AWS and SAP have announced a new partnership aimed at helping customers accelerate their digital transformation.
SAP has been steadily reinventing itself with a focus on cloud computing. CEO Christian Klein made clear in late-2021 that the strategy was working.
“Our strategy is clearly working. Customers are choosing SAP for their business transformation in the cloud. We see record adoption of our applications and our platform. This has resulted in strong acceleration of our cloud growth.”
The company has been building partnerships with other cloud providers to help customers accelerate their digital transformation and cloud migration. SAP partnered with IBM in early 2022, and has now expanded its partnership with AWS.
“AWS and other infrastructure providers are becoming increasingly important to SAP’s business as we help our customers benefit from digital transformation in the cloud with RISE with SAP,” said Elena Ordóñez del Campo, senior vice president and strategic partner officer, SAP. “Building on our partnership of 15 years, we move into the new year with aligned go-to-market teams in every region, an industry-leading portfolio of solutions enabled by our joint reference architecture, and a growing selection of co-innovations — all ready to help accelerate value for our customers. We look forward to an incredible 2023 together and beyond.”
“This multiyear collaboration will facilitate stronger marketing and co-selling programs to complement our respective technologies,” said Kathleen Curry, director of AWS Worldwide Strategic Alliances. “SAP frequently leans in with AWS to deliver to customers a unified experience as they innovate and evolve their businesses in the ever-dynamic economic environment. This collaboration is an important milestone in our partnership and helps customers modernize faster with accelerated time to value, price-performance, reliability, and sustainability.”
“What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital,” says Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. “The importance of digital in the marketplace is going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.”
Digital Transformation Is A $120 Billion Opportunity
It was a good quarter all around. All of our businesses performed exceedingly well. On the Creative Cloud and the Document Cloud, not only did we have a great acquisition. in other words, new customers adopting the platform, but we really focused on engagement and demonstrating the value of our products to our customers. Even our retention levels came back to pre-COVID levels which we believe is a really good sign.
What’s happening in the world is the businesses that we’re in, namely creativity and enabling people to tell their story, what’s happening with documents and accelerating document productivity, and what’s happening associated with every single enterprise needing to engage with their customers digitally, when you add all of this up we think it’s over a $120 billion of an addressable market opportunity for Adobe.
Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital
What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital. What we will have to continue to monitor is what happens in the spending environment. But as it relates to the overall need for the kinds of solutions that Adobe provides as well as the importance of digital in the marketplace I think that’s going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.
We believe that we’re in this third phase of what is happening in the enterprise. Traditionally, businesses first focused on automating the back office, and then they focused on automating the front office for knowledge workers. It’s absolutely clear that the biggest imperative that exists in the enterprise today is how do you engage with customers? This is a category that we call Customer Experience Management.
Customer Insight Is Key To Your Digital Transformation
If you’re an enterprise today and you’re thinking about digital transformation, what’s top of that stack in terms of where you have to invest is to make sure that you have insight into what your customers are doing. How are they engaging with you? What’s the profile? How do you deliver the personalized experience?
We really believe that what you’re seeing in the enterprise spend environment is that the companies that are focused on this next generation of delivering customer engagement, the customer experiences, and the insight associated with how to take the most advantage of that data, they’re going to be the secular winners moving forward.
Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen: Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital
“We have seen significant acceleration since the COVID-19 pandemic,” says DocuSign CEO Dan Springer. “A significant portion of that (increase) was due to increased use cases from customers driving that digital transformation faster with services like DocuSign. We don’t see customers going back. Once they’ve got the benefits from that efficiency in their business, the better customer experience, and the better employee experience, they’re going to stay in a digitally transformed world.”
We’ve been really pleased with the growth we’ve had since going public a few years. We have also seen significant acceleration since the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s obviously a horrible pandemic and our number one priority has been the health and wellbeing of our employees so we can take good care of our customers. As you can see in our Q1 earnings we did see an acceleration of our bookings to 59 percent.
Traditionally, if you look at the billings-type metric they have been in the mid-30s’. A significant portion of that (increase) was due to increased use cases from customers driving that digital transformation faster with services like DocuSign.
Companies To Stay In This Digitally Transformed World
One of the things we’ve seen with the pandemic impact is that it has really accelerated the path that companies were already on to drive that digital transformation. We don’t see companies after the pandemic settles down going back and saying they want more paper and more manual processes.
Once they’ve got the benefits from that efficiency in their business, the better customer experience, and the better employee experience, they’re going to stay in a digitally transformed world. They are going to use DocuSign and other fantastic services to do that.
The Future Is Going To Have eSignature At The Center
We really think that the future is going to have eSignature at the center of what we call the overall Agreement Cloud. Companies want to be more agreeable. They want to be easier to do business with and be easier to do business for. They’re going to not just use DocuSign for signature but all of the other components of preparing agreements and managing those agreements digitally once they’ve been created. That’s why we’re excited about our very robust future.
We just past a billion dollars in revenue (for DocuSign eSignature). We are only four percent penetrated today and we’re six times larger than the next biggest player in the space. There’s not a lot of penetration yet in that core business. Notary is still predominantly done manually. We are making investments there. We believe we can bring the same ease of use that we brought to eSignature we can bring to notary.
AI To Power The DocuSign Agreement Cloud
Much bigger than that, even expanding upon the opportunity of eSignature is that broader Agreement Cloud opportunity. We think this is the next big cloud opportunity. You are going to see companies increasingly say I don’t just want to do the workflow and signature. I also want to drive the creations of those agreements. I want to think about artificial intelligence and search capability to manage my agreements. This would enable me to actually manage my business and make my company more agreeable.
Those are some of the investments we’re making. That’s why we just finished the acquisition of Seal Software last month so we can bring additional artificial intelligence and analytic capability to help people run their businesses better.
COVID Accelerated Digital Transformation, Says DocuSign CEO Dan Springer
“Slack has already transformed the way we work at Salesforce,” says Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor. “Since we have deployed Slack internally, we sent 46% fewer e-mails. And in the last 30 days alone, our employees have sent nearly 60 million Slack messages and conducted 500,000 Slack Huddles. We run Salesforce on Slack.”
Not only has Salesforce transformed the way they work with Slack but so are the customers of Salesforce. The company sees Slack as a core platform for powering digital transformation.
“Customer 360 and Slack are powering this transformation for companies in every industry in every region of the world,” said Taylor in yesterday’s earnings call. “Slack outperformed our expectations in the first full quarter as a part of the Salesforce family. The number of customers on Slack who spent over $100,000 was up 44% year-over-year. The adoption of Slack Connect was up an astonishing 176% year-over-year. Slack is not just a product, Slack is a network, and it’s just incredible to see that growth.”
The company seemed pleasantly surprised about how transformative Slack is to the operations of large enterprises. As Slack brought on millions of new users during the pandemic they focused on innovation that has made Slack much more than a simple communications platform.
“Slack also continues to innovate at an unbelievable pace,” notes Taylor. “Slack Huddles, which is Slack’s new real-time audio capability, is already used weekly by over 1/3 of Slack users. And Slack Clips, the new asynchronous video capability, are being played nearly 1 million times a week. And this month at Slack Frontiers, which I hope all of you have watched; and if you haven’t, you can watch it online. Stewart and the team are now the next generation of Slack’s platform, and it’s going to truly transform the way companies think about workflows and automation.”
Customer 360 and Slack are powering this transformation for companies in every industry in every region of the world, according to Taylor.
Slack outperformed our expectations in the first full quarter as a part of the Salesforce family. The number of customers on Slack who spent over $100,000 was up 44% year-over-year. Adoption of Slack Connect was up an astonishing 176% year-over-year. Slack is not just a product, Slack is a network, and it’s just incredible to see that growth.
Slack also continues to innovate at an unbelievable pace. Slack Huddles, which is Slack’s new real-time audio capability, is already used weekly by over 1/3 of Slack users. And Slack Clips, the new asynchronous video capability, are being played nearly 1 million times a week. And this month at Slack Frontiers, which I hope all of you have watched; and if you haven’t, you can watch it online. Stewart and the team are now the next generation of Slack’s platform, and it’s going to truly transform the way companies think about workflows and automation.
“That is definitely what I saw firsthand,” said Co-CEO Mark Benioff. “I was like, how could it be that an airline is basically front-ending their entire system with Slack? That’s a shock to me.”
“Slack is the system of engagement for every workflow, every application, every person on your enterprise,” added Taylor. “It’s really an amazing platform vision. And absolutely watch Slack Frontiers. If you haven’t seen it, I think it will blow your mind.”
“Every CEO and every Board I talk to is focused on how they can succeed in this era of flexible work,” says Taylor. “According to Slack’s research, 93% of workers are looking for flexibility when they work, and 76% are looking for flexibility where they work. Companies need to connect their employees, their partners, their customers from anywhere because we all know we’re not going to be in the office 5 days a week.”
“Our offices aren’t going away,” he said. “It’s just that your digital headquarters is going to be more important because it’s truly the infrastructure that connects all of it, and especially in this new normal. And Slack and Customer 360 together are really powering this transformation.”
Slack Has Already Transformed Salesforce, Says Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor
The COVID-19 pandemic is driving governments around the world to invest more heavily in IT.
One of the biggest lasting effects of the pandemic is an accelerated migration to the cloud and transition to digital-first workflows. The accelerated pace, however, has put a strain on IT departments across industries, including government.
As a result, according to Gartner, 2022 will see a 6.5% increase in government IT spending, for a total of $557.3 billion.
“Governments will continue to accelerate investments in digital technologies to respond and recover from the continuing evolution of public health uncertainties due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Irma Fabular, research vice president at Gartner. “The disruptions caused by the pandemic have also reinforced a key digital government tenet, which is public policy and technology are inseparable.”
Some of the fastest growing segments include the modernization of IT infrastructure and applications; improving public services responsiveness and resilience; and adoption of citizen digital identity.
“Digital identity is moving beyond authenticating citizens online and signing remote transactions,” said Fabular. “To raise the chances for greater adoption of digital identity, governments must treat privacy, security and user convenience as critical success factors.”
“We’re seeing the rise of what we call the “revenue innovator, says Outreach CEO Manny Medina. “The revenue innovator is a different job description that has changed since the pandemic. The new job description is the revenue innovators, the digital-first, and the digital native. Those revenue innovators are the new revenue leaders.”
Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach, discusses the “rise of the revenue innovator” in an interview today on CNBC:
The Rise of the Revenue Innovator
We’re seeing the rise of what we call the “revenue innovator.” The revenue innovator is a different job description that has changed since the pandemic. It’s a data-driven digital-first predictable long-building trusting relationship kind of seller. What we are seeing is this influx and this growth in the type of seller that knows how to drive a digital conversation but is complemented with a hybrid approach of visiting your customer. It’s a very predictable, very data-driven kind of job description.
The growth happening across our customer base is the growth of that kind of seller. This is a seller and a customer-facing rep who is going to be very data-driven and very innovator-led. If we are going to think of the Salesforce numbers that just came out these are incredible signs of growth for the cloud platform. That’s an incredible sign of growth for us as well because what we are seeing is the system of action is taking place on top of the system of record that Salesforce is providing.
Second Wave of Digital Transformation
All of the companies that used to be in the mainstream economy are accelerating into the second wave of digital transformation. The first wave of digital transformation is to move all of the data into the cloud and that is happening but it’s not what companies are talking about. Companies are talking about how do you make me smarter? How do you make my teams more efficient? How do you make my teams digital-first?
How do I live and thrive in this new hybrid environment post-Covid in which the buyer is not ready to see sellers until post transaction until you are expanding not selling? All of these “before-laggers” are becoming early innovators and early adopters with new technology such as Outreach which is AI-driven and digital-first.
The new job description is the revenue innovators, the digital-first, and the digital native. They may not have them yet but they are coming online, they are getting these jobs. Those revenue innovators are the new revenue leaders. They are also hiring people of the same ilk that are looking to drive this innovation within their companies. That’s what you are seeing in this transformation. Transformations are always people first.
It’s this new wave of people that are coming into traditional companies that are driving this second digital transformation. They are forward thinkers and they are data-driven.
Outreach Doubling Headcount Again
Outreach is doubling its headcount again. We almost doubled from the beginning of the pandemic all the way to now and we expect to hit another double in terms of hiring. We expect another 600 to 700 people to come on board. Most importantly, what we are seeing is that our customers are growing as well. We sell seats ahead of sales demand and we are seeing sales seats being bought very quickly.
We are expecting our customers to be driving double-digit growth across the board. This is a great sign for the economy.
Outreach CEO Manny Medina: The Rise Of The Revenue Innovator
Amazon is throwing its weight behind efforts to revitalize the United States Postal Service, calling it the company’s “first and oldest business partner.”
The USPS has been facing increasingly difficult times as a result of the digital transformation. With people relying more on electronic communications than letters, USPS revenue has dropped precipitously. The outlook is even worse, with the USPS estimating it will lose $160 billion over the next 10 years.
The Postal Service Reform Act is bipartisan legislation that has been introduced in an effort to help the USPS transition to a more sustainable future.
We’re proud of our partnership with USPS and want to continue working with the agency to innovate and deliver for our customers well into the future. With the House Oversight Committee’s swift advancement of the Postal Service Reform Act, we hope the full U.S. House and Senate will follow suit. Enacting these common-sense reforms will help guarantee that the USPS remains an affordable, reliable, and profitable package delivery system for the American people.
It remains to be seen what will happen with the the Postal Service Reform Act, but Amazon has made it clear where it stands.
A new report shows how much mobile app usage has grown during the pandemic, reaching 4.2 hours per day, a 30% increase over 2019.
As people have been staying at home and engaging in remote work, digital services and entertainment have experienced meteoric growth. A new study by App Annie shows just how much that usage has exploded.
According to the report, in Q1 2021, “the global average time spent was 4.2 hours a day, up 30% compared to two years prior.” Some countries passed the five hour mark, namely Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea. Meanwhile, India saw the biggest growth, with consumers spending “80% more time in apps in Q1 2021 than they did in Q1 2019.”
There were interesting variations in the popularity of apps, specific to certain markets. While Facebook, TikTok and YouTube were some of the usual favorites, Signal and Telegram were very popular in Western Markets. In other markets, investment apps were among the favorites, including crypto trading apps such as Coinbase and Upbit.
The full report is well-worth a read, and shows the ongoing transformative effect the pandemic is having on the mobile industry.
Verizon is continuing to leverage its BlueJeans acquisition with the launch of BlueJeans Telehealth.
BlueJeans is a videoconferencing platform that Verizon bought in April 2020, at the outset of the pandemic. Since the acquisition, Verizon has been heavily promoting BlueJeans, using it for its own services and partnering with other companies.
Now Verizon is expanding into telehealth, providing a way for patients and healthcare providers to connect virtually.
“While the use of telemedicine has been steadily growing for some time now, the pandemic has accelerated telehealth adoption and changed the conversation around what patient care will look like moving forward,” said Tami Erwin, CEO, Verizon Business. “We worked closely with an advisory board of health system clinicians and healthcare decision-makers to build BlueJeans Telehealth specifically to address the most pressing needs for a virtual-first telehealth offering–from ease of experience to enhanced security. Today’s launch is just the beginning for Verizon in what we see as the future of telehealth, especially when you consider the innovation that will come from 5G mobility, broadband and cloud capabilities.”
While the global pandemic has greatly accelerated the adoption of telehealth medicine, the industry is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. Verizon is clearly positioning itself and BlueJeans to play a pivotal role in the transition.
“Digital transformation will come out as a faster trend out of the pandemic,” says Workday co-CEO Aneel Bhusri. “What’s been interesting about the pandemic is that for companies that were in the cloud they figured out how to how to thrive and adjust to the new world. Companies that weren’t in the cloud realized that they needed the flexibility, agility, and ability to plan instantaneously. They needed those capabilities.”
Aneel Bhusri, co-CEO of Workday, discusses how the pandemic will drive digital transformation forward at an even faster pace:
Digital Transformation To Be Faster Trend Out Of Pandemic
The first three quarters during the pandemic were challenging. The vagaries of subscription accounting models are such that it is a lag indicator. We expect new bookings growth to accelerate this year and that is our primary indicator and the way we run the business. We’re very excited about where we’re headed. That acceleration will probably take at least a year to show up in subscription accounting numbers just because of the way the model works.
What’s been interesting about the pandemic is that for companies that were in the cloud they figured out how to how to thrive and adjust to the new world. Companies that weren’t in the cloud realized that they needed the flexibility, agility, and ability to plan instantaneously. They needed those capabilities. In many ways, companies like Nike that are just such great market-leading companies, recognize that they needed to move this capability to the cloud. So I think actually digital transformation will come out as a faster trend out of the pandemic.
Employee Engagement Rose To The Top Of The List
It comes back to the flexibility and agility that that cloud solutions like Workday provide. We’ve been very fortunate. We’re so happy to have Laboratory Corporation of America become a customer. J&J is a customer. Visor’s a customer. AstraZeneca is a customer. I just feel honored to be able to support these companies who are doing the best they can to save our lives and are just doing amazing work with the vaccines and testing. We’ve always had a strength in the pharmaceuticals and diagnostics role. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that they’re successful because they’re taking care of all of us.
Coming back to what we learned during the pandemic, employee engagement just rose to the top of every CEO’s list and every head of HR’s list. In a remote work orientation, it was harder to really understand how do employees think about the company they work at, their engagement level, their comfort with their manager, and if they are feeling fulfilled at work. We were already down the path at Workday with something called Pulse Surveys. We recognized that this emerging trend was going to be critical going forward.
We Fell In Love With Peakon So We Acquired Them
We concluded that we had to get in this market now, the market’s happening now, and Peakon is the well-known leader in this category. Peakon is a UK-based company with an amazing management team. We fell in love with the product and the management team so we made them part of Workday. They’re one of the new generations of companies that’s machine learning first.
They really use machine learning in the right way to guide decisions and really give you insight into how employees are thinking about the company that they’re working for and how engaged are they. That is a supercritical set of information that’s going to drive companies going forward.
Digital Transformation To Be Faster Trend Out Of Pandemic, Says Worday co-CEO Aneel Bhusri
Salesforce and JPMorgan are the latest big-name companies looking to downsize their office space as remote work becomes the norm.
The global pandemic has fueled a major transition, making remote work and telecommuting the new normal for a large portion of the workforce. Many companies are embracing this permanently, making remote work or hybrid work their default method moving forward.
One market that has suffered as a result is commercial real estate, with many companies no longer needing the vast amount of office space as before. Dropbox recently made headlines when it sold its San Francisco headquarters for $1.08 billion.
Salesforce and JPMorgan are the latest to join the trend, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that JPMorgan is marketing its 700,000 square feet of Manhattan office space. Meanwhile, Salesforce is listing space in one of its San Francisco buildings for rent.
It remains to be seen how much the market will rebound but, at the current rate, it seems as though commercial real estate will forever be changed by the pandemic.
Verizon’s Look Forward report has a number of important insights, including the growing importance of streaming TV and mobile gaming.
The global pandemic has led to a digital transformation across multiple industries, cramming into a single year what would have taken several. Two industries that have seen massive growth are streaming services and mobile gaming.
According to Verizon’s Look Forward report, major streaming sites have seen a 21% increase over pre-pandemic levels. Rather than being an isolating experience, discussing streaming TV content has helped some 44% of adults content with friends and family.
Some 2 in 3 (67%) are watching at least 3 hours of live TV a week, with over half (59%) watching about the same amount of streaming TV. Just as significantly, of those who watch streaming content, 82% anticipate spending the same amount of time or more a year from now, indicating the uptick in content consumption is likely a permanent change.
Almost half (47%) of adults have subscribed to a new streaming service since the pandemic began, with 70% binge-watching shows at least once or twice.
Mobile gaming is another big winner during the pandemic, with 46% of people downloading or buying at least one mobile game during the pandemic. Interestingly, only 36% did the same with a computer or console game. Almost a third (31%) spend at least 3 hours a week playing a mobile game.
Some 32% of those who engaged in online gaming reported spending more time doing so now than at the beginning of the pandemic, with 45% saying they were spending about the same amount of time.
As Verizon’s report shows, streaming TV and mobile gaming have become staples of the pandemic era, and will likely continue to see major growth for years to come.
A new report by Verizon shows how much remote work has changed the workplace, with only 25% wanting to return to the office full-time.
Verizon’s Look Forward report confirms what many have known about the workplace during the pandemic. Over half of employees (54%) are now working remotely, at least part of the time, almost double pre-pandemic levels (28%).
Of those working remotely, 7 in 10 (69%) want to continue working remotely a minimum of 1-2 days per week permanently. In fact, only 1 in 4 (25%) want to go back to the office full-time. Many employees (75%) enjoy the mobility remote work offers them, with 2 in 3 (67%) planning to travel and work from places outside the home once it’s safe to do so.
The report also shed light on the amazing growth of the technical solutions that have made remote work possible. Video conferencing has seen a 2,872% jump from pre-pandemic activity, while VPN use is 91% higher.
“The pandemic has forced all of us to face challenges we never considered,” says Kyle Malady, Chief Technical Officer at Verizon. “A year into the pandemic, data usage on Verizon networks remains at almost 31% above pre-pandemic levels, a clear indicator that internet consumption and the acceleration of technology adoption are major byproducts of this moment. We’ve seen the shift to digital jump ahead 5-7 years.”
Report after report has shown the permanent transformation the pandemic has had on the workplace. Verizon’s Look Forward report puts some hard numbers to the transformation, putting it in clearer perspective.
Microsoft has released a study of the state of the workplace, finding that flexible work is here to stay, although leaders are out of touch with employee needs.
The global pandemic has led to monumental changes in the workplace, with companies across the spectrum turning to remote work to stay productive. What happens after the pandemic, however, is very much an open question. Some companies have fully embraced remote work, with no plans to go back to the office, while others are chomping at the bit to bring their workers back in-house. Many others are planning on a hybrid solution, bringing employees back part-time, when needed, but allowing them to work from home most of the time.
According to Microsoft’s study of more than 30,000 people in 31 countries, flexible work options are here to stay. Some 73% of workers want flexible and remote work options on a permanent basis, while 67% want more in-person time with their workmates than strict remote work provides.
“Over the past year, no area has undergone more rapid transformation than the way we work,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Employee expectations are changing, and we will need to define productivity much more broadly — inclusive of collaboration, learning, and wellbeing to drive career advancement for every worker, including frontline and knowledge workers, as well as for new graduates and those who are in the workforce today. All this needs to be done with flexibility in when, where, and how people work.”
Interestingly, the study also found that business leaders were somewhat out of touch with their employees, thriving with remote work more than the average employee. This results in a lack of understanding about the challenges many employees still face.
In addition, the business leaders were “more likely to be Millennials or Gen X, male, information workers, and farther along in their careers. In contrast, Gen Z, women, frontline workers, and those new to their careers reported struggling the most over the past year.”
Other findings include the impact of remote productivity, resulting in a more exhausted workforce. Without the structure of the office, many calls, meetings and videoconferences are unstructured and unplanned, and many meetings are going longer. All of this results in workers who are more exhausted, feeling the strain of always be available digitally.
Similarly, Gen Z is finding the transition to a remote workplace particularly challenging. Because of their age, many in this generation are single and just embarking on their careers. As a result, they often struggle with the isolation and lack of networking options more than their older, more established counterparts.
Microsoft’s survey is an in-depth look at what is working, and what still needs work, in the current workplace and is a must-read for any team leader or executive.
Dropbox is selling its San Francisco headquarters for a near-record $1.08 billion amid the transition to remote work.
Dropbox has went all-in on remote work, becoming a “virtual-first” company. The company has even taken steps to help other companies make the same transition. The move comes amid a wider transition in the workforce, with many companies embracing a fully remote or hybrid workflow.
One of the side effects of the transition to remote work is a significant impact on real estate. A recent survey showed some 23% of professionals have left a big city thanks to remote work. The end result has been plunging real estate prices in many cities across the US.
Dropbox is now selling its Mission Bay headquarters for a whopping $1.08 billion, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The price is the second-highest price for a piece of real estate in San Francisco. It comes in behind the $1.2 billion sale the Embarcadero Center, a property roughly four times the size of Dropbox’s four building complex.
It’s a safe bet Dropbox’s sale won’t be the last major property sale among tech companies, or the US market at large.
Microsoft is working to help EU publishers get paid for their news, similar to an Australian law that would enforce the same thing.
The Australian government began a showdown with Google and Facebook with proposed legislation that would force tech companies to pay for the news they quote and link to. Google has traditionally been opposed to such measures, claiming news publishers benefit far more than it does from its use of their news. Similarly, Facebook has also bitterly opposed the new legislation. While Google ultimately began working out paid deals, Facebook escalated the showdown by blocking Australians from posting or linking to news.
In the meantime, Microsoft has set itself apart by being willing to cooperate with Australia from the outset. The company even worked with the government to assure legislators it could pick up any additional search volume, should Google be unwilling to play ball.
The Redmond company is now taking things a step further, working with EU publishers to ensure tech companies pay for the news they use, according to U.S. News & World Report.
Microsoft is working with lobbying groups, such as the European Publishers Council and News Media Europe, in addition to groups representing magazine and newspaper publishers. While the EU has been working on ways to help publishers better negotiate with tech companies, it’s hardly a level playing field, with the tech companies holding the upper hand.
Microsoft joining forces with publishers provides a considerable boost to their negotiating position, while also setting Microsoft up to benefit should Google or Facebook be unwilling to come to an agreement.
“Business is really simple, and people are more productive, and they’re doing things that can lead to growth and opportunity,” says ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. “That’s the whole point of digital transformation. Right now, companies are hunkered down with systems that are absolutely wearing them out. It’s time to make the bold move, pivot to ServiceNow, and let’s get in there and fix the job.”
Bill McDermott, CEO, and President of ServiceNow says that only one in four digital transformation projects actually deliver positive ROI due to lack of integration:
Most Digital Transformation Projects Don’t Deliver
We have a situation on our hands where digital transformation, cloud computing, and business model innovation, are all converging at once. ServiceNow is the platform, of all the enterprise platforms, that really makes business work. One of the big lessons that business has right now is trillions have been poured into digital transformation yet only one in four projects actually deliver positive ROI. The reason for that is lack of integration.
Our system integrates with all the existing systems as well as all the collaborative tools in the enterprise. From day one, the customer gets it up and running swiftly because it’s in the cloud. They begin to derive value from it because you automate the way the work is done and ultimately, you’re now in a position to serve your customers the way they want to be served. It’s a speed game and ServiceNow is at the top of its game.
Companies Have To Create New Business Models
We’re an example. If you’re going to grow your company you’re going to take advantage of digital transformation. This is the only way out and it’s the only way forward. In the 20th Century companies put in big heavy on-premise systems. The issue is now they can’t, in a frictionless economy, immediately pivot those business models because they haven’t digitally transformed their business.
About 25 percent of the opportunity of businesses out there today over the next three years will come from white space places they are not in today. They have to create new business models. They have to think about new partnerships and new routes to market. Without the baseline of a platform like ServiceNow they’re not going to get there.
That’s The Whole Point Of Digital Transformation
I am very optimistic that the economies of the world not only are going to recover but actually going to do very well this year because people are going to be investing in digital transformation. We have seen that does not cost jobs. On the contrary, it frees people up to do things like go after new markets, derive new ideas, and so forth, because the AI revolution is also on.
We have built-in machine learning and AI into our platform. So 80 percent of the soul-crushing work people don’t want to do is done by the Now platform. The 20 percent that involves a human immediately gets initiated through a workflow order from the Now platform.
Business is really simple, and people are more productive and they’re doing things that can lead to growth and opportunity. That’s the whole point of digital transformation. Right now, companies are hunkered down with systems that are absolutely wearing them out. It’s time to make the bold move, pivot to ServiceNow, and let’s get in there and fix the job.
Fastest-Growing Pure-Play SASS Silicon Valley Company
If you look at our actual earnings results, they were stunning and obviously achieved beyond expectations performance across the board. We also followed that through in the guide. We’ll continue to be the fastest-growing pure-play SASS Silicon Valley company. We will continue to have the best margin profile of all of them. Obviously, we’re going to continue to gain market share in industries around the world, in geographies around the world, particularly in Europe and Asia Pacific, and Japan.
We will also gain market share on personas. Lots of people are getting the memo now that ServiceNow obviously dominated the IT automation market but the same backbone platform has enabled us to change the employee experience, the customer experience. In these tough times with COVID we can write low-code onto our platform in minutes and roll out new applications to hundreds of thousands of people so companies can move super fast.
We keep the guide consistent with the revenue that we generated in 2020. If there’s an upside to that… fantastic. That’s what good companies should do. They should go beyond expectations when they can but we stand by the guide and we’re looking forward to having a great year.
ServiceNow Was Born In The Cloud
The whole idea of ServiceNow is so different than SAP which was a company that needed to pivot to the cloud in 2010. We did that and that was very successful. ServiceNow was born in the cloud. It’s a very young company with tremendous growth opportunity on the organic front. Having said that, (we would be in interested in an acquisition) if you have a situation where there is a partner out there that has a substantial TAM, that can be highly complementary and synergistic with ServiceNow on the revenue side.
It also would have to do great things for the customer, because we have a precious platform and we jealously protect the integration power of that platform. A lot of things would have to be right but I can tell you as responsible business people we always look at it. We don’t need it to make our goals but you always have to look at it. We do want to be the defining enterprise software company the 21st century. That’s our plan.
A new poll has revealed major changes in the American workforce, with some 23% of respondents moving from a big city due to remote work.
Blind is an anonymous network of verified professionals that communicate, share advice, provide feedback and more. Blind conducted a survey of some 6,135 professionals, between January 29 and February 8, 2021.
Since work from home (WFM) began, 23% of respondents said they have already relocated out of a major city, while 19% said “not yet,” likely indicating they are at least considering it.
The cities registering the largest exodus were San Francisco/Bay Area (47%), Seattle (16%) and New York City (14%). Austin, Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami and Raleigh collectively made up another 22%.
Just as telling is where professionals have opted to move. Austin was the biggest single destination (15%), followed by Seattle (9%), Miami (7%) and Arizona (4%). Interestingly, 66% moved to “other cities,” which included Atlanta, Denver, Honolulu and Nashville. The most unique response was “exploring the US in a minivan while WFH from Airbnb.”
Blind’s survey is the latest indication that WFM is here to stay. Companies looking to attract top talent will need to provide remote work options to remain competitive.
Microsoft has trounced earnings estimates on strong cloud and PC results, in what CEO Satya Nadella called “a second wave of digital transformation.”
Just a day after Wedbush raised its Microsoft target price, the company smashed expectations with its Q2 earnings. In particular, cloud performance and PC sales helped propel results.
The company reported revenue of $43.1 billion, an increase of 17% and handily beating analysts’ estimates of $40.2 billion. Net income was $15.5 billion, an increase of 33%.
The company’s Intelligent Cloud business accounted for $14.6 billion, a 23% increase. Similarly, the More Personal Computing division accounted for $15.1 billion, an increase of 14%.
“What we have witnessed over the past year is the dawn of a second wave of digital transformation sweeping every company and every industry,” said Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Building their own digital capability is the new currency driving every organization’s resilience and growth. Microsoft is powering this shift with the world’s largest and most comprehensive cloud platform.”
“Accelerating demand for our differentiated offerings drove commercial cloud revenue to $16.7 billion, up 34% year over year,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft. “We continue to benefit from our investments in strategic, high-growth areas.”
Google Cloud is back to business as normal, and focused on growth, following an initial slowdown as a result of the pandemic.
Like many companies, Google had to find its footing when the pandemic first hit. Most industries, including tech, experienced a brief pullback before businesses started returning to normal.
According to Business Insider, Google Cloud’s business is booming again, with the company hiring aggressively and selling its services, after initially focusing on helping customers survive the downturn.
“Nothing has stopped because of the pandemic,” an employee told BI. “This is one of the strategies where we can see companies like [Amazon Web Services] and Google have the leverage to take in that pressure to accelerate. They reap the benefits much higher than everyone else. They’re going full force.”
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has made no secret of his desire to move the company from third place in the cloud market to at least second place within five years. It appears the company is firing on all cylinders in its efforts to reach that goal after a difficult year.
In further evidence of the rising popularity of remote work, a new poll shows that over 50% of workers would choose remote work over vacation.
Office Depot conducted a survey of professionals to better understand the state of the remote workforce. Interestingly, while just under a third of workers were working remotely in March 2020, that number had increased to nearly 70% by May.
While some workers prefer being in the office, it seems the majority not only prefer telecommuting, but would even go to extreme measures to keep doing it. In fact, only 25.2% percent of workers prefer to go back to the office. 50.2% prefer to keep working remotely, while 24.6% would like a mix of both.
Most telling, however, is that 51.2% would even be willing to forgo vacation days in exchange for remote work.
Office Depot’s poll is among a growing number of indicators of just how successful and accepted remote work has become, such as one showing that 29% of workers would quit their jobs before returning to the office.
It’s clear that employers looking to attract the best and brightest will need to ensure some form of remote work as one of their standard benefits.
