WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

With the introduction of robots, the fear is that humans will loose their jobs. In the short term at least, it may only transform work.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Any strategic plan should include a chapter on robotics and the replacement of human labour with robots (and possible AI as well). The article shed some insights on historical perspective - farmers have not disappeared with introduction of mechanical devices but they have become much more productive - as well as raises some interesting ideas about our cohabitation with robots in the near future.

Use this link to access the Forrester report for free on solutions to help protect your organization from the digital threats your corporation faces on its brand, cyber presence or physical locations.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

First, the paper describes the various risks you may face in a digital world. If you don'T know the difference between OSINT, TECHINT, SIGINT, HUMINT, CHINT then you must read it.

Good to know.

Second, it lists the various ways in which you can protect yourself.

Interesting.

Finally, it lists tools you can use to secure your company.

Useful.

Outstanding 20 minutes video that explains what geofencing is and how to it, them in layman's terms.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

We all carry mobile devices in our pockets so we are all targets for beacons and geofencing by retailers and brands. We were just getting used to being tracked everywhere we go online, and now we have become targets in the physical world as well. It is essential that we all know what level of tracking we are subjected to.

On the other hand if you are a brand or a retailer, you must know about beacons and geofencing and ensure your marketing team includes it in their digital strategy otherwise you may be missing out over your competitors.

Outstanding 20 minutes video that explains what beacons are and how to use them, in layman's terms.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

We all carry mobile devices in our pockets so we are all targets for beacons and geofencing by retailers and brands. We were just getting used to being tracked everywhere we go online, and now we have become targets in the physical world as well. It is essential that we all know what level of tracking we are subjected to.

On the other hand if you are a brand or a retailer, you must know about beacons and geofencing and ensure your marketing team includes it in their digital strategy otherwise you may be missing out over your competitors.

GE's industrial Internet means that in the future they may be best known for their infrastructure than their products and devices. Watch for it.

More importantly, the industrial internet and Predix tools came out of a strong digital transformation vision carried out by an exceptional Chief Digital Officer (CDO), Linda Boff. See her profile for more details: http://cdoclub.com/us-chief-digital-officer-of-the-year-linda-boff-on-digital-transformation-at-ge/ 

I wrote about GE industrial internet in the past: see here http://www.scoop.it/t/digital-transformation-of-businesses?q=ge 

Read the article but you can skip the 7min video. For a better - and more relaxed - discussion, consider watching this 1hr interview full of descriptions of self-driving car insights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zy_07g2IrM

For a more technical speech, view the Berkley presentation, even though there are elements that are redundant it provides additional insights into the technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxoke1lDJ9w

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

His approach is radically different than others and more "purist" from an artificial intelligence and crowd sourcing and I believe that makes his approach something to consider in other areas.

For more reading on the subject, this bloomberg paper also brings good insights: http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-george-hotz-self-driving-car/

Moreover it appears that Google lead is slowly shrinking: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/google-car-project-loses-leaders-and-advantage-as-rivals-gain 

Bloomberg video interview that provides motivations for the explosion on VR in the coming years:

1- applications are numerous, with opportunities in different space, not only in gaming but in medical, movie, etc.

2- big players are lined up : Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.

That being said, there have been multiple false starts for VR and #D (remember 3D TVs and google glasses?), so I remaining cautiously optimistic with both VR and AR. They may not be ready for consumer market but may expand into certain key niche applications and industries.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT

In that context, it is essential for digital transformation strategies to consider VR and AR in their roadmaps. There must be clear business needs to drive adoption of this relatively immature technology which requires a number of user constraint (least of which is wearing a headset which makes you look like a dork and prevents you from living in the moment). But there are multiple types of industries where professionals can find benefits in viewing things in 3D in a lifelike fashion: those should be prioritized.

5 must read papers to understand where we stand in the area of direct brain communication with machines. In a nutshell; still very early.

Beacons promised to revolutionize marketing in stores. They were supposed to be everywhere by 2016 when they launched in 2014. Today they are nowhere to be found. This article identifies reasons for this, which are related to the immaturity of the technology and lack of operational support.

The post contains a number of very useful links.

Interested in a review of the potential for beacons? Then you should also read this post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shane-paul-neil/is-ibeacon-marketing-fina_b_10508218.html 

A great blog on different elements regarding eCommerce, from strategies to solutions and statistics. Here, one post that identifies the issues that prevent ecommerce deployment.

Just watch the video and you'll see. We live in the matrix! ;-)

A detailed description of the new computer chip by IBM that mimics more closely than ever the workings of our brain neurons.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

When Intel created the integrated semiconductor in 1971, it marked a revolution because it allowed electronics to be mass produced and operate at higher speed. Today, neurons are built using digital technologies and often are coded in software. With this chip, we have the opportunity to integrate many neurons into a single computer chip, and possibly achieve improvements in artificial intelligence.

Provides context on the recent merger between UBER and DIDI for ride sharing in China.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

China has graduated to a real technology startup hotspot that competes quite well with Silicon Valley/Alley and others in the USA. When creating digital strategies for global companies and markets, you may be wise to prioritize China over the US as the new economic world order takes shape.

A very positive viewpoint on the potential contribution that enterprise architecture can play in a digital transformation.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

EA groups has historically failed to deliver the value they promised. Here McKinsey suggests they can be an essential team to bridge the business - technology gap. I remain sceptical as most EA groups lack the desired skills to communicate effectively because they focus on technology and infrastructure. Let's use this article to guide EA teams to improve and truly contribute.

A summary of the PWC 2015 digital IQ survey.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT 

Digital transformation has had a profound impact on the role of the CIO, with business unit spending more than IT on digital technology. This has been predicted by Gartner years ago and it appears to materialize now.

In that context, what should the role of the CIO be? This paper provides some direction.

An interactive chart that graphs 800 different jobs along with their automation potential - as estimated by McKinsey.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

If you are in school or just out of school, this chart should be of particular interest. For all the others, this is essential must read tooling when preparing strategy and planning for the future of your business unit, organization - large or startup.

Jobs with highest potential for automation represent opportunities for cost reduction, process improvements to reduce lead times, or creation of the automated tools and software that will replace them. For example:

• medical appliance technicians: 100% automation potential. If you are in this field your business plan should include major shift from human workers to robots. If employees are unionized, look at contract negotiation and employee retraining. If you build medical appliance, ensure your hard-software appliance includes the necessary components to make this automation simple and effective.
• sewing machine operators: 100% automation potential, 143K workers in the US. Replacing human by robot sewing machine is efficient but will require capital expenditures: has it been forecasted in your budgets? If that throws your business model out of whack, you have to think like a startup and "pivot" your company to a different yet adjacent space such as custom apparel design and fabrication.

And 798 other sources of inspiration. 

The company automated insights uses its AI tools to automatically write summary of baseball games (http://bit.ly/2a9g7qR), financial portfolio (http://bit.ly/2a9gG3T), and many other. This blog describes many of these applications. 

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

I wrote about automated insights in the past (http://sco.lt/7FRff7) as it was starting and have been watching ever since. It is important to take notice that AI has been hired by the Associated Press to write summary texts that go straight to the wire without human intervention (http://sco.lt/7FRff7). 

This is a trend worth watching as it means AI is slowing replacing human workers with machine intelligence in fields that were previously though impossible - here the redaction of human readable texts and stories. I wrote about data on why no job is safe from automatization and robotization (http://sco.lt/64xeyX).

Anyone putting together a digital strategy must absolutely consider the use of such AI tools in the coming years, and thus have a roadmap with trials starting as soon as NOW.

Google uses artificial intelligence to analyze energy consumption in its data center to improve cooling and reduce energy consumption by 40%.

The paper also links to other most interesting links on data center operations including:

• efficiency in google data centers: http://bit.ly/2a9cYHH
• more on machine learning in data centers: http://bit.ly/2a9dzJi 
• report on global data centers producing 2% of total green house emissions worldwide: http://bit.ly/2a9dm8W 

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Energy is the main cost of data center operations so this is great news. Companies should thus use this news to further move their computing to the cloud as large data centers - Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others - are way more efficient than anything even large corporations can do.

This is true for energy consumption, and I contend it is also true for many other areas including security and speed of implementation. It is essential that any digital transformation make cloud computing the primary de facto standard over any on-premise operation.

This is Capgemini business IT transformation guidance. In 146 pages, it presents cases studies of digital transformations and key technology building blocks that were used to deliver them.

Snapchat has been developing a pair of glasses with integrated camera, similar to Google glasses.

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Google glasses have suffered from bad publicity (labelling wearers as "glassholes") because of possible privacy infringements. However, it is only a question of time before those devices make it to market and revolutionize social networks, memories and our ability to merge digital with real world. I believe there is a huge opportunity in businesses to leverage solutions such as wearable glasses for all kinds of work: repairs, training, security, governance and recording for historical purposes and audits. Is this time the right one for smart glasses?

CIO index provides a series of reference documents, white papers, studies, getting started guides and other document that focus on all IT fields.

Overview of Microsoft open source technology framework to help create intelligent agents ("bots") in c# or node.js. 

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Solutions like this will likely democratize bots in many new areas, from commercial solutions for large audience and niche products within the enterprise.

DUO security publishes a report on security findings from over 2M devices its software is installed on and provides recommendations from its findings

WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT

Security is better, it seems, when users use software that update themselves automatically. Unfortunately, because enterprises have to pay to keep software up to date, most computers are out of date from a security standpoint. Leaders should prioritize keeping systems up to date or favour solutions with automated and free updates. As the paper describes, there are many out there, you just have to look for them carefully.