Technology Management Continuum 2017 was organized on 18^th March 2017 with a theme reflecting the role of technology in transforming the businesses in a dynamic world. The Continuum saw a series of lectures centered on the theme:

 “Digital Advancements & Security setbacks: State of play, Lessons learned and future prospects” 

Following luminaries participated in delivering lectures at Technology Continuum 2017 on March 18th, 2017 at SJMSOM, IIT Bombay:

• Guruprasad Kuppu Rao, Director - Technology & Operations at Imaginarium India Pvt Ltd
•  Kunal Aman, Country Marketing Manager at SAS
• Sumir Nagar, CEO & Global Delivery head at Agile Financial Technologies
•  Amit Kumar Gupta, CTO at Transerve (udio)
•  Anil Mathur, Director - Industry partner & Sales at Microsoft India
•  Ramakrishna Rama, Director at Dell
• Mrinal Chatterjee, Director of Technology, India Payments at Amazon

Listed below are the some of the suggestive and non-restrictive sub-themes for discussion: 

Disruptions in Telecom Industry

Disruption is one of the most widely-used buzz word in the world of business. Today every industry is experiencing a disruption in one form or the other. It is reshaping strategies and rebuilding business models. Among all the industries and sectors, the telecom sector is the major centre of digital disruption. The telecom industry ecosystem comprises of three entities. First are the Service providers or carriers, second is the telecom equipment manufacturers or the infrastructure providers, and lastly, the device manufacturers. With technological advancements, equipment manufacturers are continuously coming up with newer technologies like LTE, 5G, WiMAX, etc. To stay ahead of their competitors, the service providers need to quickly adapt to these more modern technological changes to stay competitive in the market. This requires acquiring new spectrum under regulatory measures and the latest technologies which incur massive investments and costs.

Reshaping the Global Automotive Industry with Driverless Cars

“Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.” – Robin Sharma

History has been replete with various examples which have been instrumental in changing the entire course of history. One such is transportation. Systems inside the car can detect driver's sleepiness, and galvanic skin-response sensors can measure stress. Gadgets like cameras, scanners, and radar fitted on top of the car can monitor the road, and then respond. The giants of automotive industry like Ford, Tesla, General Motors, Daimler, Honda and even Tech Giants like Google are already heavily investing in these. Many of them already claim to have full-fledged driving cars which are currently under testing. Most of the proponents of driverless cars predict that self-driving cars will be up for sale by 2020

Big data and IoT - Two sides of the same coin

Some of the points from the 36^th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners held in Mauritius:

On Big Data:

Be transparent about what data is collected, how data is processed, for what purposes data will be used, and whether data will be distributed to third parties. Collect and store only the amount of data necessary for the intended lawful purpose

 On IoT:

Data obtained from connected devices is “high in quantity, quality and sensitivity” and, as such, “should be regarded and treated as personal data”. Privacy by design should become a key selling point of innovative technologies Data protection and privacy authorities should seek appropriate enforcement action when the law has been breached

History and the future of 3D printing

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process of making three dimensional solid objects from a digital file. It is an additive process where an object is created by laying down successive layers of material. Each of these layers is a thinly sliced horizontal cross-section of the eventual object. All 3D printers do not use the same technology. There are several ways to print and all those available are additive, differing mainly in the way layers are built to create the final object. Some methods use melting or softening material to produce the layers. Selective Laser Sintering(SLS) and Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM) are the technologies using this way of 3D printing. Another method is when we talk about curing a photo-reactive resin with a UV laser or another similar power source one layer at a time. The most common technology using this method is Stereolithography (SLA).

A future full of drones and the advance threat they present

Despite being relatively new technology, drones of various shapes and sizes are readily available in the market for purchase. The technology or processors that are being deployed in these drones are nothing more than of the smartphone we carry around with us. Most of the drones nowadays come with an onboard camera which allows to capture images and shoot videos too with high resolution and can also be used for live feed or telecast of any event or function. These drones also come with Wifi and Bluetooth technology so that mobile devices can control them. Drones that can be easily purchased from the market could be exploited for terrorist activities or to create havoc in a city or country.

Impact on employment with the advent of artificial intelligence

We could be looking forward to a future with endless possibilities where the robots and machines could create jobs in fields which did not even exist ten or twenty years back. They could create exciting work opportunities which do not even exist today. The information security world today is embracing the growth of AI as it will lead to much more stringent cybersecurity and checks. In the next ten to fifteen years, AI could possibly create the best defense systems to counter cyber attacks all over the world. So, the government would require AI qualified professionals for these tasks and these are jobs which previously did not exist. These theories point us in a different direction that AI will not simply destroy jobs, it changes them from one form to another. Augmentation of human jobs with machines could be the possible solution to the questions that we are facing today because of automation. It is in our own hands how we shape the future. If we create this threat that technology will lead us to a jobless situation worldwide then we are missing a huge opportunity to use it to solve problems that cannot be done by humans alone. The robots and machines can never become gods or the ones commanding humans to do tasks if humans are the ones programming them. If we let machines and bots put us out of jobs, it would be due to a lack of imagination on our part and of willingness to make a better future.

Supply chain analytics – An industry transformation 

Supply chain is a part of the operations chain where the companies mainly focus on cost-cutting measures and improve efficiency in terms of their inbound and outbound logistics system. In the future, more and more companies will look forward to their supply chain network in order to differentiate themselves from their fellow competitors. The supply chain industry has already witnessed the major implementation of data analytics across enterprises and the result of this implementation has been a greater amount of visibility and productivity in the output of the company. Supply chain plays a major role in the profitability aspect of a company and hence big data and data analytics will play a huge role in the further development of the same. With the ever-increasing consumer expectations, keeping the supply chain network updated with the latest technology in the market has become almost necessary for all the industries. There are also other reasons such as rising fuel costs, the global recession in the economy and other low-cost outsourcing due to which data analytics has come into the field of supply chain.