CIO Influence Interview with Serge Lucio, VP and GM of Agile Operations Division at Broadcom

Serge Lucio, VP and GM of Agile Operations Division at Broadcom chats about accelerating digital transformation, key software solutions at Broadcom and more in this Q&A:

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Hi Serge, welcome to our interview series. Could you share some pivotal experiences that have shaped your leadership in the SaaS industry?

Back in 2019, we were seeing rapid adoption of cloud and SaaS-based services. As the pandemic progressed, we started seeing huge shifts in distributed workforces. Enterprises were increasingly implementing ‘work from anywhere’ initiatives, which meant more enterprise productivity was occurring outside the firewall and with a greater dependency on resilient networks. As a result, our customers were looking for new and better ways to understand the performance of their services within their traditional and modern network architectures and across critical internet infrastructures.

In 2021, we saw an opportunity to acquire AppNeta, a SaaS-based network performance monitoring solution that delivers visibility into the end-user experience of any application, from any location, at any time. We completed the acquisition in early 2022 and it was exactly what our customers were looking for. With AppNeta, IT and Network Ops teams at our large, distributed enterprise customers can quickly pinpoint issues that affect network and business-critical cloud application performance, regardless of where they occur. One of our AppNeta customers, ResultsCX, was able to decrease their network performance triage time by 90%. When paired together, our DX NetOps and AppNeta solutions enable network operations teams to monitor and improve overall network performance—even internet-based access methods that are so prevalent for mobile-based workers and SaaS-based applications today. FIS, a leading financial technology (FinTech) company and a long-time DX NetOps customer, purchased AppNeta last year. Now, when one of their users encounters latency or connectivity issues, they’re able to look at the entire network path to quickly pinpoint which domain is responsible and resolve the problem.

By adding AppNeta to our world-class network monitoring solution, we’ve strengthened our market presence, and continue to drive innovation and leadership in networking to help our customers deliver optimal user experiences.

Broadcom’s Agile Operations Division focuses on enabling organizational agility and accelerating digital transformation. How can B2B teams overcome the challenges enterprises face in this journey.

The Agile Operations Division (AOD) portfolio comprises three product areas that focus on helping our large enterprise customers accelerate their digital transformation efforts. These three product areas are ValueOps, NetOps, and Automation.

We design our portfolio to tackle both business and infrastructure transformation. ValueOps is focused on business transformation and is all about helping enterprise organizations rethink their operating model. We’ve all been on this agile journey for the past 20 years and the problem is that the business needs to become agile. Organizations need to align business cycles to investment management, shift focus from projects to digital product management (DPM), and break down the silos within the business.

The NetOps and Automation areas of our portfolio are aimed at infrastructure transformation. As organizations have been moving to software-defined networks and are leveraging the internet as a core part of their network, the edge is becoming increasingly critical. NetOps offers a new way to observe and manage that network.

Our Automation solutions go beyond traditional workflow automation. We help customers who are trying to automate end-to-end processes, and build data pipelines to do GenAI in the private cloud.

We offer tools, best practices, and frameworks for scaling transformation across the entire enterprise, and for addressing the challenges of managing change at scale.

Also Read: Understanding Data Fabrics in Modern Data Management System

Can you highlight more on the key software solutions Broadcom is currently focusing on to enhance digital agility for customers.

Most of our large enterprise customers are currently on this journey of transforming both their business and infrastructure from industrial to digital, and many have made the transition in isolated pockets. However, doing this at scale across the entire enterprise can be an overwhelming challenge. We build our Agile Operations solutions specifically to help them overcome these challenges.

By providing the tools and expertise to create value stream teams, our ValueOps solutions help enterprises adopt the agile, customer-centric model of born-digital companies by fostering autonomy, and measuring performance based on business value. A single platform empowers leaders at every level to plan, fund, manage, track, and optimize their work efforts while effortlessly synchronizing and aligning strategy, investments, people, and work across the enterprise.

We design our NetOps solutions to deliver full visibility into how networks perform and behave, so network operations teams can avoid blind spots, ensure optimal network performance, and proactively create better end-user experiences. As the cloud and the internet become extensions of enterprise networks, our NetOps solutions provide visibility beyond the edge by bringing third-party network and user experience insights into the NOC, so that end-users get optimal network and application performance—no matter where they are.

As organizations continue to expand their reliance on workload automation to meet digital transformation imperatives, they are running automation in cloud, mainframe, and distributed environments, so the number of tools they use continues to proliferate. Managing this labor-intensive mix of on-premises and cloud-native tools increases costs, complexity, and risk. Our enterprise Automation solution unifies workload automation and orchestration to significantly reduce costs, save time, and mitigate risk.

With AI and automation becoming core components of enterprise IT, how can companies efficiently leverage these technologies to boost organizational agility and operational efficiency?

From an automation perspective, if you look at data pipelines today, many organizations are using Airflow or instances of Airflow like Google Cloud Composer, and others. One of the key challenges with these technologies is that they are fundamentally very developer-centric and they don’t really have any of the enterprise-type features that you would expect, like scheduling, SLA management, observability, etc.

Whenever DAGs, which embed DAGs, into DAGs, into DAGs fail, trying to understand what is happening can be a nightmare. Our Automation solutions cannot only orchestrate DAGs, they can also provide end-to-end observability of these DAGs. We can automate traditional data, so we can pull data from a CRM or ERP system, or from traditional relational databases. We can do ETL-type job processing, which we’ve been doing for the last 20+ years, as well as restart jobs, and provide SLA management. By strategically implementing AI and automation, companies can unlock significant potential for increased agility, efficiency, and innovation.

How do you envision the intersection of agile methodologies, DevOps, and enterprise software in the next few years, particularly in industries like finance and healthcare?

The intersection of agile methodologies, DevOps, and enterprise software has the potential to revolutionize industries like finance and healthcare in the coming years by empowering delivery of hyper-personalized experiences, enabling data-driven decision making, and accelerating innovation and time-to-market.

The convergence of these technologies will benefit the financial services industry by empowering real-time risk assessment, automated fraud detection, personalized investment recommendations, and blockchain-based financial services. Healthcare benefits include remote patient monitoring, AI-powered diagnostics, personalized treatment plans, and secure data sharing platforms.

What advice would you give to IT leaders looking to maintain agility and resilience as we continue to navigate the post-pandemic business landscape?

In today’s climate of macroeconomic and geopolitical turbulence, organizations are increasingly technology dependent and globally entwined, so the imperative for continuous adaptation, evolution, and transformation is clear. IT leaders must adapt to this new reality by prioritizing agility and resilience in their strategies.

IT leaders need to embrace cloud-first strategies by leveraging cloud platforms for scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. Cloud services allow for rapid deployment of new applications and services, adapting to changing business needs. By combining public and private cloud environments, they can optimize resources and ensure data security for flexibility and resilience in case of disruptions. They can adopt containerization, serverless computing, and microservices architectures to build scalable, resilient, and adaptable applications.

Prioritizing automation and AI will enable IT leaders to utilize AI for predictive analytics, anomaly detection, and proactive problem resolution. AI-driven insights can help to anticipate and mitigate potential disruptions, ensuring business continuity. Intelligent Automation combines AI and automation to automate complex processes, performance optimization, and security monitoring. This enhances agility and reduces manual errors.

IT leaders must foster a culture of continuous improvement by adopting agile methodologies across their entire organization for faster iteration, feedback loops, and quicker response to changing requirements. Collecting and analyzing data on IT performance, user behavior, and business outcomes can deliver insights to identify areas for improvement, optimize processes, and adapt to changing conditions.

By embracing these strategies, IT leaders can navigate the post-pandemic landscape with greater agility and resilience, so IT can become a strategic force driving business growth and innovation.

Also Read: The Cost of Delaying Smart Cloud Strategies for Cloud-Reliant Companies

Finally, as a Tech leader what key advice do you have for IT leaders looking to foster innovation and agility in their organizations?

IT leaders need to be catalysts for innovation and agility by cultivating a culture that thrives on change and delivers lasting value.

IT leaders can cultivate a growth mindset by encouraging a culture of experimentation, and by creating safe spaces for teams to try new ideas, prototype solutions, and learn from the process. Investing in ongoing training and development programs will encourage teams to explore new technologies, attend conferences, and share knowledge within the organization.

Decentralizing decision-making gives teams the autonomy to make decisions within their areas of expertise and fosters ownership, accountability, and faster response times. Breaking down silos between IT and other departments encourages collaboration on projects that leverage diverse perspectives and expertise.

IT leaders need to leverage technology for innovation by embracing cloud platforms for scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency. Cloud services allow for rapid deployment of new applications and services, and adapting to changing business needs. AI and machine learning can automate tasks, analyze data, and provide insights that drive innovation.

Finally, IT leaders can foster a culture of innovation by establishing dedicated spaces for experimentation and prototyping to provide a safe environment for teams to explore new ideas and test concepts. Hosting hackathons and idea competitions encourages creative problem-solving and generates new ideas. Creating an open and transparent communication culture ensures that ideas can be shared freely and feedback is welcomed.

Thank you, Serge, for sharing your insights with us.

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