “We are also continuously expanding our portfolio and trying to find ways to develop or implement more solutions that will allow us to bring greater value to the world.”

The need to digitise data

The world is becoming more data-hungry. In 2018, the total amount of data created and captured in the world was 33 zettabytes (ZB). By 2025, Statista predicts this number will soar to 181ZB.

Built on a groundwork of automation, connectivity, integration and insight, organisations now have an unprecedented ability to create, capture, manage and make sense of this new mass of information. Only with this data can businesses see the whole picture, allowing them to make better decisions faster, establish cultures of collaboration and master modern work, while building a connective ecosystem between partners, vendors, customers and employees.

“Today, a lot of companies are still paper bound, so they may have filing cabinets or

“We are also continuously expanding our portfolio while trying to find ways to develop or implement more solutions that will allow us to bring greater value to the world”

ANTHONY LLOYD VP OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, OPEN TEXT

EXECUTIVE BIO

ANTHONY LLOYD

TITLE: VP OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

LOCATION: WEST NEW YORK

Anthony leads the Technology Services team and has more than 20 years IT leadership experience. His background includes leadership roles spanning multiple industry sectors including pharma/healthcare, finance, entertainment, internet, high tech and ed/pub.

Anthony is a USAF veteran, where he obtained his education in Satellite Communications Engineering. His hobbies include playing basketball, bike riding and cooking.

The industry’s most complete SASE solution with ZTNA 2.0

Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE is the secure foundation for IT to scale at the speed of business.

It protects all users and locations with

OpenText unifies networking and security with Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE

With hybrid working the new normal, network security must evolve. Solutions such as Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma SASE can help businesses secure their future

For global software and managed services provider OpenText, infosec plays a hugely important role. Providing personal, public and private cloud-hosted solutions to customers from small and medium enterprises all the way through to governments around the world, protecting users’ data is vital.

“Because of the nature of our business,” explains Anthony Lloyd, VP of Technology Services at OpenText, “it’s vital that we have not only a secure network infrastructure, but also have very secure processes around validating users with access to our environment.”

Launched by Gartner in 2019, the cybersecurity concept Secure access service edge (SASE) features five core capabilities - Secure Web Gateway, CASB, Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA),

Firewall-as-a-Service and SD-WAN - converged into a single, cloud-delivered service model.

“Not all SASEs are created equal,” comments Jason Georgi, Field CTO for Prisma Access and SASE at Palo Alto Networks. “Our approach to SASE is pretty simple. It’s about connecting users anywhere they work to any resource, whether they’re in the data centre, cloud, VPCs, SaaS applications or the web.”

As Lloyd comments, one of the benefits of OpenText utilising Palo Alto’s Prisma SASE solution is the flexibility it offers. “As we continue to grow by acquisition globally,” he says,” that flexibility allows us to simplify the whole process for granting and removing access as we need, whether that is to facilities, to organisations, or to individuals.”

In today’s uncertain business environment, organisations are increasingly transitioning to SASE solutions. Gartner expects that by 2025 at least 60% of enterprises will have explicit strategies and timelines for SASE adoption, up from 10% in 2020.

“SASE is not a one-trick pony for one particular thing that you need to solve,” Georgi concludes. “You now have this platform that is able to take on these other use cases while reducing administrative overhead, giving you consistency around access control policy. In today’s world of hybrid work and hybrid cloud, SASE is the way to provide consistent security and user experience, enabling IT to implement their cybersecurity strategy in a holistic way.”

Learn more →

40 of the

50 largest supply chains run OpenText

they may have reams of papers that are stored in a repository,” Lloyd comments. “Trying to find that data in a short period of time – whether you need to be able to research it, distribute it or report on it – becomes a very challenging task.

“Our platforms and solutions allow you to simply digitise that data to be able to then manipulate it as you need to in a very short period of time so that you don't have to go through all of those manual efforts and processes,” he adds. “It reduces your cost, it expedites your ability to use the data as you need to, and it also allows you to protect it because you're not sitting on paper that can be destroyed. We

can protect it and make sure that you have that data for whatever timeframe you need.”

By utilising the power of OpenText’s information management platforms, organisations can reduce risk, cut costs and grow revenue, all while gaining an information advantage.

The information advantage means harnessing the power of information and managing it securely, intelligently, and as a whole, rather than in parts. It is attaining tactical, operational and strategic advantages over competitors using information systems, processes and influence.

“We simplify your ability to not only keep that data securely, but also we allow you to be able to parse that data, obtain the information out of it that you need to categorise it and be able to manage it and distribute it very quickly,” explains Lloyd. “Depending on which of the tools we have that you may choose to use, we have a lot of flexibility in our ability to do that.”

Thanks to a partnership with hybrid cloud data services and data management company NetApp, one of OpenText’s premier partners, data is now available ‘on tap’, anywhere. As Lloyd explains, the cloud strategy with NetApp is a core function of the business.

“We have adapted NetApp solutions, not only in our prior data centres but also in our new colocation facilities as well as in our public cloud and private cloud solutions,” he comments. “Part of what NetApp brings to the table is the ability to have that data on tap anywhere and the ability for us to use and manipulate that data – whether it's on-prem or in the cloud – and simply get it to where we need to have it safely and securely.

“As we continue to scale our environments, the NetApp solution scales with us,” says Lloyd. “It's a core function and a core key piece of technology that continues to grow as we grow.”

“Our platforms and solutions allow you to digitise data to be able to then manipulate it as you need to in a very short period of time”

ANTHONY LLOYD VP OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, OPEN TEXT

Partners powering business

Like so many organisations, OpenText’s strong relationship with its partners is key to its ongoing success.

“Our partnerships power our business,” Lloyd says. “Our partners are why we can be successful.”

One such partnership of note is with digital solutions and services provider Presidio, which enables OpenText to find the best solutions through a proactive approach.

“Presidio really is a partner from a Value Added Reseller (VAR) perspective,” Lloyd explains, “but they also are a partner in assisting us in finding the right solutions and the right options.

“They partner with us in helping us find the right solutions, and proactively reach out to us when they have come across solutions

NetApp enables us to successfully run our high-performance, mission-critical, stateful applications in a reliable way in Google Cloud.”

“

Anthony Lloyd VP Technology Services at OpenText

“Everybody is really focused on understanding the benefits of the cloud. There is sales’ speak, and then there's reality”

ANTHONY LLOYD VP OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, OPEN TEXT

OpenText: How data is unlocking the power of information

that may be a benefit to us that we haven't considered,” he adds. “One of the things that you see in a partnership is that when you have that proactive interaction, it’s not just about looking to make money off of you, but looking to find ways to help you grow and scale your business in a more cost-effective, efficient manner.”

As Lloyd describes, OpenText’s partnership with Palo Alto Networks is one of the key underpinnings for the organisation’s next-generation network implementation. Using a range of Palo Alto’s solutions is enabling OpenText to grow without compromising security.

“We're using Palo Alto’s Prisma SD-WAN and Prisma Secure Access, Secure Edge (SASE) solutions to really allow us to have a zero-trust environment to access all of our systems, applications and networks, globally, with minimum latency and maximum security capabilities,” he comments.

“It really is a seamless end-to-end, 24/7 managed, operated, and then triage and support solution around our global fully redundant SD-WAN that we're implementing,” Lloyd adds. “We use their firewalls, we're using their Prisma solution, and that is a technology stack that allows us to really scale this business and grow very rapidly as we continue to acquire companies because of the ease of integration and for us to be able to scale it because of its cloud nature.”

Moving to the cloud has clear benefits for many organisations, with improved flexibility and scalability. However, as Lloyd explains, it’s critical for organisations moving their businesses into the cloud to go into the process with their eyes open.

“Everybody is really focused on understanding the benefits of the cloud. There’s sales speak, and then there's reality. I think that folks are realising that

going to the cloud is not just something that you do trivially – you have to perform the proper level of applications’ analysis and remediation to do it successfully and costeffectively. If you don't do that, the cost can become astronomical.

“The flip side of that is, for those applications that you do place in the cloud, the key is how do you make sure that you're maximising your capabilities to protect that data?” Lloyd says. “The more open you are to letting people have access to your systems, the higher the risk is of being compromised. As we continue to expand our footprints further out and allow anyone from any device, from anywhere, to have access to our data, having things like SASE, as well as enhanced abilities for AI and machine learning, to isolate any type of device in the environment that could be vulnerable is paramount.”

Growing by acquisition

For OpenText, the future's looking bright, with more acquisitions on the horizon and busy times ahead.

“I joined in September of 2021, and in the first year I was here, we had four acquisitions,” Lloyd says. “Being busy is good. It’s also an opportunity where you can continue to refine your capabilities and skills.

“When you buy a company, everyone is different. The requirements around integrating those companies – being able to successfully look at those environments and determine how we can quickly and effectively meld them into us, migrating them to our solutions and our platforms – really become something that you continue to get better at. sometimes they're smaller, sometimes they're larger, but each of them has their own nuances that you have to navigate.”

In August 2022, OpenText announced it had agreed to acquire Micro Focus, one of the world’s largest software companies, in a deal worth US$6bn. And, with a target set by OpenText CEO Mark Barrenechea to double the size of the company in three to five years, there no doubt will be more acquisitions to come.

“We grow by acquisition,” concludes Lloyd. “We are constantly looking to find ways to expand our product portfolio and to increase our capabilities of value to all of our customers, regardless of whether they be small to medium businesses or enterprises or governments. That is an ongoing march that we step to on a daily basis, and that's something that's going to continue for the foreseeable future.”

“We are constantly looking to find ways to expand our product portfolio and increase our value capabilities to all of our customers”

ANTHONY LLOYD VP OF TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, OPEN TEXT

90% of Fortune 100 companies are OpenText customers

IMPROVED EXPERIENCE

DIGITAL SKILLS GAP

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

HELPING

ADDRESS THE

As the way the world works continues to change, improving human capital to keep employees happy and engaged has never been so important

An organisation is only as good as its employees. And as technology continues to change the way the world works, improving human capital has never been as important.

A term made popular in the 1960s by American economists Gary Becker and Jacob Mincer, ‘human capital’ refers to the economic value of a worker's experience and skills, including assets like education, training, intelligence and skills.

Enabling

educators. Empowering students. Explore how we accelerate student discovery, learning and innovation with our Digital Education 3D Experience.

With the rise of the internet in the late 1990s, the term returned to prominence, with new technologies rapidly automating a whole new set of business processes, and changing how employers and managers

worked and collaborated. All of this change meant that workforce leaders had to transform how they went about attracting, retaining, and engaging talent in an evolving set of job roles.

Described by Oracle as ‘The Golden Age of Human Capital Management’, this decade saw new digital technologies enabling HR leaders to provide a more engaging and personalised employee experience at scale. “At the same time, emerging technologies, such as data automation, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) have added new innovations for understanding, managing, incenting, and engaging the workforce,” Oracle says.

Human capital isn't just beneficial to the person involved and the company they work for; countries stand to gain as well. A creative

“

Too many young people are illprepared for the jobs of the future, due to a lack of exposure to the digital tools and skills needed for the future of work”

REHAN HAQUE CEO, METATALENT.AI

D.

and productive workforce contributes more to the long-term economic success of a nation than virtually any other resource, reported the World Economic Forum in its annual Human Capital Report.

The move to deskless working Deloitte predicts workers in almost every role will have an opportunity to move toward

becoming “deskless”—not only knowledge workers who measure the day in keystrokes, but even factory workers who may be able to monitor and manage physical machines from anywhere.

“Is this IT transforming people and their roles?”

Deloitte asks. “Or is it a new world of work shaping a future vision of IT? The distinction may no longer hold meaning.”

What’s important, Deloitte says, is that without human drive, technology can’t deliver the growth and efficiency it promises.

Research by Boyden finds that, at the executive level, 81% of respondents identify a need to strengthen digital talent with skills such as AI, robotics and machine learning. Organisations are addressing talent needs and alignment by investing in ‘leadership

“ The merging of human ingenuity with tech and digital capabilities is accelerating the business cycle as organisations strive to address global disruption”

TRINA

GORDON PRESIDENT & CEO, BOYDEN

development for high potentials’, ‘hiring new leadership talent’, and ‘redeploying or retraining existing people’.

“The merging of human ingenuity with tech and digital capabilities is accelerating the business cycle as organisations strive to address global disruption,” comments Trina D. Gordon, President & CEO of Boyden.

“At this time of pervasive uncertainty, we embrace the challenge of helping clients to understand the global environment for talent, emerging skill sets and the leadership needs of their organisation through our insight, market intelligence and original research”.

Digital skills gap must be addressed

The World Economic Forum has estimated that 150 million new technology jobs will be created globally over the next five years, and 77% of all jobs will require digital skills from workers by 2030. However, businesses currently face a global shortage of digital skills already, with only 33% of

Importance of retaining talent

Research by GetSmarter, which surveyed 5,808 professionals from 128 countries, found that 59% of respondents are very likely or somewhat likely to change jobs to another business area or function in the next 6 to 12 months, emphasising how hiring and retaining talent is so important for businesses in this post-pandemic area – especially for employees with technological skills.

technology jobs worldwide filled by the necessary skilled labour.

To support organisations’ digital transformations, human capital needs to be up to scratch. Half of today’s organisations agree that this ‘digital divide’ is widening, with 54% of business leaders noting that they have lost their competitive advantage due to

More than half of companies lack digital skills

Findings from a 451 Research report commissioned by Hitachi Vantara reveal more than half of companies said they lacked sufficient skills in key areas.

The report, Industry 4.0: Maturity of Adoption and Its Impact on Sustainability and ESG, found the most critical gaps cited are in data science (42%) – defined as artificial intelligence, machine learning and analytics; Internet of Things (IoT) deployment and development (48%); or robotics deployment and operations (60%).

metatalent.ai. “Too many young people are ill-prepared for the jobs of the future, due to a lack of exposure to the digital tools and skills needed for the future of work. To prepare for the adoption of advanced emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, blockchain, virtual reality and more, organisations need to train the next generation of their workforce through the use of digital skills training and mentoring.”

WIth Generation Z and Generation Alpha set to make up around a quarter of the workforce by the end of the decade –and 9 in 10 of those jobs will require digital skills as a minimum – the most immediate challenge for today’s businesses is how to empower these emerging generations with the tools they need for the future of the work, Haque says.

“The challenge of global upskilling needs to be urgently addressed,” he explains.

talent shortages, according to a recent global survey by Capgemini and LinkedIn.

According to the report ‘The Digital Talent Gap: Are Companies Doing Enough?’, employees feel organisations’ training programmes are not hugely effective and those who want to excel are looking beyond their organisations’ learning and development (L&D). More than half of today’s digital talent say that training programmes are not helpful or that they are not given time to attend, while close to half described the training as “useless and boring”. The report also found that nearly 60% of digital talent are even investing their own time and money, most commonly to be on a par with their colleagues on required digital skills.

“This global digital skills gap urgently needs addressing,” says Rehan Haque, CEO of

REHAN HAQUE CEO, METATALENT.AI

“Too many organisations don’t understand the skills their current and future workers will need in the evolving digital economy. Organisations need to future-proof themselves for the rapid technological changes ahead over the next decade by enrolling workers in digital upskilling and reskilling programmes, providing their

workforce with the education, technical knowledge, skills and resources needed to thrive in future working environments.

“An upskilling mentorship platform targeting the future of work not only helps today’s businesses to directly identify skills gaps in their current workforce, but it also helps them to equip their current and future workforce with skillsbased training for the new and emerging job categories of tomorrow,” he concludes. “It’s imperative businesses take these steps now before it becomes too late. Without digital skills training and guidance for young workers across all sectors, organisations are sure to be left behind as technology continues to evolve past them.”

“

Too many organisations don’t understand the skills their current and future workers will need in the evolving digital economy”

USING TECHNOLOGY AS AN ENABLER FOR GROWTH

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

Pinsent Masons’ CTO Nigel Tranter speaks to Technology Magazine about harnessing technology as a growth enabler and the law firm’s journey with data

Just like many others, the legal industry continues to evolve. For Pinsent Masons, a professional services business with law at its core, this change has been particularly notable, with the utilisation of technology to enable growth for the business.

The multinational legal practice operates across 26 offices worldwide with a depth of knowledge and expertise in energy, financial services, infrastructure, real estate and technology, science, and industry.

And, as Nigel Tranter – Pinsent Masons’ Chief Technology Officer – says, the firm has undergone a number of changes through its investment in technology. Conversations around data and analytics are now widespread, and, through the firm’s partnerships, a product development arm of the business has developed and is proving highly successful.

“In the last three years, the firm has invested significantly in transforming its technology estate,” he explains. “I think the biggest compliment and reflection of that is when people around the business don't see you as a cost centre, but as an enabler.

“Now, we’re thought of as enablers for growth in the business. We've created a product development arm, and we're using a development company who have helped grow our product development space significantly.

“We were probably delivering two or three products a year. Between now and the end of our financial year in May, we've got 22

Driving innovation through par tnership

We believe transparency, trust and communication are central to the success of long-term par tnerships

When you par tner with NashTech, we become an extension of your team and totally align ourselves with your business mission, goals, values and culture.

NashTech: the power of collaboration in digital transformations

Formed more than 20 years ago, global technology solutions business, NashTech, builds collaborative partnerships to help organisations’ digital journeys

Since starting out more than 20 years ago, NashTech’s mission has been to create the best solutions powered by excellence in people and technology.

“NashTech provides technical solutions, whether that’s supported by people, process or technology, from primarily an offshore delivery capability” explains Paul Hunt, NashTech’s International Pre-Sales Director. “These solutions are combined with a blended model of nearshore colleagues who can help support each customer’s unique needs.”

An example of how NashTech collaborates with its partners

comes through its relationship with the legal firm, Pinsent Masons, comments Tom Lee, a Director at NashTech. With Pinsent Masons looking to embark on a digital transformation, discussions began to take place on how NashTech could support the legal firm’s goals.

“Pinsent Masons did have experts internally, but they wanted to partner with an organisation which could really help supercharge that transformation,” Lee explains. “Now, we have a couple of teams working for Pinsent Masons, largely involved in developing new products and helping them differentiate themselves from other law firms.”

For NashTech and Pinsent Masons, the future is looking exciting. “We’re building new products which haven’t been built before, and that’s not an easy undertaking,” explains Lee. “Working in an open and collaborative way has enabled us to effectively develop new products at speed, enabling Pinsent Masons to recognise the successes they’re seeing from their digital transformation journey.”

As Hunt explains, building partnerships based on trust is hugely important. “Trust doesn’t come at the start,” he says. “It comes out of development and it comes out of good delivery.

“It is an important strength of ours that we go on the transformation journey with our customers because technology’s moving quickly,” concludes Hunt. “There are all sorts of things coming into play but who better to join you on that journey than a partner you can truly collaborate with?” Explore

Pinsent Masons:

for growth

pipeline product and solutions to develop.”

The firm has also gone through a change in how it talks about, and how it uses, data. This, Tranter explains, has led to substantial machine learning opportunities for the business, along with prompting discussions around analytics and trends.

“Three or four years ago, the firm wasn’t even talking about data,” he says. “Now, data is a common construct and conversation throughout the firm. That's led to substantial machine learning opportunities and things that really make use of data.”

The journey to cloud

Pinsent Masons’ cloud journey may be well underway but is not yet complete, as Tranter

describes, predicting it won’t be finished for a couple of years.

“Prior to my taking up the role, the firm had moved to start in the Azure world,” he explains. “They were familiar with the cloud as a concept and had experimented with it, but not with really any serious desire to move the services there.

“Predominantly, I think that came from confidence – both from the technology team and from the firm – around risk and privacy, how secure data is, and whether clients would be comfortable with this.”

Working with Pinsent Masons’ risk and privacy teams, along with the firm’s clients, has helped open up numerous opportunities.

“THE BIGGEST COMPLIMENT AND REFLECTION OF THAT IS WHEN PEOPLE AROUND THE BUSINESS DON'T SEE YOU AS A COST CENTRE, BUT AS AN ENABLER”

Using technology as an enabler

NIGEL TRANTER CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, PINSENT MASONS

“We're using Microsoft Power Platform – Microsoft is a big partner with us – to craft opportunities around automating deliverables,” Tranter adds.

“We started to move services across and build all out the monitoring, as well as all the things you need to do around controlling your cloud. We’ve been looking for opportunities, such as automation, and using and exploiting low-code/no-code platforms such as Power, both for our product and legal side of the firm, as well as looking for opportunities in our business operations.

“So we've begun to build up a catalogue of where we've started to have digitised services, and the process analyst piece links into that,” he says. “They create future opportunities by going out and working across the firm, and we've started to build that whole capability around that. And then we're looking at some of our core services, and the first set that we moved across was the Microsoft stack.”

Making the decision to utilise Office 365 came into its own, Tranter explains, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic when teams began using Teams and cloudbased email systems.

“We removed passwords, and now we predominantly use biometrics and Multi Factor Authenication,” he says. “We rebuilt a lot of our underlying architectures around using things like SD-WAN. Then you can start to lay the cloud services on top of that, at a far accelerated pace and with security.”

For Pinsent Masons’ cloud journey, the next steps are around moving across the firm’s document management systems, which, as Tranter predicts, will take some time.

“We're at the point now where we're looking at some of the bigger core services: our document management system and those things are next in line to move across,” he explains.

NIGEL TRANTER

TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER

INDUSTRY: LAW PRACTICE

LOCATION: BIRMINGHAM, UK

Nigel is a CTO/CIO with extensive global experience working in Financial and Professional services organisations, a proven thought leader, confident in creating strategies and delivering meaningful business outcomes. Nigel has led diverse technology and business operations teams through direct and matrix structures. Nigel utilises an analytical, data driven mindset to assimilate quantitative and qualitative information quickly, possessing a natural curiosity and entrepreneurial flair, whilst not being afraid to challenge convention. He is a strong relationship builder who is always keen to learn from others and looks to empower or encourage in every interaction.

Previously, Nigel spent four years at Gulf Bank in Kuwait where he was the Chief Information Officer. Other executive and senior roles have included a ten-year tenure at Barclays where Nigel was the Chief Architect – Europe and Middle East Retail and amp; Business Banking.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Nigel holds qualifications in electrical engineering, computer science and an MBA in Leadership and amp; Sustainability.

NIGEL TRANTER CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, PINSENT MASONS

“We're now about halfway through our cloud modernisation journey, and the next couple of years is really around the core services.

“And, of course, we need to build the skills up with the guys in the tech teams and around that. The other piece is the Power BI platform, which has been a raging success,” he comments. “When we first started rolling Power BI as a tool, we started with

a small community of around 200 people. We've now got around 70% of the firm who can develop their own Power BI reports for things that are relevant to them. The worst thing we could have done is create a reporting centralisation bottleneck.

“We decentralised it and took more of a business technologist developer approach. And we've gone out and we've got data stewards and we've got people who are able to help other people develop Power BI dashboards, and they're used everywhere now. We see them all over the place, and there's been a significant increase in understanding our data and making decisions based on that.”

Another of Pinsent Masons’ strategic partners is iManage, which over 20 years has provided the law firm with its core Global Document Management System,

“THREE OR FOUR YEARS AGO, THE FIRM WASN’T EVEN TALKING ABOUT DATA; NOW, DATA IS A COMMON CONSTRUCT AND CONVERSATION THROUGHOUT THE FIRM”

supporting the growth of the business throughout that period.

“More recently iManage successfully tended and was awarded a contract to deliver strategic additional services to our core platform, including iManage's powerful knowledge search using AI and Workflow, replacing the existing indexing system and delivering a significant improvement in terms of speed, accuracy and user experience,” comments Tranter.

“Another service focused on securing our most sensitive content is iManage Security Policy Manager,” he explains. “It allows us to segment client and matter content and apply need-to-know security to control access and meet our clients’ needs. Security Policy Manager integrates seamlessly with active directory and group management, introducing

significant self-service capabilities and improved security.

“The final service is iManage Business Intake Manager, allowing us to significantly streamline and optimise the process of onboarding of new clients.”

Relationship with data

A key part of Pinsent Masons’ strategy focuses on the use of data. On joining the firm, Tranter says it became clear that understanding data was key to improving the firm’s position.

This meant investing in an assessment of the firm’s data, along with creating a properly structured approach to data management, which has enabled both short and longerterm opportunities.

“Three or four years ago, I spoke with the board because I kept getting asked lots of questions about data,” Tranter comments. “The questions pointed to the fact that there were a lot of people that were interested in data, but they didn't really understand what data was, what data we had, and what we could do with that data to improve the firm's position around many different dimensions.

“We did an assessment across 49 different facets of our data, and that gave us the ability to see where our quick wins were and what our longer-term opportunities were. And that formed the basis of a three-year plan that we delivered and finished last year. It significantly raised our scores in many areas – data quality, data integrity, analytics and business intelligence, governance, and privacy.”

Working with Pinsent Masons’ Advanced Delivery Team, Tranter explains the firm now has a group of lawyers who are truly clued up about using technology.

“We work together in product development, but particularly in the data analytics field,” he establishes. “They're crafting opportunity

after opportunity, and, along with using the Microsoft Data Bricks platform, the opportunities are just rolling out now.”

Working alongside Nashtech, a relationship that began through a recruitment partnership has now evolved and is delivering tangible results.

“Harvey Nash has been a recruitment partner for a long time, and some three-anda-bit years ago, we were having an account management meeting, talking about resourcing, and they did a presentation about showing what the Nash group comprised,” Tranter comments.

“It was one of those meetings where you think, ‘There's an opportunity here’. We were at the point where we needed to think about how we develop differently. So we went over to Vietnam where their main work is.

“We started off small. But now we've got three teams that work in different product areas. So one team supports our website, another is developing products and we are now going to bring on board a second team because the demand is there. We’re looking at delivering 22 project products

before the end of the year, and we've got the right paradigm around it. We've got the right construct from those guys, and they're an integral part of our development and product process.”

Changing skills sets within the technology team

With Pinsent Masons’ digital transformation journey still ongoing, there are a number of aspects the firm will be focusing on in the near future – including building upon its strategic relationships and continuing to focus on security demands.

“The way that we are changing the skill sets within the technology team will change,” Tranter predicts. “I think the speed around the cadence for change in delivery will have increased beyond where we are now.

“Demands around security will be constantly under review because of the nature of where we are,” he adds, “and the service provision will be consistent. In our current, full-OnPrem configuration, we are reliant on providers in other parts of the world that perhaps are not as equipped or mature as they are in the UK.

“The whole dynamic around servicing opportunities and the way it's serviced from a technical platform point-of-view will also change completely,” he states. “I think that

“WE’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR OPPORTUNITIES – SUCH AS AUTOMATION, AND USING AND EXPLOITING LOW-CODE/NO-CODE PLATFORMS SUCH AS POWER – BOTH FOR OUR PRODUCT AND LEGAL SIDE OF THE FIRM, AS WELL AS LOOKING FOR OPPORTUNITIES IN OUR BUSINESS OPERATIONS”

NIGEL TRANTER CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, PINSENT MASONS

just be normal behaviour for us. It won't be something new, it'll just be this is how we do

automation, there continue to be concerns

Tranter describes, technology will be utilised

clients want to have conversations about how we provide a solution to a problem, and not just looking through the legal lens. And I think we'll see more of that.”

As technology continues to evolve, the legal industry could even prove to be an interesting space for technologies such as the metaverse in future.

There’s a fear that technology like automation

“The legal sector is a relationship business.

“There are conversations ongoing around things like the metaverse, and whether that will form more collaborative conversations in a more virtual world,” Tranter predicts. “With it being a relationship business, would people that are working with a client want to have a conversation like that? I'm not sure, but I think there'll be a trend to move to test that and see how that will actually work in a real relationship.

are having those conversations will be more skilled and more geared up to talking about providing solutions that technology can help conversations that extend the reach of the conversations that are trending now where

“It may become part of a hybrid mechanism where some of the time we meet in person, other times we meet in the metaverse in teams, and I think it'll just become a tool for what we do. I'm not sure how many people would feel comfortable wearing an Oculus headset when conducting a trial or a legal transaction. But there are some interesting places that will be in the mix in one-to-two years.”

“THERE ARE DEFINITELY CONVERSATIONS THAT ARE TRENDING NOW, WHERE CLIENTS WANT TO HAVE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT HOW WE PROVIDE A SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM, AND NOT JUST LOOKING THROUGH THE LEGAL LENS”

NIGEL TRANTER CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, PINSENT MASONS

CLOUD COMPUTING

WINS GROUND IN THE CYBERSECURITY

CLOUD COMPUTING

Business leaders must rethink their entire digital strategies to take advantage of cloud and fog computing technology that could open them up to cybercrime

WRITTEN BY: GEORGE HOPKIN

Edge and fog computing have secured their place as crucial technology for businesses, delivering faster insights, improved response times, and better bandwidth availability by bringing enterprise applications closer to data sources such as IoT devices or specialised local servers.

Industry experts are, however, warning that business leaders must rethink their entire digital strategy to take advantage of these new technologies while simultaneously mitigating the multitude of cybersecurity risks that come with adding millions of new connection points to a company’s networks.

The explosion of IoT devices and their increasing computing power have led to a surge in data volumes, and this trend is set to continue with the roll-out of 5G networks.

In the past, the cloud and AI were seen as a solution for automating and speeding up innovation by driving actionable insights from data. Due to the unprecedented

scale and complexity of data created by connected devices, though, it has outpaced network and infrastructure capabilities.

Sending all this device-generated data to a centralised data centre or cloud causes bandwidth and latency issues, but edge computing offers a more efficient alternative.

Cloud computing meets open source

“CLOUD EDGE ALSO HAS THE POTENTIAL TO ADVANCE TRADING, VR APPLICATIONS, MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT, AND CLOUD GAMING”

ANTHONY KESTERTON PRINCIPAL SOLUTION ARCHITECT, RED HAT

By processing and analysing data closer to the point it is created, latency is significantly reduced, thus enabling faster and more comprehensive data analysis, as well as creating the opportunity for deeper insights and improved customer experiences.

Edge will be crucial to every network

“The edge is not a single, clearly defined location,” Anthony Kesterton, Principal Solution Architect, Red Hat, explained to trade association techUK. “Rather, there are numerous edge tiers with unique characteristics and specifications.

“Edge deployments can be integrated into a business’s existing cloud infrastructure, delivering a so-called ‘cloud edge’,” explains Kesterton. Advantages to adopting a cloud edge include the ability for DevOps teams to automate the sharing of information between the edge deployment and the rest of the cloud, allowing for far more sophisticated and integrated workflows.

A cloud edge also enables faster innovation, giving DevOps teams the opportunity to easily create new applications or update existing ones for the edge and then deploy them via a centrally managed infrastructure.

Digital life on the edge

Edge/fog is about processing data closer to where it’s being generated, enabling processing at greater speeds and volumes, leading to greater action-led results in real-time, explain Accenture tech experts.

Edge computing components include:

Edge devices – If you already use smart speakers, watches and phones (devices that are locally collecting and processing data while touching the physical world), you’re using edge computing. Internet of Things (IoT) devices, point of sales (POS) systems, robots, vehicles and sensors can all be edge devices, provided they compute locally and talk to the cloud.

Network edge – When a separate network is involved, this is just another location in the continuum between users and the cloud, say Accenture. Powerful wireless connectivity to edge computing, with low latency and high cellular speed, can be introduced via 5G, which brings opportunities like autonomous drones, remote telesurgery, and smart city projects.

On-premises infrastructure – These could be servers, routers, containers, hubs or bridges and are for managing local systems and connecting to the network.

“For all these reasons, cloud edge will soon be a crucial component of every IT and cloud network, with obvious applications in heavy industry and transportation.”

Retail and healthcare lead the way The first industries moving towards an edge strategy are manufacturing, automotive,

retail, and healthcare, explains Kesterton. “This is because these businesses, with their physical supply chains and production lines employing thousands of sensors and connected devices, benefit most from the ability to deliver applications or services with the lowest latency possible.”

As companies continue to navigate the ever-evolving world of technology, one trend that has emerged as a gamechanger is the integration of cloud edge computing. This hybrid approach – which combines the power of cloud computing with the convenience of edge computing –is proving to be a cost-effective solution for a variety of industries.

Manufacturing, automotive, retail, and healthcare companies, in particular, are reaping the benefits of this technology

“CLOUD EDGE WILL BE A CRUCIAL COMPONENT OF EVERY IT AND CLOUD NETWORK, WITH APPLICATIONS IN HEAVY INDUSTRY AND TRANSPORTATION”

ANTHONY KESTERTON PRINCIPAL SOLUTION ARCHITECT, RED HAT

by processing data locally, reducing the amount of information that needs to be sent to centralised or cloud-based locations. This not only saves money in the long run, but it also allows for faster, more efficient decision-making.

“Cloud edge is the future,” says Kesterton. “The majority of use-cases for cloud edge now focus on IoT solutions, but cloud edge also has the potential to advance trading, VR applications, media and entertainment, and cloud gaming.

“With a brandnew platform and environment at their disposal, developers may create innovative apps and services based on flexible and dynamic architecture.”

in short supply

A shortage of experienced and capable edge computing professionals is becoming a concern for businesses as the technology continues to grow. Edge computing specialists are in high demand as they not only possess the technical expertise to architect new infrastructure but also have the ability to define specific outcomes and anticipate and manage any disruption caused by significant social and technological shifts.

Experts are warning that the demand for these specialists may soon outstrip the supply, leading to a potential shortage of professionals to advise, implement, and secure edge computing solutions.

"As cyber threats continue to grow, organisations understand that any digital transformation that relies on uninterrupted access must be secure by design," Stephen Green, SVP Offer to Client Transformation, NTT, told techUK. "Unsurprisingly, this means that any move to the edge demands new thinking, in terms of security and resilience."

The shift towards a decentralised edge model leads organisations to face new security challenges as the potential attack surface expands. Edge computing requires new levels of agility in applying and enforcing security policies, regardless of where a user is located. This requires adaptive access and authentication processes.

As edge computing gains momentum, security and network specialists are working together to apply the principles of zero trust and least permissions by bringing network and security decision-making together to avoid increasing complexity. The Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) is evolving to provide a single point for centralised network management while also providing the right bandwidth provision for every user, device, and application – often through a converged security functions-as-a-service model.

The emergence of edge-native applications in a multicloud, hybrid environment allows organisations to deploy new functionality quickly and efficiently, accelerating the modernisation of legacy IT or even leaving outdated infrastructure behind. This is allowing users to find new opportunities to drive business value with faster, more relevant, real-time data.

"Investing in edge infrastructure will soon be at the heart of a successful business," says Green. "The question most organisations will now be asking is how to design and implement it correctly so that rather than feeling precarious, they create a clear, sustainable competitive edge."

“AS CYBER THREATS CONTINUE TO GROW, ORGANISATIONS UNDERSTAND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION THAT RELIES ON UNINTERRUPTED ACCESS MUST BE SECURE BY DESIGN”

STEPHEN GREEN VALUE CREATION FOR CLIENTS, NTT

Edge specialists

Future-proof sustainability through people-centric culture

through a culture

WRITTEN BY: JOSEPHINE WALBANK

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

The team behind sustainability pioneer Green Mountain share their insights into ESG, The Scandinavian Management Philosophy, and collaborative cultures

To operate efficient state-of-the-art colocation data centres, the number one priority for Green Mountain is to have skilled, motivated, and enthusiastic employees who are up for the task. This is the ethos of Tor Kristian, the CEO of Green Mountain. And it is this people-centric approach that has shaped the entirety of Green Mountain's company strategy.

“Whether it is the operations team, project managers, service delivery, sales, management or supporting functions – they all contribute to the same goal: 'Setting the green standard' in the data centre industry.”

According to Kristian, Green Mountain is shaped by four core values: a strong customer focus; reliability and honesty; knowledge; and enthusiasm.

“These values are deeply rooted in our company culture and reflect on anything we do. After all, it is all about the people.”

To delve deeper into Green Mountain’s people-led philosophy, and the importance of the human factor in the running of a data centre, we spoke to four Green Mountain employees, spanning the company’s entire value chain.

SECURING 100% UPTIME -

How do you and the rest of your operations team secure 100% uptime?

“The 100% uptime is a prerequisite in today's market, and at Green Mountain, we have secured it continuously since the start.”

“Our performance strongly relates to the people and how things are being managed as well as the technical features of our data centres.”

Operation Technician, Abhishek Jagga

EXECUTIVE BIO

TOR KRISTIAN

TITLE: CEO

LOCATION: ROGALAND, NORWAY

Although his first responsibility within the company was as CTO, Tor Kristian assumed the role of Green Mountain’s CEO in 2017. Kristian was the second employee of Green Mountain, and has been responsible for developing the technical infrastructure.

He has more than 25 years of experience within data centres and IT operations, and has been involved in several major IT and technical projects. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, specialising in automation. Kristian is actively involved in shaping the Norwegian data centre industry, both as the CEO of Green Mountain and as a board member of the data centre industry association.

“From a technical point of view, our facilities are designed to be robust and redundant, including duplicated cooling and electrical setups, simple and robust cooling solutions, multiple grid power supply, and automatic standby generators. In simple terms, if one system fails or we need to perform maintenance, another system takes over to deliver the service.”

“In addition, we have comprehensive processes to follow and strong work ethics. These include regular inspections and testing, 24/7 support and constant security to keep our services and machinery up-todate and fully functional. We follow the ITIL process and framework, and are certified according to global standards, such as ISO 9001,14001 and 27001.”

“It all comes down to honouring our commitments to the client, both as a team and an individual employee.”

How do you collaborate with the rest of the operations team to achieve these results?

“As an organisation, Green Mountain is people-centric. We coordinate with each other in the best possible manner.”

“When something new happens, or we start work on something, everyone gets a chance to speak about it and share their views.”

“So because of the flat leadership structure, everyone in the company is able to bring their ideas together. We do regular brainstoriming sessions internally and with our partners to deliver best-inclass services.”

“Green Mountain operates as one entity, where the company values of ‘Reliability & Honesty, Knowledge, and Enthusiasm’ are always appreciated and acknowledged.”

“I think this quote by Theodore Roosevelt represents our culture well: 'No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care'."

What does it mean, for you personally, to work for Green Mountain?

“When I joined the company, about threeand-a-half years ago, we had a quarter of the sites that we have now.”

“The company was at its child stage, and we were raising it from the ground up.”

“I love being a part of Green Mountain because I joined it when it was just a kid,

“To operate efficient state-of-the-art colocation data centres, the number one priority for Green Mountain is to have skilled, motivated, and enthusiastic employees who are up for the task”

TOR KRISTIAN CEO, GREEN MOUNTAIN

The Green Mountain data center, located on the island of Rennesoy, near Stavanger, Norway, boasts a Power Utilization Efficiency (PUE) rating of 1.2 and has established itself as one of the world’s most efficient data centers. Founded in 2013, and situated in a former NATO munitions bunker, Green Mountain is unique and innovative for several reasons.

Firstly, the data center is powered by cheap, reliable, low carbon hydropower. Secondly, the data center is cooled by seawater from the nearby fjord, and gravity is a key factor in the distribution of that cold water to the data center. By partnering with Schneider Electric, Green Mountain has built a highly resilient and sustainable Tier III certified data center. Its IT room boasts an impressive Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of less than 1.2, something which Green Mountain measures and reports on in real-time to its customers.

To achieve this, Green Mountain has implemented several solutions from Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure™ for Data Centers architecture, including its InRow™ cooling systems, lnfraStruxure™ hot aisle containment systems, Symmetra MW

UPSs, Canalis LV busway, Prisma LV Distribution, SM6 + transformers, MV/ Citect Scada, and Uniflair™ coolers.

Green Mountain also uses Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure™ IT data center infrastructure management (DCIM) monitoring software to controls a series of mission-critical components, and around 12,000 measuring points, helping it to increase efficiency and resilience across the facility. Further, Schneider Electric also helped design Green Mountain’s cooling system, which uses gravity to bring the cold water from the fjord to its cooling station without using any power or relying on refrigerant gases.

Green Mountain data center customers stand to benefit from this low cost, high efficiency implementation, enabling them to reduce their carbon footprint significantly.

Powered by 100% renewable hydro power and partnering with Schneider Electric, Green Mountain is able to support the critical uptime requirements of its customers, while operating as one of the greenest data centers in the world, with close to zero CO2 emissions.

Future-proof sustainability through a people-centric culture

and now it's maturing towards a sort of ‘teenage’ stage.”

“And it's good to grow with the company, because you learn a lot and, being from an IT background, I see that the demand is rising. We are providing what our customers are looking for and, at the same time, we are also offering genuinely green services.”

“Personally, I am a family-oriented guy, like so many others. And what Green Mountain offers me resembles a family: growing old together, a meaningful vision for the future, great relationships and most importantly, freedom of expression and the work I want to do.”

How do you make sure you have the right person for the job?

“We have developed what we believe is a strong recruitment process. We focus on competence, of course, but what’s equally important is the personality, preferences and motivations of the employee. So, we like to spend time getting to know the candidates, to find out both if this person would like to work for Green Mountain and if this is the correct path for this person.”

“One way to do this is to not only perform interviews but meet the candidates in different settings and different situations.

“I feel lucky to be a part of the adventure, the growth and everything that is happening in our company. When I started here I was included, given trust and made to feel welcome”

IRENE VIKINGSTAD HR MANAGER, GREEN MOUNTAIN

THE SCANDINAVIAN MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY IN PRACTICEHR Manager, Irene Vikingstad

Not all people are comfortable in an interview setting. Sometimes it is better to do an informal guided tour, let them try some work tasks or do a test. We also have a comprehensive training programme in the Green Academy, to ensure the best support for the right candidate.”

“Another important aspect is to look at the team that the candidate will be a part of. How will the person fit in and complement the strengths and personalities of existing members? We have room for both introverts and extroverts, and it is all about finding the right mix to build a strong team. All of our managers are very involved and engaged in this process, and sometimes we also discuss this with team members, too, before the final decision is made.”

How do you retain high inclusion and diversity standards in your recruitment and retention?

“We have good tools and methods in place to make sure that all candidates are evaluated in the same manner. We never exclude people based on gender, social or ethnic background, age etc. I also believe that a focus on personality gives us more diversity in the organisation.”

“For instance, we have employees of all ages in our company. Some were recruited straight from school without graduate experience, others were recruited when they were in their sixties.”

“When it comes to gender balance, the data centre industry is quite male-dominated. However, we raised the share of female

Cooperation is key when building data centers in challenging times

At Green Mountain’s OSL1-Enebakk site, a new 13.5 MW colocation data center was recently completed. CTS Nordics (CTS) was the Design & Build contractor for the project and worked closely with Green Mountain to realize this project despite demanding circumstances.

A special challenge with this project was to create an extremely flexible design. A design that could accommodate enterprises needing standard colocation, all the way to hyperscalers’ needs.

As this was a cooperation between Green Mountain and CTS it was important that the team members trusted each other. Very early in the process, a team gathering was organized so they could get to know each other and create the essential trust between the team members. This way, no one hid away problems or tried to blame each other. Instead, we discovered challenges early and were able to address them straight away.

Long production and delivery times is a global challenge in these uncertain times and it also affected the progress. One solution was to split deliveries, instead of waiting for the components to arrive together. This way, we could perform parts of installations and secure as much progress as possible while waiting for remaining deliveries. In addition, the team tried to mitigate delivery problems by close follow-up of suppliers.

“By involving CTS from the very beginning and establishing a good relationship we got a head start in the project. During design development, the team needed to look at both the master planning and the building to coordinate a viable and efficient solution. It would not have been possible to complete this project had it not been for the cooperation, trust and shared competence between the two parties. At the end, it is all about the people.” says Nils Christensen, CTS.

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employees from 14% to 18% in 2022. Now, the biggest challenge we face is to increase the number of female technicians. One of the reasons why this is so difficult is because not enough girls choose the technical subjects in school. That is why we start early and try to cooperate with educational institutions, to promote this career path and connect students with our female role models within the industry. In time, I think we will get there. This summer, half our summer interns were female, so that is definitely a good start.”

“In general, we believe that a broad diversity and a variety of personalities create better results.”

What are the core values of the Scandinavian management philosophy?

“This philosophy is known to be focused on equality between employees and managers, and a down-to-earth mentality. Management involves their employees in decision-making, and there's a flat management structure. It’s a democratic, non-bureaucratic and collaborative way of managing.”

“This means that all employees are very enabled and very empowered. They can be creative, innovative and are able to make their own decisions for the best of the company. Then, with this level of trust established, a manager would expect an

employee to take responsibility.”

“A key part of this is ‘psychological safety’, which means employees know that, if they do speak up, if they do engage and make decisions, there is room for mistakes. After all, we learn from mistakes.”

“We actually see the Scandinavian management style as a competitive advantage. It makes the whole organisation more productive, innovative and profitable.”

THE COMPANY VALUES ARE IN OUR DNAService Manager, Rikke Dishington

What is your personal philosophy for client relations?

“For me, it's important that our customers are satisfied. If a customer isn't satisfied, then I don't see the point of doing what we do.”

“So keeping the client satisfied is my number one priority. I would hate going into meetings and talking to clients if my job was to only put out fires!”

“My approach is, there’s this saying that ‘in order to treat everyone the same, you have to treat everyone differently”

RIKKE DISHINGTON SERVICE MANAGER, GREEN MOUNTAIN

“And how to do so? One vital element is that every client has a dedicated contact person in the Service Management team. A person they can contact about anything and who knows their business and needs. No matter the size of the client, we build trust through this one-to-one relationship with them.”

“However, there’s this saying that ‘in order to treat everyone the same, you have to treat everyone differently'. And that's what I've been using as my go-to quote when managing clients. Because clients are different. They are different companies from different industries with different backgrounds and different

needs. So, in order to keep them satisfied, we have to be flexible. We have to be able to adapt and to get to know them and really listen to what they have to say.”

How do the company values at large reflect the way you work with clients?

“Our vision and our values are our DNA. As a company, it should run through our veins and should feel as natural as breathing. So as a client, you can expect to see that demonstrated in whoever you talk to at Green Mountain.”

“Our mindset is customer-focused, and we always see things from a customer's

“When something new happens, or we start work on something, everyone gets a chance to speak about it and share their views”

ABHISHEK JAGGA OPERATION TECHNICIAN, GREEN MOUNTAIN

perspective. When talking to us, you should always feel that we have got your back, and that we are on your team.”

“To do so, you need to have a foundation of trust, and to create trust, you have to be reliable and honest.”

“Transparency is really the key. For instance, we have created a reporting system - called Green Peak - where we share live and historical data with our clients. This way they always know what is going on in their data room environment. In addition, we also produce monthly reports on access management, incidents, changes and so on.”

“There is no sweeping under the carpet

Green Mountain uses

100% renewable power across its entire portfolio of sites, making it amongst the world’s most sustainable data centre providers.

- we are open and honest. And hopefully, they will find us knowledgeable and enthusiastic as well.”

SETTING THE GREEN STANDARDSustainability Manager, Torkild Follaug

Green Mountain is setting the green standard. Why is that industry leadership position so important to the company?

“To answer that, I think we have to go back to 2009, when the company was founded.

“Green Mountain was really founded on the idea of creating the world's most

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sustainable data centre. And I think we achieved this very early on. Still, we realise that this is something that we need to continue to focus on every day, especially when the company is growing.”

“That's why setting the green standard was introduced as the company vision, and it really represents the backbone of the value proposition that Green Mountain has in the market.”

From the perspective of your employees, how are they working to maintain this sustainability leadership?

“Sustainability is really well-anchored in the management of the company, and also in the board of the company. And I think that's the perfect setup for creating a culture-based sustainability practice. All our

individual employees know our sustainability goals, which makes it easier for them to contribute and make a positive impact in their everyday work.”

“My role is to lead, coordinate and support the sustainability efforts of all the people that work in Green Mountain, so that we can use each other’s skill sets, and keep sustainability high on the agenda at all times.”

Where do you see your sustainability strategy heading in the next five years?

“We are committed to upholding our ambitions in the sustainability space. I think any companies that do not take sustainability seriously will be out of business, in the near future.”

“Setting the green standard means that we are willing to be at the forefront, to make

investments and put resources in to develop Green Mountain, of course, but also the industry as a whole.”

“There are a lot of challenges ahead, and these are issues that we are addressing in our sustainability strategy. We are working on several different solutions to mitigate our impact, on both the climate and nature.”

“It remains very important that, for everything we do, we do it in collaboration with our own employees and our value chain.”

THE GREEN MOUNTAIN COMPANY CULTURE

For Green Mountain, fostering a peoplecentric company culture is all about developing relationships, building and maintaining trust, and creating a supportive environment in which all employees are able to flourish.

“I feel lucky to be a part of the adventure, the growth and everything that is happening in our company. When I started here, I was included, given trust and made to feel welcome,” says Vikingstad.

“I love the work environment and the culture in Green Mountain. It makes me proud to be part of such an inclusive company.”

“At Green Mountain, we share, we trust, we talk to each other. Our team is always open to communication. We are always comfortable to discuss anything that we don't understand, like new technologies, or what to do if something goes wrong,” Jagga adds.

“So that's what I believe the company’s core foundation is - to believe in, trust in and deliver on what you say.”

And, as the company itself maintains a rapid pace of growth, its employees are able to take part in the opportunities that come with it.

“The company culture in Green Mountain is very much about trust, openness, and a

positive approach to people. This gives all the employees in Green Mountain a lot of opportunities to develop as a person, and also to develop ideas and skill sets as the company grows and moves forward,” Follaug adds.

“For me, I started working at Green Mountain when I was very young. I was 19, turning 20, and I've been here for four years now. So I feel like we've been on this journey together, where we've gone from a small, newly established company, to where we are now, having established a reputation in the industry, and being in a position where we are taking the lead and setting the standard,” says Dishington.

“Along the way, I have also grown both professionally and personally. I am very grateful for all the colleagues who have supported me and shared their knowledge and experience. I have been given a lot of opportunities in the company, and can’t wait to continue the journey.”

“It remains very important that, for everything we do, we do it in collaboration with our employees and our partners in the value chain”

TORKILD FOLLAUG SUSTAINABILITY MANAGER, GREEN MOUNTAIN

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

From robotics to mobility solutions and even jet engines, Everything-asa-Service (XaaS) models have become increasingly prevalent. And, with cloudbased ‘as-a-service’ models fuelling growth for businesses globally, the trend shows no sign of stopping.

A collective phrase for the provision of any good or service, XaaS includes all of the many services, tools, and technology that manufacturers offer to consumers. The model – paid for in a flexible consumption model rather than in the form of an upfront purchase or licence – has a range of benefits, whether improving the expense model and speeding new apps and business processes, or allowing IT resources to be shifted to higher-value projects.

As organisations continue their rush to the cloud, the XaaS model continues to grow, with the global market to hit US$1tn by the end of the decade

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XaaS isn’t a new phenomenon, but as consumers move more workloads to the cloud, there are indications from manufacturers and researchers that XaaS will become an increasingly widely-used business model. Research by Spherical Insights suggests the global XaaS market

could reach US$1.2tn by 2030, caused by an increase in the number of internet users, the quick adoption of cloud services, and the production of more data by businesses.

As KPMG describes, over the last two decades, the ‘as-a-Service’ model has revolutionised how technology resources are provisioned and consumed.

“From a consumption perspective, there has been a rapid migration to on-demand environments that can be provisioned through self-service, with elasticity to allow rapid scaling and ubiquitous availability via multiple access channels and with billing flexibility,” KPMG says.

Moving to the cloud

Utilising cloud infrastructure has a number of benefits. According to Oracle, by moving

“ 30% of large data centre servers are unused. That means a waste of US$30bn dollars annually”

VALERIE DA FONSECA WW SALES AND GTM DIRECTOR GREENLAKE CLOUD SERVICES, HPE

to the cloud, businesses can reduce their energy consumption and carbon footprint by up to 90%. Meanwhile, AWS says running business applications on remote servers can reduce energy usage by nearly 80% and carbon emissions by up to 96%.

Sustainability has increasingly become a core consideration for IT decisionmakers when shaping their cloud strategies, with 74% of respondents to a Colt survey describing it as an important part of their cloud operations. By utilising XaaS offerings, businesses can benefit from a scalable approach to on-premises and hybrid workloads coupled with environmental benefits.

“We help our customers right-size the technology they need and manage IT from edge to cloud, instead of buying assets and over-provisioning,” says Valerie Da Fonseca, WW Sales and GTM Director, HPE Greenlake cloud services at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “30% of large data centre servers are unused. That means a waste of US$30bn dollars annually.”

“We try to help address the key causes of inefficiencies, while helping GreenLake customers execute an efficient hybrid multi-cloud delivery model,” Da Fonseca adds. “That really helps deliver many of the sustainability benefits that we commonly associate with the public cloud.

“Using the as-a-service consumption model really helps our customers get exactly the same experience with the benefits of sustainability,” she continues. “Our modelling indicates that customers transitioning from a traditional CapEx model to another service, like HPE GreenLake, can achieve a more than 30% reduction in their energy costs.”

“ Businesses are shifting toward consumptionbased pricing because it offers agility, affordability and minimal capital commitment”

MICHAEL KANAZAWA FOUNDER/CEO, BOARD DIRECTOR, EY

According to a report conducted by SYSTEMIQ, XaaS models can deliver both environmental benefits and economic value.

“More and more companies are recognising the environmental impact of XaaS models – but they do not always leverage the full potential,” said the report, which was conducted by SYSTEMIQ on behalf of the SUN Institute.

It then goes on to state: “Whether as companies or consumers, we know we need to reduce our carbon footprint. But how? For many consumer goods, the majority of emissions come not from manufacturing, but in their use phase: around 50% for computers, closer to 50-80% for conventional cars.

“The smarter use patterns of XaaS models promote a more sustainable use of natural resources, waste reduction, and aid our economies on the path to net zero.”

XaaS model growth since COVID-19 pandemic

According to research by professional services firm EY, businesses’ readiness to adopt XaaS models has risen dramatically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the technology sector leading the way.

EY’s report, As-a-Service Business Operations & Transformation: When customers change the way they buy, should you change the way you sell? –which surveyed 1,200 organisations to

'

A main takeaway point from this year’s research is that these XaaS models are moving toward the mainstream, and as they scale, they are driving the need for transformational changes across the enterprise'

gauge adoption trends of XaaS across industries – found that, while only 9% of surveyed businesses have completed XaaS transformations up to this point, most (85%) are at the progress stage, whether that is piloting or operating at scale.

The report found that more than half (54%) of responding businesses said they are prepared to adopt XaaS, while the number of businesses that are not yet ready has fallen sharply – from 13% in 2019 to just 2%.

With the market maturing at such pace, businesses are increasingly migrating from basic subscriptions to consumption-based models and outcomes pricing. While 60% of all organisations surveyed are currently using subscription models to charge for XaaS offerings, 52% told EY they intend to shift to consumption models in the next three to five years.

“Businesses are shifting toward consumption-based pricing because it offers agility, affordability and minimal capital commitment – which is, in turn, translating into scalable profitability,” explains Michael Kanazawa, EY Global Innovation Realised Leader and EY Americas’ Consulting Growth Strategy Leader.

“The business models are evolving even further as companies combine their subscription services with consumptionbased pricing, helping customers to extend or enhance offerings as needed. These new blended models can require innovation to value propositions and product designs, as well as the need to transform commercialisation approaches and backend capabilities.

“A main takeaway point from this year’s research is that these XaaS models are moving toward the mainstream, and as they scale, they are driving the need for transformational changes across the enterprise.”

WRITTEN BY: HELEN ADAMS

PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

The arrival of the ‘haute couture’ supply chain

Arnaud Dourlens, Head of Clinical Supply Chain Operations at Sanofi, on building a resilient supply chain and creating efficient clinical trials

Sanofi is a one-of-a-kind pharmaceutical company for the modern age. Self-described as ‘pushing the frontiers of science’ and ‘chasing the miracles of science to improve peoples’ lives’, the 100,000-plus employee company delivers ‘life-changing treatments and life-saving vaccines’ to patients around the globe, in more than 100 countries.

The man in charge of the entire strategic sourcing and shipping process for the pharma company is Arnaud Dourlens, Head of Clinical Supply Chain Operations, who also oversees worldwide trial supply.

At heart, though, Dourlens is an engineer. He began his career in the FMCG (fastmoving consumer goods) industry, working for giants Procter & Gamble. Later, he moved into the luxury sector – the domain of beauty powerhouses such as perfume and cosmetics’ leader Christian Dior.

“For more than 10 years, I worked across operations, the supply chain, new product launches, and industrialisation – first in the makeup area and then in every cosmetic area, meaning makeup, fragrances and skincare,” outlines Dourlens.

In 2017, he switched to Sanofi as Production Director and embraced the pharmaceutical environment. During this period, Dourlens was based at the Compiègne site, in Northern France.

Arnaud Dourlens, Head of Clinical Supply Chain Operations at Sanofi

“It’s quite a strategic site here,” says Dourlens. “I led the team on the road of site improvement and transformation to be fit for the future.”

Dourlens joined Sanofi because he was passionate about the pharmaceutical field and had experience in demanding, highadded-value environments.

“I was proud to have worked in the luxury sector, making it possible for people to be even more beautiful than they are, thanks to makeup and cosmetics,” says Dourlens. “But being a part of a journey where you are allowing patients to access treatment, to

change the life of some people on a daily basis and improve their wellbeing may be a bit less trendy, but it’s so important.”

Dourlens joined the pharma’s Clinical Supply Chain Operations in Montpellier in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, in this period of chaos, it was up to Dourlens to ensure the business continuity.

“That was not easy,” says Dourlens. “As Global Head of Clinical Supply Chain, I'm heading the world supply chain of Sanofi’s clinical development – overseeing more than 300 clinical studies, making sure that we are delivering their investigational

“More than ever, the level of uncertainty we have in the worldwide clinical supply chain is just incredible”

ARNAUD DOURLENS HEAD OF CLINICAL SUPPLY CHAIN OPERATIONS, SANOFI

treatments to all the clinical patients, either at home or at hospital.”

Clinical trial supply chains

– a source of value

Dourlens believes that the clinical trial supply chain can be a source of value for patients and the healthcare sector.

“When a patient is suffering from a disease, he or she is in a tough situation and clinical trials are an option of care for him or her,” explains Dourlens.

Behind the clinical trial, there are a lot of activities that are happening around

EXECUTIVE BIO

ARNAUD DOURLENS

ARNAUD DOURLENS

TITLE: HEAD OF CLINICAL SUPPLY CHAIN OPERATIONS

TITLE: HEAD OF CLINICAL SUPPLY CHAIN OPERATIONS

INDUSTRY: PHARMACEUTICAL

INDUSTRY: XPHARMACEUTICAL MANUFACTURING

LOCATION: OCCITANIE, FRANCE

Arnaud Dourlens is an "Arts et Métiers" engineer. He began his industrial career in the FMCG sector where he held growing responsibilities. Then he joined the LVMH group where he reorganised new product launches and industrial investments in the Make-up segment .

Arnaud joined Sanofi in 2017 as Production Director of a major production site (>€2.5bn turnover). He has been a key player in the development of the continuous improvement mindset and in the transformation of the site through IT projects, investments and activity growth.

Since 2020, he has been the global head of Sanofi Clinical Supply Chain Operations, managing worldwide clinical supply teams involved in more than 300 clinical studies.

40% Average drug waste reduction

30% Average supply cost savings

2-6 Months reduction in time to market

100% Patient service level

N-SIDE Suite is a game changer in clinical supply chain

N-SIDE Life Sciences VP Sébastien Coppe explains how leveraging data & AI can streamline clinical plans, accelerate trials, mitigate risks and curb waste

N-SIDE combines deep clinical supply chain expertise with advanced mathematics, packaged into solutions to optimise the entire clinical trial supply chain by taking a global view and making data-driven decisions at every step.

“N-SIDE has been building extensive expertise over the past 20 years in empowering supply chain management in clinical development through advanced analytics and AI,” says Sébastien Coppe, N-SIDE Life Sciences VP.

Pharma companies of all sizes use the N-SIDE Suite, an intelligent SaaS solution, to avoid supply chain bottlenecks, minimise waste, control costs, reduce time-to-market, speed up the initiation of new trials, manage production plans, monitor supply chain strategy for ongoing trials, and support commercial launches. Pharmaceutical and healthcare company Sanofi started a strategic partnership with N-SIDE five years ago to digitalise their clinical supply chain.

This has led to impressive outcomes for their supply chain efficiency.

The N-SIDE Suite consists of the Supply App, for risk-based clinical supply optimisation; the Production App, for building and maintaining an optimal manufacturing strategy; and a comprehensive slate of BI dashboards and expert services.

The N-SIDE Supply App helps pharma companies optimise their supply chains throughout the trial lifecycle. It allows them to make data-driven decisions about issues including overage, packaging, sourcing, IRT setup, and depot shipments, in a smart and interconnected way. With more than 12,000 trials optimised, N-SIDE’s Supply App can be used to design and optimise any trial of any size and complexity.

“Globally, when you consider what happened during and after the Covid pandemic, we’ve seen a lot of good changes backed up by AI technology, leading to really faster clinical development activity,” says Coppe.

The arrival of the ‘haute couture’ supply chain

defining a protocol, defining the way in which the study will be carried out, and the way that the data will be managed.

“The main thing that the patient will see when they are included in a Sanofi clinical trial will be the treatment. The patient will see the investigator, the physician and the hospital staff who will take care of them, but no one from Sanofi,” said Dourlens.

Yet, the treatment that the patients will get – when they receive a box of drugs or vaccine designed to either save or vastly improve their life – comes from Sanofi. It’s Dourlens’ team’s job to get the drug to the

patient on time, whatever the situation.

“We have been experimenting with our supply chain for years, during both the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” says Dourlens. “We were still able to continue to supply almost everywhere during the pandemic.”

So, how did managing the COVID-19 clinical supply chain compare to supporting it after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

“Many patients have been in a terrible situation due to the war, but even more so when expecting a life-saving drug that it isn’t possible to receive.”

Sanofi is creating value in its patientcentric care by thinking about the patient in these types of extraordinary circumstances, devising ways to overcome situations such as war or pandemics.

Part of this is the company delivering drugs to patients’ homes, alongside a nurse where necessary: “Sometimes a patient is very far away from the clinical site, so a nurse's visit with the medicine allows easier access to the clinical trial.”

This reduces the burden of the trial on the patient, something Sanofi is very proud to facilitate. But it’s the supply chain itself that’s

responsible for making this easier for both the nurse and the patient.

“By reducing the number of trips back and forth to the hospital, we’re supporting healthcare staff and patients. But it is down to the patients to make sure that they are taking their medicine on time.”

If we think about value, we have also to discuss a bit about trial design. “When you have a clinical trial, you’re able to influence the trial design to make sure that you limit the risk of shortage and wastage,” explains Dourlens, who, in his role, has the job of optimising the capacity in supplying the trial.

The healthcare sector is aware that it is moving into an era where the cost of drugs and products is high, due to supply chain complexity, in addition to the development of drugs. The clinical supply chain has the ability to influence the way Sanofi performs the trials – something Dourlens’ team is working on each day.

“We know that, in the near future, trial design is going to be more and more complex,” he says. “We will be adjusting the design in the course of the trial, depending on the results; it's what we call adaptive trial design.”

Sanofi’s supply chain must have the agility and flexibility to follow the changes it hopes to enact, though there are analytics tools on-hand to improve productivity, resilience and sustainability.

“To have an important impact and run successful, innovative therapies, we must avoid bottlenecks linked to drug supply and we must then guarantee that the treatment is available to the patient as quickly as possible,” says Dourlens.

“We’re not getting drugs that are similar for everybody; this is a tailor-made supply chain. I like to say that it’s an haute-couture

“The world has changed over the past two years –in the supply chain, in the clinical supply chain, and across the pharmaceutical supply chain”

ARNAUD DOURLENS HEAD OF CLINICAL SUPPLY CHAIN OPERATIONS, SANOFI

supply chain. This is where digital healthcare is really able to provide the required end-toend traceability.”

Whatever the production is – internal or external – and whatever the geography level, digital is helping to make sure Sanofi is tracking all drugs everywhere in the world, at each step of the process.

Global cost optimisation & resilience strategies

Clinical trials are happening in quite a complex landscape, because each country has its own specific regulations. Depending on the design of the trial, Dourlens’ team may have different requirements to meet, such as importation and exportation rules. The number of changes, from a regulatory perspective, in the worldwide environment is huge.

“To make a long story short, regulatory complexity and varied trial design is a big challenge. Digital healthcare is a great help in making sure that we are within these constraints in the right way,” says Dourlens.

€40bn turnover per year

100K+ number of employees

60+ sites across the world

ARNAUD DOURLENS HEAD OF CLINICAL SUPPLY CHAIN OPERATIONS, SANOFI

From an integration and cost-optimisation viewpoint, digital healthcare is also important. Today, nobody is able to run a full supplier clinical trial end-to-end without any partners. Therefore, a smooth and efficient integration becomes a must.

“When we start speaking of partners, we start speaking of making interfaces, and

when we speak about interfaces, we speak about exchanging data. The level of platform integration thanks to digital development is also key. If you have a nice digital ecosystem internally, but you don't have the proper level of connection with all the players that are contributing across your value chain, you’re not fully leveraging the efficiency of your digital system,” he says.

To perform in the global clinical supply chain, there are some core activities that are part of the internal expertise of Sanofi: optimising the design of the trial from a supply perspective, the logistics setup, packaging design, and, ultimately, the needs of the patient.

There are, however, some other areas where Sanofi relies on partners due to their greater expertise and experience with a

“When a patient has a disease, they’re in a tough situation. Clinical trials are an option of care for them”

range of customers. Put simply, these partners are able to offer services that are complementary to internal ones.

One of these integral partners is Thermo Fisher Scientific, with whom Sanofi has worked for a number of years – though a partnership devoted to the US market was only agreed two years ago, which specifically focuses on the subcontracting of packaging labelling and distribution activities for certain studies.

“We are relying on them mainly to supply everything that is manufactured in the US and then distributed worldwide for studies,” says Dourlens. “We're reaching a level of maturity and interaction between the teams in terms of development that is really high.

By reducing the number of trips back and forth to the hospital, we’re supporting healthcare staff and patients”

ARNAUD DOURLENS HEAD OF CLINICAL SUPPLY CHAIN OPERATIONS, SANOFI

Thermo Fisher Scientific has been helping us in our journey to make sure that we deliver the drug at the right time – any time – but also, that we're doing it at the right cost with the right level of optimisation.”

Any partnership requires trust because it is a vital ingredient, but for the healthcare supply chain, it is absolutely crucial.

“In a partnership, nothing happens without trust,” says Dourlens. “The second ingredient is to make sure you have a partnership based on a common interest: in a good partnership, there cannot be somebody who is winning and somebody who is losing.”

Over the next year at Sanofi, Dourlens highly expects the world to change again.

“More than ever, the level of uncertainty we have in the worldwide clinical supply chain is just incredible,” he says. “The world has changed over the past two years –in the supply chain, in the clinical supply chain and across the pharmaceutical supply chain.”

Here, the level of flexibility and agility is essential to be able to adapt for the supply chain. Yet, as the world has changed, Sanofi has also grown more resilient – so much so that managing a complex supply chain is Dourlens’ 2023 goal.

THE WORLD IS WORKING ITS WAY

TOWARDS ETHICAL STANDARDS FOR AI

More than 190 nations have adopted the UN’s attempt at a global ethics standard, in what could be a trillion-dollar industry by the end of the decade

WRITTEN BY: GEORGE HOPKIN

Ethical AI marked its first birthday in the closing weeks of last year, according to the United Nations’ educational, scientific and cultural organisation UNESCO.

The First Global Forum on the Ethics of AI was held in Prague in mid-December 2022, hosted by the Czech Republic under UNESCO’s patronage. It represented the first international ministerial meeting to take place after the organisation’s adoption of the global recommendation on the ethics of AI a year before.

More than 190 member states adopted the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the first global standard-setting instrument on the subject. It is designed to protect and promote human rights and human dignity, and offer a guiding compass for the rule of law in the digital world.

“This is an opportunity to harness the potential of AI and steward inclusive AI governance, so no country is left behind,” says UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay.

“The world needs rules for artificial intelligence to benefit humanity. The recommendation on the ethics of AI is a major answer,” says Azoulay. “It sets the first, global, normative framework while giving states the responsibility to apply it at their level.”

AI open to misuse and unintended consequences

Member states have indeed taken action in this area – for example, the UK government’s Central Digital and Data Office and Office for Artificial Intelligence have set out their own definition of AI ethics as a set of values, principles, and techniques that employ widely accepted standards to guide moral conduct in the development and use of AI systems.

The field of AI ethics emerged from the need to address the individual and societal harms that AI systems might cause, say government officials. Notably, these harms rarely arise as a result of a deliberate choice, as most AI developers do not set out to build biased or discriminatory applications, or applications that invade users’ privacy.

The UK government’s official guidance regarding the main ways AI systems can cause involuntary harm surrounds: misuse, where systems are used for purposes other than those for which they were designed and intended; questionable design, when creators have not thoroughly considered technical issues related to algorithmic bias and safety risks; and unintended negative consequences,

which can happen when creators have not thoroughly considered the potential negative impacts their systems may have on the individuals and communities they affect.

Companies that ignore or downplay ethical AI issues also risk reputational damage, legal threats – and even employee churn, explain AI experts at Deloitte.

“Each type of damage typically leads to reduction of company profitability,” says Kwasi Mitchell, Chief Purpose Officer, Deloitte Consulting, writing in the first edition of Deloitte’s State of Ethics and Trust in Technology report, which he co-authored with Beena Ammanath, US Leader Technology Trust Ethics, Executive Director, Deloitte AI Institute.

“One estimate puts the cost of mitigations and fines owing to ethical missteps by technology companies in recent years at US$70bn,” they write. “Conversely, when companies apply clear, trustworthy and ethical principles to their technology use cases, the resultant transparency can foster consumer trust in the company and in the product. To avoid adverse and costly effects from neglect of ethical standards, companies should be more proactive than ever when it comes to developing and implementing ethical principles for emerging technologies.”

Governments around the world are pinning their hopes on the field of AI ethics to mitigate these harms by providing project teams with the values, principles, and techniques needed to produce ethical, fair, and safe AI applications.

“This is an opportunity to harness the potential of AI, so no country is left behind”

AUDREY AZOULAY DIRECTOR GENERAL, UNESCO

Ethical AI headed for a trilliondollar valuation

Even though international ethical AI is just one year old, the revenue at play is significant. IBM’s data indicated that AI systems were expected to achieve a worldwide market value of around US$450bn by the end of 2022 and are predicted to go on to a US$900bn valuation by 2026.

Concerns have already been voiced about biases creeping into datasets and processes, which may exacerbate societal pressures – including racism and prejudice –being unknowingly amplified and applied to specific groups and individuals.

“People exposed to AI must be educated on its potential flaws, such as biases, and kept

up-to-date on how the business is working to reduce or eliminate bias and promote fairness,” says Sofia Ihsan, Trusted AI Lead at EY. “Discriminatory or unfair algorithms and data sets can be highly damaging to some of society’s most vulnerable populations, further contributing to a lack of trust in the AI system.”

“People exposed to AI must be educated on its potential flaws, such as biases”

SOFIA IHSAN TRUSTED AI LEAD, EY

Ethics means life or death for ‘carebots’

A team of North Carolina State University researchers has developed plans for a set of algorithms that could allow a future ‘carebot’ to make complex decisions about prioritising the treatment of human patients.

The new algorithms are designed to help incorporate ethical guidelines into artificial intelligence decision-making programs such as virtual assistants known as carebots used in healthcare settings, says the research team.

“Technologies like carebots are supposed to help ensure the safety and comfort of hospital patients, older adults and other people who require health monitoring or physical assistance,” says Veljko Dubljević and an Associate Professor in the Science, Technology & Society programme at NCSU. “In practical terms, this means these technologies will be placed in situations where they need to make ethical judgments.”

Dubljević presents an example in which a carebot is given the task of giving medical assistance to two people. One patient is unconscious but requires urgent care, while the second patient is in less urgent need but demands that the carebot treat him first. What does the carebot do?

Previous efforts to incorporate ethical decision-making into AI programs have been limited in scope and focused on utilitarian reasoning, which neglects the complexity of moral human decision-making.

“With the rise of AI and robotics technologies, society needs such collaborative efforts between ethicists and engineers,” says Dubljević. “Our future depends on it.”

But it is important to consider regional differences, including cultural and legal differences when looking to address AI bias. “For example, while race can be used as one important reference characteristic when assessing for bias within the United States, in another country, it might be appropriate to put increased focus on ethnicity as a protected characteristic and consider individuals who identify with the largest ethnic group as a key reference class in bias auditing,” says Heather Domin, IBM’s Program Director, AI Governance.

Domin authored the company’s report Standards

for Protecting At-Risk Groups

in AI Bias Auditing with colleagues Jamie VanDodick, Director of Tech Ethics Project Office and Governance; Calvin Lawrence, Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect Cognitive Solutions & Innovation (AI) Public Sector; and Francesca Rossi, IBM fellow and AI Ethics Global Leader.

Protected characteristics –a matter of debate

While auditors and developers will require guidance and standards to conduct consistent bias audits on AI systems, protected characteristics and their associated classes will remain a matter of local and legal debate, though the IBM team states that there will always be some level of discretion across contexts and locations.

“It is also important that developers of AI be able to reflect their own ethical standards when evaluating AI systems for bias, which may go beyond regulatory requirements,” they say. “Therefore, the tooling that auditors and developers use to conduct bias testing should remain flexible and allow users to easily adapt testing to local norms, stakeholder requirements, and legal expectations for the location and context in which the system is deployed.”

AD FEATURE

WRITTEN BY: SANDVINE

PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

Network traffic generated by Netflix, YouTube, Google, Xbox, and other applications are exerting more pressure on global networks, raising capital expenditure and impacting service providers’ income statements and profitability.

An App QoE (App Quality of Experience) approach to capacity planning, operational efficiencies and network optimisation can make a difference.

In 2020 and 2021, COVID-19 accelerated digitisation by years, and telecom service providers around the world rose to the challenge by ensuring their networks kept up with the wave of data traffic coming in from video conferencing, video streaming, telehealth, and virtual learning. Today, people spend as much as five to eight hours a day on applications, many of which are bandwidth intensive and video based.

In fact, Sandvine’s 2023 Global Internet Phenomena Report showed that there was a 23% increase in overall internet traffic H1 2022 compared to H1 2021, largely due to the growing popularity of video apps like Netflix, YouTube, and TikTok, as well as interactive apps like gaming, social networking, and messaging.

Traffic generated by OTT apps exert tremendous pressure on global networks, but an App QoE approach helps operators reframe capacity planning and network optimisation needs in the context of customer satisfaction

Samir Marwaha, Chief Solutions Officer, Sandvine.

Photos by: Beau Bumpas

SANDVINE

Meta Brands Alphabet Apple

27.82% Microsoft

TikTok Amazon

Netflix

19.09% 13.76% 2.41% 1.96% 1.51% 0.38% 66.93%

Figure 1: Mobile traffic volume by brand

Figure 1 shows that 67% of all mobile traffic volume is attributable to the biggest brands, with Meta’s Facebook being the biggest contributor and Alphabet’s YouTube second.

Each of these brands’ apps are growing in complexity, with fusions of video, audio, voice, chat, location, and payments for better engagement and more frictionless experiences. As subscribers become increasingly dependent on applications, the performance of each function within the app dictates the user’s quality of experience (App QoE). This means operators are having to reframe capacity planning and network optimisation needs in the context of customer satisfaction.

• Improving customer satisfaction

• Planning and optimising networks to improve CapEx ROI

• Creating actionable data to quickly address the who, what, and where of problems affecting subscribers

132 February 2023

What is ‘App QoE’ and how does it differentiate you in the market?

“App QoE means understanding what your end-users are experiencing and feeling when using their favourite apps over your network.

Today, people use dozens of different apps every day. Whether for work, education, health, or entertainment, people are using apps more frequently, and across more devices, too. There is such an increasing dependence on apps, in fact, that subscribers’ App QoE matters more and more.

Regardless of device type, access method, or subscriber location, App QoE is a reflection of your network. This means you have to better analyse and optimise networks to deliver the best possible quality of experience to subscribers and enterprise customers. You want to get to the root cause of issues faster so you know whether you need CapEx, OpEx, or simply optimisation of existing investments.

This is why real-time measurement of App QoE is so important. Advanced machine learning (ML) drives our application classification and quality of experience “scoring”, with greater than 95% classification

EXECUTIVE BIO

SAMIR MARWAHA

TITLE: CHIEF SOLUTIONS OFFICER

COMPANY: SANDVINE

INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LOCATION: TEXAS, US

Samir Marwaha leads Strategy, Corporate Marketing and Product Management. He evangelises an App QoE approach to best data that is currently missing from all network and service performance systems. This data is essential for network operations, capacity planning, heavy usage management and executive insights to drive profitability and subscriber satisfaction.

SAMIR MARWAHA CHIEF SOLUTIONS OFFICER, SANDVINE

“You want to get to the root cause of issues faster so you know whether you need CapEx, OpEx, or simply optimisation of existing investments”

accuracy across 14 categories of traffic [figure 2] and 11 categories of content. In other words, we bring a clear and comprehensive application-specific view of what’s hidden in service providers’ data and control planes, tracking flows across entire delivery systems in networks.

What we do is different from the big network equipment manufacturers, probe companies, and application performance monitoring vendors. We offer more depth and scope because we are application focused, with extremely good data analysis and insight into what is going on in both the data and control planes, tracking the flow across the entire delivery system in the network.

Our machine-learning app classification takes place in the data plane, while in the control plane, data enrichment and QoE scoring occurs, feeding visualisation of the designated KPIs related to App QoE. This streamlines and accelerates operational analyses and actions. [figure 3]

In this third layer, we offer custom application workflows that deliver personaspecific visualisations for the CTO, operations, network planning, big data, and even marketing. The custom dashboards enable:

• CTOs to benchmark their network performance and plan network improvements based on application usage to maximise ROI.

• Operations to troubleshoot application problems quickly, before they become customer service calls or truck rolls.

• Network planners to be more precise and prescriptive so that congestion is managed and QoE is optimal over the long term.

• Big data teams to analyse all data traffic, including encrypted data, so they can make better business decisions.

• Marketing to monetise data traffic, upsell to specific users, and increase advertising revenue.

App QoE for right-time capacity planning

It’s important to get the timing of upgrades right. Capacity planning has a significant impact on everything – co-work capacity, access capacity, distribution networks, caching networks, peering links and small CDLs. CapEx also has a huge effect on OpEx, so timing is everything.

To stay ahead of utilisation, operators across the board want to be able to predict what’s going to happen over their networks, but fixed and mobile operators have different needs: fixed operators never want to be “full”, so once a port hits 50% or 60%, they schedule an upgrade.

“Get capacity in at the right time because if you get it in too late, users suffer; if you get it in too soon, you waste CapEx and OpEx”

ALEXANDER HAVÄNG CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SANDVINE

Figure 3: Sandvine’s Portfolio –Delivering Value at Each Layer

EXECUTIVE BIO

ALEXANDER HAVÄNG

TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER

COMPANY: SANDVINE

INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LOCATION: SWEDEN

Alexander is one of the founders of the company and a lead architect of Sandvine's Application and Network Intelligence and App QoE solutions. Alexander's passion for problem solving makes his role very customer-facing, working with service providers to understand the qualitative experience their subscribers are feeling with applications, and deploying solutions that improve customer satisfaction and improve CapEx ROI for operators.

But the time between the decision and the upgrade can be very long, sometimes “years” long. By then, customers might be upset and going elsewhere.

Mobile operators are a bit more constrained, because it’s very cost prohibitive to fix a problem if utilisation hits 100% on a radio node. So, they typically look at how much bandwidth a subscriber gets on a particular radio node in a certain location, and, if it goes below a certain throughput, they schedule an upgrade, that involves capacity elements like interfaces, radio equipment, switches, ports, routers.

In both cases, the best thing is to defer CapEx until you know it’s the perfect time. But monitoring utilisation on a port doesn’t give adequate information about when the port will hit 100%, or in a mobile network, when subscriber bandwidth will drop below something like 3 mbps.

Sometimes, to make an operation profitable, you can run an interface hot rather than going for a full interface or upgrade. If you see a streaming video experience goes from “awesome” to “very good” at a certain level of utilisation, you don’t necessarily have to upgrade.

“Sometimes, to make an operation profitable, you can run an interface hot rather than going for a full interface or upgrade”

ALEXANDER HAVÄNG CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SANDVINE

Alexander Haväng Chief Technology Officer, Sandvine.

Photos by: David Pahmp

What’s needed is accurate and precise forecasting, and our solutions are designed to provide more visibility, such as:

• What is driving utilisation? Are you acquiring more subscribers in a certain location? If there’s not much subscriber growth, do you have a lot of movement, like people moving among states or countries? Are a small percentage of users eating up most of the network resources? Do you have 1% of users eating up 10% of resources, or maybe 10% of users eating up 50%? Or is there, perhaps, a device issue, like a new security camera defaulting to 4K and eating up people’s plans without them knowing? Is there intentional fraud like tethering or video in VPNs that needs to be evaluated for disproportionate or heavy usage?

• What’s the “application popularity”? Meaning, how many subscribers at peak are using heavy video applications and how much and what type of video is being used? Is it Netflix or YouTube, is it 4K or 1080p?

• How much bandwidth does each application session use? Is the session video, gaming, or social networking, and which apps within each category are consuming the most bandwidth. How is this affecting other customers’ App QoE?

• Answering each question helps predict how much growth there will be in a particular node. Then what-if analyses can take place to inform planning for different scenarios: if you have 5% more subs, or if Netflix changes throughput for a video from 1080p to 4K, or if 20% more videos will be 4K, what can you do? Down the road, what happens if 10% more people are on metaverse, or if cloud gaming takes off and 5% of my users are at 50 MB each?

• The answers to these questions lie in the data. The quality of the data, the ability to manage and enrich data with context, and to share the data among systems relevant to App QoE is the critical foundation for decision making.

“You start to have real power when your data can inform what will happen in the future”

AMBUJ MITTAL CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER, SANDVINE

EXECUTIVE BIO

AMBUJ MITTAL

TITLE: CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER

COMPANY: SANDVINE

INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LOCATION: KARNATAKA, INDIA

Ambuj Mittal brings more than 20 years of experience specialising in telecom networks and mobile devices. He is responsible for the research and development of Sandvine’s App QoE-focused products and solutions, driving advanced classification and categorisation to help service providers predict, plan and invest in their networks with forethought and precision. He has extensive experience in leading organisations focused on innovation and delivering world class products for the global communication service provide market and has expertise in transforming technology into market driven business outcomes.

Data creation and utilisation for actionable insights

There is a massive amount of data in each call going through the network. Raw packets embody different stages of a call and contain different aspects of the overall App QoE. For example, if you’re on a Zoom call, each person’s experience will differ depending on how data flows from the client to the Zoom servers in different parts of the world, and back again – and all over different devices.

If we have an issue with poor audio or an inability to share a screen, we blame the underlying network. It could be the underlying network, or it could be many other variables, but it will be the network operator’s brand that is first impacted. That’s why creating good, quality data is crucial to the type of insights you need for meaningful corrective actions to take place.

Ambuj Mittal, Chief Development Officer, Sandvine.

Photos by: M John Benniel

The unique value of an App QoE-led approach

There are four steps to uncover and deliver meaningful data:

• Step one: Classify the app data. You have to classify that data to recognise which app is generating that data.

• Step two: Categorise the content. With many categories of apps, you might have video, voice, chat, and gaming content all in the same flow. For example, Uber is not a single app but rather a series of apps, such as Uber, UberEats, Uber Freight, Uber Same-Day Package Delivery, Google Maps, 3rd-party geolocation services, GPS tracking, and payment services. With Netflix, you may stream a movie or download a movie while simultaneously browsing content. To understand the application, you have to “look under the hood” to categorise the traffic and the content within the app.

• Step three: Identify the context – who, what, and where. Who (which subscriber) is driving on what access network and device, and where is that subscriber? Within the same packet of data, and same flow, you can get different contexts that can further enrich the data, deriving more meaning from the data. For example, if a person is having a poor experience, and they are paying for 2mbps rather than 10mbps, then is there a way to better match the subscriber to the best plan for his/her usage?

• Step four: Score the QoE. Within the identified context, the score articulates the QoE is delivered by that data to that subscriber. The insights we deliver help telcos know if the App QoE is satisfactory for each subscriber on the network.

“

By planning networks around QoE rather than throughput, operators no longer have to continuously throw endless capacity at problems. Instead, it’s possible to predict, plan and invest with forethought and precision”

AMBUJ MITTAL CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER, SANDVINE

Operations can use quality data insights for troubleshooting, isolating issues and resolving them according to the actual problem. Capacity Planning or Network Management, meanwhile, can see if the network is congested and whether adding capacity is the solution, or whether just optimising what is already there is the answer.

By planning networks around QoE rather than throughput, operators no longer have to continuously throw endless capacity at problems. Instead, it’s possible to

predict, plan and invest with forethought and precision. Segmenting the traffic and identifying whether problems are due to the network or something else, allows you to take action more rapidly. For example, if an OTT provider is experiencing server problems, you can proactively let customers know so that your call centres don’t get flooded with complaints and your customer satisfaction scores don’t suffer.

To summarise, the “right time” deployment operators want to start with a foundation of good, quality data. Knowing what will happen helps you automatically take action based on predictions. It’s one thing to know history, but another to know what to do now and into the future.

You start to have real power when your data can inform what will happen in the future – and being able to take that action without human intervention is what gets you to automation. Proactive automation then gets you to intelligent networks that automatically respond to what’s happening in real time.

EDTECH COMPANIES CHANGING THE WAY THE WORLD LEARNS

With the global EdTech sector predicted to be worth US$404bn by 2025, we look at the top companies helping their users achieve academic success

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

As COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in the mass closures of schools and universities, forcing education to be digitised more than ever, the education technology market went through a boom.

That market growth shows no signs of stopping, with extensive research by Holon IQ suggesting that global EdTech expenditure will reach $404bn by 2025.

Technology Magazine takes a closer look at 10 of the top EdTech companies that are changing the way the world learns.

Unacademy

Launched as a YouTube channel by Gaurav Munjal in 2010, Unacademy's first tutorial videos helped fellow students prepare for exams. Five years later, it was successful enough for him to bring in two friends to help launch the Unacademy app.

In 2020, the company acquired Kreatryx, PrepLadder and Codechef to add teaching resources to the portfolio, relaunching the original app as part of its Unveil 1.0 event.

As the parent company of edX, 2U works with more than 230 colleges, universities, and corporations to provide over 45 million learners with access to more than 4,000 digital education offerings, from free courses to full degrees.

In July 2022, the company announced it is to change its "one-size-fits-all" model to a more bespoke approach that enables universities to design customised partnership packages.

VIPKID

VIPKID connects global students with online educators in the US and Canada in a real-time learning environment.

Launched in 2014 by Founder and CEO Cindy Mi, in 2021 the company said it would stop selling classes taught by foreignbased tutors to students in China. Chinese student needs are now met by Chinese national tutors.

Zuoyebang

Founded in 2015, China’s Zuoyebang provides online tutoring products and services for students covering a broad range of academic subjects.

Headquartered in Beijing, the company employs over 35,000 staff in China and has 11 branches across the country, including in Xi'an, Hefei, Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing, Jinan, Changsha, Nanjing, and Shijiazhuang.

“VIPKID connects global students with online educators in the US and Canada in a real-time learning environment”

Coursera

Founded by Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng in 2012, Coursera is a global online learning platform offering access to online courses and degrees from leading universities and companies. The company has worked with around 110 million students and more than 7,000 campuses, businesses, and governments.

Coursera sponsored over 115 certification courses with its partners for people who may have been affected by the global pandemic in 2020.

Founded in 2012, China’s Yuanfudao provides K-12 afterschool tutoring, pre-school support and adult education services to over 400 million users across China, with a mission to provide equal access for every Chinese student to the best educational resources conveniently and efficiently.

Headquartered in Beijing, Yuanfudao has centres across China, including in Wuhan, Xi'an, Zhengzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Jinan, Changsha, Tianjin, Chongqing, Shenyang, Changchun and Hefei.

Yuanfudao

Udemy

Headquartered in San Francisco with hubs in Turkey, Ireland, Australia, India and Brazil, Udemy’s marketplace platform offers thousands of courses in dozens of languages, on subjects including programming, data science, leadership and team building.

Udemy Business offers corporate customers a subscription-based employee training and development platform with access to thousands of courses, learning analytics, and the ability to host and distribute their own content.

BYJU’S

BYJU'S is a global edtech company providing learning solutions to more than 150 million students around the world. Founded in 2011, BYJU'S is headquartered in India and has operations in more than 100 countries around the world in addition to learning programmes in multiple languages.

The companies under the BYJU'S Group serve a wide range of learners – from children at the start of their education to adults looking to upgrade their professional skills.

“ Udemy’s marketplace platform offers thousands of courses in dozens of languages”

Chegg

Launched in 2005, Chegg – a California-based edtech provider of digital and physical textbooks, as well as education content and student services including online tutoring – is on a mission to make higher education more affordable and accessible, all while improving student outcomes.

In August 2022, Chegg announced the expansion of its Uversity platform to Canada and the UK. Through Uversity, instructors are compensated for sharing their teaching materials across Chegg’s library of content, including study guides, practice quizzes, and lab and lecture notes, from leading educators in international markets around the world.

A publicly-held company based in Santa Clara, CA, Chegg has offices in San Francisco, New York, Portland, India, Israel, Berlin, and Ukraine.

TOOP

LEADERS

Kahoot!

Kahoot! is a global learning platform company that wants to empower everyone, particularly children, students, and employees, to unlock their full learning potential.

Founded in 2012 by Morten Versvik, Johan Brand, and Jamie Brooker and launched in private beta in March 2013 at SXSWedu, Kahoot! is today used by around nine million teachers globally, hundreds of millions of students and families, and, perhaps surprisingly, across 97% of Fortune 500 companies.

Since 2019, Kahoot!’s family of learning apps has also included DragonBox and Poio, and in 2020, Kahoot! expanded its family of apps with Actimo, for enterprise learning.

The company says 300 million sessions have been hosted on the Kahoot! platform by 30+ million active accounts, with 2 billion participants in more than 200 countries and regions in 2021 and 2022. The Kahoot! Group is headquartered in Oslo, Norway with offices in the US, the UK, France, Finland, Estonia, Denmark and Spain.

MOTOR OIL OFFERS SHINING LIGHT IN NEW WORLD OF ENERGY ISSUES

WRITTEN BY: GEORGE HOPKIN

ISSUES

PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

Nick Giannakakis,

Group Chief

Information Officer at Motor Oil, on how technology can help the world transition to a more sustainable way of using energy

Greece's Motor Oil is taking decisive action to address climate change and help the world transition to a more sustainable way of using energy. With a strong track record in the energy sector, spanning over 50 years in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean region, the company is well-equipped to guide the industry towards a brighter future.

Motor Oil's ambitious plan to transition to a new energy environment includes dynamic targets and is the largest of its kind in Southeastern Europe. As the company looks towards 2030, it is clear that Motor Oil is committed to driving positive change in the energy industry.

Founded in 1970 – and marking the launch of its refinery in Corinth two years later – Motor Oil has built a Europe-leading role for itself in the sectors of crude oil refining and the marketing of petroleum products in Greece and the greater eastern Mediterranean region. The company’s workforce of more than 2,500 supplies customers with a wide range of high-quality products and exports to more than 70 countries.

“The question I ask myself when I wake up is: ‘What makes me feel like I want to jump out of bed and come to the office?’,” says Nick Giannakakis, Group Chief Information Officer at Motor Oil. “And the answer is that I am driven by the proposition. It’s the

promise I give to all my colleagues that I will equip them and enable them to do their jobs with technology and accomplish missioncritical priorities. This commitment then cascades down to my direct reports and on to the entire technology community in this large-scale organisation.”

A graduate of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland, Giannakakis has a Bachelor's degree in physics, a postgraduate degree in industrial systems administration and over 15 years of experience in executive roles in the field of information technology. He has worked for several well-known multinational organisations, and, in 2021, he was recognised as one of the top 100 Chief Information Officers.

Giannakakis says he and his team take pride in the way they have helped support Motor Oil in its new organisational strategy. “We’re very proud of how we innovate and what we can digitise at one of Europe’s

largest industrial operations with solutions like predictive maintenance.

“There is also a lot to be proud of in the work we’ve done in the retail sector and how we have launched one of the largest EV charging solutions in this part of the world,” says Giannakakis.

“And last, but certainly not least, we are proud and pleased with the work regarding sustainability. To give you an idea, when I joined the organisation three years ago, our renewable footprint was quite low,” he says. “Today, we are maybe the second largest renewable producer in this part of the world, and this is also part of our contribution.”

Industrial complex in Greece leads the way in Europe

Motor Oil is a publicly traded company, listed on the Athens Exchange since 2001. It is included in several indices, including the Athex Composite Share Price Index, the FTSE/Athex Large Cap index, the MSCI

EXECUTIVE BIO

NIKOS GIANNAKAKIS

TITLE: GROUP CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER

INDUSTRY:

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Nikos Giannakakis holds a degree in Physics, a Master of Science (MSc) in Industrial Systems Management and Administration and is a graduate of the International Institute for Management Development - IMD (Lausanne, Switzerland).

He has 18 years of international experience in the positions of Director and General Manager of Informatics in distinguished Multinational Clubs.

He was also awarded as one of the top 100 Chief Information Officers for 2019.

He is eager on using technology to drive Digital transformation which he believes has brought tremendous cost savings and process improvement to companies across the world.

He has worked as CTO to globally distinguished brands such as British American Tobacco, CocaCola HBC, Richemont Int’l (Cartier, Montblanc, Van Cleef & Arpels, Piaget, SAP etc.

NIKOS GIANNAKAKIS GROUP CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, MOTOR OIL

Greece Small Cap Index, and the FTSE4Good Index Series.

The company operates a refinery, ancillary plants, and fuel distribution facilities that form the largest, privately-owned industrial complex in Greece and are considered among the most modern in Europe.

Motor Oil primarily exports its products, which are made with advanced technology that allows the company to adjust the final product mix to market needs and

achieve higher refining margins than other Mediterranean refineries.

Subsidiaries of the company, Avin Oil and Coral (formerly Shell Hellas) also have a significant presence in the liquid fuel retail sector, with Coral operating in several countries besides Greece.

The company's subsidiary LPC is involved in the industrial production and trade of basic and packaged lubricants and acts as the agent for Valvoline lubricants in Greece. Coral Gas – another subsidiary – is involved in storing, packaging, and marketing bottled and bulk liquified gas, as well as liquified gas for vehicles.

In 2017, Motor Oil established a subsidiary in Cyprus to expand its activities. The company's subsidiary NRG Trading House Energy is involved in the power and natural gas market, offering electricity and

“WE’RE VERY PROUD OF HOW WE INNOVATE AND WHAT WE CAN DIGITISE AT ONE OF EUROPE’S LARGEST INDUSTRIAL OPERATIONS”

natural gas programmes, in addition to comprehensive services for residential and commercial customers.

Motor Oil’s €2.5bn investment in growth and energy transition

In the face of global challenges, Motor Oil is making significant investments in the energy transition in Southeastern Europe as part of its efforts to transition to a new energy environment.

These investments reflect the company's commitment to securing energy supply, promoting the energy transition, and generating sustainable returns for shareholders, while also aligning with the company's strategic priorities. The plan is being implemented in the context of geopolitical and economic instability, as well as significant environmental challenges.

• Commitment to acting responsibly

• Enhancement of energy efficiency

• Acceleration of the renewable energy penetration

• Investment in new sustainable technologies

• Provision of energy & mobility solutions to customers

Motor Oil plans to invest more than €2.5bn in growth and energy transition projects, including renewable energy sources (RES), petrochemical products, natural gas, biofuels, hydrogen, and decarbonisation.

Additionally, the company will invest over €1.5bn to improve infrastructure and increase resilience through facility maintenance, logistical improvements,

digitalisation, and projects related to efficiency, health, safety, and the environment.

These investments are part of a plan to create jobs, growth, and value for stakeholders, while simultaneously being environmentally and socially responsible and contributing to the country's gross domestic product (GDP).

Four strategic pillars form the basis of this plan: the first is expanding the company's renewable energy portfolio through its subsidiary, MORE; the second is building an electromobility network through investments in e-mobility, strategic partnerships and installing charging points at gas stations. The

goal is to have over 1,000 charging points by 2023, with a target of 4,000 by 2030.

The third pillar focuses on the circular economy and alternative fuels, including the production of green hydrogen through a joint venture with PPC, the construction of a natural gas-fuelled power plant with GEK TERNA, and investment in solids and waste management.

The fourth pillar involves improving the resiliency and sustainability of Motor Oil's Corinth refinery, including the construction of a Naphtha Treatment Complex and the investment in a new propylene unit, as well as energy upgrades and infrastructure optimisation at the refinery.

NIKOS GIANNAKAKIS GROUP CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, MOTOR OIL

“COMMITMENT CASCADES DOWN TO MY DIRECT REPORTS AND ON TO THE ENTIRE ORGANISATION”

A combined community of partners

Motor Oil works with a range of partners and service providers, all of which it sees as a combined community dedicated to improving and refining the company's business. It is a high priority for Motor Oil.

This community includes VMWare, which Nick describes as one of the company's most innovative partners. Motor Oil has worked closely with VMWare on the company's transition to cloud technologies.

VMWare's work with Motor Oil has become a reference case for other companies, due to its success. This makes Giannakakis proud. "VMWare is one of the partners that contributed significantly towards our expansion strategy execution," enthuses Giannakakis.

Other key partners include a global leader in broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions, Fortinet, which works with Motor Oil on security regarding the company’s retail outlets. “To give you some context, we are one of the biggest retailers in this part of the world, with approximately

1,500 outlets,” says Giannakakis. “We’ve been focused on expanding the services and goods in this area, and this involves scalability and, of course, security aspects, which are a key element of everything we do. And Fortinet is exactly the partner we need to allow us to do that.”

As result of an RFP process during 2022 and a technical evaluation of the best available technologies and vendors globally, MOH decided to strategically be partnered with Fortinet for the implementation of a wide-range SD-Branch project at MOH, taking advantage of Fortinet Secure SD-WAN solution, multi-factor authentication (MFA) & WiFi technologies. There are many benefits for MOH from this project and Fortinet; however, some of the most prominent ones are the increased availability and performance of their branches’ communication paths & interaction with their central datacentres & applications, increased security at their Edge infrastructure, significant reduction at future OpEx and being able to cover the IoT challenges by dynamic detection, segmentation, and protection! Last but not least, all provided edge solutions are future-proof ready and easily expandable and adjustable for zero trust network access (ZTNA) & secure access service edge (SASE).

Motor Oil also lists Microsoft as a key partner, providing a wide range of services including machine learning and cloud infrastructure, in addition to the Greek telecoms company Nova, with which Motor Oil has a strategic alliance.

“I truly believe that telco companies with large ICT programs are key partners that will enable us to achieve our ambitious goals,” says Giannakakis.

NIKOS GIANNAKAKIS GROUP CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, MOTOR OIL

“THERE IS ALSO A LOT TO BE PROUD OF THE WORK WE’VE DONE LAUNCHING ONE OF THE LARGEST EV CHARGING SOLUTIONS IN THIS PART OF THE WORLD”

THE SMART CITY OF MODESTO

WRITTEN BY: JOHN O’HANLON

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

We talk to Scott Conn, recently appointed CIO, about the challenges and rewards of placing technology at the service of an urban population

The more you learn about Modesto, California, the more attractive it seems as a place to live. Certainly its ideal climate and contented lifestyle were among many factors that brought its new CIO Scott Conn to the city in May 2022 as a key member of its 12-strong executive team. “Modesto is a very diverse, familyoriented community primarily involved in farming and ranching, for which the climate is well suited. It’s located near the foothills of the California Sierras and it’s the perfect place to raise a family: we have great values and endless opportunities, with sports facilities and a vibrant downtown area.” And sitting less than 100 miles from San Francisco, he says, it’s well placed to take advantage of the technological hotspots of Silicon Valley - he summarises it as ‘an awesome and up-and-coming place.’

Modesto, on Scott Conn’s watch, has recently been named among the top ten in the digital cities in the USA by the govtech. com Center for Digital Governmentcities that elevated their municipalities' resilience while bolstering services and prioritising engagement with their residents. “This award recognises how we are leveraging technology to communicate with our entire community. The more we digitise, the easier it is for people to find information, the faster it is for them to find

Modesto: a smart city getting smarter

“The residents of our community see the value we’re already providing, and they want it to go to the next level”

SCOTT CONN CIO, CITY OF MODESTO

the information, and the more transparent the city itself becomes. When we know something, our citizens know it too.”

Delivering the plan

When Conn arrived he joined a municipality nearing the mid-point of a well-thought out five-year strategic plan. “My task coming on board was to embrace that plan, see how far along we've come from a technology perspective, and then determine what are the priorities going forward.” The largest part of the delivery still lies ahead, with three years of the plan to be accomplished.

And his priority is to bring Modesto fully into the community of Smart Cities - a process much of which has already been achieved. “Now everybody has a different definition for a smart city. It really comes down to again making the city more digital, more technology oriented and more online. For example you no longer have to come down to city hall to get a business permit. You can get all this done online from the comfort of your business or the comfort of your home. It’s about things like understanding how parking meters are utilised in the city, which ones are available, which ones are not available, and sharing that information for people driving around looking for a parking spot. Or understanding traffic lights and whether it appears somebody is about to run a red light. We have AI running in the background that keeps the other lights red if we suspect somebody may run the intersection.”

Things like this help cut the accident rate and are among the initiatives that the 33-strong IT department headed by Scott Conn is required to configure, design, implement and then support, taking Modesto further along the smart city route. Apart from that, the most important priority

SCOTT CONN

TITLE: CIO

INDUSTRY: GOVERNMENT

ADMINISTRATION

LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, US

Scott Conn became the Chief Information Officer for the City of Modesto in May 2022 where he puts his 40+ years of C-level private sector, Executive Consulting, and local government Information Technology experience to work. Scott has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Management from Santa Clara University, is a retired Varsity Football and Women’s Basketball Head Coach. Also, Scott is an active member of the Municipal Information Systems Association of California (MISAC) serving on the Communications Committee and is the current President of MISAC’s Northern Chapter.

EXECUTIVE BIO

CivicPlus helps governments provide exceptional experiences

Dave O’Reilly, Chief Operating Officer at CivicPlus, explains the importance of accessibility for government information services in a post-Covid world

The Covid pandemic and the rush to find a way to get things done in the “new normal” means millions of North American residents are struggling to communicate effectively with their local government officials and departments.

CivicPlus -— a leading provider of technology solutions for local government, with a track record of serving over 12,000 customers and impacting over 340 million community members in the United States and Canada alone — has earned a reputation as a leading player in the industry and is committed to staying ahead of the curve to meet these changing demands.

The company’s growing team of dedicated professionals implement new technologies and services, including web design, mass notifications, parks and recreation management, and social media archiving for local governments and municipalities.

“We provide all the systems that support the processes within local government at both a city and county level,” explains Dave O’Reilly, Chief Operating Officer at CivicPlus.

“That can be anything from applying for a permit to putting a fence up in your backyard to booking a swim lane at your local recreation centre or going online to view the minutes of a local town hall meeting.”

CivicPlus’ work has always been important to the communities it works with, but 2023 sees the company’s work as crucial to a wider range of people.

“Covid changed a lot for us,” says O’Reilly. “It took hold of an industry being carried out in local town halls and cities and counties that were still paper-based in many areas, and it meant that residents could not access any of those essential services. They couldn’t go to the town hall, they couldn’t ask questions in person.

“So we all had to go online, and a lot of our customers had to change quickly to make sure that information was available which could be easily understood,” he says.

LEARN MORE

for IT is security of these digital assets. “We've taken great strides to beef up our security of all of our protected critical assets here, which includes all of those smart city systems. So our twin focus has been to support the smart city strategic plan and to secure the information that we collect and store here, and utilise to the benefit of all the residents of Modesto.”

Conn comes in with an innovative mindset: “We don't want to be getting our ideas from looking at other cities and thinking we ought to do that too. We want to be the city that every city in California wants to emulate. And we're well on our way to becoming exactly that entity, along with a couple of other cities that I could name. We're leading the charge!”

His job is made easier by the support of the community, and the positive attitude of his fellow executive directors, the City Council members, and the mayor. The sense of community is strong, a good illustration being that a sales tax increase recently passed without opposition, virtually unheard of in the present economic environment. “The residents of our community see the value we’re already providing, and they want it to go to the next level. And so our support here is tremendous, and from that support comes the leverage to be able to implement these new and innovative programmes.”

With experience in both the public and private sectors, he appreciates the prudence with which his employers approach investment. “There are a lot of checks and balances built into the process, on purpose to make sure that taxpayers’ dollars are being spent wisely and on the right priorities. So where it might take three months to get a new programme implemented in the private sector, in the public those three months turn

“CivicPlus will be a key part of the process and will be helping to implement whatever redesign we come up with to improve the look and feel of the website”

SCOTT CONN CIO, CITY OF MODESTO

into six to nine months because we need to get the necessary approvals and buy-in, which does demand more education of all involved or impacted.

Processes of partnership

The IT team has neither the scale nor the remit to develop software though it can execute interfaces and write small programmes, but there are specialist developers who do. “There are so many intelligent IT vendors out there that have already done these things. Our philosophy is to see what we can get off the shelf and implement within our own infrastructure.”

This is why Conn looks for the best developers and consultants to bring on board. The process he follows is to open the bidding to multiple vendors, whittle them down to the best three and then open negotiations with each. “We pick the one that offers the most value, not necessarily the least expensive - we're happy to pay the appropriate fee for the service.”

Currently he is overseeing 22 active projects, including the search for a consultant on website design and ease of access. The process delivered an outstanding illustration four years ago with the decision to team up with CivicPlus

and its selection as Modesto’s website hosting vendor. “They went through a similar process, and they have done such a spectacular job for us that we have just renewed that contract for another four years. CivicPlus will be a key part of the process and will be helping to implement whatever redesign we come up with to help people to find their way, and improve the look and feel of the website.

“Our partners have turned out to be rock solid. Typically when you become a partner with the city of Modesto, you're here for many years, because if you're delivering good value there's no reason to change.

While you may need to renew yourself every so often, every four or five years, the people who've been working with you understand what your value systems are as a partner and what you offer on a value-add scale. This has a tremendous impact on how you get rated and ranked compared to any potential new people out there. That’s not to say that new vendors don’t get full and fair consideration of course!”

Finally, he points out that the IT department can move fast to onboard new technology when required. When COVID-19 struck, though employees may have used Zoom to some extent, it became necessary to quickly onboard more sophisticated Zoom features so that staff working from home could join meetings seamlessly. “Their services have been spectacular. Currently we are gearing up some conference rooms to ‘Zoom Room’ level. Our internal people and external associates really appreciate the one-touch instant meetings we are now able to set up. The other major platform we brought in was Microsoft Teams, which had not previously been utilised here. It was out of necessity,

“Of the 33 staff in my department, six of them started out as interns”

SCOTT CONN CIO, CITY OF MODESTO

driven by the pandemic, so that employees could talk with each other, even though they were working from home.”

We’ve mentioned the diversity of Modesto, and California in general. It’s a multilingual environment, with Spanish speakers by no means the only major minority. So we needed to look for ways to make things easier for people for whom English is not their first language. After a search they discovered Wordly, which many people know as a word game but whose main platform provides AI-powered interpretation and translation at in-person, virtual, and hybrid meetings and events and works as an add-on to Zoom. It translates in audio or captions in more than 20 languages without the need for special equipment. “We were the first city in the USA to go live with this technology, though many others have since jumped on to it, following Modesto’s example. Our residents love it, and its usage goes up with every council meeting we hold.”

Brightest and best

Being within reach of Silicon Valley is one of the things that attracted Scott Conn to Modesto. He keeps a close eye on the developments that come out of there, whether it is to do with transport management, citizen engagement or

general efficiency and safety for the residents. But the city has resources of its own, among them the residents themselves who are encouraged to communicate the improvements they would like to see. Among the most vocal residents are the young people. While the schools and colleges have their own administration structure, the city is very interested in providing opportunities close to home.

In the IT organisation itself, there are three current vacancies. “It’s proving difficult to fill these, but one of the things we have had success with is actually going out and looking for those that are either still in school or recently graduated, and bringing them on board as interns. They may not be able to work full time, but they can work a smaller amount of hours, and be exposed to how we do business here at the city of Modesto, how we work in the IT department, our processes, the technologies that we play with and support here. Of the 33 staff in my department, six of them started out as interns, and are now full time employees. The educational system locally is vitally important, not just to us but to other city departments too, and we’re very grateful for it.”

“We have a very sharp and well put together machine here at the City of Modesto, and I'm loving it”

SCOTT CONN CIO, CITY OF MODESTO

TCS DRIVES E - MOBILITY THROUGH FUTURE - READY ECOSYSTEMS

WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW

PRODUCED BY: TOM LIVERMORE

Laksh Parthasarathy, Global Business Head - Smart Mobility Group at Tata Consultancy Services, enables firms and consumers to move into the mobility ecosystem

To navigate as significant a change as e-mobility requires ingenuity, perseverance and collaboration among all parties involved. As with any innovation, partners are crucial for achieving great things, but electrification is a digital revolution and organisations must leverage new and existing expertise to comply with climate change targets and to fully maximise the opportunities arising in the marketplace.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are increasingly at the centre of digital ecosystems, with technology as the primary change factor and differentiator between businesses. “But, with the slew of new EVs in the market and the increased adoption of EVs, especially within the context of CASE in the mobility ecosystem, there is an accelerated pace of change, a reshaping of conventional industry boundaries,” says Laksh Parthasarathy, Global Business Head of the Smart Mobility Group at Tata Consultancy Services.

When Parthasarathy says ‘CASE’, he means ‘Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electrified’ solutions and how these services are leveraged by EVs to drive sustainability, efficiency and innovation.

Having seen the shift taking place around him, Parthasarathy explains that the switch of drivetrain from internal combustion engines (ICEs) to electric is opening up digital opportunities. As demonstrated in the EVs on the market today, digital technology enables advancement in safety—through artificial intelligence (AI), energy efficiency, and integration with homes to manage electricity and the digitalisation of vehicle maintenance procedures.

Driving digital and sustainable progress in automotive solutions

AWS utilises transformative digital technologies to accelerate the automotive industry’s development whilst striving for sustainable practices. Customers bring advanced and differentiated products and services to market faster and more cost effectively through AWS.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) is the world’s most broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully-featured services from data centres. Ajit Kolhe is the World Wide Partner Lead for Automotive.

“I’m responsible for working with Partners to build and scale market differentiating solutions to solve customers’ unique business challenges,” Kolhe explains. “Our automotive customers consist of four sub-industries within AWS: original equipment manufacturers; tier one suppliers; AutoTech/startups; and auto dealers. These include customers such as Toyota, Continental, Uber, MOIA, and Cox Automotive.”

Automotive industry solutions

AWS’ partnership with TCS dates back to 2009. “It’s been a great journey – TCS is a strategic global system integrator and premier consulting partner in AWS’ partner network.”

Together, AWS and TCS have been focused on migrating critical workloads and transforming IT, with the two having had over 700 customer engagements.

& automotive solutions

“AWS has evolved the cloud adoption framework, placing emphasis on business outcomes which aligns with TCS’ strategy,” says Kolhe.

Over the last two years, the team has built several solutions applicable in the automotive industry, including TCS Autoscape™ which covers autonomous vehicles, ADAS scenarios, connected vehicle solutions, software defined vehicles and TCS Clever Energy™ for sustainability. AWS contributes to innovation with TCS and has a roadmap of seven TCS solutions that will help to solve customers’ business imperatives.

According to Kolhe, the success of such a partnership can be characterised as an alignment around customer obsession, thinking big and mutual trust.

“We have both earned trust in our relationships and have alignment across both organisations which spans across the customer engagements,” says Kolhe.

Ajit Kolhe is the World Wide Partner Lead for Automotive at AWS. He works with Partners to build and scale market differentiating solutions to solve customers’ unique business challenges.

Ajit Kolhe from AWS on sustainability

“A classic illustration of how EVs have forced the development of digital-led ecosystems is in the way they are powered. Conventional fuelling did not have an organic need for digital systems. Charging networks and management, on the other hand, have been fundamentally based on digital operating models. Data from EVs and EV battery management systems, and its efficient utilisation, is more critical to the long-term adoption and viability of EVs, compared to their ICE predecessors,” says Parthasarathy.

As the digital ecosystem evolves, technology and automation enable more possibilities for charging solutions in the urban environment that defy the conventional format of designated fuelling areas. While it is critical to supply such services, drivers and businesses also have the flexibility to choose other options, such as charging at a restaurant, at home, at work, or in the car park at a shopping centre.

According to Parthasarathy, the digital ecosystem also enables a smoother transition from internal combustion ehicles (ICVs), which follow a traditional power format.

“For example, one of the biggest concerns is around range anxiety and the need to provide, in real-time, the accurate range left on the vehicle. And with the entry of non-traditional players into the charging ecosystem, we now have access to chargers at restaurants, grocery stores, hotels etc, where one can seamlessly reserve and charge their vehicles, unlike the gas-stationsonly option to fill ICVs,” Parthasarathy says.

“This opens a whole new digital ecosystem to enable customers to find charging stations, reserve them and complete the entire commercial transaction around it.”

Industries that were not previously associated with mobility are crosspollinating and electrification is providing them with commercial opportunities to leverage charging as a competitive advantage, which also supports the shift away from fossil fuels.

Digital transformation empowers e-mobility

When looking at how digital technology serves consumers today, it’s important to understand their current interactions. Before exploring how technology can be leveraged to meet the needs of an evolving industry, leaders first need to be aware of the ‘social customer’, which Parthasarathy explains is a term coined to represent how users respond to a product or service.

These days, technologies are intertwined with social media as an integral part of consumers, whereby they are likely to turn to

“KEEPING THE FOCUS ON THE BIG PICTURE AND ENSURING WE TAKE THE RIGHT STEPS IS AT THE FOREFRONT OF MY MIND—A CHALLENGE THAT I THOROUGHLY ENJOY”

LAKSH PARTHASARATHY GLOBAL BUSINESS HEADSMART MOBILITY GROUP, TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

EXECUTIVE BIO

LAKSH PARTHASARATHY

TITLE: GLOBAL BUSINESS HEAD - SMART MOBILITY GROUP

INDUSTRY: CONSULTING

LOCATION: UNITED STATES

Laksh is the Global Business Head for Smart Mobility and EV Ecosystem at TCS focusing on the cross-industry trends impacting the mobility ecosystem. With over 25 years of global experience in the automotive mobility industry, Laksh focuses on driving TCS solutions for the Automotive CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric), Mobility, EV Ecosystem, battery value chain, and multi-modal mobility domains, to address the major challenges faced by the industry. His primary areas of interest are to help accelerate adoption of safe autonomy solutions, EVs in all sizes, sustainable electrification and drive hyper-personalised customer experience journeys towards the renewable energy future.

CASE: CONNECTED, AUTONOMOUS, SHARED, ELECTRIFIED AUTOMOTIVE SERVICES

CASE as a construct in e-mobility or Smart Mobility refers to all of the capabilities that are currently used to bring cars and other transport solutions into the digital ecosystem. Breaking down each one helps to gain a comprehensive view of the overall applications of technology within EVs:

Connected: Also referring to ‘connectivity’, this involves any technology that enables bi-directional communication between devices or systems, including the vehicle itself.

Autonomous: Refers to the technology that allows a vehicle to be operated at various levels of independence from a human driver.

Shared:

As ridesharing services become more prominent, this refers to the technology and ecosystem used to enable EVs and ICVs to be shared and driven as a service, as opposed to a product for a single user.

Electric:

This refers to everything EV-related, including battery technology, the sustainable business model, and cost-efficiency gains.

services like Twitter to air their grievances, as opposed to their service providers directly. Automotive firms are able to leverage this knowledge to tailor their products and services to match the trends among consumers and take a similar approach to businesses by marketing their products and services online.

This puts CASE beyond the automotive industry and demonstrates how the digital ecosystem pulls industries together to integrate their services for a more farreaching and intuitive customer experience.

“CASE automotive, as a construct, is very congruent with the ‘social customer’ archetype. For starters, we see a common narrative whereby the vehicle is an extended living space, offering customers in-vehicle commerce, retail recommendations,

in-vehicle delivery and so on,” says Parthasarathy.

“While some parts of this might look surprising, given that automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have never been in the business of selling coffee or sandwiches, it fits well with a customer who prefers to have connected services. Similarly, the sustainability narratives that are accelerating the adoption of EVs and safer autonomy are fuelled by a more informed and aware customer, seeking to reduce their carbon footprint.”

The focus has turned towards customer experience and how they interact with their car or any mobility-as-a-service asset. Digital transformation done right means automotive firms implement CASE to tailor or personalise their product and services to

every consumer. A great example of tailoring is through driver profile and key recognition. Particularly in mid- to high-range cars, the car is able to set the driving position configuration and conditions based on the key that is used.

“As organisations realise the importance of seeing every customer as unique, automotive OEMs have begun their foray into areas outside of their core business model,” says Parthasarathy.

“For example, they provide parking, charging, and toll payment services. Almost all the major personal mobility OEMs have also partnered with retail service providers or aggregators to provide connected vehicle commerce offerings, so that they are present across a whole new spectrum of services.”

“They are making sizeable investments into improving the mobility experience through feature upgrades of the vehicle made over-the-air (OTA), and on demand.”

While it is great to celebrate how organisations are meeting the needs of their customers, electrification continues to present more capabilities for businesses and, more importantly, the planet. Therefore, they must always remain one step ahead of the trends, in order to remain relevant in a fastchanging industry.

“I believe the cardinal rule for customer engagement is to prioritise their imperatives,” says Parthasarathy.

“This might imply that OEMs have to pre-empt shifts in mobility consumption patterns, to continue to be the service provider of choice for customers’ mobility needs. OEMs cannot afford to be absent in this ecosystem that not only offers tremendous scope for revenue, but also enables a richer and more hightouch engagement opportunity with existing and prospective customers.”

This reverts back to the point of tailoring to the customer’s needs, which automotive OEMs can achieve by integrating their services in a multi-dimensional network fashion as opposed to a linear model. A great example is usage-based insurance models, which require manufacturers to work with insurance companies—factoring in technology requirements—to provide services like pay-per-mile or base drivers’ premiums on their performance.

Parthasarathy also delves into some of the other solutions that could arise from CASE automotive, including providing connected health services to a customer by working in an ecosystem connecting healthcare providers, retail drug stores, and emergency service providers, synced to customer health data.

“Traditional OEMs are also responding to the needs of the modern automotive customer. In some cases, playing catch up with the customer-experience-focused industry leaders. In other areas, they’re trying to transform their organisations and generate new revenue streams.”

Servitisation is also becoming a response to digitisation and consumer experience capabilities, but it has received negative attention in the past.

“This has created a lot of negative publicity in social media as customers are willing to pay to use a service that is seen as leading edge or innovative (such as Tesla’s selfdriving software) but not for items that were previously bundled with most vehicle trims,” Parthasarathy explains.

He also sees concerted activity and monetisation strategies being built to leverage the value of connected data.

“ORGANISATIONS REALISE THE IMPORTANCE OF MOVING TO AN N=1 CUSTOMER PARADIGM”

LAKSH

PARTHASARATHY

GLOBAL

BUSINESS HEAD - SMART MOBILITY GROUP, TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

SMART MOBILITY AT TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

Connected Ecosystem:

In the connected mobility space, TCS’ product and services strategy is built on the imperatives of seamless personalised mobility experiences for mobility customers and monetisable business models for mobility players. This includes:

• TCS AutoscapeTM Customer Experience Solution: A connected vehicle platform with end-to-end capabilities for an enhanced mobility experience

Autonomy:

In the autonomy space, TCS’ solutions and services address the fundamental data management and software validation needs of its customers. Given the sheer volume of cameras and lidar data that needs to be curated and managed when it comes to autonomy capability, for example, TCS has launched a suite of solutions namely TCS AutoscapeTM Data Services, Data Annotation Studio and Smart Validation solutions to help customers address this complexity and ensure safe autonomy.

1. Data as a lever to optimise costs: This has to do with connected data from vehicles being used to improve existing processes and systems to reduce costs. For example, realtime vehicular data can be used for managing the inventory of spare parts in service centres to ensure that vehicles spend minimum time off road, while also reducing inventory holding costs.

2. Data as an enabler to create revenue propositions: Mobility players are betting big on creating value from services curated on connected data. It is estimated the value of connected services will reach US$20bn in this decade. While this is not yet an entrenched business model, monetisable subscription models built on these connected services are quickly becoming a reality, whether it be through OTA upgrades, usage-based insurance, fleet management systems, or in-vehicle commerce. The ongoing success of this model will rest on the mobility players’ capabilities to build perceptible value through personalised and contextual services, so that customers are willing to pay for it.

3. Data as a tradeable commodity: Data marketplaces are not a new concept. OEMs have been partnering with tech players for data sharing, much like conventional data marketplaces in other industries like finance and retail, in revenue sharing models. However, the challenge with this model is the ever-intensifying regulatory environment around the handling of customer data and the need to preserve the trust of customers when using their information. While there are consent management systems in place to ensure that the rights of their customers are protected, it is uncertain whether OEMs would rely on this model to generate substantial revenues.

He sees a fourth perspective that will emerge to become a data monetisation proposition with substantially greater impact. It has to do with data being used as an enabler for partner enabled business models.

Any model built on data is only as good as the variables it captures. One reason why some players have not been able to monetise the data they capture from vehicles is because it covers only parts of the customer journey. This is where the ecosystems come into play.

If a company offers connected vehicle commerce to a customer as a service offering, it needs to be part of their entire retail journey, something auto OEMs are conventionally not part of. We now see business models that use data from different customer journeys in a partner driven ecosystem to generate monetisation opportunities.

Harmonious delivery of sustainable mobility

Moving forward in the electrification process, companies can benefit from TCS’ solutions for myriad reasons, including data

“OEMS MAY HAVE TO PRE-EMPT SHIFTS IN MOBILITY CONSUMPTION PATTERNS TO CONTINUE TO BE THE SERVICE PROVIDER OF CHOICE FOR THE CUSTOMERS”

LAKSH PARTHASARATHY GLOBAL BUSINESS HEAD - SMART MOBILITY GROUP, TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

monetisation, creating revenue propositions from data sources, using data insights—such as recommendation services—to reduce costs, and optimising the overall e-mobility experience from a sustainability perspective.

TCS offers e-mobility and EV battery sustainability solutions, which enable organisations to gain visibility over their entire EV value chains to assess their performance and sustainability goals down the line. From a battery perspective, this comes in the form of a digital battery passport, which gives traceability across the battery value chain, chain of custody and ensures net-zero heritage as well as solutions to manage battery second life or end of life processes.

Digital solutions will enable businesses to move forward and deliver more intuitive responses to business changes, which is assisted by Amazon Web Services (AWS), as the firm’s strategic cloud provision partner.

Having been a partner for well over a decade, TCS is the strategic global systems integrator (GSI) and premier consulting partner of AWS, with more than 700 customer engagements between the two firms. The company also achieved accreditations across 18 AWS Competencies. TCS has more than 12,500 AWS certified professionals and 30,000 employees on AWS. The company has several partnership credentials and awards from AWS that recognise TCS as a top global system integrator for AWS technologies—putting TCS among the top 10 biggest global system integrators for AWS.

Our joint focus on tailormade industryspecific business solutions like TCS AutoscapeTM built on AWS, and powered by the latest technologies such as AI/ML, IoT and blockchain, are helping industries across the globe. In addition, we are jointly

EV ADOPTION

EV adoption requires a robust charging infrastructure. TCS solutions integrate charging with bi-directional charging capabilities into the power management ecosystem to offset demand charges, respond to demand events, optimise charging from a holistic energy orchestration, and perform energy arbitrage. This holistic approach allows fleet owners to mitigate risks associated with reliance on the local electric utility for energy.

investing in our product portfolio in areas like quantum computing, the metaverse, blockchain, 5G, cloud sustainability, AI/ ML, IoT/Edge, data and analytics, and data sovereignty.

“We are working very closely with AWS. It’s not just about using AWS as a cloud provider for our solutions. The solutions and capabilities that I spoke about earlier have been built in close partnership with AWS, encompassing the best of cloud capabilities for our customers,” says Parthasarathy.

The specialised teams within the TCS’ AWS Business Unit helps customers accelerate and automate the different stages of their cloud journey using TCS’ extensive library of frameworks, accelerators and toolsets such as TCS Cloudonomy™, which enables clients to discover the most workable and custommade solutions applicable for their business while predicting future needs. TCS uses its proven transformation tools, such as TCS Modernisation Propeller™ with its extensive library of predefined industry-specific microservices and API, to enable customers

“FROM A TECHNOLOGY PARTNER STANDPOINT, WE ARE PARTICULARLY WORKING VERY CLOSELY WITH AWS. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT USING AWS AS A CLOUD PROVIDER FOR OUR SOLUTIONS BUT A STRATEGIC PARTNER JOINTLY SOLVING FUNDAMENTAL INDUSTRY PROBLEMS”

LAKSH PARTHASARATHY GLOBAL BUSINESS HEAD - SMART MOBILITY GROUP, TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

to benefit from ecosystem wide impact. TCS has built Cloud Value Measurement Model (CVMM), based on TCS and AWS best practice frameworks, to measure customers’ cloud transformation journeys.

Over the next year and beyond, TCS will continue to analyse the e-mobility trends and provide the necessary digital transformation expertise to allow companies to leverage the automotive evolution to EVs.

TCS will also continue its collaboration in partnership with the Formula E team, Jaguar TCS Racing. Using digital technology, software, and leveraging the power of the cloud, TCS helps the team collect podiums and win races. Furthermore, TCS and Jaguar use Formula E as a real-world test bed for the automotive electrification journey. Learnings from the racetrack can be leveraged to transform the entire electric vehicle ecosystem.

From a sustainability perspective— besides the inevitable shift to EVs and other electrified transport—CASE can be applied to sustainability outcomes as it supports the reduction of lifetime Greenhouse Gas (GHG) footprint by about 37% for passenger vehicles.

Enabling vehicles to connect more means authorities, such as traffic operators, can optimise mobility. This is another selling point for consumers but still requires more innovation to provide personalised customer experience. Vehicle-toeverything technology also provides social benefits from a sustainability point of view, but predictive maintenance and OTA updates must also be adopted to ensure that solutions work in harmony together.

TECHNOLOGY ENABLING COMPASSIONATE HEALTHCARE

BY: JOHN O'HANLON

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

TECHNOLOGY

COMPASSIONATE HEALTHCARE

WRITTEN

We talk to Baptist Health Arkansas’s dynamic CIO, Michael Elley, about cloudenabled IT transformation and the future of clinical practice through ML

With a full century of history behind it, Baptist Health has shown that its founding principles are enduring ones. A faithbased healthcare system – as implied by its name – it has expanded from a single hospital to eleven, serving Arkansas' population of more than 4 million while increasing care coverage into eastern Oklahoma.

Innovative leadership has helped Baptist Health to grow, becoming not only the first healthcare system in Arkansas, but the first to attempt open heart surgery, the first to perform a heart transplant, and the first to utilise robotic surgery. In all, the Baptist Health system now has 250 'points of access', comprising specialty clinics, urgent care centres and a care home for the elderly, in addition to its hospitals.

Having a firmly embedded Christian ethos, the organisation’s enduring principles lift it beyond the definition of a business to that of a healing ministry.

Just like any modern hospital group, Baptist Health seeks to attract and retain the best-qualified clinical and administrative staff while onboarding the most effective treatments and IT practices available; inevitably, its basic ethos tends to attract like-minded individuals. So much so that, in practice, its retention rates and the proportion of long-serving staff is well in advance of industry norms.

In a nutshell, Baptist Health exists to provide quality, patient-centred services, to promote and protect the voluntary, not-for-profit healthcare system, to provide top-notch health education, and to respond to the changing health needs of Arkansas’ residents with both Christian compassion and personal concern.

The CIO's task of modernisation

As well as growing in size, Baptist Health has continued to keep up with best practice, both administrative and medical – over the last three decades, of course, this has meant adopting successive iterations of technology.

The more recent journey has been the responsibility of CIO Michael Elley, who joined the company nearly five years ago. He brought with him 15 years of experience in senior positions – most of them based in the healthcare sector – and now heads up a leadership team of 14 with some 270 technical people across the wider organisation.

“These teams manage all of our Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and ERP, through to our technology stack, cybersecurity and all the other technological platforms and applications we all depend on these days. And, of course, we also work closely with the leadership team and wider colleagues, including the nurses and clinicians at our facilities.”

MICHAEL ELLEY CIO, BAPTIST HEALTH OF ARKANSAS

“We're shifting how we do medical care! That's important in a faith-based organisation”

Baptist Health: Compassionate healthcare enabled by technology

According to Elley, one thing he loves about his job as CIO is this wide variety –he's much more than just a technology leader. “We have a role in everything we do including oncology, cardiology, surgery, and everything non-clinical as well. And as all health providers must, we have to have to meet these patients, our consumers, wherever they are, whether that is in our clinical settings, virtually, or in their homes.

“We're shifting how we do medical care! That's important in a faith-based organisation. We attract a lot of like-minded, service-minded individuals.” And Baptist Health refuses to operate in isolation, seeing the benefits of collaboration; instead, it works with other healthcare systems in the state to help them provide a higher level of care. Among the advanced services in which they are deemed outstanding are virtual care, primary care, and critical care.

Elley found plenty to do upon his arrival in 2018. The bulk of the workforce is long-serving, which is excellent for consistency but can make for a resistance to change. “I did find them hungry to drive improvement and change..

“Early on, I placed an emphasis on cybersecurity, something we have made great strides in. Our data analytics were a little further behind, too – in other words, how we leveraged data to drive decisionmaking and strategy. Now, we have more structure in place and have been able to interject it into executive leadership strategy discussions and directions.”

These priorities come out of Elley’s personality and experience, he believes. Cybersecurity, though previously understood, wasn’t as top-of-mind as it is today.. It is now hardwired across the organisation – a considerable achievement in just five years, particularly when two of those spanned a global pandemic.

MICHAEL ELLEY

TITLE: CIO

COMPANY: BAPTIST HEALTH

INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE

LOCATION: ARKANSAS, US

Michael Elley is the Chief Information Officer for Baptist Health in Arkansas. He has over 20 years of IT experience and has spent 17 years in the Healthcare IT sector, the last 12 in an executive role. Michael has worked for organizations such as Ohio Health, BJC HealthCare, Lahey Health, and Cox Health. Michael enjoys spending time and traveling with his family and has been married to his wife Angela for 21 years. He is active in physical fitness and his daughters athletic endeavors.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Imagine the Calm of a Great Night’s Sleep

Get multilayered security that delivers peace of mind with Change Healthcare Stratus Imaging. We’re working to make each healthcare journey smoother and more successful. From the center of the healthcare ecosystem, we’re using data-driven insights to transform the healthcare system.

• Reducing costs up to 20%.

• Enhancing efficiency.

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• Creating a more positive healthcare experience for patients, providers, and payers.

Unleash the Power of the Cloud for Enterprise Imaging

Cloud solutions have been proven to provide security, remote access, uptime, storage and less capital investment. Cybersecurity issues have become a key disruption for the healthcare industry in recent years.

A staggering 50.4 million1 patient records were breached last year, and 70%2 of institutions reported a serious security incident. Not to mention the costly nature of these breaches, with the average cost per incident at $9.23 million3

Worst of all, breaches can disrupt critical patient services. That’s where the power of the cloud comes in. You can protect yourself from these harms with a secure cloud solution specifically designed to keep systems safe — and, just as important, to keep them from being used for an attack that could compromise your entire enterprise.

Transitioning your operations to the cloud is also a cost-effective solution that allows you to future-proof your investment as you scale. The cloud’s total cost of ownership can save an organization up to 20%. Maintaining on-prem platforms creates a high demand for utilizing IT resources and costs. With the cloud, enjoy the ability to redeploy IT resources to other priorities because of the multilayered security protection, aligned with HITRUST and SOC2 certification requirements.

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Get in touch to see how we’re transforming the healthcare system.

info.changehealthcare.com/enterprise-imaging

1 Med City News, 12/18/22, What We Learned From Cybersecurity Attacks in Healthcare in 2022.

2 2020 HIMSS Cybersecurity Survey

3 Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021, Ponemon Institute, Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021.

Into the clouds

In 2018, the system had little presence in the cloud; Elley’s ambition since undertaking his role has been to expand this dramatically. “I would venture to say that only 1% to 2% of our environment was cloud-based. As we go into 2023, about a third of it will be, says Elley.

“Our early move was from on-premise collaboration software into GCP. An 18-month, ongoing project is moving our ERP environments into the cloud. Any new systems, replacements or updates are evaluated for a move to the cloud. We're on all the main cloud platforms now, as we deploy any new tech, the first thought is about its appropriateness in the cloud.

“A priority is value for money. Does it make sense financially, from a support and reliability of performance perspective, to move that to a cloud? We're successfully reducing the amount of on-prem, server and storage needs.

“Recently, we've been upgrading our Picture Archive Communications System (PACS) system for both cardiology and radiology with the help of our partner, Change Healthcare. And now we're moving our long-term image archive and backup – in a consistent year-on-year increase for cloud utilisation.”

Maintaining on-premise platforms is expensive and involves a lot of manual work. It's hard to predict and plan spending. And then there's the matter of hardware, storage, servers, and licensing. Baptist Health is therefore benefitting – not just in efficiency now, but in future costs. Another benefit has been the greater predictability of readmissions, sepsis and many other problems formerly dealt with reactively.

Many more financial and cash-flow improvements are in the plan: “I’m keen to bring in AI to help the revenue cycle –for example, pre-authorisations – and I'm excited about its potential on the clinical side, too. Change Healthcare is helping us greatly to identify and implement these technologies.”

Particularly valuable today are advances in medical imaging technology. If a patient comes in for a CAT scan, we bank up huge numbers of images captured to illuminate a specific issue, but these may cast light on unrelated problems that should also be dealt with. ML can pick these up and bring them to the attention of the Radiologists. This is the kind of thing that really fires up Michael Elley. There’s no limit to where this technology can take patient care. As it improves, it can – while documenting an individual patient – identify similarities with other patients' scans, relate the data to other clinical indicators and indicate potential problems for other patients at an early stage.

Taking healthcare to a higher level

“I think this technology will take medicine and healthcare to the next level,” says Elley. “It will augment, not replace, what we are doing at present, making it safer and

better all the time. For example, a patient may be receiving a full chest scan for a musculo-skeletal problem causing pain or limiting their mobility. All their attention, plus that of the physician, is naturally focused on that particular problem.

“The potential of leveraging new technologies that augment the work of our clinicians to enhance, extend, and ultimately save lives make my job truly exciting!”

It should be said, however, that Baptist Health remains a fundamentally grounded organisation, and this suits Michael Elley's style of leadership. He believes that no matter how exciting the potential of advanced clinical technologies may be, they can't be introduced successfully across any large healthcare system without buy-in from all stakeholders, and in particular, among the people leading change throughout the organisation.

MICHAEL ELLEY CIO, BAPTIST HEALTH OF ARKANSAS

“The potential of leveraging new technologies that augment the work of our clinicians to enhance, extend, and ultimately save lives make my job truly exciting!”

“One of the first things I arranged upon my arrival was to establish specific IT leaders within the operational leadership teams of our hospitals and physician groups. These are not only relaying information to those operational areas about what's going on from an IT perspective, but that information is coming back to us about directional and strategic changes currently occurring or planned to occur on the operational side. As a result, I can say confidently that we now have a really solid alignment between those operational areas and IT.

“Much of the evolution and change in the organisation is now necessarily going to be IT-driven, whether it's a simple question of hardware support software or something as broad as the revolution in imaging capabilities.

“At every level, it’s important that we have that alignment with the operational side, that we have a presence in all the hospital operations and strategy conversations. Indeed, everything from the different service lines to our clinical space. I think we’ve done a nice job of getting our senior leadership aligned!”

Looks like it’s onwards and upwards for Baptist Health of Arkansas from here on out.

“At every level, it’s important that we have that alignment with the operational side, that we have a presence in all the hospital operations and strategy conversations”

MICHAEL ELLEY CIO, BAPTIST HEALTH OF ARKANSAS

USING TECHNOLOGY TO PROVIDE INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS

PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

Through its product and innovation department, people-focused law firm Weightmans is combining legal expertise with emerging technology solutions

An award-winning top 40 UK law firm, Weightmans has more than 1,400 people working from offices in Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Newcastle.

Stuart Whittle, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Weightmans – where he began his legal career almost 30 years ago – is particularly aware of how innovative technology can be utilised to gain insights and enable clients to reach their true potential.

A qualified solicitor and board member of the firm since 2010, Whittle’s current role renders him accountable for Weightmans’ information systems department, data services department, and its business change and knowledge management department, along with its formative product and innovation department.

“What makes us different is our people,” he explains. “Our clients say we're an easy firm to do business with. Every law firm says this, but there really is a focus on delivering the best results for clients.

“We recognise the fact that we're a service industry; it's not like it was 30 years ago. Our job is to fundamentally make clients' problems go away and, ideally, make them look good in the process.

“Having been a lawyer, it's pretty demanding and can be quite an allconsuming job at times. So it's important that people get something from it.”

Weightmans: using technology to provide innovative solutions

The firm has been named a leading UK employer by the Top Employers Institute for 15 years in a row, with the firm scoring particularly highly in the most recent edition on business strategy, organisational change,

onboarding, performance, engagement, values, ethics and integrity.

“Particularly when I think back to 30 years ago, one of our strengths is having built up increasing areas of specialism that enable us to meet the needs of clients,” Whittle says. “We've got employment specialists who really understand the health industry. We've got employment specialists who really understand unionised environments. And we regard ourselves as an organisation that can provide a full legal service to all of our clients.

“Ultimately, we want to be a top 30 law firm,” he adds. “Clients are at the heart of everything we do, and we aspire to be technology-driven, data-led, and innovative. And that's where the product and innovation department came from.”

Product and innovation department

As Whittle explains, Weightmans’ product and innovation team was born out of a desire to combine the firm’s legal expertise with

STUART WHITTLE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER, WEIGHTMANS

“Clients are at the heart of everything we do, and we aspire to be technology-driven, dataled, and innovative. That's where the product and innovation department came from”

emerging technology, delivering real benefits for businesses and allowing them to reach their potential.

“Many years ago, a consultant who worked in legal IT said to me that in law firms, if it isn't somebody's job, it doesn't get done,” he says. “So, three or four years ago, we created a very small innovation team with an even smaller budget just to see what we could do and get off the ground.”

A number of tools have since been developed, from a lawyer-led, outsourced HR department service to a scalable product that assists universities who are having to deal with students claiming compensation off the back of lecturer strikes. Then, around six months ago, Weightmans’ product and innovation department was launched, with an aim to systematise the firm’s approach to developing products and services.

“We've already got 60 potential ideas that have gone through a vision stage,” Whittle says. “We've narrowed those down to 30 at the first cut, and we need to narrow them down again.”

One such tool is an automated service which helps organisations calculate their casual workers’ holiday pay.

“There was a recent Supreme Court judgement that confirmed how employers are supposed to calculate holiday pay for casual workers,” he explains. “It completely affects any organisation which has seasonal workers, whether that is schools who employ term time people or retailers who employ people over Christmas.”

As a result, Weightmans built a holiday pay product allowing clients to push as much of their case load as they want to the firm, who will handle the cases and communication using their holiday pay tools.

“Off the back of that, we've also built a relatively straightforward fixed fee approach

STUART WHITTLE

TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER

INDUSTRY: LAW PRACTICE

LOCATION: LIVERPOOL UK

Stuart is a qualified lawyer by trade but moved in to IT in 2003, taking on responsibility for Weightmans’ IT department in 2005. In 2010 he was promoted to IS and Operations Director, a Board role. From 2017 Stuart took on the role as Business Services and Innovation Director and most recently has taken on a new role, Chief Technology and Innovation Officer to help Weightmans build solutions for clients.

He has a MSC in IT, is a certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and a qualified coach and was recently named Legal Week’s Legal Innovation Trailblazer.

EXECUTIVE BIO

to dealing with any historic problems in terms of any claims from employees and former employees looking to get their holiday back-pay back. We can also look at what needs to be done going forward, in terms of standard employment contracts, staff handbooks, those kinds of things, so our clients aren’t perpetuating the problem.

“That's really what the product and innovation department role is,” Whittle adds. “And I don't know of any law firm that is doing it in quite the way we do it”

Importance of data and a single source of truth

The firm has a dedicated data services department of nearly 20 people, with two dedicated data scientists. A significant part of what enables Weightmans to innovate is its data warehouse.

Launched initially for a particular product, the data warehouse has evolved in the following years, now taking feeds from Weightmans’ finance system, HR System, CRM system and case management system to collect data about individual matters.

“In a defendant personal injury claims, for example, we might capture how much we think the claim might settle for, then what it actually settles for and the date it was settled,” comments Whittle. “We've got a CRM system, we take feeds from that. We've got an HR system that we take feeds from and that allows us to have a single source of the truth both internally for how we run the firm and externally for providing data and insights from that data to clients.

“Historically, one of the issues we faced was, depending on what system you asked, you'd get a slightly different answer to the

same question, and then you'd spend the next three days working out why and which was the truth. The data warehouse was originally designed to solve that problem.”

When dealing with hundreds of reports, a single source of truth is key, Whittle explains. “You are essentially looking at the same data through different dimensions, but the total adds up to the same.

“Fifteen years ago, that wasn't always true. You could look at revenue by office, for example, and then add all of that up, then look at revenue by department and add all of that up, and you might get a different answer. That’s where our data warehouse has been and continues to be hugely powerful.”

Another innovation Weightmans has developed is its extranet service, which, combined with the firm’s case management system, allows Weightmans to provide information to external clients in a secure and innovative way.

“We might have a real-estate client where we're doing a large number of leases, or a big corporation where we do a lot of employment work,” starts Whittle.

“Many years ago, a consultant who worked in legal IT said to me that, in law firms, if it isn't somebody's job, it doesn't get done”

STUART WHITTLE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER, WEIGHTMANS

“We can give the client access to each individual matter online, securely, where they can drill down right into the very matter, see the management information (MI) about that matter, and even see the linked documents. We can also create high-level management dashboards, so that our clients can have an overview of what's going on in their matters and can visualise that data, whenever they want to.”

Data, machine learning and predictive analytics

Data is a potent tool for businesses in the modern world. Powered by anonymised information from tens of thousands of personal injury matters, Weightmans is utilising the power of machine learning (ML) to assist case handlers at the start of a claim.

“Typically, what lawyers will do is hedge their bets,” Whittle explains. “So you'll put a higher figure just to cover your back so you don't have to go over that figure. As the claim matures and you get expert reports, documents and witness statements, you start to get a much better idea of what the claims are ultimately going to be settling for.

“What we've done with our predictive analytics tool is create models for different types of claims, such as motor claims, casualty claims or large loss claims. It’ll look at what data you do have for that matter and say, ‘typically, matters that have those sorts of features will settle somewhere between X and Y’.

“It's not giving the case handlers the answers, but it's giving them something to work with. It's giving them some confidence.

And, then, what you're asking the case handlers to do is to use their skill and judgement to say, ‘actually, my experience is this case is a bit more involved than the average, so it's probably going to be closer to Y than X’.”

Another example of how data visualisation can be used to provide useful insights is when

the company was dealing with thousands of holiday pay claims against a client, which is one of the UK’s biggest employers.

“A couple of years ago, there were some issues with holiday pay. The client had thousands of holiday pay claims,” explains Whittle. “There wasn't any argument in the law,” he says, “the law just changed and we had to deal with it. As part of dealing with the claims, we captured metadata about each of the claims, and we then played it back to the client through a dashboard that enabled the client to visualise the data. One of the dashboards that we developed showed where in the country these claims were coming from.

“What we could see was that, in the Midlands, there was a disproportionately large number of claims that had turned into

“One of our strengths is having built up increasing areas of specialism that enable us to meet the needs of clients”

STUART WHITTLE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER, WEIGHTMANS

money. If it wasn’t for the data visualisation, we would never have seen it because there were too many claims for any individual to have noticed this pattern.

“We had a look at those files and it turned out there was a particularly activist trade union rep who was trying to force the pace. And so we took action and engaged with the trade union rep to say, ‘if you give us a chance, you don't need to take these to a tribunal, we will settle them but you need to understand that we are dealing with a large volume of claims so settling them will take a little bit of time’.

“We were able to then show the client that, over a period of time, that big blob of tribunal claims became a smaller blob because we'd taken action as a result of the data.”

As with many organisations, Weightmans has a number of partnerships that help both the firm and its suppliers reach their potential.

“I had an experience as a lawyer where one of my clients was more difficult to deal with than the other side,” says Whittle. “It was quite a hostile relationship, and one of the things I remember thinking at the time is, ‘this client isn't getting the best out of me’. When I came into our IT department, I saw that we had similar sort of relationships with some of our core suppliers.

“I wanted to change that around because we would go into meetings and nobody was having a good time. You didn't need to be a big reader of body language just to read the hostility in the room. I wanted to change that around. And I recognised that that's a two-way thing.”

One of Weightmans’ biggest suppliers is Thomson Reuters, which supplies the firm’s practice management, case management and document management systems and a significant amount of legal knowledge through its Westlaw and PLC services.

“To have a very hostile, negative relationship with an organisation that is so important to our business seemed to me to be counterintuitive,” Whittle comments. “We've done all sorts of things with Thomson Reuters. We've done some design sprints, some brainstorming. We've done a piece for them at Legal Geek, which is a legal IT conference where we looked at the metadata they had on judgements. They'd never given anyone access to that before.”

“Where it fits in with our business, we will also work with them to help develop

solutions. Software suppliers always need clients who are willing to work with them, and that's what I mean by partner. While all of that is a cost to me and my organisation, the benefit to me is the building of the relationships within the supplier.”

Another of Weightmans’ partners is AuditComply, which the firm not only uses for its internal audits, but also for solutions to assist its clients.

“How do you demonstrate to your ISO 27,001 auditor, your ISO 5,000 and 14,001 auditor that you are doing your internal audits?” says Whittle. “Previously, we had spreadsheets and Word documents, but now we've got it all in this system.

“Clients have the same issue. It's not just 27,001, it's health and safety audits, or anything where clients have particular

standards they need to meet and then demonstrate they're meeting those standards. If you think about our work as a personal injury firm, we see corporate and public sector bodies who are sued due to an employee being injured.

“One of the things that can be quite challenging for the organisation is they say, ‘we did nothing wrong’. And we say that's fine ,show us the evidence that you did all of the things that you were supposed or you could be reasonably expected to have done.”

“That doesn't always exist, and then it's very difficult to defend the claim for the client. Sometimes accidents do just happen. You put all the precautions in place and sometimes accidents do just happen, and it's nobody's fault. So AuditComply really is a potential solution for clients to help capture all of that information in one place.”

The product lifecycle

In turbulent economic times, the focus at Weightmans is to continue to look after its people and its clients.

“Our board is focused on navigating the firm through a macroeconomic environment, which even economists tell us

has no precedent in history,” Whittle says. “And that's quite challenging.

“A lot of my time is spent focused on bedding in our new product innovation team, generating revenue from the products we're developing.”

With the product and innovation department still in its early stages, a challenge will be establishing the product lifecycle as the firm moves forward.

“One of the things we don't know yet – and this is because we've only been doing it for six months – is what does our product lifecycle look like?” he says. “How long does it take us to get these things to market? How long do they last in the market? And when do we decide that the market for this particular product is dying, because it's done what it needed to do?

“A lot of these things, such as the new holiday pay product, will have a finite lifespan,” Whittle concludes. “But the focus now is making sure we have a pipeline so we know that, when one project starts to tail off, we've got the next thing coming through that will replace it.”

“Our board is focused on navigating the firm through a macroeconomic environment that even economists tell us has no precedent in history”

STUART WHITTLE CHIEF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION OFFICER, WEIGHTMANS

SAP’s Sam Castro on AI and risk resilience in manufacturing

WRITTEN BY: HELEN ADAMS

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

SAP’s Sam Castro is a solution manager for Digital Manufacturing. He tells us about AI, risk resilience and supply chain sustainability

SAP is a global software provider and a leader for enterprise business process software, including solutions to manage supply chains. SAP provides technologies, supports the cloud and cloud platform environments, as well as artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) libraries, robotic process automation (RPA) and in-memory technology for high-end computers. SAP’s solutions for manufacturing execution and insights are part of a portfolio of products for supply chain management and leverages these technologies.

“We're an enterprise business software and a technologies company,” says Sam Castro Senior Director, Solution Management, LoB Digital Manufacturing.

Castro is a Senior Director at SAP and a part of the line of business manufacturing solution management team. The line of business covers the 27 manufacturing industries for which SAP provides software solutions.

“All of those industrial companies have needs around operations visibility, control and reporting,” Castro explains. “The different industries have different targets that they're after. Some are heavier on the asset side, some of them are heavier on product quality and yields, others are all about logistics and moving products around on-time through the supply chain.”

SAP is met with a diverse set of requirements and needs from its customers. Solution management takes these industry needs and applies them to market direction and invests them in the portfolio.

“We provide guidance on where to focus and the emphasis for development, and that strategy big picture where we want to take the products,” Castro explains.

In college, Castro completed a Bachelor's in computer engineering and a Master's in computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

“I came from the hardware bridge to the software bridge very naturally after graduating,” says Castro. “I was dropped into the manufacturing floor because that is exactly where the hardware automation side bridges over into the software.”

He was faced with a great deal of information and digital signals from the automation layer and was tasked to turn it into information — how does SAP make that translation?

“I started at the very lowest level and moved my way through Lighthammer Software, which was acquired by SAP back in July 2005,” says Castro. “I worked my way through SAP into the role that I'm in today.”

“Being a sustainable enterprise means that you're an efficient enterprise”

SAM CASTRO SENIOR DIRECTOR, SOLUTION MANAGEMENT, LOB DIGITAL MANUFACTURING, SAP

Sam Castro is Senior Director of Solution Management, LoB Digital Manufacturing at SAP

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Reach out to us for a consultation on how Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation can help you achieve the “Factory of the Future”.

SAP’s Sam Castro on AI and risk resilience in manufacturing

actually add up to, and how that impacts the business financially, is one of the key topics around what customers will hear about resiliency from SAP, says Castro.

“Sustainability is an overlay to that, sustainability is a byproduct of efficiency,” says Castro. “Being a sustainable enterprise means that you're an efficient enterprise. If things are running effectively, things are running safely, and in a very energy-friendly manner as well.”

Castro views the impact of the cloud on manufacturing as a positive one.

“There are benefits for the IT team from a maintenance perspective and a continuous update and management of that software package,” he explains.

Cloud users are not dealing out of sync or outdated documentation, they’re not dealing with security issues that creep into the environment over time. Updates and patches are handled in real-time by the

cloud hosting and software provider, that SaaS provider in the cloud environment. Castro views offloading that burden from the manufacturing layer and the IT teams that support them centrally and locally as a big deal for organisations and businesses.

“It keeps that barrier to entry for managing efficient production and tracking off of those teams, and it puts it firmly on the shoulders of the software provider. What does that mean for the business? It means that the end users aren't working with stale software. You're not working with software that has a UI from 15 years ago. You're not working with an ad-hoc analytical environment that used to be cool but now uses plug-ins and stuff that your browser doesn't support and ultimately causes it to have problems,” Castro explains.

As businesses are not dealing with these issues from the end user perspective,

Risk resilience and sustainability in the supply chain

When you talk about risk resilience at SAP, it’s about how to handle the real world, not setting up a plan and adhering to it day in and day out.

“You would like it to be like clockwork, for sure,” says Castro. “Where everything always aligns and meshes the way that it's supposed to all the time, every second. But we know that's not always the case.”

Weather events, pandemics, labour shortages or large sporting events can cause

“Here are the enablers of AI and ML type algorithms that you can use and put together how you see fit”

SAM CASTRO SENIOR DIRECTOR, SOLUTION MANAGEMENT, LOB DIGITAL MANUFACTURING, SAP

supply chain issues. For Castro, resiliency is the byproduct of having to have to handle these off-topic or out-of-sync scenarios and the ability to detect that you're out of sync with the original plan and react to it in a coordinated manner.

“The faster you can do that, the faster you can correct that problem,” says Castro. “Then you’re able to identify how often those deviations occur — that frequency of occurrence, that is your opportunity.”

Being able to quantify that opportunity and understand what those little deviations

SAM CASTRO

TITLE: GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT, CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE

INDUSTRY: MANUFACTURING

LOCATION: PENNSYLVANIA, US

Sam Castro joined SAP in July of 2005 with the acquisition of a small company called Lighthammer. He was responsible for implementation consulting, field enablement, custom development, and training for the core products (Illuminator, Xacute, UDS, CMS). These products have since evolved into the core SAP Connected Manufacturing products (Mfg. Integration & Intelligence or MII and Plant connectivity or PCo) that you see today.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Sam is now part of SAP LoB Manufacturing Solution Management group, which is directly responsible for strategy, direction, and customer adoption of all of the manufacturing products at SAP. He is specifically responsible for Industrial Analytics, that is SAP MII, Digital Manufacturing for insights, and Digital Manufacturing for execution, and he is the solution owner for Process MES products. In this role, he is actively working on mid- and long-term features and deliverables and how they are positioned with the broader SAP portfolio; he also provides guidance for product development investment.

they're able to take advantage of a very modern, easy to consume and use software experience and focus on their core business functions.

“Despite not directly interacting with it, the work around you is what's driving that environment for you,” says Castro.

“You're not putting that burden of three or four extra clicks on somebody, this is just software that's being driven from digital signals; from integration, automation, and the tasks that the operator is performing.”

This newer approach to software design is how SAP leverages the industry investment companies have made and it is what's ultimately reducing the impact that end users have on that environment themselves.

How manufacturers can focus on business value versus technology

There are different pillars within organisations, which have their own priorities. CEOs, CIOs, CTOs and CFOs are all working together and have overlapping needs that drive different business cases. But they need to have the right information at the top layer to make the right decision for the lowest layers within the organisation. This doesn't happen unless there is a framework in place for the distribution and analysis of the data that is generated, from the very edges of the manufacturing and supply chain processes to the shop floor.

“If you don't have a way for that information to work its way up to the top, organisations really struggle to understand where the priority needs to be,” says Castro.

For manufacturers to focus on business value versus technology, Castro believes that they need to intelligently manage profitability

and investments. As a result of that additional profitability, they also need to protect that inflow of money and profitable behaviour for the company.

“Is that a CapEx investment? Is it an OPEX investment? Is it better granularity on product quality and an emphasis on quality for certain products or certain areas within a process that are very tricky and cumbersome?” asks Castro. “Maybe it's a new product that you're introducing and as a result, that process isn't fully stable yet. What is the emphasis in how much we put into that project to stabilise it? Those are the goals that are very coveted from the C-suite down, but they really are reliant from all edges of the supply chain and having that information roll all the way up.”

“Sustainability is an overlay to that, sustainability is a byproduct of efficiency”

SAM CASTRO SENIOR DIRECTOR, SOLUTION MANAGEMENT, LOB DIGITAL MANUFACTURING, SAP

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Enterprise-led manufacturing follows in tune with this exactly.

“The enterprise has to provide guidance to the manufacturing and supply chain teams as a whole,” says Castro. Where they want to see improvements and how much they're willing to invest in those improvements, what's it worth? How do you build that community up?”

To understand the role that manufacturing plays in an organisation’s reinvestment strategy, you must first understand where it matches up with other locales in the manufacturing environment.

“Manufacturing isn't just a single-faceted environment. It's often made up of plants that have been around for a long time, some

that were built up by your own organisation, some that came into the organisation through acquisition,” says Castro. “So you see different heritages and mentalities. They have this communal approach for how the plant manager wants to lead that group in the business forward.”

SAP’s AI standardisation journey

At SAP, being able to take advantage of AI standardisation in a universal way is important.

“You can take and apply these very technical algorithms in order to get information off them. Here's the technology, here are the enablers of data, here are the enablers of AI- and ML-type algorithms that you can use and put together how you see fit,” says Castro. “Then that carries over into the

application side, which says, we know we have these technologies, we know that this data is being generated from our transacting processes, so we have our own structured analytics pieces and now we can use these structures to drive our own models to influence our execution process.”

SAP has global partners, as well as local partners, who rely on its technology. When Castro talks about partnerships, he does not put one partner over another.

“We try to keep the community as open as possible,” he says. “We try not to promote one partner over another, because they're all very important to us.”

The openness of SAP and the openness of its software is for its customers to take advantage of, but also for their partners to put their own industry expertise behind.

“It is what gives SAP the power that we have to leverage in our own technologies to leverage partner-led innovation using those technologies to intelligently power our applications.”

“ You want it to be like clockwork, where everything always aligns. But we know that that's not always the case”

SAM CASTRO SENIOR DIRECTOR, SOLUTION MANAGEMENT, LOB DIGITAL MANUFACTURING, SAP

MAKING CUSTOMERS CENTRAL TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

WRITTEN BY: ALEX CLERE

PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

In recent years, Yorkshire Building Society has undertaken a transformational journey –one that starts and ends with the customer

When Yorkshire Building Society’s (YBS) Chief Commercial Officer, David Morris, and Director of Business

Transformation, Ben Sampson, join me to discuss the seismic change that the mutual has enjoyed over the last five years, there’s more than 100 miles between them. Morris is joining from Oxfordshire in the south of England, while Sampson is dialling in from Halifax in the north. It’s a sign of the times – in business today, it’s not unusual for colleagues to be separated by postal codes, time zones or even oceans. But it’s also a mark of how far Yorkshire Building Society has come since it was founded in 1864.

YBS can trace its roots back more than 150 years to the Huddersfield Equitable Permanent Benefit Building Society, whose members would meet each morning from 5-8am – not on Zoom, but in a single room in the Yorkshire town. Early directors of the society included a dentist, a shoemaker and a plumber. At the end of the first year, there were just six borrowers and assets of around £4,000 – over £400,000 in today’s money.

The name itself stems from the West Yorkshire Building Society, which was founded two years later in Dewsbury –a short six-mile hop from the town of Huddersfield. For over 100 years, the two building societies operated in separate orbits – orbits that would rarely stray outside this small, 10-mile patch of northern England. In 1982, the West Yorkshire Building Society

and the Huddersfield Building Society merged with another local mutual, the Bradford Building Society, to create the entity that exists today.

It is a history of consolidation: in the years after the merger, the newly rebranded Yorkshire Building Society would gradually accumulate more of its peers from across the UK, slowly increasing its sphere of influence and growing steadily in size. The Haywards Heath, Barnsley, Chelsea, and Norwich & Peterborough Building Societies were all subsumed into YBS and today the group has a balance book in excess of £55bn.

Is its Yorkshire heritage still important?

Being local and mutually owned means that Yorkshire Building Society is motivated by its members, not by a distant shareholder who they’ve never met. Everything that YBS does is for the service of its members.

“I don't actually think we are local at all anymore,” Morris says. “We've got a national branch network, a sophisticated digital footprint across all our brands and we've obviously got customers from all over the British Isles. We've got customers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Cornwall, and a huge London presence.”

Instead of thinking local, YBS today thinks about local values. It has expanded far beyond Yorkshire’s borders, but the organisation is still proud of its heritage and

is committed to upholding the traditional values that are said to define this beautiful part of the world: humanity, empathy, honesty, and a sense of doing the right thing.

“I’m a proud Yorkshireman. I'm a local lad,” says Ben Sampson. “I love coming to work at the Yorkshire Building Society because whilst we're national and we make a national impact, I think the culture and the roots of the business feel very Yorkshire. If you ask a Yorkshireman what they think about being from Yorkshire, they'll use words like openness, integrity, fairness and honesty – and I think we have a culture that really thrives on that.”

YORKSHIRE FACT FILE

• Historical area of northern England made up today of four counties

• Nearly 15,000km² ranging from peaks and dales to heritage coastline

• Major cities include Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Hull and York

• Renowned for its food and drink including strong tea, batter puddings, Wensleydale cheese, Pontefract liquorice, and its forced rhubarb

• Population according to the 2021 UK census: 5.5mn

“ I’M A PROUD YORKSHIREMAN . I LOVE COMING TO WORK BECAUSE, WHILST WE MAKE A NATIONAL IMPACT, THE CULTURE AND THE ROOTS OF THE BUSINESS FEEL VERY YORKSHIRE”

BEN SAMPSON, MBA DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION, YBS

BEN SAMPSON, MBA

TITLE: DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION

INDUSTRY: FINANCIAL SERVICES

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Ben began his career at HBOS and worked in various business areas until 2008 when Lloyds TSB took over during the financial crisis. At the newly formed Lloyds Banking Group Ben undertook significant roles in both the Integration and Verde (TSB creation) programmes. Since Joining YBS Ben has led a number of high profile programmes of work that have helped transform and modernise the society, such as the lending re-platforming work to move YBS to the IRESS MSO platform. In his current role as Director of Business Transformation, Ben is responsible for the strategic design, business case and planning of the YBS transformation. This includes overall sponsorship and ownership of the benefits and benefits for the programme and accountability to the Executive and board.

DAVID MORRIS BA, MA CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER FINANCIAL SERVICES

UNITED KINGDOM

David began his career at Citigroup and has subsequently worked at various Financial Services institutions across the UK and abroad. He is responsible for the innovation, development and ongoing management of the Society’s mortgages and savings products, YBS’s marketing and its digital channels, mortgage distribution and the Society’s branch network. David is also responsible for our Commercial Lending and is Chair of Accord Mortgages Ltd. Prior to joining YBS David was the Head of Products at Coventry Building Society.

Defining a clear purpose in the world

In every organisation’s history, there are usually a few executives that have a defining impact. For YBS, one of the most influential was Mike Regnier, the erstwhile chief executive who left to become CEO of Santander UK at the beginning of 2022.

David Morris says: “What Mike did was come in and effectively provide quite a lot of strategic clarity in terms of what we can and can't be. We need to be a savings and mortgage business and we need to get simple, lean, and focused. That's really been the mantra over the last eight years. What we've seen since about 2018 is an acceleration of that vision.”

Yorkshire Building Society focuses on mortgages, savings products and commercial lending, shying away from everyday transactional banking (which is highly regulated with a lot of competition) in favour of higher-interest products that encourage consumers to put some of their money aside. That means YBS has three core lines of business, which Morris describes as “low-touch but meaningful”. The company is one of the largest lenders in the UK: “We’re very big but we’re focused,” he explains.

The sheer scale that YBS has been able to achieve is testament to the laser-tight focus within the business. “We want to make sure we're doing things purposefully; we want to make sure we've got the capability to execute against that; and critically we only compete in parts of the market where we think we can win,” Morris continues.

On mortgages, this means a higher proportion of its lending goes to firsttime buyers or customers who are often overlooked by other providers. This allows them to occupy the underserved space in between other mainstream lenders, carving out a competitive advantage for themselves. “They’re good people but for whatever reason other banks are not providing solutions that help them get on the housing ladder,” Morris says. YBS still lends to more affluent customers who have higher equity in their homes, but they are clear that the

“ I FIND MYSELF ENGAGED BY PEOPLE WHO ARE ABLE TO BREAK PARADIGMS, THINK DIFFERENTLY AND LIFT THEMSELVES OUT OF THE STATUS QUO ”

DAVID MORRIS BA, MA CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, YBS

business’ focus is on being purposeful and finding innovative solutions.

People underestimate what YBS can do

This incisiveness and clarity of focus, coupled with the fact that YBS is “just a building society”, often leads to people underestimating their scale or level of expertise. Morris says: “I think the YBS of today is far more capable than people realise. It's very interesting when you go out into the market and people say, ‘oh you're a building society, do you know X’ or ‘do you know Y’? Of course we know it, we're really very good. It's just we're very, very focused.”

This clarity of focus is clearly winning: in H1 2022, YBS outperformed some of the UK’s traditional ‘big six’ banks in terms of

“ WE HAD A GOOD PHYSICAL BUSINESS MODEL , GOOD BRANCHES, BUT WE WERE REALLY LAGGING BEHIND ON BOTH TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITAL PERFORMANCE ”

BEN SAMPSON, MBA DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION, YBS

both book growth and yield performance. It is also highly competitive now on digital. Morris believes that there are other financial institutions who could learn from this focused strategy.

Ramping up digital transformation

When you think about digital transformation, you tend to think about the process of replatforming and the multiple legacy systems that often hold firms back. That is one of the key tenets of digital transformation after all. But, as with any sizeable undertaking within a business, the most important thing to get right from the outset is strategy. It can be a challenge to get everybody within a business subscribed to a digital transformation – it requires a huge

cultural shift – but it can also be difficult to get all your objectives aligned.

When Director of Business Transformation Ben Sampson joined the business, YBS had an ageing legacy platform powering its websites; it didn’t have a consumer app; and the percentage of customers signing up through digital was somewhere between 15% and 20%.

It’s not an atypical hangover for a building society to have; indeed, according to research from the Building Societies Association published in 2021, twothirds of building societies identify digital transformation as the main challenge facing the sector in the next five years.

“We had a good physical business model, good branches,” Sampson says. “But we were really lagging behind on both the technology front and the digital commerce performance front.”

First, Yorkshire Building Society established a single vision and ambition organisation-wide that everybody was aligned to. Digital transformation has proven to be a considerable, long-term investment for the business – the single biggest programme of work that YBS has ever done, as Sampson puts it. “That’s as significant as the replatforming for me,” he says. “A business that gets unified behind that single goal, which can then lead to all the important elements of conditions for success such as the ability to have razor-sharp prioritisation discussions. They’re not possible if you’ve got different viewpoints, because it just becomes an argument.”

YBS built and launched its first native apps for iOS and Android, getting into the pockets of its customers for the first time. The demand has always been there: research shows that a majority of UK banking customers want their banks to offer

mobile apps. It established a partnership with identity confirmation provider HooYu, allowing it to elevate its onboarding and ID verification process. Together, they developed a programme called “experiencedriven acquisition”, which involved building a more seamless account opening process. Alongside the partnership with HooYu, YBS also redesigned some customer journeys and replatformed to make this project work.

YBS has also invested heavily in modernising its mortgage origination system. A new platform was introduced in 2018 and through the programme this has been extended, adding the remaining products one by one. Significant time has also been spent optimising this tool, working with technology partner Iress to create innovative solutions and leverage its capabilities. Permanent squads were also set up, allowing technical expertise and strong relationships with the supplier to develop. The result is that the speed of change has increased by 300%.

Morris says this has had a huge impact on the business: “When I started at YBS I saw our mortgage business had lots of potential. I think it is easy to overlook the impact of our transformation here but, for me, this has been the spark that enabled the broader transformation. With our mortgage engine firing, we have been able to subsequently transform our savings proposition and invest further and faster in our digital transformation.”

The results have been staggering, the company says: digital acquisition has gone from 20% of the mix to over 70% and the online book is over 2.5 times bigger than it was before the transformation began; over 20% of lending originated utilises the new capabilities the transformation delivered; and digital satisfaction has increased by over 40% in the last 12 months alone.

It also transitioned away from waterfall development, which just wasn’t cutting it with the modern digital technologies, and created a ‘digital services tribe’ instead. It was the first time that YBS had attempted to work in that agile way at scale, so clearly the technical undertaking itself was vast. But it all stemmed from a single collective vision that helped to clearly define the building society’s priorities, who it was and who it served as a business, and exactly how it would take advantage of the digital opportunity before it.

“As we have learned we have sped up certain bits, slowed down and reordered priorities,” David Morris says. “But we have done this in a way that is completely

1864 YEAR FOUNDED 1982 MERGER BETWEEN THREE BUILDING SOCIETIES CREATED YBS

£60bn YEARLY REVENUE

consistent with our long-term vision, which remains unchanged. This has allowed us to continue to review and improve our performance in terms of delivery and value creation. Our modular approach has also helped enable this.”

Partnership with Johnston Carmichael

At that time, YBS had never undertaken a digital transformation programme on this scale before. It needed some support to mobilise and to get that initial jumpstart, which is when it partnered with business consultancy Johnston Carmichael. Their expertise and knowhow supported YBS in accelerating and creating pace, but it also offered a couple of additional edges – like challenging YBS’ own internal ways of thinking, and lending an experience and a pragmatism that firms like Johnston Carmichael benefit from.

They've got a team of very experienced, highly professional people that have been through a number of cycles of both the external environment and transformations,” Ben Sampson says. “That experience is invaluable when you've got a company like YBS, which has good core capability but maybe hasn't done this before and is lacking in that real-world experience. Johnston Carmichael certainly brought that. They came in, they gave us a huge injection of pace, they gave us some really strong critical thinking, and they brought a clear view of design thinking.”

The partnership with Johnston

Carmichael is indicative of YBS’ broader thinking around collaboration and partnership, as Sampson explains: “We want to be more selective about the partnerships we have. We can't throw good money after bad if we get that wrong. So we tend to go with trusted partners and longer-term

relationships. We will often run competitive processes with people we've worked with before and we look for a cultural match –people that will work well in our business. It’s vital that we have people who have done this before. We want to learn from others, we want to take their experience to help us be successful.

“The thing that's absolutely essential from any partnership for us is that they must help us to learn, and to be able to do that, they need to leave a legacy of us being able to do things ourselves. We don't want transactional relationships that give us a step change that then falls away. It's one thing to transform, but it's another thing to then optimise. And to be able to optimise, we need to be building our capability as we do it.”

David Morris concurs: “We want people who can augment, people who can do things that we can't or people who can help us accelerate. We’re not looking for people to

come in and do the stuff that we can already do, because we already have some skillful, capable people within the business.”

The inspiration to succeed

So who inspires them? “I believe in the power of people and in creating environments that allow people to thrive,”

Sampson says. He is drawn naturally to people who have overcome adversity: to Stephen Hawking, who became the preeminent scientist of his generation despite battling personal adversity; to Richard Branson, who built Virgin from the ground up and who today is quite pioneering about the way in which he nurtures his teams, giving them unlimited time off as an example.

Sampson also identifies with Steven Bartlett, the founder of marketing agency Social Chain and the youngest investor in the history of Dragon’s Den (the UK version of Shark Tank). He also has a podcast charting

the highs and lows of being a CEO. Sampson calls him an inspirational figure and likes the fact that Bartlett dropped out of university, like he did.

David Morris says that central to his style of leadership is a ‘belief in better’. He is inspired by people – both from within YBS and outside the organisation – who are able to think differently, challenge the ordinary and strive for something extraordinary. “I genuinely find myself engaged by people who are able to break paradigms, think differently and lift themselves out of the status quo. People who are able to say ‘here's a completely different way of doing things’.”

That disruptive mindset has always been rare, but wherever they exist those people are usually invaluable assets. There is clearly something of a disruptor personality trait among Morris and Sampson themselves. When we first speak, it is just a few days before Christmas – yet there is no let-up

for either of them. They brim with passion about the progress that YBS has made, the potential it’s unleashing within the organisation, and crucially the benefits it will bring for customers.

Everything comes back to the customer

YBS has spent the better part of eight years reorienting its business towards customers: giving them the platforms and digital channels they expect, but also honing its propositions so that it can meet underserved demand in the grey space between traditional high-street lenders.

David Morris believes that, because business value has played such an integral role in YBS’ transformation, the customer has become an inescapable end-goal. Every path that YBS takes now leads to the customer. That means the customer has become a really useful currency for explaining digital initiatives to executive

stakeholders within the business, particularly those that are not digitally confident.

“To me, digital inherently means being customer-centric,” Morris says. “So when we're trying to build customer journeys, there's no point building great technology if it doesn't work for the customer. We've recognised that the solutions we need to create have to be built with the end-user in mind. I think that's just a natural, inherent part of this type of transformation.”

Sampson concurs: “We're building things that meet customer needs and wants, and that's research-based. That's quite powerful.”

Customer-centric design permeates every pore at YBS, including recruitment. Everybody that has been brought into this digital transformation journey has been steered by customer demand – from UX and UI designers through to programme managers. Much like its namesake region, Yorkshire Building Society has a distinctive character, a flavour, a non-negotiable way of doing things. It only takes on new people that fit into this customer-led culture. “You can be the world’s greatest project manager

or the most sophisticated architect, but if you don’t understand the YBS culture then it just doesn’t work,” Morris says.

That applies not just to the people that YBS recruits, but the partners it chooses to work with as well. The building society partnered early on with Johnston Carmichael to help them quickly realise pace, mobilise the digital transformation programme and become clearer on the designs of its digital products. This allowed it to remain focused from the outset on the customer.

“What Johnston Carmichael brought to the table was an acceleration of what we were trying to do, [along with] huge amounts of experience and pragmatism,” Sampson explains. “They used that to not only help us think about what we wanted to do, but to be a critical friend and challenge us in our thinking, and help us avoid pitfalls that others might have experienced who went before us.”

Looking ahead to the future, Morris continues: “Over the last 2-3 years, we've been able to prove just how much opportunity there is in the business and how digitising parts of our enterprise has created huge amounts of value. I think our vision for the next 12-18 months is about how we can go from good to great. We think our approach can be really quite distinct and unique by taking this best-of-breed approach, using digital and human to create something that's distinct in the market. And I think a big focus for us over the next period is going to be about how we create an operational model that supports this powerful acquisition capability we've built.”

“ TO ME, DIGITAL INHERENTLY MEANS BEING CUSTOMERCENTRIC. THERE'S NO POINT BUILDING GREAT TECHNOLOGY IF IT DOESN'T WORK FOR THE CUSTOMER ”

DAVID MORRIS BA, MA CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, YBS

HEADSPACE

How Headspace Health created a culture of cyber awareness

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

Headspace Health is changing the way the world thinks about mental healthcare, delivering beloved meditation and mindfulness exercises and one-on-one care anytime, anywhere.

In 2021, Headspace and Ginger joined forces to form Headspace Health, the world's most comprehensive and accessible mental healthcare platform. In the midst of a growing mental health crisis, Headspace Health set out to democratise mental healthcare so people everywhere could get the care they need when they need it. Today, Headspace Health touches nearly 100m lives worldwide through its brands Headspace, Ginger, and Headspace for Work.

Puneet Thapliyal is the Chief Information Security Officer at Headspace Health. Joining the company in 2016 when it was a Silicon Valley startup, and had zero revenue and zero customers, Headspace is now a company of more than 1,100 people, with revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“It's been an incredible journey and a great opportunity, and I feel lucky to be part of this journey,” he says. “Prior to starting at Headspace Health, I was CEO of my own security product company called Trusted Passage. I wanted to be part of a company that has a large impact on the world, and I got introduced to Ginger in 2016.

“When I talked to the founding team, I was very impressed by the vision they

Headspace Health is on a mission to change the way the world thinks about mental health. But to protect users’ data, innovative solutions are needed

How Headspace Health created a culture of cyber awareness

had of solving mental healthcare for the whole world. I wanted to be part of the journey, and that was how I got into digital healthcare,” adds Thapliyal. “The company itself was building a tele-mental healthcare platform, which just five or six years ago was unheard of. I wanted to contribute as much as possible to make it a reality and, fast forward to today, it's a very mainstream offering.”

On a mission to solve mental healthcare for everybody in the world, Headspace Health offers a whole spectrum of services, from mindfulness tools to CBT, coaching, therapy, and psychiatry. The service starts with the mobile app, which helps users with meditation and helps users build good daily habits around sleep breathing.

“That is a consumer offering, so anyone could go to the app store and download and start using that and help themselves get

“OUR CORE MISSION IS TO BUILD A SERVICE WHERE MENTAL HEALTHCARE IS EASILY ACCESSIBLE TO EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD. WE WANT TO SEE A WORLD WHERE MENTAL HEALTH IS NEVER AN OBSTACLE FOR ANYONE”

better,” Thapliyal comments. “Beyond that, if you need a little bit more help, then you are able to talk to a life coach, through text and video, for your subclinical needs.

“If you have a certain situation where you need clinical help, then you are able to elevate the service level to clinical where you can now schedule time with a therapist or psychiatrist, get medication, or whatever it takes to get you into a better state from a mental healthcare standpoint,” he explains. “That's the vision of the company: to focus on outcomes and to make sure anyone who comes and uses our service is able to get better from a mental healthcare standpoint.”

Helping remove the mental health stigma

Millions of people worldwide are living with a mental health condition, not helped by the COVID-19 pandemic which exacerbated mental health concerns, with a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation finding that nearly half of adults in the United States reported symptoms of depression or anxiety during the subsequent global lockdowns.

According to Headspace Health, mindfulness and meditation can positively impact mental and physical health, whether by reducing stress, improving sleep, increasing focus, or improving relationships.

“Our core mission is to build a service where mental healthcare is easily accessible to everybody in the world. We want to see a world where mental health is never an obstacle for anyone,” Thapliyal says.

Building this world is a huge challenge.

According to a recent World Health Organisation study, about one in eight people – a billion people worldwide – suffer from some kind of mental health disorder. Of those, Thapliyal comments, about 75% of them never even get any help for their mental healthcare.

PUNEET THAPLIYAL

TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER

INDUSTRY: MENTAL HEALTH CARE

LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, US

Puneet is the Chief Information Security Officer at Headspace Health where he heads up overall strategy and direction of product and IT security as well as member data privacy. He is a seasoned cybersecurity and networking executive with previous stints at Yahoo! and Oracle. Puneet is an active member of the OWASP, Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) and Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) where he actively contributes towards security emerging research topics such as the Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) and Cloud Standards activities. He has extensive experience with cloud security and has helped build one of the first Firewall As A Service (FAAS) offerings. He holds multiple technology patents including in the areas of Web App Security and Multicast Protocol Congestion Control.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Puneet earned an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from HBTI, Kanpur and a masters degree in Computer Science from Rensselaer (RPI), NY.

“WE ARE SEEING AN UPTICK IN MALICIOUS ACTIVITY IN THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY. FOR EXAMPLE, THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY IS BEING TARGETED BY RANSOMWARE MORE THAN ANY OTHER INDUSTRY”

PUNEET THAPLIYAL CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, HEADSPACE HEALTH

“That's a huge number, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 situation and the lockdowns,” he adds. “So, the core mission is to get our care services available to as many people in the world as quickly as possible, so that we can build a happier, healthier world.”

By making services available to more people, organisations such as Headspace Health are helping dispel stigmas associated with mental health. Figures by the National Attitudes to Mental Illness Survey show that people’s willingness to have contact with someone with a mental health problem has improved by 11% since 2009, while attitudes towards people with mental health problems improved by 9.6% in the same period.

“The fact that we've been able to contribute a little bit towards removing the stigma or taboo associated with mental healthcare, by bringing this very accessible platform and the service that we have, is a proud moment for me,” explains Thapliyal. “We've been able to actually move the needle in the last several years, and a whole team has been part of that, the founding team of the company, the executive leadership team and everybody else in the company who has joined the company with this mission in mind.”

The importance of cybersecurity and data privacy

While cybersecurity is important for every company in the world today, it is even more important in the healthcare industry. Technology has transformed modern healthcare but bad actors mean that there are unique risks when it comes to virtual mental health services.

“Healthcare is one of those industries where cybersecurity and data security are extremely important,” comments Thapliyal.

in the healthcare industry. For example, the healthcare industry is being targeted by ransomware more than any other industry.

“On top of that, we are a single-purpose mental healthcare service provider, and in many of the regulations, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the US, mental healthcare data is called out separately, from a security and privacy standpoint.

“We are highly aware of that, and we feel like that's a huge responsibility,” he explains.

“The company has always had an extremely strategic focus on cybersecurity from the very beginning. We have built a very mature programme, and now we are morphing it from just purely cybersecurity to a very privacy-focused programme as well.”

As Thapliyal explains, part of Headspace Health’s success from a cybersecurity standpoint is the creation of a culture where everyone is aware of the importance of security and privacy.

“Unlike many other companies and industries, mental healthcare is one of those domains where privacy is super important for everybody, including our patients, user members, and our clinicians and coaches. Everybody in the company is highly aware and sensitive about preserving privacy,” he describes.

“The whole cybersecurity industry is still learning how to build that culture of security, which permeates through the whole organisation and is not just limited to the InfoSec teams or the IT teams or engineering teams. It's a challenge, and it requires a thoughtful approach. When we onboard a brand new employee, for example, we focus on cybersecurity from day one. That's where the journey starts for a new employee, and then it has to continue throughout their time at the company.”

But, as Thapliyal explains, relying on training alone isn’t enough. Highly compliance-driven training can quickly become repetitive, so keeping everyone engaged is critical.

“We have a strategic plan in the InfoSec team to drive engagement within

the company to spread awareness of cybersecurity,” he adds. “These are from the small little things, from having a shared Slack channel, which we fondly call the ‘tinfoil hats channel’, where everyone is able to voice cybersecurity or privacy concerns, to more mature programmes such as our Security Insiders Programme, which involves deeper engagement, where every department volunteers a couple of team members to engage with the InfoSec team.”

All of this is about instilling a culture of cybersecurity awareness at all levels of the organisation, Thapliyal comments.

“We have now built out a programme where we depend on some of these security insiders to fulfil InfoSec requirements and instil this culture of cybersecurity awareness in their respective teams,” he says. “Those are initiatives where we need to be focused,

According to research by Headspace Health, 32% of users benefit from a decrease in stress after 30 days of using the service. Meanwhile 22% of users show an increase in focus after one session, while 19% benefit from a decrease in anxiety symptoms after eight weeks.

we need to put the right resources, we need to fund it, and that's how we've been able to achieve this sense of heightened awareness around cybersecurity in the company.”

Extra focus on third-party risk

Healthcare providers, along with businesses around the world, are increasingly relying on third-party vendors to carry out their dayto-day operations. But while working with vendors has a range of benefits, the practice can also introduce information security and vendor compliance risks.

Research by the Ponemon Institute has found that 54% of third-party respondents had at least one data breach involving protected health information (PHI) over the last two years, while 41% of third-party respondents had six or more data breaches during the same two-year time frame.

“Our third-party ecosystem is extremely important,” comments Thapliyal. “We are in a new world. We call our company a SaaS-first company, meaning given a problem business challenge, we first go and look for a SaaS service provider that can help solve that.

“This is very different from how traditional healthcare companies operate, where they

run their own data centres and maintain their own networks,” he explains. “Since we are operating in SaaS-first principles, that – by the very nature of it – means we are dealing with a lot of third parties. As a result, dealing with all these vendors and third parties requires us to put extra focus on third-party risk management (TPRM).

“We have a team which is helping in our third-party assessments on a continuous basis, not just at the beginning of the contract,” he adds. “We have deployed tools to help with that, making sure our TPRM team is well-equipped to perform the access reviews at scale. And then we also categorise our vendors to the sensitivity of what data we might be transacting with them. So we have an extra special focus on any vendor that might transact with our PHI or personal identifying information (PII).”

An important part of Headspace’s operations, the business is continuing to improve its TPRM processes through technology investments.

“One such vendor we recently onboarded is called Privado,” says Thapliyal. “They are really

“MENTAL HEALTHCARE IS A DOMAIN WHERE PRIVACY IS SUPER IMPORTANT FOR EVERYBODY, INCLUDING OUR PATIENTS, USER MEMBERS, AND OUR CLINICIANS AND COACHES”

PUNEET THAPLIYAL CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, HEADSPACE HEALTH

helping us with maturing our secure software development lifecycle (SSDLC) and making sure we are not, for example, unnecessarily tracking users on our websites or on our mobile apps, and that we're not sending any PII or PHI to unapproved third parties.

“There has recently been a lot of focus in the media on apps that are doing nefarious things. We don't want to be in that business at all – that's not where we are. But we need to still build the tools to prevent any accidental sharing or tracking. So that's where Privado comes in as a big partner, for us, structurally built into our SSDLC, and we're very excited about how our partnership will shape up in the future.”

Looking at the big picture in challenging economic times

Since tech startup Ginger and Headspace merged in 2021, there has been what Headspace Health CEO Russell Glass described as a ‘staggering’ increase in demand. Ginger reported demand for its services increased threefold during the pandemic. But what does the future look like for Headspace Health?

“To answer that, we have to take a step back and look at the big picture, what's happening in the industry today,” comments Thapliyal. “There are a lot of macroeconomic factors in play, within the US and other parts of the world. There is

constant chatter around a slowdown in the economy and a recession, and then most recently in the US, we have seen companies take corrective actions to right-size their companies. A lot of layoffs have been announced by the likes of Facebook and Twitter and all the large companies.

“The general sense is that tough times are coming and we need to hunker down and prepare for that, and whoever does a better job in preparing for that will come out as a successful company on the other side.”

In a challenging economic environment, what is clear however is that the most important thing is to focus on the health and wellbeing of Headspace’s users.

“Given that broader context, our board and our executive team have given the directions to be very mindful,” Thapliyal explains. “We are trying to take this as an opportunity to refocus on doing less and doing better. So that's how we are changing our strategy as we go into 2023.

“What that means to the company as a whole is that we will continue to get better and offer more features and more services in the coming years,” he concludes. “The focus will be on what we call members first, meaning anything that we do should ultimately benefit our patients.”

PEOPLE - PROCESSTECHNOLOGY TRENDS AT UPSTREAM REHABILITATION

WRITTEN BY: GEORGE HOPKIN

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

Vice President of Information Technology for Upstream Rehabilitation

Jeff Petet on working for a company that wants to help people

Each and every one of us has a different measure of success that we judge ourselves by. For some, it may be the amount of money earned or praise garnered that demonstrates achievement; for others, it may be simply putting a smile on someone’s face.

At health provider Upstream Rehabilitation, though, success is measured by the trust and love patients and their families feel through the healing journey.

Currently, Upstream Rehabilitation is continuing its remarkable expansion across the United States. And though the company uses cutting-edge tech across its broad ecosystem of companies and partners, its technology team appreciates that humans will always be required.

Founded in 2004, Upstream Rehabilitation is a portfolio company of Revelstoke Capital Partners and, with 1,200 locations in 28 states, is the largest provider dedicated to outpatient physical therapy in the United States. Headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, the company provides a comprehensive suite of outpatient and specialised physical therapy services through a network of industry-leading regional brands, including: BenchMark Physical Therapy, Results Physiotherapy, Drayer Physical Therapy, Elite PT, and SERC Physical Therapy.

Between the year of its launch and 2010, Upstream acquired several brands, including Benchmark PT, Preferred Therapy

People process technology trends at Upstream Rehabilitation

Providers and Integrity Rehab Group, building a fully-rounded healthcare service company. It also expanded its services across some of the midwest, southern, and Bible-belt states in the US to serve a vast range of people in need: Oregan, Washington, Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, Texas and Arkansas.

In 2018, Upstream completed a merger with Drayer Physical Therapy. The following year saw it open 100 new clinics and acquire an additional 12, while also expanding its services into Iowa.

An additional 54 clinics were opened during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020,

with three more rounding off the portfolio that same year. In 2021, Upstream expanded further, opening more than 150 new clinics and acquiring Results Physiotherapy, enabling it to be granted the title of largest provider dedicated to outpatient physical therapy in the United States.

Mergers and acquisitions play a crucial role in growth

Jeff Petet is Vice President of Information Technology for Upstream, overseeing the company’s strategic planning, implementation, and management of all IT functions. Before joining Upstream, he led a global software development team, having

“I LOVE WORKING FOR AN INDUSTRY WHOSE PRIMARY AIM IS TO HELP PEOPLE ACHIEVE OPTIMAL HEALTH; IT REALLY MAKES A DIFFERENCE”

JEFF PETET VICE PRESIDENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, UPSTREAM REHABILITATION

previously graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from The University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.

“I love working in healthcare,” says Petet. “I love working for an industry whose primary aim is to help people achieve optimal health; it really makes a difference. You're not just manufacturing widgets; you're working for a company that is there to help people.”

A high point for Petet’s team arrived, in his words, with the successful merger between Upstream and Drayer Physical Therapy in 2018, shortly after Upstream announced the completion of four partnership acquisitions in Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Tennessee, expanding its portfolio of physical therapy businesses.

"We evaluate many expansion opportunities every year looking for strategic partners that share our business philosophy and core values," said Dave Van Name, Upstream Founder and Senior Advisor. "Our merger with Drayer Physical Therapy, in addition to our newest partnership acquisitions, provides a tremendous opportunity to combine the strength of these businesses, continue our growth, and advance our goal to become the provider and employer of choice in the industry."

At the time, the combination of Upstream and Drayer created a single network of more than 560 owned-and-managed clinics in 27 states, serving over four million patients annually. “It took us almost two years to complete all the merger activities on the IT side,” says Petet. “But that success was pivotal to ensuring the future growth of Upstream.”

Exceptional care requires highest levels of clinical education

Upstream and its professional development organisation, Upstream Rehab Institute (URI), provide high-quality and innovative

JEFF PETET

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

INDUSTRY: WELLNESS SERVICES

LOCATION: TENNESSEE, US

Jeff Petet is a Certified Healthcare CIO and the Vice President of Information Technology for Upstream Rehabilitation, the leading provider of outpatient physical therapy in the United States with over 1200 locations. He is responsible for setting the IT vision for Upstream, including overseeing strategic planning, implementation, and management of all IT functions for the organisation.

Jeff has over 25 years of experience in leadership positions for several organisations in a variety of industries. Jeff has a Bachelor of Science degree

EXECUTIVE BIO

MCA, as your trusted I.T. advisor, gives you the freedom to focus on your business

Service offerings:

• Equipment configuration, rollout and project management

• Cloud hosting and Data center located in Chattanooga, TN

• Nationwide repair services

• 24/7 help desk located in Chattanooga, TN

• Asset management and inventory control

JEFF PETET VICE PRESIDENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, UPSTREAM REHABILITATION

post-professional education for all clinical associates who join the Upstream family. The company recognises the difference between average and exceptional care, the latter requiring the highest levels of clinical education and training. For this reason, Upstream is dedicated to leveraging its expert faculty and innovative delivery methods to offer the ultimate in post-professional clinical education via residency, fellowship, and continuing education programmes.

Upstream offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits programme to all of its associates, including: standard health benefits, featuring medical, dental, and vision options; ancillary health options, including short-term and long-term disability and company-paid life insurance; a health savings account, a flexible spending account and a 401(k).

In addition, Upstream provides all of its associates with paid time off, company-paid holidays, a company-paid volunteer day, annual continuing education allotments for clinical staff, adoption assistance, employee assistance programmes and access to a MedBridge learning management account.

Upstream understands that choosing a partner is one of the most important decisions a business owner will ever make, according to Upstream CEO Ronald Kuerbitz.

“YOU'RE NOT JUST MANUFACTURING WIDGETS; YOU'RE WORKING FOR A COMPANY THAT IS THERE TO HELP PEOPLE”

UPSTREAM REHABILITATION

“Whether you are looking for a partner to help accelerate your growth, to provide leadership and professional development opportunities, or to begin developing an exit strategy, aligning yourself with the right one is critically important.

“We have more than 600 partners that chose Upstream because they recognised the value of the resources we provide to help them achieve their goals. We’re flexible in how we approach each partnership, and we understand that each of our partners may have different goals depending on their stage in life and future plans.”

The Upstream mission is to inspire and empower the lives they touch, to serve its communities, and lead with purpose-driven passion, says Kuerbitz: “We work diligently with our partners to provide excellent patient care, create more access to therapy in our communities, and ensure that therapy services are at the forefront.”

Technology partners helps Upstream discover new technology

Upstream has grown more than 700 percent in the time Petet has been with the company. “When I joined, we had roughly 1,100 associates in fewer than 200 locations. Today, we have almost 8,000 associates and more than 1,200 locations. That has been a great deal of growth, in terms of technology to keep up with, over the last eight years.”

Upstream employs several company-wide initiatives to continually improve efforts to collect, measure, and deliver the best clinical outcomes across the company. These include clinician development programmes, continuing education courses and resources, and independent and group learning opportunities that include grand rounds, physician shadowing, and journal clubs.

Upstream’s Committee of Clinical Excellence – composed of Senior Therapists who lead panels in education, mentor support, professional engagement, student programmes, and outcomes – helps the company ensure all clinical associates provide world-class patient care and deliver best-in-class patient outcomes.

JEFF PETET VICE PRESIDENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, UPSTREAM REHABILITATION

“We also have great working relationships with our technology partners,” says Petet. “I would say that we operate with them as true partners, not just vendors. Our partners help us discover new technology, expand our technology expertise, and increase our business performance by improving our associates' performance with that new technology.”

MCA Technology Solutions has been a partner of Upstream prior to Petet’s joining the company, but he says 2019 saw MCA become a strategic partner. “At that time, we were actively going through the largest merger in company history that began in 2018,” he says. “We were experiencing a lot of turnover on our Tier 1 Service Desk team. I learned that MCA had a lot of experience

“IT TOOK US ALMOST TWO YEARS TO COMPLETE THE MERGER ON THE IT SIDE, BUT THAT WAS PIVOTAL TO FUTURE GROWTH”

in managing service desks for other large organizations and the great customer service they could deliver.

Petet made the decision in mid-2019 to outsource his Tier 1 Service Desk team to MCA and describes it as one of the best decisions in his tenure at Upstream. “We saw immediate improvements across the board on our Service Desk metrics,” says Petet. “Again, our clinicians and back-office associates may not even be aware that we have outsourced our Tier 1 because we treat them as Upstream associates, and they represent themselves as Upstream associates. It has truly been a great partnership.”

Cybersecurity a challenge as healthcare industry targeted Petet says he faces many challenges in his role, but a number of them loom large each day – including staffing issues (“Find the right people at the right time,” is his mantra) and interoperability when working with both partners and third-party service providers. “We're doing a lot of joint ventures, so we have to ensure that our systems can integrate with each other,” he explains.

The ongoing digital transformation of the business also keeps his team very busy. “We’re using technology to optimise processes for our associates, so they can better serve our patients,” says Petet. “And, unfortunately, cybersecurity is a challenge due to healthcare continuing to be the

target of bad actors. Cybersecurity – and information security in general – is very important to me.”

Petet continues: “I'm always here to be a proponent for the information security field, especially in healthcare, because we need to keep our systems online”

Technology is embedded throughout the Upstream ecosystem of companies, explains Petet, thus producing a large amount of internal and external data sets. “And the integration of that data allows us to see how we're doing compared to our appearance in the industry, how our patients feel, and how we're doing against our internally-set benchmarks,” he says.

“Having this data available in near-realtime allows our leaders to make quick data-driven decisions that support and improve the patient experience, while also previewing a clinician experience with better outcomes for our patients at lower costs.

“When it comes to digital transformation, we’re using technology not just to modernise existing processes, but also to revamp the processes. It's all people-process technology, so you're using technology to automate things where you can,” says Petet. “And that's one of the things that we want to do: we want our clinicians to operate at top of licence by automating as much as possible.”

“WE HAVE GREAT WORKING RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS; WE OPERATE WITH THEM AS TRUE PARTNERS, NOT JUST VENDORS”

JEFF PETET VICE PRESIDENT OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, UPSTREAM REHABILITATION