Imagine how emerging technologies may reshape our world

Among the hottest new emerging technologies for 2018, picked by MIT Technology Review, here are some that caught my attention. While 3D printing has been around for a while, it’s only been for plastics, while printing anything in metal is challenging and costly. But recent strides in 3D metal printing that are combining sophisticated software with cheap metal printers (e.g. Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Markforged, Desktop Metal etc.) are enabling precise control of microstructure of metals and will likely enable mass production of parts. Just imagine, you scrape your new Lexus Mini against a pole in the narrow parking space and you get home in the evening and 3D print a new bumper.

Or imagine a city that makes sense.  A recent project in Toronto, called Quayside is designing urban neighborhoods built around digital technologies. Through an extensive network of sensors, data will be gathered on every aspect of urban life from air quality to noise levels to people’s daily activity patterns and decisions about design and policies will be made to make life more affordable, pleasant, fun and environmentally friendly.

Or imagine your baby arriving into the world with a report card that offers probabilities of heart attack, cancer, getting addicted to alcohol or tobacco, or being smarter than average, or being too competitive. LOL.  Through huge genetic studies, some involving more than a million people, this may become possible. It can bring so many new challenges that we better start thinking about all the implications.

Or imagine the possibilities of AI. Currently Artificial Intelligence is used mostly in the tech industry. But how AI will transform industries from medicine to manufacturing and energy, are endless. Recently at Ichan School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, a project called “Deep Patient” is based on use of AI to go through mounds of health data, in order to obtain insights about disease risk. With the use of deep learning, a machine learning tool, the computer is learning new things without prior programming. Similarly, at University of Montreal, in an approach known as GAN or a generative adversarial network, two networks are trained on the same data but pitted against each other. This dueling neural networks become proficient and over time gain an independent ability to make sense of the world. And when Artificial Intelligence acquires capability for imagination, the possibilities are endless on how it will impact all aspects of our lives.

You can read about top 10 breakthrough technologies of 2018 at https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2018/

Virtual reality, Augmented Reality, Autonomous vehicles and Artificial Intelligence will all intersect with Data, Cloud and will reshape our world in unimaginable ways. Attend TiEInflect 2018 www.TiEInflect.org this Friday and Saturday and get insights into which new technology innovations will have an immediate profound impact on our lives and which ones hold the future potential to turn our world upside down. 

Exciting Emerging Technologies track at TiEInflect 2018

From keynote with a catchy title “Silicon to Science Fiction” to a dedicated track on “Emerging Technologies”, TiEInflect 2018 will explore new innovations that may potentially change our world, turn our lives upside down and profoundly impact us; from retail to health to business, and influence how we interact, and whom we interact with. Virtual reality, Augmented Reality, Autonomous vehicles and Artificial Intelligence will reshape the world in which we live, work, encounter health challenges, solve them and the world in which we play.

The Emerging Tech track has panels and speakers who are playing in this hot area and will discuss and explore the trends and opportunities. AI and AR/VR have gained momentum, the hype has begun to settle down, and serious discussions are happening, among investors. How will investors define risk for technologies that do not exist and have yet to define penetration and acceptance by the audience? What sort of government policies will emerge and how will the policies intersect with investment decisions?

Participate in the emerging technologies track at the largest #entrepreneurship conference @TieInflect 2018 and through an exciting mix of keynotes, panelists, industry professionals and interested stakeholders and visionaries get an early insight into how emerging technologies will elevate human experience, in the years to come. Registration is open at www.tieinflect.org

Challenges and Opportunities in DevOps

After Agile and Waterfall, recent red hot trend in creating optimum software engineering culture in organizations, has been DevOps. DevOps is about unifying software development and operations and aligning it with shared business and product objectives. Creating smoothly functioning DevOps culture helps organizations shorten development cycles and ensure dependable and timely releases.

With DevOps enabling real-time visibility in every layer of software construction, the risk of rapid innovation is reduced as communication barriers are dissolved between teams and feedback loops are shortened. Objective single source data through shared dashboard reduces finger pointing. Companies that have not yet adopted DevOps, increasingly feel the pressure to do so. However, when companies seek to adopt DevOps, they also face challenges.

Creating a smoothly functioning DevOps culture, requires creating an optimum environment for the shift in mindset to take hold and enabling a smooth transition process through soft and hard skills training.  Traditionally, goals of Development and Operations are not aligned and handovers between different teams are costly and time consuming. A company seeking to adopt DevOps culture, needs to overcome this mentality and create product aligned team culture, away from project based culture. This is a major mindset shift that may require restructuring in staff and reporting lines, in addition to skills based training. While there is high barrier to entry with microservices, the move to automation and continuous delivery is facilitated by replacing or changing older legacy infrastructure to microservices architecture.

In any organization but more so in one seeking to adopt DevOps culture, people on the team are going to be the most important resources, for a smooth transition. Adopting newer tools may be effective only to the extent that staff receives training to use them and the tools are well integrated with the existing infrastructure.  A shift in culture must be gradual and include change management training to help people embrace the change. It will be easier to bring Dev and Ops teams on board to adopting newer tools if the focus is moved away from personalities and preferences to broader picture and larger, overarching goals of the company.  While the change may be scary at first, adoption may be smoother with objective data and feedback loops from small scale deployments and other teams to see the benefits of it working in real time.

Exciting track at TiE Inflect 2018, the largest entrepreneurship conference to take place in May at Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, will feature VCs and industry leaders discussing trends, opportunities, and strategies to deal with challenges. Entrepreneurs with eyes towards innovation in DevOps will also get to do a deep dive in the Startup bootcamp, and may learn to become investor ready, learn to effectively network and maximize visibility, and fine tune presentations and pitches. Register for the conference at www.tieinflect.org .

Technology disruptors like AI & Data reshaping Marketing & Advertising with improved personalization & enhanced targeting

Technology is impacting every area of our lives. Blending marketing and advertising with technology dubbed MarTech and AdTech, is entirely changing the marketing landscape. When combined with big data and AI, there is now greater efficiency in advertising and marketing; from building, managing, delivering and optimizing campaigns, to placing, buying, and selling ads, to targeting to most optimum potential buyers.

But it’s not about build it and they will come or turn it on and it will deliver. Often martech purchase decisions underdeliver. As an entrepreneur, if you plan to lead your company through various stages of business lifecycle from seed stage to growth stage to expansion and maturity, then you will encounter an array of marketing challenges that will require different strategies and tactics.  While in earlier phase, your focus will be on building customer and prospect lists to drive product awareness, it will soon evolve into tracking and accessing purchasing activities, supporting customer segmentation based on demographics, past purchase history and gaining deeper insight about the customer to support segmentation and personalized targeting.

At TiEInflect 2018, the largest entrepreneurship conference to take place in May at Santa Clara Convention Center, a focused track on MarTech will feature exciting topics like “Marketing to the power of AI”, “Marketing maturity model for entrepreneurs” and more. Register for the conference at www.tieinflect.org .

Where are VCs investing in DevOps

In software engineering culture, unifying software development and software operation is gaining great momentum. Automation and monitoring at all steps of software construction from integration, testing, releasing to deployment, and infrastructure management, DevOps shortens development cycles, ensures more dependable releases and is more closely aligned with business objectives. Recent M&A activities of DevOps companies like AppDynamics and Automic Software and $100M+ investments in DevOps solution providers like UIPath,, XebiaLabs and Tricentis points to the red hot market, ripe of entrepreneurial innovation.

VCs have clearly embraced this transformation in culture and processes as a more efficient organizational culture for development and deployment practices.  But as yet, DevOps sector is in the early phase. There will be incredible new opportunities for entrepreneurs in this sector, in the next few years. A panel of industry leaders will discuss and opine on new opportunities for entrepreneurs, at TiE Inflect 2018. Register for the largest entrepreneurship conference with exciting tracks in Blockchain, FinTech, DevOps, HealthTech, CyberSecurity, MarTech and more to take place in in May, in Santa Clara, CA  at www.tieinflect.org .

Blockchain: Delivering Internet of Value, a new platform to reshape the world of business

Invented by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 for use in the cryptocurrency bitcoin, blockchain enabled first digital currency without the need of a trusted central authority and has since inspired many other applications and has emerged as a major area of focus for entrepreneurs. According to Patrick M. Byrne, “The main event isn’t bitcoin. It’s using blockchain to disrupt other industries and Wall Street”.

So what exactly is blockchain and what kind of potential it holds?  Blockchain refers to continuously growing list of records called blocks that are linked and secured using cryptography and each block contains timestamp and transaction data that cannot be modified. So the transaction details are permanent and unalterable. This removes the need for verification by independent third party and a blockchain can be managed by peer to peer network.

Blockchain technologies enable confident transactions and deliver value in payments, settlements and securities processing by rendering all transactions safer, faster, cheaper, secure and transparent.  In the words of William Mougayar, “The blockchain symbolizes a shift in power from the center to the edges of the networks”. This technology will drive benefits for transecting individuals and institutions and will impact nearly all major industries. If you are an entrepreneur, you won’t want to miss Blockchain track at TiE Inflect 2018 and learn from the best minds on challenges and opportunities inherent in this technology.  Register for the conference at www.tieinflect.org .