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July - August, 2017
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Many miles from Silicon Valley, a
River Falls, Wis. company is offering to
implant chip technology into the hands
of all its employees. Three Square Mar-
ket, a provider of break room vending
machines, expected more than 50 of its
80-some employees to be voluntarily
bio-chipped at an office “chip party” held
in early August.
“We foresee the use of RFID tech-
nology to drive everything from making
purchases in our office break room
market, opening doors, use of copy ma-
chines, logging into our office comput-
ers, unlocking phones, sharing business
cards, storing medical/health informa-
tion, and used as payment at other RFID
terminals,” said CEO, Todd Westby.
“Eventually, this technology will become
standardized allowing you to use this as
your passport, public transit, all purchas-
ing opportunities, etc.”
Three Square Market is working
with Swedish company, BioHax Inter-
national, to deliver the new technology,
which is described as similar to a chip
on a credit card with no GPS tracking
ability (at least not yet). The process is
similar to getting a vaccination with a
syringe, say representative of BioHax,
while taking it out is similar to remov-
ing a splinter.
Already relatively common are
microchips implants in pets so they
can be found if lost, and companies in
Sweden, Belgium and Australia have
been implanting chips into people for
some time. But this is believed to be
the first employee-chipping program
in the U.S.
Nonetheless, earlier this year, law-
makers in Nevada introduced a bill that
would make it a felony to require some-
one to be implanted with a chip.
dinCloud Unveils
Customer Service Bot
dinCloud announced the availability of a full-
service virtual robot, dubbed “James,” designed to
help organizations deliver a better experience to
employees and customers. The virtual robot runs
in the cloud, as a service, and requires no coding
or configuration by customers, said the company.
James is tasked with testing and document-
ing the performance and availability of services
that are important to an organization. For exam-
ple, it can validate the customer experience on
an e-commerce site, the payroll calculation pro-
cess in an organization’s ERP software, or other
critical services. James can test the user experi-
ence 24/7 on systems such as SAP, Salesforce,
Sage and Microsoft Dynamics.
Whereas traditional monitoring tools have
a system-level perspective, dinCloud’s virtual
robot service sees through the eyes of the
user, said the company. It also can be rolled
out in less time than it takes to onboard a new
employee. All setup, configuration, changes
and maintenance are performed by dinCloud.
Customers have a dashboard for reviewing
performance in real-time and also receive
alerts via email or text based on thresholds
that dinCloud helps users establish.
“Often, organizations receive calls from cus-
tomers or employees noting that some process
is broken. While IT generally has monitoring
tools in place, there is still a gap in knowing, and
actually seeing, what the user experience is like.
Even if the software is not ‘down,’ it could still
impact user productivity,” said Ali Din, general
manager and CMO at dinCloud. “James can
proactively and precisely point out these issues.
This way, the help desk isn’t reliant on users
calling to report the issue, if they even do call.”
Wisconsin Company Employees
Get Microchipped
64%
Percentage of shoppers who said they
would rather have instant access to
quality customer service through AI
than preserve the jobs of customer
service reps, according to a survey
from PwC.
Home Sweet Homers
According to the latest figures from FlexJobs
and Global Workplace Analytics, 3.9 million
U.S. employees, or 2.9 percent of the total
U.S. workforce, work from home at least half
of the time, up from 1.8 million in 2005 (a
115% increase since 2005). The average
telecommuter is 46 years of age or older,
has at least a bachelor’s degree, and earns a
higher median salary than an in-office worker.
cloud strategy–incorporating elements of both private
and public clouds–versus just a public or private cloud one?
How will your hybrid cloud strategy change
over the next two years?
Source: Forbes Insights; Cisco; survey of 302 IT xecutives
Service Providers
ation from any equipment, devices or
4E
0
Data Points Gen
79%
75%
71%
63%
58%
58%
58%
50%
33%
40%
60%
80%
ondents Rating 6 or 7
63%
47%
42%
39%
32%
24%
24%
17%
16%
13%
11%
11%
%
3%
62%
21%
54%
3%
9%
13%
35%
30%
11%
25%
35%
What percentage of your hybrid cloud infrastructure
is on-premises versus public cloud?
Source: FlexJobs; Global Workplace Analytics
Telecommuting growth since 2005
Important
Neutral
Not at all Important
Increased reliance on public cloud services
Greater than 90% on-premis s
75% to 90% on-premises
50% to 74% on-premises
25% to 49% on-premises
10% to 24% on-premises
L ss than 10% on-premises
Increased r liance n on-premises
No change expected
2006
150%
100%
50%
26%
4% 5% 9% 4% 3% 4% 6% 8% 10% 12%
36%
55% 61%
66% 73%
80%
91% 102%
115%
0%
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Non-telecommuters
Telecommuters
% growth since 2005