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AI Weekly: Amazon went wide with Alexa; now it’s going deep

September 26, 2020 Big Data

Amazon’s naked ambition to become part of everyone’s daily lives was on full display this week at its annual hardware event. It announced a slew of new Alexa-powered devices, including a home surveillance drone, a suite of Ring-branded car alarm systems, and miscellany like an adorable little kids’ Echo device. But it’s clear Amazon’s strategy has shifted, even if only for a product cycle, from going wide to going deep.

Last year, Amazon baked its virtual assistant into any household device that could accommodate a chip. Its list of new widgets with Alexa seemed a mile long and included a menagerie of home goods, like lamps and microwaves. The company also announced device partnerships that ensure Alexa would live on some devices alongside other virtual assistants, tools to make it easier for developers to create Alexa skills, networking devices and capabilities, and wearables. It was a volume play and an aggressive bid to build out its ecosystem in even more markets.

This year, Amazon had fewer devices to announce, but it played up ways it has made Alexa itself better than ever. That’s the second prong of the strategy here: Get Alexa everywhere, then improve the marquee features such that the experience for users eclipses anything the competition offers.

As is always the case at these sorts of events, Amazon talked big and dreamy about all the new Alexa features. Users will find out for themselves whether this is the real deal or just hype when Amazon rolls out updates over the course of the next year (they’re landing on smart home devices first). But on paper and in the staged demos, Alexa’s new capabilities certainly seem to bring it a step closer to the holy grail of speaking to a virtual assistant just like talking to a person.

That’s the crux of what Amazon says it has done to improve Alexa, imbuing it with AI to make it more humanlike. This includes picking up nuances in speech and adjusting its own cadence, asking its human conversation partner for clarifications to fill in knowledge, and using feedback like “Alexa, that’s wrong” to learn and correct itself.

Amazon is particularly proud of the new natural turn-taking capabilities, which help Alexa understand the vagaries of human conversation. For example, in a staged demo two friends talked about ordering a pizza through an Alexa device. Like normal humans, they didn’t use each other’s names in the conversation, they paused to think, they changed their minds and adjusted the order, and so on. Alexa “knew” when to chime in, as well as when they were talking to each other and not to the Alexa device.

At the event, Alexa VP and head scientist Rohit Prasad said this required “real invention” and that the team went beyond just natural language processing (NLP) to embrace multisensory AI — acoustic, linguistic, and visual cues. And he said those all happen locally, on the device itself.

This is thanks to Amazon’s new AZ1 Neural Edge processor, which is designed to accelerate machine learning applications on-device instead of in the cloud. In the event liveblog, Amazon said: “With AZ1, powerful inference engines can run quickly on the edge — starting with an all-neural speech recognition model that will process speech faster, making Alexa even more responsive.” There are scant details available about the chip, but it likely portends a near future when Alexa devices are able to do more meaningful virtual assisting without an internet connection.

Given the utter lack of information about the AZ1, it’s impossible to say what it can or can’t do. But it would a potential game changer if it was able to handle all of Alexa’s new tricks on devices as simple as an Echo smart speaker. There could be positive privacy implications, too, if users were able to enjoy a newly powerful Alexa on-device, keeping their voice recordings from Amazon’s cloud.

But for Amazon, going deep isn’t just about a more humanlike Alexa; it involves pulling people further into its ecosystem, which Amazon hopes is the sum of adding device and service ubiquity to more engaging user experiences.

Part of that effort centers on Ring devices, which now include not just front-door home security products but also car security products and a small autonomous drone for the inside of your home. They’re essentially surveillance devices — and taken together, they form an ecosystem of surveillance devices and services that Amazon owns, and that connects to law enforcement. You can buy into it as deeply as you want, creating a surveillance bubble inside your home, around your home, and on board your vehicles, regardless of where you’ve parked them. The tension over Ring devices — what and who they record, where those recordings go, and who uses them for what purpose — will only be amplified by this in-home drone and the car alarm and camera.

Whether Amazon goes deep or wide, what hasn’t changed is that it wants to be omnipresent in our lives. And with every event’s worth of new devices and capabilities, the company takes another step closer to that goal.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

ProBeat: The TikTok acquisition is not going to happen

September 12, 2020 Big Data

When I wrote about the forced TikTok acquisition last month, I spelled out what everyone wants. The Trump administration wants trouble for TikTok (and China), Microsoft wants TikTok’s data (and algorithm), and parent company ByteDance wants to be in charge of its own destiny (and revenues). Oracle has since waded in as a potential acquirer (which makes even less sense than Microsoft as the buyer) and China is starting to throw its weight around. Plenty has happened, and yet we’re no closer to a resolution before U.S. President Donald Trump’s September 15 sell-by deadline. A month ago, I didn’t think Microsoft would acquire TikTok. Now I don’t think we’ll see a TikTok acquisition at all.

I’m not saying this because CNBC reported a deal would be announced last week and then nothing happened. Nor am I reading too much into this week’s reports: The Wall Street Journal says ByteDance is talking with the Trump administration about avoiding a sale of its U.S. TikTok operations, while Bloomberg says ByteDance is probably going to miss the deadline. (Update at 10:50 a.m. Pacific: Reuters says China prefers TikTok shutting down in the U.S. instead of a forced sale.)

To me, all of these reports merely indicate that the reasons against a deal keep mounting. Meanwhile, the arguments for a deal were never there to begin with — they were artificially imposed. Putting aside the fact that forcing foreign businesses to sell their most prized possession is inherently problematic, here are the obstacles discouraging a TikTok acquisition.

Trump

This whole brouhaha began when Trump gave Microsoft 45 days to seal a TikTok deal. That is an inadequate amount of time for any U.S. company to pull off an acquisition that was never on the table in their wildest dreams, let alone one as complicated as that of a social app owned by a Chinese company with users around the world. Such pressure certainly gets potential parties talking, but it also makes them less likely to address all the dirty details that in normal circumstances take months to hammer out.

Next, Trump wants a cut of TikTok’s sale price. Ignoring the dangerous precedent such a demand sets, whose pocket is that slice going to come out of? Neither party has reason to pay what amounts to “key money” — in Trump’s own words — an illegal real estate finder’s fee. The demand only makes a deal less appealing.

TikTok

Adding more friction, TikTok is suing the Trump administration over his executive order that bans U.S. transactions with TikTok starting on September 20. What will the courts say about that — and will they say it in the next week? If the courts don’t make a move, TikTok clones that are stealing its users will soon be stealing its U.S. revenues, making the app even less attractive to potential buyers.

Complicating matters further, all the acquisition talks have been focused on TikTok’s North American, Australian, and New Zealand operations. That means a potential acquirer isn’t getting the whole app, nor all its users and data. TikTok wouldn’t just be separated from ByteDance, but also from TikTok’s other regions, adding to the long list of technical challenges such a deal would entail.

Speaking of which, nobody can articulate exactly how TikTok’s data would be moved from ByteDance to a new parent company. TikTok applies machine learning to that data to determine which videos you are most likely to engage with, so it can serve you more similar content or content that people with similar preferences like. But it’s not clear whether TikTok’s AI algorithm — the real value of a potential deal — would come along for the ride.

Xi

Not coincidentally, China added AI tech to its export control list late last month, including “personalized content recommendations based on data analysis.” Translation: TikTok’s AI algorithm is not for sale. In case the message didn’t hit home, China’s state media quoted a government advisor saying ByteDance should study the new export list and “seriously and cautiously” consider halting deal negotiations. This is just another battle in the AI arms race, in which the U.S. is ahead and China is closing in.

The U.S. has a problematic deadline and finder’s fee, the lawsuit and technical challenges aren’t helping, and China wants to deny any sort of acquisition that involves TikTok’s most valuable asset.

Furthermore, China’s President Xi Jinping can and will play the long game. While Trump is constrained by a pesky problem known as the U.S. Constitution (Amendment XXII limits the office of the president to two terms), Xi abolished presidential term limits in 2018.

I, like everyone else, have no idea what will ultimately happen. Trump could save face by announcing that a deal has been reached, with no follow-up forthcoming. (He’s certainly made tech announcements that weren’t his to make before.) Or ByteDance could attempt to appease Trump by announcing some sort of “deal” and then dragging its feet until an alternative is reached. That would fit neatly into Xi’s playbook.

What I can say is that with each passing day, “the TikTok acquisition” looks less and less like a done deal.

ProBeat is a column in which Emil rants about whatever crosses him that week.

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Big Data – VentureBeat

Alphabet revenue dropped in Q2 2020, the first decline since going public

July 31, 2020 Big Data

(Reuters) — Google parent Alphabet’s quarterly sales fell for the first time in its 16 years as a public company, but the decline was less than expected as many advertisers stuck with the most popular online search engine during the pandemic.

Shares of Alphabet fell 1.2% to $ 1,518.85 after it released the second-quarter results. The stock had rebounded early Thursday to this year’s pre-pandemic high of about $ 1,525.

With its mostly free tools for web browsing, video watching and teleconferencing, Google unit has become a larger part of many consumers’ lives during the pandemic as lockdown orders force people to rely on the internet for work and entertainment.

But advertisers on Google have suffered mass layoffs and other cutbacks during the pandemic, and marketing budgets are often the first to get slashed especially by big clients like travel search engines, airlines and hotels.

Google’s ads business has long trended with the broader economy, and the U.S. economy contracted at its steepest pace since the Great Depression in the second quarter, the Commerce Department said on Thursday.

Google appeared to weather the slowdown better than before, as the pandemic has made the internet more attractive to advertisers than TV, radio and other avenues.

“This quarter, we saw the early signs of stabilization, as users returned to commercial activity online,” Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai told analysts on Thursday. “Of course, the economic climate remains fragile.”

Alphabet’s overall second-quarter revenue was $ 38.3 billion, down 2% from the year-ago period. Analyst’s tracked by Refinitiv, on average, had estimated a 4% decline to $ 37.367 billion.

The sales decline was the first since the company went public in 2004 and the worst performance since its 2.9% growth during the Great Recession in 2009.

About 66% of Alphabet’s revenue came from Google search and YouTube ads, 12% from ads sold on partner properties online, 8% from its cloud business and 14% from its mobile app store and about a dozen other smaller businesses.

It has adjusted by slowing expense growth. Alphabet’s total costs and expenses rose about 7% from a year ago to $ 31.9 billion in the second quarter, compared with a 12% jump a quarter ago.

Alphabet’s quarterly profit was $ 6.96 billion, or $ 10.13 per share, compared with the analysts’ average estimate of $ 5.645 billion, or $ 8.29 per share.

New data privacy laws, including one that went into effect this month in Google’s home state of California, are also depressing ad prices.

Antitrust regulators in countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia are weighing whether Google has stifled competition on its way to dominating search, mobile software and other businesses, with some bodies even considering forcing it divest parts of its ad operations.

About 2,000 employees last month petitioned Google’s emerging cloud business to scuttle deals with some police agencies, citing racial discrimination concerns. And whether a massive hiring spree will win other cloud clients is uncertain.

Investors may be shifting toward less ad-reliant rivals. Entering Thursday, Amazon and Microsoft, which have smaller ad businesses than Google but bigger cloud units, were trading at 145 times and 35 times their respective earnings over the last 12 months. Alphabet shares were at 30 times earnings over the last year.

(Reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif. and Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Richard Chang)

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Big Data – VentureBeat

What’s Going On With Oracle?

May 15, 2020 CRM News and Info

Oracle appears to be undergoing a kind of resurgence during the coronavirus crisis. Financial analysts are saying nice things about its ability to pay dividends even in tough times. Its technology, which always has been good, is seeing an interesting uptick.

All of this is buffing the company’s image after years of, yes-but responses from the market — as in yes, they’ve got good technology, but they’re rather litigious about protecting their brand. Or yes, lots of cloud companies use their technology to undergird their offerings, but they’re cloud laggards otherwise.

All that is suddenly so much ancient history as the company has hit critical mass in a number of areas: its autonomous database and autonomous Linux offering; its cloud infrastructure business, which is dependent on Oracle hardware and being rapidly built out; and its revamped set of cloud apps.

This is all coming together in at least one unlikely place: video conferencing.

For the second time in a month, first with Zoom and now with 8×8, Inc., the company is touting its brute force ability to host millions of users and push petabytes of data for video conferencing apps.

Due in part to the virus, video rapidly is becoming the show-me application — as in, if you can run that you can run my stuff — and Oracle, never shy, is happy to promote its customers.

The Skinny

The current announcement details how 8×8 moved its video meetings services from AWS to Oracle to gain a 25 percent performance boost per node. The current implementation is said to support 20 million monthly active users across the planet. That’s a lot smaller than the figures touted by Zoom, which also uses other providers like AWS.

Still, the essence of both stories, from Oracle’s vantage point, is that these video conference vendors chose Oracle for its rapid deployment capability and ability to scale for millions of users and push petabytes of their data.

Oracle claimed that its solution saves more than 80 percent in network outbound costs and that it exceeded 1.5 petabytes a day of egress network traffic and was increasing day by day.

“We’re incredibly proud to help businesses, organizations, educators and health professionals stay connected during this challenging time,” said Vik Verma, CEO of 8×8. “As global demand on our video meetings platform grew exponentially, we needed a partner to scale rapidly and cost effectively with us.”

The backstory is that Oracle has been saying for years that it has a price performance advantage against its competition, and while some customers have accepted the logic, many others have put at least part of their data in other clouds, just in case.

That’s allowed competition like AWS to scoop up some name brands as well as smaller apps and a lot of sandbox business. However, when I looked at data from G2 in Chicago last year, the numbers indicated the average Oracle implementation was 10x the average AWS implementation. No idea what today’s G2 data reveals.

This week’s announcement, along with the recent Zoom announcement, shows huge scalability and speed to market. It also provides evidence of a significant takeaway.

My Two Bits

Oracle has been around long enough to have gone in and out of style many times. It outlasted the baker’s dozen of relational database companies that emerged in the 1980s. It led a wave of applications development and then a wave of consolidation as it bought up CRM companies like Siebel and other enterprise vendors such as PeopleSoft.

It rode the consolidation wave as it began retooling for the cloud, albeit late, as is widely acknowledged. Still, it was only late compared to the market and not compared to where its customers wanted to be at the time, which was on-premises.

At that point, Oracle became challenged from multiple sides — by companies like Salesforce, which built a better mousetrap, and upstarts like Amazon, which spun up a vanity project to build its own relational database.

I liken that to the rise of Airbus, the European consortium that decided to challenge Boeing in passenger aircraft. If you have a big enough budget, you can do almost anything, but what’s the point?

For all that cash, the Europeans could have built an electric car with a sufficient continental charging infrastructure. I’ve never understood the logic of introducing another RDBMS into a consolidating market.

Now, as a practical matter, venders are poaching clients from their competition all the time. It’s emblematic of the zero-sum economics of this moment in the tech space.

I am sure that AWS can make similar takeaway claims — and for that matter, so can Microsoft. The most significant issue that I see is the demonstration of Oracle’s scalability and rapid deployment capability, which will be used in a lot of promotional materials that state unequivocally that Oracle is on the upswing again.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ECT News Network.

Denis%20Pombriant Whats Going On With Oracle?
Denis Pombriant is a well-known CRM industry analyst, strategist, writer and speaker. His new book, You Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty, But You Can Earn It, is now available on Amazon. His 2015 book, Solve for the Customer, is also available there.
Email Denis.

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CRM Buyer

Going back for seconds.. 1, 2…

April 26, 2020 Humor

Posted by Krisgo

via

About Krisgo

I’m a mom, that has worn many different hats in this life; from scout leader, camp craft teacher, parents group president, colorguard coach, member of the community band, stay-at-home-mom to full time worker, I’ve done it all– almost! I still love learning new things, especially creating and cooking. Most of all I love to laugh! Thanks for visiting – come back soon

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Deep Fried Bits

Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying ears?

March 8, 2020 Humor

Again.

During a town hall broadcast by Fox News on Thursday night there was a discussion about the national debt, which has soared during the Trump administration.

This, despite the fact that Donald Trump promised to not just eliminate the deficit (which was last accomplished by Bill Clinton), but also the entire national debt. Of course, as soon as he was elected, Trump cut taxes for the rich (like himself) and corporations, and increased military spending dramatically.

Republicans have never tried to hide the fact that they want the deficit to increase so they can cut entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. But it was still a surprise that Fox News host Martha MacCallum pointed out “if you don’t cut something in entitlements, you’ll never really deal with the debt.”

Even more surprising, Trump blurted out in response, “Oh, we’ll be cutting. We’re also going to have growth like you’ve never seen before.” Of course, instead we just had the largest drop in the Dow Jones index in history. That’s due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which Trump is pretending doesn’t exist.

But here’s the really hypocritical part. Immediately afterwards, the White House went into full spin mode, denying that Trump didn’t say what we all heard with our ears. Here’s Kellyanne Conway claiming that Trump didn’t say that, even though Fox News played the clip of Trump saying it:

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Political Irony

Wait and See: Four Ways To Keep The Customer Experience Going When Uncertainty Looms

January 9, 2020 BI News and Info

Part 4 of the “2020 Strategies and Insights for Midsize Companies” series

“Wait and see.”

That phrase can be like a huge, red stop light for businesses of all sizes when uncertainty looms. No matter if that uncertainty springs from the political landscape like the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election, or company leadership is changing, or a merger is happening, companies oftentimes pause on making big decisions around big technology purchases, staffing, and business initiatives until after the change.

Sometimes “wait and see” is just part of business when uncertainty looms. But that self-inflicted pause rarely, if ever, flies with customers. Customer needs, demands, and expectations don’t wait for elections, mergers, budgets, or internal onboarding to conclude.

So, as we face this new decade, how can you keep customer experience (CX) improvement efforts moving if you feel stuck on “wait and see?” Because you may not have a choice about following high-level directives to hold off on big purchases and decisions. But it doesn’t make good business sense to put customers on the back burner, either.

One idea: focus on what you can do. This could be the perfect time to revisit the CX basics at your company. Because customer experience is about much more than tech, initiatives, and big projects. It’s a mindset, or a way of doing things, to be interwoven into the fabric of your company’s culture.

Here are some things you can focus on to keep the company’s CX mindset flowing in times of uncertainty.

Are the basics really under control?

I’m going to get really basic for just a moment. When I say, “the basics,” I mean, are the phones being answered, and answered effectively? While the focus today may be on perfecting digital and online communication, the phone is still customers’ most preferred channel when it comes to contacting the companies where they do business. Fifty-seven percent of consumers used the phone to address a service problem last year. Seventy-five percent of companies believe they’re doing a good job with telephone communication, but only 48% of customers agree. Flames fly every day on social media from angry customers who can’t get a call answered, or when they encounter phone agents who simply don’t seem to care. Getting the phones right is a CX basic. Use “wait and see” time to secret shop your company’s phone systems or contact center. Assess, advocate for, and improve on the phone basics.

Is your website communicating well?

You probably already know website design is important to winning and retaining customers. But a customer’s experience with your site goes well beyond aesthetics. Bad, inconsistent, and confusing content leads to friction with customers. Two out of three customers in one recent study regularly had trouble finding answers on company websites. Here’s an example. I recently visited the website of a company where I had made a purchase and found that the customer service number posted on their site wasn’t correct. Their site invited me to chat online with agents “right now.” When I clicked to enter the chat, the page changed and said chat was closed, but I could feel free to e-mail them. I felt like a digital hot potato—passed around from source to source without getting anywhere. In the end, it felt like the company had deliberately wasted my time. So, secret shop your company website. Ask some communication-savvy colleagues to do the same. You probably don’t need a big budget or to wait for an election to pass in order to get the basics squared away.

How about a customer experience metrics and measurements refresh?

By now, companies who are more customer experience mature should have CX operational and experience metrics in place. Along with your senior team, you’re likely monitoring and triaging customers’ experiences with your application processes, customer wait times, website, and in your contact center, for example. But how long has it been since you challenged what you were measuring, how you were measuring it, and if those were the things that really mattered to customers? What mattered two years ago may not be what matters now. Most small and midsized companies don’t need a big budget to shift what they’re measuring and when. And if you’re not measuring, monitoring, and triaging data surrounding customers’ experiences yet, 2020 is a good time to get started, using systems and resources you already have in place.

Expand your thinking on customer feedback

No matter what size company you run, collecting feedback should be part of your business model. And hopefully by now you’re well on your way to collecting and reviewing feedback on a regular basis. If you get stuck in “wait and see” mode, go back and take another dive back into feedback you’ve collected. Challenge whether you’re acting feedback everywhere possible in your business. Sixty-three percent of companies that collect feedback don’t do a good job of using it holistically in their business. Think about using feedback in your policy and rulemaking work, risk management activities, marketing and public relations work. In the coming decade, you will want to maximize your current business processes, including how and where you use the customer feedback you’re already collecting.

“Wait and see” is oftentimes just part of the normal course of doing business. But that doesn’t mean your focus on CX needs to take a huge pause. With an entrepreneurial spirit and mindset, you can face the 2020s intuitively knowing what it takes to advance the customer experience dialogue, even if big projects go on hold. Small and midsize businesses have an opportunity to be nimble in ways where many large organizations struggle. Embrace and expand on the basics of customer experience management during periods of “wait and see,” and you will be embracing competitive opportunity.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.

See IDC’s list of top trends for small and midsize businesses in the 2020s. Download the IDC infographic, sponsored by SAP, “The Roaring 2020s – Six Trends Midsize Companies in the Next Decade.”

And we invite you join our upcoming webinar for a deeper dive into each of these trends and what you can do now to take advantage of them. Register for Winning in the 2020s: Six Trends Every Midsize Company Needs to Know.

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Digitalist Magazine

Tech Companies Are Leaving Bay Area In Droves – Where Are They Going?

November 17, 2019 BI News and Info

While Silicon Valley will certainly remain the tech/startup capital of the world for decades to come, it’s lost a bit of its luster and charm in the past couple of years. Many tech companies are on the way out, opting to move east.

Adios, Silicon Valley!

Silicon Valley isn’t what it used to be a decade and a half ago. Companies like Google and Apple, as well as hundreds of smaller tech ventures and startups, are choosing to move portions (or even all) of their operations east. They’re doing so for a variety of reasons, including:

Taxes. The corporate tax rate in California is 8.84% (for a cumulative total of 39.4%). Many other states have corporate tax rates in the four to six percent range. Business owners and executives are realizing they can save millions of dollars per year in taxes simply by moving a few hundred miles to the east.

High cost of living. On top of hefty taxes, California – and Silicon Valley in particular – has some of the highest costs of living in the entire country. Everything from housing to food is very expensive. Moving out of the area is like getting an instant pay raise.

Lack of diversity. Silicon Valley loves to pride itself on diversity, but many say it’s nothing more than a façade. While tech companies in the Valley hire lots of people who look diverse – i.e., different races, ethnicities, and genders – some employees claim they don’t appreciate diversity of thought (unless it aligns with their beliefs). Many business owners say they would prefer to escape to environments where free thought (of all kinds) is embraced.

There are plenty of other reasons for the split from Silicon Valley, but these three factors paint a picture of why entrepreneurs are leaving in droves.

4 popular destinations for tech companies

The question is: Where are all these entrepreneurs and their tech companies going? Some of the destinations are a bit surprising. Let’s take a look:

1. Salt Lake City, Utah

According to data from Cushman & Wakefield, a Chicago-based real estate services company, Salt Lake City has seen the second-most tech-related commercial leases in the country over the past year. It now claims the ninth-largest share of tech tenants in the nation. Tech companies accounted for more than 66% of all major commercial leases signed in 2018 (which is more than San Francisco).

The Salt Lake City area is also renowned for its lower than average cost of living (when compared to surrounding states). This is something local real estate developers regularly hear transplants comment on.

“Just in our master-planned community alone, we’ve already seen a number of families who are moving into the Salt Lake City area to enjoy a lower cost of living,” explains Wildflower, an active family community located south of the city. “When you combine that with strong job growth and beautiful surroundings, it’s a trend we anticipate continuing indefinitely.”

2. Austin, Texas

With companies like Apple, IBM, eBay, and Intel having major presences in the area, Austin has been dubbed “Silicon Hills.” It’s been a major player in the tech startup scene since the 1980s, and the low taxes, affordable cost of living, and pro-business environment have made it even more attractive in recent years.

3. Huntsville, Alabama

Huntsville is one of the best-kept gems of the South. Located in the northern portion of the state – just a short drive south of Nashville – Huntsville is home to a thriving engineering scene. It also has major government support, with Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and NASA all relying heavily on the city. With an extremely low cost of living, it’s the perfect place to start a business and raise a family.

4. Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina

Don’t look now, but the Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte areas are huge landing spots for large tech companies and small ventures alike. With so many medical research universities nearby, it’s a particularly compelling destination for entrepreneurs that are focused on the convergence of technology and healthcare.

The future of technological entrepreneurship

Nobody is suggesting that Silicon Valley will cease to be the tech capital of the world. However, it’s losing some of its shine. As tech companies become less geographically attached to the area, we’ll see more innovation in more places. And, at the very least, this is good for the larger society.

SAP Integration is key to SAP Intelligent Enterprise. Learn about the key ingredient of this concept – SAP APIs – on December 4th.

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Digitalist Magazine

TIBCO Talks About Going Cloud-native with The New Stack at Cloud Foundry Summit 2019

June 22, 2019 TIBCO Spotfire

This year’s Cloud Foundry summit in April was an exciting one for us here at TIBCO. We announced that TIBCO Cloud™ Mashery® is now cloud-native. This cloud-native deployment supports Cloud Foundry customers via deployment on PKS (Pivotal Container Service). It’s a ‘pivotal’ move for us, in order to further empower customers with cloud-native API management using TIBCO Cloud Mashery. Mashery can be deployed anywhere, and supports next generation cloud-native architectures to deliver more speed, scale, and agility for market-leading enterprises.

Watch this interview with the New Stack that took place at the Summit where TIBCO Senior Product Manager Beerinder Rodey, interviewed by Joab Jackson, managing editor for The New Stack, on April 22nd, discusses the cloud-native launch of TIBCO Cloud Mashery and what it means for users. According to Beerinder, in today’s world, we see both cloud-native and traditional enterprises. And, we hear a lot of customers ask “How can I leverage and augment the systems and applications I already have on-premises?”

That’s the great thing about cloud-native Mashery. You can go fully on-premises, SaaS, or use containers in your private cloud, and manage API endpoints for services deployed anywhere. Cloud-native Mashery allows you to bring cloud-native deployments on-premises, and is a good way to start for customers whose architecture doesn’t align with the public cloud, but want all of the benefits of cloud.

APIs have also evolved to become fully integrated with DevOps and front and back-end development. Among the benefits APIs offer, well-developed APIs serve integral role allowing organizations to realize their business goals more efficiently and rapidly.

In the video, Beerinder also discusses:

The current state of API management
How organizations are using API management for both external and increasingly internal use cases
The evolution to cloud-native API management
How Mashery now makes Kubernetes deployments easy and integration with DevOps tooling even easier
TIBCO BusinessWorks(TM) Container Edition is also certified on Cloud Foundry

To learn more about the TIBCO Cloud Mashery API management platform, please visit our API management landing page or contact us.

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The TIBCO Blog

TomTom is going developer-friendly with new — and free — location APIs

April 2, 2019 Big Data

Presented by TomTom

“Our developer community really pushes what’s possible with our APIs,” says Gregory de Jans, TomTom’s head of developer relations. “Often they surprise us with use cases we never imagined.”

The first TomTom use case was the standalone navigation devices the company launched more than 20 years ago. But with navigation now integrated into mobile devices, the company has evolved and grown into a global tech enterprise. The location-tech specialist designs and develops innovative navigation products, software and services, including APIs used by tech and automotive giants like Uber, Microsoft, Nissan, Volkswagen, and many more.

The company’s latest development is the release of their public developer portal, offering self-service API aimed at individual developers and smaller startups. The TomTom Mobile Software Developer Kit (SDK) offers free maps and traffic flow tiles, as well as APIs for mapping and routing, geocoding, travel times, real-time traffic data, and geofencing.

Maps APIs are already required in many existing use cases like IoT, fleet and logistics, and on-demand. But many new use cases like smart cities, geospatial data analytics, and augmented reality are also empowered by Maps APIs.

“The power of our APIs is endless,” de Jans says. “Everyone who needs location in one way or another and wants to create the next big location based application can use them.”

The move from Google

Google was the mobility API elephant in the room until last year. The change? The company significantly increased their prices. The impact of that increase was huge, especially on smaller companies and growing startups, which were being asked to pay significantly more than they were paying before.

As a result, many companies began looking for an alternative to Google Maps APIs. “A lot of developers are coming our way because of our more startup- and user-friendly pricing model,” de Jans adds.

With TomTom being a mapmaker first and foremost, they have been able to focus on offering innovative features within their APIs. This includes the ability to calculate electric vehicle ranges and locate recharging stations on the way, factor in height and weight restrictions or hazardous materials when calculating fleet routs, and analyze in-depth traffic information, such as how long congestion lasts and what other areas it impacts.

Last but not least, there’s the privacy aspect. “TomTom is a big data company, but we have always been very strict about our privacy policy,” says de Jans. “We are also a pure mapping company so we have no ulterior motives with our users’ data. Its sole purpose is to help enhance all of our products and services for all of our end users.”

Letting developers start small

“It’s important to allow developers to evaluate products for free, even letting them use them commercially for free in the beginning to help them get started,” de Jans says.

This sort of trial allows startups and smaller companies to build their applications and launch them without getting in over their heads. When the companies start growing and gaining a bigger user base, they can easily level up online. If they’re growing quite big, an account team can help them create a custom proposal that fits their needs.

The company also announced at TechCrunch last year that they’re offering a mobile SDK, which comes with free map and traffic visualizations. The reason? On mobile devices, people are seeing maps more and more as a commodity service.

“The value now is in performing high-quality searches and geocodes and predicting traffic-aware travel times,” he explains. “That’s the kind of services that people are willing to pay for.”

Developer use cases in action

The number of use cases is proliferating, as developers invent innovative new ways of leveraging location technology. This includes:

Ride-hailing and ride-sharing. It’s not just big companies like Uber and Lyft, but local initiatives and startups who are tapping into the added advantages of knowing traffic conditions, road conditions, weather, and more.
Electric cars. More people are buying electric vehicles and developers are paying attention to those drivers and their unique trip planning needs that gas engine drivers don’t encounter. There is a lot of range anxiety over how much juice trips require. TomTom’s connected services take consumption, hills and even curvature of roads into account to calculate which charging stations can be reached before running out of power. It also shares with the driver what’s around that location as well.
Fleet and logistics. Companies can track their vehicles, calculate the fastest way to deliver a truck full of packages, figure out the most optimal routes to avoid traffic-jams (while factoring in height, weight, and hazardous materials restrictions) so they can ensure deliveries are made on time without hassle.
Connected cars. As the number of connected or smart cars grow, the requirement for in-car navigation, and third-party and companion applications grow. This is especially important for leasing and rental services and car dealerships who need to protect their investments, as well as for insurance companies to check against claims.
Financial services. Location data can be used to predict housing prices around a specific neighborhood, with APIs providing information about school locations, tourist attractions, public transit stops, or where the most congested areas are in a given city.
Analytics and big data. Location services offer data scientists a new dimension for their data, allowing researchers to improve data models and visualize analyses.

The rise of innovation

“Every mobile device has some kind of a GPS sensor. And with more mobile devices being sold, often people own more than one device. So more and more location information is becoming available. With online and offline worlds converging, location context has become critical. All great — but it’s up to the application providers to do something smart with it,” de Jans adds.

The better that fleets of vehicles and ride-sharing services can avoid or manage traffic, the more time — and money — they save. Insurance companies can also monitor their drivers’ behavior to check against whether users have a right to make a claim. The savings impact is significant in terms of cost, time, stress and congestion.

“In the end what I think really matters is that we’re helping application developers provide a better user experience for their customers,” de Jans says. “It can make or break an application when you launch it into the market.”

To learn more about TomTom Maps APIs, go to: developer.tomtom.com.

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