This quote made by the preeminent mathematician Alfred North Whitehead holds both the lock and the key to the next era of computing. It implies a threshold moment surpassed only after humans have been able to automate increasingly complex tasks in order to achieve forward momentum. IBM believes that we are at just such a threshold right now in computing. The millions of businesses, billions of humans that compose them, and trillions of devices that they will depend upon all require the services of the IT industry to keep them running. And it's not just a matter of numbers. It's the complexity of these systems and the way they work together that is creating a shortage of skilled IT workers to manage all of the systems. It's a problem that's not going away, but will grow exponentially, just as our dependence on technology has.