Autonomous tech key to African business

A prototype window cleaning robot is operated by representatives from Singapore University Technology and Design during the two-day Singapore International Robo Expo on November 1, 2018. PHOTO | ROSLAN RAHMAN| AFP

What you need to know:

  • Emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, can operate independently from end-to-end.
  • Considerable portions of technology today can run on their own without the need for human intervention.
  • The technology brings significant benefits that appeal to companies of all sizes.

Often, cases of security breaches, fraud and outages are caused by human errors of omission and commission. These include the recent SIM swap fiasco that rocked the telco industry to the many reported cases of fraud and graft.

Emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), can operate independently from end-to-end.

Not only do they operate independently, but they are also self-learning. This means that the margin of error is very limited.

The value of technology is so great that it allows humans to improve business operations and focus on generating revenue.

Considerable portions of technology today can run on their own without the need for human intervention.

SELF-DRIVING

For technology systems of today and of the future to deliver on their potential, they will not need humans to maintain them.

Autonomous technology uses the power of AI and ML to become self-driving, self-securing, and self-repairing enabling organisations to lower costs, reduce risk and accelerate innovation without human intervention. It is not only self-maintaining but also self-patching, allowing it to correct anomalies.

It generates data and analyses it, identifies abnormal patterns and proactively raises red flags.

Oracle has been at the forefront of driving this innovation. The first part of this new portfolio of cloud services, Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse Cloud Service, is already in use worldwide. Work is ongoing to make a whole range of services in the platform area autonomous, including emerging areas like blockchain and chatbots.

CLOUD COMPUTING

Autonomous technology is facilitated by cloud computing. Emerging technologies such as blockchain and AI are embedded within the cloud platform, enabling their application on demand.

Autonomous cloud brings three significant benefits to business: It can lower costs by reducing administration costs by up to 80 per cent; it reduces runtime costs by up to 70 per cent by paying only for resources needed at any given time; and also enables companies to deploy new apps in minutes as opposed to months, allowing them to save tens of thousands of shillings and keeping pace with more agile, start-up style competitors.

Whereas the autonomous industry is nascent, it is growing rapidly. The technology brings significant benefits that appeal to companies of all sizes.

SMARTPHONES

It is projected that by the year 2020, more than 50 per cent of all enterprise data will be managed autonomously in the cloud and 90 per cent of all enterprise applications will include a customer AI-based capability. While it took approximately 50 years for electricity to be adopted by 60 per cent of US households, it took cell phones only about 10 years and smartphones only about five years to reach the same penetration.

Autonomous technology is the answer to the challenging technological world of today. It is also an effective antidote to the barrage of cyber-attacks and data breaches.

The writer is managing director of Kenya Hub covering East, Central and West Africa at Oracle