Kashmera Self speaking at the 2017 IBM Interconnect Conference
InterConnect is IBM’s cloud and cognitive conference where more than 20,000 developers, clients and partners are being introduced to the latest advancements in cloud computing through 2,000 sessions, labs and certifications. IBM is positioning both enterprise and startup clients for success with a complete portfolio of cloud services and marquee partnerships, supporting a wide range of applications including: big data, analytics, blockchain and cognitive computing.
The conference definitely has an elevated profile with speakers from large tech companies, a session with actor Will Smith and enough content to motivate one to walk about 12km a day to get the most out of the conference.
Theme 1 – Data
IBM is putting its money where its mouth is with the combination of its public cloud infrastructure and Watson’s cognitive capabilities. This puts IBM in a unique position that helps differentiate them from other cloud providers. Ultimately this will allow data from across industries and organizations to be coupled with an organizations own data to drive meaningful insights that will help deliver on the experiences that customers are looking for to be met.
Theme 2 – AI and IoT
How many acronyms can I use in a single theme? Device to device connections are already on the rise and this coupled with the use of artificial intelligence will continue to disrupt businesses and create opportunities for new business models.
Theme 3 – Open standards
There were many sessions and many customers from within the financial services space on their success with IBM’s solution in the development and management of APIs. With the introduction of PSD2 in Europe and consumers worldwide demanding ease of use and access to information, financial services are burdened with trying to figure out how to solve for this problem due to their internal legacy systems. IBMs API Connect Solution provides developers the means to easily integrate applications without the need to have expertise on legacy systems ultimately helping to create open systems to deliver the experiences customers are seeking.
