The Platform-Driven Business for a Software-Defined World
We see the emergence of blended assets — cyber-physical products — gaining prominence. Examples of these complex systems abound: cars, robots, automated warehouses, biometric border control, and checkout-free stores. Organisations face a conundrum in trying to accelerate their digital transformation while modernising their foundational systems yet pioneering initiatives to pursue a new software-defined future. This is more than a stepwise evolution of hardware once composed only of mechanical and electrical parts. Cyber-physical systems fuse hardware, sensors, processors, software, and connectivity features into programmable and easily updated interfaces, offering new business value to seemingly similar devices. Yet personalised digital cockpits reinvent the driver experience, and they come to us via software-defined vehicles. Virtual power plants optimise green generation and local storage. Virtual hospitals provide remote patient care, and robotic surgeons are becoming more common in operating rooms.
These cyber-physical assets connect and integrate an enterprise in a more significant way with its customers and suppliers. And deeper connections enable meaningful and continuous cross-industry collaboration.
Digital life cycle management (DLCM) presents an orchestration path for the end-to-end life cycles of these cyber-physical assets. DLCM is early in its evolution, but we are beginning to see some of its most critical elements: human-centric design, modern platform environments, and software engineering factories. These harness data flywheels that deliver intelligence, hardware, and software harmonisation with data-driven design and development.
Companies embarking on DLCM can take their cues from the automotive industry where, for example, one German innovator is engineering a software platform for advanced features, hardware and software harmonisation to provide a “system on a chip,” and a new tech hub in the United States. Instead of ordering cars (or planes or plant machinery) with pre-selected upgrades, drivers will simply turn on features at the point of need.
Digital life cycle management (DLCM) presents an orchestration path for the end-to-end life cycles of cyber-physical assets.
This will allow a truly bespoke driver experience for the customer but also substantial development, build, and upgrade efficiency for the carmaker, as future functionality gets delivered “over the air.”
We believe every industry sector will use cyber-physical assets, many at scale in fleets. The next wave of adopters will take the path of the automotive, aerospace, and electronics industries, following the direction of the hyperscalers and other digitally intense businesses, which have de facto digital operating models. These enterprises will move toward becoming platform-driven businesses.
We’ve sponsored this Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report to examine how executives can embrace digital life cycle management to create new business value in our software-defined world. Engineering and talent will be essential considerations, as will the way humans — be they customers, employees, partners, or suppliers — engage with and advance digital products and services. Read on to learn more about this and how forging the right supplier partnerships will be crucial for success.
