When I first joined a year ago, we
were in the news and you know, we
we had a cyber incident that impacted us.
Obviously,
of the biggest learnings from that incident is,
you, everyone typically focuses on technology. Right? And
I always break it into people process and
technology and unless you get all 3 legs
of a stool in order, you know, you're
never safe.
Welcome to techno activation I'm your host Pure
High. My guest today is Ses K. Ses
as is the Chief Information Officer of Western
digital, a leader in digital storage solutions it
earns in excess of 12000000000 dollars in annual
revenue. He's been enroll for roughly a year,
and in that time, has led a transformation
of It and the company. He's focused on
cyber security and risk management as well as
culture, employee experience and engineering excellence, some other
other topics of focus. I look forward to
speaking with him about each and more. He's
a past chief information officer, of Pager duty
and of ana plan, and a past Cio
of a 10000000000 dollar. Everything is a service
offering at Cisco as well. Ses welcome to.
It's great to speak with you today.
Thank you, Peter. So Excited to be you.
It's a great pleasure. Well, maybe we begin
Ses with an overview of Western Digital business.
A bit about the business you're in, please.
Western digital is in the business of data
storage solutions. It's all about high capacity, data
storage and high performance, data storage. So essentially,
we have a hard disk drive business
and a solid state drive business, and we're
pretty much in laptops, desktops,
data centers, lot of our large customers are
cloud providers whether it's Amazon, Google,
Microsoft, meta, etcetera, etcetera.
Again, I think the company has been an
existence for decades, and now with the,
buzz of generative Ai, obviously, we saw the
first wave of lot of the Gpu growth,
and I think from a data storage perspective,
we see that as a second follow. So
again, super excited in terms of the industry
and where currently.
Excellence. And I I wonder if you could
talk a bit about your role as chief
information officer. What's within your purview as Cio,
please, S?
From my day to day responsibility
perspective, I have what is classic It, I'm
also responsible for the security organization, so the
Cis reports to me. And then, I'm also
responsible for a lot of the data and
analytics. And, lastly, given that we are a
global
manufacturing company,
lot of the factory
It systems
that manage our 12 14000000000 dollar business.
You know, I'm also responsible for those So
so essentially, it's classic It, data and analytics,
security and the factory systems.
Very interesting. Well, I know from early on
in your role and makes the first days
of your time with the organization, it experienced
as so many companies have experience a cyber
incident. And I wonder if you could talk
a bit about that trial by fire in
those early days and how it created a
kind of focus you probably weren't expecting in
those early days. Can you talk about that,
Sorry, please? Yeah. Absolutely. Right? So so, again,
when I first joined a year ago a
little more than a year ago, so we
win in the new and, you know, we
we had a cyber incident that impacted us.
And the team really did a phenomenal job
in rallying behind
and then really ensuring that, you know, we'd
remediate the incident, and we got all our
systems back up and running.
Obviously, 1 of the biggest learnings from that
incident is, you know, everyone typically focuses on
technology. Right? And I always break it into
people process and technology and and unless you
get all 3 legs of the stool in
order, you know, you're never safe. Right? Or
you're never built enough guard rails in in
in your ecosystem. And then, obviously, we're a
very complex
manufacturing, supply chain organization, so we work with
external, you know, partners, logistic partners, customers.
So so the perimeter is... There is no
perimeter technically. Right? Again, for us, I think,
we are the incident,
what we learned is, how do we tighten
up our change process systems
how do we also look at our help
desk systems because when somebody calls in for
a password reset? How do you really validate
who the actors are. Right? And and do
you train in many time, you know, you
outsource,
your, helped desk function. Right? And and how
do you ensure that even within your 4
walls and partners that you engage with are
trained with best in class mechanisms of validation.
Just like in your personal life, you know,
I mean, even though you have an Fe,
and you got all validation.
There's always a, you know, a loophole. So,
again, I think, you know, the team did
a phenomenal job in terms of again, thinking
those lessons learned in terms of our help
desk processes,
our technology,
do we also communicate, you know, with external
customers and really remediate. Right? So so again,
I think from that fortunate, we were fortunate
that, you know, there was no
impact from a revenue perspective
or from our ability to ship product and
continue our R and D, but but it
really shed light in terms of our people
process technology. And since then, you know, as
a part of my own It strategy,
my number 1 priority is
risk compliance and cyber cybersecurity.
That makes sense. I'd love to get further
into, your strategy as well. But before we
do, so you you rightly call out people
as a critical component here in order to
get to all of that you've described right
and more for that matter. And I know
that you,
have put a lot of thought into culture,
the sort of culture you hope losses within
the organization. I mean, probably, of course, on
the culture that preceded your time with with
the company. But can you talk a bit
about the the role culture, and and maybe
some of the ways which you would define
it in an environment like Western digital?
Yeah. Absolutely. And and, again, you know, there's
a cliche. Right? Culture strategy for breakfast. Right?
So, again, I think what I find and
and there's, you know, different companies have got
different cultures. And from what I observe and
this is also in general what I've seen
talking to a lot of my peers. So
1 of the biggest things is, you know,
how do you avoid stove wipes? Right? Because
in It,
culturally,
you know, you're supporting a function. So let's
say, you know, you're responsible for supporting sales.
So you have a sales It organization. Right?
Or order processing or a financials It. So
so, obviously, you got the functions in how
you support the different stakeholders,
but more importantly,
you need to think of the connective tissue.
Right? 1 of the reasons I allow being
an It is because you get to see
the 03:60 view of the business.
And again, 1 of the things is, you
know, is the Cio more a business leader
or technology leader. Right? And I would say
a combination of both, but it's gotta be
business first.
Gotta be understanding,
you know, the the role of the business,
where do we see growth opportunities, Where do
we see cost savings opportunities,
How do you streamline and simplify your processes,
How do you really delight your customers, your
partners, your employees? So, again, I think that...
That's the exciting part of being an It.
So for me, culturally,
what I felt within the organization is everyone
was working very hard within their individual functions
and towers and measuring themselves. But then when
you flip it and come from an outside
in perspective. Right? Don't talk to me about
Microsoft Teams and Slack and Abc b,
But what's the employee's experience in a meeting
in in the in the way they collaborate
and how do you measure that? Right? So
to me, the biggest thing on culture was
around flipping on its head don't be tech
centric, look at it from a process and
outside in perspective and then pass the silos.
And then the second thing is in a
team sport. Right? So you know, I'm... This
is my analogy. There's... What's on the front
of the Jersey and what's on the back
of the Jersey. Right? And never forget that,
respect the position that you play. So when
you represent a stakeholder,
you represent all of It. You you can't
say, hey, that's the network team's issue or
the infrastructure team's issue. You gotta take accountability
and represent It as a whole, and then,
you know, be hard internally to hold the
Pos accountable
for improving service levels or operational levels, agreements
in order to deliver the world class experience.
Right? So again, I think the biggest 1
is silo
busting,
Right? And and the second thing is always
respect the position you play, but you're playing
for what's on the front of the Jersey.
Right?
I love that analogy. I appreciate you sharing
that so the Sports team and Jersey analogy.
I think it's particularly apt in in developing
that mentality. You alluded briefly there to
importance of employee experience, and the role that
your team plays there as well. Can you
talk a bit about you know, some of
your your thoughts process on methods of improving
it, and especially from a digital perspective,
the the the means by which you you
can impact that a best.
Absolutely. And again, this is still a, a
work in progress. Right? So we closely work
with both corporate communications and
with our people solutions teams. Right, in terms
of, you know, because, again, you know, is
that a single team within a company that
is responsible for employee experience. Right? And and
the answer is typically no. So Therefore, I
think It has an opportunity to play 51
percent of the decision making. Right? So
so like I said, again, you know, the
the classic... And the traditional thinking is, I
have a team that's responsible for email,
communication,
collaboration.
You work with facilities for your conference rooms
in terms of video conferencing, audio conferencing,
whiteboard boarding, things will lot nature. Then you
have... You... What's your,
obviously, post covid, we still try to get
people as many times in the in the
week to come into the office, but still
give or take it's about you know, 2
to 3 days a week. Right? So, again,
what's that in the office
collaboration experience.
So that's 1 set of capabilities. Then the
second is,
know, when I was getting interviewed for the
job, what's my,
interviewing process? Right? How seamless is the calendar
setup the meeting white setup? Is it a
1 click to join the meeting
because you're already, you know, having butterflies in
your stomach just before an interview, and you
just wanna make sure that the tech just
works. Right?
So once once you finish your interview, if,
let's say you get an offer of what's
your own onboarding experience like. And then, you
know, once you onboard, how do you drive
engagements? So right from, you know, I find
you
to I recruit you
to I onboard you to... I make you
productive, and I drive more and more of
your engagement. And then hopefully, I don't have
to ever leave in the event, 1 does,
this day and age, people do? For different
reasons, then what's your off boarding experience. Right?
So to me, the employee experience is really
about that end to end from, you know,
finding talent to
growing them and nurturing them, I think it's
super important.
And then the second thing is how do
you also create personas? For example, and we
did this you know, in my past company
and here. Day 1 if a software engineer
joins a company.
Can you make he or she fully
productive on day 1, which basically means that
you've provisioned the systems
tools right from writing code,
you should be able to write a code
and and, you know, deploy it on day
1. Right? So how do you have that
mine that it's not just about getting your
Pc or Mac with everything set up, but
knowing that this is a software engineer and
I'm gonna provision a Github or
jenkins or things of that nature, ahead of
time. So you're productive on Day 1. And
likewise, for a sales,
Ae, you know, access to Salesforce and access
to a lot of the critical sales tools.
That's all set up. Right? So then that
way, now all you're trying to do is
get on with your onboarding experience and learning
and being productive on the job. Right? That's
how I look at it in terms of
employee experience. Less about the tech
more about a day in the life off
and can you really make it
efficient and frictionless.
Session, light, what you described, I wonder what
skill sets are rising in importance within your
organization that you would offer some some perspectives
on.
Peter, 1 of the critical factors is also
about taking stock about the skill set within
your organization. Right? And I think it's super
important to map out
what are the current skills that you have
an inventory of all the key skills and
competencies within the It organization? And then look
at where the puck going in the industry?
Right? What are the futuristic skills that you
need and you need to do a fit
gap analysis in terms of what you have
and what skills are in demand and what
you need. And then you need to really
think about how do you bring in talent
from early carrier because you also wanna create
a growth from your career perspective carrier from
hires, uni what's the interns, etcetera. And then
the second thing is where do you need
seasoned hires people that bring in that skill
set and know how because you need to
infuse technology or that business knowledge and capability
within the organization. So I would strongly encourage
all Cios do a regular
skill set inventory analysis between basic,
proficient and advanced
throughout the entire organization, including leadership.
And and really be prepared in terms of,
you know, the feed... Future requirements and needs.
And and that's a super important
you know, success criteria within the organization.
Well, said, like the, like, the notion of
this end to end thought process as you
notes.
Earlier you talked about the
imperative strategically of of security risk and compliance.
Understandably, again, given the incidents in the early
days of your tenure as well. Wonder if
you could talk a little bit about changes
in philosophy or process associated with that. And,
you know, obviously, innovation is about risk taking
the idea of risk doesn't mean being risk
less. But obviously, also understanding that you are
taking into consideration risk tolerances and the security
and compliance implications to all that you and
your team do. Can you talk a bit
about, you know, your your philosophy around security
risk and compliance, please?
Yeah. And it's always a balance between perform
and transform. Right? You gotta make sure that,
you know, you never compromised
the existing,
infrastructure. But at the same time, you can't
swing on the other end where, you know,
every change becomes a bigger change that you
just can't in a way because now these
days, if you don't a innovate, you'll left
behind. Right? So I think it goes back
to how do you create an It engagement
model and the culture of leaning in Right?
And and really, it's a team sport. And
rather than treat the Cs in terms of,
you know, I mean,
people think of... Well, as soon as you
say a security organization, well, it takes for
too long or, you know, there's not enough
resources etcetera. So to me, I think it's
really having a clarity on... As we engage
with the business so the best we can.
Get a sense for the key priorities,
the road map. The investments.
I think it's super important. So that you
you can apply your scarce resources against the
highest order a bit. Right? The second thing
is also being very close to your procurement
organization. Right? Because a lot of the software
purchases
happen through and many of a time even
It is not aware. Right?
And it goes straight to the procurement team.
So again, having a close into lock with
their procurement team and and teaching them and
training them. So that, you know, they push
back and are able to rope in and
bring the Cio and the Cs into the
conversation when,
you know, when certain flags and conditions come
up. Right, during the review process. So so
to me, I think I think those are
2 critical things.
And then continuing to to teach the organization
because, again, let's take rb brains off lee
as an example. Right? Because, again, risk and
compliance socks is a big compliance aspect. It's
not a 1 time done dusted effort. It
gotta be a part of your day to
day performance and Sla and management with all
changes,
you know, sitting with the finance
organization, sitting with a tax organization, making sure
that all the controls are well tested. More
importantly, is it well documented?
The second thing is you have the right
practices to ensure
and compliance. And then when you do with
an external auditor in our case K G,
are you able to demonstrate both as a
business and It organization the adherence to all
the sox controls. Right? So again,
it's funny because
then you have a I have a large
team in India and you know, Asia, etcetera.
And and many your time, you know, early
in carrier people also learn through production support
and sox compliance and testing,
And and I was in in all hands
once, and I was talking to, you know,
people who are early in their career?
And and, you know, I asked this individual
What do you do? And, oh, well, I'm
just doing test thing of these controls and
validation. And then I mentioned it in my
own hand saying that if we fail the
sox
deficiencies and demonstrate that we have material weaknesses.
Guess what? It means that a lot of
the C suite goes to the jail link
including the Cio.
Right? So failing a socks out means jail.
Right? And and that light bulb is, you
know, oh my god. This is why it's
important to have fiduciary controls.
This is what it means to be a
publicly traded company.
This is why it's important because I think
it's important for people at the lower levels
to understand. Otherwise, what happens is when you're
just testing a control It may sound a
little Monday mundane, but how do you translate
it to the work that you're doing on
a day to day basis is so critical.
That it can, you know, put your company
at risk from a Sec reporting,
financial fiduciary requirements perspective, etcetera. And for a
publicly traded companies, these are something that you
never compromise. Right? So so making that as
a part of your culture and your Dna,
Are they you're so important.
Then likewise, with with Cyber 2, you know,
our past learnings has been that, you know,
we tend to go to the board meetings
and you have these missed frameworks and you
have these, you know, maturity colors that you
basically say where you have green, and and
I always call it the watermelon and right?
It's green on the outside and as soon
as you slice it, It's red in the
inside. So again, how do you ensure that?
You know, you really
are being practical about the this framework,
and you're able to call out the risks.
And again, you don't know what you don't
know. But to the best you can and,
you need to quantify the risk. And, again,
I'd... It's about people process technology. Right?
And it's also about you know, even simple
things like these days, all the phishing emails
you, you know, you get? And how do
you train the organization, when to click and
not click. Right? So So I think all
those are super important just doing a 1
time tabletop top exercise is not enough.
It's gotta be a regular you know, sport
that you that you do, frequently. So again,
I think those are some of the key
learnings. And then the last thing is when
you have an incident and when the going
gets wrong.
You'll truly get to know who's a partner,
and who's a vendor. Right? And we clearly
learned, you know, who was truly
willing to go above and beyond and demonstrate
partnership versus
some languages vendors.
And and then you need to know what
you have to do.
To really, you know,
figure out what's your next step from the
experience.
Very well set. I appreciate those flexi reflections,
and and also, the reit reiterating of the
point of the people the process and the
the technology working in concert in order to
get these frameworks correct. I know another, other
areas of strategic importance to you that you
are driving
transformation through is,
operational and engineering excellence. Can you talk a
bit about
do... How that applies, some of the methods
that you're using, again, early days I recognize.
But
how how that's being enacted within Western Digital
as well.
Yeah. I mean, look,
everybody wants to nowadays work on cool capabilities
and I I call it perform and transform.
Right? But perform is basically... It's like, you
know, water gas electricity. Right? You expect it
to be always on. And when things are
not always on, it creates big issues. Right?
You go, well, what the hell. I don't
get water. I don't get gas electricity. So
same thing from an It perspective. To me,
operation excellence basically means that all our services
are up and running. Right? Email is up.
Collaboration is up. All the mission critical wants.
The ability to message
meet,
collaborate,
place orders,
your, website is up. You can you can
book revenue. You can ship product again, I
call these as always on services. And,
you know, they better have, you know, 3
nines of 4 nines in terms of, you
know, availability.
Again, it's it's a cost versus, you know,
investment balance. But to me, operational excellence is,
you know, always on services, no compromises, etcetera.
No, obviously, in the software world stuff happens
happens, and and and I think, you know,
it's it's important that when things happen,
it's the attitude with which we respond and
and not a fingerprint pointing game on a
bridge. Right? So so, again, what is the
mean meantime to restoration when an incident happens?
And then this was classic with my previous
company pager duty. Right? And the whole premise
was
around, you know, how do we minimize downtime.
So likewise, we implemented page duty when I
first came on board.
So, again, I think the thinking of operational
excellence is measure your always on services.
And anytime there's a there's an issue or
an outage, let's learn from it. And again,
people process technology.
And most of the times, you had to
measure yourself and how good you all a
changes? And and many incidents actually happen due
to changes. So how do you minimize change
related incidents?
Right, which is you're making new features or
code change or etcetera. So how do you
really minimize that. And when things happen or
go solve, have a robust,
rollback plan or a fall back plan,
communicate early. Right?
And escalate early. Asking for help is not
a sign a weakness.
Think it's super important.
We recently had an issue with 1 of
our big software providers, and and the team
did not even know who to call on
the on the partner side. Right? So again,
you know, knowing
who to call, how do to escalate
even with your big software providers and partners
are getting a super important all that I
call as operational excellence and you measure
in terms of uptime, outages, change really related
incidents, time resolution, etcetera. Then on the engineering
excellence, it's about, you know, having the right
process
tooling
to deploy software. And we still have some
work to do to fully embrace agile. Right?
And Agile is not about, you know, producing
clap faster, but you have to have the
right due diligence
across the board.
But it's once your requirements and what your
outcomes are well understood, then how do you
accelerate with with the business. Right? And bring
the business along?
On this journey. So engineering excellence is all
about, you know, do I have
source called automation,
Can I do unit testing and dev testing
and integration testing on scale, and I automate
a lot of things,
both from our cyber and priority perspective and
from a code based perspective,
can all my ml and data engineering and
pipeline engineering, Are they all digital digitized and
automated
are we really leveraging the cloud first mindset?
Right, rather than build everything in your data
center or a c?
So I think a lot of these principles
go into and and think about security first
rather than an afterthought, even during your review
process,
etcetera. So those are the 2 pillars in
terms of operationally excellent and engineering excellence.
And and bring in the software defined paradigm,
even from an infrastructure perspective, Right, especially with,
you know, there's a lot of logging and
monitoring, but what is truly a ob ability.
And and and, again, in the industry too
the word ob ability is super important where
it's, you know, classic It It's a network
issue a data center azure data issue. But
really, how do you... Because the users don't
care whether the issue is. Right? I can't
book an order, or I can't, you know,
I can't engage with you in on your
website. So the end users should never care
on what's broken, but it's our job in
It to ensure.
That we are accountable for that end to
experience. Right? So so I know I said
a lot, but that's all I would categorize.
Very interesting. Again, Appreciate the overview there. Mentioned
in the introduction that you've been its chief
information officer multiple times and an It executive
across a diverse array of technology centric
organizations. You've been at major scaled companies, your
current post of course of with Western digital.
Also Cisco, I mentioned before, you've also been
at scaling technology
organizations like pager in plan in both cases
as chief information officer also.
I wonder what do you draw from your
experiences back and forth? What advantages
you have in having experienced scaled
organizations and helping them sort of foster, continued
growth and and transformation, also being in the
kind of even faster pace growth the organizations
like a like a pager Or anna plan.
What are you drawing from each of those
experiences into 1 like you have today that
that you, might be lightning.
Yeah. Absolutely. I I spent a long carrier
at Cisco and led a lot of transformation,
you know, great journeys across us, you know,
the business. And and, obviously, you know, having
seen the company grow form. Them when I
joined them, they were, like, 4000000000 and when
I left, we were about 51000000000 in Cisco.
So again, just going through the sales go
to market growth, the commerce growth, the shift
towards new business models like, you know, software
as a subscription also for on premise networking
gear, data center gear as a subscription. So
again, thinking through that whole business model shift,
building systems for scale,
and with high
operational excellence metrics that I mentioned was a
huge learning from a cisco perspective. And then,
obviously, as a part of your career growth
and movement, I join Ana plan and Pager
duty, and 1 of the biggest things is
when you join companies that are much
smaller.
And and you have a smaller footprint even
within It organization. 1 of the biggest things
is, you know, large company, you you take
things for granted. Right? Because your your budgets
are fairly large,
you have larger teams at your disposal and
things of that nature. And when you soon
realize that when you're in a smaller company,
everyone's got a own up like, you know,
top line and bottom line. Right? And in
the Saas companies, the rule of 40 was
super important between, your profitability and top line
versus your spends and Op and how do
you really thrive to be towards the rule
of 40 and many companies were still not
profitable,
you know, despite good growth. Right? Which then
means
that is all about the bottom line. Right?
And driving more efficiency and more automation so
doing more with less. Right? So I think
the biggest learning there was, you know, with
every hiring, value digitize, right, value automate and
and and really look for our, partnership with
the Cfo
on what are the levers towards accomplishing the
rule of 40 and and really trying to
do within It, what can we do. Right?
That was that was a big, you know,
learning and takeaway and and really being a
lead in me an organization.
Then the second thing was just around many
a time, you're selling to,
you know, fellow practitioner, Cio, Cto,
Cis, etcetera.
So how do you also help influence the
product. Right, in terms of the story board,
the pitch deck.
What features and functionalities are important? How do
you unlock relationships and and really provide the
practitioner view back into the product? Right? And
and, again, what drew me back to a
larger was partially a personal,
reason. But at the same time, I I
wanted to... Get back into a a doable
manufacturing, like, you know, footprint from a more
personal carrier perspective. So so again, which made
me come back to a larger organization.
And, again, the complexities of a large organization
having been in small teams where you have
to really be conscious about your investments,
you know, helps me bring that same value
for money. Because I think at the end
of the day, we gotta treat all of
this as your own personal money and really
think about the value for money conversation.
How do you measure Roi?
Right? How do you ensure that, you know,
the costs and and expenses are in line.
And and 1 of the biggest things and
we always get ding in It is takes
to long cost cost too much. Right? That's
that's just the tagline line. No matter where
you are. And and how do you continue
to have us story board
with the right metrics to show
exactly what your costs are. Right? So what's
your annual budget
Let me break it down
between what's fixed.
Right? What's non fixed
and and having that narrative with your Cf
4 and the c suite. I think is
super important. And like I said, 1 of
the beautiful beautiful things of being an It
is, again, you have no dog in the
fight. Right?
And and I find many many a time
being in the middle of breaking log jams
between a, Cfo or a Cro or a
Coo because you you just lay out the
fact and we go well, here's here's what's
being asked to me.
And
here's the scarce resources, and and the business
case, we've we've implemented it, but we don't
see us accomplishing a business case. So do
we continue to feed the beast or do
we cut bait. Right? So again, I think
I think 1 of the things is I
call it courageous decision making and the ability
to influence and bring
we are a steering company committee, the right
leaders of the table to have the uncomfortable
conversations, I think is an expectation of a
Cio. Right? You know, and I think that's
been a good growing opportunity early on.
I've had my own scars where you say
some things and you don't realize the... The
political landscape.
But you gotta be politically savvy and you
gotta
know, you gotta tee it up and grease
the skins a little bit before you're able
to
talk about what what the outcomes are. So
that's how I would categorize that Peter.
It's a really nice reflections. I appreciate you.
You offering those Ses.
You, as you look to the future, or
especially if somebody who's so immersed in technology,
and it has been across these different settings
we just refer to? I wonder what trends
excite you as you look to the future.
What are some of the topics that you're
investigating further or perhaps or beginning to make
their way onto the road map. Yeah. So
I think for me, I'm trying to things
to be honest with you between perform and
transform. Right? I still have a few things
or many things to accomplish on the perform
bucket, which is all about you know, cloud
first,
asset light,
beef up our,
risk compliance,
posture,
employee experience a pet peeve. Right? So again,
how do we continue to digitize,
and look for value for money. Are we
getting the value for money from all of
our major plus forms that we're invested in.
Right? Because all these are multi year subscription
deals.
Are we really getting the value for money?
Are we engaging with, you know, the the
web... The partners on a regular basis pushing
for features and functionality. So I think a
big chunk of it is in the perform
category
of employee experience,
customer experience,
improvements in your risk compliance and cyber posture,
and and really being asset light. And then
on the transformed side, potentially, a business model
shift in terms of, as a service, you
know, that is 1.
The second thing is, again, data data analytics.
Right? I I still think that a lot
of our metrics and capabilities are rare view
looking. And again, it's not unique to us
western digital, but again, it's about an industry
too...
It's it's still Admire what happened in the
last quarter and still, if you look at
many companies, culturally, you're running Qb,
you're sitting in Q 4 and you're running
AQ3 Qb. Right? Which it's it's a rare
view looking to begin with, that's a rare
view lens. Right? And we tend to rain
slides and talk about 45 minutes and our
1 hour meeting about what happened last quarter.
Rather than, hey. Here's what I'm gonna predict
is gonna happen this quarter next quarter.
And here are the adjustments I need to
make. And here's, you know, forward looking. Right?
So I still think on the analytics front.
We need to be
forward looking. And for that, I mean, honestly,
we talked about a lot about Gen ai
and the buzz. Right? I think it all
goes back to having a robust data model.
And how do you take opportunity data from
Salesforce, bookings data from an Erp
to an install based data in your install
basis you're entitlement data and really connecting it
from the lens of a customer. Right? You
know, who have you sold it too, you
know, sold to sold through because in an
ecosystem. You're not many of times selling directly
to end customers, you're selling through a channel.
So I I think it's super important to
understand your routes to market, your go to
market motions and really know who your customer
truly is,
and and really focus on the right data
quality and data completeness problems. Right? So so
in a way it's back to basics is
how I say it, Peter. And once your
data model is robust and strong, and you
have the right technology, whether it's, lake house
or data warehouse warehouses in the cloud. I
I think all those are a given table
stakes, and you got enough ample technology choices
to pick and choose from. Then comes, hey
in the future, gone to the days where
somebody's gonna log in into a Tableau or
a Power Bi and run a report. Right?
You you you you're gonna have a prompt.
And you're gonna say, who are my top
3 customers
or which product of mine is generating
more than 10000000 dollars in revenue.
Or who's my top sales rep as an
example. And I all of these are gonna
be prompt based questions. Right?
And and those are things to find information.
The second thing could be is actions. Right?
It's like, hey, I wanna take a Monday
off in July, and let me know what's
the best time to take it. And and
and you get a prompt back and and
the system creates a record in 1 day
as an example Right? And and you get
your time off request to proof. So then
that becomes an action based. So long story
short to me, I think it's about prepping
the data calls, and then embracing the right
L and the right technology
architectures to enable
in truly do we do generative Ai
based on the different department use cases, What's
relevant for sales? What's relevant for engineering?
What's relevant for employees. What's relevant for manufacturing?
I think that's super important. And then the
other area that's super important for us is
It and Ot. Right?
It being information technology, Ot operational technology. So
again, we have a lot of factories and
these are world class factories in Far East.
So again, in these factories,
how do you have the concept of a
digital twin? Right? How do we use imaging
text to videos to predict quality problems or
reliability problems? Right? And and really figure out
from your production line in your manufacturing line?
How do you demonstrate the best operational technology
where yields are super high, failure rate is
super low and that our production lines are
full capacity
with with very minimal
defects on the production line.
So again, we call it the factories of
the future,
fully digitized, fully automated Me systems.
Those are super important. And and then in
Ot,
again, you know,
we're also looking at technologies from a security
and facilities perspective
if there's a fire. Do we have enough
sensors to detect?
There's an issue because you can't physically have
people deployed every everybody? So how do you
respond in terms of a crisis,
right, in terms of Ot technology and large
campuses and large factories and things of that
nature. So so, again, that's the just a
a few things that, you know, we are
we are considering across the realm. Some of
it is back to basics and some of
it is more futuristic and forward looking.
Again, great. Frame reflections all ses. Thank you
for that.
Wanted ask you before I let you go.
Is there anything you recently you've been reading,
listening to or and or watching that you
would particularly recommend to our audience?
I mean, the 1 thing is, you know,
there's this book called working backwards. Right? I
think it's written by, you know, some key
people from Amazon and and 1 of the
things in It is it's always about... How
do you tell the story with the end
in mind, and then you work your plan
backwards once?
Right? And many your time in It, when
we communicate, we are talking about widgets and
technology and tools and and less about this
story and the narrative and imagine. And if
you wanna think about a product mindset, you
need to think around the finished product and
then work your milestones and plans backwards. Then
the second thing is even in your Powerpoint
points and the ability to create the story
more narrative, What's the punchline? And and how
do you use as few slides possible to
really talk about,
but the bias towards action. So to me,
I think that's a good read in general
to talk about a finished product in mind
and launch,
work your way backwards and Iron not all
the kinks. In a way you're writing your
press release, like, if something's gonna out, let's
say you have a big Erp release in
a year from now. How do you write
the press release as though you're in 12
months from now and answer all the key
questions
and then work your plan backwards.
A great recommendation. Thank you for that. And
and a great rationale as to why it's
a has been an important read for you.
Thank you for sharing that such. I still
read your book that's in the back there.
The world oneplus It strategy, Peter.
Yeah.
Thank you so much. I appreciate that as
well as.
And I wanna thank you more generally speaking
for a great conversation. It's fascinating to hear
more about your tenure now, you're in change
in. A Western digital, the various
transformations that you you are leading across the
organization. Also, great to hear more about your
10 year as chief information officer across multiple
organizations and how you've drawn from that experience,
culminating in your current post. It's been a
really terrific conversation. Thank Thank you again.
To think for the opportunity.