Month: June 2023

Parent and Child: Optus Should Seek Deeper Collaboration with Parent Singtel to Boost Enterprise 5G Ambitions

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in Cloud Enable, Internet of Things, Secure
M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Both Optus and Singtel have invested heavily in 5G with an eye toward the enterprise market, but Singtel has surpassed Optus in terms of deeper partnerships and solution innovation.

• Optus and Singtel should focus on deeper collaboration on enterprise 5G to keep pace with innovations in the Australian market, using solutions and intellectual property (IP) developed by the parent in Singapore.

Australia’s number two telco Optus is fully owned by parent Singtel, one of Asia’s leading carriers in terms of network carriage as well as mobile network innovations. Both Optus and Singtel have been investing in 5G from the outset of when the technology became commercially available, and both have done well in rapidly expanding 5G coverage in their respective markets. Both have also switched on 5G standalone services in their commercial network, which enables more advanced capabilities like network slicing and edge compute. However, in terms of commercial development of 5G solutions and services, Singtel has far outpaced its Australian child company. Since the beginning of 2022, Singtel has wracked up a laundry list of 5G service innovations, trials, and launches.

Continue reading “Parent and Child: Optus Should Seek Deeper Collaboration with Parent Singtel to Boost Enterprise 5G Ambitions” →

US School Districts Take on Social Media – in Court

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in IT Leader
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• In January 2023, Seattle Public Schools filed a lawsuit against social media platform providers alleging they had violated a Washington State public nuisance law, resulting in a youth mental health crisis.

• 100 other districts are also suing the providers, and in May 2023, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory warning of the possible dangers of social media to youth mental health.

The need for human connection in the disconnected digital age in which we live makes social media a dominant force. This is particularly true among younger generations who seem to live for ‘likes’ and ‘snaps’ and ‘Tik Toks.’ But in a medium where the users (and their data) are the product and not the client, there is a definite dark side.

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Verizon’s 16th Annual DBIR Finds Social Engineering is a Weapon of Choice in Cyberattacks

by Amy Larsen DeCarlo, posted in Secure
Amy Larsen DeCarlo – Principal Analyst, Security and Data Center Services

Summary Bullets:

• The Verizon Data Breach Investigations report (DBIR) revealed a sizeable jump in pretexting while ransomware continues unabated.

• While actors external to the breached organizations are responsible for most incidents, 19% of the either intentional or accidental security events are perpetrated by internal staff.

With contributions from dozens of organizations including law enforcement agencies like the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Verizon’s 2023 DBIR offers insight into the nature of current threat landscape through the analysis of more than 16,000 security incidents, 5,199 of which were confirmed data breaches. What the report reveals is an environment dominated by profit-motivated bad actors who continue to advance techniques in areas like social engineering that exploit human susceptibilities.

Continue reading “Verizon’s 16th Annual DBIR Finds Social Engineering is a Weapon of Choice in Cyberattacks” →

UK Fiber Ending in Tears?

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Communicate, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• BT CEO’s comments about competitors’ fiber rollouts as “ending in tears” was a faux pas, even if accurately reflecting the market is overdue for consolidation.

• Multiple fiber providers are shedding engineers. Market sharks will be circling to acquire fiber assets as competition takes its toll on an oversupplied supply side.

The injudicious, but possibly accurate in many cases, comment by BT CEO Philip Jansen that Openreach’s broadband network rollout had turned into an “unstoppable machine” and that competitors’ efforts “would end in tears” was not seen as his best commentary to date. In an interview with the Financial Times in February 2023, he says, “There is only going to be one national network. Why do you need to have multiple providers?”

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Digital Trust is Key to Today’s Data-Centric Business Models

by John Marcus, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable, IT Leader, Secure
J. Marcus

Summary Bullets:

• Without a transparent commitment to data integrity, tech companies – and, increasingly, all businesses – will struggle to retain customer trust.

• ‘Digital trust’ goes beyond customer personal data protection, however, extending to trust in fundamental data integrity in all digital interactions.

As just about every tech company embraces artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data analytics to take advantage of the long-term trend of digital transformation, digital trust has emerged as a key issue for consumers and enterprises – and for the tech companies themselves. The idea is that today’s increasingly data-centric world is only possible with transparency and trust, and that trust and security in digital business models is a fundamental requirement, and not optional.

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Optus and Lendlease Partner to Go After the Smart Autonomous Building Market

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in Communicate
M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• The Optus and Lendlease collaboration on smart spaces has the potential to offer innovative building automation solutions leveraging 5G connectivity, IoT, and AI analytics.

• There is strong competition in the Australian market for smart spaces as other competitors from telco to operational tech providers offer solutions that play to their strengths.

Optus has capped off a week of customers wins with the announcement that it is entering into a partnership with Lendlease that will see the Australian property and construction giant become a customer as well as a collaborator on future solutions. Lendlease is the latest deal, which follows Optus wins with Super Retail Group for a 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) solution and CouriersPlease for a broader range of IT services including SD-WAN, mobile, WiFi, and telephony. While Lendlease also represents a large customer win, as the company will move over 3,000 fixed data and mobile services to Optus across 80 locations, the deal also includes a joint venture that will see Optus and Lendlease collaborate on the development of smart building/smart spaces solutions. Lendlease will bring its ‘Podium Property Insights’ (PPI) platform, a sensor and software platform aimed at delivering insights analysis for property managers, while Optus will offer networking connectivity and IoT expertise.

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Cybersecurity Providers Should Plan for Portfolio Expansion to Counter Future Attacks on AI

by Rajesh Muru, posted in IT Leader, Secure
R. Muru

Summary Bullets:

• Cybersecurity providers will be expected to drive thought leadership in various regulatory bodies to address future cyberattacks on AI.

• Innovation in R&D will entail encryption and validation of AI/ML models through XDR as well as close integration of AI/ML models to SIEM and SOAR.

AI will Demonstrate Strong Growth Across Multiple Consumer and Vertical Settings
It’s pleasing to see artificial intelligence (AI) finally overcome many historic challenges around computing power and commercial implementation. And recent advances around the improvement of algorithms (e.g., Google’s AlphaGo, OpenAI’s GPT-3) as well as increasing computing power have accelerated AI across a number of potential applications and use cases. Use cases stem across automotive (e.g., computer vision and conversational platforms), consumer electronics (e.g., implementing virtual assistants, authentication via facial recognition – i.e., Apple’s FaceID), and ecommerce and retail (e.g., voice-enabled shopping assistants, personalized shop). Accordingly, based on GlobalData forecasts, the total AI market is demonstrating strong growth (includes software, hardware, and services) and will be worth $383.3 billion in 2030, having grown at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.4% from $81.3 billion in 2022. As a result, many of these use cases will be across a number of consumer and business application settings.

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Disappointment and Overinflated – Apple’s New VR Headset

by Steven J. Schuchart Jr., posted in IT Leader
S. Schuchart

Summary Bullets:

• The new Apple Vison Pro AR headset has many features and innovations.

• The price of the new headset, plus the immature state of the AR/VR market is a limitation.

Apple has announced its first AR/VR headset, the Apple Vision Pro at a price point of $3,499 and will be available in early 2024. This is Apple’s first foray into the AR headset market, and it shows all of Apple’s style and UI innovation that has come to be a hallmark of the company. For what specs have been released to date, it’s an impressive headset, far outstripping rival Meta’s AR/VR headsets. Reports from those who tried the devices on-site at Apple’s WWDC 2023 talk about how its ability to select the amount of immersion, i.e., the amount of the real world you want to see is impressive, as well as the quality of the screens and the build of the headset itself. Apple ran a number of demos, showing off the features of the Apple Vision Pro. Apple’s engineering efforts on this product started all the way back in 2015, showing the time and money required with such a complicated piece of equipment. Overall, other than the price the impressions were mostly positive.

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Oops – Ofcom Hacked. Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Communicate, Network, Secure
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

• Even telecoms regulators get hacked. Ofcom was hit by the MOVEit cyberattack, with the breach leading to information about a number of regulated companies and its staff being stolen.

• Consequently, Ofcom is now more likely to focus its attention of cybersecurity regulation, given that it is “the regulator for online safety in the UK.”

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (‘Who watches the watchers’) was Roman poet Juvenal’s comment on people in positions of power and influence – which must, these days, also include telecoms regulators. UK telecoms regulator Ofcom, alongside the likes of the BBC, Boots, and British Airways, was targeted in the cyberattack on MOVEit Transfer (a “secure file transfer service”) customers. So irony piles on irony.

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Cisco Live 2023: Startups Disrupt AI Leaders by Accelerating AIOps

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Cloud Enable
C. Dunlap Research Director

Summary Bullets:

• Cisco is leaning on technology partners focused on business and IT context.

• CloudFabrix brings AIOps capabilities to Cisco’s observability platform.

Enterprises have been pinning high hopes on the use of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) to digitize businesses from vastly shortening lengthy app development’ coding requirements to enabling operations teams’ use of automation for improving the cumbersome processing tasks involved in moving advanced apps through highly distributed environments. In this context, GlobalData has been discussing the prospect of modernizing IT operations through generative AI.

Continue reading “Cisco Live 2023: Startups Disrupt AI Leaders by Accelerating AIOps” →