ICON delivers keynote speech at Microsoft’s Innovation Day

“We’re living exciting times, anticipating a smarter web which will be more personalised and ubiquitous.” This was the message expressed by ICON’s Director Dr. Gege Gatt, during the Microsoft Innovation Day held last week at the Hilton in Portomaso.

During this one-day event, which was presided upon by Mr. Jan Muhlfeit, Chairman Europe, of Microsoft Corporation, various guest speakers shared their knowledge about cloud technologies and how these can be put to use in different business scenarios.

Defining Cloud Computing is quite a subjective task as people tend to explain the term from their own perspective. It is commonly referred to as Software as a Service (SaaS), Service Oriented Architecture, or a mesh of Rich Internet Applications. However these are merely styles of architecture that are applied to the cloud, rather than Cloud Computing per se. 

In a visually engaging presentation, Dr. Gatt shared his preferred analogy during the Microsoft event. Cloud Computing is like deciding whether to build your own home against renting it. Whereas building a property allows control over customisations, it also necessitates early capacity-planning, stressful supplier-management efforts and also involves management of maintenance work.

Cloud Computing is parallel to renting your home – it is scalable and on-demand as infrastructure and services are provisioned over the Internet. There is no capital expenditure outlay and cloud-users pay per use, or periodically. Since Cloud Computing suppliers are specialists in their area they bring to users best-of-breed technology which offers faster go-to-market times and includes improved security of the inherent data.

As we move from the static Web to a more interactive Web 2.0 and soon Web 3.0, the bulk of user data and applications are shifting to the cloud. Cloud computing gained popularity as an inexpensive way of providing storage and software, similar to what tools like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and social media have been up to. Such applications are free – people only share data (which drives advertising revenue) and in return users are rewarded with great service and high availability.

The massive use of social networks and web applications has married technology with social forces, which together drive global development. Whereas consumers look for technologies to make their voices heard, more and better technology is produced to cater for such demand. This has been massively verified by the unsettlement in various countries in the Arab World whose underpinning communication tool has been the web. Dr. Gatt quoted social media expert Rafat Ali, who claimed that today technology is not just a tool but is a method of “transmission of hope across these countries”.

“Such development is moving all previously offline or private data and applications to the cloud”, said Dr. Gatt, “making it easier for us in technology to bring forth even more innovative software. It also allows us to support our clients by freeing their time and resources, allowing them to focus on their core business rather than on undifferentiated ICT functions.”

Dr. Gatt concluded his presentation with a visionary overview of the future web: “Tomorrow's web will be smarter. It will anticipate what we are doing. It will be more personalized and will know us better. It will be more ubiquitous, and all devices will be part of it.”