Of digital transformations and cyber threats

While terms like AI (Artificial Intelligence), Machine Learning (ML), RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and IoT (Internet of Things) are gaining traction and could define the 2020s, another concept that could change the way enterprises build their hardware infrastructure is HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure).

A relatively new concept, the term was coined as late as 2012 and is now gaining traction becoming a multi-billion dollar global market. The Indian market is also growing at a rapid rate. With the onward march of virtualization and cloud in the enterprise space, HCI was inevitable. Computing. Storage. Networking. If everything is virtualized, then it translates into more flexibility and efficiency, a seamless operation and reduced costs.

The concept of the Digital Enterprise is also taking place with more and more digital transformation coming to the fore. Some of the other hot trends of the year are automation, containerization, micro services and the API economy.

IT always meant change, but now the rate of change is becoming faster and faster and is encompassing both urban and rural areas thanks to the mobile cloud duo and all big and large enterprises equally thanks to a host of new technologies as mentioned above. The last mile is finally being touched by an all-encompassing technology in every corner of the globe.

Of course there’s no point for an enterprise to straight away jump into all of those things without a second thought unless there’s an actual need for each and every one of them and unless the issue of scalability is sorted out.

Another major threat in 2019 is also cyber security. The world has seen a host of such breaches in the year. In the US Florida municipalities paid hackers in excess of US$1 million after ransomware attacks. Baltimore, Atlanta and a few other towns saw such attacks. NASA also announced that there had been a hack earlier at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

In Bulgaria the entire country was practically put in jeopardy when hackers went away with the tax records of every citizen in the country. Things probably reached unprecedented levels when the master hacking capability Russian secret intelligence FSB got hacked in the largest data breach in its history.

As more and more of the world goes digital, more also has to be done to bolster cyber security. India is no different and will face these issues as it gets more and more digitised. All the threats have to be weighed and countered along with all the benefits that the ever-changing technology is granting us.