HQT-4180 availability - Hitachi Vantara Qualified Professional VSP Midrange Family Installation Updated: 2024

Outlooks for 2024 from Double Verify, TDCX, Paessler, GitHub, the world’s largest software development collaboration platform, Princeton Digital Group (PDG), Hitachi Vantara and Tech Data.

Conrad Tallariti, Regional Vice President, DoubleVerify

In 2024, the Asia-Pacific (APAC) media ecosystem will experience unprecedented growth in hyper-connectivity, presenting marketers with new opportunities and challenges. Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Generative AI, will continue to transform media and advertising, elevating content consumption and creation. However, challenges such as maintaining content quality and preventing invalid traffic will persist, necessitating a proactive approach for ensuring campaign integrity. The

maturation of retail media networks in the APAC region will become a significant revenue stream for major retailers and e-commerce platforms, emphasizing the need for advertisers to focus on quality, standardization, and transparency. Automation will play a pivotal role in crafting effective campaigns, allowing advertisers to adapt to rapidly evolving channels and optimize outcomes in a dynamic media environment. Lastly, embracing holistic measurement strategies that consider the evolving complexities of the APAC media landscape will be crucial for marketers to navigate and succeed in this fragmented and ever-changing space.

Pierluigi Cau, Regional Director, Field Services APAC, GitHub

The developer community in Singapore is among the fastest-growing in the world, experiencing a 39% year-over-year increase in developers building on GitHub, as highlighted in our 2023 State of the Octoverse report. If this growth continues – coupled with the ascent of AI-powered developer tools like GitHub Copilot – Singapore’s developers could significantly boost the national economy. In fact, our own research found that AI developer tools could boost global GDP by 1.5 trillion USD. This trajectory will not only propel Singapore toward smart nation excellence but also solidify its position as a leading digital hub. By empowering its thriving developer community to build at a pace 55% faster and beyond with generative AI tools, Singapore is set to supercharge its digital economy in 2024.

Our Octoverse report also revealed that, despite its relatively small population, Singapore continues to punch above its weight, with its developer community ranking tenth globally in contributions to generative AI projects on GitHub. Developers in Singapore are clearly positioning the nation for substantial longer-term gains, enabling Singapore to stand tall among global giants in the age of AI. Looking ahead to 2024, this indicates that we’ll witness Singapore gearing up to become a powerhouse in AI, creating social and economic impact. Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0 is already setting the stage for success with plans to triple the number of AI practitioners in the country to 15,000 to meet growing AI demands.

Varoon Raghavan, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder, Princeton Digital Group

Generative AI is extremely compute and storage intensive, hence the technology will drive robust demand for data centre capacity.

We will see operators embracing new high-density design and architecture concepts tailored to the unique needs of AI applications, as an effort to offer specialized and scalable data center capacity for AI workloads.

In addition, in adopting new technologies such as Generative AI, the industry cannot afford to ignore climate impact. The need to efficiently support advanced technologies will also be balanced by demonstrating a strong commitment to environmental responsibility and sustainability, navigating a path toward a more resource-efficient and sustainable digital future.

Angie Tay, EVP and Group Chief Operating Officer, TDCX

The goal of making everything ‘better, faster, easier’ is pushing businesses to keep their IT and innovation plans squarely in focus. As technological advancements grow and attention spans shrink, customer journeys and experiences are emerging as key priorities for businesses determining their approach to technology adoption.

In this backdrop, here are the key trends that will drive customer experience in the new year:

Increased competition for goldfish attention spans

It is said that the growing ownership and dependence among consumers on multiple devices resulting in shrinking attention spans. For companies, declining attention spans mean that they only have one shot at retaining that attention and leaving a good impression at the same time. Technology plays an important role here as it is the first touch point in providing a positive brand experience.

Sentiment-driven CX becomes more viable

Sentiment analytics empowers businesses to track and to react to the emotional state of customers at each stage of their journey. While this is not new, the progress in technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) is making it easier to detect such emotions in real time. The insight can be used to provide tailored responses to individual customers, such as whether to channel them to automated channels or a human agent. Being aware of whether a customer is enthusiastic about a recent purchase or frustrated due to poor customer service allows for more informed choices, such as determining whether it’s the right time to ask them to leave a review or reach out to make amends. A deeper understanding of how sentiment affects loyalty, satisfaction and advocacy scores will be core to business growth strategies in 2024, helping to build brand preference and loyalty.

Embracing the AI colleague

The age of having AI as colleagues is dawning upon us. As companies embrace AI, a key question remains – how do they see the role of humans and why is this important? A question that is particularly relevant in CX where it is fundamentally about connecting with customers and keeping them happy.

Think of an anxious customer who needs to visit a sick relative abroad but cannot find an available flight, or an e-commerce business owner who is facing issues with their payment gateway. These are high-tension moments which make or break the brand promise. In such situations, a chatbot will struggle to empathize with the urgency of the situation. Hence, we believe strongly in a human-led collaboration with AI for greater outcomes. We are working with our clients to help them leverage generative AI through our consulting arm TDCX AI. One of the ways we use AI is to create tailored CX journeys and targeted marketing strategies that are based on comprehensive analysis of customer data.

Tapping specialist providers

With CX increasingly becoming the make-or-break factor in customer relationships, more companies are prioritizing their efforts in this area. However, as we have established, it is an uphill task, especially with the number of touch

points available to customers. Hence, to manage this challenge more effectively, there is a trend towards outsourcing CX needs to certified as companies recognize the challenges in providing omnichannel customer experience while maintaining the human touch – which remains irreplaceable.

This is something we at TDCX place great emphasis on. We are firm believers in the power of the human touch in creating an exceptional brand experience and the customer loyalty it creates. Hence, our service representatives undergo extensive training across both soft and hard skills continually, ensuring that our employees resolve customer issues effectively and efficiently. Apart from gaining deep CX expertise that would have taken time to build, companies also enjoy cost benefits and freeing up scarce resources to focus on their core capabilities.

Jaideep Malhotra, President – Asia Pacific & Japan, Tech Data

Technology distributors are driving growth in the channel and IT ecosystems by simplifying complexity, bridging widening skill gaps, accelerating new technology adoption, and streamlining go-to-market strategies. In this backdrop, here is our 2024 outlook for Asia Pacific & Japan based on findings from our 2023 Direction of Technology report:

1. Growth is on the horizon: Acknowledging a decline in channel revenue expectations in the past 12 months due to the challenging economic environment, 79% of APJ respondents remain optimistic about future revenue growth. This outlook is attributed to portfolio flexibility and the proactive approach of partners in meeting market demands, with 62% of partners intending to expand their technology and solutions offerings.
2. High-growth technologies will remain key business drivers: The transformative potential of high-growth technologies is evident in the partner community. 40% of partners are strategically expanding their portfolios to offer AI/ML solutions in the next two years and further align with the escalating demands for advanced solutions. Additionally, cybersecurity and infrastructure are at the top of consumer purchasing decisions with the former being the top technology sold for 63% partners in 2023.
3. Partner business models will rebalance towards services: In addition to evolving portfolios, partners are also adapting their business models to meet market demands and end-user needs. Services are increasingly taking an important share in APJ partners’ business models – from only 12% in 2023, the selling of professional services is expected to continue growing over the next three years, rising to 60% by 2026.
4. Ramped up capabilities will propel businesses forward: Increased financial flexibility will help APJ partners navigate increased competition and margin pressures, which have emerged as key challenges for partners. They are also confronted with credit and financial scalability challenges, driven by growing demands from customers and end-users for credit and financing options.

Joe Ong, Vice President and General Manager of ASEAN, Hitachi Vantara

According to Hitachi Vantara’s Modern Data Infrastructure Dynamics report, the majority of business leaders anticipate a doubling of data storage needs by 2025, and most express concern that their current infrastructure will not scale to meet the impending demand. In short, current legacy infrastructure is crumbling from the immense volume of data today, resulting in heightened complexity, unmanaged data, and increased security concerns, among various other issues.

As emerging technologies continue to contribute to the surge in data volume in 2024 and even into 2025, businesses must adopt robust data management strategies that utilize next-generation infrastructure solutions to extract value from data. This includes the implementation of a single unified data ecosystem that allows seamless integration into existing infrastructure to address all environments with simplicity, and scale across diverse applications. Implementing one data platform to manage all applications will enable complete visibility and interoperability of enterprise data to properly manage and maximize the full potential of this data.

Felix Berndt, Director – Sales for Asia Pacific, Paessler AG

Firstly, the importance of physical IT infrastructures will grow as cloud adoption soars.
As businesses increase the number of systems in their IT networks, improved visibility, customisation, and greater levels of control across IT infrastructures will become progressively more important. Given that it is impossible to keep up with every new product launch in today’s age of technological innovation, the ability to extend the capabilities of existing products becomes critical. The importance of physical IT infrastructure, hence, cannot be overstated.

Given that IT networks are the central nervous systems of businesses, watching out for cyber threats will remain crucial. As cyber-attacks grow in scale and sophistication, the impact on IT networks is clear – any security strategies will need to align and perform with the deployed products and solutions. This will be especially important given that businesses will continue to expand their IT capabilities next year as they look to retain talent and evolve hybrid work models.

Furthermore, as IT landscapes grow more complex, leaders will require an ‘umbrella overview’ across their legacy infrastructure, cloud systems, and OT environments. With this in place, decision-makers can rest easy knowing they are one step ahead of cybercriminals, even in unpredictable environments.

Thirdly, observability will Excellerate customer experiences. While most IT managers already have existing predictive monitoring software in place, observability can add to them by allowing managers to understand the deeper connections between their systems. Monitoring enables us to look at potential areas where common issues could occur while observability looks at the unknowns. IT managers who are able to look at extending existing system capabilities even as they fire-fight everyday issues will stay one step ahead of the competition. Transparency is going to be a key here as it will offer a complete overview of communications with customers like never before.

Fourthly, an AI-Human hybrid will mean the best of both worlds. With IDC seeing 80% CIOs harnessing AI by 2028, it’s important to remember that technology exists to empower IT administrators, not to take over their jobs. The human administrator is the most intelligent part of any system. Whilst monitoring software will provide improved and sharper suggestions, the experience and discretion of IT managers is what will help maximize value delivery out of new technologies and not the other way around.

Finally, IT Monitoring will become key to ESG practices. At Paessler, we see sustainability emerge as one of the top three priorities for businesses in the ASEAN region over the next three years – as ESG audits and reports become more commonplace, enterprises will need to be able to justify the environmental costs of business processes while understanding how they can strike a balance between performance and functional power. Monitoring will be enormously beneficial in answering these questions as it can help organizations understand exactly what resources are being consumed, what benefits are being provided, as well as areas for possible reduction.

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The new Redmagic 9 Pro smartphone is now available to buy, the handset starts at $649 for the Sleet Model, and the Snowfall model which comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage starts at $799.

As a reminder, the handset comes with a 6.8 inch AMOLED display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a Full HD+ resolution of 2480 x 1116 pixels, The display features a 120 Hz refresh rate.

The Redmagic 9 Pro comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 mobile processor and the handset comes with a range of different RAM and storage options. These include 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.

The device is equipped with a range of high-end cameras, which include three cameras on the rear of the handset and a single camera on the front. On the rear of the device, there is a 50-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera, and a 2 2-megapixel macro camera. On the front of the device, there is a 16-megapixel camera that is designed for making video calls and for taking selfies.

The new Redmagic 9 Pro smartphone is now available to order with prices starting at $649, you can find out more information over at the Redmagic website at the link below.

Source Redmagic, GSM Arena

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After announcing its new multimodal AI model Gemini last week, Google is making several announcements today to enable developers to build with it. 

When first announced, Google said that Gemini will come in three different versions, each tailored to a different size or complexity requirement. In order from largest to smallest, Gemini is available in Ultra, Pro, and Nano versions. Gemini Nano has already seen use in Android in the Pixel 8 Pro and Google Bard is also already using a specialized version of Gemini Pro.  

RELATED CONTENT: Google’s Duet AI for Developers is now generally available

Today, Google is announcing that developers can use Gemini Pro through the Gemini API. Initial features that developers can leverage include function calling, embeddings, semantic retrieval, custom knowledge grounding, and chat functionality, the company explained. 

There are two main ways to work with Gemini Pro: Google AI Studio and Vertex AI on Google Cloud. Google AI Studio is a web-based developer tool that is easy to get started with. It has a free quota that allows up to 60 requests per minute and offers quickstart templates to enable developers to get started.

Vertex AI on Google Cloud is a machine learning platform that Google says is sort of a step up from Google Studio AI in terms of complexity, where developers can fully customize Gemini and access benefits like full data control and integration with other Google Cloud features to support security, safety, privacy, governance, and compliance. 

Currently, it will be free to use Gemini in Vertex AI at the same rate limit as the free quota of Google AI Studio until it reaches general availability next year. Once generally available, inputs will cost $0.00025 for 1000 characters and $0.0025 per image. 

According to Google, some of the more complex capabilities enabled by working in Vertex AI include the ability to augment Gemini with company data and build search and conversational agents in a low-code environment.

Currently, Gemini Pro accepts text as input and also outputs text, but for developers wanting to experiment with images, there is a dedicated Gemini Pro Vision endpoint that also accepts images along with text in inputs, and outputs text.  

Looking forward to the future, developers can anticipate Google to launch Gemini Ultra early next year, which is a larger model that is suited for complex tasks. The company is also working to bring Gemini to the Chrome and Firebase developer platforms.

In addition, another announcement the company made today is the release of the next generation of Google’s image-generation model, Imagen 2. It is now available for all Vertex AI customers on Google’s allowlist. 

Imagen 2 enables the creation of “high-quality, photorealistic, high-resolution, aesthetically pleasing” images using natural language prompts. New features in this iteration include text rendering to create text overlays on images, logo generation, and visual question and answering for caption generation. 

The core function of a VPN is to hide a user’s real IP address while keeping data safe. Both CyberGhost and ExpressVPN achieve this goal. While both VPNs share some commonalities, they each have unique features.

Encryption

VPNs encrypt user data by passing it through encryption tunnels to turn readable information into scrambled ciphertext that can only be understood if someone has the corresponding key. This process is important to the added security VPNs bring to customers and depending on the encryption technique used, it can make or break the security capabilities of a given VPN.

CyberGhost and ExpressVPN use AES-256 encryption—the gold standard for VPN encryption—because it is nearly uncrackable with current technology. Both VPNs also employ ChaCha20 encryption in their lightweight VPN protocols as it provides a significant increase in speed without sacrificing security.

VPN Protocols

When your device makes a connection to a VPN server, it does so based on a set of instructions to ensure speed, privacy and stability. These instructions are called VPN protocols and they can affect performance as much as they do security. Using a safe and fast VPN protocol is important for VPNs looking for an edge in the market.

CyberGhost and ExpressVPN both use OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols, which are reliable and have their uses for different scenarios. OpenVPN is known to excel in security and its open-source nature allows its code to be monitored by savvy users to identify bugs or exploits. IKEv2 is primarily used on mobile phones or on devices that constantly switch networks and it provides decent security but much faster speed.

Users looking to maximize speed in their VPN usage have the option of the Lightway protocol with ExpressVPN or the open-source WireGuard protocol with CyberGhost. ExpressVPN created Lightway which offers similar speeds as WireGuard but with added security.

Lightway also supports obfuscation which can mask VPN usage and make it easier to bypass VPN blocking from companies or governments—giving ExpressVPN an advantage over CyberGhost for streaming or users in regions, such as China, where using VPNs are forbidden.

DNS Blocking

DNS blocking software is used by both ExpressVPN and CyberGhost to block known IP addresses that contain malware, trackers and ads. ExpressVPN users gain access to the Threat Manager tool for domain name server (DNS) blocking as long as they are on Android, iOS, Mac, Linux or using the ExpressVPN Aircove router. CyberGhost customers can activate the “block content” feature within security settings to block ads and malware. This feature is available only on MacOS, Windows, Android and the CyberGhost private browser.

Antivirus

CyberGhost provides Windows users with full access to Intego Antivirus software, which comes with all the features you would expect in a premium antivirus solution. Combined with the aforementioned DNS blocker, users could potentially treat CyberGhost as a full security solution which could be cost-effective for individuals or small businesses looking to beef up security at a competitive price—given they are on the Windows platform.

Kill Switch

Whenever an internet connection is interrupted, most devices or PCs are programmed to reestablish a connection automatically. This becomes a problem for VPN users if a VPN connection gets disrupted and the device decides to connect to an unencrypted source, possibly exposing your data and identity. This occurrence is known as a DNS leak.

Kill switches are designed to prevent DNS leaks by cutting your internet connection completely when your VPN connection drops until the VPN-protected connection is available again. CyberGhost and ExpressVPN each provide kill switches and also have built-in DNS leak protection.

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