Australian firms encouraged to adopt platform strategies

Australian and New Zealand organisations are facing challenges in productivity and data management as they approach 2025, according to an analysis by Mark Jobbins, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Asia Pacific & Japan at Pure Storage.

The acknowledgment that Australia's economy continues to be hampered by poor productivity is expected to prompt company leaders to consider how they can evolve their technology approaches to counteract this troubling trend. A McKinsey report reflecting on strong US productivity between 1995 and 2000 noted, "When faced with intensifying international competition, companies that coupled capital and technology investments with capability building and changes in management practices saw their productivity soar, which in turn lifted the entire economy."

Australian businesses looking to improve productivity in the coming years need to assess what kind of technology investments and strategies they should focus on. With a multitude of options available, this is not a straightforward discussion. Considerations include whether to invest in generative AI, prioritise cloud migration strategies, ensure robust cyber security before further innovation, or adopt other approaches for 2025. Mark Jobbins suggests broadening the view, "I would argue that we should be taking a wider view."

Jobbins highlights the success of several global companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, and Amazon, which have thrived due to the ecosystems or platforms they established. These platforms have simplified customer experiences and enabled the companies to introduce new innovations, services, and capabilities, positioning them as industry disruptors.

He defines a platform as comprising building blocks that deliver more value collectively than individually. It facilitates service delivery, capability scaling, and connects users to enhance interactions and transactions, fostering value creation. Platforms streamline operations, optimise processes, eliminate silos, and improve communication, bringing agility in innovation development and delivery while mitigating risks. They also offer the convenience of self-service, appreciated by consumers for tasks ranging from hiring a ride to booking a vacation.

Amongst the companies exemplifying platform power, Apple stands out in the consumer tech world for its interconnected ecosystem of chips, app store, operating systems, and electronic products. These components function well independently but even better together, providing a cohesive user experience by synchronising data and preferences across devices. Cisco's Networking Cloud platform serves as an example in the B2B sector, unifying solutions to aid IT and security teams in managing cloud complexities and security threats. NVIDIA has expanded beyond Graphics Processing Units by building an AI platform facilitated by AI Platform software, easing entry for customers into AI.

Jobbins advocates for a platform approach to enterprise data management, recognising data as a critical asset influencing business outcomes and customer experiences. A platform approach ensures data availability, performance, and comprehensive, scalable solutions centred around data workflows. Although Australia lacks platform companies of the scale of global tech giants, local organisations across various sectors can still significantly benefit from adopting platform consumption or architectural approaches.

An enterprise data management platform should address data acquisition, storage, analysis, governance, and security needs, supporting large numbers and diverse workloads, users, cloud-native deployments, and enterprise applications. Such platforms should integrate data, ensure constant updates, enforce security, and restrict access to authorised users only.

Automating processes as much as possible is vital for maximising productivity and competitiveness. An enterprise data platform aids in extracting actionable insights from data to drive innovation, efficiency, growth, and enhance customer experiences. A unified platform across environments, managed by a single software interface, can facilitate seamless software updates and non-disruptive hardware upgrades.

Organisations should be able to deploy data and apps at any location—edge, data centre, or public cloud—with support for modern, traditional, or hybrid apps. The platform can be utilised either as-a-service or traditionally, with payments based on operational or capital expenditure bases, providing flexibility in deploying data services within a single ecosystem.

Research firms project robust medium-term growth for the enterprise data management market. Fortune Business Insights valued the global market at USD $92.18 billion in 2023, with expectations of reaching USD $224.87 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 10.5 percent.

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, enterprise data platforms will need to deliver performance and capabilities suitable for complex AI workloads. As storage automation solutions and generative AI co-pilots become essential, organisations that adopt these technologies may position themselves as future market disruptors. Given its history of early technology adoption, Australia holds potential for a substantial role in this evolution.