Tag: Gartner

That’s A Lot of Ham for Only Two Eggs!

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Google just announced that it’s buying Nest for $3.2 billion!  For a company with two products, that’s a lot of cash 🙂

But Nest is one of the current market leaders in what is being referred to as the “Internet of Things.”  What is that you ask? The Internet of Things  refers to uniquely identifiable objects, like a room thermostat or smoke detector, that are connected and accessible via the internet.  Earlier examples of these “connectors” are RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips, barcodes, QR codes and digital watermarking.  According to Gartner there will be nearly 26 billion devices on the Internet of Things by 2020. Now that is a lot of devices.

A bit more about Nest.  Nest is best known for its smart thermostat, which learns your habits over time and adjusts your heat settings accordingly.  They also recently launched Protect (Smoke + CO Alarm) to rave reviews.  Here are pictures of the Nest thermostat and Nest Protect alarm.

nestnest protect

The Nest thermostat is the first next generation in-home thermostat.  It learns your schedule, programs itself and can be controlled from your phone. The Nest Thermostat can lower your heating and cooling bills up to 20%.  That will save you a lot of Benjamins 🙂

Nest Protect not only has an alarm component, but also speaks to you with a human voice. It tells you what the problem is and where it is. And if you have more than one Nest Protect, they connect so they can speak up at the same time even if Wi-Fi is down. No better way to protect the home and family.

For Google, this continues a big new push to apply its machine-learning expertise to physical objects, from self-driving cars to robots and now home appliances. Google continues to broaden its focus to artificial intelligence and machine learning in myriad forms. It is now a machine-learning company.

We are moving into a time where the opportunity to track everything in real time on your phone or other internet connected device will be possible.  When will we have the time to actually accomplish anything?  🙂  George Jetson is the man!

Enjoy the day.

Webman

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The Digital CMO

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Think average CMO tenure still hovers around 23 months? Think again. It now is 43 months, according to the latest findings from executive-recruitment firm Spencer Stuart, and it has been steadily gaining since its 2006 low of 23.2 months.

That 23-month myth remains a fixture, it seems, at marketing conferences and amid CMO-related banter, but it’s a thing of the past–at least for now.

To be sure, CMO tenure does vary, depending on industry: In the automotive industry, average tenure is indeed 25 months. Communications and media CMOs average 33 months. Meanwhile, CMOs in industrial companies log an average of 99 months.

But the role of the CMO is changing rapidly because of the rise of digital techniques, such as social and mobile, but also because of the ability to measure everything that is done.  Until the digital marketing revolution, marketing was generally speaking, unmeasureable.  “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” – John Wanamaker

But with digital techniques, everything is measurable. Feedback loops, segmentation becomes microtargeting, and optimizations can happen on the fly or even in real time. The relationship between investment and impact becomes correlated and causal — and the CMO becomes accountable down to the dime and moment by moment.  When it works, all are happy – when it does not, stress levels go way up as the search to make it work happens in near real time.

What does a digital CMO do differently?  They experiment aggressively. They hire smart digital natives — and empower them. They partner with great agencies. They have the humility to admit what they don’t know and the confidence to allow digital metrics to illuminate the results.

Gartner predicted that by 2017, the CMO’s technology budget will exceed the CIO‘s. Why? Because more often than not, it’s the CMO who is expected to drive the digital transformation, which is deeply dependent on technology.

Some CMOs are preparing for the digital revolution by filling the gap between expertise and authority. In other words, they have the self-awareness and the confidence to take bold action even when the context has shifted beyond their sphere of influence and scope of expertise. That is leadership. Others are afraid of the digital disruption – they will fail.

Content for this blog was sourced from the Harvard Business Review.  You can read the full article here.  http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/the_rise_of_the_digital_cmo.html?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=pulsenews

Webman

Are you kidding me?

swebman1 Comment
So much is changing so fast. Are you keeping up?  Speed, change, innovation.  Moving faster all the time.  The research firm Gartner believes the personal cloud will replace the PC as the center of our digital lives in 2014.  So in less than 2 years the PC as we know it is dead.  Hey PC, we hardly knew ya!  Just as Steve Jobs predicted.  We are now definitely in the post PC world.

That cloud thing is becoming really important really quickly.  For consumers and businesses.  We have covered a number of emerging business opportunities recently but we are really at the tip of the iceberg.

Cloud services will become the glue that connects the web of devices that users choose to access their daily life in the cloud. The new iPad may be the most impressive piece of computing hardware ever seen. Yet its true power is held back by large enterprise software corporations that cannot keep pace with the new devices designed with cloud computing in mind…. It’s as if they’ve completely ignored one of the most successful computing platforms ever built, outselling the total number of PCs its closest competitor sold last quarter.

With the new iPad sold out, it seems only a matter of time that those not on board with the cloud — and with their wares available on any device — will face an existential question.

Here are the headlines for you:

  • Users are more technologically-savvy and have very different expectations of technology.
  • The internet and social media have empowered and emboldened users.
  • The rise of powerful, affordable mobile devices changes the equation for users.
  • Users are innovators.
  • All users have similar technology available to them.
  • People are visual – Sounds like an iPad to me
  • Apps rock – they are great, they are pervasive and they are awesome
  • Why have a lot of stuff on your hard drive when you can access your stuff in the cloud when you need it
  • Mobile rocks and will be the primary way we interact with the web – desktop dead – being tethered dead, Niedermeyer dead

OK, I digress.  But the headline is, no more big hard drives, you will just put it in the cloud, so wherever you are you can access it.  Only portability you need now is your access device.  Take a look at what is coming soon.

Hey it is now in the cloud and easy to find. As my friend Johnny says, “Are you kidding me?”

Webman