Network Nirvana or nuisance
Wednesday, 24 June 2009 22:03.
I was a little late reading my copy of the Sunday Times this week. The reason for this was that I was indulging in one of my passions-Formula 1. I really thought that I was going to my last Silverstone British Grand Prix, but it seems that I may be going back next year, thanks to Bernie's change of plan. Going to the British Grand Prix is for me always a huge privilege and I never loose sight of the fact that Formula 1 really is a truly British success story. For those of you who are not fans, you may be interested to know that most of the teams are British ; the technology used in racing is some of the most advanced in the world and largely down to British engineering. Even the Force India team is based at Silverstone and is composed largely of British engineers!
But back to the Times- In fact two editions of the Times caught my attention, both of which were technology related. The first was called, "how your life will be run by the network". Apparently Logica are working on some really clever data mining software which will enable network operators to see what you are doing and produce a profile of each user. This will allow the study of real time behaviour and then be able to target specific products. It all sounds quite amazing, but I am a little worried about the "big brother" aspects and how secure all of this personal data will be. Management of the data and infrastructure will be a key issue and one that will be quite complex to solve- this aspect was not clear in the article. What did impress me however, was that again, similar to Formula 1, we do seem to be leading developments in the field partly due to our knowledge in mobile technology and software.
The second article by Lord Ress of Ludlow in Tuesday's Times, underlined how important science and technology is to the future of the U.K. economy. He emphasised the important role of government and organisations such as the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) in promoting science and technology. He made particular reference to the Cambridge phenomenon and the fact that there are over 1000 start ups based here in Cambridge. Many of these have become hugely successful directly as a result of the University. I have had a lot of experience in the last two years of working with many of these new companies, who collectively have some great products and services to help lift us out of recession. I am also proud to be part of a technology company at the forefront of new innovation in optimisation of networks, data centres and security.
If we really want to play in the big time with America (The Obama administration is putting a huge effort into promoting technology), we should pay more attention to scientific research and the entrepreneurial flair shown by companies such as Logica and other success stories similar to Cambridge and Formula 1. If we take the positives out of technology and do not see it as a nuisance, we really will all emerge from the recession in a much stronger position with some great new products for the global market.
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