Digital is an amalgamation of technologies that has evolved over time

In my mind Digital is an amalgamation of technologies (Cloud, BIG Data, Analytics, IoT, AI, RPA, machine learning, Social networks) that have been evolving over time. In order to explain what I mean by that, lets step back into history a little bit

The digital revolution start with the invention of computers around the 1950s and it became mainstream around the 70s when most industries started utilizing them for their business benefit.

Then came the internet, which started around the 80s and became mainstream by the late 90s (remember the .com boom-to-bust and vast investments in telecommunication networks to facilitate the internet). Post the fiasco of .com, industries matured their business models around Internet and started utilizing it for not only providing information to users/consumers, but for aiding commercial activities to happen over it. This was the beginning of e-commerce (commerce over the internet)

With the advent of internet, access to information became easy, however, it was restricted in terms of when and where you can access it. That is when the technology evolved and Mobile technology came into being around 2004/05 and it became mainstream around 2007 with the advent of smartphones (iphone). Now all of sudden, the restrictions on access to information at a specific place/time were replaced by so called information-at-will. The amalgamation of internet and mobile (for lack of a better word, let me call it Mobility) through the smart phones opened up endless possibilities for businesses to provide value to their customers at any place, any time and personalized to their needs.

Remember when mobility came in, every business started defining a mobile strategy. There were separate business divisions created to assess how mobility can influence business both in terms of serving their customers and improving internal efficiencies (enterprise mobility). A decade down, mobility has become BAU for business. All those separate business divisions have been dismantled and now every part of business is integrated with mobility.

As mobility matured and became mainstream, couple of interesting possibilities started developing. Emergence of DATA came into being. As systems were connected to network, they were not only consuming data/information, but they also started generating enormous amount of data and with that technology started developing tools to assimilate this data and decipher the patterns from it that can aid them in future decisions. This was the birth of BIG DATA and Analytics, which is all about how you assimilate data and analyse the patterns within it.

As BIG DATA began to grow, the requirements on data centres to store this enormous amount of data and computing power needed to analyse them started increasing exponentially. In order to optimize the investment and maintenance costs for these data centres, technology started evolving around more centralized data centres managed by intelligent software that through creation of virtual environments can enable business to optimize on their systems and software costs. This was the nothing but the emergence of CLOUD.

By this time as we all know, networks become ubiquitous and technology started exploring connecting devices other than phones and computers to the network. The rationale was that if we can access and control information remotely over the network using computers and phones then why can’t we extend that to other devices and machines. Cisco Systems, which has been a pioneer on Internet technologies eulogized this as Internet-of-Everything, which later came to being as IoT (Internet of Things)

With the advent of BIG DATA, CLOUD and IoT, the realms of possibilities have suddenly become limitless. With the availability of huge amount of data, omnipresent network and smarter connected machines, technology is now rapidly evolving to develop tools that can make these machines optimize the use of their resources and become self-learning to assist better decision making. This is where technologies like Machine learning, RPA and AI are taking shape.

All of these technologies are evolving around how to manage what is called the DATA LIFECYCLE, which is about managing data from generation to consumption. DIGITAL is nothing but management of this DATA LIFECYCLE. So in essence DIGITAL is going to be all pervasive and will impact every industry and every part of business because DATA (in every shape or form) is central to every business.

Since there are many moving parts in this DIGITAL transformation and no standardized solutions, organizations are grappling to make sense of it and how it would apply to their businesses. This is where most are looking at setting up separate divisions around DIGITAL whose charter is to understand and assess these various technologies and then explain to business functions on how they can be applied to their businesses. While this is happening the technologies themselves are evolving to a certain applicable standards.

So the question is whether this transformation will happen in an orderly fashion? Well in my opinion given that the impact of these technologies is across every part of business and in varying forms, the development and application is going to be chaotic. You will see different parts of businesses adopting it in different ways at the same time. But like it happened with Mobility a decade later an order will emerge from this chaos when businesses would have adopted some shape and form of these DIGITAL technologies for their business benefits.