Technology Magazine - April 2022

April 2022 | technologymagazine.com

SAP Supply chain resilience in Industry 4.0

Ikano Bank Finding value in data beyond cost

TRANSFORMING RETAIL WITH KROGER Kroger executives Wesley Rhodes and Dan Whitacre discuss value-driven technological innovation and improving the customer experience

Technology consultants

Shaping the Future of Technology & AI

2022 23rd - 24th June

STREAMED & IN PERSON TOBACCO DOCK LONDON

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RTJoin PAGE us at Technology & AI LIVE A SALE Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at Technology & AI LIVE 2022.

From keynote addresses to lively roundtables, fireside discussions to topical presentations, Q&A sessions to 1-2-1 networking, the 2-day hybrid show is an essential deep dive into issues impacting the future of each industry today.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group, the hybrid event will be held in London co-located with sister events: Cyber LIVE and 5G & Cloud LIVE between June 23rd24th and broadcast live to the world.

Global giants and innovative startups will all find the perfect platform with direct access to an engaged and active audience. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity.

With a comprehensive content programme featuring senior industry leaders and expert analysts, this is an opportunity to put yourself and your brand in front of key industry decision makers.

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23rd-24th June 2022

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The Technology Team SENIOR EDITOR

ALEX TUCK EDITOR

CATHERINE GRAY EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA ELLA CHADNEY

CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON JORDAN WOOD VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE SAM KEMP

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

EVELYN HUANG JACK NICHOLLS MARTA EUGENIO

ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD DREW HARDMAN MOTION DESIGNER

TYLER LIVINGSTONE PROJECT DIRECTORS

KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO RYAN HALL SUJAN JESURAJA MARKETING MANAGER

SAJANA SAMARASINGHE

MARKETING DIRECTOR

ROSS GARRIGAN

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JOE MARRITT JASON WESTGATE JAMES WHITE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

Diversify to innovate

“To freshen things up and bolster innovation, there’s much to be gained from engagement across industry verticals” TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

B

izClikMedia Group recently ran its biggest ever event - Sustainability LIVE - at London’s Tobacco Dock, featuring the likes of SAP, IBM and Tech Mahindra. It was fascinating to see how much of a major role technology is playing in ambitious ESG-related programmes.

Aside from the wonders of a circular economy, where nothing goes to waste and old tech is refurbished to breathe new life into it (saving on the vast resources of building something new), I was listening attentively to various attendees while interviewing them. One thing above all stood out.

They were not only thrilled to be in attendance again at such a big event, but the panel discussions between seemingly disconnected businesses ignited creative discussions on mutual problemsolving, and the fuel was the collective effort towards the same goals.

To freshen things up and bolster innovation, there’s much to be gained from engagement across industry verticals.

ALEX TUCK

alex.tuck@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 14 Big Picture 16 The Brief 18 Timeline: Qualcomm - how they became pioneers of telecommunications 20 Trailblazer: Simon Robinson 24 Five Minutes With: Ryan Dean

48

Digital Transformation

How digital ecosystems are evolving

30

58

Redefining the grocery customer experience

Centre of Excellence is SAP SWAT team

Kroger

SAP

98

Enterprise IT

Delivering analysis-ready data to enterprise

76

Cloud & Cyber

How enterprises can best optimise hybrid cloud

106 SHL

Creating diversity, agility and innovation with tech

84

120

Procurement the heart of every organisation

What is tiny machine learning and how do we use it?

Ikano Bank

AI & Data Analytics

166 128 Ivanti

EY

How to build autonomous and sustainable supply chains

Making the everywhere workplace a reality

142

182

Top 10

Consultancy firms

University of Oklahoma

On a mission to protect and provide

196

NetApp & Samsung

Providing turnkey solutions with AI

154

TealBook

Solving supplier data for procurement leaders

210

NTT Data

Open network innovation in the 5G era

CONTENTS

268

North Carolina Department of Public Safety Identifying technology demand in the public sector

224

Tata Consultancy Services Creating a holistic approach to cyber security

282 KDDI

KDDI set to enter the Thailand market with Telehouse Carrier Neutral DC

238

Meralco

A CISO's perspective in Transforming Operational Technology

252

Milestone Technologies

Employee-first culture drives success

294

Clusterpower

Clusterpower is a green hyperscale DC set to take over

340

000

000

DXC Technology

Autonomous driving solutions for the future

310

Humana

Humanising the digital workplace experience

352

Alder Hey Children's Hospital Innovating to advance children’s healthcare

324

EdgeUno

Your one-stop infrastructure as a service partner for LATAM

366

DataQube Global

DataQube’s Mission: scalable, flexible and sustainable pods

The Global Cloud & 5G Conference

2022 23rd - 24th June

STREAMED & IN PERSON TOBACCO DOCK LONDON

Get tickets

Sponsor opportunities

Watch our 2021 Showreel

Join us at Cloud & 5G LIVE Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at Cloud & 5G LIVE 2022.

From keynote addresses to lively roundtables, fireside discussions to topical presentations, Q&A sessions to 1-2-1 networking, the 2-day hybrid show is an essential deep dive into issues impacting the future of each industry today.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group, the hybrid event will be held in London co-located with sister events: Cyber LIVE and Technology & AI LIVE between June 23rd-24th and broadcast live to the world.

Global giants and innovative startups will all find the perfect platform with direct access to an engaged and active audience. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity.

With a comprehensive content programme featuring senior industry leaders and expert analysts, this is an opportunity to put yourself and your brand in front of key industry decision makers.

Get tickets

See you on:

23rd-24th June 2022

Sponsor opportunities

BIG PICTURE

JET tokamak reactor Oxfordshire, England

Culham Science Centre, Oxfordshire, England The Joint European Torus (JET) is the world’s largest tokamak experiment.

Using a mixture of deuterium and tritium - the fuels expected to be used in the first commercial fusion power plants the plant is on a mission to provide safe, sustainable, and low carbon energy for generations to come.

JET/UKAEA/EUROfusion

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THE BRIEF “We are focused on enabling the future cyber resiliency vision of enterprises”

BY THE NUMBERS

In the wake of the ongoing Ukraine conflict with Russia, YouTube has blocked accounts connected to Russian-controlled RT and Sputnik, and removed thousands of videos of pro-Kremlin propaganda.

Narayan Sharma

Global Head, IAM COE, TCS Cyber Security, TCS  READ MORE

“Sustainability and the circular economy will be the defining factors of the supply chain of the future” Andy Hancock

80-85%

The amount of Russian internet users active on Youtube

Global Vice President, Centre of Excellence, SAP Digital Supply Chain, SAP  READ MORE

“It is my job to ensure that all employees have what they need to execute the strategy and drive success” Sameer Kishore

President & CEO, Milestone Technologies  READ MORE

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April 2022

What is the Infosys Metaverse Foundry and why does it exist?

After it was recently announced

by India's technology giant Infosys, Technology Magazine looks into this new platform and what it can offer to businesses

 SPACEX Elon Musk has had to reprioritise his cybersecurity efforts after Starlink stations sent to the Ukraine were targeted.

Technology Magazine Show relaunches live on LinkedIn In the towers of BizClikMedia Group, we are always keen to find new ways to discuss the world’s biggest B2B technology stories, whether they are unfolding inside or outside our vast ecosystem of global brands.

The result is the return of our bi-monthy magazine show, returning across all our flagship publications, where host, editorial director Scott Birch, is flanked by Technology editor-in-chief Alex Tuck and AI editor-inchief, Catherine Gray, to discuss highlights of the best stories we cover every two weeks.

There’ll be special guests, an audience poll, a ‘tech that takes you back’ segment where we celebrate obsolete inventions that still hold a place in our hearts, and a roundup of our favourite news and interviews.

Join LIVE on April 12 and April 26 at 15:00 BST.

 MICROSOFT’S THREAT INTELLIGENCE CENTER After a warning of “wiper” malware aimed at the Ukrainian government ministries and financial institutions, in three hours Microsoft picked apart “FoxBlade”, notified Ukraine’s top cyber defence authority and updated its virus detection systems to block the code.  PELOTON American exercise equipment and media company Peloton may be worth US$11.75bn, but supply chain issues have caused the popular brand to scale back production, even scrapping plans to build their own US$400mn factory in Ohio.  TELECOM ITALIA TIM has reported a €8.7bn net loss for 2021. The telecoms giant has been the subject of a takeover bid from US investment firm KKR, in the region of €10.8bn, but it remains to be seen if joint owner of TIM, the Italian government, will allow it to happen.

W I N N E R S APR22

L O S E R S

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TIMELINE QUALCOMM - HOW THEY BECAME PIONEERS OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS One of the world’s foremost wireless innovators, Qualcomm has an extraordinary history of firsts.

Behind many breakthrough technologies that transform how the world connects, computes, and communicates, they are integrated into smartphones, smart cities and smart factories, semiconductors, processors and more as well as actively involved in the everyday technology used by billions of people.

1995 1985 QUALity COMMunications Seven employees of Linkabit - a firm established in 1968 that today boasts more than 75 indirect or direct spin-off companies gather in the home of Irwin Jacobs, co-founder and former chairman of Qualcomm.

Together, these engineers would pioneer the use of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology, which would change the world of wireless.

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April 2022

CDMA hits the market Based on theories of multiple frequencies that could be used to send a single radio transmission, the inspiration behind CDMA came from Hollywood stars of the 40s, Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil. ‘Frequency hopping’ was patented and proposed to the US government in WW2 to prevent signal jamming, but it was ignored and forgotten, until Qualcomm revived the concept.

CDMA would become the basis for cellular networks, eventually overtaking the well established time division multiple access (TDMA).

2019 2002 3G After a series of inventions solved the complex challenges that helped the world to adopt CDMA and it became a commercially viable option for 2G, CDMA would form the basis for all 3G networks and the introduction of mobile broadband services.

Two competing mobile broadband standards came out of 3G, based on CDMA: CDMA2000/EV-DO and WCDMA/HSPA+

2004 2009 4G Qualcomm leads the evolution and expansion of LTE, LTE Advanced, and LTE Advanced Pro. 4G LTE revolutionises the mobile broadband industry, delivering one of the fastest growing wireless technologies and superior mobile broadband experiences on a global scale; creating an LTE ecosystem containing over 600 commercial networks and more than 9,500 commercial devices.

5G After many years spent in R&D, the hard work and collaboration at Qualcomm pays off as mobile form factor mmWave devices finally hit the market.

These new 5G NR mmWaveenabled smartphones, tablets, always-connected PCs, and CPEs deliver unprecedented and enhanced experiences on mobile devices.

The 5G world has begun, but the potential of technology is at the embryonic stages. The future will see widespread usage across smart manufacturing, smart cities, automotive and more. technologymagazine.com

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TRAILBLAZER

Holonomics, deep tech and amplified organisations Name: Simon Robinson Role: CEO Company: Holonomics

S

lesson being a cofounder of Genie was understanding how to develop innovation ecosystems and the importance of the quality of relationships within them.

This has allowed me, for example, to understand the current challenges that DAOs are facing in developing web3 solutions through design communities.

What lessons did you learn from BT Genie?

Genie was launched inside of BT in the late 90s and I was responsible for developing music, games and entertainment mobile services. This gave me the chance to innovate through the creation of platformbased business models with partners such as EMI, Virgin Music and Ministry of Sound. As we were developing the world’s first mobile internet portal, the biggest

What was the rationale behind ‘Deep Tech and The Amplified Organisation’?

Over the last few years, we have been developing an expanded conception of deep tech to encourage people to think more profoundly about what exactly is the purpose of advanced technologies and to understand their real impact on both society and our environment. So our aim was to help organisations grow purposefully and consciously through our framework of the New 4Ps of platforms, purpose, people and planet, and our blueprint, which provides a pathway for leaders to elevate, scale and amplify high-impact strategy, design and digital architectures.

The challenge that most leaders face today in relation to digital transformation is that they are still starting with the technology rather than with their value

imon Robinson is CEO (worldwide) of Holonomics and coauthor of the book ‘Deep Tech and the Amplified Organisation: How to elevate, scale and amplify your business through the New 4Ps of platforms, purpose, people and planet’.

Robinson is an award-winning tech pioneer who co-founded BT's Genie Internet, the world's first mobile internet portal, and helped design the world’s first smartphones. He is published in Harvard Business Review, is a TEDx speaker and is CEO of digital transformation consultancy Holonomics, whose clients include many of the world’s biggest companies.

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TRAILBLAZER

propositions. By facilitating a systemic understanding of the mindsets, platform architectures and conceptual definitions of digital transformation, we wanted to show how leaders can amplify their impact by creating more agile, competitive and customer-centric organisations.

So in our book we discuss the way in which leaders need to facilitate ‘platform vision’ across their organisations. This makes the expansion and scaling of their businesses possible through people who are empowered, engaged and who have a strategic understanding of both platforms and ‘elevated’ digital value propositions.

What is the Deep Tech Network and its manifesto?

The purpose of deep tech is to find profound solutions to complex problems, honouring what it is to be human in our ever more technological world. The Deep Tech Network is Holonomics’ centre of excellence, which has the mission of amplifying our impact through the development of an innovation ecosystem that brings together organisations with the shared vision and values of our Deep Tech manifesto.

While many leaders talk about the fact that they are purpose-driven, many advanced technologies are not democratic, but are instead controlled by the few, and run the risk of inflicting harm on both people and our delicate ecosystems.

So we wrote the manifesto to help leaders determine if their solutions truly are deep tech. The reason is that technology that is not based on the five universal human values of peace, truth, love, righteousness and non-violence is not deep. It is just technology.

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What kinds of clients use Holonomics?

Holonomics is a systemic approach to strategy, design and technology that supports organisations in their transformation processes based on the New 4Ps of platforms, purpose, people and planet. Our clients are generally national and multinational organisations, and come from a wide range of industries, for example health, education, transport, banking, IT, manufacturing, energy, mining, cosmetics and fashion.

What they have in common is a desire to implement our Holonomics approach at a

“technology that is not based on the five universal human values of peace, truth, love, righteousness and non-violence is not deep. It is just technology”

strategic level, allowing them to integrate our strategy mapping, value proposition elevation, deep tech discovery, customer experiences with soul and augmented agility frameworks in a systematic manner across the whole of their organisations.

Because everything we do is based on the integration of universal human values into leadership, strategy and deep tech, our clients gain a higher level of agility and are able to amplify their impact through innovation from an expanded level of consciousness and the development of collective mastery. technologymagazine.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

RYAN DEAN FOUNDER, RD CONTENT Ryan Dean has grown his global creative production agency from a tiny flat back in 2009.

At the forefront of production standards, RD Content are assembling sustainable studios at Park Royal that will be one of the largest in London.

Q. HOW HAS THE SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE CHANGED AND GIVEN RISE TO THE MODERN AGENCY?

» The biggest change to social

media is that channels need to maintain an ‘always-on’ approach, permanently releasing content on a daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly basis.

Gone are the days when you release an advert and run it for a whole year - it just doesn’t work anymore.

This has shifted how media publishers and advertisers have had to work with one another.

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April 2022

“ I BELIEVE THAT, POUND-FORPOUND, BRITAIN IS THE BEST PLACE TO WORK IN THE WORLD FOR CREATIVE INDUSTRIES” Q. WHAT IS YOUR MISSION AT RD CONTENT?

» Our reason for existing is to tell better stories. It’s

my passion. And it is the passion of everyone who works for me.

That is attractive to brands and businesses because they need to work harder with their content these days.

Our mantra is ‘how can we tell the story better’.

By building facilities that are pretty much unrivalled

anywhere on earth, which we are doing right now in Park Royal, we are able to do things that other people can’t do.

It comes back to every investment we make. Whether it is the equipment, facilities or the people, it’s all part of the goal to tell better stories.

The future for us will be in generating more original content. We aren’t confined by platforms such as podcasts, commercials or films, so this includes the metaverse, experiential events - not just traditional forms.

It’s all about the story, regardless of the universe it’s within. technologymagazine.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Q. WHY IS BRITAIN SO GOOD FOR FILMMAKING?

» Traditionally, we punch above our weight here

in terms of talent, and there is a great history in writing, acting, filmmaking, and even now video games in Britain - as well as easier access to talent from Europe.

Many of Britain’s famous studios, such as Elstree, nearly went out of business in the 70s, as the industry was ground to a halt by trade unions.

But now the environment is more flexible, and we don’t have the writers’ strikes, for instance, that Hollywood has to withstand.

Britain has a great geographical position and the government gives 30% back in tax rebates for original content, an incentive that has generated £8 for every £1 spent.

I believe that pound-for-pound, Britain is the best place to work in the world for creative industries.

Q. CLIENTS SUCH AS EY FACEBOOK AND LINKEDIN ARE CONTENT CREATORS AND MEDIA PUBLISHERS THEMSELVES. WHAT IS IT ABOUT RD CONTENT THAT THEY FIND APPEALING?

» We aren’t pigeon-holed by industry or sector,

so we can leverage this to help clients who may want to talk to other audiences outside of their usual space.

Our lack of sector restrictions means we can offer different ideas and a high level of understanding when it comes to people’s needs.

It also means that on any given day, you could be working for a different client on an entirely different project, so it means we can attract great talent - and through that, excite clients who want to work with the best.

Q. HOW DO YOU KEEP UP WITH THE EVERCHANGING TECHNOLOGY?

» I like to think we’re the ones changing things.

That’s the thing with creative disruption, you have to be the ones disrupting.

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“ OUR REASON FOR EXISTING IS TO TELL BETTER STORIES” Many in the industry make short-term investments for quick wins, but we like to keep trying different things and truly believing in the cause we stand for.

Having that commitment towards what we stand for and why we do the work we do is why we’re having such success, and loving it at the same time.

If you find yourself chasing, then you don’t really believe in what you’re doing. technologymagazine.com

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The ‘Risk & Resilience’ Conference

2022 27th - 28th April

STREAMED & IN PERSON TOBACCO DOCK LONDON

70+ speakers. 1,000+ attendees.

One global conference.

Get your tickets

Watch our 2021 Showreel

Previous Speakers Include:

Aurelien Faucheux

Senior Director, Procurement Performance, Systems & Excellence

Charlotte de Brabandt Technology and Negotiation Keynote Speaker & Host

Aston Martin

Lufthansa

AMAZON

Ninian Wilson

James Westgarth

Group Procurement Director Vodafone Procurement

CPO

REDEFINING THE GROCERY CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WRITTEN BY: JESS GIBSON PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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KROGER

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KROGER

Kings of innovation Wesley Rhodes and Dan Whitacre home in on the technology and values that set the Kroger customer experience apart

I

t’s easy to see why Kroger is leading the grocery retail space – and it all centres around a laser focus on the customer. Innovation has been core to the grocer’s identity from its founding, when Barney Kroger created the nation’s first supermarket.

Kroger Labs, the company’s research and development (R&D) arm, plays an active role in its efforts to change the way America eats.

Wesley Rhodes, Vice President of Technology Transformation and R&D for Kroger, spent his career working with companies that are making their next big technological leaps. Today, he brings that expertise to Kroger and leads the team who are uncovering what’s next in the grocery retail space.

Rhodes and his team find ways Kroger can make changes – big and small – to introduce that next level of customer service, and these innovations are coming at an increasingly faster pace.

“In the past, innovations were big bets with potentially big rewards created during long development periods,” says Rhodes.

“Today, we incrementally deliver meaningful innovations much more rapidly by limiting their scope.”

To ensure the lab team is focused in the right areas, customer feedback is constantly incorporated into practice and, if necessary, courses can be changed or corrected in response.

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KROGER

Kroger Technology

“AT KROGER TECHNOLOGY AND DIGITAL, WE WANT PEOPLE WHO ARE PASSIONATE AND OBSESSED WITH MAKING OUR DESIGNS THE BEST”

As customers continue buybuyBaby, alongside to evolve, Kroger finds the fresh meal solutions new ways to create already available on an industry-leading Kroger’s website. experience, both in Families can send new person and on its digital parents a crib, nappies properties. Recently, and Home Chef readythe grocer announced to-heat meals – all in one a collaboration with transaction.

Instacart to deliver In its stores, Kroger customer favourites in leverages technology 30 minutes or fewer, to make the shopping supplying ‘need-itexperience simple. now’ staples from a From digital coupons trusted retailer without customers can add WESLEY RHODES VICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY requiring a compromise to their loyalty cards TRANSFORMATION AND R&D, KROGER on freshness, price or straight from the shelf to convenience. in-app wayfinding that The company is also exploring ways helps shoppers efficiently navigate any store, to digitally expand its aisle by offering grocery shopping is only getting easier. customers the opportunity to purchase Kroger is even exploring opportunities to sought-after home and baby goods from help customers better understand how their businesses such as Bed Bath & Beyond and food choices impact their overall health, via 34

April 2022

KROGER

the OptUp app. Soon, customers will be able to choose to be alerted when a certain food will negatively interact with a medication or how they can substitute better-for-you options for items in their digital carts.

None of these bets – big or small – would be possible without the team at Kroger Labs exploring cutting-edge technologies that create a seamless customer and associate experience. Rhodes’s approach to his work, collaboration ecosystem and commitment to diverse thinking creates a unique space that is ripe for uncovering what’s next.

TITLE: V ICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION AND R&D INDUSTRY: RETAIL LOCATION: USA Wesley Rhodes is Kroger’s VP of Technology Transformation and Research & Development.

Wesley is responsible for providing new innovations to transform the customer’s journey and the associate’s interactions into one cohesive experience throughout all Kroger’s digital and physical properties.

Previously, Wesley spent 18 years with IBM where he served in numerous capacities including as the Chief Technologist in Artificial Intelligence and Cloud computing, CTO for Corporate Strategy, and Deputy CTO for US and NATO National Security and Defense. Wesley holds numerous academic appointments, is a former Prince of Wales Fellow at MIT and has graduate degrees from four prominent Universities.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Building a high-impact ecosystem Alongside his strong team of associates, Rhodes leverages third-party collaborators to accelerate the work of Kroger Labs to the next level.

“That collaboration ecosystem is some of the secret sauce impacting how Kroger Labs works,” says Rhodes. “We look for partners that can seamlessly integrate in what we do, trusting them to bring the right kind of skills, to jump in and contribute to what we're trying to do. In this respect, Fusion Alliance here in Cincinnati has been an integral partner, complementing our staff, processes and methods.”

Dan Whitacre’s role as Senior Director of Kroger Labs and Technology means he is always looking for new opportunities to connect the labs with unique thinkers around the world.

“Building a network of collaborators brings in people we can trust who have different experiences and expertise to our discussion,” explains Whitacre.

“For example, Deloitte has worked across multiple parts of Kroger, and they bring those insights with them into the labs, helping us build a framework for innovation. We've worked with them to better connect with

WESLEY RHODES

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“ Deloitte has been a collaboration partner focused on delivering value and outcomes, not just a transactional service provider. ” TODD FOLEY VP & Corporate Controller at Kroger

Discover more

Danny Edsall, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP As a retail leader, Danny Edsall explains how Deloitte helps Kroger turn market challenges into opportunities to serve their customers more effectively.

There aren’t many organizations better placed to guide the key retail players through this period of digital enlightenment than Deloitte, the largest professional services firm in the United States. Deloitte Global operates in 150 countries and employs over 330,000 people worldwide.

Collaborating with Kroger Danny Edsall is a Principal and Client Services Partner at Deloitte Consulting, LLP, helping the retail industry to serve their customers better. Thinking of himself as also like a chief customer officer for Kroger, their relationship has flourished for over a decade. Edsall says it’s been highly valuable for both parties.

“Deloitte helps Kroger in many ways. We help Kroger with advisory services on areas such as cybersecurity, accounting & reporting, tax, merchandising, supply chain, digital customer experience and technological innovation.

With such a large company, we’re talking about large scale people and process transformations and software implementations. We’re working across the Kroger enterprise in their stores and in their distribution centers to help Kroger solve some of its toughest challenges and turn

them into opportunities. It’s been a highly rewarding working relationship,” said Edsall.

Leading edge developments in the technology and retail world Such innovations at Kroger have included improved customer service through advanced personalization, where the retailer has been zeroing in on what shoppers want and how best to meet their requirements.

“By assisting with their in-store customer experience, we’re helping them be more effective and efficient in the way that they deploy their own staff (associates) and the way they motivate, train, measure and reward them,” he said.

Edsall says that the combination of “business savvy and deep tech expertise, when brought together with the business problem or an opportunity that Kroger is faced with, is when the magic happens”.

“We’re also helping Kroger think through how to get business advantages from artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced analytics”, said Edsall.

Please see our website for a detailed description of our legal structure.

KROGER

“A CRITICAL SKILL WE'VE WORKED ON WITH DELOITTE IS HOW TO FAIL FAST. THEY HAVE THEIR OWN INNOVATION LABS AND UNDERSTAND HOW TO TAKE BIG CHALLENGES AND BREAK THEM INTO SMALLER ONES” DAN WHITACRE

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF KROGER LABS AND TECHNOLOGY, KROGER

outcome-driven initiatives and understand how innovation in Kroger Labs works within this kind of scenario.”

The practice of learning quickly and implementing learning repeatedly to iterate new solutions is key to any successful research and development organisation. And Kroger Labs is one of the best.

“A critical skill we've worked on with Deloitte is how to fail fast. They have their own innovation labs and understand how to take big challenges and break them into smaller ones. Teaching us to fail more quickly on the smaller problems enables us to avoid wasting time and instead focuses our energy on finding effective solutions to solve the bigger problems,” Whitacre said.

University partnerships are some of Whitacre’s favourite interactions in the Kroger Labs ecosystem. The lab team works with multiple universities and colleges to technologymagazine.com

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THE CINCINNATI INNOVATION DISTRICT HAS REALLY GIVEN US THE ACCESS TO TALENT WE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO ENGAGE WITH IN THE PAST. — Yael Cosset, CIO and Chief Digital Officer - Kroger

WE HAVE A TALENT FOR TALENT. Wanting their thinking to be as fresh as their produce, Kroger turned to the Cincinnati Innovation District to find the talent to compete in today’s digital economy.

CID is the place where industry connects with talent to solve problems that matter.

Come see for yourself.

cincyID.com

DAN WHITACRE TITLE: S ENIOR DIRECTOR OF KROGER LABS AND TECHNOLOGY INDUSTRY: RETAIL LOCATION: USA

$137.9bn in 2021 total sales

2,726

supermarkets & multi-department stores

640

million meals donated through more than 100 Feeding America food bank partners

EXECUTIVE BIO

Dan is accountable for continually developing the commercial, academic, government and NGO innovation ecosystem within the Kroger Labs. He works with the team to transform Kroger’s approach to emerging technologies, data and analytics architecture, technology strategies and practices as well as its disruption roadmap.

Dan has served multiple roles with Kroger.

Dan also served as the CTO and Vice President of Business Development for a Data and Analytics services organisation that was acquired by Data Intensity.

Additionally, he spent six years consulting at IBM on Information & Analytics Strategy and Architecture in multiple industries including retail, healthcare, manufacturing, and U.S. intelligence.

answer unique questions, working directly with faculty and students, and even has physical space on both the University of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky University campuses – each located minutes from the company’s headquarters.

These close connections with students at all levels bring fresh perspectives to the team.

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“Creating meaningful outcomes is much simpler when both professors and students are part of the discussion,” he says. “We regularly learn from the different approaches of both groups and seek out particular projects within institutes that we can then capitalise on their expertise and insights.

Young minds are a joy to challenge!”

“The 1819 Innovation Hub at the University of Cincinnati is a unique building.

It's a unique environment,” Whitacre continues. “It's a product of several innovation initiatives that are going on across the State of Ohio.”

And Kroger is not alone in the space at that university.

“Twenty other companies created labs there too and, just by walking around, I can make a connection with an insurance company, a logistics company, a finance

KROGER

“IN THE PAST, INNOVATIONS WERE BIG BETS WITH POTENTIALLY BIG REWARDS CREATED DURING LONG DEVELOPMENT PERIODS. TODAY, WE INCREMENTALLY DELIVER MEANINGFUL INNOVATIONS MUCH MORE RAPIDLY BY LIMITING THEIR SCOPE” company, a banking company. We get great insights from that,” he says.

In addition to Kroger’s close working relationship with universities and colleges in its backyard, the company seeks out opportunities to collaborate with academia across the American Midwest and elsewhere that can offer important insights.

Retail’s unparalleled science and technology pathfinder According to Rhodes, the Kroger team’s commitment to diversity and a forwardthinking digital approach opens the door to new ideas.

“Diversity of thought is key to creating real change. It allows you to see the problem from different perspectives then seek out and test the best solutions,” he says. “R&D thrives in an environment with different

WESLEY RHODES VICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION AND R&D, KROGER

backgrounds, experiences, education, and specialties. We tell our team members that they can come to Kroger and get something they won't find anywhere else – freedom to solve the problem.”

Each group of interns at Kroger Labs is tasked with the same challenge: storyboard what you think the grocery shopping experience looks like in ten years. In each cohort, interns will come to Kroger with a wide range in age, previous work experience, professional disciplines and much more.

Each team member brings a different world view to their ideal experience and their individual aspirations for the future – from making stores more environmentally friendly to exploring additional ways to make shopping more convenient. technologymagazine.com

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KROGER

“ MANY OF THE ORGANISATIONS WE CONNECT WITH ARE FACING THE SAME EMERGING TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES WE ARE. THROUGH THESE EXPERIENCES, WE LEARN FROM EACH OTHER AND CREATE A BETTER OUTCOME TOGETHER” WESLEY RHODES VICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION AND R&D, KROGER

After the initial storyboarding session, the labs teams will consider common technological underpinnings as well as where the suggestions diverge. Then, they begin to integrate the solutions into a flexible future-focused technology roadmap the lab team can begin to explore – all with the goal of creating the best possible digital and in-store experience.

“Diversity expands your imagination,” says Rhodes. “It expands your possibilities,

the breadth of customers you can serve and improves your profitability when associates are given creative licence and mutual respect.”

The lab team also looks outside their walls to understand different customer needs.

“We host forums in our communities, cities and states,” says Whitacre. “Many of the organisations we connect with are facing the same emerging technology challenges we are. Through these experiences, we learn from each other and create a better outcome together.”

Drafting a winning team Top tech talent is always in high demand – and today’s environment allows the best people to work for any company, from anywhere. Rhodes and Whitacre are confident Kroger offers these digital technologymagazine.com

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KROGER

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KROGER

“R&D THRIVES IN AN ENVIRONMENT WITH DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS, EXPERIENCES, EDUCATION, AND SPECIALTIES. WE TELL OUR TEAM MEMBERS THAT THEY CAN COME TO KROGER AND GET SOMETHING THEY WON'T FIND ANYWHERE ELSE – FREEDOM TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM” WESLEY RHODES VICE PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION AND R&D, KROGER

gurus interesting challenges, along with meaningful outcomes.

“At Kroger Technology and Digital, we want people who are passionate and obsessed with making our designs the best,” Rhodes says. “We’re a people business, so we know that to draw out the ingenuity needed to innovate, our workforce is going to need a certain amount of personal and creative freedom.”

Kroger is uniquely positioned for associates to see the outcomes of their work in real time.

“One of my favourite stories is of an associate whose family member struggled with a specific aspect of grocery shopping,” says Rhodes. “They brought the challenge to

our labs team, and we were able to solve it – not just for that one family member, but for anyone across the U.S. who experienced the same struggle. That associate was so proud to bring their family to the store and show off their solution. It’s a small, but meaningful example of the opportunities our associates have every day.”

Rhodes and Whitacre have the unique position to be driving some of grocery retail’s next big innovations. Their strong collaboration ecosystem of universities and third-party companies bring the best minds to the table, and a commitment to diverse thinking uplifts every associate voice. It’s easy to see why the future is a bright one for Kroger Labs.

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HOW DIGITAL

ECOSYSTEMS ARE EVOLVING Digital ecosystems are having profound effects on what businesses believe they are capable of.

We asked experts across technology for their views WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

B

ig Tech first pioneered the concept of business ecosystems to monetise its technology platforms and customer relationships. Ecosystem-based strategies are primarily collaborative models, set up with the knowledge that no business by itself can address all the needs of its customers, and a collective of businesses is much better-positioned to do so — especially in a digitally disintermediated world.

This is the view of CEO Nanda Kumar of SunTec, the world’s no.1 pricing and billing company, which specialises in creating value for enterprises through its cloudbased products.

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Kumar believes the benefits of an ecosystem are multiple and can vastly improve brand health for the financial services industry.

“A recent survey carried out by Deloitte Consulting AG and The Ecosystems Competence Centre of the Business Engineering Institute, St. Gallen, concluded that by 2025, about 30% of the revenues in the financial services industry will be generated in cross-sector ecosystems,” he said.

Kumar added: “More than half of respondents said their businesses

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“ PLATFORMS MUST BE ABLE TO ATTRACT AND RETAIN BOTH PARTNERS WHO PROVIDE GOODS AND SERVICES, AS WELL AS CUSTOMERS” NANDA KUMAR CEO, SUNTEC

are already offering services as part of ecosystems, and three-quarters of the respondents expect to be active members of an ecosystem within the next three years. A 77% majority believes that “ecosystems will have significant importance on the future growth of their business.

What might future banking ecosystems look like?

Joanne Dewar, CEO of Global Processing Services (GPS), said: “I think that the banks that turn out to be the winners are going to be the ones that learn to partner with the wider ecosystem, because they don’t need to do everything themselves.

Banks that really understand how to leverage that same partner network are going to be those that are able to maintain the agility that’s going to be needed going forwards, not just for the needs of today and tomorrow, but well into the future,” said Dewar. technologymagazine.com

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What might future banking ecosystems look like?

According to Kumar, easy onboarding of “I THINK THAT THE banks specifically can reap new members into the BANKS THAT TURN the rewards of a strong ecosystem. and effective ecosystem, “In the past, proprietary OUT TO BE THE as an ecosystem-centered systems were a source WINNERS ARE GOING strategy can enable banks of significant value to TO BE THE ONES THAT to improve their customer banks; but going forward, LEARN TO PARTNER experience delivery, remain their competitive edge competitive — especially will depend on rapid WITH THE WIDER with the ever-greater deployment of secure, ECOSYSTEM” threat from neo-banks scalable technology and fintechs — and platforms that spur JOANNE DEWAR drive growth. collaboration, customerCEO, “Strategies by banks GLOBAL PROCESSING SERVICES centricity and innovation such as “Banking-asto deliver higher levels a-Service” (BaaS), “Open Banking” and of business experience to customers.

“Platform Banking” are a step towards Platforms must be able to attract and retain an ecosystem play. However, it is not both partners who provide goods and enough to take on well-entrenched first services, as well as customers”, said Kumar. movers like Amazon and Google, whose For banks that want to co-create powerful, proven technology platforms ecosystems with other businesses, Kumar are capable of not only delivering superior suggests the focus must be on “building customer experience, but also enabling stronger brands, refining business models 52

April 2022

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and strengthening operational capabilities to deliver superior business experience to customers. This builds customer loyalty which, in turn, will enhance and sustain growth,” he added.

Neri Tollardo, Director of Strategy at Tinkoff, branchless credit card monoliner from its inception in 2006, today is more like a tech company with banking and brokerage licences. It serves more than 20 million customers with a full range of financial and lifestyle services via its digital ecosystem.

A key part of their internal ecosystem, according to Tollardo, is Tinkoff Bank, one of the most profitable digital banks globally and the first financial institution in Europe to launch its own super app. Aided by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine

learning (ML), the award-winning super app enables customers to tap into what’s most relevant for them.

“The app helps customers assess and plan personal spending, invest savings, earn loyalty programme bonuses, book trips, buy movie tickets, make restaurant reservations, and carry out other spending-related tasks all in one place,” said Tollardo.

The Tinkoff ecosystem also includes services for businesses, such as Tinkoff Checkout — a one-stop-shop for merchants of various sizes to accept payments and use a full range of acquiring services. The solution is customisable and works “as a Lego set, where each business can assemble the pieces that fit its needs best,” said Tollardo.

Oliver Wyman technologymagazine.com

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Tinkoff Checkout already serves 100,000 customers and placed 16th in The Nilson Report’s ranking of the Top 25 largest acquirers in Europe.

“Our approach is simple. We aim to address the pain points of traditional banking and brokerage sectors by providing a market-beating digital user experience for both individuals and businesses,” concluded Tollardo.

Tinkoff’s success is rooted in its own technology. Top software engineers, data scientists and financial professionals are part of 7,000 employees, with more than 80% of these employees focused on tech.

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Siloes must be removed James Harrison, Head of UK, Telstra, thinks that in order to build and sustain digital ecosystems, company culture must take centre stage.

“Purposeful transformation, secure business practices, and patterns of successful behaviour, all depend on organisations removing silos and making efforts to foster a culture which values collaboration between people, technology, and industry.

“All too often the focus is put entirely on the technological side of digital transformation instead of on the people

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“ THE SWIFT ONSET OF MASS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVES MEANS EVERY ORGANISATION IS GREATLY EXPANDING THE ECOSYSTEM OF COMPANIES CONNECTING WITH IT” EMILY HEATH

SVP, CHIEF TRUST & SECURITY OFFICER, DOCUSIGN

using the technology and the culture they operate within. By aligning business practices with a positive and open company culture, organisations can design digital ecosystems with people at its core. In doing so, organisations can create an optimised environment, designed to create enduring positive change, where your people, not technology, are your prized asset,” said Harrison.

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“ WE AIM TO ADDRESS THE PAIN POINTS OF TRADITIONAL BANKING AND BROKERAGE SECTORS BY PROVIDING A MARKET-BEATING DIGITAL USER EXPERIENCE” NERI TOLLARDO

DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY, TINKOFF

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partners and customers view the business and help attract and retain talent,” he added.

Harrison believes that a failure to align with culture, employee values and behaviours can create disjointed digital ecosystems. Whereas, “a collaborative, people-centric approach can help shift the culture to understand, embrace and advance digital ecosystems, transform how

Ecosystems are based on trust Emily Heath, SVP, Chief Trust & Security Officer - DocuSign, said: “The swift onset of mass digital transformation initiatives means every organisation is greatly expanding the ecosystem of companies connecting with it. Each has their own unique set of requirements when it comes to security, and more often than not, security is only as strong as the weakest part of that ecosystem,” Acknowledging trust ultimately gives business a competitive advantage. Heath says there are three golden rules that should be considered when identifying the strength of trust within any ecosystem: 1. Know your vendors’ security postures.

This includes the ongoing sharing of details, including vulnerabilities. This transparency strengthens the bonds of trust within the ecosystem and improves its overall security.

2. Know your vendors by name. Being able to lean on a personal relationship when something goes wrong makes it much easier to work through challenges collaboratively.

Coming through adversity builds trust.

3. Combine real-time intelligence tools with the soft skills of relationship building to rank each of your vendors. Spend time educating those struggling to deliver, and interconnect your vendors for knowledge sharing when it makes sense.

Heath added: “Ultimately, trust is about people. Devising a strategy that assigns equal parts trust and security is the key to achieving safer environments. Although never completely eliminating the risk, trust is about individuals; based on what you do and who you are while doing it. That’s a true competitive differentiator.” technologymagazine.com

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Centre of Excellence is SAP SWAT team WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT

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PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

SAP

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SAP

As VP of SAP’s Digital Supply Chain Centre of Excellence, Andy Hancock and his team have deeper, and earlier, knowledge of SAP products than anyone else.

T

he reason many of the world’s biggest companies use SAP’s products for their supply chain solutions is that its software helps companies accelerate growth, develop game-changing innovations and drive more value to their bottom lines.

But of course, before the process of transformation can begin, SAP must first connect with customers, and then communicate the benefits of their solutions.

For this, SAP has its very own international SWAT team of industry experts, who travel the globe, supporting knowledge transfer and being hands-on with customer-facing activities. That team - the SAP Digital Supply Chain Centre of Excellence (CoE) - are experts in any given product, and are adept at applying their industrial experience in helping customers overcome their current business problem and to its own internal stakeholders around the globe.

Andy Hancock is Global Vice President of the Digital Supply Chain Centre CoE. Hancock explains exactly how CoE experts provide the necessary support: “We support field sales teams, helping them with product-features knowledge in the early part of a product’s life cycle. We also do internal knowledge enablement. We look after a lot of global projects.”

He adds: “Our people have been out in the field - they've had oil underneath their fingernails. They understand how to run a 60

April 2022

business. It's not theoretical. They take that knowledge and help our customers achieve their goals.”

The SAP CoE has been around for 12 years and is central to what SAP does, because its teams in the field need to leverage CoE know-how, to enable them to speak the language of their customers.

“You have to understand the terminology,” says Hancock. “You have to be able to speak the language of your customers, and that's what we do. We support sales opportunities in the field.”

CoE has teams all over the world, including in North America, Mexico, central Europe and Singapore. With team members located globally, CoE never sleeps, and it offers expertise across all aspects of the digital supply chain, including on the assets side, as well as in manufacturing and logistics.

“ Our people have been out in the field - they’ve had oil underneath their fingernails” ANDY HANCOCK

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE, SAP

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

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€27.84bn Total Revenue (Non-IFRS) in FY2021

1972

Year founded

2022

50th Anniversary

#1

Software company in Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 14 years

200m+

Subscribers in SAP’s cloud-based user base

“ 5G is a great enabler as it has low latency and you can put a lot of data through a single access point” ANDY HANCOCK

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE, SAP

“We kind of have a cross-matrix approach, so that we can support any opportunity at any time across our portfolio,” says Hancock.

CoE’s main kind of work is around “the reinvention of business processes”, says Hancock.

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“We will go in and get to understand a customer’s steady state. Our guidance will be based both on the capability of the product in question and also on what we know other customers are doing around the world. That's one of the advantages of having a global team - we know what’s happening in Singapore or Australia. The lessons we learn in one place can be brought to bear in another.”

CoE also works closely with its thriving ecosystem of partner firms, says Hancock.

These include: • Movilitas. “A long-standing partner, their extensive experience has helped us scale our manufacturing solutions, and their expertise shines through at every customer engagement.”

• Havensight. “They just know what the customer needs, and they steer them in

SAP

ANDY HANCOCK TITLE: GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT, CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE INDUSTRY: SUPPLY CHAIN LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO

“There are so many great boutique tech firms who have the vision of how a product should be used in real life,” says Hancock.

They're invaluable in supporting SAP to make sure projects are implemented correctly.”

SAP doesn’t only work with businesses, it also helps organisations in the public sector. So does its approach differ, from one to the other?

“There's a lot of regulations in the public sector, so you have to understand these,” says Hancock. “In the private sector, it all

EXECUTIVE BIO

the right direction. Nothing seems to faze them - whether that is a small change request or a complex large multinational project; They just get it done.”

• Mirata. “They’ve enhanced the capability of our mobility portfolio, and also brought the power of digital forms to our enterprise customers.”

Andy Hancock is a Global Vice President of the Centre of Excellence, SAP Digital Supply Chain. Andy merges a strong technical foundation, a passion for solving problems and real world situations he has encountered during his 15 years' tenure at SAP to fulfill his role as trusted advisor for leading global brands. He understands how to quickly undercover the root of the problem and articulate a clear path to the right business outcome.

Having worked in more than 40 countries and experienced a vast array of cultures he knows the importance of operating efficiently at the point of performance and put simply, getting the Right Information at the Right Time to make that informed decision.

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“ We have a crossmatrix approach, so we can support any opportunity at any time across our portfolio” ANDY HANCOCK

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE, SAP

comes down to an individual company's desire to do something.”

He adds: “If a company in the private sector wants to migrate to the Cloud, for example, they have absolute authority to achieve that. But in the public sector there are constraints - policy constraints and security constraints for instance. Security is a huge thing in the public sector.”

Because public sector rules and regulations differ from country to country,

SAP has a completely separate company, called SAP NS2, that deals with national requirements. NS2 employees also usually have to live in the country for whom they are providing solutions.

“For example, if you’re dealing with Ministry of Defence data in the UK then you have to be based in the UK to get the security clearance you need,” Hancock explains.

No one understands SAP’s products better - or earlier - than CoE members, so few are better placed than Hancock to discuss SAP’s strategic priorities in the near- mid- and long-term.

In terms of the now, Hancock says the pandemic was “a shockwave that shook-up the supply chain, and the old model of creating growth through cost reduction got obliterated”.

“Getting stuff manufactured somewhere far away because it’s cheap doesn't work as a model anymore, because if you can't get technologymagazine.com

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Centre of Excellence is SAP SWAT team

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“Sustainability and the circular economy will be the defining factors of the supply chain of the future” ANDY HANCOCK

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE, SAP

it on the shelf, then you can't sell anything,” he says. “So in the short term it's all about creating a resilient supply chain, which you achieve through visibility and agility. It's also all about connectivity now. Businesses can’t operate in isolation.”

To achieve resilience, businesses are of course turning to Industry 4.0 technology.

Hancock says such tech - in conjunction with 5G - is being deployed most widely in so-called brownfield sites. These are existing factories, warehouses or facilities in which new tech is incorporated into the existing infrastructure. technologymagazine.com

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SAP

“Our solutions are helping businesses implement new technologies that allow them gauge the quality of products as they come off the production line, in real time. They can use machine learning to determine, say, if there's a defect on a printed circuit board in a product.”

Hancock says 5G is a “great enabler because it has low latency and you can put a lot of data through a single access point”.

But he warns that 5G’s huge capacity for data might also cause problems, unless today’s computer scientists heed the lessons of yesteryear.

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“ You have to be able to speak the language of your customers” ANDY HANCOCK

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE, SAP

He says: “Although computing has changed a lot since the 1980s the core thing is still data flow. Where was the data created?

Where is it stored? Who needs to use it?

What's it for? Being a programmer means you want to be very effective in the way you move data from one place to another.

“Think back to the days of dial-up modems, where everyone minimised the amount of data transmitted - because if you didn’t then the whole thing just hung.

“With the huge data capabilities of 5G I think people can get lazy, and end up throwing tons of information around just

because they can. The trouble is, when you scale this approach up to enterprise level you soon end up with 50 million data points that flood the network, making it inefficient.

Then you end up chucking more technology at the problem, where what you really need to do is come back to the fundamentals.”

Turning to the challenges of the mid-term future, Hancock says the big problems for supply chain will be around staffing.

He says: “We’ve all read about the mass exodus from certain sectors, such as haulage, for instance. People don't want to work where they did before. Shop floors,

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SAP

“ We're seeing a convergence of operational tech and information tech around workplace changes” ANDY HANCOCK

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE, SAP

manufacturing sites, warehouses - they're all struggling to get and retain talent. So we're seeing a convergence of operational tech and information tech around such workplace changes.”

Such changes in workplace practices are driving “hybrid data streams”, says Hancock.

“You've got on-premise capability and also cloud capability,” he adds.

The on-premise capability Hancock refers to is so-called edge computing - a distributed computing model that brings computation closer to the sources of data.

“If you have local processing power it can be invaluable,” he says. “For instance, if a machine is going out of tolerance at a paper mill and there was a delay in sending this data up to the cloud and back then you could have lost a hundred metres of product by the time the machine is switched off. So the idea is that local machine-learning tech understands the machine is out of tolerance, and without any human action needed.”

The other benefit of edge computing is that, being a local solution, connected machines never stop communicating.

“They’re chatting 24/7, creating data,” Hancock says. “The idea is that you discard most of this and look for the exception - the piece of data that shows a machine is overheating, or out of calibration, or whatever it is.” technologymagazine.com

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“ Sustainability will be a datadriven process” ANDY HANCOCK

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE, SAP

Switching his focus to the supply chain landscape five years hence, Hancock says sustainability - and the circular economy will be the defining factors.

He says: “I think consumers are going to push the agenda on this. Just telling people a product is made out of recyclable material won’t cut it. People will want to understand about companies’ supply chains - about how sustainable their manufacturers are in the Far East, for example.

“They’ll expect an almost complete genealogy of a product, and also whether products that go to landfill are biodegradable, or if they are reusable.

I think these things are going to keep everybody busy for the next ten years.”

He says that achieving such supply chain transparency will mean that data silos will have to become a thing of the past: “Sustainability will be a data-driven process, which means if products are to have sustainability KPIs, then there can no longer be data silos in the supply chain, because that’s like looking at a product through a series of letterboxes, whereas what you need is complete visibility.”

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HOW ENTERPRISES CAN BEST OPTIMISE HYBRID CLOUD A combination of public and private cloud is fast becoming the new organisational preference.

Leading minds share their views on hybrid cloud adoption WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

H

ybrid cloud is a combination of public and private cloud (on premise data centres) that when managed correctly, could bring enormous business benefits by allowing data and applications to be shared between them.

Dell Technologies Client Principal and CTO for UK&I, Rob Lamb, told Technology Magazine how businesses are optimising their IT budgets to try and create opportunities for quicker decision-making, cost reductions, enhanced customer engagement, and to ensure privacy.

As one of the world’s leading IT and workforce solutions providers, Dell Technologies helps clients manage cloud infrastructures and increasingly, the emerging adoption of hybrid cloud.

Explaining the real need for optimising hybrid cloud management, Lamb says that organisations are attracted to hybrid cloud because, “on paper at least, it enables

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them to mix and match on-premises infrastructure, private cloud resources and public cloud services to build a cloud architecture that best fits their needs.

However, these different architectures involve multiple components, requiring different toolsets and skillsets. Before you know it, you need a plethora of tools, which may or may not have cost implications.”

Lamb says that public cloud vendors offer an array of tools to monitor and manage workloads hosted on their clouds,

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“ The speed at which organisations have adopted public cloud and gone from one to multiple cloud use is a bit of an eye-opener” ROB TRIBE

VP SYSTEM ENGINEERING, EMEA, NUTANIX

but although these services work well if workloads run exclusively on a specific vendor's cloud, these native tools only help businesses manage the parts of their infrastructure in that particular cloud.

“They will not work across public clouds or with private clouds and on-premises resources. While significant advancements in the alignment of monitoring tools for

some aspects of the architecture are being made, monitoring and reporting remain divergent in other areas.

Data ingress and egress, the movement of data into or out of a cloud environment, is a further example of an area where cloud vendors have different data management tools and different charging bands for movement of data. This means multiple tools may be needed to achieve a single data ingress or egress activity,” said Lamb.

Matt Nash is Cloud Product Manager at Pulsant, who offer managed data centre services and serve the cloud computing market. He added on the benefits of hybrid cloud adoption: “By using a hybrid strategy encompassing both public and private clouds, clients can prioritise workloads and choose a location that best fits certain technologymagazine.com

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Tech to the point: What is hybrid cloud and why should I care? Dell small biz

“ A hybrid cloud strategy is a good way to build confidence in the cloud” MATT NASH

CLOUD PRODUCT MANAGER, PULSANT

criteria, gaining maximum efficiency for the applications depending on what’s important to them. Security concerns are also one of the reasons why organisations opt for hybrid cloud models to keep data on premise or in a private cloud.

“A hybrid cloud strategy is a good way to build confidence in the cloud, by using it to develop and carry out a transformation programme and execute a longer-term cloud journey in a phased, controlled manner. It can 80

April 2022

also be a deployment model for either compliance, regulatory, risk, latency or data sovereignty issues,” said Nash.

Changing cloud needs in a digital-first world James Harvey, Executive CTO, EMEA at Cisco AppDynamics, a full-stack application performance management and IT operations analytics company, says that during the worst stages of the pandemic, organisations were under intense pressure to adapt their go-to-market strategies to address changing needs in this new digital-first world.

“From remote working to digital services, they were forced to innovate at break-neck speed. In fact, our AppDynamics report showed that digital transformation initiatives were implanted three times faster than ever before. Consequently, technologists found themselves struggling to manage a fragmented, sprawling IT environment fraught with new challenges and an overwhelming volume of data.”

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Harvey says there’s no sign that this innovation pace is slowing down, as many technologists still don’t have the right tools, processes and culture to overcome this data noise and turn this mass of information into meaningful and actionable business insights.

He added: “Full-stack observability helps to address these gaps, giving IT teams a complete and unified view of their entire IT stack. In addition, when technologists use full-stack observability to correlate technology performance with real-time business data, they can prioritise innovation and investment based on customer and business impact.”

As clouds proliferate, enterprises are becoming smarter about how they’re used Given how quickly technologies tend to arrive, develop and disappear again,

$52bn

Global hybrid cloud market size 2020

82%

Enterprises following a hybrid cloud strategy 2020 Insurance and telecommunications Industries with most clouds deployed 2023

Rob Tribe, VP System Engineering, EMEA, Nutanix, says it’s easy to forget just how new cloud computing is, when it was something of a minority sport before 2008, the year that Google and Microsoft decided Amazon Web Services was more than just a passing fad.

Since then, Tribe remarks, clouds have “grown considerably in scope, with seemingly countless private and public cloud platforms now available. They’ve also “grown up” to become a core part of the corporate IT psyche. So much so that a majority of businesses - from multinationals to the smallest of start-ups – now routinely claim to have “cloud-first” or, often, “cloud-only” IT strategies.”

According to Nutanix’s fourth Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI), a survey of global cloud computing trends, an overwhelming

“ 47% of decisionmakers feel that the quality of their actionable insights has decreased or plateaued compared to where it was three years ago” ROB LAMB

CLIENT PRINCIPAL AND CTO, UK&I, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

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majority of respondents (83%) agreed that hybrid multicloud would be their preferred ideal. A view taken based on the ability of hybrid multicloud to deliver both the flexibility and agility needed to compete in today’s digital world while, at the same time, significantly simplifying operations.

“The fact enterprises across the board are dropping legacy data centre platforms in favour of cloud comes as no surprise.

Neither is the move towards adopting a hybrid mix of private and public cloud platforms, but the speed at which organisations have adopted public cloud and gone from one to multiple cloud use is a bit of an eye-opener, particularly in larger companies. Over a third (36%) of companies in the latest survey said they

CLOUD VENDORS

were also adopting multicloud as their most common deployment model going forward. While for enterprises with 5000+ employees, that number rose to over half (57%), with expectations of reaching 80% in the next three years,” said Tribe.

When hybrid cloud management is optimised, what should CIOs do next?

In Dell's 2020 bi-annual Global Transformation Index, some 80% of senior decision-makers at mid-size and large companies said they see hybrid's substantial value. But only 5% say that they've achieved their goal of having a consistent hybrid cloud. That same survey found that 35% of respondents will be investing in arranging their

multi-cloud environment so that each application is deployed in the most appropriate cloud.

According to Lamb, CIOs should take an outcomes-based perspective on their infrastructure, which means looking at how they collect and store their data to unlock its full value.

“Our recent Data Paradox study, commisioned by Forrester Consulting, found that 47% of decision-makers feel that the quality of their actionable insights has decreased or plateaued compared to where it was three years ago. They must map business outcomes to digital infrastructure requirements if they are to succeed in making the most from their data,” said Lamb. technologymagazine.com

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PROCUREMENT - THE HEART OF EVERY ORGANISATION 84

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IKANO BANK

WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

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Åsa Stoije, Head of Sourcing and Procurement, Ikano Bank, discusses the value effective procurement can provide, and the need for strategic partners

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wned by the Kamprad family, Ikano Bank can be traced back to the home furnishing company, IKEA (founded in 1943). Ikano Bank founded in 1995 creates possibilities for better living by offering simple, fair and affordable services, enabling a healthy economy for the many people. Ikano Bank’s offer includes savings and loan products for consumers, sales support services for retailers, and leasing and factoring solutions for businesses. Åsa Stoije, Head of Sourcing and Procurement at Ikano Bank spoke of the company’s business idea: “We create possibilities for better living by offering simple, fair and affordable services, enabling a healthy economy for the many people..”

Ikano Bank’s offerings consist of credit cards, loans, mortgages, sales financing, factoring, and leasing. “We have roughly 1,100 employees in eight European markets, including the Nordics, Germany, UK, Poland and Austria,” says Stoije.

She adds: “But what is interesting right now and for the coming years is that we are in the middle of a transformation - building a completely new digital bank alongside our existing operations.”

Sourcing and procurement at Ikano Bank Having 20 years’ experience in international and progressive functions, Stoije’s focus has been on sourcing and procurement at all levels. technologymagazine.com

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Ikano Bank: Procurement the heart of every organisation

She says: “I joined Ikano Bank in 2019, as Head of Sourcing and Procurement. It’s very exciting to be a part of the sourcing function.

We are a central support function that helps the wider organisation to make the right strategic decisions and investments.”

Stoije and her team is responsible for indirect purchasing of materials and services

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- essentially everything the bank needs to ensure a smooth running of the business.

Such as external resources, consultants, R&D projects, outsourcing, hardware, software licenses. “Or it can be hosted services and software-as-a-service (SaaS),” she says.

“It’s quite a broad area. We are also in charge of negotiating the best deals for the company, while continuing to meet company standards and industry regulations as well as client and public expectations.”

Sourcing is a wellintegrated function in Ikano Bank’s operations, and as such, Stoije e says it’s vital that sourcing processes are both followed and understood.

“Sourcing is a multifaceted and multidimensional function with various tasks

IKANO BANK

ÅSA STOIJE

6bn SEK

TITLE: H EAD OF SOURCING AND PROCUREMENT

Business volume

INDUSTRY: BANKING LOCATION: SWEDEN

1995

Year founded

Åsa Stoije leads the company's purchasing organization, its change and transformation.

1,000+ Number of employees

Before joining Ikano Bank in Nov 2019, Stoije served as Director Global Indirect Procurement at Arjo (Getinge Group) and she has also had several global positions at Tetra Pak and Ericsson for many years.

EXECUTIVE BIO

and responsibilities. We are in the middle of everything, a support function and a service function, where we are more and more becoming an internal business partner providing advice on investments and purchasing decisions.”

Stoije says that while the focus on optimisations and cost in sourcing is understandable the job is also about stakeholder management - building relationships, supplier development, risk mitigation, and responsible sourcing.

“And there are a lot of new regulations to take into account,” says Stoije. “It is important for sourcing and procurement to help the wider company to be compliant to rules and audits.”

She continues: “As a sourcing function we should know what we spend, where we spend, how we spend, and why we spend. It is also important to be able to show how we secure the best value for money, as well as balancing spend risk dependency and value.”

The sourcing process is fundamental, she says, and runs through the entire company.

“Nothing can be bought, purchased, sourced without the procurement and sourcing function being involved,” she explains.

Åsa Stoije holds an Executive MBA, International Management and Leadership programme. She has also studied economics, marketing and law, graduating at School of Economics and management at Lund University.

DO YOU WANT A FUTURE WHERE TECHNOLOGY CONSTRAINS YOUR BUSINESS? OR EMPOWERS IT?

GET THE FUTURE YOU WANT

Working at the heart of business transformations Capgemini, a key partner of Ikano Bank, is enabling business transformation for its global clients - working together with passion and energy Capgemini, a key partner of IKANO Bank, has enabled business transformation for more than 50 years for its global clients. “We are fortunate to work at the heart of all these major transformations, and contribute to the development of Ikano Bank,” said Sujit Karkera, Account Executive and Delivery Partner at Capgemini.

Karkera is responsible for the company’s partnership with Ikano Bank and leads a global team of 250+ people from his office in Sweden. “I believe in building winning teams, being bold, and thinking out of the box.” Capgemini is a global leader in consulting, technology services and digital transformation with the focus on building technology for an inclusive and sustainable future.

“Our industry has been evolving at a very fast speed especially given

the pandemic. Digital products and services are now even more relevant than ever before. We have our focus on being the top partners for cloud and data,” said Karkera.

“We also focus on cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our ability is to provide scale and speed with our large pool of global talent which makes us a trusted partner.”

Trusted partner of Ikano Bank Capgemini has been a key partner of Ikano Bank since 2017. “We provide technology services that drive the core banking platforms, we also partner in their New Bank transformation journey. “It has been a privilege to contribute to Ikano Bank’s vision and their journey of a New Age Digital Bank. At Capgemini we are a global team of experts with niche skills and deep domain knowledge.”

“The secret to our sustained, strong partnership is the common values we share.

I see many similarities, such as being bold with daring to be different, and team spirit with working together.

“We are fortunate to work at the heart of all these major transformations. We will do this, as we have always done at Capgemini, with passion and energy, and all together.”

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IKANO BANK

Where can sourcing’s value be seen?

Stoije says that sourcing is about multidimensional value creation: “Value can be seen from a cost perspective, from a supplier insights perspective, but also from a business growth and increased profitability perspective. Sourcing has strong knowledge in so many different areas. It is vital for an organisation to harness the function’s capabilities in these areas.”

Beyond the value of cost reduction, Stoije says sourcing also looks to create value by bringing in new technologies.

“It’s about how to improve the function,” she says. “How can we further use external input in our own product development so that we can continue on our journey to becoming a fully digital bank offering simple, fair, and affordable financing for the many.” technologymagazine.com

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Helping financial institutions build a resilient and adaptable business At TCS, we believe in creating sustainable growth for our stakeholders. Our innovative framework, digital capabilities, agile business model and ecosystem, are helping forward-looking financial institutes in their transformation journey and enabling them to stay ahead in the market.

Rabi Panigrahi, TCS’ Head of Banking, Financial Services and Insurance, Nordics values co-creative relationship with Sweden’s innovative Ikano Bank Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)’s Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI) practice has been partnering with many of the world’s largest financial institutions in their business growth and transformation journeys for over 50 years. In the Nordic countries, Rabi Panigrahi leads this key segment of the business, engaging with key clients like Ikano Bank (founded by Ingvar Kamprad the founder of IKEA).

TCS focuses on supporting their customers in taking a clear-sighted perspective towards digital transformation and reimagining their businesses. For this, TCS leverages comprehensive investments in products & platforms, as well as disruptive technologies like AI, cloud, cognitive computing and the like. “We bring these technologies on board, so the customer does not have to enter the innovation journey from zero,” says Panigrahi. “Ikano was a digital bank from its outset, without high-street branches, so it had little legacy burden. We have empowered it, with technology solutions to reimagine

Discover more

the digital banking experience coupled with a robust IT4IT platform to enhance Ikano Bank’s development life-cycle and speed to market. The new platform is enabling Ikano to further enhance their growth and transformation journey, with focus on broadening their customer base & customer experience by creating an ecosystem through retailers and distribution partnerships rather than depending solely on the financial segment of the business.”

The vision TCS offers is very much in tune with that of its client. Åsa Stoije, Head of Sourcing and Procurement at Ikano Bank says: “TCS is an important supplier for Ikano Bank. We work in close collaboration with them as part of our strong partnership.

They are a part of many development projects and integrations, and provide us with key capabilities. They fit our needs and requirements as a business, providing us with expert knowledge and helping us achieve our goals.” A statement that neatly sums up the advantage of working with the world’s leading banking consultancy.

Get in touch

IKANO BANK

INSIGHT...

Ikano Bank and its partnerships Ikano Bank believes it is important to have partners that are willing to invest in the business. “Now more than ever, because we’re on our transformation journey, it is important for us to have partners with whom we can have a strong relationship,” says Åsa Stoije, Head of Sourcing and Procurement at Ikano Bank.

She adds: “You can compare it to a marriage. It is important for us and our partners to have transparency and work together towards the same goals.

RISK MANAGEMENT AT IKANO BANK Risk management in any organisation should be treated with care. From a sourcing perspective, Ikano Bank has a detailed checklist of different requirements. It conducts annual reviews, follow-ups and risk assessments, and it has multilevel of approval chains and security assessments.

It’s about give and take throughout the journey, because this allows us to grow our business and to build at scale.”

Given the nature of the sourcing and procurement market, it is also vital for Ikano Bank’s partners to navigate a disruptive market.

“They need to be global, she says “They need to have agility, flexibility, and to provide us value for money. They must also be able to work in a multi-vendor environment, and be willing to take risks in order to get rewarded in meeting our business goals..”

Stoije adds: “I think those are key foundations for a good partnership.

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But our partners are also experts in their field, so it’s important they challenge us. We need them and their expertise, in order to collaborate and improve our offerings.”

Two such partners include Capgemini and TCS “In 2017 after a competitive tender process, we entered into a partnership with Capgemini,” she says. “As part of this partnership a large number of Ikano Bank’s IT functions were transitioned over to Capgemini. This enabled us to strengthen our IT capacity, and to further embark on

our digital transformation journey, as well as secure existing bank operations.”

Stoije adds: “TCS Tata Consultancy services is another important partner for Ikano Bank. We work in close collaboration with them as part of our strong partnership.

They are a part of many development projects and integrations, and provide us with key competence incl. consultants. They fit our needs and requirements as a business, providing us with expert knowledge and helping us achieve our goals.”

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ENTERPRISE IT

With ever-increasing amounts of data, how do Analysts, CDOs and CTOs deliver analysis-ready data to the C-suite to help shape business decision making WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

D

ata is everywhere. Evolving technologies, the consumer shift to digital and the IoT are just a few examples that demonstrate businesses have a massive opportunity to leverage data.

Stephen Walsh, Managing Director of Realise UNLIMITED, a London-based boutique analytical consultancy, says that their recent survey demonstrated that 81% of C-suite said that data and analytics are critical to business growth.

Walsh says there has been a sea-change from pre-processed; cleansed and well understood data that can be “packaged up in views, cubes and schemas to be mined through and then sliced and diced via visualisation tools”.

Now, he says, “as the data revolution accelerates, our data repositories have evolved into lakes and ponds with the emphasis on volume and richness rather than ease of interrogation. From a business perspective, this has shifted the ‘insight bottleneck’ from IT.” Walsh insists that the improved data connectivity, “through the likes of logical data warehouses and the commoditisation of ‘data science’ in a lot of business user applications”, has eased the bottleneck a little.

In his opinion, “general data literacy is improving, but data misuse and mis-interpretation technologymagazine.com

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Content Management and Process Automation Content Management and Process Automation

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ICC Community Development Solutions is a subsidiary of the International Code Council, and provides software solutions for municipalities andisbuilding safety “Our solutions make easier ICC Community Development Solutions a subsidiary ofprofessionals. the International Code Council, anditprovides to get work done faster for local governments,” said Dan professionals.

Foster, General“Our Manager, ICC Community software solutions for municipalities and building safety solutions make it easier Development Solutions, speaking from their headquarters in Rochester, New York. to get work done faster for local governments,” said Dan Foster, General Manager, ICC Community Development Solutions, speaking from their headquarters in Rochester, New York.

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ENTERPRISE IT

is on the rise. Many businesses are not keeping up. The answer is not a simple one.

There is no quick fix. There needs to be more integration between ‘business’ and ‘data’ not just through data literacy programs and data science unicorns but a shift to more business strategy leads with a genuine data remit.

Achieving this will be the key challenge for businesses over the next 5 years,” he says.

“ GENERAL DATA LITERACY IS IMPROVING, BUT DATA MISUSE AND MIS-INTERPRETATION IS ON THE RISE” STEPHEN WALSH

MANAGING DIRECTOR, REALISE UNLIMITED

AI-powered analytics becoming smarter and more accurate Gareth Hutchins is Director, Solution Architecture, Europe & North America for OpenText, an enterprise information management software with a revenue of over US$3bn.

“The amount of data in the world continues to grow at an incredible rate. This massive increase is both a challenge and an opportunity for businesses. Contained within that data is the insight needed to improve decisions, enhance productivity and drive innovation through big data analytics”, says Hutchins.

According to Hutchin, OpenText is seeing the most growth in AI-powered analytics, which brings “human-like” intelligence to understanding the context in vast amounts of structured and unstructured data.

It combines advanced analytics capabilities with comprehensive AI features – such as deep learning, machine learning

The OpenText Cloud: Enterprise Solutions

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“ THE AMOUNT OF DATA IN THE WORLD CONTINUES TO GROW AT AN INCREDIBLE RATE” GARETH HUTCHINS

DIRECTOR, SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE, EUROPE & NORTH AMERICA, OPENTEXT

and natural language recognition – to uncover the patterns that are contained in information. The strength of this analytics solution is that it will get smarter and more accurate over time as it continually learns from the interactions it has with data but can also be used to unlock insight for sources of data that were previously much more difficult to analyse.”

Richard Chalk, Founder and Creator of Virtlx, a real time monitoring platform, says that regardless of the sector the business is operating in, there are some data points which should always be brought to the C-Suite’s attention: customer sentiment, service levels, product performance and the general performance of the company.

“Of course, there are more specific points some businesses will require, and that’s why it’s vital to have a documented plan for data collection and how each department in the business will use the results. The C-Suite might, for instance, be interested in why a specific product isn’t selling and the performance of the team during the buyer’s journey. When deciphering data, it also makes sense to understand how the person you’re presenting to digests data. Artificial Intelligence has also become a powerful way to review data holistically,” comments Chalk.

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A culture of measurement and analysis CFOs and CEOs crave clear data, and cloud cost data is anything but clear, according to Henrik Nilsson, VP EMEA, of Apptio, who develop enterprise apps designed to assess and communicate the cost of IT services for planning, budgeting and forecasting purposes.

“Understanding data and refining investments requires a culture of measurement and analysis that many businesses do not yet have”, he says.

A recent study by Apptio and the Harvard Business Review found that 92% of technology decision-makers view the alignment of tech investment and business goals to be important, yet only 62% of them had confidence in the data they had available.

“Without the right processes in place, leaders risk losing sight of the value of investments and lacking the insights to understand what steps are beneficial to the business in the long term. Forward-thinking IT leaders are therefore focusing on cost allocation before profitability. Understanding who is using (or not using) IT resources and assessing the business value it brings to different stakeholders is key to making decisions on where to alter investment and realise transformation projects,” said Nilsson Visualisation holds the key to C-suite buy-in Mohammad Syed is currently the Chief Data Strategist at global data consultancy Carruthers and Jackson. He suggests that “organisations need to remember that data only has value in the context of a business decision, and data

teams must involve the C-suite and business analysts from the very beginning of the journey”.

Syed advises data teams to “start by defining the target state and work backwards to determine the overall solution strategy. If you start with the analytical layer, it is a slick way of putting the business outcomes first, and ensures that each layer of the “data delivery stack” is purposeful, valuable and necessary to the goal.

“Great visualisation is key. Data teams consistently underestimate the importance of visual and design when presenting their ideas and solutions, thinking that the “technical build quality” will sell the product instead of an “emotional appeal”. It's critical to understand colour and space theory in order to drive engagement from business users and c-suite executives,” explains Syed. technologymagazine.com

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ENTERPRISE IT

“ ORGANISATIONS NEED TO REMEMBER THAT DATA ONLY HAS VALUE IN THE CONTEXT OF A BUSINESS DECISION” MOHAMMAD SYED

CHIEF DATA STRATEGIST, CARRUTHERS AND JACKSON

“Business leaders are interested in receiving data from across an organisation that can be easily visualised,” according to John Hill, Founder and CEO at Silico AI, a platform that coordinates data and human knowledge to build powerful simulations of a business.

“What the data is saying is fundamental but the presentation of insights is also critical. This means plugging in other skill sets such as marketing and design. We’ve

ENTERPRISE IT

found that visual simulation models are well placed to give decision makers transparent, interpretable and forward looking insights,” says Hill.

The future is business intelligence (BI) and machine learning (ML) Niamh O’Brien, Manager of Solution Architecture at SaaS data integration service, Fivetran, says: “It’s clear that for businesses that want to successfully integrate the

“ WHAT THE DATA IS SAYING IS FUNDAMENTAL BUT THE PRESENTATION OF INSIGHTS IS ALSO CRITICAL” JOHN HILL

FOUNDER AND CEO, SILICO AI

DID YOU KNOW? Market research leader IDC suggests that by 2025, there will be a massive 163 zettabytes of data – a dramatic rise from 4.4 zettabytes back in 2013.

In the UK, half (48%) of C-suite leaders now feel less confident making business-critical decisions compared to before the pandemic, according to the latest research commissioned by enterprise customer data platform, Treasure Data.

valuable insights from BI while leveraging the predictive forecasting gleaned from data science, a multi-cloud strategy is the future. Using BI and ML processes simultaneously, business leaders will benefit from a comprehensive view over their data as well as the decision-making paths available to them.

Those that are spraring to start the next phase of their analytics journey, however, must evaluate their data governance strategy first. A common governance framework across clouds will be key to avoiding data duplication and any resulting compliance issues. Companies that take the initiative to invest in robust data pipelines and automation will benefit from a single version of the truth when it comes to data, which in turn will enable them to reach business-critical insight in the shortest time possible – ultimately maximising the value of their data, people and technology investments.” technologymagazine.com

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Creating diversity, agility and innovation with tech WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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SHL

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SHL

Mark Brincat, SHL’s CTO outlines the company’s drive to diversify the workforce, how its data-driven technology enables this and the company’s 2022 roadmap

L

ooking to transform workplaces needed somebody that really can drive that, around the world, SHL has developed can keep us on track towards our target a blend of solutions bringing together architecture and understand how we are science, technology and people data converging that way.” that revolutionises the way people The creation of these roles helps the hire. The global company supports clients as company realise its vision: “SHL is building a they acquire and manage their talent to drive world where businesses thrive because their agile, diverse and innovative workforces. people thrive. At the heart of this, it's our tech With innovation at its heart and an line ‘people science, people answers’. If we unmatched portfolio of products, Mark dissect that, really SHL solutions are put in Brincat, SHL’s CTO has his work cut place to combine memorable experiences, out for him as he drives the company’s technology and world-class service with our transformation to become a software-as-ascience that reduces bias to unlock the true service (SaaS) platform. potential of your people. And that's what we Leading a large global team, Brincat looks do for over 10,000 businesses worldwide.” to transform the team with the introduction Without these roles, SHL would not have of technologically focused roles, he outlines: been able to respond to the ever-changing “At SHL, I've built transformation through working world. The rise of remote working, introducing roles including Head of DevOps. catalysed by the pandemic, has caused the As we [led] a transformation into cloud priorities of the working world to change, to and we needed somebody to really think support this, Brincat explains: “SHL is there about the automation, the toolsets and in the middle of your talent acquisition and the practices. We wanted to [carry out] a talent development needs. We enable you transformation into agile to understand working and practices this shift through a and we want somebody scientific viewpoint to really lead that and through memorable transformation.” experiences.”

On top of this, the CTO Technology for talent created the roles of Head acquisition and of Architecture and VP assessment QA and Enablement to SHL’s technology offers drive SHL’s transformation both data-based talent MARK BRINCAT to a SaaS company: “We acquisition and talent CTO, SHL

“SHL helps you thrive because your people thrive”

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Mark Brincat is a seasoned IT professional with over 20 years of experience. The CTO has a strong background in digital transformations has seen this through multiple industries. Brincat has a passion for technology and how this enables the evolution of the customer experience and transform the business model.

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SHL

management solutions that reinvent the to understand their workforce,” says Brincat. way companies engage with candidates The company has also introduced its as part of their acquisition cycle.

Virtual Assessment and Development Centre “We looked at the innovation and benefits allowing for training and assessment to be deep people insights can bring to an done virtually, which — since the pandemic — organisation in terms of talent development. is vital in many environments.

We asked, “what are you looking at in terms “Innovation is constant and really what of your talent? Are we are trying to enable you looking at the is to revolutionise the mobilisation of your people decisions that talent? Are you looking organisations make at succession planning? through engaging and Are you looking at talent empowering talent development?” And we through that employee took that in to develop life cycle,” Brincat adds. our new product Without a doubt, offering called Mobilise, SHL’s technology brings this combines the immense benefits power of our data into to those who use it, MARK BRINCAT an ability for customers as its CTO outlines: CTO, SHL

“I have a much deeper appreciation as to how to understand the drivers and the motivations that are behind an execution”

Creating diversity, agility and innovation with tech

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“38% more women have been identified for leadership roles through one of our clients using one of our products, that's a direct impact of the technology and the product innovation that went into building upon the research that was done, and then building that into an experience that we can offer to our clients.”

“88% of candidates made one of our education clients the number one destination employer, that's all about the experience that those candidates had through the whole recruitment cycle, they felt engaged, informed and provided good feedback from it.”

MARK BRINCAT TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER COMPANY: SHL INDUSTRY: HR TECH LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Bolstering cloud capabilities with trusted partnerships To continually improve its solutions, SHL partners with a number of

1977

Year founded

1500+ 150

Countries

40

Languages

95+

net promoter score

EXECUTIVE BIO

Number of employees

Mark Brincat is the Chief Technology Officer at SHL. As a seasoned IT professional with over 20 years' experience, Mark has a strong background in digital transformations and has seen this through multiple industries. Mark has a passion for technology and how it enables the evolution of the customer experience and transforms the business model.

He believes that the right people working together in an engaged environment is a key enabler to success.

Strong team leadership across multiple disciplines that come together to the launch of new and innovative products/ services to market.

Mark has deep expertise in media, digital commerce, HR tech and government. He has earlier held senior leadership positions at The Economist, Telegraph Media Group and BBC Studios.

Specialties: Digital transformation, multi cloud enablement, omni-channel commerce, architecture and cross functional execution.

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“ I have a much deeper appreciation as to how to understand the drivers and the motivations that are behind an execution” MARK BRINCAT CTO, SHL

companies, to support its transition to cloud. Cloud computing is a number one priority for many companies in its digital transformation journey.

Digital business transformation holds more urgency since the pandemic, which highlighted the need for flexibility, enabled by technology. Cloud computing has proven itself as a cost-effective digital solution that

creates the flexibility enterprises desperately need.

Recognising the need to invest and innovate with this technology, SHL turned to its partner of many years, HCL, to bolster its cloud capabilities. HCL Technologies is a next-generation global technology company, its technology products and services are built on four decades of innovation, with a strong management philosophy and culture of invention.

HCL helps enterprises reimagine their businesses for the digital age and as Brincat explains, “worked with us on the first multicloud deployment of our platform.” technologymagazine.com

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88%

of candidates named SHL’s client their #1 choice after taking its immersive assessments

30%

of female engineers Bombardier was able to hire from a 20% female applicant pool

“This was a huge achievement for us last year. HCL has been doing that by providing us with people expertise and support through those changes. SHL moved to the cloud in 2019 and partnered with AWS to do that.

And then in 2021 we were able to launch on a different cloud provider, which is a huge achievement to be able to say we can offer our platforms across different cloud providers.”

On top of this, HCL has also provided SHL with resource augmentation, ran end-to-end support on SHL’s platform and partnered with the company on strategic initiatives.

Nordcloud, an IBM company and European leader in cloud implementation, has been a partner of SHL since 2018 as the company matured its cloud operations. “We grew together,” says Brincat.

“Nordcloud firstly partnered with us to move to the cloud successfully. Then it helped us with optimising that cost of operation and transforming what we have from a platform perspective to be much more cloud optimised. Thirdly, how we can bring that whole FinOps mindset into the operation of our platform.”

Promoting diversity, equity and inclusion from within It goes without saying that diversity is a top priority. With its technology improving diversity, equity and inclusion for its clients, SHL ensures this is reflected in its own operations. “It's a hot topic and it's embedded at the highest levels.

We have a number of communities.

We call them together communities that we've set up,” explains Brincat.

These communities have different focuses in key areas: “We have one around balance, which is looking at gender parity. We have one around origins, which is celebrating technologymagazine.com

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SHL

“We have community impact groups that we have set up where we can give back to the local communities that we work in” MARK BRINCAT CTO, SHL

the cultural difference. We are a global organisation, we have cultural differences all over the place. We have one around pride, which is around sexual orientation, which is really looking at giving that community the space to actually talk and push those messages. We have one around ability, which is looking at mental health and disability. And we have another two, which are around carers and generations that is allaround age equality.”

Set up to promote change, the communities champion initiatives and get involved in the narrative that surrounds important issues.

“We also have community impact groups that we have set up where we can give back to the local communities that we work in.

So, if it is in London, Delhi, Minneapolis or Atlanta, or Beijing, wherever we are, we are

making those links to the local communities and volunteering our time to help with those communities,” Brincat adds.

Maintaining momentum as SHL prepares for 2022 Now, SHL is focused on its roadmap for 2022. Following a year with a 250% rise in people using its software, the company is dedicated to keeping this momentum going. “We see that is going to continue rising because one of the impacts of the pandemic and this whole move in people, is driving more employment campaigns with a larger talent pool,” explains Brincat.

The company’s 2022 strategy is founded on its shift around the subscription ecosystem: “SHL is trying to move from a services-led offering to a product-led offering. What does that mean? It means technologymagazine.com

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“We looked at the innovation and benefits deep people insights can bring to an organisation in terms of talent development” MARK BRINCAT CTO, SHL

that we are looking at being a SaaS platform for our clients.”

As a SaaS platform is easy to use, scale and deploy SHL is keen to reap these benefits and make the transition.

“We’re focused on really continuing our pathway of growth through focusing on subscriptions and subscription selling and the solutions that enable that. Focused on the platform offering and really moving onto the SaaS offering,” says Brincat.

He adds: “We also want to enable its availability in a number of different markets.

It's looking at continuing innovation. We want to bring more analytics to interview intelligence and the video interview, so we aim to generate more data out of that.”

SHL is also looking at its chat enabled experiences so clients can interact more seamlessly with its assessment and development platform as well as its global reach.

“That's a very big priority for us because we operate in so many different markets and how we do that while optimising the cost, the scalability of that platform,” concludes Brincat.

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What is

tiny machine learning and how do we use it?

Consuming only milliwatts of power, TinyML gives tiny devices intelligence, potentially transforming the world with trillions of applications WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

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A

ccording to the tinyML Foundation, tiny machine learning (TinyML) is broadly defined as a fast growing field of machine learning technologies and applications. Tiny ML focuses on optimising machine learning (ML) workloads so that they can be processed on microcontrollers no bigger than a grain of rice.

Dr. Evgeni Gousev, Chairman of the Board, tinyML Foundation, explains: “Recent progress in computing hardware, machine learning algorithms and networks and availability of datasets for model training have created a strong momentum in development and wide deployment of game changing AI applications, especially at the edge.

Intelligent devices with human-like senses have enabled a variety of new use cases and applications transforming the way we interact with each other and our surroundings. Dedicated hardware becomes tiny and very energy efficient

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MACHINE LEARNING

tinyml.org

“ This will create a better, healthier and more sustainable environment for all” EVGENI GOUSEV

CHAIRMAN, TINYML FOUNDATION.

(with mW or less power consumption), algorithms and models - smaller (down to 10s of kB of memory requirements), software – lighter down to deployment on deeply embedded platforms. This enormous wave of technological innovation and fast growing tinyML ecosystem creates a strong momentum towards new applications and business opportunities.”

Better latency, better interactivity and less power usage Gabriel Aguiar Noury, Product Manager at Canonical, says that edge computing is

important to assist with the next industrial revolution. He said: “Our ways of working demand low latency and the need to deliver data in real-time. To reduce latency and costs, companies are quickly moving their computing power to the edge, leaning less on data centres that could be situated far away. A part of this evolution is tiny machine learning, otherwise known as TinyML. By using TinyML, there is no need to use cloud services to process this data, which means better latency, better interactivity, and less power usage. The technology can be implemented in cheaper devices, such as smartphones, and empower them to assist with more intelligent activities while continually learning to improve the process. Examples include swarm robotics that can explore collapsed underground mines, or store shelves that can be replenished when required.” technologymagazine.com

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What is TinyML?

Additionally, according to Noury, TinyML is becoming increasingly relevant as manufacturers are investing more into edge computing.

“Edge networks help with the surge in performing AI tasks at the edge, which require distinct capabilities that help to handle elastic demands and ever-changing workloads,” he said.

On the other side of the physical world spectrum, according to tinyML Chairman Gousev, sensors are becoming more sophisticated, sensing a variety of modalities such as vision, sound, environmental and motion/vibrations.

“These are being deployed in their millions every day. The “collision” of these two powerful driving forces, tinyML and tiny smart sensors, establishes a unique opportunity for edge computing and on-device analytics that will be happening everywhere and anytime. As an end result, this will create a better, healthier and more sustainable environment for all.”

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The emerging area of running AI models in large fleets of small IoT devices Edge AI is a part of the TinyML space, addressing a broad category of use cases and target devices, according to Tomas Uppgård, Head Of Partnerships at Stream Analyze, a Swedish company helping large industrials to create Edge AI solutions.

“More and more data is produced outside of the cloud directly in IoT devices and other equipment with in-built sensors or computing capabilities”, says Uppgård.

According to Gartner, 75% of all data produced will be in devices outside of the cloud by 2025. Uppgård says it isn’t possible or even desirable to send all this data to the cloud for analysis: “The concept of Edge AI is instead about sending the AI models to the devices for analysis where the data is produced.

It is a key enabler to utilise the data produced for intelligence in connected devices,” he said.

MACHINE LEARNING

“Industry is a sector where edge AI has great potential”, Uppgård continued.

“Industrial products can become smart with Edge AI adding services for the users and improving operations.”

Jan Nilsson, Co-Founder and CEO of Stream Analyze, added: “We’re heading towards a future where we see AI coming to all kinds of industrial products. We’re close to the lift-off moment for Edge AI in industry. We sense this from our customers.

There is a rapidly growing need to integrate AI solutions, ultimately, it’s about improving productivity and creating better and more competitive products”, continues Nilsson.

Stream Analyze works with large industrials and automotive companies across Europe.

The mission is to make it easy and efficient for industrials to create Edge AI solutions. This is

“We’re heading towards a future where we see AI coming to all kinds of industrial products. We’re close to the lift-off moment for Edge AI in industry” JAN NILSSON

CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, STREAM ANALYZE

Pitchbook

What are emerging spaces in the 2020 investment landscape?

Cognitive computing AIOps Next-gen security TinyML Cloud workload protection Service mesh Computational storage Database sharing Swarm AI

Deal counts technologymagazine.com

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“ The impact of this technology extends beyond commerce and has the potential to improve integral services such as healthcare” OFRI BEN-PORAT CEO, EDGIFY

done by providing an end-to-end platform enabling industrials to create their own Edge AI solutions without hiring expensive consultants. The platform is generic and enables a multitude of use cases. There are opportunities in areas such as new smart services for end users, improved operations, autonomous vehicles, smart electrification, sustainability and much more.

Edge computing can be built into existing hardware Ofri Ben-Porat is CEO of Edgify, a company that offers a solution that lowers costs, heightens security and provides near 100% accuracy.

With AI becoming more and more integrated in our everyday lives, Edgify strives to make it accessible across all industries by providing Ai training of complete ML and DL models, directly on the Edge.

“Computing on the edge has extreme value to brands wanting to retain ownership of their data, improve privacy and innovate without having to overhaul an entire system.

Edgify Explained

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“Several parallel developments are tied together - AI, electrification and sustainability are interrelated. Edge AI is a key enabler for this”, says Nilsson.

MACHINE LEARNING

“Retail is a prime example of this in action – the rise of autonomous ‘just walk out’ stores have made many brands consider stripping out their own hardware and starting over to remain competitive, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Edge computing can be built into existing hardware – such as self-checkouts – and trained in-store. The result provides intelligent identification of non-barcoded items – such as fruit and veg – without investing in a whole new suite of tools,” said Ben-Porat.

The Edgify CEO says that training these edge devices only takes a few hours, and the AI will continue to learn with each customer that uses it.

“Every ‘unknown item in the bagging area’ is no longer an inconvenience for the store, but an opportunity for the machine to learn and become even more accurate. For incumbent retailers keen to provide a more modern shopping experience for customers, this approach will give a competitive advantage that doesn’t require the deep pockets of major tech brands such as Amazon” he said.

Wider applications of edge technology This is only the beginning of worldwide rollout of TinyML across industries, according to Ben-Porat.

“The impact of this technology extends

“ Edge networks help with the surge in performing AI tasks at the edge” GABRIEL AGUIAR NOURY PRODUCT MANAGER, CANONICAL

beyond commerce and has the potential to improve integral services such as healthcare.

Patient data can be invaluable in giving medical professionals trends and insights on diagnosis and treatment. However, the need for this information to remain confidential is a major hurdle to overcome. Traditional cloud solutions have automatically been discounted, due to the inherent security issues present in moving data outside the hospital,” he said.

Again, Ben-Porat notes that the benefits lie in using existing technology and upgrading it.

He added: “Embedding edge devices within medical tools such as MRI machines can be a more effective solution. Medical professionals can gather this data, identify trends and still share valuable insights – all without compromising the privacy of the patient. The result will improve processes, treatment and the overall patient experience.” technologymagazine.com

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Making the Everywhere Workplace a Reality WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

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PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

IVANTI

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President and Chief Product Officer, Nayaki Nayyar, says the phenomenal growth of Ivanti over the last two years is rooted in vision and strategy

W

hen current President and Chief Product Officer, Nayaki Nayyar, joined Ivanti in 2020, the US-based IT Software company had few existing products to manage and secure devices.

While the company had strong patch management, endpoint management and some capabilities in service management, the reality was that “in each of the pillars that Ivanti was playing in, it did not have the depth and the strength to be top two or top three in those markets,” said Nayyar.

One of Nayyar’s first tasks over two years ago was to help Ivanti put together a very strong vision and strategy. She helped the company to look of itself in the mirror and ask questions of itself: ‘Where are we heading? Where are we going?’.

The result was a refreshed mission around the ‘Everywhere Workplace’, accelerated by the global pandemic, and a vision for Ivanti Neurons Automation Platform to Discover, Manage, Secure, and Service IT assets from Cloud to Edge.

Working in an addressable market of 30 billion, the aim was now to double this figure and work towards a 60 billion addressable market.

Charting through a period of high growth Under Nayyar’s leadership, the vision, the strategy and the growth for Ivanti’s three main product pillars, along with its flagship Ivanti Neurons automation platform, has achieved significant success over the last 12 to 18 months.

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IVANTI

IVANTI: Making the Everywhere Workplace a reality

The Neurons platform connects the company’s industry-leading unified endpoint management, cybersecurity and enterprise service management solutions, providing a unified hyperautomation platform that enables devices to self-heal and self-secure and empowers users to self-service.

Nayyar’s vision included an inorganic and organic growth strategy. Over the last 12 months, Ivanti has made five acquisitions across the product portfolio. Far from being random, Nayyar reiterates, these were “all very deliberate moves to strengthen our capabilities in unified endpoint 132

April 2022

“ It's just been a pleasure for me to be at the forefront of enabling Ivanti to go from less than half a billion to a billion plus in revenue” NAYAKI NAYYAR

PRESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, IVANTI

NAYAKI NAYYAR TITLE: P RESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER LOCATION: SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA

management, in cybersecurity to evolve beyond just patch management into the entire zero trust framework, and service management, providing a great end to end service experience for employees, not just in IT but in every line of business”.

Ivanti today has doubled the total addressable market from 30 billion to 60 plus billion, just as it set out to do.

“Phenomenal growth, phenomenal success, phenomenal momentum. It's just been a pleasure for me to be at the forefront of enabling Ivanti to go from less than half a billion to a billion plus on revenue,” said Nayyar.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Nayaki Nayyar is the President and Chief Product Officer at Ivanti. She is responsible for Ivanti’s strategy, innovation and growth in Cybersecurity, Automation, Edge and Endpoint Device Management, and Service Management. She was instrumental in Ivanti’s significant growth through acquisitions, the launch of Ivanti’s Neurons Platform, and doubling its total addressable market from US$30bn to US$60bn in the last 2 years. Nayaki currently serves on the boards of TD Synnex, Veritone, Inc., Solutions, and Corteva Agriscience.

She holds a B.E. in mechanical engineering from Osmania University (India), M.S. in computer science from the University of Houston, and is a graduate of the Stanford Executive Program.

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Dean Yeck, Chief Revenue Officer at NinjaOne, helps IT teams to monitor, manage, patch, secure and backup all their endpoints at scale.

Dean Yeck is the Chief Revenue Officer at NinjaOne, leading the global sales and marketing efforts worldwide. A year into his tenure, he’s been part of a team that has doubled the revenue of the company, also doubling the sales team and launching into new geographies and verticals.

The winning relationship with Ivanti Patch management is a priority for NinjaOne. They have formed a longterm strategic partnership with Utahbased Ivanti, who provides solutions for IT asset management.

“We are proud of our relationship with Ivanti, who have helped us deliver the best-in-class patch management solution in the marketplace. Patch management is increasing and so is its importance to our customers for their operations; whether it’s for compliance or for the hygiene of their software.

Our partnership with Ivanti has given us a best of breed approach. And our customers say that as well,” said Yeck.

Enhancing customer value add with evolving products Moving from outdated on-prem tools to cloud tools like NinjaOne is key,” adds Yeck: “Our customers receive world-class customer support with industry leading CSAT scores, with a dedicated account manager and unlimited support, post-sales.

“Our post-sales account management support is how we unlock lots of great features on a monthly basis for our customers, so they are truly getting the full value of NinjaOne. That’s a transformational relationship, not just transactional,” said Yeck.

“The more that customers can do with NinjaOne and a single pane of glass, the more value they’re going to get and the longer the relationship with us. And then on top of that, expanding our VAR / reseller relationships so we can get NinjaOne into more hands across the globe,” he said.

LEARN MORE

IVANTI

The Ivanti #EverywhereWorkplace Contest Highlights

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IVANTI

“ I saw the potential in Ivanti. While we were very small and we didn't have a lot of strong assets, there was a strong foundation for adding some smart acquisitions” NAYAKI NAYYAR

PRESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, IVANTI

The Ivanti Neurons automation platform Ivanti’s flagship Neurons automation platform discovers, manages, secures, and services IT assets from cloud to edge. Nayyar adds: “Neurons helps customers to truly leverage additional transformation in a post-COVID world. They can discover all types of assets that they have in their landscape,” she said.

“When you have such a diverse workforce working from all over the world, working from different locations, whether it's from home or while they're on the move; knowing what devices they own is the number one priority for every enterprise. We help secure the devices, the users and the end-to-end access management. We’re also trying to provide that contextual, personalised experience to every employee in an enterprise.,” said Nayyar.

Even the word ‘neurons’ was chosen because it evoked a mental image of small, intelligent, bots that can self heal devices.

“So these self-healing bots can detect an issue before the end-user knows about it and prevent those issues from happening, so the end-users don't experience it. And they get a very personalised, ambient experience,” she said.

In regards to this type of intelligence, Nayyar takes inspiration from modern cars, that can learn who we are and what our likes and dislikes are, and self-heal before an issue manifests.

Ivanti bases its technology on automation

by AI/ML, deep learning capabilities and supervised and unsupervised learning capabilities. They create these self-healing bots which provide a contextual service experience to end-users.

“The innovation that we brought to market, that's what drove our growth. I would say we’re now a leading vendor, but the brand wasn't even known two years back.” said Nayyar. technologymagazine.com

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“ The innovation that we brought to market, that's what drove our growth. I would say we’re now a leading vendor” NAYAKI NAYYAR

PRESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, IVANTI

Ivanti well received by analysts The past 18 months have seen some extremely positive reviews flood in from industry analysts, often the independent and trusted measure of quality in IT. “When we initially launched Neurons in July of 2020, they were very positive about that vision and strategy. But what really got us the credibility with analysts is our ability to deliver what we said we will do. It's one thing to have a vision and strategy, and a whole

different thing to be able to execute on that promise. Additionally, with the acquisitions we did, this created all the inorganic momentum, and every quarter, without missing a beat, we released more and more organic innovations,” said Nayyar.

“When we pair up our execution with the vision, that's what really gets the analyst communities excited. So today we are a leader in cybersecurity, unified endpoint management and enterprise service management, or what we refer to as ITSM. With the existing strength Ivanti had in patch management, we were able to evolve beyond just a standard capability into risktechnologymagazine.com

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based patch management, where we enable our customers to prioritise the vulnerabilities and the risk they are exposed to in their landscape, and proactively patch to prevent ransomware attacks,” she said.

Nayyar acknowledges how big an issue ransomware is and how it is disrupting every organisation, no matter if it's large, medium or small. She adds that with the Ivanti Neurons for Patch Management product, those ransomware attacks can be prevented by prioritising and applying those patches using robust automation.

A large ecosystem of technology partners Ivanti has rapidly built a large ecosystem of partners, specifically OEM and channel partners, a traditional strength of the company.

Ivanti works with most major security vendors and its software is embedded into the vendor’s stack. The company partners with device vendors, such as Intel and major telcos such as AT&T and Verizon. This large ecosystem of partners, according to Nayyar, “helps us scale and take our product beyond the direct selling model and into an indirect selling model, through these large device vendors, security vendors, and telcos - bringing us to thousands and thousands of customers worldwide, both in large enterprise and also in the mid-market space.”

“We become even stronger as a vendor and player in the entire cybersecurity space, in unified endpoint management, service management and bringing the digital experience to every employee in a B2B context, similar to how they're already used to in the consumer world.”

Again, for Nayyar, everything is based around the guiding vision and translating this vision to employees, customers, partners and investors: “The success I've had personally, 140

April 2022

“ The success I've had personally, both here at Ivanti and in my prior life, is all based around having a strong vision and strategy” NAYAKI NAYYAR

PRESIDENT & CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, IVANTI

IVANTI

IVANTI STATS 2020 - 50 most powerful women in technology 2021 – top 100 women in technology Cyber Security Global Excellence AI & Machine Learning Awards

both here at Ivanti and in my prior career, is all based around having a strong vision and strategy; putting that upfront and helping your entire ecosystem to get excited about it and execute towards it. This is extremely personally fulfilling for me and the entire executive team, to see that come to life for our customers and for our partners.”

Potential clear at Ivanti from the outset “I saw the potential in Ivanti. While we were very small and we didn't have a lot of strong assets, there was a strong foundation for adding some smart acquisitions. And so, with organic and in-organic investments, we quickly grew in size over the past two years.

It's been a great journey so far,” she added.

After spending more than three decades in the industry, Nayyar is all too aware that things don't happen overnight. Her early journey started as a customer in the oil and gas industry, spending over 10 years at Valero Energy Corporation, a Fortune 500 international manufacturer and marketer of transportation fuels, other petrochemical products, and power. Five years prior to that at Shell, where she gained a deep understanding of a customer's mindset, consistently seeking to apply technology to transform these industries.

“So with that foundation, I came into the software and the tech space, beginning with SAP for five and a half years, BMC for three and a half years; affording me a great mix of both industry knowledge and also technology knowledge. As a senior leader in the tech space, I’ve been lucky enough to have some great mentors and supporters along the way, who have given me these wonderful opportunities,” concluded Nayyar.

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TOP 10

CONSULTANCY FIRMS As organisations digitally transform, many turn to consultancy firms to support them with challenges around new technology, here we look at the top 10 firms WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

C

onsulting firms can be key in helping organisations improve their performance and grow. They do this by solving business problems and finding better and new ways of doing things, often with technology.

Offering services across all areas of business, including HR, marketing, IT and finance, these firms provide a wide range of solutions for enterprises.

With technology, consultancy firms advise businesses on how best to use technology to meet their business objectives. In doing so, they play a key role in business transformation, allowing clients to accelerate growth, reduce cost, manage risk, develop talent or simply just change the way they operate. technologymagazine.com

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10 Forrester

Forrester is a leading global market research company that helps organisations exceed customer demands and excel with technology. The firm empowers its clients to adopt a customer-centric approach across leadership, strategy, and operations. For more than 35 years, Forrester’s research has given global consumer business and technology leaders a clear vision to see what’s next.

Its customer-centric research and analytics support customers as they implement modern strategies that align and empower teams to deliver on a shared vision for growth.

“ The firm empowers its clients to adopt a customer-centric approach across leadership, strategy, and operations” 144

April 2022

09

Bain & Company Advising leaders on strategy, marketing operations and IT, Bain is a top management consulting firm. Since its founding in 1973, Bain has worked with 63% of the Global 500 companies and now has 63 offices in 38 countries. The firm's technology consultants serve eight of the 10 largest tech conglomerates, three of the five leading software manufacturers, and many of the most influential players in the semiconductor industry. It also guides customers in mastering technical and business model innovation.

TOP 10

08

“In FY21 PwC firms provided services to 84% of the Global Fortune 500 companies and the company had 90,273 people join its firms”

Gartner

With expert guidance and tools, Gartner enables faster, smarter decisions and stronger performance on an organisation’s most critical priorities. The company, which works with businesses in more than 100 countries, also delivers actionable, objective insights to executives and their teams. Gartner's in-depth guidance is developed through rigorous proprietary research methodologies to ensure all insights are independent and objective. It is also created by a global team of more than 2,150 research and advisory experts who understand both business and industry.

07 PwC

PwC helps organisations and individuals create the value they are looking for, by delivering quality in Assurance, Tax and Advisory services. With offices in 156 countries and more than 295,000 people, PwC supports a number of global clients and are among the leading professional services networks in the world.

In FY21 PwC firms provided services to 84% of the Global Fortune 500 companies and the company had 90,273 people join its firms. technologymagazine.com

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05

Ernst & Young

06

McKinsey & Company Global management account company, McKinsey & Company, is a trusted advisor and counsellor to many of the world’s influential businesses and institutions.

Founded in 1926, McKinsey combines bold strategies and transformative technologies to help organisations innovate more sustainably, achieve lasting gains in performance, and build workforces. To support clients in the technology industry, McKinsey helps customers build internal capabilities, integrate digital and analytics tools into their organisations, and transform the ways in which they work to improve their business in substantial, sustainable ways.

With the purpose of building a better working world, Ernst & Young (EY) provides insights and quality services to build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies. The company has a number of technology services including: advanced technology; audit technology; tax technology; connected capital technologies; technology transformation; and alliances and ecosystems. Founded in 1989, saw its combined global revenues rise 7.3% year-on-year to US$40bn and offer a radically different approach to connecting strategy, transactions, transformation and technology.

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04

Accenture Accenture is a provider of strategy, consulting, interactive, technology, and operations services with digital capabilities.

Operating in five segments communications, media and technology, financial services, health and public service, products and resources Accenture aims to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity as well as help clients become the next and best versions of themselves.

The firm has a number of technology-enabled services such as artificial intelligence, cloud and automation, on top of offering technology consulting and innovation.

“ Accenture aims to help clients become the next and best versions of themselves” 148

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03

Tata Consultancy Services Part of Tata Group, India’s largest multinational business group, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is a global IT service, consulting, and business solutions leader that partners with the world’s leading businesses in their transformation journeys. With a wide range of offerings, TCS has a number of different insights into how companies can utilise technology to improve business operations from digital twin technology and IoT to automation and AI, TCS look to support clients with many business challenges.

02

TOP 10

UST

Global digital transformations solutions provider, UST craft disruptive solutions and provide the resources and expertise clients need to bring them to life.

Empowered by the belief that the power of technology will engineer a better future, UST uses a nimble and creative approach to help clients realise their business outcomes. Founded in 1999, UST is at the forefront of digital technology and engagement. With a diverse talent and deep domain

expertise, UST devises better, more efficient ways of helping streamline business and satisfy customers through digital techniques. The firm works with modern media, technology and communications enterprises that touch billions of lives through their products, services and productions. UST has long standing relationships with its largest technology clients. Five of the largest telecommunications companies utilise its services for agile development.

UST: Build for Boundless Impact

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Welcome to Deloitte

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“ Deloitte currently has approximately 330,000 people in more than 150 countries and territories”

Deloitte Operating as a global professional services network, Deloitte offers audit and assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax, and related services. The firm, which was founded in London in 1845, serves a number of industries including energy, life sciences and technology. For the technology industry, Deloitte focuses on helping technology companies across the world deal with the demands of adapting their business strategies to succeed in a changing market. In 2021, the company’s revenue smashed the US$50bn revenue mark for the first time and was a 5% increase on its preCOVID return of US$47.6bn. Deloitte currently has approximately 330,000 people in more than 150 countries and territories. To find solutions to the most challenging issues facing its clients, Deloitte works collaboratively and dynamically by bringing together multidisciplinary teams of people with diverse perspectives, skills, and expertise.

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SOL SUP

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LVING PPLIER DATA FOR PROCUREMENT LEADERS AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

PRODUCED BY: JAMES WHITE

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TEALBOOK

CTO Arnold Liwanag describes how he and TealBook tackled the problem of bad supplier data to help procurement leaders make better decisions

T

ealBook is a specialist in the procurement space as a subset of the supply chain; a deeply complex network of relationships, and multiple data sets, where workforces depend on longstanding relationships and frequently enter information manually.

With his deep understanding of the supply chain and the core business challenges around that, Chief Technology Officer Arnold Liwanag saw a great opportunity to apply this sector knowledge with his artificial intelligence (AI) background, when he joined the Toronto-based startup in August of 2021.

Previously a student of the works of Geoffrey Hinton, a renowned British-Canadian cognitive psychologist and computer scientist most noted for his work on artificial neural networks, Liwanag was one of a lucky few in the world to be studying such a nascent topic in the early 2000s, which led to an early career of cleaning data, integrating it, and ensuring it was of good enough quality to input into the early AI systems that were in development at the time. He has led AI strategy at PwC and overseen many largescale technology implementations.

His mandate at TealBook is to drive the engineering and implementation of the product and ensure the business is constantly innovating, relative to the technologies that are available in the market and inserting that into the TealBook platform.

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TealBook: Solving Supplier Data for Procurement Leaders

“I own Data Ops and within this, Data Governance, Data Quality and the processing of information to complement where the shortcomings are. A big part of my role is also to decide how we're using artificial intelligence technologies and be able to train those models to perform better over time,” said Liwanag.

The problem of bad data Particularly in the procurement space, supplier data is about the collection of the information.

Liwanag explains: “It's very difficult to convince the universe of suppliers out there to deliver that information in the same way. With the landscape as it stands today, suppliers work with many buyers, and all these buyers want specific information to be able to transact with you. And then, in that situation, each individual buyer is asking that one supplier the same question 30 or 40 times.”

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This tireless process causes supplier fatigue as they enter this information in multiple portals and maintain this information over time.

Liwanag added: “People change, situations change, and information changes. So you can see how that problem gets out of scale very quickly. We’re talking about a dynamic environment where things are constantly changing in terms of your buyer landscape, the technologies they're using, and the supplier itself is changing constantly in different dimensions, so then maintaining data across those different systems consistently, in the manual fashion, essentially becomes unsustainable.”

TEALBOOK

According to Liwanag, it's about the ability to maintain accurate records over time: “That's really the big data problem and we call it portal fatigue from the supplier perspective, in the sense that they're just inundated with forms,” he said.

The data foundation and benefits to CPOs Within the walls of TealBook, its data foundation is vital. The company has set up the data foundation to be perfect for the needs of chief procurement officers (CPOs). The data points alone do not have a significant value until combined into one global view, which drives high-value insights that CPOs can use to build better sourcing strategies.

“For CPOs, their mandate is often savings.

So with the data foundation, they have the ability to extract and integrate information, and data from multiple poll systems, that they may have within their technology environment to execute various processes.

By leveraging TealBook and merging that information with our data set, they can drive additional insights that they weren't able to do previously. The data foundation integrates these silos of information within typically large technology environments and drives these cross-system insights through an enterprise view,” said Liwanag.

Year founded

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Number of employees

TITLE: CTO INDUSTRY: SUPPLY CHAIN LOCATION: TORONTO, CANADA

EXECUTIVE BIO

2014

ARNOLD LIWANAG

Arnold Liwanag joined TealBook as the new Chief Technology Officer, adding an impressive background to TealBook’s C-suite. Arnold brings deep supply chain industry knowledge to enable TealBook’s mission of AI-powered supplier data and intelligence.

In prior roles, he led the Artificial Strategy and Transformation practice at PwC/ Strategy&, and has also held technical leadership positions at Scale AI, Hewlett Packard and Sybase. He is a talented and coveted speaker at industry events that include CogX, Elevate Toronto and AI4. Most recently, Arnold served as the CTO at IVADO Labs, where he served as the authority on AI for the company. Arnold has the technical depth, experience, skills and understanding of supply chain issues to position TealBook as the only supplier data foundation that powers the digital enterprise.

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“ People change, situations change, information changes. So you can see how that problem gets out of scale very quickly” ARNOLD LIWANAG CTO, TEALBOOK

TealBook’s singular centralised ‘source of truth’ provides CPOs with an excellent opportunity to get a global view within their enterprises, and even within different departments and divisions. TealBook also possesses a super set of information on supplier data that it can inject and merge with internal operational system data sets, further enhancing systems that CPOs are already invested in.

TealBook in the procurement ecosystem According to Liwanag, procurement, as a function in an organisation, has been transformed from being more cost-centreoriented to now being innovation-driven, guiding or driving transformation within the business in a more proactive sense. The scope of impact that a modern procurement function has on the organisation is massive.

“The amount of spend that procurement is responsible for is enormous. And often it can run up in the billions. The expectation is now to drive innovation with the supplier 160

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base, using data as the foundation for being able to do that. A very important trend and it’s what we're bringing to the table for procurement leaders,” said Liwanag.

He added that outside of the portal approach, which is the typical model that a lot of technology players in the procurement space use, TealBook also uses AI methods and engineering techniques to autonomously collect a lot of that information, from public, private, and proprietary sources.

“We're very strategic and creative about how we apply these different methods. We aggregate, integrate, and normalise that data set into a strong source of truth. And then,

on the dissemination side or the distribution side through data foundation, we can ingest or push that information into the different technology environments for our client host.

That way, they are getting accurate, realtime information on a consistent basis, as the supplier landscape changes and the client changes as well,” he added.

Download our 2021 Global Supply Chain Agility Report

Important considerations for procurement leaders Liwanag insists that the most important quality for an enterprise procurement leader is a data-first mindset. Even outside of procurement, he believes this is the trend technologymagazine.com

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“ The expectation is now to drive innovation with the supplier base, using data as the foundation for being able to do that” ARNOLD LIWANAG CTO, TEALBOOK

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to help make intelligent decisions for the company, or for the strategy.

“Having reliable, trusted information at their fingertips and feeding that into important decisions and processes that procurement leaders are faced with every day, to make mission-critical decisions or activities, ensures these are executed effectively and with the quality that they want.

Without good data, you can't make good decisions and without good decisions, you can't be highly competitive in the space that you're trying to compete in,” he said.

TEALBOOK

Agile may be a buzzword, according to Liwanag, but he says the theme or the principles behind agile are very relevant in a highly dynamic world, especially when there are major disruptions: “One method to become more agile is to not only maintain and maximise good relationships with existing suppliers, but also to tap into insights from a broader supplier network to maintain agility as things change,” said Liwanag.

Liwanag insists there will always be extraneous factors contributing to the changing landscape. This forces companies to understand who they need to work with and how they need to work with them.

“I call that the extended enterprise, which these days is critical to enabling that agility,” he said.

“ Without good data, you can't make good decisions and without good decisions, you can't be highly competitive in the space that you're trying to compete in” ARNOLD LIWANAG CTO, TEALBOOK

TealBook CTO Arnold Liwanag discusses what’s happening in technology and digital transformation within the procurement space

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“ The mandate for me is to really strengthen and scale what we have” ARNOLD LIWANAG CTO, TEALBOOK

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A highly innovative future with technology at the fulcrum Continuing the theme of the data foundation at TealBook, Liwanag is effervescent in his praise of the technology he has inherited and how that can transform the procurement space.

“The mandate for me is to really strengthen and scale what we have. Then also layer in additional innovations to really drive better outcomes in terms of data at scale. The ability to autonomously ingest

information from more unstructured sources”, he says, “which is a very difficult task, quite frankly, when you're doing it at scale.”

As the TealBook client base grows, more people use the tools and more suppliers are integrated into its system, the level of scrutiny also continues to grow.

“A lot of the decisions that we make from the technology roadmap are rooted in data quality. I’m always asking myself: ‘How can we ingest and disseminate information at scale, for numerous supply buyers and buyers, while retaining the quality of our information for our supplier base?’,” said Liwanag.

The CTO adds that TealBook is delivering valuable insights now, but these may be known as “targeted process enablement activities” in future.

“If we become the trusted source for supplier information, at a global scale, with the types of insights and information we can glean from that data and provide for our various stakeholders, it will be unprecedented,” he said.

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How to build autonomous and sustainable supply chains WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE 166

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Glenn Steinberg shares insight into how EY teams are building the next generation of resilient, sustainable and autonomous supply chains

T

he COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has forever rewritten the rulebook for the global supply-and-demand economy, a delicate ecosystem that, until early 2020, was predicated on efficiency and productivity above all else.

Every industry has had to come to terms with titanic shifts during the pandemic: finance now faces a touch-and-go cashless future, while retail has become omnichannel and next-day-delivery by default.

Underpinning each of these pivots is the supply chain, where the only constant is adaptation. Ask any chief supply chain officer (CSCO) how the pandemic has impacted their day-to-day life and, unprecedented demand aside, they’ll tell you it’s been largely business as usual, but with a significant twist.

“What’s interesting is that the pandemic hasn’t necessarily created any new challenges for supply chains; it’s just magnified the problems that already existed,” says Glenn A. Steinberg, EY Global Supply Chain Leader. “In the US, for example, some estimates say we are short by about 80,000 truck drivers at this time. But three years ago, we were also short, just by about 61,000.”

Adaptation has been a career-defining concept for Steinberg, a former executive at GE, IBM and another Big Four who for more than 30 years has helped organizations evolve and thrive throughout periods of boom and bust.

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“If you want to be successful in this industry, you have to have a thirst for learning – and that doesn’t end. Just continually stay out of your comfort zone,” he says. “If I look back on my career, all the critical turning points came when I got out of my comfort zone and took on something new. From the early days of process and strategy, to the rise of digital and ERP [enterprise resource planning] implementation, I still leverage those learnings, 20 years later.”

It is a mindset and lifestyle that Steinberg fully embraces, and shares with thousands of professionals and students each year. He is a frequent and in-demand guest lecturer to MBA students at Columbia University. In conjunction with Columbia Business School, he helps lead a quarterly roundtable for CSCOs to share insights and experiences of the biggest issues they face, from global tax and tariffs to 170

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sustainability, digital supply chain and the future of work. He also sits on the advisory board of Columbia Business School’s W. Edwards Deming Center for Quality, Productivity, and Competitiveness, whose mission is to train the next generation of managers, upskill the senior executives of today and support vital research.

Steinberg’s commitment to learning and sharing knowledge have also earned him a reputation as a trusted and valued advisor to the world’s biggest economies. When the pandemic broadsided governments around the world, Steinberg and his team were contacted by governments in Germany, the UK, the US and Australia. The assistance provided by Steinberg and EY teams were vital in one of the most acute periods of disruption in living memory.

EY

“ WE HAVE SELFDRIVING CARS, WHERE PEOPLE’S LIVES ARE AT STAKE. THERE’S NO REASON WE CAN’T HAVE AN AUTONOMOUS AND SELF-ORGANIZING SUPPLY CHAIN” GLENN STEINBERG

GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN LEADER, EY

Today, Steinberg leads more than 5,000 supply chain consultants across the globe, guiding clients by offering supply chain strategy, procurement, manufacturing, logistics and fulfillment, as well as planning and technology solutions.

It is a broad remit that demands collaboration, and he’s proud of the “collegial” culture he’s helped shape to foster an environment where it flourishes.

“We are focused on taking care of each other, collaborating and doing what’s right for our clients,” he says. “I want this to be a place where everyone can say, ‘I feel valued. I feel understood. I belong. I feel cared for and I can grow.’ This is the culture we have developed.”

“EY teams at a global level are very focused on doing cutting-edge work with emerging technologies,” Steinberg adds. "We’re doing innovative engagements with AI and blockchain, digital twins and smart factories.”

He adds that his team is “also doing some of the most purposeful work on the planet,” carrying out shop floor digital manufacturing work at a global pharmaceutical company delivering lifesaving medicines and providing a trusted data exchange platform and suite of applications that links all the key players in the cell and gene therapy ecosystem.

“We are also working with one of the largest consumer products companies in the world, helping to decarbonize their value chain,” he adds. “This is really purposeful work that our people can be proud of.”

As much of the world begins to rediscover some form of regular cadence, Steinberg and his global team are turning their focus to defining the future of supply chain. It is the start of an “investment supercycle,” Steinberg says, with enormous potential for positive change. technologymagazine.com

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What if operational disruptions became growth inspirations?

© 2022 EYGM Limited. All Rights Reserved. ED None.

EY

“Supply chain reinvention is in vogue. It’s an exciting time for C-suites and CSCOs. The multiplicity of demands that are facing CSCOs is incredible. It used to be enough just to balance cost, service, quality and speed. Now you need to add resilience and sustainability into your supply chain.”

As global powers continue to vie for cultural and economic influence, tariffs, incentives and saber-rattling will continue to impact supply chains. Sustainability, visibility and resilience will come to define the new standard for supply chain excellence in a world where, Steinberg says, “something broader is at play.”

“The world order is changing from a unipolar economic order to a multipolar one,” Steinberg continues. “This has a tremendous impact on the strategic architectures of the world’s supply chains.

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“ THE PANDEMIC HASN’T NECESSARILY CREATED ANY NEW CHALLENGES FOR SUPPLY CHAINS; IT’S JUST MAGNIFIED THE PROBLEMS THAT ALREADY EXISTED” GLENN STEINBERG

GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN LEADER, EY

GLENN STEINBERG TITLE: GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN LEADER INDUSTRY: CONSULTING

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED STATES Glenn serves as EY Global Supply Chain and Operations Leader.

In his role, he helps drive high-impact strategies and business execution across the Fortune 500.

He is a seasoned professional with extensive supply chain and operations experience. Prior to joining EY, he led many supply chain transformations in several leadership roles.

He received an MBA in Finance and Operations Management from Columbia University and an Electrical Engineering degree from Union College.

How Glenn is building a better working world “I am focused on helping clients and internal teams navigate complexity with confidence. I am purposefully creating a safe place where our people can ask questions and collaborate – where our people become business consultants moving beyond functional professionals. I am supporting a new generation of leader equipped with digital competencies and focused on innovation.”

EY

footprint, determining where best to place their physical assets such as manufacturing facilities, warehouses and more.”

Five key themes for resilient supply chains “Resilience is a concept that is multifaceted, with most people not understanding how broad and deep it really is,” he says. “Endto-end visibility is foundational to a resilient supply chain, with agility built into the extended chain to enable action.”

Steinberg says five key themes of resilience have emerged in the course of stress testing clients’ supply chains to uncover both vulnerability and opportunity.

• Embedding end-to-end visibility, by leveraging technologies such as internet of things, digital twins, simulation software, analytics, AI (including machine learning) and alerts for risk monitoring.

• Creating agile networks, by re-evaluating the geographical and strategic architecture of the supply chain. “It is a simple question to ask what should be local, regional or global, but in a complex partner ecosystem, reconciling a network of warehouses, manufacturing plants, logistics, procurement and the other pillars of supply chain is never easy.”

• Securing alternative sources of supply. “This means not only spreading your bets among additional suppliers, but also including diversity, equity and inclusiveness (DEI) commitments in your sourcing efforts.”

• Developing a resilient workforce “by preparing employees to have the skills required in the next five years and embedding a problem-solving mindset into the ways of working right down to the shop floor machine operators.”

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• Building a trusted, secure supply network. “In an era where everything is interconnected by technology, cybersecurity is paramount if a supply chain is going to be resilient.”

Steinberg’s other focus is supply chain sustainability, and he says innovation around this important topic goes hand in hand with the fundamentals of resilient supply chains.

He says: “A resilient supply chain requires that you embed end-to-end visibility, simulation and risk monitoring into your business, while a sustainable supply chain requires traceability, visibility and disclosure.

These are two different, but related, topics that are being worked on in earnest by companies across the globe. Similarly, resilience requires that a company secure alternative sources of supply to be ready for

the next disruption, while sustainable supply chain management requires sustainable and diverse sourcing strategies.”

Supply chain in the C-suite The final major post-pandemic shift in supply chain is the rise of the CSCO and the elevation of supply chain as a constant boardroom agenda item. Some draw parallels to the rise of the chief information officer in the mid-2000s: once a nice-to-have advantage that is now an imperative skill set for every growing business.

“The best CEOs are fully versed in the importance of technology,” Steinberg says.

“They have to stay abreast of it as it’s moving very fast, and, otherwise, they can miss a pivot and easily be disrupted. Now CEOs, frankly, need to understand supply chains as well. It used to be a cost of doing business, but now it’s in the boardroom, and if you do it right,

it can be a competitive advantage and a revenue growth driver. For example, think about the largest online retailer, they can get you the product the next day, maybe even the same day. That’s all about using the supply chain as an engine for growth by quickly meeting customer needs. That is a differential competitive advantage.”

Supply chain expertise can also come from sources beyond your company’s four walls, Steinberg points out, through a partner ecosystem where companies can collaborate and gain scale by accessing the talent of thousands of talented supply chain professionals globally.

This, he says, is why the EY organization collaborates with best-of-breed innovators: industry solutions providers such as SAP and Blue Yonder, and technology giants like Microsoft. technologymagazine.com

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© 2022 EYGM Limited. All Rights Reserved. ED None.

What if resiliency isn’t about withstanding today but envisioning tomorrow?

“ SUPPLY CHAINS ARE HEADED TOWARDS DIGITALLY NETWORKED ECOSYSTEMS WITH SHARED DATA IN THE CLOUD” GLENN STEINBERG

GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN LEADER, EY

Typical of this spirit of collaboration is the EY teams collaboration with Nottingham-Spirk, a Cleveland, Ohio, innovation specialist that acts as its supply chain innovation hub. It has a center to demonstrate how its own technologies and EY assets work together to solve client business problems.

“But I have to say, above all in the supply chain space, Proctor & Gamble is a very important collaborator for us,” Steinberg says. “They are annually rated one of the top five supply chains in the industry by leading analysts. We formed a global arrangement with P&G, so while our competitors can tell you what great looks like, we can show you what great looks like.

“We bring EY clients to P&G sites; we walk the factory and talk to the machine operators. We can embed P&G leaders on our projects, and we have access to their IP [intellectual property]. It’s been wildly successful in helping EY clients see into the future and what the art of the possible really is.”

Where is this all headed?

Which leads Steinberg to the question he’s asked most often by clients: what is possible in the future, and where is this all headed?

“There’s all this disruption,” he says.

“We’ve got geopolitics shaping supply chains for years to come. We’ve got industry 4.0, and the interconnected society we’re living in. Consumer buying patterns are uneven and shifting, providing the opportunity for some companies to tap into analyzing realtime data to match supply and demand.

And there is disruption from events ranging from weather to global semiconductor shortages. It is no wonder why CSCOs and the C-suite want to know how all these things will converge.”

EY teams research points to the rise of digital and fully autonomous supply chains.

EY teams researchers surveyed 500 seniorlevel executives at organizations of more than US$1b in size. One key finding is that

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2025 will be the year mostly autonomous supply chains will begin to emerge to replace the hybrid processes common today.

“We’re already on a path to an autonomous future. We have selfdriving cars, where people’s lives are at stake. There’s no reason we can’t have an autonomous and self-organizing supply chain. In the end, it’s just about mastering the power of data.”

It’s an exciting future, and a journey that EY clients are keen to embark upon – and for good reason.

“We’re already doing projects to help clients get to their future state, to show them what the roadmap for a digitally networked and autonomous supply chain looks like. Consider this: today, a change in customer demand has to work its way linearly back through the supply chain to get to the OEM [original equipment manufacturer], the supplier, to the supplier’s supplier, all through the tiers.

That could take months before people change their production plans.

“Supply chains are headed towards digitally networked ecosystems with shared data in the cloud,” he adds. “This way, everyone can see what’s happening now, immediately adjust to real-time events and even predict what happens next. Finally, we have all the tools and technologies at our fingertips to make this a reality. There has never been a better time to be a supply chain professional than right now.”

The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.

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“ SUPPLY CHAIN REINVENTION IS IN VOGUE. IT’S AN EXCITING TIME FOR C-SUITES AND CSCOs” GLENN STEINBERG

GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN LEADER, EY

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On a Mission To Protect And Provide WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: SUJAN JESURAJA

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UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

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CISO of the University, Aaron Baillio has helped to completely modernise the institute's IT environment, empowering the students and staff

I

n the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, New Mexico and Colorado, lies the tornado-prone land of Oklahoma. This proud state is home to a University with big ambitions and no small amount of competitiveness.

But to truly compete at a higher level, they needed to undergo a digital transformation three years ago, which was triggered by new leadership and the desire to modernise, centralise and standardise their technology environment.

To help achieve this, Aaron Baillio, Chief Information Security Officer, primarily responsible for IT risk and security for the institution, had to transform into more of a “Chief Security Evangelist,” in his words.

Having spent 11 years in the Department of Defense, it’s no surprise that Baillio is a man who likes to protect and serve.

“What drives me on a day to day basis is the fact that we're stopping bad guys.

Despite the military and academia being vastly different, those intrinsic values are the same and are part of the reward of being in this profession. Our teams are doing their job; we're legitimately stopping bad things from happening to other people,” he says.

Issues from a distributed IT environment In his current role as CISO for two years, but with the University for seven, Baillio was aware the institution had multiple campuses that operated very independently, in a

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very distributed IT model. Baillio explains: “We began to merge operations, from this distributed model across the three campuses to a systemwide approach.”

The University went from three CIOs to one CIO and merged teams from across the campuses to become systemwide groups and organisations. By centralising these teams, the university began to realise millions of dollars of savings, revamping how they approached technology purchases and IT processes.

When asked about consolidation of the CIO into one overarching role, Baillio states that it accelerated the decision making process: “There was a lot of duplicative spending, a lot of decision making that was happening outside of a governance process.

So we developed one group that provides governance for the system. The one CIO is responsible for developing strategy and 186

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the primary point of contact when looking at institutional risk of purchases. When we have one person to point to, and we have a governance structure, the process becomes more streamlined, making it easier to implement strategy and digitally transform.”

When the IT groups merged from the various campuses, they had over 300 maintenance contracts, requiring 300 different bills that the University was paying for, and some they had already bought.

Standardising platforms reduced overall spend and reduced risk, but merging the teams was not easy. As Baillio explains, “one group is accustomed to one software platform, then another group, another software platform. Which tool becomes the definitive tool that the team uses? Or do we go with something completely different and in a different direction?”

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

AARON BAILLIO

Higher Education Industry

12k+

Number of Employees

“Our teams are doing their job; we're legitimately stopping bad things from happening to other people” AARON BAILLIO

CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

LOCATION: NORMAN, OKLAHOMA I spent the first 11 years of my career with the Department of Defense. With them I traveled the world and supported both in garrison and deployed network operations. My primary missions were information assurance and security engineering. I am currently the Chief Information Security Officer for the University of Oklahoma and have been with OU since 2015. We support 45k faculty/ staff and students across three campuses including a Health Sciences Center. Security at OU is supported by three pillars: Security Operations, Governance, Risk and Compliance and Training & Awareness. We currently have around 20 security professionals including 3 students who support Tier 1 operations in the SOC.

EXECUTIVE BIO

1890

Year Founded

TITLE: C HIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER

Proofpoint: protecting customers with the right approach

cover all of the different places into a single umbrella. By having this single umbrella, they don’t have to go to three different windows to do one job and that helps with resources.”

Deborah Watson, Proofpoint’s Resident CISO, discusses the company’s values and how it supports the University of Oklahoma with cyber defences

Striking the right balance between the customer and the infrastructure

Providers of cybersecurity and compliance solutions, Proofpoint, protect people over every channel including email, the web, the cloud and social media.

With its customer-centric approach, Proofpoint always aims to reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and in doing so, protect people, data and brands against advanced threats and compliance risks.

Commenting on the company, Proofpoint’s Resident CISO, Deborah Watson said: “First and foremost, we listen to our customers. To address their needs, we continuously focus on addressing reducing the risks in the evolving threat landscape.”

“A cybersecurity attack isn’t going to be effective if somebody on the other end doesn’t take some form of response. That’s why we take a peoplecentric approach,” explained Watson.

The University of Oklahoma has been a customer of Proofpoint since 2016 and offers the institution email protection with TAP and TRAP, CASB, TAM. Adding to this, Watson said: “The University of Oklahoma is unique in the fact that they have a very diverse set of security circumstances, in addition to having three campuses, offering remote learning, they also have a premier teaching hospital. With all of this, they have a lot of challenges that a hospital or other healthcare system would have, as well as a university.”

These challenges include email phishing attacks, cloud app threats, email and cloud security and IT efficiency. To overcome these challenges, Watson explained: “Our solution provides them with a consolidated solution to

“More than 99% of cyber-attacks require human interaction to be successful,” she added. Noting the importance of focusing on Very Attacked People (VAPs) rather than VIPs, Watson outlined that this approach is of equal importance to focusing on infrastructure, and striking the right balance lends itself to Proofpoint’s success.

She concluded: “Unlike security teams, cybercriminals aren’t focused on infrastructure and don’t view the world as a network diagram.

Defenders, on the other hand, are confident in dealing with networks and endpoints, which is why more than 60% of IT budgets are focused on the network.”

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

Working alongside and in competition with peers There are several comparison models the university can look to, as they are part of the ‘Big 12’: an American collegiate athletic organisation driven by healthy competition in a number of sports.

“We try to align with our peers and also institutions at comparable Carnegie research levels. We're an R1 research institution, which means we produce a lot of research every year. So certainly as we have gone through this transformation, and we're looking at capabilities and policies, we do certainly compare ourselves across other institutions,” says Baillio.

“When we want to be a leader in one area, or if we find ourselves behind in certain areas, it does help us to benchmark where we want to be. Across academia, it hasn’t been very regulated as far as information 190

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technology goes. I think culturally there have been some impacts from how academia works, how research works and where money comes from. But there’s not been a whole lot of focus from a business perspective on IT risk. As things have modernised and we have external policies, laws, and other compliance requirements, that has helped transform not only IT but IT security, which affects the running of an institution like a university,” he adds.

Utilising many strengths The teams were able to build on the strengths that came from each campus. In the health science centre, the security teams are very adept at policy and governance, as they are driven by HIPAA regulation, a compliance heavy environment.

Meanwhile on the Norman campus, a typical four-year graduate study institution,

they were very strong on incident response.

Baillio went on to say: “We were able to marry those capabilities and those teams in a way that took those strengths and spread them across the system. Yes, that did involve new technologies and new processes, but we were able to leverage our budget, reducing duplication and standardising on common platforms. We’re now enjoying support from the highest level leaders, who themselves have come in from their industries that have had to deal with IT risk in the past.”

The new culture of growth has contributed to many successes, including enrolling all faculty staff and students on the phishing training program. Baillio insists that this is significant because providing this kind of ‘on the spot’ training to the whole community, as cyber hygiene becomes increasingly important, it reduces the attack

surface across the institution. “We consider that a big win,” he says.

“We've been able to centralise endpoint control and management from all of the distributed IT groups, which from a security and risk perspective, covers a lot of areas where we were introducing more risk than was necessary. We'll be able to push our endpoint agents and our detection tools to every endpoint to patch on time,” adds Baillio.

Valuable partnerships held key to transformation Baillio is keen to credit CrowdStrike and Proofpoint’s roles in helping the IT teams reach their initial goals: “In terms of the endpoint management story, CrowdStrike were crucial in working with us on a security platform that would address all the different types of devices that we have at the university.

Universities, in general, have a fairly open technologymagazine.com

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UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

“We've been able to centralise endpoint control and management from all of the distributed IT groups” AARON BAILLIO

CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

bring your own device (BYOD) environment.

And so we support a lot of different devices, operating systems and software platforms.

So because of that, we needed something that was resilient and could operate a lot of different platforms. And so CrowdStrike has partnered with us as an agent that fit with most of our environment. Even on the Linux side and for those one-off devices.”

From the protection and prevention of malware to endpoint detection response, CrowdStrike covered a wide spectrum of security issues that the university might experience with an endpoint - which numbers around 14,000 and if covering the management of all devices, can even reach the 25,000 range.

“We're looking forward to growing with them and we've got a great deal of use and

a lot of training. They've been really great to work with as far as protecting our assets and providing incident response.”

With Proofpoint, the university experienced a very similar kind of growth.

The implementation of an email gateway drastically reduced the number of malicious emails that came in, but phished accounts before Proofpoint arrived became a weekly occurrence. Around big campaigns at the start and end of term, Baillio saw an exponential growth of compromised accounts, which became a time drain for his incident response teams.

“That pretty much dried up right away with Proofpoint. And as we've grown with them, we've been able to do more automation, allowing the tool to automatically pull emails from email boxes that are suspicious technologymagazine.com

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UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

“We began to merge operations, from this distributed model across the three campuses to a systemwide approach” AARON BAILLIO

CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

GEOCARB MISSION OU obtained a grant from NASA for its Earth science mission – the Geostationary Carbon Observatory (GeoCarb) mission, which is targeted for launch into space early this decade. This mission studies how and why the global carbon cycle is changing and monitors plant health and vegetation stress throughout the Americas.

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or malicious. We've been able to leverage automation to automatically lock accounts and enroll people in training. As we now look at the cloud access security broker (CASB) and other things we're doing off 365, we get this great email telemetry from Proofpoint, coupled with the data loss prevention (DLP) and behaviours happening inside of Microsoft 365. There's just a lot of great data” he says.

“We see both those partnerships growing over the next couple of years, as their portfolios expand and our needs continue to expand,” he adds.

The research community Baillio is proud to support the university's research community, as they are handling more unclassified information than ever before, as well as meeting the government requirements for security.

“We're finding that the ability to meet those needs and to be more dynamic and resilient on that front, we can do that better in the cloud. And so cloud security will be a big focus for us in the coming year,” says Baillio.

The support given by the new IT setup assists the researchers to explore new options and avenues for data and insight.

This expands into looking at retention and recruiting, not only from the student side but from a faculty side too.

“We have a lot of maturity efforts, as we publish our strategy and look at things like identity, access management, a zero trust type of concept, affirming our processes and technology, and training our people on incident response. We have a lot of expansion coming up so will be recruiting for several positions on our security teams.

I think we have a bright future in 2022 and beyond,” he says.

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NetApp’s Russ Sagert and Samsung’s Patrick Bangert explain how the companies’ partnership provides a best-in-class AI solution for manufacturing

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he manufacturing industry is going through a significant transformation that is impacting all aspects of operations, from the supply chain through to production. As the industry turns to technology and software providers to support them with this transition, NetApp brings manufacturers best-in-class solutions that address crucial workloads in the cloud and on-premises.

With a sound understanding of its own capabilities, NetApp partners with other key players in the technology industry.

Through its partnership with Samsung SDS, the company believes it has formed an effective collaboration to support manufacturing companies as they continue to digitally transform.

Outlining some of the changes in the industry, Russ Sagert, NetApp Business Development Lead for Manufacturing, says: “In manufacturing, everybody is looking to improve top-line revenue or profitability. They’re trying to improve their bottom line – that's the goal of every operation: Can we do better? Where can we apply technology? And where does it make sense? It has to be cost-effective and has to have a real business impact.”

Technology has already enabled more streamlined and comprehensive manufacturing operations. Greater detail can be effectively inspected, and

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“ One of the things I really appreciate about the whole Brightics AI Accelerator platform is that it came from Samsung’s best practices” RUSS SAGERT

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machines now perform repetitive tasks faster and more efficiently. By utilising artificial intelligence (AI) and the industrial internet of things (IIoT), manufacturers are gaining real benefits in terms of efficiency, cost and safety.

“In these high-speed production lines, you need the ability to do quality assurance on everything,” says Sagert.

Adding to the streamlined product quality checks, technology can also contribute to improving environments for workers.

“If you're looking at potentially hazardous environments in assembly plants, your goal is to keep your employees safe, while improving efficiencies. Technology enables systems that monitor the workplace and

NETAPP & SAMSUNG

RUSS SAGERT TITLE: BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER – INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING: IOT/INDUSTRY 4.0 COMPANY: NETAPP LOCATION: ALBERTA, CANADA Russ specialises in developing, and bringing to market, Digital Transformation solutions for manufacturing plant operators across the oil and gas, mining, power utilities, automotive and high-tech fabrication industries.

His focus on strategic partnership and value-added solutions enables organisations to improve operational efficiency, drive down costs, maximise top-line revenue, improve product quality, and site safety. As a result, organisations can justify and prioritise deploying technology where it makes the greatest difference.

After holding executive and business development roles in global consultancy firms, he served as a senior solutions architect focused on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for GE.

NETAPP:

1992

Year Founded

Technology Industry

11,000

Number of Employees

$5.74B

can provide early warnings when staff are fatigued. You can also start looking at models around how employees interact with their environment, leading to innovations that boost efficiency and worker satisfaction,” outlines Sagert.

Maintenance is another key area where technology is playing an increasingly vital role in manufacturing. With the ability to be more proactive with maintenance, AI and IIoT can help manufacturers minimise outages and get the right people and parts for their specific needs.

“Pre-planning eliminates the wait for a downcycle, which leads to general efficiency gains on any form of manufacturing production line,” adds Sagert.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Revenue

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Combining NetApp’s and Samsung’s offerings By partnering with Samsung SDS, NetApp has access to its Brightics AI Accelerator platform that offers data collection and preparation, AutoML and AI model training, and data and image analysis. With such a robust platform, NetApp customers can be assured that both companies are prepared to solve issues around maintenance, internal communications and disruptions.

“One of the things I really appreciate about the whole Brightics AI Accelerator platform is that Samsung developed it to meet their own needs, and it has evolved by incorporating their own best practices.

They are a major electronics manufacturer.

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Now you've got a platform that has all the credibility of Samsung, but it also has that evolution and that pedigree that comes from a well-recognised producer,” says Sagert.

"The methodologies for streamlining the training data categorisation implemented within Brightics AI can be applied to many other industries,” Sagert continues. “We see the uptake of AI and recognise the benefits Samsung themselves are experiencing can be realised by our other customers as well."

Equally invested in the benefits this partnership will bring the industry, Patrick Bangert, VP of Artificial Intelligence at Samsung SDS comments: “One of the secret sauces of the Brightics AI accelerator application is called Distributed Training,

NETAPP & SAMSUNG

“ The keyword is turnkey. We will save the customer a lot of time and effort with assembly and integration we deliver it all”

PATRICK BANGERT TITLE: VP OF AI LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, US COMPANY: SAMSUNG Patrick heads the AI Division at Samsung SDSA. He is responsible for Brightics AI Accelerator, a distributed ML training and automated ML product, and AutoLabel, an automatic image data annotation and modelling tool primarily targeted at the medical imaging community. Among his other responsibilities, he acts as a visionary for the future of AI at Samsung.

Before joining Samsung, Patrick spent 15 years as CEO at Algorithmica technologies, a machine learning software company serving the chemicals and oil and gas industries.

Patrick obtained his machine learning PhD in mathematics and his Masters in theoretical physics from University College London.

PATRICK BANGERT

EXECUTIVE BIO

VP OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, SAMSUNG

Connect your supply chain for Industry 4.0, powered by NetApp Learn more about NetApp AI solutions for manufacturing g

www.netapp.com

As industry turns to technology and software providers to accelerate digital transformation, NetApp delivers a consistent data connectivity platform for intelligent supply chain management.

In today’s global economy, manufacturers can’t afford to be isolated. To stay competitive, plants must be directly connected to the entire supply chain infrastructure. Manufacturers need data mobility and governance to move data from on-premise to the cloud and everywhere in between. Success depends on managing production across the entire lifecycle, all the way to the customer.

NetApp is an industry leader in enabling Operating Technologies/Information Technologies (OT/IT) convergence to connect plant operations to outside suppliers, vendors, and customers. By leveraging a data fabric powered by NetApp, manufacturers can achieve complete connectivity from production line to enterprise.

With product inspection and equipment condition monitoring inferencing happening on the edge, and enterprise resource planning databases operating in the cloud, manufacturers need to be able to move data efficiently and synchronize analytic models seamlessly from the cloud. NetApp provides the capabilities to connect real-time insights from AI analytics to deliver actionable data

to stakeholder across the enterprise. Raw materials providers, production line operators, plant managers, vendors and customers join the communication network. When analytics report problems in production, the system notifies the appropriate people allowing immediate intervention, and planning for remediation. Managers have a real-time activities monitoring system for product quality, production throughput, and worker and environment health and safety.

Succeeding in the modern manufacturing landscape means eliminating siloes and achieving complete connectivity – production line to enterprise. NetApp has the solutions, tools, and expertise that manufacturers need to create a connected supply chain built for Industry 4.0

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NETAPP & SAMSUNG

which means that for a single training task, you use multiple computers, each of which has several GPUs. “The hunger for data goes up exponentially and the storage system, which is generally just the one system, must be able to feed all of this. So you distribute the compute, but the storage remains a monolith. But now it has to feed the multitude of GPUs,” Bangert explains.

“NetApp is perfectly positioned to accomplish that task. At Samsung SDS, we just write the software, so we rely on our hardware partners to be able to ensure it is performant, resilient and cost-efficient. NetApp has been extremely helpful for us,” he adds.

Both Sagert and Bangert recognise that NetApp and Samsung SDS are better together as they can combine their expertise to develop a solution that will deliver real benefits to their clients.

“We do artificial intelligence, but that's really just mathematics. It's a bunch of lines of code,” says Bangert.

“But, when we need to run the code, we need computing infrastructure. Data is really the heart and soul of artificial intelligence, and that needs to be on storage systems that are large enough and efficient enough to serve that data to the compute side of things in a timely manner.

“The ONTAP platform, the software layer within the NetApp storage systems, is capable of serving the data very effectively with a high rate of throughput and low latency, which is exactly what we need for AI because we want to eat as much data as quickly as we can,” he continues.

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threatens to bring a lot of challenges to uninitiated technologists who have never worked with these types of enterprise systems before.

“We’re trying to offer a more holistic solution than other people, to take away that organisational effort from our customers and say, ‘We're going to offer you everything at once. Here's a computer, storage, a software environment: everything's ready to go. It's all been tested. We can solve your problem more readily’. I think this kind of partnership is very helpful to the customer.

They can trust that they get a holistic solution to their problem,” explains Bangert.

RUSS SAGERT Sagert most recently joined NetApp from GE, where, as a Senior Solutions Architect, he focused on Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) digital transformations. From his first function as a geophysicist for Shell Canada, his 30-year career in the Oil & Gas industry included executive roles for consultancy firms, business development leadership, and portfolio management roles for Schlumberger before becoming Vice President for Oil & Gas software at IHS.

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While the solution will address the specific needs of the manufacturing industry as it transforms, Sagert explains how this joint solution can be scaled and implemented to support a wide range of industries: “Looking at the benefits, it depends on the industry.

For healthcare, we know that Samsung SDS has proven technologies that help identify anomalies in x-rays and CT scans. We also know that the same technology can be used for parts identification, whether it's food and beverage or automotive assembly, anything along that line. We already know that the technology for anomaly detection will be directly applicable.”

“ As technology evolves, we're going to have more and more opportunities together. It's just going to be a natural evolution” RUSS SAGERT

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT LEAD FOR MANUFACTURING, NETAPP

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NetApp and Samsung: providing turnkey solutions with AI

PATRICK BANGERT At Samsung SDSA, Bangert directs the AI Engineering and AI Sciences teams. The AI engineering team develops the Brightics AI Accelerator that provides distributed training and automated machine learning to speed up the creation of an AI model. The AI sciences team makes models and provides expert consulting services.

Together with his team, Bangert supplies the full spectrum of AI model development backed by state-of-the-art technology and human expertise.

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Samsung and NetApp: learning from each other to create a best-in-class solution Interestingly, the partnership was created when NetApp reached out to Samsung SDS to sell infrastructure. Explaining how both companies discovered a greater interest in a partnership, Sagert says: “It really came back down to our account managers seeing the benefits of not trying to sell Samsung something and instead asking ‘Why don't we go to market together? Why don't we bake our capabilities into their go-to-market solution?’

“With common industries and geographies that we operate in, it's a win-win for both companies,” Sagert explains. “And I think there are far more things we can do together as a joint solution for manufacturing than if we stop at just selling each other things.”

Still in the earlier stages of the partnership, NetApp and Samsung are keen to continue learning about each other's capabilities to ensure they can benefit as many industries as possible. “One of the ways I want to evolve the partnership is by learning a lot more about the Brightics AI Accelerator platform.

What are the actual technical challenges?

How do they differ for each industrial application? When it comes down to image recognition and pattern recognition, how broadly can we apply this?” outlines Sagert.

He is also focused on learning more about how NetApp can support the platform as well as the “business challenges Samsung SDS’s AI can address”.

“As technology continues to evolve, we're going to have more and more opportunities to learn together, and better understand where our platform is of greatest value.

Now, it’s all about making sure that, in our labs, we have really understood how best to support the Brightics AI suite, and the data management challenges we will face in the joint go-to-market. Once we really

“ We’re trying to offer a more holistic solution than other people to take away that organisational effort from our customers” PATRICK BANGERT

VP OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, SAMSUNG

have fleshed that out, it's a matter of taking a turnkey solution to customers. It's early yet, but looks very promising,” adds Sagert.

“The keyword is turnkey,” says Bangert.

“We will save the customer a lot of time and effort with assembly - we deliver it all.”

He concludes: “The solution has been fine-tuned so that once it is delivered and installed, it works faster, better, and more efficiently. All the software has been certified by us both to provide the assurance that it's actually going to work, as opposed to being a guinea pig for that type of new assembly.”

NetApp:

Samsung:

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NTT DATA: Open Network Innovation in the 5G Era WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS

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PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

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New all-photonics technology and acceleration of open network standards will propel NTT DATA’s global vision for 5G solutions in the B2B market

N

TT DATA is Japan’s second sister company NTT DOCOMO launched a largest provider of IT services proof-of-concept, successfully transmitting by market share, and one of 4k and 8k video data over a 5G connection the nation’s most influential to a Shinkansen bullet train travelling at technology firms. A 1988 360km/h – with no handover issues. offshoot from parent company NTT Group From a consumer perspective, it is a – which, in 2021, exceeded revenues of value-added benefit to travelling on board US$100bn – it has spearheaded innovations Japan’s iconic high-speed trains. But that have established Japan’s position as a Yasuhiro Higashiyama, NTT DATA Japan’s global leader in technological convenience Head of Global Business, Telecom and Utility and security, from the introduction of smart Sector, believes there are wider implications cards to virtual shopping malls. in leveraging 5G to unlock new use cases In 2018, NTT R&D published a thesis across a vast array of B2B environments. in Nature Photonics outlining its latest “In the 5G era, telecoms should transform innovation: a groundbreaking vision for themselves, not just as a voice and data the future of communications technology service provider, but as a solutions provider called the Innovative Optical and Wireless to the B2B market, from IoT and automated Network (IOWN). It is a global initiative factories, to extended reality healthcare of two parts that will power NTT DATA’s and the burgeoning automated vehicle global expansion: the first is collaboratively ecosystem,” he says. developing and establishing a global infrastructure standard as a The All-Photonics Future proponent of Open Radio NTT R&D’s major innovation Access Networks (Open RAN) is the all-photonics network, technologies; the second a “new-generation of is the introduction of allcomputing chips, which photonics technology that will cause lower power will bring greater speed consumption than existing to the network, while technology, and high simultaneously reducing performance”, according energy consumption. to Higashiyama.

Over the past four years, The all-photonics YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA NTT DATA has been working technology is a complex HEAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, on commercialising the engineering achievement, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR, vision. In February 2021, its NTT DATA JAPAN and Higashiyama admits

“Our success and our clients’ success in 5G will come from the B2B market”

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Yasuhiro Higashiyama, Head of Global Business, Telecom & Utility Sector

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“In the 5G era, NTT DATA needs to strengthen our crossindustry activity”

the technical details are By leveraging all-photonics difficult to comprehend; the technology, NTT DATA result is, however, simple in forecasts a 100x reduction concept. “At the moment, in energy consumption. everything in the current Collaborating with Fujitsu infrastructure is driven by to develop a hyper-energy electricity,” Higashiyama says. exchange network and IT “Inside data centres, even infrastructure, NTT R&D those for fibre networks, a lot is commercialising the of energy is expended. That’s technology for communication because we need to convert service providers (CSPs). all the optical ‘photonic’ Without this dramatic decrease signals into an electric signal, in energy consumption, YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA compute something, and Higashiyama believes that HEAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR, convert the signal again from current infrastructure will no NTT DATA JAPAN electronic back to photonic. longer be sustainable in as It is not efficient and it little as three years’ time. requires an enormous amount of energy.

“Green technology is key to our But in the all-photonics future, you no longer success. As network traffic will continue to need to convert the signal. The technology exponentially grow roughly 20-30% year-onallows the signal to flow between destinations year, the network will require twice as much seamlessly, and therefore dramatically cuts energy as it currently does within the next energy consumption.” three to five years,” he says. “That growth will

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continue, and will not be sustainable. If we are successful in delivering the new greenenergy exchange technologies, it will help our business, will bring new opportunities globally in green markets, and will help our clients also deliver on their own sustainability commitments. That’s why we are investing a lot in these technologies.”

Wholesale transformation of infrastructure can be prohibitively expensive, but NTT’s all-photonics tech has one additional benefit: it is backwards compatible. “We can adopt this technology inside existing computing infrastructure,” Higashiyama says.

“If your computer has a motherboard, it is compatible with the all-photonics network and this technology. We can transmit the signal fully photonically.”

Open RAN is Key NTT group will begin deploying all-photonics technology in its domestic market by 2025.

But a wider rollout is contingent upon the development of Open RAN. Last year, NTT DOCOMO launched its 5G Open RAN ecosystem, the O-RAN Alliance. Formed of 12 global vendors – including Fujitsu, Mavenir, Intel K.K, Dell Technologies

YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA TITLE: H EAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR

139,700

COMPANY: NTT DATA JAPAN

Employees as of March 2021

Revenue as of March 2021

1988

Year founded

EXECUTIVE BIO

2,897.0bn yen

LOCATION: TOKYO, JAPAN Yasuhiro has 20 years of experience in the IT industry as an expert of CMT, leading global 5G innovations around the world with strong focus on Open network and cloud-native technologies. Until 2020, he was based in London as a leader of Global Telecom and managed Global accounts in Europe and LatAm. He completed a Master of Science course at the University of Tokyo, majoring in quantum computing, and is looking forward to translating his studies into reality this decade.

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Japan, and Qualcomm Technologies – the alliance will jointly work towards promoting industrial innovations together, accelerating the development of Open RAN to help enable flexible network deployment.

"Our home market is Japan, but now we have a strong footprint in Europe, LatAm and other major markets where we are now strongly focusing on Open RAN adoption,” Higashiyama says. “This, 218

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along with vRAN technologies, which we are developing in partnership with Mavenir, are the prerequisites for our vision. We need to transform the legacy infrastructure into an open network.

“We are heavily investing in cloud-native and open source-based IT infrastructure,” Higashiyama adds. “NTT DATA and DOCOMO are jointly developing an open source-based service management operations system. We are also developing

“We need to transform the legacy infrastructure into an open network” YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA HEAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR, NTT DATA JAPAN

autonomous operation systems for Open RAN together with Fujitsu and DOCOMO." By 2025, NTT DATA expects this open network to account for a major share of the market. “At the moment mobile operators such as Huawei, Nokia, and Ericsson dominate the network,” Higashiyama says. “But in our view, we expect that over the next three to five years, most of the market will be an open network.” technologymagazine.com

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“Green technology is key to our success”

B2B is The Future The company’s partnership As the 5G era matures, a shift in with Mavenir is a good example technology will also drive a new of this, Higashiyama adds: focus on B2B markets for NTT “Mavenir can deliver cloudDATA and the wider telecoms native vRAN solutions, but in industry. “Our success and the B2B market, a non telco our clients’ success in 5G will client requires a full-stack come from the B2B market,” solution. On top of the private YASUHIRO HIGASHIYAMA Higashiyama says. “CSPs in mobile network, the client will HEAD OF GLOBAL BUSINESS, TELECOM & UTILITY SECTOR, the B2B market will provide want to deploy some use-case NTT DATA JAPAN not just connectivity, but applications. Mavenir cannot also additional value-added provide that, but as a system services on top of that infrastructure.” integrated and IT services specialists, NTT It will also require a more collaborative DATA is good at providing those solutions. mindset and the forging of partnerships – So through our partnership, we can deliver approaches that Higashiyama admits the that full-stack solution to all industries.” company has historically not engaged in.

Many other collaborative programmes “But now, in the 5G era, we need to are already underway. In LatAm, NTT DATA strengthen our cross-industry activity.” partnered with Facebook and Telefonica,

Transform Your Network： ： Expertise that Drives Network ： Digital Transformation Network can be more flexible. More robust. More secure.

You can also make them more environmentally friendly.

How? We have the solutions.

Learn more

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delivering the lean operations with open source technologies to bring low-cost mobile connection to rural areas of Peru. In more mature markets, such as Europe, the company is teaming with industry leaders to set standards for autonomous and connected vehicles, among other emerging technologies.

“In the near future, there will be more cars connected to the network, and it will be very important to have a global standard for navigation technologies,” Higashiyama

says. “Cars will be connected not just for voice and content, but for cloud services, and those services are not necessarily standardised across the globe. Vodafone and NTT DATA are creating the standard for 5G roaming across Europe, where we are providing standardised compliance solutions to CSPs.” Manufacturing industries, particularly the automotive sector, will be a major driver of NTT DATA’s mid-term growth, Higashiyama says. In Germany, the company is working together with BMW and other Tier technologymagazine.com

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1 suppliers to establish industry standards for automated parking solutions. “We provide what we call the Campus Network,” Higashiyama says. “Together with network and AI-based solutions and video sensors, businesses can use this form of autonomous driving within their own localised factories and logistics operations. Meanwhile, consumers can enjoy this convenience in retail locations, for example.”

Roadmap for the Future NTT DATA’s long-term vision is a 10-year plan that begins with standardisation, and then culminates in the creation and maturation of markets and technologies that have yet to be envisioned. Over the next two years, NTT Group will begin prototyping new all-photonics devices, which will be deployed in Japanese domestic infrastructure from 2025. “By 2030, we’d like to have a more global impact, and we hope this technology will be more popular and have a tangible market share,” says Higashiyama.

But there will be competition. “I understand that other IT giants and some other hyperscalers have similar views as ours for the future, and are starting to develop their own technology,” says Higashiyama. "We will compete with those other organisations in technological advancement. But our competitive advantages are two-fold. NTT DATA is a telco down to our very DNA, and we have a long history of contributing to society – not just for our own business. We can differentiate ourselves by extending our values to benefit society, and our competence in telecoms technology.”

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TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

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CREATING A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO CYBER SECURIT Y WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: SUJAN JESURAJA

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Narayan Sharma, Identity Access Management Lead for TCS outlines how the company has utilised technology to respond to the rise in cyberattacks

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s technology develops and becomes more disruptive, the number of cyber security threats facing businesses has grown rapidly. Attackers are finding new ways to exploit vulnerabilities in systems, causing significant problems for enterprises.

A catalyst for this growth was the coronavirus pandemic. As people moved out of the office and worked from home, they were more vulnerable to cyber attacks. In fact, according to Deloitte, 47% of people fall for a phishing scam while working at home.

With its technical expertise and business intelligence, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) provides its customers with the solutions to combat cyber attacks and improve their cyber resilience.

TCS, part of Tata Group, India's largest multinational business group, is a global leader in IT services, consulting, and business solutions. The company “provides consulting, professional services, and managed services to the world’s biggest and most important companies,” explained Narayan Sharma, its Global Head of Identity Access Management offerings under TCS Cyber Security Unit.

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Creating a holistic approach to cyber security

He added: “As a global company, we offer a full suite of cyber security services across consulting, professional services, and managed services around areas such as Managed Detection and Response, Identity and Access Management, Cloud Security, Governance Risk and Compliance, Enterprise Vulnerability Management, Data Security and Privacy, Fraud and Forensics, OT/IoT Security, etc. We deliver these services through Threat Management Centers setup across the globe to meet our customers’ unique business and regulatory requirements.”

To combat the rise in cyber security risks, TCS partners with alliance partners and academia to provide high-quality and contextual solutions to its customers. “TCS has strong and strategic global partnerships with the likes of Microsoft, AWS, Google, 228

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IBM, Ping Identity, BeyondTrust, CyberArk, SailPoint, One Identity, Saviynt, Palo Alto – to name a few. These strategic partnerships bring in a lot of security toolsets and capabilities,” to strengthen TCS’ solutions, explained Sharma.

Helping clients become proactive with cyber defences Outlining the cyber security risks that come with advances in technology and tech-driven open business models, Sharma stressed the importance of education in cyber: “As businesses move into a multi-cloud hybrid models, highly regulated environments, and advanced threat vectors, organisations need to focus on maturing from being compliant, to being risk aware, to being risk managed – i.e. becoming truly cyber resilient.”

TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

TCS encourages its customers to proactively respond to threats. The company’s bespoke, adaptable, managed detection and response services encompass both threat hunting and red teaming, a systematic and rigorous way to identify an attack path that breaches the organisation's security defence.

By combining this with comprehensive intelligence, TCS ensures that enterprises block stealth adversaries and recover quickly from any incidents when they occur.

TCS helps its customers define a comprehensive cyber security strategy with a long-term strategic roadmap.

This roadmap enables companies to navigate enterprise risk, meet regulatory requirements and make informed choices on security solutions.

Following this, the company integrates security solutions into the fabric of its clients’ enterprises through its secure-by-design, zero-trust, and cyber resiliency frameworks.

In doing so, TCS creates a foundation for resilience and simultaneously addresses advanced threats as well as cyber risks.

“ As businesses set up a multi-cloud hybrid model and as traditional network perimeters disappear, organisations need to move towards cyber resilience mindset from being compliant mindset” NARAYAN SHARMA

GLOBAL HEAD, IAM, CYBER SECURITY TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

As risk management approaches evolve, Sharma explained, the Zero Trust (ZT) architecture approach “provides architectural blueprint to enable contextual and riskdriven security controls at deeper granularity to enforce core principles of Resource Visibility, Zero Attack Surface, Least Privilege, Data Centric Security, Security Visibility and Analytics, and Security Orchestration Automation and Response.”

EXECUTIVE BIO NARAYAN SHARMA TITLE: GLOBAL HEAD, IAM, CYBER SECURITY COMPANY: TCS LOCATION: INDIA Narayan has over 21 years of experience in cyber security consulting and large-scale cyber security transformations delivered for global customers in BFSI and other industries. He currently heads Identity and Access Management

(IAM) practice under TCS Cyber Security unit, and is responsible for IAM service strategy, revenue growth, partner GTM, customer advisory, and governance of strategic IAM programs. He is based in Pune, India.

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Simplifying secure identity and access for over 27 million users IBM Office of the CIO establishes future-proof digital authentication with IBM Security Verify

scale. Transforming IBM’s authentication would require significant infrastructure modernization and consolidation to efficiently deliver large-scale reliability and security.

After gathering requirements and considering all options, the team chose IBM Security™ Verify (SaaS). Key factors in the decision were that the APIs enabled a seamless application migration and that they’d be able to customize the user interface to fit their exact requirements without draining their development resources. By embracing IBM Security Verify as the standard platform for all B2E and B2B identities, IBM would be poised to deploy more modern identity capabilities with enhanced security, scale and user experience.

Simplifying secure identity and access for over 27 million users The expression “caught between a rock and a hard place” comes to mind when describing challenges facing the IBM Office of the CIO. First, imagine having to provide identity and access authentication for over half a million IBM employees, with a highly customized, single tenant, on-premises platform. And also, having to provide similar for over 26 million global IBM clients with a separate, first-generation identity as a service (IDaaS) solution.

The IBM Office of the CIO was dealing with two distinct identity and access management (IAM) platforms offering different technologies, levels of maturity, reliability and functionality at enormous

With the new solution, IBM could expand internal user choice for authentication. Twofactor authentication (2FA) significantly protects against password compromise but it’s often cumbersome. IBM implemented adaptive features of 2FA that used backend analytics to determine where to require additional authentication. The shift offered enhanced choice for IBMers to passwordless authenticate options.

By adopting IBM Security Verify, IBM improved the user experience while tightening security at scale. With IBM Security Verify, anyone who interacts with IBM, now has frictionless, secure, state-ofthe-art access to information resources … and that’s just the beginning.

Learn more

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“TCS also offers an integrated platform based on the ‘as-a-service’ model through its Cyber Defense Suite,” outlined Sharma.

“Some of the offerings under incubation right now are managed detection and response for connected vehicles, security for AI/ML ecosystems, and 5G security,” he added.

Adopting new approaches to respond to changes in technology These new approaches are essential as attacks become more sophisticated. “The traditional approach to security is not sustainable anymore,” said Sharma.

“So, organisations today have to anticipate risks, including potential black swan events like the pandemic that we saw. They need

“We are focused on enabling the future cyber resiliency vision of enterprises” NARAYAN SHARMA

GLOBAL HEAD, IAM, CYBER SECURITY TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

to get the right security controls based on the industry standard security frameworks like NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)/CIS (Ceter for Internet Security) to withstand and recover from an attack.

Organisations should also continuously monitor the effectiveness of security controls for further fine-tuning for better Cyber Resilience,” he added.

Now, these security controls utilise a number of different technologies to ensure enterprises are protected from security threats of all kinds. “With continuously evolving sophisticated attack vectors, machine and deep learning will take centre stage for detection and response,” explained Sharma. technologymagazine.com

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TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES

He continued: “AI can collect and correlate data across systems, applications, networks, and inputs, and analyse these inputs to provide visibility and context in revealing advanced attacks.”

To respond to the need for AI within cyber security applications, TCS is incubating research and building solutions based on this technology as well as 5G and quantum encryption, to support enterprises to counter evolving sophisticated threats.

“We are seeing an increase in the adoption of some of these services that customers are really banking on. Technology has a critical role to play in improving the risk posture for

any organisation. As we see today, everything is becoming so dynamic. We have the set of controls and advanced technologies to be able to detect the attacks as well as protect the organisations through those attacks,” said Sharma.

Creating a holistic cyber security strategy Undoubtedly, cyber attacks will continue to grow as technology advances. As technology systems are incredibly advanced, cybercriminals are increasingly targeting human vulnerabilities.

These types of attacks get people to unknowingly let cybercriminals into their enterprise’s software as opposed to targetting vulnerabilities in technological systems. To ensure both types of attacks are protected against, a more holistic approach is essential. technologymagazine.com

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With this approach, training for employees is essential to ensure they can protect themselves against cybercriminals.

Without it, both organisations and employees would continue to be vulnerable.

Recognising this importance, TCS is developing a “holistic and orchestrated Cyber Defense Suite, an integrated technology platform, which will be offered to enterprises that are looking to adopt an end-to-end cybersecurity strategy with 360-degree visibility to improve their cyber resilience,” said Sharma.

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“These services will combat emerging risks by understanding and monitoring diverse risk factors, meeting compliance and regulatory requirements and balancing the right technology platforms with proactive services to effectively manage risks,” he added.

TCS will also continue to help its clients chart long term strategic cyber security roadmaps to navigate enterprise risk, adopting security by designs to make informed decisions on security solutions.

Sharma concluded: “We are focused on enabling the future cyber resiliency vision of enterprises, by bringing in a critical cyber

“ TCS also offers an integrated platform based on the ‘as-aservice’ model through its Cyber Defense Suite” NARAYAN SHARMA

competitive advantage that helps drive transformation, counter evolving threats, adopt new approaches and actively prepare for emerging and disruptive technologies like AI, 5G, 6G, IoT security, as well as quantum computing. It's all about helping customers, first of all, getting our service portfolio right for our customer needs of today, as well as the future and then elevating and scaling up our capabilities so that they can continue building purpose-led organisations with confidence.”

GLOBAL HEAD, IAM, CYBER SECURITY TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES technologymagazine.com

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A CISO'S PERSPECTIVE IN TRANSFORMING OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY 238

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WRITTEN BY: JESS GIBSON PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER technologymagazine.com

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Meralco embraces digital transformation with operational technology as it provides heightened customer experience through AI and automation

M

eralco – an acronym of the Manila Electric Railroad and Light Company – in the Philippines, is responsible for the power distribution within its franchise area.

Meralco’s Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, Mel Migriño, is responsible for the protection of the company’s technology stock alongside its operational technology infrastructure, with cybersecurity becoming the most important facet in the face of digitisation.

“Meralco is a diverse business,” states Migriño. “We’re in FinTech, telecoms, retail energy, engineering, electric vehicles, logistics and construction and electromechanical. I work closely with my co-executives to ensure the development and implementation of the different cybersecurity programmes across the organisation.”

As a major player in the Philippine energy industry, Meralco also has a specific and distinctive focus on sustainability, with its agenda, Powering the Good Life, firmly rooted in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. The four key pillars underpinning Meralco’s sustainability agenda – Power, Plant, People, and Prosperity – guide the commitments and actions of the company in support of sustainable and meaningful progress.

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While Meralco’s sustainability strategy is palpable in the here and now, it is also intended to stretch out over the long-term.

Various initiatives and projects for the next few years have already been set in motion, demonstrating its commitment to reducing the company’s impact on the environment while fostering growth in the country.

A number of transformations have already begun – including electrifying the company’s vehicle fleet, promoting gender diversity and inclusivity, ensuring its transformers are 99% biodegradable and recyclable through the use of ester oil, and planting trees whilst nurturing existing ones to preserve Philippine forests – setting the stage for future adaptations.

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“ Meralco is a diverse business.

We’re in FinTech, telecoms, retail energy, engineering, electric vehicles, logistics and construction and electromechanical” MEL MIGRIÑO

VP AND GROUP CISO, MERALCO

“Cybersecurity is a business enabler, a key component in realising initiatives and future goals of the company,” Migriño says. “While I continue to serve my country and organisation, I also want to promote

MERALCO

MEL MIGRIÑO TITLE: VP AND GROUP CISO

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: PHILIPPINES Mel is the Vice President and Group CISO of Meralco and former Cyber Security Leader of a Big 4 auditing firm and the largest fintech in the Philippines.

Concurrently, the Chairman and President of the Women in Security Alliance Philippines (WiSAP) which focuses on empowering women in Security.

She was awarded as IFSEC Global Influencer for Security and Fire Top 5 under the Security Executives category on August 2021. Ranked #2 in the 2021 CISO ASEAN Awards

by IDG and CSO Online and was recognized as the 2021 CISO of the Year by Women in Governance, Risk and Compliance Awards.

women empowerment in the context of cybersecurity and technology, which has been advancing for many years now.”

On the horizon right now, though, is innovative technology and digital transformation, with an eye on the rise of AI and automation in the energy industry – and the potential security pitfalls that these can lead to for customers and employees alike.

Although the company’s roots can be traced back to the late 1800s, it officially began in 1903 – making Meralco almost 120 years old.

Building a future-facing energy company A commitment to looking forward and preparing for the future isn’t anything new for the energy titan. In fact, the company’s fascinating roots firmly establish Meralco as a pioneer in the Philippine energy sector.

1948 – Meralco focused chiefly on providing electricity. The electric service powered much of the post-war rehabilitation and early industrialisation of the young republic, which gained independence in 1946.

1903 – The company was established as Manila Electric Railroad and Light Company to provide electric light and power – as well as an electric street railway system – to Manila and its suburbs.

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MERALCO

“ Now, the organisation is excitingly embracing digital transformation in ICT, looking to use operational technology to provide better customer experience through artificial intelligence and automation” MEL MIGRIÑO

VP AND GROUP CISO, MERALCO

1961 – A group of Filipino investors – led by entrepreneur Eugenio Lopez Sr. – bought Meralco from its American owners, rendering it the first major American enterprise to be 'Filipinised'. This new Filipino management built electricity-generating and distributing facilities at an unprecedented

pace to meet the growing needs of its franchise area.

It is also during this period that Meralco became the first Philippine company to issue mortgage trust indenture bonds successfully in the US financial market on Wall Street.

1969 – Meralco became the very first billion-peso company in the Philippines.

This was all the more remarkable because much of it had been achieved without recourse to government guarantees.

1970 – The Philippine Government made it a state policy for the government to own all major generating facilities. Meralco sold its generating plants to the National Power Corporation, and electric distribution became its core business. technologymagazine.com

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1980 – Meralco's franchise area tripled from 2,678 square km to 9,337 square km.

Meralco – upon the request of the government – organised, started up and operated the country's first elevated light rail transit (LRT) system in Manila.

At the end of the decade, Meralco turned over the efficiently functioning system to the government.

1995 – Meralco drove the following initiatives around TQM, re-engineering, Meralco Transformation Program, with certain common emphases: customer satisfaction; world-class efficiency and productivity; performance-driven rewards; good corporate citizenship; transparent good governance; and process, organisational and human resources development.

2009 - 2012 – The López Group reduced its holdings in Meralco by selling most of its shares to the First Pacific Group.

The First Pacific Group and Metro Pacific Investment Corporation currently hold majority shares in Meralco, followed by the JG Summit Group.

2022 – Meralco continues to embark on various initiatives to further expand its infrastructure, and now the organisation is excitingly embracing digital transformation in ICT and in its operational technology to provide better customer experience through AI and automation.

“Now, the organisation is excitingly embracing digital transformation in ICT, looking to use operational technology to provide better customer experience through artificial intelligence and automation,” outlines Migriño.

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Combining Meralco’s overlapping enterprises The company’s operations cover such areas as construction and logistics, telco, energy, and FinTech – but how exactly do each of these tie together?

“The capabilities and resources of each company within the group can be leveraged for the benefit of the other, so that’s the beauty of it – recognising that each company is contributing to the overall fulfilment of the direction and profitability of the parent company,” explains Migriño.

“The capabilities and resources of each company within the group can be leveraged for the benefit of the other, so that’s the beauty of it – recognising that each company is contributing to the overall fulfilment of the direction and profitability of the parent company” MEL MIGRIÑO

VP AND GROUP CISO, MERALCO

“An example would be Bayad, which is actually our Payments and FinTech arm within the group,” says Migriño. “So the integration there is practical, providing a seamless experience where customer payments are processed through digital platforms, which can be processed in real-time.”

When discussing securing the combination of the Internet of Things (IoT) with the industrial side of the business, Migriño goes on to explain the use of a smart grid.

“It consists of digital substations, numerous sensors – even on your controller – and an advanced metering infrastructure for technologymagazine.com

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Meralco Undertakes Cybersecurity Transformation, Leverages Innovative Cloud Technologies to Gain Simplicity and Agility

Insights from an industry-leading Vice President and Group Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Ms Mel Migriño Digitisation With Comprehensive Cybersecurity at Its Core Manila Electric Railroad and Light Company (Meralco) is responsible for electric power generation and distribution in the Philippines. With Mel Migriño, Vice President and Group CISO at its helm, Meralco underwent rapid expansion and modernisation to help protect the company’s technology stock alongside its operational technology infrastructure. For this digitisation initiative, cybersecurity became an important consideration.

Understanding the Criticality of Cybersecurity As a diverse business dealing in various sectors fintech, telecom, retail energy, engineering, electric vehicles, logistics, construction and electromechanical - Meralco needed to develop and implement different cybersecurity programmes. Mel, a leading expert in the cybersecurity space, realised that the rise of AI and automation in the energy industry, which has so far lagged behind, could throw up potential security pitfalls for customers and employees alike. Knowing cybersecurity was paramount, Mel spearheaded the implementation of an all-inclusive cybersecurity policy that could cascade across Meralco and its subsidiaries.

Palo Alto Networks ensured compliance to all of our requirements and continued to demonstrate excellence and leadership from the beginning to the end. Palo Alto Networks set the bar high in terms of response time, providing zero trust through visibility, real-time threat detection and run-time protection.”

Ms Mel Migriño Vice President Group Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Meralco

Industry Utilities Focus Area Further strengthen the implementation of zero trust framework in a high-risk segment Outcomes • Diverse businesses with unique cybersecurity needs • The rise of AI and automation meant increased risks • Comprehensive cloud technologies would offer simplicity and agility

Reimagining Cybersecurity as a Business Enabler Palo Alto Networks’ Zero Trust Enterprise Framework is rooted in the principle of ‘never trust, always verify’. Given that the next five years is expected to witness the evolution of more secure networks, increased cloud storage dependence and innovation, Meralco looked to Palo Alto Networks, the industry leader in cybersecurity to address their security concerns and establish a safe cyber ecosystem.

Learn more about Zero Trust

MERALCO

real-time demand and response, all of which has been brought about by the IT and OT convergence or driven by Industry 4.0 – hence the prevalence of IT and OT technologies.”

With rapidly advancing technology being integrated into such systems, maintaining and heightening security protocols can be much more difficult to track and so requires a comprehensive cybersecurity policy.

“To maintain a level of resilience through the implementation of a zero-trust security

model, and whilst embarking on digital transformation programmes, it’s most important – first and foremost – to create an architecture where security is included right from the start,” Migriño says.

This architecture should consist of three layers, where the first is a physical layer, the second is a communication layer, and the third is the actual application layer – where the head end systems would actually reside.

“We need to identify the risk in each layer and implement appropriate security measures,” Migriño asserts. “Looking at the physical layer as an example, we can see the data as a potential risk as it can lead to fraud or theft in case of tampering with cyber technologymagazine.com

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physical systems. Other possible risks here would be the denial of service or attacks.”

“This is where we need to look at strong encryption in smart metres, as well as the possibility of deploying an IoT secure gateway and proper segmentation within the smart metre network.”

Such infrastructure will prevent the interception of vital personal and confidential data, helping to prevent attacks that result from vulnerabilities exposed by shared software and hardware systems on one singular platform, and ensure secure communication protocols – and this should be established across each of the aforementioned layers.

“Visibility is important. If you can start collecting logs and then integrating these logs into the security operation centre, then that is great,” Migriño says. “You need to think about the capabilities, so you need to have the right blend of people and skills that will actually support this. Look at the things around establishing IIoT security operations that will support the IT and OT transformation within the enterprise.”

“We look at the different data from various security logs, then have it correlated to create an intelligent behavioural-based risk to detect and respond to an attack,” she says. “With the infusion of analytics coming from the intelligent sensors and automations in the smart grid, operations can be improved, maintenance costs reduced, and real-time communication and support enabled.”

Migriño believes that achieving the correct balance between security and performance can be a challenge, particularly when there are “organisational silos”, as they can have a ripple effect on all other aspects, which requires thorough risk-assessment planning, coordination 250

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and monitoring by both the cyber and technology teams for “remediation”.

Looking at the future of cyber security “We could have gone through having an unsecure network wherein it got compromised then evolved to a secure network but with the aggressive stance on risk, certain risk conscious organisations will move to a very secure network. So things could swing on premise but the use of cloud will remain because businesses will still look for less expensive and faster ways to innovate. But digital trust and all of its components will be even greater than what we are experiencing now.”

“Also, the use of AI will play a significant role as we progress through the years, but there should be a focus on tightly securing components within the AI infrastructure otherwise we will be in big trouble.”

“Vendors and end-users are collaborating more extensively to share their experiences and knowledge to help one another – especially in addressing security concerns and incidents,” she explains. “I also envision that renewable power sources will be the centre of transformation, as well as enhancing the security of processing personal data in light of evolving privacy and data protection laws. Digital trust is paramount.”

Alongside these overall aims for the future, continuing the promotion of gender equality in the energy and cybersecurity sector and building sustainability are core to the company’s growth plan. As for the future of cybersecurity? Well, it seems that the next 5 years are set to witness the evolution of more secure networks, increased cloud storage dependence, and innovation to both drive down costs and “increase digital trust”.

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EMPLOYEEFIRST CULTURE DRIVES SUCCESS AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES

Milestone Technologies is empowering the digital transformation of the world’s leading enterprises with IT Managed Services and Intelligent Automation

M

ilestone Technologies has been providing IT Managed Services to leading technology, media, telecom, finance, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies for over two decades and has demonstrated a long history of winning and growing category-defining enterprise clients that are growing ahead of the market.

As a provider of technology solutions and automation enabled IT Managed Services, Milestone is partnering with enterprises and helping them innovate, automate and accelerate their digital transformation journey to achieve business outcomes at scale.

Employee-first culture the key to successes It is the Employee-First culture of Milestone that sets them apart in the world of enterprise IT service providers, with a deeply ingrained agility, flexibility and purposedriven attentiveness to its people, process, and technology.

The company has valued diversity since its inception, believing that it should be visible, valued and sustained throughout the entire organisation, generating a highly inclusive workplace that nurtures its own workforce and attracts the best talent.

s

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SAMEER KISHORE TITLE: PRESIDENT AND CEO AT MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

EXECUTIVE BIO

Sameer Kishore is President/CEO at Milestone Technologies.

Sameer is an accomplished business leader with over 25 years of experience driving exponential growth in the IT Services sector and leading business transformation.

Sameer joined Milestone from IBM where he was the General Manager for Financial Services sector part of Global Technology Services in North America. In addition, Sameer has held C-Suite leadership roles across Dell Services/NTT Data Services and Wipro Technologies.

Sameer is a well-travelled professional who believes in establishing and nurturing key business relationships and has successfully built global crossfunctional teams.

Sameer holds a Bachelor’s in Math and Statistics and a Master's in Management studies from India.

“ I’ve got such an amazing management team and it is a privilege to work with them. It’s exciting to see how they're empowering and enabling the organisation and employees to execute on the agreed strategy” SAMEER KISHORE

PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AT MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES

MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES

ARJUN NAGAR TITLE: CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER

ANISH SHAH TITLE: CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER

ARLENE LABORDE TITLE: CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER

BALA RAMAKRISHNA TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER

MIKE RIEP TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, BUSINESS DELIVERY

OLIVIER CRENE TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES

NATALIE HEROUX

Milestone lived its values throughout the uncertainty of the global pandemic, while maintaining 24/7 business operations and providing seamless digital experience to a hybrid workplace.

By taking care of its people, Milestone ensures a more authentic experience for its clients which emerged from a four-year vision that unfolded before the pandemic began.

MICHAEL SARABOSING TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT, SALES AND DELIVERY

MEET THE TEAM

Strategic visioning led by President & CEO, Sameer Kishore When President & CEO Sameer Kishore, a former general manager within a multibillion-dollar business segment of IBM’s Global Technology Services division, came on board in January 2020, he and his management team undertook Milestone's strategic-visioning exercise.

TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

ROBERT MALTZMAN TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, WORKFORCE SOLUTIONS

SCOTT JACOCKS TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT AND HEAD OF SERVICENOW CENTER OF EXCELLENCE

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Equipped with world class industry experience from the likes of IBM, Accenture, Wipro, Atos, Dell, and other tech giants, the leadership team shaped the vision into something truly exciting.

Kishore as well as his senior leaders set the strategic direction and goals that Milestone needed to strive towards as an organisation.

After 20 hours of Zoom calls over three long weeks, and consulting with various industry analysts and advisory firms, they generated answers to three core questions at the dawn of a four-year horizon: 1. What did they want prospective employees to think of Milestone when considering joining?

2. What did they want prospective clients to think of Milestone when considering a partnership?

3. What did they want Milestone to become over the next four years, their winning aspirations, where will they play and how will they win?

The outcome of this exercise was 'Strategy 2023', which outlined plans to continue being a global managed services partner that innovates and accelerates IT and digital transformation journeys by re-imagining people-driven technology solutions, resulting in an environment where employees, clients and partners thrive.

Staying true to the Employee First culture, a focused set of employee engagement initiatives and programmes were devised.

“This exercise was conducted pre-COVID, but I think even with all the changes — the strategy has stayed the same. I've got such an amazing management team and it is a privilege to work with them, to see how they are empowering and enabling the organisation and employees to execute on the agreed strategy.” said Kishore.

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He further adds: “We must continue to build an organisational culture that reflects our values and connects employees to Milestone. It is my job to ensure that all employees have what they need to execute and continue to drive success for themselves, their clients and coworkers.

Our philosophy aims to bring all employees together under one mission to maximise value for all stakeholders.”

The cultural values at the heart of Milestone Technologies Arlene LaBorde is Milestone’s Chief People Officer, leading the People Experience team, and overseeing all employee programmes and HR operations globally. It’s her job to ensure that the company is staying true to its values.

MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES

“People are our greatest asset. Our value proposition is rooted in driving high employee engagement and satisfaction through our employee-first culture. Our culture is built to provide a collaborative, inclusive environment that supports employees and empowers them to reach their full potential,” said LaBorde.

The company places significant focus on employee growth and development and offers a wide variety of learning and development opportunities. These include technical and business skills development, leadership development, in-house proprietary training, wellness programmes, and excellence recognition programmes.

Milestone is committed to providing an inclusive environment with initiatives such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I)

Employee Resource Groups. It also supports external DE&I endeavours like Opportunity@ Work and SkillBridge, a Department of Defense (DOD) programme. Opportunity@ Work, is a non-profit that supports IT professionals through alternative pathways to fulfill their potential. Through its partnership with ServiceNow and Department of Defence, Milestone works with skilled US Veterans who are nearing demobilisation, providing them with the necessary training and on-the-job experience that bridges their military disciplines with IT and the necessary consulting skills to work in the private sector.

The continued growth of Milestone is a testament to its focus on addressing the needs of employees, clients, and partners, with agility, integrity, and empathy.

MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES

Employee First Culture drives success

The Milestone culture is built around three pillars: 1. Respect and inclusion Building relationships with employees, clients, partners, and the community based on trust, respect, integrity and accountability.

2. Learning Employees consistently challenge themselves to develop personally and professionally.

3. Results Not winning at all costs, but through relationships and collaboration; anticipating customer needs and being able to continuously elevate services.

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“ We operate in a very dynamic business environment. If we want to be innovative, solutionsoriented and be better than our competitors, we need a diverse and inclusive workforce: people who think differently and bring different skill sets, experiences, backgrounds, and capabilities” ARLENE LABORDE

CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER AT MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES

Leverage our Diversity and Unique Strengths

Invest in Relationships

Deliver with a Sense of Urgency

MILESTONE VALUES

Collaborate to Succeed

Practise Active Learning

Anticipate, Innovate, Transform

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Go-to-market strategy designed to bring business outcomes Arjun Nagar is Milestone’s Chief Revenue Officer, responsible for the sales and marketing strategy and performance for all of Milestone’s go-to-market activities.

“We enable our clients to harness the power of their technology investments and achieve maximum performance to meet the demands of a rapidly changing digital world,” said Nagar.

Nagar’s strategic priorities are to accelerate the speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of the client’s digital transformation, while continually investing in employees and company culture. He has built a high-performing, passionate team that focuses on doing the right things for colleagues, clients, and partners.

Milestone enables the following business outcomes for its clients to accelerate their digital journey, which allows them to focus on their employees, and empowers them with the right technology and processes: 262

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• Improved operational agility and efficiency via automation and innovation • Exceptional customer service and enduser employee experience • An “always on” infrastructure and secure private cloud operations

“ We enable our clients to harness the power of their technology investments and achieve maximum performance to meet the demands of a rapidly changing digital world” ARJUN NAGAR

CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER AT MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES

Service Portfolio & Capabilities Milestone Technologies’ core offerings are split into Digital Workplace Services, Application Services and Consulting and Private Cloud Services, via their automationenabled Managed Services and ServiceNow platform. These solutions are delivered through project-based services and end-toend Managed Services.

In addition, Milestone has been working closely with its clients and partner ecosystem to implement Intelligent Automation (IA) leveraging the power of AI, ML and NLP to support clients’ ability to be agile in integrating new technologies.

IA adapts to changing business needs and enables scalability without impacting performance or incurring high costs. Through virtual agents and digital assistants, Milestone’s IA also complements and augments the human workforce, including sales, IT service desks, HR, healthcare and more.

“ By working closely with our technology partners and our clients, we bring in Milestone’s integrated solutions embedded with automation, to solve business challenges and accelerate digital transformation for our clients” BALA RAMAKRISHNA

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER AT MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

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“ ServiceNow projects are not just technology 'implementations': They're the foundation of successful organisational change and long-term scalability through sound development practices” SCOTT JACOCKS

VICE PRESIDENT AND HEAD OF SERVICENOW CENTER OF EXCELLENCEAT MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES

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ServiceNow partnership and creating value-add for clients As a ServiceNow Elite partner, Milestone implements ServiceNow solutions for all stages of business transformation. This helps their clients remove downtime or service interruptions and is part of Milestone’s commitment to ensuring business continuity while minimising breakdown and disruption of clients’ IT infrastructure.

“ServiceNow projects are not just technology implementations, they're the foundation of successful organisational change and long-term scalability through sound development practices,” said Scott Jacocks, Vice President and Head of ServiceNow Center of Excellence.

Strategic technology partnerships are vital for innovation, as Bala Ramakrishna, CTO of Milestone explains “By working closely with our technology partners and our clients, we bring in Milestone’s integrated solutions embedded with automation, to solve business challenges and accelerate digital transformation for our clients.”

MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES

Demonstrating performance through service excellence Milestone’s unique service methodology is the secret sauce that allows them to deliver differentiated services to their clients. This methodology is the framework used to collaborate with their clients to validate requirements, test implementations, deliver high-quality services, and provide value through continuous improvement.

By leveraging its blended approach of people, process and technology, Milestone collaborates with its clients to deliver a differentiated and customised service.

Milestone values transparency and to demonstrate this approach, utilises service excellence, and XLAs (experience level agreements), to consistently deliver above and beyond clients’ expectations.

Olivier Crene, SVP & GM of Customer Experience & Infrastructure Services, adds: “You can learn how to monitor customer satisfaction and provide delivery success from the watermelon analogy. The green on the surface is the SLA, indicating good performance, but there’s still a big chunk of red below the surface, which is XLA and potentially indicates poor employee experience.”

Several solutions are aimed at achieving operational and customer service excellence.

Milestone has been implementing digital workplace solutions and private cloud operations using 24/7 monitoring, coupled

“ You can learn how to monitor customer satisfaction and provide delivery success from the watermelon analogy. The green on the surface is the SLA, indicating good performance, but there’s still a big chunk of red below the surface, which is XLA and potentially indicates poor employee experience” OLIVIER CRENE

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES AT MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

with application services and consulting. This ensures that Milestone’s clients experience round-the-clock support to respond to all events and incidents at an enterprise scale.

Mike Riep, SVP & GM of Business Delivery, explains: “We deliver an experience to our clients that exceeds expectations and is aligned to their business outcomes so that we’re always driving long-term success through true partnership.”

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“ We deliver an experience to our clients that exceeds expectations and is aligned to their business outcomes so that we’re always driving long-term success through true partnership” MIKE RIEP

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER, BUSINESS DELIVERY AT MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

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Vikram Nair, SVP and CIO at Amneal Pharmaceuticals, a US$2BN global pharmaceutical company headquartered in Bridgewater, New Jersey “Unlike larger Managed Service providers, who offered cookiecutter proposals at high prices, Milestone adapted their solution to meet our business and commercial needs. They built a whole new team to provide a global service desk that has helped us improve enduser service levels. The Milestone team stands ready to take on more, to help us scale and maximise the value for Amneal. ”

“ Clients reach out to us to solve their complex or time-sensitive business problems .

Regardless of the client’s ask, our teams have stepped up repeatedly and have shown the creativity, flexibility, and professionalism that our clients have come to expect of Milestone” NATALIE HEROUX

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND GENERAL MANAGER AT MILESTONE TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

To fully meet expectations and associated challenges, Milestone’s account management team works very closely with client’s stakeholders to ensure they have a 360-degree view of their business needs, allowing clients to serve their end users better.

Natalie Heroux, SVP & GM of Professional Services says: “Clients reach out to us to solve their complex or time-sensitive business problems.

Regardless of the client's ask, our teams have stepped up repeatedly and have shown the creativity, flexibility, and professionalism that our clients have come to expect of Milestone.”

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IDENTIFYING

TECHNOLOGY DEMAND IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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NCDPS

Speaking with the CIO of the NCDPS, Glenn Mack, we find out how the department has implemented technology and its outlook for future developments

U

S public safety concerns are inevitably increasing in line with a larger population, which pushes more demand on organisations like the North Carolina Department of Public Safety (NCDPS). Since 2013, the number of individuals employed in law enforcement increased exponentially from roughly 626,942 to around 696,644 in 2020 —and figures are yet to be disclosed for 2021.

However, the general trend witnessed by the North Carolina State Highway Patrol is a decrease — specifically during the period of 2015 to 2019 — of instances like speeding, driving impairment, seatbelt and child restraint violations. The residents of North Carolina will be pleased to know that almost 75,000 fewer speeding tickets are issued annually and the public are generally more aware of risks. But, the NCDPS hasn’t achieved this solely through campaigning and training. How has technology supported the organisation in recent years and what is next for the NCDPS? The NCDPS shows resilience throughout the pandemic Covering a broad range of public safety services, the NCDPS has spent the past 10 years working with its employees and alongside the general public to prioritise the safety of the state in the most effective way.

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NCDPS

Identifying technology demand in the public sector

“ Our IT solutions support and technology services are required to accomplish the mission of the department” GLENN MACK

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, NCDPS

It provides law enforcement and health and safety management at adult correctional facilities, the NCDPS also operates a juvenile justice system, emergency management (supporting the state throughout disasters and supplying necessary aid), as well as homeland security and the National Guard.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the most significant period of international safety concerns; resulting in an 272

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unprecedented series of events across the globe, the NCDPS was forced to adapt quickly to protect its staff, the public, and individuals in its care. As a result, the organisation’s digital transformation began and there is certainly more to come as it works with leading technology companies to develop its information technology (IT) infrastructure.

NCDPS

GLENN MACK TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: PUBLIC SAFETY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT

With the department’s Glenn Mack employed as its Chief Information Officer — appointed in 2018 — the NCDPS has been able to overcome obstacles throughout the pandemic by advancing its technical solutions. Mack began his career in an entrylevel position and has worked in various IT roles since graduating from East Carolina University in 1992. His expertise has since

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: RALEIGH, NC, USA Glenn Mack is a senior IT executive with 28 years of experience within the information technology sector, where he has excelled in implementing collaborative technology solutions and addressing requirements for missioncritical systems. Mack started his career with the NC Department of Public Safety in 2009 as chief information officer for the NC Division of Crime Control and Public Safety. As the current CIO for NCDPS, which consolidated in 2012, Mack leads efforts to plan and implement department-wide IT strategies, to include healthcare, pharmacy, law enforcement and adult correction. Mack was born in Gainesville, Florida, and attended East Carolina University in Greenville, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science. He has received multiple recognitions over the years for successful or enhanced technology initiatives, to include a Governor’s Award for Excellence for Efficiency and Innovation, as well as being named the 2021 NC Tech Public Sector CIO of the Year.

Presidio: your trusted partner for secure public sector IT The public sector is pressured to improve service and better connect employees, constituents, students and affiliated agencies through advanced technologies Presidio is the recognized go to partner for designing and delivering IT solutions across a broad spectrum of vendors and customers.

Presidio is a Global Digital Services and Solutions Provider delivering customers the secure cloud environments that form the backbone of digital transformation. We guide you from initial assessments, strategy and consulting – to implementation and deployment – to managed services that run IT for you.

Between emerging security threats to new regulations and the pressing need to update infrastructure, it’s a challenging time to be in the IT public sector. No organization has enough people to address all of the physical and virtual challenges that are coming at us every day. The right technical expertise, understanding the specific challenges the public sector faces and prioritization, integration and simplifying complex network architectures are core competencies in Presidio. Presidio analyzes your current state to provide the right risk management solutions. Once we understand your requirements and capabilities, we optimize your team’s visibility and processes to strengthen them by reducing ‘alert fatigue’ and complexity.

Many factors from Covid-19 to cyberthreats and much more have

accelerated the need to modernize and secure IT infrastructure. Presidio’s team of government contact and acquisition experts across the country work with clients to identify and navigate the funding sources available to customers at the local, state and national level. At Presidio, the team focuses on aligning customers’ needs with available contracts and programs while offering assessments to determine the most appropriate budget planning and procurement strategies.

Once the team fully understands the client’s business objectives, Presidio creates strategic recommendations and can implement secure cloud migration options that will achieve objectives, while maintaining the highest levels of data protection.

Presidio offers end-to-end solutions that have security built-in from the outset. We take a step back and think about customer satisfaction as citizens who will be using the government services with our own families.

LEARN MORE

“ We're a little bit behind the eight ball when moving into some of the more streamlined solutions” GLENN MACK

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, NCDPS

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developed through working with the State of North Carolina, North Carolina Department of Crime Control & Public Safety, Pace Communications — as its IT Director — and HCS Systems.

In conversation with Mack, he told us more about his inspiration for working in the organisation and driving positive changes as “a safety-of-life department.”

“Our motto is to ‘Prevent, Protect and Prepare’, so we’re prepared to meet the

NCDPS

needs, from a public safety perspective, of the citizens of North Carolina,” Mack says.

Adopting technology for a safer community As a government organisation, the NCDPS follows stringent protocols when implementing new technologies into its operations. Or, as Mack puts it, “we are a government department and so oftentimes, we're a little bit behind the eight ball when moving into some of the more

streamlined solutions.” This really highlights the significance of his role and efforts in promoting the use of beneficial technologies across the organisation.

Over the past two years, the NCDPS has adapted to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic while ensuring the safety and detention of a population of more than 100,000 offenders and probationers in various stages of the correction process. It had already leveraged the use of services like Office 365 from Microsoft and Cisco voice over IP and unified collaboration solutions, as well as solution support from Presidio in its daily operations. “But, we are still exploring how to really utilise and benefit from the cloud,” Mack says.

Since the onset of COVID-19, the department has successfully used digital tools to incorporate e-visitation and telemedicine into its correctional facilities, which has allowed offenders to maintain contact with their families from the prison facility and receive substantial medical attention without any further detriment to their health. This has also allowed for the continued operation of facilities, by protecting staff during the outbreak.

“Obviously the pandemic helped to highlight a lot of our technology capabilities. And so, with the continued modernisation of our infrastructure and our solution set, we were able to utilise a lot of collaboration tools like Webex (a Cisco tool) and those tools lent themselves to introducing new solutions for our inmates like telemedicine and e-visitation,” says Mack. “So, we continue to modernise within the department for various reasons and it has embraced this technology to help accomplish and meet our goals.”

While technology development is critical for the future of the department, the technologymagazine.com

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NCDPS

organisation’s culture is reflected in its digital transformation. “Most of the staff exhibit a calling to public service,” Mack says. “So, even on the IT side, our IT solutions support and technology services are required to accomplish the mission of the department.

If our solutions don’t work, bad things could happen and we know that. So, there’s a strong commitment to providing excellent IT solutions for the department.”

Technical partnerships with strategies aligned Within such a rigid industry — which is expected when dealing with public safety and correction — the NCDPS is careful when selecting its partner organisations. Mack mentions the organisation’s previous and current operations alongside Cisco and Presidio as well as its use of Microsoft tools. These companies were selected based on the alignment of their views as well as their comprehension of the department’s goals and restraints.

With the support from its partners, the NCDPS is able to access new insights and leverage the innovative perspectives of expert developers — something the department would not manage on its own. “Our partners help guide us with emerging technologies and solutions to help meet our business goals and directives,” Mack says. “So, we’re very dependent on them showing us how we should move forward in certain areas. That being said, we have an extremely talented group of application developers and technical engineers that understand the business at a functional level, and are critical in the design and support of ever changing application/solution needs.”

How has technology facilitated a reaction to legislative change?

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primarily on adult correction. As a result, Mack expects to see more implementation of digital collaboration tools and ultimately, a change in organisational culture as it moves towards digital solutions in the long term.

As the department separates, the NCDPS is likely to experience operational challenges and technology is the key to a seamless transition. Mack explains how the organisation hopes to develop its solutions for the new adult correction department, which will also ensure the safety of its offenders.

“We continue to explore many new emerging technologies in this space. Mandown, inmate tracking and drone detection

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“ With the continued modernisation of our infrastructure and our solution set, we were able to utilise a lot of collaboration tools” GLENN MACK

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, NCDPS

are high priorities. In partnership with DPS leadership and the exceptional NCDPS IT staff, we are committed to finding, testing and implementing best in class solutions to improve the safety within our prisons,” Mack says.

“We have been very successful with our telemedicine, telepsychiatry and e-visitation programmes through the use of Cisco’s Webex platform to reduce costs, increase correctional officer safety, as well as boost the 280

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morale of both officers and inmates during the global pandemic. The inmates are receiving timely healthcare and able to connect with approved family online visitation via Webex.

We have also built and deployed a separate ‘inmate’ network (iNet) within our environment to accommodate online learning and other offender-related programmes.”

Mack also divulged some of the department’s technology solutions that

NCDPS

support activities within its law enforcement section, while providing other benefits to the organisation. Mack says, “we have deployed or upgraded various CRM solutions within DPS to improve our LE divisions’ ability to efficiently and accurately track their caseloads. We continue to expand and deploy departmentwide collaboration tools to better improve communication and improve efficiencies while also reducing costs.”

“Video surveillance, licensed drone operators and a statewide radio network are also being used to increase safety for the officers. It has been and always will be our goal to assist our LE partners within DPS to improve the safety and citizens of NC via technology.”

Technology will support young people Alongside its investment into adult correction and law enforcement, the NCDPS understands the importance of youth and its responsibility for setting young individuals on a safe and compliant path. Its juvenile justice system is in place to address issues within younger generations and encourage them to abide by the law.

While the department utilises technologies to support the system, it is focused on facilitating a shift in approach to juvenile justice. The organisation will develop its technologies with help from its dedicated development team.

“Many of the same technologies are deployed within our Juvenile Justice facilities to increase the safety of our staff and youth. In addition to our core operational solutions, we have a dedicated team of developers that have an ongoing mission to create or enhance applications that are mission-critical to Juvenile Justice and they are constantly tuning and creating new applications as the business dictates.”

“One new solution we are excited about is the real-time ‘bed-check’ solution that allows staff to accurately and in a timely manner, report the status of our youth via a wirelessly connected tablet.”

Developing the experience and investing in juvenile programmes is likely to increase safety over time as the NCDPS works with young people in the state. Digital tools can be leveraged to enable better lives for youth offenders, but this requires continuous digital transformation. “The laws and rules around our youth constantly change and we are there to facilitate those changes within the applications or solutions we support.”

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KDDI SET TO ENTER

THE THAILAND MARKET WITH

TELEHOUSE CARRIER NEUTRAL DC

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AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: ILKHAN OZSEVIM PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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KDDI TELEHOUSE

The Carrier-Neutral Data Centre company KDDI Telehouse is preparing to enter the Thailand market to meet growing demand in a rapidly developing data ecosystem

I

magine that you live in a city where you could enjoy all of your daily activities and entertainment in one place without going out of town, such as a shopping mall or amusement park. The concept of a carrier neutral data centre (DC) is the same” says Manabu Takagi, General Manager of KDDI Telehouse, Global Data Center Business.

Carrier-Neutral DCs are a breed of DC architecture that resolve connectivity issues that can transpire from being attached to more conventional data centres.

‘With multiple connectivity partners located in a carrier-neutral DC, customers can obtain all the connectivity services they need - such as internet services - from service providers within the DC. They also benefit from the low latency, greater efficiency and reliability, and greater flexibility that the DC environment can offer’ he says.

The obvious implication is that data centres lacking carrier neutrality can suffer from the limitations that KDDI Telehouse is providing solutions for.

Data centres that are ‘carrier-biased’ can restrict their users to just a single connectivity service, a need to venture out of their remote digital villages to access their limited digital services, which can be inconvenient, costly and even risky.

KDDI Telehouse solves this problem by allowing its clients the freedom to quickly shift between the multiple services available to their customers within their carrier neutral network.

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Manabu

TAKAGI

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MANABU TAKAGI TITLE: G ENERAL MANAGER OF GLOBAL DATA CENTER BUSINESS INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: JAPAN Manabu Takagi is the general manager of Global Data Center Business at KDDI headquarter excluding Japan. He leads the international business unit that manages strategic planning and business development such as M&A and partnering, and also manages the profitability of overseas data center business. With an over 15-year specialized experience in the data center and business development field and joined KDDI after working for PwC and a consulting firm specializing in DC. Manabu holds a master’s degree in Law from Waseda University in Japan.

“ AS AN ENERGY SAVING STRATEGY, ONE OF OUR BIGGEST STRENGTHS CONSISTS OF HIGHLY EFFICIENT DATA CENTRES WITH A LOW PUE (POWER USAGE EFFECTIVENESS)”

KDDI TELEHOUSE

“Moreover,” says Manabu Takagi, “carrierneutral DCs can increase speed to market by enabling connections to providers quickly and creating strategic networks with customers to improve their service offerings. Customers can therefore enjoy the rich connectivity and flourish in this DC ‘city’.”

Before joining KDDI Telehouse, Takagi worked with a consulting firm - one of the Big Four, plus another firm specialising in DC’s and has had over 10 years of experience in the data centre industry. He joined KDDI in 2017 as Strategic Planning Manager.

Now General Manager of Telehouse, Global Data Center Business, Manabu Takagi is responsible for the global Data Centre team excluding Japan - with roles and responsibilities spanning across strategic planning, business development and business management.

KDDI Telehouse opened its first data centre in New York in 1989, initially providing services for Japanese banks and trading companies.

They gradually expanded their global footprint

as a result of increased demand in the market.

Takagi says,“the growth of public cloud has changed the market significantly and they have changed their strategy accordingly, to focus on building interconnection hubs in key and upcoming data centre markets”.

Sustaining DCCI operation and expansion through Sustainability Describing KDDI Telehouse’s approach to sustainability, he says, “We understand that sustainability - and especially achieving carbon neutrality - is a major initiative for our customers and the data centre market as a whole. KDDI Telehouse has committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and we’re working on achieving 50% by 2030 against a 2019 baseline”.

In order to implement actionable steps, KDDI Telehouse has departmentalised the process, thereby creating measurable systems and organisational feedback loops to achieve these goals. technologymagazine.com

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KDDI TELEHOUSE

Takagi says, “achieving carbon neutrality is a key business challenge and opportunity that KDDI Telehouse is striving to achieve.

One of the main steps that we have taken is to create a ‘Sustainability Management Department’ in April this year, which will focus on sustainability measures for the entire group, including carbon neutrality”.

Telehouse has already made significant strides towards achieving these targets with 70% of its energy resources being converted into renewable energy.

“For the countries where renewable energy is not yet in place,” Takagi explains, “we will gradually promote carbon neutralisation by offsetting CO2.”

“As a data centre operator that both owns and operates its facilities, we have been working to reduce our energy consumption related to carbon neutral conversion, and this energy saving is directly related to the design and construction stages right through to operations."

“One of our key strengths consists of highly efficient data centres with low PuE (Power usage Effectiveness),” he says. “One of our flagship data centres, Telehouse North Two - located in London and launched 5 years’ ago - was designed and built to world-class standards to deliver low PuE by incorporating the world’s first multi-story adiabatic cooling system.”

KDDI Telehouse’s reach is truly global, with 100 offices located in 60 major cities between them. Speaking of their European data centre operations, Takagi says: “We have presence in London, Paris and Frankfurt, operating our most connected data centre campuses out of London and Paris.”

They opened their first data centre building, Telehouse North, at Telehouse, London Docklands in 1989. It was the first purpose-built carrier-neutral data centre in 288

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SUSTAINABILITY Telehouse has already made significant strides towards achieving these targets with 70% of its energy resources being converted into renewable energy.

“IMAGINE THAT YOU LIVE IN A CITY WHERE YOU COULD ENJOY ALL OF YOUR DAILY ACTIVITIES AND ENTERTAINMENT IN ONE PLACE WITHOUT GOING OUT OF TOWN, SUCH AS A SHOPPING MALL OR AMUSEMENT PARK. THE CONCEPT OF A CARRIER NEUTRAL DATA CENTRE (DC) IS THE SAME MANABU TAKAGI

GENERAL MANAGER OF GLOBAL DATA CENTER BUSINESS, KDDI

Europe at that time. Since then, their London Docklands campus has developed to become a leading connectivity hub in London.

This was a result of relationships developed with partners such as The London Internet Exchange (LINX), one of the largest internet exchanges in the world, which made Telehouse London Docklands its primary home more than 25 years ago.

The London Docklands campus provides access to more than 500 carriers/ISPs, as well as direct access to AWS and Microsoft Azure.

In addition to the existing four data centre buildings in London, they are set to further expand the campus and open a new building, Telehouse South, in March this year in response to increasing demand in the London market.

In Paris, KDDI Telehouse’s data centres host Paris’ foremost internet hub, with France IX’s internet traffic travelling through its Telehouse Voltaire data centre, making it the most connected data centre in France.

Takagi says: “Just outside of Paris, we have another data centre, Telehouse MagnyLes-Hameaux, offering 66,000 sqm of floor space, which is a good fit for the customers expecting future space growth. The Magny campus is strategically positioned as a technologymagazine.com

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site that can connect back to our Voltaire campus through a dark fibre network between the two campuses.”

In 2020, they also expanded their data centre services in Frankfurt, with the addition of a fifth building at the Telehouse Frankfurt campus. The space was quickly filled thanks to customer demand.

Preparing for entry into the Thailand Market KDDI Telehouse have also just announced their entry into the Thailand market.

KDDI Telehouse has leased a plot in Rama IX, central Bangkok, to leverage the connectivity network of local carriers for its KDDI Telehouse Bangkok facility, with the location close to the financial district in Thailand.

Planning has already begun on the threestory facility, with the initial phase targeted to be completed by Q2 2023.

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This facility will provide 4MW of IT power over 32,000 sqm of space when complete.

KDDI Telehouse has taken full equity ownership of its enterprise in Thailand, where the business is 100% owned by KDDI group, including its subsidiary in Singapore and Thailand.

“We firmly believe that the timing is right to enter Thailand,” Takagi says . “While many data centre operators have ambitious plans to build large, wholesale facilities around the Asia-Pacific region, KDDI Telehouse intends to offer a well-connected, carrier-neutral data centre on an international scale.”

Thailand is historically a tourism and manufacturing hub, so Bangkok has not really featured in the data centre market until recently, when accelerated digitalization in the wake of the pandemic has brought cloud providers’ attention to the market and highlighted its potential.

KDDI TELEHOUSE

A key issue faced by international customers that own network nodes in APAC is the lack of pure carrier-neutral data centres in the market, including Bangkok.

Although US hyperscalers have yet to clearly indicate plans to set up cloud regions in Southeast Asia, KDDI Telehouse’s interconnection services may well boost the market’s attractiveness to international cloud providers, as well as to other firms that are only just noticing the market’s potential.

“One of my responsibilities,” Takagi explains,is business development, which is to expand our data centre footprint in regions such as Thailand. We have been exploring opportunities in several markets around the world. In Thailand, we entered the market with full-ownership of our data centre business and there are no restrictions on the form of entry. Our aim is to utilise the appropriate model for each market and to develop the right partnerships.”

“ WE FIRMLY BELIEVE THAT THE TIMING IS RIGHT TO ENTER THAILAND” MANABU TAKAGI

GENERAL MANAGER OF GLOBAL DATA CENTER BUSINESS, KDDI technologymagazine.com

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In terms of KDDI Telehouse’s ethos, he says: “We will continue to put our customers first, expand steadily and provide data centres with the highest level of connectivity in the market, without being influenced by the external environment.”

Commenting on future trends in the industry, Takagi says: “As for data centre operators, I believe that the corporate value of data centres, such as EBITDA, will continue to be around 20-25. Boosted by this situation and the perspective of a long-term capital investment business, there may be a new form of business that sells out after launch.”

KDDI TELEHOUSE

“However, I don’t think there will be any major movements, such as player changes, which happened in the last 3-5 years.”

Additionally, Takagi plans to shift from traditional data center hubs into new regions.

Looking at rapid market growth in Southeast Asia and considering the issue with Singapore's moratorium on establishing a new data center, it is presently impractical to secure enough capacity to support the explosive growth in Southeast Asia.

He predicts that Thailand could hold the key to solving South East Asia’s digital traffic problem.

Thailand is geopolitically located at the center of Southeast Asia, and is the midpoint for traffic and Internet traffic, including submarine cables and land routes.

Suppose a cloud region or an alternative function is installed in Thailand. In that case, the route will shift to away from Singapore, and consequently Telecom carriers and NW managers in Southeast Asia will consider further strategic changes to the architecture to provide a better service.

Considering Tier 2 or 3 data centre markets, such as those in emerging countries where the entry of cloud players is expected, KDDI Telehouse’s prediction is that fierce competition between local operators and global players will occur with the aim of expanding scale, especially for hyperscale data centres.

KDDI Telehouse has achieved considerable success with its network-dense data centers in developed markets such as London, and it hopes to replicate a similar business model in Bangkok.

They have worked closely with telco carriers in other markets, and the liberalised Telco sector in Thailand offers a friendly environment for the firm to pursue this business model.

‘We believe that our interconnection services may well boost the market’s attractiveness to international cloud providers and other firms that are only just noticing the market’s potential’ says Takagii, ‘as it is in its early days and has yet to experience the scale of growth seen in Indonesia’.

In view of this Takagi predicts that “interconnected data centre demand is likely to grow in emerging data centre cities.”

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CLUSTERPOWER

IS A GREEN

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CLUSTERPOWER

SET TO TAKE OVER

WRITTEN BY: ILKHAN OZSEVIM PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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CLUSTERPOWER

ClusterPower has just become an alternative for the entire FLAP region using AI and high energy efficiency in its promising DC

“

W

e have just become an alternative to the entire FLAP area,” says Vladimir Ester, CTO of ClusterPower, as the company position themselves to become one of the most groundbreaking DC centres in Central and Eastern Europe.

The FLAP areas are Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris — the four cities considered to be the primary markets for all new data centre deployments.

Located in Romania, ClusterPower’s five hyperscale Data Centres (DCs) are of a magnitude and scalability that promises to see them become the leading provider for the entire region, while enabling them to tap into international markets. All five data centres are scheduled for completion by 2025, by which time they will be housed in a 25,000 SQM campus, sustainably producing a total capacity of 200MW. So this is hyperscale technology — but not as you know it.

Ester comes from a strong technological background and has acted as an infrastructure engineer, as well as a solutions architect, for data centre and internet service provider deployments throughout most of his career.

He has also been a CCIE — Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert — for almost 10 years, with this expertise laying the technical foundations for project ClusterPower.

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COSMIN GEORGESCU TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE AND CLOUD PROVIDER LOCATION: ROMANIA

EXECUTIVE BIO

Proficient professional with more than 20 years of experience in energy infrastructure and complex technological projects, as a direct lead.

Select achievements include: Design and permitting of the first wind farms for Electrica (52 MW), EPC for Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant - Data centers for Microsoft, Bosch, Radet Constanta (partnership with Siemens), and Fan Courier - The first cogeneration plant in Bucharest (2MW), Brasov (1 MW), Vatra Dornei (3 MW) - The first photovoltaic park in Romania (1MW).

And Energetic infrastructure projects for Romania’s main energy providers (Enel, Transelectrica) and prominent real estate developers Mr. Georgescu holds certifications in project management, software development, security systems, network design, is a Cisco Professional and and EMBA graduate.

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CLUSTERPOWER

“ We have just become an alternative for the entire FLAP area” VLADIMIR ESTER CTO, CLUSTERPOWER

“I think that this skill set has really prepared me to both design and implement largescale infrastructure projects,” he says. “So, in the last couple of years, I've moved away from engineering towards management and entrepreneurship, joining Cosmin and the rest

of the team, and I’m now managing all of the infrastructure aspects related to our campus.”

“We are very experienced in our fields,” says Cosmin Georgescu, CEO of ClusterPower, “and I have been closely involved in both energy and technology projects for over 20 years now, so it was a natural move to have our own assets and to build our own Data Centre and technology campus.”

ClusterPower is the first ever Hyperscale Data Centre in Central and Eastern Europe; both the technological and operational vision behind it is just as huge.

Georgescu possesses a fundamental knowledge of Cisco training and certifications, as well as for Project Management, with these experiences leading to the development of the first data centre in Romania for Microsoft, Bosch, and Amazon. He’s also worked on several large national projects and technologymagazine.com

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CLUSTERPOWER

ClusterPower is a Green Hyperscale DC Set To Take Over

infrastructures, including a nuclear power plant, Romania's first wind farm, and its first photovoltaic plant.

Speaking about Clusterpower’s capabilities he says: “We can host large scale infrastructure deployments in a custom, fit-out way. We are very flexible in customising services for our clients. We can host for clients and customers that either want to expand in the Central Eastern European region, or that want to optimise their current infrastructure.”

A Green Energy Data Centre Powerhouse One of the main cross-industry concerns with hyperscale DCs is potential energy wastage. But, through strategic partnerships, ClusterPower has devised an innovative solution: build a powerful data park that is not only operationally effective, but also highly sustainable and extremely energy efficient.

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“We are focusing on green energy, power and efficiency,” says Georgescu, and that focus is already yielding major returns.

ClusterPower has a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of just 1.1, which is considered very low across the industry. “We produce our own power and cooling at the same time and, to come up with such an innovative solution, we worked with our partners, Rolls-Royce MTU (hydrogen-engine solutions), which makes us not only extremely efficient but also allows us to function independently, while greatly reducing business interruption risks.”

Continuity of service is absolutely critical to DC hosting, since entire data infrastructures depend on their uninterrupted operations.

“We already have eight redundant fibre connections on site,” Georgescu says, “and that’s just in the first phase.” Redundant connections are essentially duplicate

VLADIMIR ESTER TITLE: CTO INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE AND CLOUD PROVIDER

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: ROMANIA Ester has worked in IT infrastructure and services for over 15 years, gaining a vast of amount of experience in this time.

Select achievements include: design and deployment of Data Center for Defense, Design and deployment of Data Center for a US-based Fortune 100 insurance company, Migration to the cloud for 13 government institutions in Abu Dhabi, infrastructure design and maintenance for the worldwide premier owner and operator of shopping centers.

Before Cluster Power, Mr. Ester was with Cisco and one of Romania’s largest telcos (as data center manager).

Mr. Ester holds a Master in Cybersecurity and advanced industry certifications: Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE #36295), Cisco Certified Design Professional, Cisco Advance Routing and Switching, Cisco Daca Center Unified Fabric Specialist.

As a key member of the Cluster Power team, Mr. Ester is taking the lead in the development and engineering design of the company’s services and assessment of new markets, all while maintaining a customer-centric mindset by keeping the cost and speed of the client go-to-market in balance.

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CLUSTERPOWER

“We are focusing on green energy, power and efficiency” COSMIN GEORGESCU CEO, CLUSTERPOWER

databases that are ready for access in the event of unforeseen circumstances.

“We have also established the base of our digital highway connections to Frankfurt and Amsterdam. ClusterPower’s infrastructure already provides our clients with hundreds of racks, as well as off-PCs for 200 people that may be used to resolve business interruptions.”

This means that, if their clients have a failover in a large European city, they can take a flight to nearby international airports — which are just 20 minutes away from ClusterPower’s base — and continue to work directly in their data centres with 20 or 40 people without any interruption, depending on their use-case.

ClusterPower is a real powerhouse of a Data Centre. Its sheer output of 200MW will allow it to produce its own sustainable electricity in-line with EU regulations, from its strategically positioned location.

Georgescu says: “One important aspect of our project is being located in the EU, which means that we follow all European security and data privacy guidelines and, geographically speaking, we are at the gateway between East, West, North and South. This gateway is positioned to reach and supply a multitude of cities that can in turn reach us and our populations here.”

ClusterPower’s geographic placement is a decisive point of client-attraction. He says that the company is “in an area with very low seismic activity for about an 800 km radius”, providing both security and critical dependability as a direct consequence of its site location. technologymagazine.com

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“ We surpass even the Tier-Three requirements of an uptime of 99.985%” COSMIN GEORGESCU CEO, CLUSTERPOWER

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Core Principles of Security and Resilience Security and resilience are core principles of ClusterPower, as well as the design and digital architecture being built entirely around them. ClusterPower’s campus is protected according to military standards and continuously monitored by over 200 HD cameras. All access is controlled by specific security procedures, with individual security levels for each rack, row and room — including biometric access technology.

ClusterPower’s security-first model can be divided into two areas: the first is

CLUSTERPOWER

increase data transfer speeds — the company has spared no expense. This means that, according to its own calculations, ClusterPower surpasses even the Tier-Three requirements of an uptime of 99.985%.

And Georgescu believes the company can exceed even that.

All of these cutting-edge components and systems render ClusterPower a truly formidable competitor in the Data Centre industry.

“We see ourselves as the gold standard,”’ says Ester. “From physical infrastructure, connectivity, utilities, resiliency — all the way up to the most advanced IT and technological appliances in our DC — everything has been conceived as stateof-the-art, even down to the procurement process, where we have chosen to work only with industry leaders for their segments.”

“All of the networking infrastructure is being deployed in a partnership with Cisco.

related to specialised cyber security equipment, such as next-generation firewalls and its own distributed denial of service protection (DDOS), scrubbing centre and web applications; the second area is related to systems’ resilience, which provides a powerful infrastructure that will remain operational even during an attack or disaster.

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We use Paolo Alto and F5, who are leaders in security and low-balancing; we're using NetApp and grid storage solutions; and, last but not least, we work with NVIDIA and the our co-created AI platform, which is indeed a gold standard all on its own in the AI industry.”

DID YOU KNOW...

Artificial Intelligence and Supercomputing Data ClusterPower firmly believes that machine learning and artificial intelligence applications are here to stay, as they present both a huge market opportunity and a decisive direction for the industry to move in, as a whole.

Ester says: “This is very closely related to other technologies, such as twin digital ecosystems like metaverse. This all relates to AI. Clusterpower has decided to fill in the gap of being the first cloud provider to offer AI as a service in this region, and we have built this service alongside NVIDIA, which means that we have installed Romania’s first supercomputer based on the DGX platform from NVIDIA, alongside Mellanox Infiniband Switch and NetApp storage.”

Cluster Power is one of Central Europe’s most ambitious technology projects, that not only offers competitive and resilient infrastructure in Eastern Europe but also empowers society to be more connected. It is one of the largest, most scalable, and technologically advanced hyperscale centers in Europe, with a capacity that can reach 200 MW and over 4,500 racks, at maturity.

Cluster Power aims at being a one-stop shop for technological solutions. The hyperscale campus shall address a multitude of enterprise needs, either directly or through its partners' ecosystem, starting with the fundamentals of colocation space for racks to higher valueadding Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service, and Software-as-a-Service solutions.

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ClusterPower officially inaugurated its first DataCentre, on April 1st 2022. The DC is located in Mischii, Dolj County, and put ClusterPower on the map as the largest provider of cloud and compute in Eastern Europe

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Number of employees

“ Together we all share a vision to promote a project that will change the world for the better” COSMIN GEORGESCU CEO, CLUSTERPOWER

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In a nutshell, this is a certified supercomputer that ClusterPower is offering as a service to its customers who want to either train their own AI models or run their AI-based applications in.

“So we fit both models with the same infrastructure, research, training and inferencing,” says Ester. “This is a very scalable and flexible service model that we have designed, and I think that with this kind of service offering, we are pioneers in the field — not just the region.”

Georgescu reaffirms this perspective: “It provides us with a very powerful tool for management and cost optimisation, as well as for predictive maintenance. This has already been implemented on our campus, where we’re using artificial intelligence for energy optimisation as well as forecasting.

“Most importantly, we have a great ecosystem of partners and a very seasoned team,” says Georgescu. “Together, we all share a vision to promote a project that will change the world for the better — which

means that, not only do we aim to support our customers to achieve their most ambitious goals, but we can help them become part of a transformational process, such as largescale use of trust policy AI, which will benefit regional developments in making them both competitive and unique, while allowing them to use state-of-the-art tools.”

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Humanising the Digital Workplace Experience

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Humana is a health and wellness company that continuously creates innovative solutions and resources to help people live their healthiest lives on their terms, when and where they need it. The company is one of the largest health insurers in the United States, with a burgeoning new business in clinical care

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igital transformation has come to define corporate strategy.

The promise that technology will bring new efficiencies, remove cost centres and open paths to new markets makes entering the digital ecosystem an appealing prospect for every growing business. Amid the disruption of a global pandemic, when even routine tasks for business continuity are not only impractical but, in many instances, impossible, what was a competitive advantage became a business imperative, and organisations invested billions to pivot almost overnight.

At Humana, digital transformation plays a different role in shaping the organisation’s future. It is a proactive tool to shape the human experiences of both employees and customers, and propel one of the United States’ largest health insurers into a new, post-pandemic era, built upon a foundation of digital investment stretching back nearly a decade.

“42% of our employees already worked outside of Humana buildings with another 4% being mobile,” says Callie Baumann, Humana’s Vice President of Digital Workplace Experience. “Before COVID, the digital workplace was part technologymagazine.com

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Health and Wellness in the Digital Era

of our core operations; it was something we already had to be good at and have already been doing for years. Post-pandemic, it's become a thing that we do to drive business strategy.”

With more than 95,000 employees at the end of 2021 spread across a vast array of disciplines - from knowledge workers and supply chain specialists to frontline physicians, nurses, social workers, and retail pharmacy professionals - Humana is an organisation of prodigious scale, with revenues in 2021 exceeding US$83bn.

In 2021, it acquired Kindred at Home, solidifying the foundation for an expanding business in clinical care and nearly doubling the size of its workforce. From the outside, Humana looks every bit the traditional Fortune 500 company. But, in many ways, it is also “the antithesis of enterprise-scale business”, according to Baumann. “It is an organisation where innovation, agility and reinvention are hardwired into its very DNA.” 314

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Joining Humana’s Human Resources division in 2011, Baumann has since worked broadly across the organisation, launching new products, building innovation accelerators, and gaining years of firsthand insight into how technology can drive business strategy. “Most recently, just in time for COVID, I began leading our digital workplace experience team,” she says. “It’s been a wild two and a half years.”

Her impetus has always been to leverage digital processes, tools and techniques not for technology’s sake, but to create a healthier life for Humana’s employees and customers. It is a mission that aligns with Humana’s ambitious expansion beyond commercial insurance products - a core business that remains vital to the organisation’s success - and towards a singular focus to help people achieve lifelong well-being.

“Over the past several years, we’ve really crystallised this notion of defining and

Callie Baumann TITLE: V ICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL WORKPLACE EXPERIENCE INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: USA Callie Baumann is a digital executive, consumer experience enthusiast, and passionate advocate for the ways technology and experience design can transform businesses (and lives). Callie serves as Vice President of Digital Workplace Experience at Humana.

In her decade-long tenure at the company, she has held roles spanning IT, operations, consumer innovation and HR. Whether quarterbacking the move to remote work during the pandemic, transforming a grievance department into a leading source of consumer insights, or advocating for intentionally designed consumer and employee experiences Callie is passionate about bringing humanity back to the workplace.

Callie is mum to four children – Lydia, Piper, Georgia and Rome.

In her spare time, she enjoys reading, impromptu dance parties with her kiddos, and spending quality time with her husband, Arthur.

“ WE KNOW THERE'S VALUE IN HELPING PEOPLE USE OUR TOOLS. WE ALSO KNOW THAT THEY HAVE HIGHER SATISFACTION AND THERE’S LESS BURNOUT” technologymagazine.com

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“ BEFORE COVID, THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE WAS PART OF OUR CORE OPERATIONS […] POSTPANDEMIC IT'S BECOME A THING THAT WE DO TO DRIVE BUSINESS STRATEGY” CALLIE BAUMANN

VICE PRESIDENT OF EMPLOYEE TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE, HUMANA

building a business model around health and delivering human care,” says Baumann.

“We've been investing to make that a reality, and now we're just starting to see the glimpses of the transformative power that can have on the industry as a whole.”

That investment is more than just a financial conversation, Baumann says. “This isn't about the dollars and cents that we're investing in our SaaS partners. It is less about technology and more about the impact of

those investments on engagement and wellbeing. We can see that employees using our tools have higher Net Promoter Score (NPS) with our customers, so we know there's value in helping people use our tools. We also know that they have higher satisfaction and less burnout.”

Baumann calls it the “Digital Workplace Experience” - the next evolution of digital integration in the workplace that affects every facet of the organisation. Baumann is a proponent of pushing the notion of a digital workplace forward, and that means moving away from the traditional technology mindset. It is an experience that embraces the often forgotten, but very real, personal journeys we all experience throughout our professional lives, from onboarding and career progression, to being equipped, enabled and empowered day-to-day, all the technologymagazine.com

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HUMANA

“ WE'RE DESIGNING A MODEL THAT'S BASED ON THE TRUE NEEDS OF OUR PEOPLE, AND INTIMATELY UNDERSTANDING THE REALITY OF THEIR WORK AND REQUIREMENTS” CALLIE BAUMANN

VICE PRESIDENT OF EMPLOYEE TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE, HUMANA

way to discovering an individual sense of purpose, pride and fulfilment.

“The conversation now is around leadership, culture change, and using this digital workplace experience platform that we've created to not just incrementally evolve, but to actually reimagine what we want Humana to be as an organisation, both as an employer and as a care company, post-pandemic,” she says.

Though still in the early stages, the digital workplace experience is already helping to shape the company’s expansions, the latest of which is a move into clinical care for seniors, called CenterWell (Home Health & Primary Care). Supporting this new area of business requires a completely new approach to meet unique employee needs, preferences and desires.

“Taking just one instance, we’re currently re-evaluating our Service Level Agreements (SLAs). What we instantly found was that the things that attract and retain a knowledge worker - such as myself - and a physician are completely different,” Baumann says.

“Our current SLAs for downtime are in hours and days, while their expectations are in minutes. And, frankly, our patients 318

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deserve a relationship with their clinician whose delivery of human care is amplified by the technology they use. If my laptop goes down, that is an inconvenience and a disruption to my productivity. But for a clinician who sees a patient every 20-30 minutes, who is delivering care, that is broken trust.”

It goes both ways: clinical automation may be the top digital priority for clinicians, but for knowledge workers, seamless access to documents and robust communication tools top the agenda. “That’s why we're designing a model that's based on the true needs of our people, and intimately understanding the reality of their work

and requirements,” Baumann says. “And that starts at day one, from rethinking the unboxing and onboarding experience, all the way down to the everyday, productive, ‘I am working’ experience.”

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to external partnerships. “Partner-powered” is how one of Baumann’s colleagues characterises the approach.

“I think, particularly in big organisations that can wield a lot of power in these arrangements, there is a tendency to take a ‘you are serving me’ mentality. But even though they sit outside of our organisation, we think about our partners as a relationship, and that means it's give and take,” says Baumann. “It should be really uncomfortable at times, because they should be pushing you to do more and to think differently.”

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between Humana’s departments, employees and customers - including a major project to update capabilities across the organisation’s 340-strong conference room footprint.

“We needed some help to rethink the technology in those spaces,” says Baumann.

“Our existing systems lacked the flexibility to support our new ways of working, and we wanted to be able to leverage the benefits of face-to-face interactions when in-person meetings were not possible or in hybrid environments. The Zoom team took the time to understand exactly who Humana is - the same way we are doing with our employees - and then applied their subject matter expertise in a way that's relevant.”

HUMANA

“ THESE AREN'T JUST TECHNOLOGY TOOLS FOR TECHNOLOGY'S SAKE. THEY ARE MECHANISMS

BY WHICH WE WILL ATTRACT TALENT AND RETAIN TALENT, AND WE WILL HAVE BETTER RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR MEMBERS AND CUSTOMERS AS A RESULT” CALLIE BAUMANN

VICE PRESIDENT OF EMPLOYEE TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE, HUMANA

Beyond onboarding contemporary technology for new ways of working, the team is seeking to shape and influence “not just the digital workplace vision, but our digital workplace experience vision,” Baumann says, taking a view of the holistic experience ecosystem versus a time when Humana was a more fragmented, technology-focused operation.

“Engineering was in one silo, product management in another, and HR was elsewhere,” Baumann says. "The team’s work, with support from Gartner, helped us understand that there is a more holistic and comprehensive way to approach the digital workplace at Humana. We now have a

language and a taxonomy to talk about these things. More importantly, perhaps, we now have a way to measure and communicate the value of what we do, beyond just the technology side of things, and therefore a position at the management table in terms of shaping where we go as an organisation, and how we go about getting there.”

To get there, Baumann will be leveraging all the opportunities of a workforce that is in the process of re-imagining what true hybrid work, built on the principle of experience equality means, now that the peak of the pandemic is beginning to subside.

“As our employees go back into the office, we will be flooded with data again about what works and what doesn't work,” she says. “It takes a tremendous amount of commitment from the organisation to continually reevaluate and rethink. It’s a commitment to data-driven innovation and a willingness to test and learn, stemming technologymagazine.com

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from the belief that these aren't just technology tools for technology's sake.

They are mechanisms by which we will attract and retain talent; we will have better relationships with our members and the customers that we serve, because it's easier, frankly, for our employees to do their job every day.”

Baumann’s team will be moving beyond leveraging data as a means to educate employees on processes, or for procurement to reevaluate redundant technology, and instead look at the shape of people’s networks: who they communicate with, how they work together, and what their relationships actually say about how their roles intersect within the enterprise. After all, Humana’s strategy of delivering human care via an integrated, value based health ecosystem requires a company, and the people inside it, to be integrated.

“We might strategise for something to happen, but we need to see if it’s happening in reality,” Baumann says. “Are we actually seeing someone from the actuary team connecting with someone on the clinical care team, for example? Using that data, we can start conversations with leaders across the enterprise around fostering that connection and collaboration. We've been talking a lot about these principles of providing autonomy, choice and flexibility at work, and now we actually have the data to see if we're doing that. It also tells us how our technology helps us, as a company, to live up to the values and commitments that we're making for our associates.”

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important to “tie action to intent in words and commitments that enhance their experience”, Baumann says.

With the acquisition of Kindred at Home, Humana is entering a period of rapid growth and change. Though the scale will bring its own set of challenges, it will also bring “myriad opportunities to improve the digital workplace experience and forge a brighter

HUMANA

and healthier future for every Humana stakeholder,” Baumann says. “The next horizon for the organisation is to really tightly and concretely understand the interplay between these digital workplace experiences, and how that connects to empower the customer experience,” she says. “Very soon, we will be at a place where we understand how the work that this team does powers a

different relationship with the customers, from how we show up in sales interactions on Medicare, to how we show up on the phone when our members have questions, or in clinical settings when we're coordinating care.

That’s a very exciting future.”

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YOUR ONE-STOP INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE PARTNER FOR LATAM AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: SAM STEERS

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PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

EDGEUNO

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Mehmet Akcin, CEO of EdgeUno, tells us how the company is providing solutions to problems in the data centre industry and its focus on edge and cloud computing

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espite only being three years old, the foundations of EdgeUno go back to 1993 when it was incorporated by Colombian firm Red One. Described by CEO Mehmet Akcin as a unique startup, the company has a US base in Miami, Florida, and LATAM Headquarters in Bogota, Colombia and Uberlandia, Brazil. EdgeUno also has a large presence in the region, which, in addition to the countries listed above consists of Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, and Puerto Rico.

Akcin says that what makes EdgeUno special is that it does not provide services but rather solves problems with them. “We provide solutions to issues with connectivity and colocation fast. We provide remote hands support where needed. If somebody’s equipment is broken, we help them to fix it in a timely manner, and we will provide them with equipment and the full solution to their needs,” explains Akcin.

EdgeUno also offers Cloud services to both existing customers in the LATAM region or customers looking to enter it. The customers use EdgeUno’s Cloud services to lower the latency of connectivity with their users. “Any company looking to establish a quick presence in Latin America can come to us and enable our Cloud solution in a matter of seconds,” Akcin said.

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Mehmet Akcin, CEO and Founder, Example of EdgeUno an image caption technologymagazine.com

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EdgeUno is a LATAM-based Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) rapidly growing company that focuses on connectivity and edge computing.

It operates in the LATAM region, providing its services for companies in countries such as Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and Cairo.

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EDGEUNO

The role of digital transformation is becoming ever more important in the data centre industry. In a recent study on the benefits of digital transformation

by FinancesOnline, 40% of executives surveyed believed the most important of these was improvement of operational efficiency, whilst 36% said it allowed a faster time to market.

To support digital transformation in the LATAM region, EdgeUno has a professional services division that acquires companies with this as their focus - with two out of every three acquisitions focused on providing digital transformation services to internet service providers in the LATAM region. Currently, EdgeUno has around 50 large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the region - including 5G providers and subsea cable operators - and, according to Akcin, helps them to build, monitor, run, and revolutionise their networks. EdgeUno also supports them in becoming more costeffective and makes suggestions as to how they can grow and enter different markets.

“There are a lot of data centres in Colombia, but what is missing is a connection hub where the centres and ISPs can come together and meet” MEHMET AKCIN

CEO AND FOUNDER, EDGEUNO

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Focusing on edge computing rather than building massive-scale data centres EdgeUno operates its own data centre facility in Colombia, but its focus is on edge computing. The reason for this, Akcin explains, is that EdgeUno is not looking to compete with multi-billiondollar companies to build massive-scale data centres: “This is not the problem.

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Colombia, but what is missing is a connection hub where the centres and ISPs can come together and meet.”

EdgeUno currently provides the connection hub solution in Bogota.

It is also looking at creating an exchange point in Cairo, Egypt. As the market there opens up, Akcin says the company’s plan for the city is to form small partnerships with telecom agents. “I wouldn’t really say we

MEHMET AKCIN TITLE: FOUNDER AND CEO INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES,

have our own data centre there, but we will go to Cairo with our modular data centre solutions and just focus on connectivity.”

The plan also involves taking these modular data centre solutions and targeting the connectivity points where networks interconnect. This is because in countries like Colombia, Peru, and Chile, the interconnection points are occasionally historical buildings around 80 to 90 years old.

EXECUTIVE BIO

INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE (IAAS) A former Microsoft and Yahoo employee, Mehmet Akcin is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of EdgeUno, an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) rapidly growing company providing turnkey solutions for the LATAM region. The company also provides a wide range of services focused on Emerging Markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, Egypt, Russia and more. He is an engineer and owns several patents focusing on content delivery and internet acceleration and performance.

With over 20 years of experience, Mehmet is highly regarded as a bona fide veteran in the telecommunications industry, and his impressive professional pedigree speaks for itself.

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“ If a company comes to us and says it would like one terabyte of capacity in the LATAM region, EdgeUno is probably the only company that can deliver this in less than a week” MEHMET AKCIN

CEO AND FOUNDER, EDGEUNO

“In the case of Mexico, the ISPs are not all interconnected with each other. There are not enough networks, so we are working out a solution to these issues.” To rectify this issue, Akcin says that the company is going to buy space in a data centre and build its own rack solutions with a focus just on edge computing.

EdgeUno is a “people-first” company that takes care of its customers and staff.

Talking about the workplace culture, Akcin said: “We have people who have had to go the extra mile during COVID - working late nights and on the weekends. We’ve even had some people who couldn’t work due to the pandemic, and they had to cover each other.

“Building that culture is tough and you need to really care about your people to do so.” When looking to attract talent, EdgeUno looks to its engineering background for inspiration. “We are an engineering-focused company with a 70 to 80% focus on the industry. We are hiring people every day, and whilst that percentage changes regularly around three-quarters of our company will be predominantly centred around engineers.

Another way in which the company hires staff is through having dedicated programmes within the education sector.

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$1.82bn

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

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

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$1.82bn

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

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“We provide solutions to issues with connectivity and colocation fast. We provide remote hands support where needed. If somebody’s equipment is broken, we help them to fix it in a timely manner, and we will provide them with equipment and the full solution to their needs” MEHMET AKCIN

CEO AND FOUNDER, EDGEUNO

“We have great programmes which we are establishing with schools in Brazil and Colombia and we attract talent at a young age and give opportunities to move internally within our company.”

“So, for example, we hire somebody and after working for us for a year and a half they are opening their first data centre.

Even though they may not be the most experienced person, we bring them in and offer them training and the opportunity to work on big projects, and then we help them develop their career. I think this is what helps us retain good talent,” Akcin said.

Akcin says competing with companies like Google and Microsoft on hiring staff is difficult. “It’s a challenging thing because people come into these companies, and they want to hire you. They have a great brand that’s hard to compete with but also, they offer three or four times the salary.

Of course, it’s hard to match their salary offers, but in general, I think that hiring really talented people and building a group of young and hungry people is the way to grow your business.”

The ‘sweet spot’ in EdgeUno’s company strategy In addition to growing its operations, Akcin says that the ‘sweet spot’ of its company strategy is its ability to deliver its services to smaller companies quickly.

“If a company comes to us and says it would like one terabyte of capacity in the LATAM region, EdgeUno is probably the only company that can deliver it in less than a week, because we have this kind of capacity ready to build,” Akcin says.

As part of its strategy, EdgeUno also focuses on completing several company acquisitions as a way of expanding its customer base. In 2022, Akcin says that it is looking to acquire around six or seven additional companies with a focus on different areas such as cloud professional services and security.

Furthering its mission to solve problems, the company is looking to create a machine that can design networks based on its customers’ needs, something which relies heavily on partnerships and acquisitions.

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engineers, because when EdgeUno acquires companies, it hires very senior people. “These senior people know other veterans in the industry, and they are attracted to the idea of working with us,” Akcin said.

One such partnership is with Seaborn Networks with whom EdgeUno works very closely. Seaborn is a submarine networks company that addresses global communications needs across the Americas delivering transport, Ethernet private line and IP services. “We use their internet backbone infrastructure very heavily - we rely on it,” says Akcin. EdgeUno’s other partners include Equinix, Juniper, and Dell working on both the equipment side and server side of their operations.

Discussing the partnerships in more detail, Akcin said: “EdgeUno is a very transparent company. We tell our partners our intentions clearly. We work with longterm partnership opportunities - we don’t just look for the one day or twelvemonth contract and we want to focus on win-win situations. Sometimes we might be buying something from a customer, but it might turn out to be that we can be their customer too. So, we like to be dynamic.”

Additional company acquisitions and new edge data centres are on the cards of the future Akcin outlined what we can expect to see from EdgeUno in the near future. Although he didn’t want to name them specifically, he said that EdgeUno is going to be working with “some really big names” in the industry as their LATAM representative.

Akcin also mentioned the company may be venturing into the Fintech industry with investments as well as providing support for startups. “These startups don’t technologymagazine.com

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“EdgeUno is a very transparent company.

We will go and tell our partners our intentions clearly. We work with longterm partnership opportunities - we don’t just look for the one day or twelvemonth contract and we want to focus on win-win situations” MEHMET AKCIN

CEO AND FOUNDER, EDGEUNO

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have to be technical. They can be health or education. We love education specifically, and anything to do with it is going to be a priority for us,” commented Akcin, who added that investing in Fintech will allow them to diversify and grow their portfolio.

Talking of investments, EdgeUno is also in the process of trying to finalise a funding round of its own, which Akcin says should be closed in less than twelve to eighteen months’ time. In addition, there will be three or four new edge data centres focused on connectivity. According to Ackcin, these will be started and finished in a relatively short

period of time due to the fact they will be prefabricated. “It’s just a matter of putting them on a ship and bringing them to Colombia or Chile or Peru.”

Additional company purchases are also on the cards for the future. Commenting on these, Akcin said: “You can definitely expect to see EdgeUno acquire more companies. We are looking at three or four different types of businesses, and I believe that you will also see EdgeUno establishing new partnerships, too.”

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AUTONOMOUS DRIVING SOLUTIONS FOR THE FUTURE

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WRITTEN BY: TILLY KENYON

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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As the progression of self-driving cars continues, DXC Technology and Luxoft are providing autonomous driving solutions

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f we believed cartoons and sci-fi films from back yonder, 2022 would be a world rife with automated flying cars, beyondcomprehension tech capabilities, and a fully-digitised world replete with true AI and AI robotics – take The Jetsons, for example, a kooky cartoon comedy from 1962 that imagined life in the future.

While this imagined world is still a fair way off in the future, many companies around the world are researching, integrating and assessing digital technology’s role in autonomous processes, such as driving, in order to realise this technologicallyastounding predicted world of the future.

Dr. Hans Beck, autonomous driving advisor and Coordinator of Data Science and AI at DXC EMEA, is particularly interested in the ways AI can revolutionise and propel the development of self-driving cars and autonomous driving solutions.

This is especially true in the wake of the global pandemic, which saw a quick turnaround of innovation to speed up machine learning and AI processes across everyday applications. For many businesses, this period turned into – or spurred on – a complete digital transformation. technologymagazine.com

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As digital transformation continues to drive change in the automotive industry, Beck added: “I think the industry realises how AI changes everything. Car companies have shifted from assembling parts for their suppliers to become software development companies themselves.

One of the biggest changes is with the major manufacturers transforming to focus more on software-driven development and processes. Not everything is around the vehicle anymore. It's more around the software which is in the vehicle. So that needs big changes in the thinking and approach of car markers. It requires a radical shift in how they develop and organise themselves.”

Innovating across vital areas of automotive technology Autonomous driving (AD) refers to selfdriving vehicles or transport systems that move without the intervention of a human

“ Not everything is around the vehicle anymore. It's more around the software which is in the vehicle” KARSTEN HOFFMEISTER

HEAD OF AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, LUXOFT

driver. AD has the power to transfor the sector and prompt major shifts within the technology stack and the customer experience inside the vehicle.

It’s one of the top discussions regarding future mobility.

Experts have defined five different levels in the evolution of autonomous driving. Each level describes the extent to which a car takes over tasks and responsibilities from its driver, and how the car and driver interact:

Autonomous driving solutions for the future

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EXECUTIVE BIO KARSTEN HOFFMEISTER TITLE: HEAD OF AUTONOMOUS DRIVING LOCATION: GERMANY Karsten Hoffmeister is Luxoft’s newly appointed head of Autonomous Driving in its Automotive Sector, he was previously the chief technologist

for the same area of the Luxoft business and has worked with key customers on their transformation to develop software defined vehicles. He has over 20 years' experience in the automotive and software industries, this includes more than 14 years in technical management positions at worldclass companies.

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Level 0 - No Automation – where the driver controls the car without any support from a driver assistance system Level 1 - Driver Assistance – the vehicle has at least one driver support system such as steering assistance or braking and acceleration assistance Level 2 - Partial Driving Automation – this applies to vehicles with advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) that can take over steering, acceleration and braking in specific scenarios Level 3 - Conditional Driving Automation – the jump from Level 2 to Level 3 is significant from a technological perspective. Level 3 vehicles have ‘environmental detection’ capabilities and can make informed decisions for themselves, such as accelerating past a slowmoving vehicle April 2022

DXC TECHNOLOGY

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Level 4 - High Driving Automation – this level does not require any human interaction in the vehicle’s operation because it is programmed to stop itself in the event of system failure, however, a human still has the option to manually override Level 5, Full Driving Automation – the final stage means a vehicle can drive itself everywhere in all conditions without any human interaction

Luxoft enables automakers to innovate across vital areas of advanced automotive and mobility technology. Combining the agility, energy and speed of a startup with the reach, positioning and manpower of an enterprise, it delivers highly complex solutions, at speed, in critical environments.

“ We are a unique company offering this end-to-end service” KARSTEN HOFFMEISTER

HEAD OF AUTONOMOUS DRIVING, LUXOFT

Head of Autonomous Driving at Luxoft, Karsten Hoffmeister, said: “Many global car makers are facing increased competition from the disruptors, newcomers and changes in the market. They’re redesigning their organisations and shifting strategies towards digital-first and software-first topics. They compete for automotive software talent. At Luxoft, we solve these

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DR. HANS BECK TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER LOCATION: GERMANY

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EXECUTIVE BIO

Dr. Hans Beck received his Ph.D. using Machine Learning, analyzing petabytes of CERN data. During his research career, he joined the management board of the third-largest scientific collaboration worldwide. At DXC Technology, Hans became CTO of DXC’s flagship autonomous driving program, analytics CTO for an automotive account. He is also responsible for several autonomous driving engagements and designed autonomous driving solutions. Hans enjoys analyzing data from autonomous vehicles and advising managers from automotive companies on analytics, AI, and Autonomous Driving.

DXC TECHNOLOGY

problems by helping OEMs accelerate into real software companies.”

A Fortune 500 global IT services leader, DXC Technology (DXC) delivers mission-critical IT services across the Enterprise Technology Stack to drive business impact.

With more than 130,000 employees in over 70 countries, DXC helps global companies run their systems and operations while modernising IT, optimising data architectures, and ensuring security and scalability across public, private and hybrid clouds.

Luxoft, a DXC Technology Company, is a digital strategy and software engineering firm providing bespoke technology solutions that drive business change for customers. Luxoft combines a unique blend of engineering and deep industry expertise, specialising in different areas, including automotive.

“DXC and Luxoft come from different, but complementary, backgrounds for autonomous driving.

DXC historically brings in more of the artificial intelligence development to the data centre. We combine this with Luxoft’s expertise for in-vehicle software development,” said Dr. Hans Beck, autonomous driving advisor and Coordinator of Data Science and AI at DXC EMEA.

Providing automotive manufacturers with autonomous driving solutions Luxoft Automotive offers a wide range of expertise, spanning across AD, connected mobility, digital cockpit, UX, testing and validation, and silicon and technology.

Its AD solutions give automotive manufacturers and their key suppliers the ability to focus their product development and business on the needs of their customers.

These solutions support the most critical development domains — data-driven development, in-vehicle embedded software, car virtualisation, and system design and validation.

The company creates, integrates, tests and checks in-car series software for multiple sensor ECUs and systems. The teams also design and deploy HPC software for fusion, perception, environment-model and ADAS/ AD driving functions, plus end-to-end network architecture and service-oriented middleware.

“We’re a unique company by offering this end-to-end service. You equip your vehicle with measurement equipment to collect data and then you ingest the data into a data centre, into the backend and into the cloud. Then you process the data and create something out of it: Algorithm-based driving functions for example, or AI-based perception, object detection, and things like that. It’s there that we have our strong in-vehicle knowledge within Luxoft – we work on the embedded part and help in implementing complex functions.

We also help test these functions, virtually and in the vehicle” commented Hoffmeister.

DXC’s Robotic Drive; data-driven development, virtualisation services and platform de-risk and accelerate the complete ADAS/AD development process technologymagazine.com

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to support Level 2+ through Level 5 autonomous functions. It leverages on-premises and cloud infrastructure, methodologies, tools and accelerators for a highly automated AD development process.

The importance of the cloud in autonomous driving Data and the cloud are key in the development of AD. An autonomous vehicle (AV) processes the data it receives from various sensors to make a driving decision and this needs to be stored somewhere.

With Luxoft’s connected mobility solutions, customers are able to establish hybrid cloud environments, extend existing assets, migrate applications and employ modern development methods.

The solutions’ data analytics capabilities make it possible for customers to collect, process and manage large amounts of vehicle data in real-time and help shape new services.

“The cloud is really critical and none of our autonomous driving engagements work without it. We have recently announced a strategic partnership with AWS and the cloud provides us with the flexibility, scalability and reliability that our customers need in all areas of autonomous driving,” said Beck.

One of the key benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity to replace infrastructure expenses with low variable costs that scale with your business. With cloud computing, users can access all of the features and files of the system without having to keep the bulk of that system on their own computers.

“DXC really has a strong partner network and we have partnerships with all hyperscalers.

Our collaboration with AWS, for example, already starts before any project is contracted, where we advise our clients on the best solutions for the autonomous driving project.

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driving team and it’s a pleasure to work with them. This not only happens in the design phase, but then also in the implementation phase of these autonomous driving projects, where we often have mixed DXC and AWS teams” added Beck.

Challenges facing DXC Technology and Luxoft in the next year Reflecting on the past 12 months, Beck explained that as a company, one of the biggest improvements was the growth of their customer base.

“We started our autonomous driving engagements around six years ago with our first significant autonomous driving programme. But since then, we’ve really grown. I think there's barely any car

DXC TECHNOLOGY

manufacturer or tier one supplier that we're not engaged with” he added.

The progression of self-driving cars has excited public imagination and inspired unprecedented collaboration between carmakers and tech innovators. Recent autonomous vehicle forecasts call for sales of more than 30 million autonomous vehicles in 2040, according to Deloitte.

Commenting on challenges facing the company within the coming months, Beck said: “I think about the continuation of this growth of people and skills needed for autonomous driving and AI; that's a big challenge because the whole autonomous driving market is exploding. We need to manage this growth together with our partners and our customers.”

The continuing evolution of safety technologies is setting the foundation for developing intelligent software-defined automated systems capable of navigating roads with little to no human intervention.

“On the tech side, one of the biggest challenges in disruptive change is fleet-based data-driven development. This will require a lot of changes in the architecture for, staying connected, but also in the development process itself. And of course, the major step is towards autonomous systems. The key challenge is to technically implement all those things. The second challenge is changing the organisations’ way of working,” Hoffmeister said.

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Innovating to advance children’s healthcare WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

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Alder Hey’s Claire Liddy and Iain Hennessey discuss the hospital’s unique culture and drive to become world-renowned healthcare innovators

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s one of Europe's busiest children’s healthcare facilities, Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust treats more than 300,000 children and young people each year. Offering 20 specialist services, the hospital is dedicated to children's health and trains over 900 medical students each year.

With an international reputation in a number of disciplines, Alder Hey is passionate about becoming a recognised leader in healthcare innovation. In 2016, the hospital transformed and its new building now includes state of the art digital infrastructure where clinical entrepreneurs and the dedicated commercial innovation team can actively engage with industry, academia and the local community.

Continuing on its path of innovation, Alder Hey is now looking to develop and execute its new 2030 innovation strategy named ‘Today’s child, tomorrow’s healthier adult’, as Claire Liddy, Managing Director of Innovation at Alder Hey explains: “Our strategy is all about how we're going to give children of today a better chance using innovation and technology to have a longer healthier life. Within the strategy, we have two big objectives. One is about tackling healthcare inequalities, which we know are linked to poverty and cause a lot of chronic conditions in childhood, leading to chronic conditions in adulthood.” technologymagazine.com

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“The second part of our strategy is how we're going to use technology to optimise the hospital. That's anything from how we can eliminate and reduce safety through augmenting clinical decision making or it could be automating and reducing admin burdens in the hospital,” she adds.

Alder Hey’s digital platform, Alder Hey Anywhere, will allow the organisation to revolutionise the way it delivers healthcare. “The main thrust behind the new digital platform is around prevention, empowering children, young people, their families and their carers to stay well at home. So the vision is if we have a platform that is able to universally link with any wearable, implantable, or any other device, anything that the children and young people can wear at home, we are able then to communicate and transmit data in real-time to our platform,” says Liddy.

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With the data extracted from the wearables, Alder Hey will be able to create digital biomarkers as well as utilise the data to create artificial intelligence (AI) models to augment clinical decision making. “[These AI models can] individualise and predict which children, for example, are going to have lung disease and we can almost identify these children perinatally.

So it will allow us to deliver healthcare in a more proactive way that is more focused on preventative intervention to give children and young people better life chances,” Liddy continues.

On top of his work as a surgeon, Iain Hennessey is also the Co-Founder and Clinical Director of Innovation at Alder Hey. Impassioned by the power of AI for the trust, Hennesey outlines more use-cases for the technology: “With RPA, you can get enormous benefits and optimisation as AI automates low-level decision making.

CLAIRE LIDDY TITLE: M ANAGING DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Claire has over 20 years of healthcare expertise and is a proven healthcare innovation professional. Her passion is to solve unmet healthcare needs through the harnessing of cutting-edge technologies.

Her current role is as an Executive and Managing Director of Innovation at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital and Commercial Director for non-NHS business activity. At Alder Hey, Claire heads up the award-winning Innovation Centre, which includes a large team of over 30 healthcare open innovation experts. Claire is an experienced open innovation expert with a track record of innovation pipeline curation, solutions development, deal structuring and commercialization. Her innovation dream is to bring the technology power of industry, academia, and health together to Advance Global Child Health.

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“Diveplane has demonstrated the ability to produce synthetic data that can be quantifiably measured for accuracy and privacy ensuring patient information and confidentiality are still secure and not accessible for third parties” Claire Liddy – MD Alder Hey Innovation

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Also, when people lay out the data to look at healthcare inequalities and where these are happening, you can just see the power of it. It's great to watch in the clinician's eye, just everything lights up and then they suddenly realise that's where the problem is, that's where we fix it. That's the power of visualisation of data and having data and analysing data is that it can help you take that next step.”

“ The main thrust behind the new digital platform is around prevention, empowering children, young people, their families and their carers to stay well at home”

Innovation weaving throughout Alder Hey Although the facility for the Innovation Centre is coming up to its sixth birthday, Hennesey explained that it has been running within the hospital itself since 2014, meaning that there's a strong culture of innovation throughout the trust.

“We're so lucky here to have this culture, this permission and support from above. You need to have the C-suite onboard driving this. We get better by having new ideas and pushing things forward. I love the quote that ‘all good ideas start out being ridiculous’ and it's true. In so many hospitals, not just in NHS, this is worldwide, the healthcare mindset is to just keep on doing what you're doing, whereas actually, innovation needs to be pushed for,” he explains.

CLAIRE LIDDY

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION, ALDER HEY

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IAIN HENNESSEY TITLE: CO-FOUNDER AND CLINICAL DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM I am a consultant paediatric and neonatal surgeon at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in the United Kingdom. In addition to my clinical practice, I am the Clinical Director of Innovation. A role that involves the co-creation and exploitation of medical technology in partnership with academia, industry and clinicians.

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Echoing this, Liddy outlined how innovation is embedded into every aspect of the hospital: “Having that dedicated team with expert resources has enabled us at Alder Hey to create almost like a system of innovation. So rather than innovation being a nice thing to have, innovation now is embedded as a core function and service in everything we do at Alder Hey. It's part of operational delivery.

It's part of the strategy. Anybody at Alder Hey is given permission to innovate. I think having the innovation centre has been the secret to that success.”

One of the centres earliest success stories was created using AI technology where Alder Hey co-developed the first deployed hospital chatbot in the world.

Originally named Ollie, now Artie, the chatbot is embedded within Alder Hey’s children digital play environment.

“We also invented a technology called Alder Play. When the hospital was opened the place was not designed to be like a hospital. It's designed to take the fear away from children when they arrive. In doing that, the children told us they wanted digital friends. We developed the Alder Play app, which is there for children to use, to distract, to educate and to reward. The app is still live and has gone from strength to strength,” explains Liddy.

With a dedicated innovation team driving forward the hospital for the past eight years, Hennesey notes there are too many examples of innovation to note, but does add: “It is nice to look at the things which went from crazy sketches on board to the final product that is being deployed now. With the neonatal virtual visiting, I've still got the picture of the first sketch.

It went from this little drawing and now you've got the unit set up with it.”

Partnering with the correct organisations to drive success What has been key for the Innovation Centre and its development is the support from external partners. Having previously worked within the Finance team at Alder Hey, this was a new challenge for Liddy to overcome.

“Partnerships just didn't cross my desk as something that was really critical. We saw industry as suppliers, some people who sold us stuff. Innovation's totally different. The success of healthcare innovation is about having the right partners who have the brightest and the best technology and the

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right values that fit strategically with what we're trying to achieve here at Alder Hey,” she explains.

Now, Microsoft acts as an important tool for Alder Hey as it looks to rationalise the huge data sets it now has access to. Liddy comments: “From a values point of view, they share a lot of our values around tech for good, AI for good and there was a real match there. We have always had a good partnership with Microsoft. For the two things that we wanted to do — one was the digital platform, and two was, moving forward with AI — they became the natural partners and we have been able to unlock a more innovative partnership model with Microsoft. We co-invent, which is very different to them supplying us technology.

That's going really, really well and we've got some exciting stuff coming around our Alder Hey Anywhere platform product.”

Diveplane also works as another key strategic partner with its unique synthetic data technology: “With our ambitions around our big data, AI and using data across organisational boundaries as well to really give children and young people that individualised intervention, we knew it might be really interesting to have a synthetic data tool. One of the biggest challenges in the data space is around GDPR and other datasharing regulations. The synthetic data tool gives us the opportunity to use digital twin technology to innovate but without the risk of privacy issues. So we partnered up with Diveplane,” outlines Liddy.

Taking lessons from the pandemic to harness new innovations Comprised of four expert labs, the Innovation Centre has the infrastructure in place needed for prototyping new ideas, harnessing AI technology, exploring 362

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immersive technologies with its augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) capabilities and user experience (UX).

The prototype lab has been imperative for the innovation team's more recent projects, despite not yet being live across the globe.

“We have been able to design and develop a transparent mask for PPE. There's a big problem with mask wear and COVID-19, around communication and being able to provide equal communication. So we were able to prototype the transparent mask, which has now been commercialised.

Our hope is to get that mask out there as a new global product,” says Liddy.

During the pandemic itself, the innovation team were able to pivot to solve COVID-19 related problems.

“I think having the innovation centre almost gave our profile a massive boost because everybody suddenly realised they could look to innovation to help solve problems. So it really helped with our credibility in the hospital and we did a fantastic job to support the hospital.

We also didn't

“I suppose it's an easy thing to be proud of, this hospital. It's just got everything, it's got a real soul to it, but also it's got the expertise of staff and the equipment to give parents confidence in their child’s care” IAIN HENNESSEY

CO-FOUNDER AND CLINICAL DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION, ALDER HEY

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“ On a day to day basis I see children, young people getting the benefit of our innovations and that's what makes me proud and passionate to be part of such an amazing thing” CLAIRE LIDDY

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF INNOVATION, ALDER HEY

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NEW HOSPITAL Alder Hey’s new hospital features 270 beds, including 48 critical care beds for patients in ICU, HDU and Burns, together with 16 digitally-enhanced operating theatres. The majority of the children and their families have their own room and en-suite facilities and park views outside their bedroom window; while each ward has its own kitchen providing patients with freshly cooked food to order.

turn innovation off. As soon as we'd done the pivot and helped with the immediate emergencies, we cracked on with our innovation strategy, we continued to write it. We continued to work with our partners, we kept the programme going, we didn't stop innovation. That was critical because now it feels like we're ahead of the curve because we didn't stop,” Liddy explains.

Hennessey adds: “We did so much stuff and it was great because everything just aligned. It was amazing for proving that this methodology and this way of finding problems, iterating solutions to them and then figuring out how to generate value for them is a good way of doing things. I personally love the fact that when people in the hospital had a problem, they would come downstairs to us. From a problemsolving point of view, it was a great challenge.”

Looking ahead as the hospital recovers from the pandemic, Hennesey shared his excitement for what may be next: “The fun bit is that you don't know what the future holds. Every time I try and predict the future, sometimes you get it right, a lot of the time you get it wrong. So it's that potential for what might come that you don't know, but you've got to be prepared to seize it when it arrives. That for me is a key to innovation because our human bodies aren't getting any better, we're not going to evolve in the next 1,500 years. So the only way you're going get better doctors and nurses and speechlanguage therapists is actually augmenting them with better training, with better technology, with better science. This is how we get better.”

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DATAQUBE’S MISSION: SCALABLE, FLEXIBLE AND SUSTAINABLE PODS

AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: ILKHAN OZSEVIM PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN 366

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DATAQUBE

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DataQube creates scalable, flexible and sustainable 5G data centre pod architecture that is fully customisable while solving the DC storage problem

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avid Keegan is a Co-Founder and CEO of DataQube, an innovative, scalable and firstof-its-kind 5G-active data centre technology that has already secured a US$29.4mn investment from French investment management company RGREEN INVEST. “I've been involved in the data centre market for more than 30 years,” says DataQube’s David Keegan. “The data centre market was actually around thirty years ago, they just had different titles, ‘comms rooms’ etc.,” he says, underlining both the integral nature of data centres as a technology, and the speed at which they are increasingly demanding attention in the hyper-modern business world.

Originally training as an electrician through an apprenticeship, David Keegan went on to study a degree in engineering, until eventually stepping into the data centre market where he now is having an unmistakable impact.

“I’ve now been involved in some great projects across the globe, have worked in most countries where there are data centres, and have been involved in the design and construction of about forty million square feet globally, in projects worth US$20bn.”

Small beginnings. Great changes.

“What I've seen is certainly the rapid change in technology,” he says. “About four years

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David Keegan, DataQubes Visionary DC Architect technologymagazine.com

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“ T HE UNIQUENESS OF DATAQUBE IS THAT IT'S NOT MODULAR, IT'S NOT CONTAINERISED. IT'S A SCALABLE, PODULAR UNIT, WHICH ALLOWS US TO BUILD IN ALMOST ANY SHAPE YOU CAN THINK OF” DAVID KEEGAN

DATAQUBES VISIONARY DC ARCHITECT, DATAQUBE

ago, I decided to look at whether there was something else that's going to support technology growth outside the traditional data centre models. So DataQube then became a vision.”

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as a model, bears the seeds of some of the greatest and most innovative ideas ever devised.

Could it be so for David Keegan’s DataQube?

Setting Standards in Data Centre Technologies “The uniqueness of DataQube is that it's not modular, it's not containerised. It's a scalable, podular unit, which allows us to build on a pod-by-pod basis that can be uniquely built in almost any shape you can think of.”

DAVID KEEGAN TITLE: D ATAQUBES VISIONARY DC ARCHITECT INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE LOCATION: UK

One of the problems in the data centre industry (one for which solutions are constantly being developed) is the basic issue of physical storage.

Data centres can potentially be very large, rapidly growing in-line with demand and generating major spatial and practical problems of their own.

To deal with these problems, companies tend to focus on moving the physical data centres themselves, sometimes to very remote and impractical environments.

Uniquely, DataQube offers a solution to

EXECUTIVE BIO

David is a dynamic and highly skilled senior C-Suite executive with a demonstrable record of delivering data centres and technology solutions, having designed, built, and managed more than 40m sq. ft. ($20bn) of data centre white technical space globally. These projects range from brownfield traditional builds, existing building retrofits, modular build, and edge facilities with supporting technology solutions. Well rounded, operationally strong, financially aware, commercially astute, with excellent influencing and communication skills.

David has the gravitas and reputation to act as a figurehead for the business, whilst providing clients, stakeholders, investors and business partners with the appropriate reference points and confidence.

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“ D ATAQUBE CONSUMES UP TO 40% LESS POWER AND EMITS UP TO 60% LESS CO2 THAN REGULAR AND MORE TRADITIONAL DATA CENTRES” DAVID KEEGAN

DATAQUBES VISIONARY DC ARCHITECT, DATAQUBE

this problem by adapting the data centres themselves to the environments in which they are housed. A sort of evolution by technological selection. Keegan says ‘our model can sit at the side of a road, in petrol stations, in forecourts etc. We can also build it flatpack, we can miniaturise it, we can monoblock it, which means that we can even deploy it inside high-rise buildings by using pedestrian lifts to get access’.

To demonstrate just how customisable DataQube’s solutions are, Keegan has the perfect analogy: “So, if you imagine every letter of the alphabet in a capital format, we can build DataQube to fit all those configurations.”

Responsive and Responsible Data Centres The first 5G (ready and active) edge technology of its kind, DataQube centres operate with a lead time of <6 months. No other edge data centre solution on the market offers the same levels of energy efficiency, IT density or scalability, making DataQube unrivalled in terms of both cost and speed to market.

Not stopping there, DataQube also crafts its data centres in light of the United Nation CSRs (Corporate Social Responsibilities) and has developed a green technology– helping it to stand out from its rivals. “We can also 372

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take it apart from manufacturing in various materials, stainless steel, mild steel, timber, adding yet another level of attractiveness for its stakeholders.”

Data centres are known to be increasingly green, especially considering the steady industry-wide transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Yet DataQube has gone a step further than even this standard precedent, developing a technology that consumes up to 50% less power and emits up to 50% less CO2 than regular, more traditional data centres.

Another stride beyond the competition, and one which sets DataQube apart as a leader in the field.

Life On The Edge and The Last Mile: Defining and Redefining Information Technologies Edge technologies seek to solve problems related to bandwidth (data flow) by bringing those storing relevant data closer to users.

Facial recognition technology would be one such example of Edge Tech. If, for example, you use facial recognition tech to unlock

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your phone, each and every time you do this, the information has to be relayed to a cloud server. The delay caused by this would render the technology both inefficient and impractical to use, and so it makes sense to house the data centre on the phone itself.

Unsurprisingly, data centres such as DataQube are primarily concerned with data, its storage and its transfer. To illuminate the not-so-obvious, though, data transfer is not as simple as going from A to B in a linear progression, like a vehicle traversing the highways.

Instead, the situation is better visualised as a superhighway - with millions of vehicles moving in different directions, at different speeds - which then narrows into streets, lanes and avenues near the beginnings and ends of their journeys, culminating in a sort of informational congestion.

This deceleration of data as it nears its destination has come to be known as the ‘Last Mile’ problem.

But is it really a problem? Not according to David Keegan. “My view is that the edge is not yet defined,” he says. “We don’t know how it's going to be used. It's really in its infancy.”

In the same way that Keegan recognises that Data Centres have been around for at least 30 years, albeit in a different form, he also sees edge technology as still evolving, being constantly revised and redefined.

He says: “I think we're going to have a different interconnected world. I think we're going to have the optical world (the optical fibre networks), which will continue to grow.

And, inside that global ring of interconnect, we're going to then have satellite technology - 5G, 6G, 8G and Microwave - and you're going to be getting clusters of connectivity.”

Keegan’s position on so-called ‘edgetechnology’ reflects his approach to data centres as a model, which is that not only technologymagazine.com

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is technology constantly being redefined through development, but also that this development then solves seemingly indissoluble problems in turn.

His position is one of a creative openness, a sort of growth-mindset geared towards technology and marked by a reflexivity that envisions that such a stringent definition may in fact lead to a type of stasis in development and

“ A BOUT FOUR YEARS AGO, I DECIDED TO LOOK AT WHETHER THERE WAS SOMETHING ELSE THAT'S GOING TO SUPPORT TECHNOLOGY GROWTH OUTSIDE THE TRADITIONAL DATA CENTRE MODELS. SO DATAQUBE THEN BECAME A VISION” DAVID KEEGAN

DATAQUBES VISIONARY DC ARCHITECT, DATAQUBE

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growth. This can be seen in his approach to not just edge technology and the so-called last mile problem, but towards connectivity technology in general. While many companies and leaders tend to see technological growth as a singular and homogenous transformative process, David Keegan recognises that it shifts on a global scale in intermittent stages, and at varying degrees, around the world.

“We see the systems that will come online will create varying levels of interconnection.

And that's going to be down to thousands of dumb - as well as intelligent - solution

devices that actually talk to each other, and they can be 100W or 500W, but they holds data both on and off premises, all locally interconnected. And certainly looking at 5G and the satellite deployments that are now happening, all these things are really not as yet properly defined.”

Orienting himself to the future, David Keegan says: “The next 12 to 18 months look really exciting. As you know we received our investment from RGREEN INVEST in the last year and are very pleased to be partnering with them – the relationship is really strong.

“We are already deploying two edge data centres in Ireland to create one of the city’s first smart solutions using DataQube, and we're partnering in a mode that allows us scale and growth. We've sold into Australia, and we are working with partners in the US to build an edge data centre platform using DataQube. We're also heavily going into the Asia market, where we've got a lot of inbound traction, and certainly also in the Middle East.”

Considering the potential growth of DataQube in the near future, David Keegan says: “We anticipate having somewhere between 50 and 80 edge data centres contracted and in production ready to be deployed in the next year or two.”

As big data ramps up on a global scale, data centres are becoming evermore integral to almost every industry in one form or another, and client demand grows with it, meaning that only the most innovative data centre providers will thrive in such an environment.

David Keegan says: “Part of our evolution is we're now extensively designing further product ranges to support client requirements.”

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