Dave's Adventures in Business Intelligence

The opening portion of the keynote was a dramatic (perhaps overly dramatic?) introduction by Gabriel Byrne of Usual Suspects fame (among others). His talk was interesting but what I liked the best was his update on Einstein’s famous formula. It looked like this:

e = mc(imc)2

In this formula, “m” stands for mobile, “c” stands for cloud, and “imc” is short for in memory computing. The concept is simple. By leveraging the power of in memory analytics, we can set up information resources in the cloud that are consumed by mobile devices. The three technologies individually are strong, but together they become greater than the sum of the parts. One of the primary restrictions about mobile devices is their relative lack of computing power. (Later in the keynote one panel member observed that today’s smartphones do, however, have more computing power than the systems NASA used in the 60’s to land man on the moon. Can you imagine piloting your lunar lander with your iPhone? Wonder if AT&T has cell coverage on the moon…) Because of the lack of computing power, mobile devices are mostly consumption portals rather than calculation engines. That’s where in memory comes into play. By pushing the analytics back onto the server and hosting them in memory, a mobile device doesn’t have to be brawny, it just needs enough brains to connect and render.

Putting the systems into the cloud just ads ubiquity to the system. It’s no longer behind a corporate firewall, it’s available to anyone in your enterprise, no matter where they are. It’s a compelling vision.

The keynote was followed by a discussion panel which was both entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time. It was more about where we will all be in 30 years than the more immediate concerns of in memory computing. 🙂 I will post more on the panel discussion later today. If you can, try seeing if the session was recorded and can be played back online. It’s worth watching.

The conference is starting out well. My flight was uneventful, although I had forgotten the average age for passengers on flights to Orlando is substantially lower than other flights. I wonder why that is? 🙂 I managed to connect with a couple of friends and have some fun a Universal Studios. But that was yesterday, and this morning I am sitting in the general session getting ready to take in the keynote. I’m always intrigued by how many folks sitting around me seem to be so focused on “live blogging” or tweeting that they miss out on some of the keynote. Some folks seem to be so busy writing about what was talked about a few minutes ago that they miss what’s going on right now.

I hope to be doing my own version of “semi-delayed blogging” throughout the day today. I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot about the fruits of the Sybase acquisition this year, as mobility seems to be one of the hot topics. I’ll share the main points of the keynote shortly.

After it’s over. 😉