Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

A common refrain echoes through engineering departments in R&D and cost-reduction consulting: "Our production volume is too low to justify expensive molds. There is simply no room to cut costs." This mindset is the greatest enemy of profitability. When engineers believe that low volume equals fixed high costs, they stop exploring. They settle for the status quo, and inevitably, costs remain high. But is low volume truly a dead end for cost reduction?

The smartphones, smart devices, and ecosystem services market remains under pressure due to technological limitations and ongoing structural changes at companies such as Apple. Despite a 4% decline in smartphone sales in China during the first two months of 2026, the company managed to increase iPhone sales by 23%, driven by seasonal discounts and subsidies on the base iPhone 17 model.

The business world moves at a speed that can feel dizzying. Skills that were useful five years ago might feel outdated by lunch tomorrow, so stay relevant and adopt a mindset of constant growth and curiosity. Standing still is the quickest way to fall behind in the competition. Learning never stops once you walk across the graduation stage. Keep your eyes open for new ways to solve problems.

AlmaIQ, the intelligent self-service agent for employees just received an incredible boost that expands its role to uniquely help IT teams. Interacting with users through Microsoft Teams, AlmaIQ answers questions about devices and internal processes in natural language. Whereas that intelligence simplified employees lives on the job, it now enables IT teams to interact with Collective IQ at the level of departments, groups, and collections of devices to spot patterns and trends. The overall result: vastly more productive operations and satisfied employees.