Archivo de la categoría: Artificial Intelliegence

Apple gives Siri an AI facelift

Apple 1Apple 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.

Microsoft continues cloud transformation with 100% Azure growth

Microsoft1Microsoft 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.

What did we learn from EMC’s data protection report?

a safe place to workEMC has recently released its Global Data Protection Index 2016 where it claims only 2% of the world would be considered ‘leaders’ in protecting their own assets, reports Telecoms.com.

Data has dominated the headlines in recent months as breaches have made customers question how well enterprise organizations can manage and protect data. Combined with transatlantic disagreements in the form of Safe Habour and law agencies access to personal data, the ability to remain secure and credible is now more of a priority for decision makers.

“Our customers are facing a rapidly evolving data protection landscape on a number of fronts, whether it’s to protect modern cloud computing environments or to shield against devastating cyber-attacks,” said David Goulden, CEO of EMC Information Infrastructure. “Our research shows that many businesses are unaware of the potential impact and are failing to plan for them, which is a threat in itself.”

EMC’s report outlined a number of challenges and statistics which claimed the majority of the industry are not in a place they should be with regard to data protection. While only 2% of the industry would be considered leaders in the data protection category, 52% are still evaluating the options available to them. Overall, 13% more businesses suffered data loss in the last twelve months, compared to the same period prior to that.

But what are the over-arching lessons we learned from the report?

Vendors: Less is more

A fair assumption for most people would be the more protection you take on, the more protected you are. This just seems logical. However, the study shows the more vendors you count in your stable, the more data you will leak.

The average data loss instance costs a company 2.36TB of data, which would be considered substantial, however it could be worse. The study showed organizations who used one vendor lost on average 0.83TB per incident, two vendors 2.04TB and three vendors 2.58TB. For those who used four or more vendors, an average of 5.47TB of data was lost per incident.

Common sense would dictate the more layers of security you have, the more secure you will be, however this is only the case if the systems are compatible with each other. It should be highlighted those who lost the larger data sets are likely to be the larger companies, with more data to lose, though the study does seem to suggest there needs to be a more co-ordinated approach to data protection.

And they are expensive…

Using same concept as before, the average cost of lost data was $900,000. For those who have one vendor, the cost was $636,361, for those with two, 789,193 and for those with three vendors the cost was just above the average at 911,030. When companies bring in four or more vendors, the average cost of data loss rises to 1.767 million.

China and Mexico are the best

While it may be surprising, considering many of the latest breakthroughs in the data world have come from Silicon Valley or Israel, China and Mexico are the two countries which would be considered furthest ahead of the trend for data protection.

EMC graded each country on how effective they are were implementing the right technologies and culture to prevent data loss within the organizations themselves. 17 countries featured ahead of the curve including usual suspects of the UK (13.5% ahead of the curve), US (8%), Japan (1%) and South Korea (9%), however China and Mexico led the charge being 20% and 17% respectively ahead.

While it may not be considered that unusual for China to have a strong handle on data within its own boarders, Mexico is a little more surprising (at least to us at Telecoms.com). The country itself has gone through somewhat of a technology revolution in recent years, growing in the last 20 years from a country where only 10% of people had mobile through to 68% this year, 70% of which are smartphones. Mexico is now the 11th largest economy in terms of purchasing power, with the millennials being the largest demographic. With the population becoming more affluent, and no longer constrained by the faults of pre-internet world, the trend should continue. Keep up the good work Mexico.

Human error is still a talking point

When looking at the causes of data loss, the results were widespread, though the causes which cannot be controlled were at the top of the list. Hardware failure, power loss and software failure accounted for 45%, 35% and 34% respectively.

That said the industry does now appear to be taking responsibility for the data itself. The study showed only 10% of the incidents of data loss was blamed on the vendor. A couple of weeks ago we spoke to Intel CTO Raj Samani who highlighted to us the attitude towards security (not just data protection) needs to shift, as there are no means to outsource risk. Minimizing risk is achievable, but irrelevant of what agreements are undertaken with vendors, the risk still remains with you. As fewer people are blaming the vendors, it would appear this responsibility is being realized.

Human error is another area which still remains high on the agenda, as the study showed it accounts for 20% of all instances of data loss. While some of these instances can be blamed on leaving a laptop in the pub or losing a phone on the train, there are examples where simple mistakes in the workplace are to blame. These will not be removed, as numerous day-to-day decisions are based off the back of intuition and gut-feel, and a necessity for certain aspects of the business.

An area which could be seen as a potential danger would be that of artificial intelligence. As AI advances as a concept, the more like humans they will become, and thus more capable of making decisions based in intuition. If this is to be taken as the ambition, surely an intuitive decision making machine would offer a security defect in the same way a human would. Admittedly the risk would be substantially smaller, but on the contrary, the machine would be making X times many more decision than the human.

All-in-all the report raises more questions than provides answers. While security has been pushed to the top of the agenda for numerous organizations, receiving additional investment and attention, it does not appear the same organizations are getting any better at protecting themselves. The fact 13% more organizations have been attacked in the last 12 month suggests it could be getting worse.

To finish, the study asked whether an individual felt their organization was well enough protected. Only 18% believe they are.