[Source: Jake Flomenberg, Accel] There’s a big shift happening in how enterprises buy and deploy software. In the last few years, open technology — software that is open to change and free to adopt — has gone from the exception to the rule for most enterprises. We’ve seen the IT stack redrawn atop powerful open source projects, with developers opting for an “open-first” approach to building solutions.

More than 78% of enterprises run on open source and fewer than 3% indicate that they don’t rely on open software in any way according to a recent market survey by Black Duck Software. This is a new wave in software — one that’s not only displacing incumbent markets, but creating entirely new ones. We call these Open Adoption Software (OAS) companies, and we believe they’re primed to build meaningful businesses — and drive large economic outcomes.

[Source: TechCrunch] Uber isn’t just Uber. It’s Google Maps, Checkr background checks, Braintree payments, and Twilio texts. The best way to do business isn’t to build it all in-house. Top companies are increasingly piecing together a composite of APIs from specialized startups. That lets them concentrate on their unique value-add rather than reinventing the wheel.

Now those building blocks are turning into big businesses of their own with unique challenges. How do they get traction for their APIs? What does it take to support a developer ecosystem? How much should they charge?

Accel thinks it can help. It’s learned from investments in Braintree, Segment, Slack, and Checkr.

[Source: Wired] It’s hard to think of a single technology that will shape our world more in the next 50 years than artificial intelligence. As machine learning enables our computers to teach themselves, a wealth of breakthroughs emerge, ranging from medical diagnostics to cars that drive themselves.

A whole lot of worry emerges as well. Who controls this technology? Will it take over our jobs? Is it dangerous? Wired talked to President Obama and MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito to sort through the hope, the hype, and the fear around AI. That and maybe just one quick question about Star Trek.

The 2017 Report Card measures attitudes and perception of 700 enterprise IT security practitioners across the globe. The report quantifies how security professionals rate their enterprise’s ability to both assess cybersecurity risks and mitigate threats. These scores were combined to produce a report card score on global cybersecurity status – whether or not the world’s cyber defenses are meeting expectations.

[Source: Accel & Qualtrics] Qualtrics and Accel have come together to survey over 8,000 millennials, Gen Xers and boomers worldwide to deepen our understanding on generational views across a wide range of topics.

It’s well documented that millennials overtook baby boomers as the largest living generation in the United States this year. It’s also “probably one of the most studied generations to date” — so much so that there’s a constant stream of findings about millennials and the upcoming presidential election. And plenty of data about what millennials think about careers and jobs, or even the best places for millennials to work.

All this data is useful, but it’s also inconclusive. For example, when Brian O’Malley — a partner at Accel — spent some time looking at some data, he found that the data didn’t really conform to popular perceptions about millennials. The best way to sort through the discrepancies in third-party data? To conduct some primary research.

So as two organizations that believe in the power of primary research to gain insights into topics and trends, Qualtrics and Accel have come together to survey over 8,000 millennials, Gen Xers and boomers worldwide to deepen our understanding on generational views across a wide range of topics.

We’re releasing a series of 13 eBooks and infographics over the coming weeks on our findings because we think it might be broadly useful. It’s worth noting that we don’t want to represent these findings as authoritative. It’s really meant to complement existing third-party research. As such, we encourage all organizations to conduct primary research to deepen their own understanding of the topics that matter most to them.