This episode features Abhijeet Bhandare, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Entegris. Abhijeet discusses building resilient digital infrastructure for the global semiconductor supply chain, the strategic role of IoT and connected systems in manufacturing and research, and how emerging technologies like agentic AI are reshaping collaboration, innovation, and operational excellence.
This episode features Abhijeet Bhandare, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Entegris. Abhijeet shares insights from his global career leading digital transformation across complex, high-precision manufacturing environments and how Entegris is building the resilient infrastructure that powers the semiconductor supply chain. He discusses the evolution from the early internet and mobility era to today’s AI-driven enterprise, the role of connected systems and IoT in advancing research and manufacturing, and how collaboration platforms are redefining productivity across global teams. Throughout the conversation, Abhijeet emphasizes the importance of aligning digital strategy with business vision, fostering digital talent, and preparing for the next wave of innovation shaped by agentic AI and intelligent connectivity.
--------
Guest Bio:
Abhijeet joined Entegris in January 2024 as chief information and digital officer and is responsible for leading the company’s global digital strategy. He has over 20 years of experience in the IT industry, primarily in the healthcare, life sciences and energy sectors.
Abhijeet has led large global teams to drive business transformation initiatives by leveraging digital tools and technology.
Before joining Entegris, Abhijeet was vice president of information technology for the customer channels group at Thermo Fisher Scientific. In this capacity, he played a pivotal role in shaping and executing the digital and IT strategy for the group. His responsibilities extended to leading the globalization and modernization of business systems, with a keen emphasis on developing and optimizing strategic and operational excellence capabilities to foster business growth.
Prior to joining Thermo Fisher Scientific, Abhijeet served as the chief automation officer and finance IT leader at GE Power. During his 16-year tenure at General Electric, he held various leadership roles in IT, contributing to enterprise applications, global centers of excellence, and initiatives spanning across supply chain, finance, and services.
Abhijeet holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Mumbai and a master's degree in computer science from Loyola University of Chicago.
---------
Guest Quote
“ I think the world's going to look a lot different, especially in the spaces of enterprise, digital, and technology. What we are witnessing right now is just the start. This is the first time that we have had access to a set of technology that can actually digitize and automate a lot of what knowledge workers do in the industry today.”
---------
Time stamps:
--------
Links:
[00:00:00] Abhijeet Bhandare: We are in an era that's about to witness another seismic way, and that in my mind is a combination of what's happening in the market with Gen ai and now also agenda ai. How is that going to reshape the way the supply chains are connected? Reshape our collaboration platforms that is at the, of being agreed upon.
[00:00:28] Sunny Choudhry: Welcome to Hyperconnected Journeys, the podcast where we explore how enterprises are re-imagining their digital infrastructure to innovate and grow. I'm Sunny, and in season two, we're looking at the then and now how IT leaders have modernized technology over time and how they're preparing for the future.
Today I'm joined with Abhijeet Bhandare. Chief Information and Digital Officer at Integris and Raj, Solutioning, leader at Tata Communications. Abhijeet. Raj, it is great to have you both here. Welcome to this podcast.
[00:01:07] Raj Purkayastha: Thanks. Thanks, Sunny. Good to have both you and Abhijeet looking forward. Thank
[00:01:14] Abhijeet Bhandare: you, uh, Sunny and Raj.
Really, uh, really quick to be here and looking forward to the dialogue today.
[00:01:21] Sunny Choudhry: Thank you both again. So let's get started, shall we? Um, let, let's talk about, let's talk about the now. Let's start with the now here. And when it comes to the now, I think the first topic we can cover is scaling with purpose. So, AJE, let's start with with you.
Uh, Integris has been opening new facilities across the US while continuing to manage a big global footprint. How do you design your, your, when your network networking strategies, so that expansion is quick, but also resilient. And maybe you could just talk into how that affects your business, um, overall.
'cause I know you, you've been here, they've been there for a little, little bit of time now. Yeah.
[00:02:07] Abhijeet Bhandare: Great question. To kick things off, uh, San Gimme a little bit of context of what Antiqua does. We are a global manufacturer of. Components that are used in the manufacturing of semiconductor chips. We supply chemicals.
We supply filters that are at the segment of what we call as puberty and advanced solutions. Given the nature of the business, it's highly global, uh, in, uh, in, in a reach. Our customers have global footprint and we grow with them globally as well. As we do that, we continue to partner with industry leaders to deploy what we call as the SD VAN Solutions that support both our existing sites, but more importantly, it enables that rapid connectivity, especially for the newer locations that we are building our approach towards our overall infrastructure is built on resiliency.
We are implementing solutions with very highly diversified. Carrier providers at the same time, enabling centralized management, proactive monitoring, while keeping things like incident response to ensure our seamless operations across the business where we are in our current world. Having that connected enterprise is extremely important, not just for Integris, but more so for our customers so they can rely on a partner like Integris to support their global needs.
[00:03:39] Sunny Choudhry: Thank you for that response. I mean, Raj, from, from, from your lens, when enterprises are opening new sites or facilities, uh, what are some of the best practices that you've seen to get, getting them connected quickly while also tying them seamlessly into global operations?
[00:03:58] Raj Purkayastha: Hmm. So, um, you know, I'll, I'll, I'll take back a few things that.
Abhijeet just mentioned, right? Uh, see from a very high level perspective, uh, I believe Abhijeet has a blueprint. And from there, there he was, he was actually talking from that only. Right? So any large enterprise needs to have a blueprint. Uh, the blueprint may define things like, what's my t-shirt size? How many t-shirts do I have?
Do I have, you know, three types of offices, one manufacturing center, uh, sales office, headquarter, and so on and so forth. So next time Abhijeet opens, you know, a branch office, for example, uh, he has a defined t-shirt, which will tell him this is how the land should look like. This is how the van should look like.
This is how the security app should look like and so on and so forth. What it does, Sunny, is that it'll help in, in kind of one, ensuring that there is no cost overrun and time, uh, you know, overruns per se, which is very important in any project. And I'm sure Abhijeet will get a very stringent timeline, like all CIOs do, right from, from the, from either the sales or the CEO's office.
And then, uh, of course, uh, you know, he also knows how to plan out what, right, in terms of who will do the land, who will do the van, how the whole thing comes together, you know, uh, so that at the end of the day when site is going to open, he's extremely sure that maybe, you know, 10 days or 15 days ahead of time, the site is open, it's ready for all the employees to, to roll in, and, and the operation starts on time.
See in, in, in the whole thing. I will go back to the point that I mentioned, uh, while Abhijeet may have a blueprint in place, not lot of enterprises have that. Okay. Uh, many enterprises define their architecture in terms of, okay, I have a small office coming in, and that small office may be, you know, uh, 10 or 15 people and they start from the scratch.
Which means they will have a land design. Then they'll figure out which service provider to go to, what kind of firewalls to put in, which PBX to go after, which is not the best thing to do, uh, because one, uh, you know, from an overall perspective, your office, uh, you know, uh, the date of life go live for the office may be, may be delayed.
Second, very, very, uh, essential is that. Your full design may be all over the place, right? Your offices in Europe may look like one us may look like something else. And the point that Ji was saying, you know, centralized management visibility, that thing goes for a tos. So that's how typically we have seen, uh, it's, it's better to do, you know, uh, and taking things forward from there.
[00:07:16] Sunny Choudhry: That's great. Uh, Abhijeet, anything else to that? What Rod just mentioned. I mean, I'm sure, uh, it feels good to be ahead of the game, right? Uh, as in your role with Integris.
[00:07:29] Abhijeet Bhandare: Yeah. I mean, look, um, these are just stable stakes right now. Um, really at the bottom of it, it's after that day one of that big manufacturing plant or you know, day one of that, you know, massive sales office that you have established.
What happens after that? Nobody wants to deal with connectivity issues. Uh, so there is always, you know, that part is just like, Hey, get it done. But really, I mean, if you, if you don't have that structured approach to say, okay, hey, what t-shirt size, how do I think about it? This is my day one. How do I get prepared for that?
So when operations start, they won't talk about getting the products out, getting the customers in current demo. They do not want to be dealing with any of the connectivity issues, so making sure that we do their job right starts from having that structured approach of the blueprint, understanding the requirements, not just trying to rush things to the last minute.
Think those things are basic, but extremely. Yeah.
[00:08:32] Sunny Choudhry: So, so sticking with UOBG, if, if we zoom out to, to the supply chain side, disruptions are. Constant in any environment in today's world. So how, how have collaboration platforms changed the way your teams respond, uh, in real time across both the geo and in, in time zones?
Yeah,
[00:09:00] Abhijeet Bhandare: great question. Um, if you reflect back on the base of change that we are all getting exposed to Sunny and Raj. It's just immense. Yes, we are all in the post pandemic era up, but how many of us do we, you know, do we really, how many times do we really remember of what happened? And the disruptions that it caused, that disruption came through?
And now we're facing another set of disruptions around tariffs, around regulatory surround. Like we need three challenges. So the way we think about it is less so the lenses of disruptions. For us, it's business as usual. The question is, how resilient can you make your supply chain network? How flexible can you make your supply chain network?
So when events like these do occur, they serve as an opportunity and less of a disruption. So for ris, we have always had that supply chain regionalization strategy. At our very goals, we have partnered with the US government authorities and opened up. A massive manufacturing plant supporting our customers here in the US as they manufacture their advanced chip knowns in Asia.
We have partnered up with the local authorities to build another massive manufacturing plant, and this is in addition to some of the other urban manufacturing sites that we have. So as we think through all those lenses of p and a, what could the disruption look like for us? These disruptions. So more of an opportunity now from a digital standpoint, you start looking at the network that you have locally, and we're just talking about, hey, making sure that, you know, the connectivity is there, but then you start thinking about how can we orchestrate all these supply chain sites on the different sales sides?
How can we do that commonly on a, on a, on a digital platform? For us, we have been bliss because we have orchestrated the entire submission on one VR thing. So it becomes fairly easy as compared to what other companies might have to go through when we bring up a new site or when we have to collaborate across two sites.
We are able to do demand planning for one manufacturing plant. As they manufacture their sms, they ship it to another manufacturing plan just closer to our customers. How can we put the equipment together? So from a customer standpoint, it becomes seamless. So those are the things that we have put together.
Today, what I call is the resilient supply chain that we do and sell in the interest of our, does that make sense? Yeah,
[00:11:38] Raj Purkayastha: no, yeah, absolutely. And, and by the way, s I'd like to say something, uh, and picking it up from what Aji just mentioned during COVID, you know, the CIO became the most important member in the, in the board, right?
Because at that point of time, think, you know, just think back, uh, the COVID times, if the CIO was not somebody who is agile, who can take fast decisions, the entire company would go down. Right? That was also the time. By the way, the CIOs got to most of the pers right? I'm sure ab you can remember back those times.
You know, I, a lot of my CI Friends said. Man, I don't wanna say this, but this is a boom because a lot of projects that I wanted to do is getting through right now. So, yeah, so, you know, as you said, uh, you know, times of pressure, times of disruption is actually the best time for a CI to do a lot of things that, you know, in normal times, maybe it'll not go through.
[00:12:42] Sunny Choudhry: Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. Um. You know that that was, uh, the silver lining of it all right. Uh, from a technology standpoint, things did advance a little more quickly because we needed it. Uh, so, so just one more. So back to you, Abbi. Abhijeet, I wanted to ask you, so where does iot infrastructure play a role in all of this in regards to safeguarding materials, uh, during transport and storage?
Uh, and then r. Raj, I wanted to get your feedback on the same topic and in regards to what trends you're seeing with iot and edge adoption in industries that are similar or really in that, that require the speed, the safety, and sustain sustainability, um, and bringing all that together. So I'll let both of you go, uh, on this topic.
[00:13:35] Abhijeet Bhandare: Cool. Yeah, great question. Sammi, it kind of ties well to the dialogue so far, right? We spoke about, you know, globalized infrastructure as we open up new sites, how does that serve existing sites? We spoke about how the supply chain disruptions at times for why do opportunities, the common ERT platform that we have all the manufacturing sites on the next level is what you're listening to, Sunny in terms of iot, see in our industry quality.
Precision is, these are the non-negotiable things. It's basically table stake, right? How predictable can I be when it comes to quality of my products? So as you, as you can understand, given the, the niche nature of our industry, the data that comes from the manufacturing plant is, is of extreme importance.
We have connected equipments within our manufacturing plants. What we call as the IOT network. We have connected equipments within our r and d centers. We call them the tech centers here. All of these equipments are connected onto the iot net. Making sure that those equipments are connected in a secure fashion becomes extremely important, especially in the world that we live in today.
But as we do that, the data that comes from our r and d centers, the data that comes from our manufacturing centers. We are building what we call as data models over it. We are in a position now to start predicting the quality of the manufacturing process per se. So as we manufacture our product, we are now building data models that will allow us to predict the quality of the product and then next step of manufacturing.
When it comes to r and d, we are thinking about how we can help our RP engineers accelerate the speed of science. Speed of experimentation that they're engaged in with their customers. So IOD becomes extremely core, especially in our segment Data becomes extremely important in how we a, connect the data in a secular fashion and then wave models over it to help both the manufacturing and the research processes is of poor importance to our company.
[00:15:53] Raj Purkayastha: So Sunny Abhijeet stole all my answer, but I'm gonna just add something on top of what he just said. See, IOT is all about use cases. If you do not have use cases, no, iot is not solving anything. I'll just add a few use cases on top of what Abhijeet mentioned. The first one is, uh, you know, employee safety. We are seeing that a lot if you're working in in a steel mill.
You know, there are furnaces out there, which goes up to like thousands of degrees, right? So thousands of Fahrenheit and going near it may not be good for hell. So how do you ensure that a worker who's not supposed to be anywhere near that furnace is not going there? That's one. If you're walking at heights, then how do you ensure that, you know, uh, you're safe?
And if something happens, there's a medical response, which happens very quickly. There are lot of use cases like this, which today is being, is being deployed for in lot of these, uh, you know, uh, manufacturing floors to ensure that the, the, the worker safety is at top of the chart for any place, per se.
Earlier, you know, you, if you walk into any factory, you'd see, uh, 300 days, no incidents kind of thing. Right now, today, I'm sure Aji can, can talk about a, you know, it's not 300 days, no incidents. It's about, you know, no incidents in lifetime kind of thing. That, that is. It's, it's basically, you know, uh, zero incidents that we are talking about.
How can we reach there? Because one incident may mean a lot of things for you. Not only downtime, but also. Brand image tarnish, right? Which nobody wants. The second is from a quality perspective. We are seeing lot of use cases coming from video perspective because, you know, a man in the middle is something which is slow and may not be always correct.
So if you have, uh, anything where QC is being done by a man in the middle. It is being replaced with video because video is better, faster, cheaper, and of course it'll never do a mistake, right? So use cases like these are the ones that IOT is really, really bringing forth. And uh, you know, you'll see more and more things coming in.
I'm sure Aji, uh, is already dabbling with the AGVs and, uh, robotics in his, in his factory floor because, you know, they are the future. And when I'm saying future, it's not two, three years down the line. I'm actually saying 12 months down the line. It's, that's where the world is moving from an IOT perspective.
[00:18:48] Sunny Choudhry: Thank you, Raj. And, uh, thank you Bei for both of your answers here. You know, we've talked a lot, a lot about, about the now and we've talked about today's realities, you know, expansion, supply chains, collaboration, iot. Just to summarize. But the journey didn't get here overnight. Let's take a couple of minutes.
Mm-hmm. Let's rewind a bit and talk about how things have changed over time and really focus on the then versus now, and about the transformation that took place. So Abhijeet, when you look back over your career. Was there a defining moment that shaped how you think about global infrastructure and connectivity today?
Yeah.
[00:19:47] Abhijeet Bhandare: Okay. I wouldn't say it's a great question again, uh, Sunny, I wouldn't say one defining moment if I really were to rewind and look back, right? Um, I talk about myself right as I, as I graduated, I was studying. Computer science, computer engineering. Those were the times I aged myself here. But you know, internet was there, but still they knew everybody were busy recovering from the.com era of sorts.
And then over a period of time came, um, the cellular revolution, the mobile phones, the iPhones. So you. If you go back then, you know, there are only a few, maybe three or four trends in technology that have truly shaped the world that we live in and the world that's, you know, that's coming onto us. I spoke about the internet and, uh, mobility era, right?
Then you, you think about the rush to the cloud, right? Everybody meant to news. Their data, their workloads, AWS onto GCP, Azures, i, BM, what have you. That revolution impacted all the industries. It wasn't just pharma or life sciences that after that came things like big data again. In fact, the entire industry wasn't just, you know, one specific industry that, that there.
The value of big data, ai, machine learning. A lot of big companies started to understand the value of it. There are other technologies that came along the way like blockchain here, great platforms, but you know, if you look at the use cases like Raj was referring from, it hasn't picked up across all investments.
We are in an era, Sunny and Raj, and I feel that's a balcony witness, another seismic weight. That in my mind is a combination of what's happening in the market with Gen AI and now also agent ai and how is that going to reshape the way the supply chains are connected, reshape our collaboration platforms.
I mean, I can't think of one product, so, and Raj, that would, um, that does not come out these days without having their own agent AI solution. A has announced Juul, Informatica has announced, um, I was with the log day team. They have announced a bunch of ProTech solutions. They have a flat, right now, every single SaaS player is coming up with their own egen AI solutions.
And this is not to say about the ones that are already existing with Gemini, with bedrock, with AWS, with with copilot, with, you know, with Azure. So you already have the hyperscalers being a role and now you've got these SaaS product companies coming up with their own solutions, what we are looking in into the future.
Sunny, you asked me what was the one thing that shaped, uh, my thinking about the global infrastructure and connectivity is the gen AI and the capabilities that it can. Provide to create what I call as an agent society of how the workflows within what you do on a day-to-day basis with what I do on a day-to-day basis.
How will that workflow change as we work across departments, across geographies that is at, of being read.
[00:23:27] Raj Purkayastha: And by the way, Sunny, he, me, he forgot to mention one thing, one of his defining moments was also in, I met him the first time. That's what
[00:23:37] Sunny Choudhry: define me. And, and, and while you guys try to remember on what that happened, uh, while we try to figure that out, Raj, I want to give you the floor on this.
I know you have a lot of, uh, a lot of thoughts based on, you know, working with multiple enterprises. You have a similar moment where, you know, things change for you. So why don't you comment on the same topic if you can.
[00:23:57] Raj Purkayastha: Sure, sure. So, um, you know, Abhijeet kind of, uh, you know, walked us through the journey, right?
In terms of what has happened, the shifts that has happened over the period of time, and uh, I'd say one of the biggest shift in my career was COVID. Okay. I've gone through the.com. You know, I was, I was in a time when, you know, you had to wait for a phone line to come in at your home. Right? But then, uh, uh, you know, that's passed.
But then if you look at the way the technology, uh, has shifted, it is also dependent on the time that it takes to, to actually get to everybody. Now I was reading somewhere that, uh. The time it took for internet to reach a million people, uh, to the time it took the iPhone to reach million people to the time it took, uh, you know, chat GPD to reach million people.
By the way, chat, GPD took around a day to reach million people. Right? That's like amazing. Okay. Now think about it. Uh, from the lens, uh, I look at the world, uh, you know, it's both enterprise, what's happening to the enterprise and what's happening to me. Because at the end of the day, uh, if I'm serving the enterprise, the enterprise is serving me back, right?
And in that, the tech shift that I've seen the most happening in enterprises actually during the COVID Day COVID period, because. Uh, as I said sometime back, that a lot of the enterprises had, you know, good to do projects, which was not really mapping into their, uh, journey because, you know, for them, uh, brick and mortar was mostly more important than the digital way of going things.
But then as companies went to the digital way. It quickly became very evident that one digital is pervasive, which means that you can reach to more clients than, than anybody anything else. And then, uh, what also happened in that is internet came back in a very, very massive way, right? Internet was still there.
But then look at the way internet has come back. And if you now think about, uh, the impact of all these digital tools, it is more. Because people are using it more, right? Think pre COVID, how many people were really, really using a mobile or, you know, uh, going dig, going online, and so on and so forth. Uh, even if it was 70%, the amount of time they used to spend in that may not be as high.
But during COVID what happened is we all became so digital that, you know, our maximum time is spent. In front of something, right? Uh, a phone, uh uh, an iPad or your laptop and so on and so forth. Now, the impact of that is much more, and I would say that chat g became so pervasive in a very short period of time because the way we think, you know, as human beings has really changed in that COVID period.
For me, uh, you know, I'd, I'd really, uh, see a brighter side of, of that period in the digital world, per se.
[00:27:27] Sunny Choudhry: Yes, all that makes a lot of sense, Raj. And I mean, definitely a pivotal point for all of us and, uh, in how we look at things. So, you know, I wanna pivot now on how transformation correlates to team productivity.
Um, so Abhijeet, you know, Integris has, I think, uh, a little bit more than 8,000 employees globally. How, how has the approach shifted from siloed point tools to more integrated immersive platforms that connect teams from a global perspective?
[00:28:10] Abhijeet Bhandare: Yeah, think it's a great question now. So the way I think about this is in um, two coupons, right?
The first one that I would say is the people that sell, right? 8,500 plus peoples. So there is a big talent from Poland upper, and in my experience, if you try to go after the systems first, you will be successful as well as you do it well, but you get a little bit more value of the buck that you invest into digital.
If you start. Stick approach. Um, so we, we, we, we incorporated what we call is, um, the strategic workforce planning, which basically was looking at the digital talent that we have, the digital muscle that we have, and how do we upgrade that. So we are not limited by what we know, but we get in newer talent into the organization that will help us.
Upgrade our own understanding of what digital is capable of, or how can we approach those siloed systems, that legacy infrastructure. And then in addition to that, what we also did, we realized is when we're on a journey of transformation, it is extremely important to rely more so on our internal talent because they're the ones who understand how we manufacture.
What went into discovering what or inventing our products that are mainstream today. So making sure that the existing talent is a part of that effort is extremely critical. And then we start dialing it back and say, okay, as we have upgraded our digital dial, I think they're doing the progress of doing that.
How do we think about our overall digital landscape? If you start upgrading every single solution or every single application that's out there trying to connect everything, you know, it's okay. You can take that broad swing, but in my experience, targeted things that you want to do as part of the transformation journey will be a lot more better efficient.
Our focus as primarily be in r and d and supply chain and operations, and how do we connect the applications. More effectively in r and d. How can I connect with tech centers, you know, through a common digital platform that my research scientists can use? How can I have a common business planning platform that where planning deems globally can use?
I think that's how we look at connecting those siloed applications, retiring those legacy systems that we have. But step one is upgrading the digitality within the organization.
[00:30:57] Sunny Choudhry: Yeah, as well said. And Raj, anything to add here?
[00:31:03] Raj Purkayastha: Uh, see, uh, you know, I, I totally agree to what Oji just mentioned right now. Um, when you think about collaboration, right, uh, many a times collaboration is, is thought through more for the white collars and not for the entire universe, meaning that the blue collars are left out.
Now collaboration, uh, is not happening if you do not have everybody thought through. Just like the way he mentioned, you know, how can everybody in r and d speak? How can everybody in supply chain? How can everybody in, uh, when I say speak, I mean collaborate, right? So think about it that, uh, you know, if you, if you walk into a car OEM at this point of time, how many of of the.
Floor workers do you think have a collaboration tool? Uh, if you look at, uh, you know, a person who drops the parcel at your doorstep, how many of of them do you think has a collaboration tool? Uh, I can bet that mostly they, you know, if they want to talk to somebody, they'll take out their, their personal phone and call somebody else, right?
That's how collaboration works today. Not the best. And not the most optimal. So when you think about collaboration, again, you'll have to think the universe, right? Uh, and that universe will have different levels of requirement. Uh, a white collar worker, for example, or an exec, for example, has a very different requirement from a, from a collab perspective to a blue collar worker or a factory floor person, right?
The requirement is, is different. And therefore, when you think about Microsoft teams. You don't have to think about an E three or an E five license, right? Not even an E one. How do you think something totally different, which addresses their needs and then allows them to collaborate? And it goes back, uh, Sunny to the point that I mentioned.
What's your blueprint? Yeah. Uh, you know, if you've defined your blueprint, it, the personas will be a part of it. And, and you will define, for example, how exactly you're gonna do it. You know, think about a shoe retailer. Uh, you know, in a shoe retailer, uh, collaboration is as important as, you know, the, the place where the shoes are being manufactured.
So, how do you ensure the sellers out there, even if there are three of them, they collaborate, right? Uh, how do they know what is the next big deal, which is coming in? What's going to happen on, on the Black Friday if they are not told they're not gonna do anything? So, you know, collaboration becomes extremely important.
But then, you know, you have to also think about what exactly to do to ensure that collaboration is done at optimal cost.
[00:33:54] Sunny Choudhry: Yeah, that's great perspective, uh, Raj, that's great perspective and from, from both of you on, on transformation and, and and, and how it's changed, uh, for this entire segment. Now, let's look forward because.
The next wave of technologies like AI and iot are at the edge is already reshaping what's possible. So let's talk about our last segment here, which is innovation and future, future thinking. So Obje, I have a two prong question for you. So one, as Integris continues to invest in advanced materials and contamination control.
How are you preparing your infrastructure to support AI and iot at the edge? And if you were to take a blank canvas and design Integriss next gen generation, digital backbone, would you prioritize speed or would it be sustainability or flexibility?
[00:35:05] Abhijeet Bhandare: Yeah. You're coming up with great questions, Sunny. I'll give you that.
Um, I'll start with the first one. Um, for us, when you are in the seat of an enterprise CIO, the biggest thing that we have got to think about is how do we connect what we do from a digital and IT standpoint, follow the business vision to our. To our business strategy, right? There are two elements that we want to be really good at at this.
First is we want to be in a position to build the best and the latest and the most advanced technology products for our customers. We are, we are in the technology industry, so we want to do that for our customers. And the second thing is, as we, as we innovate those products, how can we be sure that we are the most reliable supplier for our customers?
If I put those three words at the back of my head, when it comes to developing the digital strategy, you're wanna start thinking in terms of how can I enable my r and d scientists, my research, my researchers that are spread across different tech centers. How can we build better platforms for distributions per there on the operation side?
How can I build that connected supply chain? Network and infrastructure that I spoke to you guys about, how can I build those distributions effectively for the organization. On the research side, we partnered with, we will come up with, if we call the Integris development, uh, integr, uh, innovation development platform, which are, which is used by our researchers to advance the science that they're working on.
In the supply chain side, we are implementing data models that will help to improve product quality. We're implementing planning solutions that we can leverage to react quickly to our customer needs. It combine those two things together, it becomes the large transformation initiative, and that's where it comes to your second question that, hey, if I were to take a step back and look at what you have done and.
What is more important? Flexibility, insisting ness? Speed. And it depends. Very, it depends because in certain areas, when I look at speed is up a sense. Um, when we speak about things that Raj was talking about, right? Agent, the AI use cases, how can I navigate within the AI to drive operational efficiencies for the business?
How can I get better at planning? A lot sooner than what it's taking. So those are some of what I call as digital activators. That's where speed becomes a extreme sense. We will do that fast. We to adopt that fast, we to enable those business benefits for our organization and for our customers. When it comes to flexibility, well, the things that I'll prioritize more in is in terms of how can I make an environment that my r and d researchers.
Can work with my customers commonly together in what we call as data clean, where they can cope, upgrade, provide a flexible infrastructure that they can have that partnerships be partnerships of research and science with the incubative solutions that this world has been benefit so. Flexibility really depends on what you want to go after.
At times you want to go faster on a fewer technologies, fewer target and transformation initiatives, because that generates faster ROI and other areas you want to focus more on flexibility, the ease of views. So it really depends upon the use cases. I will not prioritize one other data, if that makes sense.
[00:39:05] Sunny Choudhry: Yeah, no, it does, it does. It makes a lot of sense. And. And, and Raj, quickly here, if you could provide your perspective on, you know, what you see in this, in this space and how you're seeing that other global enterprises are thinking about change and connectivity over the coming years. Uh, and maybe, you know, what they would do if they had a blank canvas.
[00:39:33] Raj Purkayastha: Yeah. So first is, I totally agree to Ji right that, uh. Many times you have to do everything and, uh, the business user will come back and say, I want flexible fast. Uh, which is also, uh, answering to sustainability. And these are like boardroom discussions also at this point of time. Right now, technology shift, uh, sometimes is helpful, sometimes is not.
Uh, no. I'll give you an example. Uh, so. Quantum is, is knocking at our door right now. When you think about quantum, quantum has very good things, which is gonna come in. Uh, and there, there are not so good things from an enterprise perspective, which is also coming in because with Quantum, what you can do is, uh, hack easier, right?
Uh, any key today is not very relevant because you know, with Quantum you can. You can just bake the key, uh, brute force works better. Uh, on the other hand, you know, quantum can, can actually bring in, uh, processing speed, which is unheard of at this point of time when you, when specifically think about all the new, uh, processing chips, which are coming in multiple qubits that we're hearing about.
So, uh. Hearing to what business is saying is, is, is the first, you know, big thing that we need to do. And then the canvas, the way we are going to draw the picture, the storyline out there will depend on what is available today, what's coming in the future. Do I take a chance with the future now or do I actually go with what is there today to meet what the business is asking?
Because at the end of the day, uh. Cloud came in. First time AWS was launched, I think it was in 2007, but they really took off in 20 12, 20 13. Right. Uh, the reason was not because, uh, initially cloud was not good, but initially not a lot of people thought it's the future. Right. It's, it is one of the other tools which is there.
And it took time to mature also. Right. So I would say that if, you know, uh, from a blank canvas perspective. Looking at what is available today and having a mixture of now and, and tomorrow is a good thing for a CIO because if you only have the now, you'll quickly become technologically obsolete. Uh, if you only think about the future, maybe you'll not have the use cases or the maturity.
To address a large company's need like that of je right? So it's a, it's a fine balance that somebody like JE needs to play. And I'm sure, you know, there'll be a lot of people like me who will actually go and tell him, Hey, don't do this. It's not good, not good for you. Right? So that is how, uh, I think things play out.
[00:42:36] Sunny Choudhry: Well said, Raj. Well said. And, um. I'm gonna have one, one more question for you, Ajit. And this, this one should be a quick hit, but, uh, it's very important. Uh, if, if you're looking three to five years ahead, uh, how do you see the innovation within your collaboration platforms within your global workforce and.
Evolving. How do you, how do you see things evolving? How do, how do you see that kind of continuing to transform and, and stay at pace here?
[00:43:12] Abhijeet Bhandare: Yeah, great question. Um, Sunny, uh, if you really think about it, right, uh, being, uh, being very closely studying, almost studying, right? Because growing up did not learn about AI at school.
So I've been doing my own parent work and studying this. Trend around AI at times, you know, some of my fear feel it's all hype and gonna go away. Others feel, hey, it's real. I'll give you my perspective, Sandy. I think the world's gonna look a lot different spec, especially in the spaces of enterprise, digital and technological.
Uh, what we are witnessing right now is just the start. I spoke a little bit about this DIC society, and this is the first time San. Really the first time that we have had access to a set of technology that can actually digitize and automate a lot of what knowledge workers will do in the industry today.
The role of a finance analyst is going to change. Um, is there a situation where we may not need any finance analyst? I don't think so. But if the way they work, work that's gonna rapidly evolve. How we manage that evolution, how do we digitize those workflows between the knowledge workers is gonna be the stepping stone on what I call as the next phase of this digital workplace that we are all going to be a part of.
So planning ahead of time, experimenting ahead of time is gonna be crucial for individuals who are in the chair that I am in. Because the organization looks up to you, the board of directors expects you to, to help formulate that digital strategy for your team and for your organization. So I believe the world's gonna be a much better place.
I believe the world's gonna be a very different place, but embracing the, the revolution of a AI at the very start is gonna be extremely careful,
[00:45:14] Sunny Choudhry: exciting things ahead. Uh, rod, before I, uh. Wrap this one up. Anything else to add to close this out before I, before I wrap up the, uh, the segment here?
[00:45:26] Raj Purkayastha: No, always good to have sessions like this.
Uh, good to hear, uh, you know, open conversations, uh, good to hear things, which, which is close to heart also. Uh, because at the end of the day, this, this is a series, which I'm sure all the listeners. Actually come back and listen to, to get some nuggets, which they can also implement in their whole world. So, uh, you know, brilliant Aji, it was a pleasure.
Sunny as always.
[00:45:58] Sunny Choudhry: Yep, yep. So, so that brings us to the end of this episode of Hyperconnected Journeys. A big thank you to you Abhijeet, for sharing how Integris is scaling its infrastructure for growth and innovation. And to you, Raj. For giving us the industry view. This has been a valuable conversation. I'm sure everyone will enjoy it.
I hope it, it gives our audience a glimpse into how enterprises are building resilient networks, leveraging IOT and empowering collaboration to meet the challeng of challenges of today and tomorrow. Don't forget to subscribe and look forward to having you join us again. Thank you.