What does it mean to design transformation with resilience at its core rather than treating it as an afterthought? As organisations accelerate cloud adoption, are they becoming more agile or more exposed? And in a world of constant disruption, from cyber threats to system outages, how can leaders ensure their organisations are not just fast, but truly resilient?
In this episode of Talking Transformation, we’re joined by Piero Gallucci from our alliance partner Veeam, to explore why resilience is becoming one of the most important considerations in modern transformation programmes. Together, we discuss how organisations can move beyond speed and efficiency to build environments that can withstand disruption, recover quickly and continue to earn trust.
As the pace of change accelerates, the definition of risk is evolving.
Once viewed primarily through a technical lens, risk is now measured in terms of operational disruption, regulatory exposure, reputational damage and the loss of customer trust. With data underpinning services, decision making, customer experiences and increasingly AI-driven processes, resilience has become a board-level priority rather than solely an IT concern.
We explore the realities of cloud adoption and modernisation, highlighting how organisations must navigate increasingly complex environments spanning on-premise infrastructure, multiple cloud providers, SaaS platforms and emerging AI technologies. While cloud can deliver agility and scale, it also increases the need for careful planning, visibility and governance.
Listen to explore:
- Why resilience must be designed into transformation from the very start
- How the definition of risk has shifted from technical concerns to business impact and trust
- The challenges of managing data across cloud, on-premise and AI environments
- What resilient organisations do differently to prepare for disruption and recovery
- The importance of leadership alignment, shared accountability and removing organisational silos
- Why sovereignty, governance and visibility are becoming increasingly important
- How resilience creates the confidence and headroom organisations need to innovate.
Podcast speakers:
- Piero Gallucci - Regional Vice President for UK&I from our alliance partner Veeam
- Adrian Chiffi – Senior Vice President, GTO UK business unit leader, CGI
- Morgan Withers - Director Consulting Expert, Lead of Automation, AI & Innovation GTO UK, CGI
- Transcript
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[00:00:00] Ade Chiffi: What does it mean to design transformation with resilience at its core rather than treating it as an afterthought? As organisations accelerate cloud adoption, are we becoming more agile or more exposed? In a world of constant disruption from cyber threats to systems outages, how do leaders ensure their organisations are not just fast but truly resilient?
Hello, everyone. I'm Ade Chiffi, and I lead Global Technology Operations for CGI in the UK. In today's episode of Talking Transformation, we're exploring a theme that's becoming increasingly critical for every organisation undergoing digital change resilience because transformation today is not just about moving faster or becoming more efficient. It's about ensuring that as we modernise, we're also building environments that can withstand disruption, recover quickly, and continue to earn trust.
The question becomes, are we designing transformation with resilience in mind from the start? I'm delighted to be joined by two experts who bring different but really complementary perspectives. Piero Gallucci from Veeam, who works with organisations globally on data protection, recovery, and cloud strategies, and Morgan Withers from CGI, who brings deep experience in delivering complex transformation programs across multiple sectors. Piero, Morgan, welcome to the call. How are you?
[00:01:18] Piero Gallucci: Hello, Ade. Great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity to join you.
[00:01:22] Morgan Withers: Thanks, Ade. I've been following the series of interest, and thanks for having me on. It's really exciting to be here.
[00:01:27] Ade: We've been trying to get you both on for a little while, so [chuckles] glad we finally made that happen, both. I'm going to kick off, if that's okay. Piero, I'm going to bring you in first, if that's okay. I'm going to start with the bigger picture. It feels like the definition of risk in digital transformation has shifted quite significantly over the past few years. If we think about the geopolitical landscape, cyber threats, for example, from your perspective, what's changed? What are you seeing?
[00:01:52] Piero: Thanks, Ade. It's a great question. If we wind the clock back a few years, risk in digital transformation was mainly thought about in technical terms. It was cybersecurity, it was budget overruns, program delays, really important issues, but largely seen as things that the IT team has managed. If we come forward to today, that definition has shifted fundamentally. Risk now shows up as operational disruption, regulatory exposure, and ultimately, reputational damage.
That can really have a direct impact on an organisation's business, where customers lose trust in that organisation. Data now sits right at the centre of how organisations operate. It's underpinning services, the decisions, customer experiences, and increasingly, AI-driven processes. We must remember that data is the fuel that drives the AI algorithm. I think we're at a point now when these data systems fail, the impact is immediate.
It's also become very human. Employees can't do their jobs. Customers can't engage. They lose confidence. Communities feel that disruption. This is why resilience has moved firmly into the boardroom. I think because of that, boards are no longer asking whether technology is modern or innovative. They're asking if organisations can recover. Can they do it cleanly, quickly? Confidently. Resilience has now become a prerequisite for trust and not just an IT concern.
[00:03:26] Ade: You're totally right. It needs to be built in and designed from the start. You touched on there, brand, the front of the papers. It is absolutely a board-level conversation and discussion that we're seeing more and more. I completely agree. Morgan, if I bring you in on this, what are you seeing across clients now in particular, that whole risk profile?
[00:03:51] Morgan: I think very much the same as Piero was talking about. With the dawn of the current AI era that we're in, the pace of change is incredible. Companies are having to try and keep up for the sake of their business. At the same time, they obviously need to make sure that they're taking care of the security, taking care of the business risk that that's aligning to. It's absolutely critical having the right technologies and the right people in place to really drive that ability to continue your business journey.
[00:04:22] Ade: I agree. Let me take it down a level then. Morgan, I'm going to stay with you if that's okay. We're seeing many organisations accelerating their cloud adoption and modernisation programs across the piece. That doesn't always mean, though, things become more simple. Where do transformation programs typically run into challenge from your mind?
[00:04:48] Morgan: I think it's a really interesting topic when it comes to cloud because, obviously, the messaging is it's really simple to jump into a cloud, and you can click a button, and everything's easily deployed. I think what many companies are finding is that sometimes they need multiple clouds. Sometimes they need to keep some elements of their services on-premise for sovereignty reasons. It isn't just a one-click button. You need to take your time, you need to deploy, but you also need to do it in a way that's flexible enough to jump between clouds or between providers as well.
[00:05:17] Ade: Yes, very fair. Piero, I'm going to bring you in here. From your vantage point, then, across different organisations across the UK and wider, where do you see businesses not necessarily getting this right first time? What would you say is the key point there?
[00:05:35] Piero: Yes, I think if you start, most organisations, they're not starting with a blank slate. They're carrying years of legacy, system technical debt, operational complexity, and they're trying to bring it into these new environments. The result is data ends up distributed across all on-premise systems, multiple cloud platforms, SaaS applications, and obviously, now AI pipelines. Many of the security and data protection that organisations are using and have relied on for years were just not designed for this level of complexity or level of speed that we're now seeing, particularly with the arrival of AI.
[00:06:19] Ade: You're right to mention AI there. We're all seeing it in pretty much every conversation. Morgan, just working off the back of what Piero said there, let me flip this around. If an organisation is truly designing for resilience, what are the characteristics you would expect to see?
[00:06:39] Morgan: Through the transformation, obviously, we've talked a lot historically around agile processes and the need to continue to be agile in delivery. I think we're moving to a world where we need to become super agile, where as soon as there is a forecast view of something changing either in the market or within the business, being able to adjust that transformation roadmap, being able to look at other technologies.
We're seeing thousands of new AI technologies coming out every week, new startups. It's a very risky environment that we're working in. We've been working with obviously Piero and the team around our delivery of our AIOps Nova platform and the services that we've got to ensure that we have that flexibility in place for when our customers need to move or need to adjust their services.
[00:07:28] Ade: Piero, your take on the same question then? What does good look like from your angle, particularly the characteristics?
[00:07:34] Piero: I think it's building on some of the things I touched on. If we think about that fragmentation that's happened, different tools, different teams, different ownership models, it's how do we get beyond that so that when the pressure hits, there's a cyber incident or an outage, we can control the situation and recover quickly. That's really where organisations are striving to get to. When we're speaking to companies, that's where they're striving to get to. It's not a simple process.
[00:08:11] Ade: I agree. You mentioned process there. I cast my mind back to those early days when we got together, our planning very much ensured that we were anticipating what could go wrong and then, of course, planning for that appropriately. That was key. That was very key to those early days, and a lot of lessons from that. Piero, I'm going to come back to you now. We've been talking about what good looks like.
For leaders listening in today, what would be some practical advice that you would look to share? It could be from positive or experiences that haven't necessarily worked out first time. What would you share from a practical perspective?
[00:08:50] Piero: I'll try and lean on the positive. Actually, what you talked about there with our partnership, I think it's very much reflected there. The organisations that handle this really well, and there's a clear pattern here, they design resilience from the very start. You referred to this before. This is something I think we've done very well collectively. It's not just something that we bolt on once the transformation is complete. That doesn't work.
These strong, resilient organisations, they know where that critical data lives. Importantly, their teams are aligned, particularly their leadership teams, on what recovery actually means for the business. There's a shared accountability. There's a shared responsibility. That runs across technology, security, risk operations. You're removing these artificial boundaries, let's say. The security, resilience, governance, they're not treated as separate disciplines. They're brought together into this single foundation.
That does a number of things. It reduces friction. It speeds the response. Also, this is really important, it gives organisations the confidence to innovate rather than hold back, and I think that's a message that I really want to get out there, right? We want to partner with organisations to help their businesses move forward.
[00:10:16] Ade: I love that. You're creating that headroom and that confidence and security to allow organisations that have that headroom to innovate. That is critical. Morgan, your take on that?
[00:10:27] Morgan: Yes, I think for me, two key areas really around the advice piece is that it's really important now to take your time to make sure you've got the right plan. In doing that as well, make sure you've got the right experts involved in creation of that plan, but also trust them because the world is moving incredibly fast, and you need to be able to keep up with that pace.
[00:10:48] Ade: Now, both, I am going to do my best. I've been scribbling as we've been going. I'm going to do my best to wrap up a bit of a summary, and please come in with your final thoughts on whether you think this has captured it. What I've heard is resilience is no longer a back-office concern. It's now central to how organisation design and deliver, importantly, transformation. I've heard that moving to the cloud does not remove complexity, and in many cases, it increases the need for that careful design that we've talked about.
Importantly, Piero, you touched on that visibility, up to board level as well. That is critical. Ultimately, resilience is not about avoiding future failure. It's about being ready for it and recovering with confidence if there are situations. This is what resilience by design really means: building organisations that can adapt, respond, and continue to operate in the face of disruption. Piero, I'm going to start with you. Is that summing things up, and a couple of other extra points you'd like to close with?
[00:11:52] Piero: Yes, absolutely, Ade. I think the biggest shift that companies' leaders need to make is mindset rather than technical. I think there's a big change there. I think when you just step back through what you just summarised, what we talked about today, there is a common thread that's running through all of this, and it's trust. Resilience shouldn't be about being risk-averse. It should actually be about creating a foundation for growth and ultimately allowing organisations to drive forward. I think one thing we've not touched on is sovereignty, and that fits really naturally into this picture.
Just knowing where your data lives, how it's governed, that's a big area of focus for us now at Veeam Software. Going beyond the recovery, we're now spending a lot more time around the governance and really understanding a lot more about the data. This is particularly evident in conversations that we're having with regulated and public-facing organisations and environments.
Fundamentally, speed and stability should not be treated as opposites. Organisations that are going to lead and the ones that are going to move forward, they're going to be the ones that are able to do both. I'll say it again. Leadership plays a critical role in getting there. Maybe one line here. Resilience is a core design principle, not constraint.
[00:13:22] Ade: I love that. Very, very, very fair. In particular, there, you talked about that symbiotic relationship between trust, and I'm really pleased you mentioned sovereignty as well. We are seeing that. We are building that into services across the entire estate. Very, very fair. Morgan, your take?
[00:13:42] Morgan: Yes, just a really quick summary for me, I think, which is don't be afraid of the transformation. Embrace it because it will enable you to have a growing and expanding business.
[00:13:52] Ade: I love that. As Piero said as well, that gives you that headroom to keep innovating, doesn't it? Lean into it. Both, well, listen, thank you so much. I really enjoyed that. I hope you did as well. Thank you both very much.
[00:14:05] Morgan: Thank you.
[00:14:06] Piero: Thank you very much, Ade.
[00:14:07] Ade: Brilliant stuff. If you're listening and want to learn more, you can connect with us on LinkedIn or visit CGI's website to explore how we're really helping organisation design and deliver resilient, future-ready transformation. You can find Talking Transformation on all major podcast platforms, so please do subscribe and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for tuning in. Have a great rest of the day.
[00:14:30] [END OF AUDIO]
Listen now for insights on building successful transformation programmes – and explore how some of CGI’s solutions can help you build the visibility, control and adaptability needed to operate with confidence:
