Digitalization: It’s the Fast Fish Which Eats the Slow Fish

Digitalization is one of those cool words that are generously used in many contexts by almost everyone in any industry. In that sense it is a close relative of “sustainability” or “security”. While such generous utilization of these words is making us feel like they lose their “wow factor”, their weight doesn’t change and their criticality in our ever-changing 21^st century society has never been more important.

We are living in an era of rapid changes and disruptions. Throughout the history, there has always been a constant evolution in our lifestyles, how we communicate, how we travel, how we make decisions or how we do business, but the speed of change experienced in recent years has been breathtaking.

Perhaps one of the most striking changes we have been experiencing is the change in the concept of time. These days, a lot happens in a year. We are truly experiencing “Exponential Times”. Just last year, scientists announced that the earth is actually spinning faster and 2020 included the 28 shortest days since 1960.  Perhaps this is the “fun” root cause of this change in the concept of time.

Regardless of the cosmic reasons, we are now producing the same amount of data produced in all of human history in just one year. Having laid down a global, efficient, and secure mobile communication infrastructure over the course of several decades and cutting-edge technological advancements in machinery and computational power are of course the main enablers of this exponential surge.

The main driver behind all this is the fact that information is now the most important asset for both people and companies. Companies that can collect the information efficiently and make good use of it are growing. We see a business world where even the top 500 companies are disrupted and replaced by new players who utilize innovations better. The rules of the game are rapidly changing, and companies are emerging and reaching giant status without any form of ownership by offering services via software. Even cosmetics and textile companies add digital notions to their products and define themselves as technology companies.

The rules of the game are changing – and so are the expectations of our customers. In order to keep up with this change, manufacturers need to offer new products much faster. Just like Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, said, “In the new world, it is not the big fish which eats the small fish, it’s the fast fish which eats the slow fish.”

Products are updated every year. This means faster innovation cycles, and more complex but smaller quantities of production. Customers would like to have more personalized products without having to pay extra. Production has to be more flexible than ever, and personalized mass production requires maximum automation. Moreover, the market now needs to have complete production quality cycles and product traceability in order to comply with the global and variable legal quality requirements. And, of course, we have to do all of this with both cost savings and maximum efficiency in mind for a sustainable world. The new motto is “More with Less”.

All of this is possible if the exponentially increasing and ever-changing data can be collected and processed efficiently to create actionable intelligence. However, it is not possible if processes keep depending on human-speed. Machine learning algorithms should massage the collected data into an intelligible format. Organizations have to update in order to be ready to act quickly on the collected data and implement necessary updates in designs, production, distribution, or any other area. In fact, industries are only processing 1% of their generated data. We are only at the beginning of Industry 4.0 and we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Some part of this data mountain can be processed at the edge depending on applications, but a big portion should still be transferred securely to centralized computing facilities.

As a connectivity provider, we at Tele2 IoT are at the heart of this giant transformation. Our horizontal structure enables us to work with any industry. One thing we are seeing that it is not just production that is changing – central energy production is being replaced by distributed generation, and the management of supply and demand with smart grids appears as a very important subheading. This is followed by smart cities, smart buildings and homes, and even healthcare. All of this has to be orchestrated in the smartest way possible.