July 29, 2026 • 44 mins
As AI adoption accelerates and global regulations evolve, digital sovereignty has shifted from policy concept to board-level priority. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell sits down live at VivaTech with IBM’s Ana Paula Assis and AXA CIO Giovanni D’Aniello to explore how organizations can balance innovation, control, trust, and resilience in the age of AI.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Robert and Joe here. Today we're bringing
you a new episode of Smart Talks with IBM.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This season, Malcolm Gladwell talks to leaders using AI and
emerging technology to change the game in their industries.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
From Heineken using AI to become the world's best connected
brewer to UFC using data to turn chaos into clarity
for fans and commentators.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Two Cleveland Clinic using AI and quantum computing to accelerate
discovery in biomedical research.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Smart Talks with IBM explores how organizations are applying technology
in unexpected and transformative ways.
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New episodes drop every month wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn more at IBM dot com slash smart Talks.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
This is a paid advertisement for IBM.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Hi Malcolm Glawell, and you're listening to Smart Talks with IBM.
Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build
and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly, it's fast, reliable,
affordable time. More and more of your operations rely on it.
Then one day the terms change. What once felt flexible
(01:07):
now feels difficult to leave, moving to another provider or
bringing those capabilities back under your own control. Could take years,
cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's
the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all
sorts of third party systems, cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models,
(01:31):
software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background,
but when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift,
organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility
they actually have. This is why digital sovereignty has shifted
from policy concept to board level priority. So to understand
(01:55):
the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to attend Vivtec,
Europe's largest technology conference, to speak with two people who
think about these questions every day. On Apaula A. Cis,
IBM's senior Vice president and chair for IBM e M
EA and APAC, and Giovanni Daniello, group chief Information Officer
(02:18):
at AKSA. Hello, everyone, welcome to a live taping of
the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I was downstairs in
the IBM booths chatting with the people who were doing
the data Sovereignty presentation, and they were discussing the and
I said, oh, it sounds like you're solving a headache.
(02:41):
And the guy I was trying to said, that's all
we do at IBM. We solve headaches and cure headaches,
and I want to start out with the two of you.
What is the headache in this instance.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
So the topic of sovereignty gained a lot of traction
over the past few years, and even though I would
said it really became a buzzword this year, I think
that this actually started during COVID, when all the supply
chains became extremely stressed and companies and governments started to
(03:14):
understand that there were a lot of choke points in
the world, right, so how can I do more on
ear shore in how can I guarantee that I have
autonomy of key elements of my supply chain? I think
was really the wake up call. And then we entered
in a period of unfortunately many wars happening constraining for example,
energy security. So all these disruptions in the world led
(03:39):
companies and governments to think, what is really that I
need to consider as critical for me, and how do
I have better control of those capabilities? And now technology
being at the core of the operations, I think that
actually increased the need for companies to focus on sovereignty.
So that is the headache given that there are so
many dependencies, given that we're living in a world that
(04:01):
is so interconnected, how do you get autonomy, how do
you get back control making sure that you continue to
operate in a collaborative ecosystem.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
It's a difficulty equilibrium in reality because we have to
take all those dimensions into consideration, making sure that at
the same time we can continue to access innovation and
and and that's where the paradigm is is really very, very.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
Complicated to solve.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
So the headache we have in AXA and then probably
many large organizations in the in the world is exactly
the topic in Europe at least it's it's about sovereignty
exactly in the terms you are talking about, and that's
becoming a topic that is very that is, there's a
lot of visibility, very in the agenda at very top
(04:51):
executive level since probably Yeah, it started with COVIY, I agree,
but the last two years there's been an acceleration clearly.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Yeah, and I you have a few data points. Today
we announced a study through our IBM Institute of Business
Value where basically we asked companies around the world, so
do you have visibility of your dependencies, right, do you
know exactly where are your exposures? And only nine percent
(05:22):
of the companies said that they have that level of visibility,
and seventy one percent of the company said that if
they needed to switch a provider today, it would be
very difficult to do so. So I think the headache.
This actually shows in numbers the size of the headache.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, you're in the insurance business. Speak to the specifics
of your own business. Why would this be an issue that?
Am I right in thinking that this is an issue
that is a specific and special concern to an insurance I.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
Don't think so.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
No, you know, no, I don't think so, because in reality,
it's an issue for organizations using technology, data and AI
as an important driver within the activities they manage.
Speaker 6 (06:13):
Insurance.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
Of course, insurance is about data, it's about people, it's
about technology, of course, So it's very very central.
Speaker 6 (06:20):
But it's absolutely not limited to insurance.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
Because at the end, if we want to talk a
little bit more into details, what is sovereignty Because everybody
talks about sovereignty, but what is it about? And very
often people believe that once you know where your data
are located and if you are your open company. If
you have the certainty that data are located in Europe,
many people believe I'm safe, I'm sobeer incompatible. Well it's
(06:46):
absolutely not enough. So there are models that not only
we are using an accept that are also very very
public on the market. Very often will refer to four dimensions.
Of course, data location is number one. If you don't
know where your data are, I mean you don't know anything.
But it's not only that, I mean how do you operate?
(07:08):
Who is operating the system, who is patching, who is
creating new versions of whatever the feature that becomes available.
That's the second one. The third one is contracts, legal terms.
Who is in charge legally speaking of the activities we
talk about, and and and the last one is the
(07:30):
technicality itself. Who is really mastering the technical details the
underlying stach. Is it something that is European, US, China?
Speaker 6 (07:41):
You know? And I mean it's it's known by everybody.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
Most of the large European companies and US companies are
using US technologies. So the difficulty in soeranties to scan
on a permanent basis the four dimensions. Making sure that
because you were saying another that you know exactly what
is exactly the situation on your business on those four dimensions.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Give me an example of how a specific example of
what difference it would make where your data was being held.
In other words, in what sense our regulatory requirements for example,
different from one country to another, or from the EU
to North America Or is there a practical way to
kind of express those differences.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah, there are very clear regulations in many of the
countries regarding what type of data needs to reside inside
the country, right, so particularly financial data, health data, those
are really really controlled and they have to follow those
regulatory requirements. So the way that we approach that in
(08:50):
our architecture, in our platform is to enforce those regulatory
requirements within the platform so that this is not just
relied from a contract low standpoint, but that you ensure
with governance tools and with capabilities that the platform is
securing that data in compliance with those regulatory aspects. And
(09:13):
when you think about sovereignty, it has to go beyond
just the regulatory and compliance requirements. It's really understanding your
business requirements. What are the applications that are truly mission
critical and that you need to ensure that have that
level of control. Because also controlling everything is not necessarily viable,
(09:35):
not from a technical standpoint and not from a business
case standpoint, right, So that is the I think that
is the challenge that many companies are going right now,
is to have the visibility of their application mistake, how
that matches the business strategy, and then making the decisions
on what is the level of sovereignty that I need
to apply.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Let's say I'm a naive company, I don't pay any
attention to this, I have operations in any different countries.
What's the worst case scenario, what's the down What's what
happens if you don't act kind of prudently around data sovereignty.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
So, I think the first aspect is if something happens
to your infrastructure that is sitting somewhere that you don't
have visibility, goes out for some reason, a war and
energy blackout, any other cyber attack in your environment, if
you don't have a fallback plan, if you don't have
(10:34):
a way to move that application to operate from another
place that has the backups the real time data that
you are accessing to your pretty much go out of
out of operations, right. So it's a that's a very
important question. Because I think it brings the sovereignty aspect
to what I believe is the strategic role that it plays.
(10:55):
It's about resiliency, it's not about necessarily just meeting regulary requirements.
And I think you need to do that from a
risk management standpoint, and I think an insurance company is
the best position to do that. But it's not just regulations,
it's really making sure that you have continuous operation twenty
(11:16):
four by seven, which is pretty much what businesses need
to come to achieve currrectly.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
In some countries for insurance, for example, but not only
for insurance. In some countries there are obligations locally, for example,
to store data in the country. So back to your question,
there's a limit to how naive you can be if
you want to develop a business, because that's at the
(11:44):
heart of getting the authorization to operate and to run
your business in the countries where you would like to.
But then once you are over the kind of MVP
of requirements that are mandatory for you to open and operate,
then of course, I mean that's atort thing that an
What you said is completely completely relevant.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
How does how does one anticipate these issues changing over time.
In other words, you said that people are going to
wake up to the importance of data sovereignty during COVID.
I'm just curious if we fast forward five years, do
we imagine that the kind of landscape in which companies
like you as you want are operating is going to
(12:25):
get more complex or less complex? What's the what's the
movement in this?
Speaker 4 (12:31):
I think it's going to become more complex because AI
is really accelerating all the trends.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Why I want you to can you explain? I want
you to kind of do a little deep dive on Yes,
what specifically is it about AI that's complicating this?
Speaker 4 (12:47):
That's a very good question. AI now moves from you know,
actions just being taken from you know, somebody operating a
system to the technology actually making this right. So you
have to have a much better visibility of what systems
AI is touching, what data it is accessing, and where right.
(13:11):
So you have to have that mapping much more clear
because the stakes are higher now on how technology is
actually operating your business right. So I do think that
there is an acceleration because of that. The second element,
AI is going to increase the amount of vulnerabilities that
are going to be either identified or created.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
So you have to have.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
An ability to continuously monitor and scan what is happening
in the cybersecurity landscape so that you can prevent and
react in a much faster way. So there are more
elements of disruption that are coming up as a result
of the acceleration of technology.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
I can give you a concrete example. So the wapplications
work today is pretty much deterministic. You have rules, you
have data, you have processes. Very often embed it into
the the code, into the business logic. So these are
executed and very often if you have the same inputs,
(14:15):
you have the same output. And so you have I
mean application with modules, you have APIs, you have data,
you have you know beautiful.
Speaker 6 (14:24):
Mobile first front ends. You know all these fancy things
that we that we run on the cloud or on
premium whatever.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
So let's project yourself into a couple of years from
now where the architecture is going to be agentic native.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
With concepts such as had less applications.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
So you will interact with kind of prompt interface and
you will start asking as a customer or as an
employee or as a partner, you will ask interacting and
asking a certain number of problems to be solved, and
this is going to be given through tokens and all
these all these technologies into a ecosystem of digital agents
(15:02):
orchestrated and orchestrating activities looking at what is in the
in the rug in terms of what is the process
telling me about how do I have to manage that?
What kind of data do I have in my repository?
And you enter into something which is going to become
much more probabilistic, and you have llms there in the
meantime in the middle trying to get answers smart answers
(15:27):
to queries that will come from specialized digital agents. So
there's nothing to do with the way applications run today.
And if you look at the flow of data today
that we know, we know where the data located. That
was saying, you know a lot of things we know
and how the data is going to flow in all
(15:49):
the directions in this Argentic native architecture. You understand that,
as you said, this is going to accelerate significantly and
the need to understand the underlying tech and architecture in
the sovereign the ecosystem is going to be crucial. You know,
data can suddenly become public in the way they can
(16:11):
be used to train models and a little bit of
your IP step by instead of going to go into
those those models if they learn. If you are not careful,
that's what it's going to happen. Of course, there are
ways to prevent that, but if you're not careful, you
can suddenly see the word around you becoming more intelligent
than you on your own business.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
It seems like there's a this is a very crude
way of putting it, but there's a race going on
with the technology on running one race and then the
other race. Is our ability to kind of make sense
of it, have visibility and it integrate the technology into
the way we do our who's winning that race right now?
Is it? Is it hard to keep up with the technology.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
That's why I think you need the technology to govern
the technology right and and and to me, that is
what our proposition with this platform that we launched a
few weeks ago called Sovereign Core, is to provide that
those that tool in and those capabilities to help organizations
create those capabilities. Because what we learned already is that,
(17:14):
as Jovanny explained very well, the technology is going to
accelerate exponentially. How do you map that with that same
level of speed only another technology that is going to
you know, operate at the same level of acceleration. And
that is exactly the proposition that we have in supporting
(17:37):
our clients. So that's the headache that you're trying to solve.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Givani, do you I'm assuming you've been in this field
of technology.
Speaker 6 (17:45):
For how many years or thirty years? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Is it any I'm curious to compare the moment we're
into any previous moments. So you've now lived through several
technological upheavals. Is this one compared to the ones earlier
in your career?
Speaker 5 (18:02):
For me, this one is very clearly the one that
has the highest potential and in terms of speed, there's
no precedent everything we've done in the past where we've
been trying to modernize. Let's take a complete, complete exam
modernizing business applications. We had this discussion a couple of
(18:25):
months ago. So like all the companies in the world,
we have legacy applications. All the companies have legacy applications
that have been written I don't know, thirty fifty years ago,
and the journey to modernize those applications. Has been the
last let's say, the last fifteen years, something like very
often a five years ticket every time you wanted to
(18:47):
work to modernize something, including migration and decommissioning. And every
time we even a year ago, every time we were
thinking about how there's technology out there we can go much, much,
much faster, we've always been blocked, and then we always
came back to that unit of performance of the five years.
(19:09):
And since this year, things are become potentially feasible because
that's the agentic revolution, because then you can specialize agents
like people in a team, to split the process into
subtask and everybody is going to be very smart and
intelligent in solving a part of the problem. And then
if you are good enough to orchestrate that towards an outcome,
(19:32):
which could be an application, modernization, ABC, whatsoever. Potentially I'm
saying potentially, but this is now technologically we see that.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
It can work.
Speaker 5 (19:41):
You can do that, not any more than five years,
but maybe I don't know, a year and a half,
two years, maybe a little bit less. Why not, I
don't know, but you see, the difference is simply huge.
I've never seen that before.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I think the compression that you're seeing in project delivery,
in new products at we are releasing updating versions of products,
it's something that is absolutely unprecedented. So the base of
innovation is happening very fast. And if we think that
AI has already created a tremendous impact, let's wait for quantum, right,
(20:16):
which is going to even take this.
Speaker 6 (20:19):
To another level. And the mix, the combination, prombination of both.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yes, it's a very interesting contradiction at the core of
all this, which is that intuitively, we know that innovation
thrives on openness into connectedness, you know, no border or whatever.
But so DATUS already makes us think very specifically and often,
(20:43):
I would imagine, painfully about the reality of orders. How
do you manage that contradiction?
Speaker 4 (20:51):
I think that is really the challenge that we are
all facing right now, right I don't think we have
one hundred percent clear answer yet. There are certain elements
of this tack that clearly, I mean, trying to reinvent
is actually going to be a reinvention of the wheel,
(21:11):
Like I mean, I'm not going to develop chips from
the scratch from scratch, for example, infrastructure from scratch, But
there are other elements of the stack that I can
get much better control.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
So for example, to the point that you'ovanni made before,
where my data is sitting, what is the orchestration layer
that I can implement so that I can bring the
right player at the right time. So look at the
stack of technology that you're implementing and see what are
the elements where number one, it's feasible to achieve control
(21:43):
and number two, I know that it's something that I
actually have to do to make my business resilient. And
focus on those, right, because if you try to address
the entire stack, or if you try to create a
model that basically build a fortres, that's not going to
be even feasible for you to achieve.
Speaker 6 (22:05):
Right.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
I normally say that sovereignty is not about building walls,
it's about building bridges, right, It's how you really create
those connections.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
I like. I like the way you phrase it.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
That's exactly that, because at the end, if you put
sovereignty as an architecture requirement when you do design, I
don't say it's the it's it's it's the key to
this very difficult you know, parading. But at least, it's
making choices easier. So, for example, if you if you
(22:41):
don't put sovereignty as a business requirement, and you want
to develop your business in the cloud, what you are
going to do is probably look at the available features
that ive features from the cloud provider. You're going to
use those features full speed to go as fast as possible,
as efficient as possible, and get access to all the
stack you know and everything else. And the day you
(23:02):
have a problem, you cannot switch, or it will take
you five years and five hundred million to switch.
Speaker 6 (23:10):
If you take the.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
Sovereignty as a requirement by design, when you want to
start the configuration of your stack, you ask yourself, what
do I have to concretely put here as a configuration item?
If I want to be, for example, multi cloud compatible
or multi cloud and on prem compatible, what kind of
(23:34):
additional technologies maybe I have to use in order to
be able to I mean, do some portability of some
workload from one platform to another.
Speaker 6 (23:44):
Not because I want to do that every day, because
it makes no sense.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
But if tomorrow I have a problem, I want to
be sure that by design I can I know what
the process I'm going to use, what's the process is
going to use to do that portability. So these are
elements that again, if you don't design your architecture using
those those elements, you wake up in the morning you
have a problem and you have no solution except spending
(24:08):
alpha billion euro. So that's that's that's the first point
I wanted to make. Now the second point is if
you want to turn technology into a business outcome, at
the end, you need to be very precisely activating a technology.
So at the end you have to make a choice,
(24:31):
yes I activate this feature you know, and yes I
use this tech provider this solution.
Speaker 6 (24:37):
At the end, you don't escape.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
And what it also allows to do is making sure
that in this architecture based design you also make explicit
what you buy from a tech provider and what you
do yourself, and also what you do yourself for how
long because you can try a certain number of things
(25:02):
because you are not convinced that a certain number of
technology providers out there are sufficiently cross cross cloud platforms,
and and you don't want to end up into a
locking situation. So you can say I don't feel that
it's mature enough, so I start doing it. But it's
(25:22):
not because you start doing it yourself, that you have
to be stuck in that strategy of doing it yourself
for fifteen years.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
Again, even if you start doing it.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
Yourself, in the design of the way you do it yourself,
you plan an exit door to be able to move
into a solution from a tech provider when the strategy
is mature enough. So that's the difficulty, and that this
is every day discussions with discipline. What I always recommend
the teams is make the things explicit. There's no right
(25:54):
or wrong answer in a limited timeframe. There is something
that is best today for the company and may not
be the case tomorrow.
Speaker 6 (26:02):
So let's make it.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Explicit and don't miss that that that I mean that
extra work because it's extra work. This is not something
that is coming really not falling from the sky. This
is extra work. But it's worse doing this this job.
To be sure that at least we are always in
this equilibri difficult equilibrium between accessing technologies and being sovereign
(26:25):
compatible by design.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
Just to stress you saw that Jovan used the word
by design all the time, right, because I think that
intentionality is probably what's different from what we saw in
the past on how companies were adopting innovation. It was
very much driven by convenience and speed, and now you
have to have convenience, speed and intentionality and understand that
(26:51):
you know, you have to have visibility on the decisions
you're making, and you have to keep your choices more open.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
It was curious when you describe kind of challenges that
come along with data sovereignty. This is also the way
that two of you work together. So I can I
mean companies insurers have been working with IBM. I imagine
for as long as they've been insurance and as long
as they've been IBM. But I mean, in this particular iteration,
(27:20):
are we altering the nature the relationship.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Before I go specifically to the partnership with as, I'm
going to give an example of what you're doing with
another company, which I think illustrates very well the intention,
the objective and the challenge.
Speaker 6 (27:37):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
So we have a partnership with Locale as well, right,
which is the cosmetics company. And they were like, okay,
foundational models, large language models.
Speaker 6 (27:47):
Are super powerful.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Right, But I invested one hundred years in my company
to build knowledge about building formula for cosmetics.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
I don't want to give that expertise that knowledge away,
so I want to train my own my own foundational model.
They are not going to do the entire stack of
training by themselves, so they partner with us. We provide research,
We provide tooling that allows them to bring their data
and create their own model based on an open source
(28:20):
pre trained a model. So these are the types of
you know, challenges that companies are facing. And to my
point prior, what is really critical to the point that
you don't want, you know, a third party to have
visibility or access to And when it comes to the
to the relationship with ACTS and many other of our clients,
(28:42):
I think number one is transparency. Right, they totally understand
how our technology operates. What are the you know, what
are the elements that are part of our architecture that
are going to connect with their systems and trust becomes
really a fundamental element. Jovanni said. There are things that
I'm going to build, there are things that I'm going
(29:04):
to buy, So who am I going to buy from?
Does this company really understand sovereignty by design? It's part
of the way that the architecture their solutions. I think
those are the elements and I think That's why this
discussion is so important right now because it also levels
the playing field for us. Right at IBM, we have
(29:25):
always been a company focused on technologies for the corporate
world to really implement mission critical workloads. So I think
now people understand why we approach things the way we
approach and why hybrid cloud, you know, giving companies the
ability to access multiple providers either on prem or in
(29:45):
the public domain. Why we have approached our technologies in
that characterization is because we are starting to see the
challenges of not having a multi cloud hybrid cloud strategy
can actually imply to your business. So I think that
this is really what changes for us now we have
we we are much more conscious on the risks and
(30:08):
those have to be considered when you're making technical decisions.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
Yeah, I think in contact remre with with what you said.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
That's that's that's at the heart of the relationship between
company like accesle and and and.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
A strategic partner technology partner.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
If if that understanding is not there, there is no
way we are going to rely on that strategic partner
to build whatever future strategical orientation and and and it's
true that today we have a large variety of technologies
running in production. As an insurance company, like banks, we
(30:49):
have mainframes running a lot of a lot of business.
But at the same time we are full speeding the
AI transformation. We have finished the clab migration and being
able to understand the full stuck again, that's what is
absolutely critical.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I had asked you earlier about was there anything particular
about the insurance business when it came to this question.
I want to come back to that a little bit,
because you know, you've both of you have talked about
trust and transparency. Our trust and transparency pretty core considerations
(31:29):
for insure, I mean, much more so than someone that's
yeah making you know, handkerchiefs. Talk a little bit about
Can you revisit that question.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
Yeah, of course, I think you have a very good
point if I look at the notion of trust. As
you said, insurance is about trust the noble purpose of
an insurance company.
Speaker 6 (31:48):
That's what I repeat every time I have the opportunity.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
You know, I'm so happy every morning when I wake
up because I know what I'm waking up. EXCI is
there to help families, companies, individuals when they face real difficulties.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
You know why you wake up every morning.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
You know what is why it's difficult, and this implies,
as you said, the notion of trust. So of course
for us what it means, it means one, we need
to make sure you were talking about data healthcare data and.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
Your initial intervention.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
We need to make sure indeed we know perfectly exactly
where our data are stored and what kind of data
we talk about, where is it sensitive data health data,
because we need to overprotect that in order to make
sure that data that we have for our customers are
not going to be made public. That's our duty to
(32:44):
do that. It's again a notion of trust. Our customers
trust that we do that. Insurance companies are long term companies,
and if you don't have trust anymore, I mean we're
simply out of business.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
So data is an important topic.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
But at the same time we talked about cyber You know,
we have a very very strong cyber team and cyber
security practice that we use both of course to protect
AXA like many organisms. I mean we all do that,
of course, but also to help our customers protect themselves.
Speaker 6 (33:21):
And we have also used our.
Speaker 5 (33:23):
Skills to develop insurance products for companies to protect them
against cyber risks. So that's also our duty to say
not only we develop those skills, but we also give
that skill back via an insurance product to our customers
because we want to help them. And then, of course,
(33:43):
back to the notion of trust itself, if those elements
are there at the end, what we believe as an
insurance company, and I agree with you this is valid
for the insurance sector in general, is that if we
continue to demonstrate that we do that very serio, our
(34:03):
customers continue to have a lot of trust in us,
and probably with the A revolution, the ones who will
be able to be better, if I can use that word,
will be the ones who will be able to continuously
demonstrate that they can they always deserve the trust that
they received from from from their customers. So yes, of
(34:24):
course this is specific. I mean the specific to the
insurance sector probably thinks also such a know, pharmaceutical companies,
you know things activities where it's very very sensitive.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
Yeah, that's that's clear.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Let me ask a question the other way and maybe
Honor you can jump in here. These considerations might differ
from industry to industry, but can you what about from
big too small? Are is this a more pressing issue
for a multinational than it is for a startup.
Speaker 6 (34:59):
I think that this.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Is this this applies to all all the companies, right,
especially because they startups from today are not like the
startups from the past.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
Right.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Everybody is scaling so fast. Right, You're seeing companies going
from zero to billion in like months in the current
in the current world. All these startup startups in general,
they operate in a global in a global footprint. So
if I am a startup going into the let's say
the healthcare, right industry, I'll need to follow the regulations,
(35:31):
even if I'm a very small startup, right. So I
do think that probably what is happening now is that
this applies to different sizes, different industries, probably some more
regulated than others. And going back to the point of
Giovanni on insurance, I think insurance is probably the industry
where this is much more visible, because insurance is about
(35:56):
pricing risk, right, and how do you price risk based
on knowledge, based on probabilities, And that's all data, right,
So data is their product, I would say. But every
company now will have to be watching those aspects because
as they scale, even if they are small, they'll need
to be meeting those requirements.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
If you were to chat with a founder who's just
starting out, came to you and said, what should I
be doing about data?
Speaker 6 (36:24):
Sovereignty?
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Should what should I get right on day one? What
would your advice be?
Speaker 4 (36:29):
I think now it's much easier because when you're starting
from scratch, you can really design your solutions and your
applications already with all that in your mind. Right, So
all the points that Jovanni made before. By design, this
is how you're going to design up front. Understand what
industry are operating in. Understand what are the implications of
(36:51):
the data that you're manipulating, Map the risk and the
critical mission applications that you're going to develop. Make sure
that those are really like sovereign to the core, and
you know, start the execution.
Speaker 5 (37:07):
We have not been talking a lot about that, but
if I look at Europe now, for example, encryption is
very critical. When you talk sovereignty, everything you said is
absolutely correct, but encrypt. That's an advice I would give
is make sure, for example that the management of the
keys is yours is yours, you know, and do that
(37:29):
from day one. Don't do that because when you do
encryption very often That's what I was saying earlier. So
you have native services, for example, coming from the cloud providers,
and you can encrypt using the native services and dis
toward the keys of course that they have been used
to do this encryption, and it's very comfortable. You can
(37:53):
go very you can be very fast, but you lose
control mm hm. And so that's that's a very simple
trick that in the design very often now comes on
a regular business to pay attention. Of course, you can
use the services, but again storing the keys, the keys
are yours, so then nobody can access your data.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
This is a really interesting theme that I'd love to
sort of end on, which is it seemed like there
was a moment in the evolution of technology where the
trend was in the other direction that I was you
want to do outsources as much as you could and
just focus on a few things. But now you're talking
about the importance of taking back control. Is that? Am
(38:39):
I right? Is this a shift across a number of
different dimensions when it comes to technology right now?
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Yeah? I think technology now is so core to the business,
is so central to the strategy that you really have
to take it like any other major component of your
supply chain and to me, that's the reason why we
have this wake up moment where people understand that I
(39:05):
need to put much more control, I need to have
much more visibility.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
The regulation itself is also creating, in a way the
obligation for us for certain activities to have those activities.
Speaker 6 (39:20):
Back under our control.
Speaker 5 (39:23):
For example, if I look at DORA regulation, what is
DORA regulation telling you understand your key business processes, Map
those key business processes to your underlying technology.
Speaker 6 (39:36):
Check where you have concentration risks.
Speaker 5 (39:38):
Mapping again, starting from your very critical business processes. And
once you've identified the areas where you have concentration, which
is normal, plan strategies, right strategies, test strategies on reversibility
(39:59):
and so this.
Speaker 6 (40:01):
A couple of years ago.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
We were doing that, I would say, just when we
were feeling that something in a specific area of the
architecture was a little bit strange.
Speaker 6 (40:15):
Then we were doing a deep dive.
Speaker 5 (40:17):
And we were very often arriving at the conclusion that
probably there we need to change something. Let's change the technology,
create more portability, and bring the thing under control. But
it was really sporadic, you know, it was not systematic.
With the regulation. Now it's mandatory we are as an
(40:37):
insurance company, we have to demonstrate every year we do
the job. So you see, I think you are totally
right in saying that we need to make sure we
have a certain number of activities back under our control.
But it's not only us deciding that. I think it's
also regulations forcing us. And from that perspective at to say,
(40:58):
this was a very good initiative.
Speaker 6 (41:00):
So just.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
When you started, Giovanni and you're in this field, you
were probably either down the hall or on another floor,
and now.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
You have to be.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Directly in the C suite. I mean, these are It's
over the course of your career you've probably gone from
being marginal to being essential, which is very fascinating. I'm
wondering did you Did you anticipate that transformation.
Speaker 5 (41:29):
A little bit, yes, because I've always been convinced that
in reality, the more the world was going to modernize
and digitize, the more the technology was going to be inevitable.
But again I was I've not anticipated the speed of
the current description that I've not anticipated. You know, I
(41:51):
was thinking about some of the statements that I was
making five years ago, announcing that a certain number of
elements we're going to upen probably you know, five two
time years time frame. In the meantime it's over. We
have already another disruption, you know. And I'm not talking
fifty years ago. I'm just talking five years or ten
(42:13):
years ago.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
Always had that feeling that technology was going to be
really critical, but I have to be honest and not honest,
not that the level it is today.
Speaker 6 (42:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
The irony of this conversation is that I over the
I've been a journalist for several decades and I realized
a few months ago that my data, in which case
is just interviews, you know, interview tape and transport, was
scattered across a million different places. So I did my
own version of this, and I hired a twenty one
year old to sit on my hopice physically goes through
(42:45):
all my old archives. I'm doing my own version of
Malcolm Data Sovereignty is going on this summer a lot
less elaterate.
Speaker 6 (42:52):
Good practice, good practice.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah that's good.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
But thank you very much for joining us on smart
talks I and good luck, and thank you all out
there for coming and listening.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Ramano, Amy Gains, McQuaid,
Trina Menino, and Jake Harper. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence
Mastering by Sarah Braguera, music by Gramoscope, Strategy by Cassidy Meyer.
Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries
and Ruby's studio at iHeartMedia. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
(43:33):
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. This is a paid
advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this podcast don't necessarily
represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.
Hey everyone, it's Robert and Joe here. Today we're bringing
you a new episode of Smart Talks with IBM.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
This season, Malcolm Gladwell talks to leaders using AI and
emerging technology to change the game in their industries.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
From Heineken using AI to become the world's best connected
brewer to UFC using data to turn chaos into clarity
for fans and commentators.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
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Smart Talks with IBM explores how organizations are applying technology
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Hi Malcolm Glawell, and you're listening to Smart Talks with IBM.
Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build
and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly, it's fast, reliable,
affordable time. More and more of your operations rely on it.
Then one day the terms change. What once felt flexible
(01:07):
now feels difficult to leave, moving to another provider or
bringing those capabilities back under your own control. Could take years,
cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's
the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all
sorts of third party systems, cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models,
(01:31):
software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background,
but when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift,
organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility
they actually have. This is why digital sovereignty has shifted
from policy concept to board level priority. So to understand
(01:55):
the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to attend Vivtec,
Europe's largest technology conference, to speak with two people who
think about these questions every day. On Apaula A. Cis,
IBM's senior Vice president and chair for IBM e M
EA and APAC, and Giovanni Daniello, group chief Information Officer
(02:18):
at AKSA. Hello, everyone, welcome to a live taping of
the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I was downstairs in
the IBM booths chatting with the people who were doing
the data Sovereignty presentation, and they were discussing the and
I said, oh, it sounds like you're solving a headache.
(02:41):
And the guy I was trying to said, that's all
we do at IBM. We solve headaches and cure headaches,
and I want to start out with the two of you.
What is the headache in this instance.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
So the topic of sovereignty gained a lot of traction
over the past few years, and even though I would
said it really became a buzzword this year, I think
that this actually started during COVID, when all the supply
chains became extremely stressed and companies and governments started to
(03:14):
understand that there were a lot of choke points in
the world, right, so how can I do more on
ear shore in how can I guarantee that I have
autonomy of key elements of my supply chain? I think
was really the wake up call. And then we entered
in a period of unfortunately many wars happening constraining for example,
energy security. So all these disruptions in the world led
(03:39):
companies and governments to think, what is really that I
need to consider as critical for me, and how do
I have better control of those capabilities? And now technology
being at the core of the operations, I think that
actually increased the need for companies to focus on sovereignty.
So that is the headache given that there are so
many dependencies, given that we're living in a world that
(04:01):
is so interconnected, how do you get autonomy, how do
you get back control making sure that you continue to
operate in a collaborative ecosystem.
Speaker 5 (04:13):
It's a difficulty equilibrium in reality because we have to
take all those dimensions into consideration, making sure that at
the same time we can continue to access innovation and
and and that's where the paradigm is is really very, very.
Speaker 6 (04:29):
Complicated to solve.
Speaker 5 (04:30):
So the headache we have in AXA and then probably
many large organizations in the in the world is exactly
the topic in Europe at least it's it's about sovereignty
exactly in the terms you are talking about, and that's
becoming a topic that is very that is, there's a
lot of visibility, very in the agenda at very top
(04:51):
executive level since probably Yeah, it started with COVIY, I agree,
but the last two years there's been an acceleration clearly.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Yeah, and I you have a few data points. Today
we announced a study through our IBM Institute of Business
Value where basically we asked companies around the world, so
do you have visibility of your dependencies, right, do you
know exactly where are your exposures? And only nine percent
(05:22):
of the companies said that they have that level of visibility,
and seventy one percent of the company said that if
they needed to switch a provider today, it would be
very difficult to do so. So I think the headache.
This actually shows in numbers the size of the headache.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, you're in the insurance business. Speak to the specifics
of your own business. Why would this be an issue that?
Am I right in thinking that this is an issue
that is a specific and special concern to an insurance I.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
Don't think so.
Speaker 5 (06:00):
No, you know, no, I don't think so, because in reality,
it's an issue for organizations using technology, data and AI
as an important driver within the activities they manage.
Speaker 6 (06:13):
Insurance.
Speaker 5 (06:13):
Of course, insurance is about data, it's about people, it's
about technology, of course, So it's very very central.
Speaker 6 (06:20):
But it's absolutely not limited to insurance.
Speaker 5 (06:23):
Because at the end, if we want to talk a
little bit more into details, what is sovereignty Because everybody
talks about sovereignty, but what is it about? And very
often people believe that once you know where your data
are located and if you are your open company. If
you have the certainty that data are located in Europe,
many people believe I'm safe, I'm sobeer incompatible. Well it's
(06:46):
absolutely not enough. So there are models that not only
we are using an accept that are also very very
public on the market. Very often will refer to four dimensions.
Of course, data location is number one. If you don't
know where your data are, I mean you don't know anything.
But it's not only that, I mean how do you operate?
(07:08):
Who is operating the system, who is patching, who is
creating new versions of whatever the feature that becomes available.
That's the second one. The third one is contracts, legal terms.
Who is in charge legally speaking of the activities we
talk about, and and and the last one is the
(07:30):
technicality itself. Who is really mastering the technical details the
underlying stach. Is it something that is European, US, China?
Speaker 6 (07:41):
You know? And I mean it's it's known by everybody.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
Most of the large European companies and US companies are
using US technologies. So the difficulty in soeranties to scan
on a permanent basis the four dimensions. Making sure that
because you were saying another that you know exactly what
is exactly the situation on your business on those four dimensions.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Give me an example of how a specific example of
what difference it would make where your data was being held.
In other words, in what sense our regulatory requirements for example,
different from one country to another, or from the EU
to North America Or is there a practical way to
kind of express those differences.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah, there are very clear regulations in many of the
countries regarding what type of data needs to reside inside
the country, right, so particularly financial data, health data, those
are really really controlled and they have to follow those
regulatory requirements. So the way that we approach that in
(08:50):
our architecture, in our platform is to enforce those regulatory
requirements within the platform so that this is not just
relied from a contract low standpoint, but that you ensure
with governance tools and with capabilities that the platform is
securing that data in compliance with those regulatory aspects. And
(09:13):
when you think about sovereignty, it has to go beyond
just the regulatory and compliance requirements. It's really understanding your
business requirements. What are the applications that are truly mission
critical and that you need to ensure that have that
level of control. Because also controlling everything is not necessarily viable,
(09:35):
not from a technical standpoint and not from a business
case standpoint, right, So that is the I think that
is the challenge that many companies are going right now,
is to have the visibility of their application mistake, how
that matches the business strategy, and then making the decisions
on what is the level of sovereignty that I need
to apply.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Let's say I'm a naive company, I don't pay any
attention to this, I have operations in any different countries.
What's the worst case scenario, what's the down What's what
happens if you don't act kind of prudently around data sovereignty.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
So, I think the first aspect is if something happens
to your infrastructure that is sitting somewhere that you don't
have visibility, goes out for some reason, a war and
energy blackout, any other cyber attack in your environment, if
you don't have a fallback plan, if you don't have
(10:34):
a way to move that application to operate from another
place that has the backups the real time data that
you are accessing to your pretty much go out of
out of operations, right. So it's a that's a very
important question. Because I think it brings the sovereignty aspect
to what I believe is the strategic role that it plays.
(10:55):
It's about resiliency, it's not about necessarily just meeting regulary requirements.
And I think you need to do that from a
risk management standpoint, and I think an insurance company is
the best position to do that. But it's not just regulations,
it's really making sure that you have continuous operation twenty
(11:16):
four by seven, which is pretty much what businesses need
to come to achieve currrectly.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
In some countries for insurance, for example, but not only
for insurance. In some countries there are obligations locally, for example,
to store data in the country. So back to your question,
there's a limit to how naive you can be if
you want to develop a business, because that's at the
(11:44):
heart of getting the authorization to operate and to run
your business in the countries where you would like to.
But then once you are over the kind of MVP
of requirements that are mandatory for you to open and operate,
then of course, I mean that's atort thing that an
What you said is completely completely relevant.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
How does how does one anticipate these issues changing over time.
In other words, you said that people are going to
wake up to the importance of data sovereignty during COVID.
I'm just curious if we fast forward five years, do
we imagine that the kind of landscape in which companies
like you as you want are operating is going to
(12:25):
get more complex or less complex? What's the what's the
movement in this?
Speaker 4 (12:31):
I think it's going to become more complex because AI
is really accelerating all the trends.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Why I want you to can you explain? I want
you to kind of do a little deep dive on Yes,
what specifically is it about AI that's complicating this?
Speaker 4 (12:47):
That's a very good question. AI now moves from you know,
actions just being taken from you know, somebody operating a
system to the technology actually making this right. So you
have to have a much better visibility of what systems
AI is touching, what data it is accessing, and where right.
(13:11):
So you have to have that mapping much more clear
because the stakes are higher now on how technology is
actually operating your business right. So I do think that
there is an acceleration because of that. The second element,
AI is going to increase the amount of vulnerabilities that
are going to be either identified or created.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
So you have to have.
Speaker 4 (13:34):
An ability to continuously monitor and scan what is happening
in the cybersecurity landscape so that you can prevent and
react in a much faster way. So there are more
elements of disruption that are coming up as a result
of the acceleration of technology.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
I can give you a concrete example. So the wapplications
work today is pretty much deterministic. You have rules, you
have data, you have processes. Very often embed it into
the the code, into the business logic. So these are
executed and very often if you have the same inputs,
(14:15):
you have the same output. And so you have I
mean application with modules, you have APIs, you have data,
you have you know beautiful.
Speaker 6 (14:24):
Mobile first front ends. You know all these fancy things
that we that we run on the cloud or on
premium whatever.
Speaker 5 (14:29):
So let's project yourself into a couple of years from
now where the architecture is going to be agentic native.
Speaker 6 (14:37):
With concepts such as had less applications.
Speaker 5 (14:39):
So you will interact with kind of prompt interface and
you will start asking as a customer or as an
employee or as a partner, you will ask interacting and
asking a certain number of problems to be solved, and
this is going to be given through tokens and all
these all these technologies into a ecosystem of digital agents
(15:02):
orchestrated and orchestrating activities looking at what is in the
in the rug in terms of what is the process
telling me about how do I have to manage that?
What kind of data do I have in my repository?
And you enter into something which is going to become
much more probabilistic, and you have llms there in the
meantime in the middle trying to get answers smart answers
(15:27):
to queries that will come from specialized digital agents. So
there's nothing to do with the way applications run today.
And if you look at the flow of data today
that we know, we know where the data located. That
was saying, you know a lot of things we know
and how the data is going to flow in all
(15:49):
the directions in this Argentic native architecture. You understand that,
as you said, this is going to accelerate significantly and
the need to understand the underlying tech and architecture in
the sovereign the ecosystem is going to be crucial. You know,
data can suddenly become public in the way they can
(16:11):
be used to train models and a little bit of
your IP step by instead of going to go into
those those models if they learn. If you are not careful,
that's what it's going to happen. Of course, there are
ways to prevent that, but if you're not careful, you
can suddenly see the word around you becoming more intelligent
than you on your own business.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
It seems like there's a this is a very crude
way of putting it, but there's a race going on
with the technology on running one race and then the
other race. Is our ability to kind of make sense
of it, have visibility and it integrate the technology into
the way we do our who's winning that race right now?
Is it? Is it hard to keep up with the technology.
Speaker 4 (16:52):
That's why I think you need the technology to govern
the technology right and and and to me, that is
what our proposition with this platform that we launched a
few weeks ago called Sovereign Core, is to provide that
those that tool in and those capabilities to help organizations
create those capabilities. Because what we learned already is that,
(17:14):
as Jovanny explained very well, the technology is going to
accelerate exponentially. How do you map that with that same
level of speed only another technology that is going to
you know, operate at the same level of acceleration. And
that is exactly the proposition that we have in supporting
(17:37):
our clients. So that's the headache that you're trying to solve.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Givani, do you I'm assuming you've been in this field
of technology.
Speaker 6 (17:45):
For how many years or thirty years? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Is it any I'm curious to compare the moment we're
into any previous moments. So you've now lived through several
technological upheavals. Is this one compared to the ones earlier
in your career?
Speaker 5 (18:02):
For me, this one is very clearly the one that
has the highest potential and in terms of speed, there's
no precedent everything we've done in the past where we've
been trying to modernize. Let's take a complete, complete exam
modernizing business applications. We had this discussion a couple of
(18:25):
months ago. So like all the companies in the world,
we have legacy applications. All the companies have legacy applications
that have been written I don't know, thirty fifty years ago,
and the journey to modernize those applications. Has been the
last let's say, the last fifteen years, something like very
often a five years ticket every time you wanted to
(18:47):
work to modernize something, including migration and decommissioning. And every
time we even a year ago, every time we were
thinking about how there's technology out there we can go much, much,
much faster, we've always been blocked, and then we always
came back to that unit of performance of the five years.
(19:09):
And since this year, things are become potentially feasible because
that's the agentic revolution, because then you can specialize agents
like people in a team, to split the process into
subtask and everybody is going to be very smart and
intelligent in solving a part of the problem. And then
if you are good enough to orchestrate that towards an outcome,
(19:32):
which could be an application, modernization, ABC, whatsoever. Potentially I'm
saying potentially, but this is now technologically we see that.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
It can work.
Speaker 5 (19:41):
You can do that, not any more than five years,
but maybe I don't know, a year and a half,
two years, maybe a little bit less. Why not, I
don't know, but you see, the difference is simply huge.
I've never seen that before.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I think the compression that you're seeing in project delivery,
in new products at we are releasing updating versions of products,
it's something that is absolutely unprecedented. So the base of
innovation is happening very fast. And if we think that
AI has already created a tremendous impact, let's wait for quantum, right,
(20:16):
which is going to even take this.
Speaker 6 (20:19):
To another level. And the mix, the combination, prombination of both.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yes, it's a very interesting contradiction at the core of
all this, which is that intuitively, we know that innovation
thrives on openness into connectedness, you know, no border or whatever.
But so DATUS already makes us think very specifically and often,
(20:43):
I would imagine, painfully about the reality of orders. How
do you manage that contradiction?
Speaker 4 (20:51):
I think that is really the challenge that we are
all facing right now, right I don't think we have
one hundred percent clear answer yet. There are certain elements
of this tack that clearly, I mean, trying to reinvent
is actually going to be a reinvention of the wheel,
(21:11):
Like I mean, I'm not going to develop chips from
the scratch from scratch, for example, infrastructure from scratch, But
there are other elements of the stack that I can
get much better control.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Right.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
So for example, to the point that you'ovanni made before,
where my data is sitting, what is the orchestration layer
that I can implement so that I can bring the
right player at the right time. So look at the
stack of technology that you're implementing and see what are
the elements where number one, it's feasible to achieve control
(21:43):
and number two, I know that it's something that I
actually have to do to make my business resilient. And
focus on those, right, because if you try to address
the entire stack, or if you try to create a
model that basically build a fortres, that's not going to
be even feasible for you to achieve.
Speaker 6 (22:05):
Right.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
I normally say that sovereignty is not about building walls,
it's about building bridges, right, It's how you really create
those connections.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
I like. I like the way you phrase it.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
That's exactly that, because at the end, if you put
sovereignty as an architecture requirement when you do design, I
don't say it's the it's it's it's the key to
this very difficult you know, parading. But at least, it's
making choices easier. So, for example, if you if you
(22:41):
don't put sovereignty as a business requirement, and you want
to develop your business in the cloud, what you are
going to do is probably look at the available features
that ive features from the cloud provider. You're going to
use those features full speed to go as fast as possible,
as efficient as possible, and get access to all the
stack you know and everything else. And the day you
(23:02):
have a problem, you cannot switch, or it will take
you five years and five hundred million to switch.
Speaker 6 (23:10):
If you take the.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
Sovereignty as a requirement by design, when you want to
start the configuration of your stack, you ask yourself, what
do I have to concretely put here as a configuration item?
If I want to be, for example, multi cloud compatible
or multi cloud and on prem compatible, what kind of
(23:34):
additional technologies maybe I have to use in order to
be able to I mean, do some portability of some
workload from one platform to another.
Speaker 6 (23:44):
Not because I want to do that every day, because
it makes no sense.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
But if tomorrow I have a problem, I want to
be sure that by design I can I know what
the process I'm going to use, what's the process is
going to use to do that portability. So these are
elements that again, if you don't design your architecture using
those those elements, you wake up in the morning you
have a problem and you have no solution except spending
(24:08):
alpha billion euro. So that's that's that's the first point
I wanted to make. Now the second point is if
you want to turn technology into a business outcome, at
the end, you need to be very precisely activating a technology.
So at the end you have to make a choice,
(24:31):
yes I activate this feature you know, and yes I
use this tech provider this solution.
Speaker 6 (24:37):
At the end, you don't escape.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
And what it also allows to do is making sure
that in this architecture based design you also make explicit
what you buy from a tech provider and what you
do yourself, and also what you do yourself for how
long because you can try a certain number of things
(25:02):
because you are not convinced that a certain number of
technology providers out there are sufficiently cross cross cloud platforms,
and and you don't want to end up into a
locking situation. So you can say I don't feel that
it's mature enough, so I start doing it. But it's
(25:22):
not because you start doing it yourself, that you have
to be stuck in that strategy of doing it yourself
for fifteen years.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
Again, even if you start doing it.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
Yourself, in the design of the way you do it yourself,
you plan an exit door to be able to move
into a solution from a tech provider when the strategy
is mature enough. So that's the difficulty, and that this
is every day discussions with discipline. What I always recommend
the teams is make the things explicit. There's no right
(25:54):
or wrong answer in a limited timeframe. There is something
that is best today for the company and may not
be the case tomorrow.
Speaker 6 (26:02):
So let's make it.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Explicit and don't miss that that that I mean that
extra work because it's extra work. This is not something
that is coming really not falling from the sky. This
is extra work. But it's worse doing this this job.
To be sure that at least we are always in
this equilibri difficult equilibrium between accessing technologies and being sovereign
(26:25):
compatible by design.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
Just to stress you saw that Jovan used the word
by design all the time, right, because I think that
intentionality is probably what's different from what we saw in
the past on how companies were adopting innovation. It was
very much driven by convenience and speed, and now you
have to have convenience, speed and intentionality and understand that
(26:51):
you know, you have to have visibility on the decisions
you're making, and you have to keep your choices more open.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
It was curious when you describe kind of challenges that
come along with data sovereignty. This is also the way
that two of you work together. So I can I
mean companies insurers have been working with IBM. I imagine
for as long as they've been insurance and as long
as they've been IBM. But I mean, in this particular iteration,
(27:20):
are we altering the nature the relationship.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
Before I go specifically to the partnership with as, I'm
going to give an example of what you're doing with
another company, which I think illustrates very well the intention,
the objective and the challenge.
Speaker 6 (27:37):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
So we have a partnership with Locale as well, right,
which is the cosmetics company. And they were like, okay,
foundational models, large language models.
Speaker 6 (27:47):
Are super powerful.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Right, But I invested one hundred years in my company
to build knowledge about building formula for cosmetics.
Speaker 6 (27:56):
Right.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
I don't want to give that expertise that knowledge away,
so I want to train my own my own foundational model.
They are not going to do the entire stack of
training by themselves, so they partner with us. We provide research,
We provide tooling that allows them to bring their data
and create their own model based on an open source
(28:20):
pre trained a model. So these are the types of
you know, challenges that companies are facing. And to my
point prior, what is really critical to the point that
you don't want, you know, a third party to have
visibility or access to And when it comes to the
to the relationship with ACTS and many other of our clients,
(28:42):
I think number one is transparency. Right, they totally understand
how our technology operates. What are the you know, what
are the elements that are part of our architecture that
are going to connect with their systems and trust becomes
really a fundamental element. Jovanni said. There are things that
I'm going to build, there are things that I'm going
(29:04):
to buy, So who am I going to buy from?
Does this company really understand sovereignty by design? It's part
of the way that the architecture their solutions. I think
those are the elements and I think That's why this
discussion is so important right now because it also levels
the playing field for us. Right at IBM, we have
(29:25):
always been a company focused on technologies for the corporate
world to really implement mission critical workloads. So I think
now people understand why we approach things the way we
approach and why hybrid cloud, you know, giving companies the
ability to access multiple providers either on prem or in
(29:45):
the public domain. Why we have approached our technologies in
that characterization is because we are starting to see the
challenges of not having a multi cloud hybrid cloud strategy
can actually imply to your business. So I think that
this is really what changes for us now we have
we we are much more conscious on the risks and
(30:08):
those have to be considered when you're making technical decisions.
Speaker 6 (30:14):
Yeah, I think in contact remre with with what you said.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
That's that's that's at the heart of the relationship between
company like accesle and and and.
Speaker 6 (30:23):
A strategic partner technology partner.
Speaker 5 (30:27):
If if that understanding is not there, there is no
way we are going to rely on that strategic partner
to build whatever future strategical orientation and and and it's
true that today we have a large variety of technologies
running in production. As an insurance company, like banks, we
(30:49):
have mainframes running a lot of a lot of business.
But at the same time we are full speeding the
AI transformation. We have finished the clab migration and being
able to understand the full stuck again, that's what is
absolutely critical.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I had asked you earlier about was there anything particular
about the insurance business when it came to this question.
I want to come back to that a little bit,
because you know, you've both of you have talked about
trust and transparency. Our trust and transparency pretty core considerations
(31:29):
for insure, I mean, much more so than someone that's
yeah making you know, handkerchiefs. Talk a little bit about
Can you revisit that question.
Speaker 5 (31:38):
Yeah, of course, I think you have a very good
point if I look at the notion of trust. As
you said, insurance is about trust the noble purpose of
an insurance company.
Speaker 6 (31:48):
That's what I repeat every time I have the opportunity.
Speaker 5 (31:51):
You know, I'm so happy every morning when I wake
up because I know what I'm waking up. EXCI is
there to help families, companies, individuals when they face real difficulties.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
You know why you wake up every morning.
Speaker 5 (32:07):
You know what is why it's difficult, and this implies,
as you said, the notion of trust. So of course
for us what it means, it means one, we need
to make sure you were talking about data healthcare data and.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
Your initial intervention.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
We need to make sure indeed we know perfectly exactly
where our data are stored and what kind of data
we talk about, where is it sensitive data health data,
because we need to overprotect that in order to make
sure that data that we have for our customers are
not going to be made public. That's our duty to
(32:44):
do that. It's again a notion of trust. Our customers
trust that we do that. Insurance companies are long term companies,
and if you don't have trust anymore, I mean we're
simply out of business.
Speaker 6 (32:56):
So data is an important topic.
Speaker 5 (32:58):
But at the same time we talked about cyber You know,
we have a very very strong cyber team and cyber
security practice that we use both of course to protect
AXA like many organisms. I mean we all do that,
of course, but also to help our customers protect themselves.
Speaker 6 (33:21):
And we have also used our.
Speaker 5 (33:23):
Skills to develop insurance products for companies to protect them
against cyber risks. So that's also our duty to say
not only we develop those skills, but we also give
that skill back via an insurance product to our customers
because we want to help them. And then, of course,
(33:43):
back to the notion of trust itself, if those elements
are there at the end, what we believe as an
insurance company, and I agree with you this is valid
for the insurance sector in general, is that if we
continue to demonstrate that we do that very serio, our
(34:03):
customers continue to have a lot of trust in us,
and probably with the A revolution, the ones who will
be able to be better, if I can use that word,
will be the ones who will be able to continuously
demonstrate that they can they always deserve the trust that
they received from from from their customers. So yes, of
(34:24):
course this is specific. I mean the specific to the
insurance sector probably thinks also such a know, pharmaceutical companies,
you know things activities where it's very very sensitive.
Speaker 6 (34:37):
Yeah, that's that's clear.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Let me ask a question the other way and maybe
Honor you can jump in here. These considerations might differ
from industry to industry, but can you what about from
big too small? Are is this a more pressing issue
for a multinational than it is for a startup.
Speaker 6 (34:59):
I think that this.
Speaker 4 (34:59):
Is this this applies to all all the companies, right,
especially because they startups from today are not like the
startups from the past.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
Right.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Everybody is scaling so fast. Right, You're seeing companies going
from zero to billion in like months in the current
in the current world. All these startup startups in general,
they operate in a global in a global footprint. So
if I am a startup going into the let's say
the healthcare, right industry, I'll need to follow the regulations,
(35:31):
even if I'm a very small startup, right. So I
do think that probably what is happening now is that
this applies to different sizes, different industries, probably some more
regulated than others. And going back to the point of
Giovanni on insurance, I think insurance is probably the industry
where this is much more visible, because insurance is about
(35:56):
pricing risk, right, and how do you price risk based
on knowledge, based on probabilities, And that's all data, right,
So data is their product, I would say. But every
company now will have to be watching those aspects because
as they scale, even if they are small, they'll need
to be meeting those requirements.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
If you were to chat with a founder who's just
starting out, came to you and said, what should I
be doing about data?
Speaker 6 (36:24):
Sovereignty?
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Should what should I get right on day one? What
would your advice be?
Speaker 4 (36:29):
I think now it's much easier because when you're starting
from scratch, you can really design your solutions and your
applications already with all that in your mind. Right, So
all the points that Jovanni made before. By design, this
is how you're going to design up front. Understand what
industry are operating in. Understand what are the implications of
(36:51):
the data that you're manipulating, Map the risk and the
critical mission applications that you're going to develop. Make sure
that those are really like sovereign to the core, and
you know, start the execution.
Speaker 5 (37:07):
We have not been talking a lot about that, but
if I look at Europe now, for example, encryption is
very critical. When you talk sovereignty, everything you said is
absolutely correct, but encrypt. That's an advice I would give
is make sure, for example that the management of the
keys is yours is yours, you know, and do that
(37:29):
from day one. Don't do that because when you do
encryption very often That's what I was saying earlier. So
you have native services, for example, coming from the cloud providers,
and you can encrypt using the native services and dis
toward the keys of course that they have been used
to do this encryption, and it's very comfortable. You can
(37:53):
go very you can be very fast, but you lose
control mm hm. And so that's that's a very simple
trick that in the design very often now comes on
a regular business to pay attention. Of course, you can
use the services, but again storing the keys, the keys
are yours, so then nobody can access your data.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
This is a really interesting theme that I'd love to
sort of end on, which is it seemed like there
was a moment in the evolution of technology where the
trend was in the other direction that I was you
want to do outsources as much as you could and
just focus on a few things. But now you're talking
about the importance of taking back control. Is that? Am
(38:39):
I right? Is this a shift across a number of
different dimensions when it comes to technology right now?
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Yeah? I think technology now is so core to the business,
is so central to the strategy that you really have
to take it like any other major component of your
supply chain and to me, that's the reason why we
have this wake up moment where people understand that I
(39:05):
need to put much more control, I need to have
much more visibility.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
The regulation itself is also creating, in a way the
obligation for us for certain activities to have those activities.
Speaker 6 (39:20):
Back under our control.
Speaker 5 (39:23):
For example, if I look at DORA regulation, what is
DORA regulation telling you understand your key business processes, Map
those key business processes to your underlying technology.
Speaker 6 (39:36):
Check where you have concentration risks.
Speaker 5 (39:38):
Mapping again, starting from your very critical business processes. And
once you've identified the areas where you have concentration, which
is normal, plan strategies, right strategies, test strategies on reversibility
(39:59):
and so this.
Speaker 6 (40:01):
A couple of years ago.
Speaker 5 (40:04):
We were doing that, I would say, just when we
were feeling that something in a specific area of the
architecture was a little bit strange.
Speaker 6 (40:15):
Then we were doing a deep dive.
Speaker 5 (40:17):
And we were very often arriving at the conclusion that
probably there we need to change something. Let's change the technology,
create more portability, and bring the thing under control. But
it was really sporadic, you know, it was not systematic.
With the regulation. Now it's mandatory we are as an
(40:37):
insurance company, we have to demonstrate every year we do
the job. So you see, I think you are totally
right in saying that we need to make sure we
have a certain number of activities back under our control.
But it's not only us deciding that. I think it's
also regulations forcing us. And from that perspective at to say,
(40:58):
this was a very good initiative.
Speaker 6 (41:00):
So just.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
When you started, Giovanni and you're in this field, you
were probably either down the hall or on another floor,
and now.
Speaker 6 (41:12):
You have to be.
Speaker 3 (41:15):
Directly in the C suite. I mean, these are It's
over the course of your career you've probably gone from
being marginal to being essential, which is very fascinating. I'm
wondering did you Did you anticipate that transformation.
Speaker 5 (41:29):
A little bit, yes, because I've always been convinced that
in reality, the more the world was going to modernize
and digitize, the more the technology was going to be inevitable.
But again I was I've not anticipated the speed of
the current description that I've not anticipated. You know, I
(41:51):
was thinking about some of the statements that I was
making five years ago, announcing that a certain number of
elements we're going to upen probably you know, five two
time years time frame. In the meantime it's over. We
have already another disruption, you know. And I'm not talking
fifty years ago. I'm just talking five years or ten
(42:13):
years ago.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
So yeah, I.
Speaker 5 (42:15):
Always had that feeling that technology was going to be
really critical, but I have to be honest and not honest,
not that the level it is today.
Speaker 6 (42:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
The irony of this conversation is that I over the
I've been a journalist for several decades and I realized
a few months ago that my data, in which case
is just interviews, you know, interview tape and transport, was
scattered across a million different places. So I did my
own version of this, and I hired a twenty one
year old to sit on my hopice physically goes through
(42:45):
all my old archives. I'm doing my own version of
Malcolm Data Sovereignty is going on this summer a lot
less elaterate.
Speaker 6 (42:52):
Good practice, good practice.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah that's good.
Speaker 3 (42:56):
But thank you very much for joining us on smart
talks I and good luck, and thank you all out
there for coming and listening.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Ramano, Amy Gains, McQuaid,
Trina Menino, and Jake Harper. Engineering by Nina Bird Lawrence
Mastering by Sarah Braguera, music by Gramoscope, Strategy by Cassidy Meyer.
Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries
and Ruby's studio at iHeartMedia. To find more Pushkin podcasts,
(43:33):
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. This is a paid
advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this podcast don't necessarily
represent IBM's positions, strategies, or opinions.
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