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
I was at an event recently where I had an interesting discussion with a college dean about preparing young people for the changing world AI is creating. When I asked about his students' interest in AI, he surprised me with his answer: he said they were more concerned about
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Conventional wisdom suggests that using AI tools makes us more productive. Think about it: you've got this bot that can do stuff for you, whether that's writing code, conducting research or editing this commentary. In theory, that should save time and reduce the administrative busy work
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Wall Street has spent the last two weeks in a full-blown panic over SaaS, with public SaaS stocks shedding hundreds of billions of dollars in value. Investors, behaving with their usual pack mentality, have suddenly decided that AI represents an existential threat to the entire SaaS model. It’s
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When you saw me out your window Singing from the garden Only the beginning I'm only getting started I don't mind the digging Baby, I'll work harder ~Jack Johnson, Washing Dishes Six weeks ago, I announced I was leaving boldstart and taking this blog
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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