TECHNOLOGY

How Businesses Can Achieve Success with Co-innovation

Published

1 year ago

July 17, 2023

How Businesses Can Achieve Success with Co-innovation

Building healthy co-innovation in business requires a strategic approach that involves identifying the right partners, developing effective collaboration processes and fostering a culture of innovation.

Business success has historically been largely attributed to innovation. Businesses that innovate and introduce new goods, services or procedures can frequently set themselves apart from rivals and gain a competitive advantage over time. But, no corporation can innovate alone in the quickly evolving business environment of today. To develop new concepts and market them, cooperation is required. Co-innovation in business is a solution to this. Co-innovation refers to a collaborative process where two or more parties come up with something new together. It frequently occurs in the business world when organizations collaborate with external partners like clients, suppliers or businesses in a similar sector.

Co-innovation aims to combine many viewpoints, bodies of information and areas of skill to produce something that is more than the sum of its parts. Companies that collaborate with one another can pool their resources and take advantage of each other’s advantages to develop new goods, services or procedures that they could not develop independently. It’s OWL, for instance, is a technology network that brings together around 200 companies, research institutes and organizations to develop solutions for the digital transformation of SMEs.

Co-innovation can take different forms. For instance, a business might collaborate with a supplier to create a novel material or component that can be incorporated into its goods. Perhaps a business might work with a client to create a fresh approach that addresses their particular requirements. Companies collaborating to develop new business models or break into new markets is another example of co-innovation.

3 Types of Business Change

For businesses to succeed and expand, innovation has always been crucial. Businesses can get a competitive edge over rivals in the market by developing new goods, services or procedures that are special and useful to customers. Yet, the value of co-innovation is becoming more apparent as the business environment grows more complicated and dynamic.

“The ability to accelerate the volume and pace of digital innovation will be the most critical new benchmark for organizations competing in the digital economy. Ignoring co-innovation is no longer an option,” said Frank Gens, Chief Analyst at IDC.

One of co-innovation’s main advantages is that it can lower the costs and risks involved with innovation. The high cost of creating new goods or services, which can include expensive research and development, is a problem that businesses frequently encounter. Additionally, there is always the risk that the product or service may not be successful in the market. Co-innovation enables firms to share these costs and risks with their partners, making innovation more accessible and less hazardous.

Additionally, it makes it simpler for businesses to enter new markets. Businesses can gain access to fresh knowledge, technologies and resources by collaborating with other companies or clients. As a result, they may be able to create new goods or services that specifically address the demands of particular markets, providing them with a competitive edge.

3 Vital Business Setups

Developing strong cooperation mechanisms, encouraging an innovative culture, maintaining intellectual property rights and monitoring and assessing success are all necessary components of a comprehensive approach to creating a robust co-innovation ecosystem. Businesses can foster a collaborative environment that fosters creativity, promotes growth and offers value to customers by using these tactics.

IDENTIFYING THE RIGHT PARTNERS

Finding the appropriate partners is the first step in creating a robust ecosystem for co-innovation. Companies should seek out partners that have comparable skills and strengths and who share their vision and values. They must also make sure that the two organizations’ cultures mesh well. Making sure the collaboration is a suitable fit for all parties entails performing due diligence on possible partners and establishing relationships with them.

CREATING EFFICIENT COLLABORATION PROCEDURES

Co-innovation success depends on efficient collaboration procedures. Companies must create procedures that facilitate efficient partner coordination and communication, such as regular meetings, team planning sessions and project management software. They must also clearly describe the duties and responsibilities of each partner as well as the partnership’s goals.

ENCOURAGING AN INNOVATIVE CULTURE

For co-innovation to succeed, an innovative culture must be built. Companies must foster a culture that values and promotes innovation. This entails developing a culture of openness and cooperation that promotes the exchange of knowledge and ideas. It also entails making investments in training and development programs that assist with giving staff the knowledge and abilities they need to innovate.

MANAGING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

Managing intellectual property rights is important since co-innovation entails partners exchanging intellectual property. Clear contracts that define who owns what intellectual property and how to utilize it must be in place. Confidentiality, intellectual property and licensing agreements are among them.

MONITORING AND ASSESSING PROJECT SUCCESS

Monitoring and evaluating co-innovation project success is crucial to creating a strong ecosystem. Companies must set precise success indicators and periodically assess the partnership’s performance in relation to these parameters. This involves tracking how co-innovation affects key business metrics, including revenue growth, cost reductions and customer satisfaction.

CO-INNOVATING WITH CUSTOMERS

Deep awareness of client demands, preferences and pain spots is necessary for co-innovation with customers. Businesses can get a competitive edge by developing goods and services that are specifically catered to the needs of their target market by incorporating customers in the co-innovation process.

Customer loyalty and involvement may rise as a result of co-innovation. Businesses can enhance engagement and loyalty by incorporating customers in the co-innovation process. This fosters a sense of ownership and interest in the good or service. Customers who are involved in the co-innovation process are more likely to be advocates for the business and the products or services they helped to create.

Co-innovation in business has gained significant momentum in recent years. It is expected to play a critical role in fostering corporate growth and developing sustainable goods and services in the future as more companies use digital technology, sustainability data and cooperation to develop new products, services and solutions that meet emerging market needs and drive business growth. By collaborating with partners and customers, companies can gain valuable insights into the evolving needs of the market and develop innovative solutions that create value for customers and contribute to a more sustainable future.

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TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

Published

10 months ago

December 1, 2023

Max

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 more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

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TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

Published

10 months ago

November 29, 2023

Max

Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

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TECHNOLOGY

Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

Published

10 months ago

November 28, 2023

Max

Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud

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