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Across the manufacturing industry, innovation is happening at the edge. Edge computing allows manufacturers to process data closer to the source where it is being generated, rather than sending it offsite to a cloud or data center for analysis and response. 

For an industry defined by machinery and supply chains, this comes as no surprise. The proliferation of smart equipment, robotics and AI-powered devices designed for the manufacturing sector underscores the value edge presents to manufacturers. 

Yet, when surveyed, a significant gap appears between organizations that recognize the value of edge computing (94%) and those who are currently running mature edge strategies (10%). Running edge devices and smart-manufacturing machines does not always mean there is a fully functioning edge strategy in place. 

Why the gap? 

What is holding back successful edge implementation in an industry that clearly recognizes its benefits?

The very same survey mentioned above suggests that complexity is to blame– with 85% of respondents saying that a simpler path to edge operations is needed. 

What specifically do these complexities consist of? Top among them is: 

Data security constraints: managing large volumes of data generated at the edge, maintaining adequate risk protections, and adhering to regulatory compliance policies creates edge uncertainty.Infrastructure decisions: choosing, deploying, and testing edge infrastructure solutions can be a complex, costly proposition. Components and configuration options vary significantly based on manufacturing environments and desired use casesOvercoming the IT/OT divide: barriers between OT (operational technology) devices on the factory floor and enterprise applications (IT) in the cloud limit data integration and time to value for edge initiatives. Seamless implementation of edge computing solutions is difficult to achieve without solid IT/OT collaboration in place.Lack of edge expertise: a scarcity of edge experience limits the implementation of effective edge strategies. The move to real-time streaming data, data management, and mission-critical automation has a steep learning curve.

Combined, these challenges are holding back the manufacturing sector today, limiting edge ROI (return on investment), time to market and competitiveness across a critical economic sector. 

As organizations aspire toward transformation, they must find a holistic approach to simplifying—and reaping the benefits of — smart factory initiatives at the edge.

Build a Simpler Edge 

What does a holistic approach to manufacturing edge initiatives look like? It begins with these best practices: 

Start with proven technologies to overcome infrastructure guesswork and obtain a scalable, unified edge architecture that ingests, stores, and analyzes data from disparate sources in near-real time and is ready to run advanced smart-factory applications in a matter of days, not weeks. Deliver IT and OT convergence by eliminating data silos between edge devices on the factory floor (OT) and enterprise applications in the cloud (IT), rapidly integrating diverse data types for faster time to value Streamline the adoption of edge use cases with easy and quick deployment of new applications, such as machine vision for improved production quality and digital twin composition for situational modeling, monitoring, and simulationScale securely using proven security solutions that protect the entire edge estate, from IT to OT. Strengthen industrial cybersecurity using threat detection, vulnerability alerts, network segmentation, and remote incident managementEstablish a foundation for future innovation with edge technologies that scale with your business, are easily configured to adopt new use cases— like artificial intelligence, machine learning and private 5G— that minimize the complexity that holds manufacturers back from operating in the data age.

Don’t go it alone

The best way to apply these practices is to start with a tested solution designed specifically for manufacturing edge applications. Let your solution partner provide much of the edge expertise your organization may not possess internally. A partner who has successfully developed, tested and deployed edge manufacturing solutions for a wide variety of use cases will help you avoid costly mistakes and reduce time to value along the way. 

You don’t need to be an industry expert to know that the manufacturing sector is highly competitive and data-driven. Every bit of information, every insight matters and can mean the difference between success or failure. 

Product design and quality, plant performance and safety, team productivity and retention, customer preferences and satisfaction — are all contained in your edge data. Your ability to access and understand that data depends entirely on the practices you adopt today. 

Digitally transforming edge operations is essential to maintaining and growing your competitive advantage moving forward.

A trusted advisor at the edge

Dell has been designing and testing edge manufacturing solutions for over a decade, with customers that include Ericsson, McLaren, Linde and the Laboratory for Machine Tools at Aachen University. 

You can learn more about our approach to edge solutions for the manufacturing sector, featuring Intel® Xeon® processors, at Dell Manufacturing Solutions. The latest 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors have built-in AI acceleration for edge workloads – with up to 10x higher PyTorch real-time inference performance with built-in Intel® Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel® AMX) (BF16) vs. the prior generation (FP32)1.

See [A17] at intel.com/processorclaims: 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. Results may vary.

Edge Computing

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Heading into 2020, there were plenty of predictions about the year ahead (not to mention detailed business plans, economic forecasts, scheduled events, and so on)—and all were rendered worthless by the pandemic.

Looking ahead to 2023, therefore, I do so with a healthy dose of humility, and an acknowledgement that there will be monumental events in the year ahead that I did not see coming. However, with all that said, I do think it’s clear that some current trends are under way that will continue in 2023.

At a high level, I’d characterize these trends as having humanist theme. Fundamentally, I view this as an increasing recognition that people are an organization’s most important asset. While companies are now highly digitized, it takes people to keep these digital services running and delivering value.

The pandemic did a lot to accelerate these digitization shifts, but I’d argue these trends will continue to accelerate. So with that, here are my predictions for strategic portfolio planning in 2023.

#1. The Pressure on Project Management Offices (PMOs) Will Intensify

The stakes for digital transformation continue to grow within today’s enterprises. The PMO’s ability to contribute to that transformation will be paramount, not just in the fortunes of the PMO, but in those of the business. The days of the PMO being an administrative finance function are numbered, if they’re not already past. In many ways, the transition can be viewed as the move to become a strategy realization office.

#2. Workforce Management Will Be a Top Priority

In 2023, it’s widely anticipated that we’ll be encountering a recession. Large-scale layoffs in high-profile technology companies have recently been announced. More than ever, there will be an intensified emphasis on cultivating the right mix of skills, roles, and workforces that will be optimally suited to realizing top strategic goals.

 #3. Investments Will Move from Projects to People

Gradually, teams in an increasing number of organizations are confronting the reality that they need to invest in outcomes and strategies rather than short-term initiatives and projects. Instead of paying for discrete deliveries, they’re investing in people and trusting that they’ll generate value, without knowing up front exactly what they’ll deliver. For a long time, there’s been a desire to gain more flexibility, and this is how we achieve that objective.

#4. Tools and Methodologies Will Converge

In years past, different methodologies and associated tools sprouted up within organizations, and operated in a relatively siloed fashion. In 2023, look for increased convergence in areas such as performance management, including methodologies like objectives and key results, strategic portfolio management, and project and portfolio management; and agile execution, such as Scrum and Kanban. Teams will take a choose-your-methodology approach, while being able to ensure all these different teams, tools, and methodologies are interacting with each other, which is key to maximizing value and insights.

#5. The Society 5.0 Concept May Move Closer to a Reality

Several years ago, then Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, announced the concept of a super-smart society, which was dubbed Society 5.0. One of the key characteristics of this concept is the shift from technology-centric interactions to those that are more human centric. Increasingly, people will want and ultimately demand software solutions that are responsive to, and aligned with, who they are as individuals. We’ve started to see this transition in consumer software, and this trend will be moving to enterprise software as well.

Conclusion

While we can’t predict the future, it’s vital to understand trends and how they’ll continue to affect our businesses. As we head into 2023, it’s more vital than ever to have a clear perspective of the people we have on our team and the people we serve.

________________________________

Explore ValueOps Value Stream Management, built to manage what you value most. 

Digital Transformation

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

Google on Tuesday said it would be adding new cloud regions across five countries to meet growing computing demand from customers across the globe.

The new regions, announced at Google’s Cloud Next conference, will be made available across Austria, Greece, Norway, South Africa and Sweden, and will supplement new regions announced in August for New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand and Mexico. However, Google did not confirm when each of these regions would be operational.

The company has already added five new regions this year in Milan, Paris, Madrid, Columbus (Ohio, US) and Dallas, Gupta said.

The addition of the new regions will take Google’s total cloud region tally to 35 regions and 106 zones compared with 34 regions and 103 zones in August this year. Zones offer high-bandwidth, low-latency network connections to other zones in the same region, and regions are collections of zones.

As of December last year, that number stood at 29 cloud regions and 88 cloud zones globally.

Google and other major cloud service providers such as AWS, Microsoft and Oracle have been investing heavily into expanding their cloud regions.

In July, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company will launch 10 new cloud regions this fiscal year.

Similarly, in June, Oracle CEO Safra Catz said the company expects to add another six regions in fiscal 2023. By July, the company had already launched two of these new sovereign regions for the European Union.

Data sovereignty adds fuel to cloud region construction

Data sovereignty regulations—rules about data that companies must keep in-country for security and privacy reasons—has given impetus to construction of cloud regions around the world. The EU has taken the lead in advancing data privacy rules with GDPR regulations, and during the Cloud Next conference, Google also announced that it was expanding its portfolio of Sovereign Solutions that can support European customers’ current and emerging sovereignty needs. 

Google Cloud Sovereign Solutions comprise Sovereign Controls, designed to help organizations manage data sovereignty requirements, as well as Supervised Cloud and Hosted Cloud options to help address operational and software sovereignty concerns. To make these controls available, Google has teamed up with a nunber of telecom companies in the EU, including T-Systems in Germany, S3NS in France, Minsait in Spain, and Telecom Italia in Italy.

Economic impact of cloud regions

Google claims that opening up new cloud regions contribute to local economic and job growth.

“These cloud regions help bring innovations from across Google closer to our customers around the globe and provide a platform that enables organizations to transform the way they do business,” Sachin Gupta, vice president of infrastructure at Google Cloud, wrote in a blog post.

The nine new cloud regions that were announced this year are expected to collectively contribute $40 billion to global GDP by 2030 and create 314,400 jobs, a Google commissioned study by consulting firm AlphaBeta showed.

At the regional level, the three cloud regions—New Zealand, Malaysia and Thailand—announced in APAC are projected to contribute $10 billion to the region’s GDP by 2030 and create 86,500 jobs, the study showed.

Similarly, the five regions announced this year across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, are projected to contribute a cumulative $18.9 billion to EMEA’s GDP by 2030, and support creation of more than 110,500 jobs, AlphaBeta said in its report.

Cloud Computing

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

All indications are that Mastercard’s vision for creating teams built around the so-called “Five Cs” – community, common vision, cross-functionality, culture, and Cutting edge – works.

Two years after its opening, the 230 employees at Mastercard’s Global Intelligence and Cyber Centre of Excellence in Vancouver have already submitted 30 patents and some of their products are in use around the world, helping to protect both commercial businesses and consumers from cybercriminals.

CIOs don’t always have the opportunity to build such a large team in one fell swoop. But the same principles that guided hiring at Mastercard’s Vancouver, British Columbia, tech hub (the eighth such centre for the company including those in Ireland, Australia, the US, and others) can help build IT teams of any size.

Nicole Turner, Mastercard senior vice-president, technology hubs, explains the Five C principle, and how IT leaders can use them to guide their own work.

Community

Like all companies, Mastercard is looking for the best possible talent. “But ideally, we try to hire local people, those who have a presence in the community. For us, that’s a plus,” Turner says.

She believes that people involved in their community are more likely to establish contacts with local businesses and help find more talent down the road. Even if a company is targeting the international market, having nearby partners can provide a host of benefits, generating new product development, for example.

For Mastercard’s technology centres, the community aspect is not only related to hiring but to the company itself. The new facility in Vancouver operates an exploration centre that holds co-creation workshops involving the company and its customers.

Mastercard also regularly invests in the regions where it’s located. Last year, the company donated $6.3 million to various local programs, such as Tech-Up, which is linked to helping young Canadians learn about technology. Employees who are present in their communities can help build such connections with local organizations.

These relationships are not only beneficial and motivational for local teams but have a positive impact on the company as a whole down the road.

Common vision

Each of Mastercard’s eight technology centres has its own personality and specific mission. For example, the Vancouver centre focuses on intelligence and cybercrime, while the Sydney, Australia, hub concentrates on artificial intelligence and machine learning. As for Dublin, Ireland, the centre there specializes in e-commerce.

“These hubs are independent, but Mastercard is a global organization, so everything has to be aligned on a common vision,” Turner says.

She has implemented a clear structure to coordinate the work of the various centres. “As an employee in a tech hub, I work with a local manager – but that manager has to operate with the global directors,” she says.

“The teams were designed to work on their own, but also to make sure that what is created locally can benefit the whole company.” In other words, the autonomy of the different units doesn’t result in working in silos.

For Turner, a fragmented structure with a common vision “allows the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts.”

Cross-functionality

“We mix skills in our teams, and we make sure they’re able to design a product from start to finish,” says Turner of the third C in her approach.

While some organizations might compartmentalize the different skills needed to create products (for example research in one centre, development in another, user experience in a third), Mastercard wants its tech hubs to imagine, develop, design, and create new products from beginning to end.

“To me, that’s the secret sauce for IT centres,” Turner says.

Cross-functional teams are especially important in times of labour shortages. Employees take pride in the work they’ve accomplished when they feel they’ve had a significant impact in making it happen and that they were able to bring their own ideas to fruition.

By definition, cross-functional teams also allow for exposure to people with different experiences and skills than one’s own, which can benefit the whole organization in fostering innovation.

“Our teams are also designed to be scalable,” says Turner. For example, Mastercard expects to hire a total of about 400 skilled employees at its Vancouver centre.

Culture

When a new team is formed at a tech hub, Mastercard looks for talent that shares the company’s culture, both in relation to where the centre is located and to the global structure of the organization.

 “We’re looking for people who are intellectually curious and who enjoy working toward goals,” Turner says. She believes the role of a technology centre like Vancouver’s is to create a culture of innovation and to allow its talents to thrive and achieve the best possible results.

For each tech centre, Mastercard also makes efforts to build teams with employees from underrepresented backgrounds, such as Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ people. “We’re committed to inclusion and equity in Canada and around the world: every major digital innovation requires it,” states the company on its website.

Mastercard also hires neurodivergent talent. “These are people who have unusual strengths that can help us create better products and serve different types of customers,” says Turner.

Cutting edge

Innovation means new technology, but not everyone is constantly pushing the envelope. “We seek talent that wants to be on the cutting edge of things – always ahead of the curve,” Turner says.

She believes it’s important to attract employees who will “think about the next generation of technology,” and who will be comfortable with more than just the current tools and ways of doing things. The company must attract this talent, but also build an organization around them that allows people to explore future opportunities.

Whether it’s AI, blockchain or other advanced technology, companies don’t always know in advance what will be the solutions to the problems they’ll be facing tomorrow. Building teams that naturally gravitate toward new technologies ultimately makes it easier to integrate cutting-edge innovations.

Translation by Daniel Pérusse

IT Leadership

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

Technology is becoming ever-more core to the educational experience, with teachers and students alike relying on rich media, deep data and analytics and cloud delivery to drive better educational outcomes.

At the same time, education has a specific set of requirements of IT that differentiate it from other verticals. Resilience and true all-day computing is required, as is massive scale as every student and teacher in every classroom needs to be working simultaneously. Security is also paramount and, increasingly, the delivery of truly rich media experiences puts additional pressure on the processors, requiring more powerful computing power than ever.

As Gartner noted in its report on the current global trends in education: “This year, the ‘hybrid world’ trend is refined to the more specific ‘digital learning environments,’ reflecting the need to think in multiple dimensions about how, when and where learning takes place. These changes include not only new additions to classroom technologies, but also those that enable this level of flexibility required to deliver instruction under nearly any conditions.”

Intel is placing the vPro platform at the centre of its efforts to address the challenges and opportunities ahead in education. There are five areas that this platform’s features will be appealing to educators in the months and years ahead:

Blended learning: The rich media experience of the classroom is going well beyond video, audio and text. The blending of these more traditional media formats with emerging formats such as VR and AR is going to put additional stress on the raw power of the processors, with the vPro platform providing a boost to the device’s ability to handle that.

Furthermore, AI is becoming increasingly important to the learning experience. Intel, in collaboration with the University of South Australia and meldCX, recently demonstrated what that might look like with the AI Playground, giving students a safe space to experiment with and explore AI. This too requires far more powerful base computing availability to enable within the learning environment.

Management: Schools are environments that involve a lot of devices, and a consistency of experience across the entire facility will be essential in ensuring that the technology doesn’t become disruptive to the learning experience. The vPro platform includes the capability to activate, configure and manage devices, with remote management capabilities, meaning that the school, or it’s managed services provider, can deliver that consistent experience across the whole campus.Security: With so many touchpoints on the network, education faces an uphill battle on security. Late last year there was the example of Newcastle Grammar School, which was infected with a virus that encrypted the entire network, compromising the data of over 900 staff and students. Further data loss meant end-of-year exams and reports needed to be re-written, and considerable expense needed to go into recovering and rebuilding systems.

The vPro platform includes hardware-level security features that provide advanced threat detection and response capabilities, minimising the attack surface across the school network and helping to ensure that vPro-powered devices are less vulnerable in the event that the network does come under attack.

Stability: One of the challenges facing schools is the wide range of devices that are on networks, with a massive number of software configurations. Driver incompatibilities across the school network make overall management difficult. To help the IT managers grapple with this, Intel has produced the Stable IT Platform Program (SIPP) as part of the Intel vPro platform. Key to this is a validation program that aims for no hardware changes within the typical buying cycle (15 months/until the next generational release), which Intel then works with key partners to deliver.Educating the Educators: Helping educators in understanding how to best leverage the technology available to them is going to be essential in maximising the opportunities that platforms such as vPro bring to the sector. With this in mind, Intel has developed the Skills for Innovation (SFI) program designed to help plan, experience, train and deploy technology-supported learning models across the education system.

While events over the past three years have brought unprecedented disruption to education systems, the response – which was to embrace technology, remote learning, and new content delivery mechanisms – has now become an opportunity. With the right technology solutions in place, that allow for a consistency and resilience to computing on and off-campus, students will be able to enjoy the benefits of an expanded, deeper, and richer use of technology to enhance their learning.

For more information on vPro, click here.

Education Industry, Intel

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

Technology is becoming ever-more core to the educational experience, with teachers and students alike relying on rich media, deep data and analytics and cloud delivery to drive better educational outcomes.

At the same time, education has a specific set of requirements of IT that differentiate it from other verticals. Resilience and true all-day computing is required, as is massive scale as every student and teacher in every classroom needs to be working simultaneously. Security is also paramount and, increasingly, the delivery of truly rich media experiences puts additional pressure on the processors, requiring more powerful computing power than ever.

As Gartner noted in its report on the current global trends in education: “This year, the ‘hybrid world’ trend is refined to the more specific ‘digital learning environments,’ reflecting the need to think in multiple dimensions about how, when and where learning takes place. These changes include not only new additions to classroom technologies, but also those that enable this level of flexibility required to deliver instruction under nearly any conditions.”

Intel is placing the vPro platform at the centre of its efforts to address the challenges and opportunities ahead in education. There are five areas that this platform’s features will be appealing to educators in the months and years ahead:

Blended learning: The rich media experience of the classroom is going well beyond video, audio and text. The blending of these more traditional media formats with emerging formats such as VR and AR is going to put additional stress on the raw power of the processors, with the vPro platform providing a boost to the device’s ability to handle that.

Furthermore, AI is becoming increasingly important to the learning experience. Intel, in collaboration with the University of South Australia and meldCX, recently demonstrated what that might look like with the AI Playground, giving students a safe space to experiment with and explore AI. This too requires far more powerful base computing availability to enable within the learning environment.

Management: Schools are environments that involve a lot of devices, and a consistency of experience across the entire facility will be essential in ensuring that the technology doesn’t become disruptive to the learning experience. The vPro platform includes the capability to activate, configure and manage devices, with remote management capabilities, meaning that the school, or it’s managed services provider, can deliver that consistent experience across the whole campus.Security: With so many touchpoints on the network, education faces an uphill battle on security. Late last year there was the example of Newcastle Grammar School, which was infected with a virus that encrypted the entire network, compromising the data of over 900 staff and students. Further data loss meant end-of-year exams and reports needed to be re-written, and considerable expense needed to go into recovering and rebuilding systems.

The vPro platform includes hardware-level security features that provide advanced threat detection and response capabilities, minimising the attack surface across the school network and helping to ensure that vPro-powered devices are less vulnerable in the event that the network does come under attack.

Stability: One of the challenges facing schools is the wide range of devices that are on networks, with a massive number of software configurations. Driver incompatibilities across the school network make overall management difficult. To help the IT managers grapple with this, Intel has produced the Stable IT Platform Program (SIPP) as part of the Intel vPro platform. Key to this is a validation program that aims for no hardware changes within the typical buying cycle (15 months/until the next generational release), which Intel then works with key partners to deliver.Educating the Educators: Helping educators in understanding how to best leverage the technology available to them is going to be essential in maximising the opportunities that platforms such as vPro bring to the sector. With this in mind, Intel has developed the Skills for Innovation (SFI) program designed to help plan, experience, train and deploy technology-supported learning models across the education system.

While events over the past three years have brought unprecedented disruption to education systems, the response – which was to embrace technology, remote learning, and new content delivery mechanisms – has now become an opportunity. With the right technology solutions in place, that allow for a consistency and resilience to computing on and off-campus, students will be able to enjoy the benefits of an expanded, deeper, and richer use of technology to enhance their learning.

For more information on vPro, click here.

Education Industry, Intel

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

If you’ve noticed changing patterns of fraud and the way your business manages fraud threats since the start of the pandemic, you’re not alone. Our latest survey of industry trends, with MRC and Verifi, the 2022 Global Fraud and Payments Report, highlights some important shifts in the extent of fraud and the way merchants are responding to it. It also reveals what merchants really think about upcoming rule changes.

Here are the key take-outs for 2022:

Fraud is on the rise…

For the second year running, fraud KPIs are on the rise. Estimated global revenue lost to fraud is up 16% — and in North America there was a sharp jump of 38%. 

% of revenue lost to fraud 1

Cybersource

…but spending on fraud is not

Despite the uptick in fraud, the overall amount merchants have spent on tackling fraud globally has flatlined since 2020. One explanation could be that managing fraud already accounts for a large proportion of merchants’ budgets. On average one-tenth of e-commerce revenue is spent on the issue. It’s a particular drain on resources for mid-sized firms:

% of eCommerce revenue spent managing fraud, by business size 2

Cybersource

Reducing manual reviews is in merchants’ sights

Given the significant ongoing costs of fraud management, it’s little wonder the majority of merchants are looking to reduce the amount spent on time-consuming manual reviews.

While most merchants foresee retaining a manual review process, 12% are planning to eliminate it entirely. In Europe this figure is even higher, with nearly one in five merchants planning a complete phase-out.

Role of manual review in future fraud management strategy 3

Cybersource

Merchants have a diverse armory

Fraud threats are a complex and constantly shifting threat, and merchants commonly use a number of approaches to tackle them.

On average, merchants use four different tools when detecting and thwarting fraud, although merchants who are members of the Merchant Risk Council typically use double that. Larger merchants also use a wider array of approaches than SMBs.

Global top five fraud-prevention methods 4

Cybersource

Changes are no big surprise

Regulatory changes are a potential minefield for merchants, but those we surveyed are generally pretty positive about incoming rules on customer authentication.

As the graph below indicates, merchants are feeling confident about the industry-wide implementation of EMV-3DS. Meanwhile changes to the EU’s Payment Services Directive (PSD2) are expected to have a major impact on organizations doing business in/with Europe. Here too, the vast majority of merchants feel at least partially prepared. 

Merchant preparedness for EMV® 3DS and PDS2 / SCA 5

Cybersource

To find out more download the Cybersource and Merchant Risk Council’s 2022 Global Fraud and Payments Report

1 2022 Global Fraud and Payments Survey Report, MRC. Figure 4, p7
2 2022 Global Fraud and Payments Survey Report, MRC. Figure 5, p8
3 2022 Global Fraud and Payments Survey Report, MRC. Figure 6, p9
4 2022 Global Fraud and Payments Survey Report, MRC. Figure 16, p18
5 2022 Global Fraud and Payments Survey Report, MRC. Figure 8, p11
Fraud Protection and Detection Software, IT Leadership