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1. What are some of the current challenges the industry is facing in Covid times in terms of business continuity, productivity and managing working capital?
The events of the past few months have brought unprecedented impact to business operations, workforce and societies across the world. What we witnessed was that companies felt challenged to implement contingency plans as they did not see the risks coming – both in terms of scale and period of impact. Nevertheless, enterprises moved quickly to safeguard their employees, mobilize their call center, enable employees to work from home, serve customers in new ways while ensuring security, business continuity and changing volume of work.
The key challenges that the industry is grappling with are –
Operational resiliency – to ensure operations run seamlessly, secure, automated and ready to scale.
Employee productivity in a new work environment – enabling workforce with tools and technologies as well as skills to work remotely and collaborate effectively with team members
Customer engagement and experience – enhance customer touch points to address their concerns and ensure smooth engagement with particular attention to new digital resources
Disrupted supply chains and operational costs – urgent need to make them more dynamic, responsive, and interconnected to an organization’s ecosystem and processes.
Increased cyberattacks – leading them to reassess cyber-resilience and incident response plan for their business.
Beyond these challenges, as businesses get re-shaped and financials are under stress, there will be focus on agility and speed in adjusting business models, cost structure and how business is conducted or work gets done. We also anticipate some sort of rationalization and re-pivoting of IT spends, the surge of cloud-based, as-a-service models, the reinvention of essential enterprise workflows with automation, AI, blockchain, IoT and other emerging technologies, as well as some other radical cost take-out measures to emerge stronger.
2. Role of technologies like AI, Cloud & Security – an accelerated digital adoption in a post-Covid world, how do you see it playing out?
Technology played a strategic role in helping enterprises navigate through this crisis and as a consequence we are/we will witness an accelerated adoption of digital technologies like AI, Cloud, Blockchain and Security.
In the post-Covid world, businesses need the ability to operate anywhere, with agility. This is where Cloud solutions which offer seamless transition to remote business can provide scale and elasticity to adapt to client demands and spikes in application usage. Modern cloud-based environments also provide extra compute capacity that you pay for only when needed. To prepare for transition at scale in times like these, companies need to plan their journey to cloud around a couple of areas:
Embrace a hybrid architecture: Hybrid cloud design patterns and service brokerage models allow commodity workloads to be delivered by multiple providers. While organizations may enjoy preferred relationships, they should also have options to shift workloads across clouds and cloud providers without hampering performance.
Shift to “as-a-service” strategy to use cloud-based tools, applications and platforms. Many software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based solutions are delivered at scale across the globe, further reducing the risk of service disruption.
Shift and share responsibility for infrastructure with Cloud partners. Cloud-based architectures provide elasticity and burstable capacity and reduce the risk of single points of failure or vendor lock-in. A secure, flexible cloud and digital services for mobility, virtualization, collaboration and support.
As organizations look to offer omni channel experience or make their customer care centers more resilient, AI – powered solutions like chatbots, cognitive routing, will make businesses more productive and effective. Enterprises, will also have to put AI at the centre of workflows, connecting with stakeholders, and using the insights generated from that process to enhance their products/services and innovate. This transformation is again powered by a hybrid cloud architecture, using open source software, that makes companies more secure and enables them to quickly adapt to shifting customer demands and changing market conditions. IBM has also recently launched Watson Works – a curated set of products that embeds Watson AI models and applications and provide data-driven insights to help employers make informed decisions on workplace re-entry and safety, facilities management, space allocation and other COVID- related priorities.
If you were to look at security, since March 11, when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the WHO, IBM X-Force has observed a more than 6000% increase in COVID-19 related spam. IBM X-Force IRIS also saw a 40% increase in incidents in 1Q 2020 globally, compared to the same quarter in 2019. Clearly, cyber criminals are using the crisis to drive their business, with virus-themed sales of malware assets on the dark web and even virus -related discount codes. The rapid shift to work from home with employees accessing corporate networks via personal devices has also opened new loop holes for cyber criminals. Hence, organizations need to have a big focus on Security – and build a robust cybersecurity resilience plan that relates to Application Security, Data & Content Security, Device Security, Enhanced Access and Identity Management and ability to manage cyber security threats by managing Security Operating Centers (SOCs) remotely. Our offers on IBM’s security solutions on Cloud provide these capabilities.
3. How is IBM supporting the industry & larger ecosystem – a collaborative approach.
Our work with the industry and larger ecosystem falls under three key pillars:
Accelerate discovery – Assisting doctors, scientists and organization in their efforts to decode and defeat the Covid-19 virus
Trusted information – Provide accurate information from reliable sources to help Govt, businesses and citizens make better decisions
Resiliency and adaptation – Providing frameworks and resources for businesses to manage, adapt and emerge stronger after this crisis
As the crisis unfolded, we helped enterprises tap into the power of our services and applications to facilitate productivity in remote work environments. Since our clients rely on our cloud environments, to handle increased workloads, we scaled up capacity in our public cloud for customers. We also offered guidance on how to realize accelerated productivity for data-intensive projects, provided access to our extensive network of ecosystem partners, provided free offers that span cloud-enabled AI, data, security, integration, video and more via the IBM public cloud to help our customers have access to the capacity, security and services they need to keep their operations running reliably. In addition our offerings were tailored to the specific needs of the clients.
Another area that we have been focusing on has been to mobilize IBM and IBMers to help with the global battle against COVID-19. IBM has made its super computing power accessible to the scientists to assist them in finding cures and vaccines. We have donated technologies so that governments can get access to free chatbots to help their customers with knowledge and information about COVID-19. Our Covid19 chatbot – Watson Assistant for Citizens is at work in more than 25 countries helping them cope with high volume of queries. Watson Assistant is also helping Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) respond to specific queries of front-line staff and data entry operators from various testing facilities across the country around the clock, in a uniform and timely manner.
We also extended the Call for Code Global Challenge for independent developers to work on COVID-19 issues and announced the top three initial solutions that have the potential to contribute to COVID-19 response efforts. One of the winners from India is Are you Well?– an app, created by global design and engineering company Altran. This app is designed to be a comprehensive medical assistance system that could reduce the stress on over-taxed medical systems. This mobile app will help individuals evaluate their symptoms, aided by IBM® Watson™ Assistant. The solution would then leverage a global dashboard that assigns cases a high, medium, or low level of risk based on thresholds set by healthcare providers and connect them with medical professionals who could use the data to prioritize cases and offer care in a safer manner.
As the trusted technology partner and advisor for our clients, we are committed to helping them recover and revive from this crisis.
4. Future of work and how new-age technologies can help. How will this blended model work and which are some of the prominent technologies that will make it happen?
As organizations envision the future of work, we believe that health and safety would be a priority for all. Technology will serve as the unifying force, and we will see the technologies like Cloud, AI in 3 key areas -Powering a new work paradigm; Driving innovation for the greater good; and building sustained resilience. For example a key component in the newly launched IBM Watson Works solution is IBM Return-to-Workplace Advisor. The solution is designed to assist businesses in re-opening the workplace, with a focus on employee health. The solution includes a command center analytics application that is designed to assist organizations in assessing worksite and community risk data in near real time – helping to identify company locations where conditions have been met to return to the workplace. It also provides individuals with an employee support application designed to answer questions about COVID-19, self-report symptoms and communicate return-to-work status.
Nature of work, technology conversations with our clients and speed of digitization is certainly seeing a shift -how that will exactly shape the industry landscape is yet to be seen. Here are some key areas where we are witnessing a focus, in addition to Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery:
Agile ops (modernization using Cloud, virtualization of infra and data to de-risk their operations to be better prepared for the future, move to more variable cost structures)
Focus on Automation and AI to increase efficiency
Ensuring a strong security posture
In this new era, in which machines are able to learn, reason and interact with humans naturally- knowledge embodied in employees will become a central component of the economy. Hence, transforming and enabling the workforce with skilling opportunities – through robust online learning platforms, innovative and engaging technologies, and new ways of sustaining communication and collaboration in times of uncertainty and beyond will be essential. IBM has also launched Open P-TECH, a free digital education platform focused on workplace learning and digital skills, available to employees, teachers and students.
And as we navigate through the new ways of working and living, we need to establish and respect new boundaries, support one another and still continue to build the organization culture. At IBM, this has evolved into a company-wide ‘The IBM Work from Home COVID Pledge’ with the simple goal of making work (and life) a little easier while we’re working at home.
5. Your insights on the recovery, please?
A return to normal, whenever it comes, will be a different normal. What we do right now will define the future, and yet making decisions and acting with assurance has never been more challenging. But even though each day brings more uncertainties, there are definitive actions that can improve our resilience and strength. We don’t know what the final impact will be, or when the situation will resolve, when we will get ahead of the curve, or how the world will look once we do. But one fortunate aspect of the era we live in is the sophistication of our digital world. We have a network of virtual connections. A broad array of devices, software and technologies allows us to operate, plan and respond to this crisis in a way that past eras never could. The changes we are experiencing are, in this way, preparation for the future. It’s time to rethink how business works. We have designed six key areas to emerge smarter, more resilient and more agile for businesses to rest and recover.
Work safe: We have developed Watson Works to help guard the health, safety and productivity people in a changing workplace. Capabilities include workplace re-entry planning, facilities management, workplace safety, contact tracing, care management, and customer and employee care.
Enhanced customer experience: Organizations today need to stay connected with their customers from various touch points. They can deploy features like chat and virtual agents to increase productivity and provide timely responses to their customers and employees. Watson Assistant is a conversational AI platform that knows when to search for an answer from a knowledge base, when to ask for clarity and when to direct users to a human.
Enhance IT resiliency and business continuity: Organizations need to maintain business operations, protect critical data and assets, and effectively respond to threats. With IBM Backup as a Service (BaaS) we provide end-to-end management of data protection to address an organizations unique backup, retention and retrieval needs.
Accelerate agility and efficiency with cloud: With IBM Cloud’s hybrid capabilities, enterprises can operate their business securely anywhere and adapt to changes without compromise. They can easily build once and deploy anywhere, modernize applications, make their data ready for AI across their entire company and simplify regulatory compliance.
Address new cybersecurity risks: Digital transformation introduces new risks and challenges. IBM Cloud Pak for Security can help organizations uncover hidden threats and make more informed risk-based decisions. It enables them to access IBM and third-party tools to search for threats across any cloud or on-premises location and orchestrate responses to those threats –all while leaving their data where it is.
Reduce operational cost and ensure supply chain resiliency: IBM Sterling can help enterprises act with speed and confidence to mitigate supply chain disruptions and reduce operational costs through actionable AI-based insights and execution. Working together with clients, we can automate decision-making where it makes sense and empower their people with real-time insights.
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