When you consider the certainty of uncertainty – that no matter how diligently you prepare, you cannot predict what is around the corner – how does that affect how you think about planning your work?
Those who know me well will know that I’m a massive public transport nerd outside my weekday life. Avoid me at parties, but specifically because I’ll end up talking about this. It’s not the trains. It’s more about networks and their interconnectivity, how these networks have grown over time, often through accident rather than design, and how their development tracks against our collective social history.
Unlike the past two years’ flurry of game-changing product announcements such as Box Sign, Box Shield, Box Governance, and Box Shuttle, Box Works 2022 was short on “new” and long on “we’re now in GA with all the stuff we said we would do”. This will be good news for Box’s enterprise license customers who seem eager to deploy the new tools.
Today we released a new batch of six research reports, Vendor Vignettes. These short reports are in essence, a product or service review of particular vendors offering.
There is no shortage of opportunities for organizations and suppliers to identify those moments and create potentially significant value for each. Managing the data-heavy requirements of the AI to enable them, along with governance structures to ensure their efficacy in operation – not forgetting their accuracy in the outcome – remains a challenge.
Value that should be front and center, not the underlying technology, however interesting. The successful business application of AI is ultimately just as revolutionary, if not more so, than the code, algorithms, models, and processors used.
Few organizations have addressed the monumental challenge of transforming how to manage teams and individuals remotely or, for that matter, how those remote workers access critical information in a fragmented organizational structure.
Those who have been around a while in this industry know that sales often grow fastest in the toughest of times, as efficiencies need to be made and costs saved. Even so, there is always an on-ramp and readjustment to remind and educate buyers and investors alike that to save money, you need to invest in the right places to make the necessary changes.
Last week Dropbox to little fanfare announced that they had acquired San Francisco-based desktop search firm Command E.
Salesforce has a vision; much of its work is customer-driven and reflects their needs, rather than the silicon valley norm of inventing things and finding a use for them. But it’s also a huge company, with many moving parts. Though it tells an admirable story, the reality is that so many technology parts and new acquisitions are not easy to balance, integrate, maintain, and manage.
One of the reasons eSignatures are not as widely used as they could be is the cost. Though Box’s announcement this week that they are essentially bundling this functionality for free in its platform takes that barrier away, at least for Box customers. But a more significant reason appears to be the complexity of configuring and using these systems.
But one area that seems to have garnered little attention is the gritty reality of the challenge of finding information, gaining and sharing knowledge, and make informed decisions. Endless Zoom meeting, just don’t cut it. We get by, we do the best we can, but for knowledge workers, in particular, there are serious and often unacknowledged challenges ahead.
Today MFiles, the USA/Finnish ECM company, announced that it had acquired London-based collaboration/filesharing firm Hubshare. It’s only the second acquisition that MFiles has made, the last being the 2017 buy of Aprento and AI/NLP vendor.
Today Dropbox announced that it is to acquire San Francisco-based DocSend, a VC-backed startup that has been around since 2013 and raised a little over $15m in funding. DocSend is an interesting little firm with an innovative approach to tracking and securing external messages and documents.
This week Microsoft launched Viva, its employee experience platform, building on the foundational work of Project Cortex. Microsoft describes Viva as an organizing layer across 365 leveraging teams. Nothing too surprising there, but where it does get interesting is its ability to co-ordinate insights, alerts, and information across the enterprise.
Today Box announced that it had acquired Dutch eSignature firm SignRequest. This deal is of significant market interest for two reasons.
But, here’s the thing, a couple of years ago, everyone was talking about AI, but few were doing it. This past year things changed fast; now, there is a mad rush to embrace AI or get left behind. But its easier said than done, AI tools, models, and libraries are readily available, but skills, knowledge of specific user needs, and good data are not.
But without a sense of reality, the willingness to do some hard work, and a recognition of the need for human expertise to understand what’s going on and what you need, then they will not work. 2021 should be the business analyst’s year, the process analyst year.
Fortunately, workforce safety software has emerged to help organize and manage the return-to-work process.
Under the banner of Project Cortex, Microsoft has taken a step back and essentially rethought, reframed, and rewritten the SharePoint experience. At heart, Syntex is an AI system that leverages Microsoft Graph, its data, and intelligence platform for Microsoft365.
