Futurum Tech Webcast

This episode of the Futurum Tech Video Podcast focuses on the post-pandemic business model and why rethinking and reworking should come before rebuilding and recovering. We decided to highlight just a few business categories with a view toward how they might rethink and rework their post-pandemic business models. Our focus in this discussion was on five categories: Education, Retail, Manufacturing, B2B Marketing and Sales, and Entertainment (Travel, Destinations, Sports). Here's a look at what our analysts think is important to consider when rethinking the post-pandemic business model — and where we go from here.

On this special edition of the Futurum Tech Podcast Interview Series host Daniel Newman welcomes Eric Vogel, Global Vice President of Customer Experience with HPE Greenlake. Daniel and Eric discussed data storage solutions, consumption-based business models as well as how HPE is helping in the fight against COVID-19.

HPE is Helping in the Fight Against COVID-19

Currently, HPE is working on giving back to the global community to help in the fight against COVID-19 in a few ways. First, the company has set up a global matching relief fund where they plan to match every dollar employees donate to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. Second, they've set up a dollar for dollar matching campaign to support the Bay Area in California, one of the hardest hit regions in the country.

The company is also looking at what can be done from a high-performance computing standpoint. They have partnered with the White House on their high-performance computing consortium to provide capabilities with respect to high performance computing to really understand the science and mysteries of this COVID-19 virus.

On-Prem and Consumption Based Business Models

As businesses have had to shift operations in the last few weeks, it's clear that those who have not transformed in some way will be left behind. One of the biggest transformation efforts in the last few years has been a shift to the cloud, but with that comes data gravity issues, security issues, compliance issues, connectivity issues and even the application interdependency issues.

Eric shared how HPE Greenlake has been working with customers to deliver on-prem storage solutions with the benefits of the public cloud without the drawbacks. Companies that use Greenlake have the flexibility to scale up or down and pay for what they're using while also knowing that their data is securely stored and protected.

Understanding the Right Mix Advisor

There's a lot to consider when moving to an on-prem consumption-based IT or business model. CIOs and IT decision makers have a lot to evaluate and it can be difficult to know where to begin. HPE has a logic-based program that helps companies evaluate their needs. Right Mix Advisor looks at 60 different variables and scores each based on the needs of the company. Some of these variables include looking at their application portfolio. Where does it run? What does it do? What do you need it to do? Do you value cost over performance?

Other variables include culture, team structure, and employee expertise. It would be a waste to move to a fully public cloud if there was no one on the team equipped to manage it. And of course, each company is different, so HPE really sets out to help companies answer these questions in order to propose the right software mix. These software solutions are also constantly evolving and changing as business needs are constantly evolving too. Right Mix Advisor continues to make adjustments as the company makes adjustments. It's not a set it and forget it situation.

Partner-Centric Model

HPE also works to give customers lists of things to do to help with their transformation based on the goals and information fed to the Right Mix Advisor. They look at what can make the most impact for the client right now and then work with partners to deliver on their promises. They recognize that no one firm or company can do it all so HPE maintains a partner-centric approach. They work with other companies like Microsoft, AWS, SAP, and Google — to name a few — to deliver what the customers want and need.

Centralized Monitoring and Data Visualization

The future for storage solutions is hybrid. Public and private clouds with on-prem and off-prem options are everywhere for customers. But the issue with the hybrid model is that it's not always easy to see where all the storage is, what's being used, and how much is being spent. Plus, many companies also have to deal with compliance like PCI or HIPAA. HPE Greenlake works to eliminate this issue by creating a place for clients to see all their solutions at once.

The ability to have easy data visualization can help streamline operations especially in an enterprise that likely has thousands of applications. As more technologies like edge computing and expanding storage solutions complicate the data picture, having one simple way to view this complex environment can help businesses operate more efficiently.

If you're interested in learning more about HPE Greenlake and their offerings, be sure to check out their website. You can also listen to this podcast below. While you're at it, be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss an episode.

On this special edition of The Futurum Tech Podcast - Interview Series host Daniel Newman welcomes Satish Thomas, Director of Product Management for Microsoft Dynamics 365 to discuss data, marketing technology, and customer insights in our current situation.

Data Is Everything

Our world is undergoing a fundamental change. Data is coming out of everything and everywhere. When customers call your company, use your product, interact with your social media posts, visit your website, they are creating a data profile about themselves. A customer Data Platform (CDP) takes all this previously siloed data and combines it to create a 360-degree view of the customer. When done well, it can be used to fuel personalized experiences across sales and marketing departments.

Four Key Pillars of a Customer Data Platform

CDPs are gaining popularity as companies realize the value that they bring. Satish and the team at Microsoft have identified four key pillars of a CDP that make it effective. First, it is critical to have a vendor-agnostic view. You should be able to bring in data from every source regardless of vendor and schematize it. Then once you have all of the data collected and you've created this unified view of the customer, the second pillar is to be able to enrich the data from other sources. This involves giving the data context which is crucial for the third and fourth pillars.

The third pillar brings in AI. It's one thing to bring all the data together, it's another thing to be able to identify the next best step. AI allows you to make decisions based on the data. The final pillar is how can you drive actions with these decisions. How can you power your business processes with this data.

The Myths and Misconceptions Surrounding CDP

As CDPs grow in popularity, Microsoft has found several myths and misconceptions that customers have regarding the technology. These range from the simple to the more complex. It's Satish's goal to eliminate these misconceptions and educate business decision-makers on how a CDP can impact their business. These are a few that he sees regularly:

• Vendor Lock-in. Many people assume that having a CDP from one vendor means you can only collect data from that vendor's sources. Microsoft Dynamics 365 runs on a vendor-agnostic view meaning data from any source and any vendor can be collected.
• Just for Marketing. While CDPs started out as a piece of marketing technology, today Microsoft sees use cases across the enterprise in sales, marketing, and service.
• It Takes a Long Time. Microsoft has worked to eliminate the misconception that it takes a long time to get a CDP up and running. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a SaaS application that can launch within a few months if they have a refined process or plan in place.
• Have to Rip and Replace. Most customers assume that when you start working with a CDP that you have to rip out and replace existing processes and other applications. That is not the case with Microsoft. Dynamics 365 works with other applications and can be built on existing processes.

Vision for the Future

If you look at CDPs today, getting that 360-degree of the customer is great, but there's more that can be done. The fact that you have a unified data view of the customer makes it easier to leverage AI. Satish believes that AI and ML will be the next frontier with CDPs. There's power in putting your data to work. There's power in having your data take shape in a system and then being able to make decisions and create actions from that data.

This is an interesting time in the world and companies have an unprecedented opportunity to hit the pause button and refocus their efforts on digitally transforming. If you're interested in learning more about the Microsoft Dynamics 365 customer insights platform be sure to check out their website and listen to the full podcast here. While you're at it be sure to hit subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode.

This podcast is part of a special series focused around what leaders and companies are doing to help employees and customers deal with COVID-19. Be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss out on amazing insights.

In this special edition of the Futurum Tech Podcast – Interview Series host Daniel Newman welcomed Doug Merritt, CEO of Splunk to discuss how data applies to everything — even in the fight against COVID-19, business continuity, and what Splunk is doing outside of the COVID-19 realm.

Looking at Data Differently

At the foundation of digital transformation is data. About five weeks ago, Splunk created a series of free dashboards hosted in the cloud that showed data about the spread of the virus and a myriad of characteristics around it. Companies can easily download these free dashboards and apply the data amassed by Splunk directly to their own data sets in order to help them make better sense of what is happening and plan accordingly.

Splunk is also working on a set of healthcare applications designed to offer better visibility to the healthcare supply chain ecosystem. Using these applications, healthcare organizations will have a better idea of bed availability, necessary PPE stock, and critical care staff and their availability.

Splunk is also working with companies in a variety of industries to fight fraud, as instances of hacking have really ramped up amid the massive distraction caused by coronavirus COVID-19. Companies have been collecting data on their networks, at endpoints, and back at data centers for other uses, but now Splunk has been able to come in and help these companies retool the data to work through these new issues. Most companies aren't collecting new data, but by adding Splunk they are able to look at the data through a different lens to solve a different problem.

Business Continuity in the Age of COVID-19

One difficult thing many businesses are facing right now is the business of remote work, and companies very quickly moving to a completely virtual workforce — including the team at Splunk! Doug praised his team for being incredibly agile and fast tracking everything needed to get themselves, and their clients, set up so the company could continue to support their clients without much disruption. If there's one thing that we all will learn from this pandemic, it's the importance of agility and having the right technology in place to handle a massive, unpredictable shift in how we operate.

Doug also shared a little about his own message to his employees during this time, which focused on being calm and trying to just roll with things as they come. He has counseled his employees on the importance of taking breaks, allowing for distractions, not getting stressed by a dog barking or needing to help a child with homework. He reminds his team, and our listeners, that this is a marathon and a team sport. We all need to come together to help each other be effective and still find a balance between work and home life. If we do it right, we will all come out stronger in the end — a bold and helpful leadership message.

Data to Everything

Beyond the fight against COVID-19, Splunk is helping companies bring data to everything. The Splunk platform allows companies to take non-structured data and put it into storage format allowing the structure to emerge as you ask questions and interact with it. The problem with most data tools is you take one point of view on the data before you've ever interacted with it and you don't get the full picture. Splunk allows the data to speak for itself through whatever questions or problems are thrown at it.

In the last three years, Splunk has pivoted to bring streaming data into the analysis mix. Data is flying around now rapidly, and companies are needing to analyze that data, in real-time, to make fast decisions. Splunk evolved and delivered, providing real-time streaming, real-time interrogation, and real-time contextual capabilities. Data to everything, while maybe grammatically confusing, makes perfect sense in the business world and has helped many of Splunk's customers be successful.

Want to learn more about Splunk's Data to Everything platform or check out the free dashboards that Splunk developed to help companies help in the fight against COVID-19? There's also probably not a better time to learn more about why customers chose Splunk, and how they can help your company act faster and accelerate innovation, amplify the impact of your data, and scale without the stress. Listen to the full podcast here, and while you're at it, be sure to subscribe to the Futurum Tech Podcast so that you never miss an episode.

This podcast is part of a special series focused around what leaders and companies are doing to help employees and customers deal with COVID-19. Be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss out on amazing insights.

In this episode of the Futurum Tech Podcast, I'm joined by my colleague and fellow analyst, Olivier Blanchard, in a discussion about the COVID-19 related rapid deployment of tech that we are experiencing as a result of the coronavirus outbreak and the new security risks posed as a result. Our goal is to highlight some of those security risks, offer suggestions on how to mitigate those risks, and also explore some other goings on in the world of cybersecurity along the way, largely driven as well by the COVID-19 pandemic we are slogging through the world over.

Main Dive

At a time when many, or perhaps most, of us are stuck at home, Zoom, Slack, Google, Microsoft Teams and other and other online collaboration tools have become our collective lifelines. While that's great — and it's wonderful that kids can learn online using collaboration tools, we can work online using these tools, and we can host family gatherings and happy hours using these platforms, there's an inherent security risk that you can be sure hackers are paying attention to, and exploiting whenever possible.

THIS WEEK's FAST FIVE

• Tech Tools are Assisting With Tracking the Mapping and Spreading of COVID-19.
• Zoombombing attacks are disrupting classes, interviews, meetings, and even social gatherings.
• China-based threat group launches widespread malicious campaign.
• Department of Homeland Security warns terrorists may exploit COVID-19 pandemic.
• The Justice League to the rescue.

This Week's Tech Bites Winner: Ecommerce: Blessing For Consumers, Curse for Amazon Workers. While the technology that powers ecommerce giant Amazon is, for most of us, a beautiful thing, Amazon workers might feel slightly less enthusiastic. Warehouse workers and other Amazon employees (and likely drivers as well), question whether Amazon is doing enough to keep them safe. While they are likely happy to have jobs as the jobless claims are at nearly 3.3 million, economic security and personal health and safety, and that of their families, is understandably on the minds of these front-line workers. It is great for consumers to be able to sit safely at home and shop online, but that privilege comes at great cost to a whole lot of people who are reportedly both scared and frustrated.

And not to pin all this on Amazon, we also discuss the fact that front line workers in grocery stores, Costco, Walmart, Target, along with millions of healthcare workers are equally as concerned about their safety as they make their way to work every day. Companies need to do everything they can to step up their efforts and keep these superheroes of a different kind healthy and well.

Our Crystal Ball: In the Crystal Ball section of our podcast we always circle back to the main dive and try to make some kind of prediction. We are sorry to say that this week's Crystal Ball prediction as it relates to the rapid deployment of tech and security concerns that presents is not a rosy one. We are pretty confident that things are going to get a lot worse on the cybersecurity front before they get better.

INFORMATION: This Futurum Podcast features Shelly Kramer (@ShellylKramer) and Olivier Blanchard (@OABlanchard). If you haven't already, please subscribe to our show on iTunes or SoundCloud. For inquiries or more information on the show, email the team at [email protected] or follow @FuturumPodcast on Twitter. To learn more about Futurum Research please visit www.futurumresearch.com.

DISCLOSURE: Futurum Research is a research and analysis provider, not an investment advisor. The Futurum Tech Podcast (and all related written notes and materials) is a newsletter/podcast intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. Futurum Research does not provide personalized investment advice and no investment advice is offered or implied by this podcast.

For this week's episode of the Futurum Tech Podcast, host Shelly Kramer is joined by Sarah Wallace and Ron Westfall. In our Main Dive discussion, they talked about Zoho, Zoom, Cisco, Intel, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and other tech brands who are doing good in tough times.

From Cisco offering free Webex licenses to employees working from home to Zoom offering K-12 schools the use of its video conference platform for free, tech companies are stepping up and doing what they can to help businesses, schools, workers, teachers, students, and communities stay connected and try to keep moving forward in uncertain times brought on by the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic. Some other notable moves from tech companies include:

Zoho has made its comprehensive suite of business software applications available by way of its Small Business Emergency Subscription Assistance Program (ESAP) to help existing customers with 25 employees or less by waiting the cost of the applications these companies are currently using for up to three months.

Intel's CEO Bob Swan has made it crystal clear the company intends to be a part of the solution for COVID-19, and that they are working in myriad ways across the country to do just that. As just two examples, Intel teamed with Lenovo and BGI Genomics in China to accelerate research and diagnostics and is also working with customers and partners to facilitate and expedite virtual learning among communities with the greatest needs.

Amazon created a $5 million relief fund to aid small businesses in the Seattle area, which has since been extended nationwide, and the company is hiring thousands of drivers to help meet the needs of its ecommerce site at a time when home deliveries have never been more popular. Apple has created a $15 million fund to help investigate and find other ways to counter coronavirus, testing, and supplies, and Dell's CEO Michael Dell has warned that if you were spending time in the last few weeks partying on beaches or gathering in other ways rather than practicing social distancing as advised, that you had best not apply for a job at Dell.

Broadband companies (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and others) are waiving late fees, not charging overage fees, removing data caps and throttling, and opening up Wi-Fi spots to help spur connectivity.

Microsoft Research (in partnership with the Allen Institute, the White House, and others) has made the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) a repository of more than 29,000 scholarly articles on the coronavirus family from around the world available, including machine-readable research from more than 13,000 articles, and Google.org has made a $1 million contribution to facilitate online learning.

These are just a handful of the tech companies stepping up to do good in very difficult times, and it's encouraging to see those who can, do. Keep it up, friends in tech.

THIS WEEK's FAST FIVE

• Intel CEO Letter. To kick off the Fast Five segment of our show, Ron covered Intel Chief Bob Swan's letter to customers and partners outlining the company's commitment to doing everything in its power to help be a part of the solution for COVID-19.
• Internet Usage Surges — With No End in Sight.
• Industry Giants Reduce Streaming Quality in Effort to Reduce Strain on Networks in the EU.
• Security and Privacy in a Pandemic.
• Ron took us on a quick dive into the importance of certification in assuring secure networks during a worldwide public safety and health crisis.

This Week's Tech Bites Winner: For the Tech Bites portion of our show, we covered the irony of Facebook establishing a Coronavirus Information Center and how difficult it is, at least for us, to trust Facebook in any way to curate and disseminate the "best" information on the net about COVID-19. Trust is earned, and Facebook? Hasn't earned a bit. We also touched on Facebook being overwhelmed by a lack of staff and using AI to moderate content and stretching the company to its limits, as personified by thousands of users receiving notifications this past week that content they shared was disallowed. Interesting, and ironic, how Facebook is in some ways an integral part of how we communicate on a daily or weekly basis, yet so largely not trusted by the majority. And deservedly so.

Our Crystal Ball: For the Crystal Ball portion of our show we circle back to the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, and talk about what we think is next and/or ahead.

INFORMATION: This Futurum Podcast features Shelly Kramer (@ShellylKramer), Sarah Wallace (@sarah_wallace) and Ron Westfall (@SirRonSolicon). If you haven't already, please subscribe to our show on iTunes or SoundCloud. For inquiries or more information on the show, email the team at [email protected] or follow @FuturumPodcast on Twitter. To learn more about Futurum Research please visit www.futurumresearch.com.

DISCLOSURE: Futurum Research is a research and analysis provider, not an investment advisor. The Futurum Tech Podcast (and all related written notes and materials) is a newsletter/podcast intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. Futurum Research does not provide personalized investment advice and no investment advice is offered or implied by this podcast.

In the latest episode of the Futurum Tech Podcast, The Interview Series, Daniel Newman welcomes Dr. George Mathew, who is an internal medicine physician and Chief Medical Officer for the Americas for DXC Technology. He also welcomes Paul Thompson, Vice President of Global Healthcare Strategy and Product Development for DXC Technology. In this podcast episode, the two talked to Dan about the current state of price transparency in the medical field—and how technology can improve this issue.

First, they agreed on the fact that most patients don't think about what the real cost of a procedure or office visit is. They think about their copay, not what insurers are charged, meaning they're insulated from the true cost of healthcare. Dan mentioned that people want to know more, kind of, but mostly they want to pay less!

Currently, healthcare is about people paying insurance premiums and copays and then not worrying about it. But lately, large employers are pushing larger insurance costs onto their employees, and it's becoming a problem that people are more worried about. They're starting to demand price transparency, which starts with better communication of what services are being rendered, and what people are paying for.

When Dan asked how providers are addressing transparency in healthcare today, and how technology can help this, George replied with his experience working with commercial health plans. At that time, the work was focused on increasing the efficiency of providers, information that was delivered through an online provider directory that allowed them to share a lot of information. They tried to offer the ability to search for the cost of procedures in a certain area but found the price could range a lot. Though they were able to find doctors with better efficiency and lower mortality rates than others this way, the data they had was raw and analytics capabilities were not as good as they are now.

George went on to explain how technology investments could enable better realization of efficiency. After all, hospitals have made huge investments in electronic health records due to government incentives in recent years. Providers (which are defined here as hospital systems and healthcare systems, which have been acquiring doctors and using them) found their systems needed to be connected together for better value. They needed an outside integrator to do this. Aetna even said 5-10% of healthcare happens in the doctor's office or hospital, and the rest happens in the home.

So, it's good to find ways to get data from smart homes and apps on your phone, creating a 360 view for a better patient experience. But part of the patient experience is price. You don't want to be shocked by the price after the procedure! At the same time, not all procedures are the same, and this complexity makes it hard to say the price of each one.

Of course, technology will help with this ability to let patients know prices upfront. Healthcare technology can streamline systems and merge databases. But regulation and compliance are big hurdles. George explained that the most immediate driver is President Trump's executive order around price transparency, which dictates that there will have to be price transparency given by providers and health plans so procedures can be shoppable. There's not been a huge amount of work done at the state level yet compared to the federal level, but it will have to begin soon since consumers are starting to need it.

Overall, the gist of this podcast was that patients don't care about overall price, but the cost to them and the outcome, such as whether they got better. They want value, which means they're paying an affordable price for a good outcome. And the experts are starting to figure out what people are willing to pay for. With healthcare, they haven't had enough data, especially providers, but now there is more in the last five years that can help put forth some good estimates. With better technology, we can help people see what they're paying for, improve value, and enhance the patient experience.

Dan concluded that lots of work needs to be done, and systems need to go through more transformation before we can realize a digitally transformed healthcare system with price transparency. But that's the goal! If you're interested in learning more on price transparency in healthcare, listen to the full podcast today.

As the coronavirus COVID-19 sweeps into our lives, remote work (and remote learning) are rapidly becoming the "new normal" for many of us, ushering in a new means of communication and collaboration. We thought it would be an interesting topic to dive into for our Futurum Tech podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by my fellow analysts and colleagues at Futurum Research, Sarah Wallace and Fred McClimans, and all three of us have decades of experience working remotely. While using video communication platforms and various other collaboration platforms is as common as checking email for the three of us, we know that's not necessarily the case for a whole lot of folks who might be finding themselves working remotely.

We thought it might be helpful to kick off this week's show by sharing some of our thoughts and best practices, along with tips on how to make it through these next weeks of remote work so that you can not only experience maximum effectiveness, but perhaps also learn to enjoy the many benefits of some pretty awesome collaboration and communication platforms and tools.

In the podcast, we offer a bunch of advice and share some of our best tips. Here are just a few:

• Probably the most important piece of advice is to try and make sure you're working on a hard-wired connection—plugged into your router, not operating on wifi. That way, you can be assured of maximum quality in your video collaboration efforts.
• Schedule calls with your team with defined, predictable windows so that you can begin to establish a routine.
• Find/create a dedicated workspace during the time you're working remotely
• Make sure the lighting in your workspace is good (poor lighting on video is no bueno) and keep your laptop (or phone) at eye level when engaging in video collaboration. When you're looking down into your laptop or phone it provides a super nice look up your nostrils — and that's not a good look for anyone.
• Get a good microphone and when you're working via video collaboration, plug into your device with earbuds, headphones, or get a pair of wireless headphones. You might not notice the difference in the quality of your communications, but your team will definitely notice.

We've got more advice, but for that, you're going to need to tune into the podcast.

THIS WEEK's FAST FIVE

• Chinese auto giant Geely and its low Earth orbit satellites.
• Cisco rewires itself for the cloud era.
• The DoD puts the brakes on the JEDI contract, previously awarded to Microsoft.
• Hackers are taking advantage of the panic around COVID-19 to do what they do best: Hack, hack, hack.
• Popular video game becomes a virtual library and provides a major assist when it comes to freedom of information

This Week's Tech Bites Winner: There is a giant asteroid racing toward Earth, suggesting tsunamis could crash into the ocean and trigger waves hundreds of feet high. Scary? Sure. Well, the asteroid, known as 1950 DA is has something like a 0.3 percent chance of slamming into the Earth — in 2880. So yes, technology definitely bites sometimes. Especially when publications publish articles like this, designed to inspire fear, and people read and share, without really grasping the realities of the timeline. 2880. That's a heck of a long time away!

Our Crystal Ball: We agree that the current situation where many are experiencing remote work for the first time, will likely change how both employers and employees feel about remote work, video conferencing, and the use of collaboration platforms to do their jobs.

INFORMATION: This Futurum Podcast features Shelly Kramer (@ShellylKramer), (Fred McClimans (@fredmcclimans) and Sarah Wallace (@sarah_wallace). If you haven't already, please subscribe to our show on iTunes or SoundCloud. For inquiries or more information on the show, email the team at [email protected] or follow @FuturumPodcast on Twitter. To learn more about Futurum Research please visit www.futurumresearch.com.

DISCLOSURE: Futurum Research is a research and analysis provider, not an investment advisor. The Futurum Tech Podcast (and all related written notes and materials) is a newsletter/podcast intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. Futurum Research does not provide personalized investment advice and no investment advice is offered or implied by this podcast.

In the latest episode of the Futurum Tech Podcast, The Interview Series, Daniel Newman welcomes three experts to talk about robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent automation (IA). Francis Carden is one of the founders of OpenSpan and is currently VP of Digital Automation and Robotics at Pegasystems. Lee Coulter is CEO of transformAI, and Jon Gilman is CEO of Clear Software. Together, they gave Dan some great insight on the future of RPA and IA.

To start off, they defined RPA as a method of automating existing work, such as rote work people have been doing on their own for years. Think of all the tasks Amazon's Alexa does now for people, chores that we once had to do ourselves, manually navigating across systems without her help. That's an example of RPA now.

And while you can use AI to help RPA, you really don't need to for most tasks, as actual RPA is rules-based task automation. For example, reconciling bank statements in a finance department is a perfect job for RPA, as it's a rules-based process that can be automated without human involvement. This is where RPA excels.

On the other hand, IA takes different tools in the RPA toolbelt and creates an exoskeleton to help humans get things done faster. IA is necessary when there are lots of paths to go down, requiring some input from humans. For instance, at a call center, there are lots of triggers that could change how a customer service rep helps people. In this situation, a chatbot integration that can take a customer's phone number and look up information would help get the job done faster.

The three guests went on to explain how they want to get people to stop using RPA as a catch-all term. After all, RPA is essentially a tool inside the toolbelt of intelligent automation. It's a tactical way to automate tasks, while IA is orchestration of work. And that's important, since it doesn't matter if a human or robot does the work, as long as it's orchestrated from end to end.

During the interview, Francis, Lee, and Jon mentioned that some of the issues with RPA vendors is that they're saying their products are low code, but they're not actually replacing the underlying systems. So the best thing to come out of RPA is bringing to life the recognition of how poor some of these systems are, which means maybe we can finally upgrade them and get on the IA journey!

After all, RPA can only get you so far, which many organizations are now realizing. They used it for simple tasks like resetting passwords. Now they want to do bigger things, like using it for a call center. They need orchestration, which should be a single digital experience to be true intelligent automation.

So, what's next for IA? Well, according to Jon, getting customers into IA is going to be a big effort. It will take a while to have all processes automated, as a huge amount of business process reengineering needs to happen. So, we can't really claim that in 10 years we'll have automated 90% of processes. But in the next 20 to 25 years, a huge amount of front office jobs will have disappeared due to automation, leaving people to forget about the mundane tasks that can be automated and focus more on the tasks that require human involvement.

If you want to learn more about what Jon, Francis, and Lee discussed with Dan concerning RPA and IA, be sure to listen to the podcast today!

This week's episode of the Futurum Tech Podcast, included analysts Daniel Newman, Fred McClimans and Sarah Wallace. We discussed the collaboration and e-learning opportunities that may arise from the coronavirus outbreak. We also covered financial cloud startup Thought Machine receiving next round of funding, Cisco Webex's global support of customers during this time, Elliott Management buying stake in Twitter, AT&T launching its AT&T TV service nationwide and Microsoft entering the RPA space. Let's dive in.

The Main Dive: A discussion of what it means for collaboration and e-learning as a result of the coronavirus.

THIS WEEK's FAST FIVE

• Cloud-based fintech startup Thought Machine receives $85 million in Series B funding
• Cisco offers free Webex around the globe
• The Elliott Management group, spear headed by Paul Singer has made an investment in Twitter
• AT&T launches its AT&T TV offering nationwide
• Microsoft announces its launch into the RPA space

This Week's Tech Bites Winner: LinkedIn adds snapchat-style stories. LinkedIn will be adding a stories feature that will be much like Snapchat stories in that they will be brief videos that can be sent, then disappear.

Our Crystal Ball: Fred asked Daniel and Sarah what lessons tech will learn from this experience with the coronavirus. As companies have had to cancel trade shows, limit company travel and adjust budgets, overall, what will be the lessons learned here?

INFORMATION: This Futurum Podcast features Fred McClimans (@fredmcclimans), Sarah Wallace (@sarah_wallace) and Daniel Newman (@danielnewmanUV) If you haven't already, please subscribe to our show on iTunes or SoundCloud. For inquiries or more information on the show, email the team at [email protected] or follow @FuturumPodcast on Twitter. To learn more about Futurum Research please visit www.futurumresearch.com.

DISCLOSURE: Futurum Research is a research and analysis provider, not an investment advisor. The Futurum Tech Podcast (and all related written notes and materials) is a newsletter/podcast intended for entertainment and informational purposes only. Futurum Research does not provide personalized investment advice and no investment advice is offered or implied by this podcast.