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AI 50 2024: Submissions For Forbes’ List Of The Most Promising Artificial Intelligence Startups Are Open – Forbes

January 15, 2024 | Author: admin

ast year marked artificial intelligences breakthrough into the mainstream. With a new wave of startups on the rise at Silicon Valleys frontier, Forbes is opening nominations for our AI 50 list to determine who is leading the way.

Since 2019, Forbes has published an annual edition of the AI 50 to honor the most promising startups whose businesses are centered around artificial intelligence. Now in its sixth year, the list is open to companies based anywhere that are held privately and more than 50% independent. As AI has long been deployed as a buzzword for marketing purposes now more so than ever we publish the AI 50 to cut through the noise and determine the top startups truly applying AI to solve business problems across various industries.

Nominations for the 2024 list are now open through Monday, February 5, 2024 at the following link:

Forbes produces the AI 50 in partnership with Sequoia Capital and Meritech Capital. The selection process evaluates applicants using both quantitative and qualitative information including revenue, business growth and valuation. Two panels of independent judges one with academic or professional expertise in AI, and the other with long-standing investing experience in the field scrutinize the strongest applicants on criteria including business promise and innovative use of AI. There is no fee for entry.

As specified in the application form, companies have the option to mark certain financial data as confidential, meaning they will be used for list-making purposes only and will not be published publicly. Non-disclosure of data will not negatively impact a companys application, though disclosing the information may boost its candidacy and help it stand out among peers.

The final list is unranked and historically includes a mix of early-stage and growth-stage startups. For a detailed explanation of the methodology, click here.

In addition to inclusion on the list, companies who make the AI 50 are highlighted with in-depth coverage, including list trends, video content and profiles. Past standouts include Databricks, Hugging Face, Scale AI and Writer.

Nominate your startup through the application form Monday, February 5, 2024 to be considered for our sixth annual AI 50 list.

AI likely to impact 40% of jobs globally, IMF chief says ‘tough year ahead’ – India Today

January 15, 2024 | Author: admin

Artificial intelligence poses risks to job security around the world but also offers a "tremendous opportunity" to boost flagging productivity levels and fuel global growth, the IMF chief told AFP.

AI will affect 60 percent of jobs in advanced economies, the International Monetary Fund's managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, said in an interview in Washington, shortly before departing for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

With AI expected to have less effect in developing countries, around "40 percent of jobs globally are likely to be impacted," she said, citing a new IMF report.

"And the more you have higher skilled jobs, the higher the impact," she added.

However, the IMF report published on Sunday evening notes that only half of the jobs impacted by AI will be negatively affected; the rest may actually benefit from enhanced productivity gains due to AI.

"Your job may disappear altogether - not good - or artificial intelligence may enhance your job, so you actually will be more productive and your income level may go up," Georgieva said.

UNEVEN EFFECTS

The IMF report predicted that, while labor markets in emerging markets and developing economies will see a smaller initial impact from AI, they are also less likely to benefit from the enhanced productivity that will arise through its integration in the workplace.

"We must focus on helping low income countries in particular to move faster to be able to catch the opportunities that artificial intelligence will present," Georgieva told AFP.

"So artificial intelligence, yes, a little scary. But it is also a tremendous opportunity for everyone," she said.

The IMF is due to publish updated economic forecasts later this month which will show the global economy is broadly on track to meet its previous forecasts, she said.

It is "poised for a soft landing," she said, adding that "monetary policy is doing a good job, inflation is going down, but the job is not quite done."

"So we are in this trickiest place of not easing too fast or too slow," she said.

The global economy could use an AI-related productivity boost, as the IMF predicts it will continue growing at historically muted levels over the medium term.

"God, how much we need it," Georgieva said. "Unless we figure out a way to unlock productivity, we as the world are not for a great story."

'TOUGH YEAR' AHEAD

Georgieva said 2024 is likely to be "a very tough year" for fiscal policy worldwide, as countries look to tackle debt burdens accumulated during the Covid-19 pandemic, and rebuild depleted buffers.

Billions of people are also due to go to the polls this year, putting additional pressure on governments to either raise spending or cut taxes to win popular support.

"About 80 countries are going to have elections, and we know what happens with pressure on spending during election cycles," she added.

The concern at the IMF, Georgieva said, is that governments around the world spend big this year and undermine the hard-won progress they have made in the fight against high inflation.

"If monetary policy tightens and fiscal policy expands, going against the objective of bringing inflation down, we might be for a longer ride," she added.

CONCENTRATING ON THE JOB

Georgieva, whose five-year term at the IMF's helm is set to end this year, refused to be drawn on whether she intends to run for a second stint leading the international financial institution.

"I have a job to do right now and my concentration is on doing that job," she said.

"It has been a tremendous privilege to be the head of the IMF during a very turbulent time, and I can tell you I'm quite proud of how the institution coped," she continued.

"But let me do what is in front of me right now."

Published By:

Shweta Kumari

Published On:

Jan 15, 2024

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AI likely to impact 40% of jobs globally, IMF chief says 'tough year ahead' - India Today

Most Trending Cloud Computing Uses And Applications – MobileAppDaily

January 11, 2024 | Author: admin

Cloud computing has fast become an inevitable part of most of the business houses. The companies have rapidly moved forward from the conventional ways of data management to much-advanced Cloud Computing. Wikipedia describes Cloud Computing as, an information technology paradigm that enables ubiquitous access to shared pools of configurable system resources and higher-level services that can be rapidly provisioned with minimal management effort, often over the Internet.

The reliance on Cloud Computing is due to many factors. The most significant ones are cost-effectiveness, adaptability, versatility, and data optimization.

For churning out flawless performance, Cloud Computing works on high-end networks of server computers, coupled with complex software. The remote servers are the core where the data is stored and can only be accessed through the internet.

Generally, Cloud Computing is fragmented into three types:

Cloud Computing was designed to provide space to companies that want to invest massive data in one place. The data may include company blueprints, media files, employee records, documents emails, technology outlines, and much more.

Depending upon the companys requirements, the clients can pick among private, public, or hybrid cloud deployment.

Cloud computing is improving business standards by managing vast data in no time. Be it for the startup or a fully-grown venture, cloud computing is availed everywhere.

With its immense potential in the IT sector, Cloud Computing generates billions of dollars in revenue annually and there are no signs of slowing down. The statistic of 2017 was predicted for the public cloud computing market at about 130 billion U.S. dollars worldwide. The public cloud computing market includes business processes, software, platforms, and infrastructure delivered as a service.

Take a look at the factors which will hold the key to the growth of Cloud Computing in the future

With the scope of saving and processing structured and unstructured data on the cloud platform, the various applications of Cloud Computing come into play. The right management of the data can harness unprecedented benefits for the business.

The significance of Cloud Computing multiples more when the consumer-centric companies are targetting buying patterns to expand their reach to the uncovered boundaries. Thecloud computing consultantsplan their strategies and marketing campaigns according to the data they gather from the cloud-based companies. The existence of Cloud Computing has given rise to in-depth customer analysis of behavioral patterns to drive more sales.

File storage if the most basic and primary service of Cloud Computing. One can transfer files to the cloud servers and retrieve them whenever one wishes. The transfer of data can only take place over a web-enabled interface that cuts down the possibility of any foreign attack. Cloud-Based services offer you round-the-clock availability, scalability, and security that is missed on any other platform. Also, after transferring the data to the cloud, the user doesnt have to keep checking with it; this chips away from the maintenance headache.

All the data that reaches the cloud servers is stored in virtualized pools of storage managed by third-party companies using solutions like the leading data virtualization tools.

It's not always about storing data, many times a user or a company may wish to back up their data on some other platform. Here, Cloud Computing comes into play. The cloud servers can hold on to data for an eternal period. Furthermore, there is no dearth of space and the data can be retrieved in the same form as it was stored. There are almost no chances of malfunctions and hence the data stays safe.

A few of the popular examples of cloud backup solutions are Dropbox, Google Drive, and Amazon S3.

Cloud computing offers scalable resources through various subscription models. This means that you will only need to pay for the computing resources you use. This helps in managing spikes in demands without the need to permanently invest in computer hardware.

Netflix, for instance, leverages this potential of cloud computing to its advantage. Due to its on-demand streaming service, it faces large surges in server load at peak times. The move to migrate from in-house data centers to cloud allowed the company to significantly expand its customer base without having to invest in setup and maintenance of costly infrastructure.

The expanded computing power and capacity of the cloud enables us to store information about user preferences. This can be used to provide customized solutions, messages, and products based on the behavior and preferences of users.

Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant - all are cloud-based natural-language intelligent bots. These chatbots leverage the computing capabilities of the cloud to provide personalized context-relevant customer experiences. The next time you say, Hey Siri! remember that there is a cloud-based AI solution behind it.

The cloud allows users to enjoy network-based access to communication tools like emails and calendars. Most of the messaging and calling apps like Skype and WhatsApp are also based on cloud infrastructure. All your messages and information are stored on the service providers hardware rather than on your personal device. This allows you to access your information from anywhere via the internet.

Now as the gravity of the Cloud Computing is understood, there is a need to unravel this technology better, so that, the parts of the world where it is still alien can be harnessed smartly.

If you wish to know more about cloud computing, you can refer to our other articles like How cloud driven Mobile Application works,"Biggest Advantages Of Cloud Backup, and How Cloud Technology Helping App Development World?.

Tanya Editor In Chief

She is a content marketer and has more than five years of experience in IoT, blockchain, Web, and mobile development. In all these years, she closely followed the app development, and now she writes about the existing and the upcoming mobile app technologies. Her essence is more like a ballet dancer.

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Edge and Fog Computing, Platform Engineering: IT trends that will gain prominence in 2024, ETCIO SEA – ETCIO South East Asia

January 11, 2024 | Author: admin

2023 has seen a complex interplay of escalating geopolitical turmoil, adverse cyber physical events, customer and supply chain uncertainties and fluctuations, implosion of Generative AI with fruition of regulations and continuing focus on sustainability and ESG. In this BANI (Brittle Anxious Nonlinear Incomprehensive) and VUCA (Volatile Uncertain Complex Ambiguous) world with cost and human capital challenges, organisations are pivoting from simply jumping on technology bandwagons to now closely prioritising and evaluating specific use cases, and their impacts on their business and the extended organisation. The focus towards the end of 2023 is on comprehending, structuring and prioritising specific areas and use cases for leveraging technology in achieving business KPIs, improving decisioning, handling elasticity, while enhancing the total experience, as well as risk, compliance and resilience posture.

In early 2024, leaders are keeping a close watch on the JN.1 strain, the Russia-Ukraine and Middle Eastern situation, and ransomware and critical infrastructure attacks across states and companies worldwide, whilst analysing the ramifications of the EU AI Act and data privacy guidelines, as well as addressing skill gaps and fatigue in their IT and InfoSec teams.

2024 is expected to see more emphasis of Industry 5.0 tenets especially on human aspects. Going beyond improving experiences of customers, employees and supply chain, there is a growing focus on trust and explainability of technology, and optimising human utilisation and efforts across the extended enterprise.

Cloud Computing 2024 will continue to witness cloud computing and cloud native initiatives for IT modernisation. This year is also expected to see acceleration in leveraging the cloud for harnessing newer technologies especially Artificial Intelligence, as well as platform engineering and for meeting company green indices and sustainability goals. Cloud spending, which was skewed towards Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) right upto the early days of the pandemic will be moving towards an equitable distribution amongst SaaS, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Containerization and orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes and Docker, as well as applied Observability shall remain to be fundamental pillars across cloud initiatives. Besides enabling end-to-end Data Lifecycle, Data Ethics and Storage Management, companies of all sizes are leveraging cloud for deploying technologies such as Generative AI, Digital Twins, Intelligent Automation, Additive Manufacturing, Blockchain and IoT.

This report by Mordor Intelligence estimates the cloud computing market size, which is around USD 0.58 Trillion in 2023 to reach USD 1.24 Trillion by 2028, evincing a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.40% during this forecast period. North America will remain the largest market with Asia Pacific being the fastest growing. BFSI, Telecom, Manufacturing and Healthcare segments are the leading verticals harnessing their cloud computing initiatives.

2024, will however see rising differentiators amidst increasingly homogenous cloud computing, both from public cloud service providers and customer perspectives. These encompass:

Serverless computing and Low Code No Code (LCNC): Cloud Service providers are incorporating serverless computing and LCNC components, tools and functionalities in their offerings. Serverless computing will be even more popular in 2024, especially on account of multi cloud computing, need for quicker development cycles, scalability, cost optimisation, and resilience. Thus, resulting in developers harnessing serverless computing frameworks, automation, administration, SLA management, upgrades, tuning and other capabilities of their cloud service providers.

Core Cloud native strategies along with the rise and popularity of Generative AI, will bring about renewed focus on LCNC tools and Citizen Development. LCNC functionalities such as Drag and drop, pre-built User Interfaces and templates, APIs and Integration Connectors, one-click delivery, flexible frameworks and others will bolster agility, speed, enhancements, scalability, integration, as well as simplification and reduction of IT dependence of cloudification projects.

CIOs are also working upon addressing challenges in serverless computing such as vendor lock-in, serverless cloud computing cost and security. Proliferation of LCNC platforms and tools have also necessitated corresponding regulatory and cybersecurity compliance considerations as well.

Edge and Fog Computing: Cloud computing is increasingly adopting edge and fog computing ecosystems, especially due to the popularity of 5G, mobility, IoT and Edge devices. This necessitates use of multi-access/ edge computing for real time data processing and decisioning, performance and latency KPIs, storage and privacy regulations, cost control and sustainability. Along with edge computing, companies are implementing decentralised distributed fog computing layers for filtering, prioritising and ensuring relevant dataset transmission back to the cloud.

Edge and Fog computing will increase in importance especially in regulated industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, oil and gas, agriculture, and others. Edge and Fog computing are also contributing immensely to FinOps, ESG and Green computing indices. Hyperscalers are incorporating a comprehensive portfolio of intelligent edge computing platforms in their offerings.

It is sacrosanct to mention that these rising attack surfaces also necessitate heightened cybersecurity and resilience postures.

Industry Cloud: BFSI, discrete manufacturing, retail and consumer products will continue to harness industry cloud capabilities viz. congregations of cloud applications, services and tools tailormade and optimised for the specific industry common use cases. Combining SaaS, PaaS and IaaS functionalities, Out-of-Box and easily configurable and customisable Workflows, Data management, APIs and other components, Industry Cloud improves ease, complexity and speed of deployment and reduces risk compared to cloud native and lift and shift approaches

Sustainability: The continuing focus on ESG and Sustainability throughout 2023 has seen companies expanding from using cloud computing as a means for sustainability, to now harnessing cloud computing and hyperscaler sustainability features for achieving their ESG indices. In 2024, it is expected that decisioning in cloud provider/ project selection shall also encompass factors such as low carbon emission regions, green data centres, and green and sustainable architecture, and incorporation of tools such as observability and intelligent automation.

This year shall see further developments by Public Cloud Services Providers in their net Zero/ Carbon free initiatives such as green data centre, sustainable supply chain, recycling and reusing, power optimisation and others.

Platform Engineering: 2024 is expected to see proliferation of Platform Engineering, especially on account of increasing cognitive load on developers with respect to frameworks and tools, and overstretched SREs (Site Reliability Engineers) who are in a perpetual firefighting mode. Platform Engineering with abstraction layers of tools and services infrastructure, is considered to be a logical evolution from DevOps and SREs and bridging the gap between developers and operations. Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) encompass tools, workflows, processes and other operational nuances of the end-to-end application life cycle in the cloud native ecosystem. This product ethos of IDPs and Platform Engineering teams hence enable self-service tooling for tasks, improve troubleshooting and incident resolution time, handle integration and automation, thus freeing up developers to concentrate on their core features and functionalities.

This Gartner research predicts that by 2026, 4/5th of large software engineering companies will establish core platform engineering teams that will be a fundamental tenet of the application delivery function.

Deploying Cloud principles to On-Premise/ Hybrid/ Co-locational Infrastructure: While companies grapple between hybrid and industry cloud, edge computing, and cloud repatriation, on-premise infrastructure is moving towards shared platform-based colocation providers, with as-a-service models. Hyperscale cloud providers and traditional hardware vendors are providing IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) platforms, which are based on Hybrid Cloud Management and Cloud Native principles. This, hence provides a unified interface with monitoring, control and visibility of all services, capabilities, updates, and tools across public clouds the edge, on premise data centres and co-locational spaces.

This ITaaS and cloud-based control approach also ensures transparent economic models corresponding to workloads/ services and helps FinOps initiatives. This Gartner research predicts that by 2027, more than 1/3rd of data center infrastructure will be managed from a cloud-based control plane. 2024 is expected to have Infrastructure and Operations teams build cloud native infrastructure and principles within their data centres, consider workload migration from inhouse facilities to edge or co-location nodes and adopt ITaaS models

Continued focus on FinOps: Companies shall be further working in 2024 to maximise return from the Cloud and bolster cloud economics. Besides the cross functional approach encompassing business, procurement, and finance teams besides DevSecOps, the levers in this section (viz. Serverless Computing, LCNC, Edge and Fog Computing, Cloud Repatriation, Sustainability, Observability, ITaaS, Orchestration, Automation and Platform Engineering) are essential tenets of FinOps.

2024 will see even more focussed efforts on cost optimisation through design, reserving instances, auto scaling, load and utilisation balancing, dashboards, monitoring and cloud management tools.

Cloud security: These predicted trends in cloud computing in 2024 and beyond will substantially increase the volume and breadth of potential attack surfaces, thus resulting in higher security issues, risks, points of breach and vulnerabilities. CIOs and CISOs shall continue to bolster their efforts in combatting Cloud misconfiguration, shadow IT vulnerabilities, insider leaks, 3rd party risks, ransomware, DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service), Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and others. 2024 will also see heightened activities by Ransomware Gangs, Critical infrastructures attacks, Hack-tivism, espionage and state level cyber warfare.

In 2024, to improve cloud security, CIOs and CISOs shall be harnessing the power of Generative AI, Automation and Big Data powered solutions, besides their cybersecurity tools, processes, guidelines and frameworks. There is a steady rise of usage of AI, observability, automation and analytics powered Cloud Protection Tools such as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE), Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) and Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP). These tools are augmented by Insider Risk Management aspects, Integrated Data Security Posture and Frameworks, Data Resilience and Human considerations including cyber drills, training, awareness and best practices.

The fundamental tenet is periodic and comprehensive cloud Cyber Risk Assessments, and the corresponding DevSecOps and Cloud Security policies across all environments, workloads and applications. The post pandemic thrust on Zero Trust principles, system and application configuration, data encryption, secrets management, observability, Identity and Access Management (IAM), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Role Based Access Control (RBAC), Password/ Password-less policies Cyber Security RASCI Charts and other best practices continues.

Cloud and Generative AI: Along with the developments in Generative AI models, algorithms, and players throughout all of 2023, cloud hyperscale providers are expected to enhance their Generative AI ecosystems and customer offerings throughout 2024. All cloud providers are incorporating the necessary infrastructure, architecture, and tools to enable their customers to harness the power of Generative AI for better business outcomes. They have been working on multi-modal capabilities, Large Language Models (LLMs), AI chips, and other technologies to build platforms, general and industry specific offerings. A few big tech companies have also embedded Generative AI features into their end user computing applications and tools.

Travel, Media, Healthcare, Manufacturing and other verticals are expected to harness the Generative AI ecosystem of their hyperscalers to enhance customer, partner and supplier experiences.

Organisations shall also take forward their Intelligent Automation, Low Code No Code, FinOps and Cloud Economics and Cloud Security focussed initiatives to ensure best levels of customer, employee, partner and supply chain experiences, agility, responsiveness, resilience, compliance and competitiveness.

We will cover trends around Generative AI, sustainability and green IT, cybersecurity, supply chain and risk in the subsequent articles.

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5 ways to maximize your cloud investment – CIO

January 11, 2024 | Author: admin

Companies often put FinOps teams in place to address cost and unsatisfactory cloud ROI issues after they arise, says Jensen, but you need to have those teams in place up front, before making new investments. Failure to collaborate and hold cross-functional teams accountable for expected returns means costs can spiral out of control.

Keeping cloud costs solely in IT is a recipe for out-of-control spending because the business reaps the benefits while IT shoulders the expenses, and the blame, when they go over budget, Jensen adds. The best arrangement is to have a full chargeback of cloud costs to the business unit or group requesting those resources.

How you organize FinOps teams can greatly affect cloud operating costs, says the Europe-based CIO. Whether agile should include FinOps or not is a matter of debate, he says. He learned from experience that you cant let every agile team choose its own cloud providers, select its own services, and place its own orders. If you go all the way and implement FinOps in an environment where you have platforms used by more than one team, you lose economies of scale. This creates a lot of missed opportunities, and is one of the debating points with agile: without end-to-end oversight on certain aspects, how can you reach economies of scale? You also sacrifice the opportunity to standardize on optimization, operations, security management and so on, he adds.

With this in mind, he and his team consolidated all platform operations, including financials, used by more than one team. So they created an XaaS team, called the Anything as a Service team that owns cloud operations best practices, overall account management, and the financials. The XaaS team still lets individual groups do their own thing, although it does give them the option to have XaaS manage the service. But if the service or vendor they want to use is used by other groups, then theres no choice, he says. Ultimately, the platform team owns the financials as well as platform operations, such as patching, security and optimization. The requesting team works only at the application layer. Thats the compromise weve built to respond to the conundrum between DevSecFinOps versus economies of scale, he says.

Finally, watch out for resistance within teams when it comes to optimizing cost efficiencies. Theres often a defensive view toward being efficient with our infrastructure spending, McKee says, and that attitude can quickly spread across the organization. The solution lies in making those teams understand theyre getting involved in innovation, not just a cost-cutting exercise.

Typically, only companies with multi-year commitments and savings plans get the personal attention of hyperscalers, says Jensen. Having such commitments in place increases cost effectiveness because personalized feedback on proper resource configurations and new web services can improve application performance and reduce costs. FinOps teams should meet monthly to discuss recommendations from their hyperscalers, he says.

Open and transparent communication with vendors is essential. Its important to remember these organizations are run by people, so building relationships at the right levels in each organization is key, as well as holding regular meetings with sufficient and transparent data from both sides to ensure mutual benefits with no resentments. McMasters, for instance, keeps up with each cloud vendors roadmap, and looks for opportunities to collaborate. As an example, Microsoft wanted to make inroads with municipalities for its virtual desktop infrastructure, so it was able to work out a win-win arrangement to provide those services. Know whats the bigger win for them and whats on their roadmap, he advises. Are there products or things on their roadmap that benefit both parties? In this case they were looking for opportunities to prove themselves.

He also reviews the overall health and direction of the citys cloud service providers, which is particularly important for smaller providers and startups. We look for transparency, he says. Providers that are very transparent tend to have a solid roadmap and we work best with them.

And when reviewing contracts for renewal, McMasters recommends hiring an analyst firm to help review changes to licensing and other cost factors. Having a third party helps you level the playing field, he says.

The technical aspects of cloud computing are the easier part when it comes to cost optimizationand the part many CIOs feel most comfortablebut cultivating relationships with vendors and especially internal constituents, is the ultimate key to success.

To me, the biggest part of cloud optimization is understanding your own organization, McMasters says. Its easy to misstep and overcompensate, especially on the tech side. Optimizing cloud spend requires getting the most from the technology and building strong partnerships with your vendors. The best relationships we have arent with the tech providers, however, but with our other executives, he adds. Only when thats in place can you anticipate needs and provision accordingly.

Establishing cloud governance and FinOps teams is also critical to get the information CIOs need to ensure cloud operational costs continue to align with business imperatives. Those teams should measure the efficiency of cloud spend, optimize costs, analyze spend, and issue reports to leadership, says Vunvulea. CIOs should then use that information to measure cloud value relative to business operations. Understand how business KPIs map back to the cloud, and how cloud value should be measured from the business point of view, he says.

To achieve that, FinOps teams should leverage available toolkits for cost analysis and optimization, conduct annual clean ups to eliminate unnecessary cloud resources, and monitor progress, says the European CIO.

Discover where youre currently spending to make sure you can explain all line items, improve spending where immediate action can be taken, and monitor for continued improvement, says McKee. And make sure your teams see cloud cost optimization as a way to innovate, not just a cost-cutting exercise.

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AlayaCare Named Best Software as a Service (outside USA) in the 2023-2024 Cloud Awards – Yahoo Finance

January 11, 2024 | Author: admin

International Cloud Computing Awards Program Releases Full List of Winners

TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / January 9, 2024 / AlayaCare has been declared a winner in the 2023-2024 Cloud Awards program in the category Best Software as a Service (outside USA).

The Cloud Awards has recognized and honoured innovation in cloud computing since 2011, spanning diverse industry sectors and welcoming submissions from organizations across the globe.

Other categories for 2023-2024 include Best Use of AI in Cloud Computing,' Best Cloud Automation Solution,' and Best Cloud Business Intelligence or Analytics Solution.'

Head of Operations for the Cloud Awards, James Williams, said: "The Cloud Awards continue to lead the way in identifying the great organizations who create world-changing technologies. AlayaCare impressed the panel with their market-leading innovations, and it was a real pleasure to see them come top in their category."

AlayaCare's CEO, Adrian Schauer, credits AlayaCare's focus on cutting-edge solutions with the company's win. "AlayaCare's recognition as the Best Software as a Service (outside USA) by the Cloud Awards is a testament to our unwavering commitment to innovation," Schauer said. "Our success lies in our steadfast investment in advanced technologies, including machine learning and AI, optimization, and data science. These advancements empower home-based care providers to curtail operational expenses, enhance patient care quality, minimize employee turnover, identify adverse events, and ultimately, keep their clients out of hospital."

"The judging panel at The Cloud Awards can see that AlayaCare offers a cloud solution which is seamlessly configurable and customizable as well as being transparent and user-friendly," said Nagendran Manidas, Lead Judge. "AlayaCare are disruptors in their field as they combine traditional in-home and virtual care solutions that enable care providers to lower the cost of care and achieve better outcomes for their clients."

Story continues

The Cloud Awards program will return in autumn 2024. Hundreds of organizations entered the 2023-2024 Cloud Awards program, with international entries from North America, Canada, Australia, the UK, Europe, and the Middle East.

To view the complete list of winners, please visit: https://www.cloud-awards.com/2023-2024-cloud-awards-finalists/.

-30-

AlayaCare Press Contact:

Steph Davidsonsteph.davidson@alayacare.com647-668-6369

The Cloud Awards Press Contact

James Williams - Head of Operations james@cloud-awards.com

About AlayaCare

AlayaCare is an end-to-end software platform for public, private, non-profit, and community home-based care organizations that manages the entire client lifecycle, including needs assessments, care plans, scheduling, visit and route optimization, and visit verification. Founded in 2014 with over 600 employees, AlayaCare combines traditional in-home and virtual care solutions that enable care providers to lower the cost of care and achieve better outcomes for their clients. For more information, visit: AlayaCare.com

About the Cloud Awards

The Cloud Awards is an international program which has been recognizing and honoring industry leaders, innovators, and organizational transformation in cloud computing since 2011. The awards are open to large, small, established, and start-up organizations from across the entire globe, with an aim to find and celebrate the pioneers who will shape the future of the Cloud as we move into 2024 and beyond. Categories include the Software as a Service award, Most Promising Start-Up, and "Best in Mobile" Cloud Solution.

Winners are selected by a judging panel of international industry experts. For more information about the Cloud Awards and SaaS Awards, please visit https://www.cloud-awards.com/

SOURCE: AlayaCare

View the original press release on accesswire.com

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AlayaCare Named Best Software as a Service (outside USA) in the 2023-2024 Cloud Awards - Yahoo Finance

NCS announces expanded collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate AI and cloud innovation, ETCIO SEA – ETCIO South East Asia

January 11, 2024 | Author: admin

NCS today announced an expanded collaboration with Microsoft in Asia Pacific to enable clients to accelerate AI and Cloud solutions. NCS will create a dedicated Microsoft growth engine with comprehensive capabilities across all six Microsoft solution areas1. This stronger alliance aims to provide enterprises and governments in Asia Pacific with innovative solutions and new IP by NCS, deployed on Microsoft technology and offered on the Microsoft marketplace.

(Note (1): The six Microsoft solution areas include Infrastructure, Data & AI, Digital & App Innovation, Modern Work, Security, and Business Applications.)

Through the expanded collaboration, clients across Asia Pacific can better harness emerging technologies including Generative AI to create new efficiencies and growth opportunities amid a rapidly evolving business landscape. They will be supported closely by Microsofts technology experts and the 1,000-strong certified expertise across NCS offices. Additionally, clients can take advantage of NCS end-to-end technology services, strong Asia Pacific delivery track record, and proven expertise in localisation of solutions.

Ahmed Mazhari, President, Microsoft Asia, said, We are thrilled to collaborate with NCS to drive innovation and accelerate growth in Asia Pacific. As we reach an inflection point with AI and cloud breakthroughs, Microsoft will continue to invest in advancing technology and solutions that empower digital transformation and enable organisations and individuals to achieve more.

Enterprise and government clients can now better leverage the capabilities of the full suite of Microsoft technologies together with NCS comprehensive end-to-end solutions and capabilities. This accelerates their deployment of Cloud Migration and Digital Transformation, as well as helps them better harness the benefits of AI, Hybrid Cloud and Security for greater transformational impact. It will be facilitated by on-ground experts and through close orchestration between the NCS and Microsoft teams.

Clients will be able to tap into NCS spectrum of solutions and services that encompass core services in application, infrastructure, engineering and cybersecurity, as well as services in digital, data, cloud and platforms offered by NCS digital services arm, NEXT. Furthermore, NEXT will play a key role in co-creating AI-enabled innovations with clients and deploy them on Microsoft technology. For example, NEXT has combined NCS in-house hyperlocal speech-to-text engine with Microsoft Copilot to enable high conversational accuracy, which is critical for many Generative AI applications.

NCS network of delivery centres in Pune, Hanoi, Manila, Chengdu, and Guangzhou will also provide clients with cost effective delivery models, including the convergence of talent and assets across global operations. The expanded array of end-to-end offerings will be showcased at Tesseract, NCS Innovation Centre in Singapore, and Microsoft Innovation Centres in the region.

Accelerating AI and cloud innovationThrough this expanded collaboration, NCS will make Go-to-Market investments to provide expedited pre-built and validated Microsoft solutions to clients, accelerating their digital transformation journey, managing growing enterprise complexity, and streamlining connectivity and collaboration.

NCS will also work closely with clients to adopt and leverage Generative AI, Cloud, Security, and a complete suite of Copilot-powered productivity technologies, to reap higher value from their ecosystem through improving operational performance, transforming customer experience, and achieving new business growth.

In addition, as part of this collaboration, NCS will invest in GitHub Copilot advocates to leverage AI to strengthen effectiveness and quality in software development projects. This will result in better quality project development and deliveries for clients.

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NCS announces expanded collaboration with Microsoft to accelerate AI and cloud innovation, ETCIO SEA - ETCIO South East Asia

7 Leading Causes of Cloud Outages – 7 Leading Causes of Cloud Outages – InformationWeek

January 11, 2024 | Author: admin

Cloud outages can have severe impacts on a business financially and reputationally, with theaverage costfor one hour of downtime running at $365,000 an hour. As businesses shift more operations and sensitive data onto the cloud, the repercussions for even a few hours of downtime become more substantial. Sadly, the rate at which cloud outages are happening has increased every year, even as cloud service providers spend billions to ensure over 99% uptime.

Cloud service providers are facing threats from every angle. While natural disasters and cybercrime receive the most news attention, internal issues take up the lion's share of actual cloud outages, with human errors responsible for half of all system failures. That said, the leading cloud service providers are aiming to reduce the chance of any external threat penetrating the data center with new state-of-the-art facilities that have closed off electricity supplies and advanced cooling systems.

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7 Leading Causes of Cloud Outages - 7 Leading Causes of Cloud Outages - InformationWeek

Top four things coming for the cloud in 2024 – DatacenterDynamics

January 11, 2024 | Author: admin

AI, egress, sustainability, the Edge - what headlines we can expect to see

AI is Redefining Roles and Elevating Engineers Up the Stack

The emergence of generative AI is revolutionizing the cloud landscape. This is fostering specialization in high-tech domains that demand significant capital investments and specialized hardware.

This transformative trend is marked by the architectural decoupling of various components - separating cloud software functions to enhance interchangeability and adaptability.

This is not just altering the day-to-day jobs of cloud engineers, but also elevating their status within the software development stack. AI's automation of routine tasks, traditionally handled by cloud engineers, liberates their time to focus on more intricate and intellectually stimulating functions higher up the stack.

Beyond routine maintenance, engineers can now spend more time focusing on the complexities of designing innovative solutions, optimizing performance, and tackling particularly challenging issues.

The synergy between AI and cloud engineering is propelling professionals into a new era of creativity and problem-solving within the evolving cloud landscape.

08 Jun 2023

Companies are realizing a hybrid mix of cloud and on-prem could be a better strategy than a binary approach

Egress costs will become the focus of increasing scrutiny from customers and industry watchers

In 2023, cloud lock-in became a big topic, so much so that the Competitions and Markets Authority in the UK recently launched an investigation into the cloud infrastructure industry exploring this very topic.

We can expect egress costs to become even more of a hot topic in 2024: with more businesses than ever reliant on fast speeds and low latencies to perform well, high egress costs are increasingly forming a block on innovation.

Today businesses have many different cloud workloads, and each one has slightly different requirements. Those requirements may be met better by adopting a multi-cloud, multi-provider approach, and high egress costs prevent businesses from being able to implement this strategy effectively.

The focus should be on reviewing and adjusting standard practices from cloud providers so that the industry as a whole can respond to changing customer demand, and ultimately provide a better service.

Cloud providers must keep sustainability on the agenda amid economic uncertainty

Amid economic uncertainty, businesses may be tempted to prioritize cost efficiency over sustainability. However, it's crucial to recognize that even in the short term, neglecting sustainability can have long-term consequences.

According to research published by Cornell University, by 2025, they [data centers] are projected to consume 20 percent of global electricity and emit up to 5.5 percent of the world's carbon emissions. As legislators inevitably act to address these concerns, we could see regulations, tax, tariff, non-tariff, or subsidies used as levers to drive carbon reductions.

Striking a balance between technological advancements, economic realities, and environmental responsibility poses a crucial challenge for cloud providers.

In navigating this delicate equilibrium, the industry must not only innovate for efficiency but also champion sustainable solutions that resonate with the evolving priorities of businesses and the global community.

Whether through the use of renewable energy, carbon offset initiatives, or other environmentally conscious practices, the commitment to building a sustainable cloud infrastructure will play a pivotal role in shaping the industry's future and fostering responsible technological growth.

Cloud is moving closer to the Edge

The migration of resources closer to the Edge is a pivotal development in the evolution of cloud computing and it comes from increasing customer demand for faster access in a greater number of locations to their applications or platforms. Even millisecond delays can result in a drop off in traffic; moving to the Edge puts workloads closer to their users.

The future of cloud architecture necessitates precision in resource placement to meet the escalating demand for efficient and responsive services.

To navigate this evolving terrain, cloud providers will need to actively facilitate dynamic resource management, emphasizing flexibility and responsiveness in our increasingly distributed computing environment.

Moving more cloud computing to the Edge also means efficient data management will come into focus.

The emphasis will increasingly be on processing and managing data as close to its source as possible, mitigating the need for extensive information transmission to other points.

This approach not only enhances efficiency but also addresses regulatory and compliance challenges associated with data transfer, offering a more secure and streamlined computing environment.

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Top four things coming for the cloud in 2024 - DatacenterDynamics

American Tower and IBM to Bring Edge Cloud Services to Enterprises for Enhanced Innovation and Customer … – IBM Newsroom

January 11, 2024 | Author: admin

American Tower and IBM to Bring Edge Cloud Services to Enterprises for Enhanced Innovation and Customer Experiences

New collaboration will leverage 5G and AI to drive edge applications across industries.

By Hillery Hunter, CTO and GM of Innovation, IBM Infrastructure and Ed Knapp, CTO and Senior VP at American Tower Corporation

January 05, 2024

Global enterprises seek cost-effective connected solutions to help solve key line-of-business problems, and bringing the cloud to the edge offers a potential solution. This transformative technology is designed to create new opportunities by bringing enterprise applications closer to data sources such as IoT devices or edge servers. At IBM, weve seen firsthand how edge computing can help enable fast data analysis, creating an opportunity for deeper insights, improved response times, operational efficiencies, and enhanced customer experience.

Today, IBM is announcing a new collaboration with American Tower, a global digital infrastructure provider, to accelerate the deployment of a hybrid, multi-cloud computing platform at the edge. Through this collaboration, American Tower plans to expand its neutral-host, Access Edge Data Center ecosystem to include IBM Hybrid Cloud capabilities and Red Hat OpenShift. The two companies will work together to help clients address their evolving customer requirements and expectations around innovative digital transformation by enabling technologies such as IoT, 5G, AI, and network automation.

How IBM and American Tower Plan to Use Innovation at the Edge

American Tower is an independent owner, operator and developer of communications real estate solutions. The company has a broad portfolio of assets including nearly 225,000 wireless and broadcast towers, rooftops, and in-building systems across 25 countries globally and a highly interconnected footprint of U.S. data center facilities, after acquiring CoreSite in 2021. With interest in distributed edge computing on the rise, IBM and American Tower saw an opportunity to leverage their complementary assets and deliver customer value at scale. IBM plans to provide American Tower with a hybrid cloud platform and automated systems to create an edge cloud at American Tower distributed real estate locations.

As a result of this collaboration, we aim to give enterprises more flexibility to deploy applications on public clouds, at the edge, or on premises. This can help to securely process and quickly analyze data closer to the point where it is created.

How Clients Across Industries Can Benefit from Edge Innovation

Across industries, companies are embracing technologies, such as AI and 5G access networks at the edge to heighten innovation and create new business opportunities. American Tower and IBM will be providing the necessary infrastructure for these enterprises to help them tap into the full potential of edge computing.

The automotive industry is a prime example. According to Jim Morrish, Co-founder and Managing Director ofTransforma Insights,At the end of 2022 there were 14.1 billion active IoT devices and by2032 connected car (vehicle platform or head unit) devices will exceed 1.8 billion, growing at a CAGR of 11.8 percent. Vehicles contain dozens of computers and micro-controllers, all requiring updates at the point of final assembly and throughout the vehicles lifecycle. Clients report that installing firmware manually can have a high cost for manufacturers, which may cause them to seek quicker and more cost-effective solutions. By utilizing edge capabilities from American Tower and IBM, automotive OEMs will be able to rapidly transmit software updates to vehicles before they are shipped to dealers. This could help manufacturers optimize efficiency, while also addressing their latency, data sovereignty, security, compliance readiness, and reliability requirements.

As we enter a new year, IBM and American Tower intend to drive edge computing across industries to bring innovation to life.

For more information about IBM edge computing, visit https://www.ibm.com/edge-computing.

For more information about American Tower, visit https://www.americantower.com/us/data-centers-edge.

Statements regarding IBM's future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only

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American Tower and IBM to Bring Edge Cloud Services to Enterprises for Enhanced Innovation and Customer ... - IBM Newsroom

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Top four things coming for the cloud in 2024 – DatacenterDynamics

American Tower and IBM to Bring Edge Cloud Services to Enterprises for Enhanced Innovation and Customer … – IBM Newsroom

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