Key Points:
-
George Colony
,
Forrester
’s chief executive officer and chairman of the board, said the company is doubling down on its call for clients to adopt GenAI and has added its own GenAI tool to the mix: Izola, which was demoed in the event’s floor show.
- The events speakers focused on three main GenAI-focused themes: AIOps (a newer term to describe the tools to monitor and observe AI performance), high-performance IT, and AI computing.
- As Forrester developed its own large language model, the company had to go back to the drawing board several times. After being dazzled by what the product could do, the company realized there was room for improvement.
- “We looked at it and realized, oh, this is only running at 65% accuracy -- not good enough for our clients,” Colony said. “So, the early part is euphoria, but then the hard work sets in. It took us about 12 months to move from 65% accuracy to 85% ... So, when you develop, it’s going to look easy at first, and then it’s going to get really, really, hard.”
- Part of the problem is that emerging technology is evolving so rapidly, there’s a talent shortage of experts -- particularly in implementing GenAI. “You want to go and hire 100 of them,” he said. “They’re not out there. This is the next area of computer science. Everyone is learning how do to this.”
- Colony coined the “10 to 1” rule. He said companies should have 10 ongoing development efforts and have one in production by the beginning of 2025. “It’s fun to come to a Forrester event and hear about it, talk about it, read about it. But you just got to take that step to do this.”
High Performance IT Teams are Critical
Key Points:
- Using the analogy of Formula One racing during a keynote presentation and panel discussion at this week’s Technology & Innovation Summit in Austin, Texas, Forrester analyst
Chuck Gahun
urged leaders to utilize similar teamwork to create a well-oiled IT operation.
- Forrester defines high-performance IT as “the pursuit of continuously improving business results through technology.” Gahun noted the technological shifts in Formula One racing that allows pit crews to change tires in mere seconds. IT teams, he says, should embrace this work ethic to enable high-performance IT.
- Gahun invited
Kevin Sturlaugson
, associate CIO for the US Dept. of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs, and
Monty Bedi
, executive vice president and CIO at PNC Bank, to discuss how their IT operations successfully navigated the phases needed to develop high-performance IT.
- Sturlaugson talked about how the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ IT teams impacted the organization’s overall mission as they provide services to the hundreds of federally organized Native American reservations. “It’s a very complex government organization -- more complex than some others,” he said. “We have to support roads, public safety, education, waters and dams.”
- PNC’s Bedi said business in the banking industry changed drastically after the financial crisis of 2008 and continued to change with new threats and social changes. “It started out as a credit crisis, and very soon became a liquidity crisis,” he said.
- “Being a CIO for a large bank, some things are expected, right? I’m expected to know my technology. I’m expected to know the businesses. That’s just a skills set -- you’ve got to do that. But we really have to be in the business of people. And what I mean by that is: to acquire talent, build talent, and grow talent. The thing that is really critical is that if you make others successful, success will come back to you.”
InformationWeek
Previewed Forrester’s Technology & Innovation Summit
Forrester’s Technology and Innovation Summit North America 2024 was all about unleashing the power of tech, talent, and AI.
In these three video interviews below, we connected with Forrester Analysts Jayesh Chaurasia, Julie L. Mohr, and Brandon Purcell for exclusive interviews to preview some of the topics they covered at the summit.
Subscribe to our official YouTube channel now for these exclusive video interviews, podcasts, and webinar recaps uploaded weekly!
You already know that every day at InformationWeek brings expert insights and advice to help today’s IT leaders identify the best strategies and tools to drive their organizations forward.
That means original reporting from our team of journalists and unique commentary you won’t see anywhere else! But in case you missed them, here are some of our other must-read favorites from this week:
Understanding Value Stream Management
Key Points:
- In today’s digital world, organizations often say they’ve gone from customer-centric to customer-obsessed.
- One success factor is having a value stream, which, according to Gartner “is the sequence of activities necessary to deliver a product, service or experience to a customer, internal or external. Value streams cut across and connect siloed business capabilities. They provide end-to-end visibility of the activity flow, from customer request to delivery.”?
- While value stream management and mapping are not new, they can be more effective using modern tools that help facilitate the value stream.?“Value stream mapping takes the focus away from a singular production point, such as a conveyor belt or a project team, and requires you to look at the entire process from idea to value for the customer. Value stream management is a process where you optimize and improve that value stream,” says
Ivan Gekht
, CEO of custom software development firm Gehtsoft, in an email interview.
- The key lies in continuous improvement and stakeholder engagement throughout the value stream, ensuring alignment and commitment to delivering responsiveness and quality to customer needs, according to
Saraha Burnett, SPC
, chief operations officer at full service digital experience and engineering firm TMG.?
Call to Arms Against Cybercrime
Key Points:
- As cyberattacks persist to stir turmoil in geopolitical conflicts around the world, the United States amped up the volume as it calls out criminal cyberactivity suspected to come out of Russia. Now, it has indicted six Russian hackers involved in cyberattacks collectively known as “Whisper Gate.”?
- Five of the hackers indicted are members of the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) officers, while the sixth hacker is a civilian. They are charged with “conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and wire fraud conspiracy,” actions taken as part of the GRU’s Whisper Gate campaign.??
- Offering a potential reward of $60 million, up $10 million for information on the whereabouts or cyberactivity of each indicted hacker, is an attention-grabbing tactic. Earlier this year, the US State Department announced the offer of a $2.5 million reward for information leading to the arrest of a Belarusian hacker.??
- While nation-state actors can be highly sophisticated and capable of breaching organizations with the strongest defenses, they can also be opportunistic. Enterprise leaders have a responsibility to maintain cybersecurity hygiene and protocols to mitigate the risk of exploitable vulnerabilities.??
Commentary of the Week
Key Points:
- In the early hours of a September morning, a severe cyberattack weakens?critical municipal infrastructures across the Northeast US. Water management systems, electric power grids, and transportation networks grind to a halt, creating chaos. In response, leaders emerge into public view to deliver strategic messages of reassurance, playing a decisive role in establishing stability.??
- The cyberattack scenario illustrates the critical role of leadership storytelling and narratives in managing crises and change initiatives. As stakeholders look for reassurance and direction, the strategic leadership narrative will significantly influence the course of events.
- Countless leaders, including those at the highest political levels, lack narrative pluralism, and this shortfall is due in part to the historical lack of diversity, equity and inclusion in the study of narratives.?
- Regardless of their cultural backgrounds, leaders must develop the skill to create narratives and tell stories that align with their audiences and have personal and strategic resonance, meaning that their narratives can transcend cultural and demographic differences.?
Podcast of the Week
Podcast and Story by Joao-Pierre Ruth
Key Points:
- At a time when organizations want to leverage AI, need more compute power, and plan for a post-quantum future, the resources that support those technologies see escalating demand.
- There have already been hiccups with computer chip shortages that roused concerns of AI development maintaining pace. Many organizations want to balance environmental, social, and governance efforts with the real need for power and materials to thrive.
- Are we on a path to a collision of innovation versus energy and hardware availability?
- In this episode of DOS Won’t Hunt, Zachary Smith (bottom right in video), board member with the Sustainable & Scalable Infrastructure Alliance; Aidan Madigan-Curtis (upper left), partner with Eclipse; and Ugur Tigli (upper right), CTO with MinIO, discuss whether the limits of chips, energy, and other materials may hinder innovation and if a point of inflection is on the horizon.
Latest Major Tech Layoff Announcements
Original Story by Jessica C. Davis, Updated by Brandon Taylor
Key Points:
- As COVID drove everyone online, tech companies hired like crazy. Now, we are hitting the COVID tech bust as tech giants shed jobs by the thousands.
- Updated September 12, 2024 with layoff announcements from
微软
,
Edgio
,
Nori
, and
WeTransfer
.
- Check back regularly for updates to our IT job layoffs tracker.
WATCH ON-DEMAND!
“Generative AI: From Bleeding Edge to Mainstream, How It's Shaping Enterprise IT”
An archived LIVE virtual event from August 22:
In this archived keynote session, Sidney Madison Prescott, MBA, founder & CEO of Mirror and Moonshot Productions, discusses the duality of generative AI, emphasizing its benefits in automating tasks, and enhancing productivity, while also addressing concerns about data privacy and ethical implications.
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