WebProNews

Category: BusinessCommunicationTrends

BusinessCommunicationTrends

  • Bill Gates: Over 50% Of Business Travel To Go Away Permanently

    Bill Gates: Over 50% Of Business Travel To Go Away Permanently

    Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says that over 50% of business travel and 30% of time in the office will never come back even after pandemic restrictions are lifted:

    My prediction would be that over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away. Now it’s not the gold standard that to fly all the way here to sit in front of me that. You can do the virtual connection. It will be a very high threshold to actually doing that business trip. There will be ways that you can work from home a lot of the time. Some companies will be extreme on one end or the other.

    I just don’t like talking to African leaders and I always feel bad for African leaders. There are so many conferences in Europe and the US that they are expected to come to. Yet, their job in their countries is so important like their education or health system or collecting taxes or disability. Yet, they spend half their time on all these trips. The fact is now we can do a 20-minute call as needed and touch with base them. It’s been pretty impressive how a lot has gotten done. We will go to the office somewhat. We will do some business travel but dramatically less.

    The fact that the (video communication) software doesn’t have any sort of serendipitous thing of people you run into after the meeting or gathering thing, there is some work to be done there. So no I haven’t run into somebody and made a new friendship. There is something missing there.

    Bill Gates: Over 50% Of Business Travel To Go Away Permanently
  • Optimizing Your Website

    Optimizing Your Website

    The pandemic has changed the way we do business because customers are more cautious than ever about going out into public when they don’t absolutely have to. Increasingly customers are looking to a business’ social media pages and websites for information about new hours, new procedures, special times for the elderly, and more before going to a business. This has increased the amount of time businesses need to spend on updating their digital storefronts, but it is effort well spent since customers are sitting at home wanting the best information before they venture out of place an order.

    How fast your website loads will impact your business, especially right now. Slow loading speeds may signal to customers that your business is struggling and unable to tend to its website.

    On social media, updates should be made frequently so that customers aren’t confused about the period of time that has passed since the last update. If a post says the hours have changed but that post is from four weeks ago, customers are likely to question the accuracy. During these trying times it is perfectly admissible to share the same information on a weekly or even a daily basis, if for no other reason than to offer reassurance to customers that you are on top of things.

    Web pages require a little less maintenance for things like hours and new policies and procedures since entries aren’t generally date stamped for those things, but there are lots of other things that businesses need to do to keep their websites up to date. 

    More customers than usual are visiting your business’ website, and now is the perfect time to ensure that it is optimized for those experiences. The biggest thing here is the load time – it should be three seconds or less, and websites that take just nine seconds longer to load experience a 123% bounce rate. Once those customers bounce to seek other options, you’ve lost the sale and probably their business for the foreseeable future.

    There’s a lot of uncertainty, and the more information and updates you can give customers the better. They want to know every change and policy you make in real time, updated frequently. And it has to be able to load quickly, especially on mobile devices while your customers are sitting at red lights looking for other options when they are looking for something.

    Hosting also makes a difference, especially if your website is where most of your commerce is taking place these days. Businesses can’t afford website outages, so ensuring your hosting is up to the task can prevent business losses during these difficult economic times. Every sale matters and every customer visiting your website should be getting the best possible experience out of it.

    Your website is your business’ digital storefront – take care of it as though your business depends on it. It’s time to do a checkup on your website hosting provider and loading speed to ensure your website is performing optimally. Learn more about website best practices from the infographic below.

  • Zoom COO: Transaction Fees Possible For New OnZoom Service

    Zoom COO: Transaction Fees Possible For New OnZoom Service

    Zoom COO Aparna Bawa says that Zoom is open to experimenting with transaction fees for its new OnZoom service targeting video delivered services like piano lessons.

    “We still are watching and waiting to see what the economics look like,” said Zoom COO Aparna Bawa at WSJ Tech Live. “We want to make sure that the customer base that we’re serving finds it helpful, it’s priced at the right point, it’s beneficial to all,”

    When asked about getting a cut of online video services Bawa said: “We’re not quite sure how that’s going to work. “For us, it’s a long game. The more and more we can build our user base and establish trust with folks like you, the more sort of legs we have as a company.”

    OnZoom, currently in beta, is a service for paid Zoom users to create, host, and monetize events like fitness classes, concerts, stand-up or improv shows, and music lessons on the Zoom Meetings platform.

    “We were humbled and inspired by all of the amazing ways the world adapted to a literal shutdown of in-person events amid COVID-19,” says Zoom product manager Aleks Swerdlow. “When business owners, entrepreneurs, and organizations of all sizes had to find some way – any way – to stay the course and continue providing services to their customers, many turned to Zoom. OnZoom simplifies that experience.”

    In short, OnZoom is Zoom for paid events or services. It has the potential to vastly increase Zoom revenues by tapping into entrepreneurs and small businesses that want to provide a service specific to individuals or groups and not just give it away on YouTube. Think personalized Yoga training, tutors for your kids, computer support, and cooking classes personalized to you. It also includes event discovery features and can be used for free events as well.

  • VMware COO: We Are So Happy That Zoom Exists

    VMware COO: We Are So Happy That Zoom Exists

    VMware COO Sanjay Poonen says that Zoom has changed the future of work:

    We are so happy that Zoom exists. When I was last in a pandemic in 2008 I was at SAP and we were all in a room sitting by a telepresence machine. It was so hot and only 10 or 15 people could sit at the same time. Then I first saw Zoom on my phone and it was beautiful. We obviously want to balance work and life and be in this place where we are concerned about both our physical and mental health. Physical health is important but mental health is equally important.

    We’re obviously helping companies through the pandemic. We’ve just adopted some best practices. We think we’re going to create Work 2.0. In the future of work-force-ware, we make it the best to work in any location. I recently had a lady that was going to do a global demand gen job. Initially, we would have thought that she could have done that job from Palo Alto only. She’s now doing that job from Sydney and doing an incredible job.

    We want to make VMware the best place to work. Then at the end of the day, each person has got to find their personal space by which they figure out the things that trample them back to work. Every day for me it’s my faith, my family, my friends. I’ve got a routine, whether it’s biking or whatever lets you get prepared for the next day. We are potentially going to be in this for the long haul.

    VMware COO Sanjay Poonen: We Are So Happy That Zoom Exists
  • Zoom End-to-End Encryption Rolling Out Next Week

    Zoom End-to-End Encryption Rolling Out Next Week

    Zoom has announced it will be rolling out end-to-end encryption (E2EE) beginning next week.

    Zoom quickly became the de facto standard for remote work and distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, the company made a number of security missteps early on, leading to a 90-day moratorium on new features as the company focused on security.

    One of those issues revolved around E2EE. The company’s early marketing made it appear as if it offered E2EE when, in fact, it did not. The company later announced definitive plans to implement E2EE, although only for paid accounts. After feedback and criticism, the company reversed course, announcing its intention to bring E2EE to all users.

    Those plans are coming to fruition, with the company implementing the first phase of its E2EE plans next week:

    We’re excited to announce that starting next week, Zoom’s end-to-end encryption (E2EE) offering will be available as a technical preview, which means we’re proactively soliciting feedback from users for the first 30 days. Zoom users – free and paid – around the world can host up to 200 participants in an E2EE meeting on Zoom, providing increased privacy and security for your Zoom sessions.

    CEO Eric S. Yuan highlighted the benefits of E2EE, both to customers and the Zoom platform:

    End-to-end encryption is another stride toward making Zoom the most secure communications platform in the world. This phase of our E2EE offering provides the same security as existing end-to-end-encrypted messaging platforms, but with the video quality and scale that has made Zoom the communications solution of choice for hundreds of millions of people and the world’s largest enterprises.

    Once enabled, users will know their meetings are encrypted with E2EE by looking at the green shield icon in the upper left corner. The normal checkmark, indicating GCM encryption, will be replaced by a padlock.

  • Box CEO: Pandemic Opened Up New Way Of Working

    Box CEO: Pandemic Opened Up New Way Of Working

    “It’s been a funny journey working remotely,” says Box CEO Aaron Levie. “A month or two into the pandemic I distinctly remembered that we actually started our company completely remotely. The move to this remote work style is causing us to realize how different managing and leading businesses and executing can be if we were able to take advantage of virtual technology more even when we go back to the office. This completely opens up a new way of working.”

    Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box, discusses at the CNBC @Work Summit how remote working that was forced upon companies has actually opened them up to a completely new way of working:

    It’s Been A Funny Journey Working Remotely

    It’s been a funny journey working remotely. A month or two into the pandemic I actually distinctly remembered that wait a second, we actually started our company completely remotely. My co-founder and I were going to two different colleges at the time and so the whole business was run over instant messaging. Before we had Slack we had AOL Instant Messenger. Before we had Okta we had really bad passwords. We were a remote company and we started our own product because we wanted to make it so people could easily access and share files from anywhere. That was the origin of the business.

    Fast forward 15 years later, we have 2,000 employees, we work in offices, we have a lot of the standard ways you think about when scaling up the company. When we had to instantly move to a remote and distributed way of working it really hit me how much of the work style that gets embedded into our companies are really actually things that just carried forward from the 20th Century when everything was analog and everything was done in person. All communication was done between people either through written communication or just a meeting.

    Pandemic Opened Up New Way Of Working

    You realize that when you go virtual and you go remote there is actually so much potential to be able to work in a digital-first way. When you think about a team meeting as an example, so many of our meetings are arbitrarily sized to the number of people that fit into a conference room. So it’s kind of bizarre that work just happens to be the six to twelve people that can fit into a conference room space. Certainly for software projects or a particular team that’s a pretty good logical size. But that’s not the right size that contributes to a brainstorm. That’s not inherently the right size of people that you want when you’re communicating information and getting the best ideas around how to go drive the business.

    So having that Slack channel with 150 people in it that cuts across different parts of the organization we are able to get contributions from people that would have never been in that conference room previously. That completely opens up a new way of working. Think of what you now do on video and the ability to include voices and ideas from people that previously wouldn’t have spoken up or wouldn’t have had an easy opportunity to contribute to some particular part of the business or strategy or have a two-way dialogue on a really important business topic.

    Real Potential That We Want To Continue

    We had a meeting with all of our top 200 leaders in the company last week and that was a complete bidirectional discussion in a way that would never have been possible in person. That’s usually a person with a microphone just communicating outward to everybody in the business and not actually having it be a dialogue to get feedback. The move to this remote work style is causing us to realize actually how different management and leading businesses and executing can be if we were able to take advantage of virtual technology more even when we go back to the office.

    None of this requires you to be remote it’s just sort of the remote that was forced upon all of us to the point that we are now realizing that there is actually some real potential here that we want to continue to maintain going forward.

  • Slack’s Performance Issues Impacting Remote Workers

    Slack’s Performance Issues Impacting Remote Workers

    Slack started experiencing performance issues early Monday morning, impacting remote workers that rely on the service.

    Slack is locked in a battle with Microsoft Teams for the corporate messaging market. While the service is widely popular, it can’t afford errors or missteps that Microsoft could capitalize on.

    Unfortunately, Monday morning the service was experiencing significant performance issues impacting all three of its target platforms.

    Some users may be experiencing slowness with Slack in the desktop, browser and mobile at this time. The issue is impacting sending messages and troubles with API calls.

    As of mid-afternoon, the issues were declining, although many customers were still not seeing any improvement. The company had also not indicated what underlying issue caused the problem.

  • Microsoft Promoting Windows on ARM

    Microsoft Promoting Windows on ARM

    Microsoft is promoting Windows on ARM, just months after Apple announced the Mac would move to ARM-based processors.

    At Apple’s WWDC conference, the company announced it was abandoning Intel’s processors in favor of custom silicon based on ARM. The move has been widely seen as an industry-changing move, one that will force Microsoft and PC makers to follow suit.

    In fact, former Apple executive and Be, Inc. founder, Jean-Louis Gassée predicted that Microsoft would follow Apple’s lead fairly quickly. A failure to do so would mean giving up the high-performance market to Apple.

    “This leaves Microsoft with a choice: Either forget Windows on ARM and cede modern PCs to Apple, or forge ahead, fix app compatibility problems and offer an ARM-based alternative to Apple’s new Macs,” wrote Gassée. “It’s a false dilemma, of course. Microsoft will forge ahead…with repercussions for the rest of the Windows PC industry.

    “Specifically, what are Dell, HP, Asus, and others going to do if Apple offers materially better laptops and desktops and Microsoft continues to improve Windows on ARM Surface devices? In order to compete, PC manufacturers will have to follow suit, they’ll ‘go ARM’ because, all defensive rhetoric aside, Apple and Microsoft will have made the x86 architecture feel like what it actually is: old.”

    Microsoft is doing exactly as Gassée predicted, touting the benefits of Windows on ARM, including 64-bit emulation, which will allow the platform to run x64 apps. This will help ease the transition, much as Apple’s Rosetta layers will allow ARM-based Macs to run older, Intel-based software.

    “We are excited about the momentum we are seeing from app partners embracing Windows 10 on ARM, taking advantage of the power and performance benefits of Qualcomm Snapdragon processors,” writes Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer, Windows + Devices in a company blog post. “We heard your feedback and are making Microsoft Edge faster while using less battery, and announced that we will soon release a native Microsoft Teams client optimized for Windows 10 on ARM. We will also expand support for running x64 apps, with x64 emulation starting to roll out to the Windows Insider Program in November. Because developers asked, Visual Studio code has also been updated and optimized for Windows 10 on ARM. For organizations, we’re committed to helping them ensure their apps work with Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 Apps on ARM64 devices with App Assure. We are working closely with Acer, HP, Lenovo, Samsung and Surface to bring these Windows 10 on ARM innovations and products to our shared customers.”

    It looks like the tide is beginning to turn against Intel, and the company largely has itself to blame. The company has struggled in recent years, with supply issues and defects, as well as ongoing security problems in their chipsets that some experts have labeled “unfixable.”

  • Microsoft Teams Adding Virtual Commutes

    Microsoft Teams Adding Virtual Commutes

    If you are missing your daily commute to and from your office, Microsoft Teams is coming to your rescue. According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft Teams is developing an update to Teams that will give you and your colleagues a virtual commute. The Teams update launching next year will let you schedule virtual commutes at the beginning and end of each workday. The idea is to bring back definition to your workday for those that are working remotely, where there is a beginning and an end to work.

    This feature is designed to bring a sense of healthiness and balance to your life for those that find themselves always connected to work. “Enterprises across the world right now are coming to us and saying, ‘I don’t think we will have organizational resilience if we don’t make well-being a priority,’” said Kamal Janardhan, General Manager, Workplace Intelligence, Microsoft 365, which runs Teams. “I think we at Microsoft have a role, almost a responsibility, to give enterprises the capabilities to create these better daily structures and help people be their best.”

    Half of the chat volume on Teams occurred between 5 p.m. and midnight in the past six months, up 48% from the months before the pandemic, according to Microsoft.

    Source: WSJ

    With many offices still closed throughout the world workers are feeling like their work life never ends.

    “I don’t miss my commute per se,” said Adam Clenton, a London-based lawyer who spent 80 minutes commuting each day before his office closed during the pandemic. “But it did give me the chance to switch off on the way home. It helped demarcate the day in a way that isn’t possible now.”

    Source: WSJ

    Some Teams users don’t see the point of this feature:

    “Right…people will start their day earlier and end it later for goal setting and reflection. What planet does Microsoft live on?” says Stephen Johnson.

    “In a work from home setup, adding *more* time sitting in front of your computer isn’t helping the separation of work and home,” notes Anne Jackson.

    “The people who came up with this clearly have no idea what the commute is for most people,” said David Weingart. “If you’re driving, you’re not thinking about the day ahead or the day just past. You’re listening to the radio, drinking your coffee, maybe talking to your carpool if you have one. If you’re on the train, you’re either sleeping or talking to the people you ride with every day. Coffee in the morning, beer in the evening.”

    “This is a meaningless update,” adds Weingart. “The best way to deal with the “virtual commute” is to not turn your computer on in the morning until it’s time to be “at the office” and to turn it off at night when you leave.”

  • Box CEO: We Have Been Thrust Into Remote Work

    Box CEO: We Have Been Thrust Into Remote Work

    “We have been thrust into remote work without a lot of the preparation and in some cases underlying infrastructure, data security, or underlying cloud platforms,” says Box CEO Aaron Levie. “What we’re finding, and certainly at least for the organizations that have had the ability to adapt successfully to this environment, is that there are better ways to get work done.”

    Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, discusses how the pandemic has thrust companies into remote work and this will move enterprises toward a hybrid workplace:

    We Have Been Thrust Into Remote Work

    We have been thrust into remote work without a lot of the preparation and in some cases underlying infrastructure, data security, or underlying cloud platforms. What we’re finding, and certainly at least for the organizations that have had the ability to adapt successfully to this environment, is that there are better ways to get work done. Now that we’ve moved to this virtual way of working there are a lot of situations where we used to have to do business travel. Being able to quickly hop on a Webex or a Skype call or a Zoom session is actually much more efficient to be able to have that conversation.

    We have a lot of situations that Box internally and with our customers where normally you might be collaborating with five or ten people in a meeting inside of a conference room. Now you can move that to a Slack channel and actually communicate with maybe 50 or 100 people on that same project. You’re actually building a much more inclusive organization with way more people that can be engaged and involved in your ultimate vision and what you’re executing on. We’re seeing actually some really positive ways of working in this environment.

    The Future Is A Hybrid Workplace

    Any tech company and any company globally really wants to get back to some version of normal. We certainly want offices to open up as quickly as possible. We want to make sure that we can see our colleagues in person. But I do think that there’s no going back from this new virtual way of being able to stay productive. The future is one of a hybrid workplace where you go into the office for some experiences and purposes and then you’re also going to be able to have much more flexibility and be able to work remotely. The digital workplace is what’s going to then bridge those two worlds together.

    By and large, cost savings is not the main factor of why you’ve seen so much excitement around remote work or more workplace flexibility. If you can be just as productive from your laptop on a Slack channel and over a Zoom call but you could then be in any place that you desire as opposed to being in a 60 or 90-minute commute each way and paying way too much for real estate. For those of us that live in Silicon Valley, this is a very expensive real estate market. So if you could have better flexibility and be able to have a little bit more space and you can stay just as productive, wouldn’t that be a better way of working?

    Lot’s Of Reasons Why Offices Will Still Exist

    What companies are realizing is as they want to actually give that choice out to their employees. They can still run very productive organizations. We at Box have been able to drive as much innovation in this environment as we have in an office environment. We want to make sure that we’re creating that type of flexibility for employees. That being said, there are a lot of benefits to being able to work in an office with your colleagues.

    For younger employees that are just integrating into the workplace for the first time you want to get to know your colleagues and you want to be able to be a part of maybe a more than just a business community. You may actually want to be able to build your business network through that experience. Also important is mentorship and being able to make sure that you’ve got more camaraderie. There are a lot of reasons why offices are still going to exist in the future. But digital technology is going to afford companies to have way greater flexibility no matter which route they choose.

  • Salesforce CEO: We Are In A New Digital World

    Salesforce CEO: We Are In A New Digital World

    “We are in a new digital world―in an ALL digital world,” says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “The past is gone and it’s not coming back. We are not in the future. We are in the present moment. We are now in this new digital future and we need to rebuild our companies and organizations. This is a moment where if we all decide that we are all going to be successful and that the past is gone, we can create the future that we want.”

    Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, discusses how we are not living in the past or the future, we are living in the present. He says that the present is a new digital world in an all digital world:

    This Is About Helping Our Customers Thrive

    We are, of course, in an unpredictable time. There’s never been greater uncertainty in the entire world because you have a global pandemic, you have a global economic crisis, you have a racial justice crisis, you have a global leadership crisis, and you have a global environmental crisis, and they are all happening simultaneously. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the world. That’s why we all really have to focus and get really clear on what we want right now and how we are going to succeed through these times.

    This is a time that you can no longer do what you were doing six months ago. You have to do something totally new and if you can do something totally new you can have tremendous success. Salesforce is now an example of that success. We delivered a 29 percent growth quarter. It was amazing. That followed a 30 percent growth quarter. We also had record margins and we had record large deals. It was amazing how many very large transactions we were able to close during that time.

    Ultimately, this is about helping our customers succeed and helping them thrive during this time. It was a 63 percent increase in seven-figure deals for our quarter. It is really because the largest most important companies in this world are all making dramatic changes and we’re there to help them connect with their customers in a whole new way.

    We Are In A New Digital World… In An All Digital World

    We are in a new digital world―in an ALL digital world. The past is gone. It’s not coming back. We are not in the future. We are in the present moment. This is a be here now moment. Everyone needs to realize that the past is gone. We are now in this new digital future and we need to rebuild our companies and organizations. Ultimately, we need to rebuild ourselves to be successful in this new digital future.

    I just had a Board meeting last week. I had a Board member and they were talking about how great Zoom is and how we participated in this great IPO and successful it is. The Board members said that Zoom is really the future. I said, look, Zoom is not the future. Zoom is the present. This is our present reality. We are in a new world. This is our reality. We need to all make changes and we need to make them now because this is not going to shift anytime soon. If we’re going to succeed through this we need to realize that the past is gone.

    We Can Create The Future That We Want

    We are never going back to how it was. All of our employees are at home. Even in countries where we are open like Japan employees don’t want to even come in to the office because they have reskilled themselves. We have a whole reskilling engine called Trailhead.com. They use our tools. We have a tremendous salesforce automation tool that lets our employees sell to our customers remotely digitally. Our Sales Cloud is why we have tremendous sales, productivity, and success. Our Service Cloud is why we are having tremendous ability to service from anywhere and market from anywhere. The reason we’re the fastest growing top five software company in the world is because we use our own products.

    This is just a minute in time where I say, wow, I didn’t see this coming. Nobody did. But now that we’re here we have to rebuild ourselves. At the same time we have to also augment for our customers what we can do. We are doing now contact tracing for thousands of companies. We run pandemic response management for 35 states. We didn’t have a pandemic response capability six months ago. Now we have to have it.

    We have to be there for our customers to help them be successful whether they are public sector organizations or whether they are the world’s most important companies. This is a moment where if we all decide that we are all going to be successful and that the past is gone, we can create the future that we want.

    Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff: We Are In A New Digital World
  • CFO: End Of Pandemic Is Not A Threat To Zoom

    CFO: End Of Pandemic Is Not A Threat To Zoom

    “Zoom is now integrated into all aspects of our lives,” says Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg. “We look forward to the day that the pandemic is over and we can resume more normal activities and yet I don’t think that in itself is a threat to Zoom. People have grown accustomed to it. Working from home is not a fad. We are all really adjusting to this new way of life and are integrating Zoom into all aspects.”

    Kelly Steckelberg, CFO of Zoom Video Communications, discusses the company’s massive growth over the last quarter and says that an end to the pandemic is not a threat to Zoom:

    Working From Home Is Not A Fad

    We indicated coming into the quarter that we really expected strong growth in Q2. We saw that across all geographies and all industries. International grew over 600 percent year over year. We saw strong performance in industries like education and nonprofits. We also had our largest Zoom Phone deal to-date signed in Q2. There was really strong performance across all aspects of our business.

    What we saw from the retention perspective is that working from home is not a fad. People are really adjusting to this new way of life. They’re integrating Zoom into all aspects. We saw strong retention not only in our enterprise but in customers with fewer than ten employees as well. As we’ve continued to focus on leveraging both the public cloud as well as our own co-located data centers that’s why we saw improvement in the gross margins. We are going to continue to optimize across all of those metrics as we focus on the rest of the year.

    Hired Over 500 Employees In Q2

    We have worked very tirelessly. Our entire Zoom team is doing everything we can to continue to support not only our existing customers but to ensure that every customer who has a need for Zoom has access to it. We have focused quickly on scaling up our employee base. We have hired over 500 employees in Q2. That’s the largest growth we’ve had to date. We are also working from home like many of our customers are and really supporting our employees to ensure that we can meet the needs of the customer. We are leveraging great partners like AWS and Oracle as we need to in order to ensure that we have the capacity to continue to support our customers along the way.

    We continue to look for opportunities to invest to grow the top-line (while free cash flow rose by 2,000 percent year over year). We had record operating margins in the quarter at 41.7 percent. We expect those to come down for the rest of the year as we are focusing on investing in more salespeople to meet the demand and more engineers to continue to innovate and build our platform. Of course, we are always looking for opportunities with M&A, technology, or teams that can really augment our platform or our team to continue to drive that top-line growth.

    Video Is The Future Of Communications

    We really believe that video is the future of communications. With that, we want our Zoom customers to be able to use the Zoom platform with other best of breed products in platforms that they choose. We have integrations with many products out there and that’s great. We want our customers to be able to use the products that they know and love and have them work together seamlessly.

    What we’ve heard from our customers is that while everyone is really longing for the day that we get to go back to a more normal life before COVID that in many ways they are loving the flexibility that this has brought to them. They get to wake up with their children, have a full day of work and then have dinner with their family at the end of the day.

    End Of Pandemic Is Not A Threat To Zoom

    I really believe that Zoom is now integrated into all aspects of our lives. We look forward to the day that the pandemic is over and we can resume more normal activities and yet I don’t think that in itself is a threat to Zoom. We have grown accustomed to it. We have seen so many additional use cases. If you think about Formula One having these great premium experiences leveraging Zoom now in bringing clients into the paddock.

    There is a company in Singapore using it to do virtual tours. They did half of their new properties that came to sale in Q2 they showed them virtually and sold them this way. We are starting to see more and more ways that people are making more efficient and more effective. This way of communicating and working is here to stay.

    Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg: End Of Pandemic Is Not A Threat To Zoom
  • Microsoft Gains Exclusive License to OpenAI’s GPT-3 Model

    Microsoft Gains Exclusive License to OpenAI’s GPT-3 Model

    Microsoft has scored a big win in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), gaining an exclusive license for OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model.

    OpenAI is one of the leading AI research labs. Elon Musk has been one of the biggest critics of AI, believing it poses an existential threat to humanity. Musk was one of the original founders of OpenAI, in the hopes that responsible AI development could help avert disaster.

    GPT-3 is “an autoregressive language model with 175 billion parameters, 10x more than any previous non-sparse language model.” The model uses deep learning to better emulate human language patterns.

    Microsoft’s latest announcement builds on their existing partnership with OpenAI, which was expanded in May.

    ”Today, I’m very excited to announce that Microsoft is teaming up with OpenAI to exclusively license GPT-3, allowing us to leverage its technical innovations to develop and deliver advanced AI solutions for our customers, as well as create new solutions that harness the amazing power of advanced natural language generation,” writes Kevin Scott – Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft.

    ”We see this as an incredible opportunity to expand our Azure-powered AI platform in a way that democratizes AI technology, enables new products, services and experiences, and increases the positive impact of AI at Scale. Our mission at Microsoft is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, so we want to make sure that this AI platform is available to everyone – researchers, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, businesses – to empower their ambitions to create something new and interesting.”

    Scott acknowledges that, at this point, it’s hard to imagine the many ways GPT-3 will impact the industry. The partnership, however, ensures Microsoft will continue to be on the forefront of AI development.

  • TikTok Deal: ‘Virality Driving This Asset To Be Worth $200 Billion’

    TikTok Deal: ‘Virality Driving This Asset To Be Worth $200 Billion’

    “Given the amount of content on that channel with the amount of marketing that’s being spent to drive more users there’s a virality that is driving this asset to be worth over a period of time $100 to $200 billion,” says Wall Street Analyst Alex Zukin. “That’s why we think that for Oracle to invest at a $7.5 billion stake for a company potentially worth $60 billion today (and $200 billion later) could be compelling and add value to the share price.”

    Alex Zukin, RBC Capital Markets, discusses why Oracle investing in TikTok is a real opportunity of the company to change the narrative and be relevant and exciting:

    It does appear to us the Oracle has a real opportunity to change the narrative for the company. A narrative that has to do with growth, that has to do with cloud, that has to do with being relevant and exciting again. That is a really interesting opportunity again to add shareholder value.

    Oracle is a fiesty competitor. Never underestimate Larry Ellison if he wants to get into a market. It started with the announcement that Zoom is a customer earlier this year. That was a big deal. That was really their first highly relevant actionable customer win that stood out to us. They are compounding their gains if they are able to successfully add TikTok.

    When Oracle is looking for opportunities to change the narrative the fact that it is looking at this rather than potentially large scale M&A suggests that the valuation environment may not be one that supports that type of path right now. This is definitely an innovative construct to change the relevant narrative for the company.

    The data indicates that the kind of engagement that this app is driving is not just unique but in the history of applications in internet software difficult to replicate. The amount of people that spend more than ten minutes, more than 30 minutes, or more than an hour engaging is very different than most established apps. Not just the amount of people that are engaging but the amount of time and the amount of people that are engaging over a certain amount of time.

    It’s always possible that these types of things can be replicated with enough investment over a big piece of time. But the truth is right now given the amount of content on that channel with the amount of marketing that’s being spent to drive more users there’s a virality that is driving this asset to be worth over a period of time $100 to $200 billion. That’s why we think that for Oracle to invest at a $7.5 billion stake for a company potentially worth $60 billion today could be compelling and add value to the share price.

    TikTok Deal: ‘Virality Driving This Asset To Be Worth $200 Billion’
  • Microsoft Buys Game Maker ZeniMax for $7.5 Billion

    Microsoft Buys Game Maker ZeniMax for $7.5 Billion

    Microsoft on Monday announced plans to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda Softworks, one of the largest, privately-held game developers and publishers in the world. The ZeniMax library includes game franchises such as The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom, and Rage, among many others, Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will acquire ZeniMax Media for $7.5 billion in cash.

    “Gaming is the most expansive category in the entertainment industry, as people everywhere turn to gaming to connect, socialize and play with their friends,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Quality differentiated content is the engine behind the growth and value of Xbox Game Pass—from Minecraft to Flight Simulator. As a proven game developer and publisher, Bethesda has seen success across every category of games, and together, we will further our ambition to empower the more than three billion gamers worldwide.”

    “This is an awesome time to be an Xbox fan. In the last 10 days alone, we’ve released details on our two new consoles which go on pre-order tomorrow, launched cloud gaming in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and now we’re making another investment in the most critical part of our strategy: the games,” said Phil Spencer, executive vice president, Gaming at Microsoft. “Generations of gamers have been captivated by the renowned franchises in the Bethesda portfolio and will continue to be so for years to come as part of Xbox.”

    Bethesda parent company ZeniMax Media was founded in 1999 by Chairman and CEO Robert A. Altman; Bethesda’s structure and leadership will remain in place.

    “This is a thrilling day for this company, our employees, and our fans. We have enjoyed a close partnership with Microsoft for decades, and this deal is a natural progression of those years working together,” said Altman. “The big winners today are our fans. We are continuing to develop our slate of AAA games, but now with Microsoft’s scale and entire Game Stack, our games can only get better.”

    Phil Spencer, head of Xbox at Microsoft, discusses the company’s acquisition of game maker ZeniMax and how this impacts gaming and the Xbox platform:

    Adding ZeniMax Games To Xbox Is Incredible

    Gamers love great games. The Xbox console is going on preorder tomorrow for the next generation. Just last week we added Game Pass cloud streaming so that people can play this Game Pass library across all of their Android phones. Then obviously Game Pass which is the largest game content subscription out there with 15 million subscribers and growing. So getting to work with ZeniMax to bring their amazing collection of games to GamePass is just an incredible opportunity for us.

    Our plan is to leave it alone. ZeniMax has an amazing track record of building great games. Our goal is to make ZeniMax the best ZeniMax they can be. ZeniMax will be working individually with their studios on the great platform technology that we have, getting their creators feedback into the things that we need to go build. That’s just a critical flywheel for us innovating, just the feedback from the world’s best creators on our platform.

    Committed To Bringing Game Pass To iPhones

    When you get large scale general compute platforms like mobile phones people should have access to the great content and services that are out there. We remain committed to that. There are over 3 billion people who play video games today and many of them play on phones. We’re committed to bringing Game Pass to all mobile phones out there including Apple phones. We will continue to have conversations and I’m sure we will be able to get to some resolution.

    Our biggest issue (with the Apple app store) isn’t a financial issue. Our biggest issue is that cloud game streaming apps are actually not allowed in the way that Game Pass is built for other platforms. For us, this is about gamers having great access to the content from the creators they love on the devices they own. Play the games that you want with the community that you want to play with the devices that you have. That’s our goal.

    COVID Impacted Game Production

    People with sheltering in place and work from home, we’ve seen incredible engagement in the gaming community over the last few months. We’re really proud with the way that gaming has been able to play such a pivotal role for people. Games today are hundreds of people coming together to build these massive games. It’s important that we’re conscious of the safety of our teams. COVID has had an impact on production and you’re seeing that out there.

    When you look at this launch and people’s appetite for gaming right now we are very bullish on how are preorders are going to go tomorrow. We have the most powerful console on the market. We have the most affordable console on the market. We’ve got things like Xbox All Access that allow people to join this next generation of gaming for $24.99 a month with no upfront costs. You get a console and Game Pass. In times like this, I think that accessibility of price point and offer is really important.

  • Zoom Has Transformed Into a Consumer Platform, Says CFO

    Zoom Has Transformed Into a Consumer Platform, Says CFO

    “The (COVID-19 crisis) has really transformed what used to be a business platform primarily used for enterprises to now be used for all kinds of new consumer and small business use cases,” says Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg. “I don’t see everybody going back to the way that it was before. I don’t think that everybody that’s working from home today is going to go back to their office necessarily or that these small business owners are going to stop using it in the way that they’ve had.”

    Kelly Steckelberg, Chief Financial Officer of Zoom, discusses how the COVID-19 crisis has transformed Zoom into a consumer platform with a 20-times increase in daily usage:

    Zoom Has Transformed Into a Consumer Platform

    We are proud that we’ve enabled over 90,000 schools in over 25 countries around the globe to use a Zoom. That along with many other use cases that we didn’t contemplate before this such as grandmother’s using Zoom to read bedtime stories to their grandchildren across the country. We are also seeing small businesses using it now to do tutoring or give yoga lessons. It has really transformed what used to be a business platform primarily used for enterprises to now be used for all kinds of new consumer and small business use cases.

    That has caused a 20-times increase in our daily participants from just December through March. Yes, with that has come new opportunities and challenges as well including opportunities to educate and enable our users in a very different way than we needed to before. Coming into this pandemic and seeing the increase in demand we have been very focused on ensuring that the platform is stable and reliable and available for everybody who needs it. 

    When we had our earnings call on March 4th we did talk about this that we already had started to see the rise in demand. While I’m not confirming guidance today, we did indicate then that we expected to see an increase in our cost of goods sold that would have an impact on our gross margins. That is consistent with what we’ve continued to see. 

    I Don’t See Everybody Going Back To The Way It Was

    In terms of what does this mean going forward and are we trying to convert some of these users, we have a freemium version of our product that many of these new users are using today. We are really focused on ensuring that everybody and anybody who needs Zoom or has a use for it today can get access to it. We really want to focus on minimizing the disruption and communication during this difficult time for everyone. 

    It’s too early to tell what comes next. Ideally, in a few months, we’re all back to a more normal state. I don’t see everybody going back to the way that it was before. I don’t think that everybody that’s working from home today is going to go back to their office necessarily or that these small business owners are going to stop using it in the way that they’ve had. So we’ll just see what that brings. it’s really too early to tell today.

    Zoom Has Transformed Into a Consumer Platform, Says Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg
  • Box CEO: Digital Selling Helping Tech Firms Prosper

    Box CEO: Digital Selling Helping Tech Firms Prosper

    “We are firing on all cylinders right now even though it’s a very dynamic environment,” says Box CEO Aaron Levie. “One of the great ironies probably that we’ll look back on is that the industry that is focused on selling digital technology spent so much time in the physical world trying to sell that technology. You can do remote selling over a video conference, over Webex, or Zoom in many cases just as easily as you could in person.”

    Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, discusses how tech companies during the pandemic have discovered that it’s more effective for them to sell remotely using all of the technologies they have developed rather than relying so much on physical meetings:

    We Are Firing On All Cylinders Right Now

    We were super happy about the Q2 that we just announced a couple of weeks ago. We were able to beat on revenue estimates and the guidance we gave on revenue, on EPS, on operating margin, and we also delivered strong billings and cash flow performance. We also raised our guidance for the full year on revenue as well as our operating margin targets for the full year.

    We are firing on all cylinders right now even though it’s a very dynamic environment. Obviously, the broader macroeconomic environment still remains a challenge in many sectors. We are seeing growth at this time and we’re seeing a lot of our enterprise customers continue to expand with us as they go and drive broader digital transformation initiatives.

    Great Irony: Tech Industry Learns To Sell Digitally

    One of the great ironies probably that we’ll look back on is that the industry that is focused on selling digital technology spent so much time in the physical world trying to sell that technology. We’re seeing is that customers want really great products. They want those products to be delivered efficiently to them. You can do remote selling over a video conference, over Webex, or Zoom in many cases just as easily as you could in person. The other benefit is you can now reach more customers in a single day or in a single week.

    As an example, we have our customer conference happening tomorrow. We’ll have about 25 000 registered attendees to that event which is three or four times larger than what we would have in the physical world. We’re able to reach more customers and we’re able to have more conversations. We’re ultimately able to support our customers right now with our technology which is helping them move to the cloud and helping them secure their corporate data. It is also easier to collaborate securely across enterprises and then ultimately integrate with all of their applications.

    Box CEO Aaron Levie: Digital Selling Helping Tech Firms Prosper
  • Zoom Reports Quarterly Results, Smashes Expectations

    Zoom Reports Quarterly Results, Smashes Expectations

    Zoom reported its quarterly results, smashing expectations as the company’s revenue was up 355% year-over-year.

    Zoom has become the de facto standard videoconferencing platform in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. It is widely used by businesses, government agencies, schools, churches and individuals. Despite some early security and privacy missteps, the company has continued to address concerns and win customers.

    Based on its quarterly results, those efforts have paid off in spades. The company reported quarterly revenue of $663.5 million, well above a consensus of $500 million, representing a 355% year-over-year increase.

    “Organizations are shifting from addressing their immediate business continuity needs to supporting a future of working anywhere, learning anywhere, and connecting anywhere on Zoom’s video-first platform. At Zoom, we strive to deliver a world-class, frictionless, and secure communication experience for our customers across locations, devices, and use cases,” said Zoom founder and CEO, Eric S. Yuan. “Our ability to keep people around the world connected, coupled with our strong execution, led to revenue growth of 355% year-over-year in Q2 and enabled us to increase our revenue outlook to approximately $2.37 billion to $2.39 billion for FY21, or 281% to 284% increase year-over-year.”

    Interestingly, Zoom reported it has 988 customers that are paying more than $100,000 each, a 112% increase from the year-ago quarter.

  • How To Successfully Manage A Remote Team

    How To Successfully Manage A Remote Team

    Team performance is inextricably linked to leadership – that much has not changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

    However, the lockdown-induced shift to remote work did transform the particular challenges of leadership. How to keep up productivity while being mindful of members’ physical and mental health? How to hold effective meetings and minimize technological vagaries? 

    According to a recent Forbes article, work-from-home (WFH) arrangements don’t automatically impair employee engagement. Rather, it depends on leaders whether team potential is harnessed during WFH.

    Here is a closer look at the big issues business leaders – from team supervisors to CEOs – face during the pandemic. And how to best tackle them. 

    Communication

    With employees unable to meet in hallways, stop by each other’s offices, or have a quick chat at the water cooler, ensuring communication is a core challenge leaders face. 

    A recent survey by Microsoft published in the Harvard Business Review found that managers took on a more active role in communication, both within and across teams. Overall, they sent 115% more instant messages after the transition to remote work, while other employees sent 50% more.

    The key, however, is not to communicate simply more – but more effectively. This means communicating succinctly, with clear goals and expectations in mind, and choosing your channels wisely. 

    Email is the default avenue of communication for many leaders. It is also terribly inefficient, as another recent Forbes analysis outlines.

    Generally, email is fine for asking quick questions, sharing a file, or responding to a scheduling request. But as soon as something requires more complex discussions, a nuanced understanding, or creative input, having a (video) call is more efficient.

    Choosing a communication platform for your team is one of the most crucial WFH decisions. 

    Overall, it is best to centralize communication. Instead of juggling notifications from five different apps, team members just have to keep their eye on one or two. For this, team collaboration apps, conference calling services, and Unified Communications platforms are invaluable. 

    Meetings

    Online meetings are an integral part of WFH – but leaders need to make sure that they are both necessary and efficient. 

    The number and duration of meetings – and the strictness of the schedule – are within the purview of managers and team leaders. 

    Microsoft’s researchers found that while meetings increased overall, they were considerably shorter than before, averaging 30-minutes. Other articles also suggest that meetings lasting between 20 and 30 minutes are optimal for keeping engagement high and proceedings efficient. 

    Steve Jobs’ cardinal rule of meetings was to have only essential people present, which cut down on explanatory ballast and tech troubles. Each item on the agenda – well-defined in advance – should have a participant responsible for it.

    Trust 

    Trust is an integral component of leadership, now more so than ever. 

    While it’s natural to be curious about how your staff handles their work projects and timelines during WFH, it’s crucial to show confidence in them. Resist the temptations of surveillance and micro-management. 

    Assume that your team is doing their best. In some cases, this may not be on par with their normal performance at the office – especially if they are facing added challenges at home, such as childcare. 

    In general, it’s best not to focus on inputs – exactly which tasks each team member is tackling at a time. Instead, concentrate on team accomplishments – the overall outputs. 

    Remote Team Building

    Fostering team spirit and building rapport among physically distanced staff is currently a central leadership task. 

    Microsoft’s survey found that virtual social meetings increased by 10% within a month of the transition to remote work. Team members wanted to connect with each other on a human basis. 

    Leaders can harness this need and take the initiative. Organize virtual ‘casual Fridays’, encourage ‘water-cooler’ chat spaces, schedule digital coffee breaks, or set up a Slack channel dedicated to swapping baby pictures, memes, and cat videos. 

    Balance Work And Life

    Finally, it’s a manager’s responsibility to ensure that remote team members can successfully balance their work and personal lives. 

    When working from a home office, it’s only too easy to let sales figures or annual reports encroach on otherwise relaxing evenings. Especially if it seems like other team members are constantly online.

    Managers need to discourage always-on culture in the interest of their team members’ mental and physical health. 

    Removing incentives for 24/7 availability, discouraging messages at all hours, strictly limiting meetings to daytime, and implementing a virtual out-of-office policy go a long way towards achieving this balance.  

    Adapt And Succeed

    Recent statistics show that two thirds of companies are planning to keep a distributed workforce model post-pandemic. That means that leading a remote team will no longer be a temporary emergency measure. It will become a standard requirement and essential leadership skill. 

    The sooner managers find sustainable solutions to the challenges of heading a distributed team, the better they will be able to operate in a business world transformed by COVID-19. And the larger their success will be – both for themselves and their team. 

  • Box CEO: All Hands On Deck With Digital Transformation

    Box CEO: All Hands On Deck With Digital Transformation

    “We saw very strong enterprise growth in the last quarter,” says Box CEO Aaron Levie. “We grew our number of big deals, which we measure as deals above $100,000 in transaction value, by 60 from Q1 to Q2 of this year. We’re happy about the momentum that we’re seeing in the business. Right now we are all hands on deck on supporting our customers and their digital transformation strategies and hopefully really enabling them to have a more secure and more seamless way to work in this environment.”

    Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, discusses the company’s continued growth and progress in supporting customers with their push toward digital transformation:

    Driving Better Balance Between Growth And Profitability

    We’re very happy about the quarter that we just put up. We are stabilizing the growth rate with 11 percent revenue growth. We had nearly a 16 percent operating margin for the quarter. That’s been a trend that we’ve obviously been driving for the past year or so around really driving a better balance between growth and profitability. We improved our guidance on both revenue growth and profitability for the rest of the year. We guided to about 12 to 13 percent operating margin for the full year (FY21) and so we do think these results are sustainable.

    Obviously, we want to be able to continue to drive them going into next year and beyond. We’re very happy about the efficiency of the business right now as well as our ability to go out and serve customers and help them power a new way to work in this very very you know dynamic landscape.

    All Hands On Deck With Digital Transformation

    The first couple quarters of the year we had to step back and figure out in this economy and in this market what could we do to best serve our customer base. In some segments, we had to lean in to make sure that we were better supporting our customers. In other segments, we saw more growth because in spaces like financial services, healthcare, life sciences, and the tech sector there’s still a tremendous amount of economic growth occurring. So we had to do a little bit of a reset in some of our segments, especially the SMB segment. and we’re seeing really healthy pipeline for the second half of the year.

    At the same time, we saw very strong enterprise growth among these customers. We grew our number of big deals, which we measure as deals above $100,000 in transaction value, by 60 from Q1 to Q2 of this year. We’re happy about the momentum that we’re seeing in the business. We do expect that we’re going to continue to drive growth coming into the second half of the year. Right now we are all hands on deck on supporting our customers and their digital transformation strategies and hopefully really enabling them to have a more secure and more seamless way to work in this environment.

    Need Better Interoperability Between Technologies

    In the enterprise segment, you deal with similar questions (as consumer-facing companies do with anti-trust). How do we ensure long-term that you have interoperability between our technologies? If I put my data into one cloud platform will I have the ability to make that data work with other applications from other cloud technologies? Whether or not there needs to be oversight that’s obviously going to be a big question for the government.

    What I do think across the industry we do need to continue to work on better standards. We need to drive better interoperability between our technologies. I can say confidently that companies like Microsoft and Google and others are working on making sure that we have greater interoperability between our technology stack. We work with companies like Slack, Zoom, Salesforce, and others to make sure that we have that interoperability as well. But there’s still a long way to go to really create a seamless experience for the broader customer base out there.

    No Precedent For The Type of TikTok Deals Playing Out

    Aaron Levie: I don’t understand business anymore, but this is very fun to watch.

    This is obviously a very strange environment (in reference to TikTok deal rumors). I don’t think there’s been a precedent for this type of acquisition playing out ever. Especially in the back of the antitrust element, you don’t have the logical acquirers of this type of social media technology at play. All you really have are these interesting configurations of maybe not the most classic acquirers of a social tool. This is causing a lot of questions on what is the long-term strategic nature of these deals.

    This is especially true for companies that don’t have a strong advertising business model or might not have some of the same demographic within their customer base. That being said, all of the players, whether it’s Larry Ellison or Satya or Doug at Walmart, these are all incredibly smart and savvy business people. I’m sure that behind the scenes there’s quite a deal of strategy going on but it’s certainly fun to watch play out.

    Box CEO Aaron Levie: All Hands On Deck With Digital Transformation
  • Universal Chooses Microsoft Azure For Live Action and Animation Productions

    Universal Chooses Microsoft Azure For Live Action and Animation Productions

    Microsoft has scored a big win as Universal Filmed Entertainment Group has chosen Azure for its cloud platform.

    Universal is looking to the cloud to improve remote collaboration and content creation. The goal is to prove a way for the creative teams to work together seamlessly, regardless of location or circumstances. Especially with the pandemic forcing many individuals to continue working from home, the transition to a cloud-based workflow is more important than ever.

    Azure’s compute platform and global hyper-scale storage will be used to support the production of both animated and live action content. The consolidated production platform will also save money in the long run by storing resources and ensuring they’re available for reuse.

    “With this partnership, Universal is continuing to build on our commitment as an industry leader in transitioning to a cloud production model across our portfolio of studios. As outlined last year in the MovieLabs 2030 vision paper, streamlining our workflows will allow for a more efficient creative process, empowering the artists and storytellers we work with to make the best content possible,” said Michael Wise, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Universal Filmed Entertainment Group.

    “Together with customers like Universal and DreamWorks, we are prioritizing cloud + edge technologies to help transform workflows, increase production output and reduce friction for creatives,” said Hanno Basse, media and entertainment CTO, Microsoft Azure. “Working together, we aspire to create technology for the industry, with the industry, so they can tell stories the world loves.”

    This is a big win for Microsoft as it continues to battle Amazon and Google for the US cloud market.