deal architect

Burning Platform: Diversity Trends in Tech

Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here. Last couple of weeks, we have had several guests like Rob Kugel of Ventana, Josh Greenbaum of EA Consulting, Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel, Frank Scavo of Avasant and Dennis Howlett of Diginomica.

The BLM movement this summer has brought more urgency for HR and procurement groups to diversify employee and supplier bases. Related to this, I did interviews with two prominent African-American tech executives, Tony Prophet, Chief Equality Officer at Salesforce  and Charles Phillips, Chairman at Infor. Also a presentation by Barbry McGann of Workday on their new VIBE product which allows companies to better visualize employee diversity from multiple dimensions.  The Tech sector should be proud of its efforts.

While the recent intense focus is nice to see, it would be remiss to not point out we have been making steady progress for a long time. I invited Cindy Jutras, President of Mint Jutras to talk about her 45-year career at software vendors and analyst firms, and draw from her experiences on how gender and ethnic-based diversity have evolved in the industry. I add my own experience as an immigrant and someone who has worked in and traveled to 70 countries and seen the US "from the outside in" in the video below.

I particularly liked Cindy pointing out the movie, "Hidden Figures" about a team of female African-American mathematicians who served a critical role in NASA during the early years of the U.S. space program. As she says "we have come so far"

We also touch on age discrimination. Silicon Valley and outsourcers tend to be focused on young recruits, but even corporate IT tends to be ambivalent about older employees. The pandemic has resulted in many older employees who are traumatized or those who finally having spent more time at home with families and have relished the experience. Both categories are opting for early retirements. These accelerated (and unplanned) exits may also bring more of a focus on the age attribute as companies refine their diversity policies.

It is a not a "woke" conversation. It is a realistic discussion about why a system of meritocracy, more enlightened executives and driven individuals work better than forced mandates for diversity.

The Analyst Cam: Avasant Research study of COVID-19 impact on IT

As we have moved to virtual vendor briefings and events, I have increasingly been excerpting short segments (with permission from vendors), as part of my Analyst Cam series. 

Computer Economics, now part of Avasant Research, has benchmarked IT spending for over two decades. Frank Scavo, President, Avasant Research presented to me an abridged version of their recent benchmark survey of the impact of COVID-19 on IT Organizations.  

He presents fascinating trends in the 20 minute conversation below. You can also get a 70 page executive summary of the survey by signing up here. 

As he describes towards the end, they are working on another checkpoint survey to be released in December. If you like to be part of that or other surveys they are constantly conducting, sign up here and you will qualify for their research publications valued at over $6,000 at no charge. 

Extra! extra! The dead has arisen!!!

As Brian Sommer and Ray Wang reported on Friday in this video I was one of the pall-bearers at the funeral for on-premise software. In that role, I was allowed to the grave site where no media followed - most were too busy tweeting about the demise. So I was one of the few who witnessed a miracle. We heard a groan and it was old OP. We helped him out, and I stayed the weekend with radio silence to see how he fared. I visited him in the hospital this morning where he is in stable condition.

Here is a condensed version of our conversation (and sanitized for the foul language he used in describing us analysts):

OP - Vinnie, you have not been too nice to me the last few years, but I get my revenge. You get to tell the world that the rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.

VM - OP, first of all its good to see you so lucid. Hope you don't mind calling you OP. Impressive that you remember your Hemingway.

OP - And I hope you don't mind me calling you illiterate. It was Mark Twain from London in 1897

VM - 1897? so Brian was right - you are as old as the hills.

OP - is that Sommer you talk about? Tell the SOB, I saw his snarky eulogy. And tell him and Ray, I will be around long to torment them.  

VM - Now hold on OP, it's not just Brian and Ray. You are not too popular with customers. And you have gotten uglier by the day, and have all kinds of patches and band aids....

OP - this conversation is finished...

VM - the pandemic and work from home trend truly exposed your weaknesses. Most CIOs describe the extra VPN provisioning and other effort it took to keep you going. Cloud applications on the other hand were a dream.

OP - OK, smartypants, then why have they kept me around? Because cloud solutions cannot deliver all the complex industry and geography specific functionality. I delivered essential services just like healthcare and Amazon Prime workers did. And this is the gratitude you show me?

VM - well, cloud vendors are working on those industry solutions...

OP - good luck waiting for that. They have been promising them for a decade. Besides, even if they do, will customers have the massive migration budgets during the recession? Till cloud vendors automate the migration, they will continue to depend on their expensive SI partners

VM - not exactly, with travel restrictions, SIs are moving to remote delivery models...

OP - If you believe that one, then I have some swampland in Florida to sell you.

VM - OP, you really don't believe things have to change?

OP - With friends like Larry and Hasso, I am used to a certain lifestyle. Why should I change?

VM - because customers are talking to Google and Amazon and Microsoft about lifting and shifting you out of their data centers and moving it to their hyperscale ones.

OP - you mean I wont live in a suite any more?

VM - actually it gets better. They are also talking to firms like Rimini and Spinnaker to service you...

OP - Mercy... no more caviar - they will only serve me hot dogs? Can you do anything about it?

VM - I will see if Larry can move you into his infrastructure cloud, but even there you will be working pretty hard. You know Zoom ran 7 petabytes of video a day through his data centers a couple of months ago

OP - that sounds like way, way too much work...

VM - well I have a better idea. Why don't you announce your retirement?

OP - Hasso did exactly that and said I would be gone by 2025, but customers don't seem to believe him ...heheh

VM - no, you need to step up, teach cloud vendors all your unique industry and geography knowledge and I will see if we can get you a decent pension and a small place on the beach.

OP - Too hot...how about on a lake?

VM - OP, quit worrying. You have had a traumatic few days. Just work on a smooth transition, and we may even get you a customized bobble head

OP -  man the one you have looks ugly but I guess after decades I do look that way. Can you arrange a red hat for him?

VM - Red hat?

OP - No not that one, one which says OP

VM - you mean Opie? We will have to check with Ron Howard.

OP - who, what? Look, I am feeling rough. Just get me the best deal you can, Mr. Deal Architect and I will gracefully, gradually fade away in a few years.

VM - OK, but no trickery. Teach cloud vendors all your industry and geography knowledge and how to automate the migration. By the way, you really gave us a scare, but I am glad you are bouncing back and are as feisty as ever.

OP - and Vinnie, nothing will please me more than to see you grovel and be nice to me. Stay healthy, yourself.

Ten enterprise trends from the COVID-19 pandemic

In December, I wrote decade-end perspectives on enterprise software and services. You can read them again here and here.  

So, how has the pandemic changed the landscape? In many ways, it has exposed the weaknesses of many software and services vendors. In other ways, it has opened up brand new opportunities. Here are ten observations from many executive interviews - nearly 50 of which are public in this series on "acrobatics during the crisis" I have been running here 

1) Moore's Law is being applied to humans with stunning results

In all the doom and gloom around the virus, it is easy to miss the amazing acrobatics we have witnessed both in healthcare and life sciences. Telemedicine, pop up hospitals, medical professionals parachuting in wherever needed. Healthcare professionals have learned so much from the Italy and NY experience - how not to overuse ventilators, how to flex ICU capacity. Therapies like Remsdesivir, Dexamethasone and Convalescent Plasma have kicked in. All kinds of vaccines are being developed, clinical trials being accelerated like never before. It's too early to declare victory but if the current spike in positives that many US states are experiencing had happened in March, we would have seen far worse crowding in hospitals and many more fatalities.

It has opened the eyes of executives in every industry to opportunities in healthcare  -  a fifth of US GDP is spent on that sector. Auto companies helping with ventilators, distilleries making hand sanitizers, everyone looking to make or disinfect PPEs, technology companies helping with contact tracing, statisticians looking to improve pandemic modeling and on and on

However, just because you serviced that sector in January does not guarantee you continued success. The expectations of exponential improvements in functionality and speed of delivery have been raised and there are competitors approaching from everywhere. Just look at COVID testing. The US has done over 50 million tests in just 4 months and yet the process feels so slow and cumbersome. There is immense pressure to move to 10-15 minute test results available at point of care. That's coming - and soon, given the speed at which our expectations are running.

2) Cloud apps supported WFH well....but....

In interview after interview, CIOs have talked about the heroics it took them to provision employees as they moved to WFH. Most also compliment how well SaaS applications scaled and supported WFH in comparison to on-premise applications, especially in self-run data centers. But dig a bit deeper and they also share all the complex protocols they are having to factor as they reopen plants, warehouses, stores, delivery vehicles, airplanes and other sites where physical presence is critical and WFH cannot help. Ask them what those on-prem systems supported and many will tell you about critical operational areas that SaaS applications have not tackled yet. Even if they could support those areas, justifying a move to SaaS in today's economic conditions is tough. If anything, moving legacy applications to IaaS looks more appealing.  Others tell you about problems with WFH in several countries with poor last-mile connectivity, and with employees with kids at home (increasingly complicated by complex decisions around whether school districts can re-open physical classrooms after summer). Long and short, be careful selling WFH support as your most beneficial "feature".

3) Video was not the only killer app

The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting is a cult gathering for many investors. It was a virtual event this year. More emphatically, Warren Buffett talked about his long time partner, Charlie Munger who was not at the meeting "Charlie at 96 is in fine shape. His mind is as good as ever. His voice is as strong as ever, but it just didn’t seem like a good idea to have him make the trip to Omaha for this meeting. Charlie is really taking to this new life. He’s added Zoom to his repertoire. So he has meetings every day with various people, and he’s just skipped right by me technologically." 96 year old Charlie and many other senior citizens whose last technology upgrade was a Kindle reader have adopted Zoom. All of us have our Zoom bombing stories. I could add to those my experiences with MS Teams, Google Meet, Skype, ON24, Streamyard and other platforms. I have been cataloging the art form of virtual backgrounds - see here. So, yes, video has definitely been a killer app in the last few months.

But, even more so have been revenue facilitating, industry-specific technologies. Telemedicine in healthcare, PPP loan and mortgage processing and mobile banking in fintech, drive-thru support for the food industry, last mile logistics for grocery stores and restaurants, contactless checkin at airlines and hotels, distance learning in education - the list is long of applications which were life savers for certain industries. Your grandparents probably know all about Zoom but likely have no clue about nCino or Teladoc or Shopify though these vendors have allowed many customers to survive and even thrive in the last few months.   

4) Get ready to hear more about these two acronyms

L+S - "lift and shift" legacy applications to cloud infrastructure at hyperscalers like AWS, Microsoft and Google. Do it to reduce your data center costs. Do it to improve security and scalability. Yes purists will argue you don't get multi-tenancy advantages of SaaS. Yes, but SaaS may not offer the industry functionality. Additionally, SaaS vendors continue to depend too heavily on partners for labor intensive migrations. Interestingly, I had called Oracle's IaaS opportunity bigger than that of Amazon's back in 2016. That called for L+S of their PeopleSoft, JDE, EBS customers. Since then. Oracle's 3 big IaaS competitors have grown their cloud footprint significantly. 

3PM - Third Party Maintenance never went out of fashion. In a recession, companies will look at it even more. With travel restrictions, the remote support model of 3PM vendors may allow them to even expand their footprint to broader Level 2 and 3 support.

5) The world is definitely not flat

In a world of travel restrictions and two-week quarantines, globalization is increasingly a dirty word. The reality is COVID-19 was not consistent in its geographic impact. The global recovery is already shaping up as uneven. It will mean new opportunities for regional players, expanded software functionality to markets that are recovering quicker, a redistribution of global delivery centers and reshaping of global supply chains. Now is the time for buyers and vendors to also be rethinking their global IT supply chains and offerings.

6) Remote services are only the start

I wrote a paper at Gartner in 1998 where I pointed out just the travel expenses (not their much higher fees) of systems integrators were often greater than the cost of the software they were implementing. I also pointed out the productivity impact of 4 day SI on-site weeks and health issues from continuous, long-term travel. Buyers and vendors would agree on ways to cut that back on travel, but it was grudging. Even offshore vendors which had honed the discipline of remote support were proposing much more on-site support. Suddenly, there is no more grudging. Remote diagnostics, remote delivery, remote support are hot. But it should not stop there. Outsourcers should be thinking about shared services  - data conversion, testing, training "factories" from where specialists should be helping multiple customers, not just one project at a time. And as that knowledge gets codified to then move to automate many of the tasks.   

7) Executive Changes at Vendors

Many people have been puzzled by sudden executive changes at a couple of large vendors. I am expecting many more. Aging workers and execs across industries are looking at early retirement or at least slowdown scenarios. The last 3-4 months have been traumatic. I have heard of unbelievable efforts and wonder if the pace is sustainable. Many of these execs look at their pipelines and workloads and think the next couple of years will not be much fun.  Or they have finally had time with family and want a bit more of that. Given uncertain markets, layoffs combined with new employees from M&A opportunities, I am expecting to see many new executive faces

8) Digital Twins - with an emphasis on Twins

In my conversations I have repeatedly heard about digital acceleration during the crisis. In this interview with Tamas Hevezi I discussed examples from a wide range of industries - healthcare, retail, banking, higher ed and many countries like Japan and Germany. 

However, I am worried we will starve the physical/analog experience for customers and employees. Ideally, we end up with parity between the digital and physical worlds. Let's treat the twins equally well. 

9) Full-spectrum automation

In my book, Silicon Collar, published in 2016, I had profiled automation trends across a wide range of work settings - at accounting firms, on the basketball court, in banks, on the battlefront, in digital agencies, in the oil patch, in R&D labs, on shop floors, in wineries, in the warehouse and many more. During this crisis, I have heard of many more use cases for drones, kiosks, shop floor and warehouse robots and autonomous vehicles.     

Most of the software and services world has largely defined automation as machine learning and RPA. HR groups have watched automation from a distance - the lead has often been taken by operational executives. Lots of changes are needed as a new wave of automation arrives.

10) Certainty is even more elusive than toilet paper

Partly because it is hurricane season and I live in Florida and partly because pandemic modeling has been so chaotic globally, I have increasingly been thinking about my case study on the National Hurricane Center and my update from a visit there in 2018  The NHC has long understood the track of a hurricane (what they call cyclones) swings wildly and they talk in terms of "cones of uncertainty". In their lingo it is "The cone represents the probable track of the center of a tropical cyclone, and is formed by enclosing the area swept out by a set of circles (not shown) along the forecast track (at 12, 24, 36 hours, etc). The size of each circle is set so that two-thirds of historical official forecast errors over a 5-year sample fall within the circle." The NHC has tons of historical data, but they refresh it for each hurricane with data from satellites, Hurricane Hunter flights, sensors on buoys, dropsondes and many other sources. I am seeing CFOs shorten planning horizons dramatically, I am seeing them move to continuous planning and frequent re-planning. Certainty is an elusive commodity these days.  I hear vendors talk ML but they are still largely working from historical, internal data. They need to step up and help customers think in econometric terms with a lot of external, constantly refreshed data.

To the last point about uncertainty - the last few months have been humbling. So much noise yet so many new signals to process. I am sure I will be writing about even more trends in coming weeks.

Microsoft Business Applications virtual summit - a missed opportunity?

James Phillips, President of the Microsoft Business Applications group had a nice slide in his keynote this morning at their virtual Applications Summit. He showed call centers evolving every twenty years - in his voice over he said "there are more differences in hairstyles and clothing than in the applications "

I was thinking he could have added a setting for the last two months - masks, video cams, young kids at home Zoom bombing (ok, MS Teams, not Zoom).

Also that the entire session could have completely focused on agility in the last few weeks. The keynote mentioned some of the customer acrobatics in passing but the session overall came across aspirational that business will continue as usual.

They mentioned how Swedish Hospital in Seattle has worked with them to develop a COVID-19 Emergency Response App (CERA). But it was 50 minutes into the session and they only spent a minute on it. They mentioned mixed reality at Ikea but could have expanded that section to talk about how Ikea has scaled eCommerce and shipping logistics with its stores shut during this phase. They mentioned l'Oreal hand sanitizers but could have drilled into impact that new SKU has had on their sourcing, manufacturing and distribution. They had a section on Chipolte but did not touch on workplace or supply chain hygiene, or contactless delivery. They mentioned stats on MS Teams usage but could have had a nice customer case study on extensive use of that platform. They could have included gesture and voice interfaces and examples of how ML and AI have helped customers.

I have been conducting Zoom interviews with C level executives in many industries and they are telling me about acrobatics in their sectors and likely new normal going forward. Last mile delivery, production planners at auto companies repurposing components for medical equipment, optimization around supply chain breakdowns, food sector drive throughs and home deliveries, retail curbside pickups, pop-up hospitals, telemedicine, distance learning, work-from-home and massive video traffic demands on IT, professional services doing remote configurations and testing, their extensive planning for return to work as states re-open and on and on. Over and over I hearing expressions like “years of change in a couple of weeks”

Microsoft has a web page called "Together" which summarizes some of the ways they have been helping customers during this phase and they could have pulled many other examples from there.

It was a professional keynote but Microsoft could have hit it out of the park by largely focusing on applications which have been dreamed up and delivered in the last quarter.

In fairness, the event goes on a couple more days and somewhere on the agenda they likely will cover other customer heroics. Perhaps Microsoft will help me navigate to relevant replays and I will post an update.

Not just Microsoft, I hope SAP, ServiceNow and other application vendors do similar in their upcoming virtual events. There is a new normal or abnormal they need to reflect.

Enterprise Software: Emergency Apps and Empathy

I was talking to a vendor exec last week and I mentioned the agility and innovation I am seeing in various sectors - agile manufacturing, re-jigged supply chains, reshaped shopping experiences, last-mile delivery, telework, telemedicine, teleschool- as we are fighting the COVID-19 war. Examples are here, here and here.

He turned around and showed me under NDA in our Zoom session the impact and innovations they are cataloging in their B2C and B2B customers. I am willing to bet their R&D team is already factoring them for their next-gen vertical apps. I have had similar conversations with other software and SI execs. Most are taking similar notes but are not ready yet to publicly talk about them. Two reasons - One, they don't want to come across as bragging in this traumatic phase. Second, it will provide them or their customers competitive advantage and they will discuss their plans when and if they are ready.    

However, many of them have publicly shared what they are doing. The common thread is most of these are timely and they show empathy.

In an analyst briefing yesterday, Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow talked about the incident management structure to lead the outbreak response they developed with the State of Washington, which was the first US "hot spot" for the outbreak. They have since released emergency response apps - for outreach, employee self-reporting and exposure tracking. They are offering them free through September 30 to other public health entities.  

Plex has been presenting dashboards on the impact on global supply chains. It has 20 years of anonymized, compiled operational data from the approximately 700 manufacturers on its software. This group collectively runs 1,200 active production facilities in 29 countries, representing the aerospace, automotive, fabricated metals, food and beverage, industrial machinery, and plastics and rubber industries. I will have more from the CTO, Jerry Foster. Here is a graph on their China dataset. They have others for Italy, the US and other markets here.

Zoho has been helping the work-at-home economy by offering 11 of its apps free (see video below) till July 1. The Remotely free offer started in early March and they already have over 15,000 businesses availing of it. They are also offering existing customers with up to 25 employees a 3 month fee waiver. Details here. They also have a live global dashboard for COVID-19 case tracking.   I am planning an interview with the CEO, Sridhar Vembu - he always has such a positive world view.

Every day, we are hearing of massive dislocations in supply chains - shortages of certain products in one area, plenty of supply of the product elsewhere. SAP has opened up access to Ariba Discovery for free for 90 days so any buyer can post their immediate sourcing needs and any supplier can respond to show they can deliver. SAP has also opened up other workforce and program management apps as detailed here 

Salesforce has launched its Care package (see video) free for 90 days for up to 10 licenses.  Its Tableau unit has various COVID-19 related visualizations. 

Plenty of empathy

I have been impressed with the empathy software vendors have been showing to their customers and employees.

Workday has sent two-weeks additional pay for the majority of employees to help accommodate any unforeseen costs and needs at their discretion. It has also opened up a year's access to Headspace, a research-backed app that offers meditations on everything from stress and anxiety to focus and sleep.  

Alex Shootman, CEO of Workfront, who is an impressive executive and human wrote a really inspirational blog post about resilience in demanding times.

"I’ve always believed that great leadership is forged in the crucible of adversity, but great leaders are those who respond with empathy and vulnerability even when making the toughest decisions. We all need reserves of determination and positivity at precisely the moments those qualities are stretched thin. Where do those reserves come from? In my book, Done Right, I explored a number of ways to build resilience."

Read more here. I have an interview planned for more of his guidance.

Salesforce has paused all customer outreach including requests for customer references for analyst evaluations. I listened to a SuccessFactors analyst briefing last week and was struck by how little bragging there was about recent competitive wins. I also listened to several SAP vertical industry webinars. Peter Maeir, who is President of SAP Industries, somewhat humbly opened each with a statement that SAP had considered canceling or postponing them. I had a chance to tell him I am glad SAP ran them. We have to keep going - our sector has to keep the lights on while businesses scramble to change their priorities.

I heard someone say the medical profession and pharma sector have a chance to come out shining from this crisis after years of brand damage from price gouging and other negative stories. You can already see the adulation for front-line medical professionals around the world.

Enterprise software has a similar opportunity. I am proud of what enterprise software vendors are doing during this crazy phase. I will be even prouder if they learn from the agility of their customers and reshape their offerings. No industry sector will come out of this unscathed. Industry-specific agility and innovation will be at a premium. Bureaucracy, huge price tags and compliance functionality much less so.

It will open up all kinds of opportunities to rethink enterprise software as the economy turns around. For now, I look forward to cataloging all the positive stuff software vendors are doing.  

More COVID-19 impact - the age of agility

The one thing I vividly remember from my first few days as an audit rookie at PwC was a class where the instructor said "never forget - an internal control should deliver more savings than the burden it puts on a process. If it does not, don't be pedantic. Let it pass"

I did not stay on the audit side for long, but over the years I have seen SOX, HIPAA, GDPR and many other compliance-oriented acronyms forget that simple guidance and the cost-benefit lens. As a result, while well-intentioned, they have slowed down innovation, made processes complex, cumbersome - and slow.

A wise man once wrote "Many of our job designs, work flows, control mechanisms, and organizational structures came of age in a different competitive environment and before the advent of the computer. They are geared toward efficiency and control. Yet the watchwords of the new decade are innovation and speed, service and quality." That wise man was the late Dr. Michael Hammer. He wrote that in 1990.

Three decades later, it is taking a disaster for us to say - screw old thinking and change old laws. Just do it! I wrote about agile manufacturing and rejigged supply chains last week. Here is this week's installment. 

Fedex is running its Memphis hub like a military base on high alert. Countless distilleries are now re-purposing their alcohol to make hand sanitizers. Sysco which has traditionally focused on the food service industry (restaurants, hotels) is shifting its vast supply chain to stock grocery stores. Carnival is offering its cruise ships to be turned into floating hospitals The Navy is already preparing to deploy its floating hospitals, the Mercy and Comfort. 

3M is doubling production of its N95 respirator masks. Nike is looking at making protective equipment for healthcare workers.

Siemens and Aucma developed in just one week, from design to sample production, intelligent disinfection robots which have joined the battle against the virus in hospitals.

Medicare did not previously cover telemedicine. At least for this crisis it will. Also HIPAA rules for telehealth will be relaxed. This will be useful to limit exposure and free up hospital capacity. 

A couple of startups are trying to reduce two annoying occurrences in US healthcare, made worse during this crisis. Yosi is trying to eliminate the countless paper forms you fill every time you go to a clinic. Navimize is trying to eliminate the doctor's waiting room - saving you time and allowing for social distancing.

I have heard of countless companies whose IT was well prepared for a work from home scenario, and many others which have struggled. Guess what - that is going to be a critical element of business continuity plans going forward.

Jason Perlow writes at ZDNet "Previous privacy concerns about revealing our whereabouts and tracking for the sake of convenience will give way to how best to service a population with a demand for goods and services while still maintaining social distancing requirements." and " With a home-based work population, the regular, 9 to 5 business days are likely to shift to more flexible working days, and a more significant segment of the workforce is expected to become "night people" and have off-hours and rest during the daytime while others are working."

Finally, listen to Lt. Gen Todd T. Semonite, commander of Army Corps of Engineers discuss in video below plans to quickly convert hotel and college dormitory rooms into ICU-like units. He talks about "super-simple" and "good enough" solutions to an "unbelievably complicated" problem.

Just do it!

The positive impact of COVID-19

Somebody once told me I could make a brown paper bag sound interesting. Not sure if that was a compliment but I do find interesting aspects to most anything. While there is so much doom and gloom around the coronavirus and the impact on the economy, I am also seeing amazing agility and innovation.

Healthcare: in spite of the huge size of the industry or probably because of it, it has always been bureaucratic and wasteful. We are starting to see telemedicine take off, clinical trials get accelerated, new diagnostics, vaccines and therapies being investigated. We are seeing infrastructure changes - drive-through tents for testing, operating and other rooms being turned into ICUs at hospitals.  China constructed a 645,000 sq. ft hospital in just 10 days in Wuhan! In the US, the Army Corp of Engineers is being brought in to increase hospital capacity, floating Naval hospitals like the Mercy are on standby (I wrote about the Mercy way back in 2009. It is a massive former oil tanker.)       

Re-jigged supply chains: Since the outbreak in China in December, most supply chains have been scrambling. McKinsey has this nice graph about impact of China on supply chain of various industries. The ripple effects will continue to be be felt for months with people evaluating other global sources, re-evaluating modes of transport, rethinking stock at distribution centers v. shipping direct to customers and so many permutations.

I wrote about Amazon's Kiva and other robots in its distribution centers after a visit here. It uses concepts like "chaotic storage". It is adding to the chaos by prioritizing medical supplies and household staples in its orders. Hard to imagine it could do that quickly with traditional warehouses. 

Agile manufacturing: 3M is ramping up production of its N95 respirator masks, GM and Ford are shuttering auto production for a few weeks and looking to make medical equipment like ventilators. Paper product makers are shifting production to more toilet paper. Distilleries are churning out hand sanitizers. Scaling production or changing assortments of products is not unusual - the speed at which they are being done is striking.

Last-mile delivery: The US last-mile delivery infrastructure has been evolving over the least few years (I recently wrote about it here)  is now being tested at scale. Downloads of Instacart, Walmart's grocery and Shipt apps have doubled and tripled. Domino's is offering contactless delivery - adding features to its already extensive delivery capabilities.

Drive-throughs - most fast food restaurants, banks, pharmacies are seeing massive use of their drive-through infrastructure, their kiosks and other automation. Pioneered in S. Korea we are starting to see drive-through tents in the US for testing for the virus.

Re-purposing of technologies: It is nice to see creative uses of technologies. I was one of Gartner's first remote analysts starting in 1995. Since then I have done thousands of calls, interviews, webinars from my home office, more recently with extensive use of Zoom. Most of us improved home infrastructure to cut cable and install smart appliances. Now, it is being used like never before for work from home.  This infrastructure is allowing for home schooling and telemedicine.  As Peter Diamandis writes "drones above various parts of China are sharing information on loudspeakers, carrying signs with QR codes (for no-contact registration purposes), spraying disinfectant, delivering packages, and taking people’s temperatures." Singapore has required citizens to scan QR codes at various public places and even in taxis to be able to allow for digital tracking. Israel is using its surveillance technology to similarly track people flows.

Of course, as the crisis shrinks, we will hear complaints about too much automation, too little privacy, loneliness in work from home, the slow start to testing for the virus in the US. For now, we are seeing an amazing use of technologies and concepts we have been maturing for years, and brand new ones.

And yes, about that humble brown paper bag. I find it even more interesting with the increase in drive-throughs and home deliveries we  are all experiencing. 

Stay safe and sane, folks!

The Passion Play

It is the start of the new decade. Which means the beautiful town of Oberammergau in Bavaria, Germany will be hosting its 42nd once-a-decade Passion Play this summer. It is also the 15th anniversary of both my blogs, Deal Architect and New Florence, New Renaissance. They have been prolific logging over 12,000 posts on a wide range of science and technology topics.

To celebrate all these milestones, I decided to re-start the Tech and my Passion guest series. The response of contributors has been overwhelming, and since late January I have run the following columns. Many more coming. The timing has also been right for readers - a nice distraction from angry politics and scary virus stories.

Some interesting patterns. Lots more ladies are sharing their passions. You appear to have an unfair advantage if you have the name "Bill". Lots more STEM is showing up in columns - wearables, mobile apps, smart homes, material science. Lots more exotic travel locations, charities, musical interests and foods are being featured.

I like to say this is the best time ever to be alive. This is what Florence must have felt like during the European Renaissance. That same joy comes through from each of the contributors below. Spend some time with each of them. They will brighten up your day.

Bonnie Tinder  Her Lab, Grommet                  

Bill Wohl  Volunteer Firefighting           

Row Henson  Animal Rescue                        

Bill Hewitt  Co-Everything                                    

Karin Tillotson  Hiking                                     

Jim Caldwell  Camerawork                          

Lexy Martin  Quilting                                  

Craig Cmehil  Ring Making                        

Erica Gunn  Baking                                     

Henry Bruce  Salt Water Fishing                 

Melissa Carpenter  Carpentry                               

Ton Dobbe High Wave Surfing                 

Margaret Newman  Day Tripping                           

Ton Brennan Bluefin Tuna Fishing              

Sukumar Rajagopal Digital Storytelling                

Bill Kutik Expedition Travel 

Bill Kirwin Humor 

Catherine Marenghi Poetry in Mexico 

Denis Pombriant Painting

Mary Keith Birding

Laura Lederman Organic agriculture/medicine

Tammy Powlas Crochet

Priya Kumar  Flute

Erik Keller  Horticultural Therapy

Roy Altman Continuous Improvement

Jeff Nolan Urban Farming and Food Security

Jason Busch Health Protocols

Norm Katz Data Driven Athlete    

Sandy Lo Piano

Susanne Beck Stained Glass

Michelle Turman Reinventing Nonprofits

Bonnie Tinder Figure Skating

Vinnie Mirchandani Stories 

Jim Shepherd Boat Building

John Appleby Smart Old Homes

Nitesh Mirchandani 'Tele-cooking"

Chris Selland Body hacking and tracking

Katie Nittler Landscape Gardening

Nancy Murrah Raptor Rescue

Sophie Bean Stupid Pet Tricks

Minal Neuman Elegant Dinner Settings

Nancy and Jim Richardson Austistic Adults

Bill McNee  Birding, Photography and Nature

Eric Dirst Quarantine Cocktail Nights

Charlie Bess Woodworking 

Nick Hortovanyi Self-driving Cars

Tamas Hevezi Effective Digital Communication

Vittorio Viarengo Producing Music

Michelle Cuilla Vintage Jewelry Craft

Sam Noto Sculpting

Look for more columns over the next few weeks! Lord, we need more of these positive, passionate messages in these rough times.  

How the heck did the great European Renaissance emerge from the depth of its Dark Ages?

I kept asking that question during a family trip to Italy in 2004. That puzzle led me to consider writing the New Florence, New Renaissance blog, in addition to the Deal Architect blog.

Both blogs are celebrating their 15th birthday this quarter. Hard to believe but they have racked up over 12,000 posts. DA has stayed true to its focus on enterprise technology, especially application software and outsourcing. NF is the wanderer - looking for innovation beyond IT in cleantech, healthtech, agritech, product design, space. And looking for it in obscure places, in any country, in any industry.

Every time I see a panic, I go back to inspiration on NF.

A few years ago, there was pitch fever around automation killing jobs. My NF research led me to write Silicon Collar which was much more optimistic. Automation makes workers much more productive, that society has speed breakers against too much, too fast effects of automation. 

I was in California during last year's forest fires. While most of the media was calling it "the new normal", I was talking to rangers about prescribed burns and learning a new set of acronyms like WUI for Wildland Urban Interface and PSPS for Power Safety Planned Shutdown. They have been around for a while - as have the terms Santa Ana and Diablo winds. The fires and outages are also leading to a slew of innovations which will result in widespread improvements in weather forecasting, fire fighting and even outage program management.

That does not mean I am gullible. DA keeps me pragmatic.  I write plenty about wind and solar power and cloud computing. But I have been disappointed that wide chunks of the economy from aviation to shipping, and even utilities who have moved away from coal have not been able to take advantage of it. I have since moved to a position we need to balance out our energy strategy and revisit nuclear and hydrogen sources. Similarly, cloud applications have not verticalized or globalized enough and they have not automated migrations enough. I now accept that custom development and ring fence/API strategies are essential components of any CIO's arsenal.

These days while people are panicking  about the contravirus, I am studying the feverish pace at which pharmas are rejigging older, proven vaccines and working on new ones, how Chinese doctors are applying AI to study lung CT scans. How they are using drones, infrared thermometers and robots as they try to contain their exposure. How S Korea is pioneering drive through clinics. Will some of that tech be used for surveillance and other improper uses? Sure. I focus on the art of the possible and positive uses. 

So, go back to what I asked at the start. How did the Renaissance spring from the depth of the Dark Ages? Because humanity does its best when we are challenged. Necessity is the mother of invention, said Plato.

With that positive outlook, I am throwing a 15th birthday party for my blogs. Every morning for the next week you will see a guest column in the Technology and my Passion series. You will hear from your fellow colleagues how they find joy and satisfaction in their hobby, interest or charity. Instead of one column every Friday, I am running one every day. It's my way of trying to distract you from all the angry political and negative contravirus news.

Look every morning for one of your colleagues as they describe how baking, fishing, surfing, quilting and so many other passions keep them motivated.

Now is a great time to seek solace in Camus: “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."