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all right great well well domain we uh we're lucky today we've got two great guests

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i know why don't we i will let i'm excited to have uh mike calino join us again it's been

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a little over a year now yep um so welcome back mike thank you very much good to be back

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yeah so guys we have done this before don't worry uh and we've also got we've also got len hardy

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uh from northern trust who's going to tell us a little bit about his journey uh len why don't

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you introduce yourself and then we'll get into into the story yeah hi my name is len hardy i'm

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from the northern trust uh we are a um large financial institution that is headquartered in

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chicago uh three main businesses asset management asset servicing and wealth management

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um my role uh now is i am the director of uh both public and private cloud uh engineering and

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infrastructure um devops uh we use for devops and then business unit type uh application

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slash infrastructure architecture so uh from the cloud perspective uh i have um sort of the

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enablement um the engineering uh in the devops sort of uh enterprise practices around that

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awesome uh so so why don't we start with a little bit of context uh you know tell us a little bit

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about your business and you know when we talk to customers there's usually some kind of you know

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driving force behind their efforts to to modernize how they how they use software it's usually some

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combination of competitive pressures uh with even desire to to better serve your customers just

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maybe lay some context down for us uh in terms of uh your journey yeah so so our journey into cloud

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native sort of application development started about two years ago and um at the time we were not

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in a position uh nor were our clients uh to do anything in the public cloud that's obviously changed

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we can get into that a little bit later but um we were looking for um a platform um or an architecture

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if you will um that would allow us to re-engineer a lot of our core applications as well as uh continue

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with the digital offering that we had uh had going on um we we knew that we needed to change um to a more

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agile um development methodology um we thought that we wanted to change and i think it's proven out that

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it was the right decision that we wanted to change to a uh 12 factor microservices based um cloud native

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um development and runtime environment um and we wanted to sort of start preparing um the organization

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and by that i mean the development organization the architects uh the infrastructure folks in the

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business for you know sort of an eventual uh journey to the public cloud and what that meant so about

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two years ago uh we brought in pivotal cloud foundry um we sent a couple of teams uh at the time to um

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pivotal labs over in the merchandise market here in chicago uh they went through the whole um the whole

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thing uh with programming and paired programming and uh and bringing over product owners and working

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through a couple of applications there uh and deployed those on uh pivotal cloud foundry that we

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my group had uh built out uh installed uh engineered and uh operate within our uh two data centers here in

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the chicago suburbs so that was sort of the beginning um now uh with two years later uh we have about

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600 developers on that platform um and they are are supported by the original four devops engineers that

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we brought on board um so you know the way that we do that is is you know you guys have said this

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before everybody says this you know relentless automation so we could not have four guys supporting

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600 developers without building a lot of things um either into the platform around the platform or

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or through tooling that we we put in place so we've grown uh significantly uh on the platform we have

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you know many many many services in uh production many in um different testing environments and we've

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got a lot a lot of activity on the platform today that's great and that's those are some nice

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sort of uh bookends right where you started where you are today and now we've got to figure out all the

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other books on the shelf in between um i am curious to go way back to that initial engagement um at

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pivotal labs in their that beautiful chicago office that they have um what was that first application

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can you share a little bit about what was it doing was it something that was getting refactored was it

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something new that needed to be built what part which of those three businesses that you mentioned

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was it supporting yeah so it was it was what i would call an assets it was an asset servicing um

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i wouldn't even call it an application i guess i'd call it a platform basically what we were doing is

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we were modernizing the core of the asset servicing business that we have today and uh the application

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in question or the uh the platform that we were talking about uh developing is something that we were

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calling tranhub or transaction hub and really it was sort of a real-time platform running on pivotal

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cloud foundry that took transactions um coming into the bank from any number of different uh scenarios so

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they could come from the swift network they could come from clients uh they can come from other

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uh applications uh running within our data center um or things like that and it it was the central

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place where they were pulled in validated uh reformatted into a common format and then delivered out

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uh to the application that was specifically responsible for processing it so

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it was sort of the core around all of the asset servicing uh uh applications clients and um

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networks uh that we do business with so basically we're looking for uh fast time to market we're

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looking at uh horizontal horizontal scalability uh we're looking at developer productivity we're looking

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at um very high reliability uh all the things that you get from cloud native um development patterns

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and from pivotal cloud foundry specifically in this case and what about let's talk a little bit about

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some of the uh i guess some of the process and culture issues you have to deal with uh as you as you

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transition from uh kind of where you were to where you are today um you talked about automation and

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having a relatively small group of four supporting the platform and uh supporting all those developers

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i imagine that's a very different scenario than than previously uh can you talk about how you how

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you approach some of the organizational and process challenges you have yeah so so that's interesting

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so i don't know how much you guys know about the northern trust but we're about 130 year old

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um financial institution in chicago so um 130 years old there's a lot of legacy out there so there's a lot

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of uh in in air quotes there's a lot of culture uh there's a lot of um uh bedded down thought process

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and all of that had to be changed uh in order to to move forward with what we wanted to do here from

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a cloud native development perspective and i guess the way that we uh the way that we approached that

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at least initially was so so the four the four develop uh devops engineers uh infrastructure

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engineers if you want to call them that that that we have that are responsible for the operation and

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the automation of cloud foundry were hand chosen and basically um we pick them um for a diversity of

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skill sets uh we have a person on the team who is probably one of the best um java architects that

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we have here at the northern trust we have someone who is a a manager and a technical manager who

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managed um uh web uh mobile uh database development for a number of different um very high profile

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platforms uh the third member of the team uh worked on our what you would call our tiger team i guess

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that attacked problems from a variety of different areas so very strong on networking very strong in

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infrastructure operating system something like that and then um but first but least we have a new

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college graduate uh with from a comp sci program here in illinois who was uh very technical and very

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uh interested in learning new things could pick up things very very quickly and was was was very

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diverse in sort of the skill sets that uh she brought to the problem so the first thing we did is i think

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we picked uh a cross-functional um uh very enthused uh very forward-looking team in order to stand up

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the the product to support the product and to build automation around the product uh secondly what we

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did is we handpicked the teams that went to pivotal labs uh right you know the old uh i guess it's

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martin follower you have to be 42 inches tall to ride the ride well we didn't want anybody that was

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three foot tall in the initial uh in the initial implementation so we basically handpicked a team of

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uh pretty good rock stars and sent them out uh to pivotal and we've rotated several of these

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through and when we brought them back uh we sat them down with um i don't want to say legacy teams

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but we sat them down with teams that hadn't been through the program um and we tried to sort of

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infect or infuse those existing teams with that same thought process in that same methodology that they

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learned uh at at pivotal labs now in terms of the automation you know we went uh head to head and

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tooth and nail with our control officers uh with our auditors uh with our regulators uh and basically

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proved to them that what we were putting in from an automation perspective um was probably more secure

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and more compliant than the four to six to eight different manual steps that were in the process in

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the past so it was an education process for uh for the people on the compliance and the audit and the

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risk and the control side but they really stepped up too once we were able to show them you know we're

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going to allow an application developer to start and stop a service by themselves in production

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but in the background we're going to automatically put in the service now ticket and we're going to

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make sure all the documentation is in there and it's all consistent it's all of a specific format

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um and it's going to be better than if somebody manually put the ticket in and you know you get

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you know run on sentences and you got inaccurate information and you get somebody just pushing a

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button in order to get the ticket completed so the minute we were able to prove that what we wanted to do

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was in fact more um compliant than what we had from you know 15 manual steps in the past everybody

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sort of jumped on board and we're extending that now into some other things that we're doing as well

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what do you think was the turning point in your conversation with that compliance risk and audit

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control team where because you mentioned that they've really stepped up but it was an education process

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yeah can you think of like a moment where it seemed like things clicked and accelerated with that team

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well yeah uh yeah let me get to that i think i think what you i think what we found and this is

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probably true for any um organization that's been around been around for a while is the controls

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uh that were in place uh were all interpretations of things that had been passed down through

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through the ages and were pretty much uh word of mouth among people or uh controls that were stacked

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on top of each other because things had potentially failed in the past right so you know maybe in the

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past there was a control where i had to verify that two numbers matched and then somebody didn't do it

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right one time 10 years ago and they added two more controls on top right so basically what we had

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to do to make them sort of see the light on how this was going to happen is sort of unwind all of that

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uh folklore and uh and hearsay and telephone tag in terms of why these were put together in the first

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place and get right down to what is the controlling for and what is the purpose of it and then as soon

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as we got that and got people to agree on that and have a common understanding of that we can very

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very easily automate that and then show you know through through hard numbers and screens and in tickets

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that are out there on service now how we were able to automate that and and actually satisfy the

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control but without the reams and reams of overhead so i think it was really just

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uh uh pulling around pulling out the actual purpose of the control eliminating anything around it and

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showing how we were going to solve it that's interesting and i i love that kind of expression

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you use of unwinding folklore yeah um and you know although i can imagine you you know that's not

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i mean you can walk up to your compliance team be like i understand you have some folklore and i'd

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like to find it um that may that may get things off the wrong foot the thing remain the thing the

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thing is is that the the control officers only all they do is they hand you the actual document that

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has the technical control uh written down and then the implementation of that is always left up to

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the people that are either building the application or the business side or or some other people that

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had oversight over it so once we could sort of distill down what that actual document said and make it

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practical and then show them how we were going to do that in a very practical way they didn't really

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care about the folklore it's not really their folklore it's more the people that get that get

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audited that people are asking questions of and it's like well i do these six or eight

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ten manual things and here that's what proves that this is right as opposed to you know here's an

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automated approach and here's a number on a screen and that's what proves it's right

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okay that's interesting that that's helpful i think that it's not the folklore from the compliance

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team it's the folklore of the people who are receiving the audits yeah so implementers yeah okay

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so then does it does it come down to like you know the way that like some event storming

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activities happen right you've got to get everyone in the room which is hard right scheduling is hard

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yeah um but we we need to all get physically in the room together and just start to to talk through

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each of these things until we get that common understanding is is that what it looks like or

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what does it look like when you actually yeah so how we did it is we had we had it's it's a it's a

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give and take and it's it's a uh it's a negotiation basically so so the way that we did it is we took

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one of the controls that were um in scope for you know a specific thing and we actually had somebody

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on the application side or on the platform side who read the control and documented what he thought it

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meant in english and in practical manners on in like six or eight bullet points you know this could

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be like a 10 page control and he said okay what i got out of this is i need to do a b c and i have to

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approve d so we started with that and then we started taking around to other people that actually

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had a had a had a uh a buy-in somehow for the process and we said do you agree with this does

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this 10 page control really only mean i need to do this these six things that's where the debate was

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you know and it probably wasn't didn't end up being the sixth thing that we started with but it wasn't

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the 47 things either it was somewhere in between and as soon as we had a common understanding and

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everybody could nod their head and sign off you know the control officer um the developer uh the

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architect the platform owner the people that support our itsm applications if all of those people

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were on board and signed off that these were the six things we have to do then all we had to do was

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automate it right that was the simple part and so mike when when and how did solstice kind of enter the

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picture or maybe len you should give your version of the story first and and then mike can elaborate

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from there no no mike can go the solstice was a a development partner from from our digital perspective

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uh in a lot of cases they did a lot of ui ux stuff uh with our what we call our passport products which is

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our uh our web-based um portal type products in our in our digital uh uh mobile offerings for both

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um retail clients uh and corporate clients so they uh solstice was a partner with our internal

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development uh folks on uh designing and developing those things yeah and solstice has been around for

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roughly 18 years and our first client oddly enough was northern trust so we've been working consistently

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with northern trust for about two decades now as len mentioned uh our primary focus has been in the

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sort of external customer facing applications uh and many of those have been uh running on legacy

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portal technology platforms uh since their inception in initial creation and so uh once the

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corresponding architecture had been proven out the platform had been stood up uh these are the the

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applications that were sort of first tagged to be moved over off of the portal technology onto

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the little cloud foundry so ultimately we are as development partners of the northern trust

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customers of the the platform and the services that it provides to its developers across the ecosystem

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over at northern trust uh my particular area of focus um historically has been on enterprise architecture

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uh that's a group that i used to lead here at solstice and in many cases on these northern projects

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we would um collaborate with len and his team uh and then oddly enough from a timeline standpoint as solstice

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looked at uh cloud partners in the lot in the landscape roughly around 24 to 36 months ago

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that's where our partnership with pivotal started on a very similar timeline where northern uh again one of our

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longest running customers uh had been evaluating the platform and had selected to actually bring it in

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house and stand it up so um you know a perfect marriage in terms of you know the the partnership

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from uh not only in northern to solstice standpoint but back from a solstice to pivotal standpoint in the

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sense that we could come in and help uh northern as a development partner uh move legacy workloads

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onto the new platform yeah mike it's funny you mentioned the the length of the relationship i

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remember a time in one of the old buildings we used to be in over on canal street with jay sitting in a

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sitting in a a little cubicle and just actually pounding out code himself so that was a long time ago right

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absolutely yes our former uh our initial uh ceo and founder and now he's actually the ceo of the

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the public parent company that owns a space in the uk so yeah the the relationship with northern trust um

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as well as the um you know just the the significant people especially those in leadership positions still

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here at solstice who've been here from the beginning uh all of them have worked uh at some point in time

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on significant um endeavors over at northern trust

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yeah and speaking of trust talk a little bit about building that trust over time between a uh a services

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provider such as yourselves a company like northern trust who's been around for i think you said

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130 plus years uh does the length of time of that relationship really help when it comes to

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working on these types of initiatives and how do you build that trust over time

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i can take it first i mean i i've been at solstice myself for seven years so i've come in um sort of

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after the relationship uh has been stood up but at the same time every year um you know it seems like

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we're in newer areas of the organization over there um and so it's definitely a relationship that has

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grown and evolved uh so much to the point now where i think it's very interesting when solstice holds

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that's bring your kids to work day uh there's actually a lot of northern um northern stakeholders

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that actually uh bring their kids uh over to the solstice offices for a couple hours uh usually in

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the afternoon each year so it just talks to you know how close the relationship um has sort of

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blossomed and matured to but um i think the other thing too is that uh northern very much has its

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sights set on the future and understands the value of sort of digital craftsmanship uh all the way from

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sort of the top of the stack all the way down to the platform itself and so i think there's just a

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a general alignment of uh again where we think both organizations are going and so uh it's just a

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really great relationship for us to again sort of care nurture and move forward uh collectively as we

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as we look to the future so what i heard out of all that was that northern trust would trust you

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with their children

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absolutely

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you know i i guess i would say you know i'll chime in on that a little bit i i think you know when it

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comes down to it it's this is uh you know this is this is business and they have to deliver and

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they they've delivered right so you know as much as i like mike and you know we know jay and we know

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everybody over there but you know they need to continue to deliver and they've done that so

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i mean that's what sort of that's what sort of you know keeps people uh together keeps people doing

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doing business together you know and keeps relationships strong is you know the ability

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to trust each side to deliver what they say they're going to do yeah and so i want to double click

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back on um something that mike was referring to which is essentially that you know since this is a

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long-standing existing relationship you know the kids are are hanging out together and everything

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um how how or did it change at all uh when sort of this this move to adopt the platform and start to

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modernize these applications come in mike you mentioned that a lot of the applications kind

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of the front-end customer-facing applications that solstice had been working on for a long time

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we're running um on you know the kind of portal back-end system that was the first things to get

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modernized so i just want to double click a little bit into that and see you know did this did this

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change the relationship at all how was solstice impacted by this sort of change to now becoming a

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customer of this new platform that had come in yeah it's a really great question um and i think uh from a

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technical standpoint um obviously len and his team uh had to go across the business business partners

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at northern trust to to sell the investment in terms of the platform but i think uh the teams on

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the ground uh solstice ones included uh were really the the the uh key messaging partners back to the

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actual lines of business and application uh owners themselves as to you know release by release what the

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platform is going to provide uh them and the applications that they own and so i think that's

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what really um was one of the sort of the the changing points of uh or turning points i should

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say of the uh relationship as it relates to uh solstice and northern uh in the context of the platform was

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that we were able to educate um our the application owners the business owners on a release by release

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basis the some of the functionality that we would be moving off of the legacy platforms into the new

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platform and what that was ultimately going to provide for them and that's what really made it

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tangible and real for them and really made them um sort of get a front row seat as to what the

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platform could provide for them long term as they saw it in the context of their own application

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yeah and i think the technical model that was chosen for that was really interesting and it did

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show from a business perspective how the new platform could deliver value very very quickly

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and could um you know really get that that that incremental speed to market i mean what they chose

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to do so the platform that that mike's been talking about is sort of our private or our retail offering

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both you know web-based and uh and uh and mobile-based but it was on and some of it still continues

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to be on sort of a legacy infrastructure you know um monolithic java type stuff and there's always

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investment into this product they're always bringing out new products and services you know for the for

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the end user and the decision was made you know starting today every new piece of uh uh functionality

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that we're going to deliver through this platform is going to be developed on this new platform uh

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pivotal cloud foundry it's going to be um cloud native architected from the start it's going to be

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microservices um it's going to be 12 factor um and we're simply going to call those services

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from the old legacy application via rest calls right so everything that was built that was going

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to be enhancements to that was built in the new platform and then as mike said they started pulling

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off older pieces of functionality and putting them on the new platform as well um until they sort of got

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uh uh an economies of scale thing going and then they basically flipped the front door to point to the

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new platform when they only had a couple of old ancillary services running in legacy so they're

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able to keep sort of keep the production line rolling by delivering new products and new capabilities

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because it was so quick to market while they were modernizing the stuff that was uh already in

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existence on the legacy platform and then again get to a tipping point where they're able to

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put the front door into the new platform and just have a couple of old ancillary services running

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in the background okay what i'm just curious like what kind of um methodologies and other technologies

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were useful in that transition i've i've heard a number of things i don't want to i don't want to

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put words in your mouth but i'm just curious as you go through and you're trying to understand

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like here are the you know we're going to build start with just anything new goes somewhere on a new

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platform and we'll we'll make those risk calls back to the to the legacy um monolith and then over time

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we're going to start to carve off pieces of that monolith until like less and less is still existing there

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what what things help provide visibility into that to be able to understand this is this is where we should

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you know make those cuts those those first cuts but that kind of thing

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well i i think you know and i'll let mike chime in but but i think you know the whole the whole

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agile methodology helps with that because there was a uh a product owner for this product and um that

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product owner was uh sitting in some new space that we built in one of our buildings in the loop here

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that was uh co-located with you know the product owners the developers uh the architects the data people

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that support this this project um they the product owner knew what the new capabilities are that needed

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to be developed uh they prioritized those capabilities um they sat down with the application

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development folks from a from a from an engineering perspective uh and figured out how that was going

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to sort of fit in from a ui ux perspective and then they applied the scalpel made the cuts right so i

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think they they kept doing that they kept prioritizing new things that they could roll out at the same time

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that they were carving off the old things and bringing them into the new platform right so it had to be a

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combination of a product and business and other words what do you want to offer but then tech in

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terms of how am i going to do that so i can almost kill two birds with one stone right i can offer new

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capabilities but i can carve some of the legacy off at the same time and bring it over to the new

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platform yeah exactly i mean i think a lot of these modernization stories um similar to the one that

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we're referencing here at northern trust uh is is really um a place where you see a lot of business

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folks in the room uh trying to understand from a feature grouping standpoint from a priority standpoint

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and more importantly from an architectural impact standpoint what are the things that we can

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prioritize uh and potentially um you know sort of lump together and releases where we're delivering

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new functionality as well as potentially moving away from some of the old uh functionality as part of

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just you know the fact that we're touching certain pieces uh or places in the architecture within an

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application so a lot of of meetings sort of cross-functionally between uh the business owners

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uh as well as uh the corresponding enterprise architects as well as some of the domain architects

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to really understand how can we group these releases together uh so we're getting the most bang for the buck

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and moving as much off of legacy um as possible you know what i think is interesting is how

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everybody's perspective changes so i'm talking about legacy monolithic java applications and

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in practicality those were probably developed two years ago right so the pace of change that we're

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seeing now is just just it's just amazing and you know legacy used to mean 20 year old cobalt now it

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means two year old java so that's that's interesting to me yeah um that i definitely would not have

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assumed that so um yeah as as you start it's just like you know when you've been driving down the freeway

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at you know 60 70 miles an hour and then you you kind of pull off and now you're on side streets it's like

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everything feels weirdly distorted and

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you risk speeding because you're like no no i'm used to this faster speed so

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um yeah yeah i'm proud you've been living on the freeway speeds now so

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um i want to also come back to something that you mentioned len you mentioned early on that kind of

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the the move to public cloud has also been um you know that was a that was kind of a key factor in

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a lot of the decisions made a couple of years ago um and mike you touched on that as well as

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as something that's that's been kind of part of the a change in the work that you've been doing so

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let's take a look at that because you mentioned those those first applications

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you know the team um that team of four operators that you you described len

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they they set up the platform on two local data centers

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and the first labs engagement that's where that got pushed and now the other end of the book end

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here we are we've got 600 developers it's the same four um and you alluded to the fact that things

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have changed in terms of the the bank's ability to make use of the public cloud

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yeah so that's something that we're starting uh actually trying to figure out what we want to do

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in the direction we want to go so we you know i i took over sort of the public cloud uh enablement

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and engineering group um what is today the 21st 21 days ago so i took it over uh on

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june 1st so i'm just getting my feet feet into this trying to figure out what what the business

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want to do again this is a very business driven um organization in terms of how we're going to roll

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this out we're getting together some groups of um sort of architects from each of our business areas

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that are responsible for driving what they want to do in both the private and the public cloud my belief

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is i think for the next you know pick a number um five years six years three years

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we're going to be in a hybrid salute uh a hybrid situation i don't think we're going to see um

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everything in the public cloud at least from our perspective um there are there are use cases and

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businesses and data that will remain um in our data center um but there are some things that

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uh we probably would be interested in putting in the public cloud now what architecture we're going to

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use uh how we're going to stage those things uh what are we going to do from an enterprise

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perspective from a compliance and a governance and a security perspective that's all sort of being

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worked out as we speak so like i said 21 days into this um excited about it but uh i think we got to

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start uh start thinking about it it's probably something that's inevitable okay with that

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how do you think that the the work that you've done over the last couple of years

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will help you with that oh i think i think it it'll help immensely from a variety of of things so so

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getting a community of developers um up to speed on what it means to be a cloud native application is a

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huge thing right so there's a huge difference between doing something for the cloud and a 12-factor

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architecture than just putting together a you know a java or a.net or a python monolith that that does the

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business logic right so just getting the developers to think in a cloud native manner and to develop

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code in a cloud native manner i think is a huge thing to get the rest of the organization um

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to get their heads around uh what you need to do to be uh to be agile and and you can think of that a

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couple of different ways you probably do need you know an agile methodology when you're doing cloud

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native development um how how i can get a faster time to market how i need to automate these things

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the conversations that we had with our control officers and our auditors and our regulators in

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terms of automating some of these manual controls all of that is multiplied by 100 when i move into the

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public cloud i think so just getting the people to think in that manner i'm getting some of the skill

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sets that some of these uh these developers these engineers these operators these infrastructure people

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need to have uh and then getting um the business and um the control officers and stuff to get their head

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around um sort of what the the new world is as it relates to cloud i think is is is very important

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i think i think it was a stepping stone and a required stepping stone to get people thinking in the

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right way okay so so as you look back you know over the last last couple of years what would you say

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are your biggest lessons learned or maybe even maybe another way to think about it is if you don't mind

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me putting on the spot a little bit what do you think what would you do differently one or two

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things that you've learned that you know if you if you could do it again you might have done a little

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bit differently yeah so i think uh one of the things is i might have had a more controlled rollout

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and what i mean by that is i think i alluded to the fact that the first couple of teams that we

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we put through this you know the first you know half a dozen dozen teams that we put through this

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were were were very very well uh educated in terms of what they needed to do um they were sort of

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hand-picked in the cream of the crop we did not do a really good job of getting sort of the rest of

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the developers or or or the consulting help that we get that's not solstice right we use a lot of

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different consulting companies and you know offshore companies things like that and try to get get people

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up to speed and train again what i talked about what it really means to be a cloud native application

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and what it really means to be 12 factor uh in what it really means to be self-healing and how do i do

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that and what are the skill sets required um i think we should have probably thought about a more formal

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training program um as as that as that goes and we are actually having conversations with

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some of our sales people from pivotal on some new things that you guys have i think coming down

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the pipe in terms of how you're going to uh support organizations like us from a from a training

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uh and uh and an engineering perspective right so i think we could have probably

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um done a little bit a little bit better job with uh developer training um yeah that's that's what i would say

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and and what role does you know in terms of just determining who your best candidates are from

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from your existing developers to make this transition do you look at it like hey there's

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going to be some people that you know they're they're eager and and excited to make this transition

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and others that are you know going to be a little bit more challenging to bring along how do you think

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about managing your your team in that sense yeah that's interesting so i think we have two

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i think we have two two different approaches one is um new talent so uh we started a program that we call

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rdp or rotational development program we started it about three years ago we started it about a year

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before pivotal cloud foundry and basically what we do with that program is we bring in

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you know eight to ten to twelve uh college graduate either engineers or computer science

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graduates and we bring them into technology and we give them three rotations in different um different

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areas and in technology for six months at a time so for example uh one of them could start in a web

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development team they could rotate into cyber security and then spend uh the last six months of the

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rotation on uh in an enterprise architecture group so we've for the last three years we've had um

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classes that start you know after the spring semester is over um and we bring in the new blood right and

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we're looking for people that are self-starters that that can learn very very quickly that have some

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of the basics of some of the things we're looking for from their either computer science or computer

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engineering um bachelor's degrees um and then we put them after the uh the rotations we put them

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into positions that both benefit northern and and are uh towards where they want to go in their career

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um we give these people mentors right but we also do this thing that we call reverse mentoring so right

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if i'm somebody's mentor you know i'm trying to teach the way around northern trust and i'm trying

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to teach the relationships that we have and in the core values of the company but if somebody is

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reverse mentoring me they're trying to teach me what a 21 year old straight out of an engineering

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school wants to see in an organization when they sit down to work right so it's really a two-way

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street so that's one of the things we do the other one i think what you were referring to is really what

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do we do with our our you know our longer term tenured employees and what we found i i think this

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must be human nature but what we found is people tend to self-delect right so if i go into a group of

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five programmers and they've all got you know 15 to 20 years and they say hey put up your hands if you

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want to work on this new exciting cloud-based project now you're going to have to learn a lot of

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stuff you're going to have to do your own research um it's all going to be very very fast paced probably

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half of them are going to put up their hands and the other half of them go work on um the mainframe

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stuff that we still need that we still have and we still need talented people to work on so we haven't

390
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had very very many situations where either somebody has signed up for it and failed or somebody uh you

391
00:38:07,480 --> 00:38:12,520
know where we thought somebody was going to be you know up for the challenge and they haven't really

392
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:18,360
worked out it self-selecting i think tends to work in an organization where you really need both skill

393
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:22,840
sets like if we were just something if we were a cloud only organization self-selecting wouldn't

394
00:38:22,840 --> 00:38:29,480
work but we still have a large legacy structure of of mainframes and as400s and you know java

395
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:34,280
monoliths and dot net and oracle and all this other stuff and we need those people and talented

396
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:42,280
people there to support and to run those applications as well yeah that that jives with what we've heard

397
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:48,280
from other other folks like john's one over at great american insurance company um specifically

398
00:38:48,280 --> 00:38:53,880
calling out you know do do the volunteer model as long as you can because you get folks who are really

399
00:38:53,880 --> 00:39:00,840
hungry to to do that and to make these changes so um what's interesting is like thinking about your

400
00:39:00,840 --> 00:39:10,920
comment about you know really picking um handpicking the folks to go into those first labs models and

401
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:15,240
then kind of coming back and having to figure out how to like how to bring this to the rest of the

402
00:39:15,240 --> 00:39:19,240
organization um you know there's there's a lot of different ways to approach that so it's great to

403
00:39:19,240 --> 00:39:22,360
hear you sort of share your lessons learned on that because i think that's something that

404
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:29,400
a lot of folks um are eager to to understand how to take those first steps uh effectively

405
00:39:30,280 --> 00:39:35,160
you know and i think the other thing to consider for an enterprise like us is you know over the past

406
00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:42,360
what 15 or 20 years companies like ours have sort of commoditized the engineer or the developer right

407
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:47,640
i mean everybody that we hired uh over those 10 years you know either had to be an architect or

408
00:39:47,640 --> 00:39:52,600
an analyst or something because you know we were doing um a lot of offshore development at the time

409
00:39:52,600 --> 00:39:56,360
right and and i think we're trying to pull that back now because the skill sets that we're looking

410
00:39:56,360 --> 00:40:04,040
for um and the quality of the people that we need i think are better suited for uh northern trust uh

411
00:40:04,040 --> 00:40:10,600
employees or uh close development partners you know like solstice and others so um what we ended up

412
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:19,000
with was a lot of you know 10 and 15 year um uh experienced tenured people that were more at the

413
00:40:19,000 --> 00:40:23,880
higher level so you know bringing in these these rotational development programs and sort of

414
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:29,800
reconstituting that that programmer or sort of engineer level i think is very important to us so

415
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:35,560
you know over the past three years we've probably brought in you know 40 or 50 new new graduates fresh blood

416
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:40,600
into that into that uh into that sort of engineering layer within the hierarchies that we have

417
00:40:43,080 --> 00:40:48,840
yeah that's that's really interesting sorry go ahead jeff yeah i was just going to comment i

418
00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:54,680
really i like the idea of the uh the reverse mentorship you know just because somebody's you know fresh out

419
00:40:54,680 --> 00:41:00,040
of college doesn't mean they they don't have you know some some great perspectives to offer uh and of

420
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:05,640
course you know as as the technology landscape evolves you know it's going to be that fresh blood

421
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:11,480
that's going to be critical uh you know to at least in part to the evolution of your organization

422
00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:15,960
and taking advantage of of these opportunities yeah absolutely in fact this year for the first time

423
00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:23,960
we brought in four of these uh rotational development program um participants for infrastructure alone so

424
00:41:24,680 --> 00:41:29,000
you know we're going to have them working like within my team on public and private cloud and dev

425
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:36,520
ops you know we're going to have them working on uh infrastructure analytics and predictive analytics

426
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:40,920
from an infrastructure perspective where in the past years it's really been targeted toward

427
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:46,920
application development we've expanded it now into engineering and infrastructure and devops and a whole

428
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:56,440
bunch of other um bunch of other uh skill sets uh within technology absolutely and you know as as we're

429
00:41:56,440 --> 00:42:01,400
we're getting a little bit close on time but i would love to to touch on if you could if you could help

430
00:42:01,400 --> 00:42:05,240
us translate all all the great stuff you've been working on all the things we've talked about today

431
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:12,280
uh to you know the business goals you know the the larger strategic business goals of northern trust

432
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:19,080
how do you see all the great work that you're doing uh you know connecting to those to those objectives

433
00:42:19,080 --> 00:42:27,160
well i i would say there's a couple of things you know so you know our competitors the northern trust

434
00:42:27,160 --> 00:42:31,560
competitors you know used to be the other big banks you know and we were all sort of in the same ballpark

435
00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:38,120
um i think what we're seeing is competition from uh startups and fintechs and things like that now as well

436
00:42:38,120 --> 00:42:43,480
so we're not just competing with you know the other big box banks you know either here on wall street or

437
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:48,600
wherever they happen to be you know we're competing with you know venture capital funded companies in

438
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:55,000
silicon valley and in other places around the world that are using these same tools and techniques in

439
00:42:55,000 --> 00:43:03,080
order to deliver product faster and more reliably and more scalably right so i think that we have to

440
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:10,520
up our game in terms of how we deliver in envision product in order to up and hopefully surpass those

441
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:15,960
kind of companies now the way that i see it it's easier for someone like the northern trust to learn

442
00:43:15,960 --> 00:43:20,760
how to do cloud native development and agile methodologies than it is for a four-person startup

443
00:43:20,760 --> 00:43:27,480
in silicon valley to have 130 years of financial services experience right so um i think that we are

444
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:34,440
well positioned to uh compete there um but it's going to need some tweaks to um and when i say

445
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:40,280
culture that that's kind of a loaded word because culture to me is a combination of things like ethics

446
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:46,760
and morality and thought process uh with process so we need to change our process and procedure we need to

447
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:52,920
keep our ethics and morality at the soul of the company but i think that you know we are we are well

448
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:59,640
positioned to do that so from a business perspective it is it is it's time to mark um you know in quality

449
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:06,680
deliverables and learn and interesting uh user interfaces and things like that i mean it's what

450
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:10,600
people are used to in their personal lives that we have to deliver uh from a professional perspective

451
00:44:12,600 --> 00:44:19,640
so on on that note kind of switching now just to my my kind of last question for you i'm not going to

452
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:26,760
promise that but i'm going to say that um i don't know when like another question comes up um what

453
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:32,040
you know that was a great kind of time to the to the business schools but what are you personally

454
00:44:32,040 --> 00:44:41,240
most proud of i think it is that i think it is the the sort of the i i for for my own personal uh

455
00:44:41,240 --> 00:44:46,200
profession and i know i think mike probably knows this but maybe no one else but i've i've been at the

456
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:51,000
northern trust for 36 years right so this was my first year uh my first job out of college i like

457
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:59,320
to tell people i started when i was 12. i was just a lot no but i mean i i had a variety i mean as you

458
00:44:59,320 --> 00:45:04,680
can imagine what was technology like 36 years ago i started as an assembly language programmer so i've made

459
00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:12,280
i've had 15 different jobs in those time periods from you know language development to uh some of our

460
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:19,160
first personal based applications in dos to leading some of the portal teams to enterprise architecture

461
00:45:19,160 --> 00:45:25,240
and now into cloud i think i think i think in the private cloud thing what we're with this conversation

462
00:45:25,240 --> 00:45:31,480
is targeted on it it's the amount of change in the fastest amount of time that i have ever seen in my 36

463
00:45:31,480 --> 00:45:38,760
years right so it may not seem like much to uh outside people looking in but to make that much

464
00:45:38,760 --> 00:45:46,600
progress on the platform in a two-year period um based on what i know about uh things that have

465
00:45:46,600 --> 00:45:51,240
happened in the past is just an extraordinary amount of change that was sort of rippled across

466
00:45:51,240 --> 00:45:56,120
the entire technology organization so i think that's probably what i'm most proud of and i'm expecting

467
00:45:56,760 --> 00:46:03,080
that or more in the next two to three years as well as things just progress and change and uh uh and as

468
00:46:03,080 --> 00:46:12,440
we look forward wonderful and uh you know i i appreciate how 36 years of perspective on that

469
00:46:13,000 --> 00:46:24,040
um really says something so thank you yeah you're welcome well where can folks kind of um keep tabs on

470
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:30,440
you or the team and learn more about the engineering uh opportunities at northern trust

471
00:46:31,400 --> 00:46:37,640
well obviously linkedin right um we've got a couple of uh opportunities out there already uh we're

472
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:43,000
looking for some some new some new people in the uh in the public cloud world my new world um we're

473
00:46:43,000 --> 00:46:48,680
looking for a couple of new people uh from a leadership perspective there um and then you know certainly

474
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:55,000
my own uh my own linkedin uh stuff you can take a look at uh northerntrust.com we've got a brand new

475
00:46:55,000 --> 00:47:01,080
spanking shiny new website as of a few days ago or a week or so ago so uh there's a lot of information

476
00:47:01,080 --> 00:47:04,440
out there all the careers and everything and all the opportunities to listed and um

477
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:09,880
uh yeah i would say that would be the way to go wonderful we'll include that in the show notes

478
00:47:11,960 --> 00:47:17,480
it was great to talk to you great to catch up with you mike as well um thank you so much for joining

479
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:25,480
very good my pleasure we'll see you guys bye-bye