Author Archives: Matt Kapko

DANA POINT, Calif. — When Steven Fund joined Intel as its CMO in the middle of 2014, the brand was in disarray. “Intel was known for what it was, not for what it is or where it’s heading,” he said at the ANA Brand Masters conference.

Despite Intel having what Fund describes as the “second most recognizable sound in the world,” the brand was stale and failing to evolve as Intel’s business evolved, he said. “We’ve got to evolve or die” because brand measurement is a leading indicator of business performance, he told a room full of marketers.

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President Donald Trump has effectively commandeered Twitter as his personal megaphone and federal employees who feel slighted or threatened by his policies have taken notice. Within days of Trump assuming the presidency, rogue Twitter accounts purporting to express views of government agencies and their staff began springing up as a new form of resistance to some of Trump’s policies.

It began when the Trump administration began ordering the removal of scientific data from government websites and imposed gag orders on the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Departments of Interior, Agriculture and Health and Human Services. The crackdown on government agencies and stifling of scientific research, particularly on climate change, proved to be a breaking point for dozens of government scientists who are determined to resist Trump’s disdain for scientific facts and environmental protections.

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Augmented reality has a powerful ally, and apparently ardent supporter, in Apple CEO Tim Cook. The leader of the most valuable publicly traded company in the world reiterated his optimistic outlook for the future of augmented reality (AR) and highlighted the technology’s capability to layer improvements in the physical world.

“I’m excited about augmented reality because unlike virtual reality, which closes the world out, AR allows individuals to be present in the world but allows an improvement on what’s happening presently,” he told The Independent in a recent interview. “Most people don’t want to lock themselves out from the world for a long period of time and today you can’t do that because you get sick from it. With AR you can, not be engrossed in something, but have it be a part of your world, of your conversation. That has resonance.”

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The IT world is going through an unprecedented transformation that impacts how enterprises operate and leverage opportunities within mobile, data and the cloud, according to Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google Cloud. Greene has been leading Google’s enterprise business since late 2015, focusing much of her attention on reorganizing Google’s approach to the enterprise market and the big customers it wants to win over.

“I’ve never seen the kind of growth that’s going on here,” she said this week during an appearance at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference. Because of that, her biggest challenge is organizing and hiring for scale and she constantly has to declare just how serious Google is about becoming a force in the enterprise market.

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In less than a month since being sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump has struck an emotional chord with tech companies, generating an unparalleled unifying force of opposition. The Trump administration’s executive order banning all people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from the entering the United States has created a rift between political and business interests, and one that many technology leaders consider a threat to their very existence.

A group of 127 technology companies last week filed an official friend-of-the-court brief in the lawsuits opposing the administration’s executive order in Minnesota and Washington. Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Snap and Twitter are all on board, but there are some conspicuous absences. Enterprise leaders IBM and Oracle haven’t joined the effort and all of the major telecom and cable providers have held out thus far as well. Amazon was asked not to join the filing because it’s a witness in the original lawsuit, according to Mashable.

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MARINA DEL REY, Calif. — One of Hollywood’s youngest and smallest film studios is holding its own against the big conglomerates by taking a fresh approach to movie marketing, and that has increasingly put the company in close partnership with Facebook. STX Entertainment, the three-year-old studio behind “Bad Moms,” “The Boy” and “The Gift,” is working with Facebook to iterate and brainstorm marketing strategies for the dramatic and fast-changing landscape of film marketing, according to Amy Elkins, senior vice president of media and marketing innovation at the studio’s motion picture group.

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When Pittsburgh Steelers’ wide receiver Antonio Brown broadcast his coach’s postgame locker room speech on Facebook Live last month it created a distraction and senseless controversy that followed the team the week leading to its loss to the New England Patriots. Brown apologized after he was admonished by his coach, but the damage caused by his negligent use of a livestreaming service was already done.

The episode was a well-publicized reminder that seemingly innocent activities on social media can pose real threats in the enterprise. Livestreaming is advancing as one of the core features of social media and analysts say IT professionals need to pay attention to the unique challenges it can impose on their organization.

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Apple and IBM’s program for iOS mobile app development in the enterprise is broadening its reach this year as more businesses pursue apps that can transform how their employees work, according to IBM. “We are engaged with more than 1,000 clients across the world,” says Mahmoud Naghshineh, IBM’s general manager in charge of the MobileFirst for iOS partnership with Apple.

IBM also plans to integrate Watson analytics and cognitive differentiation to its growing portfolio of iOS apps in 2017, according to Naghshineh. Once a new app is deployed and it becomes valuable for the business, the next step is to make it smarter, he says.

Hundreds of businesses have deployed apps to date and more are in development or at least in the sales cycle that leads to design and testing of new apps, according to Naghshineh. Changing the way people work, which was the original goal of Apple and IBM’s partnership, is also resulting in rapid digital transformation for many businesses, he says.

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Google today bolstered its G Suite of productivity apps with new controls and tools for IT professionals. G Suite administrators now have more access to control security key enforcement, data control with data loss prevention (DLP) for Google Drive and Gmail, and additional insights by connecting Gmail to BigQuery, Google’s enterprise data warehouse designed to enable SQL queries, according to Google.

All of the changes, which are live today, are designed to elevate G Suite for the enterprise, especially among companies that need more confidence in the controls they can maintain over corporate data, according to Google.

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