Wednesday 31 January 2018
ChartMaxx® from Quest Diagnostics Receives Document Management & Imaging Category Leader award in the 2018 ‘Best in KLAS: Software & Services Report’
Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), the world’s leading provider of diagnostic information services, announced today that its ChartMaxx® enterprise content management solution ranked number one among Document Management and Imaging (DMI) software products in the 2018 Best in KLAS: Software & Services report, an independent ranking based on customer feedback from healthcare information technology providers. ChartMaxx secured the highest overall score and product quality rating in the DMI category.
2018 marks the tenth time ChartMaxx has ranked number one in the Best in KLAS report, making it the most frequently awarded product in the DMI category. DMI software is used to scan, create, archive, streamline workflows and validate electronically stored content for hospitals and health organizations to complement their EHR, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and financial systems where additional enterprise data needs to be captured and accessed for better patient care.
The category leader designation is reserved for vendor solutions that lead select markets in which at least two products meet a minimum level of KLAS konfidence. These vendors earned the title of Category Leader in the 2018 Best in KLAS: Software & Services report—a top honor for helping healthcare professionals deliver better patient care.
“Category Leader is more than a ranking. It is a recognition of vendors committed to delivering superior solutions,” said Adam Gale, president of KLAS. “It gives voice to thousands of providers who are demanding better performance, usability and interoperability in healthcare technology.”
The ChartMaxx product suite has helped more than 300 hospitals and integrated healthcare delivery networks (IDNs) improve their content management for more than 20 years, enabling organizations to achieve enterprise-wide content management to promote better patient care, enhance operational efficiencies, and reduce the overall cost of the business of healthcare. Quest’s award-winning implementation, integration, consulting and process re-engineering services in support of ChartMaxx help healthcare organizations define, streamline and automate departmental workflows, improving efficiencies as well as clinical care.
“ChartMaxx continues to set the gold standard in DMI, and in 2018 aims to take our innovative offering even higher with an expanded range of capabilities that will include process automation applications to streamline operations and configurations that enable customers to reduce infrastructure and support costs,” said Tom Romeo, general manager, healthcare information technology, Quest Diagnostics. “With these new solutions, healthcare organizations will be able to capture and automate their data and content better than ever, which is critical given today’s data-driven healthcare industry. The Category Leader distinction is an honor that affirms our commitment to creating innovative solutions that help healthcare professionals use diagnostic insights and other healthcare information to improve patient care.”
The ChartMaxx enterprise content management solution is part of the QuestQuanum™ health technology and data analytics portfolio from Quest Diagnostics. Quanum solutions strive to connect healthcare organizations, physicians, and patients to improve access to information and insights. Quanum includes an analytics suite and clinical and financial suite, and has solutions spanning eLabs, ePrescribing, Interactive Insights, Electronic Health Record, Practice Management and Revenue Cycle Management.
ChartMaxx will be showcased with the Quanum portfolio at the Quest Diagnostics exhibit (5450) during the 2018 HIMSS Conference & Exhibition, March 5-9, in Las Vegas.
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Tuesday 30 January 2018
Three game-changers for the manufacturing industry in 2018
IoT being built into the product design, manufacturers adopting a more service-centric business model and 3D-printing reaching the tipping point of realizing business benefits on a large scale. These are the three game-changing predictions that Antony Bourne, Global Industry Director of Industrial and High-tech Manufacturing at IFS, outlines for 2018.
1) By the end of 2018 over 50 percent of manufacturers will be building IoT technology into the design phase of their products
When you think “IoT”, is your first thought newly affordable, available sensors being added to products after they’ve been manufactured? If it is, well I believe 2018 will change that perception as IoT takes a decisive step forward in its evolution. If we think of IoT as like a product’s nervous system, 2018 will see it grow from picking up signals at the periphery to being the brain of the product, constantly sending, receiving, growing and gathering information, from the center of the product throughout its lifetime, in the process enabling new services and revenue streams. Manufacturing is one of the markets most heavily impacted by IoT today. According to Global Market Insights, IoT in the manufacturing market was valued at over US$ 20 billion in 2016 and will grow at more than 20percent (CAGR estimate) from 2017 to 2024. Current IoT investments that are unique to the manufacturing environment are taking place in three major initiatives:
- Smart manufacturing to increase production output, product quality, or operations and workforce safety as well as lower resource consumption
- Connected products to impact product performance, including collecting detailed information on products in the field, remote diagnostics and remote maintenance
- Connected supply chains to increase visibility and coordination in the supply chain, tracking assets or inventory for more efficient supply chain execution
We will see IoT being included as a part of the design process in all three of these IoT initiatives. Manufacturers are realizing that by engineering IoT technology into products and equipment already in the design process you will be able monitor not only the equipment’s performance to predict when it needs repair, but also how and when it is being used—which provides game-changing competitive advantages!
By the end of 2018 more than 50 percent of manufacturers will be building IoT technology into their products from day one—already thinking forward in the design phase and asking themselves what services and revenue can this product generate throughout its lifetime?
In fact, where will our revenue be coming from in the next five years?’ It’s a good question. And it leads us to my next key prediction…
2) Servitization speeds ahead: by 2020 most manufacturers will earn over half of their revenue from services
With the manufacturing industry becoming more and more commoditized, the need to differentiate yourself is key to survival and profitability. We now see that a large number of manufacturers are shifting to a more service-centric business model—the buzz word is “servitization”.
Servitization is a way for a manufacturer to add capabilities to enhance their overall offering in addition to the product itself. One famous example is Apple, which did this a few years ago when it had gained the majority of market share with the iPod and introduced iTunes to increase loyalty, differentiate itself, and generate more revenue. You may think that it will never apply to your business, but companies are now reaping the benefits of servitization across many different sub-segments. For example, Philips provides Schiphol airport outside Amsterdam with “lighting as a service”, which means that Schiphol pays for the light it uses, while Philips remains the owner of all fixtures and installations. Philips and its partner Cofely will be jointly responsible for the performance and durability of the system, and ultimately its re-use and recycling at end of life. This has resulted in a 50 percent reduction in electricity consumption without having to buy a lamp!
I see this development among IFS’s customers as well. For global furniture manufacturer Nowy Styl Group, servitization has been crucial to its growth. In 2007, it announced “for us, chairs are not enough”, starting a transformation from pure manufacturer to world-class office interior consulting company. Another example is a customer that manufactures cleaning products and started to offer delivery and service dosing systems. The company understood that choosing the right cleaning products was just part of its customers’ main objective, i.e. keeping its premises hygienic. Applying the products in the most effective way, choosing the right accessories, establishing the right routines— all these too were crucial to keeping premises clean.
Both these customers realized that with technology accelerating as fast as it is, no matter how beautifully designed a chair, or how effective a cleaning product, today’s luxury products turn into tomorrow’s commodities faster than ever, pulling prices down with them. With servitization, manufacturers escape the corrosion of commodification. Expert services built on years of experience provide a kind of value customers will always pay for, regardless of technology trends.
According to the IFS Digital Change Survey, conducted by the research and publishing company Raconteur, 68 percent of manufacturing companies claim that servitization is either “well-established and is already paying dividends” or “in progress and is receiving appropriate executive attention and support”. However, almost one in three manufacturing companies are still to derive value from servitization. These are missing out on revenue streams and new ways to develop their offerings. To be successful in their response to customer needs and increasing demands, manufacturers must look to new business models to compress time to market, taking an idea through from design to a saleable item as quickly as possible.
New technology like IoT adds an additional layer to servitization. With sensors detecting when your product or equipment needs service, this data can trigger an automated service action that will realize significant benefits to make your service organization more effective. This type of automated predictive maintenance will become more and more common as it is a natural next step after implementing IoT to optimize service efforts.
3) By 2019 the hype around 3D printing will be over, and real benefits blooming
My third prediction is that 3D printing, just like IoT, will enter a new, more mature phase. No matter how big the ‘wow’ factor is when we first see it, apart from smaller-scale manufacturing production like hearing aids and jewelry, 3D printing has so far failed to live up to its full potential. all this could change in 2018.
We are seeing a couple of developments that point in that direction. The first one is the improved scalability of 3D printing solutions. A new generation of 3D printing companies is moving into manufacturing traditionally dominated by injection-molding manufacturers, with new, faster, better connected automated systems that reduce some of the time-consuming pre- and post-processing that has been such an obstacle to wide-scale uptake. One company, Stratasys, for example, has collaborated on a new printer, the Demonstrator, that combines three printers into a stack system—each printer able to communicate to its neighbors in real time. The new printer is highly scalable, meaning it can significantly increase production capacity, printing from 1,500–2,000 components a day. This means that you can achieve an economy of scale to bring costs down, which will be an important catalyst for the success of the 3D printing technology.
The aviation industry is pioneering 3D printing technology today, and the manufacturing industry can learn from that. One successful example is the new GE turboprop ATP Engine, which was 35 percent 3D printed, taking it down from 855 components to 12 and contributing toward the engine being lighter, more compact, and delivering a 15 percent lower fuel burn and 10percent higher cruise power compared with competitor’s offerings.
The expanded capacity and reduction in pre- and post-processing that new, highly innovative mid-size 3D printing companies are bringing to the field mean that, in 2018, I think we will see manufacturing companies joining in with A&D, and flying high too with new 3D printing capabilities.
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Monday 29 January 2018
Artificial intelligence: China catching up to US in race for technological supremacy
Artificial intelligence from a Chinese tech giant has defeated the country’s best player of the board game Go, despite giving the grandmaster an advantage — matching and perhaps surpassing Google’s efforts last year.
The artificial intelligence (AI) developed by Chinese company Tencent beat world number-two Go player Ke Jie last week with a two-stone handicap, the official People’s Daily newspaper reported.
Handicaps are used in Go to even out the difference in skill level between players.
Google’s AlphaGo AI beat Ke last year just months after defeating fellow grandmaster Lee Se-dol of South Korea — however AlphaGo has never competed against top-level players using a handicap.
AlphaGo has since been placed in retirement, with Google instead focusing its energies on its self-teaching AlphaGo Zero machine, which mastered the complex game in 40 days last year.
Tencent drew on research papers on AlphaGo Zero released publicly by Google to create its own champion, and its victory is a sign of just how seriously China is taking the race for AI supremacy.
AI development a national policy in China
“China has a declared ambition to equal the US in its AI capability by 2020 and to be number one in the world by 2030,” said Professor Toby Walsh, a leading AI expert from the University of New South Wales.
Tencent’s victory came shortly after fellow Chinese tech company Alibaba announced its team had developed an AI that it said, “[surpasses] humans in reading comprehension“.
Professor Walsh, who is also the author of the book ‘It’s Alive: Artificial Intelligence from the Logic Piano to Killer Robots’, said it was significant the first two breakthroughs in the field this year have come from Chinese companies.
The Chinese Government’s Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, announced last year, aims to create a massive US$150 billion AI industry in China by 2030.
The country sees AI technology as crucial to its development agenda, and as a way of improving the lives of its people.
Relaxed attitudes to privacy in China and its enormous smartphone market — which generates a huge amount of data that can be used in AI research — also give the country a natural advantage in the sector.
China’s ambitious strategy is just one of several across the world. The US, UK, France, UAE, Canada, South Korea and Japan also have their own plans.
Australia however does not have one yet.
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Artificial Intelligence Isn’t Killing Jobs; It’s Killing Business Models
SolutionsPT and Schneider Electric to host OT cyber security events
Industrial software provider SolutionsPT, together with Schneider Electric, is hosting a series of OT cyber security events, aimed at helping manufacturers protect their industrial control systems and critical infrastructure.
Taking place at Fota Island Resort, Cork, on March 15th, and The Westerwood Hotel, Cumbernauld, Scotland, on March 20th, the events will address why industrial environments are becoming more vulnerable to cyberattack, whilst providing guidance on securing OT architectures and defence in depth solutions.
Keynote speaker Jay Abdallah, Global Security Director at Schneider Electric, will begin both days by discussing ‘The Threat Within’, covering how the move to open standards such as Ethernet, TCP/IP and web technologies has allowed hackers to take advantage of industrial control systems and critical infrastructure, before moving on to ‘Defence in Depth’. Other sessions to note include guidance on building secure OT architectures, disaster resilience, managed services and a panel discussion.
The afternoon sessions will then give attendees the opportunity to take part in a series of workshops. The first will focus on Wonderware System Platform 2017, SolutionsPT’s responsive control platform for SCADA, MES and IIoT solutions, before concluding with optional Citect SCADA and ThinManager hands-on workshops.
Susan Roche, General Manager of SolutionsPT, said: “Following the success of last year’s roadshows, which were well received by manufacturers, it was an easy decision to bring our OT Cyber Security event back to Cork and Cumbernauld. The events will help manufacturers secure their operations and ensure their systems are more secure than ever.”
Both events run from 8:30am until 5:15pm and are free to attend.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/solutionspt-and-schneider-electric-to-host-ot-cyber-security-events/
Epicor announces two new executive leadership appointments to take company through next phase of growth
David Mehok joins Epicor as chief financial officer and Clarke Pich takes on a new role as head of global professional services for the company. Both Mehok and Pich will assume their roles effective immediately and report directly to Epicor Chief Executive Officer Steve Murphy.
“These new additions to our executive leadership team will be instrumental in driving the culture of growth, investment and customer centricity that is our focus,” Murphy said. “The Epicor board of directors and I are confident that David’s strong background leading global finance organisations and Clarke’s expertise in enterprise software services sales and cloud implementations will position Epicor to achieve our objectives. The business skills they both bring will help Epicor on our next phase of growth and strategy to make it easy for our customers to stay current on technology upgrades, move to the cloud, and drive digital transformation as we help them grow.”
As the head of global professional services at Epicor, Pich brings over 20 years of experience in professional services sales and delivering of enterprise solutions to the role. Pich is a proven leader, most recently running the North American cloud consulting sales team at Oracle for the commercial segment as group vice president. He implemented go-to-market strategies at Oracle to focus on the IaaS and PaaS business on alignment with product sales to optimise the annual recurring revenue and cloud revenue streams and improve customer satisfaction. Pich has held various leadership positions with Hitachi Consulting, Arthur Anderson, Momentum Software, Dr. Pepper Bottling Company, and SAP America. Pich holds an MBA in Finance from Baylor University and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems from Texas Tech University.
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Sunday 28 January 2018
When IoT puts the user last
This is especially true today when consumer tech and business computing are often one and the same. It seems quaint, in this world of smartphones, that BYOD was once a topic of hot debate.
I’m not sure that type of convergence is happening with IoT, though. At least not yet.
Solutions in search of problems
Taylor Lorenz wrote about how “CES was full of useless robots and machines that don’t work.” Her observations pretty much line up with my overall take on smart home devices — so many are solutions in search of problems.
I have a few connected monitoring devices of various sorts in my house. They let me virtually drop in when I’m traveling, which provides some level of comfort.
For the most part, though, smart home gadgetry is aimed at solving problems most of us don’t actually have. Flicking a light switch or going to the door if someone knocks rank very far down the list of things I need to automate and complicate. (Of course, if someone is mobility-impaired I can fully understand why devices to help with these things could be useful, but that’s a corner case.)
Clean the house, wash and put away the dishes, do laundry? In other words, truly interact with the physical world. Now we’d be talking. But most smart home devices can’t actually do any of these things or, if they do, they do so in such a limited way that they’re effectively useless. There are partial exceptions, like the Roomba and its knockoffs, but even those require the right layout of house to be genuinely useful.
Furthermore, a lot of this stuff not only solves problems we don’t have, but does it badly. I’m pretty experienced with electronics and networking and I still fully expect that unboxing one of these creations will be the prelude to an hour or two of cursing, upgrading firmware, rebooting and other aggravations.
User experience rules
By contrast, smartphones and consumer-oriented web apps won because they were better. Consumers liked iPhones and Android phones better than they liked BlackBerry phones. They liked modern, responsive web interfaces better than they liked their enterprise apps.
That’s not hard. Admittedly, a user experience that leads to sending a ballistic missile warning by mistake is a particularly extreme case in point. But, let’s face it, a lot of traditional enterprise apps are pretty user hostile. But consumer IoT hasn’t put user experience in the forefront as successful consumer products do.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
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Saturday 27 January 2018
Cloud computing, big data, security: What CIOs are spending their budget on this year
What CIOs say they need to invest in to succeed and what they are actually going to spend their IT budgets on may not be the same things.
Cloud computing, big data, security
Cloud computing, cyber security and data analytics are the top technologies that government CIOs need to harness to achieve their aims.
Digital transformation is the top-ranked business priority among government CIOs overall, followed by security and governance, according to Gartner’s survey of 461 government CIOsfrom around the world.
“Digital transformation revolves around data. To be successful, public sector CIOs need to focus on expanding their data and analytics capabilities and creating a data-centric culture, by increasing the availability of open data and APIs for internal use and public consumption,” said Rick Howard, research vice president at Gartner. “Building out data analytics infrastructure is fundamental to improving government programme outcomes and services to citizens.”
Digital transformation is ranked slightly higher as a priority for government than in the private sector, which perhaps puts a higher priority on growth and market share. The next business priorities for government are: security; safety and risk; and governance, compliance and regulations.
When asked which technology investment is most crucial to achieving their organisation’s goals, cloud and BI/analytics came out top, followed by infrastructure/data centre at 11 percent (national CIOs put customer relationship management as a distant third).
Government CIO tech priorities differ from their private-sector counterparts: while artificial intelligence ranks in the top 10 technology areas for CIOs overall, it’s only 19th for government CIOs. (the exception is defence and intelligence, which CIOs did list as a priority).
Cloud services/solutions and infrastructure/data centre combined was ranked in the top 10 by 30 percent of government CIOs, compared with only 12 percent in all other industries. In contrast, digitalisation/digital marketing in the private sector sits at 16 percent — more than twice the rate in government.
The Internet of Things is a top 10 item for all industries, but is not present for government, apart from in local government — likely due to smart city projects — and in defence and intelligence, which relies on data flowing from sensors monitoring a wide range of activity.
“Many government CIOs are rebalancing capital expenditure and operating expenditure spending patterns to reduce technical debt, while making the strategic shift to cloud,” said Howard. “They should consider cloud as the means to accelerate the digitalisation of their organisations and enable the business optimisation that results.”
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Friday 26 January 2018
LECTRA : Lectra announces the acquisition of Kubix Lab
Lectra, the technological partner for companies using fabrics and leather, announces the signing of a share purchase agreement to acquire the entire capital and voting rights of the Italian company Kubix Lab.
Founded at the end of 2015, Kubix Lab has developed a cutting-edge technological offer called Link. This offer enables fashion brands to manage, from end-to-end, all product information deriving notably from multiple IT systems (ERP, PDM, PLM.), within one single application. Users can modify, enrich or add new data, while maintaining data synchronization with all IT systems. In just a few months, Link has convinced over ten high-end Italian brands of its value.
“We were particularly impressed by the relevance of the solution created by Kubix Lab,” underlines Daniel Harari, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Lectra. “By capitalizing on their knowledge of best practice, the founders of Kubix Lab knew how to develop an offer perfectly adapted to the expectations of fashion companies. Link enables all players involved in product development, manufacturing and sales to collaborate in real time, in a simple and efficient way, around exactly the same data.”
“We are delighted to join Lectra. We are convinced its leadership, global presence, strong expertise in the fashion industry and the richness of its product portfolio will enable us to develop an integrated offer with high value for all Lectra customers,” states Giampaolo Urbani, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Kubix Lab.
The founders of Kubix Lab will be in charge of developing an integrated Lectra – Link offer, which will complement – and reinforce – Lectra’s entire offer.
“Product data is at the heart of Link. We took an approach diametrically opposed to existing solutions on the market and designed an offer which is highly innovative, flexible, evolutionary and easy to use,” explains Pierluigi Beato, R&D director and co-founder of Kubix Lab. “With Lectra, we will take Link to the next level.”
The transaction involves the entire acquisition of Kubix Lab for the maximum amount of €7 million: €3 million paid when the acquisition agreement is signed; €1.3 million and €2.7 million paid respectively in 18 and 36 months’ time, providing objectives are met.
Final completion of the acquisition should take place by January 31, 2018.
These amounts will come from Lectra’s available cash, with no financing from the bank. Kubix Lab will be consolidated into Lectra’s accounts, effective from the signature of the final agreement.
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Facebook shakes up its AI research team
The company didn’t have much choice. LeCun noted that both the research and Applied Machine Learning leaders were reporting to Facebook’s technology chief, who was unsurprisingly overwhelmed given how important AI has become. Now, only Pesenti will report to the CTO — and LeCun will get to focus more on actual research and less on daily business.
This should also create a more harmonious relationship between Facebook’s AI divisions. While some of the Applied Machine Learning team is joining the regular Facebook infrastructure group, those staying put will work with researchers to bring more of their projects into honest-to-goodness shipping products. To put it another way, clever ideas should be stuck in the lab.
The timing of the role changes couldn’t be more appropriate. Facebook just announced a fundamental shift in the prioritization of the News Feed, and it’s planning to rank trusted sources as part of its ongoing bid to fight fake news. The company has frequently been accused of relying too heavily on AI to solve all its problems, but the new structure might help it make better use of AI or apply it to areas where it wasn’t previously practical.
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Thursday 25 January 2018
Cisco Accelerates Multicloud Journey with HyperFlex Platform Innovations
Cisco today announced platform innovations for Cisco® HyperFlex™ with the 3.0 software release that delivers performance and simplicity for any application, on any cloud, at any scale. Enhancements include support for Microsoft Hyper-V, stretch clusters, containers, and new multicloud services that enable applications to be deployed, monitored and managed in any cloud. The result is a platform that uniquely enables development and deployment of both traditional and cloud-native applications on a common hyperconverged platform.
Cisco HyperFlex: The Power to Simplify More
Other hyperconverged solutions neglect the crucial roles that networking and distributed file systems play in the performance and scaling of clustered servers. Cisco redefined hyperconvergence with a complete end-to-end approach that engineers high performance server and networking technology, with a purpose-built filesystem. The result is industry leading performance that enables customers to efficiently support a broader array of applications, including databases and mission critical ERP workloads.
“HyperFlex’s approach enables high performance of Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases and critical applications with faster delivery of the environment, lower costs, and more effective management,” said Edivaldo Rocha, CEO, CorpFlex.
The latest release of HyperFlex builds on this superior architecture and expands the opportunity for customers to simplify more. “Customers tell us they need operational simplicity, effortless scalability, and the ability to serve the unique needs of each of their applications,” said Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Computing Systems Product Group. “The new HyperFlex platform underscores our commitment to continuously simplify and improve data center operations and help organizations thrive in a multicloud world.”
Run Any Application
The HyperFlex 3.0 software release delivers significant advancements for mission critical and cloud-native workloads:
- Multi-hypervisor Support. In addition to VMware ESXi, HyperFlex adds hypervisor support for Microsoft Hyper-V.
- Container Support. Data platform enhancements include a FlexVolume driver to enable persistent storage for Kubernetes managed containers, enabling development and deployment of cloud-native applications on HyperFlex.
- Enterprise Application Validations. HyperFlex is ready for a wide range of workloads with workload profiling and sizing tools available to support application migration projects. In addition to design and deployment guides for Virtual Server Infrastructure (VSI) and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) , Cisco design guides are now available for mission critical databases, analytics and ERP applications – including Oracle, SQL, SAP, Microsoft Exchange, and Splunk.
On Any Cloud
Organizations today require workload mobility and application monitoring across public and private clouds. HyperFlex is the platform for the multicloud era featuring new service integrations with Cisco’s multicloud software portfolio:
- Application Performance Monitoring. AppDynamics with HyperFlex enables performance monitoring of hybrid applications running on HyperFlex and across multiple clouds.
- Application Placement. Cisco Workload Optimization Manager (CWOM) for HyperFlex assists customers with automated analysis and workload placement.
- Cloud Management. Introduced last year, CloudCenter for HyperFlex enables workload lifecycle management across one to many private and public clouds.
- Private Cloud. CloudCenter for HyperFlex simplifies the deployment and management of VM’s, containers and applications, making it easy for developers and administrators to consume private clouds.
At Any Scale
Only Cisco enables customers to power rapidly growing workloads with comprehensive resiliency while enjoying the global reach of cloud-based systems management.
- Greater Scalability and Resiliency On-prem. Supporting customers with higher virtual machine density, HyperFlex clusters now scale to 64 nodes with added resiliency through fully-automated availability zones.
- Stretch Clusters Across Datacenters. To meet data protection and high availability requirements, HyperFlex can now be configured into stretch clusters for campus and metro mission critical availability.
- Cloud-based Management Across Datacenters. Cisco Intersight now supports HyperFlex Cloud Deployment, extending simplified deployment and management to any remote location.
Applications are at the heart of digital transformation. The changing application landscape demands support for both traditional, monolithic workloads as well as distributed microservices architectures. In addition, the ability to enable a multicloud operating environment is quickly becoming a data center requirement. According to IDC’s July 2017 CloudView Survey, 85 percent of respondents are evaluating or using public cloud, while among current cloud users 87 percent have taken steps towards a hybrid cloud strategy and 94 percent plan to use multiple clouds.
Organizations are rapidly adopting hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) to help simplify their environments. HCI is one of the fastest growing segments in the data center space with a 5-year CAGR (2016-2021) of 30.2 percent (Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Forecast Tracker, 3CQ17). Cisco HyperFlex is being adopted as the platform of choice for enterprise IT, accelerating this market transition with more than 2000 customers globally.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/cisco-accelerates-multicloud-journey-with-hyperflex-platform-innovations/
TrackX to Implement Supply Chain Management Solution for Global Appliance Manufacturer
TrackX Holdings Inc., an enterprise Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) software platform provider, announces that a leading, household appliance manufacturer has selected TrackX to implement yard distribution and supply chain logistics solutions. The initial implementation will be at one of the customer’s principal U.S. manufacturing and distribution facilities with 3 additional U.S. locations identified for deployment in 2018. The solution includes hardware and recurring SaaS (Software as a Service) fees as well as professional services to integrate with existing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.
In the first phase of deployment, TrackX’s GAME (Global Asset Management for Enterprises) for Supply Chain Management (SCM) software platform will focus on optimizing yard, dock and gate related business activities. In the yard, GAME for SCM provides real-time equipment visibility utilizing a variety of IIoT devices to enable real-time tracking of transportation equipment and trailers throughout a large business park. GAME for SCM will manage the arrival, departure and inventory of all transportation equipment within the facility. It will also dynamically assign tasks to the shunt drivers responsible for the movement of trailers to and from inventory locations, at the distribution docks and between facilities. The result will include: improved equipment utilization, efficient labor management, increased efficiency at the dock, a reduction in carrier detention charges, improved security and accountability at the gate, accurate inventory, and labor savings across all yard related business processes. Future expansions could include returnable container tracking and further optimization of other high value assets.
“We are excited to be working with another multi-billion dollar enterprise that is spearheading IIoT initiatives to optimize their supply chain,” said Tim Harvie, TrackX President and CEO. “This customer, a leader within their industry, fully understands that asset tracking and inventory management are fundamental competitive advantages, and we’re proud that they have chosen TrackX to increase efficiencies within their operations.”
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/trackx-to-implement-supply-chain-management-solution-for-global-appliance-manufacturer/
Avoiding Cyber Security Threats Through Timely Up-Gradation of ERP Systems
Wednesday 24 January 2018
Quaero Selects Sage Intacct for its Cloud-Based Financial Management System
Sage Intacct, the innovation and customer satisfaction leader in cloud financial management solutions, today announced that Quaero, a software-as-a-service Customer Data Platform (CDP) provider, selected Sage Intacct for more nimble financial processes. By adopting Sage Intacct, Quaero is enabled to track costs and income at a granular level. In addition, Quaero shortened its financial close to a single day since automating all of its accounting workflows.
Why Sage Intacct?
Quaero has undergone a number of business transformational changes since its founding in 1999. Using the previous system, the company’s finance team was burdened with significant manual reporting. With Sage Intacct, the finance team has benefited from a more automated and robust approval workflow that provides organizational efficiencies with repeatable day-to-day and monthly financial processes.
“We wanted an ERP system with flexible reporting and the ability to manage our project costing needs,” said Quaero CFO Robert Bales. “Sage Intacct was exactly what we were looking for – all the accounting bells and whistles, in the most intuitive, holistic, and scalable cloud solution on the market.”
Since moving from Oracle to Sage Intacct, Quaero has realized significant benefits including:
Gaining Flexibility to Manage Business Transition: Quaero can easily configure the software to support precise time keeping, expense reporting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and general ledger needs and start invoicing in less than four weeks.
Financial and Operational Transparency: Quaero’s project managers have gained real-time insight into project profitability and delivery margins. They can track costs at a granular level, drill down into details as needed, and make better estimates and decisions.
Productivity and Accuracy: By automating all month-end journal entries and cutting nearly a full day of accounting work, the finance team reduced its monthly close from seven days to one. The efficiencies provided by Sage Intacct led to a cost savings of $50,000 per year in labor costs.
“Now that we’ve been able to automate so many processes in Sage Intacct, I can spend less time on the nuts and bolts of finance and more time overseeing other key responsibilities, like legal, IT, and HR,” said Robert Bales. “More importantly, we now enjoy timely, trusted financial and operational information that has a direct impact on how we run the business.”
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/quaero-selects-sage-intacct-for-its-cloud-based-financial-management-system/
IntelliChief ECM Capture Enterprise Reduces Document Management Cost, Lifts Profit
IntelliChief, LLC, a provider of automated document management and workflow enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, announces the latest release of IntelliChief ECM Capture Enterprise reduces document management cost. The company’s flagship document capture program increases capacity to reduce manual data entry into enterprise resource management (ERP) and departmental business systems. By automating capture and extracting key project and transactional information, validating and verifying it with system records for accuracy, then enabling archival and process-mapped workflow with IntelliChief ECM, ongoing cost reduction is achieved.
IntelliChief ECM Capture Enterprise is created for ease of use with minimal instruction needed, reducing costs and accelerating document processing efficiency. The application significantly reduces labor-intensive document preparation and manual data entry (typically by 70+%), streamlining indexing and entry into workflow.
Features encompass:
- Multi-channel capture capabilities that streamline processing of documents from scanners, MFPs, fax, email and other digital sources, creating both centralized and distributed capture environments
- Configurable actions and rules-based criteria, which span capture functions including multi-language recognition, document classification, validations and business rules, and formatting for company-specific processes
- Processing of documents with barcodes, machine-printed text (OCR), hand-printed text (ICR) and form’s check boxes (OMR), with full text and zonal identification, for locating and processing data on both structured and unstructured documentation
- Delivery of documents to business applications to speed processing and increase accuracy of information by automating document search field population, removing time consuming and costly manual keying, and enabling automated validation with ERP’s and line of business systems, assuring accuracy with consistent updating of data
- Identification of document type by a combination of pattern matching, key word and rules-based data location – no template set-up required, IntelliChief ECM Capture Enterprise learns new document types on-the-fly
- Application of advanced validations, such as database lookups, math calculations and check sums, to assure accurate data
- Design and deployment of complex capture applications without expensive programming
- Management tools including real-time monitoring and advanced reporting.
Areas of use include Accounting (both Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable), Finance, Purchasing, Customer Service, Human Resources, IT, Legal, Logistics/Distribution, Operations and other paper and process-intensive departments, supporting time and cost savings throughout organizations.
IntelliChief ECM provides a smooth, automated transition from costly manual document management and workflow functions. Its industry-awarded automated capture, document management, workflow and real-time analytic visibility enables users to capture documentation in any format, index contents and validate with data in their ERP and line of business applications, for lifecycle-managing all related documentation, facilitating optimized interdepartmental processes workflow automation and cash flow optimization.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/intellichief-ecm-capture-enterprise-reduces-document-management-cost-lifts-profit/
Tuesday 23 January 2018
New AI module from Rockwell Automation models, monitors and optimises industrial operations
Creating diagnostic analytics solutions in industrial operations has long required expert data scientists with a deep understanding of the specific application to be analysed.
Those experts then require weeks, months or even years to understand and model the system. That expertise has been boxed in the new Project Sherlock artificial intelligence (AI) module unveiled today by Rockwell Automation at their Automation Fair event in Houston.
This data-driven analytics algorithm is delivered inside a module that fits directly into the controller chassis. Once installed, Project Sherlock AI leverages novel physics-based modeling to “learn” the application that controller manages. The solution scours controller tags to identify the application or allows users to choose what they would like modeled by selecting inputs and outputs via an add-on-instruction (AOI). Project Sherlock AI will then quickly learn from the stream of data passing through the controller to build a model. This process can be accomplished in a matter of minutes. Vast quantities of historical data are not required, nor must the data ever leave the automation layer.
Once the model is built, the Project Sherlock solution continuously watches the operation looking for anomalies against its derived, principled understanding. If it spots a problem, it can trigger an alarm on an HMI screen or dashboard. Future iterations will go beyond diagnostics to direct users on how to remedy the issue or to automatically adjust system parameters to fix the problem without human intervention.
“Project Sherlock brings industrial producers amazingly smart analytics in a package that is easy to implement,” said Jonathan Wise, platform leader for the Control and Visualisation Business, Rockwell Automation. “As our customers undergo digital transformation – using production data to help improve business outcomes – they can’t wait on expert-driven analytics. Even if there were enough industrial data scientists out there, not every company has the time or funds to employ them. This machine-learning tool creates powerful analytics from your automation infrastructure, painlessly – delivering value moments after it’s dropped in the Logix backplane.”
Project Sherlock diagnostics offer drastically reduced false-positive alarms as compared to other artificial intelligence solutions due to its physics-based modelling and foundation in industrial applications. For example, Project Sherlock AI can tell if a boiler temperature shift is related to a benign change in upstream operations or an abnormality that requires correction.
The initial version of Project Sherlock AI will include ready-to-use templates for boiler, pump and chiller operations, ideal for process or hybrid applications. Users can model additional applications with guided configuration.
Communications with the module are prioritised by the controller, so users can select how much data is sent and intervals of communication. The module does not add to controller CPU-load nor add to network traffic. Project Sherlock AI pilots have been running and producing results for the past 18 months. Customers will be able to purchase the module in mid-2018.
This new artificial intelligence engine is part of a larger, expanding ecosystem of analytics offerings from Rockwell Automation that run across the plant floor for devices, machines and systems, as well as throughout the enterprise. Rockwell Automation developers are building connections so users who employ FactoryTalk Analytics for Devices tools will be able to interface with Project Sherlock AI via the Shelby chatbot and action cards. Analytics from Project Sherlock AI will be easily integrated into the FactoryTalk Analytics Platform to integrate plant-floor data into business intelligence strategies.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/new-ai-module-from-rockwell-automation-models-monitors-and-optimises-industrial-operations/
How to delete all your voice data from Amazon Echo, Google Assistant, Cortana and Siri
Monday 22 January 2018
Google CEO says AI to have bigger impact on humanity than electricity or fire
Sunday 21 January 2018
Saturday 20 January 2018
What is fog computing? Connecting the cloud to things
Fog computing is the concept of a network fabric that stretches from the outer edges of where data is created to where it will eventually be stored, whether that’s in the cloud or in a customer’s data center.
Fog is another layer of a distributed network environment and is closely associated with cloud computing and the internet of things (IoT). Public infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud vendors can be thought of as a high-level, global endpoint for data; the edge of the network is where data from IoT devices is created.
Fog computing is the idea of a distributed network that connects these two environments. “Fog provides the missing link for what data needs to be pushed to the cloud, and what can be analyzed locally, at the edge,” explains Mung Chiang, dean of Purdue University’s College of Engineering and one of the nation’s top researchers on fog and edge computing.
+ MORE AT NETWORK WORLD: What is edge computing and how it will change the network +
According to the OpenFog Consortium, a group of vendors and research organizations advocating for the advancement of standards in this technology, fog computing is “a system-level horizontal architecture that distributes resources and services of computing, storage, control and networking anywhere along the continuum from Cloud to Things.”
Benefits of fog computing
Fundamentally, the development of fog computing frameworks gives organizations more choices for processing data wherever it is most appropriate to do so. For some applications, data may need to be processed as quickly as possible – for example, in a manufacturing use case where connected machines need to be able to respond to an incident as soon as possible.
Fog computing can create low-latency network connections between devices and analytics endpoints. This architecture in turn reduces the amount of bandwidth needed compared to if that data had to be sent all the way back to a data center or cloud for processing. It can also be used in scenarios where there is no bandwidth connection to send data, so it must be processed close to where it is created. As an added benefit, users can place security features in a fog network, from segmented network traffic to virtual firewalls to protect it.
Applications of fog computing
Fog computing is the nascent stages of being rolled out in formal deployments, but there are a variety of use cases that have been identified as potential ideal scenarios for fog computing.
Connected Cars: The advent of semi-autonomous and self-driving cars will only increase the already large amount of data vehicles create. Having cars operate independently requires a capability to locally analyze certain data in real-time, such as surroundings, driving conditions and directions. Other data may need to be sent back to a manufacturer to help improve vehicle maintenance or track vehicle usage. A fog computing environment would enable communications for all of these data sources both at the edge (in the car), and to its end point (the manufacturer).
Smart cities and smart grids Like connected cars, utility systems are increasingly using real-time data to more efficiently run systems. Sometimes this data is in remote areas, so processing close to where its created is essential. Other times the data needs to be aggregated from a large number of sensors. Fog computing architectures could be devised to solve both of these issues.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/what-is-fog-computing-connecting-the-cloud-to-things/
Friday 19 January 2018
What is the Internet of Things? Everything you need to know about the IoT right now
Thursday 18 January 2018
UK manufacturing sector holds the line as bad debt looms, data from Creditsafe reveals
Building on its recovery last quarter, the UK manufacturing sector has posted another solid performance across key financial indicators, as sales rose 3.94% and active companies increased by 16.66% year-on-year, according to new figures from the Creditsafe Watchdog Report.
Growth was overshadowed by a 260.24% increase in bad debt owed to companies in Q4 compared to Q3, and an 8.67% rise in CCJs (County Court Judgments) over the same period.
The Watchdog report tracks quarterly economic developments across Manufacturing and 11 other sectors (Banking & Financial, Farming & Agriculture, Hospitality, IT, Construction, Professional Services, Retail, Sports & Entertainment, Transport, Utilities and Wholesale).
In addition, company failures dropped by 1.06% in Q4, dwarfed by the overall decrease of 30.79% compared to a year earlier. Meanwhile the two fastest growing companies in Q4 were Nissan Motor Manufacturing (UK) Limited and British Steel Limited suggesting that financial health is returning to the traditional roots of the industry.
Year-on-year, the sector saw bad debt owned by industry suppliers fall by 35%, while money owned by manufacturing companies to other sectors rose to 200.05% in line with figures seen for the last three months of the year.
Rachel Mainwaring, Operations Director at Creditsafe, commented: “While there is certainly cause for cautious optimism as we see the financial health of the UK’s manufacturing base strengthen for a second consecutive quarter, there has been a large increase in bad debt owed by the sector that we should be wary of.
“CCJs are also up across the manufacturing sector suggesting that there may be some contagion in unpaid bills. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this as we look to the next quarter, hoping for positive improvement in terms of overall debt in the industry.”
For the food manufacturing industry specifically, the figures reflected the broader industry, indicating a positive trajectory in the numbers. Growth in new companies was down to 790 for the quarter, however, marking a reduction of 11.73% from Q3, and Creditsafe’s risk ratings showed an 11.22% increase in companies entering the very high risk band.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/uk-manufacturing-sector-holds-the-line-as-bad-debt-looms-data-from-creditsafe-reveals/
Wednesday 17 January 2018
Cloud Elements Delivers New Connectors for MicroStrategy Platform
Cloud Elements, an API integration provider, today announced a strategic partnership with MicroStrategy® Incorporated, a leading worldwide provider of enterprise analytics and mobility software, to add connectors from the Cloud Elements library of over 130 third-party applications. The strategic partnership will help organizations connect to new sources of data and drive greater BI and analytics insight while fully leveraging existing investments from leading cloud applications.
Together with Cloud Elements, MicroStrategy will extend its unified platform for enterprise analytics and mobility beginning with the most popular cloud applications. These connectors cover market leading solutions in the CRM, digital marketing, cloud storage, ERP, accounting, financial, project management and social media areas. The strategic partnership enables API developers to work with simple, yet feature-rich connectors to create high-value APIs and focus on building differentiated analytics and mobility user experiences.
Announced today at MicroStrategy World™ 2018, the strategic partnership will extend MicroStrategy’s ability to transform data into business intelligence for users across the organization. The collaboration leverages the Cloud Elements catalog of over 130 pre-built integrations to cloud and on-premise applications that unify the developer experience across every endpoint.
“With this strategic partnership, we are enabling our customers to discover and leverage all their data assets to build MicroStrategy applications for the entire workforce,” said Tim Lang, Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, MicroStrategy Incorporated. “Enterprises can now seamlessly connect to high-performance analytics and mobility applications, improving how the business and its employees report and share information and take action.”
“Our strategic partnership with MicroStrategy is one more step towards Cloud Elements’ vision of distributing our Elements (connectors) across leading intelligence platforms. Together, we are transforming data from existing investments into decisions,” said Cloud Elements CEO and Co-Founder Mark Geene. “MicroStrategy has access to our rapidly expanding catalog of elements, each with built-in features that make integration faster, easier to use and more reliable.”
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/cloud-elements-delivers-new-connectors-for-microstrategy-platform/
Velocity Listed in 2017 Gartner Market Guide for Cloud Service Providers to Healthcare Delivery Organizations
Velocity Technology Solutions Inc., the global leader in enterprise cloud application services, and creator of the Velocity Cloud Application Management PlatformTM (VCAMP®), was identified as a Representative Vendor in the recently published Gartner Market Guide for Cloud Service Providers to Healthcare Delivery Organizations.1
“Healthcare provider CIOs have moved from skepticism to acceptance through a considered, sometimes reluctant, embrace of the cloud,” wrote Gartner analysts, Gregg Pessin and Barry Runyan. “They [Healthcare provider CIOs] see the cloud as a way to optimize costs, operationalize expenses and improve time to value.”
Velocity’s Healthcare customers achieve immediate benefits, including better SLAs, multiple total cost of ownership (TCO) advantages, faster application deployment, and the capability to increase the volume of successful application patches and updates per month to remain ‘always current.’ In addition, these customers leverage Velocity’s VCAMP platform, purpose-built and software-defined, to optimize the way applications are delivered in the cloud, through access to service management, optimization, and analytics tiers with a unified multi-cloud application management interface. Over 120 healthcare organizations and 400 hospitals leverage Velocity applications expertise and cloud managed services experience globally.
“We are passionate about providing the right cloud solutions for our healthcare customers who need specialized expertise due to their various ERP, EMR, and EHR workloads,” said Keith Angell, President and CEO, Velocity. “Leveraging VCAMP, digital transformation and IT modernization is now a reality. The speed, efficiency, and analytics within our cloud management platform make the hybrid cloud a superior option for healthcare customers’ critical applications.”
1 Gartner, Market Guide for Cloud Service Providers to Healthcare Delivery Organizations, Gregg Pessin, Barry Runyon, 20 November 2017.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/velocity-listed-in-2017-gartner-market-guide-for-cloud-service-providers-to-healthcare-delivery-organizations/
Rittal Achieves Global Transparency with JAGGAER’s Digital Procurement Solutions
JAGGAER, the world’s largest independent spend management company, today announced the successful completion of a global digitalization project with Rittal, the world’s leading systems provider for enclosures, power distribution, climate control, and IT infrastructure. With JAGGAER’s Source-to-Pay (S2P) solutions suite, Rittal now has a central database containing all of its global supplier information that its subsidiaries can easily access from anywhere in the world.
“The comprehensive product portfolio and full ERP integration of JAGGAER’s mature S2P solutions were key factors behind our decision to work with JAGGAER,” said Ingo Schmidt, Business Process Management / S&P at Rittal GmbH & Co. KG. “The suite has helped our team make all of Rittal’s procurement processes more transparent and has improved the quality of these processes. In addition to gaining a complete overview of all of our requests, we now have full transparency into the management of our global suppliers.”
A world market leader with 13 manufacturing locations and 58 subsidiaries, Rittal first began working with JAGGAER’s comprehensive S2P indirect and direct procurement solutions four years ago. In addition to making global procurement processes more transparent, Rittal has digitalized and automated its administrative tasks. Rittal has achieved its highest ROI to date by automating the purchase order process, and has allocated the time saved to more strategic tasks. Today, Rittal processes 80% of its orders through JAGGAER’s digital platform, and has processed over 20,000 requests.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/rittal-achieves-global-transparency-with-jaggaers-digital-procurement-solutions/
Tuesday 16 January 2018
Tryzens delivers Salesforce Commerce Cloud integration for UK Click & Collect start-up HubBox
With more than 100 retailers already deploying HubBox as their Click & Collect solution, British fashion brand Jack Wills has become the first Salesforce Commerce Cloud customer to sign on to the service following the development of the cartridge with Tryzens, rolling out across the UK in time for the peak season.
HubBox is a new breed of delivery service that has developed a huge, nationwide network of Collect Points, so that retailers can increase their Click & Collect coverage significantly with very little effort. HubBox’s Collect points are based in trusted local shops, like dry cleaners and pharmacies, providing customers with the greatest convenience. This is ideal for consumers as they no longer need to worry about being at home to receive a delivery or parcels going missing at the office.
HubBox enables retailers to offer Click and Collect without changing their preferred or existing fulfilment and courier services. As well as expanding the reach of an omnichannel retailer, the service is suited to retailers without brick and mortar stores, providing a physical presence from where customers can pick up their shopping at their own convenience. For HubBox, Tryzens’ integration is a critical competitive advantage in the world of delivery providers, as squeezed retailers are increasingly focusing on rapid implementation of new services in order to stay ahead.
This integration will enable retailers to offer HubBox to customers during checkout on their eCommerce sites, quickly and seamlessly. Instead of a lengthy integration process that is bespoke to each retail user, the cartridge uses pre-written code and best practice to make deployment easy.
Greg Straw, Partner Manager at Tryzens, said: “When we first started talking, HubBox were seeing great growth in the Magento eCommerce platform space, but had yet to make ground in the Salesforce Commerce Cloud market. We quickly realised there was an excellent opportunity for a partnership. With our knowledge of the Salesforce Commerce Cloud space, and HubBox’s unique offering, we could bring something quite different to retailers in that market. Having a cartridge ensures that retailers such as Jack Wills can offer a convenient delivery option without extensive technological implementation or custom coding to integrate Salesforce Commerce Cloud with HubBox’s unique system.
“We’re working more and more with innovative technology companies through our partner network, and there’s a huge mutual benefit to doing so. For the technology company; they get access to our multi-platform expertise and a pre-built integration which saves about 90% of integration time and removes a big barrier to sale. Many retailers we speak to simply won’t work with tech companies that don’t have a pre-built integration. For us, we get the opportunity to work with some of the newest and dynamic tech companies in the market, this is one of the ways that we keep our retail clients ahead of their competition and enable them to see double digit year-on-year growth.”
Sam Jarvis, Founder & CEO at HubBox continues: “We selected Tryzens after a competitive tender to develop the cartridge. We have seen a significant increase in success with Salesforce Commerce Cloud retailers and shorter sales cycles pivoting on the availability of the integration, so it’s an important promotable asset for us as an emerging tech company. The investment is already paying off as we’re about to launch on another three significantly sized retailers; it’s unlikely we would have seen such rapid expansion without the cartridge to aid our conversations. We expect to grow our business with Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform users considerably over the next few months.”
“We know that for consumers, providing multiple delivery options and convenience at checkout is essential – it’s one of the key variables that determines a purchase. A retailer’s delivery proposition is now a clear opportunity for differentiation, and our customers see both increased customer loyalty and improvements in conversion rates, irrespective of their size. We’re really excited that the Sales Commerce Cloud integration will enable us to extend these advantages to even more retailers” he added.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/tryzens-delivers-salesforce-commerce-cloud-integration-for-uk-click-collect-start-up-hubbox/
Monday 15 January 2018
Hybrid ERP and Digital Transformation
In recent years, technology has been going beyond simply increasing efficiency through automation. Businesses have been adopting new technologies at varying paces, but many are in the midst of an ongoing digital transformation as they incorporate digital technologies in new and interesting ways.
The extensive use of digital technology is changing business processes at an accelerating rate. External users are now connecting to internal processes: think of your vendors or suppliers accessing supply chain information, as well as consumers connecting with their portion of your data via multiple channels, such as through mobile apps and inbound voice response (IVR) systems. We’re also witnessing the rise of predictive analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as the onset of user individualization through the use of application programming interfaces (APIs). The growing availability and use of data analysis is another example of how technology is fueling digital transformation.
Cloud computing and cloud storage are also helping to fuel the increase of digitization in the business world by putting affordable advanced technology in the hands of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Just a couple of years ago, businesses and individuals alike were wary of storing their important data “out there somewhere,” but the prevalence of smart phones and tablets has perhaps helped more people feel comfortable with storing data in the cloud.
That said, some businesses have maintained a cautious, even skeptical, approach to moving their critical processes and most sensitive data to the cloud. This is despite experts’ assertions that security concerns are largely either mythical or overblown. This continued general reluctance, however, is constantly butting up against the realities of cost considerations.
It may be easy enough for an individual to store computer data and backups on a small external drive, but for all but the smallest of businesses, keeping things entirely on-premise is quite an undertaking. Most businesses don’t have enough human and capital resources to fully invest in a robust in-house IT department along with the necessary hardware and software (all of which must be continually updated). This is where a hybrid enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, combining on-premise and cloud technologies, can be beneficial.
Hybrid Hits New Highs In the Clouds
A hybrid ERP solution incorporates on-premise technology, as well as a private cloud, a public cloud, or a hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud computing is simply a mix of on-premise and cloud computing models. However, it can start to get complex with the multiple options that now exist for cloud-based computing.
Public clouds are mainly distinguished by freeing users of any responsibility for hosting data since the data is stored by the provider at their own data center. This not only saves on equipment but allows businesses to more easily adapt to changing needs. They can test and deploy new products and processes, scale up or down to respond to demands, and more—all without worrying about adding extra servers or storage space.
Some businesses are wary of security when using a public cloud, but in reality, security breaches are exceedingly rare. It is a common misconception that your business’ data is stored together with that of others on a public cloud. Through the use of partitioning, different clients’ data remains separate, although computing resources may be shared with others. Just as you are only able to access your own company’s data, other cloud computing customers can only access their own company’s data.
A private cloud, sometimes referred to as an enterprise cloud, is hosted on a company’s intranet or private data center. That data center may be on the company premises or at an off-site location. For companies that already maintain a data center (such as those that had been using on-premise solutions before moving to the cloud), setting up a private cloud allows them to continue to make use of their infrastructure. All data is kept behind a firewall and resources are typically not shared with any other companies.
Hybrid cloud takes a middle-of-the-road approach; it is a mixture of private and public cloud services. Basically, it aims to be a best-of-both-worlds solution through the orchestration of services between platforms. As mentioned above, some organizations digitized rather cautiously and reluctantly due to concerns about security in the cloud. Their natural preference would be for on-premise solutions, but cost can be a barrier. Rather than committing wholly to an on-premise or cloud ERP, a hybrid ERP offers something of a “best of both worlds” answer to this dilemma.
Just as the move to cloud-based computing has made digital transformation more accessible and affordable for SMBs, hybrid computing has helped to bridge the gap between organizations that had traditionally relied on on-premise systems (i.e., larger companies with budgets for robust in-house IT departments) and smaller organizations with more limited resources that have perhaps only recently made the move to ERP.
How ERP Solutions Benefit from a Hybrid Approach
An ERP system connects various business processes (sales, order processing, inventory, etc.) within an organization and also often connects it with external stakeholders such as customers and partners. Such integration is a primary feature of digital transformation, and it gives rise to many of the advantages that come with this transformation, such as the ability to respond more quickly to changing demands and emerging business opportunities.
In some cases, users consider it advantageous to retain flexibility by keeping at least some processes or functions non-integrated. For example, perhaps they wish to test some new functionality before fully committing to it. This is an area where the managed platforms of hybrid clouds—moving between public and private clouds as needed—offer a way to gain flexibility and deployment options in the face of cost constraints and evolving needs that can change seasonally or based on the sales cycle.
The drivers and/or effects of digital transformation on hybrid ERP that incorporates hybrid cloud computing include:
- External connectivity: Outside stakeholders expect to be able to use apps to connect with organizations. Keeping everything safely tucked behind portals will become relatively rare.
- Adopting new technologies: Moving beyond optimizing business processes, hybrid ERP can make it easier for users to respond quickly to change by adopting new technologies, such as AI.
- Accelerated agility: Many companies adopt a limited-scale trial-and-error approach to minimize risk when trying out new business strategies or changing products and services. The inherent flexibility and scalability of hybrid ERP will make such trials easier and faster.
Digital Transformation as a Game Changer
A continuing digital transformation is likely to cause many organizations to re-think the way they run their operations as well as how they relate to all external stakeholders, from suppliers to customers.
At the same time, the days of large-scale, robust, and fully funded and fully staffed internal IT operations are largely gone, except among the largest and most profitable companies. This comes at a time when there is an increased risk of rapid obsolescence in IT hardware and software due to the pace of change. This opens up the door for a continued increase in hybrid ERP solutions and hybrid computing.
Getting Answers
While all of this change leads to new opportunities, it can also lead to greater complexity. For organizations that lack the knowledge, experience, or even the confidence to go it alone when determining their requirements vis-à-vis ERP and its deployment, there are independent, impartial consultants available.
So long as such consultants are not beholden to any particular software vendor or type of enterprise solution, they can be impartial and act as valuable guides in the journey to modernizing ERP and the underlying business processes it serves. Even a quick examination of the cost vs. benefit of such services can easily justify their use.
About Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC)
Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) is a global consulting and advisory firm, helping organizations select the best enterprise software solution for their needs.
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source http://news.statii.co.uk/hybrid-erp-and-digital-transformation/