Deep Into Data

- Pierre Fouche

Every 25 years or so, a new technology architecture emerges, which changes the way businesses operate and can often transform entire industries. For example, mainframes were the first technology architecture when they were introduced in the 1950s.

They enabled industries such as manufacturing and financial services to automate processes, which continues today. The technology architecture changed the business architecture because mainframes enabled organisations to use shared services and grow from local to global operations.

The production of microprocessors, beginning in the early 1970s, enabled the invention of the personal computer about a decade later, which provided computing power at the fingertips of business people, changing the way they worked. In the 1990s, the World Wide Web led to the invention of new ways of selling and doing business over the internet. What we call cloud computing today started out as network-centric computing two decades ago. Now, smart devices attached through the internet to massive cloud data centres have spurred digital businesses in many industries. We're watching a new technology architecture evolve that will result in new business architectures.

Fresh challenges