Though it may not be readily apparent, today’s major cities and metropolitan regions are highly connected and data-driven. Upon closer inspection, a myriad of monitoring devices and sensors can be seen providing a constant stream of operational data to municipal systems.
And while city-wide monitoring may not be a new phenomenon, the mass proliferation of internet of things (IoT) devices and systems in recent years has resulted in the smart city designation: a city that uses IoT, sensors, and data extensively to improve infrastructure, energy use, utilities, public services, and more.
The global IoT in smart cities market size is projected to hit $260 billion by 2025, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.1% during the forecast period, according to research from Markets and Markets.
This market growth is driven by a combination of factors, most notably an increasing number of government programs and public-private partnership (PPP) initiatives for developing IoT smart city advanced services to enhance the daily lives of citizens. The rising adoption of connected solutions and smart technologies is also expected to drive market growth in this category.
IoT deployments in smart cities are primarily aimed at improving sustainability in the face of urbanization challenges, supporting the implementation of smart intercity transportation networks, optimizing water management efforts, and improving the lighting and heating efficiency in buildings and public structures.
Here, we explore some of the ways that smart cities use innovative digital technologies on top of traditional networks and services to improve the lives of residents and visitors alike:
Continue reading: https://www.datamation.com/networks/iot-in-smart-cities/

Ordinary, everyday objects that connect to the web and cater to our needs — such as wearable health monitors, smart toasters or air quality sensors — are examples of the Internet of Things (IoT). As described by TechTarget, IoT is "a scenario in which objects, animals or people are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction." In the business world, this includes videoconferencing devices, large smart screens or any controlled utility such as a smart thermostat — which can all disrupt workflow if attacked by cyber hackers. Even the most advanced technologies are never bulletproof.
According to a Juniper Research study, the total number of IoT connections will reach 83 billion by 2024. This statistic should not be alarming but rather prepare leaders to adapt and create strategies that can prevent any security risks as IoT connections double over the next three years. Without the right security, any IoT device connected to Wi-Fi has the potential of being hacked. Once cyberattackers have access to the network, they can steal sensitive digital data. Fortunately, implementing proper cybersecurity measures now can help find and fix security blind spots and minimize any IoT threat potential in the future.
The Increasing Threat Landscape
Cyberattackers prey on vulnerabilities and will try to locate any IoT device at risk. Unpatched software, or devices that lack the latest updates, give attackers a better chance of corrupting an organization's network and assets. In fact, according to a Ponemon Institute survey, nearly 60% of breaches over the past two years were attributable to compromised, unpatched software. As more and more individuals use IoT devices and connect those devices to a business network, this can be a source of entry for cyberattackers to gain access to and jeopardize an organization's sensitive data. It's a cyberattacker's dream.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/01/18/how-the-internet-of-things-impacts-your-companys-cybersecurity/?sh=1c866f153cbb

The matter of low involvement of women in tech is one issue that will continue to plague the tech space and continue to be fodder for conversations. And it isn’t just an African problem because the world over, women are struggling to measure up with their male counterparts.
According to Statista, between 2010 and 2019, only 9.8% of start-up founders in West Africa were women. About 90.2% of founders were men, representing the vast majority.
The numbers are a bit higher for the entire continent as in 2020, approximately 85% of co-founder and C-level positions of startups in Africa were occupied by men, while only 15% were occupied by women. The global average was slightly higher, though most startup founders were still men.
These statistics reveal that women are underrepresented in the tech space. Fortunately, resources and opportunities are increasingly becoming available for women to gain a footing in the tech industry. There is a rising number of inclusive digital societies that provide opportunities for women, invest in feminist technology and put young women at the Centre of designing and learning solutions.
For young women who are looking to make an entrance into the tech space, there are different spaces for proper guidance and mentorship is necessary. These 5 organizations have created a safe space and avenues for young women to discover and pursue their areas of interest in tech.
Continue reading: https://technext.ng/2022/01/17/5-all-women-bootcamps-for-young-african-women-looking-for-a-career-in-tech/

Most of us have heard the statistics: only 25% of professional computing occupations in the U.S. are held by women, and women hold just 28% of STEM jobs in general. The latter is a number that’s gotten increasing attention in recent years; it’s also a number that’s hardly budged for decades.
While women make up 47% of the U.S. labor force as a whole, they are vastly underrepresented in technology—a growing industry representing 10% of the national economy and offering nearly double the national median wage. In other words, the above statistics represent a lost opportunity for thousands of women.
As an industry of change, technology also has a huge impact on most people’s day-to-day lives. When the people making the decisions and building the products are mostly men, it isn't just women working in the industry who lose out—it's women at large.
So what’s going on here? And what can be done about it? I sat down with three female tech leaders: Emily Yale, a senior data scientist at Shape Security; Lekisha Middleton, a career coach and community manager at Tech Ladies; and Sheekha Singh, a quality assurance engineer at Artisan Studios and the author of “The IT Girl: 3 Steps to Find Career Options for Women in Tech.” We discussed some of the key problems in the tech industry today and what can be done to solve them.
Continue reading: https://www.techopedia.com/5-key-things-holding-women-in-tech-back-and-what-can-be-done/2/34650

The concept of blockchain, decentralization, and cryptocurrencies all started when Bitcoin made its debut in 2009. Back in the day, it was called the modern way of doing finance and making transactions, and after some time, Bitcoin was called digital money; the very term ‘cryptocurrencies’ was coined later on when many other crypto tokens working on the same principle of decentralization on which Bitcoin stands were introduced. All cryptocurrencies out there in their most present form have one thing in common, and that is decentralization and blockchain technology.
The working of blockchain technology is not at all difficult to comprehend. Think of it as a vast database that is run by multiple nodes around the world that act in harmony and unison with each other to record each and every transaction that is taking place on the platform in the form of consistent blocks. These nodes are actually people that are staking their computational powers for the sake of validating transactions taking place for a dedicated cryptocurrency and getting rewarded in turn.
Concept of Blockchain
Every cryptocurrency has its own blockchain and, therefore, its own validators or miners that will validate the transactions, interpret the data in the form of blocks and place the blocks in a successive manner onto the blockchain. To validate a transaction on the blockchain, all the nodes out there must reach a consensus that the transaction is indeed valid, unique, and original. Blockchain acts as a digital ledger that is public, and therefore all the transactions that are recorded on it are tangible.
Continue reading: https://heraldsheets.com/how-safe-is-blockchain-a-guide-to-blockchain-security/

The UK won’t achieve its net zero carbon emissions goal without renewed progress on recycling and waste management, the National Infrastructure Commission warned last year. Alongside renewable energy, the move to a circular economy – in which products are reused and recycled as a matter of course – is seen as vital to averting climate change. This requires tracing products and their materials across supply chains, a task to which blockchain is ideally suited, according to its advocates. And while a flurry of pilot projects has not led to widespread adoption so far, they may yet be proven right.
Use cases for blockchain in the circular economy
While much of the fight against climate change is focused on energy production, 45% of global emissions are produced during the manufacturing of goods. Increasing recycling and reuse in five areas – cement, aluminium, steel, plastics and food – could cut those emissions by nearly half, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, equivalent to eliminating all emissions from transport. Meanwhile, 90% of biodiversity loss and water stress is caused by resource extraction or processing.
Progress on reuse and recycling has been limited so far, however. According to EU figures, the UK’s rate of circular material reuse – the proportion of materials that are reused or recycled – crept up from 14% in 2020 to 16% in 2019 (The EU average in 2020 was 12%).
Continue reading: https://techmonitor.ai/leadership/sustainability/blockchain-may-yet-prove-worth-in-circular-economy

With so many blockchain networks appearing all the time, new or even experienced crypto enthusiasts may feel overwhelmed when it comes to deciding which are the best to invest in.
In this guide, we’ll outline the most important aspects of any blockchain project, and why one should pay close attention to such details when assessing the different chains on the crypto market.
Use case
Arguably the most important part of any blockchain project is its use case. What is the project’s reason for existing? Is the project here to enhance payment processing? To improve on a business supply chain or to entertain users?
There’s technically no such thing as an invalid use case, but some are certainly more applicable than others. For example, a project meant to assist millions in acquiring food is likely to earn more support than a meme coin. If one decides that a project is valuable to them and that this value can translate over to a wide audience, then that’s a point in the project’s favor.
When examining use cases, it’s best to look at the project’s white paper. For example, we can take a look at Polygon’s whitepaper, which details potential use cases associated with the platform.
Continue reading: https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchain-assessment-how-to-assess-different-chains

As technology advances, so does everything else. No business is immune to this, and that includes the customer service industry.
Customer service roles are under much pressure these days to find new ways of dealing with complaints efficiently while still providing high-quality support. 
It’s also important for companies to monitor the stories being said about it across different platforms. These stories take the form of reviews, social media posts, forum discussions, and more. 
And if it isn’t challenging enough, you also need to provide adequate support no matter what device or app your customers might be using. You can’t afford to neglect your Facebook business page’s chat messenger, your email, or the contact forms on your site. 
Managing your customer support in the modern age is a job of its own. And if you want to scale it, then you need to seriously consider adding AI to the mix. 
In this post, we’ll look at the importance of AI in customer service, what you should know, and a few ways to implement automation in your own customer support services. Dive in!
Continue reading: https://customerthink.com/why-artificial-intelligence-is-the-future-of-customer-service/

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is impacting jobs across all strata of business and IT.
AI is being incorporated into customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), business intelligence (BI), analytics, cybersecurity, marketing, sales, management, and more. 
Here are five major trends in AI jobs the market is seeing: 
1. AI Shifts All Roles
AI is shifting all other roles or at least a great many of them
“There isn’t a shift in AI jobs as much as AI is causing a shift in other roles,” said Patrick Conte, chief commercial officer at Opsani. 
Conte gave the example of cloud application optimization, where AI is allowing DevOps engineers to focus on development and testing and not as much on the size of workloads.
AI can find the right size, or the service-level objectives, of an application, where a DevOps engineer or team might just request a large footprint that will hold the app, without worrying about over-provisioning and overspending. In this case, AI and its branch technology machine learning (ML) can suggest with high accuracy the size of the workload (CPU, memory, replicas, etc.) and allow the DevOps team to build, test, and send the workload to the site reliability engineering (SRE) team.  
Continue reading: https://www.datamation.com/careers/ai-job-trends/

Interconnection is a core service of most co-location providers that supports many-to-many connections between entities for rapid data exchange as well as an on-ramp to cloud services. The need for interconnection is growing in lockstep with the move toward digital business as constant connectivity becomes an essential element of partner, supplier, and customer relationships. It is the fastest-growing segment of the colocation industry, with worldwide bandwidth more than quadrupling between 2017 and 2020 to 5,000 terabits per second.
Interconnection virtualization is a relatively new technology frontier that is rapidly gaining acceptance by colocation and cloud service providers. It permits businesses to create virtual cross-connects between customers, workloads, clouds, data sources, and applications, allowing data center workloads to become more distributed and flexible while also distributing processing and data more economically and efficiently. Slow, manual provisioning gives way to instant and programmable management.
IT managers can self-administer infrastructure instead of paying carriers to do it. They can also better adjust and align infrastructure with the demands of their applications in real-time, reducing the need to overbuild and leave expensive equipment running idle.
Interconnection virtualization is growing in response to several major trends sweeping the IT industry:
One is the as-a-service model that offers the appeal of flexible subscription-based pricing, scalable capacity and OpEx predictability. IDC estimates that 75% of enterprises will use some form of as-a-service consumption this year, led by a three-fold increase in demand for on-premises infrastructure delivered on a pay-as-you-go basis.
This rapidly growing technology delivery model requires agile network infrastructures that can adapt to sometimes unpredictable changes in network traffic flows. As business operations become more dependent upon services hosted in the cloud, resilient and scalable networks will be table stakes for businesses.
Continue reading: https://datacenterfrontier.com/virtualizing-interconnection-new-technology-for-cutting-edge-data-centers/

With the number of artificial-intelligence IoT (AIoT) devices increasing the amount of development and management complexity, providing the required infrastructures and systems are critical. Innodisk, a provider of industrial embedded flash and DRAM storage, is one of the companies addressing the underlying hardware and software technologies needed for an all-in-one AIoT cloud-to-edge solution. In this TechXchange Talk, we speak with James Shih, Sales Engineer at Innodisk, about the company's “AIoT All-round Service” for industrial applications. 
Source article: https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/iot/video/21213595/electronic-design-empowering-ai-in-edge-computing

Drone taxis might soon be introduced in a city near you, according to a recent Markets and Markets report.
The global market for drone taxis is expected to grow from an estimated $74 million in 2025 to reach $860 million by 2030, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 63%, according the study, Drone Taxi Market – Global Forecast to 2030.
The 44-page report studied the potential growth of the market for drone taxis used to carry passengers for intracity or intercity transportation. “Drone taxis are designed to fly remotely piloted or autonomously, avoid obstacles, and take-off, fly and land precisely every time. Drone taxi propulsion can be fully electric or hybrid electric,” the report states.
The North America market is forecasted to see the fastest growth rate during the five-year period covered by the study. The U.S., with a projected CAGR of 104.3%, is the leading country in this region. Researchers point to strategic partnerships between drone-taxi manufacturers and ride-sharing companies, as well as robust investment in the business segment as the drivers behind the growth in the North American drone-taxi market.
“For instance, in January 2020, Joby Aviation entered into a strategic partnership with Toyota and Uber,” the study says. “Air taxis are likely to witness heightened demand for urban transportation in this region.”
Continue reading: https://dronelife.com/2022/01/13/drone-taxis-are-big-business-the-new-ride-share/

Drone technologies can assist inspections that are dangerous, expensive or disruptive to carry out. Drones can allow companies to easily access hard to reach or previously inaccessible areas of their plant or equipment.
Guidance produced by the Safety Assessment Federation (SAFed) provides general guidelines and conditions for the use of drone technologies during health and safety inspections. It also provides case studies of various sectors testing the use of drones in their inspections, and compares the results of using drones for these activities and the usual direct methods of inspection. 
For businesses who might be considering using drones to assist their inspections, SAFed recommend ensuring that the total operational impact of using drone technology is justified. They recommend that drones will initially be most applicable in the assessment of structures, joints and weldments, mechanical assembly stability and security, and mechanical component condition and security.
From the case studies in the guidance, SAFed is keen to emphasize two aspects that are necessary to ensure a detailed and thorough examination:
Continue reading: https://www.osborneclarke.com/insights/using-drones-health-and-safety-inspections

When Cynthia Chapple was asked to help out with a photograph of a research professor and his staff, she assumed that she would be the one taking the photo. The image was going to be used by the professor for a grant application.
Ms Chapple, then a chemistry researcher at a US university, didn't work with his team directly and had minimal interactions with them personally. Yet, when she arrived to take the photo she was pulled in front of the camera, alongside the team. Confused, she smiled for the picture before an uncomfortable realization dawned on her.
She looked around her: the research team were all white men, and she was the only black woman in the photo.
"This was an example of 'Photoshop' diversity, when black women are used for photo opportunities," she tells the BBC, "I was being used to show he worked in an inclusive team and to secure him funding. I was embarrassed."
The 31-year-old grew up in an inner-city neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.
Continue reading: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-59897898

Cryptocurrencies are once again in the news as the government is reportedly looking at fine-tuning the definition of income and gains for crypto assets in the upcoming budget. The Centre has sought opinion from senior tax advisors on whether the income earned from investing in cryptocurrencies could be treated as business income as against capital gains from this year onwards. But before we get into the taxation and legality of cryptocurrencies, let's first understand this digital asset and how it really works.
What are cryptocurrencies?
A cryptocurrency is a form of digital currency. "It is a collection of binary data which is designed to be anonymous and secure. Cryptocurrency works on the model of Cryptography wherein data is converted into codes," explains Gaurav Dahake, CEO & Founder, Bitbns, a leading cryptocurrency exchange in India.
The virtual currency is designed to work as a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure the transactions and to control the creation of additional units of currency. These are decentralized in nature, which means that no single entity owns or controls them. Moreover it does not rely on central banks, and is a collection of data, overall designed to work as a medium of exchange, using its underlying technology, the blockchain.
Continue reading: 
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/cryptocurrency/bitcoin/explained-everything-you-need-to-know-about-cryptocurrencies/articleshow/88892520.cms

The massive rise of blockchain technology has given rise to multiple industries that have the tech at the core of their operating principles, including blockchain PR. This area of communication is nothing but interesting and challenging.
First and foremost, a definition of terms should be in order. A blockchain is a growing list of records, called blocks, that are linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp and transaction data. Blockchain doesn’t equal crypto, but a lot of crypto-projects use blockchain sometimes, even if it is not necessary. 
Sometimes blockchain projects can not have any cryptocurrency involved and be utilized without any transactions, for example, the secure sharing of medical data or supply chain and logistics monitoring. 
I came into crypto PR accidentally in 2017. I was a tech journalist for a decade, and during the ICO boom of 2017, I found myself barraged by requests for PR for blockchain projects. It was all so new to me. Back then, I didn’t know the rules of this crazy new world. In fact, nobody did. Journalists scrambled in confusion because the word “blockchain” was entirely new at the time. 
The mysterious world intrigued us even more since apparently, just the word “blockchain” itself would add market value to a certain project for some reason. For instance, a regular developer’s salary could be $120,000 per year, but a blockchain developer’s salary would amount to $250,000 per year.
This rule would eventually bleed into PR. Everybody would double their prices, but very few knew what to do. By now, I have some accumulated knowledge about how it works, and I will now share it in the list below. Here are five things you should know before you start delving into blockchain PR.
Continue reading: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/403211

The 21st century has been a rollercoaster ride for technology and its applications in all industries worldwide. It has provided people with numerous unimaginable & unbelievable inventions. From online food delivery apps to Artificial Intelligence geniuses, technology has come a long way in the past decade.
One of the most appealing inventions in the technology and trading world has been cryptocurrency. Today, people have their mobile phones switched on to get the best insights on crypto trading. The success and awareness of these digital currencies are attributed to various factors like the need for easy money, increasing financial literacy, etc.
But the most crucial factor which has given rise to the trend of cryptocurrencies is the impact of crypto influencers on people and their mindset. To get the best influencer and affiliate marketing solutions, click here. Famous influencers share valuable insights on crypto trading, potential benefits, updates on upcoming currencies, etc.
People get connected with these celebrities to be more confident about investing in digital currencies. Traders and investors get influenced more by female influencers than male influencers. Therefore, the following section will give a detailed account of the top female crypto influencers.
Continue reading: https://foreignpolicyi.org/biggest-female-crypto-influencers-in-the-world/

As federal agencies slowly move away from the mainframe/data center model that once dominated their IT infrastructure, the hybrid, multi-cloud model has been elevated, while some smaller agencies are moving exclusively to the cloud approach.
The most recent addition to data workloads and virtual machines is edge computing. At the Department of Veterans Affairs, as you could imagine, IT is huge.
“We have seven core data centers. They’re the hub of our enterprise,” said Reggie Cummings, the Executive Director of Infrastructure Operations in the Office of Information Technology, Operations and Services at the Veterans Affairs Department.
“That’s kind of our focus. It’s to shore up those areas in terms of consolidation, because we also have a number of regional data centers that service a lot of our clinical regional requirements,” Cummings said on Federal Monthly Insights - Network and Application Modernization
VA is maintaining some regional centers and closing others in order to move into its core data centers. Cummings also said VA’s cloud space is “pretty wide,” as well.
“When we do something with a regional data center, such as a closure, we prefer to move that workload cloud, otherwise we’ll move it into one of our core data centers,” Cummings said on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin.
 
Continue reading: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-insights/2022/01/vas-evolving-it-infrastructure-is-vast-wideand-can-address-any-issue/

The role of AI has modified considerably – from its preliminary creation on the threshold of an enterprise of their innovation labs to the modern-day while human beings are starting to recognize that it has the ability to convert businesses from the center out.
According to the reports, AI will be better than human beings in translating languages by 2024, promoting items by 2031, and conducting surgical procedures by 2053.
Meanwhile, let’s see the changes that AI brings in 2022:
Machine Learning:
Machine Learning (ML) is an application of artificial intelligence that gives systems the capacity to automatically analyze and enhance from experience without being explicitly programmed. ML specializes in the development of computer applications that may access information and use them to analyze for themselves. ML is the idea that computer software can learn and adapt to new information without human intervention. ML keeps a computer’s integrated algorithms up to date and permits the system to pick out data and built predictions around them. ML is beneficial in maintaining an enormous quantity of data and may be implemented in quite a few areas, together with investment, lending, setting up news, fraud detection, and more.
AI at the Border
AI in defense and security are absolutely unlimited.AI is frequently embedded into weapons and surveillance systems to enhance performance. It regularly enhances target recognition, flight simulation and training, and risk monitoring.
Continue reading: https://www.analyticsinsight.net/10-ways-artificial-intelligence-will-change-the-world-in-2022/

As artificial intelligence technology becomes more widely adopted by businesses—integrated in everything from chatbots to threat detection (and so much more), it’s hard not to wonder “what’s next?” We posed that question to members of CompTIA’s AI Advisory Council and received some enlightening and eye-opening responses. Here’s look at what the AI leaders said to expect in 2022. Note: These predictions are the personal opinions of the individual council members and do not represent the views of the AI Advisory Council as a whole or the members’ respective employers.
Increased Fairness and Transparency Awareness to Pervade AI Initiatives
“We expect organizations to adopt an AI-first approach to platforms, processes and digital transformation, with embedded AI at the core of operations optimization. In addition, Responsible and trustworthy AI is something that will grow substantially in the next year. This will be led by organizations in regulated industries driving fairness and transparency as persistent initiatives within their operational AI systems.” – Mechie Nkengla, CEO and chief data strategist, Data Products LLC
Recommendation Engines Take Centerstage with Consumers
“ML-powered recommendation engines will play an increasingly large role in consumer technology as behavioral data is leveraged to minimize decision fatigue and optimize user experiences.” – Lloyd Danzig, chairman and founder, International Consortium for the Ethical Development of Artificial Intelligence
Better, More Accessible Language Models
“This year, large language models (foundation models), commonly used in enterprise applications like chatbots and language translation, will be made more accessible through SaaS and APIs. Even as the models get bigger and bigger, moving from billions of parameters to trillions of parameters, open-source research efforts will help enterprises build better services by providing them tools to easily train, deploy, and scale these language models.” – Uday Tatiraju, vice chair, CompTIA AI Advisory Council
Multimodal Architectures Integrating Video, Audio, Text
“I'm looking forward to the advancements in multimodal AI architectures that can efficiently integrate video, audio, and text. We will begin to see these multimodal models embedded in many real-world applications apart from digital art and marketing.” – Uday Tatiraju, vice chair, CompTIA AI Advisory Council
Continue reading: https://connect.comptia.org/blog/10-ai-predictions-for-2022-from-automation-to-robots-that-clean

Artificial intelligence has been a hot topic of conversation among agency leaders for some time now, and mass adoption of AI as a valuable marketing tool is already well underway. While brands come up with innovative ways to use AI to meet their strategic business, marketing and sales goals every year, they also learn a lot through trial and error in the process.
In 2022, marketers will no doubt find more unique ways to incorporate AI into their operations to enhance campaigns while boosting the effectiveness of data analysis and the accuracy of reporting. Here, 14 members of Forbes Agency Council share smart ways for marketers to leverage AI this year to better connect with customers.
1. Teach Computers To Respond As Team Members Would
AI provides the conduit through which we expedite our deliverables in a personalized way via chatbots, customer service communication and email. The precaution we need to take as marketers is to ensure that the type of communication, delivery mechanism and message is on point. We must teach the computer to act and respond as if it were a member of our team. - Korena Keys, KeyMedia Solutions
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2022/01/13/14-ways-to-leverage-ai-to-better-connect-with-customers/?sh=277b57d1364c

For most companies, 2021 was a transformational year. Coming out of lockdowns (at least partially) and the uncertainty of 2020, many of us reconnected with our peers, colleagues and customers in person this year. While customer service and support operations experienced a massive digital transformation, nothing quite replaced the need for one-to-one human conversations.
Looking ahead to 2022, the customer experience (CX) world is poised for some exciting developments that balance humanity and artificial intelligence (AI), as innovation comes from some of the most unexpected places. Here are five of my CX predictions for 2022.
Expect more consolidation around voice applications.
The pandemic-driven growth of certain industries caused a flurry of M&A activity around voice applications in 2021, and there are no signs of slowing down. The experience management industry will take a cue from the contact-center-as-a-service (CCaaS) market and add voice to its repertoire through acquisitions.
As one example, the virtual meeting industry enjoyed astounding growth in 2020, which started to trail off in 2021. To fuel continued growth and appease shareholders, these companies will attempt to acquire into the CCaaS market, opening up a new communications channel for fully-integrated virtual meetings. Paired with voice-optimized AI technologies, these platforms will become powerful tools for CX teams to connect with customers on a deeper level and evaluate agents' performance.
Continue reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/01/13/balancing-ai-and-humanity-five-cx-predictions-for-2022/?sh=6e495a7e3f00

Artificial intelligence has the power to transform your business. It can be used for everything from customer service to sales, and it's easy to implement as well. Artificial intelligence is already being used in some industries, but it's just starting to become mainstream in small business.
We're about to look at some of the best ways that AI can benefit you as an entrepreneur. By taking advantage of these ideas, you'll find success when it comes to your business.
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence is a computer system that can perform tasks that are usually considered too complicated for humans. It's currently the most advanced technology, and it's being used in many different industries.
AI systems are able to learn independently from their surroundings, which is what makes them so valuable for your business. AI programs are set up to solve problems by gathering information or performing tasks on their own. They're capable of analyzing vast amounts of data quickly and making decisions based on patterns they've learned over time.
Continue reading: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/403611

When Maxwell Lee took over as the general manager of Autel Robotics, his family-owned business, in 2020, he knew there would be challenges. What he didn’t expect was that he would be navigating a period of historic tech innovation, speckled by a pandemic, major leadership changes, and supply chain crisis.
In a candid and wide-ranging interview with DroneDJ, Lee talks about the evolution of Autel’s multirotor platforms, acknowledges the increasingly fragile nature of drone businesses, and credits rival DJI for building a multibillion-dollar industry from scratch.
Autel Robotics is the drone unit of Autel Intelligent Technology, a manufacturer of automotive electronic components and diagnostic equipment. Explaining why his family decided to enter the drone industry, Lee says, “The drone subsidiary was the brainchild of founder Frank Li and Gary DeLuca, who was heading Autel Intelligence at the time. They knew there’s only so much growth an automotive diagnostic equipment maker can achieve, given the inevitable global transition toward green energy. They decided to bank the future on robotics, and picked drones as their platform of choice.”
Lee, a Boston University graduate, came on board just before the release of the EVO II drone to “do some serious restructuring” and oversee the day-to-day operations at the company’s Seattle office. “In terms of international growth, the US is the single most important market for Autel Robotics,” Lee explains. “Consumers here are excited about drone technology and have a lot of buying power. If you can succeed in the US, you can succeed in the rest of the world.”
Continue reading: https://dronedj.com/2022/01/12/autel-robotics-interview-maxwell-lee/

The Internet of Things has been a hyped technology for years, but the pandemic and its associated tidal wave of remote work pushed its actual use in the enterprise into overdrive. What’s more, IoT is maturing as vendors begin to sell fully functioning applications, not just the components needed for businesses to build their own.
The pandemic has already driven sharp growth in the types of technologies for which the IoT is already well-known including predictive maintenance in industry and automation at ports and other transportation facilities. In those areas IoT limits the amount of time workers spend on-site because remotely monitored systems don’t need to be maintained in-person nearly as often as they might otherwise. Some functions, including certain types of inspection and servicing, can be handled fully remotely, further reducing the amount of time workers have to spend on-site and in close proximity to one another.
Commercial IoT apps
The next big shift in IoT, said Gartner vice president and analyst Al Velosa, is away from plain-vanilla connectivity, where hardware vendors simply sell a way of getting data from assets in the field into the cloud, and toward fully integrated applications.
Continue reading: https://www.networkworld.com/article/3644889/iot-in-2022-iot-turns-into-a-service.html