Get the most out of CIO Influence’s comprehensive daily IT news roundups to stay ahead in the information technology sector. Get current news in the IT sector about key domains such as cloud computing, data management, cybersecurity, and information security. Our curated updates include IT breaking news, tech partnerships, innovative IT solutions, and evolving security policies, keeping you informed on current industry happenings.
#1 New Updates Alert: IBM Watsonx Platform
IBM has announced new updates to its watsonx platform. The updates are after one year of its introduction. The upcoming data and automation capabilities are designed to make artificial intelligence (AI) more open, cost-effective, and flexible for businesses. The announcement was made at the IBM’s annual THINK conference. During the opening keynote, CEO Arvind Krishna will share the company’s plans to invest in, build and contribute to the open-source AI community as a core part of IBM’s strategy.
IBM unveils a new breed of watsonx assistants, touted to unlock $4 trillion in yearly benefits across all industries. While 42% of large enterprises have implemented AI, most are not beyond the experimental stage because of barriers to entry, such as the skills gap, complex data, and trust-related issues. IBM’s updates have improved the performance of watsonx assistants.
Top updates:
- watsonx Code Assistant for Enterprise Java Applications—available October 2024
- Watsonx Assistant for Z <br> Coming June 2024
- watsonx Code Assistant for Z Service with code explanation available by June 2024
#2 HCL Group and UpLink Announces Third Challenge of Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative
HCL Group, in collaboration with UpLink, the World Economic Forum’s open innovation platform, has launched the third challenge of the Aquapreneur Innovation Initiative, titled the “Tackling Water Pollution Challenge.” Announced at the 10th World Water Forum in Bali, Indonesia, the challenge aims to find and support groundbreaking technologies and approaches for conserving, managing, and protecting water resources.
Over five years, HCL has committed US$15 million to support entrepreneurs focusing on water-related projects. The challenge targets several key areas:
- Preventing Contamination at Source: Solutions for real-time monitoring, advanced filtration, and nature-based solutions.
- Monitoring and Treating Industrial Wastewater: Technologies to monitor water quality, reduce contamination, and move towards zero liquid discharge.
- Optimizing Urban Infrastructure: Technological solutions to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure water and wastewater treatment compliance.
- Household Water Quality Solutions: Innovations for portable water testing, point-of-use purification, and crowd-sourcing water quality data.
#3 CyberArk to Acquire Venafi’s Machine Identity Management from Thoma Bravo
CyberArk, the identity security company, has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Venafi, a leader in machine identity management, from Thoma Bravo. This acquisition will combine Venafi’s best-in-class machine identity management capabilities with CyberArk’s leading identity security capabilities to establish a unified platform for end-to-end machine identity security at an enterprise scale.
Digital transformation and ongoing cloud migration have increased exponentially in machine identities, such as workloads, code, applications, IoT devices and containers. The number of machines is rapidly outpacing the growth in their human counterparts, with more than 40 machine identities for every human identity. Left unprotected, they serve as a lucrative hunting ground for cybercriminals. These machine identities must be discovered, managed, secured and automated to keep their connections and communications safe. This is made more complex by shorter certificate lifecycles, from 398 to 90 days, and the need to be quantum-ready.
#4 NVIDIA Announces NVIDIA Blackwell Platform to Build and Run Real-time GenAI
NVIDIA has announced the NVIDIA Blackwell Platform to empower a new era of computing. This new platform will enable organizations to build and run real-time generative AI on trillion-parameter large language models at up to 25x less cost and energy consumption than its predecessor.
How will Blackwell features help organizations:
The Blackwell features will unlock breakthroughs in data processing, engineering simulation, electronic design automation, computer-aided drug design, quantum computing and generative AI. All six features are emerging industry opportunities for NVIDIA.
Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, Tesla and xAI are among many organizations to adopt Blackwell Technology.
#5 HP Introduces new class of next-generation AI PCs
HP Inc. has introduced ultra-mobile next-generation AI PCs at Microsoft’s AI Vision Event designed for the AI era to empower people to work and create more meaningfully.
More than half of early tech adopters believe AI will save them time5, and 72% of business leaders believe AI will help employees focus on more productive work.6 Additionally, developers are releasing a steady stream of AI-enabled software designed for new experiences and capabilities that can only be unlocked with next-gen AI PCs.
The Latest Next-gen AI PCs Include:
- HP OmniBook X AI PC
- HP EliteBook Ultra AI PC
HP’s first next-gen AI PCs are built from the ground up with the latest ARM architecture to harness the most powerful AI technologies.
Key Highlights:
- Both devices are designed and engineered around the Snapdragon X Elite processor with a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU).
- Capable of 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS) to run language models and generative AI locally on the device.
- The daily addition of new AI apps expands the possibilities of HP’s next-gen AI PCs.
- AI tools leverage gestures, facial expressions, and voice interaction for easy communication and collaboration.
- Real-time coaching and feedback in virtual meetings improve presentation skills. AI-enabled software makes professional features accessible even for beginners.
#6 Dell Announces Dell PowerStore Advancements for Multicloud Data Mobility
Dell Technologies introduced Dell PowerStore advancements for better performance, efficiency, resiliency and multicloud data mobility. In addition, the company also expanded its APEX portfolio with new AIOps advancements and improved multicloud and Kubernetes storage management.
What will Dell PowerStore advancements offer?
- Dell PowerStore boosts storage performance, efficiency, resiliency, and multicloud capabilities with QLC-based storage and significant performance upgrades. It offers enterprise-class performance at a lower cost per terabyte compared to TLC models and can scale up to 5.9 petabytes per appliance.
- Improves data storage performance, efficiency, resiliency, and multicloud capabilities with advanced QLC-based storage and significant performance improvements.
- Building on the Dell partner-first strategy for storage, partners can now increase PowerStore sales with competitively priced product bundles and deliver expanded use cases for joint customers. Partners can also streamline sales motions when selling PowerStore and PowerProtect offers together.
- Enhances its Dell APEX portfolio with new AI and multicloud features. The expanded AIOps SaaS offers improved infrastructure application observability and incident management. Dell APEX Navigator also supports Kubernetes storage management and multicloud storage for AWS and Azure.
#7 Intel’s Upcoming Lunar Lake Processors will get Copilot+ Experiences
Intel’s upcoming client processors (Lunar Lake) will power over 80 new laptop designs across over 20 original equipment manufacturers this holiday season, starting in Q3 2024. It will deliver AI performance globally for Copilot+ PCs.
Lunar Lake will get the Copilot+ experiences, such as Recall, via an update when available. Building on the success of Intel Core Ultra processors and Lunar Lake’s addition, Intel will ship more than 40 million AI PC processors this year.
What will Lunar Lake offer?
- Innovative mobile processor for AI PCs with more than 3 times the AI performance compared with the previous generation.
- 40+ NPU tera operations per second (TOPS) will provide the capabilities necessary for Copilot+ experiences.
- Equipped with 60+ GPU TOPS, delivering more than 100 platform TOPS.
#8 Cohesity Announces Support for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) Solution on Cohesity Data Cloud
Cohesity and Nutanix have announced an enhanced partnership to address data security and management challenges by supporting Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on the Cohesity Data Cloud. This integration allows organizations to seamlessly add NC2 environments to their Cohesity Data Cloud deployments, enhancing infrastructure management with just a few clicks.
Key Benefits:
Nutanix Cloud Clusters provide several benefits for IT administrators managing Nutanix environments, including:
- Simplified IT Management: Manage on-premises and public cloud workloads from a single management interface.
- Intelligent Workload Placement: Seamlessly migrate applications and data between cloud and on-premises Nutanix clusters with continuous data resilience.
- Cost-Efficiency and Scalability: On-demand capacity and pay-as-you-go models enable users to scale resources efficiently, leveraging existing Nutanix licenses for NC2.
#9 IBM and Salesforce Expand Partnership to Advance AI and Data Ecosystems
IBM and Salesforce have expanded their strategic partnership to merge IBM watsonx AI and Data Platform capabilities with Salesforce Einstein 1 Platform. This integration will enhance customer choice and flexibility in AI and data deployment.
This collaboration facilitates bidirectional data integration, LLM flexibility, prebuilt actions for CRM solutions, and a shared commitment to responsible AI development. Organizations can now access key IBM Granite series AI models and integrate their own LLMs with Salesforce Einstein 1 Studio, leveraging IBM’s expertise in custom AI solutions and Granite models’ performance and transparency for diverse use cases. Pre-configured prompt templates and copilot actions powered by IBM data and services will further accelerate ROI for joint customers.
#10 Kyndryl Announces Collaboration with NVIDIA to Boost AI-powered Adoption of Generative AI-enabled Solutions
Kyndryl has announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to enhance the development and implementation of AI-powered insights and business outcomes. This partnership will leverage Kyndryl’s AI-powered Kyndryl Bridge platform and NVIDIA’s accelerated computing and software to support the end-to-end lifecycle of AI solutions. Kyndryl Consult will expedite the deployment of generative AI solutions, enhancing operational experiences across various industries. Utilizing NVIDIA’s NeMo platform and NIM inference microservices, Kyndryl will address use cases like customer support and IT operations automation, integrating these capabilities into Kyndryl Bridge to optimize AIOps and reduce network and IT infrastructure failures.
Benefits:
- Advance generative AI performance on Kyndryl Bridge using NVIDIA AI and accelerated computing to enhance efficiency and speed customer adoption across industries.
- Bring value for customers through Consult & Managed Services generative AI offerings on the Kyndryl Bridge platform (LLMOps, Data Modernization and Infrastructure Services with NVIDIA NIM) leveraging
- NVIDIA capabilities to facilitate the creation of integrated solutions.
- GPU-aware workload placement – via CloudOps and SustainabilityOps – to drive improved performance and deliver insights to support energy-efficient generative AI workloads.
- Improve performance of generative AI applications, such as AI-powered chatbots and virtual avatars on NVIDIA-powered systems, through real-time insights from Kyndryl Bridge AIOps.
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