• Zoom has matured beyond its video-centric roots into a holistic UC&C player.
• Enhancements revealed at the annual ‘Zoomtopia’ event demonstrate just how far Zoom has come – and portend how far it may go.
In a short span of time, Zoom has jettisoned its video-centric roots and blossomed into a holistic UC&C player. But Zoom has not been content with resting on its laurels. Enhancements just announced at its annual ‘Zoomtopia’ conference represent a big leap forward. Zoom has arrived and then some.
Charlotte Dunlap – Principal Analyst, Application Platforms
Summary Bullets: • Mendix’s data integration technology now supports app dev around business events • Appian focused on support for composite data synchronization and data integration
Those pure-plays involved in the highly competitive low-code wars focused heavily on data integration strengths during the past week. Mendix and Appian, respectively, made significant updates to their flagship low-code automation platforms, focused primarily on providing developers with more AI/ML access and innovative data integration capabilities.
Building on its model-driven development strengths, Mendix’s platform updates during its annual conference last week focused on bringing agility to app development through automation, AI, and pre-built templates. At the heart of Mendix’s portfolio is its integration management platform Data Hub, which now lets developers display business events (such as purchases or help desk tickets) and build automated responses when triggered. Emerging intelligent workflow automation is a top priority among operations teams.
Appian continues to invest in its low-code and intelligent automation capabilities, acquiring highly relevant innovators including Novayre last year and recently process mining provider Lana Labs. Stemming from its BPM heritage, Appian differentiates from rivals through its focus on low-code/no-code automation addressing complex workflows through a combination of BPM, API integration, decision rules, RPA, AI, and case management capabilities. Its latest announcements focus further on its support for composite data synchronization and data integration, although the announcement was short on details including Lana Labs integrations.
The fast-moving low-code app development space is highly competitive, and as such rivals are quickly consolidating new innovations into broader solutions in an effort to improve their application lifecycle management (ALM) standing to better address DevOps models. Low-code enabled AI and automation innovations coupled with the cloud have created a culture of data ubiquity where data from virtually any source can be accessed and integrated into modern apps.
Low-code platforms have demonstrated an increasingly important role in enterprises’ application modernization process for the past few years, catering to both professional developers and non-coders in the role of business users. The advent of AI helped low-code platforms flourish over the past couple years, improving their ability to support the development and deployment of mission critical apps. Low-code platforms are consolidating further to include automation technologies, largely through robotic process automation (RPA) as a key component for shoring up DevOps models. Automation of backend data integration supports operations’ need to digitize workflows and business processes to support application lifecycle management (ALM) and continuous integration, continuous delivery (CICD). ML models will eventually be incorporated into solutions, building on next best action models to more quickly react to event-driven architectures.
GlobalData has just updated its Low-Code Competitive Landscape Assessment (CLA) for further vendor comparisons and low-code trends and drivers, please click here.
Awareness and adoption of enterprise analytics are still low in ASEAN.
There is a strong outlook in the near to midterm driven by digital transformation.
Low Awareness and Adoption
A GlobalData study with 158 ICT decision-makers in ASEAN shows very low awareness and adoption around analytics in the region. The study reveals that only 23% of enterprises see analytics as very important criteria when considering new IoT solutions, 22% in cloud, 18% in unified communications, and 17% in cybersecurity. Analytics was also among the least important criteria for respective solutions. This shows that while most enterprises understand the general benefits of analytics (e.g., turning data into insights), many are still unable to relate analytics to their business objectives. Continue reading “Analytics in ASEAN: Low Awareness and Adoption, but Bright Outlook”→
• The challenge is for IT to improve the experience for the work from home user
• Palo Alto Networks Okyo Garde addresses issues many enterprise work from home (WFH) solutions do not
The subject of WFH has had a lot of attention, with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing the issue for a lot of companies. Many companies have taken advantage of this and have moved their employees to permanent work from home status or only in the office a few select days of the week. The struggle since the beginning of the pandemic has been to support these home users. IT departments strived mightily and, in many cases, bootstrapped solutions that could at least get the home worker up and running. But now these same IT departments are taking a closer look at more effective and permanent solutions. Issues with home networks, particularly Wi-Fi, ergonomics, and even things as basic as monitors and chairs need to be addressed – they are all part of the WFH equation.
Major ASEAN telcos are considering selling their data center business.
As the demand is shifting, telcos should consider reassessing their data center business strategy.
In the last few days, three major ASEAN telcos – PLDT, Globe, and Indosat – were reported to be mulling over their data center businesses, worth around $500 million (USD), $200 million, and $200 million, respectively.
Not a New Trend, but Has Been Happening for Years
Having telcos exit the data center market is not new: Verizon sold its 29 data centers in the America region to Equinix in 2016; Tata Communications sold 17 facilities in 2016 and its data center arm sold a 26% stake in its Singapore business in 2019; Lumen completed the sale of its data center and colocation business in 2017; AT&T sold 31 of its data centers to Brookfield in 2018; Telefonica sold off 11 data centers in 2019 and confirmed the sale of additional four facilities in 2021; PCCW sold its data center business in 2021; and Singtel has announced that it is considering selling off its infrastructure, including data centers. However, the trend is only recently coming to the emerging ASEAN region. Continue reading “Should ASEAN Telcos Reassess Data Center Business?”→
• Digi expanded its enterprise portfolio and strengthen its SME position with the launch Oracle NetSuite.
• Maxis is moving in the right direction with its Right Cloud to address the increasing multi-cloud demand in the market.
The last three months saw Celcom’s partnership with Google to offer Google Workspace to SMEs; Maxis’ acquisition of Peering One, a private and hybrid cloud provider; and TM ONE’s partnership with SAP to offer a range of the latter solutions from its infrastructure (Cloud alpha). Now, in the first half of September, there were already two significant moves by Digi and Maxis to enhance their cloud offerings:
1. Digi Business brings cloud-based ERP solutions to SMEs
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives have become important marketing tools and proof points of credibility for enterprise IT and communication services providers. Providers also hope to leverage these initiatives as revenue generators.
While IoT contributes solutions to help with many ESG concerns, its role in measuring, monitoring, and control of environmental conditions and parameters is particularly relevant. IoT service providers should continue to develop and extend these capabilities to position themselves as worthy stewards of the planet.
ESG has never been as important as it is today, at a time when our health continues to be threatened by a global pandemic and the world faces drastic disruption due to climate change. Service providers that offer IoT solutions, as well as their network equipment and software vendor partners, are adding ESG messaging into many of their offerings, as each is intent on proving its worth as contributors to the common good. While the ‘S’ and ‘G’ aspects of solutions are extremely important, the environmental contributions should be especially key to the positioning of service providers that may still struggle to monetize their IoT portfolios. This is because measuring, monitoring, and control of environmental parameters have always comprised a key benefit and use-case driver for IoT. Some of the many types of IoT use cases that contribute to environmental ‘health’ include: Continue reading “IoT and Environmental Sustainability Can Come Together to Protect the Planet”→
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services
• Security researchers identified more than a dozen Bluetooth Classic stack vulnerabilities that affect at least 1,400 products
• This issue is highlighting broader cybersecurity challenges in the connected device world
Security researchers from Singapore University of Technology and Design cast a spotlight on vulnerabilities in 13 different Bluetooth chipsets that could put mobile and other connected devices at risk of breaches. Dubbed BrakTooth, with Brak being a Norwegian word for crash, the 16 identified vulnerabilities in the Bluetooth Classic stack can be exploited using a number of mechanisms including denial of service, firmware crashes, deadlocks, and arbitrary code execution (ACE). A wide range of devices from Dell laptops to consumer smart speakers and connected refrigerators could be vulnerable.
• Security and networking are converging, the evidence is clear, both from a technological and strategic standpoint, with security threats increasing.
• The enterprise needs tools to manage the human aspects of security and networking convergence and the fist instrument they need is real industry examples proving the trend from vendors, ITSP, carriers, and industry analysts.
By design and necessity, the security and networking industries are moving towards consolidation. Security companies are buying networking resources and networking companies are snapping up security vendors left and right. If you address a room full of vendors from the security and networking markets and proclaim that the two markets are converging, you will get heads nodding sagely. But the reality on the ground is much more complicated. Much like a stone arch, something has to move before things begin to fall in the direction gravity is pulling them.
Charlotte Dunlap – Principal Analyst, Application Platforms
• Over the next six to 12 months, the observability market segment will evolve to include more comprehensive solutions which provide application-level observability data alongside systems-level data, delivered through pre-set parameters
• The future of observability is ML-powered predictive and prescriptive analytics to enable proactive responses that prevent problematic incidents
Accelerated digital business transformations are steering operations teams towards new observability stacks to oversee an increasingly diverse and distributed IT portfolio. Ops teams are overwhelmed with the move from monolithic apps to microservices where various service components within a single app must be secured and managed. New monitoring tools are emerging to help developers collaborate under DevOps models and gain automated visibility into the impact of modern coding on underlying systems. Observability solutions will shorten the lengthy feedback cycle involved before committing apps to code, enhancing the quality of apps moving through the pipeline.
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