How so? On the upside, they accurately, if simplistically, describe the technical and market dynamics of a forward-focused industry that is quick to develop innovations and products designed to enhance performance and user experience.

But on the downside, the terms reflect the industry’s longstanding obsession with building, marketing and profiting from new products to the point of claiming, often without evidence, that they are superior to solutions already residing in client data centers.

Most important, they continually enhance existing solutions and platforms to ensure that they remain relevant to the needs of modern enterprises. IBM’s new watsonx Code Assistant for Z is a good example of one such effort.

Modernization vs. Legacy Hype

That “new” doesn’t automatically translate to “better” is a bit of practical wisdom that is seldom, if ever, seen in tech industry ad copy. Instead, vendors tend to hype shiny new things—claiming the innate superiority of this year’s gear over previous generation systems and platforms.

Certainly, new or next gen CPUs, storage media, interconnects and other technologies typically deliver better and/or more efficient performance. However, the value of ripping out existing or older systems and replacing them with new hardware is usually vastly overrated, often resembling a case of “fixing what isn’t broken.” The process is also expensive for customers, sometimes hugely so, due to costs related to system integration, software upgrades and retraining and certifying IT personnel.

In addition, generational shifts can make it increasingly difficult for businesses to find new system administrators, developers and technicians as existing staff members age-out. As is true in most other industries, younger workers typically prefer to explore and use new and emerging technologies.

That is a scenario that IBM plans to mitigate and avoid with its new watsonx Code Assistant for Z.

What is it? According to the company, the new solution is a generative AI-assisted product that is designed to enable faster translation of COBOL to Java on IBM Z, thus saving developers time and enhancing their productivity. It also joins IBM watsonx Code Assistant for Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed (scheduled for release later this year) in the watsonx Code Assistant product family.

Both solutions leverage IBM’s watsonx.ai code model, which the company says will employ knowledge of 115 coding languages learned from 1.5 trillion tokens. According to IBM, at 20 billion parameters, the watsonx.ai code model will be one of the largest generative AI foundation models for computer code automation.

Why is this important? First, because of the sheer pervasiveness of COBOL. Enterprise developers and software engineers have written hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL code. Plus, due to its notable flexibility and reliability, COBOL is still widely used, reportedly supporting some $3 trillion in daily financial transactions. In other words, COBOL is literally “business critical” to tens of thousands of large enterprises, millions of smaller companies and billions of consumers.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

COBOL Meets Watsonx Code Assistant for Z

Despite its vital position in transaction processing, COBOL is hardly a favorite among young computer professionals. Though COBOL and other mainframe programmers earn premium salaries (according to IBM, some 20-30 percent more than their peers), employers struggle to fill available positions.

That’s where IBM’s watsonx Code Assistant for Z comes in. The company notes that the new solution is designed to make it easier for developers to selectively choose and evolve COBOL business services into well architected, high-quality Java code.

Plus, IBM believes watsonx generative AI can enable developers to quickly assess, update, validate and test the right code, allowing them to efficiently modernize even large scale applications.

The Java on Z code resulting from watsonx Code Assistant for Z will be object-oriented and is designed to be performance-optimized versus comparable x86 platforms. IBM is designing the solution to be interoperable with the rest of the COBOL application family, as well as with CICS, IMS, DB2 and other z/OS runtimes. Lastly, IBM Consulting’s deep domain expertise in IBM Z application modernization makes it a prime resource for clients in key industries such as banking, insurance, healthcare and government.

Final Analysis

Though marketing professionals may feel comfortable with portraying modern and legacy technologies as a simplistic “new vs. old” conundrum, business owners, IT management and knowledgeable staff, including developers, understand the complexities of the modern/legacy dynamic. Rather than age, the larger issue is relevance: why an organization began employing a particular technology and how or whether that solution remains relevant to its owner’s needs.

It is not unlike how people and organizations remain relevant. Industries, companies, markets and larger economies are in a constant state of evolution. People and organizations succeed by adapting to those changes, by learning new skills, exploring new opportunities, and remaining vitally relevant to customers and partners. IBM’s new watsonx Code Assistant for Z demonstrates that what is true for people can also be true for information technologies.

Read next: Digital Transformation Guide

The post Modernizing the Mainframe—IBM Introduces Watsonx Code Assistant for Z appeared first on eWEEK.

Reshoring’s primary goal is to regain control over the entire end-to-end supply chain—it’s about manufacturing products on local soil, and it’s a process that’s been gaining traction from companies worldwide.

From a North American perspective, the picture is no different. Many U.S. companies have begun the shift away from globalization as default, with research suggesting that nearly 350,000 jobs were re-shored to the U.S. in 2022—a notable increase when compared to the 2021 figure of 260,000.

The movement has also seen companies become less reliant on China. Now, many economies, including the U.S., India, and the European Union, are looking to establish a roadmap that will balance supply chains and increase resiliency. The China Plus One Strategy is an approach adopted by a number of businesses looking to include sourcing from other destinations. Already, numerous companies have turned to Vietnam and India as alternatives, with both countries reporting an uptick in investment from U.S. companies that have built plants there.

According to the Reshoring Initiative IH 2022 Data Report, supply chain gaps, the need for greater self-sufficiency, and a volatile geopolitical climate are major factors driving reshoring. The report found that 69% of companies cited supply chain disruptions as the primary reason for reshoring.

There is now movement on a national level to strengthen supply chains and promote domestic manufacturing with the introduction of the bipartisan National Development Strategy and Coordination Bill in December 2022. This bill highlights the importance of manufacturing reshoring to national economic development going forward into 2023.

Sustainability and Tech in Reshoring

Recent research commissioned by IFS, polling senior decision-makers working for large enterprises globally, found that 72% have increased their usage of domestic suppliers, compared to international suppliers.

From a sustainability perspective, there are huge benefits to be gained. In fact, reshoring is giving manufacturers a golden opportunity to look hard at their manufacturing processing and how they can develop more sustainable processes.

For example, it can minimize CO2 emissions as transport is reduced and spur a deduction in wasteful overproduction as supply chains are brought closer together. As the whole world strives to act more sustainably in the race to net-zero, environmental benefits will play a huge role in driving new sourcing strategies.

However, the raw materials, components, and products that they source from suppliers are likely to become more expensive, especially as inflation continues to gather pace globally. As a result, 53% have considered increasing the proportion of materials/components they produce in-house. But again, these measures and others like them that organizations are now taking to mitigate risk are likely to add cost, complexity, and waste to the supply chain.

Therefore, reshoring is not the silver bullet to mitigating supply chain disruption entirely. Often, companies underestimate the sheer level of effort, costs, and logistical planning required to make reshoring a success.

But for many U.S. companies, the extra costs to manufacture within the country are definitely outweighed by the savings in customs and shipping costs and the additional sustainability benefits associated with offshore operations.

It’s here organizations need the helping hand of technology—in fact, it can be a key facilitator for solving supply chain, labor, and production challenges associated with reshoring.

For 94% of respondents in a recent McKinsey study, Industry 4.0 helped keep operations running during the COVID-19 pandemic, with another 56% claiming Industry 4.0 technologies had been critical for efficient responses.

A new IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by IFS and entitled Shaping the Future of Manufacturing, shows an active correlation between digital maturity and profit. According to the research, manufacturers reporting an optimized level of digital transformation saw profits increase 40%, while those with less advanced digital transformation maturity suffered bigger reductions in profit in the last fiscal year.

Tech has been quick to respond to the call to deliver the agility and fast “Time to Insight” (TTI) that manufacturers need to better forecast demand and provide a more detailed view of sustainability across product supply chains. Exceptional supply chain management will be a vital part of the move to reshoring. The IFS study showed supply chain management was now seen by 37% of respondents as one of the top three priorities their organization is trying to solve through technology investment.

Reshoring in Action: Will the Benefits Be Worth It?

In a recent Kearney index on manufacturing reshoring, 92% of executives expressed positive sentiments toward reshoring. And that’s no surprise when you consider the additional benefits on offer. As well as a more protected supply chain ecosystem, there are also positive societal benefits from the move to reshoring.

According to the U.S. Reshoring Initiative, in 2021 the private and federal push for domestic U.S. supply of essential goods propelled reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) job announcements to a record high.

From a broader perspective, there are many profitable and supply chain benefits at stake for manufacturers. For example, research found that 83% of consumers in the U.S. are willing to pay 20% more for American-made products, with another 57% claiming that the origin of a product would sway their purchasing decision.

From a management standpoint, control over operations has significantly increased. Bringing operations all to one centralized location gives businesses tighter control over processes. Manufacturers will also benefit from shorter supply chains as much of today’s manufacturing is spurred by IoT, AI, and machine learning capable of performing monotonous tasks around the clock.

On a day-to-day level, on-site teams will experience increased collaboration as reshoring drastically reduces the time difference between headquarters and the manufacturing plant.

Tech Needs to Drive Reshoring

It’s easy to see why the appeal of reshoring is prompting a move toward U.S.-based manufacturing initiatives. By addressing reshoring now with the right technology, efficiently and cost-effectively, manufacturers will put themselves in a great position to not only survive but also thrive long into the future.

Of course, as with any major transformation, there are hurdles to overcome. But the long-term results of reshoring, from increased employment to tighter manufacturing control, look as though it’s a journey worth embarking on. As more and more companies around the world look to reshore operations on home soil, manufacturers will need the guiding hand of a flexible and agile software platform to make reshoring a reality at scale.

About the Author:

Maggie Slowik is the Global Industry Director for Manufacturing at IFS.

The post Reshoring Alleviates Supply Chain Issues – But It Needs Tech to Control Costs appeared first on eWEEK.

This varies significantly according to industry, region and commercial markets. Plus, it is commonplace for ESG programs to evolve as priorities and circumstances change.

Recently, Dell published its new ESG Report for FY2023, updating its achievements and overall strategy. Let’s consider how the company has progressed – but first let’s take a brief look at the state of enterprise ESG issues today.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

Today’s Corporate ESG Issues

It is worth noting the importance of ESG programs. The issues covered in these programs affect all of our lives and are closely tied to organizations’ relationships with stakeholders, including customers and strategic partners. Empowering disadvantaged groups of customers and businesses is just good for business.

That is especially true in the U.S. where despite their myriad benefits, ESG policies have become bugaboos of “wokeness” among some politicians and groups. Many of those individuals and alliances are also attempting to dial-back broader environmental and social justice advances but are encountering resistance from progressive organizations and individuals, as well as from seemingly unlikely organizations. Those include large corporations, pension funds, insurers and investment firms.

Why would those disparate players actively protect ESG programs? A couple of issues are top of mind. First, disadvantaging specific groups of consumers and businesses to appease politicians and special interest groups is simply bad for business.

Equally important are the negative impacts that anti-ESG efforts can have on promising businesses and industries. Consider that earlier this year, 19 Republican state governors signed an open letter warning of the “direct threat” posed by ESG proliferation. Some connect the ‘E’ in ESG to renewable energy technologies and programs, such as hydroelectric, wind power and ethanol subsidies for farmers. Since many or most of the governors who signed the letter lead states that benefit from renewable energy initiatives, their anti-ESG rhetoric seems ironic in the extreme.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the value that ESG programs and strategies offer to companies doing business globally. Environmental, social and governance issues vary widely in importance and scope from place to place. The variety of ESG subject matter means that organizations can craft programs to maximize value for the customers and partners they believe are most in need.

Far from being the direct threat that some U.S. state governors and other politicians and groups imagine, ESG continues to deliver substantial, welcome benefits to businesses, state institutions and consumers worldwide.

Dell’s FY 2023 ESG Report

Dell Technologies has emphasized the importance of ESG-related issues since 1998 when the company published its initial Environmental Progress Report.

Beginning in 2002, the company shifted to annual reports charting its focus on and progress in key areas, including the environment, sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The company has maintained these commitments through recent political headwinds because it understands these priorities are not only good for business but also for the communities in which they operate.

What are some of the key highlights in Dell’s new FY2023 ESG report?

First, the company refined the goals included in the FY2022 report and condensed its 25 top-level goals to:

• Achieve net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 2050.
• Reuse or recycle one metric ton of materials for every metric ton of products Dell customers buy by 2030.
• Make or utilize packaging made from recycled or renewable material for 100 percent of Dell products by 2030.
• Leverage recycled, renewable or reduced carbon emissions materials in more than half of the products Dell produces by 2030.
• Employ women as 50% of Dell’s global workforce and 40% of the company’s global people leaders by 2030.
• Employ people who identify as Black/African American or Hispanic/Latino as 25% of Dell’s U.S. workforce and 15% of its U.S. people leaders by 2030.
• Improve the lives of 1 billion people through digital inclusion by 2030 through efforts such as supply chain training and initiatives aimed at girls and women, or underrepresented groups.
• Provide support for and participation in community giving or volunteerism by 75% of Dell team members by 2030.

Additionally, in 2022 Dell began framing a trust model centered on security, privacy and ethics. Given the importance of those areas in terms of establishing and maintaining trusted relationships, the company is emphasizing “Upholding Trust” with the goal of having customers and partners rate Dell Technologies as their most trusted technology partner.

Finally, the company demonstrated its continuing commitment to diverse supplier spend by doing over $3 billion in business with small and diverse companies. Plus, for the 13th consecutive year, Dell was recognized by the Billion Dollar Roundtable (BDR), which celebrates corporations that spend at least $1 billion annually with minority- and women-owned businesses.

Further details, background information and customer/partner examples can be found in the full Dell Technologies ESG Report for FY2023.

For more information, also see: What is Data Governance

Final Analysis

Transformation is a concept and process that permeates the technology industry, but it also has many guises. For example, there’s the “digital transformation” strategies and solutions that so many vendors emphasize aim to help customers improve business outcomes by maximizing compute performance and data efficiency. Other efforts include process transformation, such as leveraging automation and logistical efficiencies to improve supply chain performance.

One topic less commonly discussed is corporate cultural transformation. This is when an organization continually and proactively evolves to adapt and benefit from changes in commercial markets, business practices and demand forecasts, as well as shifts in politics, economies and the environment. In my opinion, this type of transformation holds a central role in Dell Technologies’ ESG strategy and its annual ESG reports.

Many of the practical steps the company is taking—expanding the use of recycled and renewable materials, for example—simply make good business and financial sense. Others, including achieving net zero GHG emissions, reflect the company’s deep understanding of and intention to practically address climate change and other environmental issues.

Some goals enumerated in the new FY2023 report may appear aspirational but are far more practical than one might expect. At a Dell Technologies World session a few years ago, Michael Dell noted (I confess to paraphrasing here) that, “A company should look like its customers and partners.”

That is a particularly profound statement, not to mention being highly applicable to business and a wide range of public and private organizations and institutions. Without having such a vision and investing in efforts to achieve it, individuals, businesses and governments will inevitably find their vision blurring, their frontiers shrinking and their opportunities dwindling.

By embracing cultural evolution through supporting and advancing the careers of underrepresented groups, by actively improving communities and the lives of a billion people and by working to become the vendor that customers and partners trust the most, Dell Technologies will further grow its own outlook, relevance and potential for success.

Is there a greater or more important goal for any organization?

For more information, also see: Digital Transformation Guide

The post Dell’s 2023 ESG Report: Evolving Corporate Culture appeared first on eWEEK.

As far back as 2001, at data warehousing firms like my old haunt of Daman Consulting, we touted the value of “operationalizing” business intelligence. The idea was to leverage BI-derived insights within operational systems dynamically, and thus directly improve performance.

Though embedded analytics have been around for decades, it’s fair to say that most BI solutions in this millennium have focused on the dashboard paradigm: delivering high-level visual insights to executives via data warehousing, to facilitate informed decision-making.

But humans are slow, much slower than an AI algorithm in the cloud. In the time it takes for a seasoned professional to make one decision, AI can ask thousands of questions, get just as many answers, and then winnow them down to an array of targeted, executed optimizations.

That’s the domain of applied intelligence, a closed-loop approach to traditional data analytics. The goal is to fuse several key capabilities – data ingest, management, enrichment, analysis and decisioning – into one marshaling area for designing and deploying algorithms.

There are many benefits to this approach: transparency, efficiency, accountability; and most importantly in today’s market? Agility. During times of great disruption, organizations must have the ability to pivot quickly. And when those decisions are baked in via automation? All the better.

It also helps in the crucial domain of explainability, the capacity to articulate how an artificial intelligence model came to its conclusion. How explainable is a particular decision to grant a mortgage loan? How repeatable? What are the biases inherent in the models, in the data? Is the decision defensible?

On a related topic: The AI Market: An Overview

Take It To the Bank

The rise of fintech startups and neobanks, coupled with rapidly changing interest rates, has put tremendous pressure on traditional financial market leaders to innovate rapidly but safely. Rather than embrace a rear-guard strategy, many firms are looking to AI to regain momentum.

As CPTO for FICO, Bill Waid has overseen a wide range of banking innovations. UBS reduced card fraud by 74%, while Mastercard optimized fraud detection in several key ways, including automated messaging to solve the omni-channel conundrum of communications.

The Mastercard story demonstrates how a large financial institution is now able to dynamically identify, monitor, and manage client interactions across a whole host of channels – and fast enough to prevent money loss. A nice side benefit? Less-annoyed customers.

In a recent radio interview, Waid explained another situation where collaboration improves marketing. “In banking, from a risk perspective, one of the most profitable products is credit card. So if you were to ask somebody from risk: which would you push, it would be the credit card.”

But other departments may disagree. “If you ask the marketing person, they have all the stats and the numbers about the uptake, and they might tell you no, it’s not the credit card, at least not for this group (of customers), because they’re actually looking for a HELOC or an auto loan.”

The point is that you can drive away business by making the wrong suggestion. Without collaborating around common capabilities from a centralized platform, Waid says, that mistake would have likely gone into production, hurting customer loyalty and revenue.

With an applied intelligence platform, he says, key stakeholders from across the business all have their fingers in the pie. This helps ensure continuity and engagement, while also providing a shared baseline for efficacy and accountability.

Think of it as a human operating system for enterprise intelligence, one that’s connected to corporate data, predictive models, and decision workflows, thus achieving cohesion for key operational systems. In the ideal scenario, it’s like a fully functioning cockpit for the enterprise.

This transparency leads to confidence, a cornerstone of quality decision outcomes: “That confidence comes in two dimensions,” he says. “The first is: can you understand what the machine is doing? Do you have confidence that you know why it came to that prediction?

“The second element is that in order for the analytic to be useful, it’s gotta get out of the lab. And many times, I see that the analytic comes after the operationalization of a process, where there is more data, or a flow of data that’s well warranted to an analytic.”

For more information, also see: Best Data Analytics Tools

Bottom Line: The Analytic Becomes an Augmentation

This is where rubber meets road for applied intelligence: the analytic becomes an augmentation. And when the business has that transparency, they get comfortable, and they adopt the insight into their own operational workflow. That’s when the intended value out of the machine is felt.

“Platforms provide unification: bringing process, people, and tech together,” Waid says. And as AI evolves, with Large Language Models and quantum computing closing in, it’s fair to say that the practices of applied intelligence will provide critical stability, along with meaningful insights.

Also see: 100+ Top AI Companies 2023

The post Navigating the Perfect Storm with Applied Intelligence appeared first on eWEEK.

Chuck Whitten joined Dell Technologies in 2021 where he became co-Chief Operating Officer in partnership with Jeff Clarke. Together, Whitten and Clarke own company-wide strategy and execution. Whitten oversees the day-to-day financial and operating plans and performance, as well as long-term planning for emerging technology areas like Cloud, Edge, Telecom and as-a-Service.

Prior to joining Dell, Whitten worked at Bain and Company for over two decades where he served as the managing partner of Bain Southwest and was a two-time elected member of Bain’s Board of Directors.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

Technology and Business

Pund-IT (Charles King): A couple of decades ago, vendors spent a lot of their time explaining and proselytizing the importance of technology to businesses. Today, that’s a common understanding or belief. So, you might say that Dell’s approach has benefited from that evolution and maturation of the links between technology and business.

Whitten: For sure. Technology has never been more essential to our customers and to society. That is also why there’s been this blurring of technology and business budgets, because it’s one and the same. You’re either born a technology company or you evolve a technology-led strategy very quickly, or you go away. There’s also the realization and the profound impact of digital transformation sweeping across industries. I think you’d be hard pressed to find a board or a C suite anymore that doesn’t talk about the criticality of technology to their business and their future. Dell is in the business of helping them solve whatever those problems are.

Dell’s Management Profile

Pund-IT: Since you and Jeff Clarke share the co-COO title, can you talk about that relationship and how your individual responsibilities work?

Whitten: When I joined Dell in August 2021, it was for two reasons. The first and most important was to share responsibilities for better coverage and speed decision making to accelerate our growth potential and deliver outcomes for customers.

The second was to capitalize on these big opportunities in front of us. We are facing a pivotal time in our company’s history, and expanded leadership capacity helps us to do that. The COO scope at Dell is really broad, so my first job was to jump on the moving train, listen and learn. Then, over time, we began to create executive capacity to divide and conquer responsibilities where it makes sense for our customers.

Pund-IT: How does that work practically?

Whitten: So today, Michael, Jeff and I share responsibility for the strategic direction of the company, as well as the talent agenda. Jeff tilts his time more toward technical strategies and the architectures that are going to define our next era. That is logical given his unmatched experience as an engineer. He also drives the critical ecosystem relationships that he’s built over decades at the company. My responsibilities are the day-to-day execution of Dell’s business like delivering for the quarter and the year, taking solutions to market, making sure we’re supporting customers in the here-and-now, and driving shareholder value.

Pund-IT: That sounds like a sensible division of labor.

Whitten: Look, Jeff and I are quite complementary. It works, I think, because we have years of deep trust, and we stay in constant communication. We’re also agile when and where we need to be. Jeff likes to say there are some problems where we need, “Four eyes, four arms and two brains.” We dig in together. It’s a model that works very well in Dell’s culture, but it takes a lot of communication and having a shared DNA. All Jeff and I want to do is win for our company and our customers, and we tend to sort out things as needed with that as the foundation.

For more information, also see: Digital Transformation Guide

The Dell Company Culture 

Pund-IT: You mentioned being attracted to the fact that Dell is a founder-led company. Does that make it a different kind of organization or entity than other vendors?

Whitten: I think founder-led businesses are differentiated in that company culture is ultimately traced back to the founders. So, the principal behaviors and practices that are instituted in the early days of a company carry forward to the present. I credit our innovative, customer-centric culture to Michael and the consistent way he’s led over the years. We have a common and real sense of purpose because of Michael—to create the technologies that drive human progress. It’s aspirational and it’s also very clear.

Pund-IT: Michael is also, to my mind, one of the most fully engaged leaders in the tech industry.

Whitten: Michael is definitely not hands-off. He is an entrepreneur to the core with incredible instincts. Look, we all admire his leadership. He has correctly predicted where technology is headed at pivotal moments in history and made some very different bets on shaping the company. That’s a real gift. I think what I’m most grateful for, and what I think differentiates founder-led companies from other enterprises, is just the long-term orientation.

Pund-IT: In what sense?

Whitten: Michael is focused on building an enduring business. We never feel pressure to drive short-term profits. We’re encouraged to wade into all these unsolved, hard problems of technology, like multicloud, security, artificial intelligence, the edge. That is a founder’s mentality at work. That’s asking, “Hey, what are the big opportunities and big problems that we can support our customers on?”

Pund-IT: We’ve talked quite a bit about culture. However, it’s a term that has become something of a bromide among some vendors. But I agree with you about the importance of culture and the value of leveraging what a company innately is to drive strategy and execution.

Whitten: Absolutely. I believe it is one of our top differentiators. We have a culture code that traces back to Michael which we all adopted when we joined Dell. It defines who we are, what we believe, how we work and how we lead our teams. It’s somewhat simple: We believe that customers and innovation are the foundation of success in the technology industry. If you never lose sight of that, you will win as long as you act with integrity and commitment. That’s what we ask our team members to embrace.

Pund-IT: What do employees receive in return?

Whitten: In return, we commit to our team members. We believe people should have fulfilling and full careers, as well as fulfilling lives. That’s culturally where we strive to build achievement inside of Dell, but also balance life at home, connections, diversity and inclusion. None of that happens without having a CEO at the top, like Michael, who says, “This matters.” We want to build a people-centric company that delivers technology and innovation for our customers as well as our team members. That’s easy to say and very hard to do.

Pund-IT: In your years working both as a Bain advisor and a Dell executive, what has impressed you or surprised you the most about the company?

Whitten: I think the biggest thing is our agility. Look, $100 billion companies are not supposed to be able to move quickly. But we do. IBM’s Lou Gerstner famously said elephants aren’t supposed to be able to dance. We dance and sing and do backflips like a smaller-scale company.

Pund-IT: What are some examples of that?

Whitten: You saw it in our performance during the last few years as we navigated the pandemic boom in PCs and supporting work-from-home (WFH), followed by the boom in infrastructure. All that time, we were supporting our own WFH employees and navigating global supply chain shortages and doing so better than the rest of the industry. We also saw the current economic caution in businesses faster than anyone else in a position to be relevant to customers. I also think you see that agility in our innovation. The rate of progress we’re making in places like telecom and AI and multicloud is astonishing. Last year in our Infrastructure Solutions Group business, we had a period of 30 major launches in 13 weeks. The ability to move that fast is a really formidable thing.

Also see: Top Cloud Companies

Dell Technology and the Future 

Pund-IT: Is there anything about Dell that you wish people outside the company knew or understood more clearly?

Whitten: I think it’s appreciated but it bears repeating. At Dell, we’ve built something that looks really different than the rest of the technology industry. We’re number one in all our core markets, and we have what we call “durable competitive advantages” that help us continue to win and reinvent ourselves. Our end-to-end portfolio puts us in the center of customers’ agendas, has the largest go-to-market and channel ecosystem in the industry, offers leading services, scale and capabilities, and benefits from the industry’s best supply chain with unmatched scale. And then, as we’ve discussed, we have a culture that I think is unmatched in the industry. Because of that and what we’ve built, we sit at the center of these great challenges our customers are facing.

Pund-IT: Such as?

Whitten: What’s the future of work and how does the PC unlock collaboration? How can companies make multicloud architectures work seamlessly? How can security be more intrinsic to infrastructure and not something that you add on after the fact? How can we accelerate AI? And how can we do it smartly and securely and ethically? How do we unlock innovation at the edge? Technology has never been more essential to customers, and never been more essential to addressing the broad problems of society. We’re in the center of all of that. I think we have the capabilities and the culture to make a difference. Building on that, we can plan and pursue our future-focused goals.

Pund-IT: Speaking of that, where do you see Dell in four or five years?

Whitten: We’ve reinvented ourselves over multiple decades, and we’re just going to continue to reinvent ourselves. There are short-term economic headwinds, but we’ve seen those before. What feels different in this cycle is that technology has never been more essential to our customers and we, as a company, have never been better positioned and prepared to help them solve those problems. Five years from now, I believe we will continue to be at the center of customers’ technology agendas, whatever those agendas are. On the way there, we’re going to help them solve the most pressing challenges that we’re seeing today so we will be at the center of whatever customers are doing. I think that’s the enduring institution that Michael built and that we’re all building together now.

Also see: Top Edge Companies

The post Dell’s Chuck Whitten on Dell Company Culture appeared first on eWEEK.

Of course, this quick integration is no easy task. Especially considering that over the last two years, one in two companies rapidly adopted new technologies and transformed their business in record time, according to new research from Accenture. In fact, the average company now has well over 500 software applications, from almost as many vendors, with 81 percent planning to add more over the next two years.

At a time when budgets are tightening, enterprises now need to focus on untangling their applications to ensure they work cohesively to enable agility and provide ongoing business value.

Also see: Top Cloud Service Providers and Companies

Cracking the Code

We’ve found that one in three companies have cracked the code and have managed to make their enterprise technologies work together.

Last year, these companies with high interoperability grew revenue six times faster than their peers with low operability and they are poised to unlock an additional five percentage points in annual revenue growth. This is a huge financial advantage.

To put it in perspective, if two organizations start with $10 billion in revenue today, the organization with high interoperability stands to make $8 billion more than its peer with low interoperability over the next five years.

So, how does high interoperability create such a powerful impact? By integrating enterprise applications, businesses can move from siloed technologies to connected solutions that enable better data sharing, enhanced employee productivity and improved customer experiences.

GN Group, a global audio solution manufacturer, is a prime example of how high interoperability can enable organizations to take advantage of opportunity. Following a 42 percent rise in headset sales in 2020, the company braced for further demand surges due to remote school and work. When sales jumped 82 percent in the first quarter of 2021, company leaders knew they needed to unite employees and technology under a common strategy to meet the increased demand—and fast.

They turned to Microsoft’s cloud-based enterprise solutions to connect functional applications – like supply chain operations and finance – so that employees across the organization could make decisions based on a single source of trusted data.

In this way, the sales team could check if procurement had the available components for a large incoming order. Similarly, vendors and suppliers, who were previously late to learn of new demand, could also make informed inventory decisions.

By removing data silos and creating a common language across critical applications and systems, GN enabled parallel, rapid transformation in multiple business areas.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

Long-Term Value Without a Big Price Tag

The concept of interoperability isn’t new, but the ability to manifest it is. As companies move to the cloud and have access to improved and inexpensive applications, interoperability not only becomes a source of long-term value—it becomes low-cost too.

Leading companies are achieving high interoperability with just 2-4 percent higher IT and functional budgets directed at applications. The investment is helping them outperform their peers across industries and economic cycles.

Consider life sciences, an industry that grew rapidly with the global demand for vaccinations. Companies with high interoperability grew revenue by almost 10 percent on average, while those with low/no operability only managed a five percent gain.

In the travel industry, which was hit particularly hard by the pandemic, saw revenue decline by four percent, on average, in low operability companies. In contrast, high interoperability companies were able to quickly pivot their business models and grow revenue by two percent.

For more information, also see: Digital Transformation Guid

The Three C’s

Across industries, interoperability is a common denominator for success. There are three best practices for getting to high interoperability in an era of compressed transformation.

1. Leverage the Cloud: By moving existing applications to the cloud and adopting cloud-based enterprise applications, companies can connect data and experiences, which helps to standardize processes and drive change across the organization in parallel. Seventy-two percent of companies with high/medium interoperability have adopted public cloud and have already migrated 30% of their data and workloads.
2. Use Composable Tech: Moving away from a technology architecture of static, monolithic and standalone parts to creating one comprised of composable pieces helps to boost agility. Repeatable solutions that can be configured and reconfigured to rapidly develop new capabilities enables companies to build flexibility into the core of their business. These solutions can be curated for specific industries and functions and act as a form of future proofing—giving organizations the dexterity to quickly adopt the technologies of tomorrow. With data flowing between connected applications, companies can easily share information with the entire organization so everyone is on the same page.
3. Meaningful Collaboration: Interoperable applications are only one part of the equation. Interoperability supports meaningful collaboration by allowing functions and people to work together seamlessly toward a common goal. Real-time data, analytics, and AI, together with new ways of working, can unlock the value of technology and empower people and achieve better outcomes. Companies with high interoperability have an unwavering focus on improving human connections.

It’s clear today, more than ever, that companies must anticipate uncertainty in all its forms. By leveraging the cloud, using composable tech, and focusing on collaboration, companies can improve interoperability to overcome obstacles and outpace competitors in growth, efficiency and resiliency.

For more information, also see: Cloud and AI Combined: Revolutionizing Tech 

About the Author: 

Brian McKillips is Senior Managing Director and Growth and Strategy Lead for Enterprise & Industry Technologies, Accenture

The post Interoperability: Thriving in Uncertain Times appeared first on eWEEK.

Among the topics we covered: 

• Enterprise IT spending is forecast to be up modestly this year. But inside that figure are larger shifts in how companies are spending their IT budget. Overall, what do you see?
• CIO budgets: Much of a CIO’s budget is allocated before the year begins. Does a CIO truly allocate funds?
• CIO as service provider: As a CIO, what’s your approach to being a service provider to your organization?
• CIO as traffic cop: Shadow IT has been – and still is – a major force in tech. How do handle “policing” the tech infrastructure management in your company?
• The future of enterprise spending? What trends do you see evolving going forward?

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During a recent analyst briefing, Cassandra Garber, VP of Dell Technologies’ ESG organization and members of her team provided an overview of the company’s ESG strategies and programs. Dell’s sustainable approach to ESG offers a template for how other organizations can effectively consider and implement their own efforts.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

What is ESG?

So what is ESG and what subjects and areas do these programs address? In short, environmental, social and governance can be used to identify an organization’s material risks and growth opportunities. If ESG issues are weak or absent, investors can use their analyses to encourage companies to act more responsibly.

Considering ESG issues individually:

• Environmental – can cover a wide variety of points, including a company’s energy use, waste disposal and pollution, use and conservation of natural resources and climate. Additionally, these issues can help organizations analyze, understand and prepare for potential risks, such as how extreme weather events might affect their facilities, workforces and supply chains.
• Social – generally addresses how a company deals with and is responsible to its stakeholders, including employees, partners, shareholders and customers. In a sense, these points reflect an organization’s “character.” Are facilities safe and healthy environments? Are employees treated equally and respectfully? How does the organization interact with and support local communities? Does it donate profits or encourage employees to perform volunteer work? Does it treat customers ethically? Does it hold partners and suppliers to its own ESG standards?
• Governance – generally relates to the careful use of transparent and accurate accounting methods. However, it can also include the methods a business uses to select its leadership and how accountable it is to shareholders. It also includes risk issues, such as avoiding conflicts of interest when choosing senior executives and board members, and avoiding questionable, shady and illegal conduct.

ESG is often used by socially conscious investors and their advisors to evaluate businesses, and is also a subject in sustainable investing, responsible investing, impact investing, and socially responsible investing (SRI) discussions. However, ESG policies can also reflect deeper points concerning how a company conducts itself internally and externally.

As Dell’s Cassandra Garber said during her presentation, “When you dive in and look at how companies manage ESG, it is a proxy for a well-run business. Investors love talking about (ESG) because it shows you know your risks, short- and long-term. You know your supply chain, the people in it, the materials you use to make your products.

“When you have all of those topics mapped out, and you have strategies and plans to address them, you are a business that understands your risk and your opportunities. You are also running things well beyond the considerations and factors in traditional business planning.”

For more information, also see: Digital Transformation Guide

Dell and the Value of ESG

Why are ESG programs so important to Dell? At the beginning of Garber’s presentation, she noted that, “Sometimes the term is used with sustainability, even interchangeably. Sometimes corporate citizenship comes up. Importantly ESG is not a ‘nice to have.’ It is essential to Dell’s business and to society right now. Quite frankly, that is a bit of a shift from how some of these issues were looked at in the past. But we want to make it abundantly clear that ESG is imperative to Dell’s business and is a business imperative for us.”

How is Dell focusing on and delivering on its ESG vision? According to Garber, “ESG defines our purpose as a company and is at the very top of who we are. Michael Dell says that our purpose is ‘to create technologies that drive human progress.’ Our ESG strategy ladders up to that, and in many cases, we think it perfectly articulates how we are driving human progress.”

Garber noted that there are two main “buckets” that define Dell’s ESG efforts. The first includes four “goal pillars” – advancing sustainability, cultivating inclusion, transforming lives and upholding ethics and privacy. Garber said, “These are big areas, a lot of different topics, different activities, different work that fits within them. We need a way to frame and organize those topics. The Pillars give us the flexibility to think about them, where they sit in our company, how we manage them, how we process them and how we make progress when it is relevant to do so.”

What the pillars don’t do is prioritize those efforts. Given the size of the ESG subject matter, Garber and her colleagues focused on four key priorities: climate action, the circular economy, driving digital inclusion for under-resourced communities and creating an inclusive workforce at Dell Technologies.

Advancing Sustainability

Garber then focused on the two priorities aligned to the company’s work to advance sustainability:

1. Taking action on climate change – involves programs and processes that Dell is instituting in its own organization and the help it is providing customers to support the transition to net zero carbon emissions and climate resilience.
2. Accelerating the circular economy – encompasses eliminating the concept of waste and keeping materials in use longer – Dell’s work to redesign, reuse and recycle its way to a better future.

Dell is also percolating sustainability concepts and practices throughout its solutions and services. For example, it is emphasizing energy efficiency and power management in its data center solutions, including Dell PowerEdge servers. Dell APEX – the company’s as-a-Service (aaS) subscription solutions – can reduce e-waste and energy consumption by helping customers reduce over-provisioning.

Dell also offers a variety of lifecycle management services that minimize customers’ e-waste production and time obligations. Finally, APEX customers can take advantage of colocation facilities provided by Dell partner Equinix. Powered by up to 95 percent renewable energy, those facilities can reduce customers’ carbon footprints and contribute to sustainability goals.

For more information, also see: What is Data Governance

Final Analysis

Dell VP Cassandra Garber said that in a recent Earth Day discussion for all team members, Dell’s vice chairman and Co-COO Jeff Clarke wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the phrase, “Don’t Be Trashy.” As Garber noted, “That’s a great phrase to think about for accelerating the circular economy. Our goal is to not be trashy but to reuse what could be considered trash. It’s a great way to rethink business models, to rethink innovation, to rethink sustainable material use.”

That down-to-earth approach typifies the ways that Dell considers sustainability and the means to effectively achieve its environmental, social and governance goals.

The post Dell Advances Sustainable ESG Strategies appeared first on eWEEK.

That said, some vendors are investing significant financial and human resources in tackling serious, often seemingly intractable issues affecting millions or billions of people. IBM’s Sustainability Accelerator is one such effort and the company’s recent announcement that it is accepting proposals for water management solutions is worthy of close examination.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

IBM Sustainability Accelerator: Strategy and Aims

Before diving into IBM’s latest request for proposals (RFPs), what exactly is the Sustainability Accelerator, how does it work and what are its goals?

Launched in February 2022, the Sustainability Accelerator is a pro bono program designed to leverage IBM technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and hybrid cloud, along with an ecosystem of company experts. The goal of the program is to enhance and scale projects focused on global populations vulnerable to environmental threats like climate change, pollution and extreme weather.

The program follows a three-step/two-year process that begins with IBM defining a central theme, then requesting RFPs. After a cadre of beneficiary organizations are considered and chosen by IBM and other representatives, they begin Phase One by meeting at IBM Garage facilities. Those discussions apply IBM design thinking and agile techniques to speed the identification of potential solutions and project development.

In Phase Two, IBM cross-industry experts configure resources and technologies to scale participants’ projects and help them meet community and environmental impact goals. Beneficiary organizations receive additional benefits, including monthly IBM Cloud credits, weather data credits, mentorship and access to the IBM partner ecosystem. IBM experts also support pilot solutions and deployments to facilitate optimal implementation, help determine long-term impacts and drive societal outcomes.

The initial cadre of Sustainability Accelerator beneficiaries that focused on sustainable agriculture include The Nature Conservancy of India, Heifer International, Plan21 Foundation for Sustainable Human Development, Deltares and Texas A&M Agrilife.

The second cadre, focusing on clean energy, announced last November at the COP27 event, includes the United Nations Development Programme, Sustainable Energy for All, Net Zero Atlantic, Miyakojima City Government and Environment Without Borders Foundation.

On a related topic: What is Generative AI?

Major Challenges

Why has IBM chosen water and water-related ecosystems for the next Sustainability Accelerator cadre? As noted by the company, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports that some 26 percent of the world’s citizens, over 2 billion people, live in water-stressed countries.

Additionally, at least 2 billion people use drinking water sources contaminated with feces that can transmit diseases such as diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid and polio. The WHO estimates that diarrhea causes or contributes to as many as 485,000 deaths annually.

These challenges, along with chemical pollution risks, are likely to be exacerbated in some regions because of climate change and population growth. Unfortunately, many of the areas most deeply impacted by these issues and problems also lack the resources to fully or effectively address them.

Non-profits and government initiatives focused on water management can apply to the RFP for IBM’s Sustainability Accelerator from March 14^th until the end of May 2023. The selected participants will be announced in November 2023.

Final Analysis: The Crucial Importance of Water

In the developed world, clean, safe drinking water is commonplace. Many consumers prefer bottled water despite having access to excellent tap water. Many others indulge in flavored or vitamin and mineral enriched water. Public sanitation is overseen and policed by local governments and utilities.

The system isn’t perfect, as pollution scandals and public health crises in Flint, Michigan, Jackson, Mississippi and many other places make clear. But while nearly three quarters of the world’s people have access to safe water and water resources, 2 billion other people are suffering, getting sick and dying because they do not.

Without water, life is impossible. With polluted water, the potential for illness, incapacitation and death can be extreme. It is difficult to think of a more fundamentally important problem that is complicated by so many economic, political and societal issues, or one that is in more dire need of original thinking and innovative solutions.

Reimagining and working to provide healthy water for 2 billion people is not impossible, but it is profound. IBM is not the only company searching for such solutions or supporting efforts to find them. However, given the company’s history of taking on and taming large-scale, real-world problems it will be worthwhile to see what participants and RFPs will be chosen for IBM’s latest Sustainability Accelerator program.

For more information, also see: Digital Transformation Guide

The post IBM’s Sustainability Accelerator: Improving Access to Clean Water appeared first on eWEEK.

A new blog by Ken King, GM of IBM Power, uses several of these points to discuss the current and upcoming capabilities of the company’s Power-based servers, cloud offerings, development tools and subscription services. Let’s consider his post in detail.

Also see: Top Digital Transformation Companies

Enhancing Current Capabilities

Ken King begins by focusing on IBM Power’s longstanding leadership in supporting mission-critical workloads that demand superior availability, reliability, security and performance.

In 2023, IBM Power plans to deliver “Frictionless hybrid cloud experiences delivered in new and enhanced flexible consumption models; mitigating risk for business resilience with cloud controls and data protection optimized for the most highly regulated industries; and saving costs with energy efficient IT.”

He also makes an important point: that IBM is developing Power solutions according to imperatives that customers and partners are emphasizing, including digitally transforming key business processes and workloads.

Also see: Top Cloud Companies

Future Focus Areas

As a result, the company plans to prioritize four key focus areas in 2023:

Advance capabilities for core business workloads – Continue strategic investments on AIX, IBM i and Linux operating environments. These include new offerings, like Hyper Protect Crypto Services for AIX and Linux on Power Virtual Server and a 24-core dual chip module on IBM Power S1014 servers which is designed to help small-to-medium sized businesses maximize their investments in Oracle Database Standard Edition 2 (SE2).

Grow share in SAP HANA on Power – King focused on the core performance and memory RAS (reliability, availability, security) features that IBM Power servers offer compared to x86-based systems. IBM is growing SAP HANA on Power10 with 2 to 6 TB bundled solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses. Power systems can support SAP HANA instances from 2 to 40 TB, and IBM offers a full range of Technology Lifecycle Services designed to support SAP KPIs.

Modernization in banking and other industries – IBM’s focus on developing modern solutions and services for banks and financial services is well established (the IBM Cloud for Financial Services is a good example). In regard to IBM Power, the company is expanding its 20+ year partnership with Temenos Group AG, a financial software provider used by two-thirds of the world’s top 1,000 banks.

Later in 2023, IBM clients will be able to modernize their Temenos Transact core banking workloads utilizing Red Hat OpenShift on Power10. In addition, IBM Consulting will provide services to update, migrate and operate Temenos Transact/IBM Power with Red Hat OpenShift as an on-premises SaaS-like OPEX solution.

Flexible subscription services – A challenge with well-established server platforms is staffing IT teams and management. IBM has approached this issue through a number of efforts, including automating/simplifying IT tools and processes.

King cited the company’s application development and modernization tool, IBM i Modernization Engine for Lifecycle Integration (Merlin), which is now available as a subscription offering to help customers streamline ERP. Using Merlin, IBM i developers can easily access automated conversion of fixed-format to free-format RPG, built-in security practices, and modern development processes and tools such as Git and Jenkins.

Final Analysis

Overall, Ken King’s blog provides an excellent overview of the current state of IBM Power, as well as insights into what organizations and markets can expect from the company during the next 12-24 months.

As a result, it accomplishes the author’s and IBM’s core goals—to inform customers and partners about IBM Power’s continuing evolution, to detail the business and performance benefits they can expect to achieve and to explain why that matters practically and strategically.

For more information, also see: Digital Transformation Guide

The post New IBM Power Offerings Highlight Flexibility, Security appeared first on eWEEK.