AI Tech
Qlik | January 25, 2024
<p> Qlik, a global leader in data analytics and integration, today announces the establishment of its inaugural AI Council – an initiative that further embeds leading edge, ethical AI development at the heart of the company’s mission and industry proposition. By convening a distinguished set of advisors, Qlik will accelerate the responsible development of its AI-driven product portfolio, benefitting from the expertise of some of the world’s most prominent AI experts, to help customers use their data to achieve more significant business outcomes.</p> <p> Qlik’s Generative AI Benchmark Report found that 31% of senior executives plan to spend over $10 million on generative AI initiatives in the coming year and 79% have already invested in generative AI tools or projects. Despite this enthusiasm, it also found that they understand the need to surround them with the right data strategies to realize their potential. If the data building blocks of AI are not governed properly as it is democratized across the entire workforce, it could present a serious threat to the efficiency and integrity of business operations. The AI Council has been established to help Qlik’s customers navigate these challenges and advise on best practices.</p> <p> Members of the Council will work within Qlik to guide the company’s R&D direction, inform its product roadmap and ensure its customers’ use of Qlik’s AI is built with responsibility and ethics front of mind. The Council will also educate Qlik leaders and employees on how to harness the full potential of AI, while providing insights into the priorities of business leaders tasked with demonstrating value from AI investment.</p> <p> The AI Council features some of the most renowned subject matter experts from around the world. More information on these members can be found on our Qlik Staige website:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Nina Schick – Author, Advisor and Founder of an advisory firm focused on GenAI</strong><br /> A world-leading authority on generative AI, Nina has long been analyzing emerging technology trends for society. With over two decades of geopolitical experience, she has advised global leaders, including Joe Biden, President of the United States, and was articulating her vision of the ‘AI inflexion point’ years before ChatGPT made AI a global phenomenon.</li> </ul> <ul> <li> <strong>Dr. Rumman Chowdhury – Responsible AI leader, engineer, auditor and investor</strong><br /> Rumman is a pioneer in the field of applied algorithmic ethics, creating cutting-edge socio-technical solutions for ethical, explainable and transparent AI. She is currently the CEO and founder of Humane Intelligence, a tech nonprofit that builds a community of practice around algorithmic evaluations. She has also served on multiple boards, including the UK Center for Data Ethics and Innovation, and on UN’s Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, Oxford University’s Commission on AI and Governance, and Patterns data science journal. Previously, Rumman was the Director of META (ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability) team at Twitter, leading a team of applied researchers and engineers to identify and mitigate algorithmic harms on the platform.</li> </ul> <ul> <li> <strong>Kelly Forbes – Co-Founder and Executive Director, AI Asia Pacific Institute</strong><br /> Kelly sits at the intersection of policy, research and industry, working with leading organizations and governments to address the risks associated with AI through international cooperation. With extensive experience in the Asia-Pacific region, Kelly has conducted research on AI governance, public-private dialogue and government policy issues.</li> </ul> <ul> <li> <strong>Dr. Michael Bronstein – DeepMind Professor of Artificial Intelligence, University of Oxford</strong><br /> An award-winning academic, Michael was previously Head of Graph Learning Research at Twitter, a professor at Imperial College London and has held visiting appointments at Stanford, MIT, and Harvard. Michael is also a serial entrepreneur, having founded startups such as Novafora, Invision (acquired by Intel in 2012), Videocites and Fabula AI (acquired by Twitter in 2019).</li> </ul> <p> "The formation of Qlik's AI Council is a strategic leap, reflecting our deep-seated commitment to not just advancing AI, but doing so with ethical integrity and practical applicability," said Mike Capone, CEO of Qlik. "Our goal is crystal clear: to enable our customers to harness AI in a way that's not only transformative, but also responsible. By uniting a cadre of AI luminaries, we are sharpening our focus on delivering AI solutions that are not just cutting-edge, but also seamlessly integrated and governed. This initiative is a pivotal chapter in our journey, marking a bold move towards democratizing AI in a manner that is both accessible and aligned with our core mission of driving substantial, data-driven business outcomes."</p> <p> Data and analytics leaders from around the world can hear from the AI Council at Qlik Connect, which takes place on June 3-5 in Orlando, Florida. At the pre-eminent event for data analytics, integration, and AI, Council members will share their take on the opportunities and challenges for businesses exploring the value of automation in their data strategy. Additional details and event registration is at www.qlikconnect.com</p> <p> “I am excited to join Qlik’s AI Council and work with some of the greatest minds in AI to optimize how businesses around the world use data,” said Rumman Chowdhury, member of Qlik’s AI Council. “We’ve reached an inflection point where innovations like generative AI are impacting the world as the internet did. This is not the time for complacency. ‘Adopting AI’ is not as simple as some suggest, but getting left behind is a risky game. By taking responsible steps, organizations can enter an era of unprecedented innovation – I look forward to being able to contribute to this evolution.”</p> <p> “In working at JBS USA, I recognize the significance of Qlik's advancements in AI, embodying a responsible and pragmatic approach to enterprise AI development,” said Stephanie Robinson, IT Business Intelligence Manager at JBS. “Qlik's dedication to enhancing AI applications aligns with our focus on employing technology to drive substantial business outcomes. We value Qlik's commitment to ethical AI practices and are optimistic about the beneficial impact this will have on the industry.”</p> <p> <strong>About Qlik</strong><br /> Qlik converts complex data landscapes into actionable insights, driving strategic business outcomes. Serving over 40,000 global customers, our portfolio leverages advanced, enterprise-grade AI/ML and pervasive data quality. We excel in data integration and governance, offering comprehensive solutions that work with diverse data sources. Intuitive analytics from Qlik uncover hidden patterns, empowering teams to address complex challenges and seize new opportunities. Our AI/ML tools, both practical and scalable, lead to better decisions, faster. As strategic partners, our platform-agnostic technology and expertise make our customers more competitive.</p> <p> 2024 QlikTech International AB. All rights reserved. All company and/or product names may be trade names, trademarks and/or registered trademarks of the respective owners with which they are associated.</p> <p> The development, release and timing of any product or functionality described herein remain at the sole discretion of Qlik and should not be relied upon in making a purchasing decision.</p>
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General AI
SysAid | January 12, 2024
SysAid, a leading provider of IT and Enterprise Service Management solutions, proudly announces the commencement of an exciting new chapter with the commercial release of SysAid Copilot, designed to liberate organizations by putting AI to work, for them and their people.
At the core of SysAid Copilot is the AI Chatbot for End Users delivering always-on, 24/7 service. This conversational self-service experience uses generative AI to help employees work through issues by delivering answers, utilizing the organization's data, from knowledge base articles through ticket resolution history – as well as verified external data sources, links, and documents.
Combating ineffective virtual agent deployment
According to Gartner, "Staffing an IT service desk is difficult and a considerable expense. Long phone queues and abandoned calls are not uncommon. Yet, many I&O leaders have experienced issues with the implementation and adoption of virtual support agents, which are aimed at alleviating some of these challenges." One of the main factors attributed to these issues is that initial deployments of chatbots were ineffective[1].
With no code zero setup required, SysAid Copilot comes with a feature set designed to counter the potential pitfalls arising from sub-optimal deployment of traditional virtual support agents.
The AI Usage Dashboard clearly reflects the value provided to both admins and end users through usage of SysAid Copilot features. For example, adoption of the AI Chatbot for End Users and Assistive AI features for admins. It also offers insights into AI-contained issues, indicating the rate at which problems were automatically resolved by SysAid Copilot using the organization's data and averting the need for ticket creation.
In parallel, admins maintain ultimate control over the quality of responses with the ability to monitor, edit, and fine-tune answers provided by the AI Chatbot enabled by a Monitor and Fine-Tune feature.
AI Author enables the provision of consistently professional service by rephrasing replies, elaborating on answers, and breaking down information into simple steps with responses that are comprehensible and accessible for employees. This also exempts admins from the need to grapple with wording and grammar.
Embedded into the channels that employees already use, SysAid Copilot facilitates quick adoption within the organization. For example, employees get service in a single click from the AI Chatbot (one-click ticket creation) or automatically via the AI Emailbot, delivering an immediate response even before an admin sees the ticket.
Increasing productivity
SysAid Copilot leverages cutting-edge generative AI technology, elevating admins to play a strategic role in the organization and improving IT productivity by over 20%.
"The release of SysAid Copilot is a momentous milestone in our quest to lead organizations on a transformative journey toward AI-driven organizational processes and excellence," said Avi Kedmi, SysAid CEO. "Tapping into specialized data accumulated from thousands of customers and millions of users, SysAid Copilot enables employees to enjoy a fully conversational experience, freeing up admins to focus on more strategic work and become the catalyst for organizational productivity. SysAid Copilot orchestrates service management across the organization, embodying our commitment to infusing intelligence and ease into the workday, reshaping the landscape of service management. And this is only the beginning, as our dynamic roadmap promises a steady stream of groundbreaking features and capabilities ahead, ensuring the success of our customers."
The General Availability of SysAid Copilot follows a 5-month design partner and beta program in which a diverse and engaged group of active customers played a pivotal role in refining and enhancing the product. The dedication and enthusiasm of the beta partners have been instrumental in shaping the product and ensuring that it is finely tuned to address the unique needs of SysAid's customer community, not only meeting but exceeding their expectations.
Enhancing CSAT scores and slashing MTTR
SysAid Copilot includes AI Intelligent Categorization automatically categorizing tickets submitted via the AI Chatbot for End Users and routes to the right people while making suggestions for more appropriate categories for tickets that come in through other channels, reducing human error in ticket categorizations by ~40%. In parallel, AI Case Summarization provides admins with a real-time summarization of the ticket content and employee sentiment (AI Emotion) so admins can understand the context, history, and end-user sentiment at a glance.
"SysAid Copilot has helped our organization a great deal in providing support quicker. Since our department is oftentimes understaffed, wait times are higher than normal, and with SysAid Copilot we've witnessed those wait times plummeting," said Nathan Gleed, IT at the City of St George. "One of the most amazing aspects of this new technology is its continual learning, consistently improving performance and generating more accurate and sophisticated output."
About SysAid
SysAid is on a mission to liberate organizations by putting AI to work for them and their people. We orchestrate service management across organizations with generative AI that taps into specialized data accumulated from thousands of customers and millions of users. With zero setup requirements, our conversational AI manages employees' requests, assists with queries, and accelerates the resolution of issues. With intelligence and ease infused into the workday, productivity thrives so that employees can focus on what they're meant to do, and organizations are free to fulfill their purpose.
With over 5,000 customers, SysAid partners with organizations ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises across 140 countries. For more information, please visit www.sysaid.com
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Software
ON24 | January 24, 2024
Today, ON24 marks the next chapter of its innovation strategy with the launch of its next generation intelligent engagement platform. With AI-powered intelligence at the core, ON24 will now enable enterprises to continuously engage audiences through hyper-personalized experiences that deliver connected insights and drive cost-efficient revenue growth.
“AI will fundamentally reshape sales and marketing and reimagine the customer experience. This means that sales and marketing teams must embrace AI to innovate and adapt, or risk being left behind,” says Sharat Sharan, co-founder, President and CEO. “With the launch of the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform, we are excited to leverage our unique foundation of first-party data to give our industry-leading customers an AI advantage, so that they can combine best-in-class experiences, personalization and content, to capture and act on connected data and insights at scale to drive revenue growth. And, we believe AI will continue to be a key differentiation for our own business and technology strategy moving forward, powering a new era of intelligent engagement.”
Built on its foundation of first-party data, the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform combines best-in-class digital experiences, including the company’s flagship webinar, virtual event and content marketing products, with its new AI-powered Analytics and Content Engine (ACE) to provide an integrated go-to-market solution. The platform’s comprehensive set of capabilities will help sales and marketing teams to:
Scale personalized experiences: Build best-in-class, branded experiences that reach their prospects and customers at scale and are hyper-personalized for individuals.
Automate continuous engagement: Interact with prospects and customers 24/7 through AI-generated content and always-on nurtures.
Deliver connected insights: Track audience engagement data across interactions and analyze engagement across key audience segments.
Drive revenue growth: Enable data-driven actions across go-to-market teams to generate pipeline and build lifetime customer relationships.
“Today’s launch of the ON24 Intelligent Engagement Platform brings our AI innovation together with more than a decade of market leadership, product development and first-party engagement data,” said Jayesh Sahasi, EVP of Product and CTO at ON24. “We believe this will unlock even greater value for our customers, providing AI-powered intelligence that keeps getting smarter, more personalized and more effective over time."
About ON24
ON24 is on a mission to help businesses bring their go-to-market strategy into the AI era and drive cost-effective revenue growth. Through its leading intelligent engagement platform, ON24 enables customers to combine best-in-class experiences with personalization and content, to capture and act on connected insights at scale.
ON24 provides industry-leading companies, including 3 of the 5 largest global technology companies, 3 of the 5 top global asset management firms, 3 of the 5 largest global healthcare companies and 3 of the 5 largest global industrial companies, with a valuable source of first-party data to drive sales and marketing innovation, improve efficiency and increase business results. Headquartered in San Francisco, ON24 has offices globally in North America, EMEA and APAC. For more information, visit www.ON24.com.
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Software
Lynx Software Technologies | January 10, 2024
Lynx Software Technologies (Lynx), a leader in the development of foundational, open architecture software solutions for the Mission Critical Edge, today announced the acquisition of Thompson Software Solutions, LLC. (TSS), a provider of software development, engineering, and integration solutions to mission-critical aerospace and defense (A&D) platforms, spanning military and commercial fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, commercial space flight, hypersonic platforms, and command-and-control systems. Its customers include the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), prime integrators, A&D original equipment manufacturers, and commercial space companies.
Since its founding in 2004, TSS has delivered technical capabilities and strategic insights to enable innovative software products requiring the highest reliability, security, and performance standards. With expertise spanning high-integrity software architecture and development, DevSecOps, cybersecurity, airworthiness certifications, open systems architecture, simulation and training, and AI and machine learning, customers across the A&D end-markets rely upon TSS to provide strategic guidance, differentiated technical capabilities, and a deep understanding of mission requirements. TSS’s Chief Executive Officer, Les Thompson, and Chief Strategy Officer, Patrick McClellen, have taken on senior roles within Lynx following the close of the transaction.
The combination of Lynx and TSS creates a scaled provider of mission-critical software solutions for customers with complex interoperability, safety, and security challenges. Lynx’s foundational software products, open-source expertise, productivity- and security-enhancing development tools, highly technical software engineering services, delivered via both professional and managed services business models, and its highly skilled and security-cleared employee base combine to create a platform company uniquely positioned to support the full software development lifecycle for clients in aerospace, defense, and other heavily regulated end-markets.
“The TSS team has built the company on a solid foundation of trusted customer relationships, innovative and cutting-edge technical capabilities, and flawless execution. With TSS’s high-value and differentiated software development and integration capabilities, we will be better equipped to enable aerospace and defense OEMs and prime integrators to accelerate the design, development, and deployment of their products and platforms,” commented Tim Reed, Chief Executive Officer of Lynx. “As we end 2023, Lynx’s portfolio of solutions spans from the operating system to the application layer, certifiable real-time, to general purpose and open-source, and from commercial-off-the-shelf (“COTS”) to government-off-the-shelf (“GOTS”) software products. I’m thrilled to work with Les and the TSS team as we continue delivering comprehensive and unique software-enabled solutions to customers whose needs extend from the development pipeline to the Mission Critical Edge.”
“Throughout my twenty years leading TSS, we’ve been consistently committed to delivering robust software solutions that meet the stringent requirements of our customers while ensuring they can stay on schedule and budget,” commented Les Thompson, Chief Executive Officer of TSS. “From our first discussions with Tim and the Lynx team, it became clear that Lynx is not just a vendor looking to push products but a committed, mission-oriented partner with the same objectives we have here at TSS, which includes continuing to deliver on our shared goal of providing resilient, secure, and performant software solutions targeted at the most demanding mission-critical environments.”
“The combination of Lynx and TSS creates a software solutions platform placed at the center of priority aerospace and defense investment areas, notably open standards, modularity, and security. Like TSS, Lynx has an established track record of exceeding customer expectations with its innovation, performance, and value proposition. As a combined company, Lynx and TSS are well-positioned to grow as our clients continue to execute on the software modernization, integration, and development priorities,” commented Patrick McClellen, Chief Strategy Officer of TSS.
About Lynx Software Technologies
Lynx Software Technologies is on a mission to improve the economics of developing, deploying, and maintaining high-assurance Mission Critical Edge platforms with modular software solutions based on open standards. Our proven technology leadership, extensive system certification expertise, and commitment to open standards have consistently saved our customers millions of dollars in development costs while delivering desired system performance, security, and reliability on schedule. Lynx is committed to enabling customers to build and manage orchestrated, cloud-connected platforms that harness a broad array of modern technologies and unique design methodologies to enable accurate, deterministic decisions at the Mission Critical Edge without compromising safety or cybersecurity requirements. For more information, visit www.lynx.com.
About Thompson Software Solutions
Founded in 2004 with locations in Atlanta, GA and Fort Worth, TX, the Thompson Software Solutions team understands what is required to develop, integrate, test, and deploy software with a safety-critical pedigree while meeting the challenges of modernization and digital transformation. Our team of proven and dedicated employees takes pride in our ability to react quickly and produce quality solutions to difficult technical challenges. We work with partners to find the right path to meet operational needs while future-proofing systems with portability and sustainment considerations to ensure next-generation success. For more information, visit https://www.thompsonsoftwaresolutions.com.
About OceanSound Partners
OceanSound Partners is a New York-based private equity firm that pursues control investments in technology and technology-enabled services companies serving government and enterprise end markets. OceanSound employs a partnership approach, working closely with founders, entrepreneurs, and executives of middle market businesses to drive transformational growth. For more information, visit www.oceansoundpartners.com.
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