Macron aims to drag France into the age of artificial intelligence

PARIS — France’s Emmanuel Macron knows his country is not about to develop a local equivalent of Google or Facebook to power the development of artificial intelligence.

But in a national AI strategy to be unveiled this week, the French president will argue that France has other assets to fuel innovation: its foreign brain trust, huge troves of state-owned data and links to European research institutes to share and leverage knowledge, according to French officials.

Macron’s aim is nothing less than to drag his country into the age of AI and erase 30 years of underperformance on innovation.

“We missed all the big technological revolutions of recent years, but France has a card to play in the field of artificial intelligence,” said an aide to the president who asked not to be named. “Either we seize the chance now, or we watch another wave pass us by.”

In a briefing with journalists ahead of the strategy’s unveiling Thursday, two advisers to Macron conceded that France was starting from way behind China and the United States on AI, and their fiscal-deficit-challenged state would not be able to tap billions of euros in taxpayer money. Venture capital remains far more limited in France than in the U.S., and there are no plans to overhaul tax rules to draw in investors.

Another key aspect of Macron’s plan is to lure French AI researchers, many of whom occupy top positions in Silicon Valley, back to France.

Yet aides argued that Paris, which has just brought its budget deficit under a European Union threshold, would still muster a “considerable” financial effort. The total earmarked for AI research in France’s next budget would exceed, for example, the amount that Finland is investing, they said, without specifying a figure. Finland plans to spend about €200 million over the next four years.

Macron’s idea, the aides said, was to leverage the cash to develop sector-specific AI technology in areas where France has an edge thanks to its giant, state-run agencies and vast troves of centrally collected public and private data.

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Article Credit: Politico

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For better AI, diversify the people building it

Big technology companies get much of the blame when technology behaves badly. But these same companies, says Partnership on AI executive director Terah Lyons, could also be part of the solution in making sure future AI technology works better for the world.

Speaking at MIT Technology Review’s annual EmTech Digital conference in San Francisco, Lyons presented the Partnership on AI’s four-point mission statement and eight tenets that the organization calls its guiding principles. Those tenets include working to protect the privacy and security of individuals, striving to respect the interests of all parties that may be affected by AI advances, helping keep AI researchers socially responsible, ensuring that AI research and technology is robust and safe, and creating a culture of cooperation, trust, and openness among AI scientists to help achieve these goals. The Partnership on AI hopes that these principles will be adopted by the wider technology community.

Six companies—Amazon, Apple, IBM, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft—started Partnership on AI in 2016 with the belief that a lot of the issues in AI are too complex to handle alone. The organization is now up to 54 member institutes that range from technology companies like eBay and Intel to nonprofit groups like the ACLU and Amnesty International.

Lyons announced the Partnership on AI’s first three working groups, which are dedicated to fair, transparent, and accountable AI; safety-critical AI; and AI, labor, and the economy. Each group will have a for-profit and nonprofit chair and aim to share its results as widely as possible. Lyons says these groups will be like a “union of concerned scientists.”

“A big part of this is on us to really achieve inclusivity,” she says.

Tess Posner, the executive director of AI4ALL, a nonprofit that runs summer programs teaching AI to students from underrepresented groups, showed why training a diverse group for the next generation of AI workers is essential. Currently, only 13 percent of AI companies have female CEOs, and less than 3 percent of tenure-track engineering faculty in the US are black. Yet an inclusive workforce may have more ideas and can spot problems with systems before they happen, and diversity can improve the bottom line. Posner pointed out a recent Intel report saying diversity could add $500 billion to the US economy.

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Article Credit: MIT

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Need to make a molecule? Ask this AI for instructions

Artificial-intelligence tool that has digested nearly every reaction ever performed could transform chemistry.

Chemists have a new lab assistant: artificial intelligence. Researchers have developed a ‘deep learning’ computer program that produces blueprints for the sequences of reactions needed to create small organic molecules, such as drug compounds. The pathways that the tool suggests look just as good on paper as those devised by human chemists.

The tool, described in Nature on 28 March¹, is not the first software to wield artificial intelligence (AI) instead of human skill and intuition. Yet chemists hail the development as a milestone, saying that it could speed up the process of drug discovery and make organic chemistry more efficient.

“What we have seen here is that this kind of artificial intelligence can capture this expert knowledge,” says Pablo Carbonell, who designs synthesis-predicting tools at the University of Manchester, UK, and was not involved in the work. He describes the effort as “a landmark paper”.

Chemists have conventionally scoured lists of reactions recorded by others, and drawn on their own intuition to work out a step-by-step pathway to make a particular compound. They usually work backwards, starting with the molecule they want to create and then analysing which readily available reagents and sequences of reactions could be used to synthesize it — a process known as retrosynthesis, which can take hours or even days of planning.

Self-teaching system

The new AI tool, developed by Marwin Segler, an organic chemist and artificial-intelligence researcher at the University of Münster in Germany, and his colleagues, uses deep-learning neural networks to imbibe essentially all known single-step organic-chemistry reactions — about 12.4 million of them. This enables it to predict the chemical reactions that can be used in any single step. The tool repeatedly applies these neural networks in planning a multi-step synthesis, deconstructing the desired molecule until it ends up with the available starting reagents.

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Article Credit: Nature

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Hopes are high for Amazon’s entry into health care—as long as they don’t ‘pull a Facebook’

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Amazon snaps up Bake Off sponsorship in biggest UK TV deal

Deal is major coup for Channel 4, which has defied critics since poaching baking show from BBC

Amazon is seeking to cash in on the success of The Great British Bake Off on Channel 4 by signing up as headline sponsor of the second series, in the US tech giant’s biggest UK TV deal to date.

Amazon is thought to have paid about £5m to secure the deal, making Bake Off one of the most valuable entertainment sponsorships in the UK, alongside Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor, after the show’s move from the BBC defied critics by proving to be Channel 4’s biggest hit in decades.

Amazon intends to use the show to push its Echo speakers and the capabilities of the Alexa virtual assistant. Bake Off attracted the largest audience of 16- to 34-year-old viewers of any TV show last year.

The final attracted Channel 4’s second-biggest audience ever, having been watched by 11 million people including those who watched it live, via recordings or repeats. As a result, the broadcaster has been able to raise the price for the second series.

The new deal with Amazon is a coup for Channel 4, which previously had to settle for splitting the headline sponsorship between two brands not known as major TV advertisers – the German baking ingredients maker Dr Oetker and the kitchen cupboard staple Lyle’s golden syrup – when an expected bidding war failed to materialise. They each paid a bargain £2m.

Channel 4 paid £75m to poach the biggest show on British TV from the BBC. Advertisers initially balked at signing a big sponsorship deal, not knowing if audiences would follow the new-look show to commercial TV. Only one judge, Paul Hollywood, made the move from the BBC.

Rival ITV sniped that Channel 4 had paid for “baking powder and a tent”, while critics were sceptical of the new lineup, which includes new hosts Sandi Toksvig and Noel Fielding and judge Prue Leith.

“It’s a great testimony to the success of Bake Off’s debut on Channel 4 last year that Amazon will sponsor the Bake Off programme brands this year,” said Jonathan Lewis, the head of digital and partnership innovation at Channel 4.

Amazon’s deal includes sponsorship of the spinoffs Bake Off: An Extra Slice, hosted by Jo Brand, and Bake Off: The Professionals, as well as celebrity and festive specials.

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Article Credit: The Guardian

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‘I Don’t Like That:’ Apple CEO Tim Cook Throws Shade At Amazon’s HQ2 ‘Beauty Contest’

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Amazon shares slump as Trump goes after the retail giant: ‘They pay little or no taxes to state & local governments’

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ERP, Supply Chain Reduce Healthcare Tools and Supply Spending

Healthcare organizations need to add ERP and supply chain solutions to their IT infrastructure to keep track of tools and supplies. Losing track of supplies and medical tools is an unacceptable reality for healthcare organizations. However, adding advanced supply chain management and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions to health IT infrastructure can reduce costs associated with medical tools and material and increase patient satisfaction.

Forty percent of healthcare organizations stated that they have had to cancel surgical cases because of a lack of supplies, while another 69 percent reported that they needed to delay a case because of missing supplies, according to a recent Cardinal Health survey.

Many organizations also reported expired products being used or that they have seen a patient be put in danger due to a lack of needed supplies.

Many clinicians feel that inventory management is complicated, which leads to clinicians hoarding supplies so they won’t be without or wasting supplies.

This problem can be traced back to the inefficiency of current inventory management solutions. Not only does this lack of organization waste money, but it’s also putting patients at risk. Manual inventory processes are no longer practical, especially when there are more advanced solutions available.

Adding automation and analytics to inventory management can make a huge difference in how efficiently supplies are ordered and organized. Supply chain and ERP solutions are critical in making sure time and money are not wasted.

Visibility and collaboration between systems will help cut costs by making sure products are being used and additional products are not being requested before they are needed.

Using more advanced technology to achieve better visibility can save healthcare organizations money by showing system administrators which parts of the supply chain solution are pulling their weight.

A report released in 2017 suggested that virtualizing and centralizing supply chain management will significantly improve the control organizations have over the cost of their supplies.

Virtual centralization integrates operations based on the market instead of the health system. For example, a consolidated service center that brings together geographically based groups of hospitals to form a single entity to centralize operations was discussed in the report. The consolidated service center acts as the central location for distribution, contracting, procurement, and customer service.

Virtually centralizing supply chain data allows larger healthcare organizations to connect with smaller organizations and share data with those smaller entities. This saves smaller organizations from needing to implement a full IT system on their own.

It would also save on staffing costs because administrators don’t need to be present at every location to manage and monitor the solution. Instead, the virtualized data can be accessed remotely from any of the participating organizations’ secure networks.

ERP tools also offer solutions on how to improve information flow when it comes to medical supplies and IT infrastructure systems.

A 2017 Black Book report revealed that healthcare organizations are underinvested in ERP technology.

“Crucial back-end software that manages finance, supply chain and inventory management, purchasing, payroll and coding have been disregarded into a confused entanglement of different products that don’t communicate and left executives with the inability to realize cost savings in preparation of value based care,” said Black Book Managing Partner Doug Brown.

“There has been user opposition to deploying a new or upgraded ERP, perceived as carrying a high price tag in a time when clinical deployments overwhelmed hospital staff and budgets.”

Although adding new technology onto current infrastructure may be overwhelming for some users, it will save organizations money in the long run, allowing for future spending in other areas that are lacking technological sophistication.

Organizations need to know what their tools are doing and how their supplies are being used to function efficiently as a business. Without the proper tools in place, entities will lose money on tools and supplies, resulting in dissatisfied patients and clinicians.

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Students succeed at their own speed with iPad and Mac

When you walk into Wilder Elementary School, just outside of Boise, Idaho, it’s what you don’t hear that sets it apart.

There aren’t any bells ringing between classes to tell kids when to move from room to room. There aren’t teachers standing at the blackboard, calling out one lesson to 30 or so students. In fact, there isn’t a lot of loud talking, or reprimanding, or noise anywhere.

But don’t let the quiet fool you — in those hushed classrooms, an educational revolution is taking place.

Wilder Elementary and its sister Middle/High School were two of the first 114 schools across the country selected to receive an Apple ConnectED grant. The program, which was launched by the Obama Administration, is bringing millions of dollars in support and technology to underserved schools across America. In Wilder’s district, the median household income is just over $20,000 a year, and 100 percent of the students qualify for a free lunch. Less than half of the community’s households have an internet connection.

But things are different when kids get to school — every student has an iPad, every teacher has a MacBook and an iPad mini, and every classroom has an Apple TV and receives technical support. It’s just one of the programs that Apple funds to help teachers use technology to enable the students of today become the leaders of tomorrow.

At Wilder, it’s changing the way that educators reach their students, and turning the traditional model of what a classroom is supposed to look — and sound like — on its head. That’s because technology is allowing every student to learn at their own pace by choosing their own work and schedule. They don’t switch classrooms, they just switch the program they’re studying on their iPad.

For fifth-grade teacher Stephanie Bauer, that also means she can give each one of her students the attention they need and deserve, regardless of whether they’re working at, above, or below grade level. She also credits the technology with allowing her to get to know her students better too.

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The Secret History of the FBI’s Battle Against Apple Reveals the Bureau’s Mistakes

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New iPhone Leak Reveals Apple’s Expensive Surprise

The iPhone has a price problem. Furthermore, AppleAAPL -2.58% is planning a massive price increase on its most exciting new model later this year. So the good news is this extra expense suddenly makes sense now we have the big picture…

In a new report picked up by BGR, RBC Capital Markets analyst Amit Daryanani reveals Apple has a surprise lined up: it will balance the launch of three new iPhone modelsthrough a mixture of, yes, price increases but also – significantly – price cuts.

So while the radically redesigned 6.1-inch iPhone SE2 will come in at a massive $799 (twice the price of the current iPhone SE) the second generation iPhone X (possibly ‘iPhone X 2’) will see a price decrease of $100, launching for $899. This will allow Apple to also release an all-new, supersize iPhone X Plus for $999, keeping the range under the crucial $1,000 barrier.

“This would effectively lower the average ASP’s but we think [it] will drive a stronger unit growth,” explains Daryanani.

And this point is crucial. To date the iPhone X, while far from a flop, has not delivered the sales ‘super cycle’ Apple expected to celebrate the iPhone’s 10th anniversary. Furthermore research by respected analyst Piper Jaffray found the reason behind this: a significant proportion of iPhone owners think it is simply too expensive.

Releasing three iPhone X-based models and retaining the existing $999 price point for a larger Plus model would be a clever way for Apple to simultaneously cut prices while also being seen to stick to its guns on the $999 price point.

Adding further credence to Daryanani’s report is his information about the three new models ties in with what we know so far, even though he doesn’t name the models specifically:

“Two OLED devices – 5.8 inch form factor and a larger 6.5 inch form factor; one LCD model 6.1 inch size…The LCD device is likely to have aluminium edges vs. premium steel in other two devices. All three phones are expected to have Face ID (no home button).”

Ultimately all Daryanani claims here make perfect sense. Apple should keep all iPhone starting prices under $1,000 (remember larger storage options will be available) and the iPhone X 2 would benefit greatly from a drop to $899.

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Article Credit: Forbes

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Defence picks strategic partners for billion-dollar ERP overhaul

The Department of Defence has begun working with two strategic partners on the first stages of its billion-dollar ERP overhaul, but is yet to decide on the system integrators for the job almost two years after it first went looking.

The ERP transformation, previously known as Defence Insight, will see Defence rationalise the more than 500 applications currently governing its finance, logistics, procurement, engineering, maintenance and estate functions.

The department’s hope is that it can rid itself of as many as 80 percent of its largest applications and up to 95 percent of the smaller ones to standardise business processes by 2023, and in doing so address some of the shortcomings identified in its first principles review.

The agency opened bidding in May 2016 for two system integrators to help it move to the SAP Defense Force & Public Security solution that it signed up to as far back as 2015.

This was followed by a second market approach in the latter half of 2016 for strategic partners to take over the planning, vendor management, and change management aspects of the program.

But the department has so far selected only the strategic partners, and is yet to appoint the two system integrators.

“No selection decision has been made regarding systems integrators,” a spokesperson told iTnews.

The spokesperson said Defence was currently evaluating potential partners, and would wait until it receives second pass approval later this year before selecting the system integrators.

Strategic partners

Late last month Defence published separate standing offer arrangements with KPMG and Ernst & Young.

The spokesperson said both big-four consulting firms had been working with the department since the program had received first pass approval in May 2017.

KPMG has been providing strategic partner services under a single $16.1 million deal that will run until the end of June 2018.

It covers “ICT architecture services, market engagement advice, data services, tranche one delivery preparation work and program management services”, the spokesperson said.

Ernst & Young has similarly been providing organisational change management services under a single contract worth $4.5 million.

This includes “change planning and coordination, stakeholder engagement and communications, change impact and business readiness assessments, training and learning services and user experience definition,” the spokesperson said.

The partners were initially invited to perform work between the first pass and second pass government approval stages.

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Article Credit: IT

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Jakarta aiming to roll out ERP in 2019

The administration of Indonesia’s capital is targeting to implement Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) within one year, said Jakarta Deputy Governor Sandiaga Uno.

“We are firm, and there should not be more delay in implementing (ERP), which is (expected) in March 2019,” he was quoted as saying by kompas.com.

He argued that the ERP system, under which vehicle owners are charged for entering certain roads, could be the solution to traffic congestion in the city, since 50 per cent of vehicles moving on the roads of Jakarta come from outside the capital.

With the implementation of ERP, vehicle owners will be required to pay if they pass along roads wired in the ERP system. “Vehicles both from Jakarta and outside Jakarta will have to pay the ERP (toll),” said Mr Sandiaga.

He added that the ERP system will be implemented after the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) has commenced operations. The administration hopes that the MRT line along Jalan Jenderal Sudirman to Jalan Medan Merdeka Barat could be operational by October.

The city has divided the ERP project into two phases: The first phase will be for vehicles moving from the Senayan traffic circle to the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, while the second phase will be installed from the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle to Jalan Medan Merdeka Barat.

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Federal Government reveals ERP SaaS services panel

HR, meet AI – making work more human, according to Oracle

Oracle’s motto for the recent bevy of updates to its Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) Cloud release is to “make work more human”. The irony of that statement, of course, is that it entails employing more technology, in particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Oracle is doing what it can to gently introduce AI to an HR audience, as there’s still some fear and lack of understanding which needs to be overcome. Emily He, Senior Vice President HCM Product Marketing, at Oracle, explains:

The other day I went to a customer meeting and while there was a break one customer came to me and said, ‘When you have AI, does it stand for A-1 or A-I?’. This is a very new concept to HR professionals and there is a great deal of fear about whether this is going to take away jobs and what’s the best way to start experimenting with AI.

To help HR professionals kick-start their AI endeavors, says He, Oracle has included some out-of-the-box apps:

It’s about making AI actionable and giving them a starting point so they can start seeing the benefits of AI and start becoming more comfortable.

This includes AI and chatbot recruiting capabilities so that candidates can search and apply for a job and can also have any questions answered. The system can also recommend actions candidates should take. Recruiting and other data can be used to pinpoint successful recruits within the company and use that algorithm to predict which candidates are likely to make successful recruits.

AI will also help cut the manual overload for staff. When someone is promoted, for example, the usual steps, such as changing someone’s job title, salary or direct report will be done automatically. He points out that recruitment and learning are the two most obvious front-line areas where AI is making its impact:

Recruiting is very similar to marketing and marketing is faster in adoption technology innovation than HR, so recruiters typically have a marketing-oriented mind-set and are trying to use the latest and greatest communications vehicles…There’s a lot of talk about AI for recruiting either in using it to support the candidate experience and to use AI to identify the best candidates possible.

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Article Credit: Diginomica

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Google loses Android battle and could owe Oracle billions of dollars

Google just lost a major copyright case that could cost it billions of dollars and change how tech companies approach software development.

An appeals court said on Tuesday that Google violated copyright laws when it used Oracle‘s open-source Java software to build the Android platform in 2009.

Tuesday’s ruling is the latest development in a topsy-turvy eight-year battle between Google(GOOG) and Oracle (ORCL).

Oracle first brought its case against Google in 2010, claiming that Android infringes two patents that Oracleholds on its Java software, a ubiquitous programming language powering everything from phones to websites.

In 2012, a jury determined that Java does not deserve protection under copyright law. Two years later, an appeals court overturned the ruling, raising the question of whether Google’s use of Oracle‘s API violated copyright law.

A jury determined in 2016 that Google’s use of Oracle‘s APIs was legal under the copyright law’s fair usedoctrine, which allows the free use of copyrighted material under specific circumstances. Oracle appealed the decision, and a judge took its side on Tuesday.

“There is nothing fair about taking a copyrighted work verbatim and using it for the same purpose and function as the original in a competing platform,” a panel of three Federal Circuit judges wrote in Tuesday’s opinion.

Oracle said in a statement on Tuesday that the recent “decision protects creators and consumers.” Google said it is weighing its next steps. It could appeal to the full slate of judges on the court.

“We are disappointed the court reversed the jury finding that Java is open and free for everyone,” a Google spokesman said in a statement. “This type of ruling will make apps and online services more expensive for users. We are considering our options.”

Another court will decide how much Google owes Oracle in damages.

As of 2016, Oracle was seeking about $9 billion from Google. But because APIs have become much more widespread over the years, a court could decide that Oracle deserves more, said Christopher Carani, a partner with McAndrews, Held & Malloy and a professor at Northwestern’s law school.

“The numbers in this case will be staggering,” he added.

The verdict is likely to eclipse the current largest copyright verdict of $1.3 billion, awarded to Oracle when it sued rival SAP in 2010.

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Article Credit: CNN Money

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Apple now selling the space gray accessories that were previously exclusive to the iMac Pro

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Nelson Mandela’s golden hand casts sell for $10m in bitcoin

Gold castings of the hands of South Africa’s first black President Nelson Mandela have been sold for $10m (£7m) in bitcoin.

Canadian crypto-currency exchange firm Arbitrade bought four casts from South African businessman Malcolm Duncan.

The firm said it planned to launch a global “Golden Hands of Nelson Mandela” tour to educate young people about the anti-apartheid icon’s life.

This is the first time artefacts of Mr Mandela have been sold in bitcoin.

Mr Mandela was jailed for 27 years for fighting white minority rule in South Africa.

He was released in 1990, and served as president from 1994 to 1999.

Mr Mandela died in 2013 at the age of 95. He had turned into a global brand, with businessmen and artists cashing in on his name.

Mr Duncan, who now lives in Canada, bought the casts from mining group Harmony Gold in 2002 for about $31,000.

Half of the money paid to Harmony Gold was meant to go to charity, but it remains unclear as to whether that happened, Bloomberg news agency reports.

Harmony said it had “supplied Mr Duncan with the necessary paperwork verifying the provenance as requested by his attorneys,” but declined to comment on what happened to the donation, Bloomberg reports.

The casts, which weigh around 20lb (9kg), include Mr Mandela’s hand, palm and fist. They are part of a collection meant to mark the years the former president spent in prison on Robben Island.

The artefacts are believed to be the only ones left in the world.

The other sets of the collection were ordered to be destroyed by Mr Mandela, Mr Duncan told Bloomberg.

It was part of the former president’s attempt to control his copyright after a number of scandals, including forgery allegations, arose around the sale of art bearing his image and name.

Arbitrade has paid Mr Duncan a bitcoin deposit that has been converted to $50,000, and the rest is expected to be paid in quarterly instalments of at least $2m, Bloomberg reports.

“They take possession when I have the dollar amount in the bank, At two-and-a-quarter million at a time, they take one hand at a time,” Mr Duncan was quoted as saying.

Arbitrade is due to launch an initial coin offering and plans to mine its own crypto-currencies and trade others, Bloomberg reports.

The company’s chairman, Len Schutzman, told the news agency that it will back all its virtual currency with a percentage of physical metal, such as gold.

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Article Credit: BBC

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Twitter, Backed by Bitcoin Fan Jack Dorsey, to Bar Some Cryptocurrency Ads Starting Tuesday

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Here’s what’s coming in Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 April update

Bitcoin Slips Further on More Bad News, But 1 Expert Says Investors Are Reading It All Wrong

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New Study Reveals Key Attributes of High-Performing Finance Teams

FinancialForce, the leading cloud ERP vendor on the Salesforce Platform, published its State of Finance report today. The report, based on insights derived from 1,000 finance and accounting professionals across industries and company sizes, reveals that finance teams that become business partners and embrace next-gen technologies — cloud, integrated platforms, mobile, AI — are best positioned for success; those that don’t adapt leave their businesses vulnerable to competition. The report is produced in partnership with third-party market research firm Lab42.

The report found finance teams are focused on more than just accounting today, and have evolved to become a key player supporting business growth. Currently, a supermajority of finance leaders (85.6 percent) see their teams as having an important role in helping their organizations avoid disruption in the new services economy, and nearly all (93.1 percent) say finance plays an important role in giving the business a competitive edge.

As finance departments evolve, so too must the ways they generate revenue and measure success. Revenue Recognition guidelines have placed a heightened value on software, and a majority of business leaders approaching full compliance (85.1 percent) agree that software will factor heavily in helping them cross the compliance finish line. Nine of 10, businesses with high-performing finance teams (89.8 percent) generate revenue from services. The importance of services is expected to grow significantly; in fact, the majority of respondents (57.3 percent) report that services will be more important one year from now than they are today.

In today’s business landscape, flexibility and an embrace of innovative technologies separate modern business leaders from the pack. Finance leaders overwhelmingly agree (88 percent) that the agility to change or add business models increases the chance of ongoing success. Three in four (75 percent) respondents believe it’s important to have access to their financial systems from mobile devices, while 80 percent say it’s important to have access from the cloud—signaling an accelerating demise for older, on-premise systems. Finance professionals who haven’t migrated to cloud-based systems must upgrade and innovate quickly to remain competitive and be able to provide real-time strategic insights to improve revenue.

“The services economy is expanding at an unprecedented pace and challenging businesses across the globe to redefine strategies and adapt to changing business models,” said Gordy Brooks, CFO at FinancialForce. “Companies who quickly embrace the opportunities provided by this new market can have a better chance to increase revenue opportunities and business success.”

“Businesses with integrated systems and data sources are able to collaborate more quickly and efficiently, accelerating business productivity,” Brooks continued. “With the proliferation of mobile devices, cloud technology, and real-time information, financial departments are no longer the revenue recorders; they’re now the drivers.”

According to the report, financial executives believe:

Cloud and mobile are paramount

• More than two-thirds (75 percent) of respondents believe it’s important to have access to their financial systems from mobile devices.
• 80 percent say it’s important to have access from the cloud, signaling a potential end for older, on-prem systems. Finance professionals who haven’t migrated to cloud-based systems must upgrade and innovate quickly.

Business flexibility reigns supreme

• The overwhelming majority of respondents (88.0 percent) said having the flexibility to change or add business models (e.g. new product, new service, or new revenue stream) helps increase the chance of future business success.
• Businesses must be able to act quickly and adapt to new technology and regulatory changes to be competitive and successful.

High-performing finance teams embrace AI

• Two-thirds (63.1 percent) of respondents agreed that AI will transform the way finance teams work over the next two years, although there’s slight uncertainty (58.6 percent) around how AI will transform their own organizations.
• Nearly half of respondents (45.9 percent) say they are already using AI, while more than a third (38.0 percent) have defined plans to expand their use of AI over the next two years.
• The vast majority of those that do use AI (70.3 percent) are seeing equivalent or greater ROI from their investment in the technology.

New revenue recognition rules offer an opportunity to update revenue management tools

• A majority of businesses approaching full Rev Rec compliance (85.1 percent) agree that software will play an important role in reaching full compliance.
• 75.8 percent of respondents reported that they are not “nearly” or “fully” Rev Rec compliant, suggesting the Rev Rec project has been a larger task than expected.
• Nearly half of respondents (48.9 percent) report their sales departments as being involved in their revenue recognition projects, and between 20 and 40 percent cited additional departments as being involved.

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New event to showcase charity fundraising successes with Microsoft Dynamics 365

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Cybersecurity for us is a complete process just than solving temporary solutions: Kaspersky Lab

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Why cybersecurity pros should pay attention to recent warnings about Russian attacks

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Cybersecurity team will ‘lie, cheat and steal’ to protect Blue Cross patients’ data

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The Allusion Of Perfect Cybersecurity

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” – Helen Keller

One of my employees has a theory. The lock on your front door or the padlock on your locker isn’t actually a lock — it’s a social contract. When you walk up to a door, the lock there is a little reminder from the owner that the stuff inside is his, and he would like you to leave that stuff alone.

We know in the physical world that locks aren’t perfect security. A padlock can easily be picked, shimmed or cut within seconds. Yet our society functions as though we believe our lockers, cars and homes are secure. A door can be taken off the hinges. You can break a window open. There hasn’t ever been a lock that couldn’t be picked. Almost.

For 67 years, the world thought it had a  perfect lock. Joseph Bramah was so confident in his lock design that he painted a challenge on the lock itself and hung it in the window of his shop in London. The winner would have won what amounts to about $25,000 by today’s standards.

Rather than keep his design a secret, he published detailed information on how it worked, in contrast with the commonly accepted maxim “security through obscurity.” If the lock really was impossible to pick, then being completely transparent and open about the details of the lock would only serve to reinforce the strength of the design.

American locksmith A.C. Hobbs would eventually pick the lock, shattering the image of perfect security. But it took Hobbs two weeks of actually living upstairs in that London shop, spending every waking moment attempting to pick the lock. After the perception of the lock’s impregnability had been broken — even though it took two weeks of trying by an expert locksmith in ideal conditions — people stopped wanting to pay premium prices for very nearly perfect security when they could get good enough security cheaply in the form of mass-produced locks.

Security through obscurity works because it takes time to defeat obscurity. The effectiveness of encryption, for example, is measured in the amount of time it takes to break it, not that encryption is unbreakable. We know with certainty that the processing power of a computer in just a handful of years will be able to break in a few minutes what would take hundreds of years today.

It is understandable, then, that the social contract concept is more difficult to understand when it comes to computers. I think this is in part due to the fact that to get into another person’s computer, I never leave my own keyboard. It is further complicated by the nature of digital information. If I break into your house and steal something, then it is more clear that I have violated the social contract. It is less clear if I break into your house and simply take photos or replicate your stuff with a 3D printer. It’s still a violation of the social contract, but psychologically, this behavior is more like voyeurism or espionage than theft.

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Article Credit: Forbes

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Dutch SMEs’ cyber security is insufficient

Nowhere in the Netherlands is digitisation as big as it is in small and medium-sized enterprises, but the sector still has a lot to do in terms of cyber security

Between 80% and 90% of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Netherlands do not comply with the rules of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which comes into force this year and will be strictly audited by Dutch privacy watchdog AP from 25 May.

If companies do not comply with the regulation, they could be fined up to €20m or 4% of their turnover.

Christian Oudenbroek, director at Brand Compliance, said many SMEs in the Netherlands will fall short of GDPR compliance. “We have many SME companies from the Netherlands and Belgium as customers and, from discussions and meetings we have had in recent months, I would say 80-90% of them are not ready for it.”

SMEs make up 90% of the Netherlands’ business world and so largely determine the country’s economic activities. Research by Capgemini and insurance company Interpolis shows that many entrepreneurs in the country score well in the areas of physical security, access to the corporate network and security of the website, but they lack vision and policy in the organisation of business processes.

Many companies do not recognise the urgency of cyber security until an incident occurs, the research suggested.

Meanwhile, the number of SME victims of cyber crime is quite high, according to the baseline measurement of the cyber security in SMEs research group at The Hague University of Applied Sciences.

Rutger Leukfeldt, head of the research group, said he was shocked by the figures. “Some 20% of companies have been the victim of cyber crime and 21% have experienced an attempted digital attack,” he said. “This means that it does not just happen occasionally, and the risk that a company faces is no longer negligible.”

The baseline measurement marks the start of an in-depth investigation into how much cyber security Dutch SMEs employ. “More and more business processes use digital systems, we as a society are ever more digital, so we can only expect the number of cyber crime victims to rise,” said Leukfeldt.

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Article Credit: CW

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SAP Code Challenge for iOS Enterprise Apps: Build a Great iOS Enterprise App in Just Six Hours

Businesses are increasingly looking to enterprise mobility as an integral part of their digital transformation strategy. Many are even implementing a mobile-first approach for pivotal organizational roles, like field service personnel and sales people.

Gartner forecasts that by 2022, approximately 70 percent of all software interactions in the enterprise will occur on mobile devices.

SAP introduced the SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS to enable businesses to accelerate innovation of enterprise mobile apps for iOS devices, and recently added enhancements for controls and tighter integration. For developers and consultants with backgrounds in either SAP or iOS, the SDK has opened a new opportunity to build the next generation of applications combining the depth and intelligence of real-time enterprise data with the intuitiveness of a simplified mobile experience for increased workplace productivity. For more information, see SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS Powers Innovation.

Held in Barcelona on the eve of Mobile World Congress 2018, the world’s biggest trade fair event for the mobile community, the SAP Code Challenge for iOS Enterprise Apps provided a venue for developers to gain hands-on experience working with the tools of the SAP Cloud Platform SDK for iOS, as well as to learn best practices, get up to speed on the latest UI design guidelines, and ask questions to the SAP and Apple experts on site. The hackathon attracted developers from both the SAP ecosystem who wanted to build on their mobile skills, as well as developers form the iOS ecosystem who wanted to gain experience building enterprise apps.

Altogether, 37 developers from across Europe and the U.S. participated in the one-day event, organized by SAP and Apple. The group included both seasoned professionals and young careerists, working for tier-one consulting firms as well as small to midsize consultancies. Most had professional backgrounds in development or design, and had some prior experience working with both SAP and iOS technologies. Some developers from the Apple ecosystem had not had prior exposure to SAP and enterprise data.

The Challenge: Field Service Scenario Optimized for Device and User Experience

The hackathon challenge centered on a typical field service scenario for the telecommunications industry, wherein a field service worker must maintain a base station. Working in nine teams, the developers were tasked with coming up with a way to guide the worker to the location of the base station and then providing the relevant information at the site. They were given just six hours to build their applications. The teams started with an unfinished prototype that performed some of the data access into the SAP Cloud Platform, upon which they then had to build a user interface and add capabilities. The teams used SAP Fiori for iOS design language to create the UI.

Following a design thinking session in the morning, the teams set to work coding with SAP Cloud Platform mobile services in combination with Apple’s programming language, Swift, to create the device interface. All participants had an SAP Cloud account to access the demo data on an SAP HANA database. The challenge provided an opportunity for developers to combine the strengths of SAP and iOS to create an enterprise-grade mobile work solution – ready to go in just six hours.

“We got very deep questions already,” said Sami Lechner, product manager, SAP Mobile Services Unit, SAP, who provided SAP Cloud Platform and mobile support during the hackathon. “Every team is doing an end-to-end connection. People are tapping into real data through SAP Cloud Platform, syncing it to a device, and then putting a very nice UI on top of it. We’re showing them how to easily tap into the SAP world. If they go to a customer now who says ‘this is the format of data I want,’ they know exactly what the customer wants and they can give it to them.”

At the end of the day, each team was given six minutes to pitch their app to their peers, first by demonstrating the flow on a flip chart and then with a demo of the app. Feedback was based on practical criteria, such as the user experience of the app; innovative ideas around the use of the technology; and viability of the concept in a business context.

In the limited time given, each team was able to produce a complete end-to-end app. Although the teams took varied approaches to guiding the field service worker to the site, most took advantage of the graphical map interfaces available on iOS and relied on the SAP Fiori for iOS design language to display data in the UI. One team went the extra mile by enhancing their app with QR code reading capabilities and video-enabled chat.

“Feedback has been very positive,” said Holger Fritzinger, head of Mobile Solution Management at SAP. “The participants liked the idea of getting an app built in such a short time. This is what we also want to also drive home. Besides learning from the challenge itself, the event is also about being able to ask questions of the SAP and iOS experts on hand as well as leveraging the approach for their customer projects.”

Follow Up by SAP Developer Relations

After the success of the hackathon, the follow up is just as important as the event itself, say members of SAP Developer Relations. They intend to maintain one-on-one contact with the participants to see how their projects are developing, as well as to provide additional enablement sessions on topics like how to integrate more SAP Leonardo services into apps and how to further modify back-end data.

“We’ll be reaching out to see how else we can help the participants develop their skills,” says Ian Thain of SAP Developer Relations. “A lot of them are just starting their journey.”

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It’s back on – SAP SuccessFactors HANA migration take 2

Will SAP SuccessFactors ever complete the planned migration from its original BizX stack to run on SAP’s own HANA database? I’ve been tracking this long-running saga because I believe it will be an important proof point for HANA’s ability to run a high-volume, multi-tenant application at scale. It’s also a matter of interest for SuccessFactors customers because, although to some extent this is an under-the-hood issue that shouldn’t directly impact them, they will want to know whether there’s going to be a noticeable impact on performance and functionality.

So the question was top-of-mind yesterday when I met Amy Wilson, Head of Product, SAP SuccessFactors, at the Unleash show in London. Especially since, according to the timescales quoted eighteen months ago by then EVP of Product Management, Engineering & Operations Adam Kovalevsky, the migration was already supposed to have finished late last year.

It seems the project had lost momentum by the time Wilson came on board last summer, but she insists that it’s now back on track, mainly because she sees real benefits from moving ahead with it. Already a significant number of customer instances have migrated across, although the largest, as was always the plan, will be the last to move, she tells me:

We started with moving customers that were only on our talent applications and now we’re adding customers that are also using learning. And in a month or two we’ll start with Employee Central. With each area we’re going with bigger and bigger schemas. So our largest customers, with the biggest footprints leveraging Employee Central, they’ll be moving to HANA later in the Fall.

I believe that we are now at 60% of customers [that were] on our BizX platform — 60% of customers on that stack have been migrated. So I think we have almost 3,000 customers that are running on HANA.

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Article Credit: Diginomica

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This is the true meaning behind the Blue Sap Moon in March

n March 31st, the Blue Sap Moon will take to the night sky. Not only is this the second full moon of March, but the Sap Moon is also the second Blue Moon of 2018 (a rare phenomenon we haven’t seen since 1999). The Blue Sap Moon is clearly a cool dude/dudette. But you might be wondering: what’s with all the names? What does the Blue Sap Moon mean?

The March full moon is actually known by several different names depending on what region of North America you’re in.

According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, March’s full moon is usually called the Worm Moon, a name that comes from the Algonquin tribes of New England. They called it the Worm Moon because it’s during March when the soil becomes soft again and worms make their way to the surface. When the worms reemerge, so do the robins and other migrating birds, thus signaling spring has sprung.

But in other regions, the March full moon is called the Sap Moon because it’s around this time of the year when sap begins to weep from maple trees. So when there are two full moons in March, the first moon is called the Worm Moon and the second is the Sap Moon.

Other names for the March full moon include Seed Moon, Plow Moon, Crow Moon, or Crust Moon.

The “Blue” in the Blue Sap Moon’s name signifies that this is the second full moon within a month. The phrase that we’re so used to hearing, “once in a blue moon,” actually came about 400 years before an astronomical Blue Moon was defined. And the definition of a Blue Moon that we know and use today is actually derived from a mistake made by amateur astronomer James Hugh Pruett in a 1946 Sky & Telescope magazine article.

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