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VR: The Next Generation Of Immersive Technology

October 18, 2018 SAP

Throughout history, technology has “rewired” our brains and changed how we perceive the world. Since the printing press enabled a new world of readers more than 400 years ago, the way we create and deliver content has been constantly evolving.

The reason? Technology. In the past 100 years, communication technologies like the telephone, radio, movies, television, and most importantly, the internet, have become part of our daily lives.

How have these technologies rewired our brains? As we adopt and integrate each one into our lives, we develop a new relational and transformative experience that alters the way we communicate and perceive the world. The telephone made communication instantaneous, making physical distances less burdensome. The radio became the new storyteller, providing a novel way for people to get both information and entertainment. Movies combined sound with moving pictures, opening up a new world of storytelling. And television brought movies, news, and entertainment directly into the home.

The next disruptive communications breakthrough, the internet, has revolutionized the way we interact: We email. We tweet. We Facebook. We Google. We YouTube. We Snapchat. We Instagram. We find companionship. We conduct commerce. We debate. We become our own content producers.

Another consequence of evolving communications technology is a reduced attention span. We scan more, read less, and gravitate to more visual content. As a result, visually based immersive platforms appeal to our desire for “snackable,” easily digested content.

The allure of immersive

With each new technology, our immersive experiences deepen. Merriam-Webster defines immersive as “something that provides, involves, or is characterized by deep absorption or immersion in something.” Radio, telephone, movies, TV, and the internet do just that, albeit in differing degrees.

As content creators, we look to up-and-coming technology that will give us the next most impactful user experience. One of the most recent emerging technologies is virtual reality (VR), which uses computer technology to create a simulated environment. VR puts users “inside” an experience, immersing them in a three-dimensional user experience (UX) where can interact with simulated 3D worlds. It creates an artificial environment that gives the illusion of reality.

VR is more than just gaming

Virtual reality was first embraced by the gaming community but has since expanded into other areas. While cost and other factors may limit widespread consumer accessibility in the shorter term, adoption will continue to increase.

Let’s look at some of the current VR applications that are being developed and deployed:

Virtual 360-degree tours

Tourism: Entice travelers by taking them on virtual trips down the Amazon, around the Grand Canyon, or through the canals of Venice
Showrooms: Let customers check out furniture, motorboats, or cars before they buy
Real estate: Inspect homes, apartments, or office spaces virtually before seeing them in person

How-to applications

In-home assembly: Learn how to assemble furniture, telescopes, and other items to minimize “build-it-yourself” frustration
Fix it: Learn how to make repairs and fix appliances at home

Training

Medical: Observe surgeries and other medical procedures
Safety: Apply immersive experiences in real-life situations where safety is essential
First responders, police, and firefighters: Train police and firefighters to handle a variety of dangerous situations

Entertainment

Movies, TV, amusement parks, and arcades are using VR to offer a more compelling experience that goes beyond 3D glasses

Sports

College and professional sports teams are using VR for training and game analysis

Approaching the promise of VR

VR is a nascent technology, and what companies do with it requires a clear purpose. Start by asking the right questions: Why, what, where, and for whom? Answering these questions can help you identify the areas where VR can best be used.

Meanwhile, VR continues to engage people and offer exciting and instructive experiences. Here are some applications that many companies are already adopting:

Virtual HR tours for recruitment: Let applicants tour campuses, offices, and social gatherings. Show employees at work and at play, and showcase your organization’s diversity and energy.

Create customer stories: “Walk” customers around facilities, showing employees at work using the Internet of Things, machine learning, cloud-based software, and other technology.

Field services: Teams can integrate VR applications so that experts can see what technicians in the field are seeing, even if they are half a world apart.

New ways to understand data: “See” data analysis in innovative ways as they are manipulated in a 3D space.

Optimize product engineering, design, manufacturing, and operations: Help manufacturers understand how their processes are performing as they spot problems and areas that need improvement.

Virtual events: Enable customers or employees who can’t attend an event to take part by live-streaming content straight to social feeds. This makes it easier to reach a broader audience in real time.

Enhance live events and experiences: Use VR for storytelling and customer testimonials. On the showroom floor, demonstrate the newest VR applications. Live concerts can also be enhanced by providing customer attendees with a VR experience.

These scenarios are just the beginning of what’s to come. As we move into the future, one thing is clear: VR will lead the way as it alters the way people engage and consume content of all types. Customers’ ability to connect in more personal ways brings organizations more options than ever to use a future-thinking approach to the intelligent enterprise and beyond.

Sources

“10 Ambitious Predictions for How VR/AR Will Shape Our World,” Venture Beat, June 2, 2018.

“5 Trends in Virtual Reality for Events,” Event Manager Blog, June 8, 2018.

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Digitalist Magazine

B2B Leaders Learn About Digital Forces Shaping Their Industry at B2B Next

October 12, 2018 NetSuite

Posted by Ian McCue, Content Manager

At the start of the B2B Next Conference & Exhibition, conference founder Andy Hoar shared a revealing story. Six years ago, a company hired him to host a B2B ecommerce event and a dozen people showed up. Last week, 700 people sat in front of Hoar for the inaugural B2B Next event in Chicago, a clear sign of the tremendous interest in and growth of this field.

The two-day show included sessions and workshops designed to help B2B leaders build a digital-first business by attracting more buyers online, leveraging emerging technology like the Internet of Things and rethinking their business model for a subscription-based economy. Most of the attendees were manufacturers and distributors who realize the potential of ecommerce but have yet to be rocked by online commerce in the same way as consumer retail.

Here are a few highlights from the first annual B2B Next Conference & Expo:

Keeping distributors happy while selling direct

Distributors share a deep-seated fear that manufacturers will start selling direct to customers and eventually abandon them, the middle man. But HID Global VP Apryl Erickson explained how her business found a way to support both channels. HID Global is a leading manufacturer of physical and access control solutions best known for their ID cards that allow people to enter secure buildings like offices, schools and parking garages.

The company built a partner program that provides distributors with product go-to-market strategies, product image galleries, and a library of detailed item information. These tools help distributors provide exceptional customer experiences while protecting brand integrity. At the same time, HID Global allows company administrators and end users to manage their credentials directly on the company’s website. HID Global also has a program called Corporate 1000 where it manages all data for those customers.

What will the workplace of the future look like?

B2B Leaders Learn About Digital Forces Shaping Their Industry at B2B Next Internet of Things (IoT) is a popular buzzword, but how will it affect our jobs and lives in the years to come? Sam Ganga, partner at KPMG, explained how IoT devices powered by artificial intelligence could, for example, quickly identify the SKU and corresponding issue that prevented your business from meeting its forecasted revenue last month. Businesses must figure out how to use IoT in their operations and scale it to succeed in the age of the 21^st century enterprise.

Ganga laid out the four pillars he thinks will be critical in this new age:

Customer engagement: Companies will focus on providing a full experience for the customer by finding the right products and services that maximize benefits, even if a partner provides some of those products and services.
Changing nature and value of assets: Organizations will trade in an asset-heavy supply chain for an asset-light supply network with strategic alliances.
Everything-as-a-service: To stay lean and agile, businesses need subscription-based technology that does not require complex in-house infrastructure and a large IT staff.
Workforce of the future: Employees will be worried about income security, not job security, meaning they may work three jobs and will not be “captive” workers.

Taking Advantage of AI Starts with Clean Data

AI recently entered the public lexicon, but it’s not a new concept. Seth Earley of Earley Information Science pointed out that search algorithms and spell check, both of which have been around for years, use machine learning and are a form of AI.

Earley also noted that AI will only help your business if you have clean, accurate data and it’s important to identify the sources and owners of this data, a challenging and time-consuming but necessary task. Even as people increasingly rely on technology to make decisions, humans must still make judgments and ensure processes are not broken. They must define the governance, curation and scalable processes around data collection that power AI. Otherwise, it won’t do much for your business.

How Connected Devices Can Help Farmers and Contractors

IoT has practical applications for even the most old-school industries. Davie Sweiss, a VP at Bosch, detailed how farmers in South America struggled to feed their cattle the proper amount of food or recognize if something was wrong with an animal because there was no simple way to weigh them. So farmers equipped their cows with sensors that link to a scale they must cross whenever they are fed, weighing them every day and storing that valuable information in the cloud.

Sweiss also talked about how technology helped construction contractors address the problem of lost equipment – they lose $ 40,000 worth of equipment, on average, per project. Sub-contractors check out tools, but sometimes they misplace or never return the equipment. Bosch sells a sensor that a contractor can attach to these tools and track online to minimize those losses. Sweiss’ overarching message was that organizations must think about how software and services can help them resolve straightforward issues that lack a clear solution.

These are the B2B trends and strategies companies must think about now to remain relevant and successful in the years to come. While a solid ecommerce platform is a key part of that equation, it is not the only thing businesses need to think about. Leveraging data in innovative ways with IoT and AI leads to smarter, faster decisions that will help manufacturers and distributors thrive.

It’s time for B2B companies to catch up to everyone else.

To learn more about how a unified ecommerce platform can help B2B companies, read this ebook or listen to this podcast.

Posted on Wed, October 10, 2018
by NetSuite filed under

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The NetSuite Blog

Splunk .conf 2018 Showcases What’s Next for Splunkers from Mobile to the Cloud

October 12, 2018 Big Data

Ian Hartley

October 11, 2018

Splunk’s annual .conf event returned to Orlando last week and this time, like every other time, it was bigger and better. Hosted at the same Disney location used in 2016, attendance had grown to nearly 10,000 (plus 125,000 online viewers!); sponsors had increased in number; and extra venues were needed to accommodate everything that was taking place.

Ahead of the conference, the big question in my mind was what else can they do? They have buttoned-up security, IT Ops, general analytics and lots more besides. Several acquisitions have also boosted their solutions. Where else can Splunk go? The answer: Splunk Next

A Closer Look at Splunk Next

Like Syncsort, Splunk is a fast-moving organization that seems to be able to tap into and ride current technology waves. And Splunk certainly have been doubling-down on pushing to the next level.

Over the course of two morning keynotes and across 350+ technical sessions, Splunk announced and showcased several updates, new products and add-ons which they rolled out under the Splunk Next banner:

Splunk Developer Cloud	Learn to write Splunk applications natively in the cloud
Splunk Business Flow	Analytics-driven approach into customer/user’s interactions and identify ways to optimize those interactions and processes
Splunk Data Fabric Search	Seamlessly expand search, monitoring and alerting
Splunk Data Stream Processor	Refine, modify and adjust data mid-stream within milliseconds before the data reaches its destination
Splunk Cloud Gateway	Gain secure cloud service with end-to-end encryption for easy mobile engagement through simple to install Splunk Enterprise app for Mobile (SPLAP)
Splunk Augmented Reality	By simply scanning a QR code or NFC tag, enjoy direct access to the Splunk dashboard and live augmented reality Splunk-powered gauges on top of real-world objects
Splunk Mobile	See actionable alerts and mobile-friendly dashboards on mobile devices through our Splunk Mobile App
Splunk Natural Language	Splunk Natural Language allows users to query a system and ask question of Splunk without knowing Search Processing Language (SPL)
Splunk Insights for Web and Mobile Apps	Address the needs of app developers and app operators who struggle to improve the quality of experience delivered by their apps
Splunk TV	View Splunk on any peripheral device instead of having to purchase a dedicated PC

Oh, and of course key product updates such as:

Splunk Enterprise 7.2	The latest iteration of their core product
Splunk Machine Learning Toolkit 4.0	Enhanced ML toolkit
IT Service Intelligence 4.0	Updated ITSI with improved Machine Learning

…and probably a whole bunch of others I have missed. There were so many.

Phew! The Splunk Teams have been very busy. Some great innovations announced.

It was certainly impressive to see new infrastructure pieces, user interfaces, and even a live demonstration of charts and metrics overlaid on real pieces of equipment with a very cool implementation of mobile augmented reality. Plus, new facilities like Business Flow, Data Fabric Search and Stream Processor will go a long way to improving both performance and data operations.

However, all these shiny new things are currently part of the Splunk Beta Program so perhaps they have been a little too busy over the last 12 months? Regardless, some very neat technologies were revealed and should be available soon.

Additional Highlights from Splunk .conf 2018

Another notable this year was the energized hum felt by many attendees. Syncsort certainly saw an impressive footfall at our booth in the “source=*Pavilion” sponsor area. Our team held in-depth discussion about our Splunk solutions, carried out many interactive Ironstream demos (for z/OS and IBM i), and captured great quality leads. People just seemed to “get it” this year.

Overall there was a positive buzz that was picked up by many. Our own David Normandeau (VP, North America Sales and show veteran) commented that this – his first .conf – was the best show he had ever been to.

A couple of user session highlights of the week were:

“Splunking the Mainframe for Real-time Insights at the Erie Insurance”
Syncsort’s John Reda, VP Data Infrastructure Optimization R&D, hosted an open discussion with Susan Fassette of Erie on how they have created over 220 dashboards with real-time data supplied via Ironstream. This is helping them replace incumbent monitoring tools, save money, and broaden access to valuable data.

“Discover Your Hidden Million Dollar Mainframe Treasure”
Another impressive presentation was given by David McPherson from ANZ Bank. He outlined how they have managed to save big $ $ $ in annual mainframe costs by leveraging data supplied by Ironstream!”

Splunk added some special extras to the event too – beyond the usual Splunking your golf swing, F1 driving performance and interactive mobile Buttercup games.

On day three the breakfast keynote hosted Silicon Valley icon and philanthropist Steve Wozniak for a fireside technology chat with Splunk’s own Susan St. Ledger. The “Woz” gave his spin on tech trends such as Artificial Intelligence…which, according to him, can recognize a real dog, but struggles when the same dog is painted on a wall. He also meandered through the ebbs and flows of his varied career from giving his own money and time away for education, to offering advice on how to lead your life…often having to return with “What was the question?” before deliberating further. Altogether a fascinating insight into how technology has grown, where it is going and the impact it can have.

Also, as part of the Splunk4Good initiative, a special breakout was organized for volunteer Splunkers to help package 100,000 meals for the worthy Rise Against Hunger campaign supporting international hunger relief. The Splunk community was all-in!

Plus, it was noted that there was a greater diversity of attendees this year. Specifically, the number of women appeared to have increased significantly, perhaps helped by Splunk promoting select events with the “Women in Tech” momentum.

But, for some, to top it all, was the infamous “Search Party” on the Wednesday evening. This year Splunk hired Universal’s Islands of Adventure™ theme park where most attendees and fez-wearing Splunk Trust members (evangelists of everything Splunk) let their inner child out and had some fun. …although one member of the Syncsort team nearly had a buffer overflow condition after riding The Incredible Hulk Coaster® followed by The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man™. Us Syncsort’ers like to live life to the full, plus a little…

For me, as a techie, it was a great .conf. Having sat in back-to-back sessions for three days, I now have a head full of ideas of what “Ironstream Next” may be. Watch this space…

But, what’s next for Splunk? Let’s wait and see. Splunk .conf 2019 is a whole year away and, like Syncsort, they can do a lot in that time frame! October next year could bring “Splunk Next, Next” perhaps.

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Syncsort Blog

How PaaS Takes Your Cloud Delivery To The Next Level

September 19, 2018 BI News and Info

Throughout history, decentralization of systems has always resulted in more robust and agile mechanisms. Whether the organization of large empires or mutually beneficial trading relationships, decentralized systems have successfully multiplied the impact of resources while retaining the ability to adapt to stresses without major structural change.

In recent centuries, the economies of scale prompted a move to integrated systems that produced large volumes of products at low purchase prices to consumers. However, certain advantages of distributed systems were lost or compromised in the process. As we enter the age of AI, machine learning, and IoT-enabled digital transformation, we have the unique opportunity to meld the greatest advantages of both into one powerful, agile, and highly productive approach.

Platform as a Service (PaaS), also called application platform as a service or platform-based service, is a category of cloud computing services. It provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage applications without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typically associated with developing and launching an app.

PaaS solutions and services support your development capabilities, which help you extend, integrate, and build innovative applications in less time. In effect, these solutions provide a significantly higher level of capability and agility than legacy infrastructure – without the hassle of maintaining, authenticating, and patching servers and other traditional hardware. PaaS expands possibilities through the incorporation of workflows, APIs, programming languages, development and deployment tools, as well as database capabilities, among other powerful features.

Apps and software-based solutions are rightly regarded as some of the most dramatic enhancements in productivity, process integration, and service-level enhancements. The immense distributed and interactive intelligence they enable is a game-changer for our civilization, let alone individual business models. The PaaS model ushers in a new era of centralized resources, multiplied dramatically by distributed and synergistic systems.

A striking new way to organize digital systems and interfaces

Legacy models for the development of apps required servers, software, data security, and multiple software dependencies – with continual updates – and complex hardware systems requiring ongoing structured maintenance, as well as considerable financial investment. Any infrastructure incorporated into this system was prone to becoming outdated and even obsolete quite rapidly. PaaS, on the other hand, can deliver click-and-code solutions through the use of cloud-based tools, servers, and programming environments, enabling apps to be rapidly developed and hosted with very low upfront costs.

As a solution, PaaS is focused on providing the tools and technologies to create an intelligent enterprise that allows a connected user to orchestrate the entire business and all its functions from a single device. It sets the user free from the dependence of static and stationary infrastructure, allowing information to talk and share its “stories,” rationalizing the business process. PaaS empowers intelligent technologies that are predictive rather than reactive, setting enabling operational excellence and underpinning real-time enterprise mobility in the field.

Integrating functions more economically, fast, and secure

Danish company Vestas Wind Systems, a seller, operator, and servicing provider for wind turbines, provides a dramatic case in point. The company now conducts its complex maintenance tasks with the help of administrative processes that primarily use mobile devices. The entire process integration required no complex redevelopment work and provides field workers real-time access to all relevant enterprise data. PaaS empowered the company to improve compliance, optimizing productivity and integration of processes in a backend-agnostic fashion.

Herfy, Saudi Arabia’s premier fast food chain, has built on a PaaS solution to provide native iOS apps that enable its customers to order their burgers and fries using an app. Oman-based OTE Group, with business interests that span from the automotive industry to home appliances, is making PaaS a central initiative in its digital transformation, using the technology to allow its staff to access enterprise IT infrastructure from their mobile phones. In yet another transformative initiative, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology has enabled online access for several campus facilities and services using PaaS.

Creating synergies and an empowered business ecosystem

PaaS is a generator of mutually beneficial partnerships through enhanced optionality and agility. SAP recently introduced a new consumption plan for customers enabling a future where customer transactions are seamless and where our customers aren’t just happier – they’re better and more competitive than ever before.

What customers truly value with this plan is the amount of flexibility it provides to their development teams to support the rapid changes required by the business. The IT and development teams can test the latest technologies – blockchain, machine learning, and AI – in their test and development systems with zero cost.

To help customers leverage these new technologies and solutions, the SAP Co-Innovation Lab provides project-based co-innovation to enhance the capabilities and knowledge of our customers and partners. Co-innovation is one of our major commitments, because it is the most effective way to demonstrate how we can deliver true business outcomes.

One critical component of a PaaS is a mobility platform. The mobility platform simplifies the development, configuration, and ability to manage multiple applications. This is achieved by providing a collection of tools and services, such as SDKs for Apple and Android, that empower developers to rapidly build world-class enterprise apps that run anywhere, anytime on any device.

All good PaaS providers will also typically provide an associated app center. An app center is a digital, enterprise marketplace where customers can discover, try, buy, manage, and deploy trusted applications that have been built using the tools and services from the PaaS provider. Most app centers will allow customers to discover information about solutions and services, read user reviews, look up certifications, and start conversations with various partners and developers.

This provides businesses that adopt this approach with a strategic advantage over their competitors to deploy solutions far more economically at a pace significantly faster than traditional approaches.

For further information and insights regarding the powerful capabilities and possibilities that PaaS technology can enable, please visit SAP Cloud Platform.

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Digitalist Magazine

Why Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is the Next Generation of NetSuite Service Delivery

September 6, 2018 NetSuite

Why Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is the Next Generation of NetSuite Service Delivery

Posted by Brian Chess, Global VP of Infrastructure, Security, and Compliance

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure blends all of the advantages of the public cloud with the control, security, and predictability of on-prem infrastructure to deliver high-performance, high availability, and cost-effective infrastructure services.

Designed to take on the most demanding workloads, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure combines compute, networking, storage, database, connectivity, and governance to create a complete, reliable technology ecosystem—all in the cloud.

As the next generation of NetSuite service delivery, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure allows us to automatically and programmatically allocate compute resources, storage, the database, and the network. It was built for Oracle's largest customers to run the hardest pieces of their applications, so they don’t have to.

Supporting both database- and Java-driven applications (NetSuite is both!), Oracle Cloud Infrastructure combines multiple availability domains allowing for the performance that enterprises need with strong availability guarantees.

5 Ways NetSuite Benefits from Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure allow us to leverage the thousands of developers and operations personnel that are working on the platform today. So, as a foundation of our service, we get all of the advantage of the work that these technology gurus do on a daily basis.
We also benefit from the improvements in efficiency, reliability, performance, and security that the very “elastic” Oracle Cloud Infrastructure was built upon. As a result, NetSuite can continuously deploy infrastructure (i.e., when we need a new computer, we can call the API and turn it on—simple as that).
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s built-in resilience ensures unsurpassed continuity of service. This allows Oracle to provide the performance that enterprises need with world-class uptime guaranteed.
The platform also provides revolutionary improvements, and not only in how the customer-facing portions of the service are delivered. It also positively impacts our engineers’ ability to test and iterate on the service before the NetSuite platform is delivered to the customer.
Finally, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is global, and continues to expand. Thanks to its broad geographic coverage, NetSuite can take advantage of the infrastructure’s global footprint to follow our customers as we expand around the globe (and as an added bonus, we can also leverage the massive investment that Oracle is making in the infrastructure).

Stay Tuned, There’s More to Come

I’ve personally witnessed a lot of changes over my time at NetSuite but Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is a game changer. I couldn’t be more excited. Stay tuned.

Click here to see more.

Posted on Thu, September 6, 2018
by NetSuite filed under

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The NetSuite Blog

Intelligent Enterprise For Oil And Gas: The Next Frontier In Operational Excellence

September 1, 2018 BI News and Info

After the oil price shock in 2014 and the loss of significant jobs worldwide, a distressed oil and gas industry saw back-to-back years of negative spending, especially in the upstream sector, for the first time this century. After three years of cost optimization and structural streamlining, the oil and gas industry has begun to embrace the potential for innovative intelligent technologies to enhance performance and profitability to secure its future. They now realize data is the new oil, and there is plenty of this “new oil” lingering in siloed islands in the oil and gas enterprise. There is a huge potential to monetize this data and achieve a step change in efficiency across the value chain.

Oil and gas companies were pioneers of the first digital age in the 1980s and 1990s. Long before phrases such as Big Data, advanced analytics, and the Internet of Things became popular, oil and gas executives were using 3-D, seismic, linear program modeling of refineries and advanced process control for operations. However, advancements in the technology will help the oil and gas industry leapfrog to the next level of efficiency.

As the upstream oil and gas industry has been generating millions of petabytes of data from oil fields, it makes perfect sense to leverage intelligent technologies to make sense of the vast amount of data they possess for managing profitability at the wellhead level and achieving significant, tangible benefits from improved performance efficiencies and better compliance.

Similarly, downstream companies have a huge amount of data emanating from refinery plant systems, sensors, SCADA systems, etc. Imagine a scenario where an oil and gas company can reduce unplanned shutdowns by proactively monitoring its assets or improve “days in inventory” by enabling real-time visibility of the inventory across the supply chain, resulting in enhanced cash flow.

With the help of intelligent technologies, oil and gas companies can achieve the “Digital Energy Network” with connected assets, connected workers, connected logistics, and connected oilfields. According to research, the most significant impacts of intelligent enterprise (IE) technologies on oil and gas will be cost optimization, high-level process automation, new business models, and enhanced productivity.

Does this mean IE technology will lead to the next level of operational excellence? The answer is a definitive yes, based on the experience of early adopters. Per McKinsey research, the effective use of digital (intelligent) technologies in the oil and gas sector could reduce capital expenditures by up to 20%; it could cut upstream operating costs by three to five percent and by about half that in the downstream.

In early June 2017, BP purchased Beyond Limits, an AI and cognitive computing startup that is adapting NASA technology designed for deep-space exploration to meet the needs of the upstream sector. The oil giant’s corporate and technology investment arm was evidently keen to see if the startup’s expertise can aid its own push towards smarter digital operations. BP’s chief digital innovation officer, Morag Watson, commented: “Our strategic co-operation with Beyond Limits is a perfect fit with BP’s vision of using digital technology to help transform our organization. We believe artificial intelligence will be one of the most critical digital technologies to drive new levels of performance across the industry.”

Similarly, other major energy companies, including Exxon and Chevron, have been using cognitive technologies to analyze seismic data and detect anomalies. Shell built an IE model to transform end-to-end business to meet the growing demand for energy.

As energy needs keep growing, energy companies will leverage the IE to meet this ever-increasing demand at the most optimized cost and the highest efficiency in a sustainable way to reach the next frontier of operational excellence. These operational excellence gains will provide other oil and gas companies with a value case to start their journey right now.

Learn more about how IoT and Machine Learning Are “Refueling” The Oil And Gas Industry.

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Digitalist Magazine

Voice: The Next Big Breakthrough In Enterprise Computing

August 26, 2018 BI News and Info

Voice is set to be the biggest enterprise tech disruption since the smartphone — if we can overcome the remaining practical difficulties.

Over the decades, computer interaction has slowly become more natural, with the computers adapting to users rather than the other way around, with the slow progression from punch cards to keyboards and computer mouse devices.

Currently, touch interfaces are the default standard in almost any device that includes a screen, from cameras to cars (and they’re habit-forming! Am I the only one who occasionally tries to swipe TV screens or pinch-to-zoom in on paper images?). Now it’s time for the inevitable big step: talking to your corporate device. In the movies, at least, we’ve been talking to computers for a long time, from Jarvis in “Iron Man” to this famous scene in “Star Trek IV,” where Scotty tries to issue instructions to a 1980s computer:

[embedded content]

Of course, voice assistants have been available in mobile phones for years — Apple’s Siri came out in 2011. But they have had limited impact on corporate environments so far.

What’s changing is that advances in computing power and machine learning have enabled computers to transcribe speech better than human beings, and then accurately interpret the result, without cumbersome coding. And the new systems can more efficiently update themselves, learning from their mistakes rather than requiring explicit instruction.

The number of voice-enabled devices continues to skyrocket — over 50 million of them are expected to be sold this year and the global voice tech industry is expected to reach US$ 126.5 billion by 2023.

There are real benefits to voice interfaces for workers, especially compared to fiddly mobile keyboards. A study earlier this year by researchers from Stanford University, the University of Washington, and Baidu USA found that voice input with mobile devices was nearly three times faster than typing, will little difference in the error rate between the two types of input.

One of the biggest benefits of voice interfaces is that they can provide a “universal remote control” to enterprise business systems. Google has already demonstrated that voice can be used to connect computers to people-based systems, for example setting up an appointment at the hair salon:

[embedded content]

These kinds of connections can make even more sense in the corporate world. Every large organization has many different applications, and providing a coherent workflow across them has always required coding, which can be slow and expensive. But if the systems are all voice-enabled, workers can easily switch from one to another without requiring any explicit integration.

In addition, it’s likely that enterprise systems will start talking to each other. It’s very difficult to implement universal standards in computing, and using voice — although obviously inefficient — could be a very pragmatic short-term solution for system integration. We’re already seeing this in the consumer world, with the recent news that Amazon’s Alexa can now “talk to” Microsoft’s Cortana and vice-versa.

All these advances mean that corporate digital assistants are going mainstream, providing chat and voice interfaces to a full range of corporate business activities, including easy access to HR information like outstanding vacation days:

[embedded content]

Voice is also becoming part of innovative service approaches. For example, Workheld provides innovative field management systems to increase the productivity of construction- and service processes. The company uses machine learning and text analytics technology to automatically match customer jobs with the most appropriate technician, with hands-free voice interfaces to help workers through maintenance steps.

There are still some problems with voice interfaces — for example, it can be hard (or just embarrassing) to use in a busy office where there’s a lot of background noise. As ever, technology companies are working on solutions: for example, more advanced noise cancellation using AI, picking out your voice in a crowd, reading your lips, or even detecting your words directly through your jaw, without you having to say them out loud (so maybe the future is actually about voiceless voice interfaces?!).

There are also clear dangers. For example, all those microphones provide ample opportunities for nefarious eavesdropping and personal tracking (from George Orwell’s 1984: “there was always the danger of concealed microphones by which your voice might be picked up and recognized “)

And how will corporate security be enforced with voice interfaces when algorithms can create uncannily accurate synthesized speech? There are already problems with corporate “vishing” today — what will happen when the distinctive (but faked) voice of your CEO connects to the system to request an exceptional wire transfer? (Or when your teenage daughter calls you to say she’s in trouble and needs money?!).

Overall, I expect there to be huge leaps in voice adoption in the enterprise this year, primarily through optional voice interaction with chatbot interfaces. You can read more in this Digitalist Magazine Executive Quarterly article I helped co-author: “Say What?!”

And then we can all look forward to the next big interface wave in the enterprise: artificial and augmented reality.

This article originally appeared in Digital Business & Business Analytics.

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Digitalist Magazine

Blockchain: The Next Wave of Industry 4.0

August 22, 2018 TIBCO Spotfire

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The TIBCO Blog

New eBook! Passing Your Next Audit: The Challenges of Properly Securing Your IBM i and Maintaining Compliance

August 19, 2018 Big Data

Passing Your Next Audit The Challenges of Properly Securing Your IBM i and Maintaining Compliance New eBook! Passing Your Next Audit: The Challenges of Properly Securing Your IBM i and Maintaining Compliance

Griffin Binko

August 18, 2018

To achieve a security posture that is a real deterrent to theft or fraud – whether perpetrated by external or internal actors – a determined, consistent effort is required that combines the right mix of technologies, expertise and best practices. Syncsort’s eBook, “Passing Your Next Audit: The Challenges of Properly Securing Your IBM i and Maintaining Compliance,” is intended to give you some insights in this direction.

Achieving optimal security on the IBM i isn’t so much a destination as it is a journey that’s marked by a continual series of efforts toward improvement. Organizations that run business applications on IBM i must adequately secure their systems to meet compliance regulations; however, being in compliance doesn’t mean your IBM i is fully secured.

Download our eBook to learn security challenges commonly faced by staff at IBM i shops in their efforts to harden security and pass compliance audits, including:

Enforcing security and compliance policies
Defending against unauthorized access (particularly via open-source protocols)
Auditing and tracing suspicious activity
Keeping sensitive data away from prying eyes
Limiting powerful profiles

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Cybersecurity startup Exabeam raises $50 million to be ‘the next Splunk’

August 14, 2018 Big Data

Exabeam, a cybersecurity startup that leverages big data, machine learning, and analytics to detect and respond to cyber threats, has raised $ 50 million in a series D round of funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Cisco Investments, Norwest Venture Partners, Aspect Ventures, Icon Ventures, and Shlomo Kramer.

Founded in 2013, San Mateo-based Exabeam is one of a number of security information and event management (SIEM) platforms that analyzes companies’ log data sources to establish what “normal” behavior looks so it can flag abnormal activities and allocate a risk score. The more abnormal activities detected, the higher the risk score. It can take a few weeks to build up a picture of what constitutes “normality” in a company, but with access to historical data this can be reduced to days.

Exabeam had previously raised around $ 65 million in funding, including a $ 30 million raise last year, and with another $ 50 million in the bank it plans to “grow its cloud portfolio” and double down on global expansion.

“The next Splunk”

Exabeam faces a number of big-name competitors, such as Splunk, which went public on the Nasdaq six years ago. Splunk‘s shares are riding on the crest of a wave, having been at well over $ 100 for the past six months — significantly over its 2012 IPO price of $ 17. With full confidence, Exabeam claims its investors are actually touting the startup as “the next Splunk.”

“The new funding will allow us to invest heavily in our new cloud solutions and reach even more enterprises around the world,” said Exabeam CEO Nir Polak. “We are on track to overtake Splunk and be the next SIEM market leader.”

Elsewhere, AlienVault, which also operates in the SIEM realm, was snapped up by AT&T just last month. A number of big funding rounds have emerged in the broader cybersecurity sphere in recent months, including CrowdStrike, which raised $ 200 million at a $ 3 billion valuation and Cylance, which raised $ 120 million.

The SIEM cybersecurity market is reportedly set to reach $ 4.5 billion in 2019.

“After just five years in business, Exabeam is rapidly gaining market share and winning deals 70 percent of the time when pitted head-to-head with the incumbent,” added Lightspeed Venture Partners’ Ravi Mhatre. “That simply cannot be ignored.”

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New eBook! Passing Your Next Audit: The Challenges of Properly Securing Your IBM i and Maintaining Compliance

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Cybersecurity startup Exabeam raises $50 million to be ‘the next Splunk’

“The next Splunk”

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