McDonald’s teams up with Google Cloud for AI and edge use cases

McDonald’s and Google have announced a multi-year global partnership to utilise Google Cloud technology in its restaurants – with a particular focus on generative AI and edge use cases.

The agreement will see updates to various aspects of the McDonald’s restaurant and customer platforms, from the company’s mobile app to self-service kiosks. Edge computing capabilities will be used to gain new insights into how equipment is performing, while on the generative AI side, a...

7 December 2023 | Cloud Computing

AWS re:Invent roundup: Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty...

30 November 2023 | AWS

ManageEngine launches cloud-based remote monitoring and management solution 

ManageEngine, the enterprise IT management division of Zoho Corporation, has launched Endpoint Central MSP Cloud, which it says brings the advantages of the cloud’s scalability, flexibility, and efficiency to the remote monitoring and management (RMM) of endpoints for managed service providers (MSPs).

The launch also completes the first stage of the company’s vision for a unified platform for MSPs. 

MSPs need a holistic solution for remotely monitoring and...

27 November 2023 | Banking & Finance

Nearly a quarter of businesses are losing more than £100,000 a year to IT skills shortage

Nearly a quarter of IT decision-makers (22%) estimate IT skills shortages are costing their business more than £100,000 a year in recruitment fees, temporary staffing, increased salaries and investment in lower-level employees to bring them up to speed over time.

As the skills shortage worsens, over three-quarters of respondents polled (77%) say their organisation’s IT recruitment costs have increased over the past three years, and nearly half (45%) say costs have risen by more...

16 November 2023 | Banking & Finance

HCLSoftware collaborates with AWS to provide SaaS products on AWS

HCLSoftware, a provider of enterprise software solutions, has signed a Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS that will allow customers to consume the HCLSoftware portfolio as cloud native SaaS in AWS Marketplace simplifying their procurement and deployment process. 

With Cloud-native architectures leveraging Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, HCLSoftware portfolio can seamlessly integrate into customers' existing cloud environments, ensuring compatibility, scalability, and...

9 November 2023 | Applications

Hackathon bridges data gaps on climate change and migration

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has hosted the first hackathon on 'Bridging Climate Change and Human Mobility', in collaboration with the data cloud company Snowflake, to provide insights on the intersection of environmental factors with migration management and policymaking in the East and Horn of Africa (EHoA).

The two-part hackathon brought together participants in London (October 6-7) and Nairobi (October 23-26) to explore data-driven solutions and improve...

7 November 2023 | Companies

Policy as code a strategic imperative – but scalability remains difficult

Policy as code is becoming ‘integral to the fabric of cloud development’, according to Styra – yet a new survey from the company has shown that alignment, visibility, and consistency remain issues.

The study from the cloud-native authorisation software provider, which surveyed 285 developers and technical decision makers, found that the overwhelming majority (94%) saw policy as code as ‘vital’ for preventative security and compliance at scale. 83% of organisations...

2 November 2023 | Cloud Computing

40%+ of firms lose revenue from technology downtime and cloud complexity

55% of enterprises are struggling to derive meaningful insights from their data, highlighting an industry-wide need to deliver technology faster, more reliably and in more places, according to a survey by Hitachi Vantara, the modern infrastructure, data management and digital solutions subsidiary of Hitachi.

The survey revealed ongoing challenges related to security, inflexible systems, isolated data, a skilled labor shortage, and the need for infrastructure agility. These...

24 October 2023 | Banking & Finance

UK startups wasting over two weeks per year – costing the UK an estimated £37bn in GDP

UK startups and microbusinesses are wasting over two working weeks every year on admin tasks, including managing mobile phone contracts, choosing energy providers, and buying insurance – according to new research. 

The study, conducted by Beasy, which surveyed 500 business owners employing between 1-9 people, found that startup founders are spending an average of 5.5 hours per week choosing and managing the business services they need to run their company – equating to a...

23 October 2023 | Banking & Finance

Avanade launches cloud insights platform that identifies risks and unlocks cloud spend

Microsoft solution provider Avanade has launched a platform to help businesses establish an AI-ready digital core and unlock funding to reinvest in innovation.

'Avanade Cloud Impact' is a data platform that uses the latest in AI and machine learning to integrate and analyse industry, business and technical data sources and generate rich, tailored modernisation for companies in their cloud journey. The platform is already saving Avanade clients up to 50% of their cloud spend and...

11 October 2023 | Banking & Finance