A Software Insider's Point of ViewDigital Giants

Expect Regulations For National Security, But Overall Lighter Regulatory Framework For the most part, tech has done well regardless of presidential administrations due to the light regulation of the overall industry. This has allowed large digital giants to emerge and dominate global markets across a multitude of industries. Amidst a national security backdrop and increasing capital required in the tech arms race, government has been hesitant to over regulate.

Broad Reaching Survey Shows Insight Into Both Progress and Trends In Sustainability In the third annual “A World In Balance 2024” report by Capgemini Research Institute, 6500 consumers over the age of 18 and 2152 executives employed at 727 organizations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue were surveyed on their views, investments, and progress in sustainability. Overall findings show how organizations have prioritized investments with tangible return on investment (ROI), improved sustainable design, and doubled down on measurement. Key regulations such as the European Union’s corporate sustainability reporting directive (CSRD) will drive continued investments to address regulatory compliance.

AI Begins And Ends With Nvidia Despite the massive buzz on AI, only a few core companies that power the Age of AI will succeed. The high capital costs of research and development investment, the time required to take a product to market, and the ability to cross competitive moats create a massive barrier to entry. In fact, only a few vendors have shown significant profits in AI:

Margin Compression Is Pernicious, Disruptive, and Exponential In Impact Technologies for the enterprise have often been seen as enablers for disruption and change. Over the past five decades as one technology or vendor would come to prominence and dominate a market, challengers would apply new technologies or business models to topple the legacy market and create new markets. Silicon Valley built its credibility on these disruptive market entrants. This cycle would continue to repeat itself until the next challenger became the market leader and struggle to hold on to its lead while meeting the demands of investors and the market.

Expect Software Giants Hunters To Soon Be The Hunted In A Digital Giant's Quest For Growth Six of the Magnificent Seven (Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet [Google], Amazon, Meta [Facebook]) stocks have entered the four comma club -over $1 trillion in market cap. With a combined market cap of over $13.2 trillion, these six players continue to defy physics with continuous quarters of double digit organic growth. Digital giants by definition have deployed five key strategies:

What Every Tech Vendor CEO and CFO Should Know About Their CMO’s Wasted Investments In Vanity Metrics Marketing professionals face massive pressure to show that their marketing investments have paid off. In a zero-interest rate environment, budgets were flush and marketers had a lot of leeway in building brand, hosting amazing events, and buying ads to improve market presence. However, a shift to a five percent interest rate environment has many CMO’s focused on performance marketing, showing return on investment, and moving MQLs from SQLs as fast as they can.

Age of AI Ushers Exponential And Transformational Power In The Hands Of A Few Society has often swung to centralization and decentralization in the distribution of power and rights. Living in a culture of abundance versus a culture of scarcity can alter the prioritization of decisions, the quality of interactions, and the overall optimism or pessimism of a society. AI has the power to transform societies for both good and evil.

Two Year IPO Drought Coming To An End In 2023, only 148 companies completed an initial public offering (IPO). This was the worst year on record and followed a 15% decline from the number of IPO's in 2022, another disappointing year. In 2023, ARM was the sole blockbuster tech IPO. After a brutal two years with a paucity of tech IPOs, the market is poised for a resurgence in 2024.

Sam Altman just faced his Steve Jobs moment when the OpenAI board fired him on Friday. The balance between too much governance and not enough innovation was the challenge OpenAI faced. This was a very immature board with members who had never built companies, never moved from ideology to commercialization, nor had any pragmatic board experience.

With artificial intelligence (AI) projects all the rage, organizations must make a strategic determination to create a new CxO role at least at a functional level if not at a title level.. This decision should not be made lightly, however. Although the chief AI officer (CAIO) role is critical to an organization’s success, the level of collaboration across business, IT, finance and operations, HR, and legal risk and compliance requires an unprecedented level of cooperation and orchestration. Boards will also want to consider AI at the same level as CyberSecurity.

Big Brains In AI Discuss The Risks of Generative AI At Reinvent Futures Event On July 27th, 2023, almost 300 people gathered at Shack15 in the Ferry building in San Francisco to discuss the actual risks of Generative AI. The event hosted by Reinvent Futures with Peter Leyden and Joe Boggio brought together the biggest minds on AI for an evening of deep discussion.

On June 12th to 15th, Hexagon, AB held their user conference at the Caesar's Forum in Las Vegas Nevada. The event showcased how Hexagon has built a foundation for bringing the real world to the digital world using reality capture, positioning, autonomous technologies,design and simulation, and location intelligence.