The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation. And while there was impetus for business to prioritize digital transformations prior to the pandemic, today it has become more urgent and pronounced.

It “has become a need,” said Manav Sadana (pictured), global head of sales and market development, Cognitive Business Operations, at IT services company Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. As a result, widespread businesses have begun to rethink their raison d’etre.

“We have been seeing largely [businesses going] from being product-centric to be purpose-centric, wherein the whole focus of the entire existence is to be able to solve the purpose for their consumers.”

That is different to how ideas used to be pre-digitization, where selling an end-product, such as a ship builder selling ships, was the enterprise’s MO. Today, the yard would be selling a maritime solution.

Sadana spoke with Dave Vellante, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the HPE Discover event. They discussed digital transformation and what it really means. (* Disclosure below.)

Purpose-centric mindset

It’s the purpose that’s the driving-force, with “the key goal of serving the customer, in terms of driving the enhanced experience, rather than just selling a product,” according to Sadana. “What the pandemic has done is accelerate the pace by a quantum leap.”

Where this shift becomes highly relevant to organizations like TCS (which is associated with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. through a long history) is that the technologies that enable the transformation become the “pillar of the whole shift of the reimagination of the business models,” Sadana explained. “The technologies rule; the data being the new fuel.”

Drawing on an analogy with historic industrialization, Sadana explained: “Technology companies are just being disruptors.” Cloud, along with edge is the new Enterprise Resource Planning software, he added: “That’s the shift that we’ve been seeing.”

The digital ecosystem

A combination of cloud, internet of things, analytics, artificial intelligence and more becomes the digital foundation. Tools like TCS’ CogniX, an AI-based human-to-machine collaboration suite, where contextual business insight is derived through machine-based cognitive methods, become the building blocks.

Challenges like laborious transformation timeframes become seriously minimized, according to Sadana. Flexible, consumption-based use becomes the norm rather than capital expenditures. That’s faster to make things happen.

CogniX provides contextual business insight that is derived through machine-based cognitive methods. TCS claims the product allows for agility in adoption of new business models, generalized resilience and consequent business value. The finance version of the product provides analytics, automation and process mining. Blockchain and data mining is all a part of the package.

Reimagination causing consumption-driven hybrid to escalate

“Today about one- to two percent of the on-premises [hybrid cloud] infrastructure is actually in a consumption-driven manner,” Sadana said. “Cloud is always going to be consumption-driven.”

The hybrid numbers are changing, however. It’s getting closer: “The trends that we’re seeing is that by next year thereabout minimum 15% of the on-premises infrastructure in a hybrid cloud environment will be delivered in a consumption-driven manner,” he said.

Speed becomes very important in this scenario. “And that’s what is really bringing the consumption-driven” model, Sadana added. “Businesses are basically reimagining their whole, where they are reaching out to their customers, where they are expanding into the newer markets.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the HPE Discover event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for HPE Discover. Neither Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE