"The Collapse of Complex Infrastructures" - a talk by Mark Burgess

The Collapse of Complex Infrastructures

Consumer IT services continue to grow in scope and variety, and the infrastructure for bringing them to life is exploding in scale, speed, and complexity. History shows that all collaborative systems eventually fail because of the law of "diminishing marginal returns". What does this mean in IT, and how do we ensure that technology scales to meet society´s needs with a minimum of overhead? What does it mean for competitive advantage, for agilty, quality and time to market? In this talk, Mark Burgess explores more of the ideas from his latest book In Search of Certainty: The science of our information infrastructure (http://www.amazon.com/In-Search-Certainty-Information-Infrastructure-ebook/dp/B00ENEEWYO), and explains how we can cope with necessary and sufficient complexity.

About the speaker

Mark Burgess is the CTO, Founder and original author of CFEngine. He was senior lecturer and then professor of Network and System Administration at Oslo University College from 1994-2011. He was the first professor with this title. Mark obtained a PhD in Theoretical Physics in Newcastle, for which he received the Runcorn Prize. His current research interests include the behaviour of computers as dynamic systems and applying ideas from physics to describe computer behaviour. Mark is the author of the popular configuration management software package CFEngine, and is the founder, chairman and CTO of the CFEngine company. He led theoretical and practical contributions to the theory of automation and policy based management, including the idea of Operator Convergence and Promise Theory. He is the author of numerous books and papers on Network and System Administration and has won several prizes for his work.