Digitization Remains a Key Focus for Most Industries in 2019 but Challenges Remain

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

More and more enterprises are looking toward new technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence, edge computing, and software-defined in their push toward digital transformation. However, technological challenges such as cybersecurity, disparate configurations, and application centricity still remain.

Even the growth outlook for traditional industries such as Energy and Healthcare appears to be impacted by technology.

Frost & Sullivan presented its annual Asia-Pacific Industry Outlook at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore on 29 January. Attended by over 100 senior management and C-suite executives, the event marks the start of an exciting year ahead for the industry.

Key analysts from Frost & Sullivan’s Digital Transformation, Transformational Healthcare, and Energy & Environment practices presented their top predictions for the industry in 2019.

Is Digital Transformation at the End of the Beginning?

Ajay Sunder, vice president at Frost & Sullivan’s ICT Asia-Pacific practice discussed data-driven technologies as the new catalyst as enterprises move toward digital transformation. These include leveraging cloud and looking at analytics as new revenue drivers while ensuring that security remains relevant.

The strong mobile telecoms market in Asia-Pacific is also expected to boost this growth, increasing from 4.16 billion subscribers in 2018 to 4.58 billion by 2021 and registering 3.1% CAGR (2017–2021). With this, 5G networks are anticipated to be an enabler for smart city infrastructure as well as industries ranging from industrial and automotive to healthcare.

In his talk, Sunder noted that, “Digital Transformation is the value extraction for business functions using the digital ecosystem, leveraging new business models to impact top-line growth and bottom-line efficiency of companies.”

Competition in the public cloud landscape is also set to intensify with giants such as AliCloud and Azure becoming more aggressive in 2019. As decision making evolves and most enterprises seek out hybrid cloud strategies, system integrators are expected to emerge as key influencers in Asia-Pacific. New use cases for edge computing are also increasing, offering data processing advantages near the source.

IoT Investments Remain Relevant in the Digital Transformation Journey

Spike Choo, Director, ICT, Asia-Pacific spoke on the four most common myths surrounding the Internet of Things (IoT) and discussed how the ground has shifted using research from a recent enterprise study conducted in Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong.

The results show that IoT adoption and maturity is reaching mainstream status as adopters reported better-than-projected business outcomes across multiple business performance metrics.

Enterprises are increasingly focusing on IoT applications and cybersecurity which are considered highly important but also harder to implement. However, the more digitally mature and IT-savvy an enterprise is, the greater the impact of IoT and digital transformation.

He added, “As enterprises adopt IoT, it is important to note that IoT should be outcome focuses and a data-driven approach is key to ensuring successful IoT outcomes. From the results of the study, enterprises surveyed have experienced improvement in overall business metrics of 12.1% after implementing IoT initiatives.”

New Security Reality is Leading to Heightened Concern Over Privacy and Security

With numerous data breaches occurring both to private enterprises and public institutions, customers are becoming increasingly aware of data privacy and demanding better protection. Enterprises must protect customers and their data, or face real consequences from customer churn in today's hyper-competitive environment, and government scrutiny as regulatory standards become more stringent.

In spite of the frequent publicity of cyber attacks in the news, traditional attack methods such as phishing emails are still remarkably effective. Beyond adopting new technologies to bolster cybersecurity, organizations must remember not to neglect what is often the weakest link in the chain – the employee.

Enterprises are increasingly adopting cloud to help meet the needs of today's digitally integrated customer. However, many have misconceptions about the security responsibilities they hold as data owners. Enterprises need to be proactive and properly secure their data on the cloud.

Kenny Yeo, Industry Principal, Cyber Security, ICT noted that “Enterprises today need to adopt a holistic cybersecurity approach, with a focus on keeping their customer’s data safe. Customers today have high expectations of the services they use and will choose providers which best protect their data.”

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