Gcore, an international cloud and edge solutions provider, has opened an AI Cloud cluster in Newport, Wales. Built with Graphcore’s innovative IPUs, it provides even the smallest companies with access to enterprise-scale IT resources, democratising opportunities for AI development across the UK and Europe. The opening of the new cluster in Newport marks the third… Read more »
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HCLTech, a specialist global technology company, and Google Cloud have expanded their strategic partnership to help enterprises leverage generative artificial intelligence (AI) and develop joint solutions powered by Google Cloud’s generative AI technologies. HCLTech is actively using Google Cloud’s large language models (LLMs) to develop generative AI capabilities for its clients across three core domains:… Read more »
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Shopify and Google Cloud have unveiled an integration that enables retailers using Commerce Components – Shopify’s enterprise retail solution – to leverage Google-quality search capabilities and AI innovations. Enterprise brands on Shopify can today access Google Cloud’s Discovery Al solutions directly through Commerce Components, Shopify’s modern, composable stack for enterprise retail. This integration, which can… Read more »
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Kingfisher, an international home improvement company, has signed a five-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud to enhance Kingfisher’s digital capabilities as it helps usher in retail’s next digital age. With more than 1,500 stores internationally, 80,000 full-time colleagues, and a brand portfolio that includes B&Q, Castorama, Screwfix, Brico Dépôt and Koçtaş, Kingfisher required a strong… Read more »
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Enterprise cloud data management specialist, Informatica, has been named as an initial partner of the Microsoft Intelligent Data Platform Partner Ecosystem. Microsoft announced the launch of this ecosystem during its Microsoft Ignite 2022. This initiative represents an investment both companies are making towards helping enterprises truly operationalise AI with trusted and governed data. By bringing… Read more »
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Research from Narrative Science claims confusion over the definition of artificial intelligence is holding it back, although 62% of enterprise respondents believe it will be place by 2018, reports Telecoms.com.
Although this is an encouraging statistic, the report also highlights there is confusion over the definition of the technology itself. 62% of those who contributed to the survey said they were not using AI currently, however later in the survey 88% of the same people were then found to be products or solutions which are under pinned by AI technology. 20% of the respondents highlighted AI wouldn’t be implemented in their organization until there was more clarity on what the technology is, where it fits into the IT function and what the benefits are.
These statistics more than anything else highlight confusion, and ignorance to the artificial intelligence technology which is already present in their day-to-day lives. AI isn’t new, in science fiction movies or in real life. From Siri on Apple devices to Amazon’s recommended purchases or Facebook’s content recommendations, AI has been drip feed into the real-world of technology with few people realizing its impact. The functions mentioned are AI at one of its simplest versions, though IBM has been making progress with its Watson offering moving into more complex arenas, such as medical diagnosis, building management and weather modelling systems.
But what is the real potential of artificial intelligence? According to the report, predictive analytics is the most prominent use-case. 38% of the respondents believe prediction on activity relating to machines, customers or business health is the most relevant use-case. This is one of the more obvious use-cases as there is a direct link to the bottom line, recouping the investment made in the technologies. Whether this is repairs on leased equipment, understanding which customers are most likely to churn or understanding external factors which may impact the supply/demand dynamic, these are all use-cases which impact the bottom line.
These use-cases can also be linked back to the growth of big data and the desire to become more competitive by being more intelligent. The more information a company has access to, the more well-informed decisions become and the risk undertaken is reduced. Dependent on who you speak to the industry is either very good or very bad at using data. The number is almost certainly in the middle, as there is only so many man hours which can be contributed towards the analysis of this data, and data scientists are in-demand.
With the introduction of IoT, increased efficiency in collection and more effective real-time solutions, the tidal wave of information available to an organization will continue to grow. For the investment in data collection, storage and management to be realized, an artificially intelligent solution to comprehend the information and turn it into insight is an alternative, as a human could not stay awake long enough to do the same level of work. To ensure ROI and avoid drowning in the swell of information, artificial intelligence could be critical.
Another area which received attention during the report was automation. This would appear to be low on the agenda currently, though 25% of the respondents felt this was the most important use-case moving forward. One of the myths which have been swirling around artificial intelligence since the release of Terminator is the idea AI will eventually remove the requirement for humans. It’s all very doom and gloom, however AI offers companies the opportunity to take the more mundane, simplistic and repetitive tasks away from employees, to ensure they can focus more time on what would be considered more valuable and critical to the success of the business.
While there still needs to be a focus around what artificial intelligence actually is and what can be achieved through the implementation of such next gen technologies, progress is beginning to be seen. Should cloud computing and 5G be the driving forces towards IoT, to ensure the time and investment is not a waste, assistance from AI driven solutions would appear to be crucial. An AI solution will not (or at least in the near future) make business critical decisions, though the promise of big data is to provide a suitable level of information to ensure businesses are making informed decisions. AI could be the link between information and insight.
Virtual reality may well have been capturing the imagination of the industry in recent months, but Intel’s $400 million of AI start-up Nervana highlights it’s not all fun and games, reports Telecoms.com.
Having set its position as a leader in the data centre market and then largely missed out on the smartphone revolution, it would appear Intel is determined not to miss out on the burgeoning IoT segment, with the Nervana purchase added more firepower to the company’s efforts. The acquisition also highlights the importance of artificial intelligence to the development of the technology industry.
“Intel is a company that powers the cloud and billions of smart, connected computing devices,” said Diane Bryant, GM of the Data Center Group at Intel. “Thanks to the pervasive reach of cloud computing, the ever decreasing cost of compute enabled by Moore’s Law, and the increasing availability of connectivity, these connected devices are generating millions of terabytes of data every single day. The ability to analyse and derive value from that data is one of the most exciting opportunities for us all. Central to that opportunity is artificial intelligence.”
The IoT revolution is coming whether we like it or not, and with it will come such vast amounts of data. Due to the volume, it will beyond comprehension for humans to develop insight from the information. Current data analytics tools and processes could be described (at best) as adequate, though this is before the surge in connected devices. Statista estimates the number of connected devices will grow from 18.2 billion in 2015, through to 50.2 billion in 2020. The devices themselves will also improve, increasing the amount of information which can be collected individually, which will lead to a tidal wave of data to be analysed.
If it is assumed to be immensely difficult or more likely impossible to analyse this data and turn it into actionable insight, what is the point in collecting it in the first place. This is the justification of artificial intelligence. Using such technologies to undertake more rudimentary decision making capabilities brought about through data analysis, or presenting insight to the more complex decisions to business leaders, is where the value of artificial intelligence will be felt. If cloud computing enables the IoT revolution, artificial intelligence will make sure it’s not a waste of time or money.
For a notable proportion of the population, AI is likened to Terminator or other such doomsday stories. But as Bryant notes below, the applications of AI will stretch throughout the life of a consumer, but perhaps more importantly, the business, manufacturing and services world.
“While artificial intelligence is often equated with great science fiction, it isn’t relegated to novels and movies,” said Bryant. “AI is all around us, from the commonplace (talk-to-text, photo tagging, and fraud detection) to the cutting edge (precision medicine, injury prediction, autonomous cars). Encompassing compute methods like advanced data analytics, computer vision, natural language processing and machine learning, artificial intelligence is transforming the way businesses operate and how people engage with the world.”
The acquisition does answer a question raised by Telecoms.com a couple of weeks ago. During early July, Intel announced a new initiative with BMW and Mobileye to drive forward the development of autonomous vehicles. The initiative showed potential, though should BMW are to supply the cars, Intel the chips and Mobileye the detection capabilities, have the body, the muscles and the eyes, but not the brain/AI to bring it all together. This Nervana acquisition in theory completes the circle and provides the intelligence aspect of the car.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to shape the technology industry moving forward, and it would appear this is a view which is shared by the major players. Google has acquired nine AI firms, including Deepmind for $625 million, Twitter has four major acquisitions, most recently Magic Pony for $150 million, Salesforce has acquired two AI start-ups already this year and Apple reported bought Turi for $200 million. The money being spent to gain the upper hand in this sub-sector is beginning to rival the early days of cloud computing.
Apple has continued its journey into the world of artificial intelligence through the $200 million acquisition of machine learning start-up Turi, according to Geekwire.
The deal has not been explicitly confirmed by the team at Apple, though it does back up claims from CEO Tim Cook the company is extending its footprint into the growing sub-sector. Although Apple has not been the most prominent in the industry in terms of grabbing headlines, Google and IBM have been particularly vocal, a number of its products are built on the basic principles of artificial intelligence. Siri is a prime example though expanding its potential through the implementation of more advanced technologies offers the potential to improve the user experience.
Turi offers tools which enable developers to embed machine learning into applications, which automatically scale and tune. Use cases for the technology include product recommendations, sentiment analysis, churn prediction and lead scoring for trial customers.
The long-term plan for the business is not clear for the moment. Whether the tools will be made available for the Apple developer community, or remain in-house for the tech giant, or even if the company will remain in Seattle, are unknown as the acquisition still remains officially unconfirmed.
“These experiences become more powerful and intuitive as we continue our long history of enriching our products through advanced artificial intelligence,” said Cook on the company’s earnings call last month. “We have focused our AI efforts on the features that best enhance the customer experience.”
During the briefing, Cook highlighted the potential for Siri to not only understand words from the user, but also identify the sentiment. The acquisition of Turi could be a link between a relatively simplistic function currently, to one which can more effectively predict what the consumer wants and better refine search results.
“We’re also using machine learning in many other ways across our products and services, including recommending songs, apps, and news,” said Cook. “Machine learning is improving facial and image recognition in photos, predicting word choice while typing in messages and mail, and providing context awareness in maps for better directions.
“Deep learning within our products even enables them to recognize usage patterns and improve their own battery life. And most importantly, we deliver these intelligent services while protecting users’ privacy. Most of the AI processing takes place on the device rather than being sent to the cloud.”
Although less vocal than other industry players Apple has been expanding its capabilities through various acquisitions. Since the turn of 2015 the company has acquired 15 organizations, not including Turi for the moment, which does contain a number of machine learning competences. VocalIQ, a UK speech tech firm, and Perceptio, an image recognition company, were both bought in September last year, as well as facial recognition business Emotient in January.
The sluggish smartphone market has been causing challenges for manufacturers, driving the need to provide more differentiation. Hardware has provided little opportunity for brands to differentiate products and operating systems offer even less variance, meaning manufacturers have had to invest more in software solutions. Siri is already one of the more recognizable personal assistant features on the market, and the inclusion of an in-phone AI offering could bring about much needed differentiation.
Google has reported its Q2 numbers, continuing a strong run of performances within the technology industry, though efforts to diversify its overall business are not paying off just yet, reports Telecoms.com.
The Alphabet brand was announced last year, with aim of allowing the team to invest in other projects more freely, without being impeded by the advertising business. It would appear the management team are not afraid to throw R&D money at its innovation team as it searches for another billion-dollar business, as the ‘Other Bets’ segment, which includes Google Fibre and the autonomous cars projects, accounted for an operating loss of $859 million. Revenues did grow to $185 million, up 150% on the same quarter in 2015, though this number was made almost insignificant by the $19 billion generated in the advertising business.
The technology industry on the whole has been providing strong numbers over the last couple of weeks, though there has been a question as to whether two advertising giants can co-exist. With Facebook reporting significant growth yesterday, advertising revenues across the period increased 63% year-on-year to $6.2 billion, these numbers were dwarfed by Google, perhaps demonstrating there is potential for both organizations to share advertising revenues, which are decreasing in value, and grow healthily.
With regard to the dwindling value of advertising revenues, Google would appear to be combatting this with volume. CFO Ruth Porat highlighted the mobile search capabilities were the primary driver behind the year-on-year growth, though the desktop and tablet search did also grow.
Numbers such as these will grab headlines, meaning it can be easy to forget about the Google cloud business, one of the top priorities for the Alphabet business moving forward.
On the same day which AWS reported revenues of $2.9 billion for the quarter, Google’s cloud business also demonstrated solid growth. Although the numbers are not specific, the ‘Other’ revenues segment which includes the cloud business, and other services such as Google play, accounting for $2.1 billion through the three month period, an increase of 33% on Q2 2015.
“Many tremendous digital experiences are being built in the cloud today, and businesses are working to take advantage of the cloud as part of their digital transformation,” said Google CEO Sundar Pichai. “We’ve been integrating our cloud and apps products to create more unified solutions for companies large and small, and these efforts are paying off.”
Following on from Pichai’s previous comments on the role of artificial intelligence on the Google cloud platform, and the wider Google business, its importance has been reiterated once again. Machine learning is being prioritized as the differentiator for Google in a competitive technology market, and only last week the team introduced two cloud machine learning APIs for speech and natural language to help enterprise customers convert audio to text and easily understand the structure and sentiment of the text in a variety of languages.
In terms of footprint, the team are not done growing yet. At the end of last month, Google and friends completed work on a new trans-Pacific submarine cable system, which will help the team launch a new Google Cloud Platform East Asia region in Tokyo. Back in March, the team confirmed it would be investing heavily in expansion of its cloud footprint with 12 new data centres around the world by the end of 2017.
AWS has previously stated it intends to break the $10 billion barrier in cloud revenues during 2016, though Google may not be that far behind. With its history of not being afraid to invest, and the growth numbers which have been witnessed over the last few quarters, Google could be set to accelerate.
Microsoft has reported 5% growth to $22.6 billion as the Intelligent Cloud business unit led the charge, with the Azure public cloud offering more than doubling in revenues and compute usage, reports Telecoms.com.
The Intelligent Cloud unit, which includes server products and cloud services, Azure and enterprise mobility offerings grew 7% to $6.7 billion, while the Productivity and Business Processes, which includes Office commercial and consumer product lines as well as the Dynamics suite, grew 5% to $7 billion. Despite revenues in More Personal Computing declining 4% to $8.9 billion, Xbox Live monthly active users grew 33% year-over-year to 49 million and search advertising revenue grew 16% over the period.
“We delivered $22.6 billion in revenue this quarter, an increase of 5% for the quarter in constant currency,” said Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft. “This past year was pivotal in both our own transformation and in partnering with our customers who are navigating their own digital transformations. The Microsoft Cloud is seeing significant customer momentum and we’re well positioned to reach new opportunities in the year ahead.”
Cloud computing has once again brought Microsoft to the forefront of the technology industry following a challenging couple of years. It would appear the transition from software to cloud computing brand is being successfully navigated, though there were a few missed steps along the way, most notably the team’s foray into mobile. Microsoft is moving towards the position of ‘mega-vendor’, infiltrating almost all aspects of an organization (cloud, hardware, social, databases etc.), to make it an indispensable factor of a CIOs roster.
The Intelligent Cloud unit continues as the focal point of the company’s growth strategy, as Nadella claims nearly 60% of the Fortune 500 companies use at least three of the company’s cloud offerings, generating more than $12 billion in Commercial Cloud annualized revenue run rate.
“Companies looking to digitally transform need a trusted cloud partner and turn to Microsoft,” said Nadella. “As a result, Azure revenue and usage again grew by more than 100% this quarter. We see customers choose Microsoft for three reasons. They want a cloud provider that offers solutions that reflect the realities of today’s world and their enterprise-grade needs. They want higher level services to drive digital transformation, and they want a cloud open to developers of all types.”
AI has previously been positioned as one of the cornerstones of growth for the company, and this was reinforced during the earnings call, as Nadella noted the component of the Intelligent Cloud business unit. The Cortana Intelligence Suite, formerly known as Cortana Analytics Suite, is built on the company’s on-going research into big data, machine learning, perception, analytics and intelligent bots. The offering allows developers to build apps and bots which interact with customers in a personalized way, but also react to real-world developments in real-time.
“Just yesterday, we announced Boeing will use Azure, our IoT suite, and Cortana Intelligence to drive digital transformation in commercial aviation, with connected airline systems optimization, predictive maintenance, and much more,” said Nadella. “This builds on great momentum in IoT. This is great progress, but our ambitions are set even higher. Our Intelligent Cloud also enables cognitive services. Cortana Intelligence Suite offers machine learning capabilities and advanced predictive analytics.
“Central to our Intelligent Cloud ambition is providing developers with the tools and capabilities they need to build apps and services for the platforms and devices of their choice. The new Azure Container service as well as .NET Core 1.0 for open source and our ongoing work with companies such as Red Hat, Docker, and Mesosphere reflects significant progress on this front. We continue to see traction from open source, with nearly a third of customer virtual machines on Azure running Linux.”
The company exceeded analyst expectations for the quarter, which was reflected in pre-market trading which saw shares in the giant growing 4%. In terms of outlook for the next quarter, most business units are expected to be down a fraction on the Q2 reported figures, unsurprising considering the summer period. Intelligent Cloud is expected to bring between $6.1-6.3 million, Productivity and Business Processes $6.4-6.6 billion, and More Personal Computing $8.7-9 billion.