Technology Magazine July 2022 by Technology Magazine

WIZZ AIR LUMEN ALCATEL LUCENTFEATURING: RUSSELLKAINOS’SLOANTALKSUSTHROUGHCyberSecurityPlatforms SYNGENTA: withtoagricultureDigitisinggrowmoreless MINING:CALIBRE A organisationmodel for ESG compliance MODERNA: Barbara Salami VP of Digital on new capabilities HOME CREDIT INDIA: inclusionfinancialImproving ZINC:HINDUSTAN The journeysustainabilitydigitalsuccessful Breaching boundariestolimitationof digitally transform July 2022 | technologymagazine.com

ortoise and Kainos spoke to a range of experts throughout the field of artificial intelligence; from executives and technicians, to researchers and government officials. Those insights are revealed in the form of three hypotheses about how the domain trust in artificial intelligence is changing: ‘The future of trust in artificial intelligence: responsibility, understandability and sustainability’. To coincide with the report, Jane Fletcher, Experience Design Principal at Kainos, discussed 'Sustainability: A path to trust for Data & AI' in a virtual keynote at TECH LIVE LONDON.Trustinthe

Language, automation and trust Fletcher elaborated on the move sustainability that has seen standardisation and mechanisms for disclosure – all to create confidence that the world economy can decarbonise, be governed fairly and embrace an inclusive society. like the major drivers that propelled original Industrial Revolution: language, trust, the latter in particular is vital to tempering AI for widespread use today, lowering the barrier entry in order to accelerate adoption.

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As governments and corporations are also considering ways of ensuring that the technologies are lawful, ethical and robust, Kainos discusses the increase in regulation around data over the last few years due to GDPR, the growing importance of cybersecurity and the role of AI ethics on the imminent EU AI act. Language, automation and trust Kainos will elaborate on the move towards sustainability that has seen professionalisation, standardisation and mechanisms for disclosure – all to create confidence that the world economy can decarbonise, be governed fairly and embrace an inclusive society.

Much like the major drivers that propelled the original Industrial Revolution: language, automation and trust, the latter in particular is vital to tempering AI for widespread use today, lowering the barrier of entry in order to accelerate adoption.

Trust in the AI ecosystem is largely dependent on data, the conclusions and predictions reached, and the sensitivity of the system to bias and other influences.

TRUSTWORTHY TECHNOLOGY IS SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY

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AI ecosystem is largely dependent on data, the conclusions and predictions reached, and the sensitivity of the system to bias and other influences.

To coincide with the report, Kainos will join TECH LIVE LONDON to heed a warning that risks from misuse of artificial intelligence, much like the impact of humans on our planet’s climate, need to be addressed urgently.

As governments and corporations consider ways of enforcing technologies that are lawful, ethical and robust, Fletcher discussed the increase in regulation around data over the last few years due to GDPR, the growing importance of cybersecurity and the role of AI ethics on the imminent EU AI act.

KAINOS

KAINOS: TRANSFORMATIONDIGITAL

INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE & TECHNOLOGY HQ: BELFAST, UNITED KINGDOM

KAINOS

vital to wider Kainos suggests that if we don't act today in a responsible and ethical way, in terms of how we develop and deploy AI to help users understand its capabilities, then this lack of trust will limit or prevent the adoption of artificial intelligence over the next few years. Acting early can mitigate and prevent some of those issues from arising, and Kainos will share tips on these first steps.

Data Governance unlocks success

KAINOS: TRANSFORMATIONDIGITAL SERVICES

Ethics vital to wider AI adoption

Kainos suggests that if we don't act today in a responsible and ethical way, in terms of how we develop and deploy AI to help users understand its capabilities, then this lack of trust will limit or prevent the adoption of artificial intelligence over the next few years. Acting early can mitigate and prevent some of those issues from arising, and Kainos will share tips on these first steps. Kainos CEO: BRENDAN MOONEY

Also at TECH LIVE LONDON was, Karim Jessani, Principal: Data & AI Practice / CSO, who discussed ‘Data Governance / With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility’. Jessani said: “If an organisation recognises data as a true and valuable asset and treats it as such through a comprehensive data governance policy, it will be able to use data more wisely to empower its business for success”.

Belfast-headquartered IT provider Kainos has developed a unique mindset that embraces any digital challenge. With 98% customer satisfaction rating, their key technology partners are AWS, Microsoft, and Workday, with notable clients like the NHS, UK Government, and Netflix.

SERVICES

The Technology Team SENIOR EDITOR ALEX DANIELAPRODUCTIONCATHERINEEDITORTUCKGRAYEDITORIALDIRECTORSCOTTBIRCHDIRECTORSGEORGIAALLENKIANICKOVÁPRODUCTIONMANAGERSPHILLINEVICENTEJANEARNETAELLACHADNEY CREATIVE TEAM OSCAR VIDEOSOPHIE-ANNHATHAWAYPINNELLHECTORPENROSESAMHUBBARDMIMIGUNNJUSTINSMITHREBEKAHBIRLESONJORDANWOODDANILOCARDOSOCALLUMHOODPRODUCTIONMANAGERKIERANWAITE DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS MARTA THOMASERNESTEUGENIODENEVEEASTERFORDDREWHARDMANPROJECTDIRECTORSKRISPALMERMIKESADRBENMALTBYTOMVENTURORYANHALLMARKETINGMANAGERDAISYSLATER MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR JASON CHIEFMANAGINGJAMESWESTGATEWHITEDIRECTORLEWISVAUGHANOPERATIONSOFFICERSTACYNORMANCEOGLENWHITE JOIN THE COMMUNITY Never miss an aboutDiscoverissue!+thelatestnewsandinsightsGlobalTechnology...

Treated as a scientific experiment in conjunction with Cambridge and Oxford universities and Boston College, productivity, employee satisfaction and happiness will be empirically measured.

The hidden human cost of working from home

According to the excellent tech influencer Bernard Marr, the four-day week is now being trialled in a number of countries and is to be adopted by 60 companies between June and December this year.

Studies from the Royal Society of Public Health also recorded high amounts of mental and physical changes, in correlation to the home working environment.

How we work is changing and, depending on the trial’s results, we could see evidence that more working hours doesn’t always equate to the best outcomes for employees or employers.

What I found particularly interesting from Marr’s perspective was the human cost of working from home, in which feelings of guilt can lead to “repaying” this perceived ‘perk’ and the “always-on” approach, which inevitably leads to burnout.

ALEX TUCK alex.tuck@bizclikmedia.com

Kainos Breaching boundaries of limitation to digitally transform 28 Event Review Tech live London44 Our UpfrontRegularSection: 14 Big Picture 16 The Brief 18 Timeline:Thehistoryofcomputer vision 20 Trailblazer:AzitaMartin 24 Five Minutes With: Jordi Ferrer Syngenta Digitising agriculture to grow more with less 58 CONTENTS

DE&I Meet the Valuable 500CEOs committed to diversity 86 IT Budgets Technological innovation in the supply chain 142 Calibre Mining Mining is a model organisation for ESG compliance 96 Application Security The Benefits of Bots 114 Moderna Barbara Salami VP of Digital at Moderna on new capabilities 126

A BizClik Media Group Brand Creating Digital Communities in TOP 100 Women NEW ISSUE OUT NOW Read now TECHNOLOGY Meet who runs the world. In Association with:

Lumen Technologies Lumen Technologies targets apps, SASE and network security 176 Top 10 Cyber PlatformsSecurity 188 Blockchain How blockchain can tackle piracy 166 Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Rasheed Mohamad of ALE: Making the Unpredictable, Predictable 150

Guilford CommunityTechnicalCollege Seeking viable avenues to improve educational access 226 NAES Corporation Transforming NAES with well thought out tech and strategy 238 Home Credit India Improving financial inclusion: Home Credit India 200 Hindustan Zinc Hindustan Zinc’s successful digital sustainability journey 214

All4Labels World-Class sustainable labelling and packaging solution provider 278 The University of Kansas Health System Guardians of a world-class academic medical centre 264 Rotary International Providing Philanthropy via TechnologY 250

Christian Horner, Oracle Red Bull Racing Team Principal and CEO

Gracing the Tech & AI podium at this year’s TECH LIVE LONDON, Amr Elrawi, Oracle’s Director, Sports Marketing and Business Development, gave a revealing presentation on the commerciallypartnership.Anaward-winningfocused and data-driven business leader with over 20 years of experience in marketing and sales within the Telecom, Technology, Financial Services, and Sports industries, he helps sports organisations and partners to use data and technology to win and drive performance. Before joining Oracle, Elrawi was the Head of Acquisition for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, focusing on growing and

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1 is arguably the most data driven and technologically advanced sport. The 2021 race season was a huge success for Oracle Red Bull Racing. With the team achieving 23 podium finishes and Max Verstappen winning the driver’s championship, Oracle Red Bull Racing had its most successful season in recent history. “Oracle Cloud enabled us to make race-day decisions that helped Max Verstappen win the 2021 Drivers’ Championship.”

engaging fans using Data and Marketing Solutions to drive commercial value and improve Fan Experience. He also spent 4 years at Barclaycard driving the digital transformation programme. Earlier he spent five years at Cisco, leading London 2012 digital sponsorship, and 10 years at Vodafone where he held a number of positions in Service, Sales and Marketing. He also holds an Executive MBA degree from Warwick Business School.

platform that lets fans earn points to get exclusive swag and digital downloads. Fans used The Paddock to redeem digital rewards and submit thousands of questions to the team through Oracle CrowdTwist Loyalty and Engagement. Elrawil also revealed how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is helping Oracle Red Bull Racing prepare race strategies and make real-time decisions during races to help them win.

Elrawi discussed the launch of The Oracle Red Bull Racing Paddock, a Oracle CEO: SAFRA A. CATZ INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES AND IT CONSULTING HQ: TEXAS, US

Driven by data, built to win

ORACLE

BIG PICTURE Earth’s digital twin Santa Clara, California The NVIDIA FourCastNet physics-ML model emulates global weather patterns and predicts extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, with greater confidence and up to 45,000x faster than traditional numerical prediction models. In addition, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy is using AI to optimise wind turbine design. Accelerating Extreme Weather Prediction with FourCastNet

nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-digital-twin-platform-for-scientific-computing

 READ

READ

First private commercial 5G network in UK for BT & Ericsson

BY THE NUMBERS 20% Asian women 16% Asian men

Bain & Company research on Asian American workers has found that feeling included is critical to employee retention and success. While 30% of employees across all geographies, industries and demographic groups say that they feel fully included at work, Asian workers in particular reported feeling the least included. 16% of Asian men and 20% of Asian women said they felt fully included at work

Digital services provider and consultants Infosys and the French Tennis Federation (FFT) announce platform for sports viewing and fan engagement

16 July 2022 THE BRIEF “We've actually put a price tag on disruption” Zsolt Nadas Head of Technology, Wizz Air  “I saw a leadershipexecutivecompanydynamictoopportunityfantasticbepartofaverymininganditsteam” petri salopera vp calibresustainability,mining  READ MORE “Agriculture has a key role to play in getting to carbon neutrality and perhaps ofreversingevensomethosetrends”

The multi-millionpound deal is the first of its kind in the UK, paving the way for Industry 4.0 and digital transformation of industrial sectors

Infosys and Roland-Garros launch AR/ VR and STEM initiatives

Feroz Sheikh CIO and SyngentaCDO, MORE MORE

"Providing

‘OpenLight’createdbyfusionofSynopsysandJuniperNetworks 

 CRUISE

technologymagazine.com 17

"We

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A joint venture between Synopsys and Juniper Networks has created OpenLight, which is designed to target the silicon photonics market. The union means third parties produce devices with integrated on-chip lasers using Tower Semiconductor's production facilities. Addressing the growing silicon photonics market requirements for improved performance, power efficiency and reliability, OpenLight is the world's first open silicon photonics platform with integrated lasers. strongly believe that OpenLight's technology will transform the silicon photonics industry," said Dr. Marco Racanelli, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Tower Semiconductor's Analog Business Unit. an open silicon photonics platform with integrated lasers that has been qualified on Tower's process will help mutual customers innovate and fuel the next generation of silicon photonics designs at scale. We are excited to partner with OpenLight in this journey."

MassiveVMWAREacquisition shakes industry Broadcom on May 26 announced it would buy VMware for US$61 billion. The offer includes a “go-shop provision” that enables VMWare to solicit competing offers for 40 days, so it’s not yet a done deal. Cruise received the first-ever ridesfarestheCommission.CaliforniagrantedDeploymentDriverlessPermitbythePublicUtilitiesThisallowscompanytochargefortheirdriverlessinSanFrancisco. GOOGLE As Google’s Moscow office has shut as they file for bankruptcy, the tech giant could withdraw from Russia for fear of antagonising the country's oversea regulators. UAE’S MINISTER OF AI Omar Sultan Al Olama told an audience at the WEF in Davos that it’s his belief that people who commit ‘serious crimes’ in the metaverse should be punished with real-world criminal consequences. meta murder a life sentence?

JULWINNERSLOSERS22

T IM ELINE

AlexNet breakthrough Although Google and US government bodies had successfully utilised forms of Computer Vision up until this point, 2012 was a pivotal year. A team from the University of Toronto entered a deep neural network called AlexNet that changed the game for artificial intelligence and computer vision projects. Deep neural networks revolutionised the field of artificial intelligence: AlexNet achieved an error rate of 16.4% and, in years following, error rates at the ILSRVC fell to just a few percent; now, deep neural networks are the gold standard for image recognition tasks. These achievements paved the way for artificial intelligence to infiltrate Silicon Valley.

Computer Vision is the science behind computers identifying and orasandgeographicaldate,basedproducingimagesanalysesalgorithmcertainsenseapplicationsImplementedofsources,informationunderstandingfromvisualviaaprocessreplication.intomakeofthepixelsinaimage,TheAIautomaticallydigitisedandvideos,metadataonit,suchas:time,cameratype,location,evenobjects–suchpeople,animals,carsbuildings.

2003

THE HIST RY OF COMPUTER VISION

1960s

According to motionmetrics. com, Computer Vision began in earnest during the 1960s at universities that viewed the project as a stepping stone to artificial intelligence. Early researchers and academics – including Larry Roberts and Marvin Minsky – were extremely optimistic about the future of these related fields and promoted artificial intelligence as a technology that could transform the world.

New generation of Computer Vision Berlin-based Mobius Labs’ Computer Vision technology is used by the European press agency, ANP and stock photographyEyeEm.community, Mobius’ CEO and Chief Scientist, Appu Shaji, claims vendors are now looking to democratise the technology: “Such technologies employ a technique called ‘few shot learning’, allowing the training of very specific concepts using small amounts of data sets. The training is no-code, which allows everyone to easily navigate through the machine learning process. These solutions are lightweight and easy to install on-premises in mobile phones, laptops and even satellites.”

Craig Federighi, a Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple, tried to test-drive the new phone's facial recognition software in front of a live audience.

2016 2017

Deep(er) Learning

Apple’s facialblunderrecognition

technologymagazine.com 19

iPhone X's Face ID – where the user looks at their iPhone X front-screen for the phone to recognise them and allow access to the phone – suffered a technical hitch, which came just after the 10th anniversary edition of the iPhone had been revealed, causing a temporary crash in Apple’s market value. 2022

A global effort from IBM Research, including engineers and scientists from teams in Tokyo, India, and the Thomas J Watson Research Center, has given rise to PowerAI, with new deep learning framework algorithms and performance tuning to help highlight the features of the S822LC server. Advantages of highbandwidth NVLinks between the GPUs and to the CPUs, combined with the IBM Caffe deep learning framework optimisations, results in lower deep learning training time.

NVIDIA brings a deep expertise in AI to help our customers and partners understand what AI use cases deliver the greatest business value. For example, computer vision technology is being employed by ALDI in the United Kingdom for frictionless checkout – self-service shopping Theexperiences.retailindustry

their customers better, letting them parse data to deliver personalised shopping lists and suggestions, which drive higher revenue and increase customer loyalty.

also is using computer vision to combat inventory loss, which today impacts overall revenue by about 2%. Computer vision technology at self-checkout lanes and throughout the store can alert store staff to suspicious activity. It is being deployed in thousands of stores around the world, particularly in systemsWesupermarkets.alsoseeAIrecommenderhelpingretailersunderstand

NVIDIA helps companies create and deploy their own AI applications, or we connect them to a broad ecosystem of partners who work with them to deploy AI applications that meet the challenges our customers are facing. What is your point of difference as a business?

Unlike many companies – which either sell software or hardware –Azita Martin is the Vice President and General Manager of NVIDIA’s AI business for the Retail, Consumer Packaged Goods, and the Quick-Service Restaurants industries. The business helps companies develop and deploy AI solutions that drive revenue, solve supply chain problems, and drive operational efficiencies.

TRAILBLAZER

andteamHowMartinAzitadoesNVIDIAandyourhelpretailerswiththeirAIdigitisationinitiatives?

NVIDIA is an accelerated computing company that delivers a full stack for building AI applications faster. We specialise in graphics chips that are a prerequisite for most AI applications and have created software accelerators, development kits and the like to make it easy to develop and optimise AI applications quickly.

“I am particularly excited about how AI and robotics will help automate warehouse and distribution centres and speed up the flow of goods around the world”

This means that customers can build the most accurate AI applications faster and deploy it in the most costeffective way. Our technology stack is available through leading equipment manufacturers and cloud service providers. Or companies can buy stateof-the-art AI applications directly from software partners and startups that use our technology. It is that flexibility that customers value, and it helps us stand out as a leader in AI. What technology are you most looking forward to using more of? In retail, it will really be a combination of technologies. Our Omniverse simulation software helps businesses optimise store layouts, and it provides consumers with a much better, faster shopping and checkout experience. We are also excited about how AI is bringing efficiencies to the supply chain. Simulation and digital twins can optimise distribution centres and warehouses, allowing companies to fulfil orders 20-30% faster. And machine learning software is being used to optimise routing and improve transportation of goods, helping companies deliver products to consumers faster and to commit to tighter delivery windows. Together, these will create new and improved shopping experiences for the customer – and deliver new revenue streams for businesses. What has been your career highlight, prior to your current role? I started my career as an aerospace engineer designing commercial aircraft. Seeing those aircraft carry millions of passengers safely to their destinations every day is still a career highlight. What has been a highlight in your current role? NVIDIA allows us to do life-changing work. Not only do we work to help customers solve some of their most challenging business problems, but those outcomes also have the potential to create better experiences

TRAILBLAZER

“NVIDIA is deliverscompanyacceleratedancomputingthatafullstackforbuildingAIapplicationsfaster” “NVIDIA is the most important tech company on the planet” for billions of consumers. In my current role, I am surrounded by some of the most brilliant minds in the world. Every day, I learn more about all the amazing technologies that are helping solve the hardest problems in the world. What exciting plans do you have coming up as an organisation? We are always introducing new advancements in AI – pushing the boundaries on self-driving cars, digital twin simulation to combat climate change, and improve medical diagnostics. In retail, I am particularly excited about how AI and robotics will help automate warehouse and distribution centres, and speed up the flow of goods around the world. By tackling these big problems, we are proving AI can make an enormous difference in how we work, shop and play. YAHOO FINANCE

Jordi Ferrer’s vision is to enable organisations with technology to have an incredibly positive impact across all remits – their business, their employees and their customers. With seasoned leadership skills and technological understanding, Ferrer has mastered the art of negotiation to drive lasting, technology-driven transformation in businesses across a wide range of sectors, particularly telecoms, industry and financial services.

VP & GENERAL MANAGER, UK&I, SERVICENOW

Q. INITIATIVESWHAT ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT CURRENTLY?

Q. WHAT IS YOUR ROLE AND ITS REQUIREMENTS AT »SERVICENOW?

My role is to make ServiceNow an amazing place to work and make sure that employees have fulfilling careers. And then also to obviously help our customers solve their most pressing business issues, whether it's in the public sector or private sector. We spend a lot of time giving back to society and doing things that actually will bring change. We are trying to find ways to improve services from the government, increase the skills in the UK and Ireland, and just do the right thing. We're a very successful business, but it wouldn't be successful if society's not doing well.

» We’re developing skills programmes, whereby we train people who are ex-armed forces but aren’t from an IT background, so they can learn how to operate on the ServiceNow platform, which is giving people new careers. The whole world is digitising, at speed. There are a lot of people who would have wonderful careers and wonderful opportunities, if we only let them. I think what we're doing with low code is a very accessible way for people to be interested in the IT industry and in technology, without being technologists. That's one area where I'm really proud because that changes lives and really drives improvement. Then more widely, we're trying to work again with the government to improve processes that are very wide, because if you think about how the NHS operates, or the Ministry of Justice or the Home Office, the problems are monumental and there's not enough money to go around. Technology can be pivotal in making the employees more effective and more successful, so they can provide the citizens with better services. AI, automation and RPA are such wonderful aids to make people work better.

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

THROUGHMAKINGFERRERJORDIAPOSITIVEIMPACTTECHNOLOGY

Q. ANY CASE STUDIES YOU CAN SHARE?

» We helped a bank in the UK to transform the direct debit payment process. When you're creating a debit process, if you make a mistake with the wrong account number or the amount, that's very disrupting to people, right? If you're, let's say, on a low income and you make a mistake, you attract 400 pounds to the wrong person.That, emotionally, is really hard, and it could take up to three days to reverse that issue and resolve the situation – the bank takes thousands of calls about this type of thing. We built an implementationout-of-the-boxofServiceNow that enables them to automate the whole process. So, now, 87% of the cases areThisautomated.helpsminimise mental health issues and, from a competitive standpoint, the employees of the bank can actually compete on service because they can focus on additive value.

Q. CAN YOU EXPLAIN YOUR PEOPLE-CENTRIC APPROACH?

» I always like to say that if I have a hundred brains in the room, why would I be the only one thinking? So if I have a problem to solve, I ask people what they think and how would they solveSecondly,this? it's about understanding people. Sometimes an employee might not perform, but then actually ask them what's going on, maybe it’s that problem at home? We all have good days and bad days. A good measure is when we got the number one place to work at Glassdoor. I'm just lucky that I can work with these employees and help connect them.

The world works with ServiceNow technologymagazine.com

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OFBREACHINGLIMITATIONTODIGITALLYTRANSFORM

28 July 2022 KAINOS

BREACHING LIMITATIONBOUNDARIESDIGITALLYTRANSFORM technologymagazine.com 29 AD WRITTENFEATUREBY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

Transformative Digital Services

To help deliver these transformative solutions, that encompass a range of services from experience design to artificial intelligence, intelligent automation and cloud, Director of Digital Services, Russell Sloan, leads one of Kainos’ two specialist business units (the other a dedicated Workday Practice), providing full lifecycle development and support of customised digital services. The goal is to deliver truly intelligent solutions that are secure, scalable, accessible and cost-effective.

Russell Sloan, Director of Digital Services, explains how Kainos has developed a unique mindset that embraces any digital challenge K ainos takes pride in combining the disruptive power of technology with the courageous ambition of their people, to create a better world for all.

30 July 2022 KAINOS

It’s a bold statement, but considering the scale of the projects they have undertaken already – which include working with the UK Government, the NHS and the digital transformation of FS&I organisations – they aren’t afraid to challenge themselves, the organisations they partner with, or the communities and industries they operate within. It’s all about preparing for what comes next.

With 12 years of consecutive revenue and profit growth for Kainos, the workforce also experienced strong growth over recent years with staff numbers nearing 2700, as of March 2022.

technologymagazine.com 31

limitation to digitally transform RUSSELL SLOAN DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL SERVICES, KAINOS “WE HAVE ACHIEVED 12 YEARS OF CONSECUTIVE REVENUE AND PROFIT GROWTH” 32 July 2022 KAINOS

In 2013, Sloan was made responsible for developing public sector business for Kainos – the largest and fastest growing area of activity in the company – alongside the aforementioned UK government’s ambitious and challenging ‘digital-by-default’ initiative.

Having joined Kainos in 1999 as a software engineer, Sloan has since enjoyed a dynamic career path, having held roles as a team leader, manager, and Head of Application Support. Core to his role is leading Digital Services on the back of the work that GDS (Government Digital Service) were doing inside the UK government, including developing the Government Digital Strategy, which set out how the government should become digital by default in 2012.

Sloan now leads a team of over 1,400 staff, delivering digital transformation for of

Breaching boundaries

LOCATION: BELFAST government, healthcare and commercial sector organisations across the UK, Ireland, Europe and North America. A diversified business, 37% of Kainos work sits within the public sector, 41% in the commercial sector and 22% in healthcare. On top of this, he is responsible for setting the strategic direction of the Digital Services business unit and developing long-term relationships through ongoing positive engagement.

BIOEXECUTIVE RUSSELL SLOAN

TITLE: DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL SERVICES INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY

KAINOS

Russell Sloan is the Director of Digital Services, a business unit within Kainos with over 1,400 people, focusing on the delivery of digital transformation projects to public sector, commercial sector and healthcare organisations in the UK, Ireland, Europe and North America. Digital Services delivered 28% annual revenue growth consistently over the last 5 financial years. Sloan joined Kainos as a graduate software engineer and progressed through various roles within Kainos including team leader, manager, and public sector lead. Sloan is an advocate

“We've always looked at bringing in entry level talent, whether it be graduates, apprentices, or through our skills academies. We like to find the best talent and there is a very strong ethos around staff development at all levels. We also supplement that by bringing in experienced hires in the right areas.

Since Smart Test was launched almost a decade ago, Kainos has brought further Workday solutions to the market; including Smart Audit, an automated risk and compliance tool. Customers include global household names such as Netflix, Match. com, Shopify and Capital One.

The Workday Practice is the other core pillar of the business, with Kainos taking £384mn of the global addressable automated testing market in 2021 with its Smart Test solution (a winner at the 2022 Workday Partner Innovation Awards). Back in 2011, Kainos started to formulate a new strategy and developed a relationship with the disruptive cloud-based ERP, Workday, as an early-stage partner (now one of just 37 globally).

34 July 2022 KAINOS

Sloan and Kainos know that the key to helping customers solve their biggest technological challenges is maintaining a continuously engaged and well developed team, which creates sustainable and predictable growth and a culture of innovation.

Since then, Kainos has been helping organisations worldwide to deploy, test, optimise, audit and support their Workday platforms. An approved Workday Service, Software and Extend partner, Kainos has now made its mark as the only three-time Workday partner in the global ecosystem.

The Workday Practice

As one of their longest serving partners, Kainos is a major part of a high-growth market with Workday, Inc. remaining on track to achieve US$10bn revenue by 2026, up from US$5.1bn in 2022. A commitment to people From the company’s origins through to the present day, the mentality at Kainos has remained the same: only hiring the highest quality graduates and, crucially, great people. Sloan himself joined as a graduate – as did CEO Brendan Mooney.

When Kainos IPOed on the London stock exchange in 2015, this was their start on the road to entering the FTSE 250, which they have now achieved successfully.

RUSSELL SERVICES,DIRECTORSLOANOFDIGITALKAINOS “WE

Kainos is dedicated to developing its people, providing everything needed for them to blossom to their full potential.

technologymagazine.com 35 KAINOS

Sloan cites the example of their project with HMPO, digitising UK passport LIKE TO FIND THE BEST TALENT AND THERE IS A VERY STRONG ETHOS AROUND STAFF DEVELOPMENT AT ALL LEVELS”

It’s all about consistency of message at Kainos, as Sloan explains: “When we look at our feedback from our staff surveys, there are very strong thoughts about helping each other, working very closely within teams and being really committed to what we're doing. “We win interesting work and we deliver well to achieve or exceed the intended outcomes.”

“As a company, we mainly provide digital services to businesses. We run the company on three principles: Be a great employer. Delight customers. And be a growing, profitable and responsible company,” he says.

“We digitised that journey. Now the user can process that all online – a much better user experience. Nearly 90% of passport applications are processed this way now and the service has won multiple awards. That's a good example of the type of projects we would do at a national scale in the UK. Our national services impact in excess of 60 million people,” says Sloan. In the Digital Services’ space, clients include the likes of Genomics England, Land Regristry (HMLR) and the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), all of

36 July 2022 KAINOS

Ready to change the world with us?

applications, as the type of project that has contributed to their recent business growth.

“If you wanted to renew your passport in the UK, you had to go to the post office and pick up a long paper form – in fact, most people picked up two or three forms because they generally made a mistake. Once you completed your paper form, then you would send that by post to process your application, and you would you would receive a passport within 6 weeks. Actually, about a third of the applications were returned without a passport because there was still a mistake.

Another major project delivered by Kainos was for the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, alongside Microsoft. Kainos helped deliver critical services for the UK’s exit from the EU to safeguard vital industries, UK economy and trade, while advancing future digital trade systems. The programme surpassed customer, trade, end-user and government expectations within an unprecedented timeline of 18 months, when such services usually take years to build.

which Kainos highlight in their interim and annual report presentations.

Major UK projects required a major partner in Microsoft Microsoft is a partnering organisation, with 22,000 partners in the UK alone. Many Kainos customers already have Microsoft technologies, making them ideal strategic partners when selling into the same marketplaces. “There's a natural synergy there. They're one of the leading technology companies in the world, so this works from our customer perspective to really push some of the boundaries with our customers,” says Sloan. “Over the last year, we have achieved over 350 certifications with Microsoft. This is technologymagazine.com

37 KAINOS

As GM of Microsoft UK's Customer Success Unit (CSU), Derrick leads the organisation responsible for enabling Microsoft's largest Enterprise Customers on their journey to embrace Digital Transformation. Core to the CSU mission is to deliver a differentiated, connected customer experience that spans the entire customer lifecycle. He is the executive sponsor of Microsoft UK's Diversity and Inclusion agenda and has played a leading role in Microsoft's strategic digital skills initiatives, such as the strategic partnership with the SouthCentral Institute of Technology, based at Bletchley Park, and the academic start-up project, University Academy 92 in Manchester, where he established Microsoft's new Greater

DERRICK MCCOURT TITLE: GM, CUSTOMER SUCCESS UNIT, MICROSOFT INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: UK RUSSELL SERVICES,DIRECTORSLOANOFDIGITALKAINOS “ WE DELIVER’ANTHEMICROSOFTINWITHCOLLABORATIVELYWORKEDNHSDIGITALANDPARTNERSHIPWITHTODEVELOPNHSAPP.ITWASABSOLUTELY‘MUSTPROJECT”

39 KAINOS

important for our own staffs’ development and allows them to further their careers.

“We worked collaboratively with NHS Digital and in partnership with Microsoft to develop the NHS App. It was an absolutely ‘must deliver’“We’reproject.”aservices business and our reputation is for high quality delivery,” says Sloan.

Derrick McCourt is the General Manager of the Customer Success Unit at Microsoft. With the UK government driving towards a cloud-first strategy, Kainos was already very well known to both Microsoft and McCourt, due to their outstanding track record in the public sector.

“If we use the example of the NHS App, this originated from a commitment made by the Secretary of State for Health in the Houses of Parliament that citizens would be able to view their health records through an app.

In 2021, the NHS App was the most downloaded free app on the Apple store in England. 141 million COVID passes have been downloaded, with peak traffic in the region of 10,000 requests per second. NHS App in summary: • 25 million NHS App users • 1.1 million GP appointments booked • 10.4 million repeat prescriptions ordered • 316,000 people registered their organ donation decision • Most downloaded free iPhone app in England in 2021 technologymagazine.com

“We were re-evaluating what the partner of the future would look like and, when we started recruiting a new wave of digital partners, Kainos really stood out. KAINOS AND THE NHS APP

With typically only 17% of technology roles undertaken by women, in the first half of the 2021 financial year, 39% of Kainos recruits were female. Equality initiatives are driven and supported by internal staff networks such as Voice (ethnically diverse network), Inspire (women’s network) –of which Sloan is the executive sponsor – Xpression (LGBTQ+ network), and the Neurodiversity network.

Five areas of focus in sustainability Sloan is particularly passionate about the sustainability goals at Kainos. Within the organisation, there are five areas of focus: climate action, gender equality, quality education, and good health and wellbeing.

40KAINOS July 2022

“In fact, it only took Kainos a short amount of time to become the Microsoft Partner of the Year,” says McCourt. “The partnership has gone from strength to strength. Kainos is now part of our technical advisory councils, so they actually influence product direction for the future. They know the customer's needs intimately and they’re able to bring those back into Microsoft and influence our future product road also refers to the quality of people Kainos provides for digital transformation journeys, investing heavily in technical skills – including the mutually beneficial Enterprise Skills Initiative –allowing both organisations to increase theirSpeakingdiversity.further on the connection Kainos has to the customer, McCourt adds: “Kainos is very aligned to our business outcomes for customers, so we know we’ve got a deeply trusted partner. They can deliver hugely complex cloud projects with a proven track record.” Such complex projects at significant times of change in the UK include the NHS App and applications around the UK’s exit from the EU, where strong citizen outcomes require technology platforms to perform faultlessly with strict McCourtdeadlines.sumsup the success of the partnership: “The NHS App was an incredible piece of quality collaborative work, which required an application to be surfaced on devices used by millions of people.”

McCourtmaps.”

In summer 2021, Kainos had over 230 young people attend its CodeCamp initiative in the UK and Ireland, designed to improve skills and encourage participants into a career in IT. Similarly, last year, almost 500 young

RECORD”technologymagazine.com 41

“Working with Microsoft, we helped the IOM to migrate to the cloud. It’s a success story of the services that we provide to the end users and a positive one around the sustainability aspect.”

Kainos developed its own IP for the purpose of a carbon calculator, combined with Microsoft’s expertise from their own Azure carbon reporting tool.

On specifically climate action, when the UN Agency, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) came to Kainos, they were experiencing issues with infrastructure: essential services couldn't be delivered; they were starting to experience resiliency issues; and, as an organisation that operates in over 150 countries, they were worried about security.

DERRICK MCCOURT GM, CUSTOMER SUCCESS UNIT, MICROSOFT

“KAINOS IS VERY ALIGNED TO OUR BUSINESS OUTCOMES FOR CUSTOMERS, SO WE KNOW WE’VE GOT A DEEPLY TRUSTED PARTNER. THEY CAN DELIVER HUGELY COMPLEX CLOUD PROJECTS WITH A PROVEN TRACK

people attended three-day workshops to help inform their career choices.

“We created an algorithm around measuring the level of carbon reduction. If you have an in-house VM (virtual machine) data centre, we look at how the reduction level differs when all that is moved onto the public cloud,” he says.

Sloan highlights that this changes the conversation at a CEO-level around the cloud, shifting from one of cost to the availability of service, resilience and security, instead.

“If you look at the journey to that commitment, we haven’t got all the answers today, so partnership is going to be incredibly important to us. A really important piece of work that Kainos are delivering at the moment is with IOM on sustainability.“It’safantastic customer example where they have developed the cloud carbon reduction calculator, delivered the IOM’s journey to the cloud and migration of Kainos was a carbon-neutral organisation in 2021, where they set scope one, two and three emission reduction goals; their target is to be carbon net-zero byMicrosoft2025. – themselves aiming to be carbon negative by 2030 and by 2050 –wishes to remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted, either directly or by electrical consumption, since they were founded back in 1975.

42 July 2022

“We also have our data and AI practice. Getting services and solutions onto the cloud is the first step, but then what do you do with data? And how does that enable you to make better decisions about your business? Both from just accessing the data and then adding the real intelligence, data science or some of the artificial intelligence in helping them to make some of the more complex decisions. As a continuation of that process, Kainos has an intelligent automation practice as well. Intelligent automation is a growing area for them, with the digitisation of processes being a huge opportunity for organisations to increase efficiencies and improve employee and customer experience. Kainos is making big, decisive steps into the future with their dedicated, innovative partners – and it’s going to be up to the rest of us to catch up.

“Microsoft is fully supportive, so I expect to see more in that space, too, as we look further into the future to North America and Central Europe.

technologymagazine.comKAINOS43

three data centres, and that customer has achieved an estimated 92% reduction in carbon emissions,” says McCourt.

Sloan adds that sustainability and carbon emissions are on everybody's agenda, so Kainos wanted to help lead customers to the right answers and give them the digital tools they need for their journey towards decarbonising.“We'llbeseeing some campaigns over this upcoming year using our carbon calculator, and it'll feed into some of our work around cloud strategy and around cloud migration type activities,” says Sloan. Expanding services across the world

According to Sloan, Kainos’ digital transformation to date is mainly concentrated in the UK, but one of the big attractions of working with Microsoft is their global“Kainosreach.has a good global reach with one of the other partners, Workday, where we're a fully global organisation. So, from a digital transformation perspective, we are looking to expand this year into Canada and Germany.

THESHAPING FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY 44 July 2022

EVENT REVIEW WRITTEN BY: TILLY KENYON

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Tech & AI

EVENT REVIEW

MATI VPKLICKTECHNOLOGY,HEALTH. KRESHNIK MATI VP KLICKTECHNOLOGY,HEALTH technologymagazine.com 47

KRESHNIK

“It’sfullyaboutbasicallygoingvirtual”

Looking at themes such as AI, Digital Ecosystems and Data & Analytics, the Tech & AI stage welcomed CTOs, CISOs and VPs of Technology from some of the most influential businesses in the world to share theirTheyinsights.explored how technology has developed, how it’s helping to solve problems, showcased the work being implemented right now and also looked at what is possible in the future. The impact of COVID-19 was a hot topic, with it having driven digital transformation and cloud adoption, while also substantially impacting businesses with the shift to hybrid working. In one session, some of the issues raised referred to the use of technology as a substitute for human interaction and whether it could be, and would be, achieved through the current digital systems or even the use of holograms.

“It’s basically about going fully virtual. Fully immersed technology that would take care of brainstorming workshops as well as every other aspect of meeting in person,” said Kreshnik Mati, Vice President Technology at Klick Health. Insights were also shared from companies including IBM, Unisys, Kainos, Sitecore, Interos, USAF, Oracle, JP Morgan, Tata, PwC and Infosys.

EVENT REVIEW ARUNGALAI ANBARASU, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY & STRATEGY OFFICER, WAYGATE TECHNOLOGIES FIRESIDE CHAT: DIGITAL ECOSYSTEMS ANTONY KAGOO, HEAD OF INNOVATION, COMMUNICATION, MEDIA & INFORMATION SERVICES, UK & EUROPE, TCS PAUL GRAHAM, DIRECTOR OF UK ENGINEERING, MATRIXX SCOTT BIRCH, CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, BIZCLIK MEDIA GROUP GERAINT JOHN, VP INTEROS RESILIENCE LABS , INTEROS AARON CELEYA, SQUADRON COMMANDER, UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE 48 July 2022

AMR DEVELOPMENT,ANDMARKETINGDIRECTOR,ELRAWI,SPORTSBUSINESSORACLE INDERPAL BHANDARI, GLOBAL CHIEF DATA OFFICER, IBM PANEL DISCUSSION: THE DIGITAL WORKFORCE SHUBHI RAJNISH, GROUP HEAD OF INFORMATION & DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, BAT SUSAN STANDIFORD, CTPMO, STEPSTONE KRESHNIK MATI, VP TECHNOLOGY, KLICK HEALTH SCOTT BIRCH, CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER, BIZCLIK MEDIA GROUP technologymagazine.com 49mobile-magazine.com

Aiming to transform and uplift natural spaces within the locality, they use robotic dogs that are programmed to explore the forest floor using sensors to detect terrain and its overall health, as well as identify the volume of sunlight reaching through the trees. The two dogs, Gizmo and Eric, also made a special appearance on stage – with Eric even showcasing a backflip! “We have an ambition to make Nottinghamshire a county for digital excellence and to try new technologies so that the next generation want to stay”

CEREN CLULOW DIGITAL CONNECTIVITY MANAGER, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTYROBOT-AIDEDCOUNCILFORESTRY MANAGEMENT. DR TAUFIQ ASYHARI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN NETWORKS & COMMUNICATIONS, BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY MOAD IDRISSI, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION, BIRMINGHAM CITY UNIVERSITY 50 July 2022

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Ceren Clulow, who currently leads the Digital Connectivity Service in Nottinghamshire County Council, took to the stage where she explained all about the 5G Connected Forest. This is a world-first project, delivering 5G connectivity into a woodland area. The project investigates the role of 5G in delivering visitor attractions for all ages and protecting the sensitive forest environment through robotic environmental management and live monitoring.

Cloud & 5G Leading telecommunications and data centre executives came together to discuss their strategies and the future of technology. A highlight from across the two days on the Cloud & 5G stage was the exciting talk about robot-aided forestry management.

NITU KAUSHAL, MANAGING DIRECTOR, INTELLIGENT EDGE, EUROPE REGION, ACCENTURE PANEL DISCUSSION: DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN TELCO. NITU KAUSHAL, ACCENTURE CEREN CLULOW, NOTTINGHAMSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL ALEX TUCK, BIZCLIK MEDIA GROUP technologymagazine.com 51

EVENT REVIEW TESTIMONIALS “It’s been great to have opportunitythe to come along and meet lots of people across the 5G and cloud industry” ROBERT FRANKS MANAGING DIRECTOR, WM5G “It’s a great event, and I always find it good to get up on stage and speak to the audience” SIMON CHASSAR, CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, CLAROTY “I really toopportunityandwascomingenjoyedhere,itagreatvenueafantasticformesocialise” TAMMY ARCHER CISO, INCHCAPE “It’s a atmospheregreat at the event, and feels really supportive and coolThere’sencouraging.somereallytechtoo!” ELEANOR LUDLAM PARTNER AT DAC BEACHCROFT LLP “We’ve managed to showcase the robots’ capabilities and the research we have carried out. It’s great to see positive feedback” DR MOAD IDRISSI RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, SMART COMPUTING AND ROBOTICS, BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY. PANEL DISCUSSION: AMIR PAULJEREMYJESSICAABDELAZIM,ELLIS,DIRECTORSPENCER,GOWANS,GLOBAL 52 July 2022

NICOLAS MARKETINGPRESIDENTEXECUTIVEFORTINEAU,VICE&CHIEFOFFICER,AIRTIESLIFE IN 2040: HOW 5G CAN HELP US GET THERE.HANNAH GRIFFITHS, SENIOR ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, JACOBS LARA MOLONEY, HEAD OF SCOTLAND 5G CENTRE, SCOTLAND 5G CENTRETARAMCDAID,REGIONALVICEPRESIDENTSALES,SALESFORCE DISCUSSION:EXPERT5G PARTNER, DETECON INTERNATIONAL DIRECTOR OF APPLIED 5G, DELOITTE MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, BAI COMMUNICATIONS GLOBAL DIRECTOR 5G, VIAVI SOLUTIONS technologymagazine.com 53

Christian Horner, Oracle Red Bull Racing Team Principal and CEO

The 2021 race season was a huge success for Oracle Red Bull Racing. With the team achieving 23 podium finishes and Max Verstappen winning the driver’s championship, Oracle Red Bull Racing had its most successful season in recent history.

A popular crowd pleaser at the event was the Oracle and Oracle Red Bull Racing F1 simulator, which attendees and speakers had the chance to experience.

54 July 2022

“Oracle Cloud enabled us to make raceday decisions that helped Max Verstappen win the 2021 Drivers’ Championship.”

He explained how Oracle is helping Oracle Red Bull Racing use data and technology to improve performance on the track and build an unrivalled fan experience. Elrawi also revealed how Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is helping Oracle Red Bull Racing prepare race strategies and make realtime decisions during races to help them win. Enabling winning through the use of data

Speaking on the Tech&AI stage was Amr Elrawi, Oracle’s Director, Sports Marketing and Business Development.

EVENT REVIEW ELEANORBEACHCROFTPARTNER,LUDLAM,DACLLP

“There are going to be times when you will face quite difficult circumstances, but I would say when it does come to that, you just need to take a step back and think about how you are going to approach the problem,” Archer concluded.

Another great presentation came from Simon Chassar, Chief Revenue Officer at Claroty, who gave a keynote presentation on managing cyber risk and XIoT. Chassar explained how everything in the world is now becoming connected, which in turn is creating a vast threat landscape. With more cyber attacks directed at the industrial industry, interconnected systems need to be protected, as the impact on society as a whole can be detrimental. Later on in the day, Simon Chassar was back on stage, but this time he was joined by Ian Lilleby, who is Group CISO at Sonnedix Group, and Rob Dyson, Global OT & IoT Security Services Leader at IBM. They discussed technological innovation, creating the right security policies for remote workers, and the ever-increasing volume of malware attacks. Dyson explained: “It’s an exciting time to work. We get to participate in this digital transformation, but we need to manage these vulnerabilities.”

TIMOTHYCISO,ROHRBAUGH,JETBLUEAIRWAYS SIMON CHASSAR, CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, CLAROTY

LESLEY KIPLING, CHIEF SECURITYMICROSOFTADVISOR, technologymagazine.com 55

Opening on the cyber stage on day one was a keynote presentation from Tammy Archer, CISO at Inchcape. Archer explained the various challenges CISOs are facing in the current changing climate. These included a rise in automated attacks and how attackers are becoming more motivated and knowledgeable.

Cyber Recognised as a crucial element of the technology industry, cyber security is a major concern for organisations globally.

PANEL DISCUSSION: SYSTEMIC GENDER BIAS ONLINE. EMILY COOK, MARKETING MANAGER, MARCH8 KATHERINE GORMLEY, PRINCIPAL SOLUTIONS ENGINEER, RESISTANT AI FANNIE DELAVELLE, MANAGER, BPIFRANCE ARUNGALAI ANBARASU, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY & STRATEGY OFFICER, WAYGATE TECHNOLOGIES NINA

Laurie explained that barriers seem to start at a young age with stereotypes, but that it can also continue into the workforce, with people often thinking: “If I cannot see it, I cannot be it”. Towards the end of the event, Samantha Karlin gave a keynote presentation entitled ‘An Ethical Revolution in Tech’, which spoke about AI perpetuating bias and the false belief of emerging technologies being neutral and unbiased. She urged the audience to focus on being empathetic and protecting ‘feminist leadership’. Other powerful talks from inspiring women shed light on some of their personal experiences with sexism and how they overcame barriers to pursue their careers.

METAVERSE RESEARCH, KABUNI 56 July 2022

EVENT REVIEW

March8 The March8 stage showcased discussions on women in STEM and what can be done to encourage future female generations into a male dominated industry. Are girls institutionally discouraged from pursuing STEM careers? Is there a cultural issue facing young women entering the industry? Or is it a combination of the two (and more)? These are some of the burning questions that were discussed.

Paulina Laurie, Head of Women in Tech at Frank Group Recruitment, and Samantha Humphries, Head of Security Strategy, EMEA at Exabeam, took to the stage to discuss barriers of recruiting women in Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

ALICE WILLIAMS, VICE PRESIDENT OF STRATEGY, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC UK&I JANE CO-FOUNDERPATEL,&VP OF

“The power of the network is huge, the meet,peoplemoreyouthemoreopportunitiesyoufind” SAMANTHA HUMPHRIES HEAD OF STRATEGYSECURITYEMEA,EXABEAM EVENT REVIEW MARA STRATEGIST,SENIORPOMETTI,AIIBM SAMANTHA KARLIN, CEO, GLOBALEMPOWER technologymagazine.com 57

Creating the technology of the future These are just a few snapshots of the insights available from across the four stages. Attendees and other viewers can catch up on all sessions from the hybrid event through the Brella platform and on Youtube in the coming week. It enables on-demand viewing and provides a method of contact between registered attendees to allow businesses to collaborate further.

TECH LIVE LONDON was brought to you by BizClik MediaGroup, in association with Claroty, Salesforce, Kainos, Oracle, Virtus Data Centres, DataCentres,NorwegianDatacenter,CloudFactory,umlaut,Africaandmoregreatpartners.

DIGITISING AGRICULTURE 58 July 2022

AGRICULTURE TO LESSMOREGROWWITHtechnologymagazine.com 59 PRODUCED BY: MALTBYBEN WRITTEN BY: TUCKALEX SYNGENTA GROUP

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CIO and CDO Feroz Sheikh is helping transform farmers’ lives through AgTech and promoting nature positive, regenerative agriculture practices. A gTech is a sector unlike any other. It involves the digitalisation of a lot of physical assets and typically spans over very vast, remote environments, which collectively have a huge role to play in the sustainability and climate agenda. At Syngenta, they thrive off innovation, offering solutions to fight climate change and tackle the challenge of feeding the world in a sustainable manner. As the Group Chief Information and Digital Officer (CIO and CDO) at Syngenta Group, Feroz Sheikh is guiding the organisation's entire digital transformation through technology. AgTech and the key challenges it faces Syngenta’s mission is to help farmers improve their yield, increase their profitability and grow more sustainably. These three aspects are what define the mantra underpinning the company’s digital strategy. “We are actually counting on the role of technology in helping farmers to be able to achieve these goals,” says“SomeSheikh.of our competitors, for example, are more focused around growing the adoption of their tools, increasing the acreage and capturing the data, whereas we look at the value of this data to help the farmers make better decisions and to help us make a better innovation available to the farmers,” he adds.

technologymagazine.com 61

Using sustainable AgTech to feed the world

“Technology plays an increasingly important and relevant role to help the farmers make better decisions. There is still a lot of untapped economic headroom in agriculture. We have algorithms that factor in elements such as soil characteristics, weather predictions, and seed variety and performance data from R&D, which help make recommendations so they can make better business decisions as a grower, ” saysSheikhSheikh.sees a future where machines autonomously inspect fields on behalf of farmers for signs of plant stress and crop protection decisions. For instance: “You could have machines that are moving in the field, inspecting the condition of the crop using cameras and computer vision, and then taking application decisions autonomously.”Sheikhalsoreferences

“FUTURE TECH PLAYS AN HELPRELEVANTIMPORTANTINCREASINGLYANDROLETOTHEFARMERS”

FEROZ SHEIKH CHIEF INFORMATION AND DIGITAL OFFICER, SYGENTA GROUP 62 July 2022 SYNGENTA GROUP

Sheikh explains that, in a typical season, the farmer has to make anywhere close to 100-150 decisions ranging from what seed variety to use, how are they going to plant it, how to protect their crop during the season and when to harvest, for example.

drones, which are deciding whether to harvest the fruit in an orchard; taking a picture of an apple and determining if it is ready to pluck it from the branch or not.

Feroz Sheikh is the Chief Information and Digital Officer for Syngenta Group. He is an experienced technology leader with more than 22 years of experience. As an entrepreneur, he has founded multiple technology-driven startups and took them to an exit. Prior to joining Syngenta, he was engaged in helping making education accessible to 200 million children in India as a philanthropic mission. At Syngenta, he is responsible for all IT and Digital strategy for the Group, where he is driving Syngenta’s mission of ensuring food safety while taking care of the planet by using technology.

TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION AND DIGITAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: AGRICULTURE INNOVATION LOCATION: BASEL, SWITZERLAND BIOEXECUTIVE technologymagazine.com 63

FEROZ

Feroz is a thought leader, shaping industry standards, creating inKozhikode,IndianCollegeadvisorindustryagricultureofaVice-chairHesoftwareopen-sourceandecosystems.isaBoardMemberandofAgGateway,non-profitconsortium200+companiesinandfoodglobally,andantomultiplestart-ups.HeisanalumnusofDelhiofEngineeringandInstituteofManagement,bothpremierinstitutesIndia. SHEIKH

We provide mission-critical IT services that transform global businesses. ABOUT US We deliver excellence for our customers, colleagues and communities around the world. We are DXC.

Syngenta’s mission to innovate sustainable agricultural solutions that enable the world’s farmers to feed our ever-growing global population cannot be achieved without the application of technology. Syngenta looks for like-minded collaborators – agile, forward-looking and effective. DXC has been working with Syngenta for more than 20 years, and in that time the two companies have built a powerful synergy. “DXC/Luxoft has established itself as Digital Transformation Partner for Syngenta on its journey to become a leader in Digital Agriculture,” says Global Account Executive Urs Geissmann. “We support Syngenta in several areas linked to DXC/Luxoft offerings. Syngenta regards us as a thought leader for the proactive way we have proposed ideas and applications applicable to agriculture. They find DXC/Luxoft an attractive partner because of our digital expertise in Life Sciences.” This is endorsed by Sunil Menon, who is a Managing Partner leading the Life Sciences business at DXC. “The urgent challenges facing the agriculture industry require the adoption of innovative digital solutions and digitally-driven business transformation.

DXC/Luxoft is very much aligned with Syngenta and its drive to keep the farmers as its central focus, keenly aware of their needs and developing the digital ecosystem that will transform their industry. We are members of AgGateway where we implemented and operate some essential platforms and solutions used to share data and facilitate interoperability.”

DXC/Luxoft adds value to Syngenta through its deep experience of multiple verticals, says EVP of Digital Engineering Sam Mantle. “We built a strong level of trust between our organisations. The possibilities for the application of technologies in agriculture and food production are endless: a win for DXC/Luxoft, a win for Syngenta, and a win for humanity.” Speed of change will differentiate winners in the Agritech ecosystem, building digital solutions at scale that enable DXC/Luxoft’s clients to achieve their ambitions.

LEARN MORE DXC enables Syngenta’s service to farmers worldwide Syngenta is a key client within the DXC Partner Ecosystem: Together we enable farmers with solutions for sustainable agriculture to meet the world’s demand

Technological advancement in AgTech Syngenta has close to 180 million acres digitally connected to their tools. Growers

In the next few decades, the world must overcome unprecedented challenges – challenges too complex to be addressed by a single nation or organisation alone. The UN Global Food Security report highlighted that 250 million people worldwide are at risk of facing food shortage. But what if great minds come together united in a passion for finding the best solutions of our time?

Syngenta: transforming the future of farming

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A tribe of visionaries, engineers, scientists, developers and makers from the finest agricultural companies in the world from start-ups, NGOs, universities, think tanks, from our partners and customers. Together, we will form an unparalleled agricultural powerhouse of diversity, collaboration and innovation.

SYNGENTA TRANSFORMINGGROUP:THE FUTURE OF FARMING

All this may sound like a sci-fi story, but it is happening around us. “You can gauge the impact of AgTech from the fact that it is predicted to soar to US$22.5bn in 5 years from the current US$9bn market size – a CAGR of 150%” says Sheikh.

access these tools on their tablets or smartphones, or in-cab displays when they're out in the field, or they may have a desktop when they're in their control room, forLookingexample.at modern equipment that's in the field, such as the latest tractors and combines, Sheikh adds: “You have so much computational power that it's probably nothing short of a data centre on wheels!”

Offering a different perspective to technology and digital adoption, the technologymagazine.com

And, pushing the envelope a little further: “We get into the realm of IOT and sensors. Soil sensors, which are six inches below the ground, or weather stations out in the field – all connected to their farm management systems through wireless, wifi or Bluetooth BLE technologies that help them send the data they collect back to the servers.

Data-enabled insights drive novel, augmented and targeted innovation, to meet the changing needs of future farmers innovationPoweringwithEPAM

EPAM & Syngenta: Driving Excellence in R&D Technology andLEARNBeyondMORE

Discover how EPAM’s digital transformation solutions and self-built data lakes further Syngenta AG’s R&D in the agricultural science sector Farming is the future. But, to weather the storms that lay ahead, that ever-useful tool, data, is essential. Step up, EPAM.

• Build robust functional data foundations • Connect all (R&D) data across functional data domains

• Use machine learning and predictive analysis to generate new insights

• Develop end-user applications that allow functional experts to utilise insights Syngenta AG is a leading global agriculture technology company that sustainably assesses and restores soil fertility, protects crops and improves seed quality. A large part of the company’s work involves assessing seed product outcomes to inform future decisions but, to do this efficiently and effectively, an overhaul of its data analytics’ workflow was needed. Data-enabled insights drive novel, augmented and targeted innovation to meet the changing needs of the future. As such, EPAM is responsible for operating multiple cloud-based data lakes, data warehouses and interconnected analytical tools for Syngenta. Each Syngenta data lake is remarkable in that it captures, contains and processes vast amounts of data , helping to give Syngenta enormous potential to drive future agricultural innovation.

Meanwhile, in Research Chemistry, EPAM drives Digital Transformation to capture high-quality structured data from chemical reactions, to enable the transfer of chemical knowledge throughout the organisation. This helps Syngenta to make data-driven synthesis decisions and to build AI-powered workflows. In phenotyping, genotyping and novel compound research, the ‘Big’ in ‘Big Data’ isn’t just a buzzword, it’s a reality – good news when the future of the world’s crop supply is in Syngenta’s hands.

EPAM rethinks the software that supports R&D to:

The data lakes cover Seeds and Crop Protection R&D spaces as well as an enterprise-wide Production, Supply and Commercial space. Via these data lakes, over 100 source systems and applications coalesce to provide data, with thousands of data extraction and transformation jobs providing millions of rows of data.

“THERE IS STILL ECONOMIC HEADROOM IN AGRICULTURE THAT CAN BE UNLOCKED BY USE OF TECHNOLOGY” FEROZ SHEIKH CHIEF INFORMATION AND DIGITAL OFFICER, SYGENTA GROUP 70 July 2022 SYNGENTA GROUP

• Crop rotation and crop diversification

• Minimise soil disturbance (minimal or no tilling before planting)

• Use of cover crops to protect soil erosion

pandemic accelerated that transformation for the“Simpleindustry.things like having collaborations over a video call. Covid-19 accelerated the need to digitise that entire data collection value chain. Advisors are able to offer suggestions to growers without being out in the field. Our marketing events turned purely virtual, and we are now thinking about creating a virtual metaverse solution, where growers and industry partners can interact, share knowledge or attend a marketing event. Equally, internal seminars or conferences that we do within the company also went virtual,” says Sheikh. “You could have the advisor sitting miles away from the farm, looking at a drone or satellite image and then making a recommendation to the grower on which part of the field they should scout,” he adds. “In terms of what happens in the value stream further after the harvest, this has also been accelerated by the transformation using digital systems.”Fromfield to fork, the entire supply chain accelerated the transformation from paperwork to digital systems, and from manual to autonomous processes. Aiming for carbon neutrality and net zero Regenerative agriculture or nature positive farming is a key aspect of Syngenta’s global strategy; regenerative agriculture is an outcome-based farming approach that protects and improves soil health, biodiversity, climate and water resources while ensuring farm productivity. It consists of practices such as:

• Optimise synthetic inputs (fertiliser, pesticides) technologymagazine.com

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“In R&D, knowledge and information are legacies… data needs to be stored and accessed in the right way. Benchling is critical in helping Syngenta capture and build on these learnings as a company.”

Syngenta & Benchling: Driving faster seed and agricultural development globally

The Syngenta Seeds business unit uses biotechnology alongside conventional breeding technologies to bring new characteristics into the seed varieties that farmers grow around the world. Seeds R&D has partnered closely with Benchling since 2020. According to Charlie Baxter, who leads Traits, Regulatory, and Product Safety for Seeds, the group has seen a significant step-shift in how it leverages data.

“The efficiencies gained from the ability to record unstructured data accurately, learn from past experiments, collaborate globally, while all in a secure and compliant way, not only benefits the scientists, but the whole organisation”

Charlie Baxter, Head of Traits, Regulatory, and Product Safety. Benchling has evolved the Seeds group’s ways of working as well, improving experiment planning by providing a more accurate view of milestones and dependencies, enabling new team members to upskill quickly by having a system of record to reference, and unlocking in-the-field optimization through mobile data capture.

Benchling enables Syngenta’s teams to communicate and collaborate across multiple locations and functions more clearly and quickly, greatly accelerating the pace of their science. Since the beginning of the partnership, Syngenta reported a 48% improvement in ease of finding legacy data or protocols, a 72% increase in ease of sharing data across teams and a 79% improvement in quality of data capture.

Benchling is a key partner in the next era of science at Syngenta. Repeatable, high-probability results are crucial to their Seeds business strategy, and as the pace of innovation accelerates, so will the quantity of data output and the need to draw insights accurately and with speed. Benchling is foundational to the technological infrastructure that Charlie and team need to tackle these challenges and to collaborate more cohesively–both internally and with regulatory agencies around the world.

Learn more Watch our video

CLIMATECHANGE

FEROZ SHEIKH CHIEF INFORMATION AND DIGITAL OFFICER, SYGENTA GROUP

“WHAT

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BIODIVERSITY SENSOR PROJECT: TRANSFORMING HOW WE BIODIVERSITYMEASUREINA

CONTEXT Biodiversity is declining at a precipitous rate, threatening our economy, societies, and shared natural environment. This decline has serious implications for agriculture, given farming’s reliance on biodiversity to sustain a healthy balance with nature and ensure the resilience of food production. However, to understand biodiversity, and how best to protect it, the world needs more on-the-ground, in-the-field data than is currently being captured. This information gap is the impetus for the Biodiversity Sensor Project crew, who built a lowcost, solar-powered, state-of-the-art motion-capturing system that would draw on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning algorithms to identify and quantify most moving species — automatically, autonomously, reliably and at scale. Together with our partners IIT, Fraunhofer Institute, TDWG and Tumbling Dice, we invite the agriculture community, researchers, policymakers, and NGOs to join us in this journey to accelerate the accuracy of biodiversity measurements across our collective home, Earth. Here is a short preview of the biodiversity sensor : HAPPENS IN THE VALUE STREAM FURTHER AFTER THE HARVEST HAS BEEN ACCELERATED BY THE USINGTRANSFORMATIONDIGITALSYSTEMS”

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AI development in agriculture. Potard was involved in creating AI-capable crop mapping for more than 70 crop types in France with incredible success, enabling differentiation between wheat and barley. However, he explains that the year-on-year changes to climate and crops is tricky.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the world in which farmers manage their crops. The industry is critical and, thanks to the intervention of new agriculture technology (agtech), consistency is highly achievable in comparison to the origins of farming, from which multiple methods arose.

In an ever-changing natural environment, technology still has its limitations.

Highlighted by Kevin Potard, Tech Field leader in Agriculture for Science & AI at Capgemini, biology is one of the major challenges that impacts the response to

Human knowledge advances AI in agtech

“We had to be able to differentiate wheat from barley on 15m resolution pixels. We succeeded in obtaining more than 98% of classification success. In this case, the biggest risk we identified is that it works well this year but not next year,” says Potard.

“Indeed, from one year to the next, the plants do not behave exactly the same way, either because of the weather or the variety sown. We spent a lot of energy orchestrating our different models to take into account this biological variability.”

Expanding on this, Oliver Lofink, Senior Director, Innovation & Strategy at Capgemini Invent, says this “depends on what region we talk about and what kind of crop is being produced”.

Artificial intelligence is the key to consistency in agriculture, but Capgemini believes natural crop changes are challenging long-term technology adoption

CAPGEMINI

ANDAGRICULTUREADDRESSESTECHRISKSOPPORTUNITIES

AI and agtech are necessary for farmers to ensure that food sources can provide for a growing population under challenging market conditions. The global IT services and IT consulting provider Capgemini recognises that the industry faces many challenges, but that breaking down those barriers will result in more opportunities for the implementation of AI and data analytics in the industry.

With challenges comes opportunities.

He adds: “In general, I would say that the farming industry is more risk averse, since decisions can only be taken once a year and decisions are having a huge impact on the harvest.”

“All the solutions that allow us to better monitor and map these inputs become formidable tools for increasing agricultural production,” Potard says.

“What we see is that, in comparison to the B2C world, the ecosystem race in Agriculture is still in the middle of being decided. Almost all major input companies provide their own platform and offering —same for the machinery OEMs—and we see new entrants, such as Cloud providers, all targeting the same client: the farmer. Our goal is to leverage digital innovation to reduce complexity for the farmer.”

Opportunity to positively impact the lives of billions and solving real world problems through Digital and Technology intervention keeps this partnership growing strong. Learn more

He also says that “we must go back to the basics of biology, what are the inputs that allow us to increase the biomass”.

Capgemini Syngenta Partnership Amitab Srivastava, Vice President and Global Account Executive is proud of the partnership between Capgemini and Syngenta that spans more than a decade.

Potard makes it apparent that farmers are the greatest source of knowledge —as both the experts and the users— when overcoming the barriers that are naturally imposed on the technology.

Lofink explains just how digital solutions can reap dividends in agriculture, despite the challenges of natural adaptation.

How will digital enhance farming?

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“Agriculture accounts for more than 12% of the global emissions today, which means all of us have a role to play in the carbon conversation”, according to Sheikh.

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Syngenta looks at carbon neutrality or nature positive farming in a slightly more holistic sense, from a regenerative agriculture, soil health and biodiversity perspective.

“AGRICULTURE

Key benefits of regenerative agriculture: • Improved soil health and lower carbon emissions plus carbon sequestration • Higher yields • Improved biodiversity • Better and more efficient use of water

“There are two or three different aspects in there. One is the emissions produced by the farming activities, as well as helping to reverse some of that through sequestration (above ground and below the ground, when the plants absorb carbon dioxide, they effectively take that carbon out of the air and store it in the soil and as part of the biomass).

“And this happens because of nitrous oxide being released through the use of fertilisers, methane being released by the livestock on the field, and carbon dioxide released through the farm equipment and machinery on the field.” HAS A KEY ROLE TO PLAY IN GETTING TO CARBON NEUTRALITY AND PERHAPS EVEN REVERSING SOME OF THOSE TRENDS” SHEIKH CHIEF INFORMATION AND DIGITAL OFFICER, SYGENTA GROUP

FEROZ

Most organizations lack a practical, easy to use, consistent, automated, data-driven solution capable to aggregate the data needed to build digital models of the company’s global value chains.

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Our solution enables companies to determine their global value chains, based on underlying data in SAP - ERP and non-SAP systems. The digital models of global value chains provide transparency on quantities, cost split, material and activities at the most granular level. Just like cost components (material cost, freight and power consumption), CO2 emissions can be mapped to the individual steps, allowing to determine the aggregated CO2 footprint for each product (semi- nished and nished).

Multinational Entities (MNE) have a big impact on the CO2 emissions. In conjunction with the required annual sustainability reporting, it is relevant to understand and manage the end-to-end value chains in order to optimize the value chains not only from a monetary but also from an environmental perspective. As part of sustainability reporting, many MNE’s may already have some idea of how to report GHG protocol compliant for scope 1 and 2 emissions but Scope 3 emission auditable reporting across the product value chain is a challenge for almost all organizations.

How to address scope 3 reporting?

If you are keen to learn more about Infosys – EXA – GVC Product Carbon Footprint and how your enterprise could bene t from using our solution and products, feel free to get in touch with our experts.

© 2022 Infosys Limited, Bengaluru, India. All Rights Reserved. Infosys believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys acknowledges the proprietary rights of other companies to the trademarks, product names and such other intellectual property rights mentioned in this document. Except as expressly permitted, neither this documentation nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Infosys Limited and/ or any named intellectual property rights holders under this document. Infosys.com | NYSE: INFY Stay Connected

GVC – Product Carbon Footprint is therefore the instrument to account, report, analyze, and simulate CO2 emissions for each activity, exploring logistical emission ows, overviewing important emission gures – supplier, inter-company and party–drilling-down3rdon most granular individual steps in the value chain, or analyze emission deviations due to change on any parameter. Building sustainability ledger

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Syngenta's focus on helping farmers to adopt regenerative practices and monitor soil health and biodiversity is actually a conscious step in that“Thesedirection.areexamples where we are using agronomically, scientifically proven techniques as recommendations to the farmer through the use of our digital tools to help them make those decisions and regenerate the land on their field.

“Similarly, from a biodiversity perspective, there is a direct link between the biodiversity and the actual yield that the growers have.”

As farmland degrades, farmers experience a drop in yield due to the reduction in soil productivity. According to Sheikh, there comes a time when the economic threshold is no longer viable, so the farmers would either have to abandon that field or turn it into pasture land for cattle grazing.

From that perspective, agriculture has a key role to play in getting to carbon neutrality and perhaps even reversing some of those trends.

“What it means is that the economic value that existed in that parcel of land is no longer available to the farm. It's our belief – in conjunction with agriculture experts, academia, and our own researchers – that through the use of regenerative agriculture practices, it's possible to actually turn this around.”

Soil health and degraded farmland

"WE WELCOME ALL TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS WHO SHARE OUR PASSION AND MISSION OF TRANSFORMING LIVES AND CARING FOR THE PLANET” FEROZ SHEIKH CHIEF INFORMATION AND DIGITAL OFFICER, SYGENTA GROUP technologymagazine.com 83 SYNGENTA GROUP

Partner ecosystem Whether it's around AI, machine learning, data science, or keeping their ERPs and CRM systems up and running at the same time, Sheikh says it is important to bring

This is an idea Syngenta are actively experimenting with, and it could take anywhere between five to 10 years to fully explore potential outcomes, with some instances where it could be a loss-making effort to try and farm on the land, because you would end up spending more on resources and inputs than what you get back from a yield perspective. Sheikh insists that by turning this around, it “restores the productivity and the yield of thatAnland”.example of this is a programme Syngenta are running in Brazil, which is specifically focusing on restoring the 84

“Through the use of technology season after season, you can prevent it from getting degraded in the first place, rather than trying to turn it around once it has lost its productivity,” adds Sheikh.

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productivity of degraded farmland and incentivising the growers to continue to follow these practices for future restoration of their land, spread over a few seasons.

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the best skillset, while balancing the cost aspect of it between different geographies having nearshore and offshore options, “where we are looking at helping to scale the internal team members by working withSheikhpartners”.continues:

“We not only feed the world, but also take care of the planet – that's the mission that we are on, and we welcome every partner who comes along to be part of that journey with us,” says Sheikh.

“We made a conscious decision to retain some of the thought leadership, architecture, and future vision internally, and then work with partners as extended members of our engineering and digital“Theteams.”otherdimension of the question is from an impact perspective. It is a call to action for us and each of our partners to join hands to make a greater impact in agriculture.“Personally, this is what gets me out of bed in the morning. We are here to help agriculture and are the in service of feeding an increasing population. This includes climate neutrality and nature positive farming.

CEOS

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COMMITTED TO DIVERSITY

MEET THE VALUABLE 500 The disability inequality crisis is real, so the Valuable 500 has united the world’s biggest companies to rethink their global leadership agenda WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK -

A t the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2019, a worldwide call was made to the global business leadership agenda to end the disability inequality crisis. Supported by Virgin Media, Omnicom Group and One Young World, the Valuable 500 asked 500 of the world’s biggest business leaders and their brands to join them. Valuable 500 Founder Caroline Casey spoke to Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, Vice Chair of the UN Global Compact and Chair of The Valuable 500, where Polman revealed: “I honestly believe that you have to fight for the people that are left behind. We have to bring humanity back into business and put it in the centre. To be a good CEO, you first and foremost have to be a good human being. And that starts with fighting for the ones that are left behind”. Using some of the world’s biggest brands’ reach and influence, the Valuable 500 has a mission to transform the global business system, shaping a society that includes everybody, not just the nondisabled. It is now the largest network of global CEOs committed to disability inclusion, increasingly data-driven in their quest to assist companies through their inclusion journey. Across the 500 members, technology is the second largest industry group including tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Google and Salesforce. technologymagazine.com 87 D, E AND I

Striving to drive positive change for disability inclusion In line with moving from commitments to action, the Valuable 500 strive to drive positive change for disability inclusion and intentionally place themselves where innovation and impact intersect. Currently, some of their Partnerships Team are attending Inclusive Africa Conference 2022, where new African ICT accessibility standards are launching alongside discussions regarding how to ‘build better faster’.

Betsy Beaumon, Chief Product officer for the Valuable 500 said: “Moreover, tech companies make up a significant amount of our iconic leader companies, which are 15 global CEOs and companies who will be spearheading the programmes and services to be offered under Phase 2 of the Valuable 500 journey. This will be activated through

“I BELIEVE FOSTERING DIVERSE HUMAN RESOURCES, INCLUSIVE OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES, WILL LEAD US TO CONTRIBUTE TO A HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY IN THE LONG RUN” global disability surveys, disability trend reports and an executive disability resource hub. By engaging with the world’s most influential business leaders and brands, the network now has a combined revenue of over US$8tn and employs a staggering 22 million people worldwide.”

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KENCHIRO YOSHIDA SONYCEO, GROUP

DR. ROLAND BUSCH PRESIDENT & CEO, SIEMENS AG

VALUABLETHE500INITIATIVE”

“SIEMENS

Financial specialist and Asian development blogger, Arup Kumar Chatterjee, stated that “there is a wide disability gap in mobile phone ownership, where people with disabilities are less likely to own a mobile phone than the nondisabled. Places like Bangladesh have the widest gap, with 55% of the disabled not owning mobile phones, and Pakistan has the smallest, at 11%. With the smartphone “This is another step forward for access to tech, and, specifically, better access in Africa. 80% of people with disabilities live in the global south, with the World Bank estimating that 20% of the world’s poorest people have some kind of disability and tend to be regarded in their communities as the most disadvantaged. We need to do better,” said theDigitalspokesperson.accessibility is a key area of focus for members, with 58% of the companies surveyed in the Valuable Truth report stating that they have started, or invested in, exploring inclusive innovation opportunities.

“Digital accessibility needs to be considered within internal systems to enable inclusive employment, and within all products. This must include the hardware, Valuable 500 – The Story So Far IS PROUD TO BE PART OF

software, content, and media,” added the spokesperson.Thepandemic highlighted the need for accessibility in everything from video conferencing tools to online voting, as life and work moved further online. Yet people with disabilities experience a significant digital divide, which can further exacerbate the physical ones.

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The

Championing systematic change

Hiring people with disabilities in all roles, including in tech teams, is critical to ensure companies deliver the most inclusive products and services, according to the “Ourspokesperson.membersinthe tech industry are pursuing a variety of talent and training programmes targeted toward people with disabilities. Positive examples of this include Microsoft’s pledge to double down on accessibility and Salesforces’ partnership with Blind Institute of Technology. Moving forwards, products need to be born accessible. Trying to retrofit accessibility is far more costly and time consuming than embedding accessibility within the initial design,” they said.

ownership gap exceeding the overall mobile phone ownership gap, they are most likely to experience a digital divide.” However, leading hardware and operating system providers Apple, Google, and Microsoft continue to add accessibility features that users, app developers, and media creators can leverage to create accessible tools and content. Moreover, global accessibility standards, such as WCAG for digital content, are constantly evolving as new technologies and capabilities continue to grow. The spokesperson continued: “With technologies like XR beginning to take hold, the global accessibility community, including a number of our members and partners, are working to make sure they emerge accessible to people with disabilities.”

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At Apple, we believe technology at its best can enable everyone to create, learn and stay connected, and it’s our mission to make technology customizable to the diverse needs of all our users. As a company, we know that achieving that goal means infusing accessibility into all that we do — from our products and services, to our stores and our workplace. We are committed to:

• Supporting the needs of our customers with disabilities: Whether it be building accessibility features into all our products, delivering our content in accessible formats, or providing dedicated support options for individuals with disabilities, Apple always wants to make our customers feel welcome and respected.

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• Creating a culture of inclusion: Apple believes in a culture where everyone, in every part of Apple, feels supported, valued, connected, and empowered to do the best work of their lives. This includes our employees with disabilities who have a voice via our global Diversity Network Associations.

• Innovating for the future: There’s always room for more when it comes to Accessibility and we’re committed to doing all we can to find new ways to support people with disabilities, not just through our products, but through all of our work.

Apple’s Valuable 500 Commitment

VERIZONCHAIRMANVESTBERGANDCEO,

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“I WANTED VERIZON TO BECOME AN ICONIC COMPANY, BECAUSE I BELIEVE TECHNOLOGY IS KEY TO UNLOCKING A MORE EQUITABLE FUTURE FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES”

The world’s biggest CEOs behind diversity Dr. Roland Busch, President & CEO of Siemens AG, explained that it is all workforce’smaximisingabouttheirfullability, saying: “Diversity, equity, and inclusion are extremely important for Siemens. We can only achieve our full potential both as a company and as a society when everyone is empowered to contribute and grow. That’s why Siemens is proud to be part of the Valuable 500 initiative,” said Busch Hans Vestberg, Chairman and CEO, Verizon added: “I wanted Verizon to become an Iconic company, because I believe technology is key to unlocking a more equitable future for people with disabilities.”

With programmes like Teach Access, Verizon is bringing together industry, HANS

Whilst technological advances are undoubtedly something to celebrate, the spokesperson added: “We must not overlook the scale of the remaining challenges for disability inclusion that persist in both business and society. Only by continuing to champion systematic change will we drive a cultural shift and reap the social and economic benefits of catering to the grossly underserved community. Disability inclusion benefits all.”

“AT ACCENTURE,

disability advocates and educators to prepare students with the skills and design principles to approach their work with an accessible mindset. Scaling Teach Access, through their partnership with The Valuable 500, are ensuring innovators of tomorrow know how to build for everyone today. Under the purpose to “fill the world with emotion, through the power of creativity and technology”, Sony Group aims for a workplace where every single employee can feel valued and respected, fostering a corporate culture that respects diversity in society. “I believe fostering diverse human resources, inclusive of people with disabilities, will lead us to contribute to a healthy and sustainable society in the long run,” said CEO, KenchiroAccentureYoshida.hasestablished the Accessibility Council – led by their General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Chad Jerdee and Chief Information Officer, Andrew Wilson. The Council ensures accessible technology across their entire enterprise as the business continues to advance disability inclusion as a source of innovation, creativity and competitive advantage. Julie Sweet, Chair & CEO, commented: “At Accenture, accelerating disability inclusion is key to our commitment to creating a culture of equality where everyone can advance and thrive, and core to our strategy of being an innovationled company.” ACCELERATING DISABILITY INCLUSION IS KEY TO OUR COMMITMENT TO CREATING A CULTURE OF EQUALITY WHERE EVERYONE CAN ADVANCE AND THRIVE”

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JULIE SWEET CHAIR & ACCENTURECEO,

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MINING AS A INDUSTRYMODEL FOR COMPLIANCEESG 96 July 2022 PRODUCED BY: ASHLEY KIRBY WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW

technologymagazine.com 97 CALIBRE MINING

The mining of gold and other precious resources is under the spotlight for its intrusive nature. Leaders within the mining sector have been assigned what some deem to be a nigh-impossible task: finding a balance between productivity and compliance with high environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards.

The Americas are significant contributors to the industry. There are an astonishing 13,000 active mines in the United States, and even more in Latin America. Calibre Mining’s operations span Nicaragua and the western US state of Nevada. The Canadian-listed company produced 182,755 ounces of gold in 2021 and continues to increase its ounces as it looks toward the future.

Mining is in a state of flux. Technology is shifting toward being either modular or remote; global demand for minerals and precious metals continues to increase; and fossil fuels, such as coal, will soon be obsolete. Within this context, mining is experiencing a complete overhaul that will shape the industry for a more sustainable future.

Petri Salopera shares Calibre Mining’s approach to environmental, social and governance across operations in the Americas and a sustainable partner network

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Minery specialists with safety, environmental protection and quality. Canchanya Ingenieros S.R.L - Peruvian company, established in 1993, specialist in the execution of works and comprehensive maintenance of underground and surface mining. We operate in Peruvian and Nicaraguan territory with international certificates. contactos@cis.com.pe | hcanchanya@cis.com.pe Learn more

PETRI SALOPERA VP CALIBRESUSTAINABILITY,MINING

Calibre operates the Pan Mine in Nevada and El Limon, La Libertad and Pavon mines in Nicaragua. Seeking to increase production, one of the company’s latest endeavours is the Eastern Borosi project, located in the Atlantic region of Nicaragua and scheduled to enter into production in 2023.PetriSalopera, Vice President of Sustainability for Calibre Mining, is keen to share the company’s achievements as an advocate for corporate social responsibility. Salopera himself is responsible for overseeing Calibre’s overall sustainability performance in relation to ESG across its operations. Originally from Finland, Salopera has lived in South America for most of his life. He is familiar with Latin American culture and fluent in Spanish, which was beneficial when he joined Calibre in 2021 and entered into what was, for him, new jurisdictions.

“Mining is fundamental for the future of our planet”

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“The biggest challenge must have been the new jurisdictions,” says Salopera. “I have worked in Latin America for almost 30 years, but I had never been to Nicaragua before. Fortunately, our team there is highly experienced and engaged, and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with them. They have contributed to my experience, and I have learned from them. In Nevada, we have a small but very strong team. This allowed for a quick and solid incorporation of the Nevada operations into our overall sustainability framework.”

While the company’s primary function is clear –to produce gold– Salopera also emphasises Calibre’s operational focus on sustainability and on creating value responsibly for those invested in the company’s actions.

“We are focused on delivering sustainable value for shareholders, local communities and all our stakeholders through responsible operations and a disciplined approach to growth,” Salopera says. “At Calibre, I saw a fantastic opportunity to be part of a very dynamic mining company and its executive leadership team. What attracted me most, however, was Calibre’s interest in the sustainable development of its host communities, and its strong commitment to doing the right thing, both environmentally and socially, at all times.”

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Calibre is a member of the World Gold Council (WGC) and committed to becoming fully compliant with the WGC’s Responsible Gold Mining Principles (RGMPs) by 2023. The company is also committed to reporting its position and progress on climate-related

Artisanal Miners and Calibre

Thanks to the culture of sustainability and commitment to ESG that Calibre promotes across its workforce, Salopera’s job is enhanced that much more as he works with professional, trustworthy teams that have expressed their positivity toward the company’s core values. Employees understand the importance of the surrounding communities and, therefore, focus on providing social support where possible, alongside efforts to influence reforestation programs and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

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risks, in line with recommendations of the Taskforce for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). Five-year strategy for sustainable mining practices Calibre has fully planned out its sustainability strategy for the next five years, and it is through this plan that Calibre will continue to promote its ideals in terms of responsible operations. Covering the period of 2022 to 2026, this fiveyear sustainability strategy also incorporates the interests and actions of external stakeholders, such as local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and public authorities.

“The objective is to improve Calibre’s sustainability performance even further, ensuring a culture of internal best practices, including our strategic business partners,” says Salopera. It also involves “contributions to the sustainability of our host communities beyond traditional mining activities, and connecting with efforts to safeguard the future through investments in favour of overcoming global challenges.” To achieve these goals, Calibre Mining will reiterate its collaborative approach across all areas of planning, execution, and evaluation of mining performance. Cooperation with stakeholders will set a precedent for the company to follow as it aims to meet the needs of all individuals and organisations that engage within the industry. technologymagazine.com

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Ensuring that partnerships are aligned with the company’s dedication to ESG is “We are focused on sustainabledeliveringvalue for shareholders, local communities and all our operations”throughstakeholdersresponsible

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According to Salopera: “We really hope to make important contributions to the quality of life of our host communities and their environment, which is especially important in jurisdictions like Nicaragua, where our social licence to operate and grow depends on our success in all aspects of “2022ESG.” is the year we will set the stage for our sustainability journey,” Salopera says. “It will require an understanding of where we are and where we are headed, responsibly. We will focus on meeting higher operational standards from 2023 to 2025 and finally, in 2026, we expect to lead the way among our peers as a frontrunner in sustainability.”Inthegrandscheme of things, to meet its objectives Calibre will require a significant level of input from its team, as well as collaboration with other entities. The company will lean on its partners in areas where specific expertise is required.

PETRI SALOPERA VP CALIBRESUSTAINABILITY,MINING

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LEARN MORE

District.technologymagazine.com 109 CALIBRE MINING

Governed by social responsibility Social responsibility is a key part of Calibre Mining’s sustainability strategy. The company is governed by its Social Responsibility Policy, which outlines the respectful nature of the organisation and its positive commitment to those impacted by its mining work. Calibre’s community engagement has changed the lives of many within the vicinity of its sites in Nicaragua. Established performance standards for community engagement govern the miner’s ability to meet best practices, as set out by the International Finance Corporation and the World Gold Council, and aligned with those of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Through its due diligence procedures, Calibre is well-educated on its surrounding communities. This enabled the company to carry out successful resettlement projects in both the Cedabilla and Santa Pancha – Pozo 7 communities located in the Limon Mining

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a major factor in building long-standing relationships with other businesses. Salopera explains that, “before starting any alliance, we take all partners through an intensive screening process, reviewing their business, health and safety, and ESG performance. This due diligence strengthens our selection process and allows us to better understand our futureFollowingpartners.”asuccessful screening, “partners and contractors are welcomed by the company into our ONE CALIBRE collective approach to ESG, which signifies that we are all united in our intentions.” Building a social and environmental advocacy network Calibre’s principal partners have responded positively and proactively to this process, and Salopera is excited to experience cultural alignment across the entire supply chain network.

“Our collaborators’ participation has been remarkable and, together, we have been able to positively change the lives of hundreds of families – even whole“Thankscommunities.”tocompanies like Civil Works, Puma Energy, NIMAC, Casa Pellas and others, we are opening opportunities for people in Nicaragua and elsewhere,” Salopera says. “This cooperation cannot

“The response of our verypartnersprincipalhasbeenpositive”

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PETRI SALOPERA VP CALIBRESUSTAINABILITY,MINING

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be underestimated; it is a clear manifestation of our common commitment in favour of sustainability wherever we work.” The ethos shared between Calibre and its partners will carry on into the future, integrating their best interests into ongoing and prospective projects. With this combined commitment, businesses will work with the mining company to realise its plans for the future. This translates into a positive outlook for the organisation in terms of business growth and the expansion of its sustainability approach, as it enters new jurisdictions. The collective ONE CALIBRE approach will drive even more community engagement, seeking active integration of the public in its sustainability journey. Having worked for other major mining companies and obtained insightful knowledge of the industry, Salopera divulges what he thinks will happen in the future and the ways in which society and the climate will shape the mining industry, and vice versa.

Calibre is excited to challenge the norms of traditional mining, encourage the use of renewable energy, and promote technological innovation. “Renewable energy, electromobility, new innovations — all these require our contribution. A better future can only be achieved with robust performance in sustainability, and that truly is Calibre’s business edge.”

“I saw a fantastic opportunity to be part of a very dynamic mining company and its executive leadership team”

Deeply rooted in the Americas, Calibre Mining will continue along its current trajectory toward a better, more sustainable world for all its stakeholders, internally and externally. Maintaining social support, improving its environmental stewardship, encouraging biodiversity, and protecting source waters are just some of the areas where particular attention will be placed.

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“Mining is fundamental for the future of our planet, and mining companies like Calibre can make an essential contribution to that future,” he explains.

PETRI SALOPERA VPCALIBRESUSTAINABILITY,MINING

THE BENEFITS OF BOTS We asked some of the leading minds in tech about the recent surge in chatbot usage, the power of conversational AI and how to spot good bots and bad bots WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK 114 July 2022 APPLICATION SECURITY

“In this case, it’s positive to see that HMRC has understood the value of investing in its chatbot programme so that it doesn’t fall into this category. Other organisations that are inundated with customer services requests should follow suit, particularly as the demand for digital and on-demand support continues to rise.” A divisive issue for many, chatbots are seemingly here to stay. How wide are the applications of these artificially intelligent tools, and what are the pitfalls of using them?

er Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) – the UK government department responsible for tax collection – has seen the number of interactions with its chatbot service surge from just under 200,000 in the financial year just before the pandemic hit (FY 19/20), to nearly 2.5 million in the year that followed, which represents a total of 3,275,046 separate chatbot interactions since the start of COVID-19. Niall Crosby, CEO, CTO and founder of AG Grid, commented: “When used correctly, chatbots can play a vital role in alleviating organisations of thousands of basic customer services requests. However, the ‘one-size-fits-all’ policy typically associated with chatbots, where it’s impossible to get a human response to a bespoke issue, can lead to frustration and a poor customer experience.

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U l k Y D Natural Language Processing Data Labeling and Cleansing CV Image Annotation Data and Document Processing Machine Learning Accelerate your AI/ML and automation initiatives and optimize business operations with CloudFactory’s scalable human-in-the-loop workforce 116 July 2022

Harding suggests that, every day, “hundreds of thousands of billions of conversations take place” all over the world.

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SOEREN BECH VICE PRESIDENT, EMEA, PERSISTENT SYSTEMS

“Technologicaldevelopments in recent years have elevated simple chatbot functionality to the more refined and complex realm of Conversational AI (CAI)”

Conversational AI is being used to help businesses, with chatbots being just a single application of this technology. Other applications also include virtual assistants, live captions and text transcription.

“Digitising these conversations is necessary to improve customer experience and generate human-like conversations with virtual assistants. We can also be confident that, as the younger generation becomes the major customer base, their expectation will be to connect with businesses 24/7 through technology channels – and advanced digital technologymagazine.com

Conversational AI at NVIDIA

John Harding, regional director of the UK&I Enterprise at NVIDIA, believes AI has now made speech and language understanding accurate enough that it's practical to deploy in industry. AI can understand domain specific jargon in realtime, opening the door to thousands of language and speech-based applications.

A real-world customer example of NVIDIA tech use includes T-Mobile, which offers award-winning customer service in its Customer Experience Centres and aims never to have customers repeat themselves.

To empower its frontline agents, T-Mobile implemented Expert Assist. This AI-based software uses NVIDIA Riva to transcribe

communications will only increase the requirement for a successful operation to offer advanced AI workflows,” he added. Some companies can get it wrong because they believe conversational AI applications cannot achieve humanlevel accuracy and do not interact in real time. However, according to Harding, conversational AI technology has advanced both in terms of accuracy and real-time performance to understand and generate intelligent responses in a human-like fashion. “Conversational AI not only improves customer experience but also operational efficiency,” said Harding.

What is Conversational AI? JOHN NVIDIAOFREGIONALHARDINGDIRECTORTHEUK&IENTERPRISE, “ConversationalAInotonlyimprovescustomerexperience,butalsooperationalefficiency”118 July 2022 APPLICATION SECURITY

Thomas Platt, head of sales at Netacea, says businesses are actually reliant on bots – third-party bots such as search engine crawlers (e.g. Googlebot), price and content aggregators, and partner services – because they’re making businesses money.

"Conversational AI primarily consists of three components: automatic speech recognition (ASR); natural language processing (NLP); and text-to-speech (TTS). These three components can be further divided into two categories: speech AI (ASR and TTS), which enables computers to transcribe speech and speak like humans; and natural language processing (NLP), which can be compared to the processing of language in the human brain and helps to provide intelligence to conversational AI applications."

“It’s therefore important to make the distinction between good bots and bad bots, because a bot management service that blocks all bot traffic would damage a website and do more harm than good. A solution should be one that prioritises customers but also realises the importance of bots on SEO,” saidBadPlatt.bots have the potential to cost businesses an average of 3.6% of their online revenue, according to research conducted by Netacea on the cost of bots, which found that, for 25% of the worst affected businesses, bots cost them more than $250mn a year. In that research, they also found that the businesses identified the

customer and agent conversations. The transcribed conversations are then analysed to provide real-time recommendations to agents for quickly resolving customer queries. With Riva, T-Mobile improved accuracy by 10% and was able to run the pipeline 10x faster.

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Good bots and bad bots

"Musk – now unsure whether the US$44bn Twitter takeover is worthy, based on the number of bots plaguing the platform – has started the debate on how tech platforms can better verify digital identity. It’s not an issue that can ever be in the hands of a single person; it's a business's job to implement identity-first security frameworks that secure and protect digital identities throughout their entire life cycles." France says that the top priority for all businesses should be to securely onboard all digital identities, humans, and machines.

“Validating human identities – as well as the related devices used for the interaction like mobile devices – OS, etc., will be critical" said France.

Elon Musk Twitter takeover brings bots into line of fire Nick France, CTO at cybersecurity company Sectigo, believes that the Elon Musk Twitter takeover news is a good example of just how damaging bad bots can be.

What Conversationalis AI?

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most attacks to come from account checker bots (46%) – these are used by bot operators to see if usernames and passwords that have been leaked also work elsewhere in a ‘credential stuffing’ attack. Sniper bots (32%), and scalper bots (29%) were identified as the second and third most common in our research,” added Platt.

DESAI CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, REPUTATION technologymagazine.com 121 APPLICATION SECURITY

It’s important to be selective with when and how AI is used interact with customers”

Soeren Bech, vice president, EMEA, Persistent Systems, said that “technological developments in recent years have elevated simple chatbot functionality to the more refined and complex realm of Conversational AI (CAI)”.

Chatbot success dependent on the nature of the query Pranav Desai, chief product officer at Reputation, said: “It’s important to be selective with when and how AI is used to interact with customers. Especially in a world where, depending on the nature of the query, customers may not want to speak with a ‘bot’ and may even get frustrated, thereby exasperating the issue and jeopardising the business’ relationship with theHere,individual.”saidDesai, the difference is understanding the nature of the enquiry. “For instance, AI that identifies when a human operator and touch are needed to resolve a serious complaint, against times when an enquiry is received out of hours and an automated AI-generated response can ensure a customer feels heard until an operator is back online to get in touch with them”.

PRANAV

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CHATBOTS AND AI IN THE UK AI helps companies improve agents' workload To improve agent productivity 34% 27%29% 23%

intercept requests going to agents To improve agent workflow

To provide customers with 24/7 support UK Customers recognise that AI improves their experience 39% 'I expect AI to improve customer service quality' 44% 'I expect AI to make my life easier' 49% of customers would rather interact with a bot for issuessimpler 50% 'I expect AI to save me from having to repeat myself when contacting a company'

solving requests)

To (prioritising,

Artificial intelligence (AI) - once seen as the tool of the future - now plays a crucial role in customer service.

The majority of UK companies are embracing chatbots in particular 46%UK Germany48% Benelux49% Nordics57% France60% Italy60% Spain73% The majority of customers recognise the benefits of AI in society 53% Chatbots have the ability to help customers reach the right channel 47% Chatbots can predictintentcustomer 55% Chatbots can be used across all channels 54% Chatbots will drive large costs savngs Indeed, business leaders now recognise the significant role that AI plays in building impactful customer experiencesfrom improving workflows to using chatbots to help with simple requests. And, customers recognise how AI can improve their interactions and experiences with a company. technologymagazine.com 123

“With terabytes of raw data piling up across the business, many automatedprocessinglabour-intensivetaskscanbeandstreamlined” VISHAL TECHNICALSONIPRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, ALTERYX 124 July 2022 APPLICATION SECURITY

“Now that CAI is a reality and seeks to deliver much more than automated responses, feedback-to-chat bots have become much more positive.

Freed from repetitive manual work "Unlocking the value from enterprise data and converting it into business breakthroughs requires labour-intensive, repetitive tasks spanning both operational activities and the data pipelines that inform them,” said Vishal Soni, Technical Product Marketing Manager at Alteryx.

“With terabytes of raw data piling up across the business, many labour-intensive processing tasks can be automated and streamlined. Alteryx Analytics Automation and UiPath RPA ingest data seamlessly from its source, analyse and interpret it, and drive results into downstream applications and processes. This frees teams from repetitive manual work and empowers organisational leaders to make faster, more confident decisions," said Soni. technologymagazine.com

“Looking forward, maximising CX in businesses will rely more heavily on bots, thanks to the use of sophisticated AI to not only access and harness the intelligence of a whole organisation and its systems, but also to provide a realistic human-like contextual and branching conversation.”

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Alteryx brings analytic intelligence to bots, delivering insights and outcomes from endto-end automation of analytics, machine learning, and data science processes.

The UiPath connector in the Alteryx Platform has accelerated value for mutual customers by making it easy to invoke UiPath bots directly within an Alteryx workflow, enabling automated analysis and augmented robotic intelligence to drive smarter business outcomes, using every byte of data in the organisation – even the 'dark' data hiding in legacy systems.

BARBARA SALAMI VP OF DIGITAL AT ONMODERNA CAPABILITIESNEW 126 July 2022 PRODUCED BY: VENTUROTOM WRITTEN BY: ADAMSHELEN

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“I started my career as an engineer, however I pivoted into other areas that have gotten me to where I am today. Looking back, I am glad that I wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable, stayed curious and open minded,” explains Salami, who is also a mother of three. “I was excited to join Moderna. I was drawn to the challenge and opportunity of having a green field to build a future-ready digital platform that will be second to none in our industry and a yardstick for other industries. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Nearly two years in, we are beginning to see value created from the foundations of the work that we have done so far. It is early days, but very exciting. One of my biggest lessons on this digital acceleration journey is that technology is not enough to deliver value. The organisation needs to be clear on the why. Technology enablement needs to be coupled with

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Moderna developed a vaccine against COVID-19 in record time and the company’s digital infrastructure played a critical role; Barbara Salami explains how In August 2020, biotechnology company Moderna, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was deep in the fight against COVID-19. While the company harnessed the power of digital in driving its clinical innovation, it recognised that it also needed to build a powerful digital ecosystem to enable its global commercialisation goals. It was at this time that Barbara Salami joined Moderna as Vice President of Digital for Commercial, to help build the company’s digital for commercial capability.

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Barbara Salami VP of Digital at Moderna on new capabilities Being 130forpivotwithrelentlessunapologeticallyandboldroomtofailandfastisimportantanyorganisation”

• Building an automated intelligence engine to power understanding of performance, drive recommendations and personalise

BARBARA SALAMI VP, DIGITAL FOR COMMERCIAL, MODERNA “

• Creating a frictionless and inclusive experience for external stakeholders

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“We are obsessed about reducing friction and making it easy for our external stakeholders who already have to navigate a complex ecosystem of wellness and healthcare,” says Salami. “We want to make

• Delivering digitisation and simplification of business operations

a solid strategy, committed business partnership, robust change management, correct processes and a very deliberate approach to how we think about engaging withModernacustomers.”wasfounded in 2010 and is focused on mRNA technology, which carries instructions across the body, instructing cells what to do. The company is fully committed to delivering on the promise of mRNA science for patients everywhere. “Our platform has a huge opportunity to go beyond COVID-19 to transform how we deliver medicine to the world across multiple modalities and therapeutic areas – such as immunology, virology and rare diseases among others. The opportunities areInlimitless.”Salami’s role as VP of Digital for Commercial, she is accountable for:

EXECUTIVE BIO BARBARA SALAMI TITLE: VP, DIGITAL FOR COMMERCIAL LOCATION: UNITED STATES technologymagazine.com

Barbara Salami is the VP of Digital for Commercial at Moderna, where she leads digital transformation for Moderna's new commercial organisation. She is accountable for building digital experiences and digitisation of business processes globally.Priorto joining Moderna, Barbara worked at GSK, Shire, BMS, AstraZeneca and Aetna among others.

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Barbara holds an MBA from Pennsylvania State University and a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University. A tech-geek at heart and an advocate for STEM, she enjoys empowering young girls to explore STEM programs/ careers. Her passion for STEM led her to co-found StemDragons, a program designed to teach K-8 kids the fundamentals of coding. Barbara and her husband have three children who keep them on their toes.

Hundreds of millions of individuals across the world have been vaccinated with Moderna’svaccine.COVID-19 134 July 2022 MODERNA

“Being unapologetically relentless and bold with room to fail and pivot fast is important for any organisation that wants to do great things. It is important to create psychological safety for employees to exemplify these behaviours habitually. Moderna gets that,” she says.

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it easy for consumers and their caregivers to inform their decisions and get access to our medicines. We are committed to healthcare providers who make sure that they offer their patients the best advice and care for healthier lives. We also want to support governments who are keen on providing health security for their citizens. In the same token, we must make it easier for our employees to do their jobs and digitise.”

Being relentless and bold at Moderna “Being relentless and bold is a way of life at Moderna. You instantly feel this energy here. In Moderna mindsets, we describe this as acting like owners, pushing past possible and questioning conventions,” she says. “I came from other organisations where you would imagine a lot of cool ideas – but it was hard to turn those ideas into reality. Moderna has really changed my perspective in terms of how far you can go when you start thinking bigger. It is no news to the world, or to anyone, what Moderna was able to accomplish. Being relentless, bold, collaborative and curious were key factors.” In a record-breaking 42 days, Moderna went from sequence to medicine in a vial ready for human trials. In a matter of eleven months, they had a conditionally approved product designed to protect lives against COVID-19. At the time of writing, the United States has just passed one million deaths from the virus.

Give it a shot

SALAMI

BARBARA VP, FOR COMMERCIAL, MODERNA “ Looking back, I am glad that I wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable, stay curious and open minded”

and problem solvers (also known as my colleagues) across many functions to align on a clear strategy and execution plan. Everyone came ready to roll their sleeves up. Many of us were one-person teams at the time and had to wear multiple hats. At the time, we were a little over 700 employees in total. We had to operate with dynamic range, toggling between strategy and execution as needed. We didn’t have all the answers. There were no examples of others who had walked this path before us. The entire world was experiencing the pandemic at the same time. Decision making was quick. We pivoted fast as we learnt more - which felt like hourly. It was the best form of collaboration that I had ever experienced in my entire career.”

DIGITAL

Salami knew that they had to improve the digital infrastructure at Moderna. There was no“Wequestion.strive to make it easy for patients and caregivers to get the help they need, to support healthcare providers with additional tools for better patient care and Answering consumer questions and building Moderna’s digital infrastructure “My proudest achievement was being part of the inaugural team that supported our first commercialisation opportunity for our COVID-19 vaccine. Before we knew whether the vaccine would pass the final test, we began preparation. I had just started my journey at Moderna and immediately partnered with an amazing team of visionaries

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Using data and AI to create an exceptional customer experience at Moderna Moderna is in the early stages of its commercial journey and digital is a core strategic enabler. The digital ambition is to create frictionless and impactful experiences for our stakeholders globally. This is an area where the life sciences industry continues to fall short. Salami understands that this is no small feat but is confident that if any company can do it in life sciences, it will be Moderna. Beyond the goal of delivering delightful experience and solutions, she is also working on simplifying commercial operations and processes through digitisation.

for governments who want to ensure health security for their citizens. As a digital first organisation, we must be obsessed about our stakeholders and deliver the most meaningful and delightful experiences. Ultimately, if we do not get it right for patients, we have failed. We learnt from health care providers and consumers alike that they wanted an easy way to learn more about mRNA and our vaccine, contact us and have their questions resolved. It was super important to address these needs. Consequently, we went into action to enable what we described as a minimum delightful experience,” said Salami. Within six weeks, Moderna had a contact centre up and running, web experiences built, digital apps that required cross-platform integrations in operation and a foundational analytics tracking framework implemented, among other things.

“ enablementTechnology needs to be coupled with solid business partnership and the right management”change

“We must do both exceptionally well. However, it is not lost on me the challenge that lies ahead.”

BARBARA SALAMI VP, DIGITAL FOR COMMERCIAL, MODERNA

“There are many other great things that Moderna has done,” says Salami. “Being able to be part of that is something I will never forget.”

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The data must be highly secure, compliant and clean. These are non-negotiables.”

One of many exciting areas that her team is exploring is the digitisation of Moderna’s content review and approval process. Moderna is also working with its data to create exceptional customer experiences.

“We do not buy technology suites for convenience, ease of implementation or due to peer pressure. Instead, we leverage best-of-breed platforms to fit into a modular, composable and flexible framework. All platforms that are part of the customer engagement and marketing technology stack are Microservices-enabled, API-first, Cloud-based and Headless (MACH). You can think of each of the platforms in the stack as a Lego piece. If a specific platform stops meeting our needs, we can quickly pivot to another platform without significant disruption to the business. We have also been deliberate about building global components that can be leveraged everywhere. Our approach to platform architecture has also contributed to faster access to data for internal stakeholders. For example, we have real-time access to data generated by Moderna’s own call centre ecosystem,” said Salami. Salami stresses the importance of partnering for scale and innovation. She does point out the need to find partners who share similar values as Moderna as well as match Moderna’s pace of innovation. She is not afraid to and has stepped away from organisations service providers and strategic technology providers who have struggled on either end. Salami works with a select number of partners including Apply Digital andApplySalesforce.Digitalis a partner who has worked with Moderna since November 2020. Headquartered in Vancouver and founded in 2016, the Apply Digital supports Moderna technologymagazine.com

When it comes to how Salami and her team are designing the digital platform, she says that lessons learnt from the past guided her decision on the architecture.

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“We are taking a deliberate approach in how we design, build and enable an automated intelligence engine,” explains Salami. “Data is a strategic asset. We are taking both a product and data as a service approach to how we envision creating value with data and analytics at Moderna. Presently, we are laser focused on building the right data foundation from sourcing to democratisation.

brainstorm on how to bring some of those to life at Moderna. Beyond the technical aspects of our partnership, we have come together to volunteer and help underserved communities and underrepresented students to advance their STEM careers. I'm grateful for that opportunity to partner with Salesforce.”

Salesforce is also an important stakeholder and partner. The company was founded in 1999 and is based in San Francisco.

“Our global customer relationship management (CRM) platform is built on Salesforce,” said Salami. “We are also working with Salesforce to build out a reimagined case management platform to support agents across the world. It has been great to learn from Salesforce about some of the cool innovations that they have matured in other industries and “Each day, we get closer to the moment when personalised medicine will become a reality and be accessible”

BARBARA SALAMI VP, DIGITAL FOR COMMERCIAL,

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The future of biotechnology and healthcare at Moderna

As part of its Global Public Health strategy, Moderna has committed to advancing into clinical trials a portfolio of 15 vaccine programmes targeting emerging or neglected infectious diseases. It is also advancing vaccines that address current diseases of significant impact to low- and middle-income countries. with a critical part of its ecosystem, which is the development of its web and digital experiences. “Beyond core web development, Apply Digital has also partnered with us in designing customer experience journeys and great thought partners on our technical architecture,” says Salami.

“From the standpoint of readiness, we've done some great work in enabling the foundational platforms and technologies. I do recognise that we are still early on our journey to a future ready state,” says Salami. “We will continue to be deliberate in our choices on digital platforms and how we architect them, data ecosystem, strategic partnerships and building a high performing digital team. We need to bring our employees along with us on this journey. People make or break any digital transformation.”

“Having lived a better part of my life in Nigeria, empathy, inclusion and accessibility to medicine are important to me. It takes courage for any organisation to choose to leverage its resources to help citizens of the world who live in low and middle-income countries in a meaningful way. It warms my heart to see what Moderna is doing and even more so to be part of it. Each day, we get closer to the moment when personalised medicine will become a reality and be accessible to all who want it irrespective of your socio-economic status, gender and racial identity among others,” says Salami. Moderna currently has 46 development programmes in its pipeline. Over the next year, there's going to be a keen focus from Moderna on making sure that they have the digital infrastructure in place to continue to advance those development candidates at speed and with the highest quality.

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“In a survey of supply-chain leaders, the latest in a series, 80% of respondents said that, as of March 2022, they have implemented ‘dual sourcing’ – up from 55% just a few months ago. New sources may work for some industries, but not all. BY: ALEX TUCK

“As the frequency and severity of disruptions increase, the era of neglecting supply chains, trusting suppliers, and optimising for cost is probably

A ccording to Knut Alicke, partner at McKinsey & Company, since the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have “grappled with one disruption after another – from natural disasters to cyberattacks – that their supply chains were not built to withstand”.

World-class consultants, software companies and supply chain experts discuss trends in the industry amid a widespread tech evolution over,” says Alicke. “We’re entering a new age of supply chain management, where sourcing capabilities are king and digital innovation is the bridge to resilience.”

Alicke suggests that supply chain leaders began to implement resilience levers in 2020, such as shifting from optimising “just in time” delivery to preparing for “just in case” demand scenarios. Despite this shift, many of the strategies only partly addressed the challenges operators face.

ININNOVATIONTECHNOLOGICALTHE SUPPLY CHAIN

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“WE SEE THE FUTURE OF SUPPLY CHAINS BECOMING HIGH TECH FOR LONG TERM RESILIENCE” KNUTPARTNER,ALICKE MCKINSEY & COMPANY technologymagazine.com 143 IT BUDGETS

that can solve near-term challenges and protect against future disruptions”.

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Alicke adds that “more companies are constructing a digital twin of the most critical parts of a supply chain – a strategy IS THE LUBRICANT IN THE MACHINERY OF SUPPLY CHAINS, ALLOWING THE RIGHT DECISIONS TO BE MADE AND EFFICIENCY TO BE MAXIMISED”

“DATA

As more assets are digitised, Alicke believes it’s even more important that companies also step up investment in cybersecurity tools and the workforce to support the technology.

“This calls for a business continuity plan, driven by CEOs that understand supply chain resilience can no longer be ‘just in time’ or ‘just in case’, but an ‘any case’ business imperative.” Supply chain risk management on three clear paths According to Peter Jackson and Tim Stone –both senior directors at Exiger Government Solutions – just two or three years ago, supply chain risk management (SCRM) “was TOM SOLACEANDSUPPLYFAIRBAIRNCHAINEXPERTDISTINGUISHEDENGINEER,

That’s why we see the future of supply chains becoming high-tech for long-term resilience.”

“Blockchain technology is revolutionising the world of customised supply chain management. Using distributed ledgers and open record-keeping—the foundations of blockchain technology—companies can establish near-perfect knowledge of every item in their supply chain, down to thirdtier suppliers,” they say.

here “EASY ACCESS TO ACCURATE, REALTIME DATA STREAMS THAT UNIFY DATA FROM ACROSS IMPORTANT”NEVERORGANISATIONTHEHASBEENMORE NICKY TOZER SVP FOR EMEA, ORACLE NETSUITE 146 July 2022 IT BUDGETS

The

Jackson and Stone believe that while investments in SCRM tech have taken future of supply chain is

a wide variety of paths, three clear themes have emerged: customised, specific solutions; big data solutions; and automated due diligence solutions.

When it comes to IT budgets, “the ability to reduce costs stems from organisations’ ability to understand what controls and optimisations they can put in place,” says Simon Wilson, chief technology officer for ArubaSupplyUK&I.chains are becoming more dynamic, covering larger networks and, with developments like 5G, IoT devices, and Wi-Fi 6, edge computing is becoming almost a necessity, according to Wilson. an esoteric field, a murky study of logistics and warehousing that few outside the industry understood, or cared to”.

With the global chip or semiconductor shortage, which has led to increased product and freight costs, having a “crippling effect across various industries, from automotive to IT”, Wilson observes that spending on software-as-a-service “may still be growing, but global spending on IT hardware is slowing down”.

For growing businesses, integrating data solutions directly into their organisations will be a priority for 2022, allowing fast responses in a changing market, effective planning and informed decision making.

Henrik Smedberg, head of intelligent spend management at SAP Ariba & SAP Fieldglass, adds: “Visibility is always important in supply chains, in particular when trying to mitigate global supply disruptions that have become more commonplace in recent years. Amid this backdrop, it’s essential that companies have visibility of all their trading partners – including manufacturers, shippers, forwarders and others – and have the connectivity to deliver real-time updates throughout the process.”

“Key to achieving this is to shift away from the traditional linear supply chain where each step is dependent on the one before,” says Smedberg. “Network strategies and making use of data-driven insights for forecasting will be important in avoiding repercussions from future shocks and shifts, replacing linearity with interconnectivity, and allowing procurement and supply chain Live simulations can bring unlimited ‘what if’ scenarios “Modern supercomputing is delivering something new. By parallelising live simulations, you can explore unlimited ‘what if’ scenarios quickly, enabling you to find and reach your optimum decision faster. For this to happen, we need scalable compute power that can be accessed as needed.”

“We suggest organisations broaden their thinking, from exploring alternative suppliers to recycling or upcycling older technology to leveraging software solutions. And above all? Challenge their suppliers to come up with ideas. There’s usually more than one way to get the job done,” says Wilson.

“As businesses become better accustomed to fluctuating conditions, we’ll likely see a focus on longer term planning, but adaptability will be a key priority.” That’s the opinion of Nicky Tozer, SVP for EMEA at Oracle NetSuite.

“Easy access to accurate, real-time data streams that unify data from across the organisation has never been more important. Manually collecting and analysing data from different departments and spreadsheets not only takes a huge amount of manpower and time, but can lead to errors and poor decision making.

Craig Beddis, CEO, Hadean.technologymagazine.com

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Data democratisation

A digital backbone that allows this data to be shared in real-time and that can handle data – from information capture and exchange to integration and governance across the network of internal systems, cloud applications, trade partner systems, and connected devices – is necessary for businesses to achieve true end-to-end visibility.” Mark Morley, Senior Director, Product Marketing for Business Network at

leaders to continuously monitor supply risk dependencies. Simultaneously, cloudbased models enable partner ecosystems to reconsider how they interact with one another, as they look towards engaging in supply chain innovation, where greener practices are prioritised and rewarded.”

"Data is the lubricant in the machinery of supply chains, allowing the right decisions to be made and efficiency to be maximised. The proven way to access, use and act on data is through an EventDriven Architecture (EDA), which allows the right data to get to the right application at the right time. Real-time, unified views of your supply chain reduce wasted energy, resources, and time, minimising environmental impact," says Fairbairn.

Ethical sourcing key to supply chains

“In order to create an ethical supply chain, complete transparency and endto-end insight into the whole supply chain is necessary. It is critical that up-to-date information is provided regularly across the entire supply chain and by all organisations, so there is no missing link.

“Supply chains will have to be agile, nimble and flexible to counter significant challenges. Overnight, batch-based processing and planning simply won’t cut it. Real-time, fully-integrated and digitised supply chains are needed to reduce the impact of disruption to a minimum," he adds. Sustainability the driver of digital transformation Research by Celonis and IBM found that supply chain leaders are under pressure from all sides to become more sustainable – not just from board-level executives, but also from customers and investors –and are embracing technology to hit their sustainability goals. More than half of chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) surveyed in the research said that they would be willing to sacrifice up to 5% of profit to become more sustainable.

Tom Fairbairn is a supply chain expert and distinguished engineer at real-time data distributor, Solace, used by the likes of NASA and the London Stock Exchange.

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According to Opentext, 88% of global consumers indicated that they plan to prioritise buying from companies that have ethical sourcing strategies in place according to their research.

ABILITY

SIMON WILSON CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, ARUBA UK&I

“THE

“Measures supply chain leaders hope to take include reusing materials, embracing the circular economy and designing new services based on renewable energy,” says Nick Mitchell, vice president and country manager, UK&I, Celonis. “Technology will be key to implementing these changes, with more ABILITY TO REDUCE COSTS STEMS FROM ORGANISATIONS’ TO UNDERSTAND WHAT CONTROLS AND OPTIMISATIONS THEY CAN PUT IN PLACE” than half of CSCOs (55%) saying that they hoped to use realtime monitoring on sustainability,environmentaland more than two-thirds (67%) saying that they hoped to use data to enhance sustainability initiatives. Looking to the future, Mitchell suggests most CSCOs believe that hybrid cloud will be important to enabling the digital transformation of supply chains and, as such, are already embracing technologies like AI-enabled real-time inventory management, as well as process and task mining to build smarter, more resilient supply “Sustainabilitychains.willabsolutely remain a key concern for supply chain leaders,” he concludes.

technologymagazine.com 149 IT BUDGETS

Rasheed Mohamad of ALE: Unpredictable,

Making the

150 July 2022

Unpredictable,ALE: Predictable technologymagazine.com 151 PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY WRITTEN BY: İLKHAN ÖZSEVIM ALCATEL - LUCENT ENTERPRISE

“It is important that innovation is approached holistically, rather than being confined to one department or an isolated aspect of your business,” he says.

Rasheed Mohamad, Executive Vice President at Alcatel Lucent Enterprise, gives insights into transformation, automation and the importance of predicting outcomes

Mohamad manages the end-to-end (e2e) delivery of the whole quote-to-cash (q2c) ecosystem at ALE. After a customer places an order, the procurement, planning, supply chain and logistics all work together as an e2e delivery process. He is also responsible for business technology, which is a CIO function, ensuring that all of the tools, infrastructure, and, he says, “perhaps most importantly, the mindset of the people” are kept in accordance with ALE’s transformation and “coined with quality”, to make sure that they deliver the best results for their customers.

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Mohamad began his career as an engineer with SFO technologies in India, moving on to network design roles with the Indian government, before finally joining Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise (‘Alcatel’ at the

F or any modern business to be successful in procurement, supply chain and logistics, ‘systemisation’ is the name of the game. Rasheed Mohamad, Executive Vice President of Global Operations, Business Technology and Quality of Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, knows that for a business’ transformation journey to be successful, this systemisation must be applied to its entire infrastructureincluding its internal processes.

2017.

time) in 2000. Here, he journeyed through different aspects of ALE’s divisions such as Operations, Finance, R&D and ManagementjoiningManagementProgrammeuntiltheExecutiveteamin

customerorganisationsagilityreliability,onofourglobe.”toapplicationsandcommunicationsdigitalindustry-specificdeliveragenetworking,cloudsolutions,andservicesenterprisesacrosstheHesays,“Now,valueslieattheheartwhatwedo.Focusingcustomercentricity,speedandenablesustoofferatotalexperience.”

Rasheed Mohamad of ALE: Making the Unpredictable, Predictable

154 July 2022

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

ALE’s uniqueness derives from several elements working in unison. They provide an extensive e2e portfolio of network, communications and cloud solutions for enterprise customers with flexible business models in the cloud, on-premises and hybrid. This means that ALE customers can choose solutions that are tailored to “Our challenge is to turn unpredictabletheintothepredictable”

ALE (then Alcatel), is a 100-year-old telecoms company, and though now global, it started out from humble beginnings in the Alsace region of France. In the second half of the 20th Century the company became decidedly more disruptive. Following acquisitions, Alcatel merged with Lucent Technologies to create Alcatel-Lucent – a global communications powerhouse. “Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise separated from the Alcatel-Lucent Group in 2014,” explains Mohamad, “and we moved away to

Rasheed is an expert executive with global leadership experience in business transformation at both strategic and operational levels. He currently leads the Global Operations, Business Technology and Quality teams at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. Rasheed’s success in transforming operations by delivering the highest level of efficiency and excellent customer satisfaction has been recognised by international awards. As sponsor of the ALE #GoGreen programme, Rasheed is committed to finding new technologies that contribute to protecting our natural capital, building sustainable cities, and limiting global climate change. Rasheed has over 20 years

LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, US their unique needs and business goals. Mohamad says: “ALE’s uniqueness stems from our distinctive go-to-market offers. Our solutions are tailored to each industry and we have a commitment to our 3400 business partners to ensure continuous customer proximity.”

COVID-19 lockdowns pushed ALE into remote operations, accelerating its transitional process. This helped ALE generate a platform where they could do e2e tracking from order to delivery.

TITLE: EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL OPERATIONS, BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY AND QUALITY INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

BIOEXECUTIVE RASHEED MOHAMAD

ALE is focused on four verticals: Healthcare, Education, Transportation and Government. “Transformations used to be confined to a single department or area within an organisation,” says Mohamad, “but to deliver the highest level of efficiency and customer satisfaction, we believe innovation has to take place in every single department, in synergy with the whole business. In this regard, we also make sure we are using our own products for transformations. In recognition of this, we have been consecutively awarded the prestigious CIO 100 award for the past two years, and also for our work in several other domains.”

Asked about ALE’s digital transformation process, Mohamad says: “when we started this journey in 2019, just prior to COVID19, we had a five-year plan. The key to a strong delivery was creating clear processes, procedures and business enablers. To implement these successfully, we first had to gather accurate information on ALE’s infrastructure. Only then, could we develop efficiencies such as automating regular processes, and using AI (Artificial Intelligence) and NLP (Natural language Processing). Anticipating outcomes was our goal, and in the supply chain world, what is most important for a customer is on-time delivery at the most optimised cost possible.”

ALCATEL - LUCENT ENTERPRISE

Find out more We shape the world of logistics. Every day, we go above and beyond to meet the needs of our customers. By anticipating challenges and applying our visionary mindset, we advance global trade and bring communities together.

As Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s 4PL provider, Kuehne+Nagel leverages its data-centric IT architecture and its global control tower footprint to support ALE’s competitive positioning.

“ALE has full visibility on all events in our visibility portal’. We use advanced tools such as a Transport Management System (TMS) with strong dynamic planning and optimisation capabilities to automate processes, and our own in-house collaboration platform for customer service, which provides a single point of contact for all requests and deviations relating to order life-cycle execution. The ability to execute request trend-analysis and determine rootcauses really drives improvement!”

“CI is the next step in the evolution of our partnership with ALE,” says Edenburg. “It’s key, especially in these times, to concentrate on supply chain optimisation and – together –find effective answers and solutions.”Findout more

Kuehne+Nagel’s flexibility of service makes its customer’s supply chain more resilient. For example ALE’s volumes fluctuate, with peaks at year- and quarter-end. ”We have a transactional model in place. The shared multi-customer environment in our Luxembourg control tower is a key enabler when handling these spikes in volumes”. Kuehne+Nagel takes the burden from ALE in a multitude of ways, such as managing its relationships with carriers, KPIs, the lifecycle of complex tariff arrangements and, very importantly, continuous improvement (CI).

In December 2019, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, one of the world’s leading networking, communications and cloud solutions, chose Kuehne+Nagel as its 4PL partner for Europe. Kuehne+Nagel maintains a network of partnerships with other supply chain operators, innovators and disruptors throughout the world – customers can achieve a distinct competitive advantage by leveraging its Software AND a Service delivering three key advantages, visibility, resilience and sustainability With ALE, seamless integration is ensured using a full EDI set up (based on EDIFACT messages) between the two partners, the European Distribution Centre, and carriers, explains Mark Edenburg, Global Business Manager High Tech at Kuehne+Nagel.

The Art of Supply Chain Orchestration

“Historically, the accuracy of our data has allowed us to provide trends for that, so we can plan and project outcomes,” says Mohamad. “When COVID-19 hit, we had to identify the challenges which arose, but because we already had the infrastructure in place, we had the capability enabled on our internal platform ‘RainbowTM by Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’, which allowed us to fully transform. Of course, the supply chain also transformed along with that, and we were able to identify clear goals in terms of our expectations and resilience towards customer needs.” In 2020, COVID-19’s knock-on effects worldwide, began leading to material shortages – shortages that only began to increase at the start of 2021.

With lead times now at 70 weeks - which we see continuing into 2023 - and with price increases across the globe, we need to be vigilant and dynamic in terms of anticipating those outcomes that yield to calculation and therefore prediction.

Rainbow (ALE’s cloud-based communications platform), provides connectivity across voice, video and messaging, enabling remote connectivity for all employees globally.

“The transformation helped to provide that fundamental baseline of forecasting, like optimising our supply chain, flow and delivery,” he says. “The good news in terms of the structures we’ve implemented alongside the reactive and proactive teams, which we have called ‘daily escalation’ and ‘the shortage target teams’, is that we were able to effectively manage the entire process and haven’t had to cancel a single order, which is a great thing”.

KNOW...YOUDID

158 July 2022 ALCATEL - LUCENT ENTERPRISE

“Typically, the lead time of the components was 16 weeks,” says Mohamad, “but it went up to almost 70 weeks, which meant that we had to anticipate for 18 months in advance when securing components. This unusually long lead-time made forecasting really challenging.”

“It's a great tool,” says Mohamad, “which provides us with some features similar

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“Innovation must take place in every single department in synergy with the organisation”whole to those offered by other vendors in the industry, but it’s far more unique and tailored to the business’ needs, and because it also integrates the backend, this makes it an incredibly powerful tool. The Rainbow platform provides much more than just simple communications, it also provides tracking of all of our orders. We have also developed chatbots, called ‘ALE delivery chatbots’, and these enable access for ALE colleagues and business partners to realtime stock estimation, the ability to order directly and highly accurate order tracking capabilities. It’s our cloud-based go-to marketOperationally,tool.” all of ALE’s systems are driven to streamline processes as much as possible, ensuring maximum efficiency. Mohamad says: “The Digital Age Communications’ (DAC) three pillars – Digital Workplace, Enterprise Agility and Flexible cloud models – support enterprises in their digital transformation journey”. Because many office-based businesses have now adopted remote working, it is important to facilitate digital workspaces. “This is where we stand out,” says Mohamad.

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

“Then there’s enterprise agility, where connectivity has to be both seamless and flexible, and our Digital Age Networking (DAN) solutions help to achieve this. Lastly, we have flexible cloud platforms that connect all of these things together, so that everybody can work collaboratively within one integrated system.”

“Another great change that came out of this situation was that we had to push the subscription model with more total cloud-enabled solutions,” says Mohamad.

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ALE’s unanticipated remote operations meant that they had to identify how best to adapt their q2c chain under such challenging circumstances and to understand how predictability could be improved as a system. But this obstacle delivered unexpected results for their processes as well as their outlook.

“We have our cloud platforms including Rainbow Office powered by RingCentral which enables the connection of devices, people and processes, and we’ve recently signed a strategic partnership agreement with Avaya that extends the availability of Avaya’s OneCloud CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) composable solutions to ALE’s global base of customers, while also making ALE, people are our strength and we work like a family”

“At

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

To understand ALE’s present processes, you need to consider them in context of the transformation journey they had a few years“There’sback.no shortage of processes in our company,” says Mohamad. “As well as being ISO certified, our operating model identifies and defines key areas to optimise the company's quality system. Giving our processes a definition allows us to run the business in a systematic and structured way. Most importantly, we automate any processes that are routine.”

“So how do we integrate such variables into our system to enhance reactivity when they arise?”, asks Mohamad. “When I look at challenges, I classify these into three areas: the first are internal challenges, which are ever present; the second are external-predictable challenges; 162 July 2022

Automation assumes regular and uninterrupted processes. But irregular events like material shortages, pandemics and regional conflicts are of a different ilk and have an unavoidable impact on entire ecosystems.

ALE’s digital networking solutions available on a global basis to Avaya customers. So we have all the geared solutions available, and this structure has been focused to provide the growth that we actually need for our five-year plan.”

K&N Engineering is a fundamental element of ALE’s partner community, ensuring that the supply chain is resilient, and the third are external-unpredictable challenges, which are essentially the unknowns. Our focus at ALE is to make sure that all predictable challenges, whether they be internal or external, are handled by automation processes supported by AI to ensure that we work as flawlessly as possible. If the predictable systems are optimal, then we are able to focus on the unpredictable and react effectively, thanks to data analysis.”

This is where ALE’s adaptability and agility comes in. “We optimise according to requirements on a regular basis, tweaking the systems as needed to reach KPIs,” he says.

The optimisation of systems, digitalisation and automation are critical to the business

“It is important that innovation is isolateddepartmentratherholistically,approachedthanbeingconfinedtooneoranaspectofyourbusiness”

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

as a whole, but behind the scenes, it’s the people at ALE - their minds and creativity - who are the heart of the organisation. “At ALE, people are our strength and we work like a family,” says Mohamad. “We help each other to make things happen, and it is the foundation of our teamwork, and it is very important to us. This is also very personal to me as I've been with the company for 20+ years now. The satisfaction you get when you are working on something with a purpose is fundamental to ALE, and I attribute that mainly to the people that I’m working alongside, and their mindsets to make things happen. Culture plays a key role at ALE, and we place a lot of importance on it.”

technologymagazine.com 163 ALCATEL - LUCENT ENTERPRISE

“It's almost the fifth year of our partnership,” explains Mohamad. “K&N’s innovation and technology continues to hugely benefit us as well as aligning with our willingness and vision to undergo such a technological evolution. Working together as a team to make this happen has been great. And as a bonus it’s also one of the reasons for our improvement in on-time deliveries over the last few years, which has made our customers very happy, of course.”

technologymagazine.com 165 ALCATEL - LUCENT ENTERPRISE

There are other notable developments too. Mohamad is a sponsor of ALE’s #GoGreen program. This initiative aims to find new technologies that will contribute to protecting natural capital, building sustainable cities and limiting global climate change.

“With price increases continuing across the globe, we need to be vigilant and dynamic when anticipating outcomes which yield to calculation and therefore prediction”

RASHEED MOHAMAD EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, ALCATEL-LUCENT ENTERPRISE

Orienting himself with an eye to the future, Rasheed Mohamad concludes: “With all of these changes, we predict a huge increase in uptake for our subscription model. Significantly, with lead times now at 70 weeks – which we see continuing into 2023 – and with price increases continuing across the globe, we need to be vigilant and dynamic in terms of anticipating those outcomes that yield to calculation, and therefore prediction. Integrating intelligence throughout the supply chain will result in precise forecasts, tracking and automated pick and pack with added valueUltimately,activities.”atALE, Mohamad and the wider team always strive, he says, “to turn the unpredictable into the predictable.” and as a 4PL partner (Fourth Party Logistics), provides ALE with the ecosystem to make sure they have a clear e2e delivery mechanism for their system.

explains Mohamad. “At ALE, we continue to encourage remote work, and an important part of this initiative is enabling effective hybrid-working which contributes to cutting travel emissions. As part of the effort, we are also utilising our facilities to host key events remotely, such as our annual Connex conference.”

“The ALE #GoGreen programme aims to decrease the organisation's overall carbon footprint. By reducing paper files and the use of excessive emails, as well as sharing files in a more ecofriendly, agile and efficient manner, we can reduce our overall CO2 emissions,”

Could decentralised content streaming be beneficial to the entertainment industry? We examine how blockchain could shift the power back to the creators WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK 166 July 2022 BLOCKCHAIN

PIRACY

A s a peer-to-peer network, blockchain technology essentially eliminates any central authority. The benefits of a P2P network is that it provides features without using one single server, but instead works by distributing the mediaAkashcontent.Takyar, CEO of LeewayHertz –a software developer for startups and enterprises – explains how “video content curators benefit from the decentralised mechanism of blockchain, because they directly publish and deliver the video content to their audience without any intermediary intervention or central server”.

Takyar suggests that, with a P2P network, “the probability that one stream can split and get scattered is higher. This happens because the replication rate of the video streaming is higher in P2P than it is in the client-server CDN structure. Creators and audience – both parties have access to join the blockchain network without any intermediate controller”.

CANBLOCKCHAINHOWTACKLE

technologymagazine.com 167

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“Video

blockchain”mechanismdecentralisedfrombenefitcuratorscontenttheof

“Traction is, in the case of long-form music and film, created by a feeling of musthave exclusivity, quality and availability,” said“FrictionKviby. is created by your willingness to pay (what you need to pay to get what you want), the packaging (what you need to buy

Piracy the biggest threat to the entertainment industry Robert Kviby is chairman of Staccs entertainment agency, where piracy is largely viewed as a problem of imbalance between traction and friction.

in order to get what you want), commitment (what you need to commit to in order to get what you want, for example a subscription), integrity (the data you need to submit to get what you want), and checkout process (the steps you need to go through to get what youKvibywant).”summarises this as a problem of perceived value creation from the user’s point of view and implemented value capturing from the service’s point of view.

BLOCKCHAIN169

Adrian Linde, CTO of Xchange Monster, a crypto exchange platform and crypto AKASH TAKYAR LEEWAYHERTZCEO, technologymagazine.com

“It’s an ongoing tug of war, and the balance between the sides can only be affected by either increasing traction or decreasing friction, or both. If there is a negative balance – that is, the friction exceeds the traction –then you will have piracy,” said Kviby.

ADRIAN XCHANGECTO,LINDEMONSTER 170 July 2022 BLOCKCHAIN

Blockchain Use Cases in Top 10 Industries poses one of the futurethreatssignificantmosttotheofthefilmandtelevisionindustries”

“In addition, the system can provide each viewer with a copy of the content that contains a distinct digital fingerprint, which can immediately be used to locate the original piratedAccordingcontent.toLinde, it is only a matter of time before we see a change in the losses that can be attributed to piracy, “considering the amount of investment that has been made in blockchain technology in the direction of reducing piracy and the success that has been achieved so far”.

Decentralisation leads to ownership Lars Seier Christensen, chairman of the Concordium Foundation and founder of Saxo Bank, believes the protection wallet for traders, said: “It is widely believed that piracy poses not only one of the most significant threats to the future of the film and television industries, but also the most significant threat businessesincreasingcontinue“Whileoverall.”thenumberstorise,annumberofarelooking to the technology of blockchains to assist in slowing down, or even halting, the escalating piracy. The most practical applications of blockchain technology that have been developed so far by the companies that are involved are central storage and sharing platform services, which embed blockchain-based infringement monitoring to assist media owners in detecting content leakage.

“Piracy

“Currently, we hand over our articles, videos, comments and artworks to an array of social media channels that fail to recognise or protect the rights and work of both professionals and amateurs, and that also fail to pay them the full value of their work. Trillions of dollars of IPR value is inadequately protected and monetised”.

of intellectual property rights through tokenisation is potentially the biggest prize out there waiting to be collected.

But Christensen thinks that this is about to change, as blockchain technology delivers many components that can help create a better future for artists and entertainers.

“The ability to register, without ambiguity, the ownership of their work on tokens via a blockchain secures immutability in terms of proving

The cost of piracy in entertainment By the end of 2022, it is anticipated that piracy will have cost all of the industries a total of US$51.6bn. This forecast is based on the rapidly increasing rate of illegal streaming and downloading, which has resulted in a loss of US$6.7bn for the industry.technologymagazine.com

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ownership, the right to sell, licence or rent the works, transfers control back to the artists themselves, while taking it away from social media platforms and other rentPresently,seekers.”fraud can be combatted efficiently through the use of ID-focused blockchains such as Concordium, where both the registered works and their current owner can be established with certainty and with immutable data registrations.

“To understand the tech may be complicated, but the outcome is not: imagine a world where the entertainer (and whoever he or she may share his rights with) has complete ownership of their works, can distribute directly to their fan bases, can set the terms of any sales, and receive immediate, 100%-accurate payment. Where SoMe platforms no longer own your ID and the content, but return to a more natural marketplace with users in control. This is the promise of blockchain and tokenisation – and it is inevitable, in my view,” said Christensen.

• Cinezen – a decentralised on-demand video service that uses blockchain technology to power its operations.

• RNDR, or distributed GPU rendering – an early example of a paradigm that demonstrated how distributed computing could be applied to the process of film

• MovieCoin – the distribution of content that has been funded using MovieCoin tokens.

Source:sharing.Adrian

Blockchain projects being developed to manage the risks associated with piracy

Linde 172 July 2022 BLOCKCHAIN

LARS SEIER CHRISTENSEN CHAIRMAN, CONCORDIUM FOUNDATION & SAXOFOUNDER,BANK technologymagazine.com

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“Imagine a world where the entertainer (and whoever he or she may share their rights with) has complete ownership of their works” the point of creation. As soon as a track is made, or a piece of IP is completed, it should be tokenised and put on the chain right then and there. Once it’s there, we know who owns it, and we know who should be paid. Once you’ve got that information baked into a track from the very start, you can start to manage usage rights in a more transparent wayForupstream.”thistowork for everyone, according to Phull, it requires a cohesive approach that could be achieved through DAOs.

“MODA DAO is creating a set of NFT standards related to on-chain metadata. If the music industry joins the DAO, they

Blockchain alone cannot solve piracy problem Inder Phull, CEO and co-founder of music metaverse PIXELYNX, thinks that blockchain alone will not be enough: “In order for this solution to really scale, tokenisation of music has to happen at

“In order for this solution to really ofattooftokenisationscale,musichashappenthepointcreation” INDER PHULL CEO AND PIXELYNXCO-FOUNDER,

A South African blockchain startup called CustosTech has built a digital watermarking technology on the bitcoin technology that is impossible to remove or even detect. The watermark is an encoded bounty that can be traced. It serves as an incentive for others to report when they come across illegal films, music, or games.

can help shape these protocols and adopt technology that will become ubiquitous. Without that synchronisation, we just end up going back to the same problem – which is that everything's too fragmented to manage, with each platform using their own systems and protocols,” said Phull.

“Last year, Microsoft announced it would use the Ethereum network to fight piracy via an incentive mechanism similar to the one from South Africa,” said Dr. Fan. “It also uses a watermarking algorithm that enables backtracking of content that has been pirated. Blockchain allows timestamping in an immutable, tamperproof way, making plagiarising previously copyrighted material impossible. Again, blockchain cannot eliminate piracy entirely, but it can provide owners of intellectual property tools to better monitor and protect their work,” he said. technologymagazine.com

“Vevue, for example, is working on a blockchain streaming service that tracks media content and can identify if, when, and by whom it has been plagiarised.

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Content monitoring part of the fight against piracy Crypto expert Dr. Xinxin Fan, former senior research scientist of the Security and Privacy Group at Bosch Research Technology Centre, North America, refers to blockchain technology currently in development that helps with content monitoring.

LUMENtargetsTECHNOLOGIES apps, SASE and network security 176 July 2022 PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS

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July 2022 LUMEN

“Everyvision.company we sell to is becoming a technology company – and our job is to support that,” says Smith, summing up the global challenges and opportunities. “Our business is about application experiences for our customers.”

Lumen believes its platform is among the fastest and most secure for nextgen apps and data, providing a strong foundation for a SASE solution portfolio n our Zoom call, I can just make out ‘Talent Winner’ draped behind Chris Smith, VP of product management platform applications at Lumen Technologies, and then spot a stack of exhibition lanyards hanging from the office wall – two small yet tangible symbols of his industry stature and customer-facing profile. For the next hour, we journey down more virtual avenues. In one of the most telling comments, Smith discusses how Lumen is transitioning from an asset supplier into a ‘technology experience’ company; certainly, the sheer variety of products and solutions under its portfolio are testament to its current output and future

One key focus is Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), an emerging cybersecurity concept first devised by Gartner three years ago. In essence, the idea of SASE is to offer secure network services anywhere from which a user might connect, and this converged solution should ideally both optimise and extend the performance of 178

ReportedrespectivelyNetCashProvided by Operating Activities of $1.375bn Generated Free Cash Flow of $846mn, compared to $850mn, excluding cash paid for Special Items of $48mn and $41mn respectively Full-year 2022 financial outlook measures updated due to the closing of the 20-state ILEC transaction now being expected in early Q4 2022

portfolio.globalsolutionsenterpriseresponsibleManagement,ofPresidentProductforvoiceandthedatacenter

Smith consistently creates world class product experiences through solid product management practices. He has a keen ability to identify and solve customer business problems paired with more than 20 years of experience developing and managing products and applications for the enterprise market. Smith currently manages Lumen’s Platform Applications portfolio, which includes management and investment oversight for the security, SD-WAN/SASE, UCC, voice, and CDN product portfolios, as well as revenue responsibility for these portfolio globally. Prior to joining Lumen through the Level 3 acquisition, Smith was Vice

Q1 2022 HIGHLIGHTS Reported Net Income of $599mn, compared to reported Net Income of $475mn for Q1 2021 Diluted EPS of $0.59, compared to $0.44 per share a year earlier.

Excluding Special Items, Diluted EPS of $0.63 per share for the first quarter 2022, compared to $0.44 per share for the first quarter 2021 Generated Adjusted EBITDA of $1.966bn compared to $2.165bn, excluding Special Items of $52mn and $8mn,

BIOEXECUTIVE CHRISTOPHER SMITH TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, PLATFORM APPLICATIONS INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: COLORADO, UNITED STATES

applications spread across individual users, premises, edge, and securetheitsnecessary.andenterpriseminimisesenvironment,applicationSASEcloudpublic/privateenvironments.NotonlydoessimplifytheoperatingittheIToversightmanagementLumenbelievesplatformisamongfastestandmostfornext-generation applications and data, providing a strong foundation to support a comprehensive SASE solution portfolio. The SASE framework represents abethatapproachfunctionsandSD-WANcomprehensiveaimtechnologiesseveralconvergencetheofestablishedthattomergecapabilitiesnetworksecurityintoaunified–onewillultimatelybettersuited,in4IR(4thIndustrial Revolution) era, to meet the needs of enterprise data workloads and applications. “Never before in the history of ofcustomersengineeringnetworkhavehadthelevelflexibilityonwheretheywanttoputtheircomputeandhowtheywanttoconsumenetwork” SHAWN DRAPER VICE PRESIDENT OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORMLUMENENGINEERING, 180 July 2022 LUMEN

SHAWN DRAPER

“We’ve created optional packages, too, such as a SASE advisory service, where we can look at your environment over three months and create a roadmap from a consulting perspective,” says Smith.

Cloud convenience and Edge distribution benefits Its 450,000-route fibre miles provide less than 5ms latency across 97% of Lumen’s US customers, as well as those in EMEA, APAC and Latin America, spread across more than 60 countries.

TITLE: LOCATION:

Draper brings a passionate and visionary approach to transformation and the application of technology to solve real world challenges. His goal is to revolutionize the way customers consume network to meet the need created by the expanding role it plays in today’s environment.

VICE PRESIDENT ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY

Draper has more than 20 years of experience developing and supporting applications across all segments of the Enterprise and Consumer markets. He currently manages the development of applications and platforms that span all segments of the Enterprise market with responsibility domestically as well as globally.Priortojoining Lumen through the CenturyLink acquisition, Draper was Vice President of Application Development, responsible for the company’s systems development and support across all facets of the operation. Over his time in the industry, he has built an extensive portfolio of experience supporting the company’s merger and integrations.activitiesacquisitionandsystems

It used to be that companies hosted their applications in their building, but no one’s doing that anymore, as the cloud is more convenient, offers more scale and is decidedly more cost effective.

KANSAS, UNITED STATES

BIOEXECUTIVE

Organizations are focusing on digital acceleration by investing in modern technologies across many network edges such as LAN, WAN, campus, data center and cloud. Fortinet is the only vendor to provide the convergence of networking and security consistently across all network edges with AI-powered threat protection to deliver better user-experience. These innovations enable a Zero Trust Edge strategy, which requires consistent convergence across all edges for your hybrid work-force. Fortinet,

Digital everywheresecurity,you need it.

“As we’ve built the platform, we can push software down it – it will look more like a smartphone upgrade – and the cool thing is that it future proofs our customers’ technology position,” adds Smith.

“We built the cloud edge for two reasons: for customer applications and to build products,” says Smith. “We repurposed buildings into mini data centres, and that’s the foundation for the cloud edge, which is now paying dividends.

SHAWN DRAPER VICE PRESIDENT OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING, LUMEN

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“Thenetworksoftwarehardware,andworlds are coming together –but the reality is that it’s already here”

“There are certain application experiences that don’t work in the public cloud – so we made a big investment in the Lumen cloud edge, as it’s highly distributed.”

Fast-paced changes mean that the days of sending drivers out in a van are being consigned to history.

“The reality is that we are no longer looking to deliver a host of services through network boxes, but are instead bringing the platform to your location, which gives you the ability to consume at the initial level and add functionality – when and how customers want to do it.”

Lumen recently announced it is providing enterprise-grade servers at the edge of the network, enabling blockchain ecosystem Flux to launch new staking nodes and accelerate building Web 3.0 – a decentralised, next generation of the internet built on blockchain. technologymagazine.com

Smith highlights three distinct customer journeys: ‘Do it yourself (DIY)’; ‘Do it together’; and ‘We’ll do it for you’, to help address varied needs of customers, most of whom would benefit from Lumen’s Managed and Professional Services to successfully implement their SASE solution. ADOPTS ‘PARTNER INCLUSIVE’ APPROACH

KNOW...YOUDID 184 July 2022 LUMEN

VMware is focused on accelerating growth of its subscription and SaaS portfolio, providing customers the flexibility. VMware Horizon is its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and apps software - one of the first products to go SaaS with the release of Horizon Universal Subscription at VMworld 2019.

Fortinet secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organisations around the world, empowering customers with intelligent, seamless protection across the expanding attack surface and the power to take on ever-increasing performance requirements of the borderless network.

VMware streamlines the journey for organisations to become digital businesses that deliver better experiences to their customers and empower employees to do their best work. Its software spans App Modernisation, Cloud, Networking & Security and Digital Workspace.

Since then, many Horizon customers have made the move from perpetual to subscription, making VMware’s End-User Computing business a leading driver of the company’s SaaS transformation.

LUMEN

The Fortinet Security Fabric architecture can deliver security without compromise to address the most critical security challenges, whether in networked, application, cloud, or mobile environments.

Lumen positions itself as ‘partner inclusive’, meaning that multiple partners can be added quickly to its platform.

Currently, it is working with VMWare, Fortinet, and Versa, with Palo Alto Networks set to come on board later in the year.

Smith highlights three distinct customer journeys: ‘Do it yourself (DIY)’; ‘Do it together’; and ‘We’ll do it for you’, the latter of which is the fastest growing area.

Also attending the call is Shawn Draper, vice president of enterprise platform engineering. Lumen is the amalgamation of dozens of acquisitions over the years, with Draper working at CenturyLink for over 20 “Lumen’syears.ability to be able to deliver platform capabilities over its high-speed, highly secure network gives it the ability to allow customers and business units to create unprecedented levels of capability,” says Draper.

Customers not only have access to Lumen’s fibre-optic network, whether through public or private means, but can also extend it to the cloud provider of their choice. technologymagazine.com

“Never before in the history of network engineering have customers had the level of flexibility on where they want to put their compute and how they want to consume the network,” he says. “Our low latency network enables customers to place their computer where it’s needed most and that’s the premise behind edge – the ability to operate closest to where the capability is being consumed or data is being created.”

“As we’ve built the platform, we can push software down it – and the cool thing is that it future proofs our customers’ technology position”

185

CHRISTOPHER SMITH VICE PRESIDENT PRODUCT MANAGEMENT,APPLICATIONS,PLATFORMLUMEN

LUMEN GOES DIGITAL TO COMBAT DDOS THREATS

Smith describes the current focus on experience as the ‘wrapper’. “We’ve done a lot of work to simplify our offers and provide an Amazon-like experience,” he says. “We are reinventing ourselves.” ago,

CHRISTOPHER SMITH VICE PRESIDENT PRODUCT MANAGEMENT,APPLICATIONS,PLATFORMLUMEN

around the US aseeingindustryelection,Presidentialthewasaroundmillionattacksamonth

“A year

“For years we’ve said that the hardware, software, and network worlds were coming together – but the reality is that it’s already here. So, we’re reimagining how we deliver network, security, compute and application integration and support, over the top, as a platform,” he says.

KNOW...YOUDID

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic.

technologymagazine.comLUMEN187

“We give the ability to consume SD-WAN across a variety of providers, and expect this year to deliver our SD-WAN services ‘over the top’ – as an Edge Gateway or softwarebased capability and full digital experience. That’s not just installation but extends all the way through activation and management, paired with firewall capabilities.”

”

DDoS is a nuisance, to put it mildly. Lumen mitigated attacks that targeted one company more than 1,300 times – but this number is just the tip of the“Aiceberg.yearago, around the US Presidential election, the industry was seeing around a million attacks a month – it was overwhelming for our operations team as we were doing it manually,” says Smith. “Now it’s digital – you go to our marketplace, agree to a few commercial terms, point-andclick, hit ‘scrub’ and we fix it for you.”

CYBER As hascybernevertoinvest 188 July 2022

T oday, technology is developing at a breakneck pace. Businesses are spoiled with the number of technological solutions at hand that they can use as they drive growth and improve operations. However, while it proves useful for business, cyber criminals too are utilising such technology to their advantage, making attacks more complex and harder to defend against. To prevent different types of cyber attacks, it’s imperative that enterprises invest in cyber solutions to ensure they are protected and better equipped to face data breaches. Here, we look at the top companies offering cyber platforms.

CYBERPLATFORMSSECURITY

WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY technologymagazine.com

189

cyber attacks become more complex, it never been more crucial for businesses invest in cyber. Here, we take a look at the top cyber platforms

TOP 10

When it comes to data and security, the company is enhancing technologies primarily focused around blockchain, data trust, and digital identity. Fujitsu 09

After 40 years in the field of IT security, Fujitsu believes that the answer to preventing cyber attacks lies in intelligence-led security. The company offers leading cyber security services that can help safeguard organisations by strengthening your resilience against cyber-crime. This includes: data protection; multi-cloud security; biometrics; network security & endpoint security, identity and access management; security consulting; IT security risk assessment; continuous cyber security monitoring and more.

TOP 10

“VMware acquired CloudHealth in 2018 and expanded it in 2019 to provide deeper integration with VMware workloads” 190 July 2022

Founded over two decades ago, VMware is a leading provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to building a better future through the company’s 2030VMwareAgenda.acquired

CloudHealth in 2018 and expanded it in 2019 to provide deeper integration with VMware workloads, alongside public cloud. CloudHealth provides cloud governance features to help organisations align security and regulatory compliance.

VMware 10

three of the 10 largest global companies by revenue among its clients”

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Fortinet develops and sells cybersecurity solutions, including physical firewalls, antivirus software, intrusion prevention systems and endpoint security components. The Fortinet Security Fabric platform secures many of the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organisations around the world. With its platform, the company brings together the concepts of convergence and consolidation to provide comprehensive cyber security protection for all users, devices, and applications across all network edges.

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Crowdstrike provides cloudnative endpoint protection software. Its platform, Falcon, goes beyond simple threat detection by automatically investigating anomalies removing the guesswork from threat analysis.

TOP 10

Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud, the CrowdStrike Falcon Platform leverages real-time indicators of attack and threat intelligence to deliver hyperaccurate detections, automated protection and remediation.

Crowdstrike counts three of the 10 largest global companies by revenue among its clients. The company was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.

“Crowdstrike07counts

Fortinet Crowdstrike

ShowreelourWatch2021 Get tickets Sponsor opportunities SHAPING FINTECHBUSINESSTHEOF A BizClik Media Group Event:

TOP 10 Cisco Trend Micro

The platform delivers central visibility for improved detection and response, with a powerful range of advanced threat defence techniques optimised for environments like AWS, Microsoft, and Google. Trend Micro is driven by decades of security expertise, global threat research, and continuous innovation.

A leader in cloud and enterprise cybersecurity, Trend Micro has around 7,000 employees across 65 countries, with its cyber security platform protecting 500,000+ organisations and 250+ million individuals across clouds, networks, devices, and endpoints.

06 05 technologymagazine.com 193

Founded in 1984, Cisco is a software development company that offers its own security platform, SecureX. This cloudnative platform includes XDR capabilities and integrates the Cisco Secure portfolio with its customers’ security infrastructure, speeding detection, response, and recovery. It delivers a consistent, built-in experience across customers’ products, giving them unified visibility, intuitive automation, and robust security for their entire security portfolio. Cisco Secure enables customers to defend against threats and safeguard the most vital aspects of business with security resilience.

By using AI, Darktrace has the ability to interrupt in-progress cyber attacks with its technology. It can fight against attacks including ransomware, email phishing and threats to cloud environments and critical infrastructure. The company has over 6,500 customers worldwide that rely on Darktrace’s digital immune system to avoid cyberFoundeddisruptions.in2013, Darktrace applies Self-Learning AI to enable machines to understand the business in order to autonomously defend it. The company is also headquartered in Cambridge, UK, with 1,700 employees and over 30 offices worldwide. Darktrace

03 “Thesecuritydeliverscompanyinnovativesolutions” 194 July 2022

TOP 10 CyberArk is a global leader in identity security. The company provides a comprehensive security offering for any identity – human or machine – across business applications, distributed workforces, hybrid cloud workloads and throughout the DevOps lifecycle. Since its founding, CyberArk has led the market in securing enterprises against cyber attacks that take cover behind insider privileges and attack critical enterprise assets. The company delivers innovative security solutions that help leaders become more proactive to cyber attacks.

CyberArk 04

Palo Alto Networks Palo Alto Networks is an American multinational cybersecurity company with headquarters in Santa Clara, California. Its core product is its platform, which includes advanced firewalls and cloud-based offerings that extend those firewalls to cover other aspects of security. Palo Alto Networks was created in 2005, and, today, it boasts over 85,000 worldwide customers in more than 150Thecountries.company’s mission is to be the cyber security partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life. By delivering an integrated platform and empowering a growing ecosystem of partners, the company protects tens of thousands of organisations across clouds, networks, and mobile devices. Palo Alto’s technology enables customers to secure any cloud, automate security operations, stop zero-data threats in zero time and secure hybrid workforces.

02 technologymagazine.com 195

TOP 10

“In my time at NTT I observed a rise in the number of attacks on industrialthecriticalinfrastructureenvironments,sowhenIwaslookingatmy next career move, I homed in on OT and IOT security as the next step,” says Chassar.

In his career, Chassar is inspired by the ability to go on journeys with people, to meet new people, and to evolve people and their understanding for the better. “I like to take people on a journey with me. We like to make sure that as an organisation we are enjoying ourselves and making sure that we learn from each other and support each others’ wellbeing. So I take

Simon Chassar, Chief Revenue Officer at Claroty discusses his career journey, what inspires him, and his proudest moments from his career so far J oining Claroty 18 months ago, Simon Chassar is currently the Chief Revenue Officer for the global cyber-physical security organisation. Prior to Claroty, Chassar ran the cybersecurity sales business at NTT.

CHASSAR, CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER AT CLAROTY

DIAMOND SPONSOR

SIMON

“My favourite thing about the industry is the conversations around protecting our lives and society as a whole. Things like fuel, shelter, food, and energy, these are the things that we consume every day, they are critical to our wellbeing as a society and as human beings. So for me, the business discussion around protecting these critical environments is an interesting sector to be in.”

WHAT CHASSAR?INSPIRES

Claroty CEO: YANIV VARDI INDUSTRY: CYBERSECURITY HQ: NEW YORK, USA seeing people come together as one company, and the success of integrating into one organisation, was another huge milestone in terms of careerChassarsatisfaction.”discussed how to achieve unmatched visibility, protection and threat detection across Industrial (OT), Healthcare (IoMT), and Enterprise IoT assets in his TECH LIVE LONDON keynote on ‘XIoT’.

He adds: “Aside from my family, my proudest achievement from a career point of view began when I joined VMware in 2007, at the start of the technology virtualisation journey within servers. During my time at VMware the growth and demand in the market really stretched my abilities as an individual to develop myself and learn new skills and new technologies.

inspiration out of seeing others develop and enjoy what they do,” says Chassar.

“That then set me up for when I joined NTT and had the opportunity to integrate five security companies together. I think

CLAROTY “IF AN CRO,SimonONETHENORDOESN’TORGANISATIONHAVEAPOLICYPROJECTUNDERWAY,THEYSHOULDSTARTIMMEDIATELY”ChassarClaroty

Claroty: protecting society with cyber-physical security

TOPTake10 control of your online safety with McAfee Protection Score 198 July 2022

McAfee The McAfee Corporation is an American global computer security software company, headquartered in San Jose, CA. Purchased by Intel in February 2011 to become part of its Intel Security division, McAfee is a worldwide leader in online protection. Its key attributes are to focus on protecting people, not their devices. The cybersecurity business boasts over 108mn customers in 182 countries worldwide.McAfee’s suite of products include its antivirus software, which can be used to scan PCs for viruses and protect them in real-time detecting all kinds of malware, such as ransomware, spyware, cryptojackers, adware and Withmore.cloud-native data protection from McAfee Skyhigh Security Cloud and threat defence from McAfee Cloud Workload Security, customers can transform cloud risk into business acceleration. The company’s cyber solutions are designed to integrate threat defence across devices, IT infrastructure, and data as it goes in, to, and from the cloud.

technologymagazine.com 199

IMPROVING INCLUSION:FINANCIAL HOMECREDIT INDIA 200 July 2022 PRODUCED BY: JOE PALLISER WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND

technologymagazine.com 201 HOME CREDIT INDIA

8.5MMborrowersApproxyear2012founded5Knumberofemployees65%increaseinnumbersofserved–fromin2018to14.2MMin202140%ofcustomersarefirst-timeborrowerswithnocredithistory67%Digitalisationhasreducedaverageloandisbursaltimeby67% 202 July 2022

Home Credit India has an employee base of around 5,000 people and has been consistently expanding operations since its entry in 2012, with its services spread across 625 cities across India. The company has a strong network of over 50,000 point-of-sale (PoS) locations and is growing with a customer base of over 14 million customers.

“THERE ARE 1.3 BILLION PEOPLE IN INDIA BUT THERE ARE ONLY TENS OF MILLIONS OF CREDIT CARDS” MILAN DOLANSKY CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HOME CREDIT INDIA

The parent company was founded in 1997 in the Czech Republic and has since branched out into a number of other key markets.

Home Credit India is transforming the lives of its customers through new technologies and products that promote financial inclusiontechnologymagazine.com

203 HOME CREDIT INDIA

Home Credit Group is known for providing regulated, trusted financial products and services to the ‘unbanked or underserved parts of the population’ through seamless loan applications, fast credit scoring and responsible lending.

The entity, which operates as a central bank licensed Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC) while also providing insurance services and other value-added services through partnerships, has been operational in India for the past ten years.

Transforming the Asian financial marketplace

t has been an interesting two years for the team at Home Credit India (HCIN).

While India is generally considered a welldeveloped nation with a fast-growing fintech industry and a wealth of technology talent, it is also home to an extensive unbanked population. A recent report by the Reserve Bank of India revealed that, with 190 million adults currently operating outside the global financial system, India has the second largest unbanked population in the world. It is this dynamic that makes the region an excellent launchpad for HCIN’s products and services.

HCIN’s core aim is to empower people to live the life they want now, by focusing on financial inclusion and responsible lending.

Embracing digital transformation,HCIN is fast expanding its digital presence and offerings since 2020, to build an omni-channel connection with our products and services.

Milan Dolansky, Chief Digital Officer or CDO for Home Credit India, has been leading the institution’s digital transformation for the past five years. Formerly the change manager for digital products and services at CSOB, a Czech bank in Prague, he has over a decade of experience in the banking industry, enhancing services and technologicaldrivinginnovations.

“WE

TOAPPLICATIONSCUSTOMERSOFFERINGTHATAREMEANINGFULTHEIRLIVES” MILAN DOLANSKY CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HOME CREDIT INDIA 204 July 2022 HOME CREDIT INDIA

“In the Indian market, the credit card is an aspirational product,” says Dolansky. “There are 1.3 billion people in India but there are only tens of millions of credit cards. So, a big part of the population is aspiring to have a credit card one day. But the banks are much less flexible on who actually gets one.”

Dolansky points out that the main purpose of the parent HCI – especially in India – is to work on improving financial inclusion and opening access to the financial industry to the unprivileged segment of subprime. “For that reason, a lot of our customers are first time borrowers or new to credit,” he says, referring to the cultural aspect of lending in India, where those who have been bypassed by the traditional banking system, have, in the past, had to rely on loans from their communities, and in an environment where loan shark practices are rife.

It is this rigidity in the traditional financial marketplace that HCIN is attempting to address through a number of innovations. ARE

He says of HCIN: “Our services are simple, easy and fast, with a focus on enhancing credit penetration through responsible lending, which empowers our customers, who generally come from a demographic that is outside of the banking system. Basically, we enable them to access financing or credit easily and safely, in both online and offline modes.”

Milan Dolansky TITLE: DIGITAL GURGAON, HARYANA, INDIA

CHIEF

OFFICER INDUSTRY: FINTECH LOCATION:

BIOEXECUTIVE

Milan Dolansky joined Home Credit India in June '17 as Head of Online with the aim to build the digital side of the business and bring Home Credit to a digital age.

Milan has over 15 years of experience in the banking industry, making online strategies, analysing the scope as well as developing suitable electronic channels. His expertise lies in his project visualisation from a birds-eye view, which helps to detail the project plan & also to analyse & shape further requirements. He believes that having the right team, doing your job with perfection and honesty, and making right decisions at the right time are the key to success. His prior experience involves risk management, process management and business architecture which enhances stability and effectiveness of delivered projects. Milan has worked with CSOB Bank, Absolut Bank, KBC Group and many other leading organisations in the past.

Onboard everyone, but not just anyone Ensure customers are who they claim to be and onboard them across 195+ countries in less than 10 secs with high accuracy AI HyperVergemodels. has verified 600M+ identities so far! HyperVerge | The Complete Identity Verification & AML Solution 

HyperVerge’s visionary and dynamic CEO Kedar Kulkarni talks partnership, frictionless onboarding, and rapid growth HyperVerge is a classic Silicon Valley-type start-up. The company started off when a bunch of highly gifted and driven kids found initial success in computer vision AI and came together to solve fundamental problem. Its CEO Kedar Kulkarni says, “The company launched at a moment when financial services providers woke up to the fact that ease of access, meeting the needs of every individual irrespective of their background, location or credit history would be a key driver to success in a competitive market.” Today HyperVerge is delivering results for customers from Vodafone to Home Credit. Headquartered in California, it has its offices in Bangalore and a growing presence in SEA and Africa. “We work with companies that need to onboard users, ascertain the identity of every customer or agent on their platform and cut fraud. Our homegrown AI ensures the customer has a great experience. HyperVerge solves the ‘know-your-customer’ (KYC) imperative for these clients.”

HyperVerge: The Complete ID Verification & AML Solution

HyperVerge works with Home Credit in India among many countries. Its drive to enable the financially deprived in the world to engage with affordable finance resonates with HyperVerge’s mission to increase accessibility to the left-behind billions in India and across the globe. “Home Credit is a great partner for us, and one we love working with. Our teams are constantly working together to exchange ideas and co-innovate. They were looking for an ally to help them achieve key business objectives with a frictionless onboarding process. We started with their digital channel, but then moved on to their offline channel as well, to improve the back-end processes for their staff. Now we are working together on new strategic initiatives and have a roadmap for collaboration over the next twelve months.”

“Seamless customer experience, cost of service, expansion of the customer base and enabling smaller ticket loans are vital goals. At the same time, compliance with complex and variable regulations can also be addressed using HyperVerge technology,” says Kedar Kulkarni – another matter he is now discussing with Home Credit. Higher conversion rates due to HyperVerge’s passive liveness technology.

208 July 2022

“We see our role as one that brings preapproved lending services to many more people,” he says. As part of the initiative, HCIN has plans for a virtual card launch in the next few months, which will allow their customers to have the benefits of a pre-approved or flexible loan product. “This is definitely an innovation for the market,” Dolansky states. “We are trying to help our customers improve their lives and fulfil their aspirations. A lot of them are buying their first smartphone, their first fridge, their first AC unit. Our mission is to empower people to live the life they want now.”

“OUR MISSION IS TO PEOPLEEMPOWERTOLIVETHELIFETHEYWANTNOW”

A developing space

In March 2020, as part of his role, Dolansky found himself managing the digital transition of a company that had typically served customers face-to-face, and a workforce that was unused to the concept of remote working practices. He explains: “When the pandemic started and the country locked down, we had to move very quickly. But it was a challenge because of the way India operates regarding technology. In most developed

MILAN DOLANSKY CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HOME CREDIT INDIA

offamily-ownedforpoint-of-sale50K+digitaltouchpointscustomers95%ofretailersaresmallbusinesses45%theconsumerloansofferedatzerointerest40%ofcustomersreturntousforrepeatbusiness technologymagazine.com 209 HOME CREDIT INDIA

countries, every home has a laptop or home computer, for example. But although India has excellent mobile technology penetration, it's as though the country skipped a step and “missed out” on the home computer stage.” This factor meant that Home Credit had to mobilise an entire software and hardware operation to ensure it could maintain its operations seamlessly and continue serving its “Verycustomers.fewpeople have laptops at home,” Dolansky says. “They are all very technically proficient and have fully embraced mobile and IoT technology – but you can't do the same sort of business on a mobile phone as you can on a laptop.” Initially, it was a massive task, as Dolansky explains: “Home Credit went through a period of time where we were literally shipping laptops and desktops all over the country. It was hectic.” But, after just two weeks, the company was fully remote in terms of its workforce and it was business as usual. New opportunities in an emerging marketplace The period has, according to Dolansky, driven forward Home Credit India’s digital transformation strategy. As a result of the transition, there are more innovative systems in place, and this has meant the team has been able to launch new products and services despite having spent the best part of the last two years operating remotely.

Users of the new HCIN super app will be able to manage a multitude of daily tasks directly through the app, from shopping and arranging insurance cover, as well as managing their lending. Dolansky says: “We are building an ecosystem in which the customer is able to fulfil all their daily needs through one platform that functions seamlessly and frictionlessly, through us and financed by us.”

210 July 2022 HOME CREDIT INDIA

Over the next few months, HCI will be launching its brand new mobile superapp, which is going to offer customers an entirely new point of service. “The main differentiator is that we are offering them applications that are meaningful to their lives – and not only the services of financial lending.”

HCIN engaged with three million people on financial literacy via in-house Paise Ki Paathshala or Personal Finance class website HCIN donated 30,000 respirators and 1.8 million surgical masks to India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare at a time of global mask shortages HCIN funded medical and hygiene kits for 10,000 people living in poor areas HCIN partnered with the Don Bosco Network to distribute basic nutrition packages to 20,000 migrant workers

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The digital ecosystem and strategic partners

As part of HCIN’s digital transformation journey, the organisation has forged a partnership with HyperVerge, a leading AI documentation and data technology company. The collaboration means the application processes for customers have been completely streamlined: documentation is scanned, read technologymagazine.com

Dolansky says of the partnership: “We were looking for a partner to improve our customer journey. And, at that point in time, we knew that one of the biggest struggles our customers have is to retype information from documents. India culturally is very bureaucracy oriented and paperwork is a big part of life. But the aim of new financial technology offerings is to make all those processes frictionless.”

MILAN DOLANSKY CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, HOME CREDIT INDIA

HCIN discovered that HyperVerge’s OCR was already enabled to scan and aggregate the data on Indian documentation. The 212 July 2022

STACKTECHNOLOGYNEWASPARTOFTHENEWMOBILEAPPLICATION”

by AI and then filed for future use.

“WE’VE DEVELOPED ENTIRE

partnerships are in point of sales. As part of our extended digital services, we will also be forging new collaborations with affiliated businesses. We’ve also developed an entire new technology stack as part of the shift to the new mobile application.”

adoption of the technology has enabled customers to take three pictures of their paperwork via their mobile phone, and the software platform does the rest, reading information with an 85% accuracy – which then simply needs checking for confirmation once the online fields are ready to view. “The process takes away the need for the customer to type in numerous details, saving them time and stress,” Dolansky says. Other ecosystem partners have been instrumental in developing the super app with its access to numerous products and services. At the moment, the majority of our technologymagazine.com

213 HOME CREDIT INDIA

Customer centricity, data and KYC HCIN’s culture is one of innovation through strategy. As part of its developments, the company is seeking advice from its users in the journey towards better products and services. Dolansky believes fintech is as much about bringing the customer needs into sharper focus, as it is about delivering better services.

Once the first official production begins, HCIN gathers feedback again. “Working with the customer is the biggest inspiration for innovation in fintech,” Dolansky states. Ultimately, the goal is to bring better opportunities to people who have been shunned by the traditional banking system. “It’s about improving lives,” says Dolansky. “Providing a family with their first laptop or smartphone so they can study better and enabling home improvement loans so they can have a nicer environment. These are things that, prior to our services, were unattainable.”

“We are talking to our customers. Our customers are part of every small piece of the development process. Their feedback on an idea, before the development process begins, is critical. Later on when we have a pilot product, we test it again and get their feedback on, for example, how the screen functions – is it user friendly and intuitive enough?”

HINDUSTAN ZINC’S SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL SUSTAINABILITYJOURNEY 214 July 2022 PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW

ZINC’S DIGITAL SUSTAINABILITY

Arun Misra, CEO of Hindustan Zinc, divulges the company’s current position and how digitalisation plays a role in making underground mining sustainable T he Indian mining sector produces nearly 95 different minerals, consisting of fossil-fuel, metals, and non-metallic materials, as well as other minor minerals. But as some of the major polluting materials are phased out in years to come, the emphasis is turning towards materials with applications in new technologies for sustainable development.Asfocusisshifting to more and more sustainable growth, it is imperative that more and more steel used in building infrastructure is galvanised. This will reduce the need for replacement, which accounts to almost 15% in infrastructure related steel consumption in India. Moreover, for a static energy storage solution, Zinc batteries will prove crucial in the coming years.

Hindustan Zinc is responsible for the production of those desirable minerals as the second largest zinc and lead miner in India—and the largest producer in the world if you include its silver mining operations. The company was responsible for one million tonnes of metal concentrate produced in 2021 and its figures continue to increase as it witnesses major growth across its underground mining operations, which is something that’s not so common across the country.

216 July 2022 HINDUSTAN ZINC

Arun Misra, CEO

Mr. Arun Misra – CEO Hindustan Zinc – has been leading the world’s 2nd largest integrated producer of Zinc & Lead and 6th largest Silver producer since August 1, 2020 – a period of time that can best be described as unprecedented. And in keeping up with the times, Mr. Misra’s leadership has been nothing less than extraordinary. Under his leadership, Hindustan Zinc has achieved unparalleled operational excellence, and set global benchmarks in sustainable social solutions that have benefited the business, people and WTD,communities.Mr.MisrawasappointedDeputyCEO,HZLonNovember20,2019andwaselevatedtoCEO&HindustanZinc Limited from August 1st, 2020. In less than 10 months, he was moved to the Corner Office and placed at the helm of the world’s second-largest integrated producer of lead and zinc.

ARUN MISRA TITLE: CEO & WHOLE TIME DIRECTOR INDUSTRY: MINING LOCATION: INDIA

He also explains that the global outlook of the business results in a successful turnaround of metals, as the price is dependent on the area in demand and the price within that area.

While the company continues to improve its output and profitability yearon-year—and act as a major contributor to sustainable initiatives—it has its own agenda to take care of, and this includes decarbonising its operations and ensuring the firm remains within its principles as a sustainable mining organisation.

“It has been a very rewarding professional life. I’ve enjoyed improving my understanding of mining and producing metals & minerals. Mineral processing is my favourite subject aside from mining,” Misra says.

The firm expects to increase its renewable energy input through the procurement of 550MW of renewable energy — 200MW of which is getting closer by the day as it is in the process of signing a power purchase agreement (PPA).

ARUN MISRA CEO & WHOLE TIME DIRECTOR, HINDUSTAN ZINC

A leader of mining and smelting

“At Hindustan Zinc, for the last two years, we have continuously improved our numbers in terms of production volume and profit. We are aware that the price of any metal is not in our hands, it is the factor of supply and demand across the globe.” Sustainability brings commercial mining success

A further action to reduce emissions across its underground mining sites is the adoption of all-electric underground mining vehicles, including transport trucks and loaders powered by solar energy. Not only does ARE READY TO FACE CHALLENGES IN BOTH DIRECTIONS, ON THEFRONTCONSUMPTIONANDTHEOTHERONTHESUPPLYFRONT”

“WE

Putting his love for mining and knowledge of natural resources to use, Misra began work at Hindustan Zinc in November 2019 and quickly realised that India was very much developing its mining industry.

In his leading role at Hindustan Zinc, Misra oversees sustainability at the company and its strategy is clearly aligned with the miner’s plans for success. With targets in place, it will begin to show its sustainability credentials and expects to see achievements by 2025. Following this, the company expects to steer ever closer towards net zero by sourcing renewable energy solutions.

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As a leader that is constantly learning, Misra was educated in electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, before joining Tata Steel as a graduate trainee with a focus on maintenance functions. After he found a love for mining operations at the company, he began to climb the ranks as a leader, completing his stint at Tata as the Vice President Raw Material.

To share just how the company will achieve this, Arun Misra, CEO and Whole Time Director at Hindustan Zinc, divulges its plans for the future and explains how it will promote responsible sourcing, decarbonisation and better use of natural resources.

technology development enable this, but it also encourages a safer method of working in a highly dangerous environment.

Technology for safer and more efficient mining

As its operations involve venturing deeper underground—roughly 1km below the surface — Hindustan Zinc must navigate through different and varied conditions without compromising health and safety, all the while making production more efficient. According to Misra, the Indian mining industry is not used to such high productivity and neither are staff, meaning there is a gap in the available infrastructure and talent. Working with its partner organisation, Normet, the company is changing the landscape for mining operations with the inclusion of digitally enabled equipment that can be operated and managed above ground. This involves telecommunication capabilities and digital connectivity. In order for these solutions to work, these systems technologymagazine.com

Another section of the business that Misra deals with is permissions. Social licensing is one of the critical areas of the business alongside the responsible use of resources.

“We are ready to face challenges in both directions, on the consumption front and the other on the supply front. Our target is to become completely green after 2030, which is one of the biggest challenges that every industry faces. This is more so for us as we operate underground mining and smelting, which are meticulous processes,” says Misra.

“We cannot relax while we are using water from lakes that is primarily meant for human consumption. We have to ensure that our operations use 100% reusable water supplies,” says Misra.

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“There is a lot of live streaming of data coming from the mines, and that data is analysed by data scientists to predict operations, forecast failures, and then carry out more predictive maintenance,” MisraThesays.miner is also committed to the adoption of all-electric machinery for transport in and out of its mines as well as on-site loaders. Announcing this investment in July 2021, Hindustan is funding a complete switch from diesel in alignment with its sustainability goals.

must be reliable in providing constant data streams between underground and surface-level operations to provide a realtime picture of progress and predictive monitoring.Operating these systems requires the expertise of technical professionals and data scientists to analyse mining operations for both efficiency and safety underground.

“You also need various utility vehicles, including those for carrying people in the underground mine, during the declining, and when dropping them at workspaces. Normet does a very good job of that, and we have also signed a memorandum of understanding for the supply and joint development of electric vehicles.” As a ‘win-win’ scenario for both teams, Normet works with Hindustan’s dedicated executive team to map out new developments, treating the company as though it is less of a supplier and more a part of the business.

According to Misra, Normet has become well integrated into Hindustan Zinc’s operations. “Normet is a very important partner for us because in mining, you can’t do everything by yourself. It requires a lot of supplies and support, for example, to carry explosives, charge the explosives,” he explains.

A further feat of digital transformation is shifting procurement and marketing functions online, with almost 50% of its marketing processes through an online platform and nearly all of its procurement being carried out via digital means.

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“We are slowly moving to digital—just like COVID-19 spurred other industries to adopt touchless services and contactless delivery. Face-to-face negotiation is a thing of the past; it’s all ecommerce,” says Misra, as he reiterates why the firm has shifted its procurement functions online.

Shaping the future of mining in India As the firm moves forward in implementing its sustainable developments and environmental initiatives, technology and corporate strategy are going to play important roles in achieving them alongside its increasing output. The use of natural resources is critical as they shape the company’s production as well as its procurement and operational resilience. technologymagazine.com

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Misra says: “We have put up sewage water treatment plants in Udaipur. We are carrying out the treatment of the entire sewage generated from Udaipur City and releasing about 30% of treated water back to the river to maintain Ecological Flow for ensuring uninterrupted flow in the river and further usage by the community, whereas the remaining 70% will be consumed by our own industry.”

ARUN MISRA CEO & WHOLE TIME DIRECTOR, HINDUSTAN ZINC

Apart from its technology expansion, sustainable sourcing of goods and services— including renewable energy and the implementation of EV technology—its energy will be sourced from solar and wind power solutions, with excess energy stored for future Beyonduse.itsmining and smelting remit, Hindustan Zinc will also look to support the development of Zinc-air batteries as Misra believes this is the next step in sustainable power storage—an industry that the mining firm will be heavily invested in. VOLUMENUMBERSCONTINUOUSLYHAVEIMPROVEDOURINTERMSOFPRODUCTIONANDPROFIT”

The treatment of water is a key area, creating a circular approach to its mining operations, but also in providing clean water for use by local industries and communities.

“WE

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Seeking viable avenues to educationalimproveaccess 226 July 2022 PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO WRITTEN BY: ILKHAN OZSEVIM GTCC

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Community colleges are generally recognised for providing what’s known as ‘workforce education’, however, since the ‘T’ in ‘GTCC’ stands for ‘technical’ – and thanks to Ron Horn – many developments are taking place in terms of the types of courses that are now being offered.

Innovative courses at GTCC “I have taken advantage of the opportunity to be able to contribute from a very non-

As an AVP at GTCC, Ron Horn has an impressive approach to using tech to solve issues as diverse as education, social mobility, family and mental health G

“I currently oversee about 30 permanent employees in the areas of infrastructure, security, networking, telephony service, delivery, application support and project management.”

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“We've been around since the late ‘50s,” says Horn. “There are five campuses here in Guilford County, which is part of what they call 'the triad' region. Our programmes include many traditional education opportunities, like associates and transfer degrees. But we also offer many skilled trade options, like advanced manufacturing, CDL or truck-driving training, welding, automotive, healthcare and also, quite uniquely, we have aviation, with a large aviation programme that's still growing.”

uilford Technical Community College (GTCC) is one of the largest community colleges in the US state of North Carolina, typically ranking fourth for the largest community college in the state, with nearly 27,000 registered students annually.

Ron Horn CIO and Associate Vice President for IT

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Education and wellbeing Since this realisation, Horn’s focus has been on creating viable programmes to counteract and resolve these issues from educational, career, financial and even familial perspectives. He’s intent on making college more accessible for those impacted by the pandemic, and those for whom the pandemic highlighted an already-existing conflict between education and financial concerns.Hesays: “Now, with these new courses, a student doesn't have to go through a complete two-year programme to earn their certificate; instead, they can go through these boot-camp-like, condensed courses to generate a nationally recognised certificate, which will enable them to efficiently access gainful employment and Seeking viable avenues to improve educational access

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traditional CIO perspective, bringing outstanding programmes to the school – like 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, blockchain and micro-credentials or microcertifications, Amazon web services (AWS) – and I have been partnering with agencies that are geared much more towards the community college environment.” This innovative development also acts as a bridge between the ‘community’ and ‘technical’ aspects of GTCC, combining the social orientation of the spirit of a community college with innovation so that both ends of the equation may benefit.

“We have a large student population who suffer financially,” says Horn. “They don't have the financial resources that are available to a lot of students in other circumstances. We noticed, especially when the pandemic came around, that there was a large drop-off in a certain male sector of students, and soon discovered that they weren't re-enrolling because they had to go back to work, because other household members were now unemployed due to COVID.”

BIOEXECUTIVE UNITED STATES

RON HORN TITLE: CIO AND ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR IT INDUSTRY: CYBERSECURITY LOCATION:

Ron is an Information Technology Executive with over 25 years of experience leading and transforming technology initiatives in healthcare, higher education, retail, manufacturing, and the federal government. He is focused on his craft, capabilities, and expertise in enterprise cybersecurity, process improvement, risk management, technology innovation, and leadership.

Ron has spent his 25-year career in Information Technology leading teams responsible for strategic planning, governance, service delivery, toenablingassessmentsfuturecurrentaleadsclients.reviewsandcompliance,cybersecurity,operations,infrastructureenterpriseregulatorytoRonwithfocusonandstateorganisationsremaincompetitivein their industry, maintaining sustainable architecture, staff alignment, and training on process improvement.

“When I get up every day not knowing really what to expect, that excites me”

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start earning an income for their families on a much shorter time scale.”

An impressive approach to problemsolving, it serves to accentuate the relationship between access to education and social mobility, as well as critical family matters that, when considered together, have obvious interrelated impacts on issues such as mental health and emotional wellbeing. Motivation and inspiration It was natural, therefore, to enquire about Horn’s motivations when it comes to problem-solving and thinking outside of the Whenbox.asked what inspires him to come to work every day, he says: “I think this may sound a little strange, but it’s the thought of the unknown and not knowing what to expect that’s a major motivational force for me. I've worked in a lot of different industries and, at one point in my career, I even worked in the federal prison industry. The first time the doors shut on me, it really jolted me and gave me a dose of reality. “But then, getting up and going to work every day not knowing what to expect was kind of exciting and even thrilling for me. In a very similar fashion (but on a much lower key, of course), it's the same for me today. When I get up every day not knowing really what to expect, that excites me, because it makes me think creatively and keeps me on myHorntoes.”says that his inspiration also comes from the opportunity for people to learn and advance their careers. “From a leadership HORN CIO AND ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR IT, GTCC

RON

As CIO, Horn knows, of course, that behind the people – whether they be student or staff member – there is a technological and informational highway that allows them to connect and thrive in GTCC’s environment. And, precisely because of those technologies and innovations, the very concept of the educational environment itself expands beyond its mere physical boundaries, redefining the educational milieuHornaltogether.observesthat,

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Expansion of the educational environment through technology

“I think it's been an option for many higher education institutions and something that they initially wanted to merely dip their toes in, if you will, just a little bit at a time to test the temperature of the water. But when I came on board, I was immediately focused on moving as much data as I could to the cloud. That made sense for the business, and it didn't create any additional risk. So, I evaluated what data we were moving and how it was to be protected. That was my cloud-first strategy from the beginning.

“No longer are we focused just on the students that are in our local area”

RON HORN CIO AND ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR IT, GTCC

while most higher education institutions have not traditionally looked at mobile-first and cloud-first environments, his approach from the start was – in terms of a data-based perspective –transformational from the beginning.

perspective,” he says, “I take the time to meet each one of my staff members and to spend time with them, asking them questions like: 'What is it that motivates you to come to work every day?', 'What do you like?', 'What don't you like?', 'What leadership style do you like?' and, essentially, I really want to help people to grow.”

“No longer are you focused just on the students that are in your local area, such as those that can commute back and forth to your campus,” Horn says. “But now that the borders have been removed, it also create a different competitive landscape. “This makes it important to be able to convince students of why it's a wise choice

Technology not only serves to improve the educational possibilities of students and learners, but it also serves to increase the number of students that enroll on the courses overall.

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“Then there are mobile-first tools. We are in a highly mobile environment, and most people carry around a cell phone, which is their access-point to data 24/7. So, as an organisation, you must be able to deliver the data to the customer, which, in our case, is our students.“We've really laser-focused on allowing the students to access every piece of information on their phones and to be able to do everything they need from these devices.”

Technology and student enrolment

Speaking on the college’s partner ecosystem, Horn underlines that, most importantly, GTCC looks for organisations that closely understand GTCC’s business, strategy, audience and demographic. “What we are specifically looking for is alignment,” he says. “We don't want a company that we just write a cheque to every month or year. Vendor partners mean something to us; they are organisations that we have frequent conversations and meetings with and where we talk about“Andstrategy.Ithinkthat's one of the things that we saw with Arctic Wolf.” Arctic Wolf provides a critical managed detection and response (MDR) framework, which plays a crucial role in the cybersecurity and risk management of GTCC’s systems.

for them to attend Guilford Technical Community College. Therein lies the importance of your messaging and how you differentiate yourself from other colleges.” GTCC has, as a result, increased its online presence and developed the systems that allow students to complete their coursework online. Horn says: “I think that the pandemic has just accelerated this transition – I think that these thoughts, ideas, movements and strategies were already there, but that COVID has acted as a catalyst. So, our college is focused on that delivery, while retaining our traditional infrastructure and our campuses, which are going to continue to be available for the students in the local area.

“We're also going to continue to look at our strategy as to how we deliver online, what we deliver online and how we differentiate ourselves from other schools.”

Cybersecurity and partnership with Arctic Wolf

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Horn continues: “Arctic Wolf is an organisation that I could have those conversations with and that I developed those relationships with, so that they understand who we are, what our mission is, what our focus is and where we're going.

“Arctic Wolf have been very supportive and transparent, and we've had a lot of conversations where they're open to feedback. They're willing to work with us and to refine the tools and processes that we need for our organisation to move forward.”

GTCC will continue to focus on automation, simplification and standardisation of their tool sets, and will focus on decreasing such overheads – from a staffing-resources perspective – so that they can focus on further innovation and dreaming up fresh approaches and systems to enhance those innovations at the college.

RON HORN CIO AND ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR IT, GTCC

In terms of cybersecurity, Horn refers to the CIA’s triad of ‘Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability’, noting that “those really ring true to our mission here at GTCC, in making sure that we maintain our students, faculty and staff privacy, and access to their data”.

“Essentially, I really want to help people to grow”

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THOUGHTNAESTRANSFORMINGWITHWELLOUTTECHANDSTRATEGY technologymagazine.com 239 PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

NAES’ VP of IT and Digitisation, Mark Holtermann, outlines how the company is responding to the changing technological landscape in the energy sector T ransforming our lives in ways we wouldn’t have thought possible decades ago, digital technologies are driving forward business and improving our daily lives. The energy sector is going through an unprecedented era of digital transformation as the industry looks for new ways to improve efficiency and safety – with technology being crucial in the bid to tackle climate change and facilitate the push for renewable energy. Keen to be part of this transition to the digitally-empowered energy sector, NAES Corporation is dedicated to optimising the performance of energy facilities across the power generation landscape.

“NAES is quite diversified,” says Mark Holtermann, Vice President, IT and Digitisation at NAES.“There are three primary industries we operate in: energy, construction and fabrication. We offer a variety of services including operating and maintaining over 200 power plants across the US as well as Mexico, and even in the UK. It’s over 100,000MW of power that we are essentially managing for other owners. Those plants could be utilities, private owners, or consolidated groups of owners.“Weprovide operations and maintenance services, asset management, grid management, compliance, fleet services, consulting services in the energy space, along with a list of other services.

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“On the construction fabrication side, we serve in the energy space, and we also do traditional build services across all industries, as well as specialised large, complex fabrication services. We have built all the components that go into hydro energy and very large facilities. We've been part of building million-square-foot facilities for Amazon,” he continues.

IT &

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IDC, there are 33Zb of data in the world; this is projected to grow to 175Zb by 2025. A whopping 90% of that data was created in the last 2 years and, by 2025, 80% of it will be unstructured.

“THERE'S LOTS AND LOTS OF OPPORTUNITY FOR IDENTIFYWILLTOGETHERCOREABLEANALYTICSAIWELLAUTOMATION,TRADITIONALASASLEVERAGINGANDADVANCEDTOBETOPUTSOMEALGORITHMSTHATHELPUSTRENDS”

While it looks at different merger and acquisition opportunities, the company remains focused on growth. With years of rapid growth under its belt, NAES has been looking to technology to further catalyse this growth and improve its operations, despite stumbling across challenges associated with technology and its ability to run at the pace of business Accordinggrowth.tothe

MARK HOLTERMANN VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITISATION, NAES

MARK HOLTERMANN TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT, IT & DIGITISATION INDUSTRY: ENERGY FACILITIES LOCATION: WASHINGTON, USA

“Our cloud-first mindset has made very significant progress in moving most of our services, as well as applications and core infrastructure, to the cloud. We're about 90% there. So that's very significant. It's enabled us to be able to scale, be flexible and have that seamless authentication for users anytime, anywhere,” Holtermann explains. “That 10% remains the challenge, and we have some IT modernisation efforts – such as our ERP implementation – that will help us progress further. We’re looking forward to that and continuously advancing our cyber programme. Thankfully we've got a great foundation and we're continuing to advance that.”

“We are about two-thirds of the way through our ERP implementation. We have clearly defined how we are going to do it; it's designed and all is being configured,”

Mark is an executive leader with 30+ years of global business transformation experience spanning multiple industries (Transportation, Distribution & Logistics, Energy & Utilities, Construction, Consumer Products, Manufacturing, Public Sector, e-Commerce) ranging from start-ups to sub-$1B to $20B+ sized organisations. He has successfully led global teams in the hundreds coupled with budgets and portfolios summing over $100M. Mark is a strategic partner with a passion for identifying and delivering effective, value-based, innovative solutions. He leads with a spirit of collaboration, transparency, integrity, and he believes in levity. ‘Seamless Customer

The availability of data is transforming how the energy sector works. These vast data lakes render information more accessible and algorithms much smarter. Motivated by this, NAES is undergoing a period of intense digital transformation that impacts all aspects of the business.

NAES is in the process of implementing its own ERP, but is doing this incrementally to ensure its reliability and effectiveness.

NAES CORPORATION

“With this cloud-first migration, we have simplified our operations heavily, not only in the IT space, but also in how we're able to operate as a business,” he adds. “We're more nimble for things like mergers and acquisitions.”

Incrementally implementing NAES’ ERP When implemented correctly, a solid ERP is essential to the future of the energy industry. It improves compatibility with third-party apps, training for new employees, risk management and simplifies big tasks.

BIOEXECUTIVE

July 2022 NAES CORPORATION

“We've revamped and redesigned a lot of the data reporting that we have. Now, we are focusing on data insights and advanced analytics, looking at those tools, improving 244

“All of the insights or data that we collect about customers help us to consider what to target next to meet the needs of the customers,” notes the VP.

For more than three decades, e360 has delivered critical technology services and solutions designed to support thriving and modern workplaces to many of the West Coast’s most prominent healthcare, financial services, entertainment, education and public sector organizations e360 is an technologyaward-winningpartnercommitted to providing solutions that empower the modern workforce Learn more Holtermann outlines. “It's going to bring together numerous disjointed processes and automate a lot of them, improve our quality, and give us better access to data in a more consistent way, reducing many manual challenges that we have today. It will then poise us for the integration of other entities.”

As the company looks for new avenues for growth, it understands the power of data when it comes to obtaining customers and extending contracts with existing ones.

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“WE ARE ABOUT TWO-THIRDS OF THE WAY THROUGH OUR ERP IMPLEMENTATION. WE HAVE CLEARLY DEFINED HOW WE ARE GOING TO DO IT, IT'S DESIGNED AND ALL IS BEING CONFIGURED” 1980 Year founded 4,000 + Number employeesof 5,546 + Renewable MW operated 96,000 + MWConventionaloperated 1,357 + resourcesGeneration 1,000 + projectsConstruction MARK HOLTERMANN VICE PRESIDENT, IT & DIGITISATION, NAES CORPORATION

Due to the nature of the business, Holtermann explains how there are lots of opportunities to reduce costs through the implementation of technologies. The service-based business can reduce the number of manual processes through new automation opportunities that will increase efficiency and contribute to reducing overall cost to serve, while ultimately providing better insights and information to support its modernisation. the quality of the data that we have flowing through as well as improving how we report the data to provide insights. That predictability aspect is what we are looking to focus on now; next, we’ll look to be more prescriptive with data.”

“There's lots and lots of opportunity for traditional automation, as well as leveraging AI and advanced analytics to be able to put some core algorithms together that will help us identify trends, in terms of where we need to maintain equipment and take certain action in the construction space. So we are looking forward to more of that,” he continues.

Holtermann adds to this: “We are at the beginning of our AI and automation journey here; however, the positive side is that we have a tremendous amount of opportunity. There are a lot of manual processes, disjointed processes and disconnected technologies that we can bring together with simple tools like RPA, and then we can go to the next step by applying some advanced tools like AI machine learning to make that intelligent automation.

“We're forming a business hyperautomation strategy – or what I call a centre of excellence – and have recruited a lead for that. We're in the process of gathering use cases right now, so we'll look to prioritise those and, of course, look at some low hanging fruit, get some traction in automation and then see where we can have the most benefit.

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Additionally, the company is looking to bolster its cyber security infrastructure as another element to its digital transformation journey. When NAES runs a plant for its customer, it is dedicated to offering a comprehensive cyber solution to protect its customers.

“WITH THIS CLOUDFIRST MIGRATION, WE HAVE SIMPLIFIED OUR ASTOINITONLYHEAVILY,OPERATIONSNOTJUSTINTHESPACEBUTALSOHOWWE'REABLEOPERATEABUSINESS”

MARK HOLTERMANN VICE PRESIDENT, IT & DIGITISATION, NAES CORPORATION

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Entisys360: supporting NAES through its transformation Key to this journey is Entisys360, an award-winning IT consultancy specialising in the deployment and delivery of advanced IT infrastructure, virtualisation and cloudThoughsolutions.Entisys360 partnered with NAES before Holtermann joined the company in September 2021, the executive had only heard good things about the partnership prior to his appointment: “Coming into the NAES team, I was hearing good feedback about Entisys360. They came in and helped as we began our cloud migration – which started before my time – and laid it all out with the team. “It was an investment they made in working with us, providing that thought leadership and then helping us execute on

“We want to be able to provide security services to them to make sure that things are run in a protected way. They're usually owned by someone outside of NAES, and we run the facility. With our operation, we offer a high-class safety culture and make sure those practices are embedded in how we operate; we look to be the same in a cyber-secure way,” says Holtermann.

MARK HOLTERMANN VICE PRESIDENT, IT & DIGITISATION, NAES CORPORATION Concluding, Holtermann outlines that NAES is still firmly focused on its digital transformation: “We're advancing our cybersecurity programme quite a bit – we are primarily a Microsoft shop, so we have access, through our licencing, to most of their security offerings, and we are expanding our use of those to obtain more process-oriented elements around cyber; likewise, we are strengthening our incident management, performing tabletop exercises and continuously advancing our cyber security awareness training.

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Now, dedicated to pushing forward with its ERP and digital transformation strategy, Holtermann explains that NAES is in a good position, as the company receives support from Entisys360 and other partner companies to grow its technological capabilities.“Thecontinued ERP implementation is key to the coming months; it’s something that we’re looking to in the very near-term to get it over the finishing line. Immediately following that, there'll be a little bit of a bumpy ride through adoption and stabilisation of that“That'ssystem.going to give us a big leap forward in our overall modernisation efforts. Additionally, regarding infrastructure and networking modernisation, we're continuing to move more and more components to the cloud. We've been out there migrating from the traditional local file shares and on-premise based technologies to the cloud, and we'll continue that in the future,” he says.

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strategy. As we're marching forward, I've been meeting with them and trying to see where they can play a part in that puzzle, as well as where we need to partner with others.”

FINISHINGTOTHEWESOMETHINGMONTHS;KEYIMPLEMENTATIONERPISTOTHECOMINGITISTHATARELOOKINGTOINVERYNEAR-TERMGETITOVERTHELINE”

“A key focus that we’re presently involved with and see a lot more coming in future is data insights and advanced analytics. This involves a shift in mindset, moving from the ‘what happened’ to more of the ‘why did it happen’. We want to adopt that diagnostic type of thinking with predictive analytics and see how we can make it happen with prescriptive type analytics.”

“THE CONTINUED

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VIAPHILANTHROPYPROVIDINGTECHNOLOGY technologymagazine.com 251 PRODUCED BY: VENTUROTOM WRITTEN BY: ÖZSEVIMİLKHAN CRIS DOWN EY OF ROTARY: ROTARY INTERNATIONAL

Cris Downey, Director of Technology of Rotary International, talks tech and progress at the largest philanthropic grassroots organisation in the world C ris Downey is the Director of technology services at Rotary International, the oldest and potentially largest, most farreaching grassroots service organisation in the world. He joined Rotary in November of 2019, after spending 18 years working in healthcare and pharma in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

“After having various roles and working on several projects up there, I was looking for a change,” he says. “I wanted to move out of the corporate world and be able to give back, to do something more as part of theHecommunity.”thenspoke to the chief information officer (CIO) of Rotary at the time, the infrastructure of which was severely outdated and highly unstable. The then-CIO was looking for someone to come in and partner with him. “He was very applicationfocused,” says Downey. “He wanted someone to help modernise and transform Rotary's infrastructure and coreDowneytechnologies.”sawthis as “an opportunity” – as he puts it – “to be able to help transform an organisation that is itself a transformative organisation on the world stage”.

“You don't get too many opportunities like that in your life and career, so I went for it. We've since made a lot of progress and have done a lot of great work, especially in the last two and a half years.”

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Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com 253

CRIS

Also included in the tech services organisation are enterprise IT security –which includes security analysts, incident philanthropy via technology SERVICES,DIRECTORDOWNEYOFTECHNOLOGYROTARYINTERNATIONAL

The technology services team that Downey heads encompasses traditional infrastructure technologies, which include things like datacentre, network, server storage, as well as their cloud and online tech, and collaboration technologies. For those cloud technologies, Downey tells us that Rotary uses Azure and Office 365.

Providing

“The great thing about Rotary is the people that work for them, and, since we are a non-profit, the people that want to join Rotary have a philanthropic or a ‘give-back’ mindset”

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TITLE: DIRECTOR TECHNOLOGYOF SERVICES INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY

Cris Downey has Over 25 years' IT experience and has held various roles in infrastructure, collaboration, and security. He Joined Rotary as the Director of Technology Services at Rotary International in November 2019 and has been leading the creation, communication, and execution of Rotary’s enterprise IT and digital transformation strategy, with focus on datacenter transformation, technology modernisation, operational stability and streamlined process enhancements. In prior positions, he built the organisation responsible for end-user facing infrastructure technologies, including messaging, collaboration, unified communications, desktop engineering and identity management. He has led an Enterprise Digital Workplace Transformation programme focused on improving employee experience through migration of IT systems to the cloud and deployment of new productivity tools for over 40,000 users. He has also managed web and application hosting, border network security & technologies.collaboration

BIOEXECUTIVE CRIS DOWNEY

LOCATION: USA response and overall security awareness –and an operations team that's responsible for the run portions of the organisation, as well as the platform operations. These platform operations cover the company’s network server and storage, in addition to the application operations, which controls the next-level application support for their critical enterprise technologies, their DevOps, and change management. Big tools for a big organisation, with a big vision. People form the foundation of Rotary - and so it should be Rotary is a philanthropic organisation, and so as you’d expect, people form the foundation of its Downeywork. says: “The great thing about Rotary is the people that work for them, and

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“Raising two strong, successful and smart teenage daughters,” he says. “I have one daughter that's graduating college and one that's about to graduate from high school – and they are both looking to work within typically-male-dominated fields. My older daughter is in astrophysics and does machine learning, big data analysis and AI; she's looking to potentially go into the gaming industry. My younger daughter is looking at film and media production, and both of these fields are traditionally male-dominated.

If you take IT for example, especially infrastructure – the part I'm involved in – often we can be perceived as the plumbers, and most people don't really care about the plumbers until the water stops running or the sewer gets clogged up.

since we are a non-profit, the people that want to join Rotary have a philanthropic or a ‘give-back’ mindset, just like I had.

And this is where the connection forms, fittingly. Technology is nothing but the tools that we use, culturally transmitted, for the betterment and advancement of society. Rotary is a philanthropic organisation, remember, and people are its bedrock – and Cris Downey is its Director of Technology Services. His proudest achievement, his “The power of Rotary is really the people that are its participants and volunteers” technologymagazine.com

From Family Values to Organisational Ethos

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“Rotary is also a very collaborative organisation. People want to work together and make a difference here, and they are really working towards the mission that Rotary has, as a whole. I also find that the people at Rotary are very appreciative.

“Having members of my family who are trying to work, to get their voices heard, to be able to stand up in those spaces is a point of pride for me. I've guided them to be strong and stand up for what they do; to show their value.”

When asked about his proudest achievement, Downey prefaces his answer by stating that “it's not necessarily a technology related one”, yet interestingly, it is.

“But Rotary is different in that, since appreciation is part of its organisational culture, they very much value the work that infrastructure, and Rotary Technology, is doing as a whole, and the people are just really great to work with, sharing in that common cause and purpose.”

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“Our seven different areas of focus are: Peace Building; Disease Prevention; Water and Sanitation; Maternal and Child Health; Education and Literacy; Community and Economic Development; and Protecting the Environment” technologymagazine.com

What Rotary does is unite people from all continents and cultures to take action, to deliver real, long-term solutions to the world's biggest problems.

“We have about 1.4mn members across the globe, in 46,000 community-based clubs in 200 countries and territories,” Downey says. “The power of Rotary is really the people that are its participants.

Rotary’s reach: facilitating progress and areas of focus

daughters, and their vision is categorically a technology-related one. He adds: “It makes me then reflect on how I do my work on a daily basis, right? It makes me think of the advantage of building diverse teams. Focusing on bringing in people from different backgrounds, and different areas, encouraging team members to share different ideas. That really helps you build bigger, better and stronger teams. That, in turn, is what endows the organisation with vision, which is what an organisation needs if it is to be successful.”

“We help facilitate the work that people are doing as part of their volunteering. We do that by connecting people for the service projects that they do, working with local organisations to facilitate that volunteer

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CRIS SERVICES,DIRECTORDOWNEYOFTECHNOLOGYROTARYINTERNATIONAL

Rotary's digital transformation and partnership with Mindsight

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Peace Building; Disease Prevention; Water and Sanitation; Maternal and Child Health; Education and Literacy; Community and Economic Development; and Protecting the Environment.”

“I'm

At the time, Rotary had a lot of outdated systems, and to be able to solve this problem, they worked with ‘Mindsight’, who was one of their key partners in helping them to modernise some of those legacy work. We provide grants, funding, travel and access so that participants can do the work, in order to make the world a better place.

“We are really here as part of Rotary to support those people of action, to achieve that work throughout the globe across our seven different areas of focus, which are:

The work that Cris Downey performed for the first couple of years at Rotary was concerned with what he describes as “shoring up the foundation of Rotary Technology as a whole”.

CRIS SERVICES,DIRECTORDOWNEYOFTECHNOLOGYROTARYINTERNATIONAL getting people from different backgrounds, getting people from different areas, getting people joining our ranks with different ideas, and that really helps you build bigger, better and stronger teams. That, in turn, is what endows the organisation with vision, which is what it needs if it is to be successful”

systems. Mindsight focused a lot of their energies on Rotary’s Network – especially on their voice systems. “At the time, we had a completely outof-support voice system,” says Downey. “So Mindsight was a great partner that worked with us to do a complete overhaul of our end-oflife, Cisco Unified Communications system. We replaced all of our phone systems for people that were on-prem and now have the ability to provide enhanced capabilities for those that are working remotely via soft phones. This is facilitating that communication, and our ability to continue working remotely when we need to do so, in a more stable and reliable way.”

Since then, Rotary has been prioritising a participant-focused digital product model, where they are now looking at the entire organisation and reorganising based on their product teams, and the products that they provide to the organisation. Those product teams will then be able provide a greater user experience and increase participant focus within those individual products. These will be anything from business owners, all the way down to people that are delivering that portion of technology.“Havingthat product focus and utilising technology, they'll be more agile and be able to respond more to those emerging participants’ needs, as well as global needs,” says Downey. “Now, they're really seeing the intersection of technology as an enabler and embracing that as a core component of what Rotary does on a daily basis to make sure that we’re able to technologymagazine.com

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modernise and optimise our operations, which helps Rotary to stay relevant and effective in its overall mission.”

“From an infrastructure standpoint, we’re building that strong and stable foundation to allow us to deliver those products utilising cloud technology, which enables us to be more agile as an organisation. If we need to expand a service or provide a new service, by utilising cloud technology, we can respond much quicker than we may have been able to do before. We can adjust based on what those product teams feel they need, based on their user experience specialists, and by looking at the data.”

People and Technology at Rotary: A Recipe for Success

There are really two arms to Rotary.

“What the Secretariat does is really help support those people of action that are doing that work via funds, connections and technology, and working with local organisations to empower them to achieve their philanthropic aims,” Downey says.

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First, there's ‘The Secretariat’, which Cris Downey is a part of and that has products to help Rotary members with their service projects. They help with funding, grants, and providing their clubs with the ability to manage their members, while also providing new leads into the organisation – including being able to showcase the work that those individuals are doing and what the clubs themselves are doing. And then there’s ‘The Rotary Foundation’, which provides funding and services that could include anything from grants to help build a community park down the street – or even the building of a hospital in Guatemala.

GUARDIANS OF A WORLD-CLASS ACADEMIC MEDICAL CENTRE PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK 264 July 2022

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM technologymagazine.com 265

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Michael Meis Associate CISO, discusses talenT, University of Kansas

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Michael Meis, Associate CISO, discusses talent, risk and tactical cyber warfare as the first line of defence at the University of Kansas Health System

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THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM W hen Simeon Bell, MD, set the stage for academic medicine in Kansas City and the wider region, his gift to the world was the establishment of a hospital, founded in 1906 as part of the University of Kansas School of Medicine.

The hospital reached an important milestone in 1998 when it became an independent hospital, and 20 years on from that point, The University of Kansas Hospital joined with The University of Kansas Physicians in 2017 to form The University of Kansas Health System.

From humble beginnings on Goat Hill in the small town of Rosedale, now part of Kansas City, the hospital has evolved into a destination academic health system sought out by patients and top-notch medical professionals from around the United States.

“What really makes the health system so special is the people. Both those that are directly providing patient care and then those in support roles like myself. All of us have this very singular focus on creating a worldclass patient experience, whether that's in the direct interactions with our patients or in building the systems that enable that type of world-class care,” said Meis.

Michael Meis is the Associate Chief Information Security Officer, a role supporting the VP of Technology, Sean Roberts, and the CIO, Chris Harper, within the Health Information Technology services team. Meis’ role supports the cybersecurity, operations and defence strategies.

July 2022

Cybersecurity’s critical role in both patient care and employee care

Protecting data is paramount as a patient care provider in a health system, where the relationship is built on patients' trust.

“We've recently seen cyber threats that have been very focused on disrupting the availability of critical infrastructure, including healthcare. And so we, as a cybersecurity team, need to make sure that not only is their data safe, but also that those medical systems, devices and records are available when the care provider needs them.”

In order to accomplish this mission, the health system leverages a range of innovative technology to support care providers as well as augment and empower all their employees.

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM

“They must trust that we're going to give them the best possible care and that we're going to keep their data safe from cyber criminals or anyone else who wants access to that data who’s not authorised to it. In order to keep that trust, there is the data privacy component to protect such critical information,” he said.

As an academic health system serving the people of Kansas, the region and the nation, The University of Kansas Health System enhances the health and wellness of the individuals, families and communities they serve.

According to Meis, cybersecurity strategy is split into two core components: a tactical angle focused on attack paths, threat actors and how they operate, and then a more 268

Michael is a security leader with a passion for architecting security programs, leading people, and developing world-class security teams. During his career, Michael partnered with the USDA CISO to develop one of the largest consolidations of security services in the federal government. Michael also led the H&R Block Information Security team through a transformation of their GRC operations to instil quantitative cyber risk management practices. Michael currently leads The University of Kansas Health System Cybersecurity team as they protect the critical systems, data, and people that provide lifesaving patient care. Additionally, Michael regularly donates his time and expertise to inspire the next generation of leaders and cyber professionals. Michael holds an undergraduate degree

in professionalAssuranceCybersecurityincludingtwoTechnologyInformationServiceManagement,graduatedegreesanMBAandanM.S.inandInformationaswellasmultiplecertifications. EXECUTIVE BIO MICHAEL MEIS TITLE: ASSOCIATE CISO LOCATION: KANSAS CITY “At the end of the day, you need people to be able to win these cyberrelationshipsadversarialwiththreatactors” MICHAEL MEIS ASSOCIATE CISO, DISCUSSES TALENT, THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM

Guardians of a world-class academic medical centre

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM

“We've recently seen cyber threats that have been very focused on disrupting includinginfrastructure,availabilitytheofcriticalhealthcare”

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“Once we've shrunk those down, then we can focus on the capabilities of the threat actors, what their tools, tactics, and procedures might look like, and then compare those against our own internal detection capabilities. We look at what we might be able to stop, where we might have gaps and then focus our maturity efforts on shoring up those gaps. Even if it's only a detection method in the meantime, we must understand cybersecurity as it relates to the business and be able to justify the investments into security technology,” said Meis.

strategic angle to understand the business in regard to how the organisation communicates and what the revenue cycle looks like.

Using threat intelligence allows the cybersecurity team to shrink the pool of potential threat actors down so they can only focus on threats that are most relevant to the health system.

MICHAEL THEASSOCIATEMEISCISO,UNIVERSITYOF KANSAS HEALTH

SYSTEM

The art of cyber warfare Meis understands that the organisation is never going to be able to protect themselves against every possible threat. Being a U.S. Army veteran himself, Meis is a big fan of warfare strategy, finding many parallels between these tactics and cybersecurity strategy. Cybersecurity attracts a lot of veterans for these reasons –and a warfare mindset is a crucial step one in becoming a highly effective cybersecurity professional, according to Meis.

“That lofty mission,” said Meis, “is something that very, very few organisations are able to replicate in the civilian world. Cybersecurity kind of gives that purpose of defending organisations and people who otherwise wouldn't be able to defend themselves.

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Open Mics with Dr. Stites

In the military, your mission is to keep yourself, your squad, and your platoon alive.

Podcasts represent the respectful, insightful and transparent voice of The University of Kansas Health System: Morning Medical Update Experts from The University of Kansas Health System discuss current health events and advances in medicine.

The University of Kansas Health System's own chief medical officer, Steve Stites, MD, interviews physicians and leaders about advances in healthcare and current affairs.

Bench to Bedside Bench to Bedside is a weekly Facebook Live series hosted by The University of Kansas Cancer Center, which follows the latest news and developments related to cancer care, clinical trials and research.

All Things Heart Everything in life leads back to your heart. Each week, Medical News Network host Alexis Del Sid shares real-life patient stories and speaks with medical experts about all things related to heart health.

THE UNIVERSITY

You see a lot of veterans who end up in the cybersecurity space after they separate from theAccordingmilitary.” to Meis, it is an adversarial relationship with threat actors, “whether they're financially motivated, hacktivists or just want to watch the world burn, at the core, they are trying to get into our health system and disrupt what we do.” Whether that's stealing patient data or disrupting the availability of systems, monitoring is vital to an effective cybersecurity strategy, or otherwise “you're going to be checking compliance boxes while they're somewhere else causing damage”.

It's no secret that there's a shortage of cybersecurity talent. Meis remarks that it’s probably become the number one risk to the industry over the last two to three years. Within the team, Meis and his colleagues have placed a really big priority on putting people first and making sure that they're at the centre of the cybersecurity strategy. “A lot of the cybersecurity vendors try to pretend like their tools can run without human intervention, and that sounds great. At the end of the day, you need people to be able to win these adversarial relationships with threat actors. So we support their development, something that's often overlooked in corporate culture –specifically within cybersecurity, where people don’t always get opportunities to stretch into new roles or to another role within the same team.”

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Handling the cyber talent shortage

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staff from being defined by the initial job they happen to land in when they first arrive in cybersecurity, enabling growth and increasing job satisfaction, while reducing turnover.

“We've seen an incredible rate of burnout across the industry, so we focus on that with our people as well, supporting them with a robust PTO policy. We have mental health support and then a really positive work environment that focuses on making sure they're taking care of themselves, as well as focusing on the mission.

MICHAEL ASSOCIATEMEISCISO, DISCUSSES TALENT, THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM

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“It’s also essential that we communicate clearly, so there’s not a mysticism around the direction of the organisation. We communicate with transparency and also give people the space to be human. Everyone is going to make mistakes,” explains Meis.

This approach facilitates how they find and recruit new cybersecurity talent: looking within the health system for the right types of people, focusing on aptitude like problem solving, finding creative solutions and being able to move at a faster pace. “That ability to problem solve at scale and at velocity becomes very important. We look for a great attitude and an aptitude that can be supported with technical training

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM

“All of us at the health system have this very singular focus on creating a world-class patient experience”

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM THAT INHERENT RISK REPORT? IT’S ALREADY DONE. See why risk management leaders rank Onspring #1 for GRC in the Leader Quadrant onspring.com/quadrant BOB PRESIDENTPAGE AND CEO, THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM “We are committed to continuing our legacy of excellence by providing outstanding KansasCitytohealthcareleading-edgeservice,careandeducationpeopleintheKansasregion,throughoutandbeyond” 274 July 2022

Cyber a young industry “When you think about us as an industry, we're very young – especially when you compare us to the finance industry or legal; they've been around for a couple hundred years at minimum. But we've started to see that same maturation of our industry, and I think that's going to continue and it's going to require the security leaders of tomorrow to Accordingevolve.” to Meis, those leaders of the future must understand how the organisation operates in terms of revenue cycles and where adversaries are going to target and be able to communicate this effectively to other business leaders.

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THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM throughout their development. Within 6 months, you can have a highly competent and driven cybersecurity professional. So we look at non-standard backgrounds, because frankly, we're all competing for the same people who have those ‘standard’ cyberWithbackgrounds.”staffturnover below 10%, the health system had achieved results exceeding the industry average. Adopting cyber risk quantification practices Being able to speak the language of the organisation in business terms is key. In the case of the health system, it has driven the adoption of Cyber Risk Quantification, which looks at potential loss scenarios to understand the probability and cost of that event. With data behind them and a structured approach toward measuring the inherent uncertainty of risk, the cybersecurity team is able to communicate risk in the universal language of money.

“Everyone understands money. Everyone understands an annualised loss exposure and a loss exceedance curve. We want to remove the dark security magic out of security communication and start communicating like a business executive. That's been an important piece for us and for our health system leadership: to be able to understand cybersecurity risk in business terms without having to take a cybersecurity crash course.”

Meis acknowledges that risk awareness has fundamentally changed the way they think about cybersecurity, shifting from just a technology problem to one of overall business risk: “It puts your organisation in its entirety at risk, if it's a large enough attack. There was a news story recently where we saw a small university that experienced a ransomware attack and was unable to completely recover from it, so it is now shutting down entirely.

“Our industry has kind of played in the basement for the past 30 to 40 years, and now cybersecurity has become so prevalent that that's no longer good enough. In order to evolve, we need to be able to adopt these risk quantification techniques,” said Meis.

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“At some point, there are going to be more Intercontinental agreements between nations. The UK, the United States, and the EU have collaborated on several pieces of legislation – we will most likely see more of that going forward. So, if we haven't invested in our GRC programmes, we're not going to be ready to take those on,” said Meis.

“We know that over 80% of the cybersecurity industry is over 35, meaning that there is a mass retirement party coming at some point soon. To address that, we need to continue to invest in automation as a force multiplier for the people that we have right now to avoid burnout.”

MICHAEL THEASSOCIATEMEISCISO,UNIVERSITYOF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM

THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS HEALTH SYSTEM

“You see a lot of veterans who end up in the cybersecurity space after they separate from the military”technologymagazine.com

Even with the education initiatives the cybersecurity industry has recently put in place, it's going to take several years for that to come to fruition.

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“Maturation and automation around security technology is key, as that talent gap is not going away anytime soon,” he added.

Meis adds that the final piece of what we'll see in the future of the cybersecurity industry is around regulation, at both federal and state levels.

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All4Labels’ Chief Technology Officer, Massimiliano Martino, discusses how technology is driving sustainability across the entire value-chain for the packaging and labelling industry

A major digital transformation and automation programme was initiated in 2021, including the deployment of automated guided vehicles and automated packaging robots, augmented reality and remote operations visualisation and management.

July 2022 ALL4LABELS

ll4Labels is a leader in labels and digital packaging production, as well as in solutions that focus on the food and beverage markets, home, pharma, automobiles and personal care. It is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, where it has established one of the largest digital, innovative and most automated manufacturing facilities in the world.

As Chief Technology Officer at All4Labels, Massimiliano Martino holds the responsibility of leading an international and multicultural team for the management of Health, Safety and Environmental protection, Sustainability, Quality, Research, Development and Innovation, Engineering, and Operational Excellence. The team includes members of all genders, age and of several nationalities, with team members hailing from countries such as China, Italy, Germany, Nigeria, Korea, South Africa, Brazil, Ecuador, Austria, Lebanon, among others.

A company with more than a hundred years of history –starting with strong entrepreneurial drive in Brazil, Italy and in central Europe – core to how they do business is focusing on how to best serve customers and the society's incremental needs. It was this spirit that drew Martino to the company.

“I immediately noticed the entrepreneurial drive across the group. The company DNA helps us merge into a large corporation that operates worldwide sharing the same principles, vision, and strategy. Printing and packaging may seem simple to the untrained eye, but I can assure you that it is very articulated and each 280

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MASSIMILIANO MARTINO TITLE: CTO LOCATION: HAMBURG, GERMANY 282 July 2022 ALL4LABELS

1881 Year Founded 3400+ Number Employeesof 600m+ Revenue

Massimiliano Martino is a charismatic Chief Technology Officer (CTO) who serves All4Labels by advocating for sustainability through empowering, developing and protecting communities, preserving the environment, and creating new products and production processes that minimise the impact on the environment. He is responsible for Safety, Health, Environmental Protection, Quality, Sustainability, Operational Excellence, Research & Development, Technical Services, Products Application, Innovation andMartinoEngineering.wasborn to an Italian mother and father, has a younger sister, and was raised in the South of Italy. He attended the University of Messina (Italy), the Louisiana State University (USA) and holds several activities.andlifeandathewithsectors.manufacturingforrecognisedinternationallycertificationstheenergyandHeismarriedtwokids,andishighlyactivework(asCTO)inhisprivatewithsportscommunity

All4Labels has dedicated focus on the most sustainable usage of the conventional and digital printing technologies and their respective advantages, so Martino and his team have helped develop a roadmap on how the company can continuously evolve its digital footprint, from inbound logistics to prepress, printing, finishing and distribution.

For Martino, there is no greater achievement than that of having a positive impact on the planet, society and the industry. As such, he is laser-focused on leading the packaging and labelling industry towards sustainability and eco-friendliness – a motivation that encapsulates several engineering and technical solutions, as well as the need to continuously innovate together with shareholders, partners, suppliers, and customers.

detail matters when it comes to customer satisfaction. It’s this complexity that brings a lot of challenges, so we need to always learn and continuously develop,” said Martino.

“We’re now ready to shape the industry’s future by making digital printing faster, seamless, and highly efficient in each of its aspects. While we are contributing to the development of latest generation presses, we have already implemented an advanced digitalisation program that includes a robust online portal where customers can directly order to press. We are connecting our printing and converting lines to automated vehicles and robots to drastically enhance safety and efficiency,” said Martino. technologymagazine.com

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Specifically, to industry 4.0, Martino also adds that “we have equipped operators with augmented reality glasses and headphones to visualise in 3D presses live for remote operations, support, simulations, and training. Majority of our presses are connected to monitor their production performance live, and we are establishing a central control room in our Hamburg headquarters to monitor, navigate and manage our digital production worldwide.” Driving sustainability throughout the entire value chain According to Martino, the industry is complex as it evolves continuously, along with the 284 July 2022

changing regulations, the needs of retailers and consumers, shareholder’s expectations and upcoming technologies that offer the opportunity to evolve continuously. He believes that leaders need to come together to positively challenge themselves, suppliers, and stakeholders on how to best develop and deploy the right technology to drive efficiency and sustainability throughout the entire value chain.

ALL4LABELS

“We constantly interact with suppliers and associations, challenging each other to drive performance forward. When it comes to people, planet and resource protection and preservation –in addition to service in the communities

– we actively engage all stakeholders to overcome that challenge collectively.

“As one of the main parts of my job, I engage with technological partners, machine and services providers, and with sustainability associations that promote circularity. This unique combination of factors brings the opportunity to have a concrete and tangible impact in both the mid and long-term, so I am passionately committed and engaged to All4Labels’ sustainable journey,” said Martino.

“We see in the market conventional printing technologies that continue becoming more and more competitive in terms of waste reduction, production speed and quality controls because of the technologymagazine.com

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MASSIMILIANO MARTINO CTO, ALL 4 LABELS “IAll4LabelsdriveandentrepreneurialnoticedimmediatelyauniquesustainableacrossGroup”

• Technology and Planet: development and selection of the right technologies to drive efficiency forward and continuously improve operations to minimise carbon footprint and environmental impact

The key priority for stakeholders is undoubtedly sustainability, which comes with a focus on three fundamental areas of All4Labels’ sustainability strategy: 286 July 2022

Priorities as Chief Technology Officer

THREE CORE PILLARS OF ALL4LABELS' CTO’S STRATEGY

• Products: research, development, and innovation of new sustainable and functional products, satisfy the demographic growth and customers’ needs

• People: personnel health and wellbeing, and environmental protection

evolution of fully automated and digital control systems. The technical production set-up of such machines is also being complemented with inline digital printing units to maintain high efficiency level on both short and long production runs to best satisfy customers while minimising CO2 emissions,” he added.

All4Labels is expanding through direct and organic growth, acquiring several companies that share the same vision and understand the wider strategy to have a sustainability impact throughout the entire labelling and packaging industry value chain.

Another critical element for Martino is the needs of the market, in respect of the regulatory requirements that the business operates within. Their target is not purely compliance but going beyond compliance to achieve excellency.

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Martino is also responsible for Health, Safety and Environmental protection: “I'm very passionate about this. I'm thoroughly into this topic because I truly believe that, to be successful throughout the industry, companies must have an outstanding safety performance”.

“We really represent the brand of major companies, and we do our utmost for their market presence and reputation. We’re committed to efficiently produce and deliver for them,” said Martino.

Sustainable and eco-friendly packaging solutions locations to support applicationssustainablethe of these products,” heMartinosaid. additionallyisresponsible for global quality, ensuring that the business has the right performance across the entire value chain: customers, communities, end users, retailers, and brand owners.

“Within engineering at All4Labels, we partner together with different suppliers to develop the most efficient machines and production technologies”.

“We have opened several hubs with specialised staff to develop new sustainable products and we continuously research to maximise the efficiency of our existing products and services. We also have dedicated technical staff deployed at customers' technologymagazine.com

IMPRESSIVE SPECIAL EFFECTS HIGH QUALITY SOFT-TOUCHSOLUTIONSPRINTING E TREME PERFORMANCES AND PRECISION PRINTINGPRINTING.OMET.COMTHEBESTQUALITYEVER MASSIMILIANO MARTINO CTO, ALL 4 LABELS “At 288forward”drivetootherchallengingandwithconstantlyAll4Labelsinteractourcustomerspartners,eachinordercontinuouslyperformance July 2022 ALL4LABELS

All4Labels strive to stay ahead of the market by trying to predict what their customers will need and always challenge themselves by asking: ‘can we produce in a more efficient manner?’ Martino insists that the answer is always ‘yes’, and it will continue to be as they continue to review and upgrade their machines and encourage two-way feedback with technology partners and providers ; conducting engineering reviews to achieve the most sustainable and lean production possible.

AN ITALIANAWARD-WINNINGJOB

Having been in his role for two years and the wider group for longer, Martino was given the chance to contribute to part of the operational activities in Italy, where the business is undergoing significant expansion. Last year, the facility in Schio won the Eco Design Award for technologymagazine.com2021.

The demand is growing for functional and smart packaging solutions, which can really interact with brand owners, retailers, and consumers.“Weneed to develop unique and tailored production solutions, coming together with machine providers and solution providers to develop the production equipment required to satisfy the needs of our customers.”

A challenging market demand that continues to grow both in size and complexity

“As the market is becoming increasingly more complex and demanding, we have long production runs, but also shorter production runs that we include to best serve our customers. We have developed hybrid production technologies together with solid and reputed partners, which sustainably merge conventional methods of producing packaging together with the modern digital methods. We can therefore use the benefits of both for minimum environmental impact and maximum efficiency, at the same time,” saidHere,Martino.hehighlights an example of promotional products with complex graphic designs, where such hybrid machines and equipment have the unique capabilities to produce in quality short and medium runs, minimising the environmental footprint like it was never possible to before. Industry 4.0 Martino is a strong advocate of the power of innovative in-line processes, robotic applications, and end-line automation to ramp up productivity and flexibility. And, with ERP integration alongside digital print, real-world data is incorporated for complete customers’ satisfaction too.

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Regarding Sustainability All4Labels has solid programs in place to minimise waste and to maximise the lifespans of equipment: “Life Cycle Assessments are constantly conducted to decarbonise as much as possible each printing and converting step with a great focus on enabling de-inking to accelerate the full circularity of substrates, including resins regenerations near-and-off-site.

July 2022 ALL4LABELS

“There are several innovations and digital transformations across the analogue machines that we have, all of which are being upgraded with certain tools like print bars that are coming into the market and having a significant impact in terms of sustainability, because they reduce waste and the need for additional printing tools. They reduce the setup times, as well as time needed to maintain the equipment, and they speed up the supply chain in a much leaner and sustainable way,” said Martino.

“We develop unique and tailored technological production solutions to best satisfy the market needs; from home care and personal care to premium solutions for wine and spirits”

All4Labels is planning to launch a proprietary owned Life Cycle Assessment Tool specifically engineered for digital printing,” said Martino.

The next part, according to Martino, is automation when it comes into transportation systems or smart manufacturing. Last year, the first automated guided vehicles were introduced around the plants including new packaging robots, limiting repetitive straining 290

MASSIMILIANO MARTINO CTO, ALL 4 LABELS

to reduce the impact on operators lifting loads and repetitive “Automatingtasks.ourfinishing and distribution operations across the manufacturing sites is one of the major achievements for All4Labels, with several patents and several engineering innovations already in the pipeline. At All4Labels we are committed to bring printing and packaging to the next level for a new and completely seamless experience,” he added. Holy Grail 2.0 Holy Grail 2.0 is about rationalising how packaging can be sorted, reused, and recycled. As an active member of this initiative, All4Labels provide special samples as well as technical advice and expertise across the Participatingindustry.inthe first industrial trials –which were successful, with a sorting rate above 90% – Martino stated that this was a “great milestone that shows how technology has the potential to improve the sorting of our packaging wastes to be reused, recycled and alsoNevertheless,upcycled”. there are major challenges in the industry that remain, including removing the ink from the packaging – substrates are incredibly challenging. After conducting several R&D and lab tests, All4Labels are now collaborating with several solution providers to see which technologies could best increase the level of efficiency in the packaging de-inking processes to up-cycle as much waste as “Somepossible.production equipment can certainly be improved in terms of efficiency and emission reduction. Partners work with our engineering team on unique solutions that could upgrade our machines with innovative technologies. Digital embellishment is another upcoming technology, where technologymagazine.com

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Industry 4.0 automation 292 July 2022

“Through R&D, we drive customer and enduser satisfaction. We do this together with universities and external practices because we are also in the fundamental research of new adhesives and new substrates that are biobased, or that can be upcycled with a much higher yield,” said Martino. Pioneering smart innovative solutions to solve energy and customer demands All4Labels is also pioneers of innovative solutions that are more interactive – so not purely labels containing printed data, but with data that is digital and can be accessed via QR codes and RFIDs. It’s an area they are heavily invested in.

instead of using traditional foil, we use an innovative technology, which is digital, to reduce CO2 emissions by up to 70% vs conventional processes”.

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“We have a dedicated business unit called Smart and Secure. This focus on the secure and sustainable consumer interaction with innovative labelling and packaging solutions, means it can occur through a mobile, PC or through data management, providing fruitful and useful data that can be fed back into our customer's database in order to really drive forward the sustainability and efficiency of supply chain, helping our customers to make the right decisions and also actively interacting with the “Interactiveconsumers.”packaging requires energy, but such energy can come from renewable energies, such as solar and we are investing into such technology; besides this, 100% of All4Labels electricity comes from renewables, and we're continuing to invest in that with further solar panels to support any incremental energy needs for our production”. technologymagazine.com

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Technology Magazine July 2022

Articles inside

Trailblazer Azita Martin

Timeline The history of computer vision