AGENTIC AI: From Automation to Ecosystem Transformation - IMRAN®

AGENTIC AI: From Automation to Ecosystem Transformation - IMRAN®

(Part 1 of a 4-part series to help guide you to maximum success with Agentic AI).

The Opportunity

Imagine this: You used to spend days mapping out every step of a business process—requisition, vendor selection, invoice processing, payment execution. Now, you simply set a goal, and agentic AI orchestrates the workflow, adapting in real time, escalating exceptions, and freeing your team for strategic work. That’s not science fiction; it’s happening right now in boardrooms and server rooms across the globe.

The New Reality: Agentic AI in Action

At AWS re:Invent 2025, the buzz was all about agentic AI. AWS unveiled new partner categories, agent builder tools, and marketplace innovations, all designed to help enterprises deploy autonomous solutions with just a few clicks. Their partnership with OpenAI—a $38B deal—signals a new era of scale and sophistication. Microsoft, meanwhile, is integrating agentic AI into everything from Windows to Azure, positioning Copilot as the productivity engine for the modern enterprise. Google’s Gemini 3 and Vertex AI Agent Builder are pushing boundaries, making it easier than ever to build agentic solutions for any industry.

But it’s not just the tech giants. Enterprises are using agentic AI to automate contract negotiation, create purchase orders, process invoices, and execute payments. The results? Cycle times slashed by 50–70%, up to 80% touchless processing, and teams reallocated to higher-value tasks. In developer workflows, agents scaffold UI flows, adapt component libraries, and even push code fixes based on customer error reports. Prompt-to-prototype cycles now take minutes, not weeks.

Why Partnerships Matter

Here’s something every CIO should know: The winners in agentic AI are building alliances. OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, AWS, Stripe, Shopify, NVIDIA—these are the names shaping the standards, stitching together fragmented tools, and controlling the future of agentic commerce. Ecosystem fragmentation is real, but strategic partnerships are the glue that holds it all together.

The Challenges (and How to Win)

Of course, it’s not all smooth sailing. Data access wars, trust and accuracy in AI recommendations, payment security, and protocol fragmentation are top of mind for every tech leader. Success requires robust governance, compliance oversight, and new roles—AI supervisors, governance leads, and professionals fluent in Python, RPA, ERP, and AI ethics.

The Leader’s Perspective

Having spent exactly 4 decades in enterprise tech, I’ve seen automation evolve from static scripts to dynamic, goal-seeking agents. What separates agentic AI from the client-server and cutting edge cloud platforms I helped build at great companies like Microsoft and Cisco is intent. These agents don’t just follow instructions—they reason, adapt, and collaborate across ecosystems. Early adopters are already reporting 10–25% EBITDA gains, and the momentum is only building.

Ready to Transform?

Agentic AI isn’t just a technology upgrade—it’s a new operating model. If you’re ready to see how agentic AI can stop just automating tasks and start executing goals in your organization, let’s connect for a 1-hour intro brief. My organizations evertrac.co and cloud9global.net are designed to help you navigate this transformation—whether you’re piloting agentic workflows, building developer tools, or reimagining the future with quantum and telematics. Visit my LinkedIn profile http://linkedin.com/in/imran for more insights and message me to schedule a strategy session.

What's Next?

In my next article, I’ll tackle the critical challenge every leader faces: building trust and governance into agentic AI systems. We’ll dive deep into how organizations can ensure reliability, compliance, and observability as they scale autonomous agents—so stay tuned!

© 2025 IMRAN®  

Is CX Dead—or Just Drowning in Data? - IMRAN®

Is CX Dead—or Just Drowning in Data? - IMRAN®

In this 30‑minute inteview, I sat down with Mark Michelson — a trusted advisor in marketing research, customer experience innovation, and AI‑powered brand transformation — to dissect what’s really happening in the world of User and Customer Experience (UX/CX).

Key insights from our conversation:

CX has shifted from a culture of empathy to a metrics‑driven monitoring system

Companies are pouring hundreds of billions into AI, yet human experience is declining

Over‑surveying and automation are eroding trust, not building it

AI is poised to disrupt every industry, but without authentic representation, it risks amplifying bias

The future of CX isn’t more dashboards — it’s real human connection, powered by smarter tech

IDC projects global AI spending at $235B in 2024, surging to $631B by 2028. Meanwhile, CX investments are being diluted by cost‑cutting and automation — a dangerous tradeoff that risks undermining customer trust.

If you care about customers, culture, or the future of AI‑driven business, this is a conversation worth your time. Watch the full interview and join the debate on what CX should become.

© 2025 IMRAN®  

V 30 Ep 1503

#IMRAN #IMHO #UrUXSux #CX #UX #AI #CustomerExperience #HumanCenteredDesign #Leadership #DigitalTransformation 

Bubble Or Balloon? From Silicon Dreams To AI Hype Nightmare Risks: A Veteran’s Warning - IMRAN®

Bubble Or Balloon? From Silicon Dreams To AI Hype Nightmare Risks: A Veteran’s Warning - IMRAN®

I’ve spent my life in tech—not watching from the sidelines, but architecting, building, and advising through every major wave: the personal computer revolution, the rise of the internet, the explosion of the web, the shift to cloud, and now the AI era. Each phase brought real transformation. But each also attracted speculative frenzy. And every time, I’ve called the bubble before it burst.

This past week, I wrapped a strategic consultation with the CEO, CIO, and CFO of a global tech-finance giant. Our sessions spanned infrastructure, capital allocation, and long-term innovation cycles. What emerged was a sobering pattern—and a familiar warning.

Today, hyperscalers are pouring over $320 billion into data center buildouts, racing to lay the groundwork for AI’s future. Meanwhile, Nvidia—whose chips power much of this buildout—has soared to a staggering $5 trillion valuation. These chips aren’t just processors—they’re the new oil rigs of digital intelligence. But the velocity of investment is outpacing the clarity of purpose. Everyone’s building. Few are asking why. Fewer still are asking what comes next.

AI is real. It will outlast us. But the current capital stampede feels eerily like the dot-com era. Back then, the internet was revolutionary—but billions were burned chasing unsustainable “dog-coms.” Today, we risk repeating that cycle with AI-native startups, GPU-saturated cloud zones, and speculative infrastructure bets.

And it won’t stop here.

I predict the next hype cycle will hit quantum computing between 2030–2035—driven by breakthroughs in error correction, entanglement scaling, and sovereign quantum zones. By 2050, bio-computing and DNA-based logic systems will trigger another wave, promising molecular-scale computation and biologically integrated networks. These will be real. But the speculative frenzy around them will be just as dangerous.

Here’s the deeper truth: just one phase of this AI buildout—one hyperscaler’s annual spend—could fund global food security, clean water access, or universal education. We’re not short on capital. We’re short on clarity, courage, and conscience.

The lesson? Vision without discipline isn’t innovation—it’s speculation. We must fund what solves real problems, not what chases headlines. We must build with clarity, not just capacity. And we must remember that the internet survived the dot-com crash because it was real. AI will survive this hype cycle too—but only if we protect its integrity now.

I’ve seen this movie before. I know how it ends. But I also know how it begins again—with smarter choices, sharper questions, and a refusal to follow the herd off a cliff.

This article distills insights from a one-week strategic engagement with a global tech-finance client—where we explored AI infrastructure, capital risk, and long-term innovation cycles. If you’re a founder, investor, or enterprise leader navigating similar questions, let’s connect. These conversations are already happening at the highest levels. The question is: are you asking the right ones? I am here to help.

© 2025 IMRAN®

Throwing The Book (Of Opinions) On "Will Print Media Survive?" - IMRAN™

Throwing The Book (Of Opinions) On "Will Print Media Survive?" - IMRAN™
This is one of the questions I have seen asked for my literally 3 decades spent living in America (this coming week!) The irony of this question is that the words print and media have some overlap. Media, as in the industry encompassing information, news, knowledge, views, commentary, and print, a medium of distributing that content.
So, if the question is, will the “media” (industry) survive…… indeed, the answer is Yes, the real problem of fascism style labeling of real news as fake news and real(ly) fake news as (alternative?) facts notwithstanding, Will PRINT as a medium used by the media (industry) survive, is a more complex one. In the long run (when we are all dead anyway, as John Maynard Keynes said and wrote, ironically, in print, a long time ago), the pace of innovation, the sheer volume of information and knowledge, the staggering number of content types, content creators, and content creators, will make it practically impossible to rely on printed paper as the mainstream mass-use medium.
There are not enough trees, one could say, to sustain that volume of paper production, without destroying the remaining forests of the planet, regardless of how much reforestation gets done. Also, if we look at the real long run, when increasing numbers of us will be able to explore space travel, there is just no practical sense in bringing printing equipment on space rockets and even spaceships, much less trees and other plant forms to produce traditional paper. Plus, the amount of information we are already used to having at our fingertips just would not translate into printed paper as a practical means to carry it around.
Having said that, however, I will also say this, or as another great mind said last century or even earlier, predictions of the death of paper/print are exaggerated. When computers came on the scene, with dot matrix, inkjet, laser and color laser printers soon following, the actual production and consumption of paper grew massively.
That rate of growth, especially in a planet starved of space to store the paper, or grow the raw materials for paper, plus a species (not)hell-bound on finding new places to live on in space, will not be sustainable. So, I see traditional, especially high quality paper based printing becoming a growth industry, where the vanity of having a hardbound book rather than just being the author of an eBook, will ensure its survival for a while, much like vinyl albums are still around despite higher resolution audio sampling of today’s digital music libraries fitting in our back pockets.
Another interesting twist may be the very notion of paper to be printed on. If the current pace of innovation continues, what is to keep us from not having literally infinite printed books, where the actual electronic screens become so thin and so embedded into plant and forest based paper pages, that we could still be holding a paper book or two in hand, where flipping pages gives the tactile experience we are used to for millennia, but with all the words of the universe surrounding us in an invisible omnipresent network.
What do you think?

Imran Anwar
Tampa Bay, Florida
12/31/2018

© 2018 IMRAN™

Image original source unknown.

Word To The Wise! A Picture IS Worth A Thousand Words! - IMRAN™

I was delighted to see this cool & powerful Microsoft feature in Office 365. Now you can search for words in your images in #Microsoft #Office365!

With such algorithms and more & more Artificial Intelligence in use in all types of software, I predict the end of differentiating between text and image files, with it all being seamless information available to us and our tools.

What do you think?

 

© 2017 IMRAN™

Need Talented Hardware & Software Electronics Engineers For Different Types Of Projects - IMRAN™

As a Pakistani-American and UET Lahore Electrical Engineer, I know how many brilliant minds, even technical geniuses, were just in my own class of 80-Electrical. So, I always think of Pakistanis as well as UET students or recent grads first when I have ideas where I may need to hire someone for side projects or new ideas I want to develop into something more. 

Sometimes I need to hire someone for a short project, sometimes longer. But I would also love to find one or more very capable electrical/electronics engineers I can use regularly, not fulltime, but part-time on different projects and ideas. Could that be You?

Ideally you would be great at designing and prototyping innovative new things in side projects for me. That takes more than just having a degree. (After all, even I have that. 😊). Here are some of the skills I would require.

You have great command of English, total ability to hear an idea and technical requirements, and design the hardware / prototype and / or write the middleware / software or web apps. By that I mean more than "Oh I can do responsive website and SEO for you!"

A full understanding of intellectual property concepts and areas (including patent, trademark, copyright, and licensing) is essential. I repeat: Knowing about what patents are, and what is needed to get one issued by USPTO or Pakistan PTO, is absolutely essential.

The following are skills specific to various projects that I do NOT expect any one person to have. So I may need different people for different projects related to:

Electrical/Electronics Engineering

- Wireless / Home Automation and integration to other IoT systems, including interface and middleware. Nothing massively complex, but being able to make seemingly unrelated things interface and communicate. (e.g. …this is just an EXAMPLE... if I wanted to have a doorbell ringing outside the house to trigger a dot matrix printer to print Hello World, then he or she would be able to make that happen. Again, this is an EXAMPLE, not an actual idea!)

- Mobile Phone (iOS and Android) expertise to design accessories for Apple/Samsung etc. devices with apps to use that accessory. (e.g. design an extra external camera accessory for smartphones and software to capture data from the external and built-in device together). Only for EXAMPLE check out the FLIR InfraRed external camera for iPhones. (www.flir.com/flirone/ios-android/ )

- Android open source operating system customization (e.g. and this is only an EXAMPLE.... to customize Android for an IMRAN-Phone that just changes the screen display based on location and temperature). 

- Web Apps. not websites, development expertise. For EXAMPLE, think more about building FaceBook the SYSTEM not just offering to do FaceBook’s index.php page design.

- BlockChain, with knowledge of micropayments and BitCoin, smart contracts, digital currency.

Patent Drawing With Mechanical Engineering A Plus

- Patent Drawing EXPERIENCE of actually FILED patent(s), not just wasting my time by saying “I can draw plan, elevation, side view!” or that “I can do anything in SketchUp or other 3D or illustration program.” You need to ACTUALLY KNOW and have experience of having MADE the very SPECIFIC types of PATENT DRAWINGS required by the USPTO. Please do NOT waste my time if you do not know what I am talking about specifically here. This person can be a NON-ENGINEER or non-Electrical engineer, or even a talented teenager.

If you already do this type of work through sites like Fiverr, etc. that would make life simpler. I will need you to sign NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and agreements to ensure that the intellectual property is protected and that you will neither re-use it nor use it yourself nor let anyone else have or use or copy from it. If interested, write in detail on what your areas of expertise are, what kind of time you are available, and rates. You may contact me via: http://imran.com/contactus.php but make sure to use an accurate and valid email address. To make sure your message is found and not lost in spam blockers, leave a comment below also to let me know. Let's see what great projects we can do together!

IMRAN

(Still The) World's Most Powerful Medium! - IMRAN™

#TelevisionIn4Words is a trending hashtag on Twitter right now. I contributed to that stream with:
"World's Most Powerful Medium!"
Yes, better believe it, it still is.
You get, as I tagged the post, "#media #news #entertainment #opinion #history #music #comedy #politics #sports #weather" all in one 'box'!
How many heads of state, or sports champions, or politicians, or businessmen, refuse to be interviewed for TV and say, "No, no TV interviews, tweet me or ask me on FaceBook." ?
Much that many of us complain about how TV quality sucks these days, very few spend hours daily watching TV reruns from the 'good old days'. If anything, more and more global citizens are now getting and experiencing the power of television.
Its influence will get even greater as even greater network bandwidth and Internet technology takes global TV to every corner where traditional TV antenna broadcasts could not reach.
And, news flash for those who claim that TV is dead. When you watch video programming, dramas, sports, music, and entertainment on your iPad or smartphone, you are still watching 'television' programming, even if you are not sitting in front of a television set.
Just because the shape and size of the screen change, it does not mean the medium has died.
Stay tuned... television imagery may become holographic or directly tuned into our heads one day in the future, but TV is here to stay. In many ways, it is up to the television industry on how much of the best is still to come.
What do you think?

Imran Anwar
http://IMRAN.TV

What Workloads Should Or Shouldn't Move To The Cloud? - IMRAN

Solar Eclipse By (No Space) Ship - IMRAN™

The more things change, the more they remain the same. Or say they say. I remember in the early days of the Internet how animated GIFs were so popular because they were one of the few ways of showing movement or multiple images in the era of very limited bandwidth. As the Internet's largest use became web sites (in addition to email) animated GIFs tended to fall off the horizon, no pun intended. Now, suddenly they are all the rage again, for some time. Ironically, it is still not easy to make quality animated GIFs, or to share them. FaceBook does not let you upload them, but finally is letting you see them if they are linked from somewhere else. Flickr, that was sleeping while Instagram took over the masses' photo craze market, makes it possible to upload animated GIFs, but the last time I checked they will NOT display, unless you include a separate link to one of the other size versions that Flickr offers. That is why, even though I have been doing Internet video from the time the first release of QuickTime with my then amazing top of the line Apple PowerMac 110 AV, creating postage stamp sized video movies. That has given way to my moving into creating some of the first 4K 3D videos, in addition to other things like time lapse music videos, and more in photography, like 360 and 360x360 spherical panoramas, etc. But Animated GIFs were not a priority. As I recently saw this cruise ship leaving the Port Of Tampa approaching the great ball of fire we call the Sun, as it set over the Tampa Bay horizon, I took several photos. They were taken handheld, not on a tripod, so they could not be totally accurately framed, but I managed to make this as my first official animated GIF. Now the question is to see how many people can see it on Blogger, and on other platforms. Imran

BUX: Apple's Falling Reliability & Incredibly Inconsistent UX On 2 Identical Brand New iPhone 6S+ - IMRAN™

The BUX Stops Here. Bad User Experiences are everywhere. I give examples, and name names, even of companies I love. 

The goal is to inform users of the problems that go on for years, to call attention of these companies to their lousy design or quality control choices, and to help UX designers and product managers improve both the customer experience and the quality of their loyal user's experience. 

Here is an example from a company I generally love, Apple. But I have been griping about the constantly falling reliability of the Apple user experience even from when Steve Jobs was still alive. It seemed like getting it out the door even at 90% reliability became acceptable instead of at least aiming for 99%. 

Under Tim Cook, and especially with the worst OS upgrade I have ever experienced from Apple with El Capitan, and parallel bug nightmares on iOS 9 show that it seems getting things out the door even at 80% is now acceptable at Apple.

The bug I am discussing today is a problem in November 2015, 3.5 years after similar problems have been discussed on Apple's own discussions forum in the past (2012 for example).

I have 2 BRAND NEW iPhone 6S+ 128GB phones, 100% identical in everything, including carrier and even color,... everything except for their device names. 

I even shot identical photographs with them (to use in 3D photos). I connected both devices to iPhoto. The first one's photos ALL came in without ANY problem. The second one's import into iPhoto fails over and over, and the iPhone even disappears from the app and has to be unplugged and replugged in for iPhoto/Mac (Image Capture included) to recognize the device again. 

Even Image Capture failed to import the images either all together or even one by one. I even switched to the cable the other phone's photos came over fine on. Nope. Everything failed. Emailing myself dozens of large image and video files was not an option as some discussions mention. 

I even turned Bluetooth off as others had found to work in past similar bugs. (That by the way is another reason I consider having to play such games of twisters to get things to work making the Mac user today sometimes seem like being a Windows user). 

I did manage to send the photos from the iPhone to the Mac over AirDrop and they ALL imported into iPhoto just fine. There were NO problems with ANY of the photos. Plugging the phone back into the Mac and iPhoto even correctly shows that the photos on the phone now already exist in iPhoto. Meaning the problem was NOT with the photos at all.

Yet the actual routine import of photos failed and the user experiences were smooth vs nightmare on two IDENTICAL devices bought literally the same week. That was the kind of thing you expected to happen with two lousy Windows PCs where they would act differently and inconsistently. But now it is a common Mac thing.

I have been an Apple user since the start of the platform but the more Windows-nightmare-experience-like it becomes the more I shake my head, and the more I can't stand when people think pointing out the falling reliability of the OS releases and apps UX to be some sort of Apple bashing.

I was able to workaround my problem this time, but the problem's root cause is still unknown. That is why I am sharing it here so others may shed light on it if they have ideas. And to try to wake up Apple's quality and UX teams before loyal users start seeing Apple as just another vendor to choose from, not a company we identified proudly with the quality products and consistent high quality user experience of. 

What have been your bad user experiences with devices, products or services?

To Achieve Greatness In The Digital World, Respect Intellectual Property & Innovate, Or Be Irrelevant! - IMRAN™

The article (Tech In Pakistan 2014) in the reputable Pakistan newspaper, Dawn, makes good points lamenting the mind numbingly stupid, and self-destructive, policies and factors that make for such “tepid performance” in Pakistan. The author, Y. Brohi, points out how one does not need an army of people to launch a startup. My personal experience proved that, indeed, even one person can start a revolution or entire industries for others to build on.

At the end of the eighties and in the early 1990s, I was fortunate and blessed to pioneer and launch Internet email service in Pakistan right from my home in Gulberg-III, Lahore, while I was studying for my MBA at Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York City. Together we, my then partner & neighbor Ashar Nisar and I, were able to launch the .PK ccTLD, literally putting Pakistan on the brave new digital world’s map.

I later also had the opportunity to make another, less known but also important, humble contribution to Pakistan’s economic progress, by bringing and launching global credit cards in Pakistan, starting with issuing the first MasterCard license to a Pakistani bank in the early 90s. The availability of credit to the middle class can be a major driver to drive economic activity and the creation of products, services and related jobs.

Both of those industries were launched with no government funding (actually, we succeeded despite resistance and other tactics of the authorities of that time that I will not mention), and without venture capital, which at that time was near impossible to get in Pakistan.

My reason for writing this is not to boast on past achievements but to exhort the dynamic and industrious Pakistani entrepreneurs to learn from what the article says and what my experience shows.

You, one person, can start anything you want. There is nothing stopping the next secure identity and privacy solution to be created in Pakistan. There is no reason that Pakistanis cannot pioneer artificial intelligence or secure cloud computing methods.

If there is one thing that I have been frustrated by, and feel is a core reason for Pakistanis not creating world changing new things, is the disregard for intellectual property rights and concepts. From people ripping DVD movies to kids ripping games without payment, to the shameless way so-called respectable newspapers (excluding Dawn) steal and reprint others’ creative output, theft of intellectual property is commonplace, and something people almost boast about.

How then can people think in terms of creating intellectual property if they are themselves busy stealing someone else's? That attitude is embedded in our culture and needs to be addressed. Without that, all the creative capabilities of Pakistanis will continue to be wasted on copying or reverse engineering others’ work, not creating brave new IP to change the world. 

I would love to see that topic get discussed at a national level. There are few nations that have so much creative entrepreneurial talent than Pakistan, as I have seen in my ~30 years of traveling the world.

Let us find ways to stimulate that and channel that and guide that for the greater good of the creators and the nation. That is why, in speaking to groups of Pakistani entrepreneurs and technology professionals, I say, “To Achieve Greatness In A Digital World, Respect Intellectual Property And Innovate With Your Own, Or Be Irrelevant!”

 

IMRAN™
http://imran.pk

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Keep A Finger On The Pulse Of Fingerprint Readers In Gadgets

By now everyone has probably seen the news about Apple's recently launched iPhone 5S. Even as an old time iPhone fan, I had stopped buying new ones since the iPhone 4S. The iPhone 5 had not given me any compelling reason to buy one either. Ironically, in that period of time, even as an old time Mac user and past critic of old versions of Windows, I joined Microsoft. 

I did not immediately get a Windows Phone (even though I was losing out an employee discount) and waited until the phone I really wanted came out….. The Nokia Lumia 1020 WindowsPhone 8, with its 41MP mind-blowing smartphone camera, which I bought without a discount or employee rebate. I still kept and use my iPhone 4S, because of the many apps I had bought over the years, and music that is tied to iTunes/Apple at present.

I was very hopeful for a truly innovative iPhone 5S, because, even though Apple's phone is now a direct competitor to my employer's recently acquired smartphone business, I believe innovation at one leading competitor benefits us all, as others have to work hard, invest in innovation and build great devices and services around them.

But, try as I might, despite being eligible for the new iPhone 5 upgrade from AT&T, I did not see any compelling reason to buy this one, at least yet, while my 4S is working fine. The only thing that I found of some interest was the fingerprint reader Apple built in, based on a company it had bought not too long ago.

I have always been a fan of natural interfaces or input devices. 

Ironically, my first fingerprint reader was actually a Microsoft branded one I bought for one of my PCs in the days I was a big time Mac fan.

A few years ago I discovered Authentec's USB readers and bought several, especially as they could work on my Macs and my PCs.

Some time later their prices dropped drastically and I found Apple had bought the company. So, predicting that the next generation iPhone would have fingerprint capability was not a leap of genius. 

However, I have to say my experience with the Authentec USB pluggable fob readers was frustrating, to the extent I do not use them anymore. Sometimes it would take half a dozen attempts of aligning the finger, the reader and Jupiter with Saturn before it would accept the print. I found simply typing in my complex password took less time and frustration.

Ironically, now that my current position is with Microsoft, I am happy that the technology is becoming more mainstream even if launched by a competitor. Such wide distribution of technology features leads to a greater pressure on everyone to improve the technology. (Remember how frustrating BlueTooth was early on?).

I have a fingerprint reader built into the new Lenovo Windows 8 (now. 8.1 :-) ) laptop I got earlier this year, and it works smoothly, quickly and without trouble (so far!).

So, I am hoping to see more of that technology in other laptops and smartphones. Let the new game begin…. Touch And Go (Innovate!).

 

 

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, Microsoft, Photography, technology, Nokia, Smartphones, WindowsPhone, Innovation

From "Apple Forever" To "Apple? Whatever…"

A contact of mine commented on my light-hearted FaceBook post about it being time to stop using Apple products like iPhone etc. 

She wrote, "Apple til I die".

That made me think how in 1996Apple was written off for dead, and my web post (before it was called blogging) Imran Anwar's Opinion on The Future of Apple Computers told Apple users not to give up hope as Apple would survive. Yet now I have no love for Apple now, which acts far more monopolistic than Microsoft was accused of with its Internet Explorer domination back then. 

Today, Apple is steadily losing people like me. I've been a Mac user since Apple created them, and have been a loyal user ever since. There was also a certain exclusivity to Apple products, the same market share as Mercedes Benz and BMW was not a bad thing to have with a company that was still profitable and made really cool stuff. But, even before I joined Microsoft, I had been getting fed up with Apple.

In the interest of full disclosure, since last year I have been working with Microsoft, on a strategy consulting project at the Department of Defense. But, my frustration with Apple, which began a few years ago, and has reached total disgust levels, is easily seen from my posts (many even deleted by the criticism-rejecting-content-Nazis at Apple's discussion boards) on the Apple customer fora. 

More and more often flakier and flakier services (including being ripped off by the class-action lawsuit worthy Music Match that never worked, and the promised refund that was never delivered), major bugs Apple idiotically tried to ignore (antenna gate, the known but never acknowledge static noise bug in iPhone 4S), stupid ugly apps (like GameCenter, PassBook, etc. that you cannot delete and can't even push to end of apps lists off the phone screen, Apple deliberately shoves them to front screen on reboots), the Maps app that various police departments have called LIFE-THREATENING-TO-USE, Apple's total lack of variety in phone models, making iPhone 5 a bit longer and with no truly desirable new features, … the list goes on.. would be enough. But even the air of exclusivity is gone... on top of the actual ability to deliver major innovation.

I am not a fan of Android at all, but, I have to give credit to Samsung for really shaking things up in more and more categories, while Apple is playing defense even in segments it made commercially successful.

So, I am not dumping my dozen old Macs and MacBook Pros, iMacs and tens of thousands of dollars in Mac OS based software I bought. But even as an Apple tech (not company) fan, I did not buy the iPhone 5, I did not buy the iPad mini, I did not buy the MacBook Pro Retina, etc. {Though I apparently will need to spend money because the 2010 MacBook Pro I use is apparently one that has a known manufacturing defect. Apple will quietly replace the logic board on it -- if you can afford to part with your machine for nearly a week -- but I can't do that as I had since then upgraded to a larger hard drive and do not know where my original drive is). 

I am not the only one from the core Mac loving Apple customers who find the company is due to be kicked off its high horse, that has been limping even more noticeably since Steve Jobs' passing.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Apple will right itself, go back to innovation, and actually building quality products again?

PS Note, these are my personal opinions. I do not even work on any products or software for Microsoft but do strategy consulting for one of its clients.

Blind Emulation Of Industries Like Technology & Entertainment Can Kill Pharma Firms & People!

McKinsey Quarterly, a business and strategy  journal I respect and enjoy reading, did a recent article "Pharma manufacturing for a new era: The sector can restore lost value by focusing intently on manufacturing innovation." This was one that I found logical sounding, but also found difficult to completely agree with.

It is an interesting analysis of what pharmaceutical industry players need to do, to be more like other big industries, in manufacturing operations. But therein lies the rub… pharma cannot completely be like other industries. The writers give examples of how it can learn from archetypical firms like Intel and Disney…. and the steelmaker, Nucor, which left me completely amazed.

Pharmaceutical firms face existential threats not because they do not have cool manufacturing plants like Intel, but when they spend billions in what can sometimes be nothing more than a scientific educated gamble. They can come up with something that "seems to work OK" and  then be denied the right to sell the resulting product -- as it may have side-effects no one can predict -- because the ultimate recipient, the human body, is still such a mystery. 

Keep in mind, I am no defender of pharma, much less any big industry. But, I want them to get a fair shake. Like many industries that get too big, and can (seem to) make "obscene" profits in the eyes of people, pharma gets the worse of both words compared to banking, oil companies, etc.

On the one hand people accuse them of exploiting suffering and on the other hand complain about the lack of more blockbuster drugs. That is not even counting the conspiracy theorists and others who suggest governments and pharma companies conspire to sit on cures for things like cancer "to make more money." {How NOT selling a cure and sitting on it makes more money they are unable to explain}.

We want firms to fund billions in research at their own risk, but ask them to throw it away the minute one patient in a trial dies of a heart attack (as happened just this week with a major drug trial). We put them through onerous processes that can take years, if not decades, then we complain about the time to market for new drugs. We look the other way when they lose billions on a failed drug, but then complain when they finally make a profit on something that (seems to) work… at least until some unknown side-effect pops up years later.

Much that we like Utopian ideals of only launching drugs that have no side-effects, and cost very little, we cannot forget that we live in the real world.

Intel can design a new version of a chip, usually based on an existing architecture, or even a new one entirely, but most likely targeted at one of its usual areas… e.g. CPUs for PCs, or cell phones. Pharma does not have the luxury of saying, we will keep redesigning and launching new versions of a drug every 90 days going after the same sore-throat market as the existing product.

Intel can decide to enter a new industry, say, chips for car entertainment systems, but using almost all the same core knowledge, with the same known laws of physics, electronics engineering and manufacturing, that they use for their other chips. Even if they decide to go into some new type of ASIC (application specific integrated circuit), they can use existing knowledge, skills, processes, people, manufacturing and some levels of innovation to quickly bring the chip to market, seed it to OEMs, see how it works, and go back to designing the next version improving on the last one. They do not have to wait for a trial of 100,000 devices over 2-5 years while they await approval from a government authority (like the FDA in USA) before they can actually "launch" or monetize the product. 

The writers' giving the example of Disney in a discussion on pharmaceuticals left me even more puzzled. Yes, DIsney went from a movies-based business into an entertainment conglomerate, but how does that relate to pharmaceutical manufacturing? Should pharma firms start selling soda, chocolates and cigarettes to move from being a medicine-based business to a "conglomerate of products that go down people's throats"?

The final comparison the article above makes is to the steel industry, mentioning Nucor. I am sorry, but which one of us would like to have our medicines, that go into our mouths, stomachs, hearts, brains, and bloodstreams, be made by pharma companies that somehow emulate (no disrespect to steelworkers) the steel industry!?

Yes, pharma firms need to focus more on strategy (all industries do), and learn from every other industry what makes sense to learn and emulate. Yes, they need more innovation (all industries do). Yes, we all know, almost any known product or manufacturing process in the world can be improved. NO, you cannot emulate Disney, Intel and Nucor to somehow become more successful in creating, manufacturing, and delivering safe, reliable, inexpensive, drugs that will win approval, of authorities, doctors and the rest of us.

Such blind emulation of other industries like Technology, Steel & Entertainment can kill not just the Pharma industry, but real people, like us!

Pssst, Want To Make Money Monetizing Social Networking Instead Of Time-Wasting Social NOT Working?

FaceBook, MySpace, linkedin, and so many other social networking sites offer great ways to connect with people - and lose touch with reality (and the total time spent on a computer). That is even before location-aware GPS and RFID devices, married to addictive platforms like FaceBook, Twitter and MySpaceTime.net (more on that later) make social networking mean even more being social and not working even during working hours.

It is so ironic that just about 16 years I wrote an article contradicting people's then assertion that computers and the Internet were going to make us all anti-social.

Having started what was considered the first online matrimonial sites, at http://imran.com, I dared to disagree.

I felt that though we may spend more time on our computers, the Internet would actually help us find that one in a million connection from places around the world we could never have gone or known or met that person.

Little did I realize how social networking would grow. Lesson learnt, something that you consider merely a social observation, or the earliest makings of a trend, must be pursued zealously even as the trend changes shapes and directions from market forces. If you are riding, even shaping, it along the way, your opportunities to start something huge are....well, huge.

Of course, as is my forte, I have a knack for starting new things. But, in the past I also had a "rebel without a cause" habit of not sticking around in such businesses long enough to become a millionaire off them. So, my advice is to never lose your idealism - as that is what will help you achieve the impossible. But, temper that idealism with pragmatism.

Wanting something to be a commercial success does not necessarily mean you "sold out" your dream. Take an alternate view. If you work hard and make Project X a huge money-making success, even if you have to sell the company to investors or venture capitalists, you did not sell out.

All you did was leverage Project X to give you the freedom to freely experiment and play with your many other some-crazy some-great ideas without being worried about getting funding for them. That can take you from being a "serial entrepreneur" to a "parallel serial entrepreneur", capable of trying multiple new ideas and businesses and achieving success far beyond what Project X alone would have given you.

In my own case, idealism was a strength, but it was also definitely a huge liability. Usually, I sat back and a few years later watched someone else do the same thing, with funding instead of personal funds, and grow rich/er. I saw the same thing as online dating grow into a huge business with the likes of match.com and others many years after I had launched the first matrimonials database.

When I started Internet email for my native country of Pakistan, I also became "co-owner and co-founder" of the .PK top level domain with my friend and neighbor, the technical genius Ashar Nisar, who went on to establish PKNIC to manage the ccTLD.

Besides getting a kick out of being called "father of the Internet" (at least in Pakistan), I even gave many people free email addresses on imran.pk (the country's first email provider and ISP) to promote email. But, never could I have imagined that sticking around giving something for free I could later have sold it to a giant corporation as hotmail.com did a few years later. Oh, well. Live and learn.

Today, FREE is a valid business model. If you grow a business large enough, no matter how much money it is losing, as long as you have enough users, someone will buy you out for millions of Dollars.

When I started writing an online journal and political opinions (Occasionally Obnoxious, Obviously Outspoken Opinions) at http://imran.com in 1995-96, little did I know that I could have built some sort of "blogging" empire on that.

Once again, despite having an MBA and thinking of myself as a savvy entrepreneur, I missed the boat. So, look around you - some of the very ordinary problems you are solving daily without thinking twice may hold within them huge business opportunities. First, recognize them. Then, go for them with everything you've got.

In 1995 I became a heavy GPS user in boating and later in aviation as a pilot. In 1998-2000 I became CEO of EverTrac, among the first out the gate selling RFID and GPS based solutions. Alas, as usual, like Panasonic's slogan, I was just slightly ahead of my time.

Fortunately, EverTrac and my team survived the dot-com bust, but only because we were gobbled by a Fortune 50 level company - which did nothing with what they bought. Lesson learnt. It's important to survive, but if you sell out to a big company, try not to feel heartache when they don't make any use of the technology.

But, this current new momentum of GPS based devices we are seeing will prove I was on the right…. umm.. EverTrac?

Hopefully, this time, with my current projects, covering GPS, social networking and mobile-monetization - I'll actually make some "real" money if I can sell something to a Google or Yahoo or, some even smarter business!

If that does not happen, I guess the pattern (or call it the Corporate Culture of an Entrepreneur) here is that I love to start new things, just before their time, that others make billions off later. But, so what? The sheer joy of starting something new, taking something from an idea that everyone says is dumb, or will never work, and making it at least take shape, get launched, and become popular is, in itself, a huge reward.

So, feel free to call me about what I an doing now. Surely I can help you become a Web 2.0 multi-millionaire doing whatever I am too lazy (or not smart enough :-) ) to make money from!

Good luck and God Speed, fellow entrepreneurs.

Can "Atom" Bomb? Imran's Law of Expectations

Sharon Gaudlin's article in ComputerWorld April 3, 2008 begins: "With Intel Corp. betting so heavily on the mobile Internet device market exploding in the next several years, industry analysts are wondering if the fledgling business can live up to the expectations."

Intel has named the technology/chips in question ATOM. So, I guess, the question is, will Atom bomb in the marketplace?

I think some of the comments from analysts like Charles King suggest that might be the case. "For a market now in its infancy to grow that fast in just five to 10 years would be an enormous growth curve - one that may not be realistic, especially with so many people satisfied with today's iPhones and other smart phones, said Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT Inc. in Hayward, Calif."

I think King's comments are an example of Imran's Law of Expectations: "Any technology can be sufficiently overhyped to be perceived as failing to meet expectations, even if it is commercially successful in the market."

Yes, Intel (and others) will overhype this chip, this technology and this market demand. But the market 5 years from now will be far different from current form factors, so using those as benchmarks is surely a silly way to analyze the potential for this technology. The market may be smaller than Intel's hype, it may be bigger than analysts guesses, but it will be BIG. Big enough to be commercially successful.

Five years ago people using handheld PDAs could not have foreseen millions of iPhones in people's pockets today. As Apple readies its iPhone 2 device for release shortly, with even more functionality, it will be even more likely to hit its target of number of units sold.

I can only imagine what general magic Apple, and its many copy-cat product designers will do when Intel's Atom and others' even more exciting technologies become available to them to design the next generation of cool new products.

(Update: April 23, 2008: As I was writing these lines, Steve Jobs was busy negotiating the purchase of PA Semi, a StrongARM design-based chip-designer firm. It will mean far more incredible machines from Apple. Will it be a blow to intel's Atom? Yes. Will Atom bomb? Probably not, as there will be plenty of Apple-copycats out there needing chips.)

What do you think?

The Last Mile, The Shortest Delay - Will The Internet Slowdown?

According to a recent article by Shamus McGillicuddy, News Writer at SearchSMB.com, titled 'Internet not growing fast enough, researchers say, "according to new research, demand for Internet usage will start to outpace the capacity of the Internet's access points. This potential crunch could spell trouble for CIOs."

I am flabbergasted by the conclusions drawn by this team of researchers that the writer is reporting about.

They seem to be unfamiliar with the rapid pace of change in technology in general, and in Internet related innovation in particular, when making their semi-dire predictions.

Yes, there is a huge growth in Internet traffic. And, yes, some slowdowns can happen. But, the last mile to the home or business is, most often, NOT the bottleneck. As a matter of fact, I have 1.5 Mbps DSL in NY and 6 Mbps DSL in Miami, and some web sites can respond equally slowly regardless of where I access them from.

"Slowdown" is NOT a generic problem that afflicts the entire Internet, as the 'research' would suggest. The problem can be specific to certain sites, domains, news events of the day, and, much like the highways analogy the news article referred to, it is nearly impossible to build broadband pipes that people and applications will not find ways to clog.

What is needed is intelligent research on where the clogging is likely to be, rather than generic predictions, based on weak logic and an apparent disdain for the reality of the rapid pace of technology innovation.

In summary, the last mile is NOT the problem, and even 6 Mbps DSL lines can find some web sites as slow as 768 Kbps lines. 'Slowdown' is NOT a generic problem across the entire Internet, but is, and will be, a more and more site/domain specific issue. The rapid pace of technology innovation with more reasonable pricing mechanisms will ensure the Internet remains an efficient and effective platform.

How Traditional Publications Can Become The Future Of Publishing

How Traditional Publications Can Become The Future Of Publishing
--- The Shape Of Prints To Come ---

Comment By Imran Anwar

People often ask me "Is there a future for traditional newspapers and magazines, and will digital devices not make these "traditional" publications obsolete?"

Well, the answer depends on how "traditional" publishers respond to the threats from digital devices - as their doom, or as new opportunities for them to expand the horizons of publishing.

What we call traditional publications may likely not be around in 25 years, much less in 50. However, I still see a bright future for magazines and newspapers, if we look at them from just two of several possible new angles I can imagine.

One, is a magazine or newspaper considered that only if it is printed on paper? Won't it still be a "traditional" newspaper 50 years from now if I, or more likely my children, are sitting at the beach, flipping the pages of a silicon film digital ink based publication that can be refilled with tomorrow's newspaper wirelessly every night or every few hours even?

Two, even if almost all of the content we seek becomes available in various colorful, handheld devices, traditional magazines can still make a niche for themselves.... by being non-traditional.

The digital devices most people envision replacing paper publications have their own limitations..... e.g. the need to have a one-size fits all device, regardless of whether I am reading the NY Times' news or MacWorld's reviews.

But, "traditional" publications can be printed in almost any size or shape, and, thanks to modern printing technology, on almost any material.

Thus, content design for these new shapes, textures, materials and sizes will allow publication designers huge opportunities of expression that no "all purpose" digital reader can match.

I do not see any reason why imaginative publishers will not create and design their publications in varying paper sizes (poster size or pocket) or with irregular shapes (triangle, continuous scroll, 100-fold single sheet) or having unique textures (cotton, holographic paper, parchment, aluminum, suede) or have different pages filled with aromas (for recipe pages for example) and who knows what else.

Their imagination is the limit. With so much creative freedom in "paper" publications, digital devices may then seem to be limited and limiting of the "reader experience"!

Imagine people wondering, in 2025 perhaps, if "traditional electronic reading devices" will be around in 20 years and if the "real" and "sensory" (i.e. including touch, feel, smell....) magazines and newspapers will replace them. Never say Never.

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© 2005, Imran Anwar
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