209 | Breaking Analysis | Beyond separating compute & storage…Journey to the 6th data platform

With George Gilbert We believe today’s so-called modern data stack, as currently envisioned, will be challenged by emerging use cases and AI-infused apps that begin to represent the real world, in real time, at massive data scale. To support these new applications, a change in underlying data and data center architectures will be necessary, particularly […]
208 | Breaking Analysis | re:Invent ’23 underscores a new simplicity mandate for AWS

With George Gilbert Generative AI has created a new mandate in enterprise tech with significant implications for all companies generally and AWS specifically. Amazon’s powerful playbook based on agility, developer choice, power, scale, reliability and security must now evolve to accommodate simplicity and coherence for mainstream customers. This imperative came into clear focus at AWS […]
207 | Breaking Analysis | The OpenAI meltdown…Winners & losers in the battle for AI supremacy

Episode 207
Conventional wisdom says Microsoft is the big winner in the recent OpenAI saga. We don’t quite see it that way. Both Microsoft and OpenAI are in a worse position today than they were last Thursday, prior to the firing of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the ongoing public drama that ensues. Microsoft and OpenAI had a huge lead in market momentum, AI adoption and feature acceleration and were setting the narrative in AI.
206 | Breaking Analysis | The copilot era takes flight at Microsoft Ignite 2023

Microsoft Ignite 2023 was one part a celebration of yearlong technological innovations, one part announcing the general availability of previously announced products, one part vision, one part ecosystem and four parts copilots everywhere. Copilots promise an historic software-led productivity increase. Perhaps for the first time in industry history we’re seeing huge demand for software coincide […]
Breaking Analysis: IBM turns the corner with Watson, why 2.0 is a breakthrough opportunity

With Watson 1.0, IBM deviated from the silicon valley mantra, fail fast, as it took nearly a decade for the company to pivot off of its original vision. In our view, a different dynamic is in play today with Watson 2.0 – i.e. watsonx. IBM’s deep research in AI and learnings from its previous mistakes, […]
Breaking Analysis: The Gen AI power law – How data diversity will influence adoption

Our research indicates that the adoption of generative AI is occurring across a variety of frameworks with diverse deployment models, data sets and domain specificities. The transformative power of generative AI for industries is colossal, and we are convinced that AI will gravitate to where data lives. The power law of Gen AI, developed […]
Breaking Analysis: AI revenue riddle – Azure sees gains, when will other cloud titans see the surge?

In 1987, Nobel Prize-winning economist Bob Solow famously observed, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” This proclamation became known as the productivity paradox. Ironically, Solow’s statement preceded the greatest productivity boom since the dawn of the computer age which subsequently came to fruition in the 1990’s. It can be […]
Breaking Analysis: From hype to reality, the true state of AI adoption

MIT professor and economist Erik Brynjolfsson said recently that he’d be disappointed if AI didn’t lift the current anemic 1.2% productivity growth rate to 3% or even 4%. This would be a good thing for business and government as it could potentially help with the labor shortage, drive earnings growth and increase tax revenues, which […]
Breaking Analysis: Getting ready for the sixth data platform

In the next 3-5 years, we believe a set of intelligent data apps will emerge requiring a new type of modern data platform to support them. We refer to this as a sixth data platform. In our previous research we’ve used the metaphor “Uber for everyone” to describe this vision; meaning software-based systems that enable […]