Digital assimilation - it takes a lot more than marketing hype

WITH the commoditisation of compute, storage and network resources - namely in the form of new cloud and mobile infrastructures - the evolution of innovative and emerging technologies has done nothing but accelerate. We're seeing offerings from artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) to analytics, virtual and augmented reality (VR & AR), 3D printing, blockchain and autonomous vehicles. And in return, we're witnessing the birth of smart cities and nations, connected healthcare, Industry 4.0 and other 'intelligent' markets. The barriers between human and machine interfaces are slowly dissolving as we all become citizens of a digital world.

But great digital strides come with new challenges - and for businesses looking to transform their processes, these technologies present very steep learning and implementation curves.

Indeed, it's clear that not everyone knows what they are doing. For example, recent industry research has revealed that more than two-thirds of all IoT projects do not make it into production. Though data is the currency of the century, separate studies also show that only 1 per cent of the millions upon millions of terra bytes of data being created around the world is actually used to make business decisions. The rest remains untouched, backed up and stored offline to age like fine wine.