Digitization offers plenty of opportunities - This is how your organization can keep up with the pace - Data News Awards ...
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Digitization offers plenty of opportunities This is how your organization can keep up with the pace
1.How do you give 2021
a positive twist?
COVID-19 has changed the world at lightning speed.
Organizations and companies must adapt faster
than ever. In tomorrow’s world, “normal” no longer exists.
We must all try to accept that change is And this is where the story takes a positive
Table of contents
the only constant. That one wave of change turn. The better you understand what
is followed by the next tsunami of change changes are coming your way, the faster
in no time. And anyone who believes that you can react and the better equipped you
this crisis is an era in which we are experi- and your organization will be to deal with
encing one huge transformation is mistak- them. That is why we are happy to share
en. Because something that works today various insights with you in this e-book. Be-
03
may get in our way tomorrow. That is why cause you can only understand the new
it is so difficult to decide on investments rules with the right knowledge. Only with
1. Introduction that force your organization to follow a knowledge does one learn to manage un-
certain path without being able to change certainty in the organization, and can the
04
2. The top 10 digital trends you can’t afford to miss
course along the way. Organizations that
realize that the next big challenge lies in
flexibility are tomorrow’s winners. They will
job of digital transformation be done.
10
have a head start on others.
3. Digital transformation comes down to people
14
4. Networks in the digital society ”It is not the strongest or the
18
5. The cloud: now and in the future YOU ARE
most intelligent that survives.
OFFLINE
It is the one that is most
22
adaptable to change.”
6. Fiber optics ins and outs
Charles Darwin
02 03
2. The top 10 trends you can’t afford to miss
Gartner research 2020
No matter how great the digitally-driven changes of the
last few decades have been, when viewed properly, only a 1. Remote work shifts digital
transformation priorities
few industries have really been changed by digitization.
While remote work has been on the rise for half of the companies surveyed stated that
several years, this year’s pandemic has dra- productivity has increased. Moreover, it is
In most industries, digitization has only about them, they work and are readily
matically changed and accelerated the not clear how long the pandemic will last
touched the surface of what real change available. And they are far from reaching
course of this trend. Gartner states that and when the next event will occur. We
could be. It is always amazing to see the their limit. We are on the eve of a digital
74% of companies will increase their adop- don’t know what the “new normal” will look
extent to which operations in complex val- acceleration. Here are ten trends that will
tion of remote work. In addition, a World like.
ue chains still rely on Excel sheets, manual give you insight.
Economic Forum study found that 72% of
work, and low-quality data sets. But new
the global workforce of the companies sur- This has major ramifications for organiza-
tools and technologies like machine learn-
veyed currently work remotely and that the tions’ digital transformation efforts, as
ing, IoT, and distributed computing have
number of employees permanently work- they must invest in making remote working
proven their potential impact and econom-
ing from home will double in 2021 (com- as secure, convenient, and efficient as pos-
ic viability in recent years. Not only inves-
pared to remote working in the pre-corona sible for their employees. This makes re-
tors, consultants, and other prophets talk
era). mote working one of the most important
trends of 2021, changing priorities and in-
This is partly due to the fact that since em- fluencing many other trends in the coming
“Make sure you’re not just keeping ployees started working remotely, nearly year.
up with changes, but staying
one step ahead of them” of the global of companies will
72% workforce now
works from home 74% switch to work-
ing remotely.
04 05
2. Rethinking cybersecurity strategies for 4. Accelerated digital
remote working transformation efforts
With employees spread across multiple loca- It goes without saying that it is extremely im- COVID-19 rocked the foundations of many enable greater flexibility and versatility. To
tions, it’s harder to manage document and portant for organizations to keep their docu- organizations, bringing with it the realiza- do this, hyperautomation is booming. Or-
information security. The growing number of ments and data safe. That is why organiza- tion that organizations must be more ver- ganizations automate whatever they can
locations and networks has also increased tions are massively upgrading their security satile in order to respond to change and in order to increase the innovation rate. Or-
the number of targets, and hackers have tak- strategies and extending cybersecurity to survive. In addition to the pandemic, which ganizations are also expected to invest
en advantage of this. The number of cy- home networks and mobile devices. The field made it clear that major changes can hap- more in scenario planning and risk assess-
ber-attacks and data breaches has increased of cybersecurity will change in 2021, with pen quickly, changes in today’s digital world ment tools so that they can better respond
worldwide. more emphasis not only on cybersecurity are occurring in rapid succession. To keep to and adapt to changes in the future and
tools, policies, and measures, but also on ed- up, more organizations will accelerate their (hopefully) never again face surprises like
ucating employees on how to work safely digital transformation efforts in 2021 to COVID-19.
from home. Organizations will continue to
work with so-called VPN connections and ex-
pand them so that colleagues can work re-
motely with company data in a secure man-
ner. 5. Contactless
technology
In 2021, there will be a greater need for
3. Employees are the core technology that allows people to avoid
face-to-face contact or that no longer re-
quires them to be physically present at a
Employees are the core of a company. not present, extra attention will be paid to
particular location.
There will be more initiatives in 2021 to im- employees’ experiences (at a distance) in
This goes beyond online video conferencing
prove employees’ experiences, especially 2021. This attention should ensure that
tools. It applies to both internal and exter-
their remote experiences. As a result of the employees not only stay motivated, but
nal situations, as well as to contact be-
COVID-19 pandemic, employees were are also connected to the organization and
tween people and between individuals or
forced to work from home. This resulted in the organizational culture. This will be re-
teams performing tasks. For example, or-
challenges that some had not experienced flected in increased investment in commu-
ganizations are investing in technology to
before. According to a study by the Knowl- nication tools for work and social purposes
control certain elements in the office re-
edge Institute for Mobility Policy (KiM), as well as an increase in culture-boosting
motely. People are becoming less depend-
people struggle with the social aspect of and team-building activities. This includes
ent on their location to perform work or
their work, loneliness, no work-life balance, sending gifts and goodies to employees’
connect with others.
and a lack of concentration. homes and having them participate in fun
challenges and online events, such as on-
Given that with remote working, employ- line pub quizzes.
ees do not go anywhere physically and are
06 7
6. 5G goes mainstream 8. Shift to a hybrid cloud infrastructure
5G caused quite a commotion in the past motely. They need to be connected from
year. If the huge increase in remote work- any location and any device and can’t af-
ing taught us anything in the past year, it ford not to be. This is why 5G is more im- The COVID-19 pandemic showed organiza- easy to use. Hybrid clouds are the perfect
is the importance of connectivity. Em- portant than ever and will be embraced tions that they need to be able to move in- balance to help organizations store data.
ployees need to be able to connect with more widely in the coming years. vestments to the cloud. As a result, more Major vendors like Azure, Google, IBM, and
colleagues and other parties to work re- organizations are moving to a hybrid cloud Oracle are already anticipating this in-
in 2021. Many organizations use SaaS ap- crease. They have made large investments
plications and on-premise solutions. To to create tools that allow for easy connec-
keep data secure and available to everyone tivity between data centers, the cloud, and
in the organization, it is important that or- on-premise solutions.
ganizations use a cloud that is secure and
9. Expansion of the omnichannel experience
In these uncertain times, customers may means spending more time, effort, and
hold the key to an organization’s success or budget on aligning all the channels a cus-
even its survival. But customers no longer tomer can use to interact with an organi-
only make choices based on a good product zation in order to provide a seamless and
or service; their experience is an even more personalized experience, regardless of how
important factor in their decision-making. this interaction takes place. PwC research
This realization will increase the focus on shows that the number of companies in-
the customer experience in 2021. Organiza- vesting in the omnichannel experience has
tions will pay more attention to increasing already risen from 20% to 80% and is set
customer satisfaction and loyalty by opti- to increase even more in 2021.
7. Guided by data (analysis) mizing their omnichannel experience. This
To survive as a digital organization, you (CDP) will help your organization organize
must have relevant and reliable data. This data and ensure that this data is valuable.
data can help you improve virtually all are-
as of the organization: from customer ser-
Organizations will invest more in CDPs in
2021, also to focus more on data privacy.
10. The digital workplace, from concept to
vice, your products and services to internal The focus in 2021 will be on collecting rele- product category
and external communications. There is so vant data and organizing it so that organi-
much data available today that it can be zations can make more data-driven deci- Over the years, the digital workplace was evolving from a concept to a product cate-
challenging to separate the wheat from sions and deliver more value to all seen as a concept. Something that vaguely gory in the collective mind. This can be
the chaff. A Customer Data Platform stakeholders. existed at a distance for many, but was not partly attributed to large organizations like
actually a tangible product that you could Google and Citrix that focus on this area
purchase. However, from our many conver- and offer their own digital workplaces
sations with customers and partners, we (Google Workspace and Citrix Workspace).
can conclude that the digital workplace is
8 9
3. Digital transformation
comes down to people
Over the past few years, one term invariably popped up in board-
rooms, management articles, and books: digital transformation. It
was often placed in a technological context. Yet the digitization of
(business) processes, services, and products is primarily done by
people, says Menno Lanting, an expert on the impact of the rapid-
ly changing world on innovation, organizations, and leadership.
Eurofiber spoke with Menno Lanting of the “Many organizations are still at tize existing imperfections, which ulti- Eurofiber: What is striking is that the vari-
Netherlands. He is an expert and the au- the beginning” mately leaves it much further from the ous industrial revolutions have all basically
thor of management books on digital goal. revolved around the replacement of muscle
transformation. He talked about the role Eurofiber: Where do we currently stand when power. The digital transformation, howev-
of people in the playing field of digital it comes to digital transformation? Digitization makes many organizations’ er, seems to be slowly but surely ushering in
transformation. inabilities very transparent. You actually the replacement of human brainpower. Do
Menno Lanting: In all honesty, I think a have to look at how you would set up the you see any of that in practice?
According to Menno Lanting - author of lot of organizations are still at the begin- organization and the processes if you
several bestselling management books ning of that process. The corona pan- started today, with all the digital tools at Menno Lanting: The first effects of this are
such as Connect and The Disruption Para- demic demonstrated that. All at once, your disposal. That is also the handicap already visible. Large banks and insurers
dox - a solid digital infrastructure is the existing technologies and applications of many organizations: they have a suc- have been digitizing what they call ‘low-lev-
foundation on which digitalization is built. had to be adopted without delay. From cessful past, which makes it more diffi- el thinking’ for some time. People used to
Yet it is the human factor that is all-impor- video conferencing to online shopping, cult for them to prepare for the new real- have to key in all kinds of insurance policy
tant for the success of digital transforma- it’s all peaking now. But the majority of ity. Because then the urgency is also data: that has now largely been replaced
tion. Especially at the top of the organiza- organizations are still some steps away lacking to a significant extent.’ by software. The same applies to account-
tion: without vision and decisiveness on the from digital transformation. Many of the
part of the management, digital transfor- examples that get press attention are
mation gets bogged down. With all the really just digital catch-up efforts. At the
negative consequences this entails. risk that your organization starts to digi-
10 11
“We don’t yet know what
society will look like in 10
to 20 years due to
digitalization.”
ancy and the legal profession, for example. knowing exactly which way it will all go. You Frenk Storm: That seems - to put it mildly gardless of the technology. This is largely a
This is always at the expense of jobs, office also see that leaders often have insuffi- - like quite a challenge. Who, in your opin- question of personal leadership, mentality,
space and other matters such as leased cient knowledge about digitization. ion, succeeds in showing such leadership? Is a company culture that is open to this and
cars. From the moment we are born, we it the well-known examples like Google and an organization that is equipped for it.
strive to minimize our efforts with a maxi- And that has a paralyzing effect. If you lack Amazon? Philips is a good example of this. The CEO
mum result. So, in that respect, the digital that kind of knowledge, then it’s a good has transformed the company from a con-
transformation isn’t really something new. idea to get it from external specialists, such Menno Lanting: The Big Tech companies sumer electronics manufacturer to a com-
as Eurofiber when it concerns digital infra- are an outside category. There is no point in pany primarily active in healthcare. And
Eurofiber: In my opinion, digitization re- structure. The success of a digital transfor- comparing yourself to Google or Amazon. one that doesn’t just sell hardware. Philips
quires human adjustments. For example, of mation stands or falls with the vision and Perhaps, as an organization, you should ac- is now focusing on software, data, and ser-
leadership styles. decisiveness of the leaders in the organiza- tually ask if you want to be in the techno- vices.
tion. logical vanguard. If you look at very innova-
Menno Lanting: I’ll go along with that. The tive companies, you will see that they leave That was a courageous move by the CEO,
interesting thing is that we don’t yet know In a digital transformation, there is rarely a the technology pioneering to the Googles and he has also managed to gather the
what society will look like in 10 to 20 years lack of initiatives. The problem lies in the of this world. right people around him to make that
because of digitalization. When the inter- fact that there is insufficient vision of the strategy work. Philips is one of the few ex-
net came along, no one knew that it would future added value that the organization Instead, they choose to make the organiza- amples of an organization that has under-
bring about the developments we are look- can offer. Without directional leadership, tion as agile and innovative as possible. Be- gone a successful digital transformation.
ing at now. This makes it difficult for or- thousands of flowers bloom, but they all cause then it doesn’t matter so much which Thanks to a leader who managed to link a
ganizations to build strategies that take die just as quickly. technology becomes relevant. As a result, clear digital vision to decisiveness. This
today’s rapid technological developments they know how to keep up with develop- shows that digital transformation largely
into account. As a leader, you are forced to ments and changing market demands re- comes down to people.
give direction to an organization without “Don’t look to Big Tech”
12 13
4. Networks in the If you look around, you will see that governments and or-
ganizations are already taking full advantage of digital
digital society technology. Just think of the introduction of digital learn-
ing and testing in education. Or consider home automa-
tion that offers the elderly remote care so that they can
continue to live independently in a safe manner for longer.
Smart City projects, for more livable, urban environments,
are sprouting up in major cities all over the world. Digital
transformation is now a reality.
31 billion connected devices of data in a short period of time with low
Organizations may be able to make do with delays (latency) on connections so that the
the available capacity for the time being, but data arrives at its destination with the
one thing is sure: the demand for capacity least possible delay. The maximum internet
will increase rapidly in all sectors in the com- speed that is currently possible over fiber
ing years. A major reason for this is autono- optic is already extremely high. This speed
mous devices: the Internet of Things (IoT). will increase many times over in the future.
According to forecasts, there will be as many That’s important if we want to take full ad-
as 31 billion devices connected to the Internet vantage of all the digitization opportuni-
worldwide by the end of 2020. These devices ties in the future.
all collect data that they transport over the
internet to the cloud. Reliable network
In addition to speed, reliability is essential
Fast network for a network in order to achieve
With all these developments, the need for far-reaching digitalization. In critical en-
a strong foundation in the form of a solid vironments, such as a hospital or an edu-
network is growing. Fiber optic technology cational institution, the primary process
plays a crucial role in this. The definition of immediately comes to a halt if the net-
a fast network is that it can transport a lot work degrades, or even worse, fails.
14 15
“One trend is
self-driving
cars”
But reliable availability is also crucial in
small and medium-sized enterprises, in-
dustry, government services or financial
services. For this reason, network suppliers
are increasingly incorporating redundancy:
organizations purchase two separate con-
nections in order to be able to switch
seamlessly from one to the other in the
event of a disaster.
”Fiber optics is the ideal
transport medium and
Longer-term trends
One example of a longer-term develop-
ment that has already started is self-driv-
ing cars. When they can drive entirely au-
tonomously, it will have consequences for also offers the neces-
sary flexibility”
many companies’ business models. Organ-
izations are already discussing this, par-
ticularly the impact it will have on their or-
ganization and customers.
This extends from the government to in-
surance companies and large hospitals.
They plan for the longer term, up to 15
years. In these time windows, such trends Connectivity requirements
are important things to include. Considering that such a vehicle generates network infrastructure to data centers. data from A to B as quickly as possible. Fib-
approximately 4 to 30 terabytes of data Such as the data centers of the central gov- er optics is the ideal transport medium for
per day, it should come as no surprise that ernment, where traffic flows are analyzed this and also offers the necessary flexibility.
the connectivity requirements placed on in real-time, and certain actions can be tak- Our customers are already taking this into
the underlying infrastructure must be op- en. A stable, secure, and future-proof net- account in their strategic plans for the fu-
timal. Much of this data travels through work infrastructure is an absolute must for ture.
the mobile networks and fixed fiber optic transmitting this enormous amount of
16 17
The cloud is currently the foundation for Innovations
5. The cloud: technological innovation. More and more
government organizations, schools, hospi-
Today’s cloud offers the opportunity to
adopt new, innovative applications and
now and in
tals, and businesses are using cloud solu- technologies quickly. Because many or-
tions. The cloud is also propelling a growing ganizations have switched to ‘Infrastruc-
need to transport large amounts of data in ture as a Service’ (IaaS), they have enor-
the future real-time.
Secure connection as basis for cloud strat-
mous amounts of data in the cloud. They
want to use this data as quickly as possi-
ble, easily and cost-efficiently.
egy
EEach cloud provider offers a different for- For example, by using this big data for
mat and sets its own conditions for redun- advanced data analytics and AI applica-
dancy, for example. Organizations can quick- tions. This enables agencies to make bet-
ly perceive the multicloud or hybrid cloud as ter decisions and respond more quickly to
complex and challenging. Lack of insight into current developments. Without the avail-
the costs of use, uncertainty about the con- ability of such applications in the cloud,
trol of availability and performance, and this would be almost impossible, or at the
possible integration problems with existing very least difficult, time-consuming, and
IT processes and systems are the reasons for very expensive. Software for data analyt-
this. ics and AI requires an enormous amount
of computing power. Until recently, this
This is why some organizations prefer public was only accessible to the very largest or-
cloud solutions via the public internet. How- ganizations. With the advent of cloud ap-
ever, this form of easy access also entails plications, this has suddenly become ac-
risks, especially when transmitting and ac- cessible to many different organizations.
cessing privacy-sensitive data. A secure
cloud connection is essential for many or-
ganizations and forms the basis of any cloud
strategy.
Fast, reliable, and secure networks have enabled the rise of
the cloud. The cloud is the basis for efficiently deploying large
amounts of (big) data. Combined with high-quality connec-
Past the hype stage
tions, the cloud provides access to data and computing pow- According to Gartner, the cloud is no longer a hype. Platform as a Service (PaaS),
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are all actual-
er, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning ly providing added value. Gartner’s Interactive Hype Cycle also shows that Hybrid
Cloud (a mix of private and public cloud services) is on the rise. Organizations and
(ML), anywhere and anytime. companies now have a clear idea of how to apply Hybrid Cloud.
18 19Gartner: Interactive Hype Cycle
Emerging Mature
Software as a
Service (SaaS)
Infrastructure
as a Service
(laaS)
Platform
o as a
e (PaaS)
Service
Hybrid
d Cloud
Computing
u
”The next era of cloud
Innovation Peak of Inflated Through of Slope of Plateau of
Trigger Expectations Disillusionment Enlightment Productivity
computing”
SaaS
Software as a service (SaaS) is software that is offered as an online service. The cus-
tomer does not have to purchase the software; they simply sign up for a subscription
per month and per user. The SaaS provider takes care of the installation, mainte-
Distributed cloud rofiber network grows by an average of 40
km every week. The most important cloud nance, and management (including updates). Users usually access the software over
The distributed cloud refers to the distribu-
providers and virtually all Belgian data the internet from the SaaS provider. For privacy-sensitive information, organizations
tion of public cloud services to locations
centers are connected to our network. are increasingly choosing an alternative that avoids the public internet.
outside the physical data centers of the
cloud provider but are still managed by the
Hybrid cloud IaaS
provider. The evolution from a centralized
A hybrid cloud, also called multicloud, con- With Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), the infrastructure is offered virtually. A ma-
public cloud to a distributed public cloud
sists of one or more private clouds running jor advantage is that an organization does not have to purchase and manage its
has ushered in a new era of cloud comput-
on their own hardware in a data center or own servers, network equipment, storage, workstations, and virtualization. Scala-
ing. It also enables providers to deliver on
on servers purchased from a cloud provid- bility is also a big advantage, especially when demand changes quickly and shows
the promises of a hybrid cloud. This system
er. significant peaks. After all, the customer only pays for what they actually use. A
combines external services from a provider
good network connection between the user locations and the IaaS environment
with internal services run on-site.
A hybrid cloud always includes one or is crucial. The internet is often not sufficient for such an application, and IT deci-
sion-makers choose a private connection or network to ensure continuity.
Eurofiber Cloud Proposition more public clouds (e.g. Amazon Web Ser-
At Eurofiber, we are working on a Eurofiber vices, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or
Oracle Cloud). This cloud solution provides PaaS
Cloud Proposition: we help clients to transi-
the ability to distribute workloads and Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a development platform as a service. Or-
tion to the cloud. We do this by starting with
move applications and data between pri- ganizations can use it to develop, run and manage applications. The cloud provider
the basics: an open, secure, reliable, and fu-
vate and public clouds. takes care of building and maintaining the infrastructure, including the runtime,
ture-proof network. The finely-meshed Eu-
middleware, and operating system.
20 216. Fiber optic: ins & outs
More bandwidth, higher speeds Self-learning, more secure networks
Nowadays, people want to be accessible at all times and Fiber optic bandwidth and speeds are going to Technology trends such as Artificial Intelli-
everywhere. Connectivity has become a basic need and increase dramatically in the coming years. One gence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are
of the techniques now being developed is hol- having an effect on infrastructure. With
the foundation for digital Belgium. Governments, health- low fiber. The biggest gain here is not in the fib- these techniques, your bandwidth auto-
er optic, but in the method of exposure. matically adjusts itself to the message you
care institutions, education, and businesses: never before want to send. The network learns how to
With hollow fiber, it is possible to send two send a message in the fastest and most ef-
has a reliable connection been as important as it is today. weeks’ worth of non-stop HD video images ficient manner. Another innovation is the
from Brussels to Madrid within a fraction of a role of data centers.
second.
Examples include working from home, the fraction of a second. No form of transport They are turning into central control points
virtual classroom, remote care, and Smart can compete with that. Masts for mobile with intelligent applications to manage
Cities. The quality, capacity, speed, and up-
time of these connections are increasing.
phone and internet traffic are connected via
high-quality fiber optic connections. In the “Hollow fiber, data remotely. The geographically dis-
persed data form centrally accessible, vir-
After all, you don’t want any hiccups or de-
lays (latency) in the transport of this cru-
near future, more and more wireless anten-
nas will be connected to a fiber optic net- even faster tual databases. This also increases securi-
ty.
cial data. work so that 100 percent reliable coverage
will be achieved in due course. Guaranteed
speeds”
High-quality fiber optic connections coverage is a hard requirement for the
Connectivity will always be a combination of self-driving car, among other things. After Such speeds were unthinkable five years
wireless and fixed connections. A fiber optic all, a dodgy connection can have disastrous ago. Try to imagine what bandwidths and
connection can transport unlimited amounts consequences. speeds will be achievable ten years from
of data to the other side of the world in a now.
22 23Questions or personal advice? Do you have any questions or would you prefer personal advice? Send an e-mail to info@eurofiber.be This is a Eurofiber e-book. The Lifeline platform informs and inspires in the area of digital connectivity: eurofiber.be/lifeline Eurofiber. Lifeline for the digital society
You can also read
