Business Review Europe magazine - June 2017

Ju ne 2017

www.businessrevieweurope.eu

Building a

GREENER GATWICK

TALKING WASTE WITH GATWICK AIRPORT SUSTAINABILITY MANAGER RACHEL THOMPSON

DATA IS THE NEW OIL: AN INTERVIEW WITH DAIMLER CIO JAN BRECHT

METRO: BEYOND CASH AND CARRY

HOW LIFI WILL TRANSFORM THE WAY WE COMMUNICATE

Symposium 2017 Bright Lights, Big Ideas and You. Uptime Institute Certifies the World’s Digital Foundation for Business.

Join Us!

September 18 The Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada

EDITOR’S COMMENT

DEALING IN DATA DATA IS THE new currency impacting everybody’s lives. It is a fuel that is driving businesses in all sectors, from technical diagnoses to targeted marketing campaigns and customer communication.

Powering all of this one day could be LiFi, a technology capable of unlocking IoT, driving Industry 4.0 and enabling 5G communications among other applications. Harald Haas of the University of Edinburgh talks about the institution’s LiFi Research and Development Centre, which is exploring how the WiFi and lighting industry could prove valuable partners.

I was also fortunate enough to speak to Daimler CIO Jan Brecht, who tells me why data is the new oil.

Our cover story this month centres on sustainability.

I spoke with Rachel Thompson, Sustainability Manager at Gatwick Airport about how it is using waste to heat and power buildings.

Our other exclusive insights this month come in the form of interviews with Hydro66 and wholesale expert METRO. As ever join the debate @BizReviewEurope

Enjoy the issue!

Tom Wadlow Editor tom.wadlow@bizclikmedia.com

F E AT U R E S

Building a

GREENER GATWICK

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PROFILE CIO FOCUS

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Data is the

new oil 4

June 2017

TECHNOLOGY

How LiFi will transform the way we communicate

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LIST

TOP 10 TALLEST BUILDINGS IN EUROPE

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C O M PA N Y P R O F I L ES

Hydro66

TECHNOLOGY

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72

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SAP

Enterprise Application Software Provider

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METRO Cash & Carry SUPPLY CHAIN

Assuta Medical Centers Healthcare

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TECHFOR BRITAIN CONFERENCE

exploring technology impact in business with...

June 9th, Stamford Bridge, London The Tech for Britain conference will welcome some serious tech talent from across the UK & Europe for a day of keynotes, presentations, panel discussions and networking.

Join us and hear from Chief Technology Officers, Chief Information Officers, Heads of Technology from BBC, Facebook, NHS & so many more

use code euro20 & save 20% www.techforbritain.co.uk/euro

PROFILE

Building a

GREENER GATWICK W r i t t e n b y : TO M WA D LO W

Rachel Thompson is in charge of sustainability at London’s secondbusiest airport. With a bid to become the UK’s most sustainable, we find out how new waste management facilities can help this to happen

PROFILE “MY JOB IS to drive and monitor the airport’s progress toward its publicly stated aim of becoming the UK’s most sustainable airport and one of the greenest in the world,” declares Rachel Thompson, Sustainability Manager at London Gatwick.

No mean task – airports are notorious consumers of resources and are regularly in the public eye regarding issues such as noise and air pollution.

It is also no secret that Gatwick is at loggerheads with the UK Government and rival Heathrow in what has become a long-running second runway saga.

However, second runway or not, Thompson is in charge of ensuring current and future operations meet the highest sustainable standards, set out in 10 key principles to achieve by 2020.

A CATEGORY 1 CONUNDRUM One of these targets revolves around waste.

“Gatwick currently generates around 10,500 tonnes of waste each year,” says Thompson. “Approximately 20 percent of this is Category 1 waste and the new plant can process around 10 tonnes of it a day.”

Thompson is referring to a new waste management system that has been installed by DHL Supply Chain, able to convert waste from on-flight food and packaging into energy. “100 percent of the energy goes back into the facility,” she continues, “with 60-70 percent used to dry the waste for the next day and the remaining heating the site. Designs are also currently being drawn 10

June 2017

B U I L D I N G A G R E E N E R G AT W I C K

PROFILE up for additional energy generated to heat the North Terminal building.

In total the new plant can generate 1MW of renewable energy a day, and we estimate that every day the plant runs, it saves Gatwick over £1,000 in energy costs.”

A change in regulation has allowed category 1 waste to be processed onsite, where beforehand it had to be handled away from airports in order to prevent any spread of infectious material.

Thompson adds: “Gatwick was keen to find a better solution to this problem and worked closely with DHL to work through the complex regulations that apply to the disposal of category 1 waste. The advantages of managing our waste onsite are

“The new plant can generate 1MW of renewable energy a day, and we estimate that every day the plant runs, it saves Gatwick over £1000 in energy costs” 12

June 2017

numerous and go beyond energy generation. Water recovered from drying is used to clean bins, saving two million litres of water, and ash recovered from the boiler can be used to make low carbon concrete.”

Processing waste onsite will also result in 50 percent fewer lorry journeys to external waste plants, thereby reducing CO2 emissions. The plant also includes a waste sorting centre in a bid to maximise recycling rates – it is predicted that Gatwick will achieve an 85 percent rate by 2020, well above its stated 2020 target and a significant improvement on the current 50 percent rate.

The amount of category 1 waste arriving at the new facility is also being cut down thanks to a new labelling system deployed with airline cleaning companies. This has allowed cleaning staff to identify EU/CAT 3 waste which otherwise would have been sent as category 1. “Although a simple process, this took nearly a year of trails before gaining approval from DEFRA and other relevant authorities,” Thompson states. “We believe we are the only airport in the UK to achieve this.”

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PROFILE

More than half of Gatwick flights use Airbus A320s

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B U I L D I N G A G R E E N E R G AT W I C K

BEYOND WASTE Cutting carbon is another area which has seen notable achievements over the past 18 months. “Last year we became one of only a handful of organisations to simultaneously hold triple certification to the Carbon Trust Standard for reducing carbon, water use and waste management,” Thompson explains.

“Gatwick Airport Ltd also hopes to be certified carbon neutral this spring.

A significant factor in achieving carbon neutrality is Gatwick’s purchase of 100 percent certified renewable electricity since 2013. We are also the first Airport in the world to have joined the RE100 coalition, a corporate leadership programme aiming to accelerate moves to a low carbon economy.”

In another UK first, Gatwick has also introduced an electric and hybrid taxi agreement, helping to cut emissions created by ferrying passengers from terminals to aircraft, and vice versa, by 75 percent. A 100 percent electric car sharing service is also on the cards.

A SOUND APPROACH When asked what some of the challenges of implementing sustainable projects at airports

are, Thompson highlights the issue of noise.

“We commissioned an industry leading review to alleviate problems local communities reported in relation to noise from arriving aircraft,” she explains. “One year on, eleven of 23 recommendations from have been completed.”

“To demonstrate the impact of just one: More than half of Gatwick flights use Airbus A320s but they make a whining noise on approach. Following the review, four of the five largest operators – accounting for 90 percent of A320s – expect to modify their entire fleets by end of 2017. Gatwick will also impose higher charges to A320s not modified from January 2018.”

This in an important marker laid down, for the amount of aircraft taking off and landing at Gatwick has increased markedly since 2010 - in the space of six years annual passenger numbers have increased from 31 to 43 million. Yet Gatwick’s environmental footprint today – for carbon, energy, water and waste – is broadly the same as in 2010, making this growth close to neutral environmentally. Come 2020, the numbers may look even more positive.

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GATWICK’S 10 2020 SUSTAINABILITY TARGETS

Air quality “Maintain current zero breaches of air quality limits”

Economy

Energy “At the core of our journey towardsasustainableGatwick we have created a 10 point sustainability plan – 10 issues and 10 years to achieve them.

20 percent reduction in energy (against 1990 baseline) and water consumption (against 2010 baseline)”

“Develop and fulfil our role as an economic driver of local, regionalandnationalsignificance”

Biodiversity Noise “Be consistently recognised as a best practice operator for noise management”

“Have an award winning approach to biodiversity through achieving a nationally recognised award for ecological awareness”

Waste “Generate no untreated waste to landfill and achieve a 70 percent waste recycling rate”

Water “Continually improve the quality of water leaving the airport. Achieve a 20 percent reduction in water consumptions (against 2010 baseline”

Community “Share the benefits of Gatwick'sgrowth,contributing to the social, environmental and educational development of our community”

Carbon footprint “Reduce our carbon emissions by 50 percent (Total known CO2 at a 1990 baseline vs 2020 scope 1 & 2 emissions). 25 percent of our energy to come from renewable sources”

Transport “Achieve 40 percent public transport mode share for air passengers and staff by the timetheairportreaches40mppa.

Identify feasible measures to achieve a stretch target of 45 percent public transport mode share once the 40 percent target at 40mppa has been achieved. Achieve a quality service rating of 4.5 (1 is lowest, 5 is the highest) for all surface access transport modes and facilities by the time the airport reaches 40mppa”

CIO FOCUS

Data is the

new oil For Daimler CIO Jan Brecht, information will soon become the company’s most valuable asset W r i t t e n b y : T o m Wa d l o w

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D ATA I S T H E N E W O I L

“IF I HAD to sum up our focus in one slogan that would be it,” says Jan Brecht, CIO at Daimler. That slogan – data is the new oil.

Brecht is witnessing change in the automotive industry that is unprecedented in terms of speed.

Having already spent the best part of two decades at the German car, truck and bus manufacturing giant, it is this tectonic shift in gears in the automotive tech space that brought him back to Daimler in November 2015; this after six years at Adidas.

“If you ever wanted to be in the car industry in IT the time do it is now,” he insists. “We are seeing more changes now than we have seen in the past 20 or 30 years combined.”

Daimler uses CASE (connected, autonomous, shared economy and electro mobility) to summarise and approach such changes. All four elements are disruptive in their own right, but the fact they are all occurring at once presents a huge opportunity for Daimler to diversify and lead from the front. For Brecht, this means utilising all of the company’s IT expertise and assets spread around the world. “We have more than 8,500 internal IT employees across all divisions, half of whom are in Germany,” he outlines.

“We also have IT teams in all the major markets we operate in, from New Zealand to Canada, and strategically we are building delivery hubs outside Germany in the likes of Turkey, Portugal and India.”

No longer a builder of cars Roughly two years ago a strategic decision was made to reposition Daimler as a ‘provider of mobility 21

CIO FOCUS services’. With origins of car building stretching back well over a century, Brecht points to future centred on mobility, driven by data.

Indeed, the company already offers car sharing services such as car2go and My Taxi/Halo, while moovel allows customers in the USA and Germany to optimise journeys via numerous forms of transportation, whether that means using other Daimler-backed services or public transport.

Data will also drive interaction with consumers when it comes to decisions on buying their own cars. Brecht explains: “There is a lot of opportunity in what I can ‘next best action’, which is much more than CRM and knowing someone’s address and birthday and sending a postcard. Rather, for each and every touch point we know what the next best action is for a customer.

“So if you’ve been on our website and configured a car, we want you to go to a dealership; if you’re at a dealership we want you to take a test drive and so forth. Or if you have a two-seater GT and have six kids, we could try to suggest and upsell larger cars. The data stream is the 22

June 2017

backbone which connects products and services to the customer.”

While customer and driver data is both numerous and lucrative, Brecht is aware of the caution required to preserve longstanding brand values around security and safety. Operating across numerous countries with varying stances towards data privacy adds in another complicating factor which, as Brecht says, makes harnessing data a bigger challenge legally than it is technically.

Connected cars Harvesting data from vehicles is less of a legal conundrum. While gathering car data for services such as real time traffic updates is nothing new, Brecht is looking at other ways to provide valuable information to drivers.

“You can also feedback data from things like wheel sensors,” he says. “Why is that important?

If, all of a sudden, you see quite a number of cars in particular area of one particular street that shows a lot of slippage, we know there is ice on the road. This information could be crucial for a driver who is half a mile away, and accidents can be prevented by warning people

D A T A I S T H EH E N AE D WL IONI E L

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CIO FOCUS

“The focus is not just to compete with the digital competitors we have in the car industry, but also the platform companies, especially if they are active in the mobility space�

D ATA I S T H E N E W O I L

early. This is just one example of many many use cases.”

This naturally led one to ask whether Daimler’s vehicles can, in essence, talk to vehicles made by other manufacturers.

“We’re in a consortium with both VW and BMW,” Brecht continues, “and the consortium acquired a company called HERE, which is the number one competitor to Google Maps and will be vital in using the data from cars in examples like ice on roads. We are integrating the map data with the sensor data so the car can literally look around the corner.”

Manufacturing maturity Software has also become an increasingly important lynch pin of a vehicle’s manufacturing process.

Brecht introduces what Daimler calls a ‘digital twin’, which is a digital representation of a car at all stages during its life, from design and manufacturing to being out on the road. “This is necessary because while metal and rubber may last 15 years without being changed, software can be upgraded multiple times a year,” he explains.

Other manufacturing advances

can be seen in the 3D printing space, something which Daimler has been utilising for spare parts for several years. While it may not displace other manufacturing processes, for Brecht it is a case of how far this can be taken. More exciting, however, is M2M communication via the Internet of Things.

Brecht cites one use case: “We are a very asset heavy industry, so predictive maintenance that signals potentials problems in advance can greatly increase our utilisation of equipment. Even improving uptime by two or three percentage points can make a big difference.” This has already proven successful for welding guns, a predictive maintenance system which has now been rolled out across the board.

Strengthening the core External partners account for roughly two thirds of Daimler’s IT work, and a major priority for Brecht is to strengthen internal competency with one overriding objective in mind – speed.

Through a project called ‘indirect to direct’, Brecht will oversee three key approaches. The first is a matter 25

CIO FOCUS of hiring more IT talent, especially in Germany, although this is becoming an increasing challenge as expertise is becoming scarcer in Central Europe. Second on Brecht’s list is to strengthen Daimler hubs in India, Turkey and Portugal, while the third element involves transforming the roles of 1,000 existing staff into more direct IT positions. This is all part of a three-year plan due for completion in 2019.

“This is trend I believe you will happening more and more,” Brecht comments. “We live in an industry that traditionally functioned in five to 10 year cycles, which is how long it takes to have a car engineered, tested and then on the road. If we turn our industry into a software industry these cycles become shorter and shorter – the multivendor, multi-layered sourcing approach that you find in many IT organisations just isn’t fast enough to respond in this new world.”

This is not to state that Daimler is looking to fundamentally alter the balance of outsourced and in-house IT functionality. “We will not be reversing that,” Brecht explains.

“Even slight changes to that ratio 26

June 2017

requires significant skills increases internally. The partners may look a little different than they used to – you need a network of agile, fast-moving partners which means you may be looking at using smaller vendors to build a system of mobility services.”

This stance reflects the priorities now evident in the upper echelons of Daimler senior management, who recognise the critical importance of technology in driving its wider business strategies.

Brecht continues: “When I returned to Daimler we asked the board of management a multiple choice question about what they want IT to deliver, with the options being speed, more functionality and cost reduction.

The unanimous answer was speed.

“The focus is not just to compete with the digital competitors we have in the car industry, but also the platform companies, especially if they are active in the mobility space. In terms of budget and headcount, IT is a massive part of the overall business strategy.”

An autonomous future?

With the shift from a vehicle builder to

D ATA I S T H E N E W O I L

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“The multivendor, multi-layered sourcing approach that you find in many IT organisations just isn’t fast enough to respond in this new world”

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D ATA I S T H E N E W O I L

mobility provider already well underway, Brecht has already made clear the importance of using data to fuel services such as car sharing.

But how far will the shift go? Can Brecht imagine a driverless world where nobody owns a vehicle?

“I can imagine this, yes,” he answers. “Do I think it will come anytime soon? Probably not. I don’t think there has been a more difficult time to predict the future than today. It will certainly go in that direction. How far and fast I don’t think anybody can say right now.”

According to Brecht, three barriers stand in the way of this becoming a reality. There are certainly some technical hurdles to overcome, although Brecht believes the legal obstacle may take longer to solve.

Puzzling questions remain, such as who or what takes responsibility for a vehicle’s actions, and whether some countries will be quicker to update statute than others.

“The most difficult

level of the challenge, however, is ethical,” Brecht states. This is especially the case when considering whether a human or a machine is responsible for certain decision making that could, ultimately, impact lives on the road.

Human errors in judgement that lead to serious incidents are, of course, tragic accidents. However, the picture becomes far more complex when it is a piece of software that has to make a life-changing call.

While for Brecht and Daimler a fully autonomous world of transport may be a long way off yet, the journey towards making data the lifeblood, or oil, of the company will continue to gather momentum.

Asked what we can expect to see in five years, the CIO concludes: “In hopefully less than five years’ time we will recognise that data is the most important asset of the company, and something we can monetise. Analysing this data is great, but shared and mobility services can generate profit streams from connected cars. I am confident that we will see this happen very soon, sooner than five years.”

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TECHNOLOGY

i F i L w Ho will m r o f s tran e w y a w the e t a c i com mun Could LiFi result in merging of the WiFi the lighting industry? and Haas of the UniversiHarald ty of Edinburgh explai ns

S HAR ALD HA A W r it t e n b y:

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TECHNOLOGY

LIFI IS A disruptive technology that is poised to impact a large number of industries. LiFi can unlock the Internet of Things (IoT), drive Industry 4.0 applications, enable ‘Light as a Service’ (LaaS) in the lighting industry, contribute to 5G and 6G cellular communications, enable new intelligent transport systems, enhance road safety when there are more and more driverless cars, create 34

June 2017

new cyber-secure wireless networks, enable new ways of health monitoring of aging societies, and offer new solutions to close the digital divide.

At the University of Edinburgh, the unique LiFi Research and Development Centre is developing high ‘Technical Readiness Level’ LiFi platforms that will accelerate the industrial uptake of LiFi technologies in all of these industrial sectors. This is

H O W L I F I W I L L T R A N S F O R M T H E W AY W E C O M M U N I C AT E

About Harald Haas Harald Haas is Professor of Mobile Communications in the University of Edinburgh's School of Engineering and Director of the LiFi Research and Development Centre. His main research interests are in optical wireless communications, hybrid optical wireless and RF communications, spatial modulation, and interference coordination in wireless networks. He is also co-founder and Interim Chief Executive Officer of pureLiFi Ltd.

“In 25 years from now, the LED lightbulb will serve thousands of applications and will be an integral part of the emerging smart cities, smart homes and the IoT, and LaaS will be a dominating theme”

achieved through strategic industrial partnerships and collaborations as well as licensing models of a rapidly growing patent portfolio.

The Centre will help seed the LiFi market by providing platforms that can be used to establish the commercial viability of novel LiFi technologies. It will catalyse an eco-system of unique LiFi technologies and applications. For example, I can already see an army of App developers for applications that run on future light bulbs.

Establishing the ‘foundations’ of LED as a viable communication source

13 years ago we started to look into alternative solutions to radio frequency (RF) communications for delivering wireless data. This curiosity driven research was motivated by the fact that the radio frequency spectrum is limited, and if wireless data services become very successful, which they have, it would be obvious that the radio frequency spectrum used for cellular communications would not be sufficient.

It has always been difficult to identify new RF spectrum as it is a heavily used 35

TECHNOLOGY resource for civil, but also military, radio astronomy and defence applications.

At the same time, white high brightness LEDs hit the market. These LEDs are semiconductor devices, which means that the light intensity could be changed very rapidly, a property needed if one would like to use them for high speed data communication.

Moreover, by recognising that the light spectrum is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, the same as the RF spectrum, we were intrigued to find out, what data transmission speeds can be achieved with LEDs. We pioneered ‘Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing’ (OFDM), a well-known technique for RF communications, for the use in visible light communications. OFDM has a number of disadvantages in RF communications, which we managed to turn into advantages when we applied it to LEDs given that the light spectrum is 1000 times larger than the entire RF spectrum (if the RF spectrum is the Earth, the light spectrum would be the sun).

This has enabled a breakthrough in achievable data rates with standard off-the-shelf LEDs. We started by demonstrating image 36

June 2017

transmission via desk lamps in 2006 (which has led to the nomination in a book authored by Nobel Laureate, Professor Haensch, “100 Produkte der Zukunf” (100 Products of the Future)), and later in 2011 the transmission of real-time videos from $3 LED lights at TED Global, where we coined ‘LiFi’ for the first time.

In our latest research we have shown that with special light sources it is possible to achieve 100 gbps.

This is about 15 times faster than the fasted Wi-Fi, called WiGig operating in the 60 GHz RF spectrum.

We have also created a spin-out company, pureLiFi Limited, to develop the first commercial LiFi wireless

“In the future, we will see a scenario where a mobile operator sells wireless access points and lights at the same time”

networking product based on the technology developed here at the University of Edinburgh. pureLiFi is the only company in the world that delivers true LiFi products. pureLiFi launched their third generation product, LiFi-X, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2016.

At the LiFi R&D Centre, we have also pioneered the use of solar cells as energy harvesting devices while at the same time acting as LiFi receivers capable of receiving data streams greater than 10 Mbps from a single panel. This technology could be used to mitigate the digital divide which is a major problem since it creates a barrier for these regions to participate in the rapidly growing data centric 21 century economies. The LiFi solar cell receiver technology was demonstrated for the first time in a TED Global 2015 talk.

LiFi’s significant potential in the years ahead

The potential of LiFi is massive, and it can have a catalytic effect for the merger of two major industries: the wireless communications industry, and the lighting industry.

LiFi has the potential to create an entire

new industry due to its transformative and catalytic effects in a large number of industries as outlined above.

Take ’smart cities’ as an example: First, the LED revolution causes radical changes in the lighting industry since the lifespan of an LED light bulb is now longer than 37

TECHNOLOGY

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H O W L I F I W I L L T R A N S F O R M T H E W AY W E C O M M U N I C AT E

the lifespan of a car. This means that old business models become invalid, and the industry is now going through fundamental changes similar to the photography industry when digital photography arrived.

This can be witnessed by the fact that Philips are selling their lighting business after 123 years.

Lights in the future will need to become smart sensing devices and high speed data communication devices, and they are probably not going to be replaced because they fail, but because there are new functions and applications that light will enable – this will be similar to what we experience with smartphone releases nowadays.

In fact, it is very likely that the lighting industry will go through developments similar to the mobile communications industry during the last 25 years. The first mobile phones served one purpose/application: mobile telephony. Now, smartphones serve thousands of applications.

The incandescent light bulb has served one application: lighting.

In 25 years from now, the LED lightbulb will serve thousands of applications and will be an

integral part of the emerging smart cities, smart homes and the IoT, and LaaS will be a dominating theme in the industry which will drive the new business models.

LaaS in combination with LiFi will, therefore, provide a business model driven ‘pull’ for the lighting industry to take market shares from what has traditionally been a wireless communications market.

Likewise, the wireless communications industry has the opportunity to enter the lighting market by offering products that will provide wireless connectivity through lights. The emerging IoT and 5G (and beyond) combined with LiFi will create a technology driven (since RF spectrum will not be sufficient) ‘push’ for this trend.

In the future, we will see a scenario where a mobile operator sells wireless access points and lights at the same time, while similarly, a traditional lighting company will become a wireless operator selling wireless connectivity and lights at the same time – essentially, both will be part of a new eco-system of a larger new single industry.

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MININGINVESTMENT 12 - 14 JUNE 2017

EUROPE

JUMEIRAH FRANKFURT, GERMANY

Where Miners, Investors and Service Providers Converge in Continental Europe Mining Investment Europe is a strategic mining

conference and exhibition for leaders of the mining, quarrying and construction materials industries, bringing together 250 attendees from 20 countries.

Ministers, mining companies, investors and service providers travel from all over Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas and Middle East for three days of partnering, networking and business matching in Frankfurt. As one of the world’s leading financial hub, Frankfurt is the ideal location to attract mining companies, investors and their partners from across the entire region.

At the conference, various topics such as key issues disrupting & innovating the mining sector, insights on the mining landscape, mining finance and business strategies will be discussed. Mining Investment Europe will bring in top notch business thought leaders to share their insights with the delegates. The conference will also provide plenty of networking opportunities through roundtable discussions and cocktail drinks reception.

Besides the conference, the exhibition also provides a great opportunity for expanding connections, launching new products and forging new business partnerships. With key buyers and industry leaders conveniently located under one roof, it is also an excellent branding platform.

This event has already attracted global sponsors, investor and ministerial speakers from Africa, Europe, Americas, Asia and Middle East.

Mining Investment Europe is organised by Spire Events (Singapore) and is part of the global Mining Investment Series. The full calendar of the latest global Mining Investment conferences can be found at www.spire-events.com.

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SNAPSHOT OF SPEAKERS

JAVIER CORDOVA Minister Ministry of Mining, Ecuador

Gold sponsor

ROBIN GRIFFITHS HARRY SANDSTROM DR KEITH WEINER Chief Technical Director CEO Strategist Mining Finland Monetary Metals, ECU Group, UK USA

Silver Sponsor

Bronze Sponsors

HE ARCH DARIUS ISHAKU

Executive Governor Taraba State, Nigeria

Spotlight Sponsors

Take Advantage of our Special Offer to Attend and Exhibit Today!

Contact Maureen Beatriz at +65 6717 6019 or maureen.beatriz@spire-events.com Follow us on social media @MiningInvmt

Mining Investment Events

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Mining Investment

Mining Investment Conferences

Spire Events

TOP 10

TOP 10 TALLEST BUILDINGS IN EUROPE W r i t t e n b y : T O M WA D L O W

Moscow dominates Europe’s skyline when it comes to tall structures. Although not up there with the likes of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Russian city is home to some enormous buildings all the same.

Seven of the top 10 tallest buildings in Europe are in Moscow, with another two in Istanbul. London is the only representative from the western half of the continent.

TOP 10

10 TRIUMPH PALACE Moscow, Russia (867 feet)

9 NABEREZHNAYA TOWER

Moscow, Russia (881 feet) Translated as the ‘tower on the embankment’, this office complex is made up of three separate buildings connected by a basement. Block C is what gets this into the Top 10, with the site located in the International Business Centre in Moscow, in plot 10, and has office and retail space to let.

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June 2017

The tallest purpose apartment building in Europe, with 1,000 luxury residences. It is sometimes referred to as the Eighth Sister as its design is similar to the Seven Sisters skyscraper built in Moscow by Joseph Stalin in the 1950s. The 57-storey building was opened in 2006.

TA L L E S T B U I L D I N G S

8 METROPOL ISTANBUL

Istanbul, Turkey (919 feet) Designed by architect firm RMJM, the Metropol Istanbul development comprises three separate buildings – one residential, one office and one mixed use tower. RMJM won the contract in 2010, with construction commencing in the following year.

6 CITY OF CAPITALS

Moscow, Russia (990 feet)

The City of Capitals opened in 2009 and houses twin skyscrapers, the tallest of which is the Moscow Tower which sits next to the slightly shorter St Petersburg Tower. The top floors are mostly occupied by an entertainment complex and office suites and luxury apartments. The base floors comprise a fitness centre, shops, restaurants and conference facilities.

7 SKYLAND

ISTANBUL

Istanbul, Turkey (962 feet) Skyland Istanbul consists of three towers that were designed by Peter Vaughan of Broadway Malyan. The developers boast the provision of luxury, smart technologies and comfort in all details with social amenities such as fitness, spa and wellness centres also a feature.

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TOP 10

4 THE SHARD

London, UK (1,016 feet) Sat above London Bridge train station, The Shard was opened to the public in 2013 and has 72 habitable floors. The building has 44 elevators and was designed by Italian Renzo Piano, replacing the Southwark Towers office block from 1975. The Shangri-La Hotel takes up floors 3452, while Al Jazeera occupies offices on floor 16. The contract cost of the project came in at ÂŁ435 million.

5 EURASIA TOWER Moscow, Russia (1,013 feet)

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One of the highlights to this recentlycompleted structure is the elevator to be found on the outside, offering visitors stunning views of the entire city. A combination of classical and modern designs, the Eurasia Tower will comprise of offices, apartments, a hotel and other entertainment facilities. More than 1,000 cars will be able to park on the bottom.

HEADLINE

3 MERCURY CITY TOWER

Moscow, Russia (1,112 feet) In November 2012, the Mercury City Tower surpassed the height of The Shard and has 75 floors with a further five below ground.

It is a mixture of residential and commercial space. A remarkable feature of this building is its covering in copper-coloured cladding – a design feature which covers more than half of the structure.

Rasen Construction finished the building last year, which is located in the Moscow International Business Centre alongside the Naberezhnaya Tower. It will shortly be surpassed by two other towers in the city, which are set for completion and opening imminently.

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TOP 10

2 OKO: SOUTH TOWER

Moscow, Russia (1,162 feet) Owned by Capital Group, the OKO is located in the Moscow International Business Centre having been designed by USA architect company Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The building took around four years to build, costing $1.2 billion and opening in 2015, offering apartments, offices and parking spaces.

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June 2017

1 FEDERATION

TOWER: EAST TOWER

Moscow, Russia (1,226 feet) The tallest building in Europe has finally been finished, having originally started construction way back in 2003. Following a prolonged period of downing tools, the project took off again in 2011 and finally finished last year. AEON Corporation built and owns the building, which was designed by Sergei Tchoban and Peter Schweger.

The two towers are 97 and 65 storeys high and will house hotels, apartments and offices – sky bridges will join the two components together.

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An award-winning colocation data center company built perfectly for the modern world Written by Stuart Hodge Produced by Danielle Harris

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HYDRO66 CEO ANNE GRAF EXPLAINS WHY THE WORLD’S FIRST 100 PERCENT HYDROELECTRIC DATA CENTER IS HAVING TO EXPAND TO KEEP UP WITH DEMAND FOLLOWING A HUGELY SUCCESSFUL FIRST YEAR OF BUSINESS

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he need for companies to store data is growing at an exponential rate and presents us with one of the most complex technological questions of the modern age, which is: how can we keep up with compute and storage demand as data grows by 30-50 percent every year?

Cost is also a massive consideration for corporate IT budgets as they struggle to cope with the growing financial burden of having to host data, whether that be on-premise or externally.

Hydro66 is the world’s first 100 percent hydroelectric data center and their claimed efficiency is not just a marketing gimmick – it is the very reason that the company is able to offer a solution to the market which provides exceptional value for money.

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TECHNOLOGY

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CEO Anne Graf explains exactly how Hydro66 is able to use its resilient green power model to benefit customers.

She says: “We offer colocation in quite a different way to traditional operators. In the past, these facilities have been built in large city centres, close to where lots of people are and where the power is really expensive. The reason for this was the hugely expensive cost of telecommunications.

However although telecoms costs are a mere fraction of what they were, datacenters continue to be built in city centers.

“Also they’ve essentially been designed in the way that was common to the time, in the 1990s and early part of this century. So what we’ve done is identify a much better way, and created a much more efficient design to provide a sustainable green colocation service to the market. Now we are saying to the colocation market “The Internet giants have worked it out, move data not power”.

“We’re providing a scale colocation

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solution that hasn’t been available before, one that more and more companies are seeing that they need to find. We’re helping IT budget holders cope with the growth of data, and at a price that makes sense for them and for our planet.”

The founding team for the Hydro66 venture is led by British entrepreneur David Rowe. He was the founder of Easynet, the world’s first B2B ISP, which grew to a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

That business was sold to Sky

TECHNOLOGY

“We’ve identified the optimum location, delivered a next-gen design and provided a truly sustainable colocation solution to the market”

and Rowe left Sky in 2013. That’s when he directed his team to begin working on this idea. Rowe saw the change that was happening with the growth of the Internet and, particularly, of data and the need for a solution to cater for that.

Graf explains: “David got a team together and along with Andy Long, the startup CEO, they went on a site selection mission around the world to work out where would be the best place to build the mostefficient kind of datacenter.

“They decided on the north of Sweden, where Facebook had recently built its first data center outside the US. It’s very close to a superabundance of hydropower and it’s in the middle of one of the world’s most reliable electric grids, what we refer to as the Nordic Battery.

“What that means is you’re able to get resilience by being connected to multiple grids and you do not need to build all the resilience onto your data center design. So you can have fewer

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diesel generators, and lead acid batteries because you have multiple connections to different regional grids and substations. This grid resilience helps our design to be very efficient from an architecture and capex perspective, and we then pass those savings onto our customers.”

The company has a team of nine staff who all occupy management positions and work in partnership with local companies to run the data center with a staff of around 25 required to keep it working 24/7.

Despite only opening at the start of last year, the success of Hydro66’s model has already been recognized by the industry, with the company beating the likes of Volta, Interxion and CenturyLink to the 2016 DCS Hosting/Colocation Supplier of the Year award.

What has surprised the team though, is just how quickly the company has been able to sell the space, with two-thirds of the existing capacity already taken up.

Importantly though, the current site has room to expand to seven times its current size, and phase two of the

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Anne Graf CEO Anne was born in the early part of the 1980s and has been fascinated with technology since getting her first computer when she was 10. After studying Marketing, EU Affairs, English and German at the International Business School, she spent the first seven years of her working life in London Her journey with Hydro66 started in 2014 when they came to the region to do site selection and during the investment and construction phase.

At that time, Anne was working for inward investment agency The Node Pole after deciding to make the move back to the region where she grew up. Anne passionately believes that the region’s robust power infrastructure can help companies to cope with the power and energy requirements of the age.

That desire made the opportunity of joining Hydro66 too good to pass up.

She was first employed as CCO in October last year, before taking over as CEO in February. Anne says she’s “very excited” by the challenge of cleaning the Internet’s infrastructure.

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YOUR LIFE BUSINESS. We are proud to have been chosen by Hydro66 to plan and build their new Datacenter in Boden. We have more than 40 years of experience in building within the arctic region. The result is a Datacenter that is unique in its design, sustainability and function. It is the world’s first datacenter with wooden superstructure. As a dynamic co-location center it can be adapted to any client’s needs and demands. Due to our climate, Swedish low energy costs and green building it is one of the most sustainable datacenter ever built. It is a reference leader for how datacenters should be built in the Nordics.

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development is already underway.

Graf said: “We are now at 65 percent of our capacity occupied.

What we built in the first phase is 1,000 square meters and 3.6 MW. Our plan is to build out the entire site incrementally. So in the first phase we built one office building and two data halls, which are each 500 square meters and connected by a central infrastructure corridor.

“Our 5 year business plan is to keep building out more data halls until we get to 14 in total. Then, depending

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2014

The year Hydro66 was founded

on the density, it should take us to 22 MW and we’re on a site with capacity for 45 MW. The initial structure though, is 14 data halls, so essentially 7,000 square meters, with 5,500 square meters available to clients.

“We are the first colocation data center operator to fully implement the European Code of Conduct on Data Center Efficiency, building capacity and resilience levels according to our clients application needs. So because we’ve sold twothirds of the existing capacity, we’ve started the preparation for the next stage of development which means an additional four data halls.

TECHNOLOGY

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“Obviously there are several stages to that development and it depends on exactly how our pipeline develops in terms of retail or wholesale demand. We have both of those types of customers. You have the ones who buy single racks or even 50 racks, on a per rack basis, and we also work with larger customers on developing bespoke data halls. They can have a data hall or halls to themselves, purpose built to their desired power density, resilience levels etc.”

So can customers expect to benefit from the extra capacity anytime soon?

Graf adds: “We’ve designed our facility to be modular and scalable – we will

continuously build new retail capacity to make sure we can deliver a large number of racks in a very short time.

Hydro66 are uniquely positioned to offer colocation on demand.

“For larger clients with wholesale needs, we’re working on the preparations now so there is much activity on the site today. By the end of the summer we’ll be able to deliver a bespoke hall, to order, in four months, which is an incredibly short timeline in our market.

“Market uptake has been a lot quicker than we expected but maybe the future is coming quicker than we all realize.”

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BEYOND “CASH AND CARRY” Written by Nye Longman Produced by Richard Durrant

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METRO CASH & CARRY

HOW METRO CASH & CARRY IS TRANSFORMING ITS OPERATIONAL MODEL TO DELIVER MORE FOR CUSTOMERS

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The customer is not the king anymore,” says Patrick Dittli, METRO Cash & Carry’s Global Director of Supply Chain Management. “They have evolved into the master of the universe, standing in the middle of a multidimensional fulfilment matrix. The customer can choose where they want to get the product from; there’s full transparency over the price and full transparency about availability.”

About two years ago, METRO Cash & Carry made the decision to introduce a new operating model. Deploying a new operating board, backed up by strategic focus on digital and technological innovation and , while implementing a proactive supply chain strategy,

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the company is unlocking value for the next generation of customers.

We drill down to the core of this transformation and speak to one of the men making it all happen.

TRANSFORMING OPERATIONS “The way the entire value chain has been built in the past is not configured anymore to meet the needs of the new environment,” Dittli says. “There are profound impacts on supply and value chains because we are sitting on physical assets built on the traditional way of fulfilling a traditional customer need up to the supplier.”

METRO Cash & Carry is a sales division of the METRO GROUP Wholesale and Food Specialist

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120k

Number of employees at METRO Cash & Carry

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METRO CASH & CARRY

Company (W&FS Co.). Headquartered in DĂźsseldorf, Germany, METRO GROUP W&FS Co. is a leading international player in wholesale and foodservice distribution. With its sales lines METRO Cash & Carry and Real as well as its other associated companies, METRO GROUP W&FS Co. operates in 35 countries and employs more than 150,000 people around the world. In 2015/16, METRO GROUP W&FS Co. achieved sales

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of around â‚Ź37 billion. The company provides custom solutions to meet the regional and international needs of its wholesale and retail customers.

Through its Metro and Makro, METRO Cash & Carry captures the global food and non-food wholesale market, offering products and services to customers ranging from small independent bakeries, to elite hotels and restaurants.

Eager to deepen its value offering

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“Eager to deepen its value offering to a rapidly evolving, segmented customer base, METRO Cash & Carry is transforming its operational mode”

to a rapidly evolving, segmented customer base, METRO Cash & Carry is transforming its operational model.

One key step on this ongoing journey has been increasing autonomy amongst individual countries. Dittli explains: “The value is created in the countries. The new operating model therefore gives more autonomy but also responsibility to the countries to realize these values. The mandate of the head office therefore changed

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Touching lives, improving life From beauty and health to home and beyond, P&G’s brands make every day just a little better for billions of consumers around the world. www.pg.com

Available at

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and consists of supporting the countries in delivering these values.

“They can define the strategy and are responsible and accountable to deliver that. Their local strategic focuses are the base and is the local strategy document that defines how we want to harvest and leverage the priories and values of the customers.”

The classical wholesale model continues to be METRO Cash & Carry’s backbone, he says, but the company is building up constantly its food delivery and services arm, “one of the biggest common denominators coming forward”.

METRO Cash & Carry is also re-examining how its distribution network is structured, particularly on the fulfilment side. By building dedicated fulfilment centres, the company is further improving its response times to customers through increased proximity. Alongside expanding its own assets, the company has recently acquired a couple of competent and leading food service distribution (FSD) companies, including one key food supplier of upmarket restaurants in the Far East.

Technology is also playing a critical role and data itself is being fully realised as a commodity.

“Money used to be the fuel,” Dittli explains. “This has been replaced by a new currency: data. Technology managed in an agile way has become the key decisive enabler.

Data has become the decisive element to make money or not, and technology is the key fundamental backbone to make that happen.”

Sustainable development Even before METRO Cash & Carry’s transformation, the company was well known for doing business sustainably, both when it comes to the environment and other businesses. Closer collaboration with suppliers has been central to this, with the aim of promoting a virtuous cycle. The company’s dedication has paid off, with Coca Cola or Procter & Gamble recognising METRO Cash & Carry’s efforts with a muchcoveted Supplier Excellence Award for Excellence in Collaboration. “The suppliers realise that how we respond to these needs is about to change.

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This is a win-win situation from us – we cannot do it on our own and need to get them on board,” Dittli adds.

The attention METRO Cash & Carry pays to environmental protection has positioned the company as a global leader in its industry. Notable aspects of its comprehensive CSR strategy include strong safeguards against slavery in the supply chain, FSC-certified packaging, and the use of sustainably farmed food. The

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use of a traceability app that enables customers to drill down to the fine details of food purchased in store, is one example among others It is little wonder that the METRO GROUP has been recognised, for the second year running, by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index as an “industry group leader” in the Food & Staples Retailing category.

“Once you buy a fresh fish in METRO stores in Germany, they have a bar

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code attached,” Dittli explains. “You can take your smartphone and scan that barcode to know where this fish comes from – you download the number and you can know the name of that boat that has caught the fish and where it was caught.”

Having demonstrated its ability to respond to changes in the market proactively, METRO Cash & Carry has laid the foundation for fundamental change that will bring benefits

for customers, partners, and the business itself. Backed up by its commitments to serve customers’ needs and protect the environment, the company is sure to lead its industry for the foreseeable future.

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DIGITALISATION DONE THE SAP WAY Written by Nell Walker Produced by Richard Durrant

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SAP, known industry-wide for its enterprise software capabilities, has evolved into a shining beacon of digitalisation. Darren Hunt and Laurence Leyden explain what this means for SAP’s vast global network of customers

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ummer in the corporate world means, among other things, an increase in events.

As businesses shop around for services, other organisations take the opportunity to not only showcase what they have to offer, but to educate. For SAP, that is the role of its Financial Services Forum.

This event, run by the multinational software giant, is now in its sixth year and has had a serious impact on the industry. Running between the 4th and 5th of July at Grange St Paul’s Hotel in London, it focusses on financial and insurances services, and on providing any and all information a customer might need to update its digital processes.

“There’s so much noise today around digital transformation, how important it is, what it is, and what it’s not,” says Laurence Leyden, General Manager, Financial Services,

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EMEA at SAP. “We host an industry debate where we examine what impact digitalisation has already had on the industry and what new, emerging opportunities it creates for our customers. Perhaps more importantly, we wanted to make digitalisation very real for our customers’ specific functions within their financial businesses.”

“The event is a person’s or organisation’s opportunity to really understand where SAP is with its technology – in particular regarding digital cloud-led enterprise platforms and real-time information – and to really understand what that means in the context of their business,” adds Darren Hunt, Head of Strategic Industries at SAP. “SAP has such a good heritage from its legacy software position. Opportunities like this are fantastic, allowing us to continue the education of our customer base

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which solidifies faith and trust, and helps them move on from what they had to our newer technology.”

SAP’s focus Between them, Leyden and Hunt have many years of experience in both financial services and enterprise software, and are at the frontline of the ongoing digitalisation of the financial industry. SAP itself is focused on expanding into industries where there are big opportunities to invest

– in particular public sector, retail, and financial services – and vitally, to support the British economy.

“I think it’s fair to say these three sectors have been somewhat challenged over recent years,” Hunt says. “Public sector has seen a lot of budget cuts, so much retail business has moved online which has shifted the market dramatically, and with financial services there are so many compliance and regulatory measures.

SAP, both in the UK and globally,

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SAP Financial Services Forum Winning in the Digital Moment July 4–5, 2017 GRANGE ST. PAUL’S HOTEL, LONDON Now in its sixth year, the SAP Financial Services Forum brings together over 500 banking and insurance executives, fintechs, key SAP partners and SAP financial services leaders and experts from over 40 countries.

Join us at the Grange St Paul’s Hotel, London, to hear from thought leaders and visionaries on what it takes to be a digital winner, and learn through real-world examples how financial services companies are embarking on their digital journeys.

We hope you can join us for this important global industry event.

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E N T E R P R I S E A P P L I C AT I O N S O F T W A R E P R O V I D E R

Thought leadership Go beyond the theory with practical insights from industry visionaries, leading financial services practitioners and fintechs on how digitalisation is transforming the industry.

Networking opportunities Network with your peers and attend exclusive dinners and other social events.

Executive access Benefit from individual meetings with senior SAP executives and SAP financial services customers.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND? The event is specifically designed for: • C-level executives including CMOs/CDOs, CFOs and CIOs • Senior decision makers from retail, corporate and investment banks, capital markets, central banks and insurance firms • Heads of digital, channels, customer service, marketing, sales, finance and risk • Senior IT transformation leaders

sees that as an opportunity. We already have a sizeable legacy across those sectors, but as the pace for change gathers, we are focused on growing our business as well as supporting customers.”

Expanding the legacy So what makes SAP so well-positioned to provide what these industries need? It is, of course, wellknown in its sector for its enterprise software services, and has created a long-lasting legacy for itself as a result, but more importantly the company maintains a vision that at once supports the legacy customers and guides them into the future.

“A lot of our customers use core back-office software from our organisation that supports their fundamental business processes, and has done very successfully for a number of years,” explains Hunt. “Our key vision is to help the world run better and improve people’s lives, and I think that’s what we’ve done with our software. But as the world changes, and we shift towards the cloud and digitalisation, SAP sees itself as very well-placed thanks to our new technologies and offerings to support customers across all market sectors.”

“Increasing digitalisation is about engaging with customers across numerous channels, making sure workforces are engaged and have information to hand, and enabling a smarter network of collaboration. Everything we talk about and hear

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now seems to be around how the world is becoming more connected, and a lot of people now come into the workforce expecting particular ways of working that might not be available in some legacy applications. Organisations need to use data in a way where access to real-time information becomes a key enabler for their business, does things faster, simpler, and in a more agile manner.�

Despite this move towards all things digital, SAP won’t forget about the legacy customers. While the company educates about and encourages moving towards the latest technology, it doesn’t force its customers to do so. Many organisations only want or

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need to run back-office systems, and in Hunt’s words, “we’re not switching the lights off. However I think it’s fair and appropriate, especially in the financial sector, that people understand we have technology today that might deliver their banking requirements of tomorrow.”

Financial services in particular are encouraged to update, because customer demands are evolving all the time. “Until now, banks have Laurence waited for customers to come to Leyden them,” Leyden explains. “Digitalisation has forced us to shift the focus from transaction execution and product selling to adding value.

That requires a different mindset and a different business model.

“It’s important not to be distracted by the shiny new front end – it masks the problem. If the back office isn’t agile, then you’re simply investing in omni-channel inefficiency.”

While some may still have reservations about digitalisation, the cloud is more secure than ever, as well as offering the best flexibility Darren and cost efficiency for the financial Hunt

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sector. “Cloud suppliers know that brand reputation – especially financial institution reputation – is at stake, and therefore they are continually raising the standards around security,” says Leyden. “Cloud system architectures use many different cybersecurity applications to combat a myriad of threats, isolating and disarming them as they are discovered, and protecting the entire cloud community from being impacted by that specific threat again.”

SAP leads the way To be an enabler of change, SAP must be at the forefront of it. Its vision and strategy centres around moving more quickly, rather than rebuilding technology that is still being relied upon by legacy customers. To do this, the company made a series

of strategic acquisitions that fasttracked its digital practices and capabilities, allowing for a combination of technology applications, platforms, and business process expertise.

“Our innovation and commitment to the financial industry is continuous and ongoing,” Leyden says. “We have been investing heavily into our own business to transform ourselves. We were once known primarily as an on-premises ERP provider, but have since been transforming ourselves not only as a supplier of cloud services and SaaS, but also a reliable business partner who can run the digital backbone of the entire enterprise across many business functions. This has required considerable change management internally, and the job is not done yet.

“Any organisation on the path to and through our digitalisation needs to

14,100+ 5,600+ Banking customers in 149 countries

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Insurance customers in 107 countries

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keep its eye on managing two critical elements: managing the technology change and the cultural change within, and ensuring that change is pervasive across the entire organisation.”

One of SAP’s top priorities is to prove that digitalisation isn’t something to be wary of – it’s something to aspire to that will only improve business in innumerable ways. How the client feels is, of course, the most important thing, and while legacy customers cannot

remain on the same platform forever, SAP offers equal support regardless of the level of digitalisation.

Hunt concludes: “I think it builds an element of trust. I also think that trust has to go both ways. No doubt about it, organisations should move to digital-based technology quickly, but that has to be on the advice of both us and them.”

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Achieving firsts with the second revolution Written by Wedaeli Chibelushi Produced by Craig Daniels

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As part of its “second revolution” Assuta Medical Centre is opening a new public, non-elective hospital.

We talk to CIO Dror Admon and board Chairman Professor Joshua Sherman about the venture’s digital strategy

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ssuta Medical centers is Israel’s leading chain of private hospitals, preforming nearly 100,000 surgeries a year. Furthermore, it is the second largest imaging institute in Israel, performing nearly one million studies a year. It has been running since 1935, and since then its high standards have become renowned across the Middle East. Assuta has maintained its reputation as an advanced healthcare firm for 82 years.

Thus, it could easily choose to uphold its triedand-tested place in the private elective system.

Why then, is Assuta about to open a public nonelective hospital? And why is its CIO building brand new IT solutions for the development?

“In the new hospital, we will have things that we

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“THIS IS EXACTLY WHERE WE SEE TECHNOLOGY MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN PEOPLE’S LIVES.” —PROF. ARI SHAMISS, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, ASSUTA MEDICAL CENTERS

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Seamless care is optimal care. This is how Assuta and eRAD make a difference on behalf of patients. eRAD RIS. Workflow matters.

H E A LT H C A R E

don’t have in the elective system”, Admon says.

“For example, we’ll have an emergency room, birth and maternity services, internal wards, geriatric wards and things we aren’t familiar with in our private elective system.”

Admon explains that although the new venture is radically different, Assuta has a history of digital innovation. “Up until 2006, Assuta didn’t have computer solutions.

They had some solutions for billings and the like, but you couldn’t call it IT,” Admon says. Bruno Lavi, the former CIO of Assuta led a team of IT professionals, including Admon who served as his right-hand man, into Assuta’s “first revolution”. Over five years, Lavi and Admon’s team installed ERP throughout Assuta, including billing systems, booking management operations procurement and more ERP modules built especially for hospital environments. Admon adds: “In parallel with the ERP system, we have installed end to end EMR solution connected to a laboratory information system, radiology information system & PACS. Along with CRM and other core systems all integrated one to another”

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Next came Assuta’s “second revolution”. “This practically led Assuta to the digital era,” Admon says. “We have opened Assuta out to the world, we have developed solutions so patients can get their medical records and the like, we developed an application for doctors so the doctors will get online updates regarding their patients’ medical state. This is all prior to building the new hospital as the 8th medical center in Assuta’s chain of medical centres.”

Chairman of the board Professor Joshua Shemer added: “Assuta Medical Centers is a dominant player in the Israeli healthcare system setting standards and trends that place us at the forefront of medical care. Assuta is a dynamic and professional network – our human capital is our greatest resource providing the best patient care with sensitivity, dignity and privacy”.

BREAKING GROUND Assuta started building the new hospital in 2012. Located in the city of Ashdod, the new hospital will be

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A S S U TA M E D I C A L C E N T E R S

“Other healthcare CIOs don’t have to build a new hospital from scratch.

So even though it’s challenging, it’s also something that leaves my mark on history” – Dror Admon, CIO

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the first public hospital in Israel to have fully computerised healthcare solutions from its launch date.

Assuta will also achieve another first. “We’re going to be connected to one of the largest HMOs [health maintenance organisations] in Israel,” Admon tells us. Assuta’s new hospital will be the first Israeli hospital to be digitally integrated with community health and welfare services. “We’re going to give the patients the best medical treatment and customer service we can,” Admon continues.

“When a discharged patient is in the community and he needs something from the hospital, everything will be held in a computerised way. When the patient comes to the hospital, we will already know everything we need to know about his medical history.” Similarly, Assuta will make sure that discharged patients have access to medical services within the community. For example, hospital staff might schedule an appointment with a physiotherapist via a digital interface, on behalf of the patient.

Assuta has already hired most of

the staff needed for the new hospital.

We ask Admon how he plans to train these employees in the hospital’s new IT system. “We have built a training environment with all the systems that are going to operate in the new hospital,” he answers.

“We hired a company in Israel that is expert at assimilating IT systems and has done such projects in other hospitals. Dozens of our own IT professionals are going to teach the staff how to use the systems.”

LEADERSHIP As for the person leading the digital transformation, Admon is certainly qualified for the job. He tells of his 15+ years’ experience in healthcare IT, including a CTO role at Sheba Medical Centre – the largest hospital in the Middle East. Admon also has the zeal and optimism needed to carry Assuta’s new project through. “I’m lucky because I’m the only CIO in Israel that has to face such a challenge,” he says. “Other healthcare CIOs don’t have to build a new hospital

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from scratch. So even though it’s challenging, it’s also something that leaves my mark on history.”

Admon operates on pride and passion, but when developing complex IT systems, he also uses thorough R&D. “We did a lot of legwork,” he tells us.

“We went to public hospitals, and we researched medical, administrative and billing processes, everything that the public hospital owns. We hired consultants that are familiar with the public sector and studied the differences and the similarities between the public and private systems.” After that, Admon’s teams characterised the solutions. They

500

Million The amount of annual revenue generated by Assuta Medical Centre

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checked the maturity of the systems in relation to its public hospital setting.

Admon explains: “Most of the systems had 80 percent maturity and the ability to operate in a public hospital because the processes are not so different. Healthcare is basically the same, even if it’s in a private hospital.”

Admon admits that an untroubled transition is too good to be true.

When we ask about challenges, Admon laughs. “It’s been an intense

few years, peaking now, with the opening of the hospital we worked so hard to plan and build. The new hospital practically duplicates our IT facilities. We have to operate the existing medical centers while supporting the new-born hospital in its early stages.” These “early stages” will last for over a year, thus Admon and his team will continue working around the clock. Regardless, Admon is excited. “It’s a huge challenge

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that will be marked in the history of Israel’s healthcare system.”

BRIGHT FUTURE Admon has various other visions for the future. He explains: “The first most important thing is a smooth operation of the hospital from day one. The second is to see that care based on integration with the community and welfare services is making the meaningful change

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on health services in Israel. Maybe other countries in Europe and US will adopt this revolutionary vision.”

“Assuta is poised to change the face of Israel’s public healthcare sector with the Assuta Ashdod Public Hospital,” Shemer says. “Assuta Ashdod will realise our vision of a truly integrative patient care model – the first of its kind in Israel.”

Admon also aims to integrate cloud technology into the Assuta’s IT strategy. Due to regulatory issues, healthcare providers are currently

H E A LT H C A R E

not allowed to use the public cloud.

“Most of the public cloud solutions use nodes abroad, and medical information is not allowed outside the borders of Israel,” Admon says.

Despite these restrictions, he is preparing Assuta Medical Centers to be “cloud ready”. After doors open, Admon’s team will build infrastructure to allow information to be transferred to a cloud if the laws change.

On 4 June, Assuta opened the first services in the new hospital and is well underway to leading the Israeli

healthcare sector with its innovative IT strategy. The new hospital will be the first public hospital built in Israel in the last 40 years, and Admon’s new system will demonstrate how far healthcare technology has come since the last launch.

Shemer neatly summarises Assuta’s achievements: “Assuta is a model for Israel’s hospitals, we don’t just raise the bar, we set the bar.”

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