If you’re not familiar with the term Digital Co-creation, it’s the idea that no organisation can tackle the issues and challenges of the future on its own.
Co-creation comes in various forms. An organisation could work with its own customers, partners, and even in some instances competitors. The point to make is that only companies that partner and collaborate will be truly innovative, and ultimately successful, in the digital age.
Even though ‘co-creation’ as an idea isn’t a new one, organisations that don’t seek out these partnerships simply won’t be able to capitalise on the opportunities digital brings.
For this article I wanted to explore what Digital Co-creation means through the lens of Hybrid IT…
DIGITAL DISRUPTION IS HERE TO STAY
When you combine the trends of accelerating cloud adoption and digitalisation, along with growing data volumes and the expanding internet of things, digital disruption cannot be ignored.
And it often comes from unexpected angles and sources. Estonia, for instance, has emerged as a leading example of a governmental disruptor in the last five years.
Its e-residency card means anyone who has applied for one can access the country’s infrastructure on a global scale. It’s redefining public services, as well as what it means to be a country.
I love this example of disruption. It shows that organisations with a minimum previous infrastructure (or even new entrants to a market), who are willing to invest, can ride these digital waves. The companies that do this in the right way will be the new leaders in the digital future.
For an established enterprise, this can be difficult to achieve.
We see the winners being able to create value through partnerships, and establishing ecosystems between those partnerships and the wider market.
According to Gartner, the world’s leading organisations doubled the size of their own ecosystems in last 18 months. It’s a telling statistic that adds weight to what’s to come.
HOW DO BUSINESSES GO ABOUT IT?
Application programme interfaces (APIs) are the backbone of this new world.
By opening up and sharing data within your ecosystem, organisations can create and accelerate new value.
The real benefit of APIs is the ability to create a pre-determined opportunity to interact with your surrounding environment.
We see the platform model as a way in which organisations can start setting themselves up to respond to the waves of digital disruption.
Fujitsu’s K5 platform enables customers to modernise their IT operations, reach new levels of agility and create shareable services as well as provide opportunities for innovation in this environment. This unlocks digital technologies such as IoT, big data, AI and mobile – all of which are part of Fujitsu’s MetaArc framework.
But organisations really need to start making the move towards Hybrid IT before this can be made a reality.
We say this is about understanding the landscape, and recognising that a move to cloud is not something that can be done by the flick of a switch.
Only when businesses move from traditional on-premise to cloud and digitalise can they start to benefit from the likes of scalable managed services.
The key to making this transition is by co-creating with partners and vendors. Only then can they fully realise the impact they can make by moving.
HYBRID IT – THE PATH FOR ENTERPRISES
As businesses look to digitally transform, it becomes clear that a Hybrid IT model is no longer an option but a necessity.
But how should businesses get started with transformation?
The secret is to find quick wins within the organisation. By starting small and simple, a business can ‘dip their toe in the water’, migrating smaller workloads and stress testing.
Another important step is seeking out partners that understand the Hybrid IT landscape. It’s not just being able to help you migrate from on-premise to cloud, being able to orchestrate and integrate new cloud-based technologies is key to making it all work in harmony.
Not just that, the moving, managing and storage of data within a Hybrid IT model, is critically important. Fujitsu is collaborating with NetApp on this, bringing together responsive Hybrid IT and Data Fabric to ensure organisations can co-create, survive and thrive in a digital world.
Naturally, as a Hybrid IT model begins to take hold and the benefits of cloud are realised, the rate of innovation will begin to accelerate.
Co-creation can add fuel to the fires, underpinned by APIs, but there has to be that starting point.
We are in the midst of a digital revolution, and embracing co-creation is the best opportunity for maintaining relevance in the digital era.
