technomical

Artificial Intelligence is in everyone’s agenda now. Investment in AI research by technology companies and institutions is growing exponentially. It is rapidly becoming a mainstream technology that is helping transform and empower us in many ways. Success is motivating researchers to explore new ways to tame artificial general intelligence. A recent study ( AI Index 2018 Annual Report ) by leading academicians from Stanford, Harvard and MIT suggests that research papers published on AI continue to outpace that of computer science and has shown 8 fold growth in the past decade. The same report states interest in rewards based reinforcement learning is overtaking data intensive deep learning neural networks in the recent years. The IEEE publication recently reported how a new application of AI based on reinforcement learning is helping amputees walk with robotic knee. This is one such example of many medical advancements, powered by AI. The story is same across the indust...

We are ready to say goodbye to 2018, the year we saw “the impact of Artificial Intelligent on humanity” debates taking place at every level. AI is already becoming a commodity and its potential positive (and negative) effect is not a hidden secret anymore. AI has seen widespread adoption by multiple industries. At the same time the rapid advancements, especially in image recognition and autonomous actions, surveillance, and concerns around bias in decision-making, triggered actions from governments, research institutes and regulatory institutions. Never before we have seen so many data privacy breaches, and testimonies by corporate CEOs. While there is enough press on negative effects of AI, there is no denying the fact that AI has transformed many early adopters, making it more urgent than ever for others to accelerate their digital transformations. Gartner says by 2020, AI will create more jobs than it eliminates. In the coming year we expect to see much more scrutiny and audits ...

Artificial Intelligence continue to shape our world and imagination. Industry analysts continue to project increasing adoption rate in multiple industries. Algorithms we invented have led to huge advances in several different industries. While it touched our imagination with self-driving cars, it entered our lives unannounced through suggestions on what to buy and what to watch. Now it is touching almost all walks of life – gaming, healthcare, fraud detection, court verdicts, insurance claim, hiring and so on. Machines are getting smarter and AI is increasingly integrated in to our daily lives. But the path to AI nirvana for enterprises is often a slippery slope. Those who got the basic building blocks established were successful in driving business outcomes leveraging AI. In part-1 of this series, I have discussed few use cases of AI. In this article let us explore basic requirements enterprises should possess to exploit the potential of AI and other digital technologies. ...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) stands out as a transformational technology. Introduction of AI can transform many business processes in companies for efficiency, productivity and customer service excellence. These use cases often will have wide-ranging implications for many stakeholders – management, employees and its customers. In this multipart series, I intend to explore application of AI in industry specific segments and its implications. Along with Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence has immense potential in transforming business operations throughout the supply chain and customer service. Applying Machine Learning (ML) to the machine generated data and combining the data from external sources like logistical providers, distribution channel and ERP systems, companies can accelerate automation, thereby productivity, efficiency and predictability of operations. Likewise, with Natural Language Processing (NLP) capability, companies can drive better customer experienc...

In the world of AI, data is like oxygen.  If you do not possess and harness data, you will be left out in the wild. I have been advocating edge computing as an essential component of digital transformation journey in all my previous articles .  It is gaining prominence daily.  Cloud behemoths Microsoft, Amazon, Google and their lesser known competitors have increased their attention to grab the market share in this new frontier.  Microsoft through Azure IoT Edge seeking a larger foothold in Industrial IoT segment, and AWS with its Greengrass.  Intelligent edge (computing) was a critical component in most of the testbeds showcased in the just concluded Hannover Messie 2018 (Industrie 4.0) conference as well.  Nearly every industrial company on earth were exhibiting in this year’s conference promoting, digitization, analytics, digital twins, industrial software , and applications , promising to fundamentally transform manufacturing forever. From t...

EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforcement date (May 25, 2018) is fast approaching. It was designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe. In this connected world, its impact is not limited to EU only. It has the potential to reshape global organizations’ data privacy policies and approach. Data is often touted as “the new oil” and entire new economy is built on data sharing. New use cases are mostly around how to extract meaningful insights from the data collected, and often there is not much diligence on what to collect. The approach mostly is to get as much data as possible, and then analyze and discard the unwanted. There are no guarantees that discarded data is not in vulnerable hands for possible exploitation. Now comes GDPR, starting to put breaks on this whole model. With huge penalties for non-compliance, companies are making changes to data collection and storage methods, rewriting contracts and applications. In the Internet of Things (IoT) ...

In this age of digital, every company is becoming a technology company. It is disrupting the role of CIO. CIO faces many challenges while companies trying to reinvent to stay relevant. Let us discuss some of those challenges faced by a typical CIO and some suggestions later in this article to turn the tide for a win-win. Expectation mismatch - there is a ground reality that is completely in the opposite direction of what the company wants to achieve. Business is under tremendous pressure to meet the market demand. Customers are looking for value and quick solutions. And, there is an information overload around us projecting all the positives of digital transformation, without much detail on how the success was achieved. Most of the organizations learns the hard way that there is no one-size-fits-for-all approach exists. It may work differently in startups than in traditional companies. The pressure is now on CIO, with a question “they have done it, why not we?” Aging IT in...

At the just concluded mobile world congress , 5G corned prime space, and speed was everywhere. Even there was Formula 1 use case and key-note by the speed machine Fernando Alonso. 5G promises speed for IoT! Good news is, 5G is closer to becoming a reality. Carriers have announced the deployment plans and there were several use cases already in pilot mode. What is 5G? Why is it being perceived as next generation connectivity solution for digital transformation? 5G is the upcoming fifth-generation wireless broadband technology based on the IEEE802.11ac standard. According to the Groupe Speciale Mobile Association ( GSMA ) to qualify for a 5G, a connection should meet most of these eight criteria: One to 10Gbps connections to end points in the field One millisecond end-to-end round trip delay  1000x bandwidth per unit area 10 to 100x number of connected devices  (Perception of) 99.999 percent availability  (Perception of) 100 percent coverage ...

I am back again with the hot topic – Security in the Internet of Things. It is the #1 concern to organizations who have already adopted IoT and who are waiting in the wings for large scale adoption. Almost every organization is using IoT, in one way or other knowingly or unknowingly. It is much more alarming, if companies do not even know IoT exists already in their organization. That means those devices and applications are not yet under the organization risk management framework, security policy, enforcement, etc. Standards and regulations are another set of concerns (excuses!) for not being able to secure the IoT footprint. The good news is a lot happened in the past week. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) has published the draft on International Cybersecurity Standardization for the Internet of Things (IoT) – NISTIR 8200 . Siemens has formed a consortium of industrial giants (Airbus, Allianz, Daimler Group, IBM, MSC, NXP, SGS, and Deutsche Telekom)...

We are now more than a month into 2018, Internet of Things is continue to be the hot topic . It has sustained the momentum past years and we are seeing the true value of IoT now. The perceived potential and the hype created over the years generated attention, investment and development of innovative solutions. The learnings from early adopters’ turned into business value for the then fence sitters. The integration and convergence for complementary technologies like AI, Machine Learning and Blockchain are creating an ecosystem of great value. Now it is time to recall the famous quote - Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects... the quality of the connections is the key to quality per se. -  Charles Eames   Traditional product manufacturing companies will have multiple business units with several business processes working together to deliver the end-product to the customer. With limited integration between the processes and business units, the fe...

Like many others, I was always fascinated by the technology and very optimistic about its effects on humanity. Technology until digital revolution, was very personal. The impacts were felt only by the closed circle, to a person or company benefiting from the product. Digital transformation changed the whole perspective on how you view technology. It is impacting end-to-end ecosystem. It is directly impacting human lives. We still need to address ethical issues on usage of data, biased data, privacy, security etc., and there is concerted effort on that front globally. But the effect of digital is largely positive for the human kind. That’s what enthused me to do research more, unearth use cases, and apply cross functionally. I wanted to share some of the amazing use cases that is transforming healthcare. Digital technologies, AI, Machine Learning along with wearable, drones, mobile apps etc. are transforming emergency care. An AI that listens in on 911 calls in Denmark will diagnose ...