Journey 2020 Digital Shockwaves in Business: Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership
Journey 2020
Digital Shockwaves
in Business
3 Foreword
4 Executive summary for CxOs
6 Take-aways for business
8 Our vision
14 Dealing with disruption
The four areas of disruption

20 Business Models
22 Intelligent networked enterprises
24 Digital blended business models
26 Digitalization of energy
28 Crypto-currencies & Blockchain
30 Ways of working
32 Interactive & dynamic media
34 Augmented Interactive Reality
36 Wearables
38 DevOps in large organizations
40 Disruptive technologies
42 Internet of Things & future networks
44 Cloud continuum, enabling Swarm Computing
46 Computing Memory
48 Cloud & containerization
50 Additive Manufacturing
52 Quantum safe cryptography
54 Evolving challenges
56 IT for Life
58 Fast Data
60 Deep Learning
62 A simplification in cybersecurity
64 Identity & privacy
66 About the Scientific Community

67 Acknowledgments
Ascent Journey 2020 can also be viewed

through an interactive mini-site designed
for portable devices, such as laptops, tablets
and mobiles. The full publication can be
downloaded at ascent.atos.net/journey2020
Foreword to
Journey 2020
Welcome to Ascent Journey 2020, our vision Sometimes emerging capabilities combine To fully realize the business potential, we must
of the evolving world of business, society and to provide the kind of coordinated address the challenge of data ownership
technology that we hope will stimulate and breakthroughs necessary to help realize and data management. Who owns and
challenge your thinking about the forces that innovations like fully autonomous vehicles, controls the huge quantities of data that will
will shape business during the next few years. computerized medical diagnostics, genetic be produced and what are the most effective
editing or smart virtual assistants. At other ways to process it? We expect the rise of
Throughout the 4 incarnations of our times, concerns over ethics or personal “Industrial Data Platforms” as a controlled
“Journey” series, the Atos Scientific privacy will cause the application of certain medium for inter-enterprise collaboration.
Community, which I personally chair, has technologies to stall or even backtrack. We Industrial equipment manufacturers will
sought to identify, define and research portray this situation as a series of “Digital use such platforms to help protect their
some of the most disruptive technologies Shockwaves”, like ripples on the surface of intellectual property and restrict visibility of
and business trends that are impacting our a pond, emanating from different sources sensitive performance data, whilst at the same
world. As we now look towards 2020, we but interacting with each other in complex time facilitate collaboration and co-innovation
are observing that the pace and impact patterns. The business and social impacts of with other parties.
of technology on business and society is these shockwaves will intensify competition in
increasing. People are spending more of their all industries, require new employee skills, and The rest of this document contains our vision,
day interacting digitally on multiple devices, often cause worker displacements. as well as detailed insights on the areas of
and products and services (consumer- disruption and their potential for business.
oriented or industrial) are increasingly To help anticipate the impact of these Digital I’m sure you will find this an essential guide to
personalized, data-intensive and context- Shockwaves, we have identified 4 possible assess the impact of Digital Shockwaves on
aware. At the same time, trust is becoming sources of disruption: Ways of Working your area of operation during your journey
disintermediated and transactional as (how people will collaborate with people, towards 2020.
objects interact directly with each other machines and virtual ‘beings’ in entirely new
and with people, generating valuable data ways); Business Models (how companies
streams. However, whilst numerous core are taking advantage of digital technologies
developments are growing exponentially, to find new markets, business models and
the rate of change in the most disruptive revenue streams); Disruptive Technologies
technology applications is not always so (how certain specific technologies may
predictable – progress is “lumpy” and in some single-handedly create notable societal
cases, may even lead to dead ends. and economic disruptions) and Evolving
Challenges (topics like security, whose
constant evolution demands radically new
“The impact of reexaminations). All of these disruptions are
Thierry Breton
Chairman and CEO, Atos
Digital Shockwaves technology-enabled, and this Journey 2020
document will help you understand their
on business will implications.
intensify competition “Industrial Data

in all industries.” Platforms will be the
controlled medium
for data-intensive
inter-enterprise
collaboration.”
Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 03

Executive summary
for CxOs
Disruptions enabled by emerging and
maturing technologies are impacting Increasing automation healthcare providers to grocery shopping. As
a result, the role of the service aggregator will
business and society with increasing pace
and depth, and this trend will persist in the
will cause off-shoring become even more significant, and the Apps
Era will wane.
next few years. More importantly, such Digital
Shockwaves will interact with each other in
to diminish and favor a
unexpected ways. This will create a complex ‘Gig Economy1’. Industrial Data
and uncertain environment, which will be ripe
for opportunity if appropriately anticipated, As automation (both physical and virtual) Platforms will help
understood and acted upon. replaces an increasing range of human
tasks, we must rethink our ways of working
incumbents to digitally
Perhaps the most significant business
disruptions will come from a combination of
and the types of skills that are required for
the future human workforce. Offshoring of
reinvent their leading
the connected sensors, devices and objects roles as a means of wage arbitrage will wane roles.
(Internet of Things), coupled with new ways as human tasks are increasingly executed
to analyze, action and monetize the resulting by robots, smart machines, smart systems The changing business models and
data streams. This will complement, and may and ‘bots’ capable of interacting in natural applications of technology we have
help counterbalance, the existing capabilities language. Virtual service desks, driverless already observed in the B2C world are now
of digital giants (Facebook, Google, Alibaba, vehicles and medical and legal research propagating through B2B interactions. We
Baidu, Amazon, etc.) to engage directly with are just some examples of areas that will be anticipate that the result will be both exciting
consumers via their mobiles, wearables heavily influenced by automation. We also opportunities and business disruption (e.g.
or computing devices. Commoditized expect that some traditional employment some logistic chains will disappear in favor of
sensors and actuators will provide both rich models will shift to regulated “Gig economies.” on-site 3D printed parts; wind farms will reach
context and precise control to an almost There is even the real possibility (according optimal performance by the autonomous
limitless range of use cases. In such a highly to a growing cadre of economists) that many coordination of smart and social wind
connected world we will see an explosion in human jobs will disappear; work may become turbines), just as we have experienced with
the potential to understand status, anticipate a privilege, and concepts like Universal Basic consumer services. Whilst we expect the
outcomes and automate processes. If we Income may become a real consideration for impact to be even more far reaching, it will
are able to couple this with the ability to governments in some countries. not be a repetition of the B2C case. If wisely
share and act upon the associated data and implemented, Industrial Data Platforms hold
derived insights, significant new business We have already seen the impact of Digital the potential to digitally reinvent a leading
opportunities will arise. Some of these Shockwaves in the world of consumer role for service incumbents (e.g. a truck
situations will emerge as transient business services – from taxis to hotels rooms and on- manufacturer selling smart truck usage à la
moments that necessitate an immediate and line shopping to house buying. We can now Uber and displacing transport companies; a
orchestrated supply chain response; others enjoy more immediacy, personalization and logistics company reinventing itself digitally
will arise from the application of deep learning convenience, and often at more competitive to be the champion of 3D printing services)
to observed trends and behavioral outcomes. price points. Data and service aggregators before they are displaced by the Digital Giants.
have rapidly risen to a position of market
New business models will emerge both dominance in this arena. In many ways, A few of the areas will probably not have a
within and across organizations. Traditional the battle for end customer engagement mainstream impact until well beyond 2020,
organizational silos will disappear, simplifying has already been won by the Digital Giants. but we believe they should be factored into
trust and contractual agreements. Business Digital marketplaces, search engines and an organization’s strategy today. For example,
performance will be measured by new digital virtual assistants relegate product and whilst gene editing is already possible and has
business KPIs and LIs (Key Performance service providers to the position of somewhat been carried out in humans, the associated
Indicators / Leading Indicators). New security disaggregated component parts of the ethical implications are unprecedented and
models will be developed that enable trusted supply chain. As the range of real-world must play a part in our thinking now, since
collaboration and bring a balance between interactions facilitated by personal smart its eventual impact will be far-reaching.
‘Block and Prevent’ and ‘Detect and Respond’. devices increases, consumers will become Likewise, whilst generally available Quantum
more reliant on digital personal assistants to Computing is still some way from becoming
interact with the world around them – from a reality, when it arrives it will render most
household appliances to bank accounts and current security and analytics technologies
“A gig economy is an environment in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for
1 obsolete almost overnight.
short-term engagements” http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/gig-economy
04
Managing the single face to the customer
By 2020 billions of hyperconnected people, devices, sensors, machines
and virtual beings will constantly exchange oceans of valuable data
B2C B2B
B2C companies get MindSphere Industrial Data Platforms
significant value from being emerge as the controlled
able to interact directly and medium for data-intensive
digitally with the end inter-enterprise
consumer. collaboration.
A multitude of applications!
but
Service Gateways and As business processes
Digital Aggregators are are enriched through
winning the battle for the data-driven insights,
interface to the consumer. collaboration and
cyber physical
interactions...
Will this mark the end of the App era? ...who will own the user engagement?
“I recommend replacing
the number 2 bearing
thrust pads.”
“Cortana, will you order
me an Uber and turn off
the heating please?”
Who will manage the single face to the customer?

Take-aways
for business
During the next few years, businesses will Increase the granularity of your processes Multi-speed IT is not a magical solution:
experience a fluctuating and tremulous and transactions so they can be easily balance carefully its advantages and
environment. Waves of change originating recomposed in real time through Advanced drawbacks. It can be smoother and more
from long term megatrends will be Analytics (Fast Data, Deep Learning). Coarse- cost effective in some cases. It could be an
compounded by Digital Shockwaves, grain processes will result in inefficiencies, unnecessary intermediate step and even a
impacting business models, organizational obstacles to automation and lack of constraint to full digitalization in others.
structures, operational processes, adaptability and competitiveness when
collaboration, financial models… practically all interacting with third parties. Counterbalance the digerati: digital giants
aspects of business. Navigating such change are in fashion, and certainly have powerful
and disruption will not be straightforward Maximize Automation of processes as strengths, but traditional businesses have
and there will be no one-size-fits-all solution. well as interactions, except where it would their own strengths – identify and exploit
Nevertheless we do believe that there are negatively affect Customer Experience, Trust them. In particular, seriously consider
a number of areas that businesses can or Compliance. Prepare for social machines, Industrial Data Platforms, both proprietary
and should focus on to ride the Digital smart contracts and other types of more and shared ones.
Shockwaves. advanced interactions. In a few years, some
machines will be indistinguishable from Disruptive vs incremental innovation:
Emphasize situational awareness before people from the perspective of business whilst the latter will be useful, its role should
strategy: map the context, driving forces and process and interaction: they will decide, be carefully balanced in the next few years.
trends affecting your business. Define your orchestrate common actions, make requests Emphasize disruptive business innovation,
strategy from that dynamic map and do not or execute payments on their behalf. leveraging on digital technologies. Experiment
limit yourself to previous customer journeys, more.
which you may not be able to influence Flatten your organization and enable new
directly. Otherwise you will be limiting the (transformational) leadership to emerge: Invest in data collection, stewardship and
scope of your thinking just when disruption Social Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing analytics: the most important aspect of this
calls for brand new concepts. tools will be indispensable in enabling effort will be developing the talent necessary
Innovation Value Webs, but prepare adequate to execute these critical requirements.
Simplify all aspects of your business: change management since organizational
operations, processes, structures, portfolios… culture will also have to be transformed. These concepts are discussed in more detail
everything. Simplicity and automation (where in the following pages, we hope that in the
possible) are keys to attaining the efficacy, Break internal siloes: this is one of the major messages presented you will find topics of
efficiency, flexibility and adaptability necessary roadblocks that companies face in their supreme relevance to your own Business,
to thrive in the context of shockwaves. transformation, especially B2B and industrial both directly and indirectly.
ones. Siloes hinder evolution, waste the most
Prepare for Common Industrial Data valuable resources and lock organizations into
Platforms, as a host or a stakeholder. Which inward looking dynamics.
aspects of your data should really never be
shared under any circumstances? Which Put the customer in a central place even
data that you do not own could bring radical if you are a B2B company: Operational
advantages to your business? Who are the Excellence alone will not do the trick. As an
potential partners that own such data? Which example, some standards came into being
win-win mechanisms can you devise for due to design or manufacturing limitations
joint and secure exploitation of shared data? which may no longer apply: can your
Think of possibilities such as limitations of products and services be less homogenous
use, temporal limitations or guarantees of and more adapted to your customers’ needs?
reversibility.
06 #Journey2020
LOBALIZATION
G
Digitalization
N
Digital blended of Energy

TIO
TR
business models
US
MA
Intelligent Networked
BUSINESS Enterprises
MODELS
T
Deep
AUTO
Learning
DevOps in large
IT for Life organizations
Blockchain
Security
EVOLVING WAYS OF Augmented
Interactive Reality
CHALLENGES Interactive & WORKING
Dynamic Media
Fast Data Quantum Safe
Cryptography
Identity & Wearables
S
Privacy
Additive
H IC
EC O
Manufacturing
DISRUPTIVE
Cloud TECHNOLOGIES
Continuum
AP
NO
Cloud &
Containerization
GR
IoT & Future

C
M
Networks
Computing
O
SU
I
Memory
E M
ST D
AIN
A BILIT Y
Figure 1 – Digital Shockwaves in Business

Our vision
Digital shockwaves
in business
The Earth’s crust is composed of tectonic emerged and transformed under a growing as can be observed with analogue waves,
plates. These plates move slowly yet expectation of “Anything, anytime, anywhere” the Digital Shockwaves will interact and
powerfully, coming together, separating and personalization. Digital Shockwaves are interfere: sometimes reinforcing their impact
or grinding against each other along fault now rapidly propagating towards Business- and sometimes cancelling each other out.
lines. Over very long periods of time, their to-Business (B2B) markets - their impact will Some will impact certain industries more
movements cause continents to drift be significant by 2020. than others; some will bring positive effects,
gradually, but they can also cause rapid others will bring potential threats. Continually
and violent phenomena such as volcanoes, Digital Shockwaves in Business will go further anticipating and responding to their impact
earthquakes and tsunamis. than just reshaping the consumer market; for a given business context and strategy
they will deeply affect end to end production will be essential as we continue on the digital
The “geology of business” is going through and service processes in all sectors of the transformation journey.
eventful times. The “earthquake” of the 3rd economy. We expect the impact to be felt
Digital Revolution2 has already been felt in as a series of shockwaves emanating from We expect to see digital disruption emanating
Business-to-Consumer (B2C) markets, as a number of sources aligned to specific from four main sources:
organizations and business models have aspects of the 3rd Digital Revolution. Just
Business models
Through new sources of business value and
BUSINESS
partnership, driven by data and connectivity. MODELS
Ways of working
Resulting from changes in Business processes
and the very nature of work. EVOLVING WAYS OF
CHALLENGES WORKING
Disruptive technologies
The developments that bring revolutionary
changes to the “art of the possible” not just
evolution.
DISRUPTIVE
Evolving challenges TECHNOLOGIES
Those familiar challenges that need to be
addressed with different perspectives as a
result of the emergence of new influences.
Figure 2 – The 4 sources of Digital Shockwaves
Ascent Journey 2018 – The 3rd Digital Revolution: Agility & Fragility https://ascent.atos.net/downloadJ2018
2
08
Our vision
Business
models
Data, connectivity and partnerships are enabling digital and digital-
blended business models. Common Industrial Data Platforms will drive
network effects in the B2B world.
We expect to see much greater levels To be effective, these business network relationships the situation will be similar,
of collaboration and co-operation, as relationships need to be underpinned by with the result that the ramping up of the
conventional enterprise boundaries become some form of contractual relationship and Industrial Data Platform may suffer from
ever more constraining in a world where value exchange. In the B2C case this often something of a “chicken and egg” problem
context, connection and responsiveness takes the form of an agreement to use for platform investment and participation:
are the expected norms. A growing personal data, in exchange for no or low The data platform needs to be fed by the
number of market opportunities will be cost services. In the B2B case, the company, very cyber-physical systems which have to be
transient in nature, driven by the impact subcontractors and customers will form cost justified by the value that can be realized
that a consumer’s context has on product networks or Innovation Value Webs that through the platform – the full benefit will only
and service requirements: A timely and use platforms to share industrial data in be gained when the Industrial Data Platform
holistic view of relevant data will be a key to specific and possibly time-limited contractual covers the whole supply chain and the
identifying and unlocking these Transient relationships. Sharing of data will need complete process. Platform Owners will have
Business Opportunities. to be organized in a similar way as for an a critical role in breaking into this cycle.
outsourcing contract, where details about
As a result, we will see supply chain operations are shared with the outsourcing The major providers of industrial equipment
ecosystems established around Common company by the industrial enterprise for will probably have a vested interest in creating
Industrial Data Platforms where participants a limited period of time, usually with a their own proprietary platforms. This will pose
will intentionally share data relating to design, guarantee of reversibility at the end of the a significant dilemma to their subcontractors
production, operations and markets. This contract. and large customers, since they will likely
will allow companies to generate superior serve or be customers of several potentially
products and services by responding to Despite this new level of openness, each competing major industrial companies. To
identifiable customer desires and market company can still maintain its “DNA” deal with this, the concept of data multi-
conditions. and Intellectual Property by performing homing will have to be addressed. One
its own analytics and deep learning to possible solution is that of Industrial consortia
These Data Platforms will become the create differentiation through improving playing the “platform owner” role in specific
very essence of collaborative working and understanding and situational awareness market sectors such as Automotive, Aircrafts
will be the catalyst to exploit the “positive when preparing the next generation of its or Aerospace. We expect other sectors such
externalities3” created by enterprise products and services. as Finance or Public Sector to also adopt
partnerships. Just as is observed with Multi- Industrial Data Platforms.
Sided Markets in the B2C world, Common In Multi-Sided B2C Market platforms, each
Industrial Data Platforms will drive network side may expect the other to reach a certain
effects in the B2B world. size before they themselves engage. In B2B
A positive externality is an indirect benefit that is enjoyed by a third-party as a result of an economic transaction.
3

Our vision
Ways of
working
Automation, communities and digital leadership are radically reshaping
the work landscape.
In 20124 Atos introduced four megatrends

that, in our view, lie behind most of the
significant changes the world is experiencing:
Globalization, Demographics, Economic
Sustainability and Trust. Now we are adding
a fifth emerging megatrend: Automation.
Whilst it can be argued that automation has
been around in one form or another for
centuries, the abundance of historical and
real-time data and the means to effectively
Globalization Demographics
extract predictive and prescriptive insights are
opening the way to previously unanticipated
applications of this technology. The new
ways of automation will not only dramatically
improve the responsiveness and repeatability
of processes, they will give rise to intelligent
systems that will perform increasingly
complex tasks that were previously impossible Economic
to conceive.
Sustainability Trust
The strengths of traditional companies are
fundamentally based on scarcity of resources,
causing value creation to scale linearly with
the availability of those resources. Digital
technology enables the creation of value at Automation
global scale through an abundance of data
and non-material resources. Automation,
orchestration and web-scale technologies
make it possible to achieve diminishing Figure 3 – The 5 megatrends
marginal costs, maybe even zero marginal
costs5. highly inspired and mobilized), or to the jobs have already disappeared due to the
crowd (loosely coupled and involved on an increasing pressure on businesses to maintain
The Internet makes flexible access to large occasional basis). Successful and responsive growth and profitability. Phony jobs that seem
global communities feasible, allowing businesses will need to leverage this to be maintained solely for political and social
small core teams within an organization community and crowd. reasons and not for business ones, are seen
to collaborate on-demand with a large to be redundant even by people who hold
community of users, customers, alumni, This transformation will affect all roles and them. Many jobs are forecasted to disappear
vendors, partners, fans and staff. Small core positions, accompanying the existing trend as a result of Automation, and the loss might
teams could end up being the only fixed towards flatter organizations. As the spotlight not be compensated by so-called ‘jobs of the
part of an organization’s employee base, on the “value of activity” intensifies, we may future’, resulting in net job destruction. Some
with the majority of existing staff moving be facing a possible economic recovery even forecast a scenario where as little as 5%
to the community (loosely coupled but not accompanied by job creation. Shadow of the population will suffice to produce the
GDP6 of the future.
4
Ascent Journey 2016 – Enterprise without Boundaries https://ascent.atos.net/downloadJ2016
5
“The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism” by Jeremy Rifkin, 2014, St. Martin’s Griffin (ISBN 978-1-13728-011-4)
6“The End of Work” by Jeremy Rifkin, 1995, Tarcher (ISBN 978-0874777796), and later works by varied authors
10 #Journey2020
Our vision
Careers could in turn become more temporal Machines are playing increasingly important Relevant education and training will be
and opportunity-specific, with labor shifting roles in analysis, decision making, planning of paramount importance to meet the
to a gig economy – potentially more unstable and strategy. Humans could end up seemingly ever changing skills requirements.
but more rewarding. Will labor unions taking a subordinate role in certain areas A solid background in key areas (i.e.
experience a transformation or will they be and situations. If the roles of humans and computing) will enable people to continually
substituted by other means of protection? If machines start reversing in certain areas, learn and adapt, in contrast to the idea that
workers’ protection decreases significantly, how can wellbeing at work be ensured? What people must become quickly specialized
what will be the effect on income, purchasing effects would such shifts have on human in very specific topics (i.e. big data).
power and ultimately national GDP? How will motivation, autonomy, accountability and Overspecialization and oversimplification will
we deal with a significant percentage of the team work? Will organizations decide to not suffice.
population that could become chronically reserve certain roles for humans for ethical
unemployable? Would schemes such as and wellbeing purposes? These discussions
a Universal Basic Income be realizable, will be important for businesses and societies
beneficial and well-perceived? Would much before the advent of the hypothetical
alternatives such as Negative Income Taxes singularity – the point where Artificial
be preferable? These debates will take place in Intelligence exceeds human intelligence in
societies where inequality is on the rise. being able to recursively improve itself.

Our vision
Disruptive
technologies
Connected Everything, Swarm and Artificial Intelligence are disrupting the
way we understand and conduct business.
At the core of the computing world, the trend the phenomenon of Social Machines – These disruptive technologies will start to
is toward fewer more powerful centers. At connected smart systems that are able to amplify some of the changes we will see in
the periphery, the trend is towards more share information and autonomously regulate Ways of Working. Connected Robots8 will be
powerful and numerous “small computers”: their performance in a concerted fashion, with managed and controlled in completely new
smartphones, tablets, wearables, connected the objective of optimizing results, solving ways enabled by the offloading of selected
things. As a result of these trends, the problems and mitigating detected risks. processing to the Cloud. Furthermore,
collective computing capacity in the hands they will be able to operate in collaborative
and pockets of people is surpassing that in Since 2014 we see increasing numbers of Swarms. The same concept can be extended
centralized data centers. These powerful Connected Products, like connected cars, to include completely Connected Production
computational shifts are the ‘Techtonics’7 that trucks, tires, agricultural machines, household Chains with Connected Production Assets.
are going to create and amplify the B2B Digital appliances and even clothes. These There will be the potential for remote control
Shockwaves. Connected Products feed back information centers and technical operation centers that
on their status, performance (e.g. for manage several production facilities (for
As this range of compute capability in the maintenance) and on how they are actually example, drilling multiple oil or gas wells). At
cloud and at the edge becomes increasingly being used. Connected Consumers can in the human level, we will see the Augmented
connected, we will see the emergence of a turn provide immediate feedback about the (and Connected) Worker, who receives
Computing Continuum. One feature of this products and – if they wish – receive real time relevant information – via wearables or hand-
will be localized and temporal interactions information and suggestions on the ‘journey’ held devices – about the production assets
between compute nodes that combine they are in. being operated or maintained. A revolution
resources to achieve a task greater than can in HMI (Human-Machine Interfaces) could
be achieved with those nodes operating in Real-Time Prescriptive Analytics and happen in the next few years, moving towards
isolation. Much as we see swarms in nature Artificial Intelligence will have major impact the Invisible Computer that supports the
acting as intelligent collectives, the individual in the automation, optimization and flexibility Connected Worker and the engagements of
limited computing capacity of objects will of connected ecosystems as we head towards workers and customers with systems and with
be complemented and supplemented by 2020. This will be especially so in industrial each other via Interactive Virtual Agents.
their connection to other objects in relevant supply chains as they become increasingly
communities. One example of this Swarm collaborative and responsive to market
Computing would be autonomous vehicles, demands.
each capable of acting independently, but
also interacting with connected objects
around it and to centralized information and
control centers to optimize traffic flow and
improve safety.
Swarm Computing will emerge as a co-

operative interaction between individual
entities (including “connected people”),
each with their own autonomy, but
working together for the benefit of the
collective community. It will give rise to
‘Techtonics’ as wordplay for (digital) technology tectonics

7
Atos Ascent White Paper “Connected Robots”, November 2012, Simon Elliott et.al. http://ascent.atos.net/?wpdmdl=1066
8
12
Our vision
Evolving
challenges
Privacy, labor and cyber-physical security will remain open challenges by
2020, as businesses and societies continue to learn that no technology can
fully solve the world’s problems.
Evolving challenges are those that we have providing digital vaults and digital graveyards Machines make more and more decisions
been facing for some time now – perhaps to facilitate the right to be forgotten. on their own. But if a driverless car’s
through ongoing manifestations of underlying decision caused an accident, who would
global Megatrends – but as a result of other Ethical debates in society and business are be responsible? The passenger? The
influencing factors, are now presenting likely to gain momentum by 2020, due to two car manufacturer? The company who
themselves in a new light. main drivers: structural changes (a necessity developed the software? Legal and insurance
in the current economic and financial crisis) implications are yet unresolved. Then there
A number of the evolving challenges link and technology-driven changes. are the growing ethical challenges raised by
not to technologies themselves, but to the application of digital technologies in the
the way that they are used or perhaps Many countries are reaching the highest Life Sciences area. Which kind of decisions
abused. The last few years have witnessed levels of wealth and income inequalities in will be acceptable and which not? Which
the appearance of Technosolutionism, many decades. The trend is growing, leading will be for the person or family to decide,
a failing vision of technology being the to a number of wealthy individuals forecasting and which will be reserved for physicians?
answer to the world’s problems. With such grave social problems if the trend is not What if some of those medical decisions are
a perspective, key human problems can be reversed. The rise of a strong and numerous in turn being made by machines? Beyond
superficially addressed with over simplistic middle class in emerging economies, 2020, further technology disruptions
digital solutions, which tend not to solve increased mobility of people at a global level (nanotechnology, bioengineering, genomics,
the underlying problems, and may even and the full digitalization of businesses are metabolomics, etc.) will only strengthen the
exacerbate them. This trend has been notably all factors that can help balance such trends, need for such ethical debates.
denounced by Evgeny Morozov9. but not without hiccups. Furthermore, such
balance can be reached only in average terms In order to avoid Technosolutionism, the right
Privacy and Personal Data Protection – inequality will still remain. questions must be asked: what are the actual
debates will continue as the needs, wishes problems, in all their complexity, to be solved
and expectations of stakeholders (citizens, The demographic pyramids of different by technological means? How can society
governments and businesses) evolve. Citizens areas are markedly different and in opposing make better use of technology for the benefit
have been unhappy with some monitoring evolution (ageing vs renewing societies). of most? What are right and wrong uses of
actions of governments but are also willing Migrations are expected to play a more technology, considering cultural implications
to tolerate certain measures against risks like prominent role, due to transfers between in a global world?
terrorism. As consumers, citizens have shown regions of different demographics as people
more tolerance towards private companies’ look for better opportunities, flee from
use of their personal data, often expecting conflicts in their native soil, or escape the
an advantageous access to products and effects of climate change10 (droughts, natural
services in return. It is not clear to what extent disasters, famines). Migrations may cause
consumers are aware of the amount and tensions in a world where geopolitical friction
nature of personal data they are giving away and the threat of terrorism lead to increased
– with unintelligible and obscure EULAs (End- protectionism and border controls. In the
User License Agreements) being part of the case of terrorism, major cyberattacks could
problem. Controversies and legal actions are also take place by 2020, especially those
on the rise in the case of citizen-versus-citizen dangerously bridging the cyber- and physical
disagreements. Some companies are already worlds, such as the Ukrainian power grid hack
of late 2015.
9
In books such as “To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism” , 2014, Publicaffairs (ISBN 978-1610393706)
10
The effect of Climate change has been seriously considered in 2015 by politicians (COP21 Conference) and investors (see BlackRock’s “The Price of Climate Change: Global Warming’s Impact on Portfolios”)

Dealing with disruption
Forces that drive

continuous transformation
These emerging and evolving research topics will play a major role in
business in the Digital Shockwaves context.
In 2020, data will continue to play an ever will become the driving force for a new ecosystem, allowing it to automate and
increasing role in determining business “Economy of Platforms” that enables optimize the production and operation of all
value and shaping business transactions. informed and orchestrated supply chains, its products and services.
The Economy of Data described in Journey delivering Smart Services and highly market-
2018 will increasingly extend to the B2B reactive products. These platforms will collect, The Economy of Data Lifecycle will thus
world, driving a new emphasis on enterprise share and analyze the whole spectrum of become:
collaboration. Data sharing platforms data sources pertinent to a given production
ATOMIZED
PROCESS
COMPONENTS
Consumer
B2B Experience Data
INTERACTIONS Usable data Orchestrated
Usage / Context Ecosystem
Data Platforms
Production Data
OUTCOME-CENTRIC
VALUE CREATION
Monetize Use Privacy & Interpret
my Data Security
Digital Market and

Business Models Process Insight
ADAPTIVE SERVICES Refine
Deep Learning
Figure 4 – The Economy of Data Lifecycle
The cycle starts with the collection of intelligence will assist with automated decision emerging and evolving topic areas. Each of
Production Data from automated factories, making – with or without additional human these is expected to play its own part in the
Usage Data from connected products and intervention. The “Next Digital Revolution in Digital Shockwaves that will be experienced
finally Consumer Feedback Data. Respecting Industry” will allow reduced time to market, as we head towards 2020. Although we can
the rules of privacy and ensuring security, with increased flexibility and efficiency along expect complex interplays between the
this data will be made available for a range the entire supply chain. sources of digital disruption, we will align our
of Analytics use cases. Predictive insights will 19 tracks of research with the 4 categories
be gleaned for operations management and The Atos Scientific Community has described earlier.
maintenance optimization; and prescriptive conducted research into a number of
14 #Journey2020
Finding new markets

& revenue streams
The increasing importance of the Economy Traditional means of establishing trust when substituted by cryptography-secured public
of Data in a B2B context will result in greater transacting business in dynamic supply ledgers of transactions that are verified by
interaction between cross business processes. chains will prove inflexible and ineffective. As network consensus.
This will give rise to Intelligent Networked an alternative, technologies like Blockchain
Enterprises: ecosystems of capabilities may offer completely new means of enforcing
that are able to collectively adapt to market and verifying “contractually binding”
requirements, initially reactively, but eventually exchanges in essentially trustless business
proactively. We will see flexibility not only in relationships. Centralized, intermediated
production facilities, but also in the employee and fragile-by-design mechanisms will be
skill base with the rise of the so-called “Gig
Economy” helping to ensure the right talent is
deployed as required.
New Digital Blended Business Models will Digitalization

emerge that are able to reflect an evolving
mix of traditional and digital economies. Such Digital blended of Energy
models will encompass the approaches we
already see within multi-sided markets in
business models
the B2C world, but will become much more
sophisticated as they look to protect individual
player’s Intellectual Property and ensure fair
value distribution along supply chains. BUSINESS Enterprises
We will see certain markets continue to
grow in complexity e.g. as power generation
MODELS
and distribution becomes increasingly
disaggregated; we will see the Digitalization
of Energy through predictive and adaptive
control networks that balance supply,
demand, cost and sustainability factors.
Related business models will continue to
evolve in response to the multi-faceted
Blockchain
prosumer market challenges.

Collaborating with people,

machines & virtual beings
Disruptive technologies are changing not increasingly be the means of achieving agility and application environments to help
only the things we can do, but also the ways in the full application lifecycle (development mitigate the risk from the growing chasm of
that we work. The workplace of the future is and operations) - even for large programs of responsiveness disparity between “digital” and
virtual, collaborative and flexible. The divide work. Agile principles will be overlaid on top “legacy” IT deployments.
between personal and working life becomes of the management of legacy infrastructure
increasingly blurred and our interactions with
both become more immersive.
User Interfaces are gradually evolving to

extend to more senses than just sight,
with the inclusion of sound and touch
in haptic interfaces. Gaming and other
entertainment technologies are enriched to
deliver increasingly immersive experiences
DevOps in large
and Interactive Dynamic Media are in organizations
turn applied to business contexts through
Augmented Interactive Reality and
Wearables.
With the potential for fully contextualized

and connected working, the scope of tasks WAYS OF Augmented
Interactive Reality
that can be performed by relatively unskilled
workers will expand considerably. Real-time Interactive & WORKING
collaboration with real and virtual subject Dynamic Media
matter experts will transform working roles
from industrial maintenance engineers to
plant operators and even doctors.
We are already seeing disruption in the ways Wearables

that IT applications are developed, deployed
and operated. Regular code releases driven
by incremental addressing of specific
business requirements, is unleashing a new
found agility in innovation. DevOps will
16
Mastering the technologies

of disruption
With 50 billion connected objects expected
by 2020, the Internet of Things and
Future Networks will lead to incredible
disruption. Connected objects will act both
as sensors and actuators, with gateways
controlling data flows to ensure real time
or near real time performance within a fully
distributed architecture. Depending on the
specific business use cases, data will either Quantum Safe
be processed in a distributed manner by Cryptography
algorithms hosted in hybrid clouds, or be
processed locally using algorithms hosted
within or close to the connected object.
We shall face a new Cloud Continuum that
extends from vast centralized data centers to Additive
Manufacturing
a huge array of edge devices. The increasing
levels of compute capacity deployed in DISRUPTIVE
mobile devices and the Internet of Things
will ultimately lead to the ability of connected
Cloud TECHNOLOGIES
objects to self-organize and configure Continuum
according to changing needs - we call this
Swarm Computing. Cloud &
Containerization
Such dynamic and responsive interaction
demands real-time prescriptive analytics
that will at least in part be delivered by
IoT & Future
local gateways, sensors and actuators. New Networks
Computing Memory architectures will bring
Computing
together both the processing and storage Memory
of data in a single processor, significantly
increasing computational performance whilst
reducing energy requirements.
Managing and protecting such a disparate

and distributed compute environment
will present significant challenges.
Containerization of applications or platforms
will be a means of transforming the way that technology will enable fully digitized product service desks, to financial advice and medical
compute workloads are deployed, managed lifecycles, offering lower development diagnostics.
and secured. They will facilitate orchestration costs, shorter lead times, reduced energy
within hybrid cloud environments, supporting consumption during manufacturing and Finally Quantum Computing, which is
the “atomization” of workflow elements such less material waste. In some cases we will expected to create a massive disruption in
that processes can be easily adapted to see a shift from mass production to full the medium term future, is likely to firstly
changing demands whilst at the same time customization, and from centralized to impact the security arena. Today’s highly
ring-fencing security risks at a very granular distributed production. The more general secure data encryption could become easily
level. sphere of robotics will be similarly disruptive, crackable using certain quantum algorithms.
whether this is in areas of physical robots Businesses should start preparing for this
We will experience significant disruption delivering configurable manual task disruption now, by implementing strategies
throughout entire manufacturing production automation or whether we consider virtual for Quantum-Safe Cryptography.
chains as Additive Manufacturing (industrial robots exhibiting artificial intelligence insights
3D printing) comes of age. This exciting in all manner of use cases ranging from IT

Addressing ever
changing challenges
Evolving challenges include those areas that they present. With a move to increasingly
are not necessarily new, but are ones where collaborative working between potentially
it seems that the goalposts are continually trustless parties and with the promised
moving, impelling us to deal with them in advent of high disruptive technologies like
radically different ways. Quantum Computing, these topics are more
relevant and impactful than ever.
Advancements in medical technology and
food production technology for example, are
creating all kinds of new possibilities, but with
these come a whole set of moral and ethical Deep
challenges that must now be factored into our
considerations of IT for life. Learning
The value of data is well understood, but the IT for Life
rate at which data is now being produced
and the increasing diversity of sources
are bringing new challenges to the area of
analytics. Particularly as it advances to bring
Security
predictive and prescriptive capability, we are
faced with the challenge of Fast Data and the
EVOLVING
ability to analyse data streams in real time.
At the other extreme we have the challenge
CHALLENGES
of Deep Learning as we look to exploit an
ever increasing pool of data, using machine
learning and algorithmic searching to unlock Fast Data
otherwise hidden insights.
Identity and Privacy and Security are no Identity &

strangers to our Journey series thinking
and yet they continue to evolve both in
Privacy
their nature and in the technologies that
are deployed to address the challenges
18 #Journey2020
Anticipated consequences
Digitalization
Digital blended of Energy
business models
BUSINESS Enterprises
MODELS
Deep
Learning
DevOps in large
IT for Life organizations
Blockchain
Security
EVOLVING WAYS OF Augmented
Interactive Reality
CHALLENGES Interactive & WORKING
Dynamic Media
Fast Data Quantum Safe
Cryptography
Identity & Wearables
Privacy
Additive
Manufacturing
DISRUPTIVE
Cloud TECHNOLOGIES
Continuum
Cloud &
Containerization
IoT & Future
Networks
Computing
Memory
Figure 5 – Mapping between Journey 2020 topics and the four areas of disruption
If making predictions has always been a risky waves of change – some will bring severe In the rest of this document you will find
affair, it borders on the naïve to attempt to challenges, others incredible opportunities. details on the specific areas of disruption and
accurately predict the combined impact of Those businesses able to anticipate and react technical advance that have been referred to
the Digital Shockwaves emanating from these to the shockwaves in the context of their above. Consider each one in the context of
four areas of disruption. What is clear however specific industry will be those that will take a your area of operation and see how they will
is that the impact will not be a one-time event, leadership role in the digital era. play a role in your journey towards 2020.
businesses must prepare for successive

1. Business models
Intelligent networked enterprises
Digital blended business models
Digitalization of energy
Crypto-currencies & Blockchain
20
Business models
Intelligent networked
enterprises
In 2020 almost every process, product and/
or service will become digitally enabled, which
business, supply chain and innovation
processes; leading to improved and new In 2020 intelligent
will lead to the creation of an information
enabled economy, offering enormous
products, services and business models. networked enterprises,
opportunities that the business world
hasn’t seen before. Enterprises have to truly
It requires a redefinition of corporate strategy
on the one hand and the explicit use of data
organised in business
understand and internalize the economic and technology on the other, combined with a ecosystems, will make
data life cycle as described earlier in ‘Dealing vision of how to add value in a more business
with Disruption’. Doing so will help identify ecosystem driven world. the B2B world thrive.
opportunities to transform their internal
Organization impact
Organisations need to become more collaboration, leading to team formation, To ensure employees are collaborating in
“intelligent”. Analysis of production data collective learning, innovation and taking the right direction, a connection between
derived from software and hardware sensors ownership. organizational, team and individual
will predict and prescribe both tactical and employee objectives and measurable
strategic outcomes. These will be presented To free the full potential of those employees results has to be established. Objectives
at the appropriate level using operational and reach the level of agility required, and key results are set by every member of
dashboards that help empower employees seizing the opportunity to establish (ad the organization, from top management to
to take the right decisions and actions. hoc) bottom up and top down networks the shop floor. These are derived from the
Those dashboards are connected, from combined with strategic direction setting mission statement, strategy and corporate
specific operations to aggregated leadership is key. Employees need the opportunity to values and are completely transparent for all
dashboards, creating a transparent and data decide for themselves, within the boundaries organizational members. This allows every
driven enterprise for intelligent and connected of their capability, where they can deliver the employee to clearly understand what is being
decision making on all levels. most added value. They can achieve this by expected of him/her, what can be expected
swarming together in transient, purpose- of their colleagues and where the uncovered
Work will become less and less routine driven working groups that form internal opportunities to deliver the most added value
through the automation of processes that and external networks, sometimes with the lie. We term this the ‘Intelligent Networked
are repetitive or predictable. This will shift involvement of the open crowd, to address Enterprise’.
organizational needs to employees who challenges and opportunities collectively,
possess and master more non-routine whilst concurrently keeping the current
skills. I.e. typical human skills, like creativity, business running. Adopting this micro-
interactive problem solving or cross functional entrepreneurial mind-set is the responsibility
of all.
Technology impact
A prerequisite for an ‘Intelligent Networked own workflows and data analysis in a user for end users, by connecting, enhancing or
Enterprise’ is an open platform that intuitive manner. The most likely candidate to replacing systems of engagement (email,
facilitates synchronous and asynchronous fulfil this role is a Workplace Communication Unified Communication, ESN, etc.), systems of
human to human, human to machine and and Collaboration (WCC) solution; one record (ERP, ECM, Big Data, etc) and systems
machine to machine communication and that is designed from a user centric of operation (IoT, machine data, etc.). WCC
collaboration. This implies an IT architecture perspective with easy integration in mind. platforms will evolve to Digital Workplace
which provides agility, speed and ease of The core technology stack of WCCs is built Platforms, the technology foundation for an
use for development with a highly scalable for integration, by making use of API’s and ‘Intelligent Networked Enterprise’.
infrastructure, making use of an API leveraging their own and other micro services
ecosystem. On top of this API ecosystem, architecture(s). WCC platforms become the
end users must have the ability to craft their information hub and work stream engine
22 #Journey2020
Business models
Market impact
Organizations had traditionally two strategies production, operational and market data A requirement for achieving these benefits
for growth and market success: they built the to craft better and new products/services and for ensuring successful cooperation in
required capability and capacity internally together based on (foreseen) market demand. the business ecosystem is strategy alignment,
(organic) or they grew through acquisition trust, openness and connectedness on
(inorganic). There is however a third path to Employees of different partners within a leadership and involved employee level,
growth: leveraged growth. An enterprise business ecosystem will flock together, based thereby supported by an integrated business
creates leverage by connecting external on insights derived from their Common ecosystem communication and collaboration
complementary resources, building on solid Industrial Data Platform, in an ‘Innovation platform, offered by a common and
business relationships and as a result, creating Value Web’, a temporary purpose driven, inter integrated Digital Workplace solution.
a business ecosystem. All parties involved and mostly virtual organization form, to make
are able to grow and innovate faster, in a innovation happen. Innovation value webs Markets in 2020 will be increasingly
more capital efficient manner. In other words, have in their nature a better understanding dominated by ‘Intelligent Networked
business ecosystems enable the translation of the supply chain through the combination Enterprises’ cooperating in business
of the sharing economy from the consumer of the specific knowledge and experience ecosystems, leaving less room for traditional
to the B2B world. The principals of the sharing of the organizations involved. This results large scale enterprises, because they cannot
economy will give rise to “Common Industrial in improved operational and customer compete with the agility, innovation power
Data Platforms” where a business ecosystem excellence, for themselves and the business and growth acceleration of those fully
of supply chain partners will share design, ecosystem as a whole. networked organizations.
Conclusion
B2B companies have to become more accessible to all involved employees within
data driven to be prepared for the digital the business ecosystem.
shockwaves which are propagating from the
B2C world. Organizations have to become In 2020 ‘Intelligent Networked Enterprises’
intelligent and networked, internally, and organized in business ecosystems will
externally in business ecosystems, thereby outperform the competition, by capitalizing
transforming the way they operate. on their combined data sources and
cooperation power to innovate and deliver
IT offers business ecosystem members the faster with better results than the more self-
opportunity to combine all of the different centered organizations.
data streams from the ecosystem participants
in ‘Common Data Platforms’ in order to
unleash synergy to improve production B2B interactions will
across the value chain and foster market
innovation with more impact, less cost, become increasingly
resulting in more beneficial growth for all. data driven, dynamic and
To ensure success, seamless communication
and collaboration within the business
intelligent with networks
ecosystem is a necessity. This will be enabled emerging around
by a common Digital Workplace solution
common Industrial Data
Platforms.

Business models
Digital blended
business models
How to discover the customer interactions are also dependent
on end to end supply chains that incorporate
We believe that those traditional businesses
that are most successful in “digital
digital competitive more traditional B2B interactions. To maintain
the agility and flexibility with which services
engagements” will be those with the
capability to blend existing capabilities with
advantage. are delivered to end customers, B2B services
will need to support highly responsive
new digital business techniques.
product lifecycles.
In the last decade, new and disruptive
digital business models have rapidly risen to Data and the inherent value of the insights
prominence in B2C interactions. As examples, that it brings, continues to play a key role
Uber’s and Airbnb’s business platforms have in digital service optimization and as the
enabled the monetization of under-utilized marginal cost and latency of sharing data
3rd party resources at marginal cost, putting decreases, the data lifecycle described in
significant pressure on traditional taxi and Journey 2018 will be traversed ever quicker.
hotel businesses. However, many digital
Realizing digital advantage

Pure digital business often requires less capital cost reduction, taking traditional enterprises
expenditure, relying instead on IT platforms to the next level of operational excellence
and data intermediation for success. Flexible and customer experience.
operation and marginal costs close to zero
enable digital businesses to tap into global 3. Digital business brings significant
markets with initial “below cost” pricing to competitive advantage through
stimulate multi-sided market network effects. connecting markets and undercutting
Yet, several of the underlying approaches prices though cross-subsidization.
used by pure digital businesses can be Digital or data driven business models are
successfully applied to existing traditional changing the boundaries of markets. This
ones to help accelerate their digitalization: can isolate traditional players and severely
test the loyalty of their customers. By
1. Digital businesses have lower, more aggressively entering connected markets,
flexible cost bases. Pure data driven traditional players can avoid losing market
business have minimal material costs - leverage. Traditional businesses are not
Capex is often limited to Information and inevitably disintermediated from the digital
Communication Technologies (ICT) or world as was feared during the first wave of
office infrastructure. Traditional businesses internet business; it is simply that a different
can embrace the transition to “as a service” form of market engagement is required.
procurement, whilst at the same time
having a much better understanding of the 4. Digital businesses learn fast via a trial and
business rationale for capital investment error culture: In general, digital businesses
- giving a competitive advantage when profit from a trial and error culture, while
investments cannot be avoided. cultural inertia and risk aversion within
traditional businesses can make change
2. Digital business techniques enable difficult. The transformation from traditional
business simplification. Business process to blended business will require a significant
digitalization and automation helps realize culture shift, but is absolutely achievable.
additional productivity, repeatability and
11
Marketing budgets seem to be the exception in this comparison of cost advantage since digital businesses are younger than
traditional businesses. Quite often, advertising and marketing budget exceeds the implementation and operations budget.
24
Business models
Digital blended business: the how

1. Make it part of your business strategy and digital business approaches can deliver For these levels of digital business, you need
process to consider digital revenue the advantage needed to stay ahead, but to understand your data ecosystem and think
models: It is not just a question of universal again require a significant cultural change. ‘digital added value’ along the entire value
digitalization at all costs - A digital market chain. In essence this will turn closed business
unit should look at the competitive forces 3. Innovate digital services: After enhancing organizations “inside out”, transforming
on the business, as adapted from the well- your existing business by applying digital them into networks driven by new and
known Industry Competition Model from principles the next natural step is to invent more transparent forms of value and risk
Michael Porter: and introduce your own new digital services. distribution. Companies that are more market
a. Customers experience can be than cost driven will find this easier and might
enhanced when you understand their 4. Co-creation of digital services: The final have already decided which model to pursue
behavior better through digitalization. step is the co-creation of new services with (see figure 6).
b. Supplier collaboration can be customers and business partners.
enhanced by participating in market
platforms that help generate larger
market share.
c. Reactiveness of new digital entrants
can be counteracted by the suitable use DIGITAL
of alliances. BLENDED MODEL
MODEL
d. Innovation should be considered as a Luxury goods Innovative bubble
continuous improvement lever, making Auction / reverse auction multi-sided platform
substitution more difficult. Price below
Utility / pay as you go / on demand
recurring / subscription Advertising current market
Price distance from cost
2. Adapt your company organization (agility, Low cost merchant / brokerage / affiliate price
Cost plus Freemium
DevOps methods, autonomy, …): Traditional
Franchise Bait and hook
businesses spend a great deal of effort
minimizing risk based on old fashioned, TRADITIONAL Add-on
MODEL
slow processes, while digital businesses
have a culture of designing fast feedback Commodity
loops to quickly identify and implement Manufacturing
requirements. The combination of traditional
Classical established Progressive digital
Figure 6 – Clusters of business models
The Blended Future

In the next 3-5 years the digital / traditional commodity businesses will become fully downstream ecosystem data will allow the
business equilibrium will be reset. Many automated ecosystems – from negotiation optimization of both product features and
traditional industries will undergo regular to delivery. New B2B platforms will emerge, supply chain speed. Companies need to learn
M&A shifts. Data will become increasingly ensuring risk sharing and a more efficient to handle the schizophrenia of collaboration
commoditized, data sources will be easily value distribution. In many markets this will AND competition.
acquired and algorithms will derive substantial lead to spot pricing and highly personalized/
new value. As products turn into services, targeted pricing based. Analysis of

Business models
Digitalization
of energy
Digital shockwaves in energy models
If there is a field where the “Digital technologies, and the deep enhancements in monthly bill. Energy companies have to cope
Shockwaves” will be profoundly felt, and with control that ICT bring to energy networks. simultaneously with the change in energy
long-lasting effect, that is Energy. So far in However, this accelerated change also raises sources and the diminishing margins in their
human history, economic growth has been negative aspects, such as the ever growing traditional core business: a combined trend
closely linked to energy consumption, complexity of the future interconnected that for some authors anticipates potential
and consequently to its undeniable energy networks which also increases their “energy for free” scenarios12. Incumbents also
negative environmental impact. Long term fragility. Cyberattacks have already shown that have to confront new, nimbler and more
sustainability goals demand that we reduce essential supply can be severely disrupted. agile “outsider” competitors, exemplified by
this coupling as much as possible. solutions like the Tesla Powerwall13. Finally,
Most importantly, the new energy model they have to comply with stricter national and
One key element to achieve this is the creates important challenges to the business international regulations, about security, trust
accelerated evolution towards a new of existing energy companies. They have and environmental responsibility, with more
energy model, based more and more on to adapt to a more demanding and active to come from the Paris Climate Conference,
true decarbonized energy production. It is customer (“energy prosumer”), who because COP 21. Reinvention of their business models,
driven by the combination of more mature of their micro-generation capabilities, expects delayed for a long time, is now a pressing
distributed renewable energy sources (mainly, more advanced services and a deeper necessity.
solar and wind), emerging energy storage interaction well beyond a barely informative
Energy networks reimagined

Business reinvention starts at the bottom, existing reservoirs. Security will increase its EMERGING ICT FOR ENERGY
with profound changes in how energy importance even more, as energy networks
networks are controlled. They will evolve are life-sustaining infrastructures. The “Fractal” Robots Fog/Edge
towards a fully distributed energy network huge “attack surface” of the new networks Smart Grid & Drones Computing:
Distributed
model, combining traditional “centralized” demands a new approach to cybersecurity, SCADA
Big Data–HPC
sources with widely decentralized renewables. combining security “by design” with Blockchain integration
They will require distributed control and distributed, analytic-based behavioral threat for Distributed for Smart Grid Cognitive
intelligence, including predictive and detection. Energy Computing
Resources for Energy
prescriptive analytics capabilities in all the Teleremote Analytics
nodes. Long-term network supervision For operational maintenance, new energy Field
Support
will evolve towards an overarching model, networks will demand optimized field Field Worker
combining information and control at different operations, delivered by expert workers of the Future: Distributed
AR, VR, “Two-Speed” Prescriptive
scales (continental, national, regional, local that make extensive use of context-aware Wearables, IoT Analytics
Energy
and in-building), which we could call “Fractal “augmented” technologies. For example: Companies in the field
Grid Supervision”. the combined use of secured mobile and
wearable devices, integrated with other IoT Additive Multi-sided Distributed
Network and energy source complexity will networks; knowledge at the field provided Manufacturing Market Services Behavioural
for Energy for Energy Cybersecurity
increase demands for proper design, requiring by Enterprise Social Networks through Infrastructures Prosumers
use of High Performance Computing (HPC) Augmented Reality; and the cooperation of
for tasks like high-resolution grid simulations different types of robots and drones. Web of Systems:
or the optimization of oil & gas production in Identity Sustainable Convergence with
Management Connected other Smart-
in IT/OT Home Infrastructures
Jeremy Rifkin, “The Zero Marginal Cost Society”, 2014

12
Tesla PowerWall homepage: https://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall

13
26 #Journey2020
Business models
Business model reinvention

For the interaction with their more digital- parties that exploit the concepts of Multi- efficiency services for homes and buildings,
savvy customers, Energy companies have Sided Markets in B2B2C and B2B scenarios. based on the combined information from
to better embrace the rules of the new For example, Energy companies may partner domestic IoT devices and Smart Meters.
Economy of Data14 . They have to implement with facilities management and consumer
innovative energy-related services with third goods companies to provide energy
ENERGY OIL & GAS VALUE CHAIN

SOURCES Cities Transport
Traditional
Oil Production
Trading Oil & Gas Commercial Buildings Factories
Gas Exploration Refining
& Shipping Retail Partners
Biofuels Non-Traditional CONNECTED
Oil & Gas EVERYTHING
ELECTRICITY VALUE CHAIN NEW ENERGY Electric

Wind SERVICES Personalized Vehicle Demand
Distributed Grid Billing Response
Solar
Sea D. Generation D. Storage Microgrids Electricity Energy Submetering
Trading Retail Efficiency
Hydro ENERGY
Coal Generation Transmission Distribution Micro PROSUMER
Domotics
Regulators Renewables Personal
Nuclear
Traditional Grid Storage
Figure 7 – The Digitalization of Energy
There are also plenty of business Transport) enabling new use cases, like like “evidence-based regulation” where
opportunities that may come from a energy optimization for Industry 4.0. Another simulation and analytics may help “validate”
stronger interaction with other smart interaction that can be enhanced is the complex regulations before they get fully
infrastructures (Cities, Buildings, Factories, relation with regulators, with approaches enforced.
Environmental & business sustainability

Combined, all aspects of the Digitalization revenue (estimated at US$ 810 Billion) to And all this without forgetting the essential
of Energy mentioned before have a clear energy companies. To attain this, Digitalization target from a societal viewpoint: achieving
impact, as studies by international groups of Energy can help improve margins by concurrent environmental and economical
have shown15. Not only environmentally, achieving higher levels of operational sustainability of digitalized Energy Value
by reducing greenhouse gases emissions excellence, while at the same time increasing Chains is fundamental for global long-term
(estimated at 1.8Gt CO2e or 15% of all sectors revenue with innovative energy-related civilization progress.
studied), but also by providing additional services driven by new business models.
See the “Digital-Blended Business Models” section in this document

14
GESi SMARTer2030 report: http://smarter2030.gesi.org/downloads/Chapter_Energy.pdf

15

Business models
Crypto-currencies
& Blockchain
In the world of ubiquitous connectivity and
peer to peer interactions, the challenge of
establishing and maintaining trust, security
and privacy has never been greater. As
the digital revolution drives the potential
for increasingly disaggregated supply
chain processes and relationships, there
is a growing demand for a new approach
to managing the integrity of business
transactions.
A new model for trust

In 2008, the Blockchain concept was
presented as a means of establishing trust
between essentially trustless transacting
parties - It became the underpinning protocol
for the somewhat notorious crypto-currency
Bitcoin. Within established Financial Services
institutions there was much initial skepticism
around Blockchain and crypto-currencies
generally, largely due to their lack of
regulation and their association with various An immutable public ledger
black market activities. However the subject
of Blockchain is now firmly on the agenda Blockchain is a public ledger of where users’ mining rights are dictated by the
of almost every major Financial Services transaction blocks that are verifiable and size of their currency holding. Both schemes
institution and is seen as the potential means auditable against an agreed protocol. It is have their strengths and weaknesses.
of completely transforming existing banking cryptographically secured and distributed
processes, removing an estimated $20Bn a amongst a consensus driven network of The attraction of Blockchain is largely due to
year from payment and compliance costs. It users. The “committing” of transactions to the core principles upon which it was built:
is even being hailed by the World Economic the ledger requires “miners” to validate the
Forum as an emerging Mega-Trend. appending of a new block chain to the end • Trustless: The Blockchain protocol enables
of the chain in accordance with a “proof” transactions between parties who have no
Within the Economy of Data, it is clear that protocol. The transactions can reflect simple previous relationship or trust.
certain data assets will be transacted in asset transfers or more complex self- • Distributed: The Blockchain is copied to and
a similar way to regular fiat currencies. A executing conditional contracts. validated by many peer nodes.
means of establishing smart contracts • Peer to Peer: There is no central authority
that validate such transactions is therefore The Bitcoin Blockchain uses hash calculations involved in transactions and therefore no
required. Blockchain could be at least part of in a “Proof of Work” scheme that makes it intermediary charges.
the answer and therefore applied in almost both difficult and costly to mine new blocks, • Immutability: Cryptographic security and
every industry from Manufacturing (for the but also virtually impossible to change the peer community consensus means little
authentication of supply chain transactions) contents of the chain. Other Blockchain chance of fraud, manipulation or coercion.
to Media (for Digital Rights Management). variants propose “Proof of Stake” schemes, • Open source: No single entity can control
Furthermore, as transaction ecosystems the protocol to its advantage.
within the Internet of Things evolve,
establishing trust between essentially trust-
less entities will become critically important.
Data is an emerging currency. We need a means
to secure its value even in distributed and
essentially untrusted ecosystems.
28
Business models
Blockchain technology challenges

For all the strengths and opportunities, there The concept of “Private” Blockchains or to a consensus driven peer network of
are a number of potential challenges that Sidechains can help address some of the interested parties, but the mining process
need to be considered: challenges outlined, but depending on the could be managed by a central “admin miner”
approaches adopted, these may require to guarantee capacity and sustainability and
• Sustainability: “Proof of work” Blockchain compromises to some of core principles. facilitate governance. It is also possible to
mining requires significant and costly As an example: A private Blockchain could foresee consortia of [otherwise] competitors
compute power. Miners are currently be used by a single entity to hold a ledger establishing “Community Chains” to address
rewarded for their efforts, but the point may of transactions specific to its products and a specific market requirement with a tailored
come where the reward does not justify the services – the ledger might still be distributed set of protocol and process overlays.
cost of mining.
• Volatility: Bitcoin valuations (e.g.) have
proved to be quite volatile compared to
major fiat currencies. Should the value crash, E-commerce
perhaps as a result of security breaches, Digital Rights
disruptive regulation or loss of confidence, ts Dig Global Payments
Blockchain may cease to be mined and
trac ita
lc
would fail.
• Integrity: Blockchain relies on highly
Wagers on Remittance
ur
rt c
secure cryptography to maintain its P2P Lending

ren
Escrow
Sma
integrity. Emerging technologies like

cy
Quantum Computing could render current Microfinance

cryptographic schemes powerless to brute
force attack.
• Capacity: There are current limits to the
transaction volumes that can be handled by
Equity Healthcare
in g
certain Blockchain schemes. This may limit

Sec
their viable use cases.

ep
• Lack of governance and protection: Private Markets Title Records

iti
ke
ur
Currently, in the case of the public

Blockchain, there is little or no protection for Debt es o rd Ownership
users who require some kind of transaction
Crowdfunding
Re c Voting
refund or compensation. If Blockchain is to
be used to facilitate transactions in regulated
industries, this will need to be addressed. Derivatives Intellectual Property
It is anticipated that Figure 9 – Example use cases for Blockchain technologies
Blockchain and its Conclusion

derivatives have the
Interest from banks, governments and use cases. It is anticipated that Blockchain
potential to become industry is gaining momentum and driving and its derivatives have the potential to
a primary means of investment in this technology – If the
necessary levels of governance can be
become a primary means of authenticating
business process transactions and will see
authenticating any appropriately applied there could be an
opening of the flood gates in the practical
mainstream adoption by 2020.
business process
transaction.
2. Ways of working
Interactive & dynamic media
Augmented Interactive Reality
Wearables
DevOps in large organizations
30 #Journey2020
Ways of working
Interactive
& dynamic media
Traditionally media has been based on linear information via wearables. Soon we will see we are referring to content that is created,
narratives but now interactivity, context and radical new ways of experiencing media, built changed or is adapted in response to real
user/viewer behavior enable customised around narrative forms that have as much time feedback such as in video games. The
experiences for each user. This allows to do with gaming as they do with traditional scope may go well beyond gaming in terms
narratives to evolve and change in response linear story-telling. of the type of content, type of feedback and
to implicit or explicit real-time feedback, social information influencing how the content is
network analytics and changing context In general, dynamic content is referred to created or adapted.
which will even include user biometric the content that changes frequently but here
The media & gaming industries

Until now the traditional media and gaming engines to create cinematic productions. New Hardware and Technologies
industries have existed separately. While The combination of video and social media
they do compete for consumer spend and (for example using live streaming platforms One of the main drivers for the trend
eyeballs, and at times collaborate in cross such as Twitch.tv), have brought a sort of towards dynamic and interactive content
media projects such as games based on interactivity for video into the mainstream is the emergence of a combination
movies, they do not compete in terms of as well as blurring the distinction between of immersive, interactive and mobile
content. Consumers of traditional media content creator and content consumer. technologies. These include better hand
who wanted highly interactive content gesture and voice technologies, the
played games; those who wanted a more Thus media is tending towards interactivity explosion of wearables providing real
static or linear experience were consumers and personalization and gaming is tending time access to user context and biometric
of traditional media. But the multi-screen, towards narrative, storytelling and stronger information, vastly more powerful mobile
pervasively connected web is driving mass characterization. This interactivity and devices, and the arrival of virtual and
media from an audience relationship to a dynamic content is based on user actions augmented reality headsets to the mass
socially connected, interactive customer as in gaming today but in future will not only market as described in the Augmented
relationship. While major landmark events be based on combinations of inputs from Interactive Reality topic (pages 34 and 35).
such as the Olympic Games will continue to individuals but also from collectives, both in
be consumed simultaneously by billions of real time and in non-real time. These inputs
people, the perspective that users take on will be utilized all through the value chain: in
these events will be increasingly personal and content production to improve the content
interactive and the experiences will become based on explicit or implicit content, in
socially connected with other end-users. content consumption and in monetization.
Gaming has traditionally been driven more by In 2015 the gaming industry had already
action and objectives (scoring goals, earning surpassed movies in terms of revenues16 and
points, passing through to a new level) rather this will only continue to increase. Our vision
than by storyline, character development for 2020 is of a converged entertainment
or narrative. But gradually this is changing. industry where games can also be narrative,
An early manifestation of the evolution and narratives can also be interactive and
of gaming towards the traditional media dynamic.
space was machinima – the use of gaming
http://businesstech.co.za/news/lifestyle/88472/the-biggest-entertainment-markets-in-the-world/
16
32
Ways of working
Dynamic narrative Conclusion

Dynamic and interactive narrative is where Digital media is being transformed; the The Symbiosis Between Social
the storyline changes with different inputs. ways in which we consume and interact
Networks, Gaming and Media
These inputs may be explicit actions by the with content are evolving towards more
user/viewer or other inputs of any number immersive, interactive and social experiences.
of other sources (biometrics, social media, The introduction of dynamic, interactive At the core of the future evolution of
context, user profile, etc. or random). In content allows people to feel more engaged media is the symbiosis and convergence
the video gaming world most content is and creates a much more personalized between social networks, gaming and
interactive and dynamic, with much of the experience. Associated with these personal more traditional forms of media such
rendering of the animation being done in real experiences are, of course, the enhanced as television and film. MMOG (massively
time. This allows the content being produced possibilities for monetization. multiplayer online games) such as World
to “fit” with the storyline up until that moment. of Warcraft and virtual worlds such as
For non-animated content this is much more The current generation is used to working Second Life were perhaps the two most
difficult to achieve because typically the with media in their daily lives by, for example, paradigmatic earlier forerunners of this.
content cannot be created in real time (it is using game elements to enhance the way
snippets of audio and video that are retrieved of working (or even thinking), learning and At the same time social media has
in response to inputs). Therefore it is far adapting their behavior. Using the emerging become a standard measurement tool
more difficult to ensure narrative coherence new technologies, dynamic and interactive for online viewing of linear television.
(Is someone’s hair combed the same way media can be a real asset to organizations. Facebook and Google (YouTube) are
from one scene to the next? Was one of The possibilities of using Virtual Reality waging a battle to be the social search
the characters who appear in that scene (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) (or a mix leader for media distribution and live
eliminated previously?). of those two; Mixed Reality) can enhance streaming gaming platforms such as
the way of working for everyone by twitch.tv are becoming wildly popular.
Because of this, dynamic content and media appropriating elements from media and They include playthroughs of video
(especially games) are currently almost gaming, transforming other domains such as games by users, broadcasts of e-sports
entirely reliant on animation. Whilst computer education and training, customer service or competitions, and are based around
graphics qualities are constantly improving virtual sales. established and/or ad hoc communities
there are limitations on how close we can who follow particular gamers. That is,
come to recreating natural scenes, especially Game-like narrative experiences with gaming + social + video.
those involving humans. Therefore an shared, collective experiences will be an
emerging area of interest is Content Oriented important part of the media landscape by
Broadcasting in which building blocks of 2020. The disruptive nature of this in terms
media are created in ways that allow them of business as well as new forms of creativity
to be composed and adapted in real time and the creative process will be huge in the
and personalized for everyone according to media industry but will also be felt in society
the context, profile, actions, etc. of them and at large.
others.
Something similar has already been seen in

the music industry. We cannot only generate
random music at will, but also create original
pieces in the style of any famous musician
such as “Jimi Hendrix” – Bizet’s Carmen as
Hendrix would have played it!

Ways of working
Augmented
Interactive Reality
Imagine a technology that would allow you It also enables secure access to vast amounts
to perceive more than the pure physical of backend information and services. This The Augmented Interactivity Wave
environment; one that allowed you to ability to combine holograms with backend
access and interact with information in services and data pushes the boundary of Technology is at the heart of this new
the field of view beyond what we naturally reality and delivers new avenues to perceive Digital (R)evolution. There are several
observe. We are on the verge of being able and interact with the environment. technologies and new devices that will
to widely adopt technologies that seamlessly facilitate all these ideas becoming a
integrate the digital world of remote data In order to enable AIR, the visual scene must reality in the coming years:
centres into our own personal field of view. first be digitized though video-recording, • Mechanics could see instructions
Such developments will support and enrich deploying the digital camera of a mobile tagged on the unknown equipment
our daily activities in new, contextually device. The frames of the captured video when repairing.
appropriate and interactive ways, through the are streamed into an image-processing • Surgeons could see ultrasound scans
enhancement of our perception of reality. service provider in order to recognize feature of organs while performing surgery on
characteristics (e.g. marker-, image-, object- them.
Augmented Interactive Reality (AIR) is Atos’ based) within the digitized field of view. These • Soldiers could see enemy positions
response to this emerging trend that aims features are further analyzed to determine the spotted by unmanned reconnaissance
to create a “next generation, reality-based spatial location and orientation (e.g. SLAM- aircraft /drones.
interface to connect the remote digital world based) of the user and to recognize specific • A plant maintenance engineer is
with the observer’s field of view, delivering IT physical entities being observed. Based on able to view all parameters such as
services and information through interactive the location and context of the user and temperature of the hazardous liquid in
holograms”. AIR enhances real world perhaps recognized entities, associated AIR- a pipe he is looking at.
information with virtual 2D/3D graphical content is compiled to provide hierarchically • Automotive plant designers are able
(computer-generated) holograms that appear composed 2D/3D holograms that are to analyze interfering construction
to coexist in the same space as the real world interlinked with further service-oriented components, plan production lines
while supporting interaction through gestures interaction processes. The holograms are and workshops, compare variance and
and speech. AIR advances the classical streamed back into a semi-transparent display verify parts in a simulated world.
concept of augmented and mixed reality of the mobile device to be spatially aligned • Consumers are able to browse reviews
by utilizing a service-oriented approach. and overlaid on the digitized field of view. By of shops & restaurants while walking
Video processing and digital enrichment are gesture or voice control, the user can interact along a shopping street, by identifying
provisioned by remote service providers, with various holograms and its associated shops automatically.
enabling high scalability and ensuring services.
maximum operation time17 of mobile devices.
Image processing executed on mobile devices significantly reduces battery time due to its high power consumption
17
34 #Journey2020
Ways of working
Business impact Market adoption

Since the emergence of smart phones And where is all this heading over the next By 2020, AIR will certainly have exceeded
(iPhone 2007) and tablets (iPad 2010), few years? It’s beginning to mature into a its present capabilities, enhancing the entire
powerful mobile computing has become viable market, just as the mobile phone performance spectrum ranging from simple
viable and has revitalized the concept of AR did, nearly a decade ago. Mobile analysts textual information overlays over discrete
(a concept that has existed since 1960). With expects AR to be adopted by a billion interactive holograms to an entire virtual
the experimental launch of Google Glass in users by 2020. Intel believes that AR will be replica of the reality (holodeck) blurring
2012 and release of the Epson BT-200 in 2014, transformative. The chip maker is investing the lines between virtual and mixed reality.
AR content has also been delivered directly $100 million over the next 2-3 years to Eyewear will evolve over this timeframe with
into the field of view, but these solutions more fund companies developing ‘perceptual comfortable stylish glasses that contain
or less stayed in the realms of research and computing’ software and applications, powerful embedded technology. They will
early adopters, as no saleable solution for focusing on next-generation, natural user range from Google Glass-style glance-at
AR capabilities or intuitive-human machine interfaces like; touch, gesture, voice, emotion displays that might also replace the phone
interface (HMI) existed. But this may change sensing, biometrics, and image recognition. with stereoscopic 3D-viewing wearables for
soon. With the ongoing launch programme of everyday use. It is currently expected that the
Microsoft’s smart glass technology HoloLens market will not see a perfectly augmented
and its powerful software development ‘‘AR /AIR will be the experience with movie-quality special effects
kit, the market for AR/AIR will most-likely seamlessly blended into reality by 2020.
experience an economic revolution. With interface for the
its highly innovative, full-vision augmenting
HMI which enables in-the-air tracked finger
Internet of things.”
gestures and its optimized design for
Greg Kipper, Senior Security Architect
service-oriented application scenes, it is well
and Strategist at Verizon
positioned to serve the upcoming AIR market.
Triggered by Microsoft’s initiative, holographic
smart glass technologies from Apple, Conclusion
Google or Magic Leap won’t be far behind.
There is no doubt that use cases for analyzing the videos in real time, selecting
Augmented Interactive Reality will proliferate context-sensitive digital content from
By 2020 augmented across industries by 2020. Moreover all distributed storage systems and returning it
reality market of these applications will likely generate
unmanageable amounts of digital content
back to the mobile device where it is rendered
directly into the digitized field of view.
is projected to which will need to be handled in real time. The
quality and size of digital data will mean that In summary, the Augmented Interactivity
generate $120 billion it cannot be handled on wearable devices
themselves. Both the content for augmented
Wave is gaining strength and by 2020
it will be powerful enough to propagate
- Digi-Capital. reality and the AIR service must be hosted into several aspects of our everyday lives.
in a data center to cater to the tremendous This may call for a revision of business
Augmented Interactive Reality will be amount of digital data and to provide the models and will also presumably herald a
furthered by technologies like HoloLens required, high powered video analytics. revolution in the technological market place,
and it is truly a foundation technology of Therefore, AIR must be delivered as a highly calling for both flagship products and AIR
the future which will drive next generation scalable service accepting a high volume compatible versions of existing models.
transformations across many industries of parallel-ingested video streams and data,
(manufacturing, field services, retail, real time
collaboration, etc.). AR/AIR is expected to play
a key role in realizing digital transformations Augmented Interactive Reality will change
across the entire value chain from product
concept through to production, even several of our day-to-day services in our real
extending to after sales support and services.
world by integrating the virtual one.
Ways of working
Wearables
The term Wearable is used to describe

items worn by humans somewhere on or Business impact
even within their body, instead of being
in their pockets like smartphones, which The wearables market is entering a rapid
• Communication: New low-energy
are capable of performing some type of growth phase. Wearables will be one key
communication protocols such as Sigfox.
computing. Miniaturisation, advanced power- contributor in the growth of the Internet of
• Augmented and Virtual Reality: Enabling
management and integration of smartphone Things, enabling the collection of Smart Data.
powerful new experiences.
technologies has led to small powerful This adoption will also be facilitated by the
connected devices which support sensors to huge base of existing smartphones worldwide
The ecosystem is very large and fragmented.
detect the current context the person is in. (1.8 billion in 2015) that will be the perfect
We can split the origin of the vendors into
complementing gateway for these devices.
three main categories: Devices, Platforms
We face many situations in daily life where and Solutions. While some of the key players
existing devices such as smartphones, The global wearables market will grow at a
are trying to extend their activities, it is clear
tablets and laptops are not able to support compound annual rate of 35% over the next
there is a requirement to integrate these
us with necessary services. Wearables have five years, reaching 148 million units shipped
different components in order to provide
the opportunity to play a major role in the annually in 2019, up from 33 million units
end to end solutions to business. We must
following situations: shipped this year18. We predict that smart
master the whole range of wearables as they
watches, digital badges and smart bands
will become an essential part of services
• Hands free: There is a demand for devices will lead the wearable market in the coming
in a connected world. The opportunity to
like smart glasses and textiles that can free years, followed by smart glasses, emerging
collect and make use of increasing quantities
up our hands. intelligent textiles and embedded accessories.
of data generated by sensors must, however,
• Assisted: Where an individual is not able to be balanced with careful treatment of the
handle traditional devices due to ability or This current evolution is possible due to new
information to retain consumer trust.
health reasons. This enables solutions for technologies becoming available, such as:
babies, the elderly and the disabled.
• Real time: Processing activity takes place • Sensors: Accelerometers, GPS, heartbeat
sensors, bio-ink, radiation detectors, air
Wearables improve
all of the time, independent from a human
interaction. There are cases to monitor the quality monitors and many more. business performance
body (including heartbeat, position, blood • Displays: Flexible displays and OLED
pressure, brain activity, temperature) or for technology. and employees will
security reasons such as prisoner tracking. • Battery: Lifetime and size improvements,
contactless charging and energy harvesting. be more efficient and
productive at work.
Business Insider
18
36
Ways of working
Market adoption
The market distinguishes between consumer customer base. But we can also observe Within the B2B sector, Field Service and
and professional usage of wearables. The huge deployments in B2B in domains like Assisted Maintenance are the main activities
customer oriented market (B2C) mainly healthcare, retail, manufacturing, military/ where wearables will bring major changes
includes use cases in the areas of fitness and police, transport, workforce and sports. Most and huge cost reductions. Smart Glasses
sports, fashion and apparel, home automation of these B2B initiatives are based on the will bring $1b savings per year from 201720.
and remote identification, gaming and business performance improvement that can Wearables will assist through:
recreation. The non-consumer use cases be achieved by the use of these wearables:
(B2B) are mainly related to defence and • Helping to diagnose incidents by collecting
security, enterprise and industry, healthcare • Smart Glasses for assisted surgeries for data from video and audio sensors,
and education. The market for consumer doctors, production quality assurance and supported by image recognition technology.
wearables will increase from 6 billion in 2014 employee trainings • Providing instructions to the support
to 22 billion in 2018 where the non-consumer • Bracelets for access management for technician who still has his hands free.
market increases from 3 billion in 2014 to 8 hotels, hospitals, manufacturing • Collaborative troubleshooting by sharing
billion in 201819. • Smart Clothes to measure driver’s health video and audio with any specialist
transporting people or goods anywhere.
The wearables market today is therefore • Smart Watches for stock management in • Integration with a SCADA system, to allow
mainly focused on B2C where the main retail the technician to directly control the
participants are seeking to increase their components.
Conclusion
Wearables challenges for adoption
The evolution of wearables is happening
in many markets, starting from a trend in Our vision is that Energy Management: Wearables have
consumer electronics and now evolving
to business. To develop successfully, it
in 2020, one third to be available during a complete usage
cycle, including the possibility of recharge
requires end-to-end solutions, from device
to applications, including connectivity and
of internet users in Usability and Comfort: interaction with
a wearable has to be limited by its size,
security, and to realize the value of collected developed countries purpose & ergonomics
data. Dependability: There must be a failover
will wear at least one strategy available to protect the user,
which may be as clear as preemptive
Wearable technology can improve the
work environment by freeing up the hands, wearable at any time. warnings about the battery level or a
providing ubiquitous access to information
and enabling transparent data collection. It
Concepts like Body transfer of functionality to other devices
Privacy & Security: wearables have to
will bring added value services, deliver cost
reductions and transform business processes.
Area Networks will be transparent as to when and what
information they handle
The collection and analysis of a growing enable a seamless Legal & ethical aspects: If wearables are
amount of data through wearable sensors to be used in critical situations they must
will enable macro trends to be identified. This integration of all abide by legal and ethical constraints such
as product liability set forth in medical-
resulting Smart Data brings the opportunity
for new business models. wearables around a device regulations
single person. Effects on the human organism:
wearable electronic devices will be in
direct contact with the human body. The
effects of materials (allergic reactions)
and radiation must be manageable and
analyzed.
BCC Research
19
Gartner
20

Ways of working
DevOps in
large organizations
For large organizations to survive in a Digital
world, businesses recognize that building a Technical capabilities
strong DevOps capability will be vital21 . A
successful DevOps implementation is a subtle Many organizations have already adopted ubiquitous computing capabilities, with new
recipe as it requires major transformation Continuous Integration and by 2020 most services created simply by a combination/
to build an excellent software delivery will have expanded this to Continuous mashup of cloud services via their APIs, fully
capability. One aspect of the transformation Deployment. DevOps is a real “game abstracting the underlying infrastructure.
is the change in Technical Capabilities changer” with infrastructure-as-code
(which represents 30%22 of a DevOps accelerating deployments and the business DevOps reduces the size and complexity
implementation effort), but the major effort driving release planning. Cloud platforms of individual software releases, however
(the remaining 70%) is the introduction will be the default choice and there will be it increases the frequency and number
of the necessary processes, culture and significant advancement is in the use of of releases. This is only sustainable if the
organizational structure. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence requirement for human involvement in
to robotize software delivery and operation. the process can be reduced. Humans will
define the high-level goals for testing25,
DevOps in a nutshell A key challenge will be the transformation but the detailed testing steps will be
of an organization’s legacy enterprise specified and performed by “virtual
application landscape to an enterprise intelligent robots”, organized in swarms
DevOps is an approach for how to build
service landscape, an area where and able to adapt and learn together.
software which aims to:
architectural styles can help.
• focus on business value
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
• catalyze a highly collaborative
The microservice architecture style23, as will help to reach this level of automation and
environment in which teams seek to
one example, supports fast, feature based interaction, not just for releases, but also for
continuously improve
delivery and removes the need for large proactive monitoring. The impact that this will
• automate integration, test and
releases and their associated risks. However, have on traceability, duty and responsibility
implementation activities to enable
in order to continuously deploy and operate will be a key topic in the coming years.
frequent delivery
microservices, they must be robust, self-
• evolve away from monolithic towards
healing and scalable. The 12 Factor App24 Building enhanced Technical Capabilities
microservice architectures
is an example set of design principles that requires not just choosing practices
to increase IT Performance defined by
can be used to achieve these goals. and installing appropriate software
Change Throughput and Stability in
tools, but also developing the skills of
Production.
The emerging Serverless architectural style employees so that they can use these
will become more relevant in a future of practices and tools effectively.
21
Computer Associates “DevOps: The Worst-Kept Secret to Winning in the Application Economy”- October 2014
22
Report of the Syntec DevOps Camp-Paris Feb. 2016
23
http://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html
24
http://12factor.net/
25
Artificial Intelligence Applications for Improved Software Engineering Development (2010) by Farid Meziane & Sunil Vadera (University of Salford, UK)
38 #Journey2020
Ways of working
Process, culture & organization

Larger traditional organizations have software in the new enterprise service Cooperation means people being more
the need to transform their structure landscape, teams need to be organized involved and knowledgeable of areas outside
to an ecosystem of interdependent around the services. These teams will be their own specialty or department. Adopting
services to improve business agility26. highly focused on meeting the needs of DevOps requires a solid foundation built
the service consumers and will adapt and on trust - trust in people, tools, processes
Conway’s law27 states that “Any organization respond to consumers’ feedback (whether and automation. A Generative culture (vs.
that designs a system…will inevitably produce they are end users or other internal teams). a Pathological or Bureaucratic culture) as
a design whose structure is a copy of the This change in approach results in better defined by Jon Westrum28 is mandatory
organization’s communication structure”. knowledge retention, team stability, and for DevOps. As a result, the workforce
fewer handovers. For large organizations, is not only much happier and more
Large organizations are often structured given Conway’s law, this transformation of engaged, but also more productive: “Job
around functional siloes based on the the organizational structure is mandatory satisfaction is the number one predictor
assumption that the delivery capabilities for them to become service-centric. of organizational performance”29.
benefit from economies of scale. To deliver
St Short Time to Market

ru c & Processes
t ure DevOps
Digital Improved Quality
Enterprise Reduced Cost
Stronger Innovation
es
iti
bil
e
pa
t ur
l
Cu
Ca
al
Tech ni c
Figure 10 – Strands of DevOps enabling a Digital Enterprise
A digital shockwave survival kit

In the coming years, DevOps will be culture and organizational structure that this is not the end goal: for a successful
mandatory for any organization to successful DevOps adoption requires. They digital transformation, the entire scope of
survive in an increasingly digital world. will have to transform themselves into an the enterprise application landscape will
ecosystem of interdependent services (see require the speed, flexibility and robustness
Many tools and best practice enablers for Intelligent Networked Enterprise). Teams that DevOps brings. The ultimate aim should
DevOps are now well established; in this will need to be organized around and be to implement DevOps everywhere.
respect, it has never been easier to adopt measured against these services and be
DevOps. Transforming to an Enterprise empowered to continuously improve how Due to the huge impact on business and
Service Landscape and increasing these services deliver value to their users. organization that adopting DevOps will
automation with “virtual intelligent have, senior executive sponsorship is
robots” are major challenges ahead. The Bi-Modal IT model can be used tactically mandatory for it to be successful. Including
to prioritize the implementation of DevOps DevOps adoption as a core component into
The biggest challenge for large traditional for areas where it will have the biggest impact business strategy enables organizations to
organizations is the change in processes, and hence deliver some “quick wins”. However, prosper in the world of digital disruption.
26
http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/11/enterprise-services-planning
27
How do committees invent? By Melvin E. Conway 1968 - http://www.melconway.com/Home/Committees_Paper.html
28
A typology of Organizational Cultures (2004)
29
https://puppetlabs.com/2014-devops-report

3. Disruptive
technologies
Internet of Things & future networks
Cloud continuum
Computing Memory
Cloud & containerization
Additive Manufacturing
Quantum safe cryptography
40
Internet of Things
& future networks
In recent years the Internet of Things (IoT) It is predicted that 25 billion IoT units The connectivity of objects, with each other
has been a major trend shaping the future will be installed by 2020 and growth in and to the Internet, is now an essential
of markets such as health, transport and IoT services will reach $230 billion30. We part of the operation of many business
the home. Wearable sensors that measure identified this in Ascent Journey 2018, critical processes, demanding a resilient,
one’s activity and heart rate are impacting acknowledging its importance for the reliable way for objects to connect within
on Healthcare. For transportation, connected future, but recent trends are causing us their vicinity. While today’s IoT connectivity
and autonomous cars are beginning to to take into account new challenges. As often relies on a Cloud or central platform,
emerge. In the home, there are a growing outlined by our work on Security and the growing importance of local object
number of connected objects that allow Privacy, the protection of personal data to object communication for critical
us to automate the watering of our plants, is a key preoccupation of the connected processes is calling for a rethink of the way
the opening of window shutters and citizen, and connected objects can appear devices participate in the IoT ecosystem.
control our central heating systems. as the weakest link in one’s security chain.
Business impact
IoT will transform the landscape for business the capabilities of the other objects are. In them. Objects will be able to use a wide
and create new opportunities, but there the future, by using Named Data Networks, variety of network technologies, from a very
are several challenges to overcome. The such a local data exchange and discovery local reach (such as NFC, Zigbee, Z-Wave,
need for rapid, tactical decisions requires a will be straightforward. These challenges LiFi and Bluetooth), to very long range
redistribution of the intelligence required drive the evolution from a rather pyramidal technologies like LoRa or Sigfox which
to ensure the system’s autonomy, robustness Internet of Things today to a meshed, inter- enable the transmission of very few bits of
and manageability. Objects also need networked web of connected systems. information over long distances within a
to be able to exchange data locally very limited energy budget. In the near future all of
quickly using a wide variety of networking In these future systems ad-hoc local this will be utilised by Swarms of distributed
technologies. This local computing and communication between objects won’t (and perhaps moving) computing-enabled
communication capability must be replace potential long-haul connections to a objects to take real-time collective decisions.
associated with a method to discover what remote cloud platform, but will complement
Named data networks (NDN) From gateways to Micro Clouds

Named data networks (NDN) have These challenges lead to a tension between will in future be complemented with more
been designed to address limitations of the growing need to distribute the intelligence processing power and steered from a set
accessing data on the classical Internet. as close to the object as possible, or even of logical controllers, borrowing concepts
Named data networks are architected in the objects themselves, and the limited from Software-Defined Networking. Those
to retrieve content or access resources networking, computing and energy new capabilities will allow them to host
by using the name of the resource itself capabilities that most objects participating virtualized computing functions and assist
rather than by having to find the address in the IoT ecosystem have. To address this a set of objects in their mutual operation. In
of a node hosting it. pressure IoT Gateways have been introduced that regard, they will evolve into IoT “Micro
into the overall system architecture. Clouds”; autonomous systems that constitute
Acknowledged by many standards bodies the IoT applications. They can (and have to)
and vendors, gateways make the link provide a means to protect the data against
between the classic IT systems (Computers, unintended use. These IoT Micro Clouds
datacenters and wide area networks) and can help to implement effective monitoring
the exciting new world of connected objects. and secure software lifecycle management.
They can help objects discover one another They also have to cope with multiple data
and exchange information. These gateways consumers sharing the data in a standard
http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/the-internet-of-things-is-a-revolution-waiting-to-happen/
30
42 #Journey2020
Gateway
IoT Micro Cloud
Data collection
Cloud 5G Aggregation
LoRa Filtering
Sigfox Local Processing
Computation
Mass storage
Big Data Analytics
IoT Micro Cloud IoT Micro Cloud
Figure 11 – Data flow exchange between Cloud, Gateway, IoT MicroCloud and Sensors
format for different purposes, and are a form Telecommunication world, Network Function gateway will ensure that sensors can be
of Edge Computing in the Cloud Continuum. Virtualization aims to allow the deployment reached and will monitor their behavior. Such
of some functionality on commoditized monitoring capabilities are essential for use
By 2020 the IoT Micro Clouds will be a equipment, be it the server in a datacenter or cases where reliability is a key requirement.
key component of the ecosystem, and a a set-top box you have at home. Additionally, Finally, the intelligent gateway will be the
battlefield between telecommunication we need to address the security and privacy Babel Fish of the IoT world, ensuring protocol
operators, object manufacturers and Internet of data exchanged between objects and translation and interoperability for sensors
giants vying for control of the IoT world. the users of this data. The IoT Micro Cloud previously lying in isolated silos. All of this in
might play a role of performing access an emerging set of standards, such as the
In the meantime further developments need control on behalf of the object, or by re- IEEE P2413 IoT Architectural Framework.
to take place. A proper method to manage encrypting data transmitted through it to
the gateways needs to be established. In the a cloud platform. In addition, the intelligent
Conclusion IoT and the Circular Economy
In 2020, the IoT ecosystem will be quite The “Circular Economy”, as defined in
different from what we see today. Whilst 2014 by World Economic Forum, will
we currently experience a set of isolated disrupt the current linear “take, make,
silos that connect objects to a vendor- dispose” economic development model
specific cloud platform for data retrieval, in and aims to create a more sustainable
the future we expect this ecosystem to be world by enabling efficient use and flow
less vertically integrated, forming a web of of energy and resources so that natural
interconnected systems where objects and social capital is preserved.
and gateways will be able to interact using IoT could strongly support the Circular
open standard protocols. This shift will have Economy through the monitoring of
a technical impact, but more importantly renewable resources and providing
an economic impact on the business instrumentation that enables the
models adopted by the market players. optimization of resource yields.

Cloud continuum,
enabling Swarm Computing
Cloud Computing, IoT and the strategic use
of data and analytics are the foundations The duality of Cloud & Edge
of a new digital revolution. The business
opportunities are massive - as is the potential The technologies underpinning Cloud Two complementary trends are shaping
economic impact on our society. Public cloud Computing have reached a high degree of and driving the digital economy and
computing has become mainstream today maturity and are providing responses to more Cloud computing in particular:
and estimates of future adoption continue complex scenarios than just IaaS or SaaS.
to grow. The Cloud market is evolving to a Cloud has become the default platform for • Firstly an evolution of centralized
Hybrid model which aims to optimize costs start-ups and many enterprise organizations specialized cloud and multi-cloud hybrid
and avoid vendor lock-in. At the same time have already fully embraced the cloud models.
the number of connected devices is growing model; be it Public, Private or a Hybrid. • Secondly, a new trend which brings
from the current 20 billion to at least 100 distributed computing to the edge of the
billion in the most conservative forecast. On the other hand, organizations that aspire network, to respond to the specific needs of
to lead in the future digital business are IoT applications.
There is common agreement on pioneering solutions based on connected
the future of digital services: devices and IoT related technologies. Maturity, There is currently a polarization of
standards and adoptions are in early stages new digital solutions; some enterprises
• Public cloud platforms are making analytics even though there is a common consensus targeting mainly the pure Cloud market
mainstream for many organizations, that these technologies are the next big thing. and others the IoT market at the edge. At
simplifying the experimentation and this stage very few players are able to offer
adoption of advanced data processing a comprehensive vision and associated
technologies. solutions across the whole cloud continuum.
• These cloud platforms are also
democratizing IoT; providing the backbone
capabilities to easily interact with devices
and sensors.
• Recent Edge Computing developments are
streamlining the connectivity among IoT
devices, sensors and gateways. These IoT
“Micro Clouds” are enabling more advanced Cloud Edge
solutions such as local machine to machine
communication and cooperative decision
making.
• Many organizations are increasingly
investing and experimenting in Multi-
Cloud models; assembling together Public Figure 12 - Cloud vs IoT Edge market
IaaS, PaaS, SaaS services with private

deployments.
Cloud Computing is evolving; bridging

Think big, think swarm
together several domains and moving
towards a computing continuum
that is a key enabler for what we
Swarm Computing combines network and
have termed Swarm Computing. cloud capabilities in order to create on-demand,
autonomic and decentralized computing.
The combination of complex multi-cloud created on demand in order to respond to
architectures with Edge computing will a specific need. The swarm approach is a
enable Swarm Computing scenarios to digital shockwave for existing computing
develop. Swarms are temporal infrastructures, environments; forcing existing offerings that
44
Cloud
broker
have emerged as part of a centralization

paradigm to evolve to a hybrid decentralized
and autonomically managed model. Private Cloud
Edge computing within a Swarm vision
will evolve into a set of computing and Multi-Cloud Public Cloud
storage platforms able to provide low
latency and near real time responses with
security focusing on the physical entities. Computing Continuum
0100 Swarm
Cloud Computing will develop into a set of Computing
110
platforms with high computing power, able

1
to process huge data volumes with complex

algorithms and deep learning performed on
the data collected at the edge. Any processing
required for immediate action and low latency
will happen at the Edge; the rest of the work
will run in the cloud. All in an automated,
self-organized and self-managed model.
The evolution of today’s multiple clouds Edge Cloud

towards Swarm Computing relies on
both Cloud and Edge adoption. Many
of the current cloud capabilities need
to be further developed to overcome
security, trust and legal compliance issues
which act as barriers for a wider uptake.
Another obstacle for wider adoption is the Figure 13 - Atos vision for Swarm Computing
prevalence of proprietary solutions and
lack of standards that lead to a potential
vendor lock-in situation for early adopters.
Looking ahead
To enable this Computing Continuum Looking to the future, the emergence of automated decision making as part
vision new investments are required to Swarm Computing will be a general trend of the next industrial revolution.
evolve solutions deployed in the cloud towards specialization and decentralization
and enable the transition from one cloud which will impact the cloud and computing In the Smart Home Swarms will be
to another. Containerization combined market as a whole. This will be felt by constructed to provide care for the elderly,
with open-standards and open meta- companies in all industry sectors and nutrition and energy management;
data will overcome currently incompatible provide the underlying enablers for new controlling and monitoring a large variety
technologies and aid in the deployment and yet to be envisioned use cases in of in-home and wearable devices.
of applications. In order to succeed, data, the industrial and consumer space.
algorithms and configuration settings must In the Smart City Swarm Computing will
be able to flow between the different clouds, In the context of Industry 4.0 further become a success factor in maintaining
creating a vendor agnostic ecosystem. integration of real-time factory and shop community liveliness, and contribute
floor sensor data with high performance to addressing the global economic and
computation in the cloud will enable environmental challenges in the areas of
true prescriptive intelligence for energy management, traffic control, and
emergency and community services.

Computing
Memory
For most of Information Technology’s Computing Memory will revolutionize (output). Computing Memory analyzes raw
history computing services have been the way computational problems can be data in-depth as it arrives and translates
constrained by the availability of hardware, addressed, enabling new algorithms and relevant parts directly into knowledge that is
software and people. Tomorrow’s IT services approaches to be taken. This will apply to retained, whilst irrelevant data is discarded
will compete on their ability to minimize analytics, pattern searching in genomics immediately. This type of stream processing
energy use. A complete change in the cost and other life sciences, fraud detection in allows us to deal with exponential data
function of IT requires a new form of IT. the financial industry, predictive analytics growth and will be adopted in IoT, pattern
in video surveillance and large “web-scale” matching and analytics scenarios.
The high cost of active primary memory computing infrastructures. The billions of
(“RAM”), which loses information when the sensors that will underpin the Internet of
power is turned off, has led to the extensive Things will also benefit from such non- With combined
use of passive storage technology; magnetic
disks, and more recently Flash. New and
volatile Computing Memory chips.
Computing Memory
emerging memory technologies promise
to deliver a thousand times the capacity
One aspect of Computing Memory that will
be applied in some situations is that it can
technology, the von
together with data persistence which will
remove the need for secondary storage. This
avoid the storing of data for later processing.
This allows a threefold improvement
Neumann architecture
new era of computing will combine compute in energy efficiency as with current principles established
operations previously performed in the CPU architectures data is handled once for initial
directly with addressable memory in a single processing (input), once again for interim in the 1940’s are blown
device. We call this Computing Memory. storage and a third time for final processing
away.
Reversing the flow Business impact
Compute and memory technologies For the enterprise, Computing Memory cloud services, and eventually by the
were separated at the birth of computing enables differentiating market-specific migration of open source and open compute
for technical reasons and their distinct solutions to be developed to address solutions to the enterprise environment.
respective priorities; speed required for particular information-processing needs.
compute operations versus capacity for It will permit real-time data analysis Whilst these new technologies are still
memory. on much wider or deeper datasets, being developed, Computing Memory can
With vastly growing data volumes and which can currently only be performed already be emulated today and there are
essentially fixed CPU performance per in batches – so new business value prototypes implemented for specific use
core, transporting data to the CPUs and opportunities will emerge. cases. Therefore in new software projects,
becomes increasingly impractical to any refactoring and middle-ware choices
meet the necessary speeds which For Web-Scale companies Computing should be made with Computing Memory
applications require. Memory is especially critical, because compatibility in mind. The eventual impact
When data becomes too big to travel together with deep machine learning entirely depends on the competitive context,
you must reverse the flow and move the and cognitive computing software, it but if cloud computing and the Internet giants
compute capability to the data instead. enables them to maximize the value from impact an enterprise’s business today, we
exponential data growth whilst keeping believe Computing Memory will make an
energy costs flat. Their investments will even bigger difference tomorrow. This will
also allow benefits of the technology to be truly be a Digital Shockwave in business.
delivered to businesses; directly through
46 #Journey2020
Input/Output Input/Output
von Neumann
Bottleneck
Memory Computer Computing

Memory
vs
Software Software
Figure 14 - How Computing Memory eliminates the Von Neumann bottleneck
Market adoption Conclusion

Native Computing Memory products are Combining compute capability together Computing platforms; a radically different
not yet widely available, though a number of with memory brings a step change computing architecture that physically
innovators are making ready their particular to the performance of processing mimics the neurons and synapses present in
solutions relating to the concepts we have certain types of data, whilst bringing the human nervous system. Neuromorphic
described here. We expect several iterations the energy cost of computing down. computing has applications in visual
and distinct types of Computing Memory processing, auditory processors, object
implementation to emerge; some of which Computing Memory reverses and even recognition and autonomous robots.
will be made available through Atos’ own Bull eliminates historical work-arounds dating
Technology brand. Similar to the way that from the early days of computing which are
the IT industry has GPU offload engines to no longer efficient and offers a more natural ResistiveRam, 3D
assist in the processing of certain workloads
in HPC environments, we see Computing
way to process information in the quantities
we now have in the 21st Century. Prototypes memory, the elusive
Memory devices complementing CPUs
to process workloads appropriate to them.
are already available that demonstrate
improvements of several orders of
Memristor. All of
Access to these offload engines will be magnitude, either in speed or energy savings. these technologies
abstracted through the use of standard APIs,
enabling an iterative transformation of legacy Finally, we see Computing Memory taking will contribute to the
workloads to the new model of compute. us even further and towards Neuromorphic
evolution of Computing
Memory.

Cloud &
containerization
Containerization is a form of virtualization environment that enables applications and With the rise of Cloud Native Applications
that is able to create lightweight partitions services to run completely independently (CNAs) and DevOps, companies who can
inside the same operating system of the underlying hosting platform. innovate, experiment, and deliver software-
instance. Though this concept was initially based solutions quickly are outcompeting
introduced in 1979, it has only recently Containerization in the Cloud will increase those that follow traditional delivery models.
gained momentum. It can enhance the application portability, efficiency and agility Containers play a key role in addressing
management of applications in today’s across multiple environments/clouds with the demand for ‘Speed of change’. CNAs,
ubiquitous cloud environments. Driven by seamless Operations Management. In Microservices, DevOps & Containers
a burgeoning ecosystem in which Docker other words, applications are deployed enable clients to move from deployment in
is playing a significant role, Containers and managed in exactly the same way, weeks to minutes, with the ability to deliver
can be expected to gain a foothold in, and regardless of the platform. Containers running enhancements and/or new features within
ultimately become a fundamental part within a single operating system are more hours and if necessary, the ability to roll back.
of, enterprise cloud strategy by 2020. efficient and this will underpin the future of
Cloud adoption across enterprises was an

the cloud infrastructure industry, based on
virtual machines. Hypervisors will still play Innovation shockwaves
inevitable result of the movement from an important role mainly because of their
bare metal to virtualized infrastructures. It ability to support workloads running different With all the technology and operational
offers infrastructure as a dynamic, adaptable operating systems (or kernels) and to leverage advantages that containerization offers, the
yet cost-effective resource that is able to the security of hardware assisted isolation. ecosystem is filling in the current functional
power business applications for agility and gaps and providing insight into the different
responsiveness. Nevertheless, enterprise
IT still faces key challenges such as:
Business impact shockwaves of innovation and evolutions
expected over the next 5-10 years (illustrated
in Figure 1, page 7). Some in particular will play
• Handling different flavors of Infrastructure The general benefits of containers, a significant role in disruption:
as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service when used in any environment are:
(PaaS). Hardware-assisted workload isolation
• Moving workloads across different clouds Performance in provisioning speed, will open up container use-cases that are
to meet portability requirements and avoid execution overhead and superior currently restricted to virtual or physical
vendor lock in to the cloud providers. consolidation rates: Compared to traditional machines.
• Enabling lightweight but efficient, consistent, virtualization, it is possible to run up to 4x
and repeatable deployment of applications. more server instances on the same hardware. Cross-platform instrumentation and
automation will be key to deployments that
The term “Cloud Native” expresses the Cost reduction and improved cost mix and match Windows, Linux, x86 and ARM
need for cloud based IT to fundamentally effectiveness by leveraging maximum on a single environment.
shift the mind-set away from infrastructure resource utilization of the infrastructure.
as discrete, large, expensive components Tiered/Hierarchical Orchestration enables
However, the business benefits of users to deploy their own orchestration
that are slow to change. Though cloud
Containers in the Cloud go beyond layer instead of the ones offered by Service
computing has redefined infrastructure
technology into IT Operations as a whole: Providers. This is a fundamental piece in the
management, it has yet to redefine
application management. This shift from portability and vendor agnostic game.
1. Through the full automated nature of the
compute & storage level to application level
container ecosystem and the adjusting of Trusted Computing features for “Software
can be enabled through containerization.
IT practices to actual resource utilization Defined Everything” (Network, Storage, etc.)
and service demands rather than industry will remove or substantially mitigate trust and
The infrastructure based services brought
benchmarked productivity ratios, IT security concerns when moving workloads
by virtualized cloud platforms are useful
organizations can save 15-20% of their among Service Providers and/or locations.
but are insufficient to meet demanding
existing costs. This brings the notion of “Bring Your Own
business needs. Users directly interact
2. The portability of workloads among Trust” as one of the enablers for truly portable
with applications, not with servers,
different service providers brings true applications.
networks and storage. The latest versions
“market based” multi-sourcing with the
of containers are a powerful and highly
benefits of price/value competition &
decomposable abstraction within a cloud
elasticity and elimination of vendor lock-in.
48
Conclusion 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Containers face similar headwinds as Advanced Workload Scheduling

previously experienced with server
virtualization. While leading B2C cloud Trusted Computing (Security)
players have already embraced Cloud Native
Applications and Technologies, the Enterprise
Named Data Networking
is now beginning to accept them to deliver
its services.. In the real world of 2 speed IT, Hardware-assisted Isolation
organizations still run legacy applications,
Technology
manage the lifecycles of IT assets and take Containers on High-end Systems

care of the service levels.
Support for Embedded Devices
The wave of adoption of Containerization
in Cloud remains a future state for most
organizations. However, with Business Cross-platform Instrumentation
Digitalization challenges dealt with and with Vertical Specialization
increasing access to maturing technologies,
the time to start implementing such a strategy Enterprise Systems Management Suites
is now. Cloud Native Technologies generate
feedback loops inside the organization that Tiered/Hierarchical Orchestration
inevitably increase the speed of development
and innovation. Businesses today need such Enterprise PaaS / Cloud Native Application
transformation and increasingly we will see
that strong pressure for adoption will be Energy aware/driven SLAs
driven from the CEO’s office rather than the IT
Services
department.
Workload Engineering Services (Infrastructure as code)
Adoption will take its time due to multiple
technology waves but the aggregated affect Operations Engineering Services (Infrastructure as code)
suggests that by 2020, we will witness the
highest adoption of Containerization within Support from Enterprise Application Stores
Cloud environments which will transform
the way the businesses are run.
Support from Public Marketplaces
Federated Application Stores / Repositories (Portability)

Market
Certification Programs
Support from COTS (licensing, support & delivery)
BYO Workload
Consumerization of Infrastructure Design

Figure 15 - Cloud Containerisation Ecosystem

Additive
Manufacturing
Additive Manufacturing (AM) can be defined
as the process of joining materials to make “AM could disrupt the the preservation of Intellectual Property (IP),
ensuring that printers can only produce the
objects from 3D model data, usually layer
upon layer - a radically different approach to
manufacturing value licensed amount of copies or items. When
transferred, digital models will not persist in
subtractive manufacturing methodologies31.
Also known as “3D printing”, both terms
chain, allowing a shift the memory of machines.
• The maturity of AM technologies is not
are usually used interchangeably, although from mass production homogeneous and depends on the material
the term AM is more related to the use in used and the type of deposition and
an industrial environment and 3D Printing is to full customization.” consolidation process. New materials for AM
identified more with consumer goods and will be developed and the real-time control
home appliances. Several changes in the industry will happen of process will be improved.
by 2020 when we expect AM to be profusely • Supply chain & logistics will decide the most
AM offers the ability to produce personalized adopted. convenient manufacturing process for each
products with lower development costs, product. It will become commonplace to
shorter lead times, less energy consumed • Design and manufacturing of parts will print fully customized spare parts at the
during manufacturing and reduced material evolve to take full advantage of AM. Retail place of consumption.
waste. It can be used to manufacture channels and product distribution models
complex parts, and enables manufacturers to will change in order to embrace these
reduce inventory, make products on-demand, techniques. Business impact
create smaller localized manufacturing • AM will require compatibility of
environments, and even improve supply digital models, 3D printers and other AM is a potential game changer that could
chains. A wide range of materials can be used, manufacturing means. Information flows will disrupt the complete manufacturing value
from technical polymers (ABS, Polyurethanes evolve in order to fulfil industry needs for full chain, allowing a shift from mass production
or Polyamides). Metals (aluminum and digitalization. to full customization, and from centralized to
titanium alloys, steels, superalloys), ceramics, • New solutions in Digital Rights Management, distributed production. Combined with IoT,
even concrete, food or organic tissues. Security and Traceability will arise to address manufacturers will monitor and improve their
products, designs and performance.
However, a present challenge is that many

Additive of the traditional manufacturing sectors are
manufacturing
not aware of, or do not fully understand,
how to utilize AM. It will replace certain
Augmented & Cybersecurity
Virtual Reality manufacturing methods, but not all of them.
And it has the added potential to complement
many of those it cannot substitute,
creating a more powerful concept: hybrid
manufacturing. This offers the full integration
of additive and substractive technologies,
Connected Connected capable of processing several materials in the
Products Industry 4.0 Worker
same product in one production run.
AM will transform manufacturing, but its

profound business value will not be fully
realized unless the proper tooling is provided:
Connected Connected product design, productive means and
Machines Customer associated systems are being transformed
in order to serve the new manufacturing
scenario.
Figure 16 - Additive Manufacturing in Industry 4.0
Definition from ASTM American Society for Testing Materials

31
50 #Journey2020
CAD-CAE-CAM (Computer-Aided Design,

Computer-Aided Engineering and Computer- Conclusion
Aided Manufacturing) systems will be
enhanced with new features to enable
complex designs in an agile way. New tools
AM is currently used profusely for prototyping
and for manufacturing final parts in several Atos design of an
will be provided for amateur designers so
that they do not need sophisticated tools.
applications, such as dental aids, prosthetics,
parts for secondary structures in airplanes
integrated customised
AM represents an impressive advance in the or final components in turbine applications.
Full industrialization of AM is just a few years
support for a space
ability to design and manufacture products
in a limited production run or even one-offs ahead, so now is the time to prepare your application, awarded
business to reap the benefits.
for a single individual - by drastically reducing
time-to-manufacture and time-to-market. Best Design for Additive
The boom of AM in the industrial processes
will drive changes in the production concept
In the following years, the three main
adoption drivers of the AM technology Manufacturing
itself, with customization and final user-centric
approaches integrated into ERP and PLM
(personalization; new materials, structures
and properties; decentralized production) will
(Additive World
systems. initiate game-changing innovations, and help
deliver spare parts all over the world and even
Challenge 2016).
Retail and distribution concepts will shift from in space.
centralized to distributed production. The
“bill to print” concept will impact logistics AM will enable new business models and new
and operations, reducing storage and products (formats, characteristics) superior to
transportation costs. Sustainability will also conventionally manufactured ones. Further
be enhanced via energy savings and, most applications will be smart materials creation
importantly, material waste reduction. (4D printing), bionic design, gigantic
structures, bio printing or multi-materials
combination. Sensors will be integrated
Market adoption seamlessly inside parts for a fully connected
industry and the possibility of printing in
AM reached a market volume of € 5.1Bn in space with extra-terrestrial materials will also
201532, with an average annual growth above be a fact.
30% since 2012. Up to 75% of the adoption
took place in the MRT market (Manufacturing,
Retail, Transport). The fastest growing sectors
are automotive and aerospace, but medical
applications are also growing quickly.
Based on different estimations, the market

volume is expected to rise up to between
€ 12.2Bn and € 21.0Bn globally. Nearly half
of this market will be services related to AM
industrialization (consulting, engineering), with
20% corresponding to materials production
and 30% to AM systems development.
According to Wohlers Associates report of 2016: http://3dprintingindustry.com/news/3d-printing-passes-5-1-billion-in-latest-

32
wohlers-report-2016-75874/

Quantum safe
cryptography
The cloud and the “Internet of Things” are
booming developments that use public Business impact Key challenges in adoption of
encryption technologies to protect data, Quantum Safe Cryptography
algorithms and systems from exposure. This Business opportunities are presenting
protection is however destined to be toppled themselves today, often triggered by • Absence of experts
by some algorithms that run on quantum requirements of data security standards • Absence of formal quantum
computers. The principle of computational and legislation for both the public and assessments
hardness used in conventional encryption private sector. The number of quantum safe • Need for standardization
approaches does not apply in the same cryptography suppliers and developers is • Definition of official evaluation reports
way to quantum computing. Publicly sent steadily growing. They offer a large array of and audits
and possibly intercepted encryption keys ever diversifying products and services. • Integration of Best Practices
that rely solely on computation difficulty
are of questionable security. Quantum All data which is currently protected by
computing forms an unprecedented threat classical encryption standards has to be lifted
to one of these traditional strongest links in
cybersecurity: asymmetric encryption.
to quantum safe standards to remain safe in
the future. Considering that the first quantum
The ‘critical period’
computers will be commercially available is between now and
The arrival of quantum algorithms that can between 2020 and 2025, and security
run on actual quantum computers heralds a standard changes being time consuming, this the availability of
makes for a precarious ‘critical period’.
vast field of new applications. Once difficult
calculations can become easily possible commercial quantum
and some calculations that were impossible
before will suddenly become possible.
Quantum cryptography offers the potential to
address these challenges with a consistency computers, minus the
This will create opportunities for a wide
range of industries, which rely on ease of
and level of protection that was previously
impossible. The ability to implement
time data needs to be
computation, and in the same way affect Quantum Key Distribution and post-
quantum encryption is not a trivial process,
secure. Once passed
those industries, which rely on computational
difficulty. Quantum cryptography includes but requires specialized infrastructure, your data are at risk.
an encryption standard and can be amended processes, and people. The quantum
by new quantum technologies to secure key computing related risks are generally those
distribution. Understanding and adopting associated with supporting technologies like
quantum computing and cryptography can cloud storage and data transmission. Securing
successfully prepare an organization for the the solutions in this domain will form the
cybersecurity threats of the future and help future paradigm in data handling and security
such organizations to learn about its own standards and need for quantum related IT
future quantum computing possibilities. At the will only grow over time.
same time, it enables organizations to review
their security management procedures with
familiar benchmarked technologies and
processes.
Sensitive data handlers,

who assess risks to
their IT infrastructure
and security processes,
will need to become
quantum safe compliant.
52
Technology impact
The technology consists of the two main PQE primarily uses mathematical encryption QKD generates and distributes secure shared
concepts; Post-Quantum Encryption (PQE) code which is secure against currently known keys over a physical network. QKD is based
and Quantum Key Distribution (QKD). Both quantum computing algorithms. PQE with upon determining if a line has an additional
aim at providing protection against threats specific key lengths are benchmarked and (unwanted) observer and successful
exerted by quantum computers. widely available today, whilst new PQE is distributed keys can hence intrinsically not be
developed by specialist research groups. decoded by eavesdroppers.
Key focus areas for PQE: Key focus areas for QKD:
• Implement PQE at company-wide level, minimally • Implementing digital security gateways between
quantum safe. different geographical sites of high security facilities
• Monitor, review PQE algorithms and provide • High security cloud Services to upgrade the current
recommendations infrastructure with Quantum safe options
• Prepare IT infrastructure for encryption adaptability • QKD subscription to Network
and possible integration of QKD • Custom made QKD implementation and local network
• Focus on development and testing of new PQE
Depending on the security requirements a other security concepts, and high quantum security infrastructure. Algorithm services
hybrid world exists, with minimally quantum safe environments, that incorporate QKD monitor advances in quantum algorithms and
safe environments, that exchange the and integrate algorithm services within the the possible threats related to them.
encryption standards without changes to

“Every new IT to be secure. Additionally, those companies
that have a lot to gain from computing
Quantum safe cryptography will create
an important new mind-set within the
infrastructure should quantum algorithms will also be early
adopters as they have a clearer picture of the
digital security arena impacting individuals,
companies and governments. Before
be minimally quantum possibilities. 2020, every business with high security
requirements has to be quantum safe.
safe” as new security The increasingly ‘Smart’ infrastructure for Adopting quantum safe cryptography today
utilities and transport, in combination with IoT will safeguard the future of an organization
design principle. form an increasingly large scope for quantum on a cybersecurity level, whilst paving
safe cryptography. Failure to take on the the first steps to grasp the future quantum
The market of quantum encryption, quantum quantum challenge is what Kaspersky Lab opportunities by already implementing
computation and all other quantum related IT aptly coined in their 2015 security bulletin, the minimal quantum safe security on
will steadily grow over time. Solutions in the ‘cryptopocalypse’. conventional computer architectures.
QKD field are mature and the new encryption
types have already entered the benchmarking The immediate next steps forward are for
process. Since this benchmarking is a lengthy Quantum computing companies to do an assessment about
process, current PQE standards consist out of
existing encryption types, with adapted key poses a threat their quantum security needs and quantum
possibilities, and decide upon how to prepare
lengths.
to conventional their IT infrastructure for the future with
quantum computers.
Early adopters will be those organizations that
have high demands on their communications
information security
systems.
4. Evolving challenges
IT for Life
Fast Data
Deep Learning
A simplification in cybersecurity
Identity & privacy
54 #Journey2020
Evolving challenges
IT
for Life
As 2020 approaches, Demographic trends including epigenetics, proteomics, and
and Climate Change are likely to put pressure metabolomics, (the -omics umbrella) to enrich
on healthcare services and on the availability their biological understanding of patients.
of food and water. Human behavior will also
play a decisive role in the sustainability of
energy and in how we choose to socialize
in a globalized world. Ethical dilemmas will Connected
force us to ask difficult questions in the pipelines
rapidly transforming areas of healthcare and Food Access to
social interaction. IT for Life examines the Intelligent and water healthcare Medical
role that the 3rd Digital Revolution will play in packaging availability wearables
overcoming these challenges by 2020.
Agricultural 3D printing
Access to healthcare has already attracted Robotics
significant attention from governments,
academia and the private sector. Without The Digital
sweeping reform, the aforementioned
pressures will challenge the ability of
Revolution
healthcare providers in the developed Connected Social
world to improve, or even maintain, the home networks
quality of care that they provide. The 3rd
Digital Revolution has unlocked innovations Smart Virtual
that could hold the key to sustainable grids Access to Social interaction
healthcare provision. However, certain ethical power interaction
Renewable Augmented
considerations must be carefully made before sources interaction
any potential solutions can be adopted.
Omics & healthcare

Figure 17 - Where digital technologies will help overcome the challenges of sustainability.
The large volumes of patient data created A new approach to healthcare

by digital medical technologies will be
a valuable resource towards increasing Widespread use of -omics techniques will combination of precise 3D printing driven by
the quality and availability of healthcare. redistribute the bulk of the workload from CT (Computed Tomography) scan models
The insights provided by this data will the hospital laboratory to data centers, where and -omics data, will play an important role
enable significant efficiencies in healthcare High-Performance Computing (HPC) will (personalized).
provision by facilitating a shift towards a P4 facilitate the conversion of patient data into
healthcare model: predictive, preventative, meaningful insights that will drive diagnosis As wearables become increasingly ubiquitous
personalized and participatory. and treatment decisions. patients will be encouraged and empowered
to participate in their own healthcare. People
On the B2C side, the digital revolution in For diagnosis, -omics and clinical data will record and monitor their exercise and
healthcare has increased the volumes of stored in patient’s Electronic Health diet through provisioned portals or bots, as
patient genetic data. Innovative Life Science Record (predictive) will be interpreted with well as undertake personalized physiotherapy
players have disintermediated healthcare prescriptive analytics, in the context of a through Augmented Reality devices and
providers by supplying millions of individuals patient’s real-time lifestyle and wearables- smart musculoskeletal tracking technologies
with direct-to-consumer insight into the gathered data (preventive). After diagnosis, (participatory). Cybersecurity and privacy
impact of their genetic profile on their health. healthcare providers will rely on Cognitive must be a primary consideration; the
However, genetic data alone often is not Computing to design the most suitable systems will need to be compliant with all
enough to accurately diagnose and treat a treatment in the context of the patient’s relevant national and regional standards and
patient. By 2020, healthcare providers will -omics profile. In the case of surgical legislation.
look to other sources of biological information, replacement of biological structures, the
56
Evolving challenges
Impact of IT for Life

The knowledge and tools enabled by economic and social progress, impacting agriculture). In healthcare, the patient journey
-omics, real-time data analytics and digital across multiple sectors (veterinary medicine, will be transformed from a largely reactive
technologies will help to secure continued industrial biotechnology, high-productivity one towards a P4 model.
Predictive Preventative
A P4
healthcare
Personalized model Participatory
Providing patients with actionable
information which they themselves
can use to actively participate in
and improve their healthcare.
Figure 18 - P4 healthcare
Business impact
The ability to predict, monitor and prevent the excellence in both hospital environments and prevalent. Healthcare providers will be
onset of costly conditions will offset the cost out-patient care, ensuring nurses and care rewarded for the successful treatment of
of proactive investment in P4 techniques over workers are utilized efficiently. patients, incentivizing a more proactive
the course of a patient’s lifetime. Enabling approach to patient treatment. However, such
patients to participate in their own healthcare As healthcare providers move beyond change will not be simple and it is likely that
will help to drive financial sustainability by treating ailments and towards maintaining healthcare providers will face scientific,
taking pressure off providers. Automation patient wellbeing, data-driven, outcome- regulatory and reimbursement barriers on
and Robotics will help to drive operational based patient services will become more the journey to 2020.
Ethical impact
The shift to a P4 healthcare model raises a situation where those who are genetically, of legislative intervention. IT companies
number of ethical concerns. If healthcare physically or mentally fit pay very little, whilst cannot put themselves outside of that
providers were to offer outcome-based those who are most in need are unable decision making process. As providers of
services, will these be more expensive for to afford these services? Differences in life the technology it is our job to take a much
those who are unlikely to achieve positive expectancy between the wealthy and the rest more cautious approach and not embrace
outcomes? Could this lead to an inequitable of society could be exacerbated in absence technology for technology’s sake.

Evolving challenges
Fast
Data
Business in 2020 will be driven by data. Whilst events identified and on the analytics applied collection point, and to provide prescriptive
Big Data answers “how to take care of the thanks to the historical analysis. analytics to act based on this information in
data that I have or will have”, Fast Data puts real time.
the emphasis on generating actionable Sources such as Telecom networks, smart
intelligence at high speed, enabling sensors and connected devices provide fast
immediate response based on insights event streams that exceed several thousand Fast Data is “Data in
derived from deep analytics of incoming
data streams.
events per second and now are approaching
millions per second. This reality has prompted Motion” where from
Data lakes (historical data) help us understand
the development of distributed streaming
computing platforms: the seed for Common
any kind of incoming
the past and predict the future based on
trends and patterns. Fast Data, however, is
Industrial Data Platforms. information streams,
time-critical. Its value and derived insights Fast Data is needed to meet the performance actionable output is
exist within a small window of opportunity as commitments of such ecosystems, due to its
it initiates actions or decisions based on the ability to bring intelligence closer to the data obtained in real-time.
Technology enablers
With the implementation of Future Networks,
particularly for IoT, there is no longer an
Fast Data will create reimagined
implementations of fault-tolerant clustered Fast Data and “Edge
excuse for devices not to be connected.
Both low bandwidth networks (such as LoRa
message queues, in-memory streaming
engines, and databases with very high in-
Computing” with
and SigFox) and high bandwidth networks
(like 5G, WiFi or BlueTooth) will ensure that
memory processing capability and linear
scalability.
“Swarm Intelligence” -
any connected device will have the required In the next five years, 15
bandwidth to optimally communicate with Algorithms together with their optimized
its surroundings and with analytics gateways computation architecture will be the to 40 billion additional
and clouds. critical differentiator in the successful
implementation of Fast Data. HPC connected devices
Data processing capacity will be virtually
unlimited when combining this connectivity
technologies will enable multiple use cases
such as image analysis in autonomous cars
are expected to hit
with Swarm Computing. In order to
implement the principle of subsidiarity of
(using GPUs) and usage of Blockchain in
energy gateways (using FPGA’s). The low-
the market. By some
intelligence, there will be ample computing latency interconnects will allow for scalable estimates, there will be
power available via: clustered message queues.
a 285% increase in the
• devices themselves: to make local decisions
• distributed gateways: to make higher level number of connected
decisions
• data lakes: to review and improve algorithms
devices. Thus, a flood
based on history. of data originating
from “things,” will
raise a whole new
set of challenges for
enterprises.
58 #Journey2020
Evolving challenges
Business impact & market adoption

The adoption of Fast Data also requires Examples of market specific use cases • Retail: Further improvements in customized
organization agility to address and make include: marketing, where personalized offers can
real-time decisions, this drives a need for be sent in real-time to potential customers
coordination between networks of people. • Public Sector: Connected citizen, predictive based on the combination of historical
Since the value generated from fast streaming and real-time policy data, smart city profile and current behavior: geolocation,
data depreciates rapidly with time, businesses management, tax non-compliance and social network activity and mobile activity,
need to reduce the gap between events and fraud detection. which will lead to price optimization, real-
decisions in order to exploit transient business • Health: Epidemiology, genomics, connected time promotions and truly cross-channel
moments. patient. New healthcare applications, paired customer management. Relationships with
with nanotechnology advances that can clients can be extended through connected
Fast Data solutions will excel where real- provide instantaneous real-time diagnostics devices and wearables.
time information processing brings a clear and take immediate actions based on health • Transport: Applications for traffic
business value and gained insights can be indicators of patients. flow forecasting, route and schedule
actioned at the moment they are obtained. • Manufacturing: Especially in Industry optimization, and predictive asset
4.0 environments, Fast Data can provide management. Automatic vehicles will be
predictive asset optimization and spare significant users of Fast Data technologies.
Fast Data is transversal parts forecasting, with self-repairing, In this case the hurdles of computation and
to all business areas maintenance and calibration of machines
based on real time data to improve
autonomy are somehow less of a problem
as the vehicle can be itself a computation
and will transform the quality of the produced goods. Adding
product field feedback can also benefit
hub; nevertheless agility and real-time
decision making algorithms will be required
way businesses are market and sales forecasting and make for them to become a reality.
significant improvements in operational
run today by taking planning, creating prescriptive supply chain
management actionable models.
full advantage of new
sources of information.
Conclusion
As the Internet of Things expands with
many billions of connected devices and
with the maturity of Industry 4.0, Fast Data
and distributed analytics are becoming
the mainstream solution approach to the
whole decision making chain: (1) batch-
oriented massively parallel analytics (MPP) for
predictive analytics, (2) design, development,
testing, training and continuous refinement
of the algorithms (Swarm, Deep Learning), (3)
distribution of algorithms and intelligence to
the edge nodes for automation (distributed
Artificial Intelligence), and (4) final decision-
making implementations in Fast Data
environments.

Evolving challenges
Deep
Learning
Deep Learning (DL) is a branch of Machine old technology which has continued to be many of the inherent challenges with Neural
Learning that has enabled significant progress researched and improved upon, but without Networks, making it possible to build and
in tackling problems such as large-scale image any significant breakthroughs until recently. train very large and multi-layered networks
processing and automatic speech recognition. Then in the mid-2000s, new algorithms were in massively parallelized forms.
It has its roots in Neural Networks, a 40-year- devised that allowed researchers to overcome
Business use cases

Currently most DL applications use DL can also be used for natural language Last but not least, DL can also be used
“supervised learning”, where a network processing, notably to build “high-dimensional for action planning. A DL system can
is trained with a large set of labelled data word spaces” where potentially associated notably outperform other approaches for
examples for various object categories - for words are placed according to their proximity reinforcement learning, by learning from
example, an image of a cat is labelled ‘cat’. in large sets of text. For example, in a word actions performed in a simulated system and
The examples are used to produce a model space created from history books, we could teaching itself the optimal action plan. For
which can then be used for identifying and see that the relationship “King” - “Male” + example, software is able to teach itself to
categorizing new samples. This technique “Female” can be interpreted as “Queen”, i.e. play chess so effectively that it can win at the
allows thousands of data patterns to be the network has ‘discovered’ hidden semantic chess “grand master” level; some robots have
recognized quickly with unprecedented relations between these words. Other learned to grasp objects without any need of
performance in terms of error rate. The most kinds of models, called “recurrent neural human assistance; and an automated CRM
common use cases for DL are in image and networks”, can automatically generate text system can automatically suggest the optimal
speech recognition through applications based patterns learned from examples. The direct marketing action plan for a given
such as voice controlled personal assistants combination of such models has proven to customer.
(Google Now, Siri and others), autonomous be very effective for automatic translation,
vehicle guidance, facial recognition, video sentiment analysis, keyword extraction, text
surveillance, image classification, and summarization, automatic question-answering
industrial computer vision systems. machines or information retrieval.
Enabling technologies
DL algorithms can be implemented across On the software side, easy to use frameworks
a very wide range of hardware, from have been developed by companies like
embedded devices, farms of GPU based Google, Facebook or Microsoft. These have
servers or HPC clusters. Single-precision GPUs been open sourced with a view to accelerate
currently provide the most cost-effective the diffusion of these technologies in
computational power, but it is likely that research centers and industry. Thanks to this
dedicated hardware solutions based on e.g. approach, DL has become one of the most
FPGA or Computing Memory will emerge to active research topics in computer science,
optimize the efficiency of applications. and has revitalized the research in Artificial
Intelligence (AI).
60
Evolving challenges
Challenges for 2020 Conclusion

A single neural network does a very trained on a related dataset. Such abilities In a data-driven environment, DL techniques
specialized task. A significant challenge is are akin to what humans are capable of - will enable a compelling and powerful
that of how to combine several networks automation at this level of sophistication solution which is capable of automation of
alongside other machine learning and clearly holds tremendous potential. It is likely information extraction and identification at
AI techniques, in order to perform more that early advances will make “pre-trained” an industrial level in a relatively seamless
complex tasks within a given application. models more readily available, thereby manner. Most industries will be impacted, for
A Google program, which received much reducing the required investment in terms example, sectors using image recognition,
attention recently by beating a human Go of data samples and time to set up an such as Security, Manufacturing or Healthcare,
game champion, illustrates the power of such initial model for a new application. Such an are likely to have many valuable applications.
an approach. approach should enable a domain specific Many companies will see huge benefits
SaaS based model factory, where standard from annotating large content repositories,
Another important challenge for DL is how it models could be tailored by customers for which will in turn enable vastly improved
evolves into a more unsupervised learning their specific needs, and improved iteratively recommendation systems. DL’s ability to learn
tool, i.e. the ability to identify objects, speech through a managed factory workflow. how to plan sequences of actions will enable
and images without having been previously the development of intelligent agents to
automate knowledge work and create context
aware robotic systems.
The first wave of DL applications has focused

predominantly on “supervised learning”
approaches and single networks. However
with multi-network designs, cost effective
general and special purpose hardware
architectures and the promise of robust,
readily available ‘unsupervised’ tools, the
benefits are likely to increase exponentially.
Businesses can already

benefit from the power
of Deep Learning in
very specialized tasks.
By 2020 benefits will
grow exponentially
due to increased
unsupervised learning
and the extension to
more general tasks.

Evolving challenges
A simplification
in cybersecurity
In today’s hyper-connected era, almost every device can be considered part of the information technology ecosystem. They interact in a
dynamic way and without strict supervision, giving rise to new challenges and threats in the context of cybersecurity. In addition, new and
exciting opportunities are provided to offer deeper integrated and open solutions aimed at improving overall situational awareness and
increasing organizational and system resilience.
Emerging technologies
A number of upcoming technologies will time dealing with the challenge of limited Next generation cryptography encompasses
by 2020 combine to become important performance and storage capacities. the innovative technologies in trusted
drivers of simplicity and automation in computing that are expected to mature by
cybersecurity engineering and operations. Real-time security analytics allows the 2020. It includes such topics as Blockchain
Those technologies will support concepts interrogation of large volumes of data in or homomorphic encryption. Blockchain
for the security of interconnected value real-time to quickly reverse-engineer attacks enables a new form of distributed, secure and
chains – like trusted brokers, dynamic to their source and neutralize the attacks - accountable cooperation without the need
access control, application shielding or or even pre-empt attacks via target threat to trust a central intermediary. Homomorphic
cyber ecosystems – use-cases that were intelligence. Such an approach allows the encryption on the other hand is a technology
introduced in Ascent Journey 2018. storing and access of security information still very much in a research stage that allows
at a fast pace to detect abnormal behavior, the processing of encrypted data without the
Software-defined security architectures predict security threats and prescribe need to decrypt it. This feature is particularly
implement layers of abstraction and countermeasures before any incidents are interesting to implement privacy-compliant
intelligence that cross traditional boundaries, able to have an impact. Correlation and processing and allows not only for transition
like network topology, security domains and observation of huge amount of data will be and storage, but also for the operation of data
business process management. All security simplified through such analytics engines. in untrusted or third party environments.
mechanisms such as network segmentation,
intrusion detection, data loss prevention
and identity and access management
are interoperating in a business process
contextual manner. These mechanisms
will be under the governance of dedicated
policy-driven software that ensures the
orchestration of dynamic security controls
which can automatically adapt over time
to changes in system configuration,
underlying infrastructure or risk situations.
Cyber-resilient systems have the ability

to independently adapt to changing threat
or impact levels as a result of dynamic
business processes. Evolving business
requirements have to be fulfilled using
dynamically re-configuring infrastructure
and connectivity. This requires protective,
detective as well as reactive and – if possible
– prescriptive controls within the respective
cyber physical system, whilst at the same
62 #Journey2020
Evolving challenges
Business impact
When organizations are resisting the The costs associated with the protection of volatility of risks emerging with increasingly
adoption of new digitalization concepts cyber assets is expected to continue growing digitalized business models; especially
because of fear from cyber threats, we in the foreseeable future. Evolving from when enterprise IT, production IT and
can objectively state that cybersecurity a manual approach to security control to smart products merge into an Internet of
has ceased to be an IT issue and has automated cybersecurity will be essential in Things (IoT) or Internet of Services (IoS).
become a business critical concern. order to manage the scale, complexity and

Markets with shorter innovation cycles, Other more regulatory or standards- Cybersecurity will be a key enabler when it
such as personal vehicles, home appliances driven sectors, such as Rail transportation, comes to a digitalization of business models,
or other consumer electronic goods have Aerospace, Manufacturing and Energy and we move increasingly towards a circular
already experienced the first waves of will be expected to reach digitalization by economy. As a result of the huge scalability,
digitalization and are already experiencing the 2020 and beyond, and solutions will need volatility and complexity of digital business
risk of constraint from emerging regulation. to demonstrate cybersecurity by design. processes, a simplification of cybersecurity
management is needed to ensure
sustainability of solutions and processes.
The required evolution into automatized
Next-generation security controls (on premise or via trusted
cryptography partners) will pave the way forward.
3rd party
Real-time
security analytics
Device Cyber-resilient
systems
Network
Backend
Software-defined
security architecture
Figure 19 - Emerging cybersecurity technologies for connected ecosystems
More and more enterprises are realizing requiring extensive set-up services. The
the extent of cybersecurity challenges application of emerging cybersecurity
when moving into a digitalized and technologies will reduce the time for the
connected ecosystem. The deployment expected cybersecurity information flows to
of an interconnected ecosystem presents materialize and be integrated into business
a daunting array of components and risk processes and operational culture.
software with few existing standards,

Evolving challenges
Identity
& privacy
Compliance and as well as value and rewards in return for the
exploitation of their data.
or techniques such as ad blockers or the
intentional “dirtying” of databases. Users are
transparency are More and more data protection legislations
also increasingly ready to change providers
if not satisfied with how their personal data
key components of are being adopted across the globe to
strengthen the obligations of entities that
is handled. By 2020, almost every aspect of
human behavior will be analyzed, recognized
the digitalization and process personal data, ensuring that they and managed through data analytics. “Digital”
improve its individual protection and control. has started going beyond producing virtual
increased monitoring The continuous increase in enforcement of and dematerialized services and is actually
of human behavior. the principles these laws impose will play a
fundamental role in the way organizations
starting to influence the way in which humans
do or should behave. In some cases this trend
manage personal data and implement towards “algorithmic governmentality“33
Ubiquitous computing in combination with processes to ensure compliance. has already led to a shift in behavior with
a high volume of information has all the customers rejecting digital services in order
characteristics to make privacy a concept In addition to data protection rules, KYC to regain freedom or to sub-consciously
of the past. However it is also evident that (Know your customer) requirements will be self-censor and withdraw from debate34. At
global surveillance, recurring identity much stronger in 2020 than they are today. the same time, concerns for national security
thefts and data breaches have created Specific regulations in various business areas as well as the thirst for innovative services
mistrust between individuals, governments will further drive this change. which almost always involve the processing
and corporations. So while consumers still of personal data, continue to place individuals
understand that sharing data has become In response to such increased monitoring and in a form of “privacy schizophrenia”. By 2020,
the key to many of our daily activities, they surveillance, consumers are already widely upgraded data protection regulations will be
expect increased protection of their identity adopting “privacy enhancing” technologies in full effect, helping to re-establish trust.
Business impact
New alliances will be formed. Competing Data Protection by design and by default and risk management. In 2020, data and
technology companies and even civil society as well as accountability are now defined identity pseudonymization techniques
will align their positions to address privacy by laws. They will have a disruptive effect on will be amongst the most widely used to
concerns in the face of governmental access the conception, creation and development protect the identity of individuals while still
requests to data. While motivations will of goods and services. Companies will allowing efficient processing of the data.
certainly vary, objectives will converge. thus change their technological approach
from creation to delivery. By 2020, we Various companies are exploring Personal
Combined with the continued blurring of the expect that data protection by design Information Management Systems (PIMS)
lines between the roles of data controllers will have moved away from policy into that will act as an intermediary service to
(i.e. entities defining the purposes and fundamental process and service design. let consumers control personal data and
means for which data is processed) and data allow them to decide how to share different
processors (i.e. entities which process data The increased compliance risks associated pieces of that data with various companies.
on behalf of data controllers) this will lead to with the exponential growth of data processes To become a reality, this emerging market
the emergence of a new genre of common will force entities to adopt automated requires a shift from ‘organization centric’ to
interests. Data operators will re-invent and measures and processes to efficiently ‘user centric’ personal data management.
re-think the allocation of their respective manage and enforce data protection rules. New regulations supporting transparency,
obligations and their relationships with public To achieve a substantial part of this objective, openness, user control and granularity of
authorities. They will progressively adopt organizations will consume more and more choice are all drivers, since they force existing
common data protection policies (codes security services provided by organizations players to open their silos. Technology is also
of conduct, binding corporate rules). that are specialized in data protection on the rise with Attribute Based Credentials
or protocols such as User Managed Access.
Antoinette Rouvroy, Thomas Berns, and Dominique Deprins. “Algorithmic governmentality: computed reality, contemporary governmentalities and new processes of subjectivation”
33
Elizabeth Stoycheff: “Under Surveillance: Examining Facebook’s Spiral of Silence Effects in the Wake of NSA Internet Monitoring”
34
64
Evolving challenges
Market adoption
Increasing consumer awareness and Identity is the first link of the digital value At a national level, the identity trust
concerns over data protection will raise the chain. Holding and securing it is vital for framework will reach a critical size and
focus of service providers to demonstrably corporations. In this area, we expect the help tackle the issue of digital identity and
remain “data protection compliant”. generalization of continuous authentication attribute sharing – see NSTIC in the USA,
Accordingly, adoption and demonstration solutions – relying on user devices, behavioral IDGov in UK, FranceConnect in France…
of compliance through transparency, biometrics and featuring Privacy Enhancing
notably with regards to subcontractors and Technologies to enable pseudonymization.
business partners, will be a necessity to The growth of global digital business should
survive in the market of service providers or also favor emergence of sophisticated
manufacturers dealing with personal data. documentary fraud management solutions.
Data protection will be at Identity will be secured Users will become

the heart of process empowered
Conclusion
Individuals already demand better privacy the pace of creation, processing and sharing The importance of brand trust and
protections and better controls in relation of personal data. The Digital Era is the cause reputation will therefore be even higher
to their digital identity. Even though people of the current situation, but it also provides in 2020 than today and the manner
may be concerned and want control of their a remedy by enabling the distribution of in which the protection of identity and
information, it will not significantly slow down personal data control to each individual. personal data is managed will be one of
if not THE key element in this battle.

About the
Atos Scientific Community
Innovation lies at the core of Atos’ business
strategy and the company has organized Key achievements
itself to think one step ahead to help its clients
to reinvent their growth models. The Atos • Proofs of Concept implemented in various in a number of awards, such as the
Scientific Community brings together over domains, including Wearables & Connected Digital Impact Award 2015 for City Pulse36,
120 best-of-breed business technologists Assistance, Additive Manufacturing, the Design for Additive Manufacturing
from all Atos geographies and businesses, Blockchain, Augmented Interactive Reality, Challenge 201637, the EVS C-Cast APPlied
representing a rich mix of skills and Intelligent Networked Enterprise, Digital Challenge for SMART (Sports Media
backgrounds. Its aim is to help Atos anticipate Manufacturing Platform, Homomorphic Application in Real Time)38, the 2015
and craft its vision of upcoming technology Encryption for Industry 4.0, Interactive & European MAKE Winner recognition
disruptions and the future business Dynamic Media (Smart Player Stadium) for enterprise-wide collaboration and
challenges that will be faced by the markets and IoT & Connected Home. Atos Business knowledge sharing (blueKiwi)39 and the
it serves. By making this vision available to its Technology Innovation Centers (BTIC) in 2015 Cambio16 Innovation Award for Atos’
clients, and by investing in areas related to Atos Paris HQ, Munich (Germany), Pune contribution to businesses’ adaptation
the findings, Atos intends to help its clients (India), London (UK), Madrid (Spain), Vienna to the new production models of Digital
make informed decisions as the Trusted (Austria) and Amstelveen (Netherlands) are Transformation40.
Partner for their Digital Journeys. designed to showcase proofs of concept to
clients. The Scientific Community regularly
The Scientific Community are “creators of publishes white papers, most of which are
change”, highlighting the importance of • Publication of Journey 2014, Ascent downloadable41:
innovation in the dynamic digital services Journey 2016 and Ascent Journey 2018 –
market and taking a proactive approach extensive studies providing insight to future • 3D Printing
to identify and anticipate game changing technology trends and how businesses can • Advanced Mobile Payments
technologies. They are mentors in the Atos IT use technology to grow and transform. • Cloud Messaging
Challenge35 , a competition encouraging the • Cloud Orchestration – A Real Business Need
next generation of IT talents from universities • Seminal and instrumental role in the • Connected Robots
across the world. Siemens-Atos joint R&D and Innovation • The Convergence of IT and Operational
investments. Technology
• Data Analytics as a Service
The Scientific • Partnership with key Research Institutions • Digital Preservation in the age of Cloud and
Community is the including CEA in France and Fraunhofer

Institute in Germany.
Big Data
• Economy of Internet Applications
best 120 scientific • Key contributions to Atos Intellectual
• Fabric-Based Computing
• The Future of In Store Shopping
people from within the Property (patenting & patent reviews). • Information Overload
• Internet Evolution
organization. They are • Providing the lighthouse for bringing • IPv6
new concepts and services into the Atos • Liquid IT
“creators of change”, portfolio, such as the Atos ambition to • Media Metamorphosis
• Open Innovation
making sure that be a Zero E-Mail™ company, Atos Codex,
Industrial Data Platforms or Quantum • PaaS – Making the Most of Clouds
whenever our clients Computing. • Real Time Traffic Forecast
• Security for BYO Concepts
choose us they always • Extensive contribution to pilot projects that
prove the business use of breakthrough
• Service Integration and Management:
Motivation, Challenges and Best Practice
get the best solution technologies and support Atos’ clients’ • The Connected Train
digital journeys. • Unlocking the Potential of Additive
available. Thierry Breton Manufacturing
Atos Chairman and CEO
• Activities carried out or originated by the • Video – The Power of Moving Pictures From
Atos Scientific Community have resulted Glass to Glass
The Atos IT Challenge promotes innovation in an open environment amongst best-in-class Universities and students as well as support young innovators in taking their ideas forward. Find out more at atositchallenge.net
35
ditss.nl/atos-wins-digital-impact-award-citypulse/
36
additiveworld.com/News/Atos-and-cassidy-silbernagel-winners-design-for-additive-manufacturing-challenge-2016
37
66 #Journey2020
Acknowledgments
Editorial board Key contributors

Development of this document was led
by the Ascent Journey 2020 Editorial
With contributions from the Scientific
Community subject matter experts, we Follow the Atos
Board of the Scientific Community: gratefully acknowledge the following
members who contributed their inspiration,
Scientific Community
Matthew Bingley
José Fernando Esteban Lauzán
knowledge, experience and passion: on ascent.atos.net
(Editor in Chief) Thomas Bierhoff and @ascentblog on
John Hall Paul-Vincent Bonzom
Ganesh Jagdale Thierry Caminel Twitter
Martin Pfeil José Fernando Esteban Lauzán
Mike Smith Hermann Gouverneur
Francisco Pinheiro Celestino Güemes
Hubert Tardieu ( Co-Chairman of John Hall
the Scientific Community) Thomas Hoberg
Jean-François James
Ana Juan
Till Kolloge
Jan Krans
Elvira León
Christian Mongodin
Paul Moore Olmstead
Frédéric Oblé
Purshottam Purswani
Santiago Ristol
Paritosh Wechalekar
38
evs.com/en/news/EVS_winners_second_C-Cast_APPlied_Challenge
39
atos.net/en-us/home/we-are/news/press-release/2015/pr-2015_11_19_01.html
40
elcandelerotecnologico.com/2015/11/18/cambio16-galardona-a-atos-iberia-con-el-premio-a-la-innovacion-2015/
41
ascent.atos.net/ascent-white-papers/
About Atos
Atos SE (Societas Europaea) is a leader
in digital services with pro forma annual
revenue of circa € 12 billion and circa 100,000
employees in 72 countries. Serving a global
client base, the Group provides Consulting
& Systems Integration services, Managed
Services & BPO, Cloud operations, Big
Data & Cyber-security solutions, as well as
transactional services through Worldline,
the European leader in the payments and
transactional services industry. With its
deep technology expertise and industry
knowledge, the Group works with clients
across different business sectors: Defense,
Financial Services, Health, Manufacturing,
Media, Utilities, Public sector, Retail,
Telecommunications, and Transportation.
Atos is focused on business technology that

powers progress and helps organizations
to create their firm of the future. The Group
is the Worldwide Information Technology
Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games
and is listed on the Euronext Paris market.
Atos operates under the brands Atos, Atos
Consulting, Atos Worldgrid, Bull, Canopy, Unify
and Worldline.
Find out more about us

atos.net
ascent.atos.net
Let’s start a discussion together

CT_161018_AS_JOURNEY2020_V13
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Atos, the Atos logo, Atos Codex, Atos Consulting, Atos Worldgrid, Worldline, BlueKiwi, Bull, Canopy the Open Cloud Company, Unify, Yunano, Zero Email, Zero
Email Certified and The Zero Email Company are registered trademarks of the Atos group. Atos reserves the right to modify this document at any time without notice. Some offerings or parts of offerings described
in this document may not be available locally. Please contact your local Atos office for information regarding the offerings available in your country. This document does not represent a contractual commitment.
November 2016. © 2016 Atos

Journey 2020 Digital Shockwaves in Business: Thought Leadership

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Journey 2020 Digital Shockwaves in Business: Thought Leadership

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Thought Leadership

The four areas of disruption

66 About the Scientific Community

Ascent Journey 2020 can also be viewed

intensify competition “Industrial Data

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 03

Who will manage the single face to the customer?

Digital blended of Energy

IoT & Future

Figure 1 – Digital Shockwaves in Business

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 07

Figure 2 – The 4 sources of Digital Shockwaves

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 09

In 20124 Atos introduced four megatrends

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 11

Swarm Computing will emerge as a co-

‘Techtonics’ as wordplay for (digital) technology tectonics

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 13

Forces that drive

Digital Market and

ADAPTIVE SERVICES Refine

Finding new markets

New Digital Blended Business Models will Digitalization

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 15

Collaborating with people,

User Interfaces are gradually evolving to

With the potential for fully contextualized

We are already seeing disruption in the ways Wearables

Mastering the technologies

Managing and protecting such a disparate

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 17

Identity and Privacy and Security are no Identity &

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 19

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 23

Realizing digital advantage

Digital blended business: the how

Classical established Progressive digital

Figure 6 – Clusters of business models

The Blended Future

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 25

Energy networks reimagined

Jeremy Rifkin, “The Zero Marginal Cost Society”, 2014

Tesla PowerWall homepage: https://www.teslamotors.com/powerwall

Business model reinvention

ENERGY OIL & GAS VALUE CHAIN

ELECTRICITY VALUE CHAIN NEW ENERGY Electric

Figure 7 – The Digitalization of Energy

Environmental & business sustainability

See the “Digital-Blended Business Models” section in this document

GESi SMARTer2030 report: http://smarter2030.gesi.org/downloads/Chapter_Energy.pdf

Journey 2020 - Digital Shockwaves in Business 27

A new model for trust

Blockchain technology challenges

secure cryptography to maintain its P2P Lending

integrity. Emerging technologies like

Quantum Computing could render current Microfinance

certain Blockchain schemes. This may limit

their viable use cases.

• Lack of governance and protection: Private Markets Title Records

Currently, in the case of the public

It is anticipated that Figure 9 – Example use cases for Blockchain technologies

Blockchain and its Conclusion

The media & gaming industries