Content consumption has changed significantly. Audiences now want everything – news, entertainment, sports and so on – on their own terms. What does this mean for CIOs in media and entertainment? To find out, CIO Dimension spoke with Harmit Singh Malhotra, Chief Technology Officer of NDTV Profit and a tech veteran with over 20 years of experience in broadcasting. 

From leading projects in live news rooms and international sports events to driving advancements in OTT and remote production, Harmit has worked with some of the biggest names in the industry. In this interview, he shares key insights on the industry’s evolution and what lies ahead for CIOs.

You come with over two decades of experience in the broadcast media space, having worked with many of the top brands in the Media industry. Would you like to recall some key moments in this journey?

My journey in broadcast media began in 2003 with Network18, where I was fascinated by the unique opportunities this industry offers to tech leaders. From the very start, I realized there is never a dull moment in this space—it’s a field where creativity and technology converge to create impactful stories and experiences.

During my tenure at Network18, I contributed to several key projects, including the launch of CNBC-Awaaz, IBN-Lokmat, COLORS, and CNBC Bajar. Each of these ventures showcased the power of technology in shaping how audiences consume content.

One of the most exciting projects in my career came in 2013 while working with Star Sports, where we implemented India’s first-ever remote production for international sports events. We wanted to move away from the traditional model of deploying large production crews at global venues. So, we introduced a streamlined workflow: live feeds were transmitted from international venues to a central hub, where commentary was added, and localised broadcasts were produced. This project delivered significant cost savings and maintained the highest production standards, setting a new benchmark for the industry. 

Following this, I worked for leading media organisations such as Republic Media Network and Enterr10. A key achievement during this period was spearheading the launch of Dangal Play’s OTT platform, where I oversaw the entire Tech workflow—from content and delivery to user experience design. This project provided great insights into the world of streaming platforms. 

Currently, I spearhead the technology operations at NDTV Profit, managing all aspects of technical and delivery from our Mumbai hub. This role allows me to continue exploring the potential of technology in media while adapting to the industry’s changing demands.

Tell us a bit more about your role at NDTV Profit and how you navigated the acquisition of BQPrime and its merger with NDTV Profit. 

In my current role at NDTV Profit, I oversee Corporate IT, Broadcast Engineering, and Cybersecurity, ensuring seamless integration across these critical functions. I lead a team responsible for maintaining efficient workflows, real-time content production, and multi-platform content delivery—spanning satellite broadcasting and digital streaming.

A key aspect of my role is managing critical infrastructure, including network systems, security frameworks, and core IT operations, all within a single, integrated team. This ensures cross-functional collaboration, innovation, and agility, allowing us to adapt to evolving industry demands. 

During the acquisition, strategic foresight played a crucial role in guiding our technology choices, ensuring compatibility with NDTV’s existing systems. During our transition and expansion, we prioritized proactive planning and seamless system integration, minimizing disruptions and ensuring a smooth operational flow. Close collaboration between teams allowed us to overcome technological challenges, facilitating a smooth and efficient transition post-merger.

As we continue to evolve, our focus remains on leveraging technology, strengthening cybersecurity frameworks, and enhancing operational efficiencies to position NDTV Profit as a leader in business news broadcasting.

I’m really curious about how content consumption and viewing patterns are evolving, especially post-COVID. Digital has clearly become the go-to medium for many. How do you see these trends shaping up?

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a big transformation in the way we consume media. Digital platforms emerged as the primary source of entertainment and information during this phase. But I think this shift stayed and paved the way for many key trends that continue to shape the media landscape. Here’re a few that I would like to highlight: 

Streaming services take centre stage: Channel streaming plays a big role in reaching a global audience. By leveraging the power of channel streaming, we can deliver excellent, personalised experiences to a diverse and expansive audience, ensuring our content remains relevant and impactful in the digital age.

The rise of short-form content: Short-form content has become increasingly popular, especially among younger audiences. Platforms like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts have revolutionised content consumption with their bite-sized, engaging videos. 

Personalized viewing experiences: Algorithms have become the backbone of personalized viewing experiences. Streaming services and social media platforms use sophisticated algorithms to recommend content based on user preferences. 

OTT platforms and Smart TVs: The integration of internet connectivity into televisions has transformed traditional TV viewing. OTT platforms offer vast content that can be accessed directly through smart TVs. This evolution has blurred the lines between conventional TV and digital streaming.

Social Media as a news source: Social media platforms have become crucial news sources, especially for younger generations. Platforms like X, Facebook, etc make it ideal for staying updated on current events. However, this has also underscored the importance of authenticity and trust in news consumption, as misinformation can spread rapidly across these channels.

Interactive and immersive content: Today audiences want more engaging experiences. Interactive and immersive content has  thusgained traction. Virtual concerts, online gaming, and live-streaming events offer unique and participatory experiences. The growing popularity of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) further enhances these interactive elements, creating a more dynamic media landscape.

That’s quite a lot on the plate for a CIO in the media and entertainment space! What are the opportunities and challenges that you see as a tech leader in this industry today? 

Speed and agility are paramount in the digital age. CIOs must prioritize digital-first strategies, ensuring rapid news dissemination across social media platforms. This requires a robust cloud infrastructure to enable real-time content delivery and personalized experiences based on audience preferences and location. Cloud technology, for example, is the cornerstone of our operations. Cloud platforms like AWS and Azure provide the foundation for our entire workflow, from content acquisition and processing to delivery and audience engagement.

One of the key challenges is the complexity of delivering content across multiple platforms and devices whilst maintaining quality and user experience. CIOs must prioritise building scalable infrastructure, including Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). As CDNs distribute content across a network of servers closer to users, it helps in minimizing latency and improving delivery times – making it crucial for modern media organisations.

You mentioned Cloud. Tell us how Cloud is driving some key business use cases for NDTV Profit. 

As a media organization, we are transitioning to a cloud-first approach, leveraging cloud platforms for content delivery, ad insertion, and audience targeting. This allows us to personalise content and ad experiences for viewers in different regions, enhancing the viewer experience and improving ad effectiveness.

We are also exploring edge computing, which brings processing power closer to the network’s edge. This enables faster response times and reduced latency, which is crucial for live streaming and interactive content. I believe cloud and edge computing will play an increasingly vital role in shaping the future of media delivery, enabling us to provide personalized content experiences to audiences worldwide.

What technological advancements do you foresee transforming newsrooms and studios in the coming years?

The media landscape is on the verge of a significant transformation. We are quickly moving away from traditional, cable-dependent workflows to IP-based production, which will efficiently transmit high-quality video signals over high-bandwidth networks. This shift will revolutionize our operations, enhancing flexibility and scalability.

AI is another technology that has the potential to change news production, even though concrete use cases are still emerging. From automated content creation and personalized recommendations to streamlining workflows and enhancing audience engagement, Generative AI will play a big role. I think, all these advancements in technology will help us build a more dynamic and responsive media industry.

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Generative AI has made impressive strides in the last one year, taking the technology world by storm. Thanks to consumer- facing tools like ChatGPT, Bard, Claud and the like, there has been a huge perceptional change toward Generative AI – a technology that has been existing ‘silently’ for years! 

In fact, Generative AI or GenAI adoption has been faster than that of smartphones and tablets, according to Insider Intelligence. 

In the enterprise world, this technology has gained massive interest and acceptance in short order. A Box-sponsored IDC survey shows that two-thirds of executives have already deployed generative AI in some areas at their organizations, which is further evidenced by an IBM survey. About 42% of enterprise-scale companies surveyed by IBM report having actively deployed AI in their business. 

But what really lies beyond the hype? Are enterprises reaping real benefits out of their GenAI investments? We asked a few CIOs at the Tech Saga 2024 organized by CIO Klub Pune Chapter. 

“Business leaders are enamoured by the success stories of these technologies that often they tend to ignore the failures and the basic requirements that are associated with GenAI’Business leaders are enamoured by the success stories of these technologies that often they tend to ignore the failures and the basic requirements that are associated with GenAI.”

Shobhana Lele, CIO of Bombay Dyeing

2024 – A year of GenAI in production? 

2023, which could be considered the watershed year for GenAI, was all about experimentation and pilots, indicate studies. In a recent Gartner poll, about 45% of the 1,400 executive leaders surveyed reported that they are in piloting mode with generative AI. An IBM research estimates this figure to be around 40%. Interestingly, about 10% of them have put generative AI solutions into production and this figure is steadily growing. 

A sizable number of the enterprises in piloting mode are expected to shift their focus to practical implementation in the next one year– making 2024 a turning point in GenAI adoption. “For the 40% of companies surveyed stuck in the sandbox, I am confident 2024 will be the year of tackling and overcoming barriers to entry like the skills gap and data complexity.” Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President, IBM Software.

Catapulted by the increasing investments, the GenAI market size is projected to top USD 66.62 billion in 2024 with an anticipated yearly growth rate of over 20% through 2030.

Indian CIOs see more GenAI use cases evolving

Tech leaders in India are bullish about the prospects of the technology. India is already considered a front-runner in the adoption of GenAI, with as high as 81% of Indian organizations already integrating the technology into their operations (Elastic report).

What kind of promising use cases will emerge in 2024? Which industries will get touched the most? 

“GenAI use cases will grow quite exponentially in the coming years,” says Shobhana Lele, CIO of Bombay Dyeing, who is a passionate advocate of AI technology. She believes that the healthcare sector is poised to hugely benefit from GenAI. 

“Of all the mature use cases that will emerge, I find the technology’s impact on the Healthcare sector quite significant and far-reaching. It’s one sector with massive amounts of data and AI can accelerate use cases that are critical for the whole humanity, helping us find solutions for some of the pressing problems that have been around for decades,” she highlights. 

A NASSCOM study from 2023 states that the use of AI and data in healthcare might increase India’s GDP by USD 25–30 billion by 2025. 

Vinod Deshmukh, GM – IT, Haldiram Foods is already exploring various use cases of GenAI at the FMCG firm and believes that the FMCG sector stands to benefit significantly from the technology. “There are strong business use cases already emerging, which help FMCG companies improve product quality, predict outcomes, and increase the overall efficiencies,” he adds.

Generative AI in the banking and financial services sector, which is expected to create a massive USD 12 Billion market in the next 10 years, is another great opportunity. 

“Strong business use cases of GenAI are already emerging, which help FMCG companies improve product quality, predict outcomes, and increase the overall efficiencies.”

Vinod Deshmukh, GM – IT, Haldiram Foods 

“This is another sector that holds huge amounts of personal and sensitive data. AI will be critical in effectively leveraging this data to help consumers get the most out of their assets and investments while devising innovative ways of protecting their critical data,” says Shobhana.

Gen AI is now catalyzing a significant shift in the financial services sector, reports EY, with 78% of the firms implementing or planning Gen AI integration. Around 61% of financial institutions anticipate GenAI to have a profound impact on their value chain, enhancing efficiency and responsiveness, states the EY report.

Banking institutions across the globe are leveraging this technology to improve customer experience, provide personalized marketing and improve collections & recovery. Underwriting copilots are another big use case in the banking sector. 

Noteworthy is the fact that sectors that have been slow in adopting artificial intelligence are moving to a more proactive approach when it comes to GenAI. 

“GenAI is encouraging many brands to push the envelope – even those who haven’t yet considered AI use cases are exploring the possibilities of GenAI, says Vinod. He cites the example of manufacturing industry. In the manufacturing sector, GenAI will soon be leveraged in quality analysis, decision making and other core areas.”

Less than 20% of manufacturers have begun to implement AI technologies, reports suggest. However, GenAI seems to be moving the needle up, with the global market for GenAI in manufacturing expected to reach around $7 billion by 2032. 

GenAI challenges for CIOs

There are several challenges that tech leaders must tackle before they deploy genAI across key business functions. Data privacy and transparency are greater concerns for sure. So are the growing AI ethical challenges which require collaborative work across various stakeholders in the industry. 

Limited availability of AI skills is perhaps the top concern for CIOs today, Vinod emphasizes. “Access to the right skillsets is a challenge, especially for businesses in tier-2 & 3 cities. Tech leaders need to develop the right resources and technology capabilities to take this journey ahead,” he adds. 

The recent IBM Global AI Index highlights that nearly 35% enterprises report lack of skills for implementation is a big inhibitor for GenAI implementation. One-in-five organizations do not have employees with the right skills in place to use new AI or automation tools and 16% cannot find new hires with the skills to address that gap, the same research shows. 

To fill this gap in the current scenario, CIO will be expected to lead the task of reskilling and upskilling the existing workforce – especially because skills in data science, machine learning and MLOps are hard to come by. 

All in all, many CIOs want to take a cautiously optimistic path when it comes to taking GenAI to the next level. And reasonably so. 

“In my observation, many CEOs are gung-ho about implementing AI or generative AI, whereas the CIOs are a little cautious and apprehensive. There is a reason for this apprehension – Business leaders are enamoured by the success stories of these technologies that often they tend to ignore the failures and the basic requirements that are associated with GenAI,” Shobhana says. 

She believes that this perception leads to a lot of pressure on CIOs to start using these technologies with the expectation that it’s going to be successful. “But, every CIO has the responsibility to make the organization aware of AI/GenAI’s basic requirement – the relevant data sets, skillsets and the support. So, it’s a tightrope walk for the CIO,” she sums up. 

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16 Mar 2024, Pune: Tech Saga 2024, one of the largest congregations of top technology leaders in the country hosted by CIO Klub Pune Chapter, commenced here in Pune today. The summit promises to be a unique platform for CIOs, IT leaders and technology visionaries to come together and chart future pathways for the tech industry in the country. 

The summit opened with a soulful musical treat followed by an auspicious lamp lighting session and Ganesh vandana performance.

With over 160 technology leaders in attendance, the summit had Vice Admiral Raman Puri, PVSM, AVSM, VSM, as its Chief of Honour. Mr. Puri, in his comprehensive speech, emphasized the importance of leadership that stands steady under pressure and why strategic security and self-reliance are critical. 

Anis Pankhania, President, CIO Klub Pune Chapter and Sr. Director & CISO, Capgemini, shared the chapter’s vision and summarized its work in the past year. Umesh Mehta, President, General Body, CIO Klub, gave the audience a rundown of the association’s programs, initiatives and engagements. 

Ashok Jade, Global CIO of Kirlosker Brothers, member of the managing committee of CIO Klub Pune Chpater said, “The ‘K’ in CIO Klub signifies knowledge. We, at CIO Klub, firmly believe that fostering knowledge helps drive innovation within the whole ecosystem. The world of technology is perhaps evolving at breakneck speed today and it’s critical that we, as a community, create a conducive environment for ourselves to embrace change. We hope that Tech Saga 2024 becomes the go-to platform for the CIO community to confidently innovate and transform.” 

The event has an impressive line-up of speakers throughout the day who cover a wide range of topics to give the attendees some valuable takeaways. The summit also hosts Ajinkya Dhariya, Shark Tank fame & Founder/CEO at PadCare Labs. Another key highlight of the event is the fireside chat session between Anita Bhogle, Author & Partner, Prosearch Consultants and Sajith Chakkingal, Head of Global Technology, TMF Group. 

The CIO Klub is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to Chief Information Technology Officers, formed by CIOs and for CIOs, representing diverse industry verticals. With a democratically elected governing body and sixteen chapters worldwide, the CIO Klub is committed to knowledge enhancement, fostering collaboration, and organizing knowledge-sharing sessions. The Pune Chapter, with over 175 active members, continues to lead these initiatives. 

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In response to the growing need for strategic AI implementation, IT research and advisory firm Info-Tech Research Group has published its latest research, Build a Scalable AI Deployment Plan. The new resource aims to equip CIOs with the strategies and tactics required to effectively deploy AI technologies at scale and empower them to navigate the complexities of AI adoption with confidence and precision.

“Aggressively scaling artificial intelligence with the latest concepts and leading-edge technologies is an attractive ambition for many organizations,” says Andrew Kum-Seun, research director at Info-Tech Research Group. “However, rolling out AI as quickly and as broadly as possible often comes with costs that outweigh the benefits and may introduce cultural, security, and business operational risks and changes for which the stakeholders have no appetite. The lagging development of a good AI practice can further hamper the future returns of today’s investments.”

The firm’s research highlights several obstacles organizations face when deploying AI. Often, there exists a deficiency in implementation plans that are essential for CIOs to ensure the alignment of projects with AI initiative goals. 

“The right AI initiatives help CIOs understand new AI technologies, their measurable impacts, and how these new technologies benefit their teams,” explains Bhavya Vora, research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group. “Appropriate initiatives also lend themselves to establishing good foundational capabilities and building the necessary relationships and collaborations to be successful in AI deployment.”

Info-Tech further underscores that CIOs should consider the following key elements when deploying AI:

1. AI Solution Design: Break down the AI initiative into granular steps, such as building use case models and charting systems, data, and process flows, which serve as a critical component of the strategy. Identifying each step clarifies the initiative and lays the groundwork for seamless integration, thus accelerating AI implementation across various business functions.
2. AI Capabilities: Establishing a frugal AI mindset enables prioritization of actionable progress over perfection. Organizations can effectively scale AI initiatives by concentrating on leveraging existing strengths and strategically addressing gaps. This approach emphasizes practicality and efficiency, facilitating meaningful advancements in AI implementation.
3. AI Budget: Quantifying the impact of scaling the initiative involves conducting estimations to evaluate cost factors against the backdrop of risk and value potential. This systematic approach enables organizations to assess the feasibility of scaling AI initiatives while considering associated risks and potential value.
4. Roadmap and Backlog: Crafting a roadmap and maintaining a prioritized backlog of AI initiatives act as a strategic compass, guiding the phased deployment of AI. By estimating and prioritizing the backlog of initiatives, organizations can assess the degree of effort and value, thus ensuring efficient allocation of resources and maximizing the impact of AI implementation.

The firm suggests it is imperative for CIOs and their organizations to position their AI deployment plan as a collectively owned and managed artifact focused on sharing, enabling, and continuously improving. 

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Vidya Rao, CIO of Genpact has taken on an expanded role of Chief Technology and Transformation Officer. Her change in role comes as part of the company’s latest appointments aimed at strengthening its executive team with transformative digital leaders and propelling its AI-first strategy. 

In this role, Vidya will be at the forefront of reimagining Genpact’s internal processes, tools, technologies, and infrastructure with an AI-first approach. Furthermore, Rao will also play a crucial role in establishing a world-class data office to fortify Genpact’s data capabilities. This will enable Genpact to harness the power of data and drive insights to guide its AI and Automation initiatives effectively and shape our internal functions for the future, the company stated. 

Vidya is a global technology leader with over three decades of experience. She has been serving as the CIO of Genpact for over four years now and had a long stint with Accenture earlier, performing diverse roles and leading technology delivery for multinational clients. She also served on the board of Microfocus PLC until its acquisition by OpenText. 

Vidya has been recognized as one of the Top 50 Technology executives by Technology Magazine and Top 10 women by Mobile App Daily globally for her outstanding contributions to innovation and leadership.

Genpact also announced the appointment of Vipin Gairola as its Global Operating Officer. Gairola comes to Genpact from Accenture, where he served in several senior leadership roles over the past two decades. His most recent role was Chief Strategy Officer for Accenture Operations.

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Atlassian Corporation the provider of team collaboration and productivity software including Jira Software, Confluence and Jira Service Management, announced the appointment of Shamik Sharma to Head of Engineering, Commerce and Enterprise Agility. Shamik will report directly to Rajeev Rajan, CTO of Atlassian.

Shamik joins Atlassian with close to three decades of experience in the field of technology and engineering. He spent the past 5+ years at Cure.fit/Cult.sport, a company he co-founded, and prior to that he served as CTO and CPO at Myntra (a company in the Flipkart group). Across his career, he has held multiple senior leadership positions at Lytro Inc., RockYou, StumbleUpon, Yahoo!, Confluent Software and HP, among others. Having scaled organizations and processes from small founding teams to large & specialized teams, he has also built innovative products in e-commerce, digital advertising, gaming, digital media, social networks, enterprise software, and consumer electronics. Shamik has completed an M.S., Computer Science from the University of Maryland and B.Tech, Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Speaking on the appointment, Rajeev Rajan, Chief Technology Officer, Atlassian, said, “Shamik’s experience in technology and e-commerce will add much value to Atlassian, both globally and in India. We want to become a 100-year company at Atlassian and the meaningful work that our teams are contributing to in India is critical to this trajectory. As India is our fastest-growing R&D site globally, we’re confident that Shamik will only help accelerate our path to building a world-class engineering team.”

Shamik Sharma adds, “With a great passion for building products and combined technical expertise, I’m excited to be joining Atlassian in its mission to unleash the potential of every team. I look forward to leveraging the potential of Atlassian engineering talent to build innovative new products that enhance workplace collaboration.”

Shamik’s appointment comes at the back of Atlassian’s recent hiring of Paranth Thiruvengadam for the role of India Site Leader and Head of Engineering IT Service Management. The company started with just over 60 employees in India 5 years ago and now has over 1,800 employees in 17 states across the country.

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Securonix, the Unified Defense SIEM company, has appointed Venkat Kotla as Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Kotla is responsible for leading and scaling the company’s engineering function and fostering partnerships with leading technology organizations to support the growing demand for the company’s Unified Defense SIEM platform.

“I am thrilled to have Venkat join our executive leadership team,” said Nayaki Nayyar, Chief Executive Officer, Securonix. “As we continue to evolve and move into our next phase of growth, it is critical for our platform to scale with enterprise-grade reliability and meet the growing needs of modern enterprises charged with defending an expanding threat landscape. Venkat’s deep experience with advanced technologies, including AI, successfully expanding technology partnerships and streamlining processes across multiple stakeholders will be invaluable in driving product development that protects our customers from internal and external threats.”

With more than 25 years of experience at world class enterprise software companies, Kotla brings an established track record of driving engineering innovation at global organizations. He most recently served as Vice President and Head of Engineering for Economy BU at Atlassian, the makers of workplace productivity tools such as Jira, Confluence, and Trello. Kotla helped grow the Economy line of business to more than $500 million ARR.

Prior to joining Atlassian, Kotla spent over 14 years in senior engineering leadership roles at Google. He spent more than three years at Google as the Senior Director of Engineering for Google Assistant and the Google Looker, a multi-cloud enterprise SaaS for business intelligence, data applications, and embedded analytics.

“I’m excited to join a team that is hyper focused on product development and deeply committed to innovation,” said Kotla. “SIEM is the backbone of cybersecurity defenses, and Securonix has long been the industry’s premier solution provider. I look forward to working with the leadership team to incorporate advanced technologies into the platform and aggressively develop new partnerships with the world’s leading technology providers.”

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Jira, the quintessential issue tracking tool, has become a household name among software developers since its launch in 2002. The makers of Jira – Atlassian – has come a long way in the last 20-odd years. With over 260,000 customers and 10,000 employees, the company today offers a suite of products including different flavours of Jira, Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket and Compass among others. 

Rajeev Rajan, Atlassian’s CTO, who joined the company in July last year, has an ambitious roadmap to build one of the ‘top engineering teams in the world’. While he is at it, his past experience has proven invaluable. 

Rajeev spent five years as VP and Head of Engineering for Facebook and Head of Office for Meta in the Pacific Northwest Region. Prior to that, he had long stint with Microsoft across multiple products from Exchange to SQL Server to Active Directory, and Office 365.

CIO Dimension caught up with Rajeev during his recent visit to India at Atlassian’s R&D center in Bangalore. 

Excerpts from the interview: 

You have always been a software/engineering leader in your career. How is your experience in companies like Meta and Microsoft guiding you at Atlassian and how are you doing things differently here?  

I was really attracted to the Atlassian story. For an engineer, Atlassian is an iconic engineering company. It built Jira for engineers and serves over 260,000 companies around the world. As an engineer, it was a big attraction to be part of a brand that so many engineers across the world use. 

I obviously bring a lot of best practices, as I have worked for companies that have exceptional engineering teams. I have seen good times and not so good times in both my previous companies. That has helped me identify some of the pitfalls and anti-patterns that we should avoid.

One of the things that I have done differently is to focus on developer productivity. I believe that our own engineers must become the most productive so that they can make every engineer in the world more productive. 

What are the key gaps in developer productivity that you are trying to address here? 
The definition of productivity here is not the traditional yardstick of efficiency or getting an engineer to write more lines of codes. That’s not the productivity I am looking at. It’s more about how we make an engineer feel the ‘developer joy’. As a developer, one needs to get to the ‘flow’ —  you’ll know this better as a writer. Just like writing, coding needs to have a state of flow. I have started a whole new program around developer productivity at Atlassian. The idea is to ensure that we increase developer productivity to the point that the engineers feel excited about coding.

Atlassian has grown over time and a lot of our code has acquired the characteristics of legacy, monolithic codebase. And monoliths become harder to write code in as nobody understands the whole history. That’s where we started leveraging Microservices, by splitting the architecture into smaller components. We have been doing some work in this area so that our engineers are able to move much faster. 

Building a strong engineering team has been a key focus area for Atlassian. Considering the uncertain employment landscape and other macro factors, this seems like a complex undertaking. 
Keeping a high bar on talent is non-negotiable for us. We have up-levelled our practices to ensure that the people we hire are truly world-class engineers. We have done well in attracting talent from some top tier companies. We believe that the future is remote, distributed work and our “Team Anywhere” policy has resonated really well.  

That said, we are not immune to the macro situation. So, we did pull back on some of our hiring goals globally and in India so that we can right-size the teams for the current business priorities. Mid-to-long term, we expect to hire even more as things pick up. We are going to be conscious about how we scale our growth, based on what we need for our business. 

We are a company that invests as much as 40% of our revenue back into R&D; that’s an indication of our commitment. Our global engineering team is roughly about 5,500 engineers and we still continue to hire. We have about 1000 engineers in India alone and it is one of the fastest growing R&D centers globally. 

As you rightly said, the future of work is remote, distributed and hybrid. How are some of these radical shifts influencing innovation at Atlassian? 
We use our own products for everything we do. We track issues in Jira. This plays a crucial role in making our offerings suitable for remote and hybrid work environments. We focus a lot of self-service APIs that allow developers to independently work on and contribute to different software components. That helps them not to be restrained by geographical boundaries or someone else’s work. These practices are then incorporated into our products. Atlassian Compass for example allows Atlassian developers sitting anywhere in the world to locate different components, documents, APIs and so on, which in turn helps with the ‘developer flow’ that I earlier talked about. 

Atlassian’s project tracking tool Jira is a go-to software for developers. How are your efforts to take Jira beyond the development world faring? 
Our Jira Service management suite stemmed out of the idea that IT departments work a lot like software teams. That’s how we pivoted Jira to IT departments. That’s a successful second business that we have grown. We identified similar requirements in the HR, legal and finance departments. That’s how we made the Jira Work Management for all. Our mission is to help unleash productivity in all kinds of teams and we believe that Jira has a universal appeal. 

More critically, the knowledge worker economy is ripe for revolution. The Office 365, Google Docs or Slack or Zoom are commodity tools and often really don’t make the big difference (in productivity of workforce). Companies, on the other hand, are seeking how they can unleash the productivity of knowledge workers. Especially the younger workforce that are mobile-first and are used to doing things digitally. Many of today’s office tools are simply digital versions of the analogue processes. In the new world, we need digital-first ways of doing things. And that’s the space that Atlassian is innovating in. 

You alluded to the changing definition of developer productivity earlier. Does AI have a role in accelerating that shift? How is Gen AI going to change software development from here on? 
AI is going to change everything. It’s as big a change that I have seen in my lifetime in technology – just like the revolution led by iPhone and previously Internet. Developers are already using coding assistants. They don’t have to write everything from the beginning on a code editor. A lot of mechanical and repetitive work is being done by Generative AI. Coding itself is changing. 

Will we reach a point where everything gets written by AI? I don’t know. 

But I strongly believe that human beings are moving up the (value) chain in terms of knowledge work. You will always need the humans to do the most intelligent and complex things. If you are an engineer writing codes, there is a lot of repetitive work that you do today. If those things are taken care of, the developers can focus on the real idea. It drastically improves their productivity. 

At Atlassian, we believe that Gen AI is truly the next revolutionary wave and we are squarely on that journey. While we have been using AI in our products, we now have the power of LLMs (Large Language Models). A few months ago, we tapped OpenAI to introduce smarter features to our products. For example, we now have a chat agent and natural language interface which allows users to use different languages while using our tools. AI’s ability understand human language is truly transformational for software engineering. 

That’s a big shift. What would this mean for today’s developers? Is this going to fundamentally change the way they look at software engineering? 
Today, a lot of coding happens at the file level. The future, which is not far away, is going to be about assembling components. Let me use Home Depot (a multinational home improvement retailer) as a case in point. They have tools and components that help you build something entirely new or remodel an existing structure. That’s exactly how software is going to be – less about writing codes and more like the Lego blocks. 

You don’t have to make everything from the scratch. If you go to any software company, almost everything is already written. Developers write some variation of it. There is a lot of effort wasted because we are not reusing. Reusable software is the future. 

There are over four million engineers in India and a lot of them are rewriting things that are already written. If we had a repository of reusable objects, we wouldn’t have to constantly rewrite software modules. Which is why I believe that the  low-code, no-code revolution is very powerful. Coding is not something only coding engineers should understand. Getting that power to more people will be the next evolution where programming is not just a domain of some set of engineers who understand 0s and 1s in their heads. 

That’s going to be one of our focus areas going forward.      

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Senior technology leader Dr. Puneet Kaur Kohli has joined Liberty General Insurance as President IT & Data (CIO).  Liberty General Insurance is a private general insurance company headquartered in Mumbai.

Dr. Puneet joins the firm from Universal Sompo General Insurance where she worked as the CTO for three years. Prior to that, she served as the CTO & CIO of Manappuram Finance for close to three years. She has also worked as the Group Executive Vice President IT & CTO of Bajaj Capital where she provided technology vision and leadership for the company’s IT strategy. 

Dr. Puneet comes with over 25 years of experience in IT leadership across various geographies. She has worked for several leading brands such as Motorola, Reliance, Duncans, Carrier Aircon, UK Land Investments, Bharti Airtel Limited, Soma Networks and Motoricity (AT&T) across Dubai, US, UK, Canada & APAC.

Dr. Puneet is also a security evangelist with experience in Information Security, Data Privacy, Risk Management. She is a Delhi University alumnus. 

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When Paolo Juvara joined Pure Storage in 2021, he knew he had a vastly different role to fulfill. After being the CIO of one of the largest cloud companies in the world (Google Cloud), Paolo’s role at Pure Storage as the Chief Digital Transformation was to be quite an unusual venture. 

A software developer at heart, his diverse background in both business and technology domains has helped him ace the role.

In this exclusive interview with CIO Dimension, Paolo shares his unique experiences as the chief digital transformation officer who drives Pure’s ambitious digital agenda to meet the company’s innovation and growth goals. 

Watch the full video here: 

People should be at the center of every digital transformation project 

DX is all about leveraging technology. But you really cannot succeed if you are not focusing on people and process, says Paolo. He believes that digital leaders must be empathetic towards the needs of diverse set of users. 

“If you do not involve humans to begin with, by understanding their needs and challenges, then you are not going to find the right bottlenecks – whether your goal is to improve process efficiencies or drive innovation,” he adds. One of the ways he implements this strategy is through the formation of a product management team within the DX organization.

For a company that transformed storage into an innovation technology, all of Pure’s technology and business advances are complemented by digital transformation – to greatly amplify the outcomes. The starting point of a successful transformation project, says Paolo, is often the back office. “I would say back office is the foundation of everything else in digital transformation. If operational complexities are not addressed, they start becoming a huge bottleneck for the scalability and growth of the company. My number one priority has been to focus on the back-office operations so that we can remove all the internal friction.” 

In this interview, Paolo also highlights how the traditional ways of measuring the success of DX projects are changing, the importance of employee and customers experience in such initiatives and why organizations must clearly define the business outcomes at the very outset. 

Also read:
Digital Transformation is all about questioning the status quo: Mani Mulki, Kedaara 

Pure Storage, Microsoft expand partnership to address cloud adoption challenges

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