Technology Magazine - June 2022

June 2022 | technologymagazine.com

Emerging tech platforms for enterprise

Hyperscale: ‘What’s the future of Infrastructure as a Service?

READ NOW

Audi Business Innovation:

DESIGNING THE FUTURE OF MOBILITY Rethinking the automotive sector with data-driven strategies

FEATURING:

SHELL

WIZZ AIR

Amp: Creating an electric world

READ NOW

eStruxture: Canada’s data centre leaders

READ NOW

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The Technology Team SENIOR EDITOR

ALEX TUCK EDITOR

CATHERINE GRAY EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA ELLA CHADNEY

CREATIVE TEAM

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

KIERAN WAITE SAM KEMP

MOTION DESIGNER

TYLER LIVINGSTONE

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

EVELYN HUANG MARTA EUGENIO ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD DREW HARDMAN PROJECT DIRECTORS

KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO RYAN HALL

MARKETING MANAGER

DAISY SLATER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE JAMES WHITE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

The future workplace reality

“Robots are now redrawing the frontiers of sustainability, safety and efficiency”

L

et’s face it, robots are pretty cool.

Many of us enjoy a bit of a browse on Youtube to see the latest inventions from Boston Dynamics, but the ‘Big 4’ robot manufacturers (ABB, Fanuc, KUKA and Yaskawa) are the ones that dominate the industry. Found in thousands of worldwide facilities, robots produced by these companies command roughly 75% of the robotics market.

There are many others besides these that, too, play a major role in manufacturing – but there are the likes of Hexagon and Brain Corp, along with thousands of others, that are branching into many previously unreachable spaces. Robots are now redrawing the frontiers of sustainability, safety and efficiency.

As Michel Spruijt, SVP of Brain Corp, puts it, we must now think of ‘cobots’, instead. These ‘cobots’ are no longer programmed mechanical arms, for instance, but intelligently-designed roaming hardware coordinated by powerful software and real-time learning, which allows them to adapt to their environments.

ALEX TUCK

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

© 2022 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

technologymagazine.com

5

CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 14 Big Picture 16 The Brief 18 Timeline: ServiceNow 20 Trailblazer: Franziska Bell 24 Five Minutes With: Tom Kellermann

50

Innovation Labs

How will robots be used to help business?

30

58

Rethinking the automotive sector with data-driven strategies

Future proofing for the energy transition

Audi Business Innovation

AMP

96

Digital Transformation

The economy of mutuality – people and purpose in healthcare

70

Hyperscale

What’s the future of Infrastructure as a Service?

104

eStruxture

Data Centers: Going full throttle in Canada

78

124

Data-driven agility helping Wizz Air to soar above rivals

Augmenting human intelligence with robotic desktop automation

Wizz Air

RPA

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

132 Shell

How Shell’s Source 2 Contract digitalisation and AI boosts productivity

182

Telehouse France

Telehouse France puts Marseille on the global comms hub map

150 Top 10

Emerging technology platforms for enterprise

162

Norwegian Data Centre Association

Promoting Norway’s DC Credentials Through Members’ Skills

198

Master Power Technologies and Digital Parks Africa

Transforming the Data Centre environment through data and regional development

240

000

Tomorrow Street

Nurtures tech ecosystems of the future

212

Nova Scotia Health Authority Collaborate to digitally evolve healthcare

254

Newfold Digital

Helping organisations succeed online

226

266

Establishing sustainable data centres in the Middle East

Going beyond Belgium, with eyes on FLAP

Gulf Data Hub

DataCenter United

312

Health Service Executive

000

Ireland's digital health transformation journey

282

City of Portland

Transforming lives with data insights

294

332

Disrupting the technology marketplace with Back Market

Ark Data Centres delves into an emissions reduction strategy

Back Market

Ark Data Centres

P RE SEN TS:

Discussing how to support women in STEM, build the talent pipeline and inspire the next generation of female leaders.

23rd-24th June 2022 TOBACCO DOCK - LONDON E1W 2SF

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13

BIG PICTURE The ‘iPhone’ moment for boats!

Stockholm, Sweden

Hydrofoiling electric boat Candela C-8's takes flight.

The world’s most anticipated electric boat is here to take the gas guzzlers, ahead of serial production. Candela C-8 promises to revolutionise waterborne transports, thanks to its unique combination of long all-electric range, high speed and industry-first features.

www.facebook.com/candelaboats

14

June 2022

Hydrofoiling electric boat Candela C-8's maiden flight

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15

THE BRIEF “Our vision is a healthier Ireland with a high-quality health service valued by all” Martin Curley

Digital Transformation and Open Innovation, Health Service Executive 

BY THE NUMBERS ServiceNow released its Global Impact Report confirming that they are using fully renewable electricity and are carbon neutral. They have accelerated their initial commitment to net zero by

20yrs

with a goal of achieving net zero by

2030

READ MORE

“We've actually put a price tag on disruption” Zsolt Nadas

Head of Technology, Wizz Air  READ MORE

“The Digital Twin, or the virtual twin, is the core of all we do. If you want to purchase a car, or if you want to even experience some piece of the brand, you want to show the product”

Their Science Based Target initiative (SBTi), which drives climate action in the private sector, approved our near-term emissions targets: Reduce Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions

70%

by 2026 from a 2019 baseline year, in line with the

1.5°c

trajectory recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change.

Executive Q&A with Publicis Sapient CPO Sheldon Monteiro Chief Product Officer Sheldon Monteiro discusses the cultural intricacies of his role at one of the world's largest digital consultants, Publicis Sapient European Space Agency renews deal with GTT cloud services GTT delivers a diverse mix of services for ESA to connect its eight cloud and office locations around Europe, including the sharing of Earth Observation data

Thomas Zuchtriegel

Head of AVP & Advisor, Audi Business Innovation  READ MORE

16

June 2022

Top 10 Swedish Technology Companies After recently being voted the most innovative nation in Europe by our readers, we take a closer look at the tech hotbed that is Sweden

 TWITTER The social media company reported a first-quarter revenue of US$1.2bn, just days after agreeing to a US$44bn sale to Tesla billionaire Elon Musk.

Ukraine’s IT army in a cyber war with Moscow The Ukrainian ‘IT Army’ – a volunteer group of around 200,000 people – are actively engaged in a cyber conflict with Moscow.

Firms from Western Europe, North America, and Asia have moved to the Ukraine in recent times to tap into a large pool of technical talent on the eastern border of the European Union.

Before the conflict, there were 285,000 IT professionals in the country, according to the IT Ukraine Association.

Having produced several homegrown tech unicorns in the country – including DevOps platform GitLab and typing assistant company Grammarly – it remains to be seen how long-term the effects will be on Ukraine’s technology professionals and the industry as a whole. But as of now, many of these IT professionals are engaged in a battle for their own independence and way of life.

 DRIVERLESS CARS – UK Users of self-driving cars will not be responsible for crashes and will be allowed to watch TV while behind the wheel under proposed changes to the Highway Code.

W I N N E R S JUN22

N ASDAQ COMPOSITE INDEX Shares in both the US and Asia have fallen due to fears about the impact of lockdowns in China on global economic growth.

The technology-heavy index recently closed at its lowest level since late 2020.  NETFLIX US$50bn was wiped off the stock market value of streaming giant Netflix after it revealed a sharp fall in subscribers, with many citing rising energy and food prices.

L O S E R S

technologymagazine.com

17

TIMELINE TIME TO CALL IN THE

SAAS!

ServiceNow’s story is a remarkable one that has seen them own the category as a cloud-based company that provides softwareas-a-service (SaaS) for technical management support.

The company specialises in IT services management (ITSM), IT operations management (ITOM) and IT business management (ITBM), allowing users to manage projects, teams and customer interactions via a variety of apps and plugins.

18

June 2022

2005

2011

First funds In July 2005, ServiceNow raised its first funds, a US$2.5mn Series A round led by JMI Equity (followed by another two rounds, of US$11mn total, over the next few years). The company sold its first contract to WagerWorks, an offshore gambling site, in the fall of 2005.

All change at the top The Founder, Fred Luddy, transitioned from CEO to chief product officer in 2011. "Fred has been a wonderful counsellor, coach, friend, as well as someone who challenges us to constantly improve our user experience, constantly make sure our products are easier and easier to use," says the current CEO, John Donahoe, who previously served as CEO of eBay.

SAAS!

2009

2013

2022

Feeling the customer love Managing partner Doug Leone said he had never seen such positive reviews from customers. ServiceNow's revenue was doubling annually, and the company became cash-flow positive, expanding deals with customers like Deutsche Bank, Intel and McDonald's In 2012, after resisting a bid from VMware, the company went public.

Silicon Valley calling Fred Luddy and a team of developers started building the platform in San Diego, CA, moving from offices known as, “the schoolhouse”, to the “wooden spaceship” in Solana Beach, to Del Mar, and eventually to the University Town Center area. ServiceNow ultimately moved its HQ north to Silicon Valley in 2013. By 2016, revenues hit US$1.39bn and the market cap US$12.34bn.

Future growth Current remaining performance obligations (“cRPO”), contract revenue that will be recognised as revenue in the next 12 months, was US$5.69bn, representing 29% yearover-year growth and 30.5% adjusted for constant currency. As of 29th April, 2022, ServiceNow’s market cap stands at US$94.28bn.

technologymagazine.com

19

TRAILBLAZER

BP winning the race to net-zero Right now, we’ve only scratched the surface of what is possible. Our ultimate aim is to build data-driven products and platforms that allow BP to iterate and innovate faster than anyone else.

Franziska Bell VP, Data & analytics

A

s VP of Data & Analytics, Franziska Bell leads BP’s data and analytics discipline, covering everything from data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to data engineering, data analytics and data management.

Her team partners with the business to set BP’s data and analytics strategy, ensuring that it is rolled out across the organisation to act as a catalyst for everything they do.

Bell is also in charge of BP’s data and analytics capability, helping others accelerate their careers and establishing a data-driven strategy for one of the world’s largest energy companies.

How do you see your role evolving over time?

I expect the importance of data and analytics to continue to grow exponentially. Our industry is filled with rich, data-driven problems and opportunities. When we apply data science to some of these problems, I believe we can have a positive, long-lasting impact on the world.

20

June 2022

BP’s ambition is to become a net zero company by

2050

What initially drew you to work for the business?

I’ve felt inspired ever since my first conversations with Bernard Looney and his leadership team.

At BP, the applications for data and analytics are immense. We work on everything from energy production, shipping, and refining to commodities’ trading and the sale of BP products to suppliers and customers. The variety that comes with my work makes me feel like a kid in a candy store a lot of the time!

Beyond the impact our work can have for BP as an organisation, there is also the impact that BP can have on our planet. 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.

Franziska Bell VP, Data & analytics

technologymagazine.com

21

TRAILBLAZER

Can you highlight a couple of achievements you're most proud of since you joined?

Collaborating with my colleagues to build the technologies and systems to accelerate BP and our customers towards net zero is something that makes me 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 co-develop data and analytics strategy, as well as develop data-driven products. For example, we have developed a datadriven 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 costeffective decarbonisation package and pathways.

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.

What trends are you seeing in the industry right now that are having the most impact?

One is the need to make data and analytics available to everyone within BP – including non-expert users – at the push of a button. Imagine a platform that can provide you with a data-driven forecast without data scientists having to write a single line of code.

22

June 2022

Award-winning innovation at BP BP’s data and analytics platform team developed a Machine Learning DevOps framework in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, receiving the DevOps industry award for ‘Best DevOps Tool/Product 2021’.

The second is causal inference from observational data. Causal inference is an often overlooked data science area that is critical for what-if-scenario modelling and decision making.

What motivates and drives you each day in your role – and do you have any mentors?

The people at BP are a big motivating factor. People here are willing to be vulnerable, down-to-earth, and

intelligent. They also care deeply about each other.

Self-development, self-reflection, and constant improvement are very important to me. I feel fortunate to be part of a company that deeply values continuous learning and has so many talented people from whom I can learn. I also greatly appreciate my long-time mentor, who has shared his knowledge and has been stretching and challenging me over many years. technologymagazine.com

23

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

TOM KELLERMANN TOM KELLERMANN IS HEAD OF CYBER SECURITY STRATEGY AT VMWARE. HE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HELPING TO GUIDE VMWARE’S CYBER SECURITY STRATEGY, AS WELL AS SERVING AS AN EXPERT RESOURCE FOR ITS PORTFOLIO OF CYBER SECURITY CAPABILITIES.

24

June 2022

Q. WIDER ROLE DOES VMWARE HAVE IN THE CYBER WORLD AND HOW IS THE PARADIGM SHIFTING?

» As I head cyber security policy

at VMware, I advise the Five Eye governments on proactive cybersecurity public policy.

I also serve as a trusted advisor to Fortune 100 customers on all challenges posed by cyber crime and espionage, as well as corresponding mitigation strategies.

VMware delivers built-in, distributed security solutions designed specifically for the threats customers face today, like ransomware and attacks targeting the anywhere workforce. Our threat telemetry is among the best in the industry given our client roster and we have powerful visibility into some of the most challenging places for enterprises to monitor. Put simply, we can stop attacks that others can’t because we can see threats that they don’t.

An interesting shift is how everybody now has to have an ‘assumption of breach’ mentality.

Organisations must now operate under the assumption that they will be impacted by a cyber attack, or that an attacker already has an avenue into their environment.

We see this as a fundamental pillar of cyber security best practice at VMware to operationalise consistent security across environments. This helps our customers to secure modern applications, workloads, and the anywhere workspace, while responding to threats with speed and hunting attackers with accuracy.

“ VMWARE DELIVERS BUILTIN, DISTRIBUTED SECURITY SOLUTIONS DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE THREATS CUSTOMERS FACE TODAY” Q. YOU'VE MENTIONED IN REGARDS TO THREATS TO BUSINESS, THAT THERE NEEDS TO BE A PIVOT AWAY FROM PREVENTION TO INTRUSION SUPPRESSION. CAN YOU ELABORATE?

» With geo-political tensions

spilling over into cyber space, organisations must now invert the security paradigm and ‘assume a breach’ in order to effectively

defend from within. Our new stark reality is that intruders can and will get into any environment. But, to prevent escalation we have to suppress their threat campaign by detecting, deceiving, diverting and containing, all without revealing ourselves to the adversary.

The core of this strategy should see endpoint detection and response integrated with network detection and response solutions, while also using deception technology to divert intruders. Attackers typically use nation state attack campaigns to hijack complex digital transformations and execute integrity attacks. Organisations need to recognise the urgency required in pivoting away from prevention techniques and towards intrusion suppression to combat these advanced cyber threat adversaries. technologymagazine.com

25

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Q. WHY IS CYBER VIGILANCE SO CRITICAL AND HOW CAN IT BE ACHIEVED WITH ZERO TRUST?

» We’re currently living in a cyber

insurgency, where the cyber space is becoming increasingly hostile and attacks are more destructive than ever before. The practice of suppressing intruders is critical to navigating this insurgency and remaining vigilant against cyber cartels, but this can only be upheld through a zero trust strategy.

It's critical that organisations take a proactive approach to security and acknowledge that threats exist both inside and outside of traditional network boundaries. A zero trust approach allows users access to only what’s necessary to effectively do their jobs, with continuous verification. The defender gains situational awareness as a result of adopting a zero-trust mindset, as well as a unified view of operations to help speed up detection and response to potential threats. In essence, zero trust instils the sensible notion of, ‘prepare for the worst, and hope for the best’, as organisations endeavour to give security teams the means to remain vigilant.”

Q. WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE TO YOU IN YOUR ROLE?

» Success is helping VMware and

our customers both defend and civilise cyberspace from the growing cyber insurgency.

26

June 2022

“ WE’RE CURRENTLY LIVING IN A CYBER INSURGENCY”

The Vmware company story

technologymagazine.com

27

7 - 8 SEPT 2022

STREAMED & IN PERSON

BUSINESS DESIGN CENTRE, LONDON

SHAPING THE BUSINESS OF SUSTAINABILITY 3,000+

Participants

2

Days

3

Zones

60+

Speakers

Get tickets

Sponsor opportunities

A BizClik Media Group Event:

Watch our 2022 Showreel

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 technologymagazine.com

29

30

June 2022

Rethinking the automotive sector with data-driven strategies

WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

technologymagazine.com

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32

June 2022

AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION

The automotive business is changing; ABI’s Thomas Zuchtriegel discusses how the company uses data to achieve business impact with visualisation

L

ooking to rethink the automotive core business, Audi Business Innovation GmbH (ABI) provides forward-thinking digital product development and innovation offering IT expertise for user-centric solutions.

Launched in 2013 by Audi, ABI is a wholly-owned subsidiary acting as a speedboat for digital product and business development at Audi. At the heart of this innovation is Thomas Zuchtriegel, Head of AVP and Advisor at ABI. “With our entrepreneurial thinking, our product and IT expertise for customer-driven solutions, and our mindset, we co-create the digital transformation,” says Zuchtriegel.

“Our overall objective is to strengthen the sales and distribution processes of Audi AG by providing relevant digital solutions and reliable IT platforms. We provide the concept of digital services and business models, while orchestrating and running digital product development processes and also implementing digital services along the whole value chain, with a focus on the efficiency of marketing and sales processes,” he continues.

Through its innovative approach, ABI makes a significant contribution to the digitisation of the customer journey.

Its technology enables the constant improvement of the Audi user experience through data-driven product developments with a measurable contribution to the customer experience performance. technologymagazine.com

33

A TRANSFORMATION PARTNER TO THE GLOBAL 2000 Modus Create helps the world’s leading enterprises build products, platforms, and processes to succeed in the digital economy. Our world-class technologists work in an iterative, outcome-focused way to help you build a digitally enabled business.

Learn About Modus

MODUS CREATE: AUDI’S DIGITAL SOLUTIONS PARTNER Patrick Sheridan, CEO of Modus Create, explains how a shared passion for emerging technology and open source culminated in a profound partnership with Audi.

Since 2019, Audi Business Innovation has worked closely with Modus Create to do groundbreaking work in the field of real-time 3D visualization and configuration of automobiles. This is a key piece of Audi’s digital aspirations. “It’s exciting to see large multinational corporations like the VW group with multiple brands bring digital capabilities in-house,” says Patrick Sheridan.

AN OPEN SOURCE DISCOVERY Modus Create’s founders met in an opensource forum in 2008, and since then, the open-source ethos has fuelled the growth of the digital consulting firm. Its team comprises some of the world’s leading technologists and thought leaders. Audi discovered Modus Create in an open-source community, and both teams instantly experienced a culture fit.

“The teams are hyper collaborative, outcome -focused, and excited about emerging technology. We felt, right away, that this was going to be a great partnership,” says Patrick Sheridan.

THE BEAUTY OF AUTOMOTIVE VISUALIZATION PLATFORM (AVP) AVP is a cloud-based toolset that develops 2D and 3D imagery, emulating multiple photographic angles to provide automotive customers with a more intelligent showroom experience.

Audi’s global teams can use AVP to easily and independently produce high-quality images and videos, leading to significant cost savings.

“Before such innovative tools, you would have to fly to different environments with a crew and take several photos. Now, you can do that all in a movie-level 3D rendering space,” Patrick added.

The project’s success has attracted interest from other groups within the Volkswagen Group.

REDEFINING CONSULTING FOR THE DIGITAL AGE Modus Create helps organizations shift their business strategy and customer experience to be digital-first. Backed by JLL Partners, Modus Create’s clients include several Global 2000 companies, and its global, remote team is spread across 50 countries worldwide.

VISIT MODUSCREATE.COM TO LEARN MORE.

AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION

Thomas Zuchtriegel, Head of AVP, & Advisor at ABI

“WITH OUR ENTREPRENEURIAL THINKING, OUR PRODUCT AND IT EXPERTISE FOR CUSTOMER-DRIVEN SOLUTIONS, AND OUR MINDSET, WE CO-CREATE THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION” THOMAS ZUCHTRIEGEL

HEAD OF AVP & ADVISOR, AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION

36

June 2022

AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION

“Our mindset and personal attitude enable us to challenge the results of our work constantly and to strive for continuous improvement of our business. It is within our DNA to generate added value through innovative ideas and new concepts,” comments Zuchtriegel.

TITLE: H EAD OF AVP, & ADVISOR INDUSTRY: AUTOMOTIVE LOCATION: GREATER MUNICH Thomas is a versatile leader with strong entrepreneurial thinking and excellent communication skills. He has extensive experience in building high performing teams to solve large and complex challenges. He is an experienced visionary and strategist in the field of computer vision and a business expert in scalable technical solutions to expand the user base.

Thomas studied digital film making arts and worked as a creative and technical consultant. Over the last 10 years, he has developed and operated industryleading B2B(2C) SaaS and VR products across VW Group, deployed in 31 markets.

Thomas has a passion for innovative digital experiences.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Developing the AVP for an enhanced customer experience The AVP is Audi’s tool that can visualise the configuration of a product and car based on computer-aided design (CAD) data in real time, as well as in 3D. At the same time, the AVP has the ability to process huge amounts of data based on product data systems in a highly automated way.

“We invented and developed the Automotive Visualisation Platform (AVP).

We are developing the building blocks to build all Audi websites. ABI is also building and running relevant components in the area of CRM, performance marketing and eCommerce. With our specific skills and a clear method set for digital product development, we are shaping the implementation of the AUDI AG's digital service portfolio,” explains Zuchtriegel.

With this technology, ABI aims to combine the digital and analogue touchpoints for end customers and for the dealerships/sales into a seamless customer journey to create an outstanding experience.

Discussing the AVP platform, Zuchtriegel says: “The desire for new, additional content types is increasing daily. The AVP allows flexible adaptations and fast production in a highly-integrated, secure ecosystem.”

Using digital twin technology, the AVP can create 3D models of a specific product before it is manufactured, which can then be used in several ways: “Based on these 3D models, we create experiences and

THOMAS ZUCHTRIEGEL

Shaping the future of digital experiences Effekt-Etage is an award-winning innovation driver for visualizations and digital experiences.

We combine tech with art to create solutions for the entire process of digital imagery.

Take your communication to the next level.

With digital twin and single source technology.

For offline, online, on-demand, streaming and beyond.

Creating individualised content for ABI with Effekt-Etage.

Björn Kowalski, Managing Partner at Effekt-Etage discusses how his company supports ABI with its visualisation capabilities for the AVP. Driven by its mission to create pioneering digital user experiences along the entire value chain, Effekt-Etage is an award-winning innovation driver for visualisations, as well as digital brand and product experiences.

“We develop scalable solutions for the entire process of digital imagery. That means starting from data preparation to create a digital twin,all the way to the production of all media assets for all touchpoints of a contemporary customer journey,” explains Björn Kowalski, Managing Partner at Effekt-Etage.

As it delivers highly-automated visualisation solutions embedded in modern IT structures, Effekt-Etage is perfectly placed to support Audi Business Innovation (ABI) with its product staging and portfolio of innovative technologies.

Commenting on the partnership, Kowalski says: “As a framework contract partner for ‘Content Production, Realtime Visualisation and Development’, we have now worked with ABI for nearly three years in a very inspiring partnership. The great thing about this partnership is the collab-orative mindset and that all processes are organised according to agile methods.”

Together with ABI, Effekt-Etage helped shape the development of the Automotive Visualization Platform (AVP), as Kowalski notes: “With the Unrealbasedvisualisation pipeline AVP, ABI consistently follows the path of the single source of truth approach.”

“But Unreal is a game engine. It delivers great results, but it still comes from the gaming world and automotive clients have some special requirements.

Therefore, we developed new tools for the AVP that now allows Unreal to also provide special assets like content for layer based online configurators in a highly-automated way,” he adds.

Looking to the future, Kowalski outlines how he hopes to develop the partnership further: “Together we have achieved a lot, but our journey does not end here. We want to provide the customer with even more individualised content in a more and more efficient manner. We also want to integrate new requirements for upcoming touchpoints into the AVP. After all, we want to continue to be the benchmark in the field of visualisation.”

Learn more

Advertising feature

AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION

produce content across all marketing and sales channels for markets all around the world,” adds Zuchtriegel.

The AVP is the core component in the product visualisation ecosystem and, to extend its options to scale and innovate further, ABI looks to select the correct partner companies that are perfectly equipped to support the company.

“We are always looking for the right mindset in our partners: collaborative, agile, tech-driven, customer-centric, and always focused on the business value.

With a mutual partnership or mutual empowerment, we have, in the end, more innovation and more scalability to serve

DID YOU KNOW...

THE AVP’S COMPETENCIES

40

• Highly automated 3D vehicle visualisation on a big scale based on product data systems (BOM information) • Connected retail and on-site • End-to-end competencies and implementation solutions • System integration • Method development/consulting • Software development/ implementation

June 2022

more touchpoints to more customers and even more brands in our case. This way we generate a win-win scenario, and everybody benefits from it,” says Zuchtriegel.

CGI agencies like Effekt Etage for example support ABI with its product staging and portfolio of innovative technologies, as Zuchtriegel explains: “Effekt-Etage assures that all cars look nice from all angles. They create 3D environments and do a lot of content production for marketing assets at scale, and, beyond that, they do proprietary software development for specific use cases.”

Focusing on data for business success For these digital twins, ABI has created a robust and comprehensive data strategy to ensure the digital models accurately create the 3D images of automotive products. “‘Own the data, own the process, enable the experience’ is how we aim to manage and successfully harness our data for the AVP. We constantly improve user experiences through data-driven product developments with measurable contributions to the customer experience performance,” comments Zuchtriegel.

Not only is data imperative for the AVP, but it also helps drive the business forward.

Using data insight as a quantitative approach in addition to qualitative feedback, ABI has developed new business models and, as Zuchtriegel explains, “the data from the feedback has been the foundation for the AVP and its development. We can use it to build upon short iterative cycles and improve the products”.

“AVP started with Audi City, the world’s first digital showroom. It then started small with multiple small pilots. Today it’s a strongly growing business with multiple business models based on 3D data, data insights and customer feedback,” he continues.

“ OUR MINDSET AND PERSONAL ATTITUDE ENABLE US TO CHALLENGE THE RESULTS OF OUR WORK CONSTANTLY AND TO STRIVE FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT OF OUR BUSINESS. IT IS WITHIN OUR DNA TO GENERATE ADDED VALUE THROUGH INNOVATIVE IDEAS AND NEW CONCEPTS” THOMAS ZUCHTRIEGEL

HEAD OF AVP & ADVISOR, AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION

This data-driven approach assures a seamless digital customer experience across multiple channels and drives millions of interactions per year, driving Audi forward. On top of this, the creation of digital – or virtual twins – generates huge time savings and empowers new business applications, notes Zuchtriegel.

He adds: “The digital twin, or the virtual twin, is the core of all we do. If you want to purchase a car, or if you want to even experience some piece of the brand, you want to show the product. The product portfolios are increasing almost every year, which means there are more and more options and variations to personalise the needs of the customer. You need to visualise it digitally – you can't take pictures because it's too time-consuming, too expensive.” technologymagazine.com

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TO THE FUTURE

Your coffee is cold until the website has loaded even one image?

This is not uncommon even today when multifaceted products are presented online. When images are rendered, performance is the key to conversions and sales. conLeos provides a maximally efficient rendering service that focuses on speed in all processes while maintaining outstanding quality standards.

Explore projects

Render image Audi RS e-tron GT

WELCOME

HOW NEXT LEVEL RENDERING WORKS TODAY With its state of the art programming technology, conLeos is a decisive pillar in the visualisation of complex vehicles for AVP Render image of Audi RS e-tron GT

The visualisation of vehicles is an important tool for customer acquisition and is therefore constantly being optimised. Before an image can be displayed, it must be rendered. To perform this process, ABI has relied on the expertise of the German software developer conLeos for many years. This company has been developing high-performance render technology for two decades already, in addition to various well-established product configurators. The new process, in which layers are superimposed and image data versioned, is based on a so far unique method of operation and has therefore been registered for patent.

In addition to Audi, the company works in a multi-brand approach for other established names such as VW, Lamborghini, SEAT, CUPRA, Claas, Linde or Knaus Tabbert. The company’s high level of expertise, cross-functional flexibility, the constant pursuit of innovation and the passion for new technologies is highly appreciated by clients.

Intelligent caching and post-processing for exceptional performance Multi-level intelligent caching is an essential part of the rendering service. Every request is processed according to the core principle of providing the customer with the image as quickly as possible. All operations are based on this maxim - whether it is numerous processes running in parallel or the use of a

lossless storage format. Due to this highly developed technology, the performance in real-time rendering is exceptionally fast while simultaneously maintaining 4k resolution.

100 layers in 100 milliseconds Image size: 4k at 12 megapixels

In post-processing, the rendered images are automatically edited before they are finally displayed. conLeos enables various types of editing such as scaling, cropping, format conversion or background adjustment. This ensures that each customer can have the rendering perfectly embedded according to their specifications while saving time as well as costs for manual editing.

CEO Tim Stoldt explains this high level of efficiency: “We are very familiar with the data thanks to our many years of cooperation with Audi, VW and SEAT and can therefore design our processes to be particularly flexible and fast.” Due to the high level of expertise and quality, conLeos will be part of the team to start implementing the real-time rendering for CUPRA this year.

Learn more

“You can't do it in a short period of time for the millions of assets and interactions we enable on a daily basis. And, therefore, the virtual twin is the core. It's also important to develop the virtual twin further, fitting to the changing customer requirements, as well as new touchpoints, new formats and new use cases. We have a tremendous cost reduction in insourcing the core components and using them in a synergetic way across different touchpoints.

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“Talking about retail, we brought down the time to market from around six weeks to just a couple of hours. All the interactive, real-time experiences and increased user engagement have a real impact on the revenue. In the end, it's all about the personalisation of products and services in the customer experience. The biggest benefit, from my point of view, is that we assure a seamless digital customer journey across all the different channels,” comments Zuchtriegel.

AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION

“ THE DESIRE FOR NEW, ADDITIONAL CONTENT TYPES IS INCREASING DAILY. THE AVP ALLOWS FLEXIBLE ADAPTATIONS AND FAST PRODUCTIONS IN A HIGHLY-INTEGRATED, SECURE ECOSYSTEM” THOMAS ZUCHTRIEGEL

HEAD OF AVP & ADVISOR, AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION technologymagazine.com

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AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION

“THE DIGITAL TWIN, OR THE VIRTUAL TWIN, IS THE CORE OF ALL WE DO. IF YOU WANT TO PURCHASE A CAR, OR IF YOU WANT TO EVEN EXPERIENCE SOME PIECE OF THE BRAND, YOU WANT TO SHOW THE PRODUCT” THOMAS ZUCHTRIEGEL

HEAD OF AVP & ADVISOR, AUDI BUSINESS INNOVATION

To gain additional support for its digital twin technology, ABI enlisted Dassault Systèmes 3DEXCITE, which acts as a downstream partner for digital services.

Zuchtriegel comments: “We have worked with Dassault Systèmes’ software, CATIA, and Deltagen for more than 10 years to create virtual twins. They drive standards, which help us – and even others – to automate. Dassault Systèmes focuses on simplification and convenience to enable ecosystem development.”

ABI also looks to conLeos, an experienced partner that provides ABI with configurator systems. With more than 20 years of experience working with Audi and the Volkswagen group, conLeos are experts in smart caching algorithms. With this, Zuchtriegel explains how it supports the AVP: “The user gets the images on the configurator, or any experience, as fast as possible. This saves a lot of render time.

We have mutual enablement in the area of software development and services, and we all have an intrinsic drive to deliver best-inclass products, which can be said the same for all of our partnerships.”

He adds: “There are long-lasting partnerships as the world is small in the visualisation sector, especially in the automotive one. You run into the same experts over and over again as they gain so much expertise.”

Looking to the future, Zuchtriegel believes that the automotive industry will continue to focus on the customer, and personalisation will be the driving force behind improving the user experience across all channels: experiential, digital, and virtual.

“With the Automotive Visualisation Platform, we continue assuring multi-brand readiness. In a couple of months, Volkswagen passenger cars, Volkswagen commercial vehicles, and Cupra will go live with the AVP in different channels, from retail to online in multiple markets. We are also working with new customers with new data, so there are additional requirements where we need to figure out how can we adapt what we already have – how can we leverage the data and how can we create a win-win scenario for everybody who's working on and using AVP?”

technologymagazine.com

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INNOVATION LABS

How will

ROB be used to he Hexagon, BrainCorp and Infobip tell us that the robot army is already here, having a massive operational effect on the bottom line and workplace safety WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

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INNOVATION LABS

BOTS elp business?

R

obots are increasingly being used by businesses to drive sustainability and safety, as well as efficiency.

Hexagon AB – recently named by BizClik Media Group as the second biggest tech company out of Sweden – has deployed autonomous reality capture solutions such as the BLK ARC, which enables companies to create Smart Digital Realities for a wide variety of industries, from construction to media and entertainment to conservation.

A recent example of this was used in Pompeii, Italy, beginning with the Leica BLK2FLY, the first flying laser scanner capable of autonomously conducting 3D scans.

The BLK ARC works with SPOT, a quadruped robot in the service of archaeologists to safely inspect archaeological areas and structures that could prove dangerous to people. The project was a collaboration with Boston Dynamics, Leica Geosystems (part of Hexagon), and Sprint Reply, a Gruppo Reply company specialising in robotics and process automation.

Burkhard Boeckem, CTO, Hexagon AB, says: “The BLK ARC is an autonomous laser scanning module for robots. It is able to capture and share data, enabling sites such as Pompeii – which were previously difficult or unreachable due to safety or technologymagazine.com

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“ Robotic technology should empower businesses to push boundaries, drive innovation and, ultimately, augment human capabilities” BURKHARD BOECKEM CTO, HEXAGON AB

other concerns – to be digitally captured both easily and accurately. We're likely to see other safety examples in the future, as the use of robotic technology increases in areas such as extreme heat as well as other dangerous environments.

Leica BLK2FLY, the first flying laser scanner capable of autonomously conducting 3D scans

“Also, as leveraging sustainable methods is now business critical, robotic solutions like the BLK ARC will become more common. The ARC requires little-to-no human intervention, thereby taking up less resources. Users simply plan and scan a path autonomously, resulting in a more efficient workflow. Businesses will use robots more and more to drive greater productivity through optimising daily operations, removing human error and expanding business capabilities.”

Boekem believes that, for robotic technology to be truly disruptive, it needs to function seamlessly in the background, allowing businesses and their employees to focus on their own equally important, specific roles. Robotic technology should empower businesses to push boundaries, technologymagazine.com

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Introducing Leica BLK ARC: Autonomous Reality Capture for Robots

drive innovation and, ultimately, augment human capabilities. “It's a truly exciting time to be in technology,” he adds.

Robots in the workplace In the space of just a year, workplaces of all kinds have had to transform and adapt their operations to navigate ever-changing Covid restrictions. Michel Spruijt, SVP International Business at robotics company Brain Corp, believes that an urgency to find solutions able to protect and assist overstretched workers, while also increasing operational efficiency and sustainability in the face of staff shortages caused an accelerated introduction of robots – or, more specifically, ‘cobots’ – designed to work side-by-side with human teams across multiple industry sectors.

According to Spruijt, it’s a shift that looks set to continue, with Gartner predicting more than 70% of global enterprises will have hyper-automation initiatives in place by 2024.

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“Cobots do what robots do: they carry out tasks with a view to increasing efficiency and/or sparing humans from work that is dull, dirty or dangerous.

But, whereas conventional robots are meant to operate in isolation from humans – imagine the stereotypical, robotic arm on a factory floor, for example – cobots are designed to work among them.

“To achieve this, they rely on intelligently-designed hardware, from cameras and sensors to actuators and grippers, all of which are coordinated by powerful software. In recent years, this software has benefited from advances in artificial intelligence to facilitate rapid, real time learning. Compared with static workplace robots, cobots are quicker to deploy, easier to reprogramme without specialist skills, and able to respond to their surrounding environments,” says Spruijt.

INNOVATION LABS

Leica BLK ARC: Autonomous Reality Capture for Robots

Automated Workplaces The global market for cobots is expected to be worth USD$8bn by 2026 – corresponding to a compound annual growth rate of 42% over a six-year period. So it’s clear that they are set to increasingly impact the workplace, enabling a greater division of labour, with staff members able to concentrate on tasks that value a human touch, such as interacting with customers.

Spruijt continued: “Whereas it’s tempting to imagine that automation will only ever touch high-tech environments such as factories and industrial sites, the truth is that robots will take up task loads wherever strenuous and repetitive work can be found. If a task needs doing with precision and consistency, chances are robots will find their way to assist, working alongside humans and freeing up time for them to tackle more specialist tasks”.

A crucial advantage of having autonomous robots in deployment is an ability to inform

“ Chatbots are now simply part of modern life” JAMES STOKES

SALES DIRECTOR, UK & ROI, INFOBIP

better operational decisions through access to real-time, high resolution data they are able to collect, according to Spruijt.

“From providing detailed verifiable reports on cleaning activity to providing real-time inventory data, autonomous robots can add to a facility manager's 360% view of operations and help them optimise operations,” he adds.

Spruijt cites many existing applications as clear examples of robots effectiveness, saying: “Several years ago, ‘TUGs’ began appearing on hospital wards. These technologymagazine.com

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INNOVATION LABS

in the US and Europe.

Deployment is also gathering pace in an array of public spaces – including airports, logistics depots, manufacturing plants, shopping malls, and train stations,” he says.

According to Spruijt, leveraging automation hardware and analytics is set to become increasingly common across all walks of business, especially as workplaces deal with sustained labour shortages and increased customer expectations and have to be able to adapt quickly to new challenges.

“Those who see the value of automation hardware and deploy cobots into operations sooner rather than later will inevitably reap rewards in the form of safer, more effective and future-proof workplaces,” says Spruijt.

“ Compared with static workplace robots, cobots are quicker to deploy, easier to reprogramme without specialist skills, and able to respond to their surrounding environments” MICHEL SPRUIJT

SVP INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS, BRAIN CORP

autonomous mobile robots work 24/7 shifts moving bedsheets, food and medication around hospitals. They automate the most menial parts of nurses’ jobs, maximising the amount of time they can devote to the more complex and human aspects of their work.

“Retailers are also taking bold steps into robotics, with automated floor scrubbers being deployed across supermarkets both

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Sam’s Club Begins National Deployment of Automated Inventory Analytics Robots

Beyond a 1960s-style sci-fi creation “When people think 'robot' they may visualise a 1960s-style sci-fi creation, but today’s robots mainly come in affordable, digital forms, via things like chatbots and automated services. These may be invisible to consumers but are forging the way for a new era of customer experience (CX),” says James Stokes, Sales Director, UK & ROI, Infobip, a telecommunications service provider.

“We’ve seen many dynamic use cases of robots in modern day retail, from Amazon introducing automated retail through their digital Amazon Fresh grocery stores and robot-powered micro-fulfilment, to a whole host of organisations investing in chatbots to provide assistance to online shoppers.

“For some time, we’ve spoken of chatbots as ‘the future’. Yet we’re well past the tipping point of automated conversation as a new and emerging technology. Chatbots are now simply part of modern life, accelerated by the pandemic and an increased desire

from consumers to engage with brands instantly and digitally. For businesses, this means embracing automation to greet customers at the digital front door, on a landing page website, or providing support for FAQs by making sense of what’s been said, understanding intent, and generating a suitable answer.

“Integrating automation isn’t just novelty – it has real, tangible benefits on the bottom line by increasing availability across channels and making more efficient use of human resources. What’s more is that, thanks to machine learning, chatbots get smarter over time as they’re exposed to more conversational data, so CX should only get better as a result. All of this leads to increased customer satisfaction, which, as we enter the endemic, is what businesses need to prioritise in order to meet their customers on the right channel, with the right message at the right time,” says Stokes. technologymagazine.com

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IS FUTURE-PROOFING FOR THE

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AMP X

ENERGY TRANSITION

AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW PRODUCED BY: ASHLEY KIRBY technologymagazine.com

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Dr. Irene Di Martino discusses Amp’s use of subsidiary group, Amp X, and its wider strategy encouraging sustainable transition to renewable energy options

T

he switch to sustainable energy is essential; indeed, the energy sector is in the midst of an unprecedented transition associated with an ever increasing level of decentralisation and digitalisation, that should ultimately lead to a carbon-free grid by 2050.

In 2019, only around 11% of global energy supply came from renewable sources, whereas today the world is experiencing an impressive rate of adoption of renewable generation. As this switch takes place, more organisations are facing challenges that include grid instability and the intermittency of renewable energy sources that requires battery energy storage to be connected to the grid. To address these, it is essential that cost-effective solutions become available to analyse, predict and manage the multitude of assets across different segments of the grid.

Digital disruption in the energy sector Speaking with Dr. Irene Di Martino, executive vice president of Amp and Head of Amp X, delves into the company’s position within the industry and how Amp X provides its parent company with the benefits of artificial intelligence (AI).

“In my career to date, I’ve been witnessing the most significant transition of the energy sector from a largely fossil-fuel-based ecosystem to one that is now creating the conditions to accelerate the transformation

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AMP X

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

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Amp X delivers grid flexibility in renewable energy markets

of the grid itself,” says Dr. Di Martino. “The digital energy space is clearly one of the most disruptive, and it’s the one we’re trying to make a game-changing contribution to with Amp X.” Dr. Di Martino describes Amp as an ‘innovator’ and a ‘disruptor’ as she outlines how the organisation has developed energy infrastructure for over 12 years, expanding its operational portfolio from solar energy applications to battery energy storage and wind. Amp recognised very early on that battery storage is an essential technology in the energy transition, but that realising the full potential benefits of investments would require highly efficient and responsive operational capabilities.

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The formation of Amp X was a strategic response for monitoring, controlling and optimally dispatching energy assets across different markets and segments of the grid.

Leveraging AI and ML capabilities, Amp X’s digital platform monitors the health and performance of different assets, and uses proprietary algorithms to gain insights into system activity, from grid-level infrastructure to individual behind-the-metre appliances and electric vehicle chargers.

Amp X has developed its robust predictive models to assess the impact of weather conditions on both the production of solar and wind energy and trends in demand, enabling the prediction of pricing and delivering optimised dispatch of battery storage assets.

AMP X

DR. IRENE DI MARTINO TITLE: EXECUTIVE VP & HEAD OF AMP X

“It is thanks to the insights gained from data through the use of appropriate and proprietary AI algorithms, that Amp X has developed a number of interoperable solutions which are not point-focused since they are the result of a systemic approach to future-proof the grid,” Dr. Di Martino says. “In view of the increasing level of decentralisation of the energy system, it's even more important now to address the changes in supply and demand, as the grid has been moving away from polluting, yet readily dispatchable fossil-fuelled generation assets.”

Low-voltage network insights will be made available through the Amp X’s proprietary smart transformer – also known

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: LONDON Irene has over 20 years’ experience in the energy sector, with a robust engineering background and an industry-sponsored PhD. She has spent most of her career to date at Engie, leading strategic programmes aimed to optimise performance and profitability of the generation portfolio.

More recently, Irene led a World Energy Council international programme on energy blockchain.

Irene has been leading Amp X since its establishment in September 2019, focusing on the delivery of a digital energy platform that caters for a number of autonomous and interoperable products to future-proof the grid, unlocking flexibility from the edge of the grid at a large scale, whilst improving system resilience and stability at the lowest possible cost.

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AMP X

Delivering flexibility in renewable energy A disruptive energy platform and a subsidiary of Amp, Amp X is supporting the organisation in navigating the transition to renewable energy. With critical systems already in development, Amp X provides monitoring and optimisation capabilities for its parent company and is branching out to further support its clients.

The smart transformer – or Smart Tx – is a solution for providing dynamic voltage control and optimising the distribution of energy. Smart Tx maximises penetration of distributed energy resources while improving grid stability, resilience and visibility within the distribution network.

One of the advantages of real-time insights is flexibility. The transactive-ready platform allows energy distributors to respond to changes in demand and energy consumption trends, even granularly across digital devices.

The overall mission of Amp X is to unlock grid-edge flexibility in a dynamic, transactive market to maximise the integration of renewable energy and provide both customers and consumers with clean, resilient, affordable energy as the world moves towards a renewable energy future.

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as the ‘Smart Tx’ – which will replace conventional transformers in the distribution network to resolve the challenges that network operators have been facing as a result of the increased penetration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs).

“Historically, distribution network transformers have been passive assets that were not smart or digitalised. There were no electric vehicles, solar PV or other assets that impacted grid stability, and the technology didn’t exist to gather, analyse and make use of the data that could be gathered from different nodes across the grid,” Dr. Di Martino says.

Leveraging AI and ML Amp X’s digital platform monitors the health and performance of different assets, and uses proprietary AI and ML algorithms to gain insights from this enhanced visibility of system activity, from grid-level infrastructure to behind-the-metre individual appliances and electric vehicle chargers.

Amp X relies on its robust predictive models to assess the impact of weather conditions on the production of solar and wind energy, providing insights into how the energy demand requirements in different periods of the day can be balanced with the output from renewable power generators, whilst also leveraging the optimised dispatch of battery storage assets.

“It is thanks to the insights gained from data through the use of appropriate and proprietary AI algorithms, that Amp X has developed a number of interoperable solutions which are not point-focused since they are the result of a systemic approach to future-proof the grid,” Dr. Di Martino says.

“In view of the increasing level of decentralisation of the energy system, it's even more important to address the changes technologymagazine.com

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AMP X

in supply and demand, as we have moved away from what was the secure and readily dispatchable supply from centralised fossil-fuelled generation assets.”

Low-voltage network insights will be made possible thanks to the Amp X’s proprietary smart transformer – also known as ‘Smart Tx’ – which will replace conventional transformers within the distribution network to resolve the challenges that network operators have been facing as a result of the increased penetration of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs).

“Historically, distribution network transformers have been passive pieces of hardware that were not smart or digitalised.

It wasn’t necessary, or even possible. There were no electric vehicles, solar PV or other assets that impacted grid stability, and the technology didn’t exist to gather, analyse and make use of the data that could be gathered from these nodes within the grid,” Dr. Di Martino says.

“Now we’re seeing more homes with solar panels and batteries, and in the future, single streets may have dozens of EVs recharging in the evenings or feeding power back into the grid. Having network insights is critical in order for Distribution System Operators to maintain secure and reliable supply, whilst avoiding unnecessary and costly network reinforcements.”

“Our smart transformer is going to help stabilise voltage dynamically – which is an increasingly significant challenge for network operators – as well as optimise power factor which will make the transport of electricity across the network more efficient and less costly. The Amp X Smart Tx is also able to act in conjunction with other Smart Tx units and other assets managed by the Amp X platform, in order to provide synthetic inertia into the system, hence helping it remain in balance,” explains Dr. Di Martino.

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“The Amp X Smart Tx will be deployed on grid in the U.K. in a few weeks’ time and will be the first smart transformer for the low-voltage network.”

Leveraging the value of utility-scale electricity Amp has several major upcoming projects in the works – Renewable Energy Hub of South Australia, community solar farms in the US, and a recently acquired wind portfolio in Spain. The Amp X digital energy platform enables the profitability of battery energy storage assets to be maximised.

“This is a core part of what we do, and that’s why we started optimising the dispatch of Amp assets in North America:

AMP X

identifying the most effective ways to dispatch that stored energy is the critical advantage provided by Amp X,” Dr. Di Martino explains. “Amp X's approach already supports the Amp ambitions of growth to an increasing portfolio of assets across different markets. Third parties too have recognised the strategic value of Amp X's approach and are adopting its solutions” Switching to electric enables grid flexibility “Amp X has a critical role to play in future-proofing the energy system. Our Virtual Power Plant solution has been in commercial operation now for several months in North America,” Dr. Di Martino says.

Dr. Di Martino also explains that Amp X is working with other companies across different strategic markets – such as U.K and Australia – to optimise battery operations, in front and behind the metre. This, she says, is a prime example of Amp X’s ability to respond to the rapid uptake of storage assets which are critical to meet the challenges associated with the increased presence of renewable generation across different markets. “Amp X continues to work in order to accelerate the electrification of heat and transport; such trends can triple the energy demand of a single household which puts a significant strain on the network.”

However, Dr. Di Martino points out that smart charging of EVs can be leveraged to provide an increased level of flexibility to the technologymagazine.com

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AMP X

“ Our smart transformer is going to adjust voltage and optimise power factor in real time, contributing to increased system stability and flexibility” DR. IRENE DI MARTINO EXECUTIVE VP & HEAD, AMP X

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grid itself. Indeed, EV users can participate in Demand-Side Management (DSM) markets, by using Amp X’s digital energy platform which enables dynamic load-shaping of EVs and other appliances according to price signals and/or carbon intensity.

As Amp X continues to serve its parent company and customer base, it expects to see further growth by the end of 2022.

Already mentioned is the game-changing role to be played by the Smart Tx, which will be rolled out in the coming months to address the challenges which network operators face in maintaining an efficient, secure and resilient network.

“Our Smart Tx is going to provide a set of key functionalities that are way beyond those currently available at substation level by incumbent technology. The deployment of our Smart Tx on the U.K. distribution network is definitely one of the things we look forward to the most in 2022. We will aid Amp’s ambitions by driving toward a fully transactive grid in which every point of consumption or generation helps to make the grid greener, more stable, flexible and secure, whilst making electricity more affordable for consumers. Amp X is an example of the bold approach that is required to overcome energy challenges and enable growth.”

Dr. Di Martino adds that “modernising and future-proofing the grid is what Amp X is all about”.

“That makes Amp perfectly placed to become a global renewable energy leader.

We’re combining our highly disruptive digital platform with a fundamental understanding of the electricity system and the energy market so that our solutions are robust and innovative.”

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HYPERSCALERS

WHAT’S THE FU OF INFRASTRU AS A SERVICE? With a multi-billion dollar market led by the hyperscalers, should organisations continue to partner with them or go it alone?

We asked the experts WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

A

ccording to a mid-2019 Gartner report, the worldwide infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market grew 31.3% in 2018, to total USD$32.4bn. This growth will continue throughout 2022, where its worth could reach USD$76.6bn. IDC predicts revenue could reach USD$400bn by 2025.

Service providers are facing key choices about how to build out their 5G and Edge capabilities: do they build their own solutions or partner with hyperscalers.

With viable reasons to choose either, why choose the latter?

Paul Rhodes, OpenRAN and 5G Lead, GSP International at WWT, a major global systems integrator, has a simple answer: “In short, because it is the easier path.

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It enables service providers to take advantage of ready-made solutions to bring edge products to market rapidly. Speed is a key consideration, because service providers face long development times – sometimes over 18 months – to bring products to market. This heightens the risk of missing the next transformational 5G and edge use case.”

According to Rhodes, this convenience in the short-term comes with potential disadvantages in the medium- and long-term. Hyperscale solutions are likely to create some kind of vendor lock-in, rendering telcos dependent on their hyperscale partners.

HYPERSCALERS

UTURE UCTURE ?

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Enabling educators.

Empowering students.

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“ Speed is a key consideration, because service providers face long development times” PAUL RHODES

OPENRAN AND 5G LEAD, GSP INTERNATIONAL, WWT

“What’s more, collaborating means service providers must surrender a degree of control over their customers – effectively sharing revenue and customer data. And, lastly, public cloud costs are highly likely to increase in the medium- and long-term, and they may need to offer added value to match,” says Rhodes

Financial Infrastructure-as-a-Service IaaS has industry specific applications. The B2B financial services market is fragmented, and the banking ecosystem consists of a network of financial institutions that have historically struggled to communicate with one another, according to Alistair Cotton, Co-Founder at Integrated Finance, which provides Fintech infrastructure for every business.

“This is largely because they often work with outdated legacy banking applications.

Consequently, this also means they are missing out on the opportunity to leverage valuable customer data and create a more standardised experience across multiple banks.”

Integrated Finance was created to solve this problem, offering Financial technologymagazine.com

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World Wide Technology: Make a New World Happen

“ Hyperscalers have grown hugely in popularity in recent years and it is easy to see why” TERRY STORRAR

MANAGING DIRECTOR, LEASEWEB UK

Infrastructure-as-a-Service, which focuses on enabling Fintech companies to quickly integrate and deploy relevant products and services via complex-yet-efficient technical solutions, whilst improving the user experience for the customer.

“Account Management, Payments, FX across multiple providers are all unified, performed through a single, reliable API that gives Fintechs the flexibility and scalability they need to enhance their core offering, and reduce the time it takes to get a product into the hands of their customers,” adds Cotton.

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Avoiding the pitfalls of IaaS Terry Storrar is Managing Director at Leaseweb UK. Leaseweb is a Dutch cloud computing and web services company with offices in Europe, Asia, and the United States. It is a subsidiary of OCOM, an internet services company headquartered in Amsterdam.

“Hyperscalers have grown hugely in popularity in recent years, and it is easy to see why,” says Storrar.

“They provide extensive cloud computing and network infrastructure, with almost unlimited service options available to even the smallest of businesses. At entry, they are easily accessible and very attractive, with opportunities to benefit from the big investments that hyperscalers make in innovation,” he adds.

HYPERSCALERS

However, any business planning to invest in a public cloud service for the next few years needs to consider potential pitfalls before signing on the dotted line.

“One of the benefits of any cloud option, whether this is public hyperscale or private, is that services can be scaled up or down according to business need. Businesses should consider how likely it is that they will need to scale ahead of time – hyperscale platforms tend to operate on a pay-peruse model. Scaling up can be expensive and there is also a risk of incurring costs for bandwidth you are not using at quieter times,” says Storrar.

Another important consideration is the ease of switching to another provider, as every hyperscaler offers proprietary services, and this can make it very timeconsuming to switch data from one platform to another.

“Although this is not vendor lock-in, switching could be a lot more complex and costly than a business bargains for, especially if the decision is made to migrate advanced services.

“The chances are that today’s online businesses will need flexibility, independence and a cost structure to accommodate this. So it’s worth taking the time to evaluate whether a public cloud offering really is best suited to business needs, or whether it would be more prudent to opt for a multi-cloud or hybrid strategy.

Both these could include some use of public cloud, but the key thing is that they avoid tie-in to one provider and enable businesses to interconnect infrastructures to run workloads in the most efficient and costeffective ways possible,” he says.

The future of IaaS Network (NWaaS) and Software services (SaaS) are variants of IaaS, which allows hyperscalers to build upon the cloud infrastructure to deliver further value to enterprise and consumers, alike, according to WWT’s Rhodes: “It’s this ability to evolve that underpins consensus forecasts that IaaS will continue to grow at its current 20%+ CAGR. It’s likely that Telcos overcoming

SaaS PaaS IaaS

Hosted Applications

Development tools, database management, business analytics

Operating systems

Servers and storage

Networking firewalls / security

Data center physical plant / building

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past conservatism will contribute to this growth, as their traditional hierarchical network model morphs into a more agile, disaggregated future.”

Jordan MacPherson is Product Operations Director at Park Place Technologies, a global leader in data centre support with over 445 of the Fortune 500 as clients.

“As this explosive growth continues, IaaS is facing many possible future directions, with several factors impacting its course.

“We are starting to see a lot of regulatory requirements about data sovereignty and the like, so having help managing options is increasingly important. The strategy to mitigate and spread risk by diversifying is growing.

Having multiple service providers lessens vulnerability if one goes down,” he adds.

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“ As this explosive growth continues, IaaS is facing many possible future directions” JORDAN MACPHERSON

PRODUCT OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, PARK PLACE TECHNOLOGIES

HYPERSCALERS

Other relatively obvious factors include cost control and meeting bandwidth needs.

IaaS is a proven solution for those points, according to MacPherson.

“Edge becomes an optimisation or enabler for some of those solutions to work in an IaaS world. Tighter integration needs between cloud and on-prem are also driving IaaS, whether it's through the public cloud providers starting to offer on-prem solutions, or VMware and services like Tanzu or Kubernetes.

With these big clusters across cloud environments, you can run anywhere but

still consume CPU time and magnetic storage space.

“The way you get there becomes less important than who gets you there. Software like Kubernetes being open source allows IaaS providers to adapt it to their proprietary services,” says MacPherson.

And all of this should be viewed through a “post-COVID 19” lens, he adds.

“Public cloud services are a critical part of enterprise recovery strategies. Pressures on budgets and infrastructure will test resilience and operational efficiency,” says MacPherson.

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Wi a

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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WIZZ AIR

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

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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

Example of an image caption

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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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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, 84

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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: •

DID YOU KNOW...

•

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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.

June 2022

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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THE ECONOMY MUTUALITY – PEOP PURPOSE IN HEALT With digital transformation rife in healthcare, customers are examining the purpose of providers and demanding more control of their experience WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

A

ccording to the report Economics of Mutuality (EoM) Backgrounder Mars, Incorporated/Catalyst Mutuality in Business Briefing Number (2015), “the October 2008 global economic meltdown generated intense discussion across the world about whether Milton Friedman’s ‘Chicago School’ model of financial capitalism - dominating business for the last 40+ years – whereby the sole social responsibility of business, to paraphrase Friedman, is to maximise profits for distribution to shareholders – has reached its natural end”.

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The joint report from Mars Catalyst and Saïd Business School, part of the University of Oxford, launched Catalyst’s nascent business model research programme – ‘The Economics of Mutuality’. This phenomenon has been seen across industries of late, and particularly within the digital transformation of healthcare.

Good examples of this in action are social enterprises that put the interests of people and the planet ahead of shareholder gain.

These businesses are driven by a social and/or environmental mission and therefore reinvest profits into creating positive social change.

OF PLE AND THCARE

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

“ The data collected from IoT sensors and workflow management platforms creates a stream of intelligence at management’s disposal” KIT KYTE CEO, CHECKIT

A new economic model emerging Martin Curley is an IT visionary and Director of Digital Transformation and Open Innovation at Health Service Executive, a large organisation of over 100,000 people that runs all of the public health services in Ireland. The HSE manages services via a structure that’s designed to put patients and clients at the centre of the organisation.

In healthcare, the ‘economy of mutual’ represents a shift from Friedman 50 years ago. According to Curley, there’s a new economic model emerging, which, while being about profit, is also about people and purpose.

“This is a significant shift. We work with a very good UK company that’s giving us a personal electronic health record and has been set up as a social enterprise to provide a public service. The founder was a clinician who had a rare condition. He created a personal electronic health record and did it as a social enterprise,” said Curley.

BizClik will reveal Health Service Executive’s exciting digital strategy for 2022 in more detail in June’s Technology and Healthcare Global issues, after previous coverage of their important work as a digital leader in Ireland. technologymagazine.com

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Strong Integrated Care Systems Everywhere

“ We work with a very good UK company that’s giving us a personal electronic health record and has been set up as a social enterprise to provide a public service” MARTIN CURLEY

DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND OPEN INNOVATION, HEALTH SERVICE EXECUTIVE

Deep consideration of people and making their lives easier applies to the UK approach, too, with NHS Glasgow being digitally transformed by customer experience software from Zendesk, brought in to aid procurement, while also freeing up time 100

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for thinly-stretched staff to focus on more detailed and rewarding elements of the job – including development work.

Bridging the healthcare digital divide to end the employee engagement crisis Healthcare workers have spent two years at the coalface of the nation’s COVID19 response. With a six million-strong patient backlog exacerbated by severe staff shortages, a chasm has formed in the industry’s economy of mutuality, according to Kit Kyte, CEO of Checkit.

“The people and purpose-driven mission is being devastated by increasing pressure, disconnect, disengagement and burnout. Turnover rates are being fuelled by latent employee engagement, a decadent sense of belonging, as well as a lack of digital investment.

“Leadership teams cannot continue to steer the ship with the same helm that initiated the sinking. Otherwise, any

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

progression in plugging shortages and improving the employee experience will simply collapse.

“Sadly, while patient care has enjoyed a digital makeover to enable the delivery of vital services during the pandemic, those delivering care have not witnessed the same level of attention,” Kyte adds.

Technologies bridging the digital divide within the healthcare industry include IoT sensors and monitoring systems. According to Kyte, built into hospitals’ infrastructure, the implementation of IoT alleviates staffs’ time spent on manual checks.

“This lifts the burden of mundane tasks so that care workers’ time can be reallocated, enabling them to enjoy more meaningful interactions through patient care. IoT sensors can also streamline incident response times by alerting staff as soon as corrective action

is needed — not after damage has been done,” he continues.

Amid the backlog of healthcare creating hectic workloads, Kyte remarks, equipping staff with digital assistants also augments their work.

“Managing workflows, guiding staff through daily tasks, while providing supportive material to increase efficiency — these digitised assistants are crucial, especially due to the influx of healthcare hires that need to be onboarded and operational quickly.

“The data collected from IoT sensors and workflow management platforms creates a stream of intelligence at management’s disposal. Data is represented in dashboard analytics, revolutionising their understanding of what’s happening on the ground by highlighting areas for optimisation and improvement — painting a clearer picture and promoting informed decisions,” Kyte adds.

“These technologies do not seek to ‘command and control’ workers. Quite the contrary: they provide healthcare teams with

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“ Through innovation, we can – and do – improve our service offering and in turn improve patient outcomes” JONATHAN RITCHIE

DIRECTOR OF IT & DIGITAL INNOVATION/CIO, MASTERCALL

the digital infrastructure required to streamline and drive increased autonomy in their operations. By increasing their efficiency and the visibility of achievements, a foundation for happier and more engaged staff is laid.”

Social enterprise with people purpose Mastercall is a social enterprise organisation with a clear ‘people purpose’ that goes

beyond the provision of providing exceptional high quality, safe and effective healthcare.

They are passionate about what they do, because they care. Their purpose is underpinned by clear corporate values that are demonstrated, acknowledged, and rewarded everyday by the people who work for them.

“Our Organisational Development plan aims to ensure that the organisational structure, the employees, and the culture of Mastercall are in the best possible place to support the delivery of our business plan and its strategic goals and objectives. We are committed to developing Mastercall to be an employer of choice, to obtain CQC (Care Quality Commission) outstanding,

Health Service Executive in Ireland leading the way in #MakingEveryBreathCount

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well-led status and to be a high performing, operationally effective organisation,” says Jonathan Ritchie, Director of IT & Digital Innovation/CIO, and voted as one of the top 100 CIOs in the UK. In order to support this ambition, Mastercall has embraced the technical revolution to innovate what they do and how they do it, putting their people at the heart of everything they do.

“As a social enterprise organisation, we don’t have shareholders to satisfy, so we are at liberty to invest our surplus/profit into developing our social value ethos – investing in our people and technology, empowering innovation to improve what we do and how we do it.

“We have progressed from simply being a receiver and user of technology to forging strong ties with leading digital tech providers, national NHS teams, staff,

students, commissioning groups, trusts, and patients within a digital healthcare ecosystem, to ensure we are encouraging digital inclusion and cultural change, and to adopt spread of innovation,” says Ritchie.

A focus point of this strategy was the setup of the Digital Programme Board, which provides a forum and steering group to encourage new ideas as Mastercall pushes on with reimagining what to do in urgent primary care. In recent years, they have been honoured to be recognised and shortlisted for three national health-tech innovation awards.

“Through innovation, we can – and do – improve our service offering and in turn improve patient outcomes. We are now investing in clinical research studies to evidence the positive impact of digital innovation on both our people and our patients,” adds Ritchie.

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eSTRUXTURE

eStruxture Data Centers: GOING FULL THROT TLE IN CANADA WRITTEN BY: SAM STEERS PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Todd Coleman Founder, President & CEO at eStruxture.

Photo courtesy of The Concours Club

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eSTRUXTURE

Todd Coleman, CEO of eStruxture talks strategy, speed, risk, and becoming the frontrunning data centre operator in Canada in under five years

H

ave you ever had a front tire blow out at 178mph (286 kph) and then got back in the car to try it again a few minutes later? That’s what entrepreneurs seemingly do every day through trials and tribulations, successes and failures as they climb their way to the front of the competition. It’s not surprising that entrepreneurs who are calculated risk takers in the business world are often thrill seekers in their personal lives, in both cases understanding the riskreturn tradeoff, the sacrifices required, learning from theirs and others’ successes and failures, and constantly analysing data and trends with a strong sense of gut feel to push themselves to be the best.

One of those calculated risk-taking entrepreneurs is Todd Coleman, Founder, President and CEO of eStruxture Data Centers. He founded eStruxture in 2017 and in less than five years drove it to become the single largest Canadian data centre platform. And, as it turns out, he is also an accomplished racecar driver.

Which begs the question: is there a common thread between success at the track and success in business?

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“ It comes down to balancing speed and risk. From a speed perspective, I’m impatient.

I like things to go fast” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT & CEO, ESTRUXTURE

Todd may spend the majority of his time leading his company, but when he’s not, you’ll find him racing in the Ferrari Challenge series in a Ferrari 488 108

June 2022

Challenge racecar or the GT America and GT4 America Championships in a Toyota GR Supra. It’s a passion fueled by risk and speed - two factors that, as we’re about to learn, relate to eStruxture’s accelerated Canadian expansion.

“It comes down to balancing speed and risk,” he said. “From a speed perspective, I’m impatient. I like things to go fast. Even when I drive to the grocery store or a

TODD COLEMAN TITLE: FOUNDER, PRESIDENT AND CEO INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES

friendly Sunday drive, I'm still in a hurry.

And I think that describes what we've done in five years at eStruxture. We're always going to be pushing at full speed.”

Then there’s the question of risk, explains Coleman: “It's not that unusual for an entrepreneur to have a personal risk profile that's different from others.

I believe in calculated risks; investing in areas where a return might not be guaranteed, but the probability analysis weighs in our favour.”

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: DENVER, COLORADO, US Todd Coleman is the Founder, President and CEO of eStruxture. Todd brings over 25 years of experience in the IT, data center and telecommunications industries. Previously, Todd was the COO and Co-Founder of Cologix. He has also held several senior positions at Level 3 Communications, a global telecommunications company, including Senior Vice President of Data Centers, Senior Vice President of Media Operations, and President of Level 3 Communications Europe. Todd holds a juris doctorate and a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems.

Todd is a sought-after industry speaker and an advocate for DE&I and sustainability in the digital infrastructure industry. At the same time, Todd is an accomplished race car driver, competing in the Ferrari Challenge and the GT America and GT4 America Championships.

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eSTRUXTURE

“ I believe in calculated risks; investing in areas where a return might not be guaranteed, but the probability analysis weighs in our favour” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT & CEO, ESTRUXTURE

“For example, we went into the Calgary market at a time when the Alberta economy was in a downturn. That was a risk as the Alberta market had been hit by weakness in the Canadian dollar and the low cost of oil. Jobs were leaving, mortgages were in default. However, that was a calculated risk. We had been studying the market for some time to determine which side of the economic downturn trough it was in – the beginning, the peak low or on its way back up,” Coleman said.

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Now, however, Calgary is starting to take off as a data centre market. eStruxture has already largely sold out at its first Calgary data centre (CAL-1) and is building out its second data centre with significant presales activity. Coleman revels in being one step ahead of the game. He said: “We've landed some strategic customers when no one else was there. I guarantee the competition is going to jump on that trend line, but they're 18 to 24 months behind.

We love that position; that's an example of calculated risk.”

Coleman relates his propensity to accept calculated risk in his business to experiences in a racecar. Coleman tells a story from when he last raced at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. He said: “I was on the road course and my right front tire blew out going into a corner at 178mph. I did five pirouettes missing walls on both sides and shot through from turn 1 to what is turn six. We were in a night time practice session and there were headlights coming towards me from on-coming cars, but I didn’t hit anything. Like in business, we quickly inspected the car and analysed data to understand what happened and why, replaced the tire and we were back out on the track within twenty minutes. That’s calculated risk.”

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“As a driver, just like a business leader, we find ourselves looking for and testing out new driving lines around the track looking for the slightest bit more grip and tire traction in hopes of getting back to full throttle just that fraction of a second ahead of the competition” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT & CEO, ESTRUXTURE

Coleman racing the Toyota GR Supra at the Firestone Grand Prix in St. Petersburg. technologymagazine.com

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EXPERTISE AT THE HEART OF YOUR PROJECTS You can count on a multidisciplinary team with over 25 years of experience in mechanical and electrical engineering that has several highly specialized projects, in Canada from coast to-coast-to coast and on the international market.

UNE EXPERTISE AU COEUR DE VOS PROJETS Vous pouvez compter sur une équipe multidisciplinaire ayant plus de 20 ans d’expérience dans le génie mécanique et électrique qui a mené de front plusieurs projets hautement spécialisés, partout au Canada et sur le marché international.

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eSTRUXTURE

It’s a team sport Much like racing, where a whole team of engineers, mechanics, and support crew come together to ensure the racing team’s success, evolving eStruxture into the Canadian market leader that it is today would not have been possible without the trust, loyalty, and support of customers, employees, investors, partners, and suppliers.

To describe eStruxture’s growth journey, Coleman uses the metaphor of a hockey stick, with a small plateau turning into a steep rise in growth. Over the last five years, eStruxture has completed more than six acquisitions and has grown both organically and inorganically. “We’ve acquired real estate and built greenfield data centres; we’ve acquired competitors and driven market consolidation in Canada. Five years later, we are the single largest carrier-neutral, privately-held data centre company in Canada,” he said.

“ We are very loyal to those that saw something in us when we were just starting out. It's easy to bet on a winner when they are leading the race, but I don't forget those who believed in us when we weren't in the position where we are today” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT & CEO, ESTRUXTURE

Coleman says the company is rewarded by both the market in which it operates and the customers it serves, adding that “Canadians like doing business with Canadians.” The reason for this, according to Coleman, is that the company plays a “trusted advisor role” with deep localised knowledge.

Since its inception in February 2017, eStruxture has completed a total of four separate funding rounds from largely the same investors who believe in and support the company’s vision. The company has also completed four bank lending agreements over the course of its five-year life span, the majority of which were with the same syndicate of banks.

He’s also grateful for the support of the companies that helped eStruxture find its feet in the highly competitive data center market. “We are very loyal to those that saw technologymagazine.com

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eSTRUXTURE

“ eStruxture is about creating a legacy that all those involved can be proud of, that has a positive impact on our social fabric and the communities that we are involved in” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT & CEO, ESTRUXTURE

something in us when we were just starting out. It's easy to bet on a winner when they are leading the race, but I don't forget those who believed in us when we weren't in the position we are in today.” eStruxture’s Canadian data center fleet Today, eStruxture has 15 data centres spread across Canada: 5 in Montreal, where the company is headquartered, 5 in Toronto, 3 in Vancouver, and 2 in Calgary.

Sustainability is one of eStruxture’s fundamental, non-negotiable tenets and plays a vital role in its data centres.

According to Coleman, none of their new data centre builds use any water for cooling as part of their standard basis of design. As Coleman states: "the only water we consume in our new data center builds is for sinks, toilets, and humidification.”

Importantly, eStruxture also leverages the geographic distribution of their facilities in key regions with abundant renewable energy supplies, to further drive sustainability.

“We’re also capable of offering power density at a rack level that is far higher than the average data centre,” said Coleman. “We 116

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Todd Coleman Founder, President & CEO at eStruxture.

Photo courtesy of The Concours Club

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eSTRUXTURE

Coleman getting ready to go out onto the track at a recent race in Watkins Glen, NY

“ eStruxture’s employees live by the company’s core value: customers are at the heart of everything we do” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT & CEO, ESTRUXTURE

can offer up to 30kW per rack without doing anything Herculean with the mechanical engineering, and without stranding valuable white space within our facility,” he added.

Due to the importance of power density and protecting the environment, eStruxture is also working with various customer industry segments, including high performance computing, AI, and cloud providers, to look at how it can sustainably increase power densities utilising submerged cooling technologies while making eStruxture’s facilities more efficient and producing a smaller carbon footprint.

Going the extra mile for the customers “It may sound a bit trite, but customers are everything to us. Even when we’re not selling to them, we are always looking for ways to support them. That may be as simple as making an introduction to another partner or supplier, for which we don’t take any economic advantage whatsoever. We fundamentally believe that if it’s good for our customer, it's good for us. And so, our relationship with our customers is essential,” says Coleman.

“Customer centricity may sound like a simple strategy in theory, but taking the time to truly understand our customers’ particular needs, their business, growth plans, challenges and opportunities, takes time, effort, and the right kind of mindset. Which is why eStruxture’s employees live by the company’s core value: Customers are at the heart of everything we do.” technologymagazine.com

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eSTRUXTURE

Driving forces Having built the business from the ground up in Canada, Coleman’s plan for the future is to continue to be a consolidator in the market as well as invest and deploy resources across the country.

“We continue to be a job creator both directly because our facilities run 24/7 and require a level of expertise and thus create high paying jobs, but also indirectly because every one of our customers brings high paying high-tech jobs with it to the markets in which we operate. So, there's a certain level of pride for us in the level of job creation that we're ultimately responsible for,” said Coleman.

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Lastly, eStruxture will continue to focus on its tenets of sustainability and diversity, with the latter relating to its workforce. Coleman said: “57% of our workforce is considered diverse, with 29% being female. 40% of my executive team is also female. You won't find that in the broader telecommunications infrastructure industry, just because it attracts predominantly white males.

And so, we want to change that. For me, eStruxture is about creating a legacy that all those involved can be proud of, that has a positive impact on the social fabric and the communities that we operate in.”

2017 Year founded

129 + Number of Employees

1.5k+

eStruxture provides access to an ecosystem of approximately 1,500 customers that trust and depend on eStruxture’s mission-critical infrastructure

Going full throttle in Canada

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eSTRUXTURE

Belden offers a Collaborative Approach to Colocation Data Center Solutions Watch how Belden helps eStruxture manage high ber density while saving space with the new DCX Optical Distribution Frame (ODF) System.

Speak to Sales

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“ Racing and business have a lot more in common than one would think, and I take learnings from both and apply them every day” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT & CEO, ESTRUXTURE

Coleman sums it all up this way: “Racing and business have a lot more in common than one would think, and I take learnings from both and apply them every day. Just like in business, we don’t simply re-invent the wheel every time we show up at a different race track. We analyse data, watch video of prior races, practise on simulators and do track walks, all to determine the best racing

line, and throttle and brake inputs with the ultimate goal of determining the fastest path around the track. And just like in business, we have to be prepared to blaze our own path when the race day environment changes.

If, for example, we find ourselves racing in the rain, everything we knew and believed about that race track has changed and we need to quickly adjust our strategy in real time. As a driver, just like a business leader, we find ourselves looking for and testing out new driving lines in the wet around the track looking for the slightest bit more grip and tire traction in hopes of getting back to full throttle just a fraction of a second ahead of the competition.”

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLIGENCE WITH ROBOTIC DESK TOP AUTOMATION RDA is a branch of Robotic Process Automation. Still in its infancy, it could bring great benefits across industries if teething problems can be solved

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

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R

obotic process automation (RPA) is the creation and deployment of software ‘bots’ designed to learn, mimic, and execute business processes, according to Servicenow, whose business model is based on providing products using SaaS cloud computing software.

ServiceNow, a leading software provider for digital workflows, last year announced the acquisition of Intellibot, which is a developer of RPA applications. The technology helps organisations streamline and automate tedious, repetitive processes.

While traditional automation has created efficiency for structured and large-

scale organisational processes, RPA is a smaller, individualised scale and taskoriented as opposed to process-oriented.

Robotic desktop automation (RDA) is an extension of RPA Ryan Raiker is Sr. Director at ABBYY, an intelligent automation company trusted by over 5000 customers and most of the Fortune 500.

ABBYY powers intelligent automation, reimagining the way people work and how companies accelerate business by delivering the intelligence that fuels automation platforms.

Raiker points out that much of robotic automation is happening on the desktop,

“So much of desktop work is performed in applications” RYAN RAIKER

SR. DIRECTOR, ABBYY

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“ Around half of all Robotic Process Automation initiatives fail to deliver expected improvements due to poor execution” DR GERO DECKER

CO-GENERAL MANAGER, SAP SIGNAVIO

even if some of these desktops are in virtual machines.

“While still difficult to automate complete processes from end-to-end, complementing human workers, robotic desktop apps have the opportunity to improve employee morale and productivity.

“So much of desktop work is performed in applications, both web and installed on the desktop, but so much of the work is performed in text and data fields. The ability to suggest actions – like Google Chrome does with username, passwords, credit card information, and addresses – will give employees back time and save money for the companies they work for.

Pair it with process and task mining to give advanced insight into the business operations, and you enable the ability to give employees AI assistance in their work to make the right decisions at the right time. It’s a win for everyone.”

The market in North America is expected to hold a major share of the RDA market.

Also, considering the massive technological advancements across emerging economies, for instance across APAC and MEA regions, the RDA market is expected to witness technologymagazine.com

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Improved employee morale Workers can dedicate more time to engaging, interesting work

Accuracy Extreme accuracy and uniformity - much less prone to error or typos

Low technical barrier No programming skills necessary to configure a bot

Benefits of robotic process automation

Compliance Bots follow regulatory complianvce rules to a tee and provide an audit trail history

Non-invasive technology No disruption to underlying legacy systems, reducing the burden on IT

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

significant CAGR growth rate in APAC and MEA during the forecast period, according to transparencymarketresearch.

Productivity Process cycles times are much faster compared to manual process approaches

Reliability Bots tirelessly work 24/7 without interruption

Consistency Routine tasks are performed the same way each and every time

Unlock the power of intelligent automation (IA) Mika Vainio-Mattila is CEO of Digital Workforce, as well as one of its three co-founders, and partners with over 200 enterprises worldwide, across a range of industries encompassing banking, finance, manufacturing, insurance and healthcare.

He says: “The beauty of business automation is that it is not sector-specific, and benefits can be leveraged in many industries. The common thread uniting our customers is a high volume of manual processes that can be optimised using RPA to boost operational efficiencies.

“Many companies can benefit from building a robust digital infrastructure but get stuck in a loop of long-tail IT projects that fail to deliver on ROI,” he adds.

In order to unlock the power of intelligent automation (IA), Vainio-Mattila says companies need scalable services that can be deployed quickly, as even seemingly complex processes have certain elements that could be taken away from human workers and given to robots.

“That’s because anything that requires a high degree of accuracy while being deeply repetitive is automation gold. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that it is exactly this sort of work that shouldn’t be entrusted to humans – repetition is the enemy of concentration, which is needed for accuracy.

“The robots already exist: your organisation might not be using them yet but the competition is, which means they can process data and analyse it faster than any human can. They can respond to changing situations quicker, deliver greater levels of service to customers at scale, and make technologymagazine.com

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Dr. Gero Decker on Robotic Process Automation at scale with Signavio

more accurate decisions on investment, procurement and the hundred and one other variables that separate the winners from the also-rans,” adds Vainio-Mattila.

What is a recurrent topic is how often processes are automated, with little reflection around how robots connect with human workforces, according to Vainio-Mattila.

“The best use is when the likes of RPA, intelligent automation and artificial intelligence are used to augment, rather than replace, workforces,” he concludes.

Execution vital to effectiveness of RDA SAP Signavio were last year recognised as the leading Customer Journey Mapping vendor by SPARK Matrix™: Customer Journey Mapping (CJM), 2021.

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Signavio was founded in 2009 and introduced the first completely webbased collaborative BPM (business process management) software. What began as a small start-up is now a global player with a growing team working in offices in Germany, the United States, Singapore, France, Australia, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. One product has developed into the SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite.

Dr Gero Decker is the Co-General Manager at SAP Signavio. He envisions a rise in adoption of RPA: “More organisations are coming round to the idea that timeconsuming and repetitive business processes can be automated, especially those which human workers find difficult, mundane, or frustrating to complete. In particular,

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

an example, he says, “around half of all RPA initiatives fail to deliver expected improvements due to poor execution – the premise remains the same for RDA”.

What is preventing businesses from making the most of the opportunity? Decker adds that a major cause is they often overlook the ‘process’ element of automation.

“This leads to the automation of systemically poor processes, with the likely result being that the same mistakes are made faster and on a grander scale.

This issue stems from a disparity between what business leaders think is happening and what is actually occurring – and it is only by aligning the actual insights and desired states prior to implementation that automation can be successful. We cannot augment incorrect human behaviour and expect efficient RDA as a result.”

“ The beauty of business automation is that it is not sector-specific, so benefits can be leveraged in many industries” MIKA VAINIO-MATTILA CEO, DIGITAL WORKFORCE

standardised tasks that are based on specific rules and that are high priority.

“Automating these tasks can deliver significant cost savings, minimise errors and open a host of other benefits which ultimately lead to an enhanced customer experience.”

However, according to Decker, effectively implementing RDA is often more challenging than initially anticipated. As

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HOW SHELL’S SOURCE 2 CONTRACT DIGITALISATION AND AI BOOSTS PRODUCTIVITY

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WRITTEN BY: ILKHAN OZSEVIM PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

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SHELL

Through its digitalisation, automation and AI systems in procurement Shell is receiving global recognition for its productivity and growing ethical standards

L

eading a transformation to digitise and automate Shell’s S2C (Sourceto-Contract) and E2E (End-to-End) processes, Sander Voorn, the S2C Digital and Process Transformation Design Manager at Shell, discusses how the use of certain digital systems and tools have had a huge and measurable impact on their output.

“My current role is really focused on looking at how we can digitalise,” he says, “and with that, largely automate these processes.”

Voorn has been in procurement for the last 20 years, starting in an internal supply chain management consulting practice and within that role, helping to manage one of the company’s strategic supplier relationships — their technology partner for telecoms. From there, he was integral in centralising their procurement activities, moving into a role to digitalise their contingent workforce spend and activities.

How digital tools fuel Shell’s procurement process Now at Shell, and describing the interplay of procurement structures and systems that brought this transformation about, Voorn says: “Each business has a procurement function, but they fall under one Executive Vice President, and my organisation supports all of these different businesses

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SHELL

centrally. We have a few key tools to carry out this function. We have our Category Management and Contracting Process framework, which lays out the requirements that everybody needs to meet, which we incorporated into the system, SAP Ariba, which has embedded DocuSign. We also have Salesforce to complement this process, and a few other systems which together operate to manage the entire end-to-end (E2E) process.”

With the rise of digital systems in business, and their inevitable impact on global procurement processes, the effects are considerable.

Voorn says: “The biggest changes have been around centralisation, and a growing awareness of the importance and value of data, and the need to structure and standardise that data in order to extract value from it. The risk-management aspect of procurement has fluctuated a little, but in the last couple of years I’ve seen a growing awareness of its importance not only from a cost perspective, but also from a differentiator perspective.

“The ability to identify viable organisations — that is, who from a risk and ESG perspective we want and do not want to be doing business with — is becoming increasingly important, and I think this trend will continue to grow.”

Growing digitalisation has unmistakable global consequences, according to Voorn: “We are now able to connect the process End-To-End (E2E) that would not have been possible in the past.”

“The key to E2E system and process optimisation and integration is to create Natural Working Teams (NWT) composed of all relevant disciplines. The core of these NWTs consists of the Process Architects from my team, our partners from IT and the 136

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“ MY CURRENT ROLE IS REALLY FOCUSED ON LOOKING AT HOW WE CAN DIGITALISE AND, WITH THAT, LARGELY AUTOMATE OUR SOURCE-TO-CONTRACT (S2C) PROCESS” SANDER VOORN

S2C DIGITAL &PROCESS TRANSFORMATION DESIGN MANAGER, SHELL

Data Analytics team. These experts make the digitalisation happen!”

One of the main systems in Shell’s entire S2C process is SAP Ariba, where they now manage all of their spend. Describing the process, he says: “From my perspective, it begins with category management. We have categories like contingent workforce, rotating equipment or consulting, for example. These categories are managed by the Category Managers (CMs) who help collect market intelligence and are responsible for providing global steer to a group of buyers.

“The CMs set up these category strategies that detail how we want to go to market.

They typically create global framework agreements, which are then made available through SAP Ariba. The next step begins when our buyers are looking to identify demand for a specific contract. They come up with a sourcing strategy, tie this into the global category strategies and leverage the information from them.”

SANDER VOORN TITLE: S2C DIGITAL & PROCESS TRANSFORMATION DESIGN MANAGER INDUSTRY: ENERGY SUPPLIER

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: NETHERLANDS Sander Voorn is the Source to Contract Digital & Process Transformation design manager at Shell where he has led the S2C digital transformation over the past 4 years.

During this time the S2C cycle-time was reduced by over 25%. Prior to this, he developed and implemented Shell’s Supplier Performance Management best practices for its Arctic operations.

Ensuring safe and efficient performance throughout its supply chain.

Sander’s first global digital transformation was in 2005 when he developed a global programme for the sourcing and management of Shell’s 10,000+ Contingent workforce. The transparency and control this enabled reduced Contingent Workforce cost

by USD 60 Mln+ annually.

Build Supply Chain Resilience By Disrupting It Winning supply chains achieve breakthrough business outcomes by leveraging analytics automation on internal and external data to develop actionable insight into the needs of customers across product, channels and other factors that influence demand.

Some of the most successful supply chains use Alteryx to improve forecasts, assortment and inventory decisions, and the uptime of in- service equipment: y

Demand Forecasting: Improve on-shelf-availability and avoid out of stock conditions

y

Assortment and Inventory Optimization: Operate a competitive supply chain with a clear line of sight

y

Predictive Maintenance: Identify and address potential downtime before it arises

DISCOVER MORE

SHELL

We can already see how much of Shell’s procurement process is carried out within SAP Ariba.

“We also review and approve them within SAP Ariba,” he says, “which provides the added benefit of being able to reuse and leverage existing or prior strategies, and we then use SAP Ariba to go to market, eSourcing either auctions or tenders. “We typically provide our suppliers during the tender with our fit-for-purpose contract proposal, in order for them to base their quote on. This draft, too, is created in SAP Ariba, which is done by leveraging

the metadata or the header data of the contract, which identify things like country, commodity, dates, contract value and so on to automatically assemble a fit for purpose contract for that unique situation.”

This is where SAP Ariba’s Artificial Intelligence starts to play a greater role.

How Artificial Intelligence and Automation lead to increased productivity “Contract Authoring was a time consuming and non-compliance risk area until we were able to use SAP Ariba Contract Authoring technology. There are about 50 key data points that the system uses to automatically assemble from around 4000 different elements of clauses, in order to determine the right contract for a specific situation. We have about 6 million possible combinations, technologymagazine.com

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and that's the draft that we give to our suppliers to base their bids on. Once we get the quotes back, we finalise the contract agreement, then use DocuSign to get a quick signature on those contracts.”

Once contracts have been signed, they have an automated bot – referred to as an RPA (Robotic Process Automation) – that then releases the outline agreement of the contract on the SAP ERP system, from which the volume of spending for individual contacts is monitored.

The sheer volume and complexity of data that is sifted through and analysed highlights the extraordinary productivity and efficiency that AI is able to achieve compared to its relative human elements. Shell also employs a selection of other (AI) systems to bolster and complete their operations.

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One of these is Microsoft Power BI (Business Intelligence), which is used in conjunction with SAP Ariba to allow procurement staff and stakeholders to easily follow contract journeys. A new Suite Dashboard for Shell’s Contract Management Teams (CMTs) is to be implemented into Salesforce, too, where they can see and collaborate on the contract relevant to each party.

Digital contracts, the limitations of AI and the need for human intervention Voorn’s position is that, even as part of the Shell procurement process – widely recognised as one of the most effective in the world – it is not yet perfect. And this is, he believes, due to the fact much of it still requires a certain amount of human intervention: “Presently, from a workflow

SHELL

perspective, contracts are integrated and to a degree, automated. From an Artificial Intelligence (AI) perspective, however, most of the technology that I see is quite limited, and still needs a lot of human intervention.

“AI, no doubt, is able to perform numerous activities, but in reality for many applications it only has around a 60-70% accuracy rate, which means that you still need to have a person double-checking its work, which kind of defeats the purpose.”

He adds: “Truth be told, when people talk about Machine Learning, it's really about training the algorithm. We train the algorithm what is and what is not permitted, by embedding that training (or that learning) into our regular workflows.”

“ THE ABILITY TO IDENTIFY VIABLE ORGANISATIONS – THAT IS, WHO FROM A RISK AND ESG PERSPECTIVE WE WANT AND DO NOT WANT TO DO BUSINESS WITH – IS BECOMING INCREASINGLY IMPORTANT, AND I THINK THIS TREND WILL CONTINUE TO GROW” SANDER VOORN

S2C DIGITAL &PROCESS TRANSFORMATION DESIGN MANAGER, SHELL

How AI can help to drive creativity and ethical standards The AI aspect of Shell’s procurement systems is not only able to improve costeffectiveness and operational efficiency, but is also able to free up staff from certain laborious and time-consuming tasks, enabling them to work more creatively, as well as having an impact on ethical procurement.

“If you look at our strategy at Shell ‘Powering Progress’,” says Voorn. “It consists of a number of elements, a key one being ‘Powering Lives’. This means that Shell is concerned with supporting inclusive societies, but it also means making sure that we only ever do business with ethical suppliers, and also that there is supplierdiversity, where we do a lot of supplier development which can take time.

“So, thanks to the AI and automation process, we can free up staff to spend more time finding potentially viable suppliers and to look at how Shell can help these suppliers reduce their own carbon footprint.” technologymagazine.com

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When considering ethical procurement at Shell, the company takes time to develop actions and solutions to diversify their suppliers, as well as how to ensure that workers’ welfare rights and ethical standards are not only complied with, but substantially increased.

Artificial Intelligence also plays a significant role in the quality of Shell’s health and safety standards, with Voorn saying: “As part of our process, we ask suppliers about their safety standards and worker-welfare policies. Some suppliers respond, some don't, or don’t do so quickly enough. In order to tackle this problem, we are building bots to ask these questions and to follow them up.

“Once suppliers come back with their Health and Safety and Welfare Policy documents, they need, of course, to be fully read and digested. We typically know what kind of HSE (Health, Safety and Environmental) policy their documents should cover. With AI NLP (Natural Language processing) capabilities, we can see whether this document and their policy is up to a certain standard and whether it meets our thresholds, so we can then determine where there’s a safety risk for a specific category.

Shell’s Scope 3 ambitions and data driven sustainability As an energy company, Shell is looking at its own CO2 emissions, as well as Scope 2 and 3 – which includes the CO2 footprint of their suppliers. One of Shell’s policies, implemented last year, surrounds the company’s drive to identify those suppliers who want to actively reduce their CO2 footprint, who can then register themselves in the Supplier Energy Transition Hub (a Shell-initiated programme), which Shell has made available as a public application 142

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Shell uses Whatfix to drive adoption of its S2P digital applications Shell transformed its contract management and procurement processes with SAP Ariba to keep up with the competitor landscape, streamline operations, cut supply chain costs, and meet evolving customer expectations. However, with a complex new application and outdated training practices, Shell struggled to meet its adoption goals, meaning longer process times, large amounts of support tickets, high training costs, and poor data quality.

With Whatfix’s digital adoption platform (DAP), Shell created a simple application experience with in-app content providing personalized guidance for employees. With in-app elements like step-by-step flows, task lists, and tooltips, Shell provided its contract and procurement departments with engaging onboarding and training, in the flow of work.

“Whatfix provides a great way to store information where it’s most needed, reducing the number of users' questions, and simplifying training. It’s a great way to communicate changes - ‘just follow the Whatfix flow!’”

With Whatfix, Shell launched its in-app digital assistant, SCAI, which embedded a knowledge base into SAP Ariba - allowing users to search for any applicationrelated questions.

“Whatfix enabled SCAI, which answers the majority of questions related to our contract and procurement processes, hence we don’t have to answer each support question from the frontline! Users ask SCAI anything they need on the contracting process or tool, allowing my team to focus on more important activities.”

With Whatfix, Shell created an intuitive SAP Ariba experience that supported its workforce through complex contract and procurement workflows. Whatfix provided an intuitive point-and-click digital adoption solution that accelerated its SAP Ariba adoption.

Empower your workforce with better in-app experiences and on-demand support with Whatfix!

By the Numbers:

The Whatfix Difference • • •

20% reduction in SAP Ariba support queries & 30% reduction in time spent on application-related support tickets 100% change communication to all SAP Ariba end-users 20 minute reduction in end-to-end cycle time per contract

SHELL

to which any company can join. In turn, Shell then works with these companies to reduce their carbon footprint.

“This is where you see a touch of symbiosis between our suppliers as customers, and our customers as suppliers; nobody can do this alone, what’s needed is collaboration.”

Shell is currently upgrading one of its SAP Ariba modules, called Supplier Life Cycle and Performance Management (SLP). SLP will allow Shell to develop sophisticated supplier profiles, by being able to analyse the qualifications of a supplier’s performance data from a variety of different angles and lenses. Everything from safety to delivery methods, through to their pricing, quality – and even worker-welfare – will be considered.

Voorn says: “I think that SLP capability is going to be critical in our ‘Powering Lives’ development, and as partof our Net-Zero ambitions.”

Electrifying energy: Shell’s strategy to move away from Fossil Fuels Shell has set out a strategy to accelerate the transition of our business to net-zero emissions. “Shell is working to provide more renewable and low-carbon energy options for customers through investments in wind, solar, electric vehicle charging, hydrogen, and more,” says Voorn. ‘For example, Shell is investing in lower-carbon options – from electric-vehicle charging points and solutions to fuels like hydrogen and biofuels.”

Additionally, Shell recently announced that it plans to increase the number of charging points from 80,000 to 500,000 worldwide by 2025.

“We've been recognised on a number of elements of our portfolio, from CIPS (Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply) and others. With CIPS, it was for our end-to-end (E2E) process,” says Voorn.

“Our source to contact (S2C) digitalisation technologymagazine.com

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“ I HAVE SEEN GREAT CHANGES IN PROCUREMENT OVER THE PAST 20 YEARS. THE BIGGEST HAVE BEEN AROUND CENTRALISATION, A GROWING AWARENESS OF THE IMPORTANCE AND VALUE OF DATA” SANDER VOORN

S2C DIGITAL &PROCESS TRANSFORMATION DESIGN MANAGER, SHELL

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strategy was recognised due to our global journey, but also due to our position moving forward. We have a fairly high percentage of sourcing that’s done through e-sourcing and e-auctions – when compared to the market standard – with around 88% of our contracts being signed through DocuSign. Just a few years ago, this was very uncommon. We encourage its use at Shell and, once you've used it, you know that it's a better way to go.”

Unexpected Data-Synergies and Value from Artificial Intelligence For Voorn, the Salesforce programme that Shell uses has two primary functions: it acts as both a kind of dashboard where data from different sources can be directly

pulled, as well as having the ability to jump via embedded hyperlinks into SAP Ariba to a specific task or activity.

Salesforce gives them the ability to collaborate, whereas most Source-toContract (S2C) tools have limited collaboration capabilities. It also allows them to collaborate on documents and pulls in documents and data from other systems, while also pushing these back into SAP Ariba via a systematic record–keeping function. The entire system is streamlined toward higher productivity.

Voorn says: “A big surprise to me was that data analytics with Alteryx identified activities that were being done that didn’t require doing. We then saw the number of contracts that staff could manage increase and the time

it took to complete a contract decrease.

The game changer in process optimisation through process mining was when we decided to use Alteryx. We fed the system all our SAP Ariba workflow data which we analysed to identify frictions points, waste and other inefficiencies. This generated very surprising insights that enabled us to close knowledge gaps with some of our users, take out process steps that were not needed, re-engage with key process participants that were ignoring their tasks in the system and were still using e-mail and implement many more improvements. All combined this led to a 25% shorter cycle time and very material reduction in effort by procurement staff and key stakeholders. technologymagazine.com

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“ONE OF THE MAIN SYSTEMS IN SHELL’S ENTIRE S2C PROCESS IS SAP ARIBA” SANDER VOORN

S2C DIGITAL &PROCESS TRANSFORMATION DESIGN MANAGER, SHELL

Another programme that Shell uses is Whatfix, which is a digital assistant that’s implemented inside SAP Ariba. Voorn says: “We have about 10 different features that Whatfix can do to help a user who’s, for example, using a feature that's never been used before. Or, if we change something in the system affecting a certain field, they will be notified of this change – and even explain the purpose of that field. Whatfix has enabled us to stop ‘classroom’ training and replaced this with short demos, guided tours, real time tips and similar features. So our users are much more comfortable trying new things because the system will support them. It will also detect in real-time any incongruent data, flag this to the user and guide the user to correct this, avoiding errors further down in the process.

This again leads to increased productivity.

The impact of these systems at Shell is palpable. Productivity has been increased and the company is able to react to geopolitical shifts through automation and raising ethical standards while increasing productivity.

Sander Voorn predicts that these trends will continue to grow, serving as a perfect example of the essential nature of digitisation and automation in contributing to the success of any company aiming to thrive in an everexpanding digital landscape.

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EMERGING TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS FOR ENTERPRISE WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

As the enterprise software market booms in 2022, Technology Magazine takes a look at some of the exciting new platforms in the enterprise space digital ecosystem. We look at some new Enterprise platforms improve the quality contenders across the three core areas of of the experience in the business, running ERP (enterprise resource platform), CRM the processes that keep a business going. (Customer relationship management) and Optimising the balance between SCM (supply chain management). supply and demand, they provide From supply chain to sales insights on how to improve the business pipelines, and customer relationships in the future. to handling business assets, it’s the There are many different types of blend of these tools that defines an platforms that make up a business's organisation’s success.

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TOP 10

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10 Apptivo

Founded: 2009 Apptivo is a cloud platform of integrated business apps designed for companies of all shapes & sizes.

For companies that want to manage multiple business functions—sales, procurement, expenses, invoicing, marketing, contracts—with one app, Apptivo is a solid, inexpensive option.

The User Interface is highly customisable and adapts well to the needs of a business.

“ For companies that want to manage multiple business functions with one app” 152

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09 Cin7

Founded: 2012

GMV: US$30bn a year Cin7 is a cloud-based retail management solution with e-commerce, inventory management, point of sale (POS) and reporting features. The solution combines the functions of inventory management, POS, third-party logistics (3PL) and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) into a single solution. Cin7 allows retailers to track inventory levels in real time across multiple warehouses to prevent stockouts or overstocks.

TOP 10

08

“One of the best overall inventory management software solutions”

Manhattan Associates Founded: 1990

Market cap: US$8.73bn Manhattan Associates works across wholesale, retail, pharmaceutical, FMCG, manufacturing and many more sectors. The supply chain management offering is a mainstay as Warehouse Management Leader on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant Report, having featured since 2009. Some other notable recognitions have included making Forbes’ ‘America’s 100 Most Trustworthy Companies’ list three years in a row, and the Top 100 Logistics IT Providers for Inbound Logistics over the same period, 2014-16.

07

Orderhive

Founded: 2013 Orderhive provides plans to meet the needs of companies in most industries, from large enterprises to start-ups. It stands out by offering unlimited stockkeeping units (SKUs) and hundreds of integrations in its featurerich plans, making Orderhive one of the best overall inventory management software solutions.

Orderhive works in all major browsers, and supports the first in, first out (FIFO) method, using the Kanban approach for reordering or replenishing stock. technologymagazine.com

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05

Monday.com Founded: 2012

Valuation: US$5.28bn

06 HubSpot

Founded: 2006

Valuation: US$25.29bn HubSpot is a highly popular marketing automation software to help people attract the right audience, convert more visitors into customers, and run complete inbound marketing campaigns at scale.

Their all-in-one powerful, easyto-use CRM platform is used by thousands of customers around the world.

HubSpot was named Glassdoor’s #4 Best Place to Work in 2021, and our award-winning culture has been recognized by Great Place to Work, Comparably, Fortune, Entrepreneur, Inc., and more.

Despite being designed as a project management and collaboration platform initially, monday.com has since expanded its use cases, and management is one of them.

Their solution is flexible, which enables users to adapt it to their needs and existing workflows.

Monday.com is regarded as the best project management tool out there, with a clear visual interface, clear workflow stages and even capturing job applications directly from your website and tracking absence.

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04

Sage Intacct Founded: 1999

Sage Intacct’s applications are suitable for small and midsize companies, helping them manage the general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management and order management. With an open API structure, you can integrate them with other business applications like CRM, payroll, or POS systems.

Named #1 by Gartner, for the 5th year in a row, Sage Intacct received the highest product score for core financials in its category.

“ Named #1 by Gartner, for the 5th year in a row” 156

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03 Infor

Founded: 2002

Valuation: US$13bn Acquired by Koch in 2020 for USD$13b. Infor is a global leader in business cloud software specialised by industry. With 17,000 employees and over 67,000 customers in more than 175 countries, Infor software is designed for progress.

Infor is building the future of industry enterprise cloud applications. Industry acclaim is common, with Gartner® naming Infor a Leader in the 2021 Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud ERP for Product-Centric Enterprises.

02

TOP 10

Blackbaud

Valuation: US$4.18bn

Proclaimed as the world's leading cloud software company powering social good. They serve the entire social good community, which includes nonprofits, foundations, corporations, education institutions, healthcare institutions, and the individual change agents who support them.

An established provider of software and services designed for nonprofit organisations, Blackbaud enables them to build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions.

Its products are utilised by approximately 19,000 organisations including the American Red Cross, Dartmouth College and the WGBH.

“ An established provider of software and services designed for non-profit organisations” technologymagazine.com

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Freshservice Founded: 2010

Valuation: US$10bn Freshservice is a product developed and provided by Freshworks Inc. that has also designed Freshdesk, Freshsales, and others.

One of the most popular asset management tools in the world, and it’s made the number one position on a number of lists.

It’s extremely easy to set up and use and saves a lot of time during asset management.

Key features include asset management tools to support tracking, in-depth reporting, and lifecycle management along with comprehensive inventory management tools to monitor and stay up to date with stock levels.

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With a business growth plan that includes asset management, the Freshworks portfolio of services offers competitively priced solutions for businesses of all sizes.

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PROMOTING NORWAY’S DC CREDENTIALS THROUGH MEMBERS’ SKILLS WRITTEN BY: SAM STEERS PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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NORWEGIAN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY

Bjørn Rønning, General Manager of The Norwegian Data Center Industry, explains the company’s work in promoting the industry through its members

T

he Norwegian Data Center Industry is an association formed of seven data centre operators and power providers.

Known as the ‘founding fathers’, these include Green Mountain, Stack Infrastructure, Lefdal Mine Datacenter, Bulk, Basefarm, Ringerikskraft and Statkraft. The association also noticed that there was significant interest from other areas of the ecosystem and today it consists of around 35 members – from power providers to hardware suppliers.

Its aim is to promote the country’s data centre sector through its members and working groups.

“What really made us pull this together was the joining of forces on addressing the tax barriers that kept us from being competitive with our neighbouring countries,” Bjørn Rønning, General Manager of The Norwegian Data Center Industry said.

The need for an association like the Norwegian Data Centre Industry increased during the height of the pandemic, which accelerated the company’s growth further and allowed it to identify the main issues the Norwegian sector is experiencing and how best to tackle them.

According to an analysis conducted

by Implement Economics – part of the Implement Consulting Group – data centre capacity in Norway has increased by 17% per year since 2010. In 2020,

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NORWEGIAN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY

Promoting Norway’s Data Centre Credentials

BJØRN RØNNING

“I think one of the key themes here is the energy situation and the total cost of ownership – the TCO – of energy,” says Rønning. “It’s all about turning around the perception of Norway that it is, in inverted commas, ‘not open for business’. Norway is absolutely open for business. We have a very mature digital population; we have a government that’s really backing the data centre strategy; and we have a vibrant data centre ecosystem that is led by five large data centre operators.”

approximately 145 MW of capacity was installed, and this capacity is expected to grow sharply in the years to come.

In the period 2019-2020, at least NOK 2.7bn (US$3.06bn) was invested in new data centres in Norway. The investments are driven by both Norwegian and international demand.

Working groups address key areas of the data centre sector In addition to reducing tax and improving framework conditions, the Data Center Industry association looks to advertise and promote the industry. It achieves this through its working groups. Based on requirements from the association’s members, there are four working groups categorised into Sustainability,

“ It’s essential for us to grow as an organisation, to recruit more members, and expand the already quite large ecosystem” CEO, NORWEGIAN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY

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centre industry in Norway today that is open for business to take in new clients who are looking for cost-effective and sustainable solutions,” Rønning says.

Norway’s unique position as a sustainable data centre location Sustainability also plays an important part in the association’s strategy, as the industry Continues page 12 

BJØRN RØNNING TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES LOCATION: OSLO, NORWAY Bjørn Rønning is the CEO of Norwegian Data Center Industry, a trade association, and the voice of the data center industry in Norway. Mr. Ronning is a telecom professional and has through his career worked as an advisor in the national and international digital infrastructure space, including terrestrial and subsea fiber optic networks, data centres and related digital infrastructure.

EXECUTIVE BIO

International Marketing, Power & Grid and Skills Development.

Each of the groups is working on different projects. The Sustainability working group, for example, is focused on heat reuse projects. As the Norwegian operators already tick the box for renewable energy and worldleading power-efficiency, heat reuse is the next step on the road to carbon neutrality.

“We are also looking at how we can get consistent and transparent reporting on climate factors, so we can compare apples with apples in terms of other markets or other countries,” Rønning explains.

Rønning says that the global data centre industry is in short supply of personnel such as electricians and people who work with cooling and heating technology. Although the situation in Norway is not as critical, the Skills Development group aims to spur development of skilled resources to the DC industry. “We are actively working with schools to develop apprenticeship programmes to encourage more young people into the business,” he says.

Then there’s what Rønning refers to as the working group for power-related issues.

He wholeheartedly believes that Norway is equal to other countries when it comes to building grids, launching projects, and having on-site power availability. This is, however, cumbersome work as Rønning points out.

“You’re working with large, monopolistic organisations like grid providers and so forth, and we are actively working to see how we make the permit processes for power grid construction more effective.”

The last of the four groups is International Marketing, which aims to promote Norway as a sustainable data centre destination.

“We have so many sites, so much renewable power and so much connectivity and competence to offer. We have a vibrant data

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TAKING SUSTAINABILITY TO THE NEXT LEVEL WITH HEAT REUSE

SUSTAINABILITY...

In Norway, we are fortunate to have access to 100% renewable hydropower to operate and cool our data centres. This also means that we are in a good position to take sustainability to the next level, exploring new solutions to support the green shift.

An area with huge potential is reuse of waste heat from data centres. Several operators in Norway have initiated pilot projects to address this challenge and, below, we present a few examples:

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1. Greenhouse plants – Bulk Data Centers has signed letters of intent on the recovery of heat across all its data centres, to ensure any excess is utilised in the district heating network. This will provide heat for several energy intensive processes and ventures, including Bulk’s first step to realise its circular industry cluster vision at its N01 campus in Kristiansand with Kristiansen Gartneri (Greenhouse Plant). In this instance, the heat provided will power Kristiansen Gartneri’s greenhouse vegetable operations – keeping vegetables sufficiently warm and reducing the greenhouse’s power needs – making food production more costeffective and sustainable.

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2. Land-based lobster farm – The company, Norwegian Lobster Farm, will use the waste heat from Green Mountain’s DC1 data centre. To grow optimally, the lobster needs a temperature of 20°C in the seawater.

This is exactly the temperature of the seawater that has been used to cool the IT equipment. In a production facility adjacent to the data centre, this heated seawater can be used directly in the breeding of lobsters.

As a result, the energy is reused, and Green Mountain is one step closer to making the facility climate positive. More info

3. Land-based trout farm - Hima Seafood is going to establish a land-based trout farm 800m from Green Mountain's DC2Telemark data centre. By connecting the two facilities together by a pipe system, we will deliver heated water to Hima. Heat exchange technology will then ensure that the Hima facility can use the energy from the water.

The same water is subsequently returned to Green Mountain. The water now holds a lower temperature that can be used in the

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cooling of the data centre. In other words, a truly circular project. The farm is estimated to be operational in 2023. More info 4. Smolt production – Lefdal Mine Datacenter cooperates with Sjomatstaden, a future-oriented seafood centre nearby their facility. They will use the waste heat from the data centre to produce smolt (a young salmon ready to live in saltwater.)

Production with heated water is twice as fast, compared to using original ocean temperature. Estimated production in phase 1 is 6 million smolts/year, which in turn will result in 15.000 tonnes of salmon annually. This will also save the seafood centre an annual power capacity equal to 12MW. More info

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DATA CENTRES IN NORWAY SUSTAINABILITY WITH A COST BENEFIT Electricity Generation in Norway

Thermal power - 11.9% Wind power - 1.0%

From 4 cent / kWh Incl.

grid fee

Hydro power - 87.1% Source: SSB

Lowest Energy Prices in Europe Lowest electricity prices in Europe Competitive grid fees Lowest energy tax in Europe

Green Energy Electricity production in Norway is 98,9% renewable Consecutive annual energy surplus

• •

• • •

Read more on TCO on p.06

Source: government.no

Sustainability to the next level Heat Reuse projects Average PUE: < 1.2 Cold and wet climate

Carbon footprint of electricity: Norway average: 34.02 gCO2eq/kWh

• • •

• • F LAP-D average: 260.35 gCO2eq/kWh

Source: PUE numbers from operators

Source: Average in 2021 Electricity Map.org

Carbon Intensity - Europe 2021 Germany: 329.70 gCO2eq/kWh France: 59.03 gCO2eq/kWh United Kingdom: 246.55 gCO2eq/kWh Ireland: 363.42 gCO2eq/kWh Netherlands: 329.7 gCO2eq/kWh Denmark: 190.36 gCO2eq/kWh Norway: 34.02 gCO2eq/kWh 400

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300

200

100

0

EXCELLENT CONNECTIVITY Fibre Routes Recent investments in subsea fibre infrastructure have improved Norway’s connectivity.

List of routes:

< 15ms

• Skagenfiber West • Skagerak 4 • Havsil

< 20ms

• Havfrue/AEC-2 • NO-UK Cable • Celtic Norse • Leif Erikson • Tampnet

< 30ms

Latency Examples from Oslo, the Norwegian capital and Stavanger, on the west coast of Norway.

RTD IN MS

FRANKFURT

LONDON

AMSTERDAM

PARIS

DUBLIN

OSLO

14.4

14.9

12.6

19.9

18.2

STAVANGER

14.1

11.6

16.3

17.4

12.1

Source: Invest in Norway

STRONG ECO SYSTEM Digital mature and skilled workforce High competence, independence, high efficiency Flat hierarchies

• •

Political Commitment The Norwegian Government issued the world’s first data centre strategy in 2018 and updated it in 2021. This is a strong political commitment to continuously work to improve the framework conditions (taxes, energy, fibre) for the data centre ecosystem.

Norwegian Datacenter Industry Members of the association represent the whole data centre ecosystem, form site developers, designers, builders, suppliers, fibre operation, power providers to data centre operators. Currently there are 30+ members, the number is steadily growing.

Member of the European Single Market Norway is fully integrated in the European Single Market through the EEA and Schengen Agreement.

Source: government.no technologymagazine.com

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itself has always been beleaguered by the difficulties sustainability poses. “I think that the data centre industry has always been challenged on the sustainability issue.

That has, however, also led us to be in the forefront of developing and integrating sustainable solutions in the data centre industry,” Rønning says.

“We are also looking at how we can get consistent and transparent reporting on climate factors so we can compare apples with apples in terms of other markets or other countries” BJØRN RØNNING

CEO, NORWEGIAN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY

In short, the long-term strategy for the Norwegian Data Centre Industry is quite simple, according to Rønning. “It's promoting the existing data centre industry in Norway, which is welcoming all kinds of business because we have ample space and ample access to power. In addition, we have a fantastic connectivity infrastructure that had a heavy uplift during the last five, six years.”

A partner ecosystem represented by its members The Norwegian Data Centre Industry’s partner ecosystem within the association is represented by its members. Our current members include Norwegian and international data centre operators, the MEP supplier industry, construction companies, HW/SW suppliers, communications technologymagazine.com

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AUTOMOTIVE DATA GOING NORTH Automotive data going north The focus on the Nordics as the ideal data centre location has increased over the last few years, especially in light of the region's plentiful access to renewable power and beneficial climate for efficient cooling. An industry that has certainly set its eyes on the Nordics is the automotive industry. Their HighPerformance Computing (HPC) workloads are a perfect fit for colocation providers in Norway.

The automotive industry is going through a massive transition. Electrical vehicles, autonomous driving, new business models and the race towards carbon neutrality are driving this industry through massive changes.

This also means that automotive companies are having to store and process enormous amounts of data to make this transition. An increasing share of this data now finds its way to Norway. Here are two examples of international automotive companies who have made the move to the Nordics.

Crash Tests Using the Power of Water In 2019, Volkswagen group moved its HPC operations to Green Mountain’s data center in Rjukan, Telemark. Two new data halls were constructed on the Green Mountain premises in only six months. These halls are supplied with up to 2,75 MW of power – that generates plenty of computing capability that Volkswagen and Audi will apply to run HPC projects like simulated crash tests and virtual wind tunnel trials. In comparison to a conventionally operated computer center, the facility in Rjukan saves Volkswagen Group more than 5,800 tons of CO2 annually. Read full story Photo credit: Volkswagen Group

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Photo credit: Lefdal Mine

Lefdal Mine Datacenter welcomes MercedesBenz to its underground facilities In 2021, Lefdal cooperated with Infosys to sign a large data center agreement with MercedesBenz. The company moved its High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster to Lefdal Mine Datacenter and was then one step closer to becoming a carbon-neutral company. MercedesBenz uses the global IT giant Infosys to operate its IT infrastructure. Infosys delivers “Green Data Center as a Service” to Mercedes-Benz from the facility in Nordfjord. Read full story

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NORWEGIAN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY

“ You’re working with large, monopolistic organisations like grid providers and so forth, and we are actively working to see how we make the permit processes for power grid construction more effective” BJØRN RØNNING

CEO, NORWEGIAN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY

operators, power companies, and companies in the consulting industry.

“If you start at the very bottom of the ecosystem, you have the site providers.

You have several companies also owned by local municipalities that offer sites for data centre projects.

“We are working with them to really adapt the site to be even more attractive for new data centre projects,” Rønning says. The company also works with both designers and suppliers of plumbing, mechanical, and electrical equipment, as well as operators and their subcontractors.

“The ecosystem is complete, in terms of covering the entire value chain.”

Rønning also adds that the Norwegian Datacenter Industry also welcomes new data centre operators to Norway.

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“Our well established supply chain network can assist foreign data centre operators wanting to establish new data centre operations in Norway.”

Discussing the working relationship with the ecosystem, he says: “My organisation is created by my members and it's basically meant to serve my members. So, I think that one of my most important tasks is to listen to my members, hear them out, understand what their concerns are and the opportunities they want to develop, and that's why we have established these four working groups.”

- The Norwegian Data Centre Industry was founded to provide solutions to challenges faced in the data centre sector and to promote the country of Norway as an attractive market.

- It was founded in 2021.

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DC BYTE...

INTERVIEW WITH DC BYTE ON THE NORWEGIAN DC MARKET 1. In your view, what are the growth projections for the Nordic market? And what are the drivers behind this growth?

The data centre market in the Nordics is 5 times the size it was a decade ago. With over 1.3GW of total capacity added between 2016 to 2021 and average yearly growth of 17.5%, it has the potential to grow by more than 60% of its current live capacity rate over the next 3-5 years.

The region has become a relatively attractive location for hyperscale public cloud operators, with around 58% of the live capacity in the region coming from selfbuilt public cloud deployments. The key drivers for the popularity of the Nordics

Jovita Januskeviciute

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are the area’s cool climate, an established infrastructure, good network connections and a plentiful supply of renewable energy.

2. Does Norway stand out in any way compared to the other Nordic countries?

Each of the countries within the Nordic region has unique features. Some factors are more common across the region, whilst others are country-specific. Increasing global concern about climate change and the signing of the Paris Agreement is driving businesses to look for more environmentally sustainable ways in which to operate. As an industry that

NORWEGIAN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY

is heavily reliant on power, data centre operators are continually seeking more sustainable and efficient solutions.

Norway has great potential in this regard due to an abundant supply of green energy. Almost all electricity produced by the country emanates from green energy sources. In addition, Norway has an industry-supportive government that favourably impacts national industry growth. In the last 4-year period, Oslo’s data centre market has grown at an average of 42% annually. In 2021, planned capacity in Norway alone doubled the 2020 figure, representing the second largest planned capacity across the Nordics after Denmark.

3. How do you think the Nordic market will develop compared to the FLAP-Ds? Will

there be a “migration up north” movement in the market? Especially in light of the energy situation in Europe, would this expedite any migration projects?

Nordic national markets are on an upwards growth trajectory. The increase of technological integration in recent years, particularly during the pandemic, led to a significant rise in IT capacity of newly built facilities. This resulted in power constraints, particularly in the larger markets such as London, Amsterdam and Dublin. Whilst it is too early to say which particular markets will become more dominant, considering what the region has on immediate offer, the Nordics are well-placed to be potential front runners in attracting foreign investment and development.

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HOW TO ESTABLISH A DATA CENTRE IN NORWAY

INNOVATION NORWAY...

Interview with Benedicte Fasmer Waaler from Invest in Norway

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Q: Norway is one of the few countries with its own data centre strategy. How important is this for the industry and potential clients?

A: A national data centre strategy shows an overall commitment from the government to develop and promote the data centre industry. Our experience is that this is appreciated – both by investors and players in the data centre industry – at home and abroad. The existence of a data centre strategy is a strong signal that there is a will to establish and maintain a favourable business climate, including a stable regulatory landscape for the industry, in the years to come. This stability is important both from an investment and from an operational perspective. The new government continues to support the previous government’s strategy.

Q: What are the different entry strategies when looking to move your data centre capacity to Norway?

A: The Norwegian data centre market offers different solutions to suit different requirements. Whether it means leasing capacity from the Norwegian data centre operators, setting up your own data centre as a service, build-to-suit, ready-to-build,

June 2022

or even build your own data centre. The Norwegian government is committed to making this process as smooth as possible and has provided an introduction guide with references to more detailed resources when needed. More Info Q: How does Invest in Norway cooperate with The Norwegian Datacenter Industry?

A: We welcomed the formation of the business association Norwegian Data Center Industry in June last year and are pleased to see that it already represents the voice of the industry towards the public authorities and the market as such. In our view, it is valuable that the association rooms the whole data centre ecosystem, from site developers, power providers, communication service providers, and equipment suppliers to the data centre operators themselves. We cooperate with the association in the international marketing of Norway as a favourable and sustainable data centre nation, either by sponsoring marketing activities or by joint marketing efforts towards an international market. We also work with the association to identify and market beneficial locations in Norway for developing new and energy intensive data centre projects.

NORWEGIAN DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY

Monitoring the international market and industry trends The Norwegian Data Center Industry has several plans lined up for the next 12 to 18 months. According to Rønning, “the most important of these is to closely monitor the international market to determine how it can benefit the data centre operators already located in Norway. It’s also to see if it can create opportunities for new projects to commit to the Norwegian Market,” Rønning says.

“It’s essential to grow as an organisation, to recruit more members, and expand the already quite large ecosystem.” Moving forward, his goal is to be the voice of the Norwegian data centre sector that public authorities listen to.

Looking toward future trends in the industry, Rønning highlighted one in particular: energy efficiency.

“I would expect to see many technical solutions that would address this issue.

That would include everything from exploring liquid cooling to having a more effective solution for heat reuse. In rural areas, the DC operators are already working actively with projects like heating greenhouses and fish farming projects.

We would see huge developments on the sustainability side in terms of embedding it in the total project how you operate sustainably throughout the data centre’s whole lifecycle.

Rønning also expects to see growth in hyperscale installation, both in Norway and other Nordic countries. “I think you will see even more energy-efficient technology and even larger installations because we need to digitalise more, which, in the end, is the key to becoming more sustainable.”

ABOUT THE ASSOCIATION Norwegian Data Center Industry is a neutral business association and the voice of the industry towards the market and public authorities. We provide the most prominent meeting place for the industry to network, influence and promote the members of the association. We are passionate on spearheading sustainability and low TCO among the key reasons why you should establish your data centre or move your workloads to Norway.

Our members represent the whole range of players in the data centre ecosystem, from site developers, builders, designers, power providers, communication service providers, equipment providers and data centre operators.

Links to resources: National Data Center Strategy How to establish a data center in Norway How Norway produces hydropower with a minimal carbon footprint Data Centers in Norway (in Norwegian) Connectivity in Norway Contact info: Bjørn Rønning Norwegian Data Center Industry Oscarsgate 20, 0352 Oslo Norway Mobile: +4792242657 Mail: bjorn@datasenterindustrien.no

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TELEHOUSE FRANCE

MARSEILLE ON THE GLOBAL

PUTS

COMMS HUB MAP WRITTEN BY: SIMON HOWSON-GREEN PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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TELEHOUSE FRANCE

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Sami Slim CEO of Telehouse France explains the business case behind the company's new strategic implementation as digital migration surges and prices increase

T

he surge in digital migration across the globe in the aftermath of the pandemic comes at a price, as well as a benefit. Sami Slim, CEO of Telehouse France, explains the business case behind his company’s new data centre in Marseille and why close collaboration with its partner, Elco Systems, will mitigate its risks and exploit its benefits.

Data centres are blossoming across the globe; where you plant those blooms is vital.

It’s all about location, so you must get it right.

Here’s why: Let’s assume you are a software designer for a Munich-based German engineering company, and you need to send information to a client in Brazil about its mining operation in the middle of a remote quarry miles from anywhere. That information will travel across the internet hubs in - let's say - Frankfurt, then up to the U.S., down through Miami and then to Sao Paulo.

So far, so good. That little packet of data left home and arrived at its destination faster than your eye moved from one word to the next in this sentence. But… every little packet of data costs money. That round trip from Bavaria to Southwestern Brazil. It would probably have more than 250 milliseconds of latency. It arrived late.

That latency, according to Sami Slim, CEO of Telehouse France, makes the software those two companies are using “less useful and less powerful”. technologymagazine.com

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“However,” says Sami, “By exploiting internet routes off the coast of France around Marseille, you can reduce this latency. Opening up this route means you can have a latency between Frankfurt and Sao Paulo, for example, of fewer than one hundred milliseconds — which is half the existing speed from the U.S.” The faster the speed of travelling data, the more cost savings to your bottom line.

Sami has another compelling example he uses to define the cost savings made when connectivity is sped up – even by mere milliseconds.

“Today, if you're an African enterprise placed, let's say, in Ghana or Nigeria and you need some cloud usage, you will go to those high-profile hubs serving Africa, such as London, Frankfurt or Paris. That comes at a cost.

“But if you bring that location closer – to Marseille – you will be saving 15% simply because you are localising your cloud traffic

Telehouse France puts Marseille on the global comms hub map

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SAMI SLIM TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS/ DATA CENTRES/HUBS

and bypassing that journey to those cities in Northern Europe.”

Sami stresses that all businesses know how expensive it is to move data across the cloud. He claims some companies could even have their data carriage costs once Marseille comes on stream.

According to Sami, the potential unlocked by those saved milliseconds changes the way we use the internet. More online trading, video, OTT streaming, gaming and real-time

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: FRANCE Engineer, graduate of Telecom SudParis and the University of Michigan, Sami joined Telehouse in 2010 as a technical sales engineer.

For 3 years, he was at the heart of Telehouse's data centre and connectivity growth in France, before joining the Telehouse Europe Strategy Department in 2013. In 2014, he became head of the sales department in France before being appointed CEO in 2022. In this role, his mission is to accelerate Telehouse's growth, helping the Group's customers and prospects to improve their interconnection capabilities. Sami Slim brings to Telehouse a passion for a free, neutral and open Internet.

His deep knowledge of the IT market and his proximity to the Internet players contribute to consolidate Telehouse's results, and to earn him the renewal of the Group's confidence.

DATA CENTER MONITORING Gain real-time insights about your data center environment!

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Data Center Monitoring redefined by Elco and Telehouse Small is beautiful and far more effective. This philosophy from Telehouse France is driving its partnership programme. Elco Solutions is one of its most favoured collaborators.

Telehouse France and the German based Elco Solutions have joined forces to design and develop a new data centre hub in Paris, France. Both companies say this will be a ‘game changer’ in terms of global connectivity.

The ‘Leon Frot’ Data Centre in the capital is the latest collaboration between Telehouse France and Elco. Elco Solutions is an innovator in the Data Centre Vendor and Integration space.

Elco is also in the process of upgrading the existing Telehouse France infrastructure at its hubs. This partnership will allow Elco Solutions to provide its specially adapted power and environmental monitoring solution for Telehouse France.

“Our focus alongside Telehouse France is all about data centre co-location and data centre management,’ says Wajdi Darmoul, Founder and Managing Director of Elco Solutions.

“This collaboration helped us tremendously to improve the way we work together, the way we develop high quality software – especially customer specific software for monitoring all aspects of a data centre.

We developed a system that will help the data centre managers to monitor their infrastructure in real time. With this software we can instantly aggregate data across

several dimensions in the data centre.

This provides real time insights into power monitoring systems, power efficiency, temperature, and humidity and so on.

“This allows us to quickly access the status of the data centre. This is vital as it allows all the stakeholders to see that the data centre is moving towards its optimum operational efficiency.

According to Sami Slim, Director at Telehouse France the two companies have been working closely together since 2020 and the arrangement is at the ‘sharp end’ of Tele House France’s declared intention to work with smaller, nimbler technology partners in its expansion programme.

“Elco fits the requirement perfectly,” says Slim.

“With its focus on high-quality measurement equipment, compact branch circuits monitoring systems and intuitive customer specific user interface, Elco Solutions is a reliable partner to meet the challenges in a rapidly changing and dynamic data centre market,” says Darmoul.

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data transfer, VR, AI — all become more plausible to a greater number of people and businesses.

“When you bridge that gap, reduce that distance, you unlock new visitors that are creating value, creating jobs and creating companies,” says Sami.

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with partners such as Elco Systems in Marseille. Sami says that Telehouse France, which already has a significant presence in Marseille, sees the city as one of the most important data hubs in Europe, in terms of location and its business infrastructure. This, the company predicts, will grow in importance over the next five-to-ten years.

TELEHOUSE FRANCE

“ BY EXPLOITING INTERNET ROUTES OFF THE COAST OF FRANCE AROUND MARSEILLE YOU CAN REDUCE THIS LATENCY” SAMI SLIM

CEO, TELEHOUSE FRANCE

Why the South of France?

So, why is Marseille so well placed as a data hub to spread out North, East, South and West?

“Marseille is one of the fastest-growing cities. Our mission is to build a new platform that will open up access between countries in Africa and the Middle East, and between Asia and Europe.

“We see Marseille as being uniquely positioned in Europe to attract traffic between Europe and a huge area of the rest of the world.”

Telehouse France deemed Marseille as the best-placed location to complement the data traffic already running through cities such as Frankfurt, London, Paris and Amsterdam.

Sami explains it in very simple and logical terms: “The position of Marseille offers it direct access to some key undersea systems coming not only from Asia and Africa, but also from Latin America,” he says, referring to these underwater ‘pipes’ as “submarine systems”.

"The most important thing is that this location is opening up channels between Europe and the rest of the world, offering the region new routes that didn't previously exist," he says."And, of course, the benefits of these new channels of communications are two-way.”

“These routes are now the backbone of the internet for billions of people because of Marseille. 4.5 billion people connected with faster and more reliable internet through Marseille via fifteen submarine cables.”

Sami is very keen to make sure we all understand that, when we speak of the cloud and data storage, what we really mean technologymagazine.com

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“ WHEN YOU BRIDGE THAT GAP, REDUCE THAT DISTANCE, YOU UNLOCK NEW VISITORS THAT ARE CREATING VALUE, CREATING JOBS AND CREATING COMPANIES” SAMI SLIM

CEO, TELEHOUSE FRANCE

is physical buildings and cables — which are very definitely earthbound.

“What most of us are missing is that 99% of the Internet today is not in the cloud. It is under the sea. This is what we call the submarine system that is powering the Internet today.

“Our traffic is in there, and most of the Internet routes are deep in the ocean. This is where cities such as Marseille have a great geographic advantage in attracting that traffic, with ‘breeding’ hubs to bring content and users closer to each other.”

Put even more simply, this was an opportunity Telehouse France could not let slip through its fingers.

Monetising with a difference Sami is keen to stress that the opportunities for Telehouse France in this venture are in no small part down to the way his company is monetising its data centres in Marseille.

Although location is a huge factor in Telehouse France’s strategy, property acquisition is not.

“The difference between Telehouse France and the rest of the big players in this industry is our approach. We are not monetising our data centre based on the number of square metres.

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“We are monetising our business based on the value we create for our customers within their traffic strategy, and ensuring they get close to their users and to their customers with our technology. That's a fundamental difference, we are not a real-estate player, we are a connectivity player.”

And this, says Sami, is the blueprint for the future when it comes to data centre development.

Telehouse France was already reshaping the data centre and connectivity business back in the 1990s. It established large data hubs in Paris and in London’s famous Docklands.

“This created data hubs that attracted the most traffic, the largest number of cables and the widest variety of ecosystems,’ Sami says.

This is what he calls the company’s ‘Connectivity Strategy’: “It is making those data centres really prominent on the map of the internet today.”

“Today, London Docklands is the most connected data centre in the world, and Paris Voltaire is the fourth most connected hub on the planet, routing more than 50% of all the internet traffic in the country.

“This is our connectivity strategy – to make our centres the heart of the telecoms world.”

Sami says his company is fundamentally convinced that Europe will be the backbone of the global Internet.

“Europe is in a perfect position,” he says. “Geographically, for hosting both the Southern hemisphere and the northern hemisphere junction in terms of data. Europe can connect the Nordic countries, the US, Russia, China in the north, Africa, the Middle East, and the countries of Latin America from the south.

“That value can happen with a ‘backbone’ coming from Marseille, going up to Paris and then diverting with two branches, East and technologymagazine.com

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“ THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TELEHOUSE FRANCE AND THE REST OF THE BIG PLAYERS IN THIS INDUSTRY IS OUR APPROACH. WE ARE NOT A REAL-ESTATE PLAYER. WE ARE NOT MONETISING OUR DATA CENTRE BASED ON THE NUMBER OF SQUARE METRES” SAMI SLIM

CEO, TELEHOUSE FRANCE

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West: one to London and the other one to Frankfurt.

“That is the map of the future of the Internet, and that’s why we think Europe will be fundamental for the future of the Internet, and that is also why we're investing heavily.”

Data Centres are a hot topic However, things have been moving fast since Telehouse France first built its data centres in the 1990s. Data traffic grows exponentially day-by-day and, with that explosion in usage,

comes potential risks and consequences that need to be monitored and managed.

This is where Telehouse France’s strong partnership with the German-based Elco Systems comes in.

Sami says he is committed to working with smaller, nimbler, and highlyresponsive partners; Elco more than met those requirements.

“We are determined to remove our dependency on large vendors in our strategy.

Using a range of smaller vendors means we technologymagazine.com

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have far greater control over the end-user or customer experience. This is important to us.

Elco is a perfect example of this,” says Sami.

“Elco is exactly the kind of vendor we like to have around us when we build our data centres. In designing our European business, we wanted European players around us.

Why? Because that gives our company and our customers a sense of security that we will deliver.

“Elco hardware and software business.

This allows us to be far more modular in terms of choice and that gives us the control over the customer experience.”

TELEHOUSE FRANCE

“Elco is an innovative solution that enables our data centre managers to monitor the health and energy of each branch circuit, gaining gain real-time insights about our data centre environment conditions,” says Sami.

Elco monitors the way Telehouse France’s data centres are running. In these worrying

times, when cyber-attack is a greater threat than ever, anticipating unusual activity is vital. There is, however, another byproduct of powerful data centres that Elco monitors for Telehouse France, which also explains why the Telehouse team is so keen on working with Elco.

“Data storage, data traffic, data transfer … all these processes equal heat.”

Sami explains: “So, usually, when you choose an electrical or cooling component of a data centre, it comes with its own measurement and efficiency control through hardware and software. The downside is that it locks you in with that particular vendor, preventing you from developing your own customer experience in terms of portal or usage.

“The great gain, when we chose Elco, is that we got the liberty of having our own software for a customer experience on the one side, but also we could choose any type of hardware on the downside of the chain. Elco sits neatly into the more open option for us,” Sami says choosing Elco was not just about its technology.

It also needed to be a cultural fit.

“We are in the business of ‘speed to market’,” says Sami.

“So, the faster you can get the data centre up and running, the better off you are. To do that, you need to build a team with your vendor. So the spirit, the culture, the way they work with your own team is a key component in which vendor you choose.

“Elco has been excellent with us in our teams. They have joined forces with us and have understood all of our constraints country by country. This is so valuable.”

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MASTER POWER TECHNOLOGIES AND DIGITAL PARKS AFRICA AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: İLKHAN ÖZSEVIM PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Master Power Technologies (Africa) and Digital Parks Africa (South Africa) are transforming the Data Centre environment through data and regional development.

T

here is something important happening in the Africa Data Centre world. “We are the biggest Data Centre (DC) support company in Africa for overall turnkey solutions,” establishes Menno Parsons, CEO of Master Power Technologies.

“No other company on the African continent offers what we do in such a true turnkey fashion. Our offerings range from UPS, generators, boards, automation, modular DCs, monitoring & control systems and their hardware, Tier III & IV DCs and all their support services (such as site engineers and technicians) in one business service offering.

“This is why we’re successful; this is why our clients stay with us.”

Menno Parsons studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Port Elizabeth and worked for Siemens before establishing Master Power Technologies (MPT) in 1999. Since then, he has created and been at the helm of MPT — a company recognised for its effective, comprehensive DC services across the entire African continent. MPT is “in Africa, for Africa”.

As one of the most extensive and most successful turnkey DC providers on the continent specialising in design, build and managed services, MPT believes that data drives the digital economy and that access to data should be a basic human right.

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We do UPTIME

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

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Originally, MPT began as a UPS company that grew into a complete DC solutions provider. They intend to play a key role in enabling African economies through scalable DC solutions, where data can be economically distributed to drive sustainable growth. They have already won four Frost & Sullivan awards, demonstrating their ability to provide industryleading solutions to the African continent.

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“Besides just generating local revenue, we are committed to local skills development.

For this reason, when we build a DC in any African country, we incorporate and empower as many locals as possible throughout the journey, which may potentially lead to permanent employment of local content,” says Rory Reid, Head of Department for Data Centres at MPT. “Our DC handover extends

MASTER POWER TECHNOLOGIES

MENNO PARSONS TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY:TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: SOUTH AFRICA Menno Parsons founded Master Power Technologies in 1999, a critical power and Data Centre solutions provider that brings innovative and quality solutions to the market. Menno has led the company to evolve from an entity selling solely UPS systems to the largest turnkey Data Centre solutions provider on the continent. Master Power Technologies has a footprint in 16 African countries and provides critical infrastructure remote monitoring solutions to over 150 sites. The company received 4 Frost and Sullivan Data Centre Leadership Awards, a testimony of its excellence in Africa's Data Centre market. Menno has a deep understanding of client’s often harsh working environments and matches those conditions to world leading products to give customers the competitive edge needed to succeed in their markets. He is Proudly South African and dedicated to developing the continent with local content and resources. In addition, he is known for his passion for empowering and developing young individuals and professionals.

MASTER POWER TECHNOLOGIES

beyond delivering only a site; we continue to support our clients in areas such as operations, maintenance, remote monitoring or whatever it may be, for that DC.” Reid has a lengthy electrical industry background where he has witnessed the invariable link between economic growth and data. He now leads the DC business as Head of Department to support the massive increase in demand on the continent.

MPT provides brick-and-mortar, modular, and prefabricated data centre solutions. They are a trusted, true turnkey provider, supplying clients with the best-in-class solutions to suit their needs and environments.

MPT is not a one-size-fits-all operation; their priority is to work closely with clients and ensure that they are provided with the best, redundant and most reliable

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solutions explicitly catered to their unique requirements. In addition, MPT has forged strong partnerships with the big critical power OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) and is the sole supplier for many in the region.

“We do not just deliver a site and then disappear,” says MPT’s Parsons. “We provide exceptional after-sales support, particularly because we intimately understand the particular challenges of the DC environments in Africa. Many global players adapt and design their DCs specifically to the environments they are accustomed to, but that which works for one environment doesn’t necessarily translate into being fit for another. It’s a question of familiarity and expertise.” says MPT’s Reid. “With over 20 years of experience in the region, we understand the issues distinctive to

MASTER POWER TECHNOLOGIES

OUR DC HANDOVER EXTENDS BEYOND DELIVERING ONLY A SITE RORY REID TITLE: HOD: DATA CENTRES INDUSTRY:TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: SOUTH AFRICA Rory Reid joined Master Power Technologies in 2014 as the Sales and Marketing Manager and has over 7 years' experience in the Data Centre industry. Rory delivers best-in-class data centre solutions to a portfolio of global clients and is involved with site audits to assist clients to identify improvements which could be made around reliability, efficiency, and redundancy of the complete system.

Prior to joining Master Power Technologies, Rory spent over 16 years leading sales and project management teams within the electrical and power industry. He successfully completed his Uptime Institute Tier Designer Accreditation in December 2020.

DIGITAL PARKS AFRICA

JACQUES DE JAGER TITLE: CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES LOCATION: SOUTH AFRICA

EXECUTIVE BIO

Jacques has a strong technical background and is currently responsible for all Data Centre operation at Digital Parks Africa.

Prior to joining Digital Parks Africa, Jacques spent nine years in IT management for the electrical engineering and telecommunications industries. Armed with over a decade of Enterprise Networking, Information Technology Security, and Data Centre Infrastructure Management experience, Jacques successfully fulfils the role of Chief Information Officer at Digital Parks Africa.

AFRICA CAN’T GROW WITHOUT DC TECHNOLOGY

Africa and the environment. We treat each client on a case-by-case basis, making for successful projects and satisfied clients.”

Alongside providing end-to-end solutions from site inspection to planning, design and construction to onsite-commissioning, remote monitoring, and after-delivery services, MPT probably has the largest Uptime accredited team on the continent, including 10 Uptime Accredited Tier Design engineers — of which their CEO, Menno Parsons, is one.

In terms of their reach, MPT is building and providing turnkey data centres solutions across the entire continent — including in South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Madagascar, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Senegal, Ghana, Congo, DRC, Angola, and Namibia to name a few.

The Data Centre market in Africa is snowballing, and the necessity of reliable and resilient DC services and solutions has become critical to the continent’s digital development. MPT supports the evergrowing demands and is the most prominent DC builder in Africa. One of its most recent projects was designing and building Africa’s largest modular DC, Digital Parks Africa (DPA).

DPA is one of South Africa’s most resilient, carrier-neutral hyperscale DCs, that targets colocation, enterprise and hyperscale clients. It provides world-class DC services

with unrestricted interconnection between clients, thus, offering better value, lower latency, and higher resilience DC solutions.

MPT and DPA are two distinct companies that work in close collaboration to meet the growing demands for large-scale data services, hosting, and DC operations. Both are effective operators in the DC world, and they contend with similar considerations and have common problems for which to offer solutions, albeit in different ways.

When most clients hear the term ‘DC Flexibility’, they tend to only think about redundancy and tier classifications, but true flexibility should also be reflected in a business model strategy.

True business flexibility is a holistic attribute, and Menno Parsons clearly has it in abundance and is recognised for it across Africa and beyond its borders. On this very point, Parsons says: “For some of our projects across Africa, our Telco clients noted that they would rather operationalise some of their expenses than investing further Capex.

This was a big turning point and marked the establishment of Digital Parks Africa.”

“In a developed world, you don’t notice the massive impact of technology challenges,” says Jacques de Jager, Chief Operations Officer at Digital Parks Africa (DPA).

“Nevertheless, Africa has its challenges, and technologymagazine.com

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they are not all, obviously technology-related.”

Speaking from DPA, de Jager says: “Unfortunately, many parts in South Africa are underdeveloped, leading to various challenges such as increased cost of living, unusual power outages and transportation issues. Luckily, the digital world’s empowerment through connectivity solves many of these problems.

“At DPA, digitally, we are on the move, and our goal is to bring content to and educate consumers at high speeds. We are involved in many social development programs, as the link between development and data, is inseparable. I believe that this will be a big differentiator for the African continent. We want to make an impact in South Africa, both technologically and socio-economically, and we are already well on our way — living our slogan ‘The Digital Heartbeat of Africa’.”

Jacques de Jager‘s career started in the

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CEO, MASTER POWER TECHNOLOGIES & DIGITAL PARKS AFRICA

information and communications field, focusing on Enterprise and IT-space type deployments and management thereof.

He moved on to work for enterprise companies, managing their IT environments in the DC space. De Jager is currently Chief Operations Officer at Digital Parks Africa (DPA) which is now one of South Africa’s fastest growing DCs. MPT and DPA play very important roles in

developing and connecting Africa. “There’s a lot of talent in Africa,” says DPA’s de Jager. “I think that DPA can play a big role in developing both the local regions and the community and providing opportunities to share insights and visions while adding value to the industry.”

De Jager believes that “Africa can’t grow without DC technology”. Simply stated, digitisation directly translates into economic growth, and the more digital services and operations that are channelled towards this goal, the more likely it is to be achieved.

DPA might be the new kid on the block, but it brings about a scalable environment and a bona fide ability to grow alongside rapid technological changes and advancements. With reliable infrastructure in place, it is no surprise that DPA is already one of the most resilient DCs on the continent.

Offering a remarkable, secure, and sustainable ecosystem for data-hungry technologies and ICT infrastructure, DPA provides flexible, high-power-density, ranging from 3-15kW per rack - which is phenomenal for South Africa.

DPA is the perfect solution for companies who want to convert their Capex into OPEX (Operating Expense). The facility is Uptime Tier III Design (level 1) Certified and offers concurrent maintainability and fault tolerance, with 2(N+1) redundancy. technologymagazine.com

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99.999% Uptime and our capacity Utility is

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DPA is currently undergoing Uptime Tier IV construct certification for its first of three phases (in Level 3) to guarantee the highest level of reliability.

DPA is built around best business practices, compliance, and maintains an internationally certified infrastructure.

Certifications include ISO 9001:2015, ISO 27001:2013, PCI-DSS and data privacy compliance. Furthermore, DPA is equipped with armed guards, 24/7 CCTV coverage, biometric access, vehicle trap, on-andoffsite Network Operating Centre managed

MASTER POWER TECHNOLOGIES

WE ARE THE BIGGEST DATA CENTRE (DC) SUPPORT COMPANY IN AFRICA FOR OVERALL TURNKEY SOLUTIONS MENNO PARSONS

CEO, MASTER POWER TECHNOLOGIES & DIGITAL PARKS AFRICA

to provide clients with enhanced security and reliability.

“DPA adopts modern technologies and energy-efficient backup power infrastructure that guarantees an uptime of 99.999%. The facility, which has a Utility capacity of 24MVA, has been purposedesigned to quickly scale up to meet customer demands, in line with its commitment to grow the South Africa Data Centre market. Besides the obvious needs of the digital economy, Industry 4.0 also requires a robust technological

communications infrastructure, which DPA can provide,” concludes de Jager.

“DPA is a proudly South African company, backed by an exceptional team of experts, including six Uptime Accredited Operations Specialists. We are privileged to play a part in the digital economy enabling companies to succeed in their digital transformation programmes," says Menno Parsons.

MASTER POWER TECHNOLOGIES DIGITAL PARKS AFRICA

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COLLABORATE TO DIGITALLY TRANSFORM HEALTHCARE WRITTEN BY: BLAISE HOPE PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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Nova Scotia Health teams up with EY to create better healthcare solutions

C

anadian healthcare provider Nova Scotia Health has been working closely with leading global consulting firm, EY, to use data and insights to better serve its clientele.

“We’ve been working collaboratively with Nova Scotia Health, supporting them through their ambitious digital transformation agenda,” says Steven Maynard, EY Canada Government & Public Sector Consulting Leader. “Having worked with others on similar journeys, both across Canada and around the world, we know how increasingly important data – and making insights consumable to clinicians – has become to improving overall outcomes in healthcare.”

In addition to its digital transformation, the organisation has restructured to evolve over the years. Prior to 2015, it was composed of nine separate district health authorities.

“Nova Scotia Health is now the single provincial health authority covering the entire population of the province,” says Matthew Murphy, Senior Director, Strategy and Performance and Chief Data Officer at Nova Scotia Health. “We provide care across the entire spectrum from public and primary health care to acute care, as well as long-term and continuing care.”

Unlike other for-profit public healthcare systems around the world, Canadian healthcare operates under a single-payer, publicly-funded system, with each province administering healthcare in alignment with the Canadian Health Act, and Nova Scotia Health is no different. technologymagazine.com

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“We have the benefit of administering the entire spectrum and that really comes into play when we start looking at how we plan services and deliver care to meet the needs of the population,” says Murphy. “We use analytics to support that delivery of care because it gives us access to information across the entire patient journey.”

Ambitious healthcare goals Nova Scotia Health has a broad purview when it comes to healthcare operations in the region. Due to this positioning, the organisation is able to map a patient's experience from beginning to end to best understand the resources and interventions needed along the way.

“Understanding what has happened in the past and using that to plan for the future helps us identify where new innovative technologies or approaches might be able to be leveraged in something like virtual care,” continues Murphy.

As part of the journey-mapping process, Nova Scotia Health recognised that, across the province, not everybody had equal or equitable access to services.

“One of the core focuses in the last couple of years has been to team up with different organisations or consultancies, like EY, to leverage their expertise in priority areas that Nova Scotia Health is driving toward but lacks the bench strength to fully deliver,” says Murphy.

“We work really closely with our analytics team and have scientists and some of our own people focused on evaluation, but we do everything in partnership, which is, I think, quite different from other organisations,” says Dr. Gail Tomblin Murphy, Vice President of Research, Innovation and Discovery, and Chief Nurse Executive at Nova Scotia Health.

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Backed by over 300,000 people around the globe and a purpose to build a better working world, EY Canada’s Government and Public Sector practice focuses on helping governments and public sector organisations, like Nova Scotia Health, create new ways of working to achieve better outcomes for its citizens and better experiences for its teams.

“Our work with Nova Scotia Health has been in support of its vision to improve and deliver personalised healthcare services to the residents of Nova Scotia,” says Maynard.

Nova Scotia Health uses AI & analytics to improve healthcare Title of the video

“ We knew that we needed the end goal to be using real-time data. We simply didn't have the technical competency to get there” MATTHEW MURPHY

CDO AND SENIOR DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY & PERFORMANCE, NOVA SCOTIA HEALTH

“We brought deep expertise and an understanding of the business of healthcare to help identify the big questions and advise on solutions that break through technical issues to deliver quality and value for key stakeholders.”

Evolving the digital landscape The digital transformation of Nova Scotia Health was catapulted forward by the pandemic, which identified areas of vulnerability across the province’s healthcare system. technologymagazine.com

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EXECUTIVE BIOS MATTHEW MURPHY TITLE: CHIEF DATA OFFICER AND SENIOR DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY & PERFORMANCE COMPANY: NOVA SCOTIA HEALTH Matthew Murphy is the Chief Data Officer and Senior Director of Strategy and Performance at Nova Scotia Health Authority and has 15 years of healthcare experience. He is the first one to have a tenure as chief in the data realm for the organisation. Prior to his current position, he worked in quality, risk and analytics with his background in research.

STEVEN MAYNARD TITLE: MANAGING PARTNER, GOVERNMENT & PUBLIC SECTOR CONSULTING COMPANY: EY Steven Maynard is EY Canada’s Government & Public Sector Consulting Leader based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In his role, Steven empowers clients to evolve for the future through enterprise-wide technology programmes and modernisation initiatives. By bridging large-scale tech platforms with human-centred design, Steven and the EY Canada team help government and public sector organisations deliver better outcomes for Canadians.

DR. GAIL TOMBLIN MURPHY TITLE: CNE AND VP OF RESEARCH, INNOVATION & DISCOVERY COMPANY: NOVA SCOTIA HEALTH Dr. Gail Tomblin Murphy is the Vice President of Research, Innovation and Discovery, and Chief Nurse Executive at Nova Scotia Health. She is an internationally recognised expert in how population needs-based approaches to health systems strengthen workforce planning, evaluation, capacity-building, and research. Gail is a champion of innovation in healthcare, leading teams and partners to seek creative solutions to provide high quality and timely access to care for Nova Scotians.

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“A year ago, we saw an increase in the number of people in Nova Scotia who did not have a primary care provider,” says Tomblin Murphy. “We were asked to come up with an innovative solution to link each unattached Nova Scotian with access to care. So we launched VirtualCareNS.” The organisation then went through a diligence process, looking at approximately 50 companies offering virtual platforms before selecting a provider. Today, patients can get same-day medical advice via their tablet, computer, or smartphone.

Integrated view for clinicians “Nova Scotians were sent emails encouraging them to participate and access care through VirtualCareNS. Once registered, they've been able to speak with a family doctor or nurse practitioner for health care advice, have prescriptions renewed, or get referrals as needed,” says Tomblin Murphy.

“We started in two areas of the province that had the highest number of people on the registry of patients without a provider.

And then, because it was becoming very successful, very fast, we were asked to scale it quickly, province-wide.” technologymagazine.com

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How do you care for today while building health care for tomorrow?

Health care transformation will be built on innovation and interconnected ecosystems that work in concert to make health care simpler and more seamless for all.

Learn more: Health – Our latest thinking | EY Canada

HOW EY IS MAKING PUBLIC HEALTHCARE FUTUREPROOF Effective public health care is the backbone of our civilization — and it’s under threat. Global consultancy firm EY is at the heart of strategies to bring health care into the digital age. Its work in Canada is proving to be a blueprint for global change.

Digital integration and the technology driving it are the key to ensuring health care has a future.

As the Health Care team at EY explains, it is bringing together central government funding, corporate providers and passionate health care professionals to ensure public health care is available and effective for all. John Bethel heads up EY’s Health Care team in Canada. He says EY is striving to transform the system into a different way of caring for people.

“Care is getting more personalised through greater digitization,” he says. “This digital migration is moving many health care functions out of the hospitals, enabling hospital systems to focus on more complex care.”

Bethel says health systems — much like banking, retail, travel and just about everything else in today’s world — face the same expectations from their user to engage quickly and seamlessly and to provide digital conveniences like scheduling appointments and sharing personal health data with physicians. Technology has also created a huge opportunity for building new capacity.

“People are living longer, but also facing more complex health issues” Bethel says. “This means the health care systems are dealing with far more comorbidity issues alongside the growth of conditions associated with aging, such as dementia.” This mixture of pressures on the system is creating a “convergence” in health care according to Bethel. “We are now seeing all kinds of ‘non-industry’ players enter our system and become part of the health care offering. It is technology that’s made this possible.” Finally, Bethel says the big game-changer was the pandemic. ”COVID forced us to change the way we deliver care overnight.”

Vinna Vong, senior manager in EY’s Technology Transformation and national Health Care practice, says none of this matters if the public doesn’t trust the services on offer. ”To implement and deploy technology, AI and machine learning in a way that is effective and efficient, you must have trust at the core.”

Anand Shah is a partner in EY’s Health Care practice based in Toronto. He says the way EY is collecting and analyzing vast amounts of data is providing the fuel to drive change.

“Smart analytics is enabling health care to apply data in different and effective ways,” he says. “We can use data to define and hone true population health management to truly understand what our populations need and therefore to shape our services in a more proactive and sustainable way.”

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NOVA SCOTIA HEALTH | EY

Enhanced use of analytics The rapid onboarding of so many new patients to the virtual platform, however, would not have been possible without analytics to help understand and predict use rates.

“It's really important to understand when, how many, and what type of patient or person is going to need and use the service,” explains Murphy. “Only then can we develop a human resource strategy to meet the need efficiently and sustainably.”

Speeding up and adapting But despite the rapid uptake and progress experienced, the journey is far from over.

Murphy and his team see lurking issues, including the overall speed of the reporting service.

“The last few years, we've gone from three months to four hours for reporting. So there has been remarkable improvement, but with that, comes remarkable expectations and four hours was suddenly not quick enough,” he says.

“We knew where our databases were, but we didn't have the technical capacity to shrink that run time. We also knew what we would be able to do with real-time data.

We simply didn't have the ability in-house to get there quickly enough; hiring new staff with the core competencies would take too long.”

Based on previous experience with EY Canada over the years, Nova Scotia Health knew they’d be able to sit down and sketch out a solution together. Murphy and his team worked alongside EY Canada’s

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“ We bring the capabilities to breakthrough technical problems. And at the same time, we bring a very strong understanding of the business of healthcare” STEVEN MAYNARD MANAGING PARTNER, GOVERNMENT & PUBLIC SECTOR CONSULTING, EY

technical teams to re-code the system and shrink run time from hours to minutes.

In addition, by working closely with EY Canada, Nova Scotia Health has been able to capitalise on data assets that were previously unavailable, including those around its human capital analytics.

“Within Canadian healthcare, as with other healthcare jurisdictions around the world, the compensation for our workforce accounts for anywhere from 60 to 80% of our budget and, within Nova Scotia, it's worth noting that the budget is over US$2bn,” says Murphy.

“Until recently, we didn’t have access to a harmonised dataset covering both financial and human resources.”

Together, EY Canada and Nova Scotia Health have brought about the creation of this new data mart that would reconcile these existing systems.

Real-time insights According to Maynard, real-time data insights are critical for any industry. They help identify efficiencies and redundancies, manage costs, deliver better, more timely immediate and follow-up care with fewer mistakes, while presenting a more integrated patient journey map across care environments and practitioners.

But, based on EY’s global experience, real-time data is a challenge for many healthcare organisations, due to significant legacy systems that exist within them.

“The good news is there has been breakthrough capability through cloud computing and advanced technologies to be able to deliver integrated data without making a significant investment in re-platforming whole new systems.”

During the pandemic, Nova Scotia Health and EY Canada tackled the unprecedented problems that arose, from automation technologymagazine.com

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“ We do everything in partnership, which is, I think, quite different from other organisations” DR. GAIL TOMBLIN MURPHY

CNE AND VP OF RESEARCH, INNOVATION AND DISCOVERY NOVA SCOTIA HEALTH

to workforce, resulting in new insights that allow them to understand not simply where they're spending money, but the driving reasons behind it.

“We learned significant lessons throughout the course of the pandemic,” says Murphy.

“The last two years have been really difficult in healthcare with respect to the workforce.

Understanding where we have potential gaps is essential to ensuring we have a sustainable system into the future.”

“The pandemic and the stresses it placed on healthcare organisations around the world created a massive capacity crunch, yet the business of healthcare had to go on. Robotics process automation was a really useful tool to help deliver the business of healthcare and maintain core operations while many of the staff had been redirected to emergency operations,” says Maynard.

During these challenging times, the EY Canada team helped deliver intelligent automation solutions that leveraged machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities to enable the system to quickly learn and adapt to the environment, acting as essential support for a key component of the business.

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the traditional mechanism of service delivery has been disrupted,” Murphy adds. “Again, the answer was wholesale digital transformation across the system.”

Thanks to its work with EY Canada, Nova Scotia Health has a clear vision of where it wants to be in the next five to 10 years.

“Historically, organisations have thought about private industry as funders,” says Tomblin Murphy. “We truly believe that private industry are partners, and so we engage them often. They're really important to the work that we are doing.”

To deliver on Nova Scotia Health’s longer-term vision, there will be significant investments throughout the transformation roadmap – from new clinical information systems to cloud computing capabilities, as well as new techniques to help produce insights and help clinicians and other organisational leaders utilise new innovations.

And, as the institution refocuses on how to provide better care for its residents, Murphy explains, it also aims to revamp the workplace to be more engaging and provide growth and opportunities for its employees and volunteers.

“It's not about using technology to eliminate positions. New technologies are faster and more efficient, often eliminating more tedious, manual processes and freeing up our workforce to do what they do best: practising the art and science of healthcare.”

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WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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GULF DATA HUB

Establishing sustainable data centres in the Middle East technologymagazine.com

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Himmath Mohammed Head of Sales and Strategies, Gulf Data Hub

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GULF DATA HUB

As the data centre market continues to grow in the Middle East, Himmath Mohammed explains how GDH are leading the way for colocation providers

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ffering first-of-its-kind Data Centres in the Middle East, Gulf Data Hub (GDH) is looking to transform the region with innovative data hubs as the market continues going from strength-to-strength.

Expanding its worldwide presence, GDH provides purposefully built centres that offer customers a resilient environment from hosting, disaster and workplace recovery, cloud platforms, and connectivity to its core colocation.

In the eight years since its founding, GDH has grown massively, competing with some of the largest names and biggest brands in the industry. Himmath Mohammed, who is Head of Sales and Strategies, as well as being a key member of the company, is dedicated to ensuring that customers know GDH offer best-in-class services.

“We assure customers as they know their data is 100% protected. There will be no downtime, the equipment will be always taken care of with the utmost care, with all power cooling and all international standards of connectivity. Since 2014 until today GDH has 100% SLA compliance which itself is a major achievement.”

Differing from the data centre market in the West, the Middle East is not as large or mature as its Western counterpart.

Mohammed explains that, as GDH looks to lead the market while it continues to

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GULF DATA HUB

Himmath Mohammed, Gulf Data Hub

East, you have only one source and one grid. So, you have to optimise your operations in such a way as to compensate for these shortfalls of availability; you have to compensate with your design, with your operations so that they should not interfere in the provision of your services.”

“After maturing into eight years in this field and in this market, we see that there are a lot of shortfalls in the different ecosystems of data centres. One of the major challenges is international connectivity and exchange hubs, which are not available in the way they are in the mature markets,” he adds.

With this lack of resources, GDH could potentially have its capital expenditure affected, but Mohammed outlines the innovative ways GDH looks to avoid this, while also providing its customers with the

“ WE ASSURE CUSTOMERS, AS THEY KNOW THEIR DATA IS 100% PROTECTED. THERE WILL BE NO DOWNTIME, THE EQUIPMENT WILL BE ALWAYS TAKEN CARE OF WITH THE UTMOST CARE, WITH ALL POWER COOLING AND ALL INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS OF CONNECTIVITY” HIMMATH MOHAMMED

HEAD OF SALES & STRATEGIES, GULF DATA HUB

grow, there are a number of obstacles that the organisation faces – particularly as the resources are more limited: “The major challenges are around measuring the performance of data centres, ensuring that the data centre uptime is always available, and complying with the SLAs of our customers. These are the major challenges we foresee, especially as this region isn't as mature as Europe or the US. In the Middle 230

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GULF DATA HUB

TAREK AL ASHRAM TITLE: CEO COMPANY: GULF DATA HUB INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES LOCATION: INDIANA, UNITED STATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Tarek is the pioneer of launching and introducing Interactive TV services across MENA way back in 2002.

Tarek has launched leading Media and voice over services for many TV channel productions.

Self-made and self-funded, he has launched many innovative services in Middle East .

As a man of vision he foresaw the Data Center Market in 2012 and launched Gulf Data Hub which has todate delivered world class services in Middle East Market.

“OUR GOAL IS TO PROVIDE A WORLD CLASS CARRIER AND VENDOR-NEUTRAL DATA CENTRE IN THE MIDDLE EAST. MAINTAINING NEUTRALITY WILL INCREASE THE CUSTOMER SPECTRUM, ALLOWING GULF DATA HUB TO BECOME THE REGION’S FIRST-CHOICE FACILITY TO STORE COMPANIES’ MISSION CRITICAL EQUIPMENT” TAREK AL ASHRAM

CEO, GULF DATA HUB

solutions they need: “We have to be prepared at a design level and the MEP/Operations level. Even though there isn't a dual power supply, in-house we have prime generators, with both diesel and fuel available so that our generators – even if there is downtime from a utility – are capable of operating 24/7, 365 days. So, we have built such a system that we are not dependent on one source. Now, we provide a one-stop-shop where customers can host and interconnect their primary and DR sites or any multiple locations, giving them connectivity within the region and across the globe.”

Driving forward sustainable data centres in the Middle East Not only is GDH innovating in a less developed market to ensure it provides the best possible colocation services, but it is also exploring the world of renewable energy to align itself with global sustainability targets.

Mohammed explains: “Especially with international regulations of carbon footprints and net-zero coming into law, everybody's looking for sustainable alternatives – this is even one of the requirements from some of our major customers, who ask, ‘How are you planning for sustainable data centres?’ So, we always look for new opportunities. Yes, renewable energy is still in the initial stages in the Middle East. Yes, there are solar and other renewable energy plants coming up but they are not yet available for commercial use. GDH always explore innovative energy solutions like immersion cooling. All that stuff is being discussed but is not yet available in the market on a commercial level.”

On top of the exploration into renewables with sources such as solar and nuclear power, GHD also looks to implement low-level sustainable solutions, which is already part of the company’s portfolio. technologymagazine.com

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30+ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE, DELIVERING DATA CENTERS TURNKEY SOLUTIONS FROM EDGE TO HYPERSCALE Site and Power Dubai (SDK) is a leading single source solution provider for Complete Data Center Infrastructure implementation, from Concept to Handover and Facility Management, Cloud to Colocation and Hybrid Solutions SDK is part of Midis Group, the ideal Partner for technology adopters looking for world class solution in emerging Markets of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa since 1967.

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GULF DATA HUB

“ NOW, WE PROVIDE A ONESTOP-SHOP WHERE CUSTOMERS CAN HOST AND THEY CAN INTERCONNECT THEIR PRIMARY AND DR SITES OR ANY MULTIPLE LOCATIONS, WHICH GIVES THEM CONNECTIVITY WITHIN THE REGION AND ACROSS THE GLOBE” HIMMATH MOHAMMED

HEAD OF SALES & STRATEGIES, GULF DATA HUB

One solution that GDH is pushing to become commercially viable is immersion cooling, which would result in a significant reduction in energy consumption, with some predicting it will account for a 25% overall reduction in a data centre's carbon footprint.

By redesigning data centre air management, GDH will be able to prevent re-circulation of hot air from IT systems.

“This is still in the testing phase in the region; it's not commercially rolled out. So,

immersion cooling is for sure coming in to stay here, and it will drastically change power consumption and dependency on fossil fuels in the data centre business,” adds the Head of Sales and Strategies.

Another key solution GDH are looking into is artificial intelligence (AI), which will support the organisation with the cooling solutions it is keen to put in place, as Mohammed explains: “We want to create effective cooling methods that use the air outside. This reduces energy costs by 40 percent!

Maybe unknowingly, we are cooling certain equipment that doesn’t require much cooling, but AI can identify this for us. So this AI system, once deployed in our data centres, will give us a lot of data where we can efficiently manage our power consumption and can efficiently manage our cooling systems, which will help our overall efficiency.” technologymagazine.com

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Aiming to implement this at different levels, GDH is looking to AI to support the company with preventive and corrective maintenance.

Using data collected from its centres and machinery, GDH will be able to be more proactive with its maintenance activities, ultimately reducing expenditure.

“On top of that, we are looking towards AI that can give you the failure rate of certain equipment. We hope this will help us predict if and when there will be a failure in our chiller or a failure in our transformer. There are a lot of different ways data will help us in optimising facility management,” says Mohammed.

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but the company is also embarking upon a significant expansion plan.

There’s no doubt that the pandemic caused a rapid uptake in the need for data centre facilities. Data centre growth has been driven by increased company awareness of the benefits that cloud services can provide and increased pressure from the boards to provide more secure, robust IT environments, along with the setup of local data centres across the world.

According to Deloitte, the need for colocation facilities will only grow as more and more companies look to bolster their IT capabilities; for GDH, the uptake was more than ten times what it predicted.

“ WE ARE LOOKING TOWARDS AI THAT CAN GIVE YOU THE FAILURE RATE OF CERTAIN EQUIPMENT. WE HOPE THIS WILL ENABLE US TO PREDICT IF AND WHEN THERE WILL BE A FAILURE IN OUR CHILLER OR A FAILURE IN OUR TRANSFORMER” HIMMATH MOHAMMED

“High availability of IT is required for the businesses to keep on running. So obviously, it can't be on-prem because if it is on-prem, the IT team has to be there, they have to monitor. So, everybody is going colocation or on the cloud. And again, the cloud has to reside somewhere, which is often in the data centre. All the cloud platforms, whether it's Microsoft or AWS or Google, have to reside somewhere in a facility. That's what we provide,” says Mohammed.

EXECUTIVE BIO

HEAD OF SALES & STRATEGIES, GULF DATA HUB

HIMMATH MOHAMMED TITLE: HEAD OF SALES & STRATEGIES COMPANY: GULF DATA HUB INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES LOCATION: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES Himmath Mohammed is a versatile and comprehensive leader with experience in managing and delivering ICT solutions. Throughout his career, Mohammed has delivered sustainable revenue gains in emerging and mature business markets. The Head of Sales and Strategy has demonstrated success in managing, planning, programme leadership, product strategies, and alliances. Mohammed has hands-on experience in a full range of business operations, including: sales, marketing, engineering, quality assurance, training and support.

He has also established strategy, methodologies, product, support, & service offerings. Mohammed is an enthusiastic team professional with a passion and dedication for customer care, identifying trends and solving business opportunities through bespoke solutions and strategic partnerships.

GULF DATA HUB

“ OUR PLAN IN THE NEXT 12 TO 18 MONTHS IS TO AT LEAST MULTIPLY OUR CAPACITIES BY THREE- OR FOUR-FOLD, WHICH IS ALREADY IN THE PIPELINE. WE ARE ROLLING OUT IN BAHRAIN, WE ARE ROLLING OUT MULTIPLE DATA CENTRES IN SAUDI, KUWAIT, MOROCCO AND EGYPT” HIMMATH MOHAMMED

HEAD OF SALES & STRATEGIES, GULF DATA HUB

“This has driven a lot of push, especially with government entities releasing a law stating that, whatever data of any company, their data should reside within the country.

So earlier, the data was being hosted on the cloud and the cloud was in a different country. Now, though, the push is to bring back that data into each country – which means, if such data is coming back into this country, then all these business entities bringing back their data need to host it in a purpose-built data centre. This means there is a huge demand to build infrastructure in the coming few years in an advanced manner,” he adds.

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With these new regulations and the high demand for data centres, GDH recognises the need to grow both quickly and sustainably. To deal with this short timeline, the company has signed a framework agreement with its vendors and partners to ensure it has a commitment from its supply chain, in terms of the delivery of equipment to facilitate this expansion.

Concluding, Mohammed explains how the future for GDH is heavily focused on this expansion: “Our plan is to invest US$1bn in the the next 12 to 18 months to multiply our capacities three- or fourfold, which is already in the pipeline. We

are rolling out in Bahrain, we are rolling out multiple data centres in Saudi, Kuwait, Morocco and Egypt. We are implementing this because there is a huge demand, especially with artificial intelligence, automated cars, augmented reality, and gaming platforms coming in, which are driving huge data centre requirements.

We see there is a lot of demand coming in the future, so we are trying to multiply our operations and projects four-fold.”

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TOMORROW STREET

WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

TOMORROW STREET NURTURES TECH ECOSYSTEMS OF THE FUTURE

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TOMORROW STREET

Tomorrow Street – a joint venture between Vodafone and the Luxembourg government – is bridging the divide between scale-ups and corporates

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he most successful economies are a joined-up network of ecosystems that are fuelled by synergies and shared goals – essentially, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

This model can be seen at work in the smart offices of Tomorrow Street, situated in the ever-expanding business district of Luxembourg City.

Tomorrow Street partners with young companies who have innovative tech, helping them to scale across the globe.

It is a venture that connects scaleups, corporate partners and Vodafone functions to establish and grow new business opportunities. It is a joint project between Vodafone’s procurement business, based in Luxembourg, and the Luxembourg government’s national tech incubator, Technoport.

“We have two primary objectives,” says Kenny Graham, the Scotland-born CEO of Tomorrow Street. “For Vodafone, we identify tech that can be used to help transform and evolve its network, IT, and digital estate – or to enable new customer propositions.

“The other goal is for us to help support the development of the tech ecosystem in Luxembourg through attracting scaleups to Luxembourg and hosting them in the Tomorrow Street offices.”

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Kenneth (Kenny) Graham, CEO, of Tomorrow Street

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Key corporate partners Accenture and Exclusive Networks Tomorrow Street has two corporate partners in Accenture and Exclusive Networks, the latter of which is a global cybersecurity specialist.

“We work very closely together, sharing our scouting pipeline of startups and scaleups, and looking for opportunities to take those technologies and scale them across the Vodafone ecosystem together,” explains Graham.

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Tomorrow Street defines a scale-up as a company that already has significant funding and a growing revenue stream, generated from a product relevant to Vodafone’s strategic priorities.

“Typically, we're looking for companies that have got around 100-plus employees, because that gives a large global company like Vodafone the confidence that they’ve got what it takes to scale – the support infrastructure, including operational people you need to put a company out to a global playing field.”

TOMORROW STREET

One such company is Quantexa, who were introduced by Accenture, which has 500 staff and is performing strongly in the financial crime sector, detecting fraud and money laundering.

“They have a powerful technology that can ‘connect the dots’ in different data sets,” says Graham. “We've now brought them into Vodafone, and they're using that technology to help Vodafone better understand their customer base. They're a company that is very well funded with a strong range of products, and are now moving into different industry sectors.”

KENNETH (KENNY) GRAHAM TITLE: CEO COMPANY: TOMORROW STREET INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: LUXEMBOURG

Kenny is the CEO of Tomorrow Street, a joint venture between Vodafone and Luxembourg’s technology incubator, Technoport. Tomorrow Street partners with innovative young companies and supports them to scale across the globe.

Kenny has held a number of leadership roles over a 20+ year career at Vodafone covering a wide range of disciplines, including, Technology Strategy, Product Development, Business Planning and Supply Chain Management.

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countries

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customers worldwide

EXECUTIVE BIO

Tomorrow Street scaleup partners are enabling digital transformation and new business products Tomorrow Street has partners covering a range of technologies important to Vodafone and the Luxembourg ecosystem.

In addition to Quantexa, Tomorrow Street partners Vizibl, Sitetracker and BlockGemini are all providing Vodafone with solutions that have digitised its operations.

New customer propositions have also been launched with Security Scorecard and Digital Barriers. Security Scorecard provides organisations with an executive summarystyle assessment of their cybersecurity risks. Its partnership with Tomorrow Street has helped it expand into Europe.

TOMORROW STREET

Digital Barriers has a leading-edge video surveillance solution already proven in the security and defence sectors, but that is now productised for commercial use with Vodafone customers.

Expeto is another example of an innovative tech company whose mobile private network solution is being deployed

by Vodafone Partners.

Graham and his team say they feel lucky to meet so many exciting young scale-ups, but that sometimes the job can be tough, as not all of them come through the robust evaluation process to become partners.

“We have to focus our time and energy on those companies that best fit Vodafone's needs and the needs of Luxembourg’s ecosystem.”

Tomorrow Street: Finding tomorrow's innovators, today.

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“ A high-performing team with a positive dynamic is vital for any business” KENNY GRAHAM

CEO, TOMORROW STREET

Corporates & scale-up have different mindsets and priorities According to Graham, the other main challenge is that both corporates and scale-ups have different mindsets, processes, constraints and priorities to contend with.

“So we have to chart a course for both parties to get to a successful outcome,” Graham says of bridging that divide.

He adds that there are three key elements to Tomorrow Street’s strategy: • Developing a vibrant global ecosystem that allows it to identify young companies able to support Vodafone’s strategy and Luxembourg's tech nation goals.

• Continuing to evolve its model, so the companies with which it partners can scale at pace.

• Creating an inclusive, growth-focused culture, both within the Tomorrow Street team and the community in which it works.

“It’s all about achieving our end goals,” says Graham, “which are to bring innovation to Vodafone and both tech talent and young companies to Luxembourg.”

One of the main ways Tomorrow Street helps bridge the divide between scaleups and big corporates is to provide operational support. technologymagazine.com

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“Tomorrow Street’s goal is to identify young companies able to support Vodafone’s strategies and Luxembourg's tech goals” KENNY GRAHAM

CEO, TOMORROW STREET

“Together with Vodafone, we spend a lot of time navigating the scale-ups, with the end goal being bringing their innovation to Vodafone. We support their procurement processes, sales enablement and productisation processes, and also provide both project management support and technical support.

“We've got a dynamic team with a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences, and we apply that to whatever challenge or opportunity we face to help advance that company into the Vodafone ecosystem.”

Growing Vodafone and Luxembourg's tech ecosystem is a key goal Growing and strengthening Vodafone's tech scaleup ecosystem – and that of Luxembourg – is the main purpose of one of Tomorrow Street’s most important undertakings: its annual Arch Summit event, first established in 2018.

It established Arch as a means to bring the two groups together and further close the gap between corporates and scale-ups, while adding leading technologists, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders to the mix. The purpose of the event is to create new opportunities through human contact, of which there was precious little during the pandemic.

Unsurprisingly, what with the past two years, the last event took place in 2019,

when 5,000 people attended over the course of two days – around 40% of whom were entrepreneurs and senior leaders - mixing with people from industry and specialist organisations.

In all, there were around 100 corporate exhibitors, and roughly the same number of start-ups. And then came COVID-19, which saw Arch Summit shelved for two years.

Rhys Astoralli is the Arch Summit Lead at Tomorrow Street, and oversees the Arch Summit events.

Those delivering keynotes at the 2022 Arch summit include the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, who has also attended past events.

Also speaking is Sophia Kianni, the noted Iranian-American environmentalist and climate activist, who is the youngest female appointed to the UN's youth climate change group.Then there is Rana el Kaliouby, an AI thought leader and author of the book, Girl, Decoded.

2022 Arch Summit is ‘keenly anticipated’ “We are massively anticipating this year’s Arch,” he says. “The whole purpose of the event is to use networking as a way to close the gap between the world of corporates and the organisations in the start-up and scale up ecosystems, and everyone has missed that these past two years.” technologymagazine.com

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New Zealand-born Astoralli adds that the event is particularly effective at “identifying and exploring different areas of value generation”.

He adds: “Large organisations will typically use scale-up technology to solve an internal business problem, or they'll look at how they can use it as part of their product portfolio or market positioning.”

Astoralli says the event is also vitally important in another regard: giving start-ups and scale-ups access to large organisations.

“One of the difficulties for start-ups and scale-ups is access into large corporates, which is where the human connection aspect of Arch is important,” says Astoralli. “What we've seen with past events is that, when you bring these two worlds together, you can actually become more efficient in terms of product development or the way in which you orientate yourself in building solutions.”

He adds: “There are panel discussions, thought-provoking keynotes and masterclasses, all driven by thought leaders across many areas, and so conversations and dialogue are very rich.

“You don’t get that when you’re sat by yourself, studying technology or a problem.

You look at it through a single lens. But when you bring other parties to that discussion, you're able to explore where the tech needs to evolve and how it might be consumed by corporations or consumers.”

Curated walk-abouts a feature of Arch Summit Tomorrow Street is mindful that the networking element of Arch Summit is as effective as possible, which is why it stages carefully curated event walk-arounds with corporates and industry thought leaders.

“We connect such people with those scaleups and start-ups most likely to be of interest to them,” explains Astoralli. “Without Arch, 250

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Rhys Astoralli, Arch Summit Lead, Tomorrow Street.

“ Technology is creating the future, so we all need to ensure that it takes everyone with us” RHYS ASTORALLI

ARCH SUMMIT LEAD, TOMORROW STREET

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“ Arch Summit is an event that’s about making meaningful connections, to help unlock naturally existing synergies” RHYS ASTORALLI

ARCH SUMMIT LEAD, TOMORROW STREET

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or an event like it, connecting with a large corporate or a thought leader can be very complicated and difficult for start-ups.”

He adds: “If you are an organisation of 20 people and want to sell into an organisation of 50,000, where do you go? Who do you talk to? How do you go about it? At Arch, we make those people connections, and, by doing so, we can help unlock some of the synergies that naturally exist.”

This year’s Arch event will have a slightly different feel to previous ones, because of the huge importance that ESG has assumed in recent years.

“For us, it was really important to look at Arch Summit through that lens of inclusion and diversity,” says Astoralli. “We want to also promote technology that is more inclusive and doesn't leave people behind; it's really important to shine a light on that.

“When we think about diversity and inclusion , where is the technology that helps people in their day-to-day lives?

How do we make sure that we have more young girls going into stem subjects such as aerospace, biological sciences and chemical engineering?”

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NEWFOLD DIGITAL

Helping organisations succeed online WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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NEWFOLD DIGITAL

Meet Newfold Digital, a leading web presence solutions provider formed in 2021. The company helps organisations of small medium or large succeed online

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erving millions of small-tomedium businesses globally, Newfold Digital is a leading web presence solutions provider that was formed in 2021 following the merger of Endurance International group (EIG) and Web.com.

In partnership with Siris Capital Group and Clearlake Capital Group, the newly formed organisation helps customers to build a digital presence that delivers results, growth and value.

Commenting on the acquisition and merger, Sharon Rowlands, CEO of Newfold Digital, says: “This combination creates an industry leader with tremendous scale, as well as a strong portfolio of marquee brands and product offerings that furthers our commitment to helping SMBs establish themselves online.

“We are excited to join forces with the Endurance Web Presence team and want to thank Clearlake and Siris for their continued support as we deliver the highest quality solutions for our customers in pursuit of profitable growth.”

Michael Bouchet, Chief Information Officer

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Creating an industry powerhouse As a newly-formed entity, Newfold Digital prides itself on being a leading web technology provider. “Through our work, we aim to set new standards for quality and success that our customers can depend on.

Whether a small business or an enterprise, Newfold Digital is positioned to provide businesses with the edge they need to 258

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grow and thrive in today’s digital world,” comments Rowlands.

Newfold Digital’s employees have adopted a serve-and-solve approach, helping them stand out from other providers in the market. With this personalised customer experience, consumers can achieve their goals with no wasted time or effort.

NEWFOLD DIGITAL

MICHAEL BOUCHET TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER LOCATION: JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA

“ Through our work, we aim to set new standards for quality and success that our customers can depend on” SHARON ROWLANDS CEO & PRESIDENT AT NEWFOLD DIGITAL

EXECUTIVE BIO

Michael is an IT industry veteran with over 25 years of experience. Prior to Newfold Digital (formerly Web.com Group), he served as SVP at OneCall heading up Infrastructure, cloud and IT Security. While there, Michael drove the service culture transformation across Infrastructure, and helped lead the development of modern cloud infrastructure practices.

Michael also has extensive global IT leadership experience from his time at JPMorganChase, BBVA, and Reed Elsevier in various IT leadership positions.

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NEWFOLD DIGITAL

A UNIQUE LOGO DESIGNED

BY ITS EMPLOYEES “At Newfold Digital, our culture is driven by purpose and passion. What unites us across the company and around the globe is a shared set of values and a unified vision for customer success. Our team members focus on fulfilling our customers’ online needs, because that’s what we do at Newfold – we empower success in a connected world,” says Rowlands.

By joining forces into one global organisation, Newfold Digital has combined talented engineers with an incredibly strong domain presence and optimised its professional services to become a one-stopshop powerhouse in this market, broadening its customer reach.

Selected from an internal design competition, the company’s logo and branding serves as a reminder of its dedication to customers and employees.

“The abstract shape of the ‘N’ in an origami-style pinwheel symbolises good luck and represents an endless cycle of energy,” says Vishnu Pradeepan, system administrator for Newfold Digital and winner of the employee design competition.

“That endless cycle of energy represents not just our team, who work tenaciously to ensure our customers are successful, but also the endless possibilities available in our connected world.”

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Helping businesses of all sizes succeed online Via its network of 18 brands, Newfold Digital helps its customers to exceed online. “From domains and web hosting to web design and online marketing tools, our helpful businessbuilding services and smart solutions give our customers an edge on the competition,” says Newfold Digital.

As with many other organisations, the COVID-19 pandemic drove a large proportion of business online; those that were previously more in-person led suddenly had to shift to online processes and quickly acclimate to new, technologically-led ways of working.

With a multitude of available services, Newfold Digital offers a range of supportive services to its customers, from solving

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“ At Newfold Digital, our culture is driven by purpose and passion” SHARON ROWLANDS CEO & PRESIDENT AT NEWFOLD DIGITAL

simple email problems, right through to an entire website design.

"We are on a mission to provide an excellent customer experience across the globe. With a number of industry-leading brands, global strategy is paramount to success,” says Rowlands.

"For businesses everywhere, ecommerce has become a necessity to compete in

NEWFOLD DIGITAL

What is Pega? We're so glad you asked

today's marketplace,” she adds. “Our nearly seven million customers not only need online storefronts, but advanced features to support their specific niches – from advanced product catalogue functionality to gift card solutions.”

Newfold Digital partners with Pegasystems Brought onboard in 2019, Newfold Digital’s initial involvement with Pegasystems was to help streamline its customer service through the use of artificial intelligence (AI). With a lot of its systems homegrown, manual and dated, the organisation needed a complete overhaul and a fresh customer approach.

Prior to the partnership, Newfold Digital – being an organisation built on multiple brand acquisitions – had a complex operating model.

This was remedied by Pegasystems, which helped Newfold Digital by improving the workflow for its agents, reducing the number of manual steps to drive greater efficiency while leading to better customer service.

Pegasystems was founded in 1983 in the US (Massachusetts). The organisation offers its customers the ability to make AI-powered decisions and automate workflows with lowcode platforms.

PEGA PLATFORM The Pega Platform makes it simple for enterprises to work smarter, unify experiences, and adapt instantly. Its scalable made-to-measure architecture helps organisations streamline their operations and increase their readiness for the future.

“We’ve gone from an idea, to a sustainable business, to a business that can really help organisations and people, globally. At the same time, I see so much more that is possible,” Alan Trefler, founder and CEO of Pegasystems.

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"Women Leaders: Secrets to Success" with Sharon Rowlands from Newfold Digital

Meet Newfold Digital’s CEO With an impressive career spanning more than 35 years, Sharon Rowlands has been operating in the technology industry working for the likes of Pegasystems, Everbridge, and Web.com.

Rowlands is described by her peers in the industry as a ‘powerful inspiration’, an ‘excellent source of insight’, ‘a brilliant thinker’, ‘hard worker’, ‘skilled negotiator’, and ‘a wonderful, people-oriented manager’.

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Rowlands joined Newfold Digital in February 2021 as the company’s CEO following its merger with Web.com. With her extensive experience in the media and information markets, in addition to her passion for digital transformation and helping customers succeed, she has enjoyed a so-far successful, satisfying career.

Rowlands has studied at both ends of England – Newcastle University and

NEWFOLD DIGITAL

"We are on a mission to provide an excellent customer experience across the globe. With a number of industry-leading brands, global strategy is paramount to success” SHARON ROWLANDS

CEO & PRESIDENT AT NEWFOLD DIGITAL

Goldsmiths University of London – receiving an undergraduate degree in History followed up by a PGCE, both of which have coalesced to provide Rowlands with a rounded perspective of various industries.

Reflecting on her career journey, Rowlands says: “It’s definitely been a long road. I’ve been in business for well over 35 years.

“I started life as a school teacher but realised that I needed to earn more money.

I then moved into business starting in sales, where I went through the process of increasing promotions, and I got my first CEO job in the mid-90s.

“Now I’m in my fourth CEO role.”

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Going beyond Belgium, with eyes on FLAP WRITTEN BY: İLKHAN ÖZSEVIM PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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DATACENTER UNITED

Friso Haringsma, Managing Director of DataCenter United, talks DC expansion, work culture and why local problems require local solutions

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ith the recent acquisition of another three data centres (DCs) across several regions, DataCenter United (DCU) – based in Antwerp, Belgium – is growing at an increasingly rapid pace.

“We want a country-wide network of well-connected, well-established, highquality and efficient DCs that offer multiple services to our customers,” says Friso Haringsma, Managing Director of DCU. Haringsma originally gained experience of the DC world through being a customer at a previous IT company, the workings of which allowed him the insight and expertise to establish DCU down the line.

A further, and critical insight into the GC market needs came from his discernment of a disparity in demand and supply.

Haringsma says: “DCU was founded in 2010 with our first Antwerp DC, after we noticed that engineers were always travelling to other regions and countries because there were simply no solutions in the local area.

So we recognised a gap in the market, saw an opportunity due to the high demand and short supply of such services, and so established DCU – only, it wasn’t called DCU back then. The ‘united’ designation came about after our expansions, establishing interconnectivity between our web of DCs, which were then united, digitally-speaking.”

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In the past, it was common for customers to bring their services to the physical DC itself, after which it was up to them to cope with the travel times and expenses. “But our vision was different,” says Haringsma. “We wanted to bring our services directly to the customer, and the eventual development and expansion of DCU flowed from this.”

DCU then continued acquiring DCs – including another 3 this year alone – bringing up their numbers to a total of six. The chronology of DCU’s growth looks like this: its first DC was established in Antwerp in 2010; in 2012, it acquired a DC in Brussels; in 2016, it acquired another in Antwerp; and, this year, it acquired 3 more, with one in Bruges, one 270

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in Ghent and another in Southern Antwerp, effectively doubling its numbers.

As stated on the company website, DCU now possesses ‘6 Belgian state-of-the-art, carrier-neutral data centres’ – “and we are not finished yet,” says Haringsma. “We are quite ambitious to get more market-share and present ourselves to the wider European DC market as a viable, cost-effective alternative to giant DC providers.”

DCU also recently became Tier IV DC certified, being recognised for its design, operations and build sustainability. “We also have flexible and transparent ways of working that are embedded into our culture,” says Haringsma.

“We want a countrywide network of well-connected, wellestablished, high-quality and efficient DCs that offer multiple services to our customers” FRISO HARINGSMA

MANAGING DIRECTOR, DATACENTER UNITED

EXECUTIVE BIO FRISO HARINGSMA TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR LOCATION: ANTWERP, BELGIUM Friso Haringsma is an expert on the topics data management, data centre and server infrastructure services & cloud computing.

Friso has a broad knowledge of management and strategy, gaining experience at several IT companies before he founded Datacenter United in 2010. He is still CEO there. Thanks to his experience with both indirect and direct channels in B2C and B2B, Friso

Haringsma is a true all-rounder. Under Friso's leadership Datacenter United grew into a top player in the field of datacenter and cloud services. As the foundation of the digital economy the company provides an ideal environment to run private, hybrid and public cloud services.

The participation in 2020 of the publicly listed company TINC in the company underlines the long-term vision and the great confidence in the company.

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DATACENTER UNITED

Expanding on DCU’s organisational vision, he continues: “Edge and Proximity have always been a part of our organisational nature, and that was a further driving force to acquire more local DCs. Transparency is not just an abstract principle at DCU, but is embedded in all aspects of our operations, whether it be in terms of our numbers, the temperatures of the centres themselves, atmospheric humidity, energy consumption and so on.”

DCU established a portal back in 2010, allowing customers to keep an eye on all aspects of these services. Haringsma says: “It is important for us to not be a black box, and so communication and dialogue with our customers is absolutely key to us.”

Tier IV and DCU’s Culture There was a myth that, in Belgium, it was impossible to achieve a Tier IV DC. “Some journalists even said they had consulted with their experts,” says Haringsma, “and I said ‘these are clearly the wrong experts’.”

Asked about DCU’s Tier IV certification in relation to its culture, Harigsma says: “If you look at the Belgium DC landscape, you see large companies are driving the business – big names with big money, and unfortunately, mainly big real estate companies who are buying and selling real estate for profits. In other words, they create value for themselves but not for the local communities.”

This insight emphasises DCU’s determination to balance social values with its DC business interests.

“DCU on the other hand,” says Haringsma, “is a way of waving the flag and showing our customers that we can add a lot of value to the market by offering really high-quality services, with a great culture to boot.

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“Tier IV is internationally known as the highest quality DC available. The knowledge and perception of DCs is incorrect most of the time, as everybody claims to have a certain quality of DCs, with most assuming that, if it looks good, then it must be good – but if you look under the bonnet you can see that it isn't. You can't claim to be a certain quality without certification – the devil’s in the details.

“So from a certain perspective, Tier IV isn't difficult to achieve, but in actuality, you need full certification to have credibility.

Our team was instrumental in designing and building our DCs, which in turn built

“ We wanted to bring our services directly to the customer, and the eventual development and expansion of DCU flowed from this” FRISO HARINGSMA

MANAGING DIRECTOR, DATACENTER UNITED

trust, and they have very good knowledge of the techniques and a mastery of the operations involved.”

DCU concentrates a lot of its energies on competing as a smaller DC, demonstrating that data services should be orientated around people and communities. “A smaller partner can be a reliable partner,” he says, “and can offer pricing as well as a high quality of service. The initial investment may cost more, but it isn't affecting the operational part.”

DCU offers Migration Services that are fully managed in-house. Haringsma says: “We were active in seven DCs at one time, technologymagazine.com

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WHAT IF THE POWER FAILS? Elinex supplied the emergency power supply to the new Antwerp DC

follow us @elinexps www.elinex.com

Belgium has its first TIER IV Data Center. Antwerp DC, one of the Data Centers of Datacenter United, has been officially certified as TIER IV by the UPTIME institute since February. The emergency power installations designed and supplied by Elinex are an essential component Elinex designs, builds and maintains entire emergency power installations, brand independent, within the Benelux. With more than 35 years of experience, they a partner for many Data Centers.

Together with Huawei, Elinex has been providing modular Data Center solutions to its customers since 2014. This goes beyond just emergency power solutions.

Maintenance while maintaining all redundancies Jo Van Den Langenbergh, Operational Director DC United clarifies: "Maintenance can be carried out while maintaining all redundancies. In order to be Tier IV certified, the emergency power supply must also be designed to maintain redundancy during maintenance. Elinex created and implemented this design. They also supplied the racks and distributors, consisting of synchronization boards and main distribution. The UPS solution concerns the high

efficiency (+97%) modular Huawei 5000 UPS. As a result, expansion in power is easy to realize at any time.”

Single Fault Tolerance Jo states: "It's not just about the data, but also about the building itself. A Single Fault Tolerance applies to everything, including the BMS. Every error must come into the picture, even if that is a problem with the climate system, for example. So we have a double redundancy on everything.”

TIER IV important for specific sectors Friso Haringsma, Managing Director DC United: "For the majority of customers, TIER III is sufficient, but for heavy e-commerce companies, governments, pharma companies and companies that handle privacy-sensitive data, TIER IV is almost a must. We are pleased with Elinex's efforts, which fit seamlessly with the requirements and wishes we had for Antwerp DC. In addition to their expertise that came in very handy in this project, they are of special value because they are 'independant', just like us.

We have a maintenance contract with them based on response time of 4 hours. This not only benefits Datacenter United, but especially our customers."

Learn more

DataCenter United is expanding beyond Belgium with eyes on FLAP

“DCU was founded in 2010 with our first Antwerp DC, after we noticed that engineers were always travelling to other regions and countries because there were simply no solutions in the local area" FRISO HARINGSMA

MANAGING DIRECTOR, DATACENTER UNITED

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DATACENTER UNITED

installing equipment, moving things around and of course, engineers and technicians can be expensive. So it was natural for me to concentrate on customers through migration services and moving DC’s inter-location.

“You can't always build-out at a new location; a lot of the time you need to migrate, and this needs to be done with minimal downtime and constraints, and without issues for the local team.”

Edge Location Services and The Question of Sustainability There are certain global-to-local trends that Haringsma sees impacting the Belgium market. “In Belgium,” he says, “we are seeing a lot of movement to cloud services and many DCs reevaluating their businesses and their real estate. For many DCs however, it isn't their primary business, so in the end, it isn't their cup of tea. DCs are always either too technologymagazine.com

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big or too small, or running bottle-necks that are way too costly. These problems require solutions. That is why we try to bring our services to our customers through multiple DCs, over an area of about 75-100 km (about a one hour drive in either direction).

“Some companies don't do everything themselves. They use IT partners, but if you can bring the DCs to your customers yourselves, it’s added-value. So we want to accelerate bringing our DCs to our customers in the future, and provide On-Net and Off-Net options over multiple DCs.” DCU’s biggest driver is for proximity DCs. “5G means decentralised data, compute, network ability and storage,” Haringsma says, “and so the services we provide are requirements for this development.”

For many DCs, sustainability is an afterthought. The centres are built with the explicit – and sometimes sole purpose – of data provision, thus sustainability considerations come later.

“We are trying to be sustainable by nature, being as efficient as possible,” says Haringsma. “But it must be remembered that there are multiple drivers. By affecting all the variables that we have under our control, we are able to lower costs and achieve higher sustainability. However, it must be said that service-continuity is always the primary focus, and then comes sustainability.

“Nevertheless, we reuse water, utilise solar panels and have heat exchange systems that redirect waste heat to reheat our warehouses, for example. We try to do our best in handling those things.”

Haringsma alludes to the fact that most talk of sustainability in the DC world is not entirely honest. After all, a DC’s primary output is energy, not data. “We could change the loads of machines,” says Haringsma, “but this is the responsibility of 278

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DATACENTER UNITED

LOCAL EMPLOYMENT Local employment (both direct or indirect) equates to around 15 or 16 people employed per rack or server, and every one euro attached to DCs creates multiple times its value for the local economy.

our customers, including things like killing zombie DCs and so on. We make sure they have a more efficient server infrastructure, but there are further constraints on sustainability for private DCs in general, because they are not being controlled by the government.”

On-Prem Legacy DCs that are converted into commercial DCs have an even higher PUE (Power usage effectiveness). “We are 1.3, 1.4 or 1.5, where some private DCs have a PUE of 4 or even 5. We are hundreds of percentage points more efficient and sustainable,” he says. “We can't change the fact that a server and digital infrastrastructure needs energy, and we do need to raise more awareness about this. The clouds run on machines, and a lot of people don't have a clue about this, so we need to fight against this lack of understanding and educate them. Further, why should we pay for an upgrade of the grid, when Mr. Facebook and Mr. Amazon are using up all of our energy for the next 2-3 years?”

Local DCs add local value to local banks, insurance companies, accounting firms, IT and Logistics companies – and DCU directly adds value to the local economy through these connections.

Haringsma points out that local employment (both direct and indirect) equates to around 15 or 16 people employed per rack or server, and every one euro attached to DCs creates multiple times its value for the local economy. “A local company also pays local taxes and serves the local community, but this is not the case with an international DC,” he says.

Haringsma believes that in the future, every town and village should have its own DC, and must give back to society, in energy that should all eventually be recyclable. technologymagazine.com

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“ We are quite ambitious to get more marketshare and present ourselves to the wider European DC market as a viable, costeffective alternative to giant DC providers” FRISO HARINGSMA

MANAGING DIRECTOR, DATACENTER UNITED

DCU’s Partner Ecosystem In terms of its current energy needs, one of DCU’s partners is Elinex, “who are very good partners”.

“They provide us with many benefits, but one thing is they have a good culture and vision, and organise to build certain solutions. They are also really hands-on and are a good fit for us,” says Haringsma. “They also know what they're talking about. We have around 10 or 15 UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) brands, and it's hard to keep track of what they're all doing in the market and their constant evolution. Elinex can take us directly to brands, and they really help us provide solutions while also providing the right information to allow us to be an effective provider.”

“We also partner with Huawei, whose equipment – according to my technicians – is really well-designed and allows us to be more efficient in our DC provisions,” he says.

Belgium is in the middle of the FLAP (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris) region, which makes up the primary DC market. DCU has high hopes that the

Belgian market will grow even more than it already has in the past few years.

As for future trends, Haringsma says: “I see consolidation in the market. There is a lot of money involved, and it seems that everyone wants a piece of the pie when they hear the words ‘digital infrastructure’. When they say ‘5G’, I say, ‘ok show me’. A lot of bubbles are created by those who don't know how DCs actually work.

“Transparency will also be a central theme, but as complexity accelerates, there will be too many applications that can potentially break down, so diverse solutions will be needed. Most importantly, the customer has to be able to focus on their own business, and more partnerships will be able to make this happen.”

Ever-expanding, DCU has just received approval for the expansion of their current Antwerp Datacenter flagship location, adding another 6000 sqm of IT space, bringing it up to become a 20 MW facility.

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TRANSFORMING LIVES WITH DATA INSIGHTS WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

CITY OF PORTLAND

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As the world opens back up, the City of Portland adopts a data-driven approach and next-generation cyber security to improve the lives of its communities

T

hroughout the pandemic, towns and cities have had to transform the way they provide services for their communities. The City of Portland, Oregon is no exception to this and has been embarking on an innovative, data-driven approach to policy.

Located in the Northwest of the U.S., at the juncture of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland serves the needs of its communities with over 25 departments focused on public services and liveability improvements across the city.

Driven by his passion to give back to the community, Christopher Paidhrin, Senior Information Security Officer for the city, has been dedicated to Portland’s transformation of technology and web services, with a focus on protecting the city’s data and information.

Noting how COVID has impacted the city, Paidhrin says: “During the COVID era, we've had to adapt considerably to provide about 70% of our services via telework. This was a challenge to address quickly. The state, county and city had lockdowns and yet 30% of our workforce still needed to go out in person to provide public safety services, maintain roads and pipes, perform inspections, and a wide array of services that a city provides. The COVID era forced us to adapt, but our services continued.”

“Fortunately, with cross-team collaboration we were able to provide extensive telework services within days. As

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Christopher Paidhrin

CITY OF PORTLAND

we come out of the COVID era we're looking forward to robust growth and recovery in the next couple of years.”

Now, as we emerge from the pandemic and cities recover from the economic impact of lockdowns, Smart City solutions are becoming increasingly vital to aid adaptation to the technology-driven world we live in.

The City of Portland has been identified as an early pioneer in municipal open data policymaking, being one of the first cities or states, in 2009, to advance the strategy and the second city or state to adopt a formal policy and programme in 2014.

As an early pioneer, the city has been well equipped to deal with the impact of COVID while utilising open data to create a healthy environment for its communities, as Paidhrin explains: “One of our initiatives, Smart Cities, leverages innovative technologies, data collection and data management tools to enhance community engagement, improve

delivery of public services, and address City goals around equity, mobility, affordability, sustainability, community health and safety, workforce development, and resiliency.

Our city is looking forward to expanding on these services and capabilities for our communities that are struggling to come out of the COVID era.”

The pandemic has refocused how Portland has executed its service visioning, as Paidhrin explains: “How we go about providing our services has been significantly impacted by the COVID era and its continuing challenges — for our communities and our employees.

We quickly stood up a COVID response team to address the need to maintain community services, and to support employees and their families impacted by the pandemic.

The technological element was the simpler challenge. Meeting the people-centric needs required a larger, cross-team, effort. The City’s core values - of equity, transparency, communication, collaboration, fiscal

Christopher Paidhrin: Senior Information Security Officer

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“ WE CHOSE FORTINET AS WE TRUST THEM TO BE ON THE FRONT LINE. THEY ARE THE BOUNDARY, THE BARRIER BETWEEN THE CITY'S TREASURED RESOURCES AND THE CYBER WORLD” CHRISTOPHER PAIDHRIN

SENIOR INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, CITY OF PORTLAND

CHRISTOPHER PAIDHRIN TITLE: S ENIOR INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER INDUSTRY: GOVERNMENT

responsibility, and anti-racism - have guided our priorities.”

“Now that we are in the process of returning a large portion of our workforce back into our workspaces, there is a significant challenge in returning to a space that has been vacant for two years. We need to make sure that the technology resources are available and that they meet the needs of our workforce within a hybrid –on-premises and telework-workspace. We also need to ensure hygiene protocols are in place and that public and personal safety remain our top priorities. It was a challenge to have 70% of our workforce move to telework. And it's a challenge to move 70% back into the workspace and find effective ways to do that. We are also mindful of the 30% of our workforce that braved on-site and in-the-field work throughout the pandemic.

We can’t thank them enough for their commitment,” he adds.

LOCATION: UNITED STATES Christopher Paidhrin's mission over the past 22 years of his information security leadership and service has been to 'add lasting value'. Christopher is an internationally recognised public sector and healthcare information security authority and mentor, having received recognition and awards for service excellence, including NetworkWorld, ISE (iise.org), SC Magazine, Information Security magazine’s 2011 “Security 7” Award, and 2021 Oregon CISO of the Year (SIM). For the past seven years Christopher has been the Senior (Chief) Information Security Officer for the City of Portland, Oregon, aligning cybersecurity best practices with Citywide services and values, including equity, diversity, privacy, and open data governance.

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Secure your hybrid workforce Digital security, everywhere you need it Learn more at www.fortinet.com

CITY OF PORTLAND

Creating innovative ways to make data more accessible Just as businesses have had to adapt, invest in technologies to support telework, and respond to the restrictions introduced because of coronavirus, the public sector has had to grapple with these challenges as well.

Pairing this with Portland’s data-driven approach, Paidhrin notes how the city looked to make information more accessible online: “The city has migrated our website from an on-premises solution to a cloud solution, transforming service accessibility and ease of access to the right information or service contact with the least effort.

Information is findable by our community, and we are mindfully transparent in our use and retention of data. Portland’s data transparency is reflected not just in our values, but also in how we provide information to our community.”

“We have also gone from a traditional in-person Council meeting process to teleconferencing and now to a hybrid approach that accommodates both. We strive to lower barriers of access to our city leadership by enhancing channels of communication so our communities can

“ WE REALLY LOVE OUR CITY AND LOVE BEING OUT IN OUR CITY. SO, THIS WILL BE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR US TO INVITE EVERYONE BACK IN” CHRISTOPHER PAIDHRIN

SENIOR INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, CITY OF PORTLAND

voice their concerns and their interests to connect with us, because not everyone is able to hear or see through a teleconference service, or has a digital device and internet service,” the Senior Information Security Officer continues.

These channels consist of several adaptive technologies the city has created to ensure the entire community can access information easily. Examples include closed captioning and translation services. Paidhrin explains that the city wants to provide

“access to information and resources, access to influence our decision making, access to our leaders in such a way that if our community can't be there in person, they can reach us through other means”.

“Since 95% of the city's information is public information, they should have ready access to it in ways that can be useful to them, not just bits of data, but actionable information,” he adds.

Engaging with communities for more insight Portland’s Smart City initiative aligns with one of the city’s core technology missions to adopt 21st century technologies. Paying attention to the needs of its communities at every level, the City of Portland holds community forums, provides surveys, and embarks on community outreach to understand what the communities need and how technology can play a role in meeting those needs.

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“Many of our departments have deeply engaged community initiatives. That's their sole purpose: to stay connected and encourage the engagement of our communities in city decisions and activities,” says Paidhrin.

Rooted in this public service mission is data. Looking to execute best practices to leverage information for new community services, Portland takes all the data from these community initiatives to provide intelligence to the community via apps, services and outreach that improve the quality of their lives.

Smart City PDX has partnered with the Portland community to make the city a place where data and technology are used to improve people’s lives, particularly in underserved communities.

Together, they will proactively prepare for future technologies to promote communitydriven goals and values. The pair use data and

CITY OF PORTLAND

technology responsibly to support a healthy, safe, more affordable, and prosperous Portland.

“It is a collaborative effort, and we are doing our part in learning from other cities who are also pioneers in Smart Cities initiatives. It is exciting to explore new and innovative ways to offer services. It's a great mission to participate in,” comments Paidhrin.

Protecting the city and its data With all these data-driven initiatives comes a significant need for the city to bolster its cyber defences. As the city collects and analyses an increasing volume of data, Paidhrin and his team need to ensure that this data is protected from threat and damage.

If left vulnerable, the city could face unknown challenges that would hinder its Smart City roadmap.

“Through due diligence, constant threat monitoring and following best practices, we strive to prevent cyberattacks. Central to our cyber program is to follow a federal cyber framework — in use by cities, counties and states across the U.S. – called the Cyber Security Framework (CSF) from the National Institute of Standards and Technologies (NIST),” explains Paidhrin.

“The NIST CSF framework consists of five functions and 20 categories. It helps us to effectively segment the complexity of cybersecurity into manageable work categories. The framework provides an ordered grouping and a life cycle perspective on data security and the use and protection of information. And by having our programme follow this framework, we can identify where we need additional resources, people, technologies, and funding. We can then justify our cyber program needs appropriately, determine the maturity, strengths, weaknesses, and then establish a multiyear roadmap for how we can mature our programme,” he adds.

This framework is essential as Portland looks for new ways to improve its cyber strategy. As many of the city’s peers also use this framework, they can anonymously share with each other their progress and their challenges through an annual survey facilitated by the Centre for Internet Security.

“The NCSR annual survey provides U.S. public entities an external metric of how our cyber programmes and business resiliency compare to our peers. This comparison helps us to motivate ourselves to do better and to collaborate better so that we share the lessons learned from years of shared process improvement,” notes Paidhrin.

Central to the City of Portland’s cyber security infrastructure is security company Fortinet. “We spent two-plus years technologymagazine.com

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evaluating next generation firewall and integrated cyber security solutions for our primary cyber security protection. And we conducted real-world evaluations of the leading firewall vendors,” says Paidhrin.

He adds: “We chose Fortinet as we trust them to be on the front line. They are the boundary, the barrier between the city's treasured resources and the cyber world.

There are a lot of good things out on the internet, but they are a lot of bad things that are happening. So, it was really important for us to find a next generation platform that could meet our cyber security and service needs for years to come.”

The FortiGates’ Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML)-powered FortiGuard Services provide Portland with intrusion prevention system (IPS) inspections, content filtering, web filtering, and antivirus protection. These capabilities make it much

“ MANY OF OUR DEPARTMENTS HAVE DEEPLY ENGAGED COMMUNITY INITIATIVES. THAT'S THEIR SOLE PURPOSE: TO STAY CONNECTED TO, AND ENCOURAGE, THE ENGAGEMENT OF OUR COMMUNITY IN CITY DECISIONS AND ACTIVITIES” CHRISTOPHER PAIDHRIN

SENIOR INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER, CITY OF PORTLAND

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easier for city staff to respond to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attempts and other cyber threats.

The city’s goal, according to Paidhrin, is to build a zero-trust network access (ZTNA), in which all network activities and resources are allowed or allocated based on the identity of the user requesting them. Most of the Portland infrastructure is in early stages of the journey to ZTNA, but the city’s Revenue Division is pioneering a Fortinet-based approach where FortiGate offers the natively integrated ZTNA enforcement capability to city’s many applications and services.

Opening up the city post-COVID Now, as the city emerges from the pandemic and services shift to a ‘new normal’, Portland plans to continue its technology and services transformation, with COVID era lessons learned, to focus

on ensuring community safety as the city embarks on its alignment of police and public safety services.

Looking ahead, Paidhrin shares more plans for the city: “Our outreach into our communities was sustained throughout the COVID era, but now, with the return to the city of more of our workforce, we continue to improve our services. The next six months are going to be intensive: we will embark on a restoration of full services, the opening up of businesses, and we will be encouraging our community to come back into the core of the city. So, on the city side, it's going to be intense, but we're very excited.”

He concludes: “We really love our city and love being out in our city. This will be an opportunity for us to invite everyone back in.”

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WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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BACKMARKET

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BACK MARKET

Back Market’s Quentin Le Brouster outlines how his company looks to transform tech consumption by offering refurbished products as an alternative to new

C

onsumer behaviour is undoubtedly changing.

As governments, businesses and individuals become increasingly climateconscious, people around the world are making more responsible decisions when it comes to the environment.

Insight by Deloitte suggests that consumers are selecting different measures with the aim to shop more sustainably. The consulting company found that people have embraced the reduction of single-use plastics and opt for the more sustainable brands on the instead.

Keen to be part of this shift, Thibaud Hug de Larauze, Quentin Le Brouster, and Vianney Vaute founded Back Market in 2014 to revolutionise the technology marketplace.

“We are bringing tech devices back to life by extending their lifespan, building immortal machines that will last forever,” says Le Brouster.

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BACK MARKET

“ Our mission at Back Market is to empower people to save the planet; this can only be done with a team that has different perspectives and experiences” QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

On a mission to restore trust and desire for refurbished devices, Le Brouster explains: “The new electronic device market remains larger than the refurbished market.

We are really willing to challenge the way we consume tech.”

In the eight years since its founding, the Paris-based company has become the world’s leading renewed technology 298

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marketplace and wants to lead the way in the transition towards a circular economy.

“To understand Back Market and why this is important: to produce a new smartphone, for example, you have to use 82,300 litres of water to create a new product. To put back on the market a product that is going through refurbishment you only need 13,900 litres,” outlines Le Brouster.

QUENTIN LE BROUSTER TITLE: CO-FOUNDER AND CTO COMPANY: BACK MARKET INDUSTRY: CONSUMER ELECTRONICS

Quentin Le Brouster is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Back Market.

Passionate about tech, from an early age Quentin was already repairing computers to give them a second life. He coded his first websites in high school and pursued this passion that droves him at university, where for 5 years he learned to have a 360 vision of a tech project. At the end of his studies, Quentin joined the Neteven company where he spent 3 years understanding the ISs of large manufacturers and integrating the APIs of the largest global marketplaces. It was there that he met Thibaud to create Back Market.

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EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: PARIS, FRACE

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In its most recent Series E funding round, Back Market raised US$500mn, led by Sprints Capital, Eurazeo, Aglaé Ventures, General Atlantic and Generation Investment Management. This brought the company’s total valuation to US$5.7bn.

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“We are really proud of our geographical expansion. We have opened more than 12 countries in the last two years and we are not willing to stop there” QUENTIN LE BROUSTER

CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

“What we want there is to reduce the ecological impact of technology. We are fighting to change the way tech devices are consumed for a positive impact on the planet,” he adds.

On top of the huge water savings, refurbishing a product produces 6kg of CO2 emissions whereas a new device produces 86.

Overcoming fears with the refurbished tech marketplace Le Brouster, who is also the Chief Technical Officer at Back Market, explains that despite these environmental benefits, there is still a way to go in terms of changing people’s perceptions of refurbished devices: “Even our customers in France have some fears, as the majority of them are consuming refurbished devices for the first time. So they tend to be scared about the scratches on the devices or the quality of the battery.”

“What makes us successful is that they are always happily surprised. Just when they're scared about scratches and they receive a device good as new, they're like: ‘Wow. Why did I wait so long to switch to refurbished devices?’” he continues. technologymagazine.com

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BACK MARKET

“ As we look to drive forward our mission and as the company changes the status quo in tech, we are increasing representation” QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

Never trust, always verify: Okta as the core of Zero Trust Okta is the leading independent identity provider.

The Okta Identity Cloud enables organizations to securely connect the right people to the right technologies at the right time.

LEARN MORE

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As well as offering refurbished smartphones, Back Market also offers smart watches, gaming consoles, home office equipment, small appliances and more.

Although he says that the lower price of Back Market’s devices makes the company attractive to a number of consumers, Le Brouster believes it is the company’s mission that has been a key driver for its success over the past eight years.

He says: “In the end, when people buy at Back Market and we explain our mission, people are engaged in what we are doing and they want to be part of it. People are willing to change their consumer behaviour.”

“There has already been a big boom in France in how people consume smartphones, as they want to change.

Comparing this, for example, to the US where 90% of the population are still buying their phone with their mobile plan. technologymagazine.com

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BACK MARKET

We are successful in France for sure. We are in 16 countries already but there is still a lot to do. We want to be known in the US. We'll keep on working and developing to deliver more refurbished devices,” added Le Brouster.

Building trust by focusing on the customer Consumer experience is key to Back Market. Looking to build trust for the refurbished maker, Le Brouster explains that the company is always looking for ways to improve the quality of its product.

This is where the CTO plays a key role, ensuring the technology is up to scratch and when it isn’t, finding solutions to resolve it.

When we launched Back Market, 15% of the

products we shipped were not working. We replaced them as soon as we could and the customer then had a good experience. But still, the defective rate was higher than we would want. We went into a lot of effort to audit the refurbishing process to assess the quality of the product. We audited all the different types of battery-related issues to the different phone models and built our expertise on that.”

“Thanks to this, we managed to reduce this defective rate from 15% to 3%. We drastically improved the quality of the refurbished and that in the end is what will build trust.”

With consumer experience at the heart of its operations, Back Market also holds customer feedback in the highest regard: “We realised, to be successful with customers is to be really passionate about them. We have customer reviews printed on the wall in the offices, with a process called ‘Everyone Support’. So every employee of Back Market that joins the company does one day of customer support. They will work as a customer care agent to understand and talk to the customer, understand the pain they could have, understand the complexity of the problems they face.”

“We have a dedicated team to manage customer care, but we also have a dedicated team to manage the worst experience and bring some answers to that. So, for example, sometimes we ship products that are working at 99%, but maybe the Bluetooth is not working well. So it's enough for us to send them a new product, but many of our customers need their mobile phones for work etc. To ensure they aren’t without a device, we send them a temporary phone in the meantime, which they ship back to us when they receive their new one,” he continues.

“ Solidarity was really important to us during the pandemic” QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

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A new phone uses up about 73 hot tubs worth of water.

According to Back Market, a refurbished phone saves around 60 hot tubs worth.

381 kg of raw materials need to be dug up to produce a single smartphone - another way buying refurbished helps save the planet.

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“Save the planet – that is what we are trying to do, basically” QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

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BACK MARKET

2014

year founded

650+

number of employees

17

countries in the EU and USA

5.5k+ tns of electronic waste avoided

1k+

refurbishing partners

Quentin Le Brouster, Co-Founder and CTO of Back Market

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“Back Market gives our employees two days where they can attend a strike on a matter that is important to them” QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

Promoting solidarity during the coronavirus pandemic Going beyond consumer experience, Back Market is dedicated to giving back to its community, particularly in times of difficulty.

During the pandemic, the company looked to ways to support struggling families as they navigated homeschooling.

Le Brouster explains: “Solidarity was really important to us during the pandemic. We’ve been helping a lot of NGOs by giving them some materials for families that couldn't afford it. For some families, it was hard for them to have the correct equipment to home school all their children, as many need computers to assist with their school work. Refurbishing is a really good way to make products cheaper and help NGOs and other initiatives that supported families during the lockdowns.”

This solidarity feeds into its company culture and the company ensures that its employees feel supported as well. Noting one unique initiative that as co-founder he is particularly proud of, Le Brouster says: “Back Market gives our employees two days where they can attend a strike on a matter that is important to them. One of the days we go as a company, the other day the individual can go to one of their choosing. In March of this year, the company will be going to the World Climate Strike. We will have no meetings on this day and instead, we will walk the streets as part of the protest.”

As well as promoting climate consciousness, Back Market knows that sustainability isn’t as simple as reducing CO2 emissions and water usage. Keen to tackle a number of sustainable development goals, the company is an avid supporter of diversity, equity and inclusion.

“Our mission at Back Market is to empower people to save the planet; this can only be done with a team that has different perspectives and experiences,” says Le Brouster.

He continues: “As we look to drive forward our mission and as the company changes the status quo in tech, we are increasing representation. It's a big job and one that we can't do alone. So we are partnering with amazing organisations like PowerToFly, 50inTech and Women in Tech. And together, technologymagazine.com

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“ What we want there is really to reduce the ecological impact of technology.

We are really fighting to change the way we are consuming tech devices” QUENTIN LE BROUSTER CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, BACK MARKET

we're on a mission to educate and provide opportunities for anyone to change the exciting world of tech, regardless of the background.”

Using the cloud to bolster defences Joining Back Market on its mission is cloud software company, Okta.

Consistently named a leader by major analyst firms, Okta helps connect organisations with technologies to help them reach their full potential.

With different challenges around theft and data security cropping up for the Back Market team, Le Brouster explains that the partnership

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was crucial for connecting the company’s devices: “We selected Okta to manage all the rights, all the identities of our employees and allow us to be sure that we could also manage all the rights on the different software we use. And now, if a computer gets stolen, we can turn it into a rock basically and remove everything that's inside. We can wipe it remotely and we can close it remotely.”

As the company developed a comprehensive defence strategy to prevent data leaks, Okta proved an important component to ensuring Back Market was well protected. This strategy was essential

as the company had looked to expand since its founding, and will continue to do so as it looks to move into other markets.

“We are really proud of our geographical expansion, opening in more than 12 countries in the last two years and we aren’t willing to stop there. We're in Europe, the US, Japan and we want to expand Back Market in all of Asia.

So that will be a big challenge,” says Le Brouster.

On top of its expansion efforts, Back Market is also keen to focus on its company image.

Known for the refurbishment of mobile phones, the company wants to showcase the other products it has to offer; 40% of

its products are not mobile devices and Le Brouster explains it is important to expand on what else the refurbished market can offer.

He concludes: “We also want to offer the ability for anyone to repair the products through Back Market. So either by themself through self-repair, by having someone that will come to them and fix their product, or going down the street to a repair shop. That is an important domain that we would love to explore.”

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IRELAND'S

DIGITAL HEALTH TRANSFORMATION WRITTEN BY: BLAISE HOPE PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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JOURNEY

HEALTH SERVICE EXECUTIVE

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Coming from a laggard position, Ireland’s healthcare system now has a rapid digital improvement trajectory steered by a unique leadership initiative

T

he Irish Digital Health Leadership Steering Group (IDHLSG) is a community of over 65 Irish and international leaders (clinicians, patients, CEOs, Academics, policy makers) who have joined together to help lead the transformation of Ireland’s Health system through digital.

Recognising that the Health Service Executive, or HSE, as the Republic of Ireland's publicly funded healthcare system – which employs over 110,000 staff – and the Department of Health could not transform the health system on their own, a collaborative ecosystem-wide approach was created that has resulted in fast, cohesive and radical results.

Dr John Sheehan, radiology director at the Hermitage Clinic in Dublin and clinical vice-chair of the IDHLSG says: “I really think aligned public private healthcare and health tech, med tech, big tech and industry working together is such an exciting opportunity with so many benefits…..not reinventing the wheel, economies of scale etc… it completely gets you out of bed in the morning.”

In a country that has failed to deliver a national electronic health record in over a decade despite having an explicit strategy and the funding to do so, a unique, almost covert public/private collaboration has developed an architecture that could underpin the future digital health system of Ireland.

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Ireland: Healthcare in the comfort of your home

“OUR OVERALL STRATEGY IS ABOUT 'KEEPING WELL PEOPLE WELL' IN THEIR HOME” MARTIN CURLEY

DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND OPEN INNOVATION, HSE

Prof Martin Curley presented a Leap Frog strategy to the HSE board in April 2020 that proposed the new Digital Health System should be focused around the patient and centred around a secure patient electronic health record. In addition to Curley, several other key leaders collaborated with one another in an digital transformation 316

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ecosystem: Dr Donal Bailey, innovation director of the country’s largest GP network; Eileen Byrne, CEO of Clanwilliam, the largest GP Practice software supplier in the country; Una Kearns, CEO of MyPatientSpace; and Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, CEO of the world’s leading personal electronic health record.

The aim of this ecosystem was to create a working prototype instantiation of a digital health platform that could help move the point of care rapidly to the patient and the home. With further work, the potential is there to create an architecture that empowers patients, that is 10 times simpler and 10 times more productive than what exists today,

MARTIN CURLEY TITLE: D IRECTOR OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND OPEN INNOVATION INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE LOCATION: DUBLIN. IRELAND

and that could be 25 times cheaper than the 800 million originally touted as the cost of a National Acute EHR deployment.

Interoperability, security and privacy are critical, so these have been carefully considered. But, like all digital solutions, the HSE Digital Transformation iterates and tests the architecture in its living labs, improving it to ensure it acts as a platform that enables solutions meeting the SLSL quadruple aim – better outcomes, lower cost, better experience, better quality of life – as well as meeting SSFE criteria – Sustainability, Scalability, Security, Functionality and Ease of Use – while also meeting appropriate financial hurdles.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Martin Curley is Professor of Innovation at Maynooth University and Director of the Digital Transformation and Open Innovation at the Health Service Executive (HSE), helping enable the digital transformation of Ireland’s health service. Previously, Martin was Senior Vice President and group head for Global Digital Practice at Mastercard and, before that, vice president at Intel Corporation as well as Director of Intel Labs Europe, Intel’s network of more than 50 research labs, which he grew across the European region.

This year he was identified as a top 10 Global Influential Health Leader and as a Top 10 Global Inspiring Educator by leading US publications.

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“MANY, MANY PEOPLE WOULD RATHER BE TREATED IN THEIR HOME THAN IN A HOSPITAL” MARTIN CURLEY

DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND OPEN INNOVATION, HSE

What has occurred here is an example of Open Innovation 2.0 (OI2) and what is called Architectural Innovation, where new, existing and emerging technologies are combined with knowledge to create a whole new product or platform with functionality that is far greater than the sum of the individual parts. Support from the HSE solicitors Philip Lee and HSE Procurement have helped create an environment where collaborative and co-funded innovation

IDHLSG members at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin

could be done in a safe fashion, while being fully compliant with procurement rules.

The collaborative research and innovation work creates a prototype or minimum viable platform and an opportunity to learn what is actually needed before going for a national procurement. In contrast to the traditional waterfall model, this agile innovation process dramatically reduces risk and with clinician, administrator and patient involvement will result in a solution that actually meets all the user’s needs.

As with the introduction of new paradigms and platforms, there may be strong pockets of resistance, but hopefully wisdom will prevail and opponents will recognise that putting patients in control of their data and empowering them will only lead to better outcomes, longer lives and lower costs. Taking an ‘honour the past and technologymagazine.com

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Dr Natalie Cole Martin Curley Elsamma Philip Dr Hannah O'Keeffe and Mary Hickey

co-create the future’ approach will hopefully lead to a unified accelerated approach.

Given the cloud-based nature of the solutions – and with the increasing support of the Irish digital minister Robert Troy – the digital health platform could be quickly scaled nationally, potentially making Ireland the first European country to reach the EU target of 90% of citizens having a personal electronic health record by 2030.

"The purpose of the HSE is to provide safe, high-quality health and personal social services to the population of Ireland. The vision is a healthier Ireland with a highquality health service valued by all."

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and patient vice chair of the IDHLSG Gary Boyle says putting the patient first is critical, and he has worked with Zendra Health’s CEO, Thomas Coleman, to quickly build an app to support and educate the community of Parkinson’s patients in a country that has one of the lowest ratios of nurses to Parkinson’s patients in Europe. Prof Anthony Staines of Dublin City University and IDHLSG academic vice chair believes the key to the progress already made is the open collaboration attitude combined with the shared vision of ‘Stay Left, Shift Left’.

The presence of ‘heavyweight’ innovative clinicians in the IDHLSG such as Prof Richard Costello, who pioneered innovative digital respiratory solutions during COVID, and Prof

HEALTH SERVICE EXECUTIVE

Michael Sugrue, who is pioneering data-driven approaches to improving surgical outcomes, gives the IDHLSG real clinical credibility.

Recognising that the nursing community is the backbone of the healthcare system, the IDHLSG vice chair for nursing is Karen Kelly, an advanced nurse practitioner who modified a remote respiratory monitoring system into a heart failure remote monitoring system with outstanding results.

Karen is also pioneering the introduction of the 10x Butterfly mobile ultrasound system into Ireland. Having respected leaders in the IDHSLG who buy into the economy of mutuality and value people and purpose as much as profit is creating very positive momentum and early promising results.

Transforming Irish healthcare with digitalisation leading the charge Martin Curley is professor of innovation at Maynooth University, chair of the Irish Digital Health Leadership Steering Group and the director of digital transformation and open innovation at the HSE. Prior to joining HSE, Curley cut his digital teeth as vice president of Intel between 2009 and 2016, before bolstering his credentials by serving as senior vice president at MasterCard for a year, until 2018. According to Curley, he switched gears and put his skills to use in the healthcare industry to “transform the Irish healthcare system using digital".

"I firmly believe we can do it," Curley says. "Together with other leaders, we have been able to mobilise a national movement around radical digital transformation with tech, medtech, pharma, clinicians, patients and academics. We now have more than 50 living labs across the country. I've also written a book called Open Innovation 2.0, The New Mode of Digital Innovation for Prosperity and Sustainability, which discusses how to drive a structural change in industry using digital technology and an exponential innovation methodology.

"And the net impact of applying the method in the book is we're getting multiplicative and exponential outcomes rather than additive outcomes where we are seeing 10X better outcomes, 10X lower cost, and 10X higher volume. [Some people have called] this Curley's law. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I've [been told to] just go with it."

One of these goals set to help Curley reform Ireland's healthcare system is to bring hospital services into homes via tech.

Stay Left is about keeping well people well in their home or, if you happen to have a chronic condition or need rehab, the technologymagazine.com

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Helping Good People Do Great Work

KEWS300 – Vital-Signs Automation and Workflow Support in the Hospital Ward Syncrophi’s KEWS300 system is used by nurses and medical staff in adult, paediatric and maternity hospital wards.

It allows instant access to patient charts and escalation plans at the bedside, nurse-station or off-ward.

It speeds rounding, eliminates charting errors and interfaces with existing vital-sign monitors and the Hospital Information System. It enables timely protocol adherence and case review which reduces ICU admissions and cuts average length of stay. Customisable to local needs KEWS300 is turning eHealth promise into eHealth practice.

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CONTACTUS@SYNCROPHI.COM

HEALTH SERVICE EXECUTIVE

understanding that this can be done best of all from home.

"I am wearing a small device on my arm (from Waire) that can show you my realtime vital signs," he says. "This includes pulse rate, core temperature, oxygen saturation level and breathing rate, so the device is going to enable hospitals at home. In the future, it’s likely that many people will prefer to be treated in their home than being in a hospital. This will solve a really big problem in the healthcare system.”

In Ireland, the problem is particularly acute where acute hospital occupancy routinely runs higher than 95%. If planes ran at this level of utilisation, they would routinely fall out of the sky.

Curley argues that providing health monitoring systems closer to houses for personal use would "improve health" while "lowering costs". He then explained how technology could further be used to improve the global healthcare system.

"I think that it’s within reach," he says.

“Using the internet of things, artificial

“WE'VE NOW LEAPT FROM HAVING A LAGGING RESPIRATORY MEASUREMENT SYSTEM TO A WORLD-LEADING CAPABILITY” MARTIN CURLEY

DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND OPEN INNOVATION, HSE

intelligence, big data and cloud computing, we can make a real change – one that hasn't been seen before."

Further to this, Curley also believes that current advancements in healthcare technology could increase general life expectancy by two-three years, every five years, for the next decade or so.

"We don't necessarily need to put more money into healthcare, actually," he says.

"Digital therapeutics are a much more pivotal investment in terms of lifestyle and behavioural changes around nutrition and exercise. They're much more impactful. We recently created a living lab (Health Elevator) where you can get a health assessment, a personal electronic health record, and a wellness device all at the same time, and technologymagazine.com

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“WE NEED THAT SAME KIND OF AGILITY TO RESPOND TO OPPORTUNITIES AROUND LEGITIMATELY TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE VIA DIGITAL APPROACHES.” MARTIN CURLEY

DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND OPEN INNOVATION, HSE

Tunstall Telehealth trusted by providers and patients around the world Telehealth is a model for the delivery of healthcare that harnesses the power of technology to design services around patient need, rather than location, and supports patients to take an active role in managing their own health.

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all for less than the price of a PCR test. This will enable us to walk the walk on wellness management, identifying risk factors earlier and reversing chronic diseases with assistance of digital therapeutics.

“We mobilised eight companies and services to work with us to create a new integrated health and wellness offering in less than two weeks. This is again what is called architectural innovation, integrating existing and emerging solutions and knowledge to create something. It's a very powerful type of innovation.”

Improving personal and population health doesn’t necessarily need more spend on clinical care but investments and improvements in lifestyle, nutrition, exercise, patient empowerment, diagnostics and smarter resource allocation.

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HEALTH SERVICE EXECUTIVE

According to Curley, HSE and the broader ecosystem aims to “empower patients and give them more self-control by testing solutions with patients as well as clinicians via its 50 living labs, ultimately providing people with closed-loop digital systems", for example such as the Medtronic 780G, which measures blood glucose levels in real time and adjusts insulin levels automatically directly via linked digital insulin pump.

The technologies incorporated in the labs are deemed by Curley to be engaging, empowering, educating and encouraging for patients.

"We're now expanding the Health Elevator living lab, first to 500, and then to 5,000 people –for the price of just two to three cups of coffee per person!" he enthuses.

Together with John Shaw of Legato Health Technologies, Curley, in his role as Maynooth University Professor, set up the IDHLSG research working group to develop the Digital Health and Wellness Capability Maturity Framework. This grant was aided by IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland, while Medtronic, Roche, Cisco, and Huawei co-funded and supported it. A working group of executives, clinicians and patients meet monthly to build the roadmap, key interventions and measurements that will chart and guide Ireland’s progress over its digital health decade, towards being a global leader in digital health.

Ireland, in Curley’s eyes, is behind the rest of Europe in terms of healthcare, having jumped a maturity level from level 1 to level 2 in a 5 level maturity model, with COVID 19 acting as a big bang disruptor.

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Shaw says: “We now have a 2025 digital capability because of the acceleration driven by COVID. Curley and Donal Morris, CEO of Redzinc, had a telehealth solution, Blueeye, co-designed and deployed in St James Hospital as well as in HSE Mental Health Services, before most of HSE mainstream employees had ever heard of Zoom or Teams.

"We have a very well supported national healthcare strategy, called Sláintecare, but the results delivery is lagging behind the vision, perhaps through overdependence on external consultants.

I have always believed that strategy and accountability for delivery cannot be outsourced. All of the parties in the government approved the programme – which is unique in the history of Ireland – so while we are still lagging in Europe with respect to healthcare, we are on a fast improvement trajectory.

Sláintecare is a programme developed by the Department of Health of Ireland and HSE that aims to build equal access to services for every citizen, with its vision of one universal health service for all as a guide. With this new model, patients will be treated based on their need, instead of their ability to pay.

"We've now leapt from having a lagging respiratory measurement system to a world-leading capability with a company called PMD Solutions and their product, RespiraSense. RespiraSense is deployed in 23 acute hospitals and we have just now made it available in a community living lab setting. We're deploying vital signs automation to over 20 hospitals, detecting deteriorating patients earlier, improving the nursing experience, shortening average length of stays and adding new capacity back into the system through efficiencies.

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The financial return is extraordinary, with an internal rate of return of about 1100%.

The support of leading HSE clinicians such as Dr Mike O’Connor and Dr Siobhan ni Bhriain has been of huge importance, because, as Erik Topol famously said, ‘Medicine is remarkably resistant to change’. A strong clinical champion is the most important ingredient for success. Prof Colin Doherty, a consultant in St James Hospital, not only has been the sponsor for a new epilepsy EPR currently being built in an agile fashion with IBM and Salesforce, but has been the main co-designer.

“Together with major partner companies Centric Health and Roche, we have been able to reduce the rate of heart-related care home hospitalisations in one of the living labs by 10 times for patients with heart failure."

Patient responses to treatment within the living labs indicated that they felt "a lot more secure".

"They actually are monitored maybe a hundred times a year rather than eight," he says while adding that "the costs for the monitoring are reduced by a factor of two or three". Curley explains that the "overall strategy is about 'keeping well people well' in their home".

Tunstall Emergency Response and Irish based Pandu have developed a novel technology called a PanPan watch, which detects falls quickly and, within 20 seconds, connects the faller with a call centre in County Wexford and initiates two-way voice communication through the watch to see what help is needed. If the person is unresponsive, emergency services can be dispatched as the GPS locations are known.

The PanPan watch allows 10 times earlier detection of falls, which has been shown to reduce average length of stay and, indeed, technologymagazine.com

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save lives. Already, 300 older Irish citizens are using the PanPan device in a distributed living lab.

T-Pro’s digital dictation solutions have now been adopted in every hospital group in the country, demonstrating a tenfold improvement in productivity, capturing speech in real-time, cutting out time waste and speeding time to treatment.

To be the best, you have to work with the best, and the HSE Digital Transformation team have forged strategic collaborations with ten global leaders, including: Microsoft, Medtronic, Dell, Cisco, Roche, Google and others. Additionally, Curley and his team are working with Enterprise Ireland to create ‘the first 25’ – a portfolio of 25 Irish Digital Health SMEs, such as Health Beacon, Synchrophi and PMP, with whom they have collaborated to bring value to Irish citizens, patients, clinicians and the overall system.

All of these companies have positioned their solutions to help support and accelerate the ‘Stay Left, Shift Left – 10x’ agenda. The collaboration with the British Embassy and the UK Department of International Trade has been particularly fruitful, with HSE Digital Transformation working with over 7 UK digital health startups.

Principle-centred leadership across the Irish health ecosystem.

According to Curley, Ireland has adopted a principle-centred leadership approach to the Irish Health Service’s Digital Transformation Innovation Plan, with the principles being "fundamentally important to the digital transformation” and having the potential to “maximise the success of digital transformation in Ireland'.'

Curley and fellow ecosystem colleagues such as John Sheahan (Blackrock Health), 328

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Brian Jordan (Cisco), Dr Donal Bailey (Centric Health), Prof Richard Costello (RCSI), Ronan Hurley (Medtronic), Maeve McGrath (Roche) and patient advocate Gary Boyle convened the Irish Digital Health Leadership Steering Group (IDHLSG) to oversee and orchestrate the digital transformation, using an all-ofIreland and all-of-ecosystem approach.

Curley drafted a set of 10 principles that were then reviewed, iterated and agreed upon by the IDHLSG, and then by the broader ecosystem.

Within this approach, there are ten core principles: "The first principle is to leap frog

from being a laggard to being a leader. We want to move from a healthcare system that is paper-based, hospital-based, clinician and presence-based, to one that is patient-centric, in which remote monitoring is key and performed via cloudbased personal electronic health devices into a personal electronic health record."

IDHLSG’s campaign, ‘Stay Left, Shift Left’, fully realises the second principle.

Where ‘Stay Left’ is about 'keeping well people well' in their own homes, ‘Shift Left’ focuses predominantly on “moving patients from an acute care setting, to

a community one, to a home setting as quickly as possible”.

“All this can be achieved with different technologies and devices. With automated vital signs’ monitoring in a home, for example, we can allow early discharges post-surgery and perhaps more importantly enable a new Hospital at Home model,” Curley explains.

McKinsey predicts that by 2025, 25% of care currently provided in facilities such as acute hospitals could be performed in the home, with no loss of quality or access.

The third principle, Health 4.0, is the result of applying the principles of the technologymagazine.com

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currently evolving Industry 4.0 paradigm into a healthcare setting. Health 4.0 also revolves around patient engagement, patient empowerment, and patient encouragement.

The fourth principle revolves around “Open Innovation 2.0 (OI2), which is a leading-edge, innovative digital innovation methodology that identifies key design patterns that can lead to a structural change in an industry". Simply put, OI2 is about intensive networking and experimentation amongst high-trust partners aligned with a shared vision (Stay Left, Shift Left) and with the goal of creating a new kind of shared value incorporating increased wellbeing, welfare and wealth. Curley’s team member, Jim McGrane, runs a disciplined innovation management process to manage the various living labs, governed by an overarching digital solutions review board comprising senior clinicians and executives across the HSE. Inspired by the "incredible exponential power 330

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of digital technologies", the fifth principle is what Curley calls, "10x radical innovation".

"We have been deploying digital technologies and healthcare settings. What we're finding from that is we are getting 10x better outcomes, 10x lower costs, and 10x volume increase," he says. A pattern is emerging and this could be codified in a new emerging ‘power law’.

The sixth principle, as Curley explains, is "a digital transformation pillar model". The model consists of five vectors, the first two of which concentrate on education. "We've created a digital academy and a Master's programme. We ignite the ecosystem using the digital academy forum, which has ‘TED Talks for Digital Health’," he elaborates. The other three pillars focus on using living labs to ideate, iterate and ultimately implement disruptive solutions.

He then explains that the seventh principle "is value-based healthcare". "We are building on the principles of the book by Michael Porter

HEALTH SERVICE EXECUTIVE

and Professor Elizabeth Teisberg, Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-based Competition on Results," Curley adds.

We move further to focus on value-based competition. A fundamental point of OI2 is that the unit of competition has moved from the organisation to the ecosystem and from the product to the platform.

“Our number eight is about dynamic capabilities and capability maturity for frameworks (CMF)," Curley says.

"So many healthcare organisations exhibited dynamic capabilities as a response to COVID, where they dramatically reconfigured themselves to enable massscale testing and mass vaccination – we need that same kind of agility once more in order to respond to opportunities effectively, which includes the legitimate transformation of healthcare through a digital approach. We use capability maturity frameworks as a way of organising how

we sequence and prioritise solutions for implementation," he says.

Working with leading cardiologists, Prof Ken McDonald and Dr Matt Barrett, the IDHLSG research team have built: a digital cardiovascular CMF that identifies and prioritises key 10x interventions, such as AI-assisted echo tests; the Alivekor Kardia device for rapid, mobile ECG testing; and the Butterfly ultrasound device, which allows point of care ultrasound at high quality and is a lower cost than the current solutions. These solutions are targeted at constraints in the cardiovascular pathway leading to faster diagnosis, treatment and recovery.

The ninth principle argues that the digital health strategy should also be a crossgovernment and sector strategy with mutually reinforcing enterprise, sustainability and education goals. Curley and the IDHLSG work with many SMEs and multinationals to create new solutions which save and improve lives but also create growth and jobs through exports and also improve sustainability.

Transport Minister Eamonn Ryan and Department of Enterprise Secretary general Dr Orlaigh Quinn have been particular champions of the cross Government approach to ‘Stay Left, Shift Left - 10x’.The last principle is about using design thinking and design science research to envisage and create solutions that meet real needs and solve real problems.

Curley’s team member, Des O’Toole, has built a repeatable design thinking process that is used at the front end of the clinical and patient engagement process.

To summarise this final principle, Curley utters the words that will always have a place in healthcare, regardless of the technological advances: “Empathy is key!”

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ARK DATA CENTRES DELVES INTO AN EMISSIONS REDUCTION STRATEGY

AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Head of Sustainability at Ark Data Centres, Pip Squire talks carbon reduction and overcoming challenges as the industry pushes for net-zero operations

T

he sustainability discussion comes with controversial views and misconceptions on how responsible organisations actually are.

When using the word ‘sustainable’ or anything that relates to the subject, most industries will be subject to the spotlight from either consumers, partners or their boards. The data centre industry is one that has received a lot of attention in this area and since the data centre became a staple for daily life – supporting many aspects of digital transformation – organisations have been working on more efficient and less carbon-intensive methods of operation.

As both businesses and individuals become reliant on digital ecosystems, data storage is a major contributor to the challenge data centres have in becoming sustainable. An example of how consumers negatively contribute, is the increased number of photos and files backed up to clouds, which are reliant on data centres — and their energy consumption — to retain them. For businesses, this is similar as they digitise their filing systems and carry out all processes on decentralised systems.

One of the organisations in charge of storing and making this data available is Ark Data Centres, a supplier of unique data centre solutions in a multi campus environment with diverse fibre connectivity.

The company began its first development

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Pip Squire Head of Energy and Sustainability technologymagazine.com

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Ark Data Centres’ sustainable approach to renewable energy

“I'M PLEASED TO SAY THAT OUR INVESTORS FULLY SUPPORT OUR SUSTAINABILITY AMBITIONS”

in 2008, following the was headhunted by an acquisition of land for its American Design and first data centre facility.

Build contractor, and he It has been steadily spent 10 years working expanding ever since. on the design and Its Head of Energy construction of power and Sustainability Pip plants, with a focus Squire is an advocate on renewable energy for sustainable datasystems. Power and centre operations and renewable energy led to even took to the stage the data centre industry PIP SQUIRE at Sustainability LIVE which has been his focus HEAD OF ENERGY AND SUSTAINABILITY, to explain more about for the last 15 years.

ARK DATA CENTRES the company’s efforts to make digital solutions efficient while Energy purchasing is critical, but challenging providing a service that requires constant As companies decarbonise their data centre attention and energy supply. operations, the development of new sites and With more than 40 years in the facilities only tackles part of the issue. Firms construction industry, Squire spent 17 of must look at ways to reduce emissions across them working in civil engineering and worked existing sites and this can be achieved through on a broad range of projects, focusing in purchasing, but it’s not a clean-cut process. As the end on power, power supplies and Head of Energy this is an area of the business power generation. Following this, Squire that Squire holds a significant stake in.

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“At the moment, buying energy is quite tricky given where the energy market is, but it's not just about buying sustainable and renewable energy. It's also about how we make sure that the energy is used as efficiently as possible, and how we also report and share that with our customers,” says Squire.

“As part of sustainability and energy efficiency, it will move away from just energy efficiency to water efficiency, to heat reuse, to asking how we begin to report under the greenhouse gas protocols.”

95%

of Ark Data Centre facilities are totally recyclable at end of life

TITLE: HEAD OF ENERGY AND SUSTAINABILITY INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRES LOCATION: CORSHAM, WILTSHIRE

EXECUTIVE BIO

Increasing emissions demand efficiency systems With continuous improvement and sustainability embedded in the company’s DNA, the firm is working on ways to mitigate unnecessary emissions and push further efficiencies across its facilities.

Systems are put in place to not only to prolong the lives of data centres—cooling as an example—but to make operations more efficient. These solutions are important for reducing the environmental impacts of data centres, but Squire believes there are current limitations on emissions reduction, which will require further means of action.

To put it simply: “what are we going to do for offsetting?,” asks Squire.

“Because at some point we'll have minimised our energy demand to a point where we can't cut it down anymore. CO2 will be down at the very limit, but to get to net zero, we're going to have to offset it.”

PIP SQUIRE

Pip Squire obtained his Geology Degree from Oxford University in 1979, followed by three years of exploration in southern Africa. In 1982, he returned to Imperial College where he gained an MSc in Engineering Geology with Distinction.

Also holding a foundation degree in earth sciences, sustainability has been at the core of Squire’s career and echoes across operations at Ark data centres and campuses Squire moved from engineering geology and foundation design on large hydro-electric projects around the world, to nuclear waste management, airport engineering into the power industry in 1996 and then into data centres full time from 2007—first as Engineering and Projects Director and his position evolved to Head of Design and Sustainability in 2021.

From 1999 to 2008, he led the European renewable energy team, with a particular focus on hydro, marine and tidal power systems, and has since moved into the Head of Design position with a focus on energy and sustainability. Over the last 14 years, Pip led the successful planning, design and construction of over 100MW(IT) of Tier three data halls in 12 data centres across three data centre campuses.

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Carbon offsets are not for all industries, but Squire advocates their importance in the company’s ability to reach its emissions reduction target of net zero by 2030. The only way to mitigate emissions is to look deeper into their sources, which is challenging.

Squire says that due to the nature of Scope 3, “you don't have any real control over it. And we started last year looking at our Scope 3 emission and looking at the ones that we thought we could directly impact or have the most chance of impacting in our day to day operations.”

“There's been quite a significant change.

COVID-19 has done a lot for meetings over the internet, but you can't substitute key meetings with a zoom call. So there will be an increase in our business travel in 2022 compared to 2020 and 2021, but it's going to be nothing as big, I hope, as it was in 2019.”

The company is also very active in seeking changes beyond the data centre and employee commuting is an important one to consider. Based on the 2019 figures – as the unprecedented events in 2020 and 2021 saw increased homeworking – the company was able to analyse and report on the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions involved in employee commuting.

“We have reports on greenhouse gas emissions for 2019 and 2020 based on questionnaires from our staff and from our mileage records and in parallel to that, we've started sharing our data,” says Squire.

The firm is also encouraging its employees to make the switch to alternative energy sources for travel through the installation of electric vehicle charging points across its sites.

Squire says: “All our data centre campuses now have electric vehicle charging points to promote electric vehicles on our sites and their use by those who have been sold on the idea of going electric.”

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“ WE CAN'T BE VERY MUCH MORE CO2 EFFICIENT BECAUSE WE HAVE PUSHED THE LAWS OF PHYSICS TO THE POINT WHERE YOU CAN'T CHANGE PHYSICS” PIP SQUIRE

HEAD OF ENERGY AND SUSTAINABILITY, ARK DATA CENTRES

Sustainable data centres require supply chain visibility But can you implement some level of control over Scope 3 emissions? This is the future that Ark is working towards as it strives for visibility of its entire value chain. Larger suppliers are more likely to implement their own ESG strategies and work with their customers to

achieve the same goal, but the difficulties lie within Ark’s smaller supplier-base.

Squire says: “If it's a small niche company, we have got to take them on that journey to be able to get them to comply with our reporting requirements, and that I think is going to be our biggest challenge over the coming 18 months.”

Beyond emissions, the firm is looking towards the future – the end-of-life procedure – of its data centres. Knowing where energy and components arrive from, represents a percentage of its supply chain visibility efforts, with another being its waste portfolio. What does it do with its data centre facilities when they reach ‘end-of-life’?

Ark has carried out a lot of work measuring the embedded carbon of its facilities and implementing modular construction systems, which have been technologymagazine.com

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instrumental in the company’s ability to not only reduce its carbon, but to deliver new units in response to the increasing demand for data centre capacity.

“95% of our facilities are totally recyclable at end of life, which is rather more than if we had a traditional concrete style building,” Squire says, before explaining how the

“WE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO OPERATE AT HIGHER TEMPERATURES, WHICH MANY PEOPLE ARE BEGINNING TO ALLOW US TO DO” PIP SQUIRE

HEAD OF ENERGY AND SUSTAINABILITY, ARK DATA CENTRES

organisation achieves this, and the supply chain itself is a critical area to be measured.

“It's the question of, how do you define the boundaries of where the limit of your steel CO2 emissions are? If it's UK based, as the bulk of Ark steel is, we know associated emissions. If the steel comes from China, it's a different number, all of that sort of stuff, but there are standard methods and we're working through that, particularly on the new builds.”

Seeing sustainability from both angles Sustainability may be on the lips of major organisations and governing bodies across the board, but in the words of Pip Squire: “You're beginning to see it in the major corporates coming through now.”

“I'm pleased to say our investors fully support our sustainability ambitions. So we've now got ourselves into a position technologymagazine.com

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“IF WE DON'T NEED DX COOLING, WE ELIMINATE THE NEED FOR REFRIGERANT GASES (FGAS), WHICH IN THEMSELVES ARE MORE HARMFUL THAN CO2” PIP SQUIRE

HEAD OF ENERGY AND SUSTAINABILITY, ARK DATA CENTRES

where they are giving us credit for sustainable targets and hitting sustainable targets on a year on year basis.”

“And this means in the long term, that financial institutions are now driving development for companies like us to be more sustainable in terms of their delivery with sustainable goals, which need to be measured and reported on annually.”

Squire highlights the reality of data centres at present, which are restricted by the current research around clean energy implementation. Squire believes that Ark “can't be very much more CO2 efficient because we have pushed the laws of physics to their limit, and you can't change physics.”

In the interest of corporations as well as customers, Ark is exercising transparency across its operations and is forthcoming with its limitations. Meanwhile, consumer behaviour plays a significant role in its ability to be sustainable. The more data storage is consumed unnecessarily – files that are kept but not used – the more data centre capacity is required, which has major ripple effects for energy footprints across the globe.

“Do you need to keep all data stored for all time?” Squire asks. “Because if you don’t, then we need to start finding ways of getting stuff off of the internet. If you think about it, the internet also, through the way it's managed, looks at what's in your profile and what is most attractive to you, and it then sends you to that particular link. People have to be educated on the massive potential consequences of their seemingly trivial data usages. We all have a part to play.

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