How Does IT Vendor Selection and Management Work?

How Does IT Vendor Selection and Management Work?

What Is the Importance of IT Vendor Selection and Management?

Ideally, the IT vendor management process is an umbrella term for all the processes and systems organizations use to manage their IT suppliers. This is where an organization works with vendors to optimize its supplies and services. There could be several vendors an organization is associated with for unique services and offers.

With proper vendor management, an organization can take appropriate measures to control costs, reduce potential risks, and ensure excellent service delivery.

But the catch here is that it isn't as easy as it sounds. This includes researching the best available vendor, sourcing and obtaining pricing information, gauging the quality of work, managing relationships, and evaluating performance by setting organizational standards.

Most Common Challenges in Vendor Management

Even though there are many benefits, organizations face certain challenges during IT vendor selection and their management. Some of these most common challenges are mentioned below:

  • High administrative costs
  • Incomplete documentation
  • Non-compliance
  • Poor vendor relationships
  • Security breaches
  • Supply chain inefficiencies

While there were some nuanced changes in the selections between various businesses, both large and small, the results indicate that organizations often face the same challenges no matter where they’re coming from.

How Do IT Vendor Selection and Management Help an Organization?

In contemporary times, with geographical and economic barriers constantly diminishing, organizations look for different types of vendors worldwide. Even if the organization is working with just one vendor, it is essential to have effective vendor management in place. With proper vendor management, an organization can experience the following benefits:

Better Selection

With the right vendor, your organization can benefit from a more extensive selection of vendors, resulting in more choices and better costs.


Better Contract Management

If there is multi-vendor management in place, your organization can benefit from a centralized view of the current status of all contracts and other useful information. This will enable your organization to achieve better decision-making capabilities.


Better Performance Management

Using a vendor management system, an organization can get an integrated view of the performance of all the vendors. This would give your organization a clear understanding of what is working and what is not.


Better Vendor Relationship

Managing multiple vendors at the same time can be a difficult task. By accumulating all vendor-related information in a single place, organizations benefit from getting all required information at once, and this can influence your decision-making process.


Exploring the Ideal Process of IT Vendor Selection

In a world where we are constantly progressing with increasing IT specialization, organizations must be able to rely on their partners. There are some specific steps that an organization can take up to make the whole IT vendor selection process more successful.

The six-step process of ideal IT vendor selection:

  • Kick-off and requirement definition
  • Market research and first vendor filtering
  • Request for proposal
  • Evaluating responses
  • Proof of concept
  • Choosing the vendor

There are also some common mistakes that organizations make while selecting their vendor. Some of these common errors are listed below:

  • Not evaluating the vendor and only their offerings
  • Communication indiscretion
  • Not comparing vendors or similar stature

Today, outsourcing is increasingly used by companies as an enabler for innovation. Technological advancements drive improvements in service delivery, which positively impact cost, enhance functionality, improve service quality, and reduce the importance of location on service delivery. Disruptive technologies like cloud computing enable solutions such as Salesforce.com or ServiceNow to accelerate speed to value and drive business growth. This leads to a change from the traditional IT organization to the next generation IT organization. The operating model needs more agility to respond faster and at different speeds to new service offerings. Outsourcing models have reached their third generation and involve a multi-vendor environment, requiring more transparency and integrated vendor management.


Best Techniques to Improve Vendor Management

The vendor management process is a crucial component for any organization, as it allows them to build a relationship with their suppliers and service providers that would help strengthen their business. Vendor management is not only about negotiating the price; the most essential aspect is coming to a conclusion that would mutually aid both organizations.

Some effective techniques that can be utilized for effective IT vendor management are:

  • Share information and priorities
  • Balance commitment and competition
  • Allow critical vendors to help you strategize
  • Build partnerships that would last long term
  • Try to understand your vendor's business process
  • Negotiate and conclude with a win-win agreement
  • Come together on value


Conclusion

Ideally speaking, vendor selection and managing that relationship can sometimes be challenging. Once you follow the process mentioned above to select the right vendor for your organization, the steps ahead will get a little easier. However, there is still the process of managing and building that relationship with the vendor.

"The objective of vendor management is to fortify company success and overall marketplace performance."

- Sean-Michael Callahan, Principal at The NiVACK Group.

FAQ


What Is Vendor Management in the IT Sector?

The process that allows organizations to control costs, strengthen service, and reduce risks throughout the process of outsourcing to vendors while getting the most value from the investment is called vendor management in the IT sector.


What Is a Vendor Selection Process?

The vendor selection process is a subsidiary stage that allows for the clear stating, defining, and approval of those vendors who are eligible to meet the requirements of the procurement process.


What Is the Role of Vendor Management?

The vendor management process ideally facilitates and maintains relationships between your organization and vendors, negotiating contracts, creating standards for the vendors, and finding the best available vendors.

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Are Telcos Ready for a Quantum Leap?

Article | July 24, 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, Low-Code App Development, Application Development Platform

Over the Waterfall to GitOps

Article | August 23, 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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Innovation, Software, Future Tech

Empowering Industry 4.0 with Artificial Intelligence

Article | November 14, 2022

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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Ebix

Ebix is a leading international supplier of software and e-commerce solutions to the insurance industry. Ebix provides a series of application software products for the insurance industry ranging from carrier systems, agency systems and exchanges to custom software development for all entities involved in the insurance and financial industries.

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AI Tech

Silobreaker Releases AI for Swift and Precise Threat Intelligence

Silobreaker | November 07, 2023

Silobreaker, a leading security and threat intelligence technology company, has announced the launch of its new AI tool, Silobreaker AI. This tool is designed to assist threat intelligence teams in collecting, analyzing, and reporting on intelligence requirements, thereby enabling faster, intelligence-led decision-making within organizations. The AI tool, which will be integrated into the Silobreaker intelligence platform, can summarize and extract key information from Silobreaker’s own analyst content and generate topical threat reports. These reports can then be used by stakeholders to make informed decisions. Per Lindh, CTO of Silobreaker, described the tool as a 'cheat code' for threat intelligence teams, providing faster insights into threats and enabling decisive action to reduce risks. The tool also augments Silobreaker’s range of threat intelligence capabilities, adding computer-aided learning and automation techniques to streamline the collection, analysis, and dissemination of open-source intelligence data. While the introduction of Silobreaker AI promises to revolutionize threat intelligence, it's important to consider potential drawbacks. The reliance on AI could potentially lead to overdependence, reducing human oversight and possibly missing nuanced threats that require human judgement. Additionally, the effectiveness of the tool is dependent on the quality of the data it's trained on, which could limit its accuracy if not properly managed. On the other hand, the benefits are substantial. Silobreaker AI can accelerate the production of high-quality intelligence reports, enabling faster, more informed decision-making. It provides threat intelligence teams with faster insights into threats, allowing for more decisive action to reduce risks. The tool also augments Silobreaker’s range of threat intelligence capabilities, adding computer-aided learning and automation techniques to streamline the collection, analysis, and dissemination of open-source intelligence data. This could significantly improve efficiency and productivity in threat intelligence teams. About Silobreaker Silobreaker is a software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that specializes in threat intelligence. It streamlines the intelligence cycle, from managing cyber, physical, and geopolitical PIRs to collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating structured and unstructured data from various web sources. The platform aids intelligence teams in identifying and prioritizing threats, enabling decision-makers to mitigate risk, protect revenue, and drive business results swiftly. Silobreaker caters to a diverse clientele, including corporate, government, military, and financial services sectors, addressing various use-cases across cyber and corporate security, competitive intelligence, incident management, market intelligence, risk analysis, asset management, and general OSINT.

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Software

Mural Announces Integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot and AI-Powered Collaboration Features for Enterprise Teams

PR Newswire | November 02, 2023

Mural, the leading visual work platform for the Enterprise, today announced its integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot, which provides Copilot users with an AI-powered experience that can be used in conjunction with Mural. Mural is one of the first integrations with Microsoft 365 Copilot which became generally available (GA) today and is the only visual collaboration solution in the initial set of third-party integrations being offered. Alongside this integration, Mural is launching Mural AI, which includes the AI-powered features: actions, mind maps, and clustering. Mural is firmly committed to creating tools and developing partnerships that help teams harness the power of AI to solve the most pressing challenges faced by teams in the enterprise today. Through in-platform AI solutions and responsible, secure integrations with existing tools, Mural is giving teams across the enterprise the technology they need to work together better, faster, and smarter, for increased productivity and job satisfaction. Integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot Microsoft selected Mural to be among a group of premier partners — as well as the only visual work platform — supporting Microsoft 365 Copilot at launch. With its Microsoft 365 Copilot integration, Mural is taking the next step to providing a seamless visual collaboration experience and saving organizations time as part of the central Copilot experience. With the integration, members can leverage simple, natural language prompts to streamline their daily tasks. Using Mural and Copilot, a sales representative can easily find the customer discovery mural for their account; a designer can quickly summarize a brainstorming mural with hundreds of sticky notes; and a product manager can efficiently retrieve a project kickoff mural template — and much more. Mural AI Features Mural's purpose-built AI features empower teams to kickstart their projects, broaden their horizons, and work more efficiently together. Mural AI features help teams automate redundant and routine tasks, quickly synthesize information, and generate new ideas so they can spend their time doing the higher-level thinking that humans do best. Mind maps: Mind maps are a great visual tool for following ideas and seeing where they lead. Mural AI can generate mind maps automatically from a single prompt and allow users to keep following the thread, empowering teams to create and develop great ideas faster and more effectively than ever before. Actions: Actions helps members save time and simplify workflows with natural language prompts to quickly and efficiently complete common tasks. Summarize a group of sticky notes, get ideas to jumpstart a brainstorming session, generate icebreakers and more from a single entry-point that's intuitive and easy to use. Clustering: When teams are generating ideas together, it can take a lot of time and energy to find those common threads that are critical to moving forward with confidence. Mural's AI clustering makes finding and sorting ideas a breeze, paving the way to new insights and enabling a smoother, faster-decision making process so teams can focus on the bigger picture. Mural's product is built to streamline workflows and allow knowledge workers to focus on the work that matters. "The new AI features in Mural are a brainstorming game changer. Pushing people to really dig deep to be creative can be challenging. The ability to quickly generate a mind map to jumpstart thinking will be very powerful. Using AI to quickly group ideas will cut significant time out of a workshop normally spent just 'organizing' thoughts. Now we can focus on creating thoughts." - Cindi P., Operations Lead, Professional Services Company The Future of AI A recent study carried out by Mural found that nearly two-thirds of all knowledge workers are excited and optimistic about AI's ability to help teams work together more effectively. Specifically, they recognize the power of AI to reduce repetitive tasks and automate processes. Managers are even more optimistic about AI than individual contributors (88% vs 74%). Mural's AI features, along with its Copilot integration, empower teams to kickstart their projects, broaden their horizons and work more efficiently together, all while ensuring thorough security and privacy from start to finish. We're thrilled to announce our integration with Microsoft Copilot, which brings AI-enabled collaborative tools to the ever-evolving workplace, said David Baga, CEO of Mural. Mural is committed to developing innovative solutions that address the pain points of teamwork, and this integration represents a significant milestone in that regard. Over the years, we've had a great partnership with Microsoft, and we are delighted to be one of the first plugins available at launch for Microsoft 365 Copilot. The future of work is AI-enabled, and Mural is proud to be leading the charge with Microsoft to bring innovative ways to collaborate to the workforce. "We are at a major inflection point where AI is reshaping work and transforming how we collaborate," said Srini Raghavan, VP of Product Management for Microsoft Teams Ecosystem. "Through our expanded integrations our customers will be leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot and Mural plugin, to improve efficiency, productivity, and collaboration within their teams." Mural's products are built for the enterprise and take a proactive approach in addressing the security needs of its users when building and deploying its AI capabilities. The company maintains active SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certifications and complies with GDPR and CCPA regulations. In addition, Mural is Microsoft 365 Certified. Mural plans to continue to develop the Mural AI offering and further extend its integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve how teams work together today and in the future. For more information, please visit mural.co/ai. About Mural Mural, the leading visual work platform for the enterprise, makes teamwork feel like less work. Our intuitive visual workspace enables teams to easily work together and collaborate better using proven design-thinking techniques. Built for enterprise teams, Mural meets the most stringent of IT and regulatory requirements. Industry leaders — including IBM, ‌Microsoft, SAP, and Abercrombie & Fitch — choose Mural to help their teams accelerate innovation and problem solving at scale. Whether your team is fully remote, distributed, in the office, or still figuring it out, Mural brings teams across the enterprise together to do the work that matters most. Try it for free at www.mural.co.

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Software

DataStax Launches New Integration with LangChain, Enables Developers to Easily Build Production-ready Generative AI Applications

Business Wire | October 25, 2023

DataStax, the company that powers generative AI applications with real-time, scalable data, today announced a new integration with LangChain, the most popular orchestration framework for developing applications with large language models (LLMs). The integration makes it easy to add Astra DB – the real-time database for developers building production Gen AI applications – or Apache Cassandra, as a new vector source in the LangChain framework. As many companies implement retrieval augmented generation (RAG) – the process of providing context from outside data sources to deliver more accurate LLM query responses – into their generative AI applications, they require a vector store that gives them real-time updates with zero latency on critical, real-life production workloads. Generative AI applications built with RAG stacks require a vector-enabled database and an orchestration framework like LangChain, to provide memory or context to LLMs for accurate and relevant answers. Developers use LangChain as the leading AI-first toolkit to connect their application to different data sources. The new integration lets developers leverage the power of the Astra DB vector database for their LLM, AI assistant, and real-time generative AI projects through the LangChain plugin architecture for vector stores. Together, Astra DB and LangChain help developers to take advantage of framework features like vector similarity search, semantic caching, term-based search, LLM-response caching, and data injection from Astra DB (or Cassandra) into prompt templates. In a RAG application, the model receives supplementary data or context from various sources — most often a database that can store vectors, said Harrison Chase, CEO, LangChain. Building a generative AI app requires a robust, powerful database, and we ensure our users have access to the best options on the market via our simple plugin architecture. With integrations like DataStax's LangChain connector, incorporating Astra DB or Apache Cassandra as a vector store becomes a seamless and intuitive process. “Developers at startups and enterprises alike are using LangChain to build generative AI apps, so a deep native integration is a must-have,” said Ed Anuff, CPO, DataStax. “The ability for developers to easily use Astra DB as their vector database of choice, directly from LangChain, streamlines the process of building the personalized AI applications that companies need. In fact, we’re already seeing customers benefit from our joint technologies as healthcare AI company, Skypoint, is using Astra DB and LangChain to power its generative AI healthcare model.” To learn more, join the live webinar on October 26 at 9am PT, where LangChain founder and CEO, Harrison Chase, and SkyPoint founder and CEO, Tisson Mathew, discuss their experience building production RAG applications. About DataStax DataStax is the company that powers generative AI applications with real-time, scalable data with production-ready vector data tools that generative AI applications need, and seamless integration with developers’ stacks of choice. The Astra DB vector database provides developers with elegant APIs, powerful real-time data pipelines, and complete ecosystem integrations to quickly build and deploy production-level AI applications. With DataStax, any enterprise can mobilize real-time data to quickly build smart, high-growth AI applications at unlimited scale, on any cloud. Hundreds of the world’s leading enterprises, including Audi, Bud Financial, Capital One, SkyPoint Cloud, Verizon, VerSe Innovation, and many more rely on DataStax to deliver real-time AI. Learn more at DataStax.com. Apache, Apache Cassandra, and Cassandra, are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation or its subsidiaries in Canada, the United States, and/or other countries.

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AI Tech

Silobreaker Releases AI for Swift and Precise Threat Intelligence

Silobreaker | November 07, 2023

Silobreaker, a leading security and threat intelligence technology company, has announced the launch of its new AI tool, Silobreaker AI. This tool is designed to assist threat intelligence teams in collecting, analyzing, and reporting on intelligence requirements, thereby enabling faster, intelligence-led decision-making within organizations. The AI tool, which will be integrated into the Silobreaker intelligence platform, can summarize and extract key information from Silobreaker’s own analyst content and generate topical threat reports. These reports can then be used by stakeholders to make informed decisions. Per Lindh, CTO of Silobreaker, described the tool as a 'cheat code' for threat intelligence teams, providing faster insights into threats and enabling decisive action to reduce risks. The tool also augments Silobreaker’s range of threat intelligence capabilities, adding computer-aided learning and automation techniques to streamline the collection, analysis, and dissemination of open-source intelligence data. While the introduction of Silobreaker AI promises to revolutionize threat intelligence, it's important to consider potential drawbacks. The reliance on AI could potentially lead to overdependence, reducing human oversight and possibly missing nuanced threats that require human judgement. Additionally, the effectiveness of the tool is dependent on the quality of the data it's trained on, which could limit its accuracy if not properly managed. On the other hand, the benefits are substantial. Silobreaker AI can accelerate the production of high-quality intelligence reports, enabling faster, more informed decision-making. It provides threat intelligence teams with faster insights into threats, allowing for more decisive action to reduce risks. The tool also augments Silobreaker’s range of threat intelligence capabilities, adding computer-aided learning and automation techniques to streamline the collection, analysis, and dissemination of open-source intelligence data. This could significantly improve efficiency and productivity in threat intelligence teams. About Silobreaker Silobreaker is a software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that specializes in threat intelligence. It streamlines the intelligence cycle, from managing cyber, physical, and geopolitical PIRs to collecting, processing, analyzing, and disseminating structured and unstructured data from various web sources. The platform aids intelligence teams in identifying and prioritizing threats, enabling decision-makers to mitigate risk, protect revenue, and drive business results swiftly. Silobreaker caters to a diverse clientele, including corporate, government, military, and financial services sectors, addressing various use-cases across cyber and corporate security, competitive intelligence, incident management, market intelligence, risk analysis, asset management, and general OSINT.

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Software

Mural Announces Integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot and AI-Powered Collaboration Features for Enterprise Teams

PR Newswire | November 02, 2023

Mural, the leading visual work platform for the Enterprise, today announced its integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot, which provides Copilot users with an AI-powered experience that can be used in conjunction with Mural. Mural is one of the first integrations with Microsoft 365 Copilot which became generally available (GA) today and is the only visual collaboration solution in the initial set of third-party integrations being offered. Alongside this integration, Mural is launching Mural AI, which includes the AI-powered features: actions, mind maps, and clustering. Mural is firmly committed to creating tools and developing partnerships that help teams harness the power of AI to solve the most pressing challenges faced by teams in the enterprise today. Through in-platform AI solutions and responsible, secure integrations with existing tools, Mural is giving teams across the enterprise the technology they need to work together better, faster, and smarter, for increased productivity and job satisfaction. Integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot Microsoft selected Mural to be among a group of premier partners — as well as the only visual work platform — supporting Microsoft 365 Copilot at launch. With its Microsoft 365 Copilot integration, Mural is taking the next step to providing a seamless visual collaboration experience and saving organizations time as part of the central Copilot experience. With the integration, members can leverage simple, natural language prompts to streamline their daily tasks. Using Mural and Copilot, a sales representative can easily find the customer discovery mural for their account; a designer can quickly summarize a brainstorming mural with hundreds of sticky notes; and a product manager can efficiently retrieve a project kickoff mural template — and much more. Mural AI Features Mural's purpose-built AI features empower teams to kickstart their projects, broaden their horizons, and work more efficiently together. Mural AI features help teams automate redundant and routine tasks, quickly synthesize information, and generate new ideas so they can spend their time doing the higher-level thinking that humans do best. Mind maps: Mind maps are a great visual tool for following ideas and seeing where they lead. Mural AI can generate mind maps automatically from a single prompt and allow users to keep following the thread, empowering teams to create and develop great ideas faster and more effectively than ever before. Actions: Actions helps members save time and simplify workflows with natural language prompts to quickly and efficiently complete common tasks. Summarize a group of sticky notes, get ideas to jumpstart a brainstorming session, generate icebreakers and more from a single entry-point that's intuitive and easy to use. Clustering: When teams are generating ideas together, it can take a lot of time and energy to find those common threads that are critical to moving forward with confidence. Mural's AI clustering makes finding and sorting ideas a breeze, paving the way to new insights and enabling a smoother, faster-decision making process so teams can focus on the bigger picture. Mural's product is built to streamline workflows and allow knowledge workers to focus on the work that matters. "The new AI features in Mural are a brainstorming game changer. Pushing people to really dig deep to be creative can be challenging. The ability to quickly generate a mind map to jumpstart thinking will be very powerful. Using AI to quickly group ideas will cut significant time out of a workshop normally spent just 'organizing' thoughts. Now we can focus on creating thoughts." - Cindi P., Operations Lead, Professional Services Company The Future of AI A recent study carried out by Mural found that nearly two-thirds of all knowledge workers are excited and optimistic about AI's ability to help teams work together more effectively. Specifically, they recognize the power of AI to reduce repetitive tasks and automate processes. Managers are even more optimistic about AI than individual contributors (88% vs 74%). Mural's AI features, along with its Copilot integration, empower teams to kickstart their projects, broaden their horizons and work more efficiently together, all while ensuring thorough security and privacy from start to finish. We're thrilled to announce our integration with Microsoft Copilot, which brings AI-enabled collaborative tools to the ever-evolving workplace, said David Baga, CEO of Mural. Mural is committed to developing innovative solutions that address the pain points of teamwork, and this integration represents a significant milestone in that regard. Over the years, we've had a great partnership with Microsoft, and we are delighted to be one of the first plugins available at launch for Microsoft 365 Copilot. The future of work is AI-enabled, and Mural is proud to be leading the charge with Microsoft to bring innovative ways to collaborate to the workforce. "We are at a major inflection point where AI is reshaping work and transforming how we collaborate," said Srini Raghavan, VP of Product Management for Microsoft Teams Ecosystem. "Through our expanded integrations our customers will be leveraging Microsoft 365 Copilot and Mural plugin, to improve efficiency, productivity, and collaboration within their teams." Mural's products are built for the enterprise and take a proactive approach in addressing the security needs of its users when building and deploying its AI capabilities. The company maintains active SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certifications and complies with GDPR and CCPA regulations. In addition, Mural is Microsoft 365 Certified. Mural plans to continue to develop the Mural AI offering and further extend its integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot to improve how teams work together today and in the future. For more information, please visit mural.co/ai. About Mural Mural, the leading visual work platform for the enterprise, makes teamwork feel like less work. Our intuitive visual workspace enables teams to easily work together and collaborate better using proven design-thinking techniques. Built for enterprise teams, Mural meets the most stringent of IT and regulatory requirements. Industry leaders — including IBM, ‌Microsoft, SAP, and Abercrombie & Fitch — choose Mural to help their teams accelerate innovation and problem solving at scale. Whether your team is fully remote, distributed, in the office, or still figuring it out, Mural brings teams across the enterprise together to do the work that matters most. Try it for free at www.mural.co.

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Software

DataStax Launches New Integration with LangChain, Enables Developers to Easily Build Production-ready Generative AI Applications

Business Wire | October 25, 2023

DataStax, the company that powers generative AI applications with real-time, scalable data, today announced a new integration with LangChain, the most popular orchestration framework for developing applications with large language models (LLMs). The integration makes it easy to add Astra DB – the real-time database for developers building production Gen AI applications – or Apache Cassandra, as a new vector source in the LangChain framework. As many companies implement retrieval augmented generation (RAG) – the process of providing context from outside data sources to deliver more accurate LLM query responses – into their generative AI applications, they require a vector store that gives them real-time updates with zero latency on critical, real-life production workloads. Generative AI applications built with RAG stacks require a vector-enabled database and an orchestration framework like LangChain, to provide memory or context to LLMs for accurate and relevant answers. Developers use LangChain as the leading AI-first toolkit to connect their application to different data sources. The new integration lets developers leverage the power of the Astra DB vector database for their LLM, AI assistant, and real-time generative AI projects through the LangChain plugin architecture for vector stores. Together, Astra DB and LangChain help developers to take advantage of framework features like vector similarity search, semantic caching, term-based search, LLM-response caching, and data injection from Astra DB (or Cassandra) into prompt templates. In a RAG application, the model receives supplementary data or context from various sources — most often a database that can store vectors, said Harrison Chase, CEO, LangChain. Building a generative AI app requires a robust, powerful database, and we ensure our users have access to the best options on the market via our simple plugin architecture. With integrations like DataStax's LangChain connector, incorporating Astra DB or Apache Cassandra as a vector store becomes a seamless and intuitive process. “Developers at startups and enterprises alike are using LangChain to build generative AI apps, so a deep native integration is a must-have,” said Ed Anuff, CPO, DataStax. “The ability for developers to easily use Astra DB as their vector database of choice, directly from LangChain, streamlines the process of building the personalized AI applications that companies need. In fact, we’re already seeing customers benefit from our joint technologies as healthcare AI company, Skypoint, is using Astra DB and LangChain to power its generative AI healthcare model.” To learn more, join the live webinar on October 26 at 9am PT, where LangChain founder and CEO, Harrison Chase, and SkyPoint founder and CEO, Tisson Mathew, discuss their experience building production RAG applications. About DataStax DataStax is the company that powers generative AI applications with real-time, scalable data with production-ready vector data tools that generative AI applications need, and seamless integration with developers’ stacks of choice. The Astra DB vector database provides developers with elegant APIs, powerful real-time data pipelines, and complete ecosystem integrations to quickly build and deploy production-level AI applications. With DataStax, any enterprise can mobilize real-time data to quickly build smart, high-growth AI applications at unlimited scale, on any cloud. Hundreds of the world’s leading enterprises, including Audi, Bud Financial, Capital One, SkyPoint Cloud, Verizon, VerSe Innovation, and many more rely on DataStax to deliver real-time AI. Learn more at DataStax.com. Apache, Apache Cassandra, and Cassandra, are either registered trademarks or trademarks of the Apache Software Foundation or its subsidiaries in Canada, the United States, and/or other countries.

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