Climate Change and Digital Transformation

Good afternoon,

I was about to continue the series on the Digital Transformation methodology for change in organisations, but developments in the France-Antilles situation and the hurricane season led me on a different path. I’ll come back to the methodology in a new email.

On to the update.

Follow-up: France-Antilles

A third proposition has surfaced in the last couple of days to take over the failing old-media organisation, as reported by RCI. The proposal is apparently unpopular as it appears to implement radical reductions in labour costs by reducing staff numbers from around 270 to just 40. The Unions are, understandably, unhappy, and there is a strong chance nothing will come from this offer that is trying to stem 400K€ per month in extra debt. The other option is complete failure with a loss of 270 jobs and, more importantly, the loss of the only daily newspaper in the French West Indies.

I’ve written about what went wrong and how previous strategic decisions inevitably lead to this situation and how others should see this as writing on the wall for their similar organisations. My opinion is based on the elements before my eyes.

It has emerged that the expensive investment of a new printing press made to diversify into other print markets. The absurdity and short-sightedness of this astounds me. Whether or not the machine purchased was productive is irrelevant — it reportedly failed regularly and forced the Newspaper to reduce the number of printed pages per run — as the hard reality of printing is that it is a dying practice.

The European Union, the French Government and many other authorities have mandated that printing non-essential documents be phased out immediately. So what would they print? Birthday Cards?

RCI's article (French), unsurprisingly given that it too is an old-media company, was off by a long way with its suggestions to save FA. It suggested entering the already saturated shop catalogue market where the only result can be a zero-sum game where everyone loses. If they enter the market to gain clients, they'll need to reduce prices; the competition responds with the same cuts under pressure as the customer's cost expectations are adjusted downwards, which in turn leads to lower prices and the ultimate failure of printing companies. Whoever holds their breath longest wins, but nothing is left in the market to monetise meaningfully at the end of the day.

RCI went on to suggest that the new market might generate funds but then in the next paragraph admitted that it is costly and challenging to deliver the printed articles to Guadeloupe and presumably Guyane (they didn't mention). At no point is anyone acknowledging the fact that the entire business model has to be re-thought out, starting from the position of the end-users. Start with the fundamental question:

What is the Job to be Done? 

Until they understand this fundamental question and design a value proposition that directly responds to it, then designs a business model that supports the value proposition, they are going to have a very rough ride, leading to inevitable failure.

As I said before, I believe the business is ultimately going to get bought; although for me, it is nothing more than re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Climate Change and Digital Transformation

I'm currently writing while a tropical wave develops in the ITCZ, with a trajectory passing over the Windward Islands according to the NHC. Digital Transformation, it seems, is both a blessing and a burden on the climate. According to the World Economic Forum:

.. a number of challenges will need to be addressed if the full potential of digital transformation is to be realized; some relating to the environmental impact of digital technology itself. For example, e-waste is growing, resulting in lost potential value from reusing or recycling devices, ever-growing mountains of landfill and increasing volumes of toxic chemicals being released into the environment. According to a United Nations study, 40 million metric tons of e-waste was discarded in 2014, of which 7 million metric tons alone were from the United States and 6 million from China.

Data centers also contribute significantly to emissions due to their high power consumption and often inefficient cooling systems. Data centers currently consume 1.5 to 2% of global electricity, a rate that is growing at 12% a year. Consumption is projected to increase to 140 billion kilowatt-hours annually by 2020. That would be equivalent to the annual output of 50 power plants and create carbon emissions of nearly 150 million metric tons of carbon annually.

The largest culprit of all is the cryptocurrency industry. However, let's look at the positive side for a moment to have some balance.

Digital Transformation can substantially help in the event of a climate disaster like the one we've seen in the Bahamas. At every stage, before, during and after, digital tools can help prepare, deal with and recover quicker, better and with more accuracy.

Preparation

Hurricanes are unique risks, in the sense that they are somewhat predictable given that we can discern their formation early and that new prediction models are more accurate thanks to computational advances like ML and a better understanding of the climate environment surrounding the storms; there are more sensors, better satellite imagery and many more advances.

For those of us in hurricane-prone regions, preparation often starts when the local authorities announce the coming of a storm, but much more is possible with digitisation. How many of you, for example, have a complete digital record of all essential documents, like your most-treasured photos, your insurance documents, your identity documents, to name a few? Do you store them out of the region in a safe — from natural disasters — and secure — sufficiently protected by 2FA and encryption — environment? I know I could do better!

What about personal belongings? Have you extensively audited your hi-fi, television, kitchen appliances, computers, phones, paintings, the list is endless? If the worst doesn't happen, how can you justify to your insurance company the real value? Currently, insurance companies tend to allocate an envelope in the event of a disaster, but as more and more issues are going to arise as a result of climate change, insurers are going to become ever more strict in the allocation of indemnities.

An opportunity exists for new business models, whereby insurers take in to account the accurate inventory list to adjust premiums and payouts accordingly. In the US, health insurance companies are already making Apple Watch and other activity tracking devices available to their customers with the promise of reducing their premiums. In Europe and further afield, devices in cars track driving behaviour with benefits not only to the driver in terms of cost reduction for insurance but for all drivers on the road with reduced accident potential. As someone who suffered a significant head-on collision and is lucky to be here, I would like to see that in more extensive use.

There are other natural risks that we cannot predict with much accuracy currently, earthquakes, tornadoes, flash floods as examples. A digitalised inventory tool using your smartphone's camera, machine learning and access to an extensive product database like Amazon's would simplify and speed up the process. Imagine pointing your phone at an article, pressing the shutter, the image treated by AI to add its make and model to your "In case of disaster" list that you share with your insurer. Incidentally, I'm not advocating the actual use of Amazon's database!

When disaster strikes

Better documentation and data collection during a disaster is another area where digitisation could help our collective understanding of what is happening. I'd read about a background app that uses the accelerometers in smartphones to measure the shaking earth and send that data to scientists studying tectonic and volcanic activities. I've no idea if it became a reality, but you get the picture.

Other digital sensors deployed at small cost would provide highly localised data to further our understanding of these phenomena. I am seriously toying with the idea of setting up a weather station in my garden and sharing that data with weather experts.

Recovery

Like for the inventory process before-disaster, the same application could be used to file claims with images showing the before and after the situation with Geo-tagging confirming the claims' sincerity. I say this as fraud is a common occurrence after disaster strikes leading to a lengthening of claims treatment for all victims, not just those attempting to gain something from the situation. Specialist DR offers like those from KPMG have embraced Digital Transformation to streamline claims through the use of analytics and automation.

The use of AI to cross-asses claims for inconsistencies with a regions' or cities damage claims is currently common practice. KPMG can even deploy drones to compare the before and after images coming up with estimates (that go through further validation) of the damage and the potential value of the insurance bill. These are, highly specialised applications, but they give you a taste of what is to come further down the line when the democratisation of the technology results.

Digital is additionally helping with relief efforts after disasters; we've seen digital mapping used to identify those in need in Haiti after the earthquake, online donation systems (beware of frauds) for victims of hurricanes and sites like stormCARIB digitally democratising meteorological information on impending storms.

One last word, I place no judgement on the information I've presented here, whether I think it is good, bad, justified or not, that's not the purpose of this article. I'll leave you to make up your minds. For now, let's hope this hurricane season passes without more trouble, we've had more than enough with Dorian.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

Don’t bet against the Smartphone

You may have noticed that a couple of things have changed since I started this newsletter in early February. I’m very happy with the way it is progressing. I have kept my promise to provide some news, opinion and help on the subject of digitalisation. 

Firstly, I’ve increased the cadence and I am now writing around two times a week rather than once, with a slightly changed format. I’ve removed the Reading List as it didn’t really bring any value-add to the content, and the newsletter is slightly shorter, with more words per week.

Additionally, I’d inexplicably set myself a publishing deadline for each Friday morning at 10am based on a hunch. I’ve decided to change this and publish as soon as I’m finished, and the statistics show that the schedule change has had no effect on reader percentages.

I’ll continue to work on the format but one guiding principle is to provide thorough, interesting and informative articles on this ever-changing digital world we live in. Thanks for reading.

On to the update.

Last week's Apple event provided much to discuss on the topic of digitalisation in the world. This week I look at Photography, and the impact of digitisation and disruption are having on that industry. Read on.

Photography, one of the original industries transformed digitally

Ever since the Arab physicist Ibn al-Haytham invented the first known pinhole camera sometime around the year 1000, Photography has gone through numerous transitions and transformations.

The act of accurately transferring light on to photo-sensitive film is an incredibly difficult task, with much behind the scenes technology responsible for the result and has been disrupted and transformed over generations. Today's cameras and camera manufacturers have all but finished their transitions to digital mediums, a process that got kick-started when Kodak developed the first digital camera in 1975. Kodak was an American company incorporated 131 years ago and is no longer in business, only the brand lives on.

Kodak serves as a lesson in disruption theory, having reacted reluctantly to further develop and push digital sales through fear of eating into very profitable photographic film and paper sales. Regardless, we can all thank Kodak for their vision to digitise a manual and ofttimes, frustrating experience creating a multi-billion dollar industry for the incumbents and new entrants alike.

As an interesting side note, Apple unveiled its latest iteration of the iPhone, the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro, with a functionality called QuickTake. QuickTake allows the user to long press on the shutter button to quickly record video in lieu of starting the continuous or burst shooting mode as was previously the case. QuickTake was also a digital camera sold and branded by Apple, but Kodak produced.

Kodak, as recently as 2001, resisted the digitisation of camera technology that it had invented and that decision is almost certainly a factor in the companies demise. The brand lives on and is still synonymous with excellent tools in the analogue photographic world.

The second wave of Digital Transformation in Photography

I've previously written about Digital Transformation as a journey, and it not being a project, Photography illustrates this perfectly. Its origins rooted firmly in analogue, the industry was abruptly disrupted digitally, with all the consequences that that entailed following — closures of old business, openings of new digital ones. But that transformation has not ended, and further disruptions and transitions are in progress, with a third wave already started. Before we get to the third wave, let’s take a quick look at the second wave, mirrorless camera technology.

The rapid development of mirrorless cameras is powering a second wave of disruption. Two branches dominated digital Photography up to this point; DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) cameras and traditional Point and Shoot cameras that naturally got digitised as sensor technology were improved.

DSLRs gradually replaced SLR cameras and became the choice for professional and semi-professional users alike. So popular they became, that companies like Canon and Nikon, developed newer models of DSLRs that targeted enthusiasts initially, then general consumers. The last 5 years or so have seen the domination by first-time users purchasing and learning how to use DSLRs, something that was unthinkable less than 20 years ago due to the skill required but also the costs and the reality of failure rates. Taking 1000 photos and deleting 999 to keep that one good shot, costs no more than taking one good shot alone.

Point and Shoot cameras transitioned quickly as well. They offer better and better image quality as the technology evolved and today's Point and Shoot's can range from professional-grade cameras like the X100F from Fujifilm, to more basic models offered by Sony, Canon and other popular brands at accessible prices for anyone interested in photography.

Mirrorless cameras transform the DLSR experience by offering the same professional output, in a smaller and lighter package. Aside from dimensions and weight, Mirrorless cameras are using digital technologies to aid every photographer to take better photos. For example, in-body stabilisation moves the stabilisation motors from the lens, making them lighter, to the camera, where the optical properties mean they are smaller and lighter in the body of the camera than in the lens and are available to any lens now. A gyroscope, some software and two or more piezo motors provide pin-sharp images at long zoom ranges that only experienced professionals could achieve previously.

The Third Wave, Computational Photography

The next wave of Digital Transformation in the industry is the current revolution I alluded to above. The advances made by Smartphone manufacturers, notably Apple and Google are currently re-writing what is possible in Photography all while traditional manufacturers have gotten wrapped up in a race for more megapixels, wifi, more autofocus points and other non-essential specifications and have pursued the development of Computational Photography.

Computational Photography, not only resolves or attempts to resolve the shortcomings inherent in the compromised optics — ‘real’ lenses are big and heavy, sometimes over 1Kg — by using massively parallel processing and sophisticated algorithms to reproduce the same effects. The latest generation photos are indistinguishable from professional photography to the general public.

Apple, Google and others are more concerned with the job to be done, which is to enable anyone to take what are essentially professional-grade photos with the least of effort, using the best camera they with them at all times (1), the Smartphone.

I joked to a friend that Apple announced an advanced camera that just happens to have a phone integrated in it. I was only half-joking because, in reality, smartphones cannot do a phone better than is already the case; they can only develop and improve upon other markets, like Photography, film amongst others.

The Smartphone starts with a powerful processor and an integrated application and operating system ecosystem, that provides lightning-quick autofocus, bokeh, night lighting and, I imagine, plenty more functions in the coming years, all whilst keeping the size of the device small with miniaturised optical elements designed for thin enclosures. Samsung is currently experimenting using the length of the case to provide real focal depth, a few centimetres instead of a few millimetres.

These functionalities are mostly absent from the incumbent camera-first camera manufacturers' devices because they start from the traditional optics point of view. The business then exhibits classic Disruption Theory tendencies that incentivise management to move prices and specifications upscale, in the quest to preserve their margins.

Camera manufacturers are going to need either a miracle or to radically step up their game in digital innovation or risk disruption that puts them out of business. Some might say it is already too late, and I wouldn’t disagree with this. When looking at the data produced by Flickr, one of the world’s most popular photography sharing platforms for both amateurs and professionals alike, over half of the photographers are using an iPhone. 50% of all photos uploaded are from smartphones (see first chart for reference).

To be clear, I’m not saying that DSLRs or Mirrorless Cameras are going to go away completely, I don’t believe that for a moment, but their use will be restricted to a needs base only, that is professional photography by professionals and other specialised applications, for example sports photography, astro photography.

As you have noted, Digital Transformation is not a one-off project, it is an ongoing journey and an ongoing feedback and adjustment loop you need to work on regularly.

Have a great day.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If you were forwarded this email, I'd love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

Footnotes:

(1) A quote attributed to Chase Jarvis, a well-respected professional photographer.

Part 10 - Customers 2.0, continued

A busy week for me this week. I have some thoughts about the Apple Keynote and particularly about Digital Transformation and Photography. I’m hoping to write it up soon.

On to the issue:

Following on from part 9, I attempt to look at how you can harness the information learned in that article and how you can start to address some of the questions raised. This is still a piece of Stage 3 of the five stage Digital Transformation Methodology, Using the 5 Levers of Digital Transformation and more specifically Customers.

Market Research

At its most basic level, it is crucial to conduct a detailed market research analysis. This report should include some of the findings revealed in the early stages of this methodology. The Audit phase is used to identify your strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities extracted from the JTBD (Jobs To Be Done) model. We need to look through the lens of the customer and how the customer behaves in the market for it to have any meaning. Don’t spend too much time and money on doing this, as it is only a simple starting point to enable the starting process once up and running.

Photo by Ousa Chea on Unsplash

To help, a couple of simple tools exist we can leverage to conduct that research, let’s look at a couple of examples.

Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSat)

A customer satisfaction survey is a way to identify if your products and services meet or surpass your customer’s expectations. The reason to conduct a CSat is to gauge purchase intentions and estimate customer loyalty. This Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is often used in developed businesses as part of an overall scorecard of the health of the business. Small businesses tend to focus on sales figures, profits and cash-flow — which are all essential to operations — but other less-definitive KPIs are also necessary for businesses to assess their potential growth.

Being that the CSat is a reasonable indicator of intention to purchase and loyalty, it follows that good Csat scores indicate potential future revenue. CSat surveys may be conducted in several ways, both simply and cheaply. There is a whole discipline centred around proper CSat construction and administration, something I have neither the time nor the expertise to go into detail here. I will, however, touch on a few tools and resources further down.

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score, or NPS, is used either in conjunction with or as an alternative to a classic CSat survey. Today, more than two-thirds of the Fortune 1000 companies have adopted NPS as their primary tool to measure satisfaction for its simplicity and its non-invasive administration.

Some of the criticism of CSat surveys is the amount of friction created for the user; often, the respondent has to sit through multiple pages of questions and use up many minutes of valuable time. I’ve sat through some of Microsoft’s more detailed surveys and spent over 20 minutes to answer the full survey. Not everyone you ask is willing to do that. NPS, however, can be as simple as a one-question survey.

The primary aim of NPS, as the name suggests, is to assess the likelihood that your customers recommend (promote) your products and services to their entourage. It’s an indicator of the power of your word of mouth network if you will. Being that that type of network is still in use and very important to Caribbeans, in my opinion, the NPS is the most useful of the options to judge your business.

An NPS score can range from +100 to -100, the former indicating that 100% of your customers are highly likely to promote you to their peers. Later, conversely, 100% will not in any way promote you. The NPS is calculated using basic statistics, and a positive score (i.e. > 0) is considered a good score. Anything north of 50-70 is considered excellent to exceptional and is rare. If you do your own NPS and get 3, for example, that’s good and shows you’re on the right track!

You’ve all taken part in NPS surveys and possibly haven’t realised it. If you have a survey question graded from 0 to 10, where 9 and 10 are the best possible feedback options for the company surveying you, then it is no doubt an NPS exercise. Answering 9 or 10, tells the business that you are Promoter. Interestingly, you are noted as a Detractor if you answer between 0 and 6, leaving 7 and 8 Neutral, or Passive.

I have a simple Excel sheet that automatically calculates your NPS based on the responses to your surveys if you’d like a copy reply to this email stating as such.

Tools and resources to build out surveys

As promised, here are a couple of tools and resources to help you build and administer your studies:

Qualtrics is one of the leaders in this field. Qualtrics was founded in 2002 and offers subscriptions to measure customer satisfaction, amongst other KPIs (Customer Experience, Employee Experience, Product Experience, Brand Experience and Online Samples) on an ongoing basis. Qualtrics was a profitable start-up and had started a systematic growth plan, recently purchasing Delighted in 2018. However, at the end of 2018, SAP purchased Qualtrics and operates the company as a subsidiary. It is widely used in both the business and academic worlds, and you find its statistical analysis cited in many journals.

For a more DIY solution, SurveyMonkey is an excellent choice. Not only do they have lots of ready-to-use templates available, but their documentation and explanations of the tools are excellent. For a novice, this is one of the best places to start. It was founded in 1999 and boasts over 25 million users currently.

For an even more basic solution, users of either Office365 or Google Apps can employ the built-in tools — Microsoft Formsand Google Forms- that let you build out forms for your customers to answer questions. They are great starting points for a small project or to prototype a more significant study in the future.

Lastly, don’t forget this aspect when evaluating new software, you wish to integrate into your operations in the future. Many of today’s SaaS applications include the ability to run and analyse simple NPS studies directly from the application. These are generally customer-facing or customer-concerned tools like CRM and Help Desk applications, but many more are seeing the value in understanding the relationship customers have with you and your business.

I hope this helps you in your own Digital Transformation process. If you have any questions or want to discuss your projects, please let me know, I’d be only too happy to see how I can help out, email me at info@dgtlfutures.com.

If you haven’t read the earlier articles in the series, I encourage you to do so to get a better overall picture of the methodology. I’ve included an index here for your convenience:

Part 1 - Auditing your current state

Part 2 - The Value Chain

Part 3 - Porter’s Five Forces

Part 4 - Data, and its value

Part 5 - Turning data into business value

Part 6 - The 5 step Digital Transformation methodology

Part 7 - Segmentation and targeting

Part 8 - The Value Proposition

Part 9 - Customers 2.0

Admittedly, Part 6 should have been Part 1 in hindsight!

Reading List

 Can AI make shopping stress-free? - news.microsoft.com

This article hints at one of the problems of this new digital paradigm, choice. I talked about it in Customers 2.0, Networked, Connected and Interactive. What Microsoft is alluding to, is a strategy to aid your customers with that abundant choice.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

Why Dropbox, Teams and Slack are all coming to the same conclusion

I’ve been wanting to write about the changing work tools and collaborative landscape for a while now. My original notes were from over two years ago, but recent events prompted me to put my thoughts down. I’d love your take on this, discuss on the Slack, we accept English and French 😀

On to the update.

Computer Systems, Operating Systems and the Digitisation of Tasks

Recently Dropbox revealed the technologies and products that would further spur growth using its platform. Dropbox is trying to create a higher-level operating system predicated on users that need to get things done, rather than to “use a computer”

If we look at computer usage and how it has evolved, we see a clear and straight path traced from the beginnings of computing — where mainframes and shared access were de rigour — in which users had one or two specific tasks in mind and set out to accomplish them. Often these were scientifically or mathematically based problems that had clear goals and outcomes; solve this incredibly complex algorithm, calculate this difficult sum, resolve for X the average…, etc.

Computer usage evolved largely because the computers themselves evolved, being driven by the demands of the users that wanted to do more and more complex things, faster and faster. Technological advances aided this and in the early 1960s Moore’s Law was born. A law that has only started to become less and less relevant.

Soon, people started using computers to do what would have been heretical things back in those early times; playing games, writing letters, listing items all became not just easily accomplishable tasks, but the very reason people would purchase computers.

Further developments enabled software houses like Microsoft to provide better tools to allow the computer to get out of the way and for the user to concentrate more on the tasks for completion. The modern operating system was born. Windows, Mac OS (which transformed to OS X then MacOS, note the distinction) all provided users with a simple, safe and often fun environment to work and play.

Placed on top of these systems were the applications that enabled specialised job functions to be digitalised. Photoshop digitalised manual and often frustrating photo development, Quark Express upended magazine and newspaper layout by treating objects digitally and writing itself became a digital process only for most people.

Then something changed, something that so fundamentally shifted the paradigm of computer systems that it not only upended the way we used computers, but has totally changed their design and build. It is all attributable to what we now term “The Cloud”.

Cloud Computing

Although a recent phenomenon as far as the general public is concerned, Cloud Computing owes its origins to the very first implementations of interconnected networks, the ARPANET. ARPANET was a US Government-funded network design that had its initial design goals set to provide a failsafe communications network in the event of attack or dysfunction. ARPANET solved the problem by routing and re-routing the communications around different routes, then reassembling the pieces to make a coherent transmission. Even back then, in 1977, the cloud symbol was depicted to simplify the structural understanding of the (very complex) design.

In a working paper at Compaq (subsequently purchased by Hewlett Packard), the phrase “Cloud Computing” appeared, however, it was subsequently popularised by Amazon when they marketed their nascent cloud computing product ECC (Elastic Compute Cloud).

Once given mass appeal and implemented in business, suddenly the enterprise, pro and consumer markets were ripe for the introduction of applications that targeted specific needs, or solved particular jobs to be done.

Today, a large majority of applications in use at home and in business, are either 100% cloud or have cloud elements attached. The Cloud has allowed developers and designers freedom to try new things and the flexibility to modify quickly if something doesn’t fit. Completely new applications use cases have been developed as a direct result of the cloud computing revolution and signs indicate that it is not likely to stop anytime soon.

The changing landscape enabled because of the cloud

One spin-off from this revolution is the profound effect it is having on the incumbents and how those specific legacy systems are getting disrupted out of business.

With the release of Windows 95, Microsoft expertly leveraged it and its cash cow sibling, the Office applications bundle, to gain a hold on the entire computing operating systems business. If it didn’t work with Windows it was essentially irrelevant1.

Built for individual computing, Windows and the computers it was mostly paired with, were ill-suited to the shift towards cloud computing taking place over the last 5 to 10 years. And this is where today’s once-relegated-to application-status programs show the way forward for computing in the hyper-connected universe in which we find ourselves.

Applications that touch virtually every aspect of modern lives —cab calling, pizza delivery, doctor reservations, even toothbrush applications that analyse brushing style and offer tips for better dental health— are being built because of three main factors; the 24hours online nature of the tools, the abstraction of the ties to a specific operating system and the form-factor that creates and encourages ultra-portability.

Modern computing platforms are all connected to the Internet by default. Your phone, your tablet and the new generation of laptop PCs all have cellular radios in them, with access-anywhere, anytime, Internet.

Legacy operating systems are becoming less and less relevant. Ask yourself, do you talk about Uber as an application on the iPhoneOS or, most likely, as a service that you access from your phone?

Speaking of phones, this the third factor, exists because of miniaturisation techniques developed by companies like Apple and Samsung, that have provided always-on super-computing power in the palm of your hand.

Which gets us to the subject of the new Cloud OSes on the horizon and how, despite different starting points, the paths are converging towards the same thing for corporate and con

The Cloud OS

I’ve been particularly interested in the developments of three companies’ products and how they change the nature of computing moving it from a legacy individual task-based needs response, to a more collaborative jobs-to-be-done enabler. Dropbox, Microsoft Teams and Slack, all show enormous potential to change the way we use computing systems, …if it hasn’t happened already.

Dropbox started life out as a small add-on that allowed the transfer, storage and synchronisation of files on your local computer to their cloud infrastructure. With obvious benefits such as availability, backup and omni-availability, the reasons not to use it were difficult to find. Other developments enabled the inclusion of a more granular security model that enabled the selective sharing of files and documents between consenting participants. Dropbox stayed like this for some time and became a well respected and trusted partner for handling your data.

Recent announcements by Dropbox have shown their understanding of this coming change and their willingness to work with other providers to develop and enhance their offering, developing it to something more akin to a workplace operating system than a data synchronisation utility. Dropbox has partnered with Microsoft, Google and others addressing the need for people to get things done and not become preoccupied by the underlying systems that enable it. Directly from their software, team collaborative features are being rolled out. You can make a Zoom call, message directly through Slack and many more.

Microsoft Teams is coming to the same conclusion with their Teams platform. Built on the legacy base of Sharepoint, Teams is designed to be a more collaborative start and endpoint of doing a task rather than a step in a complex workflow. Sharepoint was never able to get past this problem. Microsoft has finally developed a platform that is able to integrate outside tools in a way that looks and works like native extensions and be easy and enjoyable to use. There are, additionally, plenty of app integrations with tools that are sometimes in direct competition to Microsoft’s own productivity tools being promoted. How times have changed!

Just looking at Project Management (PM) software, Microsoft has its own well-respected Microsoft Project tool, Teams features a slim PM tool called Planner that fits the bill for probably something like 90+% of general PM. Not only that, but they actively promote a rival, Trello.

Slack is on a similar path, with te aforementioned integrations with Dropbox, but also Microsoft’s own collaborative suite Office 365. I’ll not labour the point, but you can see where this all leading, the fight for the start point in any working environment.

The original controller of the computing experience was the manufacturer (IBM, DEC, etc.), disrupted by the operating system developer (Microsoft, Apple) and this is now itself being disrupted by the intrinsically agnostic application developer. The difference today is that the operating systems developers are not letting disruption happen to them without their own self-disruption. That fact alone (that Microsoft is willing to collaborate on such an important tool for Microsoft) should tell you that they understand that time is up for Windows. Apple itself, is also in the midst of its own transition and is pivoting more of its revenue to services, which explains the departure of Jony Ive and also last weeks’ web beta for its Apple Music service.

I want to write more about the reason why I think Jony Ive is leaving Apple at the end of this year, but I’ll be focusing on today’s event from Cupertino and seeing how that may affect my thoughts.

Collaborative tools like these mentioned are the future of modern computing, acting as the entrance, the glue and the final resting place of work, which itself is becoming ever more collaborative in nature.

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

(1) I know this is not strictly true as Apple and a few others had market share in their proprietary systems optimised for specialised computing and not general computing like Windows allowed.

Where’s the rest of the Caribbean? Follow-Up to France-Antilles

We’re heading into peak hurricane season as this graph from the NOAA shows, notice the sting in the tail in October. Do your preparations and check on them weekly!

On to the update.

World Blockchain Forum, London 2019

The World Blockchain Forum kicked off in London this past Sunday and runs for 3 days. The Forum is a roaming event that takes place all over the world and multiples times a year. It is considered in the top 20 of the world’s finance conferences and boasts over 1500+ CEOs, Executives, Investors and Officials.

Our events in Miami, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Dubai, Amsterdam and New York have been attended by over 20,000 executives, investors, entrepreneurs and tech visionaries from around the world.

As you know, I’m not too hot on the cryptocurrency bandwagon for multiple reasons, notwithstanding fraud, but Blockchain is a technology with great potential to help digitise operations and streamline processes to make users’ lives better. 

I wrote about the subject in Blockchain ≠ Cryptocurrency, largely because I wanted to dispel the myth that Bitcoin etc., is blockchain. And to try to prevent the incorrect and interchangeable use of those terms. They are not the same thing. Technically speaking, one relies entirely on the other to build out its services.

I’m an on-the-record sceptic of Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, and so far, nothing I’ve seen has led me to believe differently. They are almost all, a waste of money. They are all, without exception, a huge waste of energy in a time when economising energy should be a priority not just for governments but individuals alike, and at the very worst end of the scale, some are downright fraudulent. That being said, the underlying technology of these currencies is actually quite interesting and has place for use in Digital Transformation, hence why I’d like to talk about it in this week’s issue. That technology is, of course, blockchain, or as it was originally known as, block chain.

In researching this article, I found a few resources from last year’s conference and I’m currently parsing through the YouTube playlist that has been released. I was particularly interested in the interview by the Hon. Wayne Caines, Minister of National Security, Government of Bermuda. Although the interview could have been a bit more structured and technically detailed, there were a few interesting points that were discussed that got me thinking about the rest of the Caribbean. Where the hell was the rest of the Caribbean?

Bermuda has set itself several goals and legislation has been amended to increase their chances of reaching them; the Digital Asset Business Act, the ICO (Initial Coin Offering) Bill and its Virtual Currency Business Act.

Bermuda’s strategy is to differentiate itself in a crowded market by aligning as many factors as possible to enable the digital transformation of it island. Like the Caribbean, it’s isolated, it has resource issues and it has difficulties finding meaningful investments for development. Its banking system was hitherto old-school, but the young PM, who intrinsically understands digital opportunities, is making great progress. I suggest you watch both the interview and the Hon. Caines’ presentation.

I’d like to see other territories do some of this. A concerted effort by CARICOM members —as a start— to distribute competencies, the shared benefits to all could be substantial. If we’re all trying to do the same thing, inevitably it leads to a zero-sum game, where all participants lose.

$15 Million MOU signed with Binance in 2018

The memorandum of understanding, worth $15 Million, was signed with Binance Group, with the aim of establishing funding for Fintech and blockchain-based companies that are targeting the educational field. In return, Binance is creating 40 new jobs with two-thirds allocated to Bermudians.

Binance is a Cryptocurrency exchange headquartered in Japan — it started out in China but has since relocated due to a Chinese cryptocurrency ban — and is currently on of the largest exchanges operating today.

Bermuda is seriously transforming its legislation and structuring the development of digital services and it is a good sign that some countries are taking serious steps to implement changes. It’s not going to be easy and, I for one, would argue that too heavy a reliance in cryptocurrencies is probably a bad thing, but the systems put in place can be used for other digital services that will increasingly be based on Blockchain. Bermuda has built out a number of online civic services, with more coming online all the time, however, like any Digital Transformation, it is a journey and not a project!

France-Antilles follow-up

As of today, 5 September 2019, eight (8) parties have registered their interest in taking over the failing media organisation that is responsible for the local newspapers of Guadeloupe, Guyane and Martinique, amongst other ventures (also in difficulty) according to la 1ere Martinique.

The candidates

Hildergarde SAS

A Paris-based company, that in 2002, created a network of media companies present in film, television, magazine production, literature and press. My research suggests that they are mostly concerned with media-oriented publications, so what experience they have in daily newspapers is hard to understand.

Caribbean Active Broadcast

A business based in Martinique, specialised in Radio. Unclear, again, its experience in newspaper production and distribution. An organisation possibly looking to diversification due to declining revenues in advertising (my assumption).

Alizés TV

A Guadeloupéen television channel, created by an ex-employee of the national television chain France Télévisions. I keep labouring the point, but again, newspaper experience? It’s fundamentally important, because newspaper production and distribution are not the same as television. Once created, a show has virtually zero marginal costs associated with distribution and media can, and is, often re-used. Yesterday’s newspaper is todays fish and chips!

Trace Global

Contemporary and urban music video show and reality television programs. A great fit for a daily newspaper? Their revenue is largely made up of subscriptions over cable television (the pressure is on, thanks to Netflix, etc.), advertising and selling own-label content (increasingly more expensive to make).

Medias du Sud

Owner of the currently active ATV Martinique, and the failed expansions into Guadelopue and Guyane in 2018, the company is a television network based in the south of France. You know what I’m going to say next…

Prim SAS

Prim is a printing company based in Guadelopue. It’s unclear to me what they are even doing in this race, unless they see an opportunity to purchase a brand-new printing press on the cheap as part of expansion plans for Martinique. Those operations costs are a sting in the tail though! Not to mention that physical printing with environmentally damaging materials is a business likely to legislated out of business in the coming years.

Hubert Pedurand

This is the interesting one from a business point of view. The proposal is based on an SCOP model. Société Coopérative et Participative (SCOP), essentially an LLC where the majority shareholders are the employees themselves. In a heavily cost bearing business that is the production of atoms and the physical distribution of said, the SCOP model has its limitations, in that external investments are limited to 49% of the capital. That doesn’t preclude in-kind or other investments, but it does diminish the attractiveness for potential investors.

The prognosis

For the moment, no business plans have been made public and I would love to see what each pretender is proposing. I’ll just have to wait and see, but I’m keeping a close watch on proceedings.

We see a common theme emerging, radio and television media companies postulating, in probable diversification strategies. These are sustaining evolutions and they don’t feel like they are understanding the fundamental reasons why FA failed. Of course, I may be wrong, and hat-eating will ensue, but I doubt it.

Perhaps intentions are to keep the current staff and management as, quite rightly, they immediately bring onboard many years of experience in the industry. But every few years FA keeps failing, what could be wrong?

I believe that a failure to recognise the digital reality will end in failure and I set out my arguments in The slow demise of France-Antilles and Newspapers in the Caribbean.

In the English-speaking Caribbean you may be wondering what this has to do with you. This scenario is playing out across the world, I can’t see in any way how the Caribbean will be an exception!

The Future is Digital Newsletter is intended for anyone interesting in learning about Digital Transformation and how it affects their business. I strongly encourage you to forward it to people you feel may be interested. If this email was forwarded to you, I’d love to see you onboard. You can sign up here:

Sign up now

Visit the website to read all my articles and continue the discussion in the Slack group.

Thanks for being a supporter, have a great day.