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Author Archives: Gareth Spence
Big Data, Big Challenge, Big Opportunity
Big data is a hot topic. Everyone from world leaders, to CXOs, to analysts, to media and just about anyone connected to the technology industry is talking about the transformative powers of big data. It even made it onto the agenda of the 2012 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. If the hype is to be believed, it has the power to transform businesses, governments and even society itself. It has the power to bring new insights into just about everything and drive a new era of intelligent understanding.
Yet if there’s such potential here, why aren’t we seeing more progress? There can be no question that some companies do understand the opportunities. One need only look at Google or Facebook to realise how these companies are effectively mining their data to drive new business opportunities and further monetize their value proposition. But these companies are rare exceptions. As I highlighted in my previous couple of blog posts, many companies are still very sceptical about moving from traditional business models and reluctant to embrace new opportunities. Read more
Are Teens the Future of the Cloud?
Late last week, ComScore announced its annual US Digital Future in Focus report. While there were no major surprises here regarding digital use, there were a couple of figures that caught my attention. ComScore noted that web-based email usage among 12-17 year olds dropped in 2011 by 31%. This figure was even higher for 18-24 year olds with a decrease of 34%.
Think about that for a moment. Email usage among 18-24 year olds has dropped by over one third. I find this figure incredible. I’m sure these people aren’t communicating any less; in fact, I expect them to be communicating even more. They’re communicating through Twitter, Facebook, Path and the wealth of other social media tools designed purely to share and communicate. Read more
When Will the Corporate Cloud Reach Its Potential?
Earlier this week I had dinner with a group of senior IT managers. As you can imagine, it’s not possible to take these types of people to dinner without a little (or in this instance a lot) shoptalk entering the mix. However, there was one consistent theme during dinner and that was the migration of corporate IT to the cloud.
What amazed me during these discussions was the level of negativity from these senior managers; key decision makers who are spread across a range of industries. The appetite to start moving to the cloud, whether it is public or private, was low to say the least. The fear of seceding control, increased in security risks, possible impact of future regulations, growing trend of European nationalism and numerous other reasons were cited as strong prohibitors. Read more
Are We Expecting Too Much from WiFi?
Over the weekend I spent a little time digging into O2′s plans to offer a free citywide WiFi blanket across London. As any regular readers of the blog will know, I’m a huge supporter of WiFi blankets. In 2011 we saw some encouraging signs that rollouts were starting to grow in size and frequency. New York had a number of interesting projects deployed and some European cities also moved forward with rollouts in parks and other public places.
If successful, O2′s network will be a first for the U.K. and for Europe and will hopefully stimulate similar developments in other cities. There can be no question that the U.K. needs to start driving forward with mobile connectivity. However, while I was reading about this project, I was reminded of an article in Gigaom from last year. This article discussed whether our WiFi expectations are simply too high and misaligned with service providers’ plans. Read more
Are Supercomputers Going Mainstream?
Supercomputing and the development of High Performance Computing (HPC) is an area that fascinates me. Over the past few years I’ve worked on a number of projects in the Research and Education (R&E) space that focus on sharing enormous amounts of data processing power on a global scale. These networks use this processing power to develop applications that are addressing some of humankind’s most critical needs.
Yet what would happen if access to this type of processing power were opened up? What if it was democratized to the point that it’s available to a mass audience? How would this impact upon our society and our future? These are some of the questions asked in a recent Gigaom article that demands entrepreneurs and technologists to think bigger. To look beyond the continued development of lifestyle and gaming applications and assess how they can use their talents and the considerable advancements in technology to drive humanity forward. Read more
