Charles Jillings, CEO of Utilico, energized by strong economic momentum across Latin America. Watch the video here.
Just for info, noticed interest here by Microsoft in RPA with reference of BP in Enterprise use. https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/23/microsoft_bots_ahoy_as_the/
Interesting - IBM are fairly astute at business intelligence type areas (i2 for example).
Joatmon - Thanks, was hoping had changed tune but point taken.
Irene,
I am fully aware of what they all are (like I said - BSc, MSc, 24+ years experience in the industry) - quite aware that they are not the same role, it's the underlying concept - AUTOMATION.
Irene - I disagree, they're both examples of taking people out of the system/loop. I do have 24 years in IT (plus a BSc and MSc) so fair amount of experience.
Irene - bit of punctuation missing on my part. Not in at the minute (personal circumstances). Still think this may have a future - plenty of M&A in IT and automation is the way forward (Oracle Autonomous database, Kubernetes, etc).
Irene - There is a fair chance it might - it's probability not 100% nailed on (big difference). Entry to oil & gas is somewhat different to software. Shame, I was going to invest in KrappSoft - sounded quite promising.
To be fair - I hadn't read that, just wanted to point out robots don't have to be "cognisant". How's your FT/AIM listed software business going BTW?
I'm not sure why IreneKrapp thinks a "robot" has to be intelligent - the robots that put cars together aren't and they're still "robots", actually come to think of it Oracle (Larry E being rather rich) keeps banging on about automation and removing the human element which makes mistakes, e.g. self managing databases, etc.
Good anything still needs marketing (I used to think the same as yourself but look at what happened to Digital/DEC and Sun Microsystems) - Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Red Hat, etc all run heavy marketing campaigns and they don't do it for fun.
The buy backs are SCRIP items, and demand isn't falling - it's just there's a lot of potential supply and n19 virus fears etc. "EIA expects global petroleum and liquid fuels demand will average 100.3 million barrels per day (b/d) in the first quarter of 2020. This demand level is 0.9 million b/d less than forecast in the January STEO and reflects both the effects of the coronavirus and warmer-than-normal January temperatures across much of the northern hemisphere. EIA now expects global petroleum and liquid fuels demand will rise by 1.0 million b/d in 2020, which is lower than the forecast increase in the January STEO of 1.3 million b/d in 2020, and by 1.5 million b/d in 2021."
Irene, It is a successful spreadsheet, but it really isn't up to much beyond that. A whole terabyte worldwide - wow (BTW you should use units of powers of two now - Tebibyte etc) - that is bugger all and quite frankly data should be held, indexed, managed and analysed in a proper database, which is what Oracle and Microsoft are doing with 'R' embedded in there, oh and Python of course which you can now run in the database engine - not in a spreadsheet which is a governance nightmare (GDPR...).
I have a suspicion that your're a Microsoft Office dabbler rather than a software engineer.
Macros to use an Americanism "Suck" - they are not for serious enterprise solutions - they're for tinkering with stuff in a bodged together Heath Robinson way. Scripts on the other hand are good - nice repeatable idempotent solutions.
Irene - Nothing complicated, was just suggesting that either:
A. A whole load of sizable blue chip companies are wrong in investing their shareholders cash and you're right.
B. You're not so right and the large number of companies are making sound business decisions.
Whilst I am aware on Bertrand Russell's Celestial Teapot, I'm minded that the most likely is B, i.e. those hoof beats are horses (likely) and not zebra (unlikely). These aren't zero sum games by the way - you pay your money and take your choice, but often automation costs can be made back a number of times over.
Occasionally makes a few half decent points on other shares though (HUR for example), can understand the concept of querying and not getting sucked in by hype (look at HP - Autonomy), but when you hear hoof beats thing horses and not zebra jumps to mind - lots of people buying and a fair share price...(probably horses then).
Irene, BTW, MS Word (and Office overall) is OK for what it does, but I have to say over my career I've seen loads of people playing at IT with them when they don't have a clue - some of them go on to describe themselves as IT/Analyst Programmer/Developer/Software Engineer etc when really they're self taught bungling amateurs who know very little about computer science or engineering in general.
WP was a decent product, think MS played a bit "dirty" earlier on, although to be fair most of their products were poor until NT came along courtesy of Dave Cutler. It was just an example, they've bought plenty of other things or hired plenty of staff including most of System Centre (SCCM, SCOM, etc.), Dave Cutler, Jeffrey Snoover, etc.
Irene, Has anyone told the customers of BP then? They'll be awfully miffed when they find out they made the wrong choice.
Irene, Perhaps take out a competitor then?
Irene, I was only using them as an example, there's plenty others always prowling for a leg up in the market (Oracle, Microsoft, etc.), but why not IBM as they're in the business since getting out of hardware.