Episode 6: Revolutionary Technology with International Industry Experts

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome back to Digicon. You're on our third day, and I know that you've been learning a lot. And there have been really rave reviews on what we've been learning over the past three days. And today, uh, takes us to what we call a synthesis of what we have learned. And I'd like to introduce, uh, right now, uh, our panelists. Uh, for this event we will be having, uh, a panel who will discuss with us, uh, the sort of revolutions that we'll be facing, uh, over the next year or so. But first we do have someone, uh, in the panel will discuss for us, uh, a bit about what the revolutions might look like over, uh, the next, uh, couple of years, which will look really exciting. So let me introduce, uh, our panelists, our first panelist, uh, that will be, uh, Dustin from New Zealand, who will introduce to us, uh, some of the, uh, revolutions over the next couple of years. So Dustin, take it away.

Speaker C: Thank you very much. Um, a warm welcome to everybody. Thank you for joining. Um, in this presentation I'm talking about prepare for the next, um, revolution. And the first place I thought to look was, was, uh, none other than the Oxford Dictionary. What is a revolution? According to Oxford? It's a great change in conditions, ways of working, beliefs that affect a large number of people. With that in mind, I really can't think of, um, uh, anything else but a revolution, uh, that's uh, really happening today. Taking, um, us through the revolution here before us, there are some quotes that I have from the event itself. Um, um. Well, let's talk about three attributes of the revolution. First is we think it's going to be hyperconnected. It's going to be about the Internet of possibilities. It's going to be something that's going to impact our lives and it's going to be something that's going to drive sustainability. Then looking back at the actual, um, uh, what we said on the day itself is there were some quotes that really came to mind. It's really about sparking a movement, I'm told. I heard that quote over the last couple of days. It's a call to arms. It's a catalyst to change. It's an accelerant to digital transformation. I heard comments about getting 70% of the Philippine population the unbanked banked, and 50% of the economy to a cashless society. I heard commitments for carbon neutrality by one customer by 2035. I heard the comment of blowing open doors. A retailer who said it could not, uh, open its doors to its customers, so it had to Find a way through online to bring the stores and everything through an online environment. We heard another comment uh, around um, bidding farewell to legacy, legacy systems, legacy technologies. And basically it said if you do not implement smart technology you will be obsolete. And let's think about other revolutions. Have we been able to predict for example electricity or the steam engine, uh, but now that we know it's going to change our lives, it's around preparing for the revolution and what we can do today to prepare. Well let's talk about people because a revolution also needs people, right? So what does that exactly mean if we can move to the next slide? People basically says on the one hand people is the heart of business, they are the ambassadors, they're very much the front line. We heard that a lot. But people are also difficult to change, especially when you're trying to move to digital first. But we also said we cannot move, we cannot go anywhere without our people. And that's why it was uh, so important to pick up on that comment. Where is ASEAN with digital transformation? We'll move really quick to the next slide. Here is what we're seeing in the lay of the land. What we see here is a lot of uh, organizations on the left are quite, not that ready yet, but they're thinking about it. But if you move to the extreme right, you have 10% of organizations uh, that are fully optimized and remember digital transformation. From our point of view it's not an IT project. It's the mobilization of people, process technology and data. It's about driving outcomes and changing our operating models. That's what digital transformation is about. To us it is about finding the minimal viable product, applying the principles of design thinking. You know for example we define we might empathize with the customer. We ideate, we prototype, we test, we implement, we continuously approve. It's trying to find ways to bring extreme collaboration across multiple uh, uh, departments and divisions. It's the ways of enhancing the productivity of a highly functioning team to a division, to a company, to an organization, maybe to the supply chain, maybe to the customers. It's also to some extent around um, uh, scaling. So what are the four things that we think we heard of today if we can move to the next slide? One is we believe we're going to be consumer first. It's all about consumers, um, and consumers will transact with digital channels in different ways. They're going to be transacting more online than we've ever seen them before. Another attribute is going to be um, around the agile working. We believe that 80% of the uh, workforce will actually want to stay and work from home as a constant as well as uh, work from other locations including the office. A lot of this stuff speaks to the uh, empowerment or the uh, acceleration of ict, uh, and how digital transformation accelerated. Some say three years, some say seven years, some say an entire decade uh, has happened within uh, one year. Another attribute is sustainability. For example, um, we're going to see the environment and social and governance being ingrained in our annual reports. We're going to measure it, we're going to monitor it, we're going to report it, we're going to share it with our stakeholders, we're going to demand it uh, from our entire supply chain. And that's another attribute that we'll speak of. We move to the next slide. I want to start with the first part. Here is proof coming from the global data, banking and payments practice that shows per capita population how we're moving to an online system. I think you'll see in uh, asean we exceeded 100 billion um, this last year and we're going to go to about 260 billion in the next couple of years. Just compare that with five years ago we were only at half that amount, about 50 billion in trade. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be transacting with a lot of low touch uh, platforms through our mobile devices in our work, in our lives and that's part of the transformation, that's part of the revolution. Let's move to the next slide, see what that says. This is around people and agility in an agile workforce. We believe in this slide. If you're going to win the global war on talent, you got to win the battle of employee engagement. We know from uh, from reading the Microsoft research, the survey of 30,000 people and trillions of data points that there's going to be what this gentleman on the left predicted, this great resignation of 2021. A lot of people want to leave their jobs, a lot of people still want to be engaged with their coworkers and they're going to be working remote. If we have an engaged workforce they're going to turn the least, they're going to have less sick days, they're going to be the most customer facing, they're going to be the most profitable over the course of time. If we move to the next slide, this is around the whole thing, around the acceleration of digital transformation. On the left here is around people, ICT goes around Personas, those people interact with applications, those people in applications interact with devices, they need different sorts of security posture and ultimately this is all going to go to the cloud. This is a multi vendor framework. This is really around um, uh, creating good products, creating good capabilities through the curation of uh, best of breed. But it's around organizations like PLDT about bringing it all together, the system integration, the professional services and having days like this to inspire others to really see what the possibilities are are with the acceleration of ICT and digital transformation. If we move to the next slide. This is around the environment and here I found so many um, inspiring quotes around uh this topic. For example um, a retailer talked about reducing inventory from six months to eight weeks to reduce wastage. That happens unfortunately in the sector. There was something called protein people and planet. It's about a food manufacturer producing healthier food, doing right by their employees and driving sustainability in the manufacturing plant. Another conglomerate, a very global diversified conglomerate talked about the shift to renewables and how that is very important. It made the commitment to 2035 about being carbon neutral. Another organization talked about a chief sustainability officer that reports up to the executive board went into areas of packaging. How are you going to reduce packaging use renewables for dining in and biodegradable for those that take away renewables happening at the manufacturing sites and how society at large is going to improve the livelihood of farmers. All of this is very inspirational. This happened over the course of uh the days. Uh it's very much a pleasure to be there. We can move to the next slide. I want to quickly talk about our predictions and before we hand off to the panelists. The first off is probably the hardest. I'll start with cyber everywhere. What's going to happen in 2022 is cyber is going to be very intrinsic in our environments unlike it's ever been before. We've already been using artificial intelligence and machine learning in ict but we're saying now is we're going to have one unified chat between different AI, um, um, um sort of automations happening between cloud and networks, networks and security between business environments and IT environments. To give us kind of an end to end holistic view about security. We got to unify uh these different sort of uh silos. Um security also is going to touch on all these other areas that I wanted to speak about quickly. One is the multi cloud evolution. We heard about the advent of hyperscalers coming to the Philippines but here we're talking about platforming to the cloud itself. Seeing the cloud through kubernetes, through microservices and serverless compute through containerization being a place that you're going to put your monolithic applications. Stick onto the cloud platform for better business outcomes. Those business outcomes are training like DevOps, uh, and getting development teams and operations teams to work closer together, being able to uh, increase the release cycle of new products. And um, the other thing is around the reduce or uh, the use of intelligent automation for low code, no code automation platforms. This speaks to citizen developers, people like me that have no development experience but will be uh, part of the development cycle producing their own applications through these platforms that are becoming extremely intuitive. Multi cloud evolution is making sure networks are on ramp correctly to the right clouds for the massive optimal performance. Next we move to Edge. Um, Edge Compute also speaks a little bit around the edge as an object or an edge as a thing to how to actually improve the application performance of the applications you run in the Edge. Um, it's around securing the edge and managing those environments and really making them part of the workload and not talking about Edge for example as just a thing that's going to sit somewhere in the ether of 5G but it actually does something. It's an extension of cloud environments. In many cases it comes with many business models. Companies uh, like PLDT might be looking to open up their locations to host these Edge sites as micro data centers. Um, there's a lot that's going to be happening around here that's going to be quite exciting. Edge also ties in a little bit with 5G. What we're seeing here and now, what we think we're going to see more of in the future is the bring your own network concept. With 5G, you're going to see it for tactical deployments like day one connectivity, network slicing, load balancing, active and passive connections. I'll use it as my primary, I'll use it as my backup. But you're also seeing it ASEAN transform the whole entire manufacturing sector. It's doing things like predictive maintenance, making sure the machinery doesn't uh, break when it's unexpected. Things like computer vision is helping manufacturers, um, decentralized controllers to continuously improve the process of, of their products as they're being curated and manufactured. Of course Edge 5G private networks all touched at security. I'll mention again it's interesting because oftentimes with security you want to keep it on site, on location for performance but also uh, data sovereignty, business continuity, disaster recovery considerations. Moving over a little bit left, we have the Agile working. This speaks to the employee experience and giving everyone the tools for the trade so they can be Very effective and most efficient in their jobs. We're going to have a little bit with more AI informed innovation and this is going to permeate across all lines of business. For example, finance may want to do credit scores in real time. It for uh, example may need to know cyber risk and profiles or need to do a root cause analysis through data really quickly. Using AI for better informed decisions or, or as we move to esg, you know what, we're going to actually be using IT to monitor, measure our compliance. How sustainable are we uh, are we achieving those objectives? And finally SD wan, my very favorite topic by the way. SD WAN is going to move from this novelty of how it's done, this really cool things in routing and automation and ability to pop up sites really quickly and take us away from the worlds of MPLs to something pretty cool. But it's actually going to start to really get into, accelerate into the branch and campus conversions. We're not really going to differentiate between our home office, our branch office and our campus environment. That's all more or less going to be controlled to the cloud. Depending if you go with an underlay or an overlay that's, you know, that's up uh, to the uh, customer decide. But what's also happening is SD WAN and security are converging and it pains me to say it, it's called sase. We didn't come up with the term, that's why it pains me to say it. But it's a great term to explain the convergence of what is actually happening out there. And SASE speaks to firewalls, it speaks to zero trust architectures and really everything we need to do to bring it all together as a framework. Sase. I'll leave it here. SASE is not a product but it's an interesting framework to understand security as security itself gets into everything and more intrinsic than we've ever seen it before. I know we have a panel session going forward, um, but thank you for giving me the opportunity to share with you some of our thoughts.

Speaker B: Thank you Dustin. Dustin Kehoe, the head of Asia Pacific Research Practice for Global Data. Uh, and I love that technology just uh, uh, gets us thinking of all these crazy acronyms. Yeah, SASE is the craziest I've heard so far. Thanks so much Dustin. Uh, those insights and predictions for the coming year, really compelling. You've surfaced a couple of key words here. Um, cloud, networking, security, sustainability. So how do you see all these coming together for the customer? Because you've given such emphasis to the customer and what would be the biggest challenge for all the enterprises in ensuring that amid all the revolutions happening post pandemic, the customer remains front and center of that narrative?

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And um, that's important. I think there's at least a couple of different ways to answer it. We have seen remarkable improvements in data centers. Okay. The last couple years we've seen a plethora of hyperscale, massive facilities going up around the world. I think our count is 450, 500 really significant, large data centers around the place. But as data centers and cloud has grown, its footprint has actually reduced. That is one thing to consider, but the other thing is we are consumers first. Right? We need to win the war on talent. Consumers employees are going to choose organizations that have a commitment that they can measure and read and monitor around sustainability. Think of it that way. Consumers themselves are going to buy products from sustainable organizations. 96% of businesses are really thinking about sustainability when they're, when they're making um, um commitments and looking at ways to improve sustainability that comes from not us, but hsbc. So I think there's a lot of ways to look at it. Sustainability will always be a journey, not a destination. I think when we hit those carbon neutral, um, um, landmarks that we all want to achieve, um, I think there's going to be continuous improvement. But it's one of those things that can be embedded in the psyche and embedded in organizations and they're going to put pressure on all of us by the way, including the supply chain of how we design. We need to design greener products. We need to manage our subcontractors better and, and we need to do right for the community at large, um, such as farmers in the case that was mentioned, um, uh, about a day or two ago.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that we say that we're customers first before we're businesses second to our participants. If you do have any questions or views to share, uh, just type them into the chat box and uh, I'll get them to our panelists later on, uh, in the hour. So Dustin, just stay with me as I call in our other panelists for the session. And with us now for their thoughts on Dustin's predictions and a synthesis of the topics and themes that we've covered over the past two days here on Digicon. Please welcome our PLDT Enterprise executives, Vice President and Head of ICT Business Nico Alcaceba, First Vice President and Head of UM Enterprise Core Business Solutions, Jojo Hendrano, and Vice President and Head Enterprise Digital Solutions John Gonzalez. Also joining us are our keystone sponsor representatives. Asia Pacific Japan and Greater China region. Lead of partner managed and cloud business of Cisco Joffrey. Thomas Tadikarad.

Speaker D: Hi.

Speaker B: Head of Nokia Philippines, Carlos Reyes.

Speaker E: Hi, everyone.

Speaker B: And chief technology Officer of Huawei Asia Pacific Enterprise Business Group, Brandon Wu.

Speaker D: Good morning, everyone.

Speaker B: All right, so let's start with Nico, close, uh, to home here in Manila. What do you think of Dustin's predictions?

Speaker F: Morning, Kathy. And good morning to, um, all the viewers in the audience. Um, well, um, I think it's, uh, very consistent to what we're seeing on the ground. Um, but, uh, what I want to latch on is really that concept on sustainability. Um, because I think the conversation has radically shifted. We can say that it's undergone a revolution, um, from being just about compliance to reporting and to standards, to really being a commitment and part of the strategic imperatives of each organization. Um, Dustin had shared yesterday that in the CEO panel a lot of the discussions on sustainability initiatives were really not just about activities that were periphery to the business, that were about corporate social responsibility, but really initiatives that were part of cooperation. And I think that's quite important because that's where a lot of the impact can be realized. Um, for PLT Group, for example, our own CEO, um, Alpan Lillio has in fact included sustainability as part of his four fulcrums, right. Uh, or priority areas. And the renewed programs we have are linked to business operations. And the goal really is to have this embedded in our culture and part of everyday mindsets of employees. Um, uh, Dustin mentioned also about how it will grow in importance. Yet we are seeing sustainability as part really of how our acquisition and retention of both customers and talent will grow. Because sustainability is very personally meaningful and important to them and now an integral part of their decision making on brands they will advocate and companies they will want to be part of. So that's my, uh, takeaway from Dustin's presentation.

Speaker B: So given that we have sustainability as one component and then the customer right at the center of it, what do you think is the kind of, uh, revolutionary technology and an opportunity that you would recommend business explorer or investing today to plan out for, say, the next few years?

Speaker F: Uh, well, um, as the economy reopens, um, I think our customers will begin to feel safer going out of their homes and they will be looking for experiences that combine the efficiency, the immediacy, the safety of digital with the certainty, immersiveness and connectedness of physical. Um, in fact, this merging of physical and digital, um, there's this new term coined, it's called phygital and this is really the type of experience that we should be prepared for. And well, if we look at companies that have successfully transitioned into a digital operation, there are certain strategies and um, characteristics that have been keys to their success. I think very important, number one is understanding customer Personas and tailoring experiences for them. It's um, in looking at new business strategies, operational processes, technology investments, customer behavior shifts are really the main drivers of transformation. And the expectation today in fact is that we are able to customize experiences for users. The days of marketing to one whole segment have really given way to marketing to a segment of one. Like um, they say today our customer is actually our cmo. The second tactic or strategy is really tying all ends together. So the front end, meaning the user experience, the touch points, the back end, meaning all our supply chains, inventory management systems, and the far end, our connection to our partner ecosystem. Because tying all ends together creates a seamless experience. One of the results of this digital shift is that customers now expect experiences that are also immediate. Um, a manual approach to finish a transaction or having to get back to customers on inventory availability and delivery lead times in today's on demand economy will result only to customer fallout and opportunity loss. So it's the importance of tying in front end, customer touch points, back end operations and foreign partner ecosystems are really key to making this experience a positive one, especially as businesses begin to scale. And I think the last one, the third, um, strategy or tactic is really investing in core capability and divesting of periphery activities. Given how fast the marketplace is evolving and how hyperactive competition has become an intense focus on your core business operation while strategically engaging with best in class technology partners will really allow companies to scale both revenues and capabilities rapidly while uh, optimizing on costs.

Speaker B: And to get to that digital, uh, word that you mentioned post pandemic, I mean, I'm really looking to travel for one. Georgia, how about you? Which key technologies did you get most excited about from Dustin's predictions?

Speaker A: So a very pleasant good morning Kathy, our uh, fellow panelists and our viewers. So, and thank you for the question. So the most resonant to me from Dustin's presentation are two. So one is on hybrid work or in terms of agile work, and the second is the transformation through the Internet of possibilities. So on hybrid and agile work it excites me even on a personal level. As you know, work from home is here to stay and there's still so many possibilities on how to improve and secure the hybrid work experience. So first is reliability is key and say Business grade connections, including 5G will be important to sustain, if not improve, employee experiences. And speaking of experiences, having say the best fit collaboration tool is also very important. So when people go back to the office and in a lot of cases there will be a very little need for that phone at the desk. So expect the integration of the phone and the collaboration tool very, very soon if you haven't done so already. Uh, security is also paramount. As said multiple times during the event. The larger the digital footprint, the larger the risks will be. And there's so many exciting technologies that can be easily adopted to ensure that employees at home get the same level of cybersecurity coverage and services as if they were at the branch or in the office, which can even extend to personal devices used for work. And some of these are actually, uh, SASE principles also. And second is on IoT or the Internet of possibilities. Uh, so we're obviously very excited about the launch of our IoT platform and I hope that some of you had the chance to see it in action in our demo area. So it's really fit to streamline the deployment of simple to complex IoT applications. Uh, this will benefit businesses large to small and also accelerate IoT solutions coming from the local ISP and startup communities. So IoT has been proven to make business, uh, become more flexible and manageable and especially as the teams have pivoted towards, um, hybrid work. And it's our wish to see this further accelerate ICT adoption.

Speaker B: And now that you mentioned it, I don't think I've picked up my landline most recently. I mean that's just been stuck, uh, at the desk here in the office. Uh, there are a lot of businesses out there that are still in the midst of that digital transformation. So now that we're at the core of it, what strategies would you suggest, uh, that companies want to be engaged in to embrace that full digital transformation?

Speaker A: Thank you very much for that. So, to fully embrace digital transformation, for me, uh, a couple of important things come to mind. Apologies if these will sound too fundamental, but I think they're really important and were mentioned consistently especially during yesterday's Power, uh, panel. So first is to have a clear and well communicated strategy to lay the vision of what your customers want and where you want to take them in your company. And second is structuring a team that is fit to transform the organization is very, very important with clear lines of, uh, um, ownership and accountability set. And the next is to pick partners that you can trust, trust those that share your vision, have the competencies to help you execute align to that vision. And on the side if you want to be a brand and a product leader, investing in resources like R and D are needed to achieve that differentiation. And last point is uh, things will always not go our way or your way. This is where resilience comes in and the team going back to the team. It's important as it's usually not a one person show and you look back then to the strategy and the vision that was laid to get back on track. And lastly this is when deeper trust can be built with the partners that's

Speaker B: correcting enough that ah, all of you are in this panel just to show how much resilience had been uh, had over the past year and a half just to survive the pandemic. John, your thoughts on Dustin's predictions?

Speaker G: Yeah, uh, thank you Kathy. And again uh, good morning to everyone. Um, I actually totally agree with uh everything Dustin presented and we are uh seeing various elements of these predictions already in play. Uh whether it be multi cloud, uh implementations, edge computing, cybersecurity, 5G or AI. Um what I personally see accelerating in terms of adoption near term are platform based cloud computing and cybersecurity but with embedded managed services, um, it seems apparent that because of the varied technology requirements um most enterprises would rather use pre built applications, uh pre built platforms instead of building through capex and platforms allow immediate access to technology via uh subscription. Our cybersecurity platform in fact alone uh has seen a spike in demand uh primarily because it is pre built, uh it's telco grade, it's ready to use and very much affordable. I see enterprises also moving towards outsourcing, uh talent and skills uh especially for cloud and cybersecurity administration and management so that uh the current resources can focus more on strategic functions. Um now lastly we've seen a lot of interest from enterprises on 5G and IoT use cases. Uh it seems to be that uh case for every industry. Um and there are companies willing to engage, uh, explore uh, run proof of concepts and replicate use cases they see from other countries. Uh and again we're very happy to be partners with the largest port operator to implement the first uh 5G IoT use case in the country. Personally I believe IoT whether it be for industrial or utility use, uh smart city implementation or home use like uh, health device monitoring functions, it will be huge in the country over the next few years.

Speaker B: How big is it going to be you think John? Interesting, because there are emerging technologies that ELDT is right now trying to get into to prepare for the next five to 10 years,

Speaker G: it's actually going to be very big. I think the use of IoT will become very pervasive. Uh, there are still a lot of technologies that are there in the market that we have yet to see. But, uh, that's the benefit of using technology really. It allows you to really transform the way you do business, how you uh, approach your customers or interact with your customers, how you change the customer experience. Uh, that is what we truly encourage, especially here in pldt, that uh, all of enterprise, especially the SME, uh, make use, full use of technology, uh, primarily because, you know, uh, as mentioned, uh, yesterday during the CEO forum, technology is a great, uh, equalizer, whether you're a large enterprise or an SME, uh, it actually provides accessibility and opportunities to everyone.

Speaker B: Dustin, what do you make of, um, all you've heard, the emerging technologies that the company is, ah, getting into and how do those align with your technology predictions for next year?

Speaker C: My favorite is John Gonzalez because he said he agreed with me 100%. No, no, it was good because everyone here had a different take on it. And it's really around, um, going down this journey together and figuring out how we transform digitally. How do we come out the other side of this pandemic and how do we give outcomes to our customers and do this in the other form of sustainability. Meaning we also, on the other side of this tunnel, want to have a sustainable competitive advantage. That's the other part. Whether we move operating model, move online, go digital first. That's the other thing that's kind of key to me in listening to this event the last couple of days and asking questions.

Speaker B: I wanted to pick up on what Giorgio said about, uh, having trusted technology partners because they're very important in the mix as you try to uh, stage that revolution within the organization. So let's move on to the technology partners here. We've got three of them. And I wanted to start with Cisco. Uh, what are some of Cisco's technology predictions? Uh, anywhere close to Dustin's or at least builds from there that businesses must pay attention to.

Speaker H: Yeah, thanks Kathy. And good morning to all, by the way, um, together with John. I kind of agree with a lot of things Dustin, you spoke about because this resonates extremely well with what Cisco seeing in the market. Right, right. From the customers telling us what's happening with them, what the partners are telling, and also looking at how these market transitions usually take place. Um, I'll just pick out two things which I feel, um, I'll just add to everything the panelists have just spoken about. And I think uh, John mentioned it, Jojo mentioned it, Nico mentioned it. But I'll just pick out two areas. One is around the multi cloud piece of it. We're uh, investing pretty heavily into the hybrid and the multi cloud environment and we're seeing so many of our customers having a hybrid cloud, multi cloud approach. But if you take a step back and try and understand what this really means in a very open architecture environment, two big challenges that come in place. One is how do you actually in an open architecture multi cloud, hybrid cloud environment, drive that end to end security in an extremely zero trust environment. So that, that becomes very key and that's the area that we're really investing in. Right from endpoint securities right. To cloud securities and everything in between with the artificial intelligence going into it. I think that's something which is going to become increasingly important in this kind of an environment. The second piece is how do you build that visibility into your network end to end when you're using multiple clouds, uh, hybrid cloud on prem public cloud environments, how do you look at what's, understanding what's happening in your network and trying to drive that visibility analytics which leads to better application and network performance? I think that becomes extremely key and that's another area that we are investing a lot in because we believe that a lot of money is going to be spent otherwise in looking at these uh, elements of it. The second piece, and I think John mentioned this and this, this is very close to my heart is around the 5G Monet piece. I think the big um, promise of 5G is the B2B piece of it, um, private 5G use cases coming up. Um, and I think was it John, I think um, Dustin or Jojo mentioned the partnerships. This is one area. I think this will become extremely important as this market evolves.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker H: Because to build up these use cases, whether it's horizontal use cases for smart cities, ah, smart buildings, or vertical use cases for looking at smart mining, agriculture, education, um, hospitals and health care. You need partners who can come together to build proper solutions which drive real business outcomes and solve real uh, time problems. So that whole partnership and building that ecosystems and bringing that together becomes extremely key. So I think I'll touch upon just these two which becomes extremely key. And I feel we're already seeing it and it's going to be extremely exciting. But I'll just leave with one more thought on this. Um, and that's, I think everyone spoke about sustainability, but I'll also talk about Inclusivity a bit. And I think this is important for all of us as leaders to think about how we use the innovations and the technology that's coming in, not just in a sustainable manner, but also benefiting everyone if you will. So that whole, as we modernize infrastructure, cloudify applications, looking at that inclusivity, part of it, together with it. And I think that's the area that we'll be looking at as Cisco starts driving this whole innovation and being part of this whole ecosystem.

Speaker B: It's interesting, Joffrey, that you made a mention of how important those partnerships are and working with the right technology partners. Could you take us through how that actually works out? Do you seek the partner who will want the same kind of development, the same kind of revolution, or do you seek them out? What's the uh, way forward when you talk about multi cloud and end to end, uh, sort of hybrid environments?

Speaker H: Yeah, I think that's an interesting question, Kathy. So the way I look at it is this right when we look at our partnership models today in Cisco, uh, we've traditionally worked with reseller partners and I think it was John who talked about managed services also. So if you look at uh, partnership models, um, and taking this 5G as an example, we're looking at working with some of our ecosystem partners who are not really interested in just selling our technology but adding to the solution if you will. So we have uh, without naming specific partners per se, but we're looking at partners who help us with building management systems, for example, partners which bring us vertical expertise in mining, for example in agriculture, for example. And looking at how we build that expertise in IoT and everything else in terms of bringing that piece of it. The second piece is how we look at our service provider partners like pldt. And I think uh, the service provider partners like PLDT has a very, very important role to play in this whole GTM or the go to market approach for building out this new use cases because they bring the whole ecosystem together and stitch it for us while taking it to the market. They have the relationships with the end customer. Fantastic. They understand networks extremely well. Fantastic. Together with security, together with vertical application partners. And Cisco in terms of technology, we bring that whole ecosystem together to stitch something which drives real business outcomes. So to answer your question Kathy, uh, which comes first? I think it comes from the need of the customer if you will, uh, in terms of um, what they really need, uh, and also trying to understand what the new technologies can bring to the table. For example 5G in terms of the low Latency or the ultra low latency and the high speeds, what are the new use cases that we can build out to make that happen? So I think it's a combination of the two um and I would really not hazard a guess to see which comes first but I think it's up to us to really look at it. But service providers like PLDT play an extremely important role to stitch this together and bring it to the end customer if you will. And like with the managed services offering uh, like what uh John mentioned, it's

Speaker B: a matter of time in fact that uh everything is coming to be and in this ecosystem uh for Nokia uh let's pull you into the ecosystem. You're known for your innovation engine Nokia Bell Labs. Carlos, what uh do you make of the uh predictions Dustin and how do these align with Nokia's own ati?

Speaker E: Thank you for your question and also uh Dustin thank you very much for putting us to think in these four pillars. Definitely this is a revolution as the theme of this vehicle. And uh, we in the industry um, in order to add uh we are in the same line we at Nokia with our research engine Bell Labs have identified some of the key trends that match with the mentioned by dusting. We predict that this confluence of 5G technologies which consists of edge computer augmented um, artificial intelligence, machine learning, 5G advanced IoT sensors and end to end security and certain network as a service models will be the key for the new value creation. We also predicted that this new value creation will be coming from digitalizing the industrial and enterprise segments. That's very important. We now need to think about the verticals. For example Bell Labs consulting projects that this ICT investment enables by 5G technologies will grow up to 4.5 trillion by 2030. That's a huge number. And this is led primarily by physical industries undergoing a massive digital transformation. We see it in this digicon in one of the sessions one of the factories here in the Philippines that is already automated and have digital twins. Well Nokia has a conscious factory in all of Finland which is part of the World Economic Forum Lighthouse Network project. It is a fully digitalized factory that incorporates all the 5G technologies driving to matching using collaboration tools, robots, autonomous ah, transformations, quality control and that is what is coming as uh, it was explained by Dustin and it was explained by all our colleagues in the panelists. This is what is coming and we are aligned to that. We just also want to share that we just launched a program called no Boundaries. This program is focused totally in our customers and what their end subscribers will need for us people is the strongest asset and we adapt from different models to work, uh, especially working from home very quickly and allowing our collaborators to be connected not only for the information flow but also to continue the team spirit with Nokia and our partners. In terms of the fourth pillar that was mentioned by Dustin, Sustainability, we have been taking this very seriously. From one decade in the past we have been developing virtual power plants, energy saving solutions in our products and software efficiency up, uh, down to aiming to have delivered net zero site solutions that include liquid cooling to reduce energy consumption. So in summary what we are talking about here is really a revolution.

Speaker B: It is a lot of money put into research and development. Uh, I reckon. Are you going to be spending a lot more for R and D, uh, to propagate no boundaries going forward?

Speaker E: Yes, for sure. Definitely. One of the most investment in our company is R and D and uh, we are committed to the community to continue in that direction.

Speaker B: Well let me carry on uh, on R and D because I know Brandon, uh, Huawei has invested a lot for research and development, um, more than US$111 billion. Correct me if I'm mistaken, uh, could you just share some of the technologies that's come out of that investment so far, the revolutionary ones that Huawei is looking into.

Speaker D: Yeah, thank you Cassie for the question. Um, well it is a very significant number if you put that number, um, in a country, you know, total investment for the research and uh, so on. Probably only 18 countries in the world actually have a higher investment than what we have been doing in as a company. So there are really a lot things we are doing. Um, so basically probably put that into two tracks. Uh one is that we really put our effort to look at the fundamental technologies. So Rose basically made more on the mathematics, you know, uh, the chemical materials, uh, some of the uh, algorithms and so on. Those are the fundamental technologies that are really going to change our uh, technology evolutions from the long run. But more importantly is on the other side we really look at um, what is the things we need to do to help the consumers for the individual homes and enterprises really to accelerate digital transformation. So one of the striking facts as Dustin pointed out his slides is um, over 50% of the digital transformations today are running a siloed manner. Some of them were lacking of initiatives and so on. So a striking fact behind this is that um, if you look at a single digital transmission there are a lot things are actually involved that includes not just connectivity, it also involves other technologies like AI, computing, cloud and more importantly is the use Cases how we can connect these things together. So one of the big area that we really as a company will focus on is synergize these different technologies, break these ah cycles, uh uh individual silos of these technologies and really link them to the use cases. So every single company's digital industries they can use these technologies to accelerate their digital transformation and really lower down the barriers of utilization. So this is one of the big elements that we are really putting a lot of effort on. So these are some of the examples includes uh, um, we using our uh optical knowledges to improve the autonomous driving. So uh, we actually you uh probably heard the news that we launched our level four autonomous driving. But actually this based on a lot of fundamental technology we build on optics. There's really um, uh a lot of uh AI things that we've been doing. Uh for example we introduced the AI chipsets. This ah is also based on our knowledge a lot of things we build under the mathematics as well. So we also doing a lot of things uh try to break the accelerate with our partners to uh improve the utilization of edge computing. So we open source our uh ief which is the uh intelligent edge fabric solution to uh the CNCF cloud uh native uh foundation and now it has become the largest community under edge computing which is the Kubernetes. So things like that, these are the things that we really put a lot of effort on to lower down the technical barriers to really um, help the different enterprises industries to better utilize these technologies to accelerate their digital transformation. So um, yeah probably these are the ones that really were going to come out from these investments.

Speaker B: That's really interesting and I like that you make a mention of synergies because at the start of the conversation uh, one of our panelists made a mention of silo and then you repeated that word again. It seems to be in contrast with the revolutionary technology that we got to break down those silos slowly down those barriers to create those synergies. Do you think that the revolution of technologies will eliminate the silo structures of legacy companies that still exist today?

Speaker D: Uh I think this is uh, certainly um. I think as Giorgio has mentioned so Nico also mentioned that several times if you look at the enterprises, the requirements that's really integrates a lot things together. The different companies they are more um, looking at what are the business processes, how we can improve the overall efficiencies and so on and on. The new sector there's different ICT technology to support that. So instead of uh looking at individual technologies I think the most important is really look at the use cases, how we can best utilize these ICT technologies to support that use cases. I uh, think that's also a big part of uh, um companies like PLTT really play a very important role and I believe that area that uh, use uh, the expertise that PLT has been built and also with the uh, expertise that Huawei has built we can really help to integrate and synergize these things together and really help the customer uh, to look at their use cases and most effectively uh, deploy these technologies and also build a sustainable manner.

Speaker B: Dustin, what do you make of ah, what Brandon had said there about use cases and what do you make of these plans from our technology vendors to create the next revolution?

Speaker C: Well uh, that's a lot. I mean Huawei, just calling out Huawei in particular, they've been very good at um, a lot in promoting open architectures but in general I think part of it as well as vendors um, getting to work together um, better. I'm not pointing fingers at anybody here but um, historically taking a 20 year view, it's oftentimes of interoperability has been difficult and achieving best in class architectures has been difficult. However there are a lot of people that do like the single vendor approach because um, it's a trusted brand and they get it. So you're trying to achieve best of both worlds. But the other thing, it's important here, let's take part technology for a second. The other part and the more difficult part is you got to change the business process. And the hardest thing of all is you got to change the people. And I think that came out in a lot of the quotations. People got to prepare to work differently, engage differently, interact with technology differently. They got to look at their industry and look at the themes of their industry and respond to them correctly. And so there's a lot more at stake here than just technology. Even though technology is the enabling factor, there's a lot more that needs to come to play to spell success. That's how I respond to that, if that makes sense.

Speaker B: Kathy, we get back to people. I mean it's really a compelling word because we want to focus on the customer. So what kind of leadership then do you think companies should take in order to ensure that the people are aligned with the technologies of the future?

Speaker C: Well I think that we can uh, definitely I welcome comments from this group but I think successful organizations are ones that are going to practice more that um, move away from the hierarchical legacy org structures. If you want to tell how somebody delivers products, look at their org structure. I think we need to flatten org structures and talk about horizontal leadership working across different lines of businesses, increase interdepartmental collaboration. And think of those things like the Spotify model, uh, what is it, Tribes and squads, um, and guilds, if you follow those kind of things, where we conduct certain things as an organization in maybe um, sprints of eight weeks to deliver incremental outcomes. But over time it starts to build this uh, cadence and momentum that brings forth a lasting change. And there's lots of ways to places we can look at, um, how to reference this, but it's really around bringing agility in the agile organization to technology and having the two somehow meet in the middle.

Speaker B: Nika John, care to take a comment there

Speaker A: if I may? So from a leadership perspective, uh, I m still continue to be inspired from yesterday's power, uh, panel where you have the heads of the largest organizations in the Philippines essentially confirming that the pandemic has impacted everyone and that while it's been difficult for a lot of people that heroic efforts were made in ensuring employees were vaccinated, digital channels and cashless being rolled out in record time. And so many more examples of uh, how organizations and ecosystems have evolved. And the takeaway there is it's put digital on the forefront that it's not a choice anymore, but now as a necessity. And digital and the role of technology is important to continue on the revolution, to be resilient. Um, it's just there. And I really like the messages from Cisco as well on um, revolutionary leadership is about uh, being inclusive. Every person, every consumer employee, entrepreneur and business owner has been impacted and stand to benefit and has to benefit from the technologies and the best practices that have been discussed so far.

Speaker B: Yeah, Nico, carrying on from that. And just to synthesize the past few days worth of conversations and realizations, how do you think this all relates to how it all connects with the technologies of the future that we're building today?

Speaker F: Nicole, thank you for that. Um.

Speaker C: Oh, sorry Nicole.

Speaker F: Well, um, I think um, the big takeaway over the last two days is that um, and it's been emphasized very often, it's really not just it's not about technology, it's about people. Because in the end, um, technology is here to empower people and to enable them and not to enslave them, uh, enslave us. I think that goes both for enterprises as well as for consumers. Right. There's this big debate out there about how our mobile phones can be both empowering and um, enslaving. Um, A lot of the discussion in the more developed economies are about how socially responsible tech giants should be in influencing behavior and influencing even political events. Now, um, if we talk about where we are today and um, how we maybe envision, um, ICT in the future and how it can be adopted, um, I think what we are seeing is that just as connectivity maybe became um, an essential in this pandemic, um, ICT will become hygiene, uh, in the future. We've seen a lot about, um, how companies um, are now looking to cloud. Um, a discussion yesterday on Global Data and on Deloitte showed that adoption to cloud and our own experience locally as well about the adoption to cloud has really solidified this trend. Um, and if you look around, uh, into the market, the need to automate, um, the need to be agile, the need to be efficient, the need to be secure, they need to be more relevant to customers. All the technologies, all the expertise, all the practices are actually here and now. Uh, in fact, I think McKinsey released a study on through cycle outperformers, or simply put, these are customers, uh, who thrived through the crisis. And it was no surprise that companies which thrived are really those who invested in critical capabilities and enabled them to shift to a digital operation in its varying forms. I guess the challenge is that, um, as maybe some of us personally feel some vaccination vaccine hesitancy, uh, organizations somewhat feel digital transformation hesitancy. Right? So, um, the questions customers ask are where do I start? What's best for me? And uh, this is where technology partner can help them plan and design the appropriate roadmap comes in. Um, I think the best results come from transformation programs that begin with an intimate understanding of the most pressing business priorities and maybe the most desired business outcomes and uh, from there subsequently provide tailored solutions to achieve the agreed goals. Um, we have definitely seen the beginnings of an ICT revolution in the last two years and we are entering 2022 with a lot of momentum toward this ICT as hygiene future. Um, we see that we can shatter that glass ceiling when a critical mass of clients dive into it and experience successful transformation. Then they turn around and maybe to borrow from a speaker yesterday, um, tell others that, hey, it's okay to come in the water is fin, uh, transformation works.

Speaker B: So what about you Jojo? Which speaker or what message resonated with you the most over the past two days?

Speaker A: Uh, thanks Kathy. So, actually very excited to answer this one as I'll attempt to tie two statements together that's not about technology, but sums up the key message of the event for me. So Charlize said something about this is our evolution. So what has happened has caused us all to look at life um, differently and we, everyone are making it work. And then in boss Jovi's opening statement, uh, you know, opening spiel, he said that this human, um, evolution can be our revolution. So he connected evolution to, uh, uh, revolution that, ah, humanity has come across. Uh, an event that literally shook the foundation of our individual beliefs. So that all of this is unprecedented where we did not see a path, uh, ahead of us, but we simply have to take step after, uh, uh, step after step, ever forward, ever onward, as he puts it. So, you know, that, uh, you know, that's really, uh, very touching for me.

Speaker B: John, how about you?

Speaker G: Uh, thanks, Kathy. Uh, well, you know, the most interesting session really for me was the CEO Leadership Forum yesterday, uh, with major movers in the industry. Um, they actually provide, uh, and shared a lot of insights and they are windows to the daily grind and challenges that, um, businesses, uh, face on a regular basis. Uh, it was, uh, mentioned oftentimes throughout that session the need and importance for business agility, uh, as a means for business to thrive in this, uh, very challenged, uh, business environment. Uh, businesses who continually create strategies to differentiate, uh, to regularly connect to consumers by expanding engagement touch points, to use data to understand ever changing consumer behavior and find operational, uh, efficiencies in production, supply chain management, logistics, um, definitely will provide businesses an edge. Uh, agility means being able to outthink competition, to constantly experiment, to fail fast, uh, but learn immediately and deploy innovations as, uh, often as possible. And, you know, because of that session yesterday, I, you know, I had to reflect, uh, from the words of our chairman a few years ago, fast is better than perfect. Uh, and I think that still holds true today.

Speaker B: I think it holds better if we say faster is better than perfect. The accelerations have really sped up. Uh, Jeffrey, uh, and Carlos, Brandon. You've been technology partners for a long time and you've certainly gained a lot of insights just doing business with us or with other leaders across the world. What key leadership principles do you see are the most vital in handling the current challenges and in keeping people keeping the customer right, front and center, even as technologies evolve.

Speaker H: Yeah. Do you want me to go first? I could do that. So, just from my perspective, um, uh, I think most of the fellow panelists captured this pretty well. Um, I think the innovation and being bold and the whole culture of accommodating failure while moving faster, and that building that culture is extremely important. While we empower Our people in building that learning organization, the agility not just in the business but also with people. But if I take a step back and if I, um, just look at the last 12 to 24 months, um, and within Cisco itself, uh, we've nurtured relationships with our customers, our partners and our teams within the organization very well and that has helped us in good stead. And the key to everything was probably, ah, two pieces if I really step back and understand this. The first one was empathy. I think this was extremely key, something which we always spoke about but really came into action in the last 24 months. And I'll speak about this in a minute. The second was very clear, direct, uh, and transparent communication while building that trusted relationship with our customers, partners and our employees.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker H: Because things change, um, and environments change like we've seen the last 24 months. But it's for us to understand and work with our customers, partners and teams to try and understand what we need to do as a team together to solve those issues. So that communication on what's happening, especially today in the supply chain challenges the industry is facing, right? Being very clear in communicating what the challenges are and how we work together to make that happen so that trusted relationships become extremely key. The first thing which I spoke about was empathy. I think this is very key for us to understand with a hybrid workforce. And this is going to be your uh, to stay for some time. As we understand it, it's very important for us to understand that each employee is not just a workforce, uh, employee, but also someone who takes care as a caregiver, a parent has a social, community life. And it's not just about balancing work and life because it's so integrated now because earlier we had a fixed time where we go to the office, get things done and we come back home. It's now your own personal and social life, but it's now all integrated. So to uh, empathize with our teams to understand that while they work remotely, the need for being there to support them as a team helps uh, drastically and very, very well to not just improve performance but also the mental and physical health. So empathy, I would say Kathy, is very, very key in leadership today, especially so in today's world, the clear communication, uh, transparency and building that trusted relationship, uh, by working together, extremely key. Um, so I think that's very, very important together with driving innovation and really driving um, building up those use cases like we talked about to solve real life issues. Right. So I would leave it at that. Hopefully it gives you the answer were looking for.

Speaker B: Yes indeed. Uh, the emphasis on empathy at a time that we were most digitally connected. It's sort of counterintuitive but that's what digital connections have given us. Uh, the need to recognize, the need to be more emphatic. What about you Carlos?

Speaker E: Thank you Katie. Complementing what Thomas has mentioned because he's in the same line of thought we in the conference talk about leading with Waverly. That is very important and in fact uh, we need to recognize that working in the pandemic was not easy and really, really is a leadership action in PLDP to launch this IoT platform. Imagine how difficult had been the last year working together in order to make this huge launch of uh, significant platform. This is a demonstration of leadership and this is an illustration of teamwork and definitely as it was mentioned by Sir Alpanillo, leading with Braverly in terms of leadership at this moment it's very important. It's not only leadership in the office, it's leadership in the house with the kids, with the wife, uh, at home schooling at home, working. Uh, it's really, really difficult. But really the people are the ones that are able to make these changes and people are demonstrating that it is possible. And we are now let's say in a better, better position because of the leadership of the people, because of the leadership of the organizations and especially uh, with the agile thinking. You mentioned it and many panelists mentioned it. Now it's not by perfect, it's fast and maybe you can do a mistake, maybe you can uh, do things uh, not in a proper way but then you correct and you do it. And what we have learned in this pandemic is that digital deployment is important everything in digital to make the things easy and that has uh, to be with people. So my learnings about this uh, leadership style is to be simple, take the decisions in the proper way with the best spirit, in an uh, ethics and transparent way and uh, demonstrate that we can be able to go to the next step uh, with this mindset. Thank you.

Speaker B: What about you Brandon?

Speaker D: Yeah, definitely Cathy. One of the key things that we believe is uh, uh, the pandemic could really cause a lot of difficulties across all industries. So Huawei as a technology partner and a solution provider we believe in consistent investment. Um, this is actually requires a lot of pre, you know, kind um of a leading effort by understanding the issues and help to transfer the knowledges and to the one place to another. So one of the initiatives that we are really focusing on is really to look at the global best practices in different industries. And we prepackaged these learnings, these uh lessons learned and we turn them into a solutions that we can easily replicate uh, and shorten the time to markets for the other countries and other industries really to make use of these specific uh, you know, global uh best learnings. So this is one of the things that we are really focusing on. And a couple of uh, days ago, about two weeks ago actually uh we launched a new program that we're going to uh, really dive into Digital for the 12 different industries, uh looking at all the use cases, how we can um, put all these learnings and make these the best part of this and quickly allow the other industry to learn and replicate. So this is the one part, the second part is that uh, we also um, um and some panelists mentioned this a couple of times already which is the tenants ah, the digital know how. We are really working with a lot of universities. Uh there's more than 12 universities in Philippines are being very closely working with us on ICT academy. So uh, we help uh, um, the industries and different, the younger generations to quickly get into, build a bigger know how about ICT trends and technologies and then they can be much more ready when they graduate and they are getting to the fast growing digital world. So we believe in really consistently invest even in the uh, difficult situations that continued uh investment will get a bigger return for the industry, for the world.

Speaker B: Yeah, let me think about the academe because there is a question here from the audience and we've got about maybe 10 minutes to take in some questions. So if you have further questions just put them in the chat box. I've got one from Ian and it's to John Gonzalez. I would like to ask if what is the role of the academe in these technological revolutions? John?

Speaker G: Well, um, you know very good question actually. Um, I think the academe, uh, the sole purpose really is to impart learning to their students. Right. Uh, and for me leadership and learning is synonymous. During trying times where we work or learn together from afar, uh, both are actually very important. When we teach or we lead we primarily try to achieve an outcome. And by achieving an outcome it really requires a lot of listening and learning uh, from the people that you work with. Right. Um, hence uh, what was alluded in yesterday's forum, uh the CEO forum, that communication is really important, especially now that we need to learn and lead remotely. Once constant communication has been established, uh we need to ensure that, that everyone's responsible and that everyone gets committed to achieving the goals that they aspire for uh, and then from there I think we need to really invest in trust. Trust really will not happen overnight, uh, and will only develop through time, uh, focus on developing long term relationships, um, that builds cohesion, builds collaboration, builds a lot of learning and then eventually trust will evolve.

Speaker B: As we're talking about the intangibles here, I might as well bring up inclusivity again as Jeffrey had made a mention of it, uh, in his earlier remarks. Uh, question from Harvey Campos on inclusivity for Jafra. Inclusivity was mentioned in the discussion. How do you measure and monitor your progress in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger?

Speaker H: Uh, good question. Thank you for that. Uh, this is a tough one, right, because this requires um, all of us to do our bit as we go forward. You could always look at the statistics, um, uh, globally from any of these global organizations and how they look at uh, the numbers in terms of how they define it and so on. But one of the things which I really believe in, and this is something which Cisco has always looked at, is the whole inclusivity part like we spoke about. So we speak about ourselves as leaders in innovation and building networks, uh, of the future if you will. The Internet of the future with IoT 5G, Wi, Fi 6, all that optical 400 gig. But if this just restricts it to the larger um, cities or the more um endowed companies if you will, it will never be inclusive in nature. So one of the, we look at a lot of things in terms of how we take this technology to uh, nations, uh, villages, um, helping improve the connectivity in terms of doing that, using technology. And then looking at how Cisco from Cisco um Academy, if you will, on how we can support the development of the next generation. And that's what we believe in terms of taking out from the poverty, the second piece of it, uh, internally, also within ourselves, uh, we look at um, inclusivity in a very big manner. Not just in terms of our hiring practices, uh, in the way we look at hiring practices across the globe, but also in terms of how we evaluate performance of people also. So uh, together with the business impact we evaluate our team members on when we look at promotions, uh, and evaluating the performance of our employees, we also look at uh, team impact that they have had, but one key ingredient, uh, of the third piece of it, which is also the impact the person has had on the community if you will. Uh, and that these are the areas that Cisco has been looking at quite well. So we take our technology support people in, uh, how we can overall develop people, uh, not just in poverty and also looking at the education piece of it and bringing up people there on one last piece I'll leave with is from a Cisco perspective is um. And this is something. It's not just a CSR activity that we look at from a Cisco culture perspective. It's ingrained in almost every employee globally in our 70,000 plus workforce that we have where we contribute number of hours for community service. Right. And this is something as every employee does, uh, religiously, uh, from the heart to make sure that we are contributing and giving back to the community for uplifting. And this could be not just from a poverty angle but like I said, it could be less fortunate if you will, uh, which could be in different spheres, not just from a monetary angle.

Speaker B: From Civiti, let's take it back to sustainability as that's where this conversation's all begun apart from the focus on people. We've got a question from John Rafford for Brandon of Wakwe. How can we get technology adoption for SMEs to support sustainability aspirations if the barrier to entry is that sustainability is seen as secondary to just being operationally viable at the moment? Brandon?

Speaker D: Well one of the key things when we look at sustainability is um, people looking at um also the economic um factors. So for SMEs, uh, when you look at a sustainability one of the biggest problem they have is how I can use these different technologies and make m the best out of it with uh, the investment I can put in place right now where I can start. So this is several questions behind it. So um, Huawei as a company we actually um uh also putting a lot of um investment on that. We also launched our digital power um business business unit. It's become a one of the large business group that we have uh, in the uh operation globally. So this uh, company, um, this unit we actually really focus on several things. One is uh, to lower down the technical barriers. So for SMEs to make use of the existing technologies and look at the use cases they can immediately start with and get also economical returns. So this is uh, the first part, the second part we also work closely with the uh industries, um, the standard organization with government, with the partners and really to build a larger ecosystems. So the different part of the solutions can put in place um, can really um, work nicely together for the different SMEs. Um they can make use of these global partnerships and ecosystems and to enjoy the leverage all these systems, uh, so they kind of leapfrog from what they have today and to the ones that are Much more uh future proof that includes the ones that we've been uh actively working with uh a lot of governments that building the uh standards for solar panels, um ah building the standards for uh, the building integrated uh panels related solutions so we can enjoy more the green energies. We also actively looking at the legacy investments including the data centers, uh these uh, uh alcohols, the BMS solutions, how we can uh leverage what you already built and start to optimize energy consumption and so on these multiple uh tracks um of optimization uh alternatively you are able to enable a Wider community like SMEs to be able to um, get engaged on the sustainability and build their um sustainability engagement paths and journeys indeed.

Speaker B: And SMEs the small medium enterprises are really key the backbone to any economy, especially an emerging um market one like the Philippines. So it is very important that they get into that ecosystem as we m all together transform into the revolutionary technologies of, of tomorrow. Thank you so much. We've run out of time. I know there are a lot more questions. If those questions have gone unanswered, we'll get them to you those answers uh, after the session on Digicon. Thank you so much to everyone in this panel. Your insights have truly helped prepare our participants for the next revolution. And that wraps up our closing plenary discussion and the Philippine Digital Convention 2020. Now before we close the session, as promised, we'll be raffling up um, winners of premium gadgets. So for a chance to win, just simply accomplish our feedback form available in the tab beside the chat box. The winners will be notified via email by October 14th. So good luck to our delegates. Thank you so much for joining us in this three day convention. We hope that uh, we inspired you to reveal embrace the revolutionary change needed to stay ahead in this ever changing business landscape. The new world of business. Again, I'm Kathy Yang and this has been Revolution Philippine Digital Convention 2021. Stay safe and well everybody.