Next in Tech

A set of significant deals in sports media rights have just closed and Richard Berndes returns to explore their impacts with host Eric Hanselman. There's a shifting mix of free-to-air, pay TV and streaming providers competing for the rights to air games. The English Premier League just settled a four year deal with a record total valuation and the U.S. National Women's Soccer League closed one at forty times its previous. All of this cash may be aiding gender parity in coaching pay, as well.

Increasing power densities in the devices that are populating datacenters are pushing their cooling capabilities to new technologies. Perkins Liu returns to dig into liquid cooling and progress at the Open Compute Summit with host Eric Hanselman. The OCP is working on extending its ecosystem efforts to liquid cooling as generative AI and other high performance computing uses look to leverage its greater capacity and sustainability. High powered GPU's are driving direct to chip cooling.

As semiconductor vendors wrestle with building more capable devices, they're turning to innovations to manage cost, improve yields and get to market faster. Chiplets let them pull together the best capabilities from different processes and geometries and build better parts. John Abbott returns to discuss the benefits and where chiplets are being put to work with host Eric Hanselman. Driven by the efficiency and power demands of AI, they're being used in next-generation GPU's and processors.

Many aspects of technology are interlinked with energy, but there are even more complex interactions that are in play. Our annual Big Picture reports are out and Veronica Retamales Burford and Nick Patience join host Eric Hanselman to explore the connections between water, both its use in datacenters and the issues caused by flooding and drought, energy, with its generation and consumption, and the demands and uses of AI.

spglobal.com/bigpicture

Vectors have an important property - they have both scale and direction. A new research product, the Technology Demand Indicator, offers this perspective in evaluating tech trends. Research Director Liam Eagle and Analyst Malav Parekh join host Eric Hanselman to discuss how it was developed and where it can be used. The panels, built from the 451 Alliance, generate insights that can provide direction.

To learn more about the 451 Alliance, visit: 451alliance.com

There are significant concerns about the security of the various publicly accessible generative AI tools that are available. Many organizations have enacted outright bans on their use for fear of exposing sensitive data. There's a path to access the benefits of these tools while managing the risk and Steve Riley, field CTO for Netskope, joins host Eric Hanselman to explore it. Starting with role-based controls and moving in to more specific shades of access can simplify security policies.

As the holiday shopping season kicks into high gear, customer experience becomes an even more critical part of retail. Sheryl Kingstone returns to discuss data from recent studies with host Eric Hanselman. Customers are expecting better integration of their online and in-person experiences and effective blending of digital capabilities is needed to keep from missing out on potential revenue. Digital infrastructure has to extend into stores, alongside a full complement of payment options.

There’s been rapid expansion in financial technologies and its adoption. Research director Jordan McKee joins host Eric Hanselman to look at trends and highlights from the Money 20/20 conference. Where cryptocurrencies played an outsized role in previous years, practical uses of blockchain capabilities have taken their place. Concerns about generative AI’s negative impacts on fraud overshadowed benefits. Open banking initiatives stand to create new opportunities, as well as a few risks.

With the ebb and flow of workloads to and from cloud, data doesn’t get the attention it should as a critical resource. Research director Henry Baltazar joins host Eric Hanselman to discuss the need for better data intelligence and results from the recent Voice of the Enterprise study. Gaps between data and storage infrastructure and the applications using it can lead to problems with application performance or increased costs with egress or retrieval fees. Better planning can prevent pain.

The excitement for 5G has waned after its initial rollout, but there is great promise that many of its capabilities will be put to work in Internet of Things applications. Rich Karpinski joins host Eric Hanselman to explore insights from the 5G Americas conference and look at impacts in the 5G and IoT markets. There’s a lot of 4G inertia to overcome and the 5G ecosystem and related investment is still building. 5G deployments are growing unevenly. Much more is to come, but the question is when?