The autumn events season started last week with a true technology innovation festival organized by Star Storage, the global provider of modern information protection and management solutions for top public and private organizations.

 Organised in the very inspirational location from Stejarii Country Club, the Digital Innovation Fest event brought together technology professionals, various business lines specialists and international analysts interested in the most relevant topics of the moment, like digital transformation, regulation compliance – including GDPR, and associated risk management.

Addressing company’s customers from the most powerful industries like financial services, utilities, telecoms, manufacturing, and also the public sector, Digital Innovation Fest 2017 was a well-received event, changing the perspective we are looking to innovative technologies and putting us in the position of the main engine of the digital transformation process.

Digital Innovation Fest participants had the opportunity to meet and discuss with global leaders in information management, enriching their knowledge and experience, and exploring new digital ways to make the difference in their industry. International speakers delivered key answers to hottest topics of the moment, showing most efficient ways to solve the specific problems.

The DIF opening keynote was sustained by Catalin Paunescu, CEO Star Storage, which presented company’s credentials, based on a continuous innovative process in business solutions design. Star Storage’s solution and services portfolio is creating value for individuals, using digital technologies with a positive impact on their work and private lives.

The company’s key achievements are related to top technologies adoption, providing to the clients:

• increased compliance & risk reduction through unified information governance;
• appreciable cost savings and time to market acceleration by rethinking operations and processes;
• customer loyalty increasing and revenue growth through improved customer experience;
• new revenue streams and new business models to reach new markets;
• the art to do more with less.

All these achievements was sustained by an ambitious Go To Market Strategy in the international markets with most dynamic average growth like Enterprise Information Archiving (EIA) with US$ 3 billion Market size 2018, Enterprise Document and Data Capture (US$2.6 billion in 2018), or  Electronic Medical Records (EMR  – US$17.43 billion in 2018 market size). Star Storage international expansion is based on more than 100 global alliance partners, powerful system integrators, consulting and regional partners.

“We have now a solutions portfolio that meets the real challenges of the business environment and can make a difference both at the level of organizations and at the level of each individual and society,” said Catalin Paunescu, CEO Star Storage during his opening keynote. “ We strongly believe that technology is not only aimed at increasing business efficiency, the technology is designed to help people – from work efficiency to office to contributing to a healthier life through effective healthcare management and effective communication with healthcare staff through telemedicine”.

One of the most appreciated presentation from opening session was keynote intervention sustained by Atle Skjekkeland, Senior Vice President at AIIM (The Association for Information and Image Management). Atle is an experienced technologist, educator, and innovator. His interest in the future of information management with social, mobile, Cloud and big data has made him a frequent keynoter and workshop facilitator at events across the world. Atle is also the architect behind AIIM’s training programs with close to 30,000 students.

During his presentation in Bucharest, Atle discussed the main issues opened by digital transformation to enterprise-sized organizations, presenting the most important 4 ways to improve productivity and ensure compliance in the new digital era.

According to a Forrester survey of business executives, the very significant business problems impact on Enterprise IT level is related to:

• High Cost of Ownership (91% of survey participants)
• Difficult Upgrades (87%)
• Poor Cross-Functional Processes (86%)
• What the Apps Deliver Doesn’t Match Business Requirements (80%)
• Inflexibility Limits Process Change (75%).

The 4 ways enterprises could improve productivity and ensure compliance in the new digital era are related to:

• Enterprise level engagement – opening mobile access to ECM systems, facilitating the mobile capture, content creation and commenting, and adoption of mobile interaction processes.
• Automating business processes – increasing business productivity by removing paper-based
• Facilitating insight actions – by process optimization, access improvement to vital data and applications, and a radical change in employees’ behaviour.
• Adopting effective control policies, based on assumed risks, and GDPR compliance.

Another very interesting and well-documented keynote was the presentation of The top 10 strategic technologies, trends & predictions for 2017-2018, sustained by Lukas Erben, Vendor Executive Manager at KPC – a Gartner Group covering Czech Republic’s, Slovakian, and Romanian territory.  Lukas is a Gartner specialist with more than 20 years of professional IT and tech writing, consulting and publishing background. As Vendor Executive Manager, Lukas is helping CEOs, CTOs and other executives to maximize the value of their investment in Gartner, in key areas like strategic development or product and service innovation.

According to Gartner’s research, the top technologies trends are related to three essential fields which involve specific technologies like:

• Intelligent: Advanced Machine Learning & AI, Intelligent Apps, and Intelligent Things;
• Digital: Augmented & Virtual Reality, Digital Twin, and Blockchain & Distributed Ledger
• Mesh: Mesh App & Service Architecture, Digital Technology Platforms, and Adaptive Security Architecture.

Let’s summarize few of the Intelligent Digital Mesh trends until 2020:

• AI (Artificial Intelligence) will be a primary battleground for service providers;
• 20% of enterprises will employ dedicated people to train neural networks;
• 46% of the customer-perceived value proposition of products and services will be digital;
• 30% of Web browsing sessions will be without a screen;
• Algorithms will positively alter the behaviour of Billions of global workers;
• IoT Will Increase Data Center Storage Demand by Less Than 3%;
• Most IoT-generated data will not be stored or retained.

 

According to a Gartner survey named “The 2017 CIO Agenda: Seize the Digital Ecosystem Opportunity”, the key technologies having the most potential to change the organization over the next five years are:

• 81% Advanced Analytics
• 48% Internet of Things
• 43% Digital Security
• 40% Business Algorithms
• 22% Machine Learning
• 19% Virtual Customer Assistants
• 13% Augmented Reality
• 10% Blockchain
• 7% Autonomous Vehicles
• 6% Smart Robots

 

A very good example of digital adoption in real life was the story presented by Alex Padureanu, CEO of Hospices of Hope, showing how innovative technologies could contribute with a very high impact on patients in the field of palliative care. The Hospices of Hope is a project that aims to radically improve patient services through patient-to-patient communication with mobile devices and advanced technologies like virtual reality.

Hospices of Hope is one of the most important networks developing palliative care in Eastern Europe. Based in the United Kingdom, Alex is responsible to coordinate the activity of the local team and the organization in the US, having a non-executive role in the country partner organizations (Romania, Serbia, and Moldova). To ensure that as many patients as possible receive palliative care Hospices of Hope concentrate on two areas of work:

• direct support and treatment for patients and their families;
• increasing the awareness and availability of palliative care through training.

 

One of the most important healthcare project from Romania in the last period is the implementation of STATUS Healthcare Hub to Casa Sperantei, a communication platform developed by Star Storage that enables doctors and medical services providers to interact with their patients and exchange information in a secure and friendly environment. Main STATUS ability is to provide efficient management of EMR (Electronic Medical Records) offering data mobility and accessibility to complete medical files based on data coming from medical systems, from field doctors, and from patients. The files are containing a recording of medication and assistance for correct drug administration, being able to provide easy and instant access from anywhere and anytime to complete patient records.

STATUS Healthcare Hub is offering also the transparent promotion of medical services by keeping up to date doctor profile relating healthcare specialities training and medical expertise. The solution is based on a safe environment for storage and transfer of medical data. Once fully implemented at Casa Sperantei, STATUS can increase the number of consultations with up to 50% offering better communication and interactivity. As recognition of the value of STATUS Healthcare Hub implementation, Star Storage’s solution received “Best Cloud services for vertical market” award during EuroCloud Awards 2015 contest.

About Star Storage 

Star Storage is a global technology provider developing and delivering state-of-the-art information protection and management solutions for top private and public organizations. With more than 17 years of experience, own Intellectual Property and a portfolio of 500 customers on 4 continents, with strong expertise in top industries such as banking, insurance, telecom, manufacturing, utilities and public administration, the company play a key role in the digital transformation, mobile and cloud journey of any size organization.

Images Source: Star Storage