Visitors to SIGGRAPH Asia last week were the first to see and catch the demo of NVIDIA GRID VCA in Asia. Essentially, NVIDIA GRID VCA is a powerful GPU-based system that runs complex applications such as Autodesk […]
Category: Enterprise
hybris announces B2C Commerce Accelerator for China
hybris has announced the coming availability of hybris B2C Commerce Accelerator for China. As businesses move from a single channel, such as print catalogues, to multiple channels — including online, mobile, print and call centers, complexity increases.
Founded on hybris Commerce Accelerator, hybris B2C Commerce Accelerator for China has been specially configured and equipped with functionalities specifically to address Chinese e-commerce needs.
Adapted expressly for the Chinese market, it comes with pre-configured page templates that are designed to suit the highly characteristic ‘click’ culture and specific shopping atmosphere enjoyed by Chinese consumers, providing big product images, larger merchandising bars and a very visual user experience.
Power limiting progress in mobile devices
Power is a big limitation in mobile devices despite improvements in battery power, according to Neil Trevett, Vice President Mobile Content of NVIDIA.
“Power is the new performance limiter. Developers need to use acceleration to preserve battery life and high performance,” he said at NVIDIA Tech Talk at SIGGRAPH Asia in Hong Kong.
On the other hand, advanced mobile GPUs and new sensors are combining to make vision processing the next wave of mobile visual processing. NVIDIA is building a stack of advanced silicon, APIs and libraries to enable advanced mobile vision applications.
SIGGRAPH Asia 2013 starts tomorrow
Exhibitors were working hard to get ready for SIGGRAPH Asia, which starts tomorrow at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Among them are HP and NVIDIA which have lined up two full-days of Tech […]
IBM and NVIDIA to supercharge data centre applications
IBM and NVIDIA plan to collaborate on GPU-accelerated versions of IBM’s wide portfolio of enterprise software applications — taking GPU accelerator technology for the first time into the heart of enterprise-scale data centres.
The collaboration aims to enable IBM customers to more rapidly process, secure and analyse massive volumes of streaming data.
“Harnessing GPU technology to IBM’s enterprise software platforms will bring advanced, in-memory processing to a wider variety of new application areas,” said Sean Poulley, Vice President of Databases and Data Warehousing at IBM. “We are looking at a new generation of higher-performance solutions to help data center customers overcome their most challenging computing problems.”
New NVIDIA Tesla K40 speeds up supercomputing and big data analytics
The NVIDIA Tesla K40 GPU accelerator is arguably the world’s highest performance accelerator ever built. It is capable of delivering extreme performance to a wide range of scientific, engineering, high performance computing (HPC), and enterprise applications.
Providing double the memory and up to 40 percent higher performance than its predecessor, the Tesla K20X GPU accelerator, and 10 times higher performance than the fastest CPU, the Tesla K40 GPU is the world’s first and highest-performance accelerator optimised for big data analytics and large-scale scientific workloads.
Featuring intelligent NVIDIA GPU Boost technology, which converts power headroom into a user-controlled performance boost, the Tesla K40 GPU accelerator enables users to unlock the untapped performance of a broad range of applications.
Alibaba breezes through China Singles’ Day online traffic with ZTE technology
Alibaba Group handled a record-breaking surge in online shopping traffic on China Singles’ Day on November 11 , the busiest day of the year for Internet retailers in China.
China’s largest e-commerce company broke its one-day sales record by more than 80 percent. ZTE’s ZXONE 8700 optical transport network system carried 90 percent of Alibaba’s operating data traffic that day, as online shopping orders pushed Alibaba’s peak data traffic to almost 300 Gbits per second, sustained for a period of seven hours.
For the 24-hour duration of China Singles’ Day, ZTE’s OTN systems deployed by Alibaba delivered excellent network performance and fault-free reliability, with no malfunction warning reported.
Your smartphone will be smarter than you by 2017
In four years’ time, your smartphone may be smarter than you. It will be able to predict your next move, next purchase or interpret actions based on what it knows, according to Gartner. This insight will be performed based on an individual’s data gathered using cognizant computing — the next step in personal cloud computing.
“Mobile phones have turned into smartphones thanks to two things: technology and apps,” Carolina Milanesi, Research Vice President of Gartner. “Technology has added features such as cameras, locations and sensors, while apps have connected those to an array of functions that, for the most part, add and improve our day to day life from a social, knowledge, entertainment and productivity point of view.”
What smartphones can do through apps has improved and broadened thanks to the personal cloud. “We assume that apps will acquire knowledge over time and get better with improved predictions of what users need and want, with data collection and response happening in real-time,” she added.
Customer experience management is top IT priority for telcos in 2014
Customer experience management (CEM) has emerged as the top driver of telco IT investments in 2014, according to Ovum’s ICT Enterprise Insights. Telco IT spend is expected to reach US$60.7b by 2017, with investments geared towards telecoms infrastructure (cloud platforms, server virtualisation and BSS/OSS systems to support LTE implementations) and online channels to support customers’ increasingly digital lifestyles.
In the largest survey of senior IT executives ever conducted, Ovum reveals a long-term shift in spending towards customer-oriented systems and on improving customer satisfaction within the telecoms industry.
Survey respondents identified multi-channel integration and service personalisation as top areas of focus in the next 18 months, with 67 percent and 61 percent planning to increase spending in these two areas, respectively. Elsewhere, business intelligence and advanced analytics (predictive or big data analytics) will be key for operators — more than 80 percent of respondents will deploy these at the network level in an attempt to offer an enhanced connected experience with predictable, consistent, and relevant services at each point of interaction in the customer lifecycle.
Tata Sky delivers multi-screen experience with Cisco solution
Tata Sky, one of India’s leading direct-to-home service provider, has become the first in Asia to deploy Cisco’s Videoscape Video Everywhere solution, to enable multi-screen experiences beyond the set-top box. Rolled out first on iOS and […]
Cloud Computing to account for most of IT budget by 2016
Cloud computing adoption is growing and will form the bulk of new IT spend in 2016. According to Gartner, 2016 will be a defining year for cloud as private cloud begins to give way to hybrid cloud, and nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017.
Gartner describes cloud computing as a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered “as a service” using Internet technologies. It heralds an evolution of business in positive and negative ways. It has also become a hot industry term that has been used in many contradictory ways.
“Overall, there are very real trends toward cloud platforms, and also toward massively scalable processing. Virtualisation, service orientation and the Internet have converged to sponsor a phenomenon that enables individuals and businesses to choose how they’ll acquire or deliver IT services, with reduced emphasis on the constraints of traditional software and hardware licensing models,” said Chris Howard, Research Vice President of Gartner. “Services delivered through the cloud will foster an economy based on delivery and consumption of everything from storage to computation to video to finance deduction management.”
RTT acquires Bunkspeed
Professional high-end 3D visualisation solution provider RTT has acquired Bunkspeed, which develops visualisation software and services for design, engineering, and marketing.
Traditionally, RTT has provided enterprise solutions and services for OEMs that employ digital product pipelines. Los Angeles-based Bunkspeed represents a well-established company with a focus on design visualisation tools and is recognised for its affordable range of powerful, easy-to-use software products. The acquisition extends RTT’s services to agencies and designers by offering this lightweight yet robust design tool.
“The addition of Bunkspeed’s specialty services and footprint will allow RTT to provide a broader range of capabilities to our customers,” said Peter Stevenson, CEO of RTT USA.
Cisco and NetApp expand FlexPod portfolio
Cisco and NetApp have broadened the FlexPod portfolio with new validated designs across the entire portfolio, highlighted by the introduction of FlexPod Select for dedicated data-intensive workloads.
The FlexPod portfolio now includes FlexPod Datacenter (formerly FlexPod) for core enterprise data centres and service providers, FlexPod Express (formerly ExpressPod) for medium-sized businesses and FlexPod supports the growing need to tie storage, networks, applications, and analytics (such as big data) into a more automated, responsive system that increases efficiency and lowers operational expense.
The new offerings build on the joint vision and strategy of Cisco and NetApp to unify branch offices, core data centers, service providers, and dedicated application infrastructures.branch offices, and FlexPod Select for data intensive workloads. FlexPod Select is the first family in the FlexPod portfolio to address targeted workloads, such as high-performance applications.
NVIDIA GRID brings visual computing capabilities to Australia
Businesses across Australia can now deploy graphics-accelerated virtual desktops to their employees – cost-effectively, anywhere and on any device – with the adoption of NVIDIA GRID technology by leading technology partners.
Servers from Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM and others are now incorporating NVIDIA GRID into their desktop virtualisation solutions. Combined with enterprise virtualisation software from Citrix, Microsoft or VMware, these solutions can deliver GPU-accelerated applications and desktops to engineers, designers, architects, product design teams and special-effects artists throughout Australia.
Melbourne-based Xenon Systems was appointed as the first NVIDIA GRID Demo Centre for Australia and New Zealand earlier this year.
ANZ WLAN market boosted by increase in devices
The wireless local area network (WLAN) hardware market in ANZ continued to grow for the third consecutive quarter, according to IDC.
While enterprises remained the largest users of wireless infrastructure, the consumer space gained share from enterprise over the year. This means that more consumer wireless routers were sold, thanks to an increased number of devices in households during the period.
Service Provider (SP) WLAN deployments differed between Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand SPs embraced 3G/LTE offload via WLAN infrastructure while Australia SPs preferred to rely on available spectrum to support mobile connectivity. Overall, SP contribution to the WLAN market remained minuscule in the region despite having the strongest growth. Table 1 shows growth for the three main segments quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) and year-on-year (YoY):
Huawei launches evaluation platform for mobile app developers
Huawei has announced MBB Insider Online, a cloud-based mobile platform for evaluating mobile broadband (MBB) app network friendliness.
Developed by mLAB, Huawei’s wireless network innovation lab, MBB Insider Online allows app developers and other third-party MBB ecosystem companies to take unique advantage of evaluation tools that accurately determine the impact their services will have in terms of consumption of traffic, signaling, device power and delivered user experience when installed on a smart device connected to a live mobile network.
These developers can then better fully utilise network resources to considerably enhance their delivered service experience. MBB Insider Online also provides app optimisation recommendations to improve delivered user experience and optimise utilisation of network resources.
India Green IT and sustainability spending to hit US$29.2b
India’s spending on green IT and sustainability initiatives will reach US$29.2 billion in 2013 a 17.6 percent increase from US$24.8 billion in 2012, according to Gartner.
In the “Hype Cycle for Green IT and Sustainability in India, 2013,” report, analysts said while businesses and investors in India are slowly waking up to green and sustainability issues, policymakers in the government are clearly pushing for changes that will likely set the tone for green and sustainable, low-carbon economic growth in the country in the coming years.
“Many Indian organisations still lack the strategic focus that comes with a clear understanding of the core issues and key technologies that bring about real change in the vision for sustainability and green IT in an organisation,” said Ganesh Ramamoorthy, Research Director of Gartner. “Therefore, policy initiatives and regulatory measures from the Indian government will be the key drivers for implementation of some of the technologies (such as advanced metering infrastructure, carbon capture and sequestration, intelligent transportation system, and solar energy technology) necessary to usher in low-carbon sustainable growth.”
GPU computing is more than just about gaming
Visual computing is no longer just about gaming but has now permeated everyday lives, Dr Simon See, Director and Chief Solution Architect of NVIDIA, told a gathering of 450 start-ups, investors and R&D providers in digital media.
He pointed out that GPUs now help power the 3D web, location-based visualisation applications, creative content creation, computer vision, user interfaces, image recognition, HD video processing, and virtual worlds.
In his talk, Simon also discussed the vibrant ecosystem of developers that have adopted the CUDA GPU computing platform, how early stage companies can leverage the GPU for visual and other computing applications, and what global programmes NVIDIA offers to nurture and inspire innovation and business opportunities throughout these ecosystems.
Gartner: Top 10 strategic technology trends for 2014
3D printing, personal cloud, the Internet of Everything — these buzzwords today are expected to be among the top 10 strategic technology trends next year, according to Gartner.
Gartner defines a strategic technology as one with the potential for significant impact on the enterprise in the next three years. Factors that denote significant impact include a high potential for disruption to IT or the business, the need for a major dollar investment, or the risk of being late to adopt.
A strategic technology may be an existing technology that has matured and/or become suitable for a wider range of uses. It may also be an emerging technology that offers an opportunity for strategic business advantage for early adopters or with potential for significant market disruption in the next five years. These technologies impact the organisation’s long-term plans, programs and initiatives.
hybris named as a B2B commerce leader by Forrester
hybris has been named alongside IBM, Oracle Commerce and Intershop as leading B2B commerce vendors in Forrester Research’s latest Wave report. Entitled “The Forrester Wave: B2B Commerce Suites, Q4 2013”, the report examined seven vendors based […]
Beginning of the Digital Industrial Economy
Worldwide IT spending is forecast to reach US$3.8 trillion in 2014, a 3.6 percent increase from 2013, but it’s the opportunities of a digital world that have IT leaders excited, according to Gartner.
The beginning of the Digital Industrial Economy will make every budget an IT budget; every company a technology company; every business a digital leader, and every person a technology company.
“The Digital Industrial Economy will be built on the foundations of the Nexus of Forces (which includes a confluence and integration of cloud, social collaboration, mobile and information) and the Internet of Everything by combining the physical world and the virtual,” said Peter Sondergaard, Senior Vice President of Gartner and Global Head of Research.
Wearables the new way to track and engage customers
Google Glass and Samsung Gear are two of the most talked about developments in wearable devices. And many more are set to follow in their footsteps.
Canalys believes that consumerisation of IT is paving the way for even bigger transitions that will rock the IT industry. Smaller app-enabled devices (‘appcessories’) enable customers and employees to do more on the move. Adoption of wearables, such as wristbands, eyewear and sensors in clothing, will lead to a new era in which location, movement, fitness, health and potentially visual focus and interest points are tracked. The data generated by these devices creates possibilities for brands to understand, segment, target and service customers. Through functional apps, buyers and sellers are also finding new ways to interact.
‘Apps have emerged as the accelerator of current industry transitions. In place of large code bases and years of development, we now have the possibility of turning out multi-platform apps in weeks, or even days,’ said Tim Shepherd, Senior Analyst of Canalys. ‘By focusing on user experience, app developers have revolutionized how new functionality is brought to market and how behavior and activity are measured. Enterprise customers have started to exploit this capability across several disciplines, including product design, marketing, customer services and operations, and buying points are changing as a result.’
Global 3D printer shipment to grow 49%
3D printing is gaining traction with Gartner expecting worldwide shipments of 3D printers (3DPs) priced less than US$100,000 expected to grow 49 percent this year to reach a total of 56,507 units.
Rapid quality and performance innovations across all 3DP technologies will drive enterprise and consumer demand. Gartner said that shipments will increase further in 2014, growing 75 percent to 98,065 units, followed by a near doubling of unit shipments in 2015.
“The 3D printer market has reached its inflection point. While still a nascent market, with hype outpacing the technical realities, the speed of development and rise in buyer interest are pressing hardware, software and service providers to offer easier-to-use tools and materials that produce consistently high-quality results,” said Pete Basiliere, Research Director of Gartner.
Half of large enterprises to have hybrid cloud by 2017
Nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017, according to Gartner. In the past three years, private cloud computing has moved from an aspiration to a tentative reality for nearly half of large enterprises. Hybrid cloud computing is at the same place today that private cloud was three years ago. Actual deployments are low but aspirations are high.
When it comes to drivers of private cloud computing, while cost is always an important consideration, a business case for private cloud cannot rely on lower costs as the primary justification.
“Virtualisation reduces capital expenses, and standards and automation reduce operational expenses,” said Thomas Bittman, Vice President and Distinguished Analyst of Gartner. “However, taking the next step of adding usage metrics, self-service offerings and automated provisioning requires investment in technologies without a significant reduction in operational cost. With this in mind, the driving factor for going that next step should primarily be agility.”
Huawei lab head first Chinese to receive AAAI fellowship
Dr Qiang Yang, Head of Huawei’s Noah’s Ark Lab, has been elected a fellow of AAAI (the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence).
AAAI Fellow is the highest honour in the artificial intelligence (AI) community, recognising a small group of AAAI members who have made significant and sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence. This year, AAAI elected eight fellows from across the world.
Yang is the 1st AAAI Fellow in Greater China and first among Chinese Scientists worldwide. He was elected “for significant contributions to AI planning, data mining and case-based reasoning” in AI. Yang is already a fellow of the institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, International Association for Pattern Recognition, and The American Association for the Advancement of Science.
ZTE launches world’s largest capacity data centre switches
ZTE has released the BigMatrix 9900 series, the world’s largest-capacity data centre switches designed for large cloud computing and big data scenarios.
The new switches will helpscustomers achieve higher-density deployment in data centres. Each single slot can support up to 144 10G ports, 36 40G ports, or 12 100G ports. The Big Matrix 9900 series comprises four models, 9916, 9912, 9908, and 9904, with each unit supporting maximum switching capacity of 84.48T. Big Matrix 9900 meets the oriented service architecture (OSA) standards.
For big data systems, BigMatrix 9900 provides customers the capability to extract non-structurised and non-relevant data from existing databases. BigMatrix 9900 also adopts modular system design, and can be used to build a super-resilient non-blocking bi-directional forwarding platform with the switching capacity of 1.4P (1,440T) in Fat-Tree mode.
Promotions help drive ANZ inkjet market
The ANZ inkjet printer market expanded in Q2, thanks largely to heavy price and bundling promotions particularly within the entry level segment, according to IDC. This augmentation was further supported by the growth of high-end machines that served as a replacement for colour laser printers.
Unit shipments increased 2 percent to about 443,000 although they dropped by 3 percent on a year-on-year basis
“The second quarter of 2013 saw aggressive promotions on various levels including price, bundling, cash back, catalogue promotions as well as TV commercials. Continued traction within the photographic printer segment and augmentation of A4 inkjet printers that could print A3 added to the positive development. However, with the close of financial year in March for certain vendors, this expansion was offset due to the limited in-take of new stock on the back of already existing stock in their channel,” said Arunachalam Muthiah , Market Analyst of Peripherals Research of IDC New Zealand.
kalahari.com accelerates market expansion with hybris
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alahari.com has selected hybris Commerce Suite to power its retail vision forward, strengthen its position as an innovative market leader, and fast-track market growth selling both digital and physical goods via its online stores and marketplaces.
As Africa’s leading online retailer of electronics, toys, appliances, games and books, kalahari.com will leverage hybris Commerce Suite to respond to growth opportunities and further extend its market share in the fast growing Southern African commerce market.
Providing a true omni-channel experience, the scalability of the hybris Commerce platform will enable kalahari.com to support its rapidly expanding online operations, which include consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) retail, and deliver a feature-rich experience to a growing number of mobile shoppers. This will include selling digital goods such as eBooks, via kalahari.com’s own e-reader device the Gobii, and a large expansion of its online catalogue of digital and physical goods.
1 in 4 homes watching TV with Cisco
Cisco has an innovative approach to pay TV that has enabled it to gain and maintain its industry leading position. With more than 300,000,000 homes around the world watching TV with Cisco, nearly a quarter of all global TV homes are now enjoying improved viewing experiences.
While 80 percent of the world’s homes have access to TV, fewer than half of them are benefiting from digital and the additional functionality that it can enable. At the other end of the spectrum, the amount of video traversing IP networks is set to reach a record 88 exabytes a month by 2017, with 914,100 minutes of video streamed or downloaded every second – all with less than 50 percent of the world’s population connected to the Internet.
Building on over 20 years of experience driving new services and profitable growth for pay-TV operators and the media and entertainment industry, Cisco can help the industry capture the huge opportunities being generated as every network attached device becomes video capable and consumers seek ubiquitous video access.
Philippines CRM outsourcing market still attractive
The Philippines continues to be one of the most attractive destinations for outsourcing, fuelled largely by competitive price points and significant pools of labour with English language skills, according to Ovum.
New research focused on CRM suppliers in the Philippines found potential within the industry as a non-voice and non-English-speaking delivery center. Furthermore, as the country’s economy continues to expand, outsourcers will see greater opportunities to serve the increasingly sophisticated domestic market.
“Following our visit to the country and our on-the-ground research, it is clear to us that the Philippines will remain one of the powerhouses among offshore front-office outsourcing destinations,” said Margaret Goldberg, Associate Analyst, IT Services at Ovum and co-author of the report. “The combination of a significant cultural disposition towards customer service and affinity to Western cultures, strong English language capabilities and competitive price points will ensure that the outsourcing industry in the country will continue to see strong growth for years to come.”
Hong Kong to stay as key Asia Pacific data centre market
Limited land availability and high real estate prices are unlikely to make Hong Kong lose its status as a key data centre market in Asia Pacific, according to Frost & Sullivan.
The limitations are countered by the Hong Kong Government’s continuous support for the sector.
“Hong Kong’s strong political connection to Mainland China allows it to act as a gateway for global companies that seek to tap into opportunities in China’s market,” said Danni Xu, Research Analyst, ICT Practice, Asia Pacific at Frost & Sullivan. “Moreover, Hong Kong’s business-friendly and free-trade environment has drawn a number of multinational corporations (MNCs) to set up their regional headquarters in the country. This has brought in numerous investments and job opportunities, and created demand for data center services.”
Tommy Bahama partners hybris to seize market opportunities
Tommy Bahama, which has an outlet in Wisma Atria, Singapore, has selected hybris Commerce Suite to improve its omni-channel commerce capabilities and create a more agile response to expanding market opportunities.
A leading retailer of island-inspired apparel and home furnishings, the brand has achieved rapid growth in online commerce over the past few years. In addition to the web, Tommy Bahama offers in-store kiosks, a commerce channel that enables an “endless aisle” of products available through the e-commerce warehouse, allowing shoppers to access out-of-stock or online exclusive items directly in-store.
To ensure the brand’s continued global expansion and establish a foundation for market and channel growth, Tommy Bahama needed a robust commerce platform capable of integrating with its existing Adobe Experience Manager solution to deliver a world-class, end-to-end user experience across all channels. hybris not only complements the Adobe Experience Manager but enables it to further create and deliver a heavily optimised user experience.
SAP and hybris to tap “customer engagement” market
Customer engagement — that’s what SAP and hybris hope to deliver as a new category of enterprise software. It’s about providing customers with a consistent unified experience. Leveraging the omnicommerce expertise of hybris and the enterprise […]
SAP completes hybris acquisition
SAP is investing in the future of commerce and customer engagement with its acquisition of hybris. The two companies plan to combine the agile omni-channel commerce solutions of hybris with robust enterprise technology and industry leading in-memory, cloud and mobile innovations from SAP to help facilitate new levels of customer insight and engagement.
“SAP and hybris will deliver the next-generation customer experience for businesses and consumers in a world where digital and physical converge seamlessly,” said Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEOs, SAP AG. “With the addition of the hybris commerce platform, we intend to help enterprises achieve unprecedented intimacy with customers in real time and across all devices, delivery channels and touchpoints.”
The rules of engagement have changed and customers are in control. Modern businesses need systems that can predict and adapt in real time to customers wherever and however they engage. hybris expands SAP solutions that address customer engagement comprehensively across marketing, sales, service and commerce. As part of SAP, hybris is expected to take advantage of mobile, cloud and big data innovations from the company while continuing to drive forward the most modern, agile commerce platform in the market today.
NVIDIA acquires PGI
NVIDIA has made further inroads into high performance computing (HPC) with the acquisition of The Portland Group (PGI), a leading independent supplier of compilers and tools. Founded in 1989, PGI has a long history of innovation […]
Global printing dips but APeJ bucks trend
Worldwide page volume from digital hardcopy devices has dipped to 2.98 trillion in 2012 from 3.03 trillion in 2011, a decline of 1.5 percent year over year, according to IDC.
However, in spite of the decline, the world continues to print at a good clip. Developed countries continued their negative page growth trend, driven by digital workflows, adoption of managed print services (MPS) and anemic economies. The silver lining for print volume in developed economies appears to be net new incremental pages from mobile devices.
While it may seem counter intuitive, smartphone and tablet users are generating more print volume compared to non-tablet/smartphone users.
Twistcode leverages GPU power for big data
By Edward Lim, Managing Consultant, CIZA Concept
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ounded in 2006, Twistcode does research and development in high performance computing technology, especially massive-parallel computing and applications using central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs). It thrives in accelerating any repetitive algorithm and/or process in most environments.
With its focus on high performance computing, the young and dynamic company hopes to let its clients – enterprises and government organisations – concentrate on what’s important to them. It provides services such as rendering and modelling, and tweaks technologies and twist codes to adapt to customers’ needs.
Frustration over cell architecture
It was frustration over Sony’s cell architecture that prompted Twistcode to consider other options for its work.
NVIDIA unveils Quadro K6000 GPU
NVIDIA has unveiled the NVIDIA Quadro K6000 GPU and a new line of professional graphics GPUs for mobile workstations.
The Quadro K6000 GPU delivers five times higher compute performance and nearly double the graphics capability of its predecessor, the NVIDIA Quadro 6000 GPU, and features the world’s largest and fastest graphics memory.
Combining breakthrough performance and advanced capabilities in a power-efficient design, it enables leading organisations such as Pixar, Nissan, Apache Corporation, and the Weather Channel’s WSI division to tackle visualisation and analysis workloads of unprecedented size and scope.
Worldwide IT outsourcing market to grow to US$288b in 2013
The worldwide IT outsourcing (ITO) market is predicted to reach US$288 billion in 2013, a 2.8 percent increase from 2012, according to Gartner. Compared with Gartner’s previous forecast, nearly all ITO segments are now forecasted to grow more slowly this year.
Gartner’s forecast includes slight upward revisions for both custom application outsourcing and infrastructure utility services (IUS) for 2014 through 2017. Although software as a service (SaaS) impacts the ITO market, it is forecasted as part of the software market, rather than as part of the ITO market.
“We continue to see overall market growth being constrained by near-term market factors, such as evolving ITO delivery models, economic, political and labor conditions, and service provider financial performance,” said Bryan Britz, Research Vice President at Gartner. “Mature Asia/Pacific and Western Europe are the regions where the outlook is most tempered, partly due to currency but also reflective of our view that 2013 is likely to be similar to 2012 in these regions.”
NVIDIA launches world’s first GPU-accelerated platform for geospatial intelligence analysts
NVIDIA has launched the NVIDIA GeoInt Accelerator, the world’s first GPU-accelerated geospatial intelligence platform to enable security analysts to find actionable insights quicker and more accurately than ever before from vast quantities of raw data, images and video.
The platform provides defence and homeland security analysts with tools that enable faster processing of high-resolution satellite imagery, facial recognition in surveillance video, combat mission planning using geographic information system (GIS) data, and object recognition in video collected by drones.
It offers a complete solution consisting of an NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerated system, software applications for geospatial intelligence analysis, and advanced application development libraries.
Cyber security for critical infrastructure to reach US$46b
Cyber security spending for critical infrastructure will hit US$46 billion by the end of 2013, according to ABI Research. Increased spending over the next five years will be driven by a growing number of policies […]
ASOS leverages hybris for China e-commerce business
UK online fashion and beauty store ASOS has selected the hybris Commerce Suite to launch its new e-commerce business in China. Providing an omni-channel experience for those 420 million potential customers, the site will include a fully-integrated, feature-rich mobile version.
With six million active customers, ASOS stocks more than 60,000 branded and own-label products through each of its websites: UK, USA, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, and Russia. It ships to 241 countries and territories from its 1.1 million square foot global distribution centre in the UK.
According to a report from eMarketer released in February 2013, this year’s B2C e-commerce sales are expected to grow 18.3 percent to US$1.298 trillion worldwide as Asia-Pacific (APAC) surpasses North America to become the world’s No. 1 market for B2C e-commerce.
Australia big on cloud computing
Australian enterprises are taking to cloud computing. According to IDC’s 2013 Australia End-User Cloud Survey, 86 percent of Australian enterprises were currently using cloud computing, up from 71 percent in 2012.
IDC observed that line-of-business (LOB) managers in leading-edge enterprises had begun to add to CIO’s cloud spending by direct acquisition of cloud services as a delivery mechanism for new competitive offerings within their own industries and marketplaces. This was validated by the survey results where the business unit (69.6 percent) was ranked higher than the IT department (59.8 percent) by the respondents when it came to the responsibility for selection of the service providers in their most recent cloud computing projects.
“Until 2012, cloud was primarily an IT label for IT infrastructure services delivered as a service. Now, cloud is no longer just an IT infrastructure play. Cloud-based business services being acquired by LOB managers will now drive growth in the use of externally sourced services. Cloud in 2013 is now business as usual for CIOs, IT managers, and LOB managers. By 2015, cloud will be just another delivery model for a range of “as-a-service” offerings that are based on infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS),” said Raj Mudaliar, Senior Analyst, Cloud Services Research at IDC Australia.
Gartner adjusts worldwide IT spending projection downwards to 2% growth this year
Gartner has adjusted its worldwide IT spending forecast for 2013 downwards to US$3.7 trillion in 2013. Last quarter, the research firm predicted a 4,1 percent increase compared to 2012 but that projection has been sliced by half to 2 percent. This reduction takes into account the impact of recent fluctuations in US dollar exchange rates.
The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast is the a leading indicator of major technology trends across the hardware, software, IT services and telecom markets. For more than a decade, global IT and business executives have been using these highly anticipated quarterly reports to recognise market opportunities and challenges, and base their critical business decisions on proven methodologies rather than guesswork.
“Exchange rate movements, and a reduction in our 2013 forecast for devices, account for the bulk of the downward revision of the 2013 growth,” said Richard Gordon, Managing Vice President at Gartner.
NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators power world’s most energy efficient supercomputer
NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators are powering the world’s two most energy efficient supercomputers, according to the latest Green500 list published last week.
The winning system is Eurora at CINECA, Italy’s largest supercomputing centre, in Casalecchio di Reno. Equipped with NVIDIA Kepler architecture-based GPU accelerators – the highest-performance, most efficient accelerators ever built – Eurora delivers 3,210 MFlops per watt, making it 2.6 times more energy efficient than the best system using Intel CPUs alone (at Météo France). It also greatly surpasses the most efficient Intel Xeon Phi accelerator-based system, Beacon, at the National Institute for Computational Sciences, at the University of Tennessee.
The number two system on the June 2013 Green500 list is the Aurora Tigon supercomputer at the Selex ES facilities Chieti, Italy.
Gartner: Worldwide PC, tablet and mobile phone shipments to grow 5.9% in 2013
Combined shipments of PCs, tablets and mobile phones are projected to reach 2.35 billion units in 2013, a 5.9 percent increase from 2012, according to Gartner. The market is being driven by sales in tablets, smartphones and to a lesser extent, ultramobiles, as PC shipments are on the decline.
Worldwide traditional PC (desk-based and notebook) shipments are forecast to total 305 million units in 2013, a 10.6 percent decline from 2012 , while the PC market including ultramobiles is forecast to decline 7.3 percent in 2013. Tablet shipments are expected to grow 67.9 percent, with shipments reaching 202 million units, while the mobile phone market will grow 4.3 percent, with volume of more than 1.8 billion units.
The sharp decline in PC sales recorded in Q1 was the result in a change in preferences in consumers’ wants and needs, but also an adjustment in the channel to make room for new products hitting the market in the second half of 2013.
Enhancements to hybris Commerce Accelerator speed up omni-channel functionality deployment
hybris has integrated hybris Commerce Accelerator with hybris Order Management Services (OMS) to enable merchants to deliver a complete omni-channel shopping experience, including browsing and fulfillment – like buy online and pick up in store and cross-channel stock-level display.
This significant enhancement means that B2C merchants of all sizes can now, at an affordable price point, go live with a world-class commerce system in less than four months through ready to use storefront templates and channel integrations that can be deployed quickly and then enhanced with more functionality over time.
Customers can also chose the deployment and purchase model which best meets their needs – traditional on-premise perpetual license, hosted by hybris or on-demand (software-as-a-service) with a monthly fee based on usage or revenue share.
Stanford University researchers build world’s largest artificial neural network
NVIDIA has collaborated with a research team at Stanford University to create the world’s largest artificial neural network built to model how the human brain learns. The network is 6.5 times bigger than the previous record-setting network developed by Google in 2012.
Computer-based neural networks are capable of “learning” how to model the behaviour of the brain – including recognising objects, characters, voices, and audio in the same way that humans do.
Yet creating large-scale neural networks is extremely computationally expensive. For example, Google used approximately 1,000 CPU-based servers, or 16,000 CPU cores, to develop its neural network, which taught itself to recognise cats in a series of YouTube videos. The network included 1.7 billion parameters, the virtual representation of connections between neurons.
ASICS picks hybris for new global consumer websites
Sports footwear maker ASICS has selected hybris Commerce Suite for the infrastructure of the company’s new global consumer websites, featuring corporate, branding and e-commerce functions.
The solution will empower its branding and transactional pages, supporting its omni-channel deployments and B2C commerce with consumers.
In the middle of 2011, ASICS launched an internal project to rebuild the system, by using an omni-channel enabled e-commerce solution. After carefully comparing and evaluating several vendor solutions, ASICS selected hybris Commerce Suite in May 2012. It will start designing and integrating the new system in the US this year before rolling it out to other countries.
Vietnam’s PC market up in Q1
It looks like Indonesia is not the only market where PC sale is still heading north. Vietnam’s PC market grew by 13 percent in Q1 compared to the same period last year, according to IDC’s Vietnam Quarterly PC Tracker.
Nearly 500,000 PCs were shipped despite concerns over high inventory.
Anticipation of growing consumer demands in under-penetrated areas of Vietnam spurred vendors to increase consumer PC shipments.
Philippines’ printer market bucks APAC trend
The market for printing devices in the Philippines grew by an astounding 34.5 percent in Q1, compared to the same period last year. This is a sharp contrast to overall Asia-Pacific region drop of 7.6 percent, the sixth consecutive quarter of year-on-year drop.
According to International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Quarterly Hardcopy Peripherals (HCP) Tracker, about 233,400 units of single and multifunction printers (MFP) and copiers were shipped in Q1 versus 174,000 units in Q1 of 2012.
Eight out of 10 were of inkjet technology while laser and serial dot matrix (SDM) accounted for the remaining 12.9 percent and 7.0 percent, respectively. Total market revenue hit an all-time high of US$48.2 million.
hybris partners LivePerson to provide digital engagement solutions
hybris will partner intelligent engagement solution provider LivePerson to offer an integrated solution for businesses to optimise the online commerce experience and drive greater return on investment (ROI) to their digital properties.
The hybris Commerce Suite is now fully integrated with LivePerson’s award-winning chat solution and available on the hybris Extend marketplace. The new integration will be essential to e-commerce professionals seeking to differentiate their brands from competitors, enabling them to connect more meaningfully to visitors and delivering a richer, more personalised experience for customers that will drive higher customer satisfaction and greater value to their business.
With LivePerson’s chat solution, merchants are able to increase conversion rates through their online stores and decrease cart abandonment. For example, if a customer is having difficulty locating a particular item, a customer service agent will be alerted and offer immediate assistance with the customer directly through live chat or ‘click to call’. Likewise, customers can engage directly with a customer service agent through a ‘click to chat’ button. To ensure an optimised client engagement, the customer’s page data is dynamically passed through to the agent.
PC sales in ANZ dip in Q1
The PC market is weakening as demand for tablets and other mobile devices strengthen. In Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), the PC market closed Q1 with a 21 percent and 27 percent dip respectively compared to the same quarter last year, according to IDC.
This decline is all the more ominous in view of recent cuts to the Australian Federal interest rate and the quarter being the end of financial year in New Zealand.
“The softness in PC sales across the consumer and commercial space reflects a declining demand for PCs,” said Amy Cheah, Market Analyst of IDC Australia. “More consumers are skipping or delaying PC purchase as tablets become the more common alternative for mobile access. Vendors, as a result, took a more cautious approach this quarter, cutting back on shipments given the slow moving inventory situation.”
Gartner: BI software revenue to reach US$113m in India this year
Business intelligence (BI) software revenue in India is forecasted to reach US$113 million in 2013, a 16 percent increase over 2012 revenue of US$98.1 million, according to Gartner. This forecast includes revenue for BI platforms, analytic applications and corporate performance management (CPM) software.
“Pressures from consumers, environmental policies, government and industry regulations, international standards of quality, and internal operational efficiency are forcing enterprises to improve their operations and processes to become both agile and efficient in a volatile marketplace, “ said Bhavish Sood, Research Director at Gartner. “These internal and external pressures are driving increased adoption of analytics solutions across the country.”
India BI Software Software Forecast Estimates (US$m)
| Subsegment | Data |
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
|
Analytic Applications and Performance Management |
Sum of Revenue (M) |
14.2 |
16.8 |
20.0 |
23.6 |
27.8 |
|
Growth (%) |
14.24 |
18.94 |
18.45 |
18.07 |
17.87 |
|
|
CPM Suites |
Sum of Revenue (M) |
18.6 |
22.0 |
26.0 |
30.7 |
36.1 |
|
Growth (%) |
11.97 |
18.32 |
18.03 |
17.85 |
17.62 |
|
|
BI Platforms |
Sum of Revenue (M) |
65.3 |
74.1 |
84.0 |
95.1 |
107.4 |
|
Growth (%) |
13.86 |
13.43 |
13.40 |
13.11 |
12.93 |
|
|
Total Sum of Revenue (M) |
|
98.1 |
113.0 |
130.0 |
149.3 |
171.2 |
|
Total Growth (%) |
|
13.55 |
15.15 |
15.05 |
14.82 |
14.67 |
Gartner (June 2013)
Unified communications picking up steam in Malaysia
Unified communications is picking up steam in Malaysia with an increase of 14 percent to US$47.5 million in the second half of 2012 compared to the earlier half.
Overall, the revenue in 2H12 Unified Communications & Collaboration (UC&C) market hit US$89.2 million, a 22.5% growth on a year-over-year basis, according to IDC’s Asia/Pacific Semi-annual Collaborations and Video Tracker, which captures the market share of major vendors in the region,
Enterprise telephony continues to play an integral part of the UC&C market, with 50.6 percent of total revenues in 2H12, followed by enterprise collaboration apps (29.5 percent), contact centre applications and equipment (12.9 percent) and enterprise videoconferencing solutions (6.9 percent).
ZTE and Easymeeting.net to develop videoconferencing solutions
ZTE and Easymeeting.net have entered into a strategic partnership to develop and release several major videoconferencing R&D initiatives in the next 12 to 18 months.
The videoconferencing industry is experiencing a huge shift from complicated high-cost solutions towards highly-scalable cloud-based software coupled with affordable hardware. The partnership between ZTE and Easymeeting.net will expedite the transition by making videoconferencing more affordable and simple to use.
ZTE’s depth of knowledge and experience with enterprise communication technology is a perfect match for Easymeeting.net whose focus is on providing innovative and disruptive services to the mass market.
NVIDIA GPU accelerators enable HIV research breakthrough
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have achieved a major breakthrough in the battle to fight the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) using NVIDIA Tesla GPU accelerators.
Featured on the cover of the latest issue of Nature, the world’s most-cited interdisciplinary science journal, a new paper details how UIUC researchers collaborating with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have, for the first time, determined the precise chemical structure of the HIV “capsid,” a protein shell that protects the virus’s genetic material and is a key to its virulence. Understanding this structure may hold the key to the development of new and more effective antiretroviral drugs to combat a virus that has killed an estimated 25 million people and infected 34 million more.
UIUC researchers uncovered detail about the capsid structure by running the first all-atom simulation of HIV on the Blue Waters Supercomputer. Powered by 3,000 NVIDIA Tesla K20X GPU accelerators – the highest performance, most efficient accelerators ever built – the Cray XK7 supercomputer gave researchers the computational performance to run the largest simulation ever published, involving 64 million atoms.
APAC shines in gloomy Q1 for servers
The Asia/Pacific posted the strongest growth in server shipment (7.0 percent) and revenue (1.7 percent) year-on-year in Q1.
The US was the only other region to post growth, according to Gartner.
“While these two regions grew in both shipments and revenue, it was not enough to offset the declines of the other geographies – all of which declined in server shipments and revenue for the quarter,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, Research Vice President at Gartner.
NVIDIA GRID unleashes graphics for virtualised desktops
NVIDIA has unleashed the full graphics potential of enterprise desktop virtualisation with the availability of NVIDIA GRID vGPU integrated into Citrix XenDesktop 7.
NVIDIA GRID vGPU technology addresses a challenge that has grown in recent years with the rise of employees using their own notebooks and portable devices for work. These workers have increasingly relied on desktop virtualisation technologies for anytime access to computing resources, but until now this was generally used for the more standard enterprise applications. Performance and compatibility constraints had made it difficult for applications such as building information management (BIM), product-lifecycle management (PLM) and video-photo editing.
Two decades ago, hardware-based graphics replaced software emulation. Desktop virtualisation solutions stood alone as the only modern computing form without dedicated graphics hardware. As a result, an already busy virtualised CPU limited performance and software emulation hampered application compatibility.
GSMA to create Connected City experience at Mobile Asia Expo
Visitors to Mobile Asia Expo 2013 in Shanghai will get to delve in a new Connected City experience. They will be able to stroll down a city street of the future and experience the Connected Life powered by intelligent mobile connections.
The Connected City will build on the success of the Connected City at this year’s Mobile World Congress and draw on developments that have put Asia at the forefront of connected device and service uptake.
In partnership with China Mobile, Cisco, Ford Motor Company, Huawei, KT Corp. and SAP, the Connected City will be a life-like urban environment where attendees will experience how these companies are making homes smarter, motoring more intelligent, shopping easier and city living safer in the largest and most forward-thinking mobile market in the world. Each area will bring together the latest in cutting-edge products and services to demonstrate how a connected future, driven by mobile, will simplify and enhance people’s everyday lives.
Entelechy Asia 