Monsido Empowers Website Owners to Take Control Of Personal Data on Their Website and Meet Regulatory Requirements
SYDNEY, July 15, 2020 — Monsido, a leader in web governance solutions that enhance user experience, today announced the launch of their Data Privacy module. The new module will allow Monsido customers to automate the management of their websites’ personal data by scanning their domains and identifying potential privacy issues.
With global privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the Australian Privacy Act (The Privacy Act 1988) in Australia in place, organisations need to be more vigilant with the personal data they collect, process, and store on their websites. It is crucial that organisations take proactive measures like implementing data protection and management software to help guide them through the various regulations.
Monsido’s Data Privacy module enables web and compliance teams to take control of their data privacy with ease by:
Automatically discovering and classifying sensitive information present on websites such as banking details, passport numbers, medical information, and much more
Customising scans based on existing data privacy standards like the GDPR, the Australian Privacy Act, and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
Prioritising potential issues by identifying the level of risk associated with the different data on websites
Proving their efforts to comply with data privacy standards to the authorities through audit logs and a history centre
Jannik Groentved, CEO of Monsido, said: “It is extremely difficult to avoid giving away personal information on the web today. And once you’ve given your data to an organisation, it can be hard to control where it will be used. Our Data Privacy module will help our customers ensure the best interests of their website visitors and customers by safeguarding their information and managing the personal data they hold to stay in compliance with international regulations.”
About Monsido Monsido is a fast-growing software company founded in 2014 that provides a one-stop web governance solution designed to give website visitors a superior browsing experience. Our time-saving auditing tool provides accurate and insightful information that helps organisations work with confidence to identify content, branding, and accessibility issues. Monsido has offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Denmark. For more information, visit www.monsido.com.
Alestra, deploys Bright Pattern Contact Center for nonprofit, CENACED, to offer remote psychological teleassistance services during the pandemic
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, California, July 15, 2020 — CENACED, a non-profit healthcare organization, has deployed Bright Pattern as their cloud-based contact center software provider amid the COVID-19 pandemic. CENACED uses Bright Pattern to offer free telehealth services to help citizens in Mexico dealing with stress during the quarantine. They have also moved agents and counselors to a remote model to protect the safety of their employees during the pandemic.
A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that the pandemic has negatively affected the mental health of 56 percent of adults. In April, texts to a US federal emergency mental-health line were up 1,000 percent from the year before. The situation is particularly dire for certain vulnerable groups—health-care workers, COVID-19 patients with severe cases, and people who have lost loved ones. CENACED is working with Bright Pattern, Alestra, and Bright Pattern partner, Call It Once, to bring telehealth counseling services to impacted people in Mexico to help people deal with the current health crisis.
CENACED offers free psychological telecare to people who have symptoms of stress derived from quarantine and with Bright Pattern’s virtual call center technology are now handling 120 cases per hour and serving almost 50,000 people per month. Alestra, Bright Pattern, and Call It Once joined CENACED in this critical initiative, enabling a teleassistance contact center in the cloud as shown in this video showing the solution in action. Per CENACED this cloud contact center was deployed in “record time” and is “a technology initiative that changes lives”:
“Bright Pattern has helped global companies during the pandemic by providing a 100% virtual platform allowing customers to seamlessly transition to remote teams,” said Michael McCloskey, CEO of Bright Pattern. “Countries in both Asia and Europe have also used Bright Pattern to help with COVID contact tracing but this is the first Bright Pattern powered contact center that is helping offer telehealth services during the pandemic as well.”
“Today, the world is facing challenging times. People and companies are taking the lead in collaborating in a more personalized way leveraging innovative technology,” said Ana Llano, Regional Manager, Latin America, Bright Pattern. “With our help, CENACED was able to deploy a hybrid contact center with onsite and remote agents quickly thanks to the ease-of-use of the Bright Pattern platform. Agents were ready to provide personalized virtual counseling services and psychological teleassistance to Mexican citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. At Bright Pattern, we are proud to collaborate with our partners and help CENACED with this innovative use of technology focused on helping people and keeping agents safe at home.”
Bright Pattern Virtual Call Center Bright Pattern’s cloud-based virtual call center solution for remote agents delivers all of the benefits of a traditional contact center solution while providing the additional benefits of the flexibility gained through the use of remote workers. Our virtual contact center software solution allows your organization to “flex” during peak or low times, recruit talent from any geography, and deliver a complete omnichannel customer experience. In addition, Bright Pattern provides a powerful omnichannel quality management solution that allows you to score 100% of all customer interactions and manage agent performance to better manage remote workers. This combination of advanced omnichannel virtual contact center software with embedded quality management makes Bright Pattern the clear choice for delivering the best customer and agent experience.
Bright Pattern Cloud Contact Center Features:
Business Continuity – Keep your business going no matter what interruptions local offices or business settings face. Bright Pattern has a robust system designed to ensure uninterrupted continuity in the case of a local disaster or facility interruption.
Scalability – Bright Pattern cloud call center software allows you to easily supplement your existing workforce with additional remote agents in minimal time.
Deploy in Days – Bright Pattern was rated #1 by G2 Crowd for quickest time to deploy out of all CCaaS vendors in the industry with the highest ROI and ROI payback time. Bright Pattern Cloud Contact Center can be deployed in days instead of the weeks it takes most CCaaS vendors.
Geographic flexibility – allow agents to access the exact same information that they would typically access in their offices from anywhere with a stable internet connection.
Maintain voice quality across geographies – Bright Pattern’s Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) software routes callers to the optimal agent.
Built in Quality Assurance – Monitor 100% of interactions regardless of channel with AI-powered quality management with sentiment and speech analytics for automated quality assurance in real-time across the globe.
Data Privacy – Fully compliant with international regulations including PCI DSS, HIPAA, DGPR, TCPA, and SOC.
If you are experiencing a spike in calls as a result of the outbreak or need to deploy a remote workforce, Bright Pattern is prepared to deliver consultations and cloud services to existing and new customers. Please contact us at marketing@brightpattern.com, call 925-548-0532, or request a demo.
About Bright Pattern Bright Pattern provides the simplest and most powerful AI-powered omnichannel contact center software for innovative midsize and enterprise companies. With the purpose of making customer service brighter, easier, and faster than ever before, Bright Pattern offers the only true omnichannel cloud platform with embedded AI that can be deployed quickly and nimbly by business users—without costly professional services. Bright Pattern allows companies to offer an effortless and personal customer experience across channels like voice, text, chat, email, video, messengers, and bots. Bright Pattern also allows companies to measure and act on every interaction on every channel via embedded AI omnichannel quality management. The company was founded by a team of industry veterans who pioneered the leading contact center solutions and today are delivering an architecture for the future with an advanced cloud-first approach. Bright Pattern’s cloud contact center solution is used globally in over 26 countries and 12 languages.
About Alestra Alestra is a Mexican IT Services company headquartered in San Pedro Garza García, in Greater Monterrey, Mexico.It is a subsidiary of the Mexican conglomerate Alfa and provides IT solutions for the corporate sector in Mexico. Alestra reported revenues of $415 million for 2014.
About CENACED CENACED is a non-profit, plural, autonomous, and inclusive civil society organization, with no political or religious aims and always open to anyone who wants to join efforts to improve the living conditions of the population in vulnerable conditions. CENACED is dedicated to promoting and strengthening a greater culture of prevention, health self-care, and self-protection in cases of disasters and epidemiological contingencies.
About Call IT Once Call IT Once is made up of highly experienced professionals for contact center management and the continuous improvement of contact center processes and strategies.
New subscription-based platform puts software at the heart of the enterprise and includes new eLearning platform to bridge widening knowledge gap
UTRECHT, The Netherlands, July 14, 2020 —Ultimaker, the global leader in professional 3D printing, launched today Ultimaker Essentials, a new software solution created to aid companies in overcoming major barriers in the adoption of additive manufacturing. Ultimaker Essentials enables companies to incorporate 3D printing in existing IT infrastructures and allows for seamless distribution and updating of 3D printing software. The paid subscription-based software offering addresses several glaring IT pain-points, including the need for improved management across workflows and the knowledge gap that exists in the manufacturing industry.
A major concern within enterprise IT departments is the ability to successfully and centrally manage distribution 3D printing software. Ultimaker Essentials addresses this issue by ensuring updates and plugins are rolled out across users in an organization at the same time. This streamlines the process, providing better control across multiple 3D printers in an organization.
Ultimaker Essentials also includes a brand-new direct support function and a catalogue of verified plugins to help effectively scale 3D Printing outputs. Subscribing to Ultimaker Essentials provides organizations with an enterprise grade solution for adopting a full 3D printing infrastructure.
“As one of the core pillars of Industry 4.0, 3D printing is an essential part of progressive business solutions and processes,” said Jos Burger, CEO at Ultimaker. “In the wake of the recent pandemic, companies need to quickly realize, if they haven’t already, that global supply chains and manufacturing workflows can be easily disrupted. The transition to digital distribution and local manufacturing is now imminent and more imperative than ever. The Ultimaker Essentials launch is targeted at addressing these gaps and removing the final barriers in adoption of 3D printing.”
As part of the Ultimaker Essential package, users have access to three eLearning courses from the Ultimaker 3D Printing Academy, which also launches today. Ultimaker’s 2019 3D Printing Sentiment Index found that 69 percent of the professionals surveyed cited knowledge as the most frequent barrier, of which, 40 percent brought up a lack of necessary skillsets to properly leverage 3D printing. The Ultimaker 3D Printing Academy helps professionals overcome these barriers with curated and developed content catered specifically to the jobs of today. Courses in the Ultimaker 3D Printing Academy, ranging from novice to expert level, will also be available separate from Ultimaker Essentials.
“We are thrilled to roll-out the Ultimaker 3D Printing Academy as a premier platform for learning, which will significantly increase in value over time,” said Nuno Campos, CMO at Ultimaker. “This is only the first step of our program as in Q4 we will expand the Academy by releasing multiple role- and topic-based courses, which will lead to additional certifications. We look forward to the continued adoption and education of 3D printing and are excited to help businesses uncover how 3D printing can benefit their business now and in the future.”
To learn more about Ultimaker Essentials, please register to join our live webinar on July 14, 2020 at 9pm SGT / 3pm CEST / 9am EDT / 6am PDT. Additional information can be found at https://ultimaker.com/software-launch.
About Ultimaker
Since 2011, Ultimaker has built an open and easy-to-use solution of 3D printers, software, and materials that enable professional designers and engineers to innovate every day. Today, Ultimaker is the market leader in professional 3D printing. From offices in the Netherlands, New York, Boston, and Singapore – plus production facilities in Europe and the US – its global team of over 400 employees work together to accelerate the world’s transition to digital distribution and local manufacturing. Ultimaker.com
Partners recognized for innovative solutions and making more possible for customers worldwide
REDMOND, Washington, July 14, 2020 — Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced the winners and finalists of the 2020 Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards. The annual awards recognize Microsoft partners demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology. Award winners and finalists from around the world will be recognized at the first-ever digital Microsoft Inspire, July 21-22, 2020.
Microsoft company logo.
This year, Microsoft acknowledged partners in 49 categories celebrating each of the solution areas, industries and sectors globally in which Microsoft technologies are used. Microsoft introduced ten new categories this year, including the first-ever Community Response Award, which recognizes partners that have made a great difference, providing innovative and unique services or solutions to help solve problems for our customers and community during these unprecedented times.
The finalists and winners for all Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards were selected from more than 3,300 nominations collected from more than 100 different countries worldwide based on their commitment to customers, their solution’s impact on the market and exemplary use of Microsoft technologies.
“It is an honor to recognize the winners and finalists of the Microsoft 2020 Partner of the Year Awards,” said Gavriella Schuster, corporate vice president, One Commercial Partner, Microsoft. “These partners go above and beyond, delivering timely solutions that solve the complex challenges that businesses around the world face — from communicating and collaborating virtually to helping customers realize their full potential with Azure cloud services, and beyond. I am proud to honor and congratulate each winner and finalist.”
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
About Microsoft Inspire
Microsoft Inspire provides Microsoft’s partner community with access to key marketing and business strategies, leadership, and information regarding specific customer solutions designed to help partners succeed in the marketplace. Microsoft Inspire provides partners with informative learning opportunities covering sales, marketing, services and technology. More information can be found at https://partner.microsoft.com/en-us/inspire.
The leading facial recognition firm launches new video analytics to enhance security and safety in the new post-pandemic era
BARCELONA, Spain, July 13, 2020 — Herta, the Barcelona based facial recognition company, has recently launched a new range of solutions that will help businesses and industries adapt to the new normality.
Herta’s technology is characterized by having the best reputation, with real and large-scale security projects worldwide. By expanding their product range, the company aims to reinforce their mission: increase the world’s safety by building user-friendly computer vision solutions. With these new applications, Herta will surely help organizations comply with the new COVID-19 safety regulations as well as covering the needs that arise in this new normality.
E-commerce tech company continues to invest in strengthening the executive team with appointment of newCFO,Michael Gordon, Deputy CFO, Laura Mineo and Chief People Officer, Lisa Craven
NEW YORK, July 13, 2020 —Rokt, the global leader in e-commerce marketing technology, today announced that their vision to make e-commerce smarter, faster and better is further strengthened with the appointment of former Greenlit Brands executive, Michael Gordon, Goldman-Sachs alumni, Laura Mineo and leadership executive, Lisa Craven in the roles of Chief Financial Officer, Deputy Chief Financial Officer, and Chief People Officer respectively. Gordon and Mineo will oversee the finance and legal operations of the business, working closely with CEO, Bruce Buchanan and the board of directors to manage the continuing acceleration of global growth. Craven will oversee people operations, learning & development and recruitment, signaling Rokt’s ongoing commitment to investment in its 225+ group of employees.
Rokt welcomes former Greenlit Brands executive, Michael Gordon, Goldman-Sachs alumni, Laura Mineo and leadership executive, Lisa Craven in the roles of Chief Financial Officer, Deputy Chief Financial Officer, and Chief People Officer respectively.
Gordon, who was previously Group CFO and MD of Group Services for Greenlit Brands Pty Limited in Australia & New Zealand, was instrumental in guiding the business from a turnover of USD$170m to a USD$1.65 billion vertically integrated retailer including the brands Freedom, Snooze, Fantastic, Plush, OMF, Best & Less and Harris Scarfe.
Mineo joins the Rokt team from Goldman Sachs in New York, where she most recently served as Executive Director, Firmwide Strategy. Mineo brings invaluable experience across mergers and acquisitions and capital markets across multiple industries and geographies. Mineo will take on the role of SVP Strategy in addition to her role as Deputy CFO.
Craven, who was previously consulting for Rokt, has an extensive career in leadership development, organizational design, people and culture initiatives, diversity & inclusion and human resources. Previously Global Chief People Officer at Sizmek, Craven has also served as a lecturer at Macquarie University, Janice Newman Institute and Drew University. Craven brings experience leading large-scale global teams in organizational effectiveness, and will use this to help drive a culture that attracts, and retains the best, and brightest talent.
“We are delighted to welcome Michael, Laura and Lisa to the Rokt executive team” said Rokt CEO, Bruce Buchanan. “In Michael & Laura, we are incredibly lucky to have two individuals with such strong expertise and a deep understanding of financial operations join at a pivotal time for the company. As we now target the next growth arc from ARR$100m to $1b, Gordon and Mineo’s global experience and knowledge of both private and publicly listed businesses will enable us to double down on our preparedness for scalability and the financial events we will consider on our trajectory.
Buchanan continued, “As a people first organization, Lisa is one of our most pivotal hires. Her expertise in organizational effectiveness and leadership development will be crucial in further deepening our people first culture, and helping us scale as we grow our business and look to continue to accelerate our recruitment across the globe.
“Rokt has quickly cemented their position as the leading technology company in e-commerce marketing and is poised to have even more significant global impact through continued innovation in research and development.” said Gordon. “I am excited to be joining such an inspirational business and look forward to working alongside the executive team to help drive this company through to the next stage of growth.”
“In what has been such an unprecedented year, it’s exciting to see a company such as Rokt thriving and innovating to keep up with, and exceed their clients’ needs.” commented Mineo. “During times of agility, financial rigor and strategic direction is more important than ever. I’m excited to come on board and help take this company to new heights of success.”
“Having spent some time recently with Bruce, and the wider executive team at Rokt I was delighted at having the opportunity to join the team in a full time capacity.” added Craven. “Rokt has embraced the people first mentality, pushing forward initiatives to ensure their values and culture are at the heart of every decision they make. I look forward to coming on board to amplify Rokt’s already significant investment in its greatest asset – it’s people.”
Rokt, who recently closed US$48m in their Series C investment round, has transformed e-commerce in over 11 countries by identifying that when customers are buying online as a consumer or on behalf of a business, they increasingly expect more personalized and relevant experiences. Rokt’s proprietary technology, machine learning and AI makes e-commerce smarter, faster and better. By unlocking the hidden potential in every single Transaction Moment™, Rokt enables clients to stay ahead of their competition, and deliver a more relevant customer experience. Rokt currently solves complex e-commerce challenges for global clients including Live Nation, Staples, Groupon, GoDaddy, Expedia and Wells Fargo.
For more information on Rokt, please visit rokt.com.
For more information on the announcement, please contact press@rokt.com.
ABOUT ROKT
Rokt makes e-commerce smarter, faster and better. When customers are buying online, they increasingly expect more personalized and relevant experiences. Rokt uses real time data and decisioning to deliver the next best action for each person in each Transaction Moment™.
Founded in Sydney, Rokt now operates in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, The Netherlands, Spain and Japan. Our clients include Live Nation, Staples, Groupon, GoDaddy, Expedia, Wells Fargo, Vistaprint and HelloFresh.
Rokt unlocks the hidden potential in every single Transaction Moment™.
– Supported by Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications –
– Subsidy for Extraordinarily Ambitious Ideas; No Restrictions on Age, Nationality, Residence of Applicants –
TOKYO, July 10, 2020 — KADOKAWA ASCII Research Laboratories, Inc. of Tokyo, the executing agency for the "INNO-vation Program," implemented by the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, is soliciting applications for the program until August 31, 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on society has been so extreme that there is no choice but to alter lifestyles down to the way people move about during the day. To overcome and eliminate this status quo and work toward changing their lives into a new and evolved normal, people must not forget about the extraordinary individuals who continue to face these challenges in the most difficult of circumstances and support their unique abilities that go beyond common sense. This program is for outside-the-box challengers in the ICT field. The "Disruptive Challenge" seeks to create disruptive value with a maximum challenge period of one year and total financial support of up to JPY3 million. The "Generation Award" looks to find small yet unique ideas and technology that look to build a better future, winners receiving commendation and prizes of up to JPY200,000 from 180 "Cooperative Partners."
-Applications for "Disruptive Challenge" (support of up to JPY3 million)
The first step, "The 0 to 1 Challenge," features a challenge period of up to 4 months and a support budget of up to JPY1 million. Desired amounts can be set according to how the challenger wishes to light up the path to the goal.
The second step, the "Disruptive Challenge," lets challengers continue on, subtracting the time and budget used in the first step for a challenge period of up to 1 year and a maximum support budget of up to JPY3 million.
-Applications for Generation Award (Receive JPY200,000 for each Category Award)
In cooperation with the Cooperative Partners of this program, Category Award Prizes (JPY200,000) and Special Corporate Awards will be offered. In addition, those proposals nominated for the awards (185 from last year) will be given the opportunity to implement their ideas in cooperation with these partnering companies.
-Creations and Inventions from Prior "INNO-vation Programs"
For videos, interviews, and more about the program, please view the official showcase at InnoUvators: https://innouvators.com/inno/
Volterra platform addresses critical operational challenges across clouds and the edge while delivering a consistent cloud-native environment
SANTA CLARA, California, July 10, 2020 — Based on its recent analysis of the distributed cloud market in North America, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Volterra with the 2020 North American Technology Innovation Leadership Award for its software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based distributed cloud services platform. Volterra’s innovative design and broad set of cloud services enable enterprises to rapidly deploy and securely deliver applications across multi-cloud and diverse edge environments.
2020 North American Distributed Cloud Technology Innovation Leadership Award
“Volterra’s distributed cloud services platform integrates a wide range of network, security and application services traditionally operated as point products. The result is much faster service deployments, simplified operations, end-to-end visibility, and significantly lower operations cost,” said Dhiraj Badgujar, industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan. “The platform also ensures multi-layer security for cloud workloads and high-performance global connectivity across multiple clouds and the edge. Thus, it serves as a foundation for the secure delivery of distributed applications across distributed environments.”
Volterra’s distributed cloud platform addresses the needs of customers across retail, automotive, manufacturing, e-commerce, and telecom by delivering and enabling workloads wherever they are needed. It achieves this via its core service offerings, VoltMesh™ and VoltStack™. VoltMesh provides high-performance cloud networking and zero-trust security for workloads distributed within or across clouds, as well as the edge. VoltStack provides application deployment and management, clustering, distributed storage, Kubernetes management and application security. VoltConsole™ provides centralized management for VoltMesh and VoltStack through with custom dashboards, logs and metrics, and full multi-tenancy.
Unlike its competitors, both public companies and startups, Volterra’s major differentiating factor is its scalable, end-to-end distributed architecture, as well as a broad set of networking, security, and app management capabilities, that together accelerate app deployments and simplify operations. Its platform further enhances security and reliability for modern apps distributed across multiple clouds through its API gateway and API discovery and control capabilities.
“Volterra’s SaaS-based offering enables customers to offload application hosting onto the network, enhancing the end-user experience by moving workloads closer,” noted Badgujar. “The company boasts a dedicated team of over 100 experts specializing in carrier- and enterprise-grade networking and computing infrastructure. With its strong human capital and collective expertise, Volterra is well-positioned to help enterprises manage the transition to multi-cloud and edge cloud environments.”
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a product with innovative features and functionality that is gaining rapid acceptance in the market. The award recognizes the quality of the solution and the customer value enhancements it enables.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.
About Frost & Sullivan
For over five decades, Frost & Sullivan has become world-renowned for its role in helping investors, corporate leaders and governments navigate economic changes and identify disruptive technologies, Mega Trends, new business models and companies to action, resulting in a continuous flow of growth opportunities to drive future success. Contact us: Start the discussion.
Volterra provides a distributed cloud platform to deploy, connect, secure and operate applications and data across multi-cloud and edge sites. Line-of-business leaders can drive business transformation and automation by distributing workloads closer to business activity. DevOps teams can manage fleets of applications and infrastructure with less complexity. Network teams can simplify application connectivity and security across clouds. Visit www.volterra.io or follow us on Twitter @Volterra_ to learn more.
Baidu’s chief says AI is progressing through three stages of historical development and will eventually transform entire industries
SHANGHAI, July 9, 2020 — Robin Li, the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU), today set out his elaborate vision for the future of AI during a keynote speech at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC). Li said that new infrastructure will accelerate the intelligent transformation of various industries, with Baidu playing a key role in this process through its open-source AI platforms that can empower other organizations to adopt AI applications. Li also believes that the development of AI is only in the middle stage of a three-stage historical trajectory, but that AI has already demonstrated its potential to transform economies and societies.
Robin Li set out his elaborate vision for the future of AI during a keynote speech at the WAIC
In line with this year’s WAIC theme “Intelligent Connectivity, Indivisible Community”, Li spoke about the impactful role AI is playing, and will play, in tackling the world’s biggest problems, including the COVID-19 pandemic, economic stagnation, and widespread unemployment. Li stated that the ongoing development of new infrastructure will facilitate the widespread application of AI, which will boost efficiency in transportation, energy, health care, and other fields, driving economic growth. Likening it to the U.S. information superhighway concept of the 1990s that ushered in the internet age, Li said that China’s “New Infrastructure” plan should be seen as “the largest-scale infrastructure expansion engineering project” for supporting intelligent transformation and “has great potential to bring about comprehensive AI in China.”
Li explained that Baidu aims to make a significant contribution to the building of new infrastructure. Baidu has invested heavily in developing AI platforms—such as the deep learning open platform PaddlePaddle, Baidu Cloud, AI open platform Baidu Brain, and the Apollo autonomous driving platform—all of which will enable other organizations to adopt AI applications. Baidu recently announced plans to deploy 5 million intelligent cloud servers by 2030 and train 5 million AI experts in the next 5 years.
“As an AI platform company that is focused on empowering other organizations, Baidu hopes that every enterprise, no matter how small, is able to use capabilities and services provided by our platforms, just like they were water and electricity, to quickly and easily realize intelligent transformation,” Li said.
“I believe even more strongly that as AI technology platforms are open sourced, more and more applications can be conveniently developed, benefiting more and more aspects of our society and economy,” he added.
Li also pushed back on the rising pessimism about the power of technology, and of AI in particular, comparing the current malaise to that which prevailed in the early 2000s about the internet, before it became universal. “During that period, I never lost faith in the power of the internet—and I feel the same way about AI today,” Li said. “I still consider AI as comparable to the big wave of the industrial revolution—AI will definitely change every industry we have today.”
Li highlighted the impressive record of existing AI applications in fighting COVID-19, such as Baidu’s AI-powered LinearFold algorithm, which has reduced the prediction time of the coronavirus’s RNA secondary structure from 55 minutes to 27 seconds, significantly increasing the efficiency of vaccine R&D. He also pointed to Baidu’s AI temperature screening system and autonomous vehicles, which have contributed to COVID-19 control work.
In Li’s view, these applications of AI are just the beginning of a wider transformation of all industries and societies. “AI development is progressing through three main historical stages,” Li explained in his remarks; at present, we are only in stage two. In the first stage, Li said, “AI scholars focused mostly on introducing concepts, technological exploration, and limited applications like playing Go. In this stage, AI had not become an industrial or economic phenomenon.”
The second stage is the intelligent transformation of the economy. Along with the rise of the internet and growth of data, AI is starting to play a broader role in several industries. Li believes this specific stage consists of two halves: the first half, which has passed, saw the development of general AI capabilities and platforms; the second half, now underway, is seeing the application and commercialization of AI in more and more sectors, such as search, newsfeed recommendation, autonomous driving, and healthcare. The third and final stage is the intelligent transformation of society, when AI will permeate from economic aspects to wider social aspects.
In line with its vision to empower other organizations to adopt AI, at the WAIC Baidu reached a strategic partnership with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB) to accelerate the application of AI in the finance industry. The new agreement will build on their previous achievements in establishing the first laboratory for deep learning in the finance industry, initiating a fintech innovation competition for college students, leveraging Baidu’s blockchain to build a new information sharing mechanism, and using AI to develop a virtual customer service platform. Baidu will continue to support SPDB in its digitalization and application of AI, with the goal of achieving the intelligent transformation of finance.
Baidu’s natural language processing (NLP) framework ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through kNowledge IntEgration) also earned the WAIC’s highest honorary prize, the SAIL (Super AI Leader) award. Receiving over 800 submissions from leading companies, SAIL aims to inspire technology breakthroughs, application innovations, and AI projects that change people’s lives. ERNIE has made significant advancements in NLP, which is important for training AI machines to understand human languages.
About Baidu
Baidu, Inc. is a leading search engine, knowledge and information centered Internet platform and AI company. The Company’s mission is to make the complicated world simpler through technology. Baidu’s ADSs trade on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “BIDU”. Currently, ten ADSs represent one Class A ordinary share.
IFS achieves the highest overall position for its ability to execute in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management
LONDON, July 9, 2020 — IFS, the global enterprise applications company, sees the most recent placement in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management* (FSM) as a testament to its long-term product investment strategy and singular customer focus. Since 2014, IFS has been recognized as a Leader in every Gartner Magic Quadrant published for FSM.
IFS has also welcomed a large number of new customers to its service management fold, including regional telecommunications leader Saudi Telecom Company, energy and communications technology solutions provider SPIE France, and US oil and gas producer Endeavor Energy Resources.
The IFS partner ecosystem was also significantly extended by PTC, whose Servigistics® Service Parts Management will, in combination with IFS Field Service Management™, allow companies to increase equipment uptime and service part availability as well as improve service delivery and execution efficiency.
IFS’s offering combines world-class real-time scheduling optimization alongside a breadth of service management and field service capabilities that are unmatched in the market. This makes IFS uniquely capable of managing the entire service lifecycle for businesses from mobile workforce, planning, service desk, and contact center to contracts, warranties, forward and reverse logistics, and depot repair. IFS connects the complete service value chain enabling businesses to deliver digital transformation and power growth through service.
“Being once again positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management is, in my opinion, an important validation of our unwavering commitment to enabling our customers to power their growth through service,” said Marne Martin, President of IFS Service Management. “Over the past year, we have continued our aggressive investment in the service management business, adding more go-to-market, product, implementation and support resources and expertise to bring even more value to our customers, both globally and regionally. As we continue to tackle the challenges of 2020 together with our partner ecosystem, our focus remains firmly on empowering our customers to accelerate revenue generation and deliver on digital transformation goals with intelligent service solutions that encompass every business process within the complete service value chain. Your customers and shareholders will thank you.”
Access a complimentary copy of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management here:
*Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Field Service Management,” Jim Robinson, Naved Rashid, 06 July, 2020.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
About IFS
IFS develops and delivers enterprise software for customers around the world who manufacture and distribute goods, build and maintain assets, and manage service-focused operations. The industry expertise of our people and solutions, together with a commitment to delivering value to every one of our customers, has made IFS a recognized leader and the most recommended supplier in our sector. Our team of 4,000 employees and growing ecosystem of partners support more than 10,000 customers around the world challenge the status quo and realize their competitive advantage. Learn more about how our enterprise software solutions can help your business today at ifs.com.
CONTACT:
Lyndsey Rojas, IFS Director of Communications. Phone: +1-888-437-4968, press@ifs.com
Dan Wright, IFS Senior Global Analyst Relations Manager. Phone: +1-847-592- 0200, dan.wright@ifs.com
