Meeting A New IT Company

[Updated 5/23/23]

An invitation came my way to talk with Alwyn Joseph, Chief Revenue Officer for FPT-USA. OK, I said, just what is that company? In brief, FPT is an information technology and services company based in Vietnam. This from a recent press release:

FPT Software is a global technology and IT services provider headquartered in Vietnam, with more than $632.5 million in revenue and 25,500 employees in 28 countries. As a pioneer in digital transformation, the company delivers world-class services in Smart factories, Digital platforms, RPA, AI, IoT, Cloud, AR/VR, BPO, and more. It has served 1000+ customers worldwide, a hundred of which are Fortune Global 500 companies in Automotive, Banking and Finance, Logistics & Transportation, Utilities, and more.

Joseph emphasized the company is more than just services, it is a technology company. It’s the second-largest ISP in Vietnam. The largest profit comes from work in the Americas. The leadership is intensely interested in helping people and even has developed a university with 100K students. They get intern work at FPT while in school. In fact, he added, the purpose of the company—it was founded to help community and nation building, invest in young people. It has brought many families out of poverty, creating healthy community.

I applaud the approach to projects—they start with the business outcome in mind. Too many engineers start with the engineering problem in mind and miss the big picture—why. He says they approach digital transformation initiatives to “think big, start smart, and scale very fast – with initial focus on 6-month projects, not 3-5 years.”

The latest news concerned the company positioned as a “Contender” in The Forrester Wave: Cloud Migration And Managed Service Partners In Asia Pacific, Q4 2022.

The report researched, analyzed, and scored the 14 most significant services providers across 27 criteria covering the current offering, strategy, and market presence. It shows that FPT Software received the highest score possible in the execution roadmap criterion. According to Forrester, “FPT Software has an impressive future roadmap and evidence that it has successfully delivered on its previous intentions.”

Additionally, the report stated that the company “supports delivery with its Japanese-inspired Digital Kaizen method and a cohesive, well-structured set of in-house developed tools… including the [platform CloudSuite] for multi-cloud management, monitoring, and cost optimization across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP)”.

It is always interesting to become acquainted with a new (to me) company.

The End Of Print Computer Magazines

John Gruber writing at Daring Fireball refers to Harry McCracken’s blog post about the end of print production of Maximum PC and MacLife. This signals the end of an era. I learned a tremendous amount of computer science and practical computing from Byte back in the day. Just as I had a notebook filled with trade press articles on project management and similar topics. In my market, I read in my latest Industry Week magazine (now quarterly) ironically the Innovation Issue that it was ending its print edition. A friend oversaw the end of print for several magazines. It’s a definite trend in technology markets.

Harry McCracken was a respected magazine editor who early on made the jump to digital only. I did that in 2013 moving from Automation World to The Manufacturing Connection. While covering IT companies, I met many IT and computer writers who also wound up as digital columnists.

I’ve been digital for a long time. But I miss the good print magazines.

Industry Reimagined 2030 Releases Research on The State of Lean Manufacturing

US manufacturers have been moving the actual making of products out of the country for many years. This, of course, is a concern for this country. We’ve seen Germany and Italy and China aggressively move to strengthen manufacturing in their countries. Only recently has there been a concerted effort to bolster manufacturing here.

I’m an internationalist on the one hand, but each country owes it to itself to have solid manufacturing. I wondered a long time ago about the future where we would be required to import products needed in an armed conflict. Well, many organizations including this one are working to restore America’s manufacturing prowess. Making Lean Manufacturing more widespread is a good start.

Industry Reimagined 2030 just released its research report “The State of Lean Manufacturing.” The report aims to vastly increase company adoption by equipping practitioners, external experts, and educators with compelling facts and insights to make Lean highly relevant, friendly, and compelling to the interests and concerns of mainstream manufacturers.

Lean Manufacturing continuously eliminates waste, bottlenecks and improves customer value through employee engagement and utilizing data-driven tools. Seventy-four percent of survey respondents reported productivity gains over 40% without intensive capital investment. Yet only 10-15% of U.S. companies systematically use Lean and reap its competitive and financial benefits.

Lean solves many problems

  • raising the level of production capability and worker productivity without intensive capital investment; 
  • competing against lower labor cost countries; 
  • creating an engaged workforce; 
  • building a problem-solving culture; 
  • truly benefitting from advanced production technology and Industry 4.0; 
  • becoming agile and resilient in responding to disruption.

Industry Reimagined 2030 surveyed three hundred manufacturers on the performance gains in ten manufacturing areas. The survey included both measurable and qualitative responses. Gains were cross-analyzed by a variety of demographics. The survey prompted respondents to provide personal views on gains and the ways in which Lean was implemented both initially and over the longer-term. Sentiment analysis was performed.

Control and Automation Market Media

I arrived home this afternoon after getting blown off on a meeting in downtown Chicago. I found an issue of Industry Week in my mail. As I scanned it I saw in the editorial that I was holding in my grubby little hands the last print issue of IW. I remember it as a weekly (thick). Then a monthly. Last year a quarterly. This year–one.

Following the lead of what I’ve experienced with IT, PC, software journals, IW will become digital only.

Endeavor, a new company busily engaged in consolidating media properties, made this decision. Marketing people in this market still expect to get publicity without paying for it. And I don’t just mean “pay to play”, which some magazines have gone to in order to survive. They just don’t see value in advertising and don’t seem to realize that the publicity can’t exist in a void.

I saw difficulties 10 years ago when I left the print world as it was evolving into pay-to-play and went digital only. I have had several sponsors over that time. I’m very fortunate to have a long-term ethical sponsor in Inductive Automation who supports the lone individual (with perhaps more readers than…well, we won’t go there).

Most companies have their own email databases (hint: you’ve been sold so many times, you can’t know where your next email blitz will come from), they produce their own webinars, they have their own newsletters, some even have their own magazines. Independent journalism and independent analysts are few.

I’m always sad at the passing of an era. It means that this industrial technology market has matured and consolidated enough that vibrancy, energy, leaps of innovation are maybe in the past.

Unless, that is, unless some of you find a new way to shake up the market. I’m old, but even I’m contemplating where the market can go. What do you think?

6,000 Blog Posts, 20 Years Writing About Technology and Strategy

It speaks for longevity and persistence if nothing else. This is post number 6,000 over two different websites. I actually contributed a few posts to MESA many years ago and had an asset management website briefly when I was working with MIMOSA. I don’t count those.

Dave, Jane, and I along with Jim, Wes, and Mike started Automation World in 2003. I was busy with that as editor-in-chief. Blogging was catching on. When I had a chance to pause and think, I started a blog on Dave Winer’s Radio Userland in 2003 as an experiment. The sales guys wanted to sell my blog to advertisers. We worked out a process that kept me pure but used it for promotion. I later moved the blog to SquareSpace when Userland folded. I renamed it Gary Mintchell’s Feed Forward—the title of my AW Editorial Page.

I left AW in 2013 after many changes. I hired a guy to remake the website. He moved it to WordPress. I renamed it The Manufacturing Connection—I could buy the domain name and wanted to feature the word Connection.

I have a second blog ongoing since about 2007 that focuses on personal and spiritual development called Faith Venture just because I have many and varied interests.

We came to Automation World from Control Engineering (both magazines still exist). I believed technology and requirements had moved from control and instrumentation to automation—which I defined as control + information. I wanted to cover how users (people) used these new technologies to make their operations better. I had writers focus on the “automation team” emphasizing that it takes teamwork to accomplish goals.

The industry has seen many fads come and go over the past 10 years of this incarnation of this blog. The market has consolidated greatly. That has resulted in loss of advertising revenue for the magazines (and me). I appreciate the long-standing sponsorship of Inductive Automation—which also seems to be the one software company still growing and “killing it” as one industry veteran told me.

Through it all, you all are still out there solving the same problems I was trying to solve when I was out in industry. The tools are better. Software mostly doesn’t require you to change your processes to fit their model. But the problems remain.

That means my focus must continue to evolve to match what is happening.

Let’s just see what 2023 brings. All the best!

From the Ridiculous to the More Ridiculous

So, the court system is now tied up by a law suit about what a chicken wing is. [Disclaimer: I have not eaten poultry since I was about five. I have no personal experience.] It seems a guy visited Buffalo Wild Wings. He ordered their “boneless chicken wings.” They were not wings, he exclaimed, they are nothing but chicken nuggets.

So, he sued.

Silicon Valley is filled with ultra-wealthy “libertarian tech bros.” They don’t need government. Just leave us alone with our money. One of these is Jason Calacanis. I used to listen to his podcasts years ago, but I grew tired. By the way, this same Jason is one of his friend Elon Musk’s advisors on how to fire most of the people at Twitter.

But then a big “oops” in Silicon Valley. The favored bank of these investors got itself into trouble and looked to be tanking. I read a post from that same Calacanis—the government must step in and save our bank.

So all the kids who were duped into over-priced university “educations” should pay back their debts to the very last dime. But we billionaires should be bailed out by the government.

Take your pick on your politics. I don’t care. Only that you don’t just knee-jerk someone else’s opinion. But, when things turn around to bite you in the butt, remember this old folk wisdom:

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

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