seven trends that will accelerate the digital economy in 2017 and beyond
TRANSCRIPT
Seven Trends that will accelerate the Digital Economy in 2017 & beyond
Dileep Srinivasan
Founder & Chief Digital Strategist
Powerfluence
Dileep Srinivasan is a Leader with a strong ability to build teams, profitable businesses and harness talent in todays digital economy. He is recognized as a Visionary and Thought Leader in guiding organizations in their digital journey by assisting them in setting transformation roadmaps to ensure competitive advantage and differentiation.
He is very well versed in adopting technologies like Social, Mobile, Big Data, Analytics, Cloud and IoT into business solutions that accelerate Superior Customer Experiences or bring in newer areas of Revenue Generation to companies.
Dileep along with his partners runs an Advisory company Powerfluence which helps organization to rapidly scale success in their Digital journey. He advises SME companies in Digital Transformation and success in their digital journey. He also is advising some leading IT firms in setting up their Digital practice.
Dileep is on the advisory board of a few companies, that include RRS Info Solutions (www.hobbyseekho.com , Monjin (www.monjin.com), Powerfluence (India) Pvt. Ltd. & Powerfluence LLC. (www.powerfluence.com). He is also the Chief Digital Strategist at Marlabs Inc. (www.marlabs.com).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Dileep Srinivasan
In a similar trends report last year, I had presented trends in technology that will shape up 2016. Looking back at this, I am pleased to see that the pattern in almost all cases did follow the predictions.
So, as 2016 has come to a close, most enterprises have clearly embraced Digital as a key transformation initiative. Many companies have realized the power of analytics and the need for Data Scientists to uncover patterns to better improve customer experiences, operational efficiencies and introduce new revenue models.
As we usher in 2017, enterprises have bigger challenges, more powerful technologies and most importantly more disrupters in their competitive space. Enterprises will need to up their game and be more agile if they want be have an competitive edge.
IT service companies will need to transform from solutions or services company to become end to end players. Tier 1 companies face stiff change management issues as digital disrupters will threaten their dominance. But, new technologies bring in new opportunities. Small & Medium enterprises now have an opportunity to break boundaries and win.
Once again I attempt to predict what technologies will impact the success of enterprises and IT service companies as they ride through the disruption wave that’s engulfed every company since the bitcoin and Uberization revolution started.
Trends & Directions in 2017
In the past it was solutions in the present it is services, but going forward what enterprises will need to do to be successful is play End to End.
This means they need to have solutions that are based on platforms and provide services that cater to the need of their clients, all under one roof.
So for example, just providing an analytical solution is no longer key. What clients expect is bring the analytical solutions, and let it be platform based so that they can add or subtract use cases and provide them service outputs as needed.
This will require, just not an analytical capability but also data scientists and a robust analytical platform to service the growing needs of these clients. Organizations who think this way will have a strong chance of becoming leaders.
Trend 1 – End to End Life Cycle is the new Playbook
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03ServicesSolutions
Platforms
AI based solutions have been present for decades, what then is different today, AI technologies, such as neural networks, are beginning to turn the corner and become more usableIt’s the mix of advances in IOT, Machine Learning and Deep Learning that brings back the prominence of AI today.
These technologies now enable machines to make decisions on their own. What really changes is that in the past, AI was based on telling computers and machines what to do. The technology advances today such as neuro sciences, allows us to present a set of data and allow the computers or machines to do the thinking.
This is going to be game changing and pervasive in nature. This will also disrupt the present labor force. In fact it is predicted that IT companies who have been recruiting in a large number, due to AI will start reducing intakes. My estimation is that on an annual basis, there will IT recruitments will come down 2-3% each year, and will accelerate at double the pace as we enter 2020.
Trend 2 – AI & Machine Learning will redefine everything we know
Blockchain is a technology that is expected to transform the very basic way we operated in the past. It will fundamentally change how our economy, governance systems and businesses will function.
The foundation of cryptocurrencies such as bit coin and the era of digital ledgers, will make Blockchain the information technology of the future.
It will permeate well beyond currencies into every other kind of transactions and contracts that will include, properties, vote, digital share of ownership, or even a kilowatt of solar energy.
Eliminating huge back office costs, companies will have distributed and trusted transactions enabled, giving opportunities to IT companies to develop more and more new use cases using Blockchain technologies across all industries.
Gartner predicts that by 2022, blockchain-based business will be worth $10 billion. The areas that Blockchain adoption growth will occur includes, Smart Contracts, Crypto Currencies, Record Keeping, Securities and Risk Management.
Trend 3 – Blockchain will be Information Technology of the future
In 2016, we saw the huge embracement of DevOps. Following this big thrust, the next focus in adoption will be Containers. Containerization provides a segregation model at the process level rather then emulating a complete computer.
Docker Inc. a leader in this space builds containers that make building and shipping applications extremely easy. Basically, a Container wraps a piece of software in a complete filesystem that contains everything needed to run: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries – anything that can be installed on a server. This guarantees that the software will always run the same, regardless of its environment.
With Containerization, organizations will accelerate development and testing and make it more agile as they can use containers to provide the same image across Unit testing (on developer machine), for QA/system tests, in staging/final test and finally into the production environment too.
IT companies would do well to partner with companies like Microsoft, Kubernetes etc. to adopt Container based development and become more agile.
Trend 4 – Containerization adoption will accelerate
ContainersDevOpsMicroservices
Whether it was Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign that created a bot that texted quotes from Donald Trump, or Drones making its first business appearance in delivering packages, it is clear that these mechanical smart and intelligence devices couples with sensors, IoTand AI will start going mainstream.
Robots use in consumer and business is expected to be over a US$ 1.5 Billion business by 2018 according to BI Intelligence estimates.
AI & Robotics will redraw every user interface and experience we have been used to in the next 3 years.
In fact automating business processes with bots, and the use of Robotics and Drones is expected to become a large opportunity for almost every enterprise. Analysts estimated the impact to reach more $9 trillion and affect 230 million knowledge workers.
Trend 5 – Bots, Robots & Drones will go main stream
Speech and Voice Recognition advances will bring in superior human like interfaces. This will begin the era of voice activated digital assistants. Advances in voiced based computing and the large amount of money being invested into these technologies by Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Apple, seems pretty clear that we will be surrounded with diital assistants and this will be the future way to interact with our personal devices, homes and car.
Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Google Now, are all playing big to reinvent theb way we will work in the future.
Research firm Tractica estimates about 40 million homes will use a voice-activated digital assistant by 2021.
We will see personal assistants taking shape and form in every area such as; Mobile OS-based and App based Assistants, PC OS-based Assistants, Automotive Assistants, Smart Home Audio Assistants, Smart TV-based Assistants, Wearable Assistants and Appliance Assistants.
Trend 6: Enter the era of digital assistants to cater to your needs
The growth of Digital economy and the disruption it has created has affected every business, every industry and every process. Needless to say, it is disrupting IT workforce too and redefining the skills and talent required for the digital workplace. One area that will see a profund change will be in the area of Talent Acquisition.
Recruiting right talent will become the biggest challenge that enterprises will face. Primarily due to the new technologies that are coming up in a rapid pace and also due to inability to correctly source the right candidate for the right job.
To overcome this, organizations will accelerate the adoption of Video based Vetted Recruitment. Firms such as Monjin(www.monjin.com) are pioneering and automating digital recruitment by incorporating technologies such as AI, automation and video tagging across the talent interviewing process.
Digital Video based recruitment by enterprises is expected to free many cycles of recruitment, enable just in time recruitment and improve the accuracy of digital fit across the digital workplace.
Trend 7: Video based Talent acquisition will gain adoption
Photo Credit – Noobreneur.com
So we enter a new era of experiences, security, privacy and digital consumption. Yes, Digital economy may make things more easier, more immersive and even more connected with every part of our life.
However, we will see everyone of us, every enterprise and every institution grappling with the effect of this adoption.
Technologies like Blockchain have the power to break the hold of strong middle institutions, and can lead to back end process elimination. Technologies like Drones, bring in new concerns of privacy, legal suits due to accidental damages or accidents.
AI has the potential to disrupt large IT backend offices and software developer intake, disrupting countries like India, Philippines and eastern Europe who dominate today.
Finally every individual will rely on mobile and home devices as a platform of voice interaction with the real world.
Welcome to the age of excitement, un-privacy and un-learning.
Conclusion
End to End Lifecycle Services
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Blockchain
Containerization
Bots, Robots & Drones
Speech based Digital Assistants
Video based Vetted Talent
Microsoft BOT Framework
Bots - http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/10/clinton-campaign-launches-bot-that-texts-you-donald-trump-quotes/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+venturebeat%2FSZYF+%28VentureBeat%29
http://www.cio.com/article/3019587/innovation/the-business-of-bots-and-the-realities-of-enterprise-automation.html
Gartner: Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends For 2017
Video based vetted interviewing – Monjin (www.monjin.com)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-05/at-ces-new-digital-assistants-restart-smart-home-race?cmpid=yhoo.hosted
https://www.tractica.com/newsroom/press-releases/virtual-digital-assistant-technology-is-expanding-beyond-smartphones-to-penetrate-additional-consumer-devices-and-enterprise-markets/
CB Insights Tech Market Intelligence reports (www.cbinsights.com )
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