It’s that nagging feeling that you’ve somehow stumbled into your plum position by accident and you’ll be found out at any moment. And when they come to show you the door, you’ll think "Well, that’s fair enough I guess."
If this sounds familiar, then you know what it’s like to experience impostor syndrome. I’ve felt that way several times in my career, and it makes me think we all have…we just haven’t said it out loud.
A chatbot is a text-based program empowered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Learning Processes (NLP). A user generally interacts with the chatbot over a platform through a communication channel connected to a network. In other words, chatbots are bots that live in chat platforms. There are numerous kinds of bots present globally, and they all can perform various tasks. The most common type of bot is the one offering customer services. So, according to a survey by Gartner, it is predicted that by 2020, an average person will converse with chatbots more than their spouse. Various new methods of customer engagement and development of enterprises have been created by conversational artificial intelligence. The AI enabled conversational bots have the potential of working 24/7, unlike human beings. With the of help this feature, enterprises have significantly reduced their response time and streamlined tasks in order to achieve the targets, which ultimately helped them retain their customers.
Bots also help businesses perform the same set of tasks multiple times in a cost-effective manner. The above mentioned are the primary reasons why chatbots are actively harnessed in different industry fields like banking sectors and on e-commerce sites. Undoubtedly, chatbots provide a lot of advantages like bots are available 24/7 and act as a dedicated resource that offer customers the services they actually need. Chatbots are known for enhancing brand value by providing instant customer service.
"Agile." What is the first thought that comes to your mind when you hear this word? Here are some obvious answers:
Let me introduce myself before I start writing about my experiences with this buzzword. I started my career in software development in 2004, about 14 years back. I have worked with 8 different companies and contributed to the development of 16 projects so far.
This article is a continuation of Part 1. You can find the first part here.
It is likely that when you begin your AIOps journey, you will already have certain analytics in place. I do not mean the analytics that are embedded in your IT tools. I mean offline, mostly manual analytics, that you do regularly, irregularly, or periodically to identify areas for process improvement, reduce costs, improve performance, etc.
A common question I hear in Scrum training courses and in coaching sessions is, "How much Product Backlog refinement should we do and how much detail should be in the Product Backlog?"
First, let’s look at the Scrum Guide.
On Monday, June 18 in an IBM office in a San Francisco, California, IBM demonstrated an AI-based system that purports to hold its own in a debate with a human being. They named the system (wait for it) IBM Debater. For the human opponent, they picked a proven, skilled debater: Noa Ovadia, a college senior who won a debating championship in 2016.
[Me stepping on a soapbox…feel free to skip]
To win in today’s highly competitive market environment, our customers need to embrace digitalization, and they are relying on us to guide them on their journey towards an intelligent enterprise – at their own speed and in their preferred environment. When it comes to consumption models and infrastructure, choice and convenience are therefore top priorities for our customers now.
Digitalization has resulted in many companies struggling to deal with the huge amounts of enterprise data and the increased user demands for faster access to real-time information. By mastering these challenges and gaining previously unseen insights into their data, users can uncover invaluable new opportunities and understand their business better than ever before. SAP HANA, the market-leading platform for real-time computing, has done exactly that for its more than 23,000 customers to date.
Image by © Jetta Productions/Dana Neely/Blend Images/Corbis
From the beginning, our aim has been to help customers get the most out of their SAP HANA deployment. Driving openness and cost effectiveness is part of our commitment to delivering customer value. Customer feedback shows that the majority of the organizations using SAP HANA want to continue using proven IT processes and harnessing their IT infrastructure investment for SAP HANA. And, increasingly, customers want to benefit from highly flexible and cost-cutting approaches – including commodity hardware and cloud deployment models.
Lowering Total Cost of Ownership
The SAP HANA Tailored Data Center Integration (TDI) has been instrumental in lowering SAP HANA total cost of ownership and designing SAP HANA infrastructure to meet the individual needs of our customers. The SAP HANA TDI approach allows them to choose their preferred hardware and infrastructure components from a menu of third-party products that have been tested and certified for use with SAP HANA: existing processes can be integrated, existing hardware reused, and upgrades can be chosen that fit the budget. SAP HANA TDI can therefore significantly lower the total cost of ownership and accelerate the integration of SAP HANA with IT infrastructures.
Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is one of the next big steps that allow our customers to benefit from the latest technologies to drive flexibility and lower operational costs. HCI is an IT framework that combines computing, storage, and network into a single system that reduces data center complexity and increases scalability. It includes a hypervisor for virtual compute nodes and the hypervisors typically run on commodity servers. We are currently working with several HCI technology partners that will be soon certified for SAP HANA workloads.
Process More Data in Real Time
During SAPPHIRE NOW 2018, we also announced that SAP HANA 2.0 SPS 03 is the first major database platform to support Intel® Optane
DC persistent memory.[1] Persistent memory support will transform the current data storage hierarchy, providing a combination of higher capacity, affordability, and persistence. This will enable customers to process more data in real time while driving a lower total cost of ownership and improving business continuity with drastically faster startup times for SAP HANA.
Intel Optane DC persistent memory represents an entirely new means of managing data for demanding workloads such as the SAP HANA platform. It is non-volatile, so the in-memory SAP HANA database does not have to completely reload all the data from persistent storage to memory. In addition, it runs at near-DRAM speeds, maintaining today’s performance expectations. It also delivers greater data density than memory technologies, which enables additional innovation and simpler IT landscapes. With its persistence, high performance, and lower cost per gigabyte than conventional memory, Intel Optane DC persistent memory can help reduce total cost of ownership, reshape how businesses tier their data for database systems, and open up new use cases for the speed and power of the SAP HANA platform.
Our customers and their individual needs are at the heart of everything we do. With SAP HANA TDI, hyper-converged infrastructure and Intel Optane DC persistent memory solutions, we continue to provide more choices at lower costs and improved scalability – whether on-site hardware or public, private cloud, or hybrid environments.
[1] Intel® Optane DC persistent memory is available today for early adoption testing and production shipping to select customers later this year, with broad availability in 2019
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Have you ever had one of those unforgettable travel experiences that you just couldn’t help but talk about upon your return? Glad I’m not the only one; however, today I would like to share a particular experience with you, one that may not be what you’d expect. I say that because my excitement wasn’t caused by the country we traveled to, the city we explored, or the attractions we visited. Rather, it was the hotel my family and I stayed at that left such a lasting impression and quickly became an attraction in and of itself.
Over the years I have stayed at many hotels; however, this particular experience quickly became unique from the moment I completed the reservation. Like most people nowadays, I make my travel arrangements online, and while receiving a confirmation email is nothing new, in this instance, I also received a link to download the hotels’ app, an action which entitled us to a discount. Never one to pass up a deal, I downloaded the app, received my discount, and patiently awaited my departure — but things got interesting way before that.
Last year, I attended a rather odd conference in Berlin where 250 invited startups competed to win €1 Million ($1,157USD), with Steve Wozniak as one of the judges. The startups not only pitched, but exhibited their wares at stalls, and I visited many with interest, asking how they had fared with the pitching — bizarrely, more than a small minority admitted that they had pitched at the event for the first time ever and perhaps they should have practiced before the event!
The finalists were smart city waste solution providers Green City Solutions and population health management solution NavVis and the inaugural CUBE Challenge was won by US-based Enlitic, a digital health and life science startup. The company is developing AI technology with the goal to cover 95% of diagnostic radiology by 2020.
As SAP, along with our partners, begins to build on the vision of the Intelligent Enterprise, I wanted to look back on what has made this possible. Obviously, the convergence of Big Data, IoT, Cloud Computing, and Mobility has created the perfect storm, in terms of bringing all the technology pieces together that are causing disruption and the need for transformation in the digital era.
But I’m going to make a bold statement—I absolutely believe the introduction of SAP HANA, just under 10 years ago, is a critical piece of the equation. This in-memory, relational database…which offers so much more…delivers (according to a recent SAP strategy document) “…the collection, connection, and orchestration of data as well as the integration and extension of processes within integrated applications.” Bottom line – SAP HANA handles big data better than anything else on the market and that has made all the difference for SAP, our partners, the marketplace, and the innovations based on the success of SAP HANA.
But rather than explain the technology or provide facts and figures to prove my point, I’d like some of our key partners to tell their stories.
VIRTUSTREAM SUPPORTS HUMAN PROGRESS
Virtustream provides cloud services for complex, mission-critical applications. Given that they serve the enterprise market, they have a lot of expertise around legacy systems and are experts at migrating and managing those systems with cost-effective infrastructure. According to Christina Colby, Senior Vice President, Strategic Alliances, “the key to success in the industry is fast time to market, which is why Virtustream combines enterprise-class cloud infrastructure and top-tier managed services with an industry-leading cloud management platform.”
Close up of a coworkers working together on a project
By delivering a powerful, fast solution that’s ready for the enterprise, Virtustream gives customers a cloud that works for them and the assurance that their mission-critical legacy systems are secure, and running at top performance.
In addition, Virtustream gives customers room to disrupt, transform, innovate…and ultimately gain a competitive edge, because they don’t have to worry about their legacy IT systems. Virtustream customers are even now disrupting their own businesses.
Virtustream—together with SAP and SAP HANA—provides customers with real solutions to tackle their most difficult IT challenges. They look forward to continuing their innovation with SAP, ensuring customers’ digital transformation journey is seamless and empowering.
ITRON CREATES A MORE RESOURCEFUL WORLD
Itron’s purpose is to create a more resourceful world, by transforming the way utilities and cities manage energy and water. With over 8,000 customers in more than 100 companies, Itron delivers one of the largest IoT solutions in the world – over 190 million intelligent devices deployed in the field.
Taipei, Taiwan — River — Image by © Imagemore Co., Ltd./Imagemore Co., Ltd./Corbis
Jay Millar, Director of Software and Services Sales, talked about Itron’s industry – Utilities and Smart Cities. “Think about it—utilities are going through a disruption Tsunami right now.” Jay went on to list the challenges facing the industry, including:
Itron is developing solutions that enable a distribution network to adapt and react to changing conditions in real time. This network must have the intelligence to do what it can, when it needs to, and know when it needs help from the back office. This is the difference between “smart” and “active” solutions – Itron’s “active” solution is essentially the Intelligent Enterprise for utilities. And Itron is providing business outcomes that deliver to utilities’ and smart cities’ bottom line.
Itron chose SAP and SAP HANA, not only to provide a common data model for customers and simplify their solution, but because there’s so much more to SAP’s real-time database. Utilities collect a massive amount of data and there is no better real-time database than SAP HANA to handle this load.
SAP HANA seamlessly facilitates the utilization of both meter and billing data and creates links with other data sets such as, geospatial, weather, demographic, deployed assets and others, which are critical to identify inefficiencies and optimize utility operations and customer insights.
Itron believes their solution could help SAVE the utility industry, by giving them the platform to transform their business, especially as new power generation laws are passed. For example, utilities in California have the opportunity to re-invent themselves due to the law recently passed that makes solar mandatory in every new home.
In addition, the industry has been talking about innovation in cities for over a decade. Itron now has the technology to deliver these solutions alongside SAP. Together, Itron and SAP are creating a more resourceful world.
BIGID REDEFINES PERSONAL DATA PROTECTION AND PRIVACY
Privacy is a defining 21st century problem. To do privacy effectively, you first need to know what and whose data you have, as well as the content and context. Once you solve the protection and privacy problem – you can solve the data governance problem and get critical insight around the data you have, where it resides, etc.
As technology companies are all too aware, the question of privacy and sensitivity of data is critical. Companies that don’t know what data they have around their clients or employees are at risk, because they can’t protect data they don’t know about. Not knowing doesn’t make data invisible…it makes it vulnerable. So, having insights around data is critical for the security and privacy of that data.
With major new regulations in Europe introducing significant penalties around privacy, data is the most important asset the modern digital enterprise has. BigID gives organizations a way to get value from that data while delivering privacy and protection and making enterprises effective stewards of their information.
BigID is the first major innovator to help companies find and understand their data and to leverage the best of machine learning and identity intelligence to give organizations a way to satisfy regulations like GDPR, but also gain a competitive advantage from the data organizations they gather and use.
From a technology perspective, BigID wanted to partner with a company that has the technological relevance and depth they needed. Apart from the common footprint of clients, they also had to have agile innovations built for purpose and the ability to plug their technology into the existing landscape, bringing immediate value to customers.
When you get right down to it, SAP’s customer base is BigID’s customer base – so it made sense from that perspective to look at their business model and technology. BigID wants to give companies a more automated way to satisfy privacy requirements like personal data rights while ensuring data security and effective data governance.
SEELOZ USES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TO SAVE THE WORLD
The US and other developed countries currently waste up to 30% of all food and medicine produced. This translates into $100B annually, just in pharmaceutical waste in the US alone, and that’s a scary number. And this waste comes typically in four forms:
The question is, why so much waste? We’re supposed to be at the forefront of technology maturity, but current food and healthcare supply chains fail to accurately forecast our demand. What makes things worse is the problem is occurring across all food and healthcare value chains. Manufacturers are battling to pace their production in a way that fits market demand. Distributors struggle to time and size procurement and can’t accurately stock warehouses to fulfill demand. And providers, including hospitals, supermarket and pharmacy chains are hardly able to determine demand from customers.
If we dig deep to get to the root cause of the problem, we can see the disconnect between ERPs and other systems that manage consumer data. In healthcare for example, hospitals implement two families of software systems: ERPs (and other operational systems of the same nature) and Electronic Medical Records. The problem is these systems don’t talk to each other, making operational decisions—particularly those related to procurement and inventory management—without a solid understanding of patient needs. Surprisingly, the same disconnect exists between Point of Sales and ERPs for retailers, distributors, and even manufacturers.
It’s an almost impossible problem to solve, but Seeloz absolutely believes Artificial Intelligence (AI) is going to save the world by solving problems that are beyond human capacity.
Let’s run the numbers. The supply chain team at a typical healthcare system must regularly procure about 100,000 to 250,000 surgery, pharmaceutical, and consumable goods from hundreds of different suppliers. Once they receive their orders, the team must then decide how to store each item between the main hospital warehouse and the numerous points of use across the hospital (ER, labs, clinics, etc). The complexity becomes exponential for healthcare systems with multiple facilities. In the world of inventory management systems, this translates into setting around 1-2M parameters per hospital location (PAR levels and recorder quantities) and this is exactly the type of problem in which AI-Driven Automation thrives.
While Seeloz spent a tremendous amount of time making their sure solutions were truly embeddable in supply chain workflows, they also needed a strong partner to:
Seeloz claims they couldn’t find a better partner than SAP. They now run their solutions on SAP Cloud Platform and seamlessly embed SAP HANA to help customers minimize waste in food and medicine. Together with SAP, Seeloz and AI will minimize waste and save the world.
SAP HANA PROVIDES THE FOUNDATION
As each of these partners demonstrate, being successful in the digital era requires a completely new way of thinking. And just as our partners are disrupting the standardized thinking and traditional practices within their industries, SAP’s introduction of SAP HANA turned the database world on its head, setting the groundwork for the introduction of SAP S/4 HANA, SAP Cloud Platform, and now HANA Data Management Suite.
The Intelligent Enterprise is a vision that has its roots in the introduction of SAP HANA. This in-memory database provided the foundation for the inspiring innovation that came afterward. As SAP—together with our partners—works to realize the vision of the Intelligent Enterprise, the legacy of HANA guides our progress and secures our future.
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source https://blogs.saphana.com/2018/06/18/setting-the-stage-for-the-intelligent-enterprise/
