ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

MEETS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCECEO SUMMIT 2016

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION6.

CREATING NEW VALUE IN GOOD TIME

8.

LEARN TO LOVE YOUR ROBOTS

10.

THE LEADING EDGE OF MASSIVE DISRUPTION

12.

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?14.

TACKLING THE SKILLS SHORTAGE

16.

I AM NOT A ROBOT18.

AI AND ABUNDANCE20.

IDEAS FOR LIFE22.

TATA COMMUNICATIONS EDITORIALS

24.

INTRODUCTION

The CEO Summit 2016 between 11th/12th July was an intimate gathering of 70 CEO’s from all corners of the world involved in the full gamut of commercial endeavour including finance, manufacturing, energy, distribution and technology. Of those businesses, 80% have deployed Artificial Intelligence or will do so in the next three years and 60% of delegates agreed their enterprises required an HR strategy to anticipate the replacement of humans with machines.

The discussion “Artificial Intelligence meets Emotional Intelligence” was as timely as it was important.

This brochure provides an overview of the Summit sessions. More information and video interviews of speakers and delegates can be found at www.tatacommunications.com/CEO2016.

To help delegates get a better understanding of the technologies in play there were a number of live tech demos many of which are featured throughout this brochure.

“Artificial Intelligence meets Emotional Intelligence”

Tech demo: Sentient shoppingIntelligent analytics enabling an intimate, personalised shopping experience got the attention of a number of delegates eager to explore the full potential of e-commerce.www.sentient.ai

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CREATING NEW VALUE IN GOOD TIMEBy Vinod Kumar

Artificial Intelligence is no longer the stuff of science fiction. It is in the mainstream of IT.

Therefore, as leaders, we are duty bound to understand it as best we can. We must share our ideas as how to enable it to fulfil its potential while guarding against the inevitable social and economic disruption it may bring.

With such a diverse group of leaders gathered to discuss a topic so strategically vital to our future it is not surprising we gleaned some remarkable, fresh and invaluable revelations and conclusions.

The outcome of the debate as to whether AI will be a force for good or for disturbing disruption was that the “jury is still out.”

Are we heading for a world where humans are dominated by intelligent machines united by an all-powerful “singularity”? This dystopian vision could not be dismissed out of hand. Even Ken Goldberg, world-leading expert in robotics and confirmed optimist, told us that today robots “can make mistakes and share what they have learned with every other robot connected to the cloud.”

Will the human race adapt to the disruption promised by intelligent technology as well as it did to the agricultural, industrial and digital revolutions? Will new jobs – jobs we have not thought of yet –

be created for all those people whose tasks can – and are being – replaced by machines?

Those that look at history see humankind’s inherent ability to survive and believe it will be “OK”. Indeed, the onset of intelligent machines is but another step in humanity’s quest for a better life and perhaps presages the utopia where humanity will flourish like never before.

Others hold that this step is something fundamentally different. Society has to find a new structure beyond capitalism. The concept that all people can gain an income by creating value through work has had its day. Without going as far as total enslavement as depicted in the movie “The Matrix”, there is a view that the “rise of the robots” will inflict severe penalties on the society they are built to serve.

While the discussion flowed back and forth, there were two common areas of agreement. Firstly, from the Emotional Intelligence side, society had to get a grip of the governance and ethics behind the development and deployment of intelligent machines. All delegates agreed that as business leaders they had a role and responsibility in that process.

From the technology side, the consensus was the exponential increase in Artificial Intelligence in business and society is driven by

ubiquitous high speed connectivity and the ability to store and process vast quantities of data. Smart machines are really happening because of the Internet and the Cloud.

It is one thing to provide the platform for a debate about Artificial Intelligence, it is another to provide the platform for the next chapter in the story of humanity. I am both humbled and proud of Tata Communications’ role in both.

The CEO Hackathon, the climax of the Summit, produced two ideas that the delegates voted to take forward to a Moonwalk. One would use AI to enhance the care of the growing population of the elderly in a world where the resource to provide such care is under strain. The other imagined intelligent systems managing a global economy, underpinned by what is fast becoming our most precious resource – water. Both are huge in their scale and ambition. Both reflect the quality and breadth of the conversations at the Summit.

And both ably demonstrate the real purpose of the Summit – to learn about and to debate one of the key issues of the day and from that evolve potential solutions to make this a better world.

I eagerly look forward to next year’s event.

“Artificial Intelligence is no longer the stuff

of science fiction.” Tech demo: Double greetingsDelegates were greeted at the event by “Double” – a mobile telepresence robot that enables an individual to “roam” a remote location with their IPad. Double is used by schools to enable students who can’t make it to school to virtually attend class and by enterprises to give remote workers the sense that they are actually in the office.www.doublerobotics.com

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“There’s an awful lot of hype about artificial intelligence and robotics in the air right now,” said speaker Ken Goldberg as he delivered the opening keynote at the event, “I feel it’s my responsibility as an engineer working in the field that we need to counter this with a more sober and practical discussion about what is really happening.”

Ken likened the current fear of robots and intelligent automation to the current fear of global migration recently brought into sharp perspective by political events in the US and the UK. “People don’t like ‘robot immigrants’ for fear they will take their jobs and change their lives. But history has shown us that immigrants initially do all the jobs that others don’t want to do and that eventually the diversity of peoples creates a richer society.”

Ken used history extensively to make the point that we have nothing to fear from technological change. “At the outset of the last century we invented automobiles, manned flight, telecommunications and the zipper all in the space of two decades. And what have we invented in the last two decades of the twenty first century other than Twitter?” he said. Of course Ken did not dismiss recent advances in robotics as irrelevant to society. He showed video clips of robots repetitively and neatly stacking boxes in a warehouse, “Maybe this is the kind of jobs we should not be asking any human to do,” he said. By contrast he showed how difficult it was for a robot to be as dexterous as a human, despite, as he asserted, the inherent flexibility and capability of a simple two pronged pincer attached to a rotating “wrist”. Ken referred to Moravec’s paradox. This is the discovery by artificial intelligence and robotics researchers that, contrary to traditional assumptions, high-level reasoning requires very little computation, but low-level sensorimotor skills require enormous computational resources.

Goldberg noted that the cloud was starting to have a significant impact on this problem.

“Robots now have access to huge amounts of data and code,” he said. “In the new science of cloud robotics, robots can learn from the mistakes of others.” He proved the point by showing a film of a robot stacking ceramic cups at an amazing rate. “This robot is connected to DEXNET – a cloud-based platform from which robots engaged in a similar task learn from each other,” he said.

In his view, smart machines and robots will evolve in ensembles of machines each capable of a different task but each contributing to an outcome defined by the group of people they are supporting. Although the machines do different things, they will share the definition of the outcome and share relevant learning between themselves. “It’s like a group of people - the more diverse the greater the potential and the richer the outcome,” he said. “Working out who are the right people to bring together to create the right chemistry and then how to match them with the ensemble of machines to achieve the optimum outcome is one of the key things that senior executives need to be thinking about.”

This “multiplicity” approach is in stark contrast to the “singularity” – the much hyped vision of a dystopian future where all intelligent machines unite to create a world in which humanity itself becomes irrelevant. “I just don’t see that happening,” he said.

Instead he believes robots will be a force for good not only in what they can achieve in themselves, but in what they can do in terms of education and inspiration. In a segment echoed later in the day by a teacher in robotics from East Barnet School (see page 16), Ken gave the example of an on-line competition to produce an affordable robot that could help inspire children in Africa.

The winner was a $8.96 robot constructed, in the main, from a recycled games controller!

He wrapped up his talk by reinforcing his view that man and machine – intelligent machine – will always be working together. “I just don’t see driverless cars,” he said. “I get the idea that cars will be assist the driver in a whole host of ways – like taking over when we are cruising along the freeway, but not when we weave through the suburbs to find our way home. I also don’t think we’ll see useful humanoid robots. We have to rethink that model – just as the pioneers of aviation had to rethink the idea that to get us into the air we needed wings that flapped.”

LEARN TO LOVE YOUR ROBOTSWith Ken Goldberg

Tech demo: Alternative personalitiesDelegates had some startling conversations with this Altair EZ:2 – designed for the education market, this robot features advanced vision and speech recognition systems that make human/robot communication so much easier and natural.www.appliedmachineintelligence.co.uk

“We have to rethink the humanoid robot model – just as the pioneers of aviation had to rethink the idea that to get us into the air we needed wings that flapped.”

Ken Goldberg is a University of California Berkeley professor. He and his students investigate robotics, automation, art, and social media. Ken is Director of the People and Robots Initiative (a CITRIS multi-campus multi-disciplinary research program established in April 2015) and UC Berkeley’s Automation Sciences Research Lab (since 1995). Ken has published over 200 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering; his inventions have been awarded eight US Patents.

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THE LEADING EDGE OF A MASSIVE DISRUPTION

In 1964, in response to 5 years of high unemployment, US President Lyndon Johnson created the National Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress to report on the future impact of machines on jobs. Two years later the commission’s report concluded that machines alone were not responsible. Increases in purchasing power and demand were essential. However, it warned, if these were not present, “the potential created by technical progress runs to waste in idle capacity, unemployment, and deprivation.” Today, especially in the developed economies, purchasing power and demand have been static for some years. You have been warned.

So Martin Ford got our attention as he opened his keynote hot on the heels of Ken Goldberg.

His presentation was stacked with hard facts about the impact of automation and machines on employment. For example, in 1998 business America consumed 194 billion hours of labour. In 2013 business America consumed almost exactly the same number of hours but in an economy that had grown by 42% in a country whose population had swelled by 40 million people. In 1979 GM needed 840,000 workers to generated £11 billion in sales. In 2012, Google needed just 38,000 workers to

generate £14 billion in sales.So more wealth, less work. That has to be a good idea? Not necessarily, asserts Martin. Between 1950 and 2010 US productivity grew 254%. However hourly compensation grew just 113% over the same period. For 20 years between 1950 and 1970 growth in hourly compensation kept pace with productivity, but from 1970 – arguably the year that automation and computing really took off in the workplace - hourly compensation remained flat. In short, he argued, the automation of production is concentrating wealth in the hands of owners and investors.

The number of people with the incomes to stimulate growth in the economy is falling. After each cyclical recession – as businesses are forced to greater efficiency and automation - it has taken longer for employment levels to bounce back and the new jobs are invariably lower paid and lower grade. As machines become more valuable than people, so we see a steady spiral downward in our collective wealth.

And as artificial intelligence and robotics become more sophisticated and capable, so the process will accelerate. Martin points out that today over 90% of jobs are in occupations recognised as such in 1914. So, he concludes, the successive waves of technology

With Martin Ford

through the 20th Century have not created significant new waves of jobs as is often asserted. And this will not be the case when entire factories and warehouses operate “lights-out”, when parcels are delivered by drones and when financial markets are operated by software bots that are also be capable of doing the job of a call centre agent in Bangalore if not a qualified lawyer in New York. In short, now that every job can be written as an algorithm, the world is on course for a major disruption with given that a society based on capitalism where there is no obligation not to take up machines to drive efficiency.

All this does not necessarily herald the end of the world. Martin accepts that mankind can adapt to technological change, but this time round we cannot let it just happen. Society may have to take proactive measures such as decoupling jobs from income. There may come a time when we have to accept that everyone must be paid a living wage no matter the wealth they create. “We have to take a collective approach to the problem. Individual businesses that try to buck the trend will soon find themselves in difficulty. It is no surprise that the Samurai, a warrior class that forsook guns as dishonourable weapons of war, no longer exist.”

“We have to take a collective approach to the problem.”

Martin Ford is the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm and the author of New York Times best seller The Rise of the Robots which received the Financial Times/McKinley Business Book of the Year Award. His other major work, The Lights in the Tunnel was equally well received.

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SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Having heard from Ken and Martin, Summit facilitator Jack Hidary ran a workshop for delegates in which they put their minds to the problem. Formed into teams, their task was to think about the role that AI and robotics could play in a specific industry and to make a list of what they thought the potential dangers were.

For example, the team that looked at Life Insurance foresaw a scenario where intelligent devices dynamically monitored a customer’s life style and adjusted their premium in real time based on how they behaved. The better you live, the lower the premium. On the downside, there were wary of the impact on privacy and the threat to fundamental liberty in that one is disallowed from following one’s lifestyle of choice. They identified the potential for the creation of a “sub-prime” market for life insurance – even for some to abuse the system by “attaching your Fitbit to your dog.”

The team looking at the automotive industry recognised that AI driven car sharing and joint ownership schemes would reduce the number of cars on the congested roads of the major cities. The downside would be a reduction in demand for cars and the negative impact on the global economy that is still largely “driven” by the auto industry. However, as one delegate pointed out, that might not be the case. While joint ownership may cause a drop in demand in the US where 90% of the population own cars, in markets such as India where ownership is measured in single digits, it could stimulate a whole new market altogether.

Another team, unsurprisingly given recent headlines, looked at the impact of the driverless car. Here we had the startling revelation that in California, the driverless car was deemed a sentient entity for the purposes of insurance. And to ably illustrate the lateral thinking stimulated by our speakers, the team were concerned about all those jobs – police, roadside recovery, sign-makers, panel beaters, etc – that are in place because cars are driven by misbehaving people. Would these jobs disappear in a world of perfectly behaved driverless cars?

Having heard the pros and cons across all teams, one consistent theme emerged about the role of AI in business – and that it will fundamentally improve our insight and understanding of the complex world in which we live. The challenge that faced by one and all was the ability to make intelligent sense of the huge volume of data available now and growing exponentially. To see things never seen before. To make connections we never knew existed. Once achieved, the opportunities were endless.

“They identified the potential for the creation of a sub-prime market for life insurance – even for some to abuse the system by attaching your Fitbit to your dog.”

A CEO workshop

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TACKLING THE SKILLS SHORTAGEWith East Barnet School

The biggest challenge I see in my business’ ability to adopt AI is:

Not being able to show ROI

Percent (42 responses)

Lack of budgetResistance from employees

Lack of talent Legacy technology

“The course I run is called ‘Systems and Control’. If it was named ‘How to build a robot’ my class would double in size,” said Steven Sadler, the teacher who runs the extracurricular class in robotics at East Barnet School. His small team of students has recently won the regional heat in the global VEX robotics competition – the largest of its kind in the world for middle and high school students. The robot, which of its own volition, hurled tennis balls into the audience for delegates to catch had got them into the World Championships!

The team is sponsored by Tata Communications amongst others. As the team leader explained, one of his key jobs was to hit the phones to get sponsorship for a project that is not funded by the mainstream curriculum. Building a career in robotics is not all about being a geek.

“I am a geek,” declared another team member. “And while we are doing this, everyone else is playing football!”

As well as ably entertaining the audience, this group of students

and their inspirational leader made the point that something needs to be done if society is to meet the burgeoning demand for the skilled engineers and programmers who will create and maintain the next generation of smart machines.

This skill shortage was mentioned throughout the presentations. The delegates also recognised the problem, as shown in the chart below. This data was generated by the interactive survey which asked pertinent questions throughout the Summit.

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

19

7 5

57

12

“I am a geek and

while we are doing this,

everyone else is playing football!”

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It will be some time before a CEO can be replaced by a tireless, “always-on” robot. The CEO must drive a relatively frail human body through a hectic, high intensity schedule. In recognition of this indisputable fact, the second day of the Summit kicked off with a session lead by Juha Äkräs cofounder of Hintsa Performance.

Juha put a class of delegates through an enlivening series of exercises on the lush lawns of Coworth Park before speaking to them over a healthy breakfast. The core of his message is that balanced well-being - mental and physical - is not the result of success but the key contributor to it.

“The accepted wisdom is that you work hard, become successful and then earn the ability to lead a happy life. Recent studies show

that in reality it works the other way round. If you flourish in life, then you will perform better and be successful,” said Juha.

He continued, “Unlike single-minded elite athletes, corporate people have many roles in life and these need to be balanced. That is not easy. But it becomes easier when they work out who they are and what they want out of life. That provides the motivation to change the habits that set us back.

Our approach is to change one habit at a time. Science shows that it takes about 21 days to change a single habit. And it’s amazing the improvement you’ll see just by changing one habit – and then we take the next and the next. Step by step, everyone can improve.”

I AM NOT A ROBOTWith Hintsa Performance

“Balanced well-being, mental and physical is not the result of success but the key contributor to it.”

Under the leadership of Dr Aki Hintsa, Hintsa Performance has developed an approach to life-style management that optimises an individual’s physiology to the task at which the individual chooses to excel. Dr Hintsa developed this approach from studying Ethiopian long distance runners and has applied it to sustain high performance for champion Formula One racing drivers Mika Häkkinen and Sebastian Vettel.

Tech demo: May I take your bag?Delegates’ baggage was taken to their rooms by the “Starship” delivery robot Maybe your next purchase on the Internet will arrive in one of these.www.starship.xyz

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AI AND ABUNDANCEWith Gerd Leonhard

“How do people go bankrupt?” asks a character from Ernest Hemingway’s novel ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’. Then came the reply, “Gradually, then suddenly.” Gerd Leonhard used this witty exchange as a model to illuminate what is happening in information technology. “For a long time, things like the paperless office, language translation, voice recognition and indeed AI did not really work that well – then all of a sudden they do. We have to understand that now we are at the exponential take off point. In two years’ time, we will solve voice recognition with all the nuances of accent, vocabulary even language. Does that mean that the jobs of 42 million call centre agents will be automated?”

Gerd used the music industry to illustrate the impact of technology and digitisation on wealth creation as a whole. “When we digitised music it became abundant. Abundant essentially means free,” he said. “If you gave your kids a CD, they’d suggest you visit a psychiatrist.”

Gerd asserts that Artificial Intelligence is also at the “take off point”. Citing phenomena such as deep learning and the potential unleashed by ubiquitous connectivity and the cloud, AI will in of itself further accelerate the impact of digital technology. “Google’s strategy has shifted from ‘mobile first’ to ‘AI first’. Intelligence will become a commodity and AI will drive ultimate efficiency. It will create abundance. In twenty years’ time, energy will be abundant,” he said.

“Intelligence will become a commodity and AI will drive ultimate efficiency. It will create abundance.”

Gerd Leonhard is a widely known and top rated futurist. Gerd focusses on near future, ‘nowist’ observations and actionable foresights in the sectors of humanity, society, business, media, technology and communications. In 2006, The Wall Street Journal called Gerd ‘one of the leading Media Futurists in the World’. His knowledge and insights are grounded by his early career as an entrepreneur, serving as Founder/CEO of several digital music & media start-ups, based in San Francisco.

Tech demo: Print me a penny, I’m hungryPutting a new spin on “supply chain”, delegates were able to create a replica of a coin with this 3D printer and then spend it on a tasty image of their choice printed in edible ink on edible paper.www.ultimaker.com

So what should business leaders be thinking about as we head for a future of abundance – where everything is free?

“The thing to remember is that customers are not algorithms and the goal of business is not to be efficient. The goal is to make customers happy,” he said.

“We are seeing several waves of digital disruption unfolding. First we had data and information, browsers and such things. Then media, music and books were digitised and that changed everything there. There are the things people never thought could be digitised like food. But now we have 3D printers that can produce a pizza, so we are heading there. We can’t be digitised, but our holograms can go wherever we want them to and wherever we

are, we can enjoy a virtual reality. So first it was data, then music, now transport, health and food will be digitised. Digitised means abundant. Abundant means free.

“So how are we going to create value in a world when the price is so low? The answer is you become more human, more unique and create experiences. We are moving from the product economy to the experience economy. And so trust, relationship and meaning is all we will have left to create differentiation and value. Everything else is commodity. So yes, make things more efficient, but also create a story, an experience around it. In twenty years the successful companies with be those that have a great story and great human factor and are completely immersed in technology,” he said.

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IDEAS FOR LIFE

During conference thus far, delegates had learned about the realities of AI and robotics. They had been shown the potential dangers posed by the march of intelligent machines. They had seen a vision where AI-enabled industries produce goods at essentially zero cost. Now it was their turn to get involved directly in that future.

Split into teams of six, the delegates were tasked to pick any problem, in business or the wider community, and come up with an idea in which all or some of the things they’d learnt about at the Summit could be part of the solution. They were given an hour to brainstorm their idea supported by AI and technology experts. They then presented their ideas – a total of ten were tabled - and the delegates themselves voted for the ideas that would go forward to a Moonwalk. The purpose of a Moonwalk is to tighten the definition, further explore the possibilities and take viable elements forward to detailed specification and – who knows – product development.

This Hackathon was conducted by David Eden, who leads pan-industry teams that accelerate Tata Communications’ product and service innovation, and Ellen Levy. Ellen is Managing Director of Silicon Valley Connect, working with organisations and entrepreneurs on opportunities for “networked innovation”, and is a member of the board of Instructure (NYSE:INST) a learning technology company.

A CEO Hackathon

“We have to take a collective approach to the problem.”

is most efficiently used where it is in relatively short supply. So the Water for Life team conceived of a system where people, businesses and governments were awarded credits for the good husbanding of water while those who wasted it received debits. Such a system would depend on a global, secure, multi-faceted intelligent metering and transfer system – not unlike the highly complex and intelligent banking systems that controls the flow of the world’s money today.

These two ideas are very broad in scope and quite loose in their definition. To that end they are the perfect fit for a Moonwalk the purpose of which is to tighten the definition, further explore the possibilities and take viable elements forward to detailed specification and – who knows – product development. While the Moonwalk itself may not produce something that solves the problem, it may well enable the next vital step toward that solution.

Over the next three to six months, teams comprised of delegates from the conference and Tata Communications people will conduct the Moonwalks. We will report on their progress as they unfold and publish their ultimate findings and recommendations.Tech demo:

Green wall, clean airPlants can think. They proved their intelligence by adjusting air quality in the demo room in real time.www.naturvention.com

Additionally, she actively manages a portfolio of over 40 start-ups either as an angel investor or advisory board member.

The two ideas from the Hackathon the delegates voted for aim to tackle fundamental issues facing our global village – an ageing population and the scarcity of water. They are as ambitious in their goal as they are ingenious in their concept.

Team “We-R” recognised the gap developing between the fast growing number of people who need to be cared for and the shrinking number of people and resources available to care for them. “We-R” could see the potential for AI to add that critically important human dimension to automated care – which in itself is the key to closing the gap.

The team’s idea is to create a caring companion to work with the family and professionals charged with looking after the well-being of an individual. There exists today

a growing family of apps and devices that provide self or remote monitoring of people in care, but We-R’s idea is to take this one step further by creating an automated entity that does not just monitor, but also engages, interacts, guides, supports and entertains the person it is working for – while gently and sympathetically sharing the information it gathers with duly appointed friends, family and professionals.

“Water for life” chose to address the worldwide shortage of water and believed that AI held some of the answers. This team realised that with the use of intelligent systems the world could operate an entire economy underpinned by the value of water. After all, if we can build an economy based on rare and precious metals, then surely we can create one based on what will be our future’s most precious resource – water?

With one third of the world’s fresh water in Canada, the problem is not so much a net global shortage as ensuring this precious commodity

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TATA COMMUNICATIONS EDITORIALS

Enabling the take off point.

Getting the enterprise ready for AI.

During the Summit, Gerd Leonhard described the “take off point” as that moment when a technology breaks free from science fiction novels, the lab and early experimental adoption to enter the mainstream of society with associated profound effects.

While a number of views prevailed, every speaker at the Summit agreed on one thing. Ubiquitous broadband connectivity and the ability to share massive volumes of data and vast but low-cost compute resource from the cloud has brought AI and smart machines to the “take off point”. There can be no doubt we will soon witness those profound effects.

All of us at Tata Communications are fully aware of the role we play in enabling the enabler of the

next, and perhaps most dramatic, technology wave. Right now, our global subsea and terrestrial network covers 700,000 km – that’s more than 17 times around the world. It features cutting-edge, one-of-a-kind innovations, including the only, wholly-owned fibre ring around the world; the only Ethernet ring serving the Middle East; more than 400 Points of Presence on five continents; and we own and operate more than 1 million sq. ft. of data centre space in 44 locations worldwide.

While this infrastructure is undoubtedly an asset of which we are rightly proud, we tend not to think of is as our asset. We see it as the platform on which partners, customers and like-minded entrepreneurs can create new value world-wide.

Furthermore, as Ken Goldberg pointed out when he spoke of robots learning from each other in ensembles of diverse machines, we know that to fully grasp this opportunity we must learn and innovate within an ecosystem of diverse enterprises.

A business with this platform and partnership strategy feels like the right place to be at AI’s take of point.

40% of the delegates at the conference said they are deploying AI for competitive advantage today. Maybe you are too. Maybe not. Either way, you need to make sure your IT infrastructure is ready to adapt to and leverage this next, critical, technology wave. In the words of Martin Ford’s analogy, you had better not be a Samurai warrior who chose to forsake the gun. Furthermore, while previous technology waves have been relatively gentle enabling enterprises to adjust over time, this one promises to be far more revolutionary that evolutionary.

Efficient access to the cloud has to be your top priority. This is not simply a matter of a secure and reliable connection to the public Internet, although that is essential. To get the performance you need – be it to drive the real-time smart

analytics at the heart of your humanised e-commerce interface or to let your smart machines link and learn amongst themselves – you’ll need specific connectivity to the major cloud compute providers such as Amazon and Google.

To give your people a quality experience enabling diverse groups to work better together and to integrate their labours with those of the new generation of machines, you’ll need a globally consistent performance from cloud collaboration service providers like Microsoft and, indeed, ourselves. How else will you create that human experience and that story from which all value in the future will be derived?

Meanwhile, these connections must be integrated seamlessly within your existing IP network – which

in itself must have the flexibility to reach and connect securely with as yet unidentified customers, suppliers and partners. Finally, you need somewhere for your own discrete compute resource and apps to reside in the cloud from where it can serve your enterprise wherever in the globe in operates.

This sounds a tall order. But we are fulfilling similar orders to businesses across Asia, Europe and the United States as they prepare their enterprises for the next technology wave – the smart machine wave.

Tech demo: A virtual F1 tour Delegates could go on a virtual tour with the current F1 world champion Lewis Hamilton to see how Tata Communications gives the Mercedes F1 team a winning edge through technology.www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFXtyu-zuhQ

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