MIKE GREGOIRE *
The other day, I ran into two separate articles on the software industry. One said that the world market for technologies related to the “Internet of Things” is expected to more than triple by 2020 to 7.1 trillion dollars. The other was a report personal data of 15 million accounts for a major telecommunications company had recently been stolen by hackers.
Following the scandal of the Volkswagen diesel emissions, in which They used deactivation devices and software to perpetuate a fraud, some focus on the negative aspects associated with the software. Now the results of false emissions have joined the online harassment and theft of electronic identities in the growing list of digital pests that corrode modern society. However, that is only a small part of the story. The most important story is the remarkable degree to which the software has become the center of our lives, and an important part of the global economy.
For the economy of applications Currently the software runs everything from giant companies to your smartphone. It has turned the world of travel. The way we do banking has undergone a complete overhaul of how the digital channels have begun to dominate the market. The windows and travel agencies brick and cement are becoming a thing of the past – just as dial telephones wheel drives and floppy disks. Most of us now buy air tickets online, make payments with credit cards online, and, increasingly, even ordered food online.
The software allows small businesses quickly escalate. It accelerates software transactional processes and eliminates barriers. Enables automation. It reduces human error. It generates objective data that can be extracted to drive new innovation and improve functionality. Is opening the door to entirely new business models.
Companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, SAP, Uber, Oracle, Airbnb, Amazon, IBM, Salesforce, Twitter , Yahoo, eBay and CA – to name a few – could not have been created without the software . These 14 companies for themselves employ over one million people, and your income is more than the total GDP of the country of Austria.
The impact of software in automotive technology provides a revealing case in point . The new electronics in your car not only serve to give good directions. These also make your car run better. There is a reason why your car does not contain a carburetor – a mechanical device – nothing more. A fuel injection system controlled by software can simply do a better job – adjusting air-fuel mixtures with high precision to match the speed of a car, engine load, weather conditions and operator preferences. This can be easily adjusted to optimize the operation of an engine fuel efficiency, energy and of course emissions.
This high level of accuracy and flexibility is what made it possible for a few Volkswagen wrong people play with the system. But it is also what makes so many new technologies more profitable, eficienticen resources and frankly more powerful than their mechanical and analog predecessors.
In the context of any imaginable process, the software enables sensitive responses and varied a complex range of inputs, in a way that mechanical tinsmiths old could never have dreamed. At this time, many of the brightest minds from around the world are busily applying the infinite adaptability of the logic circuits for every problem under the sun. Want to do a better job predicting the rains? Hundreds of people are writing code for it, even as you read this sentence. Interested in designing better tennis basketball? CAD programs have been created just for that purpose. You need to find your lost cat tennis? There is a program for that too.
The Secret Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bells today is much more likely to be in a hackathon in a garage. This should not be interpreted that mechanical engineering is an art that is dying. What it means is that engineers are already accustomed to using software to create their designs and design structures and mechanisms that ultimately will be operated by software. Over a hundred years ago, the electro-mechanical control systems began to take the importance of purely mechanical systems. Now, digital control systems are the norm. When a large building that was once necessary to contain all switches in a typical telephone exchange, a modest box or two will do the trick.
Software is now
King . It is changing the shape of our cities, the way we communicate, how we travel. This boosts economic growth and improves the way government works and delivers results as better medical care. It can be found everywhere – in large quantities. For control systems of an obviously complex equipment like fighter jet F-22 Raptor piece, they wrote 8 million lines of code. The Chevrolet Volt , which is a very nice car, but it seems to be a less complex notch and about 411 million dollars less expensive, than the F-22, uses 10 million lines of code. While history has shown that it is possible to build two fighter jets and electric cars without using any code at all, it is quite clear that none of these amazing vehicles could achieve half of what they do without the benefit of an innovative software .
Today the software is used for a number of innovations – from learning to read to children at school, up to farmers to decide what crops to plant, to entrepreneurs looking for investors and employees, and parents seeking healthcare for their children, to name a few other areas.
Every time a new technology emerges, there are those who try to adapt to destructive or fraudulent purposes. As Gutenberg should not be blamed for all the junk mail you receive questionable, and the Wright brothers should not be blamed for confusing baggage rules on discount airlines.
Of course we all have good reason to feel cheated by the revelations that emerged from Volkswagen, triggered by the misjudgment of a small group of employees VW . However, that does not change the fact that the software will continue to make the world a better place.
* CEO of CA Technologies
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