CIO CIO

00:00 Welcome to CIO Leadership Live. I’m Lee Rennick, executive director of CIO communities for CIO.com, and I’m very excited and honored to welcome Paul Hlivko, EVP, Chief Information and Digital officer at Wellmark, Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Welcome to the show, first of all, and would you mind introducing yourself and maybe telling us a little bit about your current role?00:00:25:07 – 00:00:50:06Speaker 2Yeah, sure. I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today and, look forward to the conversation. As CIO, as you mentioned, there’s really three aspects of the role at this organization. I’m at Wellmark, Blue Cross and Blue Shield. it’s which is one of the blues that serves, members and clients and providing health, affordable health care service services and solutions, in the market, ultimately trying to improve our members health outcomes.00:00:50:06 – 00:01:11:09Speaker 2But my role, along with a number of my peers is really to ensure that our market position and the needs of our members are actively met. So as CIO, one of the things I focus a lot on is information security, making sure the assets of our members are protected. Focus on the resiliency and durability of our organization.00:01:11:12 – 00:01:30:26Speaker 2as the landscape of both health care as well as, threat actors evolve, but also that, focus on the effectiveness of the organization that we’re constantly trying to find opportunities to be more cost effective and efficient to serve our members and clients needs. So that’s that’s first and foremost. second, and I’m the enterprise technology leader.00:01:30:27 – 00:01:50:24Speaker 2So the CIO role tends to fill that. And we’re constantly looking at what opportunities do we have to build new capabilities in an organization, build new muscles. so that we can continually compete in an ever evolving and changing, healthcare landscape in this case. and that’s a that’s a full time job in and of itself, as you can imagine.00:01:50:26 – 00:02:10:19Speaker 2Yeah. And third, I think the most exciting part, CIOs tend to be a change catalyst, like we are often tasked with the innovation agenda. and if I just reflect on kind of where a lot of the growth in, the GDP in the US comes from the last ten years, 35% of it’s in the in the tech field.00:02:10:22 – 00:02:32:03Speaker 2so for us, it’s understanding what that growth trajectory is, what the innovation cycles look like. doing the sensing and the sense making and ensuring that we’re bringing the best of that world imported into our organization, our industry. so we can ultimately serve our clients and our members and their health needs in a more effective manner.00:02:32:08 – 00:03:00:04Speaker 1Well, really large remit. And I love that piece around innovation. As you mentioned, you know, 35 of businesses are technology based companies, but you know, really everyone I talked to in your role, every company is technology based, and you’ve got clients who are at different of areas, probably in their journey with technology as well too. Right? So to be responsive to those end users and those clients, but also make sure you’re innovating and growing your technology portfolio as a leader, which you have to do is is a huge remit.00:03:00:04 – 00:03:21:17Speaker 1So I really appreciate your time today. Paul. Thank you so much for joining me here today. we’ve developed this series really to support the tech leader in their leadership and tech journey. So the first question and I ask everyone this question, could you please tell me a little bit about your own career path, and leadership journey to, to date, you know, are there any lessons learned along the way that you could share?00:03:21:19 – 00:03:52:21Speaker 2Yeah, sure. I mean, I think I’ve always identified somewhat as a geek. but I never really fit. I never really felt home strictly in a tech geek, type role and capacity and, I read a book recently by Andrew McAfee, and he termed, you created the term, business geek. And I think it was the first time I felt like it, it connected like I had part of, like, the geek in me from, early days in my career and then, more so in the last, probably 15 to 20 years.00:03:52:21 – 00:04:13:08Speaker 2Like, I really love solving, business problems. And to me, that intersection is tech, the financial markets, economy, and the social sciences too, that come into play. So like, business geek is what really resonates with me. And in the mid 90s, started out, if you could sling code and build websites, you could start a business.00:04:13:10 – 00:04:13:23Speaker 1Yeah.00:04:13:24 – 00:04:40:02Speaker 2So I started out just as a sole proprietor, building websites for local and regional regional companies and really understanding not just the the tech and how it meets the market need, but also how to operate all aspects of a small business. that pivoted me into my next entrepreneurial effort, which was creating immersive virtual tours of residential real estate in the late 90s, early 2000.00:04:40:05 – 00:05:01:03Speaker 2we were one of the companies that were first in the market. so I really got a taste of what being early on, the innovation curve felt like and trying to sell tech into, kind of sleepy real estate industry at the time. and right during the.com bubble. But like reflecting back on that, it was a three sided platform and we didn’t even know what that was back then.00:05:01:06 – 00:05:20:10Speaker 2Right. So it brokers on one side, distribution channel on another side. And we had photographers doing the actual image capture on the other. So it’s just that reoccurring revenue model and platform businesses like we experiment to back in the day, but we didn’t really have the words for it. Ultimately, the scale was, less interesting. that that small business scale for me.00:05:20:10 – 00:05:44:27Speaker 2So I found myself in financial services for the next 13 years. wealth management in particular,

Every business is unique in its approach to technology modernization. Likewise, the reasons behind initiating a modernization strategy will vary from business to business. However, a few key drivers have emerged as a common thread between businesses. In a recent Rocket Software survey, commissioned by Forrester Consulting, the top three drivers for IT modernization were improving IT reliability and resilience (53%), improving IT capabilities to enhance stakeholders’ experience (51%), and improving access to insights to unlock the value of data (48%). Whatever the reason, a modernization journey is a serious endeavor that can take up considerable effort and time. Rocket Software’s survey found that 74% of respondents have been on their IT modernization journey for more than a year. As they look to move their modernization initiatives forward, IT professionals shouldn’t feel like they need to take five steps backward or skip five steps forward to make a modernization solution work for them. Whether it’s a cloud migration, existing mainframe systems, or a hybrid environment, successful modernization requires a technology partner capable of meeting you wherever you are on that journey. Let’s examine what this looks like across organizations and how the right partner can transform the modernization journey. Navigating modernization in any environment The path toward modernization itself can take shape in a number of different ways. For example, one organization might decide they need to be heavily invested in cloud infrastructure to be able to scale up or down quickly, while another may have mission-critical systems tied to the mainframe that necessitate a hybrid strategy. Whatever the environment looks like, IT decision-makers must weigh the benefits of each destination and move quickly. The mainframe houses some of the most sensitive, yet critical, historical data for organizations, and is estimated to be responsible for processing nearly 70% of enterprise workloads. So many organizations choose to rely on mainframe systems because of those workloads and their ability to handle a high volume of transactional data. On top of that, mainframe systems also keep that data secure and governed in a single setting versus a multitude of environments. Cloud, on the other hand, brings its own advantages to the modernization journey. Bringing data into a cloud environment can make it easier to tap into the full power of AI and analytical models, generating deeper business insights and uncovering new market opportunities. The road to modernization isn’t a binary choice between cloud and mainframe systems though. Adopting a hybrid approach is also a popular strategy, giving businesses the perfect blend of both. In this setting, organizations can opt to modernize in place, preserving existing systems and processes that have taken years to establish while ensuring the treasure trove of historical data that lives on the mainframe can be securely leveraged for other initiatives. Whatever the approach, each business needs a partner that can support its unique journey. Mapping out the modernization journey Every modernization journey plays out differently. Regardless, businesses must get their approach right. Nearly half (44%) of survey respondents stated that IT modernization challenges have led to delayed timelines and one-third said that these problems resulted in reduced productivity. So, how can an organization know whether a technology partner is equipped to meet their needs or not? The right partner will deliver solutions that add value to existing systems while enabling modernization initiatives to thrive. With a trusted modernization partner, these organizations can tap into the tools to stay competitive by leveraging their data, applications, and infrastructure. For instance, Rocket Software has extensive solutions that will help clients to modernize the existing mainframes in place.  We also have solutions like Rocket Software’s Rocket® Enterprise Suite and Rocket® COBOL that enable enterprises to run business applications written in COBOL and PL/I coding languages in the cloud. We also help enterprises that need to run hybrid, with some workloads in place on the mainframe, while others will run on the cloud. This expands the capabilities of organizations by adding a new dimension to the ability to run workflows and distribute data wherever they prefer and empowers the mobile workforce to work from anywhere. Whichever path they choose, and wherever they are on their journey, mainframe modernization solutions can take enterprises to the next level, preparing them for the technologies of tomorrow. These solutions allow organizations to update applications and architecture incrementally, rather than making sudden and expensive replacements. These solutions will meet enterprises on whichever road they choose to go down. Learn more about mainframe modernization with Rocket Software source

However, Salesforce isn’t the only agentic AI provider that is taking the approach of launching basic agents which could be tweaked to suit a variety of use cases. Microsoft’s corporate vice president Bryan Goode, who leads products such as Copilot Studio and Dynamics 365, told CIO.com during the launch of its AI agents that it was releasing 10 pre-built agents that would act as templates for enterprises to help them develop agents for a variety of use cases. Salesforce, and rivals such as Google, Microsoft, AWS, and IBM, are also partnering with other software vendors, such as Workday, DocuSign, and Neuron 7, to create more agents that can be accessed via their marketplaces. source

As enterprise IT environments continue to grow in complexity, organizations are modernizing legacy applications and workloads, amongst other strategic IT initiatives, to address various IT and business challenges—including cost optimization, simplification, time to market, technical debt, scale and more. Along the way, they are adopting new technologies and infrastructure that have to be incorporated into the application development and delivery process. Powerful DevOps and automation tools, as well as serverless infrastructure and managed container solutions, are more accessible than ever. The hard part is knowing how to effectively combine these technologies to achieve tangible results, most notably on established transactional systems like the mainframe. Recent survey data from Forrester highlights the significant impacts of IT modernization challenges: 44% of decision-makers report delayed timelines, one-third cite reduced productivity, and 40% note increased operating costs. These hurdles stem, in part, from the growing complexity of application development and deployment processes as the speed of business continues to accelerate. As organizations strive to modernize applications, an effective and automated DevOps toolchain becomes critical. 3 keys to success: visibility, automation, and orchestration Complete visibility into the end-to-end application development lifecycle is essential for organizations to be successful in their modernization journeys. It’s what enables teams to identify problems and spot misconfigured resources that detract from operational efficiency. Visibility also gives engineers a clearer sense of how new features or processes will impact the larger picture. Once end-to-end visibility exists, leaders can automate their DevOps processes with better precision. Considering the growing number of tasks, processes, and accelerated development timeframes teams must work with, automation has a critical role. Leveraging automation takes much of the burden of managing repetitive, tedious, and time-consuming processes from development teams. When companies get automation right, they can significantly reduce complexity and mitigate risk. They can catch inefficiencies, improve reliability, and accelerate new feature delivery. Automation also helps reduce costs and reallocate engineering time to more innovative endeavors. Those who use automation well can then focus on broader orchestration. Service orchestration and automation platforms (SOAP), as they’re now being referred to, can kick off automations within the DevOps pipeline in one cloud and then initiate another set of activities in a different cloud or on the mainframe. With today’s tools, the possibilities are virtually endless. DevOps orchestration tools minimize human error and remove operational bottlenecks that would otherwise slow the entire IT operation. Combined with total IT visibility and automation, orchestration is what enables the level of coordination needed to upgrade application development and delivery across large, multi-platform IT footprints. Different technology teams can collaborate more effectively and partner on building the ideal end-to-end IT environment to serve the company’s needs. Invest in an enterprise-grade workload automation solution One of the best ways to improve visibility and leverage automation and DevOps orchestration is to invest in a purpose-built solution. Platforms like Rocket Software’s Rocket Workload Automation and DevOps Orchestration were designed for this exact reason. These solutions give development teams a robust set of capabilities to assess and manage development and deployment, with access to a centralized place for viewing business applications, operating systems, platforms, and DevOps tooling. This view captures mainframe, distributed, and cloud workloads. The tools and technologies exist to elevate IT workload and DevOps automation dramatically. Companies can get more done with fewer resources than ever before by leveraging automation and orchestration. The key is being able to do this across IT footprints that are becoming increasingly complex and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. For those with limited experience in modernizing resources and building cohesive, multi-platform IT environments, working with a company like Rocket Software can accelerate the transition while maximizing return on investment. Learn more about how Rocket Software can help you leverage the right tools to optimize the application development lifecycle, end to end. source

A new survey of SAP customer organizations shows that, despite AI experimentation, few have implemented AI and generative AI technologies across their enterprises. That’s not to say organizations aren’t eager to leverage AI for process optimization and data analysis, in particular, but concerns about security, data quality, and governance remain hurdles. SAP conducted a “Use of Artificial Intelligence” survey among its Americas’ SAP User Group (ASUG), UK & Ireland SAP User Group (UKISUG), and its German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG) in August and September 2024. There were 260 ASUG respondents and 123 UKISUG respondents, along with 246 DSAG participants from the DACH region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland). A small portion of SAP customers reported their organizations were using AI in many areas (6% DSAG, 7% ASUG, 5% UKISUG). The lion’s share of respondents said their organizations were leveraging AI in some areas of the business (24% DSAG, 25% ASUG, 29% UKISUG), or not using AI at all (11% DSAG, 10% ASUG, 13% UKISUG). source

The flight-status service, released earlier this year, gives customers faster, more transparent and context-rich information about flight delays and updates, the CIO says. United has used the storytelling LLM to send out more than 100,000 digital notifications to date and has identified roughly 90 other use cases in the pipeline, Birnbaum adds. As part of its storytelling ethos, the flight-status LLM will specify, for example, which precise weather event may be affecting a delayed flight and provide quick and useful information to customers about next actions. This has proved to be far better than broadly announcing that a plane is delayed due to mechanical issues or bad weather when it is sunny outside, Birnbaum says.  “We worked hard to fine-tune this model to take operational feeds, notes from our operations teams, the crew, and all these different sources of data, and have AI take all this data and create a narrative that is more transparent, empathetic, decisive, and clear as we can be,” the CIO says. “As opposed to a canned message, we try to write a specific story about what’s going on with your flight. People hear the specifics, and they understand it and their blood pressure goes down. Our storytellers still look at the messages to make sure they’re within the realm of what we want to communicate but we’re getting much more comfortable with it.’ source

The rise of vertical SaaS and composable solutions As the SaaS market becomes increasingly crowded, we’re seeing a trend towards specialization and flexibility. Two key developments are shaping this evolution: vertical SaaS and composable solutions. Vertical SaaS Vertical SaaS solutions, tailored to specific industries or business functions, are gaining significant traction. These industry-specific platforms offer deep functionality and built-in best practices that address the unique challenges and regulatory requirements of particular sectors. For example, we’re seeing specialized SaaS solutions for healthcare, finance, real estate, and manufacturing, among others. The appeal of vertical SaaS lies in its ability to provide out-of-the-box solutions that require minimal customization, leading to faster implementation times and quicker ROI. These solutions often come with industry-specific analytics, reporting, and compliance features, making them particularly attractive to businesses looking for comprehensive, sector-specific tools. source

What if artificial intelligence (AI) could prevent 1,000 potential outages and improve IT service health and delivery by more than 75%? IT teams would sleep better, but that’s just the start. The power of AI operations (AIOps) and ServiceOps, including BMC Helix Discovery, can transform how you optimize IT operations (ITOps), change management, and service delivery. Below, I recap my virtual event conversation with two IT leaders, who shared their first-hand experience of the benefits that BMC Helix solutions have delivered in respective use cases. Improving IT operations with AIOps and ServiceOps Jason Rush, senior director, DevOps at BMC, and his team that supports BMC software-as-a-service (SaaS) customers, were dealing with an extremely high volume of alerts and needed better ways to handle incidents. New migrations and continuous features were being deployed, and the team was unable to prioritize process optimization and noise reduction efforts. “When you’re in a constant state of firefighting with a lot of noise, you don’t really have the opportunity to optimize,” Rush explained. About two years ago, Rush implemented BMC ServiceOps, AIOps, and observability to improve on several operational efficiency and service delivery goals. By adopting BMC’s ServiceOps solutions and a revamped approach to improve operations, Rush and his team were able to employ a more proactive and automated approach to service and operations management. Since implementing ServiceOps, Rush’s team has accomplished a range of goals, from reducing noise to faster problem resolution: Reduced the high volume of redundant alerts coming in Improved efficiency in resolving incidents Accelerated root cause identification using causal AI Significantly reduced mean time to resolution (MTTR) Implemented intelligent, automated remediation solutions Cut costs and eliminated toil in manual incident remediation Enabled better collaboration between monitoring and tools teams Improved outage prevention with more proactive actions By coupling ServiceOps with BMC Helix AIOps, Rush’s team transformed from reactive to proactive incident management. They automated remediation and significantly improved MTTR and overall service quality. Rush’s team also achieved many operational efficiency goals and were able to measure the impact of ServiceOps: $669,000 projected cost savings in 2024 with improved automation and remediation 3,680 successful remediations from seven intelligent automations within one month Greater than 60% MTTR reduction 64% of outages prevented using ServiceOps, AIOps and observability Optimizing change management and modernizing service management As an IT service manager IV at an insurance company in Cincinnati, Chas Eddingfield has used BMC solutions for the past several years. The company’s more recent adoption of BMC ServiceOps has transformed change management processes and IT services management (ITSM) success for his organization. The insurance company decided to migrate from on-premises BMC Remedy to cloud-based BMC Helix ITSM and Discovery. The primary goal for Eddingfield and his team was to improve change management processes and reduce the risk of failed changes by implementing collision detection and impact analysis. Collision detection identifies potential conflicts between proposed changes with a visual representation of changes scheduled at the same time, enabling IT teams to proactively manage and resolve potentially harmful conflicts. By understanding potential collisions in advance, Eddingfield and his team proactively prevented simultaneous changes that could lead to outages or unsuccessful deployments. BMC Helix ITSM instilled confidence that deployed changes would always improve performance and reliability. In addition, by using BMC Helix Digital Workplace, Eddingfield and his organization significantly expanded self-service capabilities, giving end users independent access to a much wider range of IT services. Now the IT team provides: Enhanced self-service capabilities with more than 75 available end-user service requests Automated maintenance using BMC Helix Discovery, saving time for the IT team Ability to dynamically maintain more than 300 applications More efficient support for ITSM processes Increased accuracy in outage detection Improved reporting of IT goals and service level agreements in BMC Helix dashboards Enhanced vulnerability detection capabilities Better documentation and easy detection of undocumented changes “It’s an ongoing effort that will go on forever,” Eddingfield said “Discovery work is never done. BMC Helix Discovery helps identify all outages, from code, infrastructure to user, and to configuration. It allows us to have an automated solution we can utilize and rely on to be accurate.” Improving service reliability with AIOps and ServiceOps ServiceOps and AIOps help IT teams improve service reliability and reduce downtime by: Proactively preventing outages Unifying change visibility and governance Balancing the speed of innovation with risk mitigation Accelerating the speed of change and innovation Unifying IT operations and service management teams through automation Improving collaboration and eliminating team silos Predicting and mitigating risks before changes are implemented Providing business context and dependency mapping across the entire IT estate Now is the time for your IT organization to begin its AI journey to AIOps, Discovery, and ServiceOps. Visit here for more information or contact BMC. About the author: Stela Udovicic is the senior director, solutions marketing management at BMC Software source

As organizations struggle with the increasing volume, velocity, and complexity of data, having a comprehensive analytics and BI platform offers real solutions that address key challenges, such as data management and governance, predictive and prescriptive analytics, and democratization of insights. Dealing with these challenges requires a holistic approach with a comprehensive analytics platform and a data-driven strategy to improve organizational decision-making. Selecting an analytics and BI platform Organizations must look at analytics and BI platforms as essential tools when seeking to harness the power of their data. By providing the means to collect, clean, transform, and analyze vast datasets, these platforms empower businesses to uncover valuable insights that drive informed decision-making. The integration of AI, particularly generative AI and large language models, further enhances the capabilities of these platforms. These technologies enable advanced analytics techniques like predictive modeling, anomaly detection, and natural language query processing. By automating routine tasks and providing intuitive interfaces, AI simplifies extracting meaningful insights, making data accessible to a broader range of users. When selecting an analytics and BI platform, organizations must consider scalability, performance, ease of use, security, and integration capabilities. A well-chosen platform can significantly improve operational efficiency, reduce costs, and drive innovation. A story from the trenches I spoke with a manager of a leading distributor of agricultural spare parts, who faced significant challenges due to fragmented data and low confidence in its BI capabilities. To address these issues, his company implemented an AI-powered analytics platform to restore data accuracy, empower its team, enable actionable decision-making, and accelerate sales. Here’s how they did it. source

“SAP systems are prime targets for attackers due to their critical role in managing core operations for large enterprises, storing sensitive data such as financial transactions, intellectual property, and personal information,” according to Chris Morgan, senior cyber threat intelligence analyst at ReliaQuest. “Developing an exploit that can decrypt secure storage and facilitate lateral movement within SAP systems indicates a high level of technical expertise and effort, thus justifying a high price.” For example, ReliaQuest discovered an exploit targeting SAP systems that was being advertised on a prominent cybercriminal forum for nearly $25,000 (payable in Bitcoin) and initially listed in August 2020. The exploit purportedly facilitates lateral movement within targeted systems. “The post claims the exploit can use SAP Secure Storage to uncover credentials, elevate privileges, and eventually compromise additional SAP systems beyond the initial target,” according to ReliaQuest. source