Dan Ives of Wedbush told Seeking Alpha in a recent interview that the rise of AI within the software industry was similar to the 1990s. Ives called it the 1995 moment. Ives, as an investor, seemed to be watching the explosion in share prices of any software company that was getting into AI.
Closer to home, major CRM vendors like Salesforce and tech vendors like Oracle and Microsoft — I must make a distinction here because they offer so much beyond CRM and CX — are experiencing happy days.
I agree with you on many counts. However, since I worked in the industry in the 1990s, I remember less the financials than the incredible technology that was coming online, and what was headed for the graveyard of elephants.
Note that the mini-computer market was still around in 1995. It’s true, the industry was not in good health. Major vendors were being bought for very little money, and they would never be heard of again. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), the biggest and most successful maker of mini-computers, failed to last for a decade following its purchase by Compaq. HP bought Compaq later.
Reflecting on Creative Destruction
I remember that in the 1990s, no one bought anything.
IBM’s mainframe business, its bread and butter, was redirected into services as a result of the minicomputer crash. We all waited, however, for a network-enabled operating system to enable the PCs that we bought during the previous decade.
The 1990s was the decade when “that OS would be here soon.” The client-server system did eventually arrive, but it wasn’t to stay.
When I see investors getting excited about an event from 1995, I know that they are only seeing the creative side to creative destruction. Plus, looking at history, I’m not sure if artificial intelligent represents the destructive or creative sides of a new trend, or most likely both.
In the past year or so, there has been an air of neatness and order. Covid aside, I believe we’ve witnessed what I consider to be the culmination of cloud computing that we have lived through for around twenty years.
We have access to powerful machines and portable devices that provide us with almost any type of information at any time, anywhere. Software can create software, integration is easy and networking is no problem. Provisioning is as simple to do as punching in your credit card.
AI to usher in the end of cloud era
I would say we’re nearing the end of cloud computing, and maybe even the CRM age, or I’d at least say CRM is about to take a major turn. The comparison with the 1990s seems to be most accurate here. There are not many new niches to be found in the old wave. Major software companies have established oligopolies in both the front and the back offices. This makes traditional CRM look similar to the airline industry.
Historiographers will have plenty to do if they want to find out how the past repeats itself. Karl Marx described it as a farce. Twain thought it rhymed. Groucho reacted by saying time flies just like an arrow and fruit like a banana.
Sam Clemens’ influence is great on me. Our world is rapidly changing and it seems like a cycle is starting just as the last one ends.
AI is a hot topic, but anyone can get involved. In the past, traditional CRM was looking for product line extension among majors. Startups are kings in AI. That’s why ChatGPT has risen to such a high value overnight.
The AI era is here, or however it’s called. I’ve been betting for a while that the last era will be called SaaS or Social CRM. While some of them merged or evolved, others became radioactive. There are not many people other than Musk who are interested in being closely associated with social issues today.
AI and Security: A New Landscape to Navigate
We’ve made a huge turn. The tech industry has changed dramatically. If history is prologue, then we can expect to see many wrinkles and waves in the new age.
In the discussion of AI in CRM, trust and security have already taken center stage. Salesforce was able to predict that user adoption will be a result of the salesforce.com website. dominant idea of trust, in that your data isn’t my product. As a prelude, their research shows the same obstacles to adoption as every other innovation. The employees are asking in unison, “How do we use it?”
One must also be worried that some charlatans may find ways to corrupt artificial intelligence, just as some did with crypto and social media. We also have to wonder how the new technology can be kept on track. We didn’t do a very good job of keeping social media away from the darkside, and AI faces an even greater cliff.
All of this may create a need for a technology that uses AI in order to keep people or businesses safe. We’ve only considered trust, truth and security in terms of individual efforts or businesses. These issues should be all-encompassing.
Future Perspective
AI-based systems of security could in the future act as fortresses surrounding people and large organizations, a firewall on another level. In an age where the truth can be manufactured it may be prudent to have systems as powerful as bullpucky. In a world where truth can be manufactured, it might be wise to have systems that are just as powerful.
We have nothing more to say. They’re grandfathered. Though they’re vitally important, these categories aren’t the top ones anymore. AI is the leader now and we have to learn how to live in a world which has changed over night.
