Microsoft Cloud Innovation and Security Summit

I had the privilege to present at the The Form Rooms on Tuesday 14 November 2023 at the Microsoft Cloud Innovation and Security Summit run by Cloud Direct.  

The Forms Rooms is on a quiet street in London’s chic Covent Garden that was once a historic Victorian school that has been lovingly restored. 

My session was on 'The disruptive power of data and AI'.  About how Generative AI, Microsoft Fabric and Data Governance are the talk of the town, but without the building blocks of good quality, secure, accessible data, innovation in business is stunted. 

The talk covered how Data & AI are providing a catalyst for innovation addressing  

• Where is Data & AI tech going
• Why having an agile data strategy and data governance adoption path is important. 
• How data can be a catalyst for innovation 

In today’s world technology changes and enhancements are accelerating at speed. Developments from the 1960’s took decades to move into the modern workplace. But now we see these coming to the fore with the democratisation of technology.  We moved from the 

1970s where Codd invented the relational database

To the 1990s when ‘Big Data’ became a term to address the ever-increasing large volume of data, with discussions of volume, velocity , variety and veracity. Here we saw the mention of that ever-important reference to the quality of data. 

With that grew the ‘Internet of Things’ processing more data from sensors, devices and communication networks. 

Behind the scenes world leading database researchers meet every few years to discuss the impact on practice, challenges and emerging applications. The latest output was documented in the Seattle report in 2019. One of the areas discussed was the fact that it was impractical to continue to move volumes of data between systems. We see this fundamental change in Microsoft Fabric.

And today, it is all about ‘Generative AI’ and what it can create...

There were many really interesting sessions during the conference with Innovation, AI and Security intertwined.