Joel Norton, Regional Manager for Asia South, ZeroStack, in an exclusive interview with Techseen, discusses how the company leverages machine learning to provide customers with a cloud
infrastructure that is self-monitoring and self-healing.

Techseen: What according to you is driving cloud computing adoption today? Alternatively, is anything inhibiting cloud adoption?

Norton: Digital Transformation is the latest trend in enterprise computing – using cloud and other advanced infrastructure solutions to fundamentally change the way companies do business. The battle is between on-premises/private cloud versus public/off-premises cloud.

Enterprises need solutions that guarantee performance, latency, governance and low cost, and they want to build a self-service platform for their DevOps teams so they can provision their own resources and speed software development. People would rather consume than build, and customers want turnkey cloud solutions. The public cloud is a turnkey solution, but it may not need the performance, latency, governance and cost requirements. When it comes to private cloud, complexity is on the rise and many organizations cannot find, afford or maintain the staff needed to deploy a private cloud.

Techseen: You have developed machine learning technology, Z-COS, to facilitate the monitoring and management of hybrid cloud computing environments. What does this entail and how can enterprises benefit from it?

Norton: ZeroStack’s Z-COS enables digital transformation by converting the on-premises server clusters into a private cloud infrastructure for the user and transforming the enterprise’s existing physical infrastructure into a hyper-converged scale-out system within minutes. Unlike competing solutions in the market that require specialized hardware to implement the cloud infrastructure, Z-COS enables customers to utilize existing on-premises servers or white box servers, along with storage and networks seamlessly, thereby reducing the deployment cost significantly and accelerating deployment time.

Additionally, Z-COS provides a self-healing control system to ensure enterprises get the high availability they require for mission critical applications and services.

Techseen: Z-COS claims to reduce human intervention by creating self-driving on-premises cloud to handle management and operations. Do you think the rise of automation will lead to a dearth of jobs in the future?

Norton: No. Automation will handle the repetitive tasks and free up people to do more substantive, creative tasks. Customers know the most challenging aspect of maintaining a complex software stack is knowing when to patch, upgrade or change one element of the stack. Having intelligent software lead this process is not only a key employee time-saver, but it can ensure that there’s no downtime from software pieces conflicting and causing an outage.

Techseen: How is ZeroStack different from the existing cloud players?

Norton: For this, refer to the table below:

Techseen: At a time when companies are largely moving to the private or public cloud, why do you still continue to provide on-premises solutions?

Norton: Many companies want their own infrastructure because it gives them control over security, governance, and performance. DevOps is an in-house activity, and companies would prefer to keep DevOps infrastructure in-house.

Techseen: Would you suggest an amalgamation of public and private clouds for those as yet uncertain about possible data security breaches in the cloud, where they have sensitive data in the private cloud?

Norton: Yes. Private cloud allows companies to keep sensitive data on premises, while public cloud allows limitless scalability for less-sensitive workloads.

Techseen: You have recently acquired new customers and partners in Singapore. What key technology trends do you see emerging in the country?

Norton: Largely our traction is from companies needing a new platform for software development, so called agile Continuous Infrastructure/Continuous Development and Deployment (CI/CD). Traditional virtualized systems do not have the operational ease nor did the SaaS based, self-service consumption of the public cloud that is so compelling. And of course, since these development tools and the software itself are very strategic to a company, enterprises want to host this infrastructure either on premises, or serviced through a local cloud / managed service provider.

Techseen: You use AI to self-manage on-premises cloud. How do you think AI and IoT will drive innovation in the next 5 years?

Norton: AI will become a mainstream technology in many areas of life over the next five years, and the IoT will grow to impact the design of most products.

Techseen: In case of data loss or disruption, how quickly can a client restore data from your cloud platform? What does your restore process look like and what kind of support you render to your clients during restoration?

Norton: We have a high availability / resilient architecture to support always-on thinking. With integrated backup and integration with well-branded storage solutions like Nimble Storage, Nexenta, HPE/3Par and others, we can tailor our solutions to match the needs of customers while helping them conserve capital expenses.

Techseen: How do you see enterprise cloud computing evolving over the next couple of years?

Norton: We are moving to a multi-cloud world, where enterprises use both on-premises and off-premises cloud to manage resources for their employees. Virtually every enterprise will incorporate cloud technology to increase its DevOps and overall business agility.

Techseen: What is your current team strength? Do you plan to expand further into the APAC region?

Norton: I have been managing rapid growth for US-based start-ups for years, including companies like Panasas, and see a very similar trajectory for the Singapore region. So yes, in short we do expect to grow and see very healthy interest in the ZeroStack intelligent cloud platform.

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Techseen: You say that telecom software professional service providers still need their classic systems to support their transformation. What are these classic systems? Why and how can they support digital transformation?

Kaftzan: Business Support Systems (BSS) have been supporting telecoms businesses for years. Systems such as billing, CRM and Ordering are still necessary for service providers but they have to evolve; from billing to real-time convergent charging and from CRM and Ordering to true omni-channel digital customer engagement systems. This evolution supports service provider transformation by enabling customers to add and adapt communications services from all areas of the telco landscape, on the fly and in real-time, and they allow customers to interact with their service provider on any channel through any mode of communication. This evolution of the BSS is critical to meet the needs of digital immediacy and empowerment that the digital customer demands.

Techseen: Does the utilization of classic systems reduce the cost of transformation for an enterprise? What are the transformation solutions that are being floated in the market currently that makes Amdocs stand out?

Kaftzan: The cost of a transformation will often be dependent on the starting point and end goal. Some service providers will look to improve one particular part of their business, say the retail store. Others will look to improve all of their customer engagement channels for an omno-channel, multi-modal experience and still others will go for a deep full business transformation that involves the transformation of all elements of the BSS, both back-end and customer facing. Amdocs customer who are using our systems which have been real-time and omni-convergent for years will find they are starting at a better point for transformation than others.

However we have made additional enhancements to our offering that lets the service provider succeed in their transformation strategy. This includes more openness and APIs in our backend systems, support for new business models and digital offerings like OTT and IoT, a digital platform for true multi-modal interaction, our aia intelligence platform which helps our customers bring intelligence to their processes and engagements and the flexibility and user controls that lets the digital customer take control of their experience.

Techseen: In the telecom industry, isn’t convergent billing already happening? Especially in enterprises where there is a need of transparency? How does it connect with digital transformation?

Kaftzan: The telecom industry has been moving towards convergent billing for many years now. The challenge is that as the industry moves towards that goal, the definitions of what convergent means in the context of charging and billing continues to evolve as the demands of the digital economy evolve. It began as a means to unify systems for prepaid and postpaid. It then evolved to mean convergence of lines of business into multi-play. Now it is evolving further and extending into new digital services such as OTT and IoT and a truly real-time experience for all customers over every touch point. A charging and billing system of the digital era cannot be said to be truly convergent if it cannot handle all of these new services on a unified system.

Ironically, many service providers’ BSS systems lag behind in the enterprise space as these customers relied on more customized products and offerings as well as more direct sales and account management.

That, coupled with the relatively low number of enterprise customers as opposed to consumer lead BSS for enterprise to continue to be very customized if not manual systems that could not keep up with the development of the consumer side of the house. Now, with service providers putting more focus on enterprise customers as their core consumer service becomes commoditized, they are seeing a need to provide the same digital and convergent experience to their enterprise customers. Amdocs has put a great deal of effort in helping service providers succeed in this area, in terms of modernizing the product offering capabilities, the Configure Price Quote process as well as ordering of complex enterprise products.

Techseen: Amdocs states that there is a reduction in the cost of ownership when service providers take up convergent billing. How?

Kaftzan: This is achieved through a number of factors. Firstly there is the potential for consolidation of systems, from disparate systems for prepaid, postpaid, wireless, wireline, TV, broadband and other digital services into a single unified system. Furthermore, modern digital monetization systems are run on newer technology that helps service providers keep costs down while increasing scale.

Amdocs Digital Monetization runs NO-SQL databases as opposed to traditional relational databases, which scale better at cost and reduce costly database license fees. A number of functions are run on open source technologies that further reduce capital expenditure. And of course operating on a cloud-enabled architecture reduces dependencies on physical machines and is in turn much more efficient.

Techseen: You also claim that your convergent charging and billing solution delivers real-time charging and scalability in a single carrier-grade system. What is currently lacking in the industry that it needs your solution?

Kaftzan: The key requirement for the industry is to be able to manage all of your revenue and customer processes on a unified system, rather than spate systems for each new service. Service providers are in a hurry to launch new products like IoT and OTT offerings that their current legacy systems cannot handle. That is the key challenge. And many service providers, in their rush to market, are tempted to simply add another system to handle the new services and worry about the convergence of the system into the overall customer experience later.

This solution quickly leads to duplication of processes, and is liable to cause missed revenue opportunities and a poor customer experience. Of course the best would be a convergent system that can already handle these new services, and enable service providers to launch and scale up a new line of business quickly and efficiently.

This is the advantage that Amdocs customers have; a single, real-time system that can handle all of the new services that the telecom industry needs and wants to deploy quickly, and is ready for rapid the rapid growth and high demands of digital consumption.

Techseen: Why do you think carriers are becoming more open to alternate delivery models? What are the challenges they are facing?

Kaftzan: Service providers are dealing with a digital economy that has severely diminished the growth in their core businesses. That has forced them to be more efficient. The digital economy is also filled with new players that are software based and agile in their development of products, and are free to reap the benefits of the major investments that telecoms make in networks and infrastructure. It is this need for efficiency and agility that service providers are looking for, and new delivery models -such as cloud and managed services – for their core systems serve both of those purposes.

Techseen: What are the challenges that Amdocs has faced to convince telecom enterprises to accede to your solution? Is there a gap in awareness/ education or as you state in your white paper, there a need of digital transformation first?

Kaftzan: Amdocs is in the enviable position of being a trusted advisor for the leading service providers in the world. And our customers are constantly challenging us to help them transform from communications service providers to digital service providers. They rely on us for best practices because after all of these years we are recognized as experts in telco BSS. Our Global customer base also gives us a perspective on the possibilities that our customers, who are experts in their local markets, appreciate and we bring that to bear in all of our engagements. But our customers are not waiting for us to tell them where to go.

They are leaders in the telecommunications market and have a vision for what they want to achieve. It is a true partnership that comes from the vision and imperative of the service provider and the global industry leadership of Amdocs that closes any gaps and enables us to drive the optimal digital transformation for each customer.

Furthermore, we realize that each communication service provider is different and has unique needs. Therefore, we need to adjust and accommodate different needs of our customers. For example, even the definition and focus of DSP- digital service provider, varies from one service provider to another. Some service providers or DSPs may focus on consumer experiences and channels, while others might focus on digital services and ecosystem. It means we need to provide different types of solutions, technologies, and services to each of the service providers.

Techseen: One of your biggest communications client is AT&T and recently after its ECOMP has merged with ONAP, reports state that Amdocs’ involvement has bolstered a lot. Which is the next use case for ONAP according to Amdocs?

Kaftzan: To test and verify new virtual services on the ONAP open source platform quickly and efficiently, Amdocs believes the critical next-step for service providers is easy deployment of ONAP through a cloud-based hosting environment that simplifies distribution of open source code. Open source brings unparalleled agility to the market, making it vital that open source contributions are packaged into a mature capability set to fast-track service innovation and extract full value from virtualized networks.

Techseen: What is the next big thing in the telecommunications industry according to Amdocs? Where do you see Amdocs playing a major role in future tech?

Kaftzan: It is difficult to predict the future, but looking ahead to the next couple years, it seems clear that the launch of 5G and the integration of Artificial Intelligence will have a major impact on the telecommunications industry in the near future. 5G is just a year or 2 away and it has the potential to change our lives and how we interact with the world of technology around us. With 5G providing connectivity to billions of devices we will learn what truly ubiquitous connectivity is about.

The telecommunications industry is at the center of that game changing technology and it must do whatever it can to leverage its place in the value chain to maximize opportunities in the digital economy. Amdocs customers are at the forefront of 5G development and as such we must be ready to help them succeed in doing just that.

All of this connectivity creates a need to move past automation to intelligence. Intelligent operations, as well as intelligent interactions with customers. Service providers will need to leverage intelligence in this hyper-connected world in order to not only serve their customers, but delight their customers.

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As the industry is gradually surfacing into the mainstream, Brahma Mahesh Khaderbad, Co-founder and CEO, FinMomenta, a Singapore-based fintech startup in an interview with Techseen explains how P2P platforms have managed to cause their fair share of disruptions.

Techseen: How are peer-to-peer lending platforms transforming the consumer lending industry?

Khaderbad: Peer-to- peer lending is a paradigm shift for entire financial industry. Over the years it has proved to be a streamlined lending process. Today, Consumers are increasingly looking for investment products that generate higher returns than traditional savings accounts offered by banks. At the same time millennials are becoming a larger portion of the consumer loan market as they seek
credit to finance major purchases or refinance their student debt.

In the current scenario only about 10% of the population in India get financial help from Banks as they highly rely on Credit Bureau Scores to evaluate borrower creditworthiness. Consequently, large number of loan applications gets rejected and the applicants do not get the loan sanctioned by Banks. But with the simplified lending process, P2P lending is filling the gap.

This is where platform like ours have emerged as a game changer in the consumer lending industry
as we have our own proprietary credit scoring model to identify borrowers’ creditworthiness. Since
inception we have covered large population who remain un-served by Banks. Borrowers are not
required to move out of their home/office and visit a bank; they can apply for the loan anytime
from anywhere and avail a loan.

Techseen: You are planning to raise $2 million to $5 million by the year end in Pre-Series A funding. How will you utilize this fund?

Khaderbad: Yes we are planning to raise Pre – Series A funding by the end of 2017 and we plan to utilize the funds for business development, product enhancement and technology. This will further add to the growth of our company and maximize shareholder returns.

Furthermore, we are in the process of partnering with NBFCs to fund loans for specific products. We will also utilize the funds for providing First Loss Default Guarantee (FLDG) to the NBFCs.

Techseen: What credit scoring model do you use to assess the creditworthiness of applicants? What are the metrics you use?

Khaderbad: Our P2P lending model is growing in popularity with borrowers because of its perceived low interest rates, simplified application process and quick lending decisions. We use a proprietary credit decision model, designed with cutting edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. This proprietary credit scoring model evaluates between 500 – 800 parameters to identify the creditworthiness of the borrower. We have a 360 degree credit scoring that includes analyzing
the stability, repayment capacity, social reputation and integrity of the Borrower.

Techseen: How have you been monetizing on your FinTech platform? Which are your best markets?

Khaderbad: Our platform Tachyloans charges a one-time non-refundable registration fee to both lenders and borrowers. In addition to this, flat 2% service fee is charged to the lender and a service fee between 2% – 5% is charged to borrowers on fulfillment of loan.

The consumer credit market in India is currently at $300bn out of which $98bn is the personal loans market. The market is currently growing at 14% year on year. The SME business loan market is currently at $600bn and is expected to grow to $3.4 trillion by 2022.

Currently Tachyloans is present in 50 cities in India. We are looking to expand our footprint to 200 cities for personal loans and 50 cities for business loans. We are also planning to expand the platform to other Asian countries by 2020. Our major focus is to cover tier 2 and tier 3 cities in the immediate future.

Techseen: You have revealed plans to launch a loan offering exclusively for small businesses. What has prompted this move and how can it help expand your customer bracket?

Khaderbad: Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs) sector contribute to nearly 45% of country’s GD, growing at an annual rate of 11.5% and employs close to 46 crore people. However, most of these units remain un-served or under-served by regular lending institutions such as Banks and NBFCs due to their stringent lending policy.

Lack of awareness, obsolete data models, inadequate access to banking services, etc. force these businesses to either close their operations or depend on expensive financing from the unorganized sector.

SMEs in India are expected to be a $25.8 bn market for the emerging technologies by 2020. It is here that we see a huge business opportunity ahead of us. Reaching out to this under-served sector will help us expand our customer base.

Techseen: How are P2P lending platforms regulated? Is there any government involvement to supervise them?

Khaderbad: Currently there are no regulations by government for P2P platforms and no Licence available. However, RBI is expected to issue guidelines on the capital structure of the company, permitted activity, governance and the reporting activities. The platform could be expected to be well capitalized upto Rs. 2cr that in a way will only allow serious players in this space.

There could be guidelines on governance also where the management team could be expected to have bankers on board. This guideline will again help bring domain expertise and experience that is much needed by the platforms. The reporting activities are well needed to ensure that frauds are contained and the right borrower is given a fair opportunity to get a loan at the right price.

On the whole, we believe that the much awaited RBI regulations will only make this space attractive for individuals to invest in the loans to earn higher returns and make way to provide loans to the wider spectrum of the borrowers thereby facilitating financial inclusion. RBI recently released a consultation paper to bring P2P platforms under its purview and the final guidelines are expected to be released by the end of July 2017.

Techseen: Since a client does not need to put up collateral to compensate for a non-payment, what are the consequences to defaulting a loan on your platform?

Khaderbad: Borrowers on our platform are not required to submit any collateral. We proactively remind the borrower of the payment due well in advance and keep a track of borrower’s repayment behavior. In case of a loan default it would be reported to Credit Bureaus and will affect the borrower’s credit score.

Techseen: Are you planning to increase the ticket size of your loans, which is capped at Rs 5 lakh?

Khaderbad: We believe that under personal loan segment maximum ticket size of Rs. 5 lakh is a good amount. However, this may vary from case to case and if there will be a need to fund higher amount, we may consider a revision if the requirement is genuine. We will also be soon launching SME loans for which the ticket size would range between Rs. 5 lakh – Rs. 50 lakhs.

Techseen: Do you think it would be better for banks to oversee operations at FinTech companies like yours, or to work together to provide a good overall service?

Khaderbad: Working in alliance with company like ours will add value to Banks as they can make use of the advanced technologies adopted by us in evaluating the credit worthiness of the borrowers. This will help banks reduce the cost for customer acquisition, increase their profitability and enable them to provide loans at lower interest rates.

Techseen: In the US, P2P platforms issued approximately $5.5 billion in loans in 2014 and PwC indicated that the market could reach higher than $150 billion by the year 2025. What are your observations about India?

Khaderbad: In India, we do not have any official figures on P2P lending business, but with RBI final guidelines expected to be released by the end of July 2017, P2P lending platforms will see a huge boost up.

Credit under personal finance segment in India has grown at a CAGR of 7.57% since FY 09 from $54.7bn to $98bn in 2017. There is also a large Market Cap Opportunity of $600bn lying ahead for Private Banks, NBFCs and FinTech companies which is expected to grow to $3020bn by 2027.

Tele-density in rural areas has grown at a CAGR of 71% from 2007-16, opening the doors for digital banking. With almost all the services going online, we expect Digital Finance to constitute at least 10% of overall lending business in the country by 2022.

Techseen: What are the challenges you faced while setting up the company?

Khaderbad: When we had set up our business, there was no verification module available to verify customer data, there were no agencies/companies ready to carry-out physical verification. Banks did not agree to open an Escrow/nodal account. None of the trusteeship companies were ready to take the custody of lender and borrower money.

But now the scenario has changed and we have come a long way ahead. We have tie ups with banks, agencies and trusteeship company.

Techseen: What is your roadmap for 2017? Do you plan to launch in other countries anytime soon?

Khaderbad: We have launched our platform early this year and will disburse 1000 personal loans and 100 business loans by the end of 2017. The disbursement of these loans would be around Rs. 26 cr. In 2018, we have a plan to disburse 6000 personal loans and 400 business loans, totaling to a disbursement of approximately Rs. 115 cr. Moving ahead, we will expand our business to two potential Asian markets by 2019-20.

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Techseen: What does the global availability of SD-WAN mean for NTT and its clients? How can they leverage this solution for cloud transformation?

Hashimoto: NTT Communications’ new SD-WAN Service Portfolio leverages NTT’s industry first 100% software-defined overlay network to provide optimized performance and connectivity to client branch offices globally, leveraging more than 1,000 local ISPs and network providers across over 190 countries. This is the largest global rollout of any SD-WAN portfolio in the market, leveraging on the software defined technology and platform acquired via the Virtela acquisition in 2014.

The SD-WAN Service Portfolio provides NTT unprecedented flexibility and speed to deploy new services designed to assist enterprise clients to transform their IT environment, respond to their competition and meet their business goals. By leveraging the new SD-WAN service portfolio’s unprecedented global coverage, optimized network utilization at each branch office, cloud based secure web gateway and application acceleration services, as well as optimized access to the major cloud and SaaS platforms, businesses can migrate their current IT infrastructure to the cloud easily and rapidly and better compete in today’s digital economy.

Techseen: When it comes to SD-WAN, what are challenges that haunt the APAC market? How important is the India market according to NTT and what are the challenges you think India is facing?

Hashimoto: The APAC region is vast and provides unique connectivity challenges to SD-WAN service providers: from the ability to peer with local ISPs in country/region, to the lack of expertise and local presence, to the challenges around deploying and managing end-end solutions including customer premises SD-WAN CPE. Most SD-WAN providers envision a 100% software defined global network in 3 to 5 years, and deliver country-specific and regional connectivity. NTT’s SD-WAN Service Portfolio, provided over a 100% SDN platform is available today, across 190+ countries including 30+ APAC countries. NTT’s SD-WAN network and presence is the largest in the APAC region, and can help clients build optimized SD-WAN solutions that leverage optimized connectivity to each one of their branch offices.

The limited connectivity to ISPs and local network providers poses a challenge to businesses looking to adopt SD-WAN to connect their global offices, as they may be using ISPs and local network providers that don’t fall into what’s being offered by other SD-WAN providers. NTT’s SD-WAN Service portfolio leverages 1,000+ ISPs and local providers, and provides clients with the flexibility to mix and match connectivity options that suit their needs at each site – NTT provided and managed, or customer provided and NTT managed.

India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and a major hub for outsourcing and software development talent. NTT has made significant investments to address the Indian market needs including the acquisition of Netmagic, a leading managed datacenter provider in India. NTT also recently network licenses in India which will allow customers in India to leverage the full suite of NTT’s global SD-WAN capabilities inside and outside of the country.

But while India has seen major growth in the past few years, the business infrastructure has yet to catch up to fully support the rapidly changing IT market. NTT is leveraging all available connectivity options, including wireline and fixed wireless options, to provide optimized connectivity options to its clients in India.

Techseen: What according to you is the need of the hour for enterprises acceding to the cloud network? How do you think can NTT make that easier?

Hashimoto: Enterprises looking to transform their environment and move to the cloud are looking to leverage cost effective internet access and other network solutions at their branch offices in a secure and flexible way. They need rapid deployment capabilities to meet their business needs, and better visibility into and control over their applications and network utilization.

NTT’s SD-WAN Service Portfolio includes, at its core, groundbreaking real-time streaming network analytics which give CIOs and their IT teams deep insight into the health of their network, allowing full visibility of application performance, network security, utilization and end-user experience, in real time. This enables enterprises to analyze issues at the site, application dimension and individual IP address level, allowing the client to take faster remediation to their IT issues without delays.

In addition, with its newly launched SD-WAN Service Portfolio, NTT can provide SD-WAN solutions for enterprise clients globally in over 190 countries, leveraging 1,000+ local ISPs worldwide to deliver and support the best breed of connectivity options at each customer branch office. The SD-WAN Service Portfolio also includes a rich suite of cloud based security solutions via its Secure Internet Gateways located at NTT globally distributed local cloud centers, where customers can enable, in a few clicks, firewall protection, URL filtering, intrusion prevention services as well as malware reporting functions close to their sites.

These service enable clients to move from a capex to an open model and pay for the services and resources they need in a flexible way, when they need them.

Techseen: In one of your company’s statements, you say that you are increasingly seeing enterprises’ networks struggling to cope with the growth of cloud data, increasing security threats and inflating costs. How do you think your SD-WAN will be able to address these challenges in APAC?

Hashimoto: The new NTT SD-WAN Service Portfolio provides clients with an end-to-end solution, with highly flexible and cost-effective network connectivity options for each branch office, as well as optimized connectivity to major cloud and SaaS providers. The software-defined nature of the platform enables rapid transition of branch office IT services such as application acceleration, firewall, IPS, URL filtering, remote access connectivity to the cloud. This “Asset Lite” solution reduces the amount of equipment required for connectivity and data management at branch offices by having services provided directly from the SD-WAN platform.

With increasing security threats looming over businesses as seen in the recent WannaCry and Petya incidents, NTT can assist clients in addressing security risks through the full integration of SD-WAN security solutions via its Internet security gateways located at NTT globally distributed Local Cloud Centers, including large numbers across the APAC region, where customers can enable web URL filtering, firewall protection and intrusion prevention services.

Customers can also benefit from NTT’s malware reporting service to identify and isolate any machines infected by viruses and other security threats to their organization.

Techseen: Earlier this month you launched API Gateway as a Service, scheduled to be rolled out in July. One of the major aspects of this is strengthening your ties with SaaS players globally, where according to you do countries like Singapore and India stand?

Hashimoto: Many SaaS players have extended their presence/platforms to Singapore and India to cover the Asia-Pacific region. NTT has extensive local cloud center and network presence in the region, including India and Singapore and API gateway services will also be available in India and Singapore.

Techseen: You have recently launched the largest SD-WAN network, what will be your influence in the APAC SD-WAN market during this time?

Hashimoto: NTT has the world’s largest footprint in APAC among global or regional service providers and continues to invest heavily in the region. With all these capabilities in hand, we are looking to be a market leader in the region and drive the deployment of SD-WAN solutions for our customers in the APAC market and beyond

Techseen: Network and security go hand in hand, how closely does NTT communications work with NTT Security? Do you have a combined solution that you offer in the region?

Hashimoto: NTT Com and NTT Security work very closely together and our customer benefit from seamless service that we deliver to customers. For example, Distributed through NTT Com Local Cloud Centers around the world, NTT offers a fully integrated SD-WAN security solution via its Internet security gateways and the security logs can be processed and analyzed by NTT Security platform.

NTT Security can also provide a variety of managed security solutions for enterprise clients, including security threat diagnosis and endpoint security solutions. The power of NTT Com and NTT Security combined, leveraging the full suite of our SD-WAN cloud based security capabilities together with NTT Security’s multi-layer professional security solutions can provide a very comprehensive answer to our customers’ security needs.

Techseen: You acquired Virtela sometime back, do you see consolidation of more SDN players in the near future?

Hashimoto: The SDN and SD-WAN market is still in its early stages, and includes a large number of vendors today from established, to newly converted, to emerging technology companies. Consolidation is quite likely and customers should be careful when selecting their SD-WAN providers, and make sure they will get the long term support they need on their SD-WAN solution. NTT offers long term stability and proven track record to deliver global enterprise network services to customers.

Techseen: How do you differentiate with your peers in the segment? Companies like AT&T, Rackspace, Datapipe, IBM or even Google for that matter, are making heavy investments into this sector with APAC at the core. Do you think you will be ahead of the curve?

Hashimoto: Through our expertise in networking, and Virtela’s technology and expertise in software defined networking, we are able to accelerate the development of NTT Com’s SDx+M solution and strategy. We’re already ahead of other service providers in terms of global SD-WAN coverage as no other provider has announced SD-WAN service availability in more than 190 countries.

NTT Com is also the first provider to deploy a 100% global software defined network when others have plans to get there in the next 3 to 5 years. NTT Com is ahead of the industry and we continue to innovate and invest in services that will provide value to our customers.

For example, NTT’s real-time streaming network analytics gives CIOs and their IT teams deep insight into the health of their network, allowing full visibility of application performance, network security, utilization and end-user experience, in real time. This enables enterprises to analyze issues at the site, application dimension and individual IP address level, allowing them to take faster remediation to their IT issues without delays. This capability is far ahead of any of the reporting tools available in the market today, and we will continue to strengthen the offering to provide clients with enhanced visibility and control over their network

Techseen: Where do you see NTT communications in APAC 3 years from now? Which countries will play a major role in the coming future when it comes to network cloud and what are your future plans with these countries?

Hashimoto: NTT Com is committed to serve the APAC markets. Our goal is to continue to provide customers innovative services backed by passionate support in both the major APAC markets and emerging countries with infrastructure requirements where NTT Com can grow its business in APAC.

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Anil Chawla, MD, Customer Experience Solutions (CES), Verint Systems, in an exclusive interview with Techseen talks about how Digital Transformation at the customer’s end can allow BPOs to understand customers better and personalize the service, using ‘analytics’ which help in making intelligent decisions.

Techseen: A consistent problem that big data analytics companies have been expressing is the massive explosion of data from customers and clients. What is the feasibility of storing and maintaining such voluminous data?

Chawla: One of the things to look at while handling big data is that we are talking about unstructured data, which is anything to do with a voice call. It could be on the basis of a web chat, through social media, or through email. All these things put together essentially constitutes unstructured data. From a big data analytics point of view, we are looking at driving insights out of these interactions.

When it comes to storage, it could be offline or online. Online storage means you keep that record for about 12 months, which is called retention. However, from a banking perspective, it could be compliance. So for compliance, they may ask for a retention of 1 year, which could be online and say for 7 years it could be offline retention.

We do work in 100 percent compliance recording for all telcos, banks, and whenever they need to fetch the details, we have screen recordings as well as call recordings. This means whatever was happening at that time on screen with respect to the context of the discussion is captured, along with the voice as well.

Techseen: With Internet of Things paving its way to our personal devices, what kind of threats are we exposed to? What do you have to say about the scope of IoT and how’s Verint tackling the security issue?

Chawla: When it comes to Internet of Things, an important trend we have observed is that each one of us is looking at different preferences. For example, I am looking at a specific time of the day for someone to reach out to me or may be I’ll reach out to my enterprise from a B2C perspective as per my convenience and my mode of convenience. Now that such preferences are generated, everybody needs a customized way for handling them.

Second trend is employee expectations. They expect to be more knowledgeable, they want their performance to be measured in a manner so that they needn’t do any repetitive tasks. In terms of an organization, if you make your employees more enabled and empowered by giving them more knowledge, you’ll have a much better rate of customer satisfaction.

Third, when you look at what’s possible with technology, the choice of technology and the mode of communication is what you want to decide.

So all the solutions today are built around these trends. All of the services that we provide today are supportive of encryption. When there is a personal record that comes around during an interaction of an agent and a customer, we employ a technology called Desktop Process Analytics (DPA), which can do something called mute and mask. When a customer is calling out a specific number of a credit card, that is masked out or muted to the agent who is listening. So it is very important in today’s world to ensure that the security threats are minimized, and wherever the customer data is getting stored, it is always encrypted.

Techseen: Do you think machine learning and AI is the ultimate key to protecting enterprise IT from advancing cybersecurity threats?

Chawla: Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are being applied more broadly
across industries and applications than ever before such as computing power, data
collection and storage capabilities increase. This huge volume of data is valuable input
for AI, which can process and analyse everything captured to understand new trends
and details. For cyber security, this means new exploits and weaknesses can quickly be
identified and analysed to help mitigate further attacks. Machine Learning and AI need
to be backed by an enterprise wide security system.

Techseen: What are the key developments you have observed in India in terms of adoption of new technology?

Chawla: Indian enterprises are now more open to experiment with cloud solutions. Depending on the customers’ maturity curve, they want to explore whether a solution can be deployed on the cloud or what would work better for them when signing up for Software as a service(SaaS) or managed services.

Verint provides options for customers to deploy solution a) on premise b) on cloud c) SaaS or Managed services. Indian enterprises are now more proactive is prepping themselves for the future
customer.

Techseen: What are the key performance indicators (KPI) that Verint employs to derive actionable insights customer engagement?

Chawla: We always talk about 6 steps to success. First, listen to the customers. This means we need to look at what the customers are talking about. There has to be a very clear compliance recording which needs to be maintained.

Second, we look at how to derive insights out of those recordings. This could be real-time, through which we can derive emotions, which can be dissatisfaction. So we look at what could be the next best action that could be given out by the agent.

Third, we have something called Knowledge Management which looks at similar levels of dissatisfaction, or similar level of issues which were reported by the customer while speaking, and how some of the other agents have handled it satisfactorily. We put those kind of instances right in front as part of the knowledge and then the agent can look at those and quickly guide the customer while on the call.

Fourth, we look at it from the enterprise feedback management view where we work towards evaluating customer experience. This could be done by either sending a survey or feedback once the call is done. The other way could be looking at the digital experience. For example, asking for a feedback when the customer is already on the website. So we can initiate a feedback request even before you exit. Or the customer can initiate a feedback through an available channel.

Just like evaluating customer’s emotion from speech, we also have the same tool for text called text analytics. This is based on the Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand some of the keywords and phrases that can be caught and analyzed, and quickly raise an alarm before it goes viral. Both text and speech analytics merge and work together as a part of VOCA, which is Voice of the Customer Analytics.

Techseen: Some organizations are still building internal data analytics team, why should they use Verint’s platform instead of building their own?

Chawla: Customers are anyway building up their own analytics team. Our solutions are backed by our expert consultancy and an end to end hand-holding to help enterprises leverage on the available data.. We also ask our customers to get their own team. We are not someone who will not build that kind of a capability with the customer.

We want to build up a center of excellence with all of our customers. The insights derived from Verint’s analytics’ platforms are further worked upon by our consultants in conjunction with our customers’ expectations. And we train the customer teams to ensure that when we move out as part of change management, it becomes a continued and consistent experience with the customer.

Techseen: Can you comment on your engagement with startups, SMBs and non-traditional innovators in the space?

Chawla: As an end customer, it depends on the size of the organization and the kind of experience they are looking at in terms of continuity. When you look at a startup, some of them would probably be looking at a valuation to happen in 6 to 8 months and then sell it off. So they might not seek a long-term engagement. Their approach is very different. The best fit for Verint is to understand a long-term vision from the customer which means at least 1 to 3 years of sustenance that they would like to create.

Techseen: What are the 3 things you could have done differently in the company that you are running?

Chawla: For an India market perspective, one of the things that we could have done better was in terms of our reach via expansion. Today, what we do is target top and key customers in a field. But we would definitely wish for a horizontal penetration for Verint and expand the outreach beyond the top and key customers in an industry vertical.

Secondly, we want to propose flexible timings for our employees. And knowing the new generation, they have all the tools and things to work from anywhere they are. So if we give them flexibility, they will be much more productive. This is something which will help us in the coming future.

Thirdly to integrate our partners and customers together as a community. A community, which is driven by knowledge sharing. We look forward to include Indian customers in the Verint user forums across APAC, hence creating a vast learning platform for our Indian customers.

Techseen: At a time when Asian markets have become a key focus for many global players, which region in SEA do you think is best suitable for digital expansion? Why?

Chawla: My first preference would definitely be India, especially after the B2C (Business to Customer) and G2C (Government to Customer) verticals, opening up. India is doing fantastically well in terms of automating services from a government and citizen perspective..

From a B2B point of view, we are seeing lot of services being available on digital platform as part of enterprise wide rollout , but when you look at service being available for B2C environment its still limited., I think lot of it is still desired. There is a scope for improvement in optimization and better level of service expectations.

Techseen: What is your current team strength and do you plan to expand anytime soon?

Chawla: In India, we have grown 3X in last 3 years in terms of our employee strength. In the last 24 months, we have invested heavily in global shared services centers in the country. We have a center in Bangalore which is providing support and services to our customers across the globe including APAC and India. We will keep investing there in terms of ramping up the Bangalore facility.

The post We want to build a center of excellence with every customer: Anil Chawla, Verint Systems appeared first on TECHSEEN.

Pramati Technologies, an Indian Product company with expertise in providing technology and engineering support to companies across verticals, is focused on powering enterprise agility of the companies they support. Jay Pullur, Founder and CEO, Pramati Technologies, in an exclusive interview with Techseen, discusses how disruptive technology is changing business today.

Techseen: You have recently partnered with International Institute of Information Technology – Hyderabad (IIIT-H) to foster startups. How has the progress been so far? Are you looking at startups from a specific space?

Pullur: The response has been encouraging. We have so far received interest from 14 startups and have finalised 3 to be part of the innovation hub at IIIT. We are focused on startups that help enterprises innovate their business processes because that is the need of the hour. Enterprises need to cope with rapidly changing markets and technology is a big enabler. However, businesses may not always have the time or the resources to innovate continuously. Technology incubators can play a big role here.

Techseen: Pramati Technologies started in 1998 and is still continuing to hold a competitive edge. What is your formula to stay relevant and successful in this dynamic world of software tech?

Pullur: Pramati started as a software product company and stayed as such. Although services business became lucrative and dominated the bulk of Indian IT, we stayed on course and our decision to stay true to our roots has worked well for us. Even when we ventured into services with Imaginea (our services business), we made a conscious decision to stay away from the support, BPO and KPO routes, even today the bulk of our service business is about product engineering and helping clients build products that really make a dent in the market.

Every facet of Pramati has been about building/ helping build quality software and that’s the competitive edge with which we succeed in these state of market flux. As they say “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, having built the right culture we could expand.

Techseen: How is disruptive technology driving business today? What challenges have driven enterprises to embrace agility?

Pullur: It’s no news that every business is a technology business of some sort today. Tech competency is mandatory for survival and every enterprise we see today are forced some way or the other to unite their talent, innovation potential and user experience into a seamless whole which is why we are seeing increased partnerships dominating the ecosystem. It isn’t usual to find the banking majors of India working closely with a blockchain startup to implement a vendor payments solution, but these are happening today and indicate something important.

– Enterprises find it hard to bubble up innovation, often their org charts come in the way and make them inflexible.
– Innovation is becoming broad based and requires multiple skill sets. Baseline tech and design skills have become table stakes.
– Technologies are emerging at a staggering pace and companies ability to evaluate and adapt to them are trailing behind.

Which is why there is an emphasis on being nimble and agile. Agility is a precursor to innovation. The considerations are more technical. We speak of intra-departmental APIs, rapid app building platforms and collaborative microapps.

You could say digital transformation is about the market facing side and Enterprise Agility is more inward looking. EA is what allows the enterprise to ‘do’ something about market needs. EA is about organisational mechanics.

Techseen: How do you help in powering agility in enterprises?

Pullur: Our primary focus is de-siloing departments within an enterprise. To this effect, we are presently working on an end-to-end product suite that will help businesses become agile. We are very excited about this because we think it will be a game changer. We will make announcements very soon.

Techseen: At a time when Asian markets have become a key focus for many global players, which region in SEA do you think is best suitable for digital expansion? Why?

Pullur: When you say global players, today you can mean anything from taxi-hailing service to self-driven cars. This is because technology is at the heart of everything. And every country is at a different maturity level when it comes to digital technologies. It’s important to consider this. That’s why Singapore may be better to try out driverless cars, but India may be a better playing ground if you are looking at fintech.

For us, we are neutral about geography because our tech works at a fundamental level for the business, not so much at the customer interface. Business agility is a core capability, irrespective of verticals or geographies.

Techseen: There’s a traditional view that to decrease risk, you must reduce change, and manual or large changes can cause increased risk. How true is this? How can the risks be minimized while welcoming change?

Pullur: It isn’t always true, staying within comfort zone is the biggest threat to any business today. I think the technology market has come to a phase where controlling the rate of change is no longer an option. There is only one pace ahead and it is acceleration.

To cope up with this making changes in the realm of just customer experience is not going to cut it anymore. It isn’t about porting applications to cloud, but dockerizing them. It isn’t about doing away with systems of records (ERP), but linking them with a system of engagements (CRM). It isn’t about an ‘app for everything’ but technologies that infuse unsupervised efficiency and collaboration.

And lastly, being digital isn’t just about technology. It is about consciously deserting the comfortable old way and being able to create enough disruption to bring in change across people and processes. Transformation is always inside-out and digital is no different.

The risk associated with transformation can be minimized in multiple ways:

– Change where it is hardest, mostly it is where change is right too – Half-hearted digital washing legacy systems isn’t adding value and change need to be made where it matters – in processes and systems.
– Consolidate efforts – Evaluate vendors who bring end-to-end value to the table. One for API, one for apps and another for cloud makes the effort fragmented.
– Stop paying for aimless explorations – Tech landscape has way too many rising stars. An internal lab initiative that sucks up a lot of budget is usual. Focus on your core and for the rest, go the PoC and partnership way. Test waters before you scale and test it realistically.

– And lastly, make the old and new available in parallel – some way of making them the old and familiar available, while new is being adopted. This calls for old data being made available through an API and innovative new strategies being unleashed on top of the API.

Techseen: What are the 3 things you could have done differently in the company that you are running?

Pullur: Actually, we have no regrets. Like I said earlier, we have been quietly working on an Enterprise Agility product suite for a few years now and I don’t think we could have done it without a certain level of certainty and conviction. In fact, we are so excited about it’s release that we would rather look ahead than look back.

Techseen: What are you plans for the future? Any new product or service coming up?

Pullur: We are looking forward to introduce an end-to-end Enterprise Agility suite that will transform the way businesses are run today. It will enable business process innovation at a scale that wasn’t possible before and it will be a powerful tool for creating fresh forms of business value.

The post Agility is a precursor to innovation: Jay Pullur, Pramati Technologies appeared first on TECHSEEN.

In an exclusive interview with Techseen, Chiueh Tzi-Cker, Vice-President & General Director, Industrial Technology Research Institute of Taiwan (ITRI), Satish Allampalli, Director, Advantech, and Phoebe Chen, Regional Manager, PLANET Technology share their views on how enterprises can brace themselves against cyberattacks.

Techseen: As per a Cisco report, the number of connected devices are estimated to exceed 50 billion by the year 2020. A security breach in these IoT devices will easily disrupt business operations. How can companies effectively prevent their devices from these cyberattacks?

Chiueh: I think it is very easy for enterprises to overlook all the different entry points for cyber threats to exploit. When they go through digital adoption, enterprises must realize that their threat exposure area is growing faster than they imagine.

To protect against cyberattacks, enterprises (especially SMEs) must ditch the “it won’t happen to me” mindset. Cyber criminals are more aware than them to the fact that they are less likely to invest in, or be able to, afford a comprehensive IT security framework.

Next, enterprises need to secure all devices plugged into a network. Something as simple as an IP camera can be an accessory to cybercrime. I believe this was quite a popular method not too long ago in administering DDoS attacks globally. If there is a cybersecurity skill shortage, get help. Partner with a security solutions provider and let them work out what’s best for you.

Allampalli: Having been mostly involved in the industrial form of digitalisation, my response to this is very industrial-centric, and by extension, enterprise focused as well. The important thing when dealing with IoT devices around security, especially, is to address the need to be ‘mobile’ and timely.

Enterprises must begin thinking about adopting a scalable, extensible and low-overhead software that enables centralised security management, monitoring and reporting for connected IoT devices. This is in addition to the usual basics of an updated antivirus and firewall protection. A singular dashboard that can both be remotely accessed by the administrator and remotely access the aggregation of IoT devices will measurably decrease the time taken for identification of threat source.

Techseen: How equipped do you think machine learning and AI are in protecting enterprise IT from advancing cybersecurity threats?

Chiueh: Machine learning is definitely capable of doing so. In fact, it is not so much the capability of AI that is lacking as it is the apprehension with which enterprises treat AI adoption. Many of them think of it as expensive or unnecessary.

I think enterprises need to recognise that cybersecurity is not just about protecting your data and networks. It is essentially a business enabler. With a robust cybersecurity system, your business has about a million less things to worry about!

AI has been around for a long time. What has changed? The breakthrough in discovery of embedding hidden layers in artificial neural networks has made AI capable of just about anything, with the right algorithms. So yes, I believe AI is well-equipped to deal with cybersecurity threats. In the same way, it is also equipped to conduct higher order cyberattacks. The sheer monitoring and mining abilities of AI is beyond human capability to comprehend, especially with such large datasets.

Techseen: The WannaCry cybercriminals used blockchain technology to settle the financial transactions with the victims. Does this mean blockchain has emerged as an irremediable means for criminals to execute their operations?

Chiueh: This boils down to security. For implementation of such technology, it is imperative that the on-premises security of organisations is built to guard against all current and future exposed threat surfaces. By extension, individuals need to guard themselves and their own devices against cyber threats to prevent cybercriminals from leveraging such technology to conduct criminal activity.

We must first understand that managing cryptocurrency is but one use of blockchain technology. The technology itself is neutral, it can be applied in many territories. Blockchain is rooted in providing a sort of digital truth. Its technology and mechanics makes it such that the records that are grouped together as one block are encrypted based on data from the previous block. This means that an entire chain of records exists in interdependence, each timestamped, in a manner that is yet unalterable.

In fact, its ‘transparency’ is one of the reasons why it is considered revolutionary. The public availability of a digital ledger that cannot be altered spells many possibilities for business, government and society. That should be the focus of blockchain discourse.

Techseen: According to a report, India ranked fourth on the list of top target countries for Web Application Attacks and 10th in the list of “Global Web Application Attack Source Countries” in the fourth quarter of 2016. What do you think is the need of the hour in fighting such threats?

Chiueh: There must be action from 2 ends. The providers and developers of Web Based Applications must ensure that in their development process, they take into consideration the overall integrity of its potential users. Upon rolling out, the developers must sustain this vigilance towards their reputation as a provider and maintaining their users’ data security.

The immediate need is for all employees to be educated on the basics of contributing to the maintenance of both organisational and personal data security and integrity. Vulnerability from within can dismantle the strongest, most complex of network security systems.

The fact is that most cyber-attacks occurred because someone did, or did not do, something, causing a lapse in security. Alerting employees on the importance of something as simple as having a strong password is sometimes lacking in the biggest of organisations. A simple rundown on common indications of cyber threats will go a long way along with regular reminders to the employees.

Techseen: According to Trend Micro’s 2016 Global Roundup Report, 27 per cent of cyber-attacks were launched targeting Asia Pacific’s enterprises and individuals. Where do you think the APAC market is lagging as compared to the West in its preparedness for security vulnerabilities?

Chiueh: In a recent study on the state of digital, it was found that APAC is now home to more than half the world’s internet users. This is hardly surprising as our region is home to 7 of the 10 most populous countries in the world. The region was responsible for the 70% growth in global internet users and it is unlikely that this trend is going to slow down.

As businesses go digital and thrive, the new digital adopters may have done so at a speed where perhaps the accompanying implications surrounding technology adoption were not fully articulated and hence, the users are ignorant of the threat exposure. This makes them vulnerable to advanced threats that are everywhere these days.

I think simply put, we have the most number of Internet users in the world. This connected group is a bigger target group of potential victims. The speed of digital adoption also means that most are not savvy enough to realise cybersecurity concerns and thus, fall prey to cyber-attacks. I believe it is just a disparity of time.

Techseen: Public safety and security organizations primarily rely on web-based applications to provide remote access. How can these web-based applications be protected from unauthorized access by individuals who would use the data to cause harm?

Chen: Basically, all networking and communications products should support the SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) protocol. Through the authentication and encryption of each data packet being transmitted, SSL protocols secure connections between clients and servers over insecure networks, thus avoiding any malicious intrusion and unauthorized access. These products should also come equipped with a firewall that monitors traffic to and from the SMB network, making sure intruders and hackers are kept at bay.

Allampalli: Indeed, the migration to cloud is no longer a possibility but an eventuality. To deploy business capability on the web, enterprises should also correspondingly acquire security capability on the same platform. A solution that can easily implement security applications, configure policies and tasks, control updates and monitor events for all managed systems is key in the protection of business data.

Techseen: Can you suggest some tips for young startups to better equip themselves against cyber attacks?

Chiueh: The disturbing reality is that startups face the exact same threats as bigger organisations. In fact, individuals are as susceptible to cyber-attacks as well. Understandably, they invest their limited resources on product development and promotion to achieve faster time-to-market and ultimately become profitable as soon as possible.

This is a major concern because startups that fall victim to cyber-attacks would suffer from a damaged brand and financial troubles and even a closure of the business. Unlike bigger companies like Google and Apple which are deeply ingrained in people’s lives, startups do not enjoy such protection. Young startups could adopt certain cost-effective solutions.

Holistic Understanding and Awareness

Firstly, it is important for a company to have a holistic understanding about the kind of risks and vulnerabilities they are exposed to, ranging from the types and purposes of cyber-attacks to the different kinds of cyber fraud schemes such as phishing and pharming, and even the correct method to identify points of weakness in the network.

Emergency Response Plan

Secondly, having an emergency response plan in the event of a cyber-attack is imperative. Just like a fire drill, it is ideal to carry out practices to ensure that all employees have good knowledge of their roles and responsibilities if a cyber-attack occurs. Only when each employee in the company is clear on this, can the resolve the issue in an organised and efficient way.

Keep Networks Updated

One of the more basic yet important step is to ensure that the networks, operating systems, anti-virus programmes and any other software are up to date. This will protect your company from latest threats and improve the security of the infrastructure.

At the end of the day, rather than taking everything on board in favour of a lean structure or asset-light model and suffering from cyber-attacks, if there lacks expertise within the enterprise, it is prudent to engage the services of domain experts.

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Bill McMurray, Managing Director, JAPAC, Qualtrics in an exclusive interview with Techseen, talks about the “experience gap” and why companies should adopt CX to survive in a rapidly evolving business landscape.

Techseen: In an increasingly competitive market, why is customer experience one of the top considerations for consumers when making the decision to purchase from a brand?

McMurray: In today’s world of instant access to information, if consumers do not get what they want, when they want it, and how they want it, they will simply look for better alternatives.

Consumers today buy more than just a product; they buy the experience associated with it. The experience is everything from the product experience, brand experience, and the interactions with the company’s employees.

A recent study by Qualtrics showed that 80 percent of customers in the APAC region would switch brands based on poor customer experience alone. This clearly shows that once a customer is engaged with a company, the organisation has to provide a positive experience. If the experience is a positive one, the customer is more likely to remain loyal, buy more, and recommend the brand to others.

Techseen: Singaporeans are notoriously among the world’s most demanding when it comes to good service, says the Amex 2017 Global Customer Service Barometer. Do you see any specific challenges in customer service facing this region?

McMurray: Customer Experience (CX) is a hot topic right across the APAC region and there is a significant increase in customers’ expectations on how companies should deliver experiences. Customers now expect companies to detect dissatisfaction promptly and respond swiftly to remediate the issue and so recover loyalty.

APAC millennials are among the fastest in the world to adopt mobile technologies and organisations serving customers in APAC need to recognise this, and keep it front of mind when designing and managing their customer experience programs – everything needs to be mobile responsive. Crucial to their customer experience program is the ability to collect feedback from consumers through multiple mobile customer touch points, such as in-app feedback, website feedback, SMS, social media, etc.

Once this feedback is collected, organisations need to be able to respond to consumers in real-time. With this generation being accustomed to the norm of instantaneous feedback, if the organisation is not responding to a customer’s feedback instantly, they may lose them to their competitors.

Techseen: According to a recent Qualtrics survey on 1,700 Asia Pacific consumers, almost 30% will drop the brand or company without notice if they experience a service failure. Can you suggest 3 tips that ensure a satisfactory UX across the globe?

McMurray: The concept of “experience management” is fast-rising among marketers and strategists to unlock competitive advantages. This comes as no surprise as often the difference between success and failure lies in their customer’s experiences. In fact, customer experience is among the top differentiators for brands.

Most organisations tend to focus on the more “operational” aspects of service delivery, but few combine this with the “experience” aspects of their service. This results in “experience gaps” (the difference between what you intend to deliver and what you actually deliver), which creates a disconnect between your customers from your brand, in turn reducing brand loyalty.

To ensure an enhanced UX, first, organisations should respond in real-time. As mentioned earlier, APACs millennials are accustomed to the norm of instantaneous interactions, as they are so tech savvy. If there is service failure and the customer complains about this and provides feedback, this is the organisation’s chance to win this customer back, but they only have a small window to do this, so they must respond in real-time to customer feedback.

Second, they should measure across the entire customer journey and focus on analysing consumer decision journey metrics. Consumers are changing the way they research and buy products, and hence organisations should be clear about possible obstacles, sources of motivation, or what drives satisfaction. Consistently tying journey performance, instead of one-off interactions, to actions, will help organisations deliver a more personalised customer experience that in turn will encourage loyalty and repeated purchases.

Third, companies should engage employees. An engaged workforce that provides great customer service is linked to revenue growth and is necessary to create a customer-centric brand. Organisations with invested employees almost always outperform companies that do not. Employees form the frontline of any organisation and interact directly with consumers to create the experience, whether outstanding or not.

Techseen: Qualtrics has recently launched the XM Platform to manage the four core experiences of business—customer, employee, product, and brand experience. How has its success been so far? Can you name some major clients using the platform?

McMurray: We reached a key milestone this year, with the launch of our Experience Management (XM) platform. This has created a new market category – Experience Management (XM), with Qualtrics receiving accolades such as Temkin Group’s Customer Experience Vendor Excellent (CxVE) Award, and being named a leader in customer feedback management by independent research firm Forrester.

Our clients within the APAC span a multitude of sectors. One of our recent clients in the region is Volkswagen Group Australia (VGA), which uses Qualtrics to manage their customer and employee experience programs.

Another Qualtrics client in Asia Pacific is Australian Unity (leading health, wealth and living company in Australia), which uses Qualtrics customer experience management platform to help drive their health insurance customer experience strategy and competitiveness.

Techseen: Why is there a disparity between what companies believe they’re delivering around customer experiences and service, and what customers believe they’re getting?

McMurray: Many organisations operate on a traditional model in how they think consumers arrive at a purchasing decision – or the discovery journey. With the pervasiveness of the Internet, consumers are much more well-informed, and their purchase journey is also more dynamic and interactive.

Traditional one-way communication-based marketing strategies are not as effective as they were, resulting in an “experience gap” between the experience companies think they are delivering, and how customers perceive it. In a Bain & Co study, 80 percent of companies say they deliver superior experience, yet only 8 percent of customers agree.

Consumers also now expect brands to respond immediately if they share their feedback online. While many companies acknowledge this as a new reality and strive to improve CX, the challenge lies in not being able to capture this “in-the-moment” feedback quickly and then act on it fast enough to address that customers concern(s). Rapid remediation of issues is critical and companies no longer have the luxury of surveying customers annually for their opinions.

Techseen: How can companies get their CX right?

McMurray: Opinions should be sought continuously and the resources invested into training customer experience teams to close the loop with customers should be a key priority.

As more companies shift their focus to customer-centric business models, there are three ways they can best capture in-the-moment feedback to offer better brand experiences:

1. Timing is Everything

Knowing the best moment to capture feedback helps you deliver great experiences across the customer journey. Mapping these ‘moments that matter’ allows your brand to better understand the unique paths your customers take. Learning about their post-purchase experience also helps build a fuller picture of the customer’s perceptions.

2. Get the Right Feedback To Make The Best Decisions

It is important for businesses to ask for more than just whether the customer is satisfied or not. Going deeper with the questions, pulling out a customer’s expectations, drivers and perceptions, will help you learn how to do things better.

3. Prioritise Closing the Loop at Scale

It is critical for brands to respond to individual customers as fast as possible. However, prioritising learning and closing the loop at scale can impact many customers at once. Building a stable, repeatable process for capturing customer feedback at every touchpoint and acting on it is foundational to good customer experience management and builds customer trust and loyalty.

Companies need ensure that their strategies align with the consumer purchase journey, and invest in the relevant touchpoints. To do so, companies should invest in a well-designed CX program that can deliver real-time, actionable feedback from customers across these touchpoints, and focus on the areas of the greatest impact. Such platforms can develop a powerful and differentiating mechanism for businesses to generate an enhanced CX that sets their brand apart from the rest.

Techseen: Can you comment on Qualtrics’ engagement with start-ups, SMBs and non-traditional innovators in the space?

McMurray: Qualtrics is a modular, scalable platform, which can be used from one-person organisations, through to large-scale enterprise organisations. Typically we see our startup and SMB customers start small with our sophisticated research platform and then grow their Qualtrics usage to include other functionality, such as role-based dashboards and advanced text analysis.

What makes Qualtrics different is that you don’t need to invest in a full CX platform, organisations can start small and grow as their programs mature.

Techseen: What are your goals for Singapore in this quarter? How do you plan to transform how SEA brands and consumers interact with one another?

McMurray: We’ve selected Singapore as the location for our ASEAN headquarters, offering support to surrounding countries in the Southeast Asia region.

It just makes perfect sense for us, given its ease of doing business, it’s role as an APAC headquarters for a number of brands, its regional connectivity, and access to local, regional, and global talent.

We are building a local initial team of 10 staff as quickly as possible, with the intent of growing beyond sales and support to include client success, implementation, marketing and additional supporting functions. The plan is to provide the full range of local resources to ensure the success of our rapidly expanding customer base.

Techseen: Do you have any plans for expansion in the APAC?

McMurray: Our focus in 2017 is to further accelerate growth in Australia and New Zealand, and expand across the region by opening local operations in each of Singapore and Japan. These local teams will look to assist their clients to drive revenue growth through the provision of superior experiences across their business with our experience management platform.

Since launching in late 2014, we have grown to over 600 customers in Asia Pacific and Japan and our revenues have more than doubled each year. We expect to see this expansion continue, especially with the launching of both our Singapore (ASEAN) and Japanese operations.

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Techseen: Should a cybersecurity threat be tackled by an individual, an enterprise, by the government, or should it be a combined effort (personal, commercial and administrative)?

Walia: Digital technology – from the ubiquitous smartphone to IoT devices for the home or office – has become widespread across APAC, with India being one of the fastest adopters of new technology. In this landscape, it is impossible to expect any one sector of society to shoulder the responsibility of cybersecurity alone.

Individuals, enterprises and government – each has their own part to play in fighting cyber threats. End-users of technology, often identified as the weak link in cybersecurity, need to take charge of their own security needs and ensure that they use devices and services in a manner that is safe and responsible. This will drastically reduce the attack surface area exposed to cybercriminals and cut risk of cyberattacks. Enterprises, on the other hand, can do their part by setting up sensible cybersecurity policies, taking proactive steps to prevent cyber breaches and being prepared in the event of a successful attack. In particular, manufacturers of connected devices must ensure that security considerations are built into the very design of the hardware and software, rather than as vulnerabilities that can be patched as needed.

Governments, besides having the responsibility of setting up big-picture frameworks and legislation, also have a key role to play in stopping cybercrime across borders. In particular, they need to ensure that their own legal frameworks around cybercrime, as well as their law enforcement officials, are well-connected to, and compatible with, laws and law enforcement processes in other countries. By its very nature, cybercrime is generally not restricted to a country’s borders. Rapid, rigorous cooperation between law enforcement officials across national borders is increasingly important to all jurisdictions interested in policing cybercrime.

Likewise, there is a greater need than ever now for collaboration and information sharing in the private sector, especially within industries. For example, banks and financial institutions need to put aside commercial differences and do more to share threat information in order to efficiently protect the whole industry from cyberattack. Similarly, the public and private sectors also need to work more closely together to ensure legislation is well drafted, and is feasible to implement from a practical standpoint.

Techseen: Like the EU adopted the NIS Directive, have other countries come together to form a cybersecurity legislation? What are the roadblocks that countries face when cybersecurity is a global issue?

Walia: Each country and region faces its own unique challenges to establishing cybersecurity legislation. While there haven’t been any major cross-border legislative actions taken outside of the EU, most countries have stepped up collaborative efforts to tackle cybersecurity, particularly in this region.

Last year, Singapore played host to the inaugural ASEAN Ministerial Conference on Cybersecurity, a significant step forward in efforts to boost cybersecurity in the region. As a result, the ASEAN Cyber Capacity program was launched, aiming to enhance cybersecurity resources, expertise and training among Southeast Asian member states with initial funding of S$10 million. This is meant to fund a wide variety of mechanisms aimed at empowering businesses and public servants in the region to form cybersecurity legislation and strategies.

However, establishing cross-border legislation can be difficult owing to different levels of infrastructure and cybersecurity maturity across markets. Markets with highly developed digital infrastructure such as Japan and Hong Kong face vastly different challenges than emerging economies such as Vietnam or Myanmar. With different needs and priorities, it can be difficult – or even ineffective – to implement blanket cybersecurity legislation across a region.

Techseen: You have mentioned in your report that regions such as APAC keep updating standards in their policies to adapt to new challenges and threats. How often is this needed? How important is it for countries to understand the threat matrix and comply?

Walia: There is no specific, optimal length of time following which governments should revisit their standards for security. As technology development speeds up, naturally policies will have to be updated more frequently as they become out-of-date.

What is important is that policy-makers are proactive in consulting businesses and security experts regularly rather than reacting to major cyber breaches that have exploited vulnerabilities in existing policies. This ensures that policies and legislation are effective, adequate and up-to-date.

Techseen: Why is there no framework for APAC or Latin America, like the EU-US Privacy Shield?

Walia: The EU-US Privacy Shield is a framework governing the exchange of personal data for commercial purposes between the European Union and United States, between which there have been longstanding business partnerships, similarities in attitudes towards data protection and privacy, as well as developed technological infrastructure.

In contrast, countries across Asia Pacific face varying levels of technology development and adoption, even within their own borders. This makes it difficult for a unified framework to be set up across countries. However, countries in Asia Pacific have already begun making strides to establish their own common standards for cybersecurity. The ASEAN unit has been particularly active on this front recently, with the first ASEAN Ministerial Conference on Cybersecurity convened last year at Singapore’s International Cyber Week (SICW). In years to come, we expect even greater collaboration between countries to bring us toward a common cybersecurity standard across the region.

Techseen: What role do private technology giants such as Google, Apple, IBM or Facebook play when it comes to cybersecurity legislations? Do you feel that the private tech sector is anti-establishment when it comes to privacy laws?

Walia: Greater collaboration across the public and private sectors is a critical ingredient to effectively countering cyber threats. By combining threat intelligence and technical expertise with the law enforcement capabilities of public sector organizations, the scope of attack for cybercriminals can be greatly reduced.

Earlier this year, one of the co-conspirators behind the Operation Windigo malware attacks pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in the United States. Through the operation, over 35 million spam messages were generated daily, gathering millions of dollars in fraudulent payments.

ESET researchers had helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lead the investigation by providing technical expertise in identifying affiliate networks used by the Ebury gang, sharing sinkhole data to identify victims and produced a thorough technical report of the groups’ activity. This helped lead to the extradition and arrest of Maxim Senakh from Finland in 2016.

Techseen: ESET has talked about developing a global cybersecurity culture. How is it possible to have a unified plan of action when the laws and regulations of each country are different?

Walia: Legislation can be effective in regulating behavior, but, as you rightly have pointed out, it can also be difficult to align meanings and concepts of privacy, freedom of expression or security policy across borders.

It would be extremely challenging to standardize cybersecurity legislation across countries. However, organizations and governments can take effective, and aligned plans of action across borders if they are able to make cybersecurity a priority in all aspects of operation, and work towards a common goal of a more secure cyberspace.

Developing a global cybersecurity culture is more than just about creating and standardizing legislative action. Countries also need to set up channels and platforms that allow them to share information and resources to better anticipate and block cyberattacks. The need for this has been highlighted by the Bangladesh Bank heist last year. The approach taken by cybercriminals to carry off this operation was highly similar to an attack on Ecuadorian bank Banco del Austro SA in 2015, and could possibly have been foreseen and prevented with greater threat sharing within the industry.

Techseen: Which are the countries that you think should take measures when it comes to developing and creating cybersecurity laws? Which are the countries that have not yet taken cybersecurity threats seriously?

Walia: All countries that use digital technology – that is, all the countries in the world – need to conscientiously take steps to develop and create cybersecurity laws.

While most technologically developed nations already have their own legal policies and frameworks in place to deal with cyber threats, developing nations must act now to defend their digital assets. Thankfully, cybersecurity has quickly climbed to the top of the agenda for most countries, and is now a priority across most regions.

Techseen: What do you think will happen in the future, when it comes to countries collaborating for countering cybersecurity threats? Will everyone go their own, individual way or will they come together?

Walia: Time is of the essence in any cyberattack scenario. Having timely access to information and threat intelligence can make a big difference in protecting organizations and individuals.

Across the globe, we have seen cybercriminals banding together, with highly organized crime rings running large-scale cyberattacks in which their tools, data and expertise are shared across criminal organizations. The rise of easily available exploit kits has also significantly lowered the costs of attack for cybercriminals. This has made it far harder for any one organization to protect users on its own.

Fortunately, today, we are already seeing more organizations, governments, and even competing security vendors, put aside commercial interests to combat the growing threat of cybercrime together. As the cyber threat landscape continues to evolve, this will no longer be a choice, but an imperative for organizations that want to survive in the digital age. By banding together and collectively making a stand against cybercrime, we can quickly react to emerging threats, prevent major security incidents and create a safer cyberspace for all.

Techseen: What would you suggest a country’s government should do to develop and pass cybersecurity legislation?

Walia: Developing legislation – on any topic – is a complicated matter involving a large number of actors and political factors. However, on account of the number, frequency and impact of cybersecurity incidents worldwide, countries around the world have stepped up efforts to establish strong policies relating to cybersecurity.

Legislators need to consider the elements necessary for security in their own specific territories, including capacity to respond to large-scale incidents, the protection of critical infrastructure, ability to collaborate with other countries, and even to consider the development of a security culture which can be instilled in the population.

To do this efficiently, governments should work in close collaboration with private sector security experts and business organizations to get a holistic and realistic understanding of on-ground concerns and possible solutions to cyber threats. Matters such as data privacy and access are often debated between government and industry, and greater understanding and agreement between the two is important to set up effective, well-designed legislative frameworks.

Stepping up partnerships with the private sector has already been outlined as a key priority in Singapore’s recent National Cybercrime Action Plan, with the focus on upgrading capabilities to respond to cyber threats. However, there is still more that needs to be done in extending these partnerships in consultation with security experts to strengthen legislation in order to create a criminal justice framework that is nimble and effective in real-world contexts.

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Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures in an exclusive interview with Techseen discusses how investors’ approach towards investing has evolved now, and what startups can do to bag early stage funding deals.

Techseen: What drives valuation in technology? How do you value companies differently?

Singhal: Valuation in startups, especially technology startups is governed by several parameters like differentiation and defensibility of the IP the startup is creating, how much validation have they been able to get and what is the extent of impact on the business case they are trying to address. We look at several of these parameters ourselves along with the stage of the startup. In addition, we also look at the data strategy they have put together; how do they plan to acquire data, who will the data belong to, how will it grow, what is its cost, etc.

Techseen: Do investors in disruptive technologies or innovations need an iron stomach? How tolerant do they need to be towards risks?

Singhal: Patience is the key as the gestation period of a deep tech startup could be longer than expected. Investors should understand this aspect as adoption of a new technology takes some time with the target segment.

Techseen: Sustainability is an important precursor to a successful business. What do you have to say to startups about assuming sustainability and achieving commercial success?

Singhal: For applied technology startups, demonstrating business viability is key. Therefore commercial success is an important milestone in their journey.

Techseen: Why do we see the obsession with a handful of unicorns, or startup companies valued at more than $1 billion? Doesn’t it compromise a deep understanding of the impact and scale of new technologies?

Singhal: We in India are going through a shift in thesis for venture investing. So far, most of the venture investing has been about backing companies which can get most market share, what I call as a market share led thesis of investing. We are moving from that to more of IP led product thesis. As we see more success coming these kind of startups, the overall mindset of chasing unicorns will also shift.

Techseen: Given that artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize many areas of a company’s operations, including their decision-making processes and their budgeting abilities, how best is it equipped to make an investment decision? Do you leverage AI in determining your investment moves?

Singhal: This is an interesting point. There has been some work in this area especially in the US where venture investors are trying to leverage AI to make their investment decisions. This is still very young in maturity. We will probably also look at in due course.

Techseen: IoT is the next big thing, and almost every organization is thinking or doing something around it. How do you see this trend? Do you think there is a need to invest more in this area?

Singhal: Absolutely, IoT is becoming an integral part of all products as we create and consume a lot of data. The products and services that succeed in the future will be the ones that use data very well and hence the IoT trend is here to stay.

Internet of Things (IoT) in India is expected to see a rapid 31-fold growth to reach 1.9 billion by 2020, as per a Deloitte report. It mentions that the market value of IoT is expected to reach $9 billion by 2020.

According to NASSCOM, the IoT market in India is expected to reach $15 billion by 2020, which will be roughly 5% of the global market. Nearly 120 companies offer IoT solutions, 70% of these IoT startups have emerged in the last five years itself. Investors have been taking active interest in startups offering innovative IoT solutions and a cumulative amount of $60 million has already been invested in the last two years alone.

Techseen: Which sectors in India do you think will see a potential rise in funding and demand in the near future? Can you support your answer with some stats?

Singhal: We are very bullish on healthcare, logistics and enterprise. I think we should see an upsurge of investments in these sectors in the coming times.

Techseen: What trends have you observed in the fintech space in 2016? Any predictions for 2017?

Singhal: After 2015’s $46.7 billion in total global funding to fintech companies, 2016 experienced a decline in the market, with a 47.2-percent downslide in fintech investment, according to KPMG International’s quarterly report on global fintech investment. Despite the decline, India appears to be a key focus of VC investors in Asia as per the report.

Fintech is seeing disruption and will continue to do so as it is still largely untapped. The initial areas being tapped are digitisation, credit models etc and I am sure will move to analyzing the vast datasets on consumer intelligence using AI.

Techseen: You have recently raised a significant amount from Accel Partners. How do you plan to use this fund? What are you key focus areas?

Singhal: We have raised funds not only from Accel Partners but also from International Finance Corporation and have had backing from SIDBI, prominent family offices from USA, Singapore & India and leading entrepreneurs like Mohandas Pai, Binny Bansal, Deep Kalra, Sanjeev Bikchandani and Bhupen Shah among others.

We recently announced the first close of our maiden fund at $13mn. We will focus on investing the funds in 18-20 start-ups over a period of three to four years – startups that are disrupting the traditional space to impact a large number of people positively by their product/ service utilizing AI, ML and IoT.

Techseen: Can you suggest 3 things that young startups aiming to raise funding from pi Ventures should focus on?

Singhal: First, they should focus on a specific business case, which states the problem that they are solving, using AI to their advantage. Second, the startup should focus on the IP, and what is the real AI algorithm that they have built. And third, look at the data strategy; how will you acquire data, who will the data will belong to, how will this data grow, what is the cost of the data, etc.

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