Enterprise reality check - debut edition

This is your quick hit, unfiltered view of enterprise highs and lows. Jugular takes from special guests may be included. For a deeper review of my enterprise picks and pans, check my weekly, snark-infested Enterprise Hits and Misses columns on diginomica.

Debut edition

The best thing I read this week: Lora Cecere is usually good for a solid supply chain post, but she outdid herself with the masterful specifics of You Should Be Worried. Supply Chains Are Not OK. Let’s Lock Arms To Drive Change:

"The supply chain leader’s number one responsibility is reliability. When it comes to visibility, the ports are largely black holes. Capabilities for supply chain visibility remained largely unchanged despite the promise of value networks and streaming data. The reason? The current models for the technology providers are self-serving.

As a result, interoperability between and amongst networks is non-existent. (For example, Ariba does not interoperate with Elemica, GT Nexus does not interoperate with Nulogy, and E2open does not interoperate with 3PL networks).

The best commentary on the biggest news story: no huge news stories this week, but I'll go with Kurt Marko's Zoom as a video production platform shows it knows that online events aren't going away. On-the-ground events are shaping up as a huge issue for the enterprise this year, with CES scrambling on last minute cancellations as just one early harbinger. Event planners counted on backing away from hybrid events this year - big mistake.

The underrated storyline I'm tracking: with NRF's "big retail show" on the horizon, I'm bearing down on the good news stories in retail not named Amazon or Walmart. Shopify keeps popping up these days. Providing viable e-commerce alternatives to Amazon is no small thing, which may explain why Shopify is showing up in cloud ERP integration scenarios lately. This quote from a few years ago caught my eye: "Amazon is trying to build an empire, and Shopify is trying to arm the rebels."

Backchannel scuttlebutt: This week, I received a problematic marketing email from a B2B vendor. I sent an email with critical feedback, and was promptly dropped from that vendors subscribers list with a "We're sorry to see you go." I decided to email the CEO. This led to a productive dialogue but also surfaced "process breakdowns" and a desire by email "help desk" employees to dispense with "negative" feedback. I see this frequently in online events, where the chance to relay unvarnished feedback in live settings is clamped down. We won't realize the potential of online events until we free people up to have more open dialogue with decision makers.

The worst thing I read this week: How AI, VR, AR, 5G, and blockchain may converge to power the metaverse - I just love it when wildly overhyped concepts hypothetically converge in the promise of a better future that tech can't deliver on in the present. On the plus side, I hear extravagant handwaving is good exercise...

------------------

This edition's guest commentary

Who: Clive Boulton

How to track (your preferred contact, e.g. Twitter handle, blog links) @iC

What's your enterprise story of the week, and why?

Crypto.com will run its first Super Bowl ad amid a marketing blitz. Was a headline in the WSJ. I was thinking back to the dot-com days, and one-time ad spending. Then, I read that Crypto also agreed to pay $700 million for a 20-year deal giving it naming rights on the Staples Center in Los Angeles, home of the Lakers, which became the Crypto dot com Arena on December 25th.

Because enterprise is increasingly online and B2C, I think the technologies underlying crypto payments will be back-fitted into core enterprise software and go further. Perhaps, starting with SaaS usage payments. How about ERP usage served up like AWS EC2 usage?  

What's the underrated story too many are overlooking?

Back to Crypto. We can’t stop ransomware and data breaches, as we retool ERP for B2C, we have to engineer security into software, rather than adding security on after-the fact. Take a look at AWS QLDB (Quantum Ledger Database) for a practical example available to the enterprise.     

The enterprise is dire need of:  Distributed resilient Secure Enterprise Software. Dr SES… (I borrowed this from where, prize for who knows).

What's the most overhyped thing in the enterprise? (Where are projects getting off track?)

Claims about secure software. Projects are getting off track, because we are mostly still using PC-era software development in the internet-era.

Thanks Clive!

Jon’s whiff of the week is: Forget whiff of the week, this could be the early whiff of the year: Norton 360 Now Comes With a Cryptominer

Norton should be DETECTING and killing off crypto mining hijacking, not installing their own

For my full whiffs collection, check my Enterprise Hits and Misses missives on diginomica, which go live each Monday morning.

ABOUT THIS LINKED IN NEWSLETTER - feedback welcome

Note: this newsletter is a work in progress - let me know what you think. I'm aiming for:

This LinkedIn newsletter is intended as a jugular, quick-read, no-fancy-formatting view that provides best-of enterprise commentary, overlooked stories, and punctures a hype balloon or two. Then we end it - with plenty more to check out on diginomica if you want.

Let me know if this format is working for you, and how it can be sharpened or improved. This is not a repeat of things you'll find elsewhere, but oven-fresh commentary behind the stories, via the sharp/outspoken thinkers I follow. If you're like to be a guest contrib for a week, let me know.