Download - Teletimes
Download - Teletimes Download - Teletimes
The Next Wave of DigitizationSetting Your Direction,Building Your CapabilitiesRoman FriedrichMatthew Le MerleMichael PetersonAlex KosterFor more than a decade,powerful new digital approachesto business, and life in general,have come on the scene, yetwe are now entering an evenmore rapid and dramatic periodof change. The phenomenonof digitization is reaching aninflection point. Three powerfulforces are driving the shift:consumer demand, the pushfor new technologies, andthe prospect of even greatereconomic benefits. Everycompany in every industry willbe dramatically affected, and itwill be the responsibility of CEOsto lead the charge by buildingthe right capabilities for theircompanies to remain relevantin the digitized environment,achieve growth, and fendoff competitive threats. Newtechnology deployments andrelated investments will add upto more than even the largestand most resource-endowedenterprises can afford. Trade-offswill be required, and the risks ofmaking the wrong choices willbe high. Unlike the technologyrevolutions of the 1990s and2000s, this time around thebasis of competition will be setby the companies that embraceand deploy digitizationin the right places at the righttime. This Perspective providesguidance to CEOs and theirmanagement teams about therelevance of digitization in theirrespective industries, and thefactors most likely to accelerateor decelerate the digitizationphenomenon. The judgmentsthat companies make now willlargely determine their relativecompetitive position for theforeseeable future.The Inflection PointFans of Disney movies cannow buy cinema tickets righton Facebook and invite theirfriends to join them at the show.Groupon customers receivecoupons for deep discounts fromall kinds of local retailers andservice businesses. Shoppersat Best Buy can ask Facebookfriends their opinions aboutspecific items they see on theshelf, in real time, right in thestore.Elsewhere, ranchers areembedding into their cattlesensors that send back dataon location and health foranalysis—each cow generatesabout 200 megabits of dataa year. Engineers at ThamesWater Utilities in London haveinstalled thousands of sensorsto monitor its water pipenetwork, reducing leakage by 25percent. Further afield, ZMQ,a mobile solutions companyin India, recently launchedan SMS service to deliverprenatal advice and remindersto pregnant women, for 1 rupeeper text. ClickDiagnostics, basedin the U.S., lets people in ruralareas of Bangladesh and Egyptuse cellphones to transmitpictures of their eyes andskin for diagnosis of cataractsand skin cancers. On a largerscale, Australia is building aUS$40 billion next-generationbroadband network to serve asthe basis for a future “smart”economy.The effects of anincreasingly digitized worldare now reaching into everycorner of our lives. Already, 4.6billion phones continually sendinformation on the location oftheir users to carriers. Ciscopredicts that connected Internetdevices will outnumber peopleby two to one in 2015. Upwardof 10 billion applications havebeen downloaded from Apple’sApp Store. Every day, peoplegenerate 100 million tweetson Twitter. Fully 79 percent ofworkers in Western nationscurrently depend on theInternet. The upheavals takingplace throughout the MiddleEast and North Africa owe muchof their power to the digitaldevices connecting people there.And 32 surveillance camerasnow monitor all activity within200 yards of the former houseof George Orwell, author ofDecember 2011www.teletimesinternational.com47
1984 and coiner of the term “BigBrother.” The push to build afully digitized world continues.The amount of data generatedannually is approaching 35trillion gigabytes. In the nextdecade, 350 million Chineseare expected to move to newlybuilt cities, each of whichwill require as much as $35billion in investment for smartinfrastructure. It is estimatedthat the CO2 equivalent of 53million cars could be eliminatedif the U.S. were to invest in asmart electric grid, while smarttraffic management could savean estimated 4.2 billion workhours lost and 10.6 billion litersof gasoline burned annually ascars idle in traffic. Eventually,1 trillion sensors will bedeployed globally in the formof “smart dust,” gathering anddigitizing trillions of gigabytesof information from the analogworld, and sending it wirelesslyto a growing number of “bigdata” machines for storage andanalysis. In short, though thecurrent degree of digitizationhas already given us a worldthat’s very different from theone we knew just 20 years ago,the coming wave will remakeour world all over again. Ourresearch into the behavior ofGeneration C—people born after1990 who are just now reachingadulthood and entering theworkforce—shows that the trendto global digitization will onlyaccelerate, shaping in earnestthe ways in which technologyinvades every aspect of our lives.Pervasive broadband, ubiquitousconnectivity, cloud computing,social networking, “the Internetof Things”—all are coalescing totransform how we work, play,communicate, socialize, anddo business. The digitizationphenomenon has reached aninflection point.That leavesCEOs with a stark choice: Beginto invest now in the internaland external digital capabilitiestheir companies will need todifferentiate themselves fromthe competition. Or sit back,watch the digital revolutionunfold, and run the risk of beingoutflanked by more forwardthinking,faster-moving rivals.Three Driving ForcesThe outlines of the fullydigitized world have long beensketched.So why are we reaching thiscritical inflection point now?The reason is that three drivingforces, acting in concert, areThe effects of an increasingly digitized worldare now reaching into every corner of our lives.powerfully reinforcingone another.ConsumerPullConsumers, and particularlyGeneration C, are alreadyfully adapted to the digitalenvironment. They expect tobe connected every momentof their lives, through virtuallyevery device, whether theyare consuming news andentertainment, reaching outto their friends through social48 www.teletimesinternational.comDecember 2011
- Page 1 and 2: O3b Networks bridgesthe Global Band
- Page 3 and 4: In this issueInterviews0826Ericsson
- Page 5 and 6: Letter to readersKhalid AtharChief
- Page 7 and 8: December 2011www.teletimesinternati
- Page 10 and 11: Africa continues to be the fastestg
- Page 12 and 13: 250,000 high-speed connectionsacros
- Page 14 and 15: esearch and work closely withindust
- Page 16 and 17: Asia to be the biggest market of Co
- Page 18 and 19: Group CEO of Batelcoto chair SAMENA
- Page 20 and 21: 4G World’s Focus Evolves:It’s N
- Page 22 and 23: Contd. from page 24Central Asia, Eu
- Page 24 and 25: December 2011www.teletimesinternati
- Page 26 and 27: tion have been designed to doexactl
- Page 28 and 29: Huawei concludes 2011Cloud Computin
- Page 30 and 31: Al Daweesh: Achieving synergieswith
- Page 32 and 33: Blocking pornto safeguard kids:Some
- Page 34 and 35: Thuraya and Al Aan TV partnerto spo
- Page 36 and 37: H.M. King Hamad 4th Golf TrophyTees
- Page 38 and 39: now TV and ESPN STAR Sportslaunch E
- Page 40 and 41: Sony to acquireEricsson’s share o
- Page 42 and 43: Digital games play wellin the Middl
- Page 46 and 47: The infrastructure backbone of the
- Page 48 and 49: total nominal global revenuebase ac
- Page 50 and 51: to new digital technologiesand busi
- Page 52 and 53: “TIP for Success” - Empowering
- Page 54 and 55: sites, 27% for educationalpurposes,
- Page 56 and 57: USF all set to thrive in Telemedici
The Next Wave of DigitizationSetting Your Direction,Building Your CapabilitiesRoman FriedrichMatthew Le MerleMichael PetersonAlex KosterFor more than a decade,powerful new digital approachesto business, and life in general,have come on the scene, yetwe are now entering an evenmore rapid and dramatic periodof change. The phenomenonof digitization is reaching aninflection point. Three powerfulforces are driving the shift:consumer demand, the pushfor new technologies, andthe prospect of even greatereconomic benefits. Everycompany in every industry willbe dramatically affected, and itwill be the responsibility of CEOsto lead the charge by buildingthe right capabilities for theircompanies to remain relevantin the digitized environment,achieve growth, and fendoff competitive threats. Newtechnology deployments andrelated investments will add upto more than even the largestand most resource-endowedenterprises can afford. Trade-offswill be required, and the risks ofmaking the wrong choices willbe high. Unlike the technologyrevolutions of the 1990s and2000s, this time around thebasis of competition will be setby the companies that embraceand deploy digitizationin the right places at the righttime. This Perspective providesguidance to CEOs and theirmanagement teams about therelevance of digitization in theirrespective industries, and thefactors most likely to accelerateor decelerate the digitizationphenomenon. The judgmentsthat companies make now willlargely determine their relativecompetitive position for theforeseeable future.The Inflection PointFans of Disney movies cannow buy cinema tickets righton Facebook and invite theirfriends to join them at the show.Groupon customers receivecoupons for deep discounts fromall kinds of local retailers andservice businesses. Shoppersat Best Buy can ask Facebookfriends their opinions aboutspecific items they see on theshelf, in real time, right in thestore.Elsewhere, ranchers areembedding into their cattlesensors that send back dataon location and health foranalysis—each cow generatesabout 200 megabits of dataa year. Engineers at ThamesWater Utilities in London haveinstalled thousands of sensorsto monitor its water pipenetwork, reducing leakage by 25percent. Further afield, ZMQ,a mobile solutions companyin India, recently launchedan SMS service to deliverprenatal advice and remindersto pregnant women, for 1 rupeeper text. ClickDiagnostics, basedin the U.S., lets people in ruralareas of Bangladesh and Egyptuse cellphones to transmitpictures of their eyes andskin for diagnosis of cataractsand skin cancers. On a largerscale, Australia is building aUS$40 billion next-generationbroadband network to serve asthe basis for a future “smart”economy.The effects of anincreasingly digitized worldare now reaching into everycorner of our lives. Already, 4.6billion phones continually sendinformation on the location oftheir users to carriers. Ciscopredicts that connected Internetdevices will outnumber peopleby two to one in 2015. Upwardof 10 billion applications havebeen downloaded from Apple’sApp Store. Every day, peoplegenerate 100 million tweetson Twitter. Fully 79 percent ofworkers in Western nationscurrently depend on theInternet. The upheavals takingplace throughout the MiddleEast and North Africa owe muchof their power to the digitaldevices connecting people there.And 32 surveillance camerasnow monitor all activity within200 yards of the former houseof George Orwell, author ofDecember 2011www.teletimesinternational.com47
Change language