Technology Magazine July 2023

CTOs

Advancing defence missions at speed

Kate Maxwell, CTO, Worldwide Defense & Intelligence, on the era of the first ‘broadband war’

DaaS:

Taking a collaborative approach to data

AI & Security: Generative AI changing the game

A 6G future: Transforming the future of enterprises

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Is your organisation secure?

Are you 100% protected from the latest cybersecurity threats?

The cybersecurity landscape changes every day, so organizations face mounting challenges when it comes to protecting their digital assets.

This thought leadership roundtable featuring experts from Tech Mahindra and Microsoft explores how nextgeneration Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems powered by cloud computing and artificial intelligence can help you protect your business.

By harnessing the scalability and agility of the cloud, combined

with advanced AI algorithms, this cutting-edge SIEM technology enables defenders to gain a deep understanding of the threat landscape.

Armed with this knowledge and insight, you can proactively hunt and mitigate threats in real-time, bolstering your cybersecurity defenses and minimizing potential damages.

Tech Mahindra and Microsoft will deep dive into the key features and benefits of this SIEM solution.

Can you afford to miss it?

Tackling technology’s sustainability challenge

We speak with sustainability leaders about the tech industry’s role in achieving global ESG goals, reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change

Today’s world is witness to generational advances in technology that are helping us reimagine how we live and work. Crucially, technology companies are also important in our bid to make Earth a net-zero planet by 2050. But how, exactly, will the technology sector achieve this? What are the challenges and obstacles, and how can these be overcome?

To answer these and other sustainability questions, this month we hear from experts on how the technology industry can further global sustainability goals, and how tech firms are incorporating sustainability into their products, services and operations.

We also explore how technology such as AI is being explored for its potential to offer innovative and scalable solutions to sustainability issues, and look at the sustainability challenges tech companies are facing and how they can be addressed.

MARCUS LAW

marcus.law@bizclikmedia.com

MAGAZINE

“The technology industry has a crucial role to play in achieving global sustainability goals – especially in reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change”

CONTENTS

UP FRONT

14 BIG PICTURE Generative AI transforming the advertising industry

16 FIVE MINS WITH Richard Hoptroff Founder and CTO at Hoptroff

20 LIFE TIME ACHIEVEMENT CEO and Chairman at Dell Technologies

176 COMMUNITY FIBRE

Building the best fibre network in London

194 MICROSOFT

Mike J. Walker at Microsoft empowers pharma supply chain innovations

210 OSF HEALTHCARE SYSTEM

OSF HealthCare empowers patients with digital advancements

224 SERVICENOW

Faster, more cost-effective app development with ServiceNow

246 BDX

Customer-centricity helps data centres overcome disruption

260 AS EESTI RAUDTEE / ESTONIAN RAILWAYS LTD

Fast-tracking infrastructure into the future

Fluent Order Managements drives real-time business and customer benefits

Jamie Cairns, Chief Strategy Officer at Fluent Commerce, on how its order management platform enhances operational efficiency and customer experience.

Fluent Commerce is a global software company focused on distributed order management. Its cloud-native platform, Fluent Order Management, provides accurate and near real-time inventory data visibility, order orchestration, fulfilment optimisation, instore pick and pack, customer service, and reporting to transform fulfilment into a competitive advantage.

As Jamie Cairns, Chief Strategy Officer at Fluent Commerce explains, the process of managing orders begins with inventory data. “Being able to unify a view of inventory and then syndicating that inventory data out across a range of different channels lets you improve the customer experience,” Cairns comments.

That, in turn, has a range of different operational efficiency benefits, reducing costs by reducing split shipments, cancelled orders, and customer service calls.

As Cairns describes, order management represents an opportunity for retailers and B2B organisations to harness inventory data to provide real-world benefits. One of their recent innovations, Fluent Big Inventory, is about unifying in near real-time those inventory sources, enabling all systems to become inventory aware.

“It is not just about enhancing the order fulfilment process, which is typically what has been the domain of an order management system,” Cairns explains. “It’s about making inventory data available to other systems, like search, as well and ultimately being able to personalise search results based on inventory.” With changing customer preferences in recent years,

brands have had to adapt quickly. As Cairns explains, Fluent Order Management not only provides a robust software-as-a-service platform, but at a lower total cost so businesses can move quickly and meet customer expectations efficiently.

During the COVID-19 pandemic when stores were closed, Fluent Order Management enabled businesses to adapt quickly. “Stores still had inventory and there were huge spikes in online demand,” Cairns explains. “Our customers were able to adapt in a matter of a day to completely change their fulfilment workflows.

“Digital agility is essential,” he concludes. “We are not trying to predict what the future is, but to provide a toolset that allows you to adapt as the future evolves.”

BIG PICTURE

Image:

Generative AI transforming the advertising industry

Taipei, Taiwan

Nvidia and WPP are developing a content engine that harnesses Nvidia Omniverse and AI to enable creative teams to produce high-quality commercial content faster, more efficiently and at scale.

The new engine connects an ecosystem of 3D design, manufacturing and creative

supply chain tools, including those from Adobe and Getty Images, letting WPP’s artists and designers integrate 3D content creation with generative AI.

“The world’s industries, including the US$700bn digital advertising industry, are racing to realise the benefits of AI,” said Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang during his COMPUTEX keynote address. “With Omniverse Cloud and generative AI tools, WPP is giving brands the ability to build and deploy product experiences and compelling content at a level of realism and scale never possible before.”

RICHARD HOPTROFF

happened when, especially for financial services. And I mean precise – down to a millionth of a second, in some cases.

Awarded a PhD in Physics by King’s College London for work in optical computing and artificial intelligence, Richard Hoptroff has a long track record of technological innovation in AI, Bluetooth and, most recently, time synchronisation.

Today, with Hoptroff – the company he founded in 2015 – he is working on developing hyper-accurate synchronised timestamping solutions for the financial services sector and beyond, based on a unique combination of grandmaster atomic clock engineering and proprietary software.

Q. COULD YOU TELL ME ABOUT HOPTROFF AND HOW YOUR TECHNOLOGIES HELP BUSINESSES WORLDWIDE?

» The world today is digital, and digital moves at the speed of light. It needs precise timing globally to be able to function, for example, for media streaming and to be able to know what

But synchronising digital systems at scale is a tricky business that requires a lot of specialist expertise and hardware. So my instinct was to provide that as a utility that you subscribe to, rather than a complex system you have to manage. And that is what Hoptroff does.

After all, you flick a switch and the light comes on, pretty much 24/7/365. You don’t think about the supply chains, power stations, and distribution grids that made that happen. Time on tap should be that simple, trustable and reliable.

Richard Hoptroff speaks to Technology Magazine about his tips on launching technology companies and emerging trends in the world of AI

“The world today is digital, and digital moves at the speed of light”

Q. CAN YOU SHARE WITH US SOME TIPS ON HOW TO LAUNCH A SUCCESSFUL TECH COMPANY, AND WHAT ARE SOME COMMON MISTAKES THAT ENTREPRENEURS SHOULD AVOID?

» On success, a couple of thoughts: first, look for what other people are doing successfully and repeat it with enough differentiation to not compete head-on –for example, a different location, price, or sales channel.

Second, look for systemic changes, such as changes in regulations, technology or demographics, especially in big, fragmented, sleepy markets that will be slow to compete or will

Hoptroff provides plug-and-play software solutions that deliver precision timing and time synchronisation for businesses worldwide.

The company’s advanced technologies ensure business leaders meet compliance obligations, improve operational efficiency, and minimise costs while reducing risk and ensuring business continuity.

The network-delivered solution supports multiple industries globally, including financial services, media & broadcasting, gaming, internet of things, ecommerce, and distributed ledger technology. Hoptroff’s software is highlyresilient, secure, verified, auditable, cost-effective, and easy-to-install, use, scale and maintain. It provides the highest level of compliance, security, and accuracy, ensuring seamless business operations and effective risk management for the future.

need you to remain competitive. For example, the introduction of Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) and Consolidation Audit Trail (CAT) regulations in finance were the springboard for our current business. On mistakes, real successes come from operating as a team. Stick to what you’re personally good at and partner with people who are good at what you’re bad at. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And the “fail fast and fail often” philosophy is right; most ventures fail, so flush them out quickly and move on, or pivot the team and relationships you’ve built. When you innovate, there’s very little correlation between the effort put in and the value generated. So, if it’s a slog, it’s probably time to recalibrate.

Q. WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER TO BE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGES FACING TECH ENTREPRENEURS TODAY, AND HOW CAN THEY BE OVERCOME?

» For most of us, it’s having the balls to think big. I keep having to remind myself that if I risk and fail, it won’t kill me. As Gordon Moore said, “If everything you try succeeds, you’re not trying hard enough”.

Q. HOW DO YOU SEE THE ROLE OF AI EVOLVING IN THE TECH INDUSTRY IN THE COMING YEARS, AND WHAT EMERGING TRENDS DO YOU THINK WILL DRIVE THIS EVOLUTION?

» I’ve been active in AI since the 1980s, when the collective brain trust could gather together in a fairly small conference venue. My first business, in the 1990s, was using neural networks for time series forecasting and modelling for business applications.

Back then, as now, availability of data drives what you can achieve.

In the 1990s, I specialised in extracting the best insights possible from small datasets, because that was all anybody had. With the Large Language Models, such as ChatCGP, and image creators such as DALL-E 2, he who holds the data holds the power. And, even if the dataholders are willing to share data, they may not be able to do so for privacy reasons.

A company I was a director of, Replica Analytics – now acquired by Aetion Inc –specialised in creating synthetic datasets from real medical data so that AI models and software testing engineers could take advantage of it.

In terms of emerging trends, I contrast the AI world of the 1980s with the AI world of today. Back then, we had crazy, interesting ideas that have never been followed up on. Today, a few big players use a narrow branch of AI to extract value from the data they sit on. I think the new advances will be in revisiting those old ideas. Ones I’m particularly keen on are error estimation (“ChatGPT, are you sure you are right?”) and anomaly detection, where you could connect up an AI system to any input, it learns the patterns, and raises an alert when the data doesn’t fit the usual pattern.

“As Gordon Moore said, If everything you try succeeds, you’re not trying hard enough”

Introduction to Hoptroff

WATCH NOW

MICHAEL DELL

Thirty-nine years ago, in 1984, Michael Dell started a small startup business, Dell, situated in his freshmen dorm room at the University of Texas, with a budget of US$1,000. Fast-forward nearly 40 years, and Dell himself is the CEO and Chairman of Dell Technologies, as well as one of the top leaders in technology, whilst remaining at the forefront of digital transformation.

Dell’s dream was to make technology not only accessible, but to “enable human potential”. In the present day, it is easy to say that his company has grown into just that, with Dell Technologies now one of the world’s largest IT companies with a revenue of more than US$102bn. The company is celebrated for serving both small and large businesses and consumers alike, whilst continuing its commitment to ethics.

A deep commitment to progressive technologies in an evolving world Dell started his business at age 19, selling computers out of his dorm room at university. His quick aptitude for computers and passion for what was then a hobby led him to gross US$80,000 by the end of his freshman year.

Michael’s vision of how technology should be designed, manufactured and sold forever changed the IT industry. In 1992, aged 27, he became the youngest CEO of a company ranked in Fortune Magazine’s list of the top 500 corporations.

EXECUTIVE BIO

According to Forbes, Michael Dell now has a net worth of more than US$50bn, making him one of the top 25 richest people on the planet (as of 2023).

In 2016, Dell Technologies was formed when Dell merged with the computer storage giant EMC, making the US$60bn merger the largest technology acquisition ever.

Today, Dell Technologies focuses on the sale of personal computers, network

MICHAEL DELL

TITLE: CEO AND CHAIRMAN

COMPANY: DELL TECHNOLOGIES

INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES

LOCATION: TEXAS, US

As someone who is committed to all aspects of digital transformation, Michael Dell is the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, which was formed in 2016 when Dell merged with EMC.

In addition to his duties at Dell, he is an honorary member of the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum and is an executive committee member of the International Business Council. He is also a member of the Technology CEO Council and the Business Roundtable. He is also a board member of Catalyst and also served as the United Nations Foundation’s first Global Advocate for Entrepreneurship.

When Michael Dell pioneered Dell, he may not have imagined its global success. Now a top CEO and philanthropist, he continues to drive tech advancement

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

servers, data storage solutions, and software. It is a progressive technology company that prides itself on its ethics and reliability for its customers. In 2021, according to Fortune, the company was confirmed to be the largest shipper of PC monitors globally and the third-largest PC vendor by unit sales worldwide.

As digital technology continues to evolve, the company states that it is committed to sharing the latest resources on progressive technologies, like quantum computing, and continues to provide new use cases.

The company has also been commended as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute. It has also been recognised by Fortune as a Most Admired Company and Best Place to Work, by Forbes as one of America’s Best Employers For Women and by Newsweek as a Most Loved Workplace.

The Global Data Protection Index (GDPI) Snapshot is a survey of 1,000 IT decision makers from organisations worldwide. It highlighted that risks of cyber threats, working from home and modern workloads are key concerns in the industry, with 67% not confident that data across all public clouds are protected.

Michael Dell’s Business Lessons For Entrepreneurs | Forbes

Dell Technologies: driving the change for all to be better protected

Dell is clear on his ethos that “fair and friendly competition is better.” He is passionate about the power of technology being used in a positive way, which includes Dell Technologies helping to create better protections for internet platforms and data storage.

As reported by CSO, the company has recently expanded its security portfolio to include greater threat management tools and the introduction of a cloudbased secured component verification for Dell PCs.

The company has described data protection as “mission critical” as organisations become increasingly dependent on technology. Part of its data protection and backup solutions includes

cyber-resilient multi-cloud data protection, which uses AI to create even greater protection for businesses.

Dell has recently spoken on how AI is reimagining businesses, as quoted by CRN: “The fastest-growing workloads in our ISG business are AI and machine learning intelligence-driven.”

“It’s unlocking the power of data and it’s a wonderful thing for all of us to reimagine how our organisation and world will work as the cost of cognitive power goes to zero.”

Not only does Michael Dell seek to better protect and develop online spaces, but, also, in plenty of other capacities worldwide. In 2023, it was noted that his charity, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, has donated more than US$2.43bn to date, primarily to accelerate opportunities for children growing up in poverty in the US, India and South Africa.

Each year, the organisation creates opportunities for more than five million low-income students across the globe to attend high-quality schools with technology resources. In providing schools with the relevant resources, the organisation hopes to provide better pathways towards university, positive career prospects, and those in poverty.

Within the US, the foundation seeks to improve the health and wellness of more than two million people nationwide, collaborating with partners to help communities find local solutions.

Michael Dell’s two books, ‘Direct from Dell: Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry’ (1999), and ‘Play Nice But Win: A CEO’s Journey from Founder to Leader’ (2021) chart his journey to becoming a successful business leader, as well as lessons learned along the way. He is a clear trailblazer in the technological world.

“It’s a wonderful thing for all of us to reimagine how our organisation and world will work as the cost of cognitive power goes to zero”

Executives from Appian, AWS, and Xebia share their collaborative efforts and excitement about their partnership in low-code, cloud, and sustainability.

Technology is instrumental to achieving next-level capabilities across industries. But organizations that want to operate sustainably must choose technology that lets them adhere to strong environmental, social, and governance principles.

Appian Corporation, a process automation leader, is a critical piece of the digital transformation and sustainability puzzle. The enterprise-grade Appian Low-Code Platform is built to simplify today’s complex business processes, with process mining, workflow, and automation capabilities.

“By quickly building apps that streamline and automate workflows, organizations are using Appian to make their processes for monitoring and reporting on ESG initiatives faster, simpler, and more effective,” says Meryl Gibbs, Emerging Industries Leader at Appian.

“Both AWS and Appcino are amazing partners of ours,” says Michael Heffner, VP Solutions and Industry Go To Market at Appian. “We have an extremely long legacy engagement with AWS as our trusted, go-to-market partner and Appcino builds “meaningful, business-focused applications on the Appian platform and is amazing in all things ESG.”

Digital transformation in ESG.

As an AWS leader enabling sustainability solutions built on the cloud, Mary Wilson, Global Sustainability Lead at AWS, talks about the partnership with Appian.

“Our objective is to help our customers achieve sustainability goals across their business operations,” says Wilson. “[This means] looking at data availability, meaning access to more data, and enabling actionable insights. “Lowcode, cloud-enabled, technologies will allow organizations to build fast, learn fast, iterate, and continue to improve these insights to drive their sustainability outcomes.”

Tarun Khatri, Co-Founder & Executive Director of Appcino (product part of Xebia), explains just how critical ESG is in the face of digital transformation. “The investment community now considers ESG reporting as a major factor for measuring performance,” says Khatri The collaboration will continually uncover new insights and provides customers the opportunity to accelerate their ESG goals with speed and security.

Advancing defence missions at the speed of relevance

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

Microsoft has been a technology leader supporting the allied defence ecosystem for four decades. They have been a key partner helping organisations around the globe to harness data as an asset and deliver technology solutions to accomplish mission-critical outcomes.

As the technological landscape continues to evolve, developments are now coming faster than ever. As Kate Maxwell, Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft’s Worldwide Defence and Intelligence Industry, explains, the rate of advancements – particularly in recent years – has been extraordinary.

“Our defence customers face adversaries who are increasingly taking an integrated offensive posture – with traditional kinetic effects now married with cyber effectors and disinformation campaigns,” she says.

“That is modern warfare, and it is playing out in real-time.”

Modern warfare

Traditionally, warfare has primarily involved the deployment of military forces, the use of conventional weapons, and strategic manoeuvres in the domains of ground, sea, air, and space. However, given rapid advancements in technology and the evergrowing proliferation of data, the dynamics of conflict are shifting. The convergence

As the global landscape evolves at an unprecedented pace, Microsoft is helping defence and intelligence clients with game-changing capabilities.

of compute capabilities, communications infrastructure, and sophisticated cyber effects has opened up a new realm of warfare in the information domain.

Today, as Maxwell elucidates, this new landscape is playing out in real-time: with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine a notable example of the world’s first “broadband war.”

“Defence and Intelligence leaders have been predicting this moment for a long time. This is what modern warfare looks like — where you have cyber and disinformation campaigns leveraged in concert with kinetic effects,” she says. “We are seeing this play out in Ukraine today, right this very moment. And this did not come as a surprise.

“At Microsoft, we help governments and defence organisations find digital refuge in the hyperscale cloud, and Ukraine did a fantastic job of using the cloud to secure their digital defences and keep citizen services up and running — even as Russia launched their offensive campaign. I am proud of the way that Microsoft – and the broader tech ecosystem – has stepped up to support Ukraine. Those efforts have made an impact, particularly on the cyber, comms, and information front.”

“Our defence customers face adversaries who are increasingly taking an integrated offensive posture – with traditional kinetic effects now married with cyber effectors and disinformation campaigns. That is modern warfare, and it is playing out in real-time.”

KATE MAXWELL CTO, WORLDWIDE DEFENCE & INTELLIGENCE

KATE MAXWELL

TITLE: CTO, WORLDWIDE DEFENCE & INTELLIGENCE

Kate Maxwell is the Chief Technology Officer for Worldwide Defence and Intelligence at Microsoft. She is an accomplished technology leader and strategist with almost 20 years of experience supporting Public Sector customers around the globe. Maxwell is passionate about leveraging the intersection of people, technology, and culture to advance organizations,

As Maxwell describes, Microsoft works with defence and intelligence clients not only in the mission space, but also with back-office defence processes. From workforce skilling and smart facilities to the provision of data-driven analysis, improving organisational readiness posture is essential.

“When we’re talking about modernisation in the defence space, everybody starts with a mission, because that’s the more exciting part. But how do we help defence organisations modernise their “back office” processes and empower their personnel? How do we help them speed up time to value, realise rapid innovation, and modernise the capability lifecycle through DevSecOps and Digital Engineering? How do we help defence organisations achieve

“It’s not just about mission – it is about a whole-of-enterprise transformation. The way you maintain superiority is through digital transformation, culture and process reform, and rapid adoption of commercial technology.”

Microsoft for Defence and Intelligence WATCH NOW

KATE MAXWELL CTO, WORLDWIDE DEFENCE & INTELLIGENCE

data-driven postures so they can harness their data as an asset and elevate it to insights? How do we help them secure and modernise the defence worker experience to reduce daily pain-points?

These are many of the initiatives we spend our time talking about and, hopefully, inspiring our customers to go do, because the world is changing around them, and they have to keep up. It’s not just about mission – it is about a whole-of-enterprise transformation,” Maxwell states.

“The way you maintain superiority is through digital transformation, culture & process reform, and rapid adoption of commercial technology.”

Maxwell points to a quote from US Gen Charles “CQ” Brown Jr. to illustrate the urgency of this need: “Accelerate change or lose.”

The power of AI

The acceleration in artificial intelligence (AI) advancement has been dramatic in recent years, with impacts being felt across all industries. The defence industry is no exception.

“In terms of AI capability, there has never been a bigger time than this. I’ve been working in tech for two decades now, and I have not seen an inflection point like the one we’re sitting at today,” Maxwell comments.

“For a lot of folks, it feels like generative AI popped up overnight, but this is the result of decades-worth of work to get to this point. This is a remarkable time in compute, AI advancement, and the democratisation of some seriously gamechanging capabilities. And I really believe this is only the beginning.”

Across a range of use cases, AI can be used to drive efficiencies and provide defence organisations with a competitive edge. A popular term in modern defence organisations, the “OODA loop” involves four steps: to observe, orient, decide, and act. AI, when used properly, can be harnessed to augment and accelerate that process, particularly when considering the massive amounts of data available to any modern defence force.

“What we’re trying to do is help our customers figure out how to use AI to speed up that OODA loop. We talk to our customers about capabilities like predictive maintenance for an informed readiness posture; about modelling and simulation of threats, and of the operational environment itself; for mission planning; for speech and text translation –especially when they’re working with allies who may not have the same native tongue; and multi-intelligence (INT) fusion and processing for situational awareness.

“All of these use cases touch the OODA loop in some way, and all of them can be informed and augmented by AI. And I’m not even talking about generative AI - all of these can be accomplished with baseline ‘flavours’ of artificial intelligence – or even data analytics, much of which has already been around for years.”

From there, organisations can begin to utilise more advanced techniques, including generative AI – with capabilities including content generation, summarisation and information discovery, code generation, and semantic search.

“With generative AI, the aperture has widened in terms of AI capability and opportunity. We are talking to defence organisations and the defence industrial base (DIB) about how to leverage these capabilities to support the mission, as well as to improve operations in their own enterprises.

For example, code generation: there are hundreds of thousands of software developers supporting the allied defence ecosystem, writing millions of lines of code each year. Can we use generative AI to help increase their speed and effectiveness – such as with Copilot for GitHub, as an example? That, in turn, would result in faster time-to-value to get capabilities in the hands of the warfighter. ‘Innovation at the speed of relevance,’ as we say in defence. That’s what it’s all about.”

Another example, as Maxwell explains, is AI-enabled cybersecurity and cyber threat hunting. “In Ukraine, Microsoft’s Defender for Endpoint used an AI algorithm to identify Russian wiper malware and stop it from being installed in the customer’s network. We are now bringing these AI-enabled cybersecurity capabilities to our customers all over the globe with our Microsoft Security Copilot, which uses AI to help defenders identify and respond to threats more quickly. Not only will this create efficiencies and speed up response

times in cybersecurity incidents, but it will also help address the critical talent gap that exists in the global cybersecurity landscape.”

Though AI presents a swathe of opportunities for every industry, including defence and intelligence, it also presents some very real challenges and threats.

“We are already seeing adversarial nations leveraging AI to great effect in some cases, and those adversaries don’t hold themselves to the same standards, ethics and principles as allied nations,” she says. “The defence ecosystem has to figure out how to strike the right balance between rapidly adopting and leveraging these commercial technologies for good, while also taking a thoughtful, principled, and responsible approach –and keeping in mind that adversaries are not slowing down one bit.”

The role of culture reform and bureaucratic courage

Maxwell is keen to reiterate that the success of the allied defence ecosystem hinges on more than just technology. “The next great power competition will likely be won or lost based on the speed at which new tech can be developed AND adopted - including capabilities like cloud, cybersecurity and AI, and a focus on more software-centric capability going forward.”

She adds: “This is not a technology development race; it is a technology adoption race, and to be successful, we have to get defence culture right. This requires bureaucratic courage – to cut through red tape and transform legacy processes in a way that aligns with the transformation defence organisations are trying to drive.”

Maxwell goes on to explain that the defence ecosystem also needs to take a realistic assessment of where it is today, and then put the proper process and cultural underpinnings in place to enable the adoption of modern technologies.

“When we’re talking about advanced capabilities like artificial intelligence, we want to inspire our customers to think big, and we also want to ground ourselves in reality. Organisations have to crawl and walk

before they can run – and we can help them through that entire journey.”

So with that in mind, defence organisations endeavouring to leverage these commercial technologies should consider a few things: “Do you have a good handle on your data estate? Think about what data is available to you; where that data lives; how that data is classified, secured, and controlled; and most importantly, what you want to do with it. What are your goals and objectives for elevating that data to insights?”

A first step in that journey is the move to hyperscale cloud – which doesn’t need to happen all at once. Maxwell recommends starting with the small, “easy button” workloads and use cases to gain successes and momentum, to learn important lessons, and then to scale and grow.

Organisations also have to get the right culture in place to support the transformation they are trying to drive.

“I think the defence ecosystem at large is still very risk averse. That is for good reason, I understand – both in terms of safety, and for contracting rigour. But many times, the defence ecosystem is trading one risk for another without even realising it. This level of risk aversion has led to a very policy heavy, rigid environment in which it is challenging – if not impossible – to innovate, and it also makes it challenging to attract nontraditional vendors and new entrants who could bring real value to mission. This is a big challenge, and it is holding the allied defence

“At the end of the day, this is not just a technology development race. It’s a technology adoption race.”

KATE MAXWELL CTO, WORLDWIDE DEFENCE & INTELLIGENCE

ecosystem back. This ecosystem has to empower folks to do differently. We have to make sure people have the psychological safety to go try new things, and to fail forward in a growth-oriented and empowering environment.”

Microsoft is here to help its customers with these cultural transformations, just as much as the technology transformations. “We’re a tech company, but more than that, we’re a mission partner, and that means we cover everything – including people and skilling, process and policy, and modernisation of how an organisation does business –because it all matters,” Maxwell describes. “If any one of those pillars should fail, the entire transformation is at risk. These are foundational elements, and the defence ecosystem needs to get them right.”

Accelerate change or lose

When it comes to implementing change, there are a number of barriers to adoption, such as policy, process, acquisitions, skilling and trust.

Acquisition processes for military and defence are a great example of the transformation needing to happen in all areas – beyond just the tech. From a historical perspective, defence procurement methods were set up to support the years and decadeslong procurement of large, monolithic hardware platforms. But, when it comes to the fast-paced world of software, that procurement system has serious limitations.

“If you want to go buy a ship or a tank or an aeroplane and you have all your requirements defined up front, then perfect. The acquisition system works for that,” Maxwell says.

“But where that system struggles is in the procurement of capability where the requirements are not as well understood, or are evolving in real time - which often includes software. It is really challenging for our defence customers to go buy commercial technology and software-centric capabilities with legacy acquisition methods that were set up to buy giant, monolithic, well-defined pieces of hardware.”

As a result, Microsoft is working to advise defence customers on how to transform their processes to support the digital transformation they are trying to drive; therefore, enabling them to obtain the commercial technology and software innovation that is proving essential in modern conflicts – while helping customers remain compliant with their own processes.

Maxwell points back to the General CQ Brown quote: “Accelerate change or lose.”

“The defence ecosystem has to accelerate change, and this is not just a technology story,” she comments. “This

is about how we change the ecosystem itself, including acquisition, including skilling, including policy, so that customers can access and adopt the right kind of capabilities at the time and place of need. Speed-to-field and speed of adoption are mission-critical.”

Leveraging such commercially-facing capabilities was critical for Ukraine, particularly in the early stages of the war, Maxwell explains. “The first shots fired by Russia were not kinetic; they were cyber weapons and disinformation campaigns.

“Russia very intentionally began launching targeted cyber effectors and disinformation campaigns at the Ukrainian government, people, and infrastructure well before the kinetic campaign began. Ukraine quickly mobilised in digital fashion and changed their policies overnight to move critical data and essential services into the hyperscale cloud. That’s what refuge in the digital realm looks like, and it is working.

“So, what we advise our Public Sector customers to do is not wait until it’s an emergency. Don’t wait until you are forced

“Defence and Intelligence is a priority industry for Microsoft, and has been for a long time. I’m really proud of that.”

KATE MAXWELL CTO, WORLDWIDE DEFENCE & INTELLIGENCE

to hit the red emergency button in wartime. Start getting your data estate and your cloud adoption journey in shape today, so you can take advantage of commercial innovation and not have to seek digital refuge under duress. It should not require an emergency to kickstart a move to the cloud. Make the move today, so you can begin taking advantage of all of the goodness afforded by a modern digital posture – and you’ll enjoy a much stronger cybersecurity posture as a result.

“At the end of the day, this is not just a technology development race. It’s a technology adoption race, and the biggest barriers to that are policy, process, acquisitions, skilling, and culture. These barriers can be overcome, and the allied defence ecosystem needs to treat this with urgency.”

Industry trends

With so much experience in the defence and intelligence industry, and with the explosive growth in dual-use, software and IT-centric mission capability, Microsoft will continue to help its customers navigate this changing global landscape.

“The world continues to change around us, and around our customers,” Maxwell says. “We will continue to support our allied defence customers as a mission partner. We are committed, and we are staying the course.

“Defence and Intelligence is a priority industry for Microsoft, and has been for a long time. I’m really proud of that, and quite frankly, it’s what brought me here. As a company, we have made a commitment to support democratically-elected institutions around the world. This is how we help make the world a better, safer place, and deliver

on our mission: to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more.

At such an exciting time in the technology world, what are the trends to look out for, we ask?

“What an incredible time to work in technology – and honestly, every organisation and every company on the planet is now a tech company. There are a lot of technology trends shaping the future of defence right now, and I think many of these will be around for a long time to come,” Maxwell predicts.

“Cloud, I’m convinced, is here to stay. This is what the future of compute looks like, and it serves as the secure foundation for so many other capabilities – AI in particular.”

Networking and communications mediums such as 5G, 6G, and space-based comms are also proving vital in a defence context: “When working in defence, you have to support tactical scenarios where connectivity is not always guaranteed. We can’t assume there’s going to be fibre at a deployed site in some farflung theatre. So we are constantly working to mature the cloud continuum – from cloud to edge – and leverage the fullness of the spectrum to provide secure access to data and communications even in the most harsh and remote environments on – or off – the planet.

“That includes 5G and 6G, and it also includes all things space. Space and satellitebased communications continue to be critically important – particularly at the edge.”

Modelling & simulation, digital engineering, digital twin, and DevSecOps will also continue to be important, particularly for capability lifecycle modernisation, and to speed-up time-to-value for critically important mission innovations.

Maxwell also mentions the importance of quantum, and the expected impact

of this emerging area in the years ahead: “Quantum is another trend that I expect will be huge, especially from a national security perspective. With the rise of quantum compute at scale, we’re going to see some changing national security postures. I think it’s going to do great things for a number of defence use cases — secure communications, for instance, as well as some interesting intelligence applications. On the flip side, quantum poses some very real challenges, particularly when we’re talking about traditional encryption methods and cryptography within the national security realm.

“So, that’s my short list of trends, and I want to point out that the vast majority of these are software-defined and underpinned by the cloud. So that’s why we at Microsoft are continuing to counsel defence customers that it’s time to modernise. So for any defence organisations out there who have not yet started on that journey, today is a great day to begin, and we’re here to help.”

The Portfolio

TECH’S SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGE: Pioneering a green future

We speak with sustainability leaders about the tech industry’s role in achieving global ESG goals, reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change

WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT

Today’s world is witness to generational advances in technology that are helping us reimagine how we live and work. Crucially, technology companies are also important in our bid to make Earth a net-zero planet by 2050.

But how, exactly, will the technology sector achieve this? What are the challenges and obstacles, and how can these be overcome?

To answer these and other sustainability questions, we turned to the experts: Dr James Robey (JR), who is Executive VP, Global Head of Environmental Sustainability at the Francebased multinational IT company, Capgemini. Elena Morettini (EM), meanwhile, is Director of Sustainable Business at digital transformation specialist Globant.

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DR JAMES ROBEY EXECUTIVE VP, GLOBAL HEAD OF ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY, CAPGEMINI

JAMES ROBEY

TITLE: GLOBAL HEAD OF ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

COMPANY: CAPGEMINI

INDUSTRY: IT CONSULTING

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Dr James Robey has led the Capgemini Group’s sustainability agenda since setting its first carbon reduction targets in 2008. During his 23-year career at Capgemini, Robey has held a number of roles, primarily in business development and programme & change management.

How can the tech industry further global sustainability goals?

JR: The technology industry has a crucial role to play in achieving global sustainability goals – especially in reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change – but it can also have unintended consequences.

A key challenge facing organisations is a lack of understanding regarding the environmental impact of the digital world, which is seen by many as being less

environmentally impactful than traditional industry. IT accounts for around 3% of global CO2 emissions – more than Spain, Italy, France, and Portugal combined. And this footprint is growing due to rising demand for computing power and data storage, as well as the production and disposal of electronic devices. So it’s important for organisations to consider the impact of IT as they strive to balance growth objectives with sustainability goals.

On savings, for example, a technology can help reduce fuel consumption by optimising logistics planning.

EM: Technology can accelerate and scale the environmental impact of actions, policies, strategies already in place, which is vital because time is the one thing we do not have.

“AI is being explored for its potential to offer innovative and scalable solutions to sustainability issues”

Sustainable IT report

A report from the Capgemini Research Institute – Sustainable IT: Why it’s time for a Green Revolution for your organisation’s IT – surveyed 1,000 organisations and spoke with IT executives, sustainability professionals, and others.

Capgemini found that sustainable IT is not a priority for most organisations –only 43% of executives are even aware of their organisation’s IT footprint. While half of organisations have an enterprisewide sustainability strategy in place, only 18% have a comprehensive one, with well-defined goals and target timelines. Moreover, 49% lack the tools to adopt and deploy solutions and 53% lack the expertise. This leaves a mere 6% to reap the significant performance opportunities, including better ESG scores and improved brand image and customer satisfaction, resulting from being highly mature in terms of sustainable IT.

Technology companies need to develop applications, software, platforms, calculators, and automations that measure, compare, estimate, and forecast emissions. Emissions data is critical for understanding current emissions and for reaching global net-zero targets.

For example, at Globant, we’re focusing resources on digital-twin technologies to help businesses calculate their carbon footprint.

How are tech firms incorporating sustainability into products, services, and operations?

JR: Increasingly, AI is being explored for its potential to offer innovative and scalable solutions to sustainability issues.

“A key challenge facing organisations is a lack of understanding of the environmental impact of our digital world”

DR JAMES ROBEY EXECUTIVE VP, GLOBAL HEAD OF ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY, CAPGEMINI

For instance, it’s anticipated global demand for food will increase by 60% by 2050, which will disproportionately affect sub-Saharan Africa, where about 80% of the global population is at risk of crop failures and hunger from climate change.

Through our platform, Project Farm, we can leverage AI to optimise the agricultural value chain in East Africa, generating insights into farming patterns and increasing maize production among Western Kenyan farmers by up to 50%.

We’re also using space-based technologies to address planetary issues. For example, in partnership with Sveaskog – the largest forest owner in Sweden – we have

produced detailed maps to visualise the progression of spruce bark beetles, which is crucial in preventing the destruction of vast swathes of forest every year.

EM: Sustainable technology and green tech solutions are good for the planet and for business. While tech companies feel a social responsibility to incorporate sustainability and energy efficiency as a pillar of their product offerings, there’s also a market demand for sustainable solutions. For example, there’s increasing demand for energy-efficient coding through low/no code applications.

A lot of change can be driven by education. We train all our employees in green IT and

Sustainable IT from Capgemini Invent

best practices for sustainable software design and development to help them make climate smart solutions in their daily jobs.

How can tech companies make their supply chains sustainable?

JR: The intention shouldn’t be to achieve compliance with environmental and social

legislation but to create a positive force for societal good.

Technology companies need to adopt good sustainable procurement practices to ensure these align with their carbon reduction goals and sustainability objectives.

In doing so, they can address environmental risks, which can be challenging due to the complexity and reach of their supply chains.

Collaborating with suppliers is a key strategy for technology players here, such as waste generation and carbon emissions.

Technology can also play a role in supply chain management, particularly in tracking goods and services from manufacturing to the circular economy.

One of the main challenges technology companies face in sustainable supply chain management is the limited transparency and quality of data from other suppliers.

Despite this they must take a leadership role in promoting sustainable practices in

“For tech companies, a key challenge is energy consumption and ensuring efficiency while maintaining clean operations”

ELENA MORETTINI DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS, GLOBANT

their supply chains to create a positive force for societal good.

EM: For tech companies, a key challenge is energy consumption, and ensuring efficiency while maintaining clean operations. Some are trying to supply their operations with as much renewable energy as possible, while others are beginning to generate their own clean energy.

Sustainable procurement also needs to be a focus going forward, to ensure sustainability is considered in purchasing decisions.

What role do consumers play in driving sustainability in the tech industry?

JR: Delivering meaningful change requires collaboration with the stakeholder ecosystem – suppliers, governments and customers.

Consumers wield significant influence over the technology industry’s sustainability efforts through their purchasing power. Companies can help customers make informed decisions by acting with transparency around their sustainability practices, including carbon emissions and waste reduction efforts.

Offering sustainable products and services that meet customer needs – such as energyefficient devices and recyclable packaging – is also becoming increasingly important.

EM: Consumers are hyper-aware of sustainability, especially in technology, and are demanding more from their providers, forcing the industry to pay close attention to their emissions and impact.

This is where tech companies play a pivotal role, both in educating consumers on the efficient use of technology and also providing them with knowledge and tools to enable more efficient and responsible use.

An example of this is Apple’s Clean Energy Charging feature. An optional add-on, it permits the iPhone’s battery to

ELENA MORETTINI

TITLE: DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS

COMPANY: GLOBANT

INDUSTRY: DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Elena Morettini is a global sustainable tech director and geoscience expert in energy, energy transitions and climate scenarios modelling, who is dedicated to digital and sustainable reinvention of large organisations. Selected among the best 2023 Net Zero strategies speakers, Morettini is passionate about D&I, as well as the social and technical impact of decarbonisation policíes.

charge up when the local electrical grid provides clean power, helping lower the carbon footprint and the electricity bill.

We see real opportunity in engaging consumers on sustainability issues through loyalty programmes. There’s a really strong argument for tech companies to look at how loyalty programmes could engage and encourage sustainable behaviours from their customers.

Adam Elman Head of Sustainability EMEA Google

Musidora Jorgensen Chief Sustainability Officer Microsoft

Andrew New Chief Executive Officer NHS Supply Chain

Susan Spence VP, Sourcing Procurement & Accounts FedEx VP,

Geraint John VP, Interos Resilience Lab Interos

Kate Rosenshine Director - Global Azure Technology Sales Microsoft

Aravind Narayan Global Director - Sales Strategy & Execution Refinitiv (LSEG)

Sam Clarke Chief Vehicle Officer Gridserve

SUNRISE’S CIO TRANSFORMS TELECOMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY

WRITTEN BY: HELEN ADAMS

PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

Anna Maria Blengino, Sunrise CIO, discusses balancing her role, digital transformation, building a team that attracts diversity & being a mother in STEM

When Anna Maria Blengino was appointed at Sunrise, she requested some posters for the office and invited the entire CIO team to bring in their own paintings and photographic art for the walls.

“You cannot imagine how many came with their pictures,” Blengino says.

So many wanted to offer their art that they ran out of wall-space. Now Blengino has a long waiting list and every second month the art is replaced - except for December, which is a month reserved for the art made by the children of CIO employees.

“It’s a surprise to see that these technical people have a creative side!”

Now working in Switzerland, Blengino was born in Italy.

“As a child I followed my curiosity to take things apart and put them back together,” she says. “I was inspired by my father and by my mathematics and physics teachers, I fell in love with technology.”

She graduated with a geotechnical engineering degree at the Turin Polytechnic and began work in the construction industry. At the end of the 1990s telecommunication was on the rise and captured her interest.

“I started my new career from the bottom and continuously used my curiosity to explore the different options, moving up from hands-on Software Testing to Director positions, in IT Operation and IT Delivery.”

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Amdocs system remains at the heart of Sunrise operations

Riki Efraim-Lederman and Oleg Volpin explain how Amdocs’ comprehensive Kenan system is enabling Sunrise to provide a flawless service to the end customer

The successful business relationship between Sunrise and Amdocs stretches back several years, thanks in large part to the excellent Kenan billing system, on top of the core CRM and Service Inventory platforms, provided by the latter.

When Sunrise recognised the need to upgrade its billing capabilities, the Swiss firm knew it could call upon a tried and trusted partner.

Riki Efraim-Lederman, Division Manager at Amdocs, explains: “Kenan is a really powerful engine that can monetise any product or business process for any customer. It can be deployed on-prem or on any cloud with open architecture, standard APIs and pre-built integration, to dozens of systems.”

Kenan upgrade takes place without disruption

Sunrise uses Amdocs products in the vast majority of its features, resulting in absolute alignment between business processes and technical solutions. Kenan, it must be emphasised, is more than simply a billing system. It provides a whole range of services, including the capability to place new orders and provide new products to customers.

Amdocs’ upgrade of Kenan for Sunrise was a smooth process from planning and execution through to post-production.

Oleg Volpin, Division President Europe and Telefonica Global at Amdocs, says:

“You can think of the billing system as the heart; when the heart is functioning, we are healthy people. When the billing system is functioning, the operation of the telecommunications provider is smooth. Kenan is the heart and is allowing Sunrise to operate flawlessly.”

Fruitful partnership set to continue Efraim-Lederman and Volpin are confident the bond between Amdocs and Sunrise will remain strong for many years to come.

“If you think about a telecommunication and media provider,” adds Volpin, “you need to do a few things: allow your customers to buy new products; address questions or issues that your customer has; and generate money by charging customers for services. These are the three key services Amdocs provides for Sunrise.”

“After the merger between Sunrise and UPC, where I acted as the IT stream lead, I became responsible for IT Strategy & Innovation. Just recently I have been appointed as Sunrise CIO.” This was a new challenge for Blengino, who was honoured and excited to take on the role. She is wellsupported by Sunrise’s IT team and has been welcomed by the Executive Committee. The role of a CIO requires a strategic and holistic

ANNA MARIA BLENGINO CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, SUNRISE

“This role needs a balance between technical expertise and strong leadership skills”

approach to technology, including all aspects of the organisation.

“I believe that this role needs a balance between technical expertise and strong leadership skills. It is important to understand the technology landscape and how it can drive business value. At the same time, it is crucial to communicate effectively with stakeholders across the organisation, building strong relationships with business and aligning technology initiatives with the overall goals of the company.”

Blengino is also focused on creating a culture of innovation and collaboration within the IT unit, believing that by creating

ANNA MARIA BLENGINO

TITLE: CIO

COMPANY: SUNRISE

INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LOCATION: SWITZERLAND

Anna Maria Blengino has been Chief Information Officer of Sunrise since April 1, 2023.

After rejoining Sunrise in 2017 as Director of Platform Delivery, Anna Maria acted as the IT stream lead during the merger between Sunrise and UPC, and then became responsible for IT Strategy & Innovation.

From 2013 she spent four years at UBS, responsible for global worldwide automation shared services.

Anna Maria has over 25 years’ experience in the information technology industry. After her start in a telco-software company, she joined Sunrise in 2005 with responsibility for test management and IT application support.

Anna Maria has a master’s degree in Engineering from Turin Polytechnic and INSEAD Executive Leadership Business Administration and Management certification.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Qinshift: Supporting clients in transformation journeys

Qinshift, the product of several years of hard work and strategic acquisitions, is a new “family” of six companies across the technology industry

Following a series of strategic acquisitions in the technology space, part of Aricoma Group has revealed its new name: Qinshift.

This “family” of six companies has been assembled to create one of the largest custom software development firms in Europe.

“Qin, to us, means family,” says Ludovic Gaude, CEO of Qinshift. “Shift means to embrace digital transformation and change. Together, we are here to support clients in their transformation journeys.”

Seavus a key part of Qinshift’s expansion

An important member of the Qinshift family is Seavus, a tech firm whose main clients fall within the telecommunications sector. The business employs

1,300 software engineers with know-how in quality assurance, custom software development, application maintenance and much more.

One of those key clients is Sunrise, with whom Seavus has been working for almost 15 years.

Kocha Boshku, CEO of Seavus, explains: “Sunrise had a tough nut to crack because it was necessary, in a short time frame, to do a full migration of BSS data into their Enterprise Data Warehouse. We were one of the few companies able to do that due to our niche expertise in the Telco segment, especially in the billing systems domain and its associated data.”

Seavus’ ‘amazing’ record

Seavus has delivered a host of benefits to Sunrise, including an unblemished record when

it comes to SOA breaches and 30% cost reduction.

He adds: “Every day, there are other small things going on like data warehouse and CRM ticket resolution; we are three times faster in that domain over the last year.”

Looking ahead, Boshku believes the future of telco is all about optimisation and says customer experience is where Seavus will continue to add the most value.

“Due to the breadth of our offering and exposure to other industries, we can benefit multiple clients,” he concludes. “We are talking about AI optimisation, IoT, data monetisation – all things in which we have deep expertise.”

an environment which encourages creativity and experimentation, Sunrise can drive technological advancements that will benefit the organisation as a whole and continue to attract talented professionals.

“I am a proud mother of a girl and a boy, who despite having had a busy mother in STEM, probably did not perceive it as such a bad experience, because both have decided to study engineering too!

My mantra is: keep moving and stay on top of changes.”

“My mantra is: keep moving and stay on top of changes”

ANNA MARIA BLENGINO CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, SUNRISE

Sunrise

WATCH NOW

Monetisation of API’s & 5G

Monetising APIs involves charging other businesses or developers for accessing APIs and using them in their applications. This can be done through a variety of business models. At Sunrise, the key is to provide value to customers and ensure that their APIs are easy to use, reliable and secure.

“When it comes to 5G, there are several monetisation opportunities,” says Blengino. “On top of offering our businesses the ability to use our outstanding 5G network to provide faster and more reliable connectivity to their customers, we can also add to our portfolio value-added services such as analytics and security solutions to help businesses optimise their operations and improve their bottom line.

“In addition, we can explore new business models such as revenue-sharing partnerships with businesses that use our 5G network to deliver services to their customers. For example building Mobile Private Networks. MPNs are private, selfcontained local mobile networks that operate independently of public networks and cover specific locations; a solution for all industries 4.0, such as eHealth or SmartCities, SmartFactories, where business-critical and mission-critical applications are used.”

In April this year, Sunrise became the first mobile network operator in Switzerland to introduce a dedicated Mobile Private Network 5G solution for its business customers. Monetising APIs and 5G requires a deep understanding of customers’ needs

ZIRA’S AGILE SYSTEMS POWER DIGITAL INNOVATION FOR SUNRISE

Sunrise provides mobile, TV and landline phone and internet services to consumers and businesses across Switzerland. After merging with UPC in 2020, the new business needed to integrate both its portfolios into one new proposition, and launch new services.

Integrating two separate technology stacks into one was a big challenge, with Sunrise needing to reduce dependency on legacy systems and streamline operations.

Sunrise tasked ZIRA with implementing a holistic new Customer Order Management system to pave the way for new digital services, including HFC, XGS PON, and OTT media services.

ZIRA was able to apply its specialized Customer Order Management solution across both the UPC and Sunrise stacks. Thanks to the solution’s open architecture, the ZIRA team managed the deployment from end to end, orchestrating new flows that allowed Sunrise to roll out the services to all consumers within a matter of months.

Since then, Sunrise has been able to quickly introduce new services like XGS PON and HFC while decommissioning legacy processes, never falling behind the roadmap’s tight timeline.

ZIRA’s flexible, modular solutions work alongside legacy systems, so Sunrise has been able to fulfil their roadmap effectively.

Lejla Pljevljak-Rašidagić Chief Product Officer at ZIRA.

“The telecoms industry is changing fast, and it’s our job to ensure Sunrise can quickly react to new opportunities and adapt to new requirements.”

ZIRA delivers digital BSS solutions that streamline the entire order management process for telecoms companies. Over its 25-year heritage, the company has built a strong reputation as niche player for its unified, modular capabilities, fast implementation, and seamless integration.

21% 21% of CIO staff members are women 24% 24% of CIO managers are women 32 CIO staff counts 32 different nationalities

and a willingness to adapt to changing market conditions.

“My objective is to ensure that our organisation stays ahead of the curve in this rapidly evolving landscape. We at Sunrise understand the future of these services, especially in the B2B sector, and are preparing the technical enablers to support the commercial demand, in a secure, protected and compliant way.”

Blengino believes that delivering a business roadmap and transformation that is ‘Fit for Future’ while ensuring operational stability, can be a challenging task. This requires a comprehensive approach that considers all aspects of the transformation, from technology and infrastructure to people and processes. There are several key steps that organisations can take to achieve this goal.

Develop a clear roadmap

Start by creating a clear and comprehensive roadmap that outlines goals, objectives and timelines for the transformation. This roadmap should be aligned with the overall business strategy and should be communicated clearly to all stakeholders.

Prioritise initiatives

Prioritise the initiatives that will have the most significant impact on the business and focus on delivering those first. This will help ensure that the most critical changes are made while minimising disruption to the business.

Manage risks

Identify and manage the risks associated with the transformation. This includes both technical and operational risks. Ensure that there are contingency plans in place in case of unexpected issues.

SUNRISE-INFOSYS PARTNERSHIP: BOUND BY A DIGITAL THREAD

Does fine art have deeper meaning? Can an artists’ community make sense of the real world? Do brush strokes on a canvas help unravel communication in the Swiss Alps?

Welcome to Sunrise, Switzerland’s largest private telecom network, offering mobile, Internet, TV and fixed network services. When Sunrise appointed Anna Maria Blengino as CIO, she started with a flourish: on Day 1, she put art crafted by IT employees on the walls of her office.

Anna Maria, a native of Italy, grew up amid Renaissance art, history and literature, museums all over her country. She encouraged her team to bring their art to office. Soon enough, the office was converted into an art gallery with indigenous art. The campaign was a huge success. Artworks were replaced every alternate month, with December dedicated for drawings of children.

THE DIGITAL CANVAS

This creative facet enabled Sunrise, under the stewardship of Anna Maria, to identify 5G use cases, specifically monetisation opportunities via application programming interfaces (APIs).

According to Anna Maria, Sunrise took this leap of faith, because “5G provides customers with reliable, lightning-fast connectivity, and on top of it, we offer value-added services such as analytics and security solutions to help businesses improve their bottom line”.

A DIGITAL PARTNERSHIP FOUNDED ON SHARED VALUES

Infosys is proud of the partnership with Sunrise: a Swiss pioneer of telecom services and a global digital consulting services provider jointly developed customer-centric solutions to attract and retain digital consumers.

As part of the digital transformation, Infosys conducted design thinking workshops at Sunrise to address dynamics of the business. With the support of Infosys, Sunrise implemented a platform to help subscribers seamlessly register for new services and offers, rolled out a customised tariff plan, and adopted microservices and automation for near zero-touch migration across subsidiary brands.

Our Driving Force Sustainability Diversity Collaboration

The Sunrise-Infosys partnership has grown from strength to strength. Driven by sustainability and diversity, this collaboration is set to shape the digital agenda.

Anna Maria believes that maintaining consistency in the quality of service is possible with a team of professionals who always think out-of-the-box. She takes pride in her team’s diversity and believes “innovation is a journey of diverse viewpoints and perspectives”. Today, the Sunrise CIO office is a shining example of diversity with a workforce from 32 nationalities, and women making up 21% of the staff and 24% of managers. Infosys shares this ethos, employing a workforce of 161 nationalities across 66 countries, with 39.4% women.

Infosys joined hands with Liberty Global to support Street Child, a charity providing children across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Europe with education opportunities (Sunrise is a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty Global). Infosys established a digital footprint for Street Child to create awareness about the cause as well as provide tools for donors to follow outcomes of ongoing projects.

“Sunrise has pivoted deeply to digital technology to better serve hyper-connected customers. In this journey, we appreciate the role of Infosys to implement key digital programmes as part of a broader digital transformation at Sunrise.”

“The telecom landscape is being disrupted by next-generation digital technology. For a decade, Sunrise has been an early adopter of new and emerging technologies. Infosys is proud to partner with Sunrise in its mission to become the preferred digital services provider.”

Anna Maria Blengino CIO, Sunrise

Manish Juneja Senior Director, Client Services, Infosys

Engage stakeholders

Engage all stakeholders, including employees, customers and partners, throughout the transformation process. This will help to build support and buy-in for the changes and ensure that everyone is aligned around the vision for the future.

Invest in technology and infrastructure

Invest in the technology and infrastructure needed to support the transformation. This may include upgrading legacy systems, implementing new software solutions, or improving data analytics capabilities.

ANNA MARIA BLENGINO CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, SUNRISE

“It is crucial to communicate effectively with stakeholders across the organisation, building strong relationships with business and aligning technology initiatives with the overall goals of the company”

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Sunrise’s business is powered by Teradata, and we‘re proud to be working with them.

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Develop a change management plan

Develop a comprehensive change management plan that includes communication, training and support for employees. This will help ensure that everyone is prepared for the changes and understands how to adapt to new processes and systems.

Monitor progress

Monitor progress and adjust the roadmap as needed. Regularly assess the impact of the transformation on the business and make adjustments as needed to ensure that it remains on track.

Powerful partnerships and a team that attracts diversity

Like most technology companies, Sunrise relies on external services when it comes to the implementation and operation of IT solutions that require skills, agility and scalability to support the business.

“Since the new organisation is in place, our strategy with suppliers of professional services has been to progressively move from a Vendor to a Partner relationship,” says Blengino.

To bridge that gap Sunrise plans to:

• Consolidate the ecosystem of traditional Partners operating from on-site, nearshore and off-shore

• Build a solid foundation of trust with the preferred Partners, also based on joint investments on strategic and innovative areas

• Extend the Partner relationship to new players like the Cloud Providers

Making service effortless with AI and automation

Sunrise are transforming the telecommunications landscape using Pega (CDH) and BPM, in their groundbreaking strategy, building tomorrow’s connections today.

Sunrise are part of the Liberty Global Group - learn from their insights on how you could break down barriers in your organisation and empower employees to deliver unparalleled customer experiences

• Move from classic T&M agreements to value based, KPI-driven engagements also opened to value share propositions.

“We can count on extremely solid partnerships with software providers and system integrators,” says Blengino. “We work very closely with Infosys, Seavus and Accenture to run our transformation projects on our key platforms. The backbone of our architecture is the Amdocs BSS (CRM, Billing, and Inventory). We decided to adopt it as our strategic target as it provides full FMC capabilities, and we serve both B2C and B2B markets with a single stack. CRM10 and Kenan Billing are fully integrated. Network Inventory has been consolidated for the two original companies into the target Cramer platform. Pega omnichannel serves as an orchestrator layer to the various front ends.

“Nokia played a pivotal role in driving the automation and optimization of Sunrise’s B2B operations.

By leveraging Nokia’s Open API catalogue-driven fulfilment solution, Sunrise empowered itself to seamlessly integrate and thrive in the expanding digital ecosystem.

“The order and service management are dealt in an integrated COM/SOM provided by Zira and Nokia, which also hosts the real time charging. Our strategy around the e-commerce platform leverages SAP Hybris to deliver an engaging and omnichannel e-commerce experience for our customers.

“Furthermore, the availability of a proven accelerator for the Telco market (TUA),

“It is important to understand the technology landscape and how it can drive business value”

ANNA MARIA BLENGINO CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, SUNRISE

allowed for a fast onboarding of industry specific items like the commercial product catalogue. Ours is a data driven architecture, where one of main roles is played by Teradata and GCP platforms. All our employees collaborate by profiting from a modern digital workplace concept, based on Microsoft suite.”

Sunrise also collaborates with Microsoft to exploit the new frontiers of OpenAI.

“Last but not least the simplification of the financial processes has been completed by converging our ERP to the most modern SAP solutions.”

Over the next 12 months at Sunrise, Blengino’s team will undoubtedly keep creating office art to make their workspace a little brighter. But there is a lot of work ahead.

“We will continue to deliver a roadmap (IT and BUZ) with stable operations and accelerate the technical enablers for the agile transformation,” says Blengino. “We will optimise the engagement and partnerships with our vendors, spread the Sunrise values and leadership principles to the new team.”

Fit for the future is not only limited to the upcoming technologies, but also to new skills and competences. Sunrise will need to identify the future needs and map with the as-is capabilities, identify the gaps (in terms of skills and age of retirement) and set up an upskilling programme, together with a recruitment approach that attracts young talent and embraces diversity.

“We’ll be working with graduates and apprenticeship programmes, partnerships at universities and hackathons,” says Blengino. “At Sunrise, we will keep dreaming big and doing big, supported by a fabulous team!”

6G 6G

6G HOW NETWORKS WILL TRANSFORM ENTERPRISES

With unparalleled speeds and ultra-low latency, transformative 6G networks could change the way individuals and organisations work in the next few years

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

TRANSFORM ENTERPRISES

With the relatively recent development of 5G networks, 6G might seem to some like a distant ambition. Yet, already, the next generation networking is poised to unleash a new era of innovation, connectivity, and transformative possibilities.

With its potential to achieve unprecedented data speeds, incredibly low latency, enhanced reliability, and ubiquitous connectivity, 6G technology holds the key to unlocking a multitude of applications that were once considered unimaginable. From empowering the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem to facilitating the seamless integration of AI and immersive technologies, the advent of 6G networks is expected to reshape industries, economies, and society as a whole.

According to a report by the 5G Infrastructure Association, 6G will bring ‘a near-instant and unrestricted complete wireless connectivity’, with the technology set to radically reshape the way enterprises operate.

And, if predictions are correct, this transformational tech could be a reality in the beginning of the next decade.

“Future networks will be a fundamental component for the functioning of virtually all parts of life, society, and industries, fulfilling the communication needs of humans as well as intelligent machines,” says Ericsson. “As accelerating automation and digitalisation continue to simplify people’s lives, the emerging cyber-physical continuum will continuously improve efficiency and ensure the sustainable use of resources.

“The vision for 6G is built on the desire to create a seamless reality where the digital and physical worlds as we know them today have merged. This merged reality of the future will

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provide new ways of meeting and interacting with other people, new possibilities to work from anywhere and new ways to experience faraway places and cultures.”

6G is ready to deliver the hype

Although 5G networks have brought faster speeds and lower latency, 6G is poised to take these advancements to unprecedented levels.

VICTOR HOLMIN

TITLE: DIRECTOR, PORTFOLIO AND CONSULTING

COMPANY: WORLD WIDE TECHNOLOGY

INDUSTRY: IT SERVICES

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Victor Holmin is an engineer and business architect with more than 20 years of international experience in both the Service Providers and the Enterprise spaces. His experience covers areas including solutions design, pre-sales & business development, strategy, business & enterprise architecture, consulting and innovation.

“6G will go beyond communications by creating a distributed neural network with the ability to integrate physical, biological and cyber systems”

VICTOR HOLMIN DIRECTOR, PORTFOLIO AND CONSULTING, WORLD WIDE TECHNOLOGY

6G to deliver the benefits promised by 5G

In spite of bluesky use cases for 5G abounding, some experts believe that – just as it took the advent of 5G to really see the benefits from technology that began appearing during the 4G era –it’s the arrival of 6G that will herald the final realisation of everything 5G promises.

“5G has certainly opened the door to new use cases such as immersive reality, but it will be 6G that pushes them into the mainstream and delivers sustainability where previous generations could not,” explains Alain Mourad, Head of Future Wireless Europe Lab. “Although 5G has been touted as the last generation, as with any other, it is only when deployments begin that limitations reveal themselves and the need for a next generation is made clear.”

“While we have seen early adoption of 5G for practical virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications, 5G has not been able to deliver on the early hype due to myriad factors like costs, chip shortages, and politics,” comments InterDigital’s Senior Director of Technology Strategy, Donald Butts. “As a result, we’ve seen lacklustre adoption across both consumer and industry sectors despite there being a lot of work done in developing services and bringing them to market.”

With 5G unable to deliver truly immersive experiences, 5G has laid the groundwork

for 6G to build on and enable these opportunities, Butts explains: “While 5G provides data transfer rates that are far superior to previous generations, it still falls short of the conditions required to support immersive experiences.

“Extended reality (XR) and full immersive experiences require data transfer rates of 200Mbps to 5Gbps – far beyond what is currently possible with 5G. 6G, however, certainly holds promise in this regard, because it will utilise higher frequency bands and is said to provide speeds up to 100times faster than 5G. This will be crucial to

“With 6G supporting virtual environments and haptic technology, the virtual world will be closer to the in-person experience than ever before”

VICTOR HOLMIN DIRECTOR, PORTFOLIO AND CONSULTING, WORLD WIDE TECHNOLOGY

providing immersive experiences ‘on the go’, which may aid in its widespread adoption.”

Going beyond communications

As Victor Holmin, Director of Portfolio and Consulting at World Wide Technology, describes, 6G will represent a move ‘beyond communications’.

“6G will go beyond communications by creating a distributed neural network with the ability to integrate physical, biological and cyber systems,” he explains.

“This will be done through establishing a bridge between cognitive computing, communications and sensing technologies. 6G will mark the beginning of a new era: the Internet of Behaviours and Intelligence of Everything.”

This new wave of edge computing and AI-driven applications, coupled with the sensor network and increase of connectivity speeds, will enable a wide variety of new intelligent industry use cases.

If these predictions become a reality, the deployment of 6G has the potential to dramatically increase capabilities, across the full spectrum of global industries, including transforming the way that teams collaborate.

“Instead of spending hours on 2D Zoom or Teams meetings, we will meet in 3D digital spaces, where our avatars will have ‘real’ eye

DONALD BUTTS SENIOR DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY, INTERDIGITAL

“While 5G provides data transfer rates that are far superior to previous generations, it still falls short of the conditions required to support immersive experiences”

DONALD BUTTS

TITLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY

COMPANY: INTERDIGITAL

INDUSTRY: TELECOMS

LOCATION: NEW YORK

An experienced strategy executive in driving innovation and business growth through the creation of new products, technologies and ventures, Donald Butts has a strong background in leading global teams to identify market opportunities, deliver cuttingedge technologies and innovative products.

contact,” predicts technology blogger and influencer Bernard Marr. “We will be able to meet in groups and even express body language in real-time.

“If we need to hold a one-on-one meeting, we could simply switch all the participants out and find a quiet virtual space to connect. And if you want to visit a factory or try out a product, you could simply ‘fly’ or ‘teleport’ to a digital twin and experience it from there.”

And, as Holmin adds, 6G will support the virtual world more than ever before.

“With 6G supporting virtual environments and haptic technology, the virtual world will be closer to the in-person experience than ever before. It could be possible to no longer need to spend time commuting into the office, as the office could virtually come to us in a matter of seconds through VR and AR applications. Virtual meetings would feel almost as real as in-person ones without us having to leave our home,” explains Holmin.

Enabling the future of remote work

The advent of 6G networks is set to have a profound impact on remote working, transforming the way individuals and organisations collaborate and operate.

With enhanced connectivity, immersive collaboration, access to advanced technologies, and global collaboration opportunities, remote workers will experience a new era of productivity, efficiency, and flexibility. The boundaries between physical and virtual workspaces will blur, enabling individuals and organisations to embrace the full potential of remote work and reshape the future of work itself.

“The added capacity of 6G has the potential to give workers the ability to control and interact with industrial machinery in real time from the safety of their home office,” Holmin comments. “Haptic sensory suits, fuelled by the ease of quickly moving data across the network, could allow workers to maintain full control from the safety of a desk through a controller and headset while still communicating with colleagues.”

In fact, the potential capabilities are so advanced that, if we could create devices with brain-machine interfaces, thoughts and sensations would be possible to share in real time, and the so-called ‘Internet of Behaviour’ would become a reality.

“With 6G, the network itself will no longer be a constraint but instead ensure that almost any use case can be easily deployed. With a network as flexible as 6G is set to be, service providers will need to be flexible themselves, working collaboratively across the telecoms ecosystem and with customers to deliver solutions.”

NTT DOCOMO: 2023 TO BE THE DEFINING YEAR FOR OPEN RAN

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

Sadayuki Abeta, Global Head of Open RAN Solutions/ OREX Evangelist, NTT

Global interest continues to grow regarding Open RAN, which uses open and standardised wireless base-station specifications to enable the devices and systems of multiple telecom vendors to be interconnected in mobile networks.

However, operators constructing networks incorporating devices from just a single vendor are now facing technical and verification challenges in their efforts to implement Open RAN. NTT DOCOMO, as the world’s only company to have constructed networks implemented with multiple vendors since the 4G era, is leveraging its expertise to support the Open RAN efforts of operators worldwide.

Based on the company’s corporate philosophy of ’creating a new world of communications culture’, today DOCOMO is utilising its individual potential to provide

Through its OREX brand, DOCOMO is offering a pre-integrated solution that simplifies integration, interoperability and lifecycle management

Reclaim control of your wireless network with Open RAN

Reclaim control of your wireless network with Open RAN

Partner with Fujitsu for sustainable, open solutions that will prepare your network for the future. With Fujitsu

Partner with Fujitsu for sustainable, open solutions that will prepare your network for the future. With Fujitsu

Open RAN solutions, you get the network you want.

Open RAN solutions, you get the network you want.

Sustainable solutions for an open future

Sustainable solutions for an open future

The benefits of Open RAN

The benefits of Open RAN

If you want a sustainable network, Open RAN provides greater choice, flexibility, and agility for 5G and beyond. It delivers faster innovation, supply chain security, simplified operations, and a more competitive vendor ecosystem.

If you want a sustainable network, Open RAN provides greater choice, flexibility, and agility for 5G and beyond. It delivers faster innovation, supply chain security, simplified operations, and a more competitive vendor ecosystem.

The Fujitsu Open RAN solution encompasses O-RAN-compliant RUs, vCUDUs, fronthaul and backhaul transport, software, and 5G services. While the Fujitsu Open RAN solution is a best-of-breed technology offering, we are committed to Open RAN and know each network is unique. However you want your network configured, Fujitsu Open RAN helps to speed service introduction and reduce total cost of ownership.

The Fujitsu Open RAN solution encompasses O-RAN-compliant RUs, vCUDUs, fronthaul and backhaul transport, software, and 5G services. While the Fujitsu Open RAN solution is a best-of-breed technology offering, we are committed to Open RAN and know each network is unique. However you want your network configured, Fujitsu Open RAN helps to speed service introduction and reduce total cost of ownership.

Sustainable hardware and software solutions

Sustainable hardware and software solutions

At Fujitsu, our purpose is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation, which we are applying to the RAN network. For virtual RAN (vRAN), we plan a 50% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 compared to conventional base stations. Our RUs support advanced sleep mode that automatically turns PA (power amplifier) on and off according to the traffic, which ultimately leads to the reduction in power consumption. Since RUs consume particularly large amounts of power within a radio access network, the reduction in power consumption contributes significantly

At Fujitsu, our purpose is to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation, which we are applying to the RAN network. For virtual RAN (vRAN), we plan a 50% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 compared to conventional base stations. Our RUs support advanced sleep mode that automatically turns PA (power amplifier) on and off according to the traffic, which ultimately leads to the reduction in power consumption. Since RUs consume particularly large amounts of power within a radio access network, the reduction in power consumption contributes significantly

to sustainability transformation. Our Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) uses advanced AI technology that can orchestrate and control Open RAN networks. Applications inside of the SMO perform RU and vCU/DU sleep control depending on traffic and user quality conditions so that they can reduce power consumption, delivering a sustainable transformation for your network.

to sustainability transformation. Our Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) uses advanced AI technology that can orchestrate and control Open RAN networks. Applications inside of the SMO perform RU and vCU/DU sleep control depending on traffic and user quality conditions so that they can reduce power consumption, delivering a sustainable transformation for your network.

We are an active member of IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network) Global Forum, which leads the vision of future communications infrastructure based on leading-edge optical technology and information processing technologies to realize a smarter world in open community with industry leaders (or partners).

We are an active member of IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network) Global Forum, which leads the vision of future communications infrastructure based on leading-edge optical technology and information processing technologies to realize a smarter world in open community with industry leaders (or partners).

Easy Open RAN system integration

Easy Open RAN system integration

Fujitsu Open RAN Systems Integration solutions allow you to create your best open network while we take care of the integration planning and design, the lab deployment and conformance testing, plus network integration and lifecycle management. Fujitsu makes deployment faster and more flexible with capital and operational cost savings. Innovation and new service introductions are quicker, more responsive, and nimbler.

Fujitsu Open RAN Systems Integration solutions allow you to create your best open network while we take care of the integration planning and design, the lab deployment and conformance testing, plus network integration and lifecycle management. Fujitsu makes deployment faster and more flexible with capital and operational cost savings. Innovation and new service introductions are quicker, more responsive, and nimbler.

The IOWN GLOBAL FORUM mark and IOWN GLOBAL FORUM & Design logo are trademarks of Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

With our virtual RAN (vRAN) solution, we plan to have a 50% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 compared to conventional base stations.

The IOWN GLOBAL FORUM mark and IOWN GLOBAL FORUM & Design logo are trademarks of Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

highly personalised communication solutions that truly satisfy customers.

Earlier in 2023, DOCOMO adopted the OREX (Open RAN Ecosystem Experience) brand to strengthen the support scheme for international telecom operators in delivering the Open RAN system.

“OREX provides the Open RAN solution, creating a new network experience that is truly open to the world,” explains Sadayuki Abeta, NTT DOCOMO’s Global Head of Open RAN Solutions and OREX Evangelist.

“WE OFFER THE OPEN RAN EXPERIENCE THROUGH VARIOUS MEANS, INCLUDING PRE-INTEGRATION SOLUTIONS OR PACKAGED SOLUTIONS”

SADAYUKI ABETA GLOBAL HEAD OF OPEN RAN SOLUTIONS/OREX EVANGELIST, NTT DOCOMO

“We closely collaborate with multiple partners across different layers such as software, Communication-as-a-Service (CaaS) or O-cloud, accelerator and server vendors to establish the Open RAN ecosystem while considering commercial operations.

“We offer the Open RAN experience through various means, including pre-integration solutions or packaged solutions,” Abeta adds. “Additionally, we provide a shared open lab where

DR SADAYUKI ABETA

TITLE: GLOBAL HEAD OF OPEN RAN SOLUTIONS/OREX EVANGELIST

COMPANY: NTT DOCOMO

Sadayuki Abeta is global head of Open RAN solutions and OREX evangelist in NTT DOCOMO for creating Open RAN ecosystem globally, and shaping them to meet customer and service provider needs.

He has been working for research, standardization and development of the UMTS/W-CDMA, HPSA, LTE, LTE-Advanced and 5G. From 2005 to 2009, he was a vice chairman of 3GPP TSG-RAN WG1 and rapporteur of LTE and LTE-Advanced. He is an O-RAN executive committee member. From 2018-2022, he was a General Manager of the Radio Access Network Development Department, which is responsible

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Innovation for Open RAN and Beyond

Wind River, a global leader in intelligent distributed cloud software, is in the vanguard of businesses driving the digital transformation of missioncritical systems.

One of the areas where the company is helping usher customers into a new era is telecommunications.

“We’re constantly strategizing operations for the future,” says Paul Miller, CTO, Wind River.“5G and virtualized radio access networks (vRAN) are laying the groundwork for applications such as autonomous vehicle control, drone control, and software-based factory automation.”

Looking even further ahead, he predicts that service providers will offer “a fully virtualized environment, from core to edge,” adding that this will be automated “and built on cloud-oriented architecture.”

An important area for Wind River in telecom is its work with Open Telco and Open RAN (O-RAN) deployments.

O-RAN is a key enabler for organizations from many sectors to provide a wide array of new services to their customers. It’s an enabler of edge connectivity and the machine economy, and it provides the foundation for use

cases such as autonomous driving, modern energy grids, and robotics.

Wind River is continually innovating and has leveraged its strategic OREX partnership to share these innovations with the ecosystem.

For example, recent projects include a multi-vendor Open vRAN demonstration with OREX members NTT DOCOMO, Fujitsu, and NVIDIA that showed how an Open RAN system can be energy efficient.

But as well as enabling opportunities, new technologies also bring challenges, most of which concern system integration. OREX helps ease these challenges with activities such as the Open RAN verification environment and the work done recently to define new methods for system integration.

“Distributed networks are complex, so Open RAN solutions must mitigate complexity,” says Miller. “Our focus is on providing ease of deployment, increased levels of automation, and operational efficiency so service providers can better support new 5G use cases.”

operators can remotely access our lab from their office to test the virtual RAN solution. We also offer operational systems like SMO, leveraging our expertise and experience.

“OREX is committed to making 2023 the defining year for Open RAN. Our ultimate goal is to eliminate global communication gaps through the OREX initiative.”

Pioneering new technologies

NTT DOCOMO is the number one mobile operator in Japan. Having launched its firstgeneration service in 1979, since then the company has pioneered new technologies.

13

“In 1999, we introduced the i-mode service, which was the first mobile internet service, making us an internet service provider,” Abeta explains.

“For both 3G and 4G, we were among the first operators to commercially launch these services. In 2020, we became the first operator to commercially launch 5G services with a fully multi-vendor interoperable Open RAN.”

Today DOCOMO has three business segments: enterprise, smart life and telecommunications. It has 87m subscribers, with 20m subscribers enjoying its 5G Open RAN services, with a total revenue of around US$44bn.

Global OREX partners

An expert in the mobile industry for more than 25 years, Abeta’s career at NTT DOCOMO started as a researcher for

In 1997 the second-generation mobile system was introduced in Japan. Instead of GSM, Japan utilised the Personal Digital Cellular (PDC) system. “During this time, data services over the mobile network were initiated, but the data rate was incredibly low, starting at only 2.4kbps,” Abeta explains. “It’s hard to imagine today, but at that time, only small text messages could be transferred over the mobile network. Eventually, the data rate increased to 28.8kbps.

“In 1999, we launched the i-mode service, marking the beginning of internet services over the mobile network.

Our customers enjoyed web browsing and games on their mobile devices. Non-voice communication services expanded, but customers had to purchase new handsets to access new applications or games since some applications were hard-coded and only available on specific terminals.”

In 2000, 3G was introduced, with DOCOMO playing a significant role in contributing to the 3GPP standard specification work. “We led technical discussions and managed the discussions as one of the officials, serving as the Chair. We were the first operator to deploy 3G networks nationwide and provided rich content via the 3G network. However, the data rate was still limited to 64Kbps or 384kbps. Later, HSPA technology was introduced, enabling much higher throughput.

“Moving forward, we proposed LTE together with our partners and launched 4G services in 2010,” Abeta describes. “Our 4G radio access network (RAN) was fully multi-vendor interoperable. We defined interfaces that were not initially defined by 3GPP, making us the first operator to deploy a multi-vendor interoperable RAN. The rise of smartphones in conjunction with our 4G services revolutionised the user experience and its benefits are well-known.”

While DOCOMO’s communication services continued to thrive, the company also expanded its non-communication services, evolving into the smart-life service segment.

When it comes to the rollout of 5G, DOCOMO has contributed not only to 3GPP but also to the O-RAN alliance to realise multivendor interoperable Open RAN solutions.

“OREX IS AKIN TO A SINGLE VENDOR SOLUTION, OFFERING A PRE-INTEGRATED SOLUTION THAT SIMPLIFIES INTEGRATION, INTEROPERABILITY, AND LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT”

SADAYUKI ABETA

GLOBAL

HEAD OF OPEN RAN SOLUTIONS/OREX EVANGELIST, NTT DOCOMO

NTT DOCOMO: 2023 to be the defining year for Open RAN

“In 2018, we established the 5G Open Partner Program, aiming to create new services and address social issues by collaborating with vertical players,” Abeta adds. “Currently, this program has attracted participation from 5,300 companies and organisations.”

The benefits of OREX

As Abeta describes, OREX provides an easier solution for Open RAN, allowing the benefits of vendor competition, mitigating supply chain risks and enabling the selection of equipment from around the world.

“Our solution is designed to simplify the process,” he states. “It is akin to a single vendor solution, offering a pre-integrated solution that simplifies integration, interoperability, and lifecycle management.”

In order to implement this solution, there are a number of challenges to overcome. Many operators have conducted

“THROUGH JOINT INNOVATION, WE CAN PROVIDE ADDITIONAL VALUE TO OUR CUSTOMERS”

SADAYUKI ABETA

GLOBAL HEAD OF OPEN RAN SOLUTIONS/OREX EVANGELIST, NTT DOCOMO

“OREX PROVIDES THE OPEN RAN SOLUTION, CREATING A NEW NETWORK EXPERIENCE THAT IS TRULY OPEN TO THE WORLD”

SADAYUKI ABETA

GLOBAL HEAD OF OPEN RAN SOLUTIONS/OREX EVANGELIST, NTT DOCOMO

NTT DOCOMO Tower, Tokyo IMAGE: GETTY

trials of Open RAN. However, only a few operators have launched commercial Open RAN services.

“How DOCOMO can help in introducing Open RAN to their commercial networks poses a high-level challenge,” explains Abeta. “We need to understand their current network and propose solutions for improving it, adding value to their network while reducing the total cost of ownership.”

Another challenge of 5G deployment is the variation in 5G frequencies and frequency bands across different countries. “Allocating wider bandwidth in each country becomes a complex task due to band allocation issues. Scaling the Remote Unit (RU) also presents a challenge.

“However,” Abeta asserts, “Thanks to the open interface, we can leverage

solutions from any vendor. We are engaged in discussions with multiple RU vendors to address this situation and find suitable solutions.

“Another challenge is the coexistence with existing vendor networks. The current vendors are not fully supportive of interoperability with the OREX solution, which requires time and effort to overcome.”

Working with 13 global partners

As part of OREX, DOCOMO is collaborating with 13 global partners to make Open RAN a reality: AMD, DELL, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Mavenir, NEC, NTT DATA, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Red Hat, VMware and Windriver.

“Our focus is on developing vRAN technology,” Abeta explains. “While the ultimate goal is to support full combinations,

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INFRASTRUCTURE OPERATIONS

completing this task requires a significant amount of time. Currently, we have multiple supported combinations and are actively testing their performance.

“We are also engaged in discussions on how to simplify the life cycle management process. Typically, we upgrade our system every six months. However, when it comes to multi-vendor solutions, we need to consider the update cycles of each vendor’s software or firmware, which can be quite complex. To address this, we have aligned the update cycles to streamline operations and create a unified experience similar to that of a single-vendor solution.

“Furthermore, we collaborate with our customers by jointly visiting them to demonstrate the benefits of our solutions.”

As Abeta describes, these partnerships are of extreme importance. “Our product is a joint product, and our solution is a joint

NEC Open Networks:

Creating a better 5G future for all

NEC is committed to the principles of openness because we believe it gives network operators the best chance to capitalise on the enormous promise of 5G and stay a step ahead of the demands of our increasingly connected world.

This commitment means more than simply agreeing upon new technical standards; it means a company-wide understanding that we are open to any business possibility that improves customers' likelihood of success.

Learn more

solution. Through joint innovation, we can provide additional value to our customers. We maintain regular communication with our partners, engaging in discussions almost every day to foster collaboration and drive the development of our joint initiatives.”

Prioritising expanding services

Looking to the future DOCOMO has plans in place across each of its three business areas.

“In the enterprise business segment, we are prioritising expanding services in areas such as car connectivity and smart city solutions,” Abeta explains.

“We work alongside other solutions to provide a comprehensive offering to our enterprise customers.”

Within the smart life business segment, existing areas such as “Finance and Payment” and “Video and Entertainment” will be strengthened, while also venturing into new territories like Utilities, Medical and XR. “Our goal is to create new life values and lifestyles through strategic partnerships, leveraging our membership base, data and seamless integration from services to devices,” Abeta adds.

business area, we strive to expand our customer base by promoting

cross-selling between rate plans and lifestyle-related services that cater to diverse customer needs.

“Additionally, OREX represents our new business area where we provide the Open RAN solution. We offer this solution in combination with value-added 5G services to our customers, working closely with our partners.”

While consumer service remains a top priority, as Abeta describes it is becoming increasingly challenging to identify a groundbreaking application or device similar to the impact of the smartphone in the 4G era. “Nonetheless, we are actively exploring opportunities to introduce devices or applications that can be used both at home and on the go, offering enhanced utility as mobile devices.

“Enterprise service represents a significant focus for us, particularly in

UNLOCKING THE POWER OF COLLABORATION DATA

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

COLLABORATION

In 1978, Blockbuster Video founder David Cook formed a data services business.

Cook Data Services, which made software for oil and gas companies, went public in 1983, raising US$8.4m in an IPO.

But, six months later, the business had nosedived. Rather than sink the $8.4m into the now struggling company, he decided to put it toward a new business. Blockbuster was born.

With a vast network of retail locations across the United States and an extensive catalogue of movies, Blockbuster quickly became a symbol of the home entertainment industry. Despite its success, though, the company failed to anticipate the transformative power of data and the rapidly changing consumer preferences.

Netflix, on the other hand, embraced the digital revolution and recognised the potential of data to revolutionise the consumption of entertainment. What started as a subscription-based DVD-by-mail service in 1997 evolved into a streaming behemoth that disrupted the traditional rental model. By leveraging data to understand consumer behaviour, preferences, and viewing patterns, Netflix could deliver personalised recommendations and a seamless streaming experience.

This transformation has been seen globally. In today’s digital landscape, data has become the lifeblood of businesses across industries, fueling innovation, driving strategic decision-making, and enhancing customer experiences. As Fawad Qureshi, Industry Field CTO at data company Snowflake, explains, the company helps its clients make better use of data as well as aiding collaboration both in and outside of their organisation.

Using a collaborative approach to data can benefit organisations in several ways, driving success in a digital world

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This is the power that brings the integration of two cloud managed platforms, Cisco Meraki and Cisco Umbrella. This integration is binding together the best of breed in cloud-managed networking and Security. cisco.com

FAWAD QURESHI

Collaboration and data cleanrooms

According to Snowflake, fast, streamlined access to relevant data is key to successful business outcomes. However, many organisations struggle to share data –internally between teams and externally with partners, vendors, and customers. Data collaboration has the power to improve the quality of analytics programs and even create new product offerings.

Sharing data while adhering to privacy regulations has always been challenging. But, by using distributed data clean rooms, it’s now possible to collaborate with data in a secure manner that aligns with privacy rules. Data clean rooms allow organisations to manage data effectively, deidentify it, and share it.

“I often describe a data clean room as an escrow account for data sharing,” Qureshi comments. “It’s a middle account. Both parties share the data and control what you can do with that data.”

In 1982, computer scientist Andrew Yao proposed Yao’s Millionaires’ Problem: a secure multi-party computation problem which discusses two millionaires who are interested in knowing which of them is richer without revealing their actual wealth.

“Data clean rooms are one of the best ways of doing data sharing without revealing sensitive and proprietary information”

INDUSTRY FIELD CTO, SNOWFLAKE

What’s Next in Data Collaboration & Why Data Clean Rooms Are Exciting: Insights From Frank Bell

“The problem is there are two millionaires,” Qureshi comments. “Both of them want to know whether they have more money than the other, but they don’t want to tell the other person how much money they have.”

According to Qureshi, the solution to this problem can be found in data clean rooms: a secure environment that allows multiple companies, or divisions of a single company, to bring data together for joint analysis under defined guidelines and restrictions.

“Data clean rooms are one of the best ways of doing data sharing without revealing sensitive and proprietary information, while also creating new business value for both sides.”

Changing how data collaboration works

Data collaboration is the process of gathering and sharing data from various sources. This process typically involves combining data sets from internal teams such as sales, marketing, and customer

service and empowering domain experts to contribute their unique perspectives to inform insights. Data collaboration also takes the form of data-sharing partnerships or supplementing existing data with thirdparty data sets.

“Organisations have been doing data sharing and collaboration in many different ways,” says Qureshi, “but what we are doing is changing the way it is done.

“In the 1990s there was Blockbuster video. What did you do? You went on a weekend, got a cassette, took it home, and put it into the VCR.”

Think of this cassette as a copy of the data: the extract, transform, load (ETL) device.

“The VCR extracts the movie out of the cassette, transforms it, and projects it onto your screen,” Qureshi adds. “Later on, those VHS cassettes became CDs. You take the CD home and it has scratches; you put the CD into the CD drive – it doesn’t work. Those scratches are data quality problems.

WATCH NOW

is doing is the same Netflix-like experience for data sharing”

FAWAD QURESHI INDUSTRY FIELD

Identifying data

According to research by Seagate and International Data Corporation, 68% of enterprise data never gets used. One of the primary barriers to accessing the value of data, Snowflake says, is that teams often aren’t sure what data is available or relevant to solving business problems. Data collaboration resolves this issue by bringing those closest to the data together to identify the data sources best suited to meet business objectives, recognising the critical role that domainlevel experts play.

“Then came a company called Netflix. What they did was they said okay, instead of giving you copies of the data, the VHS will have a single copy of the movie. You bring your own compute, you bring your own bandwidth; you connect to the same copy of the movie and you can watch it at your leisure wherever you want. And whenever I want to end a movie, I can just say this movie is no longer available on Netflix.”

On top of that, users can gain insights into how the movies are being used. “What Snowflake is doing is the same Netflix-like

“We are going to get into more systematic data collaboration rather than the old Blockbuster style of cassette sharing”

CTO, SNOWFLAKE

experience for data sharing,” Qureshi says. “Instead of doing FTP and manual copies of the data, we have a single copy of the data. Consumers bring their own compute and we give them this DataFlex experience.”

As Qureshi explains, this data sharing experience has a number of benefits when compared to more traditional techniques.

“I have asked this question to many different organisations that are doing data sharing in traditional ways, can you tell me what is your most profitable, most valuable data feed? And they have no idea. Because when you create a copy of the data from

FTP from here to here, you don’t know what’s happening on the other side. You don’t get any usage information. But with Snowflake, you get metadata back on how many queries were run on your copy of the data, and how it has been consumed.”

Qureshi predicts that the future of data collaboration will see more and more growth: “We are going to get into more systematic data collaboration rather than the old Blockbuster-style of cassette sharing – because cassette sharing isn’t a scalable model and it doesn’t bring you any insights.”

ORACLE CLOUD and the power of community in driving digital evolution

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

WRITTEN BY: MAYA DERRICK

Oracle’s Jürgen Kress

named

In conversation with Mobile Magazine, Director of Product Management Integration and Digital Assistant at Oracle Jürgen Kress shared insights into how Oracle Cloud leverages community to propel digital evolution. As a multinational computer technology corporation and the third-largest software company worldwide, Oracle is renowned for its comprehensive range of software products and services. The company offers Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), with a comprehensive set of services from infrastructure to platform and SaaS. This ranges from compute and storage, PaaS services like integration, BI, content, identity management, or a chatbot to services like ERP, HCM, CX, NetSuite, or industry solutions like the OPERA Hospitality Platform. With a mission to help people view data in new ways, discover insights, and unlock endless possibilities, Oracle remains at the top of its game. Named a Leader and Positioned Highest for Ability to Execute in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Integration Platform as a Service Worldwide 2023, Oracle continues to shape the future of digital transformation.

The transformation journey

Kress, who has been with Oracle for over two decades, highlights the remarkable transformation in the IT industry. Oracle’s

explains how being

a leader in two Gartner Magic Quadrant reports will further propel the business and those it works with

Technically Inspiring

We use our specialist technical expertise, powerful technology, customised client solutions and global reach to deliver better results for the world of insurance.

Why Oracle Cloud has the ability to provide PaaS services

Vikas Sharma, Global Head of INSIS CoE at Charles Taylor, explains how the company harnesses Oracle’s OCI to enhance their internal operations and output

With a history spanning almost 140 years, Charles Taylor provides insurance solutions with a unique breadth, offering technical expertise and global reach alongside award-winning solutions. Their constant strive for excellence is propelled forward through using an array of Oracle Cloud systems that have been in place for the last 10 years – as Vikas Sharma, Global Head of INSIS CoE, explains.

‘A natural choice’

“It was a natural choice for us to try Oracle Cloud products, so we moved into OCI. One of the main benefits of OCI was providing PaaS services.” Comparing OCI Autonomous Database to a self-driving car, Sharma praised its ability to do its own patching –whether that be security patching, security detection, or identifying vulnerabilities. And there’s a financial benefit, as well.

Fast delivery

“I always use this phrase: time is money,” says Sharma.

“The first and foremost benefit that we get is that it helps us to deliver our solution in fast time-to-market.

“The time for server building and infrastructure building – which used to take many days, sometimes many months – has reduced a lot. And that eventually reduces a lot of our cost, benefitting our customers.”

Security and safeguarding data

With data protection and security paramount, Sharma adds that Oracle’s services, when used together, completely safeguard information at any and all levels. “We use Oracle Cloud Guard, which is one of the products that comes from OCI, to secure at the tenant-level. Then we utilise other services from OCI, like DataSafe, specifically, to find out any kind of vulnerabilities at the database level.

“All our servers are in a private subnet so they are completely secured. And we utilise some of the services security list type of services, rules services from OCI, to secure our applications.”

integration capabilities serve as an onramp to the broader IaaS platform.

According to Kress: “OCI is a second-generation cloud representing a fundamental re-architecture of the conventional public cloud. While first-generation clouds were built on decade-old technology, Oracle’s Cloud is specifically architected for the enterprise. It was built in a microservice architecture, which gives us a competitive advantage. We use that difference to shift all workloads for our customers to the cloud – existing workloads, new cloud-native workloads – and we are continually releasing new capabilities such as integration and AI

“Oracle now boasts the fastest core network of global data centres, with 42 regions currently available and nine more in the pipeline”

JÜRGEN KRESS DIRECTOR PRODUCT MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION AND DIGITAL ASSISTANT, ORACLE CLOUD

services including Digital Assistant, our secure, enterprise chatbot.”

By utilising OCI Application Integration (OIC), customers gain access to a wide array of services, ranging from compute and storage, to identity management, content management, modern data platform, and application development. The seamless integration of various applications, both Oracle and third-party, enables customers to enhance their operational efficiency and unlock the full potential of Oracle’s infrastructure. Prebuilt adapters and integrations accelerate delivery and minimise upgrade risks. Unified observability simplifies hybrid and multi-cloud operations.

JÜRGEN KRESS

TITLE: DIRECTOR PRODUCT MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION AND DIGITAL ASSISTANT

COMPANY: ORACLE CLOUD

EXECUTIVE BIO

An expert in the Oracle Cloud Platform Jürgen Kress is part of product management team and responsible for Oracle’s Integration & Digital Assistant partner business & the customer success program. He is the founder of the Oracle Integration & Developer Partner Communities and the global Oracle Partner Advisory Councils. These PaaS Partner Communities are home to over 10,000 members internationally as Oracle’s most active and successful communities. Which Jürgen manages with monthly newsletters, webcasts, online trainings and conferences. He hosts the Partner Community Forums, Summer Camps and Bootcamps where hundreds of attendees receive product updates, roadmap insights, and hands-on training. He graduated from Berufsakademie Stuttgart and holds a master’s degree from University of Brasilia. As an author he published several books and is an active social contributor via Twitter, LinkedIn, discussion forums, online communities, slack and blogs.

Oracle and KNEX Empower Clients with Fusion Applications for Real-World Impact

KNEX is a seasoned team of elite Oracle experts curated by founder Basheer Khan, a globally recognised Oracle authority.

Since 2013, we’ve delivered proven solutions built on broad industry understanding.

Beyond integrating systems, we elevate success, leveraging Fusion extensions to coordinate harmony within the organisations.

KNEX: Unlock the full potential of your Fusion Applications

KNEX Technology is revolutionising Fusion Applications implementations with innovative extensions that expand functionality across industries

Being a member of the Fusion Inner circle, and an early adopter, Basheer Khan gained deep expertise in Fusion Applications. Recognising this, Oracle engaged Khan in 2010 to install Fusion Applications for early adopter companies. This experience led Khan to envision a consulting firm that not only implemented Fusion Applications but also helped clients optimise their investments. With this idea in mind, Khan founded KNEX Technology in 2013 with the goal of implementing cloud applications, integrating them with other systems, and extending their functionality to bridge gaps.

In 2005, Oracle recognised Khan as an Oracle ACE Director, part of their ACE Program that recognises individuals who are experts in their respective fields. In 2012, KNEX’s CTO, Gustavo Gonzalez was awarded the same recognition. This milestone achievement makes KNEX the only organisation with two of the three ACE Directors in the world who specialise in Fusion Applications.

Providing positive change – together Oracle and KNEX have collaborated on many amazing projects. One of the most poignant is implementing Fusion Applications across 14 countries, in just 16 weeks. “I think this is a record,” Khan shares. “We don’t know of any other implementation for such a broad region in such a short time.

“We’ve also done some impactful projects when it comes to improving the productivity of our clients. One of our clients in the financial services sector had their team spending a considerable amount of time capturing data from different banks. We were able to automate that using Oracle Integration Cloud.”

To breathe life into the concept of positive change, our favourite collaboration is with non-profit organisations. KNEX works hand-inhand to help non-profits afford and successfully uptake Oracle Fusion Applications, simplifying their dayto-day operations and enabling them to focus on their missions to provide positive change to the world.

Khan concludes: “At KNEX, we simplify the complex.”

Speaking about OIC’s industry recognition, Kress explained: “Congratulations to all the customers, partners, and the whole community. It was a big team effort including product management, development, sales, and marketing. Oracle is a SaaS market leader with solutions spanning ERP, CM, CX, and industry solutions. Customers need to connect their applications, including Oracle SaaS, with their applications, data, and messaging services in the cloud, between different clouds, and on-premises.”

The power of community

A significant aspect of Oracle’s success lies in the vibrant and active community it has cultivated. With more than 10,000 community members comprising

customers, partners, and employees, Oracle collaborates, engages, supports, and trains this community. The community model extends to both partners and customers, offering sales and marketing enablement information, newsletters, webcasts, and success stories.

Comms channels ‘vital’

The constant communication channels, such as newsletters, webcasts, blogs, instant messaging, and social media, enable the sharing of product information, success stories, and valuable feedback to continually improve the OCI Application Integration service.

Oracle recognises the crucial role played by partners in implementing successful

“We are thankful for an excellent team, including leadership with an in-depth understanding, and a track record of success in the integration market”

JÜRGEN KRESS DIRECTOR PRODUCT MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION AND DIGITAL ASSISTANT, ORACLE CLOUD

FlexDeploy DevOps Platform for Oracle Cloud Applications

and Infrastructure

Streamline and accelerate delivery of your Oracle Cloud services like ERP, HCM, Integration, and Analytics by automating manual tasks, reducing the risk of failure, and providing traceability and auditability of changes.

Learn how to achieve significant benefits by streamlining the entire deployment process

FlexDeploy DevOps Platform for Oracle Cloud

Flexagon’s DevOps platform, FlexDeploy, helps customers automate their processes when software development and delivery are generally complex. “We bring software to the table in FlexDeploy to embed automation and governance into their processes and make sure there’s visibility to change,” Flexagon’s CEO and Co-Founder Dan Goerdt says.

Removing complexity

Through its partnership with Oracle and its Oracle Cloud systems, FlexDeploy optimizes services for ease of customer use. As an Oracle partner, Flexagon leverages the likes of development environments and demo environments, accessing resources within Oracle’s product management and marketing to optimise FlexDeploy’s support for Oracle Cloud Integration and Applications.

Partnership in action

Heathrow Airport had a huge transformation and is adopting Oracle Cloud, Oracle Cloud Applications, Oracle Integration and APEX. Capgemini, as an Oracle partner and a

Flexagon partner, was able to deliver this transformation successfully. “The impact of the partnership has been tremendous,” Goerdt remarks. “Customers around the globe get the value of FlexDeploy’s expansive out-of-the-box capability for Oracle Cloud. Pairing the FlexDeploy DevOps platform with the Oracle partnership has helped a lot of customers move faster with quality while managing cost and risk. Everybody wins. It’s a neat dynamic to help solve these joint customer challenges in different ways.”

A bright future

Although proud of what Flexagon has achieved since its inception and how partnering with Oracle has enabled the company to reach a wider customer base, Goerdt has his sights set on a bright future in partnership with Oracle. “Oracle continues to crank out new services and extend their existing services. We’re tightly aligned with them so we can continue to enhance FlexDeploy to support the evolution of Oracle Cloud.”

LEARN MORE

projects. The integration partner ecosystem consists of various types of partners, including system integrators, global system integrators, local partners, and independent software vendors (ISVs). To support partners, Oracle provides comprehensive programs that encompass sales, marketing, and enablement information, joint campaigns, free training, and certification. Notable partnerships include innovative regional system integrators, global system integrators undertaking large international projects,

33 hands-on trainings with 2465 attendees in fiscal year 2022

33 webcasts with 7969 attendees in fiscal year 2022

Oracle Cloud and the power of community in driving digital evolution

WATCH NOW

and ISVs leveraging pre-built integrations to connect their solutions to the Oracle SaaS ecosystem.

“Partners are absolutely key to us,” Kress says “Of the top 10 customer projects, eight of them have been successfully implemented by partners. We’re thankful for our excellent global partnerships. The integration partner ecosystem includes different types of partners from system integrators, global system integrators, and local partners, to independent software vendors.

“For partners, we offer a whole program including sales, marketing, and enablement information such as sales kits with customer presentations, sales positioning, joint campaigns to generate leads, and opportunities for free training and certification. All of that is put together in a community model to communicate regularly via newsletters and webcasts.”

To highlight some of the success factors, trained and certified partners deliver and replicate successful customer projects. Every year, Oracle offers 20 free training

sessions to its partners. In these three-day workshops, up to 200 people learn about the product in live virtual classes, which has resulted in more than 6,000 certified Oracle Application Integration experts since 2020.

Kress explains, “We have small and innovative partners like KNEX, which are among the first movers to connect and extend Oracle SaaS with OIC. They customised Oracle SaaS to run a winery, replicated this customer success, and now offer an industry solution. We work with all Global System Integrators (GSI’s) who deploy international projects. For example, Capgemini and the Heathrow Airport project, Infosys, who presented one of their projects at our last customer success webcast, or Accenture with more than 500 experts. Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) such as Charles Taylor, which offers insurance solutions, leverage OIC to connect with Oracle SaaS. With OIC, Charles Taylor gets access to the Oracle SaaS installed base and customers benefit from tailored industry solutions.”

“Partners such as Flexagon, which offers a DevOps solution, FlexDeploy, for Oracle Cloud infrastructure services. FlexDeploy is a DevOps and automation platform that enables fast and efficient packaging, testing, and development of code and configurations. It’s a complimentary tool that was initially developed on Oracle SOA Suite and now supports the latest OCI architecture. Available through the Oracle Marketplace, FlexDeploy is available to any OCI customer.” Asked about OIC’s global partner model, Kress shared, “To summarise our partner strategy, the secret is that we train and certify partners to deliver successful projects and replicate their

JÜRGEN KRESS DIRECTOR PRODUCT MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION AND DIGITAL ASSISTANT, ORACLE CLOUD

“We are continually releasing new capabilities”

best practices. The community model is a consistent, executable, and scalable model.”

He adds: “For customers and prospects, we established a similar program that includes a quarterly newsletter, quarterly product webcast, customer summits, and success stories. The product webcast provides customers with the latest release details with demonstrations of new features and roadmap details. Prospects learn from successful customer implementations in regional success webcasts. A great example is the London Heathrow Airport reference implemented by Capgemini.

“Overall, we are thankful for an excellent team, including leadership with an in-depth understanding, and a track record of success in the integration market. It’s always a team effort, and we would like to thank and congratulate our customers, employees, partners, and the ACE community that made it possible.”

Driving future development

Oracle aims to expand its customer base and further develop its cloud offerings. “OCI is a complete cloud infrastructure platform suitable for every workload, offering all the necessary services to migrate, build, and run both existing and new enterprise workloads including cloud-native applications and modern data platforms,” Kress details.

“Oracle now boasts the fastest core network of global data centres, with more than 42 regions currently available and nine more in the pipeline. Oracle also provides 20 free tier services, with no time limitations, including compute and storage, autonomous databases, and APEX for lowcode development.”

The company recognises that continued growth and development depend on customers utilising its products and actively contributing to Oracle’s service offerings. Ongoing communication with customers and partners helps prioritise bi-monthly releases and drive longer-term strategy.

AI and the future of cloud services

Kress highlights the immense potential of AI as the next major revolution in the IT industry. AI services rely heavily on data models and the ability to expose trusted enterprise data to AI systems. By connecting

“Partners are absolutely key to us”

JÜRGEN KRESS DIRECTOR PRODUCT MANAGEMENT INTEGRATION AND DIGITAL ASSISTANT, ORACLE CLOUD

transactional application data with AI capabilities, organisations can optimise automated processes and empower knowledge workers to make timely, datadriven decisions that drive growth. Cloud services are becoming smarter, more autonomous, and interconnected, leveraging the power of connected data and AI to deliver superior predictions and insights.

Through a combination of robust infrastructure, integration capabilities, and a thriving community, Oracle Cloud is driving digital evolution in the industry. Recognised as a leader in iPaaS, Oracle’s commitment

to empowering customers, fostering partnerships, and embracing emerging technologies positions it at the forefront of innovation.

Overall, Oracle’s community-driven approach, coupled with its commitment to partner success and technological innovation, positions the company at the forefront of digital transformation and enables it to provide comprehensive cloud solutions to its customers.

Generative AI is changing the cybersecurity game

Powerful AI tools are changing the world of cybersecurity. But while businesses should embrace these new innovations, it is critical they do so responsibly

From privacy breaches to ransomware attacks, cybersecurity threats are a continuous challenge facing businesses across the globe.

Cybercriminals are constantly innovating their tactics, exploiting vulnerabilities, and breaching defences with alarming precision. Consequently, businesses must adopt a proactive approach – one that not only responds to attacks, but also anticipates and thwarts them before they materialise.

To help security teams deal with these endless attacks, AI is becoming an essential ally.

AI’s ability to analyse vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and make intelligent decisions in real time has positioned it as a game-changer in the ongoing battle against cyber threats. As foundational models continue to evolve, AI is a solution businesses should certainly consider implementing when it comes to combatting these risks and threats.

Firstly, as Hitesh Bansal, Country Head (UK & Ireland) – Cybersecurity & Risk Services at Wipro, explains, the best defence is a good

offence: “Advanced AI now leverages existing protection technologies to build a logical layer within models to proactively protect data. For example, this can take the form of blocking traffic at the firewall level, before the threats compromise the boundaries of an organisation.”

Next, Bansal explains, businesses must be able to accurately detect and identify the threats and risks they are facing. “By processing and analysing large data sets, AI can provide useful intelligence upfront to recognise potential threats; for example, spotting anomalies through correlated network activity which would help engineers to identify payloads in malicious codes and malware.

“Finally, managing the response mechanisms in the event of cybersecurity threats is essential. Now, more sophisticated AI and Machine Learning-enabled playbooks and strategies are being refined and developed. While SOAR (Security Orchestration & Response) as a concept is not new, the role that enhanced AI plays is now allowing access to more data, analytics and most importantly, behavioural

“Generative AI is changing the game for cybersecurity, analysing massive quantities of risk data to speed up response times and augment under-resourced security operations”

KUNAL PUROHIT CHIEF DIGITAL SERVICES OFFICER, TECH MAHINDRA

context that will help IT teams to manage response mechanisms for each threat the business faces.”

Using AI to enhance cybersecurity

AI can be used to boost cybersecurity in a number of ways, comments Kunal Purohit, Chief Digital Services Officer at Tech Mahindra, enhancing threat detection, malware analysis, vulnerability assessment, automated response, data augmentation, adaptive defence strategies, and user behaviour analysis.

“AI enables more proactive and effective defence measures against evolving cyber

threats,” he explains. “And, with the advent of Generative AI, it is changing the game for cybersecurity, analysing massive quantities of risk data to speed response times and augment under-resourced security operations. It has massive potential to transform cybersecurity, including cloud, device, and even home security systems. By creating predictive models, generating simulated environments, and analysing large volumes of data, generative AI can help identify and respond to threats before they cause harm.”

As Damien Duff,

Senior Machine

Learning Consultant at Daemon, explains, AI can be

sometimes reflect the biases of their developers or the data they are trained on, leading to discriminatory outcomes. This can have serious consequences in the context of cybersecurity, resulting in false positives or false negatives.”

and data may not be the only reason”

IVANA BARTOLETTI GLOBAL PRIVACY OFFICER, WIPRO

As Bansal adds, while businesses should certainly embrace AI innovation and the new tools it brings, they must do so responsibly. “There are some known challenges with the use of AI, including the technical, social and organisational complexity of AI applications, bias of data sets and the associated cost of integrating AI algorithms,” he describes.

“All of these risks and challenges must be fully evaluated when AI models are built. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s

(NIST) AI Risk Management

Framework is a good example of how organisations can keep track of risks and put in place a plan to mitigate them. If these ideas are followed, then enterprises will benefit from the development of more trustworthy AI.”

Ensuring the ethical use of AI in security

The integration of AI into cybersecurity practices, however, raises important considerations regarding privacy, ethics, and

the potential for adversarial exploitation. It is crucial to strike a delicate balance between leveraging AI’s immense potential and ensuring responsible implementation to protect user privacy while maintaining ethical boundaries.

Ivana Bartoletti, Global Privacy Officer at Wipro, explains that, first of all, companies need to have the right governance in place to assess the development and deployment of AI systems: “Whether it is by creating a separate structure or building ethical AI into an existing governance structure, using AI presents risks that need to be identified and managed.”

Developing these tools requires controls, training about how to label data and prepare the right datasheets, monitoring, and defining what fairness means, Bartoletti states: “When purchasing a tool from a provider, it is essential to assess that the product has followed due diligence and that its development is aligned with the corporate values of the business.

Cybersecurity by Cybersecurists

WATCH NOW

Predictive analytics

As Tech Mahindra’s Chief Digital Services Officer, Kunal Purohit, explains, AI can be used to improve incident response and crisis management in the event of a security breach in several ways.

In the case of predictive analytics for example, AI can be used to predict and prevent security breaches by analysing historical data and identifying potential threats before they occur.

“Predictive analytics can help security teams identify weaknesses in their systems and take steps to strengthen their security posture,” Purohit explains.

“Bias is never an easy thing; it can create harm as well as financial damage. Bias can emerge at many different points of the AI system life cycle, and data may not be the only reason. Aggregation, evaluation, and measurement bias are all dangerous, and these start with people. But it is also important for companies to protect their data. For example, secure data storage is important to avoid manipulation and tampering, which could lead to severe discriminatory issues in AI outputs later on.”

As Purohit adds, ensuring the ethical use of AI in security is critical to maintaining the trust and confidence of customers and stakeholders. “Businesses should develop ethical principles that guide the use of AI in security. These principles and guidelines should align with the organisation’s values and be based on internationally recognised ethical frameworks.

“Businesses must take a proactive approach to the ethical use of AI in security,” he concludes. “By developing ethical principles and guidelines, assessing and mitigating bias, certifying data privacy and security, businesses can use AI for security in a responsible and ethical manner.”

“By processing and analysing large data sets, AI can provide useful intelligence upfront to recognise potential threats”

HITESH

BANSAL COUNTRY HEAD (UK&I) - CYBERSECURITY & RISK SERVICES, WIPRO

EQUINIX ® : HOW DIGITAL LEADERS CAN ACHIEVE SUSTAINABLE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

LEADERS SUSTAINABLE TRANSFORMATION

AD FEATURE

WRITTEN BY: TOM

SWALLOW

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS HAMMOND

Why is sustainable digital transformation and infrastructure modernisation important?

The world is on the verge of a recession with staggering levels of inflation, increasing energy prices, a climate crisis, and unprecedented disruption.

Digital Transformation underpinned by a modern, agile, flexible, secure, and resilient foundational architecture, is imperative for survival, but it is not enough.

Now, there is a legal, as well as a moral, obligation to reduce EU emissions by at least 55% by 2030. The Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey showed that over 70% of IT leaders said that reducing environmental impact is a critical driver of their technology strategy and 65% of digital leaders expressed that they will only work with partners that meet their carbon reduction targets.

Organisations are meeting this obligation head on with ambitious corporate sustainability goals in place alongside their digital transformation and infrastructure modernisation programmes. With only one IT refresh cycle left until 2030, the decisions made in 2023 will have a huge impact on the ability to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

Yet, the backdrop faced by the digital leaders has never been more complex.

Supply chain issues, chip shortages, technical debt, legacy infrastructure, changing stakeholder requirements, and rigid infrastructure all create financial, operational and energy inefficiencies which threaten to overwhelm digital transformation and the infrastructure modernisation required to achieve it.

Equinix enables organisations to modernise their networks, move appropriate business applications and workloads to the cloud, minimise cloud egress costs, virtualise their digital footprint and house remaining legacy infrastructure within Platform Equinix®.

Organisations have the flexibility to run the workloads wherever it makes the most sense; on premises, at the edge or in multiple cloud locations around the world, whilst also ensuring security and data sovereignty requirements are met.

This composable infrastructure allows organisations the flexibility to address the operational and power inefficiencies whilst reducing cost which allows them to accelerate their digital transformation and achieve sustainability goals.

Figure 1. Organisation Challenges

Sustainability at Equinix

Platform Equinix – Where Sustainable Digital Transformation happens

To understand how to facilitate a sustainable transformation, we turn to the experts at Equinix to uncover the steps along the journey.

Grace Andrews, Principal Product Evangelist at Equinix, delves into the organisation’s mission and how it approaches digital transformation.

“Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company. Platform Equinix provides the foundational infrastructure—data centres, interconnection, and digital infrastructure services—that power the digital economy.

“We’ve transformed Equinix from a colocation provider to a digital infrastructure platform, which supports the digital transformation of our customers.

“During the pandemic, we saw unprecedented demand for digital services. Platform Equinix, with vibrant digital ecosystems and foundational infrastructure

enabled via software, meets the needs of customers who now operate in a highly virtualized world.

“The coronavirus pandemic fundamentally, and in some cases permanently, changed the way we work, the way we educate our children, the way we interact with family, the way we shop and entertain ourselves… Enabling this digital transformation is what we do.

“ We have a duty and the capability to help organisations achieve digital transformation in a way that supports our collective and individual climate goals.”

GRACE ANDREWS

PRINCIPAL PRODUCT EVANGELIST, EQUINIX METAL

How can organisations integrate their digital and sustainability strategy into a coherent roadmap?

Platform & Product Marketing Director, Direnc Dogruoz tells us: “Organisations must start with optimising the core of their network; relying on shared, on-demand services and platforms powered by renewable energy. From that network hub, they can start virtualizing infrastructure and interconnecting to public and private clouds adjacent to mission-critical data in a way that is designed to be inherently more sustainable, secure, cost-effective and agile.

“Organisations can deploy with Equinix physically—in our core network hubs—to consume energy more efficiently. Our hubs in the EMEA region are covered by 100% renewable energy, supported by our stateof-the-art efficiency measures, such as software-optimised systems and industryleading power usage effectiveness (PUE), water management, waste heat recovery, liquid cooling and alternative fuel sources. By moving infrastructure into an Equinix facility, customers transfer the scope 1 emissions related to owning and operating their own facilities. For more information

on all of this please visit our sustainability website www.sustainability.equinix.com Mark Anderson,VP, Global Technical Sales at Equinix explains, “This shared network architecture helps to address the most significant conundrum in sustainable digital transformation: increasing the use of IT resources for compute and storage drives up power consumption and other digital emissions. Breaking the connection between increased use of IT resources and energy consumption is crucial.”

Figure 2. Sustainable Digital Transformation with Platform Equinix

“ A well-designed digital transformation programme allows our customers to achieve not only their business goals but reduce the carbon footprint of their entire IT and networking blueprint.”

DIRENC DOGRUOZ PLATFORM & PRODUCT MARKETING DIRECTOR, EQUINIX

EXECUTIVE BIOS

DIRENC DOGRUOZ

TITLE: DIRECTOR, PLATFORM & PRODUCT MARKETING - CLOUD INTERCONNECTION

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Direnc leads the team responsible for all interconnection and edge service product lines in EMEA. He focuses on building product strategy and go-to-market initiatives to drive customer adoption of Equinix cloud connectivity and virtualized edge network services. Digital leaders around the world rely on Equinix’s trusted platform for everything related to digital, internet and clouds. Equinix helps the world's digital leaders exchange large volumes of data and includes companies such as Google, Amazon, Instagram, SnapChat, Crypto currencies, Uber, Deliveroo, etc.

MARK ANDERSON

TITLE: VP, GLOBAL TECHNICAL SALES-EMEA, EQUINIX LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Mark leads Global Technical Sales in EMEA and leads Equinix's Solutions Architecture, Digital Technical Specialists and Solution Engineering disciplines. Mark focuses on helping Equinix customers develop, adopt and enable their Digital Strategy by consulting on workload, data, interconnection and location opportunities on the Equinix platform to exploit Internet of Things, Cloud and Data Analytics capabilities. Prior to joining Equinix nearly nine years ago, he worked in the transformational IT outsourcing space around the world, as a consulting Enterprise Architect.

GRACE ANDREWS

TITLE: PRINCIPAL PRODUCT EVANGELIST AT EQUINIX METAL LOCATION: UNITED STATES

Grace is a seasoned storyteller with a passion for people and technology. Her career is deeply rooted in infrastructure, data and non-traditional models for training and enablement. As an enthusiastic technologist, she is always looking for ways to bridge creative technical solutions with deep understanding.

PATRICIA STAMOS

TITLE: SR. MANAGER, GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY ENGAGEMENT

LOCATION: UNITED STATES

In her role at Equinix, Patricia manages global sustainability engagement and the annual reporting process for the Sustainability Program Office (SPO) with a primary focus to strategically elevate ESG value across the business to drive market leadership, stakeholder value, partner opportunities and business growth.

Under her leadership, Equinix has garnered recognition from global organisations and financial indices such as NASDAQ, CDP, US EPA and Just Capital. Patricia was also responsible for developing Equinix’s initial Corporate Sustainability Report, the first of its kind for the data centre industry. In addition to her role at Equinix, Patricia is an Advisor for the CSU Chico Women in Leadership Advisory Council.

“The idea behind the Platform Equinix shared usage, shared ownership model is to build more efficient infrastructures. Organisations running their own data centres, cannot get the size, scale, and skills they need to get the efficiencies that Equinix can.”

Direnc adds: “Deploying with Equinix is the first step in an organisation’s sustainable digital transformation journey and results in a considerable reduction in carbon emissions compared to a traditional on-prem enterprise infrastructure.

Sr. Manager, Global Sustainability Engagement, Patricia Stamos, adds: “By moving IT infrastructure to Platform Equinix, organisations also move their scope 1 and 2 emissions to scope 3 emissions—which means handing over the responsibility of greening their supply chain, keeping up with supplyside regulations, and the cost of investing in new sustainability-focused technologies and maintenance to Equinix.

“Organisations who deploy on Platform Equinix receive custom Green Power Reports (GPRs), based on third-party verified metrics, to attest to the carbon emissions associated with their data center operation deployments at Equinix for transparency.”

“

There's a roadmap to digital transformation that allows us to break the idea that increased workload equals higher energy consumption, as we look at more efficient architecture models.”

MARK ANDERSON VP, GLOBAL TECHNICAL SALES-EMEA, EQUINIX®

GRACE ANDREWS

PRINCIPAL PRODUCT EVANGELIST, EQUINIX METAL

Direnc picks up: “Once an organisation deploys in Equinix’s core network hubs, they can virtually interconnect with more than 10,000 network service providers, clouds, partners, security services, customers, and suppliers over shared resources on demand via software-based portals and platforms in real time, in more than 60 global markets.”

“Organisations can then switch from their previous methods of connecting cloud services, via their network service provider through either private multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) or the public internet, to using Equinix Fabric®—our dedicated, virtual interconnection tool.”

This virtual interconnection on demand can improve efficiencies for organisations further compared to a traditional on-prem enterprise infrastructure relying on legacy IT and networking.

The final level of sustainable digital transformation maturity is when organisations take advantage of the full suite of digital services available on Platform Equinix to deploy their entire infrastructure as-a-service. This means that organisations eliminate infrastructure ownership, capex spend, and emissions related to IT whilst increasing agility through provisioning infrastructure on demand.

With multiple global brands, offices and production facilities spread across five continents, the Hero Group needed to evolve from a traditional IT model to a more agile, reliable and cost-effective digital-first operation. The company partnered with Equinix based on its strong focus on sustainability, and expertise in delivering a secure, reliable and interconnected digital infrastructure platform.

"Hero has set specific sustainability targets to become a net neutral business. Our automated digital-first model allows us to be more agile and to create and deliver healthier foods. With Platform Equinix we have a solid foundation for standardising our IT globally with greater predictability and sustainability."

Bas Dijikhuizen, Head of Competence Center Infrastructure, Hero Group.

How Digital Services Enable Sustainable Digital Transformation

Digital services on Platform Equinix allow organisations to virtualise physical infrastructure according to their business needs, enabling a more sustainable overall outcome.

By deploying digitally on an ‘as-a-service’, on-demand platform, organisations can use what they need, when they need it; they can turn their services on and off as they see fit.

“Digital transformation and sustainability go hand-in-hand, enabling each other.”

“For example, Equinix Fabric can be used for software networking, data exchange and service exchange—all digitally rather than having to implement physical connections,” says Mark.

“Then we have Network Edge - virtual networking devices that dictate how we exchange that data securely at the edge. Equinix Metal®, is a private bare-metal-as-aservice solution, which is how organisations can deploy, store, and keep their data as a service in a private, cloud-like environment.

“The challenge for organisations right now is that they have data on public cloud, private cloud, and on their own servers and storage devices. Platform Equinix puts all this in a hybrid integrated environment, with the public clouds, for organisations to create a secure, optimised, virtualized sustainable infrastructure solution to underpin their digital transformation...”

Schneider Electric started its sustainable digital transformation with Platform Equinix. Schneider Electric has started using new models of “Platform-as-a-Service” and “BareMetal-as-a-Service”, which are covered with renewable energy from Equinix, enabling the

next evolution of its IT infrastructure.

These services are helping Schneider simultaneously improve performance and industrial automation, by improving operations and energy management. Additionally, at a time of unprecedented supply chain disruptions and constraints, virtual infrastructure built on Equinix’s digital services helped Schneider Electric to mitigate the delays on energy efficiency implementations.

"It always starts with a purpose: what is a company trying to achieve in terms of their

HERO GROUP

With multiple global brands, offices and production facilities spread across five continents, the Hero Group needed to evolve from a traditional IT model to a more agile, reliable and costeffective digital-first operation. The company partnered with Equinix based on its strong focus on sustainability, and expertise in delivering a secure, reliable and interconnected digital infrastructure platform.

Figure 3. Sustainable Transformation on Platform Equinix

Schneider Electric accelerates a more sustainable future

digital transformation? For us, it was very simple. It was about making IT infrastructure modern because of the legacy footprint that we have. That organically translated into reduction of the footprint, thus reducing the carbon footprint." Xach Nimboorkar, Senior Vice President of Global IT Infrastructure and Operations at Schneider Electric.

Grace puts emphasis on mindful digital transformation and why digital services from Equinix are required alongside the public cloud.

“Cloud is only one piece of the puzzle. We have to remember that the cloud has a physical home and underlying physical resources,” says Grace.

“So, this idea of sustainable digital transformation is also an idea of efficiency within the way we design systems. With the tools and components that make up digital services from Equinix, we are maximising the physical infrastructure that already exists in a

way that allows us to build systems differently— to build systems that are sustainable, OPEX-driven, and flexible.”

Let’s look at workloads as an example: “Organisations have workloads and often they would have the same workload sitting in four or five different geographic locations in case of a ransomware attack, power outage or other disaster.

Another example might be an e-commerce website which needs to be able to handle many loads because of an upcoming holiday sale.

Traditionally, these organisations had to buy more physical infrastructure to architect the infrastructure for the worst-case scenario in the case of disaster recovery or maximum utilisation in the case of the e-commerce provider even though that infrastructure would be redundant 99% of the time. This redundancy is hugely inefficient, expensive and CO2 emissions heavy.

“This is where Equinix brings a unique value to organisations on their sustainable digital transformation journey. We help them identify what they need, when they need it,

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

Schneider Electric started its sustainable digital transformation with Platform Equinix. Schneider Electric has started using new models of “Platform-as-aService” and “Bare-Metal-as-a-Service”, which are covered with renewable energy from Equinix, enabling the next evolution of its IT infrastructure These services are helping Schneider simultaneously improve performance and industrial automation, by improving operations and energy management. Additionally, at a time of unprecedented supply chain disruptions and constraints, virtual infrastructure built on Equinix’s digital services helped Schneider Electric to mitigate the delays on energy efficiency implementations.

and make it available to them on demand, as-a-service, eliminating the costs and emissions related to owning and operating primary and redundant hardware.

“We're bringing organisations the components they already use, whether it's networking providers, such as Cisco, Juniper and Nutanix, storage providers like Dell, HPE or Pure Storage, or security providers like Fortinet and F5. We're bringing all of those components together; optimised inside of this virtual world. Sustainable digital transformation starts with modernising and virtualizing physical infrastructure, and Platform Equinix is the foundation from which to begin.”

“ The big thing here is that the consumption model is where digital services from Equinix really disrupt.”

GRACE ANDREWS PRINCIPAL PRODUCT EVANGELIST, EQUINIX METAL

READ THE GOING GREEN WITH SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC REPORT

THE TECHNOLOGY WORLD’S

MOST INFLUENTIAL CTOS

We look at 10 of the technology world’s leaders who are driving innovation and shaping the future of technology

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

Innovation is the lifeblood of the tech industry, and no one is better positioned to lead the charge than a company's Chief Technology Officer (CTO). With the rapid pace of technological advancements, particularly in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, the evolving role of the CTO has become increasingly important.

This month Technology Magazine looks at 10 of the world’s most influential CTOs, each of whom are driving the industry forward.

Nvidia’s CTO since May 2020, Michael Kagan joined Nvidia through its acquisition of Mellanox, where he was CTO and a co-founder of the company, founded in April 1999.

From 1983 to April 1999, Kagan held a number of architecture and design positions at Intel Corporation. Kagan holds a BSc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion –Israel Institute of Technology.

Parker Harris is Co-founder and CTO of Salesforce, and a member of the company’s Board of Directors.

Since co-founding Salesforce in 1999, Parker has had an indelible impact on the company – driving its technology strategy, shaping the award-winning culture, and fostering an ecosystem of Trailblazers across the globe. Parker has spearheaded many technology initiatives at Salesforce – notably, Hyperforce, the Salesforce Platform and Lightning Experience.

Before Salesforce, Parker co-founded cloud computing company Left Coast Software and worked at Metropolis Software.

Michael Kagan Nvidia

Parker Harris Salesforce

“ UNDER HIS LEADERSHIP, ORACLE BECAME A MAJOR PLAYER IN THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY

Jürgen Müller SAP

Jürgen Müller is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, leading the Technology and Innovation board area. As CTO, he oversees SAP’s platform and technology development. In addition, he is responsible for innovation efforts related to SAP Business Technology Platform as well as new technologies.

Since joining SAP in 2013, Müller has held distinct leadership roles, serving as the Head of the Innovation Center Network, Managing Director of SAP Labs Berlin, and SAP’s Chief Innovation Officer. In 2019, Jürgen was appointed to the Executive Board of SAP SE as CTO.

Larry Ellison Oracle

An American business magnate and technology pioneer, renowned for co-founding Oracle Corporation in 1977, Larry Ellison currently serves as the company’s chairman and chief technology officer.

Under his leadership, Oracle became a major player in the software industry, providing database management systems to businesses around the world. He served as CEO until September 2014. He is now listed by Forbes as one of the richest men in the world, with a net worth of over US$120bn.

Greg Lavender Intel

Greg Lavender is Senior Vice President, CTO and general manager of Intel’s Software and Advanced Technology Group.

As CTO, he is responsible for driving Intel’s future technical innovation and research programs. He is also responsible for defining a singular AI software stack to support Intel’s range of business and hardware offerings.

Lavender joined Intel in June 2021 from VMware, where he served as its Senior Vice President and CTO. Before VMware, Lavender held roles at Citigroup, Cisco, and Sun Microsystems.

Microsoft Azure

Mark Russinovich is the CTO of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform. He is responsible for the technical strategy and development of Azure's products and services.

Russinovich joined Microsoft in 2006 when Microsoft acquired Winternals Software, the company he co-founded in 1996, as well as Sysinternals, where he authors and publishes dozens of popular Windows administration and diagnostic utilities. Today, he is a featured speaker at major industry conferences, including Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft build, RSA Conference, and more.

Mark Russinovich

Will Grannis Google Cloud

Founder and leader of Google Cloud’s CTO Office, Will Grannis has over 20 years of experience in building innovative technologies and leading high-performing teams. A former entrepreneur, CEO, and CTO of various companies in the defence and aerospace sector, he is passionate about developing leaders and technologies that make the impossible possible.

In 2022, Grannis founded a new subsidiary, Google Public Sector, and acted as CEO of the new division until the permanent leadership team was in place.

Graduating from Harvard in 2004 before working as a developer on Microsoft Visio for almost two years, Bosworth joined Mark Zuckerberg at what was then called Facebook in January 2006, where he created the News Feed and many early anti-abuse systems, some of which are still in production.

In 2017, Bosworth created the company's AR/VR organisation, now called Reality Labs. Andrew leads Meta's efforts in AR, VR, AI and consumer hardware across Quest, Portal, Ray-Ban Stories and more.

Andrew Bosworth is the CTO of Meta, where he leads the Reality Labs team.

Andrew Bosworth Meta

“ WILL GRANNIS HAS OVER 20 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN BUILDING INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES AND LEADING HIGH-PERFORMING TEAMS”

Werner Vogels Amazon Web Services

An engineer, architect, scientist, programmer, self-described troublemaker… The list goes on for AWS CTO and Vice President Werner Vogels.

The Dutch national studied computer science at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, and received a PhD in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

After his mandatory military service at the Royal Netherlands Navy, Vogels studied radiology, both diagnostics and therapy, before returning to university to study computer science.

From 1991 to 1994, Vogels was a senior researcher at INESC in Lisbon, before he joined the computer science department of Cornell University.

Vogels co-founded a company with Kenneth Birman and Robbert van Renesse in 1997 called Reliable Network Solutions, Inc. The company possessed US patents on computer network resource monitoring and multicast protocols.

He joined Amazon in September 2004 as its director of systems research, named CTO the following year.

Having won a number of awards, Vogels writes at www. allthingsdistributed.com on building scalable and robust distributed systems.

Kevin Scott Microsoft

An innovative leader, Kevin Scott’s 20-year career in technology spans both academia and industry as a researcher, engineer and leader.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Scott was senior vice president of engineering and operations at LinkedIn, where he helped build the technology and engineering team, and led the company through both an IPO and six years of rapid growth.

Earlier in his career, he oversaw mobile ad-engineering at Google, including the integration of Google’s US$750m acquisition of AdMob. Before joining AdMob, Scott held numerous leadership positions at Google in search and ads engineering.

He has received a Google Founder’s Award, an Intel PhD Fellowship, and an ACM Recognition of Service Award. He is a member of the board of directors of Stellantis and Code. org, an adviser to several Silicon Valley startups, an active angel investor, the founder of nonprofit organisation Behind the Tech, and a trustee of The Scott Foundation. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Harvard’s Technology for Public Purpose (TAPP) programme.

“ SCOTT'S 20-YEAR CAREER IN TECHNOLOGY SPANS BOTH ACADEMIA AND INDUSTRY ”

COMMUNITY FIBRE BUILDING THE BEST FIBRE NETWORK IN LONDON

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

n today’s world, broadband connectivity has become an essential part of our daily lives. From remote work and online learning to streaming entertainment and staying connected with friends and family, high-speed internet access is crucial for many aspects of modern life.

As a result, some even argue that broadband should be considered the

fourth utility alongside water, electricity, and gas.

“If I asked my kids if they would prefer to have the gas, water, or WiFi on, they’d unanimously say ’The WiFi,’” comments Richard Perry, Network Delivery Director at London-based broadband company Community Fibre.

“For everything else, we’ll put on another coat, or we won’t wash for a couple of days,”

Community Fibre is on a mission to build a network that provides Londoners with the fastest and most reliable fibre services at the most affordable prices

2013 Community Fibre Ltd was founded

he laughs. “Today, WiFi is such a key thing, for all ages. If I look at my parents, who are elderly now, they are so reliant on broadband for staying in touch with people, managing their bills, and switching on their heating. It touches everyone.”

Community Fibre is on a mission to provide a true fibre-to-the-home service to residents of one of the busiest cities in the world. It offers the fastest 100% full-fibre broadband in London, with up to 10,000 Mbps for businesses and up to 3,000 Mbps for consumers, at the most competitive prices on the market.

“We build, own, and operate our own dedicated 100% full fibre network,” comments Perry. “We’re at the cutting edge of the latest technology that’s available. We aren’t reliant on anyone else’s network, we are deploying our own. And that gives us superfast gigabit-

capable broadband, delivered directly to the home.”

As Perry describes, Community Fibre is on a mission to build a network that provides Londoners with the fastest and most reliable fibre services at the most affordable prices, whilst being recognised for our outstanding customer experience and community spirit.

“We’ve got one of the largest fibre-tothe-home networks in Greater London,” he says, “and we’re striving to have the largest in the next couple of years.”

The aim: supplying full fibre to 2.2m Londoners Joining Community Fibre in 2021 after a number of years working for Vodafone and most recently Virgin Media, Perry has seen the business grow dramatically. The one millionth premises milestone

“We’ve got one of the largest fibreto-the-home networks in Greater London, and we’re striving to have the largest in the next couple of years”

RICHARD PERRY NETWORK DELIVERY DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY FIBRE

will be reached soon, while the business has a north star target of reaching 1.3 million homes able to connect to its network by the end of 2023, and 2.2 million customers by the end of 2024.

This rapid growth is one of Perry’s favourite things about his current role. “I think one of my favourite things about the industry is the fast pace of change,” he says, “and the opportunity to bring our customers much faster and better connectivity allowing them to transform the way they can work, learn and relax at home.”

With the pandemic forcing people to work from home and homeschool, there was an enormous reliance on high-quality broadband. “The fact that I played a part in bringing that to as many

Richard Perry

TITLE: NETWORK DELIVERY DIRECTOR

INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

EXECUTIVE BIO

Richard Perry is a highly experienced senior leader with over 25 years of experience in the telecoms industry, with a proven track record in strategic delivery and infrastructure build whilst driving operational efficiency and transformation initiatives.

Perry has a reputation in leading geographically dispersed multiskilled teams and a strong belief in people and leadership development. He says: “I’m driven by people and what they can achieve when given the right support to execute a strategy. This also extends to working with Delivery Partners to form a collaborative and long-lasting partnership which ultimately delivers success for both organisations and our customers.”

BUILDING NETWORKS CONNECTING PEOPLE

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people as possible has probably been the most interesting thing because it’s tangible: you can see the end products of what you’re actually building.”

For Community Fibre, this growth is clear. Since joining the business, the organisation has tripled in size. “We’ve scaled delivery from 200,000 premises to fast approaching one million,” Perry says.

“We set out a clear strategy a couple of years ago that by the end of 2023, we wanted to reach 1.3 million premises across London, increasing to 2.2 million by the end of 2024. And we are on that trajectory path now.

“Every year, we have doubled, in terms of organisation size, customer connections, and also the amount of premises that we’re able to connect up. So we continue to grow to meet those

“We’ve scaled delivery from 200,000 premises to fast approaching one million”

RICHARD PERRY NETWORK DELIVERY DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY FIBRE

challenges and find more ways to be efficient as clearly we can’t just keep increasing the size of the organisation in keeping with a scaling customer base and network.”

With approximately 3.7 million premises in London, and with plans to have built networks to at least 2.2 million of those by the end of 2024, few organisations can claim a similar footprint in the city.

But Community Fibre’s mission doesn’t stop there. The aim, Perry explains, is to build the best fibre network in London, but also to do this with the customer experience and community spirit in mind.

“We continue to invest in our people, continually looking at innovative ways to reach more homes in the fastest, most economically viable manner,” he comments.

“We develop relationships with landlords, in both the public and private sectors, to serve more multi-dwelling units to provide them with fibre to the home. This is a key requirement in London, given the amount of multidwelling units compared to many other cities in the country.

As its name would suggest, community is at the heart of everything

“We’re very much supportive of sharing best practices and working together to achieve our goals”

RICHARD PERRY NETWORK DELIVERY DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY FIBRE

Building brilliant fibre networks

Driven by our brilliance philosophy and by investing in our teams, we work with Community Fibre to design, build and connect properties with a brilliant fibre network.

Community Fibre does. The company provides free 1Gbps broadband to over 500 community centres around London, giving high-speed internet access for training, work, education and community projects, and offers digital skills training to residents in connected Community Spaces through its network of digital ambassadors.

“We have digital ambassador programmes,” Perry explains. “We enable community centres and spaces in conjunction with some of our larger social landlords. So it isn’t just about selling to individuals, it’s about what can we do for that local community to create and provide more access to broadband.”

Partnerships essential to success

All this growth wouldn’t be possible, Perry explains, without having a clear strategy set down from Community Fibre’s board, having great people in position, and striking real, lasting partnerships with build partners. These long-lasting relationships, he adds, have enabled Community Fibre to scale and grow.

900+ Number of employees

“We’ve got a number of build partners that we work with to design our network in the first place, and then to build our core distribution, and, also, then to serve our multi-dwelling unit (MDU) and single dwelling unit (SDU) premises.”

Among some of Community Fibre’s build partners are Niocomm, KMCO and FibreWorks, which the organisation started working with as far back as 2019.

“It isn’t just about selling to individuals, it’s about what can we do for that local community to create and provide more access to broadband”

RICHARD PERRY NETWORK DELIVERY DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY FIBRE

1.3m

Target for premises by the end of 2023

“As we’ve scaled our network, they’ve scaled their ability to support our everincreasing build demands. So we’ve got a long-standing relationship with them, and they’ve been a key success to our partnership.

“Similarly with Indigo, one of our main design and planning partners, we’ve worked extensively with them over the last three years or so to create the plans for our build partners to go and execute on.”

Central to Community Fibre’s approach is one of partnership rather than a traditional client-supplier relationship. This combined effort is helping Community Fibre, and its partners, achieve their goals.

“We work really closely with all of our partners,” Perry says. “It’s a combined effort. I’ve seen in other organisations, in other industries, there’s often a very traditional client-supplier relationship manner. We don’t have that. We work hand-in-hand. Our success is their success and vice versa.

“We are very much part of each others team,” he adds. “And that’s the way in which we found success to deliver. So we don’t have all the answers, our build partners don’t have all the answers, but working together, we come up with workable solutions.

“We encourage dialogue between our build partners as well, so we don’t try and keep them separate,” Perry asserts. “If something’s working for one build partner, then we’re pretty confident others will

benefit from that as well. So we’re very much supportive of sharing best practices and working together to achieve our goals.”

Looking to the future at a pivotal time for the industry

The rollout of full fibre broadband is an increasing priority. Although broadband is sufficient for most household needs, the demand for services that use a lot of data, such as online video streaming, is on the rise.

And with the UK Government setting a target for gigabit broadband to be available nationwide by 2030, as Perry explains, the future will see more and more coverage of full-fibre broadband.

“In terms of future trends, we are going to see more emerge in the coming years. Better connectivity enables more people to have a better work-life balance. And because there is less reliance in an office,

“I’ve seen in other organisations, in other industries, there’s often a very traditional clientsupplier relationship manner. We don’t have that. We work hand-in-hand”

RICHARD PERRY NETWORK DELIVERY DIRECTOR, COMMUNITY FIBRE

there’s the flexibility to work from home, even work from other locations that aren’t home on a day-to-day basis.”

Also on the horizon will be new TV services and ways for people to consume media. “I think TV services will massively change in the coming years,” Perry predicts. “We’ll be less reliant on the traditional TV subscriptions that we get today. And even just paying for your TV licence. There’ll be more over-the-top services. To enable that, you need to have good, reliable, fast broadband.”

This, Perry describes, is a pivotal time for the industry. But with increasing competition and more choices than ever

for consumers, it is in everybody’s interests to ensure as many premises have access to fast, reliable broadband.

“In terms of the rest of the industry, it’s at a pivotal moment right now. There are lots of alternative networks throughout the country, each receiving significant investment and that’s great. But in order to maintain that investment, you have to be delivering on your plans, both in terms of build and sales.

“What’s put Community Fibre in such a strong position is demonstrating we continuously deliver against our plans,” concludes Perry. “In the coming years, we’ll see some more mergers and acquisitions along the way in the UK telco space. But, ultimately, it’s in everyone’s best interests to ensure that as many premises throughout the UK have access to superfast, reliable broadband.”

Mike J. Walker at Microsoft empowers pharma supply chain innovations

WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT

PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

Mike J. Walker, Executive Director, Global Health & Life Sciences Strategy at Microsoft

Mike J. Walker heads up Microsoft’s life sciences supply chain practice, and explains why industry advisory drives business value

Supply chain is a complicated industry that typically requires highly trained engineers to oversee, but pharmaceutical (pharma) supply chains take complexity to another level.

As well as the usual litany of supply challenges, pharma has distinct requirements on the handling of materials like a cold chain element, and also faces the perils of product recalls and compliance issues, because the field of medicine is just about the most regulated sector there is.

And then of course there’s the added pressure of how catastrophic any delays might prove, because the medicines being shipped are critical for ensuring patients have access to the medicines they need to maintain their health, or even keep them alive.

While there is a variety of permutations, the most prevalent today is the small molecule pharma supply chain. This chemical-based drug will typically begin with the sourcing of raw materials – active pharmaceutical ingredients – used to manufacture drugs. The manufacturing process involves several stages: formulation, quality control, packaging and labelling. Once the drugs are ready, they are shipped to warehouses or distribution centres, from where they are distributed to healthcare providers, pharmacies and hospitals.

For other forms, like biologics or vaccines, the supply chain is required to keep these volatile medicines stored at the right temperature and humidity, with tracking shipments to prevent counterfeiting and diversion.

Pharma supply chains turning to digital technologies

To address such challenges, pharma companies are adopting digital technologies such as cloud, blockchain, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT) to enhance transparency, traceability and efficiency in their supply chains.

One company that is helping pharma firms digitally transform operations is Microsoft,

“My role is about being a trusted business advisor to empower our top global customers with expertise and proven practices to accelerate their digital strategy”

MIKE J. WALKER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR GLOBAL HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES STRATEGY, MICROSOFT

and at the forefront of its offerings is Mike J. Walker, Executive Director, Strategy, Health & Life Sciences.

In his role, Walker is the strategy leader for Microsoft’s supply chain and manufacturing point of view on pharmaceuticals, med-tech and biopharmaceuticals.

“My role is about being a trusted business advisor to empower our top global customers with expertise and proven practices to accelerate their digital strategy,” he says. “Ensuring that these conversations are business-led with a keen understanding of the pharma business along with the external market risks. As with all industries, technology is always part of that conversation, but the key is to ensure that

EXECUTIVE BIO

TITLE: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES STRATEGY

LOCATION: UNITED STATES

Mike J. Walker is an entrepreneur, futurist, digital strategist, podcast host, global keynote speaker and a best-selling author with a specialty in helping business executives stay relevant in the digital economy.

Walker brings paradigm-shifting digital transformation by leveraging leading innovation practices through experiences with Fortune 500 leaders around the globe.

He has found success in driving pragmatic approaches to large scale problems, an ability to break down large complex challenges into something manageable, along with an insatiable need to bring teams together.

Currently at Microsoft, Walker leads a team focused on life science supply chains and manufacturing.

He acts as a trusted advisor to executives, helping them with some of their toughest challenges. This includes how pharma organisations digitally transform using digital ecosystems, digital twins, AI, IoT and blockchain.

Kinaxis at the heart of Microsoft Azure ecosystem

How cloud-based supply chain management specialist Kinaxis is helping pharma navigate transformation, in partnership with Microsoft.

Microsoft’s Azure ecosystem is helping businesses modernise supply chains worldwide, and Kinaxis is at the heart of this important process. Kinaxis provides cloud-based supply chain management (SCM) software called RapidResponse, built on prescriptive AI and automation. This provides organisations with supply visibility and resilience. Supply chains are by nature complex, and involve many operational steps and activities – whether this is manufacturing, procurement or logistics.

Using RapidResponse, planners can create disruption scenarios – such as severe weather events, material shortages or major surges in demand – and use this to make informed decisions, with business outcomes, customer needs and sustainability in mind.

Giovanni Pizzoferrato is Kinaxis CTO and helps define the technology strategy of its customers globally. “We are an amazing global team of engineers and experts,” he says. We are grounded in a ‘people matter’ culture built over nearly 40 years.” It’s a culture Kinaxis brings to its customers through Microsoft Azure,

the cloud computing platform that facilitates access, management and development of applications and services through global data centres. Kinaxis is a Microsoft Independent Software Vendor partner, and co-sells RapidResponse through the Azure Marketplace, where businesses seek out Azure-optimised software solutions.

“We work closely with Microsoft’s industry verticals teams, and interoperate with the MS Supply Chain Frameworks and Cloud Solutions,” explains Pizzoferrato. In terms of pharma supply chains, Kinaxis helps some of the world’s leading pharma companies manage supply chain complexities that are unique to areas like biotechnology, cell and gene therapy, medical devices and over-thecounter medicines. “The regulatory environment is very complex in pharma,” says Pizzoferrato, “so our software uses embedded, attribute-based planning specifically for this challenge.”

He adds that “expiry management” is another critical part of the pharma landscape. “Planners use RapidResponse to get a clear view of what’s on-shelf, what’s about to expire, what the demand patterns look like and what supply plans will meet consumers’ future needs.”

those technology conversations are focused on how strategically relevant they are to your businesses long-term goals. Once we know that, we can have a conversation on how to maximise the value potential of those technologies. That is what really matters for my client’s executive teams.”

Typically, Walker partners with “decisionmakers” – C-suiters both on the business and technical sides of pharma organisations.

The most challenging aspect of the role, he says, is “the pace and the sheer amount of change happening”. He adds: “When you peel back the onion you find each has subtly different business drivers, different cultures, different personalities and leadership styles. It requires you to employ a level of emotional intelligence to your approach. ‘This is the right answer’ is something that never flies.

Microsoft helping pharma supply chains navigate change

‘I am like a counsellor, only without the couch’

“Instead, provide the executive with a framework to work within and let them drive the conversations based on the guided journey and lots of questions. I am there to shepherd them through proven practices, almost like a counsellor, only without the couch.”

Another challenge stems from the nature of the pharma industry itself.

Walker says: “What most needs changing in pharma supply chains is the legacy mindset and a culture of risk aversion. These organisations fall into the trap of thinking they can’t do something because they’ve always done it that way. With this mindset they don’t ask the right questions.”

Questions, he says, such as: How do we create this experience within the bounds of the rules? Will the market dynamics change that would make this a viable solution? What is the level of risk tolerance we are willing to take? How can we partner with the regulatory bodies to influence change?

On the latter point, Walker says that, in his experience, regulatory bodies like the FDA are “very willing to hear you out if you've got a compelling approach to solving industry challenges”.

As for barriers to digital transformation, Walker says that here things are playing out just as they have in other sectors.

Barriers to transformation take time to overcome

“I see lots of barriers other industries have gone through and have overcome,” he says. “It just takes time. The nice part of having a cross-industry background is I've seen how other supply chain organisations have dealt with this level of change.”

This is why Walker likes to take biopharma clients to visit Microsoft customers in other fields, such as consumer goods. He has also taken them on visits to brewing giant ABinBev Anheuser-Busch.

“Brewing beer is very similar to what a biologics organisation does,” he explains, “so showing them what is possible in a less complex environment is a worthwhile thing to do.”

Technology obsolescence is another hurdle, 65% of manufacturing environments run outdated operating systems, he says.

“Even though the intent is to update technology and software, if you’ve got manufacturing equipment running Windows XP on devices supporting your biologics

manufacturing lines, you can’t just shut it down and replace it because that could impact the entire batch worth millions of dollars.”

He adds that from a strategy perspective the challenge is “to not only fix the current problem, but to create an evergreen model that prevents obsolesce from happening to begin with”.

Of course, some of the barriers to transformation in pharma differ to other sectors, particularly around regulation. The FDA’s Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), a single federal framework for tracing prescription medications through the supply chain, is challenging the pharmaceutical sector to reach data transaction targets by November 2023.

“We need visibility across the entire value chain, and you can't do that in a sequential, linear, compartmentalised way”

MIKE J. WALKER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR GLOBAL HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES STRATEGY, MICROSOFT

“There is much less scrutiny on manufacturing a beer versus a vaccine,” says Walker. “Medicine is treated very differently not only from a supply chain perspective but also from a manufacturing and a sourcing perspective.”

Pharma regulatory environment is unique

He adds: “The entire supply chain looks a little bit different, and the regulatory environment is unique. In an automotive company's supply chain, for example, they don't necessarily have to tell a regulatory body the specific specs of the machines that they will use to make that product.“

And of course, like all businesses across all sectors, pharma organisations are getting

hit from all sides. There’s a rising need to be more sustainable, materials cost more, increased energy costs – especially in Europe – which drives the impetus to do more with less cost. They're also getting hit from a geopolitical perspective, like the war in Ukraine but also, says Walker, economically from a global trade and tax perspective.

“In China for example, there is an increase in operating costs of doing business in China, especially for manufacturers with aspects like minimum wage increasing between 30% and 65% in recent years. Tax rates are also higher across the board due to a unified corporate tax, and with China’s new cybersecurity and privacy regulations, they

have the potential to transform how pharma companies conduct business in China. The most pressing question I hear from pharma executives is, should we stay or should we go.”

Walker also points out that the pharma industry is being disrupted by smaller biotech firms, along with tech-savvy companies. He likens what’s happening here to how Uber and Lyft have changed the taxi business.

“It’s the same in the pharma industry, where you've got countless small biopharmas that, from an R&D perspective, are pumping out way more patents than the traditional players.

“A lot of that has to do with their ability to be nimble and they also leverage technology at its fullest. With the bigger organisations you've got a big ship to turn, and you've got a lot of moving pieces.”

Technology is a conversation for later in the relationship

Technology is vital, but Walker says it is “always a conversation I have later in the relationship”. But it is very much a conversation that needs to be had, because many supply chains as they stand are simply ill-suited to being digitally transformed.

“Supply chains can be very linear,” he says. “The connections between the ecosystem of partners can be brittle and fragile, and there is a growing need to make sure supply chains are modular, dynamic and provide transparency across the entire value chain –and you can't do that in a sequential, linear, compartmentalised way with technology.”

He adds: “You have to do it in a way now that is much more decentralised than what it was before. There's a significant amount of processes around reconciliation of data that is introduced because of that.”

“

Many of my customers are regional ecosystem hubs that serve specific markets”

MIKE J. WALKER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR GLOBAL HEALTH & LIFE SCIENCES STRATEGY, MICROSOFT

Walker observes that this requires “an ecosystem approach” – supported by a common “data fabric” that allows organisations to digitise their supply chains in a meaningful way.

On this note, Walker has partnered with Kinaxis, a ‘visionary leader in supply chain’ solutions, according to analyst firm, Gartner.

Walker believes that leveraging the power of the Microsoft Azure cloud platform together with Kinaxis' solutions will provide pharma organisations with an agile and autonomous supply chain platform,

which are essential in today's rapidly changing business environment.

He says: “This combination of capabilities enables a digital ecosystem platform for pharma supply chains that uses advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to analyse data from across the supply chain, including suppliers, customers, and internal systems.

“It can also integrate with other systems, such as ERPs, MES, CRMs, and logistics systems, to provide a comprehensive view of the entire supply chain.

Walker recounts a past conversation he had with a pharma company.

“They were talking about how one of their key priorities is to digitise all instances of paper use,” he says. “On the surface

“But I asked if this meant putting scanners into their factories at each process-step to make sure that all paper was scanned, and then entered into a document management system.

“Then I asked if they wanted instead to solve the root problem, which was fundamentally how to reinvent the business process and how data is handled.” This, he says, requires a rethink of the organisations’ relationship with data

Digital twins can co-exist at different

Walker says he knows of pharma organisations that are leveraging digital twins for an end-to-end view of their supply chain. But does this tick all the boxes that need to be ticked, even? Probably not, he feels.

“When you look at these digital twins there's different levels and types. You have layers of digital twins that coexist within an organisation. Some represent the asset itself. Some represent the people and the interaction. Some represent the process, and others represent the facility or the

Walker says that what is needed, and often lacking, is a strategy around creating “a common data platform that is able to create digital threads to connect all of this data”, and “a full genealogy of everything that was involved in the creation of all these layers of digital twins”.

What makes Microsoft unique is our commitment to industry specific standards

and communities, such as the Open Manufacturing Platform, the OPC Foundation, the Digital Twins Consortium and our innovative partner ecosystem, coupled with composable and extensible solutions that seamlessly connect people, assets, workflows and businesses processes. Our technology is giving businesses more intelligence and visibility than ever before and making operations more adaptable.

Looking at the bigger geopolitical picture, Walker says pharma companies are changing the shape of their businesses, by stepping away from globalisation.

“I've heard from four very senior executives in the pharma supply chain that globalisation as an approach is dead,” he says. “Now it's more about de-globalisation and modularity. Many of my customers are creating an ecosystem of ecosystems strategy whereby they are regional ecosystem hubs that serve specific markets. However, each one of these is still loosely connected and provides a level of autonomy but also flexibility.”

Walker references McDonalds here because “they solved this problem in the fifties with the franchise model”.

He adds: “Why make every one of your factories unique and bespoke when you can create a franchise model that provides speed, modularity, and flexibility through a common set of methods and standards? For example, maybe it would be possible to take an oral solid dose drug and make the manufacturing and supply chain 90% standard across all applicable factories.

“This also gives you a level of nimbleness and agility in the marketplace that you won't have in linear supply chains with bespoke factories.”

OSF HealthCare empowers patients with digital advancements

WRITTEN BY: HELEN ADAMS

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

OSF HealthCare is an integrated health system owned by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis. It is headquartered in Peoria, Illinois and has 15 hospitals, including 10 acute care and five critical access. There are a total of 2,084 licensed beds and 24,000 Mission Partners in over 150 locations. Roopa Foulger has worked at the Catholic healthcare organisation for 14 years.

“We are a comprehensive health system and also have a digital health arm,” she says. “Fortune Magazine has recognised us as one of the most innovative companies in the country for 2023 – this is a huge testament to what the organisation has invested in innovation.

“My role at OSF is Vice President of Digital Innovation Development. In that role, I focus on building innovative digital products for what we term Horizon 2 and Horizon 3.”

Foulger, who has a background in software engineering, is passionate about utilising data for automation and enhancing user experiences. One innovation that OSF built during the pandemic was a texting-based communication platform, which had a 520% increase in adoption from patients compared to traditional means.

“We’ve also created a data hub, which enables all of our digital health operations with 25 different sources of data. My focus is anything around adjacent and breakthrough digital innovation that supports our patients or our caregivers.”

Roopa Foulger of OSF HealthCare harnesses technological innovation to advance patient monitoring and telehealth, in partnership with Current Health

ROOPA FOULGER VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL INNOVATION DEVELOPMENT FOR OSF HEALTHCARE, OSF HEALTHCARE

It was the desire to make an impact on people’s lives that drove Foulger to the healthcare industry.

“I enjoy enabling patients to be more connected and helping to improve their health. Also, given my background, I’m excited about using data to help reduce costs and expand services for our patients, as well as for our healthcare system. A recent study by Harvard and McKinsey showed that artificial intelligence can save healthcare industries at least US$360bn annually.

“These data points help us: classify the problems; match expertise with clinical availability; plan diagnostics and therapy for the patients; and also provide support for our clinicians at the point of care”

The intersection of technology and remote patient care Technology has always played a crucial role in achieving better care, lower costs and improved experiences. More recently, there’s been a focus on the intersection of technology and remote patient care.

ROOPA FOULGER

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL INNOVATION DEVELOPMENT FOR OSF HEALTHCARE

LOCATION: ILLINOIS, USA

Roopa

Foulger

is Vice President of Digital Innovation Development for OSF HealthCare. Her team develops new digital technologies to attract and guide patients through their healthcare journey. Foulger has been with OSF since 2009. With 25 years of experience in data and enterprise information management, analytics and product development, Roopa drives technology strategy for the healthcare system’s digital transformation. She also leads research at the OSF Innovation Data & Advanced Informatics Lab, building adjacent and breakthrough solutions in data science and artificial intelligence (AI). Her Lab focuses on cancer, promoting health equity and finding solutions for chronic disease conditions.

“I’m really excited to be part of a team that is enabling and creating those models to support and benefit our patients as well as our providers.”

Meet the platform powering OSF Healthcare’s chronic condition monitoring program

The OSF OnCall Advanced Care program is led by a multi-disciplinary team dedicated to providing in-home disease management for patients with complex conditions.

The team relies on Current Health’s platform to assess patients’ health needs, manage their care and provide education and support– all in the comfort of patients’ own homes.

How Current Health supports chronic care management

1. Connected devices for broad data capture

Combine data from remote patient monitoring devices with patient-reported symptoms to provide a holistic look into health at home.

2. Patient communication and human touch

Asynchronous messaging and video calls allow for ongoing connection and deeper insights into patient wellbeing.

3. Risk identification

Identify when a patient needs clinical attention through configurable clinical pathways and clinical alarm algorithms tailored to the individual or population.

4. EHR Integration

Integrate with leading EHR systems to simplify workflows and a create a single picture of patient health.

5. Comprehensive support

Get programs up and running quickly with robust services for patient kit logistics, 24/7 technology support, and clinical monitoring.

Key Results

~400 patient census

Spend index decreased from 1 to .71 pre vs. post enrollment

95.7% of patients would recommend the service to others

Multiple clinical pathways, including asthma, diabetes, CHF and COPD

“Through the Current Health platform, we’re able to track the clinical data points that are relevant for each patient and see how their condition is improving or deteriorating from day to day.”

Beth Wharton, Manager of Virtual Care Operations for OSF OnCall

About Current Health

Current Health, from Best Buy Health, provides an enterprise care-at-home platform that enables healthcare organizations to design, launch, and scale safe and effective programs to deliver care outside of the four walls for a hospital by providing the technology backbone as well as end-to-end support services.

LEARN MORE

OSF HealthCare empowers patients with digital advancements

“We have our digital-first strategy with human connection,” Foulger says. “It’s not just technology, as there’s always a human at the other end that the patient can connect to. Our remote patient monitoring platforms for proactive and personalised support are one intersection of how technology supports the healthcare sector.”

From a digital perspective, OSF focuses on swiftly responding to community needs with virtual care. The company uses trained community health workers that are digitally enabled.

“We call them digital health navigators, who help in expanding access to our underserved populations, such as those in rural areas. We implement remote patient monitoring programmes for specific conditions swiftly.”

“Our remote patient monitoring platforms for proactive and personalised support are one intersection of how technology supports the healthcare sector”

ROOPA FOULGER VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL INNOVATION DEVELOPMENT FOR OSF HEALTHCARE, OSF HEALTHCARE

Last year, there was an outbreak of RSV in young children and babies, yet it took OSF less than a week to support the parents and the babies remotely with monitoring and the ability to escalate to video visit if necessary.

Another group of patients is benefitting from a remote patient monitoring (RPM) programme that is providing support for some women in between medical appointments.

“We added 24/7 RPM and communications for our pregnancy and postpartum patients. Medicaid patients are the most vulnerable in terms of access to and quality of care. We added that last year in August and we’ve seen nearly 1,500 patients enrolled.”

OSF has been expanding some of these programmes in communities where other hospital systems have decided to suspend services. In addition, the non-profit healthcare organisation is utilising real-time patient data in multiple ways.

“It’s a valuable indicator for intervention and decision making for our providers. We also use the real-time data to enhance our AI model, with the end goal to improve patient outcomes and enhance care quality for our patients.”

One of the things that patient data can be used for is patient records, as Foulger explains: “Over the years, we’ve built a comprehensive set of longitudinal data around our patients. These patient health records look at the continuum of what care

The texting-based communication platform at OSF, which was built during the pandemic, had a 520% increase in adoption from patients

the patient has received since they arrived at our premises.”

This helps the team at OSF see patterns and gain insights about who is at risk, for example, of hospital readmissions, based on their health history and their choices.

“These data points help us: classify the problems; match expertise with clinical availability; plan diagnostics and therapy for the patients; and also provide support for our clinicians at the point of care,” Foulger explains. “The fact that we’ve built this data over time also helps us understand how we can personalise care for our patients and provide assistance. We’ve also built a number of algorithms that help us with risk identification.”

Telehealth and patient engagement

OSF OnCall, the system’s digital health arm, offers telehealth and digital tools that support patient engagement to promote better individual and community health. In rural communities, where it is challenging to hire and keep specialists, OSF OnCall offers remote monitoring for ICUs and telehospitalists.

“We have a hospital-at-home programme, it’s a digital hospital. We also have a chat bot that was developed early during COVID-19 for care, which is used to help triage patients. The patients who are digitally savvy can use it to direct them to the point of care,” says Foulger.

OSF also has a nurse hotline that serves a similar purpose.

OSF leverages technology that gives the healthcare organisation the opportunity to connect with patients through educational microsites, text alerts and two-way text messages as well as phone calls for appointments and screening reminders. Data identifies patients who have missed

“I’m excited to be part of a team that is enabling models to benefit our patients and providers”

ROOPA FOULGER VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL INNOVATION DEVELOPMENT FOR OSF HEALTHCARE, OSF HEALTHCARE

appointments or are likely to miss appointments and provides opportunities to get re-connected with important care.

“We ask if they need any support in making sure they’re able to reach those appointments,” Foulger says. “We have so many different channels to reach out to our patients. We’ve seen a 520% increase in the response rate from our patients using different means and how we connect with them. We’ve also seen increased responses in some of the screening metrics for Medicaid patients.”

As Foulger asserts, Medicaid patients are often the most vulnerable: “In terms of

getting access to care, we’ve doubled our mammogram rates of patient compliance since we’ve used digital means to connect with them, communicate and engage.”

Increased accessibility has also enhanced the patient experience at OSF. The two-way targeted communication allows the organisation to help patients know their health challenges and become more engaged in their own care.

“With this technology solution, there’s always another person at the end that they can connect to if they need support,” said Foulger.

Current Health is allowing OSF to safely monitor and care for more patients – with a wider range of conditions –at home, outside of a hospital setting. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Boston, Current Health (a Best Buy Health Company) offers an enterprise care-at-home platform to enable healthcare organisations to offer the best patient-centric care. The Current Health platform unites remote patient monitoring, telehealth capabilities and patient engagement tools.

Foulger explains, “We have a chronic high-risk, advanced care-at-home service, supported through Current Health digital’s platform. Patients receive pulse oximeters, blood pressure cuffs and glucose monitors, which are seamlessly integrated through bluetooth connection. The captured data gets recorded in the electronic patient health records and care plans at OSF, which, in turn, are monitored 24/7 by our clinicians.” As a result of real-time monitoring and data, OSF clinicians are able to intervene when they see something that is out of range. They can then connect to the patient via video technology which is integrated within the Current Health platform. According to Foulger, the core ingredient to a successful partnership is ensuring that you partner with someone who understands key needs.

“As a healthcare system, we need a configurable digital platform that caters to both our patients and us. Therefore, is it important that our partners listen to our voice to ensure the technology works seamlessly for patients and clinicians. I think the feedback that our staff has provided is fine-tuning the solution and

that has been one of the key ingredients in the success.”

Over the next 12 months at OSF, the team is looking to continue on its Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 capabilities.

“We have a number of partnerships with startups,” says Foulger. “Current Health, for example, was a startup. We first invested with them and now we are implementing their technology.

“We also have relationships with a number of universities that we tap into to source young talent. Through that, we are looking to continue our journey in the AI space; that is, especially in the generative AI area – one such position that we are focusing on is how we can help automate how our clinicians’ work.”

Globally, healthcare workers are facing mass burnout. At OSF, leaders are dedicated to improving the workload so employees have the time and energy needed to give their patients the treatment they deserve.

“We want to use technology to reduce the burden. We’ve already started building some solutions in partnership with universities or with startups and we now want to deploy them – using automation, personalised medicine and AI.”

“It’s not just technology, there’s always a human at the other end that the patient can connect to”

ROOPA FOULGER VICE PRESIDENT OF DIGITAL INNOVATION DEVELOPMENT FOR OSF HEALTHCARE, OSF HEALTHCARE

FASTER, MORE COST-EFFECTIVE APP DEVELOPMENT WITH SERVICENOW

WRITTEN BY: ALEX CLERE

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

ServiceNow’s Creator Workflows

Cast your mind back nearly 20 years to 2004, and the world of business was a completely different place. When ServiceNow was founded by Fred Luddy, the aim was not to invent one particular type of software; the motivation was to create an entire technology stack on a platform that could be used to automate virtually any business process that existed inside of a company. He was inspired by the pink and yellow slips for purchasing and acquisitions you would see in mailrooms of the 1990s, during which time Luddy was CTO at software company Peregrine.

He set about empowering the normal everyday employees of a company – not just IT professionals – to be able to create workflows and applications on their own without involving a high-priced app developer. When he pitched the earlystage company to investors, they were understandably keen to see exactly what he could build on this new platform he was envisioning. Drawing on his background in IT, Luddy built an IT Service Management (ITSM) software application – and, in the process, convinced them to invest in what is now an US$8bn-a-year business.

This is why many people refer to the tech company as “the ticketing company” and associate ServiceNow mainly with IT service delivery – because this was the first app use case built on the ServiceNow Platform. Employees who encounter a problem with the company’s technology systems submit

low code App Engine allows companies to build apps and workflows quicker, smarter, and much more cost effectively

a ticket request, which is then cascaded in ServiceNow and routed to the IT department to prioritise and resolve.

“I think a lot of people have big misconceptions about ServiceNow,” says the company’s Global Area Vice President for Creator Workflows Solution Consulting, Gregg Aldana. “I know I certainly did [before joining the company].”

What is ServiceNow Creator Workflows?

This newer business unit, whose Global Solution Consulting team is headed up by Aldana, is spearheaded with ServiceNow’s low-code app development offering called App Engine. The drag-and-drop set

“My primary leadership style is trust. That to me is the most important and fundamental part of any effective leadership”

GREGG ALDANA GLOBAL AREA VP, SERVICENOW

of capabilities can be used by companies of virtually any size to develop internal workflows, processes and even consumerfacing custom low-code apps that automate and connect every step of a business process and can be used to provide greater transparency and insight at every stage of the journey.

Aldana leads a global team of over 60 solution consultants, who help customers solution their digital transformation aspirations with the products in ServiceNow’s Creator Workflows portfolio. He has been with ServiceNow for six-and-a-half years, although he has been in the application development space for over 25 years.

GREGG ALDANA

TITLE: GLOBAL AREA VP, CREATOR WORKFLOWS

SOLUTION CONSULTING

LOCATION: UNITED STATES

Gregg is an energetic, passionate, and captivating public speaker with a unique “Ted-Talk Style” approach to discussing complex business, people, and technology issues. Gregg leads ServiceNow’s Global Creator Workflows Solution Consulting organisation where his teams work with customers across many different countries and cultures in various industries in kick-starting their digital transformation journeys by innovating and solutioning with ServiceNow’s low-code App Engine development platform. Gregg meets with 200+ CIOs, CTOs, and technology/ business leaders globally each year to discuss hyperautomation and effective approaches to driving digital transformation with low code app dev and automation technologies.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Gregg is a proven software industry thought leader and a true business and technology MAVERICK that takes an independent and sometimes unorthodox stand against prevailing modes of thought and action.

Creator Workflows as a business unit was launched during the pandemic in 2021, when ServiceNow noticed their customers – hard-pushed to digitise their businesses rapidly – began building a wide array of custom apps using its low-code App Engine on a scale not seen before. The new business unit’s flagship product, App Engine, encapsulates the core development aspects of ServiceNow’s platform, which is used to build and extend all of the workflow products in the portfolio.

The business unit also includes Automation Engine, which incorporates ServiceNow’s key integration technologies in a lowcode manner; Integration Hub, which allows workflows to connect to system endpoints; RPA Hub (native Robotic Process Automation) to automate manual processes and connect to legacy systems; and Document Intelligence to integrate and intelligently interact with document images within workflows.

Aldana explains that, instead of replacing all the underlying technology and information systems that companies currently use, ServiceNow can provide the “connective tissue” and offer a modern engagement layer for businesses, connecting all those underlying systems of record efficiently. Ultimately, the goal is to enable greater simplicity to drive business efficiency and greater employee/customer experiences.

ServiceNow practises what it preaches. When Aldana joined the business at the beginning of 2017, the digital onboarding process he went through was light years away from anything he’d previously experienced in the public sector. It was a sign of things to come, demonstrating to Aldana first-hand how ServiceNow can eliminate disconnected, siloed business processes or experiences into something much more seamless and efficient.

Aldana has a background in the US public sector, working in technology roles for various US government agencies and departments since 2002, where he had long been a prolific user of ServiceNow’s technology. When he left his previous employer, the FDIC (US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation), it took him threeand-a-half weeks to offboard from every department, physically going between

WATCH NOW

six buildings in Arlington, Virginia and Washington DC and manually completing over 40 separate tasks given to him on a single sheet of paper.

By contrast, when he joined ServiceNow, he onboarded through a single mobile onboarding low-code app, weeks before he officially started employment – a process that covered everything from NDAs and security training to entering direct deposit details and ordering company supplies. In turn, each of these steps, which may require some form of human intervention or approval or integration with a different department’s system of record, was automatically sent to the right department or system with full visibility over the entire value chain, including who was still required to do what.

Diversity of talent will redefine the workplace

California-headquartered ServiceNow has come a long way from those early days of Fred Luddy trying to demonstrate prototypes of apps on his platform to venture capitalists; the company now has more than 22,000 employees and its technology is used by 85% of Fortune 500 companies. It has 7,500 global enterprise customers, including over 1,600 who are spending a million dollars or more, such is the scale of automation that it makes possible.

Clients include retailers like Walmart and 7-Eleven; name brand entities such as Mars and Zoom; sports entertainment companies such as Nascar, the NBA, and the NHL; financial service and banking companies such as Wells Fargo and Standard Chartered; government agencies like the US Department of Agriculture and the US Department of State; plus, aeronautics and aviation companies including Delta Airlines and Airbus.

Despite how far it has come, ServiceNow is still loyal to Luddy’s original vision and purpose: to empower regular employees, with no technical background, to be able to effortlessly develop apps to help automate their work. Talent diversity is one of the central benefits of low-code technologies, lowering the barrier to entry for non-technical ‘citizen developers’, who could be spread far and wide across a client’s organisation. With low-code app development, more people can get involved in digitisation – meaning professional software developers are freed up to focus on complex, top-line, strategically important initiatives.

In turn, Gregg Aldana believes that app development, aided dramatically with the introduction on Generative AI, will become an important and common skill set within the workplace of tomorrow. Where 20 years ago people would list Microsoft Office as a specialised skill set (it’s taken for granted today), job applicants of the future will no longer be listing ‘low-code app development’ on their resumes. “Business process optimisation and workplace automation, including low-code app development with Gen AI, is going to become ubiquitous and it’s going to become a regular skill set and capability that every person working in society will have by the end of the decade,” Aldana predicts.

Does automation lead to fewer human jobs?

One of the most pressing topics within automation is the balance between future technology and the current labour market. Will the rise of Generative AI driving accelerated automation necessitate fewer human jobs? Aldana doesn’t think so.

“What you’re going to see will be like a professional developer on steroids,” he continues.

GREGG ALDANA GLOBAL AREA VP, SERVICENOW

“Process optimisation, including citizen driven low-code app dev, is going to become a very ubiquitous skill that everybody in the workforce will be expected to have”

“Low-coders, and more critically frontline no-coders, will become even more productive and will have to write less code and know less about technology and programming in general in order to automate extraordinary things at record speed.”

Aldana would be the first to acknowledge that low-code platforms and Generative AI may represent the demise of the traditional coding fraternity we know. After all, he has been a software developer essentially since his youth in the 1980s.

He was inspired by the movie WarGames, which saw Matthew Broderick’s character hack into the Department of Defence. Aldana was instantly in awe and asked his father for a computer so he too could dial into local bulletin boards with his modem and play games as well. Aldana thought hackers were cool, long before Neo entered the Matrix! It wasn’t too long after that Aldana began writing software at a very young age.

His parents sent him to computer camp as a child and he still fondly remembers the first piece of software he ever wrote: it helped him manage his childhood baseball card collection!

“As a lifelong app developer, I’m excited about this. I’m not intimidated,” he says of increasing automation and use of generative AI. “Quite the opposite. I think about the sophisticated and impactful systems we’re going to be able to create in the future that would’ve taken years to build before. These are exciting times!”

Indeed, based on Gartner’s latest research, he anticipates that society will need over 750 million new apps in the coming years – many

multiples of what we already have available on the Apple App Store (~2.5m apps) or Google Play Store (~3.5m apps). To meet these needs, professional developers will need to be freed up and need help with the smaller stuff – and this is where citizen developers come in. Gartner predicts that 75% of apps will be built on low-code platforms by 2026, representing a US$45bn economy.

ServiceNow makes app development three-times faster compared to other platforms. End-users are 50-75% more cost-efficient when using ServiceNow’s low-code App Engine, and customers get a 230% return on their investment on average.

“The productivity gains of low code are game changing. It’s changing the mission of some companies and their ability to do business”

GREGG ALDANA GLOBAL AREA VP, SERVICENOW

Even beyond this, the advantages of using ServiceNow’s low-code app dev platform are self-evident: as well as making developers more productive by welcoming citizen developers into the fold, low-code builders help companies to retire legacy systems and consolidate their tech stack into fewer cloud-based alternatives.

“Companies don’t need as many systems anymore because a lot of these platforms have grown up over time and so they do a lot more than they used to,” Aldana explains.

It also opens up new business models and ways of working that wouldn’t have been possible before. Take the example of the US Department of Agriculture Marketing

Service: it used ServiceNow’s low-code App Engine to automate a compliance examination process for farmers that used to take six weeks in total to complete. The process involved examining the exposure to insurance risk that farmers faced, so it was mission critical. With ServiceNow’s help, the USDA was able to get this timeline from six weeks down to 30 minutes! As well as the obvious cost savings (about US$3m a year in total), this allows the USDA to be more proactive and to offer more frequent inspections, which in turn will make them more effective. Low-code is truly transforming how the USDA can accomplish its mission and the services it can offer the public.

Another example – from the private sector this time – is an undisclosed airline, who are using ServiceNow’s platform to offer a shift bidding system for flight crew and cabin crew. Employees were able to bid on more desirable shifts and work patterns, meaning not only did the airline unshackle themselves from a traditionally arduous and heavily paper-based process, but they were also able to analyse where their staff wanted to work and when they were available.

“It’s game changing,” Aldana says. “It’s changing the mission of many of these organisations and their ability to do business. I’m seeing this in a lot of different areas where you’re opening up completely new business models that weren’t even available beforehand.”

ServiceNow’s two main growth areas

ServiceNow’s Creator Workflow products are available to businesses of all sizes, across every industry and every geography. But the company has observed two industries that in particular that are adopting its low-code solutions at an aggressive pace: public sector entities, and financial service companies including banking.

The public sector is Aldana’s domain; he spent over a decade in the US Federal Government prior to joining ServiceNow. After cutting his teeth in New York City – working as a developer at a Microsoft Partner during the dot-com boom servicing customers across financial services at Guardian Life Insurance and Mutual Life Insurance of New York – he moved south to Washington DC. First, he was a consultant for the US Department of Treasury, helping to build software to manage international debt; that was followed by six years as Chief Enterprise Architect for the Selective Service System, a small agency that manages the US military draft; then during the fall out of the subprime mortgage crisis in 2010, he became a ServiceNow customer while leading capital investment application development at the US FDIC, which insures all bank deposits in the United States (and has been back in the news again lately, following the demise of Silicon Valley and Signature Banks).

One incredible public sector case study that really summarises ServiceNow’s speed and agility is the U.S. Embassy Kabul Repatriation Assistance Request App. An extremely mission critical low-code app built by the US State Department to repatriate citizens in the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the US Department of State is one of ServiceNow’s largest Creator Workflows App Engine customers with 130,000 employees and 257 embassies worldwide conversing in multiple languages across many different cultures. Clearly, the needs here are varied and extraordinarily complex. When the decision was made by the US government to evacuate Afghanistan following the Taliban’s return to government, the department needed a way to deal with the huge volume of repatriation requests.

In under a week, the State Department built an externally facing custom low-code app using Creator Workflows App Engine that allowed people to request repatriation assistance, accompanied by an internal workspace that allowed employees to process those requests and complete background checks on applicants. Despite the intense requirements – including that it was mobile-friendly for those on the ground in Kabul – the State Department was able to roll out the app in a matter of a few days. Since then, they’ve gone on to expand upon this initial app and resettle over 70,000 refugees through their repatriation programme, integrating with other government agencies like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security to ensure that it was rigorously vetting those returning to the US.

ServiceNow’s low-code App Engine also proved incredibly useful at the outset of COVID-19. When the city of Los Angeles wanted to roll out a COVID testing reservation app in the first few months of the lockdown, it had no way of getting something live as quickly as they needed it. The app would need to connect members of the public with pandemic testing facilities, helping public

health officials to monitor and control the spread of the virus.

“I remember the Los Angeles Mayor going on TV live during the week and saying, ‘we’re launching this testing programme Sunday night’. They had to pick a technology to do it with rapidly, and they did it with ServiceNow’s low-code App Engine,” Aldana says.

“Our team helped them design it, they used an integration partner to build it, and they launched it in less than 72 hours.”

The other industry adopting ServiceNow’s low-code App Engine aggressively is financial services. These are heavily regulated

“People come to work, and they want to work for somebody who is sincere and genuinely passionate about what they’re leading. I believe in what we’re doing at ServiceNow so much”

GREGG ALDANA GLOBAL AREA VP, SERVICENOW

companies where oversight, compliance and outside auditing of every transaction is critical. One misstep can tarnish a brand’s reputation, the consequences of which have hit newspaper front pages in recent months. ServiceNow’s low-code App Engine platform natively provides full visibility, transparency, and auditability with anything that is configured or built on the platform.

Given the need for strict compliance, many banks are seeking low-code platforms that have this functionality built in. From a market standpoint, many banks are reluctant to use common purpose-built off-the-shelf software.

They see their workflows and data models as their own IP (Intellectual Property) and their competitive advantage, distinguishing them from other banks across the street. “I see a lot of banks really taking this to an astronomical level with adopting low code app dev platforms,” Aldana tells us.

Banco do Brasil has one of the largest citizen developer workforces of any ServiceNow customer worldwide. The Brasília-headquartered bank has nearly 100,000 employees and around a third of them have already been trained on low-code.

Currently, they have about 800 active citizen developers across more than 20 lines of business, which allows them to make the most of ServiceNow’s low-code Creator Workflow App Engine.

It’s all part of the bank’s five-year digital transformation strategy. One of the five pillars focuses on distributed business-led automation (aka ‘citizen development’).

Banco do Brasil is using Creator Workflows to create a full range of custom low-code apps – from in-house catering order interfaces, which allow board directors to order catering at the touch of a button and utilise geolocation to identify the meeting room they’re in; to more mission-focused business functions, like lending money from one branch to another overnight in a different currency. They are also using App Engine to fulfil a lot of the bank’s compliance and investigative case management needs, which require greater visibility over progress and status than traditional email threads can offer.

Unwinding app sprawl and eliminating technical debt

With such a varied client list, it’s important that ServiceNow can adapt to different customers in different industries of varying size. Its platform is priced for the most part on a per-volume basis, bringing the power

of Creator Workflows within reach of small and medium-sized commercial businesses as well as larger enterprises.

Regardless of a company’s size, ServiceNow aims to provide the same level of consistent service to all clients. Companies can scale up or scale down their usage at any time, depending on their requirements, and the aim is to empower clients to be able to do more with less.

As with most technologies, low-code is becoming more accessible over time and levelling the playing field for smaller companies, Gregg Aldana predicts. “This will open up [low-code] to a lot of small businesses to be able to really have much farther reach and have access to more sophisticated tools to grow their business and provide very efficient and comprehensive levels of service, something that was only available to really high-end companies that could afford high priced developers and technology years ago.”

ServiceNow Creator Workflows is one of the only low-code platforms in the market that has app dev governance and guardrails for citizen development built in, allowing companies to both empower users to build apps quickly while also limiting the extent

of app sprawl and reducing the technical debt the company creates. Normally, when developers are coding apps from scratch, there is inconsistent documentation to cover what apps do and why they were built. If a developer leaves an organisation, their successors might not understand why an app exists – particularly if it stops being used on a regular basis. With ServiceNow’s App Engine, that doesn’t happen.

The platform also gives managers and directors full visibility over app usage, so they can identify underperforming apps that receive less usage than initially anticipated – and even overperforming apps that prove more popular and are providing more ROI and business value than expected. Businesses can then react in one of two ways: they can either invest more development time in expanding popular apps to provide more functionality to users; or conversely, they can retire apps if they’re no longer receiving regular traffic.

The decision to retire apps is easier with ServiceNow. The Now Platform gives companies decisive real-time insights and analytics to be able to make those decisions in an informed way. Secondly, because apps take less time to build, any sentimental attachment to low-impact apps are removed.

“We’re building features into our platform to automate the retirement and deprecation of applications, freeing up those licences,” Aldana explains. “That way, you don’t make the same mistakes with app dev you did in the past and wind up 10 years from now with a pile of low-code apps and another pile of Lotus Notes or SharePoint apps sprawled throughout the company that you don’t know what to do with.”

CUSTOMER HELPS OVERCOME

CUSTOMER-CENTRICITY HELPS DATA CENTRES OVERCOME DISRUPTION

WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

Avnish Patankar, Commercial Director of BDx Indonesia, defines the reasons for its data centre acquisitions and transparent approach to disruption

The data centre industry’s rapid expansion sees more opportunities across every border, with its growth making way for the introduction of BDx in 2019 and the continued success of existing data centre locations.

The company sought out advantageous growth opportunities, resulting in moving to a few different locations across the APAC region.

Taking on an emerging market with billions of dollars worth of potential over the next few years, BDx ventured beyond its China, Hong Kong and Singapore data centre facilities to acquire a further site in Indonesia last year. The reason for this being the projected CAGR from 6% to 13% leading up to 2028, and the projected industry value growth to US$3.43bn by 2027.

With four data centres in total, the company is operational across the three locations in Indonesia, allowing it to serve a growing number of users globally.

“Our global customers are joining us. At the same time, we are now building two more new data centres that are greenfield projects in Indonesia – in and around Jakarta,” says Avnish Patankar, Commercial Director at BDx Indonesia.

“Collectively, we are creating a bouquet of six assets for the main DC deployment and some 20 plus locations spanning Indonesia for edge deployments where we will be able to offer more choices to customers.”

The company’s venture into Indonesia marks a crucial step in BDx’s strategy, which will service the digital transformation needs of the country by enabling access to data centres at the edge. With a dedicated facility based there, its existing pool of global clients have the opportunity to colocate their IT infrastructure and workloads to enable more growth in the region.

“We ventured into Indonesia with a mission to support its digital transformation,” says Patankar.

“Now, coming with that mission to support, it’s very important. Any client who is coming from overseas or a local national client who is looking for a data centre, colocation asset for deploying its IT workloads, it’s important to provide them with what they need. They need locations, diversification in locations, scalability, security, they need network ability for connectivity.”

“PEOPLE WHO WORK WITH THE COMPANY CREATE THE COMPANY, THEY BUILD THE COMPANY”

AVNISH PATANKAR COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR, BDx

As a result, BDx Indonesia proudly opens the door not just for national clients, but also for its overseas clients to access reliable and secured data centres within the country.

“It is the biggest acquisition deal in the data centre industry of Indonesia. We are committed to investing another billion dollars into it. While we are developing a greenfield project, which will be our flagship data centre, we are looking at creating 20-plus edge locations for deployment, which is the future of digital transformation,” Patankar says.

“In a year or two, everyone will venture into edge locations – edge data centres. People will look for edge deployments because, as the digital transformation is taking shape, it is very important for the cloud and content providers to get near the customer.”

AVNISH PATANKAR

TITLE: COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR

INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY

LOCATION: INDONESIA

Avnish Patankar is a seasoned executive with over 20 years of experience in the technology and engineering industry. He is currently the Commercial Director of a rapidly growing company, where he is responsible for setting the company’s strategic direction and driving its growth with customer first approach.

Throughout his career, Avnish has held various leadership roles at both established companies and startups. He has a strong track record of delivering results, driving innovation, and leading cross-functional teams to success.

Prior to his current role, Avnish served as the Country Head of an engineering company, where he played a critical role in growing the company’s revenue and expanding its customer base. Before that, he held senior leadership positions at several engineering and utility companies, where he was responsible for driving product strategy, business development, and customer success.

Avnish is known for his ability to build and lead high-performing teams, his strategic vision, and his customercentric approach to business. He is passionate about leveraging technology to solve complex problems and create value for customers.

From services like Netflix and Amazon Prime to Dropbox and One Drive, cloud and storage capabilities will be pivotal in the years to come, so businesses will look to grow to all corners of the globe to ensure that their services are made accessible. In Indonesia, Patankar explains that these types of services, along with Amazon and Azure, there is a demand for entry points that will allow them to create a complete global infrastructure to support their offerings wherever their customers are located.

BDx Indonesia plans to serve these companies to achieve their goals and create brand loyalty.

The main factor in the company’s rate of progress cannot be ignored, with the pandemic provoking shortages of necessary components and infrastructure via supply chain disruption.

“The pandemic shifted the entire way people work, learn, bank, shop, and interact,” says Patankar.

“That created an instant demand for IT hardware, software services and data centres was one of them. At that same time, because of the supply chain and logistic problems, I myself witnessed hundreds and thousands of containers docked at sea port as the ships were not available.”

This was one of the main struggles that BDx experienced in the process of acquiring and operationalising its Indonesia data centre, which was due to the shortage of equipment necessary to not only function, but to build a data centre that supported the needs of its clients.

“We had a challenge, we had to keep the operations running. And we, at the same time,

had to keep increasing our capacity. We had to keep building new capacity,” says Patankar.

“We have done this at our Singapore data centre. When we acquired it there was a 1.5MW capacity. During this pandemic when nothing was moving, we were able to create additional 10MW capacity there. Customers appreciated that.”

Despite overcoming disruption from various industry-paralysing events, BDx Indonesia would not have succeeded had the team chosen to ride out the issues within its supply chain. This resulted in a shift towards a new way of operating, coming away from the traditional means of procurement and supply chain management to take an approach suitable for the digital era.

“MANUFACTURERS ARE NOT ABLE TO DELIVER THE EQUIPMENT ON TIME BECAUSE LOGISTICS ARE STILL AN ISSUE”

AVNISH PATANKAR COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR, BDx

“WE VENTURED INTO INDONESIA WITH A MISSION TO SUPPORT THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF INDONESIA”

“I believe some relaxation is coming, but the demand is still high. Manufacturers are not able to deliver the equipment on time because logistics are still an issue,” says Patankar.

“Instead of sticking to one supplier for one improvement, we diversified geographically. Different leading brands came together. We worked with different suppliers and reduced our reliance on a single one, but also in terms of geographical resources, equipment from Europe, as well as resources from the US and equipment from Australia, China, South Korea.”

Before BDx Indonesia could diversify its operations, the initial challenge was understanding the different specifications of various suppliers to determine the services that it could provide with each. Unlike the standard procurement method whereby the solution must be correct, the company adapted its approach to recognise that various models could achieve the same outcomes with a more flexible outlook.

AVNISH PATANKAR COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR, BDx

“We became transparent to our suppliers. We created a complete plan for five years: our capacity, increment plans, our expansion plans,” Patankar says.

“In every meeting, online or offline, we explained those plans to our suppliers. We became transparent. We said, this is all coming in and we need your support, which particular project do you want to pick up? Which project can you support? Which equipment can you support?

“As we were transparent, both sides, customers as well as suppliers, started believing in us.”

Rather than accepting the traditional approach to equipment delivery and leaving suppliers responsible for delivery on time, BDx Indonesia asks them what they can offer and adapts its approach accordingly.

“As the customer now considers us as their family, suppliers are our family. It’s not only about asking them, ‘Hey, can you deliver this equipment on time or not?’,” says Patankar.

“We need to look into their capacity, their capabilities, their financial stability, and a lot of similar and important things. So we need to work with them.”

This approach to suppliers and customers is what allows BDx Indonesia to focus more on building sustainable partnerships with companies to create understanding and cooperation while developing the edge potential of data centres in the country. By meeting the needs of stakeholders, BDx Indonesia is able to follow a more informed trajectory with support from some major businesses – one of them being the equipment and cloud provider Huawei.

“Huawei is one of our trusted supply chain partners. A good thing about them is their approach to us. Much like our own supply chain, other supply chain partners know we

Huawei DC Solution:

From Edge to Large DC

Facilitating Green Digital Transformation. Smarter, Faster, Greener.

are very transparent with our customers and so they do too,” Patankar explains.

“A supply chain partner of ours must be transparent. Huawei is very upfront, telling us what they can and can’t do on time. They’re aware of all the ongoing and upcoming projects, but what they do for us is plan inventory on their side so that they can help us to deliver the project on time in a costeffective manner.”

As the footprint of BDx grows, particularly in Indonesia, the company will continue to leverage partnerships to provide a much more agile approach to procuring the necessary components for its data centres, but also encourage a transparency method of customer service. In such a dynamic industry, BDx Indonesia can look ahead as early as six months and as far as 18 to assess the evolution of its operations –with increasing capacity being the primary, overarching endeavour.

“AS WE WERE TRANSPARENT, BOTH SIDES, CUSTOMERS AS WELL AS SUPPLIERS, STARTED BELIEVINGIN US”

AVNISH PATANKAR COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR, BDx

Beyond the facilities though, Patankar says that the organisation itself must develop to navigate its growth with an emphasis on the talent it already has within the team.

“It’s not only about just creating the facility or enabling business, it’s also about developing the team, creating the talent. People who work with us bring value to the company,” says Patankar.

“People who work with the company create the company, build the company. So we understood that talent is important in the data centre industry. There is a shortage and we need to address this. So, we already began on-ground training by sending our engineers from here to Singapore to train them in our live data centres with various standards of operation.”

Fast-tracking infrastructure into the future

WRITTEN BY: ILKHAN OZSEVIM

PRODUCED BY: BEN WIGGER

Estonian Railways is set to electrify and digitise its entire network by 2028 for efficient, sustainable transport; Aleksandr Zaitsev says data is key

How do you bring a 150-yearold railway company into the future? Estonian Railways

Ltd, a state-owned company that’s been operating since 1870, ensures the smooth operation, development, and maintenance of the entire country’s railway infrastructure, as well as efficient traffic management throughout. An additional layer of this is acting as a partner in resolving cross-border issues and setting standards.

As the owner of the railway infrastructure, Estonian Railways holds a central role in the functioning of the transit sector, at the helm of maintaining a competitive situation both in railway passenger and cargo transport. But what really sets it apart as embracing the future is its environmental awareness credentials, operating above and beyond the basic objectives of a run-of-the-mill railway company. From the year 2019, Estonian Railways has been awarded with the Corporate Responsibility Gold level award, which is the highest reward granted to Estonian companies that care about the environment, wishing to contribute more to society than required by either legislation or societal norms.

The vision of Estonian Railway Ltd is to be the region’s most advanced railway infrastructure manager. To this end, it has embarked upon a very ambitious investment plan for the current decade that includes

different projects for the modernisation and electrification of its infrastructure.

Discussing this transformation is Aleksandr Zaitsev, the Head of its Digital Transformation and Innovation Department. Zaitsev is responsible for the digital transformation of work processes within the infrastructure business unit, alongside the implementation of new technological solutions.

Estonian Railways’ plan to electrify the entire rail network by 2028

During the first major stages of the electrification project, railways from Tallinn through Tapa to Tartu and Narva will be electrified. At the moment, a large number

“The turning point for our company is ‘global renovation’, in which we are moving from relaybased CCS systems to microprocessor logic”

ALEKSANDR ZAITSEV HEAD OF THEIR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND INNOVATION | ESTONIAN RAILWAYS

of preliminary projects have already been completed, while the majority of building permits have been issued for the AegviiduTapa-Tartu section.

At the beginning of this year, the company signed a contract with two companies –GRK Suomi OY and GRK Eesti AS – for the construction of the contact network and transmission substations for the AegviiduTapa-Tartu section. According to the contract, the Tartu direction must be electrified by the end of next year. As such, Estonian Railways has planned the procurement of the TapaNarva section for 2024, and, if everything goes as planned, electric trains will be able to run between Tapa and Narva from the end of 2026.

ALEKSANDR ZAITSEV

TITLE: HEAD OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND INNOVATION

Aleksandr Zaitsev graduated from the Tallinn University of Technology with a master’s degree in computers and system engineering in the year 2011. He began his career as a distributed control systems engineer and worked in the Industrial automation area for 10 years. After that, he received an invitation from the largest security company - based in the Estonian capital - and worked as the Technical Director. Within two years he developed the technical department of the company to be included in the list of Estonian market leaders. In the year 2019 he was assigned to become a member of council in the company called Techno Life, which was part of the same group.

In the year 2021 Estonian Railways founded a new department called “The Digital Transformation and Innovation Department”, and EVR invited him to head this department.

EXECUTIVE BIO

The project is ambitious, but achievable, and has several goals.

The first is to reduce the impact of the transport sector on the environment. Estonian Railways already only buys electricity from renewable sources, which then supplies all current electric train traffic. Another goal is to increase the speed of traffic on the railway

and reduce train travel times, both of which will make travelling on the railway faster and more comfortable. The third goal is to improve the living environment of people living near the railway as well as companies operating close by, through noise reduction and traffic vibration monitoring. This is what streamlining looks like.

Estonian Railways: Fast-tracking infrastructure into the future

WATCH NOW

“Data and analytics serve as the basis for Estonian Railways’ transformation”

ALEKSANDR ZAITSEV HEAD OF THEIR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND INNOVATION | ESTONIAN RAILWAYS

Moving Estonian Railways into the digital era through data

Zaitsev admits that moving the railway into the digital era is a very long and laborious process.

“The turning point for our company,” he says, “is global renovation, in which we are moving from relay-based CCS systems to microprocessor logic. The modernisation of control systems allows us to start collecting data, studying the behaviour of systems and making data-driven decisions.

“Data is the basis for digital transformation. We have formed a digital transformation strategy for the next few years, and we decided to focus on building Enterprise Asset Management (EAM).”

This strategy includes 3 separate projects:

• Asset Management. This includes the register of the assets, warehouse module, and financial aspects of the assets and its lifecycle costs

• Field Service Management. The goal of this is to bring work planners and technicians to a unified, real-time platform for better planning and use of resources as well as an overview of the performed works.

• Digital Services. This gives additional value to asset management and all other IT systems from analytics and monitoring of the data perspective. In addition to that, the company is constantly developing the Geographic Information System (GIS), which stands for geospatial data management of assets.

By the end of 2027, the system will cover all remaining track sections with 100% functionality, and by the end of 2028, most of Estonian Railways’ ongoing projects should be completed

Moving from calendar-based to conditional maintenance

Railway is a critical infrastructure. As the owner of said infrastructure, Zaitsev emphasises that Estonian Railways must be 100% sure of security and enact timely maintenance.

“For sure, moving from calendar-based type of maintenance to conditional-based type of maintenance is one of the goals that we want to achieve within the Enterprise Asset Management programme,” he says. “Our mission is to complete it with assets’ performance management, so we can analyse the behaviour of the assets remotely and reduce maintenance time.

“This year, we have started a pilot project for remote condition monitoring of point machines, powered by the Smart Maintenance Platform. This improves the decision-making process by offering evidence on asset conditions and, consequently, informing the maintenance priority. It’s too early to talk about the results, but I believe that this project will serve as a starting point for moving to a conditional maintenance direction, and, in the future, we will add additional systems for analysis.”

The centrality of data and analytics to digital transformation

Zaitsev says that data and analytics serve as the basis for Estonian Railways’ transformation. He points out that digital transformation starts from implementing data Infrastructure for secure data transferring and integration with other products and applications.

“This year we have created a new department to start monitoring the data coming from various systems and subsystems. As the next step we need to create an environment for connecting

“We strive to help with governmentset environmental goals in reducing our carbon footprint by completely electrifying the infrastructure”

ALEKSANDR ZAITSEV HEAD OF THEIR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND INNOVATION | ESTONIAN RAILWAYS

information from different sources that will let us provide better analysis.

“To create a unified ‘data landscape’, we are creating product roadmaps for our existing information systems. One of the main tasks is to describe the data entities used in each information system and to define right data sources for a common “data lake”. The ultimate goal of this work is to collect the initial and consistent data of various information systems into a single enterprise data lake for further crossanalysis and use it to create digital models of business processes.

“We are at the very beginning of this journey,” he says.

Adding digital & data-based capabilities to the UX Presently, responsibility for all the information displayed in Estonian Railways’ terminals and stations rests with a third-party company. But, by the time

the Time-tabling, Traffic Control, and Management System (TTCMS) project is ready, Estonian Railways will be able to provide all the necessary information and data to the Public Information Management System (PIMS), directly from the TTCMS database. This means that passengers will be able to get live updates regarding the train traffic schedules and conveniently plan their trips.

“Right now, we are in the process of using data to improve different services. For example, with the TTCMS project covering the whole Estonian Railway infrastructure, the objective is to improve train traffic safety, punctuality, and reliability. The system will be a single source of truth for train traffic accuracy and traffic forecast data, with this information available for both internal and external stakeholders and users.

Zaitsev continues: “In the following years, the company will be taking a huge step forward in the quality level of our infrastructure. It is a historical moment for us, being able to invest with the help of EU funds and government support to provide even better services for our freight and passenger railway traffic partners.

“Railway is the most environmentallyfriendly means of transport, so it is crucial that we do everything in our power to popularise it.

“Regarding data management, if a company does not have a welldefined data collection strategy – but is constantly initiating new projects and implementing new technologies – it is crucial to focus on the data architecture and data gathering. The sooner you start gathering data in a structured way, the easier it will be for you to implement new projects, as well as make better business decisions based on the data.”

Estonian Railways’ Partner Ecosystem

Hexagon

Hexagon is Estonian Railways’ major partner for the geospatial data management of assets and infrastructure.

“We signed a contract with them in 2020,” says Zaitsev. “Hexagon provides a platform for the development of the Geographic Information System (GIS). Within the contract, they are constantly developing and maintaining the system.

“We have big plans with Hexagon, because the GIS is a part of our Global Asset Management strategy. The goal is to integrate the asset management register with GIS to represent the exact location of all assets on the map so that all our field workers, technicians, and contractors can get all necessary information and attributes of assets just by choosing it on the map. Also, we actively use GIS in construction planning.

“Hexagon also offers a wide range of capabilities beyond geospatial data management – from sensor management to reality capturing – multidimensional visualisation, and all necessary technologies – from sensors for data acquisition to AI for converting data into information – with a solid geospatial background and knowledge suitable for the transportation sector.

“So, we see that, in the future, Hexagon could play a role in the strategic alignment with Estonian Railways to increase operational excellence.”

Siemens CCS

In the Major CCS (Command-Control Systems) Project, Estonian Railways’ infrastructure lines 1-5 (which are still equipped with old relay interlockings) will be replaced with dual microprocessorbased SIL 4 interlockings. Siemens designs,

supplies, installs, tests, and commissions the interlocking system’s turnkey solution, with interfaces to neighbouring lines.

The Scope of Supply includes the interlocking of software and hardware together with a CTC/LOP system. Siemens also supplies all needed hardware for main and shunting signals, including LED units for signals.

The contract was signed with the SiemensGRK consortium in 2020, with a final deadline for the last station planned for 2025. However, due to the new requirements, the deadline has now been agreed for the year 2027. As such, the first station that will be commissioned is Tapa in early 2024, and the first line – from Tapa to Tartu – by the end of 2024.

Indra TTCMS

The project goal is to develop a TTCMS covering the whole Estonian railway infrastructure. This means having all necessary interfaces for data transmission between required data sources to ensure full-scale functionality for the system. The contractor must design, supply, install, test, and deliver the required system.

The goal of the project is to develop a solution that includes at least the following elements:

• Integrated long-term and short-term digital timetable planning (the timetabling system).

• Train traffic incident management system with performed timetable functionality (the Traffic Management System (TMS)).

• Integration to existing third-party interlocking through the interface provided by the Contracting Authority.

• Performed timetable analysis and statistical reports.

The scope of the work covers design, development, supply, procurement, implementation, and testing alongside the handover of timetabling, traffic control and management, and a top-level CTC system, in accordance with the minimal requirements as stated for this technical specification.

The project started in 2019 with procurement preparatory tasks (Requests for Information and the composition of the Technical Specification). On June 30th, 2020, the contract was signed, with actual works commencing following a brief mobilisation phase in September 2020.

Today, the very first stage of the contract –the design stage – is over, and the contractor is developing and testing the functionalities and integrations of the system. The works have been split into 4 consecutive releases to be implemented until the end of the contract, in June 2027. Each release will provide an agreed amount of the system’s functionalities, accompanied by integrations to existing and upcoming CTC and auxiliary systems (power grid SCADA, Hot-Box detectors, etc). The system will be a single source of truth for train traffic accuracy and traffic forecast data –and this information will be available for both internal and external stakeholders and users.

Outlook for the future...

Orienting to the future, Zaitsev says that, due to the fact that Estonian Railways has initiated large-scale renovation projects that will last 5-8 years, in 12-18 months, they will only just be moving to the next – yet still early – stages of these projects.

“For example, in terms of the TTCMS project,” he says, “in the following 12-18 months we expect to start using the system within 60% of its functional capacity on lines with the most intensive passenger train traffic.

“By the end of the contract in 2027, the system must cover all remaining track sections of ER with 100% functionality. By the end of 2028, most of our ongoing projects should be finished and hopefully we can achieve our main strategic goal to become one of the most innovative infrastructure owners in our region.

“Then, by that time, we will have also fulfilled all prerequisites to manage our processes digitally, while also striving to help with government-set environmental goals in reducing our carbon footprint by completely electrifying the infrastructure.”

“Our main strategic goal is to become one of the most innovative infrastructure owners in our region”

ALEKSANDR ZAITSEV HEAD OF THEIR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND INNOVATION | ESTONIAN RAILWAYS