ICIOE_44_21_08

NEWS:

from

Europe

INTELLIGENCE: Whitepapers from Enel X and Dubai

TRENDING: Transformation and trust in the digital

INFOGRAPHIC: Data indicates two-thirds of businesses will

operating model to focus on employee experience

PROJECT LATEST: Updates from France, Germany, Spain

EDITOR’S QUESTION: What data centre trends are currently

the future of the industry and how should business leaders be

approach?

TALKING BUSINESS:

FEATURE:

a unified multi-cloud

reveals scams

CIO OPINION: Ensuring a resilient, secure and sustainable hybrid

COUNTRY FOCUS: The Netherlands strengthens its

solutions

‘cumulative effect’ of

national

in

and the lessons

to

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EDITOR’S NOTE

ello and welcome to the latest issue of Intelligent CIO Europe where we bring you a roundup of exciting technology trends and developments taking place across the region. We hear from a number of industry experts who offer their best practice advice on various subjects of interest.

On the cover, we have Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB, who tells us how the organisation – as Norway’s largest financial services group – has managed to enhance the customer digital experience and the value delivered through its customer channels.

The company used the services of Denodo and its data virtualisation platform to act as a data marketplace for the data science team. Millar said that DNB continues to make significant strides to leverage data to reconnect and deliver services that are relevant in the daily digital lives of its customers. Read more about this on page 58.

Another interesting feature appearing this month can be found on page 63. We hear from Simon Mair, Head of Information Security and Data Privacy at Brewin Dolphin, who tells us about how the company – as one of the UK’s leading wealth managers – recognises the importance of investing in the protection of client data and about some of the organisation’s priorities when planning its security strategy for the year ahead.

This issue, for our ‘Trending’ feature, Ricardo Ferreira, Principal Cloud Security Architect, Fortinet and Joeri

Van Hoof, Consulting Systems Engineer, Fortinet, tell us about the latest trends and insights around transformation and trust in the digital era. We hear about how cloud is future-proofing businesses across the EMEA region, as well as other hot topics of interest.

This month’s ‘Editor’s Question’ on page 34 sees us ask the experts about the data centre trends that are currently shaping the future of the industry, and how business leaders should be adapting their approach. Experts from Wasabi, Sunbird Software and CBRE offer their opinions.

On page 84, we take a closer look at the customer experience and how it is a critical differentiator for financial organisations. Frederick Tsai, VP, Customer Success, Liferay, highlights how customer behaviour in the financial services industry is changing as advances in technology – and a pandemic – move customers more to remote, online and applications.

To round off, we ‘Get To Know’ Dean Yates, Regional Vice President UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa, Rubrik. We hear how he likes to relax and unwind outside the office, and how he landed in his role.

I hope you enjoy the read and if you’d like to contribute to any upcoming editions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch at alix@lynchpinmedia.co.uk

Alix Pressley Editor

ISA and MBI join forces to offer industrial cybersecurity training in Germany

Forged in response to the changing industrial security landscape and growing cyberthreats to automation networks and systems, the collaboration focuses specifically on training of the VDMA members in OT automation security standards.

Both organisations will share training expertise based on ISA/ IEC 62443, the world’s only consensus-based set of industry cybersecurity standards.

“Cybersecurity needs to be addressed by our members, as recent global ransomware attacks have demonstrated their potential impact,” said Managing Director, Catherine John of MaschinenbauInstitut GmbH (MBI), the education academy of VDMA.

“Our members need to adequately manage the associated cyberrisk stemming from the vulnerabilities of OT technology, coupled with the increased connectivity in our digital era.”

The first activity will be a ‘Cybersecurity Fundamentals’ training for VDMA members, located on the Fraunhofer site in Karlsruhe, Germany.

“ISA is committed to providing quality technical resources that cover all areas of cybersecurity,” said ISA European Director, Pieter van der Klooster. “We are proud to welcome MBI and look forward to working together to disseminate relevant, up-to-date and interesting training materials to our audience.”

Netskope achieves UK National Cybersecurity Centre’s ‘Cyber Essentials’ certification

Netskope, an SASE leader, has announced it has attained the UK government’s National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) core ‘Cyber Essentials’ certification.

The NCSC was created in 2016 to support the most critical organisations in the UK –the public sector, industry, SMEs as well as the general public. When incidents occur, the NCSC provides effective incident response to minimise harm to the UK, help with recovery and learn lessons for the future. Cyber Essentials is a certification process that is designed to support organisations in protecting against cyberattacks. Achieving the NCSC Cyber Essentials accreditation is also a key procurement requirement for participation in government contracts involving the handling of sensitive and personal data.

Neil Thacker, Chief Information Security Officer for EMEA at Netskope, said: “Achieving the Cyber Essentials certification brings a

number of advantages and opportunities for us. First and foremost, it demonstrates our commitment to maintaining a best practice security posture within our organisation. Beyond that, it also demonstrates to our UK customers that we fully understand the need for both fundamental and advanced cybersecurity controls. Having undergone this

process ourselves, we can better understand our customers who also need to certify to Cyber Essentials.”

Netskope serves customers across the UK, including Sainsbury’s, accountancy firm BDO and Euroclear, the company that underpins the London Stock Exchange.

The International Society of Automation (ISA) has announced that Maschinenbau Institut GmbH (MBI), a service company of VDMA (Mechanical Engineering Industry Association), is joining forces with ISA to offer a unique, German ISA cybersecurity training programme.

IT decision ‑ makers expect move to flash ‑ based object storage within next five years

within five years. Notably, France seems most convinced that this Digital Transformation will happen in under three years (76%), followed by Germany (72%) and the UK (43%).

Scality

has announced the results of an independent survey completed by IT decision-makers across the UK, France and Germany. It revealed a fundamental shift in the industry towards flash-based object storage to fuel Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), automation and Big Data analytics in place of other forms of primary storage. All-flash object storage

provides comprehensive data protection of and rapid access to massive volumes of unstructured data, powering the heavy workloads of these digital business initiatives.

The survey indicates that Europe is mature for this change, with 90% of respondents across all three countries stating that this move to all-flash object storage will occur

“As flash becomes available at higher densities and lower costs, it is now suitable for high-capacity data storage,” said Paul Speciale, Chief Product Officer at Scality. “Object storage has begun to embrace flash media and, as the cost of flash decreases, it is likely to become the default media for object storage and will effectively make object storage the new primary storage for a much broader range of applications.”

Not only does all-flash object storage provide extremely high performance, thereby accelerating AI/ML environments, empowering business intelligence/analytics and increasing infrastructure performance and utilisation, it also lowers TCO and improves application development.

ServiceNow announces multi ‑ million euro investment in EU services

ServiceNow, a leading digital workflow company that makes work, work better for people, has announced new service delivery developments that will allow customers to request to have their EU hosted data always handled exclusively within the EU.

This new offering builds on ServiceNow’s existing legal, technical and organisational safeguards and will provide simple solutions to help customers meet their compliance obligations. This is against the backdrop of some of the developments raised by the Schrems II judgment and European Data Protection Board (EDPB) Recommendations issued in June 2021.

Customers and Partners will receive support from EU-based ServiceNow teams, with an EU, cloud-hosted digital workflow solution without impact on current delivery and service.

To support the new offering, ServiceNow will be making a multi-million euro investment, including opening over 80 new roles across the EU. Current ServiceNow customers will have the opportunity to opt-in to this offering, at no additional cost, from early 2022.

Mark Cockerill, Vice President Legal, EMEA and Global Head of Privacy, ServiceNow,

said: “With any regulation change, cloud services companies have a choice. They can adopt a ‘wait and see’ approach or get proactive and help customers and partners innovate. At ServiceNow we are on the front foot, continually investing in our customers, allowing them to operate with the highest level of choice and control over their EU data.”

Former Bank of England CIO joins Co ‑ op Group as CTO

On Elsey’s appointment, Khoury-Haq, said: “The last 16 months have shown us the increasing importance of technology and digital propositions – the role they play in our colleagues’, customers’ and members’ lives is here to stay.

“Also, as part of our ‘Co-operating for a Fairer World’ vision, our digital tools helped us engage with the local causes that most needed our support during the pandemic.

“Rob will play an instrumental part in helping us to maintain and build momentum in our marketplaces, as well as make meaningful differences to the lives of our members and communities.”

Elsey has previously worked with several global brands, including Vodafone, Cable and Wireless and most recently the Bank of England. He has also previously been listed in the top 50 UK CIOs and most influential technology leaders.

Shirine

Khoury-Haq, Chief Financial Officer and CEO Life Services at the Co-op, has announced that Bank of England CIO, Rob Elsey will be joining the group before the end of the year. Elsey has been appointed Chief Technology Officer, reporting directly into Khoury-Haq, to drive the group’s digital and technology ambitions, which are a key priority for the Co-op.

On his appointment, Elsey said: “This position comes at such an exciting time – both technology and digital products are bringing so much opportunity right now, there’s real potential to develop what the Co-op does for members and customers, as part of delivering its vision.”

Darktrace launches UK internship programme with CyberFirst to boost cyberskills

Darktrace, a leading cybersecurity AI company, has announced that it has launched an internship programme in partnership with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre’s (NCSC) CyberFirst initiative.

CyberFirst encourages young people from all walks of life to start careers in cybersecurity, giving university students the opportunity to work with key players in the industry.

The placements aim to help create a workforce that is equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary to tackle tomorrow’s security challenges and keep the UK safe and resilient against future cyberthreats.

The eight-week internship will give the students training in the foundations of cybersecurity, enabling them to see how AI is used to detect and respond to realworld cyberthreats, and will allow them to experience various cybersecurity roles

within Darktrace from its offices in London and Cambridge.

“We are delighted to be welcoming our first interns as part of the NCSC’s CyberFirst programme,” said Toby Lewis, Head of Threat Analysis, Darktrace.

“Cybersecurity is an exciting new industry which offers a range of stimulating and challenging career paths, and we look forward to introducing the students to some of these roles at Darktrace and give them a taste of what their future jobs could look like.”

Nokia to deploy 5G SA private wireless networking for KUKA, Germany

potential of 5G’s fast, reliable and secure connectivity. By partnering with Nokia for private wireless networking, we have now established a long-term development roadmap that will allow us to capitalise on the new capabilities in future 5G releases for our automation solutions.”

Nokia has announced that KUKA, a leading manufacturer of industrial robots and automation solutions, will deploy Nokia 5G SA private wireless networking at KUKA’s Smart Production and Development Centre in Augsburg, Germany.

KUKA is planning to deploy 5G technology in its intelligent robotics and automation

solutions and the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud (DAC) campus networking and application platform will support product development with immediate effect.

Michael Wagner, Director R&D, Competence Centre Control Technology, KUKA, said: “In coming years, KUKA will develop solutions that harness the

Through the deployment of a 5G private wireless network, KUKA will ensure that it can maximise the potential of upcoming 3GPP Releases 16 and 17. In network deployment, Nokia DAC’s manager portal will enable KUKA to configure the network to its specific requirements.

As part of the multi-year subscription contract, Nokia will also support KUKA with network deployment, operation support services and training, enabling integration of new use cases that include new 5G-based interfaces and components for the KUKA solution portfolio.

UK Cyber Security Council calls for organisations to recommit to professional development

The UK Cyber Security Council – the self-regulatory body for the cybersecurity education and skills sector – has issued a rallying call for industries to recommit to investment in cybersecurity skills development as they transition back to regular working practices following the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research by the London School of Economics during lockdown revealed that organisations’ approaches to training have shifted, with firms increasingly taking the quick-fix approach through recruitment rather than a broader training approach across wider teams. The total number of days trained per trainee in the UK dropped from 7.8 in 2011 to 6.4 in 2017, a fall of 18%, while total training expenditure per trainee fell by 17%. The decline applies across a variety of sectors, including cybersecurity.

This trend has worsened during the pandemic, which has forced many companies to either

scale back spending or simply to try to meet the challenge of delivering existing training programmes and course materials to a newly remote workforce.

The skills challenge is supported by the latest data from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which revealed that 30% of

cyber firms have found it hard to fill generalist roles (where employees are expected to work in a range of cybersecurity areas).

Shortages also exist in specialist roles, senior management roles, penetration testing and security architecture – all pointing to a shortfall in employee development.

Alpine F1 Team joins forces with FireEye Mandiant to protect data across operations

The team will benefit from Mandiant’s profound understanding of planning and risk management as it relies increasingly on Artificial Intelligence, connectivity between international locations, digital communication and advanced data capture across multiple platforms including telemetry, driver simulators and, of course, the cars on track.

Laurent Rossi, Chief Executive Officer, Alpine, said: “In Formula One, success is achieved by taking humans and technology to the limit while minimising risk. The fastest cars in the world are also among the safest and we needed a strategic partner who could help us extend the same approach to our data, the digital reflection of who we are. Mandiant will thus cover a critical aspect of our engineering operations and is a welcome new member of our Technical Partners family.”

Alpine F1 Team is pleased to announce a new strategic partnership with FireEye Mandiant, one of the most trusted cybersecurity providers in the world. As an organisation constantly analysing and finding new ways to combat cyberthreats, Mandiant will help Alpine F1 Team stay one step ahead of cyberthreats, so it can focus on pushing the boundaries of technology and innovation – both on and off-track.

Kevin Taylor, Senior Vice President, EMEA, FireEye Mandiant, said: “We are pleased to be working with Alpine F1 Team to help protect its employees and the intellectual property behind its F1 car with the latest Mandiant cybersecurity solutions.

“I am confident that together we will tackle the new challenges of cybersecurity in the automotive industry, over the 23 races of the F1 championship and beyond.”

Heart Aerospace closes US$35 million Series A round to build electric plane

Heart Aerospace, a company building a 19-seater electric aeroplane, has raised a US$35 million Series A round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, United Airlines Ventures and Mesa Air Group. In addition, Heart’s seed investors, EQT Ventures, and Lowercarbon Capital, have participated in the round.

As part of the agreement, United and Mesa have together placed purchase orders, subject to terms, for 200 aircraft, the ES-19, with options for an additional 100 planes.

“I can’t imagine a stronger coalition of partners to advance our mission to electrify short-haul air travel,” said Anders Forslund, CEO of Heart Aerospace. “There’s BEV – the world’s most influential climate fund. There’s United – one of the world’s largest airlines, which is poised to be the global leader in decarbonising air travel, and there’s Mesa, the largest operator of 19-seater aircraft in history. This combination of near-term commercial viability and long-term climate investment philosophy is exactly what we need to make commercial electric air travel a reality.”

“Aviation is such a critical piece of our global economy. At the same time, it’s a major source of carbon emissions and one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonise,” said Carmichael Roberts,

Breakthrough Energy Ventures. “We believe electric aircraft can be transformational in reducing the emissions of the industry, and enable low cost, quiet and clean regional travel on a broad scale. Heart’s visionary team is developing an aircraft around its proprietary electric propulsion technology that will allow airlines to operate at a fraction of the cost of today and has the potential to change the way we fly.”

SAP announces €1/4 billion investment in the UK over the next five years

at UK data centres. As organisations increasingly require cloud services that ensure data is managed and stored in country, especially in the public sector, the SAP UK Data Cloud offering will enable SAP to deliver its product suite to organisations demanding these criteria. The launch will initially include the company’s cloud ERP system SAP S/4HANA, its SAP SuccessFactors human experience management solutions and its SAP Business Technology Platform. The company plans to provide its wider product portfolio through SAP UK Data Cloud in the future.

SAP has announced significant investment in the UK as part of its growth strategy, further strengthening its marketleading position as a provider of cloudbased solutions and services to help the organisations in the UK run better.

The company will launch SAP UK Data Cloud, a highly secure UK-based cloud

offering. SAP will also establish new offices in London and Manchester, further develop the company’s award-winning internship programme and increase spend with the nation’s social enterprises.

With SAP UK Data Cloud, the company will provide cloud solutions and services delivered using hyperscaler infrastructure

SAP, working with SAP National Security Services, (SAP NS2), has developed SAP UK Data Cloud to specifically support the nation’s Critical National Infrastructure, organisations working in the public sector, regulated industries in areas such as healthcare, central and local government, policing, utilities and financial services.

VisitWallonia and Orange Belgium introduce a real ‑ time crowd measurement service

VisitWallonia and Orange Belgium will soon be deploying an innovative tool that enables everyone to get real-time information on the crowds in Wallonia´s various tourist zones. After a first phase of tests, the goal is to permit citizens and tourists to benefit from Walloon tourist sites without concern.

The tool will be made available free of charge during the summer season so people can optimally plan their visits and trips by profiting from less frequented zones.

The tool works by anonymising and aggregating the number of mobile connections to the Orange Belgium network within a defined zone. This measurement is then extrapolated to all mobile users of all networks of this zone and the result is converted into a simple colour code, from ‘red’ (highly-frequented zone) to ‘green’ (calm zone without large crowds). A zone’s density colour is calculated on the basis of the average number of mobile connections during the course of the last 30 minutes, dynamically compared with preceding measurements.

It is important to emphasise that the tool strictly respects the privacy of citizens, since no personal data is collected for its functioning and the results of the crowd measurements are systematically aggregated.

Valérie de Bue, Minister of the Civil Service, Tourism, Heritage and Road Safety, said: “This is a first initiative reflecting Wallonia’s determination to strengthen the digitalisation of the tourism sector so as to respond to the needs and expectations of an ever more connected clientele.”

DLA Piper advises Azrieli Group on acquisition of Norwegian data centre developer

average period of approx. 7.5 years. Green Mountain also has future construction and development potential at these and additional sites of approx. 520 MW.

DLA Piper has advised Israeli real estate investor, Azrieli, on its acquisition of Green Mountain, a Norwegian data centre developer, for NOK7.6 billion.

Green Mountain is a private company incorporated in Norway in 2009, operating in the field of server farms. Its three main areas of operations are: (a) planning and

construction of server farms with highlevel information security; (b) provision of advanced service farm services to organisations and wholesale customers; and (c) highly-efficient operation of server farms, using 100% renewable energies. The company operates three server farms in Norway and, to date, has signed contracts for approx. 24 MW with customers for an

Nokia modernises Red Electrica communications network

Nokia has announced that it will provide Red Eléctrica de España (REE) with an IP/MPLS network and DWDM (Dense WaveDivision Multiplexing) optical transport network, which will upgrade REE’s existing network.

REE is the Spanish transmission system operator (TSO) responsible for the transmission of electricity nationwide, including the Canary and Balearic islands.

The new IP/MPLS and optical transport networks from Nokia will provide significantly more bandwidth to the utility sector and its subscribers and improve efficiencies. It will support a new generation of IP-based applications that will play a key role in everything from IoT-based asset management to managing distributed energy resources such as rooftop solar and residential power storage.

Services supported by the Nokia network include sub-station communications, low-latency communication of IoT sensor data for measurement, protection and control and time synchronisation of devices. The network will also support operational control systems such as SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) and line protection, as well as synchrophasors (PMUs – phasor measurement units), which are one of the key applications for enabling highly accurate and dynamic analysis of the state of an electrical system.

Azrieli Group is Israel’s largest real estate group, which has built and operates Israel’s leading nationwide chain of incomeproducing properties. The acquisition of Green Mountain is a key milestone in realising the group’s strategy for building international operations in the data centre sector. the combination of its operations in North America and Green Mountain in Europe will allow it to become a significant global player in this growing and developing arena.

Magnus L Lutnaes, Partner, DLA Piper, said: “The Scandinavian market and in particular Norway, is experiencing outstanding growth in the data centre market as it benefits from an exceptional availability of power, alongside power costs among the lowest in Europe.”

Manuel López Cormenzana, Director of Transmission Infrastructure Maintenance at Red Eléctrica de España, said: “REE is a key player in the energy transition and the challenges we face are clear and we must be able to anticipate them, so we need to have the best tools with which to carry out our mission with the highest possible quality, safety and efficiency”.

Kohler announces multi ‑ million investment in genset production capabilities

generators it produces per annum, while also introducing a new range of walk-in enclosures.

“The Brest plant provides a one-stop-shop approach to generator supply – from design and manufacture to testing and inspection, all under one roof,” said Jacky Pluchon, Vice President EMEA Power Solutions at Kohler.

Power systems supplier, Kohler, is to make a multi-million-dollar investment over the next five years in its production site in northwest France to meet rapidly increasing demand for generators in the data centre market.

The work at the 42,800m2 Brest plant in Brittany will result in expanded manufacturing

and logistics facilities and upgraded dock infrastructure to support higher-capacity shipment by sea.

Kohler manufactures around 17,000 generators per year in Brest, with power nodes ranging from 7.5 to 4,500 kVA. The investment will allow it to increase the number of large

“The facility has undergone sustained investment recently and this additional upgrade will boost its capabilities further still. Demand for generators from the data centre market is rising sharply and this work will ensure that we can continue to meet customer needs on projects all over the world.”

Phase one of the upgrade, to be completed imminently, will result in two of the main docks being significantly enlarged and new lifting beams put in place. The existing doors to the docks will also be made higher and wider to accommodate larger generator designs.

Lumen expands its fibre network in Europe

As the fourth Industrial Revolution continues to accelerate business demand for high-speed broadband and presence in the cloud, Lumen Technologies has expanded its fibre network infrastructure in Europe, strengthening its service capabilities in France, Switzerland and Spain.

These strategic network expansions put high-performance fibre closer to end-users to deliver faster connections, lower latency and enhanced security, for an exceptional customer experience.

The infrastructure extends fibre reach in and between major hubs of business and finance, bringing connectivity to new cities and providing dense coverage in key areas to connect multiple enterprise buildings and third-party data centres to the robust Lumen network.

In France and Switzerland, Lumen increased its footprint with the construction of a unique new fibre route of more than 180 miles between Lyon, France and Geneva, Switzerland, connecting three new cities, Grenoble, Chambéry and Annecy. The length of the national Lumen network rings is approximately 3,500 route miles in France and 420 route miles in Switzerland.

In Spain, Lumen completed its national fibre ring by adding a new segment of more than 170 route miles between the city of Salou and the French border. Additionally, Lumen built a new metro network in

Barcelona and connected to the MAREA trans-Atlantic subsea cable landing station in Sopelana. The national Lumen network ring in Spain is approximately 1,060 route miles.

“Our new fibre infrastructure investments in Europe demonstrate the continued commitment that Lumen has to this market,” said Annette Murphy, Managing Director, EMEA, Lumen Technologies.

a

help

Ericsson and Vodafone deploy 5G Core SA for pre

commercial operation in Spain

The simplified SA architecture in RAN and the devices, together with streamlined operations and combined with the new network capabilities from 5G, will bring drastic improvements to mobile networks, including ultra-low latency, improved 5G capacity and greater coverage.

The provided dual-mode 5G Core solution which includes products from Ericsson’s Cloud Packet Core and Cloud Unified Data Management and Policy portfolios, offers a common multi-access and cloud-native platform that supports 5G and as well as previous generations for optimised footprint and TCO efficiency.

Vodafone Spain has selected Ericsson as its technology partner to deploy the first pre-commercial network 5G Core Standalone (SA) in Spain and will support its entire cloud-native 5G Core for standalone 5G network applications included in this launch. Ericsson’s dualmode 5G Core will allow Vodafone to develop and test new use cases leveraging the characteristics of 5G standalone technology, enabling its customers to experience 5G’s full potential.

The solution provides full integration and interoperability with current Vodafone’s network. It also provides interworking with Vodafone’s existing Evolved Packet Core (EPC), Vodafone CDR Repository and Ericsson User Data Consolidation solution, with the aim to provide 4G/5G services interoperability for seamless experience to Vodafone Spain users.

Luisa Muñoz, Head of Digital Services, Ericsson Iberia, said: “After many years of outstanding collaboration between the two companies in the different Core technologies, now we have moved forward with the introduction of 5G Core and we’re continuing to support Vodafone on its digital journey.”

Infosys to launch Automotive Digital Technology and Innovation Centre in Stuttgart

Infosys, a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, has announced the launch of its Automotive Digital Technology and Innovation Centre in Stuttgart, Germany, building on its strategic commitment to drive innovation and IT infrastructure transformation in the sector.

The new centre brings together automotive and IT experts from across Germany into a space for shared knowledge, skills and innovation. As a part of Infosys’ partnership with Daimler, automotive IT infrastructure experts based in Germany will transition from Daimler AG to the new Digital Technology and Innovation Centre.

Encouraging sustainable growth within the German automotive sector, it will provide its customers with tools to meet the country’s growing demand for electric vehicles.

Infosys aims to create a gold standard for Germany’s automotive and manufacturing companies to accelerate and standardise technology adoption. It will provide training and innovation labs and focus on industry transformation, including the infrastructure required to design future and advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, automation and electrification. The centre will also spotlight Infosys’ commitment to championing sustainability,

leveraging resources such as a data centre operating on 100% renewable energy and zero water consumption.

Through the new centre, Infosys will support leading German automotive company, Daimler AG, strengthen its IT and data centre infrastructure and drive competitive edge in line with its ambitions to standardise, consolidate, scale and transform to Net Zero with seamless customer experience. p

WHY ENERGY STRATEGY IS KEY TO DATA CENTRE GROWTH

iIntroduction

The global pandemic and resulting lockdown have brought society’s growing dependence on data into sharp focus. Whether due to remote working or home entertainment, the increase in video streaming alone caused a 40% surge in data between February and April 2020.

Even before lockdown, our data consumption was on a well-established long-term growth trajectory. Gartner predicts that 30% of the workforce will be working from home by 2024. Data centre electricity use is likely to increase about fifteen-fold by 2030 to 8% of projected total global electricity demand.

To meet this increase in electricity use, and keep carbon emissions to a minimum, data centre operators need an energy strategy now more than ever.

Business drivers

Climate change. Without action, more data will lead to more emissions

When we think about industrial greenhouse gas emissions, we usually think of traditional carbonintensive sectors like transport, agriculture or construction. But data centres and network communications companies are consuming everincreasing amounts of energy. Data centres use an estimated 200 TWh each year, creating CO2 equivalent to 0.3% of the world’s carbon emissions. This may seem small, but the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) ecosystem as a whole (including personal digital devices, mobile-phone networks and televisions) accounts for more than 2% of global emissions. Meanwhile, ICT energy consumption is increasing by 9% every year. p

PRESENTED

DUBAI COMMERCITY –THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS

PRESENTED

E-COMMERCE MARKET IN GCC and MENASA REGION

Exponential growth opportunities:

Ÿ The e-commerce retail market in the Middle East and Africa is expected to grow by 20% in the next 5 years to reach USD 26 billion in 2022, which outpaces the global growth of 13%

Ÿ GCC is predicted to contribute 43% by year 2022 of MEA’s e-commerce retail market (Source: Euromonitor database)

Ÿ Smart phone usage reaches almost 100% among GCC millennials

Ÿ UAE has the highest smartphone penetration rate in the world of 83%, along with Saudi Arabia, which is not far behind at 68% (Source: Newzoo’s 2018 Global Mobile Market report)

Ÿ GCC has a high adoption rate of social media with over 70% of the population using social networking sites daily

DUBAI THE CITY OF DREAMS

Dubai is one of the most diverse cosmopolitan cities in the world and has become a center of trade and commerce for the entire region.

Ÿ Located at the heart of the crossroads of the trade routes of East and West, Europe and Asia

Ÿ Growing and diverse economy

Ÿ World-class infrastructure

Ÿ Safe place to live and do business

Ÿ Business-friendly government policies

Ÿ Global events destination

Ÿ 200+ nationalities living in Dubai

Ÿ Home for renowned multinational companies

Ÿ Diversified and skilled manpower

Innovation and knowledge hub

YOUR GATEWAY TO CONNECTIVITY

World’s no.1 airport for international passengers

Ÿ 2.4 billion consumers within a 5 hour flight distance

Ÿ The airport serves more than 240 destinations

Ÿ Dubai International Airport (DXB) is the busiest hub for international airfreight in the MENA region

Ÿ 2.64 million tons of cargo in 2018

DUBAI COMMERCITY

Dubai CommerCity is the first and only free zone dedicated to the growing e-commerce market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It is an investment of AED 3.2 billion spread over an area of approximately 2.1 million square feet.

Dubai CommerCity provides a unique e-commerce ecosystem to global and regional brands to help them set up and operate their e-commerce business in the MENA region.

Dubai CommerCity further strengthens Dubai’s position as a leading platform for international businesses by attracting and hosting international foreign-owned companies, providing them with a comprehensive ecosystem to fulfil all their needs from facilities, logistics, technology, marketing, regulatory and social services. This endeavor will further support Dubai’s digital transformation strategies by promoting the smart economy branded around digital commerce, smart logistics, smart offices and smart ICT infrastructure.

Dubai CommerCity will be primarily targeting the global and regional manufacturers, as well as the global and regional brick-and-click distributors and retailers who would like to set up their direct e-commerce operations out of Dubai CommerCity to serve the entire GCC and the broader MENASA region. p

Download whitepapers free from www. intelligentcio.com/ eu/whitepapers/

TRANSFORMATION AND TRUST IN THE DIGITAL ERA

The Fortinet sponsored 2021 Cloud Security report highlighted numerous interesting finds, with time to market and customer responsiveness topping the list of business outcomes that organisations said they had realised by moving to cloud. But with multi cloud set to be a key element of enterprises’ strategies, it’s crucial to enable consistent security, connectivity and visibility across these environments in order to stay ahead of cyberthreats. Intelligent CIO Europe sat down with Ricardo Ferreira, Principal Cloud Security Architect, Fortinet, and Joeri Van Hoof, Consulting Systems Engineer, Fortinet, to find out more about the latest trends and insights around transformation and trust in the digital era.

hHow is cloud future-proofing businesses across the EMEA region?

RF: From my perspective, working with customers in highly regulated industries such as banking, there’s certainly been an uptick in cloud usage.

Many new insurers, for example, are trying to leverage AI and they do that based on having access to a cloud platform. I also see the banking and capital markets using cloud in order to be more competitive, to enable that faster time to market and increase competitiveness with FinTechs and challenger banks.

Across the sector, I'm seeing cloud being adopted to power new ways of working and to enable predictive

analytics, Big Data and so on. Telco is another area, with cloud playing a major role in 5G and Contact Centresas-a-Service to improve customer relationships.

JVH: Another example is Operational Technology where cloud is used for predictive maintenance across industrial control systems. What role do you see cloud playing in organisations looking ahead and how is this impacting the role of the CIO?

RF: Cloud is reshaping businesses and is acting as a catalyst for Digital Transformation, enabling faster time to market, more innovation and, as a result, more talent. It also enables organisations to access analytics,

Big Data and AI to predict things before they happen. This creates a predictive paradigm, instead of reactive. That's important because one thing that the CIO and wider team is concerned about is making sure that the organisation is also self-service.

This means they can actually use APIs to interact and have a shared single source of truth. So that generates a new API economy.

CIOs have been forced to adapt under pressure to innovate and improve agility while at the same time taking security into account. I think this will redefine the relationship between CIOs and CISOs because security is paramount and can also be brought in during this transformational event.

JVH: We have those building blocks and different public clouds that may look the same from the outside, but each of them works differently with its own unique advantages.

I think the CIO will be the broker here and assess which cloud will be best for a particular project. It depends on a number of different factors, whether it be costs, ease of operation within a specific cloud or whether the service and technology is better in one versus the other.

Done right, cloud can be an opportunity to improve security. Do you agree?

RF: I think it represents an opportunity to build in security from inception as organisations go through this massive disruption. While security has historically been on the back burner, this major transformation enables security to be seen as a first-class citizen.

JVH: On the one hand, there is reduced risk and improved security because of some of the building blocks that are secure by default. But we shouldn't think that everything is secure by default – there are still things that you need to investigate and processes you need to put in place.

That’s sometimes forgotten. More and more customers have security top of mind, but we can still do better and need to continue to advocate for security to be built in early on.

What are the internal transitions that organisations need to go through in order to seize this opportunity and improve their security posture?

JVH: If customers or partners come to me and say they want to deploy a shiny new application or piece of technology, I always start by asking what the purpose of it is. Does it need to run 24/7, for example, and what are the criteria? You need to start with the people. This also applies to training.

First, people, then processes and technology will definitely follow.

RF: I normally use this phrase from Peter Drucker: ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. And that could not be truer. We can have the best strategy but if we don't have the culture and people to support that, it will all crumble to pieces.

The cloud security report indicates that the majority of organisations are actually using two or more cloud providers. Is that something that you see and what impact is it having on security?

RF: From my perspective, highly regulated industries have something called ‘risk concentration’ which essentially means that they shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket. They actually need to use two or more cloud providers in order to share risk across them. That's something that I see very often with my customers.

That’s super important because our report highlighted that misconfiguration and other issues can be a very damaging risk. With the cloud, you use ‘tokens’ which we should think about as the keys to the kingdom.

If a bad actor gets access to those tokens, they access your environment and then they can horizontally scan and see what’s around.

Bringing in security by design and making a shift to proactive security will be a major change and will bring about a new relationship between the CIO and CISO.

JVH: What we see more and more is a multi-cloud approach where organisations pick and choose based on the unique capabilities of the different cloud providers. For example, if a company is using AWS to host their website and their business application and they're using Microsoft 365, they are already multicloud. They have two different attack surfaces that they need to defend against.

The question is, how do you get these clouds to talk to each other and then ensure visibility across all of them?

Ricardo Ferreira, Principal Cloud Security Architect, Fortinet

CIOs have been forced to adapt under pressure to innovate and improve agility while at the same time taking security into account.

Joeri Van Hoof, Consulting Systems Engineer, Fortinet

That’s where we need to have the proper tools. The good thing with cloud is that everything's API-driven, so I can get all the information out of these portals using API.

minutes and it's ready to go because we have those templates and best practices contained within that system and using that as a blueprint to get you started makes it much easier.

Cloud providers are also doing the same thing – they have their concept of landing zones for example where we can tie in and provide that security as well. The fascinating thing is that we can obstruct, but in the end, also gain that extra security there.

JVH: If we look at what we have available at Fortinet, we have a lot of things predefined. When I started 20 years ago, installing firewalls and so on, it took two or three days to get everything set up and get the hardware in place, etc.

Now, deploying a firewall within public cloud or deploying a service in public cloud takes five to 10

Can you tell us about the specific elements and capabilities of Fortinet solutions and approach to security that customers say they find particularly helpful?

JVH: Many of our solutions are completely cloudbased, for example, our FortiWeb, which is our web application firewall construct. We've totally revamped that as a fully cloud native service. It runs inside of the different cloud providers, so we support AWS, Azure, GCP, as well as Oracle. Once you set up your website or your API service through that service, we will automatically detect in which cloud you're running.

Based on that, we will select the closest data centre that we have to run the security scrubbing. Secondly, FortiGuard Labs, our threat intelligence arm, gathers information from all of our different data points across the Internet and we use sandboxing and leverage Machine Learning and AI to reduce false positives.

RF: Fortinet is also committed to innovation. We are supporting, for instance, the latest on containers. Our products leverage Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and we statistically analyse the traffic to detect malicious patterns.

We also cover some on-premise and have on-premise products. And while that's not the cloud, it's important. Why? Because no CIO is going to the board and saying they’re switching everything to the cloud tomorrow That's not going to happen. It's a journey.

Fortinet has the portfolio to cover that entire state and that journey – for when the customer needs security protection on-prem and when they need it in public cloud. We offer a single pane of glass that provides visibility across environments.

Fortinet also has a consulting offering which can help customers understand their security posture while they're migrating into the cloud and help them through that journey, either with best practices and by giving them advice on alignment to industry leading frameworks as well. p

The report findings state that the features teams found most useful in cloud security solutions were integration and customisation. Why is this and how can these capabilities help not only in improving security posture, but in helping organisations achieve success in delivering on their business objectives?

Bringing in security by design and making a shift to proactive security will be a major change and will bring about a new relationship between the CIO and CISO.

Data indicates two-thirds of businesses will change operating model to focus on employee experience

The results show that more alignment with employees is needed but nearly half of businesses plan tech investments to further improve the workplace experience. The findings consider how the pandemic has shaped the workplace experience for over 1,100 business leaders and employees worldwide.

Global business leaders are out of touch with what employees want in the hybrid workplace experience and 66% of organisations plan to adopt a different operating model than they had before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new survey from Unisys Corporation.

A majority (61%) of these organisations say these new models are designed to ensure employee safety and to achieve more productivity (47%). Almost two-thirds (64%) say the key driver for them is to create a better overall employee experience.

Further key highlights from the survey include:

Ÿ While work location and schedule that is conducive to family life is important for 66% of employees, only 49% of business leaders see this as important.

Ÿ 51% of employees said that empowering teams and individuals is crucial, but here the

discrepancy was even higher with only 31% of businesses acknowledging this.

Ÿ On the other hand, 55% of business leaders say that access to the most up-to-date technology for the task at hand is key to an ideal employee experience. This is only important to 43% of employees.

Similarly, business leaders show much more concern around the practicalities of remote working than employees:

Ÿ For 38% of business leaders, difficulties communicating and working with other team members is a concern. Only 24% of employees agree.

Ÿ 38% are concerned about the lack of management oversight and visibility as a result of home working, compared to only 7% of employees.

Ÿ While 38% are worried about potential difficulties accessing data, only 11% of employees believe this is a challenge.

Overall, employees are far more positive about the new remote working model, with 33% not seeing any or only seeing a few noticeable challenges that come

with remote working. The Unisys-sponsored research surveyed more than 1,100 respondents, including business leaders and employees, across 15 countries: Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK and the US. p

55% of business leaders say that access to the most up ‑ to ‑ date technology for the task at hand is key to an ideal employee experience.

FRANCE

The French industrial company, Verkor, has announced that it has raised €100 million in funding. Co-led by EQT Ventures and Renault Group, with participation from the French Government and Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region, the funding will support the company’s expansion and trigger the construction of the Verkor Innovation Centre (VIC) where the advanced battery cells and modules will be designed to support Europe’s net-zero goals.

GERMANY

Corero Network Security, a leading provider of real-time, automatic Distributed-Denial-of-Service (DDoS) cyberdefence solutions, and Juniper Networks, a leader in secure, AI-driven networks, team up to provide Plusnet, an organisation offering communications and network services to 25,000 businesses in Germany, with their joint DDoS Protection Solution to protect its infrastructure, business and customers within seconds of a DDoS attack.

SPAIN

Radware, a leading provider of cybersecurity and application delivery solutions, and Fujitsu have announced an expanded partnership to enable increased traffic capacity for two Spanish healthcare organisations necessitated by the use of remote access during the COVID-19 pandemic. To overcome the operational challenges that these customers faced, Fujitsu implemented Radware’s Alteon Application Delivery Controller (ADC). Alteon now provides these healthcare organisations with network load balancing for all web, cloud and mobile-based applications.

AUSTRIA

Aptean, a global provider of mission-critical enterprise software solutions, has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Ramsauer and Stürmer, a leading provider of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software in Austria. The transaction will provide Aptean with an expanded geographic presence in the Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH) region, where demand for digital business solutions increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

WHAT DATA CENTRE TRENDS ARE CURRENTLY SHAPING THE FUTURE OF THE INDUSTRY AND HOW SHOULD BUSINESS LEADERS BE ADAPTING THEIR APPROACH?

The past year has seen many of us working from home and spending a lot more time using streaming services and staying indoors. This has caused a greater demand on data centres worldwide leading to increased sales of equipment. Additionally, demand will also be driven by 5G data, Internet of Things (IoT) applications, the evolution of Edge Computing and local data centres which will all impact this market significantly in the coming years.

A key area for data centres is thermal management. Most data centres rely on air-conditioned rooms and large heat sinks for the individual components. However, in the future, this may not be feasible for all cases, especially in smaller Edge Computing sites. Power consumption is always a big concern for data centres and hence we expect to see more passively cooled centres, leading to a more careful selection of thermal materials. Direct liquid cooling or even immersion cooling is seeing some greater interest in recent years but regardless of the overall thermal strategy adopted, the considerations around Thermal Interface Materials (TIMs) are crucial.

TIMs are required to transfer heat from the operating component to its heatsink. In a data centre, TIMs can be found on processors and chipsets on sever boards, various switch and supervisor components and in the power supplies, to name a few locations.

Many have used and continue to use typical thermal greases for their TIM in data centres, while these present good thermal conductivity and

easy application, they are susceptible to pumpout and becoming brittle over time. This limits thermal performance in the long run and requires maintenance on the system. Alternative forms of TIMs such as pads and phase change materials are gaining traction, enabling even easier application and longer lifetimes.

Another key trend for data centres is the increasing power density. 1 kW per rack may have been considered a high power density in the past, but in 2018, the average was closer to 7 kW. However, for many large data centres, 15 kW per rack may be more typical, with some reaching 20 kW or more.

A critical challenge with this increase is managing the heat generated. This is another key driver for higher performance and longer lifetime TIMs, a trend that will only continue to grow in importance.

The report from IDTechEx, Thermal Interface Materials 2021–2031: Technologies, Markets and Opportunities, considers the forms and compositions of TIMs, benchmarks commercial products and details new advanced materials.

It also analyses current TIM applications in emerging markets as well as the key drivers and requirements in these areas such as electric vehicle batteries, data centres, LEDs, 4G and 5G infrastructure, smartphones, tablets and laptops. In addition, 10-year granular market forecasts are given for each of these segments in terms of application area and tonnage.

DAVID FRIEND, CEO AND FOUNDER OF WASABI

In 2017, thousands of websites across South Korea went offline for weeks as a result of a ransomware attack on the web-hosting firm, Nayana. Even after paying a then-record US$1 million ransom, hundreds of customer websites could not be recovered and thousands more were left in business limbo as they waited for Nayana to go back online.

Over the following months, it was revealed that Nayana had suffered a direct attack on its Linux servers at its data centre – one of the first publicised instances of a whole data centre being compromised by a ransomware attack.

In the four years since the attack, the threat of ransomware has continued to grow for both data centre operators and enterprises in virtually every industry.

The ransomware threat doesn’t just beget a deadweight loss in terms of either forcing data centre operators to pay out a ransom, or allowing their data to be irrevocably lost.

Suffering a ransomware attack, especially one that brings down client-side operations, means a tremendous loss in productivity and customer confidence.

Given how lucrative this practice is for cybercriminals and the ongoing rise of cryptocurrencies that can facilitate ransom extraction, this is a trend the data centre industry must adapt to.

In the past, the only entry point from ransomware was usually a single on-premise user who succumbed to a phishing email. However, with the increasing sophistication of hackers, it’s now possible for security lapses in a client or a technology partner to provide an

entry point for a ransomware package to laterally move into a data centre.

That means that hardening the data centre needs to be a top priority. Security experts generally emphasise the importance of keeping systems patched, but it’s important to recognise that hackers can be one step ahead of your software and firmware.

That’s why data centre leaders need to push for the adoption of extensive analytics in their data centres to monitor traffic on servers and networks, so as to be able to spot unusual behaviour.

This should be complemented by the use of white lists to restrict processes and applications allowed to run on servers, so as to prevent the deployment of many ransomware packages.

Another important factor for industry leaders to consider is ensuring that, alongside keeping their existing systems patched, they also avoid using obsolete systems in their data centres.

Legacy hardware and software can present an easy access point for malware of all sorts, including ransomware, and can risk compromising your entire data centre.

Suffering a ransomware attack, especially one that brings down client‑side operations, means a tremendous loss in productivity and customer confidence.

The data centre industry is currently undergoing a multitude of transformations that are permanently changing how data centres are managed, but three trends are shaping up to have the largest impact.

Ÿ Sustainability. According to KPMG, 80% of all worldwide companies (and 90% of the largest companies) now report on their sustainability. 30 years ago, that figure was just 12%. Sustainability has become a primary concern for customers, stakeholders and government regulators as they seek to reduce environmental impact, maximise efficiency and lower operating expenses. While large-scale data centres and cloud operators are looking towards hyper-efficiency and zero carbon footprints in the coming decades, sustainability is now a concern for all data centre professionals, raising the bar for the entire industry. Data centre managers need to understand the impact on sustainability when making decisions about whether workloads will be done in owneroperated/colo data centres or in the cloud.

Ÿ Hybrid. IDC expects that by 2022, more than 90% of enterprises worldwide will rely on a mix of on-premises/dedicated private clouds, multiple public clouds and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs. Yet, about 30% of organisations say that migration to the cloud is a key challenge. Data centre managers are faced with big decisions about where their workloads will take place. They need to weigh up

many factors including cost, time-to-market, risk factors, security concerns and whether efficiency improvements would enable them to take on more workloads in owner-operated/colocation data centres. As organisations tailor their workloads and spending based on their own unique needs, both cloud computing and enterprise data centres are poised to play major roles in the IT mix for modern businesses.

Ÿ Decentralisation and Edge Computing. According to Gartner, more than 75% of all enterprise-generated data will be created and processed outside of the traditional data centre or cloud by 2025. Instead, much of this data will be handled at decentralised Edge sites. Modern infrastructure managers are faced with more sites, more remote assets and unique requirements that are causing them to rethink the management paradigm. Without the ability to go onsite, they still need to maximise utilisation of space and power resources, issue work orders to remote hands, monitor the health of all sites, track all assets and connections, and secure all sites and equipment. To achieve this, leading experts are developing comprehensive remote infrastructure management strategies supported by intelligent hardware, environment sensors, remote security equipment and remote monitoring, tracking and operations software.

Data centre managers need to be able to adapt to these trends or risk falling behind. Industry experts are deploying second-generation DCIM software to turn the challenges of modern data centre management into opportunities to improve operations.

HERMAN CHAN, PRESIDENT, SUNBIRD SOFTWARE

According to KPMG, 80% of all worldwide companies (and 90% of the largest companies) now report on their sustainability. 30 years ago, that figure was just 12%.

Data centre managers need to be able to adapt to these trends or risk falling behind.

You’ve probably heard about ‘the Edge’; it is being mentioned all over the trade press and at all the conferences that used to be dedicated to data centres. But if you asked three people what the Edge is, you will get at least four answers. None of the definitions are necessarily wrong, they just come from varied viewpoints. Telecommunication companies have one view (at least), content delivery networks have another, cloud companies yet another and so on… The one common theme is about putting IT resources nearer to where they get used.

The Edge is merely a location where you put some form of processing power – simply because you have to. This is an important distinction. We have spent the last few years centralising processing power in enterprise data centres and cloud services – it was supposed to be the most efficient way. So why are we looking at a distributed network of systems, with a grid of small data centres, apparently breaking the mould that was meant to represent best practice and deliver the most efficient IT infrastructure?

The reason is simple – distributed infrastructure allows you to deploy a new class of application: the Edgenative application. Edge-native applications need a raft of special features that classic or cloud architectures cannot provide in all locations, including low network latency and high bandwidth. Latency – the delay between transmitting and receiving data on a network – is highly sensitive to distance, so it follows that the nearer you can put processing power to its users, the lower the latency. This is really important for some industrial or safety-critical apps, as well as AR/VR and gaming, but I would argue that it’s the bandwidth that is the most important factor at the Edge.

Edge-native applications are still in their infancy, but one thing most have in common is that they generate or consume huge quantities of data. Much of that data is in the form of high-definition video feeds and many

Edge-native applications have been written to perform processing and analytics on multiple video streams. The use of Machine Learning or AI systems to analyse these huge data feeds is creating new requirements for compute resources to be provided at the Edge so backhaul networks don’t become clogged.

One example in the retail industry is the use of video and ML systems to automate shops so that they can be operated without cashiers or tills – it started with the Amazon shops, but now all the big retailers are moving this way too. These shops can use many tens or hundreds of high-definition (4K) cameras, each of which needs 15–32Mbps of bandwidth.

It’s not hard to see that data- or video-intensive applications are going to drive the need for Edge Compute – a distributed data centre model that will enable the next generation of app by providing local processing power. The good news for the data centre industry is that this will add to the enterprise and cloud core, not take away from it. If anything, Edge Compute will also increase demand at the core. p

CLUBB, HEAD OF

AT CBRE

It’s not hard to see that data or video ‑ intensive applications are going to drive the need for Edge Compute.

Building a unified multi-cloud strategy with resilience at the core

Multi cloud adoption has accelerated this year as organisations have digitalised in light of the pandemic. And while there are numerous benefits of Digital Transformation, this new environment has created challenges for enterprises – especially when it comes to managing data and complex infrastructures. Ian Wood, Senior Director Technical Sales and Services UK/I at Veritas Technologies LLC, talks us through the importance of data management for staying ahead of cyberthreats, as well as how organisations can ultimately build a unified multi cloud strategy with resiliency at its core.

tThe new environment

This year, largely driven by COVID-19, cloud adoption has picked up significantly. This is as a result of accelerated Digital Transformation schemes as organisations redefined their go-to-market strategies due to the impact of the pandemic.

But while CIOs previously mandated ‘cloud first’, we have noticed a shift to a ‘cloud appropriate’ model. This is where organisations look to adopt the appropriate cloud service for the appropriate use case or workload, which is what we call multi-cloud. It's not one cloud provider, it's multiple cloud providers –things like SaaS, IaaS and PaaS.

Managing data in a complex environment

Data growth has been ongoing for some time and should be seen as a good thing. But the rate of that data growth has exploded and that’s raising complexity within environments. In a multi-cloud environment, this growing data is stored in multiple locations which opens organisations up to greater risk. One observation is a rise in ransomware attacks which are more targeted and sophisticated than ever. Another key challenge for organisations is around data privacy regulations like GDPR – being confident that you can manage personal identifiable information wherever it may reside.

Finally, cost – the exponential growth in data could lead to exponential growth in the cost of data storage and management.

Digital Transformation – The disconnect between expectation and reality

As we mentioned, Digital transformation initiatives have accelerated at an unprecedented rate during the last year, but there are some gaps between expectation and reality. Organisations expect cost-savings by going to the cloud and digitally transforming. But the reality is, there's a huge risk of overspend, especially with data growth. Left unchecked, that can actually lead to unnecessary increased storage costs.

Enterprises also expect to be able to move faster, be more agile and reduce time to market through Digital Transformation and adoption of multi-cloud. But we've seen a gap in the security posture and capabilities of organisations to secure that data, and a gap in the skills associated with these new environments.

So, while organisations think they’ll be able to go quicker through Digital Transformation, the reality is they’re actually slower because they don't have the skills and their IT processes and security technologies don't keep up. And that leads to a gap.

Finally, there’s a belief that by moving to the cloud, an organisation will automatically be more resilient. For many organisations, a cloud service provider is possibly more secure than their own data centre. But it creates confusion around ownership of that security which opens them up to increased operational resiliency risk.

Closing the gaps

First, organisations need to standardise toolsets where possible. We see organisations adopting a set of tools and processes aligned to the cloud that they are adopting. The risk, however, is that if you deploy multiple clouds then you have multiple tools and multiple methodologies of managing those which then increases their complexity.

One key area I would recommend standardising is data management. Infrastructures come and go but data doesn’t change – it’s a constant. That reduces complexity and the possibility of overspend because you can check how that data is managed, reducing that risk of ransomware.

Imagine a nightmare ransomware attack which goes into different infrastructures – some cloud, some data centres, etc. – where you have multiple technologies to recover. You can imagine the complexity that would bring, rather than having a standard methodology to go in and recover that data. Then, once you've standardised, we'd recommend looking at data management that includes a good level of insight. There are lots of opportunities to inject Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning straight into data management.

And if we have the opportunity to make more informed decisions with insights, then we're in a better place. After all, you can’t manage what you can’t see.

With data management, I always talk about insights first – it’s important to know where any personal information is that needs to be protected for data privacy regulations. On top of that, your data management needs to provide best practice protection. By following best practices, you can ensure you’re resilient against ransomware, for example.

Ian Wood, Senior Director Technical Sales and Services UK/I at Veritas Technologies LLC

Finally, you need to know what your critical systems are and ensure they have the right levels of availability.

Ransomware – A growing threat

We recently conducted some global research on ransomware. The first thing we picked up is that a third of UK respondents had already adopted multi-cloud, which tells us that the UK is more advanced than most of the rest of Europe, at least in adopting multiple clouds.

We found that 64% of those customers store all or part of their data in the cloud and, on average, the UK has 21 different cloud services, compared to 12 in the rest of Europe. There is also a security gap of technology processes, skills and best practices in cloud in the UK. The results showed 55% acknowledge that their IT security has not kept pace with the complexity of deploying cloud and infrastructure in general.

Budgets are also tighter in the UK than in other areas. We saw 77% acknowledge that their budgets will be flat to decline due to COVID, so technology leaders have to do more, with less budget, quite quickly.

Only 5% said they followed recommendations to protect data against ransomware. The 3-2-1 recommendation is to have three copies of your data in two different locations and make sure one of those locations is air gapped. Interestingly, the UK is the most likely to pay the ransom in a ransomware attack – 56% would pay in full or partially, versus 43% globally.

Almost half estimated that if they were attacked by ransomware and infected, it would take five days or more to recover. So, the impact is really high.

There are implications if organisations don't reassess their security strategies to make sure that it keeps pace with the complexity in infrastructure.

First, unwanted downtime and system outages – the big headline news moments that no organisation wants. This has cost and brand reputation implications but also breaks trust with customers.

Second, if you're not managing your data effectively, you run the risk of breaching regulatory compliance.

Finally, if you don't have a well-managed environment for your data, you’re typically overspending on data management.

If you get the security posture right and protect your data, you manage your data more effectively and there’s a by-product of reducing data management costs.

Data security – A forward view

Looking forward, we’re likely to see a continued adoption of multi-cloud and increased complexity of infrastructure. Customers are also increasingly investigating automation in IT – fuelled by cloud deployments. We see discussions around infrastructure as a code and we will see more clouds and an increased risk of complexity.

But we also have an opportunity to build data management and security management into automation.

5G is another key area which is going to accelerate digital experiences, while ransomware is a threat that’s likely to grow.

But the good news is that if you have a good data management and security strategy, and keep all your systems patched, you are probably going to be okay. But if you overlook those areas, you could have some challenges ahead.

Building a unified multi-cloud strategy with resilience at the core

Infrastructures will come and go but I would recommend looking at a data management platform, which should be seen as a service that is independent of the infrastructure.

Veritas has been in the data management industry for almost three decades and we've helped large organisations with complex environments to manage their data effectively with our best-of-breed technology.

Veritas helps organisations migrate to the cloud, protect their workloads on-prem, in the cloud and in multiple clouds, and allows organisations to underpin their critical workloads to make sure they’re available with near zero downtime, wherever they are located. p

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Mistry UK Technical Director at Trend Micro

toll

Lookout has revealed findings that warn against various types of threats to mobile devices. From cryptomining scams using Android apps, to mobile phishing exposure doubling among financial services, users need to be on the ball when it comes to cybersecurity.

Lookout, an integrated endpoint-to-cloud security company, has announced the discovery of major cryptomining scams using hundreds of Android apps.

Categorised into two distinct Android app families, BitScam and CloudScam, these apps were designed to target people interested in cryptocurrencies. In total, security researchers at the Lookout Threat Lab identified more than 170 apps that are estimated to have scammed more than 93,000 victims.

The majority of these apps are side loaded based on the fact that only 25 were available for download on Google Play. Lookout has been in close contact with Google and the apps on Play have been removed.

The BitScam and CloudScam apps advertise themselves as providing cloud cryptocurrency mining services for a fee. After analysing the apps, Lookout researchers found that no cloud cryptomining actually

Lookout reveals scams targeting mobile devices

takes place. The scammers pocket the money spent on apps and upgrades without ever delivering the promised services. Lookout estimated that the apps stole more than US$350,000 from their victims.

“These apps were able to fly under the radar because they don’t actually do anything malicious,” said Ioannis Gasparis, a mobile application security researcher at Lookout.

“They are simply shells set up to attract users caught up in the cryptocurrency craze and collect money

for services that don’t exist. Purchasing goods or services online always requires a certain degree of trust – these scams prove that cryptocurrency is no exception.”

BitScam and CloudScam apps both trick people into thinking they are paying for cloud cryptomining services. In addition to the apps themselves costing money, they promote additional services and upgrades that users can purchase within the apps, either by transferring cryptocurrencies to the developers’ wallets or through Google Play.

These apps also display fake minimum account balances to entice users to spend more money on the services and upgrades. While the BitScam and CloudScam cryptomining apps have now been removed from Google Play, there are dozens more available for download on third-party app stores.

Lookout also recently discovered, in its Financial Services Threat Report, that mobile phishing exposure doubled among financial services in 2020 despite a significant increase in Mobile Device Management (MDM) deployment. The findings also uncovered a surge in exposure to malicious and

risky applications among the industry’s employees and customers. Between 2019 and 2020, Lookout data shows that financial services and insurance organisations experienced the following:

Ÿ Exposure to significant risks despite MDM: Despite a 50% increase in MDM adoption, average quarterly exposure to phishing rose by 125% and malware and app risk exposure increased by over 400%.

Ÿ Credential stealing phishing attacks are still a major problem: Almost 50% of phishing attempts tried to steal corporate login credentials.

Ÿ Mobile applications are a security gap: Nearly 20% of mobile banking customers had a trojanised app on their device when trying to sign into their personal mobile banking account.

Ÿ Lookout found that 21% of iOS devices and 32% of Android devices were exposed to more than 390 iOS and 1,060 Android vulnerabilities because they were running iOS 13 or earlier and Android 10 or earlier. A delay in users updating their mobile devices creates a window of opportunity for a threat actor to gain access to an organisation’s infrastructure and steal data.

The Lookout report also highlights how cyberattackers are deliberately targeting phones, tablets and Chromebooks to increase their odds of finding a vulnerable entry point. A single successful phishing or mobile ransomware attack can give attackers access to proprietary market research, client financials, investment strategies and cash or other liquid assets. These attacks can take the form of mobile phishing, apps containing malware, exploits of app or device vulnerabilities and using risky networks outside of the traditional office perimeter.

“These findings demonstrate that regardless of whether a device is managed or unmanaged, attackers have equal success in deploying phishing campaigns,” said Gert-Jan Schenk, Chief Revenue Officer, Lookout. “In addition, phishing can be particularly difficult to detect on a mobile device. We inherently trust these devices, which makes us vulnerable to social engineering attacks. Protecting modern endpoints requires a different approach –one that is built from the ground up for mobile and can continuously secure an organisation’s data from endpoint to the cloud.

The report’s findings are sourced from the Lookout Security Graph, which contains behavioural analysis of telemetry data from nearly 200 million mobile devices, 140 million apps and analyses more than 4 million new URLs every day. The data analysed for this report is specific to financial services and insurance organisations. p

WE INHERENTLY TRUST THESE DEVICES, WHICH MAKES US VULNERABLE TO SOCIAL ENGINEERING ATTACKS.

Ensuring a resilient, secure and sustainable hybrid IT environment

The hybrid IT environment is a heavily talked about subject as businesses adapt to this modern way of working. Kevin Brown, SVP, EcoStruxure Solutions, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric, discusses how it helps its customers to successfully build a scalable resiliency strategy and get ahead of potential sustainability challenges.

What are some of the challenges enterprises face when it comes to increasing resiliency?

It is clear that many applications are moving (or have moved) to the cloud. At the same time, the contactless, automated world we’re living in is driving the deployment of Edge data centres. IDC has put numbers around it – 39,000 core data centres globally and it could be 7-million-plus Edge locations, probably not counting all the little wiring closets and server rooms. In our view, these wiring closets and server rooms must now be thought of as mission critical. This trend towards resiliency at the Edge creates a new level of complexity and managing it all is a challenge for CIOs.

wCIOs now need to deal with what’s left of their data centres, the equipment they have deployed in colocation facilities, and all the Edge sites – the so-called ‘hybrid IT environment’. Furthermore, it’s not only about resiliency. All these sites present cybersecurity risks as well as sustainability challenges. We are committed to helping the industry get ahead of these challenges, and management tools are a key part of that strategy.

How does remote monitoring strengthen uptime and minimise risk?

I believe visibility is the first step in managing your data centre, and many operators have limited-to-no visibility.

This trend towards resiliency at the Edge creates a new level of complexity and managing it all is a challenge for CIOs.

Kevin Brown, SVP, EcoStruxure Solutions, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric

They have Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPSs) with old batteries and out-of-date firmware. At Schneider Electric, we estimate that 62% of customers are running outdated device firmware, which creates the kind of cybersecurity risks that have been dominating headlines.

We’ve used insight from our data lake and created device scorecards to prioritise what needs immediate attention. We’ve invested in features such as massapplied device setting changes and automated firmware updates. This makes the job of ensuring the devices are complying with security policies much simpler. Additionally, the ability to connect to our data lake where we are using AI and analytics to provide insights and predictions on failures helps ensure downtime is avoided.

We believe that by leveraging technology, it’s possible to make the hybrid IT environment more secure, more resilient and more sustainable, even with limited staff support.

What kinds of services and support are customers looking for to improve business resiliency and efficiencies?

Clearly, we believe that technology and software tools play a key role, but services is just as important. It does no good to predict a device failure if no one can go and resolve that issue and perform service.

We believe CIOs will need to think of the ecosystem of partners they have and how can they utilise them more effectively. To enable this ecosystem, we’ve been investing in making the information in our tools more broadly available and easier to integrate via APIs. We’ve seen companies that are managing the complexity themselves, leveraging managed service providers, leveraging other vendors, and/or leveraging

Schneider Electric as well. Sometimes they have a mix of these strategies.

By opening up access to the data and intelligence in our tools, we are trying to empower the CIO to use the right partner for the right job at the right time. Our view is that this approach is the only way to solve the challenges of a resilient, secure and sustainable hybrid IT environment.

How do you enable organisations – and people – to stay connected through your remote monitoring solutions?

We’ve made a significant commitment to cloud enabling our tools set. We see many benefits to this approach, which includes easier remote access (no VPN required) as well as mobile access. Some of our customers have told us that in many respects, this has been a ‘life changer’ – the ability to remotely, from anywhere, stay connected and be able to resolve infrastructure issues. We have an example where our customer told us we saved their holiday because they were able to use our tools remotely, avoiding what would have traditionally required a trip to the office.

Can you highlight any recent customer use cases?

We have a number of customers who are leveraging our software and working directly alongside expert

We are committed to helping the industry get ahead of these challenges, and management tools are a key part of that strategy.

organisations within our partner ecosystem to maximise uptime, resilience and efficiency. These partners offer a breadth of engineering and service expertise within traditional data centre and Edge environments, supporting customers to manage and maintain distributed sites and reduce risk of downtime.

One example is our Elite Partner Advanced Power Technology (APT) working with the Birmingham Women and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust to ensure uptime for its critical IT and backup power systems. The Trust is leveraging our EcoStruxure IT Expert software to manage two core, on-premise data centres, a number of network closets and more than 100 UPSs across its campus.

Uninterruptible power is a key priority and the volume of IT is growing, so it’s a challenging job for a small IT department. Here, our EcoStruxure software offers the Trust real-time visibility across its entire IT infrastructure with data-driven analytics, which provide an accurate assessment of the health and status of its critical systems.

Proactive alerts also help the IT department to prioritise maintenance on any equipment that may not be performing optimally while enabling it to monitor environmental conditions, such as temperature and humidity, to mitigate failures or outages.

Another example is our Elite Partner EfficiencyIT working with The Wellcome Sanger Institute, one of the world’s leading research facilities focused on genomic discovery. Here, the data centre manager is using EcoStruxure IT Expert software to gain instant visibility of its 4MW on-premise data centre, and manage the

UPSs distributed across its research lab, which protect vital genomic sequencing equipment.

The software enables the Institute to gain greater insights into the operation of all key infrastructure assets in the data centre, including racks, Power Distribution Units (PDUs), UPS and cooling equipment. It can manage all of the key equipment from a centralised platform to improve operational efficiency and do it remotely, which was crucial during the lockdown.

In both cases, the software is an enabler. It allows the customers to not only to manage all of their data centre, Edge and distributed IT equipment more effectively, it means they can rely on partners for any mission-critical servicing to increase the levels of resilience or reliability.

How is Schneider Electric delivering on its commitments to help customers achieve sustainability and resilience?

At Schneider Electric, we are working exceptionally hard to achieve our own sustainability goals. Our CEO has prioritised sustainability and we have made public commitments. In fact, we were named the number one most sustainable company in the world by Corporate Knights.

We are taking what we have learned over the last 15 years and developing services to help our customers develop their own programmes.

It is a multi-faceted approach. Simply put, it includes an overall strategy that is actionable and measurable, enhanced Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) tools for more efficient operation of hybrid environments including proper management of Edge sites and a focus on managing their carbon footprint.

What advice would you offer businesses on building a scalable resiliency strategy?

First, they need to assess and understand where they are today. Then they can start to figure out the capabilities they need, consider the ecosystem of partners and vendors that will be essential, and ultimately determine where they want to go.

We can help get them there with our expertise and innovation. With the power of the cloud, a data lake, analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI), our DCIM tools do much more now than they did even just a few years ago. So, we think we are in a good position to help our customers in many ways. p

Ready for the next wave in IT challenges?

The Netherlands is a thriving contributor to Europe’s IT sector and its success is anchored on its robust digital infrastructure. IT leaders such as Nokia and DELTA Fiber Netherlands are working to enhance its offering by providing broadband to the Dutch market. Atos and IBM are also massively contributing by building secured infrastructure for the Dutch Ministry of Defense.

The Netherlands strengthens with IT solutions

Landscape with tulips in Zaanse Schans, Netherlands, Europe

Nokia and DELTA Fiber Netherlands have signed a deal which will see DELTA offer 10 Gb/s broadband in the Dutch market. The sole supplier agreement covers both the network and equipment for customer premises. Deployment starts with new build followed by replacement of existing equipment.

The Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) market in the Netherlands is a fast-growing market. DELTA Fiber, part of Swedish investment company, EQT, is growing rapidly with plans to have 1 million homes and businesses connected to its network by the end of this year.

Nokia is supporting the expansion with XGS.PON network equipment based on the Quillion chipset, which is also ready for 25G PON. All retail subscribers

will receive XGS.PON capable receivers with the latest Wi-Fi 6 standard and supporting Nokia’s Wi-Fi mesh technology for superior network expansion within the home.

DELTA will manage the network with the aid of Nokia’s Altiplano Access Controller which enables network automation, faster innovation and simplified operations using Software Defined Access Network (SDAN) solutions. The deployment will combine Nokia SDAN technology with Microsoft Azure cloudbased services and Nokia’s developer ecosystem to equip DELTA with the tools the operators need for Digital Transformation.

John Wittekamp, CTO, DELTA Fiber, said: “The shift towards home working is expected to outlast

strengthens its infrastructure

the pandemic as is interest in more immersive entertainment experiences. DELTA Fiber is growing fast and we are delighted that, with Nokia’s fieldproven support, we are able to bring our customers the fastest network in the country. Moreover, the network we are building is future-proofed for 25Gb/s as our customers’ needs evolve.”

Sandy Motley, President of Nokia Fixed Networks business, said: “We are proud to be supporting DELTA Fiber’s expansion from across our portfolio of both networking and customer equipment.

“Network speeds are an important competitive advantage and our solution not only meets today’s 10Gb/s needs, but can be easily upgraded to 25Gb/s when required.”

Nokia is a global leader in passive optical network solutions. In February 2021, the company announced it had shipped its 100 millionth PON fibre solution and it is the only vendor able to support 25G PON.

Network speeds are an important competitive advantage and our solution not only meets today’s 10Gb/s needs, but can be easily upgraded to 25Gb/s when required.

Atos and IBM are also working to enhance the IT market in the Netherlands. The companies are working to build secured infrastructure for the Dutch Ministry of Defense.

The two IT leaders have announced their plans to collaborate to build a new, highly-advanced digital infrastructure for the Dutch Ministry of Defense.

The Dutch Ministry of Defense plans to use advanced technologies, infrastructure services and expertise from Atos and IBM Global Technology Services to construct new data centres, safeguard its IT system and build a proprietary broadband mobile network to help ensure classified government information remains protected.

“Our work on Groundbreaking IT (GrIT) marks our continued commitment to building secure infrastructures that help global customers accelerate their Digital Transformations,” said Peter `t Jong, Head of Atos in the Netherlands.

The Dutch Ministry of Defense plans to use advanced technologies, infrastructure services and expertise from Atos and IBM Global Technology Services.

“By collaborating with IBM, a world-class partner with deep experience in helping government organisations across the globe modernise with advanced technology, we will help enable the Ministry to build an agile organisation based on a reliable, secured, future-ready and flexible digital infrastructure.”

Atos and IBM announced the expansion of their strategic global alliance in January 2021 with the goal of transforming digital acceleration, increased productivity and reduced operating costs for their customers.

This announcement reinforces the companies’ collaboration and mutual commitment to helping customers use open hybrid cloud and AI to accelerate Digital Transformation.

“Collaborating on GrIT with Atos, one of our sustainability-focused global ecosystem partners, reinforces our mission to build secure infrastructures using open hybrid cloud to help customers make their organisations future ready,” said Evaristus Mainsah, GM, IBM Hybrid Cloud and Edge Ecosystem. “Together we’re helping customers, like the Dutch Ministry of Defense, accelerate their Digital Transformations by streamlining operations and increasing productivity in a most secured environment.” p

Evening sunset, Volendam, Netherlands

Our work on Groundbreaking IT (GrIT) marks our continued commitment to building secure infrastructures that help global customers accelerate their Digital Transformations.

Shaping the networks of the future

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© 2020 CommScope, Inc. All rights reserved. AD-11568.1-EN (01/20)

The ‘cumulative effect‘ of ransomware and the lessons for UK national infrastructure

Ransomware has quickly become one of the biggest threats to organisations, and business leaders must get a hold on their infrastructure and ensure they operate with the most stringent security procedures in place. Adam Enterkin, SVP, EMEA, BlackBerry, tells us what the UK should be learning from the recent Colonial Pipeline hack and how we must prepare in order to give ourselves the best chance of protecting data, funds and the daily lives of all those living in the UK.

Ransomware is the biggest threat to British people and businesses. That’s according to Lindy Cameron, Chief Executive of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre. In a recent speech, she warned of the ‘cumulative effect’ society would feel if it failed to deal with this rising threat. But what effect is she speaking of?

We need only look to our US neighbours to answer this. The Colonial Pipeline hack in May 2021 pushed gasoline shortages to their worst in three years. Prices skyrocketed, impacting citizens and businesses simply wishing to go about their daily lives. For all this disruption, there was little justice. Its perpetrator,

DarkSide, is – by all estimations – still at large and ready to strike again.

Connected infrastructure is at greatest risk

Over the last 10 to 15 years, critical infrastructure has become increasingly connected to the Internet: highly connected hospitals, water and energy systems powered by intelligent sensors, government operations with deep roots in data and many more.

This obviously has its benefits: most importantly the ability to be operated remotely. However, this

connectivity also means the systems we rely on for our health, power and national security are susceptible to cyber threats. And in this regard, the Colonial Pipeline attack should serve as a wake-up call to those out there that needed one, as well as a reminder to those of us who were already aware of the threat.

All eyes have been on the UK’s critical national infrastructure, and particularly the NHS, since the pandemic began. Defending it is at the heart of the new Integrated Review of the UK’s foreign, defence, security and development policy, which seeks to ensure that those in control of Critical National Infrastructure have the knowledge, strategy and security to combat threat actors bent on bringing it down. But the infancy of this initiative means that

some industries are still in the dark regarding the urgency of the threat and how to defend against it.

Ageing critical infrastructure around the globe has long been ripe for attack. Last year, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre issued a joint warning alongside the US warning of Russian attacks on millions of routers, firewalls and devices used by infrastructure operators and government agencies.

The UK faces increasingly sophisticated threats from private attackers

What makes this situation more perilous is the fact that the Colonial Pipeline shut down was caused by what appears to have been a private party. Typically, cyber warfare tactics such as targeting infrastructure was the realm of nation state actors.

An act of aggression not unlike previous ‘pre-Internet’ tactics, and one which would ultimately be traceable to the perpetrator.

This situation punctuates an upward trend in the number of private parties targeting public infrastructure in ransomware attacks.

These attacks, which hold information or systems hostage until a sum of money is paid, are growing in

complexity, sophistication and frequency globally. In the UK, ransomware attacks surged 80% in just three months following the start of the pandemic.

While it was only a matter of time until ‘outsourcing’ came to the cybercrime business, the success of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) providers against infrastructure targets is sure to spur imitators and competition. The newfound ability for individuals to seriously impact critical supplies for personal profit is certainly troubling and opens our ageing infrastructure to an even wider pool of threats.

State-sponsored offenses hide behind mercenary groups

However, the rise in skills of these cyber mercenary groups may highlight an even greater long-term risk to all infrastructure. Numerous reports – including BlackBerry’s BAHAMUT: Hack-for-Hire Masters of Phishing, Fake News, and Fake Apps – show that mercenary groups offering APT-style attacks are becoming more readily available.

The Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) used in these attacks are beginning to resemble the highly sophisticated state-sponsored campaigns. This means the profile and geography of potential victims has diversified exponentially. And these victims will become increasingly ‘random’ or illogical when analysed for any commonality.

This lack of commonality will also make it harder to identify when nation states are actually behind attacks, as their fingerprints will be largely removed.

Interestingly too, the interconnectedness of the UK’s infrastructure is starting to provide an asymmetric advantage for some nations we traditionally classify as hostile. North Korea, for instance, hasn’t had the resources to upgrade their infrastructures like the much of the west. This means much of the nation’s infrastructure remains unconnected to the Internet – making it largely insusceptible to cyber threats. The one-way threat posed by some nations may present a unique challenge to the UK and other highly connected nations in the years to come.

A reactive response won’t be enough –We must prepare

Reactive approaches won’t cut it in a threat landscape perpetuated by some of the most intelligent tech minds globally. To have the best chance of protecting data, funds and – most critically – the daily lives of all those living in the UK, we must stop attacks like Colonial Pipeline or WannaCry from happening in the first place.

The UK government must acknowledge the severity of these threats, considering them as destructive and disruptive as warfare in its more typical forms. It must take on board the messages from the National Cyber Security Centre and independent cybersecurity experts, with a view to anticipating an increase in the volume and severity of threats in the coming years.

And, most importantly, it must set in place strong cyber-resiliency plans and advanced technologies to help fend off these threats with a prevention-first attitude. Such a security posture starts with neutralising malware before it can exploit systems. Once it’s unable to execute, the downstream consequences, and the resulting efforts to trace, contain and remediate the damage, are dramatically reduced.

In turn, this will make targets less valuable for would-be criminals. Only this way can the NHS, emergency services and other critical national infrastructures continue their hard work in the knowledge that data is confidential, safe and used only in the best interest of the UK and its people. p

STUDY

DNB has utilised Denodo’s data virtualisation platform to act as a data marketplace for the data science team. Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB, discusses this in more detail and tells us how the organisation has enhanced the customer digital experience and the value delivered through its customer channels.

DNB offers data-driven insights to its customers with Denodo

Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB

DNB, Norway’s largest financial services group, is working with Denodo, a leader in data virtualisation, to build a data science lab in the cloud. However, the company’s data scientists were spending more time on data preparation tasks that on building the models that would generate real business value.

To combat this, DNB implemented the Denodo Platform to easily transition to the cloud without affecting Business Continuity. The Denodo Platform helped the company’s data scientists to focus on building models rather than spending time on data preparation tasks.

With a data lake in AWS, multiple on-premise data warehouses and a Cloudera installation for real-time data streaming, DNB was managing a broad range of data sources. Instead of managing these individually, DNB used the Denodo data virtualisation platform to

sit on top of the different sources and act as a data marketplace for the data science team. This provided a single point of access and enabled the data scientists to easily browse and explore the vast datasets spread across the company’s expansive data ecosystem.

We caught up with Aidan Millar, Chief Data and Analytics Officer, DNB, to find out how the solution has benefitted the company’s business operations and development capabilities.

Can you tell us about your role and the scope of your responsibility at DNB?

My role as Chief Data and Analytics Officer (CDAO) is centred on injecting more ‘I’ into IT digital solutions. It’s all about ‘going digital to the core’ and changing the way people think and act towards data and analytics.

In Q3-2017, DNB set a clear data ambition to leverage data-driven insights to reconnect and deliver services that are relevant in the daily digital lives of our customers. This was the trigger to hire a CDAO with the responsibility to institutionalise and fuel the change agenda to become a data-driven organisation.

Why did you choose to work with Denodo?

An important priority was to create an effective and easily accessible data marketplace. DNB employs a cloud-first technology strategy, including a fully operational cloud-based (AWS) data science lab to deliver advanced data insights (200+ active advanced data analytics users). One of the challenges was how to democratise data while also managing access rights to a complex suite of data assets – balancing the ‘protect’ and ‘grow’ the bank agendas.

Modern data virtualisation tools helped to address this challenge. For DNB, Denodo was a practical choice in our decisionmaking process; it is a market-leading vendor in the data virtualisation space with an expansive set of data adapters and wide-range of existing customers. The solution addressed a capability gap in our solution architecture. Denodo has enabled us to accelerate and control access to data across the organisation and

FOR DNB, THE IMPERATIVE IS – AND WILL ALWAYS BE – TO STAY RELEVANT TO CUSTOMERS IN THEIR DAILY DIGITAL LIVES.

most importantly, can be adopted by business users with limited technical support.

What business challenges were you looking to address?

Digitalisation is fuelling an explosive growth in data, bringing with it new challenges and opportunities. For DNB, the imperative is – and will always be – to stay relevant to customers in their daily digital lives. We recognised very early on that the key to us achieving this goal was data and advanced analytics.

By capitalising on data insights, DNB can continually enhance the customer digital experience and the value delivered through its customer channels.

We also saw an opportunity to optimise delivery lead times and to create reusable data assets. Data scientists were spending 80% of their time on data preparation tasks and 20% on the real value add of building predictive models. We needed a practical solution that would allow us to switch from the 80:20 to 20:80 resource focus. This was where the Denodo platform came into play.

The Denodo solution allowed us to rapidly build reusable data assets that could be easily accessed (in a controlled way) and consumed in exploratory analytics use cases. It also fulfilled our requirements around real-time operations, auditing and maximising the utility of data assets and associated resources.

How has the solution improved data management capabilities for DNB?

From a data management perspective, Denodo has enabled our data analytics users to browse and harvest value across DNB’s complex data ecosystem. Denodo forms the foundation for democratising our data assets.

DNB manages a broad range of data sources. A critical source is the data lake in AWS that stores all DNB transactional data (over 9B+ transactions). We also have multiple on-premises data warehouses and a Cloudera installation for the real-time management of streaming data entering our banking systems.

The Denodo data virtualisation platform sits on top of all these data sources, to create a DNB data marketplace. The solution provides a single point of controlled access to over 4K+ enterprise data warehouse table views, 9B+ customer transactions and digital click stream data from our digital channels.

How important is having a robust data strategy for satisfying end-user demand?

From my experience, it is of critical importance. Having an ambition, underpinned by a well-defined data strategy and a plan for execution, is an imperative. Setting the ambition level and a plan on how to get aligned with key stakeholders across the

organisation is an important responsibility of the CDAO. Aligning organisational priorities and setting expectations is central to creating a shared agenda across the organisation to drive delivery momentum.

There must be a structured approach on how to manage and derive value from corporate data assets. The importance is amplified by the transitory business environment and ever-increasing regulatory demands. The data strategy should not only be longterm, but also flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances and encompass provisions to satisfy regulatory demands.

Most corporations have set up data platforms to collect a steady stream of valuable customer data, such as transaction history, online web behaviour and much more. The ability to manage ‘Big Data’ is critical to the success of any digital business but most corporations fail and struggle with execution and realisation of ambitions because they lack a strategy that is anchored across the organisation.

What are some of the overall benefits you’ve seen since the implementation?

Since implementing Denodo’s data virtualisation platform and the data marketplace, DNB has realised value from multiple business-driven use cases, including:

Ÿ Enabling scalable compliance solutions related to e-frauds, AML and GDPR

Ÿ Data-driven insights to provide product recommendations and personalised pricing at scale

Ÿ A material reduction in data access lead times from months to weeks – increasing business agility

However, the impact has been wider than this. With easier access to data, we have observed an increase in the volume of data-driven initiatives. Easy access to data is fuelling a cultural shift in the wider business with decisions supported by data, rather than relying on gut feel and previous experience. Data democratisation and access to data assets is changing the way we think and act when it comes to the value of data.

How does advanced analytics allow you to make effective decisions?

DNB customers are talking to us every second of the day on digital channels and as a service provider we must have the ability to listen and understand customers’ needs in near real time. Advanced analytics underpins how we can reconnect with our customers on digital channels in real time.

DNB has played an important role in supporting Norwegian society and the government during the pandemic, by providing contextual data insights (at an aggregated level) to assess the impact of the crisis and remediating policies on the economy.

Data-driven insights underpins DNBs ability to reconnect and deliver services that are relevant in the daily digital lives of our customers.

Has the technology enabled you to offer a seamless experience for your customers and if so, how?

DNB is capitalising on data driven opportunities that came with building digital customer channels and analytics capabilities in the cloud; including a new DNB mobile bank, a savings app called Spare, DNB Puls a management tool for small and medium-sized enterprises and Insight Platform for Analytics (IPA) to support data-driven actionable insights.

Advanced, scalable cloud-based data technologies and the adoption of a data marketplace are enabling actionable data insights to improve customer experiences. One area that has benefitted from such insights is the continued development of DNB’s online and mobile services. For example, we are looking at channel interaction data to assess customer journeys on our digital channels using a leading-edge data capture solution. We can continuously assess whether our digital channels are aligned to customer preferences and continuously improve the experience. Our analytics capabilities are also focused on delivering customer value by providing our customers the right product, at the right price, through the right channel, at the right time at scale.

DNB has a clear ambition and continues to make significant strides to leverage data to reconnect and deliver services that are relevant in the daily digital lives of our customers. p

DATA DEMOCRATISATION AND ACCESS TO DATA ASSETS IS CHANGING THE WAY WE THINK AND ACT WHEN IT COMES TO THE VALUE OF DATA.

Choice is important that’s why we have developed the markets most versatile range of rack solutions. From wall mount to open frames with a huge choice of cable management options, to racks designed for the deepest and heaviest servers, we have a product to suit the most demanding of applications. The new CL range of multicompartment racks is new to the offering and brings our renowned quality and design features to the colocation market. When choice and options matter, you can be sure there is a solution within the Environ from Excel range.

STUDY

As one of the UK’s leading wealth managers, Brewin Dolphin recognises the importance of operating with robust technical and physical solutions in place to provide data security for its customers. Simon Mair, Head of Information Security and Data Privacy at Brewin Dolphin, discusses the importance of investing in the protection of client data and tells us about some of the organisation’s priorities when planning its security strategy for the year ahead.

Brewin Dolphin invests in the security of its client data

Simon Mair, Head of Information Security and Data Privacy at Brewin Dolphin

As Head of Privacy and Information Security, my primary role is to ensure the security of both our client and company data. I work closely with the Head of IT Security to identify potential and real threats to the firm and mitigate these where possible My team creates the core security policies and ensures that they are effective and relevant to the firm. They also provide governance, guidance and incident support when required.

refresh prior to 2020. During that project, every enduser was issued with their own laptop, enabling them to securely connect to the firm’s network.

We have a two-pronged approach to security whereby we are able to push vulnerability updates to enduser devices, which works hand-in-hand with our awareness programme for all staff.

Can you share insight into the typical threats facing an organisation in your industry?

The protection of client data is critical to Brewin Dolphin. Our clients trust us with their financial well-being and core to that is the protection of their personal data. We have robust technical and physical solutions in place to provide data security and while we are confident in these systems and processes, we are regularly testing them and improving them where necessary.

How do you manage the security of a workforce which is split across different locations?

While the COVID-19 pandemic has presented some challenges to Brewin Dolphin, fortunately, the firm had been through a complete end-user technology

The threat of ransomware presents our biggest challenge, but as with many organisations, insider threat also has the potential to disrupt the business. A growing challenge is our relationship with our thirdparties, most of whom are not regulated in the same way we are.

What approach do you take to communicating risk and security strategies to the wider C-suite and board?

The firm has various committees, forums and groups which provide a necessary framework for communication. It is always important when communicating with these groups to have some understanding of other risks which the business is facing. It’s helpful to understand the language used by other areas of risk and frame the cyber/privacy risks in the same way.

cCan you explain your role at Brewin Dolphin and the scope of your responsibility?

How important is the protection of client data to your organisation and what security procedures do you have in place to ensure/monitor this?

How do you foster and maintain a strong security culture within your organisation?

Brewin Dolphin has a comprehensive awareness strategy which combines compulsory e-learning, targeted learning for specific teams, external speakers – for example, City of London Police – and regular news updates on internal communication platforms.

Talking about security is also key – if we are talking about it, it’s at the forefront of our consciousness and that is always a good thing! Finally, tone from the top is key to any cultural success – if the boss is talking about it then all levels of the business will take note.

Financial services is a highly regulated industry – How do you manage compliance and adherence with regulations?

One of the challenges is the fact that we are governed by both financial and data regulations, and these can sometimes appear to be competing with each other.

I work closely with the teams responsible for the financial regulation to provide guidance on data regulations to ensure that both regulatory pathways are working in parallel for the benefit of the business.

What are your priorities when planning your security strategy for the year ahead?

First and foremost, we must all understand the strategic aims of the firm. We must also consider any regulatory changes and be prepared to adhere to them when they come into force.

We will take a look at any present-day threats and those that are on the horizon, to identify gaps in systems or awareness. Finally, we must consider any risks that have been identified within the business and determine if there are solutions or processes that can be implemented which will mitigate or remove them.

that may pertain to the business and talk about the day ahead. It is an excellent opportunity for the different teams to share relevant business updates. It’s also an opportunity to check on morale which is important in lieu of any traditional office contact.

Throughout the day, I will likely attend several project board meetings relating to general business change.

I will also meet with key senior stakeholders around the business to understand what their priorities are and identify how security/privacy must be incorporated into those plans.

I am a member of a number of external peer groups who meet regularly during the working day to discuss security and privacy challenges. Group members hail from a variety of different industries and as such, are an invaluable resource.

We discuss common challenges and share best practice methodologies. In addition, we have the opportunity to hear valuable presentations from both regulators and security services. Committee meetings are also a significant part of my day.

Outside of work, I hold the position of Chair of Governors at a Westminster primary school. I have been a school governor for over three years now and find it very rewarding. It provides me with development opportunities and I would recommend it to anyone as a great way of giving some time back to the community.

On the weekends, I enjoy time with my family, dog walking and rebuilding my 1967 Series 2A Land Rover. It’s safe to say that I’m a Green Oval addict! p

Generally, I will meet with my team first thing in a morning. This meeting is as much a well-being conversation as it is a daily agenda, particularly since the increase in remote working due to the pandemic. We discuss any relevant security/privacy news items

Can you describe a typical day for you in the role of Head of Information Security and Data Privacy?

Nokia and Proximus deploy world’s fastest live fibre network

Nokia and Proximus recently turned on the world’s fastest fibre access network at a media event in Antwerp attended by the Belgian Minister of Telecommunications, the Mayor of Antwerp and executives and engineers from the two companies. Operating over existing fibre and Nokia equipment deployed in the Proximus network, the first ever 25G PON live network connects the Havenhuis building in the Port of Antwerp with the Proximus central office in the middle of the city. The network speed exceeded 20 Gigabits per second, making it the fastest fibre network in the world.

Proximus is a leading provider of fixed broadband networks in Belgium with 45.9% market share. The operator is accelerating the move to fibre, adding 10% coverage each year and is on target to reach at least 70% of homes and business by 2028. As part of its inspire 2022 vision, it is creating a high-capacity open network which will be available to all operators, eliminating the need for fibre overbuild.

Rupert Wood, Research Director for Fibre Networks at Analysys Mason, said: “This 25G PON achievement demonstrates the unlimited potential of fibre. This next evolution in fibre technology will provide enterprises with greater than 10 Gbs connectivity and the capacity needed to support 5G transport along with future nextgeneration services such as massive scale Virtual Reality and real time digital twins.”

Guillaume Boutin, CEO, Proximus, said: “The activation of the first 25G PON network worldwide shapes our bold ambition to be a trendsetter, to become a reference operator in Europe and, why not, across the globe. Together with Nokia, we have achieved a technological leap forward that will become a key enabler of the digital and

economy and society that we stand for. This announcement is also an occasion to stand still and look at the pace at which we connect the citizens of Antwerp to the technology of the future. Thanks to huge investments, we are realising an acceleration that is unseen in Europe and I am convinced this will be crucial to remain competitive for us as a company, but also for Antwerp as a city and for our entire economy.”

Federico Guillén, President Network Infrastructure Nokia, said: “10 years ago, our

companies launched the technology which enabled a switch to HD TV. Now, we make history again with a network that is 200x faster. We are proud to support Proximus in enabling the world’s first 25G PON network, powered by Nokia’s Quillion chipset, which supports three generations of PON technologies. Quillion has been adopted by more than 100 operators since its launch last year and all operators deploying the Quillion based GPON and XGS-PON solution today have the capabilities to easily evolve to 25G PON.” p

Rackspace Technology announces enhanced full-lifecycle cloudnative development capabilities

Rackspace Technology, a leading end-to-end, multi-cloud technology solutions company, has announced enhanced full-lifecycle Cloud-Native Development (CND) Professional Services capabilities to the Rackspace Technology portfolio that help customers build modern applications. The enhanced full-lifecycle CND capabilities help customers develop modern applications that take advantage of cloud-native technologies and microservices architectures.

From ideation and user experience design to development and deployment, Rackspace Technology works alongside customers to re-engineer legacy applications and build new modern applications that maximise the agility, reliability and cost-saving benefits of the cloud.

Rackspace Technology delivers unmatched CND capabilities by leveraging reusable patterns and defined best practices from two decades of expertise across various industries from healthcare and life sciences to transportation and logistics, that are driving cloud-native adoption. In addition, with specialisation in .NET to .NET Core, cloudnative SaaS platforms and a proven framework for monolith to microservices decomposition, Rackspace Technology accelerates customers’ modern application adoption.

“Our engineering expertise in cloud-native technologies, cloud platforms, modern architectures, tools and programming languages, enables us to efficiently deliver the best outcomes for customers,” said Amir Kashani, VP, Cloud-Native Development

and IoT Solutions at Rackspace Technology. “We’re the ideal combination of strategic consulting and engineering excellence which allows us to deliver business outcomes and help our customers innovate.”

Rackspace Technology developed new paths to help customers on their journey to cloud-native through services that range from assessment and advisory to enablement and modernisation at scale.

Ultimately, the outcome for customers is to have a selection of services based on their readiness to adopt, so they plan their modernisation roadmap with confidence.

Customer use case

Innovyze, a global leader in building innovative, industry-leading software for the water industry, wanted to address the real-time operational needs of utilities by extending the capabilities of its offerings through a cloud-based platform. The company turned to the cloud-native development team at Rackspace Technology to help it deliver its new SaaS solution, Info360.com.

“Our utility customers vary widely in size and infrastructure and Rackspace Technology has helped us deliver a highly sophisticated platform where we can seamlessly onboard new customers and lower the barrier to entry for new municipalities,” said Rick Gruenhagen, CTO of Innovyze.

“Our customers can use real-time data to improve the accuracy of their models, which is a huge accomplishment in the water industry. The cloud-based approach reduces operational overhead for clients and gives Innovyze the freedom to continue innovating and leading the industry.” p

Rackspace Technology announces enhanced full lifecycle cloud native development capabilities to help customers build modern applications.

Vantage Data Centers breaks ground on Berlin and Warsaw campuses

Vantage Data Centers, a leading global provider of hyperscale data centre campuses, has announced it has broken ground on two greenfield campuses in Berlin and Warsaw. The development of these sites is part of the company’s US$2 billion European expansion and will provide hyperscalers, cloud providers and large enterprises with bestin-class hyperscale data centre campuses in two sought-after EU regions. This is the second German campus for the company and the first in Poland.

Berlin data centre campus

Located in Brandenburg Park, this 250,000 sqft (24,000 m²) campus (BER1) will be comprised of two 16MW state-of-the-art data centres offering a combined 32MW of critical IT load once fully developed. The first phase, scheduled for completion in early 2022, will include 8MW of IT capacity.

As part of the company’s environmental sustainability programme, Vantage will offer customers renewable energy options at the campus to reduce their carbon emissions. BER1 will use a highly efficient cooling system with outside air economisation and will have the ability to connect into district heating schemes to reuse waste heat. The campus will also feature on-site solar energy generation for non-critical areas, EV charging stations, maximised green space and underground drainage to manage runoff into local waterways.

Warsaw data centre campus

This 390,000 sqft (36,000 m²) campus (WAW1) will be comprised of two state-of-

the-art data centres. The first facility will include 16MW of capacity and the second facility will include 32MW of capacity, offering a combined 48MW of critical IT load once fully developed. The first phase, scheduled for delivery in early 2022, will include 8MW of IT capacity.

This campus will also offer customers renewable energy options and will feature hyper-efficient cooling with outside air economisation and EV charging stations, along with amenities such as customisable workspaces, secure storage and multiple meeting space options.

“The ground-breakings of Berlin and Warsaw are yet another testament to Vantage’s rapid global growth and industry-leading timeto-market strategy,” said Antoine Boniface, President of Europe at Vantage Data Centers. “In the past six months alone, Vantage’s significant progress of our greenfield developments in Berlin, Warsaw, Zurich and Frankfurt has proven that we are prepared to deploy premier hyperscale facilities at industry-leading speed in order to best serve the needs of our customers.” p

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THESE SITES IS PART OF THE COMPANY’S US$2 BILLION EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND WILL PROVIDE HYPERSCALERS, CLOUD PROVIDERS AND LARGE ENTERPRISES WITH BEST-IN-CLASS HYPERSCALE DATA CENTRE CAMPUSES IN TWO SOUGHT-AFTER EU REGIONS.

One person in four risks sharing confidential workrelated information

Anew survey carried out by KnowBe4 Research shows that nearly a quarter of employees are unsure whether the information they are working with is confidential or not.

KnowBe4 Research investigates the IT security culture of companies worldwide. They carry out continuous surveys to see how companies and organisations handle IT security and training.

New figures show that 24% are unsure whether the information they are working with is confidential or not. This means that information that ought not to be shared with others outside the organisation risks leaking out, without the employees being aware of the hazard.

“Managers have a responsibility to train their staff to treat the information they are working with in a good way. That as many as a quarter of employees are unsure about this indicates a considerable failing in many companies,” said Research Director, Kai Roer.

If confidential information falls into the wrong hands, it could harm the company in a variety of ways.

Some information could be market sensitive, some could impact the organisation’s reputation or breach data privacy regulations, while leaked login information could give cybercriminals access to business-critical internal systems.

There are considerable differences between different business sectors. In the construction, education, transport and retail sectors, as many as 34%–35% say they are unsure about the status of the information they are working with. In banking and finance, the proportion is down at 16%.

“We also see the same tendency in the annual security culture report. Sectors like banking and finance are, on the whole, more used to dealing with confidential information and probably have better routines and procedures for this,” said Roer.

“We see a clear link between the various aspects of security culture. The organisations that do well in one area, generally also do well in other areas. Unfortunately, IT security is equally important for everyone, regardless of business sector.”

A great many workplaces include nondisclosure agreements, specifying what can and cannot be shared, in their employees’ employment contracts.

“These figures indicate that the issue has generally not been properly explained to or followed up with employees,” said Roer.

“When someone starts a new job, they are given access to a lot of information. It is the manager’s responsibility to follow up and ensure that their employees are confident in their role and know how to handle the information they encounter.

“It is equally important to ensure that employees handle confidential information correctly as time goes on. It is not enough just to provide training when people join the organisation.”

Constant follow-up and training in the practice of IT security is needed to refresh employees’ awareness and keep them up to date.

“Cybercriminals are working constantly to develop more cunning methods of attack. In addition, things can happen within the company to change the situation, which employees must be made aware of,” said Roer. p

Equinix sets 2030 global climateneutral target

Equinix becomes the first in the data centre industry to commit to reaching climate neutral by 2030, backed by a science based target and sustainability innovation agenda.

Equinix has announced that it is committed to becoming climateneutral and has set a Science-Based Target (SBT) for emissions reduction across its global operations and supply chain by 2030. Aligned with the Paris Climate Agreement, this commitment is a critical step to ensure that Equinix continues to advance investments and innovations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The expected impact of these sustainability efforts on the broader digital ecosystem is sizable and Equinix’s many and diverse customers are expected to benefit from the greening of their digital supply chains. Equinix plans to remain committed to engaging these stakeholders to drive transparency and impact.

The targets are supported by Equinix’s leadership and strategies across renewable energy, green finance, public policy advocacy and leading design and operations. Equinix’s approved emissions reduction target by the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) builds on the company’s strong track record on sustainable growth and innovation, including achieving over 90% renewable energy coverage for its data centres from 2018 to 2020.

To date, Equinix has issued US$3.7 billion in green bonds towards environmentally sustainable projects across green buildings, renewable energy, energy and water efficiency, waste and clean transportation. Equinix is a founding member of the EU Climate Neutral Data Centre Operator Pact, as well as a founding board member of the

Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance (REBA). The company is committed to designing and operating with an environmental focus and in 2020 invested US$14 million to stand up a global Energy Efficiency Centre of Excellence dedicated to driving improved efficiencies across its sites.

As part of its science-based target, Equinix is aiming to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 emissions (direct and indirect from electricity) by 50% by 2030 against a 2019 baseline. To achieve this goal, Equinix is targeting to reach 100% renewable energy by 2030, fulfiling its commitment to RE100.

Additional carbon emission reductions will be achieved through driving energy efficiency savings, reducing refrigerant loss, phasing out high Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerants and investigating the replacement of diesel generators with cleaner on-site generation technologies.

Equinix is also committing to partnering with top suppliers by engaging with those responsible for 66% of Equinix’s Purchased Goods and Services and Capital Goods supplier-related emissions, to set their own science-based targets by 2025.

The company will also address Fuel- and Energy-Related Activities (FERA) with the aim to reduce the carbon associated with the delivery of power to its sites by 50% by 2030.

Beyond achieving its science-based targets, Equinix aims to reach climate-neutrality by 2030 across its Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

The company plans to take advantage of select carbon offsets and investigate new innovations, such as biodiesel, green hydrogen and other lower carbon on-site generation technologies. p

Samsung to bring open RAN to Europe with Vodafone UK

Vodafone UK selects Samsung for Europe’s first wide scale commercial deployment of Open RAN powered by vRAN; Samsung enters Europe with its latest 5G solutions.

Samsung Electronics has announced that it has been selected as a leading Open RAN vendor for Vodafone, a major telecommunications company, to bring virtualised Radio Access Network (vRAN) to the United Kingdom (UK), as well as its latest 4G and 5G solutions, including its Massive MIMO and other radios.

For this collaboration, Samsung will supply its commercial vRAN solutions and O-RAN compliant radios, covering both low-band and mid-band spectrum. The company’s fully-virtualised RAN is software-based and runs on Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) servers, offering features and performance that are equivalent to traditional hardwarebased equipment. Using a cloud-native and container-based architecture, Samsung’s vRAN enables more flexible deployments and efficiency in network management for mobile operators.

Among the key benefits of the revolutionary architecture is its automation capabilities, which simplify end-to-end network management. With Samsung’s vRAN, operators can quickly meet the evolving demands of new and existing services with minimal impact on deployment. Samsung will also deliver to Vodafone UK its market leading O-RAN compliant 5G radios, including the latest Massive MIMO radios.

“Vodafone is committed to leading the next wave of Digital Transformation across Europe,

ensuring fast and reliable connectivity for all,” said Johan Wibergh, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone. “Open RAN, built on strong partnerships, is key to realising this ambition. Samsung’s innovative solutions and expertise are part of the foundation that is creating this network of the future.”

This collaboration with Vodafone marks a first for Samsung, as the company brings its cloud-native virtualised RAN technology to a leading operator’s network in Europe. As acknowledged by many in the industry, Virtualised RAN and O-RAN technologies will be important to helping evolve network architectures to power the next generation of 5G applications and services. To this end, Samsung has been continuously leading in vRAN innovation, most recently

showing the capability to support the multigigabit speeds of Massive MIMO radios on COTS servers.

“We are proud that this collaboration with Vodafone – one of the premier carriers in the world – will be the first scaled deployment of our pioneering 5G technologies in Europe, including vRAN and O-RAN,” said Paul Kyungwhoon Cheun, President and Head of Networks Business at Samsung Electronics.

“This is a major step forward as more operators are transitioning into new RAN technologies to prioritise user experience and efficiency. We look forward to continue leading the way in 5G innovation to meet our customer’s highest standards of performance, functionality and reliability.” p

OVHcloud partners with Aiven to enhance its Database-as-aService offer

OVHcloud is accelerating the development of its Database-as-aService (DBaaS) offer by partnering with Aiven, a European software company that combines the best open source technologies with cloud infrastructure. This new offer will provide professionals with fully managed database solutions based on a trusted cloud.

According to Gartner, by 2022, 75% of databases will be deployed or migrated to a cloud platform.

This partnership will enable OVHcloud to offer an extensive catalogue of DBaaS solutions such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Apache Kafka, ElasticSearch, M3, and Apache Cassandra. This wide range of database management systems will suit a variety of uses, from legacy applications

to AI applications, web applications and e-commerce websites.

Database-as-a-Service solutions based on OVHcloud trusted infrastructures will give organisations security, confidentiality and reversibility guarantees for their data. Companies will retain exclusive control over their data and focus on the added value of their applications, as they will no longer have to worry about the configuration, installation and maintenance of the database software, the backups and hardware infrastructure needed to run the service securely. Moreover, companies will get the best price/ performance ratio, predictable costs, as well as the power of open source to accelerate their innovation.

“This partnership with Aiven allows us to accelerate the delivery of a full catalogue

of Database-as-a-Service, is Offering OVHcloud customers a wide range of choices to develop and run their applications in the cloud while retaining full control over their data,” said Sylvain Rouri, Chief Sales Officer at OVHcloud. “We share with Aiven, a European company, the values of transparency and reversibility enabled by open source technologies, offering companies the ability to accelerate their innovation while protecting themselves from technological lock-in.”

“We are proud to partner with Europe’s leading cloud services provider to enable more organisations to leverage best-of-breed data technologies. Our joint services enable customers to focus on their core business while we manage their infrastructure in an open and trusted cloud environment,” said Oskari Saarenmaa, CEO at Aiven. p

Canal Extremadura, a Spanish broadcast media company, needed to refresh an outdated infrastructure that lacked the flexibility for supporting an evolving business and the scalability for fast growing volumes of multimedia content. The new archive environment provides the long term scalability to support the company’s transformation from traditional TV and radio to more multimedia work. Francisco Reyes, Technical Chief, says that with a scalable archive, the company can stay focused on delivering engaging content instead of worrying about where to store it.

Canal Extremadura supports large-scale multimedia transformation

Headquartered in Mérida, Spain, with offices in Badajoz, Cáceres, and Plasencia, Canal Extremadura is a public multimedia company that delivers engaging content for radio, the web and two television channels. Content focuses on the identity, cohesion and culture of the autonomous Extremadura community, which is located in the western-central part of the Iberian Peninsula.

To make the transition from a traditional radio and TV business to a modern multimedia corporation, Canal Extremadura needed to revamp its complex, ageing IT infrastructure. By selecting a Quantum StorNext solution for its content archive, the company accelerated retrieval of completed media projects and gained the scalability for a swiftly evolving business.

Canal Extremadura is in the middle of a large-scale transformation. Beyond providing traditional radio and TV services, the company strives to become a public multimedia corporation that produces rich, compelling audiovisual content for a full array of platforms. Canal Extremadura wants to put the citizen at the centre and deliver digital content with a sense of disruptive innovation.

Achieving this transformation requires technological change. In particular, the IT group needed to refresh an outdated infrastructure that lacked the flexibility for supporting an evolving business and the scalability for fast-growing volumes of multimedia content.

“We ran out of room in the tape library,” said Francisco Reyes, Technical Chief at Canal Extremadura. “We had to migrate some video to an NAS just to free up space.”

“The main problem for us was economics,” said Reyes. “It would have been too expensive to expand the system.”

Any new archive solution would have to integrate well with the group’s preferred Media Asset Management

(MAM) system from Dalet, which is essential for the company’s media production and post-production workflow. In addition, the archive would have to enable a smooth transition from the large existing environment, which contained a large volume of old files in legacy media formats.

Selecting a scalable archive from Quantum

The IT group initiated a request for proposals from multiple storage vendors, but Dalet recommended Quantum. Coming from Dalet, the recommendation carried significant weight: the Canal Extremadura team knew that Dalet had validated integration of the MAM with the Quantum platform.

“We tend to keep solutions for a very long time – we had been using [our previous] system for about 12 years. So we needed to be very confident in a new solution before making the selection,” said Reyes. “The advice and technical information we received from the Dalet and Quantum teams was very helpful. They gave a very clear picture of how the solution would work and how it would be implemented.”

“We were impressed that the Quantum CEO reached out to us directly,” said Damaso Castellote, Technical Director at Canal Extremadura. “It was clear that the Quantum team was accessible, engaged and deeply invested in the project.”

Through consultation with Dalet and Quantum, the IT group selected a Quantum StorNext solution that includes Xcellis storage servers, an Xcellis metadata array, a QXS disk storage array and a StorNext AEL6000 tape library. The tape library, which has 400 slots, uses LTO-8 drives – a significant upgrade from the LTO-3 drives the company was using previously. The environment is fully integrated with the Dalet Galaxy MAM system.

WITH A SCALABLE ARCHIVE, OUR COMPANY CAN STAY FOCUSED ON DELIVERING ENGAGING CONTENT INSTEAD OF WORRYING ABOUT WHERE TO STORE IT.

The IT group is capitalising on the networking flexibility of the Quantum platform to support a range of client systems. Specifically, the storage environment is configured to offer fibre channel connectivity to 10 SAN clients plus 10-GbE connections to multiple NAS clients. Meanwhile, the metadata network uses 1 GbE.

Getting up to speed fast and streamlining migration

To make sure Canal Extremadura could make the most of the new archive solution, the Quantum team provided multi-day onsite training. “We definitely like to know what we have in our hands,” said Reyes. “The training was very useful.”

Meanwhile, the Dalet implementation team helped Canal Extremadura migrate its existing archive to the Quantum environment – a process that included transcoding some archived content from legacy formats. “The process took some time because we had a lot of data to migrate, but it was quite smooth,” said Reyes.

Gaining rapid access to archived content

The StorNext File System enables Canal Extremadura journalists, producers and other team members to retrieve archived content much faster than before. Integrated online storage is part of the reason: with the StorNext environment, some content can remain immediately accessible on disk.

“We have more than 100 TB of online storage from Quantum. So if someone has completed a project six months ago, it will probably still be online,” said Reyes. “For us, the Quantum StorNext approach works much better.”

Even when content has been archived to tape, the IT group can deliver it to users rapidly. “In the past, users knew they had to wait for content to be retrieved from the archive,” said Reyes.

“Now, it’s much faster than before. We have more drives and faster drives with the Quantum archive.”

Moving to the latest LTO technology also helped accelerate retrieval. By upgrading from LTO-3 to LTO-8, Canal Extremadura can now store significantly more data on each tape. As a result, there’s a greater likelihood that each retrieval request can be satisfied without having to load multiple tapes.

How does faster archival retrieval help users? “Journalists might be in a hurry to assemble a new video for that day’s news broadcast,” said Reyes. “With a faster archive, we can help them meet their deadlines.”

Strengthening compatibility and simplifying support

Moving to the StorNext File System has helped consolidate a complicated archive environment that previously used systems from multiple vendors. Working with a single vendor eliminates some of the potential compatibility problems from the multivendor environment.

With the new archive, the StorNext platform facilitates smooth data movement from online disk storage to the tape library. That integrated environment works with the Dalet MAM system to support a complete production and post-production workflow, from ingest to archiving.

Ongoing support is also much easier now that there are technologies from fewer vendors. The IT group has a single point of contact for the Quantum environment if the company ever needs to address issues or make changes.

Moving forward with a multimedia transformation

The new archive environment provides the long-term scalability to support the company’s transformation from traditional TV and radio to more multimedia work. “If we ever need to expand the archive in the future, we can simply add tapes – it’s very straightforward,” said Reyes. “With a scalable archive, our company can stay focused on delivering engaging content instead of worrying about where to store it.” p

THE COMPANY STRIVES TO BECOME A PUBLIC MULTIMEDIA CORPORATION THAT PRODUCES RICH, COMPELLING AUDIOVISUAL CONTENT FOR A FULL ARRAY OF PLATFORMS.

POWERING SUCCESSFUL PROJECT MANAGEMENT BEYOND BORDERS

Starline is a global leader in power distribution equipment and provides a revolutionary, overhead power distribution system through its track/ distribution busway products. The company is now expanding its offering into high power busbars. Intelligent CIO Europe caught up with David Skeans, Director of International Sales, Starline, to find out more about the new addition to the company’s portfolio and the global support offered. He also suggests how data centre leaders can ensure successful project management.

sStarline is expanding its offering into high power busbar. Why has Starline widened its portfolio beyond track busway/distribution busbars?

We have found that our customers have very specific power distribution needs and while we’re doing an excellent job in servicing white space, they needed more assistance in connecting that white space to the grey space or to the electrical rooms. We found that they would often have to use another manufacturer to make that connection from the electrical room to the data centre, so we decided to expand our offering to include high power busbar, which is commonly needed

in those spaces. So, it’s a decision that’s been driven by customer needs.

Can you tell us how customer demands or requirements have changed and how that’s shaped your own innovation strategy?

Over the past few years, one of the biggest demands is a need to meet global project requirements. Typically, our larger customers have a global footprint or are trying to establish a global footprint. That requires them to have products that meet the needs of local electrical certifications and electrical requirements, whether it be

different voltages, different frequencies, or sometimes special safety requirements.

That has caused us to do a lot of innovation work and provide products that meet multiple certification needs. There are also requirements in many of the local markets such as China or India and Mexico.

We offer a product that can be used for all global markets and that really simplifies the application and allows our customers to have a single product that works for their global footprint.

How does Starline support the global data centre market with the XCP and distribution busbars?

Our support is a major part of our business and investment. Customers want us to handle all aspects of projects so we’re providing both the product and services, which are vast. They require a lot of input and close communication with our customers, both preand post-sales. And we have a full staff of people with lots of unique talents to support those customers.

Can you explain more about what type of global support Starline offers?

It really starts with pre-sales where the teams are heavily involved in configuration and application. Our sales staff generally have engineering backgrounds or technical training, so they understand our products –physically and also electrically.

They work in conjunction with regional application engineers to provide the best configuration for the space that the customer is looking to power.

Configuration would typically explore how you might line up the busbars, configuring the tap off units, the interconnection between the high power busbar and the low power busbar and integration in connection to UPS or switchboards.

Once the pre-sales configuration is done, we have an agreed-upon bill of material and we work with our product engineering and manufacturing teams to make sure we’re covering all the unique aspects of a particular project.

This involves creating AutoCAD drawings that are used in production and also communicated out to the customer for their use and design, before being transferred to the project management team.

The project management team then works at the site and continues to engage with the application

engineers. There is also operational support and a whole commercial team that handles contracts, contract execution, logistics and so on.

How has Legrand supported your global support capabilities?

We were acquired a couple of years ago by Legrand, a global leader in electrical product manufacturing with a global footprint and resources all over the world, which has been particularly helpful in those markets where we’re not normally involved.

Legrand is also very helpful in supplying components. Our busbar products use quite a few electrical components and circuit breakers to connectors and meters, and having access to design teams and manufacturing resources and factories means Legrand has been a tremendous asset to both us and our customers.

Project management is a key component of any build project. What does Starline offer as far as services to support the success of a project?

We really focus on customer satisfaction. We take all aspects of the project seriously and make sure we are supporting properly.

Again, this starts with pre-sales. Most of our project management is involved in the pre-sale activities for large projects, so they’re familiar with the special needs of that particular project.

It then goes into manufacturing support, making sure we are meeting the schedules by doing everything we can to get the product to the location when needed, co-ordinating with the site and making sure we understand the unique site logistics, whether it be service elevator access, crane access or coordinating with site personnel and scheduling.

Then we are also heavily engaged in commissioning support, providing products to assist in commissioning, providing commissioning data review or, in some cases, providing commissioning services themselves.

We then have installation, so if a customer chooses to use Starline installation services we have a full team available for that and if they choose to use a local resource then we have training available to make sure that the local resource understands how to install.

Along with that goes operational support. Once the product is installed and commissioned, the operational support is to make sure that customers are

David Skeans, Director of International Sales, Starline

comfortable using our product and in their spare parts supply or inventory.

What advice would you offer data centre managers on ensuring successful project management?

Regular communication with the project team is very important and getting the project team together early is also key, making sure you’re communicating all of the changes. There are always many changes, whether it be to schedule, design or things that come up during the course of the project.

We like to think of ourselves as being very flexible and being able to accommodate changes as they come up, but the more advance notice that we have, the more likely we are to be able to satisfy those needs.

How does Starline service the unique needs of a site and how do you handle site coordination for projects?

As we are a global company doing global business, logistics is an important part of what we do. We’re servicing the world through three factories in the US, the UK and Singapore, and from those factories we’re shipping to most of the major country markets.

We are often faced with logistical problems, whether it be lack of containers in a port or problems booking aircraft or ocean vessels. We put a lot of effort into our logistical support to make sure that we understand how we’re going to get the product to the customer when they need it.

Along with that goes a lot of support to make sure that when the customer is doing the installation, they understand how to do it correctly.

Which industry trends do you believe will impact the market and how should data centre teams be preparing or responding?

Probably the most immediate situation is concerns about global supply of raw materials and components, as well as factoring in lead times.

It’s no secret that there are issues throughout most industries with component lead times, particularly electrical components. The more advance notice that we have about a project or customer’s intention, the more we can do advanced purchases and firm up our position with vendors to make sure that we don’t run out of material.

We’re putting a lot of effort into that and have a process where we actually treat potential projects as if they’re orders so that we can begin the process of procuring materials and scheduling a manufacturing build so we do all we can to support the scheduling for the project.

Can you give us some insight into Starline’s regional plans for the coming year?

We are always trying to expand geographically. We’re looking more at the Eastern European markets and have put some more resources in Asia in particular to focus on the Korean market, which we feel is up and coming.

We’re adding project support resources as we take on larger projects, both in Asia and Europe. We’re also doubling the size of our factory in Singapore and increasing resources and production time in the UK. So we’re doing everything we can to meet the growing demands for our product – that’s our primary focus right now. p

McAfee and the McAfee logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of McAfee, LLC or its subsidiaries in the US and other countries. Copyright © 2019 McAfee, LLC

On the lighter side of things, we ask the industry experts what makes them tick. . . .

. . . GET TO KNOW . . .

Dean Yates, Regional Vice President UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa, Rubrik

What would you describe as your most memorable achievement?

After 25 years in the industry, there have been so many highlights/achievements but by far the standout for me is my appointment by Rubrik as Vice President and General Manager UKI/MEA. I’ve been involved from an early stage in building a startup from grass roots in EMEA with a technology that has automated data protection and has changed the game around cyber-resilience and ransomware remediation –meaning our customers are no longer held to ransom by the bad guys!

What first made you think of a career in technology?

To be honest I didn’t really think of a career in technology – I wanted to be a stuntman! I ended up falling into the industry by taking a telesales role in the late ‘90s while saving some money to go travelling, at which point the comms market was booming and full of opportunity. I kind of just fell in love with the pace of innovation and how software disrupts industry.

What style of management philosophy do you employ with your current position?

I’ve tried to keep things simple in my style and focus on some key principles:

Ÿ Drive a customer-first ethos in everything we do, will it benefit and delight our customers? If not we shouldn’t do it.

Ÿ Be a career destination of choice, have a no-ego hiring policy that has no hierarchy or politics to ensure we can evolve at the speed of the market.

Ÿ Manage with accountability – everyone is responsible for their own success which ultimately drives the direction of Rubrik both technically and commercially.

What do you think has emerged as the technology trend of 2021 and why?

COVID-19 has brought security and data protection to the forefront of organisations, having 100% of the workforce become remote overnight. Without the security of an office, corporate network and all the security protocols that go with that, hackers are the ultimate opportunists and in times of despair, unfortunately, ransomware has boomed as an industry.

COVID 19 has brought security and data protection to the forefront of organisations, having 100% of the workforce become remote overnight.

What do you currently identify as the major areas of investment in your industry?

Data protection can no longer survive as only an expensive insurance policy; it needs to derive value from data and provide additional business value with security and governance risk and compliance at its core. My prediction is that security will move more to the data layer than at the perimeter in the network and we’ll see more investment as a result.

How do you deal with stress and unwind outside of the office?

I have a young family (twin boys aged five and a daughter of nine) and I find spending time with them and my wife the best way to unwind. My daughter is learning to play golf and I’m keen to get the boys started too so we can have a four ball at the weekends. We live in a beautiful city where there is an abundance of different walks and places to explore. With lots of different restaurants, bars and cafes, we always make sure we stop somewhere different as our ‘reward’.

If you could go back and change one career decision, what would it be?

I’m not sure I’d change any – even the lowlights have been a learning experience to get me where I am today. I guess my only regret would be not moving into a startup earlier as I’ve learnt more about business in the last five years than I did in corporates in 20.

What are the region-specific challenges when implementing new technologies in Europe?

It’s interesting to see the adoption of technology across regions is vastly different. Cloud adoption in some parts of Europe, Middle East and Africa is still in early stages and as companies adopt public cloud, they need to consider data protection and security at all levels. There seems to be a perception that data in the public cloud is, by default, secure which simply isn’t the case and the customer is still liable for their data.

What changes to your job role have you seen in the last year and how do you see these developing in the next 12 months?

Despite longing the customer and partner interaction that we enjoyed prior to COVID-19, I honestly believe there are some large productivity gains and work-life balance we can benefit from as we return to some form of normality with a mix of face-to-face and remote working.

What advice would you offer somebody aspiring to obtain C-level position in your industry?

Technology in its nature is disruptive and driven by innovation, therefore being adaptable and having grit and determination in my opinion are the main attributes to success. Don’t assume that what made you successful in prior roles will make you successful again, and focus on continual improvement and self-development. p

Customer experience: A critical differentiator for financial organisations

Ensuring effective and enjoyable customer experiences is now a business imperative for financial organisations, and those that apply relevant strategies will be setting themselves up to be competitive in the future business landscape. Frederick Tsai, VP, Customer Success, Liferay, highlights how customer behaviour in the financial services industry is changing as advances in technology – and a pandemic – move customers more to remote, online and applications.

Changing customer behaviour

Your business can tailor its services to customers undergoing specific life events,

to ad-hoc events like a pandemic

distancing and work from home, and possibly influence laws in your industry. But one area where you have complete control and can affect the customer experience greatly is your technology.

these are all related.

have seen from the pandemic, customers adapt quickly and capital often flows through the path of least resistance.

As

The key to developing your digital strategy is this: digital experience strategy isn’t an IT-driven initiative, it’s a customer-needs driven initiative. There’s a huge difference between simply using digital technology and actually leveraging it to improve customer experiences and better address customer needs. The pandemic forced businesses to accelerate the adoption of technology that they were considering or planning on using to better serve their customer base.

These are some specific trends you may see now:

1. Increased digital adoption: people shifting to digital platforms for day-to-day needs

2. Change in mobility patterns: less use of public transport, more remote working, etc.

3. Change in purchasing behaviour: move to valuebased purchasing and online shopping. So how are these trends going to affect financial services?

Expectations in financial services

The obvious expectation from customers in the current environment is that financial service companies will provide digital access to accounts and resources.

This digital self-service can take different forms and your business should consider what fits best.

Focus on the outcomes you need and reflect on the following questions:

1. Do you provide any services that absolutely require in-person contact?

2. Is your current digital presence adequate to inform your customers?

3. Do you have a customer portal that users can access independently?

4. Do you have a lengthy FAQ that could benefit from an AI ‘bot’?

5. Do you already have digital resources that can be better leveraged?

These are just some areas of your digital experience to consider. The theme is that customers expect to be able to access their accounts and all their functions at all times, and without the need for human intervention – until it’s needed. If your business can invest in technologies that make the customer experience more independent, it can reduce overhead and increase profit. If you can develop a good transition from technology to real humans where necessary, your customers won’t miss a thing.

Key strategies being implemented

Once you’ve defined your specific expectations for your business and customers, it’s time to develop a strategy to serve them best while maintaining a well-oiled internal machine. Here are some of the key strategies currently being implemented:

Websites

In a new age of digital expectations, your website still acts as your business’ front door, but it’s not enough anymore. Your business needs content, tools, applications and customer service that work together, all supported by accurate, actionable data. Customers are satisfied when they are empowered to manage their finances how and when they want, while at the same time they are able to count on expert advice and service when they need it. Ease of access while maintaining security should be a focus of financial service businesses.

Do your customers know where to go for key performance indicators, pay their bill, research an investment, view the latest press releases or laws and speak with a representative? The more you can make your website interact with email, applications, text, social media and future innovations in a simple, smooth way, the more seamless and enjoyable your customer experience will be.

Self-service portals

The demand from customers to be able to access and transact with their financial accounts should be embraced by financial institutions. Self-service portals allow customers to do many things that once required an in-person meeting or phone call with a human and this trend will continue. Customers

enjoy the autonomy it provides and businesses enjoy the cost-savings. The key is having the right balance: your customer shouldn’t have to speak with a manager for something as simple as a withdrawal, but they also shouldn’t be forced to ask endless questions to an AI bot in hopes of finding a customer service phone number.

Businesses should monitor data to avoid either of these extreme cases and find the happy medium where customers are empowered and supported equally.

Headless APIs

Application Programming Interface (API) is a fancy term for software that allows two devices to talk to each other.

In a world where people are using more and varied devices, the need for a seamless experience across those devices is greater than ever. Your customers want to be able to see updates on their smartwatch as they hit the gym in the morning, sneak a peek at their account from their work computer and read the latest news from their tablet after dinner.

A Headless API is one that can connect to any enduser device. This not only simplifies integration with your customers’ current devices, but it invests in the future by acknowledging that the next device is right around the corner. Your business needs a single source to deliver content and services to avoid a disconnect in any area of the customer experience, now or down the road.

Listening to your customers

Can you hear the voice of your customer? What do they want? Surely you know what services they want – you designed your business around that. But how do they want to experience that service? Innovators such as Carvana recognised that one Toyota Camry is virtually the same as another. But people absolutely hate going to a dealership, waiting for a salesperson, spending hours test-driving and kicking the tires only to feel grifted at the end of it all. How you deliver your service is as important as what you offer.

Millennials are infamous for their focus on experiences. One side of this is their propensity to spend on travel and other experiences rather than buying, say, a Toyota Camry. The other side is that they will be drawn to companies that provide the most effective, pain-free experience, no matter if it’s as fun as a car or as necessary as insurance, banking, taxes, investing, or another financial service.

Gen Z is no different and this trend may continue for many years.

Designing a data-driven strategy

When designing your strategy to provide the best customer experience, you must gather data at every customer touchpoint and have a means for organising that data to give meaningful statistics. With this, you can see the ideal customer experience, how it changes over time, and even influence and personalise it based on if-then tests. You can also see what is and isn’t working and pivot on a dime. Consider the below steps in creating a better customer experience using data:

1. Select and capture the right data

2. Take a holistic approach to data analysis

3. Be agile

4. Predict customers’ wants and needs (but don’t assume)

5. Meet customers where they are

6. Communicate your unique selling point

7. Map the buyer’s journey

8. Don’t sacrifice performance

9. Refine your strategies

The vast majority of customers cite customer experience as the most important factor in making a purchase. It is a broad topic that deserves all of your attention to get it right because it’s the gift that keeps on giving. Repeat customers are more profitable and easier to keep happy. Happy customers refer new customers and build your brand and reputation for you.

When considering the customer experience you’re trying to foster, think about all the factors that go into it. Your employees – from frontline salespeople to IT in the back rooms – affect how your customers rate their interaction. The technology your business leverages can make the experience easy and even fun or painful. And a strategy that integrates people and technology to deliver the best service in the best way is a recipe for success. p

Frederick Tsai, VP, Customer Success, Liferay

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