Future Tech

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics’ Wireless Smartphone Strategies, global smartphone wholesale price will grow +11% YoY from $279 (€240.72) in 2020 to $310 (€267.47) in 2021. This is the highest price in the smartphone industry since 2013.

Last week an order for 186 double decker trains was nullified due to a legal formality surrounding the Qualified Electronic Signature used to ink the deal. Here, Guillaume Forget, managing director of e-signature specialist, Cryptomathic GmbH, unpacks what went wrong and highlights what businesses everywhere can learn from the debacle.

The pandemic forced many small and medium-sized companies to rethink their business plans and the technologies they use. The hybrid and remote workforce has spawned technology challenges, including cross-team collaboration and vulnerabilities. Additionally, says Gary Pica, founder and president of TruMethods, a Kaseya company, many businesses are now evaluating regulatory issues and boosting cybersecurity measures.

Nokia has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) to drive digital transformation and the knowledge economy for socio-economic development across the continent. The two parties will leverage the power of telecommunications, including 5G networks, to connect the unconnected and identify innovative use cases, as well as business models.

Bees are vital to our planet and our survival. In fact, almost 90% of wild plants, and 75% of global crops need animals to pollinate them which works out to approximately one in every three mouthfuls of our food depending on bees! To add to this, the global market value of honey is predicted to be worth US $11.16 billion (€9.54 billion) by 2027 which is a tasty-looking market for beekeepers around the world!

Energy firm SSE is using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to document one of the UK’s best loved birds. The energy company has launched its “Flying Squad” initiative with Microsoft, tech firm Avanade and NatureScot to monitor puffin numbers around the Scottish coastline. 

5G and AIoT need more speed and more capacity, and PCIe 4.0 delivers, doubling the speed of PCIe 3.0 and providing the much-needed performance boost to keep pace with innovation and industry trends.

Tenable, Inc., the Cyber Exposure company, has published results of a study that found 72% of U.K. organisations attribute recent business-impacting cyberattacks to vulnerabilities in technology put in place during the pandemic, while 68% suffered attacks that targeted remote workers.

Bright Data, the global industry provider of making public web data accessible to all, has released new research that highlights the increased role bots are playing in automating key corporate functions, including customer service, web data collections and more.

Laserfiche announced the availability of Laserfiche Cloud in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. The SaaS provider of intelligent content management and business process automation’s cloud offering delivers an innovative and trusted system for securely managing content and automating business processes across the enterprise.

A report released over the summer shows the number of AI companies in the UK has surged 600% in the last decade, from 180 in 2011 to more than 1,300 today. The rise in AI adoption has resulted as a way for companies to keep up with markets and competitors one of the main challenges for modern businesses, says Anita Weppenaar, SoftwareONE cloud services practice lead for UK, IE and South Africa

Feedzai, the cloud-based financial risk management platform, and Solarisbank AG, Europe’s Banking-as-a-Service platform, announced at Money20/20 Europe a multi-year partnership.

Software intelligence company Dynatrace announced it has completed the acquisitionof high-speed parsing and query analytics company, SpectX. This acquisition will accelerate the convergence of observability and security for modern hybrid, multicloud environments.

More than half of UK businesses (54%) say Brexit has presented them with data access and management challenges, according to research from MuleSoft, provider of the integration and API platform. This finding highlights that the challenges of siloed data and skills shortages are being amplified as businesses adapt their operations in response to Brexit.

Verizon and the NFL announced a 10-year partnership that will utilise 5G to support innovation and technology adoption throughout the league. The partnership builds on the more than 10-year relationship between the NFL and Verizon that paved the way for the installation of Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband service in parts of 25 NFL stadiums.

The chair of the U.S. financial regulator is right about cryptocurrency trading platforms: they should be regulated. So says the CEO of one of the independent financial advisory asset management and fintech organisations.

Mendix World 2021, claimed to be the virtual assembly of low-coders, Mendix, a Siemens business and global provider of low-code application development for the enterprise, announced platform enhancements designed to accelerate delivery of high-value solutions for the digital-first economy.

Dynatrace and Microsoft announced they have expanded their strategic collaboration to help the organisations accelerate innovation and tame cloud complexity. As part of this, the Dynatrace Software Intelligence Platform will be available as native SaaS on Microsoft Azure, providing customers increased flexibility and choice when selecting cloud service providers.

Modern consumers interact with around six touchpoints when making any purchasing decision. For online businesses, it’s both a blessing and a curse, says Terri Misters, marketing specialist at LCN.

During his first in-person keynote since taking the helm of Intel in February, CEO, Pat Gelsinger predicted that semiconductors will account for more than 20% of the total premium vehicle bill of materials (BOM) by 2030. That represents an unprecedented 5x growth rate over 2019’s 4% figure.

The Transforma Insights User Group live event conjured up a lot of interesting discussions around the best approaches to digital transformation. In particular it gave ample consideration to the human factors that underpin the technology. It’s not the tech, it’s the people, says Eileen Fisher, communities manager at Transforma Insights.

The early bird catches the worm, and for businesses wishing to reap the many benefits of cloud ERP integration, the sooner the integration, the better especially if their existing solution has reached the end of its development lifecycle, says Ian Robertson is the sales and marketing director of BrightBridge

Offering customers more ways to pay in a simple, quick and safe way is key to eCommerce. Having the right technology behind your checkout is critical to success, says Sujit Unni, chief technology officer, Paysafe.

Rockwell Automation has launched a new digital training experience called TechEd Tuesdays, as an extension of its TechEd EMEA event.

TOMIA, a specialist in global connectivity monetisation solutions, has appointed Howard Stevens as CEO. Stevens, who previously served as TOMIA’s chief revenue officer, succeeds former CEO Marco Limena during a time of bookings growth and innovation at the company as connectivity, cloudification and 5G networks redefine the global telecom industry.

Enterprises have long been using Microsoft Excel to collect, store, analyse and report data, as well as run complex calculations and create models. And while overall Excel usage continues to grow, says Mike Nieburg, VP, business development at EASA, there has been a shift away from Excel to purpose-made applications for situations where the program’s more pressing problems limit its usefulness.

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, and eProsima, an SME company specialised in middleware solutions, announced that the Renesas EK-RA6M5 Evaluation Kit for RA MCUs is the official supported hardware platform of the micro-ROS development framework.