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News

• We created 300,000 jobs with AI: Tye Brady of Amazon Robotics

  “Simply put, we couldn’t achieve our customer obsession without adding robotics and automation,” says the chief technologist of Amazon Robotics

• Transpower CIO Cobus Nel on working - and learning - with robots

  Prepping up to work with emerging technologies requires planning, a new mindset and working with nontraditional partners, as shown by Transpower.

• SKYCITY Entertainment Group takes to the cloud with Microsoft Dynamics 365

  Works with Intergen for a ‘complete technical refresh’ for systems across New Zealand and Australia

• Gartner ponders on the state of the CIO in 2030

  Outlines steps to take as CIOs play a broader role in business strategy and operational leadership.

• Straight talk from the top

  CEOs talk about what they expect from CIOs - keep the lights on, be a futurist, understand what’s possible and communicate that to the business – top the list: Part 4 of our special report on the 2013 CIO Summit.

• Beware the cloud boomerang

  I was talking to a colleague who works for a large technology vendor. His company offers products to enable IT organisations to construct cloud infrastructures inside their own data centres - to turn existing stable, static computing environments into ones that support scalability, agility, and dynamic applications. The company's progress on its products has been impressive, early implementations successful, and interest from their customer base (infrastructure groups within large IT organisations) high. However, he shared an apprehension with me regarding product adoption. "I'm concerned that while our customers are working on a very deliberate plan that will take a couple of years - doing their research, performing a pilot, evaluating the economics, making the capital investment business case - that the apps side of the house will just charge ahead using on-demand public cloud providers like Amazon." While he was worried about this trend from the point of view of how it will affect the prospects for his company's products, my mind moved toward a different outcome: the boomerang.
  With regard to the issue he's worried about, my sense is that his concern is quite valid. Many software engineers have moved to cloud environments for development due to immediate resource availability and low cost. It's widespread. I noted in a blog post a few months ago my amusement regarding one large software vendor's senior executive's rant. He and I were both on a cloud computing panel and in his remarks he railed against developers using Amazon, citing intellectual property concerns. After the panel was over, as the participants were chit-chatting, he said that he found it frustrating because developers in his own company were using Amazon quite widely, despite being warned against it, because it was so much easier than getting computing resources through the official channels. The phrase "hoisted on one's own petard" sprang to my mind.