From The Military to Information Technology: The Perfect Fit

Think about when you first enlisted in the military, the excitement, the nervousness, the fear of the unknown. While these feelings have surely changed since your first deployment, the end of your military career marks the beginning of a new chapter in your life and the renewal of those same feelings. While this may be intimidating, we want you to know that you have a partner in moving forward.  Our goal is to help veterans navigate the maze of opportunities ahead of them by means of education and information in order to help them choose a career that will serve them for years to come.

Spotlight

WatchPoint

Every day businesses learn that they have been the victim of a cyber-crime. Unlike viruses and malware of previous years, the latest attacks are designed to steal your information, your money and damage your reputation without you ever knowing they are there. WatchPoint uses a unique combination of easy to deploy deception technology and the recording power of Carbon Black to quickly identify and eliminate advanced threats in real-time. Utilizing clientless sensors and a nearly invisible endpoint client, WatchPoint can drastically improve your security stance in less than one day. Don’t wait for the FBI to knock on your door to let you know you’ve been breached. Take action now to mitigate your risk of becoming the next victim.

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Software, Low-Code App Development, Application Development Platform

Are Telcos Ready for a Quantum Leap?

Article | August 23, 2023

Quantum technologies present both an opportunity for telcos to solve difficult problems and provide new services and a security threat that could require extensive IT investment. Are Telcos Ready for a Quantum Leap? When Andrew Lord, Senior Manager, Optical Networks and Quantum Research at BT, first started presenting quantum technologies at customer events six or seven years ago, his was the graveyard shift, he says, entertaining attendees at the end of the day with talk of 'crazy quantum stuff.' "But that is no longer the case," says Lord. "Over the last two years, I've noticed a shift where I now speak before lunch, and customers actively seek us out." Two developments may be causing the shift: Customers’ growing awareness of the threats and opportunities that quantum computing presents, plus a recent spike in investment in quantum technology. In 2022, investors plowed $2.35 billion into quantum technology startups, which include companies in quantum computing, communications and sensing, according to McKinsey. The public sector has also been digging deep into its pockets. Last year, the United States added $1.8 billion to its previous spending on quantum technology, and the EU committed an extra $1.2 billion, the consultancy noted, while China made total investments of $15.3 billion. According to Luke Ibbetson, Head of Group R&D at Vodafone, quantum computing's promise lies in solving a probabilistic equation within a few hours. This task would take a classical computer a million years to accomplish. This breakthrough would enable telcos to address optimization problems related to network planning, optimization, and base station placement. The flip side is that a powerful quantum computer could also break the public-key cryptography that protects today’s IT systems from hackers. As a spokesperson at Deutsche Telekom remarks: “Telcos will have to react to the threat of quantum computers to communication security because their core business model is at risk, which is offering secure digital communications.” The idea of quantum computing posing a security threat is not new. In 1994, Peter Shor, a mathematician working at AT&T Bell Labs, showed how a quantum computer could solve the logarithms used to encrypt data. “His work simultaneously ignited multiple new lines of research in quantum computing, information science, and cryptography,” according to an article by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Shor is currently working. Beyond The Lab What has changed nearly thirty years on is that quantum computing is creeping out of the lab. Sizeable obstacles to large-scale quantum computing, however, remain. Quantum computers are highly sensitive to interference from noise, temperature, movement or electromagnetic fields and, therefore, very difficult and expensive to build and operate, especially at scale: IBM’s latest quantum processor, for example, operates at a very low temperature of approximately 0.02 degrees Kelvin. When Deutsche Telekom’s T-Labs tested telco use cases, it found quantum computing coped well with small problem statements. “However, when the problem size was scaled to real-world problem sizes, the quality of the QComp solution degraded,” according to the spokesperson. The company is now awaiting the next generation of quantum computing platforms to redo the analyses. All of this means, for now, quantum computers are not large and powerful enough to crack Shor’s algorithm. The question is, when will someone succeed? The Global Risk Institute tracks the quantum threat timeline. In its latest annual report, the organization asked 40 quantum experts whether they thought it likely that within the next ten years, a quantum computer would break an encryption scheme like RSA-2048 in under 24 hours. Over half the respondents judged the event to be more than 5% likely, and almost a quarter considered it to be more than 50% likely. Any breakthrough will come from a relatively small number of actors. Today, governments and academic institutions are home to around half of the 163 projects accounted for worldwide by Global Quantum Intelligence, a research and analysis company, according to its CEO, André M. König, with big technology companies and specialized startups accounting for the rest. Q2K Nonetheless, the impact of quantum computing could be widespread, even if relatively few of them are built. The challenge of preparing for a post-quantum future is often called Q2K in reference to the Y2K bug. In the late 1990s, many (but not all) governmental organizations and companies spent millions of dollars on Y2K systems integration to ensure that IT programs written from the 1960s through the 1980s would be able to recognize dates after December 31, 1999, all while being uncertain of the scale or the impact of the risk if they didn’t. ‘Q2K’ differs in that there is no specific deadline, and the dangers of a major security breach are much clearer cut. However, it is similar in demanding a lot of work on aging systems. “Cryptography is used everywhere,” points out Lory Thorpe, IBM’s Director of Global Solutions and Offerings, Telecommunications. She adds, “Because telco systems have been built over periods of decades, people don’t actually know where cryptography is being used. So, if you start to look at the impact of public key cryptography and digital signatures being compromised, you start to look at how those two things impact open source, how that impacts the core network, the radio network, [and] OSS/BSS, network management, how the network management speaks to the network functions and so on.” This complexity is why some analysts recommend that telcos take action now. “You’re going to find tens of thousands of vulnerabilities that are critical and vulnerable to a quantum attack. So, do you have to worry about it today? Absolutely - even if it’s in 2035,” says König. “Anyone who has ever done [IT implementation projects], and anyone who’s ever worked in cybersecurity [knows], tens of thousands of vulnerabilities that are critical [requires] years and years and years of just traditional integration work. So, even if you’re skeptical about quantum, if you haven’t started today, it is almost too late already.” Don’t Panic! For the past two to three years, Vodafone has been preparing to migrate some of its cryptographic systems to be quantum-safe, according to Ibbetson. He believes there is no need to panic about this. However, telcos must start planning now. König said, "The telecoms industry as a whole is not moving as quickly as some other sectors, notably the banking, pharmaceutical, and automotive industries. In these sectors, post-quantum security planning often involves CEOs at a very strategic level." For this reason, Vodafone joined forces with IBM in September 2022 to establish the GSMA Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce. “Even though many industries are preparing to be able to defend against future quantum threats, we didn’t see anything happening particularly in in the telco space, and we wanted to make sure that it was a focus,” says Ibbetson. “Obviously it will turn into an IT-style transformation, but it’s starting now with understanding what it is we need to mobilize that.” AT&T has also been working to pinpoint what needs to be addressed. Last year, the company said it aims to be quantum-ready by 2025, in the sense that it will have done its due diligence and identified a clear path forward. Minding Your PQCs Companies across multiple sectors are looking to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) to secure their systems, which will use new algorithms that are much harder to crack than RSA. König contends that PQC needs to become “a standard component of companies’ agile defense posture” and believes the development of PQC systems by software and hardware companies will help keep upgrade costs under control. “From a financial point of view, vendors do a fantastic job bringing this to market and making it very accessible,” says König. Lord, who has been researching quantum technologies at BT for over a decade, is also confident that there is “going to be much more available technology.” As a result, even smaller telcos will be able to invest in securing their systems. “It doesn't need a big boy with lots of money [for] research to do something around PQC. There’s a lot of work going on to ratify the best of those solutions,” says Lord. There are several reasons why eyes are on software based PQC. Firstly, it can be used to secure data that was encrypted in the past, quantum computing advances will make vulnerable in the future. In addition, the quantum-based alternative to PQC for securing network traffic called quantum key distribution (QKD), comes with a huge drawback for wireless operators. QKD is hardware-based and uses quantum mechanics to prevent interception across optical fiber and satellite (i.e., free space optical) networks, making it secure, albeit expensive. But for reasons of physics, it does not work on mobile networks. Setting Standards Given the importance of PQC, a lot of effort is going into standardizing robust algorithms. The political weight of the US and the size of its technology industry mean that the US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is playing a key role in the technical evaluation of post-quantum standardization algorithms and creating standards. NIST expects to publish the first set of post-quantum cryptography standards in 2024. In the meantime, Dustin Moody, a NIST mathematician, recommends (in answers emailed to inform) that companies “become familiar and do some testing with the algorithms being standardized, and how they will fit in your products and applications. Ensure that you are using current best-practice cryptographic algorithms and security strengths in your existing applications. Have somebody designated to be leading the effort to transition. QKD There is no absolute guarantee, however, that a quantum computer in the future won’t find a way to crack PQC. Therefore, institutions such as government agencies and banks remain interested in using QKD fiber and satellite networks to ensure the highest levels of security for data transmission. The European Commission, for example, is working with the 27 EU Member States and the European Space Agency (ESA) to design, develop and deploy a QKD-based European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI). It will be made up of fiber networks linking strategic sites at national and cross-border levels and a space segment based on satellites. EuroQCI will reinforce the protection of Europe’s governmental institutions, their data centers, hospitals, energy grids, and more,” according to the EU. Telecom operators are involved in some of the national programs, including Orange, which is coordinating France’s part of the program called FranceQCI (Quantum Communication Infrastructure). Separately, this month, Toshiba and Orange announced they had successfully demonstrated the viability of deploying QKD on existing commercial networks. Outside the EU, BT has already built and is now operating a commercial metro quantum-encryption network in London. “The London network has three quantum nodes, which are the bearers carrying the quantum traffic for all of the access ingress,” explains Lord. For example, a customer in London's Canary Wharf could link via the network to the nearest quantum-enabled BT exchange. From there, it joins a metro network, which carries the keys from multiple customers “in an aggregated cost-effective way to the egress points,” according to Lord. “It is not trivial because you can mess things up and [get] the wrong keys,” explains Lord. “You really have to be more careful about authentication and key management. And then it's all about how you engineer your quantum resources to handle bigger aggregation.” It also gives BT the opportunity to explore how to integrate quantum systems downstream into its whole network. “What I'm telling the quantum world is that they need to get into the real world because a system that uses quantum is still going to be 90%, non-quantum and all of the usual networking rules and engineering practices apply. You still need to know how to handle fiber. You still need to know how to provision a piece of equipment and integrate it into a network.” SK Telecom is also heavily involved in quantum-related research, with developments including QKD systems for the control and interworking of quantum cryptography communication networks. Japan is another important center of QKD research. A QKD network has existed in Tokyo since 2010, and in 2020, financial services company Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. tested the transmission of data across the Tokyo QKD network. As the EU’s project makes clear, satellite is an important part of the mix. Lord expects satellite-based QKD networks to come on stream as of 2025 and 2026, enabling the purchase of wholesale quantum keys from a dedicated satellite quantum provider. Back in 2017, China already used the satellite to make the first very long-distance transmission of data secured by QKD between Beijing and Vienna, a distance of 7,000km. Securing The Edge There are additional efforts to secure communications with edge devices. BT’s Lord, for example, sees a role for digital fingerprints for IoT devices, phones, cars and smart meters in the form of a physical unclonable function (PUF) silicon chip, which, because of random imperfections in its manufacture, cannot be copied. In the UK, BT is trialing a combination of QKD and PUF to secure the end-to-end journey of a driverless car. The connection to the roadside depends on standard radio with PUF authentication, while transmission from the roadside unit onward, as well as the overall control of the autonomous vehicle network, incorporate QKD, explains Lord. SK Telecom has developed what it describes as a quantum-enhanced cryptographic chip with Korea Computer & Systems (KCS) and ID Quantique. Telefónica Spain has partnered on the development of a quantum-safe 5G SIM card and has integrated quantum technology into its cloud service hosted in its virtual data centers. Given China’s heavy investment in quantum technologies, it is no surprise to see its telecom operators involved in the field. China Telecom, for example, recently invested three billion yuan ($434m) in quantum technology deployment, according to Reuters. Quantum in The Cloud Some of America's biggest technology companies are investing in quantum computing. Today, it is even possible to access quantum computing facilities via the cloud, albeit at on small scale. IBM's cloud access to quantum computers is free for the most basic level, rising to $1.60 per second for the next level. And it is just the beginning. America's big tech companies are racing to build quantum computers at scale. One measure of scale is the size of a quantum processor, which is measured in qubits. While a traditional computer stores information as a 0 or 1, a qubit can represent both 0 and 1 simultaneously. This unique property enables a quantum computer to explore multiple potential solutions to a problem simultaneously; and the greater the stability of its qubits, the more efficient it becomes. IBM has a long history in quantum research and development. In 1998, it unveiled what was then a ground-breaking 2-qubit computer. By 2022, it had produced a 433-qubit processor, and in 2023, it aims to produce a 1,121-qubit processor. Separately, this month, it announced the construction of its first quantum data center in Europe, which it expects to begin offering commercial services as of next year. Google is also firmly in the race to build a large-scale quantum computer. In 2019, a paper in Nature featured Google’s Sycamore processor and the speed with which it undertakes computational tasks. More recent work includes an experimental demonstration of it’s possible to reduce errors by increasing the number of qubits. Microsoft reckons that "a quantum machine capable of solving many of the hardest problems facing humanity will ultimately require at least 1 million stable qubits that can perform 1 quintillion operations while making at most a single error." To this end, it is working on what it calls a new type of qubit, a topological qubit. Amazon announced in 2021 an AWS Center for Quantum Computing on the Caltech campus to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

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Software, Future Tech, Application Development Platform

Over the Waterfall to GitOps

Article | August 16, 2023

One of the first steps on the journey to cloud-native is transforming culture. This starts with embracing Agile methodology, followed by implementation of DevOps processes and eventually GitOps, as we explore in this extract from the recent e-book Mind the gap: bridging the skills divide on the journey to cloud native. Most CSPs agree that culture, including governance and skills, is the single biggest obstacle to adopting a cloud-native architecture. Traditional waterfall project management focuses on a linear progression, where one task or process needs to be completed before the next can start. This approach is time-consuming and costly, and it stifles innovation. It’s a major reason a CSP typically takes more than a year to develop a new service. Adopting Agile methodology is a completely new way of working that focuses on building cross-functional teams to speed innovation and service creation. This requires CSPs to seek individuals with the new project management skills and are adaptable and quick-thinking. Agile may not be suitable for every aspect of the business or for every project, but it is critical for moving to cloud-based, and eventually to cloud-native environments. Agile’s assumptions • Early, continuous delivery of software leads to happy customers • Changing requirements are always welcome, even in late development • Working software is delivered frequently • Business teams and developers work together every day • Projects are built around motivated and trusted individuals • Face-to-face is the best way to communicate • Working software is the principal measure of progress • Development is sustainable and constant • Attention to technical excellence and good design are required • Simplicity is essential • The best architectures emerge from self-organizing teams • Teams look for ways to be more effective and adjust accordingly There are lots of Agile approaches, but many CSPs use a model made popular by Spotify, which organizes teams into ‘squads,’ ‘tribes,’ ‘chapters,’ and ‘guilds.’ Vodafone Group follows this model and uses ‘very, very flat, non-hierarchical governance,’ according to Dr. Lester Thomas, Chief IT Systems Architect at Vodafone Group. “We’ve learned doing this in the digital space, but we’re trying to adopt that software approach right into our network.” Culture Eats Technology UScellular began adopting Agile methodology about five years ago, and the company is implementing cloud-native applications wherever they make sense. During its shift to the new way of working, cultural change has been the most difficult obstacle to overcome, significantly harder than technological change, according to Kevin Lowell, the company’s Chief People Officer and former Executive VP in charge of IT. The shift started with creating ‘a compelling why’ – in this case, improving how customers experience using UScellular services. The company replaced some waterfall processes with iterative Agile processes managed in scrums and implemented in sprints. The IT team also began meeting regularly with business stakeholders and educating them about how Agile works. Telecom Argentina is also embracing Agile. It is working with Red Hat to adopt a framework called Team Topologies to create a more efficient way of collaborating. The company is applying Team Topologies within its network division to create cross-functional teams that not only focus on the evolution and operation of technological platforms but also on creating and delivering services. From Agile to DevOps While Agile methodologies help to establish communication between IT teams and other stakeholders in the company, DevOps goes further by introducing an end-to-end software lifecycle that establishes a continuous flow of development, integration, testing, delivery and deployment. Google’s approach to DevOps, called Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), has been widely adopted in telecoms. It provides the foundation for the ODA Canvas, and it’s how Vodafone Group is implementing DevOps. Vodafone is a cloud-native pioneer. For the past several years, the company has been transforming into a platform provider, using what it calls a ‘telco-as-a-service’ or TaaS strategy. Vodafone is becoming a software company on its quest to become a techco, which involves hiring 7,000 software engineers to add to the existing 9,000 in the company. A key driver for embracing a cloud-native approach is “moving from our millions of human customers to billions of things,” says Thomas. Instead of offering just four primary services – fixed voice, broadband Internet, mobility and TV, he envisions using 5G network slicing to support thousands of IoT services per vertical market. “Unless we can drive this through software-driven approaches and automation, we’re not going to be successful,” he says. From DevOps to GitOps The problem with DevOps, however, is that most CSPs aren’t developing their software; they buy solutions from vendor partners. As Omdia’s James Crawshaw, Principal Analyst at Telco IT & Operations, notes in a research report, this makes it difficult for operators to create CI/CD pipelines that cut across organizational boundaries between CSPs and suppliers. To address this, CSPs “have adapted DevOps to their needs and created GitOps, which they use to take third-party applications and deploy on their own platforms,” Crawshaw explains. Philippe Ensarguet, Group CTO at Orange Business Services, recently explained that GitOps requires continuous integration and continuous operations or CI/CO. This means moving away from a prescriptive way of implementing operations to a declarative approach that supports full automation. What is GitOps? “If you rely mainly on the prescriptive approach, the day you want to move into production and scale up the number of applications you implement, you have to manage it purely with humans, and you hit the wall on scalability,” says Ensarguet. William Caban, Telco Chief Architect at Red Hat, sees GitOps as foundational to the concept of zero-touch, zero-wait and zero-trouble services, which will be orchestrated end-to-end in autonomous networks. “This is exactly what GitOps is about: event-driven, intent-based networks,” he says. “It becomes the operational model for architectures based on the ODA and autonomous networks.” CSPs must hire software and automation skills for GitOps. They also must reskill network experts, such as radio access network (RAN) engineers, to work in CI/CO teams so everyone uses common terminology. Some operators are going even further by creating centers of excellence (CoEs) where cross-functional teams from business, network and operations collaborate. “In GitOps, it is also necessary to codify team members’ knowledge, so that even as people move around or leave the company, the software development and operations lifecycle processes are not disrupted,” Caban says.

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Neural Networks

Empowering Industry 4.0 with Artificial Intelligence

Article | September 15, 2023

The next step in industrial technology is about robotics, computers and equipment becoming connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) and enhanced by machine learning algorithms. Industry 4.0 has the potential to be a powerful driver of economic growth, predicted to add between $500 billion- $1.5 trillion in value to the global economy between 2018 and 2022, according to a report by Capgemini.

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How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Businesses

Article | February 12, 2020

Whilst there are many people that associate AI with sci-fi novels and films, its reputation as an antagonist to fictional dystopic worlds is now becoming a thing of the past, as the technology becomes more and more integrated into our everyday lives. AI technologies have become increasingly more present in our daily lives, not just with Alexa’s in the home, but also throughout businesses everywhere, disrupting a variety of different industries with often tremendous results. The technology has helped to streamline even the most mundane of tasks whilst having a breath-taking impact on a company’s efficiency and productivity

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Spotlight

WatchPoint

Every day businesses learn that they have been the victim of a cyber-crime. Unlike viruses and malware of previous years, the latest attacks are designed to steal your information, your money and damage your reputation without you ever knowing they are there. WatchPoint uses a unique combination of easy to deploy deception technology and the recording power of Carbon Black to quickly identify and eliminate advanced threats in real-time. Utilizing clientless sensors and a nearly invisible endpoint client, WatchPoint can drastically improve your security stance in less than one day. Don’t wait for the FBI to knock on your door to let you know you’ve been breached. Take action now to mitigate your risk of becoming the next victim.

Related News

Software

OpenText AI Enables Smarter Organizations

PR Newswire | October 16, 2023

OpenText™ (NASDAQ: OTEX), (TSX: OTEX), the information company, today announced the latest release of its Cloud Editions (CE) 23.4, which includes OpenText Aviator artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that carry through the company's innovation roadmap. For over a decade, OpenText has been helping organizations manage and secure large complex data sets from IoT and robotics, to natural language processing, to complex systems and generative AI. OpenText Aviator empowers organizations to swiftly act on their data, make sharp decisions and evolve with intelligent tools that learn over time. OpenText Aviator uplevels information automation so organizations can easily make the AI pivot and conquer today's and tomorrow's business challenges. The AI revolution is creating an unprecedented platform shift – one that will transform all industries, all functions, and all roles, said Mark Barrenechea, CEO & CTO of OpenText. OpenText has been developing AI capabilities for over a decade, and OpenText Aviators is an AI breakthrough for customers. OpenText Aviator will help customers massively increase productivity through new conversation interfaces leveraging Information Management data sets and language models. The demand for and adoption of AI technologies continues to grow at record speed. According to IDC, global AI IT spending will surpass $308 billion by 2026. In response to this rapidly growing demand and market potential, OpenText introduced its opentext.ai vision and strategy for AI focused on helping organizations power and protect traditional operational and experience data while anticipating a new layer of learning data from generative AI and large language models (LLMS). Grounded in layering LLMs on top of private, secured data, opentext.ai allows for a full stack or modular approach to practical AI. Organizations can take advantage of LLM-based capabilities within applications, or they can utilize OpenText Cloud API Services to create the right sandbox to experiment with. "From upstream and renewables to trading and transport to marketing and manufacturing, we keep goods and people moving. We span 160 markets, serve about 32 million people a day at 46,000 branded retail sites and work with more than 1 million business customers. We have been the No.1 global lubricants supplier for 16 consecutive years and offer our customers a strong portfolio of energy solutions they need today and tomorrow. AI is key to maintaining our performance in these areas whilst we play a key role in the energy transition and help our customers decarbonize their businesses in the journey to net zero," said Jonathan Cullender, Head of Integration at Shell. "We are excited to take the stage with OpenText in Las Vegas to explore the game-changing capabilities of AI within the energy sector and how OpenText solutions have been instrumental in improving our operational efficiency and security, ultimately leading to substantial cost savings." "As generative AI moves on from the initial hype, the work to ensure a measurable return on investment begins," said Darryl Gray, Global Vice President of Software Partner Solutions at SAP. "SAP is committed to creating an enterprise AI ecosystem for the future that complements our world-class business applications suite and helps our customers unlock their full potential. We support the vision behind OpenText's opentext.ai strategy and are confident that OpenText's latest innovations will enable businesses of all sizes and industries to elevate their operations to unimaginable heights." OpenText Aviator enables AI orchestration and the creation of information flows across multiple clouds and knowledge bases allowing organizations to address multiple AI use cases for their enterprise without having to move their data. The latest Cloud Editions release includes: OpenText Aviator for Business OpenText IT Operations Aviator™ is a cutting-edge generative AI virtual agent for OpenText Service Management Automation X (SMAX). The latest integration combines LLMs with OpenText's data security expertise to enhance the user experience, facilitate intuitive self-service, provide faster issue resolution and gain efficiency, ultimately reducing service management costs and improve end-user customer experience. OpenText DevOps Aviator™ revolutionizes software delivery with generative AI capabilities enabling organizations to deliver software at unparalleled velocity. This tool leverages AI to optimize software delivery with feature prediction, enhances test coverage with automatic test creation and authoring, and reduces points of risk that impact quality. OpenText Content Aviator™ optimizes information retrieval in the workplace, making it more efficient and productive. The interactive chat interface and natural language queries enhances user productivity and streamlines content discovery. OpenText Experience Aviator™ integrates Customer Communications Management (CCM) software with generative AI capabilities enabling marketing, communications and customer service support teams to produce well-formed and relevant material faster than ever, boosting development productivity. OpenText Cybersecurity Aviator™ offers AI-enhanced rapid deployment capabilities and cloud-based efficiency to help organizations implement new threat detection models designed to protect users from diverse, sophisticated and evolving threats. OpenText Business Network Aviator™ brings generative AI and large language models (LLMs) into the OpenText Business Network, placing the entire supply chain information flow into a single platform. By utilizing a comprehensive 360-degree perspective of end-to-end supply chain operations and an AI-powered conversational interface, businesses will gain access to information to respond quickly to dynamic and unpredictable market fluctuations and conditions. OpenText Aviator for Technologists OpenText Aviator Platform offers a suite of tools and connectors to administer enterprise-grade data warehouses, data lakes, analytics of structure and unstructured data, and visualization for intelligent decision-making. OpenText Aviator Search introduces a new advanced capability to go from clicks to conversations with search that spans all data types across multiple repositories to build any custom solution, portal, or experience for an enterprise. OpenText Aviator IOT brings forward a collection of tools to better connect and protect millions of IoT endpoints to get real-time insights and visibility into assets location, condition, utilization, performance and health. OpenText Aviator Thrust & Thrust Studio is a set of robust cloud API services and developer tools built over the last three years that can power secure information flows, fuel custom AI solutions, and fast-track new AI-embedded applications. OpenText Aviator Lab is a partnership for experimentation with professional AI experts to help customers accelerate AI development through rapid prototyping, AI reference architectures in a secure sandbox environment.

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LINUX, Android

Sendbird Adds AI-Powered SmartAssistant to Salesforce Connector for Fast and Personalized Support Interactions

PR Newswire | August 25, 2023

Sendbird, the communications API platform powering 4,000 apps and 300 Million monthly users, today announced that its enterprise Salesforce Connector has entered General Availability (GA), delivering efficiency-driving enhancements for customer service teams. This release adds a host of new features, including the Sendbird SmartAssistant, a first-of-its-kind, conversational AI solution. As part of Sendbird's leading communications platform, Salesforce Connector empowers any business to extend Salesforce Service Cloud capabilities to deliver an exceptional live chat support experience to customers. Now, with Sendbird SmartAssistant, a customizable, no-code generative AI chatbot is readily available to integrate into companies' support workflows. Conversations become richer and more rewarding directly within an organization's mobile app. Salesforce Connector provides superior chat capabilities, such as rich media attachments, image moderation, webhooks, and a customizable end-user experience that can be tailored to companies' specific needs. With integration of the AI chatbot, SmartAssistant, Sendbird now provides even more high-quality responses to support queries. Whether it's answering frequently asked questions or troubleshooting product issues, SmartAssistant for Salesforce Connector ensures helpful and human-like responses throughout the customer support journey. Sendbird's cutting-edge generative AI solution enables users to leverage high-value first-party data for support interactions. Users can now easily create AI knowledge chatbots without the need for OpenAI credentials. This can provide personalized and human-like chatbot conversations to quickly meet customer needs while improving agent efficiency. The new integration builds upon and extends Salesforce Connector's Summarize feature. What was tested conceptually through the beta period is now an essential, valuable part of the Salesforce Connector tool. Summarize is powered by ChatGPT and enables agents to get a comprehensive summary of an entire support chat conversation with a customer in an instant; agents no longer need to read the conversation from the very start to provide the best, immediate support for their users. In addition to SmartAssistant and Summarize, Sendbird also incorporated new Moderation capabilities. Organizations can moderate message content and users from the convenience of a single dashboard. With the supported filters and moderation methods, they can determine the level of suitability of language, images, and other content for their applications using Salesforce Connector. Users also benefit from Auto-Translation, in which Salesforce Connector translates received messages into an agent's preferred language within the case chat. "Salesforce Connector changes the game for customer support," said Sendbird CEO and Co-founder John S. Kim. "Agents have all the tools and answers they need right at their fingertips to solve even the most complex problems with ease. And with SmartAssistant, agents can help more customers than ever before with new levels of personalization and efficiency." With Sendbird Salesforce Connector, organizations get an out-of-the-box solution with seamless, near-instant integration compared to other chat solutions that can take weeks. This translates to faster time to value. Additionally, as a cloud-based solution, the tool is persistently updated with no interruption to the user experience and no management demands on teams. About Sendbird Sendbird, a member company of Born2Global Centre, believes conversations are at the heart of building relationships and getting things done. The company's global conversations platform powers over 7 billion mobile messages and interactions monthly. Industry leaders like Carousell, Traveloka, RedDoorz, Tiket, Rakuten, Viki, AirAsia, TADA, RuangGuru, Ralali, Reddit, and Paytm build with Sendbird chat, voice, video, and livestream APIs to create a differentiated user experience that improves customer retention, conversion, and satisfaction.

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General AI, Software, Future Tech

Opera announces that its native browser AI integration surpasses 1 million users

Prnewswire | July 31, 2023

Opera Limited (NASDAQ: OPRA), one of the world's major browser developers and a leading internet consumer brand, today announced that Opera's native browser AI, has reached over 1,000,000 users since recently becoming available to the users of the Opera Browser for Android and Opera Browser for desktop. Opera has moved swiftly to incorporate generative AI into its products since the turn of the year. A collaboration with OpenAI was announced at the end of February, with its popular ChatGPT platform integrated, along with ChatSonic, into the browser's sidebar within a month. Opera has also pioneered its own new AI solutions, such as AI Prompts, which allow users to quickly initiate conversations with generative AI services to shorten or explain articles, generate tweets, or request relevant content based on highlighted text. The announcement of Aria in May marked a bold new step in the company's rapid adoption of AI services. Based on Opera's own "Composer" infrastructure, Aria connects to OpenAI's GPT technology and is enhanced by additional capabilities such as live results from the web. Easily expandable, Composer allows Aria to connect to multiple AI models and in the future will expand by integrating further capacities such as search and AI services powered by Opera's key partners. Aria and AI services in general are key to Opera's strategy going forward, with the company's newly redesigned flagship desktop browser a harbinger of things to come. Rebuilt from the ground up, Opera One – in which Aria is natively integrated – heralds a new era of AI-based browsing. Beyond creating space for existing generative AI tools, the new design is also laying the groundwork for the AI services Opera is planning to unveil in the near future. "As encouraging as the initial adoption of Aria has been, we are equally pleased with the quality of the users' early engagement with the AI tool," said co-CEO Lin Song. "We are also seeing a lift in total time spent, with increased searches and pageviews per session." "While it is still early days, I am thrilled that our users are loving the Aria experience as much as we do," he expanded. "I can't wait for more of our users to try Aria for themselves as we upgrade all of our Desktop user base to Opera One and bring our native browser AI to Opera GX and Opera for iOS soon, making it available on all major platforms." Aria is now available in Opera One, Opera's completely redesigned flagship browser, and in Opera for Android. To use Aria – available in more than 180 countries worldwide, including the EU – users should download Opera for Android or Opera browser for desktop and log in using their Opera account. If they do not have one, they can register here for free. Once done, users simply open the browser, click the Aria icon in the main menu (mobile) or in the sidebar (desktop) and start exploring the new way of browsing, using AI for free. About Opera Opera is a web innovator building on more than 25 years of innovation that started with the Opera web browser. While Opera is leveraging its brand and engaged user base in order to grow and develop new products and services for people who seek a better internet experience, Opera's PC and mobile web browsers, content discovery platform Opera News, and apps dedicated to gaming, Web3 and e-commerce are already the trusted choices of hundreds of millions of active and engaged users. Opera is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, and listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under the "OPRA" ticker symbol. Download and access Opera's products and services from www.opera.com.

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Software

OpenText AI Enables Smarter Organizations

PR Newswire | October 16, 2023

OpenText™ (NASDAQ: OTEX), (TSX: OTEX), the information company, today announced the latest release of its Cloud Editions (CE) 23.4, which includes OpenText Aviator artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that carry through the company's innovation roadmap. For over a decade, OpenText has been helping organizations manage and secure large complex data sets from IoT and robotics, to natural language processing, to complex systems and generative AI. OpenText Aviator empowers organizations to swiftly act on their data, make sharp decisions and evolve with intelligent tools that learn over time. OpenText Aviator uplevels information automation so organizations can easily make the AI pivot and conquer today's and tomorrow's business challenges. The AI revolution is creating an unprecedented platform shift – one that will transform all industries, all functions, and all roles, said Mark Barrenechea, CEO & CTO of OpenText. OpenText has been developing AI capabilities for over a decade, and OpenText Aviators is an AI breakthrough for customers. OpenText Aviator will help customers massively increase productivity through new conversation interfaces leveraging Information Management data sets and language models. The demand for and adoption of AI technologies continues to grow at record speed. According to IDC, global AI IT spending will surpass $308 billion by 2026. In response to this rapidly growing demand and market potential, OpenText introduced its opentext.ai vision and strategy for AI focused on helping organizations power and protect traditional operational and experience data while anticipating a new layer of learning data from generative AI and large language models (LLMS). Grounded in layering LLMs on top of private, secured data, opentext.ai allows for a full stack or modular approach to practical AI. Organizations can take advantage of LLM-based capabilities within applications, or they can utilize OpenText Cloud API Services to create the right sandbox to experiment with. "From upstream and renewables to trading and transport to marketing and manufacturing, we keep goods and people moving. We span 160 markets, serve about 32 million people a day at 46,000 branded retail sites and work with more than 1 million business customers. We have been the No.1 global lubricants supplier for 16 consecutive years and offer our customers a strong portfolio of energy solutions they need today and tomorrow. AI is key to maintaining our performance in these areas whilst we play a key role in the energy transition and help our customers decarbonize their businesses in the journey to net zero," said Jonathan Cullender, Head of Integration at Shell. "We are excited to take the stage with OpenText in Las Vegas to explore the game-changing capabilities of AI within the energy sector and how OpenText solutions have been instrumental in improving our operational efficiency and security, ultimately leading to substantial cost savings." "As generative AI moves on from the initial hype, the work to ensure a measurable return on investment begins," said Darryl Gray, Global Vice President of Software Partner Solutions at SAP. "SAP is committed to creating an enterprise AI ecosystem for the future that complements our world-class business applications suite and helps our customers unlock their full potential. We support the vision behind OpenText's opentext.ai strategy and are confident that OpenText's latest innovations will enable businesses of all sizes and industries to elevate their operations to unimaginable heights." OpenText Aviator enables AI orchestration and the creation of information flows across multiple clouds and knowledge bases allowing organizations to address multiple AI use cases for their enterprise without having to move their data. The latest Cloud Editions release includes: OpenText Aviator for Business OpenText IT Operations Aviator™ is a cutting-edge generative AI virtual agent for OpenText Service Management Automation X (SMAX). The latest integration combines LLMs with OpenText's data security expertise to enhance the user experience, facilitate intuitive self-service, provide faster issue resolution and gain efficiency, ultimately reducing service management costs and improve end-user customer experience. OpenText DevOps Aviator™ revolutionizes software delivery with generative AI capabilities enabling organizations to deliver software at unparalleled velocity. This tool leverages AI to optimize software delivery with feature prediction, enhances test coverage with automatic test creation and authoring, and reduces points of risk that impact quality. OpenText Content Aviator™ optimizes information retrieval in the workplace, making it more efficient and productive. The interactive chat interface and natural language queries enhances user productivity and streamlines content discovery. OpenText Experience Aviator™ integrates Customer Communications Management (CCM) software with generative AI capabilities enabling marketing, communications and customer service support teams to produce well-formed and relevant material faster than ever, boosting development productivity. OpenText Cybersecurity Aviator™ offers AI-enhanced rapid deployment capabilities and cloud-based efficiency to help organizations implement new threat detection models designed to protect users from diverse, sophisticated and evolving threats. OpenText Business Network Aviator™ brings generative AI and large language models (LLMs) into the OpenText Business Network, placing the entire supply chain information flow into a single platform. By utilizing a comprehensive 360-degree perspective of end-to-end supply chain operations and an AI-powered conversational interface, businesses will gain access to information to respond quickly to dynamic and unpredictable market fluctuations and conditions. OpenText Aviator for Technologists OpenText Aviator Platform offers a suite of tools and connectors to administer enterprise-grade data warehouses, data lakes, analytics of structure and unstructured data, and visualization for intelligent decision-making. OpenText Aviator Search introduces a new advanced capability to go from clicks to conversations with search that spans all data types across multiple repositories to build any custom solution, portal, or experience for an enterprise. OpenText Aviator IOT brings forward a collection of tools to better connect and protect millions of IoT endpoints to get real-time insights and visibility into assets location, condition, utilization, performance and health. OpenText Aviator Thrust & Thrust Studio is a set of robust cloud API services and developer tools built over the last three years that can power secure information flows, fuel custom AI solutions, and fast-track new AI-embedded applications. OpenText Aviator Lab is a partnership for experimentation with professional AI experts to help customers accelerate AI development through rapid prototyping, AI reference architectures in a secure sandbox environment.

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LINUX, Android

Sendbird Adds AI-Powered SmartAssistant to Salesforce Connector for Fast and Personalized Support Interactions

PR Newswire | August 25, 2023

Sendbird, the communications API platform powering 4,000 apps and 300 Million monthly users, today announced that its enterprise Salesforce Connector has entered General Availability (GA), delivering efficiency-driving enhancements for customer service teams. This release adds a host of new features, including the Sendbird SmartAssistant, a first-of-its-kind, conversational AI solution. As part of Sendbird's leading communications platform, Salesforce Connector empowers any business to extend Salesforce Service Cloud capabilities to deliver an exceptional live chat support experience to customers. Now, with Sendbird SmartAssistant, a customizable, no-code generative AI chatbot is readily available to integrate into companies' support workflows. Conversations become richer and more rewarding directly within an organization's mobile app. Salesforce Connector provides superior chat capabilities, such as rich media attachments, image moderation, webhooks, and a customizable end-user experience that can be tailored to companies' specific needs. With integration of the AI chatbot, SmartAssistant, Sendbird now provides even more high-quality responses to support queries. Whether it's answering frequently asked questions or troubleshooting product issues, SmartAssistant for Salesforce Connector ensures helpful and human-like responses throughout the customer support journey. Sendbird's cutting-edge generative AI solution enables users to leverage high-value first-party data for support interactions. Users can now easily create AI knowledge chatbots without the need for OpenAI credentials. This can provide personalized and human-like chatbot conversations to quickly meet customer needs while improving agent efficiency. The new integration builds upon and extends Salesforce Connector's Summarize feature. What was tested conceptually through the beta period is now an essential, valuable part of the Salesforce Connector tool. Summarize is powered by ChatGPT and enables agents to get a comprehensive summary of an entire support chat conversation with a customer in an instant; agents no longer need to read the conversation from the very start to provide the best, immediate support for their users. In addition to SmartAssistant and Summarize, Sendbird also incorporated new Moderation capabilities. Organizations can moderate message content and users from the convenience of a single dashboard. With the supported filters and moderation methods, they can determine the level of suitability of language, images, and other content for their applications using Salesforce Connector. Users also benefit from Auto-Translation, in which Salesforce Connector translates received messages into an agent's preferred language within the case chat. "Salesforce Connector changes the game for customer support," said Sendbird CEO and Co-founder John S. Kim. "Agents have all the tools and answers they need right at their fingertips to solve even the most complex problems with ease. And with SmartAssistant, agents can help more customers than ever before with new levels of personalization and efficiency." With Sendbird Salesforce Connector, organizations get an out-of-the-box solution with seamless, near-instant integration compared to other chat solutions that can take weeks. This translates to faster time to value. Additionally, as a cloud-based solution, the tool is persistently updated with no interruption to the user experience and no management demands on teams. About Sendbird Sendbird, a member company of Born2Global Centre, believes conversations are at the heart of building relationships and getting things done. The company's global conversations platform powers over 7 billion mobile messages and interactions monthly. Industry leaders like Carousell, Traveloka, RedDoorz, Tiket, Rakuten, Viki, AirAsia, TADA, RuangGuru, Ralali, Reddit, and Paytm build with Sendbird chat, voice, video, and livestream APIs to create a differentiated user experience that improves customer retention, conversion, and satisfaction.

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General AI, Software, Future Tech

Opera announces that its native browser AI integration surpasses 1 million users

Prnewswire | July 31, 2023

Opera Limited (NASDAQ: OPRA), one of the world's major browser developers and a leading internet consumer brand, today announced that Opera's native browser AI, has reached over 1,000,000 users since recently becoming available to the users of the Opera Browser for Android and Opera Browser for desktop. Opera has moved swiftly to incorporate generative AI into its products since the turn of the year. A collaboration with OpenAI was announced at the end of February, with its popular ChatGPT platform integrated, along with ChatSonic, into the browser's sidebar within a month. Opera has also pioneered its own new AI solutions, such as AI Prompts, which allow users to quickly initiate conversations with generative AI services to shorten or explain articles, generate tweets, or request relevant content based on highlighted text. The announcement of Aria in May marked a bold new step in the company's rapid adoption of AI services. Based on Opera's own "Composer" infrastructure, Aria connects to OpenAI's GPT technology and is enhanced by additional capabilities such as live results from the web. Easily expandable, Composer allows Aria to connect to multiple AI models and in the future will expand by integrating further capacities such as search and AI services powered by Opera's key partners. Aria and AI services in general are key to Opera's strategy going forward, with the company's newly redesigned flagship desktop browser a harbinger of things to come. Rebuilt from the ground up, Opera One – in which Aria is natively integrated – heralds a new era of AI-based browsing. Beyond creating space for existing generative AI tools, the new design is also laying the groundwork for the AI services Opera is planning to unveil in the near future. "As encouraging as the initial adoption of Aria has been, we are equally pleased with the quality of the users' early engagement with the AI tool," said co-CEO Lin Song. "We are also seeing a lift in total time spent, with increased searches and pageviews per session." "While it is still early days, I am thrilled that our users are loving the Aria experience as much as we do," he expanded. "I can't wait for more of our users to try Aria for themselves as we upgrade all of our Desktop user base to Opera One and bring our native browser AI to Opera GX and Opera for iOS soon, making it available on all major platforms." Aria is now available in Opera One, Opera's completely redesigned flagship browser, and in Opera for Android. To use Aria – available in more than 180 countries worldwide, including the EU – users should download Opera for Android or Opera browser for desktop and log in using their Opera account. If they do not have one, they can register here for free. Once done, users simply open the browser, click the Aria icon in the main menu (mobile) or in the sidebar (desktop) and start exploring the new way of browsing, using AI for free. About Opera Opera is a web innovator building on more than 25 years of innovation that started with the Opera web browser. While Opera is leveraging its brand and engaged user base in order to grow and develop new products and services for people who seek a better internet experience, Opera's PC and mobile web browsers, content discovery platform Opera News, and apps dedicated to gaming, Web3 and e-commerce are already the trusted choices of hundreds of millions of active and engaged users. Opera is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, and listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under the "OPRA" ticker symbol. Download and access Opera's products and services from www.opera.com.

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Events