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Connected TV (CTV) menggeser lanskap Iklan

2021-12-04T20:56:00.004+07:00

Disadur dari artikel eMarketer dengan judul TV is changing marketing budgets and teams

Connected TV (CTV) mengubah lanskap periklanan dengan lebih dari satu cara. Menurut laporan baru dari MNTN dan Digiday, banyak pengiklan tidak hanya memasukkan CTV ke dalam strategi media mereka, namun juga merestrukturisasi organisasi internal mereka untuk mendukung inisiatif ini dengan cara berbeda.

Merujuk pada hasil survei 123 pengiklan merek dan agensi, 35% pengiklan menggunakan pendekatan hibrida, yang mencakup tim brand dan kinerja, untuk mengelola iklan dan strategi CTV mereka. Pendekatan ini menunjukkan keunggulan bawaan CTV sebagai saluran iklan. Seperti TV linier, CTV berguna untuk kampanye pencitraan merk, dan penargetan pemirsa dan kemampuan pengukurannya juga menjadikannya saluran kinerja yang sangat efektif. Bagi tim yang biasa mengevaluasi kinerja dari marketing web, penelusuran berbayar, dan saluran sosial berbayar, hal ini penting untuk mendorong keterlibatan dan konversi konsumen.

Anggaran bergeser dari TV linier dan Media Sosial ke CTV

Hasil survey juga menunjukkan, 58% mengatakan telah mengalihkan anggaran dari TV linier ke CTV. Hal ini tidak terlalu mengejutkan, karena pemirsa telah melakukan perubahan yang sama, sedikit menonton TV dan lebih banyak streaming televisi, sejak beberapa tahun belakangan ini. Yang mungkin mengejutkan adalah bahwa 41% pengiklan mengatakan bahwa mereka mengalihkan juga anggaran dari saluran media sosial berbayar mereka.

Salah satu penjelasan terkait pergeseran belanja sosial ke CTV adalah perubahan iOS 14 baru-baru ini, yang meminta pengguna untuk ikut serta dalam pelacakan data aplikasi seluler. Media sosial sangat bergantung pada aplikasi seluler untuk mendorong bisnis periklanan mereka, dan perubahan privasi Apple melihat persentase pengguna yang rendah untuk ikut serta dalam pelacakan. Angka keikutsertaan di seluruh dunia hanya 11% sejak mulai berlaku pada April 2021, dan tidak banyak meningkat sejak itu.

Hai ini mempengaruhi pembelanjaan iklan media sosial dan mengubah cara pemasar melihat posisi strategi pemasaran mereka. Setelah saluran direct response yang dapat secara konsisten mendorong konversi, perubahan privasi data telah membatasi efektivitas media sosial dalam memberikan jenis kinerja yang biasa dilakukan pengiklan. Pada gilirannya, mereka mencari opsi lain, dan tampaknya CTV adalah alternatif yang populer.

CTV mewakili alternatif iklan direct response

Karena CTV dapat menargetkan pemirsa tertentu dan mengukur hasil yang terkait langsung dengan promosi, seperti kunjungan situs web maupun konversi, pemasar dapat menggunakannya dengan cara yang sama seperti media sosial berbayar. Terlebih lagi, ada beberapa sinergi kreatif antara kedua saluran—materi iklan video yang ada yang digunakan di media sosial dapat dialihkan untuk berjalan di CTV dengan beberapa penyesuaian untuk memenuhi kualitas dan waktu tayang.

Dengan perubahan anggaran serta tim merk dan kinerja untuk memanfaatkan peluang, CTV terbukti menjadi saluran iklan yang tangguh di industri ini. Dikombinasikan dengan fakta bahwa kondisi ini masih sangat awal dalam pengembangannya, CTV bisa menjadi bagian yang dominan untuk beberapa waktu mendatang.

Telco edge computing (1)

2021-12-04T19:33:00.002+07:00

Taken and extracted from STL Partner's article Telco edge computing: What’s the operator strategy?, May 2020

Edge computing is a strategic opportunity for telcos. We examine the driving needs and applications for telco edge computing, describe the market and the options for telcos, discuss their partnerships with hyperscalers and recommend key actions.

Edge computing can help telcos to move up the value chain

The edge computing market and the technologies enabling it are rapidly developing and attracting new players, providing new opportunities to enterprises and service providers. Telco operators are eyeing the market and looking to leverage the technology to move up the value chain and generate more revenue from their networks and services. Edge computing also represents an opportunity for telcos to extend their role beyond offering connectivity services and move into the platform and the application space.

However, operators will be faced with tough competition from other market players such as cloud providers, who are moving rapidly to define and own the biggest share of the edge market. Plus, industrial solution providers, such as Bosch and Siemens, are similarly investing in their own edge services. Telcos are also dealing with technical and business challenges as they venture into the new market and trying to position themselves and identifying their strategies accordingly.

Telcos that fail to develop a strategic approach to the edge could risk losing their share of the growing market as non-telco first movers continue to develop the technology and dictate the market dynamics. This report looks into what telcos should consider regarding their edge strategies and what roles they can play in the market.

We focus on:

Edge terminology and structure, explaining common terms used within the edge computing context, where the edge resides, and the role of edge computing in 5G.
An overview of the edge computing market, describing different types of stakeholders, current telecoms operators’ deployments and plans, competition from hyperscale cloud providers and the current investment and consolidation trends.
Telcos challenges in addressing the edge opportunity: technical, organisational and commercial challenges given the market.
Potential use cases and business models for operators, also exploring possible scenarios of how the market is going to develop and operators’ likely positioning.
A set of recommendations for operators that are building their strategy for the edge.

What is edge computing and where exactly is the edge?

Edge computing brings cloud services and capabilities including computing, storage and networking physically closer to the end-user by locating them on more widely distributed compute infrastructure, typically at smaller sites.

One could argue that edge computing has existed for some time – local infrastructure has been used for compute and storage, be it end-devices, gateways or on-premises data centres. However, edge computing, or edge cloud, refers to bringing the flexibility and openness of cloud-native infrastructure to that local infrastructure.

In contrast to hyperscale cloud computing where all the data is sent to central locations to be processed and stored, edge computing local processing aims to reduce time and save bandwidth needed to send and receive data between the applications and cloud, which improves the performance of the network and the applications. This does not mean that edge computing is an alternative to cloud computing. It is rather an evolutionary step that complements the current cloud computing infrastructure and offers more flexibility in executing and delivering applications.

Edge computing offers mobile operators several opportunities such as:

Differentiating service offerings using edge capabilities
Providing new applications and solutions using edge capabilities
Enabling customers and partners to leverage the distributed computing network in application development
Improving network performance and achieving efficiencies / cost savings

As edge computing technologies and definitions are still evolving, different terms are sometimes used interchangeably or have been associated with a certain type of stakeholder. For example, mobile edge computing is often used within the mobile network context and has evolved into multi-access edge computing (MEC) – adopted by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) – to include fixed and converged network edge computing scenarios. Fog computing is also often compared to edge computing; the former includes running intelligence on the end-device and is more IoT focused.

These are some of the key terms that need to be identified when discussing edge computing:

Network edge refers to edge compute locations that are at sites or points of presence (PoPs) owned by a telecoms operator, for example at a central office in the mobile network or at an ISP’s node.
Telco edge cloud is mainly defined as distributed compute managed by a telco. This includes running workloads on customer premises equipment (CPE) at customers’ sites as well as locations within the operator network such as base stations, central offices and other aggregation points on access and/or core network. One of the reasons for caching and processing data closer to the customer data centres is that it allows both the operators and their customers to enjoy the benefit of reduced backhaul traffic and costs.
On-premise edge computing refers to the computing resources that are residing at the customer side, e.g. in a gateway on-site, an on-premises data centre, etc. As a result, customers retain their sensitive data on-premise and enjoy other flexibility and elasticity benefits brought by edge computing.
Edge cloud is used to describe the virtualised infrastructure available at the edge. It creates a distributed version of the cloud with some flexibility and scalability at the edge. This flexibility allows it to have the capacity to handle sudden surges in workloads from unplanned activities, unlike static on-premise servers.

Figure 1 shows the differences between these terms.

Network infrastructure and how the edge relates to 5G

Discussions on edge computing strategies and market are often linked to 5G. Both technologies have overlapping goals of improving performance and throughput and reducing latency for applications such as AR/VR, autonomous vehicles and IoT. 5G improves speed by increasing spectral efficacy, it offers the potential of much higher speeds than 4G. Edge computing, on the other hand, reduces latency by shortening the time required for data processing by allocating resources closer to the application. When combined, edge and 5G can help to achieve round-trip latency below 10 milliseconds.

While 5G deployment is yet to accelerate and reach ubiquitous coverage, the edge can be utilised in some places to reduce latency where needed. There are two reasons why the edge will be part of 5G:

First, it has been included in the 5G standards (3GPP Release 15) to enable ultra-low latency which will not be achieved by only improvements in the radio interface.
Second, operators are in general taking a slow and gradual approach to 5G deployment which means that 5G coverage alone will not provide a big incentive for developers to drive the application market. Edge can be used to fill the network gaps to stimulate the application market growth.

The network edge can be used for applications that need coverage (i.e. accessible anywhere) and can be moved across different edge locations to scale capacity up or down as required. Where an operator decides to establish an edge node depends on:

Application latency needs. Some applications such as streaming virtual reality or mission critical applications will require locations close enough to its users to enable sub-50 milliseconds latency.
Current network topology. Based on the operators’ network topology, there will be selected locations that can meet the edge latency requirements for the specific application under consideration in terms of the number of hops and the part of the network it resides in.
Virtualisation roadmap. The operator needs to consider virtualisation roadmap and where data centre facilities are planned to be built to support future network
Site and maintenance costs. The cloud computing economies of scale may diminish as the number of sites proliferate at the edge, for example there is a significant difference in maintaining 1-2 large data centres to maintaining 100s across the country
Site availability. Some operators’ edge compute deployment plans assume the nodes reside in the same facilities as those which host their NFV infrastructure. However, many telcos are still in the process of renovating these locations to turn them into (mini) data centres so aren’t yet ready.
Site ownership. Sometimes the preferred edge location is within sites that the operators have limited control over, whether that is in the customer premise or within the network. For example, in the US, the cell towers are owned by tower operators such as Crown Castle, American Tower and SBA Communications.

The potential locations for edge nodes can be mapped across the mobile network in four levels as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: possible locations for edge computing

Telco edge computing (2)

2021-01-18T07:48:00.002+07:00

Taken and extracted from STL Partner's article Telco edge computing: How to partner with hyperscalers, August 2020

Telcos and hyperscalers want to capture the value at the edge, but they need to work together to deliver of edge computing solutions and generate demand among customers.

Edge computing is getting real

Hyperscalers such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google are rapidly increasing their presence in the edge computing market by launching dedicated products, establishing partnerships with telcos on 5G edge infrastructure and embedding their platforms into operators’ infrastructure.

Many telecoms operators, who need cloud infrastructure and platform support to run their edge services, have welcomed the partnership opportunity. However, they are yet to develop clear strategies on how to use these partnerships to establish a stronger proposition in the edge market, move up the value chain and play a role beyond hosting infrastructure and delivering connectivity. Operators that miss out on the partnership opportunity or fail to fully utilise it to develop and differentiate their capabilities and resources could risk either being reduced to connectivity providers with a limited role in the edge market and/or being late to the game.

Edge computing or multi-access edge computing (MEC) enables processing data closer to the end user or device, on physical compute infrastructure that is positioned on the spectrum between the device and the internet or hyperscale cloud.

Telco edge computing is mainly defined as a distributed compute managed by a telco operator. This includes running workloads on customer premises as well as locations within the operator network. One of the reasons for caching and processing data closer to the customer data centres is that it allows both the operators and their customers to enjoy the benefit of reduced backhaul traffic and costs. Depending on where the computing resources reside, edge computing can be broadly divided into:

Network edge which includes sites or points of presence (PoPs) owned by a telecoms operator such as base stations, central offices and other aggregation points on the access and/or core network.
On-premise edge where the computing resources reside at the customer side, e.g. in a gateway on-site, an on-premises data centre, etc. As a result, customers retain their sensitive data on-premise and enjoy other flexibility and elasticity benefits brought by edge computing.

The edge computing opportunity for operators and hyperscalers

Many operators are looking at edge computing as a good opportunity to leverage their existing assets and resources to innovate and move up the value chain. They aim to expand their services and revenue beyond connectivity and enter the platform and application space. By deploying computing resources at the network edge, operators can offer infrastructure-as-a-service and alternative application and solutions for enterprises. Also, edge computing as a distributed compute structure and an extension of the cloud supports the operators’ own journey into virtualising the network and running internal operations more efficiently.

Cloud hyperscalers, especially the biggest three – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google – are at the forefront of the edge computing market. In the recent few years, they have made efforts to spread their influence outside of their public clouds and have moved the data acquisition point closer to physical devices. These include efforts in integrating their stack into IoT devices and network gateways as well as supporting private and hybrid cloud deployments. Recently, hyperscalers took another step to get closer to customers at the edge by launching platforms dedicated to telecom networks and enabling integration with 5G networks. The latest of these products include Wavelength from AWS, Azure Edge Zones from Microsoft and Anthos for Telecom from Google Cloud.

From competition to coopetition

Both hyperscalers and telcos are among the top contenders to lead the edge market. However, each stakeholder lacks a significant piece of the stack which the other has. This is the cloud platform for operators and the physical locations for hyperscalers. Initially, operators and hyperscalers were seen as competitors racing to enter the market through different approaches. This has resulted in the emergence of new types of stakeholders including independent mini data centre providers such as Vapor IO and EdgeConnex, and platform start-ups such as MobiledgeX and Ori Industries.

However, operators acknowledge that even if they do own the edge clouds, these still need to be supported by hyperscaler clouds to create a distributed cloud. To fuel the edge market and build its momentum, operators will, in the most part, work with the cloud providers. Partnerships between operators and hyperscalers are starting to take place and shape the market, impacting edge computing short- and long-term strategies for operators as well as hyperscalers and other players in the market.

Major telco-hyperscalers edge partnerships

What does it mean for telcos?

Going to market alone is not an attractive option for either operators or hyperscalers at the moment, given the high investment requirement without a guaranteed return. The partnerships between two of the biggest forces in the market will provide the necessary push for the use cases to be developed and enterprise adoption to be accelerated. However, as markets grow and change, so do the stakeholders’ strategies and relationships between them.

Since the emergence of cloud computing and the development of the digital technologies market, operators have been faced with tough competition from the internet players, including hyperscalers who have managed to remain agile while building a sustained appetite for innovation and market disruption. Edge computing is not an exception and they are moving rapidly to define and own the biggest share of the edge market.

Indonesia Digital

2021-01-03T11:20:00.004+07:00

Pada era digital seperti sekarang ini, masyarakat didorong untuk menyelesaikan kegiatan atau tugas sehari-hari secara digital/online. Pada tahun 90 an internet masih dianggap barang mewah, tetapi di tahun 2019 sudah sangat mudah bagi masyarakat untuk mendapatkan akses internet dengan kecepatan yang memadai. Saat ini, masyarakat di kota-kota besar sangat bergantung kepada ketersediaan internet karena sebagian besar dari aktivitas yang dilakukan membutuhkan internet. Hal ini terus didorong dengan berkembangnya produk dan layanan digital yang mempermudah kehidupan masyarakat baik secara usaha maupun kehidupan sehari-hari.

Menurut Google dan Bain & Company pada e-Conomy SEA 2019 Report, ekonomi internet Indonesia pada tahun 2019 berada pada tingkat USD 40 miliar, dan ditargetkan mencapai USD 130 miliar pada tahun 2025 atau diperkirakan akan tumbuh lebih dari 3 kali lipat. Dengan tren penggunaan internet yang terus meningkat, prospek penyediaan produk dan layanan digital dapat terus berkembang untuk dapat memberikan kemudahan kepada masyarakat.

Berdasarkan Kementrian Koperasi dan Usaha Kecil Menengah, jumlah pengusaha bisnis di Indonesia meningkat dari hanya 1,67% menjadi 3,10% dari total penduduk Indonesia, dimana seluruh bisnis tersebut membutuhkan public awareness untuk mendapatkan pelanggan baru dan juga meningkatkan penggunaan produk atau layanan yang ditawarkan pada bisnis.

Periklanan menjadi salah satu cara utama bagi para bisnis mendapatkan public awareness, menurut Nielsen, penetrasi media internet dan OOH secara berturut-turut menempati peringkat kedua dan ketiga, menggantikan posisi koran dan radio. Selain itu, adanya kombinasi dengan digital advertising dimana iklan dapat menargetkan pelanggan dengan kriteria tertentu sehingga kegiatan marketing para pelaku bisnis dapat lebih efisien. Dengan demikian, ke depannya mayoritas perusahaan akan beralih memasarkan produknya melalui periklanan digital untuk membantu menerapkan strategi digital yang komprehensif untuk membantu mereka meningkatkan pertumbuhan pendapatan.

Di Indonesia, industri media dan hiburan kini didominasi oleh platform digital terutama platform video-streaming dan gaming. Berdasarkan Nielsen, platform streaming untuk mengakses konten video, portal TV online, internet TV berlangganan menjadi platform “favorit” bagi pengguna layanan internet. Seiring dengan perubahan perilaku masyarakat yang semakin meningkat dalam menggunakan internet, maka kebutuhan layanan komunikasi data dalam sisi jangkauan maupun kecepatan semakin meningkat. Penetrasi jaringan broadband yang masih rendah serta masuknya era teknologi 5G, mendorong pembangunan infrastruktur teknologi komunikasi saat ini.

Digital Business Deal TikTok #5

2020-08-31T15:07:00.061+07:00

Taken from nytimes.com 's article August 24, 2020

TikTok Sues U.S. Government Over Trump Ban

The suit escalates a bitter back-and-forth between the popular video app and American officials.

TikTok sued the U.S. government on Monday, accusing the Trump administration of depriving it of due process when President Trump used his emergency economic powers to issue an executive order that will block the app from operating in the country.

The suit is TikTok’s most direct challenge to the White House and escalates an increasingly bitter back-and-forth between the popular video app and American officials.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance, poses a national security threat because of its Chinese ties. On Aug. 6, he issued twin executive orders banning transactions with TikTok and the Chinese social media app WeChat within 45 days. A week later, he issued a separate executive order giving ByteDance 90 days to divest from its American assets and any data that TikTok had gathered in the United States.

Relations between the US and China have soured in recent months over rifts in geopolitics, technology and trade. The campaign has been partly provoked by China’s more assertive posture, but also Mr. Trump’s desire to convince voters that he is tough on China.

As part of that, Mr. Trump’s advisers have zeroed in on technology companies that they say are beholden to the Chinese government through security laws, including ByteDance, the Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei and the internet company Tencent, the owner of WeChat.

Mr. Trump’s first executive order against TikTok draws its legal authority from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to regulate economic transactions in a national emergency. Past administrations have used it to punish foreign governments, as well as drug kingpins and hackers, but have never used it against a global technology company.

A partner at the law firm Alston & Bird, said courts would probably be reluctant to challenge the president on national security grounds. But if a court does decide to rule against Mr. Trump, that could end up curtailing the powers of the presidency.

TikTok explaining the grounds for its lawsuit that the Trump administration “failed to follow due process and act in good faith, neither providing evidence that TikTok was an actual threat, nor justification for its punitive actions.” The company also claimed that the purported national security threat identified by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States was based on “outdated news articles” and did not address the documentation provided by TikTok demonstrating the security of user data.

One of the Trump administration’s chief concerns has been the storage of American user data on foreign servers. But in its complaint, TikTok said it had taken “extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok’s U.S. user data,” which included storing American users’ data outside China on servers in the United States and Singapore. The company said it had also erected “software barriers” that stored U.S. user data separately from the data kept on other products and companies owned by ByteDance.

The company also said many of its top personnel — including its chief executive, general counsel and global chief security officer — were all in the United States and were not subject to Chinese law. And further, content moderation across the TikTok app is led by a team based in the United States, operating independently from China.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the suit.

The president’s move to ban WeChat, a social media app used widely by people of Chinese descent in the United States, is also facing legal challenges. A nonprofit group calling itself the WeChat Users Alliance filed a separate suit in a federal court in San Francisco arguing that the president’s attempt to ban WeChat violated various constitutional protections, including the First Amendment, and seeking an injunction against the move.

The executive orders against TikTok have led ByteDance to explore a sale of the popular video app, which is used by millions of teenagers and influencers. The company is in talks with multiple American firms, including Microsoft and Oracle, for a sale of at least parts of its business. TikTok is continuing to negotiate a potential sale while it fights the U.S. government in court.

Such a deal would require the company to move American user accounts over to the acquirer’s servers, a stipulation required by the White House. Microsoft is largely seen as the front-runner in the negotiations.

Another Chinese tech company that the Trump administration has targeted as part of its clampdown is Huawei, the giant maker of smartphones and telecommunications equipment. Huawei has also tried to use the American legal system to push back, though not always successfully.

The company sued the U.S. government over a spending law that prohibited federal agencies and contractors from using Huawei equipment, and sued the Federal Communications Commission after the agency barred American mobile carriers from using government subsidies to buy the company’s gear.

Digital Business Deal TikTok #4

2020-08-26T04:21:00.000+07:00

Taken from DealBook's article August 24, 2020
TikTok is taking the U.S. to court

The Chinese-owned video app plans to sue the Trump administration as soon as today over its order to force a sale. It faces long odds, pressure from rivals and unrest within its ranks.

TikTok is still in talks with potential bidders, including Microsoft and Oracle. There were discussions with other would-be suitors, but some appear to have dropped out: Bloomberg reports that Alphabet, the parent of Google, quit talks to join a group bid for TikTok.

It is fending off Facebook on multiple fronts. The Silicon Valley giant has rolled out new products that clone many of TikTok’s main features. And last fall, Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told U.S. lawmakers behind closed doors that Chinese internet companies like TikTok were threatening their American counterparts, according to The Wall Street Journal.

It is trying to reassure its American employees. In virtual town halls, employees are asking whether they’ll still be paid if the service is forced to shut down, according to Bloomberg. And internally, Sept. 15 — when one of the Trump executive orders is set to take effect — is reportedly referred to as “D-Day.”

Deal Professor: What TikTok wants

Steven Davidoff Solomon, a.k.a. the Deal Professor, is a professor at the U.C. Berkeley School of Law and the faculty co-director at the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy. Here, he considers the prospects for TikTok’s legal challenge against the White House.

TikTok’s lawsuit is a delaying tactic, at best.

President Trump has issued two executive orders targeting ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company. The first, issued on Aug. 6, cites powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the National Emergencies Act to bar any U.S. person from transacting with TikTok, starting 45 days after the announcement.

The second, issued on Aug. 14, ordered ByteDance to sell TikTok to a U.S. owner within 45 days. It relies on the Exon-Florio Amendment of the Defense Production Act, which allows the president to order a foreign company to divest U.S. assets if their purchase is perceived to have hurt national security. (The transaction in question here is ByteDance’s acquisition of Musical.ly, TikTok’s predecessor, in 2017.)

On the Exon-Florio order, there is one previous case to go on: President Barack Obama’s order requiring Ralls, a Chinese-owned firm, to sell a wind farm it had bought that was deemed too close to a U.S. military base.

Ralls sued, and a federal court ruled that while a foreign company was entitled to due process rights, like being able to examine the unclassified information used in the order, the substance of the decision is not challengeable. Ultimately, Ralls still had to dispose of the wind farm, but with more leeway to choose the buyer.

In the case of the Emergency Powers Act, ByteDance could make a similar argument about due process. Foreign states and organizations have challenged such orders over the years, and due-process rights have been held to apply.

TikTok thus has precedents for a legal challenge — but it would merely delay the inevitable. It cannot challenge the substance of the divestiture order. And although Mr. Trump appears to stretch the legal boundaries of his emergency powers, courts are unlikely to interfere.

Still, TikTok could extend time for a deal by persuading a court to delay the application of the orders. This is what the lawsuit is about: avoiding a fire sale. More time could help it fetch a higher price or better sales terms, but by this time next year TikTok will almost certainly be under new, American ownership.

Digital Business Deal TikTok #3

2020-08-24T07:27:00.003+07:00

Taken from Reuters article August 20, 2020

Unusual for U.S. Treasury to get a cut of any TikTok sale: White House aide

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump wants to deny China some of the proceeds from the sale of ByteDance’s U.S. operations of its video-sharing app TikTok, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said on Wednesday, but it would be unusual for any company that acquires TikTok to provide funds to the U.S. Treasury.

“Well he’s said that,” Kudlow told CNBC when asked about Trump’s demand that part of the proceeds from the TikTok sale he has ordered go to the U.S. Treasury.

“I acknowledge that it’s unusual. The president has his own mind on some of these things,” Kudlow said.

“I don’t know whether that will end up being the case when the Treasury gets its bids in from potential bidders. But the president has said that. I think he probably would like to deny China some of the proceeds of the TikTok sale,” Kudlow added.

Trump ordered ByteDance last week to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations within 90 days, the latest effort to ramp up pressure on the Chinese company over concerns about the safety of the personal data it handles.

Trump has said he would support an effort by Microsoft Corp to buy TikTok’s American operations if the U.S. government gets a “substantial portion” of the proceeds, but has also said there are other interested potential buyers.

Oracle Corp has joined some of the investors of TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance in pursuing a bid for the app’s operations in North America, Australia and New Zealand, according to people familiar with the matter.

Platform Deal Fortnite #2

2020-08-20T23:17:00.000+07:00

Taken from DealBook Briefing August 18, 2020

The Apple-Epic battle kicks up a notch

One of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched fights escalated yesterday, after Epic Games accused Apple of threatening to block it from important developer services — a move that could have repercussions beyond games like Fortnite, Epic’s marquee title.

Epic said that it could lose access to developer accounts and tools for iOS and Mac operating systems as a result of the company’s dispute with Apple over the 30 percent commission that software developers pay for sales made within iOS apps. Apple removed Fortnite, the hugely popular multiplayer game, from its app store after Epic urged players to pay it directly rather than via Apple.

Losing Apple’s developer tools is a bigger deal than just blocking Fortnite on the App Store. Epic’s software platform, known as the Unreal Engine, underpins scores of other video games and apps (including software for training astronauts). Revoking its developer accounts would leave Epic unable to update that engine for iOS or Mac devices, meaning other developers’ games and apps that rely on it would eventually become unusable.

• That could force developers to use other engines — not a small task — and could put a dent in Epic’s recently minted $17 billion valuation. Apple said in a statement that it was simply forcing Epic to comply with rules that apply to all developers on its platforms.

Epic will be hoping to rally more companies to its cause. It has already tapped into growing frustration with Apple’s power over its App Store, which has become the subject of antitrust scrutiny in Washington and Brussels. And The Information reports that the game developer is trying to form a coalition of like-minded partners, including Spotify and Sonos.

Platform Deal Fortnite #1

2020-08-20T23:08:00.001+07:00

Taken from DealBook Briefing August 14, 2020

Fortnite picks a fight

Apple and Google have kicked Fortnite out of their app stores, making the wildly popular and hugely lucrative video game unavailable to many iPhone and Android device users. It follows moves by Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, encouraging the game’s mobile-app users to pay it directly rather than going through the online stores, which take a cut of sales.

The tech giants insist on handling app payments and take a 30 percent commission on transactions via their stores. This gatekeeper policy is at the center of antitrust complaints against Apple and Google in the U.S. and Europe. After the Fortnite ban, Epic sued Apple and Google in federal court, with its C.E.O., Tim Sweeney, promising “a hell of a fight.”

• Epic’s argument: Apple and Google collectively dominate mobile platforms and cannot be trusted to charge “fair” prices.

• Apple and Google’s argument: They built and maintain their platforms and should be allowed to charge whatever they want. In other words, they aren’t public utilities.

It’s a gutsy gambit by Epic, and probably a losing one, at least in the short term. Neither Apple nor Google is likely to capitulate: If they did, they’d have to offer the same terms to everyone on their platforms. (“These guidelines create a level playing field for all developers and make the store safe for all users,” Apple said in a statement.) However, a protracted legal battle could put more pressure on the tech giants in Washington, Brussels and other places that are looking closely at their market power. If Epic rallies app developers to get behind its cause, that could be a problem for the platforms, too.

• Since March 2018, Fortnite has been downloaded more than 130 million times on iPhones and iPads, generating about $360 million in revenue for Apple, according to Sensor Tower. It’s easier to download apps on Android devices outside Google’s store, so it has made less in commissions from sales of Fortnite, which has appeared in its online store only since April. Fortnite can also be played on other devices, computers and consoles, giving it leeway to lose iPhone and Android users without going completely dark.

This is not a genuine negotiation. For Epic Games, it is as much a public relations event as anything else. Within minutes of Fortnite’s being banned by Apple — something that Epic clearly anticipated — it released a slickly produced video parody of Apple’s famous “1984” ad. Mr. Sweeney, the game maker’s chief, framed the dispute as no less than “critical to the future of humanity,” citing the risk of submission to “corporations who control all commerce and all speech.”

• Spotify, which has waged a similar battle with Apple, issued a statement in support of Epic and against what it called Apple’s “unfair practices.”

• It’s worth noting that Epic brought out its own app store in 2018. It charges developers a 12 percent commission, which it says is still comfortably profitable.

Which is worse for Apple: No Fortnite or no WeChat? Losing the mostly young fans of Fortnite is bad, but the Trump administration’s threat to ban U.S. companies from doing business with China’s WeChat could affect vast numbers of iPhone users. Whatever the case, the longer these disputes endure, the bigger the risk that people who feel they can’t live without a certain game or messaging app will think twice about buying Apple devices.

Digital Business Deal TikTok #2

2020-08-20T15:15:00.001+07:00

Taken from DealBook Briefing August 18, 2020
The race for TikTok gets (even more) interesting

As the Chinese-owned video app negotiates to sell itself to avoid being banned in the U.S., The Financial Times reports that a surprising new suitor has emerged: Oracle, the Silicon Valley giant better known for business software than for social networking.

Oracle has held preliminary talks with ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, according to the FT. Its aim was to buy TikTok’s operations in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the same assets that Microsoft has publicly said it is negotiating to acquire. Like Microsoft and any other potential buyer, Oracle’s talks have included ByteDance investors such as Sequoia and General Atlantic.

• Oracle is only the latest company to express interest in buying TikTok after the Trump administration’s demand to transfer ownership of the app to an American company: Twitter had

previously emerged as a suitor, and others are in the mix as well, DealBook’s Michael de la Merced hears.

Oracle has an advantage: close ties to the White House. Both Larry Ellison, its co-founder, and Safra Catz, its C.E.O., are among the few prominent Trump supporters in Silicon Valley. It arguably has a better relationship with the Trump administration than even Microsoft, which has itself navigated the current Washington landscape more deftly than rivals like Alphabet and Facebook.

• But Oracle also faces a question: What would it do with TikTok, given that it has little experience in the way of consumer-facing businesses?

The White House is expanding its battle against the Chinese tech industry. The Commerce Department widened restrictions on Huawei, making it harder for the company to buy chips made or designed with American equipment and and software. The net effect of all these moves, The Times notes, is a potential splintering of the internet.

Digital Business Deal TikTok #1

2020-08-20T15:08:00.001+07:00

Taken from DealBook Briefing August 17, 2020 TikTok isn’t standing still

As TikTok negotiates its potential sale, which must be completed within 90 days to prevent the Chinese-owned app from being shut down in the U.S., it is signing a different sort of deal.

TikTok is partnering with UnitedMasters, a music distribution company, to allow artists on the video-sharing platform to distribute their songs directly from the app to streaming services like Apple Music, Spotify and YouTube. UnitedMasters also arranges music deals with brands like ESPN and the N.B.A. The deal is expected to be announced today.

It’s the first major transaction for Kevin Mayer, TikTok’s C.E.O., who joined the company in May after a long career at Disney. Much of his time has been spent reacting to geopolitics, with TikTok’s parent company, the Beijing-based ByteDance, ensnared in the tech cold war between the U.S. and China. Citing national security concerns, President Trump has ordered TikTok’s U.S. operations to be sold to an American owner — Microsoft is the most likely buyer — or shut down.

• Despite the uncertainty of TikTok’s fate in the U.S., the UnitedMasters deal shows that the company is not standing still, even if the benefits of the new partnership will probably accrue to a new owner.

It’s an effort to deepen relationships with influential artists who use the app. TikTok’s young and engaged audience has helped songs go viral, jump-starting the careers of musicians like Lil Nas X and BMW Kenny. Trying to keep these creators engaged with the app is particularly important as TikTok faces competition from deep-pocketed rivals like Facebook’s Instagram, which recently launched a TikTok clone called Reels.

It’s a sign of the times for the music industry. Instead of selling their rights to a label, artists who sign with UnitedMasters keep 90 percent of their royalties, as well as ownership of the master recordings. UnitedMasters was founded in 2017 by the former label executive Steve Stoute and funded by the likes of Alphabet and Andreessen Horowitz. The deal, which creates a platform designed to circumvent the traditional music-label business model, is aimed at “tomorrow’s stars who will be famous, fiercely independent and wealthy,” said Mr. Stoute, a long-established tastemaker in the hip-hop industry.

• In many ways, TikTok has already upended the music business: Scouts no longer go to bars and clubs to discover the hottest unsigned artists — they scroll through the app instead. By partnering with UnitedMasters, the app is aiming to bolster its appeal to independent-minded artists who operate outside the traditional industry machinery.

But what about that other deal? TikTok would not comment on the state of the company’s takeover talks with Microsoft. The deal with UnitedMasters does not appear to be contingent upon that transaction, and is billed as a “global” partnership. However, if TikTok were to shut down in the U.S., it would clearly affect the reach of the music deal. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Indonesian Young Consumer & Gaming

2020-07-23T21:14:00.001+07:00

Taken from Credit Suisse Research

Institute "Emerging Consumer Survey 2019"

March 2019

Indonesia Consumer Survey 2019

2020-07-23T20:40:00.001+07:00

Taken from Credit Suisse Research

Institute "Emerging Consumer Survey 2019"

March 2019

Cloud service providers as part of utilities market

2020-07-23T19:54:00.001+07:00

Taken from Analysys Mason's Quarterly Report "Cloud service providers may prove to be the utilities of the future, in a market that remains highly competitive" April 2019

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a utility is “an organisation supplying the community with electricity, gas, water, or sewerage”. Regulators and policy-makers in several parts of the world have started to wonder whether large internet platform businesses, operated by the likes of Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft, may be a new form of utilities. After all, they provide essential services to virtually everyone in many developed markets, and they are often portrayed as new monopolies. This analogy can appear somewhat facile, and more in-depth and thoughtful reviews have sought to break down the comparison into objective features such as network effects, high upfront costs and barriers to entry and the importance of intermediating downstream relationships.

The Furman Review uses a comparison with electricity suppliers to question if online platforms are utilities or not. Electricity is not only a fundamental part of everyday life for most people, but it is also an essential input ⁷into virtually every economic activity; it powers factories, farms and offices. Increasingly, a growing proportion of electricity usage comes from computers: a regularly updated paper suggests that ICT currently uses 8–10% of all electricity worldwide, and that this will grow to 20% by 2025. A third of this usage will be linked to data centres; the large internet companies are all committed to power efficiency and the large-scale use of renewable energy to power and cool their facilities.

A study by Analysys Mason shows that online content and service providers, and in particular, the major global internet companies, have invested around USD70 billion annually in their data centres since 2014. Google is one of the largest private sector investors in electricity generation outside of energy companies.

Data centre facilities are expensive; they are typically designed to use hundreds of megawatts. Data centres and the cloud systems that run on them are complex, fast-evolving and incredibly investment-intensive: AWS added USD8 billion in assets in 2018, representing around a quarter of its entire revenue. Thanks to these investments, every company in the world has access to computing power and infrastructure that is virtually identical to that Amazon, Google and Microsoft use for their own services, thereby reducing the technical barriers to entry into many internet-related markets. Apple and Netflix are good examples of this: they are both major customers of AWS, but are also in direct competition with Amazon for video streaming and mobile and home devices.

Cloud providers are increasingly integrating many more-advanced services into their cloud offering, which allow their customers to use not only their IT infrastructure, but also voice and image recognition software (such as Amazon’s Rekognition or Google’s Vision AI) and pre-established machine learning algorithms (Amazon’s SageMaker or Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning). Voice interfaces are an interesting development: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and even Apple have all developed mass-market voice assistants, partly as an interface to their services, but also as a basic building block to add to their cloud offering to corporations in sectors where voice commands and voice recognition are important.

This points to the idea that cloud service providers may be the real new ‘utility’, in the sense of an essential input into every aspect of everyday life. They harness a traditional commodity (electrical power) to deliver a new form of input (computing services), which is then delivered to any user worldwide in its raw form or combined with any number of structured services (such as voice recognition, AI-as-a-service and visualisation engines). Internet companies such as Amazon and Google have built huge businesses on platforms and intermediation, but are now growing quickly, partly by opening up the building blocks of their platform services to all.

These internet companies are investing large sums of money into building competing cloud infrastructure across the world. Unlike traditional utilities, these companies offer differentiation across multiple dimensions, and are not natural monopolies. This is partly possible because the internet remains an open, worldwide medium, and access networks tend to be operated and regulated effectively, unlike electricity, which relies on national, closed distribution networks.

Regulators and policy-makers will undoubtedly look into the competitiveness of cloud services soon enough. As they do so, they will need to adapt their analytical toolboxes to the new challenges of cloud services, which are infrastructure- and investment-heavy, yet fast-evolving and heavily reliant on software.

The Experience Disrupter

2020-05-24T20:50:00.001+07:00

Excerpt from MIT Sloan article's The Experience Disrupter by Brian Halligan February 27, 2020

It’s not good enough to have a disruptive product. Your customer experience also needs to shine.

There’s been a massive wave of disruption happening in the consumer world. Taking a Lyft, play Spotify, package from Chewy, workout booked through ClassPass, using Dollar Shave Club, order from DoorDash, and check out movie on Netflix, to name a few.

The same shift is going on in the business world, such as collaborate on Slack, meeting thru Zoom, scarf down from ezCater.

We tend to think about technology disrupters like Google, Intel, iPhone, Tesla. Big technology companies with lots of patents. (In 2018, Intel was granted 2,735 patents, Apple 2,160, and Google 2,070.)1

Companies like Chewy Dollar Shave, and ClassPass are not really technology disrupters. List of 20 companies like that have only about 50 patents total.

Instead, they are a new species of disrupter emerging in economy, called experience disrupters. These organizations all have great products, but they offer even better experiences. How they sell is why they win.

These companies have fundamentally reshaped what their customers come to expect in the experience of purchasing and using their product or service. This is a central insight of Clayton Christensen’s Theory of Jobs to Be Done, which tells us that customers don’t simply buy products or services. They hire them to do a job for them. Doing that job well for customers involves creating the right experiences for those customers, from the moment they begin to think about purchasing the product to their everyday use of that product. It’s an essential part of developing a deep relationship with customers: You solve their struggle for them.

Companies that outmaneuver the competition by excelling at the customer experience. Five things modern adaptations that allow these experience disrupters to run over the incumbents.

They Give You Experiences You Didn’t Know You Wanted

While incumbent companies focus on product-market fit, experience disrupters work on experience-market fit. Product-market fit, when you’ve found the right mix of product for just the right target market, is considered by these companies as necessary but insufficient to get the disruption they’re really after. For experience disrupters, what matters is offering experiences that surround the product and that customers didn’t even know they wanted or could ask for.

Carvana, a killer experience disrupter, was founded in 2012 and was the eighth-largest used-car dealer in the US in 2018.2 It went public in 2017 and has a market cap of roughly $12.5 billion.

Typically, a car dealer inventory is necessary, but insufficient. To get the crazy growth it’s had, Carvana focused on the experience-market fit, to create a whole new way to buy a car, very Amazon-like experience. Choose the price range, mileage, condition, type of car, get alerted when available near you, and view a 360-degree inspection with annotated zoom-in areas to see wear and tear.

The company deals with the department of motor vehicles, taxes, registration, including delivery service and still you can return it. Carvana has taken the cringeworthy process of buying a car and automated it, institutionalized it, and made it awesome.

They Make Interactions Frictionless

The second adaptation is that experience disrupters pull the friction out of each customer interaction. The analogy of mechanical flywheel, the less friction customer interactions have, the faster the flywheel spins. In businesses that are struggling to keep up with experience disrupters, their flywheels are full of friction. Experience disrupters are very good at reducing that tension.

Atlassian, a B2B collaboration software company, is a large company that growing very fast and very profitable, with a market cap near $36 billion.

Like other B2B, it's marketing dept focusing less on generating new leads and more on activating current users and multiplying the number of users and teams within a customer. Instead of fighting the uphill battle for senior-level evaluation of their solution, Atlassian focuses on the ease with which an end user can invite a colleague to a collaborative project.

The most of its transactions happen without the sales team. Salespeople negotiate the highest-sticker-price deals, or straightforward, with no commissions. The purchase price is online, and because they don’t negotiate changes in prices or terms and conditions, the contracting process is not complex — and it’s easily automated. All these decisions eliminate friction at this stage of the sale.

They Personalize the Relationship

The third adaptation is creating a personalized experience. The incumbents offer a more generic experience when they’re prospecting customers, meanwhile experience disrupters didn’t sound like tech people. The way they cater to each customer makes them less like tech companies than like ultramodern hospitality companies.

Thru Netflix’s database, the more we use their product, the better its gets at personalizing its recommendations to us. Netflix suggests new content based on viewing history, but even the finest details — such as the thumbnails that accompany each show — are tailored to an individual user’s browsing habits.

This is also happening at Stitch Fix, an online personal styling company, that went public in 2017 with market cap of $2.4 billion, offers customized clothing selection for customers and also sells the outfits. When Stitch Fix first got started, individual stylists recommended combinations of apparel solely on the basis of lengthy profiles completed by customers about their style preferences and specific measurements.

But Stitch Fix knew the value of data to deepen the accuracy of stylists’ recommendations and to give scale to the business. In addition to the initial customer profile, the company uses feedback from customers on their purchases, which items were purchased together and which were rejected and returned, and fastidious details from its merchandise about the precise measurements, textures, and aesthetics of each clothing option. This arms Stitch Fix with an opportunity to base recommendations that have progressively led to increased purchases over returns, and more additional purchases by repeat customers.

Netflix and Stitch Fix are playing the same game, use lots and lots of data to highly personalize experience. How they sell is why they win.

They Get Customers to Sell for Them

The fourth adaptation is that while the incumbents know how to sell to their customers, the experience disrupters are very good at selling through their customers.

Emily Weiss, founder of Glossier -- a private company estimated valuation at $1.2 billion, started off as a blogger — Into the Gloss, was blowing up with beauty tips, then developing beauty products.

Weiss is next-level and a bona fide experience disrupter to not just create her own content but also encourage and enable her customers to create content. Glossier makes its products available to Top 20 YouTube beauty vlogger, sometimes even prior to public release to build buzz. Thousands of wannabes and micro influencers then imitate the most popular vloggers with their own video reviews. The result is hundreds of thousands of pieces of content out there about Weiss’s products — all created by her customers.

Warby Parker, the eyeglasses company, mail the glasses to prospect customers to try on, they can post photos on Instagram, and ask all their judgy friends which one they like.

They Empower Employees to Make Things Right for Customers

The fifth adaption: Experience disrupters enable customer-facing employees to fix things when they need to.

Traditionally, companies woo customers to make a purchase, but the second that purchase is made, it becomes the customer’s hassle to get service on it if there’s a problem. Experience disrupters make all these details much more customer-friendly.

Online pet store Chewy gives its customer service reps a discretionary budget to create opportunities to build goodwill with customers, and this empowerment allows for a customer experience that feels seamless.

Chewy’s costs to acquire a future customer were very low, and the total lifetime value current customer is now very high.

Experience disrupters know how incredibly significant it feels for customers when there’s a genuine change in the power balance in post-sale interactions.

These experience disrupters think differently, and the founders have a healthy disdain for conventional wisdom. They spend hardly any of their energy extracting value from their customers. Instead, they spend all their energy thinking, “How do I add value for my customers?”.

Here’s a summary of the five points:

Don’t obsess completely about product-market fit. Obsess about experience-market fit. Embrace your inner Carvana.
Remember that dollars flow where the friction is low. Mechanically remove friction. Automate like the superheroes at Atlassian.
Personalize, personalize, personalize. Stop embracing automation without personalization — that’s what people call spam. Think like Netflix. Dust for fingerprints.
Sell through your customers, not just to them. Let Glossier be your model.
Rethink how customers get treated after the sale. Look at your terms and conditions. Give your customer-facing employees the tools to make things right. Delight people, the way Chewy does.

REFERENCES

1. J.J. Roberts, “IBM Tops 2018 Patent List as AI and Quantum Computing Gain Prominence,” Fortune, Jan. 7, 2019, https://fortune.com.

2. D. Muller, “Carvana Debuts as No. 8 on Used Ranking,” Automotive News, April 22, 2019, www.autonews.com.

3. L. Smiley, “Stitch Fix’s Radical Data-Driven Way to Sell Clothes — $1.2 Billion Last Year — Is Reinventing Retail,” Fast Company, Feb. 19, 2019, www.fastcompany.com.

Digital Twins.... a bit Digitization

2020-05-10T13:36:00.001+07:00

Excerpt from Deloitte's article Digital twins Bridging the physical and digital 15 January 2020

Digital twins are multiplying as their capabilities and sophistication grow but require integrating systems and data across entire organizational ecosystems.

Digital twin would enable you to collaborate virtually, intake sensor data and simulate conditions quickly, understand what-if scenarios clearly, predict results more accurately, and output instructions to manipulate the physical world.

Today, companies are using digital twin capabilities in a variety of ways. They are becoming essential tools for optimizing entire value chains and innovating new products, capturing and analyzing massive amounts of data to build digital models, creating highly accurate diagnoses, uses a detailed virtual model in planning, maintenance, and disaster readiness projects.

Digital twins can simulate any aspect of a physical object or process, but they all capture and utilize data that represents the physical world.

Recent MarketsandMarkets research predict The digital twins market—worth US$3.8 billion in 2019—is projected to reach US$35.8 billion in value by 2025. The trend is gaining momentum thanks to rapidly evolving simulation and modeling capabilities, better interoperability and IoT sensors, and more availability of tools and computing infrastructure. IDC projects that by 2022, 40% of IoT platform vendors will integrate simulation platforms, systems, and capabilities, with 70% of manufacturers using the technology to conduct process simulations and scenario evaluations.

At the same time, access to larger volumes of data is making it possible to create simulations that are more detailed and dynamic than ever.

Models + data = insights and real value

It capabilities began as a tool to streamline the design process and eliminate many aspects of prototype testing. It helps engineers identify potential manufacturability, quality, and durability issues—all before the designs are finalized. Thus moving into production more efficiently and at a lower cost.

Beyond design, it transform the way companies perform predictive maintenance of products and machinery in the field. Embedded sensors feed data in real time, making it possible not only to identify malfunctions but to tailor service and maintenance plans.

It help optimize supply chains, distribution and fulfillment operations, and even the individual performance of the workers involved in each.

Smart city initiatives are also using digital twins for applications addressing traffic congestion remediation, urban planning, and much more.

What’s new?

Digital twin capabilities has accelerated due to a number of factors:

Simulation. The tools are growing in power and sophistication. It is now possible to design complex what-if simulations, backtrack from detected real-world conditions, and perform millions of simulation processes without overwhelming systems. Finally, machine learning functionality is enhancing the depth and usefulness of insights.

New sources of data. Data from real-time asset monitoring technologies can be incorporated into simulations. Likewise, IoT sensors embedded in machinery or throughout supply chains can feed operational data directly into simulations, enabling continuous real-time monitoring.

Interoperability. The ability to integrate digital technology with the real world can be attributed to enhanced industry standards for communications between IoT sensors, operational technology hardware, and vendor efforts to integrate with diverse platforms.

Visualization. Advanced data visualization can filtering and distilling information in real time. The latest data visualization tools go far beyond basic dashboards and standard visualization capabilities to include interactive 3D, VR & AR-based visualizations, AI-enabled, and real-time streaming.

Instrumentation. With IoT sensors improvements in networking and security, control systems can be leveraged to have more granular, timely, and accurate information on real-world conditions to integrate with the virtual models.

Platform. Some software companies are making significant investments in cloud-based platforms, IoT, and analytics capabilities that will enable them to capitalize on the digital twins trend. Some of these investments are part of an ongoing effort to streamline the development of industry-specific digital twin use cases.

Costs versus benefits

The AI and machine learning algorithms that power digital twins require large volumes of data, and in many cases, data from the sensors on the production floor may have been corrupted, lost, or simply not collected consistently in the first place. So teams should begin collecting data now, particularly in areas with the largest number of issues and the highest outage costs. Taking steps to develop the necessary infrastructure and data management approach now can help shorten your time to benefit.

Even in cases where digital twin simulations are being created for new processes, systems, and devices, it’s not always possible to perfectly instrument the process. Organizations need to look to proxies or things that are possible to detect.

Balancing the cost/benefit analysis is critical. Most use cases, however, require only a modest number of strategically placed sensors to detect key inputs, outputs, and stages within the process.

Models beyond

Organizations making the transition from selling products to selling bundled products and services, or selling as-a-service, are pioneering new digital twin use cases. Connecting a digital twin to embedded sensors and using it for financial analysis and projections enables better refinement and optimization of projections, pricing, and upsell opportunities.

Modeling the digital future

More organizations may explore opportunities to use digital twins to optimize processes, make data-driven decision in real time, and design new products, services, and business models.

Longer term, require integrating systems and data across entire ecosystems. Creating a digital simulation of the complete customer life cycle or of a supply chain that includes not only first-tier suppliers but their suppliers, may provide an insight-rich macro view of operations, but it would also require incorporating external entities into internal digital ecosystems. In the future, expect to see companies use blockchain to break down information silos, and then validate and feed that information into simulations. This could free up previously inaccessible data in volumes sufficient to make simulations more detailed, dynamic, and potentially valuable than ever.

Designing Artificial Intelligence (Human-Macine Interaction)

2020-05-10T07:28:00.000+07:00

Taken from MIT Sloan Management Review's article Designing AI Systems With Human-Machine Teams March 18, 2020

The greatest potential from artificial intelligence will come from tapping into the opportunities for mutual learning between people and machines.

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to augment human capabilities and reshape companies, yet many organizations try to implement AI without having a clear understanding of how the technology will interface with people.

Assessing the Context of AI Application

Bringing together the formal rationality of AI and the substantive rationality of humans can help companies meet their goals and optimize the chances of success. However, managers need to assess the decision-making context on two dimensions: (1) the openness of the decision-making process and (2) the level of risk. These will help figure out the teaming options for implementing their AI systems and maximizing further learning.

Openness of the decision-making process. A closed decision-making process implies that all the relevant variables have been considered and that there are predefined rules for framing decisions. An open process, in contrast, anticipates that there will be problems that aren’t well defined and that some variables may not be known in advance.
Closed and open decision-making require different approaches with regard to AI. Closed applications have well-established, structured performance indicators and work with a set of fixed variables. Open system decisions require additional information, often from multiple sources.
Assessments as to whether the process should be open or closed may vary. Consider the challenges involved with language translation that are based on preset rules of grammar and meaning, are therefore closed. In undefined situations, the process might be assessed as open. AI systems such as natural language processing will access contextual information and learn how certain experts handle specific situations.
Level of risk. The severity of a risk depends on the specific elements. An acute risk might be tolerated if the chance of the event occurring is small. Conversely, if the chance is high, the risk may be unacceptable — even if the specific danger is small.
Knowing the risk level can help you decide whether you’ll be comfortable making decisions entirely based on algorithms or whether you’ll want additional resources like human experts on hand to help you handle unexpected situations.

What Role Should People Play?

Combinations of human awareness and AI system design can take different forms, making different configurations possible.
When the contextual factors are well defined, algorithms can “learn” by interacting with the environment through supervised machine learning. In these instances, the need for human involvement is low and act not as active decision makers but as foremen.

But when the potential consequences of bad decisions are serious, greater situational awareness is required. In such cases, humans can act as sentinels, relying on their experience to manage risky situations. Whereas algorithms may be good at identifying ill-defined processes, an experienced person might also be needed to train the AI system, taking on the role of coach.
In situations where the levels of complexity and risk are great, the need for human-machine interaction will peak to the point where it becomes a reciprocal learning relationship. In this context, the human expert is a companion in a long-term, peer-to-peer relationship.

Human-Machine Teaming Capabilities

Depending on the circumstances, humans and machines can work together in four different ways. Humans play a distinct role in each of the quadrants.

By combining humans and machines in AI systems, organizations can draw on four main teaming capabilities:
Interoperability. The interaction needs to be facilitated, systems should be able to share the right piece of information and analysis whenever it’s required. An AI system should also be able to specify the precise role that a human needs to play in the interaction.
Authority balance. In examining dealings, it’s essential to know which one has the final control and when. In low-risk situations, the ability to control for the outcome might be enough. But in high-risk situations, the process might require a more immediate response. The system could also decide to revise how authority is assigned in order to prevent actions that could endanger people or assets.
Transparency. Given the need for reinforcement loops, transparent decision-making processes are key to building trust. The human needs to know which variables, rules, and performance parameters the algorithm uses. At the same time, the machine should know which decisions the human is authorized to make in order to integrate them into the learning loops.
Mutual learning. Machines learn from various sources, including the external environment, repetitive patterns, and the expected versus actual outcomes of decisions. However, they can also develop insights from human experience and intuition. This learning takes two forms: when humans make decisions that the machine analyzes and when human experts train the machines with their intuition. Just as machines learn from humans, humans can acquire insights from algorithms. These two-way learning loops increase the overall scope and performance of the AI system.

Configurations of Teaming Capabilities

Four different ways humans and machines can work together to make decisions.

Machine-based AI systems. In settings where machine-based designs are central and no surprises are expected, machines can perform tasks independently, with humans playing only supervisory roles and making changes only when necessary. Since potential mistakes are visible and do not pose major risks, the interoperability is for audit purposes only, and transparency is not required.
Sequential machine-human AI systems. In other settings, machines are capable of performing many of their required tasks independently. But humans need to do more than monitor the outcomes — they need to be prepared to step in to deal with unplanned contingencies. This requires humans to have situational awareness and to be ready to identify events that extend beyond the capacity of the machine and intervene. To know when such interventions are required, the AI system needs to have a level of transparency.
Cyclic machine-human AI systems. In settings where the processes are open and low-risk, organizations have wide latitude for shifting decision-making authority from machine to human and vice versa. Even though a high degree of transparency may be needed, as long as the AI system is operating smoothly, the human agents’ task is to monitor the outcomes without intervening in the activity. Their role is that of a coach: to train the AI system by providing new parameters and generally improving the performance.
Human-based AI systems. Decision processes that are both open and high-risk call for human-based AI systems, with the final authority in the hands of humans. Although the AI systems may have enough stored and processed data to make educated guesses, the risk of something bad happening can’t be overlooked. Therefore, experts must maintain high situational awareness. It’s critical, moreover, that the various decision rationales be sufficiently clear and transparent to advance the learning of both humans and machines.

Successful AI implementations should draw on a variety of configurations that can be adapted to the scenario at hand, depending on the environment and human factors.

Q4 2019 spend on cloud infrastructure services by Synergy Research Group

2020-05-01T06:00:00.003+07:00

Incremental Growth in Cloud Spending Hits a New High while Amazon and Microsoft Maintain a Clear Lead

New data from Synergy Research Group shows that Q4 spend on cloud infrastructure services increased by $2.8 billion over the previous quarter, which is by far the biggest quarterly increment the market has seen. At 37% the YoY growth rate is slowly trending down, but this is due to the massive scale of the market which forces growth rates to moderate.

Meanwhile Amazon growth continued to closely mirror overall market growth so it maintained its 33% share of the worldwide market. Second ranked Microsoft again grew fast than the market and its market share has increased by almost three percentage points in the last four quarters, reaching 18%.

Behind these two market leaders, Google, Alibaba and Tencent are substantially outpacing overall market growth and are gaining market share. All three saw revenues increase by 50% or more year on year.

Four other cloud providers have substantial market share but are somewhat niche players and typically have lower growth rates – IBM, Salesforce, Oracle and Rackspace. There is than a long tail of cloud providers with a small market share.

Synergy estimates that quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues (including IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud services) were well over $27 billion, with full-year 2019 revenues reaching over $96 billion.

Public IaaS and PaaS services account for the bulk of the market and those grew by 38% in Q4. In public cloud the dominance of the top five providers is even more pronounced, as they control over three quarters of the market. Geographically, the cloud market continues to grow strongly in all regions of the world.

The 2019 market was over twice the size of the 2017 market. Given secular trends in the market we will continue to see strong growth. We will also see a continuing battle for market position between the global giants and smaller cloud providers that have a more focused geographic or service footprint.

Half of global online retail sales is generated on marketplaces

2018-11-27T16:51:00.002+07:00

Source : www.ystats.com

Online marketplaces, such as Amazon, eBay, Tmall and Rakuten, generated around 50% of global E-Commerce sales in 2017, with a projection of two-thirds by 2022, according to sources cited in the yStats.com report. Eight in ten online shoppers used these platforms in 2017 and two-thirds started their product search on multi-seller websites rather than on the search engines of retail shops.

Asia is the global leader of the marketplace trend. In countries such as China, India and Japan, the vast majority of online shoppers reported making half or more of their Internet purchases on marketplaces, according to data from a 2017 survey contained in the yStats.com report. In contrast, only around one-third of U.S. B2C E-Commerce sales was generated by third-party merchants via marketplaces. Nevertheless, more U.S. consumers are turning to marketplace shopping, attracted by better prices and free or discounted shipping options. Other marketplace features luring online shoppers in different countries include product availability and variety.

While popularity of marketplaces among global online shoppers is rising, the rivalry between the top online marketplaces is intensifying. In terms of gross merchandise volume, Alibaba was the leading marketplace operator in the world in 2016, generating two times more online sales than Amazon’s retail and marketplace GMV combined, as yStats.com’s publication shows. Nevertheless, Amazon’s marketplace is also growing, with around one in two units sold on Amazon coming from third-party sellers, as of 2017. Besides the two E-Commerce giants, other leaders in the global marketplace space include eBay, Rakuten, JD.com, Etsy, and Wish, with numerous regional and country champions such as MercadoLibre, Flipkart, Allegro and Jumia.

Indonesia’s B2C E-Commerce to experience the fastest growth in Southeast Asia

2018-11-27T16:48:00.000+07:00

Source : www.ystats.com

B2C E-Commerce in Indonesia is growing at high double-digits rates which exceed those in the neighboring Southeast Asian nations. According to projections cited in the report by yStats.com, Indonesia is expected to be the top country in Southeast Asia by online retail sales in 2021 and also rank among the key emerging retail E-Commerce markets globally by 2025. The country’s growing middle class amidst the 260-million population and rising Internet penetration rates contribute to this robust growth.

M-Commerce is the key online retail trend in Indonesia, with mobile accounting for almost three-quarters of overall Internet traffic, as of early 2018. Most unique visitors to the country’s leading online shopping sites such as Lazada, Blibli and Tokopedia come from mobile devices, although the conversion rates on mobile are still lower than on desktop. Another important characteristic of Indonesia’s B2C E-Commerce market highlighted in the yStats.com report is the importance of social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, as a source of inspiration for digital purchases and also as a platform to place orders with online sellers. Clothes and footwear rank as the top product categories transacted through social networks.

At the same time, several major challenges to future E-Commerce growth exist. Indonesia’s archipelago geography complicates the delivery process, while low bank account penetration rates and preference for cash necessitate the acceptance of alternative payment methods by online merchants. Furthermore, Internet penetration in Indonesia is still low, according to statistics cited in yStats.com’s publication, and only about one in three Internet users make purchases online. Nevertheless, the growth expectations are high, attracting large investments into Indonesia’s E-Commerce sector.

Disrupted Phone Call by Chat App

2018-08-20T09:24:00.001+07:00

Taken from "Chat apps are extinguishing phone calls"

Annual time spent on mobile calls in the UK fell year-over-year (YoY) for the first time, according to report by UK telecommunications regulatory authority Ofcom. Total mobile call volumes dropped by 2.5 billion minutes (1.7%) last year to 149 billion, down from 151 billion in 2016.

The British regulator attributes the downtick in time consumers spend making phone calls to the rising popularity of mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat.

It's likely this slump will continue as the consumer shift to chat apps swells:

The chat app consumer base is massive and growing. It's estimated that 1.8 billion people worldwide regularly used such apps by the end of 2017, up almost 16% from 2016, according to eMarketer.
And chat app users are highly active. For instance, 57% of consumers in the UK were active social chat users on mobile in January 2018, which is up 3% annually. Moreover, Android users in the UK spend 25% of their mobile time in chat apps.
This shift in consumer behavior is impacting the way consumers want to interact with businesses. 54% of consumers already prefer using social messaging channels for customer engagement over legacy channels like phone and email, and 59% of consumers would rather go through additional channels to contact brands just to avoid having to use their voice to communicate.

As chat apps continue to replace legacy channels of communication, they will present a growing opportunity for brands. For businesses looking to increase engagement with customers, improve retention, and boost sales, it's important to shift focus to where customers are already spending a good chunk of their time.

Chat apps provide tools to help businesses target consumers, automate certain communications to enable immediate response times, and simplify the process of entering payment information to complete a purchase. WhatsApp, for example, launched WhatsApp Business API last week, which is a tool that enables larger enterprises to send customers non-promotional notifications like flight delays or appointment confirmations.

SURVEY: Trust more to Mobile Operators or OTTs?

2018-08-15T17:15:00.001+07:00

Taken from Research Paper from OPENET
CONSUMER SURVEY:Who Do You Trust Most?Mobile Operators or OTTs?

“A digital service is defined as any service accessed and supplied via the internet. For example, social media sites, music and video streaming sites, apps and games, financial services, internet calling, instant messaging, and lifestyle apps and services ”.

Consumers trust their mobile operator more than they trust the OTTs. The reason—people see that their mobile operator has always protected their data. As can be seen from the infographic below, 92% of consumers surveyed said that they’d be open to their mobile operator delivering digital services—as long as they are transparent about it.

There is an opportunity for mobile operators to build on this trust to provide digital services directly to their customers. The types of digital services consumers would most trust their mobile operators to provide. This showed that for music, video, messaging and internet calling services consumers would prefer to deal with their mobile operator rather than go direct to the OTT. When asked the reason why someone would prefer to deal direct with their mobile operator than an OTT there was a clear winner—mobile operators have always protected consumers’ data.

Social media is just one type of digital service and it was interesting to see that there has been a knock-on effect on levels of trust for all digital service companies. 83% of respondents were aware of the Facebook data scandal and 34% said that their trust in digital service companies has decreased.

86% agree that companies need to be more transparent “Companies need to be more transparent with their practices around data use”

There has also been a change in perception in the use of free services. Consumers know that their data is the ‘product’ and this effects how they view free digital services. Consumers are less likely to share their personal data as a rule, but also more than half said that they are less likely to share their data in exchange for free digital services.

More than half say they are less likely to share personal data with OTTs since the scandal, and a similar proportion are less likely to share in exchange for free digital services

Two thirds would prefer to pay for digital services if it meant they had better controls over data

It’s probably fair to say that free services will always be attractive to certain groups, but someone has to pay. When looking at how free services should be funded, advertising came out on top with only 13% feeling that selling customer data to 3rd parties was acceptable.

Summary

Mobile operators have a level of trust with consumers that can be built on to enable operators to take a stronger position in the digital value chain. Already we’re seeing operators selling Netflix subscriptions and billing for them. Over half of the people surveyed said that they’d be happy dealing with their mobile operator for digital services, such as video and music services. The main reason for this is that they know that their mobile operator isn’t going to abuse their data. The success of Orange Bank in providing mobile banking services is a clear indication that people do trust their mobile operators with very sensitive data. The Facebook data scandal highlighted that OTTs need to be more transparent and open with their customers. It also highlighted the need for regulation. For years, mobile operators have been crying foul that they’re under tight regulatory control and the OTTs had no such restrictions. Maybe being regulated does have benefits after all.

The results of this survey are clear: consumers trust companies who are open, accountable and regulated. Operators have an opportunity to build on this trust and sell a range of digital services to their customers. This is already happening and we’ll see more content and telecoms mergers in the next couple of years. However, buying content providers isn’t a cost effective option for everyone, so we’ll see increased number of content partnerships. The opportunity for the the mobile operators is to take the lead in these partnerships. This means engaging with the customer for marketing, service delivery and monetisation of digital services. In order to maintain consumer trust they need to be open and transparent about uses of consumers’ personal data.

Messaging App Usage Resume

2018-08-15T16:43:00.001+07:00

Taken from Messaging App Usage Worldwide: eMarketer's Updated Forecast, Leaderboard and Behavioral Analysis

Mobile messaging app usage is expected to hit a milestone in 2017: For the first time, over three-quarters (76.3%) of the world’s smartphone users will use one. While local standouts like WeChat and Line dominate in their home countries and a handful of other markets, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the most widely used platforms worldwide.

A mobile messaging app provides private one-to-one or one-to-many communication between registered users (via mobile phone number or user ID). Its messages and calls—voice or video—are then transmitted via data connections and the mobile web.
The number of mobile messaging app users worldwide is still growing at a significant rate, even after three years of double-digit growth. eMarketer expects growth will drop to single-digit rates in 2019, as penetration among smartphone users nears 80%.
This year, the bulk of new users (63%) will come from five countries—China, India, the US, Indonesia and Brazil.
More mobile phone internet users in Asia-Pacific will use messaging apps in 2017 than in any other region—75.9%. Western Europe and Latin America will rank second and third, at 65.6% and 64.1%, respectively.
On a global scale, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are the most widely used messaging apps in terms of monthly active users (MAUs). WhatsApp tends to be used more frequently than Messenger—but not more often than WeChat is used in China. WeChat has the highest ratio of daily active users (DAUs) to MAUs vs. the other leading apps.
Even though many of the leading messaging apps have evolved into sophisticated platforms with functions enabling more than direct messaging, the top activities conducted by users are still centered around the apps’ primary purpose—communication. Text-based messaging is still the most popular mode, but the types of messages sent have expanded to include recorded audio and video, emojis and stickers, voice calls and video calls.

"This will be another year of double-digit growth in the number of mobile messaging app users. By the end of 2017, 1.82 billion people worldwide will regularly use such apps, an annual increase of 15.5%."

Design Thinking for Action

2017-02-28T23:53:00.002+07:00

Taken from :

Design for Action

Tim BrownRoger L. Martin
FROM THE SEPTEMBER 2015 ISSUE

The New Challenge

The launch of a new product that resembles a company’s other offerings—say, a hybrid version of an existing car model—is typically seen as a positive thing. It produces new revenue and few perceived downsides for the organization. Of course, introducing something new is always worrisome.

The more complex and less tangible the designed artifact is, though, the less feasible it is for the designer to ignore its potential ripple effects. The business model itself may even need to be changed. That means the introduction of the new artifact requires design attention as well.

Designing the Intervention

Intervention design grew organically out of the iterative prototyping that was introduced to the design process as a way to better understand and predict customers’ reactions to a new artifact. In the traditional approach, product developers began by studying the user and creating a product brief. Then they worked hard to create a fabulous design, which the firm launched in the market. In the design-oriented approach popularized by IDEO, the work to understand users was deeper and more ethnographic than quantitative and statistical.

Iterative rapid-cycle prototyping didn’t just improve the artifact. It turned out to be a highly effective way to obtain the funding and organizational commitment to bring the new artifact to market. Often, fear of the unknown kills the new idea. With rapid prototyping, however, a team can be more confident of market success. This effect turns out to be even more important with complex, intangible designs.

In corporate strategy making, for example, a traditional approach is to have the strategist—whether in-house or a consultant—define the problem, devise the solution, and present it to the executive in charge. Often that executive has one of the following reactions:

(1) This doesn’t address the problems I think are critical.

(2) These aren’t the possibilities I would have considered.

(3) These aren’t the things I would have studied.

(4) This isn’t an answer that’s compelling to me.

As a consequence, winning commitment to the strategy tends to be the exception rather than the rule, especially when the strategy represents a meaningful deviation from the status quo.

The answer is iterative interaction with the decision maker. This means going to the responsible executive early on and saying,

“We think this is the problem we need to solve; to what extent does that match your view?”

Soon thereafter the strategy designers go back again and say,

“Here are the possibilities we want to explore, given the problem definition we agreed on; to what extent are they the possibilities you imagine? Are we missing some, and are any we’re considering nonstarters for you?”

Later the designers return one more time to say,

“We plan to do these analyses on the possibilities that we’ve agreed are worth exploring; to what extent are they analyses that you would want done, and are we missing any?”

The Launch Is Just One Step in the Process

In his book Sketching User Experiences, user interface pioneer Bill Buxton describes the Apple iPod as the “overnight success” that took three years to happen. He documents the many design changes to the device that took place after its launch—and were essential to its eventual success.

As this story illustrates, a sophisticated designer recognizes that the task is first to build user acceptance of a new platform and later to add new features. When Jeff Hawkins developed the PalmPilot, the world’s first successful personal digital assistant, he insisted that it focus on only three things—a calendar, contacts, and notes—because he felt users initially could not handle complexity greater than that. Over time the PalmPilot evolved to include many more functions, but by then the core market understood the experience. The initial pitch for the iPod was an extremely simple “1,000 songs in your pocket.” The iTunes store, photos, games, and apps came along later, as users adopted the platform and welcomed more complexity.

As strategies and large systems become the focus of design thinking, imagining the launch as just one of many steps in introducing a new concept will become even more important. Before the launch, designers will confront increasing complexity in early dialogues with both the artifact’s intended users and the decision maker responsible for the design effort. A solution with purposely lower complexity will be introduced, but it will be designed to evolve as users respond. Iteration and an explicit role for users will be a key part of any intervention design.

New information and computing technologies will make it far easier to create and share early prototypes, even if they are complex systems, and gain feedback from a more diverse population of users. In this new world, the launch of a new design ceases to be the focus. Rather, it is just one step somewhere in the middle of a carefully designed intervention.

—Tim Brown

Netflix, the disruptor

2017-02-28T23:19:00.003+07:00

Taken from
How Netflix Built its House of Cards (and Changed TV Forever)

08 SEP 2016 COLD CALL PODCAST
with ANITA ELBERSE : Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration

There are four major groups:

1. The broadcast channels, the ABCs and the NBCs and the CBSs.

2. There are basic cable networks, cable networks that are part of your cable bundle but that would still carry some advertising, so they make their money partly from that advertising and partly from the cable fees that consumers pay.

3. There are premium cable networks, the third group, HBO and Showtime are examples of that, and they don't run advertising. They solely depend on the subscription fees that we as consumers pay.

4. Then the fourth group, which is obviously a major focus in this case, are these online services, Netflix, and Amazon has come up strongly in recent years. They introduced binge viewing. They, too, depend on subscription fees, but it's quite a different experience to be watching these online services.

They (Netflix) certainly were very innovative and they were extremely gutsy. I think even now if you look at the decision, it's not clear that this was necessarily the safest or the most logical decision, but it certainly was very gutsy. As I said early on, I think it became a pivotal moment in television history, so in that sense they may deserve that stamp of being a disruptor.