Keynote: Data, Devices, Decisions: Why Scale & Speed Are More Important Than Ever
In the relatively short history of computing technologies, we have undergone a complete transformation in how we do business, conduct research, educate, communicate, share—in virtually every way that we work, play, live and learn. The pace of change is accelerating, not only in technology capabilities but in how they are being used. The early decades of mainframes and supercomputers, of PCs and peripherals, have accelerated into smartphones and social media, devices and data centers, clouds and containers, and have spawned the Big Data era and now the rise of AI. Scale is increasing across the board, and the speed of data-enabled decisions is increasingly important for productivity and efficiency, for innovation and insight, and likely, soon, for business survival and security. Embracing scale will enable decisions that are faster, better, or both, and will empower us with new insights and ideas that create the creativity and/or competitive advantages we seek. In this presentation, we’ll quickly review how we got to this amazing point in time, take stock of where we are, and discuss some technology directions in which we are probably, and possibly, headed.