Kenneth Corbin
Tech CEOs warn of threats to cloud, big data economy
CEOs at some of the nation's leading tech companies see boundless potential for big data and smarter, integrated systems to address major social challenges in areas ranging from medicine to education to transportation -- but at the same time, they worry that policymakers at home and abroad could stand in the way of that vision.
Top executives at firms such as Dell, IBM and Xerox gathered in the nation's capital under the auspices of the Technology CEO Council, bringing with them a message that the data economy is imperiled by concerns about security and privacy and protectionist policies that could limit the growth of cloud computing and balkanize the Internet.
"The biggest barriers I think that we see are not around the engineering. It's around regulation. It's around protectionism. It's around trust, or lack thereof. It's around policies and procedures," says Xerox Chairman and CEO Ursula Burns, who also chairs the CEO council.