Digital Transformation: A Force to Shape New Business Era

Since PM Modi spoke about his dream about Digital India, the businesses are trying to become digitally empowered. The transformation isn’t necessary just because every business is going for it. It has capability to share the future of new business era.

We spoke to Nagendra Venkaswamy, Vice President, India and South Asia at Riverbed Technology about the digital transformation and challenges in India.

How are businesses in India faring when compared with global markets, when it comes to digital transformation?

Digital transformation (henceforth, DX) is a major force shaping a new era for Indian organizations; and it’s fueling disruption across all industries, from healthcare to financial services. The Government’s ambitious Digital India initiative is slowly but surely starting to bear fruit in its effort to transform India into a digitally empowered society. And in the process, India has become a hotbed of innovation, boasting the third largest startup community in the world.

India is faring well in the global race towards DX, driven by a combination of ever-increasing customer expectations and major advancements in key enabling technologies. But challenges exist: mobile and broadband penetration remains comparably low, the digital leadership skills shortage remains an issue, and infrastructure challenges persist.

Nagendra Venkaswamy, Vice President, India and South Asia, Riverbed Technology

What are the current challenges that can be the potential roadblocks towards this journey?

IDC recently detailed some of the potential roadblocks on the journey towards DX in a whitepaper on Digital Transformation readiness in the Asia Pacific region. These include the proliferation of mobile devices (and corresponding issues including security, device management, etc.), cloud adoption adding complexity to the network, the increasing number of connected “things” and the rising costs of maintaining traditional networks. In short, DX places significant demands on the digital infrastructure and the network hasn’t evolved as fast as the remainder of the traditional IT stack. In fact, it’s an area of IT that hasn’t changed much in the last 20 years. This presents a very real barrier to the potential success of DX. IDC predicts that by 2017, 60% of DX initiatives will not be able to scale because of a lack of strategic architecture. I see this as a call to action for the industry to re-think the network for the digital age.

A brief overview of the recent report published by Riverbed in partnership with IDC

The whitepaper examines the need for enterprises and service providers to position networks as enablers of innovation, and discusses how the delivery of disruptive technologies like software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technologies is transforming the network for the digital era. Both build upon initiatives focused on enhancing WAN performance through optimization and WAN application acceleration technologies – an area where Riverbed has a legacy of innovation.

The detailed whitepaper can be accessed at: Digital Transformation Readiness in APJ

How can the enterprises achieve successful business outcome in the era of digital transformation?

Achieving true Digital Transformation requires a complete rethinking of the network and application architecture. Old school networks, based on centralized data centers, are giving way to modern networks based on cloud and lines of business demanding even greater IT ROI. While legacy technology companies, such as Cisco, struggle to make this shift, newer disruptive players are poised to shake-up the industry.

Advice for CIOs in India.

The growing prevalence of applications in the business environment, introduction of SDN and the 3rd Platform are causing a major disruption in the market as all technology segments evolve to address the changing requirements. C-level executives are also studying these technologies to see how they can leverage them to grow their businesses, but at the same time are taking a cautious approach to investments as budgets become tighter, and the importance of investment protection rises.

The network is the key to meeting the needs of the future enterprise. Its adaptability and flexibility require that existing solutions be examined carefully to determine their relevance to the future enterprise. Integration with the remainder of the IT stack, the ability to deliver on continuous QoS along with high levels of automation and support for orchestration will be key. Offerings around SD-WAN and NFV provide a direction for the IT planner to redesign their network, to reduce overall cost and to deliver on the demands that will continue to evolve from both C-Suite and the broader market.