TECHNOLOGY

New Initiatives to Expand Access for Underserved Communities

Published

8 months ago

September 8, 2023

New Initiatives to Expand Access for Underserved Communities

In the era of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), there is more emphasis on workplace inclusion and social inclusion, but not necessarily on digital inclusion.

While access to the internet has long been a given for billions of people around the world, especially since the advent of smartphones, getting online hasn’t always been easy. Aside from having access to a computer, the cost of internet access was the main stumbling block.

American entrepreneur Sky Dayton had a huge hand in changing this reality when he created EarthLink in 1994. Prior to this, AOL was charging by the minute for internet use. EarthLink modified the model, offering users a flat monthly fee and good telephone support (remember, this was back in the days when internet access took place via a modem and dial-up!).

Dayton’s vision was a strong start. But today, digital inclusion remains an issue for underserved communities. COVID-19 exacerbated the digital divide: With everyone sheltering in place for a protracted period of time, access to public computers disappeared, and with it, the ability for underserved households to participate in communicating with the outside world. Of course, this also impacted children’s education severely as teaching moved online.

Government Support for Digital Inclusion

Diversity Equity and Inclusion in Artificial Intelligence Lets Evolve the Narrative

In response, not just to COVID limitations but to the need for greater digital access across all underserved communities, Broadband USA, part of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), convened the Digital Equity Leaders Network. This group of state and local government leaders, which works to bridge the digital divide, meets regularly to share best practices, resources and strategies.

There are a large number of federal agencies, initiatives and reports focused on digital inclusion. A sampling:

· Administration for Children and Families – Digital Inclusion: Resources for State and Tribal Human Service Leaders. This document highlights funding streams and opportunities from several federal agencies and provides information on policy and data briefs from federal agencies and external organizations.

· Youth.Gov – Broadband Access Resources: Information about funding for human services providers, educational institutions, individuals and families to access broadband and devices.

· Closing the Digital Divide: A Framework for Meeting CRA Obligations (CRA stands for Community Retirement Act). A road map for best practices, tips and templates for preparing the case for digital opportunity investments; appendices of broadband resources for understanding needs in assessment areas.

· Disconnected: Seven Lessons on Fixing the Digital Divide. Report on the lessons learned after Kansas City launched a project in 2018 to outline issues of the digital divide and identify innovative community solutions.

Affordable Connectivity, Nationwide and Locally

Alexander Graham Bell may not have lived to see the internet age, but his legacy lives on: In 2021, multinational conglomerate AT&T (informally known as Ma Bell in the U.S.) announced it would invest $2 billion over the next three years to help address digital inclusion. This commitment combines AT&T’s low-cost broadband service offerings with community investment, aimed toward helping the millions of Americans who lack access to broadband connectivity.

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), based on household income, is another huge step in bringing broadband service to eligible households. The ACP is a long-term initiative created to help low-income families afford high-quality internet service. Digital inclusion is a very hot button in education, because the biggest barrier impacting access to education is connectivity, both in the classroom and at home.

The ACP, as part of the Biden Administration’s “Internet for All” effort, aims to close the accessibility/affordability gap for an estimated 48 million qualifying U.S. households. Since the ACP began enrolling participants at the start of 2022, nearly 13 million households have registered, more than a fourth of those eligible. More than 1300 service providers are participating in the program, with a Biden Administration-capped fee of $30/month. This ACP benefit means families in covered areas can access high-speed internet at no cost.

Also in 2021, the Internet Society announced a grant program, Expanding Potential in Communities, or Truist EPIC Grant, to support broadband initiatives that would help remove barriers to digital education, employment, and social services in the southeastern United States. The Truist Grant distributed $1 million through a series of grants to organizations designed to bring high-speed infrastructure to low-income communities and indigenous populations.

Five Digital Inclusion Trends in the United States

3 Approaches For Making a Digital Twin Strategy Future Ready

In conclusion, we’ll highlight the five digital inclusion trends taking place nationwide as recognized by the NTIA:

· Digital Inclusion Planning. More governments and coalitions are creating citywide, regional and statewide broadband and digital inclusion planning programs. Many of these programs also receive grants, and boast a dedicated staff and outcome-based measurement. Chicago and Philadelphia are two examples of cities that successfully pioneered citywide digital inclusion coalitions.

· Program Integration. Federal agencies understand that digital literacy and broadband access are crucial to closing the digital divide. Therefore, digital inclusion is now recognized as an “eligible expense” in government programs and funding streams.

· Performance Measurement. Metrics help program managers determine gaps and adapt programs as needs evolve, so surveys are an integral aspect of many programs, allowing state, federal and local agencies to collect data that assesses how the program is faring in meeting its goals.

· Library Updates. Today, the majority of the 9,000 U.S. libraries offer free computer access and in many cases, digital literacy training. As community hubs for digital access, libraries have become an essential resource in digital inclusion, especially in underserved communities.

· Federal Power. Underserved communities, particularly in rural areas, still lack broadband infrastructure. In this respect, the NTIA leverages federal assets to incentivize private investment.

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TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

Published

5 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.

TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

Published

5 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

TECHNOLOGY

Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

Published

5 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