Gigabit - October 2017

Bitcoin hits the housing market October 2017

SPECIAL REPORT

The big screen FIGHTS BACK

Powering

forward

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FOREWORD

WELCOME TO THE OCTOBER ISSUE OF GIGABIT. Our cover story is an interview with Baroness Michelle Mone and Douglas Barrowman about the ways in which they are hoping to make cryptocurrency mainstream, including selling $250mn of Dubai property in Bitcoin.

We also feature an exclusive interview with Giovanni Dolci, Vice President of Theatre Development and MD for Europe and Africa, about the comeback of IMAX thanks in part to this summer’s cinematic hit, Dunkirk. Find out how this and virtual reality experiences and leading the charge for the premium cinematic expert.

Plus, this month’s Top 10 is a rundown of the largest data centres in the world.

October’s cover star is Paddy Power Betfair, with NVIDIA, RISE SICS and Roche & Accenture also making a difference.

Also featured this month are IBM, Databank Ltd., Laureate Online Education, Vinod Sharma from Econet Wireless, and last but not least, Mashreq Bank.

Don’t forgot to sign up for the weekly Gigabit newsletter, and join us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Enjoy the issue!

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Bitcoin hits the housing market Michelle Mone and Douglas Barrowman.

Cryptocurrency venture

P20

IMAX European and African MD Giovanni Dolci.

EUROPE Paddy Power Betfair NVIDIA RISE SICS North Roche & Accenture

ASIA IBM

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Top 10 largest data centres

AFRICA Econet Wireless - Vinod Sharma

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INVESTMENT

Bitcoin hits the housing market Writ ten by: L AUR A MULL AN

Until now, cryptocurrency has arguably been on the fringes of the business world. However, Baroness Michelle Mone and Douglas Barrowman are hoping to bring it into the mainstream by selling $250mn of Dubai property in Bitcoin‌

INVESTMENT

WHETHER IN HER role as a Baroness, a fashion mogul, or an entrepreneur, Michelle Mone has always made a sizeable splash in the business world; the lingerie tycoon rising through the business ranks to become David Cameron’s startup business tsar two years ago.

Now, Mone is making waves in the property industry with her brand-new venture: selling homes in Dubai, paid for using Bitcoin. The Dubai skyline may already peppered with luxury apartments, however, Aston Plaza and Residences will be the first property development ever to be sold using the cryptocurrency.

Baroness Mone of Mayfair became a millionaire after founding the lingerie brand Ultimo in 1996 with her ex-husband Michael Mone now she’s launching her newest venture alongside her current boyfriend and business partner Douglas Barrowman, chairman of the Knox Group of companies.

Sitting in the sleek study of the Dorchester Hotel, the business duo are optimistic about the future of property development and cryptocurrency.

“We think it’s quite disruptive and ground-breaking,” says Barrowman.

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October 2017

“Whilst apartments have been sold sporadically on cryptocurrency, no one has actually taken a $250mn, large-scale development and said that they’re prepared to accept Bitcoin as payment.”

Disruption in the housing market “It’s really a world first,” adds Mone.

“I’m sure that lots of other developers will follow us after this global launch.”

The venture comes as Bitcoin’s value tumbled 20% recently, following a record-high of $5,000. However, peaks and troughs are not uncommon for volatile cryptocurrencies so Mone and Barrowman remain optimistic about its future. “This venture is a great opportunity to showcase the crypto world and allow people the opportunity to trade crypto currency for hard-backed assets such as land and property,” notes Barrowman.

Aston Plaza and Residences, will be located opposite the Dubai Hills – “the Beverly Hills of Dubai,” says Mone. Designed by architects John R. Harris & Partners, the development spans over 2.4mn sq. ft and consists of two luxury apartment towers and a shopping mall.

“It’s not really known in the entrepreneurial world for intwo The first 150 apartments the successful complex can be purchased using Bitcoin, with a studio apartment high-profile starting at about 30 bitcoins, or entrepreneurs US$133,000, rising to 85 bitcoins to come together for a two-bedroom flat. They are and be partners due to be completed in September both inbuyers business 2019.

Property can also and life, decorate their in homes using but Mone’s interior design service – Michelle we’re doing it” Mone Interiors – and pay for that using the cryptocurrency.

“We’ve really associated ourselves with the best people in both the

property world and the crypto world,” notes Barrowman, citing architects John R. Harris & Partners and BitPay, a type of PayPal for Bitcoin. “The thing is, we are both so passionate about this project and we want people to enjoy it, so we don’t scrimp and scrape,” reflects Mone. “You’re getting so much value for money and I think that’s because we know what we love and we want people to experience the same for a fraction of the price.”

Michelle Mone

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The first 150 apartments in the complex can be purchased using Bitcoin, with a studio apartment starting at about 30bitcoins, or $133,000, rising to 85 bitcoins for a twobedroom flat

INVESTMENT

“I think in three to five years’ time, cryptocurrency will be the mainstream”

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October 2017

Bitcoin enters the mainstream

Douglas Barrowman

The property market has seen a period of uncertainty in recent times and Bitcoin is also notoriously unpredictable. However, the pair are confident that the venture will be a promising one to invest in.

The front-end sale will be handled

by BitPay, which will “immediately convert” the bitcoins into dollars. This will prevent any negative exposure to the volatile virtual currency,” Barrowman explains. “We’re not in the business of hoarding Bitcoin and we’re not in the business of currency speculation,” he adds.

Bitcoin has arguably been a burgeoning market that has remained on the fringes of the business world, but could this venture make cryptocurrency the norm for every-day business?

Mone and Barrowman think so.

“I think in three to five years’ time cryptocurrency will be the mainstream,” reflects Barrowman.

“It’s definitely here to stay. Bitcoin trading volumes have reached half a billion dollars a day so this isn’t a small industry anymore.

Blockchain technology will 15

INVESTMENT embrace our lives, particularly in the next three to five years, so we see this as a great opportunity to be a first-to-market and to be innovative and disruptive in the conventional property market.

Mone also forecasts a bright future for the cryptocurrency. “I think a lot of developers and a lot of estate agents will be looking at this,” she says. “This is a first for the industry and it’s really exciting. I definitely think that other people will be looking into getting involved in this space.”

Dynamic duo This is the first joint business venture between the two business giants. For Mone, it’s the pair’s combined pool of expertise and the industry’s trust in their capabilities which will ensure the development’s success. “We’ve both got completely different skill sets. Doug is really such an inspiration to me and I look up to him and learn from him every day,” says Mone. “I certainly think he’s the king of business. He’s the best I’ve ever met.

“I think the crypto community are really looking for people they can trust to invest in and they can see that at Aston Plaza and Residences. It’s not really known in the entrepreneurial world for two successful high-profile entrepreneurs to come together and be partners both in business and in life – but we’re doing it.”

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October 2017

THE DEVELOPMENT SPANS OVER 2.4MN SQ FT AND CONSISTS OF TWO LUXURY APARTMENT TOWERS AND A SHOPPING MALL

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TECHNOLOGY

THE BIG SCREEN FIGHTS BACK DUNKIRK, VR AND THE CINEMATIC REVIVAL W r i t t e n b y TO M WA D LO W

IMAX is leading the comeback of cinema, with the recent release of Dunkirk perhaps the most formidable example of what its cameras can provide filmmakers.

Giovanni Dolci, Vice President of Theatre Development and MD for Europe and Africa, is in the hot seat to discuss this latest success story, along with IMAX’s plans for VR and theatre expansion

TECHNOLOGY

IMAX’s cameras were strapped to Spitfires during filming

DUNKIRK IS AN exhausting cinematic experience. Two hours of relentless suspense and atmosphere centred around three intertwining fates, it is a struggle to recall a more striking demonstration of what IMAX cameras can deliver on the big screen.

Christopher Nolan has done it before with IMAX, not least with the revived Batman franchise and Interstellar.

Branded ‘a master’ by Giovanni Dolci, IMAX’s Vice President of Theatre 22

October 2017

Development and MD for Europe and Africa, Nolan’s partnership with the business is now a proven formula.

“On a practical level, we just give him our cameras,” Dolci says.

“However, there is much more to it than that. It is a constant process.

Chris Nolan effectively designed Dunkirk with IMAX in mind, and we try to support him in any way we can to make that vision come true.”

More than 70% of Dunkirk was shot

THE BIG SCREEN FIGHTS BACK

“A passion for film has been running in my blood since I was a little kid, so I’ve managed to fulfil a childhood dream”

- Giovanni Dolci Vice President of Theatre Development and MD for Europe and Africa, IMAX

with IMAX equipment. Its cameras are the highest resolution in the world – the 70mm film offering almost 10 times the resolution than 35mm counterparts.

Strapped to genuine British Royal Air Force World War II Spitfires during filming, it is easy to see how the particularly spectacular aerial sequences captured audiences around the world.

“IMAX has become part of the creative process for these movies,” Dolci continues. “One great thing about Nolan is that he pushes us as a company, well beyond just us giving him the tools. Each film he wants to go one better, and we have to find the technological solution to help him succeed.

“Dunkirk is a great example of a movie production pushing us as a company, and will also bring much wider, longer-term benefits to the business. It shows other filmmakers what IMAX cameras can do.”

IMAX is not exclusively involved with movies, for it is also targeting producers of TV series as a means to fill quieter periods when fewer blockbusters are released. Two special episodes of Marvel’s Inhumans exclusively aired across 23

TECHNOLOGY the IMAX network, with more content to be screened once the weekly series gets underway.

Trendsetter The energy generated around the release of Dunkirk is emblematic of a wider cinematic revival. Dolci cites figures which show that admissions across Europe in 2016 were up 10% on 2012.

The rise of IMAX’s premium cinematic experience has no doubt contributed to the comeback of the big screen, and Dolci has spent much of his career at the forefront of other major transformations in the industry, namely the shift to digital.

“At the time, around 2009, digital was a big thing happening to the industry, and I was lucky enough to be brought into Arts Alliance Media, which was devising a means of switching over cinemas from analogue technology,” he explains.

“This was a big move for the industry – 10 or 12 years ago almost all cinemas were using projectors.”

Forever a film enthusiast, Dolci’s mathematical and business background opened up what was a unique opportunity 24

October 2017

“One great thing about Nolan is that he pushes us as a company, well beyond just us giving him the tools. Each film he wants to go one better, and we have to find the technological solution to help him succeed”

- Giovanni Dolci Vice President of Theatre Development and MD for Europe and Africa, IMAX

to make a difference.

“I noticed that the cinema industry, in certain countries like my home country Italy, was split into two separate packets,” he says. “You’ve got the creatives on one side and the accountants on the other. I have always wanted to find a way to merge these two together better, so having a background in business and economics has proven extremely valuable. A passion for film has been running in my blood since I was a little kid, so I’ve managed to fulfil a childhood dream.”

THE BIG SCREEN FIGHTS BACK

Christopher Nolan on the set on Dunkirk

IMAX is utilising virtual reality to open up new revenue streams

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TECHNOLOGY

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October 2017

THE BIG SCREEN FIGHTS BACK

IMAX AND VR

KEY FACTS THE EXPERIENCE

• Each experience is approximately seven to 15 minutes long • More than one user can take part at the same time • IMAX is charging $10-15 during the trial periods

THE EQUIPMENT

• IMAX VR uses the HTC Vive and Starbreeze Star VR headsets • IMAX is leveraging Google’s expertise to develop a new cinema-grade VR camera

THE CONTENT

• Existing partnerships with filmmakers are being developed to create VR experience content • Content developers currently being used include ILMxLABs, Sony, Lionsgate and Ubisoft • Upcoming movies to be featured in VR include Mummy Prodigium Strike, Star Trek and Archangel

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TECHNOLOGY

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October 2017

THE BIG SCREEN FIGHTS BACK

Virtual reality: The next trend?

Dolci will be the first to admit that the business of cinema is still changing.

While digitisation of the big screen and the rise of premium cinematic experiences are arguably natural evolutions, virtual reality (VR) looks set to add another disruptive dimension, with IMAX again at the forefront.

For Dolci it is about adding another element to the customer experience.

By partnering with Google and its VR capturing technology while leveraging existing relationships with filmmakers, IMAX aims to roll out 25 VR movie experiences over the next three years.

Currently, these experiences are being trialled in Los Angeles and New York in the US, with Europe’s first VR experience centre to be opened in Manchester, UK, imminently. Other target locations include Canada, France, the Middle East, China and Japan.

“The reaction has been amazing,” adds Dolci. “In LA, where we have been open since January, our overall satisfaction rating has been over 87%. Most importantly, we are trying to make sure this is not a gimmick in order to try out VR. We want them to have an immersive experience. I think

this is proving successful as we are seeing a lot of repeat visits, and 89% of customers are saying they are likely to revisit. It is hugely promising.”

Another interesting observation is that cinema chains are committing huge amounts of energy into attracting two audiences in particular – the millennials and generation Zs, who have become accustomed to streaming content from home rather than visiting the cinema.

“What we have found in the two test sites is that 70% of visitors have come from those two groups, so we are getting that younger demographic back to the cinema,” Dolci says. “The VR experience helps us to utilise the space in the cinemas and add to the core experience of seeing a movie.

“There are a number of pods where you can pick which experience you want to try, and we are finding that many are hanging around and doing more than one. Some experiences, like John Wick, involve quite intense participation with shooting enemies while others are more passive.”

Dolci also explained that content developers are approaching IMAX with a view to distributing their material, a move which he believes is a result 29

TECHNOLOGY of VR headsets in the home being slower to take off than anticipated.

It certainly appears that confidence in the VR and cinema combination is high, with IMAX already joining forces with the likes of Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Steven Spielberg to invest in new ventures.

The day job While IMAX continues to explore the potential of VR in diversifying its revenue streams, the bolstering of the company’s theatre network across Europe and Africa is still Dolci’s primary objective.

“Europe in particular looks positive for us,” he says. “This year alone we have signed agreements for 33 new venues, already 50% more than the whole of 2016. There is a stronger appetite than ever for premium cinema experiences and we will continue to push on this momentum.”

And there is no reason why this rapid expansion cannot be maintained in the short to mediumterm, as markets such as France and Germany remain underpenetrated in the premium cinema space.

Last year, IMAX signed an 30

October 2017

“There is a stronger appetite than ever for premium cinema experiences and we will continue to push on this momentum”

- Giovanni Dolci Vice President of Theatre Development and MD for Europe and Africa, IMAX

agreement with exhibition group Pathé, a move that has allowed it to more than double its theatre network across France. Another 25 theatres have been secured in a deal with AMC’s Odeon Group, further extending IMAX’s footprint across the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Nordics.

Africa represents an equally exciting, albeit different, series of opportunities.

“The emerging markets pose different challenges and opportunities, not least because of the difference

THE BIG SCREEN FIGHTS BACK

in how established cinema is in Africa compared to the likes of Europe,” Dolci explains. “We are teaching people what a cinema experience can be, whereas in Europe people are generally more used to going to the cinema.”

IMAX is already well-represented on the continent, with theatres spread across South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco and Egypt.

Dolci continues: “Interestingly, it is arguably even more important to provide a state-of-the-art experience

here. In places where smartphone and satellite television penetration are rapidly growing, we believe we have particular relevance, and we must give consumers a real reason to go to the cinema.”

Given time, experiences such as VR may also make their way into IMAX’s African cinemas - yet another potential project for Dolci to oversee.

Whichever way he looks, whether it be Dunkirk, VR or a burgeoning theatre network, it is evident that IMAX is revitalising the big screen industry.

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EU.CIOINSURANCESUMMIT.COM

TOP 10

TOP 10

LARGEST DATA CENTRES IN THE WORLD

INCREASINGLY ALL KINDS OF BUSINESS ARE RELYING ON DATA STORAGE FACILITIES - HERE ARE THE LARGEST DATA CENTRES IN THE WORLD BY SQUARE FOOT. Wr i t t e n b y O L I V I A M I N N O C K

09 10

THE SUPERNAP, LAS VEGAS, BY SWITCH COMMUNICATIONS

Switch Communications opened the SuperNAP facility in 2008, amidst the dual banking and housing crises. As such, it was equipped to take a great deal of business as the only stable resource for companies around the world. Although the SuperNAP centre has since fallen to number 10 on the current list, it is still a formidable resource with the ability to support 1,500 watts/sq ft of power density.

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October 2017

THE MICROSOFT DATA CENTRES IN SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, AND QUINCY, WASHINGTON

Quincy was the premier first party Microsoft data centre. In 2007, Microsoft was looking to compete with Google in online services, and finally moved into creating data centres for its namesake rather than third party facilities. Quincy boasts a $550mn investment and 470,000 sq ft of space centred on data storage. Its followup, the San Antonio facility, is just as impressive. One of its core features is a system that uses recycled water to support the more than 8mn gallons it uses every month.

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PHOENIX ONE, PHOENIX, BY I/O DATA CENTRES

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CH1, ELK GROVE VILLAGE, ILLINOIS, BY DUPONT FABROS

This facility was the first foray into data storage for DuPont Fabros outside Virginia. Its clients currently include ServerCentral and Rackspace Hosting. It is the largest data centre in the world for DFT, an important Virginia infrastructure builder. CH1’s massive data load requires 32 2MW generators along with 32 rotary UPS systems in order to function properly.

The Elk Grove Village facility also has the capacity for 200,000 gallons of diesel storage.

Phoenix ONE is a 538,000 sq ft facility that brought many innovations to the market. For instance, its breath-taking array of solar panels helps to generate an enormous 4.5MW of power for the facility. Its proprietary cooling system makes savings by running only when energy costs are low. Climate control also gets a huge upgrade for clients of this facility, with ultrasonic humidifiers and computer room air handlers. The flooring in the centre is made almost completely from recycled car tires.

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06

MICROSOFT DUBLIN,

BY MICROSOFT

Dublin represents a new level of operations even for operations giant Microsoft. This facility will run the majority of the company’s cloud operations around the world, and will do so in an energy efficient way.

While the average Power Usage Effectiveness rating for data centres is 2.0, the lower the better, and the Dublin centre boasts a rating of 1.25.

The facility’s cooling system is free, using air from the outside environment to cool the inside. If warmer temperatures are required, the unique server pod design uses a technique known as hot aisle containment.

Microsoft currently has the capacity to run the Dublin centre at temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit, which far outpaces the capability of most data centres.

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October 2017

05

CONTAINER DATA CENTRE, CHICAGO, BY MICROSOFT

The Container Data Centre, again

by Microsoft, represents a hybrid philosophy in container driven design.

The upstairs and downstairs each have a different purpose, with the lower level utilising diagonal parking spaces to fit up to 112 containers with up to 224,000 servers. The upper floor works the traditional outlay of data centres, using a raised floor and cold and hot aisles. This area has the capacity for four 12,000 sq ft pods, which translates into room for many additional tens of thousands of servers. They are used to power the Microsoft Live online suite.

03 04

NGD EUROPE, NEWPORT, WALES, BY NEXT GENERATION DATA

Initial clients of the enormous NGD Europe facility include Logica and BT. Both companies occupy an entire data hall, but there is still plenty of extra room in the 750,000 sq ft data centre. NGD Europe was originally constructed to house a semiconductor plant, and the infrastructure left there was an excellent start for the next generation of tenants. When fully fleshed out, NGD has the ability to house 19,000 cabinets of storage and servers. It can also easily house pods for private data centres and installations for data centre containers.

THE NAP OF THE AMERICAS, MIAMI, BY TERREMARK

This virtual data fortress was built in downtown Miami in 2001. 750,000 sq ft of space for data now helps to connect Latin America with the southeastern United States. The facility is used as infrastructure for the American military as well as the system that organises global domain names. The facility is sturdier than most, made to stand in the face of a Category 5 hurricane. The outside is covered by seven-inch concrete panels reinforced with steel, and with good reason.

There are more than 160 networks that call this facility a central hub.

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02 TOP 10

METRO TECHNOLOGY CENTRE, ATLANTA, BY QUALITY TECHNOLOGY

This facility boasts 990,000 sq ft of total space house with 560,000 sq ft of space specifically for data centres in the Atlanta Metro Technology Centre. Some 80MW of power is needed to run the behemoth - so much that the centre has its own Georgia Power substation on site. Quality Technology Services is currently building the centre out to challenge for the position of largest data centre in the world. Right now, it comes in second, but this could change in the blink of an eye.

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October 2017

01

350 EAST CERMAK / LAKESIDE TECHNOLOGY CENTRE, CHICAGO, BY DIGITAL REALTY TRUST

The Lakeside Technology Centre at 350 East Cermak is the largest data centre in the world, with 1.1mn sq ft of space being developed by Digital Realty Trust for the commodity markets based in Chicago. Many elite financial firms call the Lakeside Technology Centre home for their data streams. There are currently 70 tenants, with plenty of space to accommodate more.

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Powering forward with new technology Written by: Fran Roberts Produced by: Danielle Harris

PADDY POWER BETFAIR, ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST ONLINE GAMBLING COMPANIES, HAS INVESTED STRONGLY IN TECHNOLOGY SINCE THE COMPANY’S FORMATION LAST YEAR – INCLUDING MOVING TWO DATA CENTRES ACROSS THE IRISH SEA

T

echnology certainly looks set to play an integral role in the future success of Paddy Power Betfair, one of the world’s largest online gambling company.

“Our company’s performing well, we’ve got strong year-on-year growth. Alongside the technology, our greatest development is probably our i2 platform and ensuring that we are head and shoulders above our competition,” states Peter Giles, Senior Data Centre Manager.

“If we’re not innovating, we are effectively standing still. That’s just not an option for our business,” notes Giles. “We always like to ensure our place at the top of the queue for the latest and greatest technologies, and to see how we can integrate that into our estate, and products.” i2 stands for Infrastructure 2 and is Paddy Power Betfair’s

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October 2017

Inside Paddy Power Betfair’s data centre

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ENABLING USERS AND THEIR BUSINESS IN A DIGITAL WORLD Computacenter is Europe’s leading independent provider of IT infrastructure services, enabling users and their business. We advise organisations on IT strategy, implement the most appropriate technology, optimise its performance, and manage our customers’ infrastructures. In doing this we help CIOs and IT departments in enterprise and corporate organisations maximise productivity and the business value of IT for internal and external users.

DISCOVER HOW COMPUTACENTER MAKES DIGITAL WORK Computacenter helps establish flexible foundations for the future with physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure solutions. From software-defined and hyperconverged, to information, analytics, network and security solutions, we understand the platforms and the processes needed to maximise agility for IT and the business.

We bring together existing and emerging technologies to establish stable and sustainable infrastructure foundations in the datacenter and beyond, by combining best-ofbreed technologies with expert advice and seamless services. We future-proof your Digital Gateway (infrastructure) to support mobile work styles, big data analytics, the Internet of Things, cloud and virtualised workloads.

With our end-to-end expertise and vendor relationships, we help organisations bring together the best solutions and deliver the best outcomes.

Computacenter will expand and open an office premises in the centre of Dublin Computacenter is excited to announce that we are opening an office in the heart of Dublin. It is a decision that we have considered for some time and we now feel that time is absolutely perfect; it will give us closer proximity to our long standing existing customers who are based in Ireland whilst also allowing us to expand our offerings and services to new customers. In recent years, Ireland, and the city of Dublin in particular, has established itself as a popular European base for large technology companies like salesforce.com, Google, Facebook and Twitter. Computacenter’s view

is that Ireland understands the current and future value of the technology and web industry and is wholeheartedly embracing it.

This, coupled with Computacenter’s core values of ‘putting our customers first’, ‘inspiring success’ and ‘always considering the long term’; presents us with a new and exciting journey ahead.

Computacenter’s focus on the Technology & eGaming sector Computacenter supports many technology and eGaming companies throughout the business and IT consolidation process.

We take a holistic approach to rationalising, transforming and optimising IT, driving better value for the business and better outcomes for users. We consolidate datacenters. We upgrade networks. And we transform licensed retail offices.

Maximising business agility We help eGaming companies unlock financial and efficiency savings from their datacenter operations following a merger or acquisition. Our independent assessments and industrialised processes enable CIOs to build the infrastructure foundations needed to maximise agility and availability. We identify technologies that need to retired or replaced, and advise on consolidation and standardisation strategies for both systems and suppliers. From storage arrays and networking environments to server farms and private clouds, we help CIOs achieve an optimal balance between cost, performance and risk.

Safeguarding customer data Computacenter brings expertise

to every stage of the security cycle - from protection and detection to reaction and prevention. By taking a holistic approach across the workplace, the network, the datacenter and the cloud, we help to strengthen and simplify security following a merger or acquisition. From deploying next-generation defences and integrating existing monitoring tools to assessing vulnerabilities and managing system patching, we help to mitigate security risks before, during and after consolidation initiatives.

Enabling users From a licensed betting office to a company’s headquarters, we source and deploy the workplace technologies needed to deliver a compelling and consistent eGaming experience. Following a merger or acquisition, we help CIOs map the right IT devices and services to the right user workstyles. We also review and renegotiate software agreements to prevent under- or over-utilisation.

Our expertise spans the entire hardware and software portfolio – from collaboration and print solutions to virtual and mobile client devices. We benchmark.

We configure. And we maintain.

Unlocking business insights Computacenter helps e-gaming companies extract more value from their data so they can drive greater competitive advantage and make smarter decisions.

As a trusted advisor, we help to evaluate and implement analytics solutions, such as data visualisation and data lakes, as well as lay the infrastructure foundations needed to detect, capture and analyse customers’ data.

For more information please visit: www.computacenter.com/uk/egaming

PA D D Y P O W E R B E T FA I R

“THIS WAS REVOLUTIONARY, NOBODY WAS REALLY DOING IT IN THE MARKET AND CERTAINLY NOBODY WAS DOING IT AS WELL AS BETFAIR WERE DOING IT” – Peter Giles, Senior Data Centre Manager

Brian Cullen

Head of Infrastructure

“I love technology and I’ve had a career in several technical leadership roles, primarily in banks prior to joining Paddy Power Betfair five years ago. During my 18 years in the banks I’ve gathered a deep technical expertise across various disciplines – especially data centres, networking, virtualisation, storage and infrastructure design and with that delivering large-scale migrations in mission critical environments.

In 2012 I wanted a change of scene and joined Paddy Power. During the last five years I have had the following roles: Senior Engineering Design Lead, Head of Networking and Head of Infrastructure prior to the Paddy Power and Betfair merger and post-merger continued with the role of Head of Infrastructure in the new combined organisation.”

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next generation infrastructure platform, which is comprised of a private cloud and a continuous delivery pipeline used to deploy the company’s software to that cloud.

“The i2 cloud works pretty much like any publicly available cloud operator but is entirely hosted by Paddy Power Betfair,” observes Brian Cullen, Head of Infrastructure. “It gives developers the ability to write applications and deliver it all the way through the pipeline to production for

our customers. The single customer platform is a common platform we’re building as part of hosting multiple brands. Paddy Power and Betfair branded applications are going to run on this platform. The single customer platform runs on i2 and it is the largest project for our technology team for 2017.”

REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGY Despite being a household name, Paddy Power Betfair is a relatively

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new entity – the organisation was formed in 2016 following the merger of Paddy Power Plc and Betfair Plc. “Paddy Power Betfair is one of the world’s leading sports betting and gaming operators,” advises Giles.

“We operate four main brands – Paddy Power, Betfair, Sportsbet – a major sporting operator in Australia – and TVG, a major operator in the United States. Worldwide we have about four million customers.”

Paddy Power was formed in 1988 through the merger of three Irish bookmakers. In 2000, the company established its online presence with the launch of paddypower.com. In the same year, Betfair was launched.

“It was one of the first online gaming marketplaces for punters to bet against each other on sporting and cultural events around the world.

This was revolutionary, nobody was really doing it in the market and certainly nobody was doing it as well as Betfair,” comments Giles.

Over the years, the two companies expanded their respective online footprints with the introduction of online poker, mobile betting

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and online casinos. As the rival companies expanded, so did the amount of business being processed.

“In 2010, Betfair’s exchange was processing more transactions than all of the European stock exchanges combined in a single day,” advises Giles. In November 2011, Paddy Power was the largest bookmaker in Europe by total share value.

The merger of the two companies created one of the world’s biggest online gambling companies, making it a FTSE 100 company. Paddy Power Betfair has over 7,000 employees and over 600 bookmaking shops. “We operate on five real core values and they are – collaboration, integrity, agility, low ego and a relentless will to win,” Giles observes.

GIANTS OF ONLINE GAMBLING Of course, merging two giants of online gambling has required a number of consolidation activities.

One of the largest was the migration of data centres from the Isle of Man to Dublin. “As part of the merger, we decided for operational and regulatory reasons to migrate two

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Peter Giles

Senior Data Centre Manager “My responsibility and accountability is to ensure the delivery, implementation and support of Paddy Power Betfair’s Data Centre and corporate hosting estate. Working closely with strategic projects and program delivering against road-maps, strategy and investment plans created and owned by the team. All while ensuring alignment to the overarching IT and Business strategy. I am a strongly experienced in manager, maintaining and supporting 24x7 Data Centre critical operational environments. Responsible for managing a team of engineers, their performance, workload and development, with a passion for operational prudence, transparency, simplicity and team engagement, while managing key stakeholders ensuring expectations are clearly set and managed.”

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TRUST AND CONFIDENCE DELIVERED Tech Move Solutions provides Trusted, Specialist Logistics and Value Added Solutions for the Safe & Secure movement of High Value I.T Equipment Globally Some of the services we offer include White Glove Deliveries, Datacentre Relocations, Site Surveys, Project Management, RAMS, Reverse Logistics, Rack / Server Builds, Certified Electronic Waste Disposal, Asset Collections / Management / Refurbishment, Specialist Packaging

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THE ORGANISATION WAS FORMED IN 2016 FOLLOWING THE MERGER OF PADDY POWER PLC AND BETFAIR PLC

Paddy Power data centres from the Isle of Man to Dublin. The project started in May 2016 and scheduled to be finished by October of that year. Six months for any data centre move is aggressive, never mind two within two weeks of each other.

With excellent collaboration and pace displayed by the infrastructure team, the migration was completed on time,” advises Giles.

One of the main reasons for the move was to be able to regulate the Paddy Power business through the same regulatory authority as Betfair. “Essentially, it was part of a consolidation of regulatory authorities which necessitated moving data centres,” comments Cullen.

The move was very ambitious and was designed to minimise disruption

to customers as much as possible.

“The migration was to be completed within a two-week window,” Giles continues. “We’re talking about downing two live production sites, moving one, bringing it back online in Dublin, and two weeks later downing the other data centre in the Isle of Man, moving it to Dublin, and bringing it back online.

All of this with little or no impact to our customers.” Such a short turnaround helped to motivate the staff, as Cullen illustrates: “There’s nothing like an unmovable deadline to focus the hearts and minds of the team.”

UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGES Short timeframes were not the only challenge posed by the project.

“Having come from the heritage Betfair organisation, the greatest challenge for me,” explains Giles “was understanding how I could consolidate one of the heritage Paddy Power data centres in Dublin, which I knew little or nothing about, into one of the heritage Betfair data

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centres, which I obviously knew a considerable amount about.”

In order to build an understanding of the legacy estate being inherited, a thorough audit was carried out.

“We carried out a complete audit of the Paddy Power data centres on the Isle of Man and in Dublin, so we could understand and work through what the pinch points were going to be. By doing that extensive audit we were able to understand where every cable started and stopped, and how the data centres were breathing.

That really gave us a great point to kick on from,” Giles advises.

HIGH-PACED NEEDS To achieve the move with minimal disruption, Paddy Power Betfair enlisted the help of a number of partners. “A considerable amount of the hardware that was in the Paddy Power heritage data centres, had not been powered off in years,” Giles explains. “We brought in technical support from all of our major vendors and manufacturers, and proceeded, under a tight change window, to power cycle the hardware during a

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controlled period of time. By doing that, we were able to eliminate risks at all stages, that may have arisen during the actual migration itself.”

Such partners are invaluable to the operations of Paddy Power Betfair.

“We like to work with technology partners to help us deliver value with our projects. Logicalis helped us move the two data centres from the Isle of Man to Dublin, a project

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which was pretty much seamless for our customers and delivered with precision,” Cullen advises.

“Computacenter, who have been the partner behind the i2 project since its inception, has helped with the challenges across the journey.

Both have areas of expertise which we tap into. We also work with Evros Technology Group in satisfying our high-paced needs with keeping

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“There’s nothing like an unmovable deadline to focus the hearts and minds of the team”

– Brian Cullen, Head of Infrastructure

our data centres operational.”

Giles, too, is keen to praise the work of Paddy Power Betfair’s partners: “We have a close working relationship with Server Technology, who provide a bespoke power strip to suit our high-density rack requirements. A significant part of our success for this specific project comes from the very close support and commitment of our key vendors,” he comments.

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Artificial intelligence, made simple Written by: Dale Benton Produced by: Danielle Harris

THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MARKET IS SET TO EXPLODE AND NVIDIA, ALONG WITH THE TECHNOLOGY ECOSYSTEM INCLUDING PURE STORAGE, HAS STRATEGICALLY POSITIONED ITSELF TO TAP INTO THIS HUGE MARKET GROWTH

A

fter decades in the doldrums, AI has recently exploded in a boom that has unleashed applications used by hundreds of millions of people every day. The impact of this technology has been likened to that of electricity 100 years ago: AI won’t be an industry, it will be part of every industry.

The rapid rise of AI has left many businesses scrambling to understand how they can benefit from a technology they don’t yet understand. An MIT Sloan Management Review found that 85% of executives surveyed believe AI will transform their company, yet only 39% report having a strategy for AI. One company has taken the lead in helping business decision makers evaluate, implement and monetise AI. NVIDIA cut its teeth on 3D graphics for gaming and professional design, but

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the graphics processing unit (GPU) NVIDIA invented back in the 1990s has revealed itself as a processing powerhouse, capable of tackling computing’s grandest challenges.

Richard Jackson, Vice President for the EMEA Partner Organisation at NVIDIA, reveals the story behind AI’s rapid rise from sci-fi gimmick to reality, and explores how businesses can take their first steps in this brave new world.

DEVELOPING DEEP LEARNING Founded in 1999, NVIDIA’s GPU sparked the growth of the PC gaming market. Now this same tiny piece of silicon is credited with unleashing the Intelligent Industrial Revolution.

Several years ago, researchers discovered that the same parallel architecture designed to handle the vast amount of data required for 3D

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WELCOME TO THE GOLDEN AGE OF AI, POWERED BY THE MODERN DATA PLATFORM The fourth industrial revolution is upon us, powered by the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Every industry benefits from greater intelligence: the ability to transform data into intelligence is the new competitive currency. Some advances in industries include:

Driving autonomous vehicles

Aiding doctors for more accurate insights

Helping agents to serve customers better

The big bang of AI has been fueled by a perfect storm of three key technologies: deep learning (DL), Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) processors, and big data. NVIDIA is the world leader of deep learning technologies, providing the most advanced GPUs along with the NVIDIA GPU Cloud Deep Learning Stack: optimized versions of today’s most popular Deep Learning frameworks.

While deep learning algorithms and GPUs are massively parallel, delivering performance leaps every year, legacy storage systems were largely built on decades-old building blocks, designed in the serial era. And the performance gap between compute and storage continues to grow.

FlashBlade from Pure Storage is the industry’s first data platform purpose-built for AI and machine learning. Fast, big and simple, FlashBlade is massively parallel at its core, delivering unprecedented performance and simplicity for data scientists. Like a GPU-accelerated server, FlashBlade is architected to accelerate parallel workloads, delivering the performance of 10 racks of disk in a 4U size.

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NVIDIA

graphics was also a perfect fit for the complex parallel computing required by deep learning. This form of artificial intelligence enables computers to learn from data and write software that is too complex for people to code.

NVIDIA recognised the opportunity presented by this affinity between deep learning and the GPU. Since then, it has been investing in a new computing model, GPU-accelerated deep learning, which is helping to create computers, robots and self-driving cars that can perceive and understand the world.

“Although AI has been around for a long time, before now the processing power needed for it to succeed just wasn’t available,” explains Jackson. “Now, NVIDIA is working to democratise AI for all.”

Pure Storage also recognised data is the fuel to drive deep learning, and parallel architecture is the future.

It built a new data platform from the ground-up to keep pace with the innovation curve of GPUs. “Deep learning is unique among all learning algorithms in that it keeps getting better with more data,” says James Petter, VP EMEA

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Jensen Huang - NVIDIA CEO

at Pure Storage. “At Pure, we believe data should never be the bottleneck for data scientists.”

THE VOCABULARY OF AI The first step in realising the business benefits of AI is to understand a few fundamentals.

When we talk about AI, three terms tend to be used interchangeably: artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning. Their relationship

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“ALTHOUGH AI HAS BEEN AROUND FOR A LONG TIME, BEFORE NOW THE PROCESSING POWER NEEDED FOR IT TO SUCCEED JUST WASN’T AVAILABLE” – Richard Jackson, Vice President for the EMEA Partner Organisation at NVIDIA

is a bit like Russian dolls. AI is the overarching idea, within which machine learning and deep learning fit.

For a large part, the entertainment industry has molded what we think of when we think of intelligent machines and AI. In reality, what’s possible today is known as ‘Narrow AI’, as opposed to the ‘General AI’ displayed by C3PO and The Terminator. Narrow AI encompasses technologies that can perform specific tasks, such as image

classification or speech recognition, as well as or better than humans.

This human-like intelligence brings us to deep learning. It’s a fundamentally new software model where billions of software-neurons and trillions of connections are trained in parallel. The graphics processing unit emerged as the ideal processor to accelerate deep learning.

“GPUs, like artificial neural networks and the human brains on

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NVIDIA

1999

The year that NVIDIA invented the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

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which they’re modelled, process information in parallel, handling multiple tasks simultaneously,” says Jackson. “That’s why GPUs can now be found accelerating deep learning-based applications from movie recommendations to cancer detection and fraud detection to self-driving cars.”

will include efficiencies in existing processes, and insights based on data and predictive analysis that enable new classes of products and services.

“We see companies like SAP seizing an early-mover advantage by implementing GPU deep learning in their data centres to solve their customers’ most challenging problems.”

DEMOCRATISING AI The democratisation of AI brought about by GPU-accelerated deep learning is already finding its way into deployment across industries.

As this form of AI expands from research institutions and startups to implementation by large enterprise, new use cases for deep learning are emerging daily.

From intelligent assistants to smart homes to self-driving cars, it’s clear that this new computing model will infuse consumer technology as much as it will reinvent enterprise computing.

Jackson comments: “Those businesses looking to grab the competitive advantage offered by AI have a narrow window of opportunity.

For those who move quickly, rewards

PLUG AND PLAY AI Thanks to the rapid development of the AI industry, this technology is available in many flavours and at varying scales. For those looking to dip a toe in the water, cloud service providers like Microsoft and AWS offer GPU deep learning cycles on demand.

NVIDIA has also developed an offering aimed at companies seeking a combination of unprecedented computing power with security and support.

Last year, NVIDIA launched the DGX-1. It’s essentially an AI supercomputer in a box, purpose-built for deep learning. Instead of building its AI data centre from the ground up, the DGX-1 integrates everything data

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NVIDIA

Richard Jackson

“THE DGX-1 REPRESENTS A REAL BREAKTHROUGH IN TECHNOLOGY BUILT FOR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”

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scientists need to get started building, training and running powerful and sophisticated deep neural networks.

But all of this data needs to be stored somewhere. Traditional storage systems were largely built on decades-old, building blocks burdened with serial bottlenecks, and have been proven to lag behind the performance curve needed to keep GPUs busy with data.

However, Pure Storage supports NVIDIA’s efforts to democratise AI by enabling companies to store and process vast quantities of data at significant speeds. Pure Storage’s FlashBlade is an ideal match for NVIDIA’s DGX and complements

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NVIDIA gives back to communities through Project Inspire

its deep learning performance.

AI pushes beyond the limits of what’s possible with traditional storage technologies. The velocity in which DGX-1 consumes data is unprecedented. The level of parallelism required by deep neural networks and GPUs continues to grow rapidly. A new class of data system was needed.

FlashBlade is industry’s first data platform purpose-built for AI and deep learning, engineered with a massively parallel architecture from end-to-end.

“By using Pure Storages’ FlashBlade with NVIDIA’s DGX-1, data scientists can enjoy the performance they need when working on AI,” explains Petter. “We designed FlashBlade

specifically for AI and machine learning applications – and it shows.”

Combining the FlashBlade system with DGX-1 means that the GPUs can be continuously and efficiently fed with the large amount of data they need in order to build smarter AI solutions.

“The DGX-1 represents a real breakthrough in technology built for artificial intelligence,” states Jackson. “As we continue to push the boundaries of what is possible, we’ll continue creating tools which bring AI to the enterprise in ways that enable innovation and drive growth.”

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PHOTO CREDIT: PÄR BÄCKSTRÖM

ON THE RISE WRITTEN BY: FRAN ROBERTS PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

RISE SICS AB is the leading research institute for applied information and communication technology in Sweden. Tor Björn Minde, CEO of RISE SICS North, describes the Institute’s new research data centre, located in Luleå

R

ISE SICS North is a new subsidiary of RISE SICS, established in Luleå. “It’s like the Swedish Fraunhofer. There are other countries that also have their own research institute organisations,” notes Tor Björn Minde, CEO of RISE SICS North. “Here it’s called RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden.”

The SICS part of the Institute’s name stands for Swedish Institute of Computer Science, whilst the north references its location in Luleå, around an hour drive from the Arctic Circle.

Minde’s work at RISE SICS North is only part of what he does. “I work at Ericsson, the telecom company where I had my 30th anniversary last year. My current position is Head of Research Strategies. Part-time I’m loaned out to this organisation, which I’m running as a CEO,” he observes.

Originally focused on mobile audio, Minde transitioned into computing

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activities, which later facilitated his heading up of RISE SICS North. “The nascent activity in Ericsson is called Ericsson Labs and that took me over to more computer platforms and now data centres,” Minde comments.

“So, that’s the background of why I’m CEO of this research institute.”

Continuous expansion RISE SICS North was formed around the creation of a new research data centre in Luleå. “We have projects on cloud platforms, hardware and software for big data analytics. All of that we run in our two-modules-large data centre,” advises Minde. “We have 200KW installed right now and we are continuously expanding, so we will add another 150KW during this autumn.

“We call it ICE and ICE stands for infrastructure and cloud research environment. So, we cover both infrastructure and the software

Module 1

enclosure

PHOTO CREDIT: PÄR BÄCKSTRÖM

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RISE SICS Module 2 Inauguration party in the

PHOTO CREDIT: PÄR BÄCKSTRÖM

ICE facility

Tor Bjorn Minde CEO

Tor Björn Minde is currently head of research strategy at Ericsson Research with 30 years’ experience in ICT research. He has research management experience leading industry research teams, sections and sector research areas. He holds an adjunct professorship at Lulea University of Technology in systems technology and has been involved in many academic research projects. He is part of LTU technology faculty board and also a board member of Norrbotten research council.

His main research interests are audio, geo, sensor, context aware, machine learning and data center technologies. He led the team behind Ericsson Labs with the objective to improve Ericsson ability in open innovation and network exposure. Ericsson Labs operated a server infrastructure with network functionality offering on-line experimental API's, Application Programming Interfaces.

Lately his main focus has been on cloud infrastructures for energy efficient operation. He has around 20 publications in various conferences and workshops and more than 40 filed patents in the field of signal processing and applications since 1989.

Tor Björn is currently CEO of RISE SICS North AB and working as the manager for the large-scale research infrastructure facility build-up project. He will lead the initiative and implement the vision of a large-scale data center facility to support Swedish industry and academia.

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“If you can have a selfdriving car, why can’t you have a selfdriving data centre?”

– Tor Bjorn Minde, CEO, RISE SICS North

application platforms.” At ICE, clients can test their innovations in a riskfree environment with the added service of being able to measure hundreds of environmental factors.

Pioneering projects Despite being established just 18 months ago, much progress has already been made by RISE SICS North. “We are now at €1.8mn a year in turnover and we have 11 persons right now that work here,” notes Minde. “Our scientific leader is Jon

Summers. He is from the University of Leeds – he started up Data Centre Alliance and is behind the Data Centre Transformation Conferences.”

At present the facility is working on four major projects. “There is one project on data centre automation. If you can have a self-driving car, why can’t you have a self-driving data centre?” Minde comments. “The machine learning algorithm already can perform lots of activities, complex identification problems much better than humans.

“The long-term mission is to come

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to autonomous data centres, but to that it’s beyond big data at an analytics get there you need to really measure level,” Minde explains. “We have some and model data centres correctly. pre-studies on heat reuse and liquid You need to have a data collection cooling and we hope to expand them. software tool chain and database We’re looking into drying wood and and you need to have all the tools in also liquid cooling. So that is what the place for the sensors. The project is data centre is used for – different types about trying to understand how to of projects to understand how you can make the data centre autonomous create better data centres in the future.” and how to optimise the holistic view on automation – it’s Head in the cloud a very big project The first module of the with Ericsson and data centre, a room-inABB involved. room module, has been “We have one project running since February about how to use 2016. “This first module natural convection is used for big data Number of and draught in data analytics, it’s used for Employees at RISE SICS North centres so you can some cloud applications reduce the fan use. and that is running in It’s a real thermodynamic project,” the servers. We have 200 servers there, continues Minde. “The third project is some GPU [graphics processing unit] to look into how a data centre can be accelerated,” Minde advises. “Then we a part of the smart grid in the future. A use the data centre to do modelling.” data centre has lots of battery, it has “The second module is more a a water tank for cooling and it has an lab and we have built it so we can intrinsic possibility to be a big battery. It do a slab floor or a raised floor. We can then be a load balancer in the grid. can change equipment easily with “The fourth project is really about much bigger doors and we can using analytics in new applications, so move equipment in and out. We can

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RISE SICS

exchange coolers and racks, we can exchange lots of different equipment there. Module three, that we’re going to install this autumn, will be an open computer lab,” Minde explains.

Outside the modules the space will be used for smaller experiments in a wind tunnel, a cube for thermodynamics, a water tank, solar panels on the roof and renewable energy storage. All to be built during the autumn. On the roof there is also a cooling tower that will be used.

centre is being located just next door.

Facebook has donated equipment to the research data centre, and plans are in the making for setting up projects together,” explains Minde.

“Another important partner is the Luleå University of Technology. We have only been around for one and a half years, so we will expand the number of companies involved, but we have counted the companies we count as being part of our network, and it’s nearly 60-plus.”

A collaborative network

Increased integration

In order to work on such a number of projects, RISE SICS North is collaborating with several partners.

“The companies are Ericsson, of course, and ABB are involved.

Additionally, there is Vattenfall, the power company, and Swegon, the ventilation company,” advises Minde. “EON is another power company involved, alongside a number of smaller companies like Acon, Metria, Eitech, BnearIT, ArctosLabs, Netrounds.

“We also collaborate with Facebook, it’s first European data

Looking ahead, the holistic view of the data centre will become increasingly important for RISE SICS North. “The whole system needs to be much more integrated to make it optimised. It seems to me that some parts of the data centre industry are very conservative – they do what they always have done. If you need redundancy, you hit the solution with a diesel engine and that is not the future – we need to find other ways to do redundancy. That’s why we’re around, to challenge the way data centres are built,” acknowledges Minde.

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Control/ management works space in the data center w w w. g i g a b i t . n e t PHOTO CREDIT: PÄR BÄCKSTRÖM

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Yan Beynon Chief Digital Officer - RDC

Roche & Accenture

Pioneering solutions within diabetes management Written by: Catherine Sturman Produced by: Andrew Lloyd

Zeynep Waelchli Managing Director - Accenture

A pioneer in the development of blood glucose monitoring systems, Diabetes Care continues to be a global leader in diabetes management solutions and services

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he world is becoming increasingly dependent on digital services. With the challenges of ageing populations and rising healthcare costs, companies are looking to revolutionise the way patient care is delivered, developing new technologies to support the delivery of advanced medical treatment as well as healthcare professionals.

Over the last 10 years, the diabetes market has undergone considerable growth. A metabolic disorder which affects the pancreas’ ability to produce insulin, there are over 59mn people living with diabetes in the Europe alone, which is only set to rise. With over 415mn patients globally (source: IDF Diabetes Atlas), figures have been predicted to almost double within the next 25 years.

Today, approximately 10% of the healthcare costs are invested in the diabetes market. Increased obesity

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rates and sedentary lifestyles are leading factors in the increase in cases of Type 2 Diabetes. The exponentially increasing number of Type 2 Diabetes patients and the treatment of diabetes-related co-morbidities leads to increased spending, and highlights the need for new healthcare models to tackle such challenges head on. This will be through utilising digital health technologies in order to support the detection, diagnosis and therapy of this chronic condition, and provide continuous diabetes self-management support.

Roche Diabetes Care is one such company that seeks to create innovative products and solutions to drive and advance the provision of effective diabetes care. The company’s 40-year experience has led it to effectively empower both healthcare professionals and patients, and enabled it to demonstrate how

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Yan Beynon

IT realignment and digitalisation of a Swiss government,

Chief Digital Officer - RDC

Transformed country based organisations into global shared service centers of a major airline catering and travel business (Gate Group),

Yan Beynon, 44-year-old Swiss born, has earned a Master in IT & Telecommunication and graduated from IMD Business School. In the first stage of his career, he led several large IT projects for market leaders such as: BMW, ICI, AT&T. In 2000, he became Managing Director of Urbanet, the first European start-up offering high speed Internet over Cable TV. After a successful sales development and integration of Urbanet within UPC Group (member of Liberty Global), Beynon led the build of its customer services organisation for its newly created B2B segment, including: pre-sales, customer support, pmo and billing.

For the last 16 years, he specialised in transformational CIO and CDO roles with country, regional and global scope, has successfully driven innovation, revenue growth and lead major transformations in various industries (telecommunications, government, manufacturing and logistics, Pharma and Medical devices), such as:

Led the transformation of Hoffman-la-Roche France and Belgium IT and business functions, Drove the transformation of Hoffmann-la-Roche global IT shared service center (500 FTE) in Madrid, Lead Roche Diabetes Care carving out and optimising a global medical devices business with presence in 100+ countries with 6,000+ employees, in a greenfield approach, lead design, implementation and run of a new global IT organization, new core systems and business processes to enable more autonomy, agility and deliver 170+ mio CHF yearly savings.

Yan is currently CDO and CIO, heading the digitalisation of Roche Diabetes Care aiming to create the leading Digital ecosystem in Diabetes management and generate top line growth by bringing to market new business models.

ROCHE/ACCENTURE

“Digital health is growing as the market is now shifting towards an outcome based, patient-centric model” – Zeynep Waelchli, Managing Director at Accenture

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the adoption of digital health solutions brought already a multitude of advantages to patients, healthcare professionals and healthcare systems.

With this in mind, Roche Diabetes Care’s decision to enter a five-year partnership with Accenture has signified its ambitions to build a new leading digital diabetes ecosystem, which will give the company the ability to analyse and categorise data through the use of algorithms that can be transformed into key insights that contribute to better and faster therapy adaptations. Such insights will not only encompass patient needs and behaviours, but also all relevant health parameters from various sources that are analysed and put into context in order to eventually improve therapy outcomes.

“We need to integrate a lot of information and a lot of data to ensure an optimal treatment of this complex chronic disease,” explains Roche Diabetes Care’s Chief Digital Officer Yan Beynon. “With this new platform, we aim for health data that will provide better insights, enable informed therapy decision making for people

with diabetes and their caregivers on a daily basis and deliver cost efficiencies for the healthcare systems.”

“Digital health is growing as the market is now shifting towards an outcome based, patient-centric model,” adds Zeynep Waelchli, Managing Director at Accenture.

Behind a large number of digital transformations and implementation of cloud solutions, she explains: “The best enabler is digital transformation, so we are making investments to support the digital growth of our clients and support health outcomes, in the delivery of patient care.”

Scalability Roche Diabetes Care plans to grow its digital diabetes ecosystem on a global scale, embedding Accenture’s modular and scalable Intelligent Patient Platform (IPP). Specifically designed to deliver exceptional digital health solutions, both parties will adopt an agile approach in order to respond to any potential changes which could impact the development of the platform. “The industry is changing rapidly and we cannot afford

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to stay monolithic,” adds Waelchli.

Accenture’s IPP is a fully cloud based solution, garnering access to a real-world data repository of over 50mn electronic medical records.

The new platform will therefore grow in line with Roche Diabetes Care’s vision, and give the company the ability to scale quickly. “This is one advantage which the IPP is bringing,” says Waelchli. “It is bringing scalability, because Roche Diabetes Care wants to support patients and caregivers 24-7, which is going to be enabled through our cloud based provisioning.

“Further, it is not only the patient who may need to access this information. This solutions also grants doctors greater and remote visibility so they can make more informed decisions and, as a result, consult better.”

“Speed will matter,” adds Beynon.

“Of course, when you pioneer things you need to be quick, which is why we chose Accenture, because we wish to be fast and scale quickly. I’m convinced that we are delivering the right thing for the patient and for society.

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“With Accenture, the company has the key enabler for the integration that we need immediately. We don’t need to build, we don’t need to buy, and it will completely enable our strategy of integrating, collecting and computing in this area.”

Technological delivery Beynon continues: “We want to create an open digital diabetes ecosystem, and become the largest leading digital ecosystem out there,” Beynon says.

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“We aim for health data that will provide better insights, enable informed decision making and deliver cost efficiencies for payers” – Yan Beynon, RDC’s Chief Digital Officer

With plans to complete the project in phases, RDC’s data will first become integrated with the data surrounding its existing standalone solutions.

“In phase two, we will start to connect our partners and integrate further information, which will support the development of patient services.

So, the first step is implementation, but the second step will be to grow with the partnerships around the ecosystem,” Beynon adds.

To support this further, RDC has also recently acquired the company mySugr, offering the leading diabetes management app solution with more than 1mn users worldwide.

The acquisition enables Roche Diabetes Care to broaden essential access to innovative solutions to a large number of registered users who use the app to track their blood sugar levels, medication and activity levels. It will now effectively deliver the front-end of Roche Diabetes Care digital diabetes ecosystem, where sophisticated analytics will enable the company to gain essential insights to drive future innovations and support business growth.

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Such advances will encompass a multitude of benefits for healthcare professionals. With information readily available through this cloud based solution, it will reduce the time taken for professionals to source and analyse the required data, in order to make informed decisions. Data can be shared with medical professionals in real-time, enabling the ability for the delivery of better care outcomes, and will also increase engagement between medical professionals and patients, supporting positive outcomes.

However, with a number of healthcare organisations being subject to cyber-attacks, data security has become an increasing priority in the development of this new platform. Accenture has placed significant focus in this area, where its IPP architecture has been shaped to counteract such challenges. “It is a HYDRA certified environment, providing encrypted data which is a very important element for Roche and for the patient,� comments Waelchli.

The digital diabetes ecosystem will ensure compliance with all data

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security regulations, which will be consistently evaluated at Roche Diabetes Care to ensure it remains on top of all future requirements.

Future development This five-year partnership will enable both Roche Diabetes Care and Accenture to go on a journey together in the development of a

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digital health solution and support diabetes management on a global scale. “I think one important point is that Accenture is aligned with Roche Diabetes Care’s strategy and is duly committed to making this a success,” concludes Waelchli. “Both companies have embarked on this journey to create this digital ecosystem together and bring better solutions to the

entire digital health industry. From our point of view, we are looking forward to making this a reality.”

“We are pioneers in what we want to do here, specifically within the area of diabetes,” agrees Beynon. “Other industries might be different, but for diabetes, I don’t think anybody is doing what we are doing at the moment.”

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On cloud nine with IBM Written by: Fran Roberts Produced by: James Pepper

IBM

Eric Schnatterly, Vice President IBM Systems for Cloud Platforms, Asia Pacific, talks about the company’s latest pipeline of innovation in the cloud and data space

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BM is one of the most recognised and admired brands in the world.

The business has been building on its brand for more than a century, with a continuous history dating back to the 19th century. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, IBM enjoyed explosive growth, but it’s future was never completely secure. During this time, the company had to survive two World Wars, the Great Depression, and multiple industry transformations.

Then came the 1950s, a period of rapid technological change, with budding computer technologies – electronic computers, magnetic tape, disk drives, programming – creating a slew of new competitors and market uncertainties.

IBM had been a leader of the mechanical age, but success in the electronic age was not a certainty.

In fact, some analysts at the time,

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predicted doom for IBM, as the IBM install base of mechanical tabulating machines were under assault by upstarts and well funded companies offering electronic computers. In 1951, the US Bureau of Census – an IBM client, dating back to 1889 – turned to Remington Rand to provide the electronic computer UNIVAC. CEO Thomas Watson Jr was so concerned that IBM was too slow in adapting transistor technology that he issued a corporate policy in 1957, declaring the use of solid-state circuitry in all machine developments.

Of course, history shows that IBM successfully navigated this technology shift and went on to dominate the electronic computing era. Sixty years later, some analysts have declared the end of IBM’s industry leadership, pointing to

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the threat of cloud computing on IBM’s traditional computing install base. Just like Watson did in 1957, the new IBM is responding to yet another technology shift, declaring artificial intelligence and cloud computing as strategic imperatives.

“I’ve witnessed, lived through and experienced first-hand the different eras of IT and computing over the past several decades,” observes Eric Schnatterly, Vice President IBM Systems for Cloud Platforms, Asia Pacific. “I’ve been working hard on navigating and transforming my team to be able to capitalise on the new era, which is driven by new consumption models and fuelled by data. We all now fully understand that data is the new natural resource. We all participate in a global economic model, which is based on trust, and therefore, to have a secure set of data is paramount. This natural resource has helped drive IBM’s transformation over the past decade. IBM is dedicated to turning data into insights, transforming the way people work.”

During the early part of Schnatterly’s career, IBM was best known by those

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outside of the IT industry for the IBM PC, which became an industry standard and spawned many new businesses and industries. While intended for business enterprises, the PC extended its reach into the consumer space, giving retail consumers visibility to this large, business machines company.

When IBM decided to exit what had become a commodity offering, some thought that was the end of IBM. “When it was announced that we were divesting our PC business,

IBM has produced

six Nobel Laureates

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IBM Machine Learning

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many folks thought: ‘Well, IBM is out of business, they’ve sold their business,’ and yet PCs were just one small part of the business, and just as IBM did with time clocks, punch card machines, and the Selectric typewriter, it divested the old to transition to the new,” Schnatterly remarks.

“We’re an enterprise company and as such we have transformed into higher value systems, software and services, delivered via the cloud and targeted at extracting insights from data. My team is focused on the infrastructure that supports the full continuum of cloud delivery models, and designed for analysing mass volumes of data.”

Unlocking the potential of data Data – said to be the oil of the digital age – is something that IBM wants to help its clients exploit. “Our strategy is to help clients transform into cognitive enterprises and that means that they need to make better use of the data that they have,” advises Schnatterly. “There’s statistics that estimate that 80% of the data out there is what they call ‘dark data’ – it’s

not visible to search engines and sits trapped behind firewalls and within the confines of datacentres around the globe. For the most part, this resource goes untapped which means we are gaining no insight from it.

“What IBM is trying to do with our clients is to help them unlock the potential of the data that they have and to combine this with other data sources, to extract insight and differentiation. Historically, clients have done this through business intelligence programs and queries that they’ve created. They would build a data warehouse and they would have algorithms, big elaborate queries and reports that they run against the data, trying to use the results to make better business decisions,” details Schnatterly.

Creating rule-based programs to support the making of decisions is the old method. Now, companies are converting these rule-based algorithms into machine learning algorithms.

With cognitive-based systems, the machine learns as it goes. “The whole idea is to use algorithms that learn from data on the fly, thus allowing

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the system to find hidden insights without being explicitly programmed where to look,” explains Schnatterly.

There is a lot of exciting work going on in this space, and IBM is credited with having reinvigorated the field of artificial intelligence with the popularity of Watson – IBM’s cognitive system that beat Ken Jennings and Brad Netter on the TV game show Jeopardy. But Watson is just one of many offerings that IBM delivers to help clients inject artificial intelligence into applications, business processes, and procedures.

“We have a software platform called PowerAI, which includes the most popular machine learning frameworks, languages, libraries, tools, and their dependencies, and it is built for easy and rapid deployment.

Complementary to PowerAI, IBM also offers a collaboration platform, called Data Science Experience [DSX], where folks can come to learn, create, and collaborate about AI and deep learning,” advises Schnatterly.

DSX supports the complete data science lifecycle, helping data scientists bring their familiar tools such

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as Jupyter, RStudio, HDP, to curate data and create complex machine learning models and deploy these models into production. “Hortonworks, who IBM has selected to provide the Hadoop-based data platform, offers DSX to their clients because they see the need and value to marry big data with the complete data science lifecycle,” Schnatterly adds.

Another recent development is the growing and necessary use of hardware accelerators to mine this vast amount of data and to execute the AI algorithms. “IBM Power Systems offer unique, and industry leading capabilities, especially in the area of acceleration, that are unlocking new use cases for AI. Together with Nvidia, IBM offers GPU acceleration, but with a unique twist. You see, within the system, the GPU and GPU memory appear as a peer to the CPUs and system memory, with system level speed and bandwidth. Put simply, this means faster access to data, faster machine learning, and better business outcomes,” says Schnatterly.

“The need for systems that can handle the demands of AI, larger data

“I’ve been working hard on navigating and transforming my team to be able to capitalise on the new era, which is driven by data” – Eric Schnatterly, Vice President IBM Systems for Cloud Platforms, Asia Pacific

IBM

models, and distributed deep learning clusters, will fuel the growth of my business,” Schnatterly continues. “Of course, we will continue to provide the infrastructure for core banking, telco billing, ERP, and large databases, but we see the growth coming from cognitive systems – and this is our sweet spot. Our systems are designed from the ground up to handle AI better than all other alternatives, which allows us to navigate this latest shift from a position of strength.”

Head in the cloud In addition to machine learning, IBM is embracing cloud technology.

Whilst written usage of the term ‘cloud computing’ dates back to a 1996 business plan written by executives at Compaq, the concept only began gaining momentum a decade later when companies such as Google and Amazon began using ‘cloud computing’ to describe the new paradigm in which people were increasingly accessing software, computer power and files over the internet instead of on their desktops.

The cloud is not a place or

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destination, rather, it is now best characterised as a set of capabilities.

“This is not always well understood,” comments Schnatterly. “Largely due to the success and growth of public cloud providers, like Amazon Web Services (AWS), some folks confuse the cloud with a place to which you move your data and workload. However, a public cloud is just one type or delivery model for cloud services. In fact, there are multiple ways and places from which to deliver and consume cloud services.”

As most businesses looks to embrace the cloud, IBM is engaging with them around workloads and data, to architect the best cloud model and to deliver the best business outcomes.

“Some of our clients prefer to run some of their applications and workloads from the public cloud, for which the IBM Cloud would be a possible solution.

However, it is highly unlikely that any company would choose to move all their workloads and data to a single cloud provider, so it is important for IBM to allow clients the flexibility to support and maintain a multi-cloud platform strategy,” states Schnatterly.

“Since these multiple cloud types

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may include public cloud, private cloud, hybrid cloud and hosted private cloud, IBM stands apart as one company that can address all cloud types and requirements. IBM’s list of enterprise clients is the envy of the industry and we are working with and helping these clients with their transition to the cloud, no matter the type, but architected to suit their unique requirements – and we know these unique requirements better than any other.

“When my team engages with a client, we take a workload and data approach, which leads to a recommended architecture.

Sometimes, such things as latency requirements, data locality, or even governmental regulations, will dictate the need to build and deploy cloud capabilities within the client’s own datacentre. Make no mistake, this is still a cloud, as such solutions still allow variable consumption and costing, self-service and automated provisioning – all the capabilities that one attributes to cloud service providers. But in this case, the cloud provider is the company’s own IT shop,” explains Schnatterly.

Play Video: The IBM Cloud is the cloud for enterprise w w w. g i g a b i t . n e t

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Eric Schnatterly

Vice President IBM Systems for Cloud Platforms, Asia Pacific For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by people’s ability to create art from a blank canvas; to build a house from stacks of wood; to sculpture a human figure from stone; ...to create beauty from nothing. This passion for building and creating original pieces of art and objects of worth, put me on a path to becoming an IT executive with over 30 years of experience.

My love for art and design, led me to study architecture and facilities engineering at college. This led to an Internship at IBM’s Facilities Engineering department, ultimately leading to a job offer, upon graduation. While at IBM, I discovered new ways to feed my passion for creativity and design, but now extending to areas of high-technology. I became an evangelist for neat technology solutions and designs, leading to a position in sales. I had a real knack for helping clients visualize the “art of the possible” in the design of technology solutions that delivered tangible and positive outcomes. I also learned that I had a real knack for helping inspire large teams to do the same, leading to management and executive roles, in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.

The facts and figures may not be works of art to most, but I am proud that I helped create and then lead a team that delivered $1bn of revenue and significant market share gains. I am proud that I lead a business where we create value for our client’s every day.

Today, I am the leader of a passionate team of sellers and technical specialists, working hard every day to exceed our business metrics, but it all starts with CREATING technology solutions that we would proudly display in an art gallery.

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“When it comes to cloud services, I have many routes to market. I also have partners and alliances with other firms that provide hosting services. Some of my partners have global delivery centres, from which they provide cloud services to clients, using IBM provided infrastructure – systems, storage, and software. For example, TCS – a global systems integrator – provides cloud services using IBM mainframes, power systems and storage, to some of the largest clients in the world. Some of our ecosystem partners are local or regional managed service providers that address data sovereignty issues. This provides the trust and localisation that some people are looking for versus maybe a global, public cloud provider, with whom there is no established trust or relationship.

“You see, my client may be a bank, who buys IBM systems and storage to install within their own private cloud, or my client may be the cloud service provider, who sells my infrastructure solutions as-a-service to the bank. I have to cater to all types of buyers – enterprises that choose to buy our systems and storage and

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install it in their own data centre and the providers of cloud services.

“Some of the enterprises do have us manage it for them in the data centre, others pick and choose and have a hybrid approach. Therefore, some of the stuff they do themselves, some of the stuff they subscribe to as a service, and we work with them to provide the glue that allows all of that to work seamlessly together, be secure and ensure trust is maintained.

This transition to the cloud – it’s not a threat to me, it represents a great opportunity,” Schnatterly states.

The transition to the cloud has opened up IBM’s technology to segments of the market for whom it was previously economically unviable.

“Now that things have transitioned to the cloud, I can provide infrastructure at hyperscale to big data centres that can provide this infrastructure as a service to clients not based on a server or a big storage subsystem, but based on just their compute needs and their storage needs, no matter how small,” Schnatterly explains.

“I can get very granular and we can now price to just the compute

and storage needs through subcapacity, which can be carved up smaller than a server, smaller even than a virtual server, right down to a subset of a core. You can sell and make granular your compute and storage, and we can reach a whole new audience, which was never a market I could get to before. So, this represents a big opportunity.”

New opportunities Understandably, Schnatterly is optimistic about what the future holds for IBM. “All of this bodes well for me and my team because those demands will drive new projects and opportunities for my team to engage with clients on solutions and infrastructure to help them deliver the performance, and keep it up and running in a secure and trusted way,” he concludes.

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DATA BA N K :

Centers of excellence DataBank has enjoyed a hugely successful 18 months, characterized by acquisitions and organic development and super-charged by its takeover from Digital Bridge Written by: James Henderson Produced by: Tom Venturo

D ATA B A N K LT D

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he last couple of years in the data center industry have been characterized by a high level of mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity, with a record 2016 set to be comfortably surpassed in 2017, with the value of deals expected to run into multi-billion-dollar territory.

One of the companies that has been particularly busy is DataBank, which was itself the subject of a takeover from Digital Bridge in June 2016.

Headquartered in the historic former Federal Reserve Bank Building in downtown Dallas, TX the company is a leading provider of enterprise-class data center, cloud, and interconnection services, offering customers 100% uptime availability of data, applications, and infrastructure.

DataBank’s managed data center services are anchored in world-class facilities, and after a recent flurry of activity the company currently boasts 13 data centers located across Dallas, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, Baltimore and Atlanta, operating within or managing major

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CONSTRUCTION

Databank data center

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• Lower pPUE • Free cooling to increase energy efficiency • Data Centre air fully separated • Energy efficiency: Evaporative Cooling ESEERs over 45 • 3 modes of operation • Munters heat exchanger technology • Any fresh water type • Configurable design • Efficiency internal fan wall

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We are also proud to offer 1st class dedicated global sales and service teams plus fully operational test facilities for Factory Acceptance Testing and simulation. The facilities follow ASHRAE Standard 143-2015 guideline method for indirect evaporative cooling testing.

More information about our testing facilities can be found on our website. www.munters.com/dctestfacility Call to find out how much the Oasis™ IEC can meet your data centre cooling and efficiency needs.

Munters 225 S. Magnolia Ave Buena Vista VA 24416 USA / Tel: +1 540 291 1111 E-mail: datacenters@munters.com Web: munters.com/datacentres

Munters a ''Cool Partner'' DataBank is a leading provider of customized colocation solutions and services that are designed to help organizations manage risk and improve business performance. With 10 data centers located in various parts of the country, the DataBanks team of experienced professionals are familiar with various challenges faced while creating energy efficient design strategies. In a due diligence process consisting of comprehensive technical analysis and discussions with existing clients, DataBank has chosen to partner with Munters and utilize the proven Oasis TM IEC data center cooling technology.

Focusing on the latest DataBank location in Minneapolis, Munters Oasis TM Indirect evaporative cooling (IEC) units with the patented EPX polymer heat exchanger have been installed to effectively reject heat from the data center. The Oasis system are 100% Indirect Air Side Economizers and do not introduce outside air. With no leaks, and a re circulating system, the data center is cooled without the introduction of outdoor air pollutants that might adversely impact the servers.

In Minnesota, there is only 10% of a year when the outside temperatures are too high and moist for the evaporative cooling alone. During this time a small mechanical cooling system (trim DX) supplements the evaporative process, so that the air supplied to the data center is maintained at the right temperature. This condition where refrigeration is required to supplement the IEC only occurs during conditions with simultaneous high heat and humidity.

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Munters OasisTM IEC unit installation on the roof of Minnesota DatBank facility

The weather in Minneapolis goes into extremes regardless of the relative humidity (RH), with high RH in the summer and extremely low RH in the winter. The Munters Oasis IEC operates in one of three modes, depending on the ambient air temperature, dry, wet and wet +trimming DX. On cold and cool days, the Oasis heat exchanger operates dry and simply acts an air-to air heat exchanger. Outside air (commonly referred to as scavenger air) indirectly cools the data center air through normal heat exchange, without the use of any water. The EPX polymer tubes have been tested ยบand are proven effective despite the extreme cold in the northern climate of Minnesota where wind chill can drop to -35ยบF. Once the ambient temperature rises to a certain point, the Oasis heat exchanger will not be able to provide enough cooling while operating in dry mode. When this happens, water is pumped from internal sumps to the air handlers spray nozzles that wet the outside surface of the polymer heat exchanger tubes, cooling them with a thin layer of water. The scavenger air evaporates water on the exterior of the tubes, which causes heat to be extracted from the re circulating data center air flowing, internal to the tubes. In this evaporation mode, the Oasis heat exchanger will be able to cool the re circulated air even when outside temperatures are quite high.

Munters OasisTM IEC cooling unit installation on Minnesota DataBank facility

The highly effective Munters Oasis cooling system saves in annual operating costs resulting from lower power and water consumption compared to conventional water cooled chiller systems. The choice of DataBank to partner with Munters and integrate the Oasis IEC cooling technology has resulted in a pPue = 1.06 and a PUE = 1.12. The low PUE, proven reliability of the Munters Oasis Units has contributed to the overall capital savings experienced by DataBank, allowing them to operate with a competitive edge.

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Databank Richardson

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CONSTRUCTION

network interconnect facilities within each of the regions.

This footprint of top-tier facilities is dedicated to providing uninterrupted access to customer data, applications and IT equipment. DataBank’s services provide business solutions for corporate enterprises, including hybrid cloud services, customize IT deployments, and industry compliant regulations to meet the outsourcing needs for IT management, maintenance and operations. The company serves a wide range of customer verticals including media and content distribution, cloud infrastructure providers and telecom networks.

The business has consistently made headlines in recent years – both before and since the Digital Bridge takeover – as a result of a number of eye-catching deals to buy or build facilities in some of the United States’ fastest emerging data center hotspots.

In the last 12 months, DataBank has announced:

Raul Martynek, CEO

Raul Martynek joined DataBank in June of 2016 as the Chief Executive Officer. In this role, he provides overall strategic direction of the company and its operations. Raul is a 20+ year veteran in the telecom and Internet Infrastructure sector. He most recently served as a Senior Advisor for Digital Bridge Holdings LLC. Prior to Digital Bridge, he served as Chief Executive Officer for New Jersey-based data center and managed services operator Net Access, LLC. Net Access was acquired in November 2015 by Denver-based data center operator Cologix. Prior to Net Access, he was the CEO of Voxel dot Net, Inc., a global managed hosting and cloud company, which was acquired by Internap Network Services Corp. in early 2012.

Mr. Martynek also served as the Chief Restructuring Officer of Smart Telecom, a Dublin, Ireland-based fibre carrier which was acquired by Digiweb in 2009. w w w. g i g a b i t . n e t

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DataBank’s New DFW-3 Data Center

“With DigitalBridge we have a very active M&A program. We’re constantly looking at new opportunities.”

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the development of a purpose-built 94,000 sqft data in partnership with Georgia Tech; the construction of a third data center in Dallas; the acquisition of C7 Data Centers, the primary interconnection hub and largest data center service provider in Salt Lake City; the construction of a third 15,000 sqft data hall at its Minneapolis-area data center; and the acquisition of carrier-rich downtown data centers in Cleveland and Pittsburgh from 365 Data Centers.

Its most recent activity, announced on September 21, saw DataBank acquire Edge Hosting. DataBank said the acquisition will provide both market expansion and additional expertise in the delivery of cloud solutions and managed services, especially for clientele requiring comprehensive operational controls for a number of commercial and government compliance standards.

Raul Martynek is key to the story, having acted as a Senior Advisor to Digital Bridge before taking over as CEO at DataBank when the acquisition completed. Speaking exclusively,

CONSTRUCTION

he reveals: “The majority of the work I did for Digital Bridge was around the DataBank acquisition, so it was obviously something that I felt very strongly about and thought would be very positive for the business.

“Now that I’ve transitioned to CEO of the company, I feel the best component of the Digital Bridge relationship is that it is a group with very, very well-established access to long-term capital. To be successful in the data center space you really have to have a long-term plan and access to funds. The investments

we are making in building new data centers are not something that you get an immediate return on.

“We are in the process of building two new data centers, one a 145,000 sqft with over nine-megawatts available in Dallas, which is nearing completion, and we’ve also started on a 94,000 eight-megawatt facility in Atlanta. Those types of investments would not be possible with any kind of traditional private equity type of vehicle, where people are looking to get in and out of investments in a five to 10-year period.

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“That’s really been, to me, the most exciting part. Having run private-equity backed businesses in the past, and now contrasting that with our situation here at DataBank with Digital Bridge. We can have a long-term viewpoint on the marketplace.

It allows us to make different types of investments, which we believe will return very favourably to shareholders in the future.”

Key to the appeal of the purchase for Digital Bridge was DataBank’s continuing ambition to grow into underserved markets, where there is huge potential for expansion, says Kevin Ooley, President and CFO of DataBank, who has been with the business since 2011.

“From 2011 to 2016, the plan was to capitalize on the Dallas presence, grow into underserved markets, and then add a layer of services on top that we knew our clients wanted. And we did that.

We invested in Minneapolis and in Kansas City and built a second facility in Dallas,” he comments.

Kevin Ooley, President & CFO

Kevin Ooley took on the role of President in May of 2017 and has served as the Chief Financial Officer of DataBank since 2011. He has over 20 years of extensive experience in delivering shareholder value through the creation and implementation of growth and operational strategies. Prior to joining DataBank, Ooley served as the CFO for the Thompson Media Group and as a Principal at Lovett Miller & Co., a growth capital private equity firm based in Florida. He was also a Director of Strategy for iXL Enterprises and a Manager in Accenture’s Strategic Services practice.

Ooley holds a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration from Duke University.

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DATABANK’S DATA CENTERS PITTSBURGH

DALLAS

DataBank currently operates three Dallas area data centers. It’s Legacy Park facility is underconstruction in Plano, another in the telecom-rich northern suburb of Richardson, and its downtown data center facility and headquarters is the former Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, now a connectivity-rich carrier-hotel.

DataBank currently operates one data center facility in Downtown Pittsburgh. This site is within the telecom-rich business park, Nova Place. The site came into the DataBank portfolio through acquisition in January 2017.

KANSAS CITY

DataBank currently operates one data center facility in the heart of Downtown Cleveland. The telecom-rich location, boasting a number of toptier providers, came into the DataBank portfolio via acquisition in January 2017.

Both Kansas City data centers came into DataBank’s portfolio through the acquisition of Arsalon Technologies in April 2014. The data center sites are built out to top-tier standards and operate as the managed services hub for the company. The facilities host a number of prominent local and state-wide businesses as clients.

MINNEAPOLIS

ATLANTA

CLEVELAND

DataBank has two Minneapolis-Area data centers.

Our West Twin Cities data center is located off of France Avenue in Edina, MN and its newest data center is located in Eagan, MN. The Tier-III certified purpose-built facility opened in the Spring 2015 and features unmatched power availability, connectivity and security.

SALT LAKE CITY

DataBank currently operates three data center facilities in Salt Lake City area. All three of these top-tier data center sites came into the DataBank’s portfolio via acquisition in early 2017. One is located in downtown SLC and the other two are just to the South at our campus in Bluffdale, UT.

Salt Lake City

Kansas City Dallas

DataBank currently operates one data center in the Atlanta area. DataBank’s Atlanta data center is currently under-construction in midtown Atlanta, GA, nearby anchor-tenant Georgia Tech’s campus.

BALTIMORE

DataBank currently operates one data center in the Baltimore area. DataBank’s downtown Baltimore data center came into the DataBank’s portfolio via the acquisition of the compliant-cloud and managed service specialized Edge Hosting, late in 2017.

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“When Digital Bridge came on like Pittsburgh and Cleveland and board, they liked that strategy, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis and they agreed with it. It was a natural Kansas City. If you look at DataBank’s transition that the larger ownership evolution that’s exactly what we’ve group and dollars behind it allowed done. We started in a tier-one market, us to continue with that plan, but which is Dallas, and it’s still a very on a much-accelerated schedule, important market for us, but all our and really take it beyond the Central expansions since then have been time zone. So, we still focus into these other markets where on underserved markets we see demand evolving and, using a football as the internet of analogy, American everything becomes football, underserved more important.”

NFL cities: Chicago, The recent New York, Northern announcement Virginia, Silicon that DataBank has Number of Employees Valley are very well partnered Georgia at DataBank Ltd served, with a great Tech to develop a deal of competition. So, new 94,000 sqft data we’re going after that Salt center in downtown Atlanta, Lake City, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, housing high-performance computing Atlanta, that secondary market nodes and unique datasets for that has served us very well.” university research, has certainly Martynek is on the same page: piqued the interest of the data center “What we see is that as the internet world. Located in Midtown Atlanta, continues to evolve, that there needs DataBank’s ATL1 data center will to be infrastructure in secondary serve as a HPCC (High-Performance markets; this trend that’s called the Computing Center) and will house the ‘edge’ – our view is the edge is alive Southern Crossroads providing high and well today. It exists in places speed, high bandwidth connectivity

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to research and education sites throughout the southeast and across the nation. Construction of DataBank’s ATL1 data center is scheduled for Q4 of this year, with construction slated for Q4 2018 completion.

Martynek says that the opportunity to work with academia and parachute the DataBank into a new business space was too good to turn up.

“This is a very high-profile project, a very major investment, and all indications are that it’s going to be very successful because it’s starting with an incredible foundation, which is Georgia Tech.”

“We saw an opportunity to insert ourselves into an ecosystem that we hadn’t been in before. We’re very well established in the corporate enterprise ecosystem, we’re very well established in the carrier network ecosystem, and we’re very well established in what we call SMACC, which is social, media, analytics, content and cloud, so the internet ecosystem.

“This project represents a fourth ecosystem, that we really didn’t have any exposure to. We felt that given the profile of Georgia Tech,

OVER 500,000SQ FT AND COUNTING DataBank’s recent acquisition of Stream Data Centers’ latest development in Legacy Business Park, Dallas, Texas, has expanded the company’s portfolio to more than 500,000 sqft. The data center dubbed DFW3, will be a multi-tenant, Tier-3 data center largely aimed at IT outsourcing.

Located on an owned 16-acre site, the initial building will comprise 145,000 sqft with 60,000 sqft of white-space and the ability to expand to 265,000 sqft and 120,000 sqft of whitespace.

“The larger footprint we have, the more we can address different customer requirements; larger customers want to deploy in multiple markets and then different types of configurations, enterprise and interconnection,” says Martynek.

“That footprint facilitates our ability to be a good partner with our partners. It’s one of the benefits that we think will accrue to us as we expand.”

Ooley concurs, commenting: “The larger the footprint, the more scale you have, the more attractive you are to Fortune 500 clients and large technology companies. It means that we can serve customers that need locations on the east or west coast, as well as a central location as well.

“Aside from the potential for clients, the spread of locations has enabled us to attract more talent, and deepen the strength of our employees. In addition, it helps drive down our cost to capital. So just like customers find us more attractive, so do banks and equity partners.”

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it would be just a tremendous way to get into that ecosystem. We’re hugely excited about it and the conversations we’ve had with Georgia Tech have been extremely positive.”

The project is also one close to Ooley’s heart, not just because of the potential it represents for DataBank, but also due to the time he spent as an undergraduate student at the University. “I’ve experienced the emphasis and resources that they put into research. It’s one of the highest rated engineering institutes in the US, and the commitment to this area and the broader Atlanta community is unparalleled. I’m really pleased to be a part of that, and we will benefit because a lot of our customers will see us providing this for them and we’ll gain credibility to be able to take this and offer it in other markets,” he comments.

Away from academia, DataBank has entered Cleveland and Pittsburgh after its acquisition of network-neutral data center facilities from 365 Data Centers. “Cleveland and Pittsburgh offer very highly connected facilities, so it was a positive way for us to enter

into the marketplace,” says Ooley.

“This opportunity aligned with one of our two acquisitions strategies, which is to go into a market and pick up an asset and then build our data bank design, data centers around that.”

Elaborating on strategy employed

by DataBank, Martynek reveals: “We look at markets analytically – not every market is going to be a good one.

Cleveland, Pittsburgh and our Atlanta announcement, all three of those markets were on our radar as good markets that had good characteristics from a long-term absorption of incremental data center space.

“We’re reticent to go into a market without an established presence, in other words greenfield. That’s a really big difference between what’s happening now and what happened in the bubble era.

“I’ve been in the sector since 1994, so I’ve seen the evolution. In the bubble era, companies planted flags, they would set up operations in a location without a single customer.

That doesn’t happen today in data center land. People realize it’s very difficult to convince users,

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D ATA B A N K LT D

sophisticated enterprise users, in a given market, to give them business just by coming up and saying ‘Hi, I’m the new guy on the block. I’m going to do a good job for you.’

“You have no track record, and this is a business of trust. The enterprise person is going to be loathed to trust you over someone who’s been in the market for three years, five years, ten years, and has that track record. That’s why we look to seek out acquisitions as our market entry method, after we’ve underwritten the viability and attractiveness

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of a given market. That’s exactly what we did with 365’s assets.”

Amongst the myriad of challenges of operating a clutch of data centers across the United States is one of sustainability. Data centers are by their nature power hungry beasts that demand round-the-clock attention. To that end, DataBank measures the energy output of its centers on a PUE (percentage utilisation effectiveness) basis.

“It’s a pretty simple concept, which is how much power is the entire data center using? That’s what’s on

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Legacy Park Data Center (DFW 3) - Plano, TX

the numerator. The denominator is how much power are our customers consuming?” says Martynek.

“The closer you can get that number to one, the more efficient you are, because I can’t change the power usage of my customer’s equipment, that’s his decision, but I can ensure that my facility operates as efficiently as possible. We’ve been doing a lot there to ensure that we get to a very low number. Our facilities in Utah are at like 1.2, 1.3, which is very, very strong.

We’re only using 200 to 300 KW per megawatt to run the entire facility.

That’s how we measure sustainability.

“The market’s starting to evolve where we’re able to purchase power from more sustainable long-term renewable type of sources. I think you see, across the industry, big commitments, not only from the large customers, like the Apples and the Googles and the Amazons of the world, but even our larger data center competitors are demanding that type of option. I think those are going to trickle down to us, because we’re still a small consumer compared to them. I think we’re

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D ATA B A N K LT D

BIG IN TEXAS While DataBank has made its intentions to grow into secondary or ‘edge’ markets clear, its homes state of Texas – very much a primary market – remains hugely important to the business.

It recently announced the acquisition of Stream Data Centers’ latest development in Legacy Business Park – known as DFW-3. The state-of-theart, multi-tenant, Tier-3 data center in Plano, will offer Dallas area businesses a new highquality option for outsourced data center capacity in the rapidly growing Legacy business corridor. Located on an owned 16-acre site, the initial building will comprise 145,000 sqft with 60,000 sqft of white-space and the ability to expand to 265,000 sqft and 120,000 sqft of whitespace.

“The Plano submarket is one of the hottest office parks in the US

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right now. A lot of companies are moving either their headquarters or material or a substantial portion of their business to that area,” says Ooley. “And for example, Toyota, Liberty Insurance, these are companies that have moved a lot of their operations to that submarket.

We wanted to be right in the heart of it.

“Texas has sold itself number one as being a very businessfriendly state. Two, I think from an affordability standpoint, relative to the coast, California, New York, the cost of doing business here is still very affordable. There’s a huge talent pool here. From really, across the board. This is a big telecommunications and hightech hub, so it’s just a good labour pool from which to tap. it’s just a really good place to do business.”

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going to benefit from their activity.”

It is also likely that DataBank will continue to benefit from the consolidation that is evidently taking place in the data center industry, with Martynek of the opinion that the sector is very fragmented compared to industries such as wireless, telco or cable. “When you look at this space it’s ten years behind where those other sectors are,” he says.

So, plenty of potential for further acquistional activity.

In addition, Marytnek believes the service offering Databank is bringing to market sets it apart from some of the competition. “We’ve adopted what is called the hybrid approach. What that means is we offer not just co-location solutions, but we offer managed service and network solutions, on a single platform in the same building. That’s not something that a lot of people do.

“It’s much harder to do that,

because obviously, your expertise has to expand into a wider set of products and services. Ultimately, we see that as the winning formula in that enterprise market. We see our enterprise customers that are one megawatt and below asking us to do more for them around managed services, around network. That is a huge source of differentiation for us.”

He concludes: “Our plan over the next 12 - 18 months is to continue to dig deeper in our existing marketing.

That’s our function of what I described earlier in terms of bringing on new inventory, new capability.

“With DigitalBridge we have a very active M&A program. We’re constantly looking at new opportunities. I do envision us continuing to expand geographically through incremental acquisitions into attractive secondary markets that fit our strategy.”

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Innovative education at your fingertips Written by: Laura Mullan Produced by: Adam Turner

L A U R E AT E O N L I N E E D U C AT I O N D I V I S I O N O F L A U R E AT E E D U C AT I O N , I N C

Laureate Education has cemented itself as a major player in the education industry, providing innovative online degree programmes and technology solutions to students. A keen innovator, Laureate Online’s CIO Rob Hilliard is passionate about delivering an unforgettable student experience

O

nline education or e-learning is a rapidly evolving market and it seems no company is driving innovation in the industry quite like Laureate Education.

As the first publicly traded public benefit corporation, Laureate Education, Inc. is the largest global network of degree-granting higher education institutions, with more than one million students enrolled across nearly 70 institutions in 25 countries at campuses and online. Laureate Education provides access that helps reduce barriers to education and foster a culture of inclusive learning; however, Laureate Education is going one step further by also offering online courses across its network of institutions and has a division,

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Laureate Online, which focuses on the fully online degree programs.

Rob Hilliard, CIO of Laureate Online, oversees tech solutions at Walden University, the company’s largest online university, as well as Laureate Education’s partner institutions - the University of Roehampton, the University of Liverpool, and the University of Miami.

“When we talk about our vision, there’s a phrase we often use called the ‘triple bottom line,’” notes Hilliard. “This means we’ve got our financial bottom line as a company, a student outcome bottom line, and a social impact bottom line.”

“We want to make sure we’re driving student outcomes. Not just simply giving students an education, but

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Rob Hilliard

CIO of Laureate Online w w w. g i g a b i t . n e t

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L A U R E AT E O N L I N E E D U C AT I O N D I V I S I O N O F L A U R E AT E E D U C AT I O N , I N C

Doug Becker Founder, Chairman, and CEO

Ricardo Berckemeyer Chief Operating Officer

Eilif SerckHanssen President and Chief Administrative Officer

“It’s important to build relationships. You can’t do it alone. Everyone’s got to try to pull together and focus on trying to do the right thing for the student” – Rob Hilliard, CIO of Laureate Online giving them the education they need to achieve their life goals and ambitions.

“Finally, the third bottom line is our impact on the world and how we can drive positive social change,” continues Hilliard. “We’re focusing on those three levels so we can drive improvements for the company,

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the stockholders, the students and for the world in general.”

These may seem like ambitious aims, but they are ones which Laureate Education aims to deliver, through innovative digital transformation and technology leadership.

TECHNOLOGY

Changing mindsets The last few years have been transformational for Laureate Online as it has revamped its IT operating model and moved from a projectbased culture to a product-based one.

“By thinking of your technology solutions as products you have to keep iterating it, changing it, and adjusting it, just as the world around it changes,” Hilliard explains. “You might not make big changes every day, but having a team thinking

about the next improvement builds relationships, collaboration, and teamwork - so there’s less focus on the lines of the department and more focus on the student.”

Much of Hilliard’s focus has been on creating innovative technologies but as the company evolves and develops, he’s also keen to make sure the staff are well trained to deal with the new advancements.

“We have started to think about innovation in terms of change

Culinary students at Universidade Anhembi Morumbi, a Laureate network institution in Brazil

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TECHNOLOGY

enablement,” reflects Hilliard. “We now recognize that when we’re implementing a new system, there’s a change to the technology, certainly, but there’s also a change to the people and the process.

“We ask ourselves, if we are going to make this technology change, are the people trained properly, are they prepared for it, did we communicate it to them properly, and have we adjusted the processes properly?”

Driving innovation One notable product that Hilliard is proud of is Walden University’s newly revamped student portal. “Just like every technology, it gets old over time, and so we made a real effort to build a contemporary student experience,” says Hilliard.

“Not only am I proud of the solution, I think it’s also a great example of the teamwork between the different facets of the organization that needed to come together to think about the student,” he adds.

“It’s important to build relationships,” adds Hilliard, “you can’t do it alone.

Everyone has to pull together and focus on doing the right thing for the student.”

Laureate Online is also embarking on a new technological innovation by migrating

Laureate Education is the largest global network of degree-granting higher education institutions with nearly 70 campus-based and online universities in 25 countries

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L A U R E AT E O N L I N E E D U C AT I O N D I V I S I O N O F L A U R E AT E E D U C AT I O N , I N C

to a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, Salesforce, and a new marketing automation tool called Marketo. They are also working with companies such as GoKart Labs on experience design and innovation initiatives.

“Everyone who touches a prospective student will have their interactions updated in our systems. This way, we’ll have a much better 360-degree view of our customer and we can then provide them with the exact product they want,” adds Hilliard.

Focusing on the individual Offering an eclectic range of undergraduate and graduate degree programs such as business, nursing, education and social work, Laureate Education’s individualistic and innovative approach to education could well be a deciding factor for prospective students when choosing whether to enrol.

Indeed, it is the company’s dedication to providing a rewarding student experience which is at the core of Laureate Education’s ethos and it is a mission which Hilliard is passionate about. “I would say that my personal overriding goal is really focused on student experience - broadly classifying ‘student’ as prospective students, current students, as well as alumni,” he says. “It’s making sure that the organization is aligned properly to satisfy the student’s needs as they go through that lifecycle.”

By looking at education from a refreshing angle,

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TECHNOLOGY

Voices that Impact the Future

The Laureate Education, Inc. headquarters in Baltimore, Md

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TECHNOLOGY

“In an age where a lot of companies are trying to define what their purpose is I think most employees and students feel good to come to an institution where there’s a focus on driving improvement in the world” – Rob Hilliard, CIO of Laureate Online

Laureate Education is not just reducing barriers to education access but is also questioning the ways we learn.

“When you think about revolutionising and transforming education there are a lot of things out there that are beyond technology,” says Hilliard.

“You can think about the way people go to class but you can also consider what types of education you can offer.

For instance, Walden has developed a competency-based education experience that’s centered on the idea of learning at your own pace.

“It’s an innovative solution, and I think if people understood it

better and knew how it worked, they could achieve the educational outcomes they desire.”

At the forefront of a changing industry As a public benefit corporation and a Certified B Corporation®, Laureate Education is committed to making a positive and enduring impact, not only for students but also in the communities it serves.

Best expressed by a commitment to be ‘Here for Good’, the company is a strong believer that when its students succeed, countries prosper and societies benefit.

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Laureate offer undergraduate and graduate degree programmes to over one million students worldwide 140

October 2017

“Overall it’s a great mission,” says Hilliard. “In an age where a lot of companies are trying to define what their purpose is, I think most employees and students feel good about coming to an institution where there’s a focus on making the world a better place.”

A lot has changed in the education sector over the last decade, and certainly one of the trends is more online programme offerings.

Therefore, Hilliard recognizes the need to innovate so that the company can stay ahead of the curve and offer

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Antonio Guterres, the ninth Secretary General of the United Nations, being awarded an honorary doctorate at the Universidad Europea de Madrid in Spain, a Laureate network institution

a student experience like no other.

“From a technology perspective, we need to make sure we are innovating in ways that are providing the best student experience and the best student outcomes,” Hilliard says.

“My goal is for Laureate Education to be a leader, an organization you could look up to and say they have the best online education, they have the best student experience, and their students achieve their goals - from my perspective that’s what is most important.”

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NAVIG VINOD SHARMA

INNOVATION

GAT NG IN THE

FINANCIAL WORLD Written by: Dale Benton Produced by: Vince Kielty

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Vinod Sharma, CTO at Econet Wireless Zimbabwe, takes us through the ever-changing digital landscape of the global financial services industry African Business Review: Tell me a little about your role with Econet Wireless Zimbabwe.

Vinod Sharma: You can find everything on my blog, but here’s a brief word or two about where I am right now. I have extensive experience in IT networks, telecom services, and the financial technology space, now exploring artificial intelligence to add value to myself and add to my skills, as machine learning is the future of every business and technology of today. I sit in a very key position to oversee the entire changing landscape of the financial IT i.e. fintech services sector.

ABR:In our previous issue of African Business Review, you discussed the challenge

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that banking and financial organisations face in trying to keep costs low while ensuring the same high quality of services - is this still the case?

VS: Unfortunately it’s the same case and I believe fintech will settle its score in the next couple of years. Keeping costs low is the prime idea, as this is a low margin business for low value transactions, if the cost at any time starts looking north, customers immediately start running south.

ABR: With the continued growth of mobile payments, how has this impacted the industry?

VS: The continued growth has made a positive impact to the industry

AFRICA

and will only continue to do so. As mentioned before, fintech will be settling down in the next couple of years and will rest for good in order to look at what it has got and how to make best out the tools in its pocket.

One of the biggest tools is the data it has collected and continues to collect. It’s a time for data science and to explore every bit to see how cost, revenue, sales, growth, usage etc. can be optimised.

In Africa, my belief is that this has gone up many folds. Zimbabwe is a unique case where growth

is at its highest level. Artificial intelligence will guide and work as navigator for this industry.

ABR: What are the challenges that come with mobile payments?

VS: There are some challenges like cost of transaction, ease of performing the transaction, acceptance by merchants, should it be close or open loop? The question on customers mind and at heart is “How secure is my transaction?” and time

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AFRICA

T�A�S���MI��� WITH

digital payments

Srinivas Nidugondi

SVP and Head, Mobile Financial Solutions, at Mahindra Comviva shares his views with African Business Review on mobile money evolution in Africa

1 How is Africa leading the world in mobile payments?

In�Africa,�where�financial�inclusion�is�limited,�it�is�increasingly� becoming�clear�that�mobile�money�services,�such�as�EcoCash,� Airtel�Money,��range�Money,�MobiCash,�and�E-�ahab� promise�a�convenient,�affordable�and�more�scalable�alternative� to�traditional�banking.��y�leveraging�the�ubiquity�of�mobile� phones,�mobile�money�services�are�banking�the�unbanked� population,�meeting�financial�needs�of�millions�of�Africans� and�making�the�economies�cash-light.� �or�e�ample,�EcoCash,�largest�mobile�money�service�in� �imbabwe,�is�used�by��.7�million�subscribers.�EcoCash�has� helped�to�mitigate�the�cash-crisis�in�the�country�by�enabling�people� to�make�bill�and�merchant�payments,�transfer�money,�receive� salaries,�save�money�and�get�loans�digitally.�In����2�1��-17,� EcoCash�processed�transactions�valuing�US$�7.1�billion,�forming� a�significant�portion�of��imbabwe’s���P.�EcoCash�is� powered�by�Mahindra�Comviva’s�mobiquity®�Money�platform

2 How do you see mobile money evolving in Africa?

Until�recently,�mobile�money�in�Africa�was�dominated�by�P2P� transfers,�given�the�migrant�population�and�informal�network� of�family�and�friends,�who�are�the�primary�source�of�financing.� �ut,�as�the�mobile�money�economy�matures�in�the�region,� we�see�a�diverse�set�of�use�cases�picking�up.�

�ot��ust�individuals,�government�and�enterprises�are�also� e�tending�the�use�of�mobile�money�by�making�salary� payments,�government�to�person�payments,�and�business� payments�digitally.� Another�important�area�worth�mentioning�is�interoperability� between�mobile�money�services.�Tan�ania,�Egypt,�and� Madagascar�are�some�of�the�countries�that�have�already� enabled�direct�fund�transfer�between�mobile�wallets� belonging�to�different�mobile�money�services.�This�has�set� the�path�for�other�countries�to�adopt�interoperability.���

3 How do you see banks responding to the rise of mobile money in Africa? �anks�have�reali�ed�that�they�have�to�act�now�or�perish� in�the�wake�of�the�mobile�money�economy.�So�they�are� collaborating�with�mobile�money�operators�to�facilitate� transfer�between�bank�account�and�customer’s�mobile� wallet.��n�the�other�hand,�many�banks�are�also�launching� their�own�digital�wallets,�with�better�customer�e�perience�on� top�of�their�mind.��ot�only�this,�banks�are�equipping�their� merchants�with�an�unified�acceptance�interface�that�is� compatible�with�all�digital�payments�channels�such�as�debit� and�credit�cards,�mobile�wallets,�Masterpass����and�m�isa,� simplifying�digital�payment�acceptance.��y�focusing�on� better�user�e�perience�for�both�consumers�and�merchants,� banks�are�creating�a�comprehensive�digital�banking�and� payments�ecosystem

4 How has Mahindra Comviva contributed?

Mahindra�Comviva�is�a�global�leader�in�mobile�financial� solutions.�Its�solutions�are�deployed�by�over�1���telecom� companies�and�banks�in�more�than����countries,�enriching� the�lives�of�over�a�billion�people�across�the�world.�It�caters� to�both�the�issuing�side�as�well�as�the�acquiring�side�of�the� payments�business.�

The�region�is�also�showing�a�steady�uptake�of�mobile�money� merchant�payments�through�physical�and�virtual�companion� cards,���C�payments,�and�USS��based�mobile�payments.�

�n�the�issuing�side,�Mahindra�Comviva�provides�mobiquity®� platform,�for�mobile�operators�as�well�as�banks,�helping� them�to�transition�seamlessly�into�the�folds�of�the�digital� payments�economy.�mobiquity®�processes�more�than� ��billion�transaction�valuing�over�US$����billion�annually.� It�powers���of�the�top�1��mobile�money�services�globally.� In�Africa,�mobiquity®�powers����mobile�money�services�in� ���countries�transforming�the�way�Africans�save,�borrow,� transfer�and�spend�money.��

When�digital�payments�take�hold,�it�is�the�consumers�who�benefit� the�most.�The�cost�of�remitting�money�has�halved�in�many� countries,�with�mobile�money�based�international�remittance� making�it�safer,�faster,�and�more�affordable�to�send�&�receive� money�across�borders.

�n�the�acquiring�side,�Mahindra�Comviva�provides�payPLUS,� which�is�a�unified�payments�acceptance�solution�for�merchants� and�acquiring�entities.�payPLUS�enables�the�acceptance�of� multiple�digital�payment�instruments�through�a�single�interface,� facilitating�quick�and�seamless�payments�at�merchant�P�S.�

Micro-financial�services�such�as�savings,�loans,�insurance� and�savings�clubs�are�bringing�people�into�formal�economy.� People�who�used�to�stash�money�in�mattresses�are�saving� on�mobile�phones.�People�with�no�credit�history�are�getting� loans�instantly�based�on�airtime�usage.�

www.mahindracomviva.com

AFRICA

it takes to perform the transaction etc.

For service providers, the biggest challenge is how much capacity needs to be designed and bought and how best to secure it. Companies have started managing their data as they manage their money.

ABR: What is the financial industry doing to overcome these challenges?

VS: There has been a lot of work in the form of innovations and technological advancement but still, there is a long way to go. To see a fully successful and useful industry there needs to be the implementation of technology in large financial services firms. Despite $480bn spent globally in 2016 on financial services IT, the pace of financial innovation from incumbent’s still lags behind fintech which received a smaller $17bn investment in 2016.

Big banks’ organisational structures block digital innovation due to their old mindset and refusal to acknowledge the truth that BaaS (Banking as a Service) is more efficient with a combination of BaaP (Banking as a Platform), which demands a complete change in value chain compared to traditional closed core platforms Functionally, a typical banking organisation sees IT as a cost centre and every one working in IT and technology as a cost rather than an asset.

“Functionally, a typical banking organisation sees IT as a cost centre and every one working in IT and technology as a cost rather than an asset” VINOD SHARMA

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Is there a notable risk of adopting this technology?

VS: In every industry, risk is a friend which is present at all times. Its purpose is to help, guide, drive and navigate organisations out of problems. Interestingly, Africa is blessed with the best, most advanced technologies, and adoptability is extremely good in the area of mobile money, mobile payments and other mobile driven financial services.

Previously, you spoke of an industry that creates too many products for problems that don’t exist, is this still true?

VS: This is where my argument still holds. Out of everything going on around the world in the mobile payments space, I must say we ‘should avoid creating creative mess’; stop innovating for some time and start improving.

Let’s measure success and repeat with variation what works well (the process of innovation

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does not stop entirely). Developing something new on top of old systems/designs/philosophy is not always the answer. Sometimes its ok and good for everyone to un-develop something existing to uncover the hidden gems. Maybe we should un-develop to innovate?

How important is financial inclusion?

VS: Financial Inclusion or “Finclusion”, is very important. It is like a train that needs to be steered on a proper route & track, at the correct time and should know exactly where to stop, when to stop, for how long and when to take off again.

Finclusion makes sure that every segment, group, or individual is covered and have been given access to secured financial services. To build the banking culture and banking services, Finclusion needs to be included in the book of ‘Basic Human Rights” and should be enforced on all institutions. Finclusion as a “Basic Human Right” does not

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“Sometimes its ok and good for everyone to un-develop something existing to uncover the hidden gems.

Maybe we should undevelop to innovate?”

VINOD SHARMA

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require change but requires enforcement and control. I recommend my post on Finclusion, which details how Finclusion can balance the gender gap. As well as my blog which poses the question, Financial inclusion: Need or opportunity?

Is there a banks vs fintech industry, or have the lines begun to blur?

VS: This industry still has algorithmic thinking. But every industry has its business cycle and fintech is not excluded from this. Fintech will settle its score and there after you’ll see some mergers coming out between these two entities who don’t want be together but can’t survive without each other.

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There is talk of merging the boundaries between e-commerce, banks and financial organisations - do you agree?

VS: In Africa, we have witnessed backend mergers of retailer, e-commerce service providers, mobile money or mobile payments companies along with banking support from banks.

At the end of the day these industries are inter dependent on each other and have many common business interests.

An interesting point you made previously was the idea that fintechs are responsible for innovation; “finnovation”, is this still true?

VS: Looking at where banks sit and where banking (my argument is bank and banking are two separate items) service providers sit, banks rely big time on fintech for “finnovation” and they always will. Banks are nourishing “finnovation” and have slowly started learning the space of the digital world and the advantages it brings.

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What examples have you seen over the last year?

VS: I’ve seen a lot coming in i.e. bots, machine learning to make scientific predictions for Fintech and AI started ruling over fintech to guide customers.

You can read more in my blog post that looks at the data science of payments as well as my attempt at demystifying machine learning in fintech.

You predicted a future where customers will still require banking, but without the physical bank itself – is this still a possibility VS: This is no longer a future, it’s happening now, particularly over the last seven months. I cannot remember visiting any bank for my financial needs, it has all been cashless through my phone.

What are banks doing in response to this?

VS: Banks, in their terms, are doing a lot but on a wider scale of the industry, these efforts are not enough, so competition to fintechs is almost nil.

Almost every player in the fintech space came out of a financial industry with an attitude towards growth; you grow, I grow.

A bank’s mind set is; to do business with us you need to be matured and stable.

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How has the pace of innovation impacted the financial industry?

VS: With the advancement of technology, our computers start simulating our actions, interactions, perception and will be equipped with cognition abilities very soon.

Intelligent machines are no longer science fiction with experts divided

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as to whether artificial intelligence should be feared or welcomed. AI is going to cover all industries like banking, fintech, payments and almost every single business domain.

Financial services websites provide tips as a site banner or blog posts for its customers, but the content that comes out is dependent on customer’s activities,

AFRICA

including their spending/saving/investment habits and how they interact with the apps.

Descriptive analytics is all about using cutting edge tools meant for data science to understand what has happened in the past and how this will predict the future.

What are some of the current trends?

VS: The future is more scientific. Rather than simple analytics, AI will help fintech market as it’s all about descriptive analytics, predictive analytics and prescriptive analytics. These will guide fintech businesses on where, when, and how to invest. What’s important though, is that cost is king of controlling these trends.

What do you think the future African financial space will look like?

VS: The African financial space is still very new and bears so much potential. Advancement of technology, financial services, machine learning for business excellence and customer centric solutions will allow services providers to penetrate the segment.

Other factors like financial inclusion, financial innovation and financial technology will allow service providers to serve customers with more and more solutions at a lower cost.

“Descriptive analytics is all about using cutting edge tools meant for data science to understand what has happened in the past and how this will predict the future.”

VINOD SHARMA

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Mashreq Bank and the science of finance Written by Nell Walker Produced by Stuart Shirra

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Sandeep Chouhan, EVP – Group Head Operations and Technology, describes the ways in which high-level technology has kept the 50-year-old business at the top of its game in the UAE

M

ashreq Bank, the market leader in banking innovations in the UAE, is celebrating its 50th Year in 2017, having begun operations as Bank of Oman in 1967.

Over the past five decades, Mashreq has been serving residents and businesses in several countries tirelessly, never ceasing in its pursuit to be the most relevant and technologicallyadvanced business it can be.

With a background in mechanical engineering as well as banking, Sandeep Chouhan, EVP – Group Head Operations and Technology, is best-placed to bring his wealth of expertise into Mashreq. He has been with the bank since early 2015, after holding CIO and COO roles for over 30 years with the likes of Morgan Stanley, Barclays Bank, and Citigroup. In his role, Sandeep

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leads the global transformation of Mashreq’s Operations and Technology across its international footprint.

Chouhan’s current responsibilities include the development of business transformation strategies – something of a strong suit for him, as it has become the backbone of his working life.

“My ability to transform businesses is the key differentiator I have based my career on,” Chouhan explains.

“My latest role in Mashreq is to lead a digital transformation across its global footprint with a core focus on the Middle East region, a place that is experiencing not just accelerated growth, but hyper growth.”

According to Chouhan, technology-led transformations are the only truly sustainable type of transformation, but they still come with their own challenges.

MIDDLE EAST

Sandeep Chouhan, EVP – Group Head Operations and Technology

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Within a well-established bank like Mashreq, the transformation has to be not just the best, but also the most seamless, and that begins with asking a few vital questions.

“The challenge is twofold. First, is the technology truly industrial?”

Chouhan ponders. “You have to catch it when it is on the upswing of the wave, and being able to determine the industrial nature of these technologies is the first step. Once you’ve established that, can it scale?

Is it secure? Does it have longevity?

“Second, you must think about your choice of partners and resources. A lot of technological innovation takes place through third parties, so the partners are the ones making the innovations, and as an end-user bank you want to partner with the right company, the right products, the right geographic reach, and aligning views.”

This is clearly a structure which works for a company that is often regarded as the most innovative bank in the UAE. Established by entrepreneurs, the pioneering spirit of Mashreq’s founders remains vibrant, even as – after 50 years – the

business prepares to transform again.

“The entrepreneurial spirit that represents Mashreq is forms our core DNA,” says Chouhan. “For the next 50 years, we want to continue to be the leading light in this transformative new age of banking for the UAE, the GCC region and the world.”

Chouhan is building on a wellestablished and well-loved heritage, but he and the business are confident and comfortable doing so, as constant evolution is part of the environment which Mashreq has created for itself.

“It allows for this innovative spirit to blossom into something we cherish deeply, and we protect that hard,” Chouhan says. “Interestingly, anybody who comes to the region and is looking for an innovative partner gravitates towards Mashreq because they know we have this heritage, this hunger, this open-mindedness to take up a very disruptive and transformative business model.”

The Digital Workforce While the banking industry has historically adopted a very human approach to business i.e. with a heavy

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HH Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid attending the 50th anniversary celebration for Mashreq

reliance on people to perform routine processes, Mashreq’s digital DNA does in fact drive every choice the business makes – even the creation of what Chouhan calls his ‘Digital Workforce’.

Even with his long technological background, Chouhan appears endlessly astonished by the speed at which all things digital change, and he chooses to embrace it. From the dot com and World Wide Web era, to the rapid evolution of mobile phones, to the ability to house terabytes of information in tiny containers, the

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last 20-30 years have enjoyed the quickest digital change in history.

Likewise, robotics has continued to advance. Specific to banking, the first robots ever introduced were ATMs. As technology and banking continued to collide throughout his career, Chouhan’s question was: where else could robotics be applied?

“We’ve seen the arrival of basic robotic tools performing repetitive tasks, to robots with natural language processing, to natural language generation, and cognitive capabilities,”

“Digital transformation is unavoidable.

It’s happening because multiple technologies are rapidly evolving all the time” says Chouhan. “Digital transformation is unavoidable. It’s happening because multiple technologies are rapidly evolving all the time. Mashreq is arguably the pioneer in the region to deploy robotic capabilities at multiple levels.”

“We believe the advancement we have seen in robotics capabilities from basic manual tasks to intelligent predictive tasks is happening because technology has bolted on pieces of different capabilities. The concept of a digital workforce emerged at Mashreq slowly, because as we began to roll

out repetitive manual processes the robotic elements were running, we realised that like a human worker, the digital worker also needs supervision.

It needs to be checked for accuracy, for productivity, it needs training and retraining – just like a human worker.

“With a digital worker you can skill-up with ease – a simple upgrade – but it’s still a worker.

The concept of supervising these technologies was at the heart of us acknowledging the digital workforce.”

Of course, Mashreq maintains a

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human workforce who, free of more menial tasks, are available to customers to answer in-depth enquiries, but the main advantage of the digital worker is speed. This is what customers value most, according to Chouhan; wait time and task processing time are reduced, and so any misgivings they may have about leaving their finances in the hands of robots are left by the wayside.

Agility as a service This ecosystem that Mashreq has developed runs on an agile methodology – a disciplined, collaborative business process

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that makes approaching high-end technology more manageable.

This extends, too, to the partner ecosystem whereby Mashreq allows partners to co-innovate.

“The partners should feel that they are getting something in return, and upgrading themselves through our partnership,” says Chouhan.

“Cyber security is also part of the ecosystem. The space, the depth, and the intensity at which transactions are getting digitised – and therefore the vulnerability involved – is increasing all the time, so you need to get the right cyber architecture in place at the

MIDDLE EAST

Mashreq’s Robotic Command Centre foundational level of the journey.”

Tackling multi-dimensional threats is a constant battle for a business like Mashreq, but as a bank which boasts many firsts in the region – the first to introduce ATMs and credit cards, to take on AI and use its incredibly advanced tools – it is better positioned than anybody else to tackle whatever digital transformation may throw at it.

“Mashreq is a pioneer, and we have close to 40 processes run by robots performing 100,000 transactions a

month, plus a robotic command centre to supervise the technology,” Chouhan states with pride. “We have many ambitious plans to grow across various areas, and revolutionise the customer experience. Half the battle is in making the customer happy, and the winner will be the institution who is able to solve the service experience game.

“The customer remains king in the game of service.”

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INFOMART AND THE

15MW POWERHOUSE Written by: Stuart Hodge Produced by: Tom Venturo

Situated in Loudoun County’s famous Ashburn Corridor, the former Dulles Technology Center is being transformed into a 15MW powerhouse by Infomart Data Centers – we spoke to two of the project’s key players

I N F O M A R T D ATA C E N T E R S

I

n the growing industry of data centers, it’s all about differentiating yourself from the market, and Infomart Data Centers is a company that prides itself on flexibility of design.

With its latest data center project in Ashburn, Virginia, Infomart is leveraging all of its capability when it comes to adaptive, customizable and efficient design as it looks to renovate and upgrade what was formerly AOL’s Dulles Technology Center.

Infomart describes the Ashburn data center as its “most efficient, sustainable and flexible product to date,” and we spoke to some of the individuals at the forefront of the project about the electrical and mechanical transformation the building has undergone.

It’s changing from a 10MW facility to a 15MW facility, but without a massive increase in size. It’s the flexibility of design which will allow Infomart to tailor its solutions to a customer’s exact requirements.

Shawn Kane, Infomart’s Vice President of Engineering, was the first operations manager at the site when AOL originally opened the facility around two decades ago, and he has been part of the team which has overseen the transformation.

“The kind of technology that was put in to support the infrastructure 20 years ago is dated,” says Kane. “So we’re either retrofitting or directly replacing the vast majority of all of the controls and most of the power conditioning equipment.”

“It’s almost a complete strip out of the

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Shawn Kane Vice President of Engineering

Shawn Kane served as the original operations manager for the AOL Dulles Technology Center, and worked with the company from 1998 until 2015, when he joined Infomart as Vice President of Engineering. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh.

“I’ve been working in critical centers and data centers for most of my 27-year career” existing infrastructure for new, updated infrastructure.”

Kane’s colleague, Doug Shotwell, Vice President of Development for Infomart, is just as excited about the refurb, saying that the building itself is “robust” and “stout.”

“When AOL built the facility, they spared no expense,” he says.

“We’re leveraging the quality of the building that AOL was able to construct and building upon that

with the latest power and cooling technologies available today.

“It was the original AOL mega data center, one of the first large-scale data centers built in the country, and AOL spared no expense in building it, so it has great bones.

“Renovating all the facility’s infrastructure from a UPS standpoint as well as renovating generators, buying new UPSs and chillers, augmenting the piping, and changing

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Doug Shotwell Vice President of Development

Doug Shotwell’s background is primarily in development and construction.

He joined Infomart as a Solutions Architect in May 2012, before making the step up to Vice President of Development in December of last year.

“I work with individual customers as well as our own group to create and build data centers that meet the flexibility needs of our customers.” the design is going to give us the flexibility to deliver highly-efficient data center services backed by IT-critical power and cooling for our customers.

“In the years since it was built, we can now get more capacity, more infrastructure and more efficiency in the building itself.”

“While the building’s footprint will not undergo immense changes,

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other than a 20,000 sq ft addition, the size of IT critical power and storage that we’re putting inside the space will nearly double.”

Months in the making The Infomart Ashburn renovation got underway several months ago, beginning with the upgrade of electrical assets such as the

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generators and main switchboards.

“From there on out, it almost a complete renovation: new UPS systems, power distribution systems, monitoring and controls, metering, mechanical cooling, fire alarm systems, and security systems.

“We’ve gutted all of the mechanical assets,” Shotwell continues. “This includes the chillers and many of the pumps; we’ve also taken apart the cooling towers and we’re putting all of those new assets in place.

“The first phase of our deployment is going to be 6MW of IT critical power and cooling capacity — all brand-new infrastructure from an EPS and chilling capacity standpoint.

“The second phase is where we augment about 20,000 to 40,000 sq ft of building, to build some additional infrastructure. We’re on the downslope of the first phase of implementation right now, so we’re about to commission our first 2MW of capacity.”

Phase I of the project consists of 6MW of supply with 15MW of supply in the master plan for the building, with 50 new jobs expected to be created

as a result of the augmentation.

These staff members will be trained in ensuring Infomart Ashburn operations meet the requirements of the Uptime Institute Management and Operation (M&O) Stamp of Approval, the highest ranking of its kind in the world.

Among the most impressive aspects of this facility renovation is Infomart’s ability to substantially increase capacity without needing to increase its size.

The company’s adaptability allows it to install anything from 200W to 600W per sq ft, enabling Infomart to accommodate the customized needs of its clients, rather than having them resort to a standardized design.

“We’re trying to keep flexibility in our design process,” Shotwell adds. “We had some real success at our data center in Oregon with active rear-door heat exchanger technology and because of that, we’ve elected to transfer some of the same design elements to Ashburn in order to enable the same success.

“We’ve also left some of the underfloor infrastructure, with the

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Go Green With Infomart

intent that if there’s a customer who has a need for high-density, we have the flexibility to easily provide that capability within the facility.”

“Our existing data halls are going to be managed from a 2MW to 3MW footprint, with as much as 6MW of capacity within a 10,000 sq ft space, with no major modifications.

“Our mechanical design also boasts a higher water temperature than most facilities, with chiller plants delivering chilled water supply at 65 degrees Fahrenheit. This will give us an opportunity to use more outside air as pre-cooling and to make the facility much more efficient.”

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Data stronghold Infomart Ashburn sits at the center of Loudoun County’s famous Ashburn Corridor, benefiting from the strong power grid and fiber-dense networks in the area - key features which have led to (and have been supplemented by) the vast number of data centers in the region.

Kane says: “In the 20-plus years I’ve been here, I’ve witnessed a tremendous growth of data centers in the area. With new data centers come system upgrades, substation renovations, new transmission lines and new capacity to support them.

“So, from a power standpoint, we’re

USA

well-positioned. With most of the Ashburn data centers, there’s plenty of power capacity and power capacity planning, which is crucial because many of these power transmission lines can take three to five years to install. Because of this, there was no issue in increasing the capacity of our data center - it was readily available.

“Another significant feature of the Ashburn market is its network connectivity. The AOL facility was the first data center in Loudon County.

The market grew from there, leaving the building in the center of it all, and therefore, very well-connected.

“The connectivity in Ashburn

stems from a vast ecosystem of providers and carriers in the market, connecting all of the United States as well as Europe and the rest of the world. It’s also very easy to get from data center to data center to make that connectivity happen.”

In addition to its connectivity, Loudon County boasts a number of tax benefits for data centers like Infomart, as well as their tenants and other service providers in the area.

“Loudoun County and the general Northern Virginia market is very prodata centers,” Shotwell explains.

“With lower property taxes as well as tax rebate programs for data center

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I N F O M A R T D ATA C E N T E R S

Colocation suites will be available in sizes ranging from 500KW to upwards of 2MW

construction and overall build, Loudon County offers a variety of incentives to attract new business to the region.”

Track record The word “flexibility” is prominent throughout Shotwell and Kane’s commentary, and it really underpins everything that Infomart does.

In addition to showcasing the capability throughout its Ashburn renovation, the company also

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proved its agility with client LinkedIn at its Portland facility during the aforementioned implementation of active rear-door heat exchanger technology.

Although the installation of this particular technology was something Infomart hadn’t done before, the company worked in close collaboration with LinkedIn to not only install it, but also took the added step of training its staff

USA

on how to service and maintain it.

LinkedIn’s Portland data center is now considered one of the most efficient IT operations in the world.

“Our ability to drive higher-density design, as well as the innovative thinking and the creativity we employ to enable it, are what makes Infomart unique,” Shotwell adds.

“We’ve built Infomart Ashburn with that same flexibility and customer customization in mind.

“Design flexibility is amongst the most common requirements from our potential customers, and what differentiates Infomart in the marketplace.”

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