Digital consumers in the Asia Pacific expect increased automation, control and innovation from their service providers but see security and trust issues as the biggest barriers to developing the digital economy.
This are key outcomes of research conducted by Juniper Networks and released at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Juniper is using the research to highlight its vision for “Digital Cohesion,” the next generation digital environment ”in which multiple applications securely self-assemble to deliver new and often predictive services that continuously adapt to the user’s behaviour.”
The Juniper commissioned research interviewed 4800 consumers and business users across 16 markets.
The key global – and Asia Pacific - findings were:
- 77% (73% APAC average) of consumer respondents specify trust as “important” for an integrated, connected service-related device.
- 66% (76% APAC average) of business respondents see security/compliance as the biggest risk factor in Digital Cohesion
- 53% (49% APAC average) of consumer respondents specify security as the most important factor when selecting a new smart device
- 90% (91% APAC average) of business respondents expect business services innovation to result from Digital Cohesion
- 60% (63% APAC average) of business respondents cite increased automation and control capabilities as the biggest commercial benefit resulting from Digital Cohesion
- 61% (55% APAC average) consumers surveyed expect to see improved energy consumption
Mike Marcellin, chief marketing officer at Juniper Networks, said the “Digital Cohesion” vision was an attempt to understand where the current disrupted digital environment may evolve, to the benefit of both consumers and service providers.
“Looking at the landscape today there is so much talk about disruption, but we have to ask ‘is that it?’ or are we going to see something beyond this,” Marcellin told TelecomAsia at MWC.
Looking at trends in machine learning, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, Marcellin said that “Digital Cohesion” was an environment where fragmented point services, which today are delivered in isolation even if they are delivered on the same device, are delivered seamlessly, with inter-operability – and often without being physically activated.
“Digital Cohesion” would be an environment where technology would “fade into the background” and digital services would be even more naturally integrated into everyday life.
“What is it going to take? Well there are certainly a lot of barriers and some of them are regulatory, and the other thing which comes out of our research is that trust and security are so important if we are to achieve this inter-operability,” Marcellin said.
He said Juniper had identified four pillars to its “Digital Cohesion” vision:
- Interoperability
- Security
- Adapting to the ending of “Moore’s Law” which forecast constant advances in computing power. Juniper – talking its own book – has identified cloud services as a way of adapting to this.
- Self-assembly, where users construct their own services – from driverless cars to payments – which allow them to move seamlessly through life, without needing to engage more than they have to with devices.
Asked who would own this new world of “Digital Cohesion,” Marcellin forecast a world in which major providers – such as Telstra, Amazon or Google – might be “mega providers” of these services, working with a host of other providers and collaborators to deliver the final environment.
“The competitive advantage will come from being able to assemble this, and not do the heavy lifting,” he said.
This might be bad news for the old carrier model, but was a positive one for those who were willing to adapt, and to execute on that.