March 31, 2023 • 20 mins
Each week, TechTarget's news team and industry experts provide candid insight and analysis of the biggest IT news headlines of the week. On this week's show, ESG principal analyst Bob Laliberte discusses NaaS, TechTarget senior editor Katherine Finnell brings news from Enterprise Connect, and TechTarget news reporter Patrick Thibodeau explores how AI will disrupt HR.
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What is Network as a Service (NaaS)?
Everything Enterprise Connect 2023: News, Trends and Insights
ChatGPT Makes Gains in HR, One Beta at a Time
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Patrick Thibodeau (00:00):
Right. There's a term that researchers
(00:01):
use to describe a type oftechnology that is so important
to mankind that it changessociety, and they call it
general purpose technology. Theacronym is a PT.
Antone Gonsalves (00:16):
Hi, welcome to Tech News this week. I'm your
host, tick tock and newsdirector, Antonio Gonzalez. On
today's show, we're going totalk about network as a service.
We're going to discuss what itis and what it is. We're going
to give you the highlights fromEnterprise Connect the
collaboration and communicationsconference held in Orlando,
(00:36):
Florida every year, and we'lltalk about the risks and the
benefits of AI in human resourcesoftware. First up is network as
a service. You know, this week,a startup by the name of
graphene announced the $62million second round of funding
bringing his total to $100million. Analysts say that the
(00:58):
NASS market topped 2.6 billionin 2021. And will grow at a rate
of 33%. Every year through 2030.Here to tell us what NASS is in
to describe, tell us about thewhy the all the market activity
is Bob Lambert, an analyst fortech charges Enterprise Strategy
(01:22):
Group, that you told me recentlythat you compare the network as
a service market to Wild West.So So what do you mean by that?
Unknown (01:32):
Yeah, that's a that's a great point. I mean, I think
what I what I really meant bythat is anytime there's a new
term, and anytime there's $1figure attached to it, that has
a V at the end of it, andattracts a lot of people to get
into it. I remember, if youremember the software defined
craze, not too long ago, it gotto the point where our founders
DVD plus he came out and said hewas a software defined analyst,
(01:53):
hoping to hoping to make moremoney. So what it really means,
though, is that everyone isattaching the moniker of NAS, to
something they're offering. Andthere's a lot of different
definitions out there. You know,I quickly went through and you
said, Hey, why don't you comeon, I just did a quick Google
search saying what is Nazz. Andthe number of responses that
(02:14):
came up. And a number ofdifferent definitions that came
up was, was certainlyentertaining. So it could be
anything from I saw everythingfrom wan to the wireless access
points to everything in betweensome people included security in
that. So load balancers, VPNs,firewalls, et cetera. But the
(02:34):
reality is, what we're seeing isjust an overall shift and how we
consume it infrastructure. Soclearly, the cloud kicked that
off, right infrastructure as aservice platform as a service.
And now it's drivingorganizations to say, hey, I
don't want to keep buying thingsthe same way I bought them. So
let me consume my network as aservice, regardless of whether
(02:55):
that's in the cloud, whetherit's land, whether it's, you
know, an on premises, wirelessnetwork, wired networks, etc.
And really, you know, shiftstheir responsibility of
maintaining, and a lot of thesecases, to the network provider
themselves. And they're really,I think the reason why that's
happening is that modernenvironments have become
(03:15):
incredibly complex. They'rehighly distributed, right?
Applications are across privatedata centers, and multiple
public clouds, Edge locations.And there's one thing connecting
all those the network, but as aresult has become so much more
complex. So the resources thatyou have, you don't want them
focused on doing those mundaneroutine tasks, doing the
upgrades, performing patches,things like that, the lifecycle
(03:36):
management. So when you shift tothat Nazz, first of all, it
eliminates typically the onething that everyone's pretty
much consistent on is iteliminates a CapEx purchase,
right? You're not buying the,the infrastructure, you're
purchasing it in some type of anongoing model, that could be the
hardware and software, it couldbe as a consumption based model,
it could be as a subscriptionmodel. So it really in a lot of
(03:59):
cases, it also includes somemanagement capabilities as well,
I eat managing the back end. Sothere's a lot of different
things to unpack there. I'llstop and give you a moment to
jump in.
Antone Gonsalves (04:08):
Yeah, I'm wondering with so many, with so
many different definitions withso many different offerings.
What criteria should shouldaccompany us in if they're gonna
approach a network as a service?
Unknown (04:23):
Yeah, I think there's two main things. First of all,
the organization needs todecide, do they want to continue
purchasing their networkinfrastructure the way they
always have as a CapEx? And thenit's the onus is on them to get
it up and running and moving andso forth and get all the value
out of it? Or do they want toshift some of that
responsibility to the networkvendor and consume it as either
(04:44):
a subscription or as a servicetype of a model? Once they do
that? I think it's just reallyit's incumbent upon the
customers to be able to, to makesure that when they're looking
at different offerings thatthey're comparing apples to
apples. So truly understandingwhat those offerings are,
whether it is just a financialmodel, whether there's
(05:05):
additional support lifecyclemanagement, etc, you know,
there's there's full on fullymanaged services that could be
co managed services. You know,we see this a lot in like the SD
Wan space, where they're comanaged, where the service
provider or the network providerwill deliver the technology, as
a service, get it installed, getit up and running, and manage
(05:27):
the day to day activities of it.But installing all those
policies and things like thatwill be on the business. So they
still have a level of control,but they don't have to do all
the patching and things likethat.
Antone Gonsalves (05:38):
Okay, so how should How should companies look
at these these startups? I mean,a lot of their pitch is that it
doesn't matter what you have onyour end, in terms of hardware,
you just pointed to our servicein the cloud. And then you got
your way in. So but at the sametime you established vendors, of
(05:59):
course, have their offering,which probably like a Cisco be
more tied to their theirhardware. So so how should the
companies look at thesestartups? When compared to the
established vendors?
Unknown (06:12):
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's always awesome to see these
startups coming out with new andgetting funding, right,
especially in a time like this.And certainly the pedigree from
this startup is fairlyimpressive, right? The former
founder of that fella, so he'sdefinitely going to be getting
money. And he's trying to lookat here's what I did last time.
And it really ushered in a seachange, right, the conversion to
(06:33):
SD Wan really changed thedynamics of what's going on in a
WAN environment. Now, he'strying to come up with other
technology, and reshape what'shappening in the WAN and how
quickly you can do it theagility that you have to do it,
the simplicity in which you cando it. And again, it all ties
back to these environments aregetting a lot more complex. But
the organization's have to movefaster than ever. So how can you
(06:55):
implement a solution thatenables you to be more flexible,
to be more agile, and to spinthose services up with less work
on your end, and without havingto have fully trained PhDs?
Right in networking to be ableto do this as well. So we're
starting to see more and more ofthat that happened and occur.
And it's happening across allthe organizations, right,
(07:15):
whether it's the startups likeyou're seeing, or Cisco, or
Aruba, with Greenlake, andthings like that different
consumption models. Niall isanother one that's just recently
come out as a startup that'sdoing it for the wired and
wireless LAN space. So there's alot of innovation happening
right now. So it's really like Isaid, it's what best fits for an
(07:37):
organization, how they want toconsume the technology, where
they want that technologydeployed, right. Right now,
we've seen a lot of the focus onNAS being either in that that
campus branch wired and wirelessLAN, or we've seen it in the WAN
space as well. So we'll see,we'll see whether organizations
go fully into the network as aservice for the data center.
(07:58):
But, you know, never say never.
Antone Gonsalves (08:03):
Okay, so for more than 30 years, the
Enterprise Connect,communications and collaboration
conference has brought 1000s ofcommunication pros together to
look at the latest software.What is technology? Here to tell
us about the major themes ofthis week's this week's show is
(08:24):
Katie Finnell, the editor incharge of techtarget editorials,
communications and collaborationsite. So what are the what were
the major themes out of thisweek's show?
Unknown (08:37):
The biggest theme was definitely just everything
generative AI to improveproductivity and tying data
together. Every vendor on themain stage this year had an
announcement around generativeAI. Another theme was a phrase
that was kind of really commonat the conference was magnets
not mandates. So the idea thatmandating people to come back to
(08:59):
the office is not effective, youneed to make the office a magnet
for people to actually want tocome and collaborate there. So
some vendors also hadannouncements of improving the
meeting experience in thecollaboration experience at the
office. Okay, so
Antone Gonsalves (09:13):
let's unpack this a little bit on generative
AI. How is it being used? Howdid the vendors present it as a
as a benefit within for hybridwork?
Unknown (09:27):
For sure, the main one is collaboration, making meeting
smarter, being able to tietogether data from your chats,
your shared files, the meetingsthemselves into one place so
that you can get all this dataeverywhere and really simplify
things streamline things, makethings more effective. You know,
you had Microsoft co pilot CiscoWebEx AI zoom IQ. RingCentral is
(09:50):
ring sense, you know, whatGoogle's doing with their large
language models and AWS in thecontact center. So a lot of
announcements around intelligentmeeting summaries, so not as
getting a transcript of themeeting, but you know, bullet
points that might show the highlevel, you know, key takeaways
from a meeting chapters. So youcan search section by section in
a meeting, even highlightingindividual speakers, or even
(10:13):
bullet points that are specificto you and your job role within
a project. And sometimes if youjoin a meeting late, you can get
in chat and get a recap of whatyou missed without having to
interrupt the meeting. Or evenwith CO pilots, specifically, it
can join meetings for you. So ifyou're double booked, it can
attend a meeting that you canattend, and you can get a full
summary of all the informationthat you need that you missed.
(10:34):
No, I like that idea.
Antone Gonsalves (10:38):
So it appears that the AI is a lot of is
focused on making increasingefficiency of the of the
employees and when it comes tomeetings. And what about this,
this idea or this concept ofchanging the office to bring
people back in? How does thatwork from a technical from a
(10:59):
technology standpoint? Andwhat's the concept?
Unknown (11:02):
from a technology standpoint, it's definitely
about making meetings better,more immersive and more like the
experience we have here remotelywhere we're perfectly framed, we
see each other we're making eyecontact, and even things like
being able to access chat orvirtual whiteboarding, you can't
really do that in a meeting roomif you don't have your laptop
with you. So you can'tcontribute in chat like the
remote participants can, ifthere isn't a Touch Board in the
(11:24):
room, you can't ideate on avirtual whiteboard like the
remote participants can. Andit's even things just being able
to see each other, the bowlingalley view was was mentioned,
where you have the camera at oneend of the room, and you're just
looking down a long table andthe people at the back of the
table, you can't really seethem, it's hard to hear them. So
there were few announcementsaround that Cisco and zoom are
(11:45):
both doing something similar.Cisco has cinematic meeting and
zoom has intelligent director,were using a multicam setup
around the room. And with AIbuilt into their software, it
can change the camera anglesdynamically to always give the
best view of the room dependingon who's speaking or if
somebody's walking around. Sothat way the remote people can
(12:05):
see everyone clearly they canhear people better. And it just
makes for a better experiencethat way. And Microsoft
announced that the Surface Hubis now joining the team's room
ecosystem. So the Surface Hubcan be used as a Touch Board. So
you're able to access some ofthose ideation capabilities in a
team's rooms meeting. Microsoftis also going to support BYOD.
So now you can bring a laptopplug in a connector, and you can
(12:28):
launch a team's room meetingfrom your laptop. So you can
still access a lot of thosethings you would normally lose.
And Cisco also announced it'scalled meeting zones. So before
the pandemic, a lot ofbusinesses were investing in
open office spaces. But now postpandemic or come to, you know,
three years in open officespaces are a little more
(12:48):
challenging, because you wantpeople to come to the office to
meet to collaborate, things getnoisy. So with this meeting
zones, you can establish aboundary and an open meeting
space or a conference room thathas a lot of glass walls. So
that if anything is happeningoutside of that meeting
boundary, it's not picked up oncamera, you don't hear noise,
it's not picking up peoplewalking by. So it just makes for
(13:11):
a better experience in a moreopen office space.
Antone Gonsalves (13:14):
No, there was also some some discussion about
actually making changes to theoffice to make it more
welcoming.
Unknown (13:23):
Yeah, so on sort of on the non technology side,
thinking more about like thecompany culture, you know, what
would bring people back to theoffice. And that could be
activities, like hackathons,which can give more professional
development, you know, groupactivities, Diversity and Equity
and Inclusion activities, townhalls, lunches, things that make
you want to come to the officefor more than just sitting at
(13:44):
your desk, taking meetings orjust sitting at your desk,
working at your computer, butactually being able to come
together in a way that bringsyou together with the other
people that you're working withand also gives you training
gives you professionaldevelopment drives real purpose
to being in the office.
Antone Gonsalves (14:00):
Yeah, this is no it's no longer just coming
into the office for a paycheck,right. Finally, you know,
generative AI and its offspringchat GPT seems to be going into
just about everything, includinghuman resource software. Here to
tell us about the risks and thebenefits of AI and HR is
(14:26):
targeted editorial senior newswriter Patrick phoebo. So was so
well, who were the vendors thisweek were announced AI and HR
saw in their software and wasthe
Patrick Thibodeau (14:39):
the vendors the vendors are just starting to
announce and they're mostly thestartup vendors at this point.
Higher ology and be Marie bothannounced some product with an
open beta and I'm sure there's alot of others that are putting
out beta products right now butso quietly there and announcing
that the some of this is this istaking over HR technology. It
absolutely is. And I want to Iwant to tell you why. And let me
(15:03):
back up and explain just howimportant this technology is.
Right? There's a term thatresearchers use to describe a
type of technology that is soimportant to mankind, that it
changes society. And they callit general purpose technology.
Right? The acronym is V P T.Keep that acronym in mind for a
moment. So what are examples ofGPT? Technology? It's the wheel.
(15:27):
It's indoor plumbing, itselectricity, its air
conditioning. It's the internalcombustion engine, the internet.
Now, what is chat GPT standsfor? Well, they named that
generative, pre trainedtransformer. Obviously, that
name wasn't chosen by themarketing department. My feeling
is that an engineer in abasement came up with that name.
(15:48):
And my my hunch I have nothingto base this on, is that they
use GPT. Intentionally, theywanted to send a message that
they couldn't send deliberately,that this is really important.
And it is it is super important.For HR.
Antone Gonsalves (16:04):
Okay, so So what are the what makes it so
important? And like alltechnology, it's going to, is
going to introduce new problems,as well as solve them. So yeah,
so So deal with that the risksand benefits?
Patrick Thibodeau (16:21):
Yeah, absolutely. Here is the level of
interest, right, and chat GTP.Here is the level of trust,
there's this huge delta betweenthe two, the interest is
overwhelming, the trust is no asnot caught up to the interest.
And it's going to be a while. Sothe startup HR vendors, as you
would expect, as any startup arequick to incorporate this
(16:43):
technology in the product, andthey're doing it in the the
initial applications that I'mseeing her job descriptions, job
descriptions are fairly easy,right, you can go into check
GTP. And you can just type in,you know, write me a description
for car salesman, and it'll willdo a pretty reasonable job. I've
tried this myself. So but thevendors will add in their own
(17:06):
secret sauces, they'll customizethat for the employer and add in
very specific things that theemployer may want. And so you'll
get a combination of chat GTPand the vendors input, that
makes it a better job adoverall. But a human is still
involved. The human is stillreading the job ad and why is
that important? Because peopledon't really trust check UDP.
(17:27):
And and even in jobdescriptions, HR is very
litigious, you know, I mean,problems can arise over
anything. And there's a wholesubset of vendors out there that
analyze texts, and for bias. Soin other words, if you write a
job description that says, hey,we need a car salesman who can
do this, and this and this, weneed a real ninja, on our on
(17:48):
our, on our, you know, on ourteam. Ninja is one of those
words that has been identifiedas discouraging female
applicants, but encouraging maleapplicants. So there's a lot to
this, and nothing is simple inHR. So they're going to be
cautious at first not
Antone Gonsalves (18:06):
are they do you? Are you do you expect?
Because you know, bias is thebiggest problem, right? Or a
major problem with these withthe algorithms? And how is how
is that problem going to besolved? Uh, will it ever be
solved? We need regulation tosolve it. I mean, no one knows
(18:28):
how these algorithms work?
Patrick Thibodeau (18:30):
Absolutely. Right. I mean, first, I think,
you know, just to answer yourprevious question, point I want
to make is one, these chatfunctions are already arriving
in HR on an ad hoc basis, right,because it's so wonderful, you
can go ahead, and you can pastein a long two page letter. And
it'll say, summarize this messfor me. And it will do that. And
(18:53):
so you don't have to read thewhole thing and get the summary.
So I think it's alreadyappearing that way. And in terms
of the bias and the problems,well, that's the big issue,
isn't it? I mean, you had ElonMusk and the other scientists
this week, send out that lettersaying, Hold on, let's take a
six month moratorium on this,because they're worried that
Skynet is gonna emerge from thisand we're all gonna get
destroyed. But HR is going tomove cautiously this a small
(19:17):
vendors have moved quick, thelarge vendors are going to take
a year or longer to be able toreally get this out to a
product, because they're gonnatest it thoroughly, they're
gonna have to make sure that itisn't going to get their
customers in court and sued bythe EEOC, the the federal
authorities that monitor thesethings are gonna have to make
sure all those ducks are in arow, they're gonna have to test
it and the Change Manager, it'sgoing to be huge, but it will,
(19:40):
it will, it will infiltrateevery aspect of HR take a take a
performance review, right?Performance Review is a
combination of quantitative andqualitative things, right?
People go How did this employeeperform one through five picking
up? Right, but then there'll besome comments. And there may be
comments from other managers andother employees. And and so and
so did this so and so. did this.And so what Chuck GDP can do is
(20:03):
it can take all this informationand summarize it neatly. It's a
huge time saving for for themanagers that are reviewing and
signing off in this data. Butfirst, you have to know that you
can trust what chat DDP isdoing. And there's, that's a
huge divide right now, rightnow, no one knows if you can
really trust that, because ittends to make things up and it
(20:24):
tends to get things wrong. Andit's it's not it's, you know,
the bugs are still there. Andthere are a lot of bugs in the
system. And they're very easy toflush these bugs out just
through trial and error, but itwill be capable in time of doing
these things and doing them verywell. There's no doubt about it.
Antone Gonsalves (20:42):
All right. That wraps up this week's show.
Thanks for watching and enjoythe weekend. I'll see you next
week.
Right. There's a term that researchers
(00:01):
use to describe a type oftechnology that is so important
to mankind that it changessociety, and they call it
general purpose technology. Theacronym is a PT.
Antone Gonsalves (00:16):
Hi, welcome to Tech News this week. I'm your
host, tick tock and newsdirector, Antonio Gonzalez. On
today's show, we're going totalk about network as a service.
We're going to discuss what itis and what it is. We're going
to give you the highlights fromEnterprise Connect the
collaboration and communicationsconference held in Orlando,
(00:36):
Florida every year, and we'lltalk about the risks and the
benefits of AI in human resourcesoftware. First up is network as
a service. You know, this week,a startup by the name of
graphene announced the $62million second round of funding
bringing his total to $100million. Analysts say that the
(00:58):
NASS market topped 2.6 billionin 2021. And will grow at a rate
of 33%. Every year through 2030.Here to tell us what NASS is in
to describe, tell us about thewhy the all the market activity
is Bob Lambert, an analyst fortech charges Enterprise Strategy
(01:22):
Group, that you told me recentlythat you compare the network as
a service market to Wild West.So So what do you mean by that?
Unknown (01:32):
Yeah, that's a that's a great point. I mean, I think
what I what I really meant bythat is anytime there's a new
term, and anytime there's $1figure attached to it, that has
a V at the end of it, andattracts a lot of people to get
into it. I remember, if youremember the software defined
craze, not too long ago, it gotto the point where our founders
DVD plus he came out and said hewas a software defined analyst,
(01:53):
hoping to hoping to make moremoney. So what it really means,
though, is that everyone isattaching the moniker of NAS, to
something they're offering. Andthere's a lot of different
definitions out there. You know,I quickly went through and you
said, Hey, why don't you comeon, I just did a quick Google
search saying what is Nazz. Andthe number of responses that
(02:14):
came up. And a number ofdifferent definitions that came
up was, was certainlyentertaining. So it could be
anything from I saw everythingfrom wan to the wireless access
points to everything in betweensome people included security in
that. So load balancers, VPNs,firewalls, et cetera. But the
(02:34):
reality is, what we're seeing isjust an overall shift and how we
consume it infrastructure. Soclearly, the cloud kicked that
off, right infrastructure as aservice platform as a service.
And now it's drivingorganizations to say, hey, I
don't want to keep buying thingsthe same way I bought them. So
let me consume my network as aservice, regardless of whether
(02:55):
that's in the cloud, whetherit's land, whether it's, you
know, an on premises, wirelessnetwork, wired networks, etc.
And really, you know, shiftstheir responsibility of
maintaining, and a lot of thesecases, to the network provider
themselves. And they're really,I think the reason why that's
happening is that modernenvironments have become
(03:15):
incredibly complex. They'rehighly distributed, right?
Applications are across privatedata centers, and multiple
public clouds, Edge locations.And there's one thing connecting
all those the network, but as aresult has become so much more
complex. So the resources thatyou have, you don't want them
focused on doing those mundaneroutine tasks, doing the
upgrades, performing patches,things like that, the lifecycle
(03:36):
management. So when you shift tothat Nazz, first of all, it
eliminates typically the onething that everyone's pretty
much consistent on is iteliminates a CapEx purchase,
right? You're not buying the,the infrastructure, you're
purchasing it in some type of anongoing model, that could be the
hardware and software, it couldbe as a consumption based model,
it could be as a subscriptionmodel. So it really in a lot of
(03:59):
cases, it also includes somemanagement capabilities as well,
I eat managing the back end. Sothere's a lot of different
things to unpack there. I'llstop and give you a moment to
jump in.
Antone Gonsalves (04:08):
Yeah, I'm wondering with so many, with so
many different definitions withso many different offerings.
What criteria should shouldaccompany us in if they're gonna
approach a network as a service?
Unknown (04:23):
Yeah, I think there's two main things. First of all,
the organization needs todecide, do they want to continue
purchasing their networkinfrastructure the way they
always have as a CapEx? And thenit's the onus is on them to get
it up and running and moving andso forth and get all the value
out of it? Or do they want toshift some of that
responsibility to the networkvendor and consume it as either
(04:44):
a subscription or as a servicetype of a model? Once they do
that? I think it's just reallyit's incumbent upon the
customers to be able to, to makesure that when they're looking
at different offerings thatthey're comparing apples to
apples. So truly understandingwhat those offerings are,
whether it is just a financialmodel, whether there's
(05:05):
additional support lifecyclemanagement, etc, you know,
there's there's full on fullymanaged services that could be
co managed services. You know,we see this a lot in like the SD
Wan space, where they're comanaged, where the service
provider or the network providerwill deliver the technology, as
a service, get it installed, getit up and running, and manage
(05:27):
the day to day activities of it.But installing all those
policies and things like thatwill be on the business. So they
still have a level of control,but they don't have to do all
the patching and things likethat.
Antone Gonsalves (05:38):
Okay, so how should How should companies look
at these these startups? I mean,a lot of their pitch is that it
doesn't matter what you have onyour end, in terms of hardware,
you just pointed to our servicein the cloud. And then you got
your way in. So but at the sametime you established vendors, of
(05:59):
course, have their offering,which probably like a Cisco be
more tied to their theirhardware. So so how should the
companies look at thesestartups? When compared to the
established vendors?
Unknown (06:12):
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's always awesome to see these
startups coming out with new andgetting funding, right,
especially in a time like this.And certainly the pedigree from
this startup is fairlyimpressive, right? The former
founder of that fella, so he'sdefinitely going to be getting
money. And he's trying to lookat here's what I did last time.
And it really ushered in a seachange, right, the conversion to
(06:33):
SD Wan really changed thedynamics of what's going on in a
WAN environment. Now, he'strying to come up with other
technology, and reshape what'shappening in the WAN and how
quickly you can do it theagility that you have to do it,
the simplicity in which you cando it. And again, it all ties
back to these environments aregetting a lot more complex. But
the organization's have to movefaster than ever. So how can you
(06:55):
implement a solution thatenables you to be more flexible,
to be more agile, and to spinthose services up with less work
on your end, and without havingto have fully trained PhDs?
Right in networking to be ableto do this as well. So we're
starting to see more and more ofthat that happened and occur.
And it's happening across allthe organizations, right,
(07:15):
whether it's the startups likeyou're seeing, or Cisco, or
Aruba, with Greenlake, andthings like that different
consumption models. Niall isanother one that's just recently
come out as a startup that'sdoing it for the wired and
wireless LAN space. So there's alot of innovation happening
right now. So it's really like Isaid, it's what best fits for an
(07:37):
organization, how they want toconsume the technology, where
they want that technologydeployed, right. Right now,
we've seen a lot of the focus onNAS being either in that that
campus branch wired and wirelessLAN, or we've seen it in the WAN
space as well. So we'll see,we'll see whether organizations
go fully into the network as aservice for the data center.
(07:58):
But, you know, never say never.
Antone Gonsalves (08:03):
Okay, so for more than 30 years, the
Enterprise Connect,communications and collaboration
conference has brought 1000s ofcommunication pros together to
look at the latest software.What is technology? Here to tell
us about the major themes ofthis week's this week's show is
(08:24):
Katie Finnell, the editor incharge of techtarget editorials,
communications and collaborationsite. So what are the what were
the major themes out of thisweek's show?
Unknown (08:37):
The biggest theme was definitely just everything
generative AI to improveproductivity and tying data
together. Every vendor on themain stage this year had an
announcement around generativeAI. Another theme was a phrase
that was kind of really commonat the conference was magnets
not mandates. So the idea thatmandating people to come back to
(08:59):
the office is not effective, youneed to make the office a magnet
for people to actually want tocome and collaborate there. So
some vendors also hadannouncements of improving the
meeting experience in thecollaboration experience at the
office. Okay, so
Antone Gonsalves (09:13):
let's unpack this a little bit on generative
AI. How is it being used? Howdid the vendors present it as a
as a benefit within for hybridwork?
Unknown (09:27):
For sure, the main one is collaboration, making meeting
smarter, being able to tietogether data from your chats,
your shared files, the meetingsthemselves into one place so
that you can get all this dataeverywhere and really simplify
things streamline things, makethings more effective. You know,
you had Microsoft co pilot CiscoWebEx AI zoom IQ. RingCentral is
(09:50):
ring sense, you know, whatGoogle's doing with their large
language models and AWS in thecontact center. So a lot of
announcements around intelligentmeeting summaries, so not as
getting a transcript of themeeting, but you know, bullet
points that might show the highlevel, you know, key takeaways
from a meeting chapters. So youcan search section by section in
a meeting, even highlightingindividual speakers, or even
(10:13):
bullet points that are specificto you and your job role within
a project. And sometimes if youjoin a meeting late, you can get
in chat and get a recap of whatyou missed without having to
interrupt the meeting. Or evenwith CO pilots, specifically, it
can join meetings for you. So ifyou're double booked, it can
attend a meeting that you canattend, and you can get a full
summary of all the informationthat you need that you missed.
(10:34):
No, I like that idea.
Antone Gonsalves (10:38):
So it appears that the AI is a lot of is
focused on making increasingefficiency of the of the
employees and when it comes tomeetings. And what about this,
this idea or this concept ofchanging the office to bring
people back in? How does thatwork from a technical from a
(10:59):
technology standpoint? Andwhat's the concept?
Unknown (11:02):
from a technology standpoint, it's definitely
about making meetings better,more immersive and more like the
experience we have here remotelywhere we're perfectly framed, we
see each other we're making eyecontact, and even things like
being able to access chat orvirtual whiteboarding, you can't
really do that in a meeting roomif you don't have your laptop
with you. So you can'tcontribute in chat like the
remote participants can, ifthere isn't a Touch Board in the
(11:24):
room, you can't ideate on avirtual whiteboard like the
remote participants can. Andit's even things just being able
to see each other, the bowlingalley view was was mentioned,
where you have the camera at oneend of the room, and you're just
looking down a long table andthe people at the back of the
table, you can't really seethem, it's hard to hear them. So
there were few announcementsaround that Cisco and zoom are
(11:45):
both doing something similar.Cisco has cinematic meeting and
zoom has intelligent director,were using a multicam setup
around the room. And with AIbuilt into their software, it
can change the camera anglesdynamically to always give the
best view of the room dependingon who's speaking or if
somebody's walking around. Sothat way the remote people can
(12:05):
see everyone clearly they canhear people better. And it just
makes for a better experiencethat way. And Microsoft
announced that the Surface Hubis now joining the team's room
ecosystem. So the Surface Hubcan be used as a Touch Board. So
you're able to access some ofthose ideation capabilities in a
team's rooms meeting. Microsoftis also going to support BYOD.
So now you can bring a laptopplug in a connector, and you can
(12:28):
launch a team's room meetingfrom your laptop. So you can
still access a lot of thosethings you would normally lose.
And Cisco also announced it'scalled meeting zones. So before
the pandemic, a lot ofbusinesses were investing in
open office spaces. But now postpandemic or come to, you know,
three years in open officespaces are a little more
(12:48):
challenging, because you wantpeople to come to the office to
meet to collaborate, things getnoisy. So with this meeting
zones, you can establish aboundary and an open meeting
space or a conference room thathas a lot of glass walls. So
that if anything is happeningoutside of that meeting
boundary, it's not picked up oncamera, you don't hear noise,
it's not picking up peoplewalking by. So it just makes for
(13:11):
a better experience in a moreopen office space.
Antone Gonsalves (13:14):
No, there was also some some discussion about
actually making changes to theoffice to make it more
welcoming.
Unknown (13:23):
Yeah, so on sort of on the non technology side,
thinking more about like thecompany culture, you know, what
would bring people back to theoffice. And that could be
activities, like hackathons,which can give more professional
development, you know, groupactivities, Diversity and Equity
and Inclusion activities, townhalls, lunches, things that make
you want to come to the officefor more than just sitting at
(13:44):
your desk, taking meetings orjust sitting at your desk,
working at your computer, butactually being able to come
together in a way that bringsyou together with the other
people that you're working withand also gives you training
gives you professionaldevelopment drives real purpose
to being in the office.
Antone Gonsalves (14:00):
Yeah, this is no it's no longer just coming
into the office for a paycheck,right. Finally, you know,
generative AI and its offspringchat GPT seems to be going into
just about everything, includinghuman resource software. Here to
tell us about the risks and thebenefits of AI and HR is
(14:26):
targeted editorial senior newswriter Patrick phoebo. So was so
well, who were the vendors thisweek were announced AI and HR
saw in their software and wasthe
Patrick Thibodeau (14:39):
the vendors the vendors are just starting to
announce and they're mostly thestartup vendors at this point.
Higher ology and be Marie bothannounced some product with an
open beta and I'm sure there's alot of others that are putting
out beta products right now butso quietly there and announcing
that the some of this is this istaking over HR technology. It
absolutely is. And I want to Iwant to tell you why. And let me
(15:03):
back up and explain just howimportant this technology is.
Right? There's a term thatresearchers use to describe a
type of technology that is soimportant to mankind, that it
changes society. And they callit general purpose technology.
Right? The acronym is V P T.Keep that acronym in mind for a
moment. So what are examples ofGPT? Technology? It's the wheel.
(15:27):
It's indoor plumbing, itselectricity, its air
conditioning. It's the internalcombustion engine, the internet.
Now, what is chat GPT standsfor? Well, they named that
generative, pre trainedtransformer. Obviously, that
name wasn't chosen by themarketing department. My feeling
is that an engineer in abasement came up with that name.
(15:48):
And my my hunch I have nothingto base this on, is that they
use GPT. Intentionally, theywanted to send a message that
they couldn't send deliberately,that this is really important.
And it is it is super important.For HR.
Antone Gonsalves (16:04):
Okay, so So what are the what makes it so
important? And like alltechnology, it's going to, is
going to introduce new problems,as well as solve them. So yeah,
so So deal with that the risksand benefits?
Patrick Thibodeau (16:21):
Yeah, absolutely. Here is the level of
interest, right, and chat GTP.Here is the level of trust,
there's this huge delta betweenthe two, the interest is
overwhelming, the trust is no asnot caught up to the interest.
And it's going to be a while. Sothe startup HR vendors, as you
would expect, as any startup arequick to incorporate this
(16:43):
technology in the product, andthey're doing it in the the
initial applications that I'mseeing her job descriptions, job
descriptions are fairly easy,right, you can go into check
GTP. And you can just type in,you know, write me a description
for car salesman, and it'll willdo a pretty reasonable job. I've
tried this myself. So but thevendors will add in their own
(17:06):
secret sauces, they'll customizethat for the employer and add in
very specific things that theemployer may want. And so you'll
get a combination of chat GTPand the vendors input, that
makes it a better job adoverall. But a human is still
involved. The human is stillreading the job ad and why is
that important? Because peopledon't really trust check UDP.
(17:27):
And and even in jobdescriptions, HR is very
litigious, you know, I mean,problems can arise over
anything. And there's a wholesubset of vendors out there that
analyze texts, and for bias. Soin other words, if you write a
job description that says, hey,we need a car salesman who can
do this, and this and this, weneed a real ninja, on our on
(17:48):
our, on our, you know, on ourteam. Ninja is one of those
words that has been identifiedas discouraging female
applicants, but encouraging maleapplicants. So there's a lot to
this, and nothing is simple inHR. So they're going to be
cautious at first not
Antone Gonsalves (18:06):
are they do you? Are you do you expect?
Because you know, bias is thebiggest problem, right? Or a
major problem with these withthe algorithms? And how is how
is that problem going to besolved? Uh, will it ever be
solved? We need regulation tosolve it. I mean, no one knows
(18:28):
how these algorithms work?
Patrick Thibodeau (18:30):
Absolutely. Right. I mean, first, I think,
you know, just to answer yourprevious question, point I want
to make is one, these chatfunctions are already arriving
in HR on an ad hoc basis, right,because it's so wonderful, you
can go ahead, and you can pastein a long two page letter. And
it'll say, summarize this messfor me. And it will do that. And
(18:53):
so you don't have to read thewhole thing and get the summary.
So I think it's alreadyappearing that way. And in terms
of the bias and the problems,well, that's the big issue,
isn't it? I mean, you had ElonMusk and the other scientists
this week, send out that lettersaying, Hold on, let's take a
six month moratorium on this,because they're worried that
Skynet is gonna emerge from thisand we're all gonna get
destroyed. But HR is going tomove cautiously this a small
(19:17):
vendors have moved quick, thelarge vendors are going to take
a year or longer to be able toreally get this out to a
product, because they're gonnatest it thoroughly, they're
gonna have to make sure that itisn't going to get their
customers in court and sued bythe EEOC, the the federal
authorities that monitor thesethings are gonna have to make
sure all those ducks are in arow, they're gonna have to test
it and the Change Manager, it'sgoing to be huge, but it will,
(19:40):
it will, it will infiltrateevery aspect of HR take a take a
performance review, right?Performance Review is a
combination of quantitative andqualitative things, right?
People go How did this employeeperform one through five picking
up? Right, but then there'll besome comments. And there may be
comments from other managers andother employees. And and so and
so did this so and so. did this.And so what Chuck GDP can do is
(20:03):
it can take all this informationand summarize it neatly. It's a
huge time saving for for themanagers that are reviewing and
signing off in this data. Butfirst, you have to know that you
can trust what chat DDP isdoing. And there's, that's a
huge divide right now, rightnow, no one knows if you can
really trust that, because ittends to make things up and it
(20:24):
tends to get things wrong. Andit's it's not it's, you know,
the bugs are still there. Andthere are a lot of bugs in the
system. And they're very easy toflush these bugs out just
through trial and error, but itwill be capable in time of doing
these things and doing them verywell. There's no doubt about it.
Antone Gonsalves (20:42):
All right. That wraps up this week's show.
Thanks for watching and enjoythe weekend. I'll see you next
week.
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