Select Page ::

Red Hat and Accenture expand hybrid cloud alliance – IT PRO

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Red Hat and Accenture have announced an expansion of their strategic partnership which will see the pair look to drive open hybrid cloud innovation for enterprises.

Building on their 12-year alliance, the companies are jointly investing in the co-development of new solutions that they say will help organizations better navigate a multi- and hybrid cloud world, define their strategy, and accelerate innovation.

Modernise your IA for AI and hybrid cloud

Building an artificial intelligence (AI) information architecture (IA)

The new solutions will be developed over the next year and will initially focus on four key areas: open hybrid cloud application and mainframe modernization, automation, edge computing, and sovereign cloud.

In an announcement, Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president of Partner Ecosystem Success at Red Hat, said that operating in the hybrid cloud enables customers to optimize their existing systems with the added layers and capabilities necessary to support innovation and efficiency at scale.

At Red Hat, we believe that success not only lies in the technical components we bring to the cloud but also with the impactful partnerships that drive successful implementations and business outcomes, she said.

Our long-standing collaboration with Accenture means that customers have access to the open-source solutions they need and expertise they can trust to navigate the complexities of open hybrid cloud and grow their business where it needs to be - in the cloud.

As part of its four key focuses, the partnership is aiming to help clients develop a holistic hybrid cloud strategy to enable greater operational efficiency and drive innovation based on Red Hat OpenShift.

The range of offerings will also include solutions that automate and orchestrate workloads across the IT infrastructure to reduce risk and lower costs of technology operations. This includes the development of Accenture solutions on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to deliver stable, automated cloud computing capabilities.

In terms of edge computing, there will be solutions focused on analyzing and processing data where it is generated to help improve the customer experience and reduce latency. With Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, applications can be deployed and automated at the edge - reducing dependency on a physical footprint.

Additionally, Red Hat and Accenture said they are also developing offerings that will help clients control the location, access to and processing of their data in the cloud through open-source technologies and services.

Organizations are increasingly turning to hybrid cloud to help overcome complex challenges around core business functions like customer service and supply chain, and to drive growth and innovation, commented Raj Wickramasinghe, Accentures Hybrid and Emerging Platform lead.

Through our expanded alliance with Red Hat, we can further help clients embrace the cloud continuum to enable greater operational efficiency and drive innovation.

How to hold more productive meetings

Tips and tricks to get the most out of your meetings

Enabling the future of work with embedded real-time communication

A new dimension of human interaction is coming to digital work

How to do hybrid work right

Overcoming challenges in the transition to hybrid work

HCI 2.0 From HPE: How it can help your business thrive

Why SMBs need to accelerate digital transformation with HCI

Go here to read the rest:

Red Hat and Accenture expand hybrid cloud alliance - IT PRO

Global $2.5 Billion Crowdsourced Testing Markets to 2027: Adoption of Cloud Computing to Enhance Device Virtualization and Tester Support – Yahoo…

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Company Logo

Global Crowdsourced Testing Market

Dublin, May 05, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Crowdsourced Testing Market by Testing Type (Performance Testing, Functionality Testing, Usability Testing, Localization Testing, and Security Testing), Platform, Organization Size, Deployment Mode, Vertical and Region - Global Forecast to 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global Crowdsourced testing market size to grow from USD 1.6 billion in 2022 to USD 2.5 billion by 2027, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 9.4%

The increase in the number of devices, operating systems, and applications is one of the key drivers for crowdsourced testing, With the numerous combinations of mobile devices and operating systems being used, companies are finding possible reasonable approaches to strategize the testing of their applications on all these possible combinations to provide the best User Experience (UX). Thus, investing in innovative end-user testing solutions, such as crowdsourced testing, to curtail the need for a feature-rich and customer-centric product offering.

In a short time, the COVID-19 outbreak has affected markets and customer behaviors and substantially impacted economies and societies. Healthcare, telecommunication, media and entertainment, utilities, and government verticals function day and night to stabilize conditions and facilitate prerequisite services to every individual. The telecom sector, in particular, is playing a vital role across the globe to support the digital infrastructure of countries amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Fujitsu's Global Digital Transformation Survey, offline organizations were damaged more, while online organizations witnessed growth in online demand and an increase in revenue. 69% of the business leaders from online organizations have indicated that they witnessed an increase in their business revenue in 2020. In contrast, 53% of offline organizations saw a drop in revenues.

The Localization testing segment to have a higher CAGR during the forecast period

Organizations are developing software that can be released for users present across the globe. Hence, they implement localization testing that tests the software for compliance with the requirements of the target market. Through localization testing, organizations can evaluate the product based on the language and cultural standards and whether it is tailored as per the existing accuracies or not.

With localization testing, organizations can ensure that their apps are as per the required standards and easy to use for their target audience, irrespective of their geographic presence. Crowdsourced testing provides a hassle-free and cost-effective way to test the app or website on the multiple target demographics, globally.

Retail in vertical segment to account for larger market size during the forecast period

Retailers are now doing business via omnichannel retailing, i.e., through their online, mobile, and point-of-sale technologies. Hence, to remain relevant in the fast-evolving vertical, the quality of these channels is crucial. The success of omnichannel retailing is assessed by security, performance, and delivery offered by them.

Story continues

However, retailers investigate their retail systems through the consumer's perspective for enhancing their experience across all the channels available for achieving omnichannel success. Hence, crowdsourced testing is implemented by retailers across the globe to optimize the offerings and stay ahead in the highly competitive market.

Among regions, APAC to hold higher CAGR during the forecast period

The growth of the crowdsourced testing market in APAC is highly driven by the rapid digitalization of enterprises across the region. Enterprises across APAC are working effortlessly on taking up digital transformation, majorly for streamlining their operations and improving the customer experience.

Indicating that spending on software is also expected to grow to keep with up with rising customer demands in terms of online accessibility of services from enterprises. Hence, this rapid investment in technologies and providing online services to the customer is expected to drive the growth of the crowdsourced testing market in APAC.

With the rising digital transformation and offerings, consumer expectations have also changed in terms of timeline, emphasizing on speed and performance of the software used by them. Enterprises in APAC are going for innovative solutions to testing, such as crowdsourcing, for ensuring better UX for customers.

Premium Insights

Increasing Number of Devices, Operating Systems, and Applications for Scaling Quality Assurance to Drive Market Growth

Retail Vertical to Account for the Largest Market Share During the Forecast Period

Large Enterprises to Lead Market Growth in 2022

Crowdsourced Testing Cloud Deployment Mode to Lead Market Growth in 2022

Functionality Testing to Account for the Largest Market Share During the Forecast Period

Web Crowdsourced Testing to Lead Market Growth During 2022-2027

Asia-Pacific to Show Fastest Growth Rate During the Forecast Period

Canada to Account for High Growth During the Forecast Period

Market Dynamics

Drivers

Increase in the Number of Devices, Operating Systems, and Applications

Need for Scaling Quality Assurance of Software for Enhancing Customer Experience

Requirement for Adopting Cost-Effective Software Development Process

Need to Fill the In-House Skill Gap with Crowdsourced Testers During COVID-19

Restraints

Opportunities

Challenges

Industry Trends

Case Study Analysis

Case Study 1: with the Help of Rainforest Qa Cireson to Cut Qa Testing Time from Weeks to Hours

Case Study 2: High-Growth Fintech App Ramps Up a Global Testing Operation in Two Weeks with Testlio

Case Study 3: Soundcloud Paves Road to Revenue with Mobile Testing with the Help of Test Io

Case Study 4: Specsavers Saw Testing Timescales Shrink and Qa Improve with Digivante

Case Study 5: Simplot Embraced Crowd Testing for Its Latest Venture Using Crowdsprint Crowd Testing Platform

Regulatory Bodies, Government Agencies, and Other Organizations

General Data Protection Regulation

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

Cloud Standard Customer Council

System and Organization Controls 2 Type Ii Compliance

Iso/Iec 27001

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act

Federal Information Security Management Act

Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

Crowdsourced Testing Market: Patent Analysis

Document Types of Patents

Patents Filed, 2019-2022

Innovation and Patent Applications

Total Number of Patents Granted in a Year, 2019-2021

Top Applicants

Top Ten Companies with the Highest Number of Patent Applications, 2019-2021

Company Profiles

Major Players

Startups/SMEs

Global App Testing

Applause

Synack

Testbirds

Rainforest

Digivante

Testlio

Crowdsprint

Mycrowd Qa

Ubertesters

Qa Mentor

Crowd4Test

Testunity

Usabitest

Stardust

Impactqa

Cobalt

Bugcrowd

Qualitrix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/qha6z0

Attachment

Read this article:

Global $2.5 Billion Crowdsourced Testing Markets to 2027: Adoption of Cloud Computing to Enhance Device Virtualization and Tester Support - Yahoo...

Sangfor Newsletter Featuring the Gartner Research: The Cloud Strategy Cookbook, 2021 – Business Wire

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sangfor Technologies is an APAC-based, global leading vendor of IT infrastructure and security solutions specializing in Cyber Security and Cloud Computing. Sangfor works closely with its customers to develop new products and improve their already stellar offerings to help users across the world make their digital transformation simpler and secure.

The Cloud Strategy Cookbook 2021 by Gartner provides infrastructure and operations managers with a virtual template for devising a sound cloud strategy document, which answers the what and why of cloud implementation and adoption.

Gartner research resulted in several interesting findings:

The Cloud Strategy Cookbook provides infrastructure and operation (I&O) leaders with recommendations and guidelines on creating a living cloud strategy document that effectively aligns cloud migration and implementation plans with core business strategy. The cookbook approach divides the cloud strategy document into five major components: Executive Summary, Baselines, Brainstorming, Principles and Inventory, and Aligning with Other Strategies and Supporting Elements.

In response to The Cloud Strategy Cookbook, Sangfor released a detailed newsletter that answers the how of cloud implementation and offers the following practical preparations for a successful cloud journey:

For more detailed information and to read the Sangfor newsletter featuring the Gartner report in its entirety, click HERE.

Source: Gartner Research NoteThe Cloud Strategy Cookbook G00741474, Published 17 February 2021, By Analyst: David SmithGARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Sangfor Managed Cloud Services

Sangfor Managed Cloud Services gives customers the convenience and flexibility of a public cloud, with the security, control, and professional service of a private cloud, making it the best cloud service approach for most SME customers. It provides globally distributed data centers, offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) as well as dedicated resource/data security and full-stack security protection in a new security responsibilities model. Think of it as a local public cloud, with the security and ease-of-service of a private cloud. Leverage Sangfor Managed Cloud Services and allow your organization to focus on digital transformation and create more business value!

For more information on Sangfor Managed Cloud Services, please visit us online at http://www.sangfor.com.

Read the original here:

Sangfor Newsletter Featuring the Gartner Research: The Cloud Strategy Cookbook, 2021 - Business Wire

Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) Market 2022 Size, Share, Trend Insights on Share, Application and Forecast Assumptions Queen Anne and…

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) Marketreport contains detailed information on factors influencing demand, growth, opportunities, challenges, and restraints. It provides detailed information about the structure and prospects for global and regional industries. In addition, the report includes data on research & development, new product launches, product responses from the global and local markets by leading players. The structured analysis offers a graphical representation and a diagrammatic breakdown of theCloud Application Programming Interface (API) Marketby region.

Request To Download Sample of This Strategic Report@:-https://reportocean.com/industry-verticals/sample-request?report_id=bw4288

Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) is a software interface that allows developers to link cloud computing service together. Application programming interfaces (APIs) allow one computer program to make its data and functionality available for other programs to use. So, basically APIs can connect software component across a network. The increasing demand of cloud computing and new advancements will help the business man to grab business opportunity. For instance: according to NCBI, Microsoft Azure enables customers to build the foundation for a private cloud infrastructure using Windows Server and System Center family of products with the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit.

Furthermore, the adoption of cloud computing and rise in the demand for micro services by organizations are also anticipated to flourish the growth of the cloud application programming interface (API). Also, with the increasing digitalization, the adoption & demand for Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) is likely to increase the market growth during the forecast period. However, rising security concerns associated with the cloud API security will be major limitation for the cloud application programming interface market.

The key regions considered for the global Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) market study includes Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Latin America and Rest of the World. North America is dominating the market of cloud API as the region is well developed and there are high number of early adopters of cloud technology. Whereas, Asia-Pacific is register exhibit highest CAGR over the forecast period 2021-2027. It is expected to witness significant growth owing to increase in number of cloud Enterprise Size providers in the region and rising digitalization in Asia-Pacific region would create the highest growth in the forecasted period 2021-2027.

Major market player included in this report are:Amazon Web Enterprise Sizes Inc.CA Inc.Dell Inc.Google Inc.IBM CorporationMicrosoft CorporationOracle CorporationSalesforce.com Inc.SAP SETIBCO Software Inc.

Request To Download Sample of This Strategic Report:-https://reportocean.com/industry-verticals/sample-request?report_id=bw4288

The objective of the study is to define market sizes of different segments & countries in recent years and to forecast the values to the coming eight years. The report is designed to incorporate both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the industry within each of the regions and countries involved in the study. Furthermore, the report also caters the detailed information about the crucial aspects such as driving factors & challenges which will define the future growth of the market. Additionally, the report shall also incorporate available opportunities in micro markets for stakeholders to invest along with the detailed analysis of competitive landscape and product offerings of key players.

The detailed segments and sub-segment of the market are explained below:By Organization Size:Large-Scale EnterprisesMedium-scale EnterprisesSmall-scale EnterprisesBy End User:RetailHealthcareTelecomBFSI Media and EntertainmentHospitalityEducationOthersBy Region:North AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeUKGermanyFranceSpainItalyROE

Asia PacificChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaSouth KoreaRoAPACLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of the World

Furthermore, years considered for the study are as follows:

Historical year 2018, 2019Base year 2020Forecast period 2021 to 2027

Target Audience of the Global Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) Market in Market Study:

Key Consulting Companies & AdvisorsLarge, medium-sized, and small enterprisesVenture capitalistsValue-Added Resellers (VARs)Third-party knowledge providersInvestment bankersInvestors

What is the aim of the report?

The report analyses growth rate, market

Access full Report Description, TOC, Table of Figure, Chart, etc:-https://reportocean.com/industry-verticals/sample-request?report_id=bw4288

About Report Ocean:We are the best market research reports provider in the industry. Report Ocean believes in providing quality reports to clients to meet the top line and bottom line goals which will boost your market share in todays competitive environment. Report Ocean is a one-stop solution for individuals, organizations, and industries that are looking for innovative market research reports.

Get in Touch with Us:Report Ocean:Email:sales@reportocean.comAddress:500 N Michigan Ave, Suite 600, Chicago, Illinois 60611 UNITED STATESTel:+1 888 212 3539 (US TOLL FREE)Website:https://www.reportocean.com/

Go here to see the original:

Cloud Application Programming Interface (API) Market 2022 Size, Share, Trend Insights on Share, Application and Forecast Assumptions Queen Anne and...

Cirrus Nexus Introduces Industry-First Carbon Reduction Tool for Cloud Operations – PR Newswire

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

TrueCarbon provides cloud service provider-agnostic tools to measure, monitor, and reduce carbon emissions from cloud operations. These capabilities empower businesses to weigh sustainability considerations as they would other business costs and decisions with a heightened level of transparency. Key features include:

S&P 500 companies are increasingly focusing on sustainability efforts; in 2011, only 20% were publishing a sustainability report, and in 2020, 92% were. Prior to the launch of TrueCarbon, there was no independent product for organizations that reliably measured and analyzed the end-to-end carbon emissions of their cloud operations across multiple cloud service providers and enabled organizations to take immediate action directly within the platform.

"We're proud to bring this revolutionary solution to the market during such a critical moment for climate change," said Chris Noble, CEO, Cirrus Nexus. "The time is now to take bold actions to avoid increasing global temperatures, and companies need tools that not only reduce cloud costs, but also operate their systems with the smallest possible carbon footprint. That is exactly what we hope to help businesses achieve with TrueCarbon."

Beyond the business implications, the lack of clarity and visibility into carbon emissions produced by cloud operations has a direct impact on global warming. To drive real change, real insight is needed. According to theClimate Clock, we have 7 years to take bold actions to avoid increasing global temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, a point of no return that science tells us is likely to make the worst climate impacts inevitable. Getting an independent view of emissions and being able to act on that information rapidly is essential to making meaningful change.

To learn more about Cirrus Nexus TrueCarbon, visit: https://www.cirrus-nexus.com/truecarbon.

About Cirrus NexusCirrus Nexus empowers businesses through its A.I.-driven cloud management platforms that offers direct control of monitoring and optimizing cloud spend across multiple different cloud service providers. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in New York, Cirrus Nexus works with mid-size to large enterprises looking to optimize their cloud computing costs. For more information, visit: https://www.cirrus-nexus.com/.

SOURCE Cirrus Nexus

See the rest here:

Cirrus Nexus Introduces Industry-First Carbon Reduction Tool for Cloud Operations - PR Newswire

Atos Talks European HPC Openness and a Hybrid Future of AI, Machine Learning and Quantum Supercomputing – insideHPC

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

This exclusive Q&A interview was conducted by Nages Sieslack of the ISC 2022 conference organization, with Eric Eppe, head of portfolio and solutions, HPC & Quantum at France-based HPC systems vendor Atos.

Nages Sieslack: How are the needs of the European HPC market changing with regard to traditional supercomputing and things like deep learning/AI and data-centric computing?

Eric Eppe: Supercomputers are the soft power for all nationals. They are essential for numerical simulations, accelerating technological, industrial, and scientific innovations. We see a transition from traditional compute-centric simulation toward data-centric, resulting in a more heterogeneous workload. We believe the future of HPC is hybrid. This means combining traditional simulation workflows using CPU & GPU (even TPU, FPGA, IPU, why not QPU) with advanced techniques to accelerate part of these workflows thanks to machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), or even quantum computing (QC). The virtue of deep learning/AI is not only limited to the GPU accelerator on the hardware side but also serves as the foundation of smart software within HPC cluster management and workload optimization. In this regard, deep learning/AI-empowered software optimizes workloads while increasing the systems global efficiency.

Sieslack: How are those changes affecting the types of systems and services you are offering?

Eppe: Atos leads the hybrid computing trend with its existing HPC portfolio and the newly revealed BullSequana XH3000. It is the next-generation hybrid computing platform, the foundation for any scale simulation up to the exascale. It has unparalleled flexibility, industry-leading density, and embedded security. For Atos, Exascale doesnt mean Exaflopic performance only. We believe that Increasing global system and application efficiency is the only way to decrease system cost and stay within a reasonable power consumption at that scale. Thus, we have incorporated ML/AI mechanisms in our HPC Software suites to optimize simulation and keep control of energy consumption for unprecedented efficiency. We have also witnessed the need for high-performance AI simulations and launched the ThinkAI solution last year. With ThinkAI, we eliminate all the roadblocks in designing, developing, and installing high-performance AI systems, putting AI simulations at the fingertips of all businesses and academics. Furthermore, we leverage our HPC-as-a-Service portfolio, enabling any customer to run their simulations anywhere they want.

Sieslack: Geographically, where do see your biggest opportunities for growth in the HPC market, both within Europe and globally?

Eppe: Compared with China, the U.S., and Japan, which are relatively closed HPC economies (they build their own HPCs for their use), Europe is the most dynamic and open HPC market. Europe has significantly invested in the EuroHPC JU, Atos empowers 5 of the 7 EuroHPC centers. Europe continues to invest in supercomputing, including HPC and Quantum computing, e.g.the upcoming Exascale tenders, as an extension of the EuroHPC JU. Atos designs, develops, and builds our HPCs in Angers, France, and is number 1 in HPC in Europe. We also have our HPC, AI & QC R&D centers in France. We actively participate in European initiatives to develop the European microprocessor with EPI and the GAIA-X initiative. Atos is the undisputed leader in the European HPC market, instrumental to its technological and economic sovereignty.

Sieslack: What trends are you seeing for your HPC on-demand service via your Nimbix cloud offering with regards to use cases and the types of customers?

Eric Eppe of Atos

Eppe: As industry analysts have predicted, cloud computing will continue to grow at double-digit rates through 2025*. Our on-demand service through Nimbix is seeing this growth, with customers across the globe consuming computer power at record numbers. We have witnessed on-demand usage increase specifically within automotive manufacturing, Lifesciences, and academic research organizations. We are pleased to offer these industries the most comprehensive hybrid HPC cloud portfolio and are excited to be advancing this space with new offerings and technology. In fact, in the second half of the year, we will deploy the first public cloud offering in partnership with a top hyperscaler to provide Genomic analytics of sequencing data, from specialized cluster resources delivered by Atos Nimbix.

Sieslack: What is Atos doing now on the quantum computing front? Which companies and partners are currently using your Quantum Learning Machine simulator?

Eppe: Quantum Computing will re-invent how we simulate, co-existing with HPC. In Dec 2021, Atos confirmed its role as a global leader in quantum hybridization technologies at its 8th Quantum Advisory Board. For Atos, we work mainly on five strategic directions to accelerate quantum computing:

On top of these five strategic paths, we have launched Qscore, a universal metric to benchmark quantum applications performance. Together with clients worldwide, such as Argonne Labs, BMW, CESGA, SENAI CIMATEC, and Total, we are accelerating the arrival of the quantum era.

*Source: Intersect360 Research forecasts cloud computing will continue to grow at double-digit rates through 2025.

Read the original post:

Atos Talks European HPC Openness and a Hybrid Future of AI, Machine Learning and Quantum Supercomputing - insideHPC

The Cloud Is Yet Another Reason to Buy Microsoft Stock – InvestorPlace

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Its slipping again, but after Microsoft(NASDAQ:MSFT) reported its third-quarter earnings on April 26, MSFT stock put together a decent rally. A relatively rare rally for a big tech stock in 2022. However, despite the pop which saw MSFT gain 7.3% in the days after its Q3 earnings beat shares are still down over 20% in 2022. Theyre off November 2021s high close of $343.11 by 29%.

Microsoft shares were stuck in the doldrums for the first decade and a half of the century. Windows and Office kept plugging along, but the company wasnt really breaking any new ground. It was finding its footing again after a close call with a government antitrust case that nearly saw the company broken up. In addition, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000, leaving Steve Ballmer to run the company.

Current CEO Satya Nadella took over in 2014, with a focus on the cloud. Since then, MSFT stock has been a steamroller. Even after 2022s slump, it is up over 600% since Nadellas appointment. With shares feeling the impact of 2022s market, now would be a great time to buy MSFT stock in anticipation of the growth momentum continuing in the long term. Thats especially true with the way the companys cloud bets are paying off.

Shortly after Microsoft reported its Q3 earnings in April, I wrote about the importance of its legacy businesses, including Windows and Office. They tend to get overlooked these days, but still continue to reliably generate big revenue for the company. However, this time I want to focus on the cloud.

Microsofts cloud services including Azure was one of the quarters highlights. And its an area where CEO Satya Nadella has pushed the company to greatly expand its presence.

Heres what the companys CFO had to say about the third quarter: Continued customer commitment to our cloud platform and strong sales execution drove better than expected commercial bookings growth of 28% and Microsoft Cloud revenue of $23.4 billion, up 32% year over year.

That cloud revenue is creeping close to half of the companys total revenue. Overall revenue for MSFT was up 18% year-over-year, so cloud services are seeing their revenue grow at a faster pace than other divisions.

Right now, Microsofts Azure is in second place globally among cloud computing providers, with a 21% market share. Microsoft is slowly but surely growing its share in a market that is experiencing rapid growth. Everything from online shopping to remote work to the metaverse is continuing to boost the demand for cloud computing. This is a market thats on track to hit a value of $947.3 billion by 2026, with a CAGR of 16.3%.

In other words, look to the cloud to power MSFT stock growth in coming years.

Its not just Microsofts cloud services that are exciting for investors. Its the way the company is able to leverage Azure and its cloud computing infrastructure to wring more revenue from its other businesses including legacy products.

For example, you can still buy a copy of Microsoft Office. But by pushing Office to the cloud and a subscription model, Microsoft is ensuring this cash cow continues to deliver. You can now access Office documents from virtually any connected device, keeping it relevant. In 2017, Office 365 online brought in more revenue than the traditional, boxed Office products for the first time.

Any company benefits from ongoing subscription revenue thats not tied to buying cycles or strict hardware requirements. By leveraging the cloud, Microsoft is ensuring Office a product first released in 1990 continues to be a big revenue generator.

Another great example is the companys Xbox gaming division. One of the key buying propositions for an Xbox game console is Microsofts strong online gaming capabilities through subscription services like Xbox Live. That has expanded to Xbox Cloud Gaming that leverages Azure to Bring Xbox Series X-quality gaming to mobile devices. Naturally, this also adds to the companys growing subscription revenue stream.

Its having a tough 2022, but MSFT stock earns a B in Portfolio Grader. Microsoft is a company with a proven history of innovation. MSFT stock has been an impressive performer since 2014. It has been riding the cloud for momentum not seen since the companys early days as a PC pioneer.

There may be more bumps to deal with in 2022, but the opportunity to buy MSFT stock at this price will almost certainly pay off in the long term.

On the date of publication, Louis Navellier had a long position in MSFT. Louis Navellier did not have (either directly or indirectly) any other positions in the securities mentioned in this article. InvestorPlace Research Staff member primarily responsible for this article did not hold (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

Original post:

The Cloud Is Yet Another Reason to Buy Microsoft Stock - InvestorPlace

My Best FAANG Stock to Buy Now and Hold Forever – The Motley Fool

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

In the first quarter, most of the FAANG companies delivered underwhelming financial results. Alphabet missed earnings estimates on the bottom line, Meta Platforms posted its slowest salesgrowth as a public company, Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in a decade, and Amazon (AMZN -3.20%) turned in its first quarterly loss since 2015.

With the exception ofApple, all of the FAANG stocks have fallen at least 20% from their highs, and most have fallen much further. That creates a buying opportunity, and Amazon looks like the best bargain of the bunch.

Here's why.

Image source: Getty Images.

In the first quarter, Amazon's revenue grew just 7% to $116 billion, and online store sales actually fell 3%. On the bottom line, the retail titan posted a net loss of $3.8 billion -- its first quarterly loss in seven years. At first glance, Wall Street's disappointment is understandable, but investors need to dig a little deeper.

Those results are set against an exceptionally difficult macroeconomic backdrop. Russia's war on Ukraine has sent fuel prices soaring. During the earnings call, management noted that the cost to ship overseas containers has more than doubled from pre-pandemic levels, and inflation pressures collectively added $2 billion in expenses compared to last year. Amazon's net loss also reflects $8.2 billionin unrealized losses from its equity investment portfolio. Rivian alone accounted for $7.6 billion of that total.

Without those expenses and unrealized losses, Amazon's net income would have been $6.4 billion. And that doesn't even account for any inflationary pressure on consumer spending.

Despite a disappointing performance in Q1, Amazon still benefits from an ironclad competitive position in the e-commerce industry. Its marketplace accounted for 41%of online retail sales in the U.S. last year, more than the next 14 retailers combined.

To reinforce that edge, Amazon has built out an extensive fulfillment and logistics network, giving the company greater control over shipping costs and delivery times. Building upon that infrastructure, the company recently announced Buy with Prime, a service that extends the benefits of its Prime membership program to third-party websites.

Amazon also dominates the cloud computing industry. In Q1, Amazon Web Services (AWS) captured 33% market share, easily outpacing second-place Microsoft Azure. In fact, a report from Okta suggests that Amazon has six times more cloud computing customers than Microsoft. Few businesses have ever achieved that level of success even one time, but Amazon has pulled it off twice.

In Q1, AWS revenue growth accelerated to 37%, and its operating margin expanded nearly five percentagepoints to 35.3%. That makes Amazon's cloud computing business much more profitable than its retail business, which typically achieves an operating margin in the mid-single digits. That means Amazon should become increasingly profitable as AWS accounts for a bigger part of its total business.

To some extent, the novelty of e-commerce and cloud computing has worn off, but both markets are still growing at a good clip. According to eMarketer, online retail sales will climb 50%over the next four years, reaching $7.4 trillion by 2025. And Gartner says cloud spend will more than double over the same period, reaching $917 billion. That means both of Amazon's core businesses still have a long runway for growth.

Better yet, the company is actually gaining ground in a third high-growth market: digital advertising. Amazon accounted for 11.6% of digital ad spend in the U.S. last year, but eMarketer says that figure will hit 14.6% by 2023. For context, U.S. digital spend is expected to reach $270 billion in 2023. That means Amazon will generate about $40 billion in U.S. ad sales.

Amazon doesn't provide details about its ad business, but a 30% operating margin seems like a reasonable estimate. In Q1, Alphabet achieved an operating margin of 37% on its Google services segment, which primarily consists of advertisingacross Google Search, YouTube, and partner websites. In other words, digital advertising is much like cloud computing for Amazon. As it becomes a bigger part of the total top line, the company should become increasingly profitable.

To sum things up, Amazon has a commanding lead in two high-growth industries, and it's gaining ground in a third. And with shares trading at 2.4 times sales -- their cheapest valuation in the last six years -- this FAANG stock is a screaming buy.

See the original post here:

My Best FAANG Stock to Buy Now and Hold Forever - The Motley Fool

Paddle, the company that wants to take on Apple in IAP, raises $200M at a $1.4B valuation to supercharge SaaS payments – TechCrunch

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Software as a service has become the default for how organizations adopt and use apps these days, thanks to advances in cloud computing and networking, and the flexibility of pay-as-you-use models that adapt to the evolving needs of a business. Today, a company called Paddle, which has built a large business out of providing the billing backend for those SaaS products, is announcing a large funding round of $200 million as it gears up for its own next stage of growth.

The Series D investment led by KKR with participation from previous backers FTV Capital, 83North, Notion Capital, Kindred Capital, with debt from Silicon Valley Bank values London-based Paddle at $1.4 billion. With this round, the startup has raised $293 million.

Paddle today works with more than 3,000 software customers in 200 markets, where it provides a platform for them to set up and sell their SaaS products in those regions, primarily in a B2B model. But with so many consumer services also sold these days in SaaS models, its ambitions include a significant expansion of that to areas like in-app payments.

Were been growing a lot in the last couple of years. We thought it would tail off [after the COVID-19 peak] but it didnt, said Christian Owens, the CEO and co-founder. Indeed that includes more videoconferencing use by everyday people, arranging Zoom dinner, but also the explosion of streamed media and other virtual consumer services. B2C software has over the years blurred with what is thought of as B2B. Suddenly everyone needed our B2B tools.

Payments has long been a complicated and fragmented business in the digital world: banking practices, preferred payment methods and regulations differ depending on the market in question, and each stage of taking and clearing payments typically involves piecing together a chain of providers. Paddle positions itself as a merchant of record that has built a set of services around the specific needs of businesses that sell software online, covering checkout, payment, subscription management, invoicing, international taxes and financial compliance processes.

Sold as a SaaS itself basic pricing is 5% + 50 cents per transaction Paddles premise follows the basic principle of so many other business tools: payments is typically not a core competency of, say, a video conferencing or security company (one of its customers is BlueJeans, now owned by Verizon, which used to own TechCrunch; another is Fortinet).

To be fair, there are dozens (maybe hundreds) of merchants of record in the market for payments services from PayPal and Stripe through to Amazon and many more no surprise since it is complicated and just about any businesses selling online will turn to these at some point to handle that flow. However, Paddle believes (and has proven) that there is a business to be made in bringing together the many complicated parts of providing a billing and payments service into a single product specifically tailored to software businesses. It does not disclose actual revenues or specific usage numbers, but notes that revenue growth (not necessarily revenue) has doubled over the last 18 months.

Paddle as a company name doesnt have a specific meaning.

Its not a reference to anything, just a name we liked, Owens who himself is a Thiel Fellow said. And that impulse to make decisions on a hunch that it could be catchy is something that seems to have followed him and the company for a while.

Image Credits: Paddle

He came to the idea of Paddle with Harrison Rose (currently chief strategy officer and credited with building its sales ethos), after the two tried their hands at a previous software business they founded when they were just 18, an experience that gave them a taste of one of the big challenges for startups of that kind.

You make your first $1 million-$2 million in revenue with a handful of employees, but gradually those businesses become $2-20 million in sales, and then $300 million, but the basic problems of running them dont go away, he said.

Billing and payments present a particularly thorny problem because of the different regulations and compliance requirements, and practices, that scaling software companies face across different jurisdictions. Paddle itself works with some half dozen major payment companies to enable localized transactions, and many more partners, to provide that as a seamless service for its customers (which arenot payment companies themselves).

You may recognize the name Paddle for having been in the news last autumn, when it took its observations on the challenges of payments to a new frontier: apps, and specifically in-app payments. It announced last October that it was building an alternative to Apples in-app payments service.

This was arrived at through much of the observational logic that started Paddle itself, as Owens describes it. Apple, as is well known, has been locked in a protracted dispute with a number of companies that sell apps through the app store, which have wanted to have more control over their billing (and to give Apple less of a cut of those proceeds). Owens said Paddle felt encouraged to build an alternative in the heat of that dispute, before it has even been resolved, based on the response from the market (and specifically developers and app publishers) to that public dispute and governments stance.

Its approach is not unlike Apples itself, ironically:

There is one thing Apple has done right, which is to build a full set of tools around commerce for these businesses, he said. But, he added, its failing has been in not giving customers a choice of when to use it, and how much to charge for it. There has to be an alternative to cover all that as well.

(Paddle plans to charge 10% for transactions under $10, and just 5% on transactions over $10, compared to Apples 30%, a spokesperson later told me.)

The product is built and ready to go, Owens said, adding that there are already 2,000 developers signed up, representing $2 billion in app store volume, ready to try it out. Due to launch in December, Paddle has held off as Apples case with Epic (one of the most outspoken critics of IAP) has dragged on.

And he said, found Paddles name included, and not in a good way, in an update to Apples complaint.

That bold attitude may indeed keep Paddle in Apples bad books, but has made it a hero to third-party developers.

Paddle is solving a significant pain point for thousands of SaaS companies by reducing the friction and costs associated with managing payments infrastructure and tax compliance, said Patrick Devine, a director at KKR, in a statement. By simplifying the payments stack, Paddle enables faster, more sustainable growth for SaaS businesses. Christian and the team have done a phenomenal job building a category-defining business in this space, and we are excited to be supporting them as they embark on the next phase of growth.

Paddle, the company that wants to take on Apple in IAP, raises $200M at a $1.4B valuation to supercharge SaaS payments - TechCrunch

Supporters of Black Lives Matters are more likely to have protest-related dreams, study finds – PsyPost

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Race, ethnicity, and culture all contribute to the dreams we have and how we interpret those dreams. Research published in Pastoral Psychology found that people who reported having dreams related to public protests on racial injustice were more likely to be Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement supporters, regardless of ethnicity.

Prompted by protests in the United States and other countries around the world in response to the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, this study has the goal of contributing to knowledge about dreams in relation to contemporary dynamics of race and ethnicity, wrote study authors Kelly Bulkeley and Michael Schredl.

Dreaming and race has been researched from historical, cultural, and psychological perspectives and has focused on the complex influence of race, ethnicity, and culture on what people dream and how they make sense of their dreams. For example, dream analyses done in the 1990s found that Black people were deeply engaged with transpersonal aspects of dreaming (visitations, prophecies, revelations), aspects that mainstream, mostly White American psychologists tend to ignore or dismiss. Other research has found that Black people tend to place higher value on dreams and what they mean compared to White people.

The study authors were interested in exploring the relationship between race, ethnicity, and dreaming about protests in todays political context. Specifically, they were interested in how support for the BLM movement related to protest related dream behaviors.

Researchers used data from an online survey of 4,947 American adults administered by YouGov, a public opinion research company. Respondents reported how often they remember their dreams (dream recall frequency) and how often they share their dreams with others (dream sharing). Respondents also reported whether they had recently had a dream related to the public protests concerning racial injustice. If they had, respondents were told to give a description of the dream. Respondents also gave measures of their political orientation and their level of support for the BLM movement.

About two thirds of respondents (64%) supported the BLM movement, which was also more frequent in liberal respondents. Black and Hispanic respondents were more likely to support BLM than White respondents. White and Black respondents had similar levels of dream recall, with Hispanic respondents having higher levels than both White and Black respondents. Hispanic respondents reported more dream sharing than White and Black respondents, but Black respondents reported more dream sharing than White respondents.

A portion of the sample (204 respondents, 4%) reported having dreams related to the racial injustice protests. Support for BLM was relevant. Those with higher levels of support for BLM were more likely to report a protest related dream. Higher education was also associated with reporting a protest related dream as was overall dream recall.

Overall, the findings indicate that the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and the events that followed did affect dreaming among Americans, mostly in a negative way, concluded the study authors.

The authors cite some limitations of this research. They acknowledge that they are both White, male academics and that their perspectives are inherently influenced by these characteristics. Another limitation is that perhaps the environment of the online survey was not conducive to a comfortable environment for dream sharing.

The racial and ethnic differences on [dream sharing] do not lend themselves to an easy explanation, but the differences should not overshadow the significant similarities: Remembering dreams and talking about them with other people is a common phenomenon among members of all racial and ethnic groups.

The authors conclude with implications for how these findings are relevant to caregiving. These findings encourage more attention by both religious and secular caregivers to the cultural dream traditions that actively shape and influence peoples dreaming experiences in response to contemporary challenges.

The study, Dreams, Race, and the Black Lives Matter Movement Results of a Survey of American Adults, was published January 11, 2022.

View original post here:

Supporters of Black Lives Matters are more likely to have protest-related dreams, study finds - PsyPost

Jury clears man of pulling a gun when confronted with Black Lives Matter crowd – The Union Leader

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Country

United States of AmericaUS Virgin IslandsUnited States Minor Outlying IslandsCanadaMexico, United Mexican StatesBahamas, Commonwealth of theCuba, Republic ofDominican RepublicHaiti, Republic ofJamaicaAfghanistanAlbania, People's Socialist Republic ofAlgeria, People's Democratic Republic ofAmerican SamoaAndorra, Principality ofAngola, Republic ofAnguillaAntarctica (the territory South of 60 deg S)Antigua and BarbudaArgentina, Argentine RepublicArmeniaArubaAustralia, Commonwealth ofAustria, Republic ofAzerbaijan, Republic ofBahrain, Kingdom ofBangladesh, People's Republic ofBarbadosBelarusBelgium, Kingdom ofBelizeBenin, People's Republic ofBermudaBhutan, Kingdom ofBolivia, Republic ofBosnia and HerzegovinaBotswana, Republic ofBouvet Island (Bouvetoya)Brazil, Federative Republic ofBritish Indian Ocean Territory (Chagos Archipelago)British Virgin IslandsBrunei DarussalamBulgaria, People's Republic ofBurkina FasoBurundi, Republic ofCambodia, Kingdom ofCameroon, United Republic ofCape Verde, Republic ofCayman IslandsCentral African RepublicChad, Republic ofChile, Republic ofChina, People's Republic ofChristmas IslandCocos (Keeling) IslandsColombia, Republic ofComoros, Union of theCongo, Democratic Republic ofCongo, People's Republic ofCook IslandsCosta Rica, Republic ofCote D'Ivoire, Ivory Coast, Republic of theCyprus, Republic ofCzech RepublicDenmark, Kingdom ofDjibouti, Republic ofDominica, Commonwealth ofEcuador, Republic ofEgypt, Arab Republic ofEl Salvador, Republic ofEquatorial Guinea, Republic ofEritreaEstoniaEthiopiaFaeroe IslandsFalkland Islands (Malvinas)Fiji, Republic of the Fiji IslandsFinland, Republic ofFrance, French RepublicFrench GuianaFrench PolynesiaFrench Southern TerritoriesGabon, Gabonese RepublicGambia, Republic of theGeorgiaGermanyGhana, Republic ofGibraltarGreece, Hellenic RepublicGreenlandGrenadaGuadaloupeGuamGuatemala, Republic ofGuinea, RevolutionaryPeople's Rep'c ofGuinea-Bissau, Republic ofGuyana, Republic ofHeard and McDonald IslandsHoly See (Vatican City State)Honduras, Republic ofHong Kong, Special Administrative Region of ChinaHrvatska (Croatia)Hungary, Hungarian People's RepublicIceland, Republic ofIndia, Republic ofIndonesia, Republic ofIran, Islamic Republic ofIraq, Republic ofIrelandIsrael, State ofItaly, Italian RepublicJapanJordan, Hashemite Kingdom ofKazakhstan, Republic ofKenya, Republic ofKiribati, Republic ofKorea, Democratic People's Republic ofKorea, Republic ofKuwait, State ofKyrgyz RepublicLao People's Democratic RepublicLatviaLebanon, Lebanese RepublicLesotho, Kingdom ofLiberia, Republic ofLibyan Arab JamahiriyaLiechtenstein, Principality ofLithuaniaLuxembourg, Grand Duchy ofMacao, Special Administrative Region of ChinaMacedonia, the former Yugoslav Republic ofMadagascar, Republic ofMalawi, Republic ofMalaysiaMaldives, Republic ofMali, Republic ofMalta, Republic ofMarshall IslandsMartiniqueMauritania, Islamic Republic ofMauritiusMayotteMicronesia, Federated States ofMoldova, Republic ofMonaco, Principality ofMongolia, Mongolian People's RepublicMontserratMorocco, Kingdom ofMozambique, People's Republic ofMyanmarNamibiaNauru, Republic ofNepal, Kingdom ofNetherlands AntillesNetherlands, Kingdom of theNew CaledoniaNew ZealandNicaragua, Republic ofNiger, Republic of theNigeria, Federal Republic ofNiue, Republic ofNorfolk IslandNorthern Mariana IslandsNorway, Kingdom ofOman, Sultanate ofPakistan, Islamic Republic ofPalauPalestinian Territory, OccupiedPanama, Republic ofPapua New GuineaParaguay, Republic ofPeru, Republic ofPhilippines, Republic of thePitcairn IslandPoland, Polish People's RepublicPortugal, Portuguese RepublicPuerto RicoQatar, State ofReunionRomania, Socialist Republic ofRussian FederationRwanda, Rwandese RepublicSamoa, Independent State ofSan Marino, Republic ofSao Tome and Principe, Democratic Republic ofSaudi Arabia, Kingdom ofSenegal, Republic ofSerbia and MontenegroSeychelles, Republic ofSierra Leone, Republic ofSingapore, Republic ofSlovakia (Slovak Republic)SloveniaSolomon IslandsSomalia, Somali RepublicSouth Africa, Republic ofSouth Georgia and the South Sandwich IslandsSpain, Spanish StateSri Lanka, Democratic Socialist Republic ofSt. HelenaSt. Kitts and NevisSt. LuciaSt. Pierre and MiquelonSt. Vincent and the GrenadinesSudan, Democratic Republic of theSuriname, Republic ofSvalbard & Jan Mayen IslandsSwaziland, Kingdom ofSweden, Kingdom ofSwitzerland, Swiss ConfederationSyrian Arab RepublicTaiwan, Province of ChinaTajikistanTanzania, United Republic ofThailand, Kingdom ofTimor-Leste, Democratic Republic ofTogo, Togolese RepublicTokelau (Tokelau Islands)Tonga, Kingdom ofTrinidad and Tobago, Republic ofTunisia, Republic ofTurkey, Republic ofTurkmenistanTurks and Caicos IslandsTuvaluUganda, Republic ofUkraineUnited Arab EmiratesUnited Kingdom of Great Britain & N. IrelandUruguay, Eastern Republic ofUzbekistanVanuatuVenezuela, Bolivarian Republic ofViet Nam, Socialist Republic ofWallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambia, Republic ofZimbabwe

Go here to see the original:

Jury clears man of pulling a gun when confronted with Black Lives Matter crowd - The Union Leader

Is fashion facing up to the diversity challenge? – Drapers

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

The shocking murder of unarmed African-American man George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020 sparked global anti-racism protests and led to a groundswell of support for the Black Lives Matter movement. The fallout exposed the extent of racist discrimination, not only in the US but across the world, and in every industry including fashion.

A period of long-overdue introspection ensued, during which the leaders of many fashion retailers and brands around the world vowed to address racism and promote greater diversity and inclusion within their businesses, and contribute to meaningful change across the industry as a whole.

Two years on, we speak to a mix of professionals including black owners of fashion brands, CEOs and diversity leads at large high street retailers, and, for an overview, the CEO of the British Fashion Council to find out what has changed, and what still needs to be done.

Leona Smith Diversity and inclusion lead, John Lewis Partnership

The tragic death of George Floyd led to an abrupt awakening a new state of awareness of what it means to be black. As a black woman, I felt that change personally. There is a new sense of freedom to speak candidly and unapologeticallyabout the black experience.

Within the John Lewis Partnership we have taken time to look at ourselves, and have difficult conversations about what we need to do to reach our ambition to become the UKs most inclusive business my role and team was created in May 2021 as part of this.

We have looked at every avenue to see where should improve. We started with creating more ways for black partners to share their experiences. Then, with some other partners, I made a film called Its Not OK, which highlights some of the micro-aggressions faced by our black and ethnic minority partners. The film was shown internally and on social media channels.

We ensure our Black Partner Advisory Group, set up in 2020, is involved in the creation of new propositions, policies and processes. Were reviewing our recruitment processes to try to remove bias, and were creating a programme to support ethnic minority partners with their career progression. And were connecting with more black businesses to make our product ranges more inclusive.

We all need to continue having uncomfortable conversations and challenging our biases.

Olivia Overton Womenswear designer, AllSaints

AllSaints has always taken diversity and inclusion seriously, but the Black Lives Matter movement has been a catalyst for us to do even more. One of the changes has been the way we listen to and learn from our employees around the world. In the summer of 2020, I set up a diversity and inclusion working group, and an anti-racism platform for AllSaints colleagues.

We aim to share resources, have open conversations and be educated by each other. Through these channels we have been able to take actions and ensure everyones voice is heard for example, we have monthly staff forums, and employee reference groups, including our anti-racism and LGBTQ+ communities attended by a director to feed back to leadership and a working parents group. Q&A sessions are run by employees to tackle awkward issues such as how do I address a micro-aggression? We provide spaces, support, time and resources, and listen to ensure all employees can contribute to our diversity agenda.

In the wider fashion industry, there is a sense of increasing accountability. A growing number of brands are being pulled up over matters of cultural appropriation and representation. There are some leading black creatives shaping our industry, such as [editor-in-chief of British Vogue] Edward Enninful, [fashion designer] Tolu Coker and [actor/director] Kelechi Okafor.

I hope this continues.

However, there is still much to do to ensure black and minority talent is represented at all levels, rather than only in certain roles. I want more brands to ensure barriers are dismantled, and the industry is made more accessible. Brands should use their platforms to collaborate with black influencers.There is so much talent out there.

Foday Dumbuya Creative director, Labrum

The Black Lives Matter movement was a monumental moment. I was alongside the likes of [actor] John Boyega at the march in London [in 2020], he gave an incredible speech and really spoke of the emotion that is felt by us black people in this country and around the world. He also inspired me to stand up to what I believe to be true, and to fight for freedom.

With Labrum, I had been working on sharing the untold stories of West Africa for some time, and Black Lives Matter suddenly put a lot of eyes on us. People were open to learning about black history in a way that is not typically presented by the media and certainly not taught in schools.

In the aftermath, a lot of big brands jumped on board to support the movement and posted promises to be better. Its interesting to see who has come through on those.

I would like more funding for educational programmes and community development, and support for black-owned businesses. And hire more black people in senior management positions to address the gap with their white counterparts.

Steve Rowe CEO, Marks & Spencer

One of the most immediate responses to the murder of George Floyd was colleagues coming forward many directly to me to share their own personal experiences and determination to drive positive change as a result of this atrocity. Very quickly, I gained a heightened knowledge of the issues facing many of our black colleagues. For me, that was a moment of real reflection as a leader, considering what I had and hadnt done to surface and address these issues over the years.

We took an honest look at our approach to diversity and inclusion, and identified where we could go further, from recruitment and training to our products and the charities we work with. This led us to support the 10,000 Black Interns initiative, which tackles the massive under-representation of black talent in every sector [M&S aims to create 2,000 internships a year to hit the target by 2027].

Being an inclusive business also means looking at what and how we sell to our customers. Our products need to truly reflect the diverse communities we serve and over the last year we have taken steps to address some of the shortfalls in our offer. For example, our lingerie team worked closely with our [internal] culture and heritage network to redefine neutral underwear, introducing a broader range available in five shades. We also expanded our beauty range so that our Autograph foundation now comes in 30 colour options.

We know there is much more to be done. We need to continue to educate ourselves and learn from each other and change starts at the top.We are working towards having 50% women and 15% ethnic minority colleagues in senior management roles, but lack of representation is an issue the entire industry needs to be honest about. We need to work together to attract, support and develop diverse talent to deliver lasting change.

Rene Macdonald founder, Lisou

One of the positives of the pandemic, especially in 2020, was that the world was under lockdown, so it was easier to focus on pressing issues. There was an absence of the usual level of noise, so it was easier to catch peoples attention and let them know the severity of the situation black people find themselves in.

Some retailers have now ringfenced a budget for [brands owned by] black and other ethnic minorities, which although a little late in the day is a welcome change. It has also been encouraging that those within the fashion industry have been made aware of the unjust system black designers find themselves in, especially black female entrepreneurs.

This is not a temporary worthy cause. We should all be entitled to equal opportunity. Doors must be flung open for all of us and the glass ceiling set for black designers must be eradicated. It is essential that we remember the lessons learned from [the death of] George Floyd and how long this journey to equality has been, and it is shameful that [racism] still exists. While Im a realist, I am ever hopeful that this is just the start.

Caroline Rush CEO, British Fashion Council

What the last two years made clear is that there were serious shortcomings and room for improvement in terms of diversity and inclusion within the fashion industry. These were very much brought to the forefront following the death of George Floyd, when outrage brought overwhelming evidence through personal narratives of racism and barriers to entry.

Many brands rightfully prioritised diversity within their campaigns and their external communications, but creating change with representation within head offices takes longer because of employment contracts. The industry realised that it needs to break down entry barriers that were in place for far too long, and that brands must include diversity and inclusion within their wider strategies, businesses and HR practices.

As an organisation that represents the British fashion industry, we had to act. This is why we appointed new directors, including [television presenter] June Sarpong, [brand expert] Scott Morrison and [Roksanda CEO] Jamie Gill; we reviewed all of our programmes, from scholarships, talent support initiatives and fashion weeks to ensure all programmes are fair and equitable for all; and developed initiatives to give all employees the opportunity to be part of the conversation.

In 2020 we set up a Diversity and Inclusion Steering Committee made up of industry representatives to address challenges faced by different communities within the fashion industry. The committee works as part of our Institute of Positive Fashion to set the bar for accountability and best practice for all fashion businesses. Its priorities include stamping out racism and addressing the specific challenges each minority community faces within the fashion industry, across four work streams: education; business policy; talent identification and mentoring; and communications.

We are also taking part in the BBCs 50:50 Equality Project [Drapers is also a partner] a voluntary monitoring system that allows us to better understand the make-up of those working at London Fashion Week, both front and backstage. Later this year, we will publish a report on the C-level within the fashion industry led by [executive recruiter] MBS Group, that will kickstart work around benchmarking, and creating a more diverse and inclusive culture. It is critical that we ensure changes in attitudes and priorities continue to be translated into meaningful action. As an industry, its important that we continue to work to build a system we are proud of.

See the article here:

Is fashion facing up to the diversity challenge? - Drapers

Estimated Mask Use and Temporal Relationship to COVID-19 Epidemiology of Black Lives Matter Protests in 12 Cities – DocWire News

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

This article was originally published here

J Racial Ethn Health Disparities. 2022 May 11. doi: 10.1007/s40615-022-01308-4. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

There is an increased risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission during mass gatherings and a risk of asymptomatic infection. We aimed to estimate the use of masks during Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and whether these protests increased the risk of COVID-19. Two reviewers screened 496 protest images for mask use, with high inter-rater reliability. Protest intensity, use of tear gas, government control measures, and testing rates were estimated in 12 cities. A correlation analysis was conducted to assess the potential effect of mask use and other measures, adjusting for testing rates, on COVID-19 epidemiology 4 weeks (two incubation periods) post-protests. Mask use ranged from 69 to 96% across protests. There was no increase in the incidence of COVID-19 post-protest in 11 cities. After adjusting for testing rates, only Miami, which involved use of tear gas and had high protest intensity, showed a clear increase in COVID-19 after one incubation period post-protest. No significant correlation was found between incidence and protest factors. Our study showed that protests in most cities studied did not increase COVID-19 incidence in 2020, and a high level of mask use was seen. The absence of an epidemic surge within two incubation periods of a protest is indicative that the protests did not have a major influence on epidemic activity, except in Miami. With the globally circulating highly transmissible Alpha, Delta, and Omicron variants, layered interventions such as mandated mask use, physical distancing, testing, and vaccination should be applied for mass gatherings in the future.

PMID:35543865 | DOI:10.1007/s40615-022-01308-4

Visit link:

Estimated Mask Use and Temporal Relationship to COVID-19 Epidemiology of Black Lives Matter Protests in 12 Cities - DocWire News

How to leverage the power of no-code security automation – Fast Company

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Having been a security practitioner and head of security teams for over 15 years, I know how crucial it is for your frontline analysts to devote their time to high-impact tasks that can evolve the security stance of your organizationand how frustrating it can be to see them spending most of their time manually reviewing phishing responses, doing tedious log analysis, or performing other low-value tasks.

When no-code automation is properly utilized, your security operations team can have all the benefits of expansive, complex automation without ever having to involve a developer or learn code themselves. Analysts can simply drag-and-drop actions to automate complex workflows.

Based on my experience at the forefront of no-code automation, heres how you can maximize its potential for your team.

What is no-code automation?

Todays frontline security teams need automation to handle complex workflows and organization-specific requirements, often resulting in the need to introduce coding and scripting to solve those needs.

Security analysts, however, dont necessarily have coding skills, requiring them to call in developers who can take weeks or months to create integrations and deploy automations. If an analyst needs an update or addition, they need to get developers involved all over again.

And dont even get me started on the change management process this can involve.

With no-code automation, analysts are able to simply drag-and-drop actions into a workflow, wire them together, set the parameters, test it, and set it loose.

HOW TO LEVERAGE THE POWER OF NO-CODE SECURITY AUTOMATION

Improve time to value.

If youve invested in no-code automation, start by reducing project management needs, communication burdens, unnecessary feedback loops, and other extra steps that can be collapsed with automated workflows. Keep in mind that businesses are getting hit by a cyber attack every 11 seconds, so dont forget to prioritize increasing speed within the SOC.

Improve retention.

Our recent report on the voice of the SOC analyst found that 71% of analysts feel very or somewhat burned out at work, and the number one most frustrating aspect of the job is spending time on manual work.

No one wants to do work thats boring and menial, and analysts who burn out simply leave their jobs. If youve invested in no-code automation, you should use it to automate low-level tasks so security practitioners can focus on what theyre really good at: increasing the security posture of their organization, deploying new technology, improving awareness training, and other high-impact, high-value work.

Reduce the number of mistakes.

Mundane work isnt just bad for humanshumans are bad at it, too. Hours of menial, repetitive work increases the likelihood of error.

One study found that upwards of 49% of human error at work is due to stress, repetition, or fatigue. Automated workflows function deterministically and consistently, reducing false positives and false negatives. No-code automation also reduces error because the analysts who know the workflows the best are the ones actually building the automation.

Create an automation flywheel.

Keep an open mind when it comes to what you can automate. For example, a team member may build a Slack-based chatbot that automates aspects of team process and collaboration, not just the threat intelligence workflow.

In other words, an automation process an analyst builds for a specific purpose might have other applications beyond what they were thinking of when they created it.

Ive discovered that many times, security teams using no-code automation say, Could we do this? and simply build the new workflow, allowing for easier innovation and quicker application.

Improve incident readiness.

Finally, you probably already know that when an incident occurs, every second counts enormously. Thats why its important to get the most critical automations in place as soon as possible so your team is free to turn their attention to the incident. Your automation can help by collecting information and context about that incident in seconds and alerting a human when more critical decision-making is necessary.

Founder atTines, a platform that allows anyone to automate repetitive security workflows without writing a single line of code.

Read this article:

How to leverage the power of no-code security automation - Fast Company

A robot promoted me: the future of automation – BCS

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Analysts were predicting that an army of software robots would displace large swathes of white collar workers as far back as 2010. Now, automation technology has come of age and offers enterprise-grade scalability and security.

There is no denying that the adoption of both AI and automation is already happening - but its the speed of that change that has caused consternation. Large scale service sectors have largely relied on human workers - but the COVID crisis has highlighted that over reliance on people incurs a high risk to business resilience, should they become unavailable.

People-focused delivery models inhibit scalability and constrain enterprises from pivoting quickly to major social and economic events. For that reason, enterprises are struggling to keep pace. As technology marches forward, business models must change or they will fall behind. The economic union and the movement of workers across borders supported growth during the old system - but as we move forward into post-Brexit, post-COVID, the business model will need to change.

The last couple of decades have seen the UK send work abroad to take advantage of developing countries with advanced talent pools, who are comparatively low cost when compared to their British counterparts. As the range and scale of work changes, the future looks to the widespread bot-shoring of roles to automation, i.e. An industrial scale automation that will systematically replace back office workers with software bots.

Industry analysts and platform vendors have been predicting for some time that 30%-50% of the existing process landscape will be automated. While analysts cant agree on the timeframe, the consensus seems to suggest 30% by 2030. Early adopter enterprises have seen attractive proof points now coupled with real world successes. During the early stages of the pandemic in 2019, Amazon was able to hire 100,000 employees in four weeks using automation. Automated business process discovery tools are making it easier than ever before to find automation targets and reduce build effort by up to 50% for vendors with full lifecycle automation capabilities.

When science fiction presents a future where the robot army takes over every aspect of work (and eventually society itself) one thing is overlooked - it is not feasible to automate 100% of a process.

Processes with low variance and therefore low complexity can be automated easily. However, where there are complex decisions that require higher degrees of judgement, these processes are more challenging to automate and often require a 'human in the loop' to make an adjudication decision.

Enterprises must plan on retaining sufficiently skilled workers to handle process exceptions or make decisions on circa 20% to 40% of cases. Therefore, 20%-40% of an automated process will still require exception handling.

The new reality of hybrid working is less about wfh vs office and more about a future hybrid working model, where physical workers work alongside their virtual worker colleagues. Tedious, repetitive work that people are shunning in the great resignation will be replaced by robotic assistants who will work quickly, at scale, without bias and give the human back the time they need to make decisions and enjoy a better work balance.

One example Cameron gives is a simple fuel expenses report: in the same way you use a macro to record a process and automate, I can show a virtual worker how to do my mileage and expenses claim. It might need a bit of configuration, but then in the future, the digital assistant will do it for me. And you may wonder, why bother when you only save yourself 15 minutes a week? But if you do that with four or five other tasks, youre saving an hour. Then, if you roll that our across your workforce - suddenly, thousands of hours are being saved.

One of the barriers to adoption - fear of losing jobs - can prevent some people from accepting automation enabled change. However, when theyve experienced what a robotic worker can do for them, many workers are eager to not only embrace hybrid working, but seek out more opportunities to automate.

When people start to see the benefits - how they could, say, clear a backlog of six weeks in just a few hours - then they start to be engaged and motivated to seek out more changes.

Robots are not going to make the workforce redundant. In the main, virtual workers will not result in large swathes of the workforce being made obsolete. Enterprises are rejecting the same mess for less in favour of automated enabled growth models that shift people from transactional work to growth and transformation activities.

View post:

A robot promoted me: the future of automation - BCS

Nintex named a Leader in Workflow and Content Automation – IT Brief Australia

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Aragon Research has named Nintex a Leader in Workflow and Content Automation (WCA) for its consistent product innovation and market leadership.

The companys latest vendor evaluation report, The Aragon Research Globe, reviewed 13 leading software providers renowned for innovating the automating of content and, as a result, digital transformation.

Aragon reports that productivity can be fostered when the process for creating and routing documents that are part of contracts and onboarding is semi- or fully-automated.

Modern WCA software also offers organisations the benefits of automated process documentation intelligence that doesnt need to rely on human intervention.

Transforming the way people work, whether from home or the office, is just as critical today as it was at the start of the pandemic, Nintex CEO Eric Johnson says.

Nintex is honoured to be named a Leader by Aragon Research, and our ongoing commitment is to help Nintex customers and partners turn manual, paper-based and repetitive processes into fully digital experiences with our easy-to-use, intelligent automation platform.

Nintex Process Platform allows commercial enterprises and government agencies to design and deploy streamlined digital processes.

The company says this generates greater employee, customer and partner experiences.

Further, it has over 10,000 organisations and hundreds of partners globally using its platform to automate work and maintain a competitive advantage.

As a leader in The Aragon Research Globe for Workflow and Content Automation 2022, Nintex is well positioned to sustain its growth trajectory and power a new generation of enterprise applications that completely automate old forms-based processes, Aragon Research lead analyst Jim Lundy says.

Now with nearly $300 million in annual revenue, Nintex continues to add solutions and capabilities into its suite of process intelligence and automation tools that Center of Excellence (COE) groups need to consider.

The report also acknowledged Nintex as an innovative software vendor that has helped to pioneer a no-code/low-code approach to both content and process automation, as well as the discovery and mapping of processes.

Aragon also cited Nintexs recent acquisitions of AssureSign and Kryon Systems, noting that the company is moving forward in the RPA space.

Nintex Workflow Cloud, the companys cloud automation platform, offers the following process management and automation capabilities:

Nintex also recently fast-tracked process automation across commercial enterprises and government agencies by adding over 50 new process templates to its online Nintex Gallery.

The online Nintex Gallery is an interactive portal containing downloadable process maps, automation templates, workflows, and connectors to accelerate digitising work for companies worldwide.

Read the original here:

Nintex named a Leader in Workflow and Content Automation - IT Brief Australia

VA Increased FOIA Processing Thanks to Automation – GovernmentCIO Media & Research

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

The agency is using capacities like RPA to expedite FOIA review, decreasing the time between request and document release.

Over the past two years, federal agencies have been inundated with requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) the law thatenables citizens to directly engage with government by requesting access to certain files and records. Pandemic-related challenges exacerbated agency FOIA teams working to process those requests under changing circumstances and working environments.

With the presidential administration's call for agencies to improve service delivery and rebuild trust in government, improving processing times for FOIA requests is one way to ensure agencies are continuing to meet their obligation to the legislation.

As the largest of the federal civilian agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs has one of the most active FOIA departments. Requests from the public have included a multitude of different areas benefits claims, medical records, grant awards, emails, meeting notes and more.

In fiscal year 2021, the agency received more FOIA requests than it did in fiscal year 2019 from 21,336 to 27,762. From a preliminary glance at the full list of these requests, one can see many of the requests received in 2021 pertained to things like COVID debt relief data, vaccination rates and other matters that were pertinent to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

The amount of requests it was able to process dipped in fiscal 2020. This is in part due to the disruption in working location, the need for increased remote access to systems and the influx of paper mail. Plus, like many U.S. hospitals, the agency had to handle unprecedented numbers of patients sick with COVID-19 and stand up a nationwide vaccination effort quickly.

The number of requests the agency processed, however, rose again in fiscal 2021 and surpassed the amount processed before the pandemic. Part of this is thanks to its FOIA office introducing more automationinto its workflows.

With FOIA processing, we look for opportunities to not only reduce our FOIA backlog, but also provide timely records and responses to our FOIA requesters. Requests for records quite often have a finite time that they are useful to the requester; we recognize that and have actively worked to reduce our backlog through gained efficiencies, some of which is done through automation, said Stacy Ekis, FOIA officer at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).

Many of these opportunities hinge on reducing work that would be redundant for FOIA officers to undertake, particularly repetitive or burdensome tasks that would be a distraction from the critical work of adjudication.

One such automated process we use is called 'deduping' in other words, removing duplicate records. Its not an efficient use of time for the FOIA officer to process the same pages over and over again, nor does anyone want to receive numerous copies of the same documents. Reducing duplicates cuts down on FOIA processing time and costs, Ekis said.

Another critical application of automation within VAs FOIA process has been through tools that automatically redact personally identifying information like social security numbers, a task that would otherwise require officers to manually review entire documents.

We also utilize technology to find keywords in records that need to be redacted and to identity records that are responsive to a FOIA request. A FOIA officer manually removing the same social security number 20 times is not efficient. We actively look for ways to utilize our software capabilities to their maximum potential, Ekis said.

These efficiencies have reduced the amount of time VA FOIA officers would otherwise dedicate to repetitive tasks, decreasing the agencys longstanding backlog and expediting the delivery of newly requested documents while saving on operational costs and increasing workforce efficiency.

Going forward, the agency is open to sharing new applications with other agencies that oversee major FOIA programs, as well as integrating the lessons from other wings of the federal government that have begun to explore automating their FOIA process.

We are an active part of the Chief FOIA Officer Council (CFOC) Technology Subcommittee and also engage with NARA and [Department of Jusice]. These entities are on the forefront of ensuring that the FOIA technology is able to meet the ever-evolving types of records and needs of our FOIA requesters. Technology makes the world go round, and within VA we also work hand-in-hand with the VAs Office of Information and Technology as well as the VA FOIA Service to ensure we have the latest technology and proactively address any technical limitations. We view our collaborations as an opportunity to continue learning and growing with an eye on continued improvement, Ekis said.

View post:

VA Increased FOIA Processing Thanks to Automation - GovernmentCIO Media & Research

UiPath CEO Daniel Dines thinks automation can fight the great resignation – The Verge

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Daniel Dines is the founder and CEO of UiPath, one of the biggest automation companies around. UiPath sells software automation or what consultants call robotic process automation, or RPA, so they can sound fancy and charge higher fees.

RPA is actually very simple to understand. Lets say you have something in your business that relies on older software to do some repetitive task like entering billing information or moving data from one system to another. Now, the intuitive way most of us would think about making all that more efficient would be to upgrade or replace that old software with something with more capabilities. But, as weve all learned by now, new software often causes more problems than it solves; there are compatibility issues, stability issues, and the general chaos of rolling it out and making sure it all works.

UiPath and other software automation companies have a different approach: just hire another computer to use software for you. Seriously. UiPath uses computer vision to look at whats on a screen, and then it uses a virtual mouse and keyboard to click around and do things in apps like Excel and Salesforce. The automations can be mundane, like generating lists of people to contact from public records, or intensely complicated: UiPath can actually monitor how different software is used throughout a company and suggest automations. Huge companies like Uber, Facebook, Spotify, and Google all use UiPath.

Last year, I talked a lot about the social consequences of automation with New York Times reporter Kevin Roose hed just published a book on automation and the workforce. But I was really excited to talk to Daniel about it directly and hear his perspective on competition in particular, especially because UiPath has had a pretty up and down year.

The company went public almost exactly a year ago in one of the biggest software IPOs ever. Since then, the stock has taken a nosedive. (It IPOd at $74.84 a share, but at the time Im recording this, its just $16.34.) I wanted to ask Daniel how UiPath was built for this moment, how mainstream he thinks automation like this can be, and how hes thinking about big competitors like Microsoft and Salesforce.

Of course, we also talked about those social impacts. Daniel had some pretty interesting responses to those questions. He thinks giving boring work to robots instead of people makes the people much happier and might keep them from looking for new work. Daniel tells the story of a company seeing upwards of 40 percent attrition. They eventually turned to UiPath to give their people a lighter workload to hopefully make them like their existing job more and keep them from quitting. We often worry about automation taking jobs away, but its interesting to hear Daniel talk about how automation might help companies retain their employees.

Daniel Dines, founder and CEO of UiPath. Here we go.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Daniel Dines is the founder and CEO of UiPath. Welcome to Decoder.

Thank you so much for having me, Nilay.

I have been excited to talk to you for a long time. Robotic process automation is one of my favorite subjects, and you are the guy to talk about it with. It is almost exactly the one-year anniversary of UiPath going public as one of the biggest US software IPOs in history, at $1.3 billion last April. I think its important to dig into software automation, which has the potential to reshape how everyone works. I want to talk to you about what the last year has been like, and where UiPath as a company goes from here as the market reacts to automation existing. I think one of the big challenges for UiPath and for everyone else is that robots are going to become a class of users right alongside people. Lets start at the beginning. What is UiPath, and how did you end up starting it?

Well, we are an enterprise software company that specializes in enterprise automation, using a very different flavor to automating business processes compared to any other technologies. We simply emulate human users. Its more like the self-driving car version of the automation, and that has the tremendous advantage that it reuses the existing workflow operations that are proven in enterprise. We just code them into a software workflow, so it considerably speeds up the process. Its more cost-effective than any other type of automation, and it proves that its the only technology that can scale for the long tail of manual processes.

I just want to unpack what it means to emulate a human user. Correct me if Im wrong, but in the world of enterprise software, there is a tendency to dress up simple ideas into language for CIOs and finance people. When you mean emulate human users, you mean your software uses a mouse and keyboard to use other peoples software.

Yes, thats very well said.

Okay. I just want to be clear. You have a robot that moves a mouse around a screen and clicks on things in Microsoft Word or wherever.

Yes, but its not a physical robot. We do not use a physical mouse and a physical keyboard; we use an emulation of mouse and keyboard on a computer. Its virtual. You can move the mouse on the screen without physically moving the mouse. This is technology that any computer provides. We are within the computer, but we are seeing the screen and we are operating like a human user.

So again, just to make this as dumb as possible and as accessible to many people: You have an application that emulates a mouse, a keyboard, and a display, that can see whatever application is on a screen whether its Salesforce or Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop and you write automations there to operate that software.

Yes. If you want to send an email to someone, you would open your email client, start a new email, enter the title, subject, to whom, and then type what you want to say and press send. We can code this workflow in our software, and you can literally see on the screen how the email client opens and these actions are replicated to send the mail.

There are enormous implications for how all this works, but this is actually a pretty simple, easy-to-understand idea for how you might automate software. How did you come up with it? What was the genesis of this idea? How did you end up starting this huge company?

The idea is old, but it has not been used to automate business processes; it comes more from the world of testing. As a software engineer, you have to test your applications, then many people use this technique which is called regression testing to simply emulate a user doing this. That is where the idea came from.

Initially, I really didnt understand how big the market would be because I was naive. I was thinking that all these manual processes did not exist in big enterprises, and that they had already been automated by various other technologies. We thought this was a small use case more in IT automation, ITSM [information technology service management] type of use cases initially.

In order to unlock this idea of emulating people, we built a low-code/no-code environment because this was key to what we were doing. We reduced the technical skills required to build end-to-end process automation for people that have some kind of knowledge about programming but are not experts. Paired with this approach, we saw our first big usage in the BPO industry, business process outsourcing. When we saw this market for the first time in 2014 or 2015, they were under big pressure to continuously deliver more benefits to their clients year over year. They squeezed everything they could from the process optimization, using techniques like Lean, Six Sigma, or similar. Back then, automation was the only way to get more and to reduce the cost of their offering.

They started to use this type of technology, and very soon, their clients got wind of it. Oh, this is something very interesting that can give us back the leverage in the relationship with outsourcers. People realized what a huge return on investment it generates. And by our knowledge, this is the highest return on investment technology that exists. We are currently seeing people that invest $200,000 and generate $5 million in return; we have companies that invest $10 million and generate to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in return on investment.

Let me ask you about that real quick, because I have always wanted to dive into that specific return on investment. You are saying that a business process outsourcer, a BPO, is your external accounting firm or your tax provider; they are someone on the outside who is running some back office function such as accounting, billing, or invoicing that needs to be done to run a business. You sell to them because automating some of that work is the easiest way for them to increase their margins, lower their costs, provide more services, and get rid of their warehouses full of accountants. This work comes into a company because they see it happening and that they can generate a $500,000 investment for millions of dollars in return. Are they generating more revenue, or are they cutting costs to generate that return?

Well, I think its both. Let me explain the journey in an enterprise, because that will make you realize how the flywheel of automation works. We land into a department like finance, HR, or procurement and lets say we help them build a center of excellence. They have a certain number of KPIs about their automation program they use to measure the results. The most important one for us is the number of manual hours that we return to the business. We need to have someone like a controller or CFO in that suite that signs for these KPIs, which are strictly measured. Once the program is put into place and this unit returns the manual hours, its very usual that the controller will go back to them and say, I want to invest more in this. This is the technology that generates so much for me.

The cost is reduced because you can deploy people from low-level tasks to higher tasks; they can produce more and actually increase your revenue in the company. For example, if we talk to one of our big telco customers that has a negative NPS [net promoter score], for instance, we help in their contact center.

They all do. Every telco customer has a negative net promoter score its how much people talk about how much they like your company.

If we help their agents to engage the customer more and help their NPS grow, its actually a good way to increase the revenue for providing better services. So its both.

I want to come back to the very simple idea of what the core product does to help these service reps. If you are a telco customer service rep, you use some piece of internal customer management software every day that may keep you from interacting with customers because its bad, hard to use, or slow. I am sure anybody who has called a customer service agent has experienced frustration with this. It implies, Instead of fixing that software, just hire us to have our robots use it for you, and then your people will have more free time.

Well, its not instead.

Okay.

Its in parallel. What is the alternative?

I would say fixing the software is the alternative.

Yes, but I am saying to do that in parallel. That is very interesting. I had exactly the same discussion with a very big bank in the UK, and they said, We are going to change all our legacy software and contact center. We will standardize on Salesforce or Service Cloud CRM. I asked them how long this project would take maybe three years in total and if it could be replaced in one single step. It is impossible because its not only two systems the agent has to integrate and replace, but 20. If we start placing our automation layer on top of the old system, we make the job of the agent simpler. They will only interact with our software, while we abstract the underlying systems.

Then IT can go and replace those systems at their pace with better testing and better results than just doing it in one step. The CIO of that bank agreed with me and this is what they put in place. All software will continue to be replaced by new software; this is how the industry works. I think its important to point out that our customers are not only very mature businesses that have been through the mainframe era. We also have a new breed of software companies that are only cloud-based as our customers. I can tell you that Snowflake, CrowdStrike, Uber, Spotify, Facebook, Google are our customers, and they dont have legacy software. You know why? They are using us because this approach of emulating people is the only one that works at scale.

I agree with you. I dont think large-scale enterprise software transitions are easy for anyone. I do think one of the interesting components of this is a recognition that people have to use software, and that software might actually be the bottleneck, even though the software is the job.

If my job is to use Excel all day long, a recognition that Excel is the bottleneck is a mind-expanding idea, compared to any of the other bottlenecks you might face in a job, like, Im waiting for someone or, The order hasnt come in. I dont think many people consider, Your job involves repetitive use of software and the software gets in your way.

Software is a tool, Nilay. It can be a better tool, or it can be a shitty tool. If you look at the best-crafted software lets say ERP [enterprise research software] systems, which have been around for 30 years they have a lot of pre-coded processes. They come with the way you should run your business, but cannot include all the interactions between different external systems. You live in an ecosystem, and there will never be one single piece of software that does everything for an enterprise; nobody can put all the optimizations in one single instance.

Companies like SAP are pure examples. You cannot really do a fully automated enterprise on their instance, and people are reluctant to even code into their ERP systems. It is dangerous to record something into the core system every time there is a change to a process, so people dont do this. There is always another layer that sits on top the automation layer. It is easier, cheaper, and less disruptive to the business to put your automations, your operations, on this layer rather than into the core systems.

What do you think the limits of automation are right now?

I think the limits in technology are more around natural language processing. If a process that needs automation requires understanding a lot of natural language to accomplish, it is more difficult to automate. Anything that is repetitive in nature, even if you require intelligence in the process, like reading documents or invoices we can handle. But the moment you need to get to higher cognitive tasks, that is the limit.

A concept that we call humans in the loop is actually embedded in our software, so you can do a big process that involves multiple users and hundreds of tasks. We basically organize tasks like that like a big game of ping-pong between humans and robots. If you send an email or text to one of our robots asking for something and we cannot understand the intent, we parse the request as much as we can. If we completely understand those requests, we go and automate them. If we do not understand them, we will create a test for a human user and they will give us a more structured format. Then that request is passed back to the robots and so on. This is how it goes. Like a game of ping-pong. Back and forth, human to robot to human to robot.

We remove the mundane tasks from peoples daily work while they deal mostly with the exceptions. That makes the job much more enjoyable and the output of the people working in operations higher.

One thing I am really curious about is software products. They are made for their users, right? The product managers of any software product think about who is using the software, and then they write features for that person or they write user stories about that person. Have you seen any software adapt itself to UiPath now that a core user base is robots? That seems like the craziest feedback loop of all time.

Im not sure I get it. You mean that users will be adapted to how the robots operate?

Right. If you are the product manager of Nilays Enterprise Software and you know about 50% of the users of the software are UiPath robots, I had better optimize the software so they can use it more easily. Have you seen that feedback loop?

Well, not really so far. I have seen our clients putting more pressure on their vendors and being more predictive with the changes to the user interface that might break the robots.

Its interesting, I once had this discussion with a guy from Microsoft that works in their interface group. They are also anticipating a world where enough pressure will come from software robots using the user interface that they will have to treat it almost like an API. You cannot just break the existing things. Right now people are changing user interface much more freely, sometimes stupidly. I dont understand what was in their mind when they changed the interface. Maybe the user interface will become more like a contract, like API is supposed to be.

That or you will have two user interface modes, the robot and the human.

Possible.

There is just a world of software design here that I dont think has yet responded to the rise of automation. I am just dying to see what that looks like, because it seems very unlike anything that has come before.

Thats a great point, Nilay.

Lets talk about UiPath itself now. This is what I think of as the Decoder questions. How many employees does UiPath have?

Its almost 5,000 people.

That is all around the world, right?

Yes. We are very much distributed around the world. In fact, as a business model, we have been one of the very few companies I know that have started their expansion globally from day one. We started in a small country in Europe in Romania but when we got product-market fit, we expanded simultaneously to the US and Asia. Japan was the fastest revenue growth for us in the initial years.

It is a really interesting growth story to expand globally right away. That obviously implies lots of things. How did you structure the company to do that?

Well, I would say I didnt structure the company. In the beginning, I think the key was to offer people a lot of freedom to do what they want. I was working very closely with the people in sales, and one day one of our sales leaders came to me saying, There is an event organized by PWC in Japan. I would rather go there. Maybe its a good market for us. I said, Why not? Just go to Japan. It proved to be an awesome market for us because they were prone to automation. It was not that we had a big strategy. It was more of a test; go, use your best judgment, and then spread.

It was a bit more like Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde go faster than your competition in the richest places. You need to find where those are and then just go and occupy then move on. This is what we did in the early years, and it was very successful.

You are now a public company with 5,000 employees. How is UiPath structured now?

Well, many people in the first years would say that we were becoming a corporation, that we were more bureaucratic and hired a lot of senior people from the external world. I am trying to keep a balance and be a disciplined company that generates predictable results quarter over quarter while keeping the soul of an explorer, so that people have the freedom to try things, to break things, and to find new opportunities.

One of my mantras that I am trying to instill in this company is, Always challenge your boss. I even say we have a no boss culture, and the more-senior people are always taken aback and ask, What do you mean by this? It is very empowering to think, I dont have a boss; I have a partner, and I need to be capable of speaking very freely with them. That is one of the most important things that I am trying to achieve here.

Well, that leads right into what I think of as the classic Decoder question. How do you make decisions?

I listen a lot. In this interview, I feel like I talked a lot, but that is not my style. I am trying to learn more by listening to people. Obviously, I have no idea how to run a big company at this stage because I have never been in a similar situation before, but I am trying to build a very close-knit executive team that relies on each other. Our way of making decisions is to do them very fast if they can be reversed because its always a cost of decision and do them very slowly if they are irreversible.

One of the interesting stories about building the framework of this company was about the culture. We were like a bunch of kids 10 years ago, thinking about how to define the culture. We came up with lots of words like, We are open and transparent, but that ends up diluting the culture. I had this epiphany one day and I said to myself, We need to define the culture by one single word. Lets start there.

Going back to our roots, I found that humility is the word that should define us. Not in the sense of being submissive, obviously, but in the capability to listen and change your mind, your ideas. I dont really like people that believe, Im a big guy. I know what Im doing. I got it. This is not our style. If you cannot prove that you are capable of listening or changing your mind, this is not the company for you.

So let me just add those two things together. You are the CEO, and at some point the people who work for you even though they are not bosses either just want a boss to make a decision. How does that play out in practice for you? You have listened a lot, you want to be slow on irreversible decisions, and you want to have the humility that you dont know everything. At the end of the day though, you have to decide when its time to go public. How do you make decisions like that? How do you empower people underneath you to make those decisions and tell people what to do?

I made the decision of going public the moment I took external funding into the company more than five years ago; our first round of investment was in July 2015. Everyone should subscribe to this idea, the moment you take external funding is when you basically have to decide over some kind of M&A. The better question for me is, Why now?

We went through an accelerated maturing phase in 2019 and 2020, and the market was just ripe I think almost the best ever for an IPO. We knew that the window for an IPO opens and closes, and we were ready from the internal systems and the predictability of our revenue. We had more than 3,000 employees at the time we IPOed, and we wanted to give them a way to cash out after all the years they put in. It was a bit of a no-brainer for us at that moment.

Public markets are a brutal stage but I think its very simple to explain why. As much as we tell ourselves and our employees that we are here for the long term, the fact of the matter is that every day you see a movement in the stock price and it affects us because its tight. Many people I work with are leveraged on the UiPath, so it has a direct impact on them. In a private company, maybe they raised money in August last year with high valuations, but right now they are not forced to adjust their internal valuations. Even when they hire people, they can say, This is my valuation. This is not real money in a sense, so they are less affected by these movements of the stock.

In our discussions with investors, its a different level, having private investors and having public investors. In a way we have been forced to mature in a condensed amount of time. I felt that makes us a bit more competitive and more resilient. So it has benefits, but its not easy. This is what Im trying to say.

You went public on April 21, last year. What is the biggest lesson you have learned in that year of being a public company CEO for the first time?

The biggest lesson for me was never lose the grip on the company. I think all of us felt a bit too relaxed after a very successful IPO and stock pricing going through the ceiling, and we were maybe a bit drunk with our own success. We didnt make big mistakes, but I felt that we started to drink our own Kool-Aid and could have done better, honestly. We are working in an amazing market in its early innings. We could have captured more of this market if we had stayed laser-focused. You can see this lesson across many recent IPOs.

Lets talk about that market. I think that is a really interesting thing to focus on.

You have a product, people like it, and you are selling it to a lot of big companies. UiPath has a ferocious product development cycle. The other side of that is sales. You could grow your market by selling the product you have to people who might not know about automation, you could apply it to more places with your existing customers, or you could develop new products to attack new segments of the automation market. Whats the split there for you? How do you decide on making new products for new uses, versus do you invest in sales to get new customers, or sell more to existing customers?

I think the only way is to do both and simultaneously. When we saw the big market expansion, which started seven years ago, we had two big competitors. One of them was the most advanced at that time in terms of the overall technology, but they stopped investing in that and moved to invest more into go-to-market.

It was still early in the market, so they got the lead. They got a very early IPO button and more penny markets than on the big market. That happened in the UK, and I think they completely stopped the innovation in the company. If you look at their product seven years ago, you can see big differences. We invested hugely into product development, because we had brilliance.

This is part of what we call computer vision. You look at the screen and you understand whats on the screen. Which one is the button? What are the radio buttons, the selections, et cetera? We understand very well. That was our secret power, and we are much better than everyone else on the planet. Starting from this brilliant thing that we had and developed over time, we invested hugely in building the wide spaces around the product. We went from being a distant number three in the market in 2015, to number one by 2018. Since then, the lead is increasing. After we got product-market fit at the beginning of 2017, we had a kind of overarching product capable of automating end to end. Then we started to invest massively into the go-to-market and then it continued.

I think this is the right go-to-product-market fit. If you invest faster than this you will be bored, and you may not be capable of hiring the best sales people out there. The moment you get product-market fit, its kind of a self-fulfilled prophecy. The product sells itself. Sales people smell it. You get better and better people that make bigger and bigger deals.

Its amazing how the best sales people always gravitate towards the product that sells itself.

Exactly.

Theres something there. It would take another hour of Decoder just on that idea.

I am curious about challenges. You do have some competitors that are in different stages. Many years ago when I was with Microsoft I saw [Microsoft CEO] Satya Nadella, and he had just discovered robotic process automation. He was glowing about it, telling a room full of reporters and analysts that robotic process automation was a big new market for Microsoft.

Obviously, I think one of the key pieces of software that UiPath automates is Microsoft Office, specifically Excel. How do you see that relationship with a company like Microsoft or a Salesforce? You are using computer vision, so you dont necessarily need permission from them, right? Your software can see their user interface, can move the mouse, can click the buttons. You can do that in a repetitive way. Do you need to work with them? How does that work?

Yeah, we have a good relationship with Microsoft. I used to work for Microsoft, five years before starting this company. I even met Satya, and he is really an outstanding person. We gave him a demo of our product. To us, Microsoft getting into robotic process automation created more awareness. It was a good thing in a way.

I think its also clear to the markets where Microsoft plays in relation to the RPA right now. They have this tool called Power Automate, and because its more API-based, they also acquired a small company out of Greece to do the computer vision part and combined it. But Microsoft is best when it comes to personal productivity.

They can do really light, simple use cases with their approach to RPA. Particularly those where subject matter experts can do it themselves. This is where Microsoft plays. Now, going into enterprise automation when you have to take an entire process like procure-to-pay and order-to-cash this is not where we are seeing them. When we were seeing them, we always won in the enterprise automation market. At the same time, our cloud software is based on Azure. We have a very good relationship with the Azure side of Microsoft. So its more of a coopetition between us and Microsoft.

Thats a great word. One of the issues with being in coopetition with the big players, especially Microsoft and Enterprise, is that youre Slack. One day Microsoft is going to say, Well, now Teams is free, and they are going to crush you out of the market until you have to sell yourself to Salesforce. Is that a thing they can do with Power Automate?

Can they just bundle it into their product, or go to their consulting firm partners I know UiPath sells a lot through the big consulting firms and say, Look, were going to start bundling these capabilities into everyones Office suites. You can build your business with a tool that your customers already have. Is that a worry you have in that competition?

Theyve done it already for two years now. They deliver a free version with Windows, but we are not seeing competitive pressures on what were doing best. It is the medium to complex processes really getting the return on investment done. This is why this is a particularly different proposition than Slack. A good-enough product that you can deploy for everybody across the enterprise is not going to make a huge difference to any return on investment.

Slack is not a return on investment game. Its a different type of game. We are more a tool that customers are buying. I use this crude metaphor even with my sales people. If you order food and they give you a very nice steak, are you going to use the plastic forks they send with the food? You get my point.

I do. I have never heard anyone describe Microsoft Power Automate or Slack as plastic forks and knives before, but I appreciate the metaphor. Do you think the Salesforces and the Microsofts are the SAPs of the world? Outside of the business reasons, is there any technical reason that could prevent UiPath from operating? It doesnt seem like they can stop you from operating through computer vision and KVM, or operating the mouse and keyboard. Is there any risk that they might find a way to do it?

I have seen attempts to stop customers from using this approach by charging higher licenses. I have seen all of this, but in the end, they have to do what is in the interest of the customers. For instance, we are pretty big in healthcare and there are a few ERP systems there, but they are not particularly pleased with the way that we read their screens. But when you have big customers like Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic, and they say this is how we are doing it, what can you say? Were not competing. This is the situation with SAP as well and with Salesforce. There is only so much you can do within your system, and you have to recognize that there are very few companies that will base all their operations on one system.

The moment you get out of one system, you need more of an independent player that is capable of operating equally well on all the systems. I want to also make sure that you understand. We started from the UI piece from the user interface piece using mouse and keyboard, but we equally have an API approach. Today, its about combining and doing whats easiest and more reliable from both worlds.

I will ask you this broad question, but I dont know how far back I want this history to go. I would say the history of depending on other peoples APIs to build your business outside of the operating system context is not a history full of happy companies that thrive. You want to build on the Facebook API, your business is going to go away. You want to build on the Twitter API, your business is already gone. You want to build on Microsofts API, they might be able to take that away from you.

The reason I have been asking about computer vision is because that is the thing they cannot take away from you. It seems like a more reliable place to live, rather than trusting that API access will persist, or be dependable, or not subject to business pressures that actually turn it into leverage over us.

This is a point that I never reflected on really. That is actually true, they cannot take this away because they have to make the software usable to human users. They need to have a human-readable interface. The moment you know how to operate this human-readable interface, you have absolute freedom.

To us, what was the key? It was not necessarily that people are afraid of using APIs, I am not going this route. I am saying its easier to build automation on top of human interfaces rather than APIs. APIs dont match in a one-to-one to what you see on the screen. To do an operation like creating a new opportunity, its involved differently. It is kind of a complex business to understand the corresponding API, but anyone can understand the human interface. Just emulating how I do its much easier and requires a lot less knowledge.

We are way more cost-effective in implementing automation at scale because we reuse the workflow. With API, most of the time you have to change your existing operations. Every change requires intensive testing, reeducation of the people, and getting more project managers that understand. When I take the existing operation and replicate it one-to-one in software, I can use the same people with less volume of work. It is the only way you can get to the long tail of manual processes. This is where nobody can actually compete with us.

Take Microsoft. If you have 1,000 processes, they can maybe automate 10%. I can show instantly that using us for 1,000 processes, the return on investment is much higher than 100. And even for those 100 processes, my tool is sharper and I cut way more slices of bread than with the plastic knife. Even if they pay you to do this, its still not worth it.

Visit link:

UiPath CEO Daniel Dines thinks automation can fight the great resignation - The Verge

Kyndryl and Red Hat Announce Strategic Partnership to Advance IT Automation for Multicloud Infrastructure – PR Newswire

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is the primary enterprise IT automation solution for Kyndryl infrastructure services, driving enhanced business performance for organizations

Kyndryl recognized asa leading provider of automation services for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

BOSTON, May 10, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Red Hat Summit Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, and Kyndryl (NYSE: KD), the world's largest IT infrastructure services provider, today announced a strategic partnership to help customers embrace open, differentiated automation technologies and managed services to modernize core business applications and IT infrastructure, while enabling scalable enterprise operations and greater resilience with advanced security capabilities. Together, Red Hat and Kyndryl will offer integrated services and solutions based on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platformto automate critical workloads from the enterprise datacenter to the edge and across public clouds.

With this collaboration, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform becomes the primary enterprise automation solution across Kyndryl's infrastructure services, with Kyndryl as a leading service provider for Ansible Automation Platform. Kyndryl is currently one of the largest global users of Ansible Automation Platform, running tens of millions of automations and managing more than 500,000 customer endpoints worldwide. Kyndryl plans to further scale its automation architecture through joint engineering work with Red Hat to extend its storage and network automation capabilities across its services team.

In addition, Kyndryl and Red Hat will establish an Ansible Innovation Center to co-create solutions and help customers realize hybrid cloud transformation by automating IT operations and services from the infrastructure level to the cloud and the edge. This will include jointly developed playbooks, enablement and support based on Ansible Automation Platform and Kyndryl infrastructure services.

"By increasing the integration of Kyndryl's leading infrastructure services with Red Hat's industry leading open hybrid cloud technology, we are better able to deliver services and technologies that work hand-in-hand to provide a more seamless customer experience," Stephen Leonard, Global Alliances & Partnerships Leader, Kyndryl. "We look forward to working with Red Hat to help customers accelerate their ability to achieve true business agility through open multicloud solutions."

"Customers today are operating in increasingly diverse and complex IT environments, spanning on-premises datacenters to public and private clouds. Automated solutions and managed services are crucial for customers to effectively scale and manage today's hybrid multicloud landscape," said Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president, Partner Ecosystem Success, Red Hat. "Red Hat's collaboration with Kyndryl integrates automation with managed services to support customers across infrastructure, networking and cloud operations, alleviating the burden of manual IT operations and making it easier to grow into the future."

Kyndryl and Red Hat already jointly support almost 900 customers globally and are working with companies like Bord Gais Energy, an energy and services supplier in the Republic of Ireland, to help them reap the benefits from the combination of advanced automation and managed services with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. As a result, Bord Gais has realized service quality improvements, cost reductions and better adherence to audit and compliance requirements, enabling them to better serve and meet the changing needs of its customers that are transitioning to a lower carbon future.

"There was no manual to navigate the challenges presented by the global pandemic and it resulted in fast-changing business requests and urgent demands that required responsiveness from day one," Andy Nason, head of Service and Infrastructure, Bord Gais Energy. "We required minimal disruption and reliable service levels, and the Kyndryl services team and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform made it possible. The dynamic automated tooling and environment created by Kyndryl and Red Hat proactively resolved repetitive tasks and automated event incident response and resolution while consistently enabling operational improvements that ensured customer satisfaction."

To increase its support across the breadth of Red Hat's portfolio across sales, delivery and sales engineering functions, Kyndryl services practitioners have achieved over 5,000 Red Hat Certifications and accreditations to date with a dedicated focus on automation and containers.

Learn more information about how Kyndryl and Red Hat are partnering to serve customers.

About KyndrylKyndryl (NYSE: KD) is the world's largest IT infrastructure services provider. The company designs, builds, manages, and modernizes the complex, mission-critical information systems that the world depends on every day. Kyndryl's nearly 90,000 employees serve over 4,000 customers in more than 60 countries around the world, including 75 percent of the Fortune 100. For more information, visit http://www.kyndryl.com.

About Red HatRed Hatis the world's leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.

Red Hat Forward-looking StatementsExcept for the historical information and discussions contained herein, statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are based on the company's current assumptions regarding future business and financial performance. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Any forward-looking statement in this press release speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Except as required by law, the company assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements.

Red Hat, the Red Hat logo, Ansible and OpenShift are trademarks or registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries

Contacts:Kyndryl[emailprotected]

Red Hat[emailprotected]

SOURCE Kyndryl

Go here to read the rest:

Kyndryl and Red Hat Announce Strategic Partnership to Advance IT Automation for Multicloud Infrastructure - PR Newswire

Robots and Automation Move From Novelty to Necessity in Hotels – Skift

Posted on May 12, 2022 by Danzig

Given the constraints of todays labor market and the speed to onboard new hospitality talent its time to push the envelope when it comes to artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation.

Carley Thornell

No frequent traveler has escaped the toothpaste walk of shame the stroll to the front desk to grab a forgotten toiletry, during which that guest prays no one wants face time.

But thats been eliminated at the eight California hotels owned by Seaview Investors, thanks to robot ambassadors that deliver hotels, sundries and dental necessities in five minutes or less.

The goal isnt to replace anybody, (but) just make the jobs better for those who work here, said Tiffany Jassel Bevins, Seaviews director of asset management.

It allows staff to deliver more personalized service to guests in front of them. And we have so much positive feedback on TripAdvisor (surrounding the robots).

The technology from Silicon Valley-based Relay Robotics is programmed to mingle and tell jokes, said Steve Cousins, the companys chief technical officer. But while offering something a bit different from other hotels attracts guests, it can also expand the boundaries of what technology can accomplish.

Just ask Klaas van Lookeren Campagne. The CitizenM CEO says a digital-first strategy has led to the brand being the most profitable per square foot among its competitors. We are living now after the pandemic in the fight for resources. I think everybody is struggling for good employees, he said. Guess what, if you have the highest guest satisfaction and these cool tools, of course they like to work for you.

Innovations like one app for guests and another for employees mean CitizenM ambassadors or employees can relay details about neighborhood attractions directly to a customers device. Ambassadors can also make a room key at the bar, for instance, while having a chat and a cocktail, eliminating the wait at a traditional front desk.

That experience has made retaining staff easier. If you look at our website theres hardly any (open jobs for) hoteliers, we are only looking for data engineers I think thats the direction (youre moving toward), van Lookeren Campagne said.

Other companies have been driven by necessity to make dramatic shits in their operations. Accor launched a pilot at ibis Styles London Gloucester Road, the brands first fully digital hotel in Northern Europe. Its the first step in a roll-out plan that will impact at least 50 percent of its hotels in Europe over the next few years.

This is not about robots or faceless technology. This is about the smart integration of innovative, customer-facing technology at pace and at scale. Technology is part of our daily lives and is now fully part of our hotel experience, said Carla Milovanov, Accors senior vice president for customer technology services. With this important step, we give our guests the opportunity to adapt their hotel stay according to their preferences.

Accors technology already automates some hotel distribution activities, and allows staff to spend more time with guests rather than on administrative or manual tasks. Click Pay Collect enables ordering from a hotels digital menu from just a phone, eliminating calls to a restaurant or placing paper on a doorknob. Since the ordering is fully integrated within the hotels ecosystem, expenses can be charged to the room and paid on check-out.

Other features in the cloud are set to transform the physical check-in and check-out experience, too. Accors Gloucester Road property premiered the Accor Key, a smartphone-enabled code that allows guests to access elevators and enter their rooms, eliminating the need for check-in desks altogether.

Meanwhile, hotels like The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas have taken to streamlining guest communication a step further with use of artificial intelligence. The sassy Rose chatbot originally launched customer service like restaurant recommendations, requests for extra pillows, and guided tours of the property via text message. Director of Digital Marketing Lindsey Riggs said guest engagement is so high that the hotel created a Digital Guest Services Team, which monitors conversations throughout the day and helps Cosmopolitan respond to inquiries within 60 seconds.

Thanks to (artificial intelligence), Rose has the ability to use conversational data to learn from guest interaction with her over time, which helps us better understand what our guests want and need, Riggs said.

Data show that guests who interact with Rose are on average 30 percent more satisfied with their stay as compared to those who do not, said Riggs. Highly engaged guests those who send Rose five or more texts during their stay record a 28 percent higher dollar spend than those who dont interact with her.

This tells us Roses unique and playful personality not only strengthens relationships and overall guest satisfaction, but her undeniably unique tone of voice is what helps her standout from others in the hospitality industry, Riggs said.

And while human staff can often wilt in the wee hours in a city filled with late-night high-rollers, automation allows The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas to have an always-on brand ambassador, Riggs said.

[CORRECTION: The article has been updated to mention that highly engaged guests record a 28 percent higher dollar spend with Rose, not a 28 percent longer stay.]

See more here:

Robots and Automation Move From Novelty to Necessity in Hotels - Skift

Select Page ::