Technology Magazine August 2022

August 2022 | technologymagazine.com

AI: How can ensure trustworthy AI? Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund: Data-driven retail

Cloud Computing Platforms

WHAT MAKES A GREAT Data-driven agility WORKING helping Wizz Air CULTURE?

to soar above rivals

In the era of The Great Resignation, what does it take to build a culture that retains staff?

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12 - 13 OCT 2022 STREAMED & IN PERSON QEII CENTRE, LONDON

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Join us at PROCUREMENT & SUPPLYCHAIN LIVE LONDON Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at PROCUREMENT & SUPPLYCHAIN LIVE LONDON 2022.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group PROCUREMENT & SUPPLYCHAIN LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 12th-13th October is broadcast live to the world and incorporates two zone areas of SupplyChain LIVE plus Procurement LIVE in to one event.

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The Technology Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ALEX TUCK EDITOR

CATHERINE GRAY CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA

MARIA GONZALEZ

CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON JORDAN WOOD DANILO CARDOSO CALLUM HOOD CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER

MATT JOHNSON

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

MARKETING DIRECTOR

MARTA EUGENIO ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD DREW HARDMAN JINGXI WANG JOSEPH HANNA

JASON ANDIKA-SMITH

PROJECT DIRECTORS

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO RYAN HALL

MARKETING MANAGER

DAISY SLATER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

AI is transformative, but the people must have their say

“How do stakeholders overcome preconceptions over AI?”

W

e are still “scratching the surface” when it comes to AI and its true potential, according to Errol Gardner at EY. While the current use of AI is mainly confined to automating manual processes and speeding up the analysis of large data sets to help decision making, Gardner argues that AI is about augmenting and improving human intelligence to enable better choices.

“AI will be able to do this by taking a more sophisticated approach to analysis and problem solving through spotting patterns/ solutions that augment those of its human creators. The result will be a whole new way of looking at the world”.

We’ll be asking what frameworks businesses need to do to fully embrace AI and asking: how do stakeholders overcome preconceptions over AI?

ALEX TUCK

alex.tuck@bizclikmedia.com TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

© 2022 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

technologymagazine.com

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 14 Big Picture 16 The Brief 18 Timeline: The history of augmented reality 20 Trailblazer: Matthias Goehler 24 Five Minutes With: Nelson Petracek

48

30

Migros-GenossenschaftsBund

A technology and data-driven retailer

Talent, Culture & Change What makes a great working culture?

58

Google

At Google, Supriya Iyer is asking the right questions

76

Colocation

Overcoming power constraints in data centres

106

Intelligent Workflows

How intelligent workflows change the oil & gas industry

116 Chubb

Driving digital insurance innovation

86

128

Data-driven agility helping Wizz Air to soar above rivals

How can we ensure trustworthy AI?

Wizz Air

Trustworthy AI

In Association with:

Meet who runs the world.

TOP 100

Women

in

TECHNOLOGY

NEW ISSUE OUT NOW Read now

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

136

Ooredoo Kuwait

Empowering women in tech in the Middle East

178

Tomei Consolidated Adapting to disruption with a digital makeover

152 Top 10

Cloud Computing Platforms

164

Edge Centres

The art of being like water

194

NNR Global Logistics Approach to a pragmatic digital transformation

210 Vitality

Using technology to transform health insurance

244 EvoBits

Turnkey IT Solutions in a powerful boutique model

228

All4Labels Global Packaging Group

World-class sustainable labelling and packaging solution provider

262

Sonesta International Hotels Corporation The importance of partners in effective security

276

Tech Mahindra

Facilitates the digital transformation journey

7 - 8 SEPT 2022

STREAMED & IN PERSON

BUSINESS DESIGN CENTRE, LONDON

SHAPING THE BUSINESS OF SUSTAINABILITY AND ESG 3,000+ Participants

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Join us at SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON 2022.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 7th-8th September is broadcast live to the world and incorporates three zone areas of Sustainability LIVE, B-Corp LIVE plus March8 LIVE in to one event.

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

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.

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.

See you on:

7 - 8 September 2022

Sponsor opportunities

BIG PICTURE Holographic President Across Europe

Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, addressed tech leaders and innovators at events in Stockholm, London, Amsterdam and Paris in mid-June from an undisclosed location in his war-torn country, courtesy of state-of-the-art hologram technology from Canadian company ARHT Media.

SOURCE: ICT ALGEMEENNIEUWS CHANNEL CONNECT

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August 2022

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THE BRIEF “I’m inspired by seekers – anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back” Supriya Iyer

Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations, Google  READ MORE

“Some of the services that you consume, some of the banking that you do, are all underpinned by services that we provide” Jinender Jain

Senior Vice President and Sales Head UK and Ireland, Tech Mahindra  READ MORE

“The pandemic kick-started a major shift to online retail customers and the demand for a seamless experience between online and offline operations” Martin Baschnagel

CTO/Group Chief Enterprise Architect, Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund  READ MORE

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August 2022

McLaren Key Stats Industry: Sports Department: Cross-Departmental Region: Global

30mn Trackside analytics support 30M race simulations

11.8bn Data points consolidated to optimize race performance

300 Telemetry sensors on each race car generate 100K data parameters

How Red Bull & Oracle are already winning with data Amr Elrawi, Director, Sports Marketing and Business Development, Oracle, joined TECH LIVE LONDON to discuss how data built success with Red Bull Racing.

Executive Q&A with Simon Wilson, CTO at Aruba UK Hewlett Packard's Aruba are a leader in Wi-Fi 6, switching, SD-Branch, and a visionary in Data Centre networking, as their UK&I CTO Simon Wilson reveals.

 META Meta has claimed a breakthrough in 'superpower' AI translation as it interprets 204 languages, twice as many as ever before attempted, at a higher quality than previously achieved.

The next layer of the programmable world is experiential According to Accenture, “Building on data collected by IoT and edge devices and processed at 5G speeds, digital twins are a core constituent of this layer.”

The Irish-American professional services company adds that: “These digital models of the physical world give businesses real-time insight into their environments and operations. The global digital twin market, valued at US$3.2bn in 2020, is expected to reach US$184.5bn by 2030,” while remarking that “another noteworthy component of the experiential layer is AR. Even in this early phase, the value of combining AR glasses and digital twins is clear: with them, any environment can be made digital or overlaid with a digital experience”.

In summary, they added: “The final layer of the programmable world is material.

On-demand and hyper-customised products are a reality. For instance, 3D printers can now print a much wider variety of objects.”

 NHS Drones are to be used to courier drugs in a bid to speed up the delivery of vital medicines, the NHS has announced.

W I N N E R S AUG22

 THERANOS Silicon Valley executive Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani has been found guilty of deceiving investors, falsely claiming that his company, Theranos, had a device that could detect hundreds of diseases with a few drops of blood.  KLARNA In 2021, the Swedish fintech was Europe’s most valuable private startup with a valuation of US$45.6bn. Now, just one year later, they could drop as low as US$6bn.

L O S E R S

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TIMELINE THE HISTORY OF AUGMENTED REALITY Thomas P Caudell of Boeing first coined the phrase ‘augmented reality’ in 1990.

1957

Sensorama Cinematographer Morton Heilig invented the ‘Sensorama’, which delivered visuals, sounds, vibrations and smells to the viewer. Though naturally not controlled by a computer at this time, it was the first example of an attempt at adding additional data to an experience.

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August 2022

According to interaction-design.org, the first conception of the term occurred in a novel

by Frank L Baum, written in 1901, in which a set of electronic glasses mapped data onto people; it was called a “character marker”.

1968

1992

Head mounted displays Ivan Sutherland the American computer scientist and early Internet influence, with his students Bob Sproull, Quintin Foster, Danny Cohen, and others, created the first headmounted display that rendered images for the viewer's changing pose, as sensed by The Sword of Damocles, thus making the first virtual reality system.

This was one of the earliest windows into a virtual world, but the technology made the invention impractical for mass use.

Virtual reality/Wearables Myron Krueger, an American computer artist, developed the first ‘virtual reality’ interface in the form of ‘Videoplace’. This artificial reality laboratory created an artificial reality that surrounded the users and responded to their movements and actions, without being encumbered by the use of goggles or gloves.

Then in 1980, Steve Mann, a computational photography researcher, gave the world wearable computing.

2000

1975 First Fully-Immersive Augmented Reality System Developed at USAF Armstrong’s Research Lab by Louis Rosenberg in 1992, Virtual Fixtures used two real physical robots, controlled by a full upper-body exoskeleton worn by the user.

3D graphics were too slow in the early 1990s to present a photorealistic and spatially-registered augmented reality, so it enabled the overlay of sensory information on a workspace to improve human productivity, instead.

First AR game Bruce Thomas developed an outdoor mobile AR game called ARQuake in 2000.

ARQuake is an Augmented Reality (AR) version of the incredibly popular ‘Quake’ game. Using a head mounted display to overlay computer-generated information onto the real world, additional tech used included a mobile computer, head tracker, and GPS system to provide inputs to control the game.

Using ARQuake, you can walk around in the real world and play Quake against virtual monsters.

technologymagazine.com

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TRAILBLAZER

Matthias Goehler As CTO EMEA at Zendesk, Matthias Goehler’s job is to think about what comes next through innovation. He works closely with customers all over the region to better understand the challenges they’re facing and how Zendesk can help solve them.

What is the key to success in your role?

Connecting and listening to our customers is critical to continue improving our platform and build more innovative, customisable solutions that are going to help with evolving the role of their customer experience. As part of that, I am also engaged in driving the technology strategy for Zendesk.

How is Zendesk leading the way?

One of Zendesk’s strengths is that it is an easy to use and open platform, so it can be quickly implemented and integrated with existing systems, as well as easily picked up by agents. It’s my responsibility to make sure that we’re both purposeful and forwardthinking in our development, so that every time we add new features we make sure that they add value without adding complexity.

We’re a growing company, but still with the values and energy of a startup.

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August 2022

What technology is driving Zendesk into new areas?

For me, the big one is AI. It has the capacity to augment the workforce in a range of incremental and impactful ways that extend beyond intelligent chat bots: automation of end-to-end customer service processes; intelligent routing; suggesting next-best actions to agents; self-optimisation of the support system; surfacing of the right data at right moment in time; or automatic enrichment of customer and ticket data. Demand for conversational AI isn’t just limited to customer experience.

We’re seeing huge demand from companies using our solutions for employee experience too.

“Zendesk’s EMEA revenue today is larger than the global revenue was five years ago”

Can you tell us more about your current market position?

Zendesk’s EMEA revenue today is larger than the global revenue was five years ago. We continue to grow our customer base and team across the EMEA region too, with the UK being our second largest market globally and the largest market in Europe.

We’re investing in developing Zendesk even further as a tool not just for relationship management with customers, but for improving communication between teams within a business. We are also focusing on helping our customers to better leverage their customers’ data to gain greater knowledge of their preferences, removing data silos and connecting the dots to provide more tailored experiences. technologymagazine.com

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TRAILBLAZER

What has been your highlight in your current role?

Being part of and able to contribute to the company’s growth in the EMEA region and bringing further innovation, particularly in AI. I love to connect with customers, partners and prospects in person, as we recently did during our regional Relate events. It is great to hear directly from customers about how they’re using our platform to advance their business growth.

Also, working with this amazing and highly motivated team at Zendesk.

I really love the positive energy of Zendeskians. Everybody wants to make a difference for our customers.

What is your leadership style?

I truly believe that you achieve the best results in a diverse team, embracing the range of experiences and opinions. The three “principles” of my leadership style: 1. A team works best when they’re not being told what to do but when they are bought into what needs to be done.

So it’s important to spend time with the team to define goals and what you want to achieve together. Change happens best when you have everybody on board.

2. One cannot ask for trust, one can only earn trust. So I operate by the principle of “I cannot tell you everything that is true, but everything I tell you is true.”

3. Coach team members when needed & always stand in front of your teams.

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August 2022

Powered by Zendesk.

Champions of customer service

“One cannot ask for trust, one can only earn trust”

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

NELSON PETRACEK GLOBAL CTO, TIBCO SOFTWARE SOLVING THE MOST COMPLEX REAL-TIME DATA AND ANALYTICS PROBLEMS

Nelson Petracek is currently the global CTO at TIBCO Software, focusing on bringing engineering closer to the field. This includes a number of responsibilities, many of which are field-facing, with large portions of technology and product also involved. Engagements with customers, partners and analysts across the globe are a large part of his role too, with an emphasis on topics such as technology trends, product strategy and the application of both within the enterprise.

“The wide variety of topics and the opportunity to meet and work with such a broad range of organisations certainly makes my role fascinating!” said Petracek.

Q. WHAT IS TIBCO’S POINT OF DIFFERENCE AS A BUSINESS?

»TIBCO has a rich history of

solving complex real-time data and analytics problems, and this heritage continues today with our cloudnative, “anywhere and everywhere” TIBCO Cloud platform. Our ability to connect to any data source regardless of location, process and expose this data in real time, enable the creation of rich analytical and

“ THE WIDE VARIETY OF TOPICS AND THE OPPORTUNITY TO MEET AND WORK WITH SUCH A BROAD RANGE OF ORGANISATIONS CERTAINLY MAKES MY ROLE FASCINATING!”

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August 2022

Blockchain Book l The Bytes Behind Blocks: An Architect’s Guide to Blockchain

“ IF TIBCO STOPS, ENTIRE BUSINESSES STOP” predictive data science applications, and manage the hard data problems that arise from unifying data assets and more, enables us to provide our customers and partners with the right set of capabilities for today’s data challenges. We are a leader in multiple analyst reports and our omnicloud approach enables organisations to consume our technology in whatever form they need, with the mix of domain capabilities required. TIBCO is the technology behind many of the world’s largest organisations. If TIBCO stops, entire businesses stop, which is exciting but sometimes a little stressful at the same time!

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

»This is hard to keep to just one

technology! There are so many areas of innovation in the market today, from architectural approaches such as data fabrics and event-driven patterns to technologies such as augmented reality, knowledge graphs and natural language processing. Cloud and analytics are a given, as we will definitely be using more of these technologies in the future. Outside of these, I would say that I am particularly interested in blockchain-related technologies such as tokenisation, Web3, distributed ledgers and more.

Of course, I may be slightly biased, since I am launching a book on blockchain later this year. technologymagazine.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Q. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR CAREER HIGHLIGHT PRIOR TO YOUR CURRENT ROLE?

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

enjoyed the most about my career is the blend I have been able to achieve between technology and customer activities. I’m not the one who will rewrite the linux kernel over a weekend just for fun (although I do enjoy writing some code periodically), nor am I only involved in the field. I fit somewhere in the middle, which brings a level of variety to my workday that I completely enjoy.

organisation is definitely one of the highlights in my current role.

The team is fantastic – I learn from them almost daily. We are given the opportunity to apply new technologies to interesting customer problems and also participate in the broader technology community, including through various opensource initiatives and events such as our rapidly growing OSSDay (opensource community day) sessions and LABS hackathons. It is challenging, but very rewarding.

»I think that one of the things I have

»This one is easy. Our TIBCO LABS

Q. WHAT IS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

»This one is probably best answered

by my team! But, in general, I attempt to provide a very open, transparent, and supportive environment where each person in my team is able to be creative and innovative in their own way. Goals and guidelines are established and shared, and I try to give direction on potential areas of research, engagement strategies and alignment to company objectives, but with a flexible path to success.

Innovation does not occur in a straight line, nor is it fully predictable, thus we need to be ready to adapt and pivot quickly as the market or customer needs dictate.

“ THIS YEAR HAS STARTED WITH A BANG” 26

August 2022

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

»This year has started with a bang.

Problems associated with data are not going away any time soon and you can expect some great announcements from us over the course of the year, especially in the areas of omnicloud, advanced analytics and data management.

The world is changing at an extremely rapid pace, with

technology becoming more immersive and embedded, enabled by advancements in areas such as predictive analytics and cloud. I’m also looking forward to working with our customers and partners via TIBCO LABS as we dig into the nextgeneration of composable digital applications, whether for enabling further blending of the digital and physical worlds or for supporting the evolution of upcoming concepts such as the metaverse. All exciting! technologymagazine.com

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SHAPING THE BUSINESS OF FINTECH 3,000+ Participants

2

Days

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A BizClik Media Group Event:

Watch our 2021 Showreel

Join us at FinTech LIVE London Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at FINTECH LIVE LONDON 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 FINTECH LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 1st-2nd November is broadcast live to the world and incorporates three zone areas of FinTech LIVE, Crypto LIVE plus InsurTech LIVE in to one event.

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:

1st-2nd November 2022

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MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

A TECH DATA DR WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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August 2022

MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

HNOLOGY AND RIVEN RETAILER

technologymagazine.com

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MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

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August 2022

MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

Martin Baschnagel, CTO and Group Chief Enterprise Architect at Migros, discusses the company’s data-driven approach to accelerating digital transformation

A

t its core, Migros is a retail organisation committed to improving people’s quality of life in our society. “Our values are Community We are close; Responsibility - We do good; and Pioneering spirit - We create something new,” explains Martin Baschnagel, CTO and Group Chief Enterprise Architect at Migros.

He adds: “We are the biggest private employer in Switzerland; our core business is in retail including its own production, but we are also very active in finance, travel, health and in the area of sustainability as well as social engagement”. Since our founding in 1925, Migros has grown into an ecosystem of 240 legal entities.

After joining the company in February 2021, Baschnagel has consistently been involved in driving the digital transformation in all business areas.

A data-driven approach to accelerating digital transformation Migros' ambition is to become a truly datadriven company.

“Migros would like to offer its customer a first-class and fully consistent experience, which means that the data is used consistently and at the same time securely across our entire ecosystem in an ethical and safe way,” says Baschnagel. “We want to gain the maximum value from our data in order to improve our processes from the supply chain and procurement functions to our customer in-store” technologymagazine.com

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MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

1925

Year Founded

100,000

Number of Employees

28,932Mio.CHF Revenue

“ THE PANDEMIC KICK STARTED A MAJOR SHIFT TO ONLINE RETAIL CUSTOMERS AND THE DEMAND FOR A SEAMLESS EXPERIENCE BETWEEN ONLINE AND OFFLINE OPERATIONS” MARTIN BASCHNAGEL

CTO AND GROUP CHIEF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT AT MIGROS

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August 2022

Two use case examples for this field within Migros, are: Firstly, the M OPEX Tower, which provides visibility and a reduction of 70% carbon footprint on truck deliveries by 2030.

Secondly, the ability to provide real-time individual recommendations for customers with an omnichannel experience.

The organisation places importance on being open and honest. “At Migros, we attach great importance to providing full transparency towards our customers”. “An example of this is the sustainability of our products and our own production with formats like ‘M-Check’ or ‘V-Love’,” says Baschangel. A capability that its data-driven approach has helped them to achieve.

MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

MARTIN BASCHNAGEL TITLE: CTO AND GROUP CHIEF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT

From a modern data and analytics platform to a data-driven retailer Dedicated to its vision of ‘Systems of Insight’, Migros is laying down the foundations for becoming a data-driven retailer with a modern data and analytics platform. “This will harmonise our current heterogeneous DWH landscape and enable data democratisation,” explains Baschnagel.

“Part of this platform includes the development of a data catalogue, which enables us to use the data in the Migros ecosystem efficiently and securely and to know in real-time where data is located, where it comes from and it’s quality.

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: ZURICH, SWITZERLAND An enthusiastic agile leader who deeply cares about architecture and technology to ensure it delivers appropriate value to business.

Parallel to his job, Martin completed his studies in Computer Science and in Management, Technology and Economics at ETH. He started his career as a software developer. He then moved to Swisscom as an Enterprise Architect, where he was first responsible for the architecture of Mobile, then for CRM and Online, and finally took over responsibility for the entire architecture landscape.

Since February 2021, Martin is responsible for technology and enterprise architecture at Migros.

In this role, Martin drives the digital transformation with his team, working on the vision for Systems of Insight, the Journey to the Cloud, and the simplification of the IT landscape.

We bring Digital Transformation to Retail Retail is our core competence.

As certified “RISE with SAP” partner, we are the partner of choice for your digital transformation to the cloud – holistically from licensing to services and support for your solutions.

Discover more

retailsolutions: Digitalisation in retail with Migros Group Jörg Frisch, Co-Founder & General Manager, retailsolutions AG, reflects on the past, present and future of its long-standing partnership with Migros Group As one of the leading SAP retail consulting organisations in Europe, retailsolutions has, from the very beginning, specialised exclusively in the retail industry. “The retailsolutions family consists of more than 250 experienced IT experts and consultants in six European locations,” says Jörg Frisch, Co-Founder and General Manager of retailsolutions AG. “We place great value in personal contact with our customers at eye level. To achieve this, one of our managing directors is always personally involved in every project. retailsolutions AG offers solutions along the entire value chain from one single source – from strategic consulting to development, end-to-end from licence sales to subsequent support and maintenance of the solutions.

retailsolutions AG and its partnership with Migros Group One of retailsolutions earliest customers was Migros Group, a relationship in which Frisch has been personally involved since the beginning of the partnership.

“We have a long-standing strategic partnership with Migros; both with the Migros Group and with the cooperatives and subsidiaries, such as

Migrol, Migrolino and Denner,” explains Frisch.

“For many years, we have been able to contribute our core competencies to numerous projects in various areas such as retail, finance and petrol station retailing.”

Recently, retailsolutions AG has been collaborating with Migros Group on its EIGER project, one of the largest transformation projects in Europe to date.

Frisch explains further: “The project includes a complete business engineering, in which all business processes are optimised in the direction of standardisation, harmonisation and customer benefit. Our biggest challenge was to implement these complex processes with the latest technologies and cloud-based solutions in such a way that Migros Group was not only well equipped for the digital future, but can also fully benefit from the advantages of digitalisation in terms of productivity, flexibility and competitiveness.”

Frisch concludes: “We are proud to be supporting Migros Group in the implementation of its strategic plan for the future and digitalisation.”

Learn more

MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

Migros: A technological and data-driven retailer

“THE ONLY THING WE REALLY KNOW FOR SURE ABOUT THE FUTURE IS THAT IT WILL BE CONSTANTLY CHANGING” MARTIN BASCHNAGEL

CTO AND GROUP CHIEF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT AT MIGROS

“Information flows and data architecture are essential and serve as enablers, which is the reason why we attach great importance to them and establish appropriate platforms for streaming and API management. Data governance completes this and ensures that the data we have is used securely and ethically, becoming part of the Migros DNA.” 38

August 2022

COVID-19 and its impact on digital transformation It is no secret that COVID-19 has caused waves of disruption throughout many organisations, with Baschnagel saying that “the pandemic kick-started a major shift to online retail customers and the demand for a seamless experience between online and offline operations”.

MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

He adds: “The pandemic also changed the working environment for employees to a hybrid model. This has become the new norm among many organisations that are focused on efficiency. We have also experienced a major digital and especially agile mindset shift among employees during the last 24 months.”

It is this mindset that is fundamental to a successful transformation. “Digital transformation is only possible with modern and agile forms of cooperation and the appropriate mindset. Within Migros (especially in the Migros-GenossenschaftsBund), we use Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and have already established 8 agile release trains (ARTs), in which more than 1000 people work together in an agile way.

The agile transformation and the digital

transformation go hand in hand at Migros and is the prerequisite in order to react to new business needs with the necessary flexibility and speed,” explains Baschnagel.

“This way of working promotes good and close cooperation between business and IT, which we see as an essential success factor to reach our goals and to stay successful in the digital transformation at Migros.

“The Enterprise Architecture Team, that I have the pleasure to lead, is right in the middle of all this and acts as a facilitator to accelerating digital transformation with the data-driven approach. Thereby we analyse business needs provide orientation, strive to ensure maximum value, ensure lean governance, and build out the technology base, all with a key focus in mind: transparency.” technologymagazine.com

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Over the past 20 years, NETCONOMY has helped global brands transform their business models and create digital ecosystems which enable seamless customer experiences.

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NETCONOMY: How We Help Brands Transform into Market Leaders NETCONOMY’s Chief Customer Officer, Thomas Ziegler, talks about their 10-year-old partnership with Migros, resulting in experiences that delight An organisation with over 20 years of experience, NETCONOMY’s mission is to help global brands transform their digital ecosystems. The company focuses on creating innovative customer experience solutions via SAP’s Customer Experience portfolio and hyperscaler technology by Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.

NETCONOMY values long-lasting relationships, so it’s no surprise that their partnership with Migros started over 10 years ago. Their goal is to fulfill Migros’ vision by developing a deep understanding of who their customers are and what they need.

At the start of their collaboration, NETCONOMY developed online and mobile touch points as the first digital ones for Migros – enabling customers to engage with the brand wherever they are. Speaking on their progress, Ziegler said: “The NETCONOMY solutions support Migros in creating a 360-degree profile of the customer in real-time, based on their data. That means that they can understand how the customer interacts with the brand, as it’s happening.”

NETCONOMY has also been focused on building Migros’ response times when the customer needs immediate attention.

“Together with Migros, we’ve achieved a strong connection between offline and online touch points, which helped create a seamless experience. Because seamless isn’t only about the technology; seamless also means that the customer always feels treated in the way they expect,” commented Ziegler.

Looking to the future and what is next for their partnership, Ziegler said: “We will be working on extending the platform with the focus on supporting Migros with better understanding customer data – by knowing how customers interact with their brand, Migros will be able to engage with them in a relevant way and act in real-time on every touch point.

At the same time, we will be working to make Migros even more flexible and agile, so that they can quickly react to the changing demands of customers, fully leverage customer data, and ensure that they are always one step ahead.” Ziegler concluded.

MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

“ OUR CLOUD-FIRST APPROACH IS AN IMPORTANT PRINCIPLE FOR A TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN MIGROS” MARTIN BASCHNAGEL

CTO AND GROUP CHIEF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT AT MIGROS

“In order to stay ahead of the increasing customer expectations, we need to constantly optimise our IT landscape.

This optimisation is only possible with full transparency of the architecture in place” says Baschnagel.

A significant tech driver for Migros is cloud technology. “Our cloud-first approach is a very important principle for Migros. Thereby it is important that we take a holistic view of the digital transformation and of the ‘journey to the cloud’ and take the opportunity to not only modernise the IT landscape but also to simplify it, consolidate it and decommission legacy systems, where possible,” continues Baschnagel.

Based on that approach Migros has defined a Cloud Operating Model to optimise and evolve more than 2,700 group applications.

“We have already been able to successfully transform over 550 applications into the cloud and benefit from the cloud advantages such as access to innovation, improved security, optimised elasticity, new resilience concepts and finally cost flexibility,” says Baschnagel. “Cloud is one of our biggest drivers.”

“To predict the future is very hard. The only thing we really know for sure is that 42

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MIGROS AND ITS PARTNERSHIPS Over the years, Migros has made some key strategic partners along the way, many of which are involved in its large-scale initiatives to drive its digital transformation, from both a technological and business point of view.

“One of the big programmes we are currently working on is EIGER and has the goal to harmonise and digitalise our processes as well as modernise our application landscape in the retail sector. There we are working closely with partners like RetailSolutions, IBM or NetConomy,” says Baschnagel.

“For me, it is essential, that we have trustful relationships that allow us to offer faster and better solutions to our customers alongside our partners”

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What if →

you were a gigantic snack food maker and you had to wrestle a massively complex supply chain to satisfy cravings from Tokyo to Toledo? So you partner with IBM Consulting to bring together data and workflows so that every truck driver and merchandiser can serve up jalapeño, sesame, and chocolate-covered goodness with real-time, data-driven precision.

So that everyone says...

your supply chain had an appetite for ↪ performance?

See how your business can accelerate digital transformation at ibm.com/consulting

IBM and the IBM logo are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on ibm.com/trademark. © Copyright IBM Corp. 2022 B34452

IBM supports Migros to build the foundation for merging online and offline channels ↷ IBM and Swiss retailer Migros are building a new business process platform that helps unifying the customer experience across all channels.

While e-commerce had dramatically changed the retail business in many areas over the past decade, grocery shopping was long regarded as a pure offline domain – until the outbreak of a global pandemic in 2020. Since then grocery retailers are confronted with a significant change of their business model, not only due to the growing online demand, but also through other megatrends like sustainability and a frictionless shopping experience.

‘The large retailers – such as Migros in Switzerland – are beginning to embrace innovation and change at a pace and a magnitude that probably was not known in grocery stores since the invention of the supermarket’, says Florian Melchert.

He is Associate Partner with IBM Consulting in Zurich, which was chosen by Migros as an implementation partner for one of the largest transformation programmes in its history in order to address this tremendous change.

Melchert and his team are determined to support Migros, harmonise and streamline

core business processes and implement a single state-of-the-art application platform, that will allow the seamless integration of traditional and online shopping and that is attractive to consumers.’

Why? Because the positive aspects of both models can be blended into one unified shopping experience. Melchert calls this approach ‘No-Line Commerce’.

He is convinced that this is the future in an ever-changing retail market, in which the consumer does not really care or need to care where products and services are purchased or even returned to. Consumers can switch the channels as they like.

And this No-line idea will not stop at the traditional supermarket assortment: ‘Customers are getting more and more used to combining assortments, leverage multiple channels, and switch their buying behaviour frequently. And it is in these conditions large retailers like Migros need to offer services as solutions, in order to retain and even extend their market position.’

Learn more

→

MIGROS - GENOSSENSCHAFTS - BUND

“ DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS ONLY POSSIBLE WITH MODERN AND AGILE FORMS OF COOPERATION AND THE APPROPRIATE MINDSET” MARTIN BASCHNAGEL

CTO AND GROUP CHIEF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT AT MIGROS

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the needs will be constantly changing, so we will need to be able to effectively adapt to new requirements. Therefore we are adopting principles of "evolutionary architecture" which brings us lower risk and provide orientation with important technology and business strategy visions,” highlights Baschnagel.

"In addition, the cloud journey will bring simplification and help us adopt a datadriven approach to our architecture. It will be these elements – embedded into our ecosystem – that will help us to drive the next steps of our digital transformation strategy over the next 12 to 18 months.”

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WHAT MAKES A GREAT WORKING CULTURE? In the era of The Great Resignation, what does it take to build a culture that retains staff? And is it simply a case of great ESAT scores?

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

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D

id you hear about Dan Price, the man who decided to put his entire workforce, including himself, on US$70,000 as a minimum salary? The outcry was widespread, with many in the corporate world mocking his gesture and claiming it was doomed to failure.

Since then, though, Price has gone on to prove the naysayers wrong, going from strength to strength at his firm, Gravity.

The bold move has gone from a PR stunt to a phenomenal act of business bravery and success.

While no one suggests this is a good idea for businesses to adopt, one thing that cannot be denied is the positive outcome it had on the culture at the company, as staff strived to better themselves without the spectre of financial anxiety consuming their every waking thought.

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Enabling educators.

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TALENT, CULTURE & CHANGE

“ WE WANT EVERYONE TO APPROACH WORK HEALTHILY, PROMOTING BREAKS AND CREATING A WORK-LIFE BALANCE” ASIM AMIN

CEO AND FOUNDER, PLUMM

It led me to ponder on what working cultures are currently succeeding in the world of technology. What is the measure of this, and what is the importance of brick-and-mortar locations to the future workplace? Elon Musk certainly isn’t a fan of remote working, but the jury is very much out on the criticality of heading to the office.

According to Microsoft’s 2022 Work Trend Index, a study of 31,000 people in 31

countries – including insights from Microsoft 365 platforms and LinkedIn – the hybrid working model is here to stay.

ServiceNow tops UK technology ratings on Glassdoor Leading digital workflow company ServiceNow ranked as the top company in the technology industry for Senior Leadership, landing third overall in the UK. Glassdoor, the worldwide leader in insights about jobs and companies, compiled the list based solely on employees' anonymous and voluntary reviews about their leaders throughout the past year.

“The senior leadership and people managers at ServiceNow believe in leading by example and inspiring our employees by staying humble and working hard to deliver a technologymagazine.com

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Microsoft Study: Young Workers Considering Leaving

“OUR COMPANY VALUES SHINE OUT IN EVERYTHING WE DO”

great company culture,” says and to all our employees. We Jordi Ferrer, Vice President work collaboratively. We win & General Manager UK&I, as a team.”

ServiceNow. “Voted for Independent ratings by our employees, it is a are certainly one way of reflection of our team’s qualifying a workplace; tireless efforts to create a employee engagement workplace where everyone and surveys are another. feels they belong, and where Bestselling author and JORDI FERRER our company values shine business guru Patrick VICE PRESIDENT & out in everything we do.”

Lencioni’s seminal book, GENERAL MANAGER UK&I, “Myself and my colleagues ‘The Truth About Employee SERVICENOW on the senior leadership Engagement’, was first team at ServiceNow UK are touched and published in 2015. It’s still a must-read for honoured by this vote,” comments Stacey anyone interested in employee engagement Carr, Senior Sales Director, ServiceNow. “To and the impact disengaged employees have know our teams and colleagues voted for us, on organisations. to be number three overall and the highestIn his book, Lencioni argues that ranking technology company, is testament employees cannot feel fulfilled in their work to the work and culture we strive to deliver if their efforts go unrecognised. As stated in at ServiceNow. While this accolade states it his writing, people need to be appreciated is for the senior leadership, truthfully, this is and valued – and that applies equally to their credit to all ServiceNow People Managers personal and work lives.

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The potential for staff to feel invisible and anonymous has only increased since the pandemic. According to one survey reported by Forbes, 82% of employed Americans feel their managers do not recognise them. As stated on myhubintranet. com, ‘this employee mindset results in poor morale and low productivity, which ultimately affects the bottom line’.

A Gallup poll estimates that the total cost of disengaged employees in the US is a staggering US$450-500bn annually. And, according to Workest, 63.3% of businesses say they find it harder to retain than to hire talent.

Can technology unlock a better employee experience?

Asim Amin, CEO and Founder of Plumm, believes that good workplace culture is dependent on a “happy and healthy team”.

After two years of COVID-19 and lockdowns, and faced with the rise in the cost of living, Amin says business teams need to protect their employees' mental wellbeing: “Offering support to your team free of charge (for the end-user) is a fantastic way to start cultivating great culture. Our mission at Plumm is to provide care to everyone, so services are tailored towards interventive, preventive, and personal development care, ensuring we offer mental wellbeing services that suit the entire workforce,” he said.

After joining, Plumm matches employees with a therapist tailored to their unique needs, which they can contact via chat when necessary or schedule a video session with – often as early as the next day. Employees can access therapy, meditations, and expert-led courses, all with the click of a button. They

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can also log their moods daily, weekly, or as often as they please, to which the employer has anonymous access.

“When many – or most – team members express low moods, it helps management to take the necessary action. Perhaps an extended team lunch is needed to reconnect and discuss ways of working!” adds Amin.

While Plumm are changing other workplaces with their platform, Plumm employees also enjoy full access to Plumm services and special leave, such as menstrual leave and mental health days.

“We want everyone to approach work healthily, promoting breaks and creating a work-life balance. To do this, we incorporate interactive activities into the work environment as often as possible, including desk yoga, meditation sessions, weekly watercooler conversations, and quarterly virtual team parties.

Plumm – Mental Wellbeing For Empowered Teams

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TALENT, CULTURE & CHANGE

“ WE WORK COLLABORATIVELY. WE WIN AS A TEAM” STACEY CARR

SENIOR SALES DIRECTOR, SERVICENOW

“It's important to us that every team member feels valued and appreciated. This starts by promoting an environment of honesty and transparency where each team member can openly express their concerns, needs, goals and dreams. We also celebrate work and personal achievements through shoutouts, personalised gifts, cards and wellness treatments, such as a spa day,” said Amin.

The crucial need to encourage more women into the technology industry As highlighted by BizClik’s recent TECH LIVE LONDON event, where we welcomed female speakers to discuss STEM on our March8 live stage, just 19% of the tech workforce is female.

On International Women’s Day 2022 (IWD22), global data centre and colocation provider Equinix launched ‘I Am Remarkable’, in the hope of supporting women who have the skills and capabilities to enter the tech industry, but might lack the confidence and support to do so.

Lorraine Wilkinson, Regional Vice President of Sales, UK, remarked: “The initiative focuses on helping women return to work after a career break, especially those impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘I Am Remarkable’ 56

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targets candidates from outside the industry to look at roles they might not have considered by encouraging them to recognise the value of transferable skills”.

Equinix values an inclusive culture, with existing networks such as BlackConnect, GenteConnect, PrideConnect, FaithConnect and InterAsianConnect and the Equinix Women Leaders Network (EWLN), which has grown globally to support and empower women through gender equity and numerous education initiatives.

“We must all commit to creating more gender-balanced organisations, overriding the outdated idea of tech as a primarily male realm – and, with increasing efforts, the tech industry will eventually better reflect our societal gender mix. Creating the best workplace and company culture through encouraging more women into the industry and working hard to achieve a more diverse profile of workers will not only be beneficial for women, but time will prove that it is integral to the overall success of our industry,” said Wilkinson.

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AT GOOGLE, SUPRIYA IYER IS ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS 58

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GOOGLE

WRITTEN BY: HELEN ADAMS PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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GOOGLE

Supriya Iyer is the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations at Google. Here, she explains what it takes to lead and who inspires her

R

esearch from SEO Tribunal suggests that there are over three million Google searches every minute. But behind the familiar question tab is Supriya Iyer – the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations at Google.

Born in India, Iyer went on to complete her schooling there, all the way through to postgraduate study. After completing a double Master’s in Mathematics and Information Systems from B.I.T.S Pilani India, Iyer then moved to Melbourne, Australia, where she became a formidable player working in global supply chain and operations roles across a variety of industry sectors, such as automotive and high tech.

“My work at General Electric was especially pertinent to my growth as a professional,” she explains. “It was there that I truly learnt about managing change and driving transformation.”

In 2016, Iyer moved to the Bay Area with her family and started working at Google Cloud in the global partner programmes team and subsequently in the professional services organisation.

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GOOGLE

“ Compassionate and competent leaders have always inspired me to challenge the status quo and invite diverse perspectives” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

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“In October 2019, I took on my current role in the Google networking team as the Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations.

The Google networking supply chain & commercial operations team is structured to effectively manage procurement and supply of networking equipment to sites, overseeing significant investment in assets and services across the business.”

The challenges in this role range from supporting Google Cloud’s enterprise customers to ensuring effective procurement and delivery to complex countries.

“The shift over the past 40+ years to just-intime inventory and global manufacturing has helped to optimise costs,” says Iyer. “However, the pandemic added a new set of unforeseen challenges. On the supply side, border closings combined with lockdowns constrained the manufacturing and shipping of key components and goods, significantly increasing lead times. Juggling supply to meet growing demand has therefore posed new challenges.”

Hiring supply chain and project management talent globally in a labour constrained environment has been more of a challenge recently.

“As a leader, supporting team members to take care of their health and overall wellbeing during the pandemic has been critical, but not always easy to do. The last two years have been a marathon and it isn’t over by any stretch of imagination!”

Iyer and her team are working hard to overcome these challenges.

“We have developed frameworks, processes and metrics to help better understand and quantify these challenges.

For example, working with business stakeholders on an emerging market roadmap, developing a materials supply playbook for these markets and investing in planning ahead to support timely deployment in these markets have helped. technologymagazine.com

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Juniper Networks - keeping cloud providers operational Juniper Networks on how it provides infrastructure to cloud providers, including the largest hyperscale networks

supply chain and the man who oversees it – Mitch Haynes, Supply Chain Planning & Fulfillment VP at Juniper.

Juniper Networks might just be one of the biggest companies you’ve never heard of.

A US multinational corporation, Juniper offers networking products including routers, switches, network management software and security products and solutions.

“What’s super important is our ability to scale-up with a customer. We have to physically produce all of the hardware that makes that possible.”

Its customers consist of service providers, enterprises, and cloud providers, including the largest hyperscale cloud providers, as part of its Cloud segment.

“Our customers are building clouds that serve businesses and the public globally,” says Jason Fritch, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, Juniper Networks Cloud Segment. He adds that the company also provides “high-end, high-performance, high-scale networking solutions” that not only connect clients’ data centres to one another, but also connect them directly to their end-users. “Tens of thousands of products and hardware components are required from us to do this at planet scale, like we do for some of our global cloud clients.”

Such vast quantities of components and products demand a great deal of both Juniper’s

This requires an ecosystem of partners, says Haynes: “There are the customers, and the operation of their data centres, and then there are our manufacturing partners, and their suppliers.”

It’s a difficult job at the best of times, but over the past two, pandemic-hit, years, it has been inordinately challenging - which is when Juniper’s strong relationship with their customers came into its own.

“We work with customers so that together we can make the best operational decision we can at any given point in time,” says Haynes.

“That might be whether to place a new order for a product earlier than we typically would, or looking at a design or use-case and making early-stage decisions on future engineering.”

Learn more

GOOGLE

SUPRIYA IYER TITLE: DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS LOCATION: PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Supriya leads Supply Chain and Commercial Operations, with a focus on predictable materials supply and operations to operate Google’s network at scale. With 20+ years experience transforming value chains and growing small teams into mature organisations to deliver high quality products and services, Supriya enjoys fast-paced and dynamic environments while fostering people-first culture and stakeholder engagement. Previously, she has held global leadership positions at VMWare, GE and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).

Supriya holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and a Master’s degree in Mathematics. In her free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, cooking, and travelling.

At Google, Supriya Iyer is asking the right questions

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“ I’m inspired by seekers – anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back” “Similarly, developing a two-year capability roadmap has helped not only supply chain but also our partner teams to work on the right tools, data structures, reporting and processes to enable scale and velocity.

“Strong partnerships with strategic suppliers has been pivotal to ensure smooth supply and early notification of supply constraints. Jointly, we have been able to develop solutions that have supported Google networking’s rapid growth.”

SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

Vulnerability and authenticity in leadership The best piece of advice Iyer has ever been given is to “get out of the office and connect with customers, vendors, peers and team members” – pretty difficult to do in the pandemic, but not impossible.

“Only then can you hope to understand them and build relationships of trust and open communication,” she says.

This advice is in part inspired by an eclectic range of Iyers personal heroes.

“I’m inspired by seekers – anyone who is committed to learning, growth and giving back: Malala Yousafzai, Mahatma Gandhi, Greta Thunberg and Maya Angelou, they are some examples of people who inspire me by what they stand for and how they lead.

They demonstrate vulnerability, authenticity and standing up for the community. technologymagazine.com

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GOOGLE

“At work, I am inspired by the Google leaders, my peers and of course my team who have shown customer centricity, perseverance and teamwork despite the tough challenges of the last 2 years.

Compassionate and competent leaders – my first mentor (John Gafferena) and my father (Alak Sundararaman) – have always inspired me to challenge the status quo, invite diverse perspectives and focus on the customer.”

Making the Google supply chain resilient Google is a planet-scale network, but there are some figures that can provide a more easily digestible view of the organisation: • Google’s global network consists of a system of high-capacity fibre optic cables that encircle the globe, under both land and sea, connecting data centres to each other and to users • Globally, Google operates data centres in 23 locations, 34 cloud regions and 103 zones • The company has 147 points of presence and has announced 20 subsea cable investments around the globe • Google also has thousands of edge locations around the world in over 200 countries and territories, offering users and customers very low latency services such as Google Assistant and rich content such as YouTube and Google Photos

“ Strong partnerships with strategic suppliers have been pivotal to ensure smooth supply and early notification of supply constraints” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

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Though undoubtedly a complex, multi-layered role, which elements of growing this worldwide network demand most from Iyer?

“Anticipation is key and asking the right questions to pre-empt the needs of a rapidly growing and evolving network is a challenge,” she says. “The only guarantee is the next 12 months won’t be like the previous 12 months, for sure!”

Innovating material supply in ways that enables responsiveness at short notice will be key in the coming years – most likely for all industries.

Part standardisation, rationalisation and in-region customisation are some approaches that Google is taking to reduce long lead-times. Iyer’s team invests considerable time in building on the strong partnership with their strategic vendors and jointly innovating with them.

Similarly, working with the engineering, deployment and network operations teams within Google, to ensure alignment, is a key part of Iyer’s work. Over time, the Google network hopes to be able to deliver greater predictably with innovative solutions to meet industry needs, while technologymagazine.com

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GOOGLE

operating an autonomous network. Similar to a self-driving car, Google’s intent-driven automated network needs to evolve into an autonomous network.

“In addition to thinking about reliability as ‘How do we minimise failures?’, at Google we think as well about ‘How we can make our services resilient to failures when they happen?’. In our organisation, we spend as much time on systems and processes to respond to failures as we do in preventing them in the first place. Google Cloud has grown significantly, and we are continuously increasing the number of enterprise customers we support.”

Supply chain and digital transformation at Google Iyer has a roadmap for Google’s networking supply chain. She and her team have devoted considerable effort to optimise their supply chain tools and systems to reengineer across the end to end value chain and enable FLOW and agility.

“Revisiting processes and systems in light of both the demand and supply variability is essential to predictably deliver at scale,” she says. “The frequency and volume of change will increase and we are developing

“ Revisiting processes and systems in light of both the demand and supply variability is essential to predictably deliver at scale” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

processes and tools where we can react within a lead time that our customers need to sustainably succeed.”

Iyer plans to leverage AI and ML capabilities to further automate supply chain processes and simplify decision making. An example of this could be scaled invoice validation to support timely processing and payment.

“Integration with vendor systems and tools for timely information flow across the materials supply chain,” she explains.

“For example, integration with third-party warehouse providers is key to ensure the right information is available to make the right decisions in a timely manner.

“We are actively working to deliver an agreed capability roadmap. We are well progressed on all fronts and, in light of the recent supply constraints and demand growth, we have further refined our capability roadmap to predictably meet customer demand in the coming years.” technologymagazine.com

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“ Responsive and responsible supply of networking materials and services is our mission; that is what motivates us” SUPRIYA IYER

DIRECTOR OF SUPPLY CHAIN AND COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS, GOOGLE

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This transformation will help Google to offer customers capabilities that it hasn’t been able to offer before, with the investment in enhancing tools, systems, processes and data frameworks helping Google to support cloud customers with new networking products and capabilities at scale. It will support customers’ growing businesses and help them to achieve their purpose and strategy.

GOOGLE

However, Google’s longterm strategy for the Google networking supply chain links right back to Google’s vision: ‘To organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful’. “My team’s vision aligns with this as we aim to provide access to networking materials and all material related information to our customers easily and simply,” says Iyer.

“Responsive and responsible supply of

networking materials and services is our mission; that is what motivates us.”

Such a mission would not be possible without a reliable partner ecosystem.

At Google, vendors are valued partners and the company actively collaborates with them at all levels to develop innovative solutions and products. Google networking engineering, product, supply chain and other teams regularly connect, discuss and work closely with vendors.

“They are vital to delivering our vision and strategy and, likewise, Google as a customer is critical for them and their organisations,” says Iyer. “There is mutual respect, trust and confidence in our ability to shape Google’s network in the coming years.

“Our relationship with our vendors has deepened in the last two years; we’ve been learning from each other.

We have also supported each other in developing innovative solutions and ensuring timely execution of critical projects.”

Increased digitisation; stronger partnerships with suppliers; working closely with governments; holding larger inventory buffers for critical components; bringing supply chains closer to home; and increasing optionality will be key to protect from future shocks.

The pandemic has given supply chain professionals a platform to appropriately influence design, engineering and deployment – and Iyer is ready for the next stage.

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OVERCOMING POWER CONSTRAINTS IN DATA CENTRES

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COLOCATION

The need for data centres is growing but powering them is a challenge of economy.

How are data centres finding energy efficiencies and cutting costs?

D

ata centres need electricity to run their equipment and to keep the machines cool. While just how much electricity all these data centres use is up for debate, data storage and transmission in and from data centres is estimated to be around 1% of global electricity.

This share has hardly changed since 2010, despite the number of internet users doubling and global internet traffic increasing 15-fold since then, according to the International Energy Agency.

Many data centres are “colocation” centres, which are shared by users and managed by specialist companies. As specified on DW.com, these make up the majority of data centres, “but it is the mammoth 'hyperscale' data centres owned by BitTech companies that get the most attention”.

As businesses get rid of their own on-site servers, instead renting space

on cloud servers to focus on their core businesses without worrying about IT issues, “it is frequently cheaper and more efficient to farm out the costs of purchasing and maintaining such equipment to outside companies”.

Modular and mobile data centres With the increasing demands of virtualised, high density and cloud computing environments, modularity is now at the forefront of contemporary data centre construction due to it providing flexibility and a scalable approach to data centre planning and design, as well as eliminating the need for traditional bricks-and-mortar locations.

Speaking with gulfbusiness.com, Sanjay Kumar Sainani, Global SVP and CTO of Huawei Digital, claims that large-scale data centre power solutions – requiring segment-based construction, distributed

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK technologymagazine.com

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MANAGING DIRECTOR, VIRTUS DATA CENTRES

bidding, and onsite installation and testing – are being threatened by fully modular solutions, as they shorten construction time and

improve O&M efficiency: “Traditional construction methods involve multiple vendors and complicated engineering designs, which can take months to draw up, usually resulting in complex communications during construction and multiple interface standards once the job is done. This is far from conducive to efficient, convenient maintenance”.

“Huawei’s FusionPower6000 3.0, also known as PowerPod, provides power supply and distribution solutions for large-scale data centres. It is convergent and prefabricated in the factory, with AI-based management ensuring steady operations. The solution assists power supply and distribution systems to move towards fully digital Operations and Maintenance (O&M). technologymagazine.com

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Inside The World's Largest Data Centre

Globally, the average data centre has occupied a space of around 100,000 sq ft. But, with a surge in demand for online tools – particularly over this past year – 100,000 sq ft units are now considered to be small.

Switch’s latest offering places a 1.3 million sq ft warehouse among many other large buildings in its 17.4 million sq ft campus, dubbed The Citadel, a name that hints at the tech giant’s focus on security and innovation. The park lies adjacent to Tesla’s Gigafactory, a company with which Switch has worked to bring a new lease of life – albeit a high-tech one – to the desert.

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With modular, hot swappable components all prefabricated in the factory, Sainani claims that “Time To Market (TTM) is slashed by 75% and maintenance is simplified, while full-link convergence reduces the physical footprint by more than 30% and power-link efficiency also reaches up to 95.5% to supply power in an environmentally-friendly way”.

The hyperscalers Hyperscale data centres are businesscritical facilities that support robust, scalable applications and are often associated with big data-producing companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft.

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A standard data centre is either a space or a building that houses a company’s IT equipment and servers. The company can then use its data centre resources to operate its business or serve those resources up to the public as a service.

The best way to compare hyperscale and enterprise data centres is to look at their scale and performance. Firstly, in terms of size, hyperscale data centres are significantly larger than enterprise data centres and, because of the advantages of economies of scale and custom engineering, they significantly outperform them, too. Technically speaking, a hyperscale data centre should exceed 5,000 servers and 10,000 sq ft. Some are as large as multiple football fields with thousands of servers running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Renewable energy consultants Blanchard claim that “economies of scale mean that larger data centres are more energyefficient than smaller ones”.

Electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors is building a data centre as part of its US$5bn battery plant in Nevada. Gigafactory Texas is a U.S. manufacturing hub for Model Y and the future home of Cybertruck. The new global headquarters will cover 2,500 acres

How the Tesla Giga factory will look upon completion

Gigafactory – Tesla Once complete, Tesla expects the Gigafactory to be the biggest building in the world – and entirely powered by renewable energy sources.

Designed to be a net-zero energy factory upon completion, the facility will be primarily powered by solar, with installation already underway. By reducing the cost of batteries, Tesla can make products available to more and more people, allowing us to make the biggest possible impact on transitioning the world to sustainable energy. To cope with the incredible power demands, the Gigafactory houses its own data centre!

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“ Traditional construction methods involve multiple vendors and complicated engineering designs, which can take months to draw up” SANJAY KUMAR SAINANI GLOBAL SVP AND CTO, HUAWEI DIGITAL

along the Colorado River with over 10 million sq ft of factory floor.

Why do data centres use so much energy?

According to the German statistics office, there are well over seven million data centres in the world, with the US in excess of 2,670 alone. They are followed by the UK with 452, Germany with 443, China, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, France and Japan.

With vast amounts of electricity required to run their equipment, data centres also need a lot of it to keep the machines cool.

Just how much electricity all these data centres use is up for debate.

We asked John Booth, Managing Director of Carbon3IT Ltd – an organisation that provides data centre support services such as ISO/IEC management standards, EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency), sustainability and energy efficiency consultancy and training services – just how much energy is used for data centres in the UK. “The sad fact is that we don’t really know, because we don’t really know how 82

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many data centres there are, and this is because the term 'data centre' means different things to different people.

They can range from a cloud hyperscaler of 50MW, via colocation sites around 10MW, all the way down to what we call distributed IT, which can be as little as 50kW – a small server room. What we do know is that the data from the Climate Change Agreement for Data Centres 4th Period, was 3.8TWh, or about 1% of the UK total electricity consumption.”

But Booth reiterates that this figure has to be treated with considerable caution, because it only covers the commercial data centres present in the UK, and even then, not all of them. For instance, it specifically excludes enterprise data centres, those that belong to business, government, academia etc.

“Research conducted in 2017 by Carbon3IT Ltd after the CCA 2nd period suggests that this figure is woefully incorrect and that the actual energy usage for UK Data Centres is closer to 41TWh, almost 12%. This is a truly alarming figure and, sooner or later, will need to

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“ The term ‘data centre’ means different things to different people” JOHN BOOTH

MANAGING DIRECTOR, CARBON3IT LTD

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be addressed by the Government and the Sector.”

When asked what can be done to reduce energy, Booth added: “The best approach is to adopt the best practices as contained within the EU Code of Conduct for Data Centres (Energy Efficiency) or the CLC TR EN 50600 99-1, which contains the same best practices but reformatted.

“These cover measures can be taken for management, IT procurement, cooling, power systems, other data centre systems, design and build and, finally, monitoring and measurement. You cannot manage what you cannot measure,” said Booth.

Creating more efficient data centres with lower Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) Darren Watkins, Managing Director for VIRTUS Data Centres, said: “For a long time, we have recognised the need to produce and operate more efficient data centres to ensure we deliver the right service to our customers, at the right cost.”

VIRTUS, a low-cost colocation provider, is at the forefront of providing support infrastructure to the most powerful IT deployments. They have had many years of refining their data centre designs to optimise the performance with regards to minimising PUEs. “We strive to produce a 1.0x PUE and achieve varying PUEs across our estate, all of which – according to the Uptime Institute’s annual survey – are well below the average of 1.58x. We have deployed well-established technology developments to tackle power usage such as liquid, evaporative and adiabatic cooling. Direct chip liquid cooling can offer some of the lowest PUE possible, as the temperature at which they operate means that no mechanical or adiabatic cooling would be required,” said Watkins.

More compute power may seem like it will result in significantly more power usage, but in fact, Watkins added that, “as it uses and produces higher temperatures, this leads to greater efficiency – not only in PUE, but also in other resources such as water”.

“Higher powered compute often uses greater intelligence in their software, so there is an opportunity to innovate to lower the PUE further.”

Watkins' opinion is that, in the future, it “may even mean that this kind of software could enable the removal of generators or UPSs completely”. technologymagazine.com

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ta-driven agility helping izz Air to soar above rivals

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Zsolt Nadas, Head of Technology at Wizz Air, explains how their digital ecosystem is leading to faster processes and better deals for their customers

W

izz Air likes to be the ultralow cost challenger airline in the aviation industry full of numerous, larger legacy rivals. The company prides itself on its agility to move passengers, and customers, as quickly and as efficiently as possible between points to out-manoeuvre the competition.

In the world of ultra low cost airlines, one of the core principles at Wizz Air is flying its aircraft as full as possible. Reducing costs generally makes people happy about flying on its airline. But to achieve this, the data comes in to calibrate ticket prices and make sure that the airline can fill the aircraft.

Zsolt Nadas is Head of Technology at Wizz Air. His responsibility is to provide a foundation for all of Wizz Air’s digital ecosystem, to build and enhance digital capabilities. This includes data and analytics, cybersecurity, infrastructure, networking, and interface with all the thirdparty providers for prepackaged software.

“We can use trends in ticket prices to proactively predict for the future. We sense demand and change our capacity in markets respectively. It all comes down to a very simple formula that if our aircraft are full, and we're maximising all our resources, such as our pilot time and aircraft utilisation time, we can reduce the cost to the customer. And so correctly predicting and understanding our customer's behaviour has enabled us to offer our ultra-low cost product,” he said.

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Zsolt Nadas, Head of Technology at Wizz Air

2003

Year founded

€739 mn Revenue in 2021

150+

Aircrafts

1,140+

Routes

196

Airports

51

Countries

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“We've really prided ourselves on the fact that - throughout this period - we were able to continue flying” ZSOLT NADAS

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY, WIZZ AIR

How Wizz Air became a data-driven business COVID-19 resulted in an accelerated investment into the data capacity of the organisation, so where it used to spend six to 18 weeks researching new routes, markets and opportunities, Nadas’ team department has now turned that time into six to 18 days.

The airline industry as a whole was static pre-pandemic, moving slowly in terms of route planning, capacity planning and pricing. With things changing on a weekly basis, Wizz Air adopted increased agility with opening new routes and new bases.

“We've really prided ourselves on the fact that - throughout this period - we were able to continue flying. We were able to provide people with mobility and the opportunity for those who needed to fly during the pandemic.

“We’re being incredibly reactive and responsive. We need more granular data so we can make more granular decisions. We were already better than the competition - who were looking at pure demographics from yearly statistics. Now we’re at the point that we make daily decisions based on promotions, where we expect to see a certain uptick. If we see more, that means the market's hot. If we see less, that means the market's cold, and we can actually model not just in real time, but far more actively respond,” said Nadas. technologymagazine.com

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Rethink your data and unlock better results for your business You know you need to be ready for the next upheaval to hit your business.

Avanade drives digital transformation that outpaces change. With more than 4,000 data experts globally, we help clients build the data platforms that foster better decision-making.

Wizz Air soars higher with value of unlocked data Wizz Air and Avanade executives discuss transforming data to build a stronger airline: faster insights, lower costs, and better customer experiences Leading European airline Wizz Air aims to give its customers the lowest cost. To find new ways to drive efficiency, they needed to squeeze insights from every data set.

Zsolt Nadas, Wizz Air Head of Technology, called upon Avanade to help transform their data on Microsoft Azure: “I was looking for a partner who wasn’t just going to come in and provide the delivery muscle, but somebody who would guide us and be more prescriptive with the vision”.

Alan Grogan, Global Data Platform Modernisation lead at Avanade, rapidly assembled a multi-geographic team to align data strategy to Wizz Air’s operational ambitions. “We saw a huge opportunity to help improve data accessibility and trustworthiness – and accelerate the time it took to generate high-value insights from that data,” said Grogan.

Accelerating data and better decisions A delay in data availability meant Wizz Air’s systems and people couldn’t act quickly

enough to make time and cost-saving decisions. With data now streamed to a modern Azure Data Platform, Avanade helped the airline unify and accelerate data value for near-real-time visibility into nearly every aspect of operations: from on-thefly decisions to staffing models to tweaks to flight paths that save fuel. Every incremental operational improvement meant reduced waste, reduced down-time, and ultimately, lower cost for Wizz Air customers.

Better green outcomes and beyond Wizz Air aspires to be the greenest airline in the industry. By moving to Azure, the world’s greenest cloud, Wizz Air can immediately lower its carbon footprint, and scale its data and analytical processing in a responsible way.

“We’re proud of the data-driven culture we’ve helped develop with Wizz Air,” said Grogan.

“I’m thrilled to say we’re only getting started.”

Nadas said, “Data projects are easy to dream and hard to deliver. And that’s why partners like Avanade are really what make this possible.”

Let Avanade show you how to use data to unlock better results

According to Nadas, data models used to need 18 or 24 months of data. But if things have changed twice in the last three weeks, he knew Wizz Air needed to become far better at using capabilities like machine learning (ML) to really know how quickly it can respond to new data, new questions and new hypotheses.

The lowest reasonable price ticket without compromising service Nadas believes it is really important that people continue to trust Wizz Air and have positive experiences. Some of the company’s predictive data isn't even just used for pricing and for market demand, 94

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but for improving on-time performance and the overall customer experience.

“We can't continue to push downward so far that we become an airline that people don't want to fly with, but we want to become as efficient as possible without compromising on our customer service.

“From its very inception, Wizz Air was different because it was trying to make air travel affordable to everybody. When it was founded here in Hungary 18 years ago, many in the country had not ever been on an aeroplane, so the CEO was really aiming to make it accessible for all.

“The biggest way we could make it accessible is through cost and making flying

WIZZ AIR

Zsolt Nadas TITLE: HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY COMPANY: WIZZ AIR INDUSTRY: AIR TRAVEL

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: BUDAPEST, HUNGARY Zsolt Nadas, as the Head of Technology at Wizz Air, ensures that the technology foundation grows with the agility and scalability to match the aggressive goals of the airline. As the fastest growing airline in Europe, Wizz Air is constantly expanding the breadth and depth of technology investments.

This includes modernisation of its website – which is Europe’s fourth most visited website – and an acceleration of the migration to public cloud. It also includes the governance, optimisation, and exploitation of the 300+ TB of data used in its day-to-day operation.

Zsolt started his career as a software engineer and later pivoted to Data and Analytics with a focus on data-centric transformation. He also has significant depth in compliance and enterprise risk management, having been responsible for the control design for the first Sarbanes-Oxley compliant Data Lake on a big data platform. Nadas stays close to cutting-edge innovation by being active in the start-up community, acting as a mentor for multiple data driven pioneers.

Zsolt graduated with a degree in Computer Science from University of Illinois, and later supplemented this with a Master’s in Computer Information Systems from the University of Phoenix.

“ W e’re being incredibly reactive and responsive” ZSOLT NADAS

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY, WIZZ AIR

WIZZ AIR

more affordable. And not just that. It was also about making sure it was an experience that everybody would appreciate and enjoy and giving people the choice to pay for the services they wanted. One of the early taglines was that ‘a smile is free’. What makes Wizz Air is the fact that we really are passionate about helping people move from A to B and back.

The culture has always been all about that.

Connecting people with people,” said Nadas.

HOW WIZZ AIR MAXIMISES ITS RESOURCES Wizz Air carried more than 3.6 million passengers in April 2022, against 564,643 last year. The strong growth in passenger numbers brought along an encouraging load factor of almost 84%, which was a more than 24% increase from last year's load factor of 59.2%.

Factors that have helped Wizz Air to achieve this: •

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•

An aircraft that is parked makes no money, but still needs to be paid for. Consumers will pick up this cost, so this needs to be avoided wherever possible.

A grounded pilot costs money and planning time. The ultra-low cost model is designed around simplicity, and utilisation of Wizz Air resources to the maximum.

Wizz Air aims to fly more efficient point to point routes only (direct).

This maximises revenue from a fuel and sustainability standpoint.

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Cloud allows accelerated digitalisation The differentiator in the past couple of months for Wizz Air has been its accelerated movement to cloud, and specifically Microsoft Azure and the leveraging of modern data technologies. Gone is the traditional, older SQL server. Now using Databricks, the business moves towards a cohesive data ecosystem where partners were able to accelerate progress from zero to functional in six weeks.

Combined with industry leading aviation knowledge from its partners at DAA labs, the company could do things like analysing the entire network in under an hour, by scaling up resources, and then scaling them back down when done.

“By analysing our customer behaviour, whether through something as simple as the efficiency and the proper response to promotions, to see if the market is responding as anticipated in almost real time, these technologies were a capability that tackles off the ball and chain. We can not just react, but predict; using multiple hypotheses that we can process and validate to pivot quickly. Our technology toolset– especially Databricks – transformed how quickly we can go from question to results. We’re not trying to replace human intuition, we’re maximising it with modern approaches,” Nadas said.

“ W e’ve actuall y put a price tag on disruption” ZSOLT NADAS

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY, WIZZ AIR

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Data-driven agility helping Wizz Air to soar above rivals

“ F rom its ver y inception, Wizz Air was different because it was trying to make air travel affordable to ever ybody” ZSOLT NADAS

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY, WIZZ AIR

Able to test new territories with agility and low risk When Wizz Air tried to expand into Norway’s domestic market, it was able to rethink the rollout after observing that the market conditions weren’t perfectly set up for the service at the time.

“And that's something that 20, 30, 40 years ago; wouldn't have been possible because the decision would've come too slowly and the data wouldn't have been able to give us that feedback as necessary and the analysis would've taken too long.

“Aviation is probably one of two industries that I've worked in, as part of my consulting background, that has always had a rich data tradition. The other one being oil and gas specifically because of the amount of investment to realise value. Aircraft are technologymagazine.com

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expensive. Deciding what to do with an incredibly expensive resource is critical.

Decades ago, the amount of analysis being done to decide where to deploy aeroplanes was non-trivial. The data available has actually increased since then, but modern tools like Databricks coupled with our Cloud compute in Azure allow us to take that data and process quickly to drive decisions,” explained Nadas.

Disruption management and pricing modelling for added agility Disruption management pricing modelling is something Wizz Air wants to maximise.

Nadas said that the most direct feedback loop that the company has is its customers: “The best way to predict customer behaviour is to watch the customer behaviour.”

“So whether it's a matter of having tighter integration between our marketing department and our pricing departments, so that we can correctly hypothesise the impact of our promotions, to determine whether that had the appropriate impact on passengers, or to measure outside factors; we are not a sole provider within any of our markets. And sometimes we will see external factors influencing our ridership and our average ticket there,” he said. technologymagazine.com

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“ W e've been able to use the customer data as a source of information and feedback without actually using traditional surveys” ZSOLT NADAS

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY, WIZZ AIR

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Pricing is one of the core differentiators for the airline, where it has actually pivoted from being for pure revenue maximisation to developing a communication channel with its customers, both directly and indirectly, in terms of automation.

Another element is disruption management. Having been a travelling consultant himself - who flew every day for almost a decade - Nadas knows those terrible days at the airport, wondering what's going on,

DID YOU KNOW...

DONE IN A WIZZ! It takes less than 30 seconds for Wizz Air to explain how to plan, book and fly confidently with them.

without actually using traditional surveys.

By experimenting with various customer segments, we learned a lot and it has made us a better airline”, said Nadas.

where the flight is going to take off from and the distress associated with this experience.

“We know from customer behaviour that a passenger who's been rescheduled three times will likely continue to fly with us. But a passenger whose flight has been rescheduled five or six times is less than 50% likely to continue flying with us. We've actually put a price tag on disruption. Should we cancel a flight and say it might go tomorrow, or should we just reschedule the flight and say it will go in three days and we can guarantee you that?

So we've been able to use the customer data as a source of information and feedback

Beyond data and into new technologies As part of the disruption management, Nadas knows how challenging it is when things aren't going to plan, and whether it's utilising existing technologies like its freshly launched chat bots, which have reduced call centre loads significantly, providing passengers with more immediate feedback online or using airport maps and in future, geofencing, to give customers more guidance in the airport, the solutions are always geared towards reducing stress.

“Airports are probably the most stressful part of the journey. And as an airline, we are merely tenants at an airport, but we aim to alleviate any stress with proactive communications.

We’re continuously improving in our goal to be helpful and customer friendly, with such features as push notifications to alert customers that boarding has started, with a boarding percentage to see if you need to start running or not to the gate,” said Nadas. technologymagazine.com

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“ B y being a responsible global citizen as a company, we become a better partner ” ZSOLT NADAS

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY, WIZZ AIR

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Wizz Air standing up in a crisis The leadership and crisis management team at Wizz Air are empowered to take the actions needed to protect and help people where possible. An example of this is offering free tickets to those fleeing the war in Ukraine, to help support refugees to reach a safe place: “We can continue to transport them around Europe on our network, if they need to evacuate or flee Ukraine,” said Nadas.

Wizz Air was also proactive in providing financial assistance by offering free seats available for Ukrainian refugees to book on all continental Europe flights departing from Ukraine’s border countries (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania). The airline is continuing to provide support by partnering with notfor-profit organisations Choose Love, The Shapiro Foundation, The Steve Morgan Foundation and USPUK, to offer 10,000 free tickets for Ukrainian refugees to travel from Ukraine’s neighbouring countries (Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia) to the UK, in support of the UK Government ‘Homes for Ukraine’ visa scheme.

“Our crisis management team, who has been working 24/7, since the conflict started, needs information as they are constantly making decisions.

“Recently, we've had to make some very rapid cybersecurity decisions and information privacy decisions to do things like opening up WhatsApp, to open up Telegram, to get us more connected, not just with our own ecosystem, but with the whole world, because we are part of a large ecosystem.

By being a responsible global citizen as a company, we become a better partner in reacting to this as a unified member of the EU and of the world,” he added.

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HOW INTELLIGENT WORKFLOWS CHANGE THE OIL & GAS INDUSTRY

With so much volatility in this sector, acutely felt by many western consumers, how are intelligent workflows enabling the shift towards alternatives?

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A

s defined by EY, intelligent automation (IA) refers to the integration of robotics with multiple components from different emerging technologies. These software robots operate as virtual employees, reliably automating manual, repetitive tasks at scale.

EY adds that, “when robotic, intelligent and autonomous systems are integrated, the result is intelligent automation, widening the scope of potential tasks and processes that can be automated. This powerful combination brings transformation across the whole spectrum of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and the internet of things”.

Within the Oil & Gas sector, data-driven analytics are driving safety and productivity improvements, but businesses face an uphill challenge to implement automated artificial intelligence (AI) workflows based on a standardised data model in a manner that is integrated with standard work processes.

Silos and data sets are seen as the main barriers within organisations and across the energy industry at large, which has led to such initiatives as the Open AI Energy Initiative (OAI), a first-of-its-kind open ecosystem of AI solutions involving Shell, C3 AI, Baker Hughes and Microsoft.

To add more perspective on this initiative, Dan Jeavons, General Manager – Data Science, who has led the initiative’s development, and Christophe Vaessen, General Manager Commercial – EMEA, who technologymagazine.com

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“ Digital technology is a key enabler to facilitate the way we are doing business” CHRISTOPHE VAESSEN

GENERAL MANAGER COMMERCIAL – EMEA, SHELL

leads commercialisation efforts of Shell’s intellectual property (IP) to third parties, spoke about technological advancements in their industry.

Vaessen told shell.com: “Digital technology is a key enabler to facilitate the way we are doing business. As an energy company, we have to adapt to remain at the forefront of this transformation. The three previous industrial revolutions have demonstrated that not only the most advanced industries were successful, but the

ones that were able to partner, develop and work together effectively were the ones that often stood out. In the OAI platform, we are building an open environment that enables all parties to work together toward a common ambition.”

The OAI is an open platform where companies can plug in and commercialise their apps. This includes not only international oil companies but also different sectors, such as cement or mining companies, that are running large operations and looking for digital tools to help with predictive maintenance.

As industrial facilities require robust and supportable applications, C3 AI provides a series of apps that provide predictive maintenance and reliability capabilities, while Microsoft provides the base platform. technologymagazine.com

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How Shell Uses Big Data And Artificial Intelligence

Dan Jeavons added that Shell is “committed to working as part of an ecosystem – bringing multiple players together to move forward in the AI space, because no one company can solve the world’s AI problems”.

“Furthermore, speed is paramount – the energy transition is forcing us to change more quickly and the digital transformation of society is also accelerating. Our view is that alliances are critical to accelerating our progress and enabling AI deployment at scale.”

As founding members of the OAI, Shell takes a leading role in developing a curated ecosystem of integrated solutions and creating fair value exchange for the companies that build on top of the platform.

“The nearest analogue to what we’re trying to do with the OAI is to create an Apple App Store for the process industry,” added Jeavons.

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“We have a standardised data model based on open standards. We have a platform that creates consistency, scalability and supportability to drive adoption. And, on top of that, we are aiming to build solutions that respect expertise and create fair value exchange”.

Shell is focused on further developing predictive maintenance solutions that can help plant operators take preemptive action to avoid shutdown based on equipment failure, according to Vaessen.

“In the medium term, we would like to expand the offer by making it more integrated and include offerings to assist plant optimisation, inspection and sustainability. We want to bring in other elements in the value chain and therefore offer a full ecosystem for plant operations.

“Partnership for the OAI will be incentivised by the solutions offered,

INTELLIGENT WORKFLOWS

and today, Shell is providing a first-wave of solutions. As the platform gains more adopters, its offerings will increase over time. Through collaboration and sharing technology, we are aiming to build an ecosystem where adopters will, together, be developing a fully-integrated solution,” said Vaessen.

Data and analytics a true partner to businesses at BP Franziska Bell is SVP, Digital Technology, a role that involves heading BP’s data and analytics discipline, which covers everything from data science to artificial intelligence, data engineering, data analytics and data management.

At BP, the applications for data and analytics are immense, working on everything from energy production, shipping, refining, commodities trading, and the sale of BP products to suppliers and customers.

Beyond the impact such work can have for BP as an organisation, Bell is particularly passionate about the impact that BP can have on the planet overall.

“Data and analytics will have a significant role to play in helping the world get to net zero. It’s a core part of BP’s ambition to become a net-zero company by 2050 – or sooner.

“All of this means that my teams are laying the

digital technology foundations that will be crucial to rewiring the world’s energy systems,” she said.

At BP, collaborating with colleagues to build the technologies and systems that accelerate BP and their customers towards net zero is something that makes Bell particularly proud.

“I am excited that data and analytics is a true partner to our businesses at BP. We collaborate closely with the organisation to

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“ To transform into a sm augmented utility com organisations should enabling their custom transition to sustaina consumption” PHIL SCHWARZ

INDUSTRY STRATEGIST FOR ENERGY & UTILITIES, OPENTEXT

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mart and mpany, d focus on mers to able energy

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co-develop data and analytics strategies, and develop data-driven products. For example, we have developed a data-driven algorithm that can be used to recommend where best to place EV charging points as BP aims to increase its global EV charging network to 100,000 charging points by 2030.

“My team is also developing a fleet decarbonisation tool with BP’s regions, cities & solutions business. The tool is intended to analyse fleet data and recommend the most cost-effective decarbonisation package and pathways,” said Bell.

BP can then help simplify the complexity behind the transition to a low-carbon economy through designing fleet packages for our customers that consider things like total cost of ownership, operations, country-specific policies, and emissions at a granular level.

Harnessing BP’s breadth of knowledge, the fleet decarbonisation tool allows customers to make decisions on optimal fleet composition and choose less carbon intensive fuel types.

“We are also investing in data and analytics tools and platforms to increase development speed and user experience for our internal data and analytics users. For example, the data and analytics platform team developed a Machine Learning DevOps framework in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, which received the DevOps industry award for ‘Best DevOps Tool/ Product 2021”. technologymagazine.com

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“ I am excited that data and analytics is a true partner to our businesses at BP” FRANZISKA BELL

SVP, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, BP

Skyrocketing costs are a persistent challenge in Oil & Gas sector OpenText optimises asset maintenance and manages critical information and operations within the Oil & Gas sector. Companies in upstream oil and gas production, midstream transportation and downstream refining operate in a highly regulated, constantly evolving environment.

With ongoing challenges, such as fluctuating oil prices, mergers and acquisitions and data silos, OpenText helps rein in costs, improve decisionmaking and uptime, and achieve desired ROI through peak operational excellence and profitability.

Phil Schwarz, Industry Strategist for Energy & Utilities, OpenText, reiterated that “the energy and utilities industry has faced huge volatility in the last 18 months”.

“As a result, companies are working hard to extend the life of existing assets and deploy new ones on time and within budget while keeping risks as low as possible.”

In his mind, intelligent automation is key to helping the entire industrial process industry become more adaptable. This is especially true for the utilities sector.

“To transform into a smart and augmented utility company, organisations should focus on enabling their customers to transition to sustainable energy 114

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Intelligent Automation for the Oil & Gas Industry

consumption and on new businesses, such as renewables and beyond the metre.

“However, they must be pragmatic and maximise ROI by re-engineering processes before they are implemented. Finally, they must curate the culture and mindset in which these technologies complement the workforce’s skills.”

Schwarz adds that “cloud adoption will also be key” – a notion supported by research, which shows that 74% of Utilities plan to spend more on cloud technologies by 2025.

“This will break down information silos, giving team members and suppliers the right information at the right time to ensure sufficient energy supplies and service levels.” technologymagazine.com

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DRIVING DIGITAL INSURANCE INNOVATION AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: JOE PALLISER

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A truly global commercial and consumer insurer, Chubb is driving digital transformation across the digital and insurance marketplace globally

hubb is driving digital transformation within the vast insurance marketplace.

The insurer is a global provider of property and casualty, accident and health, reinsurance, and life insurance on a global scale.

Gabriel Lazaro is the Head of Digital for Chubb’s international general insurance business – a role that sees him based in Singapore, and responsible for the success and growth of the digital businesses across Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. Lazaro works with the consumer and digital teams globally to expand Chubb’s distribution through digital ecosystem partnerships.

“We innovate in terms of insurance products and value propositions. That includes claims and the technology to enable a seamless customer experience,” explains Lazaro, who spent 12 years in early-stage and mobile content companies, before a stint at AIG as Head of Digital for emerging markets. It was this experience that led to a move to Chubb in 2016, where he now oversees the digital insurance product distribution and expansion of the company’s digital business across 51 countries and territories.

A culture of development and inclusion With a global footprint of local offices in 54 countries and territories, Chubb has a robust reputation in the industry. It is known for its excellence in underwriting, risk engineering capabilities, and claims services, as well as for its innovative approach to digital transformation. technologymagazine.com

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Chubb Studio and embedded offerings

The sheer volume of the company is staggering. Chubb employs an estimated 34,000 staff around the world. In 2021, the company reported a total of US$47bn in Gross Written Premiums (GWP) and currently owns around $200bn in assets.

Yet, despite its massive size, looking after its people is a “prime consideration”, says Lazaro, who speaks of his team with pride.

He adds: “I like to inspire people to become the best versions of themselves.

In order to do that, I need to provide a clear vision to make sure that everyone is aligned and moving towards a common goal.”

Empowering the workforce is also critical, he states. “It’s imperative to empower people to unleash their creativity. The other part I'm passionate about is execution and providing tangible results. At Chubb, we are a very diverse group of professionals. There is entrepreneurial spirit across the organisation with a can-do attitude and we practise our craft with precision and passion.”

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“ The global protection gap has an estimated worth of $1.2tn. There’s a huge opportunity to address that with a new value proposition for consumers” GABRIEL LAZARO

SVP, HEAD OF DIGITAL, OVERSEAS GENERAL INSURANCE, CHUBB

CHUBB

GABRIEL LAZARO TITLE: SVP, HEAD OF DIGITAL, OVERSEAS GENERAL INSURANCE

Driving digital transformation in emerging markets Although the company has always had a strong focus on digital products and services, many recent changes have been implemented to expand and engage consumers.

“We have always been focused on expanding our digital products and services through partnerships based on a B2B2C model,” says Lazaro. “Developing unique value propositions and embedded experiences within platforms and ecosystems is paramount. We have almost 200 digital distribution partners globally, across financial services, e-commerce,

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: SINGAPORE Gabriel Lazaro is Head of Digital for Overseas General Insurance, Chubb's international general insurance business in 51 countries and territories. Based in Singapore, Mr. Lazaro has responsibility for digital insurance product distribution and digital business in countries and territories outside North America, working with Chubb's digital teams around the world.

Mr. Lazaro joined Chubb in 2016 as Head of Digital for Latin America and was promoted to his current role in 2021. Prior to joining Chubb, he held multiple international roles at AIG, including Global Digital Marketing Director and Head of Digital for Emerging Markets.

Mr. Lazaro started his career in early stage digital and mobile content companies like Fox Mobile and Zed Group in Continental Europe.

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super apps and major airlines. These digital distribution partnerships provide us with an addressable market of more than 300 million customers, most of them in Latin America and Asia, who see our products through our digital distribution partners’ business platforms.”

As Chubb focuses on its digital transformation journey and its entry and development of emerging markets, the corporation has also developed a platform called Chubb Studio that enables it to provide API technologies to connect with partners in record time. By embedding Chubb products in the partner’s ecosystem, the company is able to deliver contextual insurance offerings to customers seamlessly. To date, more than 19 million policies have been sold across the offer spectrum through Chubb Studio.

According to Lazaro, the technology has provided Chubb with a competitive advantage over other industry players.

“It's a cloud-based, easy-to-use API platform that fuels our businesses and partnerships while helping us to connect with our digital distribution partners.

We can create products within their platforms in a very easy and fast manner, pulling our digital underwriting, claims and service capabilities together into one place.”

“It provides scale because, as a global platform, every time we incorporate another market or product, our partners are able to benefit from our expanded offerings.

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Emerging markets and insurance technology adoption One area Chubb excels in is emerging market penetration. This isn’t a task for the faint hearted; companies developing new products in such a space must often be prepared to work with outdated systems and legacy business models before introducing any new products to market.

“At Chubb, we see emerging markets as a fantastic opportunity – especially Southeast Asia and Latin America. These two territories alone have a combined total population of one billion people, 80% of which are under the age of 40 and fully digitally engaged through smartphones.”

Lazaro says that, during the pandemic in Southeast Asia, more than 70 million people

became digital consumers, therefore, enabling protection solutions for those customers digitally has become an opportunity. Entering into such markets also enables companies to benefit the local populations by reducing the protection gap and providing low cost, easy-access insurance products that previously were not available.

“There’s a protection gap globally – especially in developing economies and emerging markets – of around $1.2tn. These markets have low insurance penetration compared to other markets globally,” says Lazaro, who points out that the pandemic has accelerated digital adoption across all geographies, developed markets and sectors.

“We are focused on an emerging middle class, small-to-medium companies, gig workers, content creators, Gen Z and Millennials,” he adds. “There is a huge opportunity for those across the globe.”

Insurance technologies and the digital ecosystem As part of its digital expansion, Chubb has partnered with a wide range of businesses on a global scale. The insurer provides its innovative services as part of a move to increase embedded product opportunities for agents and brokers.

“We work with businesses globally, and our goal is to help them to embed insurance offerings into their core products and services,” says Lazaro. “This provides peace of mind to the end customer and also helps businesses increase customer loyalty and then support it with new revenue streams.”

As a global company, Chubb offers a turnkey solution by helping its digital distribution partners with regulatory and related elements to make sure they have a successful insurance experience. The teams have broad industry expertise and implement technologymagazine.com

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digital insurance product offerings for verticals such as banks, fintechs, super apps, ecommerce retailers, mobility companies, travel, mobile network operators and more.

Lazaro’s team collaborated with Grab, Southeast Asia's leading superapp providing users with transportation, food delivery and digital payment services, to provide Grab users with an innovative insurance solution called Ride Cover.

Ride Cover provides complimentary personal accident insurance to Grab’s passengers and disburses a voucher in the event of a delayed pickup. Available in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, Ride Cover is opt-in and integrated into the passenger’s ride booking journey within the Grab App. For a very low fee (e.g. S$0.30 in Singapore), passengers are offered a premium service with additional protection in the event of accidents.

They have also partnered with other innovators such as NuBank, the largest neobank in Latin America, to launch a fully digital life insurance offering embedded in the bank’s app. “Together with Nubank, we created customer-friendly life insurance with a flexible product and a price that resonates with the Latin American emerging middle class. It was reported that, in the first year, we sold more than half a million life insurance policies, more than half of those who bought the product said it was the first life insurance they had taken out,” he states.

Other partners include Dacadoo and Betterfly, as well as other major players in Latin America, Korea, and Southeast Asia, all creating value-adding services to the end users that extend beyond the traditional insurance. “We like to co-create to develop those unique experiences at scale,” says Lazaro. “One of our core strengths is that, 124

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as an international company, we partner with companies that have a vision beyond their unique markets.”

Lazaro says Chubb creates unique value propositions – from selling to claims experiences. “We see everything as a whole.

We are proud of our journey and partnering with the best-in-class partners that we have.

It has helped us improve our services from the product and technology perspectives.”

Growing services in the pandemic Like many providers, Chubb’s digital business expanded during the pandemic because the demand for digital services skyrocketed. “For

CHUBB

NAME SURNAME JOB TITLE, COMPANY NAME

“ We created a customerfriendly life insurance with a flexible product and a price that resonates with the Latin American emerging middle class,” GABRIEL LAZARO

SVP, HEAD OF DIGITAL, OVERSEAS GENERAL INSURANCE, CHUBB

us, especially in the digital space, it has had a positive impact in terms of uptake,” says Lazaro. “We launched Chubb Studio in the middle of the pandemic, and we are going to keep expanding our capabilities through the platform to make the connection with our partners easier.”

Lazaro says that, in terms of claims and servicing, Chubb is working towards frictionless customer journeys, enhancing the overall experience to make claims effortless, simplified and with as few clicks as possible.

These enhancements will be made possible by new technologies the insurance giant is investing in. technologymagazine.com

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“In terms of the technology that we’re investing in, data analytics and discovering how we can take advantage of the data that we’ve collected by ourselves through our partners, this information will enable us to work towards product recommendation engines and make, at scale, much more relevant offerings for partners to provide to their end users.”

The goal, he says, is to offer the right product to the right partner at the right time.

The future of insurance Embedded products are, in Lazaro’s experienced eyes, the future of the insurance 126

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industry – although they are also relevant in other sectors. Point of Sale offerings, he reiterates, present truly new and valuable opportunities for insurers looking to expand their products and services.

34,000 EMPLOYEES

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“We innovate in terms of insurance products and value propositions. That includes claims and the technology to enable that experience,,” GABRIEL LAZARO

SVP, HEAD OF DIGITAL, OVERSEAS GENERAL INSURANCE, CHUBB

“Chubb was one of the early movers on embedded insurance, through airlines many years ago. Then we expanded partnering with ride-hailing companies, super apps, and fintechs. We are the leaders in some markets and territories, in terms of volumes and experience.”

“We truly believe embedded insurance provides the means for each platform to be able to provide really meaningful insurance products to their customers in a seamless experience. With one click, we can increase protection for customers and create incremental sources of revenue for

our partners. It's a win-win situation.”

It is this connectivity that will result in a smaller protection gap for end-user customers – especially those in emerging markets, which, says Lazaro, is the ultimate goal. “I strongly believe that we have a-oncein-a-lifetime opportunity. There are more than four billion people connected to the internet right now, and the digital economy, through partnerships and ecosystems, will be worth trillions of dollars.

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TRUSTWORTHY AI

HOW CAN WE ENSURE TRUSTWORTHY AI? For AI to reach widespread adoption in society, what steps are required to achieve this? And are businesses ready to seriously invest?

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rrol Gardner, EY Global Vice Chair – Consulting, recently told us that, while data and analytics are at the core of transformation, “businesses that graduate beyond these foundational technologies to invest in AI are the ones that reap greater rewards”.

“In an era when customers have come to expect services tailored to their needs and preferences, AI can unlock that much sought-after customer-centricity allowing businesses not just to react to changing customers’ expectations, but also anticipate and predict them.”

Technology Magazine’s July 2022 cover stars, digital transformation experts and

Workday partners Kainos, argue that trustworthy technology is sustainable technology. In their recent report on trustworthy AI, they explore how the risks from misuse of artificial intelligence – much like the impact of humans on our planet’s climate – need to be addressed.

According to Kainos, ‘the move towards environmental sustainability has seen professionalisation, standardisation and mechanisms for disclosure – all to create confidence that the world economy can decarbonise. Artificial intelligence seems to be on a similar trajectory’.

The Belfast-based IT firm argues that governments and corporations are technologymagazine.com

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“ We see AI as the future.

It's being described as a revolution, similar to an industrial revolution” PETER CAMPBELL

DATA AI PRACTICE LEAD, KAINOS

‘considering ways of enforcing that the technologies are lawful, ethical and robust, so that their benefits are sustainable and can be realised in the long term.’

Peter Campbell is Data AI Practice Lead at Kainos. After 20 years at Kainos studying every aspect of AI, it occurred to him that there is a need to improve how AI is perceived.

Campbell argues that, while international standards are coming, “we all need practical standards to follow that are available for us today to allow us to apply and implement”.

Kainos are employing their first-ever Data Ethicist to carry out this kind of work

and, crucially, increase levels of trust while helping make AI explainable.

With headlines floating around about some of the harms that have been described regarding the deployment of AI, Campbell highlights the seriousness with which the company treats such headlines: “We see AI as the future. It's being described as a revolution, similar to an industrial revolution.

“If we don't act today in a responsible, ethical way in terms of how we develop AI and deploy it, and help users understand what it's doing and not doing for them, then that will limit or prevent the adoption of artificial intelligence over the next few years.

“So we want to act early to mitigate and prevent some of those issues arising,” said Campbell.

The quality assurance process whenever you develop a system that tests and retests against the specification is important to technologymagazine.com

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“MOST MODERN-DAY AI IS JUST A BLACK BOX”

understand what outputs it robust,'' said Benedetta is giving you, and whether Cevoli, Data Science that compares with what Engineer, Speechmatics. you expect. “That's no “AI should be honest and, different with an AI model or consequently, trustworthy at AI system,” he added. all levels – from its inception “It’s important for inputs to deployment. Creating to any AI system to be such a system requires RAMPRAKASH RAMAMOORTHY properly understood. We a deep understanding DIRECTOR OF AI RESEARCH, call that, in a technical sense, MANAGEENGINE of its application in the exploratory data analysis, real world and the extent which looks at the statistical variance and to which individual differences of users, gaps with the data set to understand what such as age, race, gender, location and we can reasonably do with this data and language, influence their experience with what we cannot?” the tech. Keeping these differences right at the centre of product development with a Software should be lawful, ethical genuine drive to address these issues, before and technically robust technology is disseminated throughout “As technology and AI are becoming part society, is a way to build trust with the of our lives more and more, we have to public,” she said. ensure that people view these tools, and the Bias has multiple shapes and forms, companies and institutions that utilise them, existing in many different aspects. as lawful, ethically adherent and technically Oftentimes, we are not even aware of it, 132

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TRUSTWORTHY AI

according to Cevoli: “Biases can creep into technologies in numerous ways. Hence why monitoring and addressing bias is generally a hard problem to solve. Yet, this cannot be an excuse to use ‘tunnel vision’ when it comes to training and testing.

AI and machine learning technologies are only as good as the datasets and the algorithms used to train them. Labelling data is extraordinarily time-consuming and therefore limiting, with the datasets created far too narrow to be entirely representative.

Therefore, we cannot expect surveillance technology, for example, to be able to accurately identify cohorts of individuals never seen before”.

For trustworthy AI, Cevoli believes we need it to be “globally representative and to understand where bias will be compounded rather than reduced. Using unlabelled data has the potential to greatly reduce bias as the volume of data that a model can be trained on is increased by orders of magnitude. Testing beyond our own communities is paramount to designing technology that does not intentionally or accidentally favour certain groups in society over others. A wider testing culture is essential to addressing and mitigating bias”.

Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, Director of AI Research at ManageEngine, part of Zoho Corporation, adds that “AI has been enabling enterprise software to move from just process automation to decision automation.

“Given how AI is automating decisions in mission-critical use cases, it's important to add some accountability to the whole system. This can be achieved by using explainable AI,” he said.

“Most modern-day AI is just a black box where the AI engine doesn't explain why it arrived at a particular decision,” argues Ramamoorthy. “But in an enterprise, usually

The Aletheia Framework Used by Rolls Royce, it is a simple, practical framework for adopting AI responsibly. Kainos has adopted it as a standard for guiding how they work with our customers, deploying it with each of their customers who’re developing AI.

there are processes built around decisions that involve a hierarchy of people or teams.

When a decision is automated, it needs to be documented for future reference and due process has to be followed. An AI model that can explain its decision can help human beings understand and execute processes related to the decision – or even veto it, given how AI models are only 80% accurate on average,” he adds.

ManageEngine has deployed explainable AI wherever possible, and the use of AI features has gone up by 72% since they started adding explanations to their predictions for IT automation.

EY – only 35% of companies have a process in place to evaluate AI risks such as bias and errors Greg Cudahy is EY Global Technology, Media & Entertainment and technologymagazine.com

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“ AI should be honest and, consequently, trustworthy at all levels – from its inception to deployment” BENEDETTA CEVOLI

DATA SCIENCE ENGINEER, SPEECHMATICS

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Telecommunications (TMT) Sector Leader.

He said that, to counter concerns over AI, businesses and governments alike will need to apply “robust risk management principles and governance to ensure that the impact of AI is fair and trustworthy”.

In addition, he suggested that “AI programmes and initiatives should be continuously reviewed for unintended outcomes that could have a negative impact on the business, customers, and society”.

“While deploying AI at speed will no doubt give any organisation competitive advantage, leaders will find that it is by augmenting the intelligence of their people that they will realise their full potential,” said Cudahy.

We are still “scratching the surface” when it comes to AI and its true potential, according to Errol Gardner at EY: “Its use currently is mainly confined to automating manual processes and speeding up the analysis of large data sets to help decision making.”

The true potential of AI, however, lies elsewhere in Gardner’s opinion.

“AI is about more than just augmenting and improving other technologies. It is about augmenting and improving human intelligence to enable better choices. AI will be able to do this by taking a more sophisticated approach to analysis and problem solving through spotting patterns/ solutions that augment those of its human creators. The result will be a whole new way of looking at the world,” he argues.

To unlock the power, potential and promise of AI, Gardner adds that, similarly to Kainos, “businesses will need to set the right frameworks in place that will help stakeholders overcome their preconceptions around it, and fully embrace its power to transform systems, operations and services”. technologymagazine.com

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Dina Subuh, Director, Capability Management, Ooredoo Kuwait, discusses the challenges of working in a male-dominated field & her digital transformation work

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tep inside any technology workspace, and it’s easy to notice that most workers are not females.

While this is a global problem, a lack of equal gender distribution is particularly prevalent in the Middle East.

Despite UNESCO reporting that woman make up 57% of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) graduates in Arab countries, Dina Subuh, Technology Director of Capability Management at Ooredoo Telecom, Kuwait (Ooredoo Kuwait), comments: “The turnover rate is more than twice as high for women as for men in technology jobs, with one-inthree facing gender bias at work.”

She adds: “Women lack opportunities for advancement in the industry, as well as a lack of role models and mentorship, and there are high pay gaps. Many women are leaving their jobs in technology by the age of 35 – a 45% higher rate than men.”

This underrepresentation of women in tech is a huge liability for the industry, stresses Subuh. “Those that embrace diversity and inclusion are more likely to report growth, perform better, and have an increased competitive edge,” she says.

Being a leading woman in the technology space for Ooredoo, Subuh is responsible for the digital application development and management of the company’s entire demand and delivery of commercial roadmaps, business continuity and automation plans.

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Ooredoo Kuwait: Empowering women in tech in the Middle East

“I have carved my career in the Telecommunications sector for more than 20 years. During that time, I have had a healthy progression through many positions

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THREE WAYS THE MIDDLE EAST CAN HELP WOMEN THRIVE IN TECHNOLOGY

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We have to work on access to relevant knowledge and networks for women in technology because they gain strength in numbers.

We should improve access to formal finance for women entrepreneurs.

Stakeholders from the public sector, the private sector, and development agencies should collaborate in support of Women in technology.

August 2022

in different companies. I first joined Ooredoo in 2008 (formerly known as Wataniya) and progressed up the ladder from a Supervisor to Assistant Manager, and I’m currently Director of Capability Management,” reflects Subuh.

Over the years, Subuh has faced many tough times managing large groups of engineers and technicians in a typically male-dominated field. “However, this did not stop me from being successful in my roles. In fact, it helped shape my personality by boosting my selfconfidence and influencing people around me in everything I do,” comments Subuh.

“I particularly love my job in Ooredoo Kuwait. I feel extremely fulfilled by delivering value to our customers, paying attention to details and adopting agile and best practices in the IT domain. Ooredoo believed in my talent and gave me the opportunity to develop my leadership skills by joining Harvard Business School Executive Education – a one of a kind experience that exposed me to different cultures, perspectives, and global teams.”

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“ Those that embrace diversity and inclusion are more likely to report growth, perform better, and have an increased competitive edge”

DINA SUBUH TITLE: TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY MANAGEMENT INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: KUWAIT

DINA SUBUH

For those young girls looking to build a career in technology, Subuh believes in the unique capabilities of women in their attention to detail and dedication to doing things right.

“Most of my inspirations came from women in technology in the telecommunications industry in the US, after graduating from the University of Colorado as an Electrical Engineer. For those keen to build a career in technology I would say, show up and take your seat at the table, no matter what the challenges around you. Speak up and persist to pursue your dreams, and you will get there eventually,” says Subuh.

“For others in the industry, women can best be supported by men, so make room for them, listen to them, and encourage them to express the great ideas they have, and turn all biases and stereotypes around.”

Digital transformation at Ooredoo Telecom, Kuwait As the Technology Director of Capability Management at Ooredoo Kuwait, Subuh’s role

EXECUTIVE BIO

TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY MANAGEMENT, OOREDOO

Impact-obsessed and accomplished leader with comprehensive experience directing end-to-end IT transformation projects and devising effective smart strategies to ensure efficient technological adoption and embedment within organisations.

Ms. Subuh is a well-liked manager of a competitive team. Kind and respectful, she is sensitive to the needs of others. She is a problem solver; she tends to see setbacks as opportunities.

She’s always engaged and is a source of trust and high levels of emotional intelligence to her colleagues.

She's grateful for her 20+ years of experience in the IT Telecom domain leading high-performing and diverse team of professionals, including Solution Architects, PMs, Developers, and Analysts, and oversee delivery of IT projects and strategic/ commercial digital roadmaps. Working with different devised commercial segments of B2C, B2B and fixed mobile networks.

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“ We work together as a team to deliver Ooredoo’s objectives, and we are achieving great milestones” DINA SUBUH

TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY MANAGEMENT, OOREDOO

includes developing and leading the digital transformation vision for the organisation, as well as implementing IT, Network Applications IT Enterprise Applications, and Centralised Digital Platforms.

While many perceive digital transformation to be discovering and capturing new opportunities or

encapsulating a radical change in technology, Subuh explains that it is a mindset. “If well-equipped in the right direction, it will lead us to a broader perspective,” says Subuh.

When it came to Ooredoo’s own digital transformation, the organisation started with the basics, looking at its own existing capabilities. “We realised from our experience that the best results will come from using our current capabilities. While the current trend or myth suggests that ‘Digital requires radical disruption of the value proposition’, we found that the best results can come from ‘adaptation rather than reinvention’.”

She adds: “Therefore, we started refining and simplifying our processes continuously. We closely managed the software development lifecycle to simplify and standardise the product configuration. technologymagazine.com

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“These products have been designed to optimise telecommunication network solutions for revenue growth and improve customer satisfaction” DINA SUBUH

TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY MANAGEMENT, OOREDOO

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“ Our innovation strategy has set our priorities for the kinds of innovation that are most important for your organisation” DINA SUBUH

TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY MANAGEMENT, OOREDOO

“We started to use RPA to automate product configuration, eliminate human errors and increase the process speed.”

“Our Innovation strategy has set our priorities for the kinds of innovation that are most important for your organisation. This was the basis of success.”

“We have also built a testing tool from our existing skill set for our business users to perform user acceptance testing (UAT) seamlessly, without depending on us. Our Digital Solutions have been designed around the customer’s needs with personalised offerings on our mobile app. Similarly, for B2B, we built a self-service tool in which the payer can activate new lines, without depending on sales agents. In coordination with our B2B team, we can extend it to device purchases as well.”

During 2022, Ooredoo Kuwait will continue to build its digital capabilities in the Software and product development lifecycle, with the technologymagazine.com

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Being a leader in the Telecommunications sector, Ooredoo must ensure quality, innovation, and outstanding time-to-market in order to remain competitive. “To achieve this, we have partnered with Diyar United Company as our main IT provider,” says Subuh.

“They manage our network operations centre (NOC), IT Infrastructure, applications stack, and application development. The application development area is particularly important to us as this is where we can maintain our competitive edge in the market. Diyar United Company provides us with end-to-end services using highly skilled resources.

She adds: “We work together as a team to deliver Ooredoo’s objectives, and we are achieving great milestones, like introducing Dev-Ops and applying agile methodology. Diyar United Company also helps us to control our costs.”

In addition to Diyar United Company, Ooredoo also partners with DataSpark for its mobility data products. “These

August 2022

products have been designed to optimise telecommunication network solutions for revenue growth and improve customer satisfaction,” says Subuh.

“DataSpark empowers organisations with mobility intelligence to help maximise the value of their networks and save on capital investment spending. They are leaders in processing large geospatial temporal mobility data to deliver intelligence on people and places using the highest data privacy standards. Understanding how people move, where they go and what they do enables organisations to make more informed decisions from planning capital expenditure to creating better customer experiences.”

“Through our patented state-of-the-art technology and our team of experienced data scientists, custom mobility reports are built to gain a deeper comprehension of movements. We transform this data into mobility intelligence through our proprietary MobilityGenome™ framework - an unparalleled library of insights on people’s mobility.”

OOREDOO TELECOM, KUWAIT

introduction of Dev-Ops methodology to automate development, inject security by design, and quality testing along the lifecycle.

“We believe this is essential for our agility and quality delivery, to further fasten time to market and delivery before the competition,” says Subuh.

“The telecommunication field is a fast-paced industry that requires good problem-solving skills, staying up to date on industry trends, as well as the ability to work well with a team”

Harnessing failures to drive success “We all are bound to fail and make a wrong or bad decision in both work and life in general,” says Subuh.

“How we handle failure is more important than how we handle success.

In Ooredoo Kuwait we embrace failure to understand how we can improve and bounce back better. A healthy, no-blame culture is key, as it boosts the trust among leaders and working teams. Failure

DINA SUBUH

TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR OF CAPABILITY MANAGEMENT, OOREDOO

should never be about the person. We encourage a self-responsible team that is continuously guided and matured to better improve our outcomes. In the end, we want our employees to be happy working and find enjoyment.”

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TOP 10

CLOUD COMPUTING PLATFORMS

We run down the leaders in this hyper-competitive world, which is turning into a trillion dollar market as more companies launch straight to cloud

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

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loud resources are typically offered with on-demand plugand-play capabilities, allowing individuals and businesses to use only what they need, when they need it. This flexibility to build, manage, and deliver small- and large-scale web and mobile applications on the cloud has seen an explosion of adoption – from the hyperscalers to startups.

With virtual server hosting, cloud providers bring diverse resources over the internet, such as big data analytics, IoT, compute, and more to streamline development and generally make lives easier.

Here, we take a look at the main players solving common issues with outstanding user-friendliness and everagile product offerings. technologymagazine.com

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Dropbox

Founded: 2007

CEO: Drew Houston Dropbox is a smart workspace company that provides secure file sharing, collaboration, and cloudbased storage solutions. Designed for various business sizes to store files and documents, saved data or content can be accessed from any device with an internet connection.

Dropbox was formed due to Drew Houston’s bad habit of forgetting his USB drives, culminating in a crashed hard drive with no backup. Houston created his own personal server and wrote a program that would allow him to access the server and its data from any location.

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Founded: 2012

CEO: Shatanu Narayan Adobe Creative Cloud is unlike the other vendors, primarily focusing on the creative aspect of cloud computing. With a Software-asa-Service (SaaS) offering, Adobe provides an array of tools geared towards graphic design, video editing, photography, and more.

CEO Shantanu Naryan told Forbes: “You can argue that the most important thing on the internet now is authentication of content. When we create the world’s content, we have to help with the authenticity of that content, or the provenance of that content.”

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“The cloud market is one massive opportunity”

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Dell Tech Cloud Founded: 2019

CEO: Michael Dell Dell Technology combines the capacity of VMware software and Dell Technologies' infrastructure to provide an integrated multicloud approach. As a hybrid, multi-cloud provider, Dell focuses its core offering around storage and data protection.

Addressing Dell Technologies World 2022 in his keynote speech, CEO Michael Dell highlighted the company’s “US$101bn multicloud vision, its developer future and support for Ukraine during the current conflict with Russia”.

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Digital Ocean Founded: 2011

CEO: Yancey Spruill Digital Ocean is designed to meet developers’ needs for deploying and scaling applications that run simultaneously on multiple computers. As the third-largest hosting company globally, Digital Ocean has two primary product offerings: compute and storage.

“The cloud market is one massive opportunity,” explained Yancey Spruill, CEO, to CEO Magazine. “There are 14 million new companies created every year. That’s 50 million software engineers. Today, those groups spend about US$50bn on the cloud; tomorrow, that’s going to be US$100bn.” technologymagazine.com

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business CARES ABOUT equality It’s about doing more CL IC K H E RE

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Salesforce

Founded: 2009

CEO: Brett Taylor, Marc Benoiff

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IBM Cloud

Founded: 2005

CEO: Arvind Krishna IBM has an abundance of services to help simplify many software development tasks, blending PaaS with IaaS to provide a holistic cloud experience.

In February, IBM announced a hybrid cloud partnership with enterprise software firm SAP and at a recent summit, Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna said: “Everyone wants to use multiple public clouds. People are still going to use on-premise; people are still going to worry about data sovereignty. People want flexibility of deployment, they want speed, and they want value.”

Salesforce offers cloud-based CRM, customer service, marketing automation, sales, and more. Their customer relationship tools suite help businesses grasp a datadriven approach and their reach is, in this respect, prolific.

Speaking to Silicon Valley Business Journal, Brett Taylor, co-CEO of Salesforce, said: “You can start companies from anywhere.

You can hire from anywhere. Silicon Valley is now in the cloud."

Adding to this dialogue over the importance of cloud infrastructure, Marc Benioff, co-CEO, told a company conference in New York that "office mandates are never going to work", according to Yahoo Finance.

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Alibaba Cloud Founded: 2009

CEO: Jeff Zhang Alibaba is a global leader in the cloud with a focus on security and artificial intelligence. The Alibaba Cloud is the second-largest cloud service provider around the world, powering almost half of China’s 4.97 million websites.

“The rapid increase in data volume and scale, together with higher demand for lower latency, calls for the creation of new tech infrastructure,” said Alibaba Cloud Intelligence President Jeff Zhang in a release regarding Alibaba’s Cloud Infrastructure Processing Units (CIPU), their latest ‘homegrown silicon’ venture.

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03

Google Cloud Platform Founded: 2008

CEO: Sundar Pichai The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is an assemblage of services that operate on the same infrastructure used to power Google Search, Youtube, and several other offerings.

CEO of Google and Alphabet Sundar Pichai recently announced plans to invest US$9.5bn in data centres and offices across the U.S. “One of our state-of-the-art data centres is in Mayes County, Oklahoma. I’m excited to announce that, there, we are launching the world’s largest publicly-available machine learning hub for our Google Cloud customers.”

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Microsoft Azure Founded: 2008

CEO: Satya Nadella

Microsoft Azure offers an abundance of on-demand computing services designed for efficient building in the cloud, with four different kinds of cloud computing: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and serverless.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Data Centre Dynamics: “Across the globe, we have seen unprecedented growth in the cloud. With this surge, coupled with macro trends impacting the whole industry, we’ve taken steps to address customer increases in capacity while also expediting server deployment in our data centres.

"Our priority remains ensuring business continuity for customers. In addition to managing and planning for growth, we actively load balance as needed. If it does become necessary to put capacity restrictions in place, we will first restrict trials and internal workloads to prioritise growth of existing customers.”

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DISCOVER WHO MADE THE CUT. Top 100 Companies in Technology Read Now

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

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Amazon Web Services

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AWS

Founded: 2006

CEO: Adam Selipsky Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world-leading cloud vendor, boasting over 200 integrated features and services, in addition to 30% of the total cloud market share. Offering a free tier cloud option, AWS enables businesses to test various services free of charge and without any commitments.

Amazon’s cloud unit grew 36.5% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2022, slightly faster than analysts projected. AWS revenue totaled US$18.44bn in the quarter, above the US$18.27bn consensus among analysts polled by StreetAccount.

That works out to about 16% of Amazon’s total revenue, according to CNBC. At Mobile World Congress 2022, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky referenced several partnerships with telecoms firms including Telia, T-mobile, Vodacom and Bell.

“There is a lot of innovation across the industry, but we’re seeing cloud infrastructure being used for more – including to transform core systems.”

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EDGE CENTRES

THE ART OF BEING LIKE WATER AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: SAM STEERS

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Jon Eaves, Founder and CEO of Edge Centres, talks funding rounds, a panAPAC rollout, and writing the unwritten future of ‘Edge’

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he edge, it would seem, is full of surprises. “I'm always blown away by how much things have changed and how fast they move,” reflects Jonathan Eaves, Founder and CEO of off-grid edge data centre company Edge Centres.

For a company that’s fresh off the back of a AU$12mn funding round, and on track to grow from a single test site in the small Australian town of Grafton – which came online in early 2021 – to 20 data centres spread across seven APAC markets in under two years, “fast” feels like an understatement.

It’s all the more impressive when you hear Jon talk about just how much his understanding of – not to mention vision for – “the edge” has changed in that time.

A Year at the Cutting Edge “What Edge Centres looks like today is so completely different to what it was when I founded the company,” he explains.

Over the last year, Eaves has “radically reevaluated” his understanding of what 'edge' means. He’s pivoted the business in response, from focusing on his home market of Australia, towards “a broader, globalised footprint, rather than a more concentrated, localised edge network.”

Of course, if you talk to Jon for any amount of time about his plans for the business, you quickly realise that when

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Continuing its growth in APAC and the US

“ The Edge is like water; it’s the same shape as the space it fills” JONATHAN EAVES FOUNDER & CEO EDGE CENTRES

he says pivoting, he really means doing both things faster, bigger, and better than everyone else. In Australia, Edge Centres has 10 data centres: four in Queensland, three in New South Wales, and three more in Victoria – which cover the majority of the population in those three states.

“I built 10 data centres in Australia, where I have a serious competitor, and it's been going very well. But I realised 168

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my market was still only 25 million people, and two competitors chasing all the same business in a market that size, in small towns and areas where they've never had a data centre before - it already feels a little too small,” Eaves says. “That's what led me to look beyond Australia, towards a market with 900 million people, greater population density, and therefore a much greater need for edge solutions. I have my 10 sites across Australia, but it's time to spread Edge Centres' footprint across the rest of APAC, which will inevitably go east and west into North America in 2023 and then into Europe.”

JONATHAN EAVES TITLE: FOUNDER & CEO INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: AUSTRALIA

Across APAC In Asia, Eaves is building or buying another 10 sites spread throughout Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Japan, Hong Kong, and Thailand.

The first, EC31, is under construction in Kuala Lumpur, replicating Edge Centres’ awardwinning, cutting-edge specifications for small, modular, edge data centre units.

The next site has been selected to the south in Johor, which Eaves explains is “an amazing location because it's just across the bridge from Singapore. That means that you can have a site in Johor and, in terms of connection latency for a hyperscaler,

EXECUTIVE BIO

Jonathan Eaves is a veteran data centre builder and tireless evangelist for the future of the edge.

He founded Edge Centres – the world’s first off-grid data centre company – in 2021, and is on track to launch 20 sites across Australia and Asia by 2023. Edge Centres’ prototype site in Grafton is designed so efficiently as to have zero dependence on the local power grid, meeting all its power needs exclusively with onsite solar and creating more energy than it consumes. As a result, EC1 Grafton was named the winning Edge Data Centre Project of the year 2021 by Data Center Dynamics.

EDGE CENTRES

it's no different to being in mainland Singapore”. He adds that “we're also working on something in Panang, which is a huge industrial area with no data centres.”

Beyond Malaysia, Eaves has projects and proof-of-concept trials spinning up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and in Jakarta, Indonesia, in addition to ongoing work throughout Australia and plans to expand the business beyond APAC in 2023.

“Last year, I was facing the process of building a business in a single market of 25 million people that was familiar to me,” Jon recalls. “This year, I'm looking at 900 million people spread across six discrete, distinct countries – all with their own individual issues. And, so far, none of those issues seem to correlate with their neighbours'.”

“ We're creating an unknown future and, as many people say, the edge is still undefined” JONATHAN EAVES FOUNDER & CEO EDGE CENTRES

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Unique Challenges at the Edge This diversity isn’t just a matter of distinct markets, however. As Eaves explains, it’s also the emerging nature of the edge that’s forcing him to think differently about every new project he approaches.

“People keep asking me what the edge is, what form it’s going to take, and what its future looks like. Honestly, the edge is like water; it’s the same shape as the space it fills,” Jon explains. “I haven't found one single shape, order, iteration to which the edge constantly conforms. That being said, I've found that the ‘edge’ – which I cannot stress enough is a very loose term – is very good for fixing isolated, niche problems. To me, the edge means creating an application to suit a niche market, and we just happen to have grouped all those applications

EDGE CENTRES

under one big umbrella.” “Just look at what we did in Bright.”

Bright, Victoria Bright, a town located three and a half hours north of Melbourne, is home to around 2,400 residents and is serviced by a single cellular tower. The town is officially considered not to be a connectivity blackspot, as its tower provides sufficient cellular coverage for its residents.

However, Bright’s status as a popular base for exploring the peaks of Mount Buffalo National Park and Alpine National Park as well as Mount Hotham, a popular ski resort, means that, on weekends and holidays, its population can swell by 15,000 overnight.

This places undue strain on the area’s cellular coverage, and leads to frequent outages

THE FUTURE OF THE EDGE The edge is still a technology in its earliest stages and, if we’re going to realise its potential, there are some steps that need to be taken.

Edge 1.0: Fix the Internet Edge 2.0: Deliver OTT content through edge sites and networks Edge 3.0: Deliver on the Promise of 5G Edge 4.0: Realise the Potential of the Edge “The idea is that the four stages of edge begin with Edge 1.0, which means fixing the internet. Making connectivity stable, fast, accessible, you name it, and doing that everywhere,” says Eaves. Then, Edge 2.0 is about realising the potential of the OTT providers, migrating that content, those telematics, and everything to the edge. Edge 3.0 is integrating 5G as the universal connectivity standard. And then Edge 4.0 is using the fact that all those other problems have been fixed to build some real applications that fully utilise the power of what Edge can do.”

According to Eaves, “There's not a country in the world that's not struggling with Edge 1.0 right now. I was in Monaco recently. One of the richest places in the world and I struggled to even get a steady 3G connection. So, step one pretty much everywhere is to fix the internet.”

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and subpar service. “There was a recent emergency where a cyclist was badly hurt and, because the town’s cell network was overloaded, no one could call for an ambulance,” says Eaves. Visitors, locals, and local businesses regularly find themselves without access to the internet – typically during peak business hours, when small businesses need access the most to run payment terminals.

“We partnered with a local telco and the council to bring free, stable, fast internet to the whole town using our network of edge data centres,” Eaves explains. “Bright was a one-off for us, but that model has now been picked up by the local council who want to find a way to replicate it in other towns facing the same problems. Edge Centres won't be the company to do that; that's not our business model. But we've created that use case at the edge: this is how you fix your small rural town's internet.”

Around the world, the digital divide remains a huge issue – one that disproportionately affects rural, minority, and lower income demographics – that needs to be addressed. By leveraging small and self-sufficient, but highly connected edge data centres in remote, rural, and underserved areas, the edge could be a big part of the solution to a problem that’s only growing more severe as the physical world becomes more and more entwined with the digital one.

Jakarta, Indonesia Of course, Eaves stresses: “The edge in Asia is fundamentally different to the edge in regional Australia.”

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“ The Edge means creating an application to suit a niche market, and we just happen to have grouped all those applications under one big umbrella” JONATHAN EAVES FOUNDER & CEO EDGE CENTRES

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very interesting challenge that is likely to be a defining element of urban edge deployments over the decade to come: where do you put it?

“The edge has become more than just figuring out a solution for edge computing; it's also become an exercise in figuring out how to build this new layer of critical infrastructure into densely populated areas with next to no available land and have it still be secure,” says Eaves. “We've had a customer contact us in Indonesia that needs multiple points of presence for their app to work. Our proof of concept involves these mini edge modules, which are even smaller versions of our standard sites using units built by DataQube – which are protected by inconspicuous, but highly effective, armour plating. Because we can't fence them off from the general population, we need to camouflage them in such a way that they can be put all over the place and not invite any attention at all. The goal is to basically make them invisible.”

The test unit is a gunmetal grey box, which has been pre-defaced with graffiti and old movie posters and placed right in the middle of a busy neighbourhood in Jakarta. Eaves explains that “when you see it you'd actually think you were just looking at an HV transformer - a small substation which cities in Indonesia are full of. It looks like it's been sitting there for years.”

As the number of edge devices on the planet spikes exponentially year on year – and a tidal wave of data subsequently threatens to overwhelm our networks – migrating processing power to the edge is going to be a vital part of handling the traffic from billions of devices, IoT sensors, autonomous vehicles, and other trappings of the digital age. However, finding a way to integrate this new technologymagazine.com

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layer of critical infrastructure into urban environments where land is scarce and expensive means taking a very different approach to safeguarding edge data centres from unwanted attention than the “wall it off behind barbed wire and seven layers of manned and autonomous biometric security” approach favoured in colocation and hyperscale sites.

Taking a leaf right out of the 4G and 5G cell-tower camouflage playbook (the same one that used to line New Mexico’s highways with giant fibreglass cacti full of telecommunications equipment and wants to turn every lamppost, electricity pole, and traffic light into a mmWave 5G antenna) Eaves is discovering that anonymity presents a whole new kind of security. “It's about making the silhouette, the shape, as much a part of the landscape as possible. We made it look like a pad transformer because, in Vietnam and Indonesia, there are pad transformers everywhere. We're making them appear familiar and thereby making them totally anonymous,” he says. “We set up cameras across the street and it's really cool to watch hundreds of thousands of people walking and driving past this box that's secretly full of servers and not give it a second look.”

Exploring the Edge Edge Centres’s projects in Bright and Jakarta are just two of the ways that Eaves and his growing team are working to understand – and in many ways create – the next phase of the edge’s development.

A collaboration with a leading university in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, is not only giving Edge Centres true agnostic access to the country’s telco providers, but the presence of their facility is providing an 174

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opportunity for the university to give trainee data centre technicians (not to mention engineers looking to study networking, battery technology, solar power, etc.) a place to get hands on experience.

In Kuala Lumpur, Edge Centres is working in partnership with its Series A funding round investor, Cloud Link Solutions (CLS) – a rapidly growing cable landing station operator. “We're gaining access to land in Malaysia, and they're in turn getting access to our technology which is going into the design and

“I have my 10 sites across Australia, but it's time to spread Edge Centres' footprint across the rest of APAC” JONATHAN EAVES FOUNDER & CEO, EDGE CENTRES

construction of their new cable landing stations,” says Eaves. “This is very much a partnership.”

Home to a booming ecosystem of game developers, special effects artists, and digital content creators, Chiang Mai is poised to become the heart of digitally-driven creativity in Southeast Asia. However, video rendering and effects design are highly computeintensive activities. Because Chiang Mai is located a full nine hours away – and virtually all of Thailand outside of Bangkok

is underserved in terms of data centres and digital connectivity infrastructure – developers in Chiang Mai often need to maintain a permanent point of presence in Bangkok. This is inefficient, expensive, and is holding the growth of the Chiang Mai ecosystem back.

By installing one of its Edge Pod sites in Chiang Mai – with direct fibre routes to cloud onramps in Bangkok – Edge Centres is bringing the power of the edge to the underserved north of Thailand. Visual effects creators, game developers, and technologymagazine.com

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digital artists now have access to ultra-low latency, high-capacity compute power at the edge, where they need it. Bringing the Edge to Chiang Mai is a key element of the future of the city’s local game development and visual effects industries.

Wherever Edge Centres looks to grow and expand, there are new partnerships to be formed, new use cases to explore, and new challenges to be overcome. “It's exhausting, it's amazing, and I wouldn't change it for the world,” Jon laughs. It’s one big exercise in adaptability and, as Eaves keeps telling me, the future is yet to be written and he couldn’t be more excited.

2021 was the year Edge Centres established a dense network of regional edge locations across regional Australia. This year, Edge Centres has broken new ground in six new markets, with more on the horizon throughout a rapidly digitalising region that’s home to almost a billion people. In 2023, Eaves confirms that Edge Centres is “exploring multiple locations across the US,” where he plans to employ a series of strategic acquisitions to further expand Edge Centres’ platform. “The edge is a global phenomenon, and so are we,” says Eaves.

“We're creating an unknown future and, as many people say, the edge is still undefined.

It's like having a whole bunch of different shaped cups, and the edge is the water that fills them. It's a case of understanding the needs of each new market and figuring out how to work within it to find the kinds of use cases they need,” he enthuses. “I get to be an explorer finding out what that future will look like. I get to find out what applications and use cases are out there. I wouldn't want to be doing anything else.”

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TOMEI CONSOLIDATED BERHAD

Liong Sze Jin, CTO at Tomei, discusses the gold and jewellery retailer’s 5-year digital transformation strategy and how it has helped to drive resilience

H

omegrown in Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur, Tomei Consolidated Berhad (Tomei) is a leading jewellery manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer in the country.

Founded in 1968, Tomei has 22 subsidiaries and operates five jewellery brands with 60 outlets.

“Tomei is uniquely positioned in the market due to its product designs, superior quality and refined craftsmanship. Translated to English, the word ‘Tomei’ means ‘an abundance of beauty’, which reflects our promise to create beautiful and evergreen jewellery masterpieces,” says Liong Sze Jin, CTO at Tomei.

Spearheading the digital transformation journey in a bid to help Tomei reach new heights and evolve with the use of technology, Liong reflects on the impact of COVID-19 on the organisation.

“The pandemic has forced Tomei to evolve and move online like many other retail brands that traditionally relied on brick-and-mortar stores,” Liong explains.

“The challenge for us was to make sure that we had the right processes and systems in place to meet the fastchanging business needs. This is where we started to embark on our five-year digital transformation journey.”

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Adapting to disruption with digital transformation

Tasked with navigating the radical shifts in business operations, Liong explains that, within a short time, the organisation was forced to digitalise. “We were forced to relook at our technology systems and solutions, identifying new ways of working that are more robust, scalable and adaptable to fast-paced, changing needs,” says Liong.

Whilst in need of an upgrade, Liong emphasises the importance of ensuring Tomei’s legacy systems continue to be functional alongside its new environments.

“We are a huge group, we can’t change everything overnight, so it has to be done right,” explains Liong. “This tasked us with the challenge of reworking our internal processes to accommodate the changes we are making, while ensuring that we continue to generate cost savings and bring in the right kind of talent.”

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ensure that, in these uncertain times, we are doing so in a cost-efficient manner. We also need to ensure that we develop a workforce that has the right skills to drive our digital transformation journey.

“We can do both of these by exploring as many technologies and solutions as possible to ensure that we gain the best value in terms of ROI, and by building strong partnerships that we leverage to find the right people.”

1968 Year founded

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Number of employees

LIONG SZE JIN TITLE: C HIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER INDUSTRY: JEWELLERY LOCATION: MALAYSIA

EXECUTIVE BIO

Liong Sze Jin is a seasoned CTO with 20 years' experience.

Equipped with a Master's in Business Administration (MBA) and a Bachelor of Honours in Computer Science, he has contributed to the successful development and implementation of over 150 technology-related projects in both MNC and SME companies throughout his career and has consulted all over the world in countries like Switzerland, Thailand, Indonesia, Dubai (UAE), Cyprus, Philippines, Singapore and many others.

He has great passion and love for technology and business alike. His greatest strength is to masterfully craft technology solutions to meet the fast-driven business needs of various industries and, most importantly, to lay down a solid backbone to support technology solutions in order to accelerate productivity, reduce cost, improve quality, maximise capital investments and increase competitiveness.

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Solving operating and scalability challenges with Dell Integrated system for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI Dell Integrated System for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI is a purpose-built system designed to simplify and streamline Azure multi-cloud ecosystem with integrated fully engineered infrastructure foundation.

Designed with full-stack lifecycle management and native Azure integration, the integrated system delivers efficient operations, flexible consumption models and high-level enterprise expertise.

Explore

Dell Technologies & Microsoft: The value of partnerships Discover how Tomei is partnering with its trusted partners – Dell Technologies and Microsoft – to support the company’s digital transformation strategy When it comes to selecting its partners, Tomei values trustworthiness. “Our partners must have a strong expertise of knowledge in the domain we are looking for, they must also be responsible and reliable, particularly in terms of product quality and the support they provide,” says SJ Liong, CTO at Tomei.

“This infrastructure provides us with the robustness and flexibility to scale when the need arises. The best thing about this technology is its simplicity due to being a single, unified solution to manage all elements – both legacy and new,” says Liong.

Two major technology partners of Tomei are Dell Technologies and Microsoft.

Other solutions Tomei has adopted from Microsoft include Azure Site Recovery Call ASR. The technology enhances Tomei’s ability to provide disaster recovery in the most cost-efficient manner, instead of spending large amounts of money and resources building a new data centre.

Tomei and Dell Technologies Having in-depth knowledge of the solutions required by Tomei, Dell has been instrumental in the implementation of its HCI solution.

“They have been most helpful in supporting the whole project initiative.”

Liong continues: “The level of support they have given us has been outstanding, they have been very responsive to all our needs – particularly during the height of the pandemic, when we began our digital transformation journey.”

Tomei and Microsoft One of the most significant pieces of technology that Tomei has adopted is the Microsoft Azure stack HCI.

From an operations perspective, Tomei has also implemented RPA technology with the help of Microsoft to automate labourintensive processes. “The outcome has been encouraging; we have seen a massive reduction in error rates because we no longer rely on humans typing in data, and we have also seen an increase in the speed of execution,” says Liong.

“I believe it is the commitment and willingness of these partners to give their very best to the success of our project that truly makes them a great partner,” Liong concludes.

TOMEI CONSOLIDATED BERHAD

“THE PANDEMIC HAS FORCED TOMEI TO EVOLVE AND MOVE ONLINE LIKE MANY OTHER RETAIL BRANDS THAT TRADITIONALLY RELIED ON BRICK-AND-MORTAR STORES” LIONG SZE JIN

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, TOMEI CONSOLIDATED BERHAD

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Five years of transformation Embarking on its five-year digital transformation in 2021, the first year of Tomei’s roadmap was centred around setting the foundations. “This is where we started to look at infrastructure technologies to support us in our journey and allow us to evolve quickly.”

Today, Tomei is one-third through its journey. “We are now actively focusing in eCommerce, leveraging multiple channels to sell our products online. We are also looking to improve our customer experience – both online and in store – with the use of technology to create a more personalised customer journey,” says Liong.

“Another part of our digital transformation is to achieve operational excellence. This is where we have started to adopt technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA), digital workflows, and custom-built solutions to simplify, automate and reengineer our operations to be more streamlined, costefficient and effective. It is this key initiative that will be vital in us overcoming a number of challenges.”

One of the most significant pieces of technology that Tomei has adopted is the Microsoft Azure Stack HCI – one of the most cost-efficient, hyper-converged infrastructure solutions on the market. technologymagazine.com

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TOMEI AND ITS PARTNERSHIPS When it comes to selecting its partners, Tomei values trustworthiness. “Our partners must have a strong expertise of knowledge in the domain we are looking for, they must also be responsible and reliable, particularly in terms of product quality and the support they provide,” says Liong.

“We have two major technology partners at Tomei – Dell and Microsoft.

Both are key partners here at Tomei; we have developed good relationships with them both over the years.”

Having in-depth knowledge of the solutions required by Tomei, Dell alongside VegaEdge have been instrumental in the implementation of its HCI solution. “They have been most helpful in supporting the whole project initiative.”

Liong continues: “The level of support they have given us has been outstanding, they have been very responsive to all our needs – particularly during the height of the pandemic when we began our digital transformation journey.

“I believe it is the commitment and willingness of these partners to give their very best to the success of our project that truly makes them a great partner.

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“This infrastructure provides us with the robustness and flexibility to scale when the need arises. The best thing about this technology is its simplicity due to it being a single, unified solution to manage all elements of compute, storage and network in an environment that is familiar to most of us, Microsoft Windows,” says Liong.

Other solutions Tomei has adopted from Microsoft include Azure Site Recovery which essentially is disaster recovery on the cloud.

“This has allowed us to provide disaster recovery in the most cost-efficient manner, instead of spending large amounts of money and resources building a new data centre at our disaster recovery site,” says Liong.

TOMEI CONSOLIDATED BERHAD

“ A BIG PART OF OUR TRANSFORMATION REVOLVES AROUND USING TECHNOLOGY TO BETTER ENGAGE AND UNDERSTAND OUR CUSTOMERS TO FURTHER IMPROVE OUR PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT OPERATIONS” LIONG SZE JIN

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“We have also implemented RPA technology from an operations perspective using Microsoft Power Automate to automate the labour-intensive processes.

The outcome has been encouraging; we have seen a massive reduction in error rates because we no longer rely on humans typing in data, and we have also seen an increase in the speed of execution.”

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He adds: “From a customer perspective, we are exploring the use of RFID and business intelligence technologies to bridge the customer experience between our physical and online stores.

In particular, we are looking at how we can use RFID to analyse our customers’ experience in the hopes that we will be able to better understand our customers

TOMEI CONSOLIDATED BERHAD

IMPROVING THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE When it comes to improving the customer experience, Liong explains: “I think it's all about the product and it is about understanding what our customer wants.

“A big part of our transformation revolves around using technology to better engage and understand our customers to further improve our product development operations. Our products are what make us uniquely positioned in the market, alongside our dedication to creating high quality. It is because of this that I believe our products bring a lot of joy and happiness to our customers, which in turn generates feelings of trust and comfort in our customers.”

“ WE NEED TO ENSURE THAT, IN THESE UNCERTAIN TIMES, WE ARE TRANSFORMING IN A COST-EFFICIENT MANNER; WE ALSO NEED TO ENSURE THAT WE DEVELOP A WORKFORCE THAT HAS THE RIGHT SKILLS” LIONG SZE JIN

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“ O UR PARTNERS MUST HAVE A STRONG EXPERTISE OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE DOMAIN WE ARE LOOKING FOR, THEY MUST ALSO BE RESPONSIBLE AND RELIABLE” LIONG SZE JIN

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, TOMEI CONSOLIDATED BERHAD

and their needs to drive more customercentric product creation.”

The next 12-to-18 months promise to be interesting times for Liong at Tomei: “I believe this is because we will be more than halfway through our digital transformation journey.”

He adds: “It will be really interesting to see how all the hard work and effort come together, and the reality of the implementations. Over the next 12 months, we will be focusing on implementation on the customer experience side of things for our digital transformation phase.

“It will be exciting to see how our customers respond to our digital implementations and to be able to see what works with our customers and what doesn’t. So we are really excited to see how technology can be used to elevate the customer experience to a whole new level.”

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APPROACH TO A PRAGMATIC DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WRITTEN BY: ILKHAM OZSEVIM

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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Mac Sullivan, Head of Tech and Digital Promotion of NNR Global Logistics (USA), on the outmoded state of the logistics industry and NNR’s advancement

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hen we think about logistics, when we picture the oceans being crisscrossed by thousands of gargantuan cargo ships with their huge multicoloured containers stacked sky-high; when we picture the multitudes of blimp-like cargo planes that saturate the stratospheres with their freight-in-tonnage; the land, the sea, the skies – we doubtless take it to be the very paradigm of efficient processes. It must be, surely?

With the entire business world – indeed, the entire human world – depending on its arterial and vascular traffic (‘vessels’ being named so for a reason), it must be the case that until now efficiency has been at the very pulse and feedback of this entire system.

Admittedly, then, it was a surprise to discover that this has categorically not been the case for central aspects of logistics or the supply chain as a whole, both in the past and in most cases, even the present.

Mac Sullivan, Head of Technology and Digital Promotion at NNR Global Logistics (USA), is the man who supplied this rude awakening. “I have cargo that I need to send from Dallas to London. In order to figure out all the different ways that I can get it there, all the relevant contracts as well as all the potentially different routes have to be centralised to a specific location. What we've found is that logistics as a whole, has 196

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NNR Global Logistics’ approach to digitising the Industry

“ WHAT WE'VE FOUND IS THAT LOGISTICS AS A WHOLE HAS BEEN WAY, WAY BEHIND IN ITS MODUS OPERANDI” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITALPROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

been way, way behind in its modus operandi.

A great number of logistics companies have, up until now, been working with paperbased (literally ‘written-down’) information.

This goes all the way through from the tracking of orders to the recording of sales receipts and information,” he says.

This must be a mistake of some kind – we have our eyes on Mars; we are at the forefront of quantum computation and have systems in AI and big data that are so sophisticated that, 198

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schematically at least, they know more about us than we do about ourselves. “Way, way behind.”

“If data isn't entered into a digital system, you simply don't have ‘visibility,’ which means that you don't have all the pieces to the logistical puzzle,” he says. This sounds like a crash-course in how not to run the global supply chain.

The ability to digitise elements of the supply chain and more specifically, the logistics chain, helps provide greater visibility to potential

MAC SULLIVAN TITLE: H EAD OF TECH AND DIGITAL PROMOTION INDUSTRY: LOGISTICS

solutions. In a globalised world, the use of paper is tantamount to the obfuscation of processes, whereas the digitalisation of data is equal to their elucidation. If supply chain is the realm, data is king.

Once elucidated through digitalisation, the data of course needs to be sifted-through and sorted – in a sort of vast problemsolving operation, and this is where Artificial Intelligence ‘traditionally’ comes in. But here again, in supply-chain terms, we have been

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: TOKYO Mac aspires to facilitate a retooling and upskilling of the logistics industry through promoting collaboration between education, business, and technology. His work in sales and marketing in the logistics industry prompted him to pursue his PhD in Political Theory from ECNU where he is finalising his dissertation on how government policies can deal with the disruptive effects of digitalisation and automation on the logistics industry. Self-study and a passion for this topic has helped him recently become the Head of Technology and Digital Promotion, where he is facilitating the digital transformation of NNR Global Logistics, a division of the Nishitetsu Group. Mac has an EMBA from Hult International Business School and a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from the University of Georgia. He is an adjunct professor at Tongji University and has taught at universities such as Texas Christian University (TCU) and Elon University in the past.

Mac spent nearly a third of his life as an ex-pat, living in Spain, Thailand and China during his 20s. His first book, “The Digital Transformation of Logistics: Demystifying Impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution” is available on Amazon as of early 2021.

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NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

“ IF DATA ISN'T ENTERED INTO A DIGITAL SYSTEM, YOU SIMPLY DON'T HAVE ‘VISIBILITY’, WHICH MEANS THAT YOU DON'T HAVE ALL THE PIECES TO THE LOGISTICAL PUZZLE” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITALPROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

labouring under the misconception that, until now, AI has been doing its god-like work of solving all such humanly insurmountable problems in an algorithmic whizz, so that we can rest easy that our supplies will be efficiently delivered and that no complications will arise. But Sullivan says, “the truth is that independently, AI still hasn't been able to solve the problems that we actually have”.

So, the schema goes: AI needs human intervention, and humans need to digitise

their data in order that AI can then provide our goods through the supply chain and help us to breathe easy.

But then, in a much-needed cause for exhale, he provides respite to this unacceptable state of affairs: “This is however, finally starting to change,” he says.

“The technology and the availability of data that allows us to present the problems to AI - so that it can begin to solve those problems - is now at our fingertips. It’s a really exciting time in the logistics industry, because through the digitisation of data, we are starting to make solutions more readily available. But it will then be – contrary to popular opinion – about the further narrowing-down of those AI solutions through a human agent, enabling us to start assigning the technology to then solve the important issues.” technologymagazine.com

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The exposition is interesting. Sullivan, while teaching Business English at university-level in Shanghai, met his present boss Jeff McDonald, who then introduced him to the world of international logistics. “I hit the ground running, with zero background in international business, and started learning how to move freight around the world,” says Sullivan – and he has come a long way since.

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he has been turning over in his mind for some time now.

“Many years ago, I began looking at logistics and the lack of technological adoption in this industry in the broadest sense. I started reading a lot on the subject, doing some of my Master's level work on this topic and then started my PhD work again (which was then on hold) on the thesis of how technology could disrupt the entire international logistics industry. That was in 2016. So then, with this insight, I aimed to

NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

“ THE TECHNOLOGY AND THE AVAILABILITY OF DATA THAT ALLOWS US TO PRESENT THE PROBLEMS TO AI – SO THAT IT CAN BEGIN TO SOLVE THOSE PROBLEMS – IS NOW AT OUR FINGERTIPS” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITALPROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

get out of the commercial world of logistics and into the technology side of things,” he says.

Now Head of Technology and Digital Promotion at NNR, Sullivan’s role involves running a now 41-headcount team that is broken up into four sub-teams.

“Firstly, we have EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) and API teams, together making up 'connectivity', which deals with connecting with our vendors, customers, and agents. Secondly, we have a product

development and maintenance team for our homegrown global ERP. Third, we have two smaller programmes, one called NNR Connect, which is our new showcase product, and then a homegrown CRM system. We then have traditional IT, hardware, networking, cybersecurity, etc that falls into another (fourth) bucket.”

Of these, NNR Connect deserves a place in the spotlight. NNR Connect is a customer-facing portal that uses AI and cloud tech where customers can easily book, pay for, and track in realtime all their shipments through a truly frictionless, intuitive interface. This is where tech and data intersect to fulfil NNR Global’s vision of a streamlined, customerfocused logistics experience.

NNR’s corporate slogan is 'connecting your dreams', which means providing comfort, confidence and enjoyment for their customers, “and that means that your cargo is getting to the right place, at the right time and at the right cost,” says Sullivan. technologymagazine.com

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NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

NNR’s digitisation in the logistics industry On the conceptual issue of digitalisation in the logistics industry, Sullivan says: “I wrote a book on the subject that was subtitled: Demystifying Impacts of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where we brought together a group of 27 authors from around the world, from different segments of the logistics industry, and gave them this broad theme, ranging from blockchain to 3D printing to digital platforms

“ WE'RE GOING TO BE QUICKLY EXPANDING OUR OFFERING THROUGH NNR CONNECT AND ROLLING THAT OUT TO OUR OFFICE AND GLOBAL CUSTOMERS” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITAL PROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

and rate management. We tried to drive home the idea of a pragmatic framework, so it’s neither your consultant's version, nor is it your academic version of digital transformation. It is a kind of ‘where top-down meets bottom-up’ approach – that is, right in the middle. It is about looking at big problems, while also solving them for the desk-level users.’

When asked what Digital Transformation means for NNR Global, Sullivan answers with a single word: tracking. He then unfolds this idea: “If you go on Amazon, you can order a $2 mug. It will show up at your door, either two hours or two days later, but with turn-byturn instructions and information on where it is along the way. ‘It's left the warehouse’; ‘it's nearing your location’; ‘it's been delivered’.

That visibility has not been found in the business logistics industry, even though the cargo could be worth upwards of $2 million.

So, tracking and shipment visibility is now a big push, and that is where a lot of people are spending their money, because that’s where the demand is – and that’s why we developed NNR Connect.”

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Global shifts and ratemanagement through tech With global occurrences such as the obvious 2020 pandemic and its initially not-soobvious supply-chain consequences, the US-China trade war and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, price fluctuations are at truly unstable levels. NNR has about 15 to 30 different ocean carriers, about 50 to 100 different air-carriers and about 2000 to 5000 different trucking carriers that they work with.

Sullivan says: “We make contracts with all these different carriers, trying to aggregate and then filter-through all the related contracts in order to find the right rates, for the right type of shipment, with the right validity. This is why Amazon has made so much money – applying the right filters in the right places.”

“Rate-management has really come down in price, in that the filters and the technology have been able to aggregate all that data, add some basic AI in terms of scraping through the different documents as they come in, and then centralising them. But post-2019, because there is so much fluctuation in price due to the inconsistencies in supply and demand, you can throw all of that out of the window. We are finding ourselves in a situation where we must pick up the phone and say, 'hey, what rate can you give me for this car, right now?', which has really made the environment a lot more competitive again – where it's not just all about big-buy. Now, it's all about local relationships and about picking up the phone and working hard to get it done.”

How technology is utilised for sourcing On the question of utilising technology for sourcing, Sullivan also expresses how large companies are having a transformational 206

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“ VECTOR AI CAME ALONG WITH A STRONG RECOMMENDATION, LED BY LOGISTICIANS, AND CO-LED

BY TECHNOLOGISTS – IT WAS THE RIGHT COMPANY AT THE RIGHT TIME” MAC SULLIVAN

HEAD OF TECH AND DIGITAL PROMOTION, NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS

impact. “Alibaba, for example, has changed the face of globalisation by making products in mass quantities available through their site.

On the consumer side, between Alibaba and China, Amazon, and the US, and also on a global scale, we're starting to see how you can now track demand.

“Another example would be Jungle Scouts, a SaaS company that helps facilitate the sourcing of different product categories, where Amazon FBA sellers can go and find products that are undersold and under-priced, which will then help them to actually go upstream to the very sources of those products.”

NNR's customer facing portal In 2019 NNR were faced with deciding on whether to update their old customer facing portal, or to completely rebuild it. “We decided to start from scratch,” he says, “and to rebuild it from the ground up. We brought in a very young, aesthetically driven team to bring a product to market that is completely unique. We have handcrafted every button, every component, every page, and colour scheme, and we were able to do this with a fairly limited number of resources. We’re rolling out different modules as we speak and have already rolled out our shipment module, our billing module and so on. technologymagazine.com

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NNR GLOBAL LOGISTICS’

Our accounting team said, 'we need our customers to be able to pay via credit card', so we reached out to different vendors and put together a smooth, user-friendly, frictionless customer-experience, where our customers can easily go and pay their invoices. We're releasing some pretty exciting stuff that relates to the partnership we have with vector AI, in terms of seriously starting to eliminate any redundant manual entry upstream and have many upcoming releases in the pipeline.”

NNR partner ecosystem This partnership with Vector AI has been an important one for NNR. Workflow automation and OCR technology has been used by big banks and big insurance companies for about two decades. But you had to have millions of remarkably similar documents that were being processed to be able to extract those different data elements to utilise, and so the cost was prohibitively high.

Sullivan says: “Even when I started looking at this just five years ago, you still couldn't get a solid pilot with any OCR company without a significant initial investment. Vector AI came along with next gen AI-driven automation, led by logisticians, and co-led by technologists – it was the right company at the right time.

What we've been working on with them is outside of their traditional service offering, as it's about going upstream and looking at what documents our customers can provide there, so that we can extract the data from those documents, pre-populate what we need in order to process the shipments, and then recanalise that information to flow downstream. So, we're aggressively partnering with Vector AI to go way upstream and extract the more difficult information from many different customers in many different formats.

“With NNR Connect, we're about to rollout our product called Quick Book, which has 208

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automation powered by Vector AI. They're also working with our accounting team on the more traditional avenue of getting better invoices via email, extracting the information, and then helping to facilitate that automation of accounts payable.”

Another key partner for NNR is Snyder Technology. “Snyder has been with me since day one in this role,” says Sullivan. “Ben Snyder, the CEO, is somebody that I was introduced to by a friend of mine, also in the logistics and technology space. They have helped us move 100% to the cloud, as well as to rapidly accelerate our adoption onto Microsoft's 365 platform. They are developing NNR Connect – the customer facing portal – alongside us, as well as doing everything from data recovery

to API integrations with vendors. It's a broad partnership in terms of digital transformation, product development, infrastructure and they are our licensed Microsoft CSP.” What do the next 12 to 18 months look like for NNR? The next 12 to 18 months are going to continue to be dynamic for NNR. They are aiming to take on their technical debt through a massive database consolidation, aiming to go from the 52 databases that they either control or deal with on a day-to-day basis and instead reduce that number down to 12 to 15.

Sullivan says: “That's a big effort to reduce our technical debt, to make sure we're going to the new age with less baggage. We're going

to be quickly expanding our offering through NNR Connect and rolling that out to our office and global customers. We're also looking to rapidly improve our connectivity speed and efficacy, bring on new vendors and customers, and connect to them electronically at a much faster rate utilising everything from restful APIs to the toolkit that we have to keep around in terms of PDI integrations. We're trying to take 1,100 different screens in our ERP and get that down to really what it needs to be, to declutter as much as possible. In other words, it's not all about expansion right now, as much as it is about reduction and concentration.”

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VITALITY

Using technology to transform health insurance

WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD technologymagazine.com

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VITALITY

As one of the global leaders in digital health management, Vitality is revolutionising preventative medicine

P

reventative medicine and wellbeing have never been as popular as they are now, in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

In fact, with medical services globally undergoing massive transitional shifts and treatment waiting lists for commonplace conditions at an all-time high, private health services, especially those which are delivered digitally, are in demand.

Health insurers around the world are responding by developing rapid digital pathways for customers to access benefits.

Vitality health insurance is one such organisation. An insurance provider that offers a multitude of services and protection products to its customers, it was originally founded in 2004 when a partnership between Prudential and Discovery – a South African insurer – was formed.

Vitality current Managing Director for Health, Dr Keith Klintworth, joined the company in 2010. At that time, Vitality had just acquired Standard Life Healthcare to drive forward the economies of scale and to increase its health membership base. By 2014, Vitality had bought out Prudential and was operating as a composite insurer across Life and Health insurance.

“We've gone from strength-to-strength,” says Klintworth with pride. As a healthcare expert with a 25-year-career in medicine – during which he has worked in the role of both a Managing Director for the insurer and as a consultant anaesthetist – it's comforting to see this softly-spoken South African’s

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Telehealth in a digitised world

enthusiasm for Vitality behaviour change and “Digital diversity is an offerings. After all, this is incentivising people to ever-evolving, everno ordinary health and make healthy decisions life insurance operation: through rewards. changing definition as its leaders are doctors Launched in 1997, and the wellbeing of its we consider more and the evidence of the customers is considered programme’s success more facets” of paramount concern. spans 25 years.

Klintworth explains: As a result, the well“Discovery in South Africa structured offering KEITH KLINTWORTH MANAGING DIRECTOR, was well known to me as has plenty of data to VITALITY an insurance provider. back up the impact it Their core purpose of has in driving positive making people healthier – which is Vitality’s behaviour change and the significant purpose, too – resonated with me as I spent difference it has made to its members during so many years treating, and not enough on its quarter-century tenure. preventing, illness. Prevention is a really “The Vitality Programme is part of our complex challenge.” completely different approach to insurance As part of this they have what they call – the incentive-based programme where, the Vitality Programme embedded into if you get active each week and look after their insurance products, he explains, yourself, it rewards you with regular treats an incentive-based behavioural change and discounts from our partners. By sharing programme encouraging personal the benefits of healthy living in this way, we 214

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VITALITY

find members benefit from better health, tangible financial value, enhanced insurance benefits, alongside compelling rewards.”

He continues: “Health is a key concern for us, post-pandemic, which makes our member-led approach, with health and wellbeing at its core, really relevant and empowering to our members.”

TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR INDUSTRY: HEALTH LOCATION: ENGLAND Keith has had an enriching medical career, culminating in specialising and practising as an anaesthesiologist for 15 years. He further extended his interests into private hospitals, eventually becoming shareholder and director of two private hospitals.

He moved into the insurance industry when he joined the then PruHealth in October 2010 as Director of Clinical Risk and successfully expanded his role to Managing Director of VitalityHealth. He was appointed to lead Vitality’s Group Operations as Group Chief Operational Officer (COO) in October 2020.

Keith is committed to sustainable private healthcare market focussing on preventative healthcare. His interests also include digital healthcare with focus on primary care services, including virtual GP, CBT, Physio and skin analytics.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Member-led digitisation Vitality is driven by its member-centric digital functionality, which has been responsible for developing in-depth customer insights to understand their customer needs. More importantly, it is driven by learning from customer feedback and experience surveys across medical pathways and treatment to really ensure that the customer journey being built matches and manages their expectations, while driving excellence in the customer experience.

Klintworth points out that the memberdriven healthcare approach is one that responds to the full spectrum of members' healthcare needs. Rather than just focusing on the traditional features that people think of within PMI – specifically, private health insurance – such as in-patient and day patient treatment, Vitality prioritises prevention, primary care, and digital pathways that enable its members to better understand and also navigate the complex healthcare system so that they can access their needs quickly and seamlessly.

“Additionally, our digital experience teams are composed of both UX teams and the customer experience (CX) teams, as it is imperative that they bring together their different skills and effectively collaborate in a way that will ultimately result in an enhanced journey for all our customers,” says Klintworth.

KEITH KLINTWORTH

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Tata Consultancy Services: Vinay Singhvi on Transformation Vinay Singhvi, VP & Business Unit Head of Banking, Financial Services & Insurance, UK & Ireland at TCS, discusses transformation and change in the industry Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is one of the leading IT and tech service providers the UK, as per the latest software and IT services ranking by Tech Market Review; and is the largest provider of IT services in the UK. “TCS is part of the Tata Group and we have been in the United Kingdom for over 50 years,” says Vinay Singhvi, Vice President and Business Head for UK and Ireland Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) unit for TCS. “We have the privileged position of being the purpose-led transformation for our customers, including vitality.”

As the world recovers from the pandemic, we are seeing businesses across industries - not just financial services - accelerating their use of technology. “Organisations are now looking to adapt new business models to build more customised products and services, as the needs of the end-customers are changing so rapidly.”

The segment will also continue to have a lot of competitive differentiation. “We are, for

example, seeing the rise of a lot of challenger banks,” says Singhvi, “especially over the past two or three years, as well as Insuretechs, Fintechs and innovative, creating the right competitive tension within the industry to make sure that the existing organisations are able to cater to their end-customers in much more predictable, efficient, agile and nimble ways.”

To summarise, Singhvi says, “I believe that all of this is leading to our customers focusing on understanding their own end-customers better.

They are looking at hyper-personalisation in terms of what products and services they offer. They want to service them through seamless end-to-end digital journeys, and most importantly all of this depends upon making sure that the data and personal information that we have is kept secure.”

Get in touch

VITALITY

Personalised digital healthcare The idea is that healthcare and coverage should be as personalised as possible so it can support people throughout all the health changes in their lives, minor or major, to maximise their health. In 2021, Vitality announced its data-driven approach to realise this. Called ‘Next Best Action’, the new initiative brings together Vitality’s data science capabilities with its expertise in understanding individual health risks to provide members with that one action that would have the biggest impact on their future health.

“We all have risks, whether they're lifestyle or they're clinical risk factors.

But where do you start? You can take an overweight person and tell them ‘you need to eat healthy’. Well, we all know that. But what is the trigger, the pathway, for that person that would resonate and help them get started on that journey? It might just be, can you do 5,000 steps, four days a week, as a starting point? After that, you can expand your usage of the Vitality Programme.”

DID YOU KNOW...

LEADING IN BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE

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“I think it is really important to appreciate that Vitality is a behavioural change programme. We're not just telling you, ‘you're overweight’, ‘you're inactive’ or ‘you're a smoker and you need to stop’; we give you the tools and support and help to make that change happen, in a way that is sustainable for the long term.”

- Dr Keith Klintworth

August 2022

VITALITY

Ultimately, it's down to behavioural changes, incentivised by Vitality. Users are encouraged to alter their lifestyles and adopt healthier habits. “I think it is really important to appreciate that Vitality is a behavioural change programme. We're not just telling you you're overweight, you're inactive, or you're a smoker and you need to stop; we give you the tools and support to make that change happen in a way that is sustainable for the long-term.

“Health is a key concern for us, post-pandemic, which makes this member-led approach – with health and wellbeing at its core, really relevant and empowering to our members” KEITH KLINTWORTH

MANAGING DIRECTOR, VITALITY

Habits take a while to change though, explains Klintworth, and all of us frame our habits in different shapes or forms. “We will either minimise it, or we will recognise it as an issue. But we all have another trigger, or incentive, that can help us do something about it. Whether it's suddenly waking up to the reality of your own health and that you won't be a grandfather, or you won't see your kids grow up, or something else, we all need that occasional reality check to suddenly take heed and say, ‘Oh, I need to do something differently’,” he points out. technologymagazine.com

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VITALITY

If customers adopt better habits, not only are they benefitting from being healthier, but their health risk factors are reduced, which is better for insurers and society as a whole.

Ultimately, it's what the company calls ‘Shared Value’.

Klintworth says: “Society is demanding that companies have a strong social purpose.

By focusing on the creation of a healthier society, we believe we are at the forefront of this. Ultimately, what's good for us is good for our members and thus for wider society – member-led healthcare actually fits into that whole framework.”

A growing customer base Vitality’s target market is twofold: the first target is made up of individual members who, through accessibility, convenience, and speed of access, drive some of the market’s needs; the second big component is employee health and wellbeing. More

and more companies are offering private medical insurance and are aware they need to provide something that’s appropriate for their entire workforce.

“We seek to provide the private medical insurance that is right for each company's circumstances. Some, for example, may for whatever reason not cover all employees.

Recognising that these companies often still wanted a wellbeing programme for the wider workforce that could support them to be healthier, we devised a programme that featured key aspects of the Vitality Programme and access to primary care for the whole workforce.”

The Vitality team is increasingly seeing primary care, which would previously have fallen out of the remit of private health insurance, becoming one of the most used services. Klintworth explains that there is much people can now do to understand their own health better. When they have

Stories Behind Positive Change | Vitality UK

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“ Digital healthcare adoption is a revolution. We need to keep driving this revolution because, from a consumer perspective, I do believe it works best for the majority of people – that's really important to us” KEITH KLINTWORTH

MANAGING DIRECTOR, VITALITY

a Vitality GP consultation or see their physio, it's often not just about treating that acute event; instead, it’s a process that informs the member about what their risks are. Understanding risk as a consumer is, Klintworth believes, paramount in the preventative medicine journey.

“As a Vitality memberyou can also do a health questionnaire, get a health check

to see where your numbers are sitting, like your blood pressure and your weight, etc. Then, if there are any risks that are identified, you can take action to prevent it.

If you add into this our Vitality programme, with what we know about behaviour change and incentives, you have the potential to have a far healthier society.

“While our model encourages members to live a healthier lifestyle, we do attract a healthier client base to start off with, whether that be a 30-year-old gym member or a 50-year-old cyclist, as the product offering resonates with them.”

In general, Klintworth says that a significant proportion of the Vitality membership base is active, which supports their prevention agenda. The provider’s aim is then to leverage the data they have as part of the Vitality Programme and claims' data to technologymagazine.com

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make the less active or at-risk more active, thus improving their health.

Technological innovation Technology plays a crucial role in everything Vitality does, with a clear focus for the company centred on using technology to improve customer experience, access and clinical pathways. It is also a powerful tool for their own employees. To empower employees, it is imperative that they have the necessary technology tools to do their job well.

“The key consequence of empowering one’s employees is that it drives service improvement and understanding of our customer’s needs. And why do I think that's important? Well, it's to build advocacy among the actual membership base.”

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Klintworth says businesses need to drive scalability, and economies are scaled through different efficiencies of technology use.

“You need to continually invest in technology because it is critical to our offerings. Within the Health and the Life business for example, we need technology to support claim fund management as it relies on technology assets such as rules engines.

“For cyber security, we are duty bound and committed to ensuring our data and our assets are protected from cyber attacks. Our customers rightfully want to know that we govern their data properly, that it's ethically managed, and that it's collated consistently and stored safely.”

VITALITY

“Concentrating on continuing to reduce future morbidity and mortality, and really giving people healthy life years, remains our key strategic focus” KEITH KLINTWORTH

MANAGING DIRECTOR, VITALITY

Digital diversity and an expanding ecosystem Working on a core value of promoting digital diversity is another motivating factor behind Vitality. “Digital diversity is an ever-evolving, ever-changing definition as we consider more and more facets.

But I think it does include all aspects of technology and its impact on people, whether its a physical, mental, emotional or ethical impact.

“When you're building technology or digital programmes, you have to consider the diversity of your customer mix and the demographic you're targeting. We need that balance of understanding and the conscious and unconscious biases that are at play.”

Digital transformation in the DNA Vitality is a fairly young company and, as such, may not be as hampered by legacy and multiple technology systems that other, longer established health and life insurance providers have endured. The culture of the company is dynamic, and the teams actively embrace new innovations and solutions as they appear on the market.

“The people who work here know that change happens. To quote my CIO, ‘We look for shiny new objects all the time, and we build and enhance and optimise’.

“Another component is language – consistency of language across your different technology routes, whether app or web, is critical. After that, it's a case of continuing to optimise and use technology to understand and continually improve the customer experience.”

Vitality’s technology integration is complex. As part of the company’s focus on health and wellbeing and the way the Vitality Programme runs, they needed to integrate their technology systems with a range of fitness devices that are essentially wearable data sources. Additionally, the company technologymagazine.com

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needs its technology to integrate with the partners it has within the Vitality Programme, such as Caffé Nero, ODEON and Vue. The next process has been to integrate the relevant health and wellness data into medical care. Klintworth began working on developing the first virtual GP service back in 2015, at a time when these kinds of appointments were largely unheard of. Yet, now, after the pandemic has caused millions of face-to-face appointment cancellations, the forward-thinking moves Vitality made in this direction are now setting an example to other health providers.

“If I just look back at the GP market that I surveyed at that time, 50% of GPs were against telehealth, 50% were for it. It was age and gender agnostic, which was surprising.

Yet, customers recognised it as a really important route of access for GP services.

Following a market review, we identified US partner second MD, who did the initial application development for the virtual GP service and outsourced the medical service to a UK GP provider.”

Klintworth says that in continuing to drive scalability, member experience and digital innovation, Vitality recently partnered with Livi, a Swedish-based digital company, to provide its digital GP service. Livi is working with a number of NHS Primary Care Trusts, which ensures they understand the challenge to deliver an exceptional customer experience in digital healthcare.

He then emphasises that it’s about more than having convenient access to a GP. “We devised a new pathway so these GPs could make onward referrals where a member needs it, as well as training the GPs to prescribe ‘wellness’.” GPs, he stresses, need to have visualisation of patients’ health checks, their activity data and their lifestyle and clinical risk factors so that they are not 224

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only treating the sore throat, but they're also prescribing wellness.

“Our Vitality primary care digital services also include physiotherapy and CBT services. We introduced the use of smartphone cameras to support diagnosis of skin lesions, for example.

Our customers are sent a high-resolution lens that attaches to their smartphone and with which they take a photograph of their skin lesion, upload it, and our partner, Skin Analytics, will use Artificial Intelligence processes to assess it.”

Klintworth, who is passionate about progress, believes the company was well positioned to embrace digital healthcare at the start of the pandemic because it had all the foundations in place. “Recently, we launched the next iteration of the digital care journey for our members – an online Care Hub where our members can start a claim, get authorisation and choose a consultant in one seamless digital process,” he says.

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New solutions for healthcare providers The Care Hub’s includes a Consultant Finder which features a range of different doctors, including Vitality Premier Consultants, a specially designated panel that demonstrates superior performance outcomes. The solution is supported by a Vitality partner, Doctify, and enables members to input their condition(s), bringing up a list of consultants for members to look through so they can choose who is most suitable to treat them.

“People demonstrate different preferences when it comes to choosing a doctor. We provide each doctor's details, such as

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academic background or specialist interest, as well as patient reviews to support each customer in making an informed choice.

“It's about the journey,” Klintworth continues. “And our journeys in healthcare can be wasteful. The amount of time that is wasted by consumers going to see a GP, waiting for your appointment, being referred somewhere else, and then you wait again. Why do you always need follow-ups to be done in person? They're generally five to 10-minute follow-up consultations. With the current in-person system, customers may find themselves impacted for three hours out of their day. Having a digital

VITALITY

“Our focus has always been about creating innovative and disruptive products. We work from both understanding consumer needs, but also developing products or journeys that people haven't thought about before” KEITH KLINTWORTH

MANAGING DIRECTOR, VITALITY

process in place is far more efficient for the consultant and the customer and can, for many conditions, still provide a good medical outcome.”

Turning of the tide in healthcare Despite some initial resistance to the digital healthcare system, both from members and providers, Klintworth says the tide is now turning. People are understanding the value of technology, while also appreciating the convenience and speed at which their medical needs can be met. This is all made possible through the strategic partnerships Vitality operates with.

“We have a very wide partner ecosystem.

Not least of all, our external technology and digital companies. One of these is TCS, which is a valued partner of ours and has been since before our Standard Life days.

Vitality also has a substantial number of digital wellness, screening providers and reward partners.

“You need the attraction for a broad base of appeal. You're either an Apple Watch lover or you prefer something else, such as your Garmin, your Fitbit, or your Polar. So we have built the capability to integrate with all of these fitness tracking devices within our Vitality Programme.

“Our focus has always been about creating innovative and disruptive products. We work

from understanding consumer needs, while also developing products or journeys that people haven't thought about before.”

A bright future for digital health providers “We have always been known as a disrupter in the health insurance market, approaching things differently. Using the data we collect to develop behavioural change incentives that support better health and wellbeing while reducing health risks will always set us apart,” concludes Klintworth, who goes on to say that, at least annually, Vitality launches new initiatives, product enhancements, and new reward and health provider partners to its programmes and products. Ultimately, consumers and market demand for better services are driving this initiative.

He adds: “Digital healthcare adoption is a revolution. We need to keep driving this revolution because, from a consumer perspective, I do believe it works best for the majority of people – that's really important to us. Concentrating on continuing to reduce future morbidity and mortality, and really giving people healthy life years, remains our key strategic focus.”

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World-Class sustainable labelling and packaging solution provider WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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

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

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

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

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

“I immediately noticed the entrepreneurial drive across the group. The company DNA helps us merge into a large corporation that operates worldwide sharing the same principles, vision, and strategy. Printing and packaging may seem simple to the untrained eye, but I can assure you that it is very articulated and each 230

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MASSIMILIANO MARTINO TITLE: CTO LOCATION: HAMBURG, GERMANY Massimiliano Martino is a charismatic Chief Technology Officer (CTO) who serves All4Labels by advocating for sustainability through empowering, developing and protecting communities, preserving the environment, and creating new products and production processes that minimise the impact on the environment. He is responsible for Safety, Health, Environmental Protection, Quality, Sustainability, Operational Excellence, Research & Development, Technical Services, Products Application, Innovation and Engineering.

Martino was born to an Italian mother and father, has a younger sister, and was raised in the South of Italy. He attended the University of Messina (Italy), the Louisiana State University (USA) and holds several internationally recognised certifications for the energy and manufacturing sectors.

He is married with two kids, and he is highly active at work (as CTO) and in his private life with sports and community activities.

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1881

Year Founded

3400+ Number of Employees

600m+ Revenue

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

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

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

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

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Specifically, to industry 4.0, Martino also adds that “we have equipped operators with augmented reality glasses and headphones to visualise in 3D presses live for remote operations, support, simulations, and training.

Majority of our presses are connected to monitor their production performance live, and we are establishing a central control room in our Hamburg headquarters to monitor, navigate and manage our digital production worldwide.”

Driving sustainability throughout the entire value chain According to Martino, the industry is complex as it evolves continuously, along with the changing regulations, the needs of retailers and consumers, shareholder’s expectations and upcoming technologies that offer the

opportunity to evolve continuously. He believes that leaders need to come together to positively challenge themselves, suppliers, and stakeholders on how to best develop and deploy the right technology to drive efficiency and sustainability throughout the entire value chain.

“We constantly interact with suppliers and associations, challenging each other to drive performance forward.

When it comes to people, planet and resource protection and preservation – in addition to service in the communities – we actively engage all stakeholders to overcome that challenge collectively.

“As one of the main parts of my job, I engage with technological partners, machine and services providers, and with sustainability associations that promote

REDUCES THE CO2 FOOTPRINT > 50 % www.actega.com/ecoleaf

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20.07.2022 16:14:23

circularity. This unique combination of factors brings the opportunity to have a concrete and tangible impact in both the mid and long-term, so I am passionately committed and engaged to All4Labels’ sustainable journey,” said Martino.

“We see in the market conventional printing technologies that continue becoming more and more competitive in terms of waste reduction, production speed and quality controls because of the evolution of fully automated and digital control systems. The technical production set-up of such machines is also being complemented with inline digital printing units to maintain high efficiency level on

“ I immediately noticed a unique entrepreneurial and sustainable drive across All4Labels Group” MASSIMILIANO MARTINO CTO, ALL 4 LABELS

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THREE CORE PILLARS OF ALL4LABELS' CTO’S STRATEGY • Products: research, development, and innovation of new sustainable and functional products, satisfy the demographic growth and customers’ needs • People: personnel health and wellbeing, and environmental protection • Technology and Planet: development and selection of the right technologies to drive efficiency forward and continuously improve operations to minimise carbon footprint and environmental impact Another critical element for Martino is the needs of the market, in respect of the regulatory requirements that the business operates within. Their target is not purely compliance but going beyond compliance to achieve excellency.

both short and long production runs to best satisfy customers while minimising CO2 emissions,” he added.

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

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Priorities as Chief Technology Officer The key priority for stakeholders is undoubtedly sustainability, which comes with a focus on three fundamental areas of All4Labels’ sustainability strategy: “Within engineering at All4Labels, we partner together with different suppliers to develop the most efficient machines and production technologies”.

ALL4LABELS

All4Labels: Sustainable and eco-friendly packaging solutions

“We have opened several hubs with specialised staff to develop new sustainable products and we continuously research to maximise the efficiency of our existing products and services. We also have dedicated technical staff deployed at customers' locations to support the sustainable applications of these products,” he said.

Martino is additionally responsible for global quality, ensuring that the business has the right performance across the entire value chain: customers, communities, end users, retailers, and brand owners.

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

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

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“ At All4Labels constantly interact with our customers and partners, challenging each other in order to continuously drive performance forward” MASSIMILIANO MARTINO CTO, ALL 4 LABELS

E

TREME PERFORMANCES AND PRECISION IMPRESSIVE SPECIAL EFFECTS H I G H QU A L I T Y S O F T - T O U C H P R I N T I N G T A I L O R - M A D E

HIGH-VALUE SHRINK SLEEVES PRINTING THE BEST QUALITY EVER P R I N T I N G . O M E T . C O M

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A challenging market demand that continues to grow both in size and complexity The demand is growing for functional and smart packaging solutions, which can really interact with brand owners, retailers, and consumers.

“We need to develop unique and tailored production solutions, coming together with machine providers and solution providers to develop the production equipment required to satisfy the needs of our customers.”

All4Labels strive to stay ahead of the market by trying to predict what their customers will need and always challenge themselves by asking: ‘can we produce in a more efficient manner?’

Martino insists that the answer is always ‘yes’, and it will continue to be as they continue to review and upgrade their machines and encourage two-way feedback with technology partners and providers ; conducting engineering reviews to achieve the most sustainable and lean production possible.

“As the market is becoming increasingly more complex and demanding, we have long production runs, but also shorter production runs that we include to best serve our customers. We have developed hybrid production technologies together with solid and reputed partners, which sustainably merge conventional methods of producing packaging together with the modern digital methods. We can therefore use the benefits of both for minimum environmental impact and maximum efficiency, at the same time,” said Martino.

Here, he highlights an example of promotional products with complex graphic designs, where such hybrid machines and equipment have the unique capabilities to produce in quality short and medium runs, minimising the environmental footprint like it was never possible to before.

Industry 4.0 Martino is a strong advocate of the power of innovative in-line processes, robotic applications, and end-line automation to ramp up productivity and flexibility. And, with ERP integration alongside digital print, real-world data is incorporated for complete customers’ satisfaction too.

AN AWARD-WINNING ITALIAN JOB Having been in his role for two years and the wider group for longer, Martino was given the chance to contribute to part of the operational activities in Italy, where the business is undergoing significant expansion. Last year, the facility in Schio won the Eco Design Award for 2021.

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“ We develop unique and tailored technological production solutions to best satisfy the market needs; from home care and personal care to premium solutions for wine and spirits” MASSIMILIANO MARTINO CTO, ALL 4 LABELS

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

Regarding Sustainability All4Labels has solid programs in place to minimise waste and to maximise the lifespans of equipment: “Life Cycle Assessments are constantly conducted to decarbonise as much as possible each printing and converting step with a great focus on enabling de-inking to accelerate the full circularity of substrates, including resins regenerations near-and-off-site. All4Labels is planning to launch a proprietary owned Life Cycle Assessment Tool specifically engineered for digital printing,” said Martino.

The next part, according to Martino, is automation when it comes into transportation systems or smart manufacturing. Last year, the first automated guided vehicles were introduced around the plants including new packaging robots, limiting repetitive straining 240

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to reduce the impact on operators lifting loads and repetitive tasks.

“Automating our finishing and distribution operations across the manufacturing sites is one of the major achievements for All4Labels, with several patents and several engineering innovations already in the pipeline. At All4Labels we are committed to bring printing and packaging to the next level for a new and completely seamless experience,” he added.

Holy Grail 2.0 Holy Grail 2.0 is about rationalising how packaging can be sorted, reused, and recycled. As an active member of this initiative, All4Labels provide special samples as well as technical advice and expertise across the industry.

Participating in the first industrial trials – which were successful, with a sorting rate above 90% – Martino stated that this was a “great milestone that shows how technology has the potential to improve the sorting of our packaging wastes to be reused, recycled and also upcycled”.

Nevertheless, there are major challenges in the industry that remain, including removing the ink from the packaging – substrates are incredibly challenging. After conducting several R&D and lab tests, All4Labels are now collaborating with several solution providers to see which technologies could best increase the level of efficiency in the packaging de-inking processes to up-cycle as much waste as possible.

“Some production equipment can certainly be improved in terms of efficiency and emission reduction.

Partners work with our engineering team on unique solutions that could upgrade our machines with innovative technologies. Digital embellishment is another upcoming technology, where technologymagazine.com

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

“Through R&D, we drive customer and enduser satisfaction. We do this together with universities and external practices because we are also in the fundamental research of new adhesives and new substrates that are biobased, or that can be upcycled with a much higher yield,” said Martino.

Pioneering smart innovative solutions to solve energy and customer demands All4Labels is also pioneers of innovative solutions that are more interactive – so not purely labels containing printed data, but with data that is digital and can be accessed via QR codes and RFIDs. It’s an area they are heavily invested in.

“We have a dedicated business unit called Smart and Secure. This focus on the secure and sustainable consumer interaction with innovative labelling and packaging solutions, means it can occur through a mobile, PC or through data management, providing fruitful and useful data that can be fed back into our customer's database in order to really drive forward the sustainability and efficiency of supply chain, helping our customers to make the right decisions and also actively interacting with the consumers.”

“Interactive packaging requires energy, but such energy can come from renewable energies, such as solar and we are investing into such technology; besides this, 100% of All4Labels electricity comes from renewables, and we're continuing to invest in that with further solar panels to support any incremental energy needs for our production”.

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EVOBITS

Turnkey IT solutions in a powerful boutique model WRITTEN BY: ILKHAN OZSEVIM

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Silviu Balaci, CTO, and Dragos Radulescu, GM of EvoBits, a boutique-minded yet highly capable IT solutions firm, talks tech, turnkey and timely evolution

I

n the business world, just as in the world at large, there is a kind of operational ‘survival of the fittest’ principle, where the most highly adaptable to change will survive. There are other related principles at work, too.

‘Environment’, ‘niche’, ‘competition’ and a form of ‘selection’ are involved, and these principles are more than mere metaphors.

EvoBits IT is a company that exhibits such principles, and its adaptability is striking.

EvoBits IT began as a software development company in 2014, which was their primary focus for the first few years.

“But, after that, we started branching out into hosting, due to the emerging demand from our existing clients,” says Silviu Catalin Balaci, Chief Technology Officer (CTO). “That's when we built the first data centre, and we then very quickly built the second.”

Exhibiting further acumen for the exploitation of the environment, he says: “Initially, they were purposely built for a particular project, but since then we started trying to attack the hosting services aspect.

We already had an established infrastructure and then developed into a hosting provider – mainly B2B, which is our target audience. But we also have the software department, and, instead of merely working for other clients, we are now trying to shift focus and develop different types of software-as-a-service (SaaS) to offer those as a product.”

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Turnkey IT Solutions in a powerful boutique model

“ You have to think about such equipment as you would think about a race car: it can only operate at high performance when it’s within its parameters, and so you have to try to keep it within those parameters” DRAGOS RADULESCU GENERAL MANAGER EVOBITS

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Balaci says that, being a small company, “the positions here are generally like an octopus with many tentacles, and we have several simultaneous functions so our titles alone don't really capture what we actually do”. Although officially ‘CTO’, Balaci’s role is mainly on the broad technical side involving management of the IT infrastructure, which includes everything that doesn't fall under the data centre operations.

“This includes servers and the handling of the networking part, the operating system and the software – including our own software development department.

And then on the business side, I'm more

EVOBITS

SILVIU BALACI TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: ROMANIA I am a technology enthusiast with an entrepreneurial spirit and an eye for solving IT-related challenges. Looking at the future, I am certain of only one thing: no matter what happens, it will be interesting.

DRAGOS RADULESCU TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: ROMANIA

EXECUTIVE BIOS

or less overseeing the marketing strategy and consulting on the general business development strategy, where Dragos and I strategise on which direction we should evolve or what market we should attack.”

Dragos Cristian Radulescu is General Manager (GM) and his role similarly entails multiple facets. “On the one hand, there is still a technical aspect concerning the operation of the Data Centres,” he says. “It's related to engineering and to the equipment that we're using, and since I joined EvoBits IT, it has also developed into an operational role, leading internal ops and the general administration of the business – which means dealing

With extensive engineering background in the automotive sector and exposure to the German and Japanese school of thought, my aim is not only to ensure goals are reached but that the process is thorough, complete and well documented.

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with customer and supplier contracts, and includes personnel responsibilities.”

Located in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, EvoBits IT is currently looking to finalise a solid recipe for the business, creating a solid model for their hosting business and, later, one for SaaS, that Radulescu says “can then be easily reproduced and expanded into potentially different locations”.

“The kind of business that we are currently running and the markets for these products and services (the data centre and hosting business) are dependent on location.

Expansion, generally speaking, requires relocation towards the customers, so that would be a ‘horizontal expansion’. Then, within our current business model, we are looking at our customers and seeing what needs they have that may not currently be met by the market” EvoBits IT prides itself on being a company with a boutique mentality. One of their goals in their expansion and development is to maintain this ethos, and where they are focusing only on B2B, they will work to maintain a close working relationship with their customers, discussing all their needs and adapting their hardware – as well as their software – infrastructure in line with customer needs, and developing their products in a particular direction accordingly. “We will never ever become a corporate type of company with a highstreet mentality,” says Balaci.

EvoBits IT’s Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning EvoBits IT’s biggest customers are currently in the AI business. “We've identified a kind of niche where we see a great potential because the products offered by large companies are off-the-shelf, fixed and immobile,” says Balaci. “All the large 252

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“ We will never ever become a corporate type of company with a high-street mentality” SILVIU BALACI

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, EVOBITS

cloud companies have a 'take it or leave it' approach, but this area is complex and some customers require a different type of computational power. Others may need a different balance, such as more CPU power or a specific type of GPU, and either very fast, low latency storage or incredibly high amounts of storage. So we've discerned that there's a large volume of customer needs that are not being met in this department, and that speaks directly to our image as being customer-focused and creating solutions that are best for their particular business, so we are presently tackling this as a service.”

EvoBits IT also has a model that includes renting out equipment and hardware for AI processing, and engaging in consulting for larger customers that want to create their own infrastructure. For example, they presently have a client that has built his own private cloud just for AI processing and are both providing the hardware and creating the design for this private cloud – even the control panel. They are essentially a turnkey solution, with full vertical integration (FVI).

FVI means that EvoBits IT controls every aspect of the package that they provide and deliver to the customer. They have their own hardware and infrastructure that they built with their partners, and have full control of the software that's running on the technologymagazine.com

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cloud – fundamentally in control of every aspect on the chain. This gives them a lot of flexibility, as well as the power to adapt to the customer's needs and to react quickly in case any changes are required.

Balaci adds: “This full vertical integration eliminates a lot of restrictions. For example we are not limited to the power in a rack.

As we actually own the data centre, we can quite easily go in and assign more power to a particular zone or more cooling to a particular area. We're even able to modify the local data centre infrastructure, if that's something that needs to happen.”

Software as a Service Then there is the SaaS model within EvoBits IT.

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The idea is that a big part of the company is still focused on software development, making use of the skills of many great software developers who have been with the organisationfor a number of years. But, at the same time, EvoBits IT has shifted their approach into that of a service provider, focusing heavily on the hosting aspect of the business. One of the first examples would be the complete API builder.

Balaci says: “You have a lot of mobile apps developers that are quite good at creating mobile apps, but all that data in the backend needs to be stored somewhere.

Usually, what they do is contract other companies to build that for them. What we want is to have something similar to a website builder, but one that targets

EVOBITS

building the APIs behind mobile apps or other websites that work with that type of structure. This product will also be ready very soon.”

DC’s, Tech and technical know-how When Radulescu first joined EvoBits IT, he was in charge of a more technical aspect of the business, related specifically to the equipment used in the infrastructure of the data centres.

“We had two great partners that we worked with to construct the DCs,” he says. “Before I joined the company, we

purchased very efficient evaporative cooling equipment from Vertiv – which is a big name in the business – and we've used our local partner Innova to integrate and set up this equipment for the data centre.”

At the time, however, there was a certain lack of internal know-how within the company. Radulescu’s purpose was to understand how the pieces of equipment worked to get the most out of them and heighten their performance.

“You have to think about such equipment as you would think about a race car: it can only operate at high performance when it's within its parameters, and so you have to try to keep it within those parameters.

“One of the data centres that we constructed was a custom job built for max-load (3 MW of power), which means

“ One of the approaches is how to start our own marketing campaign to highlight the brand, highlight what makes us special, what specific aspects of our service set us apart from our competitors and why customers should come to us in spite of our very low prices” DRAGOS RADULESCU GENERAL MANAGER EVOBITSE

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that everything was strung up very tightly.

The cooling equipment, especially, was working very close to its rated capacity, and we had to find solutions to understand how to optimise and distribute airflow to ensure that we didn’t have any hotspots. Initially, this took a while, but we can say that we've gone from something that was very tightly strung – where any issues would've led to major concerns during operation – to where we are now, which is an N+1 situation where we can literally shut down some equipment and still continue to be operational without a hitch.”

As things progressed and Radulescu’s role evolved into one more involved with operations, they found that they needed to define numerous procedures to ensure that they have systems in place to record and document activities, and track all tasks – both internal and external – to optimise their workflow.

IT service expansions: challenges and opportunities IT expansions do, of course, come with their own sets of challenges. Asked about their own particular kind, Balaci says that they found them to fall into three categories – the first of these being global supply issues.

“If we take just network cards as an example, if we were to source them through the direct channels, we would have to wait up to a year in some cases.

So we had to adapt by trying to find other suppliers for those particular parts, but even so, nothing really comes quicker than three months – and, in a company where we are trying to be as agile as possible, that means trying to think ahead by buying and keeping things in stock so that, when a customer has a particular requirement, we are able to offer them a solution on 256

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the spot. This has been one of our biggest strengths, because we took that risk to buy ahead. We were, many times, the only ones in the local market who could provide, let's say a specialised custom server within one week. Instead of waiting three months, most of the time we had everything we needed ready.”

EVOBITS

The second challenge for EvoBits IT has been the software aspect. “We just launched our OpenStack cloud,” says Balaci. “We wanted to go for a solution that caters to high performance computing, which means extremely fast servers and, most importantly, an extremely fast storage solution – completely based on NVMe SSD

technology – which is the best of the best with low latency. We have to thank our partners at StorPool for that, who provided the software solution for the storage part and that solution has been great. However, the challenge has been in integrating it with our control panel, because we built one from the ground up. If you go onto Amazon technologymagazine.com

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cloud and try to buy some components in one package, you will spend hours reading through the documentation as to where you need to go and what you need to do to gain access to these components. That led us to take the decision to build our own management and control panel, where we can simplify things enough that almost anyone can go there and, in just a few clicks – I would say in under a minute – easily customise whatever they want according to their needs.”

“ You have to think about such equipment as you would think about a race car: it can only operate at high performance when it’s within its parameters” DRAGOS RADULESCU GENERAL MANAGER EVOBITSE

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The last challenge was a particularly interesting one. “It relates,” says Balaci, “to the business strategy that we discussed with Dragos.

“We have all this hardware and we're going to build this high performance cloud, so we thought, 'let's take the strategy of not overcharging our customers, because fundamentally, we don't care about profit'.

Right now, our concern is getting our name known and expanding our brand. But, oddly enough, a lot of people are wondering, 'what

EVOBITS

corners are you cutting if you are able to offer these prices? Why is it so cheap?'. They think that we can’t offer this performance for under a half or a third of what other suppliers in the market offer. We built everything properly, with the latest high-performance equipment, with top-of-the-line software components, and we’re simply trying to not overcharge anyone. Even our biggest customer – who we're building the AI cluster for – came to us directly and said, 'your prices are so low that people are really

thinking that something is off here'.

“We need, therefore, to convince our customers that we are not cutting corners and are not underpricing our services, but that other providers are overcharging them.”

EvoBits IT’s upcoming 3rd DC EvoBits IT are also focused on a third DC. Finding the right location has been a challenge as, for DCs, location is key.

Specifically, power is a big problem, because data centres require large volumes of it to function effectively, and EvoBits IT is in a city where a number of areas have been built up and a lot of power resources have been used up.

The next stages are about obtaining approvals for the new location and for the new building, which is also a lengthy process.

There's a lot of bureaucracy involved.

Balaci says: “We hope that we'll be able to overcome all the challenges on the way which will be basically the implementation of all lessons learned. We aim for it to be as efficient as our most efficient, as reliable as our most reliable, and as flexible as our most flexible DC. We expect the building permits and zone development permits to come sometime next year.”

The critical importance of the partner ecosystem EvoBits IT’s partner ecosystem is also key to its successes. Hearkening back to evolutionary analogies, this ecosystem functions in a way that’s somewhat akin to symbiosis.

One of these partners is Supermicro, who has been very reliable. Most of EvoBits IT’s servers have been from Supermicro, and they have proven themselves to be – despite the fact that they’re a big company – extremely adaptable, and, as EvoBits IT offer technologymagazine.com

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customised solutions, they require flexibility.

Supermicro constantly adapts solutions for EvoBits IT and the two work together within the supply chain. They were also quick to point out delays caused by the sourcing of parts, offering solutions to go in a different direction to solve EvoBits IT’s delivery issues.

Another one of EvoBits IT’s partners is AMD, who they’ve been with since 2019, where EvoBits IT were a launch partner for Epyc Rome CPUs. Balaci says: “They are always fast to supply; their CPUs are great, as is the support that we receive from them and, if we contact them concerning more niche software, they will help with custom settings or tweaks.”

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On the partner ecosystem, Radulescu continues: “We have our partners on the infrastructure and equipment side for the data centres, and the most important name here is Innova. They have been our partners since the construction of the data centres, and they have basically been holding our hands throughout the process of our operations. They've been our partner for maintenance and have been supporting us for any changes that we've carried out and have been there to help with any problems that we have, and have been open to suggestions and requests. They even helped us to learn about specific equipment, such

EVOBITS

“ We need, therefore, to convince our customers that we are not cutting corners and are not underpricing our services, but that other providers are overcharging them.

SILVIU BALACI

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, EVOBITS

as the Vertiv cutting edge evaporative cooling systems.”

Most importantly, Innova have been able to hand EvoBits IT knowledge down from Vertiv as an intermediary – “and they were very open in doing so,” says Radulescu. “We are very pleased to have them as a partner and have found many opportunities to collaborate with them.

“Obviously, I can't go on without mentioning Vertiv themselves, who have delivered the product and have been very diligent in supporting it wherever it was necessary - and even when it was out of warranty. It must be said that our use-

case isn't the most usual case for this type of equipment. We've been pushing those units in that project close to max load continuously, which has also been a very interesting experience for Vertiv themselves, to see how the equipment handles that sort of situation.”

StorPool is another one of EvoBits IT’s partners. They offer a really fast, low latency storage solution for cloud systems and for high performance computing, “and those guys are just awesome,” enthuses Balaci.

“We begin with the fact that their solution is great and works really well, but the level of support that they offer is what really sets them apart.”

EvoBits IT’s focus is about trying to develop the business and to make a name for themselves in the market. “One of the approaches is how to start our own marketing campaign to highlight the brand, highlight what makes us special, what specific aspects of our service set us apart from our competitors and why customers should come to us in spite of our very low prices,” says Radulescu. “And, on the other hand, we want to push forward on the development of our data centre, which is very important to us in terms of the next few years, which will be pivotal for the development of our company as a whole.”

Balaci says: “My area of focus will heavily be on our cloud solution. The one that we just launched is something that is also extremely critical for the software-as-aservice aspect of the business, since it provides the backbone for that area. We'll focus heavily on evolving, adding new features, expanding the offering and trying to educate our customers.”

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THE IMPORTANCE OF PARTNERS IN

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SONESTA INTERNATIONAL HOTELS CORPORATION

WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

E SECURITY technologymagazine.com

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SONESTA INTERNATIONAL HOTELS CORP

Michael Woodson, Director of Information Security & Privacy, Sonesta, details the importance of partnerships when developing an effective security strategy

S

ince 2020, Sonesta International Hotels Corporation (Sonesta) has grown by 350%. Starting out as 16 hotels in 1937, Sonesta has more than 1,200 hotels today – and this number only continues to grow. Sonesta’s foundations are built on excellent service and authentic experiences, driven by its founder A.M. ‘Sonny’ Sonnabend.

Offering its services with passion, loyalty, and commitment to the many faces - new and familiar - that stay with the organisation, the human side of hospitality is at the core of Sonesta’s culture. “The guest experience is the number one goal,” says Michael L. Woodson, Director of Information Security and Privacy at Sonesta.

Growing its portfolio of hotel brands, each hotel is as individual as its customers’ reason to travel. “Our mission is to wow every guest, team member, partner and community in which we operate by delivering quality, value and amazing hospitality. Being a fast-growing organisation, we are dedicated to redefining hospitality, making sure our operations are the best of the best,” he adds, elaborating on the organisation’s aims for consumers. “Since joining the organisation, Sonesta has gone from 1,000 employees to more than 8,000.

We have made significant improvements in five key areas: people, processes, technology, security and resilience.

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1937

Year founded

8500+

Number of employees

Michael Woodson, Director of Information Security and Privacy at Sonesta International Hotels Corporation

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SONESTA INTERNATIONAL HOTELS CORP

“WE HAVE EVOLVED INTO THIS EXPANSIVE CORPORATION OF HOTELS AND SERVICES, WITH VERY TALENTED AND DIVERSE PEOPLE AMONG US”

“We have experience in a evolved into variety of industries this expansive including retail, pharmaceutical, corporation banking, of hotels and services, with manufacturing, very talented wholesale and and diverse distribution, people among government, us. It’s truly healthcare and been an utilities and gas,” amazing says Woodson. journey.”

“In hospitality, As Director I have consulted MICHAEL WOODSON of Information with many leading DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRIVACY, Security organisations on SONESTA and Privacy incident response, at Sonesta, threat identity, and Woodson leads the organisation’s asset management,” he adds. “So, when cybersecurity practices. “From a holistic this opportunity came up at Sonesta, I felt cybersecurity perspective, I have a lot of that, with my deep industry experience,

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I could immediately add value and help the organisation reach its goal of becoming a world-class organisation.

Since then I have been working to improve the organisation’s cybersecurity posture from one with limited security capabilities to one that has a fully operational security function that is both sustainable for the business and aligns with its objectives.

“At Sonesta, we have adopted a hybrid approach, supported by a managed detection and response solution in partnership with an organisation called ReliaQuest. With our unique workforce, my team and I are solely focused on cybersecurity, whether that's risk management, privacy, compliance, or endpoint detection and response, our goal is to ensure that we develop a cybersecurity program that aligns with the business.”

MICHAEL WOODSON TITLE: DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRIVACY INDUSTRY: CYBERSECURITY

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: MASSACHUSETTS, US Michael’s passion and commitment to delivering best-in-class cross-functional leadership, transformative cyber security initiative, and radical operational improvements can be seen in the array of high-impact positions he has held over the years in academia, law enforcement, and corporate environments.

As Director of Information Security and Privacy, Michael has successfully accelerated revenue generation and optimised profitability through the strategic design of information security management processes, as well as radically improving existing information systems and platforms to elevate security standards, ensure physical and digital information assets are adequately protected, and provide the organisation a considerable competitive advantage over others in the market.

“ ONCE, WE WERE IN THE BACKYARD; NOW, WE ARE IN THE JUNGLE” MICHAEL WOODSON

DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRIVACY, SONESTA

The importance of an effective cybersecurity program during an aggressive growth strategy Once a small organisation, the expansive scale of Sonesta opens up the organisation to all manner of vulnerabilities. “Once, we were in the backyard; now, we are in the jungle,” says Woodson.

“In the jungle, there are lions and tigers, so we need to make sure that, as our organisation continues to grow, we are proactively creating our security posture to defend against a wide spectrum of potential threats, making sure everyone is safe and secure.”

As the organisation continues to develop, cybersecurity will be critical to its success.

“Security is very much woven into the fabric of our strategy; it receives commitment from the top down,” Woodson says.

Woodson warns, however, that, being a large organisation, it is important to attribute pillars of the organisation when it comes to security, rather than looking at the concept as a whole.

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SONESTA INTERNATIONAL HOTELS CORP

Sonesta’s approach to…

Cloud security: COVID-19 brought about an influx of cloud adoption.

“Whether it’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or a platform, it will be vital to look at these technologies from a security perspective in order to continue to drive success.”

“ BEING STRATEGIC IS AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF A PARTNERSHIP, IT ADDS VALUE TO SOMETHING – WHICH IS NAME SURNAME INCREDIBLY JOB TITLE, COMPANY NAME IMPORTANT TO SONESTA” MICHAEL WOODSON

DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRIVACY, SONESTA

Application security: Moving from DevOps to DevSecOps, Sonesta is dedicated to ensuring its environments are developed in a secure way.

“We are making dramatic improvements in this area as we expand. We are committed to making sure that our developers are security conscious and adopt the best practices.”

Asset Management: “When it comes to asset management, we have been looking at some of the key enablers to develop a single, centralised foundation for information security. We have been looking at this from three areas – asset management, inventory management, and configuration management. Together, we aim to create a dynamic approach to making things secure.”

Unified patch management: “Vulnerability management and patch management go hand-in-hand. The combination of the two has helped us to advance our cybersecurity strategy, giving us an edge when it comes to keeping our security posture.” technologymagazine.com

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Sonesta and its partnerships When it comes to its partnerships, Sonesta is always on the lookout for those committed to developing a strategic partnership. “Being strategic is an important element of a partnership: it adds value, something that is incredibly important to Sonesta. Listening to our customers and developing strategic relationships with our partners have been very important elements of our cybersecurity strategy,” says Woodson.

“It’s not just about price, it’s about added value,” he adds. “When we work with our partners, we are looking for organisations that can advise us on the right products, that can collaborate with us and suggest other approaches that we may not have considered. Sun Management is one such organisation that has given us that ability.

“Sun Management provides us with the ability of value-add both to meet the needs of the organisation and from a cost perspective. They have been a trusted advisor and trusted partner, who have helped not just on the cybersecurity side but on the infrastructure side. They have helped with project management and bringing third parties to help improve our security posture holistically.”

The next 12 to 18 months for Sonesta In the upcoming months, Woodson is committed to growing the organisation.

“I’ve been in the digital equipment industry for more than 30 years – as a Director, you never know what tomorrow will bring, but I try to see cracks before they become holes, and my job is to prevent them from becoming craters.

The next 12 to 18 months will continue to be dedicated to the development of our security programme and the mitigation of threats and risks,” says Woodson.

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SONESTA INTERNATIONAL HOTELS CORP

Sonesta: The importance of partners in effective security

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“SECURITY IS VERY MUCH WOVEN INTO THE FABRIC OF OUR STRATEGY; IT RECEIVES COMMITMENT FROM THE TOP DOWN” MICHAEL WOODSON

DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION SECURITY AND PRIVACY, SONESTA

“Partners will be key to this going forward; as we adopt things like platformcomputing, infrastructure-as-a-service and various cloud technologies, vendor management relationships will be very important. Third-party risk is going to be a key attribute that the industry will need to manage better – as well as fourth and fifth-party risk, as these dependencies can indirectly affect your security.”

Another key trend to keep an eye on will be prevention methods, as Woodson believes that “awareness of the human aspect of security will play a major role.”

“It will be important to make sure that, with a growing remote and hybrid workforce, organisations start to look at their threat landscape differently. With these new ways of working, the perimeter is no longer confined to the walls of your building – workers can now be anywhere.

It will be important for organisations to have visibility, as well as the ability to discover, build, understand and utilise what is coming onto the network and how they are using the data.”

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FACILITATES THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY

Tech Mahindra's Pune Campus in India

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TECH MAHINDRA

WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY technologymagazine.com

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TECH MAHINDRA

Jinender Jain, Senior Vice President and Sales Head UK and Ireland at Tech Mahindra, explains how it supports the client digital transformation journey

E

very consumer sees digital transformation across multiple facets of society. But as a consumer, it is not always apparent just how much technology plays a role in the development of society and the services consumed en masse on a daily basis.

The digital ecosystem goes beyond phones, computers and other digital products to include the infrastructure behind the scenes that ensures services are operational on a consistent basis to frequent the demand of a growing digital ecosystem. Global consumption of coffee is becoming increasingly more digital; the way we consume advertisements relies on digital media products; and, for anyone still purchasing items with cold, hard cash, digital payment is a process of the future and will develop at a fast, secure rate.

All of the digital solutions that create ease for consumers also produce benefits for business, which is where the demand for technology expertise comes in. One of the leading solutions’ providers, Tech Mahindra, is a leading provider of digital transformation, consulting, and business re-engineering services and solutions firm that makes up part of the Mahindra Group. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, the firm has a global reach, with 1,224 customers around the world, serving 90 countries as they undergo their digital transformations.

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Tech Mahindra facilitates the digital transformation journey

“A year ago, we were talking about the tailwinds becoming headwinds”

Leading the support “Some of the services for businesses operating that you consume, in the UK and Ireland, some of the banking Jinender Jain, Senior that you do, is all Vice President and Sales underpinned by services Head, UK and Ireland, at that we provide to our Tech Mahindra, manages clients, and this is one of client relationships the amazing areas that across different business we help our customers verticals in the nation, serve their customers JINENDER JAIN SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND SALES including banking and better,” Jain explains.

HEAD UK AND IRELAND, financial services and “Tech Mahindra is TECH MAHINDRA insurance, healthcare a very purpose-led and life sciences, as well organisation, extremely as retail and manufacturing. focused on our customers. The philosophy The firm prides itself on being a world that we have is the philosophy that Mr leading organisation in the digital space, Mahindra outlined, and that philosophy is leveraging a network of associates in the Rise,” Jain says.

UK and overseas to service its clients.

“Rise means accepting no limits, changing Jain explains how the company is faster and helping our customers achieve embedded in its clients’ processes and the purpose they set out for.” how it has an indirect impact on the One of the major facets of expertise consumer’s experience. at Tech Mahindra is manufacturing, 280

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TECH MAHINDRA

particularly the digital transformation of the automotive sector, which plays to its strengths as Mahindra Group operates the largest tractor manufacturer in India. This is but one of the areas the company has excelled in over the years since Mahindra Group’s founding in 1945.

As it responds to the trends in the industry, the firm also considers the effects of the global transition to digital with more emphasis on supply chain resilience and better management of resources. Jain also cites COVID-19 and the Ukraine crisis as examples of supply chain volatility and how businesses must prepare for eventualities beyond their current capabilities.

The company has very much witnessed and supported this along with healthcare as the two critical industries affected by the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, the use of blockchain, 5G, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity solutions hold wider applications within its industries and the company’s goal is to ensure that clients are using them to their benefit.

“Our goal is to work with clients very closely to ensure that they have the right data, analytics, supply chain tools and principles, blockchain-based solutions, and the right processes are in place for manufacturing to minimise waste.

Associates

1,224

Customers across 90 countries

TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND SALES HEAD, UK AND IRELAND INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES LOCATION: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM Jinender is an accomplished sales leader, expert in Digital Transformation and Solutions, with an outstanding record in securing major Multinational accounts, ideating services and achieving exponential high margin revenue growth.

Global Client Partner for GE. He has published papers on CAR-T therapy and Supply Chain in the past.

Jinender is passionate about running and has participated in London marathon couple of times. He is a member of Mensa and loves reading and playing chess.

EXECUTIVE BIO

151,100

JINENDER JAIN

TECH MAHINDRA

Tech Mahindra's office at Queen Victoria Street, London

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It also ensures that supply chains are resilient, and products and services are delivered to their end clients without any delay and in a fast fashion,” says Jain.

Jain also explains that there are two trends among its manufacturing clients that are challenging the ways in which they operate, and Tech Mahindra sees these barriers with the goal of pushing through them to encourage success for its customers.

One of the core reasons why businesses come to Tech Mahindra is agility.

“They want to deliver to their customers in an agile fashion and change faster. They want the customers to have the ability to design a service or car themselves and deliver the products,” says Jain.

Jain also explains that, while its clients want to provide their customers with agile services,

Tech Mahindra's campus in Chennai, India

“ Over the past 13 years the Tech Mahindra – IFS partnership has evolved from us being an implementer of IFS solutions to being a co-developer, a co-creator of industry specific solutions for our global clients” JINENDER JAIN

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND SALES HEAD UK AND IRELAND, TECH MAHINDRA

they aim to improve their own efficiencies to create more flexibility in production.

“They also want to make sure that their factory operations are able to relate and adapt very quickly to any disruption. As such, just-in-time principles on which

manufacturing was built earlier along the theory of constraints, essentially ensures that you have to have a level of competency as well as capability in-house, across the globe; to have resilience built in,” Jain explains.

Overcoming supply chain challenges in manufacturing requires data and intelligence to understand trends in the industry and ensure a constant flow of resources required for production.

Providing a great example of how supply chain disruption can affect a production line, Jain emphasises the need to gather industry data and assess the integrity of certain supply chains, while also planning contingencies in the event of shortages.

This is a particular risk that can be seen in the automotive sector, with companies struggling to procure semiconductors amid the shortage during COVID-19. technologymagazine.com

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Discussing the technology leader’s ethos behind the factory of the future, this will be achieved in accordance with its four ‘beds’, which describes the approach towards a digital, more sustainable future.

The first aim of this strategy is to digitise manufacturing processes to make them leaner in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and is something the firm takes very seriously as it makes a positive impression on the planet. Secondly, the internet of things (IoT) plays a critical role in achieving this as it leverages smart products to provide real-time updates on system inefficiencies and failures.

“ Our goal is to work with clients very closely to ensure that they have the right data, analytics, supply chain tools and principles” JINENDER JAIN

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND SALES HEAD UK AND IRELAND, TECH MAHINDRA

Another of the four beds is centred around reliability and ensuring that all supply chain issues are taken care of whether take involves insight or planning to integrate production quality, production design and field warranties into the equation. Finally, the company is a keen advocate of mobility and the sharing economy.

Digital transformation is a partnership endeavour As the brainchild of a partnership, it is clear that Tech Mahindra recognises the importance of partnerships in achieving business goals. The firm works closely 284

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with another technology organisation, IFS, recognised for its leading enterprise software solutions and one of the longest standing partners of the business.

Similar to the rest of the organisation, Jain believes that “partnership is the key to collaborating, co-creating and delivering the goods and the services that our clients need”.

He continues to express the importance of integrating partners in everyday business processes. “For example, to build a car you need parts, software, hardware, PLM software; so many different things.

You need more than a hundred plus things to build one car. I think this is how we work collaboratively and we help co-create. We anticipate the needs of the business based on the industry trends and how the market is behaving,” Jain says.

“Over the past 13 years the Tech Mahindra – IFS partnership has evolved from us being an implementer of IFS solutions to being a co-developer, a co-creator of industry specific solutions for our global clients.”

Tech Mahindra and IFS have a focussed approach to the market and the industries in which we operate, and this allows us to deliver greater value to customers who in turn deliver greater value to their customers.

IFS is uniquely positioned in the market thanks to IFS Cloud – a single, composable technology platform that enables customers to differentiate on service. With specific industry solutions and capabilities for asset management and ERP, what makes IFS really stand out is how this combines with the company’s leading service management capabilities. Never before has there been such high expectations on how a company serves its customers, which makes IFS Cloud’s ability to deliver amazing Moments of Service™ hugely compelling – for many customers, it is their own basis of differentiation. technologymagazine.com

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This is well aligned with Tech Mahindra’s goal of helping clients become market leaders and be prepared for what’s coming NXT.NOW. What sets IFS apart is their use of the Business Value Engineering (BVE) framework which creates a tailored success map and engagement model, individual to each customers.

“The BVE frameworks enables this partnership to jointly agree on the scope, value discovery workshops and identifying key drivers for improvement along with client, which is critical to build incremental value for our client.

“Together with IFS, we have delivered value to 30+ clients, helping them unlock 286

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value out of their ERP investments.

Tech Mahindra’s true strength lies in our depth of the practice, the strength of our relationships with IFS and long-standing mutual customers.

“With one of the largest pools of Certified IFS Consultants and the ability to service customers globally, training and upskilling forms an integral part of our partnership.

Jointly, we have initiated an upskilling programme and identified 50+ Tech Mahindra resources to become IFS-certified on the customised curriculum created by IFS.” The partnership with IFS allows Tech Mahindra to leverage the adverse conditions of the market as it thrives on solving the

TECH MAHINDRA

“Some of the services that you consume, some of the banking that you do, is all underpinned by services that we provide” JINENDER JAIN

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND SALES HEAD UK AND IRELAND, TECH MAHINDRA

business challenges that its customers are facing. Jain refers to this with a great analogy about headwinds and tailwinds.

“A year ago, we were talking about the tailwinds (opportunities) becoming headwinds (challenges or threats), but, in our opinion, digital technology in any product and service is going to grow,” Jain explains.

“If there are economic headwinds, they actually become tailwinds for us. Everyone who wants to service their clients, be it a bank, mortgage application or interest rates, everyone wants to serve them better despite the economy doing so badly.”

While technology adoption is on the rise, there are still many areas to implement

solutions and, as Jain highlights, technology is only integrated into 20% of various products and services, with there being scope to increase this to 50 or 60%. In certain native applications, technology integration can be increased to 100%, which is a major door that the industry is prepared to open.

“I think that revolution is starting to grow,” Jain says. “We are seeing the demand and requirements from various clients who want to optimise themselves and become more efficient.”

Jain believes that the future of technology will be driven towards the programmes that are receiving heavy investment, while Tech Mahindra’s ‘TechMVerse’ will bring together technologies like imaging, video analytics, augmented and virtual reality, and geospatial technology. Excitingly, these new technologies will be embedded in all industries and solutions for the future.

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