Information
Technology has invaded almost every industry. The invasion is actually welcomed
because once IT pierced through the hull of the industries; it injects juices,
and rejuvenates the industries to move forward with a faster pace. We observed
how IT has helped revamp industries in the eighties and nineties during the
last century. For examples, Microsoft
Office improves office automation, Adobe
perfects graphic design and publishing, CAD/CAM
excels as aided tools for engineering, accounting software increases efficiency
for financial reports preparation and etc., and this is all happening with Moore’s Law working behind the scenes
while doubling computing power in every 18 months.
But those
were the good years when IT companies came in as friends rather than foes. They
knocked on your doors, delivered amazing hardware and software, took your
money, and left you without interrupting your business. At that time, IT
business meant selling IT products, and it never trespassed between
industries to compete with you and grab a piece of your market share.
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| Information Technology |
When the smart
IT guys leaned further in, all in the name of producing ‘better stuff’ for you,
they get to know more about your operations, your business logic and process. When
the Internet technology started to emerge in the late nineties, and provided
them with virtual power, the invasions suddenly turned “hostile”. They started
having less interest to sell IT products to improve your business. While the
old-school bosses are still struggling to comprehend the virtual world
phenomena, they have already made your border borderless, crossover to open fire. And we observe a lot of
industries losing their grounds to these newcomers.
Here’s an example:
Amazon not just posed an
impending threat to conventional book retailers like Barnes and Noble, it extended warfare to include publishers,
resulting in the recent merger of Penguin
and Random House, with eBooks and Kindle. It continued the attack on WalMart for the groceries market, gobbling
up everything it saw fit to be sold in its online store.
Here’s
another example: Apple created
another upheaval paradigm shift by turning cell phones into smart phones, changing
the phones that supposedly serves the body parts of ears and mouths into eyes
and fingers, thus putting the once dominant Nokia
in a hemorrhaging state, and accidentally slaughtering the digital cameras and
game consoles market along its way.
Now, think of the wearable IT gadgets, and think of the self-driving car.
IT marches into almost every aspect of our life, just name it.
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| Google's Sergey Brin wearing Google Glass |
In
general, the bloodshed of IT invasion may be a bad thing for industry players, but
it is definitely a good thing to customers. IT invasion brings inventions, new
ideas and directions, eliminates the incompetent players, while still refreshing
the industries with new bloods.
Imagine a
decade ago, we’re just an IT player supplying electronic publishing solution to
the newspaper industry to automate their operations. And now, we are one of the invaders for workforce management
and access control industry. We use biometrics algorithm, TCP/IP communications,
Windows applications, Web and mobile technology, Cloud services, accomplishing
them with other IT knowhow to break through barriers, and turning ourselves as
one of the leaders in this industry. No doubt, the competition is becoming
fiercer with more newcomers, but the industry is apparently also becoming more
interesting and beneficial to the customers.
On top of
our products being IT-coated, FingerTec also uses IT to improve business operations.
But to unleash the real power of IT, we have to burrow deeper into the industry
knowhow, creating something new that the industry agrees with. That’s why we
have established FingerTec Academia,
to have thorough academic research for the industry we intend to serve. We
believe the industry would welcome invasion via invention, seeing its usefulness
to them.
