Our FOSS community drives open source adoption within the group: Zeiss' Anupam Chaturvedi

Zeiss, a German technology company known for its precision optics and optoelectronics. Founded in 1846, Zeiss, today operates across four key segments: Industrial quality and research, offering precision metrology and microscopy solutions for industries like automotive and aerospace; medical technology (ZEISS Meditec), providing advanced ophthalmic systems, and surgical devices for eye care professionals; consumer markets, for camera lenses, binoculars, and eyeglass lenses; and semiconductor manufacturing technology (SMT), which supplies crucial optical components for lithography systems in chip production, working closely with ASML.

Working horizontally across these segments is the Zeiss Digital Partners that serve the digital needs. It is a global team of about 1,300 people spread across Germany, Hungary, India, and China. The India Centre, led by Anupam Chaturvedi, who is the Head of ZEISS Digital Partners (ZDP) India, is a rapidly growing. TechCircle interviewed Chaturvedi to understand the workings and operation of the India digital arm.

Edited excerpts:

What are the key responsibilities of ZDP India?

Our teams work closely with all business units on diverse digital initiatives. While Zeiss Corporate IT (CIT) manages core IT infrastructure, platforms like SAP and Salesforce, and cybersecurity, ZDP focuses on digital innovation, customer experience, and data-driven transformation. 

Within ZDP, we have four key units: data and analytics, which drives data engineering, analytics, and AI; digital customer experience, which manages platforms such as zeiss.com and our e-commerce sites to ensure a seamless and consistent brand experience; software development and cloud excellence center, which delivers end-to-end software solutions and manages global cloud platforms (with the Cloud Center primarily based in India); and the technology accelerator, our newest division, which leads the responsible adoption of Generative AI across Zeiss.

Since you are catering to digital tech needs of different segments, how do you measure the success of your services and innovation?

When we started Zeiss Digital Partners in India, we were very clear about our approach. Even before the formation of Zeiss Digital Partners, Zeiss had development teams in India, and our focus was never just on cost arbitrage, but on building deep capabilities and competencies that could be leveraged globally.

Therefore, when we look at return on investment, we don’t measure it purely in terms of cost savings. Instead, we focus on the value created through capabilities built in India. A strong example of this is our Global Cloud Excellence Center (GCEC), which we established in 2022. In just two years, the GCEC has grown into a team of about 30 experts who manage Zeiss’s cloud platforms worldwide.

Today, this team handles the entire cloud infrastructure and operations for various business units including health data, enterprise data, and multiple cloud-based applications like my.zeiss.com. They oversee site reliability engineering, infrastructure management, and 24/7 operations, ensuring that all Zeiss applications deliver high availability, strong performance, and a seamless customer experience. 

Is the India cloud centre one of its kind for Zeiss globally?

Yes, it is a one-of-its-kind initiative, established in 2022, and is entirely operated from India. While the workforce is based in India, the governance model is jointly managed, and I lead it along with key stakeholders from Germany.

The scope of our work has been steadily expanding. Every day, we receive new requests from different Zeiss business units. With four major divisions to support, we are continuously evolving and creating an annual roadmap to prioritize and absorb as much as possible in a structured way.

In the initial phase, we supported one major platform and around 12 applications; we now support around 30 applications across various businesses, along with two large-scale data platforms: one focused on enterprise data and the other on health data. 

Most of our partnerships are with Microsoft, and consequently, the majority of our global applications run on the Azure Cloud. Our GCEC has also been built around this ecosystem – developing deep expertise in Azure-based capabilities to manage and scale Zeiss’s cloud operations worldwide.

What role does AI play at ZDP India?

We have been using AI at Zeiss for quite some time now, particularly in our manufacturing and medical systems. Over the years, we have implemented various machine learning and deep learning techniques across our products, in areas like quality assurance and defect detection within manufacturing. 

In the Vision Care segment, we use AI in customer-facing devices as well. A good example is our VisualFit device, which uses AI models to recommend the most suitable frames based on an individual’s facial structure. 

With the advent of Generative AI, we are now taking AI adoption beyond product development teams and bringing it to every function across the organization from sales and marketing to HR, learning and development, and business operations.

We have since established a dedicated GenAI unit, which focuses on enabling broader adoption through secure, internal platforms. One key example is our in-house Zeiss GPT+, a private, secure version of GPT hosted on our own servers to ensure that company data remains protected. Alongside this, we conduct extensive training and learning programs to help employees understand and use AI responsibly.

Zeiss is a big proponent of open source software. How has the company contributed to and leveraged this ecosystem?

We have a global FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) community under our Open Source Program Office, which is part of the Digital organization. This community operates across geographies including Germany, India, and other regions. It focuses on driving open source adoption within the group through a structured, three-level approach.

The first level is compliance. Here, the focus is on creating awareness about open source usage within the company while managing associated risks. This includes ensuring license compliance, identifying vulnerabilities, and guiding teams on mitigation measures.

The second level is facilitation. At this stage, we actively encourage collaboration with the wider open source community. Employees are supported to contribute to projects and acknowledge the value open source brings to innovation and development.

The third level where we participate in and lead open source projects, contributing to communities that align with our business and technology goals.

Our open source community has a well-defined governance model. There is a central Open Source Office at the corporate level, and each business unit  such as Digital, IT, Meditech, or Microscopy has its own coordinators and experts who work with the central FOSS team. Depending on the project’s nature, certain contributions can be made independently, while others follow approval processes based on their potential business impact.

We also have our own open source contributions. For example, the Microscopy unit developed litCZI, a C library for reading and writing CZI image formats, and the Meditech unit contributes to Zephyr RTOS. These projects exemplify how we not only use open source internally but also give back to the community globally.