IBM India Cloud Forum 2017: My Experience!!!!

There are certain events that take your breath away by displaying the sheer magnitude of possibilities. One such event that I attended yesterday was IBM India Cloud Forum 2017. Conducted at the prestigious Grand Hyatt, Mumbai,  the event was summarized by Fashion Designer Falguni Shane Peacock when she said that this isn’t the future of Technology, this is THE TECHNOLOGY. The event started with a keynote address by Mr. Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, IBM India. He explained the entire ecosystem around IBM Watson, the cloud platform offered by the Company and focussed on data security and scale of business. With business moving on the Cloud and technology integration is a challenge faced by CIOs and CXOs all across, this was a problem that need to be addressed and Mr. Bajwa did a fine job. I especially liked when he said that Technology may change, architecture will remain intact for the next two to three decades. This was an interesting observation on which even Honda VP and Operating Head IT, Mr. Hilal Khan and the illustrious Mr. Manish Choksi, President Asian paints also emphasised. Mr. Choksi was of the opinion to focus more on execution of a small piece rather than contemplating the architecture and figuring out the possible solutions as and when the problem approaches. One of the key insight I observed came from Mr. Amit Sethi of Axis Bank when he said that around 50% of Loan dispersal process is computer based and has no human intervention involved. Technology has indeed helped banks in reducing NPAs.

The initial keynote was followed by a panel discussion on ‘Creating the cloud platform for business with best in class partnerships’. It was a revelation to learn about the possibilities with IBM Watson that VMware India, SAP India, Red Hat, Tech Mahindra and others are doing. There was a demo on IBM Watson enabled fashion website abof.com w.r.t Jabong.com and how abof yields better search results, understands the human behaviour better than other platforms.

There was a lot of emphasis, and correctly so, on the word ‘ Cognitive’. If this whole event has to be defined in one word, it would be ‘Cognitive’, the word was uttered at ‘n’ number of instances that I lost count but essentially this was the event all about. The session of Shankar Kalyan, CTO, IBM Global business had some great insights on the entire cloud architecture. This was followed by the charismatic Kitman Cheung, CTO Analytics, IBM Asia Pacific. Kitman was a very enthusiastic IBMer who loves to interact and is extremely humble. In a discussion I had with Kitman offline, he was was being extremely modest when he said that I try to cover in entertainment what I lack in knowledge. His session on the importance of correct input data to generate meaningful  AI was the centre idea of his discussion. How IBM Watson powers such user friendly and highly accurate APIs was the essence of his talk.

This was followed by sumptuous lunch where Grand Hyatt was a great host. I loved the desserts that they offered and the quick turnaround to convert the ballroom into three separate halls dedicated to various topics of interest. Being an Investment Banker, My area of interest was automatically the panel of BFSI and it wasn’t disappointing to learn the applications of IBM Watson in BFSI sector. The presentation by the charming Arpit Ranjan of Signzy Technology was one of the way of leveraging the power of IBM Watson with validation of data in Financial Services domain. I found the presentation of Anand Mahurkar extremely informative and coherent when he told that IBM Watson and his Findability algorithm uses unstructured data through 52 variables to predict the user behaviour and personality traits of customer base. He took a twitter handle of a user from audience and predicted his personality on the system in a LIVE demo.

I was already aware of ORO Wealth business model of selling direct Mutual Funds but IBM Watson assistance was something new in this regard. I was more interested in blockchain event happening simultaneously at a different venue but by the time I reached, it had got over. Thanks to the very nice speaker Mr. Ojha who was kind enough to discuss the example he gave during the talk. It was particularly enlightening and for me, it was the enlightenment of the day to understand the applications of Blockchain in current context and how IBM Watson can be leveraged in this regard.

I will quickly summarize the various kiosks that I saw, powered by IBM Watson platform. The ability to generate new music based on historical music fed to the system, the generation of a movie trailer from an input movie based on the highs and lows of volume in it. I think the algorithm worked pretty well for a thriller movie but I have my apprehensions regarding the success of the trailer in case of a drama movie. May be, someone from IBM might explain that to me. The weather forecast, BFSI utility tools and the use of IBM Watson in predicting fashion trends were some of the key highlights of the day. Another key thing that I didn’t observed in other events was the way the questions were being asked. I have always observed that hand over mikes looks so bad in a professional setting and sometimes the quality of questions are below standard which wastes the time of speakers and audiences but here we had to post question on an app and the host would ask the most applicable question. I loved the use of technology in solving this issue.

At the end of the day, I truely felt enlightened, my world view got bigger and certainly better but the words of one of the speaker kept echoing in my conscious hours after the event. One Speaker in his talk said that If there is something that can be automated, It will be automated because Humans might have a bad day at Office but machines love to learn more. With every learning they become even better and while this event makes you in an awe with technology but simultaneously makes you wonder of a world where Humans might not be having jobs. The kind of precision, accuracy and confidence levels that IBM Watson has achieved will put humans to shame.  Capitalism was already putting humans under a lot of stress and its partnership with Technology is changing the world for better or worse that only History will judge. Shankar Kalyan was optimistic on the uses of Technology but I felt that somewhere it was frightening also.

It was a great event and I cherished every moment. The key learning for me was that technology is disrupting at a staggering pace and as a professional we need to adapt, learn, grow and outdo to be on top of our game. Kudos to the entire team of IBM, for hosting such a well organized event

  

(Abhinav is a Technology enthusiast and a blogger at heart who covers events. He can be reached at abhinav.simsr@gmail.com, @abhinavpathak86 Twitter handle or you can buzz him on Linkedin also.

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