Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Welcome to the Conference, Day 1

The Philly Emerging Technologies Conference kicked off this morning with a presentation from John Carrow, former CIO of Unisys. As a technology leader who’s been in the business for decades, Carrow brought perspective on how the big issues facing enterprise IT workers have changed pretty drastically in the last few years. From cost containment, the focus has shifted (thankfully) to top-line growth and innovation. Why? For several reasons. One, the speed of business has increased in the IM/SMS generation. Two, technology has improved so the focus isn’t on issues like having enough storage or bandwidth. Three, business is now global, which means a greater competitive playing field.

Carrow also talked about key aspects underlying emerging enterprise technologies:

  • The drive toward real-time infrastructure – an infrastructure that is adaptable within minutes and seconds rather than weeks and days
  • Application modernization – open source is a market-changer, primarily in its innovative and distributed processes
  • Collaboration and communications – communication is person-centric now, which creates easier information access from human resources

The day ahead looks promising. Stay tuned for more event coverage, including interviews with speakers and hopefully discussion with attendees.