According to the Wall Street Journal Microsoft is partnering with tech startups as part of its fierce battle to win the cloud war against Amazon, Google, and others. Microsoft just announced today a global strategic alliance with cloud security startup Abnormal Security. The deal is straight forward. The fast-growing startup moves its platform to Azure and Microsoft will offer Abnormal Security to its huge list of enterprise customers. Amazon has been employing this tactic as well per WSJ.
In the latest deal with Abnormal Security, Azure customers can purchase Abnormal Security directly via Microsoft co-sell and through the Azure Marketplace. Microsoft says that all purchases count towards enterprise Azure commitments.
“Microsoft for Startups is committed to helping B2B startups use the Microsoft platform to scale their business quickly and deliver innovative AI-powered solutions to enterprise customers,” said Jeffrey Ma, VP Microsoft for Startups. “Abnormal has hit the ground running, seeing success with Fortune 1000 companies in a short time, and we’re looking forward to joining forces to further accelerate their security solution to our global customers.”
Evan Reiser, Co-founder and CEO at Abnormal Security said, “When considering the right cloud infrastructure, startups need to look at both the technology platform and the business opportunity. As a cybersecurity company, we were very intrigued with Azure’s inherent security, privacy and AI offerings and as a startup, Microsoft’s go-to-market support and access to the largest enterprises is unmatched. We decided that to be a high-growth company selling to the Fortune 1000, it made business sense to partner with Microsoft and move our business to Azure.”
“Abnormal’s unparalleled market traction is a testament to incredible value being delivered to their customers and the ability to protect organizations from these cyberattacks that have cost them over $2b. I couldn’t be any more excited to see the accelerated growth with Microsoft co-selling the solution,” said Saam Motamedi, General Partner at Greylock Partners.
It’s definitely a win-win for Microsoft and startups like Abnormal Security. Microsoft gets a fast growing startup exclusively on its platform and Abnormal Security gets access to Microsoft’s massive connections with enterprise companies.
Intel launched their 10nm Tiger Lake CPU today increasing product performance by 20 percent. “Our 10-nanometer process that our Tiger Lake product will run on today is a step function improvement from the 10-nanometer process we launched just last year,” says Intel CEO Bob Swan. “Its process will deliver 15 to 20 percent more performance in the products that we are launching. At the end of the day, product performance is what matters most to our customers.”
Bob Swan, CEO of Intel, discusses the launch of their 10nm Tiger Lake CPU which provides a significant improvement in product performance:
Product Performance Is What Matters
The PC is a more and more an essential ingredient of our everyday lives. Whether you are studying from home, working from home, and trying to stay connected from home, it’s just more important. The Tiger Lake product that we are launching today, in essence, addresses those activities that we are doing. Whether it’s content creation, inherent productivity, or connectivity, it addresses those key things that are becoming more relevant in terms of how we engage with our PC and how we engage with each other.
At the end of the day, product performance is what matters most to our customers. Under that umbrella, there are multiple things that have evolved over time. Process continues to be very important. Packaging becomes more relevant as we pull different technologies together. Software plays an increasingly important role. The technologies required to build a computer today are much different than they used to be. With Tiger Lake, it’s not just about the CPU or the microprocessor, it’s about the WiFi. Connectivity is so important, upgrading WiFi, and upgrading graphics capabilities, The nature of the PC today and how it’s evolved incorporates more technology. Where process continues to be important, it’s not relatively as important as it once was.
Tiger Lake Will Deliver 20 Percent More Performance
The naming convention over time has lost its relevance. It’s become less of a technical articulation of capabilities and a little bit more of a marketing articulation. Our 10-nanometer process that our Tiger Lake product will run on today is a step function improvement from the 10-nanometer process we launched just last year. Its process will deliver 15 to 20 percent more performance in the products that we are launching. It’s a very exciting time not just because of the Tiger Lake product (the CPU) but how we’ve coupled it with other technologies to address the most top of mind experiences with advanced processing technology that we refer to as SuperFin.
The relative importance of graphics and the role that it plays, not just in gaming but in communications today is so much higher. That’s why with this product launch the enhanced capabilities of our integrated graphics is a real big bump in overall performance. It’s also an increasingly relevant technology and capability in today’s PC. In essence, the use of the PC and what the graphics technology we’ve built into this product does is rising the role that the PC will play as it become more and more an essential ingredient in our everyday lives.
There Will Be Significant Demand For Tiger Lake
Over the last several years we’ve added $20 billion in revenue to the size of the company. From our PC, our internet of things, our communication, and from our cloud businesses, we’ve experienced dramatic growth. It was critical for us to keep pace in ensuring that we have the capacity and the supply to deal with that growth. We’ve made tremendous progress at the end of last year and through the first six months of this year getting that capacity in place.
For both 14-nanometer, which today is the lion’s share of the products we are shipping, but increasingly we are adding capacity. We expect there will be significant demand for the new product that we announced today but also the new products that we have coming in the second half of this year, particularly in the server Xeon chip.
https://youtu.be/PMAi5lXMkXA
Intel CEO Bob Swan: Tiger Lake Will Deliver 20% More Performance
“It was a strong quarter for us certainly across almost every metric,” says PayPal CEO Dan Schulman. “What’s happened is the world has accelerated from physical to digital across almost every industry. If you look at health care it’s all about telemedicine right now. If you look at education it’s about remote learning. If you look at the retail industry it is now about online almost over offline or physical locations in store. If you look at the restaurant business you really can’t be in business.”
Schulman says that it is imperative for businesses to move toward a digital-first strategy. “If all you’re doing is trying to serve customers at your location given social distancing and the number of people coming out (you won’t survive),” he said. “You have to be about takeout and delivery. Across every industry, we’re seeing this surge towards a digital-first strategy. All of the tools and products and services that we offer are probably more relevant and important across multiple industries than they’ve ever been before.”
PayPal CEO: Across Every Industry, We’re Seeing a Surge Towards a Digital-First Strategy
Just twenty short months after SAP announced their intention of acquiringQualtrics for $8 billion just prior to their IPO SAP is taking Qualtrics public.
“The Qualtrics IPO is actually a win-win situation for both SAP and Qualtrics,” says SAP CEO Christian Klein. “When we are talking about Qualtrics let me first outline that Qualtrics was for sure one of the best acquisitions SAP ever did. They performed in the last 9 months above and beyond all the expectations we have set at the point of the acquisition. Now, three months back when I became the sole CEO of SAP Ryan Smith and I discussed a few options about how to move Qualtrics to the next level.”
“SAP’s acquisition of Qualtrics has been a great success and has outperformed our expectations with 2019 cloud growth in excess of 40 percent, demonstrating very strong performance in the current setup,” Klein stated. “As Ryan Smith, Zig Serafin, and I worked together, we decided that an IPO would provide the greatest opportunity for Qualtrics to grow the Experience Management category, serve its customers, explore its own acquisition strategy and continue building the best talent. SAP will remain Qualtrics’ largest and most important go-to-market and research and development (R&D) partner while giving Qualtrics greater independence to broaden its base by partnering and building out the entire experience management ecosystem.”
“When we launched the Experience Management category, our goal was always to help as many organizations as possible leverage the XM Platform as a system of action,” Qualtrics Founder Ryan Smith said. “SAP is an incredible partner with unprecedented global reach, and we couldn’t be more excited about continuing the partnership. This will allow us to continue building out the XM ecosystem across a broad array of partners.”
SAP agreed to acquire Qualtrics just four days before Qualtrics was to go public in 2018, recognizing the potential of bringing together experience and operational data (X+O) to help organizations take action. SAP currently owns 100 percent of Qualtrics shares. SAP will retain majority ownership of Qualtrics and has no intention of spinning off or otherwise divesting its majority ownership interest. Ryan Smith intends to be Qualtrics’ largest individual shareholder.
Christian Klein, CEO of SAP, discusses the reasons for their IPO and says that Qualtrics has been the best acquisition that SAP ever did:
Qualtrics IPO Is A Win-Win For SAP and Qualtrics
When we are talking about Qualtrics let me first outline that Qualtrics was for sure one of the best acquisitions SAP ever did. They performed in the last 9 months above and beyond all the expectations we have set at the point of the acquisition. Now, three months back when I became the sole CEO of SAP Ryan Smith and I discussed a few options about how to move Qualtrics to the next level. The partial IPO, we are both fully convinced, is actually a win-win situation for both SAP and Qualtrics.
First, it will allow Qualtrics to focus on the non-SAP customer base in a high closed market. Second, despite the IPO, of course, SAP will remain fully committed to Experience Management (XM) and we will develop further use cases for our customers. We will also continue with the joint go-to-market. SAP is fully committed and will be in the long run highly committed to to Qualtrics and also will remain a majority shareholder of Qualtrics going forward.
IPO Allows Qualtrics To Go After non-SAP Customers
We kicked off already in the last 19 months, great use cases for our customers. We launched Human Experience Management (HXM) which helped both to accelerate the sales of Qualtrics but also our core application success factors. We did the same for commerce. In our product strategy, it actually plans to really expand experience management across our solution portfolio.
Our employees are very excited about that because they see the benefits for our customers and this is something that won’t change with the IPO. This will allow Qualtrics more autonomy to also go after the market with non-SAP customers as this is a high quote segment.
Qualtrics IPO Is A Win-Win, Says SAP CEO Christian Klein
“You have got to have a subscription business model just like Netflix, just like Adobe and just like Microsoft,” says Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey. Customers subscribe and we stream innovation. We’ve been streaming a lot to our customers. We talked about Home Depot recently. They’re seeing a record demand in the pandemic and we really helped them consolidate their infrastructure.”
Tech Companies Must Have A Subscription Business Model
As a company, we started almost ten years ago in a recession. The first killer workload for hyper-convergence was virtual desktops. People said Windows is dead. We said long live Windows. We went after federal customers and did an amazing job of building a very reliable company. Just taking a step back, we’re in the business of building cloud software. A lot of this comes down to the word software and cloud. We’re really thinking hard about being amorphous, being everywhere, being in the private data centers at the edge, and in the public cloud.
Cloud is hard and you really need to make it simple, seamless, and secure. But most importantly, you have got to have a subscription business model just like Netflix, just like Adobe and just like Microsoft. Customers subscribe and we stream innovation. We’ve been streaming a lot to our customers. We talked about Home Depot recently. They’re seeing a record demand in the pandemic and we really helped them consolidate their infrastructure.
Cloud Is About Consuming Smaller Things
The best way to measure our performance is a cloud subscription currency. We started talking about it as of last quarter and we grew really well with annual contract value. If you think about it cloud is about consuming smaller things. Hardware was about seven-year entitlement and software is still five to seven years. We’re saying let’s go do three-year terms and one-year terms. You’ve got to start small.
The recession is also the best time to go back with bite-size of what the customer really wants to buy. Annual contract value is the way of measuring our growth. It is also going to make this whole transition. I talked about Netflix and others and this whole transition unlocks amazing operational efficiencies for the company as well.
Tech Companies Must Have A Subscription Business Model: Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey
Better late than never—Microsoft has released an update to a major vulnerability that is some 17 years old.
Microsoft and security researchers are keen to prevent another WannaCry disaster, which has prompted a renewed focus on Windows vulnerabilities. Israeli security firm Check Point has discovered a vulnerability, called SigRed, that has the potential to be just as bad.
The vulnerability scores a CVSS Base score of 10, meaning it is as bad of a vulnerability as can exist. Microsoft also describes it as “a wormable vulnerability, meaning that it has the potential to spread via malware between vulnerable computers without user interaction. DNS is a foundational networking component and commonly installed on Domain Controllers, so a compromise could lead to significant service interruptions and the compromise of high level domain accounts.”
According to Check Point, every version of Windows Server, from 2003 to 2019, are equally vulnerable. This gives hackers an enormous target to take advantage of. Microsoft has released an update today, as part of Patch Tuesday. All organizations are strongly encouraged to update immediately.
“We strongly recommend users to patch their affected Windows DNS Servers in order to prevent the exploitation of this vulnerability,” says Check Point. “We believe that the likelihood of this vulnerability being exploited is high, as we internally found all of the primitives required to exploit this bug, which means a determined hacker could also find the same resources. In addition, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) may even have set up their public DNS servers as WinDNS.”
System admins should waste no time applying this patch, as hackers will waste no time trying to take advantage of SigRed.
“The CIO now has become front and center and central to the business strategy,” says Aongus Hegarty, President of International Markets at Dell Technologies. “From the c-suite perspective, they are now seen as a key individual around investment in technology to enable the business from a growth and transformation point of view. There has been a fundamental change in the role of the CIO.”
Aongus Hegarty, President of International Markets at Dell Technologies, says that the CIO role is now core to the business strategy in the enterprise. Hegarty was interviewed by Tim Crawford, ranked as one of the most influential CIOs and is the CIO Strategic Advisor at AVOA:
The CIO Is Now Central To The Business Strategy
If you stand back and look at the CIO role I think it’s gone from being a role traditionally which was very much in the back office. The CIO was focused on keeping the systems working and maybe often only out in the c-suite discussions when there was a challenge or an issue with systems or email, etc. The CIO now has become front and center and central to the business strategy. From the c-suite perspective, they are now seen as a key individual around investment in technology to enable the business from a growth and transformation point of view. There has been fundamental change.
What’s driving the change is the recognition by CEOs, c-suite, and companies that technology is disrupting industries and disrupting businesses. It’s driving significant efficiency and operational enhancement and/or a brand new set of business models, products, and services enabled by technology. Companies need to quickly move forward around their digital transformation or they will be left behind or significantly disadvantaged quite quickly. There’s an urgency in the c-suite to bring the technology strategy front and center underpinning the business strategy.
The CIO: A Critical Role Now And Into The Future
The CIO within that c-suite is in an absolutely critical role now and into the future. The breadth of skills and competencies required has broadened significantly. Now the CIO role very much encompasses an individual who has vision and collaborates across the organization. The CIO has strong communication skills and ability and can work and navigate between obviously the tactical and executional elements of the role but also the strategic elements of the IT strategy. They they must match that and understand how it fits into the business strategy.
To all the CIOs out there I think it’s absolutely an exciting time and a great opportunity. You can be sure that Dell Technologies will be there every step of the way with you.
“Digital transformation is the opportunity of this generation,” says ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. “If you look at the Zoom partnership as one example, all companies want simple, easy, seamless experiences for their people and their customers. This is how you transform companies. This is how you grow and this is how you navigate a digital experience to win. We’re at the forefront of the digital transformation rage in the cloud.”
We’re At The Forefront Of The Digital Transformation Rage
Digital transformation is the opportunity of this generation. If you look at the Zoom partnership as one example, all companies want simple, easy, seamless experiences for their people and their customers. This is how you transform companies. This is how you grow and this is how you navigate a digital experience to win. We’re at the forefront of the digital transformation rage in the cloud. We’re super excited.
If you look at Zoom, they had 300 million users utilizing their system in the heart of this COVID crisis. I expect that will continue to grow. The question was how do you handle 300 to 400 million users, most of them concurrently on a global scale? They turn to ServiceNow to solve that problem. Our customer service management solution is like no other in the marketplace. We can not only use self-help tools for customers, but we can also use virtual agents. Best of all, most of the service that will be required when Zoom does have to remediate an issue will be done predictively on the Now platform.
ServiceNow At The Epicenter Of Helping Zoom Innovate
Furthermore, they also want to have a hardware as a service business model that they’ll bring to offices all over the world. The idea here is simple, touch it once–instant collaboration, instant linkage to the ServiceNow workflow, and then the users get a great experience. That hardware as a service business model will be very large for them because they want to displace existing legacy vendors with their modern solution. ServiceNow is in the epicenter of helping Zoom utilizing our great innovation and ultimately taking both of these solutions to market to help many many customers around the world.
If you look at the tech sector for cloud, companies that are at the forefront of creating great digital experiences, these companies are going to continue to scale, continue to hit new highs and continue to grow. Nine out of ten CEOs have a digital-first strategy before COVID. Now I suspect that 10 out of 10 would have a digital-first strategy. It’s the only way to navigate these choppy waters.
We Get Things Done In Days and Weeks, Not Years
The companies that will do less well, and I’m just basing this on research and current results, are the ones that have heavy time-consuming elongated project cycles or potentially commodity hardware where customers are just not going to invest in that. Whatever they invest in they want a return and they want that return to come quite quickly. In the case of ServiceNow, our business cases show 5, 6, 7 times return on investment and we get things done in days and weeks, not years. That’s what makes the big difference. Speed, value creation, and truly illuminating great employee and customer experiences are what this market is all about.
One of the things that we covered in our last earnings call is that 20 percent of our business is in one-way shape or form tied to industries that would be highly impacted by COVID. What was amazing is we didn’t have one down-sell or one cancellation in that total customer group. What you’re seeing is when you have a platform company that truly can innovate, make work actually work better for people, take cost out, and improve business productivity, that’s the last place even challenged industries are going to cut.
We’ve been very fortunate because the partnerships that we have built with this hungry and humble culture and our near 100 percent retention rate are paying off even in the most challenging industries like the airlines, hospitality, and retail.
ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott: At The Forefront Of The Digital Transformation Rage
“In this environment, digital transformation is more important than ever,” says VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger. “If you think of it only a few percentages of employees worked from home before this (pandemic). Now it’s 97 percent. Given the length and challenges that people faced this doesn’t go away.”
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, discusses how the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and dramatically increased the work from home trend for enterprise companies:
Digital Transformation Is More Important Than Ever
In this environment, digital transformation is more important than ever. If you think of it only a few percentages of employees worked from home before this (pandemic). Now it’s 97 percent. Given the length and challenges that people faced this doesn’t go away. We are going to be here for the next two years where the majority of workforces, a substantial portion, are going to be work from home distributed workforce.
In the face of that IT and technology are more important not less. Sometimes it takes a decade to make a week of progress and sometimes a week gives you a decade of progress. All of a sudden, education, healthcare, and work from home are making huge steps forward. That’s what gives us the view that long-term tech is going to be stronger and software and cloud will be stronger yet than the overall economic environment.
Work From Home Is The New Normal
For VMWare, we were 20 percent work from home. I expect as we continue in this environment we will end up in at 50 to 60 percent over time. I don’t think we are atypical. We’re doubling and tripling the amount of work from home. When you think about that distributed workforce, essentially you go from 100 or 200 sites depending on the size of your company to 10,000 or 20,000 sites.
When you think about every home becoming a new worksite they need to be managed, connected, and productive. They need to be secure. They need good quality and bandwidth. Then they need capacity. That’s where VMWare cloud comes in. That’s our business continuity focus for the future.
We don’t see ourselves as atypical here. This is the new normal. We’re excited to see these transformations happening across the industry and we’re making good progress with customers around the globe.
Every CIO Is Adjusting Their Priorities
We used to generate new projects with POC’s and being face to face with customers. The salesmen always liked to shoulder up with the potential customer. We have to make adjustments. Every CIO is also adjusting their priorities due to this radical shift of a distributed workforce and the new demands that are being placed on them.
Digital Transformation Is More Important Than Ever, Says VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger
“Nobody was using machine learning to point at the underlying consumer data to help make sense of it and bring it together,” says Matthew Biboud-Lubeck of Amperity. “We put together cloud computing that was scalable with better economics alongside a machine learning algorithm that we were pointing at the data to help make sense of it. We realized that what we had was a pretty scalable solution to help brands get to that nirvana of a single view of the customer.”
Helping Brands Create a Single View of Their Customers
We are a CDP (customer data platform) based in Seattle that is helping brands create a single view of their customers and to unlock personalized experiences from that data. If you look back to the founding of Amperity about three years ago our founders were canvassing the marketplace. What you saw was a marketplace using a lot of buzzwords but having a lot of trouble executing them. You heard about personalization, customer 360, and a 360 view of the customer. Marketers across major consumer brands were super frustrated.
They spent a fortune trying to cobble some view of their customer. They invested in technology to help them send better emails, to make their media more targeted, and to unveil better analytics. All of those tools that they have invested in talked about the notion of a single view of the customer because they fundamentally needed that to operate. The reality was that nobody was getting to the solution. We came in to say maybe there is a better way.
Machine Learning Helps Brands Get To Nirvana
There were two things that changed in the marketplace that we capitalized on. First of all, it was that cloud computing got a lot cheaper. It used to be that if you were a big brand and got hundreds of millions of customer interactions, it’s just a lot of data. Part of the reason that no one was able to create an easy solution to putting that all together was because it was cost prohibitive.
The second really interesting evolution in the market is that machine learning has become much more mature. What we found was that everyone in the marketplace was using machine learning to make that last mile to the marketer a little bit better. It was used to decide which products to show a customer or to decide which offer to show a customer or to create a customer care solution that’s automated. You go online and type toward a solution and some bot talks back to you. Nobody was using machine learning to point at the underlying consumer data to help make sense of it and bring it together.
We put together cloud computing that was scalable with better economics alongside a machine learning algorithm that we were pointing at the data to help make sense of it. We realized that what we had was a pretty scalable solution to help brands get to that nirvana of a single view of the customer. That’s how we were born. What’s interesting is that the customer data platform space is a little bit confusing. You have a lot of companies that started as something else that rebranded as a CDP. We were purpose-built from the ground up as a customer data platform designed to bring all of a brands data, reconcile that data to create a notion of identity on it and then to unleash that data back to the brand anywhere that they want to use that data.
“If this truly is the Fourth Industrial Revolution it’ll be of the scale of the past three,” says legendary venture capitalist Duncan Davidson. “If we’re going to do this reindustrialization of America and prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it’s going to be more AI, more robotics, taking a lot of things like 3D printing, additive manufacturing it’s sometimes called, and putting it in scale operation in this country. Tech has a real part to play in that but this will pervade the whole country.”
Duncan Davidson, General Partner at Bullpen Capital, says that the reindustrialization of America will be powered by tech but pervade the whole country in an interview on CNBC:
Preparing For The Reindustrialization Of America
Amazon might become a $2 trillion company. Digital ads, I think old media is really going to be in trouble here, Retail — if people can get by without the ads in the local newspaper and have the same sales why do they keep advertising? Remote collaboration — that’s an obvious category (to invest in). I think the two that are less obvious are first the gig economy, its thriving, people thought it was on its back legs. The final one is reindustrialization, what some people call the fourth Industrial Revolution, which is the next big thing coming out of this.
I think Marc Andreessen’s piece was terrific. You think about the tech sector, it’s probably more important now to the economy than the auto sector, which has been driving this place for 100 years. We don’t have a really strong voice at the table here. He’s exactly right. We shouldn’t just repair roads and fix bridges, we have to build the future. I think what he’s getting at fundamentally is if we’re going to do this reindustrialization of America and prepare for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it’s going to be more AI, more robotics, taking a lot of things like 3D printing, additive manufacturing it’s sometimes called, and putting it in scale operation in this country. Tech has a real part to play in that but this will pervade the whole country.
The VC Model Is The Core Driver Of Growth In This Economy
The VC model is the core driver of growth in this economy. If you go back and look at the stats it’s overwhelming. If you think about what we did in VC in the 80s it was PCs, it was hardware, it was disc drives. In the 90s it was software and the internet. More recently, it’s all kinds of things that is spread very broadly across the economy but basically is software-driven, There’s no problem with the VC industry rotating itself back toward industrial things and toward real things and away from software. In fact, it’s exactly the right industry to be agile and move very quickly to finance this next wave of innovation.
It’s just not here yet. But if this truly is the Fourth Industrial Revolution it’ll be of the scale of the past three. I think the boom in the venture world, let’s say from 2024 to 2032 or some time frame like that, will be bigger than we’ve seen in the last decade and probably rival what we saw in the 90s. What we see is an acceleration of current trends. So Zoom may be overvalued but the direction of remote collaboration tools, no question. Remote learning — universities may have a total change into more teaching online versus people going to the universities themselves. I can go down through the whole list. Look at what’s really surging and think of that as an acceleration that will continue.
“A lot of times it’s better to think about (digital transformation) in retrospect after you’ve gotten something done, but the digital platform is essential in helping you achieve your business objectives, and that’s really what it boils down to,” says AMA Chief Experience Officer Todd Unger. “Even though my purview here is mostly communicating between us and physicians, ultimately, I’m there to help them in what they care the most about, which is patient care. There is no aspect of healthcare right now that is not being transformed digitally.”
I Don’t Start Anything That I Do With Digital Blinders On
I don’t start anything that I do with digital blinders on. The first thing is to figure out what the job that you’re trying to get done is. Inevitably, of course, these days, if you’re trying to meet people where they are, that does involve digital platforms. We are, in essence, like any other subscription business in that we have something that we’re trying to get people to belong to. If you’re going to communicate with people and build a subscription business, you do need to have that platform in place.
I think, basically, today, most organizations or businesses, they have to act in three ways. They’ve got to have the consumer product focus of a company like Proctor & Gamble. They need to have the publishing experience and content management experience of a New York Times or Washington Post, and they need to have the data and analytics platform and skillset of like an Amazon. That’s a tough organization to build these days. But if you’re going to succeed in creating a member experience and really interacting with people, you’ve got to be able to do all three things.
There Is No Aspect of Healthcare That Is Not Being Transformed Digitally
I think digital transformation is a bizarre and scary term. I don’t walk in the door saying, “We need to have a digital transformation,” because that is really kind of meaningless to people. A lot of times I would say it’s better to think about that in retrospect after you’ve gotten something done, but the digital platform is essential in helping you achieve your business objectives, and that’s really what it boils down to.
Even though my purview here is mostly communicating between us and physicians, ultimately, I’m there to help them in what they care the most about, which is patient care. There is no aspect of healthcare right now that is not being transformed digitally. One of the most exciting places, and I think it probably has more relevance on the long-term care side, is remote patient monitoring. You look around at most systems and they’re equipping themselves to have people not come to the hospital, not come into the office, but to provide people with the technology to be able to do what they need to do from home and to be able to communicate with them from a remote place and have their progress monitored.
Driving The Future of Medicine
I’d say the final way that we (are an ally in patient care) is through something I don’t think a lot of people know about, which is driving the future of medicine. We are facilitating the changes that are happening in medicine right now. I talked about remote patient monitoring, but telemedicine is something that’s increasing in usage and all of the infrastructure that underlies that needs to get put into place to make sure that doctors have what they need to be able to do that and, from a technology payment standpoint, all of that kind of stuff.
The other thing and this is affecting every aspect of business out there is data. One of the key things about data right now in healthcare is, it’s not necessarily hooked up in a way that can connect the input when a patient comes in the door and the outcomes. There are different systems that underly that data input and the portability of that. We are putting in place an infrastructure and what we would call an innovation ecosystem to facilitate the flow of that data so that it can actually deliver better patient care in the end.
There Is No Aspect of Healthcare That Is Not Being Transformed Digitally – AMA Chief Experience Officer Todd Unger
“We’re done with talking about if it is a good idea to digitally transform,” says ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. “Now the conversation has shifted to how quickly can you get me there. I have to get there really fast. My prediction is that companies that are digital, that can lead this digital transformation revolution, will prosper through this time because there are so many public sector and private sector entities that must change. I do believe we will be going into a totally new normal.”
Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, discusses how COVID-19 has forced CEOs to speed up digital transformation in order to compete and win. McDermott says that businesses have to have an all-weather workforce to win.”
We’re Done With Talking About If It’s a Good Idea
When we came out of the financial crisis in 2008 that is when cloud computing hit a new gear. That’s when it became the pervasive computing theme of the 21st century. The elasticity of the cloud, the ability to build applications very quickly on a platform like ServiceNow’s⎯so you can be in service, in service to employees, in service to customers, and in service to keeping the operation going, even through difficult times. if you think about digital transformation, it’s a $7.4 trillion addressable market in the next four years.
I talk to CEOs and heads of state every day. We’re done with talking about if it is a good idea to digitally transform. Now the conversation has shifted to how quickly can you get me there. I have to get there really fast. My prediction is that companies that are digital, that can lead this digital transformation revolution, will prosper through this time because there are so many public sector and private sector entities that must change. I do believe we will be going into a totally new normal. It’s not dissimilar to 2008. We’re going to have to figure out whether it’s three weeks from now or three months from now.
A Totally New Way To Work
How are you going to get back to work? Business continuity must contain. Think about all the processes that will have to change. I like to think of this as a physical distancing, not a social distancing because our processes on Zoom every day has us connected to the management team and the people throughout our company. So while we are physically distant we have socially kept the conversation going. We’re continuing to pursue our goals because that’s what the world needs from ServiceNow.
Customers right now are basically saying, how do I take care of my people? For example, I’ve heard from some very outstanding CEO saying we’re going to keep hiring or am certainly not going to lay people off. How do we get the tools for people to do the job remotely? How do we make that happen? How do we make sure we’re caring for the people? How do we align them with the goals and the orientations of the company? How do we keep compliance and security at a high level even as they work from places like home or studio environments where they’re not used to working? All of this has to be done utilizing a digital platform, a totally new way of working.
What About the Customer?
Here’s a really big thing. In the beginning, everybody was saying we’re going to work from home. We will close down operations and that was basically it. What about the customer? What we’re learning about the customer is right now they’re not really interested in you upselling them and cross-selling them in an engagement layer of CRM. What they are interested in is business continuity. How will you service me even as we’re in the midst of a crisis?
This idea of service management, of making sure you get the right assets in front of the right problems where you can resolve issues for customers⎯especially since they’re no longer working in their offices for the most part. It has really reoriented the workflow of companies all over the world and it’s happened really quickly.
Over 43 percent of the companies today actually don’t even have a work from home policy. Think about that. Now, after this crisis, I can assure you they’ll need one and the boards of directors will expect that they have one. If you remember the post 9/11 era, it was unbelievable to think that people would be standing in line to get x-rayed with their luggage before getting on a flight.
Digital Transformation Has To Go Faster
As they think about this new environment just think about the procedures and the protocols that we have to now impart on the workforce to make sure that they’re healthy when they come into these buildings and they actually go to work. We will actually have to have quick analysis. For example, you could do an ear temperature check to make sure someone’s temperature isn’t high when they’re coming into the workplace to keep people safe. That’s a protocol, that’s a new process, and I expect that things like that will definitely happen.
I also expect that workers will work more from home, that people will be more agile and flexible in how they work, and the tools and the platforms of digital have to be enabled to make that happen, So here it is, people that are digitally transforming now, you have got to go faster. People that haven’t actually embarked upon this journey, you need to do it now. Now is when your people will expect you to build a culture that enables them to prosper in any working environment. I have to believe we’re in a new norm. If it’s not COVID-19 it’s going to be something else. Workforces have to be prepared to handle anything. We have to be an all-weather workforce to win.
Digital Transformation: The Conversation Has Shifted – ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott
“The fact is as much as 5G is going to be tremendous, and it’s going to bring an amazing architectural shift to our economy and to our markets and economy, it’s still not here,” says Skyworks Solutions CEO Liam Griffin. “It is here in certain areas but the rollout has been somewhat delayed due to the pandemic.”
Liam Griffin, CEO of Skyworks Solutions, discusses on CNBC how thepandemic has temporarily delayed 5G but ultimately it will be a big part of a whole new world.
It’s a Stay At Home World Right Now
It’s a stay at home world right now (due to the pandemic). I talked about the digital traffic jam three or four years ago. At that time we talked about the networks being compressed and taxed and digitally clogged and we’re seeing this today. I mean it’s great that we’re seeing the network interfaces and the data traffic and the ability to do what we’re doing but we’re nowhere near where we’re headed.
We’ve got a long way to go in 5G. We’ve also got incredible Wi-Fi technologies coming. I think this pandemic situation is very difficult. It is a challenge and a big deal. But I think the technologies that we’re working on in our ecosystem with partners like Verizon and infrastructure players and even the Chinese⎯we’re all coming together to make this work. It’s a real indication of how necessary these applications are to the economy.
5G Delayed Due To The Pandemic
The fact is as much as 5G is going to be tremendous, and it’s going to bring an amazing architectural shift to our economy and to our markets and economy, it’s still not here. It is here in certain areas but the rollout has been somewhat delayed due to the pandemic. However, we’re going to see a bigger uptick in the second half.
We’re working with the marquee companies largely in the US, China, and Europe and we’re seeing some great technologies. They’re going to launch, it’s just delayed right now. That’s where we’re going to see the quality, the experience, the bandwidth upside that we’ve been talking about. That will happen.
5G Is a Multi-Year Thematic Move
5G is a multi-year thematic move. The interesting thing is that people today are clamoring to get the technology. The issue that we have and in what manifests in the demand weakness has really come about by a supply shock. It’s the supply chain in Asia and other parts of the world where folks couldn’t go to their factories and work. It creates a delay but we don’t think it’s perishable.
We think this 5G technology is absolutely going to launch. Some of that demand that did not get executed in our Q1 or Q2 will move forward into the back half of 2020 and certainly into 2021. We see this as a pause more than a complete deep dive.
Interesting Applications Are Really Emerging Through 5G
I saw the Verizon CEO talking about a 20 percent upside in data traffic and Vodafone also just announced a 50 percent increase in data traffic. So if you look at how this works, the smartphone⎯that’s your quarterback. They’re doing a lot of the work. But think about the IOT space, machine to machine, autonomous driving, and security. All of these interesting applications are really emerging through 4G, 5G and higher speed Wi-Fi. It’s creating a new experience.
If we look at what we’re doing with the young people today, the Millennials, I got three kids, they’re all face-timing. It’s just a whole new world. In a way, I think there are some real positive thematic changes that we can capitalize on once we get through this challenge with the pandemic.
5G is Delayed, But a Whole New World is Coming, Says Skyworks Solutions CEO Liam Griffin
Many companies are working to build authentic and trusted brands with consumers. This is especially true with pharmaceuticals, biotech, and med-tech companies. The CEO of Sparrho, Dr. Vivian Chan, says that their approach combines artificial intelligence and 400,000 Ph.D.’s to deliver scientific data to companies. This data helps companies back up their marketing messages which enables them to more effectively build that vital trust with their customers.
Dr. Vivian Chan, Sparrho CEO, recently discussed on CNBC their unique hybrid AI approach to helping companies use science and information to back up their brands messaging:
AI Enables Humans to Make Better-Informed Decisions
Artificial intelligence is really about algorithms and how we can use data that we collect to enable humans to make better-informed decisions. I not at all about having computers make decisions on behalf of humans. In a way, I think it’s machines that will be helping evolve the tasks and not actually replacing the human roles. Human roles themselves will be evolving also as the technology improves. This allows humans to have more headspace to be thinking about things that machines can’t do right now.
Machines can’t necessarily summarize a lot of pieces of contextual analysis very well yet to a 100 percent accuracy and humans are still better at making nonlinear connection points. For example, being able to say that this mathematical equation is super relevant to an agricultural problem. If we don’t have the tagging and reference and citations humans are still better at making those nonlinear new connection points than machines.
Humans are still good at coming up with the questions. If you actually pose the right question and you train the data and the algorithms you might actually get the right answer. However, you still need to have the humans to be thinking about what the questions are in order to ultimately get the answers.
It’s About Using AI as a Means to an End
I think the angle is really thinking about using AI as a means to an end and not just the end. Ultimately, this is a hybrid approach and various different people are calling it differently. Even MIT professors are calling it a hybrid approach. We’re calling it augmented intelligence. We need to come up with a good relationship between humans and machines. Marketing is about building relationships. It’s about building relationships between brands and consumers and now how do we build that relationship digitally?
Using Science to Build an Authenticated Brand
In this digital age, consumers are a lot more tech savvy but are also information savvy. They want to know what the is science behind certain things. Even if you’re talking about CPG, consumer packaged goods, what is the science behind a shampoo product right now when it claims 98 percent prevention of hair loss? What is the real science behind that and how do we actually bring that simplified science-oriented message to the consumer? How can consumers educate themselves and make informed decisions based on the products and thereby build a stronger brand relationship?
Ultimately what we’re trying to do at Sparrow is simplify science to build trust in brands. Especially for marketing departments and brands, it’s really allowing them to have the evidence-based science and the facts because building a very authenticated brand is what is meaningful to consumers. Research says that about 71 percent of consumers immediately reject content that looks like a sales pitch. Building a relationship and having an authenticated brand and content is super important in building that relationship between brand and consumers.
Sparrho Provides Content as a Service On Demand
We’re going even wider with that by providing what we call content as a service or relevant content on demand. We then integrate that into the digital platforms or the brands. We have what we call augmented intelligence with over 16 million pieces of content that is augmented by a network of more than 400,000 monthly active PhDs in a150 countries. They curate and summarize what’s actually happening in the latest of science.
We know that in about 60 percent of pharmaceuticals, biotech, and even med-tech companies, are spending more than $50 million per year just in content. Content has been the major driver for a lot of their marketing. In pharmaceuticals, they’re trying to really bring that relationship that they have offline to online. It’s at the heart of this digital transformation age that we are going through. This is really helping bring that relationship online by using the right engaging content. Our goal with Sparrow is to drive more engagement and ultimately more sales.
“When I think out over the next two or three years, and even the next few months with coronavirus, it feeds into this whole digital transformation movement,” says Splunk CEO Doug Merritt. “If this becomes a new normal and we start to adapt to more of a social distancing that just means more digital usage. There are a lot of great digital technologies we can all lean on so that we can still move forward with business.”
Doug Merritt, CEO of Splunk, discusses how the coronavirus is feeding into the digital transformation movement in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
Coronavirus Causing Business To Lean On Digital Technologies
It’s a brave new world. I think we’re all going to learn this in the coming months. Like every other company should be doing, we’re putting our employees health and safety first. We are encouraging people to work from home. We are a Zoom customer and a Slack customer. There are a lot of great digital technologies we can all lean on so that we can still move forward with business.
We’ve got a great install base of 20,000 customers that actively use Splunk. Over 80 percent of our revenues come from that install base. My hope is that for a lot of the transactions, they’re just expansions or additional capabilities from some new products that can be attached to the existing contracts. We’ll see we’ll see like we all do. I didn’t think well going into 2020 that I’d be a CEO of a company that was going through something like coronavirus.
Coronavirus “Social Distancing” Feeds Digital Transformation
When I think out over the next two or three years, and even the next few months with coronavirus, it feeds into this whole digital transformation movement. If this becomes a new normal and we start to adapt to more of a social distancing that just means more digital usage. The companies that we are all relying on, all the digital properties, have Splunk as their backbone to make sure that their services work effectively.
Whether it’s Slack or Zoom or AWS as a overall customer of ours, if we all turn digital that falls into the trend we’ve been seeing. We now need to make sense of what’s happening in that digital environment. We need to make it resilient and we need to make it safe, which means more Splunk.
Coronavirus “Social Distancing” Feeds Digital Transformation Movement – Splunk CEO
Hawaiian police have released Sonam Saxena, a Google Cloud product manager, following his arrest for second-degree murder in relation to the death of his wife.
Saxena and his wife Smriti were on vacation on the Big Island Hawaii with their two children. According to an interview Saxena gave to reporters prior to his arrest, his wife had an asthma attack on the beach, prompting him to go back to the hotel to retrieve her inhaler. By the time he got back at the beach, Saxena said his wife was missing and filed a missing person report.
The next morning a woman’s body was found near the beach, leading police to arrest Saxena for second-degree murder. Friday, two days later, “after conferring with prosecutors, Sonam Saxena was released pending investigation,” says a statement on the department’s website. “Detectives with the Area II Criminal Investigation Section are continuing this investigation.”
The police continue to ask for anyone who has information, or may have been in the area at the time of the events, to come forward.
Google used RSA Conference to announce new security tools aimed at helping secure customers’ data and cloud services.
The first new feature is related to Chronicle, the Alphabet-sponsored cybersecurity firm that has since been rolled into Google Cloud. Chronicle’s security analytics software helped “change the way any business could quickly, efficiently, and affordably investigate alerts and threats in their organization.” Google says the new feature is designed to help companies “detect threats using YARA-L, a new rules language built specifically for modern threats and behaviors, including types described in Mitre ATT&CK. This advanced threat detection provides massively scalable, real-time and retroactive rule execution.”
Google is also “introducing Chronicle’s intelligent data fusion, a combination of a new data model and the ability to automatically link multiple events into a single timeline. Palo Alto Networks, with Cortex XSOAR, is our first partner to integrate with this new data structure to enable even more powerful threat response.”
The company has also announced the general availability of its reCAPTCHA Enterprise and Web Risk tools. reCAPTCHA Enterprise helps protect websites from unauthorized scraping, automated account creation and more, while the Web Risk API lets companies check URLs against Google’s list of malicious sites.
The announcement comes as Google is working hard to build its cloud business, trying to make headway against rivals Microsoft and Amazon, and will likely help the company as it works to attract new enterprise clients.
In its ongoing battle with Microsoft Teams, Slack has scored two major wins as SiriusXM and Uber have both deployed the messaging app to their employees.
Microsoft Teams recently doubled Slack’s user base, helped by the app’s deep integration with the rest of Office. Slack has maintained, however, that its users are more engaged and shot down concerns that it couldn’t effectively compete with Microsoft. Underscoring Slack’s claims, it has been scoring a number of significant wins, including IBM and now SiriusXM and Uber.
“Collaboration is key to our success, which is why we decided to use Slack as part of our efforts to bring our employees together,” said Bill Pratt, SVP and CIO at SiriusXM. “We see Slack as an important day-to-day productivity tool for our organization.”
Similarly, according to tweets by Uber employees, it seems the ride-hailing company made the switch to Slack yesterday.
Given the size of the messaging market, there’s no reason Teams and Slack can’t both exist with a healthy user base. With Slack’s recent gains, the company obviously is doing well convincing users it is not only viable, but competitive.
Sonam Saxena, Google Cloud Product Manager, has been arrested on the Big Island, Hawaii on suspicion of second degree murder.
A body was discovered near Anaehoomalu Bay, leading to Saxena’s arrest. In an interview he gave to West Hawaii Todayprior to his arrest, Saxena said he and his wife Smriti—a Microsoft business program manager—were on a secluded beach south of Anaehoomalu Bay when she had an asthma attack.
“She got an asthma attack right there on the beach and she was feeling weak and she didn’t want to walk all the way back because it’s almost a 20-minute walk back from that beach to our room,” said Sonam Saxena. “So, I said, ‘hey, you know what? You stay here, you have your phone with you and I’ll just go to the room grab your inhaler and pump and come back.’
“I did that. Went to the room, picked up the inhaler, came back, and she was missing.”
Police have not released the identity of the body they discovered, but said it was found in the general area where Smriti Saxena was reported missing and last seen. The police are asking for assistance from anyone who may have been in the area around that time.
A security issue in a popular WordPress plugin has left some 100,000 websites vulnerable to being completely wiped.
Security firm WebARX discovered a flaw in the ThemeGrill Demo Importer plugin. The plugin imports other plugins developed by ThemeGrill. When WebARX first discovered the flaw, some 200,000 websites had the plugin installed, although that number has now dropped to 100,000. This is likely due to companies uninstalling the plugin to mitigate the risk.
To make matters worse, this vulnerability is being actively exploited. WebARX has already stopped over 16,000 attacks attempting to exploit the plugin.
“This is a serious vulnerability and can cause a significant amount of damage,” writes WebARX. “Since it requires no suspicious-looking payload just like our previous finding in InfiniteWP, it is not expected for any firewall to block this by default and a special rule needs to be created to block this vulnerability.”
ThemeGrill has updated the plugin to fix the vulnerability. All impacted sites would install the new version immediately.
