Digital twin technologies will transform way ASEAN businesses deliver customer experiences: Neo4j

Neo4j is an enterprise-strength graph database that combines native graph storage, advanced security, scalable speed-optimized architecture, and ACID compliance to ensure predictability and integrity of relationship-based queries.

Here Nik Vora, Vice President, APJ, Neo4j, tells us more. Excerpts from an interview:

DQ: How will Digital Twin Technologies transform the way ASEAN businesses deliver customer experiences and overcome industry challenges?

Nik Vora: Businesses today, across geographies, are essentially focused on two key things – good customer experience and optimum operational efficiency. For this, they are exploring advanced tools and technologies that provide comprehensive solutions to their problems. One such technology that is at the forefront of transforming businesses in a secure, yet agile manner is – Digital Twin.

Google, in 2012 announced that it was using a knowledge graph to power its search engine. Since then, the interconnectivity of analytics, data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked interest in the use of knowledge graphs. Multiple challenges across industries whether it is logistics or security, can be addressed with the help of digital twin technology. It gives a detailed view of the entire operational framework that has complex and multi-layered processes.

This operational efficiency will not only enhance business productivity but also impact end customer experience giving them a more engaged interaction with the said product/service offering.

One such category to look out for is the application of digital twins in security. Creating and analyzing a graph digital twin of an organization’s infrastructure is one of the most effective ways to improve a company’s security posture. It will help address the never-ending, dynamic complexity of vulnerabilities and loopholes. This in turn will make back end processes robust and resilient, ultimately refining the entire ecosystem and providing customers a very wholesome and valuable experience.

DQ: With the increased adoption of ethical and responsible AI applications and the need for authentic, diverse, and non-manipulated data across enterprises, how will graph technology and data science help organizations produce and generate AI predictions that are traceable and explainable, and ultimately improve the overall trustworthiness of AI?

Nik Vora: Data is everywhere today, and so are the tools and technologies that are unlocking the potential of this data. With many of these solutions driven on the back of AI, security and authenticity become major areas of concern.

Graphs, however, work on existing databases without altering it. They are designed to be able to identify relationships between data sets and present them in a simple, understandable model.

They can extract the inherent value of the data and help draw relevant insights and analytics from it. Inherently, graph technology takes all the data – structured, unstructured, or semi structured – and helps map it and draw preliminary connections which provides insights and an understanding. Lastly, semantics are applied to provide deeper context to that connected data, giving out powerful, relevant and impactful insights.

Graphs today can be leveraged by anyone irrespective of the size of the organization or the nature of the use case. In fact, with Neo4j, one can easily download Neo4j Desktop for free and use it to create their own space and work with graphs.

DQ: What tech trends will ASEAN manufacturers and distributors plagued by global supply chain disruptions look to adopt in 2023?

Nik Vora: Southeast Asia has attracted manufacturers due to its regulatory, economic and demographic advantages. An estimate by EY indicates that online retail in this region will jump from US$19 billion in 2018 to US$53 billion in 2023. Its digital economy too, is projected to exceed US$240 billion by 2025. In order to build back post the pandemic and bring the business ecosystem back on track, the region needs to address one crucial challenge that accelerated during the pandemic – disrupted supply chains.

They need to create supply chains that are resilient and well-oiled. In 2023, we will see manufacturers and distributors adopting more evolved technologies like graphs to strengthen their supply chains. Using technologies like graphs will help them expedite query response compared to traditional relational software. Since supply chains are multi-dimensional, their tech stacks are often not capable of managing large amounts of data or providing insightful analytics.

Graphs, however, are easily scalable and can manage large volumes of data. Manufacturers will use graph technology to gauge real time insights, transaction transparency, distribution analysis, among other things. To summarize, for fast growing markets like SEA, graph technology will play a key role in giving them a competitive edge and accelerated economic growth going forward.

DQ: What role will graph technology play in the healthcare sector in 2023?

Nik Vora: The transition from traditional paper records to digital, electronic record keeping has been rapid. However, there still lies a great opportunity that can be leveraged. The healthcare and life science industry are handling so much data on a regular basis that it is difficult to access and analyze it. This is where graph technology comes into the picture.

With every patient or stakeholder having multiple interactions within the system, the entire data infrastructure can get extremely complex. Hence, graphs can be an excellent option for storing and visualizing medical data. They can assist healthcare organizations realize newer opportunities by leveraging the connections within their existing data, whether it is in the form of a connected genome, a provider network, or patient treatments.

Neo4j has enabled companies like Novartis and ChemAxon to extract novel insights about relationships between biological and chemical data to accelerate drug discovery. New York-Presbyterian Hospital also uses graph to relate all their event data, enabling them to track infections and take strategic action to contain them. Going forward in 2023, we will only see an increased adoption of graph technology across the healthcare space for various use cases.

DQ: How can graph technology help organizations strengthen cybersecurity and build public trust in 2023?

Nik Vora: Over the last few years, businesses have realized that cybersecurity has progressed from "good to have" to "must have." Companies that successfully implement cybersecurity have an advantage in reducing risks. The increasing complexity of cyber-attacks necessitates solid solutions to combat them. To effectively mitigate these risks, organizations require advanced data solutions that enable them to correlate and analyze connections on a large scale in a real - time basis.

Graphs are useful in this scenario. The benefit of graph technology grows in proportion to the size and complexity of the data. By connecting an organization’s resources and users with the activities on a system, they can gain a unified visualization of the attack surface and the ability to conduct ongoing cyber risk assessment with a graph. With clear attack paths and reachability routes, they can have predictive, pre-emptive, and proactive threat identification and cyber risk management. Companies can safeguard systems, detect anomalies in real-time, respond confidently to incidents, and recover quickly.