Ditital Transformation Archives

Because it touches on every aspect of operations, digital transformation is more of an ethos than just an IT project. However, three key factors are crucial to enabling the business agility you need.

1. Data platform simplification

Although hybrid IT allows businesses to build truly flexible systems, it also dramatically increases operational complexity. With virtual machines, containerised applications and SaaS platforms to contend with, achieving complete data visibility is harder than ever.

Choosing a single, integrated platform like Oracle Cloud can help to simplify the data platform and blur boundaries between on- and off-premise systems. Smart management tools then provide line-of-sight across the entire estate – and facilitate new ways of working – to make operations simpler, faster and more effective.

2. Intelligent automation and AI

Your data estate continues to grow exponentially, adding to management overheads. Managing the balance between cost, speed of access and availability is a full-time job.

Again, the smart tools included with the Oracle Cloud can help to streamline management, automatically placing workloads where they offer the best price-performance potential. Artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities ensure that the platform continues to learn what your business needs – and to make it happen. This will be particularly important as demand changes; AI will be better able to manage short-term surges in resource demand for instance.

Using automated management tools frees your infrastructure team to focus on the strategic projects which will carry your organisation forwards, rather than diverting resources to keep the lights on.

3. Lower operating costs

A smart data platform in the cloud has the potential to significantly reduce costs – some estimates suggest 55%-100% improvements in price/performance. Service costs also fall by 30%-50% as you outsource responsibility for keeping the hosted platform running.

The savings made can then be re-invested in other activities. From developing next-generation apps to purchasing additional infrastructure that will allow you to achieve your digital transformation goals, the cloud will be an invaluable asset. Assuming you choose the right platform for your current and future needs.

Faster, smarter, cheaper

Cloud investments continue to rise year-on-year – but IT departments also face potential budget reductions in the face of a challenging economic climate. Now more than ever C-suite stakeholders are demanding greater value from investments. This means that IT decision-makers will need to demonstrate operational performance improvements whilst maximising return on investment – or even cost reductions.

The cloud remains the only viable option for achieving these contradictory demands. With the right operating platform, it becomes possible to improve access to data and operational agility and reduce costs too.

To learn more about Oracle Cloud and how it will help your business achieve its digital transformation aspirations, please get in touch.

Businesses face an unusual dilemma as they prepare for a data-driven future. First is big data analytics, centralising data to ensure as much information is available as possible. Second is automation, applying data to increase efficiency and reduce manual intervention.

This creates a problem however. In order to function correctly, automation systems needs to process and action data at the point of collection, at the edge of the network. This is in complete opposition to the centralised model favoured by data-driven industry.

What does this actually look like?

Take self-driving cars for instance. Each vehicle is equipped with thousands of sensors to navigate routes and avoid collisions. In order to succeed, information must be processed in real time – the vehicle cannot tolerate any latency, ruling out cloud-based systems.

At the same time, vehicle manufacturers need to collect data from onboard sensors to drive product development and safety improvements. And this is where centralised cloud systems do make sense.

Autonomous vehicles are just one example of this dilemma. Factories, retailers, operators and producers all face the same challenge as they try to embrace the data-driven future. Any business deploying smart sensors, IoT devices and predictive analytics will encounter similar issues.

Ever-increasing data volumes

The introduction of IoT devices has exponentially increased the volumes of data being generated. Each sensor can output multiple messages every second. Although small in size, each signal needs to be analysed and actioned immediately.

In most cases, sensor output is nothing more than ‘status ok’ type messages and can be safely ignored, and simply sent to archive storage. In fact, it may be perfectly reasonable to discard them entirely as they offer little long-term value.

Without rules that filter and direct this constant stream of information, businesses will see their data capacity requirements – and costs – escalate even faster than anticipated. The right information must be retained however, otherwise the results of your predictive analytics efforts will be unbalanced or incomplete.

The fundamental challenges you face

In order to succeed in a data-driven operating environment, your business needs to adapt to computing at the edge. You will need to address:

How to provide adequate processing power to deal with incoming data in real time.
How to specify storage for machine-generated information.
How to provide sufficient network bandwidth between the edge, data centre and cloud.

With the right infrastructure, these challenges can be overcome. And the benefits of edge computing are significant – you can read more in part 2 of this blog series next week.

Useful Links

Dr. Tom Bradicich, HPE, The Intelligent Edge: What it is, what it’s not, and why it’s useful

When OT and IT collide: Managing convergence on the industrial edge

IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IoT 2019 predictions (Analyst report)

2018 National Retail Security Survey (National Retail Federation report)

The merging of cybersecurity and operational technology (ISACA and ISA report)

Mining 24 hours a day with robots (MIT Technology Review)