Technology Magazine - December 2023 by Technology Magazine

December 2023 | technologymagazine.com

DATA GOVERNANCE

TECHNOLOGY LEADERS

Navigating data governance and building AI models

DIGITAL TWINS

Technology is reshaping the manufacturing world

AWS DRIVING CLOUD INNOVATION WITH SAP MATT SCHWARTZ, who leads AWS’ Global SAP Alliance and Partner Network, on how AWS solutions drive cloud transformations

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The Technology Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

MARCUS LAW

CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER

SCOTT BIRCH

SENIOR DESIGNERS

REBEKAH BIRLESON SAM HUBBARD FEATURE DESIGNERS

NEIL PERRY

JULIA WAINWRIGHT VICTORIA CASEY EMMA WALLER

CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER

ADVERT DESIGNERS

HEAD OF MULTIMEDIA

HEAD OF DESIGN

CALLUM HOOD DANILO CARDOSO ADRIAN SERBAN

LEAD DESIGNER

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

MATT JOHNSON

ANDY WOOLLACOTT REBEKAH BIRLESON

KIERAN WAITE

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD DREW HARDMAN SALLY MOUSTAFA

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ

PRODUCTION MANAGERS

JANE ARNETA MARIA GONZALEZ YEVHENIIA SUBBOTINA KENDRA LAU

MARKETING MANAGER

DAISY SLATER

PROJECT DIRECTORS

TOM VENTURO NAZEEF IDREES

MEDIA SALES DIRECTORS

JASON WESTGATE

MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

The vital role of data governance in building AI models As businesses rapidly adopt Generative AI, experts warn that neglecting robust data governance can limit potential and pose security and ethical risks

“As organisations move quickly to employ gen AI models, they are often failing to consider the importance of established data governance capabilities”

TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

usinesses are embracing AI at an accelerating pace, enticed by the promise of data-driven insights and automation. But as organisations move quickly to employ Generative AI models in order to transform their business, they are often failing to consider the importance of established data governance capabilities. According to a report by Deloitte, data governance plays a pivotal role in fostering innovation in the evolving AI landscape by ensuring responsible data practices, mitigating biases, and safeguarding privacy. A robust data governance strategy, it says, is the key to unlocking the full potential of generative AI use cases. However, this rapid adoption poses a myriad of challenges around data governance and model management. Without robust data governance capabilities, the potential impact and value added by Generative AI will be severely limited and may even expose organisations to data and cybersecurity risks. MARCUS LAW marcus.law@bizclikmedia.com

technologymagazine.com

CONTENTS UP FRONT

14 BIG PICTURE

Amazon trials humanoid warehouse robots

16 THE TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEW

Nicola Hodson, CEO UK & Ireland at IBM

24 SECURITYHQ

Providing a simplified cyber approach for teams

30 LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT IN TECHNOLOGY

Meg Whitman, Former CEO at Ebay & HP

34 PEOPLE MOVES

The latest executive moves in the world of technology

36 THE MONTH THAT WAS

Daily coverage of global technology developments

December 2023

DECEMBER 2023

CONTENTS

40 TOP 10

Technology leaders

52 AWS

AWS is driving cloud innovation with SAP

66 DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS

Intelligent Workflows: Automation & AI transforming business

74 J.P. MORGAN

Transforming Treasury via Technology

84 ENTERPRISE IT

How the AI is changing the cloud landscape

84 technologymagazine.com

In Association with:

THE TOP 100

LEADERS OUT NOW

Championing leaders from global organisations, celebrate those who elevate the industry day in, day out.

Read now

DECEMBER 2023 94 SAP

SAP’s Joule taking supply chain AI to the next level

112 DATA & ANALYTICS

Navigating the complexity of data governance and AI models

120 MICROSOFT

Microsoft driving AI transformation in the public sector

136 AI/ML

Industrial metaverse & digital twins reshaping manufacturing

144 SOPRA STERIA

Maximising IT and OT brings cyber security challenges

120

144 technologymagazine.com

CONTENTS 158 EY

Driving the SAP cloud adoption charge

166 GFT GROUP

GFT’s data platform modernisation accelerates the AI journey

182 GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Balancing cybersecurity and innovation

158

198 ETIX EVERYWHERE

166

Edge data centres in Europe – and now Asia

214 STATE OF NEVADA

Inside the State of Nevada’s drastic transformation efforts

228 ARXADA

Arxada’s short-term delivery and long-term capability

240 IRON MOUNTAIN

The twin infrastructure impacts of generative AI and how to deal with them

252 MASTERCARD FOUNDATION

Mastercard Foundation invests in the future of African youth

266 SIEMENS ENERGY

Driving sustainability with digitalisation

282 CITY OF MEMPHIS

How Memphis is using tech and AI to improve public services 10

December 2023

240

DECEMBER 2023

182

214

198 266

228

The Portfolio

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BIG PICTURE

CREDIT: AMAZON

December 2023

Amazon trials humanoid warehouse robots Seattle, Washington Amazon says it has begun testing human-like robot solutions at its robotics research and development site to perform repetitive tasks and work collaboratively with employees. The company has started testing Digit, a twolegged robot that can grasp and lift items, which comes as a result of its partnership with Agility Robotics. Amazon says the device will first be used to shift empty tote boxes, a ‘highly repetitive’ process.

THE TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEW

NICOL A HODSON CEO UK&I AT IBM

Technology Magazine sits down with Nicola Hodson, CEO UK&I at IBM, on the company’s AI strategy, the need for responsible AI and the company’s future plans NICOLA HODSON TITLE: CEO UK & IRELAND COMPANY: IBM LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Dr Nicola Hodson was appointed Chief Executive, IBM UK and Ireland, in January 2023, where she is responsible for the company’s business operations. Before joining IBM Dr Hodson held senior positions at Microsoft for 14 years, including as a global Vice President of Transformation for the commercial business, UK Chief Operating Officer and as head of its UK Public Sector business. Dr Hodson is Deputy President of techUK and has a wide breadth of experience, serving on the boards of Beazley plc, Drax Group plc, Bramble Energy Ltd and is a governor of Bradfield College.

December 2023

n experienced technology leader, Dr Nicola Hodson joined IBM from Microsoft in January 2023 and brings deep technology industry expertise, as well as extensive experience in business and digital transformation, sales and IT in leading global companies. Technology Magazine recently sat down with Dr Hodson at IBM Think in London to discuss IBM’s approach to AI, the importance of ethics and what the company’s future looks like.

Q. PLEASE INTRODUCE YOURSELF AND TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROLE

» I joined IBM in January and my role is

Chief Executive of IBM UK and Ireland. My role has multiple facets to it. First and foremost, that is to make sure that we are best supporting and serving our clients. Secondly, it’s that we build out a partner ecosystem, which is a major facet of what IBM does across the UK and Ireland. I also lead our people across the UK and Ireland, making sure everybody’s energised, motivated, up to speed with our latest technology, and able to bring that to support our clients. In addition to that I do a lot of external work with clients, with partners, with the

THE TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEW

“ IBM HAS A REALLY CLEAR STRATEGY ABOUT HOW WE HELP AND SUPPORT OUR CLIENTS TO MAKE THE BEST OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY”

UK government, and making sure that we create the climate in which we can do business. Increasingly, we’re involved in policy matters, especially as it comes to AI regulation, AI safety, AI ethics and how you build a governance framework to make sure your AI models are doing the right things. Of course, I am accountable for business performance. It goes without saying that the UK and Ireland is a big part of the organisation and it’s important that we’re able to bring the best of our technology and our consulting expertise to bear here.

Q. HOW IMPORTANT IS AI TO YOU AT IBM?

» IBM has a really clear strategy about

how we help and support our clients to make the best of advanced technology, and those technologies that we’re focused on are hybrid cloud and AI. When it comes to hybrid cloud, 77% of all clients have a hybrid cloud environment, be it public cloud, on-premises, or any other private clouds you might think of. So being able to act across all of those environments is super important. The other big component is AI. It’s a big theme for IBM and something we’ve spent many years of R&D and effort on. Most people will be familiar with our brand, Watson, and this year we launched watsonx. We believe that every company and organisation will become an AI organisation. At IBM we are differentiated primarily in the fact that we’re all about AI for business. We don’t play in the consumer space, it’s all about AI for business. Businesses have very specific needs for AI. It’s not like I’m off to do a restaurant search for somewhere to eat tonight: the stakes 18

December 2023

#techUKTalks | Nicola Hodson, CEO at IBM UK&I WATCH NOW

there are not very high. But if I’m a business, for instance a bank or a healthcare provider, and I’m helping you to make a decision or giving you information, I’d better hope it’s going to be right. I’d better hope it’s going to be explainable and that it’s not treating you any differently because of who you might be. Businesses absolutely need consistent AI, and that’s our specialist space, and that’s where we believe watsonx really comes to the fore.

Q. TELL US ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF ETHICS WHEN IT COMES TO BUILDING AI MODELS

» We spend a lot of time talking about

AI regulation and AI ethics to make sure that we can exist within a framework that supports the responsible development of AI. You have to think about the components of responsible AI at the get-go, not once the genie’s left the box.

If you think about responsible AI, it’s really important that we work in every country where we operate – with the government, with regulators, with other partners and with industry and academia – to make sure that we’ve got a regulatory environment that fosters the development of responsible AI. For us, that means you regulate the use case and not the algorithm. Many countries are going down the former route. We think the UK is on the right track going down the route of regulating the use case which might be where you, as a human, interact with the AI. We think AI regulation has to be done by specialist regulators. The FCA or the PRA need to regulate banking and the financial services sector because they know about the sector, they know the risks. It doesn’t make sense to have a new regulatory body when you’ve got people steeped in that industry. technologymagazine.com

THE TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEW

When it comes to ethics we have three pillars: we look at the principles, the practice, and the policies. Think of the principles as how you govern AI and make sure it’s fair, explainable and transparent. And every organisation needs to think about that because let’s face it, your reputation is on the line if you’re using this technology in practice. The second is about practices. That’s about making sure as you go all the way through the development life cycle, from design through development and deployment of AI. It’s crucial that you’re thinking about ethics all the way through that cycle and making sure, again, that the process is fair, explainable and transparent. And then the third is about policies. That’s a bit more widespread than regulation in a sense that you want to make sure that the policies in place support AI development that isn’t advantageous or disadvantageous to any section of society. That gives us the best shot at making this a success not just for a few, but for many people and really taking advantage of the hundreds of billions of pounds that AI can add to the UK economy.

Q. TELL US ABOUT WATSONX AND WHAT IT OFFERS TO YOUR ENTERPRISE CUSTOMERS

» Watsonx has three basic components:

watsonx.ai, watsonx.data and watsonx. governance, and it works across any cloud. 77% of organisations have a hybrid cloud strategy. So it’s super important that you’re not saying, ‘Hey, this only works if you extract all of that data from all of those clouds and put it in one place’. We don’t need that to happen. Watsonx is built on Red Hat OpenShift and it allows 20

December 2023

your data to sit wherever your data sits and for you to then be able to access that to reason your AI across that data. Governance is about lots of the things we’ve been talking about so far, which is how you validate, train, tune, and deploy your AI models, and how you do that in a way that you know where the data came from, whether it’s trusted, whether it’s verified and how your AI is reasoning over that data and taking its decisions. The second piece is around watsonx. data. AI is only as good as the data it’s reasoning over. So for many years in the technology industry organisations have been grappling with how to get their data in good shape. Interestingly, with watsonx, it means you get the benefits of a data warehouse without having to do those multi-year complex programmes to build one. Then the third part which we talked about is watsonx.ai, which gives a bunch of different capabilities including Watson Orchestrate, as an example, which allows you to automate processes. A good example in our own world is we transformed IBM’s HR function on a global basis. The work of 700 people is now done by 70 with the support of AI. It has really transformed the employee experience. The other HR professionals didn’t go anywhere other than to go into higher value work or to be redeployed into different parts of the business, but they’re now doing a lot more work to support people on career development and talent management.

Q. HOW IMPORTANT ARE PARTNERSHIPS AT IBM?

» IBM launched a programme in

January this year called Partner Plus, technologymagazine.com

THE TECHNOLOGY INTERVIEW

and it’s a real step forward in our approach to the ecosystem. We are very reliant on a vibrant ecosystem. If you own three DIY shops and you want to implement AI, you need a partner around the corner whom you can contact and can support you. And so, we absolutely need a vibrant ecosystem of partners, from the large to the very small. We partner extensively with people you might think are competition: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Adobe, SAP, all the way down to small mom-and-pop shop partners. It creates a model where we incentivise them to get certified in our programmes and that gives more of a pull factor. We also now have a number of our products and services available online and we are able to pass leads directly to those partners now. We also recently announced for the UK market the availability of the majority of IBM software and products in the AWS marketplace, as an example. So it just gives customers more flexibility. We know that clients across the patch will want to work with multiple vendors. It’s perfectly natural and our aim is to support them as best as possible in that.

Q. WHAT DOES THE FUTURE LOOK LIKE WHEN IT COMES TO AI AT IBM?

» One of the things we will continue to

do is make sure our business is first and best and making sure we’re applying that technology and making ourselves more productive and giving our employees a better and better experience. We are very active in building an ecosystem. If you think about the UK market specifically, the UK is third only to the US and China in terms of AI capability and AI startups. 22

December 2023

Where we are not always so good is the adoption of that technology. And so, success for me in this market looks like making sure that we have sufficient capability and capacity in our channel to drive that adoption to make sure everyone’s skilled and able to take the technology on and move through to advancement. As you think about the evolution of the workforce and how you help society make the best use of AI, I think we all in the tech industry – including IBM – have a very big part to play in making sure we skill up the population. All of our jobs will adapt. We need to be able to interact with AI systems

“ WHEN IT COMES TO ETHICS WE HAVE THREE PILLARS: WE LOOK AT THE PRINCIPLES, THE PRACTICE, AND THE POLICIES”

and keep building our own skills and those of the people around us so that we can take best advantage of that. I think success looks like getting hold of the £635bn available to the UK economy and helping it to stay at the forefront of AI and making sure our businesses and people thrive. That is a large number, and if you think about that divided across the households in the UK, the impact on health and wellbeing could be phenomenal. If we can go after that, the UK becomes successful, UK businesses become successful, all of our clients are successful and we are there to support them to do that. technologymagazine.com

INTERVIEW WITH SECURITYHQ

SECURITYHQ:

PROVIDING A SIMPLIFIED CYBER APPROACH FOR TEAMS SecurityHQ Head of Sales EMEA & APAC Claudia Banks on the company’s innovative solutions and the benefits of a simplified approach to cyber

CLAUDIA BANKS TITLE: HEAD OF SALES EMEA COMPANY: SECURITYHQ LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM With more than eight years of sales experience, Banks’ background is in implementing sales strategies that drive profitable growth for a plethora of clients. She combines a passion for technology and creativity which has created long lasting relationships with her clients.

December 2023

s Head of Sales EMEA & APAC, Claudia Banks is responsible for the Sales and Business Development at SecurityHQ. With more than eight years of sales experience, her background is in implementing sales strategies that drive profitable growth for a plethora of clients. She combines a passion for technology and creativity which has created long-lasting relationships with her clients. Banks’ main goal when working with a customer is to understand the challenges they face and to create the best solution to not only help the business but also the personal goals of her clients.

Q. TELL US ABOUT SECURITYHQ

» “SecurityHQ is a Global Managed

Security Service Provider (MSSP), that detects, and responds to threats, instantly. With 20 years of experience, we support hundreds of customers across the globe, and hold a 98% customer satisfaction rate. “As your security partner, we provide the agility, flexibility, and expertise in response to cyber threats, and accountability for your security strategy. Gain access to an army of analysts that work with you, as an extension of your team, 24/7, 365 days a year.

Receive tailored advice and full visibility with our Global Security Operation Centres, ensuring peace of mind. Utilise our awardwinning security solutions, knowledge, people, and process capabilities, to accelerate business and reduce risk and overall security costs.”

Q. HOW DOES SECURITYHQ’S UNIFIED AND HOLISTIC CYBER SOLUTION PROVIDE A SIMPLIFIED CYBER APPROACH FOR TEAMS?

» “At SecurityHQ, we’re consistently trying to listen to not just the market but learn from our customers. What we are finding is that because there are so many different technologymagazine.com

INTERVIEW WITH SECURITYHQ

solutions to choose from, businesses are finding it hard to know what solution the right choice is. Leaders are having to make decisions they are not fully comfortable with because they have so many elements to consider that don’t always align, to protect their business. It’s very difficult to have visibility across all estates or infrastructure. “In response, SecurityHQ built Managed Defense, a solution to simplify the process, to make it easy for customers to work with a thought leader and build a strategic partnership. Managed Defense helps in three different ways. First, by managing and responding to threats instantly. Second, to help companies work towards achieving the right compliance. Third, to ensure agility to

protect customers from an array of different global threats consistently targeting them. “There are lots of new businesses coming up through the market in the UK, which is great because that means a lot of innovation. But it’s difficult to know if these businesses have the capability in place to help them when the worst happens. Businesses must now question: •

• •

‘Do we have the right capability in house, and the right skills in house to help pivot in very difficult situations?’ ‘Have we got a business model that means we can be flexible?’ ‘Do we have a partnership that we can hold accountable?’

“Another challenge businesses are facing is that it is very difficult to keep up with strict compliance regulations, in the UK, especially. This can be overwhelming. What we’re trying to do is help businesses mitigate risk and help them grow their business successfully. It’s not a silver bullet, but we provide the agility to be able to pivot and support our customers, to make sure that they are protected 24/7.”

Q. HOW DOES SECURITYHQ’S 24/7 MANAGED CYBERSECURITY SOLUTION ENABLE CUSTOMERS TO RAPIDLY MONITOR, DETECT AND RESPOND TO CYBER THREATS?

» “Our services can be categorised into

three main areas: Managed Security, Managed Risk and Managed Defense. “The most significant portion of our services revolves around Managed Defense, where we monitor our clients’ systems 24/7 according to a service level agreement (SLA). We alert clients about any malicious traffic or potential risks detected on their network. 26

December 2023

SecurityHQ a World Leading Independent Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) WATCH NOW

Q. WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF “ BECAUSE THERE ARE A SIMPLIFIED APPROACH TO CYBER? SO MANY DIFFERENT » “A cornerstone of SecurityHQ’s approach is the close partnership we establish with SOLUTIONS TO CHOOSE our customers. We actively collaborate with our clients to understand their evolving FROM, BUSINESSES needs. This collaborative approach fuels our commitment to adapt our processes, ARE FINDING IT HARD technology, and our dedicated team to TO KNOW WHAT align with and anticipate our customers’ ever-changing requirements. SOLUTION IS THE “Our unique ability and agility to adapt to the ever-changing threat landscape, RIGHT CHOICE” “Furthermore, our role doesn’t end at just alerting; we also take steps to remediate and mitigate the risks. This comprehensive approach ensures that we both detect and respond promptly.”

paired with our best-in-class technology and expertise, sets us apart in the industry giving you the ultimate assurance. We provide the bandwidth that you need, ensuring our technology, processes, and team bolster your security investments ROI, technologymagazine.com

INTERVIEW WITH SECURITYHQ

December 2023

“ OUR ROLE DOESN’T END AT JUST ALERTING; WE ALSO TAKE STEPS TO REMEDIATE AND MITIGATE THE RISKS” strengthening your cybersecurity posture and offering peace of mind in the everevolving digital landscape. “Our unique ability and agility to adapt to the ever-changing threat landscape paired with our best-in-class technology and expertise sets us apart within the industry. It also puts accountability to us to ensure that we’re going to provide the bandwidth customers need, we’re going to ensure our technology is the best, we’re going to give customers processes that they can put into their businesses and that, when customers invest in tools, we can help them increase their return on investment, because we know we’ve got the experts to do that.”

Q. WHAT DIRECTION IS SECURITYHQ HEADED?

» “Leaders are constantly trying to evaluate

their risk within their business. We noticed how many of our customers want easy and digestible data to understand where their vulnerabilities and risks are so they can act accordingly. Our latest development ‘The Risk Centre’ is a completely new feature, as part of the SHQ Response Platform, and is designed to be customer focused, where clients, as well SecurityHQ Employees, can document risks for their organisation, and effectively track with mitigations. The purpose of the Risk Centre is to avoid any emergencies and pre-empt any threat before it arises. More to come on that soon!” technologymagazine.com

Meg Whitman EBAY AND HP PIONEER TO POLITICAL AMBASSADOR

December 2023

LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT IN TECHNOLOGY

Meg Whitman’s illustrious career spans CEO roles at eBay and HP, a gubernatorial run in California, and her recent appointment as the US Ambassador to Kenya

prominent American business executive and political figure, Meg Whitman is best known for her roles at leading several major corporations, most notably eBay and Hewlett-Packard. Born on August 4, 1956, in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, Whitman attended the Cold Spring Harbor High School before enrolling at Princeton University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics. Following this, she obtained an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979. Whitman began her career in brand management at Procter & Gamble, following which she joined Bain & Company as a consultant. She then took on executive roles at various firms, including The Walt Disney Company, where she was Senior Vice President of Marketing, and Hasbro, where she oversaw the global management and marketing of the Playskool and Mr. Potato Head brands. In 1998, Whitman joined eBay, a then-fledgling online auction platform, as its President and CEO. Under her stewardship, eBay grew from a company with 30 employees and US$4m in annual revenue to a global enterprise employing 15,000 people with almost US$8bn in revenue by the time she stepped down in 2008. She was instrumental in launching initiatives like ‘Buy it Now’ and led the company through its initial public offering (IPO) in 1998.

“The challenge at eBay was how to keep up with a 70% compound monthly growth rate,” Whitman said in a 2016 interview with Harvard Business Review. “But the principles of leadership were the same: clear strategy, well communicated, well metricked. Celebrate the victories and hold people, including yourself, accountable for results. When you’re the CEO of a 30-person company that grows to 15,000 people, as eBay did, you have to keep reinventing yourself as the company scales.” After leaving eBay, Whitman ventured into politics, running as a Republican candidate for the Governor of California in 2010 but was defeated by Jerry Brown. She returned to the business arena in 2011 as the CEO of Hewlett-Packard. At HP, she faced the enormous task of reviving

MEG WHITMAN TITLE: FORMER CEO COMPANY: EBAY AND HP LOCATION: KENYA Margaret ‘Meg’ Whitman has significant experience leading business organisations, from start-ups to large multinational companies in Silicon Valley. She has served as the President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the Hewlett-Packard Company, and served as President and CEO of eBay Inc.

technologymagazine.com

LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT IN TECHNOLOGY

HP CEO Meg Whitman on Integrity & Courage in Leadership WATCH NOW

December 2023

“ Since I arrived in Kenya, my team and I have been laser-focused on strengthening the US-Kenya trade and investment relationship”

the struggling tech giant. She initiated significant restructuring, including the decision to split the firm into two separate companies: HP Inc, focused on printers and personal computers, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, focused on servers, storage, and networking. “The biggest challenge facing the company was that it had too many CEOs in too short a period of time,” Whitman said. “I was the third CEO in as many years. That is really tough on a company. And the three CEOs had quite different strategies. When you make changes at the centre they get amplified on the ground in Singapore or Berlin or Rio. The company was not sure what its strategy was, and therefore it was difficult for everyone to execute.”

After stepping down as the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2018, Whitman’s next venture was Quibi, a short-form streaming platform created by Jeffrey Katzenberg. Launched in April 2020, the platform aimed to revolutionise mobile-first entertainment but struggled to gain traction. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and lacklustre performance, Quibi shut down just six months after its launch. Whitman has been recognised numerous times for her contributions to business. She has been featured on Forbes’ list of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women multiple times and has received several honorary degrees. Whitman was confirmed in a unanimous vote by the US Senate as the 18th United States Ambassador to Kenya on July 14, 2022. “The US-Kenya partnership is strong, built on sixty years of shared values and interests,” she wrote in an official post. “Our partnership has enhanced security, increased prosperity, and improved the lives of Kenyans and Americans. “Since I arrived in Kenya, my team and I have been laser-focused on strengthening the US-Kenya trade and investment relationship in coordination with the Kenyan government.” Whitman is married to Dr Griffith Harsh, a neurosurgeon. They have two grown sons and two grandchildren. technologymagazine.com

PEOPLE MOVES

THE LATEST EXECUTIVE MOVES IN THE WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY Technology Magazine highlights the latest executive appointments and departures that are set to drive innovation and business success

“ I am well aware that Atos possesses strong assets, and I have great respect for the world-renowned skills of its teams”

YVES BERNAERT JOB FROM: C EO EUROPE, ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY JOB TO: C EO, ATOS Digital transformation leader Atos has announced it has appointed former Accenture Technology executive Yves Bernaert as its new CEO. A leader with proven expertise n the technology and digital transformation industries, Atos said Bernaert’s first mission will be to successfully complete the next stages of the group’s transformation plan. Bernaert began his career as an auditor at PwC before joining Accenture in 1992. After several executive roles in France and abroad, he served as CEO Europe of Accenture Technology for the past nine years. Bernaert is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of French NGO 1001 Fontaines.

RANDY GUARD

NAVINDER UPPAL

JOB FROM: C MO & CPO, SPREEDLY

JOB FROM: G TD, JLA GROUP

JOB TO: C MO, APPIAN

JOB TO: C DO, PULSANT

Appian has announced Randy Guard as its new CMO, bringing 35 years of experience in marketing and technology leadership to Appian’s executive team. Guard’s impressive track record includes 20 years at SAS and most recently digital payments start-up Spreedly.

Pulsant’s first Chief Digital Officer, Navinder Uppal brings more than 20 years of industry experience to Pulsant’s executive leadership team. CEO Rob Coupland said that Uppal will be “a tremendous asset to Pulsant” as the brand continues to pursue its ambitions in the edge infrastructure space.

ED MORCHE JOB FROM: P RESIDENT, NA ENTERPRISE & PUBLIC SECTOR, LUMEN JOB TO: C EO, GTT GTT Communications has announced the appointment of Ed Morche as CEO and board director. Before joining GTT, Morche served as president of Lumen’s North American Enterprise and Public Sector, and previously held other senior leadership roles at CenturyLink and Level 3.

BEN VERGHESE JOB FROM: C HIEF ARCHITECT, ILLUMIO JOB TO: C TO, ILLUMIO Illumio, the Zero Trust Segmentation company, has announced the appointment and promotion of Ben Verghese to Chief Technology Officer. The former Chief Architect has nearly 30 years of experience overseeing engineering and architecture teams across the cloud and security space. Prior to Illumio, Verghese was VP of Engineering and Chief Management Architect at VMware.

GILLIAN CHANNER JOB FROM: C PO, CAPITA OB TO: V P IDENTITY PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, MITEK Mitek has announced it has appointed Gillian Channer as the VP of Identity Product Management. With a career spanning product management, business operations, and technology thought leadership, Channer most recently served as the Chief Product Officer for Capital.

MY TRUONG JOB FROM: C MO, SURFLY JOB TO: V P MARKETING, STRAVITO Enteprise insights platform Stravito has announced it has appointed My Truong to the position of VP of Marketing. Truong will be responsible for spearheading marketing strategies that drive rapid and sustainable growth for the company.

technologymagazine.com

THE MONTH THAT WAS

THE MONTH THAT WAS: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER

Google invests in OpenAI rival Anthropic, AWS is using AI to bring F1 fans closer to the track and EY report reveals CEOs are betting big on gen AI

GOOGLE INVESTS IN OPENAI RIVAL ANTHROPIC AS AI RACE HEATS UP

TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE’S TOP 100 LEADERS 2023

Google is to reportedly invest up to US$2bn in AI startup Anthropic, following earlier investment in the Claude 2 creator and adding fuel to the ongoing generative AI race.

Celebrating the best of the best in the world of technology, our annual Top 100 Leaders list champions the most innovative and influential technology leaders who are elevating the industry.

READ NOW

ALIBABA AI SUITE TO STREAMLINE GLOBAL ENTERPRISE OPERATIONS Alibaba has announced the pilot launch of Aidge, its first commerce-centric, AI-powered suite of APIs that is poised to enhance business performance and reduce costs for global enterprises.

READ NOW

HOW AWS USES AI TO BRING F1 FANS CLOSER TO THE RACE

EY: CEOS BET BIG ON GEN AI TO GAIN COMPETITIVE EDGE

Since partnering with the sport in 2018, AWS has been revolutionising the F1 fan experience by providing more accurate predictions than ever before.

Business leaders globally recognise the potential of AI, but are encountering significant challenges in formulating and operationalising related strategies, according to the latest edition of the EY CEO Outlook Pulse survey.

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MICROSOFT ANNOUNCES PATH TO QUANTUM AT SCALE WITH PHOTONIC Microsoft has announced a strategic quantum co-innovation collaboration with Photonic, a company focused on building scalable, fault tolerant, and distributed quantum technologies, to unlock the next stages in quantum networking.

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How PLCs and drives unlock intelligent industrial automation Arnold Taddeo, Head of Global Product Management, ABB Drives explains how PLCs and drives combine to enhance performance, energy efficiency, and safety.

Drives, often referred to as variable speed drives or VSDs, control the speed and torque of electric motors. The use of variable speed drives can significantly reduce energy consumption and enable precise control of key processes and machines, across a variety of industries. Simply pairing an existing motor with a drive offers a significant opportunity to boost performance and energy efficiency. In fact, drives can typically decrease energy consumption by up to 25% or more. But there is an additional way to optimise efficiency – combining a motor-drive system with a programmable logic controller (PLCs). PLCs are compact, yet powerful, automation devices which actively monitor input signals from various sources, including drives. The PLC uses this data to make intelligent real-time decisions that can guide the actions of these drives. This results in more reliable, cost-efficient operation of the application they control.

Arnold C. Taddeo Head of Global Product Management ABB Drives

A single PLC can seamlessly coordinate the movement of multiple drives connected to numerous motors, enabling precise synchronization even in intricate and large-scale operations. These PLCs are often pre-programmed with specific instructions tailored to the unique needs of the industrial process they oversee.

Uwe Maigler, technical manager of Wendlingen waterworks - which uses 11 ABB AC500 PLCs to ensure consumers have uninterrupted access to drinking water

PLCs in action In smart irrigation, for example, PLCs can continuously collect data from various sensors, including weather forecasts, soil moisture levels, and temperature sensors. This wealth of real-time information is then analyzed and processed. When the data indicates, for example, high temperatures and low humidity, the PLC instructs the drive and motor to release just the right amount of water from the pump to prevent crop stress, ultimately conserving precious water resources. Another great example of PLCs in action can be observed within a bakery setting. PLCs can be programmed with multiple recipes, controlling ingredient dispensing, mixing, proving, baking, and quality checks, all according to the specific product required. The baker can quickly switch between different bakery goods on the same conveyer line, so individual orders can be instantaneously and accurately fulfilled with minimal human input. This means the bakery can consistently produce high quality products, reduce waste, lower unnecessary consumption of energy and, ultimately, save money. PLCs monitor the end-to-end process, receiving data from sensors that detect any anomalies or bottlenecks. If an issue arises, the PLC can promptly instruct the drives to adjust the conveyor’s speed or

halt production to resolve the problem. If there are potential issues with the condition of the assets, the PLCs can proactively alert the operator to perform preventative maintenance. This level of real-time coordination not only optimizes efficiency, but extends equipment lifespan and reduces the chances of process failure, which could lead to costly, unplanned downtime. PLCs also play a pivotal role in industrial safety, offering crucial features such as emergency stop controls and safety interlocks. These measures are critical in preventing accidents and protecting both workers and equipment. For a crane, for example, this might involve restricted safety areas for movement, and collision prevention.

Embrace the automation revolution PLCs hold the potential to further enhance the already transformative benefits of drives paired with motors. Together, they can elevate system and energy efficiency, improve safety, and streamline operations, moving us further down the path towards a sustainable industrial future.

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TECHNOLOGY LEADERS

Technology Magazine picks the top 10 executives from our annual Top 100 leaders WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

rom the frenetic pace of advances in generative AI to navigating cyber challenges and challenging economic conditions, the last year has been an influential one for the technology world. As 2023 nears its end, Technology Magazine shines a light on the influential figures who steer the tech world and are at the forefront of an era where technology is not just a tool, but a force that shapes our collective future.

December 2023

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TOP 10

Nagesh Saldi CIO Tesla

Sukanya S

SVP & CIO Tata Consultancy Services

Joining IT Services and Consulting company TCS in 1989 as a SETP Trainee, Sukanya S has more than 33 years of experience at TCS, including several key leadership positions including that of Business Head for Travel, Transportation & Hospitality Unit, Global Head - Delivery Excellence and Delivery Head for some of TCS’ leading customers. She became its Chief Information Officer in October 2023.

December 2023

Nagesh Saldi joined Tesla in 2012 as the VP of Engineering, before being promoted to the CIO position six years later. Alongside his team, Saldi is driving the sophisticated and pioneering digital transformation initiatives that Tesla is renowned for. He is responsible for the management of Tesla’s overall applications and systems. These include overseeing its global supply chain, worldwide manufacturing and factories, engineering, e-commerce, business intelligence and financial management.

TOP 10

Michael Wintergerst Global CTO IBM

John Powers Global CTO & CIO Deloitte

Michael Wintergerst is part of IBM’s ecosystem unit as the Global Chief Technology Officer across all brands for the SAP business. He works hand in hand with SAP to enhance IBM’s hybrid cloud offerings, infuse IBM’s Watson solution into SAP products, partner with SAP in the security space and further strengthen the 50-year bond between SAP and IBM. In his role Wintergerst enables customers with the very best IBM and SAP solutions.

John Powers is a principal at Deloitte and serves as Global Chief Transformation Officer and Chief Information Officer (CIO). As CIO, Powers chairs the Deloitte Technology Executive and has responsibility for all facets of technology including strategy, applications, infrastructure, support and execution. Additionally, as Transformation Officer, he guides, directs, and sponsors the implementation of transformative programs and is accountable for embedding sustainable change. He formerly led Deloitte’s Defense Sector and its Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) practice in the US and globally.

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Sam Kini Global CIO Unilever

Stefan Palzer EVP & CTO Nestlé

As CTO Stefan Palzer leads Nestlé’s R&D activities to deliver nutritious, healthy, sustainable and affordable food and beverage innovation globally. He and his teams are focused on exploring cutting-edge science and technology across Nestlé’s value chain, accelerating innovation and scientific breakthroughs and bringing relevant product innovations to market rapidly. After studying Food Technology at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, Stefan obtained a PhD in Process Engineering and a qualification as Professor from the same University. He holds an MBA in Marketing from the University of Hagen, Germany.

Sam Kini has worked extensively across the technology industry with a strong focus in the telecommunications sector, including at Virgin Media and Telenet. Before joining Unilever in 2020, Kini was the Chief Data & Information Officer at EasyJet, where she was accountable for all IT, Data, Digital, Cyber Security Operations, Portfolio, and Transformation Delivery. Her current role has her overseeing the company’s enterprise architecture as well as the development and delivery of applied technology across all applications and platforms.

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TOP 10

Timothy Campos VP & CIO Apple

Apple CIO since 2022, Timothy Campos was Facebook’s first CIO for nearly seven years - joining after becoming the youngest CIO of any Fortune 500 company at KLA-Tencor. At Facebook, he was responsible for helping to double employee productivity to an industry-leading US$1.8m in revenue per employee through innovation in software development and operations. Before joining Apple Campos served as CEO at software company Woven, which was acquired by Slack in 2021. Campos has a BS in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley, and an MBA from Columbia.

December 2023

Satya Nadella Chairman & CEO Microsoft

Satya Nadella is Chairman and CEO of Microsoft. Before being named CEO in February 2014, Nadella held leadership roles in both enterprise and consumer businesses across the company. Joining Microsoft in 1992, he quickly became known as a leader who could span a breadth of technologies and businesses to transform some of Microsoft’s biggest product offerings. Most recently, Nadella was EVP of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group. He joined Microsoft from Sun Microsystems.

TOP 10

Werner Vogels CTO Amazon

Dr Werner Vogels is Chief Technology Officer at Amazon where he is responsible for driving the company’s customer-centric technology vision. As one of the forces behind Amazon’s approach to cloud computing, he is passionate about helping young businesses reach global scale, and transforming enterprises into fast-moving digital organisations. Vogels joined Amazon in 2004 from Cornell University where he was a distributed systems researcher. He has held technology leadership positions in companies that handle the transition of academic technology into industry. Vogels holds a PhD from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and has authored many articles on distributed systems technologies for enterprise computing.

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LEADERS OUT NOW Championing leaders from global organisations, celebrate those who elevate the industry day in, day out.

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December 2023

1 With deep experience in enterprise software, Thomas Kurian leads Google Cloud on its mission to accelerate organisations’ ability to digitally transform their business. Born in 1966 in Kerala in the south of India, Kurian started his career with McKinsey & Company as a consultant serving clients in the software, telecommunications and financial services industries for six years in London and Brussels. In September 1996 he joined Oracle, working as Vice President of its e-business division

Thomas Kurian CEO Google Cloud

Software Development Revenue $257.63bn 289,000 Employees

and later working as President of Product Development. Kurian also served as a member of Oracle’s Executive Committee for 13 years. Working closely with Oracle founder Larry Ellison, in 2018 Kurian resigned from the company after 22 years, having reportedly clashed with Ellison on the company’s cloud strategy. Kurian became CEO of Google Cloud in 2018, overseeing a shift towards winning enterprise clients. In April Google reported that its cloud unit finally turned profitable in the first quarter of 2023.

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AWS IS DRIVING CLOUD INNOVATION WITH SAP AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: MARCUS L AW

PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

December 2023

AWS

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AWS

Matt Schwartz, who leads AWS’ Global SAP Alliance and Partner Network, on the two companies’ partnership and how its solutions drive cloud transformations

mazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud, offering more than 200 fully featured services from data centres globally. Today, millions of customers worldwide are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile and innovate faster. As explained by Matt Schwartz, who leads the Global SAP Alliance and Partner Network at AWS, the company works with anyone from the fastest-growing startups to the world’s largest enterprises to government entities. “Our north star is to help customers lower their costs, be more agile and to innovate faster. And that’s something that we’re very passionate about.” Having held a number of senior executive roles at IBM, SAP, Ernst & Young and other leading technology companies, Schwartz brings a unique perspective to the SAP ecosystem. Schwartz’s journey has equipped him with a deep understanding of the SAP ecosystem. “I understand what SAP customers’ challenges have been in the past, as well as the challenges they are facing today and in the future. And so I can bring the unique perspective of having implemented this technology that they’re on today and helping them on to what’s next in the cloud.” Today, the synergy between AWS and SAP is multifaceted, with AWS serving as a partner, customer, engineering

December 2023

AWS

Matt Schwartz, AWS: Driving Cloud Transformations Through Partnership WATCH NOW

collaborator and developer – a relationship that Schwartz aptly refers to as a “360-degree relationship”. This drives a virtuous cycle propelled by the partner community, fostering an environment of continuous innovation. Increased adoption leads to more co-engineering efforts, which in turn spawns more sophisticated solutions, such as the HANA Cloud database on AWS’ Graviton processors, which SAP uses to improve performance while reducing costs and energy consumption. “When you have greater business outcomes at lower costs, you get delighted customers,” Schwartz describes. “We have really spent a lot of time enabling our partners to make sure that they can deliver these outcomes for their clients. Because without that component, we can’t continue to grow our business together.” 56

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“ The fact that we have the most BTP services on AWS allows RISE on AWS customers to do what they need to do” MATT SCHWARTZ

GLOBAL HEAD OF AWS SAP ALLIANCE AND PARTNER NETWORK

AWS partnership with SAP AWS has been partnering with SAP in the cloud since 2008, when the company started using Amazon’s EC2 instances to build and test its NetWeaver solution. SAP has been trusting AWS to build and run its products ever since, and today over fourty

MATT SCHWARTZ TITLE: GLOBAL HEAD OF AWS SAP ALLIANCE AND PARTNER NETWORK COMPANY: AWS LOCATION: UNITED STATES Matt Schwartz currently leads the Global SAP Alliance and Partner Network at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Matt brings strategic perspective, technology acumen, and global execution capabilities developed over his 27 years in the SAP ecosystem. Previously, Matt held senior executive roles at IBM, SAP, Ernst & Young, and other leading technology companies. His deep expertise has enabled leading enterprises to optimise operations, reduce costs, improve profitability and accelerate growth. With expertise spanning cloud computing, enterprise software, emerging technologies, and strategic partnerships, Matt is a proven leader in developing technology vision and executing commercial strategies that transform industries. Matt is a regular on the SAP speaking circuit having presented many times over the years at SAP Sapphire, SAP TechEd, ASUG, SAPinsider and countless customer and analyst events. Follow Matt on LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter) for more AWS, SAP, Cloud, and Innovation insights.

AWS

thousand customers run SAP applications on AWS. Schwartz explains the long-standing innovation history: “If you look over the 15-plus years of innovation with SAP, we’ve continued to break new ground for our customers throughout, helping them take advantage of the cloud.” This innovation has largely been focused around being able to help customers continue their business transformation. Schwartz notes the increased awareness among SAP customers regarding the necessity of cloud migration, particularly post-COVID, and AWS’ commitment to 58

December 2023

ensuring their comfortable transition to the cloud landscape. “We’ve seen since COVID that customers know that the cloud is where they need to go, but for us it’s making sure that SAP customers feel comfortable in moving to the cloud.” Schwartz pinpoints the transformation journey of SAP customers with AWS, typically commencing with SAP system migrations to AWS or initiating new S/4HANA systems. “Typically, we see customers go on a journey that starts with migrating their SAP systems to AWS – unlocking cost savings and better performance, security and reliability than they had on-premises,” he says.

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“ It’s been fantastic to partner with SAP on the RISE with SAP offering, which gives customers a guided path to cloud transformation” MATT SCHWARTZ

GLOBAL HEAD OF AWS SAP ALLIANCE AND PARTNER NETWORK

The result is not just an operational upgrade but a strategic move to rethinking business processes and customer experiences. Take, for example, the German athletic apparel and footwear corporation Adidas, which since its SAP migration to AWS in 2021 has leveraged the AWS spectrum of services to innovate across the company’s entire value chain. “By tapping into the full breadth of services from AWS and the SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP), Adidas has been able to shift its focus from running the application to re-thinking business processes across the entire value chain. technologymagazine.com

AWS

With AWS, they can offer an entirely new cloud-based consumer experience with personalised offers and services,” Schwartz explains. Such capabilities have become the new normal for SAP in the cloud. “Cloud isn’t just an infrastructure platform for SAP applications, but an innovation platform. In recent years, it’s been fantastic to partner with SAP on the RISE with SAP offering, which gives customers a guided path to cloud transformation.” AWS partnering with RISE with SAP AWS’ collaboration with SAP extends to RISE with SAP, a solution designed to guide customers through cloud transformation, and SAP BTP, which maximises the value of the RISE offering. AWS’ partnership on RISE is illustrated by its robust support infrastructure, including 80+ BTP services – more than any other cloud provider. AWS has been working closely with SAP on RISE since its release in January 2021, helping customers like PPG, Moderna and Versuni (formerly Philips Domestic Appliance) in their transformative journeys. As AWS continues to add new cloud services, SAP has continued to expand the BTP portfolio. As a result, customers today who choose AWS have the broadest set of native cloud services and SAP BTP services available to them – and in the most regions – of any cloud provider. “The fact that we have the most BTP services on AWS allows RISE on AWS customers to do what they need to do,” Schwartz adds. “When you have the broadest set of native cloud services and BTP services available, running on the world’s most secure, reliable and extensive cloud infrastructure, you’re providing your customers the most complete set of tools to take full advantage of RISE.” 60

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AWS

Over the course of 2023, the two companies also partnered to develop and release Joint Reference Architectures for RISE on AWS, making it even easier for customers to harness the value of more than 200 AWS services and 80+ SAP BTP services to deliver business outcomes. For example, customers such as Sumitomo Corporation in Japan are modernising their SAP environment with RISE with SAP on AWS. The Tokyo-based trading and investment company is making use of BTP to connect data globally, apply advanced analytics and AWS machine learning to assess its business processes and identify ways to reduce carbon footprint. Another example comes from Zurich Insurance, which has taken advantage of AWS’ new region in Switzerland and is moving a thousand applications to AWS. The insurance leader is also utilising RISE with SAP on AWS to integrate systems like finance and HR across its entire business. “We have the joint reference architecture to make it easier for customers to deliver their business outcomes, and we’ve got some of the world’s largest companies modernising on RISE with SAP and AWS,” Schwartz comments. Innovation in generative AI AWS’ partnership with SAP is not limited to ERP; it extends to harnessing generative AI, with SAP leveraging Amazon Bedrock to revolutionise services like Concur: a solution which simplifies travel, expense and invoice management. “Instead of manually checking prices for the various components of a trip – hotel, airfare, meals, ground transportation – Concur will automatically generate a completed trip request and submit it for approval, saving employees hours,” Schwartz explains. technologymagazine.com

AWS

In addition to giving customers the broadest set of native generative AI services to build with alongside their SAP systems, AWS is also working with partners to create pre-packaged solutions through its Partner Innovation Hub. “For example, customers will be able to automate the generation of finance reports coming from the SAP General Ledger, rather than create them manually,” Schwartz describes. “Or, our generative AI services can analyse historical data from ERP and ecommerce systems to predict demand patterns, assisting businesses in optimising their SAP inventory management.” Infrastructure key to focus on innovation beyond ERP core To innovate in this way, building a solid foundation is necessary. “Before you can do all this other really cool stuff, you actually have to keep innovating when it comes to the underlying infrastructure,” Schwartz explains. AWS has co-developed extensively with SAP to ensure it meets the most complex and secure reliability requirements and delivers the most high performance, secure and reliable infrastructure. As a result of this innovation, in October 2023 AWS announced the launch of its European Sovereign Cloud, a new, independent cloud for Europe designed to help public sector customers and those in highly regulated industries meet regulatory data residency and operational requirements. “We see consistently that customers with the most complex performance, security and reliability requirements bet on AWS, including SAP themselves,” Schwartz describes. “We’re partnering with SAP on the European Sovereign Cloud so EU customers with the most stringent security and compliance requirements can take 62

December 2023

advantage of cloud innovation for their mission-critical ERP systems, including through RISE.” Running the world’s largest SAP systems For years, large organisations from the US Navy to BP and Bristol Myers Squibb have counted on AWS’ large instances to run some of the most significant SAP systems in the world. To help meet the requirements of the largest companies across the world, AWS recently announced a preview of its 32TB High Memory Instances – which run on AWS’

“ We see consistently that customers with the most complex performance, security and reliability requirements bet on AWS, including SAP themselves” MATT SCHWARTZ

GLOBAL HEAD OF AWS SAP ALLIANCE AND PARTNER NETWORK

proprietary Nitro system – a combination of dedicated hardware and lightweight hypervisor enabling faster innovation and enhanced security. “The 32TB High Memory Instances will allow customers to run some of the world’s largest SAP systems on AWS, including through RISE – but we also offer SAP-certified instances with as little as 256GB of memory,” Schwartz explains. The pursuit of sustainability also sits at the forefront of the partnership between SAP and AWS, with efforts such as the use of AWS Graviton processors for SAP HANA Cloud. SAP technologymagazine.com

December 2023

AWS

is one of 445 current signatories of the Climate Pledge, which was co-founded by Amazon. “One project where we have been collaborating for a few years is SAP’s adoption of AWS Graviton for SAP HANA Cloud – the database foundation for BTP and RISE,” comments Schwartz. AWS’ Graviton processors leverage custom AWS silicon, and use up to 60% less energy for the same performance than comparable Amazon EC2 instances.” By migrating SAP HANA Cloud to AWS Graviton-based Amazon EC2 instances, SAP has seen up to 30% better compute performance for analytical workloads and lowered its compute costs by 15%. And with Graviton3-based instances using up to 60% less energy for the same performance than comparable EC2 instances, SAP can reduce the compute carbon footprint of the workloads of SAP HANA Cloud by an estimated 45%. This drive for sustainability is a common goal: in SAP’s Q3 2023 earnings its CEO Christian Klein mentioned innovating with AWS on Arm as one of its key strategic pillars. “We’re proud of the collaboration across both engineering teams, and we really believe it’s only the beginning,” Schwartz comments. “This is going to help our SAP customers reduce their carbon footprint. What I’m excited about is not just the innovation around being able to serve small and large customers, it’s about being able to serve them in a sustainable fashion.” AWS and SAP partnership continuing to push boundaries The future for the partnership between AWS and SAP is bright. “We are going to continue to push boundaries and break new ground for customers together at every layer of the stack,” Schwartz says.

“ The 32TB High Memory Instances will be the largest instances available for SAP in the cloud, including RISE – but we also offer SAP-certified instances with as little as 256GB of memory” MATT SCHWARTZ

GLOBAL HEAD OF AWS SAP ALLIANCE AND PARTNER NETWORK

This innovation – driven by AWS’ customer-obsessed approach – starts with infrastructure to help customers run their SAP applications with better performance, cost, security and reliability, while reducing emissions. As Schwartz concludes, the other aspect will be to help AWS customers more easily use SAP applications and AWS services together. “That’s what our customers want, and we want to meet that demand. We’re going to do this by continuing to help SAP build additional BTP services and regions, continuously publish more joint reference architectures for different use cases and add things like gen AI to those use cases. “Cloud is an innovation platform at this point, and we’re all in with SAP to harness the power of the broadest set of cloud services from AWS – including analytics, IoT and of course, generative AI – alongside SAP’s leading enterprise software to help our customers solve business problems.”

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INTELLIGENT WORKFLOWS: AUTOMATION & AI TRANSFORMING BUSINESS Combining automation, AI, and data analytics, intelligent workflows are reshaping business processes for increased efficiency and adaptability WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW 66

December 2023

DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS

n today’s world, businesses in all industries across the globe are being forced to be more efficient and streamline processes. One such solution is intelligent workflows: automated or semi-automated business processes that are enhanced by technologies such as AI, machine learning and data analytics to improve decision-making, efficiency and outcomes. Unlike traditional workflows, which often involve a series of predefined steps and rules, intelligent workflows can adapt to changing conditions, analyse vast amounts of data, and even make decisions to optimise process performance. Defining Intelligent Workflows: A paradigm shift “Traditional automation integrates actions where variation is contained and decisions can be more easily programmed. It is more rigid,” explains Cassiano Surek, CTO at design agency Beyond. “Intelligent workflows combine automation, AI and analytics to adapt to different conditions, adjusting themselves as environments evolve. A good example is continuously training a model to detect abnormalities as they appear: new ones will come up over time and the workflow will evolve accordingly.” Echoing Surek’s sentiments, James Dodkins, Tech Evangelist at Pegasystems, characterises traditional workflows as akin to a “well-worn path,” whereas intelligent workflows “forge their own path.” These workflows, Dodkins explains, use smart tech like AI to constantly learn, adapt, and optimise processes, reacting to new data and changing circumstances on the fly. “They’re not merely about automating processes; they’re about optimising them, learning from data patterns, technologymagazine.com

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DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS

CASSIANO SUREK TITLE: CTO COMPANY: BEYOND LOCATION: PORTUGAL

Surek is the Chief Technical Officer at Beyond. He has over three years of experience in management and a background in software development.

and subsequently, providing recommendations or automating decisions to enable more agile, efficient, and effective operations,” he says. Ben Canning, Senior Vice President, Product Experiences at Smartsheet, offers a complementary view. He states that traditional workflow systems like “email, chat, spreadsheets” have already transformed work, but adding automation and intelligence “can take efficiency and productivity to a whole new level.”

“Increasingly, intelligent workflow systems leverage the power of AI to better understand the kind of work you’re doing and make smart decisions and recommendations about it, which empowers non-technical people to implement advanced automation that can help them work much more efficiently and consistently.” Business challenges: Complex decisionmaking and operational efficiency As businesses grapple with multifaceted challenges, intelligent workflows are increasingly vital. “Intelligent workflows can help businesses scale their work by eliminating repetitive tasks, which frees up their employees’ time to focus on the work that matters most,” Canning describes. “They can also help create consistent execution. Teams waste so much time reinventing processes and trying to re-learn how things are done. Intelligent workflows can eliminate that overhead so people can repeat what’s working without starting from scratch, technologymagazine.com

DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS

JAMES DODKINS TITLE: TECH EVANGELIST COMPANY: PEGASYSTEMS LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Dodkins is a Tech Evangelist at Pega and a multi-award winning expert on customer service. He is also a two-time #1 best selling author and the former host of Amazon Prime’s weekly topical CX show, ‘This Week In CX’.

allowing them to focus more on value realisation.” As Dodkins notes, intelligent workflows target several issues like operational inefficiencies, siloed data and suboptimal decision-making. “They strive to automate and optimise processes, ensuring resources are utilised effectively and that decisions are informed by rich, contextual data,” he says. “Moreover, they aim to foster a seamlessly integrated digital ecosystem wherein data is readily accessible.” Simon Morris, Area Vice President, Consulting at ServiceNow, points out that in the face of “macroeconomic challenges, such as inflation and supply chain shortages,” intelligent workflows can be a tangible solution. “Intelligent workflows help companies connect all areas of the enterprise by taking data into coordinated action, which streamlines traditional, siloed enterprise operations.” 70

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Impact on employees: From drudgery to value-driven tasks For Surek, the advent of intelligent workflows means employees can allocate their time to roles “where AI does not excel, like building trust with another human being.” Dodkins extends this argument by suggesting that for employees, intelligent workflows are like an extra pair of hands. “Intelligent workflows manage the routine, repetitive tasks, freeing up individuals to focus on more interesting, creative, and value-driven work,” he says. “Intelligent workflows also equip employees with critical

data insights at the right crunch moments, enhancing their decision-making capabilities.” Ultimately, as Canning describes, the process allows employees to focus on higher-value work and move away from tedious, repetitive tasks. “Intelligent workflows eliminate the drudgery of doing everything manually so employees can focus on higher value work,” he says. “They also eliminate errors by maintaining process consistency. And, they can help non-technical employees feel more confident in their ability to implement new workflows.”

SIMON MORRIS TITLE: AREA VP, CONSULTING COMPANY: SERVICENOW LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

As Area Vice President, Consulting at ServiceNow, Morris helps business leaders understand how digital workflows can transform their business. He first joined the company in 2011.

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BEN CANNING TITLE: SENIOR VP, PRODUCT EXPERIENCES COMPANY: SMARTSHEET LOCATION: UNITED STATES

Canning is a customer obsessed and energetic product leader with over 20 years experience leading some of the biggest projects in the industry. He currently leads product management for several areas at Smartsheet.

December 2023

DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS

“ Intelligent workflows can help businesses scale their work by eliminating repetitive tasks, freeing up their employees’ time to focus on work that matters most” BEN CANNING

SENIOR VP, PRODUCT EXPERIENCES, SMARTSHEET

Integration challenges: Legacy systems and cultural adaptation Integrating intelligent workflows presents a unique set of challenges. As Dodkins explains, it’s vital to make sure the new intelligent workflow solutions work well with legacy systems to keep data flowing and operations running smoothly, while safeguarding data accuracy and consistency across all systems is paramount to leverage the true potential of intelligent workflows. Beyond technical aspects, Dodkins emphasises the need for the right culture to embrace intelligent workflows. “Orchestrating an organisational culture that welcomes and adapts to digital transformation, by investing in employee training and change management initiatives, is pivotal to successfully implementing intelligent workflows.” Morris offers a pragmatic view, suggesting that the objective isn’t to replace all existing infrastructure. Rather, businesses should look for solutions that ‘seamlessly integrate’ into what already exists and helps get more value from the data.

“As companies navigate the uncertain economic landscape, getting more value, faster, is vital.” Future technologies: Preparing for the next wave Surek believes that Generative AI will “enhance the ability to analyse data and detect patterns for decision making,” serving as a potent tool in the intelligent workflow arsenal. “Businesses are already gathering an enormous amount of data from the various operations and integrations that happen with staff and clients, so ensuring that the data collected can be easily accessed and analysed will be key to realising the full potential of these future technologies,” he says. Morris speaks to the central role of AI, saying that businesses “must take advantage of the opportunities of AI technology and utilise general-purpose LLMs which are built for enterprise-level use cases. “This includes building an architecture that can accommodate large volumes of data for processing and utilising best-inclass algorithms that can sort through and act upon that data.” Canning offers a more strategic perspective on preparation. He advises businesses to consult their employees and IT teams to assess their current workflows and ask them where they feel there are bottlenecks and inefficiencies. This will not only prepare the organisation for adopting intelligent workflows, but also ensure that they are tailored to solve specific challenges effectively. “Gen AI for the sake of gen AI isn’t the way forward – instead, consult your employees and IT teams,” he says. “They’re the ones who will use these tools day in and day out.” technologymagazine.com

J.P. MORGAN PAYMENTS – TRANSFORMING TREASURY VIA TECHNOLOGY AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

December 2023

J.P. MORGAN PAYMENTS

Michael Brady, Executive Director, Liquidity and Account Solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments, explains how Treasurers can leverage technology transformation

s a leader in payments with nearly 150 years of experience, J.P. Morgan Payments has a deep understanding of the impact of technology on Treasurers and their partners. This technology, when implemented correctly, can enhance a Treasurer’s ability to perform their core responsibilities, and their value to the organisation. Michael Brady, Executive Director, Liquidity and Account Solutions at J.P. Morgan Payments, says better technology and data leads to more informed decision making, resulting in better forecasting and improved control. “At their core, a Treasurer is responsible for ensuring the company has the right amount of money, in the right entity, in the right currency, in the right location and at the right time to ensure financial obligations are met,” says Brady. “Having the right technology infrastructure can unlock the data and insights necessary to more accurately view current cash positions and forecast future cash needs. This ultimately leads to freeing up working capital, improved FX hedging, and overall improvements in capital efficiencies. Additionally, technology can reduce operational risks associated with manual processes and, ultimately, free up resources.” The key phrase there is “the right technology”. With so many solutions on the market, Treasurers can easily find themselves swamped with disjointed 76

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systems that lead to unnecessary complication and inefficiencies. Brady backs this up, saying that the issue J.P. Morgan Payments hears of most often is fragmented platforms that lead to lack of both centralisation and visibility into cash positions globally. “This lack of controls results in excess cash buffers, which has become increasingly punitive in an elevated rate environment,” explains Brady. “Along with lack of control/visibility, we also see an increased focus on the move towards real-time data to help further reduce idle cash. The main reason for these challenges is twofold. First, lack of understanding the art of the possible and keeping up with new trends in treasury technology, and second, lack of availability of resources on the treasury and technology side of companies.” Application programming interfaces, or APIs, allow applications to speak to one another and can therefore support digital transformations such as real-time payments and real-time visibility into cash positioning. These innovations can be good news for both partners and Treasurers, but they do require Treasurers to have a foundational understanding of APIs – as well as which ones are most useful when it comes to meeting business goals. Treasurers need to be able to communicate confidently about APIs with technology leaders within the organisation.

US $9.8 trillion daily payments processed

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countries & territories

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Michael Brady, Executive Director, Liquidity and Account Solutions technologymagazine.com

J.P. MORGAN PAYMENTS

“ Here at J.P. Morgan Payments, we have built our virtual solutions platform in-house, which makes it more flexible, and we are continuing to invest in it to suit our clients’ needs” MICHAEL BRADY

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF LIQUIDITY AND ACCOUNT SOLUTIONS, J.P. MORGAN PAYMENTS

“The world of Treasury has shifted and is rapidly moving towards real-time to reduce capital buffers and create operational efficiencies. APIs are a tool that is driving this evolution,” says Brady. “In a rapidly changing economic environment with elevated rates, the benefit of having real-time insights into cash positions is invaluable, and the flexibility the APIs provide will be transformative. “APIs are really the present and the future. Where we see the biggest challenge is with the understanding of APIs and how powerful they can be in a company’s treasury transformation journey.” APIs are on a rapidly evolving journey with the ability to monitor and initiate payments in real-time to transform Treasury. All of this of course comes with a cost, particularly when working in a legacy technology environment. The technology investment and resources need to be carefully taken into consideration, but the adoption of APIs is becoming more and more streamlined and may be easier and more powerful than some Treasurers realise. 78

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Of course, Treasurers are rightly concerned with cost when it comes to capital expenditure on new technology, and while virtual solutions are not new, there has been an increased focus and investment in them thanks to the cost benefits they can bring. Brady, however, believes there is a bigger picture to consider. “When it comes to virtual solutions, the number-one driver from clients is cost reduction as a result of account rationalisation,” he says. “Can there be a cost benefit? Sure, but we encourage clients to think more broadly. What is the art of the possible? If you could have the

most granular level of reporting, insights, and visibility, what would that look like? What resources would that free up? How much working capital could you free up with better reporting? What operational efforts or risks could be reduced or eliminated?” Brady says virtual solutions can facilitate subledgering of funds within a single physical account, resulting in the ability to slice and dice transactions within that account to create the ultimate in flexibility in reporting. Historically, companies had to open hundreds or thousands of accounts to get this level of visibility. The improved visibility not only creates natural business

MICHAEL BRADY TITLE: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LIQUIDITY AND ACCOUNT SOLUTIONS COMPANY: J.P. MORGAN PAYMENTS

Michael Brady, Executive Director, is a Liquidity and Account Solutions Specialist at J.P. Morgan. Michael is a liquidity subject matter expert with more than 13 years’ experience in various roles in the payments space.

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insight benefits, but also limits idle cash as concentration is native within virtual structures. Lastly, virtual structures can significantly reduce the burden of cash application and manual reporting processes. “The key with virtual solutions is creating a flexible structure and having a partner that is continuing to invest in their platform as technology and adoption of virtual solutions evolve,” says Brady. “Here at J.P. Morgan Payments, we have built our virtual solutions platform inhouse, which makes it more flexible, and we are continuing to invest in it to suit our clients’ needs.” 80

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Treasury transformation is not a onesize-fits-all, one and done approach. It is important to not just think of what you need to solve now, but rather to consider what is the art of the possible, and work backwards from that. There will inevitably be low-hanging fruit, and there will also be heavy lifts. When thinking of the heavy lifts, keep in mind the return in terms of unlocking capital, freeing up resources or gaining more insights to drive business. View it as a journey, which, as technology advances, will be ever evolving. That is why flexibility is so important.

J.P. MORGAN PAYMENTS

When it comes to the best strategy for creating a digital ecosystem to enable and accelerate digital transformation, again, there is no single ‘silver bullet’ solution. “Does it make sense to invest in the most robust treasury management system? Maybe. Maybe not. What features are you realistically going to use and is it worth the investment?” asks Brady. When it comes to the potential benefits, there are a few key aspects to consider. First, what manual processes can you replace? This should be assessed both from an operational risk perspective and also a resourcing perspective.

Second, how much working capital can you unlock, and what is the most efficient way to deploy it? With rates elevated, the benefits can be significant, but it is also important to perform sensitivity analysis around yields to ensure ROI projections are accurate should current economic conditions change drastically. Lastly, and less tangible, is the importance of flexibility of your tech ecosystem. The secret of a successful digital transformation lies in fluency between Treasurers and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs). Only when these vital functions are aligned will the organisation truly evolve. technologymagazine.com

J.P. MORGAN PAYMENTS

“We encourage clients to think more broadly. What is the art of the possible?” MICHAEL BRADY

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF LIQUIDITY AND ACCOUNT SOLUTIONS, J.P. MORGAN PAYMENTS

“With many companies evolving into new lines of business or expanding into new markets with globalisation, we are seeing increased alignment between Treasury and the Business lines as a result of the cash implications of these evolutions,” says Brady. “As the demand on Treasury increases, Technology must also have a seat at the table to understand the implications the Treasury infrastructure has on the overall working capital of the company. Treasury should view Technology as a critical partner and involve them in project decisions so that Technology not only understands the language of treasury, but vice versa as well. “With resources limited on both sides, it is important to have a clear sense of the implication of projects and decisions on one another.” There are pressures on both sides to deliver transformation via technology in a cost-effective manner, which is why due diligence is essential to enable smooth project delivery and ROI. This is where the Treasurer and CTO can work in tandem to secure the best business outcomes.

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ENTERPRISE IT

HOW AI IS C THE CLOUD L We explore the dramatic rise in AI adoption, highlight how it has reshaped the cloud computing market and detail one of the trends to watch next year WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

f 2022 was the year generative AI broke through, 2023 was the year the technology truly took off. And with the surging popularity of AI, the cloud computing world continues to evolve. As the year draws to a close, Technology Magazine hears from experts in the field about their thoughts on the cloud technology landscape today, and how they see the rising use of AI evolving over the next 12 months. Reflecting on the last year, how has the surge in AI adoption reshaped the cloud computing market? Sascha Giese, Global Tech Evangelist at SolarWinds, highlights the remarkable leap

December 2023

initiated by OpenAI's ChatGPT. “The most significant impact on cloud computing came from OpenAI's "triumphal procession”, after launching ChatGPT just over a year ago,” he says. “With Microsoft's involvement, this technology swiftly found its way onto Azure. Now, others are following suit, with Google leading the way by introducing Bard, and more interesting for enterprise, PaLM and Vertex. “We’re currently in a ‘hype’ phase and are yet to see what the future holds for these competing technologies. However, one thing is clear – the world of AI is finally revealing remarkable use cases for cloud computing, and accessibility and affordability have considerably improved.”

CHANGING LANDSCAPE As Maynard Williams, Managing Director, UK at Accenture, describes, these consumergrade tools have made AI accessible to a broader audience. “We’ve seen a flood of interest in generative AI in the last 12 months – with consumer-grade tools like ChatGPT putting AI into the hands of everyone in a way that simply wasn’t possible before. With generative AI front of mind for business leaders, many CIOs have been tasked with incorporating it into their business at record speed – and this has implications on cloud usage and dependency. “Our advice remains the same: focus on addressing the business problems you need to solve – and then identify the right

technology and processes to do that. On many occasions, the question businesses have been trying to answer is ‘how do we use AI as quickly as possible?’, not ‘how do we fix this business problem?’. Addressing the latter will drive the change they’re looking for – and in some cases the answer will be AI.” As pointed out by Agustin Huerta, Senior VP of Digital Innovation at Globant, the last year has seen competition among cloud service providers aiming to furnish superior AI models. “The most significant impacts were related to the competition among cloud service providers to offer the most important AI models. Some of them, such as Google and AWS, developed their own technologymagazine.com

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“ One thing is clear – the world of AI is finally revealing remarkable use cases for cloud computing” SASCHA GIESE

GLOBAL TECH EVANGELIST, SOLARWINDS

strategies but also made third-party models available, like Azure with OpenAI or AWS with the entire HuggingFace ecosystem. This marked a noticeable shift compared to the past when they primarily focused on offering their own models and services.” Dominic Schmitt, Director of Ecosystem Central Europe at Red Hat, underscores the relationship between AI and cloud computing. “In 2023, companies across the board have adopted AI to accelerate their processes,

improve quality and reduce employee workloads. As a result of the extensive integration of AI, the cloud computing market has undergone substantial changes. AI and cloud computing have a symbiotic relationship, and there has been an increased demand for cloud services specifically tailored to AI. “As a result of these complex changes to the market, companies are increasingly looking to open hybrid cloud platform providers to adjust their offerings. The scalability offered by cloud providers is crucial in handling the significant computational requirements of AI models and algorithms.” This AI adoption has pushed cloud providers to bolster their infrastructure offerings, according to Kiran Minnasandram, VP and CTO of Wipro FullStride Cloud. “The increasing dependence on AI has compelled cloud providers to increase their infrastructure offerings, meeting the computational and data-heavy requisites of AI-driven applications/services. technologymagazine.com

Sustainability a key issue As Giese comments, in the realm of cloud computing, one concern looms large: the environmental impact of data centres. "On a global scale, this issue ranks just behind the aviation industry in terms of significance and demands serious attention. “Looking ahead to 2024, I anticipate a closer examination of the environmental footprint of hyper scalers. They will be forced to adopt more eco-friendly practices. While no single solution promises a dramatic improvement, a multi-layered approach holds promise. “Advancements in technology will contribute to more efficient hardware, and businesses should consider extending the life cycle of their equipment. Additionally, the concept of "Green Coding" is worth exploring, even though it may entail higher development costs. “This topic will gain increasing importance, creating new opportunities for both cloud providers and individual vendors.” As Huerta describes: “Something that cloud providers can continue to enhance, particularly concerning the usage of LLMs, is their ability to provide better sustainability metrics and detailed information regarding the carbon footprint associated with the utilisation of their infrastructure and cloud services.”

Furthermore, as cloud platforms amplify their suite of AI-focused services, they're in a way democratising the playing field, granting even those without AI backgrounds the ability to exploit these sophisticated tools. This expansion has intensified the synergies between AI adoption and the progression of the cloud computing domain.” What are the key trends you anticipate for the cloud computing industry in 2024? Looking ahead to 2024, Ben Scowen, Vice President of UK & Ireland Cloud & Core Leader at Kyndryl, advocates for a conscious multi-cloud strategy.

ENTERPRISE IT

“For the past decade, multi-cloud adoption has grown due to healthy competition among leaders like AWS, Microsoft, and Google. Fierce competition pushed cloud providers beyond basic infrastructure services (IaaS) to offer more advanced platform services (PaaS) and increasingly software services (SaaS). “The problem is that most businesses have unconsciously taken a multi-cloud approach, organically building services on two or more cloud providers leading to more technical debt and cost, coupled with increased operational and cyber risk. Sure, companies quickly deliver services to the market, which justifies the approach, but

there is a price. Put another way, we have effectively spent the last 40 years building technical debt on-premise and the last 15 years building it in the cloud, unconscious multi-cloud is a major reason for this! “Looking ahead to 2024, a conscious multi-cloud approach will be key for enterprises that want to have access to a wider range of tech innovations, better commercial leverage over the cloud providers and an overall reduction in cloud technical debt.” Accenture's Williams anticipates a continuous surge in demand for cloud as businesses seek technological transformation, driven by data and AI. technologymagazine.com

“We’ve seen significant growth in demand for the cloud as businesses continue to evaluate every part of their business, considering opportunities for transformation by technology, data and AI – pursuing new ways of working and engaging with customers, and new opportunities for growth. “Indeed, recent Accenture research of UK C-suite business leaders found nearly all (92%) plan to increase technology spending in 2024, up 12% on this time last year, with a further four in five (82%) planning to boost investment on data and AI specifically. “This anticipated rise in demand will continue to place greater emphasis on cloud providers to deliver the infrastructure and compute power to enable the likes of large language models (LLMs) to process vast quantities of data at superfast speed. Consumption is only set to increase again, as organisations continue to require more of their cloud providers.”

“ We’ve seen significant growth in demand for the cloud as businesses continue to evaluate every part of their business” MAYNARD WILLIAMS

MANAGING DIRECTOR UK ACCENTURE

December 2023

ENTERPRISE IT

Are there any emerging sectors within cloud computing that you foresee becoming particularly significant in 2024? Minnasandram predicts that regulatory requirements and macroeconomic conditions will significantly influence cloud strategies. “Regulatory requirements are expected to introduce heightened resiliency standards, particularly for regulated industries. This regulatory landscape will prompt enterprises to not sure how this got here but remove please, should be 'to revisit' revisit and potentially recalibrate their existing cloud strategies. “Moreover, the macroeconomic conditions predicted for 2024 will considerably shape the trajectory of cloud transformations. As enterprises navigate these conditions, the central themes will drift toward Operational Excellence, Cost Optimisation (ROI), and an even higher emphasis on high-calibre engineering solutions.” Generative AI incorporation into cloud applications and services at scale is another trend to watch, according to Williams. “We will see generative AI being incorporated into cloud application and service production at scale – whereas now it’s mostly still typically sat with innovation teams or being experimented with internally. This will have implications across nearly all sectors, but we expect it to impact FinOps models as well as hardware optimisation, needing to be incorporated. “Outside of generative AI, we will see further silicon specialisation in the cloud, with more choice of specific chip types for specific types of computing, from data-intensive workloads to machine learning and training.” Finally, Scowen highlights the emergence of distributed cloud as a result of the combination of multi-cloud and hybrid technologymagazine.com

December 2023

ENTERPRISE IT

“ In 2023, companies across the board have adopted AI to accelerate their processes, improve quality and reduce employee workloads” DOMINIC SCHMITT

DIRECTOR OF ECOSYSTEM CENTRAL EUROPE, RED HAT

cloud strategies, terming it as a conscious distributed cloud developed from a wellmapped technology stack over time. “The advent of cloud provider appliances like Dell HCI Azure Stack or AWS Outposts that allow businesses to create a public cloud experience on premise – i.e. hybrid cloud – have been key to its growth over the past few years. This will continue in 2024, given it allows companies to unify the IT experience, simplify the technology landscape, reduce technical debt and the skills demand, while allowing portability of workloads between public and private cloud. “Multi-cloud combined with hybrid cloud leads to the term distributed cloud, which is in fact, what most organisations will end up with. Those that have long-term plans, and a dedicated team of conscious multi-cloud strategists will be the first to capitalise from its benefits. And 2024 sounds like a great year to begin this journey.” technologymagazine.com

SAP’S JOULE TAKING SUPPLY CHAIN AI TO THE NEXT LEVEL WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

December 2023

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SAP

Darcy MacClaren, Chief Revenue Officer for SAP Digital Supply Chain, on why Joule takes AI out of the sandbox and places it at the heart of businesses

n launching Joule – SAP’s naturallanguage, generative AI ‘co-pilot’ – SAP CEO Christian Klein spells out how it has the power to redefine both the way businesses and people work. “Joule will know what you mean, not just what you say,” Klein tells the world. Joule will be embedded throughout SAP’s cloud enterprise portfolio, and is aimed at the estimated 300 million enterprise users around the world who work with SAP cloud solutions. It is built to deliver proactive and contextualised insight from across the breadth and depth of SAP solutions and third-party sources – and one area in particular is set to reap huge benefits from it: supply chain. Darcy MacClaren, Chief Revenue Officer for SAP Digital Supply Chain, says: “AI has the potential to revolutionise supply chain management because it’s going to enable better decision-making, improved efficiency, reduced costs and meaningful sustainability initiatives. As AI becomes more accessible, we will see increased adoption and integration of it across supply chain operations. It’s a game changer.” Based on an understanding of a customer’s processes, Joule is able to provide the customer not only with intelligent insight, but can also make recommendations designed to deliver outcomes faster.

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“This capability is now available across the SAP portfolio, and it’s going to be incredibly important to supply chains,” she says. “You can interrogate Joule. You can ask questions such as, ‘Were there any issues in my last supply planning run?’ Joule will then let you know what’s going on in your planning cycles, and what you need to do about it. It will make suggestions by comparing different planning runs.” SAP ‘will become the largest AI enterprise bar none’ Because AI is embedded across its solutions, MacClaren explains that Joule “is set to make SAP ‘the largest AI enterprise out there, bar none’.” “Supply chain is the key area where folks are using AI for,” she adds. “Joule can contextualise data from multiple systems. This results in insights that help people get work done faster and drive better business outcomes in a secure, compliant way.” “Think of well-known consumer apps that have AI embedded, such as Siri, Uber and Microsoft Office,” says MacClaren. “We have that now in SAP. Our mission is to enable and accelerate the adoption of AI to create business value. It’s infused in the business process, and that’s what SAP’s business AI is. It’s an integrated feature. “We are also exposing business AI to extend services through our business technology platform.”

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SAP

MacClaren is in no doubt that Joule – and SAP’s wider business AI offerings – are milestone events for supply chain, a discipline in which she has been involved for more than 25 years. She joined SAP 12 years ago. Unlike many in the supply chain, MacClaren has an economics rather than engineering background, and also gained an MBA early in her career when she was with Hewlett-Packard, where she worked in the manufacturing technology space. At SAP, MacClaren is responsible for the go-to market for SAP’s digital supply chain solution set. “It’s what we call ‘design to operate’,” she says. “It’s basically everything from how a company designs its products to how it plans, schedules, manufactures, delivers and operates.” 98

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Making supply chains resilient ‘is our goal’ She and her team are responsible for working with SAP customers to help transform their supply chains to be resilient, risk proof, and agile. “We’re the point of contact between SAP and our audience,” she says, adding: “As Chief Revenue Officer, I am on the customer side of things. But there is also a solution and marketing aspect to what we do, and we’re also involved with engineering product development. We work together to determine the go-to market for the supply chain at SAP globally.” Throughout her career, MacClaren has developed deep experience in building and scaling niche supply chain companies. She started out with a planning and scheduling company, whose solutions

“ SAP’S ALWAYS BEEN POSITIONED BETWEEN TECH AND BUSINESS, AND WE’RE NOW APPLYING THAT TO REALLY SEIZE THE OPPORTUNITY OF AI” DARCY MACCLAREN

CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, SAP DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN

DARCY MACCLAREN TITLE: CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER INDUSTRY: S OFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LOCATION: UNITED STATES Darcy MacClaren is a strategic global leader who has spent 30 years growing, differentiating, and improving businesses through technology transformation with a focus on supply chain. She has held various leadership roles at SAP over the last ten years, most recently serving as the Senior Vice President of Digital Supply Chain and Industry 4.0 for SAP North America. Today, she serves as Chief Revenue Officer of SAP Digital Supply Chain, overseeing the global supply chain business.

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“ A BUSINESS MUST CONSTANTLY BE WORKING ON ITS DATA. IT’S A JOURNEY, NOT A DESTINATION” DARCY MACCLAREN

CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, SAP DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN

now reside at Oracle, and has also worked across most of the ‘design-to-operate’ pillars, including planning, transportation, and design. MacClaren finds the potential of Joule “exciting and inspiring,” and feels the same way about supply chain in general. “From the beginning, I just loved supply chain,” she says. “I loved the mathematical complexity of it, and I loved how it could be optimised and the strategic decisions that are made. It made me realise how powerful and important the supply chain is in any business.” At SAP, MacClaren is on a self-declared mission to work with customers to transform their supply chain – something she sees as a global imperative. “Supply chain always was very important,” she says, “but the pandemic brought it to the forefront of people’s thinking, both at boardroom and government level.” Continuing with this theme, MacClaren points out that the release of Joule comes at a time when the stock of supply chain executives has never been higher – their influence at board level never stronger. “CEOs are now being recruited from the supply chain side of the business because supply chain execs understand the entire technologymagazine.com

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organisation and what runs it,” she says. “A study we did recently with Oxford Economics shows how important it is in today’s world for businesses to make supply chain the heart of any business strategy, because of the seemingly never-ending run of disruptions. It must never be an afterthought.” With Joule now turbo-charging SAP’s solutions, senior supply chain executives are set to bring a greater degree of insight and control to the boardroom. SAP solutions have AI and ML at their core MacClaren reminds us that SAP’s solutions have for some time been built on AI and have offered machine learning capabilities.

“If you look at our warehouse management solutions, we use AI for intelligence slotting,” she says. “This optimises warehouses through stock replenishment, based on product characteristics, product demand and sales forecasts.” She adds: “Then if you look at generative AI in transportation, it examines goods received and delivery notes, and optimises which loads you should unload first. So it’s quite powerful. “Demand planning customers, meanwhile, are using market data promotion, weather calendars, and tens of thousands of data points with machine learning to create forecasts by country, which makes it far more efficient.” technologymagazine.com

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Of course, SAP does not work in a vacuum, but within a collaborative ecosystem far greater than the sum of its parts. One key SAP collaborative partner is Deloitte, who recently expanded its deployment of SAP Business Technology Platform, an open cloud solution with data management, analytics, AI, IoT, blockchain and application development services to help connect companies. Deloitte has also expanded its SAP RISE deployment so companies can access

innovation across their supply chain. SAP RISE is a complete offering of cloud solutions, infrastructure and services that helps businesses migrate SAP ERP. Deloitte now has RISE Premium Supplier designation, which increases the breadth of the SAP cloud services that the company is able to bring to its clients. “We have a deep commitment to working closely with SAP to empower

supply chain transformation in pursuit of business agility and resilience,” a Deloitte spokesperson says. “We look forward to continuing to support our joint clients through the waves of industry change, with SAP as a prized collaborator.” Pointing out that Joule takes the power of SAP’s solutions to another level. MacClaren Echoing Klein that Joule knows what you mean, not just what you say, she explains that Joule

means AI “is no longer just a sandbox pilot but the beating heart of your business.” SAP partner – IT implementation specialist, LeverX – also lauds the power of Joule, with company Chairman and Co-founder Victor Lozinski saying that Joule “provides new-found capabilities that enable SAP customers to improve the decisionmaking process, accelerate problem resolution, and determine the sustainability quotient of their delivery operations.”

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SAP

`He adds: “The world of logistics faces several hurdles throughout the delivery process, impacting efficiency, transparency, and overall costs. “The growing and dynamic power of AI can address these challenges and bring to life groundbreaking solutions that revolutionise the entire supply chain landscape. By leveraging SAP Digital Supply Chain, companies can orchestrate and monitor all delivery cycles in real-time.” Another SAP partner to welcome the introduction of Joule is Camelot ITLab, a leading SAP consultancy for digital supply chain management. A Camelot ITLab spokesperson said: “The impact of AI in supply chain is not limited to a specific function, but offers transformative benefits across the entire design-to-operate process. “With its generative AI application Joule, SAP will dramatically change how businesses run, and it marks a new era of transformation and innovation. Joule will be a game changer for SAP’s Digital Supply Chain customers.” But of course, many businesses currently have no access to this game-changing AI power, because they are behind the

“ JOULE MEANS AI IS NO LONGER JUST A SANDBOX PILOT BUT THE BEATING HEART OF YOUR BUSINESS” DARCY MACCLAREN

CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, SAP DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN

technological curve – marooned in a world of siloed data and offline spreadsheet analysis. For MacClaren and her team, guiding such business through their transformation journeys is central to what they do. “Like many areas of business, supply chain practitioners are very comfortable with Excel, which they use for offline data manipulation,” says MacClaren. “This is why SAP uses Excel-like interfaces, the big difference of course being that our solutions are dealing with live data accessible in the cloud when the business user needs to make game-time decisions.” She adds that as well as weaning supply chain folk off Excel, SAP solutions help them move away from departmental silos, to be more collaborative – both within their own organisation and externally. “If you are a demand planner, you need to be communicating with supply planning,” says MacClaren. “Design needs to be technologymagazine.com

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communicating with manufacturing, which needs to communicate with logistics – and they all need to be communicating with one another as part of a digital thread.” Disparate technologies can affect data quality As for the many businesses that have already embarked on transformation, they too face barriers to progress. “A business must constantly be working on its data,” she says. “It’s a journey, not a destination, and the more a company uses disparate technologies the more important it is that it keeps that data clean.” 110

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“ AI HAS THE POTENTIAL TO REVOLUTIONISE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT” DARCY MACCLAREN

CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, SAP DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN

SAP

One of the most important things SAP helps its clients with, says MacClaren, is clean data. “Look, data is never going to be 100% clean but you have to start the journey of cleaning it as soon as possible, and of course we have a lot of machine learning tools to help here.” Whatever stage a business is at on its transformation journey, MacClaren says her team’s aim is the same: “We want to delight the end consumer, and do it in a sustainable and cost-effective way. “We have a strong sense of ownership and responsibility in helping companies

do that, and we take it very seriously. That’s what I really enjoy about it. The impact supply chain has across society, globally. “When you add our existing capability to natural-language AI it is going to be truly transformational. “SAP has always been positioned between technology and business, and we’re now applying that to our long standing customers to really seize the opportunity of AI.

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DATA & ANALYTICS

Navigating the complex data governance and AI As businesses rapidly adopt Generative AI, experts warn that neglecting robust data governance can limit potential and pose security and ethical risks WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

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DATA & ANALYTICS

JINENDER JAIN TITLE: SVP AND SALES HEAD UK AND IRELAND COMPANY: TECH MAHINDRA LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Jain is a head of business development and an expert in digital transformation and solutions. He has an outstanding record in securing major multinational accounts, ideating services and achieving exponential high margin revenue growth.

“Data governance and AI model management present complex challenges for businesses. Compliance with data privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, is non-negotiable to avoid legal consequences and safeguard consumer trust.” Jain also emphasises the pivotal role of data quality and privacy: “Maintaining data quality is equally critical, as AI relies on accurate, unbiased data for dependable outcomes. Data cleansing and validation processes must be continuously upheld to ensure data integrity.” Zoë Webster, AI Director at BT Group, echoes these sentiments, particularly when it comes to data quality: “Ensuring the quality and quantity of data is paramount. To develop robust AI models, you need sufficient, high-quality data. Different AI techniques have varying data appetites, with deep learning and large language models being particularly data-hungry.”

The issue of security is another thorny challenge, especially in sectors like healthcare, retail, and BFSI, Jain notes. “Businesses that fail to protect their customer’s data run the risk of losing their trust, leading to a loss of sales, ruining the company’s reputation, and potentially subjecting them to legal liability. In an environment where consumer loyalty and relationships are everything, businesses must take every measure possible to keep customer data safe and secure,” he says. “Protecting customer trust and mitigating cybersecurity risks are just a few examples of why privacy and security are vital to businesses.” technologymagazine.com

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NINA BRYANT TITLE: SENIOR MD, TECHNOLOGY COMPANY: FTI CONSULTING LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Bryant specialises in combining data expertise across legal, compliance, privacy and risk to enable business transformation and build cultures of compliance and collaboration in combination with effective technology solutions. Prior to FTI she led a number of data governance and regulatory compliance programs at Deutsche Bank and IBM.

Ethical concerns and the risk of biases Nina Bryant, Senior Managing Director in the Technology segment at FTI Consulting, turns the spotlight on ethical considerations: “Research has identified critical risks within AI algorithms, including racial, gender and socioeconomic biases and age verification issues, alongside significant data protection risks.” Bryant also highlights the significant regulatory focus: “There is also significant regulatory focus, with different jurisdictions taking alternative approaches, especially around assessing risks, transparency, explainability and accountability, which will contribute to making AI governance equally challenging and important.” Webster also takes up the theme of ethical considerations, commenting on the potential 116

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for biases: “When AI is trained on historical data, it has the potential to inherit biases unless those biases are consciously addressed.” She adds that where AI models are typically trained may inherently introduce biases. “It’s worth noting that the well-known large language models are generally trained on vast amounts of data from the World Wide Web. The WWW does not necessarily reflect the values and experiences of everyone across the world in equal measure, so this may inherently introduce biases. Data scientists and their teams must prioritise understanding their data sets to avoid ‘baking-in’ bias into the model.” Long-term reliability Jason Tooley, VP North EMEA at Informatica, raises concerns around the role of effective

data governance in ensuring long-term AI reliability. As he describes, there is a temptation for organisations to ‘jump in at the deep end’. “In reality, poor quality data leads to incorrect outcomes. Without appropriate data governance to support a self-service model for data consumers, organisations risk creating data insights that are damaging in the short-term,” Tooley describes. “While in the long-term, it reduces the potential credibility of AI technologies.” Effective data governance goes beyond the immediacy of deployment and also plays a role in ensuring ongoing reliability. Webster underscores this point: “Data governance includes continuous monitoring and management of the data feeding the AI

ZOË WEBSTER TITLE: AI DIRECTOR COMPANY: BT GROUP LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

As AI Director at BT, Webster’s cross-cutting role in the digital team involves putting in place the capability and capacity needed to address the opportunities around data and AI to generate more value or customers.

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DATA & ANALYTICS

“Research has identified critical risks within AI algorithms, including racial, gender and socioeconomic biases and age verification issues” NINA BRYANT

SENIOR MD, TECHNOLOGY FTI CONSULTING

model, ensuring that it aligns with the data on which the model was trained. “A primary concern is data drift, which refers to changes in the data used to feed the model. This can occur for various reasons, such as a breakdown in data feeds and fluctuations in the behaviour of the entities the data relates to, for example, in customer behaviour caused by events like a pandemic. When data drift happens, it can significantly affect the model’s performance. Without proper governance, you might end up with inaccurate and unreliable AI output.” Another critical aspect of maintaining AI reliability, Webster says, is recognising and addressing different forms of drift, not just data drift. “It could be technical issues within the model, such as components not functioning as intended. Effective AI governance ensures these issues are detected and resolved promptly.” Transparency and accountability When it comes to transparency and accountability, Bryant considers it essential for effective data governance to incorporate checks and balances: “Core to effective data governance is a series of checks and balances, procedures and controls, that assess the risk of potential harm from new AI solutions.

These ensure that as AI is developed key considerations are managed and documented to drive transparency and reduce the risk of unintended bias.” Tooley stresses the role of a unified data governance model for achieving transparency: “Increasingly, organisations need to move towards a single platform that can connect, integrate and automate all of the data management capabilities. This approach provides greater visibility, but it also offers synergy and simplicity. It ensures organisations can integrate data from multiple points and apply powerful AI principles, while ensuring the quality, governance and traceability of data is built into the underlying data management models for AI.” As Webster concludes, ultimately, humans should be accountable for AI. “While some people talk about giving AI systems legal rights, accountability must rest with those who make decisions about AI use and deployment. It’s the responsibility of humans to ensure that AI systems are governed correctly, that biases are addressed, and that ethical considerations are upheld. Having strong data and AI governance practices in place helps uphold accountability by guiding the responsible use of AI.” technologymagazine.com

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Microsoft driving AI transformation in the public sector WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW PRODUCED BY: TOM LIVERMORE

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Microsoft Government CTO, Greg Wilson, on the company’s expansive role in AI adoption, ethical governance, and cybersecurity within the public sector

hen one thinks of ‘Technology Leaders,’ Microsoft is likely the first company that comes to mind. A globally recognised brand offering a wide portfolio of products and services across industries, central to Microsoft’s message is its mission of empowering every person and every organisation and on the planet to achieve more. “For me, we’re so much more than a large technology company,” describes Greg Wilson, Government CTO at Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector team. “There’s a responsibility on us as a strategic partner to nations, and as a partner to governments. We’re thought leaders in terms of Cloud technology. Although we also have a responsibility for helping governments understand how things like AI should be governed, or how to help reduce the digital divide, or how to support sustainability commitments and how to work with our big partner ecosystem.” Microsoft is truly leading the AI revolution, from its Copilot products to Azure OpenAI Service and Cloud adoption, which helps improve productivity, insights and driving automation. The use cases in the public sector, as well as other areas, are endless. “There’s one word that’s driving this change and that’s AI,” Wilson describes. 122

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“ For me, we’re so much more than a large technology company. There’s a responsibility on us as a strategic partner to nations, and as a partner to governments” GREG WILSON

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, MICROSOFT

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“The other word that’s completely underpinning that, of course, is data. The AI revolution of Microsoft, particularly over the last few months, has built up on all the work that’s been done over the last 10 years and how we’re going forward. Today, we’ve restructured our Government Industry focus to be more about empowering governments with technology to help solve society’s biggest challenges with AI in the Cloud. “I think it’s beholden to us as we bring all this new tech to the market space to

GREG WILSON TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER COMPANY: MICROSOFT INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT Greg Wilson is Microsoft Worldwide Public Sector’s Chief Technology Officer for Government. His role is to help global Public Sector Government clients and partners to work with Microsoft technologies to achieve more by empowering growth, innovation, and digital transformation. He oversees support around the globe to Government Public Finance, Public Safety and Justice, Government Operations & Infrastructure and Public Health and Social Services Partners and Customers. Prior to his current role he was Microsoft UK’s National Technology Officer and focused predominantly on the National Security sector cloud, data and AI solutions.

help governments understand it, help our partners understand it, and really demystify it for governing bodies so they understand the tech, they understand the issues, they understand the risks and they understand accountability.” The key drivers for tech adoption in the public sector With the world now in an era of AI transformation, Wilson’s message for organisations is to not get left behind. “We can talk about generative AI and all

the great things that these tools enable, but all the magic starts with the hyperscale cloud.” As a result, a lot of discussions around AI transformation are centred around moving governments to the cloud. “The Cloud is where the magic is unlocked and for governments wanting to better understand their data and access emerging technologies like AI and quantum, migrating to the cloud is a key first step,” Wilson says. “Here they will unlock the power of solutions like Microsoft Fabric that will reshape how everyone accesses, manages, and acts on technologymagazine.com

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Accelerating AI’s Potential for Critical Infrastructure Discover how Bentley Systems leverages data-centricity, digital twins, and AI to improve business outcomes across the civil infrastructure lifecycle

Learn More

Bentley Systems turns AI into an infrastructure assistant Julien Moutte, CTO of Bentley Systems, discusses the benefits of combining data with AI and ML to address capacity concerns among infrastructure The imperative to upgrade infrastructure is underscored by advancements in construction, renewable energy, and the strategic role of technology. Julien Moutte, CTO of Bentley Systems, underscores the importance of providing engineers with “infrastructure intelligence” amid growing demands. He distinguishes between IT data, which is administrative, and engineering and operational data, which are vital for developing digital twins with inputs like 3D models, drone imagery, and IoT sensors. Moutte stresses the importance of data in today’s engineering: “It’s more important than ever to make this infrastructure intelligence available to engineers so that they can do their best work. Because in our

sector infrastructure is under a lot of pressure right now due to backlogs, talent shortages, and sustainability requirements.” Digital twins enable simulations and problem anticipation in a virtual space, with AI and machine learning being key to predicting real-world outcomes. AI can aid tasks such as CAD analysis and production and in the creation of digital twins. Bentley Systems addresses data interoperability challenges and the trustworthiness of AI amid evolving discussions on generative AI. The company has committed to ensuring its AI solutions respect intellectual property and data privacy rights. Moutte views AI as a powerful assistant rather than a

replacement in infrastructure design. Bentley Systems promotes AI as a collaborator with designers and engineers, grounded in physical laws and engineering limits: “We believe this is an approach that is going to help our users understand how the data is being used, have control, but also make the best use of past data.” “Our tools already understand the rules of the physical world, the constraints of engineering, and we want to make sure that AI is working as an assistant to the designer and engineers and of our tools so that they can enforce those engineering rules and make sure we create safe designs.”

MICROSOFT

data and insights by connecting every data source and analytics service together—on a single, AI-powered platform. Or our Copilot products that use AI tools to help users to unleash a whole new way of working. Copilot works alongside you to unleash your creativity and help you perform tasks faster. It’s amazing and Copilot will help you organise ideas, understand context, and bring collaboration to a whole new next level. “People expect their governments to change,” Wilson asserts. “They expect 128

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the services that are getting to go online and therefore they’re expecting their country to adopt a more competitive approach in the digital market. We can see the clear benefits this brings to society through efficiencies, reducing costs, improving customer satisfaction, and even driving innovation going forward.” Driving this innovation, Microsoft is accelerating how customers can improve employer productivity and leverage transformation AI by going to the cloud. “This is the massive impact that will

empower governments, with our technology, to help solve society’s biggest challenges. It’ll deliver innovation in programmes and experiences. It will better empower the government workforce and we will see a transformation of the business space in terms of especially government operations and services.” The need for ethical AI As AI technologies become increasingly integrated into public life, ethical considerations are paramount.

“The challenge obviously always in the public sector is that procurement cycles are longer,” Wilson describes. “There’s no hesitancy; they want to get after AI. It’s beholden on us to help them understand its utility, how to contract for it, and how to ensure that the benefits are reaped responsibly.” In line with these responsibilities, Microsoft has developed ethical principles around AI since 2018. “In short, we must ensure our view that AI is always under the control of humans: that’s a first order of technologymagazine.com

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priority for governments and ourselves alike. That connects directly with the essential concept in a democratic society, that one of our founding principles is that no person is above the law, no government is above the law, no company is above the law and therefore no product or technology should be above the law. “Therefore, the people who design and operate AI systems cannot be accountable unless some of these decisions are subject to the rule of law,” Wilson adds. “We’re doing a lot of work with governments that help them understand their AI policies, advance the regulatory debate and explore how a government can ensure what regulations and policies they should take forward.” The importance of cybersecurity With over 10,500+ security and threat intelligence experts worldwide, Microsoft provides governments with valuable insights on cybersecurity. The company synthesises 64 trillion signals daily, uses sophisticated data analytics, and has AI algorithms to protect against cyber threats. “Our technologies around the world connect billions of customers,” Wilson describes. “This gives us a rather unique advantage of being able to aggregate security data, and to understand the scope and scale of digital threats around the globe.” With such diverse threats coming in from many sources, it would be difficult for customers to anticipate when they may be attacked and how to defend themselves. To combat this threat, Microsoft uses sophisticated data analytics and AI algorithms to understand and protect against threats and cyber-criminal activity. “We synthesised 65 trillion signals a day, blocked more 4,000 identity attacks 130

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“ There’s one word that’s driving this change and that’s AI – it’s all about AI, AI, AI. The other word that’s completely underpinning that of course, is data, data, data” GREG WILSON

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, MICROSOFT

Use more image captions as often as possible

per second and tracked 300+ threat actors last year alone and we removed up to 100,000 domains, which were being used by cyber criminals and, in some cases, nation state actors. “It’s important for us to help people and governments understand, particularly policy makers, how we help them with their security cyber policies and resilience,” Wilson comments. “Cybersecurity is of national importance not just to economies but is a priority for the governments around the world, to make sure that their capabilities and their data is safe.”

Partnership with Bentley Systems Partnerships are key to Microsoft’s success. Wilson cites partnerships like that with Bentley Systems, which enable the development of new digital twin and smart city solutions. “We have our own products, but our products are there to help our really extensive partner ecosystem,” he says. “In my area, smart cities and critical infrastructure, Microsoft doesn’t build bridges or railways, but our technology helps those firms that do.” “With a strategic partnership like the one of Microsoft and Bentley Systems – a leader technologymagazine.com

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“ This is the massive impact that will empower governments with our technology to help solve society’s biggest challenges” GREG WILSON

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, MICROSOFT

in engineering software for professionals to design, build, operate and maintain critical infrastructure, such as roads and rail networks, or public works and utilities – it enables us to develop new smart city solutions and that builds a lot on some of the exciting work we’re doing in Digital Twins.” These Digital Twins can help in a number of ways: reducing costs, helping with urban planning, and driving public engagement in projects such as high-speed rails or dams. “It is just amazing how that work can be done with Digital Twins. I like watching Formula One racing, but actually the most valuable racing car is the Digital Twin racing car, because that’s the place where the teams can test numerous different scenarios and take them forward without destroying physical assets. “For me, these opportunities – particularly as we go more to the industrial metaverse and how we see the industrial metaverse in Digital Twin and the sensors of IoT sensors all coming together – will be somewhere where our expertise and the expertise of our partners such as Bentley will come together, making a real and huge difference to business and mission outcomes.” 132

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Look to the future Looking towards the future, Wilson predicts that the pace of technological change will only accelerate. “Change has never been as fast nor will it ever be as slow again as it is today, that is widely recognised,” he reflects. “The pace of AI change that we are seeing is absolutely tremendous. This is not a hype or a trend, this is making a real impact and changing the way that AI goes forward and evolves.” In addition to the rise in AI, Wilson highlights other next-gen technologies from 6G networks to robotics and the metaverse. “When you think about some of the networking technologies that are changing, we’re getting to the early stages of 6G. How can we take that technology further to the edge, to the frontline worker, particularly in public safety and justice, healthcare, and critical infrastructure. “And I think with the pervasiveness of computing, we’ll see a drive for more and more low-code, no-code applications, people doing their own things to advance public services.” Despite some scepticism in recent months, Wilson also believes the metaverse will come to the fore. “The infrastructure is there, the technology’s there, the AI is there, and industrial metaverse and smart cities will be a big driver. Then you throw on top, quantum computing – in particular, what we’re doing in the research area at the moment and how that will become more prevalent in driving decisions from data.” Ultimately, Wilson explains that, for public sector organisations, it is beholden on them to understand all these technologies as they move forward. “We’re working technologymagazine.com

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with some of the Government research organisations around the globe and international think tanks, as well as with academia helping them drive forward technological innovation and helping them understand: “What government services can be improved? What does this mean for how they use digital technology smarter for their environmental position and services? And then really, where can we use quantum to drive things forward?”

“No person is above the law, no government is above the law, no company is above the law and therefore no product or technology should be above the law” GREG WILSON

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, MICROSOFT

“Underpinning everything, whether it’s now or in the future, are those points of security and trust and what that means when you adopt new technologies,” Wilson concludes. “The horse got replaced by the car, how do we translate that analogy as we go forward with AI? I think it’s beholden on us all to think these things through for the public sector responsibly as change is continually and needs embracing and considered strategically not reactively.”

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INDUSTRIAL METAVERSE & DIGITAL TWINS RESHAPING MANUFACTURING Ludwig von Reiche of NVIDIA reveals how industrial metaverse and advanced digital twins are revolutionising manufacturing processes and boosting efficiency WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW 136

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s artificial intelligence continues to dominate headlines, one could be forgiven for having forgotten about the metaverse. But the metaverse is alive and well, ushering in a new era of digital transformation in a surprising place – the manufacturing industry. Aiming to help solve the world’s hardest engineering, manufacturing and science problems, digital twins are a powerful tool capable of accelerating innovation and boosting productivity and business performance. To learn more, this month Technology Magazine speaks to Ludwig von Reiche, Managing Director at NVIDIA GmbH, on how the industrial metaverse is emerging as a powerful tool to help businesses reshape their approach to manufacturing, design and collaboration. Decoding the metaverse and its early applications in digital twins Simply put, a metaverse is the internet in 3D: a network of connected, persistent, virtual worlds. According to von Reiche, today manufacturers are already harnessing metaverse technology to digitise difficult physical processes, ranging from the design and engineering of physical products to planning and operating physical factories and warehouses through digital twin technology. “The concept of digital twins has been used in manufacturing for years, facilitating the modelling of individual machines and the component parts of production lines,” he explains. “However, the scope and capabilities of digital twins have advanced significantly. Traditionally, these twins have been limited to replicating one machine or part, but not the complete manufacturing process.” technologymagazine.com

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“ What’s exciting is we’re now approaching stepchange in digital twin technology where this is becoming possible – and not just for large global companies” LUDWIG VON REICHE MANAGING DIRECTOR, NVIDIA GMBH

As von Reiche describes, true-toreality digital twins – which replicate all components of the physical world and how they interact – have so far been difficult to achieve. “The benefits are clear – these more advanced digital twins have the capacity to conduct more accurate simulations of different scenarios, which helps users make better decisions – and not just in the original design, but throughout the operational lifetime of, say, a production line,” he says.

LUDWIG VON REICHE TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR COMPANY: NVIDIA GMBH LOCATION: GERMANY

Ludwig von Reiche is a transformational leader with a general management background in an international, highly diverse environment, with focus on business development, marketing, funding, and corporate development in high-tech industries, primarily in the IT/tech space.

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BMW Group Celebrates Opening the World’s First Virtual Factory in NVIDIA Omniverse WATCH NOW

“Real-world data captured through sensors can be seamlessly incorporated into the digital version, synchronising the digital twin in real time. What’s exciting is we’re now approaching step-change in digital twin technology where this is becoming possible – and not just for large global companies.” Harnessing the benefits of the metaverse Several metaverse applications are currently found in sectors ranging from customer experience to industrial manufacturing and research. Almost every industry will benefit from participating and hosting virtual worlds. Creators will make more things for virtual worlds than they do in the physical world. According to von Reiche, enterprises will build countless digital twins. 140

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“A pivotal catalyst to the industrial metaverse’s application to many industries is the Universal Scene Description standard (USD), also referred to as OpenUSD. Initially developed by Pixar Animation Studios, USD’s impact has extended far beyond movie making. In industrial settings, USD serves as the foundation for creating 3D replicas of machinery and equipment, enabling seamless interoperability among various 3D tools. USD enables easier collaboration between teams of engineers, who can now edit and view the same assets simultaneously, essential in an era of hybrid working.” Metaverse in action: real-world applications But while USD exists in the virtual world, the benefits are very much apparent in the

“ In industrial settings, USD serves as the foundation for creating 3D replicas of machinery and equipment, enabling seamless interoperability among various 3D tools” LUDWIG VON REICHE MANAGING DIRECTOR, NVIDIA GMBH

physical world for manufacturers. “At NVIDIA, we work with hundreds of manufacturing organisations, and we’re witnessing a rapid uptake of industrial metaverse technology, such as our NVIDIA Omniverse platform,” von Reiche adds. Omniverse, the culmination of more than 25 years of NVIDIA graphics, accelerated computing, simulation and AI technologies, enables manufacturing companies to plan and optimise multibillion-dollar factory projects entirely virtually. This means they can get to production faster and operate more efficiently, improving time to market, digitalisation and sustainability. BMW’s adoption of the digital-first approach to manufacturing is a great example of the transformative power technologymagazine.com

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of the industrial metaverse. The group’s production network is poised to benefit from the digital transformation opportunities brought by Omniverse. “In the past, reconfiguring production lines incurred substantial expenses and production downtime,” says von Reiche. “To solve this, BMW is using Omniverse to design an end-to-end digital twin of an entire factory. Thousands of planners, product engineers and facility managers can collaborate in a single virtual environment to design, plan, simulate and optimise extremely complex manufacturing systems before a factory is built or a new product is integrated into a production line.” The results here are remarkable: von Reiche highlights a 30% boost in planning efficiency, reduced planning durations, and heightened flexibility and precision. “OpenUSD and its applications have also revolutionised the way Mercedes-Benz operates its manufacturing and assembly facilities,” he describes. “The company adopted a ‘digital first’ approach with the ambition of boosting the flexibility and resilience of its production system. As Mercedes-Benz is rolling out its nextgeneration vehicle portfolio into its manufacturing sites, the challenge is to adapt facilities worldwide. Starting with plants in Hungary, Germany and China, the automaker reduced coordination processes by 50%, which lays the foundation for the global rollout of the technology.” At a tough time for businesses, with manufacturers grappling with inflation, supply chain disruptions, labour shortages, and sustainability commitments, it can be tempting to resist or at least slow down the deployment of new technologies 142

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“ The market for the metaverse will grow, with more designers and creators building digital items and complex systems in virtual worlds first and only then in the physical world” LUDWIG VON REICHE MANAGING DIRECTOR, NVIDIAA GMBH

in these times. “But the reality is that technologies like the industrial metaverse hold enormous potential to improve efficiency, competitiveness and ultimately, profitability,” von Reiche explains. “The market for the metaverse will grow, with more designers and creators building digital items and complex systems in virtual worlds first and only then in the physical world. Just as the web did, virtual worlds will spark many new economies that are larger than our current physical economy.”

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Maximising IT and OT brings cyber security challenges WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

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Director of Industrial IT, OT and Cybersecurity at Sopra Steria, delves into the consultancy’s ethos for delivering secure digital transformation to its customers

ndustries are evolving at a range of change that is unseen in history. Digital technology is the ultimate differentiator between operations that survive versus those that thrive, and deliver new efficiencies to meet company demands. The questions that industries face today are about the future and how systems can work together more effectively to transform operations. This opens up new conversations about security. With technology taking the wheel as companies digitise and digitalise with operational technologies (OT), cybersecurity becomes an imminent challenge to businesses and their supply chains as without proper care, they risk significant downtime and damage to their commercial outcomes. In order to help companies stay ahead of the curve, one of Europe’s largest digital transformation consultancies Sopra Steria is driving the conversation in this area with technology and sustainability at the core of its business. As explained by the company’s Director of Industrial IT, OT & Cybersecurity, Kenneth Titlestad, the organisation is committing to advising its partners on how best to move forward in the digital era. “We focus on providing the best advice to – and being partners with – our clients, so that they can get good effects out of their transformation journeys. We also keep a really high focus on providing value to not only the clients, but also to society.

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“ With a really mature level of digital twin, you can also provide rich and understandable data streams” KENNETH TITLESTAD

DIRECTOR OF INDUSTRIAL IT, OT & CYBERSECURITY, SOPRA STERIA

That’s something that has strengthened over the five years I’ve been with the company, the focus on sustainability,” says Titlestad. “We’ve also been strengthening our focus on the technology side as well – with the focus nowadays on the sustainability side of technology, instead of just technology for 148

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technology. I often discuss, not just Industry 4.0, but Industry 5.0. It requires much more consideration on the sustainability side of things.” Sopra Steria is driven by three key statements that are the pinnacle of its core value system. These include ‘Shape the future’, ‘Provide value to our customers’ and ‘The power of sharing’. These three values sum up what the consultancy is really about – understanding the needs of clients and sharing the relevant knowledge with them to deliver on their goals. Much of the company’s work, as alluded to before, is centred around the industry revolution and evolving technologies coming as a result of years of research and innovation. “The pace of evolution or what they call the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a big challenge for companies.

KENNETH TITLESTAD TITLE: DIRECTOR OF INDUSTRIAL IT, OT & CYBERSECURITY COMPANY: SOPRA STERIA LOCATION: NORWAY Kenneth has expert knowledge in the modernization and security of critical infrastructure and services. His advice and assessments are sought after in a variety of large modernization and security programs that large enterprises and various industries face. He serves as a working group leader in the Norwegian Electrotechnical Committee, is a guest lecturer at universities, and a central advisor in several large projects and programs. He has practical experience in strategic work, management, system design, advising on maintenance strategies, and security assessments for large, complex, and critical infrastructures.

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TXOne Networks solutions secure OT in the production line Carl-Johan Dahlgren, TXOne’s Business Development Director for Northern Europe, shares the company’s solutions for secure operational technologies TXOne Networks stands as a specialised OT cybersecurity vendor, singularly focused on fortifying missioncritical operational technologies and infrastructures of paramount significance. It caters to manufacturing, oil, gas, and electricity sectors, offering cybersecurity protocols that preserve production continuity and digital manufacturing system integrity. Carl-Johan Dahlgren, TXOne’s Business Development Director for Northern Europe, delineates the company’s adaptable solutions. Dahlgren elucidates the distinction between IT and OT, where IT deals with information handling and OT concerns operational technology involving physical devices. TXOne equips clients with tools for vulnerability scanning and analysis as a proactive cybersecurity strategy. The product range scans assets for malicious code, especially pertinent when integrating new machinery. It could be that you want to scan a new machine before you bring it into the production environment,” says Dahlgren. TXOne’s Edge Series, a suite of products,

empowers clients to secure various production levels, including legacy systems. Notably, the Edge IPS stands out – a level two device protecting machines where you are unable to install CyberPhysicalSystem – Detection & Response (CPSDR) software. “The Edge IPS is a layer two device, a physical device that you put in your network to protect machines or computers on which are unable to install any kind of software. This could be very old machines, legacy operating systems, etc,” says Dahlgren. “You don’t need to re-architecture the environment since it’s one layer and just a bump on the wire. You can just plug into a physical cable and it begins producing the Edge Series.” Dahlgren also introduces a level three device functioning as an IT environment firewall, though its integration requires considering the network architecture. This approach ensures comprehensive protection for diverse customer needs. Practical understanding is exemplified through a partnership with strategic advisor Sopra Steria. This collaboration facilitates up-to-date insight into TXOne’s evolving portfolio, enabling adept advice to customers regarding environment protection and future architecture.

“ We focus on providing the best advice to, and being partners with, our clients so that they can get good effects out of their transformation journeys” KENNETH TITLESTAD

DIRECTOR OF INDUSTRIAL IT, OT & CYBERSECURITY, SOPRA STERIA

There’s a lot of new technology seeing the daylight nowadays with drones, robots, autonomous systems – lots of research and developments going on,” says Titlestad. “Finding the right combination of these kinds of technologies, the companies can have a really strong foothold in business and become more competitive in the market. Looking from the outside we see them stressing over the licences to operate. They need to find the sweet spot with technology and we see a lot of the technology nowadays is experimental – it’s not working just as it should or the way they expected.” It’s in this area where companies can effectively be left behind if they are unable to get up to speed with the latest digital trends. “When experimental technology is combined, the effects are not easy to predict. Still, we are reminded of what Klaus Schwab from World Economic Forum said some years ago, that ‘In the new world, it is not the big fish which eats the small fish, it’s the fast fish which eats the slow fish, it’s the fast who will get the future benefits’. You are giving 152

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yourself a difficult task, because moving fast in this rapidly evolving technological area is really difficult,” Titlestad explains. Cybersecurity is a product of OT digital transformation When it comes to cybersecurity, what are organisations dealing with as they evolve digitally? “With a mature level of digital twin, you can provide rich data streams to your vendors that know how to prescriptively and precisely maintain their and your equipment. Then you have the whole value chain working together as an orchestra so that we can actually get the best benefits from our industry,” says Titlestad. “But, that’s on the Industry 4.0 side, it’s a lot about technology and, of course, products and interoperability. But in terms of Industry 5.0, the focus is shifted more to the sustainability of things, and the total outcome for humans. They say that Industry 5.0 is humanity’s revenge over Industry 4.0.” Titlestad identifies some of the stakes when shifting from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 from a cybersecurity perspective, which has become a major threat to businesses – particularly when OT is plugged in, theoretically, to the digital ecosystem. Although criminal activity, such as theft, fraud and sabotage, is the same as any, much of it now appears in the digital world. “What we’ve seen in recent years is also espionage, terrorism and war from a digital perspective. All of these digital technologies we implement around us are being exploited for fraud, sabotage, vandalism, terrorism and also being used as tools for war,” says Titlestad. technologymagazine.com

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“The tools and critical infrastructure systems need to be resilient and robust enough to withstand everything from just pure daily vandalism and break-downs all the way to cyber warfare.” Dependence on the cloud means relying on the internet Also highlighted in this conversation is a point about the use of data lakes and the cloud, which can leave organisations prone to attack from a different angle. The internet being a staple in today’s digital society makes it a hot target for acts of crime, sabotage and terrorism, leaving organisations vulnerable if they operate solely on the cloud. What this means, Titlestad explains, is that organisations shouldn’t be fully dependent on data lakes accessed via different countries. “If you lose the internet connection or if we go into a more unstable geopolitical situation where attacks attempt to actually take down your internet connections, then you shouldn’t rely on big data or data lakes outside of your country. That could be a really big vulnerability on big data on the internet,” says Titlestad. A further risk he notes is the competency squeeze – referring also to the generational gap in digital capabilities, which is something to be considered as technologies evolve and individuals struggle to keep up. “We see that there’s a really big need to get more people to have competency on new technology – technology by default – but there’s just not enough people with all the technology coming in,” says Titlestad. He continues: “Competency squeeze is a mega trend with the world’s population getting older and older, and lots of new technology coming in. We see a need for more people to be competent with new technology and technology by default, technologymagazine.com

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but there’s just not enough people with all the technology coming in. We get fewer and fewer available professionals to manage technology. So, we have a lot of demand for competent people with technology in itself and even more so on Operations Technology and cybersecurity – huge competency squeeze,” says Titlestad. So, Sopra Steria is responsible for some critical stages of cybersecurity in IT and OT, but how does it ensure that it can deliver the best possible insights and requirements to its clients? Having worked with TXOne, it partners with the company as a product and service provider, but more importantly, it means that Sopra Steria can validate its approach through collaboration – aligned to the same goals of providing customers with what they need. Having seen the limited range of OT protection-based products on the market, TXOne delivers a keenness and sharp focus on the core demands of its technologies, making it a valuable partner for the business. “A lot of companies or producers come from IT and they try to change their products or modify them so they can work within OT as well. TXOne is a company which is dedicated to OT, so that’s their main priority and that’s crucial in our partnership we have with them,” says Titlestad. He also recognises broad partnerships as an important factor as a digital technology consultancy, gaining great insight into the available solutions in the market. Buildingca collaborative relationship with TXOnecand others is part of Sopra Steria’s aim to keep up with the trends. These organisations and partnerships will likely tackle the future together as Titlestad coupons up about Sopra Steria’s 156

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strategy, which is predominantly focussed on increasing its portfolio of clients and projects and providing further experience-based support to increasingly digital organisations. “We are starting to see the mountain of regulations coming. So with the EU having implemented the NIS Directive, there’s the Cyber Resilience Act, lots of regulations coming. Also, with AI suddenly coming all over the news, that’s an area that needs regulation,” Titlestad closes. “That’s something that we will need to navigate going forward. And assist our clients on how they can do the same.

“ Finding the right combination of these kinds of technologies, the companies can have a really strong foothold in business and become more competitive” KENNETH TITLESTAD

We saw that there was a tremendous pickup in the security area with the Russia-Ukraine situation. We also see the mega trends coming or being visible with, for instance, the population getting older. We see a huge need for optimising healthcare, a challenge that calls for even more comprehensive solutions. While various methods are essential, there is a particular emphasis on the pivotal role of digital technology in addressing these needs.”

DIRECTOR OF INDUSTRIAL IT, OT & CYBERSECURITY, SOPRA STERIA technologymagazine.com

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EY DRIVING THE SAP CLOUD ADOPTION CHARGE

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW 158

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Technology Magazine speaks to Tom Janoshalmi, EY Global Consulting SAP Leader, on how EY is positioned to aid organisations in their transformation goals WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

he adoption of cloud technology, digitisation, and new ways of working is accelerating at an unprecedented pace. This includes a rapid shift toward advanced technologies enabling secure data management and the establishment of robust supply chain redundancies. In this new era, the ability to overhaul an organisation’s core operational systems will be the differentiating factor between industry disruptors and those left behind. As highlighted by Tom Janoshalmi – EY Global Consulting SAP Leader – businesses must use intelligent tools to combine flexibility and resilience across the entire value chain while embedding real-time intelligence in operations in order to succeed. This month Technology Magazine speaks to Janoshalmi on how the EY organisation’s extensive SAP capabilities, deep industry and regulatory expertise, financial acumen, and global presence uniquely position it to assist organisations in achieving their transformation goals. As Janoshalmi explains, implementing a cloud system means change can be met with challenges around integration with legacy systems and processes, necessitating flexibility for future growth, and garnering full support from various departments within an organisation. technologymagazine.com

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Tom Janoshalmi TITLE: GLOBAL CONSULTING SAP LEADER COMPANY: EY Dr Tom Janoshalmi serves as the EY Global Consulting SAP Leader and is also part of the Global Technology Consulting Leadership team. Janoshalmi has over 20 years of experience leading digital transformations at Fortune 500 companies all over the world. At SAP, he was part of the Global Executive Leadership team. His most recent roles were Chief Business Officer, SAP Next Generation Cloud and Chief Growth Officer, SAP Digital Business Services, where he reported to the SAP Executive Board. Janoshalmi also serves as a guest professor at the Department of Network Economics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, where he teaches Digital Technology Adoption. He holds a doctorate degree in Science with a focus on supply chain optimisation, and studied at Stanford, Newcastle and Budapest universities.

“At the EY organisation, we also observe a growing demand among customers for modern, event-driven data architectures,” he adds. “They expect data to flow seamlessly across diverse technology landscapes. Businesses today seek a data strategy that allows them to remodel processes by leveraging structured and 160

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unstructured data from various layers of the technology stack.” Consider the example of the chemicals industry and how it manages specific transformations. “Global digitisation and evolving end-user demands have compelled chemical companies to innovate in more efficient, effective, and sustainable ways,” Janoshalmi asserts. “To succeed, organisations must accelerate transformations on a larger scale, ensuring end-to-end connectivity across their enterprises and with partners.”

“ The EY organisation’s approach to business transformation with SAP solutions provides a clear strategic intent and framework to maximise the value of SAP S/4HANA” TOM JANOSHALMI

GLOBAL CONSULTING SAP LEADER, EY

With this goal, EY’s Intelligent Chemicals solution (ICS) is intended to enhance the journey to SAP S/4 HANA. “The EY Intelligent Chemicals solution (ICS) is a detailed, prebuilt, chemicals-specific, services and technology solution that is augmented with EY differentiators to support chemical companies in their digitally-enabled, SAP transformation journey,” says Janoshalmi. “It combines a rich industry reference model, key performance indicators and standards, risks and controls, test scripts, and demos – mapped to SAP cross-industry and SAP chemicals best practices. technologymagazine.com

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These can be used to accelerate transformation for chemical clients.” Addressing client challenges and trends EY teams developed ICS to empower chemical clients to leverage SAP solutions across their entire value chain while preparing for the future. “Built on the latest version of SAP S/4HANA, ICS covers critical chemical processes, including production planning and detailed scheduling, sales and service, finance, procurement, enterprise asset management, multi-resource scheduling and environment, health, and safety management. ICS facilitates digital enablement and process enhancement, offering a unique value proposition by aligning a company’s business and operating models with a technical model, tested and transitioned to the client’s environment within the EY ecosystem. “According to the latest EY DigiChem survey of industry leaders, over 80% of chemical players prioritise environmental, social, and governance (ESG) and sustainability as much as revenue growth. Digital solutions are expected to play a central role in achieving these objectives. The primary challenges reported include access to a robust technical infrastructure (40%), investment requirements (38%), and the need to develop secure systems (38%).” How ICS can accelerate transformation “The EY organisation’s approach to business transformation with SAP solutions provides a clear strategic intent and framework to maximise the value of SAP S/4HANA, fostering organisational alignment. ICS is designed to expedite crucial business transformations by offering industry-specific solutions and best practice processes. This approach improves programme design through experience-driven workshops using the EY industry model. 162

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EY realising transformation with SAP offerings “The nature of work is demanding that we adopt new behaviours – becoming more innovative, agile, collaborative, and adaptive,” Janoshalmi describes. “The EY organisation’s extensive SAP capabilities, deep industry and regulatory expertise, financial acumen, and global presence uniquely position us to assist organisations in achieving their transformation goals swiftly. “EY teams are dedicated to facilitating strategic, industry-specific, cloud-optimised, and value-driven SAP transformations. Our experienced SAP professionals, spanning over 150 countries, are instrumental in delivering rapid value, enabling organisations to effectively address contemporary business challenges and fundamentally reshape their transformation journey – both before and after an SAP programme.”

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“ EY teams are focused on helping organisations drive strategic, industry-focused, cloud-optimised, value-driven SAP transformations” TOM JANOSHALMI

GLOBAL CONSULTING SAP LEADER, EY

A value-focused service approach aims to increase adherence to SAP standards, allowing the reuse of selected components from legacy systems. This streamlines SAP delivery, focusing on the most impactful aspects of the transformation.” ICS is complemented by a broad suite of chemical-specific innovations, including real-time inventory management, material valuation, order management and billing, accelerated material requirements planning, embedded extended warehouse management, integrated quality management, and a consistent SAP Fiori user experience (UX) for SAP S/4HANA. These enhancements, Jaloshami describes, help deliver additional value to clients. “ICS offers significant advantages to our clients, including supply chain efficiency, production planning, compliance with regulations, and intelligent innovation.” “When it comes to realising transformation with SAP offerings, EY teams are focused on helping organisations drive strategic, industryfocused, cloud-optimised, value-driven SAP transformations,” Janoshalmi concludes. “Our more than 26,000 experienced SAP professionals across the globe help deliver value quickly so that organisations can more easily respond to today’s business challenges and fundamentally change the transformation experience – before, during and after an SAP programme.” technologymagazine.com

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GFT’S DATA PLATFORM MODERNISATION ACCELERATES THE AI JOURNEY WRITTEN BY: HELEN ADAMS PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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David Tuppen, GFT’s Head of Data and AI, discusses strategic technology alliances, Gen AI and helping customers to accelerate their AI journey

FT is an international technology service provider with strong expertise within banking, financial services and insurance. It has over 10,000 employees globally, across the UK, Poland, Spain, Canada, Germany, the USA, Vietnam, Brazil and many other countries. “I would say our differentiator is that we pride ourselves as being precision engineers across a multitude of domains; including platform modernisation, cloud computing and neobanking services, with a strong focus on AI and Data,” explains David Tuppen, GFT’s Chief Data Officer. David Tuppen and GFT’s data team are developing the GFT AI.DA marketplace, which can support and accelerate GFT’s clients’ journeys utilising AI. “GFT is maturing the AI landscape in the industry, helping many organisations that are focusing on their investments into AI,” he shares. Specifically, GFT is doing something a little different – GFT has been placing a lot of emphasis on its AI.DA marketplace, which allows clients to see AI use cases, plus AI and data journeys, through to a modern data platform blueprint of architecture design. “We firmly believe that there is a connection between AI and the data that goes with it,” says Tuppen. “From integration, storage and management of data processing and analytics; building specific end-to-end pipelines is as important as generating the AI itself.” technologymagazine.com

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“ If you examine the data, the industry is moving towards a democratised domain-led architecture” DAVID TUPPEN

HEAD OF DATA AND AI, GFT

For Tuppen, data platforms are evolving – they have changed over time and will continue to evolve. “There are various architectural patterns which are needed and these vary according to each business and client domain,” he says. “There’s not one single solution for a modern data platform. So, from the big trend on data mesh and democratised type architectures, to traditional centralised data stores, there needs to be a specific pattern for each business unit and each client.” This is what GFT provides, a data strategy that fully aligns with an organisation’s AI goals and aspirations. “Data strategy is fully dependent on the business strategy in order to demonstrate true value for the business,” he emphasises. A solution needs to start with business value first; after that comes data lifecycle, data management and governance, data and technical architecture, data science and AI visualisation, then finally, data literacy and change management. “Each one of these steps is needed to a certain degree, for controlled and secure insights.” Tuppen sees the data pipeline prior to AI projects as being very important. 170

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“You need to move from front to back,” he says. “As I mentioned, you start with the business and then move backwards to the IT backend. You need to look at how to change the impact and what change the impact of adding intelligent automation has on your business. How will the users view and access those insights from the AI? How is the data stored and processed? How is the data integrated into the platform?” Tuppen sees that if a customer removes any of those considerations, they might land

DAVID TUPPEN TITLE: HEAD OF DATA AND AI COMPANY: GFT LOCATION: LONDON

themselves in a data integrity issue, which could cause processing issues and an increase in time and cost. Ensuring that data is clean, relevant and suitable for AI Along the pipeline of a modern data platform, there should be defined data models, or at a minimum, one that has governed data assets (or data products), regardless of the data quality (DQ) tooling or process used.

David Tuppen is the Head of Data, Analytics and AI at GFT. He has been working in the data space for over 20 years, from technical development through to business development. His area of expertise is enterprise data strategy, with a focus on hybrid data architecture patterns and applications. His career experience includes working at the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Athene Holding in Bermuda, and Milliman Actuarial Consultancy in London.

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GFT GROUP

Smart DQ, also known as Intelligent DQ or Rule-Based DQ, without management and governance can compromise the underlying input data. “One will always have various levels of data quality and a lot of people will focus on rule-based or Smart DQ but forget about the governance and management that’s needed,” Tuppen explains. On top of that, it’s necessary to control the data being used by the AI models. “Focusing on the integrity of the input data will mean that your insights from the applied AI will be much more trustworthy.” 174

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As with architecture, Tuppen says that there is no single answer for how to store your data. “If you want a playground or a sandbox environment, where you can run generalised analytics against raw data; that’s where you’d have, for instance, a data lake which may not have been modelled.” Tuppen advises that if a business wants to slice, dice and drill down reporting capabilities, then they may typically need a relational database.

GFT is present in more than 15 markets

GFT has over 35 years’ experience of delivering deep technical IT engineering and consulting services

“If you want an event-based architecture, then potentially you’d use something like NoSQL – it really depends on the business case and the client as to which architecture is best to use.” There are a range of challenges and solutions involved in the data integration process – and Tuppen has seen them all. “Data integration, which is getting the original source data into the new platform, can follow a multitude of paths,” he said. “This is the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process. It really does depend on the

architecture and whether transformation is required. Does the customer need streaming capabilities, or can they run a batch without considering that option?” Tuppen encourages businesses to carefully manage their data as it will be likely to explode over time. This includes duplication and replication of data over and over within the entire environment of the business. “Again, this increases both cost and time,” he says. “Maybe having all that data is necessary and maybe you are technologymagazine.com

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able to store all that data. But if you expect a lot from the data over time, building a decomposable architecture with, for instance, a layer that has schema bound API’s, will give a certain degree of surety on the data as it moves down your pipeline.” GFT addresses data governance and compliance issues, especially in industries with strict regulatory requirements. “If you consider each layer of a modern data platform, you will inherently need to adhere to regulatory compliance,” Tuppen explains. “For example, if you look at BCBS239, and consider Principles 1 and 4.” Principle 1: Aggregated data and reporting need to have governance. Principle 4: Accuracy and integrity of data.

“Focusing on the integrity of the input data means that insights created from the applied AI will be much more trustworthy” DAVID TUPPEN HEAD OF DATA AND AI, GFT

“If you have a data governance model in place and data management in place across your pipeline, you will be following Principle 1 and Principle 4, which includes accuracy and integrity of data,” Tuppen advises. When an organisation moves their data into their data models, that will inherently force integrity on that data and ensure the accuracy of it. He continues: “So as soon as you start building that layered approach in your architecture, you will start becoming regulatory compliant inherently, rather than having to build it from scratch.” technologymagazine.com

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Data infrastructure scales have had to adapt to handle increasing data volumes. Tuppen saw many companies ‘lift-and-shift’ their data into the cloud a few years ago, which at the time was not unusual. “Many businesses originally lifted and shifted all of their data into the cloud, with the ambition of addressing existing challenges later down the line,” Tuppen says. “The challenge (and benefit) with that, is that the cloud scales very easily, so you don’t have to consider the ever-growing infrastructure behind it.” As such, GFT has seen data explode over time, which means that data processing time and costs have now multiplied. “I frequently talk about the data strategy, but having your data strategy up front – which means designing a targeted solution,

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“ GFT is able to help customers accelerate their overall AI journey” DAVID TUPPEN HEAD OF DATA AND AI, GFT

including archiving and deletion of data, data modelling and sandboxing, is crucial to cover all your bases,” he explains. With this approach, businesses can process their data faster, which will produce input data quicker and allow them to run AI solutions more efficiently. GFT’s strategic technology alliances and a focus on Gen AI GFT has a multitude of technology partnerships, including major cloud providers and many independent software vendors (ISVs).

“We are in fact building accelerators with our ISV partners on the cloud,” says Tuppen. “From building large language models (LLMs) and Gen AI accelerators on GCP, through to streaming capabilities on AWS, we spend a lot of time carefully selecting our partners, based on synergies between their capabilities and our clients’ requirements.” For instance, MongoDB is a leader in the data technology space and GFT has used their technology for a number of clients. “We often utilise the streaming capabilities of Confluent, where we advise on the implementation of the technology for our clients, who are looking for enterprise-grade trusted real-time processing of data.” technologymagazine.com

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David Tuppen, GFT’s Head of Data and AI, on Strategic Alliances and Accelerating AI Journeys

Over the next 12 months, Tuppen anticipates a huge focus on AI and data. “GFT is investing heavily into its AI.DA marketplace, which includes industry specific use case libraries, AI and data journeys, blueprint solutions and accelerators, through to the modern data platform design patterns; all accessible through the AI.DA marketplace,” Tuppen shares. “We are going to enable our customers to accelerate their AI journey even faster.” As for insights into future trends in AI and data platforms, Tuppen sees that Gen AI is the hot topic currently in everyone’s search history. “People want to know – how can we integrate Gen AI with our existing landscape? How can we use LLMs and AI? The reality is that unless you have a trusted data platform in place, this is always going to be a difficult challenge.” AI is fed by data, so users must have a trusted data source in place. 180

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“If you look at data, the industry is moving towards a democratised domainled architecture,” Tuppen suggests, “So, isolating each functional domain into an end-to-end data product is becoming the go-to standard.” Meanwhile, GFT’s data science team is seeing increased uptake of smaller taskoriented language models. “Model ops for governance is a trend that we’re beginning to see,” he says. “We are actually seeing prompt engineering becoming less of a trend, due to optimisation frameworks already being built.” At GFT, the focus continues to be on AI and Data, how to accelerate AI solutions and the benefits these bring, whilst always maintaining an eye on the ever-evolving data and AI requirements of the future.

GFT GROUP

“Data strategy is fully dependent on the business strategy in order to show true value” DAVID TUPPEN HEAD OF DATA AND AI, GFT technologymagazine.com

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Balancing cybersecurity and innovation WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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The Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Administration Building, commonly known as Tech Tower, is a historic building and focal point of central campus technologymagazine.com

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Georgia Tech balances cutting-edge research with robust cybersecurity: safeguarding intellectual property and empowering its research & academic community

he Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the United States’ top public research universities. In total more than 45,000 students study in person at the main campus in Atlanta, along with campuses in France and China, as well as through distance and online learning. With nearly US$1.3bn annually in research awards across all six colleges and the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech’s mission is to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. Its mission and strategic plan are focused on making a positive impact in the lives of people everywhere. As explained by Leo Howell, Georgia Tech’s Chief Information Security Officer, an evolution has taken place when it comes to cybersecurity since he joined the organisation in October 2021. There have been two aspects to this evolution: balancing cybersecurity with innovation, while promoting the importance of cybersecurity across the whole organisation. “What I want to do is to limit friction to our researchers and students who are looking to develop the new frontier of technology,” he says. “At the same time, while we’re doing that, we’re also trying to stop the bad guys from disrupting what we’re doing and stealing our research data.” As Howell describes, his second focus has been around promoting cybersecurity as a matter of collective responsibility.

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Tech Tower, Atlanta skyline, taken from the Georgia Tech Atlanta campus library technologymagazine.com

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“My mission is to get non cybersecurity people to realise that we’re all responsible for our defences. My staff gets paid to do security, of course, but everybody that works at Georgia Tech is a part of that defence structure. “Almost two years in, I’m starting to see colleagues across campus embrace these ideals and it’s starting to pay dividends as we work to mature some of our capabilities.” Cybersecurity challenges at Georgia Tech Like many other large research universities, Georgia Tech faces a number of cybersecurity challenges. 186

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One of the biggest challenges is the constant onslaught of threats from nation states who are looking to gain access to Georgia Tech’s valuable research data and intellectual property. “Some of the most important breakthroughs in history have taken place at Georgia Tech, and I expect that to continue into the future,” Howell explains. “As a result, we have to skillfully manage how we do cybersecurity in a way that we don’t cause too much friction to the academic and research mission.” These very breakthroughs are the reason why Georgia Tech represents such a target.

Close-up of Tech Tower

GEORGIA TECH

LEO HOWELL TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER COMPANY: GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: UNITED STATES

“ My mission is to get non-cybersecurity people to realise that we’re all responsible for our defences” LEO HOWELL

CISO, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Leo Howell, a visionary IT leader with over two decade of experience, currently serves as the Chief Information Security Officer at Georgia Institute of Technology. He previously served as the CISO of the University of Oregon where he showcased his leadership in cybersecurity and IT. His dedication to leveraging data for decision analytics sets him apart. Leo holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Electronics from the University of the West Indies, and an MBA from NC State University. As a CISSP and CISA, he demonstrates deep knowledge and commitment to cybersecurity. Leo’s distinguished career is marked by strong collaborative leadership and the recognition of data as a strategic asset for decisionmaking in the ever-evolving IT and cybersecurity landscape.

GEORGIA TECH

“We must apply the right amount of security to reduce that risk. We run on research, one of our main sources of revenue, and so we have to demonstrate to our federal funders as well as private funders that we are worthy of these investments and that we are being good stewards of the research data and the intellectual property that comes from it. Otherwise, cybersecurity risks eventually becoming an existential threat to what we do as an organisation.” As Howell describes, today’s cybersecurity challenges expand beyond just typical traditional digital assets. “We’re like a small city,” he says. “Anything you can imagine that a city does, we also do 188

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at Georgia Tech. We have people who live here, we have a police department, we have roads that run through campus. We have just the regular facilities of a city, and at the same time we’re an open city because we want to have people coming through easily. So you can just imagine then, all the things that are connected to our network.” The complexity of this attack surface creates complications. “Now we’re worried about protecting people’s health, safety and wellbeing because these kinds of threats are becoming real possibilities,” Howell adds. “Just imagine, for example, the risk associated with threat actors getting access to our building automation system or water

Georgia Tech students in 2023

“ What I want to do is to limit friction to our researchers and students who are looking to develop the new frontier of technology” LEO HOWELL

CISO, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

management system or fire control systems. This is not just about data anymore, it’s about the safety of people.” AI in Georgia Tech’s operations Georgia Tech has a longstanding involvement in AI research. However, when it comes to operations, Howell acknowledges that AI technologies are at an “early stage of maturity” regarding data security and privacy. “On the research side, Georgia Tech has been actively engaging in AI research and education for many years,” he observes. “Just this year we launched an AI hub to unite campus research and development and commercialisation efforts.” technologymagazine.com

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Protect your student, faculty, and research data from cyber threats Today’s modern campus is more interconnected, providing seamless access to university resources, collaboration, and research. In parallel, adversaries are advancing cyberattack campaigns to disrupt university operations. Deloitte’s Higher Education Practice is ready to be your partner on the path forward. Our cyber solutions include:

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GEORGIA TECH

“ We have to apply the right amount of security to reduce that risk” LEO HOWELL

CISO, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

From an operational perspective, Howell explains that the organisation is cautiously embracing AI technologies. “A number of AI platforms like ChatGPT, Bing and Copilot, all these tools that are coming out these days are offering very powerful capabilities, but they are at the early stages of maturity when it comes to data security and privacy capabilities. And so I would say AI is at a starting point for us right now in the operational sense.

First-year Georgia Tech students attend the 2023 New Student Convocation ceremony.

“Many of our technology partners have begun including AI capabilities as default into their products, and we’re starting to leverage some of these capabilities,” he adds. “So we embrace AI capabilities that are being added, but we’re really working to understand the risk before we just jump in full blown, because we still have to protect privacy and security of data.” Partnerships – Elastic and Deloitte Given the complexity and the scope of Georgia Tech, the organisation has partnered with many technology and consulting vendors as an extension of its staff. technologymagazine.com

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$1.82bn

In April 2017, American hosting company GoDaddy acquired 123 Reg from the parent company, HEG.

123 Reg is is the UK's top domain registrar.

$1.82bn

American hosting company Georgia Tech staffers 2023, GoDaddy acquired Georgia Tech 123 Reg from the parent company, HEG.

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“Right now we’re working with Deloitte to help us assess our identity and access management function and then develop plans for modernising that over the next few years. We’re also working with them to assess and develop plans for maturing our overall campus network architecture, so we can make this more 21st century and put us in a place where we can really meet the current and future needs of our business partners across campus.” Another of Georgia Tech’s key cybersecurity partners is Elastic, which is helping when it comes to cybersecurity data decision analytics. “With all the things we’re working on in terms of leveraging cybersecurity data for decision making, Elastic is one of our key partners helping us to mature that process and that set of services,” Howell comments. “They’re also helping us to turn cybersecurity data into value for not just the security operations centre (SOC) and our IT colleagues across campus, but sometimes students or faculty may want that data as part of their research or academic activities. The team at Elastic are working with us to figure out how to make that happen in a secure and safe way.” Highlighting the importance of these partnerships, Howell describes these relationships as an extension of the team at Georgia Tech. “It’s more than a transactional relationship for me,” he says. “Strong partners build a relationship with you by spending the time to learn your organisation, understand your strategic objectives, and provide you with some form of insights in how they can help you get there. technologymagazine.com

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“ This is not just about data anymore, it’s about the safety of people” LEO HOWELL

CISO, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

“Our partners like Elastic and Deloitte are key pieces to that defence mission so we don’t feel like we have to go it alone.” An exciting future ahead at Georgia Tech Howell is optimistic about the upcoming initiatives, with Georgia Tech significantly investing in its cybersecurity programme. “We’re in the process of developing our three to five year strategic plan, off the back of the IT strategic plan that was just

Students on Georgia Tech campus

developed by our CIO. So we’re working to ensure that the cybersecurity strategic plan aligns with that.” As part of that strategy, Howell is working to mature Georgia Tech’s identity and access management capabilities, and to leverage data as a part of that decision about who gets access to systems. “We’re advancing our cyber security data analytics capabilities from what I like to call an archaeological approach to more of a meteorological approach to cybersecurity data analytics,” he says. “I do not just want to recreate what took place in the past. I want to be able to predict what is about to happen in the future in terms of my defences.” technologymagazine.com

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Georgia Tech is also working on advancing the SOC, embracing security orchestration, automation and response technologies. “We’re also leveraging our students to be a part of our workforce as we continue our journey towards something that looks more like an autonomous SOC.” Future perspectives: The increasing role of AI With almost 25 years in the industry, Howell has a balanced view of what lies ahead. “What we protect will change, but who we protect from will not change much. Nation states are still going to continue to try to steal our research and intellectual property, organised crime will continue to steal personally identifiable information.” “The fundamentals will not change much. At the end of the day, threat actors are very pragmatic and efficient people. So they’re going to continue to exploit organisations through things like phishing and social engineering techniques because it works, why break it? They’ll continue to exploit existing and zero day vulnerabilities for as long as organisations refuse to invest appropriately in these areas.” In conclusion, Howell anticipates that AI will increasingly play a role on both sides of the cybersecurity landscape. “While the good guys like myself are adapting AI capabilities to help make sense of the complex surface area and associated risks, AI will also be leveraged by the bad guys to improve their attacks against us, and they don’t have to follow any rules.”

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EDGE DATA CENT EUROPE – AND N WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

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Group CEO Louis Blanchot shares how edge data centre pioneer and leader Etix Everywhere is taking its successful formula from France to Southeast Asia

rtificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and augmented reality are just three of the technological advancements that are gaining headlines globally. While consumers get excited about how these may change their lives, and business leaders wonder how to leverage the opportunities they offer, there is one essential element necessary for success – edge data centres. While edge data centres may not enjoy the hype of generative AI, they are a vital piece of the infrastructure required to make these technologies tick, due to low latency, increased security, greater bandwidth, and more sustainable operation. Etix Everywhere is a leader and pioneer in edge data centres in Europe – and is now expanding that successful formula into Asia. Formed in 2012, Etix Everywhere now operates 15 data centres, and has grown quickly in the last three years. The number of data centres has tripled in that time, while turnover has grown eight-fold. Etix Everywhere is committed to providing colocation solutions that are both sovereign and environmentally friendly, all within 200km of its partners’ headquarters. This USP has really helped to drive the business.

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LOUIS BLANCHOT TITLE: GROUP CEO COMPANY: ETIX EVERYWHERE Armed with a civil engineering degree from a top-tier French institution, Louis Blanchot has helmed Etix Everywhere since inception, and played a pivotal role in laying the firm’s foundation. With a track record of successful partnerships over a decade and eight years spent overseeing European operations, Blanchot embodies the essence of leadership. He spearheaded a strategic turnaround during Etix’s acquisition three years ago. In addition to being a shareholder of the Company, Blanchot shoulders responsibility for the company’s vision, strategy, and overall direction.

“We only focus on the edge market, which for us means bringing the service to the customer and not the customer to the service,” says Etix Everywhere Group CEO Louis Blanchot. “Our core mission is really to develop a platform of data centres to really bring the infrastructure close to the data end user.” So, what makes Etix Everywhere different from other edge data centre operators? Blanchot points to the main USP and reason why customers move to Etix is its scalable edge network with its strong IT marketplace. On top of the colocation factor, Etix is able to deliver interconnection to a long list of IT Partners that can bring added services to its customers to support them in their digital transformation. “Edge data centres provide customers with access to a lot of solutions to develop their hybrid cloud infrastructure, but also what we see is that there are more and

Etix Everywhere Group CEO Louis Blanchot

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“ What we like in the Southeast Asia market is that we can use the same recipe that we used in Europe – developed and duplicated quickly” LOUIS BLANCHOT GROUP CEO, ETIX EVERYWHERE

more services that require low latency – for example, autonomous vehicle, IoT, streaming, gaming, all these new trends,” says Blanchot. “There is a growing demand for low latency and also the question of traffic congestion that you can have on connectivity. So, when all the telco companies want to bring a service to their customer, if they had to send data from Lille to Paris to come back to Lille, or basically to send the data to be computed, like in all 204

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those tier one locations, it creates virtual traffic congestion. When the data can be computed straight away, locally, it will save a lot of bandwidth.” Over the past two years, Etix Everywhere has refocused its efforts on its core expertise – offering a multi-site, sovereign, and decarbonised colocation solution. The acquisition of CIV has doubled the company’s capacity in the Hauts-de-France and in 2024, Etix will inaugurate Lille #4 – a new data centre just 500 metres from Etix

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Lille #2, thereby creating a 2.5 MW IT campus with the best connectivity in the region. Blanchot also points to the recent acquisition of Zcolo France, which has broadened the firm’s horizons – enabling the offer of colocation solutions in three new regions and, as a result, strengthening territorial coverage. “This acquisition represents a key milestone in cementing our undisputed leadership in the French regional market and accelerates our development in Europe –

with colocation capacity now reaching 17.3MW,” he says. But the company’s ambitious expansion strategy does not stop here, with a “vision to establish a leading edge data centre platform in Europe and Southeast-Asia, and guarantee our clients highly scalable and connected facilities close to the data end user.” Data sovereignty is also a key consideration and a hot topic of conversation when it comes to security, and Etix is committed to providing customers with colocation solutions within 200km of its partners’ headquarters. With data invariably crossing borders with hyperscalers, protecting data sovereignty is a challenge, and that’s why more businesses are taking greater control of their data and keeping it within domestic borders, or even closer to home via edge data centres. technologymagazine.com

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Sovereignty is a cornerstone principle for Etix. Domiciled in France with a majority of its capital held by French stakeholders, Etix operates under the jurisdiction of French law for the provision of all its services. It’s a commitment to sovereignty that not only underscores the company’s dedication to maintaining the highest standards of ethical conduct and legal compliance, but also ensures accountability and compliance within the French regulatory landscape. “In this way, Etix demonstrates an allegiance to home turf while contributing to the growing French business ecosystem,” says Blanchot. Along with a commitment to sovereignty, what makes Etix particularly appealing is its offering of a modular solution, a feature it has provided since its inception in 2012. Back in 2012, it was innovative, but now many operators are trying to use modular architecture. “It’s funny. It’s what we created,” declares Blanchot. “It was our innovative design when we created Etix, and the design that we have sold to all our customers ever since – because the benefits are obvious. “Firstly, you only invest in what you need, and you align your CAPEX with your sales ramp-up. “The other main benefit is that we know that the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is really related to IT usage. So, when you achieve around 50% usage and exceed that, the PUE is better. That’s why having a modular data centre improves the IT load and helps you achieve a good PUE.” PUE is essential for data centres as they try to become more sustainable, and that is a core focus for Etix Everywhere. As well as aiming for PUE 1.3 for all of their

“ Having the support from a big partner like Schneider Electric is huge. That’s why we only work with such a world-class supplier” LOUIS BLANCHOT GROUP CEO, ETIX EVERYWHERE

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“ Power Usage Effectiveness is essential for data centres as they try to become more sustainable, and that is a core focus for Etix Everywhere” LOUIS BLANCHOT GROUP CEO, ETIX EVERYWHERE

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data centres, the Nantes-headquartered company also strives to use no water for cooling (WUE <0.01 L/kWh), employ low-carbon electricity, recycle residual heat, repurpose existing buildings, and add solar panels. It’s a bold ambition, and one that was cemented when Etix joined the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact in 2021 with the goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. So how will it achieve those goals? “We have three ways, the first being to work on the energy efficiency of the data centre and improve the PUE,” says Blanchot. “Renewing the technical equipment can really improve performance. “Then you need to work on how you ‘feed’ your data centre with green energy, and how

to recycle the energy that you are producing. Ultimately, the idea is to switch from being an energy consumer to an energy producer, to create a virtuous circle.” Evidence of how Etix is looking to expand its footprint in a sustainable manner comes with its first edge data centre in Thailand’s capital Bangkok. Etix has chosen to focus its development on the capitals of emerging countries with what it considers exponential growth potential. These include Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City, and Manila. The Bangkok site is strategically located in an industrial zone that offers a stable and reliable power source, and also has good road access and telecommunications infrastructure.

DECADE OF DATA CENTRES “When we started in 2012, we were talking about kilowatts or megawatts,” says Group CEO Louis Blanchot. “Now it’s not rare to speak in gigawatts. So, the size of the project is totally different now. “This new hyperscale market demands finding a huge plot of land with a lot of possibility to scale and also – a lot of power. “It’s totally different to our edge DC market, really a medium-sized data centre close to the city with a big and deep IT ecosystem and customer portfolio.”

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Escaping Datacenter Obsolescence: Embrace the Future! IT infrastructure, cooling, power backup and management cannot do without a large amount of energy. Fortunately, with today’s technology you can make your datacenter more sustainable - and more cost-efficient!

Learn more ›

How to achieve cost-efficient data centers A more digital world At Schneider Electric, we believe a more electric and digital world is key to addressing the climate and energy crises. Together with our customers, we will build the New Electric World everywhere: in our homes, buildings, industries, infrastructure, grids… and of course also data centers! Smart & Green But what does this mean for our customers? We focus on the huge potential of two major pillars: Digitalization and Electrification. Or in other words: Smart & Green. Ultimately, we build the technology around digitalization and electrification that guides our customers towards efficiency and sustainability. Our collaboration with Etix Everywhere, leader and pioneer in edge data centers, is a prime example of how we work. They are committed to providing colocation solutions that are both sovereign and environmentally friendly, and as a world-class supplier we are in the best position to support them with smart and innovative solutions. Strategy, product and software Because to meet the needs of the new digital world, we must transform how we deploy and manage IT. Schneider Electric is leading digital transformation

through innovation – with data centers that are sustainable, efficient, adaptive, and resilient in the cloud and at the edge. Schneider Electric not only has the products to enable the best sustainability in data centers, but also has all the software to digitize the entire lifecycle and the knowledge to act as a strategic partner for part or all of the sustainability process. The result? data centers that are faster, more accurate, more cost-efficient, and more sustainable. Change the world For us, sustainability is not a buzzword, it is ingrained in our DNA. We have fully integrated sustainability into our strategy over the past 10-15 years, with concrete and ambitious short-term and long-term targets. Only recently we were included on the Fortune 2023 “Change the World” list – a ranking of the top companies in the world making positive social or environmental impact through activities integral to their core business strategy and operations.

Curious to know more?

Click here ›

“ We only focus on the edge market, which for us means bringing the service to the customer and not the customer to the service” LOUIS BLANCHOT GROUP CEO, ETIX EVERYWHERE

The modular infrastructure provides flexibility when it comes to scalability, meaning Etix can meet the future growth needs of operations at the same site. “What we like in the Southeast Asia market is that we can use the same recipe that we used in Europe – developed and duplicated quickly,” says Blanchot. “That’s why we started with Bangkok. The government is really supporting the digital economy, the country is stable, there is a high number of ‘eyeballs’, not to mention a high number of telcos.” Instrumental in this expansion into Asia is trusted partner Schneider Electric – the energy consultancy regularly voted the world’s most sustainable company. Blanchot points to several factors that Etix Everywhere had to tackle, from culture to climate, and how Schneider Electric’s expertise helped them to navigate these challenges. “Having the support from a big partner like Schneider Electric is huge,” says Blanchot. “That’s why we only work with such a world-class supplier. They have been brilliant for us, and have been able 212

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to deliver the same level of quality in a new country. “Working with Schneider, they helped provide a turnkey solution, so we can just push the button and know exactly the price, the timing, and the level of quality. “It’s just a copy and paste of how we worked with Schneider Electric in Europe, and being able to rely on them has been a big comfort and given me the confidence that we can deliver for our customers.” Looking ahead to the opportunities on the near horizon, from artificial

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intelligence to autonomous driving, those are going to require eye-watering amounts of data, which has to be good news for data centre operators? Blanchot agrees, but reckons it is a little bit of a ‘chicken-and-egg’ situation – the technology cannot really take off until the capacity is there to enable it. “We discuss this a lot with our customers, and urge them to think about the world tomorrow,” he says. “I can tell you that all the main telcos understood it well and see these trends coming.

“When we started Etix in 2012 and began investing in edge, I think it was a little early, but now the market is ready. There are more and more investors trying to develop huge platforms to invest in edge, because this is the future.” If this is indeed the future, you can bet that Etix Everywhere will be there, leading from the front when it comes to edge data centres.

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INSIDE THE STATE OF NEVADA’S DRASTIC TRANSFORMATION EFF WRITTEN BY: TOM CHAPMAN PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

STATE OF NEVADA

C FORTS The State of Nevada’s IT professionals travel long distances to rural sites CREDIT: STATE OF NEVADA

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On a mission to provide exemplary service to all citizens, the State of Nevada is working around the clock on a game-changing modernisation programme Thanks to its geographical diversity, Nevada is an incredibly unique state in the context of the US. Its buzzing metropolitan areas, such as Las Vegas, are some of the largest and busiest in the country, but on the flip side its rural areas are vast, sparsely populated and often difficult to reach. This presents a host of challenges for the State of Nevada, the government administration whose responsibility it is to ensure critical services are delivered to citizens across the area in an efficient fashion. Those services include pretty much everything from the Department of Health and Human Services delivering supportive care to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) dealing with licensing and vehicle registration. “We have the Reno-Sparks metropolitan area including Carson City, where we’re based, then we have Vegas, and then we have this huge number of rural communities in between,” explains Timothy Galluzi, CIO at the State of Nevada. “As the state government, we’re responsible for delivering services to all residents – not just the ones living close to our offices. 216

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Security in the Office of the CIO is the top priority CREDIT: STATE OF NEVADA

“ Let’s be frank:

we have to be more efficient and effective in how we deliver services” TIMOTHY GALLUZI STATE CIO, STATE OF NEVADA

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“The services we deliver are not necessarily unique to Nevada, but the geography of our state and the location of our population centres definitely creates some unique challenges in the way we have to deliver them.” Emphasising the State of Nevada’s core mission, Galluzi adds: “The residents of this state have put great trust in us to provide these services for them at significant investment. So, we need to be there for them whenever they need us, however they need us.”

TIMOTHY GALLUZI TITLE: STATE CIO COMPANY: STATE OF NEVADA LOCATION: USA

The growing influence of technology Plenty has changed within the State of Nevada since Galluzi first joined the organisation in 2017. During the last legislative session, a governmental modernisation bill moved the enterprise IT services division – of which Galluzi was administrator – out of the Department of Administration and into the office of the governor, elevating it to cabinet level. This not only gave the division a seat at the top table, but demonstrated its undeniable

Timothy Galluzi was designated as the State Chief Information Officer of Nevada in 2022 and has been serving the State of Nevada since 2013 in various roles in technology and leadership. Timothy started his IT career serving eight years in the United State Marine Corps filling roles as a telecommunications chief and Formal Schools instructor. Timothy earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and a Master of Business Administration in IT Management.

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“ As state government, we’re responsible for delivering services to all residents – not just the ones living close to our offices” TIMOTHY GALLUZI STATE CIO, STATE OF NEVADA

and ever-growing importance in the context of the modern-day state government. “This means we’re now involved in cabinet meetings and having conversations with agency directors at a strategic level to figure out what their core business needs and challenges are – and we can be that voice to tell them how technology can help them on their path,” continues Galluzi.

“We’re moving beyond being an operational break/fix type of division to an area where we’re taking strategic leadership roles and helping to support the delivery of services. “What we’re here to do is advise, and talk about the capabilities and limitations of technology. We can’t really talk about business needs and outcomes without technology being in the room, because technology is how we’re delivering a lot of that work.” Becoming a ‘smart state’ Undoubtedly, one of the State of Nevada’s key strategic aims is to become a ‘smart state’. Central to this effort is an expansive programme of digital transformation which has the potential to impact all residents and enhance their lives. technologymagazine.com

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Timothy Galluzi, Nevada State CIO, Discusses Tech-driven Transformation for a Modern State WATCH NOW

“ The services we deliver aren’t unique to Nevada, but the geography of our state definitely creates some unique challenges” TIMOTHY GALLUZI STATE CIO, STATE OF NEVADA

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“The concept of becoming a smart state leans on the fact we need to create easy ways for Nevadans to request and receive services,” says Galluzi. From the IT chief’s perspective, Nevada’s geographic dispersion, means ensuring the vast majority of the state’s services are available online and can be accessed via all browsers and devices. Becoming ‘smart’ also relates to the state being more proactive in its service delivery. Galluzi admits one of his longterm, visionary goals is to build up a detailed constituent identity for each individual, consisting of pretty much everything from basic information like their address to the services they are regularly consuming.

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Nevada Capital in Carson City, NV CREDIT: STATE OF NEVADA

He explains: “That will get us to a point where we’re not waiting on the constituent to reach out to us, so we can start delivering services more proactively.” There are already “pockets of brilliance” within the state working towards this goal, such as the DMV which is undertaking a substantial digital transformation to move the vast majority of services from offices to web platforms and apps. “Constituents won’t have to wait in line anymore, saving them time and saving the DMV overhead costs,” Galluzi continues. “Let’s be frank: we have to be more efficient and effective in how we deliver services. Right now, we are seeing a massive vacancy rate in state government and it isn’t unique to Nevada.”

State of Nevada: A truly modern organisation In keeping with the theme of digital transformation, the State of Nevada is going through a process of modernisation in various facets, including by harnessing the power of the cloud. The government has adopted a sensible policy of being “cloud smart” – in other words, assessing options on a case-by-case basis and moving to the cloud when it makes sense. “Cloud is as much a part of technology as the internet,” contends Galluzi. “It’s simply a component piece now. “If we’re looking for a new product or a new service, one of the first places we look is at our SaaS vendors. In Nevada, whether it’s state-wide ERP, digital technologymagazine.com

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“ If a repeatable task can be handled using AI, it enables staff members to be utilised where they’re more valuable” TIMOTHY GALLUZI STATE CIO, STATE OF NEVADA

transformation efforts or our department of public safety’s modernisation efforts, a lot of that is moving to SaaS-type platforms.” Nevada also has a state private cloud, referred to as the Silver Cloud, which is being promoted as an option. Summarising, Galluzi says: “What we’re really looking at is being cloud smart and leveraging our hybrid cloud environment.” Meanwhile, Nevada’s wireless network infrastructure – because of its unique geography – is critical to the delivery of backhaul communications for some of the most remote sites in the state. Over the past couple of years, the Department of Transportation has been working on improvements to the Nevada Shared Radio System, while significant investment has come through the ARPA grant programme to refresh microwave infrastructure from analogue to digital. “We’re really excited that we can use this funding to leverage that capital expenditure to help our agencies reduce rates,” Galluzi goes on. “I know it doesn’t sound very sexy, but that microwave refresh is huge because it will ensure stability in that environment for at least the next decade. 224

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“The primary users are generally law enforcement officers who, when they hit that radio, need to have confidence that someone’s at the other end. It’s a system that needs to work.” A brave new world Thanks to major global events and gamechanging new technologies, the world has changed – and is changing – like never before. Organisations have been forced to adapt at breakneck speed, and technology experts like Galluzi left with little choice but to think on their feet in a desperate bid to come up with solutions.

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Employees from the Southern Nevada Office of the CIO CREDIT: STATE OF NEVADA

Of course, one of the most obvious everyday changes brought about by COVID-19 was the new age of remote working which, for the State of Nevada, has proved hugely beneficial. “The massive proliferation of tools like Zoom and Teams has really raised the level of collaboration,” reveals Galluzi. “I think we’ve raised our level of maturity so that, instead of everybody compiling work and having to bring it back into the office for processing or uploading, we’re ensuring our folks out in the field can still access the same level of technological support.”

Aforementioned staffing issues mean workflow automation is another weapon in the armoury which is fast becoming crucial to the State of Nevada. In all departments, efficiency is key, hence the increasing prevalence of emerging technologies like generative AI. Galluzi says: “If a repeatable task can be handled using an algorithm, AI or machine learning, it enables staff members to be utilised where they’re more valuable. We can use our people for creative thinking and decision making, and let the computers do the routine, monotonous tasks.” technologymagazine.com

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“ We’re really excited to have Extreme Networks on board within our technology portfolio” TIMOTHY GALLUZI STATE CIO, STATE OF NEVADA

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The importance of partnerships The State of Nevada is regularly able to call upon a host of trusted partners in order to achieve its ambitions. One is Extreme Networks, which has been a critical part of Nevada’s Department of Transportation infrastructure for some time, and is part of a recently-launched pilot in the central IT organisation. “We’re really excited about any opportunity that we can get to create a more resilient, reliable infrastructure,” continues Galluzi. “Partners like Extreme Networks can really bring to the table capabilities like mesh networking, software-defined networking and microsegmentation to help ensure our infrastructure is there when we need it, and we’re really excited to have them on board within our technology portfolio.” Galluzi is unequivocal about the importance of the partner community, and readily admits the state government would be lost were it not able to call upon a diverse range of vendors. However, he insists prospective new vendors must quickly grasp the State of Nevada’s needs. “One of the questions I’m often asked is, ‘what’s the best way to do business with the state?’,” he concludes. “The key is understanding what our needs are, understanding where we’re challenged and coming to me with a solution to a problem. Then we can start a conversation.”

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Randy Willis of Arxada discusses synchronising supply chains with people, processes and tools to transform short, medium and long-term planning

n the modern world, science-led solutions that claim to protect the health and wellbeing of people and our planet are under increased scrutiny. Arxada is a global specialty chemicals company, with a clear track record of industry innovations which range from Microbial Control Solutions to Professional Hygiene. The 3,000-strong Arxada team is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and aims to be the preservation go-to within the industry, by solving the world’s toughest preservation challenges. “We are focused on delivering superior products and services to our customers by leveraging our strength in science and innovation, our manufacturing process development capabilities, and our regulatory sciences organisation,” says Randy Willis, Vice President of Supply Chain for Arxada. A keen chemical engineer, he studied the subject at Lamar University, before taking up process engineering role in a management development programme for DuPont. Willis then went on to work at Axalta, Materion, and AkzoNobel, before joining Arxada in September 2022. “I worked across different sites and then moved into various operations and supply chain leadership roles in several companies – DuPont, Axalta, and now Arxada.” 230

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Randy Willis TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF SUPPLY CHAIN COMPANY: ARXADA Randy Willis joined Arxada in 2022 as Vice President for Supply Chain and Integrated Operations. Randy brings more than 25 years of experience to the role, previously serving as North America Supply Chain Director for AkzoNobel. He is a supply chain expert, specifically within the specialty chemicals industry with a particular concentration in coatings. He has held positions at high profile industry leaders including Axalta and DuPont. Randy has a BS in chemical engineering from Lamar University, Beaumont, TX. He has lived in nine U.S. states as well as abroad in Duesseldorf, Germany. He currently resides in Nashville, TN with his wife Carla and Bella, their Great Dane, where they enjoy hiking, camping and fishing and attending concerts.

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The biggest challenge in his role at the moment is managing his team’s time. “Just like every leader, the big challenge is balancing short-term delivery versus longterm capability and building a property and excelling team over time. It’s the balance between now and the future.” Willis is most proud of the team he has built. “I’ve been in a few transformative roles over my career, but I think the one I’m most proud of is the last year, my first year at Arxada, where we have transformed the supply chain and generated huge business improvements while building a winning culture and a winning team.” Arxada’s Evolution: Transforming supply chains with the right people, process and tools Willis is improving end-to-end synchronisation and collaboration capabilities from customers through to suppliers, despite limited planning tool capabilities.

“We have a weekly process, where we have a cross-functional team from the commercial, manufacturing, supply chain, and procurement,” Willis says. “We are all working off the same set of books and numbers and plans, to make sure they’re all aligned.” One of Willis’ next steps is getting tools that will help the team do just that. Three companies were brought together to make Arxada and, as a result, they have three different ERP systems, manufacturing networks and most important, workcultures. The team uses core ERP to complete its planning. “We need to evolve and start doing our planning using modern tools. But that is in the future, not today. We decided to start with people and processes and follow with tools. Our processes have improved dramatically. Our team’s capabilities have improved dramatically. Now we’re going to start working on tools and digital enablement.” Willis is improving forward visibility to enable upside and downside supply technologymagazine.com

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capability. Arxada is starting to look at order intake frequency trends in the short, medium and long term, as well as efficiently managing feedback from key customers. “We run our supply chain at varying sales to capacity ratios based upon how quickly we can respond up or down, based on an individual asset. So we’re using all those processes to manage up and down and make sure that we keep a constant supply and manage cash and cost effectively,” adds Willis. Arxada’s journey to optimise short, medium and long-term planning Arxada’s strategy throughout 2021 and 2022 saw its inventory and back orders continue to rise, while service levels deteriorated, but Willis saw this as no different than most in the industry. “Between all the supply chain disruptions, staffing shortages and unpredictable demand, it caught us a little bit flatfooted,” Willis says. So, in September 2022, the team took a reset and backed up to look at the whole system and completely redesign it. “We made it much more fit for purpose,” notes Willis. “To make sure that we’re prepared for the short, medium and long-term, to meet the needs of both the business and our customers, more efficiently.” Arxada has two time-phased work streams, Fix and Iterate. “In short, that was all about here and now, making sure our ERP system was set up properly, making sure our planning 234

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practices were state-of-the-art and that we were monitoring and complying with the short-term needs of the business.” Using these two time-phased work streams ensures that Arxada’s short-term orders are filled, midterm orders are planned and back orders are being covered. “This also makes sure that our inventories turn back the other way and start getting under control,” says Willis. The team has built the basics for organisational execution capability. “We found the processes we wanted to run as an organisation from end to end and then designed the organisation to effectively manage and control that process.” Willis and his team have completely retooled the planning organisation, realigned

“We need to evolve into this century and start doing planning using more modern tools” RANDY WILLIS

VICE PRESIDENT OF SUPPLY CHAIN ARXADA

the way they do work and readjusted the way that they collaborate with other functions in the company. “As a result, we’re getting much better outcomes.” Arxada defined the path to first quartile five chain capability by starting with a cross-functional strategy meeting in Basel, facilitated by Ernst and Young (EY). “We decided what we wanted to be when we grew up and what ‘good’ looks like for our particular company. Then based on that, we looked at where we are, where we want to be and did a gap analysis at the detailed level.” This created 55 projects, to get from point A to point B. Arxada then put them in logical work streams.

“We time phased them from urgent and important, to important but not as urgent. We built the path from here to there,” said Willis. In September 2022, Arxada leadership and EY formed a team to reverse the trends and build sustainable capability to improve things. “We use EY’s supply chain practice to enable and accelerate our transformation and deliver results in weeks, not months. EY works well with our internal team and provides industry best practice. Insight helped build our multi-year roadmap and EY became our trusted advisors. “We openly discussed options regarding short-term priorities, developed the results-oriented organisation and closely technologymagazine.com

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monitored the overall performance of the supply chain and developed a winning organisational mindset.” The results are quite remarkable. Arxada has: • Reduced back orders by 70% • Reduced inventory by 14% • Reduced manufacturing cost by 5% “That happened very quickly – in the first 90 days. In one year, backorder reduction has gone from 70% to 86%, a 39% reduction in order delivery failures and a 29% inventory reduction.” Arxada has built KPI driven processes and people capabilities to set the stage for the next journey and has been sharply focused on its externally benchmarked force quartile supply chain performance. 236

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“We looked at supply chain performance in a variety of ways, both from the number of people required to do it, inventory turns, supply market service levels – the full suite of what you would expect the top quartile supply chain to do,” says Willis. “Then, we looked at it from a more subjective view of the characteristics of a top quartile supply chain, which are important for us and which are not.” Arxada made conscious decisions on what the first quartile should look like. Over the next year, Arxada intends to implement a fit for purpose end-to-end supply chain planning tool, with asset optimisation and full financial scenario planning capability. “We plan to improve our end-toend synchronisation and collaboration capabilities with suppliers and customers,

“We have a cross-functional team, all the way from the commercial manufacturing supply chain, back to suppliers” RANDY WILLIS

VICE PRESIDENT OF SUPPLY CHAIN ARXADA

ARXADA

as well as provide forward visibility to support upside and downside supply capability. This will ensure sustained excellence for service to our customers while improving cost, networking and capital productivity. “Last and most importantly, we intend to achieve an externally benchmarked first quartile supply chain performance, making our supply chain a competitive advantage for our company.” Within the next year, Arxada is going to work on four things. “We’re implementing a fit-for-purpose end-to-end supply chain planning tool, that will enable us to continue the journey of improving networking, capital cost and market service level or customer service level going forward,” says Willis. The company is going to improve its endto-end synchronisation, using tools to make sure that its suppliers and customers are all working on the same base plans. “We’re going to work on forward visibility using leading indicators,” Willis adds. “There are a few of our products that tend to lead the drop and the recovery. We’re using those as bellwethers to understand what the general economy is going to do.” Arxada is going to be more proactive in staffing up, as well as down, to make sure they are meeting their objectives and maintaining good supply to the market. “Last but not least, we are going to achieve first quartile supply chain capability and performance and the corresponding KPIs associated with that.”

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“We looked at supply chain performance in a variety of ways, both from the number of people required to do it, inventory turns, supply market service level – the full suite of what you would expect the top quartile supply chain to do” RANDY WILLIS

VICE PRESIDENT OF SUPPLY CHAIN ARXADA

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Sustainability leader Iron Mountain Data Centers is investing heavily in next generation carbon reduction measures which will be vital to sustain the exponential growth of generative AI

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will be looked back on as the year generative AI burst into the public consciousness and businesses frantically adapted their models to accommodate it. The ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to bridge the linguistic gap between humans and machines has caught the popular imagination and raised awareness of the potential to automate and improve many aspects of our lives. In this initial flurry of speculation it can be difficult to find reliable forecasting models on which to base sound business decisions. However, in data centre infrastructure the impacts are more predictable than most, and Iron Mountain Data Centers (IMDC) believes they will drive an industry-wide design revolution fuelled by sustainability. Smart data centre users undertaking AI investment should be aware of this and start planning for it now. 242

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Power surge It is clear to Iron Mountain Data Centers that by far the greatest challenge in supporting generative AI is the huge surge in power loads. Generative AI models use graphics processing unit (GPU) chips which require 10 to 15 times the energy of a traditional CPU. Many models have billions of parameters and require fast and efficient data pipelines in their training phase, which can take months to complete. ChatGPT 3.5, for instance, has 175 billion parameters and was trained on more than 500 billion words of text. To train a ChatGPT 3.5 model requires 300 to 500MW of power. Currently, a typical data centre requires 30 to 50MW 244

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of power. One of IMDC’s larger campuses, in Northern Virginia, has capacity for 10 data centres on it. The whole of the power load for this campus would be required to train ChatGPT 3.5. While LLMs are definitely at the most power-hungry end of the generative AI boom, every generative model IMDC has worked with has processor and power needs which grow exponentially, either doubling or tripling each year. Forecasting the power requirements of generative AI over time is hard to do with any accuracy, but most analysts agree that it will ramp up current requirements hugely. If one estimates current data centre compound growth at a relatively modest

IRON MOUNTAIN DATA CENTERS

AI’S APPETITE IN ACTION IMDC provides the infrastructure for many High-Power Compute (HPC) configurations running generative AI, and has developed specialist facilities that meet their needs. High-density power, modular architecture, high-bandwidth training – input – and inference – output – connectivity and advanced cooling are all critical factors for customers. Healthcare One of IMDC’s healthcare customers has developed a supercomputer for AI-driven imaging apps. While the total consumption is not massive and training cycles are much shorter than for LLMs, the data growth curve of this supercomputer since it was first built in 2018 has been steep. It began with just 10,00050,000 images and achieved 85% accuracy. Now it uses up to half a billion images with accuracy of 95% and runs 50,000 deep learning training experiments per month. Despite the compactness and efficiency of the GPUs, a few racks in the data centre have become a full module of 60 racks with

26 petabytes of processing power storing close to two billion datasets. In less than two years a petaflop of processing power will be needed. Research The Computational Research Accelerator department at Arizona State University was running out of network ports, space and power for ‘Agave’, its supercomputer, so they built a new supercomputer called ‘Sol’ in 2022 in one of IMDC’s Phoenix data centres. Sol is a Dellbuilt system spanning 178 nodes. It uses AMD Epyc 7713 CPUs, consisting of around 18,000 cores, with the bulk of the nodes carrying 512GB of memory and five large-memory nodes equipped with 2TB. It has 56 GPU nodes with quadruple Nvidia A100, 80GB, GPUs each and four nodes with triple Nvidia A30, 24GB, GPUs. The system is networked with Nvidia’s 200GB/s HDR InfiniBand and supported by four Petabytes of Dell BeeGFS scratch storage. The R&D potential of Sol is extremely exciting, and a steep physical growth curve is anticipated.

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15%, global capacity will double in five years and quadruple in 10. With generative AI in the mix, CAGR could rise as high as 25%, tripling capacity in five years and increasing it up to tenfold in a decade. That is more than double the current growth rate. Enterprises, AI startups and Cloud Service Providers are already racing to secure data centre capacity for their workloads, with the hyperscale clouds leading the pack. This is happening fast. Analyst TD Cowen reported “a tsunami of AI demand” with 2.1GW of data centre leases signed in the US, a fifth of current total supply, in Q2 of 2023. A mountain of e-waste The second AI-generated challenge is at the

back end; a stream of used equipment. AI is driving faster server innovation, particularly in chip design, and the latest AI chips such as the Nvidia H100 have had so many billions advanced against their manufacture and are in such short supply that they are even being used as debt collateral and made available for rent. While this refresh rate will be key to improving efficiency it will also – in tandem with the rise in capacity – increase the scale of e-waste. E-waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world. By 2030, annual e-waste production is on track to reach a staggering 75 million metric tonnes. Global e-waste is thought to hold roughly US$60 billion-worth of raw materials such as gold,

What if Data Security, Serviceability, Safety and Satisfaction Could all be Achieved by Design? Explore how Mission Critical facility types are becoming defining elements of architectural design.

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“ To address the twin challenges of capacity growth and e-waste the industry will have to be at the top of its game”

palladium, silver and copper. However, just 17% of global e-waste is documented to be collected and properly recycled each year. Looming climate targets Combine these factors with the broader issues society now faces. These challenges will need to be addressed as the climate crisis deepens and zero emission targets loom. There will be unprecedented pressure on power grids to provide new electrical power for industries that are weaning themselves off fossil fuels. Iron Mountain Data Centers is a firm believer that generative AI in particular will be under intense environmental, and therefore technologymagazine.com

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“ AI may be a key to solving the problem, not just for our own industry but for other sectors” popular, scrutiny. To address the twin challenges of capacity growth and e-waste the industry will have to be at the top of its game. Addressing the challenge: Carbon elimination and circularity How should the industry react? As ever, by solving the problems one by one. Low-to-no-carbon power sources will be the key to addressing power challenges. The power demands of generative AI will accelerate this focus and drive new innovations in microgrids and backup power sources such as battery, hydrogen and nuclear. Renewables will also be key. Most hyperscalers and a growing number of colocation providers have been growing the green grid and eliminating carbon to the point that today, hyperscalers are the biggest buyers of renewables in the world. On the colocation side, the Iron Mountain Group is now one of the top 20 renewable buyers in the world. 248

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Data centre owners will now need to follow the leaders and we are already making headway. Following Google’s lead, two years ago IMDC committed to provide not just 100% renewables but 24/7 carbonfree energy – you can see how IMDC and its partners have gone about this in a recent documentary ‘Transforming our Future’. This is a major step up from ‘attributing’ power used to renewables credits, and we believe that this approach will in time replace the current year-by-year Virtual Power Purchase Agreement model. When it comes to circularity, new chips and superfast GPUs will drive the

AI revolution, but what will happen to the old ones? For both efficient performance and impact reduction, Iron Mountain Data Centers says AI providers will need to check that IT asset lifecycle optimisation and recycling, remarketing and secure disposal are available. The industry has been fairly slow to integrate this, but this will accelerate, and IMDC is changing the shape of its business to be in a position to address this issue. The IMDC Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) division, which now covers 32 countries, sanitises more than three million drives a year and has generated in excess

of US$1bn for clients via remarketing and recycling. Most recently, Iron Mountain invested a further US$200 million in acquiring Regency Technologies, which will add even more robust remarketing and recycling capabilities to support circularity for the world’s largest digital businesses. Iron Mountain sees huge potential for this segment to service AI customers over the coming years. The AI opportunity for the industry In the same way that generative AI will revolutionise the industries that run its applications, it is set to revolutionise technologymagazine.com

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STATS: • To train a ChatGPT 3.5 model requires 300-500MW of power • With generative AI in the mix, data centre CAGR could rise as high as 25%, tripling capacity in five years and increasing it up to tenfold in a decade • By 2030, annual e-waste production is on track to reach a staggering 75 million metric tonnes • The IMDC Asset Lifecycle Management (ALM) division, which now covers 32 countries, sanitises more than three million drives a year and has generated in excess of US$1bn for clients via remarketing and recycling • Click here to read the IMDC Infrastructure Service Sheet on the Top 10 considerations when planning AI infrastructure

the infrastructure industry that supports it. It promises to deliver immense economic value over the coming decade, but will also consume immense amounts of power. Many generative AI applications can be hosted in a specialised shared facility. Different models have different infrastructure requirements, but all share the need for high-density power, advanced cooling and modular design. The scale of the power challenge does not mean it cannot be overcome. In an era in which Big Tech has displaced many oil giants 250

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in the list of the world’s largest companies, innovation has accelerated and serious fact-based commitments have been made by industry leaders to tackle the climate crisis. In fact AI may be a key to solving the problem, not just for our own industry but for other sectors. Data centre customers interested in developing generative AI applications should plan and invest early to keep ahead of the steep upward curve in power and space uptake. They should also pay close attention to new infrastructure design impacts,

“ Iron Mountain is now one of the top 20 renewable buyers in the world”

efficiency, energy sourcing and e-waste. This means scrutinising the energy track record and targets of their cloud or data centre provider and sharing data on climate target progress and day-to-day access to – preferably 24/7 carbon-free – renewables. You can find more detail on the market forecasts and detailed infrastructure impacts of generative AI in IMDC’s Generative AI Solution Guide.

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Mastercard Foundation invests in the future of African youth WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

MASTERCARD FOUNDATION

Enabling young leaders to own their futures, Mastercard Foundation invests in African and Canadian youth providing vital opportunities to learn and prosper

veryone deserves the opportunity to learn and prosper. Working with visionary organisations, the Mastercard Foundation is one of the world’s largest enablers of providing access to dignified and fulfilling work for young people in Africa and Indigenous communities in Canada. “We want a world where young people are included and are thriving and their leadership and contributions matter,” says Mastercard Foundation. “A future where young people are driving transformative change and achieving their full potential.” Bringing together the private sector, donors, young people and civil society, Mastercard Foundation is a developer of effective ecosystems and infrastructure, as well as a supporter of policies and an environment where young people can find work and entrepreneurs can succeed and grow. Education, women and employment Working in 33 countries across Africa, the Mastercard Foundation has a three-step longterm plan for its operating areas: • Improve the quality of education and vocational training to equip young people with the skills employers need • Leverage technology to connect employers and job seekers, as well as drive growth • Enable entrepreneurs and small businesses to expand through access to financial services

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“We expect to work in a diverse group of countries with high levels of young people living in poverty who are vulnerably employed. These countries will have an enabling environment for growth, job creation, education and skills development, and an ability to influence within regions. We will also prioritise working with African organisations,” explains the Mastercard Foundation. To date, the foundation has improved the lives of more than 50 million people, unifying its work around the single most complex challenge young people face in Africa – unemployment. Enabling young women to ‘own their futures’ Providing secondary education, financial literacy and entrepreneurship opportunities, the foundation helps more than one million young women from disadvantaged backgrounds and rural communities gain access to vital skills. 5

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”This magnificent investment [US$10mn] by the Mastercard Foundation will enable Camfed to expand opportunities for girls and young women,” says Ann Cotton, Camfed’s Executive Director. “Together, we will help a new generation of young women to access vital skills in financial literacy and

MASTERCARD FOUNDATION

Philanthropy in action: The Mastercard Foundation

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entrepreneurship which will empower them to own their own futures.” First launched in 2011, Camfed’s programme enables a continuum of support during school and post-school years, enabling young women to complete secondary education, gain financial knowledge and test new approaches to launch innovative and diverse businesses in their rural communities. “Camfed’s holistic approach enables young women to become leaders of change and role models who re-invest back into their communities,” notes Reeta Roy, President and CEO of The MasterCard Foundation.

Giving women a platform in agriculture Backing an initiative established by Alluvial Agriculture, the foundation enables training and financial support for women in Nigeria to become tractor owner-operators. “For too long, women have been excluded from agricultural finance and mechanisation, despite the fact that they are the backbone of our industry,” says Dimieari Von Kemedi, Co-founder and Managing Director of Alluvial Agriculture. “Our programme is an important step in addressing this imbalance.” The initiative began in 2021, with training provided by a joint venture between Tata International and Alluvial Agriculture. Providing female-led farms with John technologymagazine.com

MASTERCARD FOUNDATION

Deere tractors, a percentage of fees earned are used to repay the tractor loan. Based on expected earnings, new female-led businesses could own between 20 and 50 tractors by 2028. “The Mastercard Foundation is very excited about this partnership as it is an opportunity to drive inclusive growth for women in farming,” says Chidinma Lawanson, Nigeria's Country Head at Mastercard Foundation.

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Entrepreneurial skills and fostering a network ecosystem of support In a bid to support more than 300,000 young adults, the foundation has partnered with Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) to provide access to entrepreneurial skills and foster a network ecosystem of support. “Young people have the potential to be at the forefront of innovation and entrepreneurship in high-growth sectors such as technology, climate-smart agriculture

MASTERCARD FOUNDATION

and renewable energy. Women and girls, in particular, can play a crucial role as powerful agents of change in their communities, contributing to economic growth and social progress,” says the Mastercard Foundation. Dubbed The ‘Going Beyond – Partnering for a Youth-Led Future’ project, the two organisations will scale DOT’s evidencebased, peer-to-peer model in four African countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania). Scaling DOT’s model will ensure

comprehensive digital and business skills training, leadership development, coaching, peer-to-peer learning, and networking. Reeta Roy, President and CEO of Mastercard Foundation says: “Going Beyond is designed to envision young people as leaders in their communities, and we believe that a combination of YLO capacity building, locally appropriate 21st-century skills, entrepreneurship and MSME support will be an effective means of bringing this vision to

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life while addressing youth employment in the four countries this project will be executed in. “In addition, Going Beyond’s work, which is also in line with the Young Africa Works strategy, will help young women and men find dignified and meaningful work.” Social venture challenge and climate action Providing a pathway to action for socially responsible young leaders, the Mastercard Foundation in partnership with The Resolution Project offers entrepreneurial 11

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and socially responsible Scholars with a pathway to bolster their social enterprises and deepen community impact. “Africa’s young leaders are brimming with ideas, energy and a desire to have a positive impact on their communities. But few have the tools, resources and access to the mentorship they need to successfully launch social venture projects in their communities,” notes the foundation. Competing in a multi-step competition designed to recognise and celebrate young leaders committed to social

MASTERCARD FOUNDATION

change in Africa and beyond, Social Venture Challenge (SVC) – since 2016 – has awarded more than US$581,200 to 267 Mastercard Foundation Scholars. With the support of The Resolution Project, Fellows have gone on to positively impact more than 904,792 people across Africa to date. The Social Venture Challenge 2023 Now in its eighth year, SVC has selected 37 young African social entrepreneurs as winners of the challenge that provides seed funding, mentorship and access to a network of global changemakers.

Duaa Mohamed, Lead of Transformative Leadership Programmes at the Mastercard Foundation, says: “Congratulations to the 2023 Resolution Project Social Venture Challenge winners! Over the past eight years, in partnership with the Resolution Project, the Social Venture Challenge has showcased the immense potential of Mastercard Foundation Scholars dedicated to community impact. “It’s not just about recognising their achievements, but also acknowledging the profound influence these projects will have on their communities.” Green technology and youth employment Examining the gaps and opportunities of green technology programmes to engage and benefit Africa’s youth, the Mastercard Foundation’s report – ‘Green technology and youth employment potential in Africa: A continental scoping report’ – shines a light on how African governments can seize these opportunities to spur green technology growth and youth employment. technologymagazine.com

MASTERCARD FOUNDATION

“With climate change posing a major challenge to African economies, governments have been implementing policies and programmes to address its impacts. These are particularly focused on the energy and agriculture sectors, which will need to undergo significant changes to adapt to climate change. Green technologies offer opportunities for job creation and increased entrepreneurial activity in these sectors,” highlights the foundation. An opportunity waiting to be harnessed, the continent could benefit from green tech initiatives given the high levels of youth unemployment and their potential for innovation and entrepreneurship. Dr Eunice Muthengi, Director of Programme and Strategic Research at the Mastercard Foundation, says: “While climate change presents significant risks to Africa’s development agenda, the required green transition also presents a unique opportunity. This report highlights that greater policy dialogue to support Africa’s green tech industry can contribute toward improving young people’s access to jobs that are not only dignified and fulfilling, but that are also environmentally sustainable.” In particular, information and communication technologies (ICTs), hold significant promise for developing climatesmart solutions for greener economies.

The report was presented and discussed by a panel of experts, including Dr Fadekunayo Adeniyi from the African Development Bank, Mwayi Kampesi from Planet Green Africa, and Chiemela Anosike from Solaris GreenTech Hub on November 8, 2023. 13

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WITH DIGITALIS AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW PRODUCED BY: OLIVER REEK

December 2023

SIEMENS ENERGY

NABILITY

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SIEMENS ENERGY

Siemens Energy VP Simona Rossetti on how the company is spearheading the decarbonisation of the energy industry through digitalisation

or more than 150 years, engineers at Siemens Energy – one of the world’s leading energy technology companies – have been spearheading the electrification of the world. The company works with its customers and partners on energy systems for the future, supporting the transition to a more sustainable world. With its portfolio of products, solutions and services, Siemens Energy covers almost the entire energy value chain – from power generation and transmission to storage. “Our mission is to support companies and countries with what they need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make energy reliable, affordable, and more sustainable,” describes Simona Rossetti, Senior Vice President within Siemens Energy’s Gas Services Business, who first joined the company’s energy business in 2003. In 2020 Siemens Energy was founded as an independent company, opening a new chapter in Siemens’ extensive history of energy technology. Its aim today is to energise society. “An estimated one-sixth of the electricity generated worldwide is based on technologies from Siemens Energy,” Rossetti says. “Today we are a team of 94,000 sharing the same passion, vision, and values. Our diversity makes us strong and helps us to find answers together with our partners.”

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Digitalisation and decarbonisation Describing it as our greatest challenge, energy transition poses a number of questions: first and foremost how to reduce greenhouse emissions while also increasing energy supply. “It is an uphill battle, and there is no silver bullet,” Rossetti says. “But finding solutions has always been in our DNA.” Digitalisation can contribute to decarbonisation in several ways, firstly by making energy production more efficient, meaning the same amount of electricity can be produced with less fuel and fewer emissions. “Secondly, digitalisation helps to integrate renewable energy sources into the grid by managing power flows, balancing supply and demand, and optimising energy storage,” Rossetti says. “For example, digital control systems such as Omnivise T3000 can help manage the intermittency of solar and wind power by predicting energy output and adjusting supply accordingly.” Integrated data management is another solution that supports decarbonisation. “Integrating operations and engineering data can enable engineers to do their jobs more efficiently,” Rossetti says. “Overall, digitalisation can enable the optimisation of energy and resource use, reduce fuel consumption, and promote sustainable practices, contributing to decarbonisation efforts.

“ SIEMENS ENERGY BELIEVES INCLUSION AND DIVERSITY CREATES MORE OPPORTUNITY FOR SUCCESS... EVERYONE HAS AN EQUAL PART TO PLAY IN ENERGISING SOCIETY” SIMONA ROSSETTI TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT COMPANY: S IEMENS ENERGY INDUSTRY: ENERGY LOCATION: GERMANY Simona Rossetti is a Senior Vice President within Siemens Energy’s Gas Services Business. She is leading the Europe and Africa region for all service activities in Controls and Digitalisation. Her goal is to support all European and African customers with tailored sustainable solutions for servicing and decarbonising their portfolio to secure energy supply and achieve CO2 reduction goals. She aims to directly contribute to business growth and strategic direction of the organization, drive change management, and effectively role model, inspire and mentor the next generation of professionals in the energy industry.

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SIEMENS ENERGY

WATCH NOW

Digitalisation boosting efficiency in power generation Digitalisation is a potent tool to enhance efficiency in power generation. Siemens Energy offers a number of solutions from their Omnivise portfolio, engineered to refine maintenance operations within power plants and foster predictive maintenance strategies. The company’s Omnivise Asset Management (OAM) offering is a modern software suite combining deep domain know-how, the latest technologies and methods, and modern software design to support plant personnel. An example of these capabilities can be seen in the operations of one of Latin America’s largest electricity suppliers, which manages a vast fleet of diverse power generation assets – ranging from fossil to renewable sources. The company, in a bid

to trim Operational Expenditures (OPEX) across its maintenance and operations, wanted to introduce a remote expert centre at its headquarters. “The OAM software forms the central technical backbone to deliver critical services to their entire fleet of assets,” Rossetti says. “Our solution will enable the customer to reduce operational costs while increasing reliability and availability of key assets at 23 power plants.” With OAM, Siemens Energy also supports broader use cases from remote operator rounds and inspections all the way to autonomous plants. As Rossetti describes, to reach this milestone there are a number of challenges for plant operators to overcome. “The growing percentage of renewable energy sources in the grid is steadily increasing the pressure on gas power plants to operate more flexibly and efficiently. technologymagazine.com

SIEMENS ENERGY

A massive shortage of skilled control room and maintenance personnel is also looming on the horizon.” Ultimately, the vision of power plants that operate autonomously is about to become a reality, with increasing advanced technologies increasing the efficiency of the plant itself but also of the plant operators. “Developers are now taking the next step towards autonomy by fine-tuning digital twins, data analyses, and AI to provide smart forecasts and instructions. “Autonomy doesn’t start with the autopilot. Long before that, power plants are supported by smart analyses, smart forecasts, smart recommendations, and smart instructions,” Rossetti comments. “AI-supported analysis algorithms regularly filter out signs of irregularities from the data supplied by cameras, microphones, 21

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and other sensors mounted on the plant or installed on robots, and that request support when needed. Off-site maintenance and control room personnel can support several power plants simultaneously.” Digital control systems helping manage new challenges in the energy industry The energy landscape is changing and the number of renewable energy sources is growing steadily. With that comes pressure on fossil-fueled power plants to operate more flexibly and efficiently. Digital control systems such as Omnivise T3000 from Siemens Energy can help to manage these new challenges. This system with its SCADA functionality is capable of managing a variety of different decentralised energy resources including wind offshore, automated, autonomously

and in a coordinated way, ensuring reliable 24/7 operation. “At the same time, it is flexible and scalable to support a larger number of assets when needed,” says Rossetti. “Omnivise T3000 is the perfect solution not only for fossil power generation and renewables, but also for large and mid-size microgrids, such as IPPs, islands, industries, data centres and mines.” Together with German utility MVV, Siemens Energy has built and recently put into operation a large-scale heat pump plant at the GKM power plant in the city of Mannheim. The plant uses river water as a heat source, helping to replace a coal-fired power plant. This new heat pump will be a major contributor to MVV and the City of Mannheim’s goals to become CO2 neutral

“ DIGITALISATION WITH OMNIVISE CAN ENABLE THE OPTIMISATION OF ENERGY AND RESOURCE USE, REDUCE FUEL CONSUMPTION, AND PROMOTE SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES, CONTRIBUTING TO DECARBONISATION EFFORTS” SIMONA ROSSETTI

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SIEMENS ENERGY technologymagazine.com

SIEMENS ENERGY

“ AN ESTIMATED ONE-SIXTH OF THE ELECTRICITY GENERATED WORLDWIDE IS BASED ON TECHNOLOGIES FROM SIEMENS ENERGY” SIMONA ROSSETTI

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SIEMENS ENERGY

in heating production by 2030. The facility is expected to supply district heating for 3,500 households and save some 10,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. “Our proven Omnivise T3000 control system integrates the control of the new heat pump and an existing thermal storage into the existing GKM power plant,” Rossetti explains. “The control system uses its multi-unit functionality to manage multiple generation units from a central control room.” Using data insights to unlock new opportunities to decarbonise A powerful tool to improve operational efficiency and reduce emissions is harnessing the power of data. Integrating operations and engineering data enables engineers to do their jobs more efficiently, while data scientists and modelers use this integrated data to predict the future. One good example of this, Rossetti describes, is Siemens Energy’s Omnivise Energy Management solution. “Power 23

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SIEMENS ENERGY

producers also have the challenge to sell their energy most profitable. Every day, they have an increasingly complicated decision to make: How can I plan the dispatch of my assets to satisfy market demand, but in the most beneficial way?” For dispatchers with combined-cycle power plants this question is challenging. The introduction of renewables like solar and wind can create wider fluctuations in demand for dispatchable energy from traditional power producers. “When solar and wind are available, they are prioritised on the grid,” Rossetti explains. “This situation leads to shorter market intervals for power generated by fossil-fueled plants. These dispatchers now must access and understand weather data to know when neither wind nor solar will be available, and they will need to fill the generation gap in a cost-efficient way.” Aimed at solving this problem, Siemens Energy’s Omnivise Energy Management solution combines the power of AI-driven forecasting and predictive asset models. “With Omnivise Energy Management our customers are able to do rapid multidimensional or multi-branch scenario simulations and create day-ahead and short-term future generations plans that are economically optimised to the plant’s circumstances,” Rossetti says. Ensuring the safety and security of control systems and customer data As part of critical infrastructure, plants in the energy market must fulfil more stringent requirements than ever before. With the risk of cyber-attacks, this means looking beyond operational concerns and protecting plants against hacker attacks – and documenting compliance according to a wide range of legal requirements. technologymagazine.com

As Rossetti describes, thanks to built-in security and Siemens Energy’s comprehensive cybersecurity portfolio, Omnivise T3000 is ideally suited to help operators protect their infrastructure. “We provide long-term support so you can rely on a system that is always up to date,” she comments. “We support current hardware on a long-term basis and provide tried-and-tested security patches for software at any time during operation. For our customers, this means long-term security with no downtime.” One of Rossetti’s most significant career achievements, she describes, has been the spearheading of Siemens Energy’s Cyber Security Operation Center (cSOC) in Germany to help organisations defend against and resolve cyberattacks 24/7. 25

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“ OUR MISSION IS TO SUPPORT COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES WITH WHAT THEY NEED TO REDUCE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS AND MAKE ENERGY RELIABLE, AFFORDABLE, AND MORE SUSTAINABLE” SIMONA ROSSETTI

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SIEMENS ENERGY

SIEMENS ENERGY

“The energy sector has become a primary target for cyber-attacks,” she says. “Collaborating with my dedicated team, I saw the need to develop cybersecurity services that could be seamlessly integrated into our customers’ contracts and help them when confronting the growing cyber threats they are exposed to. To meet this need, I took the initiative to establish a Cyber Security Operation Center (cSOC) for our European customers from the ground up. “This undertaking allowed us to promptly respond to an emerging trend and fulfill a critical customer requirement with our cyber protection, detection, and monitoring solutions. I am proud of our ability to identify a new industry trend and swiftly create effective solutions to address it.”

The energy transition relies on seamlessly connecting physical assets with digital technologies to foster innovation, reduce emissions, and improve efficiency, but this future depends on strong cybersecurity across the whole supply chain. Siemens Energy’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) solution provides scalable protection against disruptive cyberattacks in the energy sector using innovative AI. “It defends critical infrastructure against cyberattacks, helping protect communities around the world from supply chain disruptions,” comments Rossetti. Siemens Energy partners with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to quickly collect and analyse large volumes of data to monitor for cyber threats, giving energy sector chief information security officers (CISOs) technologymagazine.com

SIEMENS ENERGY

“OUR PROVEN CONTROL SYSTEM SUPPORTS YOU WITH INNOVATIONS YOU NEED TO BUILD A BRIDGE TO THE ENERGY SYSTEM OF TOMORROW. FOR CONVENTIONAL POWER PLANTS AS WELL AS DECENTRALISED POWER GENERATION WITH RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES, FOR ANY PLANTS AND ANY SIZE – PERFECTLY TAILORED TO OUR DIGITAL SOLUTION PORTFOLIO. CONTROL THE ENERGY SYSTEM OF TOMORROW WITH OMNIVISE T3000” SIMONA ROSSETTI

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SIEMENS ENERGY

the power to detect and uncover attacks before they execute. “These secure cloud capabilities that can integrate digital applications and leverage sensitive data – such as real-time monitoring and detection – add an important and cost-effective tool to the defensive arsenal for CISOs and industrial security analysts.” A wide range of collaborative partnerships Siemens Energy is collaborating with numerous companies around the world, from the marine sector to hydrogen production, from eFuels to heavy industries. “We are working on open innovation with customers, industrial partners, universities, and research centres like the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) in Germany, the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US and the University of Cambridge in the UK.” As Siemens Energy invests in growth and optionality, it has engaged in partnerships with a number of ventures: including joining 27

December 2023

the AWS Partner Network as a Technology Partner to provide customers with industrial cybersecurity, analytics and data storage solutions and partnering with Air Liquide on building a sustainable hydrogen economy in Europe. “At Siemens Energy, our innovation strategy is not just about technology and products. It is about empowering people and partners, both within the company and outside of it, to accelerate progress on the journey to net-zero,” Rossetti says. “We strive to create a culture and framework where individuals and teams can take ownership of innovation and bring new concepts to market with the goal of better serving our customers and becoming the world’s premiere energy. “Partnerships represent a key step in helping the power industry drive toward a more sustainable, profitable future and in offering our customers a more efficient solution for their business.”

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SIEMENS ENERGY

The importance of inclusion and diversity in energising society Every day, people are treated less favorably or face discrimination because of their ethnicity, gender, religion or ideology, disability, age, or sexual identity. As Rossetti explains, this has to change. “Siemens Energy believes inclusion and diversity creates more opportunity for success. It doesn’t matter the gender, age, ethnic background, sexual orientation, or disability − everyone has an equal part to play in energising society. Here, more than 94,000 employees worldwide join forces with welcoming colleagues who encourage equality and belonging, to passionately and energetically pursue a shared goal: to shape the energy systems of the future.” With the energy industry playing a crucial role in addressing climate change and reducing carbon emissions, there has never been a more important time to make positive change. “The world needs people who do not look the other way when they see or hear racism and discrimination. We can all doa great deal in our everyday lives and at work to make our society more supportive, open, and tolerant. “At Siemens Energy, we believe that creating a society worth living in involves demonstrating solidarity and creating an environment in the here and now that not only leaves room for diverse identities and lifestyles but also sees them as an enrichment to our lives,” Rossetti concludes. “If we all work together toward this goal, nothing less than great things can come of it – for us, for the future, for all of us.”

technologymagazine.com

CITY OF MEMPHIS

HOW MEMPHIS IS USING TECH AND AI TO IMPROVE PUBLIC SERVICES

December 2023

S D

WRITTEN BY: ALEX CLERE PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

CITY OF MEMPHIS

The City of Memphis is revolutionising public services and driving value in local government by adopting new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI)

sually, when we speak with a leader in the field of technology or cybersecurity, the end goal is invariably profit. No matter how innovative a company might be, how groundbreaking a new product or solution, the underlying motivation is to drive profit and increase market share. Yet when I speak with Augustine Boateng, Interim Chief Information Officer for the City of Memphis, it is a dedication to public service that shines through more than anything else. Everything that the city does from a technology and IT security perspective is done with the greater good in mind. There is no CEO here; just a directly elected mayor. There is no board of directors; the mayor answers only to taxpayers. There is no shareholder dividend; just positive outcomes. “Public servants are in this line of work for the love of the job,” Boateng tells me from his office inside City Hall. “It’s the sense of seeing your accomplishments, and knowing that I am helping somebody even if they don’t themselves know it.” In today’s post-COVID economy, the public sector is reflecting on how it can remain competitive in the labour market. Workers want flexibility and seem inclined to change jobs more frequently than previous generations when they don’t get it. When the 33

December 2023

Memphis Bridge

CITY OF MEMPHIS

AUGUSTINE BOATENG TITLE: INTERIM CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER COMPANY: CITY OF MEMPHIS INDUSTRY: IT LOCATION: MEMPHIS, USA Augustine Boateng is an accomplished IT executive with a Bachelor of Science in Management & Computer Studies from Wisconsin International University College, Accra, Ghana. His extensive professional certifications include CISSP, CEH, CNDA, ECIH, OCA, ITIL and Splunk certifications, among others. With over a decade of experience, Augustine has held key roles, including his current position as Interim Chief Information Officer for the City of Memphis, where he plays a pivotal role in driving technology-driven business solutions. Previously, he served as the Information Security Manager within the same organization, contributing significantly to enhancing information security. His earlier roles as a Senior Linux Engineer and Systems Administrator at the City of Memphis and the University of Memphis showcase his multifaceted skills in system administration, database management, and information security. Augustine’s ability to lead large-scale digital transformation initiatives and implement cutting-edge technologies has consistently resulted in increased operational efficiency, security, and competitive advantages for the organizations he has served.

December 2023

employer is ultimately the public, competing for talent on financial terms is difficult. So it is often this noble commitment to the public good, to serving communities and making a difference in the real world, that holds local government together. “The sense of fulfilment that you get from knowing your decisions will help the ordinary citizen,” Boateng continues, “is the reason why I stay in public service. It’s about giving back, and knowing your handiwork is preparing somebody to achieve the best they can with their life.” Music heritage and a place in civil rights lore Memphis is the sort of city that people will know for a couple of things above most else. This vibrant city of more than 620,000 people, straddling the Mississippi river on the state’s western border with Arkansas, is world-renowned for its music culture. Out of the city’s thriving music scene of the 1950s and 1960s emerged some of America’s most celebrated recording artists – including Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Johnny Cash, Al Green, B. B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Otis Redding.

“ We want to make sure our front gateway is as resilient as it can be” AUGUSTINE BOATENG

INTERIM CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, CITY OF MEMPHIS

Augustine Boateng

CITY OF MEMPHIS

City of Memphis’ IT Department

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December 2023

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“ We want to make sure our partners and suppliers are doing all the right things before we bring them into our internal cyber management” AUGUSTINE BOATENG

INTERIM CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, CITY OF MEMPHIS

It is because of legendary labels like Hi Records, Stax Records and Sun Records that the city was able to build up such an inimitable musical pedigree. Fitting, then, that Memphis today is home to prestigious musical institutions like the Blues Hall of Fame, the Museum of American Soul, and even Graceland. For the less musically inclined, the name Memphis brings to mind the hard-fought

battles of America’s civil rights movement. The vibe of the city, which today is more than 60% African-American, has long been shaped by black culture. It is where, in 1968, black workers from the city’s Department of Public Works striked in hope of better pay and conditions; and where, later that year, the iconic civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated, after visiting the city to lend the strikers his support. Under the tagline ‘Memphis has Momentum’, modern-day Memphis is bringing about a cultural and technological transformation that it hopes will be remembered alongside its music culture, alongside its civil rights heritage, in the decades to come. The city is preparing to welcome car maker Ford when it opens a US$5bn electric vehicle plant in the suburb of Stanton in 2025; and Memphis technologymagazine.com

How Memphis is using tech and AI to improve public services WATCH NOW

International Airport handles the second largest volume of air cargo in the world thanks to the presence of FedEx’s Global Hub. Despite the upsides, the city also has its challenges. The average age is five years younger than the US median, which is typical of cities owing to their strong graduate and job prospects. Median household income is about US$44,000, according to the Census Bureau, and the city has one of the nation’s highest rates of deprivation with roughly a quarter of residents reported to be living in poverty. It is these challenges that inform and guide the City of Memphis’ technology strategy. A diverse but economically divided community One of the things the city is doing to deliver for its most deprived neighbourhoods lies

in the provision of digital services in the community. The city extensively provides free Wi-Fi through public libraries and community centres, where residents without broadband at home can go and access the internet. Officials are also working on expanding the availability of fibre broadband to more locations across the city, allowing homeowners to receive high-quality internet connectivity as and when they desire it. But there is still a long way to go. Pew Research Center notes a persistent ‘digital divide’, where the most affluent communities have the greatest access to technologies like smartphones, computers, and broadband internet. Indeed, there is a 36 point difference in broadband penetration between households with an annual income of less than US$30,000 and those with an income of more than US$100,000.

CITY OF MEMPHIS

“ I know AI has been a bit of a buzzword, but it really does save time and create a lot of efficiencies for us” AUGUSTINE BOATENG

INTERIM CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, CITY OF MEMPHIS

It comes as no surprise that Memphis – one of America’s poorest cities – also has one of the lowest internet penetration rates. According to analysis of census data conducted by Filterbuy, 83% of Memphians

have internet access but just 63% have access to high-speed internet. Compare this to well-connected places like Denver and San Francisco – where the average wage is 77% and 186% higher, respectively – and it soon dawns how important connectivity is as a determinant of prosperity. This is exactly what Boateng was referring to when he described the sense of fulfilment he gets daily from his job. Although there is a need to address the underlying causes of this financial inequality in America, the city is, in the immediate term, able to give poorer residents access to public services that they might otherwise struggle to afford. How AI is making city government more intelligent The city is also using artificial intelligence (AI) in a number of intelligent ways. One that regularly extracts rage from taxpayers is technologymagazine.com

Household waste collection

CITY OF MEMPHIS

In an emergency: Memphis Fire Department and (left) Memphis Paramedics in action

potholes. Previously, the city would rely on tips from members of the public, responding by sending public employees to resurface problem roads. As with many use-cases, AI is allowing this manual process to be completely overhauled. Instead, Memphis has been tasking its public works and information technology departments with finding a technological solution to potholes. They joined forces with Google and SpringML, who suggested mounting panoramic cameras on the front of city buses. The cameras create a 360° image of their surroundings along bus routes – which, after all, tend to follow the city’s most heavily used arterial routes – and an AI algorithm helps to detect what is a pothole and what is just a change in the appearance of the road surface. Initially, 30 days of raw footage was captured to help train the algorithm; and now the system automatically creates

and assigns repair tickets to available crew members, who are then dispatched to refill the road. Not only did this make detection quicker and more effective, it has cut down on the number of man hours involved – partly because crews are no longer required to go out and verify repair requests from members of the public. “Really, Memphis was one of the first cities in the US to do this as a proof of concept,” Boateng explains. “It worked out so well that we are now going to expand it.” This means evaluating more criteria – for example, could the system be used to detect abandoned buildings and blight – as well as increasing the amount of video capture that takes place. As well as public buses, the city has access to CCTV cameras and even dash cameras operated by the police department; these already have AI capabilities built into them, as they’re used to automatically detect fugitive number plates. Could this technologymagazine.com

CITY OF MEMPHIS

existing capability be better leveraged to help the local government detect, and resolve, other nuisances? “We’ve been perfecting the algorithm as we go because we want to make sure that it’s identifying and reporting potholes correctly,” Boateng continues. “We want to make sure that people who drive on our streets are safe, but also we want to introduce this technology as part of our governing process for the City of Memphis.” He recognises that expansion of AI will always – for the time being, at least – provoke privacy and security concerns, particularly when it’s being used by the government. After all, the same technology that today is being used to detect potholes could inherently be used for facial recognition, which is a highly sensitive and controversial topic. Every new technology that is onboarded by the city is intensely scrutinised from a legal and regulatory standpoint, as well as to ensure the security and integrity of the software itself, to ensure that Memphis’ digital revolution is undertaken safely. “We do not want to infringe anybody’s privacy,” Boateng assures. Smart technology for safer streets The city is also using AI to herald a smarter era in street light management. Before – when the only options for street lamps were ‘on’ and ‘off’ – linear decisions had to be taken about how the city’s streets were lit. But now, with the advance of technology, the city government 43

December 2023

can take a much more strategic approach. The city is currently embarking on a huge project to upgrade and replace its existing street light infrastructure with LED smart lights – a mammoth task that involves switching out more than 77,000 lights across the entire city. Dimly-lit street corners breed crime and unsociable behaviour, so ensuring that streets are lit efficiently is a priority in terms of public safety and order. But not all street corners are equal. The amount of light needed might depend on the amount of traffic on a particular street, or whether there are any unique circumstances such as business

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Memphis City Hall

technologymagazine.com

premises that are always lit. The LED lights being adopted by the city allow it to variate the amount of luminosity used, meeting the requirements of the local environs. Ensuring the right balance between preserving energy and providing public services – both in street lighting, and other areas – is both an environmental and fiscal prerogative. The City of Memphis has been working with an engineering company called Ameresco to remotely control street lighting, including when lights are turned on and how brightly they shine. “Our first priority is the safety of our citizens,” Boateng says, “but we are also saving energy. That is money that we 45

December 2023

“ Memphis has people who are so committed to their city. They have a love for their city and a love for what their city stands for” AUGUSTINE BOATENG

INTERIM CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, CITY OF MEMPHIS

CITY OF MEMPHIS

Mud Island, Memphis Representatives from the city’s fire, sanitation and police departments (right)

can reallocate to other projects, benefitting citizens. We are now beginning to see some savings in the amount of money that has been spent to maintain these ageing street lights.” Consent is ultimately built on shared trust As the city’s technology strategy becomes more sophisticated, there is hope that the public might contribute their own cameras and lights to public initiatives – especially if it allows law enforcement to reduce crime. After all, there are now billions of IoT devices in American households, including millions of smart doorbells. We are used to seeing the viral videos posted on social media: technologymagazine.com

CITY OF MEMPHIS

the misbehaving pets, the charming neighbour kids, the deviant delivery drivers. But could these increasingly ubiquitous devices be a new tool in the police department’s armoury? Only with the homeowner’s consent is the short answer. The city has derived a new strategy called Connect Memphis, which uses an underlying intelligence technology provided by Georgia-based firm Fusus. Individuals and businesses that already have cameras can opt to register their device with the local police department. When there’s a crime in the area, Fusus negates the need for officers to manually conduct door-to-door enquiries. Instead, as part of their investigation, they can request access to footage through the platform and camera owners can grant access digitally. There are already 3,700 cameras that have been registered across the city, including over 500 that have been integrated with the city’s real-time crime centre. “It was overwhelming to see how many citizens were willing to go through this and provide access to their camera to the police department,” Boateng says, although he accepts that the majority of users at present are businesses rather than private individuals. Generally, companies have less to lose and more to gain; their premises are less likely to have privacy implications, and with revenue protection they have more to lose. America is still grappling with how to repair relations between the public and the police; if that relationship improves, it’s plausible that more citizens will choose to register their doorbell or private CCTV camera. “When you explain to them the benefits of it and how it helps with crime 47

December 2023

“ Public servants are in this line of work for the love of the job. It’s the sense of seeing your accomplishments and knowing you are helping somebody” AUGUSTINE BOATENG

INTERIM CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, CITY OF MEMPHIS

620,000 population

28th

largest city in the US

2nd

largest city in Tennessee

64%

black or African-American

US$44,000

median household income

median age

83%

of Memphians have internet access

77,000

lights being switched to LEDs in the city

prevention, they see the importance of this project, and it has been amazing,” Boateng says. Mitigating against growing cybersecurity risk As cities up and down the country transition to smarter and more connected technologies, like Memphis is doing, the cybersecurity challenges grow. The risk of getting something is wrong is arguably bigger now than it has ever been. There is, of course, a due diligence process involved

in onboarding any new technology partner or supplier. “We want to make sure they’re doing all the right things before we bring them into our internal cyber management,” Boateng tells us. Typically, this process will take 8-10 weeks just to conduct due diligence and check out the supplier. “There have been times where we decided not to go with companies because they were not mature enough, and we didn’t want to take on the risk of bringing in solutions that would affect technologymagazine.com

“ I’m looking forward to our future. I know that everything we do within the IT division is for our citizenry” AUGUSTINE BOATENG

INTERIM CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, CITY OF MEMPHIS

our security posture. Balancing the technology deployment with strong cybersecurity measures is, for us, crucial to our long-term success and the resilience that we want to achieve.” This is an issue close to his heart. Boateng, who started his career in his native Ghana, comes from a cybersecurity background. “I take security very seriously,” he tells us. As well as scrutinising every new partner and supplier, the city offers cybersecurity training twice a year to its staff. Employees on the city’s payroll are not just administrators based at city hall; they are teachers, police officers, public librarians and street cleaners. They are young, they are old. They are technologically savvy, and they are not. Ensuring that they receive timely and accurate information about current cybersecurity threats is incredibly 49

December 2023

important, not least because the amount of data held by the city makes it a prime target for hackers. The city also tests users randomly to see how resilient they are, as many large organisations will do. When there are shortfalls or vulnerabilities, employees are re-educated to ensure they understand the most common tactics and are aware of what constitutes risky behaviour online – like clicking on a link from an unknown source. “We want to make sure our front gateway is as resilient as it can be, and people are able to identify phishing emails that come through or the tips and tricks that bad actors are trying to use.” One thing that is helping to keep city employees safe online is the City of Memphis’ partnership with email security software provider Ironscales.

CITY OF MEMPHIS

Boateng continues: “We adopted Ironscales a year ago, and it’s been amazing how they’ve helped reduce the time between identifying a potential threat and resolving it. We used to dedicate hours to manually going through reported emails and following up on them. Ironscales has helped us to cut the number of man hours down by 95%.” Using pre-defined parameters and rules, the system detects possible phishing scams and email compromises. “One thing I love about Ironscales is the community aspect of it,” Boateng continues. “Whatever other customers are seeing in their platform is aggregated and then it’s used to resolve the possible attacks in other customers.” Local and municipal government rarely stands still. Unlike the private sector, where chief executives might remain in situ for

decades, mayors come and go. Elections are fought, won, lost. The current incumbent, Jim Strickland, won two elections and will have served the maximum eight years by the time he departs. His replacement, experienced public servant Paul Young, will take office next year. At a time that could otherwise be volatile for public servants, Boateng is reassured by the commitments that his new boss has publicly made. “We have a new mayor coming in who has expressed his plan to improve the technology for the city,” he says. “I’m looking forward to that, and I know that everything we do within the IT division is for the citizenry.

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