Are you desperate to move to cloud but uncertain about where to begin? What will your strategy, and roadmap look like? Organizations need the right public SAP to cloud migration solutions to guarantee a smooth transformation for business and enhance business value. Migrating critical workloads to public cloud can help reduce time to market, enhance ROI and stimulate innovation.

Our modular SAP2Cloud transformation services shape the digital core of your operations, helping you reap the full benefits for the future of your operations. This transition is more than an upgrade – it is a response to the new digital world climate where rapid digitization of businesses is fore fronting the necessity to stay ahead of competitors and maximize business value.

As a world leader in ERP and digital transformation, Capgemini possess a depth to our experience and real-world success in building migration strategies to help our clients arrive with ease at a next-generation platform. We have a portfolio of accelerators to help clients operate and innovate in public cloud. Cloud-agnostic and vendor-neutral workloads and applications act as foundation to our services – so you can relax without fear of lock-in. Your cloud strategy will naturally evolve, and it needs breathing room to do so.

Moving traditional SAP architectures to cloud requires a strategic plan to unleash competitive advantage and foster innovation for future growth. We facilitate the development of new services natively in the cloud and manage a hybrid cloud estate with multiple providers.

We employ a range industrialized approaches, to help you make this transition and we consistently drive innovation into our methods through automation and reviewing use-cases. Our SAP2Cloud automation service provides the necessary tools and experience to shift your entire SAP estate to IaaS cloud environment (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).

Capgemini built automation accelerators like Migration as a Code (MaaC), Capgemini Cloud Migration Optimizer (CCMO), Capgemini Cloud Migration Assistant (CCMA), as well as automation cockpit and standardized templates for the due diligence and designing phase, deliver a faster, and more optimized deployment experience. CCMA is speedy, accurate and cost-efficient. It lends a predictability to the migration process. MaaC & CCMO helps with the repetitive and time-consuming tasks associated with cloud migration, helping our clients increase migration speed and reduce risk. It automates all the SAP product and Database templatized deployment, increases greenfield implementation and migration speed. Both have proved to be effective in delivering quantifiable benefits that advance both business and technical goals.

Disciplined operations and predictable business growth are the main benefits that come with the transition. A simplified IT infrastructure, reduction in costs, improved consumption management, cloud scalability, improved customer engagement, increased agility and flexibility and a relaxation of increasing resource demands will inevitably boost your organization’s capabilities, consolidating change at a deeper level and allowing for a flourishing of business outcomes in the future.

To reap the full benefits by virtue of this transformation, the main questions you need to ask yourself prior to the change are:

• What are your business objectives and ambitions?
• What is the maturity level of your organization in different areas?
• What are your business needs, and security and regulatory constraints?

What’s more, technology only plays a part in this migration – this is an organizational cultural shift and requires a shifting of mindsets to really focus on the outcomes. Successfully implementing cloud is a balancing act of different variables and therefore it can be a disruptive and complex initiative, however, with the right transformation services on deck to craft a unique strategic plan for you, you can be at ease that every small step forward guarantees both short-term and long-term benefits.

Catalyzing innovation through a unique transformation process is the number one way to grow as a business. Capgemini occupies a unique position given its deep understanding of the SAP solutions in the cloud and through its established partnership with hyperscalers to reap greater synergies. We are one of the leaders in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Professional and Managed Services, worldwide and our partnership with SAP and market giants such as AWS, Azure and GCP helps customers achieve new levels of success.

To learn more about Capgemini’s approach to SAP – https://www.capgemini.com/service/cloud-services/

Author

Devendra Goyal
Head – Global SAP2Cloud Offer & SAP2Cloud Transformation

This year, cloud adoption will accelerate even faster as organizations become more at ease with the variations and patterns of cloud and seek to leverage increased value from their investments.

Our top-five cloud predictions for 2022:

1: Cloud-native technologies and thinking will be pervasive, not just popular.

Cloud native transcends technologies or tools. It is an approach to building applications that take full advantage of cloud computing where modern technologies and ways of working are embraced to deliver immense value to organizations. However, cloud native is about how we create and deliver applications, not where, meaning that process and cultural practices must be transformed alongside the architecture patterns we develop.

In 2022, cloud native will transition from a supplementary enabler to a core component of a future-proof cloud strategy as enterprises look to bootstrap their digital strategies post-pandemic and reform after their transition to cloud models. Enterprises will look to re-evaluate their existing strategies and base them on cloud-native approaches as a first principle.

We are already seeing the technology decision signals with 64% of organizations using containers, a core architectural principle of cloud native, as their deployment target in 2021, compared to 48% using virtual machines (State of DevOps Report 2021). In fact, 95% of new applications use containers (451 Research) within their architecture today.

We will also see cloud native extend to the edge as applications are built using microservices (aka the Edge 2.0 paradigm) supported by 5G technology that will enable cloud service providers to extend cloud to their customers and deliver services in new and innovative ways. Edge computing can provide developers an environment to create innovative 5G applications across powerful use cases across industries. This will represent a need to be able to manage these new patterns (see next trend).

Delivering business improvements in more consumable increments, empowering teams, celebrating mistakes/failures, and promoting a culture of collaboration and openness are principles promoted by the DevOps/Agile movement years ago. In line with the technology shift mentioned earlier, a cloud-native mindset within the enterprise will emerge more prominently, forced by pandemic events and the need to shift priorities, cater to disruption, and transform business models.

2: Digital cloud platform strategies will remain critical, but must extend to new architecture paradigms.

Cloud adoption requires a platform strategy. Platforms allow users to take advantage of cloud native and business services in a centralized manner. Platforms are built on the principles of reusability and automation, which help digital teams save money and create more quickly.

For tech to be a real driver of innovation and growth, IT needs to reorganize itself around flexible and independent platforms. By 2025, 75% of large enterprises will build self-service infrastructure platforms to enable rapid product innovation, up from 15% in 2020. Platform features such as containers, DevSecOps tooling, monitoring tools, self-service, and identity management remain key foundational components that are developed and maintained by established platform teams. Platform features must be repeatable, standardized, and easily consumable by developers – treated as living, breathing​ sets of “products” that are iterated, updated, and maintained in line with business needs.

In 2022, we will see platform strategies shift to encompass more modern variants of edge computing (Edge 2.0), enabling the development of planet-scale applications, capturing distributed data sources, and applying AI/ML to create new and unprecedented customer experiences and industry use cases. This will place new pressure on the platform principles adopted by the enterprise to leverage unified control planes, application lifecycle tooling, distributed security, distributed data processing and embedded analytics, and software defined edge. Containers and Kubernetes will be the key platform foundation for edge architecture as recognized by the investment by the hyperscaler providers in Azure Stack, Google Anthos, and AWS Snowball Edge – all based on Kubernetes.

3: Environment, Social, Governance (ESG) is now a board-level priority and the highest growing/emerging risk, with cloud a key accelerator for ESG initiatives.

ESG is now a priority for organizations as they are tasked with reducing carbon footprints, protecting financial and social capital, and having to comply with disclosing key data around such efforts. In 2017, 85% of the S&P 500 reported sustainability efforts and in 2022 we expect this to be higher, with many smaller organizations beginning to report their efforts.

Measuring and reporting the impact has been challenging as organizations look to record their environment footprints, reduce their resource utilization, leverage carbon offsets, and replace high carbon footprints with lower ones. The sheer volume of data to be captured and the need for accuracy and precision around each of these areas has led to the hyperscalers developing APIs specifically aimed at helping provide automated, accurate, and real-time access to ESG data to turn insights into meaningful actions.

In 2021, we saw Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability announced, a SaaS offering providing a suite of tools to help enterprises measure their environmental impact. Similarly, AWS customers can now leverage AWS Data Exchange for sustainability to load data directly into S3 and analyze data sets using data and analytics and machine learning services. It also provides access to 75+ ESG data products, including third-party scores, raw company-level ESG metrics, and reporting frameworks from providers such as Arabesque, SASB, and RepRisk. AWS has also updated its Cloud Frameworks, adding a shared sustainability model and a pillar for sustainability into the AWS Well Architect Framework to help customers navigate.

4: With digital transformation driving accelerated release velocity, the focus on Service Reliability Engineering (SRE) is on the rise to ensure a secure, stable, and highly productive operations environment.

SRE practices aim to apply software engineering principles to operations in order to improve the reliability of IT systems, with a constant focus on eliminating the toil from operations teams. Many of the early adopters focused on a people- and tool-centric approach to SRE by onboarding engineering skills and making random tool investments. They continue to struggle with adoption and value realization owing to challenges arising from lack of proper process and tooling standards, inefficient operating models, and more importantly, the lack of cultural shift that was necessary for driving the change.

In 2022, we will witness enterprise-wide adoption by establishing a clear focus on the critical success pillars of SRE. The success however will depend on the organization’s ability to execute operating model shifts to align with product-centric delivery, reskilling operations teams with engineers who can code and automate, tool simplification, and rationalization for AIOPS, and focusing on hyper-automation initiatives.

5: Continue bringing cloud thinking to traditional environments.

Applying cloud thinking to traditional environments (much like the Phoenix Project) is nothing new. We have been doing this for the last 3–5 years.

In 2022, an even bigger move to continue bringing cloud thinking to traditional environments automation, CI/CD, SRE, platform thinking, “CloudOps” (i.e., operations like we do in cloud) is brought to on-prem environments. Add enhancements such as Google Anthos, Azure Stack, OpenShift and AWS Outpost – now “the public cloud” is enabled on-prem for applications that cannot currently move (e.g., for known reasons such as highly connected, very old technology, technology not available in cloud or regulatory, risk, compliance). Ultimately, applications can be prepared before the jump is made to public cloud.

The challenges are that modernizing traditional environments is sometimes even harder than moving to public cloud. Traditional environments are highly siloed with limited collaboration between silos. Many different tools, techniques and utilities have been implemented over the years and people have “commitments” to these methods (through sphere of influence, resistance to change – the normal adoption barrier we have with cloud).

The gain, however, can be very substantial. No more heroics, less unknown outages, and highly repetitive actions automated. Getting a new VM does not have to take a month (or longer) and it does not require an army to create it. Simple automation scripts or even tying together existing scripts can yield great benefits.

Special thanks to Bernard Drost & Renjith Sreekumar for contributing to the research and predictions.

Author

James Dunn
Global Head – Cloud Services,
Cloud Infrastructure Services

Within weeks, governments and welfare systems successfully set up streamlined legal frameworks and delivery mechanisms to process and distribute huge volumes of economic support to businesses and individuals, protecting economies from disaster, enabling otherwise healthy firms and their employees to survive and safeguarding countless millions of households and families.

These achievements have demonstrated that there is huge potential for welfare systems – and the public sector as a whole – to leave legacy infrastructure, mindsets and ways of working behind, to move from reactive to proactive, and to once again become agents for change, delivering transformational social, economic and environmental policies.

1. Moving from reactive to proactive: Predicting employment and welfare needs

We are living in an era of fundamental change. The re-engineering of entire industrial economies to meet the imperative for sustainability is already underway. Meanwhile digital technologies and the advance of automation continue to reshape the skills market and future of work in every sector. It remains challenging to predict how long the pandemic will continue and what its long-term impact on employment patterns will be.

During COVID-19 we saw how welfare systems enabled government to close and re-open targeted areas of the economy. In 2022 policy makers will be considering how these systems might operate on a more proactive basis to assess and predict labor market needs in the future, and to enable citizens to acquire the skills that are most in demand, now and in the future.

The result of a more visionary approach, informed by the insights emerging from data and artificial intelligence, is likely to be more well paid, rewarding jobs with prospects, in today’s new industries. And digital profile screening technology will match more candidates to jobs, producing a corresponding reduction in the welfare burden, freeing resources for other spending priorities.

Moving to a four-day week and the introduction of a universal basic income are policy options under discussion in several European countries. In some countries a lasting consequence of the pandemic could be a more proactive welfare system making moves to intervene and redistribute, rather than simply providing a basic safety net.

2. Digital identification systems will increasingly ensure the right people get the right support

While so many welfare agencies quickly mobilized the necessary approvals, processes and resources to get financial support to those who needed it most, their success highlighted the urgent need for the universal application of single digital identification systems for all citizens, to provide the confidence that the right assistance was getting to the right people, at the right time.

A secure, personal ID recognized by all government departments and agencies, alongside robust digital infrastructure, has the potential to transform the lives of people everywhere, especially vulnerable groups and those most in need, such as the poor, casual or migrant workers and those living in remote areas, with little or no formal contact with public authorities.

Digital ID systems with robust governance enable public authorities to analyze huge volumes of data, informing evidence-based service improvements and additional features and integrations, benefiting citizens, economies and social inclusion.

While some countries require a foundational ID system so all people can prove their official identities, others, including Australia, Canada, and France, are beginning to create entire digital ID ecosystems that give people a choice of public and private sector ID providers.

With the World Bank investing $1.2 billion in more than 30 developing countries to reduce the number of unregistered people and to build better digital ID and civil registration systems, 2022 will see significant progress in this important area.

3. Focus on human centricity will signal a philosophical shift from laws to services

Public authorities’ high-speed response to the coronavirus crisis has accelerated a philosophical debate that will gather further momentum in 2022. The concept of human centricity – putting the wants, needs and motivations of individuals at the heart of decision making – is not new. But the success of the COVID-19 response has demonstrated that traditional norms need no longer apply.

For many citizens, the public sector’s seemingly built-in complexity and inertia is no longer acceptable, because now there is evidence that the alternative is not only possible, but achievable. Workable solutions that might previously have taken months or even years to launch were delivered in just days.

Citizens are now increasingly expecting their public authorities to make a step change, to be human centric, to provide services rather than enact laws, to support rather than punish, recognizing that the vast majority of citizens needing help are simply experiencing the realities of challenging life events – such as unemployment, poverty, relationship breakdown or bereavement – rather than criminals trying to defraud the system.

4. Synergies between central and local government will deliver better connected welfare

On a similar theme, human centricity in welfare means much closer synergies between national and local welfare organizations. Currently, in many nations unemployment benefit services are delivered by a central government department, with welfare payments handled separately by municipalities.

The disconnect is both costly and inefficient for the state, and disheartening for the individual, compelled to keep retelling their story to public authorities, who seem unable or unwilling to talk to one another.

An integrated employment and welfare ecosystem, accessing secure digital identities, will not only save precious resources by eliminating wasteful duplication of effort and infrastructure, but is also much more likely to match jobs with jobseekers. Once again, the skills, the technology and the political will are readily available – in 2022 citizens will increasingly demand that their elected representatives and public servants make it happen.

5. Workforce and welfare planning will have a role to play in reducing climate change

The lockdowns and restrictions of the past two years, while absolutely essential for the preservation of public health, have produced major challenges for politicians trying to protect their economies, for businesses trying to stay solvent, and for individuals fearing for their jobs, their homes and their families. And while the many social and financial support and assistance schemes have been enough to provide protection for most, they’re not sustainable in the long term because of their enormous cost.

But the support model that has been established to respond to the COVID emergency could yet have another positive role to play, a thought that will gather pace and take more concrete shape in 2022. Events of the past two years have, to some degree, taken attention away from our other global emergency, climate change. As our need for radical action to cut emissions and get on track for Net Zero continues to grow, major shifts in industrial strategy, workforce and skills may be unavoidable.

In our most polluting industries, it is increasingly worth considering what role welfare systems, such as COVID-19 furlough schemes, could play in enabling a managed transition from fossil fuels and other unsustainable industries to renewables.

Further reading:
Harnessing the power of digital ID (worldbank.org)

For information about Capgemini’s welfare services, visit here.

The global pandemic has caused enterprises to rethink their approach to digital customer service, and with this has come a willingness to adopt a digital-first approach. Healthcare has been no exception, with the sector being forced to adopt a digital approach to customer service (telehealth) that focuses on meeting individual patient needs.

Propelled by the pandemic, the global telehealth industry is currently driving digital customer service transformation that delivers enhanced efficiency and improved customer experience to healthcare professionals and their patients alike. However, to meet the desired level of healthcare patients want, providers must accelerate their use of frictionless, omnichannel digital customer service channels. Innovative services that are available around the clock and create a more individualized approach to digital customer service and patient wellness are key to the future of healthcare.

In the post-pandemic world, consumers have become accustomed to services that are convenient, intelligent, and readily available. This is due to the implementation of digital touchpoints, the adoption of social distancing measures, and new hygiene protocols which have caused a noticeable shift across the healthcare industry. However, these changes – initially driven by necessity – are now being welcomed by patients who want access to personalized and relevant consumer healthcare services at a time that suits them.

This fact is illustrated in research from the US that indicates that 50 million people would be willing to switch their family practice provider to have access to virtual visits. This finding is clearly a big driver accelerating digital transformation of the healthcare industry.

Want to know more? Read my full article on the healthcare industry’s shift to a digital-first approach and its impact on digital customer service in The Journal of mHealth.

To learn how Capgemini’s Digital Customer Operations for Healthcare  solution drives frictionless patient and member experiences across the healthcare ecosystem, contact: scott.manghillis@capgemini.com

Scott Manghillis helps clients transform their technology into digital, omnichannel, personalized solutions.

This month, eight students are looking to get their cloud engineering diploma from AWS re/Start in the Netherlands, and some of them will land an entry-level job at Capgemini. They’re not fresh-faced, college-age, computer science graduates, but an extremely diverse group of adults who have decided to switch careers, or to take their best shot at re-entering the job market. They range from a stay-at-home mother with a background in social work to a Lybian immigrant who is not just new to IT, but also to the Netherlands, and from a middle-aged woman who has been out of the job market for some time, to someone with IT experience from years ago in another country.

One of the graduates is Victor Romijn, who was the Food & Beverage Manager at a hotel/restaurant when he lost his job at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Learning to be a cloud engineer has been quite a radical career switch for the father of four. “Without the pandemic, I probably would have stayed on at the hotel,” he says. Nevertheless, he has no doubts that he’s on the right track. Victor had already started two other IT courses, both paid for by the unemployment agency, when he was accepted by TechGrounds’ Capgemini-sponsored AWS cloud engineering training (he still finished both).

It’s been over twenty years since Victor graduated in Hotel Management. Going back to school – even while staying at home – has been pretty overwhelming, he admits. But he relishes working with the other students in his team: “I like it a lot. Everyone has their goal on the horizon. For many, it’s a way to give their career a new direction. We’re all proving our ability to adapt our way of thinking. It wasn’t easy, I had to reinvent myself.”

Sponsoring the candidates

Overseeing the project for Capgemini is recruiter Sebnem Ozec. “Our aim is to help people,” she states. “Of course, it cuts both ways. Cloud computing is on the rise and we see an opportunity to hire people to work at Capgemini on AWS projects. It’s business as well as social return: we’re sponsoring the candidate and if they’re not a fit with us, that’s okay too. But we want to give them the push to choose for themselves and move on with their lives.”

Once the students have successfully completed the program, their cloud engineering skills are at a junior level. The Dutch training center TechGrounds has offered the four-month program in conjunction with AWS since 2019. It’s a full-time online course for unemployed and underemployed individuals, with work spaces available in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and Zaandam for anyone who isn’t able to work from home. A “matching” session with a number of companies is part of the three-day selection process and once a student is accepted, the course is free, with all costs covered by the prospective employer. The class of December 2021 was the first to be sponsored by just one company, Capgemini, which allowed TechGrounds to fit the entire program into 12 weeks.

Learning coaches

Instead of traditional classes, the course is led by so-called “learning coaches.” The students work in teams. Victor: “It’s a lot in a short amount of time and you pretty much have to figure it out for yourself. Before you can contact the learning coach, you and your teammates have to have done the research. So you’re learning by doing and applying your newly acquired knowledge right away”.

In addition to teaching the students (to teach themselves) new IT skills, both Capgemini and TechGrounds are keen to stress the development of so-called soft skills. Project manager Yasmina Tran: “You need to be able to express yourself appropriately in front of clients, for example when they don’t agree with your point of view.” She’s very proud of the students who enrolled in the first dedicated Capgemini class. “They have really become a team in ways we didn’t expect. People are checking in and consulting with each other into the night, and are encouraging each other to help everyone pass the exam. It’s really beautiful to see.”

A pipeline of talent

Kevin Kelly is the director of Cloud Career Training at AWS. The re/Start program is vital for all parties concerned, he explains. “Capgemini helps many of our customers deploy production workloads on the cloud. They’ve been a strong partner of ours for many years. But like us, they suffer from a cloud IT skills shortage. Everyone wants to hire the 10-year tenured cloud architect, but I can tell you that all three of them are gainfully employed,” he remarked in partial jest.” Capgemini understands how important it is to create an entry-level pipeline of talent. They then have a healthy mix of stable talent, where the experienced talent can focus on their level of expertise and the entry-level talent is thrilled to learn about other tasks that need to be done. Ultimately, it helps them, it helps us, and it helps our customers who are starving for this talent.”

Developing soft skills

Capgemini’s involvement with the curriculum stresses developing the students’ soft skills: presentation, leadership, consulting, and personal development. Sebnem: “What is their potential, will they fit into our organization, what do they want for themselves? It’s not about how many of them we end up hiring, it’s really about the whole process.”

As a recruiter, she has found that it’s a totally different way of working that has its own set of benefits. “It’s the ultimate way of seeing how an IT person comes into being. They’re not someone who was coding at five years of age. Some made a career switch at 50. It’s not beneficial for me as a recruiter to have preconceived notions about people. This process helps me get rid of narrow frames of mind. I would love to see it applied more broadly as a recruitment practice. I’d rather take into account who somebody is than look at a CV and say: ‘Less than five years of experience? Next!’ That’s not recruitment. But that’s my personal opinion.”

Sebnem Ozec is the Corporate Tech Recruiter at Capgemini Financial Services

We are truly moving the dial from science fiction to science fact, as we enter a new era of tech-led innovation encompassing AI, 5G, AR & VR, Edge computing, and more. As explained by our Chief Innovation Officer Pascal Brier, in his latest blog post, innovation has to be strategically prioritized and managed, with a focus on applied research and use case development.

I believe that quantum technologies in particular have the potential to change how we solve some of our biggest business and societal challenges. The true impact of quantum will only become clear during the next decade, but smart business leaders are experimenting now – and that’s where we come in.

I’ve been working on quantum technology at Capgemini for three years with all kinds of research-led activities, whether that’s delivering data-led insights in the UK and India or analyzing quantum communications in Portugal.

Moving from quantum theory to practical applications

As a result, we’ve developed a pioneering view on the use of quantum applications. We’re now moving to the next stage to demonstrate the power of quantum in the real world. We’re bringing all our global knowledge together in our virtual Quantum Lab (Q-Lab), a dedicated initiative drawing on the expertise of our scientific researchers and trusted partners to explore the potential of quantum technologies for our clients.

Our Q-Lab bridges the gap between theoretical research and its application to real-world challenges. Our experts are working on a range of research projects, learning from each other and collaborating with our sector teams to identify use cases where quantum technologies are likely to have the biggest impact – life sciences, financial services, automotive, and aerospace.

A resource such as Q-Lab is crucial for business leaders who want to make sense of quantum technologies. Business leaders are aware of the benefits that this next generation of computation can bring, but they’re also concerned by the complexity of this fast-evolving area of technology. Estimates suggest as many as 40% of large enterprises will have quantum computing initiatives underway by 2025.

However, quantum technology requires deep knowledge in physics at lower levels of the stack. Higher up the stack, it requires mathematics, computer science, and artificial intelligence capabilities – a range of skills that many businesses struggle to find. An advantage of our Quantum – Lab is that it attracts ambitious talent from universities and research institutions, eager to see a practical application to the theory learned.

What’s more, making the most of quantum isn’t just a technological conundrum. Spending on quantum computing is expected to reach USD3.7bn by 2030, a 25% annual increase from today. Businesses will be desperate to turn this investment into a competitive advantage.

Understanding quantum technologies takes many forms

Business and governments need to get quantum right, because there will be plenty of both opportunities and threats. Understanding the power of quantum will be essential during the coming decade. We believe our Q-Lab will have a key role to play in educating, experimenting, and reassuring organizations as they progress along the quantum journey.

Our experts are already collaborating with clients on several use cases, investigating complex business problems, carrying out in-lab research, and developing protypes and proof-of-concept studies that show the critical role quantum will play in shaping all our futures. We focus on three crucial areas of quantum technology:

• Quantum computing– using quantum properties and algorithms to perform computations exponentially faster than classical supercomputers, with companies relying on heavy compute facilities most likely to benefit, including molecular design within life science, fluid dynamics in aerospace, and stochastic financial models.
• Quantum communications – the quantum internet could become a secure communications network and have a profound impact on areas critical to science, industry, and national security.
• Quantum sensing– providing new data and accuracy that classical sensors cannot provide, leading to advances in medical diagnosis, autonomous transport, and intelligent industries.

Quantum might be at a nascent stage of development, but its potential will bloom with new use cases ever year. Together with IBM and an ecosystem of partners, we are starting to demonstrate how quantum applications can and will move from the lab to the business. This proactive approach to quantum is identifying the game-changing potential of this complex and awe-inspiring technology over the next decade.

Quantum is too big and complex to “go it alone”; it requires a team-based approach. In my next blog, I will look at the importance of the wider ecosystem of partners that bring a range of critical and complementary skills.

Julian van Velzen

Expert in Analytics, Big Data, Machine Learning

I am an enthusiastic big data engineer with a strong background in computational physics. As the leading consultant for the quantum exploration center, I take clients on a journey into the exciting era of quantum computing.

The modern supply chain environment can be a difficult and often uncharted space – one in which a digital application landscape is necessary to both operate and facilitate optimization and automation of your supply chain operations.

In a recent blog, I discussed the five pillars of the Capgemini Industrialized Operations Platform (CIOP) required for the successful transformation of supply chain operations. One of these pillars is the extensive partner ecosystem that complements Capgemini’s own “small tech” proprietary tooling with the necessary support from specialist expertise and technology.

Macro-, micro-, and nanoservices

These end-to-end supply chain digital capabilities are characterized by full enablement from three different groups of applications:

• Macroservices – monolithic applications such as an ERP, which serve to not only streamline and digitalize supply chain operations, but also enterprise services
• Microservices – smaller applications that deliver specialized functionality for individual functions such as order fulfillment or planning
• Nanoservices – applications that tackle individual pain points within macro- or microservices functions, such as order validation.

By way of an analogy, imagine the digital application landscape is a lunar base – a complex, modular system designed with sufficient resilience to weather and tame the adverse conditions it has to operate in. The main building of the base is connected to several additional facilities equipped with cutting-edge tools that provide vital services, which improve the performance of each component and, when combined, the entire base.

Integrating supply chain operations

Your supply chain organization requires an integrated approach to solutions, spanning all crucial components from expertise in processes operations, through consulting, to the right technology implementation – all of which support successful transformation in an as-a-service model.

Leveraging macro-, micro-, and nanoservices enables such a broad and agile approach, helping you choose the right tools for the right task and scaling up or down as necessary. A planned and structured application of these services, regardless of their size, enable you to stay focused on your supply chain operations. The key is to integrate the solutions with the right methodology, talent, and organization – either building up from the most detailed nanoservice or augmenting a macroservice with additional capabilities.

The CIOP acts to integrate functions, identifying and addressing friction points through transformation, and supporting your digital capabilities.

Nanoservices as “digital patches”

The ability to deliver nanoservices and integrated operations is a critical characteristic of an end-to-end supply chain partner. An organization’s existing technology stack receives complementary treatment for its “nano challenges” that can be limited to just one process or even a fraction of it.

Order capture, validation, or supply chain data entry are great examples of nanoservice use. Such integrations increase the overall system flexibility in an ever-changing supply chain environment, where targeted nanoservices serve as a final digital “patch” to larger scale enterprise solutions.

A frictionless supply chain drives value

Most supply chains don’t set out to construct a complex digital application landscape, similar to a lunar base, but often end up just as complex and heavy. Supply chain digitalization requires you to not only pick the right macro- and micro-tools for your general operations, but also understand how leveraging nanoservices can deliver tailor-made solutions for individual “nano challenges.”

While this may sound tedious, the immediate value creation makes such a supply chain transformation worth the effort. To maximize the chances of enjoying frictionless supply chain operations, your digital transformation needs to work on a macro-, micro-, and nanoservice level.

To learn more about how Capgemini’s Digital Supply Chain Practice  can help your organization implement smart and flexible supply chain processes, contact: joerg.junghanns@capgemini.com

Jörg Junghanns leverages innovation and a strategic and service mindset to help clients transform their supply chain operations into a growth enabler.

This has also served as a reminder that healthcare has largely existed in the shadows of broader public policy considerations and aspirations, operating, for the most part, in responsive mode, with its primary focus on healing the sick rather than promoting good health. But out of the depths of crisis come encouraging signs that we could be witnessing the beginnings of a new era in healthcare.

1. Green health will gain momentum, delivering benefits for citizens and the planet

The global pandemic has understandably drawn our attention away from our other global health crisis – climate change, which is continuing to take its toll on physical and mental health, often reversing decades of progress in health outcomes.

However, as global leaders strive to re-engineer their economies and move to “clean” industries, the “green health” movement is also gaining traction. We endorse the fundamental wisdom of a cradle-to-grave approach to health, in which we create the conditions – economic, social, environmental – in which good health is nurtured throughout our lives.

But, as advocates of prevention rather than cure, we can all go further. As Dr Maliha Hashmi of the World Economic Forum contends, this fundamental shift, in particular appreciating the importance of the natural world in promoting health and wellbeing, will not only deliver better health outcomes, but also help to stimulate the essential changes to markets and economies that are required to stop the planet from overheating.

Not least of these will be the continued growth of digital healthcare, stress-tested and turbocharged by COVID-19, in which virtual surgeries and ward rounds, remote monitoring and telehealth not only increase capacity and productivity, but also deliver significant reductions in travel-related emissions.  Critically, new skillsets for primary care workers will become the norm in order to successfully implement new technologies.

Dr Hashmi and others have a more literal vision of sustainable health systems too, in which hospitals have their own gardens to promote health and wellbeing for patients, resources that can also be used to grow fresh crops for consumption by staff, patients and communities, further reducing energy and transport costs in the process. For example, social prescribing, such as arts activities, gardening, cookery and a range of sports, is already starting to replace pharmacological interventions.

Copyright: Maria Koijck

2. Deploying user experience skills will speed the delivery of human-centered healthcare

The idea of human centered healthcare has been around for decades, and there are great examples of how technology has transformed aspects of patient care, for example wearable devices for monitoring, diagnosis and ongoing health management. But, overall, delivery has been patchy.

This is because a vital skill set is still too often missing from the debates in the conference hall or the thought leadership session. In healthcare, as in all services consumed by the public, the quality of the user experience is vital in achieving universal use of new technologies and maximizing the value and benefits for all.

And given the enormous scale of the healthcare ecosystem, even small gains deliver huge results. Saving 30 seconds of time at the computer for each patient episode in an average emergency department seeing 75,000 patients a year will free up 12 hours of clinician time every week. And when patients are given choice, they often choose less intervention than clinicians.

They also often prefer to be treated at home, and the rise of federated learning, connected care devices and closer collaboration between telecoms companies, hospitals and Departments of Health has enabled patients to choose homecare, rather than a hospital or clinic.

User experience experts take a forensic interest in all real and potential user types – patients, clinicians, administrators, family members – in all settings, exploring why, where and how they will use the item, how they will connect with other services and the way in which data is stored and shared. They consider all of the user’s pain points, predict how the solution will need to evolve over time – and design, test and build accordingly.

These are the people who will translate talk about human-centered care into action. In 2022 we believe there will be a growing focus on delivering the great user experiences that will help unlock human-centered healthcare.

Equally, healthcare professionals will increasingly unearth – and share – the  vital clues, insights and trends in health data not just for great patient outcomes but also to inform resource requirements and procurement decisions too.

3. Patients and clinicians will increasingly choose between digital and in person contact

After the exponential growth in the deployment of digital solutions to meet the unique healthcare challenges of the first months of the coronavirus pandemic, during 2021 these were refined, and in many ways became the new normal.

Remote appointment setting and consultations, data sharing, analytics and modelling and much more all enabled the mass delivery of healthcare services in a way that helped keep patients, clinicians and wider society as safe as possible.

For example, a huge increase in home monitoring, using plug and play technology, made a significant impact in reducing hospital admissions. The ability of frontline healthcare workers to stay productive, even while shielding at home, has been vital to the maintenance of those services.

But in 2022, the Omicron variant notwithstanding, we will see a rebalancing of digital and in-person service provision, with healthcare systems, clinicians and patients increasingly able to choose between a range of now proven service delivery options.

The best of digital, where appropriate or when selected by a patient, will be combined with a return to more face-to-face contacts, where specifically requested by a patient, or judged to be advantageous by a clinician.

Choice delivers flexibility and efficiencies for service providers seeking best practice, and puts patients at the center of decision making, giving them more control of their own health journeys, selecting routes that suit them best.

While a rebalanced healthcare system will deliver multiple operational benefits and efficiencies, including the ability to address the backlog of both urgent and elective procedures, it also enables a much-needed reduction in risk, for example in the area of patient data security.

Faced with the urgent need for high-speed action, some decisions that were inevitably fast tracked can now be revisited and readjustments made where necessary, reducing the huge increase in cyberattacks on hospitals that have been witnessed during the pandemic.

With the demonstrable success of flexible and innovative approaches in helping to cope with one of the greatest challenges in its history, there is now renewed optimism that healthcare could be entering a new era, building on its unique experiences and learning from other sectors too, shaping a brighter future for all of its stakeholders.

4. Interoperability will become the global standard, enabling digital value to be maximized

COVID-19 demonstrated once again just how important reliable and accessible data and analytics are to make precise forecasts, to draw the right conclusions and to make the right decisions.

While huge progress has been made, there is still some way to go to achieve the level of interoperability of both data and systems that will maximize the fast and secure sharing of electronic patient records, as individuals move in and out of the healthcare ecosystem. Only then will we unlock the next level of operational efficiencies and improved health outcomes.

In some areas of healthcare, interoperable data is already used in algorithms that turn clinical decision making into a fact-based and largely automated process. But too many healthcare institutions and practitioners still rely on paper files and handwritten notes, with all the obvious risks and inefficiencies.

While the pandemic has acted as an accelerator in breaking down many data silos, only when secure interoperability becomes the global standard will the huge potential of digitization be maximized. We believe that 2022 will see another big push to clear as many roadblocks out of the way, taking us closer to the streamlined data sharing system that everyone seeks.

For information about Capgemini’s healthcare services, visit here.