AOL Time Warner Inc Chairman Steve Case last night said his work at the helm of the world's largest media empire was largely a challenge of integration - between the company's multiple businesses, its customers, and all the different devices they use to access news and entertainment.
"The basic challenge is to connect all the dots," he said, paraphrasing the often used high-tech buzzword of convergence.
Mr Case, who delivered the closing remarks at the 29th annual JP Morgan H&Q Technology Conference in San Francisco, discussed how the technology scene has changed over the years. From a landscape brimming with young companies working on revolutionary but unproven services, he said the high-tech industry today has more established companies that need to expand their reach globally and offer a more integrated customer experience.
Mr Case, whose brother Dan Case is Chairman and CEO of HP Morgan H&Q, said he had attended the conference informally as far back as 20 years ago.
"I was captivated by the energy of all these technology companies. They all sounded great to me. They all said they had hockey stick growth, and no competition," Mr Case said, drawing laughter from the crowd of institutional investors and money managers, who recalled the euphoria of recent years when tiny startup companies would come to the conference and discuss their grandiose plans.
"Much as we hate to admit it, AOL Time Warner is still really a US company with some global outposts," he said. The company's goal, he added, is to get half of its revenues from outside the US within 10 years, compared with about 17 per cent today.
"If the notion of connecting all the dots sounds like a 'no-brainer,'" Mr Case said, "it only makes sense to do so now, because of all the recent advances in technology that have brought about a lot more customer choices, making it possible for them to get the same magazine from a newsstand, a PC or over other devices.
"We really are shifting to a more connected society. The lines are blurring between devices and all the things that are part of the fabric of every day life."