Mohit Rochlani Director, IT and Operations, IndiaFirst Life Insurance
Enterprises across sectors are increasingly focusing on new technologies to improve their operational efficiency and service delivery. In the past one year, all organisations, irrespective of their size, industry and focus area, have undergone digital transformation. Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT) and big data analytics have seen high adoption rates amongst organisations. Interestingly, various state governments have also partnered with technology companies to establish incubation centres to promote the development and adoption of new-age technologies. Going forward, enterprises will have to work on developing skill-sets to leverage these technologies. Also, this will raise data protection and security concerns. Technology experts from leading enterprises discuss the key technology trends and the way forward…
What were the key technology trends that shaped the Indian enterprise space in 2018?
Today, we are surrounded by smart devices. The technological wonders continue to get better with each passing day. Devices are getting smarter and we need better platforms and architectures to efficiently support the digital transformation. Trends that shaped Indian enterprises and continue to make an impact are business process bots/chatbots, cloud migration and adoption, machine learning (ML) and AI, advanced security architecture, service-based architectures, IoT architectures, blockchain, and augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).
What is the current trend in adoption of new-age technologies among Indian enterprises?
India is reaching an inflection point in technology adoption with social, mobile, cloud and analytics driving digital disruption in the country. The world has truly gone mobile, forever altering customer expectations and experiences.
In India, we are moving rapidly towards the next phase of the web, the internet of everything, which is the connection of people, processes, data and things. The enterprise scenario is changing rapidly. Earlier, where only large companies were taking advantage of the new-age emerging technologies, now even smaller businesses are leveraging similar benefits. They are adopting these new technologies and using them in more innovative ways and more quickly than larger firms. Most of the technologies are offered as services such as software-as-a-service, infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service. These new models of technology delivery can go a long way in increasing technology absorption in businesses.
“Be it setting up a new start-up or financing an idea, the government and its schemes have been very helpful. The fintech ecosystem has gained a lot from government programmes.” Mohit Rochlani
What are the key challenges faced by enterprises while adopting and managing new technologies?
One of the main challenges pertains to organisational culture, where people are not receptive to change, and leaders of the organisation are not well equipped to disrupt their own business models. In addition, there is a lack of strategy for digital transformation and limited resource availability.
What is the government’s role in increasing the uptake of new-age technologies?
India is fortunate to have a very technology-friendly government. Digital India is one of the biggest initiatives in the world. Be it setting up a new start-up or financing an idea, the government and its schemes have been very helpful. The fintech ecosystem has gained a lot from government programmes.
Which technology trends are likely to dominate Indian enterprises in 2019?
Trends that made inroads in 2018 will grow in prominence in the coming year. These are AI, ML (a subset of AI), RPA; blockchain; edge computing (designed to solve some of the shortcomings of cloud computing); AR and VR; cybersecurity; and IoT. The number of IoT devices is expected to reach 30 billion by 2020. There are also subsets within the ML domain, including neural networks, NLP and deep learning.
