Computer Science at Yale

Abstract: The Global Technology Outlook (GTO) is IBM Research’s vision of the future for information technology (IT) and its impact on industries that use IT. This annual exercise highlights emerging software, hardware, and services technology trends that are expected to significantly impact the IT sector in the next 3-7 years. In particular, the GTO identifies technologies that may be disruptive to an existing business, have the potential to create new opportunity, and can provide new business value to our customers. A number of architectural changes are occurring – all of which are expected to evolve into a new enterprise environment with new ways to deploy information technology. The 2009 GTO focuses on five topics: Transformational Hybrid Systems, Fine-Grained Security, Business Services in the Cloud, Services Quality and Data to Smart Decisions. In this talk, I will share the GTO 2009 findings with the audience. Following are some details on the five GTO 2009 topics.

Transformational Hybrid Systems: The Next Generation of Systems Architecture A large class of emerging applications, such as those arising from the instrumented, interconnected and intelligent world of a Smarter Planet, exhibit requirements that are much broader than those found in traditional applications. Within a decade, these emerging applications will require substantial improvements in traditional system characteristics such as performance, power efficiency and cost/performance; at the same time, these systems will be required to provide novel attributes such as domain-driven specialization, composability of subsystems, and dynamic optimizability.

Fine-Grained Security: Smarter Defenses for a More Interconnected World Businesses need to think with more precision about their information assets. We now need to determine how those assets may require varying levels of protection, and how users may require varying degrees of access. In this model, each type of stakeholder is subject to different rules within a common framework that governs their network access privileges, with various permissions modifiable at a moment’s notice. To prevent one breach from disrupting the entire network, and to isolate damage to one sector, enterprises need to implement a multi-tiered containment approach.

Business Services in the Cloud Much of the public discussion on Cloud to date has focused on the infrastructure level, which is critically important. However, the largest and fastest growing opportunities for providers and clients are arising several layers above the infrastructure, with new service delivery models that can help make systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, productive and responsive: Platform services, Application services, Business services and People services.

Services Quality: The Next Great Differentiator Regardless of the product, services and manufacturing are converging. And the growth in knowledge-intensive areas such as energy, healthcare, financial services and education is being driven by services. Services have now reached a point where quality can be the next great differentiator for IT services providers, as well as the rest of the services industries that constitute the development of a new services economy. But many challenges need to be overcome. To enable standardized, consistent delivery across a services infrastructure spanning global accounts, a standardized “IT factory”, or “services factory”, will emerge – learning and adapting from other industries like manufacturing.

Data to Smart Decisions Advances in the science of data analysis, exponential increases in available computing power, and vast new sources of data, science and technology have come together and made it easier than ever to tackle complex problems. In the coming “data tidal wave”, what will differentiate some providers is the depth and ability to manage, analyze and model the data from end to end. A company with a holistic view will be in position to take advantage of an unparalleled opportunity compared to companies with an incomplete picture of bits and pieces. A key measure of success for new tools will be in their usability.

Digital Economy: New Value Creation Models With the world becoming increasingly interconnected and flattened, we are seeing an evolution in the digital economy and a paradigm shift in value creation and how that value is exchanged. As new ways to exchange value become the norm, companies must align feature and function to create, support and transact money flows in a smarter digital economy. This Digital Economy 2.0 represents both an opportunity to create value and a deep societal shift to a new economic model where transactions, increasingly in the purely digital realm, create significant changes in how value is managed and created. Several key factors point to transparent securitization, mobile financial services, and reliable carbon trading as areas with the greatest initial potential. These factors include the widespread impact stemming from the inability to trace structured securities; mobile network operators expanding banking services to previously “unbanked” populations, primarily in emerging markets; and carbon trading, which has been deemed an efficient strategy for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Bio: Dr. C. Mohan joined IBM Almaden Research Center (San Jose, California) in 1981 where he worked until May 2006 on a number of topics in the areas of database, workflow and transaction management. From June 2006, he worked as the IBM India Chief Scientist, based in Bangalore, with responsibilities that relate to serving as the executive technical leader of IBM India within and outside IBM. In February 2009, at the end of his India assignment, Mohan resumed his research activities at IBM Almaden. Mohan is the primary inventor of the ARIES family of recovery and concurrency control methods, and the industry-standard Presumed Abort commit protocol. He was named an IBM Fellow, IBM's highest technical position, in 1997 for being recognized worldwide as a leading innovator in transaction management. In 2009, he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE). He received the 1996 ACM SIGMOD Innovations Award in recognition of his innovative contributions to the development and use of database systems. In 2002, he was named an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. At the 1999 International Conference on Very Large Data Bases, he was honored with the 10 Year Best Paper Award for the widespread commercial and research impact of his ARIES work which has been widely covered in textbooks and university courses. From IBM, Mohan has received 2 Corporate and 8 Outstanding Innovation/Technical Achievement Awards. He is an inventor on 34 patents and was named an IBM Master Inventor in 1997. Mohan works very closely with numerous IBM product groups and his research results are implemented in numerous IBM and non-IBM prototypes and products like DB2, MQSeries, WebSphere, Informix, Cloudscape, Lotus Notes, Microsoft SQLServer and System Z Parallel Sysplex. He has been on the advisory board of IEEE Spectrum and an editor of VLDB Journal, and Distributed and Parallel Databases. Currently, he is a Steering Council member of IBM's Software Group Architecture Board, and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology. In the past, he has been a member of IBM's Research Management Council (RMC), IBM's Technical Leadership Team (TLT), IBM India's Senior Leadership Team, and the Bharti Technical Advisory Council. He is on the Academic Senate of the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Bangalore. Mohan received his PhD in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981. In 2003, he was named a Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Madras from which he received a B.Tech. in chemical engineering in 1977. Mohan is a frequent speaker in North America, Western Europe and India, and has given talks in 35 countries. More information can be found in his home page at http://www.almaden.ibm.com/u/mohan/