IBM Think on Cloud (4)

Eric Friedman, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Fitbit, Inc. and Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, Software and Cloud Solutions Group, IBM discuss cloud at the 2014 IBM THINK Forum.

Friedman offers a clear glimpse into the underpinnings of Fitbit: controlling capital spend at startup, while proving the feasibility of both its technology product and business model, and gathering Big Data as customers around the world unwrap their devices on Christmas Day.  The cloud enables it all for Fitbit, and its capability and capacity grow with it.
 

IBM Think on Cloud (3)

Hisao Tanaka, President and Chief Executive Officer, Toshiba Corporation and Bernard J. Tyson, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Kaiser Permanente discuss new infrastructures driving new business models with Frank Gens, Senior Vice President & Chief Analyst, IDC at the 2014 IBM THINK Forum.

Failure of Toshiba machines can have reverberating impact on both hospital and patient, so Tanaka-san looks to technology like the cloud to ensure that such failure does not occur.  Tyson and Kaiser Permanente aim to provide the safest hospital milieu, and rely as well on technology to make big, systemic improvements, rather than incremental change, concerning safety.
 

IBM Think on Cloud (2)

Frank Gens, Senior Vice President & Chief Analyst, IDC discusses why cloud is the great disruptor at the 2014 IBM THINK Forum.

The cloud dramatically speeds up innovation, reduces costs, and bolsters competitiveness.  Such a heady claim, I'd say.  The two moves vs one move chess is certainly an evocative analogy.
 

IBM Think on Cloud (1)

Frank Gens, Senior Vice President & Chief Analyst, IDC discusses why cloud is the great disruptor at the 2014 IBM THINK Forum.

Gens speaks technically

If you consider yourself an innovator for your business and your industry, if you've not mastered cloud, and mobile, and social, and Big Data, and security technology, you need to trust this platform or you're really not mastering the IT industry.

and lyrically

I look at it as [cloud] is the palette for the artist.

IBM Think on Big Data (2)

Terry J. Lundgren, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Macy’s, Inc.; and Matt Rose, Executive Chairman, BNSF Railway Company discuss harnessing Big Data for competitive advantage at the 2014 IBM THINK Forum.

From inventory and distribution, to marketing and operations, Big Data can be a major competitive advantage across many sections or functions of a business.  But that's the hype, isn't it.  As Nate Silver said in a preceding clip, if a business is to realize that advantage, it must face up to the reality of (a) what can Big Data do specifically, (b) how must a business best utilize it, and (c) whom they need to bring onboard to make it all work.
 

IBM Think on Big Data (1)

Remarks by Nate Silver, Author, Founder of FiveThirtyEight and Correspondent, ESPN at the 2014 IBM THINK Forum.

In short order, Silver makes three crucial points about Big Data and Analytics:

• Beyond the hype, there is the inescapable reality for business and organization alike: Do you have the people with the right capability to make it all work?  
• A prerequisite is having a highly functional corporate culture, that can adapt and change, that can criticize itself when it needs to and realize where the opportunity is potentially, they cannot fall for the hype.
• We must check our assumptions or hypotheses, our biases or preconceptions vis-a-vis an evolving reality of evidence, and undergo continuous refinements of the former.