The telecommunications and banking sectors have a little more in common than you might think. While many analysts have postulated a technological future in which the two sectors grow together, there is another area of similarity. Both have strong core competencies and a significant user base; Yet both still run on a lot of outdated IT.
Himanshu Jha (left) notes both the similarities and the differences. He is in a good position to do this. After spending a decade at the former, at Verizon and BT – “essentially building a new stack,” as he puts it – he spent the last decade at the latter. Jha most recently served as Cloud CTIO (Chief Technology and Information Officer) following a stint at Barclays, where he co-authored the bank’s data strategy to underpin its broader business strategy as part of a newly formed data team. at TSB. A key factor was that, while his remit previously involved leveraging the cloud, he now had the opportunity to build it.
So how does Jha assess the two areas in which he is so knowledgeable? “Telecommunications is actually more complex than banking,” he explains. “Why? Because they own a big part of the network and the deployment. Their big part of the business is the network and how well it works, and that really determines the customer experience. There’s a lot of commonality in pretty much everything else – a lot of legacy, a lot of mainframe, a lot of need to move from batch mode to real time.
“[That said] The sensitivity of what a bank does is extremely high, and in this case when you have an inheritance [tech] It might hurt you more for something like that,” Jha adds. “The need for innovation at banks is therefore much greater than at telecommunications companies.
“I would like to think that banks are leading the exploitation of technology, [with] more stress for innovation.”
For the role of Cloud CTIO, the balance between leadership, strategic and technological aspects had to be found. But similar to Barclays, the importance of linking cloud strategy to business strategy – improving service, implementing hyper-personalization, leveraging analytics in the cloud, and cost and efficiency – cannot be underestimated.
Jha points out the connections between all three disciplines. “There is no point in leadership if you cannot develop a strategy and implement it,” he explains. “And the strategy has to be contextual. So we have to implement our cloud strategy at the same time, it was part of the overall technology strategy to enable the business strategy – and there is no point in investing money if something doesn’t enable the business strategy.
“If we look at it a little deeper, the data was there, and the cloud has now come through, and the AI has still come through. When you look at these three things together, they work very synergistically,” says Jha. “What I mean by that is that you can’t really explore data at scale unless you have the cloud offering, and similarly, data is key for AI. So if you want to take advantage of the three waves, you need to have a solid cloud offering.”
What did this change look like at TSB? Roughly, as Jha explainsIt was about two aspects: building new and maintaining old enterprise cloud platforms and services; and modernizing digital, data and business applications and infrastructure by re-architecting and re-platforming to be cloud-native in various ways.
A key step was understanding which blocks to recreate in AWS versus Azure. The solution was that, with a few exceptions, the customer-facing applications ran on AWS and the peer applications ran on Azure.
The latter included a virtual desktop – Jha points to Azure’s strength in this area – which was an example of replatforming; Take a set of on-premises microservices and move them to IBM Cloud. “Essentially, the actual code of these microservices hasn’t changed,” says Jha. “It was a redeployment on a different cloud platform, which allowed for better uptime and better cost management.” Azure Synapse Analytics was also used for the user-centered analysis part.
“It’s pretty safe to say [a lot of the decision is from] “You can’t decide whether AWS or Azure is good or bad, but you have to understand the technology well enough to use it for your solution, your context,” explains Jha.
But how about deciding between rearchitecting and replatforming? “If you have time and your existing on-prem applications really need a re-architecture, then go for it,” says Jha. “But I think to at least get the OPEX value of the cloud platform and have to do fewer patches and upgrades, you could reap the benefits immediately by replatforming.”
It can understandably be a minefield – and there are trapdoors that companies can easily fall through. Jha cites education and cost as the two main issues.
“I don’t think education is consistent,” he explains. “I’m not just talking about technology – I mean, there are often inconsistencies in the technology itself – but digital transformation can’t be achieved if your business owners don’t speak the same language and don’t work at the same pace.” It doesn’t work that much not about technical knowledge, but about broader brushstrokes; “That consistent understanding of where we’re going, how we’re going to get there, what technologies are in use and how that really impacts the bottom line,” as Jha puts it.
Of course the costs are relevant. Given the numbers, leadership wants the project to be completed as efficiently as possible. However, this can lead to unforeseen costs. “Let’s say you’re successfully using the cloud,” says Jha. “You have to pay attention to increasing investments through greater capacities while at the same time offering the greatest range of skills. The way you deploy and develop in the cloud requires a very different set of skills than you currently have.
“Often these programs are discontinued because expectations don’t match,” Jha adds. “Cloud infrastructure provides an advantage when it is in a stable state and you move all your workloads as much as possible. Then the denominator increases, so to speak, and you get the advantage. But not if you’re running some Mickey Mouse Edge use cases. Then you don’t see the value of the cloud.
“Reaching the full extent of the cloud takes time,” says Jha. “You not only have to take into account the initial costs, but also the time for a run. You will work in the on-premise infrastructure for a period of time until the applications in the cloud are stable.
“Those two costs – I saw them missing. People forget to plan for it.”
Jha speaks on Cloud Transformation Conference On February 15, he will share how to master cloud migration strategies for business growth and agility. The talk will be based on Jha’s experiences, so expect life lessons similar to those above. But if there is a conclusion, it is a muted but important one.
“I want people to learn — because I felt that way — that I hope they can be a little more real,” Jha says. “[They] Leave behind all the reports and promises, the hype and the possibilities and redouble your thinking, your training or collaboration or the much more boring sounding work to understand that the vision will never be realized until you yourself come along Go to the nuts and bolts.
“People are excited, but the excitement will never come until they double down and figure out how to really make it work.”
Photo of Nicholas Cappello At Unsplash
Check out the upcoming ones Cloud Transformation Conference, a free virtual event for business and technology leaders to explore the evolving landscape of cloud transformation. Book your free virtual ticket to dive deep into the practicalities and possibilities of cloud adoption. Find out more here.
