Tag: AI

ANS’ Sci-Net Acquisition Positioned as Driving UK AI Readiness

by Rob Pritchard, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable
R. Pritchard

Summary Bullets:

  • ANS’ acquisition of Sci-Net Solutions expands its portfolio of value-added enterprise technology solutions in a highly competitive UK B2B market
  • AI is a hook everyone latches on to – there are even products and solutions out there – but this is an acquisition of a service provider with current revenues

The ANS acquisition of Sci-Net Business Solutions is positioned as a complement to previous acquisitions such as Makutu as part of the ANS strategy to exploit and deliver the opportunities presented by artificial intelligence (AI). Sci-Net is an Oxford-based business solutions specialist with expertise in ERP, CRM, and cloud infrastructure solutions (e.g., 365 Business Central, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, CRM, and Microsoft Azure).

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LevelBlue Research Finds Manufacturing Organizations are at Risk and Underprepared for Cyber Threats

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

Summary Bullets:

  • As part of a larger global cross-industry study, LevelBlue surveyed executives in 220 manufacturing companies to gauge the state of their cyber resilience strategies in the era of AI-driven threats and other risks
  • Awareness is high but also so are concerns, with 37% saying they are seeing a significantly higher volume of attacks; just 30% said their organization is prepared for deepfake attacks, even as 47% are anticipating them

Threat actors are savvy when choosing their targets. Manufacturing holds a strong appeal to cyber criminals because the profit potential associated with intellectual property is high and, thanks in part to supply chain vulnerabilities, there are plenty of points of exposure. A recent LevelBlue survey of 220 manufacturing executives found that while awareness about the threat environment is high, preparedness, especially for AI-driven attacks, is not.

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Mistral AI’s Independence from US Companies Lends it a Competitive Edge

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• Mistral AI’s valuation went up to EUR11.7 billion after a funding round of EUR1.7 billion spearheaded by Netherlands-based ASML.

• The French company has the edge in open source and is well positioned to capitalize on the sovereign AI trend sweeping Europe right now.

Semiconductor equipment manufacturer ASML and Mistral AI announced a partnership to explore the use of AI models across ASML’s product portfolio to enhance its holistic lithography systems. In addition, ASML was the lead investor in the latest funding round in the AI startup and now holds 11% share on a fully diluted basis in Mistral AI.

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IBM Think on Tour Singapore 2025: An Agentic Enterprise Comes Down to Tech, Infrastructure, Orchestration, and Optionality

by Dustin Kehoe, posted in Big Data, IT Leader
D. Kehoe

Summary Bullets:

• Cloud will have a role in the AI journey, bit no longer the destination. The world will be hybrid, and multi-vendor.

• Agentic AI manifests from this new platform but will be double-edged sword. Autonomy is proportionate to risk. Any solution that goes to production needs governance.

The AI triathlon is underway. A year ago the race was about the size of the GenAI large language model (LLM). Today, it is the number AI agents connecting to internal systems to automate workflows, moving to the overall level of preparedness for the agentic enterprise. The latter seems about giving much higher levels of autonomy to AI agents to set own goals, self-learn and make decisions, possibly manage other agents from other vendors, that impact customers (e.g., approving home loans, dispute resolution, etc.). This, in turn, influences NPS, C-SAT, customer advocacy, compliance, and countless other metrics. It also raises many other legitimate legal, ethical, and regulatory concerns.

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Tata Communications and Amazon Web Services to Build AI Network in India, as More Telcos Look to Deploy AI-ready Infrastructure

by Brendan Swan, posted in Network
B. Swan

Summary Bullets:

• Tata Communications will collaborate with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build a high-capacity network connecting three major AWS infrastructure locations in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

• In a growing trend, more telecom providers are building high-capacity terrestrial networks to meet the growing demand in bandwidth contributed by the rise in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud.

Tata Communications has announced a new partnership with AWS to build and deploy a high-capacity national terrestrial network backbone, making a significant move in transforming the country’s digital infrastructure evolution. This strategic collaboration between the two supports the continued rise in demand for data-intensive workloads driven by AI and cloud adoption. In what is becoming an increasing trend among global telecom operators, with more carriers investing substantial funds to expand, or upgrade their terrestrial networks to meet future data traffic demands, contributed by data-hungry workloads such as AI/ML, while future-proofing their networks to meet the requirements of their hyperscalers and enterprise customers.

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The Season of Agentic AI Brings Bold Promises

by Charlotte Dunlap, posted in Big Data, IT Leader
C. Dunlap Research Director

Summary Bullets:

  • Spring/summer platform conferences led with AI agent news and strategies
  • AI agents represent the leading innovation of app modernization, but DevOps should be wary of over-promising

During this season of cloud platform conferences, rivals are vying to own the headlines and do battle in the cloud wars through their latest campaigns and strategies involving AI agents.

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Tech Leaders Leverage Unique Strengths to Tackle AI Agents

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

Summary Bullets:

• GenAI providers leverage strengths across the cloud stack to differentiate

• Progress in AI agents’ efforts are made via acquisitions, partnerships, and innovations

Technology providers across the GenAI ecosystem continue to build out AI agent and AI assistant strategies and portfolios to help demonstrate the power of GenAI technology through practical use cases, which highlight vendors’ unique technologies. In the year ahead, vendors will lean heavily on their strengths across the cloud stack in order to differentiate from rivals and appeal to customers.

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Generative AI Watch: At GTC 2025, NVIDIA Envisioned a World Beyond Large Language Models

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, Cloud Enable
B. Valle

Summary Bullets:

• NVIDIA believes enterprises are evolving from digital transformation driven by large language models (LLMs), and towards physical AI, or spatial AI, and multimodal AI.

• The industry at large is turning to “reasoning” models, capable of offering more analysis and autonomy than LLMs, especially combined with AI agents.

GTC is NVIDIA’s most important conference, focused on developers, who are the core of the AI market. This year, the event was held on March 17-21 in San Jose, California (US). NVIDIA believes that enterprises should be diversifying from purely digital transformation driven by LLMs, and towards physical AI or spatial AI, as well as multimodal AI, robotics, and AI at the edge. For this reason, the event tilted towards the industrial, automotive, and manufacturing sectors. The industry at large is turning to “reasoning” models, capable of offering more analysis and autonomy than LLMs, especially combined with AI agents. This transition should bring further demand for raw computing power, despite efficiency gains in terms of chipset architectures.

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Alibaba Cloud AI Tech Day Malaysia – Closing the Competitive Gap with Global Hyperscalers

by Alfie Amir, posted in IT Leader
A. Amir

Summary Bullets:

• Alibaba Cloud is expanding its presence in Malaysia with a new data center and wider ecosystem.

• It is closing the competitive gap in cloud and AI, but still lacks local references.

Local Expansion

At the recent Alibaba Cloud AI Tech Day 2025 in Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud shared its latest initiatives in the country including the development of its third facility there (the first opened in 2017). This is part of its $53 billion investment in global AI and cloud within the next three years. The Chinese hyperscaler is also expanding its ecosystem in the country to strengthen its presence and further penetrate the market. For example, it has groomed over 50 ISVs with AI and expanded its partner network with key players such as YTL, Agmo, PIKOM, and National AI Consortium (KAIN). At the event, the hyperscaler announced two MoUs: with Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), a local investment firm, and with HiSEVEN, a regional digital marketing provider headquartered in Malaysia. Alibaba Cloud is also actively driving programs to build skillsets especially in new technologies such as AI and cloud. It has trained over 21,000 talents in the country and announced Alibaba Cloud AI Hackathon this year – the first in Malaysia.

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AI Agents Take Center Stage at Salesforce TDX25

by Rena Bhattacharyya, posted in Big Data
R. Bhattacharyya

Summary Bullets:

  • Salesforce’s new AgentExchange is a marketplace for AI agents that are preconfigured to integrate seamlessly.
  • Interoperability among agents and frameworks will be a key concern as organizations look to deploy multiple agents to complete more complex tasks.

Salesforce’s annual developer conference, TDX25, took place in San Francisco during the first week of March. As expected, AI played heavily in all conversations, with AI agents and Salesforce’s Agentforce platform taking a starring role. Similar to its approach with GenAI, Salesforce has been a thought leader when it comes to AI agents. Noteworthy announcements from Salesforce TDX25 included Agentforce 2dx (a suite of AI-powered tools to support building, testing and deploying AI agents), an Agentforce API (enabling customers to embed Agentforce across applications and workflows), partnerships to help scale deployment of AI agents, and customer testimonials and potential use cases.

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