IBM Inc. is readying its business in the Philippines, as it sees the complexity level of the country’s information technology (IT) getting higher.
Gyanendra Pawahanee, IBM (International Business Machines) executive for its business in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region, told the BusinessMirror that they see in the Philippines the common simultaneous use of technology like mobility, Internet of Things, cloud and Big Data analytics, among others. The Philippines has also embraced disruptive technologies like Uber and AirBnb, according to Pawahanee, who heads the sales, service line and client management of the infrastructure services business unit of global technology services in IBM Asean.
While an IBM white paper admitted there are no conclusive definitions to complexity in IT, the company research said complexity of IT systems “has business consequences.”
“Complexity may add operational risk because the system becomes more fragile to change,” the paper said. “Humans overlook the consequences and implications of changing one component and then the system breaks.”
The IBM-sponsored report also noted that IT complexity increases cost of management “because, when you change one component, you have to change another, and another.”
“Complexity [also] reduces business agility because, to change one thing, you have to change lots of other things,” the paper added. “Complexity makes it more difficult for teams to diagnose and fix problems.”
Pawahanee, however, said the Philippines has not yet reached a certain level of IT complexity to warrant worries on such problems.
“But it [the Philippines] is getting there,” he said, adding that such is the basis for IBM to offer its new artificial-intelligence platform to manage the IT complexity. Pawahanee said they are in talks with three to four companies who expressed interest in utilizing this platform, called Watson. Pawahanee’s view is in step with executives of the International Data Corp. (IDC).
According to IDC Philippines Market Analyst and IT Services Lead Alon Rejano, “[the] majority of organizations in the Philippines are still classified as digital resisters and digital explorers, which signify that the country’s adoption of DX [digital transformation] is still slower than its regional peers.”
“But we are also seeing signs of acceleration in DX among local firms, and this is a very encouraging trend for the current ICT [information and communications technology] environment,” Rejano said. “Moving forward, becoming a digital-native enterprise is the next major step for Philippine organizations that want to be successful in a very competitive global digital economy.”