Driving growth in times of Industry 4.0

IT services company Atos India is leveraging robotics to help clients evolve with the times

AVINASH VELHAL

ATOS INDIA

Today, we are living in a data-driven world and have moved from customer-centric digital enterprise experience to phase two of digitalisation with the help of data generated over the past two years. Business is now driven by data and analytics to collaborate outside our industry along with various components.

Internet is moving fast from virtual to physical space so the new revolution that has come up is known as Industry 4.0, shares Avinash Velhal, CIO, Atos India. “The industrial revolution started with the steam engine that went on to introduction of electricity and then computers. Now, it is in the fourth version where industrial manufacturing is going to extend to manufacturing laboratories and factories,” says Velhal.

Atos India is a subsidiary of French IT services company, Atos, with a client base of international blue-chip companies across all industry sectors. It is focussed on business technology that powers progress and helps organisations create their firm for future.

Talking about digital transformation, Velhal adds that moving forward machine-to-machine interactions will increase with robotics coming along with artificial intelligence and data analytics. The production is going to interact with the raw materials and manufacturing setups. “This will lead to a tremendous productivity improvement in the process and will no more be isolated. But it is starting right from the raw material stage to the product and to the end consumer. At each stage, even after a consumer receives it, it gets connected to the services. From the beginning i.e. raw material stage to the final product and servicing, it is a connected consumer who is interacting with this and opening up a big landscape called Industry 4.0,” Velhal explains.

He further adds that IOT (Internet of Things) is already a part of ecosystem with advanced and improved connectivity from healthcare to wearables. Talking about digital transformation, Velhial says that various industries at various stages of time depend on their IT investments, their domain which they are working and operating on. But in the next two-three years, it is going to be the baseline of all the industries. The third platform, SMAC, is further added with the innovators coming up with artificial intelligence, virtual reality, data analytics, M2M languages and robotics that are adding additional investors or innovators on the existing SMAC platform and it is leading to huge innovations across all industries based on where they are being applied.

“The technology cycle times have come down from years to months to weeks. So today, we need to be on our toes to look at what is coming up in terms of business and what are the changes taking place around us,”

he says.

On the changing role of CIOs, Velhal believes that the role of a CIO has taken a paradigm shift wherein earlier it was restricted to cost-cutting and having a fortified firewall environment, however, now the CIO has to tackle open systems where they have to give access to everyone in a BYOD environment. On the top of it, CIOs are working and looking at new avenues changing the business models. They have a huge contribution if they lead with the right process and knowledge, which new digital offices are really going to help them leverage. It’s not only about aligning with the business but also about leapfrogging to innovate for business.