With businesses continuing to face an everchanging economic landscape and unprecedented markers of volatility and ambiguity, several experts have said that data and emerging technologies are going to reshape organisations vaulting them out of the financial or operational rut and making them more resilient to future shocks.
The experts were speaking at The Economic Times DataCon 2.0 Virtual Summit, India’s largest data gathering, aimed at expanding the ambit and horizons of organisations to help follow the evolutionary journey of data across multiple disciplines, verticals, and industry sectors.
Underpinning the importance of data, Vaishali Kasture, Head of Enterprise Business, AISPL, AWS India & South, said that people presently refer to data as the new oil but just like oil, if data is not refined it holds little value.
“We have seen particularly in the last few years that the structure & volume of data is changing rapidly there is an explosion in structured & unstructured data. So being data-driven is important for organisations and their future,” she said.
According to IDC, by 2025, the worldwide data is expected to grow 61% to 175 zettabytes from 33 zettabytes, with as much of the data residing in the cloud as in data centres. Interestingly, another Forrester report claims that only 21% of companies believe they’ve completed their digital transformation.
Adding to Kasture’s emphasis on data, Amit Deshmukh, Solutions Lead – Content and Data Intelligence, Hitachi Vantara, said, that research shows that organisations which are data-driven are 23 times more likely to win new customers, 6 times more likely to retain these customers and they are 19 times more likely to be profitable than the ones who are not data-driven.
[box type=”success” align=”” class=”” width=””]“We are living in an uncertain world today with a lot of negativity around and we all are looking at data points how our country is recovering from Covid, so that’s a simple example of how everything is being data-driven today & not just businesses. Our day-to-day activities are much much data driven in today’s world,” Deshmukh said.[/box]
Experts also said that this rise in data complexity is also putting a strain on legacy IT infrastructure and architecture.
“We understand when you live in multiple worlds, as I say multiples worlds what it means is your infrastructure, application infrastructure, data infrastructure, is spread across multiple platforms today, some would be in premised, some in cloud & today’s an era of multiple cloud. This can change over span & is not static. Businesses & IT have to be ready to accommodate these requests coming from different companies,” Pradeep Seshadri, Director, Sales Engineering, Commvault India & SAARC, explained.
Speaking specifically on organisation transformation, Kevin Redmond, Director, Data, AI & Automation, IBM Asia Pacific, said that businesses today need to focus on people and processes while planning or strategizing digital transformation.
“….How do I make my job better? How do I deliver more value & how do I compliment that with AI, automation, and intelligence to make you more efficient and to add to the needs of our clients, employees, stakeholders & shareholders? All of these things are important. The best performing organizations are data-driven & AI is the best way to put data to work,” Redmond explained.
Other experts also spoke about the various emerging technologies that are playing a key role in IT and operational transformation such as AI, 5G etc., and also spoke about fundamental assets such as networks.
Speaking about the importance of innovations, Sajan Paul, Managing Director & Country Manager, India & SAARC, Juniper Networks, said that organisations should focus on upgrading their customer experience and ensure that networks are able to handle the quick and accurate transfer of data.
Commenting on 5G, Randeep Sekhon, Chief Technology Officer, Airtel, said that the industry and other stakeholders need to come together to leverage the benefits of 5G.
“I mean the value will get created if people collaborate & then this value should be created like a toolkit if I may say so that it can be exported,” Sekhon added.
