1.1 The ICT Phenomenon
Information and communications technology (ICT) is permeating and transforming every sphere of life, including commerce, education, healthcare, governance, agriculture, manufacturing, banking, defense, media and entertainment, logistics, travel, tourism, and so on. Organizations such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have noted that telecommunications is now essential to a country’s economic development and competitiveness. As per a World Bank Report, a 10% increase in the speed of high-speed Internet connection has been found to increase economic growth by 1.3% (Minges 2016).
Attractive as all this may seem, the forces unleashed by ICT are in fact so powerfully disruptive and rapid that organizations not only struggle to harness the potential of ICT but are also getting run over by the change, complexity, and competition. Complex regulatory structures in various countries and the trade dimension (such as service and manufacturing interdependence through equipment and software interface) have added their own obstacles in the path of harnessing ICT’s potential benefits.
Where does one start? Not surprisingly, with the psyche.
A shift in mindset is crucial not only to deal with these disruptions but also to exploit them and thrive towards greater successes. The shift in mindset is all about moving away from security and stability towards resilience. In contrast to the former approach which is more risk-averse, the latter indicates an acceptance of the inevitable reality that there will be shocks and disruptions and prepares for them, and hence actively engages in experimentation and risk-taking. It is a far more opportunistic and entrepreneurial outlook.
The opportunities and disruptions are equally immense. It is imperative to take a closer look at both.
The global mobile devices and connections worldwide today exceed the world population (7.25 billion). The mobile phone penetration is more than 90% and several people own multiple subscriptions.1 In comparison, the PC penetration stands much lower at 20%. The total cost of computing processor power, bandwidth, and storage continues to drop (roughly halving each year), and newer, more efficient standards of network technology are continually being implemented.
All these have effected radical changes in the ICT landscape. Read carefully through the sweeping list. Each of these represents opportunity as well as disruption, depending on your point of view.
- 1.In Services and Business Models: immersive user experience including AR/VR/XR, digital services, digital marketing, analytics, big data, automation, enterprise architecture, microservices, open innovation, crowdsourcing, social media, e-commerce, and so on
- 2.In Mobile Networks: mobile broadband, 3G, 4G/LTE, 5G, end-user mobility (e.g. location-based services and mobile banking), enterprise mobility (e.g. field personnel enablement and logistics management), Telco mobility (e.g. smartphones and smart applications), and so on
- 3.In Infrastructure and Data Centers: cloud computing, virtualization, containers, and services, for example, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, KaaS, which mean software/infrastructure/process/knowledge as a service, and so on
- 4.In Core Networks: IP networks, SIP Trunking, SDN (software-defined networking) and NFV (network function virtualization), convergence (VoIP, triple/quad play), and so on
- 5.Regulations: de-regulation, Net Neutrality, spectrum auctions, laws related to competition and monopoly, security of data, and so on
- 6.Technology: platform, smart machines, 3D printing, IoT (Internet of Things), Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, AR/VR/XR/MR, and so on
Upon adopting a new mindset of resilience, the next step then is to look at things through the lens of ICT. Every organization is a complex information engine and hence an ICT organization. Having established this, it is crucial to understand technology and enterprise architecture well. The key industry trends and the technologies of interest must be understood by everyone who plays any significant role in the organization. Technology is really an ecosystem enabler, and it will be beneficial for everyone to grasp this fact.
1.2 What Is ICT?
An OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) paper (Inaba and Squicciarini 2017) defines ICT as any product or service that stores, retrieves, manipulates, processes, transmits, or receives information electronically in a digital form. It is the convergence of unified communications, telecommunication , computing, and broadcasting industries. The older Information Technology (IT) is a narrower term which usually excludes telecommunications (voice) technology while including data networks (although almost all networks today are digital), as a reference to the systems that support information processing. The term Information Technology is used in a narrower sense, typically excluding telecommunications (voice) technology while including data networks (although almost all networks today are digital), as a reference to the systems that support information processing.
Processing (computing power), network, and storage capacities are rising exponentially, and knowledge is becoming accessible to more people than ever before in human history. Network effects trigger an ever-increasing number of people (and hence devices) to use and create information.
We’re now into the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab 2017) which will bring a thorough and exponential transformation in the industry. To clarify:
- The First Industrial Revolution was powered by steam-powered machines to drive production.
- The Second Industrial Revolution was powered by electrical machines in the industry.
- The Third Industrial Revolution brought in digital transformation in the industry.
- The present one, Fourth Industrial Revolution, is about integration and fusion of the physical, digital, and biological technologies.
Each of these industrial transformations was built on top of the previous one. Thus, the systems of the Fourth Industrial Revolution leverage the third, digital revolution, that is, global, digital communications, high-speed and low-cost processing, and high-density data storage, and a vast, digitally connected global population of people and devices.
Of the ten key emerging technologies that are among the most promising and potentially most disruptive and that carry significant risks outlined in the OECD science, technology, and innovation outlook (Inaba and Squicciarini 2017), four directly come under ICT (viz. Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, big data analytics, and blockchain), and the remaining rely heavily on ICT for their research/design/production/use (micro/nano satellites, additive manufacturing, neurotechnologies, advanced energy storage technologies, nano materials and synthetic biology). Similarly, PricewaterhouseCoopers has identified eight essential technologies for the future (PwC 2016).
Artificial Intelligence, IoT (Internet of Things), VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality), blockchain, robots, 3D printing, and drones.
All of these are ICT technologies.
In short, the disruptions and innovations in and driven by ICT are set to drastically change the way firms, industries, and economies work.
The future holds tremendously high potential for the development of individuals and organizations, due to the synergies among these technologies and also other upcoming technologies such as quantum computing, LiFi (Light Wi-Fi), nanotechnology, bio-engineering, and so on.
The present day’s unified communications technologies such as SMAC (social media, mobility, analytics, and cloud computing) catalyzed by underlying technologies such as virtualization, container management, and microservices architecture are accelerating the velocity of business by the day, that is, speed as regards what firms can do, how they can do it, and how quickly they can deliver.
Fundamentally, ICT has magnifying power. ICT bestows on us the capability to gather and use intelligence at a rate and level unprecedented in history, as follows:
Collect big data from various sources, such as IoT-enabled devices, analyze this data as rapidly as needed by using analytics, mining, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and Machine Learning. The deep insights drawn by using these technologies to collect, analyze, and understand data give a huge opportunity to understand retail and enterprise customers, to fine-tune processes, cut inefficiencies, redundancies and wastage, enable e-governance, and conduct research and development. This entire process can happen in real-time too.
Gartner vice president Steve Prentice says that “At a minimum, the IT organization needs to be able to design the ‘big picture’ of all the new information and technology capabilities required to support digital business. … Fueled by data, analytics and AI, algorithmic business will continue to grow and disrupt your business” (Gartner 2016).
1.3 ICT and Innovation
ICT spurs innovation at every stage of the lifecycle of a product or service. For research in the academia and industry, ICT tools facilitate both fine-grained accuracy in analysis and massive modeling and crunching capability to design, build, and validate complex theoretical models, by using big data, small data, or even imperfect data. It also enables geographically disperse teams (even crowds) to collaborate (Birudavolu 2015).
ICT helps in market research, id...