The Art of Allen

We all know the past year has seen many challenges, including ongoing supply-chain disruptions, fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and widespread third-party breaches and security incidents. From healthcare to energy, no industry is immune to the attacks that are happening in our cyber world. New reports dig deeper into the trend happening in many industries today. It’s pretty darn scary, if you ask me. As one example, Prevalent’s new report The 2023 Third Party Risk Management Study provides deeper insights into current trends, hurdles, and programs that are impacting third-party risk management practitioners, which uncovers some current results. Let’s look at a few of them here. The report reveals roughly 41% of companies experienced an impactful third-party breach in the last 12 months. What’s more, they still depend on overlapping tools and manual process, which actually tend to slow incident response. The majority of respondents (71%) report the top concern regardin...

PTC LiveWorx 2023, a live event in Boston, Mass., wrapped up last week after thousands of attendees experienced Xtropolis, the LiveWorx expo hall full of demos and interactive technology displays. It was PTC’s first LiveWorx event in four years. During those four years, PTC says it invested more than $3 billion in acquisitions and organic development, including its acquisitions of companies like Onshape, Arena, Codebeamer, and ServiceMax, as well as the launch of PTC Atlas and several SaaS (software-as-a-service) -based tools, including Windchill+, Creo+, and Kepware+ . The 2023 event focused on the importance of sustainable digital transformation. In his keynote address, PTC’s CEO Jim Heppelmann shared how PTC is supporting six trends in product development by enabling speed and agility, greater efficiency, an asset-centric vision, a focus on sustainability, and a transition to SaaS, in addition to building powerful partnerships. Heppelmann also gave examples of how PTC is helpin...

IDC says ICT spending in Spain will reach $64 billion in 2023, with insurance companies driving AI growth. The post Fact of the Day – 5/24/2023 appeared first on Connected World . from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-5-24-2023/ via IFTTT

In the last two weeks, this blog has narrowed in on the subcontractor market and the remodeling market, looking at economic and technological trends for each market. Now, let’s look at nonresidential construction. The AGC (Associated General Contractors of America) notes that the price of materials and services in nonresidential construction specifically has increased about 0.5% from March to April, which is the largest increase since January. At the same time, an index that measures bid prices declined 0.3%. All this to say, margins are even tighter than they once used to be. Certainly, material price changes depend on the material, with some rising more rapidly than others during the month. For instance, liquid asphalt saw a 15.3% increase while asphalt paving mixtures and blocks saw a decrease of 5.9%. Also, a diverse range of input prices continued to increase in the month. Prices rose 13.7% year-over-year for cement, 13.3% for electrical switchgear, 13.2% for concrete produc...

I have been writing about the labor shortage in multiple vertical markets for many years, covering manufacturing , construction , and even recently discussing the shortage of healthcare staff on The Peggy Smedley Show . Industries that are critical to the foundation of our country will falter if we don’t entice the younger generation to such careers—and the repercussions will be felt wide and far. Here at Constructech , I have even gone so far as to argue that finding the right workers is putting our country at risk. In fact, I went as far as to interview Whitney Jones who leads the Submarine Industrial Base Program to discuss the criticality of hiring a new generation of workers, which is truly national security. We need the workers to build the infrastructure that will underpin our nation’s footprint. It’s just that simple. I have been spending countless resources trying to emphasize the problem that exists so that as readers you do more than just read. You act. You go the extra mil...

Gartner says employees are 12% more likely to leave their workplaces if employers don’t establish explicit hybrid work norms. The post Fact of the Day – 5/23/2023 appeared first on Connected World . from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-5-23-2023/ via IFTTT

ABI Research says automated storage and retrieval system revenue to reach $1 billion in micro-fulfillment centers by 2027. The post Fact of the Day – 5/22/2023 appeared first on Connected World . from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-5-22-2023/ via IFTTT

If you want to see true innovation, look to what is happening in the U.S. Army. As an example, the organization is using technology that leverages sensors and effectors, connecting and fusing multi-service sensor data to multi-service weapons. Consider this. Northrop Grumman Corp.’s IBCS (Integrated Battle Command System) is part of the Army’s air and missile defense modernization strategy. IBCS provides a modular, open, and scalable architecture that integrates available assets in the battlespace onto a common, integrated fire control network, regardless of source, service, or domain. This architecture offers integration of current and future systems as well. Here is how this can help: Deliver decision-quality fire control data across joint networks. Increase situational awareness. More time for decision making. Looking to the future, integration is key here. IBCS has integrated or demonstrated integration on numerous sensors and shooters from all U.S. service branches and a...

Energy efficiency is essential for our homes—and for our data centers. Used to house computers, storage systems, and computing infrastructure, data centers account for roughly 2% of total U.S. electricity consumption while data center cooling can account for up to 40% of data center energy usage overall. Now, the government is looking for a way to improve this, in an effort to make all our communities a little bit more sustainable. To help, the U.S. DOE (Dept. of Energy) announced $40 million in funding for 15 projects that will build high-performance, energy-efficient cooling solutions for data centers. The projects will be located at national labs, universities, and businesses and they look to reduce the energy necessary to cool data centers. The objective is to lower the operational carbon footprint of powering and cooling the critical infrastructure. It’s no surprise that some of these projects are making great strides. Let’s take a peek at some of the energy-efficient projects—...

Few would argue that, of the common construction materials, concrete is a hard substance. Perhaps not as hard as steel, but still pretty hard. And, as commonly created, a source of considerable GHG (greenhouse gas), especially CO 2 . Luckily, the industry is seeking ways to mitigate the damaging elements and improve the positive elements. As you might recall we had a discussion about this a week ago, both on The Peggy Smedley Show and here in the news. But here today, we are going to add even more context about a very growing segment to help the industry address its environmental impact. The environmental impact of CO 2 on the climate is no longer debated, it’s accepted globally. Many European Union countries have formulated extensive plans to combat the damage done by GHG, focusing on the major industries creating the problem. For example, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, France is focusing on the construction industry, which accounts for 25% of its CO 2  emissions. ...

Berg Insight says the number of smart homes in Europe and North America reached 120 million in 2022. The post Fact of the Day – 5/19/2023 appeared first on Connected World . from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-5-19-2023/ via IFTTT

Juniper Research says operators will lose $1.3 billion to flash calling globally in the next five years. The post Fact of the Day – 5/18/2023 appeared first on Connected World . from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-5-18-2023/ via IFTTT

Are you ready to take that next step in your digital transformation journey, but you aren’t quite sure where to start? Well, you are not alone. Recently , I had the pleasure to spend some time with Joseph Msays, global managing partner, EA Managed Services, IBM Consulting . to talk about the digital transformation journey, what IBM Consulting is showcasing at SAP Sapphire, May 16-17, and how companies can take that critical next step. “We have been a partner of SAP for the last 50 years,” Msays explains. “I don’t know if you know this, but the three original founders of SAP were ex-IBMers and since then our relationship has been really close.” At the SAP Sapphire event taking place this week, IBM is showing many of the critical capabilities that span from advisory, to implementation, to migration to cloud, to managed services, industry solutions, and more. He goes on to explain SAP has around 45,000 customers and now the focus is to move many of these clients to the cloud. “(We wan...

Every second of every day, business, individuals, and devices are creating data. While no one knows for sure exactly how much data is created every day, it could be up to 463 exabytes per day by 2025 . And even with all this data overflowing from every smart device and connected machine, businesses still crave more—more connectivity, more data, and, ultimately, more data-driven insights that can lead to data-driven decisions. As the demand for connectivity grows, so has the demand for data centers to process this information. Projections suggest this upward trajectory in data centers will continue throughout the decade, and, as a result, the data center infrastructure will inevitably swell as well. Spherical Insights suggests the global data center infrastructure market will grow from $50 billion in 2021 to $120 billion by 2030, in part due to the prevalent rise in connected applications and online services globally. The research firm also suggests more small and medium-sized busine...

IDC says worldwide IT and business services revenue is expected to grow from $1.13 trillion in 2022 to $1.2 trillion in 2023. The post Fact of the Day – 5/17/2023 appeared first on Connected World . from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-5-17-2023/ via IFTTT

Safety is a top priority for many construction companies. And that’s really good news. Safety needs to the be a priority for every company. How can we keep workers safe? One of the best places to start is to look at the trends and the data surrounding workplace accidents and injuries to gain better awareness about who is getting injured—and why. One place to find such insights is the 2023 Travelers Injury Impact Report, which is an analysis to identify trends that can help inform businesses about workplace safety risks. The organization analyzed more than 1.2 million workers compensation claims submitted from 2016 to 2020. The data is based on lost time claims from those accident years. Here is what it found. Who Is Getting Injured? The answer to this is nuanced. For one, new employees seem to be injured very frequently. Roughly 34% of workplace injuries occurred during an employee’s first year on the job, resulting in almost 7 million missed workdays. First-year injuries made up o...

Economic forces, political unrest, labor shortages, supply-chain woes, and so many other factors are having an impact on the construction industry. What do projects look like for the years to come? This week, let’s dig into one specific market: home remodeling. The homebuilding market overall has seen strong growth in the past several years, even amid a pandemic and other disrupting factors, but now it appears growth may begin to stall. The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University releases its LIRA (Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity) quarterly and uncovers declines in the year ahead. In fact, the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University suggests year-over-year expenditures for homeowner improvements and maintenance will post a modest decline of 2.8% through the first quarter of 2024. Looking a bit more at the research, the organization suggests that higher interest rates and sharp downturns in homebuilding and existing home sales are some of th...

Gartner says worldwide PC shipments declined 30% in the first quarter of 2023. The post Fact of the Day – 5/16/2023 appeared first on Connected World . from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-5-16-2023/ via IFTTT

If anything, 2022 was challenging for business in ways rarely seen. Costs up, inflation up, employment up and down, revenue for many up and down, and the inventory of skilled workers, down. At the end of 2022, the AGC (Associated General Contractors of America) and Sage cosponsored a survey that found construction contractors were less optimistic about many private-sector segments in 2023 than they were in 2022, but their expectations for the public sector market remained relatively bullish. The net reading—the percentage of respondents to the survey who expected the available dollar value of projects to expand compared to the percentage who expected it to shrink—was positive for 14 of the 17 categories of construction included in the survey. Respondents were most optimistic about infrastructure categories. There were net positive readings of 42% for both highway and bridge construction and transportation projects. Contractors were almost as upbeat about sewer and water construction,...

ABI Research predicts enterprise WLAN infrastructure revenues will reach $14.5 billion by 2028. The post Fact of the Day – 5/15/2023 appeared first on Connected World . from Connected World https://connectedworld.com/fact-of-the-day-5-15-2023/ via IFTTT