Mining, that ‘dirty’ industry with its decades-old technology and data systems, has started squaring up to the very latest that IT has to offer. When these two disparate worlds collide, says Georg Gradl, SAP global director for mining and metals, IBU mining and mills products, it will change the face of mining by creating new efficiencies as well as potentially substantial personal benefits to mineworkers across the globe.

While Gradl, who participated in a roundtable at the recent 2013 SAP Africa Mining Forum, prefers the more prosaic description of this melding of two industries as the ‘digital mining enterprise’ (DCM), other taglines include next-generation mining, the intelligent or smart mine of the future.