Cloud Lighthouse Labs

Reduce your tech investment risk and long-run costs in our early-stage innovation Lab to rapidly experiment, blueprint, and prototype

We launched the Cloud Lighthouse Labs to take on technical challenges that exist between the arrival of new technology and a typical organization’s decision to invest heavily in that new tech. Our partner organizations with whom we craft, architect, and execute Cloud + AI strategy can rely on the Labs to rapidly experiment, blueprint, and prototype before deciding to go big with a particular technology. And, as always, our clients need not be concerned that we have a hidden motive to sell them an army of implementation consultants afterwards: It’s not even a service we offer.

Rapid Prototyping

Quickly develop new solutions so that you know what you’re getting into and can make informed decisions on a big investment, contract, or costly implementation.

Solution Blueprint

Create a vision and roadmap, design, technical architecture, and possible alternatives for complex technical initiatives in just two weeks.

Frontier Experience

Accelerate your journey to becoming a frontier firm and reduce risk of AI pilot failure with our intense, cross-technology two-week frontier experience.

What kinds of challenges are we solving in the Labs?

We’re helping our partners experiment, innovate, and share investment before they get to more costly implementation stages…

Can we connect our single source of truth sitting in OneLake or another data lake to a custom Copilot?

Is Power Pages the right choice as a portal to manage our thousands of field personnel and volunteers?

We need a better way to monitor and govern AI adoption, but we don’t need to own the tools ourselves.

Just how exposed are we to the risks of data sitting in SharePoint training AI tools like Copilot… without us knowing?

How straight-forward will it be to move our application data to Dataverse and shortcut it to the lake?

A law firm needs this custom connector. A global NGO and a utility company need it, too. Let’s share the cost!

Insights from the Labs

We share what we learn, so that you can learn with us…

Featured

These are the days of miracle and wonder. AI is the long distance call.

The Boy in the Bubble was the first track of Paul Simon's Graceland, in my view, the greatest musical album released in my lifetime. The year was 1986.

Lately I find myself quietly singing Bubble's refrain.

“These are the days of miracle and wonder. This is the long distance call The way the camera follows us in slo-mo, the way we look to us all. The way we look to a distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky. These are the days of miracle and wonder, and don't cry, baby, don't cry, don't cry.”

The genius of Simon's lyrics is in the juxtaposition of tragedy and progress. Nearly 40 years later, the line "these are the days of miracle and wonder" comes to mind when contemplating the nature of this moment in humanity's technological progress. Yet, consider the song's final verse.

Launching the Center for Trustworthy AI, a Global Movement

The Center for Trustworthy AI has been established by technology and legal partners with contributions from experts around the world because the achievement of Trustworthy AI is an effort that must be taken on by every user, every leader, and every organization that wishes to survive and thrive in the coming age. The Center for Trustworthy AI is the guiding beacon for organizations navigating this unprecedented wave of AI innovation.

A Call to Arms for Trustworthy AI: Can we trust Artificial Intelligence?

People and organizations around the world are asking, ”Can we trust artificial intelligence?”. Sure, can we trust AI to be responsible, to generate accurate, trustworthy responses to our prompts? But look more deeply and you will find that truly Trustworthy AI is about so much more. Do we trust that our investments in AI are wise, that we are not throwing effort and money after nonsense? Do we trust that we are moving rigorously, purposefully, and efficiently towards AI’s promised land?

A Moment of Reckoning for Humanitarian and Public Sector

Leaders of these organizations now face a moment of reckoning and—in the chaos of that moment—an opportunity to craft the modern, technologically nimble institutions resilient enough to continue delivering the crucial services upon which their publics so desperately depend. They must use technology to drive out cost, with the core thesis being that to emerge stronger, they must become more modern organizations that use technology to reduce cost and improve services, rather than viewing technology as an ever-expanding cost center. Those that seize the opportunity may survive. Those who let it slip away will fail.

Applying Modern Ecosystem-Oriented Architecture in PubSec

We’ve covered the Principles of Ecosystem-Oriented Architecture (EOA) and Mapping your Cloud Ecosystem in previous articles. We’ll now make the concepts discussed in those previous articles more real in context of Public Sector organizations. To do so, let’s spend some time speaking less about technology and begin describing workloads that incorporate functions and scenarios upon which a typical agency might rely on its cloud ecosystem to perform.