Showing posts with label cloud computing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cloud computing. Show all posts

IT Leadership Series: SAP's Christine Ashton, Global CDO, Digital Office, Cloud ERP

I have the honor of hosting the CIOWaterCooler.com's IT Leadership Series, and this week I had the privilege of interviewing Christine Ashton, SAP's Global CDO, Digital Office, ERP Cloud.  In this interview, we dig deep into her insights on digital transformation, AI, automation and the economic case for running ERPs in the cloud, plus what it takes to win in a fast changing technology environment.  Enjoy!



************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Senior Vice President Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc.
Website Regalix Inc.
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Is Silicon Valley Worth It?

Have you ever wondered why technology start-ups aggregate in Silicon Valley like moths to a flame?  Office space is expensive.  Hiring employees in the valley is costly.  Competition for talent is fierce.  Buying a home is cost prohibitive and traffic is horrible.  Yet start-ups continue to locate here.  What are the attractants?  Let's consider the following:

Traditional consulting practices promote the fact they have decades worth of accumulated business processes, system designs, economic models, methodologies and experiences from years of providing IT and business strategy consulting to large multinational companies. The problem is the large legacy S&P 500 companies are not the models for agility and digital acumen today - think about the trouble GE is in.  Today the average number of years a company can stay in the S&P 500 is predicted to be only 14 years.  Today, agile Silicon Valley companies are the ones commanding the most attention.

Having Silicon Valley DNA today is more important than archives full of historic processes and decades of experience deploying legacy systems.  Silicon Valley is the very epicenter of digital transformation and the companies here think and act differently.  Silicon Valley DNA is a digital mindset, a paradigm, a culture, a perspective and an operational strategy.  It assumes there are competitive advantages to be found in change and innovation - just waiting to be exploited.  It aggressively pursues new business models and innovations based on the belief there is value in learning, whether the experiment is a success or a failure.  It seeks examples of successful proof of concepts across all industries, and then seeks ways to apply those findings to other business problems and situations.

Consulting companies with Silicon Valley DNA are not attracted to projects involving the implementation or deployment of legacy technologies and business models.  They may do them, but only as a means to an end, which is to get more challenging and transformative projects and business. They seek opportunities to help companies advance, in leaps and bounds, rather than in small risk-free iterations.  

Businesses with real Silicon Valley DNA are located in the Silicon Valley.  It means they are surrounded by innovative people both inside and outside the company that are working with and learning about emerging technologies and business and economic models every day.  It means they are collecting and working with new ideas every day - assembling and reassembling them to form new products, services and businesses.  It means they have unleashed their employees’ creativity to integrate and test unique combinations of technologies in search of additional value. 

Being located in the Silicon Valley and having Silicon Valley relationships also benefits new start-ups seeking to fund interesting ideas and new ventures.  In addition, start-up teams benefit from being in close proximity to experienced technology leaders, investors and advisors. 

Consulting companies with Silicon Valley DNA, are made up with people that think differently.  They thrive in an environment and culture that attracts ambitious, competitive and driven innovators and entrepreneurs.  They are not seeking status quo, but rather they are trying to make a positive impact through change.

Where many traditional businesses struggle with change and experience a deep-set institutional and leadership resistance to it, businesses with Silicon Valley DNA recognize change as an opportunity to capture additional competitive advantages and deliver more value.

Businesses with Silicon Valley DNA also look at risk differently.  Where traditional businesses might fear risk and see it as something to avoid, Silicon Valley companies are willing to work with it.  They see risk as a gateway to potential opportunities and competitive advantages that are worth exploring.

Silicon Valley consulting companies often have an abundance of knowledge and experience on how to take an idea from a concept to a new business ventures.  Often within leadership teams they have the accumulated experience of having worked in dozens of different start-ups.  This experience has shaped them into entrepreneurs.  Their natural approach to any project is from a business start-up perspective.  This mindset is missing from many consulting companies that focus primarily on staffing and long-term ERP implementations and deployments.

Another Silicon Valley DNA character trait is a healthy disrespect for how things have been done in the past.  Traditional market rules and behaviors, business model norms, institutional and industry practices are often not respected.  In fact, they are often viewed as mere artificial limitations created by incumbents for the purpose of protecting their own status quo and limiting customer choices and options.  In the Silicon Valley rewards are given most often to those that think out-of-the-box, not to those trying to fit in it.

Silicon Valley consulting companies and entrepreneurs often believe in fuzzy math.  They believe that 2 + 2 does equal 5.  They have witnessed firsthand entrepreneurs networking independent car drivers together with ubiquitous wireless broadband, maps, mobile apps, mobile payments and a demand for transportation into – Uber!  They have experienced the value of collecting concepts, ideas, technologies and best practices from many different industries and combining them into new business models that thrives and add exponential business value!

Businesses with Silicon Valley DNA by their very nature also look beyond technologies.  With an entrepreneurial mind they consider competition, markets, regulatory environments, industry trends and much more.  This is a requirement for start-ups and these considerations are embedded in their approach to consulting.

We have of course generalized in this article.  Not every business with Silicon Valley DNA is geographically located in Silicon Valley, but having this DNA is a huge advantage.  


************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Senior Vice President, Solutions Strategy, Regalix Inc.
Website Regalix Inc.
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

CIO Interview Series: Jim Dubois, Former Microsoft CIO

I had the privilege of interviewing Jim Dubois, former CIO of Microsoft last week!  In this interview we discuss Microsoft's digital transformation over the past few years, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, IoT, analytics, change management, automation and the future.



Read more on artificial intelligence from the Center for Digital Intelligence here.

************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Principal Analyst | Consultant | Digital Technologies and Strategies - Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Silicon Valley Series: Security as a Service and Managing Enterprise Security, Processes and Policies

In this Silicon Valley Series I have the privilege of interviewing very smart and experienced Silicon Valley veterans on a variety of important business trends, technologies and strategies.  I hope you find this series of short interviews interesting.

In this episode, I interview the CTO of Cybric, Mike D. Kail, and discuss Security-As-A-Service, and the challenges involved in managing the digital security of a large enterprise when there are so many wireless and mobile connected devices and objects in your IT ecosystem.  Enjoy!



Digital Transformation and Leadership Development

I have read several articles recently about projects designed to teach digital systems to think more like humans.  For example one article was about teaching chatbot systems to communicate empathy to humans.  It seems ironic that we are developing digital systems to think more like humans, while at the same time much of my work is focused on teaching humans how to think more like and about digital systems and their capabilities.  Let me explain.

Competitive battles in most industries today are increasingly centered on digital technologies and digital strategies, and as a result, it benefits leaders to have a deep understanding of how digital systems work, and how the impact of new digital innovations will change the behaviors of customers, competitors and partners.

A few of the areas that I think leaders should really understand are:

  • Simple programming concepts and computer logic
  • Small World, social networks and swarming theories
  • Industry and technology data exchange standards
  • Platforms, Cloud computing, Containers and System thinking
  • Internet and network architecture and design
  • Big Data and real-time analytics
  • GPS, GIS and Mapping
  • Mobile and wireless technologies
  • Sensors, embedded wireless devices and IoT
  • Data and device security and authentication
  • Databases and data lifecycle management
  • Online catalogs, shopping carts and digital payments
  • Digital marketing, personalization and contextual relevance
  • Digital content and delivery: websites, blogs, videos, podcasts, social media (e.g. Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.)
  • Robotics, automation, AI and machine learning
  • Virtual and augmented reality

There are many more items that could be added to this short list, but I hope you get the idea.  If we can agree that digital technologies are fundamental to our future success, then we must understand them, or at least their capabilities.

To read more about how digital transformation is impacting strategies read this article 15 Rules for Winning During the Age of Digital Transformation.
************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
President, Principal Analyst, Futurist, the Center for Digital Intelligence™
Website C4DIGI.com
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Technologies
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Bots for President

  1. The End Game of Digital Transformation
  2. The Three Tsunamis of Digital Transformation - Be Prepared!
  3. Bots, AI and the Next 40 Months
  4. You Only Have 40 Months to Digitally Transform
  5. Digital Technologies and the Greater Good
  6. Video Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  7. Report: 40 Months of Hyper-Digital Transformation
  8. Virtual Moves to Real in with Sensors and Digital Transformation
  9. Technology Must Disappear in 2017
  10. Merging Humans with AI and Machine Learning Systems
  11. In Defense of the Human Experience in a Digital World
  12. Profits that Kill in the Age of Digital Transformation
  13. Competing in Future Time and Digital Transformation
  14. Digital Hope and Redemption in the Digital Age
  15. Digital Transformation and the Role of Faster
  16. Digital Transformation and the Law of Thermodynamics
  17. Jettison the Heavy Baggage and Digitally Transform
  18. Digital Transformation - The Dark Side
  19. Business is Not as Usual in Digital Transformation
  20. 15 Rules for Winning in Digital Transformation
  21. The End Goal of Digital Transformation
  22. Digital Transformation and the Ignorance Penalty
  23. Surviving the Three Ages of Digital Transformation
  24. The Advantages of an Advantage in Digital Transformation
  25. From Digital to Hyper-Transformation
  26. Believers, Non-Believers and Digital Transformation
  27. Forces Driving the Digital Transformation Era
  28. Digital Transformation Requires Agility and Energy Measurement
  29. A Doctrine for Digital Transformation is Required
  30. Digital Transformation and Its Role in Mobility and Competition
  31. Digital Transformation - A Revolution in Precision Through IoT, Analytics and Mobility
  32. Competing in Digital Transformation and Mobility
  33. Ambiguity and Digital Transformation
  34. Digital Transformation and Mobility - Macro-Forces and Timing
  35. Mobile and IoT Technologies are Inside the Curve of Human Time
************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Senior Analyst, Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin's YouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict