Commentary - FastForward

A straight, empty highway stretches toward distant mountains under a bright blue sky dotted with white clouds, cutting throug

See you further on up the road

If there's a light up ahead, well brother I don't know But I got this fever burning in my soul So let's take the good times as they go And I'll meet you further on up the road ~Bruce Springsteen, Further on

Close-up of a hiker’s boots stepping over rocky terrain, with the tread of one boot in sharp focus and a blurred mountain lan

AWS takes an AI step forward

A year ago this week, I launched FastForward #1 at AWS re:Invent. It was a heck of a place to officially start my journey, amidst the tumult of a ginormous conference in one of the most distracting places on the planet, but we were ready to go and there

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Commentary

Turkey Day tech thoughts

Some readers may recall that around the July 4th holiday, rather than do my normal column where I take a deep dive into a subject that’s been on my mind, I instead paid homage to Dan Shaughnessy, the long-time sports columnist at the Boston Globe, who regularly writes columns

A white herding dog runs down a dirt path toward the camera, tongue out, while a small flock of sheep follows behind on the s

Commentary

AI natives and AI wannabes

I had a conversation with Amanda Silver from Microsoft recently, which turned into a profile I published earlier this week. Silver, who has been with the company for nearly 25 years, gets that startups have a distinct edge when it comes to embracing AI, no matter how well-intentioned an established

An aerial view of a multi-lane highway with light traffic, bordered by green grass and trees, and a yellow overhead gantry sp

Commentary

The limits of today's AI

So put me on a highway Show me a sign And take it to the limit One more time ~The Eagles, Take it to the limit If you listen to the hype from what I call the ‘AI true believers,’ you’d think it could do almost anything, but there

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella with a slight smile on his face.

Commentary

Satya steps back to move forward

I did a thing last night You know those future games I turned off all the lights Oh, the future came ~Bob Welch, Future Games Filed under things I didn’t expect to see this week was Satya Nadella stepping back from his very successful tenure as full-time Microsoft CEO

Close-up view of rows of computer chips labeled “AI,” arranged in a grid pattern with alternating blue and black colors, crea

Commentary

The cloud’s tenuous relationship with AI

When you think about the impact of AI in recent years on the cloud companies, it’s pretty easy to make a connection between the rise of AI and increasing revenue for cloud infrastructure companies. Just this month, we heard about Oracle making some wild cloud revenue projections in the

A dizzying view looking down a spiral staircase, featuring weathered stone steps, ornate black iron railings, and a warm oran

Commentary

AI is falling into trough of disillusionment

For all the optimism surrounding AI in recent years, it feels like we are hearing an increasingly loud drumbeat of negativity lately. Heck, even Sam Altman is talking about an AI bubble – and he’s not alone. There’s even been talk of another AI winter. AI winters tend to

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Commentary

One year at boldstart

A year ago this week, I started my journey at boldstart. I had spent the previous decade at TechCrunch covering enterprise technology, but over time I had begun to grow restless. As I started to look outwardly for a new challenge, I landed on boldstart, but it was not by

IBM mainframe from the 1950s or 60s. A woman is sitting in front of a huge keyboard for data entry. A man is looking inside o

Commentary

Legacy tech is hard to kill

As companies rush breathlessly forward to understand and incorporate AI into their organizations, they are often held back by legacy tech. I was thinking about this recently when I saw the news that AOL is ending its dial-up service at the end of September. It's the end of

Series of white up arrows on wooden slats.

How to succeed at AI

If you were trying to read the AI tea leaves this week, you could be forgiven for having a hard time. There was no shortage of AI-related news and it was a series of increasingly mixed messages. As an example, we had OpenAI announcing $1 billion in revenue in July,

Purple AI repeated in grid on yellow background.

Commentary

How mature is your AI effort?

It turns out that in spite of the hype, most companies are not all in on AI yet. While there’s a huge dose of FOMO out there, the Economist reported this week that just 10% of firms are using AI in a meaningful way (whatever that means). I’ve