Digital Transformation and the Evolution of Apps – What’s the Link?

Digital Transformation and the Evolution of Apps – What’s the Link?

Keiichiro Nozaki, Regional
Marketing Architect/Evangelist for Asia Pacific, China, and Japan, F5 Networks

A
century ago, we had the industrial revolution. It transformed how we
manufactured, well, everything.

Fast-forward to the
present day. We are now in the midst of the Fourth, characterized by the fusion
of technologies that is blurring the lines between physical, digital, and
biological worlds. Companies are embarking on digital transformation journeys
to experiment new digital ways of doing business—this means leveraging data smarter to enable unprecedented
levels of efficiency, agility, and productivity.

Technologies—from
mobile to cloud—are integral to every business regardless of industry, and
those that fail to set an efficient digital strategy and maximize the impact of
digitalization risk being left behind.

While data serves as
the backbone to digital transformation, software applications (apps) are where
the magic happens, because businesses are already using an average of over 200
applications[1].
At the same time, technology and medicine publisher PLOS found in a recent
study that we check our phones a third of our waking hours[2]—and
of that, a whopping 85 percent is spent using apps[3]. Mobile
is now a significant driver to the volume of software solutions and apps
created, and the coming wave of the Internet of Things (IoT) will only
accelerate this trend.

However, let’s take a
step back and rewind a few years—or decades—to visualize the history of apps.
Apps popularly started out as a means for communication (call, SMS), which then
evolved to a platform for content consumption in the early stages of data (news,
MMS and YouTube), and finally to what we now define as demand services (food
delivery, transport and e-commerce). In fact, we even have some apps like
WeChat that are able to encompass all three “functions” of apps.

How did all this
happen? Let’s take a look at how apps became such a vital part of our lives and
how they went through dramatic change and development.

The
Need for Faster Communication

Fact: the world’s first
mobile phone call was made on April 3, 1973, by Martin Cooper, a senior
engineer at Motorola[4].
However, it wasn’t until 1983 when the first commercially viable mobile phones
went on sale in the U.S.—each retailing at a cool US$4,000[5],
with the first text message (SMS) only sent in 1992.

However, the mobile phones
available then were large and bulky, and innovation was driven by the desire to
communicate untethered. And it is this desire that has driven the evolution of communication
technologies—from simple phone calls and text messages such as SMS, to real
time conversations and interactions through new app features such as video calls.
A rich user experience soon followed, as app developers came under pressure to
keep their apps updated, while making the app simple and easy to use—or risk
losing their users to apps from the competitors.

Mobile phones made
instant communication possible. This is what Faster communication is all about—making communication services
available and reliable, while being responsive and increasing the speed of
innovation. It is this need for speed that still applies today.

Creating
Smarter Content

Now
that near-instant communication had been achieved, the next step in the
evolution was in providing content.

Before iOS and Android,
there was IBM’s Simon, the first ever smartphone. It was launched in 1994, and had
over 10 inbuilt apps[6].

In addition to being
communication devices, mobile phones were also starting to function as a
platform for content consumption. Nowadays, consumers and end-users are able to
consume content on the go, without having to sit at their desktop PCs. Videos,
music, games; they were all now available at the tip of their fingers. In fact,
most websites implement modern web protocols to dynamically show attractive
animations, and track user behavior to offer the best communication or follow
up to consumers.

At the heart of it all,
this enriched content is all about elevating the end user experience, to gain
the loyalty of their customers. Smarter content
creates this, through the analyzing and tracking of user behavior to create
personalized customer interactions, based on intelligent user recognition.

Satisfying
the Demand for Safer Experiences

Today, our lives move
around mobile applications – whether we need to wake up in the morning, do a
quick meditation exercise, navigate the route to your office or even make a
dinner reservation. Applications enable you to do almost anything, making everything
just a click away. The idea of true intelligence—be it smart cities, smart
homes, smart health and smart retail—is growing.

In addition, our
sharing economy is quickly gaining traction across the region due to the speed
and convenience it delivers. However, this increasing reliance on applications
call for an increased vigilance in security. Consumers today are willing to
sacrifice personal information to shave off precious
few seconds of waiting. This means that businesses who own these
applications are creating an entire ecosystem of devices and data that are
interconnected—an ideal treasure trove for cybercriminals. The risk is—a
cyberattack will cause more than loss revenue, but loss reputation as well,
causing customers to jump to alternative services.

What’s
next?

With the growth of
applications, organizations of all sizes are adapting to the new digital
economy by relying on the cloud to deliver the speed necessary for digital
transformation projects[7]. Additionally,
while the names of critical vulnerabilities and insidious malware may have
changed, the underlying security threat is still there for consumer and
corporate data. This means that any success application would have to be fast,
responsive, and personalized, while providing customers the peace of mind. This
means that organizations should look to application-centric solutions to ensure
faster, smarter, and safer applications.