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.
Per usual, there was a lot to write about this week, and frankly I was torn between the memo from Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke requiring employees to use AI, and Google’s announcement of the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol at Google Cloud Next, but in spite of the attention the the
Commentary
In the late 1990s, a new kind of browser-based file sharing software platform emerged called Napster. Almost immediately folks began sharing copyrighted music and videos in numbers never previously seen. This wasn’t sharing cassettes and VHS tapes with friends and family, it was instant access to content at internet
Commentary
This week, we witnessed a surge in M&A activity, the likes of which we haven’t seen for some time. The $32 billion Google-Wiz deal stood out by its sheer size, but it was far from the only one. We also saw Softbank scoop up chip maker Ampere
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I spent the first part of this week at HumanX in Las Vegas, a conference focused on AI — what else? In his kickoff keynote on Monday morning, conference co-founder and CEO Stefan Weitz talked about the paradox that is AI today. While we are surely in the middle of hype
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We are living in a volatile world, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that even a company like Nvidia, fresh off a successful earnings report, should find its stock experiencing dramatic fluctuations this week. Perhaps it reflects the emotions of investors unclear on what’s coming next, or
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A number often floated in IT circles is that 70% of projects fail. In fact, it led to a discussion this week on LinkedIn that got me thinking about the figure. I asked Google search, Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT and Perplexity if the number was valid, and if there was research
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Let’s start this week’s commentary with a story 📖: Back in the 1990s when I was a technical writer writing documentation, online help and training materials, there was a lot of repetitive content. To get around this, I would create macros by recording a series of tasks and the
Commentary
I had the distinct pleasure of spending part of the week at boldstart Founder’s Day in Miami. In addition to being a nice respite from the cold and dreariness of the Massachusetts winter, it was also a time to hang out with a group of founders in the boldstart
Commentary
When I launched this newsletter at the beginning of December, it was never my intention to make every commentary about AI. It just seems to have worked out that way. There is just so much to talk about, and as I noted in this space last week, we are dealing
The whiplash-inducing pace of change This week it would have been easy to write my ForwardThinking commentary about DeepSeek, the new model from China that had everyone buzzing about its impact and speculating what it means. Find your favorite writer or thought leader and there was surely an opinion. But
Garbage in/Garbage Out applies more than ever to aI data Whenever I talk to people who are working with enterprise customers about AI, they inevitably need to talk about data first. That’s because the quality of the models depends on the quality of the data used to train
The AI pricing conundrum remains Unresolved We are a little over two years removed from OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT, a moment that will be remembered as a pivotal shift in the technology landscape. Almost immediately, we felt the impact of that change, and it wasn’t long before every