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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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