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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Valley Tech Leader Gives His Take on State of Industry

On the day after Christmas, the Apple iTunes website nearly crashed when a rush of people who received gift cards attempted to use them to purchase music to download to the ubiquitous portable music devices. What happened that day is just a hint of things to come in the world of commerce on the Internet, the head of a Woodland Hills information technology company said. “That is the power of the information age right there,” Lief Morin, president of Key Information Systems, told members of the ACG101 Corridor business group. An increase in people using the Internet for shopping was among the changes coming to the tech industry as it reaches the early stage of maturity and companies do what they need to reach consumers and all the new electronic devices they use, Morin said. The immediate future also holds more bandwidth as cable broadband and DSL become more widely available and an improvement in standards so users can connect more effectively with websites, Morin said. Morin’s talk hit the nail on the head as to where tech was going, said Jeffrey Craft, an intellectual property attorney with a law firm with an office in Westlake Village. “I was impressed that he was willing to commit,” Craft said, adding that many people in the technology field tend to cover all their bases. Key Information Systems is an information technology company specializing in corporate infrastructure, storage and business continuity. Morin founded the company in 1999. Citing a study that says major industries follow a cycle of point of invention, frenzy, crash and maturation, Morin said that tech was in the early stages of maturation following the dot bomb crash in 2002. The next big cycle coming directly applicable to the 101 Corridor in the San Fernando and Conejo valleys is biotech, with companies such as industry giant Amgen in Thousand Oaks and Medtronic MiniMed, which has a facility in Northridge. The biotech industry creates products that can extend life spans and replace body organs yet also leads to social issues of population growth and dealing with an aging population, Morin said. “It’s not yet at a frenzy,” Morin said. “But it is real and that has the potential to change drastically the way we all live.” The growth in biotech is good for business such as Key Information because the biotech companies are large users of IT equipment. Amgen spends upward of $100 million on its IT network, Morin said. Other innovations being developed in the tech sector include a real-time speech translator, the ability to view three-dimensional websites with special glasses that should improve market share for online retailers, and a medical device that gives full-body scans in 60 seconds. The body scanning device as currently available is extremely expensive, Morin said but in five to 10 years it should be available in many hospitals. “It will become the norm rather than the exception,” Morin said.

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