Strategic advice to leverage new technologies
Technology is at the heart of nearly every enterprise, enabling new business models and strategies, and serving as the catalyst to industry convergence. Leveraging the right technology can improve business outcomes, providing intelligence and insights that help you make more informed and accurate decisions. From finding patterns in data through data science, to curating relevant insights with data analytics, to the predictive abilities and innumerable applications of AI, to solving challenging business problems with ML, NLP, and knowledge graphs, technology has brought decision-making to a more intelligent level. Keep pace with the technology trends, opportunities, applications, and real-world use cases that will move your organization closer to its transformation and business goals.
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Working with blockchain over the past few years has made me realize the broad possibilities of distributed networks. Certainly, one could say that blockchain is “just” a distributed database; however, emerging adoption reinforces the potential underneath. There are myriad ways to adopt this technology, including in transferring funds, managing supply chains, handling tax evasion, and performing targeted analyses of data already recorded on the blockchain.
When using Agile methods, the integration and testing effort is performed continuously since capability is built up and delivered in short iterations. In order to implement continuous integration and testing concepts, consider the seven Agile approaches examined in this Advisor.
A capability architecture defines what we are and do at any given time, whereas process, information, platform, and other architectures describe how we accomplish what we are or perform what we do at any given time. As we improve or mature, what we do and/or how we do it changes over time, meaning that both our capabilities and the enabling architectures evolve.
As we explore in this issue of Cutter Business Techology Journal, blockchain is a smart but still small baby only just beginning the process of becoming an adult. The next two to three years will be important in terms of implementing proper regulations and standards to enable wider adoption of blockchain and to establish the technology on a solid legal foundation.
Tim Virtue focuses on the most significant risks of BaaS. He identifies common BaaS risks and proposes mitigation strategies for all of them. Virtue stresses that adoption of innovative business models is essential for new market entrants. In the build-versus-buy debate, he favors buy, although stresses that the BaaS provider should be a trusted partner, not simply a commodity supplier. Despite the significant risks involved in digital transformation adoption, doing nothing is the greatest risk of all.
Claudio Lima explains how blockchain technology can be used to digitize and foster growth in the energy sector. DLT has the potential to optimize energy management processes and to deal with the growing complexity in the decentralized energy system. Lima introduces the IEEE P2418.5 Standard for Blockchain in Energy, which creates an industry framework that will help with interoperability among different blockchain use cases and technologies. A DLT layer complements existing smart grid architectures, improves grid security and efficiency, and reduces the costs of utility operation.
Magesh Kasthuri discusses how city administration can use blockchain. He provides various insights into decentralized architecture, including its technology benefits and security implementation. The article highlights a need for self-healing and auto-scaling services within a smart city architecture, which can be achieved by a blockchain network based on HyperLedger Fabric in a cloud environment. Blockchain can make cities more efficient and more resilient and adds greater transparency and security to a city’s digital processes. Applying DLT technologies in smart cities is an opportunity to reshape many aspects of how cities are organized and managed in order to better serve their citizens.
Patryk Walaszczyk discusses regulators’ role in blockchain adoption. He evaluates different approaches to regulatory sandboxes and questions their value in driving innovation and blockchain technology adoption. The author provides information about the scope and objectives of some blockchain sandboxes as well as their outcomes so far. It is to be hoped that current government efforts will accelerate blockchain adoption and that new business models across industries will emerge.