According to IDC, by 2020 there will be 30 billion devices within the 'Internet of Things' communicating with one another. As such, digital transformation will involve major challenges – both for IT and for those who provide it. Only when IT is completely reliable, networking and digitalization of products and processes can unlock new potential for the economy, for businesses and for people. To put it bluntly, without the highest standards in quality and security, further digitisation of our economy will pose a sizeable risk because many processes are already dependent on IT today. What standards need to be defined in refer to IT quality and security - and furthermore for our digitizing economy? What risks do we need to consider in regards to already existing IT dependencies?

With the "Zero Outage" initiative we would like to give you an example for an industry standard which was designed to prevent future outages by sharing industry best practices in how to improve stability and security. What happened so far and how do we proceed? What criteria need to be defined to create a joint standard and thus maximise reliability and stability not only across the entire ICT industry – but for all industries. The human factor in particular will become increasingly important in the future. That’s why we would like to talk to you and think out loud.