Over the past few years, there have been various emerging technology advancements creating disruption in the enterprise business. It’s likes of Cloud, AI, RPA, IoT and many other technology trends which brought digital experience to business and has been ruling the enterprise space in terms of innovations.

These trends are becoming the fundamental building blocks for enterprises to modernize their ecosystem, transforming the way business processes are laid down and impacting the business strategies. Technology landscape always continues to evolve while its being adopted. In the enterprise world, it is not just the technologies but their innovative use that defines business success and, in turn, the success of any technology.

The simplistic definition of digitalization for any enterprise – channeling current data to make use of it to take better decisions, having intelligent interfaces for better user experience and user reach, to capture meaningful data in an effortless manner, and use further acquired data to make better decisions. I do believe technologies described further in this article, are those which no enterprise can ignore any further.

“Cognitive Computing technologies can analyze growing data and handle the complexities in the relationship built across this data into information and the data volume that is getting generated”

Cognitive Computing

Cognitive Computing defines a broader concept and a set of technologies encompassing Machine Learning (ML), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), various bots, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

With the current momentum of capturing data and processing the same, there would be need for interpreting and using it for well-informed and intelligent information. This is where cognitive computing would play a pivotal role. Today, traditional analysis tools can provide decisions on data but are not able to handle the complexities and the data volume that is getting gathered every day in an enterprise from various sources and in various formats.

Cognitive Computing technologies can analyze growing data and handle the complexities in the relationship built across this data into information and the data volume that is getting generated. It can understand and learn the business processes which can be further optimized. It leads to improved customer interactivity, operation efficiency and enhanced data analytics. Enterprises would be looking at consolidating the data gathered into meaningful information in the coming years and would be a primary focus for many.

Intelligent User Interfaces

Newer methods of interaction are being introduced which move from the conventional keyboard, mouse to touchscreens and voice commands. Chatbots are already getting their place for automated interaction. Currently with technologies such as Alexa and Siri, voice enabled applications are available with limited functionality but with the newer interacting landscapes like voice recognition, human gestures, face recognition and other intelligent input methods would provide avenues to have complex but intelligent interactions and build new application around them.

With these additional inputs combined with the cognitive computing, it would provide a greater customer experience in everyday activities. The way consumer space would be communicating with the application and access the data would see change and would in turn help the enterprise business to position themselves in a better customer centric experience or in other words, CX. This would aid in the journey of digital transformation.

Advanced Networking/5G

The primary focus of the industry has been on innovating the software and application or virtual space. Recently, in the infrastructure space, hardware, new multi-rate switches, and next-generation Wi-Fi infrastructure has come up. Also, 5G - fifth generation cellular network technology is around. These are likely to be used by enterprises as these emerging technologies provide AI and ML capabilities. This makes them run more efficiently and protect enterprises from any vulnerable cyber-attacks by providing full visibility onto device activity and by taking remedial action based on behavioral device and network analysis. New Wi-Fi infrastructure and 5G cellular technology will give new dimensions to industrial IoT, autonomous computing, biometric technology, and various other IoT based applications.

IoT                           

Internet of Things (IoT) continues to grow as various devices have sensors and can either process or emit the data on the network. IoT has started making its presence in the business process and into our lives where most of the devices are interconnected. From consumer devices for homes to public spaces, IoT is bringing an increasing number of devices (things) and data it provides, would overlap each day, into complex relations. In coming years, Industrial IoT will also see growth in its usage across various industries and in use of making ‘smart’ cities. Advanced routers with better security features and encryptions are being made available in the market. With features like DNS, data encryption, firewall and anti-malware/ anti-virus protection inbuilt into routers, consumer networking space would become less vulnerable and allow to maintain the data security and privacy.

With cognitive computing and networking capabilities combined with IoT devices, it will start making its mark in industrial space.

Edge Computing

Cloud computing has been revolutionizing the mechanisms in which the data is being stored and accessed by the businesses. It has enabled them to store, process and access it from any part of the world and from any devices and not confined to offices. This provided new dimensions for creating business application or how business is conducted. This traditional cloud computing had challenges in meeting the network requirement, as more and more people/devices would connect to the internet, and will generate more data. Edge computing addresses this latency issue by bringing the processing as close to the devices as possible. In certain cases, it would exist on the device which would be part of the network, so the processing of data would be geographically close to the device as possible.

Going back to my simplistic definition of digitalization – my recommendation to the fence sitters would be to not waste any time; and start assessing their current data unless none exist. In a world where ‘Me Too’ in business has made billions, there is no harm in learning from pioneers. If the business is still doing well without looking at digitalization, you should be happy as you have something which customer loves; but this may not last long. On the other hand, with a great product and service in hand, embarking on digitalization will surely multiply the goodness of products and services.