We are entering the third wave of digitalisation which will once more result in far-reaching changes to society.
The first wave was the emergence of PCs and IT systems in businesses with enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and databases which created a massive amount of automations.
The second wave was the internet. With that came a huge disruptive force and digitalisation that has affected every industry.
The third wave of digitalisation is the ubiquitous, connected network. The consequence of pervasive connectivity is huge because it connects the physical world of machines with apps and with on-premise IT.
When you look at this truly connected world in the B2B context it drives companies into a new direction, one centred around the connected customer experience. At Tesla Elon Musk is able to respond to a tweet from a customer suggesting an improvement to a vehicle and say it’s a great idea, we’ll make it available in the next software update. Previously, a car maker would have had to delay the introduction of a new feature until the next new model was introduced in several years’ time. Now it can simply be added to the next software update.
It’s not just the automotive industry that is transforming in this way. Other industrial companies too are transforming their business from selling products to providing services. It is scary as it means they have to innovate continuously. Gardner Denver is an air compressor manufacturer. It used to sell air compressors but now it is moving to offer compressed air as a service. Michelin has been offering tyres as a service to truck fleets for many years.
In a truly connected world you need to have a seamless technology architecture, so you can run the same apps on public cloud, at the core on-premise and at the edge. It isn’t optimal to process all data at the edge, or on-premise or in a public cloud. Each has their own advantages for specific tasks and therefore all should be accommodated.
In the third generation of digitalisation we witness the integration of on-premise databases, trouble ticketing and other enterprise systems with new services in the cloud. These need to be brought together via hybrid integration with the physical world, the things out there.
The third generation of digitalisation with a truly connected world will unleash a new way to drive efficiency, productivity and innovation which is very much needed to compensate for our aging society.
