Splunk’s Stock Rising Despite Growing Losses

According to recent reports, worldwide big data hardware and software revenues grew 59% last year to $11.59 billion. The market is projected to be worth $18.1 billion this year, translating to growth of 61% over the year. The market is estimated to grow 31% annually to $47 billion by the year 2017. IBM is the market leader in big data products and services, with revenues of over $1.3 billion from the segment. Other smaller players are making their mark in the industry as well.

>>>

Salesforce Says Grow First, Profit Later

Gartner’s recent forecasts for worldwide enterprise software peg the worldwide CRM market to grow 15% annually from 2012 through 2017. Many CRM companies are expecting strong growth. But this rising revenue is not necessarily turning into profits.

>>>

Workday: High Revenue Growth, but What About Profits?

Gartner forecasts the SaaS market to grow 19.5% over the period 2011 through 2016 to $32.8 billion. Even at conservative estimates, researcher Tech Navio estimates the global software-as-a-service based enterprise resource planning software market projected to grow 13.93% annually from 2012 through 2016. The high growth in the market is estimated to be driven by the increased adoption of these services by SMEs.

>>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Your point is well taken. From what I know from bringing products to market, anything that requires too much work on the part of the consumer basically fails. As long as the products that come onto the market have self-learning capabilities, that would be fine.

Rich Mahoney: At the end of the day, these robots will be products. They will have to meet customer demands and have some value for the price people are paying for them. That is a phase that has to happen. There is a lot of attention to robotics right now. Even the smallest bits get a lot of attention at the moment. That is just the nature of the technology. But if you compare it with any other consumer product or any other area, the overall activity is extremely low. It is still very early. >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I don’t see this happening in the food preparation domain as much as I see it happening in cleaning services. Lawn mowing is a good example, because it is a repetitive and physically exerting function. Those are good application areas. If I were thinking about consumer applications, what other applications would I be looking at in terms of launching a product to market that could be remotely as successful as Roomba? >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I think the way to think about it is from different societies, where there is a lot more use of services and a lot more domestic help. In American society that help is there, but probably in the more affluent class of society and not as penetrated into the broad mass of society. If you look at lawn mowing, for example, I could see a parallel of the Roomba technology.

>>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: If you look at today’s robots, what would the market penetration look like? Are we still mostly in the area of industrial and manufacturing applications? How much have consumer applications taken off?

RM: First off, robotics is a very broad technology. There were talks about robotic kiosks at the airport that were handling the check-in for people bringing their bags. It was the first time I ever heard anyone refer to a kiosk as a robotic kiosk. >>>

The Past, Present, and Future of Robotics: Interview with Rich Mahoney, Director of Robotics Engineering at SRI (Part 1)

Rich Mahoney is the director of robotics engineering at SRI. He has more than 20 years of experience in the development and research of robotics. He holds a BS and an MS from Drexel University in Pennsylvania and a PhD in engineering from the University of Cambridge, England. In this interview he talks about current developments in the robotics industry and potential uses of robotics in our daily lives as well as the future of this fascinating field.

 Sramana Mitra: Rich, let’s start with a bit of context. Give us an overview of where you think robotics sits today.

Rich Mahoney: This is my 25th year in robotics. I started in 1988 as a graduate student, and robotics itself emerged in the 1960s as a manufacturing technology in Boston and Silicon Valley, where the first demonstrations of industrial robotics were gaining traction. >>>