As the railroad industry is going through its digital transformation—such as implementing broadband communications and applications that leverage Cloud technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for operational and commercial purposes—we are finding there is a clear lag in the deployment of technologies vs. what technologies enable.
We call this the cascading technology trap or “The Trap”: Technologies are evolving at a significantly faster pace than the ability of organizations to adapt.
This problem is not unique to the railroad industry. We’ve encountered this in other industries that are further into their digital transformations, such as telecommunications service providers and smart cities around the world. The cascading technology trap is more difficult to overcome than other challenges such as regulatory, financing, and ecosystem partnerships. Organizations and ecosystems get caught off-guard in vicious cycles of technical debt, while the demands on their capability maturity surge. The Trap is activated by at least six triggers that are unavoidable given the nature of the digital transformation and the traditional nature of the organizations undertaking the transformation.
How can railroads leverage the rapidly changing and competing offerings from Cloud providers, telecommunications giants, 5G equipment manufacturers, system integrators and legacy infrastructure vendors by using the lessons learned from other industries to successfully avoid The Trap?
The case study of a broadband communications technology deployment illustrates both the triggers and the strategies to avoid The Trap.
Factors That Trigger The Trap