All posts tagged: tech trends

New trend: XaaS stands for everything as a service!

Published by Gert Christen

A very common form of disruption is to “virtualize” traditional business models by moving them to the internet. Email sent letters with an electronic service, displacing the physical letter monopoly by the postal services, iTunes sold single pieces of music in a download service, displacing the CD records industry, Airbnb did the same to the hotel industry, Uber to the taxi industry, Netflix et al to cable TV, Amazon AWS to the computer server industry. Companies that escaped disruption by virtualized services realized that they needed to jump on the “as-a-service”-bandwagon before being displaced by yet another outside company: Microsoft’s Office 365 and Adobe’s Creative Cloud are such examples. Both were once sold as CDs in a box and now they are sold as subscription services and with features that can be activated online only.  What is next for this trend? What comes after “software as a service”, “entertainment as a service”, “hospitality as a service”, “mobility as a service”?  I believe that technologies today enable everything to be offered in a service model: The “virtualizing” of assets and packaging them as a …

Hot Technology: Blockchain, look beyond the noise and it’s very real!

Published by Gert Christen

Every now and then a technology appears that is so intriguing that it spikes fantasies of what it is, does and all the things it might make possible: Examples are the Internet, GSM mobile telephony, or social media. And no doubt, Blockchain is such a technology, too: Oh, the hype and oh, the claims of all that it will do, and oh, the fears of all it will replace: Agencies, banks, currencies, jobs, “everything!” While the fantasies run wild with every up and down of cryptocurrency prices, these are just one use of Blockchain technology. I observe something completely different: Away from the noise and hype, Blockchain has matured into a solid IT technology that is used to solve previously unsolvable problems and produces increasingly novel applications. And the Blockchain startup scene is alive and kicking. Here are two use cases of Blockchains that exemplify this: SyraCoin, citizens crowd-fund city services in exchange for tokens. By City of Syracuse, NY and VITE.org. Citizens of Syracuse, NY, can now donate money to help out other citizens …

Digigram Newsletter of July 2019!

Published by Gert Christen

Thank you Thank you to the more than 4000 of you who saw my first Digigram. I am surprised, delighted and very humbled. And I appreciate all of you who gave me your comments and feedback, I will try to incorporate them. Please enjoy a wonderful summer, happy reading and ‘till soon, Gert Explore Digigram – July 2019 Hot Technology: Blockchain, look beyond the noise and it’s very real! New trend: XaaS stands for everything as a service! Top of the Month Congratulations to Scoot, a pioneer in the electric moped rental space, for the acquisition by Bird, the electric scooter rental heavyweight. Meet me here: Meet me in Berkeley from next month. I am excited to have been appointed an Entrepreneurship Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. I wanted to continue to teach part-time ever since moving back to California and I couldn’t be happier to do it in Berkeley. Check out my first course here! What’s on my table? Summer reading: “Make Elephants Fly. The process of radical innovation” by Steven S. …