This year, Gartner released a study that only 7{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of CIOs in the Asia-Pacific Region have no interest in Artificial Intelligence technologies.

Both data sets confirm that despite the unique obstacles and bottlenecks in the deployment of the technology, more and more CIOs are embracing AI’s application in their organization’s critical business points.

In this age of digital transformation, CIOs are expected to adopt, engage and lead the company in its business strategies by building a solid digital enterprise.

In the recent round table discussion held at SAP Asia-Pacific, CIOs of SAP and MyRepublic shared how they leverage AI capabilities in their organizations and how they manage the roadblocks of their AI initiatives.

SAP’s AI Efforts

For many years now, SAP has been at the forefront of digital innovation driving and expanding its business globally, now taking full advantage of SAP Cloud Platform and the AI capabilities from its SAP Leonardo portfolio.

Manik Narayan Saha, CIO of SAP Asia-Pacific, has stated that today’s business problems are underpinned by AI thinking. In fact, the company’s center of excellence already had the initiative of building AI models not just for analytics, but also to automate transactions, effectively moving rule-based to pattern-based automation.

In SAP’s APAC headquarter in Singapore, an AI team of experienced data scientists are now put to work. Saha said,

“We’re starting to reach the hockey stick moment where we’ve built enough organizational competencies that can be used across the board… The next step would be to use external data to provide our sales teams with news and other information about their customers.”

One of the company’s AI projects is to develop a digital assistant that would use natural language processing to help its sales team manage accounts and opportunities in their sales pipelines.

MyRepublic’s AI for better CX

Eugene Yeo, group CIO and CEO of MyRepublic, a multinational telecommunications company delivering fiber broadband, voice and digital services to homes and businesses across APAC, recognizes the contribution of AI in helping the company understand its customers better.

“We’ve focused a lot on gathering customer data, as well as external data, to understand our customer segments, including their values, interests, and connections with other people over time,” he said. “This will enable us to create better product bundles catered to their needs.”

The company also recently formed a data science team to support its AI initiatives.

Clearing the bottlenecks

The two CIOs explained how they have managed the key challenges they encountered in rolling out their AI initiatives. Below are the ones mentioned:

Lack of computing power

According to Saha, this is the bigger bottleneck than data issues, particularly when running highly specialized algorithms and models that could take days to generate an outcome.

As with MyRepublic, Yeo said that the company is now using cloud-based serverless computing services to ease the computing crunch needed in driving sales and marketing initiatives.

Utilizing Chatbots

Yeo said that instead of powering chat bots with a knowledge base, his team is working with Google to build a chat bot powered by user stories helping their customers step-by-step through digital interaction.

Saha stated that at SAP, chat bots handle 10-15{aa282f308afcc222aaa21b0478c79e01a8fedd01972e2180867097bd93930f22} of the million IT support requests from employees they receive yearly, which emphasizes the importance of achieving scale in AI deployments.

ROI on AI

“To get full value from AI, you need to deploy it at scale, simply because the upfront investment is significant,” Saha said. “If you are only doing it in one subsidiary or country, it is unlikely that you will get a good return on investment.”

In the same context, Saha warned that AI projects do not always deliver guaranteed results based on a certain metric and within a specific period of time.

“But one thing that’s different between AI and other projects is that the returns from AI will get better as the machine gets smarter and more optimized over time… Just look at Amazon’s Alexa, which can now handle exponentially more scenarios than when it was first released.”

Saha said SAP has embarked on explainable AI projects to look into the factors that influence AI decisions.

Read the Gartner report here.

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Improved Data Quality Tools

Talend, a global leader in cloud data integration and data integrity, today announced it has once again been recognised by Gartner, Inc. as a Leader in data quality tools as described in the 2019 Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Tools. This is the second consecutive time that Talend has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant.  Talend improved its position over the previously issued report based on completeness of vision and ability to execute.

Only Talend offers a single suite of apps for data integration and data integrity with built-in, pervasive data quality and governance. Talend solves some of the most complex aspects of the data value chain, enabling companies to collect data across systems, govern it to ensure proper use and compliance, transform it and improve quality, and share it with internal and external stakeholders to help more users make the right decision on time, every time.

Software Tools

In the report, Gartner notes: Data quality tools are vital for digital business transformation, especially now that many have emerging features like automation, machine learning, business-centric workflows and cloud deployment models. According to Gartner, the market for data quality software tools reached $1.61 billion in 2017 (the most recent year for which Gartner has data), an increase of 11.6 percent over 2016.

“Data quality has never been more important,” said Mike Tuchen, CEO, Talend. “It’s essential that companies can trust the data fuelling their business decisions while delivering it at the speed required to remain on the cutting edge. We believe our position in the Leaders quadrant validates our vision and unique approach where data quality and governance are built-in and managed throughout the data value chain. We’re thrilled that Gartner has again positioned Talend as a Leader in this Magic Quadrant report.”

For a full copy of the report click here.

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Improved Data Management Solutions

Snowflake Computing, the data warehouse built for the cloud, today announced that Snowflake has been positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics report. Snowflake’s zero-management, cloud-built data warehouse equips today’s organisations with unique and powerful features to get all the insight from all their data by all their users. These features include Secure Data Sharing (without moving or copying data), instant elasticity, per-second pricing, and the ability to deploy on multiple clouds. Snowflake expects these and other product attributes to continue to enable modern data management, data warehousing and data analytics.

According to Gartner, “The Leaders quadrant includes a mix of traditional large vendors that have, in general, adapted to the changing market conditions which continue to drive the DMSA market. All of them have a cloud strategy, and all of them have a vision that allows them to address the broader DMSA market beyond traditional data warehousing. Notably, each vendor in the Leaders quadrant has a credible, well-developed strategy for addressing all four defined DMSA use cases, as well as breadth of coverage as defined in Gartner’s DAIM. Within the Leaders quadrant, there is a significant spread of scores in both vision and execution. This reflects different strengths for each vendor regarding where they are focusing their effort and attention. In most cases, the perennial Leaders have capitalized on the “foundational core” strengths, while simultaneously addressing new market demands for innovative pricing models, new deployment models such as cloud, and an increased scope that includes a modern DMSA platform. New entrants to the Leaders quadrant this year exhibit a strong vision, as well as success in executing within this market — as reflected in their customer growth, retention and market mind share.

Data Driven Solutions

Rob Smoot, Snowflake VP of Product Marketing, believes Gartner’s findings align with Snowflake’s mission to enable every organisation to be data-driven. The features that enable and expand Snowflake’s active customer base, which has more than tripled in 2018, are all unique attributes of its cloud-built architecture. Those features combine the flexibility of big data platforms and the instant and infinite elasticity of the cloud, all at a fraction of the cost of other solutions. At the same time, Snowflake harnesses the power of traditional data warehousing with its SQL-based solution. This preserves the tools, knowledge and processes organisations have relied on for years.

“We’re pleased Gartner has recognised Snowflake’s completeness of our vision and our ability to execute,” Mr. Smoot said. “Today, the demand for data-based insights is omnipresent. The Data Economy is growing and organisations want a solution to easily and securely load, integrate, analyse and share all of their data. We believe this report reaffirms our commitment to put customers first.”

Gartner’s report evaluated 19 vendors based on their ability to execute and the completeness of their vision for its Magic Quadrant for Data Management Solutions for Analytics. Gartner’s ability to execute axis comprised seven evaluation criteria: product or service, overall viability, sales execution/pricing, market responsiveness/record, marketing execution, customer experience, and operations. The other axis, completeness of vision, comprised eight criteria: market understanding, marketing strategy, sales strategy, offering product strategy, business model, vertical/industry strategy, innovation, and geographic strategy.

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The quarterly ‘Emerging Risks Report’ identified cloud computing as the top concern for the second consecutive quarter.

Social engineering and GDPR compliance were cited as most likely to cause the greatest enterprise damage if not adequately addressed by risk management leaders, according to Gartner.

“Executives are right to expand cloud services as part of their digital business initiatives, but they need to ensure their cloud security strategy keeps up with this growth,” said Matthew Shinkman, practice leader, Gartner. “Leaders should start by clearly identifying their most at-risk areas, which remain obscure to many large organisation leaders.”

Gartner expects cloud computing to be a US$300 billion business by 2021, as companies increasingly adopt cloud services to release their desired digital business outcomes. But companies continues to struggle with security – despite record spending on information security in the last two years, organisations have lost an estimated US$400 billion to cyber theft and fraud worldwide. To respond to an increasing number of cybersecurity events and data breaches, organisations elevate IT security to the board level.

“Executives should promote risk awareness throughout the organisation,” Shinkman said. “A strong risk culture helps employees make the right decisions and mitigates poor outcomes.”

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Rapid growth in cloud adoption has made this year’s Hype Cycle of particular interest as organisations struggle to understand security issues in the cloud. It’s a double-edged sword, according to Jay Heiser, research vice president, Gartner.

“Security continues to be the most commonly cited reason for avoiding the use of public cloud. Yet paradoxically, the organisations already using the public cloud consider security to be one of the primary benefits,” said Heiser.

The Hype Cycle charts technologies along a maturity curve travelling through five stages of expectation from innovation and the peak of inflated expectations, through the lows of disillusionment to the slope of enlightenment and finally to the plateau of productivity.

In the innovation stage this year, and expected to mature within two to five years, are cloud infrastructure security posture assessment, container security, and security rating services. Also at this stage, but expected to take 5-10 years to mature, are immutable infrastructure, cloud data backup, digital security and open ID connect.

Technologies at the peak of inflated expectations this year include data loss protection for mobile devices, key management-as-a-service, and software defined perimeter. Gartner expects all of these technologies to take at least five years to hit the plateau of productivity.

In the trough of disillusionment stage this year are disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) and private cloud computing, both of which Gartner predicts will achieve mainstream adoption in the next two years.

The slope of enlightenment is the stage at which new technologies are beginning to be adopted in an increasingly diverse range of organisations. This year data loss protection (DLP) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are both on the slope and expected by Gartner to mature within two years.

Gartner found four technologies to have reached the plateau of productivity: tokenisation, high assurance hypervisors, application security as a service, and identity-proofing services. Only the latter remains at the plateau stage from last year’s Hype Cycle, with the three others new to the stage this year.

“The Hype Cycle can help cyber-security professionals identify the most important new mechanisms to help their organisations make controlled, compliant and economical use of the public cloud,” said Heiser.

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In keeping with the increasing budgets are 2017 revenue forecasts and the level of prioritisation assigned to digital transformation, with Indian CIOs expecting average revenue growth of 12.6 per cent compared to a global average of 4 per cent, while 37 per cent of Indian CIOs list digital business as a top priority compared to 28 per cent of global top performers and 21 per cent of all respondents.

These priorities are impacting the focus of Indian IT organisations, with almost 90 per cent of Indian CIOs emphasising support for digital business over optimising IT costs and almost 80 per cent emphasising innovation over daily operations.

The survey shows that digitalisation currently accounts for 23 per cent of the total IT budget in Indian IT organisations, below top performers at 33 per cent but above typical performers at 18 per cent. By 2018 Indian CIOs expect to further increase their funding for digitalisation to 35 per cent, with top performers surging further ahead to 43 per cent.

“Indian CIOs are being given the budgets to invest in digitalisation and the game-changing technologies that support it, but IT organisations remain immature in some respects and lack key resources,” said Partha Iyengar, vice president and fellow, Gartner.

Skills and resources topped the list of concerns for Indian CIOs at 21 per cent. The shortage of skills is especially troubling, with 35 per cent of Indian CIOs citing lack of business analytics skills as a top talent concern and 25 per cent listing overall lack of skills as a top-three talent concern. In addition, 25 per cent listed digital business and marketing skills as a talent concern while 19 per cent were focused on lack of specific technical skills.

The 2017 Gartner CIO Survey, which received 2598 responses from CIOs in 93 countries across major industries, received 65 responses from CIOs in India.

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David Willis, Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, presented on this topic at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo running this week in Cape Town.

“The future of mobile will provide ubiquitous services delivered anywhere, by any person or thing, to any person or thing,” said Willis.

“While users are constantly looking for new and compelling app experiences, the importance of apps in delivering services will diminish and the emergence of virtual personal assistants (VPAs) and bots will replace some of the functions performed by apps today. Alternative approaches to interaction and service delivery will arise, and code will move from traditional mobile devices and apps to the cloud.”

Mobile has shifted to ‘business as usual’, with 2.38 billion devices (including PC, tablets, ultramobiles, and mobile phones) forecast to be shipped in 2017 and 342 million wearables sold.

Bring your own device (BYOD) and bring your own application (BYOA) will continue to grow, and become the norm for most organisations.

“Moreover, the arrival of wearables and bring your own ‘thing’ (such as smart kettles, smart power sockets or smart light bulbs) in the workplace will introduce new interaction techniques and new platforms, diluting the need for specific mobile app experiences,” said Willis.

Innovation is occurring not inside the smartphones themselves, but in the way they communicate with other things. Gartner predicts that by 2018, 25 per cent of new mobile apps will talk to Internet of Things (IoT) devices. And this may also drive a longer-term change in delivery mechanisms.

“Through 2018, the app will be the preferred mechanism, because it provides a better experience and allows more sophisticated interactions and data analysis, with low-level networking and background processing,” said Willis. “As new technologies grow in importance as a way to control and interact with things, app interfaces will fade.”

Among the new technologies that may come to the fore in the post-app era are artificial intelligence, natural-language processing and bots integrated into message apps.

Already organisations such as Kore are enabling businesses and consumers to “chat” with users on their messaging platform and evolving APIs so developers can create their own bots. This allows users to chat with organisations to get information, answer questions or transact through messaging or VPAs.

“This means that instead of going into a system and filling out complicated forms with checkboxes, users can ask a bot a question, and it will answer or negotiate on our behalf, based on rules and knowledge in the system,” said Willis. “It will then move to those systems that allow interactions with customers – from marketing to sales.”

Willis said that despite these changes, apps will not go away, but the post-app era will see more data and code stored in the could and less on the device.

“The post-app era will be an evolving process through 2020 and beyond,” he said. “It has, however, already begun, and organisations should prepare for it by being agile and tactical, planning for new skills, assessing the new opportunities created by the post-app era, and developing a digital business strategy that integrates many different technologies.”

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world’s most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT leaders, uniting a global community of CIOs with the tools and strategies to help them lead the next generation of IT and achieve business outcomes. Upcoming dates and locations for Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016 events include:
October 5-7, Tokyo, Japan
October 16-20, Orlando, Florida
October 24-27, Sao Paulo, Brazil
October 24-27, Gold Coast, Australia
November 6-10, Barcelona, Spain
November 15-18, Goa, India.

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The mature Asia-Pacific market includes Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.

The market is currently expected to grow 12.8 per cent in 2016 to reach $10.81 billion (US$8.11) in 2016, up from $9.58 billion in 2015 (US$7.19 billion).

Perhaps not surprisingly, software-as-a-service is the fastest growing segment in the region, with a projected growth rate of 22.5 per cent, and a revenue projection of $2.22 billion (US$1.67 billion).

“Organisations are pursuing a cloud first strategy focused on migrating software applications to the cloud driving this growth,” said Sid Nag, research director, Gartner.

Cloud management and security services is another fast growing segment, expected to grow from $302.5 million (US$227.5 million) in 2015 to $722.2 million (US$541.8 million) in 2020.

“The growth in cloud management and security services is testimony that cloud related services, in addition to the core cloud services, are critical to cloud adoption. Organisations will look for increased automation and management of these cloud assets, as well as focus on the security aspects of consuming public cloud,” Nag said.

Gartner’s full forecast is included in ‘Forecast: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2014-2020, 1Q16 Update’.

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The top five vendors accounted for more than 45 per cent of the total market, with little change in ranking from 2014. Salesforce is still leading the way with 19.7 per cent, followed by SAP with 10.2 per cent, and Oracle with 7.8 per cent. A new entrant to the top five in 2015 was Adobe, which displaced IBM with its focus on CRM for marketing agencies and the chief marketing officer.

Other vendors still constitute 54.5 per cent of the total market, or $14.3 billion in revenues.

“The merger and acquisition activity that began flowing through the market in 2009 continued in 2015, with more than 30 notable acquisitions,” said Julian Poulter, research director at Gartner. “This has resulted in increased competition at the top end of the CRM market, with the continued focus of global vendors’ sales forces driving good growth worldwide in all CRM subsegments but only for cloud or software as a service (SaaS) applications.

“CRM growth is driven by cloud service revenue, which, in the application space, uses SaaS as the major delivery model,” said Poulter. “SaaS revenue grew 27 per cent year over year, which is more than double overall CRM market growth in 2015. On-premises new license revenue declined 1 per cent for the same period.”

At the regional level, emerging Asia-Pacific was the fastest-growing, with growth of 21.9 per cent in 2014, followed by greater China with 18.4 per cent growth. Middle East and North Africa, and mature Asia-Pacific posted double-digit growth of 10.7 and 10.2 per cent respectively. The North American market continued to generate the bulk of revenue at 55.7 per cent.

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