Technology Magazine - January 2021

J anuar y 2 0 2 1

technologymagazine.com

Playtech: Evolving Security in a Changing World

SMART CITIES

HCL Technologies: COVID-19 and Digital Transformation

Ordina: A Holistic Approach to Cybersecurity

DELL TECHNOLOGIES:

SECURITY IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Arash Ghazanfari, CTO (UK), on how digital risk management has only become more necessary in 2020 Howard Kennedy

SAP

Notting Hill Genesis

NTT

WELCOME

I

n our lead feature, Dell Technologies CTO (UK), Arash Ghazanfari, and Liz Green, Cyber Security Specialist UK, reveal how the company is supporting customers across their security and digital risk management transformations.

“Events in 2020 have proven that every business has to become a technology business in order to survive the unique operating environment we find ourselves in. The need for digital transformation is stronger now than ever before.

We’re finding that our customers have had to accelerate their digital transformation projects to take advantage of the emerging digital economy,” says Ghazanfari.

Among this month’s other features, we take a closer look at enterprise resource planning software and its central role in digital

transformation, emerging trends for sustainability in energy-hungry data centres, and the digital future of customer experience in the age of COVID-19.

In our top 10, we dive deep into the world’s smartest cities, based on two separate indexes. Usual suspects such as London, New York and Singapore feature prominently, but entrants from Norway, New Zealand and Finland make strong showings.

Don’t forget to read our other feature reports with the likes of HCL Technologies, NTT, SAP, Playtech, Clear Channel International and many more.

Do you have a story to tell? If you would like to be featured in an upcoming issue of Technology magazine get in touch at william.smith@bizclikmedia.com William Smith te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

03

ericsson.com/ 5g-switch

Move towards zero touch, cut down on time

Ericsson.

The 5G switch made easy.

With automated provisioning and insight-driven service assurance, Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration simplifies operations, moving you closer to the zero-touch experience.

This means greater savings and shorter time to market.

CLICK THE MENU TO RETURN TO CONTENTS PAGE

Subscribe to receive exclusive weekly news and insights direct to your Inbox

CLICK NOW TO SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE

05

PUBLISHED BY

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

Georgia Allen Daniela Kianickovรก

SENIOR EDITOR

Paddy Smith EDITOR

William Smith EDITORAL DIRECTOR

Scott Birch

Mike Sadr Kris Palmer MANAGING DIRECTOR

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Kristofer Palmer

Owen Martin Philline Vicente

James White

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

Kieran Waite

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

DIGITAL MEDIA DIRECTOR

Jason Westgate CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

Sam Kemp Evelyn Huang

Stacy Norman PRESIDENT & CEO

Glen White

CREATIVE TEAM

Oscar Hathaway Sophia Forte Sophie-Ann Pinnell Hector Penrose Sam Hubbard Mimi Gunn

DIGITAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE

Andy Stubbings PROJECT DIRECTORS

Ryan Hall Ben Maltby

t e c hn o l o g y m a g a z in e . c o m

CONTENTS

10 SECURITY IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

COVID-19 and the Future of Customer Experience

24

32 DATA CENTRES: RUNNING HOT

42

ERP: Mission Critical

SMART CITIES

52

110 70

SAP

HCL Technologies

90 NTT Ltd.

124

136

Playtech

Motor Oil

150 Howard Kennedy

166 Clear Channel International

194

180

The Student Hotel

Notting Hill Genesis

248 220 Ordina

234 PT Biznet Gio Nusantara

Bombardier Transportation

10

SECURITY IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WRITTEN BY

WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY

BEN MALTBY

JANUARY 2021

11

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

We hear how security and digital risk management have only become more necessary for digital transformation in 2020

D

In a fast-changing world, the imperative for digital transformation has never been clearer. Effecting that change while man-

aging digital risk and prioritising security requires expert assistance. “Our intention is to be a strategic partner to our customers, an essential technology 12

vendor and a one-stop shop for organisations as they undergo digital transformation,” says Arash Ghazanfari, CTO (UK), Dell Technologies.

“Events in 2020 have proven that every business has to become a technology business in order to survive the unique operating environment we find ourselves in. The need for digital transformation is stronger now than ever before. We’re finding that our customers have had to accelerate their digital transformation projects to take advantage of the emerging digital economy,” says Ghazanfari.

“Our clients have recognised the need to leverage technology to create best-in-class experiences for their customers. Additionally, they need to empower a diverse, and in most cases distributed but connected workforce to collaborate on digital

JANUARY 2021

13

“As part of our Work Redefined programme, we focus on three key areas: productivity, trust, and safety” — Liz Green, Cyber Security Specialist UKI, Dell Technologies t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

14

platforms with the ability to create

an area in which Dell Technologies

value regardless of where they are.

specialises as an essential infra-

All of this means the amount of value

structure provider. “As organisations

you unlock from your data can directly

think about adopting cloud operat-

contribute to your competitive differ-

ing models, it’s really important they

entiation. It is now more important than

understand the cost and operational

ever before to consider your cyber

implications of where they place their

resiliency and enterprise security as

data,” says Liz Green, Cyber Security

a matter of board level priority.”

Specialist UK, Dell Technologies. “We

One of the major transformational megatrends is the adoption of cloud, JANUARY 2021

help our clients to make sure they’re mitigating risks and costs and are

“ Going from a physical to a virtual network presents a lot of opportunities for greater levels of visibility and security” — Liz Green, Cyber Security Specialist UKI, Dell Technologies

a consistent software defined enterprise architecture, so that workloads can be deployed in the empowered edge, or in existing on-premises and distributed private cloud environments, or in the public cloud ecosystem. Our multicloud strategy delivers a consistent software-defined architecture underpinned by a consistent and platform-agnostic operating model helping IT departments deliver con-

able to understand what workloads

sistent value added services to their

fit best in the cloud.” The cloud land-

lines of businesses and achieve unpar-

scape entails many choices, but that

alleled flexibility, control and choice.

needn’t be an issue as Ghazanfari

We believe this is the most optimum

explains. “Businesses are increasingly

approach to maintain the security of

adopting a multicloud strategy and

and keeping control over application

we help our customers by delivering

and data supply-chains.”

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Arash Ghazanfari Title: Chief Technology Officer (UK) Passionate about transforming great businesses in the digital age, experienced in start-ups and large corporations. Currently serving as a Chief Technology Officer, supporting the overall go to market strategy across the full breadth of the Dell Technologies Ecosystem in the United Kingdom.

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

15

Securing the future of Finserv by aligning business, architecture and operations Our security consultants, architects and engineers can build you an enterprise security program that defends against the most pressing risks facing your financial institution. Our experts are experienced in security strategy, architecture and daily defense. They will work with you to make sure your investments further business goals, integrate into an architecture and mature your security posture.

Secure your future now

WWT and Dell Technologies: partners in financial security World Wide Technology’s Chris Konrad and Matt Berry on the partnership with Dell Technologies and changing security needs in the financial services space World Wide Technology (WWT) is one of the world’s premier technology solution providers. “Revenues right now are approaching $13bn in 2020, encompassing our digital strategy, innovative technology, as well as supply chain solutions to a variety of different customers in the public and private sectors around the globe,” explains Chris Konrad, Director of Security for WWT’s global business. “We’re hyperfocused on providing secure business outcomes for our global clients,” adds Matt Berry, Principal Security Advisor, Global Financials. “We deliver solutions in the area of data governance and strategy, security platforms and tool operationalisation. We also address AI and ML model security and enterprise security architecture. Regardless of what the challenge is, our goal is to bring together business acumen with a full stack of technical know how to develop solutions that address our customers’ most complex cyber needs.”

Security in the financial services space has been made only more necessary by the ongoing challenges around the pandemic and the transition to remote working. “Financial institutions are being forced to deal with their technical debt as non-digital processes are being digitised,” says Berry.

“Often these workloads are being moved into cloud environments, for instance.” That shift in technology comes alongside a rise in cyber attacks. “Threat actors are getting smarter, they’re getting more organised and they’re becoming increasingly innovative in their tactics and technologies.”

With those challenges in mind, WWT tailors its solutions for customers. “We architect our solutions and services around these business outcomes and offer strong consultancy combined with the technical competency.”

WWT’s reputation has led to a strong partnership with Dell Technologies. WWT is a $1bn partner of Dell Technologies’ and their first ever Titanium Black partner. “We’ve leveraged about 25 years of partnership expertise to do everything from designing to testing and delivering best-in-class integrated solutions that really help accelerate digital and security transformation journeys,” says Konrad. “Working

with Dell Technologies ensures that as we speak to our financial services customers, we’re going to have the right technical solutions to offer, regardless of whatever business outcome we’re solving,” adds Berry.

The partnership extends to the wider Dell Technologies ecosystem, with WWT having recently secured its largest managed services deal in partnership with Secureworks, a leading Cybersecurity Managed Services provider that is a strategically aligned business within the Dell Technologies portfolio of capabilities. “It’s a three-year programme broken out across 10 different key work streams, with the goal of working with this financial services customer to accelerate their security maturity by the end of next year,” says Berry.

WWT also has invested $500mn in an advanced technology centre for clients to try technology before buying, as Konrad explains. “They can do proofs of concept, testing, and validation with the entire Dell technologies portfolio of capabilities. And then we also have a digital Dell desk that we’re able to offer our customers.”

Going forward, Berry sees the partnership evolving to continue addressing current trends. “The digital landscape is at war and the commodity that is being fought over is data.

Bank accounts are stored in ones and zeros, and proprietary algorithms and financial projections are all digitised and accessible from anywhere on earth - organisations need to know where their data is, at speed and at scale across a very complex ecosystem.” The answer is a focus on data discovery, classification and protection, as well as cloud everywhere security competencies. “Going into the cloud creates additional challenges,” says Berry. “Organisations need flexible security solutions that can adopt a cloud-agnostic approach to security. If you have sensitive data, wherever it is, however it’s stored, it needs to be easy to protect with simplified policies that are applied as code.”

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

Dell Technologies Digital Transformation Index 2020 CLICK TO WATCH

|

1:05

18 The number of subsectors experi-

Technologies ecosystem of capabili-

encing digital transformation has led to

ties, with VMware technology being

a security landscape that is something

at the heart of it all, is to focus on

of a headache for companies. “The

delivering more foundational and pro-

security market is highly fragmented

active security measures by delivering

and there are many point solution

security by design intrinsically within

providers out there. Historically, busi-

our pre-validated solutions. Building

nesses have also made tactical and

security controls intrinsically into our

reactive investments in cybersecu-

software defined capabilities reduces

rity,” says Ghazanfari. “The result is

the need for bolt-on, threat centric and

a proliferation of disjointed security

siloed approach to security.” Among

controls that don’t necessarily talk to

the trends in the transformation of

each other - adversely impacting the

security is virtualisation. “We’re seeing

security posture of the enterprise. The

big transformations in network security,

approach that we take within the Dell

specifically in virtualising networks,”

JANUARY 2021

says Green. “Going from a physical

sure that their customers understand

to a software-defined network pre-

how their data is being used and how

sents a lot of opportunities for greater

the data is secured. We’re going to

levels of visibility and security. Micro-

see a huge focus on security and resil-

segmentation as an example, is a great

ience for the fintech industry, but also

way to prevent lateral progression of

as a huge catalyst for change across

advanced threats, a common trait seen

every sector.”

in modern destructive attack patterns.”

The fintech industry has kept up one

All of this has only been accelerated by the pandemic, which has served

of the fastest paces of transformation.

to catalyse new approaches and

“Programmability, extensibility and

new understanding of security, with

visibility have played a major role in

Dell Technologies offering a Work

the success of open banking. What’s

Redefined pathway for the new normal.

going to make organisations even

“We’re seeing fundamental shifts in

more successful down the line is how

operations, and how we talk to custom-

they secure data and how they make

ers and clients in all industries. As part

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Liz Green Title: Cyber Security Specialist UKI Data Protection and Cyber Recovery Strategist helping organizations to safeguard their most important asset, their data.

Passionate about helping drive human progress through technology.

Enthusiastic technical and financial sales leader that loves to work collaboratively towards common goals to drive positive outcomes for our clients.

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

19

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

20

“ Our Customers have had to accelerate their digital transformation projects to be able to take advantage of the emerging digital economy” — Arash Ghazanfari, CTO (UK), Dell Technologies

JANUARY 2021

of our Work Redefined programme, we focus on three key areas: productivity, trust, and safety,” says Green.

Bearing those tenets in mind allows businesses to thrive, as Ghazanfari explains. “It’s about assessing the risk of adoption of new digital technologies and providing a consumer-like, persona-driven experience that effectively makes the complexities around delivering a digital workspace disappear and enables businesses to focus on delivering business value.”

Having that increased awareness of risk can then lead to better outcomes.

“Organisations didn’t always have a comprehensive digital strategy.

Now, it’s essential that they do. With that comes a need to look at how risk is being mitigated and managed effectively, but this can actually be a really positive thing. The more that we assess and evaluate digital risks, the faster and better organisations can transform digitally.”

From this viewpoint, security acts as a catalyst for, rather than a barrier to, innovation. “In order to achieve that outcome, you need to have visibility of your threat landscape and your risk profile,” t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

21

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

“ Organisations didn’t always have a comprehensive digital strategy.

Now, it’s essential that they do” — Arash Ghazanfari, CTO (UK), Dell Technologies says Ghazanfari. “We can help our customers understand every aspect 22

of their business architecture so that they have the end-to-end visibility that they need to maintain and manage risk, and then make calculated decisions around the steps that they need to take towards innovation. Fundamental to all of this is the recognition that we can’t secure the future in the same way we secured the past. Modern applications can have several cross platforms and complex lateral dependencies, a connected digital workspace can and

Dell Technologies will continue to

will lead to the erosion of traditional

help companies make the most of

perimeters and a distributed data

technology in more flexible ways, as

consumption model. This requires a

Ghazanfari explains. “We are seeing

context centric and unified approach

many businesses value and embrace

to security transformation.”

consumption models. We recognise our

JANUARY 2021

23

customers are looking at consolidating,

the needs of our customers and the

simplifying and de-risking their vendor

unique challenges they face in 2020.�

relationships. Our broad ecosystem and open approach, as well as our diverse and inclusive consumption models, has put us in a position to serve t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

D I G I TA L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

COVID-19 and the Future of Customer Experience WRITTEN BY

WILLIAM SMITH

24

JANUARY 2021

We take a closer look at evolving approaches to customer experience through technologies such as APIs, AI chatbots and RPA

C

ustomer experience, often abbreviated as

CX, describes all the ways in which a cus-

tomer interacts with a company, whether

calling a customer service helpline or buying a product in a store, and everything in between.

While the old mantra of ‘the customer is always right’ might still serve as a guiding principle, increasingly the customer experience is ran by technological and automated means.

According to Chris Duddridge, Area Vice President & Managing Director of UKI at UiPath, a number of issues are critical for customer contact centres in providing the best level of customer service. “There are an estimated 14 million contact centre agents globally across a variety of industries, company sizes, and countries. While each industry faces its own unique problems, the frustrations around customer contact centres are global for businesses and customers alike. Today, contact centre leaders face three main challenges to ensure they remain competitive: Retaining customers, improving agent effectiveness and modernising operations.”

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

25

Digital Transformation.

Made real every day.

Find out how big advances in AI have made it easier than ever to unlock the power of data, create value, insights and a new level of intelligent security. From Individuals, to small organizations, to the Global Fortune 100, AI and machine learning are improving businesses and lives everywhere.

Learn More

“ An experience that delivers results today, such as lots of conversions, may no longer move the needle next month, or even next week” giving examples such as chatbots for

— Michael Scharff, CEO, Evolv

customer self service, arming agents with intelligent attended robots and automatically handing off between

Solving those three problems simul-

chatbots and live agents.

taneously is RPA, or robotic process

Automation also assists with the

automation. “RPA presents contact

changing behaviour of customers,

centres with a low-risk approach to

who are increasingly shifting to digital

transformation that applies intelligent

channels. According to Michael Scharff,

automation across the entire customer

CEO, Evolv, the pace of customer

service lifecycle,” says Duddridge,

evolution requires automation to keep

Changes in customer experience because of COVID-19, by Steven Van Belleghem CLICK TO WATCH

|

2:36

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

27

D I G I TA L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

up. “An experience that delivers results today, such as lots of conversions, may no longer move the needle next month, or even next week. Companies should ingest engagement data and design great experiences based on that information, but they must also deploy predictive modeling so these experiences evolve over time.”

Increased automation need not represent a lack of care for the customer, however, and can instead improve customer’s attitudes. “It can negate 28

the need for customers to take multiple manual steps such as filling out multiple forms, or engage with several stakeholders within the organisation during their digital journey,” says Ian Fairclough, VP of EMEA Customer Success, MuleSoft. “It’s therefore no surprise that automating as much of the customer’s journey as possible is a hallmark of ‘digital native’ organisations, such as fintech challengers.”

Lee Whittington, customer experience consultant at Pegasystems, concurs: “Without automation, businesses have to take an old-school approach to customer interactions.

Do you remember carpet bombing JANUARY 2021

“ Automation keeps customer-facing professionals at the top of their game” — Lee Whittington, Customer experience consultant, Pegasystems

Alongside RPA, other technologies are proving highly valuable in the sector. Take machine learning, for instance, capable of emulating human approaches to things like optimisation.

“While most companies think A/B testing is the ultimate way to sort through lots of ideas and find the winning ones, traditional testing is simply inadequate to help you find that needle and especially if the goal is growth,” says Scharff. “AI-driven optimisation, on the other hand, focuses on the goal itself and not a specific test or experiment. It can evaluate thousands of user experiences and find the needle, fast — and then find it over and over again in every new haystack you encounter.”

Another important trend has been in getting human employees the data they need to deal with customers most effectively, with application program- agents asking the same questions

ming interfaces (APIs) being key to

at each contact and being resold

this. “They play such an important role

something you have already bought?

in enabling organisations to deliver the

Automation keeps customer-facing

connected experience that customers

professionals at the top of their game,

increasingly demand,” says Fairclough.

alerting them to changes in a customer

“To get around their data integration

account and when they need to take

challenges, many organisations have

proactive action.”

been experimenting with APIs. By te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

29

D I G I TA L T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

placing them in front of the systems they need to connect, a loose coupling between the organisation’s various sources of data can be created. With this in place, organisations can quickly and easily draw the information they need from disparate systems scattered across the business.”

While customer experience was heading there already, the ongoing

“ As the demand for these services has risen, so too has the expectation for those services to offer a sophisticated, connected experience” — Ian Fairclough, VP of EMEA Customer Success, MuleSoft

COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated existing trends towards digitalisation, with knock on effects for how 30

customers experience products and services. “Consumer reliance on digital services has soared. As the demand for these services has risen, so too has the expectation for those services to offer a sophisticated, connected experience,” says Fairclough. With the twin pressures of increased demand

It’s also highlighted the importance of

and increased expectations, organi-

understanding in customer experience,

sations of all stripes have had to turn

as Whittington explains: “The CX empa-

to automation technologies to thrive.

thy approach is a major asset to retaining

“From contact centres to hospitals, to

customers and forging the potential for

government agencies and humanitar-

new sales as well. Where, during the pan-

ian organisations, RPA turned out to

demic, businesses needed to put their

be one of the only tools in the toolkit to

focus on supporting customers through

respond to the impacts from the crisis,”

economic uncertainty rather than simply

says Duddridge.

trying to upsell, empathetic treatment

JANUARY 2021

31

of customers did not go unvalued.

The impression, then, is that

Companies which used AI and RPA to be

companies that embraced the

proactive and choose the most appropri-

digitalisation of the customer experi-

ate action for each customer in real time,

ence prior to the pandemic were

whether they needed to adopt equip-

much better prepared to face it.

ment for a home working environment or

Regardless of whether it was in their

freeze their non-essential subscriptions

plans, companies worldwide are now

due to financial restrictions, were able

all but forced to bring in automation

to get it right the first time and hold on to

and other technologies to meet cus-

customers for the long-haul.�

tomer expectations. te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

D ATA C E N T R E S

32

DATA CENTRES: RUNNING HOT WRITTEN BY

PADDY SMITH

JANUARY 2021

The heat is on for data centres to become sustainable. But can they succeed? Paddy Smith takes the temperature

D

ata makes the world go round, but at

what cost? As companies collect and process ever more data in their quest

for efficiency, data centres are fighting on twin fronts: keeping costs under control and trying to improve their sustainability credentials. In the short term, the two don’t go hand in hand. So is the data centre destined to become the next combustion engine – a luxury we can’t do without, even as it threatens the planet as we know it – or can it redeem itself before it causes too much damage?

Some estimates claim data centres will use a fifth of the world’s available electricity by 2025. The EU’s Green Deal stipulates

that data centres can and should be carbon neutral by 2030. How do we get there? In fact, can we get there? Surely the advance of automation, data analytics, 5G and cloud computing, not to mention the ubiquity of video calling, will outstrip the industry’s efforts to clean house?

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

33

Unique, open & intelligent technology solutions

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the global edge-to-cloud platform-as-a-service company, helping organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere.

Visit www.hpe.com

“Just because businesses can store data, doesn’t mean they should” — Peter Ruffley, Zizo

OVERWHELMING DEMAND

“Many cities, such as Amsterdam,

It’s a big problem, says Peter Ruffley,

have put a stop to any more data

CEO of Zizo, a data analytics platform.

centres being built as they drain power

“With the demand for the Internet of

from the grid and cities have to invest

Things (IoT), automation and 5G con-

more in power and cooling systems to

tinuing to grow, and heavily influencing

keep them running efficiently. There

businesses and supply chains over the

is an urgent need for existing data

coming years, the sheer volume of data

centres to be utilised better and for

that companies will be dealing with will

businesses to become savvier in

become more and more overwhelming.

how they store and move data. Just

Whereas five to 10 years ago we’d see

because businesses can store data,

new data centres popping up every-

doesn’t mean they should.

where to store and move all of the data around, this is no longer the case.

“Sustainability is something that should be baked into the strategy as te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

35

D ATA C E N T R E S

Azure sustainability | The mechanics of reducing the carbon footprint of Microsoft’s data centers CLICK TO WATCH

|

6:37

36

“ Reducing climate change is critical to the sector’s future success” — Andy Brierley, Rackspace Technology

cooling costs in the data centre, and only a few of the capabilities of these servers are ever fully utilised. There must be smarter initiatives put in place.”

SUCCESS CRITICAL But data centres themselves are more bullish that solutions can be found.

businesses move forward and seen as

Andy Brierley, UK GM at Rackspace

a positive process, as opposed to one

Technology, identifies four areas

that is a burden. There is a misconcep-

which already look promising: liquid

tion that having more servers is the

cooling, indirect outside air-cooling

way forward. While they are able to

technology, data centre infrastructure

store large volumes of data, they do not

management (DCIM) and data centre

reduce the power needed and increase

consolidation [see box for details].

JANUARY 2021

W H AT ’ S T H E F I X ?

Andy Brierley from Rackspace Technology explains four of the top current solution for mitigating energy use while increasing service delivery.

Liquid hardware cooling Water is better at absorbing and transporting heat than air, but the preconceived complications surrounding liquid cooling has meant that it’s easier to use an air-based data centre cooling system. However, liquid cooling decreases the pressure on data centre air conditioning because it eliminates the need for fans and decreases CPU power consumptions. It involves chilled water entering the cabinets in the data centre cooling design, reducing the distance between the cooling system and the data, making it more energy efficient.

Indirect outside air-cooling technology This highly efficient method uses outdoor air to cool data centres, considerably reducing the total energy consumption. It has the potential to provide a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15, compared to the average data centre rating of 1.7. By using this method, data centre providers can achieve the Open Compute Project (OCP) status, which demonstrates that a data centre provider has implemented the best practices for operations and energy efficiency for all IT equipment.

Implementing indirect outside aircooling technology was a significant contributor to Rackspace Technology’s facility being recognised as one of the greenest in the UK. Data centre infrastructure management (DCIM) Rated as one of the best technology tools by experts, DCIM is key to improved efficiencies and reducing energy consumption. DCIM provides a complete view of a data centre’s performance through real-time insights into collating, storing and analysing data related to power and cooling. It allows data centre providers to create collaboration between a building and its IT systems, analysing PUE and cooling system energy efficiency, and supporting data centre managers with capacity planning and optimising efficiency.

Data centre consolidation According to the Data Centre Alliance, 62 per cent of data centres are going through consolidation at any given time. An ongoing process, it offers providers the means to streamline their processes to create efficiencies across the business. By combining data centre locations and condensing hardware platforms, providers are able to reduce both the need for additional physical space and, in turn, their energy consumption.

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

37

D ATA C E N T R E S

“ Solar is likely the strongest candidate for supplying sustainable energy to data centres in the long term” — Fredrik Forslund, Blancco And he is adamant that the industry should get it right. “It has never been more important for data centre leaders to address the challenges 38

presented by environmental conditions,” he says. “Not only does the sector have a responsibility to do its bit

ALTERNATIVE FUELS

to reduce climate change, but it will be

Fredrik Forslunk, VP of enterprise and

critical to its future success.”

cloud erasure solutions at Blancco, a

But liquid cooling is “not a magic bullet

data erasure firm, thinks the problem

for the data centre industry”, according

is better tackled at the root: power

to Mark Fenton, product manager at

generation. “The energy targets cur-

Future Facilities. Even so, he expects it

rently set are achievable and we have

to continue. “The push towards higher

seen strong development over the last

computing services like AI is driving

few years. For example, hydropower

up rack and server densities in data

is currently a leading source of energy

centres. This is having the net effect of

for Nordic data centres. The output

taking computing beyond the threshold

capacity of both solar and wind is

of what is possible with air cooling alone.

already increasing too. Solar is likely

As such, we expect to see more and

the strongest candidate for supplying

more liquid cooling in 2021 and beyond.”

sustainable energy to data centres in

JANUARY 2021

39 C A S E S T U D Y: G O O G L E A N D T H E ‘ R E V E R S E A U C T I O N ’

In 2018, Google matched 100 per cent of its global electricity consumption with renewable energy for the second year in a row. Looking to the future, Google recognised that sustaining a 100 percent match would require thinking beyond its historical procurement methods. To continue meeting its users’ needs in a sustainable way, it decided to streamline its renewables procurement process by running reverse auctions (where energy sellers bid for a buyer’s business) for wind and solar projects.

Google’s goal was to find a way to source, negotiate, and sign a large

wave of renewable energy deals in a single, global push.

Google used Enel X’s proprietary reverse auction technology to support its industry-leading commitment to sustainability. As a result of the auctions, Google signed 10 agreements comprising more than 1.2 gigawatts of renewable energy.

Running reverse auctions accelerated its procurement process and allowed it to meet its procurement cost goals.

Source: Andrew Toher, head of customer insights, Enel X UK

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

D ATA C E N T R E S

40

“ Liquid cooling is not a magic bullet for data centres” — Mark Fenton, Future Facilities JANUARY 2021

the long term as this technology continues to advance.”

VIRTUS Data Centres is already using 100 per cent renewable energy.

Solutions director David Watkins believes “if organisations work collectively” the emissions targets can be achieved. And his view of the future beyond is equally rosy. “Hydrogen fuel cells are currently gaining a lot of traction as an energy source, especially for standby power as a potential replacement for diesel generators. Microsoft recently successfully tested a 250kW deployment, which is small for the requirements of a hyperscale data centre but proved that if the technology can be scaled it is a viable option.”

Other solutions on Watkins’ list are ‘free cooling’, running the data halls at warmer temperatures and finding ways to reuse the water used in adiabatic cooling.

Data centres have got 99 problems but a fix ain’t one. Solutions – or potential solutions – abound. As Mark Fenton so succinctly sums up, “Be in no doubt though that the next few years are going to be transformational for data centres and the data centre industry.” te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

41

EPR

ERP: MISSION CRITICAL WRITTEN BY

PADDY SMITH

Threading its way through every business’s digital transformation is successfully implemented enterprise resource planning (ERP) but the challenge is daunting

42

E

nterprise resource planning (ERP) software is the beating heart of a digital-first business.

Necessarily sweeping, complex and notori-

ously difficult to implement, it is a double-headed beast, either creating visibility and ease or chaos

and confusion. Now, with more businesses than ever trying to unify their technological assets under this digital umbrella, it is time to unlock the secrets of successful ERP implementation and bypass the pain of getting it all wrong.

AGILE AND RESPONSIVE The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted challenges in industry processes and connectivity, and placed already pressured customer service and communication under increased strain,” says Andy Campbell, a global solution evangelist at FinancialForce. “Many businesses have been able to meet these challenges in an agile and JANUARY 2021

43

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

Reimagine the impossible

Bring together people, data, and processes to transform your organization.

With the latest in AI technologies, you can engage your customers in new ways, empower your employees more than ever before, and optimize operations to become an industry leader. Start your digital transformation today.

Get started

“ When implementing a new ERP system, it is tempting to take existing business processes and try to replicate them” — Andrew Davies, OGL Software

Software, explains: “When implementing a new ERP system, it is tempting to take existing business processes and

responsive manner, introducing or

try to replicate them. This approach

extending channels to market, and

can lead businesses to be more

coordinating internal and external

focused on software functionality

communication as the workforce

when selecting a new ERP solution, but

adapts to home-based working.

it is more effective to focus on people

Modern ERP systems deliver a plat-

and processes rather than automating

form that supports these extended

existing bad practices.

requirements and can be a real enabler to implementing rapid change.”

Can be, but aren’t necessarily. There

“Another area which is often underestimated is the importance of clean data. Most legacy systems’ data

are mistakes that companies com-

requires cleansing as it is full of old

monly frequently fall foul of. Andrew

products, and out-of-date customer

Davies, lead developer for OGL

and supplier records.”

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

45

EPR

BITE-SIZED CHUNKS Lisa Bowden, head of business development for solutions at Retail Assist, thinks too many companies try to do too much at once. “The risk of undertaking multi-year project implementations are well reported,” she says, “expectations are high and retailers are

“ The risk of undertaking multi-year project implementations are well reported” — Lisa Bowden, Head of Business Development Solutions, Retail Assist

often left disappointed with the length

46

of time it takes to, in some cases, sim-

ERP TO THE CLOUD

ply move from one system to another

It’s also important to embrace a

– delivering like for like, with little reduc-

cloud-based ERP, especially with the

tion of operating costs.”

prospect of hybrid working becoming

Describing this approach as “trying to fit a square ERP peg into a round market”, she says it’s better to deliver your implementation in bite-sized chunks.

“Long project tails can lose sight of the original objectives and change management is used to ‘shoehorn in’ unnecessary modifications. As much as possible, stick to core software functionality and amend your business processes accordingly. Instead, engage in deep reflection on the core values of what makes a business successful and focus more on both the customer and product experience. This will differentiate businesses both now and in the not-too-distant future.”

JANUARY 2021

a permanent feature of business life.

What is ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)?

CLICK TO WATCH

|

1:53

47 John Erik Ellingsen leads Accenture’s intelligent platform services team in the UK. He says, “In this new era of ERP, nimble and flexible cloud-centric ERP solutions based on intelligence will be key. Legacy and heavily customised on-premise solutions will not allow businesses to adapt effectively.

In addition, poor data management will hold companies back. Data will flow in from a vast array of internal and external sources, even including areas such as social media. The introduction of 5G will mean this high volume of data will flow into the business at a relentless te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

EPR

“Covid has been a major wake-up call” — Andy Campbell, FinancialForce

48

pace. The underlying quality of this

customers and suppliers,” he says.

data and the ability to harness it, aug-

“It is a major engagement that does

ment it, find it, secure it and analyse it

not just consider the business pro-

effectively will be what sets organisa-

cess or technology, but also needs

tions apart.”

to understand the impact of human

Neil Andrews, digital transforma-

factors. The ability to analyse, lead,

tion specialist at Sigma Dynamics,

communicate and understand busi-

says a successful ERP implemen-

ness processes, how to change an

tation is as much about people as

organisation and how to implement

software. “Introducing a new ERP

the technology plays a major role in a

system into an organisation is a

successful project, and engaging and

complex undertaking, as it impacts

bringing your teams along with this

most parts of the business, external

change is critical.

JANUARY 2021

S I X S T E P S T O E R P H E AV E N

1. Evaluation of systems and partners

4. Prepare the ground

It is important that a thorough evaluation of the different systems and business processes is carried out to clearly understand the scope and ensure all areas are covered with no missing components. Choosing the right partner is essential to success and in our experience, ensuring the culture aligns, technical capability is proven and that your partner has the right approach and scale to intertwine seamlessly with the operation and provide resource as needed is similarly critical

Start data cleansing and defining data strategies now or as early in the process as possible. It is very important that business process flows, data mapping and test scenarios are developed early in the implementation. These will constitute the basis for the requirements, influence the scope of the project and create the basis for acceptance tests. If not planned early, they will affect the duration of the project and go-live plans 5. Training of users

Ownership of the project from the very top of the business and regular communication across the business as to progress, next steps and early preparation contributes significantly to the project success.

One of the most common reasons for business system projects to fail is the lack of proper training and support for the users. As above, the users need to be brought along in the journey, but poor training can lead to employees rejecting new systems because they simply do not understand them or how their role is impacted

3. Effective resourcing

6. Test, test and then test again

As a partner in such project delivery, our customers look for our A-Team.

Resourcing within the customer team needs equivalent subject matter experts (SME) and if necessary, backfilling these roles whilst they commit to the project itself

Rigorous testing is more than just a hygiene factor. Developing a testing strategy is a critical success factor in ERP implementation. Testing is important to be done before the system is put into operation and serves as proof that the target image and requirements are met

2. Careful planning and communication

Source: Neil Andrews, Sigma Dynamics

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

49

EPR

50

CHOOSE VANILLA

course, introducing changes to the

“In recent years, the willingness to

software should certainly be consid-

adopt vanilla or standard ‘configured’

ered where it supports a company’s

functionality in favour of development

unique proposition or delivers real

has increased, and can improve time

competitive edge.”

to delivery, reduce risk and cost over-

ERP software is increasingly in

all. This willingness to adapt business

demand, across a wider range of sec-

processes in line with industry and

tors and business types. For Andy

sector best practice avoids unneces-

Campbell, “Covid has been a major

sary development, and benefits all. Of

wake-up call”, particularly for those

JANUARY 2021

“The willingness to adopt vanilla or standard ‘configured’ functionality in favour of development has increased”

— Neil Andrews, Sigma Dynamics

still relying on legacy on-premise sys-

mobile, and enable collaboration

tems. “It has shown businesses that

and sharing. Additionally, there must

legacy software will no longer cut it

be a willingness to embrace change

and the weaknesses of relying on bolt-

and adopt new ways of working,

on systems and spreadsheets have

particularly with AI and advanced

been cruelly exposed.

technology continuing to grow. If this

“As a result of the pandemic, organi-

is achieved, services will continue

sations have come to the realisation

to develop, and the importance of

that the systems they use now must

a joined-up approach will become

enable remote working, embrace

even greater.” te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

51

T O P 10

SMART CITIES 52

Technology magazine analyses the latest rankings to produce a blended list of the smartest cities in the world – combining data from the IESE Cities In Motion Index (July 2020) and Smart Cities Index Report (September 2020) WRITTEN BY

SCOTT BIRCH

JANUARY 2021

53

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

T O P 10

39

COMBINED SCORE

54

10

35 IESE

4

SCIR

Auckland New Zealand

Auckland’s already impressive smart city vision got a further boost since these rankings were published. New Zealand’s largest telco and digital services company has introduced 5G and a host of IoT technology for the heart of the city. These include solar-powered benches with phone electric scooter charging points, smart street lighting that can be controlled remotely to save energy, and smart bins that show when they need emptying. 5G connected CCTV cameras could also be used to automatically notify authorities of traffic accidents. Smart safety.

JANUARY 2021

09

Taipei Taiwan

Taipei Smart City Project Management Office (PMO) was established to transform the Taiwanese city, building a platform to connect industry and government resources to develop smart solutions and make Taipei a ‘living lab’. Since its launch in 2016, PMO has developed 66 smart city projects, from smart parking to tracking stray dogs.

Taipei is also due to host the 2021 Smart City Summit & Expo (March 23-26), likely to be a hybrid affair. One of the hot topics will be the emergence of artificial intelligence and Smart City 2.0 – integrating AI into services alongside IoT.

35

COMBINED SCORE

27 IESE

8

SCIR

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

55

The Department of Defense trusts the cloud with the most tools, technology, and accessibility at the tactical edge.

www.BuildOn.aws

T O P 10

24

COMBINED SCORE

08

22 IESE

2

SCIR 57

Helsinki Finland

Ranked second by SCIR, the Finnish capital is a city on the rise. The Helsinki-Uusimaa region is developing leading-edge technologies while putting great emphasis on the environment and sustainability. There has been significant innovation in self-driving vehicles, drones, smart health, hydrogen technology, robotics, cyber security and more.

“Helsinki’s goal is to be the most functional city in the world,” said Jan Vapaavuori, Mayor of Helsinki. “Our success in this new ranking shows that we are moving determinedly in the right direction. The results also indicate how the importance of technology utilisation in cities has grown during the coronavirus epidemic, in a way that will likely remain permanent.” te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

T O P 10

07

Amsterdam The Netherlands

Amsterdam has a reputation as a progressive city in many ways, and the adoption of smart practices is no exception. Amsterdam Smart City is an open innovation platform that was launched in 2009 with a decade-long mission to create a cleaner, greener and happier city using data and technology to increase quality of life. There are many success stories that justify the ranking, including the forming of AMS Institute – bringing together engineers, scientists and designers to develop metropolitan solutions. Recent innovations include autonomous boats (to further reduce traffic from Amsterdam’s streets), and forward-thinking designs for large-scale urban farms.

58

17

COMBINED SCORE JANUARY 2021

8

IESE

9

SCIR

17

COMBINED SCORE

06

12 IESE

5

SCIR

Oslo

Norway

With a relatively small population of just over one million, in many ways Oslo is the perfect testing ground for new technologies – from electrical buses and zero-emission construction sites, to circlebased waste management and green energy systems.

Mobility hubs promote the use, and sharing, of electric vehicles.

Energy positive buildings generate more energy than they use. Open data, the key to many smart city concepts, is also boosting innovation and entrepreneurs are able to lever these data to create even smarter solutions. te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

59

Pack the essentials for your business trip: Laptop Charger Business insights Payment solutions

From T&E expertise to business insights to payment solutions, the American Express Corporate Program gives you all the tools and services you need, so you’re fully prepared for business wherever you are.

To learn more about the American Express Corporate Program, visit www.americanexpress.com.

T O P 10

05

London

United Kingdom

London came top in the IESE rankings but only managed 15th spot with SCIR, meaning it enters the Technology chart at five. According to the Cities in Motion Index, London came top thanks to factors including international projection and human capital. Of the 9 criteria measured, London ranked highly in 7, only falling down when it came to social cohesion and the environment. London Mayor Sadiq Khan launched the Smarter London Together initiative in 2018, with the aim to make London the smartest city on the world. According to IESE, at least, mission accomplished.

16

COMBINED SCORE

1

IESE

15 SCIR

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

61

T O P 10

14

COMBINED SCORE

11 IESE

3

SCIR

62

04

Zurich

Switzerland

Switzerland’s largest city scored highly with SCIR in particular on a number of factors put into sharper focus by Covid-19 – healthcare and safety. Zurich also has excellent education, efficient transport systems, culture and open spaces that make it an attractive place to live – but what of its tech? Well, it all began with a simple, and ingenious, concept – the Smart City Tower. This streetlight only came on when required, could charge electric cars, measure traffic, provide WiFi, collect data, and could even find you a parking spot. Now, if only every streetlight had that functionality.

JANUARY 2021

03

New York City

United States of America

The city that never sleeps is a city that has to work smart, so it’s little wonder to see the Big Apple high on this list. What is perhaps surprising is that NYC is the only city in North America that makes the Top 10.

New York is using smart city technology to tackle water quality, public safety, waste management and more. The office of technology and innovation leads projects such as smart street lighting, trash bins, and many of the usual suspects.

So what pushes New York up the rankings? Pushing those concepts further, and thinking bigger – something in the city’s DNA. So waste bins called Bigbellys not only monitor levels and send alerts but also come with solar-powered compactors so they have five times the capacity of traditional trash bins.

Any fan of TV cop shows will also love the HunchLab – software that uses historical data and terrain modelling to predict where and when crime may occur. The twoyear trial was a huge success and significantly lowered violent crime in the city.

We also love LinkNYC that is converting payphones into smart zones – a free wifi hotspot with an android tablet for browsing the internet or making free phone calls across the US, and handy charging points for personal phones. So smart, they named it twice.

12

COMBINED SCORE

2

IESE

10 SCIR

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

63

E M E A | A PAC | N O RT H A M E R I CA

AMERICAS APAC FIND|OUT MORE | EMEA

FIND OUT MORE

T O P 10

66

02

Copenhagen Denmark

Copenhagen is famously “wonderful, wonderful” (if the 1952 film Hans Christian Anderson is to be believed) and the good folks at both IESE and SCIR seem to agree, with the Danish city ranking sixth in both reports.

The Danish capital is already one of the happiest places on the planet thanks to short work days, a healthy environment, and free further education.

While the Paris Agreement has seen countries commit to being carbon neutral by 2050, Copenhagen is being more ambitious – hoping to be the first carbon-neutral city by 2025. That target is being helped by Smart City Copenhagen, a ‘lab’ covering the entire city.

Around 250 companies are working on smart city initiatives and while many of these are startups, you also have the likes of Cisco Systems working with three municipalities to develop IoT-based citizen services and solutions.

While the initial aim may be environmental, the tools for success are pure smart city tech.

JANUARY 2021

67

Copenhagen Vacation Travel Guide | Expedia CLICK TO WATCH

|

3:58

12

COMBINED SCORE

6

IESE

6

SCIR te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

T O P 10

10

COMBINED SCORE

9

IESE

1

SCIR

68

Smart Nation - Transforming Singapore Through Technology CLICK TO WATCH

JANUARY 2021

|

1:30

Singapore The Lion City has roared to the top of the Smart City rankings, mainly thanks to the number-one position from SCIR. The timing of the report is interesting, as at the time, Singapore was considered to be handling the pandemic particularly well.

That survey asked citizens for their perceptions of the impact technology has on their lives, in terms of governance, health, mobility.

This year, the IMD, in collaboration with Singapore University for Technology and Design (SUTD), has included key findings on how technology is playing a role in the Covid-19 era. The index shows that those cities with better technology are handling the pandemic better.

Singapore has invested heavily to achieve its smartest city status, to the tune of around US$2 billion since the Smart nation initiative was launched in 2014.

The small island nation was well equipped for a healthcare crisis and had already put a number of measures in place that put it ahead of the competition. By 2050, almost half of the population will be aged 65 or over and to tackle the ageing population TeleHealth video consultations are commonplace, while TeleRehab wearable tech allows people to be monitored while at home. There are even AI-powered chatbots to talk to elderly people to help prevent loneliness.

But it’s not just in healthcare where Singapore is super smart. Singapore is app central, which helps when around 90% of people have a smartphone.

From monitoring traffic to hailing a self-driving taxi – there’s an app for that.

How about two initiatives – AI for Everyone and AI for Industry – upskilling some 12,000 people, and the Virtual Singapore 3D digital model that can run simulations and make everything even smarter?

It’s going to take something special to knock Singapore from its perch in 2021.

te c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

69

70

COVID-19 and Digital Transformation: A HCL PERSPECTIVE WRITTEN BY

OLIVER JAMES FREEMAN PRODUCED BY

THOMASÂ LIVERMORE

JANUARY 2021

71

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

HCL TECHNOLOGIES

Eric Cohan, CPO of HCL Technologies, discusses supply chain resilience and the digital acceleration caused by COVID-19

W

hen COVID-19 came knocking, industry leaders all over the world found themselves both shocked and, in many cases,

slightly puzzled. Never before in their lifetimes had a naturally-occurring event like this cropped 72

up, so the question, “What do we do?� was prevalent across every sector - especially across the global supply chain network that allows modern society to thrive in the way that they do.

The same was true for HCL Technologies, a leading IT services company that assists global enterprises in the reimagination and digital transformation of their business operations and infrastructure. The multinational company uses and sells technological products and services that have been built on four decades of innovation - an innovation that thrives under the watchful eye of a world-renowned management philosophy, a brazen culture of invention and risk-taking, and a relentless focus on customer-centricity.

JANUARY 2021

73

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

Curvature, global leader in independent IT maintenance and support, allows forward-thinking leaders of data centres to realize their business ambitions for the digital economy.

Curvature, one of HCL Technologies’ Strategic Partners, works hand in hand with HCL to provide intelligent alternatives to vendor IT maintenance and support, allowing world class organisations to achieve their digital ambitions without compromise.

Learn more

A Curvature and HCL Collaboration - The VP of Sales Perspective Christo Conidaris, VP of Sales for Curvature, sat down to discuss the ongoing partnership between his own company and HCL Technologies, and supply chain.

Christo Conidaris, Vice President of Sales for Curvature, (now a Park Place Technology company), the global leader in independent IT maintenance and support for storage, server, and network hardware, jumped in the Supply Chain Digital hot seat recently to discuss Curvature’s ongoing partnership with HCL Technologies, and his thoughts about the state of global supply chain networks.

The industry-leading Vice President of Sales finds himself overseeing Curvature’s EMEA sales, and rather uniquely, rolling up his sleeves and fostering some of the strongest relationships in the industry today. One such relationship comes in the form of Curvature’s tight-knit partnership with HCL Technologies, an Indian multinational information technology services and consulting firm.

“We have different tiers of salespeople all over the world. I’ve spent a lot of time working alongside them, and we’ve worked very closely with HCL Technologies’ staff to ensure that HCL is always successful as a company with us.

There are two reasons for that. The first: the

Copy will go here

propositions that HCL bring us are always complex - they’re never straightforward and simple, often because they need to make tough decisions very quickly, in order to maintain their competitive edge.”

“The second reason: it’s important for us to achieve a strong partnership together, and my role is really to foster that and make sure that business understanding can flow between the two companies. Ultimately, we can meet the objectives of the company, and HCL can meet the objectives of their campaign. It’s about making sure those two aspects come together.”

On fostering a strong relationship, Christo stated, “One of the things that really gets me excited about working for Curvature is its customercentric approach. And HCL is reassuringly similar.

Let me elaborate. When HCL take on a customer, they put several people on the task, and they push until they’ve provided everything requested.

I think that’s part of the success story. When somebody asks why it works so well between Curvature and HCL, I would say that it’s because we have the same vision for the customer.”

Learn more

HCL TECHNOLOGIES

“ I would say that not a lot of innovation has accelerated.

It was more about accelerating investments in existing technologies” — Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies 76

JANUARY 2021

The company’s prolific, first Chief Procurement Officer (CPO), Eric Cohan, the man in control of HCL’s end-to-end supply chain, took the time to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on HCL Technologies’ year, and his own personal experience of the ‘new norm’. Stating that his team supports both its customers and HCL employees directly, Eric shared that “[HCL] had several major themes of issues to deal with related to COVID. One was

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Eric Cohan Title: Chief Procurement Officer Industry: Information Technology & Services Eric is HCL’s Chief Procurement Officer. In this role, he leads HCL’s global procurement and supply chain organization in delivering Category Management, Sourcing, and Procurement Operations for all external spend categories (Technology, Labor, Facilities, Travel, HR, Marketing, etc.) In addition, Eric sits on the U.S. employee benefits council and chairs the HCL 401k Investment committee.

Prior to joining HCL, Eric worked for Accenture, most recently leading the Americas Procurement organization where he was accountable for Sourcing & Category Management, Procurement Operations, and Payables across the Americas region. Simultaneously, he served as the Global Sourcing & Category Management process lead in addition to the Global IT Category Director.

Prior to these roles, Eric held a variety of leadership positions within Accenture’s Procurement Business Process Outsourcing organization directing global teams of category-specific resources in delivering procurement services to Accenture’s end clients.

Prior to Accenture, Eric spent over 10 years at Dell, most recently as their first Executive Director of IT Procurement.

Preceding this, he held several position in Dell’s IT department, leading both application and engineering teams.

Prior to Dell, Eric spent 8 years in Accenture’s (Andersen Consulting) Supply Chain practice.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Operations Research & Industrial Engineering from Cornell University’s College of Engineering.

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

77

YOUR BUSINESS NEVER STOPS. Flexible technology for a scalable world.

DellTechnologies.com

A Dell Technologies and HCL Collaboration: In Conversation with Rod Gardner Rod Gardner, Senior Director at Dell Technologies, discusses the special relationship between Dell and HCL Technologies, and ‘going digital’.

Rod Gardner, Senior Director at Dell Technologies and a pivotal figure in the industry-leading behemoth’s Global Alliances business unit, took the time to sit down with Supply Chain Digital to discuss one of the company’s most critical partnerships with HCL Technologies and the synergies that fuel their powerful collaboration, as well as his thoughts about global supply chain networks and the growing trend of ‘going digital’.

emerging technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, and data analytics, within their own framework. “At Dell, we’re able to match that methodology head-on through the provision of technological means,” Rod added. In essence, Dell provides HCL Technologies with the infrastructure and technology needed, and HCL then re-wraps it with their own label and deliver it to some of the largest customers in the world.

“I think the most important thing in a business relationship is trust. There’s a lot of trust between our organisations at every level, from the top-down.

The CEO, all the way down to our field account teams, are working together. When I think about the synergies between Dell and HCL, I’m reminded that our mission at Dell is to drive human progress, as the essential infrastructure company. The synergy with HCL is their ability to take what we bring to the market and make it special for their end-users, with their own label and intellectual property.”

With constantly evolving technological capabilities at both companies, the future looks bright for the Dell Technologies and HCL Technologies collaboration. “The unique aspect, when it comes to Dell and HCL, is that HCL is able to have that end-to-end conversation with customers that we’re working on together. Afterwards, Dell can deliver not only the infrastructure needed for the on-prem private cloud component of a multi-cloud world but also the enabling technology that makes even the public cloud hyperscaler-space operate better - and HCL is using all of it.”

“If you look at HCL’s business model, they have the Mode 1-2-3 Strategy,” which allows HCL to help its global clients map and navigate their transformational journeys, fuelling them with

“That’s the biggest trend that will continue to affect how we collaborate.”

Learn more

HCL TECHNOLOGIES

“ Every individual is the CEO of their position” 80

— Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies

enabling our employees, which was

We had to figure out how to get those

[indirectly an effort to] extend our sup-

machines to the employees’ homes,”

port to customers”. And, just like many

Eric added. Getting those machines

organisations around the world, that

from the office to employees’ homes

led to another question entirely: “How

“only solves one-third of the problem.

do we get our employees the technol-

We had two-thirds of the [workforce]

ogy they need at home. That was the

that didn’t have any technology

big challenge. A lot of our 100k Indian

because we had to choose one person

based employees don’t have their own

to get the desktop. So, we had to go

technology assigned to them.”

and procure a lot of laptops – us and

HCL runs a 24-7 or 24-5 opera-

everybody else in the world. Our cus-

tion, depending on the job role, and

tomers also needed the appropriate

employees “share a desk and [equip-

technology for their employees, which

ment], and they all come in on shifts.

we had to procure on their behalf.”

JANUARY 2021

1976

Year founded

$9.95bn Revenue in US dollars

153,085 Number of employees

The rapid adoption of new norms, which many companies collapsed whilst trying to manage, was tough for the greater majority. For HCL though, while there was an obvious strain, their supply chain was already relatively resilient to the effects of the pandemic.

The company successfully procured nearly a hundred thousand laptops and relevant equipment for their own staff as well as their customers’.

“Fortunately, we have a multi-vendor, multi-channel, multi-solution approach to solving a lot of these problems,” Eric told me. “We don’t rely on just one

HCL Microsoft Relationship and Expertise CLICK TO WATCH

|

1:31

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

81

Excellence Congratulations HCL Technologies on all of your accomplishments!

We thank you for the great partnership and wish you continued success.

The Catanella Institutional Consulting Team For more information on our 401k Institutional Consulting Services please give us a call.

215-972-6826

800-345-7941 toll free

Click here to find out more information about Our Team

Š UBS 2019. All rights reserved. UBS Financial Services Inc. is a subsidiary of UBS AG. Member FINRA/ SIPC. CJ-UBS-1574118747 Exp.: 10/31/2020

“ In India, HCL is a huge brand. People know it just as well as CocaCola or Apple. We’re at that level over there - a household name” — Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies hardware vendor, [nor do we] rely on

they instead choose to streamline the supply chain by finding an all-in-one solution. In hindsight, HCL, through its sophisticated systems, wasn’t overdependent on an individual provider to fuel their business economy.

“All we really needed to do is flex those muscles and leverage all those connections that we’ve already established, in order to put [the correct adjustments] in place.”

one distributor or on one value-added

Not to say that HCL Technologies

reseller. [HCL] has lots of partners

has found the pandemic ‘easy’, but it

globally - be it Dell, HP, Lenovo as

certainly seems to be the case that

OEMs or Insight and Egiss as reseller

the company has acted as a trailblazer

partners, for example.”

and shown organisations across the

We honed in on that particular

globe exactly how they can transform

element; the businesses that have struggled the most in 2020 tend to be those that feature very rigid, robust supply chains of yesteryear - the ones that haven’t yet evolved through the blessings of digital transformation.

HCL had, even prior to COVID-19, a diverse portfolio of suppliers and partners, which allowed them to quickly respond to supply and demand issues.

It’s something that, in many cases, business leaders lament, classing a multi-system as overcomplicated and t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

83

HCL TECHNOLOGIES

into agile, resilient stalwarts. Maybe

haven’t.” Organisations were forced to

they’ll release a guidebook one day.

adapt their technological arsenal and

On the question of digital transfor-

adopt new norms and values but “most

mation being accelerated by a decade

of the capabilities that our customers

during 2020, Eric wasn’t so sure. “The

are asking us to develop and accel-

suggestion that we’ve accelerated by

erate are not necessarily, new and

that vast amount of time implies that

innovative; it’s more about how we can

the COVID-19 made us invent futuristic

apply existing technologies to remote-

technologies - in reality, though, we

access purposes. I would say that not

“ HCL had a couple of major themes of issues to deal with, with COVID. One was enabling 84 our employees, which was indirectly an effort to extend our support to customers” — Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies

JANUARY 2021

a lot of innovation has accelerated. It

teams across the globe which allowed

was more about accelerating invest-

them to rapidly respond to the pan-

ments in existing technologies.”

demic, were ultimately beneficial for

Investments can go either way and,

the company. Not just for the ‘boots

in Eric’s case, when HCL released

on the ground’. HCL announced a net

its FY21 second-quarter figures on

income of US$424mn, up 12.7 per cent

the 16th October, it was revealed that

year-on-year - exponential growth in

their prudent financial decisions and

a time period of uncertainty. Naturally,

the nimble mentality he’s instilled in

from an outsider’s perspective, you’d assume that this - alongside the fact that HCL Technologies has been the fastest-growing large technology company globally for four years in a row - would have something to do with the technologies that it has access to.

Speaking of the “technological arsenal”, Eric notioned that it’s neither cloud adoption, digital transformation or next-gen technology that is truly revolutionising the system currently. In response to the suggestion, the CPO stated that “It’s none of those. It’s actually HCL’s business architecture. Our architecture has multiple lines of business - IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud-based services, included.” But Eric was quick to clarify that it isn’t the technology itself that is transforming the company - it’s the people in charge of the tech. At HCL Technologies, t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

85

Helping you navigate changes for the better.

We’re here to help you achieve business continuity every step of the way.

Learn more at adp.com/enterpriseforward

“ We are currently the digital technology partner for both Manchester United and Cricket Australia and have been a highly visible participant at the World Economic Forum, amongst other things. So we get seen, and we’d like to find ways to increase that visibility. That’s the future for us” — Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies

that they do whatever they think is

there is an ethos that “every individual

wrong; most of the time they go right.

is the CEO of their position”. In a

You have to have a certain amount of

workplace that implements that very

flexibility to find out.

best - which is often the very best for the company too. Sometimes things go

modern and unique mindset, there’s

Sinking cash into a diverse and

a degree of freedom within the ranks

dynamic business architecture and

which allows staff to flex their skills in

the subsequent infrastructure is

whichever way they see fit, to ensure

incredibly important in companies of

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

87

HCL TECHNOLOGIES

the future, especially in an era where employees are heavily focused on development, freedom, and opportunity. “Our business architecture... We have multiple lines of business. So we have all those technologies you mentioned, and we have big bets that we’ve made in those, both organic and inorganic. We’re involved in every industry. If you look at our industry split, it’s not like we’re 80% one industry. Our largest one is less than 25%,” Eric added.

88

Workforce Management Simplified We specialize in managing pre-identified contractors, driving cost savings to our clients. Let us manage statutory requirements, worker classification and contractual relationships for pre-identified employees, independent contractors and 3rd party suppliers.

LEARN MORE

hit, and they were able to put up a very strong, resilient defence against the effects of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. “I don’t think there’s going to be anything massively changing strategically across the next 24-months. However, we will see an increase in our local hiring at both the experienced and entry-level ranks; as such, you’ll see an increase in brand awareness on campuses and other hiring channels.

“In India, HCL is a huge brand.

People know it just as well as CocaWith all of this in mind, it’s clear

Cola or Apple. We’re at that level

that while some industry-leaders are

over there - a household name. In the

focused on implementing certain

Western nations - where most of our

technological elements into their

revenues come from - our custom-

business operations, spreading your

ers and prospects know us, but we

investments across several technolo-

aren’t as well known. We are currently

gies, as well as your human assets

the digital technology partner for

is potentially a wiser move. Create a

both Manchester United and Cricket

wider web and infiltrate all of the mar-

Australia and have been a highly vis-

kets, in other words.

ible participant at the World Economic

Looking to the future, Eric doesn’t

Forum, amongst other things. So we

think that we’ll see HCL Technologies

get seen, and we’d like to find ways

changing its strategies up too much.

to increase that visibility. That’s the

Fortunately, as we now know, the com-

future for us.”

pany had already prepared a diverse supply chain years before COVID-19 t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

89

90

Moving up to the hybrid cloud WRITTEN BY

DAN BRIGHTMORE PRODUCED BY

CRAIG KILLINGBACK

JANUARY 2021

91

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

NTT LTD.

How NTT Ltd. is helping CIO/VPs and CFOs achieve business continuity, compliance, and security with the delivery of business-critical applications in the hybrid cloud

NTT Ltd. is an integral part of the global growth story of Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) – one of the largest telcos and ICT companies in the world. In the Americas, NTT Ltd. employs more than 7,500 people 92

in a diverse and dynamic workplace. As part of a larger global organization, they have a footprint that spans 57 countries while delivering services in over 200 countries and regions.

“Being the number three data center provider with one of the largest networks in the world, and providing over 50% of global internet traffic, puts us in a unique position to provide our clients with an unparalleled solution set of infrastructure, network, and security allied to application expertise,” explains Kirk Compton, Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd. “Being a global SAP and Oracle partner, allows us to provide full-stack services for our clients connected globally with all of our low latency networks from marine cables linking Asia to the US market.”

JANUARY 2021

93

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

Do More With Data MSP Solutions to Accelerate Your Cloud Services Everyone knows that an organization’s success is driven by its data. Pure Storage delivers a modern data experience supporting businesses Data Transformation projects.

Our solutions empowers your business to drive differentiation,reduce complexity, and enable your hybrid cloud.

NTT Managed Services and Pure Storage partner together for providing world-class storage solutions and enable managed IT operations, application hosting, security, cloud and comprehensive managed multicloud services to enterprises worldwide.

Learn More

Pure Storage: Data delivered at scale anywhere, everywhere

Jack Hogan @ Pure Storage

Discover a better way to interact with your data through storage that’s modern, easy to manage and offers flexible ways to consume Pure Storage is driving the simplicity and disruption of access to storage. Futureproofing its capabilities of simplicity, performance and ease of use allows users to be ready for the next generation of technology consumption in the cloud.

“Companies are accelerating their digital transformation journeys, but lack the skills to achieve the best outcome,” warns Jack Hogan, Pure’s Vice President of Technology Strategy.

“NTT is where that expertise is; they can help companies get to those faster outcomes by leveraging solutions like Pure Storage where we’re seeing shutdowns around the world.

A partner like NTT is critical to both provide the venue and the expertise to accelerate transformation, and allow companies the ability to be flexible in these challenging times.”

Pure offers a utility consumption model, supported by its partnership with NTT, to deliver services and solutions to joint customers focused on driving better outcomes rather than just selling products says Hogan.

“Underpinning everything we do is an all-flash technology layer that allows us to achieve sub-millisecond level response times to better manage ERP workloads down from hours to minutes.”

A Modern Data Experience In today’s world, data is the new fuel, the growth engine. However, being able to effectively access and leverage insights from that data is one of the biggest challenges companies now face. “At Pure we’re focused on creating a modern data experience,” reveals Hogan. “As much as 75% of a company’s data is never unutilized, so it’s vital to get a centralized view. Our suite of solutions and services extends both to the on-premise data centre and all the way to the edge via the cloud, offering a centralized storage platform and storage plane.”

Pure & Simple The Purity operating system operates across all of Pure’s platforms which are controlled via SaaS with Pure1. “Companies can see where their data is in all venues; whether different tiers of storage in an individual data center, or across different data centers, or even across different clouds,” pledges Hogan. “Pure is creating that interconnected tissue of how those different data points can come together as one central data hub.”

purestorage.com

NTT LTD.

“ One of the biggest issues in the market today is data latency. We start at ground level making sure your network is secure and your data is not disrupted.”

— Kirk Compton, Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.

Client Centricity Compton credits the successful disruption of companies like Uber for ushering in a business climate where if you’re not digitally transforming you could get left behind.

“We’ve had to adjust how we support our clients so we can help them with their design of the future,” he responds, noting that NTT’s clients today are looking for more than servers, storage and network capacity. “Our clients want business outcomes. They’re looking for ways to be nimble, and really execute against their

96

digital transformation strategies… Whether it’s growth within the US market, growth globally, or being able to interact with a more client-centric offering shifting from what used to be B2B2C to a more B2C approach as supply chains are disrupted.”

Banking, retail and manufacturing, to name just a few, are all sectors responding to, and ripe for, disruption following the impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

Compton believes this very pressure is expediting the kind of business transformations a purpose-led organisation like NTT excels at. “In current circumstances, it’s a more powerful change than ever, being able to manage your workforce, whether it’s working from home or managing them JANUARY 2021

97

5G & IOT Over the last four years, NTT has been in joint venture with Dell Technologies for the city of Las Vegas looking at 5G and IoT solutions for Smart Cities and remains at the forefront of these technologies through its Japanese market leading mobile operator DoCoMo. “What we’re starting to look at with 5G is how to bring siloed data platforms together.

How are cities utilizing all of the data that’s available to them to be

able to help first responders; to help with city services, provide data to city planners for smart building initiatives and to other organisations that need data to help their citizens?

A lot of our work has been around artificial intelligence and machine learning. They become successful when IoT and 5G and other technologies are aligned to the extent that they can provide data at the right time to the right people to make the right decisions.”

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

NTT LTD.

safely in a manufacturing facility,” he says.

application workloads are structured –

“In supporting those points of contact

whether they’re on premise, inside their

we’ve become the number one cyber-

four walls, co-located in another data

security company in the world capable of

center, or if they’re using Software-as-

adapting to meet our clients’ needs.”

a-Service applications (SaaS) – the data is spread across a multitude of

98

Continuity, Compliance & Security

networks along with the users,” he

The fundamental elements of connectivity

the market today is data latency. We

are network and security Compton says.

start at ground level making sure your

“At every organization, the way their

network is secure and your data is not

notes. “One of the biggest issues in

Executive Profile:

Kirk Compton Title: VP Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd. Industry: Information Technology & Services

Kirk Compton has a proven track record of continued success in delivering growth in global and regional leadership roles. A market leader in client focused solution development, delivery and management, Compton drives enterprise growth by aligning corporate strategy ahead of market conditions and ever-changing technology solutions. He has held expansive roles at NTT Ltd. providing global, regional, and vertical leadership across multiple technology platforms – including ERP, hyperscalers, private cloud and most recently Smart Solutions.

Together we do great things CLICK TO WATCH | 1:32

99

“ What we’re starting to look at with 5G is how to bring siloed data platforms together. How are cities utilizing all of the data that’s available to them to be able to help first responders; to help with city services, provide data to city planners for smart building initiatives and to other organizations that need data to help their citizens?”

— Kirk Compton, Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.

disrupted. SaaS is a great opportunity for most organizations to transform, but being able to utilize data effectively and make sure our clients are performing at an optimal level really starts at the data center and the network.”

To deliver this continuity, NTT has experts on hand across the Americas working to the highest-level certifications across multiple verticals “whether it be Federal government, PCI or HIPAA” to guarantee a reliable infrastructure for its clients.

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

No other SAP global partner offers Cisco’s breadth of innovations designed to power SAP environments.

Cisco SAP portfolio includes: Cisco UCS and HyperFlex integrates compute, storage, and network for cloud-like flexibility.

Cisco Tetration offers comprehensive workloadprotection capability across multicloud Cisco Intersight cloud-based manager simplifies SAP environments, making them more efficient.

Cisco Workload Optimization Manager (CWOM) scales resources up or down assuring workload performance.

AppDynamicsÂŽ SAP Monitoring Agent provides ABAP level visibility to diagnose root-cause failure and overall application performance Thousand Eyes offers a 360-degree view of your hybrid SAP deployment across cloud, SaaS, and the Internet to SAP end-users

Cisco: The leading global partner for SAP innovation Cisco offers the broadest portfolio of solutions designed to modernise on-premise and hybrid cloud SAP landscapes.

SAP is the critical operational backbone of most enterprises and often their largest IT investment.

Enterprise line of business managers demand agility to meet evolving customer requirements without compromising on security or reliability.

How do SAP enterprises protect that investment while modernising their infrastructure without disrupting established business processes?

Cisco’s tried and tested suite of SAP solutions can add new functionality to existing investments and improve performance while reducing TCO with an end-to-end modernisation approach.

Compute, Network & Software “We have the complete portfolio for SAP customers so they don’t have to deal with multiple vendors,” assures Cisco’s Saroj Mohapatra. “Cisco takes investment protection very seriously. From the beginning, our solutions have been built to provide excellent value with scalability and agility. Cisco’s flexibility allows customers to start small and incrementally grow their suite of solutions, investing only when they need to with an approach that saves on CapEx and reduces OpEx.” Cisco modernises SAP HANA and SAP legacy ERP application environments with solutions for

on-premise and multi-cloud platforms offering unified management and monitoring, multi-layered data protection, cybersecurity and policy-based automation. “Compared to our competitors we shine because we look after the network for you; resolving any issues with latency to guarantee the response time needed for best practice with SAP, both today and in the future as customers migrate to HANA,” adds Mohapatra.

Cisco is also working closely with SAP to leverage the power of AI and IoT. Elsewhere, recent acquisitions, such as AppDynamics, work seamlessly with existing solutions to detect performance issues with mission critical applications like SAP. ThousandEyes, another addition to the Cisco arsenal, offers SaaS flexibility to enhance Cisco’s network performance and monitoring capabilities across the enterprise and into the cloud.

Together, NTT, with its SAP consulting expertise, and Cisco deliver a modern and resilient solution to identify SAP customers’ needs to fuel success with competitive value.

Learn more about a robust portfolio of end-to-end SAP solutions here

NTT LTD.

“ As hybrid cloud and digital transformation become a top priority for companies, we’ve got the automation and the capabilities to help them really drive growth and transformation.”

102

— Kirk Compton, Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.

data centers,” reveals Compton. “This creates a unique opportunity for us to provide our clients with a dedicated private environment in the same data center where we’re providing hyperscaled services.” Compton explains that being able to cross connect the environments inside the same facilities provides an optimal performance platform where digital latency is significantly reduced.

“Having this network acumen and expertise really puts us in the forefront of hybrid cloud,” he adds. “We can bring all of our other services – whether it be application workload, security, wide area

Hybrid Cloud

network or network-as-a-service – in a

“Traditionally, you had to buy the infra-

combination that’s unique in the market

structure to be able to grow your data

via a platform our clients can trust.”

platforms,” remembers Compton. “And now you can get those on demand.

Partnering for Success

When we look at hybrid cloud… we’re

A key component in NTT’s global

a data center company. We’ve got pri-

success and building that trust over

vate clouds for our clients, but we also

the past 23 years has been the com-

support the hyperscalers.”

pany’s alliance with Cisco. “We have

NTT recently announced a strategic

enjoyed an extensive partnership over

relationship with Microsoft with the

the years,” confirms Compton. “What’s

company moving much of its internal

been really exciting is how we’ve

workloads to the Azure cloud. “As part

grown together. My experience with

of that agreement, Azure is inside our

Cisco began when we were building

JANUARY 2021

WHAT THE STACK! Any organization’s needs can be met with one NTT Ltd. solution covering Enterprise Application Services; Managed Services and Managed Cloud, Data Center Network, Infrastructure and physical kit: • Digital Advisory services • Project implementation services • Application managed services • Administration services • Database managed services •O perating system managed services • Infrastructure managed services • Hardware managed services • Data Center managed services t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

103

NTT LTD.

Our best advice for 2021 CLICK TO WATCH | 1:21

104

our cloud platforms for SAP workloads.

They helped us design and build the cloud infrastructure for our Africa and Asia operations. And then as the market matured, and the shift in digital transformation occurred, Cisco has been a great partner in regards to how they build their networking services, and

1952

Year NTT founded

USD11bn NTT Ltd. global revenue

how we’ve been able to leverage their IoT capabilities.”

Cisco’s solutions, including recent acquisitions AppDynamics and ThousandEyes, are helping NTT JANUARY 2021

40,000

Number of NTT Ltd. employees globally

105

manage workloads from a top to bottom

2021 and beyond…

perspective with their networking capa-

NTT remains focused on maintain-

bilities and monitoring prowess. “With

ing secure networks and giving its

our stack we provide the network and

clients the ability to scale to support

security around Cisco’s UCS (Unified

increased demand. While organiza-

Computing System) infrastructure which,

tions look to meet the challenges of

in tandem with offerings from the likes

the ‘new normal’ triggered by a global

of Pure Storage and Cohesity, creates a

pandemic leaving millions working

unique opportunity where we can really

from home, NTT are on hand to deliver

drive a lot of these solutions together

the right collaboration tools to allow

paired with ERP applications to realize

them to thrive. Looking beyond to a

the outcomes our clients are looking for,”

post-COVID world, the company is

assures Compton.

working with SAP on the deadline t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

awaKen your DaTa The only data center CPU with builtin AI acceleration. The latest 2nd Gen IntelÂŽ XeonÂŽ Scalable processors feature Intel Deep Learning Boost to accelerate your AI inference up to 30x*.

learn more

*Compared to previous generation hardware. For more complete information about performance and benchmark results, visit www.intel.com/benchmarks

The CollaboraTive Power of The eCosysTem Delivering suCCess As an industry leader with the purpose to create world-changing technology that enriches the lives of every person on earth, Intel has been and is at the forefront of technology growth and development, catering for all business solution needs.

Through a broad ecosystem, Intel is focused on delivering an end-to-end data portfolio that stretches from the edge to the cloud, powered by artificial intelligence all while being more secure.

All of this is enabled and achieved through the strong collaboration of the ecosystem mentioned.

An often overlooked though integral part of the ecosystem is the Service Integrators (SI), also known as Solution Integrators, like NTT Limited, who have a global alliance with Intel, where together they solve difficult challenges and deliver business outcomes.

The role of said Service / Solution Integrators is to influence IT decisions, recommend on the architectural designs and deployment across on-premise and cloud, and ultimately deliver complete end-to-end hardware and software solutions together with the broader ecosystem of OEM & ISV partners like SAP and Cisco.

With enterprises embracing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and big data analytics, the solutions are required to access and handle large data sets faster, which can be addressed

by Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory (PMem) which removes I/O bottlenecks to maximize CPU utilization.

Intel & SAP have collaborated to bring Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory support to SAP HANA and Intel and the OEMs, like Cisco, have collaborated on system designs that support Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory modules allowing for a variety of configurations to suit all customer needs.

Intel and NTT Limited have collaborated for a number of years, designing solutions that meet customer needs in industries such as enterprise, manufacturing, agriculture, automotive, financial, and more all around the world, with great success being realized when forces are combined with the greater ecosystem.

It is through insights gained while working through these relationships that Intel is able to create technologies like Intel® Software Guard Extensions (SGX). SGX enhances the last part of the data journey by securing data-in-use, enabling for example AI workloads to be performed on otherwise untapped data sources. In fact, 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors are the only mainstream data center CPU with built-in AI acceleration enabling organizations to deploy highly performant applications without using complex and expensive new hardware.

By collaborating with Intel, along with Service / System Integrators like NTT Limited and the technology ecosystem clients can feel comfortable in the knowledge that their business challenges can be addressed, delivering the best possible outcomes.

This is your DaTa on inTel Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software or service activation. No product or component can be absolutely secure. Your costs and results may vary. © Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

NTT LTD.

108 IOWN “We’re working on a new network called IOWN (Innovative Optical & Wireless Network) that is going to be very powerful in the industry,” reveals Kirk Compton, Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas for NTT Ltd. in the Americas. “It’s an initiative for networks and information processing infrastructure that can provide high-speed, highcapacity communication utilizing innovative technology focused on

JANUARY 2021

optics, as well as tremendous computational resources. With IOWN we’ve got platform services that now connect multiple clouds together and allow you to manage the network, as well as the security across those cloud platforms. When we start looking at our clients’ needs, but again more importantly, how the industry is trending, having that connectivity and creation across platforms becomes crucial.”

to migrate its clients to the new S/4 HANA solutions.

“As hybrid cloud and digital transformation become a top priority for companies, we’ve got the automation and the capabilities to help them really drive growth and transform,” pledges Compton. “We’ve been developing the security and migration automation tools for our clients. I think we’re at a time of transition where the maturity in the market – and the way Cisco has matured through application performance – allows us to bring a full solution; it’s the client journey we’re focused on.

Infrastructure isn’t the critical question now, it’s how your applications perform, how your revenue strategies are grow-

“ With IOWN we’ve got platform services that now connect multiple clouds together and allow you to manage the network, as well as the security across those cloud platforms.”

ing and how you’re transforming your own organization. We’re now in a unique position to be able to drive all that for our clients and execute like never before.”

— Kirk Compton, Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

109

110

SAP: The Jazz of Digital Transformation WRITTEN BY

WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY

BEN MALTBY

JANUARY 2021

111

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

SAP

SAP’s Lars Friedrich, Andreas Spahn and Maria Fay on the balance between innovation and structure powering its approach to digital transformation

S

AP’s regional customer success team - Lars Friedrich, Andreas Spahn and Maria Fay - takes care of innovations in strategic cus-

tomer engagements for middle and eastern Europe.

Friedrich has a musical analogy for what the team set out to achieve: “We act as innovation brokers, and 112

we look upon the incubation and innovation team as a Jazz combo. We help customers to become digital sprinters and build sound innovation capabilities with the power of SAP’s innovation ecosystem “From a Jazz point of view, it’s about bringing the tracks together to build up a full song at the end.

That’s what we encourage our customers to do - finding the right beat to adopt innovation phase by phase and step by step.” That musical metaphor also underlies the philosophy that they believe companies must adopt to achieve digital transformation. “It’s not just about KPIs, but rather the whole symphony. You can’t simply use technology to make every process perfect, but you can make sure that everything that you do inside of the process makes sense. And then, once the process has been properly structured and the people are enabled, the technology can come in.”

JANUARY 2021

113

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

SAP

The Business Innovation Framework for SAP S/4HANA is the structure under which such transformation occurs.

Increasingly, companies are digitally transforming their core businesses, but achieving that is highly complex.

“Many customers have built highly customised applications over the years. It’s a very complicated landscape that they have, and then, on top of that, they are considering: ‘how can I get from my old enterprise resource planning (ERP) software to a new ERP like 114

S/4HANA?’ Then there’s the question

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Lars Friedrich Title: Innovation & Technology Director Industry: Computer Software Lars Friedrich is a business and technology director at SAP, integrating digital into all aspects of the customer strategy from digital organization mindset shift, tech-driven business process innovation, and unleash the power of data and network. Lars supports customers across industries to become digital sprinters, improve their business performance, and to build sound innovation capabilities. He empowers the SAP innovation ecosystem to rethink products and processes for the digital age. With his international experience in Japan, Finland, and South America, he learned the tools to synergize the core competency of the organization and inject speed into the operating model.

JANUARY 2021

of all the new technologies like machine

SAP is not content to simply bring cus-

learning or robotic process automation

tomers up to the modern digital standard,

that everyone is talking about and figur-

but goes further to identify technologies

ing out what that means to the company.”

coming down the track. “What we do

To cut through that fog, SAP has

is help the customer to identify which

developed a systematic and structured

technologies can add additional value

approach to help customers identify

on top of the standard offering, and

which digital technologies in SAP’s vast

technologies that are on the horizon. The

portfolio could add additional value to

next generation of business software

their core businesses. “We have a lot of

that our colleagues from New Ventures

different tools and methodologies from

and Technologies are exploring right

design thinking to SAP Activate, which

now includes brain computer interaction,

is our very own SAP methodology for

gaze control of software or homo-

business transformation in terms of ERP.

morphic encryption and further

We also have a huge portfolio of intel-

emerging technologies.”

ligent technologies, and that is important because when we talk to customers,

While that lies in the future, Fay points to a number of concrete examples

they really want to know what robotic process automation, or machine learning, or even blockchain means to their business.” The innovation ecosystem encompasses a broad range of partners, including its venture arm SAP.iO for new product incubation. “We have many different experts across industries and business units that are all there to support the innovation journey of a customer.

The whole ecosystem is very unique in the market, and really differentiates us from other competitors.”

“ Companies like SAP quite clearly have a full sustainability strategy, but the question is how to reach out to the midsized and older companies” — Lars Friedrich, Innovation & Technology Director, SAP t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

115

SAP

regarding how technology can help improve business processes. “In the supply chain area it’s possible, based on historical data and machine learning, to predict how long it takes to process and ship the sales order. That, of course, allows customers to better plan their processes and in general improves customer relationships in the supply chain.”

Other examples in the supply chain space include IoT sensors to monitor products in certain conditions. “You can track temperature, humidity, vibration, 116

“ SAP has a strong internal ecosystem of various teams coming together in the jazz orchestra – from technology foresight to startup scouting” — Dr Maria Fay, Senior Innovation Architect (Middle & Eastern Europe), SAP

impact and so on. That is critical in industries like pharmaceuticals or consumer

One of the elements that sets SAP

products where it’s better to learn as

apart from the crowd is its partner eco-

soon as possible if there is any damage.”

system, which informs and interacts

Such examples cleave closely to

with the business innovation framework.

SAP’s ambition with its customers’ digital

SAP and its partners, together with

transformations, as Spahn explains: “It

customers, accelerate innovation

makes sense to streamline your core

adoption, providing the governance,

processes, but, at the same time, you

methodologies and technologies for the

must identify where advanced technolo-

situation at hand. “SAP is an ecosystem-

gies could add additional value to your

oriented cooperative with over 21,000

business processes. Where do you

industry, technology, start-up partners

need to skill up your people or future

and research institutes. We believe that

proof your workforce in order to not lose

the collaboration with partners is key

ground on your competitors in the race?

for our customers,” says Friedrich. “We

It’s important to address the two worlds

integrate and take advantage of a per-

at once.”

forming ecosystem to solve customers’

JANUARY 2021

117

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Dr Maria Fay Title: Senior Innovation Architect (Middle & Eastern Europe)

Industry: Computer Software

Dr. Maria Fay is a Senior Innovation Architect at SAP, leading engagements with strategic customers in Middle & Eastern Europe to create value and improve processes with next-generation technologies. With over 10 years of international experience in technology and business consulting, she develops new methodologies and services and is a lecturer on digital business models. Having earned her PhD investigating the relationship between big data analytics and business value, Maria is passionate about the future that new technologies from machine learning to quantum computing can bring. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

SAP

digitalization shift. We onboard partners into niche areas to gain trust and once we have identified a backlog of use cases we hand-over delivery to certificated providers.”

Apart from the partner ecosystem, “SAP also has a strong internal ecosystem of various teams coming together in the jazz orchestra – from technology foresight to startup scouting,” as Fay explains. “SAP’s Innovation Center Network is working with visionary startups leveraging 118

SAP’s business cloud platform, one

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Andreas Spahn Title: Senior Innovation & Technology Manager Industry: Computer Software Andreas Spahn is a business innovation and technology consultant who is passionate about solving business problems using digital technologies. Self-driven strategist and innovation broker who is extremely well connected within SAP’s innovation ecosystem. Andreas supports customers across industries to optimize their business processes and to navigate through the uncertainty of innovation, from ideation to implementation of the innovative (custom) solutions.

He knows how to play the garnet, from Design Thinking, Business Model Development, Lean Startup, agile Project Management (PMI certified), all the way to Scrum. Beyond realizing innovation projects, he set up a strategic partnership with global industry players, like Schaeffler.

JANUARY 2021

“ Reducing the innovation budget in the long term can have a major impact on competitive capabilities in the future” — Andreas Spahn, Senior Innovation & Technology Manager, SAP services and networks. All those elements are crucial to ensure customers are leveraging the latest knowledge data model and technologies to build

and achievements. “

products and support customers on

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic

their transformations. Another team

has naturally affected SAP, just as it has

has expertise in the context of sustain-

its customers. Consequently, SAP is

ability and developed an Impact Lab for

offering solutions and services to help

Sustainability – a format to apply hori-

out. “One of many examples is called

zon-thinking of environmental, human,

the business operation self-healing

economic and social factors into cus-

service,” says Fay. “It’s a comprehensive

tomer organisation, and identify sweet

out-of-the-box AI platform to support

spots for new business opportunities

automation in the business operations.

and co-innovation. More and more we

In other words, if allows fast deployment

are opening up internal formats for our

of various use cases from restoring

customers, like the SAP One Billion

unplanned outages to interactive sales

Lives program, which empowers social

order issues resolution.” Spahn points

entrepreneurship with SAP products,

out that while the natural instinct in such t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

119

SAP

challenging times is to cut innovation

Sustainability is of ever-increasing

budgets and focus on what is necessary

importance in the business world, and

to survive, this can be self-defeating.

the efficiencies digital transformation

“Reducing the innovation budget in the

unlocks go a long way to helping out. “Big

long term can have a major impact on

companies like SAP quite clearly have

competitive capabilities in the future.

a full sustainability strategy, but the

After all, it’s the digital maturity level

question is how to reach out to the

of a company that is a good indicator of

midsized and older companies,” says

the level of resilience to coping with

Friedrich. “They also need to look into

these situations.”

what sustainability actually is and how

The team emphasises that the key

they could set up their enterprise to

benefits of the digital transformations

achieve it. That’s why we’re setting up

SAP enables are not just monetary.

a framework for sustainability called ‘the

Digital Transformation CLICK TO WATCH

|

3:17

121 sustainable enterprise’. That answers

of its USPs, as Rettig explains. “As

the questions of how a company can use

a company in Germany, we have local

digital technologies to operate in a more

SAP experts within a global organisation,

efficient, and more sustainable manner.”

and our mission is to drive the intelligent enterprise. That involves a focus on

NAGARRO ES

SAP and enterprise resource planning

“Nagarro ES is an SAP full service

to build an enterprise architecture that

provider, meaning we implement, and

works for the company involved.”

consult our customers on SAP software.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has

We’re also part of a global company

accelerated efforts towards digitalisa-

which focuses on technology not only

tion, specifically cloud solutions, as

with regards to SAP, but beyond,” says

Manuel Sedlak, Teamlead SAP Cloud

Julia Rettig, Director Marketing at

Services, explains. “We’re seeing the

Nagarro ES. The company’s expertise

companies we work with jump into digi-

when it comes to SAP products is one

talisation. Almost every customer we’ve t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

SAP

122

worked with in the last year has thought

Nagarro works closely with its cus-

about whether it’s now time to jump

tomers and SAP as part of a triangular

to S4/HANA, and whether that should

relationship to get the best out of its

be an on-premise or cloud solution.”

SAP implementations. Sedlak gives as

Nagarro had first hand experience of

an example its work with a customer.

the efficacy of S4/HANA cloud, and the

“We were asked to be the implementa-

flexibility it offers, having used it for the

tion partner, but having a relationship

past four years. “We were one the first

between ourselves, the customer and

customers in the world to use S/4HANA

SAP is really important for the overall

cloud. That’s why we decided to bring

success of the project.” That triangu-

this to market, and with this approach,

lar relationship is reinforced by quick

we were able to find new customers

responses should a problem arise. “We

with whom to discuss the cloud suc-

identified a problem with a sales order

cess story.”

that couldn’t be deleted from within the

JANUARY 2021

“ We look upon the incubation and innovation team as a Jazz combo” — Lars Friedrich, Innovation & Technology Director, SAP

about a new configuration platform, for instance, that is in development and will potentially go live from the begin123

ning of 2021.”

Rettig sees Nagarro’s full service, independent approach as standing it system,” says Sedlak. ”We raised a ticket

in good stead for the future. “Customers

and I was in direct contact with the cus-

want to participate in all the latest

tomer success manager on SAP’s side.

technologies, but they need to do the

Within half an hour, we were able to find

homework. That’s where we come in,

a solution, so it took just 30 minutes from

because we not only have the cloud

reporting that incident to having a resolu-

perspective, but also do on premises

tion from SAP.”

projects. For us as a partner, it’s impor-

The extent of the relationship between

tant to consult our customers with an

SAP and Nagarro has meant the two can

open mind. We don’t want to push them

exchange ideas. “As a partner, it’s really

into a corner where they don’t belong.

great to have a tight connection with

That’s why we’ll continue to take a holis-

SAP,” says Sedlak. “We are currently dis-

tic view with our customers.”

cussing some products with SAP which are coming next year. We are talking t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

124

JANUARY 2021

SECURITY TRANSFORMATION AT THE HEART OF CYBERSEC 125

WRITTEN BY

PADDY SMITH PRODUCED BY

BEN MALTBY

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

PLAYTECH

As the world shifts its working patterns, and faced with an already complex set of technology stacks, Playtech’s Daniel Liber discusses security transformation

W

hile Playtech is a technology company with gaming at its core, it takes no chances with its security strategy. That’s a challenge

because the company has developed and acquired a number of technology platforms, all of which need to be rationalised in its security brief. And its custom126

ers – household name online gaming platforms with reputations to protect – need it to look after their best interests.

The task of keeping a lid on the company’s systems and data is head of information security Daniel Liber.

Liber, who like many Israeli technologists got his start through the country’s military service programme, joined Playtech three years ago and climbed to his current role. “It’s a great school for security management positions,” he says. “You learn so much from so many talented and experienced people.”

Things have changed dramatically over the course of Liber’s career. He reminisces about the development of the internet from the dot com bubble of the early 00s to now, pondering the milestones – smartphones, the internet of things – that have marked the technological transformation in the interim.

JANUARY 2021

127

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

PLAYTECH

RISE OF THE PERSONAL DEVICE Personal devices, Liber thinks, have been maligned in security circles. Yes, they offer an increased attack surface and personal details are more likely to be compromised, but at the same time Joe Public’s attitude to privacy has changed.

“Privacy doesn’t make most of end users worry. People today give away information relatively easily. You can see it on social media. When you lost your credit cards, that used to be a big issue. Now you just cancel it and everything is okay.”

128

Transparency is top of Liber’s list when it comes to management. “It’s important.

Everybody should feel as if they have an understanding of what’s going on from the top level down to the person doing the hands-on engineering. When there’s a shared strategy and objective to the company, everybody should feel as if they’re part of it.”

The second thing on his list is saying yes (even conditionally) and the third is sticking to facts and numbers. “There are a lot of hunches and gut feelings in security,” admits Liber, “which is okay and sometimes important. But eventually, when you need to make a decision, it should be balanced between having JANUARY 2021

“ Having a good relationship with your vendor means being able to look forward to the upcoming years in terms of security transformation” — Daniel Liber, Head of information security, Playtech

129 E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Daniel Liber Title: Head of information security Industry: Computer Software

Company: Playtech

Location: United Kingdom

Daniel Liber is current Head of Information Security at Playtech, a leading gaming platform provider.

Daniel has over 15 years of experience in different positions such as security consultancy, engineering and management, and working across different industries – automotive, finance, telecom and software companies.

Daniel also participated as a speaker in several global security conferences including OWASP, BSides, Tel Aviv Cyber Week and local Defcon and ISACA chapters. He also holds B.Sc. in Physics and MBA, as well as several security certifications, as well as participating in management programs from top universities. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

PLAYTECH

INTRODUCING TREND MICRO CLOUD ONE™ A security services platform for cloud builders. Secure your cloud migration and future cloud projects without slowing you down.

See how we’ve made cloud security beautiful at TrendMicro.com/HybridCloud For more information: trendmicro_israel@trendmicro.com

131 the full view of information and taking an educated decision.”

Hunches are okay then?

“Sometimes there is a lot of focus on the characteristic technicalities of the vulnerability, rather than the context,” he says. “So it looks scientific but there

“ There are a lot of hunches and gut feelings in security” — Daniel Liber, Head of information security, Playtech

is information missing. Where the vulnerability is and how it could be used

digital transformation. It sits at the inter-

and how difficult it is is information that

section of technological frontiers and the

could be used to determine the overall

needs of users, customers and employ-

vulnerability impact.”

ees. And it is particularly important at a time of change.

WHAT IS SECURITY TRANSFORMATION?

“The hottest topic at the moment is

This holistic view informs what Liber calls

working from home,” LIber says. “It is

‘security transformation’ as an arm of

obviously about getting companies’ and t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

PLAYTECH

“ The orchestration of tools and visibility across different technology stacks is extremely critical right now” — Daniel Liber, Head of information security, Playtech users’ IT needs to align in a new working model, but more than that, it is about changing attitudes.

132

“Teams had a limited transformation state of mind. Now they know that every couple of years they will have to ask

“Doing proper mapping is very impor-

the question: what’s next? Some were

tant, and then you have the question of

already doing that because of previous

how you tie these things together. You

security challenges – the shift to the

might buy several tools from the same

cloud, for instance – so to some extent

vendor or different tools from different

we were pretty ready to have a smooth

vendors, but you need to find a balance

transition into working from home.”

of managing them which supports your

Another pillar of Liber’s security transformation is orchestration. “There are

company’s needs. You have to balance your priorities.

so many technologies we need to cover,

“Eventually the idea is to try to narrow

so the orchestration of tools and visibility

down this stuff as much as possible, into

across different technology stacks

a single dashboard or as few places as

is extremely critical right now, espe-

possible – just for the sanity of your ana-

cially for incident response and security

lysts – and it’s becoming harder as more

operations teams.

and more tools are added.”

JANUARY 2021

133

COMPLEXITY VERSUS UNIFICATION

personal devices as they wish while

At Playtech, the company has moved

companies can be assured that security

into a hybrid environment of on-premise

isn’t compromised.

and cloud infrastructure, and pushed to

Security transformation isn’t a task

consolidate “small islands” of technology

to be taken on single handed and Liber

services into a more unified platform. It’s

is particularly impressed by Playtech’s

been a boon from a security perspective,

partnership with Trend Micro. Unusually,

particularly as the pandemic has forced

perhaps, the seed of the relationship was

more users to work from home.

hyper geographic: the two firms both

The problem, as Liber sees it, is one of

had small offices in the same building.

employees using their personal devices

“They gave us a lot of attention,” Liber

for work. A possible solution, he thinks,

recalls. “They sat down with us during

might be to “somehow containerise

the proof of concept and we gave them

part of your personal computer”. This

some feedback and we got immediate

approach allows employees to use their

responses. They were amazing with how t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

PLAYTECH

134

JANUARY 2021

“ Privacy doesn’t make most of end users worry” — Daniel Liber, Head of information security, Playtech

they helped us to shape the implementation of their Deep Security products based on our environment and needs.

“Having a good relationship with the vendor is important for several reasons, firstly that when you implement a product or service you will bump into some kind of issue or question, and the feeling of getting good service or customer support is always nicer than when it doesn’t happen. But it’s also about being able to look forward to the upcoming years in terms of security transformation.

Sharing the road map early allows you to predict and better plan your work.

“I also think it’s important to keep it light, which might sound silly but negotiations and discussions can be quite dry, so sometimes the personal touch can really help the procurement and commercial processes.”

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

135

136

WRITTEN BY

LEILA HAWKINS PRODUCED BY

KRISTOFER PALMER

JANUARY 2021

137

How COVID-19 has Driven Motor Oil’s Digital Transformation t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

MOTOR OIL

Nick Giannakakis, Group CIO at Greece’s Motor Oil, discusses accelerating digital strategy, digitising manufacturing processes and the customer experience

I

n the months since the Covid-19 pandemic began, numerous industries have reported a fast acceleration in terms of

moving to digital processes. This certainly rings true for Motor Oil, an oil refinery based in Greece 138

that is one of the largest in Europe.

“In the last two months we’ve seen two years’ worth of acceleration,” its Group Chief Information Officer Nick Giannakakis says. It has also been a complex endeavour, as Giannakakis describes the company as “one of the biggest, most complex manufacturing refineries in Europe”.

Motor Oil has a strong export branch, with 78% of its operations coming from export sales that need to be facilitated via loading ports and vehicles.

As well as being an oil refinery they have a large retail operation, with hundreds of petrol stations selling non-fuel products as well as petrol, making up a large part of the business.

A key aspect of the acceleration caused by COVID was ensuring employees could continue

JANUARY 2021

139

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

MOTOR OIL

“ In the last two months we’ve seen two years’ worth of acceleration” — Nick Giannakakis, Chief Information Officer, Motor Oil

decided to not stop any of its investments in technology, which meant much of its digital programme could

to perform their daily duties remotely.

continue and it also ensured a good,

“We had to address the end user com-

continued relationship with their part-

puter experience for staff, to make sure

ners. That also meant it didn’t have to

they could still work collaboratively

delay its digital transformation.

from home and get the best possible performance,” Giannakakis says.

140

While the pandemic of course brought challenges, Motor Oil

JANUARY 2021

Giannakakis is a believer in resilience in the face of adversity. To handle the challenges of COVID to the business, he says Motor Oil

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Nick Giannakakis Title: CIO

Company: Motor Oil

Industry: Oil & Energy

Nick Giannakakis has over 20 years of experience working in IT. Throughout his career he’s worked for Richemont in Switzerland, British American Tobacco in the UK, and in his native Greece for the Coca-Cola Hellenic Company. His current role is at Motor Oil, where he’s based in Athens.

He describes his style of management as being both a mentor and a team member, commenting that he prides himself on a daily basis of being able to combine these two aspects. He believes in the importance of being able to influence decisions working with senior executives.

He’s also a big believer in diversity. “We try to encourage everyone to bring a difference to everything they do,” he says. “When you are leading a tech department, and I have been on this journey for years and years now, you need to be able to focus on diversity. When I say diversity I also mean in the way of thinking, combining a more agile way of thinking and understanding the power of prioritisation.”

Giannakakis is collaborative, always a team player, and always keen to learn. “I don’t want to be left behind in this new reality, and I always try to bring new ideas to the table” he adds. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

141

ABOUT OTE GROUP OTE Group is the largest technology company in Greece and a member of Deutsche Telekom AG. It is one of the top three listed companies, with respect to capitalization, in the Athens Stock Exchange and is also listed in the London Stock Exchange.

OTE Group offers a wide range of services, under the unif ied brand COSMOTE: f ixed and mobile telephony, broadband services, pay-TV and ICT solutions. In addition, the Group in Greece is also involved in maritime communications and real estate.

In the f ield of System Integration, OTE Group has developed diverse capabilities and constitutes a leading partner of choice for businesses seeking innovative solutions in the f ields of Data Centers, Cloud, Information Security, Networking, Big Data and IoT. Leveraging strategic partnerships with IT market leaders and thanks to its large IT & Network workforce, it has delivered large scale and complex ICT projects, offering managed services to customers in Europe.

WE EMPOWER. YOU LEAD Focusing on continuously developing innovative solutions and building strategic partnerships with global IT leaders, OTE Group stands out to be a trusted technology partner for large business customers. By modernizing its IT infrastructure, as well as maintaining operational and people excellence, OTE Group delivers and supports sophisticated tailor-made projects.

The state-of-the-art services and solutions offered by OTE Group enable businesses dynamically to the new digital era and ensure their business continuity and efficiency.

The strategic partnership with Motor Oil for the implementation of an SDWAN (Software Defined-WAN) solution acts as an accelerator of the company’s digital transformation journey through a robust technology strategy.

Motor Oil is one of the leading players in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean region in the areas of crude oil refining and petroleum products. The company has large campuses all over Greece with distinct connectivity and communication needs. Some of the installations are in remote areas, where as others need to operate uninterrupted 24/7. At the same time, these installations need to have independent and safe access to the Internet and to cloud services, with an extremely high SLA, regarding both network and services as well as applications.

OTE has provided Motor Oil with a turn-key solution to modernize its corporate network with a Software

www.cosmote.gr

Defined-WAN implementation. The SD-WAN solution provides a virtual WAN architecture, with users controlling and managing the entire system via software running on a central platform. One of the main advantages of this approach is that it can offer a combination of communication technologies (MPLS, dedicated broadband Internet and LTE), to safely interconnect a company’s point of presence, while improving overall user experience and increasing productivity.

The Motor Oil project includes 30 sites all over Greece. OTE Group has selected Cisco Meraki SD-WAN services in order to provide Motor Oil a complete solution that includes the necessary connectivity, hardware equipment, a management platform and all the SLA agreements needed.

With the implementation of the SD-WAN project, Motor Oil will have achieved a simplified, fully secured network, with high availability and scalability. Both user experience and productivity will have improved. The company’s IT department has now more agility, being able to integrate new points of presence whenever needed and much faster. Also, the project provides better management of capital, as well as operational expenses.

Holistically looking at Motor Oil operations, OTE Group aims to empower our customer’s vision for having a leading role in the crude oil ref ining and marketing of petroleum products sectors in Greece. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

MOTOR OIL

showed great resilience. They demonstrated this by creating new solutions.

“At the peak of the crisis we developed a digital planning tool that allows our employees to perform their daily business,” says Giannakakis. “When you have an organisation that needs to communicate by making hundreds of calls on a daily basis and do their jobs from home, having the same quality in terms of communication is a very important aspect.”

For the retail side of the business 144

the company used advanced analytics to deep dive into sales models, identifying relevant models that could predict future sales. This helped them develop solutions to scale up, such as a new pay at pump service which eliminates the need for customers to step inside a shop to pay.

Another change he has seen is the way the customer experience is framed. “Some say we’re living in the age of the customer, but I think we are beyond that,” he says. “Before COVID we were in the age of the platform, and COVID has brought the necessity of this platform because of the importance of having collaborative activities.

JANUARY 2021

“ It’s an industry that needs to change and with COVID this has been magnified and accelerated” — Nick Giannakakis, Chief Information Officer, Motor Oil

“Customer interactions through

In terms of manufacturing, Motor

these platforms continue to be at the

Oil developed the concept of a smart

top of our priorities. We have seen

factory. Giannakakis explains this is

changes, and with a change in focus

focused on five pillars: digital engi-

sales have significantly increased, and

neering; digital production, where the

we want to be able to react to that cus-

remote operation centre is the north

tomer experience. I would say that now

star; digital asset management; digital

customer-centricity along with data is

workers and equipping them with the

the new priority for our business.”

relevant tools so they can perform their tasks; and the digital optimisation of processes.

“Everything to do with the smart factory is classified in those five pillars,” he says. “With the help of our partner ecosystem working in each of these pillars allowed us to achieve increased production, reduced downtime, reduced production cost, and focus on product optimisation.”

Giannakakis says that although COVID-19 has certainly accelerated all these processes, the need to do this already existed. “The challenges in the energy and oil and gas industries were already there. It’s an industry that needs to change and with COVID this has been magnified and accelerated,” says Giannakakis.

“At the same time you have two frontiers: you have to keep the t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

145

12 34 1

REGIONAL MANAGERS THAT NEED TO INCREASE SALES DEPARTMENT HEADS THAT NEED TO REDUCE COSTS

CEO THAT WANTS INSIGHTS INTO TOMORROW

SAP S/4HANA® provides the agility you need in times of great uncertainty, by turning your ERP data into insights with the power of prediction.

TOGETHER

WE GOT THIS © 2020 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

Click here to find out more

1970

Year founded

5,000 Number of employees

business going with the new reality,

good for us to be able to go with a swift

while not losing time regarding the

pilot to learn and have a partner at

digital transformation.”

the same time ready to scale it up. We

Strong partnerships have been vital

need to be able to combine the value

for this. “I’ve always been a big believer

offering from International and Local

in having relevant partner ecosystems,”

partners in order to be able to maxi-

he says. “Companies like ours, who are

mize the impact.”

manufacturing and retail companies,

From the International field SAP is

cannot focus on technology ourselves,

an important partner for Motor Oil.

because it’s not part of our mandate.

“They help us with all of our transac-

We need to have a partner ecosystem

tions, whether it’s on the customer

around us to help us scale up and pro-

side or the manufacturing side. Every

vide us with the relevant innovation in

inventory and every shipment lives in

the areas and the priorities that we set.

SAP, so it’s a no-brainer for us to look

It’s exactly what we have done both

to SAP to also help us innovate.”

before and during the crisis.”

One of the largest local players

He explains that having partners in

is OTE. OTE has provided Motor Oil

various sectors help them to have the

with a turn-key solution to modernise

right focus and pilot new systems. “It’s

its corporate network with a Software t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

147

Get reliable network coverage and security protection, fast.

A modern network must be able to respond easily, quickly and flexibly to the growing needs of today’s digital business. Must provide visibility & control of applications, users and devices on and off the network and Intelligently direct traffic across the WAN. Be scalable and automate the process to provide new innovative services.

Support IoT devices and utilize state-of-the-art technologies such as real-time analytics, ML and AI. And all these must be provided with maximum security and minimum cost.

This is the power that brings the integration of two cloud managed platforms, Cisco Meraki and Cisco Umbrella. This integration is binding together the best of breed in cloud-managed networking and Security.

cisco.com

cisco

CiscoSecure

CiscoSecure

“ Whatever is good for the environment is good for the business too” — Nick Giannakakis, Chief Information Officer, Motor Oil

Defined-WAN implementation. The

149

“I think we are going to live in a new

SD-WAN solution provides a virtual WAN

reality where our priorities and our digital

architecture, with users controlling and

transformation will be accelerated, but

managing the entire system via software

also I think the traditional model was

running on a central platform.

always focused on two pillars: innovation

With the implementation of the

of the business model, and the opera-

SD-WAN project, Motor Oil will have

tional side,” concludes Giannakakis.

achieved a simplified, fully secured net-

“Now we’ve added sustainability into the

work, with high availability and scalability

mix too. It’s a strong directive from the

to improve both the user experience

European Union but also from across

and productivity.

the sector. Whatever is good for the envi-

Looking ahead, Giannakakis believes

ronment is good for the business too.”

the major oil players will all adapt to new ways of working post-COVID. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

150

JANUARY 2021

DEFINING DIGITAL IN THE LEGAL SECTOR 151

WRITTEN BY

RHYS THOMAS

PRODUCED BY

KRISTOFER PALMER t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

HOWARD KENNEDY

TONY MCKENNA AND JONATHAN FREEDMAN DISCUSS HOW TECHNOLOGY IS SHAPING THE FUTURE OF LEADING LONDON LAW FIRM HOWARD KENNEDY

H

oward Kennedy is a London-based, fullservice law firm with a storied history stretching back to the late 19th century.

Evolution has been key to its sustained success, adapting to overcome contemporary hurdles and 152

act as a stabilising force for its diverse and international client base. When Tony McKenna joined the firm six months ago, he was thrust into the middle of perhaps the largest period of adaptation in recent memory, the COVID-19 outbreak and a now familiar quandary: how does business continue amid the countless disruptions caused by a pandemic?

As IT Director, it fell to McKenna and his colleague Jonathan Freedman, Howard Kennedy’s Head of Technology and Security and a company man with 16 years at the firm under his belt, to swiftly transform the way their lawyers worked together, and how they interacted with clients. The vision was simple: “business as usual, but not in the usual place”, a strap line that has become a mantra for the firm’s overarching digital transformation efforts and ambitions.

JANUARY 2021

153

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

HOWARD KENNEDY

IT’S ABOUT TAKING SPECIFIC PROBLEMS AND SOLVING THEM WITH TECHNOLOGY AND PROCESSES AND PEOPLE, AND ACTUALLY DELIVERING BETTER VALUE TO THE CLIENT — Tony McKenna, Head of IT, Howard Kennedy

Howard Kennedy faces obstacles that will be familiar to every business this year: connecting a now dispersed, home-based workforce to one another and to their clients, and digitising the most vital business functions to ensure

154

a smooth and seamless transition.

On the communications front, Microsoft Teams has been implemented to keep the more than 400 lawyers and support staff connected.

It was a crucial step in sustaining the organic collaborative environment of the office; Freedman reveals that more than 19,000 one-to-one calls were made between employees in the past 30 days alone. The transition was swift, in part thanks to Programme Horizon, an earlier initiative started by Freedman and his team in 2017 to spearhead the firm’s digital transformation.

“Programme Horizon was all about delivering a seamless integrated JANUARY 2021

digital platform,” Freedman says. “But

‘innovation’. This process leads up to a

it’s very much aligned to the five strat-

defined transformation, avoiding what

egy areas we’d like to achieve as a

McKenna calls a “cathedral solution-

business. Essentially, we said, ‘this is

type moment”, where staff are forced

how we’re going to use that technol-

to adapt to an entirely new system all

ogy to deliver what the business is

at once - a poor result for productivity

trying to achieve’.

and empowering employees. “Rather

The goal was to implement incre-

than a digital transformation - because

mental changes and technology

we’re a law firm this year, and we’ll be a

for purpose, rather than nebulous

law firm next year - it’s much more of a

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Jonathan Freedman

155

Title: Head of Technology & Security Company: Howard Kennedy Jonathan Freedman is the Head of Technology & Security at London law firm Howard Kennedy, with a background in Enterprise Architecture and systems engineering within the UK professional services sector spanning more than 18 years. His current role is focused on both the development and implementation of new technology within the firm and leading the cyber security program. In addition, he is jointly managing the firm’s internal GDPR compliance program.

He holds multiple industry certifications including, CCNA Security, Certified Ethical Hacker, TOGAF, CGEIT and ISO27001, with special interests in cyber security, ethical hacking, data protection, cryptography, secure systems design, mobile device security and technology innovation. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

Breaches aren’t inevitable Menlo Security’s isolation Core™ technology stops malware, ransomware and zero-day attacks in their tracks — no ifs or but’s.

Try isolation for yourself today

Menlo Security: shielding business in the cloud Mike East, VP EMEA of Menlo Security on empowering business through air-tight, automated digital security in the cloud Mike East, Vice President EMEA at Menlo Security, leverages his considerable 30-plus years’ experience of the full IT ecosystem to steer businesses through the crucial security aspects of their digital transformation.

Menlo’s solution is clear and concise: “Menlo was born in the cloud and provides users with a 100% safe email and browsing experience by moving the fetch and execute functions of web browsing away from the network and brought back into the Menlo cloud.”

Web browsing and electronic documents are isolated on Menlo’s cloud, instantly tested for malicious content, before being rendered and returned safely to users’ devices. During a pandemic situation, such capabilities enable organisations to secure employee activity outside the confines of the corporate network, which in turn brings enormous value. By sidestepping the need for a VPN, businesses also often save money and can offer their employees a more seamless experience.

To power its own digital transformation and support hundreds of employees working from home, law firm Howard Kennedy’s Head of

Technology and Security, Jonathan Freedman, sought out Menlo.

“Jonathan was looking to isolate documents and protect its users from weaponised attachments,” East says. “Now when lawyers click on that document, essentially the execution of that document is happening in the Menlo cloud.

If it’s malicious, what we send back is a rendered view, which is completely harmless, on the user device. If it’s completely harmless, that also gets rendered back on the user’s device.”

As industries accelerate their digital transformation, East says “the convergence of software defined networks and security is only going to accelerate.”

And the Menlo team will be standing by: “Organisations should spend more time doing what they do, not building infrastructure to support what they do.”

Learn more

HOWARD KENNEDY

continuous improvement and that digital journey,” McKenna says. “It’s about taking specific problems and solving them with technology and processes and people, and actually delivering better value to the client.”

The removal of paper from billing and internal expenses has been an immediate upshot of the project, feeding into ongoing automation efforts to ensure Howard Kennedy lawyers are free to dedicate their expertise to clients, rather than routine admin tasks. Video conferencing technology has also rev158

olutionised the way the firm now works; during the UK’s government-imposed lockdowns, hearings and mediations continue uninterrupted.

“We’ve done quite a number of virtual hearings and virtual mediations, where normally you’d have people just gathered in a room. But now we’ve been using the technology, using the video conferencing, to achieve everything that they wanted to achieve,” Freedman says. “Our support teams have become a lot more proficient at supporting Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings, setting out multiple breakout rooms and ways to move people between different breakout rooms.”

JANUARY 2021

WE CAN COMPETE WITH [THE BIG LAW FIRMS] ON LEGAL TERMS, AND NOW WE CAN COMPETE WITH THEM ON TECHNOLOGY TERMS AS WELL — Tony McKenna, Head of IT, Howard Kennedy

But it soon became clear to Freedman, a security expert, that the firm’s once resilient data centre VPN could not handle the new strains of hundreds of offsite terminals: “The biggest challenge we had was the way our security was set up. We were using a full-tunnel VPN, sending all of the internet traffic back to our corporate data centre, and that coincided with the enormous surge in the use of video conferencing.”

Partnerships and access to “fitfor-purpose tools” would be vital to E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Tony Mckenna Title: Head of IT

Company: Howard Kennedy

Tony is currently Director of IT at Howard Kennedy LLP and chair of ILTA’s (International Legal Technology Association) European Program Council. As Director of IT, he is responsible for dayto-day technology services, business change, information security and technology innovation. As a senior volunteer leader for ILTA he chairs the annual European ILTA conference. Continuously improving technology service is mission critical to Tony, as is sharing his knowledge and ensuring everyone around him is given the opportunity to be the best they can be. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

159

We put security in the palm of your hand.

Now we’re putting it into everything you touch.

BlackBerry devices changed the world with their mobility and security.

Now we’re bringing our AI-driven security to systems across the world.

161

1940

safeguarding the law firm’s security systems, Freedman says, and it turned

Year founded

to third-party specialist Menlo Security.

£60mn+

and working on in the background was

Revenue in GBP

400

Number of employees

“One of the projects we’d had testing the Menlo Security project. The big thing was that we wanted to keep the security benefits of the traditional VPN, being able to filter and scan all of the traffic, but we wanted to remove the speed limitation with people working from home. We were able to implement Menlo’s technology platform, which allowed us to have staff go straight to the internet for their internet related t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

HOWARD KENNEDY

BUSINESS AS USUAL, BUT NOT IN THE USUAL PLACE — Corporate Strapline, Howard Kennedy

162

JANUARY 2021

sites, but we didn’t lose any of the security of the traditional platform that we had before.”

McKenna admits that while a small period of learning and “ironing out bumps in the road” was necessary, the solution accelerated what could have taken months via more traditional means. “We are confident that by the early part of spring 2021 pretty much all of our core products will be in a position to take advantage of the elasticity of these hosted solutions, which potentially would have been more of a challenge for us in a traditional data centre environment,” he says.

This new way of working places Howard Kennedy on solid footing as we head beyond the disruption of the pandemic. “Our business aspirations are to grow our business, and therefore having a technology ready just to switch on in a dynamic way is a real business differentiator for us,” McKenna continues. “As we start to bring on other businesses or start to look at what we deliver against our strategic ambitions as a firm, we will be able to do that quickly and simply with the best technologies.” t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

163

HOWARD KENNEDY

WE SAID, ‘THIS IS HOW WE’RE GOING TO USE THAT TECHNOLOGY TO DELIVER WHAT THE BUSINESS IS TRYING TO ACHIEVE 164

— Jonathan Freedman, Head of Technology and Security, Howard Kennedy Further developments include AI implementation, further freeing staff from tasks that require little human input. “In terms of inefficiencies we’re just closing out a pilot of some AI technology that we’ve been working within a real estate area,” McKenna says.

“Improving efficiency is one thing, but it’s accuracy as well as improving the work/life balance of our colleagues.”

The pilot has already received positive feedback: ‘This is brilliant. Why

kind of statement from a lawyer,” McKenna adds. “It’s just great.”

Further ongoing projects will come

would I ever go back?’ one lawyer

to fruition in the coming months, and

replied. “And you just don’t get that

open up an exciting future for Howard

JANUARY 2021

165

Kennedy in the post-pandemic world

“We can compete with them on legal

competing against the ‘magic circle’

terms, and now we can compete with

of big law firms. “We’re well known in

them on technology terms as well.”

the market for being a straightforward, straight-talking firm,” McKenna says. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

166

Clear Channel International’s Digital Transformation

JANUARY 2021

167

WRITTEN BY

WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY

MIKE SADR

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

CLEAR CHANNEL INTERNATIONAL

Chief Technology Officer Ola Reppling discusses how Clear Channel International’s ongoing digital transformation is enabled by its culture

O

la Reppling holds the role of Chief Technology Officer at Clear Channel International, an out of home advertising

and infrastructure business. The company has a heritage dating back over a century, and has a bold vision to create the future of media.

168

“We have 17 different markets in Europe,” says Reppling. “For over 100 years, we’ve been helping brands meet people on the move. As a result, the culture is very customer-driven and focuses on solving customer problems.”

In recent times, the aim has been to combine that heritage and experience with new technology into a cohesive whole. A large part of this is to integrate Clear Channel International’s markets together, as Reppling explains, “we’re bringing all territories together as a single cohesive team, with a shared vision, purpose and mission.”

As CTO, much of Reppling’s work has been in enabling that transition and unification, to place more integrated processing at Clear Channel’s core.

One of the ways Reppling is doing this is by partnering with companies such as network solution JANUARY 2021

169

“We’re in the transition phase from being 17 small companies into becoming a corporate entity” — Ola Reppling, CTO, Clear Channel International

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

BROADSIGN AND CLEAR CHANNEL: DIGITAL PARTNERS IN OUT-OF-HOME Chief Revenue Officer Martin Dollevoet on Broadsign’s partnership with Clear Channel and momentum in out-of-home advertising Broadsign is a global company providing software for out-of-home networks. “We work with almost all of the world’s largest out-of-home networks and not just on the digital side, but also paperbased out-of-home networks,” says Maarten Dollevoet, Chief Revenue Officer at Broadsign.

“Clients use the Broadsign platform for anything from ad serving to network operations, and also to manage and optimise their sales workflows - as well as connecting to new channels, like programmatic buying.”

The out-of-home industry has experienced considerable growth on the digital side, with market leader Broadsign being ideally placed to influence trends. One is digitisation, the evolution from posters and printed billboards to digital signs. “With the move to digital, advertisers are able to leverage its inherent flexibility to react in real-time to content changes, audience movement, as well as the ability to use data for improved audience targeting and to dynamically change screen content,” says Dollevoet. “Content is King, but context is everything. While we aren’t close to the Tom Cruise-style, Minority Report type of targeting, we can deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time.”

One example was a recent campaign for takeout food, where the content automatically displayed a ‘pick-up’ message when the sun was shining, versus promoting the ‘home delivery’ option when it was raining.

When Clear Channel International was looking for a best-in-class content management system to support its digital transformation, it chose Broadsign and its offering. “The relationship has really flourished and has become a strong

Maarten Dollevoet @Broadsign

partnership. After the CMS, the team at Clear Channel wanted to leverage more of the platform to help them scale other parts of their business.

It added Broadsign Direct, a tool to help them scale their sales organisation so salespeople were able to respond to customer requests and RFPs quicker, and sell more of their network at a premium. What started out as an initial relationship on the CMS side has become a true partnership for the rest of the business.”

While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had an undoubted impact on out-of-home advertising, changes in the online space have revealed fresh opportunities. “With the impact of what’s happening in the online world with privacy concerns and the disappearance of the cookie, we actually believe the momentum for out-of-home is bigger than ever.” broadsign.com

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Ola Reppling Title: CTO

171

Industry: Advertising Ola Reppling holds the role of Chief Technology Officer at Clear Channel International, a position he has held since July 2020. Reppling has been with the company almost two years, driving technology transformation in different roles.

In his role of CTO, Reppling is currently focused on building an effective and efficient ‘technology factory’ that will serve all business units with the technology needed for tomorrow’s business challenges.

With Reppling’s belief in rigidity at the core to enable flexibility at the edge, his work focuses on alignment, standardization and modernization, while also building a high performing team across 17 countries.

Reppling has a long career bridging technology and business to drive tech-fueled transformations in many industries including IT, Manufacturing and Telecoms. Reppling holds a MSc in Information technology alongside a MSc in Business from Uppsala University. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

CLEAR CHANNEL INTERNATIONAL

172

“Going digital means, one panel offers hundreds of thousands of opportunities” — Ola Reppling, CTO, Clear Channel International JANUARY 2021

provider Meraki. “With Meraki, we’re getting a real baseline of the right infrastructure,” he says. “We want to have SD-WAN and a proper network across all of Europe that we can rely on. Historically, we’ve had 17 different networks, and we had at least 10 different data centres with varying degrees of different clouds.”

The cloud itself is another focus, but Reppling is conscious of getting the balance right between a cloud-first vision and he reality at hand. “We want to get rid of physical servers, but the reality is that some of our applications

Clear Channel International: Creative Advertising CLICK TO WATCH

|

1:24

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

173

CLEAR CHANNEL INTERNATIONAL

174

JANUARY 2021

“We’ve changed the culture.

So, we really only need to enhance our digital capabilities” — Ola Reppling, CTO, Clear Channel International

175

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

CLEAR CHANNEL INTERNATIONAL

need them, so we still need to have data centres for those. That’s why we’re working with CWL and Cloud Temple, to actually have a hybrid cloud approach alongside control over the data centres. CWL and Cloud Temple are helping us to make sure we have the ability to retire applications, refactor the ones that we can, and move towards the cloud.”

The company partners with Broadsign for the majority of advertising broadcast on digital screens. “Broadsign 176

offers us a unified platform to deliver digital content. One of the biggest

Clear Channel International: Making Brands Famous CLICK TO WATCH

JANUARY 2021

|

2:57

177

“It’s about making sure there’s rigidity at the core to allow flexibility at the edge” — Ola Reppling, CTO, Clear Channel International t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

Get visibility of your applications, security and utilisation with no risk!

Working with Clear Channel to support their Digital Transformation journey

Rediscover Your Network with the Fortinet Cyber Threat Assessment Program with CWL Systems & Fortinet!

Are you concerned that your current security infrastructure may not accurately detect today’s sophisticated attacks?

Do you have the operational visibility to understand how applications (traditional and web-based) are truly being utilised on your network?

Is your current security solution able to sustain present-day throughput demands despite increased traffic volume (perhaps due to cloud based storage, big data analytics or increased web usage)?

If you are asking any of these questions, the Cyber Threat Assessment Program can help!

Validate your network’s security effectiveness and user productivity by enlisting expert guidance.

An expert will use a FortiGate to monitor key indicators within your network. After several days of gathering information, you will receive a Cyber Threat Assessment Report which is divided into three primary sections: • Security and Threat Prevention User Productivity • Network Utilisation and Performance • How should your network security solution be optimised for performance?

Get visibility of your applications www.cwlsystems.co.uk

Clear Channel International: Where Brands Meet People CLICK TO WATCH

|

1:26

179 problems we have is organising the

such as ad-blockers and being able to

billions and billions of variations that

avoid potentially annoying customers

come from selling six or ten-second

by interrupting their content with ads.

slots for commercials across 15,000

That advantage has been compounded

digital screens, seven days a week.

by digital panels. “In classic out-of-

We generally steer away from promising

home, the refresh rate here is once a

individuals screens, in favour of focusing

week, or maybe once every two weeks,

on a specific target audiences. If our cus-

or even a month. But going digital means

tomer asks to be able to reach 10 million

one screen offers tens of thousands of

people with a certain demographic, we

opportunities in just one week.”

need to be able to fulfil that - which we can with partners like Broadsign.”

Reppling emphasises the benefits of out-of-home advertising over other forms, namely in avoiding problems t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

180

JANUARY 2021

181

Notting Hill Genesis: A thriving digital transformation WRITTEN BY

LEILA HAWKINS PRODUCED BY

KRISTOFER PALMER

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

NOTTING HILL GENESIS

Rajiv Peter, Director of Digital Technology, talks technology transformation within one of the largest housing associations in London and the South East

N

otting Hill Genesis was formed in 2018 following the merger of two Londonbased housing associations, but the

company’s roots actually stretch back to the 1960s, when a group of local people gathered with 182

a shared vision to house low-income families and individuals in west London. This commitment hasn’t changed in the decades since.

Rajiv Peter joined the company in 2017, having started his career as a systems analyst to help local governments in England achieve digital targets. More recently, he was head of digital at PEX software. He has an MSc in Information Systems from the London School of Economics under his belt and researched technology in direct democracy and governance at the same school.

As the Director of Digital Technology at Notting Hill Genesis, he’s leading their digital strategy and technical transformation.

“From a purist point of view, there is no sector that can’t be digitised,” he says of implementing

JANUARY 2021

183

“There is no sector that can’t be digitised” — Rajiv Peter, Director of Digital Technology, Notting Hill Genesis

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

NOTTING HILL GENESIS

“ Technology creation has become more affordable in the last five or six years. It’s within the realms of any organisation to create its own software” 184

— Rajiv Peter, Director of Digital Technology, Notting Hill Genesis

a digital culture at an organisation that has been established for over 60 years. “The core component of what we call digital is not tied to any sector.

These are portable skills, and these are portable technologies.”

“What has really changed is that we’ve moved from a system where external companies create software and we take it on to being more platform-based. Bespoke technology creation has become more affordable in the last five or six years. I think it is within the realms of any organisation to create its own software.”

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE HOUSING SECTOR The advantage of this is being able to offer a more streamlined total experience for colleagues and customers.

“In the past the problem was that you usually had one software company delivering everything, and they’re good at one or two things but at most of them they’re just ‘okay’. What we are moving towards is being able to pick and choose what you want, and then bring it all together with our own software. If you look at Amazon’s JANUARY 2021

1960s Year founded

website, there may be many systems underpinning it, but you as a customer don’t know they exist because it’s a seamless experience.”

$550m+ Revenue in US dollars

2,100 Number of employees

Before NHG started on this journey, it had minimal digital capability in-house, so it engaged with external suppliers to provide this capability and to create the building blocks. The next stage was for Rajiv to enhance that capability by creating a new digital department and hiring new staff. Now, Rajiv says, the company is in complete control of its technology and design; it

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Rajiv Peter Title: Director of Digital Technology Company: Notting Hill Genesis Rajiv Peter joined Notting Hill Genesis as Solutions Manager in 2017. Responsible for the group’s software engineering and digital architecture. During the group’s merger in 2018, he was made the Director of Software and Support and helped consolidate the systems of both organisations, integrating it into a single layer for both customers and staff that included payments, arrears, and repairs, called WorkWise. He was subsequently promoted to Director of Digital Technology.

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

185

NOTTING HILL GENESIS

“ Using technologies makes us more efficient and cheaper to run; that goes into the profit which goes into building more homes” — Rajiv Peter, Director of Digital Technology, Notting Hill Genesis has started on the next stage and has 186

been working with offshore companies based in India. This gives NHG better value for money, scalability and commercial options.

In the longer term he sees an

A key aim for Rajiv is providing

opportunity to create revenue from

value to the business by making cost

technology. But for now, an immediate

efficiencies. “Housing associations

benefit for customers has been open-

are generally structured as charities.

ing new channels of communication.

Most of our surplus comes from com-

“They can now contact us 24 hours

mercial investments, so we have to

a day and they can digitally see the

create and sell properties, just like any

same information about themselves

other provider. The profit we make we

as our staff, because both are using

re-invest into our core business. Using

the same system. Just as if they were

technologies makes us more efficient

going on to Amazon to buy a product,

and cheaper to run, that goes into the

they can also raise a complaint, or

profit which goes into building more

request a repair at any time of the day,

homes” he says.

and it’s all recorded centrally.”

JANUARY 2021

Rajiv says the COVID-19 pandemic was a catalyst for their digital journey this year. Staff had already been provided with laptops and a digital interface - WorkWise - so they were able to start working remotely almost instantly. NHG also used serverless, low-code technology to create a new app that connected to a database and provided dashboards to key stakeholders in the business, automated messages to teams, and emails with information such as which staff were off-sick. It also helped to identify employees who were happy to step

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

187

YOUR VISION, OUR PEOPLE Our world has seen major digital innovation. Technology has moved forward quicker than we could ever imagined.

Businesses now need teams that combine expertise and scalability. The question is, are you ready for change?

Neo Technology is a global provider of digital experts and offshore solutions. Working together we can help you deliver outstanding results through a cost-effective outsourcing model.

In a world of technology, we make the difference.

Learn more

With over 20 years of industry expertise, our experience allows us to engage with you across a multitude of business sectors and markets enabling your organisation to adopt digital processes and offshore models to achieve outstanding results Our unique and flexible outsourcing model enables seamless integration with your process, bringing significant cost savings, whilst enabling you to focus on your core requirements.

Why are we different?

Neo Technology’s business model is focused on maximising the experience of its UK based senior team, with a flexible and agile approach to upscaling and downscaling FTEs for projects, delivering cost savings passed on to you.

This is made possible by careful segmentation and simplification of your requirements, enabling a streamlined approach to development, where the skills of the IT professional are focused on coding and leaving the nuances of requirement analysis and project management to the respective business leads.

Our ambition is to deliver efficient and exceptional technology solutions to differing business requirements, using an offshore model that works for you.

Notting Hill Genesis Partnership Notting Hill Genesis started their digital transformation journey recently with the launch of a new user portal. Having had the core of the platform designed and built by a third party, they decided to bring inhouse the challenges of system enhancement and maintenance.

Due to the combined growth in platform usage and ambitious development goals, Notting Hill Genesis found themselves needing to expand the capacity of their in-house IT team. This was approached with a mix of permanent and contractor staff. However, recruiting, on-boarding and training adequate IT specialists was a time-consuming and costly process and Notting Hill Genesis needed a more flexible solution.

Neo Technology partnered with Notting Hill Genesis to deliver an experienced sprint development team, for one of their key work streams. With a short onboarding timeframe, the team acquired the necessary knowledge of the technical stack and were quickly self-sufficient.

“ We are driven to deliver efficient and exceptional technology results by applying innovative and scalable solutions which benefits the customers ambition to drive down costs.”

The onboarding process, utilising Neo Technology’s senior UK based team, has empowered Notting Hill Genesis to refine strategic decisions across all their work streams. Today we partner across a range of work streams such as migration, integration & support and are the preferred partner in their Digital Transformation journey.

Having outsourced teams from Neo Technology, Notting Hill Genesis have extended their development capacity and negated their contractor management requirements. In addition, this has achieved substantial savings against their contractor costs.

Learn more | neotechsolutions.co.uk

NOTTING HILL GENESIS

“ A huge shift is going to happen and COVID is definitely a factor in this” — Rajiv Peter, Director of Digital Technology, Notting Hill Genesis

190

JANUARY 2021

in, where needed, if there was a staff shortage in critical services.

“This was one of the things that completely changed the minds of people in terms of what the possibilities are. Because we couldn’t work from offices all the paper-based systems presented a challenge, for instance invoices that would have previously been printed. Some of the manual systems we automated very quickly and were able to digitally track colleague workloads, for example in HR, to make sure that it was streamlined and evenly distributed. All these things were implemented very quickly; people were very keen to use the technology.”

AN EXCITING FUTURE Rajiv believes that we are entering the most exciting period since the internet was developed. “A huge shift is going to happen, and COVID is definitely a factor in this,” he says.

“One of the biggest things is probably 5G, and it will probably take about five years to roll out because it requires a lot more infrastructure than 4G, just because of the frequency bands it covers. This will be an enabler t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

191

NOTTING HILL GENESIS

for other complementary technologies around devices taking information, in other words IoT. “This is currently maturing, as the cost of these devices is falling quite rapidly.

You can then create a virtual world, which is a replica of the physical world, where you’ll be able to visualise a whole building or even a city. This will help us to make better decisions, both individually but also connecting to machines to make autonomous decisions and acting on them, both locally and centrally. If, 192

for instance, a lift stops working somewhere, that information can be passed to our system and the system could automatically send out a repair job to a supplier, who can then repair it.”

“It could also detect things that humans can’t detect, like water pressure reducing gradually over a long period of time, which could be an indication of something that’s gone wrong like a leak, or a generator losing power.

association. It’s also become far more

Then we can intervene much earlier

accessible thanks to pay-as-you-go

and treat the problem.”

cloud platforms.

Rajiv says that these uses of arti-

“This sort of automation will ramp up,”

ficial intelligence create a better

he says, “because citizen developers

experience for customers, but are also

and software developers can all use

more cost effective for the housing

those ‘human literate’ technologies to

JANUARY 2021

193

be more efficient. Things have moved from buildings to the private cloud, then to the public cloud by using one of the core providers like Azure, Google and AWS. In the future it will be spread out between different cloud providers but controllable from any one of them.� t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

194

Reimagining Hospitality.

195

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

THE STUDENT HOTEL

The Student Hotel is redefining how the hospitality business model works in a world of changing guest behaviour. And that means a new approach to technology.

C

hange has not been one of the watchwords of the hospitality industry, according to The Student Hotel’s Chief Digital and Experience

Officer Mark Liversidge. “The hotel business, in my humble opinion, hasn’t really changed in generations,” he says.

“It runs on the same formula. It’s driven by the same industry metrics with the same workaround to overcome the

196

shifts and changes that are going on around it.

“Brand portfolios delivered by the hospitality management companies are massive. They’ve got up to 20, 30 or 40 brands in their portfolios, yet fundamentally it’s all just been the same space and service with different carpets and wallpaper.

“The engine it works on is the same. Most of the guest utility is the same. The decision making of the business models is the same. It’s simply a drive to get more flags in the ground and operational rooms. Fundamentally, none of it is serving the evolution of the guest. And their ability to pivot is hugely constrained. Conventional hospitality technology does not allow them to move with fluidity or agility.”

What we’re trying to do is different; staying at TSH is not just about the rooms, it’s about a community experience.

TSH’s hybrid hospitality concept is designed to welcome students, tourists, neighbours, entrepreneurs and business

197

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

THE STUDENT HOTEL

198

EX EC UTIV E PROFILE:

Mark Liversidge Title: Chief Digital and Experience Officer Company: The Student Hotel Industry: Hybrid hospitality Location: Amsterdam

Mark is responsible for the technology stack, digital platforms and guest experience, placing technology at the core of TSH hybrid hospitality model.

Mark held a variety of executive roles in consumer markets with Orange, O2, CSL, Macquarie and Hilton Worldwide. He has a master’s in strategy and innovation from Oxford University and is a graduate in European Studies from Durham University.

Twice in the Global Top 40 Under 40, named Asia’s Most Influential CMO and awarded in branding, marketing, digital, mobile and retail design.

Mark advises sporting charities and is a passionate sportsman, currently a youth coach at Bath Rugby in the UK. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

199

THE STUDENT HOTEL

Mark Liversidge: 5 Points to Effective Leadership Mark Liversidge has honed his approach to leadership “over time, working across a broad spectrum of companies in different industry sectors, different organisation models, different ownership structures, different cultures globally and sizes of team from single digits to 700”. It comes down to five points.

1. Be culturally aware “It’s critical to be culturally aware. And that’s culturally aware in terms of the context of where the market operates in terms of geography both for your internal team and also your customers, and then the actual community culture of your business.

You have to understand that very quickly on entry into any organisation. And you have to keep that at the forefront of your thinking.”

200

2. Be contextually aware “This is where you go down to an individual level, understand each individual’s journey.

I don’t buy into leaders who think that people are going to want to stay with that company or that team for lifetime. That just simply doesn’t happen. It’s not normal.

So understand the context of an individual’s journey, where they’re at, what they want to get out of their time in your team, in your organisation, and where they want to go next. And be respectful of that and try to assist them on that. Because if you are open and engaged in that journey, then you will get more out of them while they’re with you.”

3. Set direct strategy and objectives “Every time I’ve observed failure, it’s because of a lack of harmonisation across the group of people. What’s important is to set clear direct strategy, objectives and timeline, then to step back and allow the people and the teams to work out the journey and not be prescriptive or descriptive in how they’re going to achieve those outcomes.”

4. Put in the checkpoints “Have set communication and engagement cycles with the team, with your internal clients, and externally, with your partners and your customers. And I think it’s very important that people understand what that communication cycle is, so that they know they’re going to be engaged and given downward information, but also have the opportunity for feedback. And then with that communication, ensure commitment of action based on the collective observations and findings of that communication and engagement cycle.”

5. Give people space “It’s critical to harmonise around the individual. Give people space to explore their capabilities, allow people to step into the space that they feel they’ve got within themselves, allow them to make mistakes, allow them to challenge your thinking by trying things that maybe you, with your experience or perspective, don’t necessarily think is the right outcome, but then learn from them as they learn. In order to facilitate that, be super flexible in your engagement as an individual. And I see this as four roles that I have to play in engaging with somebody and the mix is dependent on the individual and where they’re at and what that person is like: between being a director, being a mentor, being a disruptor, and being a defendant.

The Breakdown And you think about those things, then in terms of the full package overall, to be an effective leader, my belief is that you have to spend two-thirds of your time in that last element, which is one-on-one individual time, and you’re spending 20 per cent on your strategy direction and your communication, and you’re spending 20 per cent on maintaining cultural and contextual awareness. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

201

THE STUDENT HOTEL

202

“ Activating all types of space use within a single harmonized technology system” — Mark Liversidge, Chief Digital and Experience Officer, The Student Hotel

student accommodation (PBSA). That is also a rapidly evolving market, as higher education morphs from a concentration of 18 to 24 year old’s towards lifelong learning models, another trend Liversidge sees

people to learn, stay, work and play, all under

being accelerated by COVID. TSH’s hybrid

one roof. From hotel, student rooms and co-

personality begs the question of where

working spaces to auditoriums, gyms, event

The Student Hotel fits between hospital-

spaces and social initiative programming,

ity, workspace and PBSA. In fact, they are

Its a place where people can connect and

somewhat converging, as students demand

learn from one another while growing into a

higher quality accommodation while work-

vibrant community.

ers and travelers have increasingly fluid

The Student Hotel began life, as the name suggests as a provider of purpose-built

notions of how they go about their respective endeavours.

WORKING FOR CHANGE

that are going to be fluid in the immedi-

Like universities, who are coming to realise

ate future. The challenge for us, at TSH,

that they are not accommodation special-

is to bring them together harmoniously,

ists and would rather hand off to third party

each part clearly defined, and as a prof-

expertise, Liversidge believes the corpo-

itable business. Technology will play a

rate world is likely to see a revolution in

critical role in achieving this.

office space.

If you want to do things differently you

“Companies don’t want to be carrying the

have to overcome the constraints of con-

cost of large spaces in city centres or in major

ventional industry technology engineering.

hubs at high cost that is not fully utilised.

The Student Hotel has been pushing to

They’re going to want to hand that over to

break free of the “standards, systems

other people whose specialisms are in real

and platforms” that “just don’t exist to sup-

estate as a service and have more fluidity in

port our desired fluidity”.

what space they need and when they use it.

“We’re heading into a generation of more

MIDDLEWARE

203

freelance contract work, where people

“We’re on our transformation journey, and

will come together in teams on a fluid,

we’ve made some bets with innovators

organic, time-specific basis. You won’t be

and early leaders who are bringing smart,

contracted to a company so much as con-

dynamic tooling to the table to be a technol-

tracted in for a particular activity or project

ogy leader, breaking out of the conventional

within a company. And that company itself

architecture and systems that just can’t

may only exist for a certain reason for a short

cope with hybrid space use and operat-

period of time. People are going to say ‘I want

ional fluidity that we believe are the basis

the ability to step out of my personal space

of future business profitability and growth.”

and go to a dedicated workspace which

Middleware, Liversidge argues, is the key.

is set up for that and has the facilities and

“Middleware is a critical path for the indu-

amenities for that. And from a wellness and

stry because so many of these systems

mental wellbeing perspective, it should give

are linear and single use, but we’re trying

people that ability to mix face to face rather

to dimension our spaces to be multi-use.

than solely via a screen.

You need a logic layer that can connect

“So you’ve got three things in a state of flux

those individual systems and allow you to t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

THE STUDENT HOTEL

204

205

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

THE STUDENT HOTEL

206

207

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

www.thestudenthotel.com

Hospitality’s Premiere Middleware Provider Start building a foundation. Ireckonu combines its powerful, system-agnostic product stack with a hotel or hotel chain, adapting and evolving with your technology stack and company vision to unlock the true potential of your on-premises and above property systems.

Visit our website

“ It’s all just been the same with different carpets and wallpaper” — Mark Liversidge, Chief Digital and Experience Officer, The Student Hotel

the ability to start creating a core central customer data platform (CDP) with individual lifelong guest profiles.

“I would argue that a middleware logic layer is fundamentally going to be critical to almost any multi-product hospitality operator in the next five years while the operational systems try to catch up.

And then if you look at the key systems,

manage that flexibility. We partnered early

the property management system (PMS)

with Ireckonu who developed a middle-

in our category, they’re very limited and

ware logic layer specifically for hospitality

very linear. Most of them are based on the

and over the last couple of years has

same dimensioning, which is the historic

evolved into a rich product set that has

per room per night stay.”

209

enables us to move rapidly with our technology transformation.

The other big thing to address is that

PERISHABLE SPACE The problem, Liversidge maintains, is

we’re clearly now in the era of hyper indi-

achieving the optimal use of space. A fully

vidualization, which we see delivered by

booked hotel may have all its rooms

the digital retailers and service providers.

booked according to the legacy system,

People now expect you to understand who

but upwards of half of the ‘space time’ is

they are and serve them to their distinctive

never used. Once the time has passed, so

unique behavioral needs and journeys.

has the opportunity to leverage its use and

“And again, the hospitality space in its

sweat the asset for incremental revenues.

broadest context just doesn’t do that right.

The Student Hotel has been partnering

It actually has abandoned the original

with Mews Systems in delivering a PMS

fundamentals of hospitality in personal

which “will fundamentally allow us to drive

service and it’s now a homogenized thing

our dynamic space x time model more

at a time when everybody wants to get

intently in activating all types of space

that individualisation. So the other critical

use within a single harmonized technol-

thing about middleware is that it gives you

ogy system.” t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

THE STUDENT HOTEL

“ I’m having to design a technology architecture for a business model that’s never existed before” — Mark Liversidge, Chief Digital and Experience Officer, The Student Hotel

That technology architecture is designed to deliver The Student Hotel’s brief as a hybrid space for blended living, blended use.

It’s a PBSA, it’s a city hotel, it’s serviced apartments, it’s a workspace, it has corporate busi­ness meeting, event and – increasingly –office space. Then there is lifestyle, it’s also a place to hang out in the day and night-time: gyms, wellness spaces, learning events, mini cinemas, gaming theatres and “what we call our living space, where all of those different tribes come together”.

“I’m having to design a technology

210

architecture for a business model that’s never existed before and is still nascent in its formula. It’s not fixed as to how it’s going to be. And I’m pretty confident that three years from now, it won’t look like we think it looks today. And three years after that, none of us know. So we have to have some agility in what we’re trying to design for today to be still purposeful within that natural five to seven year technology life cycle that we all live with.”

THE BLUE CUBE Liversidge’s approach is to abandon traditional hotel thinking and break down the space. “I simply think of a blue cube and that blue cube is a metre by a metre

Stay Curious. | The Student Hotel CLICK TO WATCH

|

1:08

211 by a metre. And we ask ourselves, how do

“The other side of what we’re thinking

we activate that blue cube – and we have

about is our guest. Our business success

hundreds of thousands – in the most opti-

is singularly going to be built on the iden-

mal and efficient way that people can use

tification and serving of an individual

them purposefully as individuals or groups?

guest who is increasingly expecting

And how do we make sure we’re turning

hyper-personalisation. So we’ve got

them over to other people to use as quickly

to make sure that we have an ability to

and as efficiently as possible? As an exam-

immediately capture people’s profiles in

ple, many coworking places will have a fixed

the broadest possible dimensions that

membership quota. And they’ll say they’re

we can at every possible opportunity, but

full, but you go there at 10 o’clock at night,

then intelligently and restrictively use them,

it’s empty. You go there at six o’clock in the

because we don’t want to be big brother.

morning, it’s empty. There are people who

We want to use it with respect, intelligently

have a need to use space in off-peak hours.

and infrequently, but when we use it, it

How do you reach them? And how do you

really is a moment that matters for the guest.

set up the technology to activate them?

We are in the process of building that up on t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

THE STUDENT HOTEL

212

2012 Year founded

13

Number of hotel locations

500+ Number of employees

our proprietary front-end platforms, based on the core middleware and operational management system.

TECHNOLOGY ARCHITECTURE “We’ve built an entire new front-end, which essentially is our shop window, with a new website and the booking engine. We’ve built our own new proprietary spaces. We built a website using React JS. To give you an idea of who else uses React JS, people like Netflix and Airbnb. And why do we want that? Because it enables us to modify and deliver faster, stronger UX, as well as critically, really leading-edge capabilities to have dynamic and changeable experience, which is going to be fundamental for us in telling our brand story and experience, along with capturing revenue opportunities.”

The new booking platform, now into phased deployment, again breaks away from the traditional linear single hotel product booking engines, moving to a multi-product basket to deliver a distinctive branded shopping experience as TSH seeks to sell packages meeting individual guest and group needs, to wrestle back control of the customer from the intermediary distribution platforms and build a customer lifecycle model. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

213

THE STUDENT HOTEL

214 Finally, there is data, a crucial pillar of the

middleware logic layer, and finally complete

knowledge economy, “how we start to

swap out and standardization of our on-

understand the value of the data we’re har-

property technology.

vesting and the sensitivity and meticulous

This latter proprietary technology stack

control to utilise that data to benefit both

is called HiB (Hotel Tech in a Box), which is

the individual customer and for the company

dropped into each of our operating proper-

by aggregating that into macro indicators.

ties, identikit right down to the cable layout

All of these elements of the technology

in the equipment rooms and integrates with

architecture are being delivered to put the

deploying HP Aruba hardware for optimal

individual customer in “total” control of their

connectivity and space monitoring.

own journey.

And we’ve overlaid that with PRTG

“We’ve made three massive transforma-

monitoring over more than 4,000 data

tions in the last 15 months; delivering a new

points so that we can, from a single

website and booking engine, transformation

central perspective, constantly monitor,

of our operating management system and

moderate and control our technology

“ Middleware is a critical path for the industry” — Mark Liversidge, Chief Digital and Experience Officer, The Student Hotel

broadcast quality connectivity and enables use our meeting spaces differently, which has been super, super successful already.

“COVID has re-emphasised we’ve made the right decisions in the direction we’re taking with our technology, showing the critical need for the flexiest, most agile systems.

Furthermore, COVID hit in the middle of our transformation program and created a

stack which harmonizes between the op-

huge challenge of project delivery, which

erational systems and the actual property.”

I’m very proud of what was achieved, not only by my team, but our vendor partners,

SURVIVAL OF THE FLEXIEST

in still delivering on time and without any

It’s a system The Student Hotel has been

impact on business operations, really

able to stress test during the pandemic.

encapsulating the can-do spirit of TSH.”

“COVID has accelerated the stress and flux

As for the impact of COVID on the sector,

that’s coming on the hotel, workspace and

Liversidge says, “it will be Darwinian, those

leisure categories. If it had been a year

that have planned and deployed the flexi-

earlier it would have been a horror show for

est technology architecture will thrive and

us because of all the singular systems, so

grow, while the operators that are stuck

we have been fortunate to deliver the new

with the out-of-date and linear product

core systems and take advantage that part

technology stacks will struggle to respond

of the design has our own Api to enable fast

to the dynamic changes in the market and

deployment of new guest experience ser-

meet customer expectations.”

vices. One thing that we quickly invested in

And beyond COVID-19? “Space is

was a belief that organisations would

going to be redefined. Let’s focus explicitly

need enhanced broadcast to reach their

on the hotel bedroom all over the globe: you

dispersed teams and audience, so we cre-

know what you’re going to see. You walk

ated and delivered the TSH Media Studio,

in the door, the wardrobe is to the left, the

which essentially is building on the deployed

cubicle bathroom is to the right. Straight t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

215

THE STUDENT HOTEL

“ We’ve made three massive transformations in the last 15 months”

216

engage in your public spaces. By and large it is the same fixed formula, yet customers have differing needs for space at differing times. We are delivering lounge

— Mark Liversidge, Chief Digital and Experience Officer, The Student Hotel

tribes at different times of the day.

ahead: double or twin beds. In front of

SUSTAINABILITY

that a desk on the wall with a TV above it.

Sustainability will also be crucial to hos­

And probably a bit of shelving and one

pitality and technology in the future,

comfy chair in the window. And that has

says Liversidge. “I fundamentally believe

not changed in literally the better part

the way we build and operate property

of a century.

will change and this will be driven by

spaces that are set as hubs to provide for the needs of the differing customer

“People are going to look for different

the financing. The financial markets will

spatial experience, they are going to want

drive and demand smarter more envi-

a private space to rest and revitalize, a

ronmentally sound thinking about the

cocoon, a space designed for wellness.

physical asset because people are making

Why is there a desk when people now

a 20-year investment. Those investment

want to work collaboratively? Get that

managers are smart enough to know

out of there. Starbucks has been the des-

that five years from now a very heavy

tination of choice for people grabbing a

metric of value is going to be based on

workspace for the better part of 20 years

your green footprint.

around the globe, that should be a natural

“We’re working super, super hard on this.

use of hotel/living space. Just rethink and

We’re trying to use sustainable elements

reimagine the whole space. Maybe people

and base components in all of our buildings.

want individual cooking in a room, or VR

I’m very pleased to say that we opened

gaming, or exercise without going to the

in Delft a couple of months ago where all

hotel gym. How do you design space

our public spaces, workspaces, as well

for that? And you’ve got to create more

as the in-house restaurant are designed

inspiring and flexible space for people to

with circular design principles. We see

T S H K E Y PA R T N E R S H I P S

RUFUS LEONARD

IRECKONU

Rufus Leonard is a creative agency

IRECKONU’s hybrid middleware solu-

that built The Student Hotel’s website

tion is designed specifically for the

and retooled its content manage-

hotel industry and connects systems,

ment system (CMS). Underpinning

either on-property or otherwise, into

the experience is an innovative hybrid

a single platform allowing for instant,

hospitality UX that is user-centric and

accessible visibility of operational and

goal-orientated, rather than one-size-

guest profile data.

fits-all.

MEWS

HP ARUBA HP Aruba is a wireless networking tool

Mews is an advanced property man-

allowing for control of access points,

agement system (PMS). Founded by

traffic management and network mon-

a team of former hoteliers, the Mews

itoring. It also allows networks to be

Hospitality Cloud was designed to be

controlled remotely and can perform

the most open, extensible property

complex tasks such as prioritising

management software in the market.

bandwidth for certain customers.

the property as a live operating lab to

collectively as a harmonized technology

test circularity and sustainability in the

team. After a lifetime of partnerships

built environment. We’re exploring smart

with businesses, governments, sports,

building design and management, and

entertainment and charities, Liversidge is

behind this we are making conscious

both enthusiastic and pragmatic. As far as

choices in technology deployment and

technology is concerned, it’s not about the

its use to bring energy efficiency.

technology (“it’s all good tech if they’ve got to the shortlist”), but about the people.

BEDFELLOWS

“It’s really about where they’re going,

TSH digital and technology group operates

how quickly, and identifying how that can

with substantial outsourcing, built around

be harmonised between both parties for

four key partnerships [see box] working

mutually beneficial time-based outcomes t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

217

THE STUDENT HOTEL

“ Let’s just sit down, be open, supportive and reharmonise on the new way forwards.

And go again. This open and pragmatic approach is the reason we have delivered our transformation during this global crisis” — Mark Liversidge, Chief Digital and Experience Officer, The Student Hotel 218 and milestones. There are going to be moments of failure with technology.

You have to accept they’re going to happen and have tolerance on both sides. And that

STINKY FISH

tolerance is based on that harmonised

“And the other side of this is ‘stinky fish’.

milestone plan.

You’ve got to have truth and reconcili-

You break it down into an annual horizon

ation when something’s gone wrong to

and a quarterly horizon, then accept that

make sure you don’t make the same error

there’s going to be a bit of a zigzagging

in future and it doesn’t cloud the working

journey to get there. And that gives you

relationship. And another dynamic you

a degree of manoeuvrability when you

will handle in deploying any leading-edge

have those inevitable ebbs and flows of

capability – which happens in technology

any relationship. You need a collective

a lot – is that if you pick a fast growth

group of people on both sides who have

company as your partner, you’ll inevita-

a connection with each other and see

bly stop being the shiny new customer at

themselves as one team.

the top of their client list at some point.

219

You’ve got to address it on both sides,

new way forwards. And go again. This open

acknowledge it and ensure your interests

and pragmatic approach is the reason we

are protected in formal documentation

have delivered our transformation during

and informal people connections, while

this global crisis, preparing our business

openly supporting the partners growth.

model to grow as we move into the future”

“This openness has been really important with the Covid situation. Right now we’re having constant conversations with our core partners because all our timelines are changing for reasons that are, in most cases, out of all our control. So let’s not all get upset about it. Let’s just sit down, be open, supportive and reharmonise on the t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

220

JANUARY 2021

221

360° SECURITY WRITTEN BY

PADDY SMITH PRODUCED BY

BEN MALTBY

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

ORDINA

222

JANUARY 2021

Vincent Meijer, CISO at Ordina, explains why security should be built in, not bolted on

“W

e are a local player,” says Vincent Meijer, CISO and Head of Information Security at Ordina. The Netherlands-based IT

solutions company is heavily focused on the Benelux market, perhaps surprisingly in a world of globalised solutions. But for Meijer it is key to 223

delivering value.

“We talk about areas of expertise, but we get even more value because we are a local player. We understand Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourgisch culture and how things work out there and we focus on building expertise and knowledge of certain branches – sectors – in these countries.

“We have a deep understanding of those kinds of businesses which, added to our expertise, can really move them forward and put them a step ahead. You can have just the expertise and fold it into a context you don’t understand, but you will only bring the company forward in a technical way.

We look at it a little bit more holistically and see how we can deliver a total concept or solution by combining expertise from all our company.”

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

ORDINA

“ We deliver a total solution by combining expertise” — Vincent Meijer, CISO | Head of Information Security, Ordina

it in a more holistic way – and look at where you can adjust it or apply it in your value stream process. If you do that, you

HOLISTIC SECURITY

can move and anticipate change really

Meijer talks about holistic security enthu-

quickly because it’s just the way you

siastically, and calls his work ‘security

work. But if you keep on addressing it

transformation’. “I don’t think security is

as an add-on or an afterthought, that’s

a goal in itself,” he says. “It’s just a piece

going to be really, really difficult.”

which needs to be there as a standard 224

in, and to build it in you need to look at

way of working. So it needs to be built

Why? “It was already difficult, but it’s going to be impossible to grow in this digital transformation everybody’s into.

And the risks are growing.”

Meijer explains that new legislation passed in the Netherlands puts the duty of care on suppliers for security matters. It’s “a big topic at the moment” because although many suppliers wanted to put security at the heart of

JANUARY 2021

Data Migration CLICK TO WATCH

|

0:51

225 their solutions, it adds costs and clients

change and an increasing number of

were reticent about paying the per-

employees engage with their work via

ceived mark-up.

personal devices. “A lot of companies

“That was always a difficult discus-

designed their programs on the office

sion, because if the supplier thinks their

network, not just their IP networks

competitor is going to propose a solu-

but also the people networking in the

tion without [security] and I’m going to

office and in the office space. So, for

propose one with it, I’m going to lose

example, the awareness programmes –

the offer. So it’s a big step from both

there are posters all over the company,

sides to increase security, and that’s

in the toilets, in the coffee bar, but

a good thing, I think.”

no one’s going there so the question arises: how do I reach my people?”

HYBRID WORKING AND SECURITY

At a more technical level, Meijer also

Covid-19 has also accelerated secu-

points to home networks that lack

rity concerns as working patterns

the enhanced security of corporate t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

ORDINA

226

“ It’s important to realise you can’t do all the security on your own” — Vincent Meijer, CISO | Head of Information Security, Ordina

network monitoring solutions. “A lot of

we create value for our customers

companies I speak with have a huge

hasn’t changed, only the context of the

blind spot there, so they need to antici-

environment where, when and how we

pate it to increase visibility again. And

create that value did change.”

again, we are continuously looking at

The problem for companies who

what value we can create. So the way

haven’t previously consolidated their

JANUARY 2021

security arrangements are strug-

security arrangements more effec-

gling in managing and maintaining all

tive and better to manage in order to

their security controls and it almost

become more resilient.

becomes a goal on itself. “Hopefully a lot of people are going to take a little

ZERO TRUST: NO HERO?

step back instead of rushing forward,”

“I keep hearing about a ‘zero trust’

says Meijer. “A better goal should be to

philosophy during Covid conditions,

make it simpler instead of adding more

and this is where you don’t trust any-

complexity to it. So we help companies

thing and therefore might think you

to remove complexity and make their

have to check everything. Using this

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Vincent Meijer

227

Title: CISO | Head of Information Security Industry: Information Technology & Services With more than 20 years of experience in IT, Business and Security, Vincent has worked on many challenging cyber security projects for appealing organisations both national and internationally.

The last decade he has been focusing more on understanding and learning about organisational business models and their processes in order to integrate security within the value stream instead of using the traditional afterwards compliance-driven approach.

In addition to his assignment to integrate cyber security within the business strategy as Group CISO for Ordina Benelux, Vincent also fulfills the role of business director for Ordina’s Cybersecurity & Compliance services. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

ACCELERATE DETECTION, CONTAINMENT AND REMEDIATION OF CYBERSECURITY INCIDENTS WITH ESET EXPERTISE

At ESET we believe that the highest level of security can only be achieved by a combination of robust technology and human expertise. As a global company with local expertise we are the cybersecurity experts on your side.

LEARN MORE

#1 ENDPOINT SECURITY VENDOR FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION

“ A lot of companies I speak with have a huge blind spot on hybrid working security” — Vincent Meijer, CISO | Head of Information Security, Ordina

hierarchies play a role in whether the customer can be sold on the argument. Difficulties arise when security officers are still traditional some-

approach might end you up in a never

where in IT and not positioned within

ending and unmanageable situation,

the business itself. It’s an easier sell

I think, because that’s going to be too

when, as at Ordina, the CISO is also

much and really complex. Yet if I look

an executive position. This important

at this change, I can actually remove

transition to really integrate into the

complexity because I can look at the

business could take up to five years,

office environment at the same level

he says.

as the home environment. I don’t trust them, but I only have one scenario to

FINDING A PARTNER

manage. We’re not ever going back, I

Internally, Ordina wants to create value

think, to the old situation. We’re going

but the same is true of its partnerships.

to a hybrid kind of model, and then the

“You have to seek for partners to be able

office becomes a more public environment with a different function – to connect, to socialise, to find each other in person – and that’s why my office network is going to look more like my home network.”

Meijer’s mantra of building security in, rather than bolting it on, is part of this simplified approach to holistic security. But organisational t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

229

ORDINA

O R D I N A: 3 CO RE VALU ES

• We discover

230

From craftsmanship towards staying ahead in your profession. We are curious and open to new things. This helps us to identify opportunities and threats and to figure out what that means. Every day we discover how our talent can be optimally used. How we can further develop our craftsmanship. To be at the forefront of our profession and to proactively help customers to remain ‘Ahead of change’.

• We connect From collaboration towards taking responsibility for the result. We are open-minded, inclusive and entrepreneurial. That helps us to make connections and to build relationships. Ordina takes JANUARY 2021

responsibility for the result by collaboration through High Performance Teams. Proactively connecting the inner with the outer side and vice versa, to achieve an optimum result. Win-win situations with the best results for every stakeholder.

• We accelerate From customer knowledge towards digital lead. We are customer focused and we strive for quality. That helps us to look forward and helps our customers to accelerate. Through our business propositions we proactively develop the best solutions for customers. Ambitious solutions that make the difference.

They positively surprise and help customers to take a digital lead.

“ Security is a shared responsibility” — Vincent Meijer, CISO | Head of Information Security, Ordina

with their product but didn’t have the expertise to follow up on alerts within the customers context. “They realised that that wasn’t actually their cup of tea, so they needed to find a partner who was good at that, and can bring customer and business context

to offer a total solution for the problem

to the product. So that’s why we joined

in the market. You have to find a partner

forces, because we design it within the

who is really excellent at what they do,

context of the organisation and we

so we can join forces and increase the

can follow up in case of an incident.

value of something we deliver together to the customer.

ESET, an antivirus company, is one such partner. They are happy

“It’s important to realise that as a good security services provider you need to work with partners in order to deliver end-to-end solutions.

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

231

ORDINA

1973

Year founded

€372mn Revenue in euros (2019)

232

2,650 Number of employees

“You can’t do everything by your-

customers which can only be solved

self, especially all the security. It’s

with these combined services then

just too broad. It’s too much, it’s too

you’re in really good condition.”

intense. And a partnership has to be a two-way street, otherwise it’s

RISK OWNERSHIP & ACCOUNTABILITY

more like a supplier-client relation-

Finally, Meijer wants to impress

ship. It needs to be from both of you,

about the importance of risk own-

and if you can solve something for

ership. “A big job is to help the

JANUARY 2021

233

organisation understand, and organ-

“Otherwise we’re going to end up

ise that accountability in the right

being at a loss, or running behind

places in your organisation. We

it forever.�

need to see security as more of a shared responsibility for everybody in the company and organise it so everyone can take their piece of accountability. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

234

Biznet Gio: Cloud Provider with Essential Customer Experience in Indonesia WRITTEN BY

GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY

RYAN HALL

JANUARY 2021

235

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

PT BIZNET GIO NUSANTARA

PT Biznet Gio Nusantara’s CEO, Dondy Bappedyanto, discusses Indonesia’s cloud computing business standpoint along with his winning strategy in the postCOVID situation.

R

eflecting on his career in the cloud industry, Dondy Bappedyanto explains that he began his career in the cloud industry in

2009. Since then, Bappedyanto has “made many changes to the cloud and hosting industry landscape 236

in Indonesia,” he comments. Looking at the comprehensive technology and infrastructure industry, Bappedyanto has more than 20 years of experience in multiple multinational companies, ranging from general management, product development, technical operations, and technical strategy. He also has been actively speaking in various IT events and joining as a mentor for startups and the IT communities in Indonesia.

Taking a look at the company’s services, Bappedyanto explains that PT Biznet Gio Nusantara’s cloud operations, known as Biznet Gio, relate to cloud computing and data center solutions in Indonesia.

As the demand for more agile IT services and vast network capabilities rises, Bappedyanto details that the company “has been helping customers to grow and transform digitally. Since launching in 2015, JANUARY 2021

237

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

PT BIZNET GIO NUSANTARA

238 many companies in Indonesia have

a part of a wider group, Bappedyanto

trusted their business infrastructure

highlights the benefits of being sup-

on our cloud. We are determined to

ported with large network capacity.

assist our customers in overcoming their

“Our cloud infrastructure is available

IT Infrastructure challenges with the

to fulfill any connectivity requirement

right solutions and achieve their busi-

and offers free unlimited network

ness objectives.”

traffic to every customer.”

With both PCI-DSS and ISO 27001

Delving deeper into the company’s

certification, and SOC Type-2 by the end

infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution,

of 2020, Bappedyanto is proud to say

Bappedyanto explains that “Biznet Gio

that the company is “the first compliant

service offers scalable virtual machines,

CSP in Indonesia with the multi-region

storage, networks, and dedicated

concept with flexibility like the hyper

cloud servers. For the virtualization

scalers, and serving business continuity

platform, VMware is one of the most

planning among the industry.” By being

commonly used platforms among

JANUARY 2021

“ Biznet Gio helps Indonesian companies to not only transform their legacy system but also to achieve productivity through infrastructure cost optimisation and provide leverage in terms of which budget to save in the long run” — Dondy Bappedyanto, CEO, PT Biznet Gio Nusantara

E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :

Dondy Bappedyanto Title: CEO

Company: PT Biznet Gio Nusantara

Industry: Internet

Location: Indonesia

Dondy Bappedyanto began his career in the cloud industry in 2009. Since then, he has “made many changes to Indonesia’s cloud and hosting industry landscape.” Reflecting on his experience in the comprehensive technology and infrastructure industry, Bappedyanto has more than 20 years of experience in multiple multinational companies, ranging from general management, product development, technical operations, and technical strategy. He also has been actively speaking in various IT events and joining as a mentor for startups and the IT communities in Indonesia. t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

239

DIGITAL GAME CHANGERS Our customers are our storyline. From challenge to success, your transformation journeys reveal the innovation we can achieve through technology, people, and economics.

Learn More

enterprise businesses. Therefore, one of the enterprise products, GIO Cloud, is undoubtedly reliable and offers VMware’s well-known functionality, such as a high availability design with a robust performance advantage. Serving both public cloud and private cloud, our enterprise customers can design their system requirements, based on the scale of

“ Our customer support is available to assist customers 24 hours a day and to respond in under 15 minutes.”

— Dondy Bappedyanto, CEO, PT Biznet Gio Nusantara

the project.”

The dedicated cloud service from GIO

SMEs, providing a one-stop solution

Cloud is the GIO Private. GIO Private

for small businesses in Indonesia to

is a ready-to-go private cloud “to fulfill

ease the digital transformation process.

the industrial demand for massive

“NEO offers a simple yet sophisticated

computing needs on dedicated phys-

infrastructure service for startups,

ical servers and offers full control of

developers, and small businesses alike,

VMware,” comments Bappedyanto.

from cloud servers, block storage, object

In addition to GIO Cloud, the com-

storage, networks, dedicated hosting,

pany offers NEO Cloud. NEO Cloud

licenses, SSL, domain, DNS manager

– launched at the end of 2017 – is a public

to website builder. NEO also comes with

cloud product designated to target

multi regions and multi availability zones t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

241

PT BIZNET GIO NUSANTARA

catering multiple services and systems

IT solutions based on the industrial

design needs,” he adds.

requirement while optimizing the entire

With a mission to simplify the management infrastructure process to eliminate

242

infrastructure cost.”

While its services are certainly

the day-to-day operation complexity,

extensive with a multitude of benefits,

Bappedyanto adds that the company

Bappedyanto reflects that when it

has “multiple services such as backups;

comes to being a successful provider,

disaster recovery center; security;

“our cloud service will not be heavily

microservice management; digital trans-

considered by Indonesian customers

formation, up to the managed service.

if we have slow customer support.

Our extensive managed service offers

Our customer support is available to

end to end transformation and cost opti-

assist customers 24 hours a day and

mization. Equipped with cloud experts

respond in under 15 minutes. The fast

who are ready to identify your business

response is the key-point of our services

pain-points and deliver the best-fit

where most of the industry entrust their

Dondy Bappedyanto - Biznet Gio 1 CLICK TO WATCH

JANUARY 2021

|

1:55

“ Our cloud infrastructure is available to fulfill any connectivity requirement and offers free unlimited network traffic to every customer” — Dondy Bappedyanto, CEO, PT Biznet Gio Nusantara

comes to the impact of legacy systems for an organization, Bappedyanto adds that “whenever a legacy system is outdated, the potential disruption on the operational level could put the company brand value at stake. At the same time, legacy renewal or expansion will need to allocate a huge amount of capital.

This action will become a burden not only from the cost perspective to maintain the legacy system but also on the possibility to delay business profitability.”

mission-critical infrastructure to our cloud and data centers.”

As cloud computing advances, technology provides ways for organizations

When discussing the infrastructure

to become more agile without spending

industry as a whole, Bappedyanto details

CAPEX for infrastructure. “At Biznet Gio,

the importance of moving away from

our cloud expert team assists customers

legacy systems and its hyperscalers

in dealing with the current technological

partnership strategy.

issues. We are helping customers moving away from the CAPEX to the OPEX

LEGACY SYSTEMS

model and avoiding capacity planning

Today Bappedyanto is seeing many

upfront so they can enjoy pay-as-you-

customers move away from the CAPEX

go flexibility,” explains Bappedyanto.”

model to an OPEX model to drive cost

At the same time, he adds, “Biznet Gio

efficiencies and avoid capacity planning

helps Indonesian companies to not

investments upfront. “The business

only transform their legacy system but

approach has shifted the element of

also to achieve productivity through

investment cost towards OPEX, as

infrastructure cost optimization and pro-

many business players start to look

vide leverage in terms of which budget to

away from CAPEX,” he says. When it

save in the long run.” t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

243

PT BIZNET GIO NUSANTARA

Dondy Bappedyanto - Biznet Gio 2 CLICK TO WATCH

|

2:26

244

HYPERSCALE STRATEGY IN INDONESIA When it comes to hyperscalers, Bappedyanto emphasises the long company’s ambitions to welcome the adoption in Indonesia “Currently, we’re partnering with two hyperscalers (AWS and GCP).” In partnering with hyperscalers, he adds that the company strives “to bring an added value for our customers who want to use hyperscalers.” PT Biznet Gio Nusantara does this “by providing managed services and consultant services so customers can efficiently achieve their goals.”

JANUARY 2021

“ Businesses that have migrated to the cloud will survive and be able to compete compared to businesses that still rely on manual systems in the current hybrid workplace situation” — Dondy Bappedyanto, CEO, PT Biznet Gio Nusantara

PT Biznet Gio Nusantara’s partnership with HPe At PT Biznet Gio Nusantara, we use

Gio team to stay competitive in the

HPe servers and HPe storage, and we

cloud computing industry by

are the largest HPE Nimble Storage

providing technology updates along

deployment in Indonesia.

with their

HPE has provided serious support

SLA commitment.

over the years by providing us with reliable products, services, support,

In addition to HPE, we are also getting

and professional advice not only

support through their partner Berca.

technical but also for the business.

Berca contributes to helping us by developing strategic planning

We have been using a lot of HPE

according to our needs and meeting

products from servers and storage

the performance quality based on our

to construct Biznet Gio’s cloud

service requirements. In terms of

architecture on the products and

timeline and commercial

services level. HPE Nimble Storage

administration, Berca provides a clear

offers flexible storage management

vision of how we should deal with the

while also generating faster data

hardware and what the suitable specs

backup, excellent Recovery Time

are according to our target and budget.

Objectives (RTOs), and Recovery Point

Both HPE and Berca, through this

Objectives (RPOs). Apart from the

collaboration, share the same mission

superior performance and competitive

as us, which is to leverage local cloud

prices, HPE products are also easy to

service position and market share

maintain. HPE also supports the Biznet

in Indonesia.

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

245

PT BIZNET GIO NUSANTARA

246

JANUARY 2021

Biznet Gio Senior Members From left to right Standing: Cornelius Hertadi (VP of Sales Marketing) Yusuf Hadiwinata (VP of Technology Operations) Dery Irfianto (Business Operation Senior Manager) Edward Reynaldi Widjaja (Finance Accounting Senior Manager) Rangga Praduwiratna (VP of Product Engineering) Seated: Dondy Bappedyanto (CEO) Miki Tanaka (Strategic Director)

Reflecting on the future for PT Biznet Gio Nusantara, Bappedyanto believes that “the company has a very bright future ahead, with our partnership with the hyperscalers and when it comes to an understanding of the local market.

We know that we can bring more value to our customers who want to transform digitally by using our cloud computing services.”

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

247

BOMBARDIER TRANSPORTATION

248

JANUARY 2021

BOMBARDIER TRANSPORTATION: DRIVING SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY WRITTEN BY

GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY

LEWIS VAUGHN

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

249

BOMBARDIER TRANSPORTATION

A reflection on Bombardier transportation history and how the organisation is striving to develop sustainable mobility solutions

F

ounded in 1942, Bombardier Transportation has 78 years of history in the rail and sustainable mobility industry. With a belief that

in today’s world it is “essential to offer high-quality, sustainable, safe and comfortable public transpor250

tation solutions to meet the capacity challenge,” Bombardier Transportation has more than 100,000 trains operating daily, that it is constantly investing into to drive sustainable mobility and the adoption of digital technologies.

Bombardier Transportation provides integrated solutions to provide substantial benefits and safety for operators, passengers and the environment, digital technologies the company is harnessing include driver assistance safety systems, alternative propulsion, predictive maintenance and high-performance signalling technology.

Operating in 200 cities in 60 countries, Bombardier Transportation’s vision is to move “people and goods in and between cities: safely, reliably and comfortably”. The company is committed to developing

JANUARY 2021

251

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

Innovation is about doing more good We are an international group providing engineering services to design and implement technology-based solutions in many fields of application.

Read more about us today

253 and delivering innovative solutions that advance economic growth, foster inclusivity and protect the ecology in communities.

“Working with our customers, we strive to create holistic, high-quality mobility solutions that anticipate the needs of tomorrow and maximize value for customers and passengers already today.

As a team, we never stop moving to keep ideas, people and goods in motion.

Combining technology and performance with empathy, we serve as a trusted and strong local partner all over the world,” comments Bombardier Transportation.

“ As a team, we never stop moving to keep ideas, people and goods in motion.

Combining technology and performance with empathy, we serve as a trusted and strong local partner all over the world” — Bombardier Transportation t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

BOMBARDIER TRANSPORTATION

Bombardier Transportation’s six smart sustainable mobility solutions “At Bombardier Transportation, we’re tackling these challenges head on.

Our smart mobility solutions combine energy-conserving technology with optimal safety, reliability and cost efficiency”

254

1. Converting to full batterypowered mobility

2. Fast construction with minimal environmental impact

With increasing numbers of railway companies and governments seeking clean alternatives to diesel. Bombardier Transportation provides its customers with battery technology for electromobility that can be used on nonelectrified lines. Currently the company is striving to eliminate diesel power on France’s rail network by converting its regional fleet into an eco-friendly battery propulsion operation.

Ensuring fast construction and minimal environmental impact, Bombardier Transformation’s driverless INNOVIA monorail system is equipped with technology for carbon neutral, emissionfree operations. The system is designed with urban application in mind to drive efficient and cost effective mass transit.

“Our most recent battery project is the TALENT 3 battery-electric multiple unit (BEMU), the first modern regional battery-powered train to enter passenger service in Europe. The battery train is emission-free and sets the standards for smart mobility, with a highly efficient propulsion system and a high degree of recyclability.”

JANUARY 2021

3. Reduce energy consumption by up to 15% with optimised driving In addition to its battery power technology to drive eco-friendly energy, Bombardier Transportation’s EBI Drive 50 technology is designed to help vehicle drivers conserve energy by helping to optimise their driving. “The system dynamically calculates track topography and vehicle performance and compares it with the train’s route and position,”

4. Reduce your vehicle’s weight “Safety, efficiency and flexibility are guiding principles in Bombardier’s product development,” comments Bombardier Transportation, with this vision driving its innovation, Bombardier Transportation helps its customers to reduce their vehicle weight with its ‘lightweight FLEXX Eco bogie’. The technology is said to ensure smooth and safe journeys for travelers in cities, due to its specific design features.

5. Automated vehicle inspection system for sustainable performance To provide its customers with a solution to improve efficiency and operation by forecasting key components and alerting to maintenance needs before they arise, Bombardier Transportation has developed an Automated Vehicle Inspection System (AVIS) to combat these challenges.

6. Reduce your energy consumption by to 35% with silicon carbide converters Striving to continuously innovate in the sustainable mobility industry, Bombardier Transportation’s latest energy saving technology enables its customers to further advance their sustainable urban transit systems with lower energy consumption and noise levels.

“We are very proud of the great strides we are making in reducing energy consumption and are thankful for the strong collaboration with our partners that made this achievement possible. It’s not only evidence of our deep local engagement in Sweden, but it also illustrates how Bombardier Transportation is committed to innovating a greener and more sustainable transportation systems.”

Integrating proven optical image and laser technology to capture key asset conditions with ORBITA, “Bombardier’s state of the art predictive asset management toolset, and the depot’s maintenance management system to deliver seamless automated, intelligent maintenance instructions to a technician.” t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

255

That’s why railway leaders partner with us to develop and test their systems, ensuring they meet the highest industry safety standards.

What about you?

257

“ We are very proud of the great strides we are making in reducing energy consumption” — Bombardier Transportation

SUSTAINABILITY IN MOBILITY In 2009, Bombardier Transportation launched its ‘Climate is Right for Trains’ initiative. The initiative was launched with ambitions to reinforce the advantages of low-emission rail transport. ”Today, this declaration is truer than ever,” notes Bombardier Transportation. “It’s no t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

BOMBARDIER TRANSPORTATION

258

“ Safety, efficiency and flexibility are guiding principles in Bombardier’s product development” — Bombardier Transportation

JANUARY 2021

secret that the world is undergoing a period of dramatic change.

Population is booming and it’s estimated that by 2050 the planet will be supporting 9.8 billion people. At the same time, demographic shifts mean that over half of them will be gravitating to urban spaces with projections showing that by 2030 there will be 43 global megacities of over 10 million inhabitants each. This is all occurring in a context of dwindling resources and environmental uncertainty.”

To address these global challenges, Bombardier Transportation alongside its initiative ‘the Climate is Right for Trains’ not only deliver holistic solutions to combat these challenges, they are committed to continuous development of eco friendly mobility solutions that drive opportunities and prosperity, as well as driving the planet towards a sustainable future.

BOMBARDIER

t e c hno l o gyma ga z in e. com

259

Between hope and possible there’s a bridge.

There from the beginning to where we stand today. And to where we will go from here. One company. One promise.

If you can imagine it, we will build the bridge to get you there.