As I close out my 28th year with the Object Management Group® (!), one last report for 2017.
I spent a large chunk of time at AI World, an excellent Artificial Intelligence-focused event in Boston. With 2,200 attendees, it was a busy and boisterous event, with a fair dose of other hot technologies mixed in (Internet of Things, Hyperledgers, Cyber Security, etc.). Having been an expert system developer building AI systems early in my career ― in the 1980's ―it definitely is amazing to see AI come back as a market. Early AI startups in which I was involved (A.I. Architects, Symbolics, Gold Hill Computers and others) have gone by the wayside, but the amazing jump in computing power in the intervening decades has made many more things possible than could be done 35 years ago. Expectations, however, are on their way up the hype cycle; we'll have to be careful to control the hype and ensure that we promise what really can be done. I am constantly reminded of one of the best definitions of Artificial Intelligence that I ever heard: AI is anything a computer can do that you didn't think computers could do.
I also had the opportunity, through the good graces of Industrial Internet Consortium® member, Vincent Wang of Wanxiang Group, to meet with a traveling group from the National Xiaoshan Economic & Technological Development Zone, which is working to develop the technological prowess of Xiaoshan (a region of Hangzhou south of Shanghai, China). They were quite interested how a small consortium based in Boston with active projects in standards, Industrial Internet, software quality and cloud computing was having such an impact in the world and how we could help Xiaoshan develop. I naturally had a few ideas! They brought along some very helpful people from local Boston firm A123 Systems, now a Wangxiang Group subsidiary.
As 2017 comes to an end, I am reminded of the many accomplishments and successes our members have achieved:
• publication of the first results of the IIC testbed program
• formation of the Retail Domain Task Force that resulted in a partnership with the National Retail Federation
• publication of the Industrial Internet Connectivity Framework, the Industrial Internet Security Framework and the Industrial Internet Analytics Framework
• adoption by NATO C3B of the Object Management Group Unified Architecture Framework® Metamodel
• adoption by the OMG® BOD of the Automated Technical Debt measure as an OMG specification, which estimates future correct costs to maintain software. It also represents the level of risk exposed to the business due to the increased cost of ownership
• initiatives to make our information more digestible and actionable, including maturity models so that IIoT systems can be brought to market more rapidly
In the meantime, o
