Back in January, Mr. Edgar Perez correctly predicted that the number of new COVID-19 cases in China would reach its peak by late February; then the infection crossed an inflection point when cases outside China exceeded those within the mainland for the first time. The daily movement of people and the sheer number of personal connections between China, South Korea, Iran and Italy, make it unlikely that COVID-19 will be contained. While the situation in China has stabilized with the implementation of extraordinary public-health measures, new cases are rising elsewhere, including the Americas, Europe and Africa. Mr. Perez will inspire CEOs to act immediately to protect their employees and customers, address operational business challenges and risks, and help to mitigate the outbreak in their communities

Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet now sit on top of the list of most valuable tech companies in the world, as each is worth more than $1 trillion. Significantly, these four companies have all looked at cloud computing for growth. In turn, the market has rewarded their shareholders richly, as each of these companies’ market values have climbed to record levels. What is it about the cloud computing paradigm that makes these companies so valuable? Could your clients apply this philosophy to their own businesses? The answer is yes. You only have to look at Porsche Passport, the most streamlined way to drive a Porsche by including most of the aspects of ownership or leasing into one convenient package and payment plan. Notably, 80% of subscribers never owned or leased a Porsche prior to the Passport program. Mr. Edgar Perez will share key lessons and insights to explore this new business model.

Artificial intelligence has been referred as the general ability of computers to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. Through a comprehensive review of the latest artificial intelligence breakthroughs, Mr. Edgar Perez will offer his insights on how these advancements will impact businesses and the human race in general for years to come, and more specifically, how companies can leverage the plethora of available resources to start their digital transformation and implement solutions to problems that only a few years ago belonged to the realm of science fiction. Mr. Perez will reveal why artificial intelligence is the present and the future.

Google recently announced that their most advanced quantum computer, a radically new design to manipulate and process information, has achieved “quantum supremacy” for the first time. The technology giant's Sycamore quantum processor was able to perform an incredibly complex task in 200 seconds, a feat that would take the world's fastest supercomputers 10,000 years to complete. The ultimate development and commercialization of this technology will tremendously accelerate difficult tasks across all industries, including financial services, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and the upcoming space exploration. Are we really there yet? Mr. Edgar Perez will enlighten your audience with the latest head-turning business applications of this revolutionary technology.

Deep learning has enabled many practical applications of artificial intelligence in today’s digital organizations. Deep learning breaks down tasks in ways that makes all kinds of machine aids seem possible, even likely. Driverless cars, better image recognition, more effective medical diagnoses, even better movie recommendations, are all here today. Mr. Edgar Perez will identify what organizations need to do today to embrace the future, starting with the basics: empowering their employees and turbocharging the organization’s digital transformation strategy. Once these two important tasks are accomplished, organizations can then launch pilots for the most promising opportunities, leveraging “state of the art” cases from today’s global innovators such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Tesla. Mr. Perez will show organizations how to kick start their digital impact transformation.

Neuromorphic Computing (NC) emulates the human brain’s neural structure and operation as it attempts to match a human's flexibility and ability to learn from unstructured stimuli with the energy efficiency displayed by our brain. NC has grown at the intersection of diverse research disciplines, including computational neuroscience, machine learning, microelectronics, and computer architecture, among others. It seeks to produce a cognition machine that not just reaches decisions, but memorizes information and even deduces facts. Mr. Perez will enthrall your audience with the possibilities created by computers that will behave as though they were originally engineered for the tasks they are executing, rather than as general-purpose computers taking their instructions from electronic programs.

Classical computing was invented in the 1940s; the advent of Quantum Computing (QC) will render all what we have learned about these computers obsolete. Calculations that would take longer than a human’s life span to work out on a classic computer can be completed in a matter of days or hours with QC. Furthermore, QC will enable solving a set of problems that couldn’t be solved before. QC’s benefits include efficiently simulating new drug molecules and dramatically reducing the time complex financial calculations take, among many others. For optimization, sampling or search problems, this promises dramatic speedups. Mr. Perez will entertain your audience while revealing why Quantum Computing will disrupt every industry.

Only days after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the U.S. FAA grounded the Boeing 737 Max 8, joining airlines and governments worldwide in an effort to guarantee passenger safety, just months after the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 involved the same model. Reports point to Boeing’s new automated flight-control system, known as MCAS, as the culprit. However, an initial review of the design, certification and deployment process for the 737 MAX shows an over-reliance on untested technology, potential conflicts of interest between regulators and airlines, and lack of proper documentation and training. Is it still safe to fly? Mr. Edgar Perez will provide an insider’s look at how this dysfunctional process evolved, resulting in 346 casualties within five months, and what your organization can do to identify technology and operational challenges that can compromise its viability.

Artificial intelligence has been referred as the general ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. Since the development of the digital computer in the 1940s, it has been demonstrated that computers can be programmed to carry out very complex tasks with great proficiency. Through a comprehensive review of the latest artificial intelligence breakthroughs, Mr. Perez will offer his insights on how these advancements will impact businesses and the human race in general for years to come, and more specifically, how companies can leverage the plethora of available resources to start implementing solutions to problems that only a few years ago belonged to the real of science fiction. Mr. Perez will reveal why artificial intelligence is the present and the future.

The Internet of Things (IoT) explosion will see 20.8 billion connected devices deployed by 2020. The volumes of data generated will become a tsunami that firms will need to transform into actionable information. Unfortunately, most firms only look at the easy information they can get from structured data while ignoring their unstructured data, which accounts for 90 percent of content generated globally, making unstructured data a tremendous source of untapped value. Artificial Intelligence is making it possible and affordable to sift through and find meaning in vast amounts of unstructured data obtained from video, audio, emails, logs, social media posts and IoT devices. All of this data can bring about enormous benefits; Mr. Perez will show organizations how to reap these benefits today.

Constant regulatory changes and technological evolution have transformed the financial landscape so profoundly since the advent of the first electronic networks in the early 1970s. Regulators around the world are now in a race to respond to the evolution of technology in financial markets and prevent its operational challenges from becoming the biggest risk for financial markets. However, when considering technology and the cyber landscape, errors are bound to happen. Financial services firms are expected to have deployed the most sophisticated defense systems against cyberattacks. Trading firms are expected to have controls in place and invest in the technology to keep up to date. Most companies would realize the need of these investments and honestly attempt to implement them, but their IT departments would soon hit a wall, because of direct involvement from senior management and boards of directors. Compliance actions against those who missed their importance will go a long way toward restoring investor confidence and limiting the impact of the biggest risk for financial markets.

Until quite recently, globalization was seen as a one-way street. Multinationals, which led the charge four decades or so ago into growing global markets, were its ambassadors, and American and European workers, whose wages and upward mobility were flattened, were feeling left out. The core idea was that globalization, technological innovation and unfettered free trade would erase historical and geographic boundaries, making the world ever more economically interconnected and alike. Developed economies would come under more and more competitive pressure from eager upstart nations. Now we are entering a new age of volatility. Financiers will become less important, manufacturers more so. Blue collar jobs will go high tech. Robots will replace Chinese workers. Mr. Perez will discuss why finance stands now in front of its biggest transformation triggered not by any of the financial conglomerates that dominate the world today but by obscure startups that could be working already in garages in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, Kiev or Delhi.

Social engineering involves tricking your employees into breaching security protocols or giving away information, most often over the telephone or via email. Social engineering exploits human weaknesses rather than technology, preying upon people’s propensity towards trust in particular. Often, these exploits are used to gather information to support a more targeted cyberattack, with the initial forays based on the premise of ‘little and often’ so as not to cause concern. Employees at all levels, including senior executives, are vulnerable. Mr. Perez will explain why by improving employee awareness and introducing simple technical measures, organizations can protect themselves against social engineering techniques and the risk of a cyberattack and its potential impact on business, customers and data.

An email embedded with malware. Security systems hacked by thieves. Credit card numbers stolen from store purchases. There’s certainly no shortage of examples when it comes to data security breaches and the havoc they wreak on business. No wonder then that nearly a third of CEOs in KPMG’s latest global survey identified cyber security as the issue having the biggest impact on their companies today. Every organization should apply a Cybersecurity Framework for analyzing cyber security, and ideally it should be integrated into an organization’s existing enterprise risk framework. The key is making it part of the mainstream of risk management within an organization. The most innovative companies today have recognized that cyber security is a customer experience and revenue opportunity, not just a risk that needs to be managed. Mr. Perez will explain why this must done across the entire organization and why the CEO and Board of Directors have the most important role to play.

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework, which was drafted by the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), comprises leading practices from various standards bodies that have proved to be successful when implemented, and it also may deliver regulatory and legal advantages that extend well beyond improved cybersecurity for organizations that adopt it early. Its adoption may prove advantageous for businesses across virtually all industries. Mr. Perez will explain why a proper Cybersecurity Program will build on the analysis of the possible areas of concern, an understanding of the company’s most critical assets, and a thorough review of Information Technology’s policies and procedures when faced with cybercrime.

On May 6, 2010, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted nearly 1,000 points, then its biggest intraday point drop ever. The “Flash Crash” revealed the influence of high-frequency trading to mainstream audiences around the world. In fact, over the past 15 years, the global financial market has fragmented: where there were once three main U.S. exchanges, there are now more than 40 exchanges and alternative trading systems. High-frequency trading companies have largely replaced traditional broker-dealers, using algorithms instead of human traders to make decisions in milliseconds, mostly in response to orders made by other algorithms. Mr. Perez will discuss the benefits brought by technology, making trading faster and more efficient, as well as the potential costs brought upon institutional and retail investors.