IT Life: Anand Krishnan, Canonical Cloud

How will the Internet of Things affect your organisation?

The way we think of IoT is – that everything around you with a processor in it now has the ability to give you answers. This is your car, the projector in the conference room, the big flat-screen in your living room, the drone you bought to play around with.

All of these are now computers that you can shape to your needs. For example, for most of us, a set-top box is a relatively static blackbox unit you get from your cable/TV provider. But it should do so much more.

You should be able to add and remove the apps you want on your set-top box – like your choice of VPN or DVR or video communications – to make it your own, much as you do with your smartphone. That is now possible. We see a lot of this innovation already because the bulk of these apps, like with most scale-out, is done on Ubuntu. We see a lot of interest and ideas within our developer community and with customers and we’re gearing up to serve that as we’ve done with the cloud.

What smartphone do you use?

Nexus 6

What three apps could you not live without?

A lot of my work is done on the move so I can’t live without good calendaring and email – sounds basic but this is where I spend the bulk of my time on the device. I travel a lot so the airline apps are indispensable, especially British Airways. And then I use Whatsapp a lot for both work and personal communication.

What new technology are you most excited for a) your business and b) yourself?

Speaking as a business – Anything that reduces the cost of delivering computing is exciting because it drives ubiquity and creates options. There are a lot of pieces that contribute to that movement – from chip design work to drive lower power consumption to open-sourcing software bundles that makes the complex accessible to anyone.

Speaking personally, the combination of machine-learning at scale in the datacentre, coupled with intelligence on the device in the user’s hands is going to be transformative. We’re increasingly surrounded by devices that know something about us. Having them work in symphony, with intelligence behind it, to truly anticipate and serve the user they belong to is the era I can’t wait to get to. This is very real and within reach.

If you weren’t doing the job you do now, what would you be doing?

This is not a job, it’s a hobby. If I wasn’t doing what I do now, I’d be doing something that looks a whole lot like it. Like since I was 14…

Quiz: What do you know about Linux?