Ep 50: How Western Digital Balances AI, Automation, and 24/7 Operations with SVP and CISO Sesh Tirumala

‍Evan: Hi there, and welcome to Enterprise AI Innovators, a show where top technology executives share how AI is transforming the enterprise. In each episode, guests uncover the real-world applications of AI, from improving products and optimizing operations to redefining the customer experience.  I'm Evan Reiser, the founder and CEO of Abnormal Security.

‍Saam: I'm Saam Motamedi, a general partner at Greylock Partners.

 Evan: Today on the show, we’re bringing you a conversation with Sesh Tirumala, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Western Digital

With over 51,000 employees, 13,000 patents, and $13 billion in annual revenue, Western Digital is one of the world's largest data storage manufacturers. From enterprise data centers to high performance hard drives for creative professionals, Western Digital has been a storage pioneer for over 50 years. 

In this conversation, Sesh offers insights on practical applications of AI in enterprise productivity, the critical role of IT in global manufacturing, and the future of IT architecture to enable business transformation.

First of all, you know, thank you so much sincerely for joining us today. You know, like I said, before we started recording, Saam and I were looking for this conversation, um, you know, you've been a CIO at really many notable companies, Anaplan, PagerDuty, now Western Digital. Do you want to share a little about kind of your career and how you ended up where you are today?

Sesh: So I, you know, I started off as a EE electrical engineer. So that's what I did at school. My first job out of college was in ASEA Brown Bowery. It's a, it's an electrical engineering giant. A Swedish and Swiss based company. Uh, so again, I was a design engineer, uh, you know, designing microprocessor based technology for really power grid protection. Right. So, so that's what I started off with. 

It was hardcore design for manufacturability is where I started. And, uh, this was in Bangalore in India. And I traveled quite a bit in the Far East, Southeast Asia, supporting a lot of customers. And then in the mid nineties, there was this big trend around, you know, the US and software and software was the cool thing. So, so I, I made a, you know, career leap of faith and change from, uh, a hardware microprocessor EE background to software and started off with Oracle consulting in, uh, In the East Coast, right? But I used a lot of my manufacturing background to build on top of the transformation and innovation and solving problems with systems is always appealing. Right? 

So, so over the time, I've grown through the ranks. Uh, supported manufacturing, sales, e commerce, customers, and then, you know, uh, slowly brick by brick, you keep learning from your experience and, and reward for good work is more work. Right? So, so that's where I ended up. 

Saam: If it's Monday morning, right every week and you wake up and, and, and get to work, like what, what's most top of mind and what do you most look forward to in your current role?

Sesh: Yeah, it's, it's funny. My, my day is Sunday. It's actually starts on a Sunday, right? Because we got so many factories in, in Asia, right? Like a lot of our hard disk drive is manufactured in Malaysia, Thailand. Likewise, our flash is, you know, built in Penang, Malaysia, and then in Shanghai. So between Japan, China, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines. If you look at our geo time clock, it starts on a Sunday. So for me, what's most important, honestly, as a CIO is the heartbeat of always on operations, right? 

Are your systems humming? Are your factory systems humming? Can you process your orders? Are shipments happening? So again, just to keep a, Keep a bird's eye view in terms of the key operational aspects of that. IT never comes in the way of revenue impact and customer sat, right? So, so that's, that's what is top of mind for me is first is then if you do a good job and perform, I call it the perform bucket, right? And you meet your SLAs, you meet your metrics, you're on top of your game, then you get a seat at the table to have a transformation discussion and an agenda, right? But if you don't do the basics, then you don't even have a seat at the table.

Evan: So I think, you know, most, most of your peers I talked to are almost in total alignment that AI is going to transform many things you just described. Although I think there's a, there's a pretty significant cohort of that group that would say, Hey, but that's like three, four years down the road, right? There's a, you know, a lot of these technologies are unproven. Like we got to wait to see what happens. Um, but, but also I know there's, there's many examples where people in more kind of localized ways are really getting value out of, you know, some of these new AI technologies. 

Where are you seeing kind of, you know, these technologies apply to drive an impact to either, you know, how you run the business or even maybe some of the products that you, you know, product and services you, you do deliver for customers? 

Sesh: If I look at my day to day, right, the number of meetings I'm in, the number of calls I'm in, right? So even simple thing like a note taker. That's an example, right? It's funny. Even when you go to the doctor's office. Now you have an assistant where the doctor doesn't have to go back and type all the notes that they just had, right? It's all automated. So automated. So likewise, I think in the work life to a lot of it is many of us spend time in meetings and, you know, you're trying to catch up. You can't be in all meetings. So, so just having that ability to, uh, key points made, note taking, summarizing, synthesizing actions, it's just a productivity, uh, enhancer, right? For you and your chief of staff and your whatever the team members are. So, so we see a lot of traction there and it doesn't matter, right? We are a Microsoft shop. So we use a lot of copilot features, et cetera. 

So, and then I also mentioned about search and find ability. We're doing a minor proof concept for about 400 users, and we're using a technology called Glean here.

Right? So so again, our, our purpose there is, you know, find ability, right? Like I mentioned, simple things like your pay stubs or, you know, who's a sales rep that covers account a, or, you know, what's the contact of so and so. So just that, uh, it's funny because when you open up such a search and find ability, it also exposes things that are not supposed to be found. So, so then you go back and say, Hey, now we need to tighten our policies to make sure that we don't get to see Evans information and compromise our PII, etc. Right? So, so we're doing some work around search, findability, better collaboration, etc. 

Saam: When I talk to other technology leaders, I think there's a little bit of disappointment in like, Hey, yeah, like the co pilot thing is really, really interesting and it looks cool and we use it once or twice.

Like, it's not really changed how I work. Like, you know, I think back to your pointer on PowerPoint slides and QBRs, like none of that's really changed. And so. Are there examples you've seen where you look at a business process, a function, and you're like, this is radically different now because of copilot or because of one of these other tools.

Like, I'm wondering if there's one that you could point to. 

Sesh: Yeah. I don't think there's any one silver bullet, right? Because you know, in the, in the world of your enterprise, again, I go back to, it's less about these technologies, but it's about, Hey, can we, I mean, I generally prescribe the crawl, walk, run, right? And, and you don't want to be too invested too soon, but you want to get your feet wet and then you know how you scale something, right? 

So to me, I think, you know, if, if you're a heavy meeting company and culture, right, having things like co pilot and summarize key things, I think is super important. Great. On the other hand, if you're like, I'm a young startup, meetings are a death in terms of my productivity and my innovation, and I want more open, collaborative culture, less meetings, then I think it's a different paradigm. Right? So, so to me, I think it goes back to industry, the global nature. And then when you're a global company, you can't be in all meetings. It's impossible. Right? 

So, so to me, I think it just helps the organization scale. Um, and there's also a cultural element because we all like to be having this fear of missing out and we try to attend all meetings and, and what if you told your staff, you don't need to, and here's just a snippet that you need to know that happened.

And 90 percent of the meetings are generally non action driven right there and FYI and, and, and boring and monotonous. So, so again, you can spare a lot of people from pain. So I see value in that, um, because of the heavy meeting culture. 

Evan: Do you mind talking about maybe ways that, um, you know, You know, you know, outside of kind of like the latest Gen I, Gen AI way, but other ways are using kind of data science or machine learning or AI technologies to help improve or manage kind of manufacturing or some of your customer relationships or the employee experience.

So, um, I mean, just saying, I know there's a lot of stuff in there, right? But any kind of notable things you call out that maybe the average listener might be really surprised to hear some of the ways that, you know, Western Digital is going to deliver some of those innovations. 

Sesh: So one of the big things that on the AIML story is around, you know, uh, our test escapes, right? Like how many, if, let's say you're producing 100 widgets on a line, you know, you want, you want 100 percent pass rate.

You don't want any defects right on the line. Uh, so again, how do you predict quality failures, uh, test escapes, uh, manufacturing defects, even visual inspection, right? So, because, you know, you could have your design and a former engineer or a, or a mechanical engineer in, in the U S and the factory is in Asia. And then how do you use imaging and video imaging and things of that nature to potentially visually inspect quality issues. 

And then also our business is a very capital intensive business, right? So, you know, sometimes you can't afford to have things that are idle. So again, machine idle time, throughput, a lot of time, defect prediction, visual imaging. Um, you know, predictability off potential failures. So I think a lot of this is what happens in the shop flow. And again, I'm no expert, but my team, we have a data science team and analytics team that really runs a lot of the algorithms on lots of data. And on a cloud based architecture, because again, you're bringing back data, the edge into the center, computing it, writing it back to the edge.

So again, the just the streaming, the movement, the ingestion. It's a pretty fairly complex data landscape and architecture. But again, that's how we keep our supply chain humming and efficient, which is why to me, there's a lot of computer science and algorithms and math that goes in, right?

Uh, same thing. A lot of us have sustainability goals for the future. So, knowing what your customer bought, how do we recycle products, how do we repurpose old drives, how do we erase data in a, in a conscious manner, uh, and, and then again, put it back in terms of either refurbish or repair or, you know, in a different market that you can sell, uh, devices.

So again, I think a lot of these things in terms of new versus, uh, You know, um, aging infrastructure, install base, you need to really look at it holistically. Uh, so, so again, as a part of my team and the factory operations, there's, there's a ton that goes on in that space. 

Evan: So you, you've been at Western Digital for, you know, over, you know, been over a year now. Uh, I mean, almost a year and a half. Um, was there anything you encountered, right? Kind of, uh, you know, since you joined, you're like, wow, I can't believe we do that.

Sesh: Yeah, no, I think this whole factory automation, because again, if I compare in contrast to my prior experience, we were a very outsourced manufacturing, right, where we basically had like the Jables and the Flextronics do all the bulk of manufacturing and all you gave them was a demand signal and what to build.

But I think here, what caught me was we own our factories and we're responsible for the digital twin and the layout and looking at the efficiency, the robotic process automation and all that. And to me, the factory, uh, you know, automation in terms of how material moves, uh, you know, how the lines are efficient, how we can predict in terms of supply demand matching, uh, how do we look for failures?

Um, I, I just, and then the whole data ingestion, data movement, data engineering, and the data architecture is just amazing in terms of what was built. Right. So that to me was definitely a wow. Yeah. That I totally underestimated.

Saam: It feels like every year is a decade's worth of progress. And so, like, when you put on. You're ahead of like future looking five years from now, seven years from now, 10 years from now, what do you think is going to be possible in the context of like a business like Western Digital? I don't know if there's one or two things that you think like will look, well, if you told me now it feels like magic, but you know, five, seven, 10 years from now, we'll feel like they're the bread and butter of either how the business is run or how your products are delivered and, uh, built and delivered to customers.

Sesh: If I fast forward and work my way backwards. Do I, do I have an IT architecture, right? That truly can talk about predictability where my sales data, my procurement data, my order data, my contract data are all so well connected, that I'm able to tell you, like, Hey, sales rep, take this action because company ABC is going to jump. Right. And so, so that to me is one simple use case. 

The second thing is again, information and find abilities at your fingertips. And you really don't need to call some I. T. professional to get your, uh, that you, that to get a problem solved. So really frictionless, no touch with I. T., smaller I. T. staff, right. Even within Western Digital, I still think, you know, as a percentage of revenue and productivity, we have some ways to go. 

And lastly, I don't know, you know, I'm, I'm an old guy and I've done a lot of ERP implementations and ERP is still a beast, right? Uh, and, and not, and it costs a lot of money. It's hard to change. And a lot of your crown jewels of data sit there. So to me, the other thing is, can you really make ERP light? Well, it does what it needs to do, like process a sales order, fulfill a customer demand. It does the basics. Uh, strong and does it well, but are there things that we can take on top of it that we can innovate that really optimizes for the customer life cycle, right?

Uh, and, and the employee life cycle to me, I always look at it strategy as one bookend being your customer and the other bookend being employees, right? And, and then when you take a sales rep, you know, in some cases, the sales rep is a proxy for the customer because that's the last mile. And we need to think in arming and personalizing stuff for the rep in order for them to have an effective conversation with the customer.

So back, back to your original question, it's all digitized, you know, you're managing by exception, not by every transaction and, and, and really you're, you know, there's, there's no touches, there's no failure rate and you have a lot more, you know, predictive stuff. And, and hopefully from a, Environment and, um, you know, uh, environment and sustainability perspective that we really don't have data centers and, uh, you know, uh, in the sense that I mean, it's the other extreme, right? But we're able to leverage a lot of it as a service, uh, and not really have a lot of servers and, uh, an infrastructure, uh, because it all adds to the overall, you know, cost and carbon footprint. And so you've got to also be environmental friendly, right? So, so that's super important. 

Evan: Are there anything like you're hearing from your peers? I want to ask you kind of like the other side of that, maybe where you're feeling a little more bearish. Um, are there kind of, I'm sure you, you, you've heard things from your peers where they're saying, Oh, I think, you know, AI would be a great thing for go this.

And you're probably sitting there saying, I don't know. I don't think that's actually like. You know, the right place to focus or it's not the right maturity. Like, you know, what, what would be the kind of the top things that maybe you would kind of advise maybe to your peers to like, wait a little bit or don't focus there, kind of, where do you think maybe AI won't have the impact that most people expect?

Sesh: So, the way I would look at it is come at it from a people process and systems perspective, right?

Firstly, create a governance structure where. You don't have everyone doing willy nilly within the company and organization. So stand up a governance structure and have key reps from the key functions that can represent and bring in, you know, not for bureaucracy sake, but really to really be the spokesperson and evangelize things. So you need a governance structure. 

The second thing is, I think you need to jump in and not wait, right? Because if you wait for too long, then you're going to be irrelevant. So, so it's important to get your teams to. you know, test out of the box solutions. Like I said, we already named a few solutions, but at the same time also look at, you know, like the data bricks of the world, the snowflakes of the world, et cetera. Right. Because I think data to me is going to be the ultimate differentiator, both from a cost and connective tissue perspective. So again, you need to, and then you can't again, and when it comes to data, there's things like sovereignty, security. Um, you know, where do you put your data comes into play, right? So, so you need, you need the security officer and your chief legal officer tied at the hip, creating the right policy, right? 

So have a technology track, have a governance. And then have a procurement security and legal team advising in terms of the dues and the guardrails, right, in such a way that we are conscious in the approach that we're taking and look at the maximizing of business cases.

And I'm always biased in any company, right between sales and R and D, they make up 55, 60 percent of the company. So I'm always looking at use cases that can give back a sales rep one hour a week or more and likewise to a developer, right? In terms of focused on architecture and design, instead of doing mundane coding that somebody else can help digitize. Right? So, to me, anything for engineering, anything for sales. And that connective tissue of sales and support, right, having that closed loop, I think is super important.

Evan: Appreciate you sharing. Okay, so the last kind of couple minutes here, we'd like to do a lightning round. So kind of looking for like the one tweet answers. I know these questions are very hard to answer and like the, you know, whatever, I don't know what the latest is 280 characters or whatever it is, but kind of going for like a, you know, the punchier it takes.

So we've got like five or six questions. Saam, you want to kick it off? 

Saam: Yeah, absolutely. So to start off, Sesh, how do you think companies should measure the success of a CIO? 

Sesh: How are you doing for top line and how are you doing for bottom line? 

Evan: What's one piece of advice you wish someone told you when you first became a CIO?

Sesh: Learn more about the security posture. 

Saam: What do you think most IT leaders underestimate about the opportunity with AI? 

Sesh: The lack of data maturity or preparation. 

Evan: Maybe switching gears to the more personal side. Is there a book you've read that's had a big impact on you? And if so, I'd love to hear which one and why. 

Sesh: You know, there's this book called, uh, Driving Digital Strategy by Sunil Gupta. You know, I mean, it's reimagining businesses and processes. I find that to be very useful every time I read.

Uh, you know, I love that book. 

Saam: And maybe staying on the personal side, um, what's an upcoming new technology, and it doesn't have to be related to AI, that you're personally most excited about? 

Sesh: I'd love something where, you know, I'm an architectural guy, right? And I'll always be asking questions and I like simple visuals. I hate PowerPoint slides that are a thousand words long. So to me, a cool technology would be like, Hey, here's what I'm thinking as a high level business process. And it just gives me like a framework rather than me having to go and find a framework to build a slide off, a slide from. That'll be a cool technology.

Saam: That, yeah, agreed. 

Evan: Maybe the last question here, um, what do you think will be true about technology's future impact on the world that most people consider science fiction, and kind of looking for like the contrarian view, right, what do you think is going to happen that most people don't, right? I was trying to figure out kind of where you maybe have a different perspective than, you know, the average listener or average, you know, CIO, CTO.

Sesh: I think it's about a meeting, you know, meeting experience, given we are such a globally distributed workforce, right? How do you assimilate without having the need to travel and as though you're all in the same room and collaborating with 3D? And I think that to me, it'll be super cool if you make it happen.

It just breaks all barriers. So, 

Evan: yeah, it definitely changes a lot of things. And, um, it feels like with the way the world's kind of being increasingly like globalized, right. And digitized, that's, uh, that's going to be a key need for the future. 

Sesh: Yeah. 

Evan: Sesh, thank you so much for, uh, making time to chat with us today. Really enjoyed the conversation and looking forward to chatting again soon. 

Saam: Thanks a lot, Sesh. 

Sesh: Yeah, no, thank you guys. Really appreciate it. It was fun.

Evan: That was Sesh Tirumala, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Western Digital.

‍Saam: Thanks for listening to Enterprise AI Innovator. I’m Saam Motamedi, a general partner at Greylock Partners.

‍Evan: And I’m Evan Reiser, the CEO and founder of Abnormal Security. Please be sure to subscribe, so you never miss an episode. You can find more great insights on enterprise AI transformation at enterprisesoftware.blog

‍Saam: This show is produce by Josh Meer.

See you next time!