Digital Transformation Is A Continuous Spark
This ecosystem involves two parts, one is its value-added partners and large SI integrators, the other part that is rampantly growing is our startups, the developer ecosystem in the AI space.Industry major IBM shares its experiences and learnings on how customers are evolving in their digital transformation journey.
Digital Enterprise is the talk of the town in the industrial world today. In this context, IBM has been making some major transformations. And AI is an important
part of the digital transformation journey of the enterprises. However, there is a need to understand that this digital journey does not have its end with the AI. Further, it is important to keep in mind that this
digital transformation journey has to be more tangible for the clients of enterprises. If the clients are not fellow travelers in this journey, then the entire effort of digital transformation is futile.
A lot of things are really exciting from these perspectives at IBM globally as well as in India. Several things are transforming IBM in all the new areas, be it digital, blockchain, or Artificial Intelligence. A lot of these are really converging and IBM is helping clients to transform into the digital era; and in the process get clients to move into the AI era because that is the strength of IBM.
Major Strengths
IBM’s real strength is in terms of encompassing a lot of software services and solutions management; and taking the clients on a journey on the premise to a hybrid cloud or hybrid cloud to a multi cloud or from a multi cloud to AI. There are different journeys which clients are going through in this disruption era. And now, primarily it is about taking enterprises to an AI journey. Its Red Hat acquisition adds to thejourney, because this would make them the dominant player in the multi cloud and the hybrid cloud era.
Today, digital transformation encompasses a very vast arena. Mobile banking apps on our phones are digital, making a transaction using Paytm is also digital. But these are very nascent forms of digital. The question is what after that? And how can an enterprise move further ahead in the chain by leveraging these new technologies to give a great customer experience; and also get some insights out of the customer information and experience; and then to suggest even more relevant products or services back to them. Digital transformation is basically an entire journey and the organization could be at a different stage, but it would culminate into an AI system. With the AI, the inference our clients can improvise their own systems to again drive more business, so it’s always an infinite loop.
Digital transformation doesn’t mean that there is an end stage, because transformation is always going to change; and change is not constant. Disruption is always going to be a new normal. Disruption could be in different forms and states but in today’s era, AI is the new disruption. But in 5 years AI could be the starting point and deep learning could be the new horizon. Or quantum computing could be the next horizon. So, with digital transformation, it is a continuous spark that organizations will get into. Today at IBM we see quantum computing to be the next horizon doing really deep learning models for solving those problems of businesses which our classical computer cannot solve. That’s a transformational journey and the end state is not AI. The horizon that is visible is AI and quantum computing.
No End Point
There is no end point to this journey; and it is an infinite loop. Organizations have to decide what they want to do and what is the time span they have to sit in the train to go to the next journey. Some clients say they have everything done but there are too many manual interventions, so they find it difficult to automate it. That is one journey. There are others who are in the advanced form of the digital transformation journey, so they have started AI in one or two places. Now the challenge to make AI pervasive in their entire organization, is another transformation journey.
The question of the use of AI all across the enterprises is an important one. IBM has large Indian clients in the healthcare, general insurance and banking. The bank is doing cheque truncation using AI. We also have another couple of other POCs going around in other banks. The Government of India also realizes the importance of AI as they have sanctioned a special budget for up a national AI Centre. Growth and spread of AI is rapid and pervasive and in future, the organizations would like their applications to run on AI. The question will be, is this application AI, or that
Today, digital transformation encompasses a very vast arena. The question is what after that? And how can an enterprise move further ahead in the chain by leveraging these new technologies to give a great customer experience; and also get some insights out of the customer information and experience; and then to suggest even more relevant products or services back to them. Digital transformation is basically an entire journey and the organization could be at a different stage, but it would culminate into an AI system. With the AI, the inference our clients can improvise their own systems to again drive more business, so it’s always an infinite loop.