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Environmental Analysis

Preliminaries - Industry Analysis
The industry analysis includes the analysis of Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal aspects that impact the industry we are operating in. This PESTEL analysis is part of business research and helps us to understand the market the organization is operating in. The factors involved in PESTEL are discussed below

Political
  • Government policy
  • Political stability
  • Corruption
  • Foreign trade policy
  • Tax policy
  • Labour law
  • Trade restrictions
Economic
  • Economic growth
  • Exchange rates
  • Interest rates
  • Inflation rates
  • Disposable income
  • Unemployment rates

Social
  • Population growth rates
  • Age distribution
  • Career attitudes
  • Safety emphasis

Technological
  • Technology incentives
  • Level of innovation
  • Automation
  • Research & Development activity
  • Technology awareness
Environmental
  • Weather
  • Climate
  • Environmental policies
  • Climate change
  • Pressure from NGOs
Legal
  • Discrimination laws
  • Antritrust laws
  • Employment laws
  • Consumer protection
  • Health and safety laws



Market Forces

·        What issues affect this industry and are there shifts happening?

o   Digitalization – the increased use of technology

o   E-Science –  the use of technology in Science (e-Science)

o   Fourth Industrial Revolution - readiness to adopt technology and innovate business models

o   Security and privacy – data protections and cybersecurity increased focus

·        Which customer segment is the most important and which one is declining?

o   Astronomy increasing in line with international trends

o   Bioinformatics increasing with reliance on machine learning for genomics

·        What do the customers need?

o   An end-to-end solution that ingests data, analyses the data and stores the data

o   There has been an increasing in data archive needs

·        Where is the demand increasing?

o   Data archiving is becoming more important for Astronomers

o   Large scale analysis and data storage increasing for Bioinformaticians

·        Can customers find other products and services quite easy?

o   Not at all. This service is bespoke and requires a considerable amount of expertise that is not commercially available or feasible

o   Commercial cloud providers do not provide facilities for research and development

 

Industry Forces

·        Who are the competitors and new entrants in this market?

o   Commercial Cloud Providers

o   Commercial Data Science Consultants

·        What do they do better or worse than the organisation reviewed?

o   They are highly over priced

o   They have bigger economies of scale leading to decreased infrastructure costs

o   More human resources for technology support

o   They are unable to provide Scientific solutions for research

·        Which customer segment do they focus on?

o   They tend to go for commercial clients not research institutions

·        Which products or services can replace those by your organisation?

o   Cloud Storage

o   Machine Learning

·        How easy can customers switch to them?

o   It is not feasible to switch due to the research networks

o   They do not have Scientific technical implementation expertise

o   They have no international or local networks with research community


 Key Trends

·        Technology trends

o   Emerging technologies

o   Cloud adoption

o   Big Data Analytics, Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence

·        Regulatory trends

o   Cybersecurity Bill

·        Societal and cultural trends

o   Digital divide

o   Fourth Industrial Revolution

·        Socioeconomic trends

o   Economic uncertainty and budget cuts

o   Low work force skills

o   Inequality in access to infrastructure resources

o   Historically Disadvantaged Institutions low financial resources

o   Free Education


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