Google CIO Ben Fried Says IT Critical to Corporate Culture

Google CIO Ben Fried Says IT Critical to Corporate Culture
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Good morning. CIOs have a unique opportunity to shape a company’s culture with the tools that they provide to workers or accept in the workplace, Google Inc. CIO Ben Fried tells The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Fried, who joined Google six years ago after 13 years at Morgan Stanley, leads IT at a company where no one needs to be convinced about the value of the cloud, and where choice in the use of technology has been enshrined for years. Most businesses are headed in that direction—Google just got there sooner. In an interview, Mr. Fried spoke about the link between technology and company culture.
“So much of the culture stems from how we work,” he says. “When people feel like they aren’t part of the decision-making process, they feel treated like children, they feel resentful and you find examples of belligerent compliance. When people feel like they have had a say, like they have been empowered, you get collaboration and cooperation.”
For health sensor data, context is king. The health industry sees big promise in wearable devices that could provide doctors with greater insight into their patients’ health. It is trying to get a better handle on how best to understand this new data. “The data is not collected from a hospital with battery like IBM ThinkPad T40 Battery, IBM ThinkPad T41 Battery, IBM ThinkPad T42 Battery, IBM ThinkPad T43 Battery, IBM ThinkPad R50 Battery, IBM ThinkPad R51 Battery, IBM FRU 08K8193 Battery, IBM 92P1060 Battery, IBM 08K8214 Battery, IBM 08K8195 Battery, IBM 08K8193 Battery, IBM 08K8192 Battery, and no one is making sure sensors are working properly … and yet we’re supposed to make health decisions,” Santosh Kumar, an associate professor in the computer science department at the University of Memphis, tells CIO Journal. Mr. Kumar is leading the Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge center, which is developing software that makes it easier to gather, analyze and interpret data that’s created by mobile and wearable sensors.
Family Dollar’s move to Apple bring app development challenge. Family Dollar Stores Inc. district managers are swapping their laptops for iPhones and iPads, which they use to access data about store operations, troublesome trends, and sales. But as part of the transition, the company has had to overcome a steep learning curve. “You’re forced to re-write everything that they used to do on the laptop for the new form factor,” CIO Joshua Jewett tells CIO Journal. “If you do that right, it’s much more efficient.”
The evolution of the Internet of very smart things requires an Internet reboot. As the Internet of Things become the Internet of “Hundreds of Billions” of Things, organizations need to consider new architectures to complement today’s centralized cloud. “Supporting hundreds of billions of IoT devices at radically lower costs requires a decentralized peer-to-peer architecture, capable of near unlimited scalability,” Guest Contributor Irving Wladawsky-Berger writes. Connectivity is not an end in itself, but “a means to create better products and user experiences.”
TECHNOLOGY NEWS
SAP cuts outlook. Enterprise software provider SAP SE lowered its earnings outlook for this year, even as it reported a 15% increase in third-quarter net profit, boosted by growth in subscriptions for its cloud-based software products, the WSJ’s Christopher Alessi reports. Accelerated adoption of its real-time HANA database platform led the company to boost its outlook for cloud revenue in particular. The company, which uses its own accounting methods, anticipates short-term pressures on margins and less upfront revenue as it refocuses its business on cloud-based software technology.
As SAP moves further into the cloud, its revenue will increasingly be distributed over longer contract periods and be based less on one-off licensing fees for on-premise software, SAP executive board member Bernd Leukert told The WSJ. “In the long run, this is a more healthy business,” Mr. Leukert said.
Apple Pay rolls out, with holes in the system. Apple Inc.’s new mobile payment system is here, but it isn’t ubiquitous. The WSJ’s Daisuke Wakabayashi and Greg Bensinger say Apple Pay starts today and participants in the service include McDonald’s Corp., Whole Foods Market Inc. and Walgreen Co. as well as the three major credit-card networks: Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and American Express Co. But many retailers—including the nation’s largest, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. —aren’t part of Apple’s network. Only a minority have machines capable of reading the near-field communication radio signal that makes Apple Pay work. And then there’s the fact that only Apple’s newest phones, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, include the technology. Ahead of the Tape’s Spencer Jakab reports notes that in the U.S., credit- and debit-card transactions are around $4 trillion, or 40 times the annual iPhone sales that analysts expect Apple to report. But margins are much lower on the card transactions.
IBM selling semiconductor operations. International Business Machines Corp. has reached an agreement for Globalfoundries Inc. to take over its semiconductor operations. The company, looking to reduce costs tied to maintaining an expensive chip business, will pay Globalfoundries $1.5 billion to take the operation off its hands, the WSJ’s Don Clark and Dana Mattioli report.
Yahoo CEO set to refresh turnaround plan. Yahoo Inc. chief Marissa Mayer will seek to fend off a challenge from activist investor Starboard Value LP this week by detailing her plan for turning around the struggling Internet business, the WSJ’s Douglas Macmillan reports. When the company shares its third-quarter results Tuesday, Ms. Mayer is expected to outline cost-cutting efforts and give new details about how the company is evaluating possible acquisitions.
Twitter to offer new tools for app developers. Twitter Inc., at its first developer conference in four years, is expected to announce on Wednesday a suite of tools to make it easier for programmers to build apps, the WSJ’s Yoree Koh reports. Two years ago, Twitter irked developers with stricter rules for applications that plug into the social-media service. The new tools are aimed at part at regaining their trust, and also at attracting a broader set of app makers.
Microsoft plans to launch wearable device within weeks. Microsoft Corp. has a smartwatch too, Forbes reports. The device will boast a battery life of more than two days. Yes, there will be a heart monitor, but beyond that, there’s not much known about the features.
FCC chief says he agrees with Obama on fast lanes for the Web. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said he opposes the creation of so-called fast lanes for Web traffic as the agency rewrites open-Internet rules, Bloomberg reports. President Obama last week said he opposes letting companies pay for better service, and said Mr. Wheeler, his appointee, was aware of his position.
Dial and redial: Phone hackers stealing billions. Hackers are hijacking phone lines at small businesses, rerouting premium rate numbers through the switchboards of smaller local phone companies that don’t have the sophisticated equipment required to detect fraud. The result, reports the New York Times, are bills for $200,000 for one weekend of calls. “The law is not much help,” the NYT says, “because no regulations require carriers to reimburse customers for fraud the way credit card companies must.”
Hackers use suppliers to gain access. Cyber criminals are developing ever more sophisticated methods for breaching a company’s firewall, and experts warn that the supply chain is a source of great risk, the Financial Times reports. In the case of Target Corp.’s significant breach late last year, for instance, a criminal gained access to data on millions of customers by entering the system using access granted to a refrigeration and air conditioning supplier.
There is another possible suitor for T-Mobile US. Two recent suitors for T-Mobile US failed in their efforts to buy the firm, but there is another potential dealmaker lurking in Dish Network Corp., the Financial Times reports. Regulators are expected to look more favorably on a tie-up between a wireless player and a satellite company, a combination also being pursued by AT&T Inc. and DirecTV. But even without a transformational deal, the sector faces a period of upheaval.
Tesla’s autopilot isn’t revolutionary. The vision of a car driving itself around your neighborhood with a sleeping driver isn’t any closer to reality than it was before, but Tesla’s new system can take control on highways, park itself in a garage or intervene ahead of a collision, the Verge reports. That makes it a mere incremental step above other systems that are already on the road.