TECHNOLOGY
Illuminating the Path to More Intelligence and Less Artificiality
Generative AI has revolutionized how data is processed on a large scale, enabling the creation of text, images, and audio that closely resembles human conversation.
Think about the sudden rise of ChatGPT from OpenAI and its record-setting 100 million users – only two months after launch.
One reason gen AI continues to take us by storm is its interactive nature and immediacy. As a subset of machine learning, algorithms are trained to respond like you and me when asked a question. You see? Less artificial and more intelligent.
Recently, I explored generative AI’s transformative potential on my show CXO Spice with Dell Vice President of Corporate Strategy Mindy Cancila. Mindy Cancila is no stranger to compute-and-storage products. She worked on Compaq computers in the 90s, joined Dell in the early aughts, left to serve as a public cloud analyst for Gartner and returned in 2022. Today, she leads the growth strategy at Dell by identifying emerging technologies impactful for customers. She’s confident generative AI will “massively disrupt” many industries and says it “is all about the data.”
“Innovation comes in lots of form factors,” she says, adding that while people wonder if generative AI will impact their work, most organizations are leaning into the idea of increased productivity in a new way rather than getting more out of the resources they have. “It’s more how can I take the things they do today and offload those into generative AI and therefore take my talents so they can do more impactful types of tasks. So it’s really as much about increasing productivity as driving operational efficiencies.”
GenAI Users Will be the Disruptors
As an infrastructure and solutions provider, Dell focuses on customer priorities. Dell meets customers where they are at and learns with them. “It all ties back,” says Cancila, “to the business objective that we’re trying to help our customers solve for.”
Cancila suggests not making rash decisions for fear of falling behind competitors. However, she also warns not to wait. “The companies that harness generative AI are the companies we believe are going to disrupt the industries. They’re going to drive new revenue streams, they’re going to seek new opportunities for operational excellence, and they are going to have a resulting increased productivity,” said Cancila.
Not sure where to start? Here are 10 questions to get your generative AI conversations off the ground:
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What problem are you trying to solve?
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What needs to be true to enable generative AI?
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What are your past mistakes and lessons learned?
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What mission critical deployments are not tied to production, sensitive data and productivity?
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What are the potential risks and rewards of embracing non-mission-critical initiatives in the context of generative AI?
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What talent do you have in your organization?
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Does the culture of your company embrace technology or fear it?
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What is the right data strategy?
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What is the right infrastructure strategy?
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What are the right security postures?
From these questions, Cancila suggests three major phases to getting generative AI off the ground:
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Strategic planning. Strategy should be rooted in purposeful outcomes to drive increased productivity, operational efficiencies or net new revenue streams.
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Use case identification: Uncover non mission critical areas that could benefit from GenAI leading to expected outcomes.
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Steps for implementation: Execute the transformation in a structured, progressive manner.
Customized Solutions and Innovation Culture
Dell tailors generative AI solutions to address unique challenges across various industries. For example, highly repeatable tasks can benefit from large scale data being infused into the learning model, like software engineering where AI develops code and solves problems. Another example is using generative AI for knowledge-based articles in marketing.
Dell has long fostered a culture of innovation. The company ranks No. 13 on the 2023 Patent 300(R) List and earned “Best Place to Work in 2023” by employees on Glassdoor. Dell’s proactive technology adoption, rather than a break-fix strategy, keeps the company at the forefront of innovation with diverse perspectives and values integrated into AI training.
While generative AI largely focuses on operational performance, Cancila is excited about its future potential. “One of the most interesting facets that sort of struck me is the impact I think it (generative AI) will have on our current and our future workforce. One of the top priorities at Dell is to really foster this diverse workforce.”
From my perspective, I’m excited to see how generative AI enables less unconscious bias, creates more inclusive job descriptions and can even suggest recruitment strategies for a more diverse workforce.
There is No Easy Button – But There is a Path
Five years ago, I worked with a global financial institution to bring AI-powered chatbots into their customer service setup. Making this happen was a bit complex and took a good amount of effort. We started by figuring out how AI could be useful and gathering the right data. The more data we fed in, the better the AI could learn, but that also meant waiting for hours to test how well it worked. Working with the data required technical skills, like coding and understanding data models. Plus, we had to spend time convincing others within the company that this was a good move. Back then, it wasn’t a walk in the park, and even today, it’s still no walk in the park. But thanks to GenAI, it has advanced us by leaps and bounds.
Engaging with GenAI is remarkably authentic. Using GenAI no longer demands technical expertise.. Envision a scenario where a broader populace harnesses the machine’s intelligence to embrace a more human-focused methodology, marked by reduced artificiality. Such technology holds the potential to contribute positively to humanity’s welfare. Let the machine do what it does best with human oversight.
This reminds me of something CEO Michael Dell said: “AI won’t replace jobs, but companies leveraging AI will disrupt industries.”
Cancila concedes there is no generative AI easy button. “Instead of taking all that data and bringing it to AI, take the AI and bring it to your data,” she advises. Wise. Consider your data based on use cases and outcomes you want to achieve. Then, drive them with the right GenAI model.
Perhaps then the button will read: more intelligence and less artificiality.
Looking for AI ideas? Check out CXO Spice_Activating GenAI with Mindy Cancila and follow Dell’s AI journey at #DellGenAI as they take AI to new places and beyond.
TECHNOLOGY
Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3
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.
TECHNOLOGY
HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces
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.
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.
TECHNOLOGY
Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud
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.
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.
