New Florence. New Renaissance.

Amazon's largest fulfillment center

BFI4, located in exurban Kent, Wash., is Amazon’s flagship fulfillment center and regularly hosts senior company leaders—Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy dropped by recently—who want a better understanding of what happens after a shopper clicks “Buy Now.” It was the first facility of its kind capable of processing more than 1 million items a day, three times what was possible at the company’s state-of-the-art warehouses a decade ago. Improving technology means Amazon can stay several steps ahead of brick-and-mortar rivals Walmart Inc. and Target Corp., which are now adopting many of the practices Amazon has worked on for years.

More than the physical robots, the stars of Amazon’s facilities are the algorithms—sets of computer instructions designed to solve specific problems. Software determines how many items a facility can handle, where each product is supposed to go, how many people are required for the night shift during the holiday rush, and which truck is best positioned to get a stick of deodorant to a customer on time. “We rely on the software to help us make the right decisions,” says Shobe, BFI4’s general manager.

BusinessWeek (sub required)

 

Burning Platform Series on hot enterprise topics

Update - after Brian and I did the first 12 episodes, I have been inviting other market observers and practitioners to the series.

Brian Sommer and I go back nearly 30 years. We look at issues from very different perspectives but have a healthy respect for our differences. We have been called the "Penn and Teller" of Enterprise Technology because we tend to be both educational and entertaining about trends in software, outsourcing and many other issues that affect C level execs in enterprises.

We collaborate on a number of advisory projects and talk on a regular basis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our conversations have moved to Zoom. We thought it would be fun to share some of our on-going conversations about enterprise technology. 

Notice on the cover of each episode how cool the man is, even in the face of the raging fire. That is a good metaphor for how we approach enterprise problems. We will share these on a regular basis, minus much of the snark, family talk and politics that creeps into our conversations. We expect to average 1-2 a week. It is a roughly 10-20 minute format. Below are links to each episode. 

Look forward to your feedback, and the opportunity to help you through complex enterprise issues. And do so with much needed humor in these crazy times!

1. Eulogy for On-Premise Apps 
2. Bumper Quarter 
3. School buses or RVs 
4. The WTF about WFH 
5. Analytics, new management science
6. The Post-Pandemic world of the CFO
7. The Post-Pandemic world of the CHRO
8. The Post-Pandemic world of the CIO
9. Software - Feast or Famine
10. Why does my software not have its own passport?
11. COVID morphing of digital transformations
12. Career advice for new tech world
13. Wall Street and Enterprise Software with guest Rob Kugel
14. Mediocre, Myopic or Merry? with guest Josh Greenbaum
15. Project Management in the age of COVID with guest Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel
16. A Curmudgeon Christmas Greeting Card with guests Frank Scavo of Avasant and Dennis Howlett of Diginomica
17. Diversity Trends in Tech with guest Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras
18. Services and other Industry solutions with guest Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research
19. Architectural Trends in Enterprise Software with guest Holger Mueller of Constellation Research 
20. Digital Acceleration with guest Tamas Hevizi of Automation Anywhere
21. Supply chain resilience and renewal with Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters
22. Pandemic and Tech AR/PR with Sabrina Horn of Horn Strategy Consulting
23. A Christmas Carol with Sandy Lo of Zoho
24. Cloud Wars! with Bob Evans of Evans Strategic Communications
25. SAP Projects in Asia Pac with Paul Coetser of Big Blue Ventures
26. Business Continuity with Mark Smith of Ventana Research 
27. A review of RISE with SAP with Dennis Howlett of Diginomica
28. Exciting world of Citizen IT with Amit Zavery of Google Cloud
29. More on RISE with SAP with Geoff Scott of ASUG
30. Evolving expectations of CX with Mark Taylor of Cognizant Digital Experience
31. Developers, developers...with James Governor of Redmonk
32. Modern Decisioning with Bret Greenstein of Cognizant
33. Global Grand Challenges with Jyoti Banerjee of North Star Transition
34. Startup Communities with Brad Feld of Foundry Group and Ian Hathaway of Techstars
35. Entrepreneurial Trends with Brad Feld of Foundry Group and Ian Hathaway of Techstars
36. Relentless Amazon with Simon Gaster, author Behemoth, Amazon Rising
37. Amazon, automation and society with Simon Gaster, author Behemoth, Amazon Rising
38. Digital Nomads with Mark Brooks of Courtland Brooks
39. 25 years of "As a service" with Phil Wainewright of Diginomica and Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies
40. The future of "As a service" with Phil Wainewright of Diginomica and Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies
41. More work from Anywhere with Tammie Hilend of Maxar Technologies
42. Work anywhere: Tertiary Towns and Rural Revival with Raju Vegesna of Zoho Software
43. Industry Clouds with Jujhar Singh of Salesforce
44. Workday Nation with Webb Armentrout of Workday
45. Data-infused apps with Pete Schlampp of Workday
46. More work anywhere with Monty Hamilton of Rural Sourcing
47. The end of ERP? with Patricia Harris of Workday
48. Not your grandpa's service economy with Peter Bendor-Samuel of Everest Group
49. Leading with authenticity with Sabrina Horn of Horn Strategy
50. Ecosystems Galore with Tyler Prince of Salesforce
51. Labor Shortages, Mindsets and other Talent Trends with Fred Goff of Jobcase
52. Customer Service as Competitive Advantage with Sarah Nicastro of IFS
53. AI in the Enterprise with Roy Altman of Peopleserv
54. Servitization Trends - Part 1 with Marne Martin and Mark Brewer of IFS
55. Servitization Trends - Part 2 with Marne Martin and Mark Brewer of IFS
56. Acronyms, Buzzwords and Customer Realities with Jon Reed of Diginomica
57. Flashing Red Lights around Green Policy with Kurt Marko of MarkoVision
58. HR: what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger with Stacey Harris of Sapient Insights
59. Supply Chains: the good, the bad and the ugly with Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters
60. Generational shift in Content creation, distribution and consumption - Part 1 with Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group
61. Generational shift in Content creation, distribution and consumption - Part 2 with Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group
62. Curmudgeon Christmas - Part 1 with Dennis Howlett
63. Curmudgeon Christmas - Part 2 with Dennis Howlett
64. Innovations and Verticals Trends in ERP for SMEs with Rainer Zinow of SAP and Jory Lamb of VistaVu solutions
65. Analyzing the Analysts with Duncan Chapple of Analyst Observatory, U of Edinburgh
66. Christmas Musical Card with Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel

 

Zoho's version of rural sourcing

Phil Wainewright writes at Diginomica

"In February, Zoho opened a farm on its 360-acre headquarters campus in Austin, Texas. Employees started helping to grow crops, often bringing their families so their children could learn how to farm and grow food. Although the initiative started before COVID-19 took hold, the farm became an outdoor place to catch up with colleagues after remote working was introduced, says Chief Evangelist Raju Vegesna.

Now the company has started rolling out the model on other sites. In the last three months, it has opened six new farm offices in India, each based in a village and with capacity for 10-20 employees. In Texas, it is currently looking to open new offices in four small towns — average population about 10,000 — each about an hour's drive away from Austin."

This did not happen overnight. Every conversation with CEO Sridhar Vembu is cerebral and spiritual - quotes like "pain is everywhere, suffering is optional" are mixed in with talk of chip fabrication measured in nanometers, as you can read my interview with him in Austin in February  and when he did his version of "acrobatics during the crisis" video interview on a 4G mobile line from a remote village in India. 

Kubernetes in one visual

Kubernetes is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

If you want that in simple English, BusinessWeek explains it in one long visual – ten panels like the one below.

Raising the Bar

As an innovation author, I post all kinds of flattering stuff on startups and emerging technologies on this blog. As an analyst and adviser to clients I have to be much more hard nosed. In a 3 part series on Deal Architect, I have written on why we need to raise our expectations of

Cloud Computing

Renewable Energy

Digital Transformation projects

They have all had decades to do better than the incumbent – on-premise systems, fossil fuels and analog processes. In some ways they have done well, in others they are showing signs of being underachievers. We need to spur them to do much better. 

Photo Credit

The JP Morgan Cloud

After visiting companies including Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. three years ago to understand how their developers worked, the bank set out to create its own computing cloud called Gaia that went online last year. Machine learning and big-data efforts now reside on the private platform, which effectively has limitless capacity to support their thirst for processing power. The system already is helping the bank automate some coding activities and making its 20,000 developers more productive, saving money, Zames said. When needed, the firm can also tap into outside cloud services from Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and International Business Machines Corp.

JPMorgan will make some of its cloud-backed technology available to institutional clients later this year, allowing firms like BlackRock Inc. to access balances, research and trading tools. The move, which lets clients bypass salespeople and support staff for routine information, is similar to one Goldman Sachs Group Inc. announced in 2015.

Bloomberg

The AWS Snowmobile

As (AWS CEO) Jassy noted during his keynote at re:Invent, one of the biggest hurdles with moving workloads to the public cloud has been data transport. So why not create a truck that'll suck in your corporate data and move it to AWS?

ZDNet

 

Facebook’s Open Compute tackles telecom infrastructure

I profiled Facebook’s Open Compute initiative as it launched its Prineville data center in the New Technology Elite. Now it is tackling the telecom infrastructure side

“To that end, we recently started working with a few partners on Open Packet DWDM — a packet transponder and open line transport system with open optical specifications that enable any interested party to contribute systems, components, or software. Today we’re excited to announce Voyager, a networking solution for Open Packet DWDM networks — and what we believe is the industry’s first “white box” transponder and routing solution. Our partners have helped us successfully test Voyager and begin to build an ecosystem around it. We plan to contribute the design to TIP via the Backhaul: Open Optical Packet Transport (OOPT) project group, with the aim of encouraging more open and programmable network architectures.”

Facebook

 

 

The Queen of Chaos

Sometimes this team makes Martians invade the earth. Sometimes they feign an earthquake or ecological disaster.

They strike their internal Google targets without warning.

This is Google’s renowned DiRT team, (Disaster Recovery Testing), led by director Kripa Krishnan, who has perfected the art of breaking Google over the past nine years.

Business Insider

Dropbox moves out of the cloud

actually it has built its own cloud, moving out of the Amazon cloud. From Wired

“Amazon’s cloud computing service lets anyone build and operate software without setting up their own hardware. In other words, those billions of files were stored on Amazon’s machines, rather than machines owned and operated by Dropbox.

But not anymore. Over the last two-and-a-half years, Dropbox built its own vast computer network and shifted its service onto a new breed of machines designed by its own engineers, all orchestrated by a software system built by its own programmers with a brand new programming language. Drawing on the experience of Silicon Valley veterans who erected similar technology inside Internet giants like Google and Facebook and Twitter, it has successfully moved about 90 percent of those files onto this new online empire.”