IT decision-makers of India will be focusing on the areas of hybrid and on-premise cloud, AI, ML and using data to create informed and intelligent decisions as their key priorities are in the year 2022.
In times when the majority of everyday work-related practices are being done online. From meetings to conferences, most of it has been shifted to the digital space. There has been a significant decline in the number of COVID19 cases in India and things are getting back to normal. Organisations are constantly making an effort to accelerate their journey of digital transformation.
43 percent of Indian IT professionals said that the pandemic has increased their focus on security and threats. The report added that more than one in two feel limited knowledge and increasing data complexity and data silos as barriers to AI adoption.
W.Media spoke to Suhas Mhaskar, ED & CIO, Octave in order to look at the major technology focus areas of the company for the year 2022.
Octave is an India-based company that helps in accelerating the transformation to Industry 4.0 by smart automation of production & assembly processes, IoT-enabled process automation, industrial robots, special purpose machines, big data, analytics and cognitive computing.
Focus areas for 2022
“We will continue our focus on business platforms and will expand these further. Owing to the nature of our business, we will continue hybrid platforms – both on-premise, colocated and cloud-native,” said Mhaskar.
He further explained that increased focus will be on innovative capture and use of data to create informed intelligent decisions. Ability to assimilate, co-relate and integrate data across platforms, user groups and projects. To prepare executives and managers for the continual use of AI and Machine Learning to augment and enhance human intelligence.
Other areas of focus include increased focus on digitalisation to create the ability to change & scale quickly. Reusable business logic modules: (much on the lines of lego bricks) that can be quickly reused across different applications and platforms. Rapid, intelligent decisions combined the use of automation, AI and human intelligence to quickly learn the lessons and improve on them and automation and AI to create and provide capabilities for quick turn-around times.
Mhaskar further explained that technology will also be used for increasing business revenue. Using AI and algorithms to predict industry trends and customer choices.
“Ability to seamlessly work across extended supply chains consisting of our plants, captive units and supplier base. Enhance user experience across customers, employees and suppliers – for quicker adoption,” pointed out Mhaskar.
Priorities for the next few years
“We usually create a long-term roadmap for about 3-5 years ahead of time, and in our case, this was prepared prior to the beginning of the pandemic. We course-correct as the technologies mature or new ones emerge. Obviously, the overall industry-related changes, changed customer behaviour and employee working trends are the influencing factors on the adoption of appropriate technologies,” said Mhaskar.
He further pointed out that these along with the business priorities would become the core input for the company’s next technology roadmap, on which they would be working during the middle of the next financial year.
“Other than the company’s core design and production areas, we had already moved on cloud, so the pandemic-related work from home was not a major challenge for us.
Going forward we see some more automation opportunities in our core manufacturing areas, and increased synergies between our plants, captive facilities and suppliers. Apart from these, security will remain a major priority,” added Mhaskar.
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning have been around for a long time now but are still in the early stages. Virtual reality and augmented reality have primarily been used for gaming but now it has enormous potential in training, entertainment, education, and marketing areas. Automation, edge computing and AI are said to be the new normal.
Where are the Budgets?
Considering the effects that the pandemic and the economy reflected on the business, every budget owner will have to justify the spending.
While the spending is expected to provide good returns (tangible or intangible) over a reasonable period of time, some of the focus areas which we consider strategic in nature would continue to get new budgets.
“For all of the other tactical and operational spends, an innovative payback approach is expected. In most such cases, the cost savings over a period of time, help to sustain the momentum,” Mhaskar concluded.