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Nvidia’s transformation from an accelerator of video games to an enabler of artificial intelligence (AI) and the industrial metaverse didn’t happen overnight — but the leap in its stock market value to over a trillion dollars did.

It was when Nvidia reported strong results for the three months to April 30, 2023, and forecast its sales could jump by 50% in the following fiscal quarter, that its stock market valuation soared, catapulting it into the exclusive trillion-dollar club alongside well-known tech giants Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft. The once-niche chipmaker, now a Wall Street darling, was becoming a household name.

Investor exuberance waned later that week, however, dropping the chip designer out of the trillion-dollar club in short order, just as former members Meta and Tesla before it. But it was soon back in, and in mid-June, investment bank Morgan Stanley forecast Nvidia’s value could continue to rise another 15% before the year is out.

By late August, Nvidia had more than justified its earlier optimism, reporting a quarter-on-quarter increase in revenue of 88% for the three months to July 30, driven by record sales of data center products of over $10 billion, with strong demand from AWS, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle. Its stock price, too, continued to climb, bumping up against the $500 level Morgan Stanley forecast. Unlike most of its trillion-dollar tech cohorts, Nvidia has less consumer brand awareness to go on, making its Wall Street leap more mysterious to Main Street. How Nvidia got here and where it’s going next sheds light on how the company has achieved that valuation — a story that owes a lot to the rising importance of specialty chips in business, and accelerating interest in the promise of generative AI.

Graphics driver

Nvidia started out in 1993 as a fabless semiconductor firm designing graphics accelerator chips for PCs. Its founders spotted that generating 3D graphics in video games — then a fast-growing market — placed highly repetitive, math-intensive demands on PC central processing units (CPUs). They realized those calculations could be performed more rapidly in parallel by a dedicated chip rather than in series by the CPU, an insight that led to the creation of the first Nvidia GeForce graphic cards.

For many years, graphics drove Nvidia’s business; even 30 years on, its sales of graphics cards for gaming, including the GeForce line, still make it the biggest vendor of discrete graphics cards in the world. (Intel makes more graphics chips, though, because most of its CPUs ship with the company’s own integrated graphics silicon.)

Over the years, other uses for the parallel-processing capabilities of Nvidia’s graphical processing units (GPUs) emerged, solving problems with a similar matrix arithmetic structure to 3D-graphics modelling.

Still, software developers seeking to leverage graphics chips for non-graphical applications had to wrangle their calculations into a form that could be sent to the GPU as a series of instructions for either Microsoft’s DirectX graphics API or the open-source OpenGL (Open Graphics Library).

Then in 2006 Nvidia introduced a new GPU architecture, CUDA, that could be programmed directly in C to accelerate mathematical processing, simplifying its use in parallel computing. One of the first applications for CUDA was in oil and gas exploration, processing the mountains of data from geological surveys.

The market for using GPUs as general-purpose processors (GPGPUs) really opened up in 2009, when OpenGL publisher Khronos Group released Open Computing Language (OpenCL).

Soon, hyperscalers such as AWS added GPUs to some of their compute instances, making scalable GPGPU capacity available on demand, thereby lowering the barrier of entry to compute-intensive workloads for enterprises everywhere.

AI, crypto mining, and the metaverse

One of the biggest drivers of demand for Nvidia’s chips in recent years has been AI, or, more specifically, the need to perform trillions of repetitive calculations to train machine learning (ML) models. Some of those models are truly gargantuan: OpenAI’s GPT-4 is said to have over 1 trillion parameters. Nvidia was an early supporter of OpenAI, even building a special compute module based on its H100 processors to accelerate the training of the large language models (LLMs) the company was developing.

Another unexpected source of demand for the company’s chips has been cryptocurrency mining, the calculations for which can be performed faster and in a more energy-efficient manner on a GPU than on a CPU. Demand for GPUs for cryptocurrency mining meant that graphics cards were in short supply for years, making GPU manufacturers like Nvidia similar to pick-axe retailers during the California Gold Rush.

Although Nvidia’s first chips were used to enhance 3D gaming, the manufacturing industry is also interested in 3D simulations, and its pockets are deeper. Going beyond the basic rendering and accelerating code libraries of OpenGL and OpenCL, Nvidia has developed a software platform called Omniverse — a metaverse for industry used to create and view digital twins of products or even entire production lines in real-time. The resulting imagery can be used for marketing or collaborating on new designs and manufacturing processes.

Efforts to stay in the $1t club

Nvidia is driving forward on many fronts. On the hardware side, it continues to sell GPUs for PCs and some gaming consoles; supplies computational accelerators to server manufacturers, hyperscalers, and supercomputer manufacturers; and makes chips for self-driving cars. It’s also in the service business, operating its own cloud infrastructure for pharmaceutical firms, the manufacturing industry, and others. And it’s a software vendor, developing generic libraries of code that anyone can use to accelerate calculations on Nvidia hardware, as well as more specific tools such as its cuLitho package to optimize the lithography stage in semiconductor manufacturing.

But interest in the latest AI tools such as ChatGPT (developed on Nvidia hardware), among others, is driving a new wave of demand for Nvidia hardware, and prompting the company to develop new software to help enterprises develop and train the LLMs on which generative AI is based.

In the last few months the company has also partnered with software vendors including Adobe, Snowflake, ServiceNow, Hugging Face, and VMware, to ensure the AI elements of their enterprise software are optimized for its chips.

“Because of our scale and velocity, we’re able to sustain this really complex stack of software and hardware, networking and compute across all these different usage models and computing environments,” CEO Jensen Huang said during a call on August 23 to discuss the latest earnings.

Nvidia is also pitching AI Foundations, its cloud-based generative AI service, as a one-stop shop for enterprises that might lack resources to build, tune, and run custom LLMs trained on their own data to perform tasks specific to their industry. The move, announced in March, may be a savvy one, given rising business interest in generative AI, and it pits the company in direct competition with hyperscalers that also rely on Nvidia’s chips.

Nvidia AI Foundations models include NeMo, a cloud-native enterprise framework; Picasso, an AI capable of generating images, video, and 3D applications; and BioNemo, which deals in molecular structures, making generative AI particularly interesting for accelerating drug development, where it can take up to 15 years to bring a new drug to market. Nvidia says its hardware, software, and services can cut early-stage drug discovery from months to weeks. Amgen and AstraZeneca are among the pharmaceutical firms testing the waters, and with US pharmaceutical firms alone spending over $100 billion a year on R&D, more than three times Nvidia’s revenue, the potential upside is clear.

Pharmaceutical development is moving faster, but the road toward widespread adoption of another of Nvidia’s target markets is less clear: self-driving cars have been “just around the corner” for years, but testing and getting approval for use on the open road is proving even more complex than getting approval for a new drug.

Nvidia gets two bites at this market. One is building and running the virtual worlds in which self-driving algorithms are tested without putting anyone at risk. The other is the cars themselves. If the algorithms make it out of the virtual world and onto the roads, cars will need chips from Nvidia and others to process real-time imagery and perform myriad calculations needed to keep them on course. This is the smallest market segment Nvidia breaks out in its quarterly results: just $253 million, or 2% of overall sales, in the three months to July 30, 2023. But it’s a segment that’s been more than doubling each year.

When it reported its results for the three months to April 30, Nvidia made an ambitious forecast: that its revenue for the following fiscal quarter, ending July 30, would be over 50% higher — and it went on to beat that figure by a wide margin, reporting revenue of $13.5 billion. Growth in gaming hardware sales was also up 22% year on year, and 11% quarter on quarter, which would be impressive for most consumer electronics companies, but lags far behind the recent growth in Nvidia’s biggest market — data centers. The proportion of its overall revenue coming from gaming has shrunk from over one-third in the three months to April 30 to just under one-fifth in the period to July 30. Nevertheless, Nvidia still sees opportunity ahead, as less than half of its installed base has upgraded to graphics cards with the Geforce RTX technology it introduced in 2018, CFO Colette Kress said during the call.

Huang and Kress both talked up how clearly Nvidia can see future demand for its consumer and data center products, well into next year.

“The world is transitioning from general-purpose computing to accelerated computing,” Huang said. With around $250 billion in capital expenditure on data centers every year, according to Huang, the potential market for Nvidia is enormous as that transition plays out.

“Demand is tremendous,” he said, adding that the company is significantly expanding its production capacity to boost supply for the rest of this year and into next.

Nevertheless, Kress was more reserved in her projections for the three months to October 30, saying she expects revenue of between $15.7 billion and $16.3 billion, or quarter-on-quarter growth between 16% and 21%.

All eyes will be on the company’s next earnings announcement, on November 21.

Artificial Intelligence, C Language, Cryptocurrency, GPUs, Manufacturing Systems, Nvidia, Software Deployment, Software Development

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The headlines are clear: Recession is looming, and tech companies of all stripes are cutting thousands of employees from their rosters. Yet, despite these reductions, TOPdesk, an IT service desk software company, remains committed to growing its footprint as it continues to expand its internal teams and has no plans to change.

Why? Let’s start by addressing some of the reasons why there are currently so many tech layoffs:

Exponential growth in technology

Historically, the tech sector has long been one of explosive growth from responding to market drivers. One of the recent market drivers for most technology companies was the massive shift toward e-commerce spending and remote shopping during the pandemic lockdowns. This increase created an assumption of growth, and subsequent massive hiring initiatives.

When lockdown mandates eased and people began leaving their homes, big tech companies saw changes to spending and consumer behaviors, cutting into their revenue and projections. As a result, a common refrain from the sector emerged in late 2022: inflation, changing consumer behavior, and recession concerns mean taking a cautious approach to the days ahead. Businesses shifted to protect profits, revenue, and long-term sustainability. Investors applied pressure to scale back expenses to preserve profit margins, and organizational leadership responded.

According to World Economic Forum, chief economists expect the United States to experience 24% inflation growth and 91% weak economic gain. From large tech corporations to start-ups, workforce reductions have rippled through the tech industry as a result. Most of the major organizations cutting staff are not near bankruptcy or insolvency. Tech has always been a growth-oriented industry. Silicon Valley has always focused on high-flying innovations, unicorn startups, and massive growth. The sector has remained unusually resilient even during major economic downturns (think the Great Recession or COVID pandemic). When it’s down, it’s never down for long.

But when a potential recession threatens its profit margins, that doesn’t mean the industry takes it. One way to keep pace with a history of massive growth is to sell more products or raise prices. Another is to slash its workforce and reduce expenses. With a downturn on the horizon, many companies opt for the latter.

They need to pivot

Alongside its massive growth, tech is renowned for quick-paced innovation and industry disruption. But the constant shift in tech and strategies means that, inevitably, some teams need to catch up. Sometimes, even high-flying companies have to make cuts in some areas to ensure others receive essential R&D funding.

For firms facing cuts, channeling resources into new strategies could prove beneficial long term. But, unfortunately, that means tech layoffs are an unavoidable reality.

Tech companies copy each other

Many tech companies, like lemmings, follow each other blindly based on trends and what they see others doing. Layoffs are only sometimes good for a company’s financial health and may hurt it. Some do it only because other companies are doing it. Likewise, investors have a say in most tech organizations’ operations and their bottom lines. Future success determines many daily decisions, especially those firms that are publicly traded.

Another factor at play is that tech companies operate on margins, which affects their decisions to hire and fire. So, when an investor reads an earnings statement, those reserves aren’t what they’re thinking about; instead, they are measuring tech companies’ investment value per employee. When revenue is down, headcount follows. That doesn’t mean the organization is not making money or having trouble paying its bills; this only means employees are eating into profits. To rectify this, layoffs occur.

Software companies like Microsoft usually have $500,000 in revenue per employee or at least a minimum of $300,000. Of course, this can be higher, but headcount is evaluated when it descends below that threshold.

What TOPdesk does

TOPdesk is a tech company that does this differently. As a private company under the same leadership since it began in the early ’90s, our culture isn’t driven by quarterly forecasts or fears of recession or worse. So, for example, during the worst of the COVID pandemic, TOPdesk took a hard line on layoffs: there wouldn’t be any!

Adapt, respond, evolve, and change, but leave no one behind. To this day, years after that decision was made during the scariest of times, the leadership team agreed that no employees nor contractors would be asked to resign, take a furlough, or find work elsewhere.

We were, and are, in this together. As long as the individual wants to be here, contributes values, and wants to learn, grow and succeed, they can remain TOPdeskers.

Like every other organization, we had to adapt quickly to how we worked. But we never stopped hiring; we just changed the process. Online onboarding of newly hired employees, video and virtual interviews for open positions, freshly hired employees learned our culture virtually from their internet connection. Teams and teamwork operated in a virtual hub.

Annual performance reviews, standup meetings, coaching, sales team check-ins, technology implementations, and client-side relationship management became virtual, but we all stood together and became stronger. As fear of a recession rises, TOPdesk doesn’t change. Our philosophy is the same.

That’s the difference in our culture versus that of many other big tech companies.

Our team members are our team. They are not a number, nor are they seat fillers. This is only possible through a strong culture built on pillars of freedom, trust, and responsibility for employee outcomes. Our organizational leaders encourage team members to take the freedom needed while responding to challenges as they arrive.

Personal freedom is necessary for the health of the organization and its individuals. However, freedom and independence are built only upon trust and responsibility. Without trust and responsibility, there can be no freedom. They all function in tandem.

These three factors define our organization and its people, not revenue ups and downs; that’s how we differ. These factors set us apart, even during the wildness of an unpredictable economy. While counterintuitive and not always easy, how we respond to these and other stimuli determines our internal culture, even when facing external influence.

Ultimately and evermore, we must stand for our people; their well-being comes first, and positive results will follow. When the focus is on employee happiness and well-being, business results have been proven to follow. Discover more about TOPdesk and how we work with companies to improve their IT solutions here: https://www.topdesk.com/en/about-topdesk/

IT Leadership

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PET is a major industrial polymer used to manufacture the polyester fibers used in clothing, plastic bottles, and much more. As such, it is the most widely recycled plastic in the world. As a global chemical company and producer of PET, Indorama Ventures Limited (IVL) has made sustainability a priority for over a decade, from energy and greenhouse gas reductions to increased renewable energy and recycling.

To illustrate, from 2011 to 2021, IVL collected over 72 billion post-consumer PET bottles for recycling, which prevented 1.6 million tons of plastic waste from going to landfill and reduced 2.4 million tons of carbon footprint in the product life cycle. And IVL is experimenting with recyclable plastics as part of a circular economy model. 

The company received the Asia Responsible Enterprise Awards 2022 for circular economy leadership, which recognized IVL’s successful PET Bottles Recycling to Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) Distribution project. Their medical-grade PPE suits — reusable and washable up to 20 times — are certified by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

To bring sustainability home, IVL sought to maximize the efficiency of its plants through digital transformation by replacing data silos with a single data source that would revolutionize enterprise asset management (EAM). Taking digital transformation to the next level, IVL’s Oxides and Derivatives Division applied the concept to their risk-based inspection program at the Port Neches Operations (PNO) Facility.  

“Based on our rapid growth trajectory, we were looking for a solution that could scale and assist us in realizing maximum efficiencies in various business processes,” explains Joel Presley, PNO, inspection team leader. “Additionally, striving for continuous improvement, we were looking for a solution to take our existing mechanical integrity program and strategies and integrate them with our maintenance and business processes.”

Indorama Ventures Limited

Making the expansion of risk-based philosophy a reality

“A critical work process for mechanical integrity is risk-based inspection, which allows us to prioritize asset inspection planning based on the consequence and likelihood of failure versus traditional time-based interval planning,” explains Adam Wallace, PNO RBI coordinator. 

Core challenges included complex and siloed business processes with a lot of customizations, out-of-sync data and processes, disparate and niche applications with inconsistent data and assets, and expensive and unsustainable data and risk management that lacked innovation and adaptability.

About four years ago, IVL expanded the use of risk acceptance at its PNO facility in Texas to establish next-inspection plans. By doing this, they could move away from the arbitrary inspection intervals prescribed by their previous software and use the efficiencies of the relative risk ranking process defined in American Petroleum Institute (API) 580.

“While this new practice helped us realize significant improvements in the inspection program, the software was incapable of automating the process, which meant that significant manual effort was required to run multiple what-if analyses to reach the conclusions needed,” adds Presley.

Instead of a holistic view, plant operators had to access data silos — outside of the EAM system — from disparate software solutions developed to manage inspection, maintenance, risk, pressure relief, safety instrumented systems, and other critical functions, like hazard and operability (HAZOP). This disparity could lead to minor or even catastrophic chemical releases.

“In 2020, our facility decided that we would be moving away from the previous software to the SAP Intelligent Asset Management with AsInt’s native SAP Risk Based Inspection and Inspection Database Management software solution,” says Joel Presley, IVL PNO.

During the implementation, it was clear the flexibility of the software made it possible to fully utilize the concepts of API-580 by automating IVL’s new, risk-based inspection strategies. Adam Wallace (IVL PNO) adds, “With AsInt/SAP, we can take it to the next step by integrating transitional risk evaluation to maximize the efficiency of the inspection program.”

Managing asset integrity on a scalable, sustainable platform

With the new platform linking inspection mitigation plans and maintenance workflows, IVL has reduced the IT cost of ownership by 30%. Plant operators have a holistic view of both the physical and virtual assets needed to address high-risk equipment in order to prevent, for example, a loss of containment. Productivity has quadrupled while maintaining the overall risk of the facility to approved levels, and both scalability and sustainability have been served. IVL expects ROI at the PNO facility to total 5 to 20 times the cost of implementation over the next five years.

Indorama Ventures was a finalist in the 2022 SAP Innovation Awards Program. Learn how they built the new integrated platform in their pitch deck.

Data Management

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Banking as a Service (BaaS) is revolutionising the finance sector. BaaS enables non-financial companies to provide customers with financial products and services such as personal loans, credit cards and digital savings accounts. It leverages the expertise and experience of trusted banks, such as Standard Chartered, so they can offer a wider range of services to existing and new customers.

When Indonesian e-commerce company Bukalapak wanted to provide their customers with access to financial services, they partnered with Standard Chartered to launch BukaTabungan, which is powered by Standard Chartered nexus (SC nexus) BaaS platform. While SC nexus already had a footprint on AWS Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) region, it had not yet migrated to AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) region.

Sourced Group an Amdocs Company (Sourced), migrated SC nexus’ digital banking platform from AWS Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) to AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) within a tight timeframe. SC nexus was planning to make that migration by 2025. But to meet the needs and regulatory compliance of Bukalapak, that migration was brought forward. And while this migration typically takes about a year, Sourced completed the migration of the workload which was spread across four AWS EKS clusters coordinating 103 EC2 instances across three availability zones in just nine months. The accompanying data migration included eight PostgreSQL clusters and data sync for a Cassandra cluster and two Amazon S3 buckets.

As well as enabling Bukalapak to achieve its objectives, being able to offer BaaS from Indonesia broadens SC nexus’ market reach.

The migration was complex as not all the required AWS services were available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) region. At the time of migration, Sourced needed to develop robust and compliant solutions as Kinesis Analytics, AWS Transit Gateway, AWS EKS and GPU instances were not available in the AWS Jakarta region.

Sourced’s expertise and deep knowledge of cloud services was a valuable asset in this complex migration. For example, the company was able to architect an automated solution for the data migration. This was a crucial factor that enabled the migration, that took nine months of preparation and planning, to be successfully completed in just eight hours.

The partnership between Sourced and SC nexus has supported and enabled Standard Chartered’s strategic priority of scaling up its mass retail presence through innovative partnerships and generating new revenue streams through digital initiatives. Being able to meet customers’ needs, such as those of Bukalapak proves that it is possible to offer reliable, robust and secure BaaS offerings that take into account the needs for data sovereignty and differing regulatory requirements.

Sourced has expertise in most major cloud platforms offered across the world. The partnership with SC nexus, which has grown over several years, has given SC nexus first-mover advantage in several countries. For example, Indonesia is one of the world’s largest emerging markets with almost 200 million internet users. The partnership with Sourced means SC nexus can offer BaaS in country with onshore services through AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) that are compliant with local laws and regulations.

Similarly, it can also do the same in Singapore as well as many of the over 30 markets Standard Chartered already operates in. With a proven track record in making SC nexus available in multiple regions through the partnership with Sourced, Standard Chartered has a platform that can grow beyond the Asia Pacific region and offer compliant BaaS across the world.

BaaS gives businesses that are looking for new services they can offer to customers a high-value service. And while banking has been extremely difficult to break into because of the high cost of establishing systems and licensing and maintaining regulatory compliance SC nexus enables businesses to offer banking services through a trusted banking partner. Sourced has enabled SC nexus to expand its reach across the Asia Pacific region and beyond.

Read the full case study here

About Sourced Group

Sourced Group an Amdocs company is an award-winning global cloud consultancy that enables enterprises to make the most of cloud services with a focus on security, governance and compliance. With offices globally we provide professional services for securing, migrating and managing the cloud infrastructure of large enterprise customers. We specialize in configuration management, automation, cloud computing and data management for a wide range of industries, including financial services, media, transport and telecommunications companies. By utilising our proven deployment frameworks, and trusted design patterns, we work with the largest and most security conscious organisations to unlock innovation through cloud computing.

About Amdocs

Amdocs’ purpose is to enrich lives and progress society, using creativity and technology to build a better connected world. Amdocs and its 27,000 employees partner with the leading players in the communications and media industry, enabling next-generation experiences in 85 countries. Our cloud-native, open and dynamic portfolio of digital solutions, platforms and services brings greater choice, faster time to market and flexibility, to better meet the evolving needs of our customers as they drive growth, transform and take their business to the cloud. Listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, Amdocs had revenue of $4.2 billion in fiscal 2020. For more information, visit Amdocs at www.amdocs.com.

Managed Cloud Services

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Banking as a Service (BaaS) is revolutionising the finance sector. BaaS enables non-financial companies to provide customers with financial products and services such as personal loans, credit cards and digital savings accounts. It leverages the expertise and experience of trusted banks, such as Standard Chartered, so they can offer a wider range of services to existing and new customers.

When Indonesian e-commerce company Bukalapak wanted to provide their customers with access to financial services, they partnered with Standard Chartered to launch BukaTabungan, which is powered by Standard Chartered nexus (SC nexus) BaaS platform. While SC nexus already had a footprint on AWS Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) region, it had not yet migrated to AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) region.

Sourced Group an Amdocs Company (Sourced), migrated SC nexus’ digital banking platform from AWS Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) to AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) within a tight timeframe. SC nexus was planning to make that migration by 2025. But to meet the needs and regulatory compliance of Bukalapak, that migration was brought forward. And while this migration typically takes about a year, Sourced completed the migration of the workload which was spread across four AWS EKS clusters coordinating 103 EC2 instances across three availability zones in just nine months. The accompanying data migration included eight PostgreSQL clusters and data sync for a Cassandra cluster and two Amazon S3 buckets.

As well as enabling Bukalapak to achieve its objectives, being able to offer BaaS from Indonesia broadens SC nexus’ market reach.

The migration was complex as not all the required AWS services were available in the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) region. At the time of migration, Sourced needed to develop robust and compliant solutions as Kinesis Analytics, AWS Transit Gateway, AWS EKS and GPU instances were not available in the AWS Jakarta region.

Sourced’s expertise and deep knowledge of cloud services was a valuable asset in this complex migration. For example, the company was able to architect an automated solution for the data migration. This was a crucial factor that enabled the migration, that took nine months of preparation and planning, to be successfully completed in just eight hours.

The partnership between Sourced and SC nexus has supported and enabled Standard Chartered’s strategic priority of scaling up its mass retail presence through innovative partnerships and generating new revenue streams through digital initiatives. Being able to meet customers’ needs, such as those of Bukalapak proves that it is possible to offer reliable, robust and secure BaaS offerings that take into account the needs for data sovereignty and differing regulatory requirements.

Sourced has expertise in most major cloud platforms offered across the world. The partnership with SC nexus, which has grown over several years, has given SC nexus first-mover advantage in several countries. For example, Indonesia is one of the world’s largest emerging markets with almost 200 million internet users. The partnership with Sourced means SC nexus can offer BaaS in country with onshore services through AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) that are compliant with local laws and regulations.

Similarly, it can also do the same in Singapore as well as many of the over 30 markets Standard Chartered already operates in. With a proven track record in making SC nexus available in multiple regions through the partnership with Sourced, Standard Chartered has a platform that can grow beyond the Asia Pacific region and offer compliant BaaS across the world.

BaaS gives businesses that are looking for new services they can offer to customers a high-value service. And while banking has been extremely difficult to break into because of the high cost of establishing systems and licensing and maintaining regulatory compliance SC nexus enables businesses to offer banking services through a trusted banking partner. Sourced has enabled SC nexus to expand its reach across the Asia Pacific region and beyond.

Read the full case study here

About Sourced Group

Sourced Group an Amdocs company is an award-winning global cloud consultancy that enables enterprises to make the most of cloud services with a focus on security, governance and compliance. With offices globally we provide professional services for securing, migrating and managing the cloud infrastructure of large enterprise customers. We specialize in configuration management, automation, cloud computing and data management for a wide range of industries, including financial services, media, transport and telecommunications companies. By utilising our proven deployment frameworks, and trusted design patterns, we work with the largest and most security conscious organisations to unlock innovation through cloud computing.

About Amdocs

Amdocs’ purpose is to enrich lives and progress society, using creativity and technology to build a better connected world. Amdocs and its 27,000 employees partner with the leading players in the communications and media industry, enabling next-generation experiences in 85 countries. Our cloud-native, open and dynamic portfolio of digital solutions, platforms and services brings greater choice, faster time to market and flexibility, to better meet the evolving needs of our customers as they drive growth, transform and take their business to the cloud. Listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, Amdocs had revenue of $4.2 billion in fiscal 2020. For more information, visit Amdocs at www.amdocs.com.

Managed Cloud Services

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , ,

By Milan Shetti, CEO Rocket Software

As a leader, setting the culture of an organization is a massive undertaking, especially if the task is to change the culture at a company that has been around for decades. How a culture is implemented in an organization oftentimes comes down to the idea of the company having a “fixed mindset” or a “growth mindset” – one will help the company get ahead, while the other can create a hostile, stagnant organization that falls behind the competition.

As the name would imply, a growth mindset leads to a better work environment and a better work product than a fixed mindset brings. To have a growth mindset in business means that challenges are enjoyed, people stive to learn new things and employees see the immediate and long-term benefits of continuing to learn and develop new skills.  

Defining a growth mindset

The phrase “growth mindset” was coined by Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford, who spent several decades studying how people react to challenges they face. Dweck’s original quest was to study how students in a classroom learn and perform, but her research has shaped how business leaders think about training employees and the culture of their organization.

Simply put, someone with a growth mindset views intelligence, abilities, and talents as learnable and capable of improvement through effort. People who adopt a growth mindset are more likely to take risks, channel their skills to face new challenges, and are hungry to learn more. On the opposite side of the spectrum, someone with a fixed mindset views their traits as stable and unable to change over time.  

Leaders within an organization often set the culture of that organization. Business leaders that adopt a growth mindset, and encourage their employees to do the same, will foster innovation, growth, and collaboration in their business.

How a growth mindset propels businesses

There are countless reasons why a growth mindset is important for business. There are several iconic brands that have adopted a growth mindset, including Apple, Bloomberg, and General Electric, and are known as innovators in their space. A fixed mindset can hinder growth and stops innovation from flourishing – a major problem for companies looking to get ahead of the competition.

One of the world’s most well-known and successful companies, Microsoft, switched its culture to a growth mindset when CEO Satya Nadella took over in 2014. In his words, prior to this mindset shift, “Innovation was being replaced by bureaucracy. Teamwork was being replaced by internal politics. We were falling behind.” Once Microsoft consciously started examining its work culture and implementing the attitudes of a growth mindset, including valuing innovation even if there’s failure along the way, the company truly transformed. As one employee put it, “The culture at Microsoft changed from ‘know-it-all’ to ‘learn-it-all’.” This ultimately helped Microsoft continue to lead in the technology space.

A growth mindset dramatically improves a company culture, but it must be practiced by senior leadership before junior employees will feel comfortable taking on the same mindset.

Educating employees on the growth mindset

According to one study, employees that are in a company that values a growth mindset are 47% likelier to say their colleagues are trustworthy, 65% likelier to say that the company supports risk taking and 49% likelier to say that the company fosters innovation.To sum it up, employees value working at a company that fosters a growth mindset.

Companies that encourage a growth mindset must communicate what that mindset entails clearly with employees, so they know it’s okay to take risks, try new things, and potentially fail. According to the NeuroLeadership Institute’s Idea Report, “Growth Mindset Culture,” support from top leadership is critical for success in an organization. Sixty-nine percent of organizations used top leaders to communicate, teach, and role model growth mindset throughout the company.

Instilling a growth mindset into company culture is a worthy cause for organizations looking to continue to innovate and stay ahead of their competition. When top leaders within a company embrace a growth mindset, the entire organization will follow suit.

To learn more about Rocket’s culture and growth mindset, visit the careers page on our website.   

IT Leadership

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Consolidation is happening across industries – even spirits. Acquiring companies gain a myriad of benefits when they add new brands to the fold, but one resulting downside is internal complexity and confusion caused by different systems and processes being used. The Pernod Ricard Group, the producer of premium spirits such as Chivas, Absolut, Martell, Ricard and Perrier-Jouet, experienced that very challenge.

A global company, Pernod Ricard operates 90 subsidiaries across 100 production sites in 80 different countries and employs over 19,000 workers. To track and monitor the entire lifecycle of its spirits, Pernod Ricard used server-based technology. Because of the volume of different products and the complexity in managing associated processes across so many countries and sites, however, it was becoming impractical and unsustainable, creating a disconnect for prospective IT technicians who are accustomed to working with more agile and accessible systems. In order to both compete for better talent and improve its operations, the company made a decision to forge ahead and build a single web- and mobile-based platform that would serve all main production plants, allowing teams to monitor operations from anywhere and on any device and enabling the company to implement automation and standardized data collection and management processes across all its brands.

Upon researching the market, Pernod Ricard concluded there were no solutions that could provide the adaptability and agility its operations would need for competitive advantages and continued future growth.

Buy, build… or modernize?

When the company struck out looking to buy, Pernod Ricard turned its focus internally toward a tool it had used previously that was still performing at a high level; however, it had become cumbersome and unsustainable for users. Pernod Ricard determined modernizing that internal application would deliver the flexibility, adaptability, and agility its users needed – and, at the same time, it would be a selling point for retaining and attracting new IT talent.

While web- and mobile-based applications were critical to the project, Rocket Software – which acquired Uniface, the company that had created the original application – started by revamping Pernod Ricard’s 2,500-page ERP, doing away with its outdated and unused pages. A hybrid team of Rocket Software and Pernod Ricard developers then worked hand-in-hand to rethink, reconstruct, and rewrite the entire framework of Pernod Ricard’s application. The team simplified and reduced the application’s components from 4,000 to 2,200 — cutting them nearly in half. To create a uniform platform for managing Pernod Ricard’s many brands, the team built the application out brand-by-brand, deploying new functionalities as they went. In doing so, Pernod Ricard hoped to introduce standardized data collection and management processes while still providing its brands with the freedom to implement into the software the different methods and functionalities specific to their operations.

Creating a better user experience

In less than three years, Pernod Ricard completed its modernization project, cutting the 1.3 million lines of code needed to create the software by 60%, substantially reducing coding times. Since its transition onto a single platform, the Pernod Ricard Group has signed an additional 180 users to its company, a true testament to the solution’s modernization and innovative allure to the next generation of talent.

By automating its barrel reservation and Cognac QA process, employees save two days of work per month on average, which allows teams more time for value-driven tasks. And newly integrated automation is helping to streamline Martell’s cask inventory operations. On the old platform, employees could complete the physical process of “debonding” and content measuring at a rate of 7,000 to 8,000 barrels daily. Since adding automation capabilities, employee workloads have been reduced and teams can now complete between 12,000 to 14,000 barrels per day, saving Pernod Ricard both time and money.

Faced with few options, Pernod Ricard chose to modernize and it’s paying big dividends for its digital transformation efforts. Next time you’re contemplating some combination of new hardware and/or software to address operational challenges in your business, the answer to those challenges may already be in-house.

Read more about Pernod Ricard’s modernization efforts here

Digital Transformation

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

A group of Google employees are yet again speaking out against Google’s defense contracts, this time asking the company to shelve its $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract for the Israeli government and military. Google partnered with Amazon to bid for the project.

Under employee pressure, Google has previously dropped one US government defence contract (Project Maven), and shied away from another (JEDI).

In a video posted on Youtube, a group of Google employees including Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim, and Arab staff expressed their concerns over Project Nimbus, which they claim will provide surveillance and other forms of powerful AI technology to the Israeli government and military. They are also speaking out against “the anti-Palestinian bias” they have witnessed within the company. 

“By doing business with Israeli apartheid, Amazon and Google will make it easier for the Israeli government to surveil Palestinians and force them off their land,” said the group that calls itself Jewish Diaspora in tech.

While Google said Project Nimbus is a mere cloud computing contract for Israeli government, a report from The Intercept  pointed towards training documents and videos that showed Google is providing the Israeli government with a full suite of machine-learning and AI tools that would give Israel capability to surveil people and process vast stores of data on the Palestinian population.

Google employees’ protest against Project Nimbus has been led by a Jewish employee, Ariel Koren, who resigned from the company this week after protesting for over a year against the project and what she terms Google’s attempts to silence her.

“Instead of listening to employees who want Google to live up to its ethical principles, Google is aggressively pursuing military contracts and stripping away the voices of its employees through a pattern of silencing and retaliation towards me and many others,” Koren wrote in a letter to colleagues explaining her decision to resign.

Koren, who worked in Google’s marketing division, first spoke about the issue in an internal group for the Jewish Google employees, but said she was “put on moderation” by some group members, banning her from posting anything in the group.

She and other employees subsequently started the Jewish Diaspora in Tech group to continue their protest against the company.

As Koren resigned from Google, at least 15 other employees published audio testimonies against the company’s “anti-Palestinian” bias. Many among the activists are also holding press conferences in a multi-city protest across the US.

Tech giants face heat over political disagreements

Political disagreements among employees have been clashing with technology development and making talent shortages an even bigger issue among technology giants who are constantly trying to upend competition with new advancements in AI and other areas.

Four years ago, Google was forced to end its participation in a large US Department of Defense contract, Project Maven, which was supposed to use AI to interpret video information to target drone strikes. Four thousand Google employees signed a petition demanding the company and its contractors stay away from ever building warfare technology.

Seeing those protests, when it came to bidding for another DoD project called JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure), Google decided to stand down.

Similar calls have been made by employees of Microsoft and Amazon against projects that have political leanings or implications on wars. Technology workers across the industry have been participating in several protests as they stand up and speak out against injustice.

While Google has been on the back foot in earlier protests, this time Google doesn’t seem to be backing off as it slowed hiring and pushed employees to work harder.

In a clear sign that dissent would no longer be tolerated at the firm, Google spokeswoman Shannon Newberry spoke to The New York Times about Koren’s allegations, saying, “We prohibit retaliation in the workplace and publicly share our very clear policy. We thoroughly investigated this employee’s claim, as we do when any concerns are raised.”

Aerospace and Defense Industry, IT Management

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

A group of Google employees are yet again speaking out against Google’s defense contracts, this time asking the company to shelve its $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract for the Israeli government and military. Google partnered with Amazon to bid for the project.

Under employee pressure, Google has previously dropped one US government defence contract (Project Maven), and shied away from another (JEDI).

In a video posted on Youtube, a group of Google employees including Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim, and Arab staff expressed their concerns over Project Nimbus, which they claim will provide surveillance and other forms of powerful AI technology to the Israeli government and military. They are also speaking out against “the anti-Palestinian bias” they have witnessed within the company. 

“By doing business with Israeli apartheid, Amazon and Google will make it easier for the Israeli government to surveil Palestinians and force them off their land,” said the group that calls itself Jewish Diaspora in tech.

While Google said Project Nimbus is a mere cloud computing contract for Israeli government, a report from The Intercept  pointed towards training documents and videos that showed Google is providing the Israeli government with a full suite of machine-learning and AI tools that would give Israel capability to surveil people and process vast stores of data on the Palestinian population.

Google employees’ protest against Project Nimbus has been led by a Jewish employee, Ariel Koren, who resigned from the company this week after protesting for over a year against the project and what she terms Google’s attempts to silence her.

“Instead of listening to employees who want Google to live up to its ethical principles, Google is aggressively pursuing military contracts and stripping away the voices of its employees through a pattern of silencing and retaliation towards me and many others,” Koren wrote in a letter to colleagues explaining her decision to resign.

Koren, who worked in Google’s marketing division, first spoke about the issue in an internal group for the Jewish Google employees, but said she was “put on moderation” by some group members, banning her from posting anything in the group.

She and other employees subsequently started the Jewish Diaspora in Tech group to continue their protest against the company.

As Koren resigned from Google, at least 15 other employees published audio testimonies against the company’s “anti-Palestinian” bias. Many among the activists are also holding press conferences in a multi-city protest across the US.

Tech giants face heat over political disagreements

Political disagreements among employees have been clashing with technology development and making talent shortages an even bigger issue among technology giants who are constantly trying to upend competition with new advancements in AI and other areas.

Four years ago, Google was forced to end its participation in a large US Department of Defense contract, Project Maven, which was supposed to use AI to interpret video information to target drone strikes. Four thousand Google employees signed a petition demanding the company and its contractors stay away from ever building warfare technology.

Seeing those protests, when it came to bidding for another DoD project called JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure), Google decided to stand down.

Similar calls have been made by employees of Microsoft and Amazon against projects that have political leanings or implications on wars. Technology workers across the industry have been participating in several protests as they stand up and speak out against injustice.

While Google has been on the back foot in earlier protests, this time Google doesn’t seem to be backing off as it slowed hiring and pushed employees to work harder.

In a clear sign that dissent would no longer be tolerated at the firm, Google spokeswoman Shannon Newberry spoke to The New York Times about Koren’s allegations, saying, “We prohibit retaliation in the workplace and publicly share our very clear policy. We thoroughly investigated this employee’s claim, as we do when any concerns are raised.”

Aerospace and Defense Industry, IT Management