Beyond the fading horizon

Ordinary data lakes are passé. We need to build real time, cognitive data assets. Organically growing stores of data, being operated on by a swarm of soft robots, who are continuously improving the quality of the data and growing the asset base. Real time, organic, and cognitive. AI and ML not only to garner insight from the data but also deployed to continuously extend the quality and the amount of data collected. Data is the new oil in a digital enterprise. Cognitive data lakes, powered by swarm intelligence the emergent architecture to continuously refine this oil.

As we get to the nano-scale, stuff gets quite spooky. The only way to fathom the world of quantum is through probabilities. In a digital business, a large number of the business processes will morph from being deterministic to a probabilistic nature.  Real-time AI will underpin this probabilistic world of business. Supervised, unsupervised and re-enforced, deep learning friends of business will create interesting decision options, with probabilities attached. Human intelligence thus augmented, will take business to a level of unprecedented performance, with competition left behind in the extreme cold.

Supply chains are legacy. In specific, the chain in the world of supply will be relegated to the annals of history. Blockchain, despite the irony in its name, will power a world of dynamic business networks for multiple business domains. Network effects underpin these rich ecosystems, trust assured through tamper proof consensus protocols. Smart contracts will ensure auto event driven, human free operation across these networks. The linear chains of yesteryears, yielding to the powerful, global, network topology of the future.

The economic transaction cost theory posits that the high cost of organizing work in the market, as opposed to within the firm, results in the very existence of firms. The API economy coupled with the trend of portfolio working will exponentially reduce transaction costs, and extend the boundaries of an enterprise to somewhat blur with those of the market. Millennials will expect enterprises to work like platforms, on which they can co-create new value with their friends.  A cloud of human wisdom operating above open enterprises, beaming their services through open APIs.

As I close my eyes and transcend across the fading horizon, the cacophony of mobility, social, cloud, analytics fades into low decibel murmurs, replaced with the glow of cognitive data, quantum AI, dynamic biz networks, wisdom clouds and robotic devops shining over a digitally transformed future.