Modern Technologies Need Modern Solutions
Over the past two decades, the Indian ICT industry has witnessed a phenomenal growth and rapid evolution of technologies. If it was proliferation of one-way pager in early 90’s, today it is technologies such as web, mobile, social media messaging, video conferencing, IP based unified communications capabilities and AI driven chat-bots. Earlier this year, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, 5G was discussed in combination with AI and IoT. The potent combination of these technologies will empower industries to truly embrace digital transformation in the years ahead.
With the promise of unprecedented speed, ultra-low latency, innovative network slicing capability, and unmatched reliability; advent of 5G is poised to have a material impact on widespread success and proliferation of industrial IoT frameworks. As per Gartner forecast, IoT will account for 1/4th of the global 41 million 5G connections in 2024. A wide range of IoT applications will be empowered by 5G backbone augmented using AI driven algorithms which can deliver the promise of a smart, ultra-fast, automated and data intelligence driven use cases across industries and ultimately realize the vision of Industry 4.0.
However, the data consumption and creation has increased dramatically. According to IDC, the collective sum of the world’s data will grow from 33ZB in 2018 to a 175ZB by 2025, for a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 61 per cent. Enterprises need to make the most of information technology—to engage with customers in real-time, maximise return on IT investments and improve operational efficiency. It requires a deep understanding of what is happening in their infrastructure to predict and stay abreast of trends, as well as rely on automation, so that the staff is free to focus on strategic endeavours. The challenge for organisations is to access the analytics and leverage it as part of an automated, continuous improvement process that keeps IT running at peak performance. Business leaders recognise that their industries and markets are either being disrupted or have the potential to be disrupted by nimble digital players. To remain competitive, organisations should continue to transform digitally. Businesses must explore new and improved ways to leverage their most valuable asset—their data.
Digital Transformation isn’t just about machines and software— it is about creating and supporting a responsive and agile organisation that can thrive in today’s disruptive digital economy. World's largest Global System integrator (GSI) organizations have vast knowledge-base and intellectual properties (IP) across the ICT ecosystem of products, platforms and technologies as well as have deep expertise around integration and deployment of complex technology architectures. These unique strengths naturally qualify them to be the best contenders who can provide end to end services around this massive convergence opportunity. Among these players, especially, the communications service providers are betting big on these 3 emerging technologies as their traditional revenue streams from voice and data have shrunk in the recent past due to intense competition, commodification of services, increasing spectrum costs and price pressures (decreasing ARPU).
The enablers include an ultra-fast & low latency communications network, AI driven edge analytics, embedded IoT sensors and cloud data services. This convergence of the trinity will hold the key in delivering a unique technology framework which can be termed as the trinity convergence framework which can be readily consumed by enterprises across industries to design and deliver a range of smart and efficient, new-age solutions and services for industrial use cases.
Today, majority of ICT players (i.e. communications service providers, IT service providers, software makers and OEMs) and consumers have reached a stage where they are in a race to ride the much
awaited 5G, AI and IoT waves to gain from the first mover advantage and find avenues for generating new revenue streams. However, many customer organizations rely on a heterogeneous mix of vendors, products, and solutions—both legacy and modern offerings—to address their business challenges. The valuable data produced by these siloed, patchworked and legacy tools and systems is ever-increasing. Organizations must address the proliferation of data by adopting the best dataops practices while digitally transforming themselves.
This provides Channel Partners a unique opportunity to leverage their understanding of the local market and customer requirements to enable their customers to be future-ready. Customers who engage with trusted, accredited and certified channel partners have the added benefit of immediate deployment and better after-sales service. Channel partners and distributors also play a critical role in ensuring that a customer’s complex requirements are fulfilled in line with their unique business and process guidelines. Channel partners and distributors can leverage their strong relationship with the customers to uncover additional business opportunities as their customers grow and transform.
To conclude, the modern infrastructure powers the digital enterprise with technology that is highly adaptable and scalable to meet today’s, as well as tomorrow’s, competitive demands. The modern infrastructure optimizes systems, software and operational processes to catalyze digital transformation. In modern process management, execution is based on crafting best practices and having the right technology. It allows systems and software to be deployed and configured to address users’ needs automatically and seamlessly. With automated process management, expert staff are free to research new technologies and architect the solutions that will accelerate innovation and drive the organization forward. However, without an effective way to aggregate the complete set of modern infrastructure solutions for digital transformation, organizations are left relying on short-sighted tactics, longer time-to-value and a backlog of incomplete tasks.
