Joël Van Hoolandt — Fractional CTO | Magma Consulting

Coming back on the McKinsey report I discussed on my last post, one emerging segment was interesting (well, they all are) - but let's focus on one more specifically, otherwise I don't have anything to say for this month). Being involved in knowledge and IT management for many years now, the section of automation of knowledge work is one of the most challenging. With the emergence of new tools, new programming languages and techniques (what after object-oriented programming?), increased processing power, enhanced connectivity and portability...more than 100 millions FTE's could be impacted). The use of deep learning, neural networks (computers that enable and adapt their own algorithms), we expect huge job shifts (job losses and job creations, with gains in medical sciences, management and professional services [fraud detection, for example]). This is probably underestimated today in the current CIO agenda's, where we're still lacking good and robust informat...

In May 2013, McKinsey Global Institute issued a publication about the major technologies and 'next big things' that our interconnected, worldwide economy could expect. They identified, based on specific criteria, the 12 technologies that would make a significant difference (in our lives, in our economies, in our working habits). Mobile Internet Automation of Knowledge work The Internet of things Cloud Technology Advanced Robotics Autonomous vehicle Next generation genomics Energy storage 3D printing Advanced materials Advanced oil & gas exploration and recovery Renewable energy And, based on this selection, I believe that the daily life of the Chief Information Officer (Chief Innovation, CTO, the title does not really matters here) will be tremendously impacted by some of this. If we consider the evolution of...

Norton has released, for the fourth edition, a cyber security report. What I like in this reading is the readability and the clean facts that it delivers. For example, it is quite striking that victims of cyber criminality activities are located in Russia and China (slightly different than being at the origin of some attacks). And we have interesting stats, like that 50% of surveyed adults have been already facing some cyber crime threats... You can get the full report right here .

While reading the McKinsey Big data report ( that’s a worth reading one,you can find the document right here ), some questions popped in my mind regarding the concrete use of ‘big technology’ (and not only the produced data) in the consulting world really means. For example, having attended the HP Discover 2014 Conference, there are some highly impacting technologies that will radically transform our economy (and that’s the kind of slogan you will read in every management business book). But the remaining question is ‘HOW’? In the ‘Big technologies’, we should include what we call nowadays ‘disruptive’ technologies, being cloud computing (but what's the real, concrete shift for Small and Medium Enterprises for example? Is the cloud really changing the way the SME’s will operate on their markets?); big data might change tremendously marketing and client prospection, especially when public data sets will be made available (and we could imagine the setup of open, public ...

Now that we have a new European Commission in place (and if, by any chance, you spent your last twelve months in a fridge, have a look here if you want to know more about it ), the political work may start. One of the major action item we have to work on (amongst many others, I agree) is on technology and the digital agenda (we all remember the 2020 digital objectives, with becoming the most competitive digital economy in the world ). Well, in the meantime, we had a financial crisis (still), budget discussions, wars, Ebola, UK out of Europe (oh, no, sorry, that's not decided yet)...and I have the impression that the road to our technology heaven is still very long. But. The Commission worked on an ambitious agenda and in the last Open Innovation Letter, the dates for the new Net Futures 2015 have been announced (March 25-26 2015, in Brussels). The event will be a bring together event, around all the hype tech topics of today (cloud, open technologies, software and services)...

I attended earlier this week the official launch and public presentation of the new Belgian Cyber security alliance . I have to say that the idea is excellent, especially in a such divided country, where we became specialists in fragmenting budgets, workforces and ideas, losing everywhere the power of a certain scale (even if the scale is quite relative in the Kingdom of Belgium).  The new coalition has a triple objective: Knowledge exchange, with a cross-sectorial approach; Raising awareness within the population about the risks associated with cyber criminality and e-negligence; Policy advice, where the members will establish recommendations and solutions to our public authorities (which is probably an excellent idea, when you consider the level of IT savviness from our politicians...)  Good luck to the group and let's hope it will deliver all of this!