Compared to other fields, development has one major advantage: it is universal. Applications, websites and services become global when made public. However, their success relies on their associated scope, on the way in which users interact with the products and the way in which marketing resources are engaged. Up to now, research, finances/stock exchange and the media have been noted to be highly successful. We expect other fields, like education, health and agriculture to embrace the advantages which derive from the fusion of software, robotics and AI. In agriculture, for instance, drones oversee the crops, while algorithms are used to detect possible issues and to improve overall production. Ideally speaking, we could go to the store to buy a pack of seeds, but also receive a drone responsible for planting and overseeing the crops, which results in more productive or eco crops. The integration between IoT and sensors, as well as irrigation control will hopefully be done based on a common standard, adopted by the entire industry. This is not a Sci-Fi scenario, as it will probably become reality in the next couple of years. If we take the example of Larry Page, Google co-founder, he invested 100 million dollars in flying cars. Similarly, Elon Musk, Tesla founder, invested in the exploration of cosmic space, SpaceX, which will launch the first satellites this month. These examples may seem extreme, but the lesson start-ups may learn is that they must go beyond the comfort zone of standalone or website applications, and factor in the new technical and economic environment.
We begin the current issue with a brief retrospective of Techsylvania and IT Camp, two of the most important events that take place in Cluj. The 4th Industrial Revolution and robot (r)evolution invites us to the world of robotics and IoT. Scalable Data Science: Spark ML Pipelines presents the last Apache project for machine learning. SAP HANA as Database is the first article in a series which will present the SAP HANA platform. Our next article focuses on automating testing. ODI 12c versus Talend compares two ETL tools, extract-transform-load. Hiperspace in software development outlines the current paradigms in development and guides us in choosing a programming language when we start a new project. We end the current issue with a quaint article, Do we dedicate pipes or poetry?, which tackles the term dedicated, often misused in IT.
by Bogdan Bucur
