Vanguard Magazine

game ChangER 42 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2020 www.vanguardcanada.com See the full interview online Q What is your role at your organization today? As Chief Infrastructure Officer, I am re- sponsible to ensure that our customers have a rock-solid foundation for their critical data and business applications. This means delivering uptime, scalabili- ty, and availability 24/7, 365 days a year on Aptum's products and services, and doing so securely. Q What is the best advice you received? That a person's emotional well-being at home and in the workplace are predi- cated by a strong sense of purpose. Next to physical health, a sense of purpose is the single most important determinant of a person's happiness. I enjoy helping people find their purpose and helping them connect the dots. Q What is a habit that contributes to your success? I am privileged to be in a leadership po- sition that as part of my day to day role, it is important to always look for oppor- tunities to bring down siloes, improve communications and ultimately build trust and respect for each other. Q What people or organizations do you believe best embody the innovation mindset? Elon Musk. He sets audacious goals and, while imperfect, achieves incredible things like a new mass-production car company – a feat that hasn't happened in 100 years. It's not a typical car company but a software-defined car company that measures and analyses data in everything they do. Self-driving vehicles seemed im- possible just a few years ago; now they are literally at our doorstep. Even more remarkable given the incredible pres- sure of naysayers who said it could not be done. Q What are some of the biggest impediments to innovation in your industry sector? The battle between security, compliance, and innovation is always a challenge in our industry. There continue to be new innovative digital initiatives launched regularly to establish pathways to new revenue, enhanced customer experience, and tap into new market opportunities. Organizations must take necessary steps to protect data and other IT assets and keep compliant with regulations as a re- sult. At Aptum, we have an innovation team that focuses on these aspects in the context of a business' security - find- ing innovative ways for storing, mov- ing, managing, protecting, and securing data. Q How has innovation become engrained in your organization's culture and how is it being optimized? Customers have accelerated their digital transformation plans and are engaging to develop solutions to their business chal- lenges. They are moving at a speed that is unheard of and our job is to bring the expertise and sweat the details to ensure that it achieves their desired outcome. We can't ask customers to digitally transform if we don't do it ourselves. To that end, we have been incredibly focused on simplifying our business and maximizing automation to make intro- ducing innovative products and services more straightforward with less risk. It has allowed us to quickly deliver no less than seven major product releases to the mar- ket without a single customer service im- pact within the past year. We provide hybrid infrastructure solu- tions to support customer critical data and applications, but it goes beyond that. We've progressively moved further into helping companies with their digital trans- formation strategies – becoming more agile, software-defined, and data-driven. We help our customers leverage the pri- vate and public cloud through our Hybrid Cloud Managed Services supporting big data, AI, and ML applications. Q What technologies, business models, and trends will drive the biggest changes in your industry over the next two years? The biggest wave of change, now accel- erated by the pandemic, is the move to digitally transform businesses and with it, managing and protecting these com- plex environments becomes critical. The explosion of data requires a robust infra- structure that goes beyond storing and managing. The infrastructure needs to adapt, scale, and grow while remaining available and completely secure. As the value of data goes up for an organization, it becomes a target for cyber-attacks. A data-centric approach allows for ana- lytics to improve tenfold with technolo- gies like Data Lakes, AI, and Machine Learning. That is the future. Real-time deep learning insight on your customers' needs and your value proposition to them. Q What is your parting piece of advice? Companies that harness and embrace digital transformation will out-maneuver and differentiate against their peers that do not. It is a harsh reality but a very clear and present one. One way to get mobi- lized is to engage in the community and embrace partners that can help you on this journey. Alberto DA AnunciAcAo Chief infrastruCture OffiCer Aptum technologies

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