Digital & Tech Head Soumya Mishra reveals how the group behind power brands like Sensodyne, Panadol and Centrum, broke away from GSK and transformed so successfully. Haleon is itself a large organisation so separating from a huge parent company was a big challenge… “It was the biggest deal of its kind and the first to happen in this industry,” Mishra adds. “We were separating to create simplification, but we had to work hard to achieve that. There were a lot of processes and policies that didn’t make sense and needed an overhaul. This had to be backed by a culture shift that was properly communicated.”
State of Montana: Cybersecurity Through A New Lens
State of Montana CISO, Chris Santucci, explains the organisation’s drastic shift towards security, and how his team has become a shining example within the wider IT centralisation sphere… “Fixing security vulnerabilities came down to having built enough social capital and trust to correct. I like to stay slightly uncomfortable as a CISO and as a human, to keep challenging myself to deliver better services and greater value. The mission is to ensure Montana citizens get the support they need while keeping services secure and protecting data.”
Publicis Sapient: Driving Banking Transformations with AI
Financial Services Director Arunkumar Gopalakrishnan reveals how Publicis Sapient is developing the playbook for delivering successful AI-led digital transformations across the financial services landscape. “Working with Generative AI today feels like standing on a new frontier. It keeps us on our toes, but it’s also what drives us – to stay relevant, deliver outcomes and connect both worlds of business and technology.”
Techcombank:
Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer, PC Chakravarti explores the operating model, Data & AI foundations, culture and talent playbook, and the partnerships turning ambition into market leading outcomes at Techcombank in Asia. “Tech is not the limiting factor – it’s about supporting people and talent to leverage capabilities to enhance business models.”
Oakland County:
Sunil Asija, Director of Human Resources at Oakland County, talks building trust with collaboration and becoming employer of choice. “To build trust the culture needs to change from top to bottom, and it needs everyone to join in that good fight.”
Fawad Qureshi, Global Field CTO, Snowflake, on realising possibilities for innovation in this new AI era
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Without cloud migration, businesses face the end of innovation. In this new AI era, businesses operating within the closed architectures of legacy systems do not have the flexible, data-driven foundation to engage with these new technologies and ensure a strong pipeline of necessary innovation. And as AI continues to evolve, those not able to keep pace with innovation risk being left behind.
Cloud migrations are the foundation to modernise and drive business growth over the long term. When organisations migrate to a cloud-based environment, it’s crucial to focus on the tangible business value a migration will deliver, rather than simply shifting from one system to another. Moving a company’s customer-facing applications and all of their data to a cloud-based environment has the benefits that are increasingly real and measurable.
Migration isn’t just a Plug and Play approach – Which migration fits your needs?
There are two approaches to cloud migration, broadly speaking: horizontal and vertical, each with their own benefits and potential challenges. A vertical approach sees organisations migrating applications one by one: this approach is a good choice if certain systems have to be prioritised, or if the applications being migrated do not have many interdependencies. Vertical migration allows for focused efforts and risk management on individual systems, and requires fewer resources. Horizontal migration moves entire system layers at the same time. This is the best solution when businesses have tight deadlines to retire legacy systems, or if their systems are tightly integrated. Horizontal migrations tend to be faster by allowing for parallel work streams, but they require more technical expertise.
Organisations often adopt a mixture of the two approaches, for example, horizontally migrating important systems such as data platforms, while taking a vertical approach to customer-facing applications. Whatever approach an organisation takes, it’s vital that the migration also includes a culture shift, preparing employees to adapt to new, consumption-based models and the possibilities of the new technology. Migration is also just the start of the journey, unlocking the potential of AI-driven use cases and seamless data collaboration, including new ways to achieve business value.
Before diving straight in, ensure it’s with a Data-First Mindset
When migrating to the cloud, a data-first approach is essential. For those acting as the catalyst for change, whether that be IT managers or even CIOs, data must be front of mind before planning any successful migration. Understanding how data is used within the organisations, including its structure, governance needs, and how it delivers value and business outcomes, is imperative. This applies doubly when it comes to large, complex systems with many interconnected applications.
Before migrating, businesses must comprehensively assess their current ecosystem. It’s imperative that the end-to-end business product survives the migration, intact. Organisations should maintain internal control over core competencies around data, such as business process knowledge, data governance and change management. These areas include institutional knowledge that external parties may not grasp. Businesses should also maintain direct oversight over compliance requirements and risk management.
Technical activities such as cloud infrastructure optimisation, performance testing, and specialised migration tooling are something, by contrast, that can be handled by external expertise. Code conversion can also benefit from purpose-built tools that use technologies including AI. Technical parts of the immigration tend to evolve rapidly and require specialist knowledge, so are ripe for outsourcing. While doing so, those steering the migration need to ensure clear governance around outsourced activities, including regular knowledge transfer sessions.
Different parts of the business all have a role to play: IT and engineering lead on technical implementation, handling the technical side of business requirements, while finance will identify ROI opportunities and manage cloud costs. It helps to create a cross-functional steering committee with representation from every department to ensure that different areas of the business are aligned and ready to address challenges.
Adaptability and Flexibility is the key to business longevity
Migration is never one-size-fits-all, and business leaders should be prepared to be flexible and adapt. There are multiple kinds of horizontal migration, from a simple ‘lift and shift’ focused on moving systems as they are to a ‘move and improve’ where migration is followed by optimisation to reduce technical debt. They should be ready to adapt at their own pace, choosing data platforms which offer agnostic architecture and the freedom to choose between data models and tools to ensure minimal disruption.
Flexibility is also important in choosing the tools used for migrations. Flexible data platforms will offer the support businesses need to deal with collaboration and governance frameworks. For businesses operating in EMEA, where different countries can have varying policies, pay close attention to issues around data quality, security and compliance, particularly when it comes to data sovereignty and issues around European data residency.
A Shared Destiny
The shift to the cloud fundamentally changes security. The traditional cloud ‘shared responsibility’ model clearly demarcated duties between the provider and the customer. However, a more advanced approach is emerging: the ‘shared destiny’ model. This model recognises that in the event of a breach, reputational damage affects both parties. This shared risk incentivises the cloud provider to be a more proactive partner, actively helping customers strengthen their security posture rather than simply managing their own side of the demarcation line.
As ‘destinies’ intertwine, you help eliminate the vulnerability created due to password simplicity. Put simply, in a ‘shared responsibility’ model, the cloud provider is only responsible for securing infrastructure, while the customer remains responsible for securing data and apps in the cloud, as well as for configuration. In a ‘shared destiny’ model, the cloud provider plays a more proactive role to ensure that their customers have the best possible security posture.
Taking a ‘shared destiny’ approach allows businesses to be more proactive in securing data, using approaches such as multi-factor authentication, secure programmatic access and more comprehensive cloud monitoring services. Choosing a modern, AI-driven data platform offers the best security foundations here, offering security controls across cloud service providers and the entire data ecosystem.
A Pathway to Growth
In today’s world, the bigger risk is standing still. Nothing changes if nothing changes.
If organisations are holding back on innovation due to technological limitation, then the time to migrate is clear. There is no need to face an end to possibilities when the path towards success lies in reach, offering an opportunity to bring businesses up to date with modern requirements, and pave the way for the adoption of technologies such as AI.
However, as we’ve seen, it’s not just a case of plug and play. Organisations must ensure a flexible, data-driven approach to migration, while keeping security front of mind via a ‘shared destiny’ approach. To deliver this, the right choice of a modern, flexible data platform will ensure the whole organisation can work together effectively and deliver a path to future innovation and growth.
Driving Business Transformation Through Cloud & AI
Microsoft’s Shruti Harish, Head of Solution Engineering for Cloud and AI Platforms across the tech giant’s Manufacturing and Mobility vertical, talks to Interface about how to achieve successful AI implementations augmented by Cloud. Our future focused fireside chat covered everything from driving value through cloud modernisation to responsible AI.
“Leaders should align AI initiatives with clear business outcomes and foster a culture that embraces change. The focus is shifting toward AI-operated, human-led models where intelligent agents handle tasks and humans guide strategy.”
Virgin Media O2: Democratising Data as a Cultural Movement
Mauro Flores, EVP for Data Democratisation at Virgin Media O2, talks to Interface about the leading telco’s data journey and how it is supporting colleagues to innovate faster, make smarter decisions and deliver brilliant customer experiences.
“Data-driven insights are essential. They’re helping power our decisions like optimising our network performance, anticipating outages before they happen, identifying and preventing fraud, personalising offers and pricing to build customer loyalty, and forecasting demand so we invest in the right things.”
CIBC Caribbean: Shaping the future of Banking in the Caribbean
Deputy CIO Trevor Wood explains how CIBC Caribbean is blending technology, culture, and customer-centricity to deliver seamless digital experiences across the region with a ‘Future Faster’ strategy.
“We want to lead in every market we operate, build maturity across our practices and be architects of a smarter financial future for all.”
And read on for deep AI insights from ANS’s CIO on why AI isn’t just for big business, Emergn’s CTO on how your business can get AI-ready and Kore.ai’s Chief Strategy Officer on taming AI-sprawl with governance-first platforms.
We also hear from Celonis, Snowflake, ServiceNow, Make and Zoom with their tech predictions for 2026 and chart the key dates for your diary with global networking opportunities at the latest tech events and conferences across the globe.
