Ahead in the Cloud: Delivering Scale and Service in the Credit Union Cloud with Anurag Sharma

Chad Watt: Welcome to Ahead in the Cloud where business leaders share what they've learned on their cloud journey. I'm Chad Watt, Infosys Knowledge Institute researcher and writer. Today I'm speaking with Anurag Sharma, Chief Technology Officer of VyStar Credit Union. VyStar is the second largest credit union in Florida. It's the 13th largest credit union in the nation. Welcome to Ahead in the Cloud Anurag.

Anurag Sharma: Thanks, Chad. Happy to be here and discuss one of my favorite topics with you.

Chad Watt: First, tell us a little bit about the history of VyStar and the credit union's current mission to do good and bank better.

Anurag Sharma: VyStar was founded in 1952 by 12 people with $60 on board Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida, and since then it's almost 71 years and we have grown and we now serve more than 900,000 members with over 13.5 billion in assets as well as more than 50,000 small business members. We started as a place to help military and civil services members to meet their financial needs. We continue to do that, but we have grown quite a bit since we serve people who live and work in Oregon, central Florida, north Florida and South Georgia, and as well as past and present military members around the world.

Chad Watt: Anurag, As a credit union, VyStar has a mission to do good and bank better. How do you put that to work? What concretely are you guys doing in that way?

Anurag Sharma: So our purpose to do good informs all that we do as a credit union. Whether that means by providing financial services to our members or volunteering in the communities we call home, our teams understand that as we grow, so does our ability to do good. That includes better serving our existing members, bringing credit union services to more people in our communities, and also supporting more nonprofit organizations. So personally, I feel extremely, extremely proud to work for an organization that encourages and actively provides avenues to give back to our community. A couple of weeks back, we launched our second year of Good Is Everywhere campaign where thousands of VyStar employees are coming together to volunteer with nonprofit organizations doing good and making a difference in the communities we serve. We'll have around 5,000 of volunteer hours that will give back this Good is Everywhere campaign. So it's very important for what we do in our community and very excited about it.

Chad Watt: What are some of the kind of common things that hold true regardless of industry when it comes to managing technology?

Anurag Sharma: So yeah, I have managed technology across various industries like healthcare, consulting, financial services obviously. So while each industry has its unique characteristics or challenges or nuances, I also feel there's a lot of common themes when it comes to managing technology across industries, right? Regardless of the industry, digital technology plays a critical role in approaching fundamental business challenges and succeeding in delivering on business outcomes. So what is the recipe for success? I look at it and I think number one, adaptability and innovation. So in technology, adaptability and innovation are critical to keep up with our ever evolving landscape.

Number two, efficiency, right? So digital transformation and a smooth product delivery are important to all industries. We talk about artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud, data analytics, workflow optimization. These are all industry agnostic. So in last decade or so, we have seen organization embark on digital first data, first cloud, first journey, and I see that we will pivot to AI first very soon across all business sectors.

Chad Watt: Very interesting, very interesting. We've talked about some of the commonalities of technology across industry. What is unique about IT in financial services?

Anurag Sharma: So when people ask me like, "Hey, what are you in the business of?" And I say, "We are in the business of trust. So in financial services our customers have..." And I'll tell you in credit union, we call members, we never say customers, but I will use customers and members interchangeably here. That's what I mean. So customers have trusted banks and credit unions far more than any other industry and banks and credit unions have become or have been a key part of these communities that we serve in. So with the trust that people put with their finances on us, there's a huge amount of responsibility in managing their financial data, managing risk, ensuring regulatory compliance, et cetera. So the primary focus of a technology in financial services is on delivering a seamless experience while doing it safely. That's what is unique about IT and financial services.

Chad Watt: I like what you said there and kind of want to double click on that because trust is at the heart of what banks and credit unions have done for years. They're about security, they're about stability and kind of being that fortress where I will give you my currency, whether it's actual hard coins or paper money or just a digital ledger, and I can trust that you're going to keep that safe. So being built on trust and security that leads you to move slow and change slowly. Has that been your experience in financial services and how do you mix that trust and slow change with the demand that technology change fast and experiment and innovate?

Anurag Sharma: So here is how I think about that. Number one, I want to focus on deepening the relationship with members. How do we do it? So we leverage the power of data and AI to deliver a very hyper personalized customer experience. I guess number two, we leverage cloud and DevOps. So this helps with new business capabilities to deliver business outcomes, I guess in a cost-effective manner in a very agile and fast pace. And number three I would say is instill a culture of curiosity and continuous learning in the organization. It is very crucial to stay resilient and relevant in today's world. And I really like this code by John Maxwell that I refer to. It says fail early, fail often, but always fail forward. So we need our people to be bold and not be afraid to fail. But what I really mean by this is be iterative, learn from mistakes, but always have a plan.

Chad Watt: You said DevOps, for the folks who don't know, explain DevOps in one breath for us.

Anurag Sharma: So DevOps is a practice and a mindset where development organization development teams and operations teams come together and they deliver things in a very agile fast pace.

Chad Watt: You said agile there, tell me what you mean by agile.

Anurag Sharma: So agile is all about doing things in a very nimble way. Traditionally it used to be waterfall where you do one thing, but everything happens in sequence. So you have to wait on certain things to happen before other things can happen. But today we talk about agile where all cross-functional teams sit together, it's very small, they work very quickly and they deliver on incremental capabilities very quickly.

Chad Watt: We're going to spend some more time talking about agile and DevOps and getting past the waterfall and moving faster. But before we move on from financial services, I want to talk about how you as a well-established credit union, engage with financial technology companies or FinTech. FinTech businesses are the digital disruptors in the world you operate in. How does VyStar and how does Anurag engage with FinTech?

Anurag Sharma: So traditional financial services institutions, especially credit unions, are counted on by our members to be stable and secure as we talked about. So we can leverage the agility and innovation from FinTech organizations while FinTechs can learn from a more traditional FIs about trust and loyalty with member-centric focus. So we do partner with FinTechs to develop new products and services, but the heart of our business is to be member centric and meeting members where they are. So I believe by fostering collaboration with FinTech startups and traditional financial institutions, both sides can benefit from each other's strengths and together we can drive innovation, enhance customer experiences and shape the future of financial services.

Chad Watt: Terrific. FinTech what is IT service management and what is different about IT service management in the cloud? What's the value of putting it there?

Anurag Sharma: IT service management, I mean simply put together is a set of practices and strategies used to design, manage, and deliver IT services to meet the needs of any organization.

Chad Watt: Give me an example of that. What's some IT service that I might need?

Anurag Sharma: If you want to order a laptop, if you have an issue with a system that you are logged into, you just go to IT and they support and provide the support services to you. So traditionally, ITSM was largely focused on managing on-prem infrastructure and software. So with the cloud, ITSM service encompass the management of cloud-based services Now, so ITSM and cloud offers unique advantages of cloud through automation, scalability, cell service capability, security, compliance, monitoring, analytics, data reporting. I mean I can go on and on. So the advent of cloud computing introduced a fundamental shift in IT service delivery. It has allowed teams to become very nimble. You can be remote yet scalable and become very service oriented. So that helps.

Chad Watt: You mentioned automation, scalability. I want to ask you about another aspect of cloud that I've been studying. Our recent research shows that interoperability kind of cloud to cloud, cloud to on-prem legacy system to new capability driven system interoperability is very much desired and can enhance what an IT department delivers. What is your thinking around interoperability and how do you achieve interoperability in the cloud?

Anurag Sharma: I mean, I believe, again, this is Anurag's point of view, right? So I believe future is going to be hybrid with an inclusion of on-prem component and a multi-cloud strategy. There will also be several SaaS platforms in the mix here. So these landing zones I call them, will need to work together now and more importantly in the future as the workload shifts between different clouds and different platforms. So achieving interoperability in cloud would be cloud to cloud, be cloud to on-prem systems is essential for seamless data flow, resource utilization, maximizing the benefit of this hybrid and multi-cloud environments, so to speak. So a few key areas to consider for cloud interoperability are by having a modern architecture like microservices and API modern architecture. This includes standardized APIs and communication protocols that are recognized across cloud providers having data flow and integration tools, right?

These enable data movement between different systems, seamless, which is key data is like lifeline and blood of any organization today. Having access management capability to allow users to authenticate and access resources across multiple systems with a single set of credentials, I guess, and a couple more, right? So containerization and orchestration technology like Dockers and then Kubernetes. These tools simplify the deployment and management of applications across different environments. And finally, if you don't have good monitoring practices, it's that be successful. So establishing monitoring and governance practices to track these data flows, these service interactions and performance metrics are going to be very important critical with cloud interoperability.

Chad Watt: Anurag tell me what the status is of cloud migration at VyStar.

Anurag Sharma: Currently, we are in a hybrid approach where we have applications and systems running in our traditional data center. Applications and APIs that are deployed in Microsoft Azure Cloud. And at the same time we have many SaaS solutions as well, right? I'd say we are actively on our cloud transformation journey and we are looking to deploy more and more workloads in the cloud in near future.

Chad Watt: We've talked about from a developer and software developer context, you're an advocate for agile DevOps and scrums. Do you ever bring your old school analog bankers into those sessions and get them into a scrum?

Anurag Sharma: Yeah, honestly, I'm pretty progressive Chad when it comes to technology capabilities and delivery. So I personally do believe in these modern methodologies and practices as they emphasize on collaboration, iterative development and continuous improvement. Well, today everything is a code or as a service, so like infrastructure as code, platform as code policy, as code security as code, et cetera. So along with these more modern cloud native architecture, which includes microservices, containers, serverless architecture, this provides a way to exponentially accelerate the speed of delivery through the DevOps pipeline. So I'm a big advocate of these modern methodologies and practices.

Chad Watt: So moving on, talking about cloud, cloud is working well, cloud is delivering new capabilities, but some of our recent research shows that companies are a little less confident in managing their spend in the cloud. How do you keep watch on what you spend in the cloud?

Anurag Sharma: Yeah, that's a very good question because my team is very much engaged in that, right? So we actively monitor and manage cloud spend as it is crucial to ensure that teams are optimizing costs and staying within budget else. Cloud can become very expensive very quickly. So a few steps that my team has taken to effectively keep a watch on our cloud spending, or we have regular biweekly reviews of Azure cost per subscription for example. We have implemented monthly budgets for each of the subscription, and we have kind of put a threshold on these budgets to identify any overages. We do a monthly review of our cloud resources to identify any right-sizing opportunities and maintain adequate resource utilizations. We must accurately tag resources to help identify resources by environment. And then we also leverage cloud advisory recommendation to identify any other opportunities for cost optimization, right? Automatic stored staff schedules for non-production resources. All of these things we do very actively to manage our cloud spend.

Chad Watt: You can make cloud available at any time and any place, but is that really delivering business value all the time? So it sounds like you're asking the right critical questions here. Let's move on to the security side of things. You mentioned that you guys are in a hybrid multi-cloud world. That's where global companies are heading some things on premises, some things in one cloud, some things in another. You have multiple clouds, you have clouds dependent on other clouds. You have on-premises systems that are all connected to each other. How do you assess guard and keep visibility on all these potential points of vulnerability or access?

Anurag Sharma: Assessing and guarding against any potential threats in a hybrid multi-cloud environment requires a very comprehensive and a strategic approach towards information and cybersecurity. Not only there are multiple clouds and data centers, there are integrations with outside hosted apps and third parties. In additionally, there is a rapid growth of endpoints across organizations. So nowadays it is very difficult to put a perimeter around an enterprise, and then that complicates the security aspect of it. The cloud is unique with its shared responsibility model of security of the cloud is by the cloud provider, and security in the cloud is with the company that has to manage. So hence this cloud security design is important first step, fortunately for me, I'd say I have a great partner in my CISO who works closely with me and my team to ensure we are safe and secure. We as an organization put a lot of focus on safety and soundness.

Some things that our security team works on, and in partnership with my organization is perform a comprehensive security risk assessment, implementing network segmentation and network security, ensuring data protection and encryption monitoring on a regular basis, performing penetration testing. We call it pen test on a regular basis, and then also regularly scanning for any vulnerabilities. It isn't necessary to identify the security risks and remediate them in a timely manner. That's how we do it, and I think that's a good approach.

Chad Watt: You sit at the fulcrum of technology and system processes and business strategy as the CTO. How do you engage people who are perhaps non-technical business leaders in thinking about technology and properly funding technology? As a credit union, you're a nonprofit organization. You want to do what's right for your members, and I can see it being a tough sell to spend lavishly on technology when you're about member service. So how do you bring people around to investing properly in technology?

Anurag Sharma: I think what I've found very helpful is to engage with business leaders ahead and often, and not only during annual prioritization and planning process and meetings, and then always to keep the focus on what technology can do to improve the member experience, lifetime value, and drive business OKRs. So this even gets non-technical business leaders to engage with the interest and see technology as a partner instead of just an implementer or an order taker. I would say another important thing is to deliver value quickly and build credibility. So instead of long-running projects, delivering new capabilities that functions every few months in an incremental manner builds the confidence in technology. And thirdly, it helps to make business goals a key part of technology strategy. Funding is going to be required to keep the lights on and overcome the technical debt. It is critical to map the investments and funding requests to business outcomes.

Chad Watt: Anurag, I have one gift for you. I'm going to give you a technology magic wand, and I want you to take this technology magic wand and it will change one thing perfectly and completely in terms of your people, process and technology. And you can use it only once, only one use. What are you going to use it for?

Anurag Sharma: I love that, Chad. If I was given a business magic wand, I would want to infuse a culture of learning and innovation throughout the organization. So this would help the organization to adapt to changing market dynamics, drive business growth, and stay ahead of any technological disruptions. So that's me being selfish here, but that's what I would want.

Chad Watt: Terrific. Terrific. Thank you so much for your time today.

Anurag Sharma: Thank you for the opportunity, Chad. It was a very good conversation.

Chad Watt: This podcast is part of our collaboration with MIT Tech review. In partnership with Infosys Cobalt. Visit our content hub on technology review.com to learn more about how businesses across the globe are moving from cloud chaos to cloud clarity. Be sure to follow ahead in the cloud wherever you get your podcast. You can find more details in our show notes and our transcripts at infosys.com/iki. It's in our podcast section. Thanks to our producers, Catherine Burdette, Christine Calhoun, and Yulia Debari, Dode Bigley is our audio technician and I'm Chad Watt with the Infosys Knowledge Institute signing off. Until next time, keep learning and keep sharing.