Commentary brings you FastForward’s take on the big trends and developments in enterprise tech and innovation — from AI and cloud to security, data and strategy. These pieces go beyond the headlines to unpack what’s happening, why it matters and what it means for leaders and builders in the space.
Commentary
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
Commentary
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
Commentary
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
Commentary
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
Commentary
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,
Commentary
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
Commentary
When Palo Alto Networks announced it was buying CyberArk on Wednesday for $25 billion, it sent a clear signal that in the age of agents, identity is going to play a huge role, enough for Palo Alto to pay a premium to grab a major player in this space. It
Commentary
We've been hearing a lot of positivity when it comes to AI in recent years. It’s going to transform business, increase efficiency, lower costs. Every company needs to embrace it. Ignoring it is not an option. Consider these recent quotes from big company CEOs: Technologies like Generative
Commentary
Think back for a moment to the glory days of 2021. We were just emerging from the pandemic. Companies were hiring in droves, valuations were skyrocketing, the stock market was soaring, and mergers and acquisitions were plentiful. Optimism ruled the day. Then came the grim reality of 2022, where suddenly
Commentary
I write so much about the importance of data in this publication, but that’s because data is the lifeblood of large language models. If data quality is critical to model performance, then the data within your enterprise applications is even more so. It enables companies to build more relevant
Headlines blare gloom and doom about the impact of AI on employment and our lives. We hear about layoffs linked directly to AI. We hear about AGI—artificial general intelligence—a term many people use, but few can agree on a definition or a timeline. Simply put, it’s a
Commentary
In a prescient presentation in July 2017, Peter Levine, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz predicted a future where, out of necessity, computing would shift from the cloud to the edge, closer to where the workloads lived. You have to remember that in 2017, cloud computing was really just beginning