Read Like An Analyst: Dead Companies' User Data, Bots & Reinventing Tech Sales

AI/Bots

Type “Inspire me” and our office Slackbot will sometimes respond “The journey of a thousand miles sometimes ends very, very badly.”

Top researchers have rejected huge salaries trying to lure them away from Elon Musk and Sam Altman’s non-profit OpenAI. While idealistic in theory, the open source artificial intelligence research firm raises some ethical questions.

After building and launching EstherBot, a personal resume bot, Esther Crawford has some fascinating and entertaining insights to share. Crawford says to expect humans to be mean to your bot when they’re frustrated so “…you should have calming or perhaps funny responses to common teenage assaults like “I hate you!” or “Why are you so dumb?”

Motherboard’s fascinating “botifesto” is a thought-provoking piece that raises as many questions as it answers about the nature of bots and their implications on politics, journalism, art and ethics.

Big data

“There’s nothing scary about Gryzzl. We just want to learn everything about everyone, and track them wherever they go and anticipate what they’re about to do.” – – Parks and Recreation

Big data analytics play an ever increasing role in where politicians spend their ad money.

If a company fails, what happens to their user data? Can it be sold? Will the new owner be bound by the same privacy policies?

“Cloud-hosted intelligence,” “mission-critical intelligent apps,” and “ultra-scale analytics” were among the trends-to-watch identified by Joseph Sirosh at a recent artificial intelligence event. Check out GeekWire’s recap of the talk.

Cybersecurity

“Hackers have been known to infiltrate public Wi-Fi networks, so make sure to switch stores or cafés every 45 seconds while working in public.” – – The Onion

The role of CISO is of increasing importance. No wonder there’s so much demand for leaders with the right mix of business acumen and technical know-how. Companies vary greatly on how much they’re willing to pay them though.

Rob Enderle says Underwriters Laboratories’ new Cybersecurity Assurance Program (CAP) is “a huge step in the right direction” for making the Internet of Things safer.

The numbers just keep getting scarier in this Computer Business Review piece on the cost of cybersecurity breaches.

Tech Biz

“Services are low margin. Except when they’re not.” –Dharmesh Shah

Mike Baker writes, “…selling software doesn’t just mean dressing the sales process up in a new outfit, it means actually changing the sales process and changing the way sales reps behave.”

“Salesforce has infrastructure and functionality; LinkedIn has data,” writes Myk Pono. He thinks that shifting to a platform business model is the best way for LinkedIn to stay relevant.

Tomasz Tunguz lays out some data that underscores “…why building a great product is the first order of business for a startup and why developing great customer success should be the second order of business.”

Business development reps are already reporting to marketing, could they be the key to vanquishing the disconnect between sales and marketing?

IoT

Are you sad too that the Duolingo Pillow that lets you learn a new language overnight was just an April Fool’s joke

In a summary of the IoT World conference, Eugene Signorini describes the Internet of Things as an “ecosystem in flux” in danger of “confusing the heck” out of everyone.

Would a Mesh Network of Things be better than the Internet of Things?

“No one provider has an end to end IoT solution yet and hence the only choice is to partner or perish,” writes Mohit Agrawal in an article stressing the importance of business models for the Internet of Things.

Gartner has released forecasts for worldwide Internet of Things security spending. The research company expects worldwide spending on IoT security to reach $348 million in 2016.

Developer

“That’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”

SD Times lists the best programmer blogs from A to Z. A sampling of what made the cut: Coding Horror, Geek With A Hat, Herding Cats, and Rogue Wave Software Code Buzz.

Cade Metz of Wired breaks down how Google makes sure its services almost never go down. (Basically, DevOps.)

“For most companies, it will be difficult to incorporate agile practices from small-scale pilots into all business units and functions—regardless of the success of those pilots—without making significant structural changes,” according to McKinsey & Company.

Cloud

“If the cloud ever did go down, would it be called fog?”

With all of this rapid growth, The Next Platform asks “How Big Is The Ecosystem Growing On Clouds?”

The Read Like an Analyst (RLA) roundup is curated by Cascade Insights analysts Philippe Boutros, Colleen Clancy, Jacob Dittmer, Sheila Johel, Harrison May, CEO Sean Campbell, and President & CTO Scott Swigart. It is written and edited by Marketing Assistant Isabel Gautschi with Sean serving as editor-in-chief.

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Sean Campbell

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Sean Campbell is the CEO of Cascade Insights, a competitive intelligence and market research firm for B2B technology companies. A 20-year technology veteran, Sean oversees the health of the firm, drives the company’s thought leadership efforts and maintains relationships with key clients.