Microsoft has unveiled Scout, an experimental always-on AI “autopilot” agent for Microsoft 365 that can operate across Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, SharePoint, calendars, contacts, browsers, and external apps via MCP. “Autopilots stay active in the background, understand how work gets done across your apps and systems, and take action without needing to be prompted each time,” said Omar Shahine, a Microsoft veteran who recently announced he is leading a new team to bring OpenClaw-based personal assistants to Microsoft 365 apps. Computerworld reports: Shahine said Scout can reduce mundane tasks that office workers face, such as coordinating and scheduling meeting times with colleagues, or blocking times in a user’s calendar based on upcoming work commitments. “It can also spot risks, like stalled decisions, so you can address them before they become blockers,” he said. It’s available as an “experimental release” to customers of the company’s Frontier program, Microsoft said, and will require Intune policy configuration and “opt-in attestation.” […] It’s not clear whether Scout will be included in Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions or charged separately. Microsoft did not immediately provide additional details about pricing.
A suspense visual novel replete with life-or-death situations, puzzles and six different endings. Make your own decisions, solve riddles and reach the truth about the disappearance of the world’s leading geneticist – and your best friend.
CONTENT WARNING This game contains scenes with flashing lights, profanity, blood, violence and self-harm. Player discretion is advised. ABOUT World-famous geneticist Dr. Lucien Janus has gone missing inside his own lab. It is up to Brendan Alaster, retired detective and old friend to Janus, to carry out a clandestine investigation and find out the truth in just one night. Inside, Brendan will find two other people who have also heard about the Doctor’s disappearance and are interested in finding him – but can they be trusted? Investigate, solve mind-boggling puzzles and, most importantly, make wise decisions – the lives of all these people are in your hands. Virtual Driving School
This Sunday, June 7, our yearly double feature returns, offering you a look at what’s next from XBOX and our incredible partners across the world. The XBOX Games Showcase 2026 kicks off at 10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK, immediately followed by Gears of War: E-Day Direct – presented by The Coalition, creators of the next mainline entry in one of XBOX’s most iconic franchises.
This year marks 25 years of XBOX, and this Showcase is poised to be a true celebration, offering world premieres, new gameplay, fresh updates and more for a swathe of projects we cannot wait to share. We invite you to watch live: here are all the details you need to know ahead of Sunday:
What time does XBOX Games Showcase begin? The Showcase will take place on Sunday, June 7, beginning at:
PDT: June 7, 10am
EDT: June 7, 1pm
BST: June 7, 6pm
CEST: June 7, 7pm
JST: June 8, 2am
AEST: June 8, 3am
What time does Gears of War: E-Day Direct begin? Immediately following the XBOX Games Showcase.
How do I watch the XBOX Games Showcase and Gears of War: E-Day Direct? The XBOX Games Showcase and Gears of War: E-Day Direct will be streamed live on official channels, including the below:
The show will also be streamed simultaneously on regional XBOX and Bethesda channels around the globe, as well as on Steam. It will also air on China’s Bilibili platform.
Is the event available in languages other than English? The XBOX Games Showcase and Gears of War: E-Day Direct will be streamed live on YouTube.com/xbox with English captions, and our other live languages will be available via regional XBOX channels.
The languages we will support live on our XBOX channels are: English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Castilian Spanish, Mexican Spanish and Turkish. Following the broadcast, we will add additional languages including Afrikaans, Arabic, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Canadian French, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Malay, Norwegian, Persian (Farsi), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. The easiest way to find your preferred language is to go to your region’s XBOX page, or by viewing on the official XBOX YouTube channel at YouTube.com/xbox and clicking the gear icon in the lower right corner.
Is XBOX Games Showcase and Gears of War: E-Day Direct going to be Accessible to those with low/no hearing or low/no vision? There will be a version of the show with Audio Descriptions (AD) in English on the XBOX YouTube channel, American Sign Language (ASL) on XBOX’s YouTube channel and the /XBOXASL Twitch channel, and British Sign Language (BSL) on XBOX On’s YouTube channel at YouTube.com/XBOXOn.
I’m not going to be able to watch, where can I find out what was announced? As the broadcast runs, we’ll be publishing detailed blog posts for key announcements right here on XBOX Wire (with localized versions in Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, LATAM Spanish, and Japanese to follow).
A full show recap will be published here on XBOX Wire immediately following the end of XBOX Games Showcase, and a separate article for Gears of War: E-Day Direct will go live after the double feature ends. Plus, stay tuned to XBOX Wire in the days following the broadcast for more deep-dives into games from the show.
Will XBOX be releasing post-show content? During the week of June 9, the Official XBOX Podcast will be airing special episodes offering deeper dives into announcements featured during XBOX Games Showcase. These shows will be published on XBOX’s YouTube channel and podcast services.
Notes for co-streamers and creators: We at XBOX greatly appreciate any co-stream efforts and aim to ensure you have a smooth experience if you choose to do so. However, due to forces beyond our control, we cannot guarantee that glitches or disruptions by bots and other automated software won’t interfere with your co-stream. For those planning to create full post-show breakdowns of the XBOX Games Showcase and/or Gears of War: E-Day Direct in the form of video-on-demand coverage, we recommend you do not use any audio containing copyrighted music to avoid any action by automated bots, and to also consult the terms of service for your service provider.
We can’t wait for you to join us for the XBOX Games Showcase, followed by Gears of War: E-Day Direct on Sunday, June 7 – whether that’s online, or in-person as part of our returning FanFest event in Los Angeles!
You can’t seem to make friends because no one has the time for you. You feel like no one cares about your feelings or your thoughts and opinions. No one’s sincerely listening.
Not your family, not your children, there’s no one there to hear your pain.
You feel alone.
Do you long for deeply connected relationships where you can freely talk about matters and get valuable Christian feedback and insight (without judgment or false teaching types of input or advice)?
Feeling the weight of loneliness can be overwhelming, but these 30 Bible verses about loneliness can offer hope and encouragement.
If you’re going through a lonely season right now and are saying to yourself, “I feel like I’m a lone ranger in my walk with Christ“, that’s exactly what we’re going to discuss today! You are in the right place.
I Feel Like I’m a Lone Ranger in My Walk with Christ
When the day arrives, when we’re finally frustrated enough by the lack of quality, fulfilling friendships we have with other Christian women (ones that believe similarly to our own set of beliefs), it’s cause for celebration.
Even though at that moment, we may feel like lone rangers in our walk with Christ, it demonstrates that we’ve become discerning enough to recognize this is a missing piece (and we actually do need to more Christian women in our lives). By adding friends to our lives and widening our circle of influence, not only will we be impacted for the better, but we also will have the opportunity to help and support others.
So, where do we begin? The first step we want to take is to develop into the Christian women we wish we had as friends.
We want to add value to the world. We want to be the kind of friend others can glean from. It’s in that relationship of growing and learning (BOTH give and take) that genuine friendships are cultivated.
Can you point to at least one person in your life (who is a Christian) that you love being around? That when you’re with them, you feel excited about life and motivated to get out there and serve or help others?
If so, jot down the characteristics they possess that make you feel this way when you’re with them. If you don’t have this specific type of individual in your life, think back to past mentors or influential teachers who have inspired you or encouraged you to take action. Once you’ve realized a role model, jot down the traits you admire in them.
To widen your circle even more, think about the Proverbs 31 woman. Think about Jesus. How would those people treat you? What characteristics would they have that you’d like to possess?
Once you have a list together, now it’s time to review it, so that you can begin to apply them to your own life.
Or, if they always sent you an encouraging text to you at seemingly the perfect time, make a note of it. There isn’t anything too small to write down (every little thing can count regarding how it’s made a difference in your life). This list is only for your eyes, so, however you want to describe all of it, go for it. We want to make sure this is understandable because we’ll reference it throughout the remainder of this post. And because all of this will lead us to achieve the end goal. To become the type of Christian woman you wish you had more of as friends, so you can ultimately have more friends and cultivate relationships with more Christian women like this.
Another reason you want to take a serious approach when creating this list is that you will gain valuable insight along the way (insight into learning precisely how to become this type of person). As you identify each item, by default, you are becoming clear on which concrete action steps will be best for YOU to take.
And the real (mountain-moving) growth and development will only occur when you take action. And many people don’t take action because they don’t know what to do – or they have resistance to something. It’s an endless cycle. Just thinking through the things, personality traits, characteristics, etc., won’t move the needle. Nothing will significantly change until you begin taking action. So action is vital to expanding our circle.
Some women have told me that goals scare them and actually prevent them from taking action because they think they have to know everything to make sure they’ll do it perfectly first. Okay, no worries. I can see that setting a goal may not work for every single person out there. So if you don’t want to start by setting a goal, then give yourself permission and allow yourself to take imperfect action at the very moment when you become inspired or motivated (use those good feelings as a springboard to take action).
Like for example, say someone you sincerely appreciate sends you a text; why not send that same type of message/email/text (or handwritten note) to someone else who you could encourage and impact for the better? Just doing it at the moment when the inspiration strikes will help you gain more confidence – action seems to always breed confidence, whereas inaction breeds the opposite – it opens the door for paralysis and fear.
The key is always to keep your end goals in mind, which is to cultivate the kinds of things you love about other people in your own life so you can begin connecting with other godly women who love being around you. This will help you connect to others, create meaningful relationships, help you not feel so alone, AND serve other people and grow in your own spiritual walk…all at the same time!!!
Here’s a practical example of something you can start with right away. Ask someone you admire if she’d like to meet for twenty or thirty minutes to get better acquainted and have a “virtual cup of coffee” with you. If you do this with just two people, that scenario right there gives you two times to connect with others in a relatively short period of time. And once you get the ball rolling and start getting to know more people, you’re essentially networking (and creating momentum).
And hey – so what if you begin getting to know someone and find out that person isn’t the type of friend you were hoping to meet. Or what if they don’t have time or appear interested? No problem…move on and ask someone else! Ask God to open the doors as you do this and see where it takes you!
Let’s try another example because maybe the thought of meeting someone you only know online face to face scares you a little. What are some other ways you’ve felt really special because someone took a minute to acknowledge you or let you know they were thinking about you? Did someone mention or tag you in a comment because they used your advice to help someone else? And if so, then make a note of it and do that for someone else down the line. Even though you may not realize it, people read through comments. And many times, they’ll click on your profile to see who you are and perhaps what you have in common. This in and of itself could be a way to make Christian friends and widening your circle.
What about Christian groups you’re in – are there women there who always contribute really thought-provoking insights? If you’d like to further connect with this person, you could start by liking their comment and replying with your own comment as to how it helped you. And then there’s the option of adding them as a friend (or following them) if that’s something you’d like to do. Suppose that maybe it’s not so much as becoming directly connected to them but more so about imitating what you love most about their style and input. You can consider these women as mentors from afar because you’re seeing how they do the thing that stops and pinpointing what makes you want to be more like them in your own life so that you can model that and apply it to your situation.
Can you see how it won’t take too long before you start to interact, in loving ways, with those around you with whom you have more things in common? I understand that some of this can freak people out because maybe you are more introverted. That’s why I don’t want anyone to misunderstand what I’m trying to communicate. None of this is about using these examples as prescribed tactics or strategies. It’s about understanding how you love being treated and using that as wisdom to help you step outside your comfort zone in a baby-step fashion and to take action (and hold yourself accountable if you want).
And as a result of really honing in on the type of Christian women you value in your life, I dare to say you will be able to spot them more readily, reach out to them more quickly, and start developing friendships. Initiating new friendships as adults isn’t as easy as when we were kids; I totally understand that. And yet we cannot allow this to stop us because that’s precisely the thing that Satan can use to keep us isolated.
Somehow as adults, we have all these preconceived notions about people (like they won’t like us once they get to know us), but honestly, so much of that is in our heads. Focus rather on taking imperfect action and letting God control the outcome.
If you’re more of an outgoing person, someone taught me something YEARS ago. I came to him with this problem of my being so SHY at church. I’m a total introvert, just so ya know! I find it scary, heart-poundingly HARD to talk to people in person (unless I know them well). So he told me to just take it slow.
Every week, go up to ONE new person and set aside 15 minutes to talk to them. This isn’t a prescribed set number of minutes, but more that you are committed to actually listening. Actually building friendships. Actually meeting people and talking with people.
This can greatly help in meeting new friends and blossoming friendships! Because then the next week, you can go up to them again and say hi and chat for another few minutes, constantly building that friendship up!
What a brilliant idea, right!
We need to be encouraged that God knows the desires of our hearts, and He already knows that we want to have more godly friendships and not feel so alone all the time. So it’s up to us to put in the work and take steps to lead us there. To, in a sense, put us in a position where we are comfortable networking and connecting with the right type of person. And if this seems impossible to you, relax – you’re not going to be relatable to every other Christian woman out there. However, the good news is that it’s not impossible when your expectations are correct, and you rely on God to work out the outcome.
The beautiful thing about being sisters in the body of Christ is that no matter our background or upbringing, we all serve Christ as our life mission. And just as we all have different gifts and talents, we all have other personality traits and unique characteristics that will meld better with certain people over others. And people change too, over time. Maybe someone you don’t connect with now, you can still connect with later.
So while it’s good to know a lot of Christian women and establish meaningful relationships, it’s even better to narrow that group down to the kind of ladies you most enjoy having as close friends and confidants. The friendships with those women will, in all probability, provide tons of mutual joy and fulfillment (which is the secret to beautiful, long-lasting relationships).
Google is finally making password manager switching easier by letting users securely import and export passwords and passkeys between Google Password Manager and third-party apps.
The new Credential Exchange standard eliminates reliance on insecure CSV exports, creating a safer way to move sensitive login data across platforms.
Don’t want to miss the best from Android Authority?
This may seem like a very niche update at first glance. In fact, it solves an age-old problem that has kept many users locked into a particular password manager.
With passkeys becoming more common on Android, iOS, and the web, password managers are becoming more important. Passkeys are more secure and resistant to phishing attacks than traditional passwords.
The downside is that it hasn’t always been easy to port your credentials from one service to another. In many cases, users were forced to use proprietary export formats, manual transfers, or incomplete migration tools.
Google’s latest move is intended to make that process a lot easier. By adopting the Credential Exchange standard, users can transfer both passwords and passkeys between Google Password Manager and supported third-party alternatives without being tied to a single ecosystem.
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We haven’t heard much about Riot’s League of Legends MMO—basically nothing, if you get down to it—but it’s still alive and kicking, and today it kicked again: Brian Holinka, who spent more than a decade at Blizzard, including nearly five years as the lead combat designer on World of Warcraft, has joined the dev team.
“Today is my first official day at Riot on the League of Legends MMO!” Holinka wrote on LinkedIn (via PCGamesN). And, well, that’s the extent of it, except that the page indicates Holinka is now employed as principal game designer on the League of Legends MMO.
Holinka actually left Blizzard in 2023 and joined Fantastic Pixel Castle, the studio founded that same year by former Riot Games vice president Greg Street. Prior to his departure from Riot, Street had been heading up development of the League of Legends MMO, and Fantastic Pixel Castle’s debut project was also meant to be an MMO—but that fell apart when NetEase ended funding in 2025.
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The hiring of Holinka comes less than five months after Riot added former World of Warcraft lead producer Raymond Bartos to its MMO development team, and confirms continued turning-of-the-wheels on the game. Riot has never formally suggested those wheels weren’t turning, to be clear, but the League MMO was revealed in December 2020 and it’s been pretty much dead silence ever since, except that Street—the guy who announced the game in the first place—was leaving. Riot previously added former WoW lead software engineer Orlando Salvatore to its roster in October 2024.
Street, for the record, also apparently has a new gig in the games industry, although he hasn’t yet revealed what it is. He did say on his own LinkedIn page that “it’s not an MMO, at least not yet.”
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
The original promise of cloud infrastructure was simple: replace fixed capital expenditure (CapEx) with a variable cost model that scales precisely with what the business needs. Pay for what you use. Stop paying when you stop using it.
That logic worked well enough when workloads were predictable. It gets structurally harder to execute when you layer in Generative AI training, high-volume data pipelines, and machine learning inference. These workloads are computationally heavy, highly variable, and increasingly central to product strategy. The infrastructure supporting them shifts constantly. Costs don’t follow a pattern that forecasting tools were built to handle. And unlike a slow-moving spike in database storage, a single AI model training run can move the monthly bill by tens of thousands of dollars in a matter of days.
This is not a hypothetical risk. TheFlexera 2026 State of the Cloud Report estimates that 29% of all public cloud spend is wasted. Not invested in infrastructure that supports product development or model training, but structural leakage with no corresponding business output. Furthermore,Deloitte Insights data adds another layer: 50% of organizations routinely exceed their cloud budgets, with an average overrun of 15%.
That’s not a billing anomaly. When half of all enterprise cloud users cannot hold their infrastructure budgets despite having dedicated cost management tools, something more fundamental is broken.
The Tools Are Working. The Structure Around Them Isn’t.
AWS Cost Explorer, Trusted Advisor, AWS Budgets, and Anomaly Detection are genuinely capable platforms. They surface real utilization data, flag idle resources, and alert on spending anomalies. The signals they generate are accurate. Most of them go unacted on, and the reason isn’t technical.
Engineering and DevOps teams are already carrying a full mandate. Keeping systems fast, reliable, and available is demanding enough on its own. When cloud cost optimization gets added to the same team without dedicated support or analytical infrastructure, it almost always gets deprioritized. Not because anyone is being careless. Because keeping the platform running is the more urgent obligation, and that priority is entirely rational.
The second layer is a data interpretation problem. A dashboard can show that data transfer costs spiked 40% last month. It cannot explain whether that spike was tied to a successful product launch, an inefficient pipeline, or a migration job that was never properly closed out. Connecting raw infrastructure data to business context requires an analytical layer that most engineering teams were never set up to provide, and that most finance teams can’t access directly.
This isn’t a paradox. It’s a predictable outcome of an incentive structure that assigns cost accountability to a team whose primary metric has nothing to do with cost efficiency.
Where the AWS Spend Actually Leaks
The overspend rarely sits in one obvious line item. It distributes across categories that are each individually defensible and collectively expensive.
1. AWS Commitment Mispricing
AWS offers meaningful discounts through Savings Plans and Reserved Instances (RIs) for organizations that commit to a specific usage level over one to three years. Getting the commitment level right is genuinely difficult, particularly for organizations whose AI and ML workloads are growing unpredictably.
A specialized cloud operations study byHarness found that 55% of engineering leaders describe their cloud purchasing commitments as essentially guesswork. Overcommit and you pay for capacity no one uses. Undercommit and you pay premium on-demand rates for workloads that could have been discounted. Both outcomes are common, and organizations running large model training cycles are disproportionately exposed because the compute requirements for those workloads can change significantly between commitment periods.
2. Idle Resource Accumulation
In environments that are actively building and testing AI models, infrastructure gets spun up for training runs, model verification, or short-term data migrations and stays running after the project ends. The individual cost of any single idle resource is small enough to escape notice in a large bill. Across dozens of teams and months of accumulation, the aggregate is not. This category of waste is hard to catch because the cost doesn’t spike. It erodes margins slowly.
3. No Line of Sight Into Unit Economics
This is the structural problem that makes the other two worse.Gartner Enterprise Research indicates that only 43% of organizations track cloud costs at the business unit level. The remaining 57% see their AWS bill as a single aggregate number.
Without the ability to break spend down by product line, team, customer segment, or AI initiative, leadership cannot determine which parts of the business are driving infrastructure costs or identify where spending has drifted out of proportion to the value it generates. When a generative AI project runs three times over its compute budget, a consolidated bill won’t tell you that until the quarterly review.
Bridging the Gap
Your developers do not need to work harder. The optimization tools you already have are not the problem. What’s missing is the layer between raw billing data and business decision-making.
An AWS bill is, at its core, a very large dataset. The organizations that reduce waste meaningfully treat it as one, matching what they spend to the specific business activity that drove it, identifying which workloads justify their cost and which don’t, and building commitment strategies around actual usage patterns rather than estimates.
That work requires data skills, not engineering skills. It also requires someone whose mandate is cost efficiency rather than uptime, and that separation of accountability is where most organizations are still underinvested.
Building that analytical layer internally takes time most teams don’t have. A cloud cost audit gets you there faster, surfacing exactly where your bill is leaking and what it would take to stop it, without waiting for a new hire or a reorganization to fix a problem that’s billing you every day.BizAcuity is an AWS Partner. To help organizations find hidden efficiencies with zero downside, we provide an independent, data-verified AWS cloud audit.
E-commerce businesses can grow fast, but spending can grow even faster. Current retail data, business finance practices, and e-commerce operating trends were reviewed to identify practical ways for online sellers to control costs without slowing growth.
For many e-commerce companies, expenses are spread across ads, inventory, shipping, software, freelancers, agencies, packaging, and marketplace fees. Each cost may be useful, but problems start when leaders cannot clearly see who spent what, why it was approved, and whether it helped the business grow.
Smarter corporate spending strategies for E-commerce businesses is not about cutting every cost. It is about giving teams better rules, tools, and visibility so money supports the right goals.
Set Spending Controls Before Costs Spread
Many e-commerce businesses start with informal spending habits. A founder pays for ads. A marketing lead buys software. An operations manager orders packaging. A team member hires a contractor. At first, this feels simple.
As the business grows, that setup can become hard to manage. Receipts get missed. Subscriptions renew without review. Ad budgets increase across several platforms. Vendor charges appear under different team members. Finance leaders may not see the full picture until the month is closed.
Clear spending controls help prevent that. E-commerce businesses need rules for who can spend, how much they can spend, and when approval is required. They also need a simple way to track purchases by category, team, channel, or vendor.
A dedicated ecommerce credit card can help online retailers separate ecommerce expenses from general company costs, especially when used with limits, approval workflows and reporting tools. This makes it easier to understand how money moves through the business.
Start by grouping the biggest spending areas, such as ads, inventory, fulfillment, software, contractors, and customer service tools. Then assign an owner to each category. That person should know the budget, the goal, and how often spending will be reviewed.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported that e-commerce made up 16.9 percent of total U.S. retail sales in the first quarter of 2026. E-commerce sales also rose 9.8 percent from the same quarter one year earlier. As digital sales grow, companies need tighter control over the costs tied to serving those customers.
Connect Spending to Business Goals
Every major expense should answer one question: What should this money help the business achieve?
For e-commerce businesses, common goals include higher profitability, better margins, faster shipping, stronger retention, and healthier cash flow. Effective corporate spending strategies should connect spending to those outcomes.
Ad spend is a common example. A campaign can bring in revenue while still losing money after accounting for product costs, shipping, discounts, returns, and platform fees. Teams should measure ad performance by profit, not just sales.
Inventory also needs close attention. Buying too much can trap cash in slow-moving products. Buying too little can lead to stockouts and missed orders. Smarter purchasing uses sales trends, seasonality, and supplier timelines to guide decisions.
Software costs should also be reviewed often. E-commerce teams may use tools for email, SMS, reviews, analytics, customer service, loyalty, subscriptions, and fulfillment. Some tools create value. Others overlap or go unused. A quarterly review can help teams decide what to keep, pause, or replace.
Monthly spending reviews do not need to be complex. Leaders can focus on three questions: Did spending stay within budget? Which costs supported revenue, margin, or customer experience? Which expenses should be reduced or tested again?
This rhythm creates accountability without slowing the business down.
Use Automation to Reduce Waste
Manual spend tracking takes time and creates errors. If finance teams rely on spreadsheets, inbox searches, and delayed reports, they may spot problems too late.
Automation gives e-commerce businesses faster visibility. Alerts can flag when ad spend rises too quickly, when a vendor charge looks unusual, or when a purchase falls outside policy. Reporting can also link expenses to campaigns, products, or teams, making it easier to compare costs and returns.
Gartner has reported that 91 percent of retail IT leaders are prioritizing AI as the top technology to implement by 2026. For e-commerce businesses, automation and AI can support spend analysis, demand forecasting, fraud detection, and customer service routing.
Still, technology works best when the process is clear. Before adding more tools, define spending limits, approval steps, review timing, and category ownership. Then use automation to make those rules easier to follow.
Security should be part of the strategy, too. Shared cards, broad permissions,s and informal approvals create risk. Businesses should limit access by role, use separate cards or virtual cards for vendors,s and review permissions when team members change roles.
Better spending systems also support cash flow. E-commerce companies often pay for inventory, ads,s and fulfillment before sales revenue fully arrives. When leaders can see upcoming costs and current balances more clearly, they can plan with more confidence.
Better Spending Habits Create Room to Scale
Smarter corporate spending strategies gives e-commerce businesses more control over growth. It helps teams move quickly while protecting margins, cash flow, and accountability.
The best strategy is not a one-time cost cut. It is a set of better habits: assign spending owners, link expenses to clear goals, automate tracking, and review costs before they become problems.
When ecommerce companies understand where money is going and why, they can invest more confidently in the areas that drive profitable growth.
Google parent company Alphabet said Monday that it plans to raise $80 billion to help pay for the massive AI infrastructure buildout it has planned. Alphabet will sell off that amount in stock, and will then use the funds to pay for “general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures to scale AI infrastructure and global compute,” the company said in a statement.
Part of the plan involves selling $10 billion in stock to Berkshire Hathaway, the massive global holding company formerly led by Warren Buffet.
“The company is experiencing strong demand for its AI solutions and services from enterprises and consumers, at levels that are exceeding the company’s available supply,” Alphabet said in its statement. “By scaling its investments, the company seeks to expand its foundational infrastructure to support the significant growth opportunity ahead.”
The company added that the stock plan represented a way to “fund its investments in a balanced way while retaining a healthy balance sheet.”
Like other tech giants, Google has announced plans for a massive investment in compute this year, the likes of which will be used to support a flurry of new AI services. At Google I/O last month, CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company expects to spend between $180 and $190 billion on capex before the year is out. Google and other tech giants are expected to spend as much as $700 billion this year on AI capex.
The engineering design process, the kind of work that you can tell from the name alone, isn’t for the fainthearted. You need the willingness, the resolve, and the bloody-mindedness to keep going in the face of many setbacks and challenges, or, in some cases, the nerve to quit. Now that sounds quite interesting, so what is it exactly?
According to The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), the engineering design process is an iterative workflow for devising components, products, or systems to meet specific needs. ABET says the process uses the applied sciences to turn resources into a practical, useful object. At this point, you wonder, “Why does a formal definition of anything always sound awfully boring and mouthful?” Boring as the definition might be, it’s true.
The definition goes on to state that the fundamental parts of the process involve specifying the objectives, conducting analysis, constructing, running tests, and performing evaluation. In general, not entirely unlike the empirical way of the scientific method. If we’re talking specifically about product design, the process needs to take into account some realistic constraints such as budgets, technical feasibility, user-friendliness, environmental impact, and so forth.
Because an engineering design process can be as complex as ABET suggests, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that everybody needs assistance from experienced engineering design professionals and designers to develop a new product. And by “everybody” we do mean absolutely everybody, from creative inventors and startups to design firms and big companies. When it comes to hiring NPD (New Product Development) professionals, Cad Crowd has consistently been at the top of the recommendation list. It has a massive network of talents you need, flexible hiring options, affordable rates, and, best of all, a guarantee of design accuracy.
What’s in an engineering design process?
The expectation is that when you’ve finished the process and done so well, you’ll end up with engineering solutions for crafting a new product. A solution can be as simple as a ball bearing to reduce friction in a mechanical system, or as complex as using 3D printing services to fabricate intricate parts. It can also be as exceedingly complex as creating a high-tech communication device or building an engine from the ground up. Despite the wide variety of products, functions, and features, the engineers working on them follow roughly the same steps throughout the design process.
Problem Identification: You can’t develop a solution for a problem unless there’s a problem that needs solving to begin with. From the business side of things, a problem signals a market opportunity you can pursue. Perhaps you can create a product, offer it as a solution to the problem, and make a profit from it.
Research: the next step is to analyze the problem to gather more information. Why does this problem exist? Has anyone attempted to solve it before? Have any of those attempts succeeded? If they failed, why and how miserably did they fail?
Solution Ideas: Knowing that a problem exists and that no one has a good solution, now it’s time to ask yourself whether there’s something you can do to solve it. And for every idea you have, how different is it from the others? This is the point where the actual design process begins. The design engineer and designer handle much of the work here, conducting experiments and simulations to generate possible solutions, in this case, a concept. They produce sketches and CAD drawings, which eventually become some sort of formula, or a recipe that they like to refer to as “product requirements,” just to make it sound a bit more technical.
Prototypes: based on the product requirements, the process steps into the prototyping phase. The prototype is typically known as the Proof of Concept (PoC) model. But this won’t be the only prototype you need to build. There will be many more before you get to the final production version.
Evaluation: Every prototype iteration must undergo a series of tests and evaluations to determine how well it works, or whether it works at all. In a proper evaluation, the product (or prototype) is tested across various usage scenarios to assess usability, performance, durability, and overall alignment with the product requirements.
Refinements: The data gathered from the evaluation phase serves as a guide for improving the product. Refinements can take many forms, such as better materials or a simpler user interface. Sometimes a prototype needs a complete redesign if you discover serious flaws during evaluation. Steps 4, 5, and 6 run in a loop due to the iterative nature of the tasks. When the prototype design experts finally builds a prototype that meets all the product requirements, the circle stops spinning, so you can move on to the next phase.
Production: the design is finalized and ready for mass production.
It’s a systematic method that engineers and designers follow to develop a functional product that solves (presumably) a complex problem. This makes good sense because if the problem is anything but complex and intricate, there’s little point in spending time, money, and effort on the whole exercise. Say a toy car makes squeaky noises each time you open and close one of the doors. It doesn’t take a licensed engineer to determine that the hinges need some lubrication. When you’re talking about the engineering design process, the “identified problem” is likely a whole lot more complicated than that.
It’s worth noting that the engineering design process is often collaborative and multidisciplinary. You’ll need input from an industrial designer, a prototype fabricator, a programmer if the product is an electronic device, a market researcher, and even the manufacturer to help optimize the design for mass production. Customers might also be directly involved in beta testing and feedback generation.
In what ways is it important?
Much of the engineering design process, no matter what specific product you want to build, revolves around four major steps: discovery, ideation, development, and optimization. One of the key elements of the entire process is iterative design. The product development team has to repeatedly re-evaluate and refine the prototype until they build a truly optimized solution. They learn from every test result and mistake in every iteration, so they adjust the approach to better suit the goals. Sometimes, and probably more often than not, this iterative loop presents one or two unexpected issues with the design.
This isn’t entirely bad, because you can then ensure the next prototype iteration won’t carry the same surprises. The engineering design process is important to product development in many ways. Everything you do across the steps outlined above contributes to product quality, budget efficiency, and your chances of commercial success after launch. Here are just a few examples of how it can help you set the course for the project.
In nearly all cases, a modern-day product development project can be categorized under one of the following three approaches.
Adaptive design
A great portion of your work in an adaptive design approach will be about creating an adaptation of an existing product. Still remember why the problem exists? And that there have been some attempts to offer a solution, but none have worked quite as well as expected? There are plenty of product categories in which manufacturing and engineering development have practically ceased, leaving you with hardly anything to do but make minor changes to the already-established form. An easy example of such a product is the claw hammer, which has remained essentially the same since the 1920s, maybe even earlier. Seriously, what can you do to improve the design? Maybe you can introduce a new material or a handle with a unique ergonomic shape, but other than those, nothing really. Another example is the modern laptop, with its recognizable clamshell design developed mainly in the 1980s – 1990s. Several decades after the first PowerBook came to market, laptop design hasn’t changed much since. The work is somewhat easy with adaptive design, mostly because you’re using an already-established basic conceptual design and only making changes wherever possible. Changes can be in the form of dimensions, power specifications, and aesthetics. But no matter what modifications you propose, the final product should not look strikingly different from the existing ones.
Development design
You also start with an existing idea. However, a development design approach requires you to build a product that’s markedly different from the initial concept. We’re pleased to say that the best examples of such an approach were Nokia phones from the past. Nokia made dozens of mobile phone models, including the bar, flip, leaf-shaped, the slider, the twist, the camcorder look-alike, the gamepad aesthetic, and so on. Underneath, most of those models ran the same operating system, but the shapes were unique enough that you could easily tell them apart from miles away. Another example could be CRT monitors, which have now been replaced by thin plasma or LED screens. Cars can also make the case for development design. The exterior might be all about aesthetics, but powertrain technology has advanced so much that you now have electric and hydrogen-fueled models. Some cars are hybrid, combining internal combustion and electric motors to power the drivetrain. So, development design means you take an existing product and build a distinct variety based on that. This new variety has to have unique characteristics to the point where you can objectively call it “different.”
New design
It’s the most difficult design approach of them all. Very few, if any, product developments are actually a new design. It takes some real ingenuity, scientific insight, great foresight, and a good chunk of imagination. Think of the invention of the wheel, the first general-purpose computer, and the Benz Patent-Motorwagen. What do you think is the latest genuinely original physical product design? It’s probably something invented decades ago, maybe centuries even.
Every problem can have one or more possible solutions. And there can be different ways to develop the most efficient solution when it comes to product concept design services. For instance, you discover that the typical lawn mowers use blades that need sharpening every 20 hours or so of usage. You can either focus solely on the blade (adaptive design), create a new lawn mower model to accommodate the new blades (development), or build entirely new equipment for cutting grass (new design).
Although all the approaches share the same goals (that is, providing a more user-friendly way to cut grass and maintain a lawn mower), each has a different difficulty level, with “new design” being the most challenging. The best design approach is always the one you feel most comfortable with, both in terms of technical capabilities and budget.
Understand the competitions
Any information you can get about products similar to your idea can play a huge role in how you proceed with product development. This is not to say that you’ll end up copying some design elements. Quite the contrary, you may want to avoid having any resemblance to the competitors for both legal and technical reasons. Some companies include a “patent attorney” in the new product development team for one purpose: making sure that any part of the product idea isn’t a copy of an already patented design. This way, they don’t have to pay royalties to the patent holder.
From a technical perspective, the information should contain a list of all the available design solutions (to the identified problem you’re trying to solve). There might be one or two competitors selling similar products. Even if your idea isn’t identical to those products, your design may come across as unoriginal. We’re not saying you won’t make a sale for that reason alone because it’s simply untrue. Case in point: smartphones. Every single one of them looks pretty much the same at a glance, and yet millions of people still rush to buy the latest fad every few months.
But that’s more like an exception than the rule, so tread with caution. For a lot of other products, however, knowledge of existing designs will prevent you from pursuing some kind of an imitation of a solution that has been attempted before. It also must have been an ineffective solution; you wouldn’t have discovered the problem in the first place. But why waste time and money making a copy? Making a unique alternative would be a better use of your creativity and resources.
Focus on the “functions”
Anybody would expect that “goals” and “functions” are basically the same, but this isn’t always the case. If the goal of a product development is, for instance, to build a safe stepladder, it only makes sense to say that the ladder in question must work or function safely. While it’s true to a certain degree, the engineering designer can make you understand that there’s a real difference between the two.
A goal is often stated in a general fashion. It’s the final objective, so no matter what you do in the development work, the end product has to fulfill that very purpose. At the same time, the engineering design process is all about doing experiments with all sorts of design options until you get everything right. The experiments only end when the design meets the objective. But the good thing is that it’s not a freestyle experiment in the sense that you have guardrails and constraints to keep it focused on the main goal.
Function is all about “what the product can do to make it safe” for users. And it turns out there’s a lot it can do. Say the spreaders have a locking mechanism that prevents the rails from snapping together while in use. You can also include anti-slip feet so the stepladder doesn’t move around as easily. A tool tray may seem like an add-on rather than a main feature, but it improves safety by giving users a convenient place to put their hammers and spanners. Perhaps you want to use safety handrails or rear braces for certain designs, too.
Such a technique opens the door to greater creativity, too. Referring back to our previous example of a lawnmower, the goal for a product designer is to make a more user-friendly version of the equipment with less frequent blade sharpening. If you’re stuck with designing new blades and using a peculiar onboard sharpening mechanism, you’ve practically enforced an unnecessary constraint that limits design exploration. Constraints are useful in many cases, but not when the development is still in its early phases. Keep in mind that the main function of a lawn mower is to cut grass.
Would it be possible to use non-metal blades? Does adding a string trimmer attachment make sense? The engineering design process helps you focus on functions that enable the product to meet its objectives. It converts a general statement of goals into a much more specific to-do list. If you have a particularly big team, you can probably even run a simultaneous (as opposed to sequential) design development.
Not every product development effort succeeded. In fact, many of them proved disastrous enough that the makers had to face costly consequences.
Remember the Concorde? The spectacular crash in 2000 led the authorities to strip the supersonic passenger plane of its airworthiness. Long story short, it’s no longer produced.
What about the exploding Samsung battery? Manufacturing defects caused many Galaxy Note 7 units to overheat and explode. Samsung was forced to recall the units, causing an estimated revenue loss of US$17 billion.
Lancia Beta, anyone? The exotic, terminally rust-prone car cost the company a fortune through a buyback program. But even after spending a tremendous sum of money, Lancia never fully recovered from the PR disaster caused by the poorly built model.
Catastrophic failures can happen for many different reasons, however, can be avoided with the help of the right design engineering firm at your side. Failures can happen due to the lack of understanding of the problem, incorrect design requirements, incomplete market research, inadequate testing and evaluation, faulty assembly, manufacturing defects, and so forth. An engineering design process, thanks to its iterative and collaborative nature, should at least minimize the risk of mistakes. This doesn’t suggest in any way that those companies failed to follow their own engineering design process. It’s just that the products were so complex, it’s possible that at some point in the development, somebody didn’t think something through and started a daisy-chain of issues.
An engineering design process is more than just a simple checklist you need to go through in a product development project. It is a checklist, alright, but more importantly, every item on the list keeps you on the right track while giving you the freedom to be just playful enough with your creative engineering side. It’s a systematic problem-solving method used by companies everywhere to decide what to make next and how to build it as efficiently as possible.
There might be some little variations in how different design for manufacturability (DFM) companies handle the process, but for the most part, it’s fundamentally the same. They discover problems, set out to develop a solution, test it, find mistakes, go back to the drawing board, and repeat until they iron out all the details. One of the biggest differences, in fact, lies in those companies’ abilities to put the engineering design process to good use. Some companies do an excellent job at discovering problems and market research, but are terrible at prototyping and optimization. A few have what it takes to take a “new design” approach, while others are experts in adaptive design.
Very rarely is a product development firm perfect in everything, and this is where Cad Crowd comes as a balancing force. It doesn’t really matter if you’re a small 3D design firm trying to break into the market with a new product, an established company looking to bring on board specialists’ perspectives, or anything else in between; you can always count on Cad Crowd to connect you with the best talents to boost your engineering design process. With flexible hiring options, an easy project management dashboard, and a massive network of experienced professionals, it’s safe to say that you can always find qualified engineers and designers on the platform to reinforce your team. Contact us for a quote.
MacKenzie Brown is the founder and CEO of Cad Crowd. With over 18 years of experience in launching and scaling platforms specializing in CAD services, product design, manufacturing, hardware, and software development, MacKenzie is a recognized authority in the engineering industry. Under his leadership, Cad Crowd serves esteemed clients like NASA, JPL, the U.S. Navy, and Fortune 500 companies, empowering innovators with access to high-quality design and engineering talent.
