A new reports suggests that, despite its promise for the future, artificial intelligence (AI) is still not paying off for most companies.
A study by BCG GAMMA, the BCG Henderson Institute and the MIT Sloan Management Review found that a mere 11% of companies reported significant financial benefit from deploying AI.
Surprisingly, this low return rate was despite widespread attempts to use AI. In fact, the study found that 71% of respondents understood how AI would impact their business, 59% had an AI strategy and 57% had already deployed it to some degree or another.
One of the key differentiators appeared to be the degree to which an organization adopted and used AI. Companies that merely saw it as a quick fix, such as a way to improve automation, were the companies seeing very little return.
“Our survey analysis demonstrates that Leaders share one outstanding feature: They intend to become more adept learners with AI,” reads the report. “Organizations that sense and respond quickly and appropriately to changing conditions, such as a new competitor or a worldwide pandemic, are more likely to take advantage of those disruptions. They view AI as more than a tool for cost cutting and automation.”
As a result of this approach, those companies the report labels “Leaders,” fully integrate AI with their entire approach, learning from it while it learns from humans. This degree of change is often time-consuming and requires a fundamental shift in how many companies operate.
“As more and more of the core of a company is built around software and data, the nature of the organization changes,” says Marco Iansiti, the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He goes on to caution: “It’s an architectural transition that takes a lot of time for a traditional organization. It’s a massive change.”
The full report is a fascinating read and should be a top priority for any executive involved in AI deployment.
A Dell Technologies commissioned an independent survey of 4,300 worldwide business leaders indicates a massive shift toward digital transformation in 2020 accelerated by the pandemic. The survey indicates that 80% of organizations globally have fast-tracked some digital transformation programs this year. But just 41% accelerated all or most of their programs. Dell says that this is the third installment of their Digital Transformation Index (DT Index), designed to show how businesses are adapting to unprecedented uncertainty during a global pandemic.
Incredibly, 79% are reinventing their business model as a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic and 50% of international business leaders worry they didn’t transition fast enough. The study notes that digital transformation is not easy, 94% of businesses surveyed say they are facing entrenched barriers spanning across technology, people, and policy.
According to the 2020 DT Index, the following are the top-3 barriers to digital transformation success:
Data privacy and cybersecurity concerns (up from 5th place in 2016)
Lack of budget and resources (#1 in 2016, #2 in 2018)
Unable to extract insights from data and/or information overload (a jump of eight places since 2016)
“We’ve been given a glimpse of the future, and the organizations that are accelerating their digital transformation now will be poised for success in the Data Era that is unfolding before our eyes”, says Michael Dell, Chairman, and CEO, Dell Technologies.
Additionally, the survey reveals a huge shift toward remote work. About 25% of employees worked remotely before the pandemic and today it is more than 50% of all employees are remote. According to the survey, remote work has become the new normal.
Top IT Investments Are For Emerging Technologies
Prior to the pandemic, business investments were strongly focused on foundational technologies, rather than emerging technologies. The vast majority, 89 percent recognizethat as a result of disruption this year, they need a more agile/scalable IT infrastructure to allow of contingencies. The DT Index shows the top technology investments for the next one to three years:
Cybersecurity
Data management tools
5G infrastructure
Privacy software
Multi-Cloud environment
And recognizing the importance of emerging technologies, 82 percent of respondents envision increased usage of Augmented Reality to learn how to do or fix things in an instant; 85 percent foresee organizations using Artificial Intelligence and data models to predict potential disruptions, and 78 percent predict distributed ledgers – such as Blockchain – will make the gig economy fairer (by cutting out the intermediary).
Despite these findings, only 16 percent are planning to invest in Virtual/Augmented Reality, just 32 percent intend to invest in Artificial Intelligence, and a mere 15 percent plan to invest in distributed ledgers in the next one to three years.
IBM and ServiceNow are partnering to provide enterprise solutions that utilize AI to automate IT operations. The new joint solution combines IBM’s AI‑powered hybrid cloud software and professional services to ServiceNow’s intelligent workflow capabilities and IT service and operations management products. The solution raises up deep AI‑driven insights from their data and then recommends actions for IT organizations to take that help them prevent and fix IT issues at scale.
“AI is one of the biggest forces driving change in the IT industry to the extent that every company is swiftly becoming an AI company,” said Arvind Krishna, Chief Executive Officer, IBM. “By partnering with ServiceNow and their market-leading Now Platform, clients will be able to use AI to quickly mitigate unforeseen IT incident costs. Watson AIOps with ServiceNow’s Now Platform is a powerful new way for clients to use automation to transform their IT operations.”
“For every CEO, digital transformation has gone from opportunity to necessity,” said ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. “As ServiceNow leads the workflow revolution, our partnership with IBM combines the intelligent automation capabilities of the Now Platform with the power of Watson AIOps. We are focused on driving a generational step improvement in productivity, innovation, and growth. ServiceNow and IBM are helping customers meet the digital demands of 21st-century business.”
ServiceNow says that in today’s technology‑driven organization, even the smallest outages can cause massive economic impact for both lost revenue and reputation. They note that this partnership will help customers address these challenges and help avoid unnecessary loss of revenue and reputation by automating old, manual IT processes and increasing IT productivity.
Here is what IBM and ServiceNow are planning:
Joint Solution: IBM and ServiceNow will deliver a first of its kind joint IT solution that marries IBM Watson AIOps with ServiceNow’s intelligent workflow capabilities and market‑leading ITSM and ITOM Visibility products to help customers prevent and fix IT issues at scale. Now, businesses that use ServiceNow ITSM can push historical incident data into the deep machine learning algorithms of Watson AIOps to create a baseline of their normal IT environment, while simultaneously having the ability to help them identify anomalies outside of that normal, which could take a human up to 60% longer to manually identify, according to initial results from specific Watson AIOps early adopter clients. The joint solution will position customers to enhance employee productivity, obtain greater visibility into their operational footprint and respond to incidents and issues faster.
Specific product capabilities will include:
ServiceNow ITSM allows IT to deliver scalable services on a single cloud platform estimated to increase productivity by 20%.
ServiceNow ITOM Visibility automatically delivers near real‑time visibility from a native Configuration Management Database, into all resources and the true operational state of all business services.
IBM Watson AIOps uses AI to automate how enterprises detect, diagnose, and respond to, and remediate IT anomalies in real time. The solution is designed to help CIOs make more informed decisions when predicting and shaping future outcomes, focus resources on higher‑value work and build more responsive and intelligent applications that can stay up and running longer. Using Watson AIOps, the average time to resolve incidents was reduced by 65 percent, according to one recent initial proof of concept project with a client.
Services: IBM is expanding its global ServiceNow business to include additional capabilities that provide advisory, implementation, and managed services on the Now Platform. Highly‑skilled IBM practitioners will apply their expertise to facilitate rapid delivery of valuable insights and innovation to clients. IBM Services professionals also will introduce clients to intelligent workflows to help improve resiliency and reduce IT risk. ServiceNow is co‑investing in training and certification of IBM employees and dedicated staff for customer success.
“Businesses are facing increased pressures to match the digital pace of a cloud‑first market in order to meet the demands of their customers,” said Stephen Elliot, program vice president, DevOps, and Management Software, IDC. “The C‑ suite is transforming workflows to deliver insights and automation for more efficient customer engagement models and cost containment strategies for the business while simplifying IT operations and increasing collaboration between IT and business stakeholders.”
Qualcomm is the latest company to tackle misinformation, announcing a tool designed to ensure the validity of photos and videos.
Shallowfakes (photos manipulated through traditional means) and deepfakes (photos manipulated with AI) are a growing concern for researchers, tech giants, security experts and politicians. A single photo or videos manipulated to portray someone in a compromising position, or saying something inflammatory, can have profound repercussions.
Qualcomm is the latest company to tackle the problem, teaming up with Truepic. Most digital images contain metadata, such as the time the photo was taken and the location where it was taken. Normally, this metadata is relatively easy to edit and change, either via the camera’s settings or with a third-party application after the picture is taken. Truepic’s software makes it harder to modify the metadata, thereby protecting the integrity of the media.
Qualcomm plans to embed Truepic’s software in its smartphone chips. According to NBC News, “the feature enables a ‘secure’ photo capture mode within a device’s native camera app to sit alongside other modes such as portrait, slow motion and time-lapse. The mode allows users to take a photo that has a digital signature to prove its provenance, including the pixels that were captured in the original image and where and when the photo was taken.”
By partnering with Qualcomm, one of the largest smartphone chipmakers, this deal is a huge win for Truepic. Thanks to Qualcomm’s reach, the technology will hopefully have a meaningful impact in the fight against shallow and deepfakes.
IBM is taking a major step to focus on the cloud, announcing plans to split its legacy business into a separate company.
IBM is one of the oldest technology companies in existence and has weathered multiple, monumental changes in the industry. Once known primarily for its mainframe computers, the company has increasingly bet on the cloud as it works to transition away from its legacy business.
Now, under CEO Arvind Krishna, the company is taking drastic action to streamline its focus by spinning off its legacy business into a separate company. Krishna made the announcement in an open letter to IBM employees:
On my first day as CEO, I made a commitment to the growth of IBM. I stated that a maniacal focus on our open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities is key to this outcome. Day by day, product by product, project by project—we are dedicated to helping our clients unlock the immense value this represents.
Building on the solid foundation Ginni has put in place, we are focused on accelerating our growth strategy and seizing the $1 trillion hybrid cloud opportunity.
As we work toward this goal, two things are becoming increasingly clear. First, we’re seeing a tremendous increase in client demand for our capabilities and expertise. Second, we’re noticing that client buying needs for application and infrastructure services are diverging.
Because of this, we have decided that the managed infrastructure services business of our GTS segment will become an independent company, which we’re initially referring to as “NewCo.” We expect the new company to be created sometime toward the end of 2021. IBM will sharpen its focus on its open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities. And the new company will focus on delivering managed infrastructure services.
Krishna makes the point that NewCo will have the resources it needs to succeed as an independent company. The company will have 4,600 clients and nearly $19 billion in annual revenue. This will make it roughly twice the size of its nearest competitor.
This is a huge move for Krishna and IBM, and underscores the importance of the cloud for the future of the industry.
BlackBerry has announced BlackBerry Mobile Protect, a mobile threat defense (MTD) solution based on artificial intelligence (AI).
Once known for industry-leading mobile smartphones, BlackBerry was largely supplanted by Apple’s iPhone and Google Android phones. As a result, the company now focuses primarily on enterprise software, while licensing the rights to create Android phones to third-party companies. One thing BlackBerry has always been known for is first-class security.
The company’s latest announcement extends the protection of BlackBerry Protect, bringing the same level of security to mobile devices. In particular, the technology leverages AI to provide “security teams with unprecedented visibility into their mobile, desktop, and server endpoints from a single security console, which is critical during a time when remote workers are being targeted with mobile malware and phishing attacks.”
BlackBerry Protect Mobile is designed to detect attacks before they can be executed. This includes alerting users to dangerous URLs before they open them, as well as warning before a user visits a spoofing website, designed to steal their information.
“The number of phishing attacks that target mobile users will continue to rise because business is being conducted on mobile devices and users are more susceptible to attacks when viewing and accessing content on the go,” said Billy Ho, Executive Vice President of BlackBerry Spark. “BlackBerry Protect Mobile provides mobile device security integrated into our unified endpoint security (UES) solutions for a simplified approach to identifying and alerting users and administrators to phishing attempts and mobile malware across the enterprise.”
As mobile threats continue to rise, combined with the need for increased security for remote workers, it’s a safe bet that BlackBerry Mobile Protect will be a big hit for the company.
We are going to be the most important software company in the world,” says Planatir co-founder and CEO Alex Karp. “We are going to deliver the world’s best software with the most efficient way of delivering it. Well over 90% of our growth in the first half of the year came from our existing clients. Our existing clients, the most important clients in the world, are really happy. Of course, we are going to expand those really happy clients who happen to be the coolest people on the planet.”
Alex Karp, co-founder, and CEO of Palantir Technologies Inc. says his company which initiated a direct listing today on the New York Stock Exchange will become the most important software company in the world:
We are very focused on building software a long time before others build it. We are going to be the most important software company in the world. We are going to deliver the world’s best software with the most efficient way of delivering it.
What’s interesting about our client list that people ask is how can you have this super valuable company when there are only 125 customers? To which I respond, yeah, but they are the 125 most interesting institutions in the world. These aren’t just any institutions. We don’t go out and advertise who uses our product but I would say the list of our clients is the single most impressive list of institutions in the world I’ve ever seen. We want to keep these clients.
Well over 90% of our growth in the first half of the year came from our existing clients. What does that mean? Our existing clients, the most important clients in the world, are really happy. Of course, we are going to expand those really happy clients who happen to be the coolest people on the planet.
We’ve built this product which has gotten very little attention called Apollo. Apollo allows us to maintain and deliver software to any number of clients while essentially not growing our Palantiring force at all. We are planning, now that we have Apollo, to grow the number of super cool customers all over the world. We can do it without raising our headcount. What you are going to see is that we are going to continue building with our clients.
Why, because they are the most interesting clients in the world and they clearly based on our numbers like us and some love us. Now with Apollo, we can deliver the whole stack in six hours. I don’t think any other company I’ve seen in the world can do that and we can do it with efficiencies that I don’t know any other company is going to do. We can do this with a small number of people sitting in one office that we have maintaining, updating, and providing them with new products we build.
They don’t have the Frankenstein monster that takes two years to build and has to be maintained with either human hours, like in the government contracting case, or by purchasing new product or compensating salespeople.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp: The Most Important Software Company In The World
D-Wave has announced its next-generation quantum computing platform built for business.
Quantum computing is the next big evolution of computing, providing performance and abilities current computers cannot even begin to match. Entire industries, including cryptography, physics, artificial intelligence and more will be upended by the technology.
D-Wave is one of the leading companies providing quantum computing services, and their new platform increases those abilities, offering 5,000 qubits. Qubits, or quantum bits, are the quantum computing equivalent of traditional computing bits. Unlike bits, that have a binary value of either 0 or 1, qubits can exist in a state of both, thanks to the principles of quantum mechanics. The more qubits a system offers, the more powerful it is.
“Today’s general availability of Advantage delivers the first quantum system built specifically for business, and marks the expansion into production scale commercial applications and new problem types with our hybrid solver services. In combination with our new jump-start program to get customers started, this launch continues what we’ve known at D-Wave for a long time: it’s not about hype, it’s about scaling, and delivering systems that provide real business value on real business applications,” said Alan Baratz, CEO, D-Wave. “We also continue to invest in the science of building quantum systems. Advantage was completely re-engineered from the ground up. We’ll take what we’ve learned about connectivity and scale and continue to push the limits of innovation for the next generations of our quantum computers. I’m incredibly proud of the team that has brought us here and the customers and partners who have collaborated with us to build hundreds of early applications and who now are putting applications into production.”
This is a big step forward for the quantum computing industry and should be a big success for D-Wave.
“What we’re announcing today is the democratization of AI,” says VMWare CEO Pat Gelsinger. “VMWare and Nvidia are coming together to leverage all the work they have done over the last decade and a half in AI. This partnership will put it on the industry-standard VMWare footprint to enable every enterprise to have this game-changing technology of AI. We see it as a game-changer for the AI industry broadly.”
Patrick Gelsinger, CEO of VMWare, announced just before this year’s huge virtual VMworld 2020 conference a partnership with Nvidia that will bring on the democratization of AI:
The Democratization Of AI
Nvidia and VMWare are coming together in a new partnership. Nvidia has been building their capabilities in artificial intelligence are for quite a number of years. But AI is used by only 10 to 15% of enterprises where specialized hardware sits in the corner of the data center and is only available in remote cloud environments. What we’re announcing today is the democratization of AI. VMWare and Nvidia are coming together to leverage all the work they have done over the last decade and a half in AI.
This partnership will put it on the industry-standard VMWare footprint to enable every enterprise to have this game-changing technology of AI. Literally, that software can introspect on data and write software and bring that to every enterprise application. We are quite excited about the partnership. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and I have known each other for several decades and it really is exciting to see us bring the partnership to the next level.
Making AI Broadly Available For Enterprises
We are excited about it. We do see that this idea that we can now make AI broadly available for enterprises. It’s exciting for Nvidia because even as successful as they’ve been, they are still only cracking a small piece of the application workload. For us, this is a major accelerant not just in the data center but also extending to the Edge. As we see 5G and Edge emerge this is a major new area for both companies.
With our Tanzu offerings and virtualization offerings, it really is saying that now every enterprise can start to take availability of these powerful AI capabilities. We see it as a game-changer for the AI industry broadly and cleary an accelerant for us and for Nvidia and for our financials.
The Edge – Next Major Move Of Application Development
Multi-cloud is the core of our Tanzu offerings. We want to help companies take advantage of the most modern CI/CD pipeline DevOps, DevSecOps capabilities. But they need to be able to take advantage of it in their private data centers, across multiple clouds, and to the Edge. For this, clearly, our preferred partnership with Amazon has really taken off. Now with Azure and Google and Oracle and the Alibaba partnership showing up now they can take advantage of that across any cloud and be able to go from their private data centers to the cloud and back.
We now have major customers of which a number of those we are highlighting at VMWorld who really are taking advantage of both to the cloud as well as from the cloud. This hybrid approach enables us to save 30% on average for customers. It’s a big savings but it also enables customers to have consistent developer environments and take advantage of the Edge. The Edge will be the next major move of application development as 5G starts to become broadly available in the industry.
“Today starts a new chapter in our close collaboration with the telecommunications industry to unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever,” said Microsoft Azure Executive Vice President Jason Zander in a blog announcement. “We’re building a carrier-grade cloud and bringing more Microsoft technology to the operator’s edge. This, in combination with our developer ecosystem, will help operators to future proof their networks, drive down costs, and create new services and business models.”
Jason Zander, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure, announces new collaborations with the telecommunications industry that will unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever:
The increasing demand for always-on connectivity, immersive experiences, secure collaboration, and remote human relationships is pushing networks to their limits, while the market is driving down price. The network infrastructure must ensure operators are able to optimize costs and gain efficiencies, while enabling the development of personalized and differentiated services. To address the requirements of rolling out 5G, operators will face strong challenges, including high capital expenditure (CapEx) investments, an increased need for scale, automation, and secure management of the massive volume of data it will generate.
Today starts a new chapter in our close collaboration with the telecommunications industry to unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever. We’re building a carrier-grade cloud and bringing more Microsoft technology to the operator’s edge. This, in combination with our developer ecosystem, will help operators to future proof their networks, drive down costs, and create new services and business models.
In Microsoft, operators get a trusted partner who will empower them to unlock the potential of 5G. Enabling them to offer a range of new services such as ultra-reliable low-latency connectivity, mixed reality communications services, network slicing, and highly scalable IoT applications to transform entire industries and communities.
By harnessing the power of Microsoft Azure, on their edge, or in the cloud, operators can transition to a more flexible and scalable model, drive down infrastructure cost, use AI and machine learning (ML) to automate operations and create service differentiation. Furthermore, a hybrid and hyper-scale infrastructure will provide operators with the agility they need to rapidly innovate and experiment with new 5G services on a programmable network.
More specifically, we will further support operators as they evolve their infrastructure and operations using technologies such as software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and service-based architectures. We are bringing to market a carrier-grade platform for edge and cloud to support the operator’s goals to future proof their infrastructure with disaggregated, and containerized network architectures. Recognizing that not everything will move to the public cloud, we will meet operators where they are—whether at the enterprise edge, the network edge, or in the cloud.
Our approach is built on the acquisitions of industry leaders in cloud-native network functions—Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch and on the development of Azure Edge Zones. By bringing together hundreds of engineers with deep experience in the telecommunications space, we are ensuring that our product development process is catering to the most relevant networking needs of the operators. We will leverage the strengths of Microsoft to extend and enhance the current capabilities of industry-leading products such as Affirmed’s 5G core and Metaswitch’s UC portfolio. These capabilities, combined with Microsoft’s broad developer ecosystem and deep business to business partnership programs, provide Microsoft with a unique ability to support the operators as they seek to monetize the capabilities of their networks.
Your customer, your service, powered by our technology
As we build out our partnerships with different operators, it is clear to us that there will be different approaches to technology adoption based on business needs. Some operators may choose to adopt the Azure platform and select a varied mix of virtualized or containerized network function providers. We also have operators that have requested complete end-to-end services as components for their offers. As a part of these discussions, many operators have identified points of control that are important to them, for example:
Control over where a slice, network API, or function is presented to the customer.
Definition of where and how traffic enters and exits their network.
Visibility and control over where key functions are executed for a given customer scenario.
Configuration and performance parameters of core network functions.
As we build out Azure for Operators, we recognize the importance of ensuring operators have the control and visibility they require to manage their unique industry requirements. To that end, here is how our assets come together to provide operators with the platform they need.
Communication Service Providers
Interconnect
It starts with the ability to interconnect deeply with the operator’s network around the globe. We have one of the largest networks that connect with operators at more than 170 points of presence and over 20,000 peering connections around the globe, putting direct connectivity within 25 miles of 85 percent of the world’s GDP. More than 200 operators have already chosen to integrate with the Azure network through our ExpressRoute service, enabling enterprises and partners to link their corporate networks privately and securely to Azure services. We also provide additional routes to connect to the service through options as varied as satellite connectivity and TV White Space spectrum.
Edge platform
This reach helps us to supply operators with cloud computing options that meet the customer wherever those capabilities are needed: at the enterprise edge, the network edge, the network core, or in the cloud. The various form factors, optimized to support the location in which they are deployed, are supported by the Azure platform—providing virtual machine and container services with a common management framework, DevOps support, and security control.
Network functions
We believe in an open platform that leverages the strengths of our partners. Our solutions are a combination of virtualized and containerized services as composable functions, developed by us and by our Network Equipment Provider partners, to support operators’ services such as the Radio Access Network, Mobile Packet Core, Voice and Interconnect services, and other network functions.
Technology from Affirmed and Metaswitch Networks will provide services for Mobile Packet Core, Voice, and Interconnect services.
Cloud solutions and Azure IoT for operators
By exposing these services through the Azure platform, we can combine them with other Azure capabilities such as Azure Cognitive Services (used by more than 1 million developers processing more than 10 billion transaction per day), Azure Machine Learning, and Azure IoT, to bring the power of AI and automation to the delivery of network services. These capabilities, in concert with our partnerships with OSS and BSS providers, enables us to help operators streamline and simplify operations, create new services to monetize the network, and gain greater insights into customer behavior.
In IoT our primary focus is simplifying our solutions to accelerate what we can do together from the edge to the cloud. We’ve done so by creating a platform that provides simple and secure provisioning of applications and devices to Azure cloud solutions through Azure IoT Central, which is the fastest and easiest way to build IoT solutions at scale. IoT Central enables customers to provision an IoT app in seconds, customize it in hours, and go to production the same day. IoT Plug and Play dramatically simplifies all aspects of IoT device support and provides devices that “just work” with any solution and is the perfect complement to achieve speed and simplicity through IoT Central. Azure IoT Central also gives the Mobile Operator the opportunity to monetize more of the IoT solution and puts them in a position to be a re-seller of the IoT Central application platform through their own solutions. Learn more about using Azure IoT for operators here.
Cellular connectivity is increasingly important for IoT solutions and represents a vast and generational shift for mobile operators as the share of devices in market shifts towards the enterprise. We will continue our deep partnership with operators to enable fast and efficient app development and deployment, which is critical to success at the edge. This will help support scenarios such as asset tracking across industries, manufacturing and distribution of smart products, and responsive supply chains. It will also help support scenarios where things are geographically dispersed, such as smart city automation, utility monitoring, and precision agriculture.
Where we go next
Our early engagement with partners such as Telstra and Etisalat helped us shape this path. We joined the 5G Open Innovation Lab as the founding public cloud partner to accelerate enterprise startups and launch new innovations to foster new 5G use cases with even greater access to leading-edge networks. The Lab will create long-term, sustainable developer and commercial ecosystems that will accelerate the delivery of exciting new capabilities at the edge, including pervasive IoT intelligence and immersive mixed reality. And this is just the beginning. I invite you to learn more about our solutions and watch the series of videos we have curated for you.
We started Aiera with the idea of just trying to help clients engage with the advances that were coming through tech. Our focus was really Amazon. Aiera spawned from an Amazon research report, where we’re trying to just advocate for clients that they have to start taking this seriously in terms of how industries will change. We thought one way to help them do that aside from just the stock price and what Amazon had been doing in the past was to help them look to how their own roles could change.
Aiera stands for AI Equity Research Analysis. The AI is silent. Within Aiera we’re really trying to pay respect to the research analysts role. We’re trying to learn that the best we can in terms of the rules that they follow to understand markets that are constantly in flux, equities, and where their stories are constantly changing. We’ve been at this for about three years now.
Analysts really want to understand the why. They want to understand the critical events within conferences, filings, and news. We want to make that as easy as possible. What we’re trying to help clients with the most is helping them be able to be updated on the 40,000 events that we are processing right now. We want to help them access those events easily. Ultimately, whether it’s through alerts, search, or comparisons, really be more informed than they’ve been in the past. That’s how we’re trying to revolutionize the more traditional sell-side models.
A little bit is generational (in terms of the use of Aiera). When we started Aiera the business side was very focused in New York. All of our clients were in New York and there was a lot more face to face and a lot more in their offices showing them Aiera on a big screen. But inevitably we’d run into well how do we connect to the WiFi? Well, can you see what I’m trying to show you here? Whereas on a screen you can just follow the cursor. It’s easier to express to that other side exactly what it is trying to show them when selling software.
My generation still very much values that face-to-face. But when I look at our devs and most of them have worked distributed from the beginning they don’t value that same kind of face-to-face. I can also look to the other generations particularly those who are in tech and say they don’t need it in the same way. They don’t even know maybe what they’re missing in the same way that I feel from what’s happened during COVID.
Aiera is an event intelligence and insights platform founded by former Internet equity research analyst, Ken Sena (CEO), and Amazon Alexa engineering lead, Bryan Healey (CTO). Aiera began as a collaboration on how natural language processing could improve investment workflow. Aiera now covers over 40,000 live events per year, including earnings calls, analyst days, management conferences, and more, tying these events to millions of documents it is simultaneously processing and analyzing, and offering users the ability to set intelligent monitors to track what matters to them most.
Elon Musk has promised dramatically lower battery costs, leading to $25,000 Tesla vehicles within three years.
During the company’s Battery Day, Musk talked about the future of battery production. “The battery stuff is clearly revolutionary and essential to Tesla’s goal,” Musk said, “accelerating the [transition] to sustainable energy.”
According to NBC News, Musk said there would need to be significant technological breakthroughs for the cost of batteries to come down lower than they currently are. In the meantime, the company is planning on revamping its entire manufacturing process, streamlining it and eliminating more expensive elements.
The result will be batteries that are not only less expensive, but also pack more energy. Controlling the entire process could give Tesla an even greater advantage over competitors than it currently enjoys.
Either way, Musk is confident $25,000, fully autonomous Teslas will be a reality within three years.
Rescale and Hyundai have announced they are collaborating on a multi-cloud, high performance computing (HPC) environment for the mobility industry.
As with many industries, the mobility industry is turning to the cloud to help with research and development. Relying on cloud-based HPC resources gives companies the ability to scale faster and with fewer limitations.
“Close collaboration between IT and the field is essential for Hyundai Motor’s digital transformation strategy,” said JungSik Suh, Senior Vice President and Head of ICT Division of Hyundai Motor Group. “We are pleased that the Rescale cloud platform will be the venue for this collaboration, and expect it to increase research efficiency by moving away from the physical limitations of a static on-premise environment.”
Resale’s platform will help Hyundai develop autonomous vehicles, enhance fuel efficiency, run simulations and test new safety features.
“As an intelligent control plane for big compute, Rescale enables researchers to collaborate seamlessly, and ensures simulation workloads always run on the most performant architectures from our multi-cloud provider infrastructure network.” said Edward Hsu VP of Product at Rescale. “We are pleased to be working with Hyundai Motor Group to drive unprecedented mobility innovation.”
Microsoft has scored a big win in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), gaining an exclusive license for OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model.
OpenAI is one of the leading AI research labs. Elon Musk has been one of the biggest critics of AI, believing it poses an existential threat to humanity. Musk was one of the original founders of OpenAI, in the hopes that responsible AI development could help avert disaster.
GPT-3 is “an autoregressive language model with 175 billion parameters, 10x more than any previous non-sparse language model.” The model uses deep learning to better emulate human language patterns.
Microsoft’s latest announcement builds on their existing partnership with OpenAI, which was expanded in May.
”Today, I’m very excited to announce that Microsoft is teaming up with OpenAI to exclusively license GPT-3, allowing us to leverage its technical innovations to develop and deliver advanced AI solutions for our customers, as well as create new solutions that harness the amazing power of advanced natural language generation,” writes Kevin Scott – Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft.
”We see this as an incredible opportunity to expand our Azure-powered AI platform in a way that democratizes AI technology, enables new products, services and experiences, and increases the positive impact of AI at Scale. Our mission at Microsoft is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, so we want to make sure that this AI platform is available to everyone – researchers, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, businesses – to empower their ambitions to create something new and interesting.”
Scott acknowledges that, at this point, it’s hard to imagine the many ways GPT-3 will impact the industry. The partnership, however, ensures Microsoft will continue to be on the forefront of AI development.
“There are huge benefits to collaboration,” says Proofpoint CEO Gary Steele. “However, I do believe fundamentally that this work from home economy that we’re living in is going to change the face of work. You’re going to see a blend. Security leaders and organizations are going to need to figure out how do you defend people when they are sitting at home working from their couch just doing their job and doing it well?”
New AI/ML Innovations Block Bogus Emails
One of the big investments for us in this people-centric framework is to help organizations protect the data that people create. We’re giving companies more visibility and more controls to ensure that when you’re sitting in front of your couch and working from home that you’re not treating data in a way that’s going to ultimately hurt the company. For those individuals that are doing something malicious, we’re going to help companies find those malicious individuals.
We need to block (bogus emails that are supposedly from a trusted source) so that an individual doesn’t actually receive that message (in the first place). That is an impersonation. That’s how we’re applying new innovations in the AI/ML (artificial intelligence & machine learning) space to be able to identify those very sophisticated attacks and block them so that a poor user is not trying to figure out (if it is really) the CEO that asked me to do something that they shouldn’t do.
Proofpoint CEO Gary Steele: Working From Home Changes Face Of Work
H-E-B is planning to use Swisslog robots to improve its curbside delivery services through the use of micro-fulfillment centers.
As the coronavirus pandemic has impacted how people go about their daily lives, curbside grocery pickup has experienced major growth. In an effort to improve curbside pickup, without negatively impacting the in-store expense, H-E-B is turning to robotics.
The goal is to create a number of automated micro-fulfillment centers to meet customers needs. As an added benefit, because of their smaller footprint, it should be possible to place micro-fulfillment centers closer to neighborhoods, making it easer and faster for customers to pick up their groceries.
“Swisslog is pleased H-E-B put their trust in us to automate and support their facilities with state-of-the-art automation and software,” said Mitch Hayes, vice president of e-commerce and retail, Swisslog Logistics Automation, Americas. “COVID-19 and anticipated behavioral changes have created increased urgency around the need for automation within many grocery operations. E-grocery automation is no longer an option…it’s a requirement for survival and continued growth.”
Accenture announced the formation of Accenture Cloud First with a $3 billion investment over three years. Accenture’s $3 billion investment will be used to continue advancing — often together with its cloud and broader technology ecosystem partners — industry roadmaps, data models, and solutions; cloud AI data and AI architectures; integrated full-stack infrastructure and applications capabilities; cloud tools, assets, and automation to drive lower unit cost and innovation; and research and development in edge computing and related cloud technologies.
Accenture Cloud First is a new multi-service group of 70,000 cloud professionals that brings together the full power and breadth of Accenture’s industry and technology capabilities, ecosystem partnerships, and deep commitment to learning and upskilling clients’ employees and to responsible business, with the singular focus of enabling organizations to move to the cloud with greater speed and achieve greater value for all their stakeholders at this critical time.
“COVID-19 has created a new inflection point that requires every company to dramatically accelerate the move to the cloud as a foundation for digital transformation to build the resilience, new experiences and products, trust, speed, and structural cost reduction that the ongoing health, economic and societal crisis demands — and that a better future for all requires,” said Accenture CEO Julie Sweet. “Accenture Cloud First and our substantial investment demonstrate our commitment to delivering greater value to our clients when they need it most. Digital transformation requires cloud at scale, and post-COVID leadership requires that every business become a ‘cloud-first’ business.”
The idea is to help clients across all industries rapidly become “cloud-first” businesses and accelerate their digital transformation to realize greater value at speed and scale. Karthik Narain will lead Accenture Cloud First and join the Global Management Committee, effective October 1.
Julie Sweet, CEO of Accenture, discusses how the company is investing in helping businesses “replatform” in the cloud:
Once In An Era Replatforming Of Global Business
There has been this massive acceleration in the cloud. Really what’s happening is a once in an era replatforming of global business. We are 20 percent in the cloud today. We believe we will move to around 80 percent in just five years. What Accenture Cloud First is about is helping companies get there faster by bringing together all of the capabilities with a singular focus of how are we going to replatform at speed.
Pre-COVID we worked with a ton of the digital leaders who have been out front. What we see is that there are three important components. First of all, with our cloud partners across the spectrum it’s really critical to not just move companies but to move entire industries. That takes the road map, the learning, and the data integration about what problems are specific to the industry. We are going to be investing in those solutions often along with our partners.
The second area is the speed, investing in better automation and technology that is going to help not just move these companies faster but actually also be able to operate in the cloud with increasingly more productivity. Think about the cloud becoming a platform for their productivity.
Investing In Making Replatforming Sustainable
The third place is around talent and sustainability. If you are replatforming entire global businesses in the cloud we have to do so in a sustainable way. This means getting out of the datacenter to the cloud and what it does for climate change. It’s around things like supply chain and making sure that you are building in the ability to have the integrity of the supply chain and that you are reskilling.
We will be investing in making this replatforming sustainable. This is core as we think about post-COVID our belief as companies across the globe and government that we need to make a better future for all by building in this view of all stakeholders from the planet to our people.
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet: Once In An Era Replatforming Of Global Business
Facebook has rolled out automatic captioning in IGTV, Facebook Live and Workplace Live, powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
With the pandemic forcing more people to rely on video, both for communication and entertainment, captioning has become more important than ever. It’s critical for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as those whose native language or dialect is different than the video they’re watching. In these instances, captioning is an invaluable resource to ensure effective communication.
To assist, Facebook’s engineers worked on AI-driven automated speech recognition (ASR), using it as the basis for the new feature. The feature is also designed to learn new words as the AI continues to be trained.
“It can easily learn a new word and predict where it will occur,” explains Julian Chan, a Facebook AI software engineer. “This was largely made possible using text data from public Facebook posts to train the system.”
The feature is currently available now and content creators can enable it at their discretion.
AppZen has released a report, The State of AI in Business Spend, which shows that enterprise companies are only auditing 10 percent of employee expenses in expense reports submitted, which makes it very unlikely they will catch mistakes or even outright fraud.
The report, which used anonymized data from hundreds of companies, found that companies were missing fraudulent expenses related to strip clubs, escorts, tattoos, gambling, and much more.
AppZen offers a solution that processes data crawled from the internet through their AI-powered algorithm to automatically identify the type of business being expensed and flagging it for human auditors.
AppZen software uses AI to help companies find expense report abuse
Anant Kale, CEO of AppZen, discusses in an interview on Fox Business, how AppZen helps companies use AI to audit 100 percent of reimbursable employee expenses in order to avoid getting ripped off:
Companies Using AI to Identify Expense Report Fraud
AppZen has released its Business Spend Report where we have compiled private and anonymized data from hundreds of companies across a variety of industries. The results are very surprising. What we found are that companies who are relying on human auditors are auditing less than ten percent of their expenses. This means that if you are an employee of one of these companies the chances of ever getting caught is close to zero.
Companies that are using artificial intelligence are auditing 100 percent of their expenses within minutes. They are finding lots of surprising things. One of them is concerning duplicates. You would be surprised to find how many employees are getting paid for the same expense. This means that some employees are submitting the same expense with different descriptions and different amounts which is very difficult for auditors to catch.
AI Makes it Harder for Employees to Lie on Reports
Another expense is where employees or a group of employees are submitting dinner meals with customers with what seems to be a restaurant when in reality when the artificial intelligence technology goes out and scours the web for that data we found that sometimes those or strip clubs and sometimes even escorts. That is happening far more often that you would like to believe.
These were going through the companies systems before AI came in. The reason why they are very difficult for human auditors is that they just don’t have the time necessary and the number of expenses being reviewed is much less with humans.
AI Software Looks at 100% of Reimbursable Expenses
When AI does it, it looks at each and every expense. It doesn’t just use the data on the expense report but also uses things like social data and reviews from websites and then puts the doc together. So it’s very difficult to escape from what the AI technology can find out versus what a human auditor can.
What the AI technology does is unravel what’s going on with the expenses. This lets the company determine what the best way to deal with information is. Often, it includes better communication with employees. We are seeing all kinds of things including mistakes, fraud, and non-compliance with company policies and sometimes government regulations.
These are on all kinds of expenses around travel, hotel, and airfare, which you would believe are far more controlled in companies today.
This may or may not worry you depending on your point of view. IBM has deployed a super intelligent face mask surveillance system for businesses (or government) to discreetly track face mask usage by employees, customers, and anyone who enters a building where their system is installed. The platform will send alerts to the powers that be if anyone is either not wearing a face mask properly or not wearing one at all.
Presumably, if the tech savvy eye in the sky notices an infraction it will quickly enable management and their enforcement teams to confront the individuals to rectify their face mask violation. How dare they! It will also monitor in real-time crowd density, social distancing, and elevated body temps of those who are entering an establishment.
IBM Cloud released a video narrated by Ian Smalley (below) that explains how their technology works to enable any business or government to surveil and enforce mask usage:
Here is a really cool way that Edge Computing is being used to help businesses reopen and operate safely. We know face masks can substantially reduce the transmission of aerosol borne viruses. But sometimes people forget to wear them properly or at all. IBM Edge Application Manager places analytical workloads with Edge enabled cameras that can recognize face masks and determine if they are being worn effectively.
Since analysis is being performed at the camera the video data and individual privacy are protected. You also avoid the expense of transmitting, storing, or analyzing that image data any further. Alerts are sent every time the camera detects improperly worn or non-existent face masks. Then it sends the aggregated data back to the IBM Maximo Worker Insights platform allowing you to highlight face mask activity in your facilities.
It’s pretty amazing stuff and that’s only scratching the surface. IBM Application Manager is also using Edge Computing to monitor crowd density, social distancing, and elevated body temps of those who are entering an establishment.
According to the Wall Street Journal Microsoft is partnering with tech startups as part of its fierce battle to win the cloud war against Amazon, Google, and others. Microsoft just announced today a global strategic alliance with cloud security startup Abnormal Security. The deal is straight forward. The fast-growing startup moves its platform to Azure and Microsoft will offer Abnormal Security to its huge list of enterprise customers. Amazon has been employing this tactic as well per WSJ.
In the latest deal with Abnormal Security, Azure customers can purchase Abnormal Security directly via Microsoft co-sell and through the Azure Marketplace. Microsoft says that all purchases count towards enterprise Azure commitments.
“Microsoft for Startups is committed to helping B2B startups use the Microsoft platform to scale their business quickly and deliver innovative AI-powered solutions to enterprise customers,” said Jeffrey Ma, VP Microsoft for Startups. “Abnormal has hit the ground running, seeing success with Fortune 1000 companies in a short time, and we’re looking forward to joining forces to further accelerate their security solution to our global customers.”
Evan Reiser, Co-founder and CEO at Abnormal Security said, “When considering the right cloud infrastructure, startups need to look at both the technology platform and the business opportunity. As a cybersecurity company, we were very intrigued with Azure’s inherent security, privacy and AI offerings and as a startup, Microsoft’s go-to-market support and access to the largest enterprises is unmatched. We decided that to be a high-growth company selling to the Fortune 1000, it made business sense to partner with Microsoft and move our business to Azure.”
“Abnormal’s unparalleled market traction is a testament to incredible value being delivered to their customers and the ability to protect organizations from these cyberattacks that have cost them over $2b. I couldn’t be any more excited to see the accelerated growth with Microsoft co-selling the solution,” said Saam Motamedi, General Partner at Greylock Partners.
It’s definitely a win-win for Microsoft and startups like Abnormal Security. Microsoft gets a fast growing startup exclusively on its platform and Abnormal Security gets access to Microsoft’s massive connections with enterprise companies.
