KRISTOF VOS: Hello, my name is Kristof Vos.
I'm very pleased to be here today
with Henry Aguda from Globe Telecom.
Globe is one of the biggest telecom
providers in the Philippines, and we're
going to chat a bit on how their journey was
going to Drive for Work and Google Apps for Business.
But firstly, I want to have Henry
to introduce himself and tell us a bit more about Globe Telecom.
HENRY AGUDA: Well, I'm Henry Aguda.
I'm the CIO of Globe Telecoms.
Globe Telecoms as Kristof mentioned
is one of the biggest telco in the Philippines.
We're actually the leader in postpaid and mobile data
services.
Aside from that, we have the distinction
of being the transformative telco in the Philippines.
And as our discussion will be with Kristof,
we'll show you some of the neat, transformative stuff
that we've done.
KRISTOF VOS: OK, great.
Thank you.
So could you tell us a bit more about the journey that
brought you to Google?
Like what the challenges were, the opportunities, and what
was actually keeping you awake at night
that brought you towards doing something
new in your organization?
HENRY AGUDA: OK, Well Kristof, I joined Globe three years back.
And three years back, Globe was seeing this transformation
journey from people to technology to the way we work.
And the mandate to me by Ernest, our CEO,
was to transform the way we work inside Globe, representative
of a young, vibrant workforce.
And we started off by changing the way we send emails,
the way we collaborate in changing documents.
And the journey to Google was a very exciting one
because we had this idea of work as you play.
And we know at least that a lot of our young workforce
had been using Google before we even
introduced the idea of Google.
So the adoption was very, very easy and quite seamless
because they've-- they're already used to the Google Apps
and the Google solution.
So we went into this aggressive journey
of transforming our email platform from the legacy one
to Google.
And the benefits were instantaneous,
from commercial to even the hip factor.
So our employees are quite happy that they
can claim that they're working in one of the first work
areas in the Philippines where they
can use their own devices at home
and bring it over and seamlessly integrate their Google
Mail, their Google Hangout, their Google Apps.
Another thing also is a surge in collaboration.
So Drive to Work, normally I have
to have a complicated security construct to be
able to get my company e-mail.
Here I just switch on from my personal to my professional
email, or my personal to my professional social network.
And I'm already meeting with people while I go to work.
I can edit documents on the fly.
And I can edit it while my team is editing it also on the fly.
Questions about security or--?
KRISTOF VOS: Yeah, that's something
that we get all the time, right?
I mean we might as well just put it out there
because that's the main thing.
Going to the cloud, what about security?
HENRY AGUDA: Well, Kristof, one of the biggest
question before-- and you've been
involved in that rationalization-- was security.
Surprisingly, we found out-- at least
for our assessment-- it's more secure
because of several reasons.
One, the security features of Google
are tuned towards the new web 2.0.
It was born in the cloud.
Security's in the cloud.
Second, there's auto trailing.
So this is the first time when I--
where I can see who's using what and how much they're using.
In fact, one of the things that I'm fairly surprised with
would be the operations dashboard that I get.
And I get operations dashboard-- I don't
have to request it anymore.
I just have to go through a site and see
how it's being utilized.
So security to us while it matters very much and Globe
takes it very, very seriously.
It's not impaired by going in to Google.
KRISTOF VOS: OK, well that's great.
So if you would look back at the journey that you guys took,
what would be the biggest game changer
in the whole organization that you see with Google?
Is it mobility, is it like--?
HENRY AGUDA: Well, mobility's one,
but in nature, it's mobile first.
That's why we love it.
Second, commercial.
It's very few-- there are very few instances where
our CFO would come to me and pat me on the back
by spending on an IT solution that saves you money.
Google's one of them.
Third is basically the innovation approach.
Google leads the way in a lot of innovation
from technology, to air and space, to medical.
Our people is by osmosis getting a vibe of that innovation feel.
In fact after we went through Google,
we went into a lot of innovation, orientation,
and execution.
And I think part of it is limited to the fact
that the [INAUDIBLE] we're using lend itself well to innovation.
KRISTOF VOS: So it's a bit of a stepping stone.
HENRY AGUDA: Yes.
Yes.
KRISTOF VOS: Great to hear that.
If you see like cultural change, because that's
what-- that's what you actually mentioned, right?
You see the-- a lot of small steps,
but those are big steps in innovation.
What's the biggest cultural change that you see?
On speed, agility, any big changes there?
HENRY AGUDA: Well, the big change there
is, I see a lot of people-- well,
we're a mobile service provider.
So now we work-- how we sell our products.
People don't need to be tethered to an office cord.
I see a lot of people doing a lot of their work
in the common areas, the pantries, the coffee
shops, and be on their phone collaborating with six or seven
other people.
Google Hangout is very, very good
because now it shortens the distance between us
and our regional offices.
In fact, some of our town halls, we do Google Hangouts already.
KRISTOF VOS: No that's great.
HENRY AGUDA: Yes, [INAUDIBLE] and it
cuts down on a lot of the travel,
but more importantly, it breaks down barriers
between geographical location.
So that's what I've seen very, very advantageous
to using a platform that's really born
on mobility and in the cloud.
KRISTOF VOS: Wow, that's good.
So, what was your personal aha moment?
When you went through the journey or that
when you discovered something in the Google Apps and Drive
for Work, what was your personal moment you said like, "Wow?"
HENRY AGUDA: Well, there are two aha moments.
One, when we did the benchmark, we
had several of our employees group themselves together
and put together their own collaborative portal
or website.
And we noticed in the legacy system,
it takes around six weeks at least to several months
if it ever gets up and running.
With the Google platform-- well you guys
were kind enough to award the top three winners--
they were able to develop their own collaboration
sites in two days.
KRISTOF VOS: Yeah, that's great.
HENRY AGUDA: And the next aha moments
were-- those who developed their collaboration sites,
the top two were not even from an IT organization.
They were one from marketing and one from finance.
So the ha-- the aha moment there was you
don't have to create a collaboration platform
and invest in a lot of training.
You have to get a collaboration platform that is intuitive.
And the Google suite of solutions is very intuitive.
The next aha moment-- this is me also
being sensitive to finances.
We saved a lot of money by going there.
We saved on licenses, on the hardware.
We thought we will be killed on connectivity, but not.
It's the same-- it's the same connectivity
cost that we had before.
But take the licenses and the hardware that we saved,
it's a substantial savings.
KRISTOF VOS: So you guys went for a Drive for Work as well,
right?
So I mean you now have unlimited storage.
HENRY AGUDA: Oh yes yes.
KRISTOF VOS: So how does that impact your business?
HENRY AGUDA: Well, I tell you what-- the day
I announce the unlimited storage,
we had a major collaboration launch.
You were there, you saw.
KRISTOF VOS: It was great.
HENRY AGUDA: And you saw the reaction of the people
when we told them, "We will increase your storage from this
to 30 gigs."
And, that was it, they were happy.
But then before ending the session, we said, "Oh
by the way, there's a new change.
We won't change it to 30, we'll make it unlimited."
And people were silent for about a second.
They couldn't grasp the notion of unlimited storage
on their own personal collaboration platform.
So that has encouraged a lot of our employees
to start doing their research, putting
their collaborative files online, making
sure that if it's on the Google Drive,
people have access to it.
They're now learning how to create permissions.
They're now learning how to audit who edits what.
So it's another aha moment actually.
KRISTOF VOS: Yeah.
So if we say that what are the future development
or the future things that you want
to do with the Google platform?
And what are the things that you want to bring you next steps?
HENRY AGUDA: Well, the next thing initiative
was Chrome, right?
We're particularly excited that I think more and more
Chrome and Android will have a more seamless collaboration
together.
And from workforce automation to paperless initiatives
to a lot of other stuff that we feel we can automate.
We're going to use it as our own--
not just a collaboration platform--
but maybe in the future, our enterprise applications.
We can build on top of it.
So we don't know what's going to happen in the next few months
or years, but we know we're going to build more [INAUDIBLE]
system that we built from Google.
KRISTOF VOS: It's great to hear that actually
the system of Google is really magnifying or multiplying
new opportunities within the company and innovation
that they're trying.
That's great to hear.
Any questions that I didn't ask you that you--
that you want to share?
HENRY AGUDA: Well, one of the things
that I may want to share with you is that-- we-- we basically
use what we sell.
And now the concept is we sell what we use.
I think you know this one.
Not only are our employees excited about Google.
We're seeing a lot of excitement from the corporate clients
and the small and medium enterprises that we service.
So I guess one of the future costs
will be you will be seeing as more and more pushing Google
to our customer base as well.
KRISTOF VOS: That's great to hear.
Thank you so much Henry for spending this time with us.
And talking to you was amazing to hear what Globe is doing.
And I really hope that in the future
we can actually as Google help you out
with all these initiatives and these great challenges
that you guys are going to take.
HENRY AGUDA: Kristof thank you very much for the opportunity
to share.
And I do believe and I'm encouraged by the fact
that developments out there with respect to Google
are the exciting ones.
I think we made the right bet by going with you guys.
KRISTOF VOS: I think our solutions will
be definitely one of the parts to a success for you guys
and we keep on supporting you.
To the audience, thank you so much for watching.
Goodbye.