Technology

Bill McDermott has landed. Two weeks ago, he stepped down as CEO at SAP after a decade leading the company. Yesterday, ServiceNow announced that he will be its new CEO.

Itunclear how quickly the move came together but the plan for him is clear: to scale revenue like he did in his last job.

Commenting during the companyearningcall today, outgoing CEO John Donahoe said that McDermott met all of the boardcriteria for its next leader. This includes the ability to expand globally, expand the markets it serves and finally scale the go-to-market organization internally, all in the service of building toward a $10 billion revenue goal. He believes McDermott checks all those boxes.

McDermott has his work cut out for him. The company2018 revenue was $2.6 billion. Still, he fully embraced the $10 billion challenge. &Well let me answer that very simply, I completely stand by [the $10 billion goal], and I&m looking forward to achieving it,& he said with bravado during todaycall.

Itworth noting that as the company strives to reach that lofty revenue goal in the coming years, it will be doing with a new CEO in McDermott, as well as a new CFO. The company is in the midst of a search to fill that key position, as well.

McDermott has been here before though. He points out that in the decade he was at SAP, under his leadership the company moved the market cap from $39 billion to $163 billion. Today, ServiceNow market cap is similar to when McDermott started at SAP at a little over $41 billion.

He also recognizes that this is going to be a new challenge. &I&ve seen a lot of different business models, and [SAP has] a very different business model than ServiceNow. This is a pure play cloud,& he said. That means as a leader, he says that has to think about product changes differently, how they fit in the overall platform, while maintaining simplicity and keeping the developer community in mind.

Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research said that ServiceNow is at a point where it needs an enterprise-class CEO who understands tech, partnerships, systems integrators and real enterprise sales and marketing — and McDermott brings all of that to his new employer.

Tesla has started trial production of its Model 3 vehicle in its new Shanghai factory, which CEO Elon Musk called a &template for future growth.&

This trial basis includes all aspects of production, including body, paint and general assembly. Tesla said it is clearing final regulatory hurdles such as finalizing its manufacturing license. Once complete, the company will begin ramping production and delivering vehicles, the automaker said Wednesday in its third-quarter earnings report.

Teslafactory capacity is poised to grow even larger as it gets closer to picking a location in Europe for its third factory. The company said Wednesday itin the final stages of its site-selection process. The eventual European factory is expected to produce both Model 3 and Model Y, Tesla said.

For now,Teslafuture financial health is tied, in part, to its ability to ramp up sales in China, the worldlargest electric vehicle market.

In July 2018, Tesla struck a deal with the Chinese government to build a factory in Shanghai. It was a milestone for Tesla and Musk, who has long viewed China as a crucial market. And it was particularly notable because China agreed for this to be a wholly owned Tesla factory, not a traditional joint venture with the government. Foreign companies have historically had to form a 50-50 joint venture with a local partner to build a factory in China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has pushed forward plans to phase out joint-venture rules for foreign automakers by 2022. Tesla is one of the first beneficiaries of this rule change.

The opening of the China factory comes at a time of rising trade tensions between China and the United States. Tesla has been particularly exposed to relations between China and the U.S., and the resulting rising tariffs. Tesla builds its electric sedans and SUVs at its factory in Fremont, Calif. and ships them to China, which subjects the vehicles to an import tariff.

&We believe China could become the biggest market for Model 3,& the company said in its third-quarter earnings report.

Tesla broke ground on the factory in China in January and it was constructed in just 10 months, including the installation of stamping and other equipment. Musk called the speed of construction &unprecedented.&

Following the introduction of its digital well-being tools for Android at GoogleI/O developer conference last year, the company has since expanded the feature set to include new options, like Focus mode and better parental controls for families with children. Now, Google is trying something new. The company today introduced a set of &experimental& apps designed to help users be better aware of their device use and reduce their screen time.

The apps, which are a part of a new Digital Wellbeing Experiments platform, are very different from your standard screen-time controls. They&re open-sourced projects designed to kickstart out-of-the-box thinking, but not necessarily must-have tools.

One experiment, Unlock Clock, simply shows you how often you unlock your phone.

Another, We Flip, lets a group of friends or a family disconnect from technology altogether by flipping a big switch. And if anyone unlocks their phone, the session ends for everyone — almost like making screen time a competitive family sport.

Desert Island and Morph, meanwhile, take an app-centric approach to screen-time reduction. The former requires you to go a day with only your most essential apps, while the latter helps you stay focused by giving you the right apps at the right time of day.

That idea had been popular in years past with Android launchers, like Cover, EverythingMe and Aviate, for example. In those cases, different homescreen configurations and widgets would appear based on what time of day it was and what you were doing. However, the idea of smartphones that personalized themselves to our needs never really took off — perhaps because these same experiences could never transition to iOS, where Applerestrictions limited how much customization could be done.

The Post Box experiment is one of the more intriguing creations — it offers to hold your notifications until whatever time suits you.

Notification spam is now arguably one of the worst side effects of becoming a smartphone user. Itso bad, in fact, that both Apple and Google have had to redesign ways for users to reassert control at the OS level.

Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook even said that he has gutted his iPhonenotifications, touting the iOS feature to do so as some sort of miraculous invention — when in reality it was Appleflawed design of the notification system to begin with that allowed developers to continually interrupt us with their irrelevant pings.

A mailbox-style system — like this new Google experiment provides — was another obvious choice, but one that wouldn&t have allowed an app ecosystem to blossom.

Then there is the most whimsical experiment of them all: Paper Phone.

This app will print you a custom booklet of the critical information you need that day, including favorite contacts, maps, meetings, tasks, weather info and more.

You can then take a short break from your device, without giving up access to your must-have information. Itlike time-traveling for those of us old enough to remember life before smartphones, and a small gift of freedom for those who have never been without.

Google says this new Digital Wellbeing Experiments platform is open for contributions from any designers and developers who want to share their ideas for a more balanced relationship with technology.

&We hope these experiments inspire developers and designers to keep digital well-being top of mind when building technology. The more people that get involved, the more we can all learn how to build better technology for everyone,& said Google.

Interested contributors can download the &Hack Pack& and open-source code available on the site to get started.

The experiments only run on Android and are offered for download on the Play Store.

While the new experiments are less about fixing existing Google products and more about playing around with new ideas, Google has several other screen-time/well-being initiatives underway, including its Android native well-being features, YouTube&take a break& reminders and other screen-time controls, Google Assistantwind-down routines, Gmail automations like auto-reply and send later, Google Family Link and more.