Let’s Talk. A magazine for the ICT decision maker.

A look at the future of cyber security. Interview with Dr Ben Azvine, BT’s global head of Security R&D.

How tech disruption is turning outsourcing on its head.Interview with Marco Gianotten, CEO Giarte and Alrik Hohman, BT Deal architect.

Managing innovation at incumbents: lessons from KBC and BT.Interview with Freddy Van Bogget, innovation manager for KBC’s banking products, and Pascal Cuppens, head of KBC’s innovation centre ‘Surf Studio’.

Content.Welcome to The Digital Possible.

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Only your imagination is a limit to what technology is capable of today.

Fabrice De Windt,CEO BT Benelux.

How tech disruption is turning outsourcing on its head.

Marco Gianotten, CEO Giarte andAlrik Hohman, BT deal architect.

The impact of IoT on the enterprise: a Cisco perspective.

Alexis Malchair, Cisco’s IoT lead Northern Europe.

Managing innovation at incumbents: lessons from KBC and BT.

Freddy Van Bogget, innovation manager KBC.Pascal Cuppens, head of KBC’s innovation centre.

A look at the future of cyber security with Dr Ben Azvine, BT’s Global Head of Security R&D.

Dr Ben Azvine, BT global head of Security R&D.

Keeping car hackers at bay.

Martin Hunt, Automotive Industry practice lead at BT.

Software Defined Networking: time to unshackle the network.

Steve Decoster, senior network designer, BT Advise.Wouter Coppens, business consultant compute, BT Advise.

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The world is changing and it’s changing fast. According to the World Economic Forum, we’re on the threshold of the fourth industrial revolution. Technology is fast reshaping our world. The prospect is exhilarating. Digital transformation is being discussed at the board level, in IT and operational teams, in organisations around the world, no matter what industry they are in. That’s exactly how it should be. Because what’s digitally possible is not yet defined.

We see digital as the coming together of humans and technology in new ways resulting in fundamental changes in people, teams and organisations. In the digital age, people aren’t just users, they are in the driving seat. Whether it’s the sharing economy, our always on lifestyle or the consumerisation of IT, everyone wants agility, flexibility and speed from their IT. Without compromising on security. Customers and employees are becoming more demanding, ecosystems are evolving and the established rules of business economics are changing.

We call this The Digital Possible, – the amazing potential of digital to change not just businesses, but also communities, nations and the wider world. We believe that an organisation’s digital possible is unique. And that there is no off the shelf solution to digitise a business. This means that understanding, planning, realising and evolving your own digital possible is quite a challenge.In this new edition of the Let’s Talk magazine you will read about the Digital Possible in action.I hope you will enjoy,

Fabrice De WindtCEO BT in the Benelux

Fabrice De Windt, CEO BT Benelux.

Also, take a look at our blog: http://letstalk.globalservices.bt.com

Follow us on LinkedIn: http://www.bt.com/be/linkedin

Only your imagination is a limit to what technology is capable of today.

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In February 2016, Fabrice De Windt was appointed CEO of BT’s Benelux organisation. Fabrice is Belgian but has spent the past five years working internationally, serving some of BT’s biggest customers around the globe. In his previous role, Fabrice was responsible for BT’s financial services customers in Europe and before that held a global sales management role. In other words, Fabrice has had first-hand experience helping large enterprises deal with the challenges of digital transformation. We asked Fabrice about his perspective on the market’s major trends - and how BT is responding.

Digital transformation is a key priority for nearly all our customers.

Our Cloud of Clouds portfolio strategy offers a single point of control to manage cloud infrastructure, apps and storage.

You have worked with some of BT’s biggest customers around the globe. What keeps them up at night?Digital transformation is a key priority for nearly all our customers. New tech-enabled business models are disrupting every industry. Uber has become the largest taxi company in the world but doesn’t own a single taxi. Airbnb is the largest short-stay accommodation provider in the world but doesn’t own a single property. Our customers are now urgently looking at their own digital transformation and in many cases fundamentally rethinking the way they interact with their customers. At BT we’re exceptionally well positioned to work with our customers during that transformation process. That makes it a great place to work currently.

Why is BT so well positioned with regard to digital transformation?The paradox for IT at present is that they have to do so much more with less. IT budgets have been under pressure for several years but, simultaneously, the business requirements are more demanding than ever. On the one hand the role of IT is to deliver a more efficient business operation, but on the other hand the business is crying out for innovation. At BT we can help in both these areas. With regard to the day-to-day running of IT infrastructure we are in an excellent position to do this more efficiently but also more effectively. We can reduce costs and improve quality of service. And that frees up resources which can be invested in digital transformation. Our Cloud of Clouds portfolio strategy where we integrate different cloud services in a single control pane is our key differentiator. Customers can pick and choose services from different providers depending on where they are in the transformation process. BT brings all these services together under a single security wrap and replaces a bundle of SLAs with just one. Our network capability is the so-called spider in the web. It allows customers to make ubiquitous connections to various services, whether delivered from their own datacenters, or from BT’s cloud (e.g. unified communications or contact centre services), or from partners in our ecosystem (e.g. Amazon, Microsoft).

Technology disruption is not a new phenomenon. Why do you think digital transformation has become such an urgent topic lately? Simply put, the technology is currently available to enable such transformation. In the past, much of the ‘disruption’ was theoretical; now there are huge opportunities in so many different areas. For example, we recently helped one of our insurance clients develop a model where they are able to conduct claims assessments using mobile video. In this way, claims adjustors do not have to travel to the customer’s location every time; instead, they can assess the damage through real time video. Another example: one of our banking customers analysed payment traffic in a city during a major festival. It was subsequently able to advise city authorities to adjust the route of the parade and thereby boost retail revenues by 25% the next time. Today only your imagination is a limit to what technology is capable of.

Looking internally at BT’s own assets and capabilities, what are some of the key trends in that regard? In our world, convergence is absolutely critical. The lines between the traditional towers in IT – hardware, telco, software, and services – continue to blur. For example, traditional hardware-based networking will gradually give way to Software Defined Networking (SDN), a new architecture that makes it much easier for our customers to manage their network and deploy new applications. Our capabilities in IT services are also continuously evolving. The cloud is becoming a key driver of new business models, especially service-based and pay-as-you-use models. Uber and Airbnb are key examples of this, but now similar models are emerging in industrial sectors and manufacturing. Even aircraft engine manufacturers are turning into ‘aircraft engine as a service’ providers. That is a key trend in the market and BT is making that shift too.

What are your first impressions of BT’s Benelux business?Firstly, let me say that I’m happy to be back home. I think we can be proud of the fact that we serve such stellar customers, companies like Philips and Solvay and major institutions such as NATO and the EU. We clearly have a strong customer base. Our task now is to further develop the relationship with these clients. We can add more value by working more closely with customers. Another priority is to improve our client services; we’re good, but I would like us to be even better. To conclude, I’m very confident in BT’s future. We are in an excellent position currently to help our enterprise customers manage their digital transformation. And I’m particularly excited about our Cloud of Clouds offering – it is a bold move that perfectly illustrates our own willingness to embrace new digital realities.

The impact of IoT on the enterprise: a Cisco perspective.

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With several trillion dollars at stake, the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving a technological tsunami that will utterly transform most industries. Cisco is right in the heart of that revolution, creating the building blocks of a secure, reliable and scalable IOT system architecture. We spoke to Alexis Malchair, Cisco’s IoT lead for Northern Europe, and asked him about the impact of IoT on enterprise IT and the CIO.

Alexis Malchair, Cisco’s IoT lead forNothern Europe

The Cloud is up there; the Fog is down there closer to the sensors.And that’s Cisco’s core business.

Ultimately we will hit the limits of the Cloud model where all data is handled centrally. Fortunately, from a business model perspective we usually don’t need all the data that connected devices generate. Say you are monitoring the temperature of a device or location using a sensor that takes a measurement every 10 seconds. You may not have the bandwidth and latency to collect such data from thousands of sensors simultaneously. And anyway, the data may only become interesting once the temperature falls or rises above a certain threshold, or when it correlates with some other measure. So instead of performing that analysis centrally in the cloud, we can distribute that intelligence across the network, closer to the devices themselves. To reduce the amount of data flowing through the network, we need to process the data in the network. The network is the ideal place to distribute applications or micro services, and allows us to evolve to a network-centric application model. Connected devices require routers and gateways, and these have memory and storage capacity, so why not use that capacity to handle distributed applications? We call that Fog computing. The Cloud is up there; the Fog is down there closer to the sensors. And that’s Cisco’s core business.

What are the implications of Fog computing for enterprise IT?

Firstly, a distributed computing model is a far more efficient (and secure) means to handle IoT data storage, communication and management. Secondly, and perhaps most interesting from a business perspective, it can enable powerful real-time analytics. For example, in a centralized cloud model, analytics are typically conducted on historical data because latency issues preclude real-time analytics. With Fog computing it becomes easier to conduct real-time analytics and even streaming data analytics. For example, if you are monitoring specific tolerance levels in a production process, historical analytics will only pick up faults hours into a production run; with streaming data analytics you could pick it up immediately. Thirdly, Fog computing enables IoT standardization because you can introduce a layer of data transformation in the network. Related to this, there is a clear trend toward open APIs in the application layers that enable more interoperability – and hence new business models – beyond the walls of the traditional enterprise, linking customers, suppliers and partners. Ultimately we need to start looking at IoT as a platform. For example, Smart Cities have an opportunity to connect traditionally ‘siloed’ infrastructure and thereby create a range of new services. Sensors in parking spaces could enable parking navigation apps while boosting city revenues. And sensor-equipped street lamps could adjust their energy consumption in response to traffic conditions, and simultaneously be used for surveillance and air quality monitoring. Enterprise also needs to start reimagining their business in this way.

To begin with, how would you define or describe the ‘Internet of Things’?

While most of us use the term ‘Internet of Things’ to refer to connected devices, the broader, overarching trend is that everything – not only things, but also people, processes, and data – are being connected in a huge distributed network. That is why at Cisco we often talk about the Internet of Everything as the ‘next wave’ of internet growth. Connected devices will get us to several billion smart objects, but the Internet of Everything will take us to 50 billion connected devices. This is an evolution that is growing at an exponential rate, much faster than we have seen with any other technology adoption. Now what is interesting about IoT is not so much the fact that things themselves are becoming connected, but the implications thereof on the business models of nearly every major industry. As consumers we are seeing an increasing range of IoT applications – think smart meters, connected scales, and ambient lighting – but most of these are still stand-alone applications with limited impact on the core business model of that industry. That is all about to change.

Why is that? What impact will IoT have on business?

At Cisco we have calculated that IoT will create $14,4 trillion in “Value at Stake” over the next 10 years. By that we mean the total economic value that could be impacted by IoT, including cost reductions, improved employee productivity, more efficient supply chains, customer growth and innovation. Moreover, we expect that within 5-10 years many Fortune 500 companies will lose significant market power due to technological disruption.

We have all become familiar with the stories of Uber and Airbnb, but they simply illustrate the bigger trend that all industries are facing disruption of their core business models thanks to digitization. When we surveyed the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, 75% acknowledged that adopting a digital strategy is crucially important for the survival of their company, and yet only 25% actually have a far-reaching digital strategy in place today. That is why we are working with our customers and partners such as BT to build sector specific solutions. For example, we are involved in Smart City initiatives where we focus on the optimization of public as well as road transport. When it comes to manufacturing we are enabling more flexible and efficient manufacturing lines. And in the logistics sector, we’re creating ever-smarter and more connected supply chains.

Let’s look at IoT from a CIO’s perspective. What are the key trends that CIOs should be aware of? The major change is that we are moving toward a more standardized, interoperable environment. There is more openness in the system and that makes an exponential growth in the range of interactions possible. Standardization also enables better security, which is crucially important given the threat of cybercrime. Also important is the concept of Fog computing or a more distributed computing model. As millions more devices become connected, the use of the network increases exponentially.

What is Cisco’s role in the development of IoT? Over the past three decades Cisco has played a key role in building the internet and hence the Internet of Things is very much core business. We want to help build a scalable platform that can handle billions of devices - an interoperable platform based on open standards, and, crucially, a secure platform. No single company can do all of that on its own and that is why we work with partners such as BT. In fact, we are building an ecosystem of partners within verticals such as manufacturing, energy and smart cities, so that together we can drive innovation and experiment with new models. In support of that strategy we have opened IoT innovation centers in several cities around the world, where we can we work with customers, partners and startups to quickly test ideas and launch new innovative concepts.

How should large enterprises embark on their digital transformation? The task can be overwhelming, so where should CIOs begin?In our experience there are three different ways in which companies look at their digitization strategy. Some companies look at digitization to improve their existing business, for example to streamline existing processes and cut costs. Others use digitization as a means to differentiate from the competition. And yet others have made digitization an integral part of their business model, with Uber and Airbnb being the classic examples. Every company must decide for itself on which approach is more feasible or relevant, but a degree of digital transformation is unavoidable. The key challenge that many CIOs face is to find time and resources for innovation. Most still spend 80% of their time running their existing business, leaving little time for innovation. Our advice for those companies is to begin with small steps. They should run a few pilots and avoid having to take the legacy along. If you try to integrate existing processes from day one you will probably create a complex and overwhelming task. Rather work with virtual teams, do rapid prototyping and fail fast too – if needed. By doing this you will gradually build capabilities.

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A look at the future of cyber security with Dr Ben Azvine, BT’s global head of Security R&D.

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Dr Ben Azvine is responsible for BT’s security innovation strategy and helped to lay the groundwork for BT’s award winning new capability, BT Assure Analytics. In this interview, Ben explains how the cyber threat landscape is evolving and how new developments in technology – especially Artificial Intelligence – will help us address the threats of tomorrow.

Tell us a little about your background and current role at BT.As Global Head of Security Innovation at BT my role is to look two to five years into the future and prepare for the coming challenges. I think it is the best time in the history of technology to be involved in security because it is such a dynamic area. Security is not just a technology issue; it is also a business and board-level issue. I would say that cyber security is currently one of the top three priorities for business and hence we receive a lot of support from top management to accelerate technology in this field.My background is in Artificial Intelligence (AI). I used to be a full time academic in the field and even today maintain active contact with academia through a number of visiting professorships, which allows me to talk about some of the challenges ahead and perhaps inspire bright people to work in the security field. I joined BT about 20 years ago and have spent most of my time leading R&D programs in intelligent systems. We strive to build intelligent networks and intelligent assistants that help people do their job better. Basically I like inventing things. I have approximately 50 patent and patent applications in my name. I really enjoy coming up with new things and in that task I’m supported by a fantastic team of people all over the world.

How has the cyber threat landscape evolved in your opinion? Are the types of threats changing and is there any change in how these threats impact our personal and professional lives?

You only have to turn on your TV to learn about the latest cyber-attacks on individuals, companies and governments. The reality is that criminals are constantly coming up with new ways of attack, creating approximately $400 billion in annual losses. Nobody is immune. Ninety percent of companies have reported a security breach. Every second approximately 18 people are victims of cybercrime. Both the frequency and the importance of the attacks are increasing. The numbers are pretty worrying but on a positive note this is also a major opportunity for companies to invest in new security capabilities. This is a really vibrant technology right now and there are plenty of financial incentives to increase R&D investment.

What threats should worry us most? I have seen figures that about 80% of financial crime on the internet is done by coordinated groups, but I don’t think all crime is performed by financially motivated people. There are lone hackers who are in it simply to impress their friends or make a name for themselves. But worst of all are the ideologically and politically motivated hackers. Financially motivated hackers tend to go after the easiest targets, so it you can deter them by having good defences, they often choose the easiest targets. But ideologically motivated hackers go after specific targets and they don’t give up. This creates a more persistent threat. We don’t always hear about the damage they do but it is very significant. We have to be aware that the threat environment is evolving rapidly. Crime that can cause disruption to critical infrastructure is probably the biggest threat we should worry about.

How is predictive analytics helping us protect ourselves against cyber threats? In that regard, can you tell us more about the SATURN project? SATURN is a technology we developed here at BT’s labs. Like many innovations, the initial area of our focus led the creation of something far more valuable than we originally thought. Initially we were interested in creating a model that would help us understand the impact of breaches on critical national infrastructure. For example, what would the impact be on telecommunications or the road infrastructure if the electricity network was attacked? We commenced research on this about five or six years ago. There are basically two ways to approach this. One way is to develop mathematical models of each national infrastructure and then model how they would impact on each other. The problem with this approach is that it is very difficult to link together the existing models of such infrastructure. Also, once you build such a model it would be out of date almost immediately because of the dynamic nature of the world. Hence, due to the rapid pace of change we decided to abandon the top down approach and use a more data-driven approach instead that looks at actual incidents in the past, collects vast amounts of data from various sources about such incidents and then link them together with the help of human experts. The challenge here is how to combine and organise such vast amounts of data. The SATURN acronym (Self-organizing Adaptive Technology Underlying Resilient Networks) refers to the principle that the data needs to self-organise so that it can be interacted with by human beings and used to spot anomalies.

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Dr Ben Azvine, BT’s global head of Security R&D.

There are three key elements to a security strategy: prevention, detection and response.

I would have more faith in a cloud provider than placing my data on a USB stick.

One of the first applications of SATURN was to investigate cable theft crime on our networks. What makes SATURN so powerful is that it can handle any type of data. It is not limited to structured data. It handles data from social media, news feeds, and internal log systems. The data self-organises and humans subsequently interact with the data through visualisation tools, providing a holistic view of data sets and their interrelationships. People can also spot anomalies not seen before that a computer would not be able to detect. We have packaged all these capabilities in BT Assure Analytics, giving customers the means to analyse their network data and spot potential security problems. For BT this has been one of the fastest transitions from idea to the development of the technology to access for customers. It only took two to three years because the benefits were so great. Essentially it is clever web-based software that uses AI to turn data from multiple sources into pictures that humans can interactively analyse. It enables you to detect anomalies much faster than before – from days to minutes, from hours to seconds. The computers are doing the processing but the humans are spotting the anomalies.

There are three key elements to a security strategy: prevention, detection and response. With SATURN we address detection. Here the aim is to detect an attack while it is happening, ideally within seconds of it starting. But we also want to predict the next stages of the attack. Essentially we have developed software that is trained to look for specific phases of an attack. We look for low-level signs of an attack that we can extract from our network logs. However, the data is so noisy that we cannot monitor everything. Hence we rely on the knowledge of our experts, the knowledge we have of the different types and stages of an attack, and we train our software robots to keep an eye out for these stages. This gives us time to react. By predicting the next stages of an attack, and the timings of such next phases, you will know whether you have time to respond.

What role do you think Artificial Intelligence will play in our personal security and the way we keep our organisations safe? A lot of people seem concerned about the future impact of AI.I think there are two future scenarios of AI: there is the scary scenario of robot domination. But there is another more positive scenario where AI is used to make our lives easier and more secure, where we ‘augment’ humans. For example, an immediate benefit of AI would be in the area of authentication. AI could be used to free people from the passwords shackle. People have difficulty remembering all their passwords which creates a great deal of frustrations as they struggle to log into their laptop or phone. There has been a lot of research on biometrics and tokens but none of these solutions are very user friendly. With AI we are able to look at the way people speak, or even the way they log into their machine as a means to automate authentication.Machine Learning systems could also be used to learn from people by observing them with a view to automating the more routine elements of their tasks. One big prize in that regard would be to automate the response to security breaches, although I would caution that we should never relinquish control completely to robots in security. I’m a big fan of human-centred AI where people are in control but where lots of the laborious processing and preparation are done by computers. Let’s talk about the Internet of Things (IoT). Installing antivirus software on your PC is a no-brainer, but what can you do when the device to be protected is a toy or a toaster? Around five billion devices are already connected to the Internet of Things and by 2020 this could rise to 25 billion. How will this be secured? Will there be new methodologies or will we need to accept more vulnerability?I think IoT will make our lives easier and boost business. And the more data we collect the more it will help us make smarter decisions. However, from a security perspective every device could potentially be a vulnerability. I think there are three key security challenges we need to deal with. Firstly, most security measures today are designed for high power, high cost devices; with IoT we need to develop cost-effective encryption and monitoring for low power, low cost sensors and devices. Essentially this is a scale issue; we will need to sell enough of such solutions so that costs decline. That will happen. The second challenge is concerned with trust and data integrity. For example, how do we protect our networks from spoofing attacks? How do we prevent people from intercepting messages from your electricity meter, or even worse, your pace maker? Antivirus and encryption technology is needed so that criminals cannot break into IoT communications. The third challenge is privacy and data protection. I think this will make or break IoT. There are so many potential points of data collection and when you put all of that together it becomes easy to identify people.

I think we have the necessary techniques available to address this issue but we need to use them properly, from the start. That is a key pillar of BT’s capabilities: providing a secure platform for people to store data and build apps on top of that data. It reminds me of the early days of cloud computing. Back then we also worried about security. I am sure we will solve these issues but it will require more awareness and cooperation among device manufacturers, network operators and consumers. We need to establish best practice and promote vendors that comply with best practice. Today a lot of vendors are still making rooky mistakes such as storing passwords in firmware as plain text. Those are not difficult problems to overcome, it just requires rigour in following basic principles and best practice.

Security and the cloud: what do you see as the major risks and how can they be avoided?There is still a huge gap between perception and reality. Cloud security is much better than people believe it to be. Some people express concern about having their emails in the cloud, but they’re perfectly comfortable having them on their phone or laptop which isn’t password protected and can be left on a train. Cloud providers are in the business of securing their data and apps, so I would have more faith in a cloud provider than placing my data on a USB stick.However, there are challenges. Firstly, we need to be able to manage the security of virtual applications and machines in the same way as we secure our physical machines. When I buy a laptop in a store I immediately install security software. I should be doing the same in the virtual domain. As providers our task is to make it easy to do so. Ideally, we should be securing applications as they are being created. At BT we have created technology that scans virtual environments and creates intelligent security.Secondly, as people store more data they become more vulnerable as targets for hackers. We need a simple way to add more security measures around data access. Even cloud providers should not have access to the data of their customers. Fortunately, there is good technology available to govern access to data.Finally, there is the issue of compliance. With data moving freely to the best available resource there is potential to create compliance issues around the geographic location of where data is stored. We need to improve trust in the cloud by giving people more control and visibility over where their data is stored.

What do you see as the biggest headaches for the CISO and CIO today and in the future? Can they be expected to do a decent job when the CFO is cutting costs?We have to change the way we think about security. A lot of the disruption and cost is due to a focus on prevention as opposed to detection. We cannot stop everything. Instead we should promote a more risk-aware culture. The traditional security model is the coconut; a hard shell that keeps you safe inside. But that model has holes in the shell; it is outdated. We should focus on the avocado model: protect the crown jewels, the stone in the middle. Spend most of your resources on protecting the crown jewels and for the rest focus on detection, monitoring and responding. That is the only way to meet the competing objectives of costs versus security.

Let’s look a little further in the future. What will next-generation information security look like in your opinion?That’s my playground! I think cyber defence will become more analytical and predictive. Within a few years we will have real-time response to cyber-attacks. The time it takes to respond to cyber-attacks will reduce dramatically. I think more human centred security measures will emerge, that will help people make decisions, both personally but also around corporate and national security. I also see a world without passwords. I have a vision of AI that authenticates you in the same way your friend authenticates you. Quantum computing is a huge opportunity given the processing speed it promises but it is also a huge threat from a security perspective since ultra-fast computing power could theoretically be used to crack current encryption techniques. So how will we provide encryption-based protection in a quantum world? There are promising developments in the areas of Quantum Key Distribution and post Quantum Cryptography which will help meet these challenges.

To conclude, are you optimistic? Is the future bright? Yes, absolutely. Obviously there are big challenges ahead but this is the best time to get into the field. I’m very optimistic that we will have the people to meet the challenges in the future. There is a lot of interest in the field, but we need to keep up our investment, because the bad guys are investing in their capabilities all the time too. Also, at BT I’m feeling confident. We have one of the largest security organisations in the world with 14 global security operations centres. It gives us a unique perspective.

How tech disruption is turning outsourcing on its head.

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Marco Gianotten is CEO and co-founder of Giarte, a leading IT services and IT outsourcing research and consultancy firm. Marco has a clear-cut vision on outsourcing and is actively challenging his customers to re-evaluate their IT landscape from a business perspective. As illustrated in this interview, Marco does not mince his words: it is high time that companies let go of their legacy, ditch the traditional SLA and rebuild the sourcing relationship on the basis of trust, commitment and healthy conflict. Alrik Hohman, deal architect at BT, joined us in this interview to explain how BT is addressing these trends through its Cloud-of-Clouds roadmap.

Today, outsourcing is seen primarily as a means to keep upwith changing technologies. The last thing you want is a verycheap but pared down IT environment that is stuck in the past.

People talk about the “new outsourcing” – is that an appropriate term? Is outsourcing changing in any significant way?Marco Gianotten (MG): I would agree that outsourcing is changing quite fundamentally. Before, and certainly throughout the financial crisis, outsourcing was primarily cost driven. It was even seen as a means to boost shareholder value. When ABN AMRO first announced an outsourcing contract with EDS it was cheered by analysts because it promised control over the ‘monster of TCO’ (total cost of ownership). Today, however, outsourcing is seen primarily as a means to keep up with changing technologies. The last thing you want today is a very cheap but pared down IT environment that is stuck in the past. IT used to be seen as a pure cost factor that was always too high.

Now the core question is: how can we use IT to make money, to boost top-line growth? IT has become an integral part of business; we are all becoming IT companies at heart. Alrik Hohman (AH): One consequence of that shift is the rise of ‘shadow IT’, where the business and end-users are engaging with technology outside the traditional tower of the centralised and procurement-driven IT department. MG: Indeed, but shadow IT is also a fantastic compliment for the organisation. It shows that we may be recovering from that other Dutch Disease, our “self-learned helplessness”. For so long we have tried our very best to not understand technology.

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Marco Gianotten, CEO Giarte.

Alrik Hohman, BT deal architect.

The Cloud of Clouds illustrates that approach perfectly. It is based on the idea that customers should be able to securely integrate and manage applications wherever they are hosted, whether in private clouds, in BT’s cloud or in third party public clouds.

“Oh, it comes from the IT department; let’s not concern ourselves with that because we won’t understand it anyway.” Now end-users are buying and building apps, they are analysing data, and they are doing so independent of the decision making and governance of centralised IT. IT used to be so very boring; now users are seeing the fun. And as a result, they’ve lost their helplessness. There are now so many ‘IT people’ outside the IT department. IT departments are becoming smaller but that does not matter because IT people are now everywhere in the organisation. Obviously that has a huge impact on the back-end of IT: it creates new demands on storage, networking, security and compliance. But most importantly, it implies a confrontation with modernity, in the sense that you need to accept a constant process of cannibalisation and convergence in your IT environment.

How are these new demands changing IT procurement and outsourcing? What are companies struggling with in that regard?MG: There are at least three key challenges that companies face. Firstly, many companies struggle to let go of their legacy. Secondly, the business case for new IT investment is too often based on the replacement of existing technologies. And thirdly, outsourcing relationships are managed on the basis of outdated SLAs that are completely out of touch with new realities.

Let’s address each of these in turn. Why are companies struggling with legacy? Surely companies are justified in extracting maximum returns on these earlier investments?MG: Companies have to learn to let go of their legacy infrastructure because the truth is that such legacy has no value anymore. We’re seeing an increasing number of acquisitive companies replace all their legacy with flexible cloud infrastructures. That fits in the strategy of these companies because they want to focus on buying and integrating companies rapidly. In that context the legacy IT assets of a target company have absolutely no value; they don’t even come in the equation. And to think that since the crisis companies have made such an effort reducing the costs of their existing IT setup, when perhaps they should have taken a hard look at the value of those assets in the first place.

Technology disruption has fundamentally changed the competitive dynamics in the market. In the past one company might be worth a little more or a little less than its competitor. Today the new reality is that the loser is worth nothing. In the past you acquired such a company for their customers and IT infrastructure. Today you steal their customers and their IT assets are worthless.

How is legacy IT shaping companies’ IT procurement?AH: Too often companies just want to replace the telephone, when the question should be: how can I improve communication with my customers? MG: Everyone smells the opportunities in IT - that you can make money with it, that you can pursue new markets and reduce vast amounts of waste. But that means you have to be willing to constantly change your IT environment. And the last thing you then want is to hack it all into small pieces. But that is exactly what most companies have done through their fragmented IT organisations. Why are we still talking about mobile versus fixed telephony? Why are we still pushing technologies into different internal siloes such as facilities, infrastructure and telephony? When you buy a car your first question is not what the price of a tyre or a gearbox is. No, you evaluate the full package. Similarly, in IT you need to look more holistically at the services that you buy. But IT has a history of purchasing technical products such as gigabytes of storage and megabits of bandwidth. And they rely on traditional Quality of Service metrics such as throughput, bit errors and latency. The problem is that these factors have no meaning anymore, especially for the business and end-users. Consumers aren’t interested in the number of megabits their telecom provider delivers; they’re interested in whether they can watch Netflix. If you let IT sell Sushi they would call it wet, cold fish. They’re not selling an experience.

And that leads to irrelevant SLAs and unproductive sourcing relationships?MG: A good working relationship with an outsourcing provider is based on results and accountability, but that implies trust, commitment and healthy conflict. And these features have been missing in traditional outsourcing. We utterly lacked trust. And the biggest symbol of that mistrust is the 8000-page SLA contract.

How should companies break that negative spiral? What do you advise?MG: Firstly, you have to bite the bullet. You have to let go of your legacy. The digital natives like Uber and Airbnb get all the airplay, but the real heroes are the incumbent companies that have made a successful digital transformation. Start-ups and consumers have an easier time making that shift; to look ahead and ditch old technology. But as an enterprise company, if you’re dragging 40 years of legacy along, it is hard to be fast, nimble and inventive. I think the key to success is vision and a more transparent, open relationship with your partners. With vision and early adoption of new technology, it becomes easier to bite the sour apple, the pain becomes bearable. Dare to dream about how you will make money through IT. Top-line growth initiatives are a lot more fun than cost-reduction initiatives. Secondly, you should be buying new technology on the basis of a vision of where you want to be in the future, not on the basis of what you currently have in place. If you don’t have a vision, then you will automatically focus on cost reduction. Invite the people from BT in to talk about vision and the lessons that are being learned in other industries. Don’t talk about infrastructure. In this way you can build an alliance of people who share a common vision; otherwise you will always be held accountable on the basis of price. Cost reductions do not solve today’s strategic problems, because the time has come for fundamental decisions. Since the crisis companies have done nothing but cutting costs. As a result, they are now stuck with a pared down IT infrastructure and have missed the latest technology wave. They’re all shouting that they want to be a digital company but they omitted to invest. Fortunately, it isn’t too late because so much is currently available as a service.

AH: Indeed, a good example is our Life Sciences R&D cloud, a secure collaboration platform for scientists in the pharmaceutical sector. It enables scientists to, for example, test new drugs via computer modelling and manage global project groups, while making sure that they comply with the industry’s security and compliance requirements. It is a nice example of BT taking end-to-end responsibility for the business processes and end-user experience.

Which brings us to SLAs. What alternatives are there to SLAs? How can we improve trust in the outsourcing relationship?AH: More transparency. Instead of playing with our cards held close to the chest, we should be laying them on the table. That way both parties win. Being the cheapest is not an interesting goal. MG: It is possible to work with more interesting KPIs. For example, let’s steer things on the basis of critical application performance and make that more transparent as opposed to the network and datacentre. Give people responsibility for applications. Some companies are even beginning to work with Experience Level Agreement. I think this is simply part of a broader trend that companies are focusing much more on the experiences of people as opposed to the underlying processes. For example, aircraft today are designed with the traveller’s experience in mind, about how they experience space and time, including the emotive aspects. Car manufacturers have also excelled in this, and consumer IT is also now selling emotional experiences. Gradually we’ll see business IT move in that direction too.

Outsourcing providers will need to change too. How is BT addressing these trends?AH: All these lessons also apply to BT. We have to constantly reinvent ourselves and let vision drive our technology investment. I think the Cloud of Clouds illustrates that approach perfectly. It is based on the idea that customers should be able to securely integrate and manage applications wherever they are hosted, whether in private clouds, in BT’s cloud or in third party public clouds. As a result, we are investing in massive connectivity to other companies’ datacentres. That is totally new for us. Ten years ago it would have been unthinkable that we could connect to competitors in this way. It is huge step forward in the way we are thinking about IT infrastructure.MG: Indeed, I think the Cloud of Clouds will lead to pretty significant cultural changes at BT. It’s a lot more than simply another product.

Managing innovation at incumbents: lessons from KBC and BT

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Banks have had their fair share of challenges over the past decade. Those who survived the financial crisis are now facing the threat of digital disruption, and like most incumbents in nearly every industry, including BT, are having to take innovation and digital transformation very seriously. KBC Bank, one of Belgium’s largest universal banks with retail, business banking and insurance activities, is no exception. In this interview Freddy Van Bogget, Innovation Manager for KBC’s banking products, and Pascal Cuppens, Head of KBC’s innovation centre ‘Surf Studio’, explain the concept and inspiration behind KBC’s innovation strategy. Peter Niersch, KBC’s Account Manager at BT, also joined the conversation.

Dawn of a new world.In 2012, as the financial crisis calmed and people began seeing light at the end of the tunnel, KBC Bank realised that they needed to start doing things differently to face a rapidly approaching digital future. The world had changed. Firstly, the bank appointed innovation managers in all the key divisions - including Freddy Van Bogget for banking products. Their job descriptions were still unclear, but there was consensus on what they shouldn’t be doing: create new products. As Freddy explains; “We already had too many products. Hence from the start we were convinced that we needed to focus on the societal needs that already existed and look for more interesting, innovative ways of interacting with customers.” Not only did the interaction with customers deserve attention; equally important was the internal communication and teamwork across traditional departmental boundaries. Freddy: “We wanted to stimulate collaboration among people who may not have known each other yet, to make such contact less coincidental.” Interestingly, KBC’s current innovation program has its roots in such coincidental teamwork: Freddy happened to know Pascal Cuppens, who hailed from the bank’s IT department, and asked him to join the innovation initiative.

Adastral Park: a source of inspiration. Freddy: “Our CEO, Johan Thijs, argues that you have to let change happen organically. You can’t force it, or ‘structure’ change. You have to give change its own drive and you can best accomplish that by giving it the right impulses.” One such impulse came in 2013 when Peter Niersch, KBC’s Account Manager at BT, invited Freddy and some of this colleagues to Adastral Park, BT’s Global Research and Development headquarter. Freddy: “BT is a very inspiring example. They too have had to make a radical transformation, from their roots as a state-owned telco to one of the world’s most innovative global companies. The total concept of how they manage innovation is very inspiring.” That first visit to Adastral Park confirmed some of the key ideas that were taking shape at KBC. One such principle that KBC adopted was BT’s customer-driven approach to innovation. As Peter explains; “BT departs from the need of the client and only then do we begin exploring how we can address that need in new ways. There has to be at least one business manager who sees a clear need and opportunity to make money with it. We do not start an innovation project without such a sponsor.”

Surfing time.Tactically too there are many similarities in BT’s and KBC’s approach. KBC’s Surf Studio, currently headed by Pascal, is the overarching concept and brand of KBCs innovation program. Surf Studio’s tagline is: “You can’t stop the waves but you can learn to surf.” The main idea here is that digital transformation is something that concerns everyone in the organisation: everybody has to learn to surf. Freddy and Pascal have organised Surf Studio’s activities in two broad domains: facilitating innovation and doing innovation. As a physical infrastructure, KBC’s Surf Studio has many parallels with BT’s Customer Experience Centres and other facilities at Adastral Park. A key principle, in that regard, is that the innovation process must be as tangible as possible, and that means creating physical spaces where people can connect with each other and physically experience new technologies. Studio 1 and Studio 2, for example, are places for showcasing innovative new technologies to KBC staff and customers. Pascal: “The focus here is on technologies with future applications. For example, we’ll showcase biometric technology and explore how this could transform authentication in banking applications. We have even played with the Oculus Rift, which may seem pretty far removed from a banking operation. Nevertheless, we discovered potential applications in health and safety prevention, for example in training people how to use firefighting equipment.”The Gallery is an experience centre where staff and visitors can engage with technology and solutions that the bank already offers today. This is important because as Freddy and Pascal learned, many staff had never used the bank’s latest mobile applications, quite simply because they do not have a smartphone or tablet. The Fountain is a common workplace where employees who are bitten by the innovation bug can come together and experiment in new projects. Pascal and Freddy also organise a range of activities that bring people together and expose them to new ideas. For example, they organise a regular ‘innovation café’ where people from different departments talk about innovation topics, dream up new ideas and explore ways of implementing such ideas. They also organise three innovation exhibitions per year where both external companies and internal teams can showcase their ideas and innovations. It is an opportunity for staff to take a break from their day-to-day tasks and connect with new ideas and people. BT is usually present too, via inspirational talks (BT’s futurist Nicola Millard gave a talk at a recent edition) and technology demos. Pascal: “BT recently demonstrated an interesting personalised video technology. One of our managers spotted this and came up with an application that we would never have been able to come up with.”

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Freddy Van Bogget, innovation manager, KBC banking products.

Pascal Cuppens, head of innovation centre,KBC Surf Studio

You have to let change happen organically. You can’t force it, or ‘structure’ change. You have to give change its own drive and you can best accomplish that by giving it the right impulses.

Innovation is everybody’s job.While facilitation is important to engage people in the innovation process, ultimately innovation needs ‘doing’ too. One such initiative at KBC, called ‘inside-outside’, encourages internal people such as IT experts, to work with the bank’s commercial people in serving customers directly. Freddy: “An increasing number of customers are approaching us with complex technology-related projects. They’ll use terms such as Big Data and IoT, but our business credit people just don’t have the expertise to evaluate those requests properly. That shouldn’t be reason to reject those proposals. That’s why our commercial people are now bringing our IT people along to take a thorough look at such projects. And our role is to be connector in this, connecting insight with outside. We’re unique in this in the banking sector.”

Also in the ‘doing innovation’ bucket falls KBC Start-IT accelerator, an initiative that supports several young start-ups, both financially but also with the bank’s resources and talent. While this programme falls outside Freddy’s and Pascal’s remit, they are making grateful use of it. For example, the accelerator’s start-ups can showcase their technology at the innovation exhibitions and they are often seen inside the building taking part in initiatives or experimenting with the bank’s technology. “As a company we need to start thinking more like start-ups.”All of Surf Studio’s initiatives are designed to engage a broad cross section of the bank’s people in the digital transformation process, by exposing them to a range of new ideas and technologies, and by stimulating new connections across organisational borders – both internal and external borders. This is also illustrated in the way that KBC is working with BT; it is a relationship that extends beyond the traditional customer-supplier relationship. For KBC, BT is not only a network provider but also offers inspiration and practical support in managing the digital transformation process.

Autonomous services and the 3rd channel: a look at the future of banking.While Freddy and Pascal place a lot of emphasis on the “organic” and facilitative aspects of the company’s innovation strategy, they have also articulated a number of objectives that are based on a compelling vision of the future of banking. Pascal explains: “At Surf Studio we want to focus on two key trends that in our opinion will define the future of banking: autonomous behaviour and the 3rd channel.” With the concept of ‘autonomous behaviour’, Pascal and Freddy refer to a company’s ability to respond to consumer needs both instantly and in a highly personalised manner. In the spirit of Amazon’s ‘one-click-buy’ feature, more and more services are available instantly, anywhere and anytime. As a result, people’s expectations are changing. Freddy: “They won’t tolerate a service where you have to go to a physical branch to sign a bunch of papers.” Banking services need to become ‘autonomous’ in the sense that these will take account of a consumer’s context and

instantly and automatically tailor itself to that context. That requires a more integrated and intelligent approach to service delivery. Freddy explains: “I recently booked a trip to America and I had to talk to about 20 different people to handle flights, hotels, insurance and a visa. Imagine how wonderful it would be if I had an intelligent agent that handled everything instantly, so that I could only focus on the actual travelling. That’s what we need to achieve in banking too, but that will require a lot of R&D and development of smart algorithms.” The ‘3rd channel’ refers to a growing trend that many services are not only sold by a company’s own brick and click channels, but also via 3rd party applications. “In a Smart City concept the relationship that banks have with their customers will change dramatically. Banks will need to be far more proactive in how they approach the market. In particular, they will need to seek ‘deep integration’ of banking applications with 3rd party applications. For example, most real estate sites already let banks do some basic promotion on their site. You can do a quick calculation of your mortgage payments based on the asking price of the property, but with deep integration you would be able to ask for a mortgage and get immediate approval, all from within the real estate application.

Parallels in the digital roadmap.Also in the above areas there are strong parallels with BT’s strategy. As Peter explains: “At BT we also are striving for increased simplicity and immediacy in our service provision. In networking, for example, we talk about Zero Touch Provisioning. But also in a strategic sense I think our Cloud of Clouds offering illustrates the same principles. Our goal here is to provide secure connectivity, not only to our own cloud services, but to any cloud services the customer wants, whether delivered from their own datacentres or from third party public cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft. Essentially we are all moving in similar directions.”

Keeping car hackers at bay.

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Martin Hunt, Automotive Industry practice lead, BT.

It’s almost become a platitude to say that an industry is undergoing “massive, disruptive change.” No industry is currently immune to the transformative power of technology. Yet the automotive industry warrants that description like no other - it is truly being rattled to its axle. Not only is the industry (and its products) increasingly reliant on software, placing it firmly in the crosshairs of the technology giants, it is also seeing two rugs being pulled from under it. Tesla is pushing the industry headlong toward electrification, which ultimately will consign the internal combustion engine to obsolescence, and car sharing initiatives are undermining the very concept of car ownership. The recent emissions scandal at VW seems almost emblematic of an industry that is incapable or simply unwilling to adapt to new realities.There is one issue, however, that could shatter that techno-optimist view of the future: cybercrime. Last summer was open season for benevolent hackers who showed that they could alter the dashboard of a Tesla, cut the brakes of a Corvette and shut down a Jeep in the middle of a highway. Smart cars could turn out to be a major threat to our safety and privacy. For Martin Hunt, BT’s Automotive Industry Practice Lead, these are indeed exciting times, but as he made clear in this interview, security is the number one issue that could wreck the promise of connected cars. And it is this issue that BT has prioritised in its automotive practice.

Martin, in your view, what are the most important trends shaking up the automotive industry today?

There are at least four trends that have a major impact on the industry:1. Connected cars are most probably the number one technology trend that will shape the future of the industry. Simply put, connectivity features are selling cars. People buying cars today already are more preoccupied with the navigation system, Smartphone connectivity and infotainment system, than with the car’s engine or other traditional features. It is opening up the competitive landscape to entirely new players. Even the rumour of Apple working on a car is enough to unsettle the industry.2. Changing buying behaviour. The entire sales cycle is changing as customers look for information about cars online, and are even able to configure and design their car online. Automotive companies are on a steep learning curve as they try to master their digital sales and marketing channels.3. Car sharing is becoming a major theme in transportation generally but it also has a major impact on the car industry. In the big cities we will increasingly see households opt for car sharing as a viable option to buying a car - especially a second car. That obviously has an impact on car production but it also changes the very model of car ownership and usage. The industry will have to consider the implications of a Car-as-a-Service model, whereby a car is used by multiple users for short periods of time. For example, will users be able to ‘log in’ a shared car to automatically configure settings such as their saved navigation routes or seat settings?

4. Finally, the electrification of cars is an unstoppable trend. Even Porsche is producing an electric car. Important as these four trends may be, there is one aspect that cuts across each of the above themes: security. Connectivity has radically increased the vulnerability of cars. In a sense cars have become computers on wheels. But as technology is beneficial in some areas, it creates risk in others. Examples of this are connected cars that are being hacked, websites that are coming under DDoS attacks, shared cars that are vulnerable with regard to their access technology, and electric charging points that can be hacked.

How are you responding to these challenges? What is BT’s strategy with regard to the automotive industry? Two years ago our team ran a ‘hot house process’ at BT where we, together with our partners and suppliers, looked at how we could best address the key issues in the automotive industry. We realised then that we could best focus our efforts on helping the industry deal with security issues. BT today is one of the world’s largest security companies. We have 2000 security consultants globally and an ethical hacking team of 50 specialists. At BT, we approach security with two goals in mind: firstly, we strive to protect our customers from cybercrime, and secondly, we use security measures as an enabler for innovation and technological progress. For example, while it is technically possible to pull and push data to a car, most car manufacturers do not exploit that opportunity due to security concerns. One of the biggest opportunities in this regard is to enable remote software updates. For example, Tesla may have been hacked but it can distribute a patch to fix the problem almost immediately. Other manufacturers have to recall millions of cars or send a software update by mailing a USB stick to their customers which is hardly a secure measure. Those are the types of issues we want to address.

BT launched its ethical hacking practice in 2015. Where do you typically look for vulnerabilities in cars? Obviously we look at the full spectrum of the car’s connectivity, including 3G, 4G, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and even infrared connectivity which is sometimes used to communicate tyre pressure. We look for vulnerabilities in the way different systems of the car connect to each other. For example, Jeep was hacked through the infotainment system, via which they gained access to the control system. We also look at the wider ecosystem of the car. For example, when a car is being serviced the technicians will plug into the car’s diagnostic port, but what if their laptop is compromised? Also, what happens when an infected mobile phone is connected to the car via Bluetooth? Cars without their own SIM-card will use the driver’s mobile phone for connectivity, but our hackers have managed to get into the back-end system of a car through a connected mobile phone. Looking ahead we are pre-empting additional vulnerabilities. Some insurance companies, for example, are keen to track their customers’ driving behaviour through a dongle the driver plugs into the car. This means they can offer more

personalised plans, provide models whereby you only pay for the time that you use the car, or even set speed restrictions for young drivers. Dongles will probably also be used in car sharing schemes to track usage and personalise settings. The trouble is, dongles are highly insecure. It again illustrates the two edged sword of technology: even though new opportunities open up, new security issues emerge at the same time.

What lessons can other industries learn from the automotive industry, and conversely, what can the industry learn from others?The automotive industry is the absolute benchmark in the way it manages the supply chain. Large global car manufacturers have up to 100,000 Tier 1 suppliers and many more Tier 2 suppliers. These are by far the largest, most complex and connected supply chains in the world. Secure global connectivity underpins these supply chains and that’s exactly where BT comes to play; that’s our core business. However, the industry can be slow in embracing change. For example, most of today’s cars were not designed to be connected. Connectivity in many ways is an add-on.

The lifecycle of product development is far too long and lightyears behind other industries such as the mobile industry. It is also not very flexible as it is not easy to change mass production facilities of such scale. Partnering and collaboration is another weakness. While they absolutely excel at partnering within their own supply chain they struggle to collaborate across industries and with competitors. Partnering is, however, becoming increasingly important as cars begin to look more like computers and attract new competitors from beyond the automotive industry.

The automotive industry is being buffeted by three hurricanes simultaneously: smart cars, electric cars, and shared cars. We asked Martin Hunt, Automotive Industry Practice Lead at BT, how these trends should be interpreted from an ICT perspective and how BT is working with its automotive customers to help ride these waves of change.

Software Defined Networking: time to unshackle the network.

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Steve Decoster, senior network designer, BT Advise.

Wouter Coppens, business consultant compute, BT Advise.

Tell us about the history of SDN. Where do the underlying ideas and technologies come from? SDN has its roots in a number of research initiatives that sought to separate or abstract the control and management functionality of a networking device. The Internet Engineering Task Force, for example, created the ForCES (Forwarding and Control Element Separation) protocol in 2003 which separated the forwarding and control functionalities within a network device. Two years later a team at Stanford University launched the Clean Slate project with the idea of building a networking switch from scratch. Here the goal was to build a centralized control and management system that would look at the network as a whole in making its forwarding and routing decisions (as opposed to distributed device configurations running the show). That project led to the launch of the Open Networking Lab, a non-profit entity supported by industry that is actively promoting Software Defined Networking as the means to boost Cloud innovation.

How would you define SDN today? How does it differ from traditional network architecture?A traditional network is typically set up using hardware-based networking devices such as switches and routers. While new protocols have certainly made networking more efficient over the years, the basic design and implementation of such networking devices has not changed fundamentally over the past 20-25 years. Each device typically has its own data plane (responsible for forwarding traffic), control plane (responsible for controlling traffic) and management plane (responsible for managing the device). This means that each component has to be configured individually, with all the implications thereof on network management and flexibility. SDN virtualizes and thus decouples the control and management functionality from the device and centralizes that functionality as a purely software-based service. That simplifies the network hardware, making it more cost effective and also creating a single plane for configuring, controlling and managing the whole network. Therefore, if you want to deploy new services you do not need to reconfigure individual components. You simply define policies that are automatically pushed to components. It basically eradicates the “stovepipe” approach in deploying IT services, whereby each deployment has to work through a series of manual, error-prone and often bureaucratic processes.

What kind of company will benefit from SDN? SDN within the enterprise is especially relevant for large companies that have their own network and datacenter, supporting a complex and, most importantly, dynamic business operation. These companies frequently need to deploy new resources and applications, but it is a time consuming and cumbersome process, especially from a governance perspective.

For example, BT is currently working with a large international customer that had three separate environments in its datacentre for production, development and testing. These environments were separated to reduce the risk that development and testing could infringe on the production environment. Also, the deployment of new applications typically took weeks, undergoing several steps before these could be securely integrated in the network. Governance issues and the allocation of engineers to each of these steps created unavoidable delays.With SDN, the entire infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking can be seen and managed as a single integrated entity. New applications and their required resources can now be rolled out in minutes.

What is required to migrate to SDN? Where does one begin?A migration to SDN does require new infrastructure since network components will need to be replaced with SDN-enabled technology. During the migration you will need to run two systems concurrently. This setup allows for smooth migration from an existing network environment to the SDN enabled Virtual Private Cloud.

How can BT help? And what is BT’s longer term vision with regard to SDN?BT Advise can support clients along the entire lifecycle, both in an advisory role and with the actual implementation. For example, we can design the SDN enabled network and architecture, but we can also validate the design through a PoC. We also help clients integrate the software driven architecture into their installed base and can take responsibility for Project and Programme Management.At BT Advise we have experience in SDN implementations (we took on the first SDN project in Belgium last year), we have the relationships with the vendor ecosystem, and we can rely on the global capabilities and infrastructure of BT. Software Defined architecture is also perfectly aligned with BT’s Cloud of Clouds vision, since it prepares the way for easy integration in the (hybrid) Cloud of Clouds ecosystem.

So to sum it up, why should companies take the step toward SDN?SDN allows you to utilize your IT infrastructure more effectively than in a classic hardware defined architecture. Moreover, you can now model your IT infrastructure to suit your changing business needs, and do so without having to change your underlying network infrastructure. That improves your business agility, and at the same time reduces your total cost of ownership.

It’s been said that “software is eating the world.” Internet-based cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure are indeed disrupting industries from the ground up. Public cloud services give startups that are unencumbered by legacy infrastructure ways to develop and deploy new applications with unprecedented speed, flexibility and efficiency. For many large enterprises, however, deploying new IT services in on-premise IT infrastructure is anything but fast, agile and efficient. Fortunately, that is about to change as traditional hardware-based networking is being “eaten” by software too. Indeed, Software Defined Networking (SDN) is a new architecture that gives enterprises the power to radically simplify their network, making it easier to manage, and allowing applications to be deployed in minutes, rather than days. We asked Steve Decoster, Senior Network Designer at BT Advise, and Wouter Coppens, Business Consultant Compute at BT Advise, to explain what SDN is and what its implications are for enterprise customers.

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