Axelsson at TechEx 2024 in Amsterdam

TechEx is a leading series of tech events, and this October saw TechEx Europe commence, focussed on the European tech scene.  The very well attended event was composed of eight collocated expos taking place within the same venue, each focussing on distinct area namely, AI & Big Data, Cyber Security & Cloud, Data Centres, Digital Transformation, Edge Computing, IoT Tech, Intelligent Automation and Unified Communication.

The event had focus on both deep dive sessions into the tech powering the applications of tomorrow, such as one of the opening sessions covering how vector searches can be used in converged AI and application layers, as well as the differences between vector similarity search techniques such as Euclidian, cosine and dot product metric, each representing a distinct way for returning the most relevant result based on the distance between data points (vectors), inferring underlying latent features, characteristics and attributes of the vector at the time of the search (rather than relying on exact matches as in traditional key word searches), capturing patterns and relationships in the data, resulting in more relevant searches that understands the semantic relationships, meaning, and intent of the search, as well as showing how vector searches can be used for new ways of searching for different types of information such as concepts, patterns, similarity (such as image similarity), recommendations based on relevancy, how vectors can be indexed etc., while other sessions focused on higher level topics, such as cybersecurity, change management in digital transformation projects etc. Many great use cases, examples and case studies on how new and emerging technologies can and have been used for positive business and environmental impact were also on display, such as the use of wireless networks for more effective water management and smart port use cases, edge IoT network architectures and computing and their advantages, such as reduced data transmission and latency and faster response to anomalies through local data processing, distributed architecture for increased resiliency, as well as autonomous functionality.

The diversity of expos held was also reflected in the vendors exhibiting, with a great variety of vendors attending and exhibiting, ranging from IoT hardware manufacturers, SaaS and PaaS providers e.g., edge application- and operation management platforms, full stack- and cybersecurity providers, cloud providers based on modular compute units with circular cooling systems, and much more, all-in-all a great event that was well worth the visit.

There’s no lack of interesting IT events this autumn and one of the biggest ones is Microsoft Ignite, the largest Microsoft conference of the year commencing on November 19th, 2024, and at which I’m certain we’ll see many great new cutting-edge solutions and innovations in fields like security, governance, infrastructure, new data management capabilities and features, and, naturally, further advances in AI- and ML and how it continues to unlock new capabilities in workflow automation, digital innovation, new data-driven value creation, real-time insights, analytics and more.