The Intelligent Enterprise in the Era of Big Data

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is about a big, broad topic and has been in the making for at least two decades. It is the reflection of a lot of learning from colleagues, customers, teachers and friends.

I got the computing bug in the late 1970s working at a large US multinational in Delhi, India. I used to hang around the freezing cold area of the office floor where a couple of IBM 1401s were housed along with all the card punching and reading machines! Later I learned that those machines were already dinosaurs here in the United States, but they were operated with awe back in India those days. I was not trained as a computer programmer but bribed my way into the computer center by helping several programmer friends with punching and running the cards through the readers. From those days to now Internet, tablets, and smart phones, I have witnessed an incredible rate of technology advance in my lifetime to date, and the pace of acceleration seems to be only gaining even more momentum!

Just as Warren Buffett famously talks of his ovarian lottery, I feel incredibly lucky and privileged to have had the ability to learn the way I did and for the breaks and opportunities that came along the way to shape that learning and my professional journey. There are so many that I owe a deep debt of gratitude to. Thanks to my dear friend, Dr. Sanjiv Chopra, I am reminded of Captain Charlie Plumb and his deeply incisive “who packed your parachute” parable as I think back to the times and people ...