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Banks, telcos lead digital transformation charge

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 01 Dec 2017
Ovum created a digital maturity index aggregating progress by enterprises in each vertical across nine steps.
Ovum created a digital maturity index aggregating progress by enterprises in each vertical across nine steps.

Across 14 industries, the telecoms and banking sectors are the most mature in the drive for digital transformation.

This is according to Ovum's latest ICT Enterprise Insights programme based on primary interviews with over 6 300 enterprises globally, asking senior ICT executives to rate their organisations against nine steps identified by Ovum as key to digital transformation.

These ranged from tackling cyber security, to developing digital skills, creating the necessary organisation structure and culture, to digitising processes, creating digital services, to having a clearly articulated digital strategy.

Ovum created a digital maturity index aggregating progress by enterprises in each vertical across the nine steps.

The market analyst firm says while the telecoms sector was most advanced, the overall level of digital maturity is low, with its index score currently at 43.9%, with banking next at 42%; many providers in both sectors are still at early stages or mid-stream levels across most steps.

It adds that across the over 6 300 enterprises surveyed, only 8% consider themselves to have achieved transformation, and only a fraction, over 16%, believe they are well-advanced. Almost as many (23%) rate themselves to be still at the early stages.

The ICT Enterprise Insights programme also examined the role of enabling digital technologies in the path to digital transformation, including big data, blockchain, Internet of things (IOT), platform architecture/application programming interfaces (APIs), artificial intelligence (AI), and microservices.

Here, enterprises are most advanced in adoption of big data and API-based architectures, with close to 40% of enterprises actively testing or deploying these areas, with just under a further 50% planning or considering to do so in the future.

According to Ovum, microservices and IOT are less currently advanced in terms of active deployment, but over 50% are planning or considering to do so in the future. In contrast, while AI and blockchain are much discussed, actual traction by enterprises to use such technologies for digital transformation is much less developed, it adds.

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