Monthly Archives: March 2022

The showy science projects get all the attention in the constant quest to automate everything. That includes gigantic natural language processing models such as OpenAI's GPT-3, which can complete sentences, answer questions, and even write poetry.

For those making commercial software, there is a more mundane but perhaps equally valuable task, which is to figure out what facts a machine should have access to and make that actually have value for humans.

"We don't apologize for the fact that some of this requires brute force," says Dan Turchin, chief executive and co-founder of PeopleReign, a San Jose, California software startup that is automating the handling of support calls for things such as IT and benefits.

His software has compiled, over a period of five years, a kind of encyclopedia of more than five million "domain concepts," structured information relating to things such as employee benefits, requests for computer support, and all manner of other things customers or employees might request, culled from a billion examples such as IT tickets, wikis, chat transcripts, etc.

All of that is meant actually to know what a human is trying to express.

"When we named the company, it was very intentional," said Turchin in an interview with ZDNet via Zoom. "Technology is amazing, but it can also be dangerous; people do and always will reign."

Also: What is GPT-3? Everything your business needs to know about OpenAI's breakthrough AI language program

Turchin's firm on Wednesday announced it received a $4 million seed round of financing to advance its programs that are already in use by Fortune 500 firms such as insurance giant Swiss Re, which uses the software to support 15,000 employees in 25 countries.

The funding from venture capital firms Boulder Ventures, Moxxie Ventures, and Sterling Road, and individual investors that include MicroStrategy co-founder Sanju Bansal, is the first outside money PeopleReign has received since its founding in 2020.

The area of automating language for things such as help desks has been a hot area lately. It includes startups such as DialPad and Moveworks to large, publicly traded companies such as Five9.

The Great Resignation is driving a lot of demand for software such as PeopleReign's, contends CEO and co-founder Dan Turchin. To the extent such tools deliver a better experience for employees, they "demonstrate to employees they are valued, they're trusted, they're respected, they're no longer constrained by the things that used to make an office environment toxic."

But the work of gathering the domain concepts, years of work that preceded the formal founding of the company, is the bedrock of the software that PeopleReign claims as its unique edge -- "it's one of the world's biggest corpus of content related to IT and HR," said Turchin.

"No one is leveraging the tools we are to develop an understanding of language to do the kinds of things we are doing," Matt Parker, PeopleReign's head of data science, told ZDNet in a separate interview via Zoom.

"We have this huge database of domain-specific information and how it all weaves together," said Parker. "It's just a huge list of factual information. That's the key bit, is that it's unambiguous, indisputable facts."

It is a strategy somewhat akin to Chicago-based startup Narrative Science, a focus not strictly on automation but on the detective work of piecing together what language means in context.

PeopleReign uses largely off-the-shelf, open-source software for the rote tasks of parsing text examples, what's known as automated entity extraction and automated concept tagging.

Also: Language AI startup Moveworks expands beyond IT to finance, HR, other corporate communications

A program called spaCy is used to create what are called word embeddings, syntactical representations of how words relate to one another in a given context. The popular Neo4j knowledge graph software builds a knowledge graph of the discovered relationships.

From those tools, PeopleReign constructs ontologies that know what a term suggests in context. The term "Mavericks," for example, could be used in the context of Apple's previous OS X software release of that name. "That is a member of 'OS X,' and of 'hardware' and of 'operating system and 'personal computing,' and it's also related to 'Apple'," said Parker, listing all the parts of a domain that may cluster around a given term.

Clustering in and around each term can be related concepts, he said -- that "huge list of factual information," things such as types of computers, vendor names, or types of problems that people can run into, such as computers "freezing" or "crashing" or "breaking."

Another open-source program, made by spaCy's creators, prodigy, is used for machine learning training to understand what someone is referring to. PeopleReign uses its domain ontologies to train what's called an "entity recognition model," a mechanism that can retrieve, at runtime, the relationship of, say, "Mavericks" to "OS X" and to "computers."

Also: 'We won't have the sexiest AI, but everything it says is true,' says Narrative Science

The result is, "When somebody says, 'I can't upgrade Mavericks,' they are probably not talking about the surfing spot," explained Parker, referring to a popular destination in Northern California for which the OS X distribution was named.

"Where PeopleReign adds unique value is in understanding the domain and learning from these concepts," said Turchin. "If an employee is asking about 'airport,' but in the context of WiFi or network access, it's about the Apple product [Apple's Airport base station], not a physical airport."

"So, understanding the language that employees use to request IT and HR service means these domain ontologies can have a much more fluent conversation." The facts, moreover, can be translated across 27 different languages by finding the domain-appropriate term in the native language, rather than a simple word-for-word translation.

"When we receive an utterance in Spanish, the facts are the facts; we just have to translate," explained Parker. "If your computer screen is going to crack, that's true no matter the customer and the language."

The PeopleReign ontologies are packaged as four programs. One is a virtual agent meant to handle requests automatically. Two other programs are to aid live agents by suggesting relevant answers, "essentially to make the agent smarter with contextual recommendations that are built based on this knowledge graph," explained Turchin.

And a fourth program is what's called predictive analytics, "to basically tell you what's trending, to let you know what are the gaps in your knowledge to be able to deflect more calls to self-service."

"We have this huge database of domain-specific information, and how it all weaves together," says PeopleReign co-founder and data science lead Matt Parker. "It's just a huge list of factual information -- that's the key bit, is that it's unambiguous, indisputable facts."

Especially in cases where some new product pops up -- the latest Apple computer, say -- "there are going to start to be questions that no one knows about" because they haven't previously been handled. "So, PeopleReign will be the canary in the coal mine to figure out what people are talking about.

PeopleReign is aiming at winning customers among companies that have the typically load of 750,000 trouble tickets annually. "PeopleReign, for most customers, will reduce call volume by about 60%," claimed Turchin.

Armed with new funding, PeopleReign has enough capital to take it through next year, when a Series A may happen, said Turchin. Some seasoned tech veterans are joining in the round, including Larry Augustin, former CEO of software maker SugarCRM and Linux computer maker VA Linux; and Julie Liegl, formerly the chief marketing officer of Slack.

Among other things, the new money will be used for go-to-market initiatives such as building partnerships. One of the first, announced Wednesday, is with Thirdera, which bills itself as "the largest pure-play provider of ServiceNow services."

In the era of the Great Resignation, Turchin is betting that the work of smoothing an employee's help-desk calls may be a big draw for companies that don't want to annoy their employees.

"This is the hardest environment I've ever had to hire in," said Turchin, who is a veteran of numerous tech startups. He said his small, seasoned team is ten people now, expecting to double by year's end to 20. A big help to hiring is that PeopleReign is "embracing the idea of a 100% remote team," he said. Despite the San Jose address, there is no formal headquarters facility and won't be one anytime soon, he said.

"We will align our real estate strategy with where our talent is, rather than the other way around," he said.

"All organizations are now remote-first, or hybrid-first," observed Turchin. Without a physical locus, in an age of increasingly nomadic work, the bet is that software needs to extend employee service outward, virtually.

"Every employee just became a remote office that IT needs to support, so technologies like PeopleReign are making it easy for IT to be adaptable just like employees are having to adapt to working anywhere."

In a broader sense, technologies that improve the world of work become an important element to attract and retain talent, Turchin contends. Software such as improved help desks is among "technologies that let CXOs demonstrate to employees they are valued, they're trusted, they're respected, they're no longer constrained by the things that used to make an office environment toxic."

(In addition to running PeopleReign, Turchin hosts podcasts with thought leaders in software, AI and related topics, called AI and the Future of Work.)

Here is the original post:

Ontology of the everyday: PeopleReign's automation of IT and HR - ZDNet

CAIRO The Egypt Ministry of Finance is working with IBM and SAP to help automate the countrys tax system as part of the federal governments digital transformation strategy.

IBM Consulting is collaborating with its partner SAP to provide Egypt with an integrated solution based on the SAP Tax and Revenue Management for Public Sector package, according to IBM this month.

The implementation is part of a national project by the Ministry of Finance to automate and digitalize the countrys tax processes and procedures: to integrate the informal economy into the formal economy; enhance governance over tax returns; and expand the tax base. The project is expected to lay the foundations for tax justice and fair competition in markets.

The software package is intended to give the Ministry of Finance a business operations platform to help streamline and automate its processes into intelligent workflows, enhance collaboration, and elevate its citizen experiences.

The package was piloted with 10 tax offices in greater Cairo and will expand across Egypt this year.

Under the collaboration, IBM also implemented IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation, which is set up to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into the ministrys processes and provide taxpayers, tax officers, and collectors with a more automated and governed taxation journey. This offering can help the ministry enhance the accuracy of taxpayer submissions and enable higher-value work, like minimizing tax evasion and increasing tax revenue.

We are honored to be leading such a complex project that can help support the national economy, said Marwa Abbas, GM, IBM Egypt.

We are confident that the integrated core taxation model can support Egypts digital transformation journey.

Mohamed Maait, minister of finance for Egypt, said the government launched its digital transformation strategy to enhance the business ecosystem in Egypt.

Maait said the automation project is part of the national vision to maximize public revenues, and the ministry is keen to adopt advanced technology in its reform agenda.

Here is the original post:

Egypt Ministry of Finance Taps IBM and SAP for Automation - Datamation

We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - August 3. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Learn More

As hybrid work becomes the new normal, businesses recognize that people arent going back to the office full-time anytime soon. IT environments are changing, with continued migration from on-premise systems to hybrid or multicloud environments. The complexities of diverse environments challenge IT teams to implement and manage consistent security policies. In fact, many businesses spent the past two years attempting to achieve or maintain stability in a storm of uncertainty and rapid change. But what about the future? As enterprises look towards the horizon, there is a need to shift focus from merely surviving to thriving. This is according to the latest survey by Delinea that explores how enterprises address the challenges of future-proofing.

Delineas research explores the important, yet sometimes misunderstood and undervalued topic of future-proofing. It reveals the challenges faced as a security industry and points towards a balanced path of expertise and automation to guide our work.

The report finds that cloud automation is seen as the key to future-proofing cybersecurity, especially when coupled with autonomous privileges and access. The good news? Eighty-six percent of respondents are exploring ways to automate access controls, especially for privileged access. But even with 68% of respondents seeing increases in budgets and staff, they continue to face mounting threats from an expanding threatscape thats challenging to address. Fifty-nine percent of respondents indicate that the leading factor driving their need to future-proof their access security in 2022 is increasingly complex, multicloud IT environments.

But the research points to a conundrum:overconfidence in security preparedness could lead to a security disaster.The survey found that future-proofing becomes even more important when organizations become overly confident in their security measures. Despite the challenges ahead and knowing automation will be critical to their future success, 83% of respondents are confident with their current access controls even astwo out of three companies admit to being victims of cyberattacks.

As cloud migration accelerates, the pressure to manage critical systems in an increasingly complex, dispersed and vulnerable IT environment will continue to rise. Hybrid solutions will become mandatory. As the volume of activity and risk scenarios increase, were likely to rely more heavily on machine learning and autonomous security controls that require no human intervention at all. That will hold true for on-premise and cloud scenarios.

Its the most informed, most forward-thinking leaders who will select the most effective security investments to set their organizations up for future success. The better you prepare for the long term, the more agile and resilient youll be in a time of rapid change.

The report analyzed responses of more than 300 IT business decision-makers through a survey conducted in February 2022 by Census-wide, a global research company.

Read the full report by Delinea.

VentureBeat's mission is to be a digital town square for technical decision-makers to gain knowledge about transformative enterprise technology and transact. Learn More

Read the rest here:

Report: Cloud automation is key to future-proofing cybersecurity - VentureBeat

The Tally 3.0 autonomous mobile robot scans inventory in a grocery store.

Simbe Robotics

Automation and robotics are typically associated with multi-million budgets at multi-billion dollar companies. But as the cost of technology has come down, it's become more affordable to smaller companies even small businesses.

Outside of Atlanta in Jonesboro, Georgia, THAT Burger Spot!, a burger and wings joint with four locations, got tired of being slowed down by phone orders.

There's beef burgers, turkey, Impossible, black bean, fish, chicken and more. Then there's the matter of how many patties, sauces and other customizations. Given all the choices, a single phone order took an average of seven to eight minutes. And that's only if there was staff on hand to take those orders.

"Our menu is a little complex, there's a lot of options," said Cedric Pool, president of THAT Burger Spot Franchising, Inc.

"Staffing . . .it was a problem and continues to be a problem," Pool said. "We figured we will be able to automate the process of order taking, we wouldn't have to pay somebody to do it."

After a search, they found a solution in Grubbrr, which sells free-standing kiosks that can take in-store orders and integrate those with online orders and a point-of-sale system. Pool started with two kiosks in just one location, costing $14,400, which is about how much the company would pay someone over the course of a year to take orders by phone.

After easing customers into using the kiosk and online ordering, the restaurant's average ticket order increased from around $19 to over $21. Average sales per labor hour moved up from the high $50 range to $85, Pool said.

"Restaurants have been notorious laggards when it comes to technology. And they've done this predominantly because they've had access to extremely low labor costs," said Sam Zietz, chief executive officer of Grubbrr.

According to a recent report by the National Restaurant Association, seven in 10 restaurant operators said they currently don't have enough employees to support customer demand. The restaurant industry added1.7 million jobs in 2021, but many restaurants are still severely understaffed and expect labor shortages will continue to constrain growth.

In the most recentCNBC|SurveyMonkey Small Business Surveyfor Q1, 17% of respondents in the accommodation and food services industries cited labor shortage as the biggest risk to their business.

Dirk Izzo, president and general manager of NCR Hospitality, a technology provider for restaurants, said in cities including Denver and Jacksonville, Florida, customers cite costs for kitchen and front-of-house staff that are running 20%-40% higher than a year ago.

"If you're taking on those costs, anything you can do to automate things is a big saving," Izzo said.

One example of technology that's become common and affordable for restaurants is contactless ordering and paying. More restaurants use QR codes at the table that push customers to order and pay from their phones. This is a time saver for staff, who would otherwise need to take the order and then enter it manually into the point-of-sale system.

The cost of robotics is being driven down by broader investments from the global smartphone industry and the self-driving car industry.

"The cost of this technology has come down quite drastically," said Brad Bogolea, co-founder and chief executive of Simbe, which provides an autonomous robot that uses computer vision to track inventory in a grocery store, drug store or hypermarket.

For now, Simbe primarily works with large retailers, but Bogolea said the company also works with smaller retailers with 50 to 100 stores. Simbe's robotic inventory taker can check an entire store's inventory three to four times a day and place orders directly when items start to run low. "It's not humanly possible to scan at that frequency or fidelity with human labor in these environments," Bogolea said. Retailers traditionally spend anywhere from 30 to 100 hours per store per week on inventory.

In many cases, technology providers are offering automation as a service. Instead of being saddled with large upfront costs for equipment, companies pay a monthly fee.GreenSeed Contract Packaging, located outside of Chicago, implemented robotics to automate some particularly repetitive packaging functions, such as packing baby snacks into a box or moving packed boxes off the line onto a pallet. The company is billed monthly based on the number of hours the robot is working.

"Instead of using an agency to get a temp worker, you can get a robot in," said David Gray, chief executive of GreenSeed. Depending on the structure of the contract, the cost of the robotics is 40% to 50% of what he would pay to hire a person, which costs at least $17 or $18 an hour, not including benefits or the costs to a temp agency. "So you can really reduce your costs and get better consistency," Gray said.

While the cost of technology has come down, smaller companies lacking economies of scale still need to spend more as a percentage of their revenue than their larger counterparts. Outside of the food sector, one telling example comes from the world of accounting. According to arecent survey by Ernst & Young, 70% of large companies with $30 billion or more in revenue plan to spend between $2 million to $6 million on tax automation technology. By comparison, 81% of smaller companies with less than $1 billion in revenue plan to spend between $1 million to $3.99 million less, but not that much less.

"That's a pressure on the smaller companies where they're almost spending as much," said David Helmer, global tax and finance operate leader at Ernst & Young.

Inflation is impacting how small businesses look at the cost of automation relative to rising costs in other core areas of their business.

San Francisco-based Nana Joes Granola has been facing higher costs of raw goods and labor and is trying to figure out how to bring the costs of its premium granola down as consumers look more closely at pocketbook decisions. Michelle Pusateri, owner of Nana Joes Granola, said options include reducing the volume in bags by a few ounces, or reformulating the recipe to cut down on ingredients costs, or figuring out how to use automation for its production process and equipment that can make it easier to pump out more volume.

The company, which has Whole Foods among its retail partners, is facing a highly competitive market and while it was able to pass along some costs to customers in 2021 as sale boomed, being a higher-cost granola during inflation is more challenging, Pusateri said.

The company received a Covid EIDL loan, which mostly went to stocking up on ingredients which have risen in price, an inflationary factor that required it to buy in higher volumes to secure better deals. But Nana Joes Granola has also set a small portion of that loan aside for automation on the packaging side of production, and it might also need to take out business loans for equipment.

"I don't think inflation is going away any time soon. We will be stuck in this and having more volume to pump out with same staff and same overhead is what we are looking at now," Pusateri said.

Pusateri, who said she supports the higher wages workers are receiving across the economy, adds that investing in automation wouldn't mean downsizing staff. "The women working for us since 2016 are doing the same things over and over again and there is fatigue in that," she said.

CNBC's Eric Rosenbaum contributed additional reporting.

To learn more and to sign up for CNBC's Small Business Playbook event, clickhere.

Read the original here:

Big food automation is making its way to Main Street's menu - CNBC

Jeff Francis, VP of finance and CFO, Methodist Health System in Omaha, Neb., and Amy Raymond, head of revenue cycle operations at AKASA in South San Francisco, Calif., spoke about automating the revenue cycleat HIMSS22.

Jeff Francis, CFO and vice president of finance for Methodist Health System in Omaha, Nebraska, worked with Amy Raymond, head of Revenue Cycle Operations at AKASA, for unified automation of the health system's revenue cycle that tied into its Cerner EHR. Francis and Raymond spokeabout the journey to automation that began in 2018, which went live in 2019,during the HIMSS22 session, "How Automation Can Improve the Patient Financial Experience."

Methodist started with the goal of automating all non-value added aspects of the revenue cycle, Francis said. "It really came down to what were those initial pain points," he said.

Claims status has been automated to the point that what used to take over six months to determine is now down to a minute, he said. The result has been an increase in yield, which is up by at least 1% on gross revenue of $3 billion.

Raymond brought a passion for a better patient financial experience, including the benefit of staff having the time to pick up the phone and call patients when necessary, she said.

"There's more time for patients," Raymond said.

Methodist began the process by setting up a governance committee to oversee operations. One of the high priorities was automating coding edits. There was early skepticism among staff about potential layoffs. There were no layoffs, and staff members are now able to concentrate on the more difficult claims, Francis said.

Automation has taken over the repetitive tasks. Staff no longer have to spend seven minutes to see the status of a claim and make the notification and update within Cerner, Francis said. Responses to claims denials are now automatically sent to payers.

Automation continued as the health system found new use cases in the front-end and mid-revenue cycle.

The automation has also been leveraged with the addition of Fremont Health joining Methodist in 2018. Fremont came onto the Cerner platform for clinical and accounting services.

The health system has now about reached the limit of what robotic process automation and machine learning can do for the revenue cycle.

As more hospitals and health systems have automated their revenue cycles or want to, Francis advised that the first step should be to review options for a third-party partner, based on what pain points they want to solve.

Twitter: @SusanJMorseEmail the writer: SMorse@himss.org

Continued here:

Methodist Health System and AKASA partnered to automate the revenue cycle - Healthcare Finance News

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, updated its ads platform, introducing more automation into campaigns, as the company continues to adjust to privacy and data restrictions in online marketing.

On Tuesday, Goksu Nebol-Perlman, Metas VP of product marketing, ads and business products, announced the new automation and machine learning tools within Facebooks ads platform. Anewly branded ad service called Meta Advantage consolidates the automated ad products, Nebol-Perlman said. Automation helps advertisers set app-install ad campaigns and create lookalike audiences, by relying more on Metas artificial intelligence. Lookalike audiences are people who resemblebased on their internet behavior and other factorsexisting customers of brands, and lookalikes are ripe for targeting with ads.

Last year, Apple implemented rules that limit how much apps like Facebook and Instagram can track users on web browsers and mobile devices. The app-tracking changes made it more difficult to create lookalike audiences and to measure ads. It became more difficult to quantify the effectiveness of app-install ads, for example. In the past year, Meta has made a series of updates to its ad platform in response to Apple and notified marketers of nagging issues with some of its ad services. In September, Meta outlined how it was not accurately reporting conversions, or the rate at which ads lead to concrete results such as app downloads and sales. In February, Meta said it was making progress at tracking conversions.

This move is in line with the industrys desire for a more fully integrated tech stack that gathers all actionable data on one platform for more automated and efficient mobile growth," said Simon Bobby Dussart, CEO of Adjust, a mobile marketing analytics platform, in an email to Ad Age, referring to Metas new automation.

Dont miss the latest news. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters here.

Meta has more than 10 million advertisers, and many of them are sophisticated online marketers that are used to running their own ad campaigns. As data becomes harder to collect and connect online, advertisers have to lean on machine learning models and aggregated data sources, which dont identify individual users.

Link:

How Meta is relying on automation to fix its ad platform - AdAge.com

Automation and digital transformation (DX) have become one of ITs dynamic duos: Where you see or hear one, the other seems sure to follow.

Theyre certainly linked by their priority and popularity in IT and business circles. Automation and DX have been atop the strategic roadmaps of CIOs and other leaders for years now. Digital transformation has become an industry unto itself, and few CIOs have automate less highlighted on their strategic roadmap.

But do they always go hand-in-hand? Whats the actual relationship between IT automation and DX? Answers to questions like this require more context and nuance.

Lets ground the relationship in clear definitions. Heres how we describedigital transformationatThe Enterprisers Project(while also recognizing that the unique needs and characteristics of any given organization mean that the term digital transformation must necessarily be flexible):

Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. Its also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.

Its the scope and scale of that definitional change and the value it aims to produce that brings us to automation. Automation is one of the major catalysts that make it possible to actually execute on DX goals large and small.

Lets borrow adefinition of IT automationfrom Red Hat:

IT automation, sometimes referred to as infrastructure automation, is the use of software to create repeatable instructions and processes to replace or reduce human interaction with IT systems.

[ Related read:Automation: 5 issues for IT teams to watch in 2022. ]

At first blush, that might sound like a relatively specific domain this is just from the sysadmins and infrastructure engineers, right? But that would ignore the intensifying role that IT shops play in their broader organizations: A company pursuing digital transformation without the CIO and her team is like a transatlantic airline flight without a pilot good luck and Godspeed.

This brings us to the first way automation and digital transformation go together:

All sorts of automation gets devised and implemented for specific purposes or tasks, sometimes for refreshingly simple reasons, like Automating this makes our system more resilient, and automating this makes my job better.

This is the type ofstep-by-step automationlong done by sysadmins and other operations-focused IT pros; its also common in DevOps and site reliability engineering (SRE) roles. IT automation happens for perfectly good reasons on its own, and it has now spread deep and wide in most, if not all, of the traditional branches of the IT family tree: development, operations,security, testing/QA, data management and analytics you get the idea. None of this needs to be tethered to a digital transformation initiative; the benefits of a finely tuned CI/CD pipeline or security automation can be both the means and the end.

Theres no such thing as digital transformation without automation, however. This claim may involve some slight exaggeration, and reasonable people can disagree. But digital transformation of the ambitious sort that most Fortune 500 boardrooms are now deeply invested in requires (among other things) a massive technology lever to accomplish, and that lever is automation.

Heres more from theRed Hatdefinition:

Automation is key to IT optimization and digital transformation. Modern, dynamic IT environments need to be able to scale faster than ever and IT automation is vital to making that happen.

Glynn Newby, global manufacturing industry principal at SAS, illustrates this aspect of their relationship with a straightforward example of a DX goal enabled by automation: Lets say your organization wants to use analytics to improve production quality to boostNet Promoter Scores.Like many business initiatives, the stated timeline for this goal might beX, but the true timeline is probably yesterday hence the modern obsession with cheetah speed and agility while of course staying within budget and ensuring five-nines uptime.

To accomplish Newbys hypothetical goal, you integrate a containerized analytics platform that auto-scales up and down depending on analytics load, supporting data-driven decisions in real-time or close to it, without a massive capex on infrastructure and other resources that sit idle for non-trivial chunks of time.

"Modern, dynamic IT environments need to be able to scale faster than ever and IT automation is vital to making that happen."

Mission accomplished, or at least mission enabled the product team (and likely other units) can now do its thing at a much faster pace and greater scale than before.

That relatively simple hypothetical is automation-enabled transformation. Its technically not the only way to go about it, but its probably the only way that is sustainable for the long term.

IT automation techniques like containerization are not the only way to achieve digital transformation, but there are distinct benefits including creating a more secure, portable, scalable IT ecosystem, Newby says. A platform also fills in the resources, talent and personnel gaps created by the pandemic.

IT pros are familiar with the concept of Day 2 operations, which essentially asks of any significant launch or change: What happens once were live?

Given that digital transformation is so often referred to as a journey, organizations and leaders should ask a similar question: What happens if we arrive? Or, what happens when were successful?

[ Learn how leaders are embracing enterprise-wide IT automation: Taking the lead on IT Automation ]

Automation is a big part of the answer: If youre hitting DX goals, youre likely spinning up new applications and services, new products, new data streams, and so forth. Thats a whole lot of Day 2s to contend with, and ignoring that will likely erode any of the initial gains. Automation is the glue that binds things together as DX initiatives hit their stride.

If digital transformations are the bricks that build new business opportunities, then automation would most certainly be the mortar that connects and binds it all together, says Leon Godwin, principal cloud evangelist atSungard AS. Organizations are looking to do things better, faster, and cheaper to gain a competitive edge.

Automation is the glue that binds things together as DX initiatives hit their stride.

You might say all three of those terms better, faster, cheaper could apply to DX or automation on their own. But as a duo, DX is really about the better, while automation focuses on the faster and cheaper.

Weve noted multiple times in this space thatautomation on its own wont improve a broken or flawed process; it will just help that problematic process run faster and more frequently. DX is process improvement writ large, at the scope and scale that can completely revamp a business and how it operates. Automation is what makes that scope and scale attainable within time and financial constraints and sustainable over an indefinite period.

Digital transformation improves processes, while automation adds speed and reduces costs, Godwin says. Ultimately, digital transformation delivers more business value when it is combined with process efficiency, enabled by automation.

Lets recall a key piece of our definition of digital transformation that sometimes gets subdued by the industry hype: Its also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.

Were essentially at a point where the value and necessity of digital transformation dont need a lot of explanation everyone has seen the proverbial light.

Along with artificial intelligence (AI), advanced analytics, and the cloud, automation is a core component of digital transformation," says Amaresh Tripathy,Genpactsglobal analytics business leader. Enterprise leaders understand that their organizations cannot remain competitive in the digital age without these technologies.

Indeed they do. Some organizations are still figuring out the people and culture part, however. Embracing these solutions is only half the battle, Tripathy notes.

As words, automation and digital transformation sound indifferent to people or like theyre actively trying to remove us from the picture. But the true and nearly limitless value of automation and DX should very much be in human hands, with technology-borne tailwinds at their backs.

Tripathy and others use the term augmented intelligence here to describe the ideal (rather than the more dystopian future scenarios) partnership between people and machines, with automation and DX as its foundation. Most definitions of the term mix human experience and ingenuity with machine intelligence and scale.

While automating processes can be beneficial, the real value is how technology empowers people to innovate, build better products and services, and ultimately drive long-term value for all, Tripathy says.

While the term augmented intelligence naturally leads any discussion to disciplines likemachine learningand other AI fields, the human-machine relationship that it describes is fundamentally connected to the relationship between automation and digital transformation: They can make each other better.

[Where is your team's digital transformation work stalling? Get the eBook:What's slowing down your Digital Transformation? 8 questions to ask.]

Read the original here:

Automation and digital transformation: 3 ways they go together - The Enterprisers Project

DURHAM, N.C., March 25, 2022 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- ISA is working to make cybersecurity a more important topic in the post digital transformation world with its Digital Transformation Virtual ConferenceBrazil on March 29, 2022.

The event is aimed at IT technicians, cybersecurity professionals, engineers, plant managers, automation system developers, and others involved in the industry. Relevant companies and individuals can register on the home page.

The conference is particularly targeted towards audiences in Brazil, Bermuda, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Canada, and USA. As supporting partners, Petrobas and IBP will discuss their own cybersecurity experiences. At the conference, experts will discuss how cybersecurity will work in a post digital transformation world. The event will include discussions about cybersecurity issues in industrial automation settings, design systems with cybersecurity in mind, skills gaps on ISA cybersecurity standards, reliability, obsolescence of automation systems, how to protect and upgrade legacy hardware, and how to process safety issues that are affected by cybersecurity. In addition, experts will also share ISA cybersecurity standards, different approaches to cybersecurity, state-of-the-art cybersecurity for automation systems, and integration of Security Operation Centers (SOCs).

"Digital transformation offers so many benefits to companies in every vertical segment. These connected technologies enable higher performance, reduce downtime, increase efficiency, and provide unprecedented amounts of data to inform the enterprise," said ISA Executive Director Claire Ramspeck. "With all of these benefits, though, comes a great responsibility the expanded digital footprint means a much larger set of threats and vulnerabilities from a cybersecurity perspective. Cybersecurity needs to be a primary consideration for any company undergoing a digital transformation, and this event helps frame strategies to protect your systems and facilities."

The CEO & Founder of vFairs, Muhammad Younas, expressed, "Cybersecurity is a very relevant topic for all companies these days. Technology is part of most processes, so companies need to be up to date with the latest security protocols. Conferences like this will help make the post digital transformation world a much more secure and safer place."

The Digital Transformation Virtual ConferenceBrazil will take place on March 29, 2022. Those interested can buy their tickets on the event page. ISA members receive discounted tickets.

About ISA

The International Society of Automation (ISA) is a non-profit professional association founded in 1945 to create a better world through automation. ISA advances technical competence by connecting the automation community to achieve operational excellence and is the trusted provider of standards-based foundational technical resources, driving the advancement of individual careers and the overall profession. ISA develops widely used global standards; certifies professionals; provides education and training; publishes books and technical articles; hosts conferences and exhibits; and provides networking and career development programs for its members and customers around the world.

About vFairs

vFairs is a virtual & hybrid events platform that helps organizations reach global audiences. We help organizations of all sizes host amazing online conferences, trade shows, job fairs & more. The platform offers an intuitive virtual experience along with interactive features such as audio/video chat, excellent scalability, and several customization options.

Media Contact

Brianne Snell, vFairs, 519-215-3854, brianne@vfairs.com

Jennifer Halsey, ISA, 919-549-8411, jhalsey@isa.org

SOURCE vFairs

Read the rest here:

International Society of Automation (ISA) Partners with vFairs to Emphasize the Importance of Cybersecurity at the Digital Transformation Virtual...

The Industrial Automation Market Size, Growth driven by the surge in the uptake of automation solutions in the oil & gas, manufacturing, chemicals & materials, pharmaceuticals industries. APAC is anticipated to be the fastest-growing regional market with an impressive CAGR of 8.8% from 2021 to 2028.

New York, March 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Insight Partners published latest research study on Industrial Automation Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Component (Hardware and Software), System Type (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition, Distributed Control System, Programmable Logic Control, and Others), and End Users (Oil & Gas, Automotive, Food & Beverage, Chemical & Materials, Aerospace & Defense, and Others)", the global industrial automation market was valued at $140.39 billion in 2021 to reach $233.94 billion by 2028; it is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 7.6% from 2021 to 2028.

Get Exclusive Sample Pages of Industrial Automation Market Size - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis with Strategic Insights at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPRE00025985/

Report Coverage

Details

Market Size Value in

US$ 140.39 Billion in 2021

Market Size Value by

US$ 233.94 Billion by 2028

Growth rate

CAGR of 7.6% from 2021 to 2028

Forecast Period

2021-2028

Base Year

2021

No. of Pages

187

No. Tables

98

No. of Charts & Figures

86

Historical data available

Yes

Segments covered

Component, System Type, and End Users

Regional scope

North America; Europe; Asia Pacific; Latin America; MEA

Country scope

US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Australia, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina

Report coverage

Revenue forecast, company ranking, competitive landscape, growth factors, and trends

Industrial Automation Market: Competitive Landscape and Key Developments

ABB Ltd, Emerson Electric, OMRON, Rockwell, and FANUC are prominent players in the industrial automation market. In addition to these players, there are several other important players operating in the Industrial Automation market which were studies analyzed during the course of this market research study, such as B&R Industrial Automation GmbH; HITACHI LTD., Industrial, Automation (M) SDN BHD., Koyo Electronics Industries Co., LTD., and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.

In 2021, ABB launched a cobots portfolio in GoFa and SWIFT cobot families, which offer higher payload capacity and speed in the movement of robots that complement YuMi and Single Arm YuMi in ABB's cobot lineup.

Inquiry Before Buying: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPRE00025985/

In 2021, Omron launched the i4 series SCARA robot, which automates high-speed, high-precision assembly and transportation with easy installation.

The increasing penetration of advanced technologies such as machine learning (ML), the internet of things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) has helped accelerate the growth of the industrial automation market.Furthermore, the rising product development and strategic initiatives from key market players for industrial automation applications lead to industrial automation market growth. For instance, in 2020, Honeywell International Inc. and Tech Mahindra Limited partnered with "Factories of the Future" to accelerate the digital transformation journey by empowering manufacturers. Similarly, Siemens collaborated with SAP SE to offer industry 4.0-enabled business processes to enterprises. Further, the development of the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and the upcoming engineering 5G technology are a few factors contributing to the industrial automation market growth during the forecast period.

The demand for automation in e-commerce is highly varying, owing to which the forward pick areas must be continuously adjusted to aid the fluctuation in demand. Along with managing SKU demand fluctuations, an ASRS also advances the fulfillment process, thus allowing e-commerce and omnichannel retailers to adhere better to service level agreements by fulfilling order delivery commitments.

Several e-commerce giants have also increased their investment in automating their warehouse facilities over the years. For instance, in July 2021, Amazon India announced the launch of its 11 automated fulfillment centers. The centers will be integrated with automated technologies to automate pick pack and shipping processes and ensure safe and timely order processing. These factors are expected to boost the growth of the industrial automation market globally over the forecast period.

Speak to Research Analyst: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/speak-to-analyst/TIPRE00025985

Over the years, the industrial automation market has experienced a rise in adoption across all industries, owing to rapid investments made by several governments to promote the adoption of automation. However, due to the sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the manufacturing facilities of industrial automated solutions across the globe were adversely impacted, leading to low production volumes. Further, the demand for such solutions declined rapidly, owing to the temporary closure of end-use manufacturing and other retail outlets. However, with the normalization of economic and manufacturing activities from Q3 of 2020, the adoption of automated solutions experienced a rise to reduce the number of human interactions across facilities, thereby enabling the industrial automation market to revive from both the supply and demand sides in 2021.

Integration of Robotics in the Construction Industry:

Construction is one of the most manual-intensive industries, with physical labor being the primary source of productivity. Robots do not yet play a substantial role in any stage of a building's lifecycle, whether it be new commercial construction, refurbishment, or deconstruction. However, with the rising automation across all industries, the global construction sector is also experiencing a surge in investment in automated solutions, such as robots.

Several types of robots are being extensively adopted across the construction industry such as 3D printing, demolition, and remote-controlled or autonomous vehicles which is driving the industrial automation market growth. Currently, automation across the construction industry is at a very nascent stage. It is expected to propel over the coming years, supporting the market growth.

Due to these opportunities across the sector, several companies have invested heavily in developing advanced construction robots. For instance, Shimizu Corporation made investments worth US$ 180.7 million since 2015 for the development of construction robots, such as Robo-Welder and Robo-Buddy. These factors further fuel the adoption of robots across the construction industry, which is expected to contribute to the industrial automation market's growth over the forecast period.

Buy Premium Copy of Industrial Automation Market Size, Share, Revenue, Strategic Insights and Forecasts 2021-2028 Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/buy/TIPRE00025985/

Industrial Automation Market: Component Overview

Based on component, the industrial automation market is segmented into hardware and software. The hardware segment is anticipated to continue dominating the industrial automation market, owing to the significant hardware adoption in every industry. The software segment is the second-largest segment expected to gain prominence in industrial automation market during the forecast period.

Browse Adjoining Reports:

Industrial Automation Control Market to 2027 - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Solutions (Distributed Control System (DCS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Programmable Logic Control System (PLC), Human Machine Interface (HMI), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Others); and End-User (Process Industry and Discrete Industry)

Electronic Design Automation Market to 2027 - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Type (CAE, SIP, IC Physical Design & Verification, and PCB & MCM) and Application (Aerospace & Defense, Consumer Electronics, Telecom, Automotive, Industrial, and Others)

Industry Control and Factory Automation Market Forecast to 2028 - Covid-19 Impact and Global Analysis - by Component (Industrial Robots, Machine Vision, Control Valves, Field Instruments, Human-Machine Interface, Industrial PC, Sensors, Industrial 3D printing); Application (Power, Automotive, Printing and packaging, Oil and Gas, Pharmaceuticals, Textile, Chemical, Plastics, Food processing, Original Equipment Manufacturers) and Geography

Irrigation Automation Market Forecast to 2027 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Automation Type (Time-Based Systems, Volume-Based Systems, Real-Time Feedback Systems, Computer-Based Irrigation Control Systems); Irrigation Type (Drip Irrigation, Sprinkler Irrigation, Surface Irrigation); Component (Controllers, Sensors, Valves, Sprinklers, Others); System (Automatic, Semiautomatic); End-user (Agricultural, Non-Agricultural), and Geography

Logistics Automation Market Forecast to 2027 - Covid-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Component (Hardware, Software, and Services); Application (Warehouse Management and Transportation Management); Mode of Freight Transport (Air, Road, and Sea); End-User Industry (Retail and E-Commerce, Manufacturing, Oil and Gas, Food and Beverage, Automotive, Healthcare and Pharmaceutical, and Others), and Geography

Lab Automation Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Equipments (Automated Workstations, Microplate Readers, Robotic Systems, Off-The-Shelf Automated Workcells, Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS), Others); Software (Laboratory Execution Systems (LES), Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELN), Scientific Data Management Systems (SDMS))); Application (Clinical Diagnostics, Drug Discovery, Proteomics Solutions, Genomics Solutions, Microbiology)

Door and Window Automation Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Component (Access Control Systems, Control Panels, Sensors and Detectors, Motors and Actuators, and Others), Product Type (Windows, Industrial Doors, and Pedestrian Doors), and End User (Residential, Commercial, and Industrial)

Tunnel Automation Market Forecast to 2028 - Covid-19 Impact and Global Analysis - by Component (HVAC, Lighting & Power Supply, Signalization); Tunnel Type (Railway Tunnels and Highway and Roadway Tunnels); Offering (Hardware, Software, and Services)

Helpdesk Automation Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Software (Web Help Desk, On Premise Help Desk, Enterprise Help Desk, Open Source Help Desk); Solution (Alert Management, Ticket Sortation, Others); End User (IT, Telecommunication, Education, Government, Retail, Others); Organization Size (Large Enterprises, SMEs) and Geography

Back Office Automation Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Deployment (Cloud-Based, On-Premise); Organization Size (Large Enterprise, SMEs) and Geography

Modular Laboratory Automation Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis By Equipment and Software (Automated Liquid Handlers, Automated Plate Handlers, Robotic Arms, Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (ASRS), Software, Analyzers); Application (Drug Discovery, Genomics, Proteomics, Clinical diagnostics) and Geography

Database Automation Market Forecast to 2028 - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis by Component (Solutions, Services); Application (Provisioning, Backup, Security and Compliance); Deployment Mode (Cloud, On-Premises); Enterprise Size (Large Enterprises, SMEs); Vertical (Manufacturing, Healthcare, BFSI, Research and Academia, Media and Entertainment, Retail and E-commerce, Government and Defense, Telecom and IT, Others) and Geography

About Us:

The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We specialize in industries such as Semiconductor and Electronics, Aerospace and Defense, Automotive and Transportation, Biotechnology, Healthcare IT, Manufacturing and Construction, Medical Device, Technology, Media and Telecommunications, Chemicals and Materials.

If you have any queries about this report or if you would like further information, please contact us:

Contact:

Sameer Joshi E-mail: [emailprotected] Phone:+1-646-491-9876 Press Release: https://www.theinsightpartners.com/pr/industrial-automation-market

SOURCE The Insight Partners

Excerpt from:

Industrial Automation Market Size Worth $233.94 Bn, Globally, by 2028 at 7.6% CAGR - Exclusive Report by The Insight Partners - PR Newswire

A new study reveals that 91 per cent of Canadian technologists believe that the shift to full-stack observability will be transformational for their business.

Full-stack observability is real-time view across the modern technology stack applications, software-defined compute, storage, services, and network. It allows IT operations, development and networking teams to easily identify abnormalities, understand root causes through dependency analysis, and solve issues before they impact end users and the business. When this IT performance data is connected to business outcomes, technologists can rank issues based on their potential impact to the organization and prioritize actions accordingly

According to a Cisco AppDynamics report, The Journey to Observability, many organizations have made strong progress on the transition to full-stack observability, with 86 per cent succeeding in generating greater visibility across their IT stack.

Support for full-stack observability has seen a huge increase, and technologists are receiving strong backing from business leaders, who are committing budget and resources to activate implementation plans. Companies that have already generated improved visibility across their IT stack over the past year are seeing improvements such as greater efficiency and productivity within the IT department, improved collaboration between teams, faster resolution of technology performance issues, reduced operational costs, and a greater ability to deploy IT teams on more strategic work.

The Cisco report also reveals that 95 per cent of Canadian technologists said their organization now has a defined full-stack observability strategy in place, with 37 per cent already in execution mode, 44 per cent taking their first steps and 14 per cent with plans to get started.

And its not just full-stack observability that enterprises are prioritizing. Automation adoption is also growing.

According to Stonebranchs 2022 State of IT Automation Report, 88 per cent of enterprises plan to grow their investment in automation in 2022. Companies are looking at a cross-section of automation technologies, and IT automation has specifically become increasingly important.

Sixty-nine per cent of enterprises are automating cloud applications and platforms, as well as containers. Multi-cloud environments are also becoming more and more popular; almost all enterprises reported using more than two public cloud service providers in day-to-day operations, and 91 per cent automate data transfers between multiple public cloud providers.

About half of the respondents surveyed in the report said they plan to invest in business process automation (BPA). In addition, investments in robotic process automation (RPA), workload automation (WLA), cloud automation, and service orchestration and automation platforms (SOAPs) are all being considered.SOAP, the newest category, is already one of the leading automation technologies globally. It is an evolution from WLA that adds cloud, DevOps, infrastructure, and data pipeline automation capabilities to the mix.

Samira is a part-time writer for IT World Canada. She is currently pursuing a journalism degree at Ryerson University and hopes to become a news anchor or write journalistic profiles.

Read this article:

Studies reveal that full-stack observability and automation adoption are priorities for businesses in 2022 - Channel Daily News