Cloud breakthrough with NTT DATA’s Charlie Li

Clinton Bonner: I'm a Mets fan, so when I was talking about the Braves, I categorized them as annoyingly good because they just... (Laughs) 

Charlie Li: (Laughs)

Clinton: They just have our number and have for 30-something years at this point, right? So it's funny to hear from someone who lives in Atlanta be like, yeah, you know, they're really good, but they often don't get all the way over the hump. And I'm sitting here going, like, boy, would it be cool to be that good. Different strokes for different baseball folks.

(CATALYST INTRO MUSIC)

Clinton: Welcome to Catalyst, the Launch by NTT Data podcast. Catalyst is an ongoing discussion for digital leaders dissatisfied with the status quo, and yet optimistic about what's possible through smart technology and great people. Be sure to subscribe in your audio feed and help spread the good word on these very worthy discussions. Today we've got a great guest, trotting the globe nearly weekly. Almost every single day this guy's going around the globe. He's going to be sharing some strong points of view on all things cloud technologies, and enterprise approaches to decisionmaking when it comes to cloud. We're talking ecosystems, nativization and the duality of cloud as we know it in mid-2024. And leading that discussion today is Charlie Li of NTT Data. Charlie is the Senior Executive Vice President and Global Head of Cloud and Security services at NTT Data. He lives in Atlanta, the ATL, as some may know it. Charlie, you are back home. How are you doing? Are you feeling refreshed after traveling the globe for... What is it, months at this point?

Charlie: Yeah, Clinton. Absolutely. It's great to join you on the podcast. I've been to every continent over the last month and a half, except for the really snowy northern part. So it's a lot of traveling, but I'm glad to be home and doing this right from my own office.

Clinton: Charlie, you live in Atlanta. They got an annoyingly good baseball team. They got the beautiful aquarium. You're traveling the globe. But if you had to bring somebody in and host them for, let's say, a fun dinner in Atlanta, what's your go-to spot at the moment?

Charlie: I think it would have to be the 8 Mile station in midtown. It was an old Sears building that was re-renovated into this amazing rooftop restaurant. It has the entire view of the Atlanta skyline. And of course, you've got this modern soul food fusion with Asian food type of vibe going on, so the food is great. And the view... You couldn't ask for a better view. So that's probably where I would take someone. And if you're into, kind of, that hole in the wall, then Korean food in town is probably second to none at this point, given the huge Korean business hub in Atlanta. So I would take you to a place called 9292, it's a phenomenal Korean barbecue restaurant, fantastic place with a bunch of K-pop vibes in the background. So if you're into that, you know, certainly you're going to enjoy that as well.

Clinton: That sounds like fun. And Korean barbecue is delightful. So, we're talking cloud today. It's been around a while now, Charlie, but from your perspective, what's the promise of cloud, and what's the actual reality been like on the ground for most enterprises?

Charlie: I think a lot of people looked at cloud initially as simply a cost takeout. Cloud was defined as a destination. You know, you were running workloads on your own servers. You know, you are a fried chicken company, what do you know about, you know, servers? So might as well outsource that to somebody else who's running a better set of servers. And by doing so, you can reduce some costs, and also use a consumption model. That was the initial model in cloud. Of course, cloud platforms and cloud providers has evolved significantly from that point on, to the point where the paradigm shift of cloud is actually changing businesses and changing business models, and changing how consumers experience businesses. So things have changed quite a bit. Now, of course, today cloud is synonymous for anything that is possible. So the promise is the world, right? If we just bring cloud in here, it'll solve all of our problems, right?

Clinton: Right.

Charlie: Or if we just move to the cloud, then magically we become Facebook and we become Apple, we become Google, right? Of course we all know none of those things are true.

Clinton: So the lift and shift of just simply getting to the cloud, which I think has been such a, almost a cardinal sin, let's say the last 15 years or so of enterprises that are like, we need to rush, we need to get to the cloud, as if cloud was some destination.

Charlie: Absolutely.

Clinton: Versus being something to build upon, right? So, what's the biggest misalignment, you think, and I guess the biggest mistake that you're seeing when they're spinning their wheels, when they're focused on lifting and shifting, versus what they actually could possibly go do now that they are there?

Charlie: Well, I'll give you an analogy. You know, I think you talked about the Atlanta Braves...

Clinton: Yep.

Charlie: Being a disappointing or frustrating team to follow, and I followed them most of my life. You know, I used to discuss with other fans who would talk about how, oh, look, you just have to move to, if you want to be better at sports, move to a place with high altitude, because that high altitude gives you all sorts of advantages. If that were really true and we would all move to Colorado, we'd all become Olympians. That's clearly not true, right? I've been to Colorado many times. It has not improved my swimming, nor has it improved my running or anything else. (Laughs) But I think cloud is seen often the same way. If we simply moved to Microsoft, we simply moved to Google or AWS, and all of a sudden, you know, we're agile, we're fast, we're executing like a digital native. And that's just simply not the case, right? Whatever workload that was running in your data center, you move it to another data center, you're inherently not going to get a lot of benefits other than potentially a volume discount initially, or a discount based on some type of consumption. But other than that, you're not getting a whole lot of innovative benefits. So in reality, what you're getting is IT benefits, and very little true business benefits.

Clinton: When you and I prepped, when we were discussing this conversation, you talked about TikTok. And you talked about, like, hey, did you know? And you gave this thing about TikTok, and then you had some, I thought, some really cool ideas around, like, does it even matter? And I'd love for you to share that bit of trivia with the audience, too.

Charlie: Absolutely. You know, if you look at the consumer world, and I always look at that as a good parallel to the business world, and I would say that consumers are way ahead of the business world. If you look at a typical consumer, they use an iPhone and then they use an app. Let's say it's an app called TikTok. None of them really care about any of the technology behind it. I mean, does anyone know which cloud TikTok runs on? Does anyone really know what algorithm, you know, how the algorithm works at TikTok? Or do they actually really care? Do they really care about, you know, where does the App Store sit on an iPhone? What is the actual CPU serial number model? What is the memory and how much memory is it? And really, the only time you ever notice that your iPhone or your TikTok doesn't work is because your network, you know, was down, right? You're at an airport where there's no Wi-Fi or there's no 5G, and you notice. And you're like, wait, this is not working. But other than that, you never care the details behind it. You just want it to work. In business, we don't operate that way. In business, we still operate in a very traditional model. Where we care about every aspect of technology. We're so focused on, well, what is the CPU? What is the server? What is the operating system? What is the network? And that's all we focus on. And therefore we kind of keep our eyes away from the really important things, which is, what is the business outcome? How does this change my business? And how does that actually give a better experience to my end customers? And I think if you look at an Apple or TikTok, they simply do not focus on the technology complexity. Because they see themselves as the company that takes that complexity away from the end user, and therefore all they provide is an experience. So it's kind of funny when we look at a lot of big news recently about TikTok potentially being banned, and we're worried about where the data is sitting and blah, blah, blah. I mean, how many people know that the data of TikTok sits on Oracle Cloud, right? Very few, I think. And very, very few care. And if you told them that it's sitting on AWS, they wouldn't care. But the fact of the matter is that it actually doesn't sit in China, which is what the whole fear is about, that the data is sitting in China somehow, and that the Chinese are going to steal our data. Well, the data's sitting with Oracle. So... (Laughs) You know, are we equally concerned about Oracle stealing our data? I mean, I don't know.

Clinton: Right.

Charlie: But the point is that we only care about the experience. We simply don't care where it's sitting and how it actually operates in the back end.

Clinton: So when you're talking about the enterprise user, and them being... Let's call it what it is, really in the weeds on these technical pieces, who is this at the enterprise? And what kind of conversations do you then try to have to... Convince might be too strong, but just assuage them to see it differently and look at the value?

Charlie: Yeah, I think the solutions that are being provided today in the market, whether you hear about terms like cloud-first or digital transformation, it's still very much discussed at a technology stack level, right? What is the infrastructure we need? What is the network that we need? What kind of security parameters? What types of application programming languages do we need? Very few of the business solutions out there are focused on, well, what is the business outcome and customer experience? And frankly, all of that technology complexity should be encapsulated away from the actual users, right? That's less important. And this is why people often love their personal iPhone experiences and TikTok experiences, but they hate their work experiences. They hate taking a Teams call or Zoom call. Half the time it doesn't connect, it doesn't work. Or they hate working with whatever productivity tools that they use, right? The most complaints that you hear from people are generally their work productivity technologies. People love their iPhone experiences. They don't love their work experiences. For the most part. Part of the reason is because consumer technology companies focus on the outcome and the experience, whereas business technology providers focus on the technology complexity aspects of it, more than anything else. Which is why after, what? 15-plus years of cloud being first launched by AWS, most of the enterprise customers are still worried about, you know, still complaining about their experiences, the technology discussion is still focused on, you know, what type of chips. What type of networks, what type of cloud or infrastructure. Versus, how do I provide a better restaurant platform experience, or how do I provide a better retail platform experience for the business customers?

Clinton: Is one of the challenges that when they're trying to do things, let's say they're trying to execute on an enterprise level product or an application that ends up being... Whether it's B2B or B2B2C, that part doesn't really matter. But it's one of the things that, if they're not working with the right partners, or if they have to work with a hodgepodge of different partners that handle different things, like one handling network and another handling another piece of that pie, does the complexity make it harder for those enterprise leaders to actually just, you know, forget about it, and basically, like, put it up as table stakes and just stick to the value? Is it difficult because they actually end up having to work with a variety of different providers to get that stack, let's call it, you know, effective and consistent?

Charlie: You really hit the nail on the head there. If you look at what makes Apple successful, it's a single company, single ecosystem, fully controlled. Of course, Apple has all the different technology pieces that a business technology would have as well. The iPhone requires a network. Certainly. IPhone has security in it. Certainly. It has a CPU, has memory, right? Has cloud, has storage. All of those things are included. But when you walk into an Apple Store, you don't have 15 different engineers trying to sell you their individual pieces.

Clinton: Right.

Charlie: You don't walk into an Apple Store and here comes a storage guy trying to sell you 128GB of drive. You don't have a network guy selling you 5G. You don't have an App Store guy selling you just the App Store. It's one guy showing you a phone. Play with it. It's an experience. But in the business world, because we are so, still, organized in a legacy fashion from the 1980s, where IT learned the initial workings of IT from, I think we borrowed it from manufacturing, auto manufacturing, where it's this waterfall model, where there are a multitude of teams, each responsible for a very small slice of a technology, and that's how we've operated for a very long time. And I often get complaints from my clients that says, hey, we asked for a, you know, a new perspective on a retail platform. And one of your competitors showed up with a team of 21 people, each responsible for a small slice of that retail platform. You know, the client says, I asked for one person to come talk to me about how to run a modern, digitized, in the cloud, agile consumption-based retail platform. And yet 21 people showed up. And that's a reflection of how IT organizations are traditionally organized. We're all organized in silos. We're not organized by the experience or the buying pattern of our modern customers. So I think that's where the enterprise business has fallen behind the consumer experience for many years now.

Clinton: I've talked about this on the podcast before. And just... Ideas that we're thinking about a lot from our perspective as Launch by NTT Data, a part, a portfolio of services within NTT Data. And we're having these, our C-level discussions going like, hey, what do we think enterprise C-suite actually wants right now? What I keep hearing, and what I believe in my heart, is also, they crave, they really want simplicity. And I don't mean simplicity for the sake of it being simple. I mean for the, getting rid of the rat's nest of 21 different people showing up at their door to talk about a single experience. What it also allows them to do, in my opinion, Charlie, is like, stop thinking about these things as 21 disparate pieces. Focus on the most important thing as an orchestration, and then put actual deep focus into the thing that matters. It's less spinning of wheels... Which are just activities. Table stakes activities that don't actually provide business value. Versus, best people on the experience factor with deep focus. And I think the C-suite conversations we've been in recently, like the last, say, six months or so, when we say that to leaders, we go like, everybody promises velocity. We all want to go fast. But it's actually... I don't think it's velocity for the sake of velocity they're after. I think they want smoothness. And the ability to focus on what actually is going to drive value. And put the other stuff, you know, just out of their head for a while, or maybe for good. Are you seeing that too? I mean, you literally are going around the globe talking to people every single day. Does that feel right to you?

Charlie: Absolutely. And I think business relevancy has become an important aspect. In addition, as well, clients are often asking, I know you have a cloud solution, but do you have one for healthcare, for mid-market healthcare in Europe, right? Very specific to people's businesses. And if your solution is generic, it doesn't add a whole lot of business value. It adds a lot of IT value. Again, I think, going back to the business value versus IT value. Same thing, going back to the consumer example, you know, consumer companies, technology companies are really great at kind of simplifying the end result to a customer while kind of hiding all of that internal complexity away. For example, an iPhone, it's made in China by a third-party company. The parts are acquired by different companies. Their Korean companies might make parts. There are, you know, Taiwanese companies that make certain parts. There are American companies that make certain parts. But never, when a consumer walks into an Apple Store, is that complexity displayed to you. You simply don't know and don't care. You just look at the final result that drives your needs. And I think we don't do such a good job on the business side. Because often, what you see is that companies, especially enterprise technology companies, whether you're on services or technology, you bring all the complexity within your own supply chain, within your own internal organizational structure, and you bring all of that to a customer. And that's why customers get frustrated that their personal experience in consumer technology is so different than their professional experience in the business. Where, you know, in the previous example, 21 people show up to a meeting, each talking about a small piece of the pie, when the client only cares about, do you have a retail platform for me? I'm a mid-market retailer based in North America. Do you have that solution? Don't tell me that you worked with Walmart. That's great, right? Walmart's the biggest global retail brand in the world. We're not Walmart. We're a mid-market retailer that sells clothing for kids. Do you have a solution for that? And I think we miss the point often in the enterprise market, of how to tailor very specific experiences for our customers and their customers. We focus too much on the technology complexity of getting something done.

Clinton: You're mentioning Apple as, hey, that's the ecosystem. And, of course, but in the Apple world there is the other side. There's Android, right? And you've got this Apple versus Android. And Apple, you're locked into an ecosystem. Android, perhaps you have more flexibility, and that kind of goes back to that duality of cloud that you were mentioning. So, when people are looking at cloud, what actually does matter? And is... It sounds to me if we have, if we have what is tantamount to an Apple and tantamount to an Android, then there's also people with different needs where one might be right, depending on who they are, what they're trying to do, and kind of their state now. So, what is that duality actually like? And does the Apple-Android metaphor carry over that way?

Charlie: Absolutely. And it's actually very interesting you mentioned that, because in the world, you see there's clearly two camps. There are those that just want the experience. Not very nerdy or techie. You know, Apple, give me whatever technology behind the scenes you want. As long as it works, I'm happy. Right? My parents are great examples of that. Even though my father was an engineer for 50 years, he simply doesn't care what runs under the hood as long as it works. But you also have nerds like myself. I actually carry a Google phone, even though I use that iPhone example quite often, because I want the ability to have interoperability with other devices. You know, there's a bit of a lock-in when you use Apple. And in the enterprise world, you have a very similar situation. You have customers who are, let's use the example, a mid-market customers are, tend to be Microsoft shops. You hear that term a lot. You know, we're a Microsoft shop. Well, what does that mean? Well, it means that they're a fairly small company. They can't compete in the market for talent like the big players can. And they want to pick a technology that is fairly ubiquitous, easy to find talent, easy to train, and has a fairly well-integrated ecosystem. And for them, because they're a small company with a small IT budget, they don't have a lot of leverage with large vendors. So they have enough spend to maybe use one vendor. So, a lot of them, you'll see they'll be... You'll see companies that are, you know, IBM shops, or Microsoft shops. Or they're a Google shop. That's what that really means. But then there are other customers who are enterprise customers, and they have a lot of needs because their market segment is vastly different. So to serve different market segments of their own, they must leverage different types of technology ecosystems. In that case, some of these customers might choose best of breed. Oh, I really like the AI of Google, but I like the flexibility, you know, and the ecosystem of AWS. But then I also like the startup community that builds innovation, so maybe I'll stitch, I'll build a team that can stitch all of that together and bring the best platform to the market. So I think even in the enterprise, you see, kind of, these two... Clearly, these two camps. Those that believe they need something very unique and they need to stitch everything together, versus those that are smaller and want to leverage a single ecosystem to be as cost-effective as possible.

Clinton: If you're on the enterprise grade, right? That level. And you choose something that does, let's say, lock you in more, then are there dangers to your business? If you're making a choice at that level, where you've gone down a path and you might be in an ecosystem where certain experiences come out of the box more, you know, but you gotta buy the box. You gotta buy the whole box. Are there dangers of getting locked into that? And... I guess, what, how do you guide CIOs if they're trying to make that kind of choice on experience? In a box or, hey, you really ought to opt for more flexibility for reasons X, Y, and Z.

Charlie: Yeah, there's certainly... This is certainly one of those it-depends answers. Because there's a notion of good lock-in and bad lock-in. Right? A good lock-in is where you get all the cost and productivity advantages. In the earlier example, I talked about kind of the small- to mid-sized customers who can't afford to negotiate with so many different vendors. For them to be locked into a single vendor, let's say Microsoft, is actually a pretty good strategy. Because for them, if they were to split their IT spend into multiple vendors, they probably won't get the cost efficiencies of just being, working with one vendor. So in that case, it's actually a good strategy. And also, if most of their technology is already based on Microsoft technologies, for them, there's very little risk to do anything else. Now, I've also seen other customers, however, who haven't thought about the whole cloud problem through. So, a lot of the early adopters, let's say the mid 2010s, if you will, that have gone with one vendor, and then regretted it. And decided to go somewhere else. One example is, famously, when Walmart declared that Walmart's data cannot reside on AWS because AWS is a competitor to Walmart. So overnight, many companies who have chosen AWS as the one and only vendor regretted that decision, and had to back out and create a multi-vendor solution, or a strategy. So in that case, vendor lock-in was detrimental to their business, because it cost them extra to then migrate out of something they've already migrated into. So they had to pay migration fees twice, and re-architect their entire IT landscape. So I think there's a notion of good lock-in and there's a notion of a bad lock-in. I'm sure you could write a whole book on the strategies behind it, because it all depends on the client's situation and their current spend and who their vendors are and where they can get their talent. But both of those examples ring equally true in the market today. There's a valid argument to be made to have good lock-in for some customers, and certainly there's a lot of risk for other customers who are fully locked in. The general rule of thumb, though, is that if you're a really large enterprise, you need to have options.

Clinton: Yeah.

Charlie: So, tend to have a strategy, to have a multi-vendor strategy. Whereas if you're a smaller vendor, you tend to go with kind of the challenger-champion model, or a single-vendor strategy.

Clinton: I'd love to flip it back over to experiences, because the whole point of, again, it's not the destination of cloud, it's what cloud can enable. So, speaking of experiences... You know, you mentioned that consumer apps are at least ten years ahead of the enterprise, yet you're talking with clients every single week. You travel, you know, incessantly. You're always out there with the clients. So are there a couple of examples from the enterprise, either philosophically or maybe in the products and the apps that they're executing, that you could point to and just be like, that's who's doing it really, really well. Like, go follow them. They are crushing it and really showing how to reinvent and build with cloud.

‍Charlie: Yeah, I think there are a lot of great retail examples, especially in the restaurant space. If you look at a Starbucks, if you look at a McDonald's, if you look at a Chick-Fil-A, the technology integration has been phenomenal from an experiences perspective. I think I was just with my family on vacation and we went to a Chick-Fil-A, we ordered something on the app on the way there. Once we pulled into the parking lot of Chick-Fil-A, it actually geofenced. It knew that we were now on premise. That's when they started making the food, while we were in line for the pickup. And by the time we got to the line, you know, a person actually handed the food over to us. Of course, we know why they did that, because it guaranteed quality of the food. If they made the food when I actually ordered the food, which could have been 30, 40 minutes ago, right? When I left the house. The food could be cold by then. Maybe it's not fresh anymore. So the fact that they've integrated this mobile technology to in-store geolocation, and then to the in-store experience, and then marry that with the people inside, it's quite amazing. And I think this is why when you go to a Chick-Fil-A anywhere in the world, it's packed. Like, you don't see any other fast food packed like Chick-Fil-A, it's just packed. There's cars everywhere. It's because the experience is amazing, right? Some people like chicken, some people don't like chicken. And. But the experience you get at Chick-Fil-A is almost second to none. And I think it's true to some extent for McDonald's these days as well, and also for Starbucks. Is Starbucks the best coffee in the world. Many would argue not. But they certainly provide a tremendous, standardized, consistent experience whether you are in Japan having a Starbucks or you're having a Starbucks in Europe. And same thing with McDonald's. I think those are great examples of where, I think, companies have looked at their technology stack, looked at end user experience being the most important thing, and then solved technologies once they've created the strategy around the business. So more business-focused drivers rather than IT focused drivers. A bad example, I'll tell you, because I was just at jury duty this week.

Clinton: (Laughs)

Charlie: And as you know, how governments are not usually the earliest adopters of technology.

Clinton: No! You don't say. Yeah, you're right.

Charlie: They gave each person a sticker that says "juror" on it, and then they gave each person a printed-out number that they can hold in their hands. Because they can't learn your name, so they have to learn your number. But one juror mentioned, hey, Charlie, why is it that they can't just print it, the one sticker with a number and the word "juror" on it? You have to get in two different lines to pick up your sticker and then pick up your number. Well, I said, jokingly, but it's probably true, well, you know, long time ago when they bought those HP printers, they were probably calibrated to only print one thing, which is the word "juror." And now you want to add a number to it. That's a whole new project, right? That's a whole new project to change the design, change the process. I gotta buy another printer that's purpose-built for printing the word juror and the number on it, so on and so forth. But that's an example of a very technology-centric type of approach rather than the end-user experience approach. Right? The user experience was secondary. You know, it's how convenient it is to fit into the internal structure or buying patterns or procurement of the government. That's what they focused on more. And therefore the experience is terrible. But the total cost they put into getting the whole jury system to work, I'm sure, is no less than what McDonald's put into their digital experience for their customers. But the end result is completely different.

Clinton: And it reeks of the rigidity of the system itself. If we take that juror example and bring it back over to the enterprise, we find that, very often, their inability to absorb change, because they're so rigid in how they were previously set up, just do not allow them to then put the focus where it really needs to be, which again, is back on experiences. And it becomes very difficult to do something as simple as, hey, print one sticker. (Laughs) Right? As a, it's a crude metaphor, but it really works, right? And then back on the McDonald's side too. I frequent a local McDonald's. I use the app. And when I do dine in, because I'll drop my kid off at a martial arts place and I'll go get whatever, a soda or a burger or whatever, I see people who come into the store, typically older, just... It just is what it is, right? Just observation-wise. And they have to go face this big kiosk that they're not used to. And they're frustrated in two levels. They're frustrated that they don't know how to operate this particular computer interface. And, the prices are way higher than they used to be. And I'm coming in, i'm watching other people come in that are, let's say, our age or younger who are picking their food up flawlessly, really never interacting with the human. And if you're using the app, you're probably, A, punching in the discount code that's sitting right there, and you're getting reward points. I mean, talk about two different worlds right now. And there's nothing in between. It's like someone's frustrated and angry, or they're in and out and enjoying their stuff, and it was cheaper because they used a piece of technology. Just something that kind of came up for me, Charlie, I don't know if that duality, or like, you see some of those things happen, again, back at the enterprise, where you got some people, you know, yes, they got to cloud, but they're not extending through cloud, they're not thinking through it. Versus those examples like you gave that are really, now, offering new experiences because of that great foundation.

Charlie: Yeah, I think I see that experience more in Western countries during my travels, because in Western countries you see a huge duality, as you mentioned, right? You have the government agencies, healthcare, being very immature in the customer experience. Like, who loves doing a claims process? That is not as easy as ordering McDonald's.

Clinton: No. Right.

Charlie: It should be, right? There's no reason why it shouldn't be. But it's not. And then you have the McDonald's of the world. So then what happens is that you have users that are stuck between those two worlds.

Clinton: Right.

Charlie: Those who are used to the old way and then the new way. But if you go to some of the emerging markets like India and China, Southeast Asia, it's amazing that... I was in India once and there's a person selling tea on the street. An old man, you know, probably 70, 80 years old. And when I tried to offer him to pay cash, he says, we don't take cash here, right? Just a QR code. I mean, here's a 70-80 year old man, street vendor selling tea, taking QR codes for payment. Whereas we still have people in America who's, you know, in their 40s, who comes up to a digital kiosk in McDonald's and frustrated, couldn't figure out how to order a burger. So I think you see some very interesting dynamics around the world based on how technology evolves and the different types of governments, mandates and policies that are driving technology. You know, in countries where the government basically says, look, cashless payment, everything has to go digital. Everybody learns just like that, right? Whether you're 80 or whether you're five. But in our country, and many of the Western countries where, of course, you can't have that kind of mandate, I think there's going to be that duality for probably another ten, 20 years.

Clinton: Yeah, that feels about right. So, let's talk about predictions. So, next 3 to 5 years. I always like to see if we can take a futurist angle. What do you think is the next big trend, or just general predictions for a cloud... Not adoption because that's not about it, but cloud experiences in the enterprise for the next 3 to 5 years that you really think are going to be, you know, whether they become commonplace or just really, really take hold of the enterprise?

Charlie: I think there's two things, and I think this is probably not rocket science. I think every listener has already thought it as well. One is AI. AI's going to dominate everything that we do and see within our life experiences and within technology. Whether it's improving productivity, whether it's, you know, creative, being more creative and innovative, I think AI will be everywhere. Second is, I mentioned this earlier, is that you will see an increasing amount of technology that has a more specific purpose. Today, we see a lot of technology that is very generic, horizontal. It's a technology that does everything. In the future, especially in enterprise technology, you will see more and more business relevant technology that is hyper-specific to a customer's needs. So no longer are we creating just a retail platform. It is a retail platform for kids' shoes for a small online kids' manufacturer based in the UK. Right? Something very, very specific. And I think, just like the consumer world, where every app is very catered to you. For example, my TikTok feed, I'm sure it's very different than yours, Clinton. But in the business it's very generic. Right? So I think that's where you will see as well. The business will catch up, and you will start to see business technology solutions that are very catered to a very hyper-specific set of business audiences. Similar to a fee that you get that's very personal to you, businesses should also expect to give very personalized solutions catered to their industry, their sector, their market segment and their customer base.

Clinton: Yeah, certainly leads to more value-led approach and solving human problems at the end of it, right? Really with the human at the focus the entire time through. And that leans into design-led practices. You know, UI, UX heavy at the front, really understanding who the heck you're serving through technology and not the other way around, right? It's all enabled by cloud, which is, of course, the great opportunity that's before us. So, Charlie, where should people look out for you? If it's LinkedIn, let 'em know where. And, anything you got coming up, research-wise or content-wise, you'd like to point people to?

Charlie: Absolutely. Linkedin, of course. Been on LinkedIn for a very long time, you can just search by my name, Charlie Li, as in L-i. And I'm happy to announce that with our collaboration with Omdia, we have a new piece of research and thought leadership, publication that's coming out very soon in June, that specifically addresses how CIOs and really, the whole C-suite can take advantage of cloud from a business perspective rather than an IT perspective. We talk a lot about how to, you know, kind of guarantee business outcomes rather than IT outcomes, how to celebrate business go-lives rather than IT go-lives. We're very excited about this paper, which helps our C-suite think through how to really pivot their thinking around end user experience and business outcomes of the cloud paradigm shift, rather than technology outcomes from a cloud as a destination. 

Clinton: Perfect. And I know folks will be able to find that on the NTT Data website a little bit later in June. That article, that research is going to be coming out with Omdia. So, Charlie, a huge thanks to you. Charlie Li, Senior Executive VP and Global Head of Cloud and Security Services at NTT Data. Charlie, thanks again. Great conversation today here on Catalyst, where we believe that fast will follow smooth, and aiming to create digital experiences that move millions is a very worthy pursuit. Join us next time as the pursuit continues on Catalyst, the Launch by NTT Data podcast.

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