Creating a Digital Eco-System Can Advance Sri Lanka as the Asian Digital Tiger

The Internet has effectively transformed the world we live in today and thought leaders around the world are maximizing the benefits of this transformation in ways unimagined a few decades ago. Human intelligence as we know it is now partnered with artificial intelligence forming an alliance towards beating the odds of survival in the natural world.

It is this what we really asked for when humans ventured into creating machines that could take on tasks that would otherwise have to be performed ourselves? How best should professionals in the field information technology manage the collection and use of information? What really, is the future of humans in a world that could possibly be dominated by machines?

These are just a few questions asked around the world, and in today’s Ernest Interview with Ernest Jacobs, Ramesh Shanmuganathan discusses the challenges and opportunities created in the human-machine partnership.

‘The Internet of Things’ (IoT) is globally discussed as the new frontier in business and technology, while present IoT technologies and business models that use IoTare at an early stage, what is your assessment of its enterprise opportunities?

Today, DIGITAL is transforming the way we do EVERYTHING! I use the world DIGITAL to define many facets of what we are seeing in today’s context in terms of Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud and Internet of Everything (or Internet of Things). It’s estimated that the INTERNET connected devices would reach a staggering 75+ B by 2020 and this would unleash OPPORTUNITES as well as CHALLENGES in making sense of the DATA that all of these devices would unleash. Today, the world is moving towards mass personalization and that too based on context. IoE is already revolutionizing personalization based on context (location based services), how people drive (driverless cars), deliver goods (drones), nations manage public utilities (smart cities), newer buildings manage themselves (smart building), etc. This does present a unique opportunity to enterprises who wish to create engagement with their customers than merely transacting with them, since it enables an organization to serve its stakeholders with better visibility of what they are looking for through meaningful insights. Cisco assesses this to be a US$19 trillion opportunity in the next 5 years.

The amount of data in our world has been exploding. Companies capture trillions of bytes of information about customers, suppliers, and operations, and millions of networked sensors are being embedded in the physical world in devices such as mobile phones and automobiles, sensing, creating, and communicating data. Big data—large pools of data that can be captured, communicated, aggregated, stored, and analyzed—is now part of every sector and function of the global economy. Like other essential factors of production such as hard assets and human capital, it is increasingly the case that much of modern economic activity, innovation, and growth simply could not take place without data. The question is what this phenomenon means. Is the proliferation of data simply evidence of an increasingly intrusive world? Or can big data play a useful economic role?

As alluded to earlier, with IoE gaining traction there is an obvious growth of data that is being churned out by all of these devices connected to the internet, Big Data. The success of future organizations would greatly depend on how effectively they could crunch these data to get meaningful insights to make better decisions, build personalized services and build value eco-systems beyond the traditional boundaries of their organization. This has also given rise to a new breed of professionals called the ‘Data Scientist’ who are helping organizations unearth the hidden potential within the zeta-bytes of data which is inundating them today. Obviously this amount of data is going to intrusive, but does present useful outcomes from personal healthcare to sustainable economies with increased pressure on our habitat with the increase of the global population and consumption. Also, this does present immediate opportunities for certain industries such as telecommunication, retail, financial services, logistics who are better geared to capitalize on it today and the rest will evolve with the passage of time due to the competitive forces as well.

CIO’s may face pressure to adopt and implement newer technologies, but there’s also the reality that much of the business often involves long cycle times, with product platforms that have been in place for decades. With such competing forces at play, CIO’s can be challenged with achieving harmony with fellow executives and business-line leaders between driving innovation and respecting longstanding, tried and true processes. How do you reason with such situations towards seeking out the stable platforms to introduce new technologies and processes?

The emerging mandate for CIOs today is to help business understand the potential of emerging platforms beyond the boundaries of traditional organizations and more so in terms of the Digital platforms I spoke of earlier in terms of iSMAC (IoE, social, mobile, analytics, cloud) stack. The traditional platforms which are transactional warrants them to be stable and predictable, but the emerging digital platforms which are necessary to create engagement warrants them to be agile. The challenge is to balance the act between these two end of the continuum of platforms and hence between stability and agility. The key to this is to acknowledge that every platform and solution need not be inside-out, but can be outside-in as well. We need to create a platform that is open, scalable and federated, in terms of IT parlance so to speak, that can fuel open-innovation through crowd-sourcing, collaboration, co-creation. Today, Social, Mobile, Cloud, Analytics and IoE presents numerous possibilities to create this kind of platform and with the right API (Application Programming Interface) platform today, organizations can deliver the expectations of the business whilst balancing the expectations of the businesses whilst safe guarding governance structures that need to be present as part of the organization.

What methods/metrics are best to measure the performance of a CIO?

The CIO today has transformed from Chief Information Officer to that of Chief Innovation Officer and with this transformation in the role, the metrics associated in assessing his or her performance has evolved as well and can be broadly categorized into the two modes that I had mentioned earlier.

Mode One – Internal/Stability

• Strategic Value of IT in the organization
• Transformation role/potential of IT in the organization – Profit Center vs Cost Center
• Portfolio/Investment/Time spent on Transformational, Growth and Operational programs/initiatives
• Performance benchmarks against industry – IT budget as a % of revenue, cost of IT per employee, SLA commitments, etc

Mode Two – External Agility

• New capabilities and competencies incubated/acquired in line with ISMAC stack
• Programs/initiatives aligned to drive growth/transformation
• Extend of digital reach/foot print

Business leaders often complain about the lack of urgency in their IT departments in comparison to the frequently changing scenarios in business and marketing campaigns towards keeping up with market conditions. The notion of agility is a key measure of value. Is it important to think away from cost centricity towards business agility and investing in technology to create business flexibility?

In most organizations, IT is still seen as a cost which immediately implies that IT is seen a mere utility and a non-value adding function where the potential for IT to transform the organization is very low. In such as context, IT function will not have the alignment nor the capability to respond to changing business scenarios due to limited budgets, capability and lack of alignment between Business/IT. On the contrary, in organizations where IT function is able to lead the discussion on IT led Business transformation, IT is seen to be a strategic asset and thus agility becomes a key measure of value since the capability to react to evolving business needs becomes a core capability.

Business leaders often take longer to understand the value of IT innovations while IT departments often may not fully understand the needs of the business. What could CIO’s do to educate the business on the value of the technology at hand and also to educate the IT people on what the business is, that they’re serving and what provides it with value, how do help the translation on both sides?

Business savvy IT executives and IT savvy Business executives are a bid ask in today’s organizations and those who are able to cross-breed the Business/IT capabilities are able to have a meaningful discussion in providing the much desired leadership for transformation that could be championed through IT. The common language both parties understand is return on investment and value driven innovation which can impact the business. Demystifying technology to business executives is key and having a continuous dialog with the business on an on-going basis is key to building that confidence and knowledge.

Innovations tend to be the consistent requirement for businesses to meet market demands and conditions successfully. How do you recognize the value in business organizations having a formal innovations program on board vis-à-vis an open form of innovation where everyone in the company has the opportunity to pitch in their ideas?

Innovation today has become a global agenda and this cannot be assigned to a group of individuals or a unit, rather needs to be everyone’s agenda where by one within the organization or outside is able to contribute – open innovation. Open innovation is the way forward for any organization and it is a must to enable collaboration, co-innovation, and co-creation. Today’s IT platforms lends itself to facilitate same and extend the boundaries of an organization beyond the physical domain into a virtual world, truly making the world flatter.

Human resource management in large organizations involves attracting talent, maintaining talent and upgrading talent towards realizing their maximum potential. Information technology and automation is often mistakenly seen as the component in the organization that would minimize the need for human talent. How best should large organizations manage such conceptions about technology?

Today, the world is getting flatter by the day with globalization. This phenomenon is getting accelerated by technology and is fast reducing the degree of separation to less than 6 degrees. Technology and automation drive efficiencies in the eco-system and gives the much required speed and agility for the organization to be innovative and this does require talent of different proportions and scale which necessarily may not be found within the confinements of the organization per se. Technology complements the talent within organizations and does to replace them whilst bringing in better economies of scale and reach. The emerging concepts of crowd sourcing is fast becoming a cost effective and viable means for organizations to acquire their talent which is required on a per assignments basis whilst HR portal and online recruitment gives them a broader reach to acquire same for talent required on a longer term basis. Large organization can easily leverage the above and benefit immensely from it.

The capabilities of Asian technology leaders can have a positive impact on Asia, yet is Sri Lanka positively leveraging such capacities?

Sri Lanka needs to think of itself as an ‘Information Hub’ with information super-highways to other parts of the world in creating a digital eco-system that can help SRI LANKA leapfrog as the ASIAN, DIGITAL TIGER, an equivalent of Singapore in the digital world. With the strategic location of being positioned between China and India, the world’s No.1 and No.3 economies, Sri Lanka must work on putting herself on the digital map. We are not doing enough on this front since our efforts are currently concentrated on physical infrastructures at present. It would be good to develop both at the same time since we must understand that we are competing with established players such as Singapore, Malaysia, etc.