The teams are here, and the first formal event for teams and coaches at the 2015 ICPC World Finals was today’s IBM Tech Trek.
The BlueMix development and deployment environment was the focus of this year’s presentations. BlueMix builds on Cloud Foundry to let developers rapidly create, test and deploy cloud-based applications.
IBM distinguished engineer Andrew Hately took the stage in a shirt that read
Commit, Deploy, Scale & Repeat. “We as computer scientists and engineers are ready to solve
some new problems,” Hately said. Those new problems are increasing cloud based. “Over 80 percent of the new stuff we’re building is on cloud
– pure software,” Hately said.
One of the major applications is the Internet of Things, John Cohn, IBM chief scientist of design automation, told the crowd. “Three things have come together to make this an amazing
time,” he said, citing “Wicked cheap electronics” like Arduino and Raspberry Pi devices, ubiquitous connectivity, and ubiquitous intelligence.
A serious challenge is dealing with the data generated by all of these connected devices. Cohn noted that this year, we will have the same number of bits recorded as the number of stars in the universe.
The cost of supporting hundreds of billions of devices and ensuring privacy are additional challenges. Also, because physical items have a longer life-cycle than virtual ones, dealing with the longevity of devices like refrigerators is an additional challenge.
Cohn invited the World Finalists to join IBM in trying to “build a vision for a scalable and secure future.”