The impact of digital disruptors

This chapter focuses on the impact of digital disruptors. I think what's interesting about the clips you're about to see is the wide range of sectors and industries that this is impacting in different ways. You'll see Jeremy Silver talk about the impact of digital on the music industry where he started. Non-food retail has been strongly impacted by the Amazon phenomenon. But on the other side of the spectrum you have Tullow Oil CIO Andrew Marks talking about the impact for an oil and gas exploration company. You would think that an oil and gas company would surely be immune to the effects of the digital revolution, but you will see that this is not the case. All companies here are in a different space on the spectrum.

The second point you can see from this interview series is that there is a need to invest in infrastructure to support technology. Andrew Marks talks about the difference between expectations in Western Europe, where infrastructure is relatively good, and some exploration in remote parts of the world, where infrastructure is more or less non-existent. We find, as a law firm, that our clients have not spent or invested heavily in technology over the last few years due to the global financial crisis, but they are now starting to invest in infrastructure, it so is a fundamental choice to make here between, do I continue to invest in my proprietary systems or the infrastructure that they have under my existing contracts or do I look at cloud solutions or do I what I'm setting up is something completely different. Again, we're seeing a lot of this with companies that want to make a digital leap and so they create a separate entity, give it a separate budget and start investing in the technology around that, which of course causes tension between existing infrastructure and new infrastructure.

For us as a technology law firm there are two main areas: one, M&A and joint ventures, we see companies acquiring innovation in order to move forward and expand their product range. A good example would be investing in core banking capabilities in terms of online applications to support an entire banking process. The other area that Jeremy Silver talks about again is the commercial difficulty, but also the legal difficulty, and how, if you're running a joint venture, a large company and a small technology company or an innovation company can work together. How will it work? How will respective rights and what people expect from this relationship work? I think it's very difficult and look at Jeremy on this, he's part of a small company and definitely has some challenges in terms of the relationships he has with some of the larger entities that don't operate as quickly than the kind of company he keeps.

From a purely technological point of view, this investment and infrastructure is challenging because a fundamental decision needs to be made regarding the type of contract solutions customers want. Big companies want security. Some of them are subject to regulation that mitigates, if you will, a reasonably long forward contract that covers different eventualities. But how to sustain this contract, how to integrate innovation? These questions have always been challenging for technology lawyers, but I think they are more so today. Do you go for standard cloud terms and just take the risk in terms of terms offered to you by cloud providers? Develop a contractual environment with lots of choice but also with risks. I hope you enjoy the videos we have collected.

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