EMA Blog: Business Intelligence and IT Management

Cisco Live is happening in Las Vegas this week. It remains one of the biggest annual gatherings of network infrastructure professionals in the world. It is also a venue for Cisco to showcase its latest products and services, and it is a place where Cisco lays out its overall vision to address customer requirements.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend Informatica World 2022 (IW22) in Las Vegas. Returning to the in-person conference scene caused some apprehension; however, reflecting on takeaways and engaging in discussions around data integration made this trip a worthwhile experience. I want to thank IW22 for a thought-provoking week of discussions centered on data management, data integration, interoperability, artificial intelligence, and navigating a complex, hybrid, multi-cloud digital environment with Informatica experts, sponsors, and customers.

Long gone are the days of simple, signature-based defenses against cyber-threats.

Cyber-threats are growing at an exponential rate in the perpetual cat-and-mouse game of cybersecurity, and traditional approaches to cybersecurity are struggling to keep pace. In 2021, anti-malware vendors estimated that they detected between 300,000 and 500,000 new pieces of malware every day. That means than in 2021 alone, over 100 million new pieces of malware were created. Even if cybersecurity vendors can keep up with the sheer volume of new pieces of malware, traditional signature-based and even heuristic-based detection algorithms will struggle to keep up – and that’s only for known malware.

I could spend pages and days talking all about the new technology that was released at Dreamforce 2018, but I am going to take the higher road and discuss what Dreamforce 2018 means to customer organizations. Salesforce demonstrated that it cares about its customers and is committed to increasing the productivity of customer-facing teams around the world. Of course, if customer-facing teams are more productive, that will mean increased revenue, higher customer satisfaction, and a palpable competitive advantage.

The C-Suite Should see Gains in Productivity and Profitability

Many sales leaders complain about the challenge of getting sales representatives to enter information into their sales automation systems. The results are incomplete information and the inability to properly forecast and manage sales teams for success. The introduction of Einstein Voice allows sales teams to interact with Salesforce products over their morning coffee or handsfree on their drive home, freeing them to do more of what they are paid to do: sell.

OpenManage Enterprise is a big deal, but underrated: OpenManage Enterprise is the new infrastructure automation platform that could unlock the private and hybrid cloud for Dell. Deploying Dell infrastructure through a simple YAML file is within reach.

Companies who manage to put AI capabilities into the hands of each and every business employee will be vastly successful in the marketplace. Enabling business employees to back up their decisions with data will dramatically increase staff productivity. At the same time, employees will feel empowered by their new ability to make much more informed decisions and automating certain tasks, based on intelligence derived from operations and market data that is now available to them.

Here are the 10 quotes that best sum up #Think2018. Inspired by Think 2018, I came up with my own ideas for AI bots and posted them here.

Why Machine Learning Diagnoses Cancer but Can’t Run our Hybrid Cloud

Neural Networks Are Key in 2018

Neural networks are back, but please don’t think they are able to emulate the context awareness of the human brain. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the neural network approach is a viable one, but we do need to be clear about its limitations. All of these limitations are rooted in the limited 'worldview' the neural network is able to take in. This worldview is limited as it relies on a human being with limited time and knowledge creating the neural network topology by providing the following components and enough sample data for the machine to determine how input should be processed.

My constant search for the next ‘cool’ tech toy or app is inspired by my obsession for automation. Trying to teach my 4 and 6 year old kids to think of creative solutions for their repetitive problems (no, there’s not yet a robot that cleans their rooms) surfaced the following 3 top toys and top apps in 2017.