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  • How Tech Startup Raycatch is Revolutionizing Solar Efficiency

    How Tech Startup Raycatch is Revolutionizing Solar Efficiency

    Raycatch Founder Michael Goldstein says that his VC backed software startup is using artificial intelligence to bring significant efficiencies to solar projects all over the world. Their DeepSolar solution captures data, does an AI-powered analysis, and then provides action items to large solar panel users so that they can improve energy yield and reduce costs.

    Michael Goldstein, Chairman, and Founder Of Raycatch discussed their breakthrough technology on ILTV ISRAEL DAILY:

    Raycatch Uses Data Analytics to Manage Solar Panels

    Raycatch is a solar company that does data analytics for solar owners and solar maintenance people. What happened in the whole energy system is that there was a main revolution where the cost of panels went dramatically down in the last ten years. That caused a large number of new installations all over the world, either on roof mounting or ground where you saw more and more solar projects all over the world. The only thing that did not change, besides the reduction, of course, was the fact that owning and maintaining those projects did not improve.

    Improves Solar Panel Efficiency with Artificial Intelligence

    So that’s exactly where we come in. We’re trying to improve ownership and maintenance by using AI, artificial intelligence, to better run those assets. We are a VC backed 15 person startup based in Tel Aviv operating with projects all over the world, currently in Israel and Europe. We have prominent customers and we are already running over 100 different projects in those countries. We will eventually be in the United States as well.

    Improves Solar Yield by 5 Percent, Operational Costs by 20 Percent

    People that are using our software are able to increase the yield by 5 percent. They can reduce the cost of operation by 20 percent and they have better transparency about the value of their assets they’re running. Bear in mind that it’s not only residential installations but imagine all those large installations over the ground, utility-scale, utility companies, that are using solar panels today.

    We are targeting mainly the large-scale installations because it’s more efficient for us business-wise but in principle were relevant for both small and large installations. They can be residential, they could be on a commercial roof or on the ground.

    How DeepSolar Works:

    About Raycatch:

    Based in Israel, Raycatch was founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneurs and solar experts. Raycatch is an AI diagnostics technology for solar energy, on a mission to revolutionize the manual PV monitoring market by enabling automated, insight-driven management of solar assets. By deciphering existing solar energy data, Raycatch transforms PV Operation and Maintenance (O&M) tasks from traditional manual scheduled operations to on-demand automatic management. No hardware or software installation or site visits are needed. 

    The result is maximized performance and maintenance of solar assets, leading to increased yield, decreased operational costs and the acceleration of solar energy penetration in the global energy market.

  • Reddit Co-Founder: Every Businesses is Going to Have to Be a Software Business

    Reddit Co-Founder: Every Businesses is Going to Have to Be a Software Business

    The co-founder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian, says that every business is going to have to be a software business. “Our beliefs still remains that every business is going to have to be a software business in some way, shape, or form,” Ohanian told CNBC. “For us to be able to make these investments on bright engineers building software solutions still feels like the right long-term play. We noticed the turning point in the last couple of years where the C-Suite all got on Instagram.”

    “What I mean by that is they got exposed to it and there’s now a broad use of world-class software for really trivial stuff,” said Ohanian. “Once enough execs have spent time looking at selfies on Instagram, of their kids or their grandkids, they come back to work they sit at their desk and they look at the software that they’re using and that their companies are using and they can’t believe how antiquated is by comparison.”

    “So we’re seeing this new trend in startups that are selling direct to the enterprise level from jump,” explained the Reddit co-founder. “They’re people who left that world, see the problems, and are saying I can build a better solution and I’m just going to sell it back to my old buddies and then hopefully the rest of the industry. Whereas ten years ago, if you were starting Dropbox as Drew was, you’d be trying to sell the basic $10 a month package to some little startup.”

    Ohanian says that today, companies realize this existential need and startups are now able to sell to enterprise direct.

    About Alexis Ohanian:

    Alexis Ohanian was the co-founder of Reddit, one of the first social media companies in the world. He is also a bestselling author and he is currently co-founder & managing partner of Initialized Capital that focuses on very early stage VC ($22B in market value so far).

  • SAP CEO on Qualtrics Deal: A Global Growth Juggernaut in the Cloud

    SAP CEO on Qualtrics Deal: A Global Growth Juggernaut in the Cloud

    SAP CEO Bill McDermott says that buying Qualtrics creates a “global growth juggernaut in the cloud, the number one business software growing in the cloud in the world.” McDermott says that he’s here to build a company for the generations, not just for a few days and that this is a fundamentally transformational deal, one that will reshape the entire industry.

    Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith says that combining forces with SAP will change the experience economy forever. “This is by far a once in a generational opportunity and it’s going to change how everyone thinks about cloud and SAAS and CRM and ERP and HCM forever,” said Smith. “Why wouldn’t we want to be a part of that?”

    Both SAP CEO Bill McDermott and Qualtrics CEO Ryan Smith talked about the acquisition on CNBC Squawk Box this morning (Watch Video Below):

    SAP CEO: If You Can Combine X-Data and O-Data You Can Change the World

    We’re reshaping the enterprise application software industry. What led us to this deal is that all CEOs you talk to want to run their companies on an end-to-end basis. They want to deal with their customers in every channel, they want to fulfill, and that requires operational data. SAP touches 77 percent of the world’s transactions, but the operational data doesn’t ask the right question. It doesn’t say, why does the customer feel a certain way about your brand, about your products, and about their experience. This new category called experience management is all about x-data and if you can combine o-data and x-data you can change the world.

    Ryan I have known each other about three months. We spent a lot of time together, a lot of text, a lot of phone calls, and we fundamentally wanted a transformational deal, one that would reshape the entire industry and here we are.

    SAP CEO: If You Want to Survey Somebody You Hire Survey Monkey…

    Have you looked at acquiring SurveyMonkey? No, they do surveys we reinvent customer experiences in a whole new category called experience management. If you want to survey somebody you hire Survey Monkey, if you want to fundamentally change the way an enterprise thinks about its culture, its brand, its products, and its people, now you’re talking Qualtrics, the leader in the marketplace by a factor of 10x. We’ve always bought the biggest and the best one and thankfully with the high trust that Ryan and I developed and our companies developed we’re ready to go.

    SAP CEO: A Global Growth Juggernaut in the Cloud

    When you’re talking about this particular company, Qualtrics, they’re growing at 40 percent on a year-over-year basis in the cloud. They have a very serious go-to-market strategy, but it’s modest in size. We’re growing at 41 percent year-over-year in the cloud and we have a very large go-to-market machine, more than 15,000 people touching the customer every day. If you combine that rate of growth you have a global growth juggernaut in the cloud, the number one business software growing in the cloud in the world. So digest that dear shareholders.

    We’re saying and we’re very clear on this, we’re going to grow total revenue in double-digit, operating income in double-digit, not to mention being the fastest growing cloud company in the world. So today this will be digested. Now they’ll know, why did he do a big one when he said he was more likely gonna do tuck-ins? Because I never thought I would get Qualtrics and it takes some skill to pull deals like this off and convince a great entrepreneur like Ryan that he’s better off with SAP than going it alone when he’s 13x oversubscribed in his IPO.

    SAP CEO: I’m Here to Build a Company for the Generations

    So that’s what took a little bit of time and when we pulled it off together this weekend we were literally crossing each other in the air at 39,000 feet, so this was high-stakes. Now that we’re here, we’re doing all-hands meetings, we’re talking to the media, we’re talking to the bankers, and I expect the stock to do extremely well as the day progresses, and more importantly in the mid and the long term. I’m here to build a company for the generations, not just for a few days.

    Qualtrics CEO: We Created the Experience Management Category

    We were planning on ringing the bell on Thursday. I was home this weekend just to kind of take a little break after a week on the road it was going really well. We were 13 times oversubscribed with the best still ahead of us and then we had an opportunity to combine forces with SAP and change the experience economy forever. I think in my conversations with Bill it’s something that we only dreamed of that we could make this happen. It’s pretty special.

    We’ve been doing this for 16 years. We transformed the entire experience management category, we’ve created it. We’re powering the feedback for 14 different airlines, 200 financial institutions, and we’ve really created this category to go do something big, that was the goal. We never had a financial reason to go public, we bootstrapped our company longer than anyone and we had no investor pressure. We’re one of the only companies that has been cashflow positive and high growth since its inception. The reason why we were going public was to create this massive new category.

    Qualtrics CEO: A Once in a Generational Opportunity

    When Bill approached us with a once in a generational opportunity that we could take all the power of Qualtrics and our 9,000 brands and have that sit alongside SAP and have every ounce of customer feedback go into the entire product process with an ERP system, reshape how the world thinks about CRM, and everything that we’re doing to power all the employee experience of the whole world that’s all available overnight. That’s something that we couldn’t turn down and we chose to be here.

    Our IPO was already way oversubscribed, it was gonna take off and everyone was looking at us saying, hey this is the next $20 or $30 billion dollar standalone company. But we want to win and this is what winning looks like and we’re going to reshape the entire industry and Bill’s on board and we’re excited.

    We were pretty set on going public and so it wasn’t till this opportunity came through this weekend where we said, hey look, this is by far a once in a generational opportunity and it’s going to change how everyone thinks about cloud and SAAS and CRM and ERP and HCM forever. Why wouldn’t we want to be a part of that? We couldn’t be more excited and like I said this is a pretty special team with Bill and me.

  • Box CEO Sees the Underlying Value of Box Increasing Because of IBM-Red Hat Deal

    Box CEO Sees the Underlying Value of Box Increasing Because of IBM-Red Hat Deal

    Box CEO Aaron Levie says that the IBM-Red Hat Deal showed what the underlying value of incumbent technology companies like Salesforce, ServiceNow, and “hopefully Box” is potentially worth.

    Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, was interviewed on CNBC about the impact of the IBM-Red Hat deal on Box:

    Red Hat Deal Puts IBM in a Great Position

    Red Hat is a leader in commercial open source technology which is really the future of computing in any real IT environment or software development and IBM now has one of the world’s best companies in the open source space and the multi-cloud space.

    I think it puts them in an incredible position to help enterprises that are moving to a multi-cloud environment be able to run their data centers and run their operations, whether it’s in the cloud or on-premises and a hybrid model for the future. It puts IBM in a great position.

    IBM-Red Hat Deal Shows Increased Underlying Value

    This is obviously an incredibly bold move on the part of Ginni (Ginni Rometty, CEO, IBM) and the rest of the team but one that I think we will look back in five or ten years and say that was a very defining decision. IBM is a great partner and we obviously want to root for their success but we partner with probably the majority of software and technology companies in the industry, so our job is to be interoperable and integrate with all the major technologies our customers use.

    What the (IBM-Red Hat) deal showed was that the underlying value of some of these significant players is in many cases worth a lot – especially big incumbents. I think in general, companies like Workday, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and hopefully Box, we’re trying to build industry defining companies that will last quite some time.

    Becoming a Core Part of the Technology Stack

    I think, in general, when you think about enterprise IT, enterprise IT buyers are making long-term investments in the future of their technology architecture. It’s very sticky and there are massive modes in the technology that are being built out and if we do our job and continue to innovate we will become a core part of the technology stack of how the future of all enterprises operate.

    That’s why these deals end up actually looking pretty good in hindsight when you can see how powerful these platforms are.

  • SAP CEO: It’s All About the Customer Experience

    SAP CEO: It’s All About the Customer Experience

    SAP CEO Bill McDermott, in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg talked about enterprises moving to the cloud, competing with Oracle’s new autonomous database, competing with Salesforce, and its huge business in China:

    SAP Has Taken Over the Enterprise Database Market

    Do you have a major move to the cloud? If legacy companies haven’t fully invested themselves in the cloud where they’ve converted their revenue streams more to cloud than on-premise I think you will see them make bold moves to get cloud-ready. No choice, that’s where the customer wants us.

    We obviously have taken over the enterprise database market with HANA. HANA has many of the characteristics that you mentioned (referencing Oracle). HANA can take data from any source, everything that is either structured or unstructured and data from any source in the enterprise. HANA is running the biggest enterprises in the world now with 25,000 customers at mass scale. We like our HANA database very much.

    It’s All About the Customer Experience

    We see a fourth-generation of CRM where we go beyond the current market participants. Basically, they focus on sales, marketing campaigns, things that essentially take money out of the customers pocket. What we want to do is focus on an omnichannel ecommerce world where we connect the demand chain because our customers are social, mobile and on the run. They shop in every channel, direct to consumer, wholesale, retail. We want to connect that demand chain to the supply chain so that we have a complete end-to-end business.

    Why is this so important? We are not just talking about CRM, we are talking about customer experience. The way CEOs think about their brand, their products, their human capital, their customers. All of the people inside of the company have to be completely committed to the customers outside the company. This is what we call fourth-generation CRM. It’s all about the customer experience.

    We’d Like to See China and the US Cooperate

    The most important thing is that we get paid to run businesses and work in an environment where we let government do what government does. All government leaders have to do what’s best for their country and best for their constituents. These tariffs are obviously a serious situation. You have the two largest economies in the world with $30 trillion in combined economic firepower that right now are at a little bit at odds with each other.

    It’s good, as we saw in today’s tweet, it was stated that at the G20 President Xi and President Trump will sit down and talk. That’s very encouraging to the market. Markets like certainty. So certainly we would like to see China and the US cooperate. It’s good for supply chain, it’s good for business.

    China is Regarded as SAP’s Second Home

    Germain engineering is highly regarding in China, as it is in the United States and around the world, but we do particularly well in China. China is our fastest growing market. We think that China is easily regarded as SAP’s second home in terms of market receptivity, ecosystem growth in China, and our long-term prospects. We think China will end up being the biggest market in the world soon.

    We have the most sophisticated data privacy in the world. We acquired a company called Gigya where we have billions and billions of customer records. We protect your privacy, we don’t let customers actually engage you unless you agree that you want to opt-in on various offerings from our customers and they serve their customers. We follow the same reference architecture, the same high-security standards and cloud standards in China that we do in Europe, the United States, and every other theater in the world.

    We are very confident in China in the way enterprises can serve their customers in China with high-security standards. We recently announced a very important partnership with Alibaba and that is a cloud partnership that will not only impact our growth in one of the fastest growing regions in the world.

    We Are Very Diverse and Highly Inclusive

    We actually have appointed in the last 12 months two women to our Executive Board, not just because they are women, but because they are great leaders. That would be Adaire Fox-Martin and Jennifer Morgan. If you look at our company we have a third of our workforce that is female and we also have a third of our leaders that are female.

    We are very diverse and highly inclusive. One of the things we really enjoy is what we have done with Autism at Work and now we have dedicated one percent of our hiring to autistic folks, at least on the spectrum somewhere, to help our workforce be highly productive and diverse. That extends also to the solutions that we have. If you look at success factors, the number one human capital solution in the world, we have a business without bias mentality.

    Computers don’t have bias. In the way we build the algorithms in the software they eliminate bias from the hiring process. The computer doesn’t have a bias. It looks for the best candidates and it fills an algorithm or model that the company is trying to get at. If you want 40 percent of your workforce to be diverse and inclusive, the model is built to do that for you. You don’t leave it up to humans, you let the software do the work and then the human judgment comes in at the final phase of hiring. It’s changing companies everywhere.

  • Nick Tzitzon of SAP on the Changing Role of the CIO

    Nick Tzitzon of SAP on the Changing Role of the CIO

    Nick Tzitzon, EVP of Marketing and Communications for SAP, recently was interviewed on CXOTalk where he talked about the changing role of the CIO:

    Every CXO Became a Technology Buyer

    If you think about how enterprise technology has evolved… if you think 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you had the Chief Information Officer which was the single dominant point of contact inside most businesses for how a business uses technology. And then what happened? Every CXO became a technology buyer and the CXO technology buyer was interested in very specific business outcomes.

    If you’re a Chief Human Resources Officer you buy human capital management software because you want to inspire and retain and train your workforce. If you’re a Chief Marketing or Sales Officer you want to grow your business, you want to attract customers, you want to deliver new customer experiences.

    The CIO and CXO Conversations Must Be the Same

    The CIO in many cases, because of their long-term relationships was stuck in one conversation while the CXOs went into a different conversation. We want to push them together because that’s where they belong. The CIO is an incredible resource in companies to be able to tell you here’s a business problem and a technology that can help. As technology is maturing so quickly with AI and all the other breakthroughs you need the CIO to be a leader in these companies. But the CIO conversation and the CXO conversation have got to be the same conversation.

    What opportunity are we trying to seize? What problem are we trying to solve? It can’t be technology for technology sake because if it’s that then a technology vendor like SAP is not relevant. What are we trying to do for the business? That’s the question and a conversation that we need to be part of and that our peers want to be part of as well.

  • Freshworks CEO: What We Really Have is a Business Model Disruption

    Freshworks CEO: What We Really Have is a Business Model Disruption

    In 2010, Freshworks started as Freshdesk with a dream to make a dent in the world of customer support. The company has grown exponentially since then, moving well beyond customer service offering products that compete directly with Salesforce and others… 

    By necessity, from their humble beginnings in Chennai, India eight years ago, Freshworks brought an innovative sales and marketing approach which enabled them to compete globally immediately.

    Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham recently discussed in an interview on ZDNet how Freshworks disrupted the global SMB business model:

    What We Really Have is a Business Model Disruption

    What’s different with our approach is that you have to really understand the US model or the Silicon Valley model of scaling a SAAS business. It’s not suited to serve the long tail of the global SMB. The model is dependent on going upmarket and selling to the enterprise because when you actually have salespeople and the territories are shrinking and you want to grow in revenues you really want to go upmarket and close those million dollar deals or 350k deals.

    What we really have is a business model disruption where we are able to serve the long tail of the global SMB profitably. To understand this you have to probably look at the only other company that I can think of is Atlassian, which also started off outside the valley. When that Atlassian IPO happened I’m sure you also saw along with the rest of Wall Street in Silicon Valley on how different the economics of the model was.

    The Flywheel Effect

    Even though Atlassian didn’t have a lot of SMB customers, their highest price point was $8,000. Even Walmart paid them their $8,000 one-time fee. I think what Atlassian shows you is a glimpse of a different model where you call it the flywheel effect, where a lot of teams just buy the software off the web and then you grow through land and expand inside these companies. That is the closest model that I can tell you.

    Because we started in Chennai, India about eight years ago, we did not have any customers in Chennai and we didn’t have many customers in India for that matter, so we were actually from day one we had to go global. Our first customer came from Australia. When we had six customers we had them from four different continents. When we had 70 customers the average that a customer was paying us was $30 a month. The average revenue per customer was $30 a month in 2011.

    Fundamentally a Different Business Model

    We were really starting from the SMB, then we started building more products, expanding our product plans, expanding our portfolio, offering customers more features to get them to upgrade, or add more agents or try other products. I think what we had is fundamentally a different business model of acquiring customers online and selling profitably to the long tail of the global SMB.

    What helped us was like the tailwind that we rode, in hindsight, I can tell you were all the SMBs actually going through this digital transformation. SMBs did not have the budget 13 years ago to go spend a hundred thousand dollars for on-premise software. Today, they can put on their credit card $100 or $200 a month and actually buy software. We were probably at the right place and at the right time in terms of bringing that software to them and being able to sell to them globally from Chennai.

  • Larry Ellison: Amazon uses Oracle, not Amazon to Run Their Business… Because AWS is Not Good Enough

    Larry Ellison: Amazon uses Oracle, not Amazon to Run Their Business… Because AWS is Not Good Enough

    Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison says that Amazon does not even use their own database to run their business. “Amazon runs their entire business on top of Oracle, on top of the Oracle Database,” Ellison said. “They have been unable to migrate to AWS because it is not good enough.”

    Larry Ellison, Oracle co-founder, discussed why Oracle is still the best database in the world and why it’s significantly better than Amazon and SAP databases in an interview this morning:

    Amazon Does Not Use AWS to Run Their Business

    Sometimes I liken the computer industry to the fashion industry. Certain brands get popular, certain brands get unpopular. IBM when I first came into the industry was the ultimate brand. It was not a company against whom you would compete, it was the environment which you would compete. Amazon now is the number one brand in infrastructure cloud computing.

    Let me tell you an interesting fact. Amazon does not use AWS to run their business. Amazon runs their entire business on top of Oracle, on top of the Oracle Database. They have been unable to migrate to AWS because it is not good enough. I keep saying this because they just spent another 50 million dollars last year buying still more Oracle Database. I keep saying this because well maybe our database is better than Amazon’s databases. Why else would Amazon keep buying our database?

    Last year they bravely said that they are sick of these comments of mine and they are going to move off of Oracle. They said they are going to move off of Oracle by 2020. Well guess what, they took their first step, they just moved a bunch of their warehouses off of Oracle and guess what happened. I will send you a copy of Amazon’s internal memo. It went down. It failed. They had a huge outage. They said that if they would have stayed with the Oracle Database this wouldn’t have happened.

    All of the World’s Most Valuable Data Runs on Oracle, Not Amazon

    The Oracle Database manages most of the world’s data, today and ten years ago. Nothing has changed. All of the world’s important valuable data is in an Oracle Database. They’re not in Amazon’s database. Amazon won’t use its own database to run its business.

    So if our database is so great what have we done wrong? We didn’t get our database to the cloud quickly enough. If you wanted a cloud database, you had to go to Amazon for a database. Then you were able to go to Microsoft for a database. It took a while for us to build a secure cloud. It’s really hard to build a secure cloud. We think we are there now.

    We have by far and away the best database in the world. Nothing is close. We show a series of benchmarks where we are ten times faster than Amazon. More importantly, we are ten times cheaper to run the same exact thing on Amazon on our database. So if you want all that security and want all that reliability, you have to be able to spend less. That’s what we’ve shown in a series of benchmarks. Even Amazon can’t move.

    People say that Oracle has no chance in database and Amazon’s going to dominate everything, well you would think that one of the early customers that Amazon would move, how about Amazon. No, Amazon picked Oracle.

    We Have a 10-20 Year Lead on Amazon

    We think we have a 10-20 year lead on Amazon on databases. Let me prove it. Another thing, Amazon uses Oracle not Amazon. Amazon’s transaction processing database that they have is called Aurora. Aurora is an open source database. They just it picked up and made it closed source on Amazon. They didn’t write any of that. They picked up Aurora, put it on Amazon and made it available on their cloud. Well, so who owns Aurora? Who develops Aurora? That would be Oracle. It’s called MySQL. That’s our small open source database which they claim is their big transaction processing database that’s going to replace Oracle. It’s just preposterous that Amazon didn’t even develop the Amazon database. It’s just a chunk of open source that we are responsible for called MySQL. MySQL does not compare to the Oracle Database. There is a reason Amazon uses Oracle.

    SAP Also Uses Oracle Everywhere

    You know who else uses Oracle? Another company that hates us, SAP uses Oracle everywhere. SAP ten years ago said I hate Oracle, I’m getting off of Oracle, I can’t stand these guys, especially this guy that goes on TV and makes fun of us. They say we have this great new database called Hanna. It’s awesome. Well, they have all of these cloud services such as SuccessFactors. Does it run on Hanna? But oh no, it runs on Oracle. Actually, 98 percent of everything SAP does runs on Oracle. A decade later, they still use Oracle, can’t get to Hanna.

    The Oracle Database beat IBM in the database business and beat Microsoft in the database business. We’ve been in this business for 20 years constantly making our database better. Now it’s the world’s first autonomous system.

    The Oracle Database is Much Better Than Anyone Else Has

    The EU actually did a study, of the top hundred SAP customers in Europe how many of them run the Oracle Database? Only 99 percent. One actually ran IBM DB2. All of their cloud services, whether it’s SuccessFactors, Ariba, all of these things which they’ve been trying to get off of Oracle and onto Hanna for a decade still all run Oracle. The reason is that Oracle is just a much better database than anyone else has.

    Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was asked if I can have any other piece of software in the world what would it be? Everyone thought he was going to say Google Search. He said the Oracle Database because it’s the information age and all of the world’s most valuable information is stored in an Oracle Database.

  • Bizzabo Wants to be the Salesforce of Events

    Bizzabo Wants to be the Salesforce of Events

    Putting on an event, marketing an event and more importantly, measuring the impact of your event has never been easy. Enter Bizzabo, a company that is working to become the Salesforce of Events.

    Recently, Tom Shelly, Product Marketing Director at Bizzabo, discussed how their cloud-based solution is disrupting the event industry:

    Bizzabo Event Cloud Empowers the Marketer

    Bizzabo is a cloud-based service, the same as Salesforce which invented the Sales Cloud and then we had Marketo that invented the Marketing Cloud, we came and said there needs to be an Events Cloud. Our audience is the event marketer and essentially we’re empowering that marketer to create events that are actually rewarding and impactful for the audiences.

    Bizzabo is an all-in-one platform that they use in order to manage the event, in order to promote the event, and in order to execute it. But the secret sauce and the wisdom behind the platform is the fact that it allows the marketer to measure the impact of the events and that’s something that sounds standard, but no one can actually measure.

    Before Bizzabo Measuring Event Success Was Impossible

    We know that 24 percent of the marketing budget is invested in events, but they can’t measure it. They literally cannot tell if the event was successful. Were they able to retain customers, acquire customers, and was it because of that event? The platform provides them with a lot of analytics and statistics and insights and recommendations to become better at what they’re doing and grow their business through events that they’re hosting.

    Bizzabo Software Using Artificial Intelligence

    We’re providing them those recommendations and we’re at the point right now of incorporating AI and machine learning and the best technologies out there to provide all the knowledge that they need automatically so that they don’t need to do much.

    It’s already a very profitable engine for many companies all over the world. We have HubSpot as a customer and WeWork and many others.

  • Christie’s Says AI Art is Not a Masterpiece, But Good Enough for $10K

    Christie’s Says AI Art is Not a Masterpiece, But Good Enough for $10K

    Christie’s announced that it is going to auction for the first time art that has been generated via an artificial intelligence algorithm. The art was created by Obvious, a Paris-based collective consisting of Hugo Caselles-Dupré, Pierre Fautrel, and Gauthier Vernier using AI software.

    Richard Lloyd, Christie’s International head of Prints & Multiples discussed AI art in an interview on CBS:

    AI Art Used Software Called the GAN Algorithm

    Obvious used a nifty piece of software called the GAN algorithm. What they did is uploaded thousands of images to a computer and that point it actually splits itself in two. One half is called the Generator and that analyzes those thousands of portraits and learns what a portrait is. It sort of parses through all those and then thinks now I am going to start creating my own versions of those.

    The second half of the computer, the Discriminator, tries to spot that. Everytime the title is run, if the Discriminator is able to say that a portrait is created by a computer the Generator runs it again. The cycle finishes when the Discriminator says I give up, I can’t tell the difference between the computer generated version and the human-generated version and that’s what pops out.

    AI Art to Sell for $10K

    We’ve estimated that it will sell for $7,000 to $10,000. We put a lot of thought into the estimate because if we put a huge amount people would say what are you basing that valuation on because this is the first.

    But also we thought that it was the right sweet spot where people would respect it as a work of art because the creators certainly think of it as that.

    Who is the Creator of AI Art?

    Who created the art? Is it the person who wrote the algorithm? Is it a combination of the artwork that was uploaded? Is it the people that tweaked the software? This is why this is inspiring and interesting because we’ve never really had to ask those questions before.

    I remember reading years ago that when TV news started, print journalists thought well that’s it, who’s going to read a newspaper? Everybody is just going to watch it. But in fact, both exist side by side. So I think that in the future in five to fifteen years time there will be parallel tracks. There will be human art and artificial intelligence art.

    AI Human Hybrid Art is the Future

    There will also be a hybrid which I think is coming down the pike in the near future. Artists have always been great early adopters. Warhol adapted screen printing which came from commercial packaging.

    Photographers took the camera and thought we can do weird and wonderful things with this. I think human artists will be working side by side with this algorithm to create hybrid art. It’s just the beginning and is so fascinating in what is going to be created.

    Just Don’t Call AI Art a Masterpiece

    I’ve done a lot of research into AI art and there is something about using human-centric words like masterpiece. You just kind of stop short. I think a great work of art is a link to another person. You think of Vango and what he was going through to create that. But this is an algorithm so…

  • SAP CEO: We Are the Fastest Growing Business Software Company in the World

    SAP CEO: We Are the Fastest Growing Business Software Company in the World

    “We grew 41 percent in the cloud and SAP has now become the fastest growing enterprise application software company in the world,” said SAP CEO Bill McDermott in an interview on CNBC. “For business software, we are the fastest growing company in the world. It’s amazing how fast the growth is in the cloud.”

    Bill McDermott, SAP CEO:

    Our cloud business is growing faster than anyone else’s, but we are also partnering. If you look at Microsoft and the Azure Cloud, of which Microsoft has been a great partner of ours for four decades now. If you look at AWS with Amazon or if you look at the Google Cloud platform or if you look at Alibaba in China, we have partnerships with all of these hyperscalers.

    It’s All About an Open Initiative For Customers

    Our reference architecture, our software, can also run in there cloud which gives us another set of distribution channels around the world to expand our market-leading software. They’re all going to grow fast and we’re going to grow fast.

    It’s all about an open initiative for customers. Customers really need to manage their business in real time and the cloud is a great way to do it. It’s lower cost, faster innovation, easier to consume, it’s a winning formula.

    Bill McDermott On the Economy

    It’s really amazing. I’ve been obviously all over the world and if you go to China right now, things for us and all solution oriented tech companies are very strong. The Asian region is outstanding.

    John Kerry and I hosted a meeting in Bankok and we met with 35 CEOs that simply could not possibly be more positive about the economic scenario.

    Shortly thereafter, I was in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Chancellor Angela Merkel talking about Industry 4.0, venture capital, and tech investment. Yesterday, in Canada with Prime Minister Trudeau where there is a huge AI opportunity with great young people highly skilled in AI. Everyplace you go there’s nothing but optimism.

    McDermott tweeted:

    “Thank you Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau for your statesmanship and leadership. SAP is strongly committed to a bright future in Canada. We have outstanding customers and colleagues!”

    Trade Tensions Have No Impact on the Tech Industry

    The trade tensions are something that is obviously concerning, business people don’t like uncertainty, but in terms of the real impact of the business volume, new orders, global pipeline, I don’t see any impact at this stage for the tech industry.

  • Veeva CEO: Reinvention Makes a Great Company

    Veeva CEO: Reinvention Makes a Great Company

    Veeva Systems offers pharmaceutical and other highly regulated chemical manufacturers a cloud-based solution to make their employees and companies be more efficient and in compliance with the vast array of regulations these industries face. Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner modestly says that “we are just helping people to be more efficient.”

    Peter Gassner, CEO and co-founder of Veeva Systems recently discussed how the company is growing by “reinventing” itself:

    Veeva On Target To Be a Billion Dollar Company

    We laid out a goal to be a billion dollar revenue company in 2015, saying we will get there in 2020 sometime. In our recent analyst day, we let people know we are actually a year ahead of schedule. I’m really proud of our Veeva team that executed so well on our long-term plan.

    Reinvention Makes a Great Company

    If you step back to when we went public about five years ago and if you look at our progress we’ve almost tripled the number of products we have, revenue is up four times, and profits are up six times. What makes a great company is people that can reinvent themselves, a team that can create new products, keep customers happy, and uses success to grow the business. Veeva has done that.  Certainly, Adobe and Salesforce have done that as well.

    Life science is a serious business. It’s a big business, a $1.6 trillion business. It’s doing some amazing things to improve and extend human life and we are proud to be part of that. When you are dealing with human lives, there are certain regulations and process and procedures mainly to do with safety for the patient.

    We Are Just Helping People to Be More Efficient

    You have to follow those things and some of those procedures, unfortunately, have been on paper until Veeva got in there with the right cloud software. We are just helping people be more efficient. The people inside those life sciences companies I think are doing their jobs slightly better because they get to use this modern software technology to help them do what they love to do which is making medicine for patients.

    This Veeva team can accomplish so much. We started out in the commercial side of life sciences and then we moved into the R&D, the clinical trial area. That was our second big act with our Veeva Vault and has been huge for Veeva. Now we are going outside of life sciences with a product called Quality One.

    A New Big Frontier for Veeva

    You have to be careful when you are manufacturing and distributing a chemical, cosmetics, consumer packaged goods, and laundry detergent. You have to be very careful about that type of stuff and they have been burdened with client-server processes and paper processes. We want to come in and modernize that and help people do better work in those industries. That is a big frontier for Veeva.

    Sometimes in these industries, you will be doing a very complex manufacturing process and you when you want to change that process, a lot of that is done on paper and spreadsheets still. They haven’t automated it because there hasn’t been a good cloud-based system so that’s what we are helping them with.

  • How to get real followers for Instagram in 2018

    How to get real followers for Instagram in 2018

    With 25 million business profiles on Instagram, we’re living in a time where it is not enough to simply have a social media presence to get real followers on Instagram. You have to attract the right kind of Instagram users to gain that crucial social proof to help your brand stand out.

    This is a sponsored post

    Whether we like to admit it or not, you could have the best product in the world, but if you only have a few followers on Instagram people will immediately begin to discredit it.

    At the same time, your competitor could have a mediocre product, but be driving more sales than you because of the social validation they’ve gotten from their followers on Instagram.

    Don’t worry, we get it 💪

    Growing your account can feel like a tedious and time-consuming task. But with 60% of users finding products via Instagram, your brand simply CANNOT afford to ignore Instagram as a marketing channel. You need to attract the right Instagram users that are going to convert into more likes, comments, clicks, and most importantly, fans of your brand.

    Today, we’re breaking down the 7 crucial categories you need to focus on to simplify using Instagram for business and get real followers on Instagram in 2018. Here’s what we’ll cover:

     

    1. Optimizing Your Instagram Bio
    2. Creating Quality Instagram Content
    3. Crafting Instagram Captions
    4. How to Hashtag on Instagram
    5. Using Instagram Stories
    6. Instagram Giveaways
    7. Instagram Influencer Marketing

     

    1. Optimizing Your Instagram Bio

    First impressions are everything. When it comes to Instagram, impressions are made in two-tenths of a second. To grow your Instagram organically and gain the right kind of followers, your potential followers need to know exactly who you are, what you do, and why they should care.

    Your Instagram bio is the first thing people see when they land on your page, so make sure your bio section captures your visitors’ attention from the get-go. Do this right and you’ll be ahead of 95% of brands out there on IG.

    Here’s what you’ll want to include in your Instagram bio:

    Headline & Keyword

    Clearly state your brand name and then add a keyword that describes who you are. Adding a particular niche, job title, or interest to your headline helps your users get to know you and understand what you do.

    @Planoly uses the keywords “Planner for Insta” to clearly showcase their scheduler tool and drive traffic from anyone that might be searching for their type of service via the Instagram app.

     

    [su_quote style=”default” cite=”” url=”” class=””]The headline is also searchable, so make sure you choose a keyword that your followers would associate with your page to increase organic traffic.[/su_quote]

    Body section

    The body section is the bulk of your Instagram bio and should contain the majority of your description. Keep it clean and organized with a bullet point format, while clearly describing who you are in your brand’s voice.

    About you

    First, include a condensed version of your mission statement or company slogan to let people know what you’re all about. Remember, you’re limited to 150 characters here, so be short & precise.

    You can also add anything that gives your page some personality – like your location or a branded hashtag. (Don’t forget to throw in some 🔥🤩🌹)

    Call to action 📢

    Most importantly, include a call-to-action statement that entices your followers to click on the URL provided. Adding phrases like “Click below for 10% off” or “Check out our new arrivals” can help convert your followers into real customers.

     

    Entice the click

    Try adding some emojis like @Puravidabraceltets to really catch the eye of your followers and drive them to your link!

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Social proof

    Be sure to include a line that gives your page credibility. This can be a feature in a publication, a certification you’ve achieved, or a social cause your brand gives back to.

    The body section of @Sugarbearhair’s bio clearly states exactly what their product is, while speaking to their audience and showing social proof.

     

     

    URL

    This is the only section you have to place a link on Instagram, so use it wisely. Typically, you’ll want to provide a direct link to your website, blog, or specific landing page that coordinates with your call-to-action.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    2. Creating Quality Instagram Content

     

     

    With now over one billion users, Instagram is THE visual platform. Every post you share on Instagram should be high-quality and complement your brand image. Never sacrifice quality for quantity (just save those for Instagram stories 😉).

    Nowadays however, it isn’t as simple as posting an “Insta-worthy” photo. Because new potential followers are going to get their first impression of your brand from your Instagram’s aesthetic, the quality of your individual posts have to reflect throughout your entire grid consistently.

    To get real followers on Instagram, keep these two key concepts in mind:

     

    Signature style

    First and foremost, your brand should be the focus of your page. Whether you are a business or an influencer, you’ll want to make sure that each and every image you post reflects the purpose of your page. Even one random image can ruin a grid.

    Once you pinpoint your focus, take your page to the next level by centralizing around a theme with at least one consistent element that links all of your photos together.

    “Engaging photos and video is absolutely essential on Instagram. Not only should your content be high quality but it should also communicate something interesting and important to you. When you create content that you are excited about you will naturally find an audience that is excited about it too.”

    Emma Chapman, Color Story Co-Founder

    Digital design kit and mobile application

     

     

     

    Filters

    Apply the same filter to all of your photos for a quick and easy way to create flow and cohesion. We love the apps A Color Story and VSCO.

    Color scheme

    Find a distinct color scheme that works for you and sprinkle it in throughout your grid.

    Is your brand bright and colorful? Minimalistic with lots of negative space? Outdoorsy with beautiful sceneries? Pick a style and consistently stick to it in every post.

     

     

     

     

    Variety of content

    With Instagram, you want to create a sense of community and lifestyle around your brand so that new followers can easily identify and picture themselves using what you have to offer. No one wants to look at a product catalog, so be sure to mix it up with both lifestyle and product photos!

     

    Creating Your Content

    Variety is KEY! You’ll want to create different types of photos like detail shots, flatlays, and lifestyle images to keep each post feeling new and exciting. Any opportunity you get to show your product on a model or in action, take it!

    Adding to Your Mix

    Once you have gathered all of your own original content, enhance your grid by cycling in stock photos, relatable quotes, and user-generated content. These can be a lifesaver for making your content last much longer, especially if you have a non-visual brand or service.

     

     

     

     

    Instagram is a platform for visual storytelling. Instead of trying to stand out, just be authentic. We shoot the photography in-house and hand-curate what we post; we don’t recycle content from our Facebook or Twitter feeds. Instagram should be its own, unique channel.

    Laura Casanova, VP, Creative at ONTRAPORT

    Business automation software

     

     

    Organizing Your Grid

    Ensure that all of your high-quality images will look #flawless together on your feed by using a scheduling app like Planoly or Later. These apps give you a preview of how all your photos will look before you post them! Mix and match until you get a well-balanced grid.

     

    Creating a cohesive Instagram brand is one of the best ways to attract your target audience and get more followers. Pre-planning your Instagram aesthetic with a visual Instagram planner like Later is key, it helps you make sure your feed flows by allowing you to see all of your upcoming content at-a-glance.

    Taylor Loren, Head of Marketing at Later

    A far-famed Instagram Posts Scheduler

     

     

     

    60 / 40 rule

    At least 60% of your grid should include your product or service directly. The other 40% can be lifestyle shots, stock images, or quotes that all speak to your community.

    @originalgrain built their community of “the travel seaking gentleman” by complimenting their product shots with scenic stock images and user generated content.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    3. Crafting Instagram Captions

     

     

    The money is made in the captions.

    Your Instagram captions should enhance your post by giving more context, value, and insight into what is happening beyond the image. Let your audience get to know your brand on a higher level.

    Rather than describing what is in the picture, try telling the story behind it, why is it you do what you do, or news regarding your brand.

     

    Brand Personality

    Show some personality behind those captions! The more your brand’s voice shines through, the easier it will be for your followers to connect with your post.

    Call-to-action

    Include some type of call-to-action to entice users to comment and get the conversation started! Comments are weighed heavily in the new Instagram algorithm, so the more comments the better.

    Try asking a question or having users tag a friend to get even more traffic and engagement back to your page.

    @Toneitup has the right idea! They speak to their fitness community in a laid-back, yet personal tone and ask users to tag a friend to join their workout.

     

     

    4. How to Hashtag on Instagram

    Instagram posts with at least one hashtag have 12.6% more engagement than those without.

    The best way to expand your reach on Instagram: HASHTAGS. We know hashtag research can seem a little daunting, but stick to these easy steps and you’ll have a perfect set of hashtags in no time!

    Brainstorm

    Think of words your customers would use to describe your product or service. Since they are the ones that will be searching these hashtags, it is important to get into the mind of your audience.

    Is there a certain community you are trying to tap into?

    Using hashtags like #brooklynlife or #mommystyle are great niche specific hashtags that will link you directly to your ideal target audience.

    If you’re really stuck, check out what your direct competitors are using to generate some ideas.

    Qualify

    The biggest mistake with hashtags is using ones that have way too much or far too little traffic. You’ll want to find hashtags that have about 4K-800K posts associated with them to get the optimal amount of exposure.

    The more specific a hashtag is to your industry the better. You want the hashtags to be big enough that people are actually searching for it, but not so big that your post will be lost in the clutter.

     

    Keep in mind that users can now follow a hashtags, similar to following a brand’s Instagram account, making hashtags even more essential to get real followers on Instagram.

     

    Store & Save

    Once you start compiling your qualified hashtags, break them up into 5-7 sets of about 10-20 niche specific tags. Store them in the note section of your phone for easy access and be sure to switch them out every so often.

    Post

    When it comes time to post, copy and paste your list of hashtags into the first comment of your image. This helps to keep your post looking clean while still tagging the picture and getting you more exposure. Although we recommend around 10-20, you can include up to 30 hashtags per post, so add a few more hashtags specific to this image and hit share. And that’s it! Easy enough, right?

     

    5. Using Instagram Stories

    Instagram Stories are quickly becoming one of the best marketing tools for brands. From behind the scenes check-ins to exclusive sales, you can use this feature to build brand identity and connect in real-time with updates beyond the scope of your IG Grid.

     

    Features

    Just like your Instagram grid, your IG stories should be cohesive with your brand imagery and voice, but with a “live view” feel. This is your chance to be sporadic and authentic with your followers. Since stories only stay up on your page for 24-hours, you have a little more wiggle room to play around with.

    Exposure

    Using the Stickers Feature, tag your story at a certain location or include a relevant hashtag. This allows your story to pop up on the corresponding explore page, giving you another opportunity to increase your story’s reach!

     

     

     

     

    @Socialstatic interacts with their followers by utilizing the question feature and maximizes exposure using the location sticker. Win-win!

     

    Highlights

    Instagram Highlights are collections of Stories that give new potential followers an idea of what your page is all about. Rather than disappearing after 24-hours, Highlights are saved right under your bio and act as a more interactive “about you” description.

    The possibilities for Instagram Highlights are truly endless, but some commonly used categories include: how it works, new products, and behind-the-scenes.

     

    Take it up a level by adding matching covers to all of your Instagram Highlights to ensure your page stays organized and on brand!

     

    Not much of a designer? Go to Fiverr.com and pay $5 for a professional designer to get your Instagram Highlights looking fresh.

     

    6. Instagram Giveaways

    Instagram accounts that hold contests can achieve 70% faster follower growth compared to those that don’t hold contests.

    Hosting an Instagram contest is a tried and true method to not only reward your loyal followers, but also gain exposure and get new real followers on Instagram.

    There is a lot of planning that goes into running a successful Instagram giveaway. You’ll want to consider things like budget, picking the right incentive, and most importantly the goal of your Instagram contest.

    If your goal is to grow your following with an Instagram giveaway, these are the four best entry methods.

    Comment-to-Win

    These contests require your followers to comment on your contest photo. Then, winners are chosen from the pool of commenters.

    To increase exposure, have the requirement be to tag a friend (or two) in their comment. Voila: double the Instagram exposure. You can even go as far as counting each tag as an entry, further incentivizing your followers to tag more friends for a better chance to win.

    Follow-to-Win

    For this type of contest, consider collaborating with another complimentary brand (or group of brands) in your niche. Contest participants can enter by following all of the accounts involved in the giveaway.

    Because your page will be exposed to the followers of the brands you are collaborating with, you’ll want to make sure you pick a brand that has your ideal target audience. This will help ensure that these new followers will have a genuine connection to your page and stick around long after your contest is over.

     

    Double up on a couple of tactics like @nenaandco to maximize engagement.

     

    Post to win

    Participants re-post a picture that you provide or share their own original content showcasing your brand to their feed. By sharing these pictures, your fans are grabbing the attention of their own followers to give you a mini-shoutout.

    This gives your followers a chance to get creative and gives you lots of free user-generated content.

    However, you’ll want to make sure you already receive high engagement on your page to confirm there is enough brand loyalty to ensure participation.

     

    “When you collect media via a contest you shouldn’t leave it sitting on Instagram for no-one to see. You can build a Gallery and embed it on your site so users can see the content and engage with it. This is more likely to drive sales of your products. Gleam offers a beautiful UGC Gallery app to allow you to do just this.”

    Stuart Mackeown, Gleam Co-Founder

    Business Growth Platform

     

    Remember this? In 2017, Sunny Clothing Co hosted a post-to-win contest where users had to repost this now infamous red bikini picture to receive a free swimsuit. Soon enough, everyone’s feed was flooded with this picture, which exponentially increased their brand awareness.

    Unfortunately, the brand received far more entries than expected and did not have enough inventory to handle the high volume of participants.

    Take Away: Post-to-win giveaways can do tremendous things for your brand awareness, but make sure you have the right requirements and are prepared to live up to your promise.

     

    Hashtag-to-Win

    Similar to post-to-win, participants post their own image or an image you provide on their feed, but also include a certain branded hashtag.

    While this can be the toughest type of giveaway to pull off, if the hashtag trends, the exposure can be pretty substantial. You’ll want to make sure you pick a unique hashtag specific to your contest, ideally centralized around your contest theme.

    Tracking the success of your giveaway is almost as important as the giveaway itself. Save yourself some time and get clear insights from Gleam’s Instagram contest tool that simplifies the entry process and make tracking participant an breeze.

     

    7. Instagram Influencer Marketing

    More than 90% of marketers who use an influencer marketing strategy today believe it’s effective for increasing customer engagement.

    Here’s our go-to-guide for how to find influencers:

    Set your budget

    Determine your budget and what level influencer you want to target. A general rate is $1,000 per 100,000 followers, but can vary depending on industry. If you have a lower budget, you may consider going after a micro-influencer who may have a bit of a smaller following, but who’s audience is very niche specific and value said influencer’s opinion highly.

    Define your niche

    Figure out who has a voice in the community. When in doubt, a simple Google search of the top Instagram accounts in your field can be a great place to start. Platforms like Famebit and Tribe Group help you discover and connect with influencers by interest or category.

    Qualify your list

    Once you have your list of prospective influencers, make sure they are going to be a good fit. Note how many followers they have, their average likes & comments, and what social platforms they are on to pick the best influencer to collaborate with.

     

    Build your community

    Engage with their content so they are familiar with your name. Once a bit of a relationship is established, reach out with a genuine message that states why you both would work well together.

    And that’s it! Seven easy steps to optimize your business’ Instagram account for growth. Implement even just a few of these tips and you’ll be well on your way to getting more real followers on Instagram and becoming an Instagram marketing expert.

    For more daily marketing tips, be sure to follow us on Instagram @Kicksta.co.

  • Thinking About Using AI to Recruit New Staff? Amazon’s Failed Experiment Might Have You Thinking Twice

    Thinking About Using AI to Recruit New Staff? Amazon’s Failed Experiment Might Have You Thinking Twice

    Companies that are planning to use artificial intelligence for recruitment should think twice before doing that. A new report revealed that Amazon’s AI machine learned gender bias and weeded out women as potential job candidates. The machine even downgraded applicants based on the school they attended.

    A growing number of employers are using AI to boost the efficiency of their hiring process. The machine can be utilized to evaluate resumes, narrow down a list of applicants, and recommend candidates for the right post within a company. It can then pass on its findings to its live counterpart for human assessment. While AI is an effective tool for screening resumes, it has been shown to develop bias, as proven by Amazon’s experiment.

    Reuters reported that the retail giant spent several years developing an AI that would vet job applicants. The machine was trained to look at the resumes that the company received for the past ten years. But as most of these applications were from male applicants, the patterns the AI identified were strongly oriented to that sex. In short, Amazon’s AI learned gender bias.

    For instance, the AI developed a preference for terms like “captured” or “executed,” which were words commonly used by male engineers. The machine also began to penalize applications that included the word “women” or “women’s.” So describing yourself as the head of the “women’s physics club” was a strike against you.

    A source familiar with Amazon’s AI program also admitted that the machine even downgraded applicants who graduated from two all-women’s universities. The names of the universities were not specified in the report.

    The bias shown by the AI’s algorithm became noticeable a year after the project started, and Amazon admittedly tried to correct its AI. The company’s engineers initially edited the system to make it neutral to these specific words. However, there was no way of proving that the machine would not learn another way to sort candidates in a discriminatory manner.

    The project was eventually shelved in 2017 because company executives lost confidence in it. The AI also reportedly failed at providing choices for strong and effective job candidates.

    Fortunately for Amazon, the AI hiring experiment was just a trial run. The machine was never utilized by a larger group and was never used as the main recruiting agent. Nevertheless, the possibility is high that a qualified applicant was weeded out simply because she was a woman and did not think to use a masculine term like “capture.”

    [Featured image via Pexels]

  • Larry Ellison’s Pitch for the Oracle Autonomous Database

    Larry Ellison’s Pitch for the Oracle Autonomous Database

    Oracle just released a new video commercial for the Oracle Autonomous Database featuring Oracle co-founder, executive chairman, and chief technology officer Larry Ellison:

    The world’s first and only fully autonomous database.  Oracle Autonomous Database is 100% self-driving. It needs no human intervention. The Oracle autonomous database continuously tunes itself. This makes it faster and much cheaper to operate. It will automatically scale itself up as the demands on the system go up and will automatically scale itself down so when there isn’t a lot of demand on the system you’re not paying for what you don’t use.

    We are using machine learning to make our software self-driving. We have to automate our cyber defenses. The Oracle autonomous database automates the entire thing. A much more reliable system. A much more secure system. The system that protects against data theft. The system that’s up 99.995% at a time and a system that makes you and your developers dramatically more productive.

    Oracle CEO Mark Hurd recently described the Oracle Autonomous Database saying:

    “This is a generational release for us as we bring it to market.”

    Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has previously said about the database:

    “The cool thing about the Autonomous Database Cloud is because it is autonomous the database is fully automated.  Human Beings don’t create the database, the database creates itself. Human Beings don’t tune the database, the database tunes itself.”

  • Cloudera CEO: How We Become the Next Oracle of the Future

    Cloudera CEO: How We Become the Next Oracle of the Future

    Last week, Cloudera and Hortonworks announced that the companies were merging to “create the world’s leading next-generation data platform provider, spanning multi-cloud, on-premises, and the Edge.” Cloudera CEO Tom Reilly says that providing technology to help manage the huge volume of data generated from the Internet of Things is where “Cloudera is going to compete and that’s how we become the next Oracle of the future. “

    Tom Reilly, CEO of Cloudera, discussed the Hortonworks merger and how they plan to become the next Oracle type company in an interview with Jim Cramer on Mad Money:

    This is a Wonderful Merger

    This is a wonderful merger. Basically, by bringing these two companies together we are creating immense shareholder value. Our plans are that by 2020, just around the corner, our combined company Cloudera plus Hortonworks will be greater than a billion dollars in annual revenues, will be greater than 20 percent year-over-year growth, and will have greater than 15% operating cash flow margins. The amount of shareholder value we will create by bringing us together is immense.

    Profitability of the combined company is our goal. This has been a rivalry that’s going on for nearly 10 years. We have been going at it really hard against each other and that has made us both better. Competition is wonderful, but now there’s a new set of competitors that we can combine ourselves to be a much stronger company at greater scale and we can take on a new set of competitors, and a lot of it are these cloud guys, where we are extremely well positioned to win in a different market.

    What Does Cloudera Do?

    Samsung Electronics, like all other manufacturers, are instrumenting and connecting the devices they create to the Internet. It’s called the Internet of Things. Every car, every cell phone, everything through a supply chain is being instrumented including autonomous vehicles. We sell technology for our customers to collect all that data and use machine learning and artificial intelligence to understand better how products are being used and to make them more efficient or to build autonomous vehicles. This is what we do. Cloudera and Hortonworks allow us to deliver an enterprise data cloud from the Edge where data comes from all the way to AI, getting insight out of that data.

    Merger is a Win-Win for Everyone

    This merger is a win-win for everyone. All of our customers are happy, all of our partners are happy, and yes our partner systems is going to get larger because Cloudera has some unique partnerships and relationships as does Hortonworks. Regarding our IBM partnership, Hortonworks and IBM have had a wonderful strategic partnership.

    The new Cloudera is going to embrace that partnership much like we Cloudera have had a wonderful relationship with Intel. Now we’re going to bring in the Hortonworks customer base and they’re going to get the benefits of our relationship with Intel. We intend this to be a win-win not only for our shareholders, our partners, our customers, and all of our employees.

    How We Become the Next Oracle

    A  lot of the excitement about this merger is people expect us to be the next Oracle. That doesn’t mean we’re replacing Oracle legacy business or their traditional business. No, the world is changing with this Internet of Things. Data is of much more volume and people want to do artificial intelligence machine learning against that data. That’s where we’re going to compete and that’s how we become the next Oracle of the future.

    The fact of the matter is Oracle is a good partner of ours. Oracle has resold Qatar our software for a long time and we’re excited about what Oracle is doing in the cloud and we intend to work with them there. Cloudera plus Hortonworks working together will be the only provider delivering our software across all the major cloud guys. We work on Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and the IBM cloud and that’s our value proposition, enterprises they can work across all the cloud providers.

  • CareerBuilder CEO Says Technology is Driving Jobs Growth

    CareerBuilder CEO Says Technology is Driving Jobs Growth

    The release of today’s Jobs Report shows the lowest unemployment in the US since 1969 and CareerBuilder is now predicting that an additional 8,310,003 jobs will be created over the next 5 years. CareerBuilder CEO Irina Novoselsky says that technology is driving that growth, whether the job is a technology-oriented job or a traditional manufacturing job, technology skills are now required.

    Irina Novoselsky, CEO of CareerBuilder recently discussed how technology is driving jobs growth on Fox Business:

    Technology is Driving Jobs Growth

    Technology is driving a lot of that growth. You are seeing it in two ways, both on new industries that are emerging such as AI, robotics, cybersecurity, as you would expect, and the high wage earners are seeing a lot of that growth in jobs like nursing and software development.

    We are also seeing a lot of growth on the low wage in industries that are really the American fabric such as manufacturing. What’s really driving some of the conversations around that is the technology aspect and the skill deficit that’s happening as part of that.

    The top is growing, the bottom is growing, and really the middle is stuck in a dilemma where they have to get more skillset if they are going to get there. They are either going to go up or they are going to be left behind.

    70 Percent of Jobs Have a Major Technical Component

    Employers are saying that 70 percent of their jobs have a major technical component, including in manufacturing. A machinist today has a big technical aspect to their job, more than even a few years ago. Consumers and employees are left looking at how do they upscale and career path in non-traditional ways?

    The four-year education model is really difficult for them, it’s budget constraint, time constraint, so they are looking for unique opportunities to get that education and that skillset and in non-traditional ways.

    Employers Have Turned to Training Internally

    One of the things employers are doing is creating that competency skill training internally. What’s happening is that there are not enough of the skilled employees to recruit. One of the largest things employers are dealing with is open roles for a very long period of time and they are maneuvering this talent deficit by taking it on themselves.

    One of the things that we are doing is no longer mandating a 4-year college degree for some of our roles. We are taking on the onus to bring in the people and train them ourselves. It’s a great opportunity for middle wage earners to start upscale and career pathing, learning the technology skill sets to move up or they are going to be left behind.

  • Chinese People’s Liberation Army Implanted Malicious Microchips on Computer Servers Bound for U.S. Companies

    Chinese People’s Liberation Army Implanted Malicious Microchips on Computer Servers Bound for U.S. Companies

    An explosive Bloomberg Businessweek report details how China was able to pull off the most significant supply chain attack ever against American companies. Reportedly, China used third-party vendors to America companies, including Amazon and Apple, to insert a tiny microchip, no bigger than a grain of rice, onto motherboards for Supermicro. Amazon Web Services (AWS), reviewed these servers and found “troubling issues.”

    “Nested on the servers’ motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental’s servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers.

    During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.”

    Bloomberg Businessweek reporter Jordan Robertson who co-wrote this blockbuster story talked about it on Bloomberg TV:

    The basic gist of this story is that in 2014 and 2015 a unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army implanted malicious microchips on computer servers bound for U.S. companies. Those computer servers wound up in very targeted, very large companies including Apple and Amazon.

    What these malicious chips did was compromise the software on these hardware devices at the kind of level that you can’t detect, in many ways the ultimate silent attack. This was a very major discovery for these companies and for U.S. intelligent services.

    This story has taken us well over a year to report and write and a lot of that is learning what is a hardware attack? It’s such science fiction in many ways to us as reporters and to the public at large. A hardware attack is simply the most effective type of computer hacking that any organization can engineer. The reason is if the hardware of the computer is compromised it will irrevocably compromise the software that sits on top of it.

    There is no commercial security system that can detect that kind of manipulation. It’s a super serious attack that is almost impossible to detect without physical examination of the hardware which almost no one does.

  • Inventor of the Web Reveals Disruptive Plan to Solve Data Security Issues

    Inventor of the Web Reveals Disruptive Plan to Solve Data Security Issues

    Facebook’s announcement last Friday that 50 million of its user accounts were compromised by hackers only emphasizes how vulnerable our data is and how little control we have over who gets to see it. This is not what Tim Berners-Lee envisioned when he created the world wide web back in the 1980s. However, the esteemed engineer’s new project will reportedly take the power away from large internet providers and give it back to ordinary users.

    A Solid Way to Disrupt the Internet

    Berners-Lee and his partner John Bruce have just unveiled their new startup, Inrupt. Supported by Glasswing Ventures, the company aims to change the internet and fulfill Berners-Lee’s vision of a free web where people have control of their data.

    In a recent interview, the MIT professor said that he has been imaging this moment for some time now. And with everything that’s happening with Facebook, Amazon, and Google, it’s now time to move and take advantage of this “historical moment.”

    Berners-Lee and his MIT team have spent the past few years developing Solid (Social Linkedsolid Data) and Inrupt is the first company to be built off it. Solid is said to give web users total control of their data through a POD, or Personal Online Data storage system. This is a file that holds all the user’s data, everything from addresses, friend lists, videos, images, and documents.

    The Solid team has designed the software so that it can create and manage a POD on either a hosted server or on a personal one. Companies can also use the system to design apps using the Solid platform.

    Development for the Solid POD will reportedly wrap up soon. Interested parties can actually start making their own PODs right now on the Inrupt website. However, the interface admittedly leaves a lot to be desired but you can use this time to familiarize yourself with the platform.

    Users will have the option to enroll their PODs in a storage service or store them on a standalone device. Meanwhile, apps and websites that want to access a user’s information will have to request the specific POD for it. But whether the device will share the information or not depends on the user’s preference. More importantly, apps or social media platforms won’t have control of the information. The data will be automatically removed from their system once access to the POD has been disabled.

    Can We Take Back the Internet?

    There’s no denying the merit behind Berners-Lee’s Inrupt and that it has the potential to turn the internet on its head. But the question on everyone’s minds is iwhether it will have the chance to do so.

    First, Inrupt and Solid still have a lot of questions to clarify. For instance, there’s the scope of the data that can be stored in PODs and how it will be maintained. Since a lot of people are already using the cloud for safekeeping data, would they have to migrate everything to a POD?

    Then there’s the fact that generating revenue through ads is still a crucial element and Solid might hinder that. For example, a music streaming service, providers will be hard-pressed to develop user profiles and recommend songs to clients if they can’t store customer data on their servers.

    Established platforms, like YouTube, would also be wary about suddenly switching to PODs. Even if they’re inclined to, their shareholders might not be too happy about it. Not only is Inrupt untested, but a lot of companies would also find that continuing with the business model they have now is simpler.

    [Featured image via Bloomberg Youtube]

  • Rapid7 CEO: We Have Not Designed Our Technology Ecosystem to be 100% Secure

    Rapid7 CEO: We Have Not Designed Our Technology Ecosystem to be 100% Secure

    The recent massive data breach at Facebook have brought to focus that if one of largest technology companies in the world can have their data compromised then any company, regardless of the security measures they may have in place is also vulnerable. This included sectors such as healthcare, banking, and transportation.

    The CEO of Rapid7, a company which offers vulnerability management solutions, says that cybercriminals have recently realized that data is money and that vulnerabilities are happening because of our speed of innovation. This is compounded because almost all companies are in essence becoming software companies. 

    Corey Thomas, Rapid7 President and CEO, discussed the challenges of cybersecurity on CNBC this morning:

    Cybersecurity Attacks Affecting the Fundamentals of Business

    What we’re finding is that more and more things are actually causing people to really understand that cybersecurity attacks are going to affect the fundamentals of the business. I think with Facebook, it was the additional layer of so much turmoil and scrutiny already that it’s just another sign that it’s going to be troubling days ahead.

    I was surprised by the recent breach in some ways because of how seriously Facebook takes security. On the other hand, when you look at the details of the breach it was completely understandable. They have lots of technologists, they’re moving fast, and the compromise itself and the vulnerability itself was the interplay of a whole bunch of different errors that actually went wrong at the same time.

    We Have Not Designed Our Technology Ecosystem to be 100% Secure

    One way to think about it is that we have not designed our technology ecosystem to be a 100 percent sure and secure. We value speed and one of the reasons that so many companies are successful is because they’re fast at building technology that all of us love and adopt and use. The side effect of that, unfortunately, is that speed comes at a cost.

    Speed of Innovation Raises Security Risks

    I don’t know if we’ll be able to put the speed of innovation genie back in the box. I do think we’re going to have to raise standards and I think there are lots of fundamental things that people can and should be doing.

    What actually scares me more are not the Facebook’s of the world, because I think Facebook and many companies have good security. It’s the fact that our entire economy is becoming more digital and frankly most of the companies that are starting to actually turn their services into technologies that are digitally connected are just not as sophisticated with security as a company like Facebook.

    Almost Every Company is Becoming a Software Company

    If you look at healthcare and the transportation ecosystem we’re connecting more and more aspects of our lives and we’re turning them into compute. You have a bunch of companies in the software industry which just ten years ago used to be an industry of relatively few names in the overall ecosystem.

    If you look toward the next ten years, almost every company is becoming a software company in some way.

    Cybercriminals Have Recently Realized that Data is Money

    Banks have been focused on security for longer because they’ve been the targets of fraud people have always gone after the money. You can argue that it’s a relatively recent focus area to realize that data’s money. That’s something that the internet companies realized 10 plus years ago and criminals have now realized that in the last five years, so that’s a change.

    The other aspect of it is banks do innovate less. If you look at one of the biggest disruptions that are coming along now is the in the financial services sector and in the consumer financial services sector. I would argue that banks are having the other outcropping of that because they innovated a slower pace typically they are now being disrupted.

  • Vlocity Thriving on the Salesforce AppExchange Focusing on Industry Verticals

    Vlocity Thriving on the Salesforce AppExchange Focusing on Industry Verticals

    The Salesforce AppExchange is where companies can find third-party applications that run on and integrate with the Salesforce platform. David Schmaier, CEO and Founder of Vlocity, a Forbes Cloud 100 Company, says that Vlocity is the fastest company ever built on the Salesforce AppExchange and the Salesforce platform.

    Companies leverage Vlocity Industry Cloud apps to extend the power of the Salesforce platform.

    Vlocity CEO and founder David Schmaier discussed his companies amazing rise in an interview at Dreamforce:

    Vlocity Has 5 Industry Verticals Built on Top of Salesforce

    Vlocity is the single fastest company ever built on the Salesforce AppExchange and the Salesforce platform. The app exchange has 4,000 companies that do basically everything you can do possibly with the world’s number one CRM platform and cloud platform Salesforce. What we do is we build five industry verticals on top of the Salesforce platform; communications and media, insurance, healthcare, government, and our newest addition is the energy business. We take what our regulated businesses and we make them digital.

    I came to my first Dreamforce in 2013 and I was looking around for opportunities. Some friends had built a company called Veeva, which is the biggest company ever built on the Salesforce platform and they do pharmaceutical and life sciences CRM. I came to Dreamforce to find the next Veeva and when I found was astonishing. Back then there were around 2,700 companies on the AppExchange and I saw CPQ, CGI, Middleware and Document Management, but no other industry vertical applications.

    There was only one back then and yet it was the largest company ever built on the Salesforce platform and the only one to go public. You didn’t need to be a Ph.D. in computer science to figure out that there was an opportunity to build another Veeva, a bigger Veeva, which we call Vlocity.

    Vlocity Transforms Industries to be Modern, Digital, and Customer Centric

    We named the company Vlocity because we’re fast, but we try and we’re trying to improve the agility of our customers. A good example of this is last night we were with New York Life Insurance which has rolled out about 18,000 users of Salesforce and Vlocity in about a year and they do it all in a mobile-first way.

    Before they would go in and talk to you about life insurance in your kitchen with pen and paper and now they just tap on their phone to sell life insurance. We’ve taken the whole process and made it mobile first and made it digital so they can connect with their customers in a whole new way. That’s the kind of capabilities that we provide for people. We call it digital, we call it agile and it’s all available now on the mobile device.

    Vlocity Announces New Mobile Products

    We’re announcing two new mobile products. The first is a visual studio where I can point and click and drag and drop and I can put in a companies logo and I can build high fidelity rich mobile apps and I can deploy them really really fast versus having to custom build them. We simplify the development process and allow you to point-and-click and put your colors and your branding and your logo and roll out very high fidelity mobile apps.

    The second part is we’re coming up out with a new app for consumers so that when I want to browse my bill or look at my usage or add devices or buy the new iPhones that just came out I can do that all from a branded consumer mobile app that’s that comes out of the box and ready for use. We’re doing a lot of things in the mobile-first area.  

    Vlocity Integrates AI and Siri

    I’m excited about Salesforce’s big announcement this week where Einstein and Siri are now best friends. We were in parallel working on these mobile apps and because our software’s all built 100% native and additive on the Salesforce platform all that great work Salesforce is doing with Einstein and Siri we get for free.

    Now we can ask Siri questions about paying the bill or understanding usage or adding the new iPhone and I can do that all through the voice capabilities that Salesforce has added to the platform. The platform keeps getting better with analytics, with Einstein, now Einstein meets Siri, and we’re just thrilled to be part of this great ecosystem.