More technological progress has been made in terms of inventions and innovations in the past five years than in the fifty years before that.
The pace at which is technology is advancing is giddying and is extremely hard to keep track of. In fact, the advancement of technology has been rampant that a term itself was coined to refer to the spectrum of possibilities: digital transformation.
Digital transformation is the maximum utilization of digital tools to optimize organizational performance at all levels. It is not a single technology, but rather a group of technologies that contribute for synergistic results.
There are six major technologies that have ushered in the digital transformation era. These are the technologies that will also responsible for pushing the frontiers of technological possibilities to the next orbit.
This blog is an exploration of six such technologies, the positive influence of which cannot be denied.
Augmented reality (AR)
Augmented reality forms part of the larger set of immersive reality technology. It works by displaying digital snippets above physical objects or surfaces. Although it is in the recent years that AR has become a mainstream technology, the groundwork for this stretches back to the 1990s.
Take Boeing, for instance. Boeing has been using AR since the 90s to simplify the interior design and component engineering of its airplanes. These days, every software development company worth its salt in engaged in developing augmented reality apps across a variety of industries, from manufacturing and automobiles to retail to banking and real estate and beyond. The fact that Apple is betting heavily on AR also adds more significance to the technology.
eCommerce
Amazon. Alibaba. Zappos. eBay. The list of world’s top eCommerce companies is ever-growing. Two decades ago, the majority of these companies did not exist, or were fledgling startups; eCommerce was a vague term for most users.
Today, eCommerce is a trillion dollar industry that has become a hotbed for technological developments. From cab hailing and ride sharing to virtually “trying on” merchandise while online shopping, eCommerce has become a way of life for many. It has become a launch pad for many entrepreneurs who want to sell their wares to the world at large without having to set up a physical store. All an entrepreneur needs is a great idea and a domain name to get started. Needless to say, eCommerce played a significant role in bringing digital transformation to life.
Cloud computing
A decade ago, the storage size of a floppy disk was 1.44 MB. Today, cloud computing has made it possible for individual users as well as businesses to have far more storage capacity. In fact, a new email ID comes with free GBs of cloud storage; that was unimaginable a decade ago. Today the cloud is used for storing terabytes of data and running heavy applications that pull real-time data from all distributed online sources. It has become the backbone upon which digital transformation takes place.
The public cloud application services market revenue is forecasted to be worth $113 billion by 2021 (Statista). Cloud storage brings to businesses several benefits like flexibility, agility, quick time to market, over-the-air product updates and so on.
In a way, it is cloud storage that has caused the steep decline in the prices of commodity hardware as well as obsolescence of hardware storage devices like floppy disks, compact disks, and so on. Cloud storage is the technological catalyst for enabling digital transformation across several industries like manufacturing, retail, finance, and logistics, among many others.
Mobility
Mobility has become more of a lifestyle than a utility. The ease-of-use, abundant availability of mobile apps, and affordable smartphones have all accelerated the global adoption rate of mobility.
As a result, businesses also migrated to a mobile-approach where they use mobile websites and applications to woo customers and sell to them. Mobility combined with the reach of eCommerce has led to the explosive growth of the retail industry. Subsequently, mobile app development has also come to the forefront as a pivotal IT service offering.
Data analytics
There are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created each day. 90% of this data was created only in the past five years or so. Google itself is is processing 3.5 Million searches everyday. All this data churned out needs to be analyzed to spot patterns and user behavior.
Data analytics help businesses to analyze their customer data to identify trends that could be capitalized on. From predicting seasonal purchases to zeroing down on the best sellers, data analytics can help businesses pick signals from the noise that real-time data is creating. This enables businesses to tweak their strategy to become a digital enterprise that is driven by data and not by guesswork decisions.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is hailed to be the next frontier of technology. As a matter of fact, studies in AI and machine learning have been happening for decades. But, only in the recent decades, thanks to the explosive amount of data created has AI become a feasible technology.
In the days to come, AI will act as a catalyst to decision-making that will help businesses to take quick data-driven decisions. AI programs will disseminate historical data and futuristic trends to arrive at recommendations that will steer decision-making in the right direction. .
Final thoughts
These are the six technologies that have pushed the envelope of digital transformation. From bringing the world together to making digital tools available to all, they have played a key role in sculpting the digital era.
