SaaS PPM from HP Helps Deloitte-Australia Streamline Top-Level Decision Making

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to a BriefingsDirect podcast on Deloitte-Australia, and how their business has benefited from leveraging the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for project and portfolio management (PPM) activities.

We spoke to Deloitte-Australia at a recent conference to explore some major enterprise software and solutions, trends and innovations making news across HP’s ecosystem of customers, partners, and developers.

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions and I’ll be your host as we learn more about Deloitte’s innovative use of SaaS hosting for non-core applications. First, please join me in welcoming Ferne King, director within the Investment and Growth Forum at Deloitte-Australia in Melbourne. Welcome.

It’s the only solution that we found in the marketplace that would help us support and have visibility into the investments we were going to make.

Ferne King: Thank you.

Gardner: Tell me, Ferne, what led up to the use of SaaS for PPM? Why did this particular model seem to make sense?

King: The SaaS model made sense to us, because we had a strategic direction in our firm that any non-core application’s strategic intent was to have them as SaaS.

Gardner: What is it about PPM, in particular, that made this a leading candidate for that initiative?

King: It’s the only solution that we found in the marketplace that would help us support and have visibility into the investments we were going to make for ourselves internally around the growth and the maintenance of what we did internally within our own firm.

Gardner: Perhaps for our listeners’ benefit, you could explain a little bit about what you do there at Deloitte in Australia and the extent to which you went with this PPM solution. How far and wide?

King: Deloitte-Australia is approximately 5,000 practitioners. In 2010, our revenue was A$850 million. We provide professional services to public and private clients, and we are now globally the largest professional services firm. We utilize PPM internally within the firm, and that helps us to understand that portfolio and prioritization. Deloitte-UK practice and Deloitte-America practice in their consulting areas use PPM to go to the market and help manage deliver investments with their client base.

Gardner: From a high level, what have been some of the benefits of PPM in general, but furthermore, the SaaS deployment method?

Three benefits

King: The three benefits of PPM, primarily for us has been understanding that portfolio and linking that to our strategy. For example, our executive will have a series of business objectives they want to achieve in the Australian practice.

By utilizing PPM, we can understand what is going on within the firm that’s meeting those objectives, and then, more importantly for them, with the gap, and then they can take the action on the gap. That’s the number one priority. The number two priority is being able to communicate to our people within the practice the particulars of change.

For example, over the next quarter, what will our practitioners in the firm see as a result of all of these myriad of initiatives going on, whether it’s a SaaS service HR system or whether it’s a new product and service that they can take to market. Whatever change is coming, we can better communicate that to them within their organization.

Our third priority which the PPM product helps with discipline is our area of delivery. So, in our project management methodology, it helps us improve our disciplines. We had a journey of 18 months of doing things manually and then we brought PPM to technology enable what we were doing manually.

From a SaaS perspective, the benefit we’ve achieved there is that we can focus our people on the right things. Instead of having our people focused on what hardware, what platform, what change request, what design do we need to be happening, we can focus on what our to-be process should be, what our design should be. Then we basically hand that over the fence to the SaaS team, which then help execute that.

We don’t have to stand in a queue within our own IT group and look for a change window. We can make changes every Wednesday, every Sunday, 12 months of the year, and that works for us.

Gardner: Great. Now you described how you’ve decided on the prioritization of moving to SaaS as non-core. But, forgive me, PPM, the way you described it, it sounds rather mission critical. How was it that you decided on this, even though it seems so pertinent and perhaps it forms mortar to other types of business processes?

King: We would say it’s non-core, but high value. Just because it’s non-core, doesn’t mean that it’s not a top priority. Our firm has approximately 2,500 applications within our Australian practice. PPM, at our executive level, is seen as one of our top 10 applications to help our executive, our partners, the senior groups of our firm register ideas to help our business grow and be maintained.

So, it’s high value but it’s not part of our core practice suite. It doesn’t bring in revenue and it doesn’t keep the lights on, but it helps us manage our business.

Gardner: Could you give me a sense of the timeline? Is this something that is relatively new, something that you're well into, something that you're looking at through the rear-view mirror and assessing? Where are we within your roll-out of this PPM for SaaS?

The roadmap

King: I’d answer that in the question of where are we in our roadmap of strategic enterprise portfolio management. In that journey, we're four years in and we are two years into technology enablement. We undertook the journey four years ago to go down strategic portfolio management and we lasted about 18 months to 2 years, manually developing and understanding our methodology, understanding the value where we wanted to go to.

In our second year we technology enabled that to help us execute more effectively, speed to value, time to value, and now we are entering our third year into the maturity model of that.

Gardner: When you describe this as something that doesn’t directly impact your bottom-line, it certainly sounds as if it’s impacting the users within your organization. What’s been the feedback from the front lines, those who are involved with are actually using this? Has this been something that they’ve embraced or something they needed to learn to embrace over time?

King: Fantastic results, particularly at the executive levels who are the ones who pay for us to create the time to work on this. Deloitte itself has taken the transformation over the years, If anybody in the market follows the professional services, industry group areas, Deloitte globally is 160,000 practitioners and over 250 billion of revenue on FY10. We're coming together and have been taking a journey for some time to be as one.

So, if you're a client in the marketplace, you don’t have to think about what door you need to enter the Deloitte world. You enter one door and you get service from whatever service group you need.

PPM has enabled us to help the executive achieve their vision of firm-wide visibility of the enterprise investments we are making to improve our growth and support our maintenance.

If I take the example of three years ago, our tax group would only be interested in what’s happening in their tax group. Our consultant group would really only be interested in what’s happening in the consultant group.

Now that we are acting as one, the tax service line lead and the consulting service line lead would like visibility of what’s happening firm wide. PPM is now enabling us to do that.

What I would summarize there is that PPM has enabled us to help the executive achieve their vision of firm-wide visibility of the enterprise investments we are making to improve our growth and support our maintenance.

Gardner: Tell me if you could, Ferne, a little bit about how you came to the HP solution. What was it that you were looking for in a solution and what requirements did you feel were most important in leading up to that choice?

King: First of all, probably, 27 years experience with project delivery, coming from an engineering construction background, getting very detailed knowledge over the years about the one-on-one delivery components and dealing with a lot of vendors over the years in the client marketplace.

So, well-versed in what we needed and well-versed in what was available out there in the marketplace. When we went to market looking for a partner and a vendor solution, we were very clear on what we wanted. HP was are able to meet that.

I actually took my own role out of the scoring process. We helped put scripts together, scenarios for our vendors to come and demonstrate to us how we were going to achieve meeting our objectives. Then, we brought people around the table from that business with a scoring method, and HP won on that scoring method.

Gardner: With you being fully into this project and for those listening who might be considering moving to a more holistic PPM approach and perhaps evaluating the different sourcing options, is there anything in hindsight that you could offer in terms of advice when beginning such a project?

When we went to market looking for a partner and a vendor solution, we were very clear on what we wanted. HP was are able to meet that.

King: Understand the method or the approach that you want to use PPM for. You cannot bring PPM and expect it to answer 80 percent of your issues. It can support and help direct resolution of issues, but you need to understand how you are expecting to do that. An example would be if you want to capture ideas from other business units or groups or the technology department on what they'd like to do to improve their application or improve product development, any area of the business, understand the life-cycle of how you want that to be managed. Don’t expect PPM to have preset examples for you.

Gardner: Very good. We’ve been discussing how Deloitte-Australia has benefited from leveraging SaaS as a model for delivery of project and portfolio management activities. I’d like to thank our guest, Ferne King, Director within the Investment and Growth Forum at Deloitte-Australia. Thanks so much.

King: Thank you, Dana.

Gardner: And I’d also like to thank our listeners in joining us with this BriefingsDirect podcast, coming to you from a recent HP conference.

I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions. Thanks again for listening, and come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes/iPod and Podcast.com. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HP.

Transcript of a sponsored BriefingsDirect podcast, part of a series on application lifecycle management and HP ALM 11. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2011. All rights reserved.

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How Retailers Can Get a Much-Needed Makeover Thanks to Data-Driven Insights, Edge Computing, and Revamped User Experiences

Transcript of a discussion on how data-driven intelligence, edge computing, and rethinking of the user experience come together to give retailers a clear path to digital transformation.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation success stories. Stay with us now to learn how agile businesses are fending off disruption -- in favor of innovation.

Gardner

Our next vertical industry disruption solutions interview explores how intelligence, edge computing, and a rethinking of the user experience come together to give retailers a business-boosting makeover.

We’ll now learn how Deloitte and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) are helping traditional retailers -- as well as hospitality organizations and restaurants -- provide a more consistent, convenient, and contiguous user experience across their businesses.

Here to help to define the new digitally enhanced retail experience is Kalyan Garimella, IoT Manager at Deloitte Consulting. Welcome.

Kalyan Garimella: Thanks for having me, Dana.

Gardner: We’re also joined by Jeff Carlat, Senior Director of Technology Solutions at HPE. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Carlat: Great to be back. Thanks, Dana.

Gardner: Jeff, what are the top trends now driving the amazing changes in retail?

Retail demise untrue

Carlat

Carlat: First off, I want to clear the air. Retail is not dead. Everywhere I go I hear that the retailer is dead, no more brick and mortar. It's a fallacy. There is a retail apocalypse out there, but quite honestly 85 to 90 percent of purchases still go through the brick-and-mortar retailer.

The retail apocalypse does apply to brick-and-mortar stores that are failing to transform to fully embrace the digitalization  expected by consumers today. We are here to do something about it.

Gardner: Kalyan, user experiences have always been important. You can go back to Selfridges in London more than 100 years ago. People understand the importance of user experience. What's different now in the digital age? 

Garimella: Unfortunately, if you think about it, going back for the past four decades, retailers have relied on brand names and the strength of the merchandise to attract more customers. They never really differentiated themselves from the experiences that they were creating versus what their competitors were creating.

With the advent of changing customer demographics -- with Millennials, Gen Ys, Gen Xs coming into the picture -- retailers now need to produce a more customized shopping experience. They need to give shoppers a reason to escape their online retail channels, to come to brick-and-mortar shops and make more purchases there. It’s high time we give that to them -- and make them come back to the stores.

Gardner: There are still things in the physical world that need to remain in the physical world, right, Jeff?

Virtual-real hybrid

Carlat: Exactly right! Take me, for example. We recently bought a new house and I wanted to get a nice La-Z-Boy chair. I’m the kind of guy who’s not going to just push a button on a computer or a handheld to buy a new chair. I’m going to want to go sit in it. I want to know is this right for me, and so I go to a traditional brick-and-mortar outlet.

How HPE and Deloitte
Align IT
With Business Strategies

Yes, I may do my research [online]. I may actually end up [online] doing my purchase and having it shipped directly to my home. But while I’m at the store, I want to have an experience -- an immersive experience -- that's going to help suggest to me, “Oh what's the perfect side table that should go with that? What’s the complementary piece of art that actually matches the fabric?”

I want the capability to know what that chair will look like in my own decor, via virtually imposing that chair into my environment. That's where the world is going. Those are the demands of the new retail environment, and they will separate those that continue to thrive in the retail environment from those that suffer and decline.

Gardner: And, of course, the people in that physical environment might actually know quite a bit about the purchase that you could gain from. They have been doing this for some time. There is the interaction of a consultancy effect when you are in a sales environment.

Garimella

Garimella: People are always going to be a key asset no matter where we do it and in whichever industry. If we can complement the existing user knowledge that exists in the retail stores with the intelligence, or analytics and data that go along with it -- that's a powerful combo. We want to provide that. 

That's why we are talking about helping brick and mortars attract more customers -- not just by increasing the customer experience and optimizing your digital store operations -- by combining data and insights, and not relying only on opinions.

Gardner: Is that what we mean by cross-channel experiences, Jeff?

Easy as 1-2-3

Carlat: We, together with Deloitte, are delivering in early 2018 the Connected Consumer for Retail offering. It’s definitely a cross-channel experience. This takes the cross-channel experience and enhances it for the brick-and-mortar environment.

The Connected Consumer for Retail offering is based on three core principles. Principle number one is providing that enhanced customer experience, that immersive experience, which ultimately increases revenues and basket sizes for retailers.

The Connected Consumer for Retail offering takes the cross-channel experience and enhances it for the brick-and-mortar environment.

The second principle is based on optimizing in-store operations. How do you ensure that you have the right amount of stock -- not overstocking and not under-stocking? How do you reduce the amount of a lost inventory? This Connected Consumer offering will help shrink and reduce the cost structures in a brick-and-mortar environment.

And finally, as Kalyan mentioned, the third key principle is around driving new insights from the in-store analytics. That data and intelligence is derived from the customers -- coming through video-location analytics and all kinds of integration into social networks. You can know so much more about the customer, and then give that customer a personalized experience that brings them back and increases brand loyalty.

Gardner: I suppose it’s important to connect all of the dots across an entire shopping ecosystem process – from research to purchase to installation to service. Is that what we need?

Garimella: Absolutely, and that is what we refer to as an omni-channel experience, or a unified commerce experience. Our customers these days expect a seamless continuous shopping experience -- be it online or in a store. If you can create that consistent behavior and shopping experience, that is a powerful channel to attract even more customers. 

There are many retail concepts very much in demand right now, such as online delivery or pickup at the store. Or you can order in-store and have delivery to your house. Or you can order in one store and pick up in other stores, if the inventory is not currently available in the initial store.

So whatever channel they choose, you can provide value in each of those steps back to the customer – and in doing so you are attracting loyalty, you are building the brand. And that is a powerful medium.

Deloitte and HPE Collaboration
Span 20 Years and 
Myriad IT Solutions

Gardner: And the more interactions, the more data, the more feedback, the more analysis, and the better the experience. It can all tie together.

Let’s talk about how the technology accomplishes that. You mentioned a new retail initiative at HPE in partnership with Deloitte. What are fundamental technology underpinnings that allow this to happen?

Solid foundations for success

Garimella: The Connected Consumer for Retail begins at the infrastructure level -- solutions around HPE Aruba, HPE Edgeline Systems portfolio, and other converged infrastructure systems. For location-based analysis, we are using the wireless LAN from Aruba and their Meridian App Platform for mobile. From a security layer, we are using Niara and ClearPass, but we are also working with a set of third-party vendors for radio-frequency identification (RFID) and for video analytics. So it amounts to an ecosystem of the right partners to solve the right business problem for each of those retailers.

Gardner: And, of course, it has to be integrated properly, and that is where Deloitte comes in. How does that come together into an actual solution?

Carlat: This is the beauty of working with a group like Deloitte. They bring together the consultative and advisory capabilities, along with the technical integration needed. Deloitte brings the ability to help the customer figure out how to get started on this journey. 

First off, the methodology helps a customer think big about what they can do, then helps them actually build a business plan internally to drive change and get the right business approvals to start changing. Then they proceed to solution execution that starts small – and builds a proof of concept.

How HPE and Deloitte
Align IT
With Business Strategies

In as little as eight weeks, we can deliver the value that can then be extrapolated across all of the retail sites. That’s what projects the true savings. That is the proper scale: To think big where you can, then start small, and lastly, scale fast across all of the sites.

Gardner: Kalyan, any more to offer on the importance of proper integration at a solutions level?

Garimella: Internet of Things (IoT) is such a complex ecosystem of technologies that you need subject matter experts from each of the technologies -- such as RFID, Bluetooth beacons, Wi-Fi, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), your core enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and the list goes on. 

That’s where we come in, with the right people, and with the vast resources that we have. That’s deep industry expertise. We come and we look at the problems, create the customer journey for our clients, and then create the right level of systems integration that can help achieve the business objective. 

Gardner: Let’s look at some examples. What are some of the ways that retailers are doing things right to improve on that all-important user experience?

Carlat: As a consumer, I know what I like -- and I know what I do not like. I have seen overly aggressive advertising, pushiness that repels me as much as waiting in a long line at a retail brick-and-mortar. There needs to be a correct balance, if you will, of suggestive selling, cross-selling, and upselling. But you have to have the right learning, the right analytics, to be right more times than you are wrong. It means providing a value versus becoming a pest. 

This new offering allows that balance to be made. Other best practices would be providing point notifications to issue a discount that would get me as a consumer over the buying hump, to say, “You know, that is a good deal. I cannot pass this up.” Then as a seller, I can naturally dovetail into increasing the basket size, cross-sell, and upsell.

Gardner: How can the brick-and-mortar company better extend itself beyond the threshold of the physical building into the lifestyle, the experience, and the needs of the consumer? 

Customized consumer choices

Garimella: You are talking about bringing the retailer into the houses of the customers. That is where the successful online retailers have been. We are working with our brick-and-mortar clients to create similar experiences. 

Some of the options to do that would be having a digital voice assistant included on your retailer or shopping app. You could add items to a wish list; you could look up those items and determine if they are close by and where is the retailer nearest to my house. Maybe I could go and check those out instead of waiting for a couple of days for them to be delivered.

We are talking about bringing the retailer into the houses of the customers. That is where the successful online retailers have been.

So those are some of the experiences that we are trying to create -- not just inside the brick-and-mortar store, but outside as well. 

Gardner: Jeff, tell us a bit more about the Connected Consumer for Retail. Where can we find out more information?

Carlat: We are rolling out this offering in Q1 2018. It is being delivered consultatively initially through Deloitte as the lead. We are happy to come in and do demos, as well as deliver proofs of concept. We are actually happy to help build a business model and conduct workshops to understand what is the best path for retailers to begin adopting the on-ramp to this digital transformation. 

The easiest way to get to us is via our websites at either HPE or at Deloitte. We have business leads in all regions, all parts of the world.

Gardner: We have talked mostly about brick-and-mortar retailers, but this applies to hospitality organizations, restaurants, and other consumer services. How should they too be thinking about the user experience and extending it to a life cycle and a lifestyle?

From pain to gain

Garimella: Wherever there’s a possibility of converting a pain point in a customer journey into an engagement point, I think IoT can definitely help. We are calling this the Connected Consumer for Retail for a reason. The same concepts and the same technologies that we have developed for the retail solution can be extended to hospitality, or travel, or food services, et cetera, et cetera.

For example, based on location and proximity of a user, you can create -- using the location-based services – improved experiences that cater to individuals in hospitality and hotels by giving them the right offers at the right time, thereby increasing the basket size in their respective industries.

Gardner: It seems that across these vertical industries we are at the threshold of something that had never been possible before.

Carlat: This is the beginning of a new era for retail. What is clear to me is those retailers that choose to adopt change are going to be the winners -- and more importantly those that do not choose to change are going to be the losers.

Deloitte and HPE Collaboration
Span 20 Years and 
Myriad IT Solutions

Garimella: I think Jeff hit it right on. Retail is changing and changing fast, and other industries will follow in the same suit as well. If you do not put enough emphasis on customer engagement, while also optimizing your operations, you are at risk.

Gardner: I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. We have been exploring how Deloitte and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are helping traditional retailers provide a more consistent, convenient and contiguous experience to end users. And we have learned how intelligence, edge computing and rethinking of that all-important user experience can come together to give retailers a potentially life-saving makeover.

So please join me in thanking our guests, Kalyan Garimella, IoT Manager at Deloitte Consulting. Thank you.

Garimella: Thank you.

Gardner: And we also have been here with Jeff Carlat, Senior Director of Technology Solutions at HPE. Thanks, Jeff.

Carlat: Thanks a lot.

Gardner: And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining us for this BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation success story. I’m Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host for this ongoing series of Hewlett Packard Enterprise-sponsored interviews.

Thanks again for listening. Please pass this content along to your IT community, and do come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Transcript of a discussion on how data-driven intelligence, edge computing, and rethinking of the user experience come together to give retailers a clear path to digital transformation. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2018. All rights reserved.

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Why Effective IoT Adoption is a Team Sport

Transcript of a discussion on how the complexity and novel architectural demands of IoT require a rethinking of the edge of nearly any enterprise.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: HewlettPackard Enterprise.

Gardner

Dana Gardner: Hello, and welcome to the next edition of the BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer podcast series. I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing discussion on digital transformation. Stay with us now to learn how agile businesses are fending off disruption -- in favor of innovation.

Our next case study highlights how Internet of things (IoT) adoption means more than just scaling-up networks. The complexity and novel architectural demands of IoT require a rethinking of the edge of nearly any enterprise. We'll now explore how implementing IoT strategies is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor -- nor can it be bought off the shelf. What’s more, those new to the computational hive and analytical edge attributes of IoT are discovering that it takes a team approach.

To explain how many disparate threads of an effective IoT fabric come together, we're joined by Tushar Halgali, Senior Manager in the Technology Strategy and Architecture Practice at Deloitte Consulting in San Francisco.

 Halgali

Tushar Halgali: Dana, thanks for having me.

Gardner: We're also here with Jeff Carlat, Senior Director of Technology Solutions at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Strategic Alliances. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Carlat: Thanks. It’s nice to be here, Dana.

Gardner: What are some of the top trends making organizations recognize the importance of IoT? What’s making them examine the architectural implications?

Carlat: We're at the cusp of a very large movement of digitizing entire value chains. Organizations have more and more things connected to the Internet. Look at your Nest thermostats and the sensors that are on everything. The connectivity of that back to the data center to do analytics in real-time is critical for businesses to reach the next level of efficiencies -- and to maintain their competitiveness in the market.

Gardner: Tushar, this is a different type of network requirement set. We’re dealing with varied data types, speeds, and volumes in places that we haven't seen before. What are the obstacles that organizations face as they look at their current infrastructure and the need to adapt?

Halgali: One of the really interesting things we've seen is that traditionally organizations have been solving technology-related problems as all information technology (IT)-related problems. There was this whole concept of machine to machine (M2M) a while back. It connected machines to the Internet, but it was a very small segment.

Now, we're trying to get machines to connect to the Internet and have them communicate with each other. There are a lot of complexities involved. It's not just the IT pieces, but having the operational technology (OT) connect to the IT world, too. It creates a very complex ecosystem of components.

Gardner: Let’s parse out the differences between OT in the IT. How do you describe those? Why should we understand and appreciate how different they are?

Carlat

Carlat: When we think of OT, you think of long-standing companies out there, Bosch, National Instruments (NI), and many other companies that have been instrumenting sensors for operations, shop floors, oil and gas, and with every pump being sensed. The problem is that humans would have to interact a lot around those sensors, to remediate or to understand when something like a bearing on a pump has failed. [Learn more on OT and IoT.]

What's key here is that IT, those core data-center technologies that HPE is leading the market in, has the ability of run analytics and to provide intelligence and insights from all of that sensor data. When you can connect the OT devices with the IT -- whether in the data center or delivering that IT to the edge, which we call the Intelligent Edge -- you can actually do your insights, create your feedback, and provide corrective actions even before things fail, rather than waiting.

Gardner: That failed ball bearing on some device isn't just alerting the shop floor of a failure, it's additionally automating a process where the inventory is checked. If it’s not there, the supply chain is checked, the order is put in place, it’s delivered and ready to install before any kind of breakdown -- or did I oversimplify that?

End of downtime

Carlat: That’s a fair representation. We're working closely with a company called Flowserve. We’re building the telemetry within the pumps so that when a cavitation happens or a bearing is starting to wear out, it will predict the mean time for failure and alert them immediately. It's all truly connected. It will tell you when it’s going to fail. It provides the access to fix it ahead of time, or as part of a scheduled maintenance plan, rather than during downtime, because downtime in an oil production facility or any business can cost millions of dollars.

Gardner: Tushar, are there any other examples you can think of to illustrate the power and importance of OT and IT together?

How to Gain Business Insights
From the Intelligent IoT Edge

Halgali: If our readers ever get a chance to check out one of the keynote speakers [at HPEDiscover London 2016] on the Intelligent Edge, there's a good presentation by PTC ThingWorx software, which is an IoT platform and the HPE Edgeline servers in a manufacturing facility. You have conveyor belts that need certain improvements, they're constantly producing things, and they're part of the production facility. It’s all tied to the revenue of the organization, and the minute it shuts down, there are problems.

Maintenance needs to be done on those machines, but you don’t want to do it too soon because you're just spending money unnecessarily and it’s not efficient. You don’t want it too late, because then there's downtime. So, you want to find the equilibrium between the two.

IoT determines the right window for when that maintenance needs to be done. If there's a valve problem, and something goes down quickly, sensors track the data and we analyze the information. The minute that data goes off a certain baseline, it will tell you about this problem -- and then it will say that there’s the potential in the future for a major problem.

It will actually generate a work order, which then feeds from the OT systems into the IT systems, and it’s all automatic. Then, when mechanics come in to try to solve these problems, they can use augmented reality or virtual reality to look at the machine and then fix the problem.

It’s actually a closed-loop ecosystem that would not have happened in the M2M base. It’s the next layer of maturity or advancement that IoT brings up.

Gardner: We can measure, we can analyze, and we can communicate. That gives us a lot of power. We can move toward minimum viable operations, where we're not putting parts in place when they're not needed, but we’re not going down either.

It reminds me of what happened on the financial side of businesses a decade or two ago, where you wanted to have spend management. You couldn't do it until you knew where all your money was, where all the bills had to be paid, but then doing so, you could really manage things precisely. Those were back office apps, digital ledgers.

So, it’s a maturity coming to devices -- analog, digital, what have you, and it’s pretty exciting. What's the impact here financially, Jeff?

Carlat: Well, huge. Right now, IDC predicts IoT to represent about a $1.3 trillion opportunity by2020. It's a huge opportunity, not only for incremental revenue for businesses, but increased efficiencies, reducing cost, reducing downtime, reducing risk; so, a tremendous benefit. Companies need to strongly consider a movement for digitizing the value chains to remain competitive in the future.

Bigger and Better Data at the Edge

Gardner: Okay. We understand why it's important and we have a pretty good idea of what you need to do. Now, how do you get there? Is this big data at the edge? I heard a comment just the other day that there's no bigger data than edge data and IoT data. We're going to have to manage scales here that we haven’t seen before.

Carlat: It’s an excellent point. Jet engines that are being used today are generating 5 TB of data every time they land or take off. Imagine that for every plane, every engine that’s flying in the sky, every day, every year. The amount of data is huge. This brings me to the unique way that HPE is approaching this, and we truly believe we are leaders in the data center now and are leaders within IT.

We're taking that design, that implementation, that knowledge, and we're designing infrastructure, data center quality infrastructure, that’s put on the edge, ruggedized compute or analytics, and providing the ability to do that analysis, the machine learning, and doing it all locally, rather than sending all that data to the cloud for analytics. Imagine how expensive that would be.

That's one approach we're taking on within HPE. But, it’s not just about HPE tackling this. Customers are asking where to start. "This is overwhelming, this is complex. How do we do this?" We're coming together to do advisory services, talking our customers through this, hand-holding, building a journey for them to do that digitization according to their plans and without disrupting their current environment.

Gardner: Tushar, when you have a small data center at the edge, you're going to eke out some obvious efficiencies, but this portends unforeseen circumstances that could be very positive. What can you do when you have this level of analytics, and you take it to a macro level? You can begin to analyze things on an industry-level, and then have the opportunity to drill down and find new patterns, new associations, perhaps even new ways to design processes, factory floors, retail environments? What are we talking about in terms of the potential for the analytics when we capture and manage this larger amount of data?

Halgali: We've noted there are a lot of IoT use cases, and the value that generates so far has been around cost optimization, efficiencies, risk management, and those kinds of things. But by doing things on the edge, not only can you do all of those, you can start getting into the higher-value areas, such as revenue growth and innovation.

A classic example is remote monitoring. Think of yourself as a healthcare provider who would not be able to get into the business of managing people's health if they're all located remotely. If we have certain devices in homes through sensors and everything, you can start tracking their behaviors and their patterns. When they're taking medicine and those kinds of things, and have all the information created through profiles of those people. You have now distributed the power of taking care of all the constituents in your base, without having to have them physically be in a hospital.

Gardner: Those feedback loops are not just one way where you can analyze, but you can start to apply the results, the benefits of the analysis, right back into the edge.

Carlat: Health and life sciences are great examples of using IoT as a way of more efficiently managing the hospital beds. It costs a lot of money to have people sit in a hospital when they don't need to be there. To be able provide patient access remotely, to be able monitor them, to be able to intervene on an as-needed basis, drives much greater efficiencies.

We’ve talked a little bit about industrial IoT, we’ve talked a little bit about health and life sciences, but this extends into retail and smart stores, too. We're doing a lot with Home Depot to deliver the store of the future, bridging the digital with the brick-and-mortar across 2,200 stores in North America.

It also has to do with the experience around campus and branch networks. At Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, HPE built that out with indoor Global Positioning System (GPS) and built out a mobile app that allows indoor wayfinding. It allows the patrons visiting the game to have a totally new, immersive experience.

They found uploads and downloads of photos, and they found hotspots by mapping out in the stadium. The hotspots had a great unobstructed view of the field, so there were a lot of people there taking pictures. They installed a food stand nearby and they have increased revenues because of strategic placement based on this IoT data. Levi’s Stadium recognized $1 million in additional revenue in the first season and 10 times the growth in the number of contacts that they have in their repository now.

Gardner: So, it's safe to say that edge computing and intelligence is a gift that will keep giving, at levels organizations haven’t even conceived of yet.

Carlat: I believe it’s a necessity to stay competitive in the world of tomorrow.

How to Gain Business Insights
From the Intelligent IoT Edge

Gardner: If your competitor does this, and you don't, that’s going to be a big question mark for your customers to mull over.

While we are still on the subject of the edge technical capabilities, by being able to analyze and not just pass along data, it seems to me it's also a big help when it comes to compliance and security, which are big concerns.

Not only does security get mitigated by hardening or putting up a wall, probably the safest bet is to be able to analyze when something is breached or something is going wrong, and then to control or contain that. Tell me why the HPE Edgeline approach of analyzing data fast and on the edge can also be a big boost to security risk containment and other compliance issues.

Carlat: We do a lot around asset tracking. Typically, you need to send someone out there to remediate. By using Edgeline, using our sensor data, and using asset tagging, you can ensure that the right person can be identified as the service person physically at the pump to replace it, rather than just saying that they did it, writing on paper, and actually being off doing something else. You have security, you have the appropriate compliance levels with the right people fixing the right things in the right manner, and it's all traceable and trackable.

Halgali: When you begin using edge devices, as well as geolocation services, you have this ability to do fine-grained policy management and access control for not just the people, but also devices. The surface area for IoT is so huge there are many ad-hoc points into the network. By having a security layer, you can control that and edge devices certainly help with that.

A classic example would be if you have a camera in a certain place. The camera is taking constant feeds of things that are going on that are wrong or right; it’s constantly recording the data. But the algorithms that have been fed into the edge device allow it to capture things that are normal, so it can not only alert authorities at the right time, but also store feed only for that. Why store days and day’s worth of images, when you can pick only the ones that truly matter?

As Jeff said, it allows workplace restrictions and compliance, but also in an open area, it allows you to track events that are specific.

In other cases, let’s say the mining industry or the oil and gas industry, where you have workers that are going to be in very remote locations and it’s very hard to track each one of them. When you have the ability to track the assets over time, if things go wrong, then it’s easier to intervene and help out.

Carlat: Here is a great personal example. I went to my auto dealership and I pulled into the garage. Immediately, I was greeted at my door by name, “Hello Mr. Carlat. Are you in for your service?"

I thought, “How do you know I came in? Are you tracking me? How are you doing that?” It turns out, they have radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. When you come in for service, they apply these tags. As soon as you pull in, they provide a personalized experience.

Also, it yields a net benefit of location tracking. They know exactly where my car is at all stages. If I moved to a rental car that they have there, my profile is automatically transferred over there. It starts their cycle time metrics, too, the traceability of how they're doing on remediating whatever my service level may be. It's a whole new experience. I'm now a lifetime-loyal customer of this auto dealer because of that personalization; it’s all coming from implementation of IoT.

Gardner: The implications are vast; whether it’s user experience, operational efficiency, risk reduction, or insights and analysis at different levels of an industry and even a company.

It's very impressive stuff, when you can measure everything and you can gather as much data as you want and then you can triage, and analyze that data and put the metadata out to the cloud; so much is possible.

We've established why this is of interest. Now, let’s think a little bit about how you get there for organizations that are thinking more about re-architecting their edge in order to avail themselves of some of these benefits. What is it about the HPE and Deloitte alliance that allows for a pathway to get on board and start doing things in a proper order to make this happen in the best fashion?

Transformation Journey, One Step at a Time

Halgali: Dana, anytime you do an IoT initiative, the key thing to realize that it should be part of a major digital transformation initiative. Like any other transformation story, there are the people, process, and the technology components of it. Jeff and I can talk about these three at a very high level when you begin talking about the process and the business model.
 
Deloitte has a huge practice in the strategy and the process space. What we're looking at is digital industrial value-chain transformation. Let’s look at something like a smart factory.
 
What’s the value chain for an organization that's making heavy machinery, end-to-end, all the way from R and D and planning, to procurement and development and shipment, and after-sale repairs, the entire value chain? What does that look like in the new IoT era? Then, decompose that into processes and use cases, and then identify which are the most high-value use cases, quantifying them, because that’s important.

Identifying the use cases that will deliver immediate tangible value in the near term provides the map of where to begin the IoT journey. If you can’t quantify concrete ROI, then what’s the point of investing? That addresses the reason of what IoT can do for the organization and why to leverage this capability. And then, it's about helping our clients build out the business cases, so that they can justify the investments needed from the shareholders and the board — and can start implementing.
 
At a very high level, what’s the transformation story? What's the impact on the business model for the organization? Once you have those strategy questions answered, then you get into the tactical aspects, which is how we execute on it.
 
From an execution standpoint, let’s look at enablement via technology. Once you have identified which use-cases to implement, you can utilize the pre-integrated, pre-configured IoT offerings that Deloitte and HPE have co-developed. These offerings address use cases such as asset monitoring and maintenance (in oil and gas, manufacturing, and smart cities), and intelligent spaces (in public venues such as malls, retail stores, and stadiums), and digital workplaces (in office buildings). One must also factor in organization, change and communication management as addressing cultural shifts as one of the most challenging aspects of an IoT-enabled digital transformation. Such a holistic approach helps our clients to think big, start small, and scale fast.

Gardner: Tushar just outlined a very nice on-ramp process. What about some places to go for information or calls for action? Where should people get started as they learn how to implement on the process that Tushar just described?

How to Gain Business Insights
From the Intelligent IoT Edge

Carlat: We're working as one with Deloitte to deliver these transformations. Customers with interest can come to either Deloitte or HPE. We at HPE have a strong group of technology services consultants who can step in and help in partnership with Deloitte as well.

So, come to either company. Any of our partner representatives can get all of this and our websites are loaded with information. We're here to help. We're here to hold the hand and lead our customers to digitize and achieve these promised efficiencies that can be garnered from digital value chains.

Gardner: So the buzzwords to track or to follow to get into your organizations are Internet of Things, Operational Technology, did I leave anything out?

Halgali: Digital Analytics, Edge Computing.

Gardner: I'm afraid we will have to leave it there. We've been exploring how IoT adoption means more than just scaling up networks. The complexity and novel architectural demands of IoT require a rethinking of the edge of nearly any enterprise.

And we’ve learned how to rationalize the many disparate parts to produce an effective IoT fabric through a team approach. So thanks to our guests Tushar Halgal, Senior Manager in the Technology Strategy and Architecture Practice at Deloitte Consulting, and Jeff Carlat, Senior Director of Technology Solutions at HPE Strategic Alliances.

And a big thank you to our audience as well for joining us for this BriefingsDirect Voice of the Customer digital transformation discussion. I'm Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions, your host and moderator for this ongoing series of HPE-sponsored interviews. Thanks again for listening, and do please come back next time.

Listen to the podcast. Find it on iTunes. Get the mobile app. Download the transcript. Sponsor: Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Transcript of a discussion on how the complexity and novel architectural demands of IoT require a rethinking of the edge of nearly any enterprise. Copyright Interarbor Solutions, LLC, 2005-2017. All rights reserved.

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