Interview with Damien Scalzo from Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Australia/New Zealand

Damien is the CIO of Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Australia/New Zealand.

For over 15 years, Damien has combined his business and technology experience as a CIO, Management Consultant, Systems Integrator and Chartered Accountant to help organisations use technology to add value to their core and new business processes across industries including Financial Services, Manufacturing, Utilities and Public sector. Damien is passionate about technology and also spends time mentoring startups to grow and scale.

 

 

 

Interviewer: What do you feel are the biggest challenges IT leaders are currently faced with?

 

Damien: Transformation vs BAU: being able to balance Transformation and Business as Usual Activities. IT leaders need to manage this balance carefully to ensure they are not at the mercy of their technology debt.

Continuous Security: keeping their landscape more secure than ever on top of Continuous Delivery. IT Leaders need to balance security being a blocker to Continuous Delivery vs. the risk of cyberattacks.

Business Integration: being more than just ‘IT’ and being truly part of and integrated into the businesses you serve. IT leaders need to be embedded in their business, truly part of making business decisions and on the front foot with technology solutions before the business has come for help.

Reducing Cost: delivering more whilst lowering costs. IT Leaders will need to do more with less or do more with your budget by looking at different ways to structure your landscape, staff and suppliers.

 

Interviewer: Where do you see the industry headed within the next one to five years and what do you feel will be the biggest game changers?

 

Damien: My presentation “How the Role of IT Leaders and Emerging Technology are Converging in the Future” covers the answer to this. Hope to see you there.

 

Interviewer: What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?

 

Damien: Deliver quality over volume. Whilst it is imperative to deliver to the internal or external customer on time, it’s more important that you get it right. A customer will always remember something that didn’t work, didn’t meet their expectations and was frustrating, rather than something that was delayed. I believe this sets apart technology leaders over project delivery professionals.

 

Interviewer: What advice would you give to someone trying to excel in the IT industry?

 

Damien: – Future proof your skillset: IT roles are in the process of transforming and this will continue and evolve for some time. Because of this, IT professionals should focus on getting exposure to as many roles as they can in the software development cycle. I believe IT professionals who do this will effectively “future proof” their resume and ability to transfer their skill set to a future role.

– Understand the business you serve. The more you can understand the businesses you are delivering to, the further you will go. I believe IT professionals who can independently understand, identify and resolve key business challenges will be at the top of the pecking order.

 

ABOUT MERCEDES-BENZ FINANCIAL SERVICES

Mercedes-Benz Financial Services is a leading, captive financial services provider and the global financial services company of Daimler AG. Doing business as Mercedes-Benz Financial Services and Daimler Truck Financial, they provide financing for automotive and commercial vehicle dealers and their retail consumers in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

Interview with Megan Hemingway from Seven West Media

Megan started her career as a developer, moved into data as her area of specialty and then found herself as a project manager and ultimately a leader. She’s worked mainly in Australia but also had a 3-year stint in Asia. These experiences have developed Megan so that she is most effective in an environment with a focus on continuous improvement and gets excited by leading teams through wholesale transformation.

 As Head of IT, Megan has full responsibility for corporate IT for Channel 7 and Pacific Magazines, Australia wide. This includes a team of 40 people that are distributed across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The team supports a user base of approximately 3500 across 13 sites. The role manages teams that have responsibility for ensuring operational stability, providing end user support and managing the delivery of projects for the business.

 

Interviewer: How do you keep up to date with technology innovations and keep your organisation up to date with new technologies without disruption?

Megan: If we’re going to be honest, it’s almost impossible to stay completely up to date without disruption – but then not every organisation is right to be on the ‘bleeding edge’. The most important thing is to understand how ‘up to date’ your organisation wants or needs to be. Part of determining this is to identify the appetite for disruption and comparing that to the appetite for everything shiny and new.

 

Interviewer: What is the biggest challenge you face as Head of IT?

Megan: One of the things I love about my job is that the challenges change on a daily basis. One day might be removing a roadblock (or potential roadblock) from a big project, the next could be dealing with an unhappy customer and the one after that, making decisions on trade-offs between cybersecurity and user experience. There are also the inevitable financial challenges of doing more with less.

Consumers are becoming more tech-savvy every day and rightfully expect the same level of technology they have at home to be available in the workplace. However, the workplace has budgetary and other constraints that may not apply to the home. The challenge is finding ways to overcome as many constraints as possible so that people have the technology they want to use that enables them to be the best they can be at work.

 

Interviewer: How much importance does cybersecurity play in your role?

Megan: A significant amount. There are cybersecurity experts within the organisation but security can’t just be left to them – all of us need to play our part. As the leader of the IT team, every decision I make must include consideration for security – something that has changed considerably, even over the last 3 years.

 

Interviewer: What projects are you currently or have recently been working on?

Megan: We recently finished an O365 foundation project where we focused on identity, security and email. It was a 4-month project with an amazing technical outcome that included more than 5000 mailboxes migrated, 1500 public folders removed, 40 servers decommissioned and our security score increasing by 250. Although it wasn’t without hiccups, it has been well received in the business and people are already jumping in and asking ‘what’s next?’

 

Interviewer: What to do you feel will be the biggest game-changer within your industry beyond 2020?

Megan: The media industry (like many others) is being significantly disrupted and is having to find new ways to operate. This is resulting in ideas that historically would have been completely dismissed, being seriously considered and in some cases implemented. We have traditional competitors sharing resources in areas not considered to be competitive in nature. The media ownership law changes have also allowed for mergers and acquisitions that historically weren’t possible. I believe the next biggest ‘game-changer’ will come from new ideas that form out of these changing company structures within the industry.

 

Interviewer: Have you recently introduced new technologies into your organisation or are you currently looking to? If yes, what are these new technologies and their key uses?

Megan: Our focus is less on the introduction of new technologies and more on fully utilising technologies that we already have. There are technologies that have been brought into the organisation for various uses but haven’t been widely standardised on. By revisiting and choosing the ‘best of breed’ we already have, we’re getting improvements in traditional overhead areas like backup and DR, patching and monitoring as well as significantly reducing complexity.

 

Interviewer: What is your strategy for staying on top of new technologies and other industry changes?

Megan: My strategy is to listen. There are so many sources of information available to us that it would be possible to make a full time job of reading and researching upcoming trends. Most of us don’t have that luxury of time so I find that listening is the best way to identify which trends I should further investigate. The information can come from all sorts of sources including mainstream media, vendors, colleagues, my team, friends, etc.

 

Interviewer: What do you think is the most important aspect of your role as the Head of IT?

Megan: Leadership. I’m not the most technologically advanced person, I’d never be great on a service desk, I don’t understand the complex backend workflows in a broadcast management system – but my team is all of this and more. The most important part of my job is to provide my team with the support and guidance they need so they can utilise their skills to provide the organisation with the services that they need.

 

ABOUT SEVEN WEST MEDIA

Seven West Media is one of Australia’s leading integrated media companies, with a market-leading presence in broadcast television, magazine and newspaper publishing and online. The company is the home to many of Australia’s leading media businesses – Seven, 7TWO and 7mate, 7flix, 7food network, Pacific Magazines, The West Australian and The Sunday Times, and the biggest content brands including My Kitchen Rules, House Rules, Home and Away, Sunrise, the Australian Football League, Cricket Australia, the Olympic Games, Better Homes and Gardens, marie claire, Who, PerthNow, racing.com and 7plus.

Interview with David Austin from Six Flags

David Austin was named Senior Vice President, Information Systems & Chief Information Officer for Six Flags in December 2017. Mr. Austin had previously served as Chief Technology Officer at Berkshire Hathaway Automotive from December 2014 to December 2017, where he had operational responsibility for all technology across 100 business units, technology development, and leadership of the IT team. Prior to that, from May 2007 to December 2014, he served as the Vice President of Information Technology at Larry H. Miller Group, a company with many businesses that included The Utah Jazz and associated arena businesses, large mega-plexes cinemas, a 500-acre racetrack complex, and a large automotive business, where he led the IT team. Mr. Austin majored in Speech Communication at Fresno State University and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

 

Interviewer: What do you feel are the biggest challenges IT leaders are currently faced with?  

 

David: On the surface, this seems like an easy question, money, time, and resources… But that perspective has become dated. There are a lot of complex issues we are facing today – new regulatory issues,  unprecedented levels of innovation in technology,  ML and AI just to name a few.   How to acquire, deploy, maintain, and most importantly, keep everything secure is high on the list of challenges for IT and business leaders today.   I’m including business leaders, as we evolve technology can’t just be sweep over to IT.  The business needs to become part of the process.

 

Interviewer: What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?

 

David: I worked for a company that was very successful in racing cars.   We heard often “don’t let a five dollar part take out a million-dollar race car.”   Make sure you have the correct focus on the little things and you probably won’t have to deal with the big things.

 

Interviewer: What advice would you give to someone trying to excel in the IT industry?

 

David: This is going to sound really old school!  Learn it from the ground up.  There aren’t enough technologists that really know the stack.  Learn the basics and build from there.  Building a solid skillset & understanding the fundamentals will always open doors.

 

Interviewer: What do you feel the most passionate about within your business?

 

David: We really thrive on delivering a world-class tech experience to our end-users and guests.  We like to think way outside of the box using technology to reduce friction and to make sure the guest tech experience is as much fun as the guests have in our parks and on our rides.

 

Interviewer: What is one key takeaway you hope our CIO audience leaves with after hearing your presentation on-site

 

David: Using next-generation technology to enhance the employee and guest experience can be done securely!

 

ABOUT SIXFLAGS

Six Flags Entertainment Corporation is the world’s largest regional theme park company and the largest operator of waterparks in North America, with $1.4 billion in revenue and 26 parks across the United States, Mexico and Canada. For 57 years, Six Flags has entertained millions of families with world-class coasters, themed rides, thrilling water parks and unique attractions.

Interview with Andrew Weyer from DHL Supply Chain

For the last 17 years Andrew Weyer has lead customer centric professional services teams in DHL Supply Chain across Australia and New Zealand, Middle East and Africa.  They contribute to everyday life by ensuring the efficient operation of their customers supply chains.  They adopt and deliver innovative cost effective solutions leveraging the latest digital technologies and incorporating best practice standardisation for the benefits of their customers.

 

 

 

 

 

Interviewer: What do you feel are the biggest challenges IT leaders are currently faced with?

 

Andrew: With the speed of change, anticipating what is coming and catering for that in your solutions approach is a key challenge.  Building solutions than can be mixed and matched with new market introductions and ability to change small components of your overall solution is a key requirement of delivery. 

 

Interviewer: As a leader in the IT industry, what do you feel businesses can work on when it comes to their IT strategy?

 

Andrew: Change management today is more critical than ever before.  Understanding change and ability to drive cultural changes to technology and business approach are critical. 

 

Interviewer: Things change so quickly in the IT industry, what does it take to stay on top?

 

Andrew: Continual re-education and collaboration. Engage and learn everyday!

 

Interviewer: Where do you see the industry headed within the next one to five years and what do you feel will be the biggest game changers?

 

Andrew: Wearables and Human natural interfaces (Voice, Sight, Hearing, emotion, movement) 

 

Interviewer: What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?

 

Andrew: Carpe Diem and be open to constant change.

 

Interviewer: What advice would you give to someone trying to excel in the IT industry?

 

Andrew: Think and talk like a customer.  Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. This applies to any industry not only IT

 

Interviewer: What do you feel is the hottest topic right now in the industry and what is its effect on the industry?

 

Andrew: Digital Twins and how this enables AI and Machine Learning to add real value. This is a game changer in terms of proactive alerting and responses to business   

 

Interviewer: What is one key takeaway you hope our CIO audience leaves with after hearing your presentation on site?

 

Andrew: All technology is great and can be very exciting.  You need to leverage the Technology capabilities and enablements to drive real business outcomes and value, including Digital Revenue streams

 

ABOUT DHL SUPPLY CHAIN

DHL Supply Chain, part of the EUR 56.6bn DPDHL Group, is the world’s leading contract logistics provider. Combining value-added and management services with traditional fulfilment and distribution, our customized, integrated logistics solutions drive efficiency, improve quality and create competitive advantage.

DHL Supply Chain offers specialist, proven expertise within the Automotive, Consumer, Chemicals, Energy, Engineering & Manufacturing, Life Sciences & Healthcare, Retail and Technology sectors. As today’s global markets grow, our innovative logistics solutions are ready to help.

 

Interview with Ross Dawson, Futurist

Ross Dawson works globally as a futurist, keynote speaker and strategy advisor, inspiring audiences with a deeply positive and pragmatic focus on the potential of the future. He is Founding Chairman of the Advanced Human Technologies Group of companies, spanning professional services, web publishing and software development, and the bestselling author of books including Living Networks, which The New York Times credited with predicting the social media revolution.

He has delivered keynotes and strategy workshops in over 30 countries for leading organisations such as American Express, Coca-Cola, Commonwealth Bank, Dubai Ministry of Finance, Gartner, Google, IBM, KPMG, Macquarie Bank, Oracle, Procter & Gamble, PwC, Roche, Telstra and Visa. Media appearances include CNN, Bloomberg TV, SkyNews, ABC TV, Today and Sunrise shows, Washington Post and many others.

 

Interviewer: “What inspired you to become a futurist?”

 

Ross: “Since I was young I always thought it would be amazing to be a futurist, to be able to think about the future for a living, look at where the world is going, and where we are going as the human race. I feel very fortunate to have created that career and role for myself, through hard work over many years.”

 

Interviewer: “How did you make a career out of being a futurist?”

 

Ross: “People often ask me, “how do you become a futurist?” The trite but true answer is that you claim you are, and people either believe you or they don’t. Anybody can talk about the future. You need to have credibility so that people will listen to you and give credence to what you are saying. My definition of a futurist is someone who helps people and organisations think about the future so that they can act better in the present.

My personal journey began over 20 years ago by studying and applying scenario planning, a well-established future discipline. I have been studying and using futurist methodologies for over two decades now, but it was my first two books that gave me the credibility to pursue the profession of futurist on a bigger scale.

My first book was on knowledge-based relationships, with a subtitle of ‘The Future of Professional Services’. The book was highly successful and anticipated the dynamics of the high-value professional services industries today. My second book was Living Networks, which looked at the implications of the hyper-connected economy. The New York Times credited it with predicting the social networking revolution before any of today’s social networks existed.

I was looking to the future but even then my primary role wasn’t as a futurist. These two books’ success gave me the credibility to work as a futurist with many leading organisations around the world. My role is not to predict the future, my role is to help executives to think about the future more than they usually do or in different ways than they normally do, so that they can be more effective in their roles as directors and leaders.” 

 

Interviewer: “What do you see are some of the challenges that IT professionals are facing?”

 

Ross: “Technology is, of course, becoming more and more central to society, business, and organisations. That’s been clear since we started to use computers to process our payroll to the introduction of email as a transformative technology for organisations, through to today where absolutely extraordinary possibilities are being enabled through technology.

The role of the IT professional has moved from being a supporting function to become far more strategic. Nicholas Carr, a former Editor of the Harvard Business Review wrote a provocative article in the Harvard Business Review which stated that “IT doesn’t matter”. He argued that technology is a commodity, just like electricity or other basic functions, so you should treat it as a commodity, spend less on it and focus on what does matter. However, among others, Andrew McAfee & Erik Brynjolfsson of MIT have done studies that showed that those organisations that invest more in technology are in fact differentiated in their industries and perform better.

If you ask which of these ideas is true, the answer is in fact, both are true, in the sense that there are aspects of technology that are commoditised, they are basic functions of the organisations such as accounting and communication, but there are other aspects of organisational technology that are absolutely unique and strategic and shape the organisation’s success.

IT leaders must recognise that there are two possible paths forward for them. One is that boards and executives see IT as a commoditised function which should always be asked to do the same thing or better with less money and resources. Alternatively, the company leaders recognise the critical strategic role of technology and support it moving to the center of the organisation. This, of course, requires the technology leaders to clearly demonstrate the vital role of technology to the future of the business.

As such, one of the critical challenges today for IT leaders today is the fact that they do need to be in both of these worlds. They need to manage core technologies, which you could call commoditised but are absolutely underpinning the organisation and if they go down, the organisation goes down. But at the same time, they need to be exploring new domains including the applications of AI, distributed technologies including blockchain, sensors and IoT and other domains that can create immense value and new possibilities.  There are so many new emerging possibilities that it is challenging to continually explore the possibilities of these new technologies, how they’re applied to these organisations and at the same time having the responsibility of keeping the engine room running that supports the organisation.” 

 

Interviewer: “What would you recommend IT Leaders start taking action towards to prepare for the future?”

 

Ross: “There are a number of facets to how you manage the world of emerging technologies at the same time that you manage core technologies. The starting point is that of leadership, where IT leaders have to take this role upon themselves if it is not given to them, being the technology strategy leader in helping the board and executives to understand the possibilities and the implications of technologies and what that might mean for the organisation. Whether they are recognised in that role or not, they need to take that role.

In managing emerging technologies, one of the key starting points is in governance, because new technologies can have unintended consequences. This is very obvious in the role of data governance amidst the proliferation of data, with many legal implications, but also in terms of the possibilities and the implications of technologies such as AI, which is itself based on massive amounts of data. There needs to be deep thinking around the ethics of technologies, and what is required to create value in ways that protect the future of the organisation rather than put it into danger.

Leaders must set strategic paths or roadmaps to explore possibilities, using lean start-up practices within large organisations to marry these two modes. One of the most important challenges of all is in talent, of course: being able to attract, retain and develop the most talented people who are able to work effectively on leading-edge projects,  and manage the dynamics of some people working on more exciting projects than others.”

 

Interviewer: “What do you see some of the new trends and behaviours of IT being in the next 3-5 years?”

Ross: “One of the most important issues is the transformation of the IT function. You need to look at what is the nature of the IT function today and what will it need to be in 3 or 5 years from now, and from there what are the things that need to be done to enable a successful transformation.

We have been talking about cloud in various guises since the beginning of the millennium, however effectively managing the continuing shift of the mix of where data and processes reside, whether they be inside or beyond the organisation, is critical.

AI is of course on everyone’s agenda in terms of the business applications, for manufacturing, robotics, business process automation and so on, but the next phase which is still quite early is the application of AI to the management of IT itself. This is where AI is applied to processes such as database optimisation, staff allocation, or coding different layers of applications. One important application is in responding to cyber-attacks, which is an accelerating race because both attackers and defenders are using increasingly sophisticated systems. We clearly need to be able to respond faster than humans can to attacks.

We can now certainly start to use and deploy AI systems for optimising or enhancing the management of the IT function. The truly strategic issue today is how you use the most sophisticated IT professionals together with AI and machine learning to achieve your outcomes. That is a strategic challenge, one giving real differentiation to those organisations that are able to effectively combine AI tools applied to the IT function together with human professionals.” 

 

Interviewer: “Are there areas you are interested in learning more about?”

Ross: “Since the future of IT is centred on how human skills and technology work together, a key interest of mine is in productive interfaces between corporations and start-ups. We have a long history in this space, of course, we have many accelerators, hackathons and similar programs yet I still think that there is far more possible in getting true value from working with start-ups in a corporate context.

We still need to discover and develop the structures and the mechanisms which can make that most effective. We are still working out how to bring that entrepreneurial spirit, ideas and technologies to be truly valuable in a corporate environment. This is something we have been exploring for a long time, but there is still more to discover in how to do that extremely effectively.” 

 

Interview with Duncan Cavanough, Head of IT & Operations, AFL Telecommunications Australia

AFL Telecommunications Australia is part of AFL Global based in the US. AFL Global is subsequently owned by Fujikura Limited, Japan and employs over 4,500 people worldwide.

AFL provides industry-leading solutions, products and services to the energy, service provider, enterprise and industrial markets as well as a number of emerging markets.

Duncan’s role is to ensure the IT plan and systems supports the business to produce the most technical fibre optic cable and cable systems to meet future (not current) market demands. This not only encompasses IT, but operations, finance, logistics to ensure business continuity across all departments.

Originally Duncan started with one of the first Fibre Optic company’s’ in Australia back in 1994 called AFC Group. From this he has seen the internet and data expand to levels never thought of back then. AFL acquired AFC in 2015.

 

Q. What do you feel are the biggest challenges IT leaders are currently faced with within their business?

A. Fibre optics, being the backbone of the core network in today’s modern world, has always kept me at the forefront of what speeds and feeds can be achieved. In light of this, I see the biggest challenge of IT leaders is providing core networks that have enough capacity to meet the data hungry needs of society, and having the skill base to implement.

Q. As an IT leader, what do you feel businesses continue to get wrong when it comes to their marketing strategy?

A. We market to the ‘now’ which is hard because of the inherent nature of society, when we need to plan for the future. Like with road building and transport infrastructure, we look at how big we need it now, not how big it should be in 10-20 years time.

Q. What are the latest trends and behaviours you predict will be surfacing on the market over the coming 12 months?

A. I hope we get back to using technology to give ourselves personal time back. We seem to have so much tech, it takes most of the day to ‘check’ everything. Tablet, watch, smartphone, smart Tv, Ok Google, Hey Siri….we need tech to support lifestyle, not be a slave to it. If I had to identify something specific however, I see health monitoring (for the ageing population) and fitness trends utilising tech more.

Q. What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?

A. It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. (Originally quoted by Grace Hopper, a Rear Admiral in the US Navy and one of the first computer programmers) Born 1906

 

Interview with Luke Knowles of Wandera

Who are Wandera and what do they do?

Wandera is a leading mobile security company, providing multi-level protection for users, endpoints, and corporate applications. Security teams worldwide rely on Wandera to eliminate threats, control unwanted access, prevent data loss and enhance user privacy. The company pioneered the application of data science to tackle the complex challenges of mobile security with MI:RIAM, the industry’s most effective threat intelligence. Recognized by analysts and trusted by thousands of enterprise customers, Wandera was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in San Francisco and London.

What do Wandera see as some of the key challenges facing senior IT executives?

Mobility into the enterprise has exploded, what started as a consumer technology quickly spread into businesses allowing employees to work in a more agile & flexible way. Operational demand for an infrastructure that enabled mobility grew quickly, but left IT scrambling to keep up. The nature of mobile devices presents a number of security challenges that aren’t necessarily covered in the traditional security stack.

As yet, companies have not invested in mobile security solutions in the same way they have in their traditional infrastructure. Many companies have started by using mobile device management (MDM) solutions which allow for fast deployment of business apps, the ability to block unwanted apps and also wipe devices remotely if there is a security risk detected – more aimed at management and configuration rather than protection. But with the growing prevalence of BYOD ownership models, employees aren’t necessarily comfortable having corporate technology installed on personal devices possibly monitoring traffic.

While MDM’s may be the first step in managing mobile devices, without a Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) solution in place it is impossible to tell if a mobile is infected with malware, if someone has clicked on a phishing link if an app is leaking data, and the list continues.

Attackers are wise to the fact that corporate mobile devices are often the weak link in a company’s infrastructure, and exploit this weakness through targeted campaigns. Phishing is the number one threat to mobile, backed by research from Google, Black Hat and US Homeland Security, and last year research showed that 76% of businesses suffered a phishing attack. Furthermore, users are 3x more likely to click on a phishing link on a mobile device than on desktop.

The proliferation of mobile malware is also a top security concern for enterprises across the globe. Research from Wandera showed 13% of all organisations experienced a malware incident on a mobile device in 2018.

With data breaches hitting the news daily, companies can’t be too careful when it comes to security. Mobile security needs to be given the same resource and investment as all other parts of a businesses IT infrastructure. With the corporate perimeter becoming porous, companies need to adopt a more risk averse stance when it comes to security and protect at both on the endpoint and at the network level.

How can Wandera help secure mobile devices?

Wandera has a mobile-first approach to security. It integrates into your EMM/UEM solution allowing you to make the most of your existing investment. Based on a zero trust model, the integration allows for continuous conditional access. By communicating device-based risk status (based on multiple outside-in and inside-out threats), Wandera enables organizations to control access to corporate data and applications based on the threat status of the device.

The Wandera app not only provides effective endpoint security, protecting against threats on the device such as malicious or risky apps and detecting man-in-the- middle attacks. Our Secure Access Layer employs network-level protection to proactively stop threats from reaching the device, blocking phishing, malware and cryptojacking, and initiating a secure tunnel when under attack.

Whatever your device strategy – BYOD, COPE, COBO – our solution is built with privacy at the forefront, with no private data decryption or monitoring of personal data on the device: such as text messaging, emails, or photos. Wandera is designed to safeguard your employees with encryption so actual data is not visible whether at rest or in motion, while ensuring they don’t fall prey to phishing theft of their own personal credentials.

The admin portal gives admins access to see what security issues are lurking within their fleet. There are a number of dashboards which give insights into what apps are leaking data, if anyone is clicking on phishing links, and any malware installed on devices. As well as this you can see who is operating outdated OS’s and if anyone has jailbroken their device. From here, admins can set policies in place to monitor devices and only flag up the issues they want to see. They can also block access to sites just as adult, gambling and extreme, which are areas of the internet well known for their higher risk.

Wandera are well known in this space and the only vendor who secures mobile devices end to end. Wandera were recognised in Gartner’s 2018 Market Guide for Mobile Threat Defense as well as identified as a leader in IDC’s MarketScape for Mobile Threat Management.

What are the key messages that attendees will take away from Wandera’s roundtable discussion?

Join Wandera’s Asia Pacific mobility leader Luke Knowles for a roundtable discussion to learn more about how you can protect against the rapidly changing mobile threat landscape. You’ll hear real life examples of how other business have been infiltrated and what steps have been put in place to mitigate future risk, and importantly what technologies are most relevant in helping CIO/CISO’s protect against mobile threats.

Interview with Simon Reiter, Chief Information Officer – Defence Health

Simon is a business transformation leader with more than 20 years of ICT industry experience along with seven years of experience operating at the CIO level, demonstrated success in leading transformation programs that enhance the customer experience while delivering organisational strategic change.

Team Leadership: Managed crossed functional teams of up to 60FTE’s, transforming underperforming departments to high performing teams, recently at Defence Health this saw an improvement from 58% employee engagement to 98% for the past three years under my mentoring and leadership

Business Transformation & Process Improvement: Led large scale transformation programs, through the adoption of business processes management which have improved organisational customer satisfaction and business efficiencies through the adoption of CRM, Omni Channel, Digital, Cloud and AI platforms

Strategic development: Successful track record in leading, developing & executing business aligned ICT strategies to deliver the maximum return on technology investment, while position ICT as a strategic business enabler.

Industry leader: Seen as a leader in the Industry, current member of the Private Health Insurance IT Industry Committee, and mentor to the Victorian ICT for Women organisation. Additionally, my experience is often called on to present as an Industry expert at conferences, recently including the 2018, CISO conference on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence within the Insurance industry and chairing the 2018, Insurance Claims management & Customer experience conference. Additionally, in 2013 I was privileged to be nominated for ITSM Project of the year in 2013 for my “Business Transformation’ project.

As an IT leader, what do you feel businesses continue to get wrong when it comes to their IT strategy?

I see lots of organisations that invest significant organisational resources into developing a five year strategic plan and then either take a set and forget attitude or don’t develop metrics to report the strategic plans success and how it is enabling the organisation to grow/transform.

What are the latest trends and behaviours you predict will be surfacing on the market over the coming 12 months?

With the increase of digitisation, transformation we will continue to see a rise in cyber security incidents while many organisations continue to view security as an afterthought rather than incorporate security from conception, through design and into the final systems go live

What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?

Making time to build and maintain relationships within all levels of the organisation, this is critical to ensuring that IT is seen as a valued business partner and ensuring that the business works with you when they face a problem and your able to then demonstrate the value of how technology can assist them in improving their process.

What is one key takeaway you hope our IT audience leaves with after hearing your presentation on site?

How as a CIO you can gain confidence from your executive peer group to play a key role in leading the emerging technology & digital frontier for organisations.

Interview with Glen McLatchie from SkyCity Entertainment Group

Glen is an experienced senior executive with an extensive background in delivering business and digital change on a global scale. I have a strong strategic orientation; having held several senior business and IT executive roles allows me to contribute to overall business direction alongside core technology and digital strategies.

he flourishes in changing environments and my commercial acumen and pragmatic approach to business and IT problems have been honed in large European and Asian environments as well as across Australia and New Zealand. This wide breadth of experience has enabled me to become a highly successful leader of change.

He has a real passion for the development and investment in people, particularly long term strategies for personal growth and capability improvement.

Interviewer: “What do you feel are the biggest challenges IT leaders are currently faced with within their business?”

Glen: “Technology has always been important, but today there is not an organisation on the planet that is not undertaking some form of digital transformation. One of the many challenges I see for IT leaders is managing the complexity of a full stack transformation versus the easier, more recognisable, and arguably the more rewarding customer facing parts – coined by all and sundry as digital.  Addressing the whole of enterprise business architecture is hard and complex to do, and far less transparent to the board, but in the end is the only real way to deliver sustainable business benefits through tech enablement.”

Interviewer: “As an IT leader, what do you feel businesses continue to get wrong when it comes to their IT strategy?”

Glen: “Many organisations still believe that digital is something that is separate to IT.  Creating the role of a CDO and thinking that this somehow removes the technology debt or poor IT capability that legacy organisations often have.  In other words, their strategies focus in on symptoms rather than core problems.  Address the root cause of the problem by lifting the IT delivery capability, and if the CMO can’t do it create a role of Chief Customer Office – focusing on the customer experience, of which digital (or tech) is just one component.”

Interviewer: “What are the latest trends and behaviours you predict will be surfacing on the market over the coming 12 months?”

Glen: “5G will begin to allow us to control anything from anywhere.  My own view is that rather than having driverless cars, why not have a bank of uber drivers sitting in a building in India or China driving cars, or construction site cranes, in the US or Australia.  This removes all the legal and moral hurdles of driverless cars.
Robotics and AI will continue to become more mainstream, which in turn will see a rise in the need for tech skills and a decline in the need for low skilled workers. Which raises all sorts of societal issues.”

Interviewer: “What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?”

Glen: ““It’s about them stupid”.  In other words, it’s always about your people, their family, their lives, their promotions, their well-being.”

Interviewer: “What is one key takeaway you hope our audience at the CIO Leaders Summit Australia, Sydney leaves with after hearing your presentation on site?”

Glen: “That they are not alone in the challenges they face, and by sharing with each other we may just pick up a tip or two that will make our job a smidgen easier.”

Interview with Mick Havill, Chief Information Officer – WISE Employment

Mick Havill has over 40 years of achievement in IT across a wide range of business sectors.

He provided a variety of industrial control systems in harsh environments across the globe culminating in the implementation of the first ‘safety-critical’ software systems for the nuclear industry.

He was recruited as a consultant to Barclays to apply ‘nuclear thinking’ in order to raise the quality and performance of their banking systems.

In 2003, Mick joined ANZ to manage their global technology operations.  Mick became a key architect in the implementation of a major transformation program within ANZ before joining IAG to head infrastructure delivery to CGU.  This was a transformational role delivering IAGs platform which has become the basis of their regeneration.

After 20 years in financial services Mick took the role of CIO at WISE Employment to deliver opportunity to the most disadvantaged in our community.   Revolutionary innovation in the area of mobility has delivered a launch pad for WISE Employment’s growth and success.

He has built an expert team from a diverse background and in partnership with large corporate drives innovation as an early adopter.

What do you feel are the biggest challenges IT leaders are currently faced with within their business?  

  • Business demand for speed to market – Technology can deliver but it requires a cultural shift in the business. Collaboration and agility require true engagement.
  • Building and developing a passionate and competent team – Challenges of ‘team’ when from different business backgrounds geographically distant.
  • Sifting the hype from the reality – Living on the edge requires a degree of risk taking. To be successful, I have to recognise when a hyped solution will not deliver and create a strategy to deliver.

Tell us about your approach to supporting diversity in the workplace?

  • WISE is all about diversity in the workplace. We aim to support the most disadvantaged members of society and fully believe in empowerment through employment.
  • We own and operate four social enterprises that are dedicated to providing work opportunities for people from disadvantaged backgrounds, those traditionally under-represented in the trades (for example, women) and people with mental illness.
  • I see that technology can assist by bridging gaps that create social exclusion.
  • In my department we are fortunate to have diversity in ethnicity, gender and disability

What advice do you have for an IT graduate who is looking to join the workforce today?

  • Get real about the global position of IT today in Australia. There is a lot of stiff experienced competition and it is hard to get established.
  • Endeavour to keep abreast of the changing technology so that you have real skills which are in demand in a global market.
  • Client facing skills add to your personal selling proposition.
  • Know your brand and develop it.

What are the key things you look for in potential IT employees?

  • Creativity – knowledge leads to an ability to carry out tasks in a methodical fashion. It takes creativity plus knowledge to be able to see opportunities for radically changing for the better.
  • Passion – to be successful in IT people need to have a passion about technology, a passion to learn, a passion to try, a passion that drives you to keep trying until it works and a passion to make sure that it runs without error.
  • Customer focus – technology is not an end in itself. It is all about customer service. I look for people with both customer and commercial awareness.

What are the latest trends and behaviours you predict will be surfacing on the market over the coming 12 months?

  • Infrastructure
    o Hybrid Cloud – A swing back from total cloud deployment using hyper converged systems
    o IOT – still looking for solutions
    o FMC – Convergence and management of voice/video calls through mobile or landline
  • DevSecOps
    o CI/CD
    o Containerisation
    o Automated Testing
    o Scrumban framework
  • Applications
    o Micro-services architecture

What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?

  • “Believe in yourself”
    • Despite an uninspiring engineering education, an interest in STEM and the wisdom of experience has given me the tools to be innovative – so take a risk and back myself!
  • “Understand the value you bring to the organisation”
    • Measure the successes and ‘failures’ in terms the benefit and learning brought to the organisation – the net $ value from the changes you have driven!

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