Don't Fall for Sexy
Don't Fall for Sexy
This Week in Enterprise Tech, Episode 10, was (blissfully) about more than just AI for a change, but the big message was that while sexy gets the attention, pragmatism will always win the day!
👋 Hi and welcome to The DX Report — the research hub of The DX Institute all about Digital Transformation, the Digital Experience, and the Digital Enterprise. I’m industry analyst, author, and speaker Charles Araujo, and I’m all about providing insights and analysis for enterprise IT leaders as you make the big bets about your organization’s future!
When it comes to my career in enterprise IT, there are two terms that I think best define me: storyteller and pragmatist.
I have always excelled at making complex, technical concepts understandable through storytelling, and I've always been focused on translating hype and strategic direction into pragmatic action.
The challenge is that so much of the world of tech seems to favor — at least initially — the sensational rather than the pragmatic. But I love it when the good guy (the pragmatist, in this case) wins one!
Well, this week's episode of This Week in Enterprise Tech (hosted, as always, with Amalgam Insights' CEO, Hyoun Park) was a win for pragmatists everywhere! Let me explain.
As I’m now doing, the video and audio links as well as show notes and links to all the articles we discussed are below, but first, let me set the stage for you.
The Fallacy of Sexy
One of the rules of marketing enterprise tech is that you need to stand out and get some attention before you can make any real inroads. That's why we spend so much time talking about competitive differentiation and positioning. If you're just like the next guy, why should anyone pay attention?
And it's the same story within the enterprise. One of the primary objectives should be to leverage technology to enable your organization to create competitive advantage. The question is, how do you do that?
It's tempting to think that it's about breaking all the rules and creating something brand new that the world has never seen.
Sometimes that works.
Most of the time, it doesn't.
Exhibit A was the launch of the Humane AI pin. It was roundly panned, and for good reason. It put all the focus on being new and sexy, but failed to remember that delivering value in the form of a solution to a real problem must always be the starting point to any innovation.
Unfortunately, they're not alone. The world of the now AI-fueled enterprise IT market right now seems to be almost exclusively powered by hype. But this week, we saw a bunch of news that was just the opposite.
Pragmatism May Not Be Sexy, But It Gets the Job Done
This week, we covered a lot of AI news, but what was fascinating is how much of it focused on the less sexy, but more practical elements of it. We led off with Meta's release of Llama 3. Zuckerberg is admitedly in the hype horse races, but the significance of this release is less that it competes favorably with models from OpenAI and Anthropic and more that it represents a new, more open opportunity for enterprises to bring a degree of portability and control. Pragmatic concerns.
Likewise, we covered challenges with how CIOs are looking at copilots, the Linux Foundation's effort to create an open portability standard for enterprise AI, and Workday's shift to a more open and inclusive platform approach.
All were testaments to the practical and, dare I say, mundane considerations surrounding AI implementations and enterprise software rather than the more hypey elements.
But the winner of this week's news battle was Zendesk. They announced an entire AI-augmented service platform at their annual user conference, Relate 2024. When I read through the announcements, my first reaction was, "Meh. Nothing new here."
That's because most of their innovations — AI agents, workflow automation, a copilot, AI-powered QA, etc. — have existed for some time. The thing is that they have predominately been provided by fringe players. But this is Zendesk bringing them to market in a very big way, essentially resetting the game that this is now the defacto operating model for customer service operations.
Much like companies like Apple tend to do, this isn't about Zendesk being first as much as it is about them nailing execution, taking it mainstream, and operationalizing it.
That's the essence of pragmatism. And in our hype-filled AI-focused enterprise IT world, we could use a few more heaping servings of it.
Happy listening!
🗓️ This Week in Enterprise Tech, Episode 10
For the 10th week of This Week in Enterprise Tech, Amalgam Insights' Hyoun Park and the DX Institute's Charles Araujo weigh in on eight trends for the CIO office and the strategic techie ranging from product launches to reorgs. We run the gamut in exploring Meta, Slack, Humane AI, Android, the Linux Foundation, Zendesk, Workday, and why CIOs distrust the value of Copilots (hint, it’s about the Future of Work). But who won this week in a crowded list of announcements, achievements, and launches?
Segment descriptions and links to all the articles we discuss are in the Show Notes, below.
Watch the full episode here:
Or listen to the episode here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2319034/14938633
📔 Show Notes
Meta Releases Llama 3 and Meta AI to the Wild
Meta goes all-in on AI, just as they once went all-in on the Metaverse. But this time, Mark Zuckerberg’s vision and ambition feel a bit more real, despite some initial missteps. Why did Meta have the biggest announcement of the week?
https://ai.meta.com/blog/meta-llama-3/
Slack Embraces GenAI Summarizations
Slack was the one-time leader in translating text into business activity before LLM’s took the air out of the room for basically all other technology. Is Slack’s moves towards Gen AI moving fast enough? We take a look at Slack’s latest moves with a hat tip to Venturebeat’s Shubham Sharma
https://venturebeat.com/ai/salesforce...
Why CIOs Don't Trust Productivity Claims for Copilots
$30 a month seems like a high price to pay for a lot of AI copilots. Vendors seem to be taking a cost-plus approach to pricing, but CIOs are having trouble justifying the price? Why? There’s fault on all sides, whether it be vendor inability to create trust in the value proposition or the CIO’s inability to manage teams and maximize skill utilization. Both sales and management are revealing issues here. Thanks to CIO.com’s Grant Gross for this article.
https://www.cio.com/article/2089717/c...
Lessons from the Humane AI Pin for Judging AI Claims
At first glance, Humane AI reminds us a lot of Magic Leap, which is a tough comparison. We want to like the Star Trek-like tech, but at the end of the day, Humane AI looks like an object lesson in how to differentiated between cool AI tech and well-researched AI products.
https://www.macworld.com/article/2307...
Enterprise Mobility Considerations for the New Android Team
Google says that their new Android reorganization is “all about AI.” But does everything always have to be about AI? We think there are some more practical ramifications for enterprise mobility, field service, and retail environments. Thanks to The Verge’s David Pierce for the perspective!
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/18/24...
The Linux Foundation Launches Open Platform for Enterprise AI
As AI becomes harder to parse, we are starting to see companies come together to build portability and partnerships in Enterprise AI. It’s hard to ignore Intel’s role here, but 15 companies ranging from enterprise stewards to hungry startups have come together for this initial iteration of companies focusing on OPEA
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press...
Zendesk Puts AI At Your Service at Relate 2024
Zendesk announced a slew of AI augmentations throughout their service platform at Relate 2024 including AI agents, workflow automation, an agent copilot, Workforce Management, and Quality Assurance (QA). Although the announcement sounds similar, we found a lot of meat on these bones as Zendesk aligned AI to work better than any other vendor we heard from this week.
https://www.zendesk.com/newsroom/arti...
What Workday Needs To Become The Next Great Platform
Amalgam Insights’ Hyoun Park attended the Workday Innovation Summit last week where Workday made partners and platform front and center goals for the future. Although Workday is well known as a cloud-first HR platform, it has also traditionally been known to be inflexible and closed. What needs to change for Workday to be seen as a first-class enterprise platform like SAP, Oracle, and ServiceNow? We share the tough love, both for Workday and for other vendors wanting to be seriously considered as a “Platform” by the CIO Office.