Deutsche Bank Americas CIO: Silicon Valley Lab Tech Under Review

Deutsche Bank announced its plans to launch three innovation labs in June 2015 as part of its Strategy 2020, during which the German bank will spend €1 billion ($1.13 billion) on digital initiatives over a five-year span.

Less than a year later, all three labs, which are located in Berlin, London and Silicon Valley, are fully operational. Phil Gilligan, CIO of the Americas and global head of DB Labs, spoke with WatersTechnology about the launch of the Silicon Valley lab last week.

Focus

While none of the labs are required to only focus on specific technologies, each region has its strengths and weaknesses. In Silicon Valley, the focus will be on application programming interfaces (APIs), in addition to what Gilligan calls "software-defined everything in the infrastructure." Improving on the bank's infrastructure is a major focus of Strategy 2020, and one for which Gilligan feels there are plenty of opportunities in the Valley.

Software-defined networking, load balancing and security fall under that umbrella, and the bank is already in the late stages of valuation of two technologies sourced from Silicon Valley in the software-defined space. Although Gilligan declines to provide details, but he says he believes the bank will eventually adopt both.

"This is about execution, outcomes and implementation, not about having a nice place that someone can come and visit," Phil Gilligan, Deutsche Bank

Data is also a focal point for the lab—especially around management, marshalling, analytics, cognitive learning, machine learning and ultimately artificial intelligence, says Gilligan.

In addition to these areas of focus, the lab is open to developing other types of technology that have use-cases, Gilligan says. "We have a very broad net here because of the diversity of the Silicon Valley ecosystem," Gilligan says. "We don't want to limit ourselves and walk past innovative, creative, game-changing, disruptive technologies because we are only focused on something specific."

Future

As for the future of all three labs, Gilligan says Deutsche Bank is on track with its initial projections. In June, a person familiar with the labs told WatersTechnology the bank was hoping to implement technology from 50 startups within the first year. The bank also publicly stated it wanted to evaluate over 500 ideas during the initial year.

According to Gilligan, the bank is well within those metrics. More than 500 companies have already been evaluated, Gilligan says, and the goal going forward is to analyze at least 100 companies in more detail, 50 of which will make it into a deep-engineering stage.

Gilligan says the actual number of adoptions remains to be seen, but it's more about trying to get as many new technologies into the bank as possible.

"This is about the very careful pinpointing of things that can make a material difference to a particular line of business. Obviously, the more we have the better, but we are focused on quality versus quantity," Gilligan says. "You have to have the quantity in the pipeline coming in. You've got to filter that down aggressively to the small number of high-quality solutions and inject those into the businesses and incubate and nurture those through a multi-year relationship."

With the success of the initial labs, it's easy to speculate about further growth. Gilligan says there are no further plans for expansion at this point. And while he mentions there is the possibility of adding a few more labs, he says wants to avoid adding too many and losing focus.

Gilligan already has teams in Frankfurt, Bangalore, India, and New York. As for other regions, there is Singapore, the top digital ecosystem in Asia, according to Gilligan, and Tel Aviv, which is known for its strength in the security space.

"Yes, we have high aspirations, but we're very serious about this. This is about execution, outcomes and implementation, not about having a nice place that someone can come and visit," Gilligan says. "We're focused on outcomes, and I believe everybody understands that. We're very pleased with where we are. We have a lot of work to do, but we believe we are very well positioned"