By Joe Flynn, Senior Manager, Technical Architecture at Insight
A huge part of technology, especially how it affects business, is an exercise in fear.
Remember when IT pros were reluctant to move basic Office 365 to the cloud? Or when it felt absurd to think about workers answering emails on airplanes? Augmented reality in the workplace? Yeah, right.
Metaphorically, in that big ocean of a technological change, there’s an appeal for businesses to ride the waves. But doing so is hard, and each wave seems to be more daunting than the last.
Modern IT management is a big wave
The IT industry has been moving toward a more unified approach to IT management for some time now. Modern IT management is about consolidating tools that embrace cloud centricity and make life easier for IT — whether that’s with provisioning, patch management, pushing out applications and anything in between.
The move to the cloud is on. This infographic breaks down 21 stats on cloud adoption — and gives 7 best practices for migrating.
Many of the clients I work with use a big jumble of toolsets. They may image a machine and manage it with a toolset meant only for that device. For another device, they use another toolset. One tool for anti-virus. Another for encryption. It’s a very fragmented environment.
When fragmentation is all you know and nothing breaks down completely — and you use numerous resources to maintain that environment — the risk of adopting something new might feel scary.
Unfortunately, fear isn’t sustainable in the IT industry (if you’re not willing to face it head-on).
Eye openers
Because technology forces change, and companies are becoming tech companies at heart, we’re all being nudged down a different path.
An eye-opening tech report: The 2018 Insight Intelligent Technology Index surveyed IT decision-makers to understand the impact of tech on business. See the findings.
I’ve found that companies addressing their fear of change experience a catharsis of sorts. Based on conversations I’ve had with clients, they’re coming to these realizations:
1. The efficiency gains are remarkable. I once had a client who told me it took five hours to image one machine. Don’t get me wrong, the process was clearly defined. The machine would go to one group that would throw the image on, another group to set it up for users and then a third group to help users transfer all of their data. But with the evolution of technology to a cloud provisioning model, it just doesn’t make sense to spend that much time and resources on such an inefficient process.
2. Fragmentation is costly. This notion goes back to management toolsets. Although the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” our clients are finding it’s a short-sighted view. Outside of licensing costs, the operational costs associated with supporting an increasing number of devices, dealing with maintenance windows and everything under the sun are really starting to weigh down financially on the business.
The 6 pillars of modern IT: Insight Chief Information Officer Mike Guggemos breaks down what IT pros need to master to drive meaningful change in this podcast.
3. It’s a journey, not a leap. Many clients aren’t fully ready to release what they have on-premises to the cloud. That’s okay. We know there are limitations with legacy apps and deployment, and some things will simply have to stay on-premises — for now. As tech inevitably evolves, more companies will make the shift to the cloud. An encouraging way to think about it is that modern IT management is still in its infancy — businesses may be behind that curve, but we’re all evolving here.
4. We’re all moving in the same direction.
Take it from Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of Microsoft, who Tweeted some reassuring social proof stats on Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS):
As of July 7, 2018, EMS has 85,000 customers (a 13,000 increase in 90 days alone) and 82 million active licenses in the EMS stack (up 55% in 90 days). This growth is huge, but mostly, it’s reassuring that businesses are moving toward cloud-based management.
I believe fear can lead to all kinds of positive change. Fear makes people hesitant, but think of it this way: The more hesitant an organization is to ride the big wave of change, the more time it has to think things through, build a strategy and have some great epiphanies along the way.
For additional content around the Top 8 IT Challenges, go here.
About Joe Flynn Senior Manager, Technical Architecture at Insight With more than 20 years of industry experience, Joe focuses on the Microsoft stack of technologies to help clients keep up with the workplace technology curve. His expertise revolves around the latest cloud tools that drive collaboration, communication and security.
Whether you’re a one-person company selling unique products online or a 5,000+ employee SaaS company, every business is different. What all businesses have in common is the need to run as efficiently and productively as possible so that they can grow and meet business goals. One of the most important aspects to consider when it comes to efficiency is how software is helping your businesses to reach those goals.
While it’s important to implement solutions to manage your sales, marketing, finances, support, and so on, it’s also important to consider how those apps will work with one another to make business processes more efficient. You might have a great CRM and awesome marketing tools, but if they aren’t easily integrated, you’ll end up wasting valuable time just transferring information from one app to the other. Or maybe you have a robust finance suite, but you’re stuck exporting and re-importing invoices from your accounting software to your CRM.
Instead of wasting your time on these low-value activities, make your life easier and choose business software that’s built to work together. By using integrated applications, you can save time and automate processes for a more efficient work environment.
One platform to help you run your entire business online, with contextual integrations to empower your business is ZoHo. Whatever business process you have to handle — accounting, sales management, expenses, social media and project management, and beyond — Zoho One comes can help you manage it. Everything from sales and marketing, to support and collaboration, to finances and beyond is in one integrated platform, streamlining your business and increasing your effectiveness.
The deep contextual integrations throughout the platform help you eliminate busy work and automate your processes so you aren’t wasting time switching between apps, copying and pasting data to get the insight you need.
How would you use extra time saved?
Would you focus on big-picture projects? Could you accomplish business goals faster? With enhanced productivity how many other projects could you launch? The possibilities are endless.
How would centralized information transform your business?
Centralized and integrated client information, across all your business software, means you can sell and support your users better and faster and you can view data across your whole organization, showing you where processes are working well, and where you can improve things.
The truth is, we know it’s not easy running a small business where you have to work on so many different things at once. ZoHo is a 20-year-old startup and they know what it’s like. That’s why they strive to help educate solopreneurs, startups, small, and medium business owners so that they can empower their organization with apps that make their lives easier, and eliminate unnecessary cost, rather than the other way around.
Zoho’s holding a free educational seminar going over business basics and best practices and how Zoho can help on March 7th in Phoenix and would love to have you join! They’ll discuss how you can increase productivity and show you how to efficiently run your entire business with one platform for everything. As a bonus, they’re providing free breakfast, lunch, and plenty of coffee to get you through a full day of learning.
The world’s most generous community for entrepreneurs
We’ve all heard it, read it and even say it. But what does “most generous” mean? More generous than who? How do you measure generosity? After all, what’s generous to one person isn’t necessarily generous to the next. Is generosity measured in dollars? In equity? In hours? Or is generosity found in conversations, encouragement, information and connections?
Or is generosity all of the above?
If that is the case, how is that generosity quantified? When measuring, what amount of generosity can be expected from solopreneurs or a startup with three employees and little to no profit, versus an enterprise level business with hundreds of employees?
If we are going to continue to build PHX into a diverse entrepreneurial hub, where innovation and ideas thrive — generosity is a key ingredient. We also know PHX entrepreneurs are incredibly generous already. But are we “the most” generous? How do you quantify “most?”
All of the members of the core planning team have experienced the generosity that connects us as individuals and businesses across the Valley. That generosity is one of the reasons we’ve spent the last six months volunteering to build PHX SUW 2019, to give back to a community we’ve been benefited from, believe in and want to help make it a little better.
Any person who attends SUW 2019 is a beneficiary of the hours and hours of planning, organizing, creative and strategic time donated to build this event, given by lots of people and organizations all doing a little bit. Sponsors have donated money or other resources. Mentors and speakers have donated knowledge and are investing in attendees.
You, as an attendee, are giving back by showing up, talking to other entrepreneurs as you build relationships and connections during the week, as well as lending your support to speakers as they present. All that generosity adds up to great big things, for individuals, companies, and PHX at large. It’s how we can Thrive Together.
We know we have something different here in PHX. Something that isn’t the same in other cities and in other ecosystems. We don’t need to establish ourselves as the next <insert another tech city> or call ourselves the “Silicon Desert.” We are PHX.
What is the difference? Generosity.
What does generosity look like? We think it looks a lot like PHX Startup week. But it also looks like conversations in coffee shops and introductions to people in your network, it’s meetups and conferences put on to benefit the community across the Valley. It looks like funding. It looks like encouragement.
But what does it feel like?
It feels like PHX.
If you’ve been here you know the feeling. But this brings us back to our original question — how do you measure a feeling? Our recommendation?
One percent at a time.
What if every company represented at SUW pledged to give 1% back to the PHX community?
Could 1% help PHX Thrive? Could 1% transform your company culture?
Tech leaders like Salesforce, Atlassian and Yelp, along with 8,500 companies in 100+ countries are showing 1% can make a big difference by pledging 1%.
Pledge 1% is a global movement, creating a new normal for companies to give. The simple, flexible and scalable model helps founders integrate giving back into their company cultures and values early by committing to give 1% of equity, time, product, and/or profit to any cause of their choosing.
Here in PHX, over 40 CEOs and founders have already committed to giving back 1% of equity, time, product and/or profit to a local cause of their choosing. You’ll be hearing more about Pledge 1% during SUW — including hearing from these local companies who have incorporated giving back into their business models, sharing how conscious giving changed their company cultures — for the good.
The best part about pledging 1%? It’s a measurable commitment to continuing to build a generous PHX. Founders, entrepreneurs of companies of all sizes can participate. You don’t have to be funded, have dozens or hundreds of employees, you don’t have to make millions… you just pledge to give back and help PHX thrive, 1% at a time.
It’s simple and easy to sign up. By joining, you will receive access to free tools, support, and a growing community of like-minded leaders who are committed to leveraging their companies to do good.
If you are a founder, CEO, or entrepreneur and are interested in learning how you can have a positive social impact through your business, take the pledge at p1.today.
Is giving back already part of your company culture? Great! Take the pledge and help us quantify the generosity that already exists in PHX.
Our goal is double the number of PHX companies who pledge 1% during the month of March, starting with SUW. Will you join us?
PHX Startup Week 2019 planning began with a very specific intention — build an event representative of the diversity of the PHX Entrepreneurship Ecosystem, inclusive of all people, industries, and stage of business.
This charge was given to every single one of the teams who came together to build the event, but as the programming team, we knew an event that claimed diversity and inclusion would fall flat if our speaker line-up didn’t reflect that goal.
As a programming team we are proud to say, mission accomplished!
We set out to have an inclusive event with speakers that are age diverse (both at heart as well as in age), ethnicity diverse, and gender diverse. Most notably, while the national average for speakers at conferences is a ratio of 2-to-1 male to female, PHX SUW 2019 has 46%, female-identifying speakers and panelists.
Our daily track has representation from tech startups as well as non-tech startups. We dove into functional areas of marketing, branding, design, development, operations, founder, growth, sales and legal. Did we succeed? Oh hell yes we did!
But it certainly wasn’t an accident.
So how do you start tackling a community event that’s focused on diversity?
We started by developing Core Principles to integrate throughout the event. Huge props to Abby Rudd and Tari Thomas for all their hard work fleshing out the Core Principles and clearly defining them for the programming team.
Core Principles:
Diversity
Transformational Leadership
Collaborative Problem-Solving
Grit — Failing Forward
Customer Obsession
Future is Now
Navigating Technological Change
Culture Embedded in Business
After identifying the functional areas we outlined industries for speakers:
Tech
Non-tech
Social Entrepreneurship
International
Over time, expectations from prior years of Startup Week, sponsor desires and commonality of speakers, we started grouping people into various “vertical” tracks.
While there is benefit from learning high-level concepts at a conference, the struggle for many entrepreneurs is finding the time to distill that information down into action items that they can take and move their business forward. I wanted to incorporate an idea I’d seen Nikki Nixon incorporate into the Flip My Funnel conference, to deliver actionable takeaways from every session. That central goal became a question to ask ourselves, “does each and every session of 2019 Phx Startup Week deliver actionable takeaways that entrepreneurs can take steps TODAY to move their business forward?”
We certainly hope so!
We were going to start small and “test” an idea to have workshop-style sessions this year and only have one workshop a day. Then the submissions came rolling in, and content around branding, fundraising, sales, gaining PR exposure, leadership, metrics and so on and soon we had two workshops scheduled for each day.
We planned to cut down on the total number of sessions each day, focusing on quality over quantity of speakers. Then, as the deadline for speaker applications came and went, it became apparent that we had too many quality speakers, passionate about sharing their experience with fellow entrepreneurs, we decided to add more sessions to the lineup to accommodate, and still had difficult choices to make.
We started with 14 sessions a day, 4 for a technical track, 4 for a non-technical track, 4 for functional content and then a keynote and panel, resulting in 70 sessions for a 5-day conference. The ~200 submissions we received from amazing people throughout the Valley made it apparent that we needed to adjust (heck, isn’t that what entrepreneurs do all the time anyway?)
We now have 22 sessions each day, for a total of 132 total sessions (that’s after we expanded to add on Saturday as well). Every day there is a technical track, a non-technical track, two functional content tracks, two introductory 101 style sessions, two workshops, and two keynote/panel sessions. Adding all the people that are co-presenting, on panels, and sponsored content, we’ve got over 150 amazing people donating their time to help you learn and grow yourself and your business.
Speaker Selection
A common question, especially for anyone that didn’t get selected to speak, is how did we choose speakers? I’ll tell you how we did it, though we already have learned and heard from other people’s ideas that might make this better next time around.
If you haven’t seen it mentioned before, the entire group of people that put together PhxStartupWeek is completely volunteer-based. This shows that there are a bunch of people interested in and invested in the success of the entrepreneurial ecosystem here in Phoenix. One of the challenges is that the group may not have in-depth knowledge of each industry or have deep connections into well established, large businesses. We have to rely on people stepping forward to say that they want to speak, whatever connections and knowledge our group already has, as well as what information we can gather from individuals to select a bunch of people to speak.
Our programming team started with quite a few hard-working ASU students. They are a great group of people, though as most of us who are young in our careers, don’t necessarily have a wide, diverse network. Additionally, while a few of us had seen a large variety of Phoenix-based people speak previously, the majority of our team hadn’t experienced presentations by some of the larger than life personalities here in the valley.
We decided to borrow the format used last year and have speaker applicants submit a video. Some people who wanted to speak HATED this idea, believe me, we’ve got the emails to prove it. We understand that speaking straight into a camera on your own is very different than getting up in front of an audience and delivering great content with presence. At the time, we thought this method would be most fair as well as get the highest quality speakers that we could. While we have some suggestions for next year’s team, if you have ideas, we’re open to hearing them!
As the submissions came in and we started sorting them, each person on the team chose a primary topic or two they were passionate about helping lead. We then had two other people join into reviewing submissions from that topical area. Using a rubric to grade each submission by the speaker’s presence, the uniqueness of topic, subject knowledge, credibility, and their alignment to the theme. Each area would get scored from 1–5 by three different people with that score totaled.
We averaged all three scores and then reviewed the content to ensure we didn’t have four different speakers from one particular track all talking about the same thing. Additionally, we dove into each area and identified hot topics in the industry that we were hoping would have coverage to give the most current value to attendees. Based on all these factors, we picked out those with the highest average score to be this year’s speakers!
One last item on diversity here. We were very conscious about making sure we had representation from speakers of all backgrounds. Once we got to this list of the submissions from each category that had the highest scores, I did go through and take a high-level view of each topical area to see if we had diverse representation. I was hoping to not “force” diversity into the program and that it would happen naturally.
While there were one or two areas that we pulled up an additional speaker to ensure we didn’t have “a bunch of white guys” for an entire track speaking all day, I’m excited to say that we achieved this diverse line-up that included the 46% representation of women — naturally! Averaging scores from a rubric of items, considering hot topics in the industry and trying not to double up on speaking topics, we found that expertise in our ecosystem is found in a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds and excited to showcase that next week!
For all of you who like data… 200 submission videos, each approximately two minutes long, each reviewed by three people (sometimes more than once, but let’s say one time through for now), means the team reviewed over 20 hours of submission videos to identify speakers for this year’s event.
We really hope you enjoy the event and get a TON of value out of it! We hope each presenter delivers takeaways that help you move forward personally and professionally immediately. We put a lot of time and care into building an event that would allow you time to network with others (since we know and have survey data showing that people really enjoy that aspect of the event) while diving into a plethora of topics and ideas that help you learn new things and perhaps think of things differently.
Whether you love it or hate it, I’ll be at the event all week long, feel free to come by and share how you think things could work better next year. I know there are things we could’ve done better and happy to look for opportunities to incorporate insights from others.
Blockchain technology has gotten tremendous attention lately for its industry-disrupting capabilities. As a result, many enterprises are rushing to try and incorporate blockchain into their ecosystem, so they are not left behind. There are also companies who are simply adding this buzz word to their existing offering and claiming that they are now blockchain ready/enabled etc.
Unfortunately, as with any emerging technology that is gaining momentum, there is a lot of confusion and misdirection. As a result, enterprises are spending a lot of time and money in a technology that might not be applicable to them or is the wrong use case.
In this article, I will try to provide a high-level overview of the technology, its strengths/weakness and outline some potential use cases.
So what is Distributed Ledger Technology(DLT)?
But wait, we thought you were going to talk to us about Blockchain! Before we venture into Blockchain we need to discuss the difference between Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT). Blockchain caught on as a buzzword and is more recognized among the masses and commonly used interchangeably with DLT (although they don’t mean the same thing at all).
Distributed Ledger is a data structure which is stored across distributed/de-centralized devices, usually spread across various locations. DLT is a technology that uses a distributed ledger to store data, a specific protocol to achieve consensus and transactional code to change the state of the ledger. The storage structure, distribution methodology and consensus protocol used (Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Directed Acyclic Graph, etc.) differentiate various DLTs.
All blockchains are DLTs… but not all animals are dogs
In summary, Blockchain is a sub-type of DLT. All blockchains are DLTs but not all DLTs are Blockchains. Think all dogs are animals, but not all animals are dogs, the same with Blockchains and DLTs.
Why all the hype?
So now that we have covered the fundamentals of DLT and Blockchain, let’s see what the hype is all about. Historically, enterprises stored all their data in centralized databases, think Oracle, SQL Server, Mainframes etc. These solutions have evolved over the years to provide reliable, fast and successful data management solutions. Millions of installations and trillion of queries later, these systems have carved out a place at the heart of data management for most organizations. However, since the data is centralized, the custodian of the data has the keys to the kingdom and users have to rely on the organization for the integrity of the data(trust). Additionally, since the single instance of the database contains all pertinent data, it is vulnerable to hacking, thus making it less secure(security).
DLTs, on the other hand, are distributed and immutable (unchanging over time) by nature, and the data is secured using cryptography making it virtually impossible to hack. The distributed and immutable nature of the data removes the need for a centralized authority to govern the data.Since the community is now the custodian of the data, this brings trust to an ordinarily trustless environment. Since the data is replicated over a network and distributed, DLTs have extreme fault tolerance built into them. Given these innate benefits, you can see why everyone is excited and rushing to implement DLTs in their organization.
So what’s the problem?
If DLTs are so awesome, why shouldn’t my organization jump on the first chance to implement DLT/Blockchain? Before we decide, let’s recap the benefits of DLTs:
· Trust · Robust fault tolerance · Secure collaboration of data
Do DLTs have any disadvantages? Yes, and the answer is performance. Due to the nature of the technology DLTs will ALWAYS be slower than centralized databases.
So if trust and fault tolerance are not an issue in your organization and performance is crucial to your operation, DLT/Blockchain might not be for you.
This article obviously has oversimplified the analysis needed before your organization can make a firm decision on the need for DLTs. A business must, of course, consider cost, schedule, willingness to collaborate across a business network, public vs permissions, ways to incentivize the community, etc. before making the final decision.
Enterprise DLT Use Cases
· Industrial IoT — Expose IoT sensor data to auditing agencies via DLT · Supply-chain Provenance — Track products as it journeys through the supply chain on DLT · Sensitive Data Document Management — Use DLT to author and distribute documents securely · Asset Configuration Management — Track asset configuration over time on DLT to avoid errors · Medical Records Management — Track patient records on DLT to facilitate data collaboration · Controlled Drugs Tracking — Using a DLT to track ingredients, suppliers, distributors and patients
How can hyperFIELD help?
We know the implementation of emerging technologies, or even just finding out if they are right for your business, is a daunting task. hyperFIELD is made up of a team of industry and technology experts with years of experience doing just that. We specialize in emerging technologies like DLT (aka Blockchain), Augmented Reality, Machine Learning, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Analytics. Feel free to reach out to us with any questions. We would be happy to sit down with your team and help you to identify what technologies would best suit your business needs.
About the Author: Naveen Sydney is a life-long entrepreneur and a pioneer of emerging technologies. He has over 20 years of experience in a variety of industries with a focus on enterprise management and technical innovation.
As CTO at hyperFIELD, he operates with a customer-first motto to connect businesses with the right solutions to increase productivity and profits. During the course of his career, he has consulted for Fortune 100 companies including GM, Microsoft and Raytheon, and continues to be sought after for advice in emerging technologies like Blockchain, Machine Learning, Predictive Analytics, Augmented Reality, etc.
