Google Cloud has unveiled its latest innovations, aimed at helping companies unify database, analytics and AI.
Google Cloud is the third leading cloud provider, behind AWS and Microsoft Azure. The company is particularly viewed as a good option for machine learning development, and has strong support for open source software.
The company’s latest tools will go a long way toward improving its stand even further, with Dataplex, Datastream and Analytics Hub.
Dataplex is designed to “centrally manage, monitor and govern your data across data lakes, data warehouses and data marts, and make this data securely accessible to a variety of analytics and data science tools.”
Datastream, currently available in preview, helps “move and synchronize data between heterogeneous databases, storage and applications reliably to support real-time analytics, database replication and event-driven architectures with Datastream, our serverless change data capture (CDC) and replication service.”
Analytics Hub is designed to make it easy to “access and share valuable datasets and analytics assets (think BigQuery ML models, Looker Blocks, data quality recipes, etc.) across any organizational boundary.” Those interested will need to sign up for preview access.
The company’s latest tools should go a long way toward helping its customers make the most of their data, as well as AI applications.
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) has announced its acquisition of Ampool, in an effort to modernize the SQL stack.
SQL is still one of the most widely-used database workload. With the increased adoption of cloud computing, however, SQL does have limitations. Ampool is the developer of a distributed SQL engine based on the open source Presto.
HPE plans to use Ampool’s engine to accelerate “HPE Ezmeral analytics runtime for interactive SQL workloads.” This will help HPE better address customer needs, especially in data-intensive scenarios, such as AI, machine learning and analytics.
“The acquisition builds on this strategy by adding Ampool’s technology components and open source expertise to the Ezmeral portfolio, which will over time turn into a set of SQL acceleration services made available through the HPE GreenLake cloud platform,” writes Anant Chintamaneni, Vice President and GM, HPTE Ezmeral. “This acquisition is also further evidence of HPE’s investment, focus and execution toward building out an open-source-based, IP rich capability for the HPE Ezmeral software portfolio, to deliver superior end to end analytics in fast growth markets.”
The U.S. Supreme is giving LinkedIn another chance to prevent its user data from being harvested, in a case with far-reaching implications.
A company called hiQ Labs Inc was harvesting data from LinkedIn’s site, including the personal data from users’ professional profiles. LinkedIn demanded hiQ stop scraping its data in 2017 but hiQ sued, accusing LinkedIn of anticompetitive behavior.
A lower court had ruled that LinkedIn could not stop hiQ from scraping the data, despite LinkedIn arguing that hiQ was scraping far more than any human could. In addition, LinkedIn accused hiQ of selling some of the data.
The Supreme Court has given LinkedIn another chance, sending the case back the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, according to Reuters. At the heart of the issue is whether the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act applies to cases such as these, preventing companies from scraping data from competitors.
The Supreme Court wants the lower court to reexamine its decision in light of its recent decision involving the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, limiting the scope of crimes that can be prosecuted under the law.
However the courts rule, the case has profound implications for the future of the internet, as it will help determine who controls publicly available information, and whether third-party companies can profit from it without permission.
Facebook has lost a major battle against an EU privacy law, one that would prevent EU data from being sent to the US.
It’s no secret Facebook makes its money off of data. Since most of its products and services are free, the customer is the product and their data a gold mine. As a result, Facebook funnels all the data it collects back to its servers in the US.
Facebook was fighting to block the EU ruling from moving forward, but Ireland’s High Court dismissed Facebook’s attempts, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The data regulation could still be months away, as Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) will need to finalize the rules. Once finalized, they will still need to be approved by the EU’s other privacy regulators. Ultimately, however, the road has been paved by Facebook’s failure to block the effort.
Should the EU’s rules go into effect, they could have profound repercussions on a wide range of industries that will have to take steps to keep EU data within the EU. It’s little wonder that Microsoft has already committed itself to that outcome.
Microsoft has upped its commitment to EU data privacy, promising to keep EU data within the bloc.
Data privacy is a bigger concern than ever before, as individuals and lawmakers start holding companies accountable. As part of the shift toward more data responsibility, some jurisdictions have passed legislation requiring companies to take certain steps to protect user data.
The EU’s GDPR is one of the strictest such laws, providing far more protection than US federal laws currently do. As a result, EU states and citizens have become increasingly concerned about their data being transferred to the US and coming under the scope of US surveillance efforts.
Microsoft is working to address those concerns, promising it will go beyond existing agreements and keep EU data within the bloc. Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, announced the pledge on the company’s blog.
Today we are announcing a new pledge for the European Union. If you are a commercial or public sector customer in the EU, we will go beyond our existing data storage commitments and enable you to process and store all your data in the EU. In other words, we will not need to move your data outside the EU. This commitment will apply across all of Microsoft’s core cloud services – Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. We are beginning work immediately on this added step, and we will complete by the end of next year the implementation of all engineering work needed to execute on it. We’re calling this plan the EU Data Boundary for the Microsoft Cloud.
The new step we’re taking builds on our already strong portfolio of solutions and commitments that protect our customers’ data, and we hope today’s update is another step toward responding to customers that want even greater data residency commitments. We will continue to consult with customers and regulators about this plan in the coming months, including adjustments that are needed in unique circumstances like cybersecurity, and we will move forward in a way that is responsive to their feedback.
While individual states have passed privacy laws, there have been increasing calls for for the US to address the issue on a federal level. Microsoft’s pledge, along with the increased challenges of doing business in the EU, will likely add increased pressure for measurable change.
IBM’s spree of purchases continues, with a deal to acquire myInvenio to help provide AI-powered automation.
IBM is moving aggressively with its plans to reinvent itself as a hybrid cloud provider. The company is preparing to split into two companies, spinning off its legacy business. To better position the core business as a cloud provider, IBM has been on a slew of acquisitions in an effort to shore up its portfolio of products and services.
myInvenio is a company based in Reggio Emilia, Italy, that specializes in helping companies find inefficiencies in their business processes and make the necessary improvements.
myInvenio capabilities reveal inefficiencies, bottlenecks and tasks that can benefit from automation, to help organizations significantly reduce their operating costs and improve customer service. Simulations can be run to assess automation opportunities to measure the benefits of applying automation at the outset of the automation journey. By analyzing historical process execution data and desktop behavior, myInvenio technology can help determine where to apply RPA bots, automated decisions, AI models, and other automations to have the most impact on a business.
The acquisition underscores IBM’s determination to become a “one-stop shop of AI-powered automation capabilities.” Once the deal closes, myInvenio’s capabilities will be integrated into IBM’s Automation portfolio, including IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation.
“Digital transformation is accelerating across industries as companies face increasing challenges with managing critical IT systems and complex business applications that span the hybrid cloud landscape,” said Dinesh Nirmal, General Manager, IBM Automation. “With IBM’s planned acquisition of myInvenio, we are continuing to invest in building the industry’s most comprehensive suite of AI-powered automation capabilities for business automation so that our customers can help employees re-claim their time to focus on more strategic work.”
“Through IBM’s planned acquisition of myInvenio, we are revolutionizing the way companies manage their process operations,” said Massimiliano Delsante, CEO, myInvenio. “myInvenio’s unique capability to automatically analyze processes and create simulations — what we call a ‘Digital Twin of an Organization’ — is joining with IBM’s AI-powered automation capabilities to better manage process execution. Together we will offer a comprehensive solution for digital process transformation and automation to help enterprises continuously transform insights into action.”
No price was disclosed, and IBM expects the deal to close by the end of the quarter.
The European Union is preparing to pass rules that would ban AI-based mass surveillance, in the strongest repudiation of surveillance yet.
According to Bloomberg, the EU is preparing to pass rules that would ban using AI for mass surveillance, as well as ranking social behavior. Companies that fail to abide by the new rules could face fines up to 4% of their global revenue.
The rules are expected to tackle a number of major and controversial areas where privacy is concerned. AI systems that manipulate human behavior, or exploit information about individuals and groups, would be banned. The only exceptions would be some public security applications.
Similarly, remote biometric ID systems in public places would require special authorization. Any AI applications considered ‘high-risk’ — such as ones that could discriminate or endanger people’s safety — would require inspections to ensure the training data sets are unbiased, and that the systems operate with the proper oversight.
Most importantly, the rules will apply equally to companies based within the EU or abroad.
The new rules could still change in the process of being passed into law but, as it stands now, the EU is clearly establishing itself as a protector of privacy where AI-based mass surveillance is concerned.
“Digital transformation will come out as a faster trend out of the pandemic,” says Workday co-CEO Aneel Bhusri. “What’s been interesting about the pandemic is that for companies that were in the cloud they figured out how to how to thrive and adjust to the new world. Companies that weren’t in the cloud realized that they needed the flexibility, agility, and ability to plan instantaneously. They needed those capabilities.”
Aneel Bhusri, co-CEO of Workday, discusses how the pandemic will drive digital transformation forward at an even faster pace:
Digital Transformation To Be Faster Trend Out Of Pandemic
The first three quarters during the pandemic were challenging. The vagaries of subscription accounting models are such that it is a lag indicator. We expect new bookings growth to accelerate this year and that is our primary indicator and the way we run the business. We’re very excited about where we’re headed. That acceleration will probably take at least a year to show up in subscription accounting numbers just because of the way the model works.
What’s been interesting about the pandemic is that for companies that were in the cloud they figured out how to how to thrive and adjust to the new world. Companies that weren’t in the cloud realized that they needed the flexibility, agility, and ability to plan instantaneously. They needed those capabilities. In many ways, companies like Nike that are just such great market-leading companies, recognize that they needed to move this capability to the cloud. So I think actually digital transformation will come out as a faster trend out of the pandemic.
Employee Engagement Rose To The Top Of The List
It comes back to the flexibility and agility that that cloud solutions like Workday provide. We’ve been very fortunate. We’re so happy to have Laboratory Corporation of America become a customer. J&J is a customer. Visor’s a customer. AstraZeneca is a customer. I just feel honored to be able to support these companies who are doing the best they can to save our lives and are just doing amazing work with the vaccines and testing. We’ve always had a strength in the pharmaceuticals and diagnostics role. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that they’re successful because they’re taking care of all of us.
Coming back to what we learned during the pandemic, employee engagement just rose to the top of every CEO’s list and every head of HR’s list. In a remote work orientation, it was harder to really understand how do employees think about the company they work at, their engagement level, their comfort with their manager, and if they are feeling fulfilled at work. We were already down the path at Workday with something called Pulse Surveys. We recognized that this emerging trend was going to be critical going forward.
We Fell In Love With Peakon So We Acquired Them
We concluded that we had to get in this market now, the market’s happening now, and Peakon is the well-known leader in this category. Peakon is a UK-based company with an amazing management team. We fell in love with the product and the management team so we made them part of Workday. They’re one of the new generations of companies that’s machine learning first.
They really use machine learning in the right way to guide decisions and really give you insight into how employees are thinking about the company that they’re working for and how engaged are they. That is a supercritical set of information that’s going to drive companies going forward.
Amazon has made Lookout for Metrics available to all its customers, providing a way to monitor and diagnose business anomalies.
A preview version of Lookout for Metrics was first launched at re:Invent 2020. The service uses machine learning to analyze a business’ operations and automatically detect and diagnose anomalies. It could be a potential business opportunity, a technical issue or any one of the myriad challenges a data-driven business faces.
“We’re excited to announce the general availability of Amazon Lookout for Metrics, a new service that uses machine learning (ML) to automatically monitor the metrics that are most important to businesses with greater speed and accuracy,” write Ankita Verma and Chris King for AWS. “The service also makes it easier to diagnose the root cause of anomalies like unexpected dips in revenue, high rates of abandoned shopping carts, spikes in payment transaction failures, increases in new user sign-ups, and many more. Lookout for Metrics goes beyond simple anomaly detection. It allows developers to set up autonomous monitoring for important metrics to detect anomalies and identify their root cause in a matter of few clicks, using the same technology used by Amazon internally to detect anomalies in its metrics—all with no ML experience required.”
Lookout for Metrics connects to 19 of the most popular data sources, including Amazon Simple Storage Solution (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Redshift, Amazon CloudWatch, Salesforce, Marketo and Zendesk.
IBM is investigating the possibility of selling IBM Watson Health, its attempt to use artificial intelligence (AI) in the medical field.
IBM is moving swiftly toward its goal of splitting the company and focusing the core business on cloud computing. As a result, IBM has purchased a number of smaller startups aligned with that goal. Its latest move, however, appears to be an effort to trim dead weight, or a portion of the business that doesn’t line up with its long-term plans.
IBM had high hopes for IBM Watson Health and the promise of AI revolutionizing the medical profession. The company invested billions building out the solution, but it has ultimately proved a cautionary tale for companies investing in AI. Despite all of IBM’s efforts, the company had difficulty getting doctors and medical professionals to adopt it.
According to insiders who spoke with The Wall Street Journal, IBM is looking to sell the business to an industry player, private-equity firm or merge it with a blank-check company. The common theme is deep pockets.
IBM Watson Health clearly has potential, but it may have been a good idea before its time. It may take deep pockets to keep it going until the medical community warms to the idea of AI managing its data.
“Business is really simple, and people are more productive, and they’re doing things that can lead to growth and opportunity,” says ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott. “That’s the whole point of digital transformation. Right now, companies are hunkered down with systems that are absolutely wearing them out. It’s time to make the bold move, pivot to ServiceNow, and let’s get in there and fix the job.”
Bill McDermott, CEO, and President of ServiceNow says that only one in four digital transformation projects actually deliver positive ROI due to lack of integration:
Most Digital Transformation Projects Don’t Deliver
We have a situation on our hands where digital transformation, cloud computing, and business model innovation, are all converging at once. ServiceNow is the platform, of all the enterprise platforms, that really makes business work. One of the big lessons that business has right now is trillions have been poured into digital transformation yet only one in four projects actually deliver positive ROI. The reason for that is lack of integration.
Our system integrates with all the existing systems as well as all the collaborative tools in the enterprise. From day one, the customer gets it up and running swiftly because it’s in the cloud. They begin to derive value from it because you automate the way the work is done and ultimately, you’re now in a position to serve your customers the way they want to be served. It’s a speed game and ServiceNow is at the top of its game.
Companies Have To Create New Business Models
We’re an example. If you’re going to grow your company you’re going to take advantage of digital transformation. This is the only way out and it’s the only way forward. In the 20th Century companies put in big heavy on-premise systems. The issue is now they can’t, in a frictionless economy, immediately pivot those business models because they haven’t digitally transformed their business.
About 25 percent of the opportunity of businesses out there today over the next three years will come from white space places they are not in today. They have to create new business models. They have to think about new partnerships and new routes to market. Without the baseline of a platform like ServiceNow they’re not going to get there.
That’s The Whole Point Of Digital Transformation
I am very optimistic that the economies of the world not only are going to recover but actually going to do very well this year because people are going to be investing in digital transformation. We have seen that does not cost jobs. On the contrary, it frees people up to do things like go after new markets, derive new ideas, and so forth, because the AI revolution is also on.
We have built-in machine learning and AI into our platform. So 80 percent of the soul-crushing work people don’t want to do is done by the Now platform. The 20 percent that involves a human immediately gets initiated through a workflow order from the Now platform.
Business is really simple, and people are more productive and they’re doing things that can lead to growth and opportunity. That’s the whole point of digital transformation. Right now, companies are hunkered down with systems that are absolutely wearing them out. It’s time to make the bold move, pivot to ServiceNow, and let’s get in there and fix the job.
Fastest-Growing Pure-Play SASS Silicon Valley Company
If you look at our actual earnings results, they were stunning and obviously achieved beyond expectations performance across the board. We also followed that through in the guide. We’ll continue to be the fastest-growing pure-play SASS Silicon Valley company. We will continue to have the best margin profile of all of them. Obviously, we’re going to continue to gain market share in industries around the world, in geographies around the world, particularly in Europe and Asia Pacific, and Japan.
We will also gain market share on personas. Lots of people are getting the memo now that ServiceNow obviously dominated the IT automation market but the same backbone platform has enabled us to change the employee experience, the customer experience. In these tough times with COVID we can write low-code onto our platform in minutes and roll out new applications to hundreds of thousands of people so companies can move super fast.
We keep the guide consistent with the revenue that we generated in 2020. If there’s an upside to that… fantastic. That’s what good companies should do. They should go beyond expectations when they can but we stand by the guide and we’re looking forward to having a great year.
ServiceNow Was Born In The Cloud
The whole idea of ServiceNow is so different than SAP which was a company that needed to pivot to the cloud in 2010. We did that and that was very successful. ServiceNow was born in the cloud. It’s a very young company with tremendous growth opportunity on the organic front. Having said that, (we would be in interested in an acquisition) if you have a situation where there is a partner out there that has a substantial TAM, that can be highly complementary and synergistic with ServiceNow on the revenue side.
It also would have to do great things for the customer, because we have a precious platform and we jealously protect the integration power of that platform. A lot of things would have to be right but I can tell you as responsible business people we always look at it. We don’t need it to make our goals but you always have to look at it. We do want to be the defining enterprise software company the 21st century. That’s our plan.
“What’s interesting here about the SolarWinds hack, in particular, is that it’s what’s called a supply chain attack,” says Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel. “This means the attack was made on the code that was shipped to the SolarWinds customer. Then there is this new notion in security called shifting left. By left, it means is closer to the developer and earlier in the development process.”
Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel discusses how the SolarWinds hack signals an increased focus by hackers to target software earlier in its development:
The SolarWinds hack was definitely a very big one. It’s not especially surprising to see new important hacks like this one but definitely a very impactful one. What it makes very clear is that there’s going to be even more of an arms race when it comes to security. It’s not surprising companies are transforming. They’re having more and more of their activity that is happening online is happening in software. So there’s much more that can be done by attacking that software.
What we do is we gather as many signals as possible across observability and monitoring. This is the way we come from and across security. What’s interesting here about the SolarWinds hack, in particular, is that it’s what’s called a supply chain attack. This means the attack was made on the code that was shipped to the SolarWinds customer. Then there is this new notion in security called shifting left. By left, it means is closer to the developer and earlier in the development process.
There’s something really interesting there when it relates to us (Datadog) in how we can solve the problem for our customers by bringing security earlier into the development process and tied in more to the operations and the development of the application. That’s definitely something that we’re investing in and something that we think is going to be a big area of investment for customers in the future.
“This year we’ve seen fairly brutal changes in patterns of usage in the cloud,” says Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel. “As you can imagine, streaming (has increased). All of a sudden everybody’s kids are watching Disney+. Also, video conferencing, online gaming, and all of that spiked pretty quickly. The way we see that is it’s a big win for the cloud, in general.”
This year we’ve seen fairly brutal changes in patterns of usage in the cloud. As you can imagine, streaming (has increased). All of a sudden everybody’s kids are watching Disney+. Also, video conferencing, online gaming, and all of that spiked pretty quickly. Even if you think of the domains that were negatively impacted by COVID such as travel when all of a sudden everybody had to cancel their travel, it actually meant a lot more activity for the online sites of the travel companies.
So you see all these patterns of companies pointing up and spinning down. The way we see that is it’s a big win for the cloud, in general. Companies could change their minds they could actually scale up. They could decide to shift different services to have them delivered at different scales instead of having to spend three to six months trying to retool everything and ship that to the data centers. They could do that very quickly in the cloud. We see that as a big win for the cloud.
Next year we still see some scaling from those customers. We see some of the industries that were negatively impacted coming back online and getting back up. Across the board, we see more and more renewed urgency around digital transformation and migration to the clutches precisely because the cloud made it possible for companies to react so quickly. Those who are not on the cloud were more impacted than the others.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued orders to nine social media and video platforms, inquiring about their data practices.
Big Tech is under more scrutiny than ever before, and privacy is a big focal point. Data breaches and mishandling of consumer data in recent years has resulted in individuals and officials being more privacy-conscious. As a result, there have been some instances of groundbreaking legislations, such as the EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA/CPRA.
It appears the FTC is increasing its own scrutiny of companies’ data practices, with an order to “Amazon.com, Inc., ByteDance Ltd., which operates the short video service TikTok, Discord Inc., Facebook, Inc., Reddit, Inc., Snap Inc., Twitter, Inc., WhatsApp Inc., and YouTube LLC.”
The FTC is specifically looking to understand how these platforms “collect, use, track, estimate, or derive personal and demographic information.” In addition, the FTC wants to know how these platforms determine which ads and content are shown to users, how they handle user engagement and how children and teens are impacted.
Some companies, such as Apple, Microsoft and Mozilla, have taken strong stands on privacy. The platforms covered by the FTC’s order, however, have based much of their business on collecting user information. In many cases, there has been a lack of transparency about what data is collected and how it is used.
Hopefully the FTC’s inquiry is the first step toward stronger data protections for consumers.
Amazon has launched Amazon Shopper Panel, a program that will pay users for information on their non-Amazon purchases.
In addition to sales, one of the biggest benefits Amazon gains is access to customer and purchasing data. For purchases made outside Amazon, however, the company is largely in the dark.
To address that, Amazon has unveiled Amazon Shopper Panel. The program “is an opt-in, invitation-only program where participants can earn monthly rewards by sharing receipts from purchases made outside of Amazon.com and by completing short surveys.”
The company emphases its commitment to privacy, promising that Amazon only receives information that panelist explicitly share, and that panelists can stop at any time. In addition, panelist have the option to delete any previous receipts, and Amazon automatically deletes sensitive information, such as prescription receipts.
At this time the program is only available to a limited number of users, but those interested can join a waitlist to be informed when it becomes more widely available.
Microsoft’s approach to customer data could help the company make major headway against Salesforce.
Salesforce is one of the leading customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise application software companies in the US. According to Business Insider, Futurum Research analyst Dan Newman believes it could be at a big disadvantage versus Microsoft because of its focus on collecting data primarily from its own tools.
In contrast, Microsoft has moved towards openness in recent years, under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella. In the past, Microsoft was fiercely territorial about its own products and services. Windows and Office were Microsoft’s two cash cows, and the company was focused on keeping customers locked into that ecosystem.
Under Nadella, however, Microsoft has embraced other platforms and operating systems. Their focus has shifted to providing the best products, apps and services on any platform, rather than fiercely protecting their own.
This approach is serving it well in the CRM market, where Microsoft Dynamics 365 competes with Salesforce. Unlike Salesforce, Microsoft’s products integrate with a wide range of tools and services, including those from competitors. Microsoft seems to be taking the approach of being the central hub where that data comes together.
“We have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of out-of-the-box connectors that allow our customers to connect to the data they already have, wherever it is: Whether it’s sitting in a system 360 mainframe from the 1970s or it’s sitting in the latest-and-greatest SaaS business application,” said James Phillips, President of Microsoft’s Business Applications Group.
Microsoft’s efforts may force Salesforce to adapt in order to stay competitive.
“Every company is going to need a Data Czar, a data leader, a Chief Data Officer, over time,” says Splunk CEO Doug Merritt. “One of the big points of digitization is you now get a bunch of data that you didn’t have before so that you can actually begin to act in real-time on these different signals. That needs somebody that understands data and guides data across an organization.”
Doug Merritt, CEO of Splunk, discusses how big data has spurred the need for every enterprise company is ultimately going to need a Data Czar:
Big Data Drives Society Forward
Almost everything in the world has got some type of WiFi or network connection so there is a ton of data that is flying around the stratosphere at this moment. The difficulty is being able to capture that data and begin to make sense of it so you can serve customers more effectively, reduce costs, optimize your supply chain, and hear signals from your employee base.
All the different capabilities that if you understand big data, and cloud certainly helps dramatically there, you can actually drive society forward. It’s what we call turning data into action, bringing data to every question, every decision, and ultimately into every action, so that we can keep our organizations and our society moving forward.
Every Company Needs A Data Czar
Every company is going to need a data Czar, a data leader, a Chief Data Officer, over time. One of the big points of digitization is you now get a bunch of data that you didn’t have before so that you can actually begin to act in real-time on these different signals. That needs somebody that understands data and guides data across an organization.
That pull from corporations is what pulls companies like Splunk and others forward to help the technical population within those organizations to actually make sense of data. We also help the sales, marketing, and finance departments, and any people in organizations that are leaning more heavily on data gathering and data science in making sense there.
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.
Google Cloud has introduced Confidential Computing in a bid to help secure data in the cloud.
Google and Microsoft are both founding members of the Confidential Computing industry group. The goal of Confidential Computing is to encrypt and secure data while it is being used and processed. This is far different than current encryption methods, wherein data must be decrypted in order to access it. In its current incarnation, Google Cloud encrypts data in transit and at rest, but the data must be decrypted to work with.
Confidential Computing is a game-changer since it keeps data encrypted at every step of the process, including when the data is being accessed.
“Google Cloud encrypts data at-rest and in-transit, but customer data must be decrypted for processing,” write Nelly Porter, Senior Product Manager; Gilad Golan, Engineering Director, Confidential Computing; and Sam Lugani, Lead Security PMM, G Suite & GCP platform. “Confidential Computing is a breakthrough technology which encrypts data in-use—while it is being processed. Confidential Computing environments keep data encrypted in memory and elsewhere outside the central processing unit (CPU).
“Confidential VMs, now in beta, is the first product in Google Cloud’s Confidential Computing portfolio. We already employ a variety of isolation and sandboxing techniques as part of our cloud infrastructure to help make our multi-tenant architecture secure. Confidential VMs take this to the next level by offering memory encryption so that you can further isolate your workloads in the cloud. Confidential VMs can help all our customers protect sensitive data, but we think it will be especially interesting to those in regulated industries.”
This is an exciting development in the realm of cloud security, and specifically for Google Cloud. As the first major cloud provider to offer Confidential Computing, this is a big win for Google as it battles its larger rivals in the cloud space.
Apple unveiled the next version of macOS, named “Big Sur.” The design of the OS features a number of refinements.
Apple has repeatedly said it has no intention of merging iOS and macOS, as each has a place in the company’s ecosystem. That doesn’t mean they can’t benefit from each other, however, and it’s apparent that many of the Mac’s new features are inspired by some of the best features of iOS.
Interface
Craig Federighi highlighted Apple’s intention of making its various platform feel more cohesive, making it easier for users to move from one device to another.
The updated interface includes icons that are more reminiscent of iOS, as well as a more colorful interface and increased transparency.
Mac Catalyst
Mac Catalyst receives an upgrade in macOS Big Sur. Catalyst is the compatibility layer that makes it possible to port iOS and iPadOS apps to macOS
Developers will be able to optimize Catalyst apps to take full advantage of the Mac’s resolution. Apps will also have access to menu and keyboard APIs, as well as new controls, such as checkboxes and date pickers.
The new Maps and Messages are good examples of Catalyst apps.
Safari
Big Sur has the biggest update to Safari since it was introduced. The company has focused on performance, improving not only its already good JavaScript performance, but page-load performance as well.
Privacy will take center stage in Big Sur, making it much easier for users to see how websites attempt to track their data.
Web Extensions API will now make it easier to bring extension for other browsers over to Safari. There will be a new category in the Mac App Store to showcase Safari extensions.
Extensions will be managed in a way that preserves user privacy. Users will be able to manage what data an extension can access, as well as limitations on how long it can access that data.
Safari will also feature built-in translation. Safari will detect when it encounters a page that is not the same as the primary language on the computer and display a translate button. Clicking the button will translate the text, and even text off of the screen will dynamically translate as Safari scrolls down.
Next is Apple’s biggest announcement of the day: Custom Silicon
Antietam Broadband, based in Maryland, has boldly gone where big ISPs fear to tread: It has removed data caps permanently.
Many ISPs have data caps, but have temporarily waived them as more people are working and learning from home during the pandemic. Antietam Broadband, however, has decided its time for data caps to go the way of the dodo.
“These are uncertain times,” said Brian Lynch, President, Antietam Broadband. “We felt a need to give customers as much certainty over their bill as possible. Eliminating data usage caps means that customers will know the exact amount of their broadband bill every month.”
The company credits what it has learned during the pandemic for its decision to end the caps. As more people have come to rely on their internet service, the company has seen a trend toward people moving toward plans that better matched up with their needs.
“Since the pandemic began, we have seen as much increase in broadband usage as we generally would see over the course of a year,” continued Lynch.
Antietam Broadband is to be commended for putting its customers’ interests and needs first. Here’s to hoping some of the bigger ISPs will follow suit.