Mainframe Modernization with Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Kyndryl

Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Welcome to the latest edition of Walter's world. The podcast series from Astadia. As hopefully, all of you know, this podcast series is dedicated to new and interesting trends for people who are interested in mainframe migration and modernization.

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Today I am delighted to have with me. Richard Baird, who is the VP and CTO for Core Enterprise and zCloud for Kyndryl. Richard, welcome to the podcast!

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Walter, thank you very much for the invite and good to be here.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Richard, could you share with the our team members and audience what your background is, and what your role at Kyndryl is?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: So you know, as you said, I'm the global CTO for anything in Kyndryl to do with the IBM Z or depending on which part of the planet you're from. And I'm responsible for, you know, technical direction, being any technical issues that you know deep technical issues that we have in our delivery capabilities and also maintaining, you know, the technical relationships with companies like Astadia. 

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Before this, obviously, you know, Kyndryl was part of IBM and I had a long career in IBM software group, where I owned such things as a CICS product development, COBOL and PL1 product development, some of the application development environments, so a long history in Z and I. And also, you know, owning web application server and Java development so multi-platforms as well.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: A long tenure and a most interesting background indeed.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: You and I both have this nice shade of hair. 

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: For those of us who have air, Richard, I'd be interested to know, and I I'm sure the audience would. You mentioned having been a part of IBM. What's the transition to Kyndryl being an independent company, been like? Has it been what you expected, or completely different?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: It's a great question. You know, when Kyndryl spun out from IBM back in November of 21 you know we were a 90,000 strong start-up on launch day. So you know, when we spun, we became the world's largest, IT infrastructure services provider because Kyndryl provides not only the mainframe services, but it literally does everything from mobile to mainframe, network storage and all the other things you would expect from a services provider and we've gone through that transition to being an independent standalone company. You know, we focused on 3 initiatives around advanced delivery. We have a large number of accounts being the largest provider here, and also alliances with, you know, companies like Astadia. And you know we have being proactively working on all of those over the last 18 months and becoming independent, has really given us the freedom to operate and partner with who we think we need to in order to make sure that our customers is successful. It enables us to address the full spectrum of mainframe customer needs and deliver even more comprehensive services and business value than we could previously.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: And new news relatively hot off the press in the last week, you know, for a startup that, you know, started in November 21, we have evolved from being that startup company to landing as number 225 on the Fortune 2023. So that's a good place to be. And equally, we're, you know, really excited that we've been recognized as one of Newsweek 100 most loved workspaces, workplaces in 2023.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: So I think it's a start up those 2 things, not only from a from a financial stability, you know, financial recognition on the Fortune 500, but also from the people standpoint to be recognized as one of the 100 most loved workplaces for employees, that's a testament to what we've been able to do since spinning out.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Absolutely, congratulations on both of those amazing accomplishments. That's a that's truly impressive.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: We think so too, and equally, you know, it's down to the 90,000 people. But that pull it off as well. So all good all round. Good deal.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Richard, you mentioned something a second ago about our partnership and your approach, and it's one that we at Astadia share. I think I view us both as being both very customer-centric companies and we recognize that each customer's mainframe modernization challenges and needs are unique. I'd be interested to know what are you hearing from your customers as the main challenges they're dealing with, and just as importantly, what are the most important needs as they start their mainframe modernization journey.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: So for most mainframe customers, the mainframe stays at the core of their business and they have that intention that the mainframe is going to continue to play a role for some years ahead whether it's as deeper role that it's played up until now that's going to unfold over time. But they still see it playing a role to some degree for many of them, looking after their most mission critical applications and data, and all of that as part of the, you know, digital transformation journey that they do along with the hyper scalers that they may be partner with. You know we see them partnering with AWS, and with Google, either you know, a one on one relationship, or they have a multi hyper scalarer relationship. And then all of those, the mainframe continues to be. You know, what do we do with it. Right? What? How did the applications and data that we have? How do we manage that digital transformation for the applications into this this new world? So it's like the next, the next generation.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: The other thing is that they do that digital transformation and drive innovation enhance their own customer experiences, you know, and even down to the extent of enhancing their employee productivity maybe through changes in the way they do application development, they get more agile, as a result of doing it.

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They tend to focus on all of those, but the other thing in customers aim to manage their costs and drive more value out of the IT investments that they made. You know, every single company doesn't matter who you talk to, which you know part of the planet, at the end of the day they've all got to effectively manage their costs and all look to drive more valued from their IT investments.

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So it's a combination of how do I get that? The right application and data, and the right workload on the right platform? How do I do it in such a way that is cost effective to my business? But the number one thing that drives all of it is, how do I do it so that I drive a better customer experience for my own customers that my IT is providing support for?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: In the midst of that, they're also having to transform their own organizations, because often they don't have the skills and the expertise to do so with the teams that they've had for the last 10,15, 20 plus years, because, Walter, as you and I both know, we've both been in this industry a long time, technology is constantly changing and we're always looking for skills. So from a Kyndryl standpoint, it's not just about the practice that I represent here, it's Kyndryl in general, it's all of Kyndryl come into play here along with partners like Astadia to help the customers tackle those challenges are just outlined and mainframe transformation and application modernization is probably one of the toughest problems that they get to tackle, but, as I said, with partners like Astadia the forces and skills that we got available in Kyndryl, I think we can probably tackle them.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Great. Thank you it. I'm glad that you mentioned that and I know you have these relationships with other companies as well, but I know here at a stadium we cherish our relationship with Kyndryl because we think we have that that common ground, and it's what you talked about before that providing the broadest range of options, being able to give people different paths that they can follow is important. And I know, as we work together, being able to talk to clients together, that has been a strong benefit that they have expressed. Do you see it the same way?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Yeah, I mean the combination of Kyndryl with Astadia, I think, brings the best of both worlds together. If you look at some of the industry analysts reports it could be ISG or Gartner, or any of those, certainly, for ISG you'll find that Astadia is a leader in the mainframe application, modernization space, modernization software. 

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And Kyndryl is the leader in mainframe modernization services. So if you put 2 leaders in the industry together, both that have a similar approach or synergistic approach in terms of how they approach customers, how they deal with the challenges. You're gonna get a really good experience. Kyndryl can benefit from the partnership by leveraging Astadia’s extensive experience with application, modernization, right? The tools and techniques that you've got. And you know, similarly, Astadia can benefit from Kyndryl deep experience in terms of managing and looking after a large number of these mainframe environments for 20-30 plus years in in many instances. So yeah, you know, I think it's a good combination between the 2. 

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: I I'd like to say that to me it's a case where one in one equals 3 that we are able to offer clients a more comprehensive and complete solution for them, not just picking individual components that we do. But together we, we really provide them something that they can't just go find everywhere.  

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: And we all have extensive partner networks where we can bring other people in if necessary, in order to address the stuff that we always find out there, I mean. As I said, we've both been here for too many years to know the customer turn and says, Oh, I've found this little thing that I've got in the corner here. The technology is being there for a long time. Do you know what to do with it? We normally know somebody who does.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Absolutely. It astounds me how creative people have been over the years,  and what they have done, and in a similar manner, the fact that what they did 40 years ago still works amazingly well today to the point that they even forget that it's there.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: yeah. I mean, how many times have you and I talk to a customer that said, oh, it's only a bit of COBOL and Db2, don't worry about it. Right? And you go look at the code and you go, you know this COBOL looks suspiciously like Assembler. Exactly. And again, you know, the customer goes. Well, yes, there might be some Assembler in here as well, and you know the IMS, we know we told you it was all Db2, but then there's probably some IMS Db in here as well, and it's all out there, and we know what to do with it. 

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: That's what makes it fun, absolutely. Richard, you talked about the hyperscalers earlier. I'd be interested in knowing Kyndryl's approach to take when a customer is interested in hybrid or multi cloud solutions, how do you tend to look at that?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: So, as I said at the beginning, one of the benefits of Kyndryl being stand-alone now is that we can be agnostic, right? So we have strong partnerships with strong alliances, I should say, with all 3 of the main hyperscalers, Microsoft, AWS and Google. When we sit down with the customer we take an approach of the right platform for the right workload and we'll talk to them and say, Well, you know, do you know what you want to do?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Because some of them will turn around and say, we want to do a lift and shift. We don't want to touch the COBOL. We just want to move the COBOL over. Some will turn around and say, we want to refactor. We want to go to Java or C# and some will turn around and say we decided we're gonna rewrite, we're gonna use an off the shelf package. So you know, what do we do with all the data and some of our unique stuff that we might need to keep when we move to using this new package. So the approach is very much one of an application and data workload one. We'll work with a customer and a hyper scaleer or hyper scale is because, as I said, in some instances, the customer has a a multi hyperscaler strategy. 

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We'll work with them to make sure that they limit the risk in what they're trying to do, make sure that, you know, we advise them on the best way to approach the application placement, and then, when the application has been moved, Kyndryl can manage the application and the infrastructure wherever they've landed it, you know, even if they move it to their own existing private cloud, you know that they may have on premise.

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Kyndryl got the depth and breadth of experience here to be able to manage any of the target landing zones that a customer may have for that application and data. So it's not just a question of us. Say, oh, you know you're off the mainframe. We're not interested. I no, we will manage the life cycle here.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: a studio as one of our partners to help move the applications and data across, and then, once migrated, you know, we can be there, as you know, we believe a superior managed service provider for the environment that they choose to move into

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: with equivalent, you know. with equivalent service, or, better.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: which is important. That's what people look for on the mainframe of being able to work with the candle of the world where they they feel very confident that they will achieve the same that's got to be a plus for them.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: And you know we can help them plan it. We can help them execute it. We can help them manage it on the back end.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: in a, in a new environment, with, say, kindle bridge which is our own. you know, AI Ops, based environment for managing

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: the runtime environments that we look after for customers irrespective of platform. If we can be to an AI of platform. It will support Mainframe. It will support any of the hyper scalars, etc.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Okay, perfect. I I think I know the answer to this question, and how you would view it. When you talk to a client. do you have a particular

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: affinity for discussing with them that they should modernize on the mainframe versus moving to the cloud.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: we we don't go in with a you know. You should move everything off, or you should keep everything on we actually have a a as I said a couple of times here, the the right platform for the right workload. So you know, sometimes we'll look at an application and we'll go. Look.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: there's a lot you can actually do with this, and and probably need to on the mainframe. You might be running a really old version of Cobalt. Really, old version p. One, etc. You might be using some of the older technologies which need to be renovated.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: and having been, you know, renovated the customers able to, and wants to continue down that path.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: equally, you know, if we turn around to a customer. And and we say, Look, this application probably really shouldn't be here anymore.  we've got a way in which we can help you either move the application and the data off.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Some choose to leave the data behind because the issues around data sovereignty data governments, all those you know, security and data privacy stuff. They feel more comfortable leaving the data on the mainframe. But maybe access from an application that's running on one of the the hyper scale is so it's you know there's not a one size fits all here.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: But we, you know, we very definitely do have a view with the customer as to what they should

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: be doing with a particular application. Clearly, once we've gone in and and taking a look at it and work with them on what their their own strategy isn't, where that application placement fits within that strategy that makes sense.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: I know for me.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: The topic of people being receptive to moving to the cloud has changed over the years. Ha! Do you see it the same way? Do you see that organizations are today

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: more willing to consider Cloud as an alternative than they might have been in years past.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: I you know I have. I think it it changes. And the pen, you know, this is the pendulum of technology.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: and it it oscillates backwards and forwards here.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: you know, there was a a big move I'm going to say about 4, 5 years ago. Certainly, you know, Pre Covid, where everything was going to move off.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: And that's obviously, you know, not happen, because it's still a large number of main trains out there, and and many people are happy with them.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: And the the the penguin swung back to say, well, you know.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: everything is going to stay on, and we're going to modernize it. And that pendulum is now sort of swinging back into the middle here, which I think is a person thing, is a more balanced approach, which is that the world is truly hybrid.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: and it is

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl:  the hyper scale is. and the mainframe are going to sit there, and they're going to coexist. And it's going to be this continued story of you know where to my applications and and

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: data have to sit in this new world.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: And and if if

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: I could say, you know, history has a habit of repeating itself, and I hate to say this. But, Walter, you and I are probably of the the generation that can remember this.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: If we go back to the days of client server.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Everything was going to move off the mainframe then, and everything.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Everything was going to go clients over. Well, it didn't

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: all right, for whatever reason. And you know, I'm not saying history has repeated itself, but it's that same sort of technological

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: evolution where things have to coexist with one another for a variety of good reasons.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: And you know, as I said, between Kindle and stadia, we can help them get that balance right of

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: where do I want to put it? Where do I want to put my data? How do I get them linked up? How do I make sure that my business continues to be a hundred percent available. Once I've done this

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: in such a way that I am now as the customer able to address the new digital challenges, new customer challenges that I face in my own industry.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: I I think that is so important. What you just described.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: 1015 years ago it was pretty straightforward for

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: me moving people off of the mainframe, the 50 MIPS customer, or the 100 MIPS customer. It made sense for them to move everything away

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: The organizations today realize that the business will determine

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: where information needs to be and how it needs to be processed, and I think

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: we both approach it the same way that finding what's right for the customer, and it will be that hybrid that's going to be the fun part of this

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: this area for the next multiple years, being able to see how we evolved the process to give people that flexibility to leverage

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: where they get the most benefit in the best way possible. That's what that's what makes this fun for me, I know.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Yeah. So it's the. It's the same for me, because, you know, some of the the technology challenges haven't changed. I this we have to deal with the laws of physics in latency. I I have a hyper scale. I have a mainframe places in 2 different data centers.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: The data I want instantaneously. Well, you know, I'm very sorry the laws of physics apply here. and there's only so fast, you know. A a bit can fly from this side to this side.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Other things that we can do to improve that, undoubtedly. But at the end of the day we still have to deal with some of those practicalities.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: And it's those kinds of things that make this whole, you know. Transformation journey like much more fun like for the likes of you and me.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Fantastic Richard, I have a a 2 part question for you.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: What do you believe? Are the main drivers for organizations today

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: who are trying to drive their corporate it? Strategy? And what are the things that you foresee in the next 5 years that will start to drive, how people define that strategy.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: So you know, from a

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: from an organizational change, the the biggest thing that we see customers facing with their organization to get the the cost. And and what have you continues to be one of skills?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: you know, via cobal skills. Po, one skills and the skills, etc.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl:  that's where you know, a number of of customers are

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: worried right now.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: They also worry not only in terms of skills for them, being current, but they also worry that a lot of their skills are about to retire. you know. Now, kindred has a very robust

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: robust skilling and staffing program. So with that, you know, with the roughly 8,000 people that we have that to do. The mainframe stuff in kindle average age is, you know, sort of 30 35. Ish, yeah, it's that kind of number. So we have a a relatively young team

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl:  but it's achieved because we have that robust scaling program. So you know, customers who invest in skilling for those who choose to stay on the platform or even move the cobal pl one off platform it is possible to achieve, but it does require

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: the the customer to invest in the skills program to enable future development in that to be state.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: And and interestingly, I mean, I was around at the the birth of Java.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: I now hear Java referred to as a legacy language. I I'm not necessarily sure that the world is running out of Java skills. but you know. Nonetheless, I can see this. You know, the same problem appearing on the horizon

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: with the number of Java skills in the future. So it's really a question of investing in the people. and what what is important for you as a customer in what you need to maintain your business?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: you know, there are some, you know, we said here, some key critical applications and data.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: and so you know, I'll pick something if you've got data critical data sitting in Ims. dB, you probably want to make sure that you've got a robust program around your Ims dB programmers.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: so you know, that's gonna that's gonna continue for the future. And it's a an area that people should focus on And the second half, your question, I think, was around. What do I see in the next of the 5 years?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: The difference?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl:  a, you know, back to the the prior question we had in terms of You know the that swinging pendulum of

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everybody stays on. Everybody moves off.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: one thing we know

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: in this industry is that technology never stands still. certainly all of the hyper scalars continue to invest heavily in the the technologies that they provide

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: is, you know, fairly obvious that IBM is probably gonna continue to invest in the mainframe. I mean, we've just seen what they did with the Z. 16 launch with the AI chip at the the half of it.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: you know that.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Where does AI play in applications? Well, 2 levels. Where does AI play with applications? And where does AI play in the operation space.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: you know, is, I think, going to continue to grow over the next 5 years.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl:  we still gonna have this skills problem. And I just reference. you know.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: will it have changed dramatically?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: probably not. The will play have been more more of the the more of the folks will have retired. but then, you know, I equally see

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: the the advancement of software technologies.

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Not necessarily not saying that won't be hardware advances. But certainly software advances.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: We'll see. And we'll see another new generation, a new style of business applications as we go through the digital transformation that most many customers are going through. New markets are going to appear as they do that digital transformation which will require new software capabilities, new hardware capabilities, but certainly new software capabilities

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: for them to access that

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: particular new business opportunity.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: you know, if we look back over the last of the 5, 10 years, the advancement of mobile phone technology, the introduction of 5G. It, it changes.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: it changes the It landscape, but it also opens up a myriad of new business opportunities. So

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: I think the message for the likes of of kindle start here, and the the partners that we all work with is, you know, we've got to keep our eyes wide open.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: we've got to continue to to work together.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: and you know, see what's coming, and try and plan for it so that we can be in a position to help the customers take that next step in their digital transformation. Once they've, you know, achieve what they are doing in the near term. The other thing I would say, which has started to grow in the last couple of years, and I think we'll take a big jump over the next 4 to 5 years

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: is the focus on enterprise social and governance, or Esg.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: as it's, you know, refer to particularly around climate change and the impact on it as a result of climate change. And what have you? So the ability to automate tasks

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: become much more essential. The ability to to have it help

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: a company achieve their social and governance goals. you know, that's going to become a a core factor in the equation over the next 3 to 5 years, and I wouldn't be at all surprised

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: if you don't start to see some form

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: of a government legislation in some spaces around. Certainly the the enterprise commitments around social and and governance that would be the the other big area that I think we all collectively need to be able to address

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Richard. It was interesting. I was thinking, as you were talking talking about our generation. I hate to admit. I remember the time when I used to have to dial an operator to place a call for me.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: and then the technology allowed me to become the operator. I I could dial myself.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: I remember, when I used to have to go into the bank every week to deposit a check or to move money around. I haven't been inside of a bank and forever. I do everything because the technology allows me to do that. Now the pace at which these things change is only growing, I think.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: and you said something that I think was so astute. We together and in this industry have to be on the lookout for what that next thing is that's going to revolutionize.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: the way that companies can do business, and the way that it can assist them and that It's not going to be boring, is it, my friend?

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: no, I mean, you know, life in this industry has not been boring for the last in years will say and it's certainly not going to be boring in the in the future. And I mean, even in the in recent times. We've seen a big change. you know. With the unfortunate rise of Covid

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: we saw the world move to a more cashless society and the way in which people spend their money. has changed dramatically. They might be spending the same, but they're not carrying the cash around with them any more that you know the the the T with the iphone, or whatever, in order to pay for services

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: dramatically changed right over the last few years and you know

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: it's built as well when I go shopping. Now, when I go to a when I go to the food store. I do my own check out.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: I we have become trained again via the technology.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Exactly.

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Richard Baird - VP and CTO, Core Enterprise and zCloud - Kyndryl: Exactly. So, I think, you know, next 5, 10 years we're going to see more of that in maybe in areas that we haven't even thought of yet.

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: Absolutely. That's a possibility, Richard. It looks like we are. Unfortunately, at the end of our time I wanted to thank you so very much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to spend this time with us today. I know the audience really appreciates your thoughts and observations, and and what you see for the future

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Walter Sweat - CTO - Astadia: pleasure. Thank you very much, Walter, for the for the invite, and look forward to carrying on the the partnership here. Absolutely. Thank you, sir, and to everyone else. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy Friday. We appreciate you being here today, and I hope you'll keep visiting a Astadia@wwwstadia.com looking for upcoming podcast series. Thank you all so much and have a wonderful weekend.

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