Many Australian companies are joining a broad movement in the country toward cloud computing and digital transformation, a trend accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis, according to a new report published by Information Services Group (ISG), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.
The 2020 ISG Provider Lens Digital Business – Solutions and Service Partners report for Australia, the first such ISG report focusing on the country’s digital business provider ecosystem, finds many Australian enterprises looking for digital ways to be more competitive, improve supply chains, enable remote working and ensure business continuity. These goals became even more urgent with the arrival of the pandemic, which severely disrupted business practices even though it did not affect Australia as much as some countries, ISG says.
“As an important IT market with a mature digital business consulting sector, Australia is aggressively adopting new development and business methods,” said Scott Bertsch, ISG partner and head of ISG Asia Pacific, based in Sydney. “Enterprises, supported by their providers, are moving toward DevOps modes of working and engaging more closely with users, closely linking the areas of customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), and digital transformation (DX).”
While most organizations in Australia still have a long way to go from traditional IT processes and in-house data centers to cloud computing, many are hiring developers and encouraging all employees to look for ways to implement digital solutions like Virtual Server and Azure Windows 10 VM quickly, the report adds. The need to become more agile, in terms of both technology and culture, has become all the more clear with the pandemic.
Australia is also highly advanced in customer experience techniques and technologies, with demanding consumers and a thriving market for digital design, ISG says. A key part of digital business, customer experience development helps enterprises understand their customers’ behavior and design an interaction path that leads potential buyers toward a purchase or brand commitment.
The blockchain market in Australia is small but vibrant, the report finds. Service providers have proved the viability of the technology through numerous use cases in the country, many in the banking, financial services and insurance industry and the country’s emerging FinTech sector. Other applications have been demonstrated in supply chain, tracking, payment services and document and contract processing.
In addition, digital technology has shaken up supply chain management (SCM) practices in Australia, ISG says. Companies are transforming their supply chains both by applying digital technology to traditional supply chain management and by using SCM methods to manage the new digital products and services they are beginning to offer.
The 2020 ISG Provider Lens™ Digital Business – Solutions and Service Partners report for Australia evaluates the capabilities of 49 providers across five quadrants: Digital Business Consulting Services, Digital Customer Experience Services, Digital Product Life Cycle Services, Digital Supply Chain Transformation Services and Blockchain Services.
The report names Accenture, IBM and Infosys as leaders in all five quadrants and HCL as a leader in four. Deloitte Digital, DXC Technology, Publicis Sapient and Wipro are named leaders in three quadrants. The report names Atos, Cognizant, TCS and Tech Mahindra as leaders in two quadrants, and EY, McKinsey and Mindtree as leaders in one quadrant each.
In addition, UST Global is named as a “Rising Star”—a company with a “promising portfolio” and “high future potential” by ISG’s definition—in two quadrants. Block8, Coforge, Cognizant, Cybage and TCS are named as Rising Stars in one quadrant each.