Episode #10: CTO Challenges - What is the Role of CTO post-CORONA

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Welcome to the IBM Keep It Simple technology podcast, where each episode we discuss technology but in a simple way. We keep the explanations simple, but what we spend our time on is emphasizing what this technology means to you and how you can best utilize this technology for you and your business. Your host, as always, Thomas Anglero. Welcome to the IBM Keep It Simple Technology Podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Anglero. Another episode with another great guest and more great topics. Today we have the man, none other than himself, the CTO of IBM in all the Nordic countries, Brian Rasmussen. Brian, are you there?

I'm here. Thank you, Thomas, for inviting me.

Brian, I know, listen, the invitation went out to two people. It went out to you and your dog Kuba. Did I say the name right?

Yeah, close enough.

So let's make this realistic, right? We're all stuck at home. We're all working from home. You got your dog bothering you. You got your kids fighting in the background playing What was that, a fortnight? And people coming in the room probably going to clean. It's going to be a mess in your background. So that's just the way the world is today in the days of corona. But you being the CTO of IBM for all the Nordic countries, you have this incredible overview and as well as insight into the minds of CTOs all over. And where I want to go on this episode is really important. One of the things that everybody's experiencing now, especially this— let's talk to the CTO community, the IT people out there, or just leaders in general. My role, my job— let's look at CTOs right now— has been for the last 5, 10, 20 years has been X, has been the way it is. But now it's changed. Everything has changed. My company has changed. The finances of my company— look at the news. All these companies are going bankrupt. Everything has changed. The revenue models changed. The business models changed. So, Brian, what I want you to start off with, and it's a big question, but I think it's important, the role of a CTO now when the corona days are over, if they ever are over, what is the thinking, the mindset, the focus of the CTO now? Because boy, if your IT infrastructure doesn't work during these corona days, your company's in trouble. That goes without being said. So now, as a CTO, you are an even more important person in the organization. So please enlighten us, after the corona days, how should a CTO think to benefit their company?

Well, thanks for that question. That's, that's quite a straightforward one, Thomas. So I would hope that you pick something more, more challenging and difficult than projecting the future. But, but listen, I think, I think the CTO is in these days and will be after the corona crisis, one of the most important people in, in, in every every enterprise organization, because one of the capabilities that we have as CTOs is to tie business needs with, with technology. And as IT infrastructure— and we've probably all realized that during these days where we're all working from home and we're trying to get acquainted with new ways of collaborating in a more digital manner than we've ever done. So instead of using whiteboards, we use mural boards and Post-it notes and virtual spaces and stuff like that. So So I think the need for a person who can really translate business needs into technical solutions and get that done and get that live and operational, that person is a person that you really want to keep close to your heart. And I think that role is the role of the CTO. So I think as CTOs, our role is going to be very, very important post the corona crisis.

And yeah, yeah, this— you, you make my mind go so many different places. Um, the first place I'm going is I made an assumption in the very beginning of this podcast, and then you two, that we're using this online world and we're using video conferencing and all that stuff. It occurred to me there are a lot of companies listening to this podcast that aren't there. They're doing— they're still doing business with a mobile phone.

Sure.

Can we help them and give them some advice? Right? Because that's just the reality. It's just not every— laundromats and restaurants, they're not as digital.

What do you think about that? I think that— so to some extent, I heard some people talking about the corona crisis as a war-like situation. So I actually heard people referring to this as being in war. Are at war. And, and, and I think most innovation and transformation of industries actually happened during war times. So, so if we, if, so if we play along the lines that this is a wartime situation, we, we would expect a lot of innovation and transformation, uh, both in companies and in industries as, as a whole, uh, to change a lot. During this wartime. And one of the interesting things is that post-wartime, what do you spend time on then? You spend time on picking up the learnings that you had during the war, and then you try to prepare yourself to be more resilient for the next war that will come up. And most people say that even though that we're post-corona, this is just a tasting of what's going to hit us on this planet in terms of viruses and other biological crisis happening in the future. So I guess that being in crisis situations like the corona crisis here is gonna be, if not a new normal, then at least a regular guest. So I think it's a very important role for the CTO to be instrumental and very close to the to the business leaders in order to build a more resilient way of operating the business during crisis times. So, and back to your question on, so what do I think about all the restaurants? So, all the businesses that predominantly rely on physical presence in order to do their business. And we have that situation right now. So actually I ordered lunch today. From a nearby restaurant because we have the cleaning lady visiting us today. So she's taken up the kitchen space and all, so we couldn't cook our lunch today. So we decided for takeaway and they didn't have an online ordering shop. They didn't have a delivery service. So what I had to do is to pick from a PDF file menu on their webpage and then call them and order it. And after that, uh, get into my car and go and pick up the food. And, uh, so I— it worked. It did work.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I still bought with them. Uh, however, if they've had a nearby competitor, uh, who had an online shop and a, and a delivery service, exactly. Yeah. Then I would've picked another option and, uh, they would not have gotten my business today. So having— and actually what I've had one of my teams working on the last couple of days is to see, can we build a mockup online web store for all the shoe stores and the candy stores and the Joey and the Juice and sandwich bars and stuff like that that don't really have a digital platform to do business on today? So could we build a mockup online webshop platform that they could launch within 48 hours and get up and running with an online store? Would there be a market for that? So that's some of the thoughts that I'm thinking right now. And I think that when we move post-corona, we will not see a lot of these physical Reliance stores that don't have a digital twin. I think is one of them. And I think you're not going to see a lot of enterprise business without having a good business continuity plan and a disaster recovery strategy in place on how they're going to operate their business, not only from a technical but also from a workforce management perspective post the corona crisis. So, I would assume that most business leaders and CTOs are in the planning phase of preparing themselves for the next corona crisis.

Isn't that a bit late, don't you think? I mean, we've been talking in the— people have been talking about redundancies and planning, and a lot of companies have blown it off, right? A lot of companies said, 'We don't have to worry about this,' and it's a little bit too late, don't you think, for some companies?

Yeah, and I think that's it. We're getting a wake-up call here. So it's too— definitely. So no doubt about it that companies will go out of business during the corona crisis. So we're going to see a very different competitive landscape when we are post the corona crisis. Some industries, whole industries may even be suffering for survival when we're post the corona crisis. So there will be industries that have disappeared. And there will be a number of industries that have renewed themselves during the corona crisis period if they had the cash resiliency to do that. Because that's actually the biggest problem. And then you could argue if you can't survive as a business in 3 to 6 months or however long the Corona crisis may last, if you don't have the cash resiliency to survive for a 6-month period during a crisis like this, would you then have been able to survive anyway on a long-term So that's a debate. So I think what's happening now is back to Darwin. It's survival of the fittest, isn't it? So we're gonna see a demising race right now where the most unfit will die during Corona, both in in a, uh, in a human as well as in a business, uh, uh, sense. Uh, so, um, the unfit, uh, will not survive Corona. Uh, but the, but the fittest will come out stronger.

Yeah. I'm just, I'm just thinking about your situation in your home now with lunch, uh, being there and your dog being hungry. Who's gonna be the top of the pyramid in that house? My money's on Kuba. But let me, let me, let me Talk on some other things. Before, you talked about this being a warlike situation. And I think that's a really powerful analogy because a leader during wartime, right? The number one thing is the winner in war are the troops who have no fear, right? That is one of the key things is that you cannot have fear. And that's the way to go forward is that the culture of the organization cannot be fear-based but saying that this is an opportunity. It's just a very different type of opportunity. And we have to find a way of succeeding. And the other thing you touched on was on innovation, right? And innovation is about taking risk. And in a way, this corona thing has exposed companies who were risk-averse. You know, being innovative doesn't mean you're taking huge risks, but you got to try and be some— be different because black swans like corona happen. Let's give some some really simple 1-2-3s to the leaders that are listening, because you touched on, you know, going forward at post-corona times. And I'm wondering, what— when does that clock actually start? Because in one way, post-corona times has probably started, in another way we haven't got there. But that's another talk. But, um, what is the CTO now thinking about? So right now you said there are crisis meetings happening, right? Right? So, let's help out a whole bunch of people listening right now. They're in that crisis meeting. The CTO needs to contribute with something authentic, something original. What should CTOs be proposing right now on their conference call that they're going to go to after this podcast episode, after they listen? What should they be talking about in their crisis meeting looking forward? What are the things— and let's look at it from a technology point of view, right? What are the technologies that the CTO is saying, you know what? With all the corona and what's the business model our company's in, we should be looking at technology X, Y, and Z. What do you think?

So I think from a core— so first of all, let me touch on what am I doing right now and what should all CTOs be doing right now. So one of my primary focus times now during the corona crisis, so in this crisis management situation, is to make sure that we have a sound and productive collaboration platform because when it all boils down, all business is people business. So, we may be talking about technologies, but these technologies are only here to help people do their job, right? So, that's the purpose of technologies. And then, so first of all, I'm experimenting on a daily, if not hourly basis, on how I could put new technologies into place to make my team more connected socially during the crisis period and how we collaborate efficiently. During this crisis period. So, so I think it's fair to just touch on what, what is happening now. Moving past the corona crisis, I think our priorities should be— I think we're gonna see an acceleration in cloud adoption. I think that a lot of businesses has discovered their own vulnerability in, in, in managing and operating a resilient IT infrastructure on their own. So, I think this is good news for everybody in outsourcing business, in managed service provider business, and in the cloud platform businesses. So, I think Corona is good news for people operating in those areas. And I think that a lot of companies are looking in that way. And being a CTO in that respect, I think it's not so much on the CTO to pick the right technology. But it's more designing the right principles. So, so one of the things that I'm working on right now with hundreds— so actually we did over the past weeks, we've done more than 100 CTO interviews across Europe to figure out what is the CTO thinking right now.

Perfect timing.

And, and how do they actually structure their thought process? And what we can see now is a pattern where where we can categorize the decisions into what we call architectural decision points. And this is the, this is the cornerstone of the technology work that a CTO should be doing, structuring the business priorities into architectural decision points. So which technologies do I, do I need to automate my business processes? So business process automation is an architectural decision point.

Okay.

How do— it's a hybrid cloud. So cloud or hybrid multicloud is definitely a decision point. I think one of the things that is becoming evident during this conversation is that nobody want to rely on one vendor and, and single and mono cloud or building silos of, of different vendors where they have to operate and work in parallel and where they don't really collaborate together and they can't move data and workload from one cloud to another. So this has become very evident how locked in you are, that you are as locked in on a, on a single mono cloud platform as you were on your HP MLiR or IBM mainframe in the past. So you have the same lock-in situation if you're with a single cloud vendor. So hybrid multi-cloud is definitely a priority for the CTOs during and after the corona time.

Okay, Brian, let's hold on. Let's hold on a second. Hold on. I know you got number 2 coming, but let's break that down for some people because you threw in a bunch of acronyms and words that some people aren't familiar with. So what you're saying is, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that a business owner who has an existing infrastructure, their infrastructure in their basement, let's say, is fine. That's fantastic. They should be thinking about connecting that infrastructure to a cloud-based provider, the Amazons, Microsoft, the IBMs of the world, right? They're all out there.

Absolutely.

But then you made a very powerful point, and that is not about selecting one provider, right? It's about using the multi-cloud. Each provider has its pluses and minuses. So, and for you to get the best innovation, best services, you should be able to choose, use them all in that scenario. Am I correct in summarizing what you said?

Yeah, absolutely. So what I'm saying is that it's not the role of the CTO necessarily to pick the cloud provider. That should be made by the procurement and, and some technical SMEs, but designing the principles on on how we want to operate our IT infrastructure. So, is the mission of the CTO. And that's where I take it away from the 100 interviews that we've had, that the principles they're looking at is that we don't want— we want the flexibility to move our data and our workload between cloud vendors, between our on-premises infrastructure and public cloud infrastructures. So that's what I'm hearing the other CTOs or the CTOs of the enterprises. So 106 companies we've interviewed in Europe. And what they're more or less saying, using different words, is that we want that flexibility to move our workload between clouds and between on-premises and public cloud data centers.

That's— that is fantastic. Really, I can literally now see a whole bunch of CTOs going, thank you for helping me to prioritize what is the first thing we should be looking at. Well said, Brian. Do you have a second or third thing? I don't want to get in your way, but what is the second thing that 106 different CTOs around Europe What is the second on the priority list right now?

Yeah. So the, the other architectural decision points that we were discussing with them is, is what they call security immune systems or what we summarized into what we call security immune systems. So how do we actually build resiliency? So in a world of hybrid, multi, multiple clouds and having our workload and our data in a lot of different platforms, how do I have a uniform uniformly managed and applied set of security policies that kind of works on all the platforms so that I don't have to decide for security architecture and security policy for each of my cloud vendors or each of the systems I have in my own data centers, but where I have a centrally managed approach to handling my IT security and my business resilience so that my disaster recovery plan works So this week I decide to put all my workload on Microsoft Asia, but next week the big offer is from, or the best offer is from Amazon. Do I want to change my whole security infrastructure, the way? No, no, no. So a big part of that mobility, flexibility, and resiliency of the business is to be able to manage your security wherever your data might be and where— whichever platform you choose. So, so security is an architectural decision. Security immune systems is another architectural decision point they are looking at. And so, and that really tags well into, I think, what we've been working at IBM for, for the past many decades. So I think from an IBM perspective, I think our time is back. So we've been transforming our company like 8 times during the past century, and we're probably in the middle of the 9th transformation, major transformation of the IBM company. But some of the principles that we've been working on since, since we started the company back in 1911, so 109 years ago, they still apply. Business still have the same requirements for the trust and transparency, the enterprise understanding and readiness that has always been the DNA of IBM, helping businesses improve their performance, manage their predictability and their risk, and, and, and doing that in a way that, that drives innovation and, and protects, uh, protects our clients' businesses. So I think what's been our agenda for the past 109 years is still the agenda, and, and, and there's still a need, for companies who are enterprise thinking, enterprise operations in the way that IBM has been doing it for 100 years. So, so I think we are, we are well fit partner to, um, to have a conversation with on this.

So, so let's break down one thing. You said many things, but there's one thing I wanna emphasize and I wanna break down to very simple terms because what you said was quite powerful in the old days and during those 109 years. Um, That's old as hell. Companies, when they approach the vendor, the vendor will want to— as there have been called vendor lock-in. You committed yourself just to this one vendor. And then, as time went by, you said, "Okay, there's new technology and we want to move over to a new vendor." And these were big projects and these were super expensive projects to move from vendor A to vendor B. And companies just hated that whole process of, "Oh God, now we have to move to this new technology, whatever. I made my point. But what you said when you said your second advice was about security, and you're saying today that there is ability to give security across all platforms, across all vendors. The days of committing yourself just to one vendor and that vendor lock-in and there's no flexibility, that is gone. And that security can be a fundamental part of your business that you don't have to worry about those thoughts. You don't have— there's no more additional cost. No matter— as you wake up tomorrow, you have an innovative thought, which when you want to use company XYZ, you still have your security built into the foundation. You don't have to worry about that. Security is now part of your bloodline. Did I get that correct?

Yeah, so basically, you're spot on. So as a CTO, you want to give your development teams and the organization the freedom of developing on the platform they see most fit. But you want to have a control point that the same security policies are applied whether the developers are developing on Amazon, on IBM Cloud, on Microsoft Azure, or in their own data centers. You want to have a control point that ensures that you can apply your security policies and your resiliency and disaster recovery policies, that they are evenly applied irrespective of the vendor and the platform you develop to. So you want that as a control point, right? And you also want a hybrid and multi-cloud management tool where you know that your operational procedures and your ability to manage cost and, and keep track of where your data is and, and that yet you can track that across platforms so that you actually give your development teams the freedom to choose the technology that's best fit for the purpose that, that they apply, that they want to apply it to. But your security policies and your management procedures, your operation procedures and all that stuff, that they are still maintained and in place regardless of the underlying platform. That's, that's what you— that should be— that's your priority as the CTO. Yeah, I post-corona.

Yeah, exactly. And then, and then, Brian, um, one more crazy question, and that is, um, The answer— the last two answers, which were gold or platinum, whatever price of rare metals we have today, they change so much. It's for really IT-centric companies who have an existing IT infrastructure and things like that. Um, I'm stuck on, uh, your restaurant and the food that your dog is eating while you're talking to me right now. Your dog's way too quiet, so it must be eating something. At least in my experience with dogs, that's usually what's happening. So let's go back. Let's give advice, specific advice to listeners who are listening to this saying, I don't have an IT infrastructure. I don't have IT people because I don't have a budget. And also, I'm not an IT person myself, but I love my company. I love my employees who work at this restaurant, but I want to provide the best services possible. So Brian, as the CTO who interviewed 160 CEOs, What advice do you have for me, the little restaurant guy who's providing phenomenal services so that your dog's belly's full right now? Um, what, what advice can you give for me?

Mm-hmm.

You know, because I can't afford a CTO.

Mm-hmm.

But I wanna provide these great services. Do you have any advice for them?

Yeah. So, so first, first and foremost, uh, you need a digital twin. So you gotta, you gotta a brilliant store, but you need a twin and that twin need to be digital, right? So get yourself a digital twin.

So, so, Brian, break down, break down for our listeners what exactly is a digital twin? Because right now people are freaking out. They're thinking about people giving birth.

So, so a digital twin is actually what it says. So it's a twin. It's something that looks exactly like the beautiful store that you have on the main street where you serve these lovely sandwiches. And you want to take, you want to build an exact copy of that store and make it digital. And as you don't have a CTO and you don't have developers yourself, find a great company that knows how. It could be calling IBM and we'll find a business partner that is perfectly fit for that. And then apply this overall principle to your architectural decision and say, whatever I build, I only want to build it once and then be able to deploy it anywhere. So that should kind of be— so build once, deploy anywhere. That should be the ground principle of everything you do in the digital space. Build once, deploy anywhere. That's the core functional decision principle. So for the little sandwich store in my home city here, get yourself a digital twin. And get it done in a way that you only have to build it once and with the ability to deploy it anywhere.

And once I've built this digital twin of my restaurant, what do I do now?

Well, the rest is marketing, I guess. So make sure that you tell some people about it. But I mean, that shouldn't be that difficult in these days because everybody is using the internet to search for their next meal anyway. So, so, so that's digital marketing.

So what you're saying in a very simple way is, let's, let's pick a restaurant, an Italian restaurant, just as anything. You want me to make a digital twin of my restaurant or my dry cleaners or something. And what that means is you want me to create a digital platform where the services that my company offers can now be marketed and provided from a digital platform, from an electronic point of view, over the internet, let's say. And from that, I then can come be creative or work with local schools or work with marketing teams and to advertise my services. So, me being a restaurant owner or cleaners or something like that where I just focus on my business and my employees, you're saying move to the digital electronic twin of what I— who am I, and then market my services so that I reach a greater audience and I grow on from my— through my digital twin.

Yeah.

Is that a good—

yeah, I think so. Yeah. And I think, I think the overall thinking that you should apply here is that one of the things that we often see with twins, uh, in, in So people being twins is that they are very closely connected with each other. So we see that when they grow up through their life, that they actually complement each other and they share information with each other. So you should never give up your physical store because the closeness of being socially close together with other people, that's very, very valuable. And we will all want that to come back. But if you have a digital twin, that will keep your business going during crisis time and make sure that your clients are there to visit you after the crisis is over. And vice versa, if you have your cozy physical store or facility where people love to come, then in crisis times, they will know you have a digital twin and they will talk to your twin when you're not available yourself. So I think that's complementary in this digital twin concept. And I think that applies to not only the shoe store or the sandwich store in, in the local city, but to all businesses. So all the processes and services that are core for you to operate in your business, make sure that you have a digital twin and that digital twin is resilient, built once with the ability to deploy anywhere and with all your security and resiliency requirements built into it. So I think, I think that's going to be the task of the CTO post the corona crisis— make sure that we have a digital twin of all core processes that can be built once and deployed anywhere.

And Brian, you wrapped up this episode, this podcast, so damn well that I think you should take my job. You and Kuba over there, who are still damn quiet, I'm telling you, by the way, your kids are the quietest kids I've ever heard because I haven't heard them at all. So compliment to you as a good papa. Ladies and gentlemen, you don't know how I achieved it, right, Thomas? So but pizza, baby, lot of pizza and candy. That's how you do it. I'm a papa too. I know the secrets. Just don't tell Mama, she'll kill you. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the IBM Keep It Simple Technology Podcast. Brian Rasmussen, IBM CTO of the Nordics, thank you so much. You are a wonderful guest, and we will have you back on in the future. Ladies and gentlemen, please share this episode with your colleagues and friends. We are now on Google Play. We soon will be on Apple iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, you name it. Have a wonderful day, and as always, stay safe until the next time. Thank you very much.