Striving to be more sustainable means becoming more efficient, and understanding how your company operates in order to reduce your carbon footprint, as well as operational costs. Ultimately, where before organisations have felt that being more sustainable would negatively impact their bottom line, the opposite is true.

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2022 was another year of disruption, following two already disordered years, as the aftermath of the global pandemic and economic crises impacted enterprises globally, and in particular, IT departments as they facilitated and supported the new ways of hybrid working.

Now the challenges of last year are largely behind us, this special report looks at what trends IT decision makers predict will affect their businesses in 2023. We also shine a light on some of the things to get excited about rather than it all being doom and gloom.

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Intelligent automation solutions deliver value in key areas like cost management, operations and innovation. Yet adopting these solutions can be challenging.

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The volume of data in circulation is growing on an exponential basis, with much of this data being fed into systems to help businesses gain insights they can act on. Humans still need to be able to read and process data, though, in their own right, which is where small data comes into play.

One might think of small data as the definition of data as we once knew it – data on a scale that’s easy for most people to comprehend, digest and act on. With the rise of big data and big data analytics, though, has come the tendency to forget about the importance of small data in a modern business context.

As trendy (and useful) as big data might be, only small data can actually allow us to make sense of why these trends machines help us see are happening. As such, while big data technologies can find patterns and correlations, small data helps us understand the context.

What is small data?

What makes small data ‘small’ isn’t the data itself, but the scope of the query. You can think about small data as corresponding to an infographic. This type of visualisation is designed to tell a strictly specific story with an absolute minimum of necessary context (or none).

You’re not expected to dive into the data or pivot it into different dimensions: nobody has so far come up with a standard for live, tappable infographics, and that’s probably a good thing. That’s not to say that such a presentation wouldn’t have its uses. It could be valuable to the mobile gaming development community, or the old-school telecoms businesses, who are having all sorts of fun with their proprietary phone-call-hacking API services. But once you start delving into the numbers, you’re leaving the realm of small data.

Meanwhile, you shouldn’t think of small data as merely a selective distillation of big data. Focusing on individual data points can – with a little human intuition and understanding – yield valuable information that’s overlooked by traditional big-data analysis.

That’s the thesis of Martin Lindstrom’s book Small Data: Tiny Clues that Uncover Huge Trends. Based on extensive consumer analysis, Lindstrom advises businesses not to focus on figures and trends, but to examine the behaviour of individual customers to understand why they act in the way they do.

In particular, it’s suggested that a customer’s decision-making process can be affected by intangible factors such as the climate, the governmental and religious context or cultural tradition. Ultimately, the goal is not only to predict what customers will do, but to identify the underlying drivers that motivate them. This is the sort of analysis that big data alone could never produce: it’s fair to say that few customer relationship management (CRM) systems are set up to record and track this type of data, and interpreting it would be problematic for even the most advanced AI.

Why are businesses turning to small data?

Engaging with big data is a lot more complicated than just pulling up an Excel spreadsheet. A query is likely to involve multiple systems and data sources, and often some sort of fuzzy artificial intelligence (AI) interpretation. It’s too big and woolly for most people’s daily tasks.

Even formulating the right questions for a big data system is a challenge. “How do our last five years of sales figures compare to those of our top three competitors?” is a human-grade question: you’re probably better off spending your time putting the graph together yourself and drawing your own conclusions, rather than trying to figure out how to get a meaningful answer out of the AI.

Although we humans can only process limited amounts of data, we have a natural talent for identifying which items are important, and making actionable decisions on that basis. We can also draw on our wider contextual understanding to interpret information: every big data event starts out as small data, so it certainly doesn’t hurt to have eyes on that end of things.

There isn’t so much of a backlash against big data, as there is a newfound recognition of its limitations. The point of the “big data” approach is to not get bogged down in details. For example, you don’t need to know exactly which numbers are feeding into the output, or how many petabytes they take up – it’s just big data. That’s great as far as it goes, but you can’t run a business entirely on not knowing things.

Big data is, indeed, as powerful as it ever was. The problem, however, is that anything that qualifies for the term is, by definition, too large and complex for a human to comprehend. It’s great to have machines poring over a huge aggregated mass of data to extrapolate emerging global trends, but staff need to focus on much smaller sets of facts and figures. These might be customer profiles, daily sales totals or server statistics – things we can understand and process for ourselves.

What are the limitations of small data?

There are reasons to be wary of embracing small data too wholeheartedly. When a vital part of your process is actively excluding data, it’s easy to be misled.

There are also risks associated with keeping human-readable records and spreadsheets that aren’t connected to the original data source – it’s all too easy for things to get accidentally

changed in ways that could lead to disconnected and misconceived decisions. Ideally, small data should be an application of your big data assets, and treated with at least as much caution and seriousness as the main repository.

Security vendors' pursuits of an autonomous security operations centre (SOC) are fruitless, according to claims by a leading industry analyst.

According to Allie Mellen, senior analyst at Forrester, security vendors are all searching to build an all-in-one product that could entirely automate the many functions of a security team but the idea would be almost impossible to implement due to technical and logistical limitations.

Mellen argued that although automation has been instrumental in areas such as automating back office functions, and is increasingly powerful for security applications, the complexity with which threat actors operate means a machine could never fully protect against their various techniques.

Threat actors are also highly unpredictable in their methods and anticipating the next move in any engagement would require a well-trained human mind, she said.

“In contrast, security tools must follow a set of rules - they are built with an intention in mind, whether it’s to detect threats on the endpoint or to find anomalies in otherwise consistent data,” said Mellen in a blog post.

Security oversight still demands escalation to human workers and always will, Mellen added, especially with complex environments in which automated systems could “go off the rails".

“These constraints force a limitation on technology that cannot be overcome without the aid of humans. If an organisation uses endpoint detection and response, an attacker will find a way to bypass it or not target an endpoint. If an organisation collects all logs from every single asset into a security information and event management system, an attacker will find a vulnerable employee to leverage for covert access.”

Theoretical upsides to fully automated SOCs and security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) solutions include the reduced impact of cyber skills shortages on organisations and fewer data protection weak points among employees, but human decision-making is still required for the best protection.

The retained need for human input is the key differentiator between SOAR and fully-autonomous solutions and although companies such as Google Cloud and MITRE have taken steps to provide customers with pre-built threat-hunting queries in their environments, no one is selling an out-of-the-box, fully automated cure-all to security fears.

Tech giants including Microsoft continue to offer business security solutions that blend automation and expert insight. Providers that offer security as a service might yet fulfil the same role as automated security for smaller businesses, as this still has the end result of freeing employees from the burden of threat management.

Firms such as QuSecure even offer ‘quantum security as a service.’ In this sense, it could be argued that there is less of a need for a fully-automated SOC, with hybrid solutions working well.

A number of meaningful advances have been made in recent years using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in security applications.

In 2022, AI cyber security software has continued to innovate and has seen the uptake of tools capable of identifying suspicious web traffic, such as NDR products.

Microsoft and Darktrace partnered on AI cloud security in 2021, while it was recently revealed that MI5 and the Alan Turing Institute have collaborated on AI since 2017 with the specific focus of using the technology for defence and security.

Additionally, a great deal of research and development is being done into the potential for deep learning solutions to threat actors, which carry the potential to predict ransomware strategies, or even combat AI malware developed by leading-edge threat actors.

Microsoft has announced record cloud revenue in Q1 2023, even as revenue slowed and net income decreased across the same period.

Recording $50.1 billion in revenue during the quarter, it represents Microsoft's slowest growth in five years, just 11% up year on year (YoY). Net income was $17.6 billion, a 14% decrease YoY, above the industry expectation but still adversely impacting shares.

Microsoft pinned the slowdown on reduced consumer spending, as well as unexpected costs driven by fluctuating exchange rates and increases in energy costs.

However, the company’s cloud offerings continued to deliver healthy returns and demonstrate strong growth. Revenue in Intelligent Cloud across the quarter was $20.3 billion, up 20%, with cloud services and server products continuing to drive profit. Microsoft Azure, the current cloud market leader, saw a 35% revenue growth.

“This quarter Microsoft Cloud revenue was $25.7 billion, up 24% (up 31% in constant currency) year-over-year. We continue to see healthy demand across our commercial businesses including another quarter of solid bookings as we deliver compelling value for customers,” said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer at Microsoft.

In Microsoft’s earnings call, Hood also pointed out the value of renewal in cloud services. Azure and Office 365 continued to draw long-term contracts from businesses of all sizes, and the enterprise-exclusive E5 licence for 365 remains particularly popular.

Additionally, Office 365 commercial revenue grew 11%, while Microsoft-owned LinkedIn reported a 17% revenue increase. Overall, Microsoft’s productivity and business processes department saw overall increases, but still reflected the slowing growth and economic downturns represented in the rest of the report.

Sales were down in Microsoft’s personal computing departments with $13.3 billion in revenue, down slightly on the same period from the previous fiscal year. Within this category, Windows OEM revenue decreased 15%, indicative of a slowdown in PC purchases.

“Microsoft’s revenue continues to grow thanks to its Azure cloud offering; however, the company’s rate of growth has slowed, which is reflected by the recent news that it let go 1,000 employees,” stated Dan Davies, CTO at Maintel.

“Cloud will continue to drive Microsoft’s revenue, as the growth of this industry is showing no signs of slowing down," he added. "The technology now permeates every part of our lives.

"With remote work now a fixture for many of us, tools like Teams have become staples, while in our personal lives even the activities we enjoy during our spare time depend on cloud technology, with online gaming and VR more popular than ever.”

What’s led to the slow growth?

Microsoft provided a number of explanations for its lower revenue. In addition to the growing economic uncertainty which is driving consumers and businesses to cut back on spending, Microsoft’s international trade has been impacted by the comparative strength of the dollar across the period, which made international sales more expensive.

In its earnings call, Hood said that financial exchanges will account for an approximate 5% decrease in total revenue growth going forward. Multinationals have indeed faced greater strain on their international trades as a result of the economic turbulence we now face, and Microsoft has faced the double-pronged effects of reduced consumer confidence even as the costs of shifting hardware worldwide increased.

The company also highlighted the increasing costs of advertising, and in its earnings call Hood pointed to the $800 million increase in energy costs across the period as having contributed to the lower than hoped for growth.

Such high energy prices are to be expected for Microsoft, which runs a colossal number of data centres, sites, and offices worldwide. Gartner predicts data centres could cost 40% or more than usual to run in the coming months, and operational costs are unlikely to decrease until the worldwide energy market stabilises.

Like other big tech firms such as Twilio, Microsoft has slowed down hiring in the past few months, reportedly advising staff to slow recruitment. In the past month, the company also reportedly made 1,000 employees redundant, looking to reduce numbers across a range of departments.

Despite this, in its earnings call the company reported that headcount grew 22% year on year, although it is likely that the true trajectory of hiring at Microsoft will become clearer over the next few quarterly reports.

SpaceX is offering between $100 and $25,000 in bounties to hackers who report exploits to the company through their website.

The spacecraft manufacturer has set up a dedicated page on crowdsourced bug bounty platform Bugcrowd, giving would-be white hats a centralised method for reporting un-patched SpaceX and Starlink exploits.

Hackers who submit reports on network vulnerabilities can expect up to $10,000, while on a “case-by-case” basis those who discover and report vulnerabilities with Starlink dishes, satellites or other such hardware can receive up to $25,000.

According to its Bugcrowd page, SpaceX has so far rewarded 41 vulnerability reports, at an average of $972 each. A more comprehensive list of prices per type of vulnerability discovered can be found on the page, but SpaceX specifically forbids physical tampering with its infrastructure or that of Starlink’s, as well as testing that could directly impact its services.

In a document shared by SpaceX titled ‘Starlink welcomes security researchers (bring on the bugs), the company outlines its position on bug bounties.

“We allow responsible security researchers to do their own testing, and we provide monetary rewards when they find and report vulnerabilities,” states the document.

“We recognize and appreciate the support of the broader security community in making Starlink better and more secure. We encourage researchers to test Starlink for security issues in a non-destructive way and to report their findings through our bug bounty program.”

SpaceX further states that it considers vulnerability research within its bug bounty policies to be exempt from Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claims, legal action as a result of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) violation, and SpaceX terms and conditions that would interfere with research.

Bug bounties are a popular form of publicly-sourced testing for companies, that offer white hat hackers lucrative rewards and permission to attempt to hack some of the most challenging commercial security systems, in return for information on any vulnerabilities that they discover.

In June, an employee working for the vulnerability coordination platform HackerOne was found to have been stealing and re-submitting bug bounties for personal profit and was subsequently fired.

The Starlink constellation, which aims to provide satellite broadband access to customers worldwide, is rapidly growing. With over 2,500 satellites currently in orbit and an end goal of 12,000 having been approved by the FCC, it is a frontrunner in the growing race for satellite internet dominance, which has already spawned disagreements as well as interest from agencies such as DARPA.

MI5 and the FBI held an unprecedented joint address to highlight how the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) represent a growing threat to UK and US businesses.

Addressing an audience of business leaders and academics at Thames House in London, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum and FBI Director Chris Wray laid out serious concerns about the long-term prospects of Chinese mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and intellectual property (IP) theft across all sectors, with copies of their respective speeches available on the MI5 website and FBI website.

The intelligence experts reminded listeners the large Chinese companies that aren't explicitly state-owned are nevertheless required to report to the CCP and maintain internal cells, effectively ensuring that government oversight and control is maintained.

These concerns have previously led to the UK government deciding to remove Huawei devices from UK 5G infrastructure, as well as prompting a group of cross-party MPs to urge for two CCTV companies to be banned from operating in the UK.

Corporate takeover or IP theft was highlighted as a particularly common attack vector against Western firms. Organisations were warned to invest in long-term growth, rather than short-term profitability by selling in the Chinese market. Doing so could result in IP being replicated and sold by a Chinese government-backed firm.

Other methodology that was highlighted includes fake professional networking, in which professionals are encouraged through flattery and business trips to give up key sector information, covert theft of industry secrets by malicious insiders, and the ongoing pressure of cyber attacks by state-backed cyber crime and ransomware groups.

Indeed, Chris Wray warned the assembled audience that “when you deal with a Chinese company, know you’re also dealing with the Chinese government – that is, the MSS and the PLA – too, almost like silent partners".

Throughout the statement, it was reiterated that although the UK and US government have been targets of Chinese-backed cyber attacks and espionage, it's the tech sector and advanced research fields such as those developing artificial intelligence (AI) that are of most material interest to the CCP.

They also raised brewing geopolitical crises such as anticipated action against Taiwan, while warning such incidents might exacerbate the economic downturn caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Wray predicted in the case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, businesses may come to regret being closely entrenched in the Chinese market and experience "one of the most horrific business disruptions the world has ever seen".

“Just as in Russia, Western investments built over years could become hostages, capital stranded, supply chains and relationships disrupted. Companies are caught between sanctions and Chinese law forbidding compliance with them," he said.

The experts avoided trivialising the situation by offering simple advice, but business leaders were asked to consider whether they have a strategic approach to manage and discuss the issues raised, whether their organisation has a security culture at all levels, and whether or not they have carefully assessed the risks of funding sources and partnerships.

Both agency chiefs stressed they're ready and willing to work closely with organisations to offer advice, check submitted evidence and provide solutions to ward off would-be attackers.

Boeing has struck a deal with space-based automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) service provider Aireon to better predict and prevent aviation hazards.

Per the accord, Aireon will offer its flight data stream to Boeing, expanding the aerospace firm’s data analytics capabilities. Select Boeing airplane programs will have access to historical aircraft data, including near real-time aircraft event data, via AireonINSIGHTS.

“The global space-based ADS-B data from AireonINSIGHTS can help customers gain insights to key performance indicators on flight safety,” stated Aireon.

Boeing will notably integrate Aireon-provided ADS-B data into enterprise Safety Management System (SMS), in a bid to proactively monitor risks and ‌changing‌ ‌safety trends.

Oceanic, polar, and outlying areas can be monitored by space-based ADS-B, which adds to conventional ground-based surveillance limited to terrestrial airspace.

"We are investing in a data stream that can be transformed into safety intelligence," commented Vishwa Uddanwadiker, vice president of aerospace safety analytics at Boeing.

"We are adding this to our data analytics ecosystem to help predict and prevent safety risks, while identifying other opportunities to strengthen our Safety Management System."

Aireon CEO Don Thoma said, "The power of the Aireon data unlocks a cache of information for Boeing regarding the operations of its aircraft in the global airspace. With this integration, Boeing will have data to provide a full operational view of its fleet, and we are excited to partner with them.”

Microsoft has announced the addition of a Power BI add-in to PowerPoint and Outlook that will allow businesses to share live and easily manipulated data as part of office presentations.

The company believes it will add an extra dimension to storytelling with data, and will replace the need for businesses to generate new screenshots from Power BI and paste them into PowerPoint.

The new add-in will let users insert a live Power BI report that can be interacted with directly from within the presentation. This will allow businesses to show clients how data changes with different variables introduced, and answer any questions on-the-fly without having to leave the presentation.

Microsoft also added a ‘freeze view’ component that allows users to take a single Power BI configuration and treat it as a static image, should they wish.

To insert a Power BI report, users select a tool and drag a window across the slide, similar to how drawing a text box works. A box then appears in which the Power BI report’s URL can be inputted and loaded.

The resulting window can then be resized like a text box can and the data displayed within can be manipulated as if it could directly from within the Power BI platform.

“This new capability brings fully interactive and up-to-date data into your discussions during meetings,” said Lukasz Pawlowski, principal program manager at Microsoft in an explainer video. “Presenters can quickly explore data to answer questions without slow ‘I’ll get back to you’ [responses].”

The Power BI integration is also coming to Outlook so the same reports can be accessed and shared amongst departments without having to leave the email client.

Adopting a UI reminiscent of Microsoft Teams, the Power BI integration in Outlook will help people tasked with composing status update emails at the start of the day.

These individuals can add a preview card to emails that links directly to the Power BI report from which the status update email’s conclusions are taken, in case the recipient wants to verify the data.

A Microsoft Teams chat can also be created directly from within the Power BI view in Outlook in case a team member wants to quickly follow up on something, for example.

Microsoft 365 users will soon see a Power BI button added to the ‘Insert’ tab in the PowerPoint ribbon. If it isn’t there, it can be added from the Office store, provided administrator rules allow for this.

Power BI will be available to both users of the Outlook client and the Outlook web app, and can be located in the apps list.

The latest update shows Microsoft's commitment to bringing technical skills to non-technical business employees. Power BI sits under the Power Platform umbrella of products, which gained a fifth tool as it was launched yesterday.

Building out from Power Apps portals, Power Pages was one of the first headline announcements made at Microsoft Build. The new low-code web development platform was launched to help businesses develop their own web pages and web apps without the need to recruit developers.

While a little coding knowledge is required, the platform will be familiar to everyone who uses Office 365 products, like PowerPoint and Excel, and can be used by developers and non-developers alike.

Application Performance Management (APM) is a vital part of monitoring software that actually implements the functionality that businesses and end users find most important.

Observability is a fairly new term, describing what monitoring vendors do, including metrics and tracking, however it can also mean a new software solution that enables continuous updating of diverse and dynamic application environments.

Download this whitepaper to understand more about automated observability and how it compares to APM and other monitoring solutions.

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Document productivity software company Nitro Software has agreed to acquire Connective NV, a European-based e-sign software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider for $81 million.

Nitro will fund the transaction by tapping investors for $104 million. Connective is the leading e-sign SaaS provider in Belgium, according to Nitro, and is expanding its customer base in 11 other European countries. The firm has over 30 eID and smart card integrations across 20 countries, which Nitro claimed was the most of any e-sign vendor today.

Among Connective’s customers includes the Belgian and French governments, BNP Paribas, Cofidis, ING Bank, Pirelli, and Toyota.

The deal bolsters Nitro's e-sign capabilities, including support for Advanced Electronic Signature (AES) and Qualified Electronic Signature functionality, and the company sees opportunities for improving the Nitro Productivity Platform's existing e-sign capability.

Nitro co-founder and CEO Sam Chandler said the deal was a “milestone moment in Nitro's growth story.”

"With the acquisition of Connective, Nitro is in prime position to become one of the top three global players in the rapidly growing enterprise e-sign market, at a time where increased trust, security, and regulatory compliance are vital to business success. With data privacy and security at a premium, the future of e-signing is built around high-trust eID-driven solutions, and this acquisition positions Nitro to become a global leader in this space,” he said.

"Connective's Smart Document solution will also further bolster Nitro's offering, making document workflow automation easy, powerful, and available to all. There is a multitude of opportunities to drive additional demand of the Connective offerings within Nitro's platform through our global customer and partner networks. Nicolas and his team have built a world-class company that tightly aligns with our mission of delivering best-in-breed, high-value technologies with unparalleled customer service experience and we couldn't be more excited to welcome the entire Connective team to the Nitro family."

Connective CEO Nicolas Metivier said "We are delighted to have found a partner in Nitro that so closely aligns with our mission and vision, as well as our core company values. There was an immediate connection with Sam and the Nitro team, and it was clear to me how Connective's market-leading solutions could scale even further as part of the Nitro Productivity Platform."

When the transaction is complete, Connective will become an indirect subsidiary of ASX-listed, Nitro Software Limited. The complete Connective team is expected to join Nitro.

In this week's exclusive feature for The Business Briefing readers, Bobby Hellard looks at some of the big-name companies we know today and how even they, at one point, were close to ruin. See why this happened, and how they pulled themselves back to success.

The Business Briefing is a free weekly digest that highlights everything you should know about the business world around you.

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Deel, a global compliance and payroll solution provider, has raised $425 million in a Series D funding round led by Coatue. A number of new and existing investors also participated in the round, including Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, YC Continuity Fund, Spark Capital, and Greenbay Ventures.

The latest round of funding puts Deel’s value at $5.5 billion.This makes Deal the most valuable company in the global hiring, payments, and compliance sector.

Deel allows businesses to hire employees and contractors compliantly without a local entity. Furthermore, the platform offers support for more than 120 currencies, enabling companies to pay their global teams instantly.

“The way people work is fundamentally changing. And it’s never going back,” said Alex Bouaziz, Deel CEO.

Bouaziz added, “We founded Deel because we didn’t want hiring or payments to prevent businesses from building the best global teams and finding the best global talent. We’re going to keep challenging the norms of how companies operate and continue building tools that shape the future of work.”

GDPR-compliant, Deel also lets businesses create, send, and sign data-protection agreements (DPA) through a centralized dashboard. Besides compliance, the firm also handles health insurance and pensions.

Organizations can sync invoice data with desired accounting software, receive compliant digital invoices for every contractor payment, automate payslips, and more.

"We had been tracking Deel since 2020 and were impressed by Alex and Shuo’s vision," said Rahul Kishore, senior managing director at Coatue.

"As we learned more about Deel, we became excited by their increased and impressive scale and believe we are in the early innings of what the team is capable of."

Lucas Swisher, a general partner at Coatue who co-led the round, added, "We were then impressed by how the platform was able to distill something so overwhelming into a tool anyone can use to take global employment from dream to reality."

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Your organisation is likely developing a return-to-office plan or considering a partial return to the office. And as a business leader, you know exactly how complex it can be.

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The global pandemic has catapulted us into a new era in which hybrid workforces - a mix of office, remote and frontline employees - are the new norm. The question for business leaders is how to lead these teams successfully.

Here are three tips:

1. Use the right platform
2. Build hybrid communities
3. Take care of your teams

Download the guide to get all the details and discover how a secure communications platform like Workplace helps take the complexity out of leading hybrid teams.

Northern Sky Research (NSR) has released version 2.0 of its proprietary Non-GEO Constellations Analysis Toolkit (NCAT).

The update adds to NSR's comprehensive analytical tools for benchmarking low Earth orbit (LEO) and medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellite constellations.

A multi-faceted toolkit, NCAT includes analytical models, input and output data tables, comparison charts, maps with satellites, orbital routes, footprints per constellation, and more.

According to the company, the latest version doubles input and output data tables to 56 sub-constellations and increases tool options to 15. NCAT2 also supports granular evaluation of mobile and fixed data applications.

“Two systems, Starlink and SES O3B, are now operational but many others, such as OneWeb, Telesat, and Amazon are in the pipeline,” said Christopher Baugh, NSR president.

Baugh added, “The rapidly increasing numbers in the Non-GEO sector drives need for tools to assess capabilities factually and in-depth. Driven by client feedback, NCAT2 incorporates new tools, including the ability to conduct assessment for fixed and mobility applications at global, regional or country-levels.”

NCAT2 comes preloaded with data, configurable filters, inputs, and visualizations. Specifically, the toolkit can be used alongside market data and insights drawn from relevant NSR research studies.

NCAT2’s other notable features include gateway housing and visibility assessment, exclusion angles, mobility heatmaps for 56 LEO/MEO constellations shells, and breakeven analysis of Non-GEO capital cost per Mbps

Commenting on outreach, NSR said its NCAT2 toolkit is intended for both business and technical professionals looking to understand Non-GEO high-throughput SATCOM in-depth.

“As thousands of LEO and MEO satellites beam tens of Terabits per second, they transform not only the space sector, but the adjacent telecommunications industry, making it vital for strategic decision makers of both value chains to evaluate potential developments. NCAT2’s configurable filters and visualizations allow that insight,” added NSR.

Intuit has agreed to purchase global customer engagement and marketing platform Mailchimp for $12 billion as it sets to cement its market position among small businesses.

Intuit and Mailchimp will combine their respective technologies to build an end-to-end customer growth and engagement platform for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the company said.

Founded in 2001, Mailchimp began offering email marketing services and has now evolved into a major name in customer engagement and marketing automation with AI-driven tools and services. Intuit, meanwhile, is most well known for its QuickBooks small business accounting software.

A unified platform between these two entities would allow customers to get their business online, market their business, manage customer relationships, benefit from analytics, get paid, access finance, optimise cash flow and remain compliant. This is alongside access to expertise the firm will provide in the form of a services offering.

Through this joint platform, SMBs can also combine customer data from Mailchimp and purchase data from QuickBooks to gain insights that can be used to grow their businesses.

“We’re focused on powering prosperity around the world for consumers and small businesses. Together, Mailchimp and QuickBooks will help solve small and mid-market businesses’ biggest barriers to growth, getting and retaining customers,” said Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi.

“Expanding our platform to be at the centre of small and mid-market business growth helps them overcome their most important financial challenges. Adding Mailchimp furthers our vision to provide an end-to-end customer growth platform to help our customers grow and run their businesses, putting the power of data in their hands to thrive.”

The firm has committed to another large-scale acquisition only months after completing its $8.1 billion purchase of Credit Karma, a startup with 110 million members. This firm offers financial services, including credit and loan comparison, alongside free credit score tracking.

Intuit was mostly intrigued by the firm’s reach, according to Forbes, as it embarked on its vision to expand among smaller businesses.

The Mailchimp acquisition allows Intuit to build on these ambitions, given the company’s own global customer reach comprising 13 million users. Intuit will also benefit from taking over 2.2 million daily AI-driven predictions.

As part of its ambitions to target SMBs with a unified platform, the firm has embarked on an acquisition spree in recent years, also purchasing OneSaas in February and TradeGecko in August 2020.

Intuit expects the Mailchimp acquisition to close during the second quarter of the 2022 fiscal year, with the deal subject to standard regulatory hurdles.

In this week's exclusive feature for The Business Briefing readers, Bobby Hellard looks at the benefits of hiring outside the box and choosing applicants, especially young ones, based off of skills rather than professional qualifications.

The Business Briefing is a new free weekly digest that highlights everything you should know about the business world around you.

Learn more about it and sign up here, or fill in your details below to read this sample feature.

CLEVR has announced its new augmented reality (AR)-powered Field Services Manager (FSM).

Designed for end-to-end service providers, CLEVR’s FSM includes a unified platform for field operations that facilitates installation, maintenance, route optimization, archiving, and more.

Remote AR assistance, which is integrated into FSM, lets smart home service providers offer remote support to customers via two-way video calls and AR. Developed in partnership with Econic Technologies, FSM’s remote assistance feature also enables customers to point at real-world objects in real time.

"Econic expects that Remote Assistance will cut down on-site inspections of all new installations by 25%," said Vincent Damen, product manager at Econic.

Damen added, "By 2023, we will grow to 200,000 new installations annually. A single inspection costs $148.00 (125 euros), so with the projected number, we estimate saving $7.1 million (6 million euros) annually as well. In addition, remote assistance will significantly reduce the need to drive to on-site locations by 1 million kilometers, which roughly translates to reducing CO2 emissions by 170,000 kilograms."

According to CLEVR, its AR-powered FSM will help organizations lower costs, reduce carbon emissions, and optimize staffing. Thanks to its low-code architecture, FSM is lightweight and highly customizable. The service is reportedly aimed at improving end-to-end services for homes, offices, and stores.

CLEVR also announced plans to expand FSM's capabilities to serve adjacent markets, including home security, home appliances, waste management, utilities, and telecommunications.

"Field services is an area crying out for new, digitalized, efficient processes," said Kay Lankheet, squad lead of CLEVR's Field Service Manager business unit.

Lankheet continued, “CLEVR Field Service Manager enables incumbents and start-ups alike to offer highly digitalized offerings leading to significant cost reductions amounting to millions, an improved customer experience and perhaps most importantly of all, reduced carbon footprint of installation companies by up to 25%."

Just about any industry uses business analysts, from IT and telecoms to retail and financial institutions.

There is a growing demand for business analysts in many organizations. And anyone who loves crunching numbers and trawling through data to find insights may find this is the career for them.

But what do business analysts do and how do you become one? There are various ways to become a business analyst. As a first step into this career, you should determine if you are a good fit for such a role and figure out what skills, training, and qualifications you need.

What is a business analyst?

The job title sounds generic, but being a business analyst is certainly not monotonous. The role is diverse and wide-ranging and changes from business to business.

Depending on the organization, this can be an entry-level position or a role for experienced professionals. This means business analysts are engaged with a wide variety of tasks, and the job description from one company to the other can be very different.

A business analyst works inside an organization and reviews data so an organization’s plans align with business goals. This could be a one-off project or continuous development of the organization and act as a conduit between technology specialists and the wider organization.

Why are business analysts important?

Business analysts are important to many organizations as they make digital transformation easier, which is an essential undertaking in the modern business world. Their role is crucial to the future of any business. They do this by frequently assessing business functions to gauge the effect a proposed transformation or new solution may have on an organization.

What responsibilities does a business analyst have?

The business analyst’s role is varied, but they have several shared responsibilities across the board.

The key responsibility is to find business issues or inefficiencies and provide recommendations — usually through deploying some sort of technical solution.

There are a few important elements business analysts are responsible for:

• Investigation: Analysts must discover the principal business problems needing to be tackled and unearth any information connected to the project.
• Requirement analysis: Analysts must organize, specify, and model requirements to ensure they are comprehensive and clear.
• Requirement specification: Analysts must verify that documentation of requirements is formatted in an easy-to-understand way for stakeholders. They must also be easy to share.
• Requirement verification and validation: Business analysts must ensure requirements align with the business problem faced, they are ratified by all the applicable stakeholders, and meet important quality standards.

What are the key skills of a business analyst?

A business analyst must have a wide range of skills, but here are some key ones you’ll need to get your career going.

A technology head

The most important skills a business analyst can have are technical skills. Most analysts work in an organization’s IT department, and their recommendations usually involve a technical solution.

In today’s digital world, analysts must have a good understanding of what IT solutions are available and know about the latest key trends and technical innovations.

Research know-how

Projects are all about solving a problem for the business. Before any decision is made, all possible outcomes need to be explored. Identifying the most suitable outcome requires an analysis of the situation. This involves investigation and research.

To thoroughly research the problem requires asking probing questions, investigating all the angles, and looking at how other organizations tackled similar issues. All this knowledge is necessary when presenting findings back to the organization so it can make an informed decision.

Be a critical thinker

Research is essential to the business analyst role, but it is not just a case of presenting findings. To be a great business analyst, you must get the crux of the matter. This means thinking about all the means of fixing a problem.

An analyst must show how they have determined assorted possibilities and studied the most feasible ones, even if this means “thinking outside the box” and moving into uncharted areas.

When evaluating options, they should consider the effect and probability of each alternative. An analyst must also consider the risks of selecting or not selecting a specific result. A wide-ranging appraisal of several choices should ensure the organization is confident it has made a wise choice.

Be a people person

Business analysts spend a lot of time talking to people, such as users, management, clients, and other stakeholders, about these issues, so being a people person is a must-have skill for this job.

Being attuned to diverse opinions, inspirations and intentions are indispensable to balance the range of characters within an organization effectively. Knowing where within a business a person is, who they are responsible for, and who they report to will help figure out their risk profile and decide how to present assumptions and proposals.

Be a communicator

In line with being a people person, business analysts must be good communicators, as you must communicate your findings to everyone and gain buy-in to whatever outcome is eventually pursued. Having clear lines of communication will ensure all stakeholders are updated on the progress of a project.

What qualifications and experience do you need to become a business analyst?

Given that the job requirements are varied, relevant qualifications can vary from industry to industry and even from company to company.

While a business analyst needs no particular degree or qualification, one of the best ways of getting such a role is to have a computer science degree or an MBA. You can also get a postgraduate qualification in business information systems or business management.

Several organizations, such as the IIBA, IQBBA, IREB, and PMI, offer certifications that can boost your chances of becoming a business analyst. These certifications include, but aren’t limited to, the Certified Analytics Professional (CAP), the Entry Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA), the Certified Business Analysis Professional CBAP certification, and the PMI Professional in Business Analysis (PBA).

Generally speaking, most business analysts spend three to four years earning a degree to gain an entry-level position. Even with an entry-level job, it will take a few more years in such a role to learn all about different aspects of the field.

What do business analysts earn and what are their prospects?

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), management analyst employment, including business analysts, is expected to increase by 11% between 2019 and 2029. This is much faster than the average of all occupations.

The BLS also found the median pay for this category is $87,660 per year. The lowest 10% earned less than $50,990, and the highest 10% earned more than $156,840.

As a business analyst, the more experience you have will determine your salary. Location will also play an important part in salary.

The prospects for choosing a business analyst role are good, as businesses always need to change and reappraise their procedures to adjust to unpredictable circumstances. Being a business analyst, you can help organizations by asking questions, pinpointing the biggest problems, and answering them with new, data-driven solutions.

Google has announced a new Time Insights mode for its Calendar app that will show you how you spend your time, how many meetings you have, and who you spend most of your time working with.

Google Calendar has become a powerhouse in the era of remote work, as it helps distributed teams better manage their schedules and share them across a group or company. Soon, it will offer even more with the new Time Insights mode that offers a deep dive into your daily doings.

Time Insights will give you a close look at the information that will help you better understand your day. It will show you your time breakdown, which displays your working hours and the various types of meetings you have. It will also give you insight into the time you spend in meetings, highlighting days and times especially heavy on meetings.

Another key insight will be a look into who you are meeting with and the ability to “pin” key stakeholders to ensure you keep the lines of communication flowing. This feature will also highlight all your meetings involving a specific person if you hover over them in the Calendar app.

All this information will only be visible to you — your manager will not have access to these insights — unless you give someone “manage time sharing access” permissions.

Google began rolling out the new Time Insights update to admins on August 30, and it plans to complete admin distribution within 15 days.

End users on Google’s Rapid Release track will start seeing Time Insights on September 6. Those on Google’s Scheduled Release track will see the rollout begin on September 20. Google expects to complete end-user distribution within 15 days of the initial release.

Google Calendar Time Insights will be available to Google Workspace Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, and Nonprofits customers only. It will be visible on a computer only — the smartphone app will not gain the new feature.

According to Google, Time Insights will be active by default, but admins can deactivate it at the domain/OU level.

AI Clearing has announced a strategic partnership with Doosan Mobility Innovation (DMI), a subsidiary of the Doosan Group, that will offer unique insights into construction sites previously deemed inaccessible.

By integrating disparate data sources and drone images, AI Clearing helps construction teams track civil works in real-time. Powered by artificial intelligence, AI Clearing also offers alerts on progress and discrepancies.

DMI offers commercial drone platforms for industrial applications. Unlike conventional drones, the firm's hydrogen-powered drone can be recharged in less than three minutes and boasts significantly longer flight times.

Per the new deal, AI Clearing will integrate its construction progress tracking technology into DMI’s hydrogen-powered drones.

Hydrogen-powered drones remain in flight up to four times longer than lithium-ion polymer (LiPo) drones, eliminating the need for multiple batteries and launch points. AI Clearing and DMI’s joint solution will ensure granular visibility and near real-time aerial data insights for large, geographically complex construction sites.

DMI’s autonomous drones will collate large sets of flight data, while AI Clearing's system produces reports in minutes.

“Many construction teams find data gathering with drones challenging as they have to change batteries very often which takes time,” said Michael Mazur, CEO and co-founder of AI Clearing.

Mazur continued, “Combining DMI’s hardware with AI Clearing’s software solution allows our clients access to near real-time reporting remotely. We are very proud to form a partnership with a company from the Doosan Group, which was founded in 1896 and is one of the largest construction machinery manufacturers in the world.”

AI Clearing and DMI’s collaboration is also focused on enabling edge computing technologies for construction projects that have been hampered by software and drone range limitations.

Mavenir has acquired communications platform as a service (CPaaS) provider Telestax for an undisclosed sum. Telestax’s acquisition will help Mavenir further enhance Mavenir Engage.

Engage, Mavenir’s cloud-based customer engagement solution, doubles as an omnichannel messaging monetization tool with rich communication services (RCS)-based business messaging, campaign management, visual flow builders, payment integrations, and advanced analytics.

A full-stack CPaaS enabler, Telestax will add new agile software as a service (SaaS) models and customize solutions for small and medium businesses. Telestax will also enable consumer-friendly APIs and web tools.

Telestax’s other notable CPaaS applications include call queuing, number masking, Cisco Message Exchange, and SMS for Microsoft Teams.

“CPaaS is the key enabling technology for our Mavenir Engage service to position Communications Service Providers (CSPs) at the forefront of the digital engagement landscape,” said Ian Maclean, senior vice president and general manager of cloud services at Mavenir.

Maclean added, “With this acquisition, Mavenir is lowering the barrier of entry and democratizing business messaging for businesses of all sizes to implement conversational commerce experiences.”

Earlier this year, Mavenir launched its BSS Digital Enablement platform to help CSPs accelerate 5G deployments. Mavenir also deployed its 4G/5G Open vRAN at O-RAN Town, Deutsche Telekom’s multi-vendor open RAN network.

“Communication Platforms are becoming a key differentiator for service providers,” said Pardeep Kohli, president and CEO of Mavenir.

“They will unlock enterprise value in 5G with API enablement for different verticals such as IoT, Smart Cities, Automotive and provide turnkey applications for logistics, fleet management, AI/ML chatbots, voice biometrics verification, immersive commerce/entertainment, and many other use cases.”

Mutualink has announced the launch of its multifaceted and intelligent communications platform, LNK360.

LNK360 by Mutualink combines voice, video, internet of things (IoT), and data communications into a single platform to improve situational awareness through instant incident-based communications.

In addition to providing radio interoperability, the platform allows for real-time video sharing, geospatial access, and data sharing. Most notably, LNK360 offers freedom of choice. Users can choose between or connect across any device, system, or application. Additionally, LNK360 scales on-demand to accommodate new devices via public or private long-term evolution (LTE), satellite, or terrestrial broadband.

Public safety agencies, schools, hospitals, and smart cities are among the beneficiaries of the platform. LNK360 connects all types of government and commercial land mobile radios (LMRs), mobile phones, and push-to-talk (PTT) apps. Organizations may choose to automate alerts and share data across agencies.

LNK360’s other interesting features include LMR and LTE PTT integration, PTT-to-PTT interoperability, group messaging, real-time location tracking and mapping, drone and robotic platform sharing, and more.

As for security, LNK360 offers secure end-to-end communications encrypted with federally approved advanced encryption standard (AES) ciphers.

“This is an innovative collaboration tool that spans the entire community. Our schools benefit from the experience our first responders have on the platform. Our goal is to connect with law enforcement more quickly, creating better situational awareness before they even reach the school. We’re also seeing a better way to work between schools,” said Philip Thorton, superintendent of schools in Warwick.

LNK360 is compatible with Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices.

A scrum master may sound like something out of a Marvel movie, but it is an important job in software development.

Scrum masters are integral parts of agile development. They are responsible for managing communication between team members to keep projects on track and the scrum framework is followed. “Servant leaders” as the Scrum Guide puts it. Scrum is a software development methodology embedded in self-organization and adaptability in line with agile principles.

The term scrum comes from the magnificent game of rugby. In rugby, the teams receive instructions from their coach, but in the game, the players must organize themselves as small units and quickly apply tactics. This is also what scrum, as a form of agile project management, is about: The goal is outlined, and there are many steps to be taken with small, flexible solutions on the way to success.

Like rugby players, product development teams huddled together at the start of each day in a scrum led by the scrum master. The scrum master asks team members three questions:

• “What did you do yesterday?”
• “What will you do today?”
• “Are there any impediments in your way?”

The scrum master leads the scrums, but they are not the project leader nor are they singularly responsible for project outcomes. They are more like a channel between product/line-of-business owners and development teams.

That doesn’t mean the job is easy. The scrum master also helps the team determine what it can achieve in a period or “sprint,” helps the team reach consensus, keeps the team focused and follows up on scrum rules, removes obstacles impeding team progress, and protects the team from outside distractions.

What are a scrum master’s responsibilities?

The scrum master has several responsibilities.

Create project teams and best practices

The scrum master oversees creating and onboarding project teams. These teams are then provided with a vision of how the product should function. The scrum master also enables communication and information exchange between the project team and external groups. scrum masters also monitor project progress, provide feedback, and ensure there is an ethos of agility and knowledge.

Keep everyone informed and on track

The scrum master holds daily team meetings to get project progress updates, fix potential problems, and keep everything on track. They also hold regular sessions to inform product stakeholders about project progress. The scrum master’s key role is to keep the team meeting deadlines and getting results.

Lead Agile engineering practices

The scrum master promotes continuous integration (CI) and automation to enhance efficiency. Developers use these CI tools to incorporate portions of code into a central repository at regular intervals, from which automated builds and tests run in continual repetitions. This repeatable methodology decreases the risk, time, and work related to conventional development techniques.

How does a scrum master deal with others?

The scrum master cooperates with all team members and must deliver numerous services to the following people.

The scrum master’s relationship with the product owner

The product owner is typically a project's key stakeholder and has the vision of what needs to be built and a solid understanding of its users. The scrum master supports the product owner by:

• Finding ways to efficiently manage, arrange, and optimize the product backlog
• Ensuring that aims, scope, and wish list are correctly comprehended by every team member
• Helping create practical product planning in a complex environment
• Knowing and practicing agility and organizing scrum events as requested or needed

The scrum master’s relationship with the development team

The development team is those who do the work of building a product, including designers, writers, and programmers. The scrum master supports the development team by:

• Removing obstructions to the scrum team’s progress and performance
• Leading and coaching the team members in adopting scrum and using its methodology
• Helping the scrum team focus on creating high-value products
• Ensuring all scrum events happen and are kept positive, productive, and within a suitable time frame

The scrum master’s relationship with the organization

The scrum master supports the organization by:

• Leading, training, and coaching the organization in the successful adoption of the scrum methodology
• Taking part in implementing scrums within the organization
• Working with other scrum masters to increase scrum efficacy within the organization
• Eliminating barriers between stakeholders and scrum teams

The scrum process

Scrum has a clearly defined set of roles and ceremonies to follow, and the scrum master coordinates with each team member, guiding and coaching the team through the scrum framework.

The scrum process starts when one or more stakeholders need a product. The product requirements are then collected in a so-called product backlog — a summary or list of all product features the final product should include.

The product owner can adapt the product backlog during the project, so it’s a living artifact. When the developers have completed and developed all the requirements for the product from the product backlog, the product is, in the best case, finished and the product goal is achieved.

After completing the product backlog, the team begins sprint planning.

In sprint planning, the scrum team plans which product features from the product backlog they want to implement in the coming sprint. This subset of the product properties is then transferred to a sprint backlog, which includes all product properties to be implemented in the coming sprint and all requirements for the associated sprint goal.

The scrum master official certification

Scrum master is neither an apprenticeship nor a course of study. To become one, you must complete appropriate training courses where you’ll receive a scrum master certificate.

You must have several years of professional experience in project work and team management because agile product development proceeds differently than it does in theory.

Two organizations, Scrum Alliance and Scrum.org provide scrum training and certifications. These certification processes include deep dives into the scrum framework and the various team rules, events, and artifacts incorporated into agile development.

Scrum master certification courses are available, and they are requirements for scrum masters within some organizations. In organizations where they’re not required, having a certificate could help give you an edge over other applicants.

The abilities and characteristics of a scrum master

There are several characteristics and abilities good scrum masters should have.

Be knowledgeable

A good scrum master must be knowledgeable to be an effective team coach. They must understand the project’s technical issues and have good working knowledge of the business.

Most Scrum teams work in an economic context, so any knowledge of how an organization can act economically and what challenges it faces can be useful for the scrum master to highlight the advantages and consequences of Scrum more clearly.

Be collaborative

Scrum masters must be collaborative to ensure a culture of collaboration exists within the team they manage. Team members should be able to raise issues and be supported for doing so.

A scrum master must collaborate not just with their team but also the product owner and all other parties with stake in the project and business.

Be a good listener

Scrum masters must listen actively so they can react empathically and situationally to individuals or teams and identify difficulties and deviations regarding the scrum framework.

Be methodical

Scrum masters should know some prioritization techniques and methods for retrospectives so they can create an active and participatory framework. They should also have a basic understanding of time management, focus, and prioritization.

Industry groups wrote to Congressional leaders today urging them to follow through on their commitment to the semiconductor industry.

In a letter to leaders on both sides of the House and the Senate, 20 industry organizations and union groups complained that a key piece of legislation designed to stimulate domestic semiconductor manufacturing remained unfunded.

The Creating Helpful Incentives for the Production of Semiconductors (CHIPS) act, proposed last June and subsequently passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, legislated a 40% refundable tax credit for organizations building chip fabrication plants in the US. It also promised $10 billion in federal funds to match state incentives for factories and funding for Department of Defense research and development around semiconductors.

However, that legislation didn't provide the funds, which remain unavailable. The letter's signatories, including the Semiconductor Industry Association, The Telecommunications Industry Association, and the Alliance for Automotive Innovation along with trade unions, warned that carving out the money is now a national priority.

"While the governments of our global competitors have invested heavily to attract new semiconductor manufacturing and research facilities, the absence of comparable U.S. incentives has made our country less competitive and America’s share of global semiconductor manufacturing has steadily declined as a result," it complained.

Some funding for the CHIPS act has already trickled through via the United States Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), passed in June. It includes $52 billion in funding for domestic chip production over the next five years.

In June, senators also introduced the Facilitating American-Built Semiconductors (FABS) Act, which would create a 25% tax credit for domestic semiconductor manufacturing facilities and tools.

Now, Congress must make good on those promises by actually approving funding for these programs, the letter said.

"The Biden Administration has expressed strong support for this funding and included it in its budget request," it said. "We call on Congress to expeditiously approve funding for these programs as set forth in the Senate-passed legislation and enact an investment tax credit as provided in the Facilitating American-Built Semiconductors (FABS) Act."

"These initiatives will help grow the U.S. economy, create hundreds of thousands of good-paying middle-class jobs in advanced manufacturing and other fields, unleash billions in private-sector investments, assure the supply of critical components essential to virtually all sectors of the economy, and strengthen our national security," the letter concluded.

Rockwell Automation and Kezzler AS are teaming up to develop an advanced asset-monitoring platform to help manufacturers track the course of their products from conception to sale and beyond.

Per the agreement, Rockwell will link its supply chain infrastructure with Kezzler's tracking technology. Additionally, Kezzler’s cloud-based solutions will offer seamless integration and access to legacy record-keeping systems, including immutable ledgers and traditional databases.

The arrangement is aimed at providing customers with a unified tracking platform that connects suppliers, manufacturing, logistics, and consumers. What’s more, unique identifiers can be used to digitally identify and track products at every stage of production.

“Our partnership with Kezzler will provide greater supply chain transparency to enhance safety and quality control measures, ensure regulatory compliance, and meet ESG goals with cloud-based technologies that are easy to implement and easy to use,” said Matt Fordenwalt, VP and general manager of systems and solutions business at Rockwell Automation.

Fordenwalt continued, “By combining our technology and expertise with Kezzler’s, we can quickly design and deliver a serialization solution customized to meet specific business requirements with advanced cloud-native software.”

But that’s not all. Following the recently announced Plex Systems acquisition, Rockwell will incorporate Plex's cloud-native factory floor track-and-trace capabilities into Kezzler's product digitization system. The combined solution will offer a comprehensive supply chain management system that is deep in functionality and vast in scope.

“Together, we can help manufacturers connect all points of a product’s journey, beginning with its inception and ending with its point of sale, consumption, or even where it’s recycled. Tying upstream and downstream data together creates true end-to-end traceability, with a single data repository for each product,” said Christine Akselsen, Kezzler CEO.

The vast majority (83%) of software developers are suffering from burnout at work, according to a new survey.

The study, carried out by Haystack Analytics, found that the top reasons cited for burnout included high workloads (47%), inefficient processes (31%), and unclear goals and targets (29%).

The study found that burnout worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 81% of developers reporting increased burnout due to the outbreak. The top reason developers cited for increased burnout amid the pandemic was increased workload (40%), which ranked above any personal reasons for experiencing burnout.

The survey also found that 83% of developers are concerned about software reliability at their workplace. Of those concerned, 20% are greatly concerned, and 55% reported they were frequently delayed in delivering work due to inefficient processes to a great or moderate extent.

Of the respondents themselves, only 26% of software engineers find themselves solely working on product development. Another 74% saw themselves working on operations in some form, even if only as part of their job, while 44% of software engineers worked in hybrid roles.

The survey also looked at how quickly an engineering team can deploy ideas into production and get real-world users’ feedback, which researchers called a “cycle term.” The survey asked how long it took respondents to go from working on a feature to reliably deploying it.

While 28% of respondents said this took two to three days, 22% said this was done on the same day, and only 9% could do this within a few hours. Researchers said these figures showed that developers are “becoming increasingly flow-oriented, focusing on cutting Cycle Time for delivering business value into production.”

Computer scientist Junade Ali, who led the research survey said that the results showed that developer burnout is far worse than imagined.

“Given the ever-greater role software plays in society and the high rate of concern developers have for software reliability in their workplaces, this raises serious concerns about the quality of software that plays an integral role in our everyday lives and critical national infrastructure,” Ali said.

Ali added that the novelty of measuring developer burnout in this study “has shown that well-being has often been disregarded when measuring engineering productivity.”

Data is taking on an increasingly important role within organisations around the world, but IT leaders have traditionally struggled to make staff truly understand or engage with analytics and business intelligence. There are many options for how to approach this particular challenge, but for Nationwide’s business intelligence team, the answer lies in building a culture of self-service data consumption.

This week, we’re talking to the leader of Nationwide’s business intelligence solutions Centre of Excellence, Richard Speigal, to find out how data literacy programmes and a federated model are helping the organisation’s staff to adopt data specialisations within their own teams - as well as how BI divisions can embed some of these practices into their own workflows.

Footnotes

• IT Pro Panel: Building a data-first culture
• What is Business Intelligence (BI)?
• What is a business intelligence analyst?
• Addressing the data literacy problem in the financial services sector
• Best data visualisation tips and tools
• How to measure data quality
• How to become a data scientist
• Home Office seeks AWS and Windows experts for criminal data lake
• Poor data is killing the smart city dream
• Infrastructure is everywhere — and so is your data
• Cloud can help you understand data – but only if you plan first
• The Locus Charter – a sign of the times
• The new generation of technologists
• Yes, you can use Excel as an enterprise database tool
• Need Excel training? Try these 10 cheap or free options
• NHS Test and Trace IT blunder blamed on Microsoft Excel glitch
• Why COVID-19 could spur a learning revolution
• The IT Pro Podcast: Data-driven doggos
• What can companies learn from object storage pioneers?

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Quantum Metric, a SaaS company specializing in digital product development, has announced the availability of its solution on Salesforce ‌AppExchange.

The strategic integration will enable Salesforce users to draw upon Quantum Metric's proprietary Continuous Product Design (CPD) technology to pinpoint, isolate, and resolve problematic customer experiences. According to Quantum Metric, users don't have to leave their Salesforce environment to access the service.

It is impossible for service professionals to provide great service without a complete view of customer interactions, concludes a recent Salesforce study. Quantum‌ ‌Metric's‌ ‌integration‌ ‌with‌ ‌Salesforce provides service representatives with real-time access to customer data and insights, including device, location, and cart value.

Moreover, the service allows agents to access contextual evidence whenever a customer encounters friction on a website or native application. This way, agents can quickly identify site errors, abandoned carts, or rage-clicking incidents.

The Quantum Metrics dashboard also lets managers ‌assess‌ ‌the‌ ‌scope‌ ‌of‌ ‌a‌ ‌problem‌ ‌and‌ ‌prioritize‌ ‌or‌ ‌escalate‌ ‌it‌ ‌as‌ ‌necessary.

"The Quantum Metric integration not only identifies where friction occurs with individual customers, it also provides transparency and insights into how many other customers have experienced this issue, and what that means when it comes to an overall impact on an organization's business goals," explained Zack McCook, senior director of content and communications at Quantum Metric.

"Creating the best digital experience for our customers has been of the utmost importance, particularly over the past year," said Jasmeet Singh, senior director of digital operations at Tapestry.

"We are thrilled about Quantum Metric's integration for this very reason, and are looking forward to enhancing our customer services practices to resolve frustrations in real-time and create the most personal interactions and support possible."

Early stage startup Haystack has raised $1.2 million for its engineering insights tool in funding led by Founders Club, Y Combinator, Soma Capital, and Entrepreneur First. The round also saw participation from Haystack's investors, Dan Siroker and Blaine Vess.

Developed in 2020 by Julian Colina and Kan Yilmaz, Haystack Analytics provides engineering metrics and alerts to augment developer performance. It's integrated with GitHub, an open source code-hosting service that lets users collaborate on projects, pull code from repositories, track changes, mention individual contributors, and more.

As an added benefit, the tool provides real-time insights into every step of the software development life cycle, from commit through deployment. Haystack Analytics' performance monitoring capabilities also help identify bottlenecks that delay productivity.

Commenting on the tool's efficacy, Haystack said its users have, on average, increased their production deployments by 58% and achieved 70% faster cycle times.

"Tech teams and engineers around the world are key assets to any company and shipping software is the heartbeat and competitive advantage they seek," said Julian Colina, founder and CEO of Haystack Analytics.

"The efforts of developers are at the heart of processes, products and, effectively, the bottom line. Until now, it was difficult for CTOs and engineering managers to objectively know what their roadblocks are or have insights into resourcing levels. Haystack gives visibility by providing metrics and alerts to make sure nothing continues to be stuck. We are helping developers to ship faster and improve their satisfaction".

The Haystack platform has attracted over 7,000 developers, including those from GoDaddy, Microsoft, The Economist, Indiegogo, and Truebill, in less than 12 months since launching. Through the newly raised funds, the company plans to expand its offering to a wider range of data sources and provide a more robust user experience.

"Our mission is to bring the competitive advantage data-driven engineering teams like Google have to everyone. We help teams track their delivery process and optimization opportunities instead of relying solely on gut feelings - resulting in 70% faster delivery on average. It's been an incredible 12 months and we are well set to achieve much more in the next year," added Colina.

Siemens has acquired Nextflow Software, an independent provider of particle-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solutions, for an undisclosed sum.

As part of the acquisition, Siemens will incorporate Nextflow's smooth-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) technology into its Xcelerator software. The integration will allow for rapid and automated analysis of fluid flow and transient motion applications in the automotive, aerospace, and marine industries. Use cases include gearbox lubrication, tank sloshing, spray cooling of motors, and more.

"Our customers need to leverage sophisticated simulations earlier and more often in their design process, and this is creating a strong demand for rapid and automated CFD of dynamic gas-liquid flows," said Jean-Claude Ercolanelli, senior vice president of simulation and test solutions at Siemens Digital Industries Software.

Ercolanelli continued, "Meshless technology has emerged as a leading solution to greatly reduce the setup and solving times for this class of problems, accelerating time to results and prove the behavior of products at a reduced time and cost."

The Siemens Digital Industries Software suite caters to a broad range of mechanical and electrical design scenarios with computer-aided design and high-fidelity tools.

With Nextflow Software's SPH technology now included in the Siemens' Simcenter Xcelerator portfolio, engineers can capitalize on the complementary benefits of meshless and mesh-based solvers to address design challenges, added Siemens.

For instance, in applications where it would be best suited, SPH-flow Explorer can be 5 to 100 times faster than conventional finite volume (FV) solvers, simplifying a week's worth of simulations into a few hours, with superior results over FV.

"We are very excited to join Siemens and expand the scope of CFD simulation for our customers," said Vincent Perrier, Nextflow Software CEO.

"Today, there is no single validation approach that fits all industrial applications. As engineering problems become more complex and design cycles are shortened, analysts must find the optimal trade-off between accuracy and computation time. Nextflow Software's SPH solutions nicely complement the existing CFD offering in the Simcenter Portfolio to overcome challenges of complexity and long run-times."

The global semiconductor shortage has forced Nissan and Suzuki to halt production at some of their automotive plants in Japan and Mexico.

The shortage has already stopped or cut back production of vehicles such as the Ford F-150, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and Chevy Camaro.

Nissan will idle its huge factory in Kyushu, Japan for part of June and lower production at two other Japanese plants, Reuters reported Friday. The company is also temporarily stopping the production of some of its models built at its plant in Mexico.

“A global shortage of semiconductors has affected parts procurement in the auto sector,” a Nissan spokeswoman said.

Suzuki plans to idle three auto plants in Japan’s Shizuoka prefecture for three to nine days, according to Reuters.

This comes on top of recent news that Mitsubishi, another Japanese automaker, will reduce its output of vehicles by a whopping 30,000 in June at five auto plants in Japan, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the worldwide semiconductor shortage has already forced General Motors and Ford to slash production at automotive plants in three states, Canada, and Mexico.

Due to the chip shortage, the global auto industry is expected to make 1.5 million to 5 million fewer vehicles this year than originally planned, according to the consulting firm AlixPartners.

Ford and other automakers have asked the US government to help secure a steady supply of semiconductors to keep their auto factories running. However, a new tech lobbying group called the Semiconductors in America Coalition is arguing the government shouldn’t favor a single industry, such as automakers.

The White House says it’s exploring options to address the global chip shortage. President Joe Biden has already asked Congress for $50 billion to fund a bill that would help build more chip manufacturing capacity in the US.

Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins recently predicted it would take “another six months to get through the short term” of the shortage. Robbins added the crisis is unlikely to be fully resolved until 2022. Meanwhile, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell recently said he expects that the chip crisis “will probably continue for a few years.”

Humanising customer experience is critical for business success in today’s market, especially as brand trust is now more important in the decision-making process than ever before.

By relating to your customers on a personal level, your business can win your consumers’ trust and maintain it for the long term.

Leverage key insights from Customer Experience expert Clare Muscutt and Customer Success Director Charlotte Passemard, Global Programs Manager Matthew Meeks, and Head of Support Susana de Sousa today to build a human centric business for tomorrow.

Knowledge management is a key activity for organisations that are looking to scale their business and derive more value from their employees.

Essentially, knowledge management is about getting the right knowledge to the right person at the right time. This may not sound complex on the surface, but it involves a strong tie to corporate strategy, an appreciation of where and in what formats that knowledge exists, creating processes that span organisational functions and ensuring buy-in for initiatives from organisational stakeholders.

Knowledge management may focus on the creation of new knowledge, or focus only on knowledge sharing and storage. It is not about managing knowledge for its own sake – the aim is to create value and use the company’s knowledge assets to meet organisational goals.

Download now to find out more information on knowledge management.

Fill out the form below to access the free resource.

The following article originally appeared in Issue 12 of IT Pro 20/20 as part of a new series that invites industry experts to give their take on some of the most pressing issues facing businesses today. To sign up to receive the latest issue of IT Pro 20/20 in your inbox every month, click here. For a list of previous issues, click here.

Historically, the financial services sector has struggled to realise the benefits data can offer. Despite awareness from business leaders that access to the right data at the right time can accelerate business value, the sector often falls behind, in part due to a persistent digital and data skills gap.

Even when businesses have equipped people with the tools to effectively integrate data, financial services organisations haven’t always trained people with the requisite skills to understand it.

Our industry faces two significant challenges to data literacy. The first is to break a perception that we implicitly understand data because we deal with financial matters. The reality is that while we can use structured reports or dashboards to accurately measure what has happened, we generally do less exploration to understand why things happen. The second challenge is overcoming the embarrassment from colleagues throughout the business of asking for or accepting help when it comes to interpreting and acting on data.

If we want our industry to keep up with consumer demand and remain competitive, a cultural shift in attitudes toward data needs to take place – and we have to put people at the heart of it.

That’s why at Nationwide, we’ve embarked on a programme that is helping us make a shift towards a data-driven culture, where every employee is empowered to embrace data in decision-making. Our Business Intelligence (BI) team has implemented an approach, with our partner Qlik, that aims to help all employees become ‘Fit to Fly’ when working with data, helping them make decisions through self-service analysis and reporting.

Expanding data access

The first pillar of activity we embarked upon as part of the ‘Fit to Fly’ approach was raising awareness of the importance of data and how it can be a productive tool to help employees improve their decision-making. From creating drop-in days where we showcase our analytics tools, to setting up ‘data speed dating’ sessions to explore new ways of working and troubleshoot any challenges, the process not only helped us improve the perception of data in our organisation, it critically also helped us better understand the challenges employees were facing. This process validated our belief that a huge portion of our team’s time was being spent on preparing data rather than providing insights from it, but we also learnt that some people just weren’t especially confident using the data they did have.

This learning then informed our next objective, to make analytics-ready data accessible to those that need it. By democratising access to our analytics applications, we were able to put the power to self-serve data insights into the hands of all our employees – not just the BI team.

With the appetite for data use growing, we also needed to find a consistent way of visualising data sets. If the same data is presented differently in every meeting, it can easily feel like you’re starting at zero every time.

To overcome this challenge, we established a Visual Vocabulary application based on the Financial Times model that breaks down visualisations into logical categories, essentially acting as a ‘menu’ of what our analytics teams can produce. For business stakeholders, it helps us identify the most appropriate way to visualise data and derive insight, and for developers, it’s a technical timesaver that aids design consistency.

Home-grown experts

Our data team also includes a smaller group that is dedicated to driving and maintaining adoption of our solutions. Where the team see a reduction in usage, they will make an intervention, which could be a call, arranging a solution review, or just inviting colleagues to one of our weekly drop-in sessions. The team develop and deploy learning aids that are short, punchy and easy to consume and use existing engaged business users to record video learning clips, with the benefit of the explanation and learning being in a language their colleagues understand, not “data speak”.

To encourage teams to be more collaborative with data, we also have an accreditation programme that nurtures highly skilled employees as ‘platinum level Qlik-experts’, who understand both the technology and our data strategy. This gives them more freedom, helping them become ambassadors of change and fostering knowledge-sharing throughout the organisation.

Is your organisation considering a digital transformation? In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business environment, many companies feel pressured to innovate or get left behind by competitors.

However, it's important that you not simply follow trends and revamp all areas of the business, which will cost lots of time and money, but decide what specific changes will benefit your business and actually make you stand out against the competition.

Join Ralf Bucksch, IBM Technical Executive AI Applications, for this 40-minute recorded webinar about the seven steps you need to consider if you want to avoid messing up your organisation's digital innovation and transformation.

Customer intelligence platform Affogata has raised $5.5 million in a funding round led by Mangrove Capital Partners and PICO Venture Partners. Wix Capital and Fiverr Founder and CEO, Micha Kaufman, also participated in the funding round.

Affogata said it’ll use the funds to scale its business and develop new customer solutions. The Israeli startup also aims to strengthen its research and development department.

Affogata's artificial intelligence-driven platform gleans information from a wealth of open data sources about the brand and its competitors to provide real-time actionable insights.

"Our ability to provide customer opinions and actionable insights for multiple stakeholders in real-time is a major differentiator for any brand, especially with the continued rise of online communities like Reddit," said Affogata Co-founder and CEO Sharel Omer.

"This funding round is a big vote of confidence in our platform and will provide us with the ability to empower countless brands with a robust set of tools to improve their products, strengthen their online presence, and really stand apart when it comes to offering a superior customer experience while maintaining a strong reputation."

As an alternative to multiple tools focused solely on listening and responding, Affogata enables proactive responses and high levels of automation. Powered by millions of data points, Affogata’s platform eliminates bots and spammers with AI-powered moderation. This saves moderators countless hours of manual work.

Affogata also features competitor tracking, so companies have the information they need to make informed decisions. Businesses can also use the platform to find influencers and comprehend their reach, thereby channeling resources effectively.

"Being able to make decisions to improve product development and the customer experience based on expansive, real-time data is now mission-critical and Affogata's product has become a customer intelligence solution for leading global brands," said Claudia De Antoni, Operating Partner at PICO Venture Partners

"We're excited to join the Affogata team and look forward to seeing many more brands adopting the kind of customer-first approach their technology enables."

Apple has pledged to invest $430 billion in the US over the next five years, which will fund a massive new North Carolina campus and create 20,000 new jobs.

The company unveiled a long list of investments in the US, including silicon development and 5G advancements in nine US states. This comes after Apple last year launched its own silicon, the ARM-based M1 processor, in a snub to Intel, which has since rolled out several devices including the new iMac and iPad Pro.

The North Carolina campus will cost over $1 billion and host 3,000 new jobs in various computing fields, the company said. It joins another campus already under construction in Austin, Texas.

Other investments include a $100 million fund to support schools and community initiatives in North Carolina and over $110 million in infrastructure spending on broadband, roads, bridges and public schools in the state.

The company, which says it's on track to meet its goal of 20,000 new jobs by 2023, now plans to add 20,000 new jobs over the next five years. These include growing its San Diego, California workforce to more than 5,000 jobs by 2026 and adding 1,000 in Seattle, Washington.

Other cities due for jobs boosts include Boulder, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts. Particularly notable are 500 new jobs in Waukee, Iowa, which is the site of a new Apple data center currently in the design stage.

The expansion pushes Apple forward on all fronts. Apple will also push $100 million toward funding a new logistics center in Clayton, Indiana, creating 500 new jobs. The company also plans to push ahead with investments in productions for its TV+ service across 20 states.

This isn't the first time that Apple has pledged a large investment package in the US. In 2018, it set an original five-year investment goal of $350 billion. However, this spending spree has a historical context.

Apple claims to be the largest taxpayer in the US, having paid almost $45 billion in domestic corporate income taxes over the past five years. However, analysis has shown how the company historically reduced its US tax payments before this period by moving its money offshore. CEO Tim Cook expressed his outrage after a 2016 EU ruling that would have forced the company to pay €13 billion ($15.7 billion) in back taxes to the Irish Republic, where it stored a lot of its offshore capital.

Apple repatriated much of its earnings that year, paying $38 billion in taxes while also taking advantage of a US deal that taxed repatriated earnings at 15.5%. This deal created $40 billion in savings, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates.

In 2020, the European General Court overturned the original EU ruling, but the EU appealed the ruling in September 2020.

In 2015, Akamai set targets to reduce emissions by 30%, power its edge platform with 50% renewable energy, and recycle 100% of e-waste by the end of 2020.

During the five years, the company reduced its energy consumption tenfold for every unit of capacity while also achieving its objectives.

Continuing its commitment to environmental sustainability, Akamai has announced five new goals for 2030.

The new goals surround Akamai's intelligent edge platform, the communities it lives, operates and works in, and its global supply chain.

"Akamai believes that corporations share the responsibility to protect the earth's natural resources. These 2030 goals reflect our commitment to this belief," said Nicole Fitzpatrick, deputy general counsel and chief ESG officer.

Akamai meets over half of its energy needs via renewable sources. Akamai's first goal will prioritize the implementation and procurement of renewable energy to power 100% of its global operations by 2030. If Akamai operates in an area without an adequate renewable energy supply, it plans to use attestable and traceable sources of renewable energy certificates to meet its goals.

Akamai's most energy-intensive operation involves managing its intelligent edge platform that includes over 325,000 servers across 135 countries. As part of its second goal, Akamai plans to make its edge platform 50% more energy efficient.

The third goal focuses on 100% platform emissions mitigation. To achieve this goal, Akamai will work with data center providers and landlords to build attestable renewable energy sources that equal Akamai's footprint. Both scope-one and scope-two emissions are included within the net-zero emissions target.

Akamai has set responsible supply chain management as its fourth sustainability target. For a measurable reduction by 2030, the company will collaborate with its top suppliers to benchmark and quantify scope three emissions.

Lastly, the global expansion of 100% electronic waste recycling program is Akamai’s fifth sustainability goal. Akamai will recycle all electronics at the end of a product's lifecycle per the e-Stewards program guidelines. Furthermore, over the next 10 years, the company plans on making partner programs more efficient by disposing of e-waste in the country of origin where feasible.

IBM, Red Hat, and Cobuilder are teaming up to develop a new platform to connect fragmented supply chains in the construction industry.

Using the new platform called OpenBuilt, construction companies can securely integrate their digital solutions with their supply chain partners, suppliers, and subcontractors through a single integration hub.

The OpenBuilt development process will also see participation from five cross-industry partners, including Cemex, EDIN Network, Backe, Sol Services, and Element.

"In pursuing the broad goal of construction industry transformation, there is a critical need to break down the deep silos and fragmentation that exists in how we organise and operate design, manufacture, construction and operation processes,” said Mark Farmer, Cast Consultancy’s CEO.

OpenBuilt’s collaborative development will initially focus on three key areas: establishing OpenBuilt using Red Hat OpenShift running on IBM Cloud to enable construction companies to seamlessly connect their supply chains via the hybrid cloud; integrating IBM solutions and Salesforce’s open APIs into the platform; and creating new flagship applications for searching, filtering, and sorting of technical building data.

Define, Cobuilder's data dictionary solution, will establish a common language within OpenBuilt's flagship applications. Additionally, OpenBuilt will leverage Cobuilder's template-based data structure to make all data machine-readable and interoperable with existing and future systems.

Users can also build and deploy intelligent workflows via an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, said IBM.

"The global construction landscape is evolving and requires a new approach towards industry-wide technology platforms with new levels of openness, innovation and collaboration,” comments Jon O'Donnell, managing partner, IBM Global Business Services EMEA.

“Together with our partners we are creating OpenBuilt to empower the construction industry to break down its silos with intelligent workflows and play an active role in designing and driving its own transformation. Successful companies across the construction supply chain are coming together to embrace a digital future, harnessing the power of an open hybrid cloud approach and adopting new technologies to gain a real competitive advantage. We want to inspire other companies to join us and accelerate the march towards a truly digital construction industry."

Infosys and LivePerson Inc have entered a strategic partnership to help brands manage artificial intelligence-powered conversations.

The partnership combines Infosys Cobalt, a platform and set of services designed to accelerate an enterprise's journey into the cloud, with LivePerson's Conversational Cloud, a complete set of applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) for creating and managing conversational experiences.

According to reports, Infosys is also investing in and scaling a service practice to support LivePerson's Conversational Cloud. Additionally, Infosys will assist LivePerson in transforming its technology infrastructure on the public cloud to address the growing demand for conversational experiences.

"Together with Infosys' transformational services and cloud capabilities, we can redefine how the world's major brands communicate with consumers and engage their employees," said Rob LoCascio, CEO and founder of LivePerson.

"Our Conversational Cloud includes a full set of APIs and integration points that Infosys can help architect and weave throughout a large enterprise's systems and processes to generate the maximum sales impact and cost savings from conversational experiences. LivePerson will benefit from Infosys' partnership by continuing to scale our Conversational Cloud to meet consumers' growing demand for these experiences."

The Infosys-LivePerson partnership will also focus on direct-to-consumer conversations on consumers' preferred messaging channels, including Apple Business Chat, Google's Business Messages, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and brand websites and apps.

It’ll also include new messaging experiences for employees to support business continuity, HR, finance, and IT queries and digital consulting and global delivery services to build, run, integrate, and scale immersive experiences for brands.

"We are excited to embark on this strategic partnership bringing Infosys Cobalt's services to act as a force-multiplier for LivePerson's Conversational Cloud. We plan to leverage LivePerson in the mission-critical business processes of our clients to improve the user experience for their customers, channel partners, and employees," comments Karmesh Vaswani, EVP and global head of consumer, retail and logistics at Infosys.

"I'm confident that we will jointly innovate and deliver insight-led omnichannel customer experiences for enterprise brands to create new revenue models, realize savings, and achieve faster time to market."

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is launching a new tool that uses machine learning for business analytics.

AWS’ Lookout for Metrics monitors key performance indicators (KPIs), such as web page views, mobile app downloads, numbers of active users, and income to detect anomalies and alert the organization so it can act.

It also makes action easier by grouping related anomalies together and offering potential root causes. It also ranks each anomaly by severity, so organizations know which issues require immediate attention and which can wait.

“From marketing and sales to telecom and gaming, customers in all industries have KPIs that they need to be able to monitor for potential spikes, dips, and other anomalies outside of normal bounds across their business functions,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of machine learning for AWS.

“But catching and diagnosing anomalies in metrics can be challenging, and by the time a root cause has been determined, much more damage has been done than if it had been identified earlier.”

AWS looks to make a splash in the world of business intelligence (BI), one of the most effective ways to use data. It can provide businesses with critical insights to help them make better decisions to foster a more productive and efficient organization, analyze how they can keep up with competitors, and grow their revenues beyond projections.

According to AWS, “In a couple of clicks, you can connect Amazon Lookout for Metrics to popular data stores like Amazon S3, Amazon Redshift, and Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), as well as third-party SaaS applications, such as Salesforce, Servicenow, Zendesk, and Marketo, and start monitoring metrics that are important to your business.”

Lookout for Metrics is available to most US, UK, EU, and Asia-Pacific AWS customers via the AWS console and through supporting partners in the AWS Partner Network. Availability for additional regions is coming soon.

Amazon noted that Lookout for Metrics requires no specialist machine learning training to start using it.

AWS prices Lookout for Metrics in tiers according to the number of metrics per month your organization needs to track. The first 1,000 metrics cost 75 cents each per month. Metrics 1,001 through 5,000 are 50 cents each per month, and metrics 5,001 through 20,000 are 25 cents each per month. From 20,001 to 50,000 metrics are 10 cents each per month, and anything over 50,000 metrics is 5 cents per metric per month.

Synnex Corporation and Tech Data have signed a definitive merger agreement valued at approximately $7.2 billion, including net debt.

Following the merger, Synexx and Tech Data, with approximately “$57 billion in estimated pro forma annual revenues and a team of over 22,000 associates and colleagues,” will be better positioned to accelerate technology adoption.

The transaction, which is expected to close in the second half of the current financial year, also combines each company's core growth platforms and end-to-end solutions to create best-in-class product offerings pertaining to the cloud, data centers, security, Internet of Things (IoT), services, 5G, and the intelligent edge.

Additionally, the combined company will expand its global footprint to serve over 100 countries across the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions with a diversified portfolio of over 200,000 products and solutions.

“This is transformational for Tech Data, Synexx and the entire technology ecosystem. Together, we will be able to offer our customers and vendors exceptional reach, efficiency, and expertise, redefining the experience and value they receive," said Rich Hume, Tech Data CEO.

"The combined company will also benefit from significant financial strength to invest in its core growth platform as well as next generation cybersecurity, cloud, data, and IoT technologies, which are experiencing explosive growth due to work from home and return to office trends.”

Apollo Global Management, which wholly owns and manages Tech Data through its funds, will also enjoy certain merger benefits.

As per the agreement, Apollo Funds will receive an “aggregate of 44 million shares of Synexx common stock plus the refinancing of existing Tech Data net debt and redeemable preferred shares of approximately $2.7 billion.”

MiTAC Holdings Corporation and its affiliates, which collectively own approximately 17% of Synnex shares, have also agreed to vote their shares in favor of the Synnex-Tech Data merger.

Fintech firm Stripe has raised $600m in a funding round that places its value at $95 billion.

The move will fuel further expansion in Europe for the fast-growing company, which is increasingly targeting large enterprise customers.

The money came primarily from insurance companies Allianz and Axa, with other backers, including Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Sequoia Capital, and the Irish National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA).

The company has committed much of the funding to expand its European operations, where it already operates in 31 countries. Stripe launched support for companies in the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Malta, in May 2020. Ireland, where it has one of its dual headquarters, will be a focal point, according to its president and co-founder John Collison.

Outside Europe, Stripe will also expand operations in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and the UAE.

Stripe will expand its Global Payments and Treasury Network (GPTN), the foundation for a range of services it’s been launching to capture greater parts of the payment chain. These include accepting and making payments and storing and managing them.

The company began focusing on smaller, startup-stage companies, providing them with a way to integrate payments easily into their applications. Over time, it’s expanded to court larger companies with a range of additional enterprise features.

In 2018, it added a set of anti-fraud tools called Radar. It also launched a platform for companies to issue Mastercard and Visa credit cards during the same year. In late 2020, it announced Stripe Treasury, a banking-as-a-service API2 that provides its clients' banking services. Initial partners for the service included Goldman Sachs and Evolve Bank in the US.

This latest fundraising follows a $250 million Series G funding round that Stripe started in September 2019 that put its value at $35 billion. It extended that round and included General Catalyst, Sequoia, and Andreesen Horowitz to raise another $600 million in April 2020.

Delivering a presentation in the workplace can be a stressful experience, but the best presentation software can help you get your message across more confidently. With the backing of a convincing deck filled with powerful imagery and data, anyone can deliver a top-notch presentation.

Luckily for business users, there’s no shortage of choice when it comes to tools that can help you create the best presentations possible. We’ve brought together the best presentation software in the five best offerings from Microsoft, Visme, Google, Prezi, and Slidebean.

Whether you plan to present remotely via a video conferencing system or in-person, pay $180 per year, or nothing at all – you’re likely to find the perfect software for your presentation in one of the five options detailed below. Once you’ve decided which one suits you best, you’ll just have to work on your public speaking skills.

1. Microsoft PowerPoint

Supported operating systems: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Free tier: Yes

Ever since it was first released in 1987, PowerPoint has been one of the top contenders for the title of best presentation software. With a powerful set of features including clean graphics and stock images, the ability to time and record slideshows, and even have generative AI produce text, images, or entire slides if you pay for Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Other PowerPoint features include support for 3D objects, limited image editing, and the ability to produce detailed infographics.

As part of the Microsoft Office 365 software suite, PowerPoint is widely used in conjunction with Excel, Outlook, Word, and Access. The online version of PowerPoint allows users to collaborate on a slideshow in real-time.

Microsoft 365 business subscriptions start at $6 (or £4.90) per user per month, depending on options and add-ons. If you’re not interested in the other apps in the suite, you can also purchase PowerPoint as a standalone app for a one-time fee of $159.99 (or £149.99).

2. Google Slides

Supported operating systems: Windows, macOS, iOS, ChromeOS, and Android

Free tier: Yes

Google Slides was built with collaboration at its heart and operates very similarly to Microsoft PowerPoint. As part of the Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) set of applications, Google Slides is available for free with any Google account and works seamlessly with Google Drive and Google Sheets.

You can import PPSX files from Microsoft PowerPoint directly into Google Slides and also download slides in a range of formats when finished. This allows for a good degree of flexibility and inter-compatibility when using Google Slides, perfect for businesses that rely on a mixture of Google Workspace and Office 365 or those whose customers are entirely reliant on a platform outside of Google.

Suited for the hybrid working era, users can deliver presentations on Google Meet video calls directly from Slides. A built-in Q&A feature also allows viewers to submit anonymous questions while a presenter runs through their slides.

If you choose to pay for Google Slides, you’ll be able to use more cloud storage, benefit from advanced security features, and receive more responsive tech support.

Subscriptions start at $6 (or £5) per user per month for the Business Starter plan. For more cloud storage, video meeting options, and recording there’s also the Business Standard plan at $12 (or £10) per user per month and the Business Plus plan for $18 (or £15) per user per month.

Topping the offerings is a customizable Enterprise offering, with quotes available on a per-business basis via the Google Workspace sales team. Those looking to leverage features similar to Microsoft’s Copilot in PowerPoint will be glad to know there’s also the option of using Google Gemini in Google Workspace starting at $20 per month.

3. Prezi

Supported operating systems: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Free tier: Yes

As presentation software goes, Prezi might be the best for pure focus on images. Users can zoom into slides to a greater degree than in competing software and are encouraged to turn the canvas at different angles while presenting or insert seamless transitions to keep your audience engaged.

Additionally, Prezi makes it easy to import and embed a PDF file into your presentation. You may also choose to incorporate live or recorded videos into your presentations via video in video. Convenient and secure, Prezi’s “Go Live” feature lets you share your recordings with popular video conferencing tools, including Zoom, Webex, and others.

Prezi also has its own integrated AI assistant, which suggests templates based on text input and can reword text to improve its readability. The Basic plan is free and lets you create and share up to five projects but Prezi also offers flexible business tiers: Plus, Premium, and Teams. 

‘Plus’ plans cost $15 (or £15) per month and enable users to create unlimited projects, infographics, import slides from Microsoft PowerPoint, export decks as PDFs, and create voice-overs for presentations. At the ‘Premium’ level, which costs $19 (or £19) per month, users get presentation analytics, advanced online training, as well as phone and chat support.

Topping the price list is the Teams plan, which starts at $19 (or £19) per month and includes admin controls, custom branding, integration with Slack, and secure single sign-on (SSO) among other benefits. Keep in mind, Prezi bills those monthly fees annually, but you can take advantage of a 14-day free trial.

4. Visme

Supported operating systems: Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, and Android

Free tier: Yes

With Visme, you can run your presentation online or offline, collaborate with teams, connect charts to live data, and more. Visme’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface provides granular content control, making customization quick and easy. You can also add animated assets, forms, and surveys to a Visme presentation.

What’s more, Visme’s analytics feature lets you track traffic on public Visme projects. When someone views a public Visme project, the software detects and compiles the source address, number of unique visitors, and each visit’s duration. Visme then visualizes the metrics into an easy-to-understand analytical graph, accessible through the dashboard. You can also download the metrics as Excel reports.

Visme offers a free plan that allows up to five projects and includes limited templates, charts and widgets, 100 MB of storage, the ability to download JPG files, and more.

Paid Visme plans come in three variants: Starter ($29 per month or $147 per year), Pro ($59 per month or $297 per year), and Visme for Teams (contact sales for pricing).

The Starter plan adds onto the free plan with up to 250 MB of storage, premium assets and templates, no Visme branding, PDF download, 24/7 phone and chat support, and more. The Business plan offers 3 GB of storage, multiple file download types, a branding kit, privacy controls, and more.

For large corporations, the Enterprise plan has custom pricing. This builds upon the Business plan with 25 GB of storage, single-sign-on ability, two-factor authentication, a custom subdomain, deep analytics, training and onboarding, and more.

5. Slidebean

Supported operating systems: Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android

Free tier: Yes

Standing out from the conventional, Slidebean is an AI-powered, web-based multimedia presentation tool. It can design and format your slides automatically as you type. Furthermore, this tool lets you combine a wide range of media, including videos, PDF files, web pages, and Prezi and PowerPoint presentations, to name a few.

From sales decks to business proposals, Slidebean’s ready-to-use templates offer smart content suggestions to keep presentations informative yet creative. You may even choose to remotely control your SlideDog presentations from a desktop or your smartphone.

Slidebean’s free plan includes unlimited access to its AI-powered editor, pre-built templates, and media galleries. Its paid plan, All-Access, allows users to share and export presentations to PDF and PPT, track views and activity on slides, browse over 30,000 investor contacts, and access over $15,000 in discounts on startup tools.

HPE has doubled down on its commitment to data-driven insights with the acquisition of cloud analysis platform provider CloudPhysics, as well as the release of its new Software-Defined Opportunity Engine (SDOE).

The acquisition adds CloudPhysics' SaaS-based, data-driven platform for analysis of on-premises and cloud setups, bringing detailed insights to customers and partners across most IT environments, the firm said.

CloudPhysics' solution monitors and analyses IT infrastructures, estimates costs and viability of cloud migrations, as well as model a customer’s IT infrastructure as a virtual environment.

Quick to deploy, the solution can generate insights in as little as 15 minutes, HPE says, while its data capture includes over 200 metrics for VMs, hosts, datastores and networks.

"Through increased visibility and understanding, CloudPhysics transforms the procurement process to be a win-win for both customers and partners,” commented Tom Black, Senior Vice President and General Manager of HPE Storage.

"Our partners will benefit from shorter sales cycles, an increase in assessed to qualified opportunities and higher close rates. More importantly, our partners become trusted advisors to accelerate the transformation agendas of our customers."

The CloudPhysics solution will be integrated into HPE’s freshly unveiled Software-Defined Opportunity Engine (SDOE), which is designed to provide customers with data-backed customised sales proposals.

Powered by HPE InfoSight, the SDOE solution uses intelligence and deep learning to generate holistic technology recommendations for businesses to optimise their infrastructure and accelerate digital transformation.

The platform auto-generates a quote with the best storage solution for a customer in as little as 45 seconds – a dramatic reduction on a process that could take weeks previously.

HPE says SDOE will enable businesses to work as trusted partners with their customers as they build a detailed understanding of their workloads, configuration and usage patterns. On average, the streamlined tool also eliminates five meetings from the current sales process, the tech firm added.

"By utilising software and data-driven analytics, HPE Storage is transforming the sales and customer experience with real intelligence - removing complexity and guesswork, and turning it into a simple and data-driven decision making process, based on the preference and specific needs of the customer,” Black added.

Juniper Networks has unveiled Paragon Automation, its new cloud-native software suite for enterprise automation and resiliency testing.

Also primed for vendor-agnostic monitoring of network services, Juniper has announced Paragon Automation as the new brand name for its WAN automation solutions portfolio.

The new application suite will also combine tools and assurance testing software from Netrounds, a cloud-based predictive network analytics platform Juniper acquired in September 2020.

“Juniper’s automation software and tools brought in-house through the Netrounds acquisition have been rewritten to be microservice-based and cloud-delivered and hosted, said Brendan Gibbs, VP of automated WAN solutions at Juniper.

“Everything is Kubernetes based. We want to align to a standard hosting architecture for clouds, whether it be hosting in a public cloud or customers hosting this in their own private cloud on-premise with their own Kubernetes-based architecture.”

For 5G network operators and enterprises running their applications on multi-cloud environments, Paragon Automation replaces manual troubleshooting tasks with automated network and service provisioning, managing, and monitoring.

The Paragon Planner network planning and simulation tool, offered under the Paragon Automation software suite, provides full-scale network views, health audits, and scenario planning without disrupting an enterprise’s live network.

Paragon Insights, a data collection and analytics solution, offers actionable operational intelligence across network deployments.

Finally, Junos Telemetry streams real-time performance data from network devices to enhance performance analysis and service assurance.

“We’re on a mission to drive experience first networking, something Juniper considers necessary for service providers and all WAN routed networks, including planning and design, configuration, service assurance and provisioning, and analytics for multi-vendor architecture in a visual workflow, Gibbs added.