by Dr. Riad Hartani, Xona Partners
Internet Intersects Space Technologies
The space race is on again! This time the focus is on building a new generation of low earth orbit satellite constellations to deliver broadband internet. A simple equation lies at its heart: Internet to more people around the world; to keep the business model for the cloud/internet players going. Breakthrough in space technologies has led to a drastic reduction in the cost of building, launching and operating satellites. We have been actively working on the latest designs bringing in Internet knowhow into the new generation of satellite technologies.
Into the Quantum Era
Computing is the common denominator for the growth of today’s hot technologies: AI, IoT, Blockchains, cybersecurity and others. Leading the technology race requires one to crack the computing challenge. Quantum computing is a promising breakthrough where a lot of progress has been made in building a new generation of quantum computers. Yet, the first major commercial breakthrough of quantum technologies is emerging in a derivative area: Quantum internet security for robust encryption that leverages a new generation of key management technologies. Our work has focused on operationalizing these technologies into the real world. Field lessons are so far very exciting!
Blockchain Moving Ahead
Blockchain is by now a technology that everyone knows about and very few have managed to commercially leverage at scale. This is not because of lack of trying! Many applications, some commercial, are running, in different market segments, especially Fintech. Yet, much remains to do, even on fundamental aspects such as making the blockchain platforms robust, scalable, usable and manageable. While efforts are in full speed, it will take few additional cycles in engineering and development. Breakthroughs are promising in areas of decentralized data management, data sharing and exponentially efficient use of compute, storage and networking resources at scale. We have been working on the intersection of blockchain and the Internet infrastructure, which from experience will open up a new wave of applications. Killer apps will emerge – we just don’t know them yet!
Artificial Intelligence Itself Needing Disruption
AI has had many lives – we are just witnessing one of its best times! A new era of computing, the flood of data from new Internet business models, and the highly competitive data driven economy lead to incredible advances in AI. AI is now a common feature in many advanced products. But this has been the case for numerical AI specifically which takes the form of machine and deep learning models. The other branch of AI, symbolic AI, has seen very little progress. Our work has focused on developing models where symbolic AI would come in to address some of the challenges of numerical AI, for instance the cost of training, the complexity of learning and the efficiency of reasoning. This leads us to believe that the next decade will see more synergies between different intelligent computing technologies leading to a new set of applications.
A New Era in Software
Building software systems has changed drastically over the last few years because of two fundamental drivers:
1. Migration to fast-evolving software development and automation frameworks on top of the cloud, and
2. The emergence of large-scale open-source software and developer communities, spanning pretty much all industry verticals.
A lot is tried, some is adopted, and few becomes the norm. The first generation of cloud-based software leveraged virtualization and cloud compute models. An era of containerization of software at scale followed, which consequently led to promising models in areas such as serverless compute. Many of these developments have a common thread: The automation of software delivery and deployment of advanced API models, machine learning for software integration and delivery and rapid release of software applications. This is bound to continue to become a competitive differentiator for application developers aiming at leveraging the new generation of cloud compute architectures.