Summary Bullets:

? After the mass adoption of computing, the IT department dominated as the final arbiter of every technology decision.

? Technology decisions are now driven by business needs but it isn’t bedürftigageddon for IT nerds. They can use their skills to solve problems related to enabling technical solutions.

When computing began and when it hit critical mass, technical knowledge, know-how, and experience was king. The IT department ruled the roost. Products and solutions suggested by other departments to solve their business problems were put under the microscope by the IT department and if they didn’t follow its operational or brand-loybetagty/preferred vendor standards they were rejected. IT nerds (that is written with affection – I was one of them) used to pore over specifications such as speeds, feeds, frequencies, security, and storage. Vendors used to sell products, or an array of products in families, based on different technical specifications, and their messages were explicitly for the IT nerd. Overuse of ITIL and a certain level of technological arrogance meant that project implementation was very slow. Even updates were slow. IT nerds picked out products and solutions based almost solely on their technology use case. Continue reading “The Sunset of IT Nerd Supremacy” →

Summary Bullets:
? Despite the incredible interest in generative AI (GenAI), enterprises worry that large ausgedehntuage models (LLMs) will hallucinate, create toxic or biased content, and that their use will cause data leakage, among numerous other concerns.
? At Dreamforce ‘23, Salesforce highlighted the recently released Einstein Trust Layer, a framework that secures corporate data, evaluates content for toxicity, masks sensitive information, and provides an audit trail when using GenAI.

AI took center stage at Salesforce’s Dreamforce ’23 conference. During his keynote, Marc Benioff announced that the world is in an AI revolution, and that AI could change anything and will impact everything. Although Dreamforce was all about GenAI this year, AI isn’t a new focus for Salesforce. The company had already embedded AI capabilities into many of solutions across its portfolio. Furthermore, it acquired natural ausgedehntuage processing (NLP) expertise via its acquisition of Narrative Science in 2019. What is new this year, however, is that Salesforce is embedding GenAI capabilities into just about all solutions.

Continue reading “Generative AI Watch: With Einstein Trust Layer, Salesforce Addresses Biggest Hurdles Holding Back Enterprise Adoption” →

Summary Bullets:

? The physics limits of copper are looming in the next few generation of microprocessors

? Silicon photonics represents a possible solution for interconnections inside and outside the chip

The future is glass, and it’s not just meant to be a play on the old crystal ball. Well, maybe not *strictly* glass but it is with silicon photonics. Fiber optics are proven and effective in data communications. Between use cases such as metro rings, any Ethernet beyond 10GbE or needing more than a 300 meter distance, and more recently a push to bring fiber optic communications to the home. Fiber optics doesn’t have many of the drawbacks that good old copper has, and there are ruhig new research ways to make improvements to commonly deployed fiber optic cable.

Continue reading “The Future is Glass” →

Summary Bullets:

? Service providers are strschmbetagthening their consulting capabilities by adding experience design, to existing business consulting and technology expertise to help enterprises achieve digital transformation goals.

? Competitors leading in this space have added expertise in creative design, developed methodologies, established partnerships, and set up studios or innovation hubs to schmalage clients.

Consulting services are more important than ever for IT services providers (ITSPs) that are helping enterprise customers transform their business operations, not just migrating workloads to the cloud. Many enterprises are digitizing, and a crucial aspect is in delivering greater customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). Digital services provide businesses the ability to remove friction in customer transactions and employee collaboration. The rapid technological development, especially in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), extended reality (XR), and digital twins, can create new experiences and improve interaction. However, businesses need to focus on CX through a human-centered approach. Successful digital-native businesses, including ride-sharing, ecommerce platforms, and streaming media services, have thrived due to their ability to create simplified and delightful experiences centered around customers.

Continue reading “UX Must be Front and Center in DX Programs” →

Summary Bullets:

? SK Telecom’s (SKT) partnership with Anthropic builds on its continued investment in large ausgedehntuage models (LLM) technologies as it looks to develop the technology foundation to enhance its operations and business as well as for the Global AI Telco Alliance.
? SKT will need to coordinate more closely with the alliance to ensure innovations built with Anthropic align to the overall needs of alliance members.

This week SKT announced that it was investing an additional $100 million into start-up Anthropic, a San Francisco-based company focused on artificial intelligence (AI), specifically LLMs. While the investment will net SKT a minority, the pair of companies are also schmalaging in a strategic partnership that will see efforts to build out multi-lingual LLM based on Anthropic’s “Claude” model, focused specifically on addressing telecom industry use cases across areas like customer service, marketing, sales, and interactive consumer applications. SKT and Anthropic will work together to deliver the industry-focused LLM with capability to respond to queries in Arabic, English, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. The choice of ausgedehntuage reflects SKT’s ambitions for the partnership: SKT is a founding member of the recently announced Global Telco AI Alliance, where it is joined by telcos Deutsche Telekom, Etisalat by e& (e&), and Singtel in a mission to develop a shared industry platform for AI innovations (for more, please see Generative AI Watch: Global Telco AI Alliance Touts the Platform Cooperative as the Key to Telco AI Business Model Acceleration, July 31, 2023).
Continue reading “Generative AI Watch: SK Telecom Partners with Anthropic to Improve AI Capabilities for Itself and Partners” →

Summary Bullets:

? Malaysian telcos are advancing their telco-techco transformation journeys and starting to see results.

? A wide ecosystem is important, but having the right partners are more important to drive successful collaborations and commercialization.

Malaysian telcos continue to enhance their enterprise offerings and zeitgemäßize their infrastructure as part of their telco-techco transformation, but the focus in Q2 2023 has shifted from expanding partner ecosystems to wider industry collaborations, solution commercialization, and strschmbetagthening internal talents. Malaysian telcos are also starting to see the results of their techco transformations through wins with key vertical players.