This Week in Enterprise Tech

For the audio podcast of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess last week's biggest tech news:

1. One… Billion… Dollars for SSI, a New AI Startup
2. Claude for Enterprise: Anthropic Appeals to IT
3. OpenAI Claims Over 1 Million Paid Users
4. Salesforce Purchases Own Company
5. AT&T Sues Broadcom For Changing VMware Rates
6. SAP CTO Fired; What’s Next for SAP?
7. NVIDIA Stock Selloff Signals AI Bubble?
8. Virtual Reality Gets To Work
9. IT Unemployment Is Up To 6%

Sources:

One… Billion… Dollars for SSI, a New AI Startup

VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/ex-openai-co-founders-new-safe-superintelligence-startup-raises-1b-in-three-months/ 

Claude for Enterprise: Anthropic Appeals to IT

Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-for-enterprise 

CIO Dive: https://www.ciodive.com/news/anthropic-claude-enterprise-plan-pricing-features/726040/ 

OpenAI Claims Over 1M Paid Users

Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/openai-considers-pricier-subscriptions-its-chatbot-ai-information-reports-2024-09-05/ 

Salesforce Purchases Own Company

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/06/salesforce_own_company/ 

AT&T Sues Broadcom For Changing VMware Rates

Channel Futures: https://www.channelfutures.com/channel-business/att-sues-broadcom-over-vmware-contracts-bullying 

CIO Dive: https://www.ciodive.com/news/att-sues-broadcom-vmware-software-support-licensing/726232/ 

SAP CTO Fired; What’s Next for SAP?

The Register: https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/03/sap_cto_departs/ 

NVIDIA Stock Selloff Signals AI Bubble?

Vox: https://www.vox.com/artificial-intelligence/369974/nvidia-stock-chip-nasdaq-ai-tech-meta-microsoft-jensen-huang-doj 

Virtual Reality Finally Goes to Work?

Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-finally-find-a-use-for-virtual-reality-at-work-9dddf8db?mod=djemCIO 

IT Unemployment Is Up to 6%

Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-unemployment-hits-6-amid-overall-u-s-jobs-growth-bc2f2915?mod=djemCIO

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights

For the audio podcast of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess last week's biggest tech news:

1. The Fortune 500 Faces AI Regulation Concerns
2. NATO Appendix C: Restricted Data in the Public Cloud
3. Salesforce Hypes Agentforce, Benioff Calls Out Microsoft 
4. Procreate’s Tough Stance Against Generative AI
5. LAION Cleanses Data of CSAM-Related Links
6. Anthropic Opens Up System Prompts
7. Google AI Assistant Struggles with Hindi
8. Reputation Management Through AI Optimization

Sources:

The Fortune 500 Faces AI Regulation Concerns

Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-regulation-is-coming-fortune-500-companies-are-bracing-for-impact-94bba201?mod=djemCIO 

NATO Appendix C:  Restricted Data in the Public Cloud

Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/blog/slow-degradation-of-government-it-cloud-security-standards-2024-08-28/ 

Salesforce Hypes Agentforce, Benioff Calls Out Microsoft 

Charles and Hyoun discussed the recent hype around Salesforce's new product, Agentforce. They note the irony of Salesforce's long-held partnerships with Microsoft while competing fiercely with them in the AI space.

https://youtu.be/xk-71ucN7oc 

CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/28/-salesforce-ceo-explains-how-customers-use-new-platform-agentforce.html 

Procreate’s Tough Stance Against Generative AI

Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/procreate-app-no-generative-ai/ 

LAION Cleanses Data of CSAM-Related Links

LAION: https://laion.ai/blog/relaion-5b/ 

Anthropic Opens Up System Prompts

Anthropic: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/release-notes/system-prompts\#july-12th-2024 

Google AI Assistant Struggles with Hindi

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/27/googles-ai-overviews-in-hindi-need-a-quality-upgrade/  

Reputation Management Through AI Optimization

New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/30/technology/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-manipulation.html

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights

For the audio podcast of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess last week's biggest tech news:

1. Salesforce’s Open-Source Framework for LMM’s
2. Grafana Raises $270M to Enhance Observability
3. Opkey: $47 Million to Test All ERPs
4. Stephen Wolfram and the Philosophy of Gen AI
5. IT Spending Trends: Growth Ahoy!
6. Total Monetization And the Role of Pricing
7. The Societal Impact of Thirsty AI

Sources:

Salesforce’s Open-Source Framework for LMMs

xGen-MM \(BLIP-3\): A Family of Open Large Multimodal Models: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08872 

VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/salesforce-releases-xgen-mm-open-source-multimodal-ai-models-to-advance-visual-language-understanding/ 

Technology Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/08/22/1097224/we-finally-have-a-definition-for-open-source-ai/?mc_cid=03ff8ef90a&truid 

Grafana Raises $270M to Enhance Observability

Grafana Labs: https://grafana.com/about/press/2024/08/21/grafana-labs-soars-past-250m-arr-and-5000-customers-completes-270m-primary-and-secondary-transaction-and-named-a-leader-in-the-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-observability-platforms/ 

Opkey: $47 Million to Test All ERPs

Opkey: https://www.opkey.com/blog/opkeys-bold-leap-forward-47-million-in-series-b-funding 

Stephen Wolfram and the Philosophy of Gen AI

Stephen Wolfram for TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/25/stephen-wolfram-thinks-we-need-philosophers-working-on-big-questions-around-ai/ 

IT Spending Trends: Growth Ahoy!

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3487383/moderate-it-budget-increases-have-cios-shaping-2025-strategies-to-suit.html?huid=205a7546-7f41-491b-8fc6-da2d631e9e4b 

Total Monetization and the Role of Pricing

Zuora CEO Tien Tzuo for Diginomica: https://diginomica.com/second-act-subscription-economy-total-monetization-become-goal-says-zuora-ceo-tien-tzuo 

The Societal Impact of Thirsty AI

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/19/demand-for-ai-is-driving-data-center-water-consumption-sky-high/ 

Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/1d468bd2-6712-4cdd-ac71-21e0ace2d048 

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights

For the audio podcast of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess last week's biggest tech news:

1. California Takes on AI with SB 1047
2. AMD Acquires ZT Systems
3. Juniper Makes Networking More Interesting
4. Nice Systems Picks a CEO from SAP
5. Cockroach Pursues Pricing Experiments
6. Palo Alto, What Were You Thinking?

Sources:

California Takes on AI with SB 1047

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/15/california-weakens-bill-to-prevent-ai-disasters-before-final-vote-taking-advice-from-anthropic/ 

Letter: https://democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2024-08-15%20to%20Gov%20Newsom_SB1047.pdf 

Compromises made on SB 1047 https://www.platformer.news/california-ai-bill-sb-1047-wiener-controversy-changes-lofgren/ 

AMD Acquires ZT

WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/amd-deal-shows-ai-chip-business-isnt-just-about-chips-81fb46d9?mod=djemCIO 

Juniper Aligns Networking To AI Challenges

Juniper: https://newsroom.juniper.net/news/news-details/2024/Juniper-Networks-Unveils-First-Blueprint-for-Accelerating-AI-Native-Network-Platform-Adoption-Delivering-up-to-9x-Faster-Time-to-Value/default.aspx 

Nice Systems Picks a CEO from SAP

BusinessWire: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240815240570/en/NICE-Announces-the-Appointment-of-a-New-CEO 

Cockroach Pursues Pricing Experiments

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/15/cockroach-labs-shakes-up-its-licensing-to-force-bigger-companies-to-pay/ 

Palo Alto, What Were You Thinking?

BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y5r11xmkvo.amp

Palo Alto Networks: https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/2024/08/a-letter-from-our-ceo/

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights

For the audio podcast of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess last week's biggest tech news:

1. It’s Official: Google’s A Monopoly
2. Oracle Launches Ampere A2 for OCI
3. OpenAI’s Leadership Turbulence: The Reality of AI
4. Is the Battle to Detect AI-Generated Content Worth It?
5. Groq Raises $640M to Improve AI Inference
6. KNIME Raises $30M for Open Source ML
7. How Many CEOs Does It Take to Tank a Company?

Sources:

It’s Official: Google’s A Monopoly

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/05/google-loses-massive-antitrust-case-over-search/ 

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/06/breaking-up-google-would-offer-a-chance-to-remodel-the-web/ 

Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/apple/2024/08/google-antitrust-verdict-means-inconvenient-alternatives-for-apple/ 

US District Court for the District of Columbia: USA vs. Google: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25032786-googleruling 

---

Oracle Launches Ampere A2 for OCI

Oracle: https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/post/introducing-oci-ampere-a2-arm-cloud-compute 

---

OpenAI’s Leadership Turbulence: The Reality of AI

AI Supremacy: https://www.ai-supremacy.com/p/openai-faces-talent-exodus-as-google  

---

Is the Battle to Detect AI-Generated Content Worth It?

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/04/openai-says-its-taking-a-deliberate-approach-to-releasing-tools-that-can-detect-writing-from-chatgpt/  

---

Groq Raises $640M to Improve AI Inference

Groq: https://wow.groq.com/news_press/groq-raises-640m-to-meet-soaring-demand-for-fast-ai-inference/ 

---

KNIME Raises $30M for Open Source ML

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/06/knime-lets-users-build-workflows-to-automate-data-analytics-task/ 

---

How Many CEOs Does It Take to Tank a Company?

Yahoo: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-latest-fortune-500-giant-100000114.html 

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3481651/aware-of-what-tech-debt-costs-them-cios-still-cant-make-it-an-it-priority.html

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights

For the audio podcast of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo critically assess last week's biggest tech news:

1. Gartner Thinks 30% of Gen AI Projects Will Be Abandoned
2. Why Are CIOs Doubting the ROI of AI?
3. Emergence Capital Champions Enterprise Data
4. Apple Takes On Responsible and Trusted AI
5. SRG: Cloud Market Grew 22% YoY driven by AI
6. SAP Says Goodbye to Revenue and Marketing Heads
7. Intel Lays Off 15,000 Employees
8. NVIDIA Announces Chip Design Flaws, Tanks Stock Market
9. Google Brings Too Much AI to the Olympics

--
Gartner Thinks 30% of Gen AI Projects Will Be Abandoned - Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-07-29-gartner-predicts-30-percent-of-generative-ai-projects-will-be-abandoned-after-proof-of-concept-by-end-of-2025
--
Why Are CIOs Doubting the ROI of AI? - Sources: https://www.businessinsider.com/pharma-cio-cancelled-microsoft-copilot-ai-tool-2024-7 & https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/microsoft-adds-openai-to-its-list-of-competitors-in-ai-and-search-28fbe90f?mod=tech_lead_pos3&mod=djemCIO
--
Emergence Capital Champions Enterprise Data - Source: https://www.emcap.com/thoughts/ai-s-curve-plateau-proprietary-business-data-breakthrough/
--
Apple Takes On Responsible & Trusted AI - Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/ios-gets-an-ai-upgrade-inside-apples-new-intelligence-system/
--
SRG: Cloud Market Grew 22% YoY driven by AI -  Source: https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/cloud-market-growth-stays-strong-in-q2-while-amazon-google-and-oracle-nudge-higher
--
SAP Says Goodbye to Revenue and Marketing Heads - Source: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/scott-russell-and-julia-white-to-leave-sap-executive-board-302209547.html
--
Intel Lays Off 15,000 Employees - Source: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/actions-accelerate-our-progress.html#gs.d6a1jh
--
NVIDIA Announces Chip Design Flaws, Tanks Stock Market - Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/3/24212518/nvidia-ai-chip-delay-blackwell-b200-microsoft-amazon-google-openai-meta-artificial-intelligence
--
Google Brings Too Much AI to the Olympics - Source: https://www.axios.com/2024/07/31/google-olympics-ad-ai-gemini-ire

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights

For the audio podcast of This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park + Charles Araujo tackle the following:

1. Salesforce-Workday AI Agent: Next-Gen ERP
2. ServiceNow + Boomi Partner in API Automation
3. ServiceNow President CJ Desai Resigns
4. OpenAI  Pours Money into Search with SearchGPT
5. AI’s Mixed Effects on Employee Work Burdens
6. CIOs Must Embrace the Strategic Importance of Their Role

Salesforce-Workday AI Agent: Next-Gen ERP

Why should CIOs look at this partnership of Tech Titans?

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3478064/why-are-salesforce-and-workday-building-an-ai-employee-service-agent-together.html 

ServiceNow + Boomi Partner in API Automation

Will this partnership help enterprises deliver on the promises of service-based apps? 

Boomi: https://resources.boomi.com/resources/resources-library/servicenow-boomi-strategic-ai-commitment 

ServiceNow President CJ Desai Resigns

What does this mean for ServiceNow? 

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/3477586/servicenow-embroiled-in-doj-probe-of-government-contract-award.html

OpenAI Pours Money into Search with SearchGPT

Will OpenAI be able to execute on their plans before they exhaust their financial runway?

The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/07/searchgpt-openai-error/679248/?mc_cid=348e5cf486 

TechSpot: https://www.techspot.com/news/103981-openai-massive-running-costs-could-push-close-bankruptcy.html 

AI’s Mixed Effects on Employee Work Burdens

What does this mean for the reality-based CIO tasked with translating AI into $$$?

Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2024/07/23/employees-report-ai-increased-workload/

VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/gen-ai-boosts-individual-creativity-at-the-cost-of-collective-diversity-study-finds/ 

CIOs Must Embrace the Strategic Importance of Their Role

We consider the following pieces about the "AI Generation CIO":

Rex Woodbury for Digital Native: https://www.digitalnative.tech/p/ai-is-a-services-revolution 

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/2517822/the-cio-role-today-change-agents-need-only-apply.html 

Isabelle Bousquette for the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/morgan-stanley-moves-forward-on-homegrown-ai-120c59ab?mod=tech_lead_story&mod=djemCIO 

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights

This Week in Enterprise Technology, Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo tackle the following:

1. Crowdstrike Takes Down The World
2. Mid-Size Models Take Center Stage for Gen AI
3. Lattice AI Bots Are People?

Crowdstrike Takes Down The World

Just as Charles and Hyoun thought we had made it to Friday and we were going to finish off a lazy summer week, Crowdstrike added a little excitement to everyone’s workplace. Flights were canceled, government agencies of all shapes and sizes were shut down, and it became much harder to buy things if only for a few hours. What is the CIO‘s responsibility in light of these challenges from a technology sourcing basis and considering global technology deployments?

Microsoft: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/07/20/helping-our-customers-through-the-crowdstrike-outage/

Parmy Olson for Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-07-19/crowdstrike-s-nightmare-it-microsoft-outage-shouldn-t-be-normal

Mid-Size Models Take Center Stage for Gen AI

There was a lot of focus on midsize large language models this week as both Mistral and OpenAI came out with their midsized models and enterprises are talking about their own focus on building custom midsize models for their own use cases. Also, Hyoun and Charles take a look at Vectara, which just raised a $25 million A round to support enterprise RAG.

OpenAI: https://openai.com/index/gpt-4o-mini-advancing-cost-efficient-intelligence/

Mistral: https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-nemo/

Isabella Bousquette for the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-ai-models-are-pretty-mid-thats-why-companies-love-them-710a0f72?mod=djemCIO

MSN: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/openai-holds-talks-with-broadcom-about-developing-new-ai-chip-the-information-reports/ar-BB1qeyfX

Sean Michael Kerner for VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/vectara-raises-25m-as-it-launches-mockingbird-llm-for-enterprise-rag-applications/

Lattice AI Bots Are People?!

Soylent Green is people?! HR software company Lattice announced that they would manage AI as employees, before quickly rescinding that statement.

While the emergence of AI is not quite as worrisome as Soylent Green, it is still a stretch to manage AI with the same tools used to manage people. AI is not people. Beyond the initial goofiness of this story, is there a deeper issue that we should be careful of as we consider the role that AI does play in the workplace?

Jay Peters for The Verge: https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/15/24199054/lattice-digital-workers-ai

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights and Charles Araujo of The DX Report tackle the following topics for This Week in Enterprise Tech:

[01:05] Will AWS App Studio Disrupt Enterprise App Development?

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/10/aws-app-studio-promises-to-generate-enterprise-apps-from-a-written-prompt/

[08:49] Celonis + Emporix = End-to-End Process Automation?

Diginomica: https://diginomica.com/celonis-and-emporix-aim-end-end-process-automation-launch-new-orchestration-engine

[16:43] AMD Acquires Silo AI to Pressure NVIDIA

ComputerWorld: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2517498/ai-chip-battleground-shifts-as-software-takes-centerstage.html

[22:35] Why CEOs Fail to Replace Employees with AI

Cangrade CEO Gershon Goren for VentureBeat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/can-we-please-stop-talking-about-replacing-employees-with-ai/

[29:06] What if AI Doesn't Improve Productivity?

MIT labor economist Daron Acemoglu for the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/business/dealbook/ai-productivity.html

[33:50] AI Should Be All About The Money

Isabelle Bousquette for the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-time-for-ai-to-start-making-money-for-businesses-can-it-b476c754?mod=djemCIO

[37:12] OpenAI Debuts A New Maturity Scale for Gen AI

TechRadar: https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/openai-has-a-new-scale-for-measuring-how-smart-their-ai-models-are-becoming-which-is-not-as-comforting-as-it-should-be

[41:30] Generative AI Can't See, Needs Bullshit Detector

VentureBeat: Meet Patronus: https://venturebeat.com/ai/meet-patronus-ais-lynx-the-open-source-bullshit-detector-outsmarting-gpt-4/
NBC News: Hunting for AI Bots? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna161318

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights

In a holiday-shortened week, Charles Araujo of the DX Report and Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights take on the following topics:

1. Anthropic Funds the Development of New AI Benchmarks

2. CIOs Are Recklessly Underestimating AI Governance Needs

3. AI Power Costs Become Materially Important for Upcoming CIO Budget Forecasts

[01:20] Anthropic to Fund New AI Benchmarks

Anthropic recently announced its intentions to both develop and fund new benchmarks that more accurately describe the behavior and performance of Large Language Models (LLMs). Charles and Hyoun discuss why this is a good move from Anthropic in terms of the needs for better benchmarks, an enhanced understanding of generative AI, as well as Anthropic's own self-interest in standing out from OpenAI and other large AI competitors.

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/01/anthropic-looks-to-fund-a-new-more-comprehensive-generation-of-ai-benchmarks/

[08:15] CIOs Recklessly Underestimating AI Governance Needs

A recent article from CIO.com kicked off a discussion between Hyoun Park and Charles Araujo on the massive chasm between the current discussions in AI governance and the reality of the breadth of AI governance challenges that CIOs seem poorly prepared for. It is not enough to just lean on legacy data governance policies and a decade of cloud computing experience. CIOs need to look across the challenges of data, model development, model training, talent management, infrastructure management, power management, and environmental concerns. 

CIO.com: https://www.cio.com/article/2510265/4-essential-lessons-in-ai-governance.html

[17:27] AI Power Costs Enter CIO Budget Forecasts

A firm called Phaidra got Hyoun and Charles' attention in tackling the challenges of data center power management. After a decade of CIOs thinking that they had built their last data center, the cost of unmanaged cloud and the challenges of AI are starting to force CIOs to reconsider their on-premises IT strategies. In a world where data center infrastructure management is making a comeback and practically every large enterprise is now a hybrid multi-cloud ecosystem, CIOs will be forced to take a broader role in translating electricity, power, and utilities into digital outcomes. 

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/02/phaidras-ai-helps-manage-data-center-energy-consumption/
Venture Beat: https://venturebeat.com/ai/will-the-cost-of-scaling-infrastructure-limit-ais-potential/

This Week In Enterprise Tech is hosted by:

Charles Araujo of The DX Report and

Hyoun Park of Amalgam Insights