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The transition to a modern business intelligence model requires IT to adopt a collaborative approach that includes the business in all aspects of the overall program. This guide focuses on the platform evaluation and selection. It is intended for IT to use collaboratively with business users and analysts as they assess each platform’s ability to execute on the modern analytics workflow and address the diverse needs of users across the organization.

“It all went live in less than two months,” said Paul Egan, It Manager of Business Intelligence at Tableau. “The CEO had his new production-strength dashboards in Tableau in less than two months of the server being deployed—and that was a pretty phenomenal turnaround.”

Download this free whitepaper to learn more.

Digital Transformation

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Wendy M. Pfeiffer is a technology leader who’s as dedicated to excellence in operations and delivery as she is to maintaining a focus on innovation. She joined Nutanix as SVP and CIO following a successful career leading technology teams at companies like GoPro, Yahoo, Cisco Systems, and Robert Half. Highly regarded by her industry peers for her courageous transparency and candor, Pfeiffer also serves on the boards of Qualys, SADA Systems, and the American Gaming Association (AGA). 

On a recent episode of the Tech Whisperers podcast, Pfeiffer shared her insights about the numerous demands being placed on CIOs today, what she’s gained from her board experiences, and how the ways in which we work are evolving. Afterwards, we spent some time talking through Pfeiffer’s five-part series for “The Forecast by Nutanix” on IT’s role in enabling hybrid work, as well as what she’s learned running IT for a hybrid-first company. What follows is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Dan Roberts: What motivated you to produce this series on hybrid work?

Wendy Pfeiffer: Work is now eternally hybrid. What I mean by that is, we’re not going to be able to count on having everyone in the same place at the same time ever again. So, how do we respond to this changed nature of work? Instead of just being observers and saying, “Well, it’s not like it used to be,” how do we focus on changing the methods we use to respond to that?

If I think about my primary mission as an IT professional, it’s to enable technology in service of business and people, and today, business is different. Technology is different. People are different. So, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, studying it, reading, and speaking to folks. And the bottom line is, I didn’t find that anyone had any great ideas.

So, I started thinking about the IT experience as a product, and the employee experience as a product. If I were delivering a product into a new marketplace, I would need to learn everything I could about that marketplace, and then I would need to adjust some parameters of the product to be appropriate. And in doing so, I discovered these simple principles that I think make a difference towards enabling hybrid work.

Hybrid work is asynchronous, so you have to enable asynchronous things. It is characterized by context switching, and context switching has a negative impact on productivity. How do we counterbalance that? There are just all sorts of principles that are at the heart of hybrid work that, if you take them one at a time, we already have some tooling to address. We already have some techniques in use. We already have some design thinking around how to address those things. If we focus our efforts on those, we can improve the nature of work.

Part one focuses on managing constant change. Why should that become a bigger focus in 2023, and what are some everyday ways we can do that in a hybrid workplace?

I think that hybrid work in general is characterized by the change that comes from continuous context switching on purpose. Like most people, I find change to be stressful, and yet, I have developed some ways to deal with change. One is to have a home base, a foundation that’s not changing and that’s solid even as things around it changes. So, I was thinking about how to create a solid foundation in technology, and one of the easiest ways to do that is through ‘anchor technologies.’

In my organization, we have chosen a handful of anchor technologies, and we’ve doubled down on enabling our employees to be very comfortable with them, to always expect that those technologies will be available, functioning, and even to feel expert in them, the same way that you feel expert after you’ve been using your smartphone for a while. We want people to feel like, I’m not just a medium user of Zoom or Slack — I’m a Zoom ninja and know all the secrets. As soon as that competence and bedrock are there, then that gives us the foundation from which to launch new things.

For example, with online whiteboarding, I’m not launching a new technology; I’m launching a new online whiteboarding feature in the context of Zoom. So, I’m minimizing the amount of change the employee has to go through. They already feel comfortable when they see it show up as a feature in one of these anchor technologies.

It’s psychological, but it makes a huge difference in terms of our adoption of new technologies. We find that when we are launching new technologies in the context of our anchor applications, we see a massive uptick in adoption. In the past, we would launch a new technology, and about 30 days in, we would see about a 25% adoption rate. Now we see about an 80% adoption rate. And, you know, that’s a beautiful thing — much less training time, immediate productivity for our employees, etc.

In your second video, you get into asynchronous productivity, and you talk about those ‘watercooler’ conversations that many CIOs are concerned about — chance meetings that foster collaboration and innovation. How has that changed in the hybrid workplace?

Before the pandemic, most of us who worked in global companies already had people who worked in different time zones in different locations all over the world and were part of our teams. But back then, we didn’t care what kind of an experience they had. We didn’t pay much attention to them. You sort of had to be physically in the room, where the conversation was happening, to have a voice in that conversation. So we were leaving some of the productivity of those ‘remote’ participants on the table.

For example, before the pandemic, about 30% of our employees, globally, were full-time remote. They were not associated with a hub office. But 99% of the time, when we would have ideation sessions or strategy or planning sessions, those of us in a US time zone would physically get together in a conference room. If somebody couldn’t be in that conference room, they could be on the call, but they wouldn’t really collaborate and participate. We would use whiteboards, and the very act of stepping up and writing scribbles down on the whiteboard is an exclusive in-room experience. If you’re not in that room while it’s happening, you can look at those whiteboards afterwards and they’re unintelligible. If you’re listening in or you’re even viewing that conversation from a camera in the room, you can’t understand those whiteboard scribblings.

In 2023, we’re looking at fully 60% to 80% of most knowledge workers, at least at some point every week, working remotely. We’re never all going to be back in that room. Therefore, the biggest request I get as a CIO — and it’s usually from senior executives — is related to that: ‘Ideation has stopped; innovation is going to grind to a halt because we can’t all sit in this room and whiteboard together.’

I have a different point of view. I think that perhaps if we can find a way to ideate in a hybrid mode or asynchronously, then we can suddenly take advantage of that 30% of our employee population whom we used to not engage. Now we can have 100% participation.

What are some of the ways you’re doing that?

Asynchronous work requires a steady-state set of content that people can interact with. It requires writing, for lack of a better term. It requires expressing ideas in a context that transcends space and time. And then, of course, not everybody likes to read, not everybody speaks the same language, so we also need tooling that makes recordings and that creates transcripts of those recordings, so that over the course of 24 hours, a global team that might be living in 15 different time zones and 30 different countries can all take part in contributing to a conversation.

We are using tooling that creates persistent ways of communicating so that, even if you’re not in the room where it happens, you can still understand what happened, have a voice in what happens in the future, and make your mark. There are other tools and ideas as well. Nutanix’s Head of Design, Satish Ramachandran, talks about the need to make organizational changes to create ecosystems of collaboration around a time zone radius, so that we treat our global workers more respectfully.

Back in the day when we would have critical meetings in the US time zone, we had another set of executives who were missing dinnertime or getting up at four in the morning to participate. Most of us learned when we were all working from home that that’s incredibly disrespectful to our families and ourselves. People don’t want to go back to that. And yet, those people are key contributors, so we need to find ways of ensuring that we’re respectful of all participants.

Parts three and four are about reducing context switching and focusing on automation and self-service. Why is that important? 

One thing that happens when you are working in multiple modes is that the work itself can become complex and the technologies that we use can become complex. The more that we personalize, the more we have people engaging in using technology from all different contexts — this creates the need to do a little bit of everything.

The question becomes: How can we deal with the complexity of a work environment that’s inclusive of consumer tech and public internet and yet also must be very performant in physical offices and needs to happen across time zones and SaaS applications and on-premises data centers and all of those things? It’s overwhelming even to talk about it!

When we have great complexity and high volumes, those are wonderful times to automate, to take those high-volume tasks, those complex tasks, break them down into components and hand them off to the machine. It’s the same principle behind assembly lines. It’s setting up employees to succeed using the right mix of technologies, processes, and methodologies.

The fifth part explores consumer technology experiences for hybrid work. How do companies benefit by integrating consumer technology into the hybrid work system?

I think one of the things we miss as employers is that over the last 15 years or so, technology has become fun. I’m a huge gamer. I love the art and the science and the capability and the interaction design that’s grown up around that space. I’m a huge proponent of mobile devices. All of these things blend some serious technology, but also with serious fun. There are all kinds of interactions that are available that are just super cool. So why do we have to be so 1980s and sad and serious in the workplace?

If we brought our sense of engagement and our sense of fun and our sense of pleasure in using those technologies to work, what could we achieve, particularly if we’re working in a company that’s making products for other human beings? There’s no rule against me sitting here in my gaming chair, using one of my gaming computers, to do work. I’m even curating my own visual experience. I have this really cool streamer camera that lets me show up beautifully. Even using that consumer tech to curate my appearance is one of the things that’s available to me, so why not have a little fun as I’m working? Why wouldn’t we enable our employees to be comfortable and feel good about themselves and how they’re showing up professionally?

There are multiple studies that show a direct correlation between employee happiness and employee productivity. In fact, many studies show that employees are about 15% more productive when they report their mood as being happy versus their mood as being sad. So why not? Why not have happier employees by using technology to give them the experiences that they enjoy, even while they’re working?

For more from Pfeiffer on the changing nature of work and her passion for developing the human side of technology, tune in to the Tech Whisperers podcast.

Collaboration Software, IT Leadership, Staff Management

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Data is critical to success for universities. Data provides insights that support the overall strategy of the university. It can also help with specific use cases: from understanding where to invest resources and discovering new ways to engage pupils, to measuring academic outcomes and boosting student performance. Data also lies at the heart of creating a secure, Trusted Research Environment to accelerate and improve research.

Yet most universities struggle to collect, analyse, and activate their data resources. There are many reasons why.

For a start, data is often siloed according to the departments or functions it relates to. That means the various “dots” that join these datasets are missed, along with any potentially valuable insights.

This has not been helped by the fact that universities have traditionally lagged the private sector in terms of cloud adoption, a key technology enabler for effective data storage and analysis. One thing holding universities back has been a reluctance to move away from traditional buying models. Long-term CapEx agreements have helped universities manage costs, but such models are inflexible. In the age of the cloud, what’s needed is a more agile OpEx-based approach that enables universities to upgrade their data infrastructure as and when required.

Finally, the skills gap remains a challenge to the better use of data. Eighty-five percent of education leaders identify data skills as important to their organisation, but they currently lack 19% of skilled professionals required to meet their needs.

How can universities overcome these barriers? The first step is to put in place a robust data strategy. Each strategy will be different according to the unique needs of the university, but at a minimum it should include the following:

Evaluation of current data estate to understand pinch points and siloes so these can start to be tackled.Alignment of organisation strategy with technical requirementsEvaluation of the cloud market and cloud adoption roadmap to enable data transformation and agile, integrated data use.Comprehensive upskilling programme to overcome data skills gaps.

As universities embark on this journey, finding the right partner will be critical. One option is to team up with a company like SoftwareONE, which has extensive experience in enabling data strategies for large organisations.

Significantly, SoftwareONE is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Consulting Partner, which means it can bring to bear the capabilities of one of the world’s leading cloud platforms. SoftwareONE adds value by optimising and automating AWS infrastructure as code, which makes it faster and less expensive for universities to get their cloud data programmes up and running. The company also offers a rapid, cost-effective, and secure path to building trusted cloud-based research environments. 

What’s more, partners like SoftwareONE can help address the skills challenge, and not only through automation. SoftwareONE helps to upskill IT teams at universities and provides a full infrastructure as a managed service. Whatever your organisation’s level of comfort with the cloud, SoftwareONE can help you leverage cloud-based data tools with ease.

For more information about how SoftwareONE can help build your data strategy click here.

Education and Training Software, Education Industry

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Cybersecurity breaches can result in millions of dollars in losses for global enterprises and they can even represent an existential threat for smaller companies. For boards of directors not to get seriously involved in protecting the information assets of their organizations is not just risky — it’s negligent.

Boards need to be on top of the latest threats and vulnerabilities their companies might be facing, and they need to ensure that cybersecurity programs are getting the funding, resources and support they need.

Lack of cybersecurity oversight

In recent years boards have become much more engaged in security-related issues, thanks in large part to high-profile data breaches and other incidents that brought home the real dangers of having insufficient security. But much work remains to be done. The fact is, at many organizations board oversight of cybersecurity is unacceptable.

Research has shown that many boards are not prepared to deal with a cyberattack, with no plans or strategies in place for cybersecurity response. Few have a board-level cybersecurity committee in place.

More CIOs are joining boards

On a positive note, more technology leaders including CIOs are being named to boards, and that might soon extend to security executives as well. Earlier this year the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed amendments to its rules to enhance and standardize disclosures regarding cybersecurity risk management, strategy, governance, and incident reporting by public companies.

This includes requirements for public companies to report any board member’s cybersecurity expertise, reflecting a growing understanding that the disclosure of cybersecurity expertise on boards is important when potential investors consider investment opportunities and shareholders elect directors. This could lead to more CISOs and other security leaders being named to boards.

Greater involvement of IT and security executives on boards is a favorable development in terms of better protecting information resources. But in general, boards need to become savvier when it comes to cybersecurity and be prepared to take the proper actions.

Asking the right questions

The best way to gain knowledge about security is to ask the right questions. One of the most important queries is which IT assets the organization is securing? Knowing the answer to this requires having the ability to monitor the organization’s endpoints at any time, identify which systems are connecting to the corporate network, determine which software is running on devices, etc…

Deploying reliable asset discovery and inventory systems is a key part of gaining a high level of visibility to ensure the assets are secure.

Another important question to ask is how is the organization protecting its most vital resources? This might include financial data, customer records, source code for key products, encryption keys and other security tools, and other assets.

Not all data is equal from a security, privacy and regulatory perspective, and board members need to fully understand the controls in place to secure access to this and other highly sensitive data. Part of the process for safeguarding the most vital resources within the organization is managing access to these assets, so boards should be up to speed on what kinds of access controls are in place.

Board members also need to ask about which entities pose the greatest security risks to the business at any point in time, so this is another key question to ask. The challenge here is that the threat vectors are constantly changing. But that doesn’t mean boards should settle for a generic response.

Accessing threats from the inside out

A good assessment of the threat landscape includes looking not just at external sources of attacks but within the organization itself. Many security incidents originate via employee negligence and other insider threats. So, a proper follow-up question would be to ask what kind of training programs and policies the company has in place to ensure that employees are practicing good security hygiene and know how to identify possible attacks such as phishing.

Part of analyzing the threat vector also includes inquiring about what the company looks like to attackers and how they might carry out attacks. This can help in determining whether the organization is adequately protected against a variety of known tactics and techniques employed by bad actors.

In addition, board members should ask IT and security executives about the level of confidence they have in the organization’s risk-mitigation strategy and its ability to quickly respond to an attack. This is a good way to determine whether the security program thinks it has adequate resources and support to meet cybersecurity needs, and what needs to be done to enhance security via specific investments.

It’s most effective when the executives come prepared with specific data about security shortfalls, such as the number of critical vulnerabilities the company has faced, how long it takes on average to remediate them, the number and extent of outages due to security issues, security skills gaps, etc.

In the event of an emergency

Finally, board members should ask what the board’s role should be in the event of a security incident. This includes the board’s role in determining whether to pay a ransom following a ransomware attack, how

board members will communicate with each other if corporate networks are down, or how they will handle public relations after a breach, for example.

It has never been more important for boards to take a proactive, vigilant approach to cybersecurity at their organizations. Cyberattacks such as ransomware and distributed denial of service are not to be taken lightly in today’s digital business environment where an outage of even a few hours can be extremely costly.

Boards that are well informed about the latest security threats, vulnerabilities, solutions and strategies will be best equipped to help their organizations protect their valuable data resources as well as the devices, systems and networks that keep business processes running every day.

Want to learn more? Check out this Cybersecurity Readiness Checklist for Board Members.

Risk Management

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Cybersecurity breaches can result in millions of dollars in losses for global enterprises and they can even represent an existential threat for smaller companies. For boards of directors not to get seriously involved in protecting the information assets of their organizations is not just risky — it’s negligent.

Boards need to be on top of the latest threats and vulnerabilities their companies might be facing, and they need to ensure that cybersecurity programs are getting the funding, resources and support they need.

Lack of cybersecurity oversight

In recent years boards have become much more engaged in security-related issues, thanks in large part to high-profile data breaches and other incidents that brought home the real dangers of having insufficient security. But much work remains to be done. The fact is, at many organizations board oversight of cybersecurity is unacceptable.

Research has shown that many boards are not prepared to deal with a cyberattack, with no plans or strategies in place for cybersecurity response. Few have a board-level cybersecurity committee in place.

More CIOs are joining boards

On a positive note, more technology leaders including CIOs are being named to boards, and that might soon extend to security executives as well. Earlier this year the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed amendments to its rules to enhance and standardize disclosures regarding cybersecurity risk management, strategy, governance, and incident reporting by public companies.

This includes requirements for public companies to report any board member’s cybersecurity expertise, reflecting a growing understanding that the disclosure of cybersecurity expertise on boards is important when potential investors consider investment opportunities and shareholders elect directors. This could lead to more CISOs and other security leaders being named to boards.

Greater involvement of IT and security executives on boards is a favorable development in terms of better protecting information resources. But in general, boards need to become savvier when it comes to cybersecurity and be prepared to take the proper actions.

Asking the right questions

The best way to gain knowledge about security is to ask the right questions. One of the most important queries is which IT assets the organization is securing? Knowing the answer to this requires having the ability to monitor the organization’s endpoints at any time, identify which systems are connecting to the corporate network, determine which software is running on devices, etc…

Deploying reliable asset discovery and inventory systems is a key part of gaining a high level of visibility to ensure the assets are secure.

Another important question to ask is how is the organization protecting its most vital resources? This might include financial data, customer records, source code for key products, encryption keys and other security tools, and other assets.

Not all data is equal from a security, privacy and regulatory perspective, and board members need to fully understand the controls in place to secure access to this and other highly sensitive data. Part of the process for safeguarding the most vital resources within the organization is managing access to these assets, so boards should be up to speed on what kinds of access controls are in place.

Board members also need to ask about which entities pose the greatest security risks to the business at any point in time, so this is another key question to ask. The challenge here is that the threat vectors are constantly changing. But that doesn’t mean boards should settle for a generic response.

Accessing threats from the inside out

A good assessment of the threat landscape includes looking not just at external sources of attacks but within the organization itself. Many security incidents originate via employee negligence and other insider threats. So, a proper follow-up question would be to ask what kind of training programs and policies the company has in place to ensure that employees are practicing good security hygiene and know how to identify possible attacks such as phishing.

Part of analyzing the threat vector also includes inquiring about what the company looks like to attackers and how they might carry out attacks. This can help in determining whether the organization is adequately protected against a variety of known tactics and techniques employed by bad actors.

In addition, board members should ask IT and security executives about the level of confidence they have in the organization’s risk-mitigation strategy and its ability to quickly respond to an attack. This is a good way to determine whether the security program thinks it has adequate resources and support to meet cybersecurity needs, and what needs to be done to enhance security via specific investments.

It’s most effective when the executives come prepared with specific data about security shortfalls, such as the number of critical vulnerabilities the company has faced, how long it takes on average to remediate them, the number and extent of outages due to security issues, security skills gaps, etc.

In the event of an emergency

Finally, board members should ask what the board’s role should be in the event of a security incident. This includes the board’s role in determining whether to pay a ransom following a ransomware attack, how

board members will communicate with each other if corporate networks are down, or how they will handle public relations after a breach, for example.

It has never been more important for boards to take a proactive, vigilant approach to cybersecurity at their organizations. Cyberattacks such as ransomware and distributed denial of service are not to be taken lightly in today’s digital business environment where an outage of even a few hours can be extremely costly.

Boards that are well informed about the latest security threats, vulnerabilities, solutions and strategies will be best equipped to help their organizations protect their valuable data resources as well as the devices, systems and networks that keep business processes running every day.

Want to learn more? Check out this Cybersecurity Readiness Checklist for Board Members.

Risk Management

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Education is changing. In part, this shift is driven by students, who increasingly demand virtual and hybrid learning experiences that better match the ways they like to consume content at home. Meanwhile, virtual education has become an essential element of resilience for educational institutions by ensuring that students don’t fall behind during closures.

In the schools and universities of tomorrow, hybrid and virtual learning will play a central role in enabling inclusive education that’s focused on the unique needs of individual students and better able to drive engagement at all levels. As a result, student outcomes will likely improve. Evidence from corporate training programmes suggest that this could be the case, demonstrating that virtual learning boosts retention rates by 25% to 60% compared to 8% to 10% using traditional methods.

However, as schools and universities make the move to virtual and hybrid learning, many are encountering barriers that are slowing progress considerably.

The key challenge is one of complexity. The average number of edtech tools in schools is over 1,400, and IT teams will likely struggle to ensure the efficacy of such a large number of systems.  There are also questions around the impact on students. With no easy way to monitor student engagement there is no clear path to optimising virtual and hybrid experiences. Similarly, a lack of necessary features and capabilities in many of the tools, such as the ability to combine live, real-time, and video functionality,  mean that institutions can struggle to offer a range of learning experiences, necessary if they’re to tailor virtual learning to the needs of different students. 

Overcoming these barriers is crucial for educators, for the simple reason that doing so unlocks a range of benefits. For one, the curriculum is extended to any location, and schools can benefit from a talent pool of educators that includes anywhere with a good broadband connection. Virtual and hybrid learning creates both global and remote learning and delivers accessibility and localisation for learners.

Of course, there are still some people for whom broadband access is still a problem. But if this gap is closed, then the approach unlocks a 24/7 model for learning for all, where content is always available to students, and they can learn in a self-paced asynchronous manner. Additionally, virtual and hybrid learning can support a range of content formats to support self-serve learners, such as video on demand (VoD). This is a much more tailored approach based on providing personalised learning journeys for students. And of course, virtual experiences are available regardless of whether schools and universities are open or not, helping to build resilience.

Thanks to the cloud, the barriers currently holding institutions back can be overcome. Kaltura’s Video Experience Cloud for Education is a case in point. Kaltura is a cloud company focused on providing compelling video capabilities to organisations.

Kaltura Video Cloud for Education powers real-time, live and video on-demand for online development and virtual learning. Its products include virtual classroom, LMS video, video portal, lecture capture, video messaging, virtual event platform, and other video solutions — all designed to create engaging, personalised, and accessible experiences during class and beyond.

Kaltura content, technology, and data is fully interoperable and seamlessly integrates with all major learning management systems, enabling schools to quickly deploy and get started in transforming learning for their students and staff. The Kaltura Video Cloud for Education helps drive interaction, build community, boost creativity, and improve learning outcomes

Built on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud, Kaltura provides an elastic, reliable, performant, and secure platform that can enable schools and universities to accelerate their move to virtual and hybrid learning. 

For more information on how to use video to drive student engagement online click here to discover Kaltura’s Video Cloud Experience.

Education and Training Software, Hybrid Cloud, Virtualization

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

The digital transformation bandwagon is a crowded one, with enterprises of all kinds heeding the call to modernize. The pace has only quickened in a post-pandemic age of enhanced digital collaboration and remote work. Nonetheless, 70% of digital transformation projects fall short of their goals, as organizations struggle to implement complex new technologies across the enterprise.

Fortunately, businesses can leverage AI and automation to better manage the speed, scale, and complexity of the changes that come with digital transformation. In particular, artificial intelligence for IT operations (or AIOps) platforms can be a game changer. AIOps solutions use machine learning to connect and contextualize operational data for decision support or even auto-resolution of issues. This simplifies and streamlines the transformation journey, especially as the enterprise scales up to larger and larger operations.

The benefits of automation and AIOps can only be realized, however, if companies choose solutions that put the power within reach – ones that package up the complexities and make AIOps accessible to users. And even then, teams must decide which business challenges to target with these solutions.  Let’s take a closer look at how to navigate these decisions about the solutions and use cases that can best leverage AI for maximum impact in the digital transformation journey.

Finding the right automation approach

Thousands of organizations in every part of the world see the advantages of AI-driven applications to streamline their IT and business operations. A “machine-first” approach frees staff from large portions of tedious, manual tasks while reducing risk and boosting output.

AIOps for decision support and automated issue resolution in the IT department can further add to the value derived from AI in an organization’s digital transformation.

Yet conversations with customers and prospects invariably touch on a shared complaint: Enterprise leaders know AI is a powerful ally in the digital transformation journey, but the technology can seem overwhelming and takes too long to scope and shop for all the components.  They’re looking for vendors to offer easier “on-ramps” to digital transformation. They want SaaS options and the availability of quick-install packages that feature just the functions that address a specific need or use case to leap into their intelligent automation journey.

Ultimately, a highly effective approach for leveraging AI in digital transformation involves so-called Out of the Box (OOTB) solutions that package up the complexity as pre-built knowledge that’s tailored for specific kinds of use cases that matter most to the organization.

Choosing the right use cases

Digital transformations are paradoxical in that you’re modernizing the whole organization over the course of time, but it’s impossible to “boil the ocean” and do it all at once. That’s why it’s so important to choose highly strategic and impactful use cases to get the ball rolling, demonstrate early wins, and then expand more broadly across the enterprise over time. 

OOTB solutions can help pare down the complexity. But it is just as important to choose the right use cases to apply such solutions. Even companies that know automation and AIOps are necessary to optimize and scale their systems can struggle with exactly where to apply them in the enterprise to reap the most value.

By way of a cheat sheet, here are four key areas that are ripe for transformation with AI, and where the value of AIOps solutions will shine through most clearly in the form of operational and revenue gains:

IT incident and event management – A robust AIOps solution can prevent outages and enhance event governance via predictive intelligence and autonomous event management. Once implemented, such a solution can render a 360° view of all alerts across all enterprise technology stacks – leveraging machine learning to remove unwanted event noise and autonomously resolve business-critical issues.Business health monitoring – A proactive AI-driven monitoring solution can manage the health of critical processes and business transactions, such as for the retail industry, for enhanced business continuity and revenue assurance. AI-powered diagnosis techniques can continually check the health of retail stores and e-commerce sites and automatically diagnose and resolve unhealthy components. Business SLA predictions – AI can be used to predict delays in business processes, give ahead-of-time notifications, and provide recommendations to prevent outages and Service Level Agreement (SLA) violations. Such a platform can be configured for automated monitoring, with timely anomaly detection and alerts across the entire workload ecosystem.IDoc management for SAP – Intermediate Document (IDoc) management breakdowns can slow progress in transferring data or information from SAP to other systems and vice versa. An AI platform with intelligent automation techniques can identify, prioritize, and then autonomously resolve issues across the entire IDoc landscape – thereby minimizing risk, optimizing supply chain performance, and enhancing business continuity. 

Conclusion

Organizations pursuing digital transformation are increasingly benefiting from enhanced AI-driven capabilities like AIOps that bring new levels of IT and business operations agility to advanced, multi-cloud environments.  As these options become more widespread, enterprises at all stages of the digital journey are learning the basic formula for maximizing the return on these technology investments: They’re solving the complexity problem with SaaS-based, pre-packaged solutions; and they’re becoming more strategic in selecting use cases ideally suited for AIOps and the power of machine learning.

To get up and running fast at any stage of your digital journey, visit Digitate to learn more.

Digital Transformation, IT Leadership

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , ,

IT organizations are increasingly shifting from project-based organizational structures to product-based methodologies, which involve cross-functional teams. These new building blocks of business include both tech and business pros, and they’re generally led by a product manager, who acts as the point person throughout the product’s lifecycle.

Product managers aren’t a new job category by any means, but this shift means that they’re newly prominent and important to many companies’ strategies. As a result, many corporate leaders who are used to hiring for IT now have to learn what makes a good product manager as they seek to fill these roles.

If that’s a position you find yourself in, don’t panic. We spoke to a host of experts, including product managers and those who supervise, hire, and mentor them, about what you should be looking for if you’re hiring a new PM for your team.

Seth Dobbs, CTO at IT services and consulting firm Bounteous, gives a pretty good thumbnail sketch of what an ideal product manager would look like. “This is absolutely a hybrid role and requires a good mix of skills,” he says. “They need to have enough knowledge in both technology and UX to at least be able to understand technical and experience constraints and tradeoffs, but need to be centered around business and customer value to drive decision-making around tradeoffs.”

Dobbs says he also looks for adaptability given the rapid changes that often evolve in a product-based environment, in addition to the ability to “meet deadlines, budgets, and the overall business strategy as they work through these tradeoffs,” he says. “They also need to have strong interpersonal skills and know how to lean into the experts to leverage their insights in forming a roadmap and plan, but also leverage their skills in getting the work done.”

That’s all easier said than done, of course, and in practice it’ll be hard to find a candidate who can cover all those bases. But our experts gave us some pretty good guidance on specific qualities to look for in a candidate.

Look for great communicators

Almost everyone we spoke to agreed that communications skills are a must when it comes to product management. “I can typically tell within the first 15 minutes of a phone call whether or not I’m going to hire someone,” says Cait Porte, who is chief marketing officer at software development company Digibee and has a background in product management. “The people who can articulate themselves well can translate business and technology wording and phrasing in a way my team will respond well to. Effective communicators can not only articulate themselves well, but serve as translators between business and technology, ensuring that the right solutions are at the top of the priority list.”

Tal Laufer, VP of products at cybersecurity firm Perimeter 81, explains that communication is a must-have in this job because of the role product managers play coordinating various stakeholders. “A product manager serves as a bridge in the organization. Many aspects of their work involve connecting and bridging different teams and disciplines, striving for the success of the entire company,” she says.

Seek out those who go beyond the data

Most businesses, especially in tech, pride themselves on making data-based decisions, and many of the team members a product manager will be working with will be very data-focused. That said, a product manager needs to both be able to understand what hard data is telling them — but also be comfortable making more intuitive and creative decisions. “Being technical is great — it allows you to understand the details — but it can also hold you back at times,” says Luke Gannon, product manager at graph database company Neo4j. “If you can only view things with your developer/computer scientist hat on, you run the risk of being closed off to new, creative ideas and suggestions.”

“Lots of folks are stressing metrics and being data-driven,” says Shane Quinlan, director of product management at software development firm Kion. “But in most cases, you’re starting with a dataset that’s not statistically significant — we’re not all building B2C at crazy scale. Yes, data is important. No, you don’t need to wait on perfect data to make a decision. Take chances. Make mistakes. Get messy.”

Emphasize measurable outcomes

Nothing helps attune a candidate’s intuition like experience. Holly Hester-Reilly, founder and CEO of H2R Product Science, a product management coaching and consulting firm, says that a candidate’s resume should show what they’ve done in the field — and what they’ve achieved. “The first thing a hiring manager should look for is measurable outcomes on their resume,” she says. “It’s not enough to say they’ve gone through the motions of product management. The hiring manager needs to know what tangible improvements were achieved.”

And while there may be a stereotype of fresh-faced product managers with little real-world experience, many companies will choose candidates with in-depth knowledge of the business domain in which they’ll be working, according to Stephanie White, director and head of product, technology, and professional at fintech recruiting company EC1. “Product managers who our clients hire have to be domain experts, understand how the product is being used commercially, as well as understand end-to-end product build technologically,” she says. “This is so that they can attend client meetings and sell the user experience, as an extension to the sales and propositions teams.”

Charles Paumelle, chief product officer and co-founder of Microshare, a smart building data solutions company, agrees. “Business and technical acumen is needed to answer the questions ‘Why will customers spend money on our product?’ and ‘How can our organization deliver a cost-effective solution to the customer’s needs?’” he says.

Look beyond certs and education

On the flipside, many of the experts we spoke to held formal training and education in less esteem. “Certifications are not the key to becoming a PM,” says Kion’s Quinlan. “I don’t care how many classes your previous employer paid $5,000 for, if you can’t explain simply how a website works, talk about a product that inspires you, and prioritize work with some level of objectivity, you won’t cut it.”

Digibee’s Porte goes even further than that. “Historically, jobs for product managers were reserved for MBA graduates,” she says. “As someone who both served as a hiring manager and obtained her MBA, I believe it shouldn’t be a qualification as a product manager.” It’s not that having such as degree is a bad thing per se, she says, but “people naturally think an MBA is enough of a qualification. In reality, it’s so much more than that.”

Understand your specific product-based needs

If you’re worried about finding someone who fits all of these bills perfectly, good news: In all probability you’re going to have more than one product manager at your company, and different specific roles and experience levels may be called for.

“In terms of experience, sometimes you are looking for someone who has experience in a certain market or with a certain technology, but other times you are ready to invest in someone who has the attitude and aptitude without the experience,” says Trisha Price, chief product officer at software development company Pendo. “There is no one-size-fits-all, because diverse teams with diverse experiences are what drive the best outcomes and create the best cultures.”

“There are different ‘flavors’ of PMs in practice,” says Kion’s Quinlan. “There are startup PMs, go-to-market PMs, scale PMs, design PMs, platform PMs, data PMs, and more. Someone who’s awesome at one flavor may not be the best at others (or there’ll be an adjustment period). Understanding your problem is key to hiring the right product manager. That’ll inform how you rate them on specific skills — more technical, more business-oriented, more design-oriented, a jack-of-all-trades.”

“I consider is a candidate’s ability and aspiration to be more of a ‘pioneer,’ a ‘settler’ or a ‘farmer,’” says Microshare’s Paumelle. “Product management ranges from pure innovation and R&D to create brand new products (the ‘pioneer’ heading into the unknown), to the productization of alpha products into a mainstream market (the ‘settler’ who establishes a community and builds the first structures), to the optimization of established products (the ‘farmer’ who increases the yield year after year).”

Tailor your interview process

You might be able to suss out some of this via resumes and email exchanges, but a lot of your hiring decision will come down to the interview and how the candidate does in the room (or on the Zoom, as the case may be). Our experts had plenty of advice on how to assess a candidate in an interview:

“Something we do as part of our interview process is a bit of role playing,” says Mona Ghadiri, director of product management at cybersecurity firm BlueVoyant. “Part of that is to see how they respond to role playing in general; putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is so critical as a product manager. It is also critical to see how they answer the questions and think on their feet when a problem statement is in front of them, because we are in front of customers and our peers presenting information frequently. We also ask about how they have prioritized work in the past. We’re not so much looking for them to rattle off frameworks like RICE [reach, impact, confidence, and effort] or WSJF [weighted shortest job first], but seeing if they were able to use those frameworks in a practical application.”“I ask for good, detailed examples of how they make tradeoffs against business need, user desire, and technical feasibility, and how they successfully navigate the different stakeholders to get to agreement,” says Bounteous’s Dobbs. “I’ll also typically ask them to walk me through a high-level strategy or roadmap for a product they have managed in the past. Overall, I try to understand how they think, how they have reacted in various scenarios, and how they drive things forward.”“Don’t show up unprepared,” says Kion’s Quinlan. “JIRA does not make a PM. I don’t care that you’re a wizard in JIRA. Show me you understand problems. Show me you’re thinking about ways of working. Show me you can lead a small team.”“No matter what level they are interviewing for, from entry level to senior director, I always look for a passion for solving problems for the customer,” says Dan Ciruli, VP of product management at software services provider D2iQ. “That is the number one thing I want out of a product manager. One of my favorite interview questions is, ‘Tell me about your favorite customer.’ Their answer tells me everything I need to know about how they work with customers, what inspires them, and whether or not they are truly problem solvers.”

Don’t lose sight of the intangibles

“I’m a big fan of finding the ‘raw talent’ that would make a great PM,” says Kion’s Quinlan. “For an associate product manager, the day-to-day skills can be taught, but you can’t fake or learn interest in the problem and empathy with your peers and users.” In the end, most of our experts agreed, it’s that interest in solving problems that’s the most important quality to find in a candidate for product manager.

“I went into product management coming from a hardware development background,” explains Perimeter 81’s Laufer. “Even as an engineer, I was always curious about the full picture. What do customers want? What is the market like? How can we build a better product for our customers? This curiosity and my love for working with people led me to a product focused role. I had to learn about a lot of subjects, all at once, but I had (and still have!) a blast doing so.”

She adds: “I love that part of the job, teaching young PMs how to do things right.” We hope that the product managers you find go down this same successful path.

Hiring, Project Management

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Huawei kicked off its Huawei Connect 2022 tour in Bangkok as it embarks on a world tour. The massive exhibition brings together ICT leaders, experts, and partners to unleash digital productivity, build stronger digital ecosystems, and promote the digital economy.

CIO Editor Andrea Benito visited the exhibition and sat down with Derek Hao, President of Global Marketing, Huawei Enterprise Business Group, on why the key to accelerating digital transformation is matching the right technologies to the right scenarios.

Asia Pacific is leading the shift toward digital-first business process and will generate more than 30% of revenue from digital products and services by 2023, IDC predicts.

It’s not hard to see why; the degree of uncertainty created by the pandemic around workforce availability, and customer preference shifting towards online has created a set of powerful catalysts for change.

Connecting technology with transformation

Huawei Connect 2022, themed “Unleash Digital”, kicked off in Bangkok in September. The key message from Huawei was that to ensure successful digital transformation, the right technology must be selected for each scenario.

During the second day keynote on Innovative Digital Infrastructure Accelerates Digital Transformation, Bob Chen, Vice President of Huawei Enterprise Business Group, emphasised the importance of finding the right technology for the right scenario, further citing how “data is at the core of digital transformation and Huawei provides full-stack products and product portfolios to support end-to-end data processing.”

Data the key to deeper digital transformation

During our conversation, Derek Hao, President of Global Marketing, Huawei Enterprise Business Group shared that while many businesses have implemented basic workflow in a digital equivalent, fewer have taken full advantage of the data available to them to inform their processes.

According to Hao, data is key to deeper transformation and a cornerstone of Huawei’s strategy to help customers more comprehensively transform their business processes.

“Huawei believes that the way to deepen digital transformation and drive continuous innovation of industries is to ‘find technologies for scenarios’, which requires combining technologies. Data is, after all, the core of digital transformation. That’s why intelligent industry upgrades must be based on data,” Hao observes.

“To meet the requirements of different industries and specific scenarios, Huawei provides customers with a wide range of full-stack products and portfolios, covering full-stack data ingestion, transmission, storage, computing, analysis, and more, which effectively support E2E data processing,” he says.

Sector-specific solutions on display

Huawei has developed initiatives to help specific industries digitise and will be in showcasing them at Huawei Connect 2022. In the Bangkok edition, the exhibition demonstrated digital transformation cases across different industry sectors, divided into three key zones:

Industrial Digital Transformation showcased innovative applications and industry solutions in different scenarios including Education, Ports, Roads, and Electricity.

Innovative Digital Infrastructure showcased Huawei’s latest innovations across data centres, campuses, digital sites, and WANs, four types of product portfolio solutions provided by Huawei.

HUAWEI CLOUD and Eco-partners showcased HUAWEI CLOUD’s successful practices in technological innovation and ecosystem development.

Understanding customers’ challenges

According to Huawei, one of its key focuses is to work closely with customers to first understand their unique challenges, which will allow its technology subject matter experts to match the right technology solutions for different scenarios.

Huawei recently worked closely with a municipal government in an Asia Pacific country to understand its problem space and identify a series of issues in its environment, including isolated IT systems, lack of virtualised management rules, inefficient O&M, and slow response.

This enabled Huawei to build a centralised cloud platform for the customer, leveraging the HUAWEI CLOUD stack, which migrates multiple services to one cloud and ensures resources can be requested by multiple departments at the same time, improving office efficiency.

Huawei was also able to deploy a multi-data centre disaster recovery and backup system to ensure service continuity.

The result has been much-improved efficiency and stability for the systems, allowing the government workforce to improve its productivity.

Go digital in the changing environment

To assist partners with solution design, Huawei has developed more than 100 scenario-based solutions with partners covering over 10 industries.

While the pandemic is slowly resolving, the world remains a very different place from what it was before COVID-19. A set of fundamental assumptions that underpinned global trade and economies have shifted. As the world charts the uncertain path ahead, one thing is certain: businesses will have to comprehensively transform their processes toward digital to survive and thrive.

“We look forward to working with more customers and partners to dive deep into scenarios and jointly innovate to upgrade infrastructure, unleash digital, and build a fully connected, intelligent world. In the future, we are still confident in the digital development of the Asia Pacific,” says Hao.

Register today to visit Huawei Connect 2022 Dubai

Digital Transformation

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , ,

Ryan Ding, President of Huawei Enterprise BG, says deeper digital transformation can help companies better deal with uncertainties.

From the rise of remote work to constant innovations in emerging technologies, the breakneck pace of global disruptions is spurring Asia Pacific’s digital growth. Take for instance the internet economy in Southeast Asia, which is expected to double to US$363 billion by 2025. This has created a clear opportunity for businesses, allowing them to ride on this wave of digitalization for seizing greater growth opportunities—as long as they play their cards right.

“The number of companies that have a digital transformation strategy was up 42% from two years ago,” says Ryan Ding, President of Huawei Enterprise BG, “Enterprise direct investment in digital transformation is set to grow at 16.5% per year over 2022 to 2024. Deeper digital transformation can help companies better deal with uncertainties.”

Bob Chen points out that data ingestion, transmission, storage, and analysis are key steps in digital transformation

Huawei

“We are entering the fourth industrial revolution, where menial office tasks will be carried out by machines. The huge potential of AI in labour will play a vital role in creating wealth,” says Bob Chen, Vice President of Huawei Enterprise BG,. “Tapping into this potential will be key for an enterprise to stay competitive and for a country to develop its digital economy.”

Deepening digital transformation through scenario-based approach

This is why as digitalization continues to sweep the region, industry leaders are looking to leverage cutting-edge technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G and the cloud, to bolster their digital transformation efforts. But this requires a marked shift away from the one-size-fits-all approach in adopting new innovations. Instead, businesses have to identify the most suitable technologies for specific scenarios, even if it means tapping on multiple solutions to address their precise needs. This is key to driving continuous, long-term innovation.

For Ryan Ding, identifying what these needs can lead to substantial results. “Using Huawei’s connectivity, and cloud technologies, we are working with our partners to drive ongoing industry innovation and multi-tech synergy, creating scenario-based solutions for diverse customer need. Together, we will create greater value and unleash the power of digital”

“In the past, power line inspectors had to walk dozens of kilometres a day with 10kg backpacks. At one power grid, their engineers inspect nearly one million kilometres of power lines each year, equivalent to walking 25 times around the earth,” he says. “To support their work, Huawei uses a combination of technologies, including solar-powered systems, optical ground wires, microwave, and Wi-Fi. Now engineers can inspect power lines remotely without leaving the office. With these technologies, power line inspection is 80 times faster, and the engineers can work more safely.”

At the same time, data remains the core of digital transformation, and the fuel behind any technology adoption strategy. If data is the new oil, then the 100 exabyte of data that’s being generated daily needs to be refined, before it can power any digitalization efforts. In other words, the data have to be collected, transmitted, stored, analysed, and processed before it’s usable. What’s more is that any improvement in this data processing cycle, no matter how small, can make great strides in helping businesses unlock new opportunities.

This philosophy is a cornerstone of Huawei’s approach to digital transformation. “Data is at the core of digital transformation, and data ingestion, transmission, storage, and analysis are key steps,” says Chen “Huawei provides full-stack data collection, transmission, storage, computing, and analysis solutions to effectively support end-to-end closed-loop data processing.”

Huawei provides full-stack data collection, transmission, storage, computing, and analysis solutions to effectively support end-to-end closed-loop data processing

Huawei

By combining both data and scenario-based technologies, traditional industries can also realize their digital transformation initiatives. One example is the marine logistics and global supply chain industries, which are now embracing Fifth Generation Fixed Network (F5G)-enabled, ship-to-shore cranes to free operators from tedious, manual tasks. Engineers in the power and energy industries, too, can inspect power lines without putting their lives on the line, while carrying out their responsibilities more efficiently than before. Then there are smart solutions, which can be applied in compute-intensive scenarios, such as in medical image processing and reading, as well as network traffic security in tunnelling protocols, that can enhance key features, such as predictive capabilities and deep learning techniques.

Finding the right technology for the right scenario makes the path forward for deeper digital transformation across multiple industries.

Huawei

Partnership is a key ingredient to growth

Digital technology may has redefined how industries operate, but the journey of digital growth isn’t meant to be embarked alone. Instead, partnerships are crucial to building a collaborative ecosystem that thrives on shared success, with businesses able to tap on a diversity of services at their disposal.

To better support businesses, Huawei is working with their partners to build three capabilities: consulting and planning around digital transformation, product and portfolio expertise, and solution development. “Huawei offers support to our partners on enablement, platforms, funding, and talent. Over the next three years, we will invest US$300 million to support our partners and train more talent through our ICT Academies and Huawei Authorized Learning Partners,” says Ding.

Enabling new business models through data

More than just technical innovation, digital technologies have the capacity to unlock the hidden potential for organizations across any industry. This can lead to growth across several aspects of their business, be it improved employee confidence or greater customer satisfaction. Thus by examining the unique requirements of their most complex scenarios and processes, businesses can discover the right solution against today’s rapidly changing disruptions.

These topics and more will be discussed at Huawei Connect 2022. Under the theme of “Unleash Digital”, the annual event has taken place in Bangkok on September 19, and will head to three more cities in Dubai, Paris, and Shenzhen. Several ICT products, portfolios, and solutions designed to address a variety of industry scenarios will be introduced. Through a series of summits, broadcasts and exhibitions, there will be previews of new, ground-breaking innovations, as well as best practices and results from our work with customers and partners around the world.

“Deeper digital transformation will help companies better adapt to an ever-changing world. Huawei is working closely with our partners to find the right technology for the right scenario,” says Ryan Ding, “we will support customers in furthering their digital transformation and unleash the power of digital.”

Find out more about Huawei Connect 2022 here.

Digital Transformation