Life Is Not a State-Machine: The Long Road from Research to Production

Traditionally a technology adaption cycle progresses at least 10–15 years before technologies become mature enough for wide-spread adaption. That time period is dramatically shortened as there is a need for technologies that can satisfy the unlimited appetite for ultra-scalable, highly-reliable, high-performance, and cost-effecient software architectures by the top Internet companies. In reality, however, it turns out to be very difficult to speed up the adoption process. In this presentation I will review some of the obstacles that are in the way of adoption of research results into production environments and will revist the principles of "worse is better" and Occam's razor in the context of technology transition.