CloudComputing: March 2015

INFOR releasing supply chain to the cloud.

Infor is targeting suppliers and warehouse operators with the release of Supply Chain Execution (SCE) to the cloud.

Working in partnership with Amazon Web Services, the product will allow customers to manage their warehouses, workers, third party logistics billing and transport in a cloud program, having previously been available as an on-premise solution.

John Bermudez, VP of product management at Infor, said: "The landscape of the modern supply chain is more complex than ever before, and our customers are facing growing challenges to remain competitive through the use of emerging technologies.

"Infor SCE has taken this next major step forward creating a reliable cloud solution that is both an affordable and flexible tool for creating efficiency within the supply chain."

In addition to the above features SCE will also grant users access to Infor's collaboration tool Ming.le, and the company's Intelligent Open Network (ION), which helps integrate applications from different vendors.

The release also promises to be highly scalable, and is part of a continued drive from Infor to entice its customers onto the cloud, which it believes is the future of enterprise software.

Bermudez added: "This release of Infor SCE is driven by user feedback, to provide a best of breed solution that can fit the unique needs and price point of any of our customers."

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hacktivists and cybercriminals are on the watch

Recent events have taught us that everyone is vulnerable to data breaches. Now that the majority of businesses are running services in the cloud, whether sanctioned, rogue or Shadow IT, there is much work to be done in beefing up cloud security. And, with each major data breach that takes place in the cloud, trust in the cloud is further eroded.

Cloud Is an Attractive Target for Data Breaches

The increasing pervasiveness of the cloud makes it an attractive target for hackers and cybercriminals. Cloud is not only for business and leisure applications; it's also the back end for electricity grids, water treatment plants, healthcare applications, smart cars, smart refrigerators and so much more. With each device or source that connects to the cloud it creates additional pathways or access points for unauthorized users to infiltrate. The increasing volume of data that is either stored or transacted in the cloud is a strong lure for hacktivists and cybercriminals.

Promoting Women to lead us to the Cloud

Women in leadership

As the cloud improves an organization's technical agility, teams must respond with equal business agility to accomplish organizational and customer goals. Let's take a look at some of the strengths that women bring to this time of transformative change and explore how we might continue to leverage these strengths to fuel innovation and breakthrough in our corporations.

Researchers contend that women leaders seek leadership styles that allow them to be supportive of others. Cooperation and collaboration is important to women. A conclusion might be drawn that women find it more important to create community in an organization. According to the "Toxic Versus Cooperative Behaviors at Work" study published by the International Journal of Leadership Studies (IJLS), organizations that are able to create collegial cultures where employees are part of a cohesive community are more resilient to external threats. These same companies are more agile and able to respond quickly to market threats and opportunities. The creation of this type of culture requires an egalitarian. Although not exclusively the domain of women, this leadership style may come more naturally to women.

Deep Learning Technology Integration With IBM WATSON

New York City, N.Y. - 04 Mar 2015: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has acquiredAlchemyAPI, a leading provider of scalable cognitive computing application program interface (API) services and deep learning technology. The acquisition will accelerate IBM’s development of next generation cognitive computing applications.

The acquisition also significantly expands the Watson ecosystem, welcoming 40,000 developers that have innovated on the AlchemyAPI platform to the IBM Watson developer community. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

IBM will integrate AlchemyAPI’s deep learning technology into the core Watson platform, augmenting Watson's ability to quickly identify hierarchies and understand relationships within large volume data sets. The technology is expected to enhance Watson's ability to ingest, train and learn the “long-tail” of various data domains – including general business and target industries, as well as address the need to manage constantly evolving ontologies.

In addition, the acquisition will greatly expand the number and types of scalable cognitive computing APIs available to IBM clients, developers, partners and other members of the Watson ecosystem. This includes language analysis APIs to address new types of text and visual recognition, and the ability to automatically detect, label and extract important details from image data.

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Denver, AlchemyAPI’s deep learning platform enables clients, partners, developers and other third-parties to build cognitive-infused applications with advanced data analysis capabilities such as taxonomy categorization, entity and keyword extraction, sentiment analysis and web page cleaning. The company’s software platform processes billions of API calls per month across 36 countries and in eight different languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish.

"IBM continues to invest in Watson‘s core technology and cloud development platform, amplifying a robust Watson ecosystem where third party organizations are creating new businesses and solutions powered by Watson," said Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson. “Our ability to draw upon both internal and external sources of innovation, from IBM Research to acquisitions like AlchemyAPI, remain central to our strategy of bringing Watson to new markets, industries and regions.”

“Today is the start of a new journey for AlchemyAPI, our customers and our user community, as we join IBM, the leader in cognitive computing,” said Elliot Turner, founder and CEO, AlchemyAPI. “We founded AlchemyAPI with the mission of democratizing deep learning artificial intelligence for real-time analysis of unstructured data and giving the world’s developers access to these capabilities to innovate. As part of IBM’s Watson unit, we have an infinite opportunity to further that goal.”