Riding out the wave of disruption
Disruption is not necessarily the crisis it’s frequently considered to be for
incumbents, the researchers stress. Two technologies can often coexist in the
marketplace for a significant period. Thus, it’s important for incumbent
companies not to overreact. They should target dual users and reexamine the
factors that have led to the old technology sticking around for so long. Of
course, the profit implications of cannibalization of the old technology and
leapfrogging depend on which type of firm is trumpeting the new technology. New
entrants will always stand to gain when they introduce a technology that takes
off. But incumbents rolling out a successive technology will also gain if their
competitors would have introduced it anyway or if the 2.0 version has a higher
profit margin than the original. The authors write, “Leapfroggers are an
opportunity loss for incumbents, but switchers are a real loss.” Regardless of
the predictive model they use, marketers should strive to understand how the
various consumer segments identified in this study will grow or shrink over time
and use that information in their forecasts of early sales or market penetration
of successive technologies.
AI and APIs: The A+ Answers to Keeping Data Secure and Private
Adding to the complexity is ensuring that AI and data are used ethically,
Marques points out. Two key categories comprise secure AI, he says: responsible
AI and confidential AI. Responsible AI focuses on regulations, privacy, trust,
and ethics related to decision-making using AI and ML models. Confidential AI
involves how companies share data with others to address a common business
problem. For example, airlines might want to pool data to better understand
maintenance, repair, and parts failure issues but avoid exposing proprietary
data to the other companies. Without protections in place, others might see
confidential data. The same types of issues are common among healthcare
companies and financial services firms. Despite the desire to add more data to a
pool, there are also deep concerns about how, where, and when the data is used.
In fact, complying with regulations is merely a starting point for a more robust
and digital-centric data management framework, Jahil explains. Security and
privacy must extend into a data ecosystem and out to customers and their PII.
For example, CCPA has expanded the concept of PII to include any information
that may help identify the individual, like hair color or personal preferences.
What is a data center REIT?
The rationale for converting to REIT status will vary from company to company,
but broadly it offers beneficial tax status and greater access to capital for
growth. “The biggest benefit is that REITs don’t pay any corporate tax,” says
Millionacre’s Frankel. “Think of a data center company that isn't a REIT. Its
income can effectively be taxed twice; once at the corporate level when the
company earns a profit, and again on the individual level when the company
pays a dividend to investors.” The rules on whether an organization can apply
for REIT classification vary from country to country, but broadly having a
portfolio of properties from which real-estate activities such as rent is the
majority of your revenue is derived, and having a number of investors to which
you provide the majority of that revenue, is the minimum requirement. “REITs
are able to raise capital more easily via share issuances and/or joint venture
partnerships as investors have a better idea of the company’s financial
situation once public, says Cushman & Wakefield’s Imboden. “The degree of
difficulty [on becoming a REIT] depends largely on if the company was
structured and managed with the intention of becoming a REIT, or if the
decision was made after years of operating.”
12 security career-killers (and how to avoid them)
“The biggest problem I’ve seen is security people who think security is the
be-all and end-all. They go in with that attitude, and they don’t see how they
have to enable the business,” says James Carder, CSO of the security tech
company LogRhythm. He says they instead need to collaborate with their
business-unit colleagues to understand their objectives and then be an
enabler, not a hinderance. Others agree. “Security is a profession that has
plenty of standards and regulations and frameworks, but too many times we try
to implement them in a blind way, from the perspective of the standards
instead of trying to implement them in the context of the business,” adds Russ
Kirby, CISO of software company ForgeRock. Similarly, Kirby has seen security
pros become so focused on their own objectives that they alienate other
departments that may otherwise want to work together to find a solution. He
points to one scenario, where security staffers wanted to change an
application’s minimum password length from 8 characters to upwards of 20. The
IT application team pushed back, explaining that they could go to 12
characters but anything more would take significant time and money to
change.
Six industries impacted by the combination of 5G and edge computing
"Weather and humidity can impact the performance of 5G,'' Roberts added; he
also noted that, as 5G continues to proliferate, there will be many more cell
towers. That's consistent with recently released research by PwC, which
reported that "the performance of 5G networks remains uneven." Widespread
usage is not here yet "because it's a big challenge to upgrade
infrastructure," agreed Mark Sami, a director at West Monroe. Right now, for
example, to get Verizon's Ultra Wideband network, "you need a line of sight to
a tower so you have to be in close proximity," Sami said. ... "It's all about
driving applications and how do you make these 5G and edge solutions [work] in
a manner where you create more opportunities for the developer community to
write applications to that infrastructure architecture,'' said Sid Nag, a
vice-president at Gartner. Some 90% of industrial enterprises will use edge
computing by 2020, according to Frost & Sullivan. "The applications are
endless,'' observed Chris Steffen, a research director at Enterprise
Management Associates. "Every vertical is going to be impacted in some way,''
he added, depending on specific use cases and relevance.
Why Disconnected Data Grinds Customer Journeys to a Halt
Business architecture matters because it defines and explains the
relationships between customer business processes. And information and
application architecture matter because they define the major types of
information and the applications that process customer data. Clearly, this
kind of systems thinking is essential to defining holistic customer journeys —
or in the language of marketing, the friction points between customer facing
systems and data that flows between them. Thinking this way raises questions
like why customers need to interface with applications separately and why they
have to enter data multiple times when interacting with these separate
applications — two big sources of customer journey friction. Data limits the
quality of the customer journey at three major points: a company’s sales,
marketing and service processes. According to economist Theodore Levitt, any
sales and marketing processes should focus on the following: “the role of
marketing is creating and keeping the customer.” To create or obtain new
customers, organizations must simplify the processes to become a customer,
regardless of the customer channel chosen. In practice this means integrating
customer facing systems, so customers enter information only once.
Rust Could Be the Secret to Next-Gen Computing
The team think there are good prospects for using ‘rust’ to create
super-efficient computers. This is because although very simple in architecture,
the Fe2O3-based device where merons and bimerons were found already contains all
the ingredients to manipulate these tiny bits quickly and efficiently – by
flowing a tiny electrical current in an extremely thin metallic ‘overcoat’. In
fact, the team state that controlling and observing the movement of merons and
bimerons in real time is the goal of a future X-ray microscopy experiment,
currently in the planning phase. Moving from basic to applied research means
cost and compatibility considerations are of paramount importance. While iron
oxide is extremely abundant and cheap, the fabrication techniques employed by
researchers at Singapore and Madison are complex and require atomic-scale
control. However, the team are optimistic as they recently demonstrated that is
possible to ‘peel off’ a thin layer of oxide from its growth medium and stick it
almost anywhere, with its properties being largely unaffected. They say their
next steps will be the design and fabrication of proof-of-principle devices
based on ‘cosmic strings’ .
New Opportunities from Tech-Driven Industry Convergence
When we study the evolution of information technology, we find that companies
traditionally leveraged technology solutions to serve specific business
functions within an industry. For example, in life sciences or pharmaceutical
companies, technology solutions were usually grouped by function such as
commercial, R&D, and supply chain. Most answers were explicitly designed for
the specific process and had little scope for portability across sectors.
However, as technologies evolved, solutions have become increasingly broad-based
and sector-agnostic. While cloud and high-tech companies still provide
industry-specific solutions, there is a convergence in the types of problems
they solve for customers across industries. ... As the lines are getting
blurred, we need to rethink our traditional approach to grouping various sectors
when building technology solutions. For instance, all consumer-facing industries
such as CPG, pharma, insurance, and manufacturing are likely to have significant
overlap in the challenges they face. Similarly, healthcare, finance, medical
devices, retail, and telecommunications are likely to find common ground.
Networking software can ease the complexity of multicloud management
Cloud providers offer essential tools in three key areas: security, networking,
and management and orchestration (MANO). Their security capabilities and
controls often must be manually implemented, and their networking requires that
their on-ramps and off ramps—which providers optimize--be specifically routed.
Each cloud has its own MANO tools to provide management, visibility, and
automation tools that must be set in order to gain visibility see and tune
application performance. That means a learning curve and fragmented MANO for
enterprise IT teams that support multicloud environments. These factors combine
to make many IT operations involving IaaS multiclouds difficult to scale and the
task of troubleshooting performance slowdowns tedious and time consuming. The
leading IaaS providers are building new access capabilities at the edge of their
networks. Key to user experience is network performance, which relies on network
routing to and from the nearest cloud on-ramp. Leveraging WAN network
intelligence is essential to delivering a reliable, high quality experience
between applications in the public cloud and end-users. Enterprise IT will
require the network intelligence to connect to the best IaaS point of presence
to accelerate application delivery.
The transportation sector needs a standards-driven, industry-wide approach to cybersecurity
We have already witnessed attacks on electronic charging stations via the
Near-Field Communication (NFC) card, which handles billing for EV charging. The
ID cards have inherent vulnerabilities due to third-party providers not securing
customer data. Research has shown malicious individuals can copy these cards and
use them to charge other vehicles. Another concern is related to traditional
lithium-ion batteries, which are used in EVs and have the potential to explode.
While this issue is being addressed by battery suppliers with investment in
R&D, this safety effort must also consider the risk of cyber attacks. If
it’s known that a battery in an EV can explode, this may increase the likelihood
that a bad actor may target this type of car with the intent to cause harm. As
EV battery technology advances, it’s imperative that comprehensive cybersecurity
measures evolve and improve in parallel so automakers and technology providers
can prevent this type of hacking from occurring. As the AV industry advances, so
will the incentives for hackers. There is an increased potential for financial
crimes committed via ransomware attacks. Further, these attacks could cause
vehicles to behave abnormally, potentially endangering human lives.
Quote for the day:
"To accomplish great things, we must not
only act, but also dream, not only plan but also believe." --
Anatole France
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