Tag: Interconnection

Healthcare has been around in some form or other for millennia, while artificial Intelligence (AI) has only a few decades of history behind it. Still, that’s long enough for Al to begin transforming this ancient industry, and its influence is only accelerating in the digital age.

Virtualization has made it possible to separate the software functionality of all those boxes from the specific appliance-type hardware in which it resides. Network functions virtualization (NFV) software can replicate an appliance’s function in a more cost-effective commodity server, which is easy to obtain and deploy and can hold the software for numerous functions at once. People like the improved simplicity, cost, agility and speed that comes with this change.

The prospect of a global cashless economy is not too distant a reality. Global digital payments are predicted to increase on average by 10.9% reaching close to 726 billion transactions by 2020, according to the World Payments Report 2017. The world’s top cashless economy is currently Canada, with Sweden coming in at second and the UK at third (Forex Bonuses). Chinese cities are already emerging as early examples of cashless economies, with digital payments on mobile apps such as WeChat and Alipay taking precedent for mobile payment transactions. And Sub-Saharan Africa is a huge market for mobile payments — the GSMA reports that more than 40% of the adult population is using mobile money on an active basis in seven Sub-Saharan African countries.

AI, VR/AR and IoT all have something else in common besides their recently accelerated development– they all have the same set of dependencies: Each requires relatively sophisticated devices, excellent network connectivity and robust cloud infrastructures. And none of it works as well as it should without interconnection.

Yesterday’s Oracle CloudWorld in New York City covered everything from managing data with the world’s 1st autonomous database and humanizing customer experiences, to connecting and extending on-premises and cloud applications. In his keynote speech at the event, Oracle CEO Mark Hurd, told the audience that by 2020, more than half of all enterprise data will be managed autonomously, and will also be more secure. Hurd also said that 90% of all enterprise applications will feature integrated artificial intelligence capabilities.

At the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos a few weeks ago, UK Prime Minster, Theresa May delivered a confident speech on the advancement of technology innovation and its potential to boost the UK economy. The Prime Minister began her speech by highlighting that “harnessing the power of technology is not just in all our interest, but it’s fundamental to the advancement of humanity.” This statement demonstrated her intent to ensure that technology will be a critical element of UK economic growth and her lofty ambitions for the UK to be a global leader in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Business application giant SAP® has transformed more than 345,000 companies throughout the world in how they perform enterprise resource planning, customer relationship, product lifecycle, supply chain and database management. SAP is continuing its evolution by transforming itself into a world-class enterprise application cloud platform company with its SAP Cloud portfolio.

This year’s Pacific Telecommunications Council’s (PTC) 40th anniversary theme, “Connecting Worlds,” spoke to the global nature of communications that is launching a new decade of connections in our industry. And I’m not just talking about the physical and virtual connections that carry the massive amounts of data being transported all over the world, but the interconnection between service providers and their customers that enable private data exchange, which is essential for global digital business to flourish in the decades to come.

The insurance industry is well-known for its conservative nature, but that’s a characteristic that’s now having to evolve as the industry faces the digital age. For these reasons, trending tech topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), IoT and blockchain are rapidly becoming hot topics in these most traditional of boardrooms.

What does the digital edge have to do with payments? The answer lies in the fact that the world has gone digital, which is changing almost every aspect of how payments are processed. The digital edge is enabling payment providers to connect to their customers where they are, to deliver services that are fast and secure.