Tag: AI

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.

Continue reading “Alibaba Cloud AI Tech Day Malaysia – Closing the Competitive Gap with Global Hyperscalers” →

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.

Continue reading “AI Agents Take Center Stage at Salesforce TDX25” →

The AI Act: Landmark Regulation Comes into Force

by Beatriz Valle, posted in Big Data, IT Leader

Summary Bullets:

B. Valle

• On February 4, 2025, the European Commission published the Guidelines on prohibited AI practices, as defined by the AI Act, which came into force on August 1, 2024.

• The AI Action Summit took place in Paris (France) on February 10/11, 2025, with heads of state and government, leaders of international organizations, and CEOs in attendance.

It has been a busy few weeks for observers of AI in the European continent: firstly, the issuance of new guidance around the AI Act, the most comprehensive regulatory framework for AI to date; secondly, the AI Action Summit, hosted by France and co-chaired by India. The stakes were high, with almost 100 countries and over 1,000 private sector and civil society representatives in attendance, and the ensuing debate delivered in spades. With the summit following the latest issuance of the AI Act by a matter of days, part of the event concentrated on issues around regulation vs innovation.

Continue reading “The AI Act: Landmark Regulation Comes into Force” →

Enterprise AI is Driving New Dynamics for Telco Hyperscale Competition

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in IT Leader
M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

• Critical Digital Shift: Hyperscalers and data center providers have started competing for cloud networking services, competing for enterprise dollars in space previously dominated by telcos.

• New AI Driven Dynamic: The emergence of enterprise AI is highlighting the importance of network infrastructure and the need to run more distributed workloads, opening new ways for telcos and hyperscalers to collaborate.

Generally telcos and hyperscalers are cautious collaborators. After a brief period where telcos tried to use their pre-existing data center assets to compete in the emerging cloud market, most have decided to move on from those assets. With the emergence of hyperscale data centers, their ubiquitous presence and common operating platforms, they have slowly taken over the market. While some telcos still offer private data center services, most have given up data center assets and instead moved their own IT environments to hyperscale platforms. Some enterprise focused telcos will still function as cloud service providers, migrating applications and maintain the underlying infrastructure they, for the most part, do not own the data centers themselves. While this may be some lost revenue for telecoms, this area was never their specialty.

Continue reading “Enterprise AI is Driving New Dynamics for Telco Hyperscale Competition” →

HCLTech Builds Customer Confidence by Offering Outcomes-based Pricing Models for Generative AI (GenAI)

by Rena Bhattacharyya, posted in Big Data, IT Leader
R. Bhattacharyya

Summary Bullets:

• HCLTech is taking a wise approach to building customer confidence in its GenAI services by offering outcomes-based pricing models.

• Tying compensation to performance, which can include KPIs and ROIs, is a logical next step.

GenAI is considered the most disruptive technology in the market today. Momentum is strong, with the market opportunity expected to grow from $2.8 billion in 2023 to $75.7 billion in 2028, a CAGR of 94%, as projected by GlobalData’s latest forecast. Enterprises across a range of industries are eager to harness the benefits of GenAI in a wide variety of use cases. The technology can be used to support customer service and marketing initiatives, improve operational efficiency, enhance security and fraud prevention measures, modernize applications, and much more.

Continue reading “HCLTech Builds Customer Confidence by Offering Outcomes-based Pricing Models for Generative AI (GenAI)” →

SMBs Are Part of the AI Boom – Show Me the Telco Money?

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

Summary Bullets:

  • Research from Verizon Business and opinion from Deutsche Telekom highlight the growing importance and transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the SMB segment.
  • The challenge is how to convert this demand into money when SMBs have become the focus of telco growth in enterprise revenues.

AI is for hyperscalers, data centers, large corporates, and geeky consumers. Right? Wrong. Research from Verizon Business has found that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in the US are rapidly adopting AI. Verizon’s annual State of Small Business Survey found that the proportion of SMBs using AI has more than doubled in the past year (39% from 14% in 2023, with a further 35% considering using AI), as awareness and accessibility to AI in business applications has grown. The leading sectors adopting AI are largely the entertainment, hospitality, and accommodation verticals, which also tend to dominate much of the SMB market. The main use cases for adoption of AI cover marketing/social media, data analysis, and customer service – which makes sense as this has been largely the early adopter case across most markets to date.

Continue reading “SMBs Are Part of the AI Boom – Show Me the Telco Money?” →

Generative AI Watch: Text-based Data is the Next Logical Evolution of Synthetic Data

by Rena Bhattacharyya, posted in Big Data

Summary Bullets:

R. Bhattacharyya

• Synthetic unstructured data, or text, can be used to train and finetune large language models (LLMs) used in customer support applications or chatbot conversations.

• The application of synthetic data, both tabular and unstructured, will continue to grow, driven by a need for additional training data as well as concerns over data privacy.

On October 1, 2024, MOSTLY AI announced that its platform can help enterprises create synthetic text, a timely new capability given the growing interest by enterprises to leverage GenAI to extract insights from unstructured data. Over the past several years, much of the conversation around synthetic data has focused on using GenAI to create synthetic tabular data. Tabular data is structured data that can be neatly organized, for example information that can be arranged in an excel file. The logical next step is to use GenAI to create text-based information that can be used to customize LLMs.

Continue reading “Generative AI Watch: Text-based Data is the Next Logical Evolution of Synthetic Data” →

AI in the Contact Center: Why and How?

by Gary Barton, posted in Communicate

Gary Barton – Analyst, Business Network and IT Services

Summary Bullets:

• Most enterprises agree that AI delivers benefits – but not necessarily the benefits they expected

• AI projects require clear goals and a dedicated project management team, as well as external advice

GlobalData’s research into AI includes talking to enterprises about how and why they are using AI-powered technologies in the contact center. This research has given light to a number of key trends, and also highlighted examples of best practice.

What Technologies Are Being Used?

GlobalData’s research shows that, perhaps unsurprisingly, AI-powered chatbots are the most prevalent use case for AI in the contact center. The use of text-based chatbots on websites is now common, but GlobalData’s research suggest that voice-based chatbots are more of a focus for enterprises. Cost reduction is a key reason for this, particularly for contact centers in North America and Europe. But chatbots also deliver the potential for increased customer service with the potential for quicker response times to more simple inquiries. Continue reading “AI in the Contact Center: Why and How?” →

Video Analytics for Public Safety Will Require Digital Transformation

by Malcolm Rogers, posted in Cloud Enable, Internet of Things

M. Rogers

Summary Bullets:

  • AI and machine learning-powered video analytics are revolutionizing the video capabilities of public safety departments, with solutions like Scene from Nokia and Appearance Search from Motorola Solutions-owned Avigilon leading the way.
  • Further integration into other public safety infrastructure will be critical to leverage the full potential of this technology, but that presents a challenge, as many critical communications systems rely on siloed radio networks.

Video analytics has been a hot topic for the past few years, but only recently have we seen larger-scale deployments in the public safety sphere. Government spend on these technologies is set to increase in the coming years, and plenty of vendors are readying their portfolios to meet this demand. While there is a wealth of small players specializing in this field, Nokia has developed its Scene Analytics platform and Motorola Solutions purchased AI-based video analytics company Avigilon in March 2018. Both these vendors have seen some significant return on these investments, with Nokia launching its Scene Analytics service in Belgium through security company Room40. Meanwhile, Motorola Solutions has a host of wins for its Aviligon service across public safety, logistics, and education, including the New Bedford Housing Authority in the US, Express Cargo in Ireland and Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. Continue reading “Video Analytics for Public Safety Will Require Digital Transformation” →

AI and Ethics: The Waters are Murky, but Help is Available

by Rena Bhattacharyya, posted in Big Data

R. Bhattacharyya

Summary Bullets:

• Many organizations need help navigating ethical issues related to artificial intelligence (AI), such as privacy laws, unintentional bias, and lack of model transparency, but don’t know where to begin.

• Enterprises can benefit from working with a partner that helps them consider the ethical implications of their AI deployments, but they should keep in mind that issues aren’t static and can evolve over time.

Organizations are eager to enjoy the benefits that AI can bring to them – whether enhanced productivity, or new revenue-generating or enhanced customer experience opportunities. But many are unclear about how to navigate the murky waters of AI and ethics. Changing regulations and privacy laws, concerns over unintentional bias in training data, lack of transparency in AI models, and the dearth of experience with new use cases are difficult challenges to address. Enterprises want to ensure that their adoption of the technology doesn’t cross ethical boundaries, but often don’t know where to begin. Thankfully, the topic is being increasingly addressed by IT services providers. Many organizations, from IBM to Capgemini to Atos are touting that they help their customers implement AI while also considering the ethical implications of their deployment.
Continue reading “AI and Ethics: The Waters are Murky, but Help is Available” →