Digitalisation is set to change how businesses operate for the better. These changes span industries. Within the healthcare space, digitalisation will connect rural patients who have been diagnosed with chronic diseases to doctors, without them ever having to leave their homes. In education, digitalisation will see children in the most remote classrooms being taught by the best teachers in the country and experiencing lessons in real-time, via HD video links. Security and crime-prevention initiatives will be boosted through a range of facial recognition, big data analytics and mobile technologies. Likewise, we’ll be better equipped to save energy as street lights are fitted with intelligent sensors, so they can be dimmed or brightened based on need.

For Cathy Smith, MD for Cisco Southern Africa, digitalisation means connecting people and things, and making sense of the data we generate in a meaningful and secure way. In 2016, says Smith, we’ve seen breakthroughs such as a rise in the adoption of cloud models, the hyper-personalised shopping experience, the tech-savvy bank of the future, as well as the re-imagination of the mobile workforce. “There is no denying the imminent digital rupture.”