Skillsoft + Convercent: Expanding Compliance Training to Drive Business Outcomes

May 15, 2019 | 191 views

Over the last two years, ethics in the workplace has taken on a new meaning. We have seen the growth of three approaches: top-down, brand-driven and employee activism. For each approach the following examples springs to mind - Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson taking action after the Philadelphia incident, Nike’s TV commercial narrated by Serena Williams talking about the barriers females athletes face and Google employees walking out after hearing the news about how the company dealt with sexual misconduct allegations against Andy Rubin.

Spotlight

CTS, Inc.

"CTS is a regional software consulting firm that specializes in solving complex IT problems with creative and customized solutions. With our full-time employee base, we deliver software development, business intelligence, quality assurance, and application support solutions. In other words, we build it, test it, report on it, and support it. "

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FUTURE TECH

Top 10 Low-Code App Development Platforms for Fast Custom App Creation

Article | July 26, 2022

Explore the top low-code platforms that enable fast and cost-effective app development with a strategic approach by creating and achieving MVPs and understanding the KPIs of a good platform. Contents 1 Low-Code Development Essentials: Creating and Deploying Effective MVPs 2 KPIs of a Good Low Code Development Platform 3 Top 10 Low-Code App Development Platforms 3.1 AIRKIT 3.2 BETTY BLOCKS 3.3 CREATIO 3.4 DECISIONS 3.5 INTERFACING 3.6 KISSFLOW 3.7 SKUID 3.8 TRACKVIA, INC. 3.9 ULTIMUS 3.10 XENOSS 4 Strategic Low-Code Development: Trend Forecast Analysis Low-code platforms have transformed software development, enabling fast and cost-effective app development. This article covers vital components like creating effective minimum viable products, execution strategies, and key performance indicators to look for in a good low code platform for mobile app development. The article also lists the top 10 platforms, like Airkit, Betty Blocks, and Creatio, which offer innovative solutions to reduce time-to-market and produce exceptional results. 1. Low-Code Development Essentials: Creating and Deploying Effective MVPs Creating a software product or app from scratch doesn't have to be long and tiresome when it can be fast and fun with the help of low-code application development platforms. Before you start building your app around the no code framework, you need to create a minimum viable product (MVP) that can thrive on its own in the market. Defining the attributes of your app to meet your value proposition is essential. Having a plan of execution alongside the best lowcode development tools leads to the success of your software development projects. Effective execution strategies and product development strategies are far more critical to the success of your product than the development process itself. Thanks to low-code platforms, developing and deploying the desired features in your app is faster and easier than ever before. Cutting down on the development time leaves you more time to think strategically about product design, marketing, and perhaps sales. 2. KPIs of a Good Low Code Development Platform Low-code platforms for mobile app development allow organizations to deliver new user experiences faster. While evaluating different low-code application development platforms that meet your business needs, we highly recommend these factors, KPIs, and features to look for: Drag-and-drop interface: Enables non-technical users to create apps, reducing IT burden. It boosts productivity and lowers development time and costs. Develop once and deploy anywhere: Low code mobile app development platforms create apps for multiple platforms (cross platforms) without extra coding. It cuts down on IT workload and speeds up time-to-market. Seamless integration with enterprise systems: Simplifies the integration of enterprise systems with low code app development platforms, trims development time and costs, and enhances system efficiency. Intelligent BI and analytics: Automatically analyzes data, minimizing the time and effort required for data analysis. Leverage insights for data-driven decisions and improves business outcomes. AI-enabled data enrichment: Automatically fills in missing values or adds more data points to enrich the data. Improves data quality and accuracy and reduces IT workload. Complete visibility of data with dashboards: Provides a real-time view of app performance and user behavior. Monitors and improves app performance and user experience. Compliance with international data security policies: Ensures compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, Intertek, BSI, and AICPA SOC, reducing the risk of data breaches and ensuring data privacy. Flexibility for coding and posting: Enables developers to use preferred coding languages and frameworks, improving developer productivity. Transparency and predictability with pricing: This provides transparency and predictability regarding pricing. Allows budgeting for app development and reduces the risk of cost overruns. Low-code platforms help businesses develop applications quickly and efficiently. They offer a visual development environment, integrate with existing systems, support rapid application development, cross-platform compatibility, customization, and security. They are an excellent solution for businesses wanting to build applications quickly and cost-effectively. 3. Top 10 Low-Code App Development Platforms Today's low-code development platforms, which use the most recent low code technology, put more emphasis on innovation and optimization of business processes than just quick development and deployment. When your prime focus is fast-paced app development, there are some platforms that go above and beyond to reduce time-to-market and produce exceptional results, as listed down below. 3.1 Airkit Building complex apps with beautiful front-end experiences requires custom components, workflows, and styles. Share and iterate with the team to collaborate on application development. Airkit uses a visual builder, conversation automation, agent automation, security, and integrations. Latching on to anything with pre-built integrations helps with fast and free additional functionalities. For excellent CX, use components for purpose-built CX across all platforms. Reusable components and templates for designing personalized cross platform buyer journeys. With app debuggers, you can debug, test, and preview apps and use multi-environment deployment with a single click. Manage and control security and scalability with role-based access, versioning and environments, as well as end-user authentication. 3.2 Betty Blocks Betty Blocks is an enterprise-grade no-code development platform that lets users build collaboratively with no limitations. It lets you build apps with rapid application development technology, automate processes, and maximize efficiency. It is utilized by citizen developers to build solutions that integrate with the current tech stack. Building internal applications, customer-facing apps, and process automations is simple and easy to innovate with Betty Blocks. It offers development, testing, and production environments on its public cloud as well as on-premise and cloud providers in its standard and enterprise plans, respectively. As far as free and fast integrations are concerned, it integrates with everything from its Betty Blocks Store. It also lets you build your own integrations using the API. Its intuitive drag-and-drop user interface builder allows reusability, radically shortens the time to market, and empowers the citizen development workforce. 3.3 Creatio Creatio is a no-code development platform with a compostable architecture. Creatio Studio allows for no-code application development with an extreme degree of freedom. It lets you select the available types of apps, connectors, and OOTB functionality templates to manage instances and facilitate the collaborative development process. It is packed with intuitive no-code design automation tools to create and modify pages and views, data models, workflows, and integrations in a no-code workplace. It has a library of predefined views, widgets, and templates to accelerate the design process. Optimize and manage structured and fluid processes using workflow management capabilities with advanced analytics. Add integrations with SOAP and REST integration connectors. Use AI and ML to automate your workflows and enhanced security and safety for enterprise application platform scalability. Using the collaborative process designer, accelerate process design and standardize process management with team efforts. 3.4 Decisions Decisions is a powerful low code automation platform and business process management software that is capable of building no-code and low code applications. It helps turn siloed decisions into centralized rules. Its no-code intelligent process automation platform enables the codification of business logic and automation decisions, manages workflows, finds and fixes problems, connects systems to unify operations, and designs seamless experiences. Its visual design interface helps to design, optimize, and launch complex processes without writing code. Building software apps that solve business problems by automating functions to simplify, standardize, and streamline business operations and stay compliant is easy with Decisions. 3.5 Interfacing. Intefacing offers a business transformation suite using low-code rapid application development technology. It primarily supports business process optimization, quality control, continuous improvement, change management, SOP development, digital transformation, business excellence, and stakeholder happiness. It extensively offers eFORMS, process automation, low code database table entity designer, system integration designer, tax monitoring and delegation, custom rules and actions, text and voice messaging services, custom dashboard design, and app mobile touchscreen for better control over your low code mobile app development. Interfacing allows building simple to complex consumer-focused applications and business processes in hours, not days. 3.6 Kissflow Kissflow's enterprise-grade low code application development platform lets businesses take control with no IT background. It helps digitize operations, automate processes, and modernize apps using its components. The software offers a comprehensive suite of features such as application builder, process designer, boards, reports, and analytics, and custom UI. It also provides collaboration, developer sandbox, extensive integrations, external portals, and roles-based access control for application deployment with new builds. Using a visual builder for forms with easy drag-and-drop options, work management, intuitive dashboards, communication, and collaboration, Kissflow has emerged as an industry standard in no-code development. Bring business and IT together with a DevOps approach, streamline ad-hoc requests, manage and control with a central console, and reap returns with high productivity and a lower time-to-market with Kissflow. 3.7 Skuid With Skuid, you can build low-code mobile apps from scratch for multiple platforms that are user-friendly. It allows design interdependence, composite apps, and rapid prototyping. Custom user experience options on Skuid NLX involve design decisions about interaction, navigation, and app structure. Skuid SFX helps build modern, custom Salesforce apps. It helps with lightning customization, portals and communities, and a high-performance engine. Skuid EXP for enterprise HR app creation brings features to maximize platform value, flexible deployment, and people-centered portal creation. Components on Skuid include account dashboards, customer request forms, opportunity management, quick orders, revenue and expense dashboards, dynamic forms, retail data dashboards, and a contact directory. These features help increase app adoption and innovation by 10x. 3.8 TrackVia, Inc. TrackVia helps automate processes in a business to connect and track everything that matters. It allows for seamless integration with existing ERP, CRM, BPM, financial systems, and more. It helps keep up with product and quality, compliance, custom workflows, supply chain management, project management, and field services. Its low-code app development platform enables users to build business apps without code and without limits with the help of its toolkit and a canvas. It brings intelligent workflow automation, single to multiple sandbox environments with unlimited applications and unlimited storage, and records for 1 administrator and 5 users. Its pricing plans include mobile, quick start, business, and enterprise for citizen developers in any industry. 3.9 Ultimus Ultimus offers a highly customizable platform with integration capabilities for business process management. It has a strong focus on security and compliance and offers scalability and dedicated support. Ultimus streamlines app development with a cost-effective platform, empowering non-IT business users to create custom apps easily. Its mobile-ready technology deploys on-cloud or on-premises servers, prioritizes decision-making, and improves the customer experience by eliminating isolated apps and data. A unified inbox and high-productivity portal fuses interactions with customers, employees, and partners. Ultimus avoids high upfront costs with flexible pricing options. 3.10 Xenoss Xenoss's mar-tech, low-code platform offers up to 40% cost savings and the fastest time-to-market in the industry. It has ad-tech and mar-tech parts like a bidding cluster, mission control, campaign front end, account server, logging cluster, predictor optimization engine, aggregator, reporter, DMP profile builder, DMP segment builder, DMP real-time audience DB cluster, health monitoring system, and real-time anti-fraud. Its feature set includes campaign management, budget management, creatives, supply integrations, device targeting, geographic targeting, audience targeting, dayparting, media planning, the DMP, automatic campaign optimization, manual campaign optimization, tracking, reporting, and analysis, support tools, and the data collection web SDK. It offers a customizable and integratable user-friendly platform. With a strong focus on scalability, it offers dedicated support. Its pricing is based on a per-user basis. 4. Strategic Low-Code Development: Trend Forecast Analysis Large companies will keep using low-code platforms for digital transformation in the near future because their visual interfaces and pre-built components can speed up software development. Strategic low-code development will be a must for reducing time-to-market, speeding up digital transformation, and putting security and compliance front and center. More and more people will use industry-specific solutions, AI integration, collaboration, and process automation, which will streamline operations and make them more efficient. Some of the best low code app development platforms will meet security and compliance requirements like HIPAA and PCI, so sensitive information will be safe. AI and machine learning tools will make it easier to solve problems and improve processes. This will bring IT and business operations closer than ever before. These automation platforms will be crucial to making businesses more profitable and stable because they will let them get the most done with the least amount of work.

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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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LOW-CODE APP DEVELOPMENT

How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Businesses

Article | April 20, 2023

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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The advances of AI in healthcare

Article | February 11, 2020

With the Government investing £250 million into the project, the Lab will consider how to use AI for the benefit of patients – whether this be the deployment of existing AI methods, the development of new technologies or the testing of their safety. Amongst other things, the initiative will aim to deliver earlier diagnoses of cancer. It is estimated that in excess of 50,000 extra patients could see their cancer being detected at an early stage, thus boosting survival rates. More specifically, a study has shown that AI is quicker in identifying brain tumour tissue than a pathologist.This would have a positive knock-on effect in other areas, such as enabling money to be saved (that otherwise would have been spent on further treatment) and reducing the workload of staff (at a time when there is a crisis in NHS workforce numbers).

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Spotlight

CTS, Inc.

"CTS is a regional software consulting firm that specializes in solving complex IT problems with creative and customized solutions. With our full-time employee base, we deliver software development, business intelligence, quality assurance, and application support solutions. In other words, we build it, test it, report on it, and support it. "

Related News

Healthcare firms go for the hybrid cloud approach with compliance and connectivity key

Cloud Tech | February 18, 2019

It continues to be a hybrid cloud-dominated landscape – and according to new research one of the traditionally toughest industries in terms of cloud adoption is now seeing it as a priority. A report from enterprise cloud provider Nutanix has found that in two years’ time, more than a third (37%) of healthcare organisations polled said they would deploy hybrid cloud. This represents a major increase from less than a fifth (19%) today. The study, which polled more than 2,300 IT decision makers, including 345 global healthcare organisations, found more than a quarter (28%) of respondents saw security and compliance as the number one factor in choosing where to run workloads. It’s not entirely surprising. All data can be seen as equal, but healthcare is certainly an industry where the data which comes from it is more equal than others. Factor in compliance initiatives, particularly HIPAA, and it’s clear to see how vital the security message is. Yet another key area is around IT spending. The survey found healthcare organisations were around 40% over budget when it came to public cloud spend, compared to a 35% average for other industries. Organisations polled who currently use public cloud spend around a quarter (26%) of their annual IT budget on it – a number which is expected to rise to 35% in two years. Healthcare firms see ERP and CRM, analytics, containers and IoT – the latter being an evident one for connected medical devices – as important use cases for public cloud. The average penetration in healthcare is just above the global score. 88% of those polled said they see hybrid cloud to positively impact their businesses – yet skills are a major issue, behind only AI and machine learning as an area where healthcare firms are struggling for talent.

Read More

Six best practices for increasing AWS security in a Zero Trust world

Cloud Tech | January 15, 2019

Included in the list of items where the customer is responsible for security “in” the cloud is identity and access management, including Privileged Access Management (PAM) to secure the most critical infrastructure and data. Stolen privileged access credentials are the leading cause of breaches today. Forrester found that 80% of data breaches are initiated using privileged credentials, and 66% of organisations still rely on manual methods to manage privileged accounts. And while they are the leading cause of breaches, they’re often overlooked — not only to protect the traditional enterprise infrastructure — but especially when transitioning to the cloud. Both for on-premise and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), it’s not enough to rely on password vaults alone anymore. Organisations need to augment their legacy Privileged Access Management strategies to include brokering of identities, multi-factor authentication enforcement and “just enough, just-in-time” privilege, all while securing remote access and monitoring of all privileged sessions. They also need to verify who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment. These are all essential elements of a Zero Trust Privilege strategy, with Centrify being an early leader in this space. The following are six best practices for increasing security in AWS and are based on the Zero Trust Privilege model: Given how powerful the AWS root user account is, it’s highly recommended that the password for the AWS root account be vaulted and only used in emergencies. Instead of local AWS IAM accounts and access keys, use centralised identities (e.g., Active Directory) and enable federated login. By doing so, you obviate the need for long-lived access keys.

Read More

Four cloud security predictions for 2019: Containerisation, load balancers, and more

Cloud Tech | January 08, 2019

The cloud is a vital part of any enterprise infrastructure. The convenience of having a database that can be accessed from any location has dramatically improved efficiency within workforces. While many companies had previously been afraid of making the move, as the open nature of the cloud makes it less secure than on-premise solutions, new advances in cloud security have vastly reduced the number of successful attacks. With 2019 here, it is time to look to the future and predict where the cloud is heading. While there are numerous public cloud providers out there, six stand above the rest. Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, Alibaba and Oracle are the alphas in the cloud provider space and they will only get stronger throughout 2019. The growth of these providers will come primarily from increased revenue in their business services and SaaS services, as well as from new and powerful third-party apps being brought to their respective market stores. Their growth will have the adverse effect of making them a bigger target for malicious attacks and at least one of them will suffer a major breach because of this. However, it will not be enough to slow down momentum. We predict that by the end of 2019, all six will see an increase in profits. 2018 saw the rise of enterprise container adoption with Kubernetes leading the charge. Twelve months ago, Microsoft stated that adoption of Kubernetes on its Azure service had increased by 10x compared to the year before, matching similar reports in 2017 from Google that showed a 9x increase. The open-source nature of Containers provides companies with a lot of freedom to develop secure, scalable and enterprise-ready applications, such as application load balancing and traffic monitoring tools.

Read More

Healthcare firms go for the hybrid cloud approach with compliance and connectivity key

Cloud Tech | February 18, 2019

It continues to be a hybrid cloud-dominated landscape – and according to new research one of the traditionally toughest industries in terms of cloud adoption is now seeing it as a priority. A report from enterprise cloud provider Nutanix has found that in two years’ time, more than a third (37%) of healthcare organisations polled said they would deploy hybrid cloud. This represents a major increase from less than a fifth (19%) today. The study, which polled more than 2,300 IT decision makers, including 345 global healthcare organisations, found more than a quarter (28%) of respondents saw security and compliance as the number one factor in choosing where to run workloads. It’s not entirely surprising. All data can be seen as equal, but healthcare is certainly an industry where the data which comes from it is more equal than others. Factor in compliance initiatives, particularly HIPAA, and it’s clear to see how vital the security message is. Yet another key area is around IT spending. The survey found healthcare organisations were around 40% over budget when it came to public cloud spend, compared to a 35% average for other industries. Organisations polled who currently use public cloud spend around a quarter (26%) of their annual IT budget on it – a number which is expected to rise to 35% in two years. Healthcare firms see ERP and CRM, analytics, containers and IoT – the latter being an evident one for connected medical devices – as important use cases for public cloud. The average penetration in healthcare is just above the global score. 88% of those polled said they see hybrid cloud to positively impact their businesses – yet skills are a major issue, behind only AI and machine learning as an area where healthcare firms are struggling for talent.

Read More

Six best practices for increasing AWS security in a Zero Trust world

Cloud Tech | January 15, 2019

Included in the list of items where the customer is responsible for security “in” the cloud is identity and access management, including Privileged Access Management (PAM) to secure the most critical infrastructure and data. Stolen privileged access credentials are the leading cause of breaches today. Forrester found that 80% of data breaches are initiated using privileged credentials, and 66% of organisations still rely on manual methods to manage privileged accounts. And while they are the leading cause of breaches, they’re often overlooked — not only to protect the traditional enterprise infrastructure — but especially when transitioning to the cloud. Both for on-premise and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), it’s not enough to rely on password vaults alone anymore. Organisations need to augment their legacy Privileged Access Management strategies to include brokering of identities, multi-factor authentication enforcement and “just enough, just-in-time” privilege, all while securing remote access and monitoring of all privileged sessions. They also need to verify who is requesting access, the context of the request, and the risk of the access environment. These are all essential elements of a Zero Trust Privilege strategy, with Centrify being an early leader in this space. The following are six best practices for increasing security in AWS and are based on the Zero Trust Privilege model: Given how powerful the AWS root user account is, it’s highly recommended that the password for the AWS root account be vaulted and only used in emergencies. Instead of local AWS IAM accounts and access keys, use centralised identities (e.g., Active Directory) and enable federated login. By doing so, you obviate the need for long-lived access keys.

Read More

Four cloud security predictions for 2019: Containerisation, load balancers, and more

Cloud Tech | January 08, 2019

The cloud is a vital part of any enterprise infrastructure. The convenience of having a database that can be accessed from any location has dramatically improved efficiency within workforces. While many companies had previously been afraid of making the move, as the open nature of the cloud makes it less secure than on-premise solutions, new advances in cloud security have vastly reduced the number of successful attacks. With 2019 here, it is time to look to the future and predict where the cloud is heading. While there are numerous public cloud providers out there, six stand above the rest. Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, Alibaba and Oracle are the alphas in the cloud provider space and they will only get stronger throughout 2019. The growth of these providers will come primarily from increased revenue in their business services and SaaS services, as well as from new and powerful third-party apps being brought to their respective market stores. Their growth will have the adverse effect of making them a bigger target for malicious attacks and at least one of them will suffer a major breach because of this. However, it will not be enough to slow down momentum. We predict that by the end of 2019, all six will see an increase in profits. 2018 saw the rise of enterprise container adoption with Kubernetes leading the charge. Twelve months ago, Microsoft stated that adoption of Kubernetes on its Azure service had increased by 10x compared to the year before, matching similar reports in 2017 from Google that showed a 9x increase. The open-source nature of Containers provides companies with a lot of freedom to develop secure, scalable and enterprise-ready applications, such as application load balancing and traffic monitoring tools.

Read More

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