Coronavirus Era Shines a Light on the Importance of Broadband

Broadband and wireless networks have held up quite well during this month of dramatically shifting work and traffic patterns. Some of the stats are otherworldly, such as the 50%+ drop in mobile handoffs in places such as NYC, a near doubling of home streaming and work collaboration traffic, and a 50-60% increase in home voice calling minutes. Kudos are due to the service providers and the FCC for some agile, outside the box thinking, and gratitude is due to the front-line workers who are keeping the networks up and running.

The communications needs during the coronavirus crisis have cast a particular light on the importance of broadband networks. Yes, there has been a marked increase in wireless network traffic, but much of this drafts off home broadband/Wi-Fi. Even the increase in wireless voice minutes (since so many fewer homes have landlines) is using ‘voice over Wi-Fi’. For the most part, home broadband networks have held up pretty well. For the 60-70% of homes in the United States that have a 50 MB connection or better, broadband has met most of those  Zooming and Streaming requirements. Much as we might beat up the cable companies, they’ve done a pretty good job upgrading their networks over the past 3-5 years – albeit with far less fanfare than the wireless service providers. Average home broadband speed has basically doubled since 2015, and most consumers aren’t paying more.

However, these steady improvements have, like so much else in the economy, illuminated the stark difference between the haves and the have-nots. Some 30% of households in the United States are unserved or underserved by broadband, in that they have no access at all, or can only get some sort of crummy DSL service (or worse). I consider anything below a 25 MB download service as inadequate for today’s needs.

There’s a whole other category here, which is more difficult to quantify: the percentage of households who don’t have broadband simply because they can’t afford it. Then there’s the percentage of who pay the $60 monthly average cost of broadband, but struggle to do so – a number that’s sure to increase as the recession deepens. Note that even though broadband service has improved in recent years, the industry in the United States is not at all competitive. Only 50% of U.S. households have a choice of more than one good broadband service, with little prospects for this changing in a widespread way in the near-future.

There have been some important measures and initiatives to address issues of broadband availability/quality/affordability over these past few weeks. Most of the broadband service providers (SPs) have waived data caps and late payment fees, and have said they won’t turn customers’ networks off for non-payment. We’ll see how long that magnanimity lasts. Some SPs have also offered a free or very low-cost entry-level broadband service. Comcast, for example, is offering its Xfinity Internet Essentials service for free for 60 days (it’s normally $9.95) and increasing download speeds from 15 Mbps to 25 Mbps. But, we should bear in mind that the usual 15 MB service is the communications equivalent of the $15 minimum wage: it might be a ‘living wage’, but it’s not enough to live on.

In another promising sign, a not insignificant sum of money has been allocated to help improve broadband in un-served/underserved areas as part of the coronavirus stimulus bill. This should help some of the Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs), some smaller/rural telcos, and others who are seeking to upgrade their networks. Laudable though this is, it must be noted that there is no quick, easy or cheap way to get to areas not served by current physical plant. Reaching that last 10% of households is really, really hard. Satellite remains the service of last resort, but the quality ranges from abysmal to inadequate…and is super-expensive. Multiple attempts at a ‘next gen’ satellite service have either failed or fallen under the weight of the enormous capital required, OneWeb being the most recent casualty.

The telecom historian in me remains cynical of the prospects of the ‘stimulus broadband’ dollars producing any large-scale results. Billions of dollars, across multiple initiatives, have been allocated to ‘rural broadband’ over the past ten years, with very little to show for it. It’s a real mystery where some of this money has gone.

Finally, there’s the idea of wireless to the rescue. A significant increase in wireless network capacity is on the way over the next few years, through a series of already completed and upcoming spectrum auctions, in both the high (mmWave) and mid- (sub 6 GHz) bands. This, combined with the spectral efficiencies of 5G (which lower the cost of providing data), put wireless networks at least in the league of being considered as an option for unserved/underserved areas, and/or a competitive alternative in cities, which could lower the cost for consumers. Verizon remains committed to serving 30 million households with its 5G Home service within three years, and T-Mobile as part of its deal to acquire Sprint, has promised to offer a competitive broadband service to tens of millions of households, especially in un/under-served rural areas.

However, what we’ve seen out of coronavirus era usage patterns should give a sense of pause when it comes to the prospects of wireless as a home broadband alternative. Average wireless data consumption (not using Wi-Fi) from smartphones is about 8 GB per month in the United States. Average U.S. household broadband data consumption is about 300 GB per month, and now getting closer to 500 GB with the coronavirus spike. Those looking at the 3-year planning horizon should probably assume household usage approaches 1 TB per month. Even with all the improvements in wireless network capacity and spectral efficiency brought by new spectrum, industry consolidation, and 5G, wireless networks will not be able to support data requirements anywhere near that level. Wireless might be a viable alternative for a 50-100 Mbps plan with usage caps in the 200 GB range. Perhaps at a discounted level to current broadband pricing. A ‘Metro PCS’ for broadband, if you will.   Wireless should be seen as a niche home broadband service, not a broad-based solution or competitive alternative.

During this very long past month, most home-bound folks will say there are four things they wouldn’t have been able to live without: toilet paper (apparently), liquor (50% increase in sales), Netflix, and broadband. The ‘haves’ — those who live in cities and with decent incomes — are well-served by broadband networks. But good broadband service remains far from universal. And it’s big monthly nugget for many. The number of households that that will struggle to pay that broadband bill will undoubtedly increase as the coronavirus economic fallout continues in the coming months. This is something we need to think more about, and address.

Need for Multiple Video Platforms Becoming Apparent

Like most of you, I’ve been doing more than my fair share of video calls lately and feel relatively certain that the practice will continue for some time to come—even when life beyond the COVID-19 pandemic starts to return to normal. As we’ve all learned from the experience, in the proper amount and for the proper length, they can be a very effective form of communication. Plus, as many have discussed and promised for years, they do give us the flexibility to work from many different locations and, for certain types of events, can reduce the time, costs, and hassles of travel.

That’s not to say, however, that they are a cure all. As we’ve also all learned, there are definitely limitations to what can be achieved via video calls and sometimes things just get, well, awkward.

For people who don’t work at large organizations that have standardized on a single videoconferencing platform, another challenge is the need to work with, install, and learn multiple different apps. As someone who talks to lots of different companies, I can safely say that I’m pretty sure I’ve used virtually every major videoconferencing option that’s out there over the last few weeks: Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, Google Hangouts/Meet, Skype, GoToMeeting, Blue Jeans, and of course, Zoom.

Initially, I admit to being frustrated by the lack of standards across the different tools and have wondered if it wouldn’t make more sense to just have a single platform, or at least a primary one that could serve as the default. As time has gone on, however, I realize that my initial thinking was lacking a certain amount of insight. As unintuitive as it may first sound, there actually is a great deal of sense to having multiple videoconferencing apps and platforms.

To be clear, there’s definitely work that could be done to enable and/or improve the interoperability across some of these platforms–even if it’s nothing more than allowing the creation of a high-level log-in tool that could manage underlying audio and video connections to the various platforms. However, just as choice and competition in other categories ends up creating better products for everyone, the same is true with videoconferencing tools—for many different reasons.

First, as we’ve certainly started to see and learn from much of the Zoom fallout that’s started to occur, things can get ugly if too many people start to over-rely on a single platform. Not only is there the potential for reliability concerns—even on a cloud-based platform—but a platform that gets too much attention is bound to become a tempting target for hackers and other troublemakers. Stories of “Zoombombing” and other related intrusions have grown so commonplace that the FBI is even starting to investigate. Plus, nearly every day, it seems, there’s news of yet another large organization moving away from or forbidding the use of Zoom.

To the company’s credit, much of the attention and the continuing strong usage of Zoom is because they took the often awkward, painful, and unreliable process of connecting multiple people from multiple locations into a functioning video call and made it easy. For many people and some organizations, that was good enough, and thankfully, we’re starting to see other videoconferencing platforms improve these critical basics as a competitive response. That’s a win for everyone.

However, it’s also become increasingly clear that Zoom wasn’t nearly as focused on security and privacy as many people and organizations thought they were and as they should have been. From questions about encryption, to publicly accessible recordings of private calls, the routing of US calls through Chinese servers, and much more, Zoom is facing a reckoning on some of the choices they’ve made.

Other videoconferencing platforms, including Webex and GotoMeeting have been focused on privacy and security for some time—unfortunately, sometimes at the expense of ease-of-use—but it’s clear that many organizations are starting to look at other alternatives that are a better match for their security needs. Microsoft, to its credit, has made security an essential part of its relatively new Teams platform.

But even beyond the obvious critical security needs, it’s clear, in using the various videoconferencing tools, that some are better suited for different types of meetings than others. The mechanisms for sharing and annotating files, for example, take different forms among different tools. In addition, some tools have better capabilities for working within the structure of a defined multi-part meeting, such as a virtual event.

The bottom line is, it’s very difficult to find a single tool that can work for all types of meetings, all types of leaders, or even all types of company cultures. Meetings can vary tremendously across companies or even across groups within companies, so it isn’t realistic to think that a single platform is going to meet everyone’s virtual meeting needs. Choice and focus continue to be important and will likely lead many organizations to adopting several different videoconferencing tools for different meeting needs.

And let’s not forget, we won’t be doing this many video meetings for ever. While there’s little doubt that we’ll all be doing more video meetings post-pandemic than we were doing pre-pandemic, the overall number of video meetings will go down from current levels for most people. In fact, once things get back to normal, I think people are actually going to look forward to face-to-face meetings¬—despite the frustrations they often create. We’ll all just be a lot more sensitive to what types of things work in video meetings and what’s better live. That’s an improvement I think we can all look forward to.

Podcast: Microsoft 365, T-Mobile-Sprint, Network Reliability

This week’s Techpinions podcast features Carolina Milanesi, Mark Lowenstein and Bob O’Donnell discussing the release of Microsoft’s new Microsoft 365 subscription service, analyzing the impact of the T-Mobile-Sprint merger on the US telecom market and the rollout of 5G, and chatting about overall broadband and mobile network reliability during the COVID19 crisis.

Niantic Buys 6D.AI as Battle to Own the AR Cloud Begins

This week a small startup that few people outside the augmented reality (AR) industry have heard about called 6D.AI was acquired by Niantic, one of the few AR-focused companies most people do know (thanks to its hit game Pokémon Go). So why is Niantic’s acquisition of 6D.AI important? Because it could represent the opening shot in an industry-wide battle to own an essential building block of our AR future, collectively termed the AR Cloud.

What is the AR Cloud?
The AR Cloud, as the name unintentionally implies, is a somewhat amorphously defined technology that is comprised of a 3D map of the world that enables AR applications to persistently tie digital objects and experiences to specific locations in the real world. Fundamentally, it is vital because mapping the real world is essential to the future of AR if it’s going to move from purpose-built applications in the enterprise to mainstream usage. The AR Cloud will be critical to driving a feature-rich, shared AR experience across all types of AR-enabled devices from smartphones and tablets to glasses and headsets.

How important is this technology to the future of AR? Many in the industry call it the operating system (OS) for AR. We know from history that the companies that own the OS of a new technology category—think Apple, Microsoft, and Google—are the ones that tend to capture most of the revenue generated there. So, it’s no wonder that many of the tech-industry majors have begun the work of building their own versions of the AR Cloud, some quite publicly and others behind the scenes. Concurrently, we’ve seen a ton of investment into startups, such as 6D.AI and others, that are racing to build their versions of the AR Cloud.

The well-funded startup Magic Leap calls its AR Cloud the MagicVerse. Microsoft calls its service Spatial Anchors, and it is in beta supporting HoloLens, Apple’s ARKit, and Google’s ARCore. Facebook calls its version Live Maps, Google’s is Anchors, and Niantic’s is the Niantic Real World Platform. You get the picture: Everybody is in the pool, and some are being more public about it than others.

Why the AR Cloud is Key to the Future of AR
One of the reasons that AR’s biggest successes, to date, have mainly occurred in the enterprise is because there is clear value to real-world use cases there, from knowledge capture and transfer to collaboration to accessing 3D models and more. And it’s not that enterprise use cases can’t use real-world mapping; it’s that they’ve mostly dealt with the lack of mapping by using next-gen barcodes, object recognition, and other technology workarounds. But for AR to expand its commercial use cases, and to take off with consumers, the industry needs to make all of this happen automatically. My AR device needs to know where I am, and when I’m there, and it needs to recognize the digital objects that others have placed there.

Another critical element that the AR Cloud will drive is something called occlusion. A person’s AR experience is significantly improved if the digital object they are viewing is spatially aware of the real-world objects around it. So, for example, if you are watching a digital rabbit run in front of you in AR, it shouldn’t run through the real-world light post, it should run around it. And just as important, when it passes behind the light post, it should briefly disappear and then reappear on the other side. Occlusion not only drives a higher level of immersion; in time, it will be instrumental in driving better forms of interacting with these digital objects, too.

One of the issues we’re going to run into as all these companies build out their own AR clouds and make them available to the developers who create the next generation of AR apps is that persistence only works if it is universal. If my map is different from your map, and each shows different landmarks and such, it diminishes the usefulness of both maps. That’s why the Open AR Cloud organization exists. It’s mission: “to drive the development of open and interoperable AR Cloud technology, data and standards…” The company has an impressive list of contributing companies, although there are some notable hold outs. Recently the organization announced plans to build its own reference Open Spatial Computing Platform (OSCP). Keep an eye on this working group, as its ability to bring companies together to create a truly useful AR Cloud will be important.

Why Niantic’s Purchase of 6D.AI Matters
So, at the end of the day, why is the purchase of a company most people haven’t heard about by one that many have heard of important? For starters, it means one of the upstart independents has been swallowed up by one of the more prominent players. That will have a meaningful impact on developers that have built or are building apps utilizing 6D.AI’s existing services. The company says its current SDK will only remain active for another 30 days, and it will wind down its existing developer tools during that same period. A note on its site says it is shifting its focus to “helping developers build realistic AR applications through the Niantic Platform.” I hope Niantic takes good care of 6D.AI’s existing developers.

We can speculate as to why 6D.AI opted to sell now, but the broader implication is that this likely signifies that additional consolidation in this space is coming. There are simply too many companies trying to build out their own AR Clouds, and the ramp of AR in the consumer space is, quite frankly, taking longer than many of these companies expected. It was just a matter of time before we started to see more acquisitions, and likely some closures.

My hope is that purchases such as this one will help speed the development of workable AR Clouds that will deliver the experiences that we’re all looking forward to having in AR. My concern, however, is that as bigger players capture more of the technology and developer mindshare, we could be headed toward a series of walled-off AR Clouds. If that happens, it won’t be good for the industry or users.

Microsoft 365 Aims at Helping Us Navigate Our Blended Lives

In a world where productivity is no longer confined within the physical place where we work, why should the tools we use create artificial barriers for us, rather than help us blend work and play? Now more than ever, thanks to COVID-19, work and school have found a place in our homes as we are all trying to work, learn and live under one roof.

Microsoft’s vision for a blended life started almost two years ago when, at the Devices Fall Event in New York City, Microsoft’s Corporate VP, Yusuf Mehdi, mentioned for the first time Modern Life. The vision that we humans share both many tools and many goals in our work-life as we do in our private life remains true today as it was in 2018. What has changed over this period of time,  is how Microsoft will empower us to achieve that blended life. It seems to me that Modern Life has evolved from a product to a philosophy behind the products Microsoft will bring to market starting with Microsoft 365, an evolution of the consumer version of Office 365.

This is what I wrote back in 2018, commenting on Modern Life:

It is this blurring of our work life and our personal Life that Microsoft is addressing with Modern Life. Because of its history with consumers and the lack of mobile presence, Microsoft comes to this from its position of strength, which is work and the PC.
Modern Life takes those users who Microsoft caters for in a corporate environment and addresses their needs before and after they get to the Office helping them achieve what they want to achieve: finish a presentation, dialing into a call on the way home, planning a weekend away or juggle the after school calendar.
In other words, Modern Life recognizes that I am not a “worker” between 9 and 5 and a “consumer” for the rest of the time. I am a human being 24 hours a day doing different things depending on time and place but still with the same goals, values, and aspirations.
Fast forward to this week and you see two marked differences.

Confidence and Focus

What struck me about the Microsoft 365 announcement, this week, is the confidence Microsoft displayed in addressing some real pain-points and, in doing so, where it matters the most to users, which meant making its tools available first on mobile. This is a very different company from two years ago. One that knows the value of its own services and has come to fully embrace an OS-agnostic approach as the value proposition shifts to center in the cloud and AI.

And so, Microsoft Teams for consumers will be made available first on mobile, both Android and iOS, for consumers to be able to chat, share photos and videos as well as do video calls. From sharing to-do lists across the family to organizing a book club, the Teams app will become a collaboration and communication one-stop-shop. Plus, if you are one of the current 44 million corporate users, you will easily be able to toggle between your personal and your corporate account.

The second difference comes in the name Microsoft 365. To me, this signifies that the company believes they have value to offer beyond Office, beyond a more traditional concept of productivity. The name also speaks to the pillars that Microsoft’s services and apps are built on: cloud, AI,  privacy and security. Privacy, in particular, was mentioned when talking about the chat function within Teams, a very timely highlight, given this week’s news about Zoom. The other mention of privacy was in relation to a new app called Microsoft Family Safety, which helps parents keep their kids safer both in the digital and the real world. Digital safety has similar features we have seen for iOS and Android around screen time but offers the additional benefit of working across Android phones Xbox and Windows PCs. It also helps manage appropriate content when browsing which remains one of the biggest issues for parents when their kids just start to discover the Web. In real life, the focus shifts to physical safety as the app sends notifications when a family member arrives or leaves a location. The app also offers driving reports for new drivers with the promise that your information will be kept private and not shared with third parties such as insurance companies.

A Better Understanding of Consumers

What I have seen in Microsoft is indeed confidence rather than arrogance. They understand where their sweet spot is, and they want to stay true to it, which is why we did not see Microsoft get into content as others have done. Microsoft knows the brand has consumers’ trust and they know there is value in offering alternatives to existing apps by centering them on privacy and security. This is especially true when it comes to location data and financial information. So Family Safety location alerts might not be an original idea, but for those parents who use solutions like Life360, having an alternative that offers peace of mind on privacy and security is a welcome addition. The same can be said for Money in Excel, a solution that draws data from your banks and credit card accounts to create personalized insights to help you improve your spending all while your data is kept private and secure.

Microsoft does not just better understand its strengths. Microsoft understands consumers better. A blended life does not mean that I want to extend my work to home. Sometimes I might have to, but what I am looking for is a consistency of tools and workflows that allows for a more seamless transition between my personal and my professional. This realization is clear not just in the tools that Microsoft is offering within the traditional Office suite, but in the use cases they list for those new features. And so Calendar is not about accessing the work calendar in the morning to see what is coming up. Instead, it is about being able to see a family calendar right next to my work one, so that scheduling anything becomes easier. Or Word where Microsoft Editor is expanded because good writing does not only matter at work. In addition to Money for Excel, in my spreadsheets, I can now start to analyze other data like food, dogs, places, or even Pokémon.

All these services will start rolling out over the coming months with some services like Money for Excel only available in the US first due to the need to close relationships with banks and card issuers. For current users of Office Personal or Family, the additional services will all be included in the subscription as they start to roll out later in April. For new Microsoft 365 subscribers, the cost will be $6.99 for Microsoft 365 Personal and $9.99 for a family up to six users. Is it worth it? Here is some context. A monthly subscription to Grammarly is around $11 if bought as an annual subscription. Budget management apps like Dollarbird, Goodbudget and Tiller Money go from $3.99 to $6.99 a month. Life360 with Driver Protect is $7.99 a month. It seems a pretty easy decision to make from an economic standpoint but even more so from a security and privacy standpoint.

Microsoft 365 Shift Demonstrates Evolution of Cloud-Based Services

If there’s one piece of software that has held up remarkably well over several decades, it’s Microsoft’s Office suite of productivity apps. From business to personal life, the applications in Office have proven their value time and time again to people all over the world. Perhaps because of that, Microsoft has used Office as a means to push forward the definition of what software is, how it should be delivered, how it should be sold, what platforms it should run on, and much more over the last decade or so.

In June of 2011, for example, the company officially unveiled Office 365, which provided access to all the same applications in the regular suite but in a subscription-like “service” form that was delivered (and updated) via the internet. Since then, the company has added new features and functions to the service, made it available to mobile platforms such as Android and iOS, in addition to Windows and MacOS, and generally used it as a means to expand how people think about applications they use on a regular basis. In the process, Microsoft has made many people comfortable with the idea of cloud-based software becoming a cloud-based service.

Yesterday, the company took the next step in the evolution of the product and renamed the consumer, as well as the small and medium business versions of Office 365 to Microsoft 365—changes that will all occur on April 21. The name change is obviously a subtle one, but beyond the title, the changes run much deeper. Specifically, the new brand reflects how the set of applications that make up the company’s popular subscription-based offering is evolving. It also reflects how the company itself is changing.

In the case of the SMB versions of Microsoft 365, the name change is simply a branding one, which better reflects that the service includes more than just basic office productivity, particularly with the Teams collaboration tools and service. For the new consumer-oriented Personal and Family versions of Microsoft 365, the changes are more extensive.

Notably, the consumer versions of Microsoft 365 include the addition of several new applications, a number of AI-powered intelligent enhancements to existing applications and—in an important first for Microsoft—some mobile-first advancements. The new version of the Microsoft Editor function works across Word, Outlook.com, and the web, and is essentially a Grammarly competitor that moves beyond simple spell and grammar checking to making AI-powered rewriting suggestions, avoiding plagiarism and more.

The AI-based Designer feature in PowerPoint—which I have found to be incredibly useful—has been enhanced in this latest version of Microsoft 365 to support a wider array of content that it can “beautify” and includes support for a greatly expanded library of supplementary graphics, videos, fonts and templates.
The biggest change to Excel is the forthcoming addition of Money for Excel, an add-in that gives it Quicken-like money and account management features. In addition, working in conjunction with Wolfram Alpha, Microsoft is adding in support for over 100 new “smart” data types that makes it significantly easier to track everything from calories to travel locations and more. In essence, it provides the type of intelligence that people may have expected computing devices and applications to have all along.

The addition of both Teams (for Consumers) and Family Safety are interesting because of the capabilities they bring to the service and because both will launch first on mobile OSes—Android and iOS. Microsoft has had mobile versions of its main productivity suite apps, as well as its One Drive storage service for a while now, but this Microsoft 365 launch marks the first time the company will debut new apps in mobile form. On the one hand, the move is logical and not terribly surprising given how much people use their mobile devices today—particularly for communications and tracking, which are the core functions of Teams and Family Safety respectively. Nevertheless, it’s still noteworthy, because it does show how Microsoft has been able to pivot on its typical “deliver on PC first” strategy and keep itself as relevant as possible.

In the case of Teams, the company isn’t replicating its Enterprise version, but instead has developed a consumer-focused edition that allows for real-time chats, document sharing, creating and tracking lists, and more in a manner that should make sense for most consumers. Family Safety is completely new and allows parents to provide limits and controls on digital device usage and content, as well as track the physical location and even driving of other family members. Importantly, Microsoft made the point to say that it’s doing all these things without sharing (or certainly not selling) any of this information to auto insurance companies, advertisers or any other companies. While the company would have undoubtedly created a bit of an outcry if it did any of that, it was still reassuring to hear a big tech vendor emphasize these privacy and security-focused concerns. Let’s hope all major tech vendors follow suit.

Speaking of privacy and security, Microsoft took the opportunity with its Microsoft 365 launch announcement to also unveil the latest version of Microsoft Edge, the company’s significantly improved browser. In addition to several convenience-based features, such as the addition of vertical tabs, smart copying from web pages, and the ability to easily create portable “collections” of content from web-based sources, the company debuted some important privacy features as well. Password Monitor, for example, can automatically track whether any of your logins are available on the dark web and encourage you to change your passwords on sites where that may have occurred. Given the huge number of security breaches and data exposure that have impacted almost all of us at this point, this could prove to be an incredibly valuable new feature. In addition, the company added refined tracking controls that allows you to set the amount information you are willing to share with other websites as a result of your browsing sessions.

All told, it was a pretty impressive set of announcements that highlights how Microsoft has managed to continue adjusting its strategies to match the changing needs of the market and its customers. Of course, many consumers will still be content using the free versions of the basic Office applications and services that Microsoft will continue to make available even after April 21. However, the functionality that the company has built into its new Microsoft 365 Personal and Family offerings will be compelling enough for many to make the switch, and the success that the Office suite of applications has enjoyed for so long will continue with the new Microsoft 365.

Podcast: Technology and Remote Education

Ben Bajarin and Carolina Milanesi are joined by special guest Dr. Mitchell Salerno who is head of school at Monta Vista Christian School.

They discuss the school’s rapid transition to distance learning, the role technology played, and challenges and opportunities learned from distance learning.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast client or Apple iTunes Podcasts.

Some “Lighter Side” Headlines For the Coronavirus Era

For most of us, the past couple of weeks have been ‘all coronavirus all the time’, whether personally, professionally, or financially. I just looked at my work e-mail inbox, and 80% of messages have COVID-19 in the subject line. So it’s time to take a break from adding to the chorus of bleak forecasts or recommendations on what XYZ company should do. With April Fools approaching, here’s an attempted humorous take at some of the headlines we might see coming out of the tech and telecom worlds over the next couple of weeks.

WeWork To Change Its Name to iWork. With nearly all co-working places closed worldwide and the massive shift to working remotely, the company has been advised that anything connoted to the concept of ‘We’ will take an even bigger chunk out of WeWork’s ongoing valuation freefall. Adam Neumann, the company’s beleaguered former CEO, has suggested that the stock symbol for its future IPO should be just “I”, rather than “WE”.

Apple Temporarily Disabling Screen Time Feature. Nearly two years ago, Apple introduced a feature called Screen Time, to help customers take control over how much time they’re spending on their various iDevices. But with the kids at home for an extended period and parents also pulling their hair out, Apple has decided it’s better for everyone’s mental health if they just simply don’t see that their usage across all screens roughly mirrors the hockey-stick-like surge in confirmed coronavirus cases.

New TV Show To Debut on Netflix: “Billionaire Island”. Part ‘Survivor’ and part ‘Hunger Games’, this new series puts 12 tech billionaires infected with coronavirus on an island, without any access to PPEs or ventilators. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have signed on as advisors to the show, and, as one would expect, they’ve designed some interesting challenges and plot twists.

Secret Emerges in DISH offer to Lend Spectrum to T-Mobile. DISH’s offer let T-Mobile use a chunk of its 600 MHz spectrum for free in order to help meet network capacity demands in the coming weeks is laudable. Many were surprised, however, since DISH has been hoarding its spectrum for years. We’ve since learned that in a break during the negotiations between DISH and T-Mobile that helped get the Sprint deal done, John Legere challenged Charlie Ergen (a famous poker player) to a game of Texas Hold ‘Em, using spectrum channels rather than dollars, as currency. The evening ended with Legere up about 30 MHz.

Alexa To Be Used to Help Identify Those With Coronavirus. The shortage of test kits for the coronavirus continues to be a serious problem. But tech companies are stepping up. In his news conference yesterday, President Trump announced a new arrangement with Amazon, whereby anyone who says “I might have coronavirus” within earshot of Alexa will be entered into a national database, as a first step in determining who should get tested. The president added “If  Amazon does a good job, we might take another look at that JEDI contract”.

Fund Managers Start Shorting Netflix Stock. This might seem like a counterintuitive move, since it appears that we’re all homebound for the long haul. However, it’s possible that we’ll have cycled through pretty much everything Netflix has to offer — something that until recently seemed mathematically impossible — which could lead to significant numbers of subscribers dumping Netflix once they’re actually allowed to go.out.again.

Airlines Will Make a Huge Comeback…With $1,000 Bag Fees. Airlines are the good cop/bad cop of corporate America. During the past ten flush years, they’ve done nearly everything possible to make the flying experience less pleasant. Now, they’re being all nicey-nicey, waiving change fees, cancel fees, and baiting you with $30 fares to Hawaii. But when flying returns, you can bet that they’ll be looking at all sorts of creative ways to recoup their losses. We hear they’re considering $1,000 bag fees, surcharges for crying children, and huge fines for anyone boarding a plane with so much as a runny nose.

Facebook to Relaunch Facebook Dating as A Virtual Service. Facebook received a huge amount of bad press when it launched the Facebook Dating app not long after CEO Mark Zuckerberg was summoned to testify in front of Congress about customer privacy concerns. Predictably, the app has not been a standout success. However, we hear that Facebook has pivoted and is re-casting Facebook Dating for the coronavirus era. In a press release, the company said, “Our whole company was built on the basis of people virtually, rather than actually, interacting. Facebook Dating is the logical extension of that, and is perfect for these times, since people can only virtually, and not actually, date”.

Two New Coronavirus-Era Reality Shows Being Rushed to Market:

  • ‘Zoom Bloopers’, Hulu. Next week will mark the debut of the show on Hulu. Zoom users — who now equal about 100% of the U.S. population — will be asked to send in videos of their favorite Zoom fails and embarrassing moments. Categories include: Most Embarrassing Unmute Moment; Worst Audio of the Week; Most Distracting Behavior by a Child During a Work-From-Home Zoom Call;  Best Example of Someone Getting Frustrated Learning How the F___ To Use This Thing;  and You Shoulda Left the Camera Off.
  • ‘Work From Home War Stories’, Netflix. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have never worked from home are now getting adjusted to this new reality. Well, this sure works better for some than others. Sketches for the first couple of episodes include: WFH Will Ruin My Marriage; Odd Spaces for Home Offices; Sweatpants Are The New ‘Business Casual’; One Thousand Ways to Distract Your Kids So You Can Actually Work For Ten Minutes; These Types of Classes Just Don’t Work For Online Learning; and Foods Not To Eat While On a Conference Call. People will be able to nominate their colleagues for a special award, to be given at the end of each episode: Least Effective Home Worker Of The Week

Stay safe, stay healthy, and stay sane.

The Time for Pragmatism in Tech is Now

The tech industry has always prided itself—and for good reason—on describing and building products, services, and even business models that look to the future. In fact, the technologies behind many of today’s advances are arguably helping define our future. Because of that, it’s become quite normal to think and talk about these developments as having to unfold over the course of several years before their true impact can be accurately measured.

But the COVID-19 crisis is focusing a dramatically different lens on many of these efforts and forcing companies to think (and act) on completely different timelines. It’s also getting people to think differently about what technology products can and can’t do for them, which is leading to some important reassessments of what really matters as well as what’s truly useful and what isn’t. Frankly, in many instances, it’s a rethinking that’s been overdue.

Reassessing and/or revising expectations has some potentially profound implications for tech companies, which can then smartly recognize ways they can shift both their messaging and even their product strategies. It also opens up some interesting opportunities to make meaningful improvements in existing products. Last, but certainly not least, it also provides an incredible opportunity for at least some portion of the tech industry to turn the increasingly negative narrative about big tech around and to reposition the tech industry as a beneficent force that can help improve our society and our world.

Thankfully, the manifestations of these new approaches are already starting to happen in both big ways and small. T-Mobile, for example, quickly got the FCC to give its approval for what’s called Temporary Spectrum Access to increase the available bandwidth they had at 600 MHz—which the company uses for both 4G and 5G service—by essentially “borrowing” unused spectrum from Dish and Comcast. Because T-Mobile had already built-up a good part of its network infrastructure for its 5G deployment, it was able to move much more quickly than it would have otherwise been able to. In addition, the company followed up this week by also launching a new low-cost ($15/month) plan sooner than originally planned. For their part, both AT&T and Verizon also joined in the FCC’s Keep Americans Connected Pledge and made similar efforts of their own to increase available bandwidth, remove data caps for broadband services, pledge not to turn off connectivity plans due to financial hardship caused by the crisis, and more.

Collectively, these quick efforts showed the telecom industry as a whole to be very responsive and sensitive to the issues at hand, all of which should certainly go a long way in improving consumers’ perception of them. Throw in the fact that, as of now, the critical telecom and data delivery infrastructure has held up remarkably well given the huge increase in traffic it’s had to deal with from the many people working and living exclusively at home, and it’s arguably been an impressive week or two for the telecom industry.

Yet another interesting example and set of data comes from Cisco, whose equipment powers large segments of these infrastructure networks. On a call with Cisco executives and CEO Chuck Robbins, the company talked about having to approach these network loads in entirely different ways than they had in the past. Rather than taking a more systematic approach to problem solving, they freely discussed having to make adjustments in real time—a clearly different approach to what they’d done in the past, and yet, based on what we’ve been experiencing, a successful one.

Not surprisingly, the Cisco execs also discussed the incredibly robust demand they’ve seen for their networking products—every company is looking to their bandwidth—as well as the enormous traffic increase (up to 24x) that they’ve seen for their Webex videoconferencing and remote collaboration services. Clearly, these are things that companies need immediately, so Cisco’s ability to adjust its own networks on the fly to meet these huge demands speaks volumes about the pragmatic approach the company is taking to address these issues. One interesting side note from the Cisco call was that the vast majority of Webex client software downloads was for PCs over smartphones, once again highlighting the real-world value that PCs (laptops in particular) continue to play.

In a different and yet thematically related development, IBM, along with a number of government labs and technology partners like HPE, made the decision to open up access to many of the world’s fast and most powerful supercomputers to scientists who are working to battle the virus. It was a smart, fast, pragmatic decision that serves an incredibly important cause and highlights, in a very public way, the efforts that IBM is making to assist in whatever way it can.
Of course, many other tech companies also announced their own efforts to address some of the concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic has created. In fact, as a long-time industry observer, it was very encouraging and even heartwarming to see how much concern that the tech industry was displaying. While it may prove to be short-lived, there also seems to be much more willingness for companies to consider partnering with each other to help create new solutions that, in otherwise normal times, might not happen.

Even with these efforts to provide quick benefits, however, the new “normal” has made it clear that much work still needs to be done, particularly in making some tech products and services easier to use. Case in point: given the huge increase in video calls that I and most other people are now experiencing, it’s easy to find instances in applications like videoconferencing that need to be improved—and quickly. If you’ve ever suffered through trying to troubleshoot your audio and video connections for these calls, for example (and let’s be honest, who hasn’t), then you understand the need. Something as obvious as having a button on the main page of an online service or in the launch screen of a videoconferencing app to let you test your connection (or even better, to use some kind of AI or other software intelligence to fix it automatically), without having to log-in to an account or find the buried preference settings, seems like a very easy thing to do, yet, it’s just not there. These are the kind of small pragmatic differences that companies should also be thinking about.

To be clear, the more pragmatic approach to creating, marketing, and even selling tech products that the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing upon us doesn’t have to come completely at the expense of forward-looking technology advances. The R&D-focused efforts within the tech industry that are enabling things like quantum computing, or the latest neuromorphic chips that Intel recently unveiled, remain an absolutely essential and defining part of the business. The difference now, and likely into the foreseeable future, is really more one of focus and emphasis. Companies need to look much harder at the types of changes they can make here and now both to existing products and upcoming products. I’d argue that the tech industry had gone a little too far down the path of promising long-term revolutions without thinking enough about short-term implications. If nothing else, I expect that one of the more important outcomes that will linger on after we pass this crisis will be more attention to what kind of ideas, products, and services make a difference in the near-term—not just in some far off “vision” for where things might go.

Of course, it’s also important to remember that necessity is the mother of invention, and there are likely few times in recorded history when the necessity of thinking and acting differently has been more urgent. As a result, an even more important silver lining from our current crisis is that we will soon start to see and enjoy the inventive benefits of many of the most brilliant minds in the world who are spending their time thinking, from a present-focused pragmatic perspective, about how to solve many types of tech-related problems both big and small. It’s not clear when, how, or in what exact form those innovations will appear, but I have absolutely no doubt that they will arrive and that we will all benefit from them.

Podcast: Apple Product Launch, Sony PS5 and Microsoft Xbox X, Intel Neuromorphic Chip

This week’s Techpinions podcast features Carolina Milanesi and Bob O’Donnell analyzing Apple’s surprise launch of their new iPad Pro, Magic Keyboard, and updated Macbook Air and Mac Mini, discussing the product spec reveal this week of the forthcoming AMD-powered PS5 and Xbox X gaming consoles, and chatting about the innovations enabled with Intel’s latest neuromorphic chip.

Apple’s Quiet Launch Brings Welcome Updates

Apple skipped the virtual press event and launched its latest updates to the iPad Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac Mini via press release. Without executives on stage, it may have felt like a quiet launch, but Apple is delivering some key updates here that should make some serious noise in the market.

iPad Pro with LiDAR Scanner
Apple continues to iterate on its world-class iPad Pro form factor. The latest 11- and 12.9-inch versions of the high-end tablet feature a new A12Z Bionic chip, a Pro camera system with a 12MP Wide and a 10MP Ultra Wide camera, and five studio-quality microphones. Perhaps the most notable new hardware feature is the LiDAR Scanner, which Apple says can measure the distance to surrounding objects up to five meters away. The company says the scanner, combined with the new camera and new computer vision algorithms on the A12Z, will drive improved augmented reality experiences.

Rumors last year suggested that Apple had hoped to add the LiDAR Scanner to at least one version of the iPhone, but it wasn’t yet ready. Its inclusion here suggests we can expect to see it ship on one or more of this year’s phones, too (although its placement where the iPhone Pro’s current third lens resides brings up some interesting questions). LiDAR is short for Light Detection and Ranging, and I’m a little surprised Apple marketing didn’t come up with a better name for its version of this technology. Others have called similar technologies “time of flight” sensors, which isn’t much more user friendly. While the naming isn’t sexy, the capabilities should be. Essentially the LiDAR Scanner should drive much more robust AR experiences on the device. Apple points to instant AR placement, improved motion capture, and people occlusion.

I’m pleased to see Apple continuing to push forward with AR methodically. These new hardware features, coupled with continued updates to iPadOS, should result in some of the best AR experiences you can have on a handheld device. It will be interesting to see how developers utilize these new features to improve their existing apps and create new ones. It’s worth noting that mobile devices like the iPad also continue to be a primary way many enterprise organizations are testing the waters of AR usage. I expect commercial-focused SDKs and applications—such as PTC’s Vuforia Engine and Vuforia Studio—will begin to leverage these new features straight away.

The other big iPad-related announcement was the addition of touchpad support to iPadOS and a supporting product, called the Magic Keyboard, which is due to ship in May. The Magic Keyboard may well represent the most wished-for product of many die-hard iPad loyalists. It attaches to the iPad Pro via magnets, and it allows for screen angle adjustments. In addition to the all-important touchpad, it includes scissor mechanism keys (with 1mm of travel) and—super importantly—a Type C USB port for charging that leaves the existing iPad Type C port open for accessories.

I can’t wait to try out the new Magic Keyboard, and I’m pleased to see that it will work with existing iPad Pro models. From a design perspective—and without having used it yet—the biggest issue I have is that Apple continues to leave out a place to store the Apple Pencil securely. I’ve been using a $10 case that brilliantly holds the pencil where it can charge, and it never falls off in my bag. Microsoft cleverly addressed this same issue with its Surface Pro X Signature keyboard. It boggles my mind that Apple won’t make this simple feature available in its cases. Beyond that design issue, my other biggest quibble is Apple’s pricing for the Magic Keyboard, which starts at $299. Yes, there are some great new features in the product, and I rarely criticize Apple for its premium pricing, but that price tag is too high. Yes, Microsoft charges $269 for the Surface Pro X Signature keyboard, but that price includes the Slim Pen, whereas you must buy the Apple Pencil 2 separately from Apple for another $119. That means, all in, a new entry-level 11-inch iPad Pro with all the accessories will cost $1,167. That feels too high at a time when iPadOS still feels like a work in progress. Will I buy one? Yes. But at $299, it feels as if Apple missed an opportunity to cast a wider net with this product launch.

Updated MacBook Air, Mac Mini
I’m not happy with Apple’s Magic Keyboard pricing for the iPad Pro, but I am pleased that the company lowered the starting price for its updated MacBook Air to $999. The new notebook features the new Magic Keyboard, faster Intel processors, and a new base-level storage allotment of 256GB.

Each of these new additions is incredibly important. One by one, Apple is replacing the products in its lineup that shipped with the former flawed keyboard design, and now its entry-level buyers can once again buy a notebook with a keyboard that should last the lifetime of the device. The processor upgrade is also huge and moves the lineup from Intel’s 8th generation to its 10th generation products. Apple says to expect a 2X performance boost plus 80% faster graphics. The $999 product is a 1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core i3 processor; an extra $100 buys the 1.1-GHz i5, or $250 buys you a 1.2-GHz i7.

Apple also updated the Mac mini, increasing the storage of the starting $799 product to include 256GB instead of the previous 128GB. I’m happy to see Apple showing the mini some love again, although I would have liked to see a processor bump here, too.

A Strong Lineup in Uncertain Times
As we head into the second quarter of the year, Apple’s iPad and Mac lineups are looking quite robust. Pricing complaints aside, the iPad Pro continues to be one of the most technically impressive hardware products on the planet. iPad OS still needs work, but I’m hoping to see it evolve into something on par with the hardware in the next 18-24 months. The new MacBook Air addresses some of the primary issues many people had about the product and should return it to its former “easy recommendation” status. And more storage for the Mac Mini is a plus.

The real question Apple faces–along with the rest of the technology industry—is what the market will look like for the remainder of the year. As an increasing number of countries move to address the ongoing threat of COVID-19, we already see dramatically negative impacts on the world economy. While we’ve seen an early surge in technology buying as consumers and companies buy products to facilitate working and educating at home, we’re likely to see a significant slowdown in the coming months as everyone waits to see how things play out. Strange times, indeed.
As we find our way forward, please be kind to each other and stay safe.

Apple In The Time of Coronavirus

The rumors about an Apple event in March had been mounting since the start of 2020. Still, the string of cancellations of every live tech event and conference from February to July had people believing Apple would pivot to an online event to launch what was expected to be a low-cost iPhone, a new iPad Pro and a new MacBook Pro. Then, last week, the COVID19 crisis accelerated across several locations, including Apple’s backyard: Silicon Valley. A date for WWDC was announced and with it the news that the event will be a virtual one. I am sure even for the most avid fans, whether or not Apple was going to have a product launch was no longer top of mind and many might have thought this was not the best time to have a product launch.

To Launch or Not To Launch

I have no insights into the thought process that lead Apple to launch its products, but there were a few things that stood out to me about the process. Some might argue that this was not a time to launch any consumer products. The reality, however, is that the uncertainty of how long this situation will last makes it hard to delay products as doing so might impact other products coming to market later in the year. Also, although brick and mortar stores are closed in many markets, online stores are still open for business.

I thought the way Apple decided to launch was sympathetic to the mood we are all in. There was no live event, which could have been an option we have seen other brands adopt. Instead, there was a press release, a landing page for each product like we usually have and video ads and demos. The video showcasing the iPad Pro new Magic keyboard saw a much less exuberant Craig Federighi than we are used to seeing on stage. There was contained excitement for the product, but the demo was delivered in a very matter of fact way acknowledging the unique situation we are finding ourselves in.

There was one product that was expected to be part of this launch that we did not see and that is the rumored lower-priced iPhone. It could well be that Apple might be facing some supply issues, but I would not be surprised, although I doubt, we will ever know for sure if delaying the launch of that specific product has to do with the COVID19 crisis. A more affordable iPhone would have its greater appeal among potential buyers who have a more limited disposable income. I would argue the economic uncertainty tied to COVID19 is likely to impact this target market the most. That said, I believe the choice Apple made not to launch the new iPhone model at this time had more to do with not being out of touch with reality than a concern about weaker consumer confidence.

Three Thoughts on the New iPad Pro

And now onto the product that most interests me: the new iPad Pro. I will have more to say once I get my hands on one, but from the demos, there were a few general observations I wanted to make.

The Trackpad

I have never been one of those iPad users calling for trackpad support, I was just going to be content with a backlit keyboard, but I got both! What struck me about the demo that Federighi delivered was that the trackpad is more akin to the MacBook TouchBar than the trackpad on the Mac, which is why I believe we will see it go from the iPad Pro to the Mac. The idea is for the trackpad to keep the hands where you have them when typing but allowing you to interact with content on the screen as if you were touching it. Wouldn’t that be what you want to do with a Mac?

PC vs. iPad Pro

The “How to correctly use a computer” video has evolved from the “what’s a computer” video of a couple of years ago. The focus shifted from what the hardware should look and feel to how the hardware defines the way we work. It seems subtle, but as the iPad Pro gets closer to the Microsoft Surface Pro, at least conceptually, moving the conversation to how people work points exactly to differences such as the role of a trackpad as well as the app ecosystem.

Software

Over the years, the big argument people would make on whether the iPad Pro could replace a PC was centered around three things: better keyboard, mouse support, and software. Now that Apple has delivered on the hardware front, the software is what needs to be addressed.

In my view, this means that the race that used to be iPad vs. Surface Pro becomes iPadOS+MacOS vs. Windows 10x. With Panos Panay now leading the Windows effort, I would expect a new emphasis on ease of use and richness of the experience. I also expect a lot of learning coming from the effort that Microsoft is putting into Android and bringing Android and Windows closer together.

Even switching from hardware to software, it is interesting to see how these two companies are heading towards a very similar final goal but coming at it from the opposite direction. iPadOS users are calling for software that can handle more, while Windows users are asking for a much slender software. It sure will be interesting to see where we go from here.

The Value of Contingencies and Remote Collaboration

The stark realities that we’re all facing from the COVID-19 pandemic unfortunately won’t be going away any time soon. The simple truth is that life is just going to be different for a while. Let’s hope that the extraordinary efforts that companies and people are taking to minimize the spread of the virus prove to be effective sooner rather than later.

In the meantime, however, it’s clearly time to settle into new modes of working, with technology obviously playing a key role. Work at home numbers are going to shoot up tremendously, for example, and many people are about to get a crash course in things that work well—and things that don’t—in that environment. (By the way, if you’re looking for some advice and pointers on the subject based on years of experience, check out the latest Techpinions podcast: https://techpinions.com/podcast-working-from-home/59461)

In addition, many companies are going to have to start up whatever contingency and emergency plans they have in place. The speed at which events are occurring and situations are shifting is undoubtedly catching even the most well-prepared organizations off-guard to some degree. Once things start to settle down, however, the critical importance and value of technology-enabled contingency plans should start to become very obvious.

Unfortunately, there are likely several companies that didn’t have those types of plans in place. In addition, there may be an even larger number that had a basic plan in place but didn’t take it to the level that our current situation has created. (To be fair, it would have been hard for anybody to really predict the speed and depth of impact that COVID-19 has created.) The challenge for these organizations will be to quickly put together plans that can help them adapt in the best way possible to the new environment. I have no doubt that, in fact, that’s exactly what a lot of IT professionals are in the process of doing as we speak.

The good news is that we now have access to an amazing array of different technology-based options to help address at least some of the challenges organizations are going to be facing. Additionally, thanks to a series of encouraging announcements, a wide range of tech companies, carriers and others are pitching in to make their services free or to reduce data caps in order to ease the potential limitations of network bandwidth.

From high-quality videoconferencing solutions, to fast, reliable broadband networks, to mature cloud-based collaboration software tools, the tech industry has never had a wider range of tools to help ease the process of working at home (or remotely). In fact, once we get past all this, there’s little doubt that we’ll look back at these next few months as being a defining moment for remote collaboration. The extensive use of these tools is also going to be an incredibly valuable real-time experiment that will clearly expose the real advantages (and challenges) of existing tools. Hopefully, these next few weeks will also quickly lead to tweaks and adjustments that make them easier and more reliable. If these tools do perform well, they could end up becoming significantly more important in the average worker’s arsenal even beyond this crisis. Of course, if they don’t work well for many, expect to see some serious pushback against them.

In addition to these basic remote work enablement capabilities, there are a number of more nuanced factors that are going to come into play, particularly as time goes on. Even if companies have the basic tools they need to enable collaboration, for example, what level of control or management do they have over the devices or the networks being used to do that work? Those are details that can get overlooked in basic contingency plans but need to be a factor for longer-term emergency plans that, hopefully, every company is now creating, if they haven’t already.

If we learn nothing else from this crisis, it should be abundantly clear to all that the need for creating plans that allow business continuity in even the most challenging of situations is absolutely essential. There should be little doubt that aggressively leveraging the new types of remote connectivity and collaboration tools now available needs to be a critical part of those plans.

Podcast: Working from Home

This week’s Techpinions podcast, which features Ben Bajarin and Bob O’Donnell, takes a different approach than normal and features an in-depth conversation on how to make the best of working from home, providing advice and best practices gained from many years of personal experience on everything from developing habits, to optimizing your connectivity, to leveraging the right kind of tech equipment and more.

Another Remote Work Take Or Remote Work Does Not Suck

I am sure by now you had enough about people pitching remote work and how the future will change because of what we are all experiencing due to COVID-19. I already wrote about how frustrating it is that it takes a pandemic, now an official one, to look at how far tech has come to empower remote work. I also warned about the need for companies to take seriously the cultural change that needs to occur to leverage remote work after this crisis is over.

So why am I writing about this again? I read an article earlier this week that really struck a nerve for the many generalizations that the author made on who benefits from remote work and how remote work negatively impacts creativity.

In my career, I have worked both from an office and remotely. I have done so both in the UK and in the US. My experience is my own. We are all a little different, the work we do might be different and the companies we work for are also different making each situation almost unique. So I will try my best not to succumb to generalization just to prove a different point from that expressed in the article and that is remote work does not have to suck.

Who Can Benefit From Working Remotely?

The article calls out new parents as a group that can benefit from working remotely. When I had my daughter, I was still in the UK and I was already working remotely. Those first few months were the hardest I ever had as a remote worker, so I am not sure it was quite a benefit. If you are a mother and you are breastfeeding, working from home allows demand and supply to be in the same location, which certainly simplifies things. Yet, trying to adjust to being a new parent while working all under the same roof makes boundaries much harder. As breastfeeding did not last long for me, I opted to go into the office for a few hours a week as a way to create a separation between me as a mom and me as a business person. Generally, I would say it is not feasible to work from home while looking after a child of any age unless it is for a limited amount of time, like during an illness or a bad weather day when one can temporarily rearrange calls and deadlines.

The other group the article suggests could benefit from working from home are “people with disabilities or others who aren’t well-served by a traditional office set-up.” I would think the hardest part for many in this group is commuting rather than actually being in the office. There is no question that cities could make it much easier to support people with disabilities when it comes to commuting. Often as I battled through the London underground during rush hour I wonder how visually impaired people or people using a wheelchair dealt with the number of stairs and escalators let alone the number of people.

Commuting is also tasking, of course not to the same extent, for people who do not have disabilities. The level of stress that commuting adds to our life impacts both our physical and mental health. In 2017, a study developed by VitalityHealth, the University of Cambridge, RAND Europe and Mercer, examined the impact of commuting on employee health and productivity across more than 34,000 workers across all UK industries. Commutes longer than 30 minutes appeared to have a negative effect on mental wellbeing with 33% of longer commute workers more likely to suffer from depression, 12% more likely to report multiple aspects of work-related stress, 46% more likely to get less than the recommended seven hours of sleep each night and 21% more likely to be obese.

There are other groups who I think could take advantage of working remotely and those are people who do not live in areas where work opportunities are plentiful. For some of these people moving to look for a job might mean not being able to afford a decent home or leaving behind any family support which could help with caring for their kids. It could also mean they are the ones unable to do the caring for family members, for instance.

Remote working might also result in a more diverse workforce. Companies not limiting their talent sourcing to the cities and counties where they have offices might make it easier to attract talent from different ethnicities. Take the tech sector and San Francisco as an example where, in 1970, the Black population represented around 13% of the total population and by 2018, that number was down to less than 6%. How can tech improve diversity if it is fighting against decreasing numbers of available candidates? Also, how can these companies attract diverse employees when it often means not having a community they can belong to?

Productivity and Creativity

I am not sure one could ever settle the discussion on remote work productivity and the jokes I have seen on Twitter over the past week are really not helping. There is this fantasy that working from home means you are less productive because you are easily distracted by family, roommates, pets, delivery people, the TV and apparently whatever else is in your home. While a little self-discipline is required, the distractions are only different, not necessarily less than what an open office can offer. Those who argue for higher productivity often mention the lack of commute time, which can impact how present or more relaxed one is by the time they sit at their desk but might not necessarily result in more hours spent working.

On creativity, the author is clear that working from home kills your creativity because of the lack of stimuli, he even quotes Steve Jobs about how staring at email does not help. But who stairs at email now? The reality is that with today’s technology, you can brainstorm, collaborate and connect in so many different ways and have a quality experience. Being in the office does not necessarily guarantee you are where your team members are, especially if you are working with international teams. The chances of those casual conversations by the micro-kitchen being always about work are also pretty slim. Not that my colleague Ben Bajarin and I should be used as an example, but we are rarely in the same place unless we are traveling. We both work from home and have our best brainstorming session over chat or iMessage. I am also more connected to Ben than I ever been to most of the people I saw every day at my old office.

Working Remotely Does Not Mean Being Alone

The current circumstances are, of course, very unique as we practice social distancing, but in general, working remotely does not mean being alone. The more people in the team are remote, the more the company will have a culture of inclusion and you will not feel like the odd one out. Just this past week seeing most of the people I had meetings with working from their home office rather than all being around one conference tablet and me dialing in from home made a big difference in how we all felt we belonged equally.

The more important point, though, is that remote work gives you the flexibility to include work out time, or running an errand over your lunch break, catching up with a colleague or a client over coffee, and the list goes on. Yes, the jokes about never taking your pajamas off might have some truth for the first couple of days and there are some people for whom remote work could lead to depression induced by isolation, which is no joking matter. Still, with a little proactiveness in setting up human contact and technology that improves telepresence, I think most people would find it quiet but not lonely.

 

So, do I think that remote work sucks? Absolutely not. Do I believe that remote work is for everybody? Of course not. If you are new to remote work and you want to see if it might be something you want to continue to do once the emergency is over, give it some thought. Evaluate the pros and cons, looks at the technology both devices and software that might help you improve the quality of your experience – this is the time to ask for what you need – and try to get into a routine.

Could Tech Actually Save Bricks and Mortar Retail?

There’s no question that e-commerce has changed the retail landscape forever. The hollowing out of physical stores started with books and Amazon and has now touched nearly every retail sector. In the latest wave, traditional malls, big box stores, and even grocery stores are feeling the effect.

But a recent trip down a storied Boston shopping street proffers hope that bricks and mortar retail might experience a sort of rebirth. And, ironically tech is playing a part.

Newbury Street in Boston’s tony Back Bay neighborhood has experienced all the familiar phases of retail over the past 30 years. For a long time, Newbury St., which runs for about 1 mile between Boston Public Garden and Kenmore Square was a high-end retail district, lined with boutique shops, galleries, and a few restaurants. That began to change in the 1990s, when the continued escalation in rents and the growth of big box stores resulted in the “mall-ification” of Newbury St. Even though the neighborhood remained delightful for walking,  Newbury St., which is populated by three to four story brownstones and mid-rise commercial buildings, started to look like the outdoor version of a typical American mall. Cue the Gap, Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, Urban Outfitters, and the like. A Tower Records store became a Best Buy.

But with the continued rise of Amazon and online shopping, and growing fatigue with the genericization of the retail shopping experience, business at many of these retail outlets started to fade. Vacancies, even in an otherwise healthy economic times, started to rise. And then, about three years ago when things were starting to look downright depressing, Newbury St. started to experience somewhat of a rebirth. Now, it’s still a work-in-progress, and there’s no doubt that retail remains a particular challenge…but the trendlines are cautiously encouraging. Ironically, e-commerce, tech, and big data have influenced or helped make this happen. How?

First, there’s the growth of what I call micro-segments, which are surely enabled by big data and social networking. For clothing, it used to be, there were men’s stores, women’s stores, and children’s stores. Now, these tend to be higher-end stores geared toward much more specific segments. The generic wedding shop is now Firas Yousif Originals Bridal, which makes custom gowns and women’s evening wear. There’s No Rest for Bridget, which has an ever-rotating line of trendy women’s clothing and accessories. Mulberry Rd. is the same idea, but for infant and kids clothing. The Fish & Bone, for pets. Allsaints has 200+ stores worldwide, catering to the ‘chic and edgy’ segment. There’s a block-long ‘athletic cluster’, consisting of Patagonia, Arc’teryx, North Face, and Fjällräven, all surrounded by yoga boutiques, a bike shop, a boxing club, and a Boston Sports Club.

Microsegments also include niches, such as Barbour, the British brand of cotton waxed jackets English country apparel, Akris, which features a Swiss line of womenswear and accessories, and Alps and Meters for luxury alpine sportswear.

Then there’s a group of stores that the increasingly sophisticated supply chain at least partially enables. Ministry of Supply is a men’s clothing shop whose main appeal is affordable custom-made wear. You stop in, are offered a coffee, and then get measured for an item that you actually have to pick up two weeks later…all while buying a sweater or some accessory that sits on their rather sparse shelves.

Third, are the types of stores that e-commerce can’t replace. Goorin Brothers Hat Shop still survives, since hats are probably something you don’t really buy online. Or the more modern Topdrawer, which sells pens, pencils, stationery, and travel type gifts – the whimsical sort of thing you wouldn’t know to even look for on the Internet. Muji is a Japanese retailer that sells a large range of clothing and household knickknacks. There are at least 15 shoe stores on Newbury St., since that’s a type of product that’s harder to buy on-line. And, high-end designer boutiques that have made somewhat of a comeback. Sure, this is a function of an affluent city/neighborhood and a strong economy, but also type of product/experience for which there is less of an online substitute.

Fourth is a group of stores I term ‘Born in Silicon Valley’: AllBirds (the shoe version of Lululemon), and Warby Parker (the Apple store of eyeglasses). You also see where Apple has had an outsized influence on design, such as at the sleekly decorated LIT Boutique, and numerous other stores along Newbury.

Yet another category is stores that started in direct-to-consumer online but are now adding a bricks and mortar presence. The above-named Allbirds is an example. Another example on Newbury St. is Tracksmith, which sells running clothing online for the prep school/Strava crowd but has opened the Trackhouse, which looks like a mix of Augusta’s 19th Hole and the Harvard Club. All that’s missing is the Winkelvi. Related, are stores influenced by online sites. So, the online StitchFix and Rent the Runway beget several high-end consignment shops on Newbury St., such as Castanet Designer Consignment and Revolve.

Finally, and this has nothing to with tech, is what I call ‘trend of the month’. Bagel shops became cupcake shops, which became frozen yogurt shops, and are now…smoke and CBD shops. Which will run through their cycle and yield to…anybody’s guess.

To conclude with a twist of irony, I should mention that one block over, running parallel to Newbury St., is Boylston St. It’s a wider street, home to the Boston Public Library and Trinity Church, but also a much larger population of chain type stores and restaurants than Newbury St. And the largest employer on Boylston St.: Boston-based Wayfair, which at least for household goods has mounted an impressive online challenge to Amazon.

AMD Highlights Path to the Future

After a gangbuster performance on the stock market for the last several years, AMD, its CEO Dr. Lisa Su, and its executive leadership team have been under the glare of a lot of media attention recently. Despite the apparent pressure, however, the company keeps coming out swinging and the announcements from last week’s Financial Analyst Day indicate that AMD is showing no signs of letting up.

In fact, the key takeaway from the event was that the company leadership—and apparently many of the financial analysts who attended—now have even more confidence in the business’ future. (The company was even willing to reiterate its guidance for the first quarter, which, given the impact of the coronavirus on many its customers and the tech industry as a whole, was an impressively optimistic statement.)

As a long-time company observer, what particularly stood out to me was that the company has now built up a several-year history of achieving some fairly grand plans based on big decisions it made 4-5 years back. In the past, previous AMD leadership has also talked about big ideas, but frankly, they weren’t able to deliver on them. The key difference with the current leadership team is that they are now able to execute on those ideas. As a result, the credibility of their forward-looking plans has gone up significantly.

And what plans they are. The company made a number of important announcements about its future product strategies and roadmaps at the event, most all of which were targeted around high-performance computing, both for CPUs and GPUs. On the GPU roadmap, a particularly noteworthy development was the introduction of a new datacenter-focused GPU architecture named CDNA (“C” for Compute)—an obvious link to the RDNA architecture currently used for PC and gaming-consoled focused GPU designs. Full details around CDNA and specific Radeon Instinct GPUs based on it are still to come, but the company is clearly focusing on the machine learning, AI, and other datacenter-focused workloads that its primary competitor Nvidia has been targeting for the last several years. One key point the company made is that the second and third generation CDNA-based GPUs would leverage the company’s Infinity interconnect architecture, allowing future CPUs and GPUs to share memory in a truly heterogenous computing environment, as well as providing a way for multiple GPU “chiplets” to connect with one another. The company even talked about offering software that would convert existing CUDA code (which Nvidia uses for its data center GPUs) into platform-agnostic HIP code that would run on these new CDNA-based GPUs.

AMD also talked about plans for future consumer-focused GPUs and discussed its next-generation RDNA2 technology and its Navi 2X chips, which are expected to offer hardware-accelerated support for ray tracing, as well as improvements in variable rate shading and overall performance per watt. Notably, the hardware ray tracing support is expected to be a common architecture between both PCs and gaming consoles (both the PlayStation 5 and next-generation Xbox are based on custom AMD GPU designs), so that should be an important advancement for game developers. The company also mentioned RDNA3, which is expected in the 2020-2021 timeframe and will be manufactured with what is described as an “Advanced Node.” Presumably that will be smaller than the 7nm production being used for current RDNA-based GPUs and those based on the forthcoming RDNA2 architecture.

Speaking of production, the company discussed how it intends to move forward aggressively, not only on smaller size process nodes, but also to add in 2.5 and 3D chip stacking (which it termed X3D). Over the past year or so, packaging technologies have taken on new levels of importance for future semiconductor designs, so it will be interesting to see what AMD does here.

On the CPU side, the company laid out its roadmap for several new generations of its Zen core CPU architectures, including a 7nm-based Zen 3 core expected in the next year or so, and the company’s first 5nm CPU, the Zen 4, planned for 2021 or 2022. AMD made a point to highlight the forthcoming Ryzen Mobile 4000 series CPUs for notebooks, expected to be available later this month, which the company expects will boost them to the top of the notebook performance charts, just as the Ryzen Zen 2-based CPUs did for desktops. The company also mentioned that its 3rd-generation Epyc server processor, codenamed Milan and based on the forthcoming Zen 3 core, is expected to ship later this year.

For even higher-performance computing, the combination of Zen 4-based CPU cores, 3rd generation CDNA GPU cores and the 3rd generation Infinity interconnect architecture in the late 2022 timeframe is also what enables the exascale level of computing powering AMD’s recent El Capitan supercomputer announcement. Built in conjunction with HPE on behalf of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and the US Department of Energy, El Capitan is expected to be the fastest supercomputer in the world when it’s released and, amazingly, will be more powerful than today’s 200 fastest supercomputers combined.

All told, it was a very impressive set of announcements that highlights how AMD continues to build on the momentum it started to create a few years back. Obviously, there are enormous questions about exactly where the tech market is headed in the short term, but looking further out, it’s clear that AMD is here to stay. For the sake of the overall semiconductor market and the competitiveness that it will enable, that’s a good thing.

Podcast: Coronavirus, Virtual Events, AMD

This week’s Techpinions podcast features Carolina Milanesi and Bob O’Donnell discussing the ongoing impact of the coronavirus on the tech industry and how it may provide some people with a bit more time to think through the direction the tech industry is heading, analyzing the impact of the cancellation of many in-person events and how companies should best think about holding virtual events, and chatting about the news from AMD’s financial analyst day regarding their advancements in supercomputers, datacenter-focused GPUs, process technologies and more.

2020: Virtual Reality’s Next Big Moment?

The Virtual Reality (VR) market has seen its fair share of ups and downs over the last few years, but the technology is poised to have a very good 2020. This year we will see VR hardware and software come together in new, exciting ways that will help drive growth in both the consumer and commercial segments. While the market still faces substantial challenges, including hardware supply constraints due to COVID 19, the opportunities are significant.

Hardware Evolution
VR hardware continues to evolve and improve. In late February, VR pioneer HTC announced the launch of its VIVE Cosmos Series, focused on expanding the functionality of the original PC-based Cosmos product. By using modular, swappable faceplates, the company is now offering three flavors of the product. The Elite uses an external tracking faceplate that works with external SteamVR base stations and the company’s Vive or Vive Pro controllers to offer a precision experience that retails for $899. The original Cosmos, which uses six inside-out tracking cameras, will remain in the market at $699. And the upcoming Cosmos play will bring the platform to more value-focused users by utilizing four inside-out tracking cameras at a presumably lower—but not yet announced—starting price. Finally, the company also announced the Cosmos XR edition, which will bring high-quality pass-through cameras to enable a mixed reality experience. The modular nature of the Cosmos product line means that users can effectively move up the stack as their needs change by buying a new faceplate instead of buying a whole new setup.

HTC isn’t the only VR company to bring new capabilities to an existing product line. Last year Facebook’s Oculus announced it would bring a handful of new features to its shipping Oculus Quest headset, and since then, it has rolled those new features out. The first is called Quest Link, a free software update now in beta that lets you connect the Quest to a PC using a USB 3 cable. Link allows Quest users access games previously available only on the higher-performance, PC-tethered Oculus Rift. The second new feature is integrated hand tracking, which lets you put down the controllers and interact with VR content hands-free in the Quest, which tracks your hands using its existing cameras. Oculus rolled out the feature to consumers as a free update and has also now made the SDK available to developers.

HTC and Oculus aren’t the only ones making notable VR hardware moves. I wrote in November about Varjo, which announced four high-resolution headsets in 2019 that I expect to drive continued strong interest in 2020. Another big launch in 2019 that should have a positive impact in 2020 is the Valve Index, a high-fidelity VR experience focused on gamers. Two other companies to keep an eye on in 2020, as they moved significant unit volumes in 2019, are DPVR and Pico. Finally, we expect Sony to ship a follow on to its successful PSVR either later this year (in conjunction with the PlayStation 5 launch) or early next year.

Next-Generation Software
In 2020, expect to see VR software continue to evolve and improve. We’ll see more developers work to bring hands-free capabilities to headsets such as the Quest with hand-tracking capabilities. We’ll see others move to utilize the eye-tracking functionality in products such as the HTC Vive Pro Eye and Varjo VR-2 that radically change the way you interact with content in VR. And I expect to see more developers dip their toe back in the VR waters as the consumer and commercial installed base of devices grows, and it becomes easier to make money in VR. A recent piece noted that an estimated 100 VR apps have now crossed the $1 million revenue mark.

One of the key drivers around VR software will be the continued growth of commercial VR. As more companies embrace the technology, they’ll be engaging with developers to create an ever-increasing range of apps. These purpose-built VR apps don’t need to appeal to a wide audience, and this means developers can create them to run on a single hardware platform. Companies realize that they can quickly recoup the money they spend on the creation of VR apps that help speed training, eliminate unnecessary travel, and accelerate processes such as design and manufacture.
There are two big software-related VR launches to watch closely in 2020, one from Valve and another from Oculus. Later this month, Valve will release Half-Life: Alyx, perhaps the most highly anticipated VR game to date. Based on the much-loved Half-Life series, Alyx is a prequel build specifically for VR. And while Valve would encourage players to enjoy the game in its Valve Index headset, the game will be compatible with any SteamVR-compatible system, which includes HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Quest (with Link), and Windows Mixed Reality. The success or failure of Alyx will have a notable impact on the near-term future of VR.

The second big launch to watch in the coming year is the rollout of Horizon from Oculus. The company is taking applications for beta testers now to be a part of what it calls a “new social VR world.” I expressed my reservations around Horizon when I first wrote about it last year. That said, Facebook—and CEO Mark Zuckerberg—clearly still see VR as a key component to the future of social. It will be interesting to see what the company has built and how people will respond to it.

Supply Constraints
I’ve painted a pretty rosy picture around the upside for VR in 2020, but I should note that this doesn’t mean I expect VR to be a huge mainstream technology anytime soon. And in the near-term, one of the biggest challenges the industry is going to face is a lack of headset supply. Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that key products such as the Oculus Quest and Valve Index have been in short supply for months. Demand outstripped supply late last year, and now we have the added issue of COVID 19, which is impacting the supply chain and creation of all manner of technology products, including VR headsets. As I noted in my recent piece, it’s very difficult to forecast the speed at which production in China will ramp up, even as the country contains the virus, and this could negatively impact the VR market for months to come. I’m hoping these near-term supply constraints don’t cause the market to miss what could be a key inflection point for VR in 2020.

Five Things To Remember When Hosting A Digital Event

Thanks to the COVID-19 virus, we have seen several events being canceled both in the tech world but also in other industries like fashion, home, and publishing. I am sure more will be announced over the next few weeks, leaving my calendar free from travel but full of digital meetings.

There has been a lot of talk already about remote work and I wrote about it in last week’s column. Hosting digital events, however, is not the same as working remotely and this is true for internal events as well as external ones. I was spoiled to have my first event be hosted by Zoom, a company that was built for remote work and video, so, as you can imagine, the quality of the technology was great. The team knew exactly how to keep the audience engaged over the 8 hours we spent together.

Good Speakers Are Critical

Keeping people engaged for a long period is not easy at the best of times, but when you are not in the same room, it gets even harder. People get easily distracted, but in a room, maybe out of respect for the speaker or just good old fashion manners, people tend to limit their multitasking. During a remote meeting, video can be turned on and off the leaving the participant free to zone out without guilt (I might be projecting a little here .)

Technology can help speakers with live transcription and even live translations making it easier for the audience to follow along in a more natural way than when those options are offered during a live meeting. Remotely nobody knows whether or not you are taking advantage of these features.

The pressure, however, might be higher when it comes to tone of voice, cadence and overall level of engagement. A good speaker, changes pace and tone, tells a story without getting off-topic too much and, most of all, keeps on schedule. Timeliness is more important than during a live event because your audience might have scheduled other meetings or work around the virtual event, something they would be less likely to do if they traveled somewhere to attend the event.

Always On Video Is Not Always Best

Just because you are attending a remote event, it does not mean your camera has to be on all the time. If you have a meeting where you are actively participating, of course, video matters. Seeing people face to face makes the exchange more personal, that’s the point! Yet, if you are mostly listening to a speaker or a set of speakers and you are part of a large group having your camera on and not being muted can take away from the experience for other participants.

Most video conferencing systems have some intelligence built-in that allows for the video to focus on the person who is speaking. How quickly the system performs that switch is crucial to establishing a natural conversation flow and, by doing so, increase engagement. Participants often forget to go on mute, which triggers the system to think you are either speaking or about to speak and therefore focusing on you rather than the actual speaker. This makes for a cumbersome experience, the more participants you have.

All that said, if you are invited to an online meeting, do make an effort to access the meeting through the system, video included rather than just dialing in. This helps with creating a consistency of experience across all participants. Simple things like not having to say your name because the system knows who you are, being able to use the “raise your hand” feature, so you don’t talk over someone else and generally better read the meeting.

Time Zones Will Be A Challenge

This is probably the biggest hurdle for world-wide events. While a live event will have everybody physically in one place while possibly mentally battling jetlag, virtual meetings have to account for time differences.

The time difference can impact the outcome of a meeting in several ways from a simple variable in energy from both speakers and participants due to the time of day, to a change in audience mix. The complexity of dealing with participants in different time zones might lead you to consider splitting the event into an overall event for the top-level remarks and smaller regional events to follow from there. You could even consider a mix of live and recorded portions, so people have the option to join the top-level remarks and then attend the rest of the sessions as a recording. This is no different than how many events are set up with a keynote and then several parallel sessions one chooses from.

One significant point to remember is that for virtual events, people don’t usually get time off around it. For instance, if you have a meeting or event you are attending in a time zone that requires getting up early or staying up late, most participants will be expected to still have a regular workday around it.

Sensitive Information Might Be At Higher Risk

Securing information you share over a remote meeting is both a question of technology and education. While information is not necessarily easier to secure during an in-person meeting, technology does make it easier for people to capture and share information over a virtual meeting.

Most of the collaboration systems use encrypted solutions to safely keep the data as well as offering ways to trace back leaks. Unfortunately, however, participants can use other devices to record or capture data. Informing upfront and reminding participants of what is public information and what is not is a must in a virtual world.

Engagement Can’t Be Taken For Granted

Aside from a good speaker, you need to make sure your audience is engaged, so leave time for questions during the presentation and at the end. In the same way as you would for an in-person meeting, make sure you moderate your Q&A segments, so time does not get away from you.

You can also think about using different tools to keep your audience connected with your speaker and the content. You can ask to submit questions via chat if you have someone who is moderating those questions. This allows the speaker to stay on track and the audience to ask more questions and get clarification when needed rather than at the end. Have your speaker ask questions or take polls, but try and keep your audience within the video platform, so you lower the chances to lose them. If the topic permits, make it a little fun. Zoom used a wheel of fortune with the participants’ names to draw who would be asked a question.

Especially when you are dealing with a large group, the speaker has little chance to see everybody and feel the room in the same way as they would in an in-person meeting. It would be best if you created those opportunities to take a pulse check, especially when the event you are hosting is going to last several hours.

 

I am sure over the coming months, I will have plenty of opportunities to come up with a best practice list, but I have little hope that my experiences will be perfect, not because of the technology but because of the people. After all, we have been doing phone meetings for years, and people can still make it unbearable.

Coronavirus-Induced Pause Gives Tech Industry Opportunity to Reflect

As the news has now made clear, the COVID-19 coronavirus is having a significant impact, not just on the tech industry, but on society and the globe as a whole. There are still huge numbers of unanswered questions about the virus and what it’s full effect will be. Importantly, and appropriately, most of the focus is on the health and well-being of those impacted and educating people about how to keep themselves and their loved ones safe. There’s also a lot being done to keep people accurately and adequately informed about which concerns are legitimate and which ones are unnecessarily overblown.

At the same time, it’s now very clear that there’s a very practical impact happening to people in the tech industry: their calendars are opening up in a way that many haven’t experience before. The reason? The cancellation and/or “digitization” of more and more events scheduled for this spring and, likely, into the summer. Not just big events like MWC, GDC and F8, but lots of small public and private events are being cancelled, rescheduled, or in the latest move, “virtualized” to streaming-only digital form.

Combine that with the travel restrictions in place for important tech-focused countries around the world, and the tangible result is that many people in the tech industry are going to be falling way short of their frequent flyer requirements this year. Practically speaking, they’re also going to have more time available to them.

The reality is that this “pause” in the action will likely be short-lived. If history has taught us nothing else, it is that “this too shall pass”, and there will come a time in the hopefully not-to-distant future when coronavirus-related concerns will be nothing but a memory.

For a while at least, though, things are going to be different for a lot of people in tech. So, the important question that comes to mind is, how are people going to be spending that extra time?

I don’t claim to have any brilliant answers, but I certainly hope that, in addition to maybe spending a little more time with our loved ones, some of that newfound time is spent thinking about the direction that some key tech industry trends are heading, and whether or not they’re moving in a manner that people really want or intended. On the privacy and security front, for example, there’s arguably a great deal of soul-searching that ought to be done about what kind of data can and/or should be collected about each of us as we go about our digital lives. Similarly, advertising and other information-driven services that leverage (or, in many cases, abuse) that information, might want to consider less invasive alternative approaches.

In the case of autonomous cars, I’d argue that’s it’s time to look past technological advances and figure out how real people actually want to interact with their vehicles. Similarly, it’s worth taking time to think more about how vehicles could be made safer without necessarily becoming dependent on autonomous control.
For many companies, the “found time” may (and should) also lead to more discussions about how to refine their messages and deliver information that doesn’t overpromise what’s possible (as the tech industry has become notorious for doing), but gives people a realistic set of expectations.

There are also bound to be some very interesting discussions about the overall merits of holding big (or even small) events. Again, society and the industry will make it through this, so it will be very interesting to see what people believe was lost and/or gained from the cancellations or recasting of these events. Yes, I’m sure we’ll see more discussions about working from home and video-based collaboration and those are all good things. However, there are still serious questions about how much people are willing to change their work habits for the long-term.

Of course, there are literally millions of other positive ways that people in tech can use this potential opportunity of extra time for good. What I’m afraid might happen, however, is that more of it will be spent on social media, adding yet more undeserved influence to a serious blight on the tech industry’s legacy that, among other things, has already cultivated a heightened level of fear and panic about the coronavirus.

It’s rare that an industry, or a society, suddenly finds itself with access to the precious resource of additional time. In the end, I think that’s one positive thing that we could end up realizing from the unfortunate reality that is now upon us. Let’s hope the newfound time gets used in a positive way.

Podcast: Coronavirus, Intel 5G, Asian Phone Launches, Qualcomm

This week’s Techpinions podcast features Carolina Milanesi and Bob O’Donnell discussing the ongoing impact of the Coronavirus on the tech industry, and several news announcements that were originally scheduled for MWC including Intel’s debut of new chips for 5G network infrastructure, the launch of several new Android phones from Huawei, Xiaomi and other Chinese vendors, and Qualcomm’s press briefing on 5G phone momentum, the third generation X60 5G modem, and more.

What’s Your MWC Plan B?

If things had hewn to plan, I’d be writing this column from balmy Barcelona, rather than staring out my window at 42 and drizzle in Boston. In the immediate aftermath of MWC’s cancellation, Carolina wrote an excellent piece reflecting on how companies made the decision to withdraw and what impact this might have on future trade shows.  The cancellation of MWC was a big deal – 120,000 attendees, ½ a billion Euros to Barcelona’s economy, countless hours spent planning for the event, and no small number of dollars lost in non-refundable travel bookings.

I’d like to build on Carolina’s column with some thoughts of my own, focused on three key questions:

  • What are companies doing to offset some of the real or perceived business losses from the cancellation of this important annual event?
  • For those who use events like MWC to keep up on the latest and greatest on 5G, IoT, and other hot, mobile-related issues, what are some alternative means and substitutes?
  • Will the cancellation of MWC have any longer-term impact on major trade shows?

Company Strategies

Aside from the parties, SWAG, and the customary trade show excess, MWC is a gargantuan effort and expense for key vendors in the mobile ecosystem. Huge numbers of people spend more than a year planning for this event, with some companies’ MWC-related budgets running into the tens of millions of dollars. They plan major product announcements at this show. Some smaller companies allocate much of their annual sales and marketing budget to MWC basket, seeing it as the opportunity to have meetings with key prospects all in one place and in a concentrated amount of time.

So, in addition to the dollars lost and massive inconvenience of MWC’s cancellation, what are companies doing to make up for the perceived loss of business? We haven’t detected a major pattern, yet. Key vendors are implementing a variety of strategies. They’re issuing press releases of major product announcements and are holding webinars and other types of online briefings. One example is the slew of announcements of 5G phones, showcased in a Qualcomm 5G-related press event held this week.

In the immediate aftermath of MWC’s cancellation, some companies had announced plans to conduct a series of road shows or smaller, more customer-focused events. But we understand many of these plans have been put on hold, due to the still-spreading Coronavirus and escalating number of travel restrictions.

More urgently, over the past few days, I’ve had several discussions with companies who have shifted their focus from the new product announcements they were planning to make at MWC to focusing on their global supply chain and trying to minimize any disruption to customer commitments.

The GSMA, organizer of MWC, is trying to keep itself visible. Its news service is sending out product announcements and alerts. It is producing a series of MWC Shorts, showcasing some of the knowledge-sharing that would have happened in Barcelona. And, the GSMA has been mum with respect to MWC Shanghai, planned for June 30-July 2. I think they’re going to have to make a go/no-go decision on that one within a month.

For those who’d like an analysis of key MWC-related product announcements, please join me and two other highly respected industry analysts, Monica Paolini and Chris Nicoll, in a ‘Sparring Partners’ Webinar, Wireless Without MWC.

Substitute Events

Another key element of a tradeshow such as MWC is its role as an annual benchmark for the state of the industry, communicated in countless executive sessions and educational tracks. The 2020 MWC was set to be particularly critical, as we’re hip deep in Phase I of the 5G rollout, with new networks, new devices, and new use cases all emerging and being discussed.

The industry can ill-afford waiting until MWC 2021 for some sort of major confab. So, in addition to what some companies themselves might be doing directly (see above), it might be time to consider attending some of the smaller, regional, but still significant trade shows and conferences that will still hopefully happen. Among them:

5G World. London, June 9-11. I’ve attended/spoken at this event a couple of times. Last year I thought it was a bit flat, but the event might see a bit of a boost this year…

The Big 5G Event. Dallas, May 18-120. The North America version of the above show, and a re-branded version of what had been called The Big Telecom Event. No, Dallas ain’t Barcelona, but it’ll be easier to find accommodations…

IoT World. San Jose, April 6-9. A good opportunity to do a deep dive on IoT, visit your Silicon Valley friends, and feel like you’re in Barcelona by spending on overpriced hotels while missing Barcelona’s hyper-efficient transportation system (even when it’s on strike)

MWC Shanghai. June 30-July 2. A regional version of MWC. Would be a great opportunity to benchmark the 5G rollout in China and in Japan, in advance of the Olympics. Still on, as of late February…but we’ll see.

MWC Los Angeles. October 28-30. This event might move closer to ‘must attend’ status if there continue to be travel disruptions through the first half of 2020, but then things start recovering this summer. Then again, three days in downtown L.A. will really make you miss Barcelona.

Longer Term Effect on Trade Shows?

It’s too early to tell whether the cancellation of MWC, and, presumably, numerous other events over the next few months, will result in some bigger picture soul-searching about the value of big trade shows. Let’s face it, these types of events have a mix quantifiable benefits as well as ‘softer’ attributes experienced through meals, receptions, casual conversations, chance encounters, and just the sheer energy and osmosis that validate you’re part of something important and exciting.

I do think that some larger companies might use MWC’s cancellation as a ‘control variable’ in assessing the true value of this type of event. I don’t think we’ll see large scale pullouts of future MWCs, but we could see some companies adjusting how they approach major trade shows, what sorts of resources they devote to them, and what types of alternative events are equally effective.

Perhaps as one consolation, it was an unusually mild 65º in Boston on Monday — about the same temperature it was in Barcelona. Perhaps I should now do a search for ‘Best Tapas, Boston’…

Why Does it Take the Threat of a Pandemic to Support Remote Working?

There has been a lot of talk over the last week of how COVID-19 might be the pivotal moment for remote working to really take off. China, Silicon Valley, Japan and even Italy are all adopting remote working at various degrees to limit the spreading of the virus. There is such excitement around remote work that brands like Zoom have seen their stock value climb up.

While I really hope people are right and we will see remote working remain relevant once the threat is removed, I cannot help but be skeptical because we have been here before!

First, there was SARS in 2003, but the technology back then was nowhere near what can be delivered today, both in terms of sound and video clarity as well as latency. Then there was the economic crisis of 2008-2009, when companies like HP, Cisco and Polycom were heavily marketing telepresence as a way lower air travel cost. Intra-company business travel is often the largest controllable expense for most organizations. Video conferencing was an effective way to keep communications going and manage operations while reducing costs. However, at the time, technology had improved, but most solutions were still not economical enough for broad adoption. Remember that 2009 was less than two years after the iPhone and before smartphones made their way into enterprises beyond the C-suite.

On paper, now is the time! The experience has improved so much that videoconference is something people actually want to do. Companies like Zoom and BlueJeans have lowered friction and saw the popularity of their solutions grow thanks to individuals buying into it rather than management, making it a must. Well established brands such as Cisco WebEx and Poly reinvented themselves, focusing on better all-around hardware and solutions that cater to collaboration as a whole. Millennials are the generation that has embraced digital collaboration like never before with Slack and Microsoft Teams. Gen Z pushed it a step further, embracing video at its fullest. So why am I skeptical?

Video Conferencing and Remote Working Are Not The Same

It seems like a silly point to make, but doing a few video calls does not make you a remote worker. We need to make a distinction between turning some face to face meetings into virtual ones and allowing your workforce to regularly work from places other than the company office. The first requires technology; the latter requires a considerable cultural change that really empowers people to continue to contribute and be part of the day to day process.

Ultimately, three words are at the root cause of my skepticism: regulation, trust and people.

Regulation

When you are considering remote working, many regulations kick in. Some might be company-driven, like making sure that your employee has a proper space dedicated to work with a desk or table and a suitable chair, a reliable internet connection and overall a place that is conducive to getting work done. After all, we all saw that BBC interview with the kid barging in the background!

In other cases, though, regulations go beyond the company you work for and involve government decisions. In Italy, for instance, there is a specific law that governs remote working or smart working. Due to the current emergency, corporations are asking to allow remote working without setting in place all the paperwork that is usually required. Italy is among the countries in Europe that have adopted remote working the least with only 4.8% of people working from home. The Netherlands and Sweden lead the way with 36% and 35% of the workforce working remotely.

I am sure Italy has other reasons other than regulations that hold back remote working, culture and technology adoptions come to mind. Still, laws that consider liability, overtime compensation, security all play a role and add to the complexity of deciding in favor of remote working.

Trust and People

I put these two together because they are profoundly interconnected.

On the one hand, you have trust issues of managers who need to feel they are in control of their own employees. One would think that in 2020, productivity should be measured in output and not in hours. In other words, it really should be all about what you deliver, not how. If you are not embracing this philosophy, you should at least feel reassured that technology gives you so many ways to keep an eye on your workers that their physical presence in the office is no longer necessary to do that.

Managers are not the only ones with trust issues, though. Remote workers can, at times, feel isolated and be concerned about being “out of sight out of mind” when decisions are made, meaningful work is allocated and, of course, when work is recognized for promotions or incentives.

Trust issues are human but also a clear sign that remote-working needs to be implemented with some degree of formality. It requires processes that foster inclusivity by communicating frequently and allowing every member of the team to have a voice, which means being mindful of time zones. Creating a routine and set expectations for response time also helps to minimize the pressure of always wanting to be present to avoid raising trust issues only to end up creating the potential for burn out. On the employee side, there must be boundaries both in space, by creating an appropriate workspace within the home or remote location, as well as time, by avoiding spreading work over what should be personal time like late in the evening or at the weekend.

Remote Working As A Business Asset

Ultimately, remote working should be seen as a business asset at any time, not just when we are under the threat of a pandemic. Aside from providing cost reduction on travel, it does offer many other advantages like decreasing the need for office space that in some areas can be extremely expensive as well as reducing the need to provide services such as childcare. On the employee side, we could register lower stress levels from not having to commute, which results in more time with the family and potentially lower childcare costs.

What remote working should not be seen as is a benefit or a luxury. Modern employees expect some level of flexibility, although there are, of course, roles where such flexibility can be offered in terms of flexible hours rather than location. Furthermore, positioning remote working as a benefit or a luxury comes loaded with perceived implications that not being in the office makes your actual work easier, better, or a lighter load, which of course it is not the case.

Remote working is smart-working, so I really hope that the current circumstances will help companies see that their business cannot just survive during a pandemic threat but could flourish under normal conditions. The key is to plan for it in the same way we would any work transformation.

Intel Focuses on 5G Infrastructure

Despite the cancellation of this year’s Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, quite a few tech companies are still making important announcements that were originally planned for the show. Not surprisingly, several of those announcements are focused on 5G.

One of them—perhaps somewhat surprisingly—comes from chip leader Intel. The company sold its 5G modem business assets to Apple last fall, and many considered that move to be the company’s exit from the 5G world. But Intel has a much bigger, though significantly less well-known, business creating chips that help power the network infrastructure equipment that sits at the heart of today’s 4G LTE and 5G networks, including base stations and other core components.

For years, much of the network silicon inside these devices was custom designed and built by the vendors making the equipment—companies like Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, etc. However, with the growth of more software-based networking advancements, including things like network function virtualization (NFV), as well as increasing demand for general compute performance to handle applications like AI at the edge, Intel and other specialized vendors like Marvell have seen strong interest in their off-the-shelf “merchant” chips.

The basic idea is that, as with many other computing platforms, it’s the software that’s driving the biggest innovations in networking. By building on more standardized hardware platforms (x86 for Intel and Arm for Marvell) and leveraging open source software tools and platforms, like Linux, companies can create networking-related innovations at a faster and more efficient pace.

To better address those needs, Intel made several different announcements focused on adding the computing power and specialized resources that new 5G networks require at multiple points along the network path. Starting at the network edge, the company introduced a new version of its Atom processor, the P5900, that’s specifically targeted towards wireless base stations. Based on a 10nm process technology, the new SOC (system on chip) integrates a next-generation set of Atom CPU cores along with network acceleration functions that are specifically targeted for radio access functions, small cells, and other edge of the network applications. Given the strong expected market for 5G-focused small cells that millimeter wave, mid-band sub-6 GHz and CBRS-based spectrum demand—as well as the potential to do cloud-based computing workloads on the edge, such as AI—this looks to be a very interesting opportunity.

For more compute-intensive workloads at the core of the network, the company also chose to make a number of additions to its second-generation general-purpose Xeon Scalable server processors as part of this 5G announcement. Facing intensive pricing and performance pressure from AMD’s second generation Epyc server processors, Intel added 18 new SKUs to its lineup that offer more cores, faster clock speeds, and large cache sizes at lower prices than some of its initial second-gen Xeon Scalable parts. In terms of performance, Intel touted up to 56% improvement for NFV workloads versus some of its first-generation Xeon Scalable CPUs (though the company didn’t clarify performance improvements vs. some of the earlier second-generation parts).

Another key element that’s essential to speed up the performance of core telecom markets are programmable chips that can be optimized to run network packet processing and other functions that are critical to guaranteeing lower latency and meeting consistent quality of service requirements. These points are becoming particularly important for 5G, which has promised improved latency as one of its key benefits versus 4G.

FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) have traditionally done much of this kind of work in telecom equipment, and Intel has a large, established FPGA business with its Agilex line of chips. The power and flexibility of FPGAs do come with a cost, however, in terms of both pricing and power, so Intel debuted its first all-new design in a chip category it’s calling a structured ASIC and a product that’s currently codenamed Diamond Mesa. The idea with a structured ASIC is that it’s essentially only partially programmable, and therefore sits between an FPGA and custom-designed ASIC. From a practical perspective, that means it offers faster time to market than building a custom ASIC at a lower price and power requirement than an FPGA. To ease the transition for existing FPGA users, however, Intel has designed Diamond Mesa to be footprint compatible with its FPGAs, making it easier to integrate into existing designs. The real-world benefit is that, used in conjunction with the latest Xeon Scalable CPUs, Diamond Mesa will let telco equipment providers create products that can handle the increased performance, latency, and security demands of 5G networks.

The last portion of the Intel announcement centered on, of all things, a wired ethernet adaptor. While much of the focus for 5G and any other telecom network is typically on wireless technologies, the reality is that much of the infrastructure still uses wired connections for interconnecting different components across the network core and to enable certain capabilities. Particularly for applications that require time-sensitive networking—including things like precise industrial automation—we’re still several years away from being able to ensure consistent real-time signal delivery over completely wireless networks. As a result, Intel’s new 700 series network adapter—which incorporates hardware-enhanced precision time protocol (PTP) support that leverages GPS clock signals for cross-network service synchronization, according to the company—still has an important, if not terribly exciting, function to fulfill in 5G networks.

All told, the Intel 5G network infrastructure story offers a pretty comprehensive set of offerings that highlight how the company has a bigger role to play in the latest generation wireless network than many people may initially realize. Of course, it’s a big field, with a lot of different opportunities for many different vendors, but there’s no doubt that Intel is serious about making its presence felt in 5G. With these announcements the company has made several important steps in that direction, and it will be interesting to see what the future brings.