While Build is mostly about software, there’s usually a considerable amount of information on hardware that can be, at times, revolutionary. Major breakthroughs for both software and hardware don’t typically happen at the same show, but this year we had new ARM-based, four-processor PCs and AI applications that address what is the most pervasive problem in computing that has been largely unaddressed since its creation: Enabling users to interact easily and naturally with PCs.

Also read: Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Software 2022

Project Volterra

The hardware announcement was Project Volterra, which boasts four processors, two more than the typical CPU and GPU we’ve known for years. The third processor is called a Neural Processing Unit focused on AI loads and handles them faster while using far less energy than CPUs or GPUs, according to Microsoft.

The fourth processor I’m calling an ACU, or Azure Compute Unit, and it is in the Azure Cloud. This is arguably the first hybrid PC sharing load between the cloud and the device, which is stackable if more localized performance is needed. Volterra may look like a well provisioned small-form factor PC. However, while it’s targeted at creating native Windows ARM code, it is predictive of the ARM PCs we’ll see on the market once this code is available.

Useful AI

As fantastic as this new hardware is, Microsoft is a software company with a deep history in development tools that goes all the way back to its roots. A huge problem computing has had since its inception is that people have to learn how to interact with the machines, which makes no sense in an ideal world.

Why would you build a tool that people have to work with and then create programming languages that require massive amounts of training? Why not put in the extra work and do it so we can communicate with them like we communicate with each other? Why not create a system to which we can explain what we want and have the computer create it?

Granted a lot of us have trouble explaining what we want, but at least getting training in doing that better would have broad positive implications for our ability to communicate overall, not just communicate with computers. In short, having computers respond to natural language requests would force us to train people how to generally communicate better, leading to fewer conflicts, fewer mistakes, and far deeper and more understanding relationships, not just with computers, but with each other. Something I think you can agree we need now.

Also read: Microsoft Embraces the Significance of Developers

GitHub Co-Pilot

The featured offering is a release coming from GitHub called Co-Pilot, which collaboratively builds code using an AI. It will anticipate what needs to be done and suggest it, and it will provide written code that corresponds to the coder’s request. Not sure how to write a command? Just ask how one would be done and Co-Pilot will provide the answer.

Microsoft provided examples of several targeted AI-driven Codex prototypes as well. One seemed to go farther by creating more complete code, while another, used for web research, didn’t just identify the source but would pull out the relevant information and summarize it. I expect this capability will find its way underneath digital assistants, making them far more capable of providing complete answers in the future.

A demonstration that really caught my attention was on OpenAI’s DALL-E (pronounced Dolly). This is a prototype program that will create an image based on your description. One use: Young schoolchildren who use their imaginations to describe a picture of an invention they had thought up, which led to shoes made of recycled trash, a robotic space trash collector, and even a house kind of like the Jetson’s apartment that could be raised or lowered according to the weather.

Right now, due to current events, I’m a bit more focused on children this week, but I think a tool like this could be an amazing way to visualize ideas and convey ideas better. They say a picture is worth a thousand words; this AI could create that picture with just a few words. While cartoonish initially (this can be addressed with several upscaling tools from companies like AMD and NVIDIA), they nevertheless excited and enthralled the kids. It was also, I admit, magical for me.

A Useful Future for AI

Microsoft Build showed me the best future of AI. Applied not for weapons or to convince me to buy something I don’t want (extended car insurance anyone?), but to remove the drudgery from coding, enabling more people with less training to create high-quality code, translate imagination into images and make digital assistants much more useful.

I’ve also seen the near-term future of PCs, with quad processors, access to the near unlimited processing power of the web (including Microsoft Azure Supercomputers when needed), and an embedded AI that could use the technology above to help that computer learn, for once, how to communicate with us and not the other way around.

This year’s Microsoft Build was, in a word, extraordinary. The things they talked about will have a significant, and largely positive, impact on our future.

Read next: Using Responsible AI to Push Digital Transformation

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This conversation can’t happen soon enough. A growing concern of mine is that automobile companies don’t yet seem to fully understand the risk they are taking with platforms that aren’t secure enough for products tied to human transportation and safety.

Having someone hack your phone or PC is bad, but having someone hack your car could be deadly. So when the industry is talking about putting apps in cars, safety and security should be a far higher priority for many of the automotive OEMs than it seems to be.

Granted, many of these companies are using, or planning to use, QNX for the operation of their cars, relegating Android and Linux to the entertainment functions of the vehicle. But this is not universal, and that could lead to some unnecessary accidents and liability for car makers who try to cut corners or attempt to build their own platforms without the necessary software background and experience.

 Tesla: A Cautionary Tale

Tesla was largely the pioneer of both electric and self-driving technology on the road – and a significant number of people have been injured or died as a result. On the positive side, Tesla did have a higher level of technological understanding than the older car companies, but on the negative side, they didn’t seem to take certain risks seriously enough, which resulted in unnecessary customer deaths.

Generally, it is considered bad form to kill your customers. However, over time, cars have gotten safer and far more capable. One example I witnessed early on was how they trusted this new technology too much and didn’t design good workarounds when it failed. Stories of people getting locked into the back of Tesla Xs were common. I had a friend whose Tesla’s software crashed with his newborn baby in the locked car in 115-degree weather. Fortunately, they were able to get to the child through the manual release in the Tesla trunk, but had they left the child in the car, or pets, and this crash had occurred (so the air conditioning shut off) the outcome would have been far more dire.

Same with Tesla’s Autopilot. The product name implied self-driving ability, but the technology wasn’t, and still isn’t, at that level. This resulted in a number of unnecessary deaths and a request from Consumer Reports to at least change the name (which Tesla refused to do), to prevent those deaths. NHTSA was not amused. 

Tesla is functioning as an early warning system for the rest of the industry, and I’m worried that one or more of the other car companies’ decisions to not use industry standard hardware and software could have similar tragic results.

Also read: 6 Emerging Technologies to Watch from the Current Gartner Hype Cycle

Securing Next-gen Cars

Since its pivot away from smartphones around a decade ago, BlackBerry has been a security-focused vendor with interests that cover government, healthcare, finance, defense and automotive markets. This heavy focus on security, both in terms of hardware and software, makes it uniquely capable of addressing what will likely be the biggest exposures coming in autonomous cars, and especially flying cars (which may be an even greater need at some point because if a flying car’s software crashes, you probably won’t survive the result).

While BlackBerry’s QNX platform is widely penetrated in the automotive market, and it partners with other companies that also help advance this market, like NVIDIA and Qualcomm, QNX isn’t as universally used as NVIDIA’s Omniverse simulation platform, but it should be.

In the end, when we choose those future cars, it may make more sense for our safety and those we love if we limit our choices to cars that are designed to be secure and run QNX for car operations, so we don’t become a footnote in another article on bad automotive OEM behavior like those about Tesla’s tragedies.

Also read: 5G and AI: Ushering in New Tech Innovation

The Automotive Future Needs to Be Secure

We are anticipating a growing wave of electric autonomous cars and flying cars. These vehicles will require a massive focus on security to ensure they don’t become rolling disasters waiting to happen.

Of the vendors I cover, BlackBerry is the most focused on this problem, and its QNX platform is the most secure automotive OS on the market. Here’s hoping the car companies do what they did with NVIDIA Omniverse and recognize that, when it comes to safety, the best product, not the cheapest, may turn out to be the least expensive in the long run.

Read next: Blockchain Hackers Cost Crypto Ecosystems More Than $1B in Q1 2022

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This capability was so much more than caller-ID, and it meant that not only didn’t you waste the caller’s time forcing them to repeat what the company should have already known, you were ready and informed before you said hello.  

Cisco shared some survey results that agreed with the work I’d seen back in the 1980s, which was that customers would abandon vendors if that vendor makes them jump through annoying and, from their perspective, needless hoops, like having to repeat their problem and history with the company over and over and over again.  

With this capability, you could differentiate from your competitors and assure customer satisfaction and loyalty, making these improvements competitive gold.  But this is just part of what Cisco covered.

Also read: Cisco CDA, Greece Create a Solutions Platform at a National Level

Cisco Webex Takes the Lead

The collaboration market is dominated by-products that are more about virtualizing meetings than true collaboration. Most of the collaborations I’ve done or covered didn’t occur in meeting rooms and required the team to surround the subject on which they were collaborating in groups that were often geographically spread out, forcing in-person meetings.  

The pandemic drove a profound change, and surveys indicate that almost all meetings going forward will have at least one remote attendee likely feeling disenfranchised because they are remote. Up until now, I’ve thought of Webex as a lagging product that is harder to use and less interoperable than its competitors, but that changed last week.  Cisco has added a host of features that included a holography feature allowing you to scan and bring a 3D image that the meeting attendees could manipulate into the meeting, making Webex a genuine collaboration product.  

In addition, Webex has reporting tools that preserve employee privacy but provide feedback to the employee and their manager on issues like meeting effectiveness and participation. These tools can help managers and employees maintain work/life balance.  

Cisco’s new Webex hardware is the only hardware from any major vendor that easily allows users to switch between collaboration platforms. The other products I’ve tested either don’t support all three platforms or require a reboot to switch from one platform to another.  

With this change, Webex went from a product I couldn’t recommend to the only product I’m likely to recommend for voice and video collaboration, and I’ve been covering this product class for over 30 years.  

Also read: 5 Digital Transformation Hurdles and How to Get Over Them

Telephony, Too

Cisco continued with telephony features in line with what I had in those old ROLM systems where calls and the caller’s information are co-located so that you know as much about the caller as the company does automatically when the call comes in. This feature isn’t just for call centers, either, as there is nothing more annoying than calling into a company you’ve been working with only to find the person you are calling doesn’t know you, the project, or any history, so you constantly have to boil the ocean with redundant information.  

Then Cisco added automated features so that if a customer had a problem the company knew about, the company could initiate contact with them rather than forcing the customer to wait for extended periods to get help. For instance, just today, our high-end, Samsung-connected washing machine crashed and threw a code. It has an extended warranty, but it took us several hours to call in and provide what the service should have been able to pull from the washer and schedule a repair.  With this new Cisco capability, that could have all happened automatically with less manual overhead; the washer could have told Samsung I had a problem, would have generated a text or email note setting up the repair, and I would have been so impressed I’d likely not buy anything but Samsung in the future. 

Brand and Employee Loyalty

Vendors bleed customers all the time, and the event called the “great resignation” is causing employees to leave companies that don’t get remote work for companies that do. Cisco announced a host of Webex and telephony features that not only seemed to integrate telephony and video conferencing but could effectively address both problems, making both customers and employees more loyal and far happier with their company interactions.  

And what is fascinating is that this is just the start of Cisco’s efforts. There is every possibility that if the company keeps this up, it could end up alone at the top of the entire office communications and collaboration segment.  It has been decades since I’ve been impressed with an offering like this, and I worry that I’ll never again see the capabilities I worked on in the 1980s.  In short, Cisco knocked my socks off, and I’m tickled pink that it did. 

Read next: Best Decision Making Tools & Software 2021

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The latest project in Greece highlights the power and potential of this collaborative approach because it places Cisco at the heart of Greece’s digital transformation. This program is also expected to positively impact everything from Greece’s education system to the country’s resilience efforts post-pandemic. The collaboration also helps ensure the country’s green and digital transformation programs are successful.  

I’m fascinated by the CDA program primarily due to its uniqueness and impressive success record across most continents and how it plays at a national level and above where most vendors currently can engage.  

Cisco CDA

What makes the CDA program unique is that it isn’t focused on selling Cisco products so much as on understanding the priorities and needs of large government entities.  It was used broadly during the pandemic to help governments move aging politicians to WebEx so that debates and votes could be done securely from the politicians’ homes.  Projects tend to be very large with impacts that approach national levels and fully establish a strong relationship between Cisco and the government they have helped on the generally successful completion of those projects.  

The program’s value to the government is that it provides access to a relatively unbiased set of human resources that know its needs and limitations.  This knowledge helps create an affordable solution that meets the government’s needs while not exceeding its limitations.  

The principal goal isn’t selling; instead, it assures the government’s needs are understood and that the solution meets those needs while falling within the limited funds it has to spend.  It is critical to point out this focus because most effort to sell to governments is focused on making the sale, not on assuring the outcome. The result is that more government efforts from non-Cisco companies fail rather spectacularly. 

Also read: 5 Digital Transformation Hurdles and How to Get Over Them

Cisco CDA and Greece

The effort in Greece exemplifies the full promise of CDA. It is a broad initiative that increases the professional educational resources available to the country focused on advancing Greece’s technological competence and capability through a collaborative framework. This framework was driven jointly by Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Minister of Digital Governance in Greece; Cisco’s Gerri Elliott, EVP and Chief Customer and Partner Officer; Guy Diedrich, VP, and Global Innovation Officer; and Antonis Tsiboukis, the Managing Director at Cisco Greece.  

This Greek/Cisco CDA effort is the broadest I’ve seen so far.  Goals include digitization and security of public sector services, establishing hybrid learning models for Greek schools, spinning up new cybersecurity and IT skills in Greece, helping to establish Greece’s digital ports of the future, and helping Greece with foundational support on its journey to building a resilient and inclusive economy and society. 

A significant part of this effort consists of opening a Cisco Digital Transformation and Skills Center in Thessaloniki. This center is focused on developing practical, affordable solutions through the application of Cisco, and Cisco partner, solutions.  This effort has additional partners in educational and institutional research entities. The focus for this last effort includes improving Greek quality of life (like Smart Cities), health systems, rural development, tourism, environmental protection, and civil protection, among others.  

A Unique Working Foundation

The Cisco CDA program is the only corporate program I’m aware of that focuses on the relationship at a governmental scale over sales to that government. The effort initially works to build a foundation of trust and then, without violating that trust, moves to put Cisco and the critical junction between national need and technological capability, providing a reliable, trustworthy, and trusted path to an assured solution benefitting the participating government.  

This effort is unique because that focus is on building relationships, not on selling products, and when the two things come into conflict, favoring the relationship over sales revenue. In the end, both the staffing level, from both the government partner and Cisco, makes the CDA effort as successfully unique as it has become.  

Read next: Using Responsible AI to Push Digital Transformation

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As we’ve moved from in-person to remote events, the effectiveness of a scripted keynote has been significantly reduced because, with the distractions we all have at home, an executive reading a script doesn’t seem to hold the audience’s attention. To keep the audience interested, you need more.

Dell went from a traditional keynote to a panel format that was well moderated by Dell’s SVP of Corporate Affairs, Jennifer “JJ” Davis, who is a legend at the company. On her panel were Dell’s CEO Michael Dell, Chairman and Co-COO Jeff Clarke, Co-COO Chuck Whitten, and Allison Dew, Dell’s CMO. 

Let’s talk about why a panel works better than a scripted monolithic keynote for an online event.  

Also read: Dell Makes Strong Push Towards Autonomous Operations

Building Trust

Dew spoke to this during her interaction on the panel. As CMO, she gets that the impression and effectiveness of any executive team is a mix of company priorities and company personality. While the priorities, at least the stated ones, can be stated in a monolithic executive keynote, that format doesn’t convey the company’s personality.  That personality is more easily conveyed when you see the executives interact.  Do they like each other? Do they get along? Is the executive team looking for ways to undercut their peers, or do they have each others’ backs?

For someone considering working with a company, you want to see if its management is dysfunctional. That will directly relate to how well they can execute the plans and priorities they articulate. A few years back, I was at an event held by a Dell competitor. At that event, two critical executive team members demonstrated their hatred for each other, which predicted the firm’s later massive and more obvious inability to execute. I would argue it is at least as necessary to know the odds a vendor can execute their plans as it is to know those plans in the first place because, if you use them and can’t execute, their dysfunction will become your problem.  

When I watched the executives’ body language, I could tell that they liked and supported each other, which helped me trust what Michael Dell and his executives said and made me believe that infighting was unlikely to derail their plans. A well-moderated panel like this one can establish a natural empathy and depth in the executive team and better allow you to see if interpersonal problems in the firm might become your problems later.

Also read: Facebook’s Unique Ownership Structure Might Be its Downfall

Creating Interest

When you are at a venue listening to a speaker with full audio/video support, it can hold your interest if it is well-staged, scripted, and performed. At home, much of what is typically staged — product demos, slides, and videos — don’t seem to be done as well because you need a full-on TV studio to make all of that work, and most companies don’t have that. Microsoft often does far better in this regard because they have funded a full studio and thus can better professionally produce a show or event.  

The panel approach,  if done well, provides interaction that is more interesting to watch. Television networks use panels to discuss news items on news shows because they work better when conveying a complex topic like Dell Apex, Dell’s big “everything as a service” push.  The variety and interaction between the speakers tend to hold interest better. The speakers are better positioned to speak up to fill information gaps or better explain a topic.  

The key to doing this, however, is having the panel well moderated. A poorly moderated panel can be worse than a monolithic speaker because it often devolves into a linear progression of poorly linked talks with little preparation or rehearsal. Ultimately, what made the Dell panel work was Davis’s preparation and her execution as moderator. In addition, she was the best prepared on the stage, which tended to pull up the performance of the other panelists, further improving the overall quality of the effort.  

Notable Observations

I’ve noticed during vendor events the main focus is more about surviving the event itself.  However, events are supposed to convey information, drive sales, and improve a company’s image. Executives often change slides until the last minute, resulting in unforced errors by the support staff and speakers, all of which reflect poorly on the image and perceived quality of the company.  

A well-moderated panel can mitigate this because you don’t need as much rehearsal. The moderator owns the flow and can be brought in as a professional. And, from my perspective, a panel better conveys the company’s personality than a monolithic keynote.  

Here’s an additional observation. Michael Dell opened with his new book Play Nice But Win, which is about the birth of Dell and the management practices that turned Dell Technologies into the powerhouse it is today.  The book provided a solid foundation to who Michael Dell and his namesake company are and what the company’s lasting priorities will be in a believable context. 

Read next: The Overlooked and Undervalued Importance of Marketing

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CEOs with too much power have been problematic in the past because, as the old saying goes, power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Zuckerberg’s power has led him to take risks that a more conventional CEO would avoid for fear of being fired.  

This problem is playing out in Congress this week as former Facebook Product Manager Frances Haugen testifies that Facebook intentionally harms users and profits from that harm.  Zuckerberg’s response was to attack the whistleblower, but that typically doesn’t play well. This may set up a series of events that could cause Facebook to fail.  

Let’s talk about the importance of strong governance and ethics this week.  

The Importance Of Ethics in Governance

I’ve worked for several startups and multinationals over the years, often in oversight and compliance roles. When there is a severe problem with management, I’ve often found that it is a result of insufficient oversight and a lack of one of the primary accounting government rules, separation of duties.  But suppose you have an executive with absolute power, like in a sole proprietorship or a closely held corporation? In that case, you’ll get behavior that can put the entire company at risk.  

Problems can range from misusing company assets to extreme abuses. At some point, the executive gets the impression that rules that apply to others don’t apply to them because of their unique situation. The result can be catastrophic for the company and the executive.  

It also makes investing in the company far riskier than otherwise would be the case because the investor may think that Facebook, like most other corporations, has a set of controls that protects against executive misbehavior. It is pretty apparent now that it doesn’t.  

Good governance and ethics protect the company and the individuals who run it because they help prevent mistakes that might result in criminal actions against those executives. With Zuckerberg’s kind of absolute power, liability may pass through Facebook to him, which should be far more troubling than it seems to be.  

Ironically, Zuckerberg’s unique position represents an existential threat to Facebook. It shouldn’t exist because it muddies the related stockholder risk and leads to bad operational decisions. These decisions put the entire company at risk.  

Also read: It is Time to Make Anger Management Training Mandatory

Maintaining Strong Governance and Ethics is Hard

A company needs a strong management structure with oversight so that there are protections against unacceptable behavior.   It certainly isn’t uncommon for a company to act against its customers.  We’ve seen bad behavior in Big Pharma, petro-chemical companies, entertainment companies, military contractors, and cigarette companies. All of these examples showcase the extreme problems that can result if governance and ethics aren’t taken seriously.

Over the years, I’ve watched companies that have been founded with strong controls tear down those controls over time, resulting in destructive behavior and dire outcomes. I was working at IBM when that happened there. Over the years, internal audit and quality control units were defunded and often disbanded until the customers revolted. IBM almost failed in the 1990s, and was built on a strong governance and ethics model. The oversight units were gutted or disbanded over time, and the resulting problems almost took out the most powerful technology company of its age.  

The Zukerberg Problem

At Facebook, the problem seems to be Zuckerberg, who appears focused on disputing that the problems exist rather than correcting them. He appears to focus on eliminating the evidence of those problems, which never ends well.  Facebook should serve as a reminder to all of us that proper and adequate governance, management controls, ethics, and oversight with teeth are critical to the company’s health.  Regardless of that company’s size and power, if those elements are not in place or inadequate, the result will be an avoidable catastrophe.   

Facebook’s unique ownership and control structure make adequate governance almost impossible, and ethical positions that should be static become harmfully fluid instead. If Facebook fails, I expect the cause will be traced to their ownership structure and lack of solid governance and corporate ethics.    

Read next: Challenging Post-Pandemic Workplace Harassment

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What is a Smart City?

A smart city is a highly instrumented city where decisions are based on the data being gathered. The future is developed from that data along with the use of aggressive simulation. Smart cities should have lower traffic, better access to resources, and be safer and cheaper to operate in than cities that aren’t automated. It should also:

• Advise a business on the ideal location in that city for that business. 
• Be data-intensive and  have strong policies protecting privacy
• Work aggressively to integrate every service with the related innovative technology that will optimize that service.  
• Be more economically feasible for a business than a city that isn’t smart.  
• Have better living conditions, more balanced housing, and more informed operational management.  
• Be better prepared for disasters and should have eliminated those disasters that fall within a city’s resource envelope.  

Also read: 5 Digital Transformation Hurdles and How to Get Over Them

How Can You Tell if a City is Smart?

It is pretty easy at the moment because there aren’t any truly smart cities yet.  However, there are several cities worldwide racing  to more efficiently use the limited resources available to them.  

Have a CTO

The first check is in technical competence; if the city does not have a CTO, they likely will not implement smart city technology successfully. They may have a CTO, but that CTO may not be qualified to do the job; many appointments are passed to the mayor’s donors or friends, and that approach often does not result in competency.  An incompetent CTO is arguably worse than not having one because they’ll have the authority to do far more harm than good, and may resist competent advice. I’d rank a bad CTO behind no-CTO.  

Have a plan

Do they have a detailed plan for the future based on data that aligns with what you need as a company?   Establishing a factory, warehouse, office, or headquarters takes time and money.  A site may seem attractive initially, but plans may make that site undesirable.  If the city doesn’t have a detailed, long-term plan or conflicts with what your company wants to do, it should be avoided, but you won’t know of these conflicts until you do your due diligence.  

Political considerations

Political stability is also essential when assessing a city. If it shifts between parties, then long-term plans are at risk, and you won’t be able to trust the city’s promises. This problem can be mitigated with enforceable contracts, but generally, it is safer to pick cities where leadership is stable and reliable. 

I’ve watched several companies fail because of governmental changes that weren’t in evidence when the business started.  If the city has stable and solid leadership, it has a redundant consistent succession plan to keep promises.  

Be data-driven

Finally, is the city data-driven in its decision making or is it operating more on gut decisions?  It will do no good to have the capabilities of a smart city if executive management constantly ignores the data when making decisions.  

Also read: Best Decision Making Tools & Software 2021

Smart Cities are the Future

Most cities are exploring smart technology to deal with many problems like homelessness, understaffing, reduced tax income, and climate change.  Done right, a smart city can help locate the business efficiently, lower operating and transportation costs, and better work with the business to assure success. 

 Done wrong, the misapplication of technology will create new problems for the city and waste funding that would have been better spent on more critical activities.  You could also have issues with privacy, demonstrations, and timely access to critical resources.  

These potential adverse outcomes are why it is essential to understand the smart city effort and make sure the city you are considering will be advancing in ways that will enhance rather than hinder your future. Companies like Qualcomm, Cisco, and IBM are heavily invested in smart city developments and may be able to provide informed guidance while considering your choice.  

Utilities, access, transportation, housing, security, political disruption, technical competence, a well-defined plan for the future, and a demonstrated history of data-based decision-making are elements of a successful smart city.  If they aren’t evident, you’ll need to factor in related existing and future problems.  Also, you may want to make sure the planning commission is up to speed on current sustainable building technologies and capable of providing you with the assistance you’ll need when building out your site.  

Finally, it would be wise to review the plans for the cities where you have offices to assure plans exist and that they will be beneficial rather than harmful to your business’s future. Forewarned is forearmed, and we are entering a period of very rapid change. Most cities are not prepared for this change and likely should be avoided until this shortcoming is addressed, while those few cities that are well-staffed and have decent smart city plans should be favored as you map your future.  

Read next: IoV: The Pioneering Union of IoT and the Automotive Industry

The post Choosing a Smart City for Business Expansion appeared first on IT Business Edge.

However, at least for the moment, we don’t have a shortage of jobs; we have a severe shortage of people, and technology is advancing rapidly — expanding the need faster than we spin up people to address it. To address this need this week, Dell provided a panel moderated by Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars.On the panel with Mark were Patrick Duroseau, VP, Data Management, Under Armour; Michio Kaku, futurist and theoretical physicist; John Roese, CTO, Dell Technologies; Rose Schooler, VP GM Intel; and Susan Sharpe, Product Manager, CloudIQ, Dell Technologies.  

Also read: Report: Observability’s Growth to Evolve into Automation Solutions in 2022

The Hierarchy of Automation

Before the panel kicked off, Dell’s Roese, walked us through a hierarchy of automation levels based on the now mature hierarchy we use for autonomous vehicles. The level range is 0 to 5:

• 0 = no automation
• 1 = operated assisted
• 2 = partial automation
• 3 = conditional automation
• 4 = high autonomy
• 5 = full autonomous

For the most part, the industry currently is in the 0 to 3 range, depending on deployment, but we are a long way from the “IT-in-a-box” world that an entire level five deployment represents across IT.  

At the current level of autonomy, between 0 to 3, the industry is supplementing rather than replacing staff. However, retraining and replacement staff will likely become necessary as we move to levels four and five. This is hardly a new problem in the tech market, which is advancing rapidly.  

Dell’s Advanced Offerings

Roese and Sharpe highlighted the products that Dell has already advanced toward full automation. These offerings include VXRail, which can now provide six nines of availability, far more employee efficiency in deploying apps (2x the speed of alternatives), fewer manual steps, and an 85% faster deployment speed than prior technology. In addition, VXRail deployment, monitoring, and incident mitigation are all automated to reduce staffing load significantly.

APEX is Dell’s ITaaS (IT-as-a-Service) offering that was recently introduced.  Its automation benefits include reduced costs, improved agility, more empowered employees, and the ability to ramp to more locations quickly.  

Dell CloudIQ can monitor and make recommendations across the entire technology stack, emphasizing infrastructure health issues and allowing greater automation in the future.   

Also read: The Growing Relevance of Hyperautomation in ITOps

Approaches to Automation

Michio Kaku had an interesting view on approaching automation, particularly in emerging countries where cutting edge technology is not often available. He suggested you start much like the automotive industry, where automation carries from manufacturing and increasingly into the products they sell. Start with repetitive machines that can do the same thing over and over again, much like what happens in automotive assembly lines. Then move to pattern recognition software capabilities currently used by firms like BlackBerry’s Cylance for effective malware mitigation. Finally, machine learning and deep learning can advance their capabilities.  This last is cutting edge, but if you don’t transition through the earlier concepts and related technologies, you won’t have the necessary infrastructure or technical competence to execute the fourth step effectively.  

Kaku added that we are currently in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It will delineate where humans and machines best function with humans better with the unknown and machines increasingly operate in the known world autonomously.  

IT in a Box

We have a decade or so before we get to IT in a box, but this presentation reminds us that change is coming, and it is coming rapidly. Increasingly, bridge skills will be needed to implement these evolving automated systems in the industries that want them. One benefit is that IT folks already know the technology, unlike healthcare, manufacturing, or legal markets looking at AI solutions. AI is part of the technical landscape that IT already has to address. Thus, it should be easier to find and train bridge employees — who know both the subject matter and the AI technology — than to train a doctor, lawyer, or manufacturing worker in advanced technology.  An IT tech in any of these other markets might be able to transition to become a bridge employee based on what they’ve learned servicing one of these verticals.  

With these changes comes risks and opportunities. Still, the benefits of automating, if only to free up IT time to do other critical tasks, will undoubtedly drive that automation into the industry. This effort will take decades, and those that rise as experts could find themselves highly sought after, providing a significant incentive to help drive this change.

Read next: Top RPA Tools 2021: Robotic Process Automation Software

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While YouTube is full of videos of actions like this at retail establishments, the people acting out have day jobs and don’t seem to understand the personal risks they are taking. If it weren’t for the employee shortage, I’d suggest stress interviews to see who is likely to overreact coupled with a policy against hiring or retaining people who can’t, or won’t, control their temper.  But, given the shortage, even if you could implement such a policy, I doubt you’d be able to sustain it.  

The EEOC rules against a Hostile Workplace are enforceable. Having watched significant judgments and settlements over the years, I recognize that firing these people not only potentially escalates to violence, but also puts stress on the remaining staff and potentially results in brand damage. Here’s another path: mandatory anger management training with lessons on how to behave in public and on social media to prevent the behavior in the first place.  

Also read: Creating Better Employees with Better Education

Corporate Behavioral Policies

I’ve worked for two companies that, at least while I worked there, took employee behavior seriously.  Disney had the Disney Academy, where employees were taught how to behave in the face of adversity at the park.  Even if you were attacked physically, you weren’t to respond, but instead seek help from security. At IBM, they required you to behave while in public or any time you might be connected to the IBM brand. It was made clear that you’d be an ex-employee if you violated that policy.  

These lessons have served me well over the years, but they occurred before social media, which can make your mistake far more visible and far more lasting.  People are losing jobs and opportunities for things they did in their youth. The best defense for everyone is to prevent the mistake from ever being made.  

While we were in the office, there was the opportunity for management to at least see and moderate in-person behavior. However, with people working remotely, that protection is reduced.  More importantly, while an inappropriate remark in an in-person meeting may stay in that meeting, video conferencing meetings are often recorded, creating evidence of this bad behavior that can be used in litigation or posted on social media — doing substantial damage to the employee and the firm’s brand.   

I’ve also observed that senior-level employees may be most prone to bad behavior, as they often feel policies don’t apply to them. They may overreact if that potential misperception is challenged by a peer or a subordinate.  

The Benefits of Ongoing Anger Management Training

There are issues with making anger management courses a targeted remedy for employees that act out. Still, IBM and Disney have showcased you can make them mandatory for all employees without calling any employee out.   

Social media is both problematic and beneficial, but employees must remain conversant on what is and is not allowed and be reminded that other forms of communication like email are not private. They are audited for bad behavior.  Simply reminding people not to post when they are under the influence, tired, or angry would mitigate a great deal of the problems, but these reminders can’t be one and done; they have to be ongoing, so the employee realizes that when on social media they are in the public. 

I’m recommending a regular recurring class on anger management, employee interaction, acceptable behavior, and de-escalation. We can’t afford to lose employees, and we certainly can’t afford the brand damage when a misbehaving employee gets national attention. In addition, reminding employees they are always on camera these days would likely mitigate much of the bad behavior that is on display.  

Read next: How Micron Fixed the Diversity Labor Pool Problem

The post It is Time to Make Anger Management Training Mandatory appeared first on IT Business Edge.

This week I met with Dawn Jones, Intel’s Chief Inclusivity and People Officer, to discuss the company’s efforts to bring DE&I to the forefront as well as key moves that have underscored that effort in the last year.

Setting a Bad Example

When I started working with Intel in the early ‘90s, they were often defined by bad behavior, including anti-competitive policies, affairs among company leadership, and stymied advancement for women. Intel was a showcase for the male-dominated technology industry.  A few years back, Renee James joined Intel as a co-CEO, but she was driven out of the company by her male co-leader Brian (BK) Kerzanich, making the effort appear disingenuous. 

James’s short tenure underscored a company culture rife with backbiting, inappropriate liaisons, and lawsuits brought about by wrongfully terminated employees. This kind of  corporate drama creates substantial distrust between employees and management. 

Intel’s current CEO, Pat Gelsinger, is cut from very different cloth. Instead of paying lip service to DE&I and Intel’s fraternization policies about senior executives, he has aggressively turned Intel into a company known for treating employees fairly and well.  While the job is far from done, the progress is impressive. 

Raising the Bar

According to Dawn Jones, Intel’s HR department has moved away from being a compliance department focused on covering up problems to one that has trained a laser-like focus on creating a safe and fair workplace for all of its employees. This includes surveys to ensure that employees understand how their programs work and to motivate and activate the workforce appropriately; and, employment measurement systems underpinned by DE&I policies to ensure that 80% of all job requisitions are posted. 

While some employees may be chosen, most jobs are available to anyone qualified by background, experience, and education. Job descriptions are reviewed to assure the description doesn’t set unreasonable requirements and prevent a woman or minority from applying and getting the job. The policy also requires the interviewing panel to be diverse and that every effort is made to ensure a diverse pool of potential employees.  

Jones shared that one of the exciting initiatives Intel has driven is the Alliance for Global Inclusion. I’ve mentioned Micron as a diversity leader in previous columns, and they have joined this group, which recognizes that no firm can do this alone, and that progress can be accelerated if companies address DE&I as a group. This effort can be far more effective in driving interest in technology into education so that the availability of women and minorities for tech jobs improves over time. In addition, Jones told me that currently, the Alliance for Global Inclusion’s efforts are positively impacting 100K high school students in 30 countries, with plans to expand significantly in the future to better ensure STEM readiness.    

Finally, Intel has significantly diversified its board by adding more women, which should significantly weaken the firm’s glass ceiling.  

Setting a Better Example

Diversity and inclusion in an industry that has been anything but for much of its life isn’t easy. It takes focus and determination, it takes more than one company, and it takes a willingness to fight through the pain of change for a better place to work. A place you’d be proud to send your mother, sister, or daughter in the future, knowing they’d be treated fairly and well.  

Intel’s changes are nothing short of amazing. Still, their most significant impact may be their Alliance for Global Inclusion which is driving changes that go far beyond Intel’s corporate reach and has a decent chance of fixing an industry that desperately needed to move away from the Old Boy’s Club mentality that was crippling it.  

Given that technology increasingly defines our world, having the leading tech companies get behind an effort to substantially improve DE&I is a critical milestone on the path to building a better world.  

Read next: Why the Tech Industry Struggles with DE&I

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