The technologies defining the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' (Industry 4.0) are being powered by cloud infrastructures.
This is according to a new report by Oracle: Industry 4.0: How 'the rise of the machines' is being driven by cloud. Researchers surveyed 1 200 decision-makers in midsize and large companies in 18 countries across Europe, Middle East and Africa, including 100 respondents from SA.
Technologies such as the Internet of things, robotics and automation have ushered in a fourth age of widespread change known as Industry 4.0, says the study.
It adds businesses view the cloud as a blank canvas upon which to build innovation strategies.
"Cloud integration is fundamental to kick-start Industry 4.0 initiatives. This will not only benefit the IT department - but the entire organisation, as mission-critical apps are moved to the cloud."
The report says if a business has a game-changing service or application on its hands, the opportunity to bring it to the market in a way that would be truly disruptive could be lost if the supporting infrastructure fails to cope with demand.
The huge changes in how people consume movies, listen to music and order taxis would not have been possible without scalable cloud infrastructure, it adds.
The report notes the majority of businesses are currently implementing, or plan to implement, new innovation strategies: 62% have or plan to implement robotics technology and 60% have or plan to work with artificial intelligence.
According to Oracle, 58% respondents in SA have implemented or plan to implement robotics technology, while 64% say the same about artificial intelligence.
Most companies in SA also recognise that a combination of cloud platform and compute services is required to bring these technologies to life, it adds.
Seventy-four percent believe an enterprise cloud platform provides the opportunity for organisations to capitalise on innovation such as robotics (the highest of any major market) and 53% for artificial intelligence, says the report.
However, 36% of South African respondents said the inability to deploy innovative apps quickly is one of the current challenges they face in respect to cloud deployment, it notes.
In addition, 48% said time to innovate is the biggest area of inefficiency in their current platform model, with 55% saying the same about time to deployment.
The report notes with cloud accelerating innovation and automation becoming more widespread, there will be shifts in entire industries, meaning new types of jobs and work will emerge.
This will require workers to quickly develop new skills as their roles evolve, it adds.
But the tools and capabilities that cloud platforms provide will be able to support these necessary changes in skillsets, which means employees won't need to be reskilled from the ground-up, says the report.
Pascal Giraud, senior director of IaaS Foundation and Cloud Platform at Oracle EMEA, says despite an uncertain economic climate, businesses understand that at the speed of today's market, a first-mover advantage has never been more valuable.
The dawn of Industry 4.0 is seeing companies fall into either an innovation fast lane or slow lane, he adds.
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