The PC Industry: A Warning from History (and a Lesson for Video Collaboration)

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was in the thick of the personal computer business.
Compaq 286/20s. IBM PS/2 Model 30s with dual 3.5” floppies. If a client’s budget was tighter than a drum, I’d dust off a Tulip, Philips—or heaven forbid—an Amstrad. And laptops? Take your pick: Zenith, Toshiba, or Osborne.

Choice was everywhere. To call it a crowded market would be an understatement of Olympic proportions.

And you know what? It was thrilling. Specs changed monthly. Prices fell constantly. Every month felt like the Cambrian Explosion of computing—wild, messy, and full of bizarre species.

But then reality arrived. Margins collapsed. Prices cratered. Consolidation steamrolled the industry. Innovation slowed to a crawl, and before long, the once-vibrant PC sector was reduced to an enormous, low-margin, logistics-driven slugfest.

Today, only four and a half players remain. Dell. HP. Lenovo. Apple. And the half? Asus—still clinging on.

That’s it. Decades of creative chaos distilled into four logos.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does enjoy a good rhyme

Déjà Vu in 2025: The Video Collaboration Crunch

Fast forward to today. In 2025, there are 28 companies manufacturing Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) video conferencing devices. That’s 28 players fighting over an industry worth less than $5 billion annually.

For context: in 1992, the PC industry was worth $57 billion—equivalent to $130 billion today.

And just as in 1992, innovation is thinning. Products are converging. Differentiation on features is becoming harder by the quarter.

Sound familiar? It should.

The question is simple: what happens to the video collaboration space?

Do we end up with a commoditized race to the bottom, where the cheapest box wins? Or is there a smarter play available?

Lessons from the PC Wars

Let’s rewind. In the 1990s, the difference between an Amstrad and a Compaq was minimal in terms of specs. Yet Compaq—the more expensive choice—won.

Meanwhile, Toshiba made brilliant laptops but still faded away. Premium pricing alone wasn’t enough.

So why did some win while others vanished into the annals of tech trivia?

The winners didn’t obsess over being the cheapest. They built trust. They went global. They offered portfolios, not just products. They gave risk-averse corporate buyers the things that actually mattered:

• Service Level Agreements
  

• Global availability
  

• Broad solution sets
  
  

Meanwhile, the losers assumed the pie was big enough that everyone could carve out a slice. They offered “me too” boxes, ignored corporate trust, and leaned on channels that weren’t fit for enterprise buyers.

In short: Dell, HP, and Lenovo didn’t win because their boxes were shinier. They won because they made enterprise customers feel safe, supported, and understood.

The Video Collaboration Industry’s Fork in the Road

So, what now for video collaboration vendors, resellers, and distributors?

The market is tiny compared to PCs—even by 1992 standards. And yet the herd keeps piling in. Something has to give.

Here are a few paths forward:

1. Get Big or Go Home

For vendors who want to matter, scale is non-negotiable. Being the “easy button” globally is a powerful narrative for cautious buyers.

2. Be Truly Different

If you can’t be big, be unique. Cisco, for example, positions itself like Apple once did—offering a distinct, premium experience. Owl Labs takes another path with radically different form factors.

Differentiation is survival.

3. Compete Beyond the Product

When products blur together, outcomes matter more. Ask yourself:

• Do you have a compelling ESG story? Clients increasingly care.
  

• Using the best recycled plastics? Tell the world.
  

• Got rock-solid, audited financials? Lean into governance.
  

• Manufacturing in high-quality, ethical workplaces? Help buyers sleep at night.
  

It’s not just about the spec sheet anymore.

4. Sell Scale, Not Specs

Got a management suite that handles massive deployments seamlessly? Lead with that.

Have an ordinary product but an extraordinary sales team? Focus on creating raving fans, not just clients.

Reality Check: Not Everyone Survives

Let’s be blunt: not all vendors will make it. Some already have warehouses full of unsold kit, or share prices that resemble ski slopes.

At some point, the industry will consolidate. Some players will exit gracefully. Others will be dragged out feet-first.

The warning from history is clear: size and specs don’t guarantee survival. Strategy does.

The Big Questions for 2030

Which raises the open questions for all of us in the industry:

• How many video collaboration vendors will still be standing in 2030?

• What separates a compelling solution from “just another black box with a camera”?

• What criteria—trust, governance, ESG, service, scale—will actually decide the winners?
  

History gives us clues, but not the answers.

Over to You

I’ve shared my view. The PC industry taught us that chaos collapses into consolidation, and that winners aren’t always the ones with the best products—they’re the ones who understood customers’ deeper needs.

What do you think?
How does our industry avoid repeating history—or are we already halfway there?

Drop your thoughts in the comments. Let’s compare notes before the rhyme becomes reality.

Simon Dudley

Technology strategist, bestselling author, and former senior executive at Logitech, Lifesize, and Polycom.
CEO & Founder, Excession Events.

Author of Competitive Intelligence Playbook, The End of Certainty, and Who Put That Idiot in Charge?

#VideoCollaboration #Strategy #MarketIntelligence #PCIndustry #MicrosoftTeamsRooms #Consolidation #AVIndustry #BusinessStrategy #CompetitiveIntelligence #FutureOfWork

Sales Activities: Why We’re Still Selling Like It’s 1999

You can tell what really matters in a company by where it concentrates its energy. And nowhere is that more obvious (or occasionally tragic) than in sales.

At an old employer of mine, we had what was politely called “the sales deck.” It was 450 slides long. Yes, four-hundred and fifty. To put that in perspective, that’s longer than most doctoral dissertations, but with fewer footnotes and less originality.

Of those 450 slides, 449 were about the product. Every little toggle, switch, feature, and blinking LED was lovingly detailed. There was one—just one—slide about the company itself. And I never, not once, saw a salesperson bother to talk about it.

I once asked how on earth anyone was meant to present 449 slides. The answer? “Oh, we don’t present all the slides. Just the ones that matter to the client.”

Ah yes. The ones that matter. Because nothing says “client focus” like handing over a product encyclopedia and telling them to pick their favorite chapter.

The Problem with Product Worship

It’s safe to say that sales team was focused on products. Lots and lots of products. And here’s the funny thing: clients don’t buy products. They buy solutions to business pain points.

In a world where products increasingly look the same, do we really think concentrating on the product is a winning strategy? I mean, honestly—does any CIO wake up at 3am and whisper, “If only this widget had a 17% faster data throughput, my problems would be solved”? No. They wake up at 3am worried about lawsuits, budgets, compliance audits, and whether the board will sack them before they cash their bonus.

But in technology sales, we cling to this romantic notion that clients will fall in love with our products if only we can help them understand how clever they are. That if we can just explain how our algorithm is 0.2% more efficient than the competition’s, the client will leap into our arms, sign the contract, and maybe even write us a sonnet.

That’s simply not true.

What Clients Actually Want

What clients actually want is something far more boring—and far more important. They want a solution to their business problem. Preferably one that is:

• Easy to buy
  
  

• Easy to own
  
  

• Low hassle
  
  

Notice what’s not on that list: world-class algorithms, revolutionary architectures, or synergies so disruptive they’ll make your eyes water.

Clients want less drama, not more features.

What Does “Hassle” Look Like?

Hassle is a vendor who makes life difficult in ways that go far beyond the product. For example:

• Accounts payable nightmares: If their purchasing department can’t get you into the system, congratulations—you’re not a vendor, you’re a problem.
  
  

• Employment practices: If your company ends up on the front page of the newspaper for the wrong reasons, you’ve just given your client’s legal department a migraine.
  
  

• Supply chain risks: Nothing keeps a CISO awake like the thought that your supplier’s supplier might also be moonlighting as a spy.
  
  

• Reputation for drama: Even the faintest whiff of instability—financial, ethical, or operational—becomes a big red flag.
  
  

And these issues often play on a client’s mind a lot more than whether your product has a new button labeled “AI-powered.”

The Questions That Really Matter

When clients are deciding who to buy from, here’s what they’re actually asking themselves:

• Future direction: Will this vendor still exist in five years, or are they on a countdown timer?
  
  

• Alliances: Who are they aligned with? Do they have the right certifications, partners, and credibility in the market?
  
  

• Supply chain security: Not just at the factory—what about the entire reseller and distribution network? One weak link and the whole chain snaps.
  
  

• Market alignment: Are they even going where the market is headed, or are they desperately trying to sell VHS tapes in a streaming world?
  
  

• Channel relationships: Do resellers and distributors actually make money selling this stuff? Because if they don’t, guess what—they won’t.
  
  

• Legacy product handling: Do they support their older products, or do they abandon them like a toddler losing interest in a toy?
  
  

• Leadership quality: Does the senior team have deep industry experience, or are they quarterly-obsessed spreadsheet jockeys who think customer loyalty is a “nice to have”?
  
  

• Acquisition risk: If this vendor gets bought, what happens to support, pricing, and continuity? Clients know acquisitions often come with “surprise” changes—usually unpleasant.
  
  

In other words, clients are buying risk management as much as they’re buying a product.

The Brutal Truth

The brutal truth is this: product differentiation is shrinking every year. The speed at which competitors can copy your shiny new feature is terrifying. One engineer in Shenzhen can make your “revolutionary” idea look positively mainstream within a quarter.

So if your sales team is still trying to win on product alone, they’re playing checkers in a world where everyone else is playing 3D chess.

Clients know they can get a good-enough product from half a dozen vendors. What they want is confidence that the one they choose won’t become a headache, a liability, or a career-limiting move.

What Leadership Should Do

For senior leaders, this requires a mindset shift. Stop asking your sales teams, “How are we proving our product is the best?” Instead, ask:

• How are we making ourselves the safest choice?
  
  

• How are we reducing friction in the buying process?
  
  

• How are we demonstrating long-term stability, vision, and alignment with customer needs?
  
  

• How are we helping customers look good to their own leadership when they pick us?
  
  

Because here’s the kicker: most clients don’t actually want the “best” product. They want the least risky option. The one that lets them sleep at night.

A Final Thought

The next time you see a 450-slide deck, remember this: nobody ever closed a deal because slide 327 explained your product’s “innovative use of containerized microservices.”

But plenty of deals have been lost because the client thought, “This vendor seems unstable. If they implode, I’ll have to explain it to my board.”

So, by all means, polish the product slides. But don’t forget: your customers are buying peace of mind, not feature sets.

And if you really can’t resist showing all 449 product slides—at least have the decency to provide coffee. Strong coffee.

To Cloud or not to Cloud. That is the question.

Less than 10 years ago I remember meeting many clients who scoffed at the idea that Microsoft Teams would be a cloud based solution, and that they would not be able to host their own environments.

The large pharmaceutical and finance houses I was talking to at the time had invested huge amounts in their own networks, so their position was understandable. The idea of simply using the internet seemed like a step back. And of course in many ways it was. Security, resilience, scaleability, and long term cost of these cloud solutions were all major concerns.

But come the pandemic, most big orgs embraced cloud with a vengeance. Realistically they had little choice. With so many people working from home, empty offices and networks designed for a different world, where people primarily came to a central office, they simply needed to embrace it.

Fast forward to 2025 and I’m beginning to witness what I think is a bit of a swing back toward on-prem solutions. Now to be clear I’m not suggesting the likes of Zoom, Webex or Microsoft Teams are in trouble, far from it. But I do see clients who are moving toward more of a hybrid world where some communication is brought back inside the walls of organizations. Security, geo political risk, AI scrapping and the ever rising cost of Cloud solutions are beginning to rise in importance to the point where reshoring some of these activities are becoming strategically important.

The questions I have for my readers are.

• Am I only seeing this because I’m looking, or is this real?

• Do developments such as Azure and AWS sovereign in country solutions change the dynamic, or mitigate clients risk assessments?

• If you are seeing clients moving in this direction, do you have a sense of what type of calls, or what percentage of traffic would be reshored?

• What are the reasons cited by clients for looking to reshore, or reasons not too?

• What challenges around reshoring are top of mind for clients?

• What have I missed that should be covered?

• How much of this is going on beyond communications solutions?

Please feel free to email me, or send me a message through Linkedin if you’d prefer not to comment publicly on this. I promise to keep your comments private. Ideally I'd like to make this an interesting thread for conversation.

Assuming I get some feedback on this topic, I’d like to dig into some detail over the coming months. So please stay tuned for more.

About the Author

Simon Dudley is a chump. A man who believes in paying taxes, waiting his turn, the rule of law, being a decent human being. He writes a lot about strategy, technology, society, education, business, Excession Events and science.

simon@excessionevents.com

#Cisco #CiscoWebex #Webex #Zoom #Microsoft #MicrosoftTeams #Pexip #Cloud #VaaS #Collaboration

Microsoft’s November 2025 Licensing Shake-Up: When Your Discount Ladder Turns Into a Snake

The facts (quick recap)

Straight from Microsoft’s own neighborhood watch (and summarized neatly by Fusion Connect):

• Effective November 1, 2025, Microsoft ends tiered volume discounts (Levels B–D) for Online Services at EA/MPSA/OSPA renewal. Everyone pays Level A (list) pricing—yes, even you, global megacorp.
  
  

• Price impact: larger enterprises could see up to ~12% increases; many mid-market orgs ~6–9%.
  
  

• EAs under ~2,400 seats won’t be renewed; Microsoft will nudge these customers to CSP models.
  
  

• Exceptions: On-prem pricing unchanged; Government and Education (GCC/EES) not affected.
  
  

• Microsoft’s rationale: “standardized pricing,” more “transparency,” and—my favorite—alignment with the likes of AWS and Google Cloud.
  
  

That’s the setup. Now the reaction.

Why big enterprises will be furious

Large corporates built procurement strategies, budgets, and career plans on the EA discount ladder. Removing tiering does more than hike costs; it breaks the logic of “buy more, pay less.” Expect:

• Budget shocks at renewal: models built on C/D tiers suddenly don’t foot. Finance will search for a culprit; it will find your name and Microsoft’s invoice.
  
  

• Less negotiating leverage: no tiers means fewer knobs to turn. Procurement’s “hero moment” becomes a cost-containment apology tour.
  
  

• “Growth into discounts” disappears: variable headcount orgs lose a natural buffer. Seasonal hiring now just costs… more.
  
  

• Board optics: CEOs don’t love paying list price like a casual tourist. To them, this looks like market power flexing, not transparency.
  
  

Will Microsoft say this is abuse of dominance? Of course not. Will many large enterprises feel like it is? Absolutely. I suspect Microsoft knows many of their clients will pay this, but those same customers will resent this.

With the tiered pricing Microsoft at least pretended that it was a partnership. Now it’s abundantly clear that Microsoft has decided to not bother buying you dinner before robbing you. Perhaps in the grand scheme of things the extra cost can simply be written off as a cost of doing business. But I believe many clients will feel a rubicon has been crossed and that they will need to at least have a plan B, even if they choose not to take it, yet.

Abuse of dominance—or just “transparency”?

I’ve spent the better part of three decades watching markets harden around a single vendor’s gravity well. When a near-ubiquitous provider turns price complexity into price uniformity—and the net effect is that you pay more—that’s not what CFOs mean by “simplification.” It’s what my book Who Put That Idiot in Charge? calls a narrative pivot: rebrand a margin expansion as customer love.

Let’s be fair: AWS and Google Cloud preach list-price clarity too. But Microsoft isn’t just a cloud provider; M365 + Teams sit at the core of daily work. The line between productivity standard and regulatory eyebrow-raiser gets thinner when the “standard” also gets pricier in one stroke.

The opening for Google (and friends)

For the first time in ages, Microsoft just handed competitors a credible wedge. If I’m Google, here’s my three-move combination:

1. Procurement Relief
   Offer EA-style predictability without the “surprise, it’s Level A for everyone.” Price bands tied to commitment, adoption milestones, and measurable outcomes (security posture, automation gains). CFOs want forecastability more than they want another glossy deck.
   
   

2. Switching-Cost Arbitrage
   Subsidize migration, change management, and coexistence. Bake in dual-running periods and interoperability guarantees. Make the first 120 days operationally safe and politically defensible for CIOs.
   
   

3. Outcomes > Features
   Compete on business outcomes—faster onboarding, lower security incidents, reduced SaaS sprawl—not checkbox features. (Chapter 4 of Competitive Intelligence Playbook if you want the playbook; bring coffee.)
   
   

Others can pile on: Zoom (room experiences + telephony), Slack/Salesforce (workflow gravity), Cisco/Webex (regulated industries), even specialist CSPs who can package flexibility and white-glove support that Microsoft’s scale struggles to match.

The 12-Vector opportunity (how to actually win)

Applying Excession Events’ 12-Vector System, here’s where rivals can poke holes today:

• Pricing Architecture: Replace “one list for all” with outcome-based tiers.
  
  

• Procurement Friction: Pre-approved paper, ≤2-week security review, CFO-ready TCO models.
  
  

• Switching Costs: Tooling for mail/cal migration, policy mapping, and identity federation out of the box.
  
  

• Ecosystem: Deep ISV bundles (security, compliance, archive) that neutralize Microsoft’s bundling advantage.
  
  

• Service & Success: Named CSMs with adoption SLAs tied to rebates.
  
  

• Governance/Compliance: Native controls and attestations matching M365 baselines to de-risk audit questions.
  
  

• User Experience: Zero-learning-curve migration aids; “meet users where they are” coexistence.
  
  

• Data & Telemetry: Prove productivity and security outcomes with observable metrics the CFO can trust.
  
  

Do these well and you’re not just cheaper—you’re easier to buy, safer to own, and harder to fire.

What C-suites should do now (defensive and offensive)

• Model the delta: Assume Level A at renewal; quantify 1-, 3-, and 5-year OPEX lifts.
  
  

• Scenario plan: Pilot Google Workspace + Meet or a CSP-optimized M365 package. Use real data.
  
  

• Exploit CSP agility: Monthly billing, flexible seat management, and license hygiene to offset hikes.
  
  

• Negotiate outcomes: Tie any commitment to adoption, security, or automation improvements—not just seats.
  
  

• Communicate up: No CFO likes “surprise spend.” Pre-brief now; control the narrative later.
  
  

Visuals you can steal for the board deck

• Before/After Price Ladder: A→D tiers collapsing to Level A (impact by headcount).
  
  

• Budget Shock Waterfall: Renewal variance with CSP optimization offsets.
  
  

• 12-Vector Heatmap: Where alternatives over-index vs Microsoft.
  
  

• Migration Risk Radar: Governance, identity, data, change-management mitigations.
  
  

Simon Dudley is a technology strategist, bestselling author, and former senior executive at Logitech, Lifesize, and Polycom. He leads Excession Events, helping companies win beyond price and features.

#Microsoft #EnterpriseAgreement #M365 #Teams #SaaSPricing #CSP #GoogleWorkspace #AV #VideoCollaboration #Procurement #SwitchingCosts #CompetitiveIntelligence #Antitrust #CIO #CFO #DigitalTransformation #ExcessionEvents

How big is big in a data breach?

I. Introduction: The Volume Illusion – Is 1TB Really Worse Than 10KB?

Data isn’t like money, losing more isn’t worse. Quality matters far more than quantity.

We've become accustomed to a certain scale of digital drama. Headlines scream about breaches involving millions of records, gigabytes upon gigabytes of pilfered data. We gasp, shake our heads, and perhaps change our passwords… eventually. But what about the smaller leaks, the drips and drabs that barely register on the Richter scale of cybercrime? Do we dismiss them, assuming their impact is negligible? That, my friends, is a dangerous game to play in the age of Artificial Intelligence.

The underlying misconception is simple: bigger equals worse. A terabyte breach must be catastrophic, a mere ten kilobytes, a mosquito bite. But this quantitative view is increasingly obsolete. The truth, unsettling as it may be, is that in the age of AI, it’s not how much data leaks, but what kind of data. A single, strategically chosen drop of the right information can trigger a cascade of consequences, a digital domino effect that can bring individuals and organizations to their knees.

In this exploration, we'll delve into the evolving definition of “sensitive” data, examine how AI amplifies the dangers of even seemingly insignificant leaks, and contemplate the regulatory and technological landscapes that are struggling to keep pace. Prepare to challenge your assumptions about data security, because the future, as always, is already here.

II. Beyond the Numbers: What "Sensitive" Really Means in Data Breaches

Let's cast our minds back – not too far, perhaps a decade or so. The primary concern in data breaches was volume. The more Social Security numbers, birthdates, and addresses a thief could amass, the more identities they could steal, the more fraudulent credit cards they could open. It was a numbers game, a brute-force assault on personal information.

But the landscape has shifted. Today, precision is key. It's no longer about quantity; it's about the specific data points that, when combined, unlock access, manipulate opinions, or trigger automated systems. What constitutes "sensitive" data has expanded far beyond the traditional categories.

Consider this:

• Personal Goldmines: Yes, PII (Personally Identifiable Information) – names, addresses, driver's license numbers, passport details – remains valuable. Financial details like credit card numbers and bank account information are, of course, highly prized. And medical records (Protected Health Information or PHI), with their intricate details of our vulnerabilities, are perpetually at risk.

• Digital Keys: Usernames and passwords, the gatekeepers of our online lives, remain prime targets. But access credentials to internal systems, cloud platforms, and critical infrastructure are even more so. These are the keys to the kingdom.

• Business Secrets: Trade secrets, strategic plans, intellectual property – the lifeblood of any organization – are increasingly vulnerable to exfiltration. The loss of this information can cripple a company's competitive advantage for years to come.

• The Deeply Personal: This is where things get truly nuanced. Biometric data (fingerprints, facial scans), genetic information, and even political or religious beliefs are now considered sensitive. Think about the implications for targeted disinformation campaigns or personalized blackmail. And let's not forget the ever-watchful eye of GDPR, demanding stringent protection for this most personal of data.

And here's the kicker: seemingly "harmless" data points, when linked together, can become explosive. A name, combined with a publicly available address and a stated political affiliation, can be used to target individuals with personalized propaganda. A seemingly innocuous purchase history, when analyzed using AI, can reveal intimate details about a person's health or lifestyle. The sum, as they say, is often far greater than the parts.

III. The Butterfly Effect: When Small Leaks Cause Big Waves

The consequences of even minor data breaches can ripple outwards, creating unforeseen and often devastating effects. Consider the potential fallout:

• For You, The Individual: Identity theft remains a persistent threat, leading to fraudulent accounts, drained savings, and a financial quagmire that can take years to resolve. But beyond the financial impact, there's the emotional toll – the anxiety, the fear, the feeling of vulnerability that lingers long after the immediate crisis has passed. And because smaller breaches often go unnoticed for longer, victims remain exposed, unaware of the danger lurking in the digital shadows.

• For Them, The Organizations: Reputation is everything. Losing customer trust is like losing a limb – incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to fully recover from. Then there are the financial penalties – massive fines, legal fees, compensation to victims. We're talking about sums that can reach into the millions, even for relatively small breaches. And let's not forget the operational chaos, the competitive disadvantage, and the demoralized employees that can result from a security incident.

Let's look at some real-world examples:

• The Disgruntled Insider: A former employee, armed with access credentials, downloads sensitive data before leaving. This could be customer lists, proprietary code, or confidential financial information. Cases like Tesla or the South Georgia Medical Center demonstrate the vulnerability from within.

• The Accidental Oops: A misconfigured cloud storage bucket exposes sensitive data to the public internet. This could be anything from medical records to financial statements. The Pegasus Airlines incident serves as a stark reminder of the potential for catastrophic errors.

• The Small Guys, Big Impact: A leak at a small nonprofit organization serving vulnerable populations can have a disproportionately devastating impact on the individuals it serves. Imagine the consequences of exposing the identities and locations of victims of domestic violence or human trafficking.

IV. Enter AI: The Turbocharger for Cybercrime

Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic fantasy; it's a present-day reality, permeating every aspect of our lives. And while AI offers immense potential for good, it's also a powerful tool in the hands of malicious actors.

AI isn't just for chatbots anymore. It's being used to enhance and automate cyberattacks in ways we could only have imagined a few years ago.

Consider these examples:

• Phishing on Steroids: AI-powered phishing attacks are hyper-personalized, ultra-convincing, and increasingly difficult to detect. Deepfakes, realistic video and audio forgeries, are used to impersonate trusted individuals, making it easier to trick victims into divulging sensitive information.

• Malware That Learns: Adaptive, evasive malware uses AI to constantly change its code, making it harder to detect and neutralize. These viruses can learn from their environment, adapting to bypass security defenses in real time.

• Automated Vulnerability Hunting: AI is being used to scan networks for vulnerabilities at speeds far exceeding human capabilities. Attackers can identify and exploit weaknesses in systems and applications before defenders even know they exist.

• The "Shadow AI" Problem: The proliferation of unsanctioned AI tools, particularly free tiers of services like ChatGPT, poses a significant risk. Employees, often without realizing the implications, are using these tools to process sensitive company data, creating a potential data leakage nightmare.

• The Black Box Mystery: AI models are often incredibly complex, making it difficult to understand why they make the decisions they do. This lack of transparency makes it hard to determine whether an AI system is leaking data or being used for malicious purposes.

V. The Great Debate: Volume vs. Sensitivity – Why Sensitivity Wins (Hands Down)

For years, the standard metric for measuring the severity of a data breach was simple: the number of records exposed. It was easy to quantify, easy to understand, and easy to report. But this approach is increasingly inadequate in the age of AI.

Experts across the cybersecurity field are converging on a single conclusion: sensitivity is the true measure of pain. A few hundred credit card numbers are far more damaging than millions of non-sensitive marketing emails. A single compromised password can grant access to an entire corporate network.

But here's the challenge: sensitivity is contextual, subjective, and constantly evolving. What constitutes sensitive data in one industry may not be the same in another. And regulatory landscapes vary wildly from country to country, creating a complex web of compliance requirements.

VI. Playing Catch-Up: Regulations and the Future of Data Protection

Regulators around the world are struggling to keep pace with the rapidly evolving threat landscape. We're seeing a patchwork quilt of laws and regulations, from GDPR in Europe to state-specific laws in the US (California, Oklahoma, New York, Pennsylvania), each attempting to address the challenges of data security and privacy.

The EU AI Act is a pioneering step, categorizing AI systems by risk level and imposing strict regulations on "high-risk" systems, such as those used in medical devices or critical infrastructure. This is a landmark attempt to rein in the potential harms of AI.

A key focus is on AI governance. Companies desperately need clear policies and robust access controls for AI tools. The cost of failing to implement these safeguards is staggering, both in terms of financial penalties and reputational damage.

Regulators are increasingly demanding greater transparency, accountability, and the ability to explain how AI systems make decisions. This is a critical step towards ensuring that AI is used responsibly and ethically.

VII. The AI Cyber Arms Race: What's Next?

The future of cybersecurity will be defined by an ongoing arms race between attackers and defenders, each leveraging the power of AI to gain an advantage.

We can expect to see the emergence of more sophisticated adversarial attacks on AI models, including data poisoning attacks that corrupt training data and lead to biased or unpredictable behavior. The weaponization of AI for social manipulation will also become an increasing concern.

But there's good news too. AI can also be used for defense, enabling real-time threat detection, automated incident response, and enhanced security. AI-powered systems can analyze vast amounts of data to identify and respond to threats far faster than any human analyst.

Ultimately, the key to winning the AI cyber arms race will be responsible AI development, ethical oversight, international collaboration, and holding AI developers accountable for the potential harms of their creations.

VIII. What Can You Do About It? (For Individuals & Businesses)

The fight for data security is a shared responsibility. Here's what individuals and businesses can do to protect themselves:

• Individuals: Be vigilant about the information you share online. Use unique and strong passwords for every account. Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) whenever possible. Stay informed about the latest threats and scams.

• Businesses:Know Your Data: Classify your data by sensitivity. Understand what information is most valuable and most vulnerable.Secure Your Data: Implement strong access controls, encryption, and regular security audits.Train Your People: Human error remains a leading cause of data breaches. Educate employees about AI risks and data hygiene best practices.Embrace AI Responsibly: Invest in AI for defense, but implement strict governance for AI tool usage.Plan for the Worst: Have a comprehensive incident response plan in place, ready to be activated in the event of a breach.

IX. Conclusion: The New Era of Data Security

We've reached a turning point in the history of data security. It's no longer about the megabytes or gigabytes, but the intimate, personal nature of the data we entrust to the digital world.

AI has irrevocably changed the game, making even small, seemingly insignificant leaks disproportionately dangerous. A single drop of the right information can trigger a cascade of consequences that can devastate individuals and organizations alike.

Vigilance, smart data management, robust security, and proactive regulatory compliance are no longer optional; they're essential for survival in our AI-driven world.

Protect your data as if your life depends on it... because in the age of AI, it just might.

About the Author

Simon Dudley is a chump. A man who believes in paying taxes, waiting his turn, the rule of law, being a decent human being. He writes a lot about strategy, technology, society, education, business, Excession Events and science.

#AI #AIsecurity #ExcessionEvents #Pexip #VQ #VideoConferencing #AVusergroup #Webex #Teams #Zoom #Cisco

Survivorship Bias in Win-Loss Analysis: Why You’re Probably Learning the Wrong Lessons

One of the great rituals of business is the win-loss analysis. Executives love it. We gather the sales team, dissect the quarter, and attempt to reverse-engineer some grand unified theory of victory.

But here’s the problem: most win-loss reviews are little more than self-congratulatory fiction. They’re not telling you why you win or lose. They’re telling you what you’d like to believe.

The culprit? Survivorship bias.

What Survivorship Bias Really Is

The classic example comes from World War II. Engineers studied returning bombers riddled with bullet holes and decided to reinforce the areas most often hit. Sensible, right? Except statistician Abraham Wald pointed out that these planes had survived those hits. The ones that didn’t come home—the real data—were silent.

In sales, we make the same mistake. We obsess over the “planes that came home”: the deals we won. We polish them into case studies, tell ourselves it was our genius strategy or our dazzling product. But the truth lies in the planes that didn’t come back—the prospects who quietly walked away, chose a competitor, or decided to do nothing at all.

How Survivorship Bias Warps Win-Loss

Most win-loss conversations sound like this:

• “We won because they loved our features.”

• “We won because of our relationship.”

• “We won because we discounted just right.”

Lovely stories. But they only explain why a tiny subset of customers said “yes.” They say absolutely nothing about the much larger group who said “no.”

A few examples:

• Your buyers say, “The demo was great.” So you assume demos are working. But those who ghosted after the demo? They found it confusing, too technical, or irrelevant.

• You think, “Price isn’t an issue.” Because the ones who bought didn’t object. Meanwhile, a dozen others quietly left because the price was the issue.

• You conclude, “Our sales process is frictionless.” Sure—for people who made it through. For the ones who bailed in procurement purgatory, your process was a nightmare.

This is the danger: you start optimizing your strategy around the people who already liked you. That creates a vicious cycle:

• You get better at closing the same type of customer.

• You ignore entire market segments who could have bought from you—if only you’d bothered to ask why they didn’t.

It’s a little like deciding your car is reliable because it made it back from one road trip. Meanwhile, the one broken down on the highway isn’t there to give you feedback.

How to Avoid It

Escaping survivorship bias isn’t complicated—but it does require discipline (and a little humility):

• Interview the losses. Not just the big competitive ones, but the deals that never returned your calls. Silence is also data.

• Segment your “no’s.” A loss to a competitor means one thing; a loss to “do nothing” means something else entirely. Both matter.

• Treat salespeople’s explanations with suspicion. They’ll tell you losses were about “price” and wins were about “our brilliance.” Neither is the whole story.

• Look for the missing planes. Where in your funnel do opportunities die? Which accounts never even considered you? That absence is a flashing neon sign you’re ignoring.

The Payoff

When you finally look at both sides—wins and losses—you get the real story:

• The hidden objections that kill deals before they start.

• The segments you’re unintentionally excluding.

• The gap between what customers say and what they actually buy.

And perhaps most importantly: you stop mistaking survivorship bias for strategy.

Final Thought

In The Competitive Intelligence Playbook, I argue that most corporate “intelligence” is little more than cheerleading on your own scoreboard. Survivorship bias is exactly that. Studying only the wins isn’t analysis—it’s therapy.

So yes, when your team closes a big deal, raise a glass. Celebrate the win. But when it comes time to learn, spend at least as much energy on the ones that got away.

Because the real strategy—the kind that wins markets, not just deals—lives with the planes that never came home.

Simon Dudley is a technology strategist, bestselling author (The Competitive Intelligence Playbook, The End of Certainty, Who Put That Idiot in Charge), and former senior executive at Logitech, Lifesize, and Polycom. He is the Founder & CEO of Excession Events, a consultancy that helps companies compete more effectively in a world where products look increasingly similar.

Suggested Visuals/Slides

• WWII bomber graphic with “bullet holes = customer feedback” and “missing planes = lost deals.”

• Slide: Win-Loss Through the Lens of Survivorship Bias (Wins = noisy survivors, Losses = silent truth).

• A pipeline diagram showing where “ghost deals” fall out unnoticed.

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Mike Tyson v Simon Dudley. Who wins?

For a while now I’ve been thinking of how to give a real world illustration of the work we do at Excession Events. So I've decided to fight Mike Tyson.

Here’s an example. Me v Mike Tyson.

As you can see from the stats above, I have him on height and weight, and I have absolutely zero sports  injuries, from a long career of sitting quietly (well not actually quietly, but you get the idea).

Now who wins?

Before you get all, oh don’t be stupid, he’d punch you to death in 5 seconds flat, I need to revel one other rather pertinent fact.

I get to choose the rules, because I’ve spent my time defining what success looks like to the market. After all I'm a good salesperson, and I know that helping the client understand the problem and helping them understand what success looks like is far far more important than knowing a bunch of specs that you need a degree in the topic to understand.

As a result we’re not going to be boxing (see above for why). We’re going to be playing chess.

Mike Tyson is actually better than it would first seem likely, having taken up the game while in prison (gulp). But I think I can take him, and certainly my chances are rather higher than if we got in the ring.

So the moral of the story? Fight on ground you can win on. Don’t play the other guy's game. Because you can never win any game where someone else is setting the rules.

Here’s a couple of examples in the real world:

• You’re the big company having a small competitor running rings around you in execution?

Flip the script. Help clients understand that both solutions are more than good enough, but that you have the financial resources and history to ensure the purchasing department doesn’t have a conniption.

• You’re a small player, competing against the big guy?

Talk about personal service, how the client is more than just another customer. After all you don’t have customers, you have partners.

• Product getting a little long in the tooth?

Emphasis, stability, longevity, safety. Sure you don't have all the latest features, but do users even want those things? A product, that just works day in day out is the right answer.

Know thyself

Now to be clear NONE of this works if you don’t have a clear eyed understanding of your competitor and your own business.

At Excession Events we help companies understand their competitors, themselves, and then help them create the narrative that can set the rules of success.

Because there are plenty of things I can beat Iron Mike at, it's just not boxing.

About the Author

Simon Dudley is a chump. A man who believes in paying taxes, waiting his turn, the rule of law, being a decent human being. He writes a lot about strategy, technology, society, education, business, Excession Events and science.

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