The Swift Pace of Technology
Most of us take for granted the state of technological innovation we enjoy today. In fact, keeping up with the latest developments is a continuous challenge for individuals and organizations alike. Exploring this topic often makes me think back to when I started in information technology in the late 1970s.
At that time, I was working in the UK and programming on a 512-byte mainframe computer. I wrote COBOL1 in pencil on coding sheets—these then became punch cards and were submitted for a daily compile. Getting to a clean executable could easily take a week, so I worked on 10 to 15 programs simultaneously.
When personal computers first debuted, pundits argued that we didn’t need them. What were we all going to compute? I remember purchasing my first PC in Manhattan and asking the salesperson whether I should invest in the larger 30-megabyte hard drive. He kindly advised against it, stating that no one would ever need so much storage space.
This, of course, took place before Steve Jobs and Bill Gates became celebrities, when a website was where you found a spider, and a bar code meant taking your turn buying a round of drinks. Looking back, what is stunning to me is the geometric growth of the data we store and use to make our everyday lives more efficient and enjoyable. I now have a two-terabyte backup drive at home the size of a paperback book, and a single family photo can easily reach 36 megabytes!
Unsurprisingly, recent advances in mobile and digital technologies are disrupting age-old business models in the banking industry—none more keenly than ones in areas such as peer-to-peer payments and consumer and small business lending. Our banking clients are being challenged to respond and adapt quickly to remain relevant in the financial marketplace. At Monticello, we have been part of the most technologically innovative programs to affect the banking industry in the last five years, including advanced application development in Python, Agile delivery services, analytics and business intelligence solutions, and UI/UX re-engineering projects.
As I have enjoyed this stroll down IT memory lane, I invite you to explore our website to learn how Monticello Consulting can assist your organization with its next complex technological change initiative. We would enjoy the opportunity to partner with your organization and help achieve your vision of success.
[1] COBOL (common business-oriented language) was introduced in 1959 and is still being used today to maintain legacy mainframes.
The Geometric Growth in Data Processing
Intel's co-founder, Gordon Moore, first published his prophetic observation in 1965 that the performance of computers would double every 18 months. Since that time, the chip industry has used Moore's Law as its guidepost—driving the industry's roadmap for developing successive generations of microprocessors. The benefits of this technological progress cannot be understated, and have arguably given rise to one of the greatest economic and social drivers of change in human history. The figure above illustrates the exponential increase in speed and performance of Intel's widely installed CPUs—used in devices spanning personal computers, laptops, and more recently the tablet market—over time.