Цифровая транформация: Как выжить и преуспеть в новую эпоху

by Томас Сибел

Мир стремительно меняется. Эпоха технологических открытий представляет угрозу для отраслей, компаний и человечества, но вместе с тем становится и огромной возможностью. Томас Сибел, крупнейший специалист в области информационных технологий, на практических примерах погружает нас в атмосферу цифровой трансформации: слияния облачных вычислений, IoT, big data и искусственного интеллекта. Книга будет интересна всем руководителям, чьим компаниям предстоит пройти процесс трансформации, а также тем, кто хочет глубже понимать происходящее в области технологий и его значение как для бизнеса, так и для планеты в целом

Genres: Business, Technology, Nonfiction, Science, Artificial Intelligence, Economics, Futurism

393 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 29, 2020

Reviews

[Jordan Self · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is perfect for two types of people.

1. Someone who is interested in the evolution of technology, but has little prior knowledge about the subject. The stories and generalized concepts are perfect for anyone stepping into this area of knowledge.

If you have clicked on or read any major headlines in the last 10 years then more than 90% of the topics presented in this book are just a recap of current events.

2. Someone who needs self help type books to make themselves feel better or more in tune with the world of business. Any business owner could read this book and feel very inspired or even enlightened, but only because that person is looking for this particular feeling. Nothing in this book will give you an actionable step for the future, or a fact that will help with comparison of trends.


This book should only have one star for the lack of information and the pages of filler that would be expected of a high school student trying to reach a page count. It seems like the author has some interesting ideas hiding in his head, but unfortunately he doesn't want to share. This book gets two stars only because the affect of mystery and prompting of further research is an intriguing way to write a book that has little to no real content.


Always a huge thank you to Goodreads for hosting giveaways, and thank you to RosettaBooks for giving up this book for readers to experience.

[Pap Lőrinc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Buzzword, buzzword, millions of euros by random year, buzzword, buzzword, millions of dollars, exact same example as before, buzzword, million percent, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword...

[Trey Shipp · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good primer on the combined power of cloud computing, big data, the IoT, and AI

After watching big companies like Blockbuster and Borders go out of business because they couldn’t adapt to changing conditions, Siebel thinks we are in an era of mass corporate extinction with mass speciation of new kinds of companies. Siebel is a gifted writer, and with over 40 years in the industry, often spent talking with other CEOs, he has plenty of stories and insight about the impact of new technology.

KEY POINTS FROM THE BOOK

• The combination of four disruptive technologies: cloud computing, big data, the internet of things, and artificial intelligence is dramatically changing the way businesses compete.

• The smooth rate of change implied by Moore’s law doesn’t capture today’s upheaval. Since 2000, 52% of the Fortune 500 companies have been acquired or gone out of business.

• To survive, most companies will have to make revolutionary changes to key corporate processes.

• The CEO has to lead this change.

• The competitive landscape for governments is also changing. China has declared it intends to be the leader in AI and plans to invest $60 billion per year by 2025 to get there.

• Most companies struggle to move beyond AI experiments and prototypes. Perhaps the most valuable parts of the book are Siebel’s tips, like using a model-driven architecture, to increase the odds of success.

• Large companies can turn their existing data into a competitive advantage to deter new entrants.

• The productivity improvements can be huge. John Deere estimates it will save over $100 million per year using AI to optimize its inventory. 3M hopes to save over $500 million per year from its AI applications. The U.S. Air Force has significantly increased mission-capable readiness by applying AI to predict the need for unscheduled aircraft maintenance.

• Siebel gives a CEO action plan with 10 principles. And he includes a reading list of six general books (from James Gleick’s “The Information,” to Brynjolfsson and McAfee’s “The Second Machine Age.”) And if you want more, he gives a list of Coursera online courses that teach you how to code.

[Nasse · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was very general. 50 % of the content was just repetition of general AI and IoT facts and hypes. I guess the problem is that I'm not the target group. I'm not a clueless CEO in an industry foreign to IT, but a sales guy in the IT sector.

The key take-away for me was that, apparently, you have to start from the very basics when selling to the top management. I also found these points to be both true, and something to take with me in my sales job:
> Only start projects for clearly identifiable use-cases: do not go for the general improvement big bang
> Only start projects which can be completed in less than a year: 6 months is a good target
> Go for model driven architecture (need to look into this a bit more), as it supposedly gives freedom to adjust the underlying cloud services.
> If you don't understand how the project is supposed to be completed in 6 months and how the proposed business case should materialize - don't start it.
> Get started or disappear: companies who don't make full utility of Big data, IoT and AI will not be around 10 years from now.

[RoWoSthlm · Rating 5 out of 5]

My acquaintance with the author started trough the IPO of his company which proved to be a highly successful deal (not a recommendation, do your own analysis). This triggered my curiosity about Thomas Siebel as an author. Perhaps one should do things the other way around – read the book first and make an investment decision afterwards. However, an investment based solely on the book could be categorized as a gambling, but the book might be a helpful source of information. Especially, in this case when the author is the CEO itself. As opposed to many other books in this genre the book condenses the experience of an insider who works with AI business on a daily basis and runs a successful company in the field. The downside of it, sometimes, the author’s company gets an increased attention in the book. This has not to be a big disadvantage. After all, the real experiences from the insides of an AI company are of a great value for the reader.

Digital transformation is an everyday fact. Artificial intelligence technologies that are accelerating it like machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, NLP, etc. will soon be present in every aspect of our lives. This book is a good starting point to get a broad overview of where and how it will happen. The author gives some valuable historic perspective, the current status of the technologies, and prospects where it all will be heading. Some numbers are questionable, perhaps based on a little bit of a qualified guess work, but overall, the vectors of AI development are correctly elaborated in my opinion.

I am not a complete novice in the field, and my expectations from a general book like this were, let us say, general. However, the book turned out to be a page turner, engaging and inspiring. The author provides some very valuable insights and recipes for companies, their executives and engineers wanting to do a smooth and well thought digital transformation. The worse part of the book – it generated a list of five more books that I must read. I gave it 5 stars knowing it is a little bit of a stretch, but the topic engages me quite a lot and it’s hard to not to be quite generous on stars.

[Mauro Locarnini · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really helps you understand what role you can play and what you need to know to dive digital transformation in business.

If you're not techy I'd suggest you read chapters and 2 and then you jump to 10-12 only to go back yo the others later. And maybe read again 10-12 with a different appreciation.

The book houses interesting nuggets of the non tech important aspects you need to know yo embark on a digital transformation. Unfortunately it points out to sources to better understand the technology underpinnings (which is essential and greatly appreciated) but does not offer similar resources for the non tech aspects of DT.

[Suzy S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid, clear argument for the need for and power of digital transformation. Provides the historical construct to explain “why now,” and does so in layman’s terms. Makes it clear that businesses of any sort that do not embrace this, will be left behind. Further, our nation is at risk unless we capitalize on the power of this change ourselves. Finally explains the role of the CEO in the process and lays out the practical pathway to success (don’t DIY!).

Recommend for any senior executive planning on or going through this critical process within your company.

[Tracy Brower · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book very boring. It felt like reading a glossary or an instruction manual. So very dry. Parts of it also seemed very elementary.

[Chris Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Digital Transformation
Today I’m going to share some digital transformation concepts with you. Let’s start with my favorite questions: ‘Why?’ and ‘Why do you care?’
‘Why’ is because we are in the middle of a disruptive event. This disruptive event will certainly remake the way businesses operate and will likely change many other things that will impact us all.
‘The why do you care’ is that impact. Because in one way or another this disruptive process is going to impact you. As a public service I’m going to walk through it and simplify. Hopefully this will be helpful to understand the changes when you see them, for your prosperity, or at least your sanity.
I will attempt to give you context.
Let’s dive right in. What do people mean by ‘digital transformation’? It is a combination of forces and emerging technologies that are converging, right now, to cause a disruptive shift in business and society.
‘The 4th Industrial Revolution’ is a related term. (I see this phrase used more internationally.) For our purposes Digital Transformation and 4th Industrial Revolution Mean the same thing.
It is a convergence of forces and technologies that is causing and will cause a disruptive shift in business and society.
I’ll get to the technologies, but let’s first start with the concept of evolution vs. revolution.
Evolution is a process whereby things slowly adapt over time. Famously introduced by Darwin in the 1800 with his trips to the Galapagos. He was able to theorize that the specific adaptions in finches were due to specific environmental pressures over time.
For this conversation the important point is that evolution is a slow and relatively stable process of adaptation.
Revolution or ‘transformation, by contrast, is an abrupt change.
In the natural world the examples cited are the extinction episodes throughout history. These events, like the 15Km across Chicxulub asteroid that whacked into the Yucatan 66 million years ago and put the dinos out of business, create massive change – or disruption.
This massive change not only creates massive destruction but also creates opportunity. In our asteroid example there was a certain cohort of furry, warm-blooded, rat-like creatures hiding in the bushes that did really well once the dinosaurs were gone.
What you see when you look at history, either on the epoch scale or the shorter human scale is not a straight line. What actually happens is intermittent periods of stability or evolution, separated by constant disruption events that reset everything.
That’s the difference between evolution and revolution. The trick is that you cannot predict when disruptive events are going to happen. If you could, they wouldn’t be disruptive.
In the business world, revolution happens when a new innovation disrupts that period of stability. The examples of course are the industrial revolutions. First steam, second electricity, third digital and now this fourth industrial revolution – or Digital transformation.
There you go – that’s your baseline.
What are the innovations that the prognosticators are claiming are/will precipitate this next digital transformation?
I’m glad you asked. There are four technologies. These four and the interplay between them is what we are here to talk about today.
Ready?
Excited?
Edge pf your seat?
Drum roll…
Number one…
The internet of things or IoT
Number two…
Big Data
Number three…
The cloud
And number four…
Artificial intelligence, specifically machine learning.
Hold onto your hats. We are going to breeze through these and contextualize why the pundits think these technologies are going to disrupt.
First, holding the prize for the most non-sexy moniker of a technological innovation ever is “the internet of things”.
What is this? Think of IoT as all those smart devices that are connected to the internet. There are billions of them. The smart speaker in you house, the chips in your car, your phone, the cameras everywhere, the sensors in everything and everywhere.
In the last couple decades these sensors have gotten smarter and have been engineered into everything.
Why do we care and how does it create a revolution?
The answer is that as soon as these billions of devices phone home they create billions of bits of data about everything. All this data from all your houses, cars, phones, machines and sensors is being collected at an exponential rate.
And that creates a problem, and an opportunity.
This opportunity is known as Big Data. At the same time these billions of IoT devices got connected and started phoning home our ability to collect and store large amounts of data evolved. We have the ability to collect all this data, store it and rapidly convert and consume it.
This data is something we have never before had access to. Why? Because we didn’t have the compute power to deal with data at this scale. It was too big for the tools we had and we had no place to store it.
But, now we do have a place to store this big data.
It’s called the cloud.
The cloud is simply a bunch of hardware sitting in giant data centers and connected to the internet. With that giant pool of hardware you get two enabling things. First unlimited is unlimited storage. Second is unlimited compute power. Simply put, with the cloud, problems that used to be too big are no longer too big because we can throw unlimited fast computing at them.
Here we are. We’ve got billions of little devices collecting big buckets of contextual data about everything and pumping them into a cloud computing environment that has unlimited capacity to work with that data.
So now what?
Now, we get the secret sauce.
Artificial intelligence, or more specifically Machine Learning.
Simply put there is a class of algorithms that were designed to derive insights and knowledge from big data sets. We couldn’t use them before now because a) we didn’t have the data and b) we didn’t have the compute power.
Now we do.
Think of machine learning as pattern matching. In the same way you might look at a painting and say “Hey there’s a mouse hidden behind that tree and it’s blue!” Think about the complexity of what went on in your brain to get to that insight. You have to know about mouses and colors and hiding and paintings and trees…
The learning part of machine learning is that we can teach these algorithms to do things by giving them ‘training data’ and telling them what to look for.
You might say, ‘that doesn’t’ sound very useful’, but whereas we can study one painting the machine algorithms can study billions and they can do it quickly.
The combination of the data and the new classes of algorithms means that we can predict things we could not before. We can get down to a level of specificity that we could never before.
And here is the part you should pay attention to:
We have machine code that can do the same thing as human professionals, do it better, do it faster and do it at scale.
I’m talking to all you well educated, highly paid, white-collar professionals. The reason you care about the digital revolution is that it is going to automate much of what we do.
And that, my friends, is why the business pundits are all-a-flutter about digital transformation.
Because, in 99.99% of the companies in the world the largest expense and the largest risk is humans.
Companies will embrace this revolution because if they don’t, others will, and those that don’t will end up, as they say on the BBC, in the dust-bin of history.
…

[Leah French · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the first 7 chapters because they were assigned for school. I wasn't inspired to keep reading after that point.

[Dmitry · Rating 1 out of 5]

(The English review is placed beneath the Russian one)

Этой книге можно было поставить среднюю оценку, но… я считаю, что она не заслуживает даже среднего балла. Я бы даже сказал, что её вообще не стоило издавать, ограничившись лишь статьёй. В принципе, я даже встречал подобные статьи в открытом доступе. Но ведь тогда не получилось бы заработать денег, не так ли? Вот поэтому и был выбран книжный формат.

Я согласен с теми читателями, кто ставит ей в заслугу то, что она может быть информативной, следовательно, полезной тем людям, которые только что выбрались из пещеры, в которой провели лет 10, т.е. те, кто вообще ничего не знаю о том, что сегодня происходим в мире высоких технологий. В принципе, наверно такие люди и существуют, т.е. которые ничего не слышали о Big Data или об облачных технологиях. Однако я не думаю, что таких людей много, да и сомневаюсь, что такие люди читают бизнес-литературу. Вот именно поэтому я и не вижу особого смысла в этой книге. Хотя главный недостаток этой книги даже не в том, что автор пишет об общеизвестных вещах, а в том, что он подходит к этому даже без намёка хоть на какое-то критическое мышление. Автор описывает последние достижения в области компьютерных технологий, и делает это, не разделяя людей и компаний на тех, кому это «жизненно важно», «важно, но не значительно», «маловажно» и «неважно вовсе». К примеру, какой прок от облачных технологий или IoT местному бару или локальному производителю овощей? Мы этого не узнаем из книги, ибо автор об этом ничего не пишет. Он не говорит, какие недостатки, какие опасности фирма может встретить при попытках имплементации данных новинок. Да и стоит ли ей вообще это делать, ибо мы все прекрасно знаем, что погоня за самыми последними инновациями не всегда оправдана в виду не только возможной её бессмысленности для бизнеса, но и наличию высоких издержек. И ещё. У меня сложилось ощущение, что автор просто зачитывает рекламные материалы компаний, которые заняты предоставлением услуг связанных с новыми технологиями, которые упоминаются в книге, ибо, как и в рекламе, мы не встретим здесь и намёка на возможные недостатки продукта/услуги; в этой книги всё выглядит просто идеально.

В заключении стоит упомянуть, что первая часть книги, просто невообразимо скучна, ибо автор в ней использует приевшийся тезис о том, что компании, которые не поспевают за развитием технологий, зачастую покидают бизнес очень быстро. Мол, если вы всё ещё не используете компьютеры, то, скорее всего, вы скоро обанкротитесь, так как вас обойдут конкуренты, которые их используют уже довольно давно (благодаря снижению издержек и/или повышению ценности для потребителей). По мне, так это одна из самых очевидных вещей и, следовательно, посвящать целую главу на такие очевидные вещи, смысла нет никакого. Такое чувство, что в первой главе автор намеренно попытался вселить в читателя чувство необычайной важности того о чём пойдёт речь далее. Увы, но как я сказал в самом начале, нужно десять лет прожить не контактирую я сегодняшним миром, чтобы совершенно ничего не знать о сегодняшних последних достижений в области компьютерных технологий. Но даже в этом случаи у нас имеется Интернет и Википедия, где об этом можно прочитать и бесплатно.

I could have given this book an average rating, but... I don't think it deserves even an average one. I would even say that it should not have been published, limiting it to an article. In fact, I've even found similar articles in the public domain. But then it wouldn't have made any money, would it? That's why the book format was chosen.

I agree with those readers who credit it with the fact that it can be informative and, hence, useful to those people who have just got out of the cave where they spent ten years, i.e., those who know nothing about what is going on in the world of high technology today. In principle, there are probably such people, i.e., people who have not heard anything about Big Data or cloud technologies (Cloud computing). However, I don't think there are many such people, and I doubt that such people read business literature. That's why I don't see much point in this book. Although, the main drawback of this book is not that the author writes about common knowledge, but that he approaches it without even a hint of any critical thinking. The author describes the latest advances in computer technology and does so without dividing people and companies into those to whom it is "vital," "important but not significant," "unimportant," and "not important at all." For example, what good is cloud technology or IoT for the local bar or local vegetable producer? We don't learn this from the book because the author doesn't write anything about it. He does not tell us what disadvantages and dangers a company may encounter when trying to implement these innovations. And whether it should do it at all because we all know very well that the pursuit of the latest innovations is not always justified due not only to its possible meaninglessness for business but also due to the presence of high costs. Also, I have the feeling that the author simply reads out advertising materials of companies that are engaged in providing services related to new technologies, which are mentioned in the book, because, as in advertising, we will not meet a hint of possible shortcomings of the product/service; in this book, everything looks just perfect.

In conclusion, it is worth mentioning that the first part of the book is unimaginably boring because the author uses the tired thesis that companies that do not keep up with the development of technology often leave the business very quickly. If you still don't use computers, you will probably go bankrupt soon because you will be overtaken by competitors who have been using them for a long time (due to lower costs and/or higher customer value). This seems to me to be one of the most obvious things and hence, there is no point in devoting a whole chapter to such obvious things. It feels like, in the first chapter, the author deliberately tried to instill in the reader a sense of the extraordinary importance of what will be discussed next. Alas, as I said at the beginning, you have to live ten years out of contact with today's world to know nothing about today's latest advances in computer technology. Even so, we have the Internet and Wikipedia, where you can read about it for free.

[Henrik Samuelsson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book Digital Transformation discusses how the confluence of four technologies; cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things is impacting business. It is claimed that the companies that do not adapt and go through digital transformation using these technologies will be extinct. A high level action plan for digital transformation is presented in the end of the book, aimed at management at large companies.

There are several issues with this book but the main issue is the massive amount of repetition of the concepts presented. The same messages are repeated again and again in almost exactly the same way as if a parrot had written the book. Think "Polly wants a cracker, Polly wants a cracker, Polly wants a cracker..." but instead "Cloud computing is awesome, cloud computing is awesome, cloud computing is awesome..." The audio book was 9 hours long but could easily been cut down to 1.5 hours by removing all the useless repetition.

I do agree with many of the conclusions in the book but it shines through that author is not the one that does the actual transformation work and instead sits at the top delegating tasks and hence lacks deep knowledge in any of the four technologies presented. There is of course nothing wrong with this, someone need to lead and no one can be expert in all areas at once, but it narrows the amount of readers that this book is useful for.

Do read this book if you happen be in the extremely small set of people that have managed to become a CEO of a large company without any knowledge what so ever on cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the internet of things. Otherwise there are likely better things to spend your limited time on.

[Bilal · Rating 4 out of 5]

The implications for society in general and for corporations and governments in particular from the confluence of four disruptive technologies, i.e., AI, Big Data, IoT, and Elastic Cloud, have been addressed by several authors in the past few years. As such, Siebel’s book is a little late to the party. I was underwhelmed since my expectations had been set high from the many endorsements by scholars and leaders, and from Condoleezza Rice’s foreword; I learnt very little from the bulk of it, namely from chapters 2-8. However, if you have not read any of the other fine books on the coming of this runaway freight train, the treatment in chapters 2-8 is likely going to be educational and enlightening. But I found chapters 1, 10, and 11 rewarding. In chapter 1 he likens the punctuated equilibria and economic disruptions in the history of corporate world to the mass extinction and mass diversifications in evolution; I find this an apt analogy. In chapter 8 he cites examples of large organizations that have successfully implemented digital transformations recently; this chapter could have been very instructive except for the fact that his coverage is about a page of text per case so there really isn’t any meat to taste. In chapter 9 he talks about the technology stack needed to bring about the digital transformation, and I liked the fact that he is very clear on what won’t work; this is valuable advice. Finally, in the last chapter he puts together a 10-point action plan for the CEO to affect digital transformation in his or her company; this action plan presents a clear vision and is laid out in nicely delineated and actionable steps.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction, Silicon Valley tech CEO Thomas Siebel breaks down the disruptive wave of imminent technological overhauls that a digital revolution spearheaded by the confluence of elastic cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things will introduce and has already effected in myriad industries. The obsolescence of Blockbusters, taxi cab companies, Borders, and pharmaceutical companies, according to Siebel, serves as a monumental bellwether for the industry-shattering digital transformational turbulence that awaits and that could spell the impending extinction of countless enterprises that have yet to adopt the technological measures to stave off the oblivion that afflicted their digitally naive predecessors. Siebel's book provides illuminating, accessible information to CEOs of valuable industries that are forecasted to grapple with insidious challenges if they fail to forge advantageous technological positions for their companies. In essence, Siebel equips CEOs with timely, indispensable insight regarding technological transformations while simultaneously posing an important caveat to all of the wary industry leaders tentatively teetering on the precipice of obsoleteness in this digital day and age: Adopt the pivotal technological cornerstones that have enabled contemporary businesses to thrive and supplant their competitors, or perish.

[Steve Heitkamp · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the better books I've read on digital transformation, which is imperative for any corporate enterprise seeking to thrive going forward. Siebel does well to articulate why you can't just hire a few data scientists or outside vendors and hope that it will transform your organization. Transformation needs to be purposeful and taken seriously by leadership or it will fail.

And while I don't fully buy the requirements Siebel imposes for successful transformation, it is certainly ideal to have an engaged CEO, an empowered CDO, and a clear digital strategy that is communicated across the organization. If you are someone lower on the hierarchy or an outside entity trying to help transform an organization, you often won't have, and can't impose, these conditions.

In these cases the answer is not to give up or wait until you have the optimal conditions, but to find a compelling starting place, somewhere that you can drive meaningful outcomes, and then leverage those successes for additional growth.

Wherever you start, if you want to read a minimal fluff book that has some really solid guidance on why digital transformation is important, as well as pointers on how to get there, read this book.

[Tuyet Lan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cuốn sách này được dịch sang tiếng Việt với tiêu đề "Chuyển đổi số" với 11 chương nội dung.

Sách phân tích bốn trụ cột chính tạo nên "chuyển đổi số" là các công nghệ: điện toán đám mây (cloud computing), dữ liệu lớn (Big data), trí tuệ nhân tạo (AI) và kết nối vạn vật (IOT) thông qua hàng loạt những dẫn chứng thực tế và dự đoán tương lai gần. Và ở chương cuối, ông đề cao yếu tố con người - đội ngũ lãnh đạo và nòng cốt của doanh nghiệp/ tổ chức là điểm cốt yếu quyết định sự phát triển hay tồn vong, đổi mới hay lạc hậu của đơn vị họ trước xu hướng này; gợi ý một số bước cơ bản để họ tiến hành chuyển đổi số.

Nếu bạn đọc lần đầu tìm hiểu về chuyển đổi số, thì đây là một cuốn sách kiến thức tổng quan rất phù hợp. Sách đưa ra những phân tích về xu hướng tất yếu của một xã hội số hóa và kết nối chặt chẽ, cơ hội và thách thức với từng tổ chức và doanh nghiệp trước xu hướng này. Còn nếu đã đọc nhiều về Big data thì cuốn này trùng khá nhiều nội dung, thành ra hơi nhàm.

[TJ Totland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a tough book to review (easy to read) but I am tourn about the review. Overall, it is a great summary of technology today and how we got here as a society. It fills its purpose well, which is to guide business leaders into a digital transformation, and the author's new company is well positioned to help, but there are very few plugs in the book for his company.

Overall, as a technology expert and cloud engineer, I cannot disagree with any if his ideas and the book is very well written. I reserve my 5 ratings for legendary books, this topic can never reach this level and even though the author calls himself "legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur", I have my doubts. Still, a fantastic book and likely deserves 4.5 stars.

I very much do recommend this book for all company workers and leaders alike. We do need to embrace AI as it is coming whether we like it or not, and companies and people who are able to harness this technologies will be the survivors in the future.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this as a Goodreads Giveaway.

Digital Transformation is a fascinating look at the rapidly changing digital world. Thomas Siebel provides a thorough and readable explanation of complex issues like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, and the internet of things, making these topics accessible to those not well-versed in them. While primary oriented towards business executives, he also touches on issues of technology in government, and the challenges and opportunities developing in the public sector.

Overall, a very interesting and informative book. Highly recommended for anyone interested in how new technologies will affect your life in the very near future.

[Fernando Cárcamo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este libro inicia su premisa con una analogía muy interesante entre las extinciones masivas y la era de la transformación digital.

Debo decir que no ha sido igual recibir la descripción de transformación digital venido de un orador x, (sin demeritar a nadie) a la expuesta en este libro por una de las mentes más brillantes de Silicon Valley. Más interesante aún, me parece que este libro no está dirigido hacia los informáticos, si no más bien a CEOs y tomadores de decisiones, pero sin duda resultara muy útil a esos informáticos que han entendido que está es una carrera de desarrollo continuo.

[Nikhil Kanthi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book on digital transformation as it stands in 2020. Very promising and thorough analysis of what the future holds, exciting opportunities. Often feels like a lot of big numbers said with emphasis back to back to back, as if the author is in a constant state of incredulity. "It's 5o billion petabytes per second! That's nine billion bytes per millisecond" or some other kind of incomprehensible number. You encounter these thirty times a chapter -- it's all very numbing.

Also the author's voice on Audible is a little raspy, which can get exhausting on long drives.

[Robmgooch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good primer for non-technical people for upcoming changes in the workplace. Reads a bit like an ad for the author's company. Despite this and many acronyms, it is a good read for anyone in business. There is a way of change coming due to Cloud computing, Big Data, AI, and IoT technologies. If you are not familiar with these terms, you are in big trouble with your business. It is the equivalent of sticking with buggy whips, fax machines, and rotary dial phones if you are not looking to add these technologies to your business.

[Richard P · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can not recommend this book highly enough. Mr. Siebel delivers compelling insights from a real world, front line point of view. If you are a part of a Fortune 1000, you must read and understand this book. Perhaps the most resonating line of the book is: "Companies that transform will be operating on an entirely different level from their lagging competitors. This will be tanks versus horses."

It is pretty simple, do you want to be a tank or a horse?

[Ashconn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently, I came across the book Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an Era of Mass Extinction—a powerful read that underlines why organizations must embrace change strategically to stay ahead.

Inspired by its insights, I also recommend reading my new blog on Ashconn: Digital Healthcare Consulting Transformation in Qatar to see how these ideas apply to healthcare.

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun and fearful look at the impact artificial intelligence (AI) may have on the business community. The author argues without major AI software innovations, companies will go out of business. Cases illustrate where AI meant major cost savings and how a mode-driven process highlights paths to success. Extensive chapter notes back thesis ideas. Author Sievel is a leading of provider of AI software.

[Firassb · Rating 5 out of 5]

The quintessential book for the new industrial revolution

The title says it all, this book is very informative, it starts with a history of evolution, go on to define the new evolution along with its four major elements, and then finish by presenting an action plan along with resources . I couldn’t ask for more .

[Enrique Lenin Diaz Torregroza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mirada amplia de lo que es la Transformación Digital

Me gustó la explicación de lo que realmente es la Transformación Digital, los casos de usos con ejemplos reales, siento que este libro aporta tanto a los que ya conocemos del tema, como a los que no conocen del tema a profundidad.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good info for a CEO that wants to convert a traditional company into a digital company that takes advantage cloud, AI & IoT. He has great explanations on the technologies along with book recommendations it you'd like more detail. Great book overall with a very interesting on the history of business.

[Prashanthi Chennupati · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very Good Read. Thomas has very beautifully captured the evolution of technology and connected with the current AI revolution. He has covered many aspects of digital transformation and how enterprises can strategize its digital transformation roadmap. It is a must-read for all the current world business leaders who are on the verge of embarking on a digital transformation journey

[José Calado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book highlighting the connection of the technological trends that enable Digital Transformation!

The model-drive approach concept could have been explored in more detail but it doesn't dimish the overall value of the book.

A must read!

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

fantastic walk through of what it takes to lead an organization into the digital age. Also, this book was able to provide clear and simple examples to allow the reader full understanding of complex topics.