COMMENTARY When I began my career, the security operations center (SOC) analyst role seemed like an exciting entry point into a promising career. And for me, it was. However, the job is increasingly perceived as thankless and high-stress, filled with repetitive tasks, high stakes, and limited opportunities for professional growth.  High turnover and talent shortages are common, so if businesses want to retain skilled analysts and appeal to the next generation of talent, the SOC role needs a serious rebrand.  Why SOC Roles Are Losing Their Appeal I won’t sugarcoat it: The SOC Tier I analyst role is incredibly challenging. In a typical day, analysts receive thousands of alerts, many of which are false positives.  This constant flood of data leaves analysts struggling to sift through the noise and focus on real threats, a task that demands both accuracy and a clear rationale for every action taken. Dismissing an alert too quickly risks missing a critical event, while escalating a low-risk alert could divert resources away from more urgent priorities. This pressure, coupled with the fear of making mistakes that could affect the team or your own credibility, often leads to burnout. The pressure, the sheer volume of alerts, and the feeling of always being under scrutiny make this role uniquely taxing. Another significant issue I’ve encountered is the lack of growth opportunities. With so much time dedicated to the constant alerts, analysts rarely have time to develop new skills. Despite the extensive training and certifications many analysts bring, they’re often stuck with monotonous tasks like reviewing phishing emails, limiting exposure to broader infrastructure or skills required for senior roles.  This lack of growth and evolution leads to disengagement and, eventually, many talented analysts leave the role entirely. Leveraging AI and Career Development to Transform SOC Jobs The key to transforming the status quo for SOC analysts lies in reimagining these positions to make them more dynamic, rewarding, and sustainable.  One solution is thoughtfully integrating AI to enhance — not replace — human expertise. By doing so, organizations can: Automatically resolve false positives, allowing SOC analysts to focus on more critical, actionable alerts Automate repetitive tasks that can be time consuming, like threat intelligence enrichment, false positive filtering, and alert triage prioritization  Provide 24/7 monitoring to alleviate the strain of on-call shifts and cover gaps by allowing AI to investigate and escalate alerts Triage the flood of alerts to surface only the most critical and relevant issues, empowering SOC analysts to proactively threat hunt rather than only react to alerts  These applications of AI not only reduce the workload but help prevent human error, which is more likely when analysts are overwhelmed by large volumes of data.  But AI alone doesn’t fix everything. While AI can free up analysts’ time by automating many entry-level tasks, businesses must then provide the appropriate structure and growth opportunities to align with these changes.  To help SOC analysts grow and avoid stagnation, while also providing the necessary support, businesses should do the following: Provide mentorship opportunities after taking steps to ensure senior analysts aren’t bogged down with the same repetitive tasks as junior analysts. In many cases I found that no one on the team had bandwidth for anything beyond alert response.  Invest in training and upskilling so analysts can perform more sophisticated tasks and advance in their careers rather than becoming pigeonholed in low-level tasks. Implement regular evaluations to assess the well-being and development needs of SOC analysts. These evaluations are commonplace in the public sector, but I’ve rarely encountered them in the corporate world.  Foster a culture of continuous improvement throughout the organization, empowering all team members to seek out new skills and opportunities. Secure a permanent seat for security in strategic decision-making. SOC teams are often seen as blockers and are typically the last to learn about key business changes. By integrating security early, security teams can influence strategies, ensuring that protocols are built in from the start and reducing future risks. Investing in Tools, Training, and the Future of SOC Roles Budget constraints and organizational inertia often prevent companies from investing in the tools and training needed to make analyst roles more meaningful and sustainable.  However, the cost of not investing is far greater — high turnover leads to gaps in security coverage, increased vulnerability to cyberattacks, lost institutional knowledge, and longer incident response times. Plus finding, hiring, and training replacements only consumes more time and resources. The solution lies in rethinking the SOC analyst role — embracing AI to reduce stress and improve efficiency while providing better support and growth opportunities. Forward-thinking businesses that face these challenges head-on will be better equipped with the highly skilled, motivated analysts ready to tackle the threats of the future. I want to see SOC analysts succeed. These days, I love that I’m able to help SOC analysts as a solutions engineer, working with them to implement and adopt tools to alleviate the stress and alert fatigue that can come from working in a SOC.  Companies that fail to address these issues risk losing not only their analysts but also their security edge against attackers. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI is extending access to its side-by-side digital editing space, Canvas, to all ChatGPT users and adding new features, the company announced today in a livestream, the fourth of its “12 Days of OpenAI” holiday-themed announcements. Canvas, which was announced in October, was previously available only to paying ChatGPT Plus, Teams, Edu and Enterprise subscribers. Available on desktop web browsers, it converts ChatGPT’s traditional interface, with a conversation at the top and text entry box at the bottom, into a left-hand sidebar, and on the right side of the chat session screen, adds a new space for the content the user is working on — such as a code block for an application or a text document. When a user converses with ChatGPT and asks for changes to the content on the right sidebar, it will appear automatically there with the changes implemented, rather than generating a whole new text response in the traditional interface. Canvas can also make suggestions for text and code, which it will implement immediately.  Canvas added to GPT-4o Starting today, Canvas will be integrated into GPT-4o, eliminating the need to toggle to GPT-4o with Canvas on the model picker. Canvas will automatically open for some prompts or pasted text. It is available only on the web version or the Windows app of ChatGPT. With the wider release, OpenAI also updated Canvas to run Python code, support more text pasting, and be launchable in custom GPTs.  Users can paste Python code to ChatGPT which may automatically open Canvas. Previously, it didn’t let people see if the code that was just generated or edited works. They needed to copy the code again and run it in their own systems. Allowing Canvas to run code brings it closer to Anthropic’s Claude Artifacts, which already allowed people to see a sample webpage from their code.  During a demo, OpenAI showed Canvas can also create and preview graphics from code alone so developers or analysts can adjust the formulas or data before finalizing a chart. Canvas also has a feature that can find bugs in the code and make suggestions to fix them.  Custom GPTs with Canvas For those that create custom GPTs, Canvas will be integrated by default, though users can still define the parameters of when and if Canvas will open for prompts on the assistant they created.  But for existing custom GPTs, OpenAI did not make Canvas a default to avoid disrupting how these already work. Users can add Canvas as a feature to their GPTs through the settings of the custom GPT.  Adding Canvas makes custom GPTs as powerful and useful as the base ChatGPT, allowing for more features specific to customers’ needs.  OpenAI said it plans “to continue making improvements and launching new features available in Canvas in the near term.” Features like Canvas and Artifacts are indicative of the interface battleground model-makers find themselves in as users look for more useful features to keep using the chat platforms.    source

California’s new law establishing various requirements for autonomous vehicles is something other states should pay close attention to — especially because the Golden State’s policies may become a de facto mandate for manufacturers due to its market size, says Vineet Dubey at Custodio Dubey. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Ten months after previewing it with eye-catching, vividly lifelike videos, OpenAI finally released Sora, its AI video generator model, to the public on Monday. However, in the two days since, the debut has been less than picture-perfect: Early-adopter AI filmmakers have reported surprisingly inconsistent and unrealistic results from Sora, especially compared to leading rival AI video creation tools from the likes of Runway, Luma, Hailuo, Kling, and Tencent’s new Hunyuan. Others have taken issue with OpenAI’s content restrictions prohibiting violence and explicit content, even with cartoonish or unserious visuals. And OpenAI has now closed off Sora account creation temporarily to deal with unanticipated high demand, according to a post by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on X yesterday. Sora’s bumpy rollout already has some stalwart AI critics such as public relations agent Ed Zitron suggesting that it was a “bait and switch” to earn OpenAI positive press coverage despite the company’s being technically unable to actually provide the model in a reliable inference to the masses. Wide-ranging reactions, from impressed to disappointed Regardless, those who have been able to access the tool starting this week (or earlier, when OpenAI pre-seeded it to selected alpha and beta testers) report a wide range of experiences, from impressive to disappointing, especially given the price point for accessing it: $20 a month for 50 generations through ChatGPT Plus subscriptions, or $200 a month for unlimited generations through ChatGPT Pro. “Nope, Sora is not there yet!” wrote creator Umesh on X. “HailuoAI seems far better. I just tried four generations with varying prompts to achieve what HailuoAI did so easily, but none of them worked.” Similarly, artist PurzBeats posted on X saying Sora was “[p]robably only worth it on the Pro plan,” and that they experienced “[v]ery strange and choppy motion on everything but the subject” in their generations, among other complaints. “OpenAI has been lying to us this whole time!” wrote independent filmmaker el cine on X. “It loses in every way, most of the clips not usable and it doesn’t even follow prompts properly,” they noted, posting clips of a generation with people walking backwards with their legs facing opposite their torsos and heads. Ultimately, they concluded: “Think twice before going for the Pro plan.” Others have been more impressed with the results, including futurist podcaster Ed Krassenstein, who called the model “amazing” in a post on X based on his experiences making quick clips with it. He posted a four-minute long Sora-generated film by another creator, KNGMKRlabs, that shows cavemen in a documentary-style program called “The First Humans” which to my eyes looks incredibly realistic and compelling. A highly competitive market leaves less room for error and tinkering Nonetheless, as AI video generators work to out-compete one another for users, with new features that make Hollywood-caliber filmmaking available to the masses, Sora’s debut seems challenged to say the least. And for actual Hollywood studios that OpenAI and rivals are reportedly courting, the rivals may currently have the edge. Already, for example, Runway has inked a deal for an unspecified amount with Lionsgate to provide the John Wick studio with custom AI models trained on its catalog of 20,000+ films and TV shows. Especially for those looking to shell out the money for the “Pro” subscription tier, the question is whether Sora is worth it now, or whether other AI generators with similar or less-expensive pricing structures are a better deal. Sora’s current output and relatively high entry price points (it offers no free tier, unlike other AI video generators) may make it more challenging to find widespread adoption. In response to these reactions, an OpenAI spokesperson emailed VentureBeat the following statement taking from Sora’s official launch blog post: “The current model still has room for improvement. It may struggle to simulate the physics of a complex scene, and may not comprehend specific instances of cause and effect (for example: a cookie might not show a mark after a character bites it). The model may also confuse spatial details included in a prompt, such as discerning left from right, or struggle with precise descriptions of events that unfold over time, like specific camera trajectories.“ OpenAI’s spokesperson also noted: “We’ve seen significant demand for Sora.” source

YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat remain widely used among U.S. teens; some say they’re on these sites almost constantly Two teenage boys use their smartphones in Vail, Colorado. (Robert Alexander/Getty Images) Pew Research Center conducted this study to better understand teens’ use of digital devices, social media and other online platforms. The Center conducted an online survey of 1,391 U.S. teens from Sept. 18 to Oct. 10, 2024, through Ipsos. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel. The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey was weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories. Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and the survey methodology­­­. This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants. Amid national concerns about technology’s impact on youth, many teens are as digitally connected as ever. Most teens use social media and have a smartphone, and nearly half say they’re online almost constantly, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 conducted Sept. 18-Oct. 10, 2024. YouTube tops the list of the online platforms we asked about in our survey. Nine-in-ten teens report using the site, slightly down from 95% in 2022. TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat remain widely used among teens. Roughly six-in-ten teens say they use TikTok and Instagram, and 55% say the same for Snapchat. Facebook and X use have steeply declined over the past decade. Today, 32% of teens say they use Facebook. This is down from 71% in 2014-15, though the share of teens who use the site has remained stable in recent years. And 17% of teens say they use X (formerly Twitter) – about half the share who said this a decade ago (33%), and down from 23% in 2022. Roughly one-quarter of teens (23%) say they use WhatsApp, up 6 percentage points since 2022. And 14% of teens use Reddit, a share that has remained stable over the past few years. We asked about Threads, launched by parent company Meta in 2023, for the first time this year. Only 6% of teens report using it. How often do teens visit online platforms? Debates about teen social media use often center on how much time teens spend on these platforms. As lawmakers explore potential regulations, our 2023 survey found a majority of Americans support time limits for minors on social media. Our current survey asked teens how often they use five platforms: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. Overall, 73% of teens say they go on YouTube daily, making YouTube the most widely used and visited platform we asked about. This share includes 15% who describe their use as “almost constant.” About six-in-ten visit TikTok daily. This includes 16% who report being on it almost constantly. Roughly half of teens say they go on Instagram or Snapchat every day, including about one-in-ten who say they’re on each of these platforms almost constantly. The share of teens who say they use Instagram almost constantly has increased slightly, from 8% in 2023 to 12% today.   Relatively few teens report using Facebook daily (20%). Across all five platforms, one-third of teens use at least one of these sites almost constantly. These findings are largely similar to what we’ve found the past two years. By gender As in previous surveys, teen girls are more likely than boys to say they use TikTok almost constantly (19% vs. 13%). Inversely, teen boys are more likely than girls to use YouTube this often. While 19% of boys say they use it almost constantly, that share drops to 11% among girls. Unlike last year, similar shares of boys (13%) and girls (12%) today say they use Snapchat almost constantly. There are also no gender differences in the shares of teens who report using Instagram and Facebook almost constantly. By race and ethnicity Roughly one-quarter of Black (28%) or Hispanic (25%) teens say they visit TikTok almost constantly. This share drops to 8% among White teens. Black and Hispanic teens are also more likely than White teens to say they constantly use YouTube or Instagram. There are few to no racial or ethnic differences in the shares visiting Snapchat and Facebook on a near constant basis. How does the use of online platforms differ across demographic groups? While many teens engage with online platforms, usage varies by gender, race and ethnicity, age, and household income. By gender Instagram and TikTok are used more widely by teen girls than teen boys. For example, 66% of girls say they use TikTok, compared with 59% of boys. Instagram use follows a similar pattern (66% vs. 56%). On the other hand, boys are more likely than girls to say they use YouTube (93% vs. 87%). By race and ethnicity Among teens, a larger share of those who are Black (79%) or Hispanic (74%) than White (54%) say they use TikTok. Black and Hispanic teens also stand out compared with White teens in their use of Instagram and X. When it comes to the messaging platform WhatsApp, Hispanic teens are more likely than Black or White teens to say they use it. By age Older teens are more likely than younger teens to use each of the platforms we asked about. Notably, teens ages 15 to 17 are more likely than those ages 13 to 14 say they use Instagram (72% vs. 43%) or Snapchat (63% vs. 44%). Differences are more modest for platforms like YouTube, which most older (92%) and younger (87%) teens use. By household income As was true in prior studies, Facebook remains more commonly used among teens in lower-income households. For example, 45% of teens in households earning less than $30,000 a year say they

According to Forrester’s Business Privacy Survey 2024, 46% of privacy decision-makers in Asia Pacific (APAC) report full compliance with GDPR. However, compliance with the EU’s GDPR alone isn’t sufficient in APAC, where local regulations may impose additional or different requirements. My recent report, “Navigating Privacy Regulations In Asia Pacific,” highlights the key APAC privacy regulations that are most relevant to marketers. APAC Privacy Regulations Differ From GDPR In Three Key Aspects In APAC, local privacy regulations may impose different or additional requirements compared to GDPR. Key ones include: Data localization. GDPR ensures data protection regardless of location but doesn’t mandate specific country storage. APAC regulations like China’s Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) and Vietnam’s Decree on Personal Data Protection (DPDP) require certain data to be stored within their countries. Cross-border data transfers. GDPR allows transfers with adequate protection or explicit consent. China’s PIPL and Vietnam’s DPDP require government approvals and security assessments. Japan’s APPI requires opt-in consent. Legitimate interests. GDPR allows processing for legitimate interests like marketing, provided it doesn’t override individual rights. In APAC, only the Australian Privacy Act and Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act recognize legitimate interests; others require consent. APAC Privacy Regulations Demonstrate Various Levels Of Stringency Many APAC privacy regulations have adopted GDPR-like principles, such as data subject rights, consent requirements, and breach notification obligations. However, the details and stringency vary across the region (see Figure 1).   Navigate Three Key Dimensions That Are Most Relevant To Marketers Marketers should focus on the components of these regulations relevant to consumer engagement and marketing activities. Emphasize the following three key dimensions: Fundamental requirements. To conduct compliant marketing, marketers need to understand APAC regulations’ various requirements around consent and opt-out (including cookies), sensitive data and children’s privacy, data localization and cross-border transfer requirements, and penalties for breaches. Transparency, minimization, and security. Marketers need to follow APAC regulations’ varying requirements on data use transparency, minimization, and data breach notification, which are vital for compliance and consumer trust. Data subject rights. APAC regulations also vary in terms of granting consumers rights to know, access, correct, object, limit, transfer, and delete their data. Some regulations address automated decision-making, which is important for marketing automation and AI. Marketers: Adopt A Proactive Privacy Strategy Understanding the most relevant privacy requirements in APAC and meeting all compliance requirements are only the first steps for the region’s marketers. The goal is to adopt a proactive privacy strategy in marketing, earn customers’ trust, and be truly privacy-first. Forrester clients can access the full report to navigate the region’s complex privacy regulations, benchmark themselves against GDPR, and adopt a proactive, privacy-first marketing strategy. To find out more, schedule a guidance session with me. source

By Matthew Perlman ( December 12, 2024, 5:19 PM EST) — The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation rejected Google’s bid to prevent video-sharing site Rumble from having its antitrust claims over key digital advertising technology included in the consolidated litigation pending against the tech giant in New York…. Law360 is on it, so you are, too. A Law360 subscription puts you at the center of fast-moving legal issues, trends and developments so you can act with speed and confidence. Over 200 articles are published daily across more than 60 topics, industries, practice areas and jurisdictions. A Law360 subscription includes features such as Daily newsletters Expert analysis Mobile app Advanced search Judge information Real-time alerts 450K+ searchable archived articles And more! Experience Law360 today with a free 7-day trial. source

AI rightly has taken center stage in the public cloud platform market, but it’s not the only major transformation underway. First, cloud users are changing the way that they provision and consume cloud services, with serverless-first approaches gaining momentum. Second, sovereignty concerns are carving the market into regional and national components amid trade tensions. Each of these key trends are featured in the public cloud platform evaluative reports, the result of our collaboration over the past year to identity evaluation criteria in a rapidly changing technology environment and assess competitive differentiators. The most recent of our reports, The Forrester Wave™: Public Cloud Platforms, Q4 2024, highlights how hyperscalers are remaking core infrastructure services for the generative AI (genAI) moment with a focus on data, even as they push up the tech stack to reach business users with AI-infused versions of services that operate largely beyond the boundaries of traditional enterprise IT. The Forrester Wave™: Public Cloud Platforms In China, Q3 2024, by Charlie Dai, shows Chinese cloud providers driving platform innovation AI services and foundation model support across several domains. The Forrester Wave™: Public Cloud Platforms In Europe, Q3 2024, by Dario Maisto, puts a spotlight on how European users’ (and their governments’) priorities on sovereignty and sustainability have created an opportunity for Europe-focused cloud providers to offer competitive options up and down the tech stack. Forrester clients have access to the full reports. Here are some key points: The serverless-first (and often only) public cloud is here. Cloud providers and customers have been wrestling with both legacy technologies from data centers and the open-source complexity of cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes and function as a service (FaaS). Today, Kubernetes and FaaS have become implementation details — checklist items for cloud customers who want services that provide a pipeline into nonproprietary open-source-based services but who don’t want or need to put resources into complex platform build-outs and integrations. The Chinese cloud providers are particularly innovative on this front, for example, with serverless machine learning/deep learning and support for mini-app mobile development. Digital sovereignty and cloud sustainability influence cloud procurement in Europe. European regulators are setting the pace on digital sovereignty and cloud sustainability. Here, digital sovereignty moves beyond the cloud infrastructure domain to involve hardware, software, network, and data, each with broader implications. The most obvious example is in-region (or, sometimes, in-country) data centers and supply chain controls. But a cloud provider that offers European operations physically, legally, and logically separated from the rest of the world isn’t necessarily a sovereign cloud vendor, which requires adherence to a mix of regulatory and certification regimes. Cloud sustainability is gaining traction, too, as providers face spiking energy usage from power-hungry genAI services. In both arenas, Europe is set to influence globally. Cloud AI moves from scattershot to orchestrated services. The requirements of genAI and the global scale of public cloud made it inevitable that hyperscalers would dominate the AI boom, albeit with disruptive upstarts and resurgent older tech providers getting into the mix, as well. Our evaluation of cloud provider AI offerings focuses heavily on the infrastructure firepower. We also looked at both AI-assisted TuringBot developer tools for general application development as well as others specifically for developing AI applications and agents. We paid particular attention to genAI-enabling technologies such as retrieval-augmented generation, which is often critical to move foundational models into production. While these services are not all yet generally available, the essentials are there for users who are prepared to accept complexity to achieve genAI results in the near term. For more details, Forrester clients please read the global, Chinese, and European reports and book an inquiry or guidance session to discuss. If you’re not a client, be sure to attend the upcoming Predictions 2025 webinar on January 30. source

Unsurprisingly, lack of skills is cited as the biggest challenge. Issues around data governance and challenges around clear metrics follow the top challenge areas. All of these relate to the lack of experience with AI. As organisations embark on their journeys, they have to learn what is needed to ensure a successful project.  When it comes to failure, leaders contend with issues including privacy or compliance, compared to the followers, where the biggest cause of failure is the inability to access data due to infrastructure restrictions.    Having guardrails in place is key. “Two critical foundations for AI integration at a policy and governance level are that you have trust in your data and that the data is ethically managed,” says Deepak Ramanathan, Vice President of Global Technology Practice at SAS. He continues: “This demonstrates to your team and stakeholders that you are taking the appropriate actions to mitigate risk and liability. When it comes to Responsible AI, that includes not just those potential risks, but also the need to ensure that your models are driving accurate and actionable insights. At its core, Responsible AI begins with good policy and that flows onto rigorous technical execution, ensuring good governance is embedded at the heart of ‘AI Leaders’ systems.”  source

Humans have long been fascinated by the power of the sun. Since as early as the 7th Century B.C., humans used magnifying glass to spark fires with sunlight. Later, we used mirrors to light torches.  But if you get too close to the power of the sun while continuing to use outdated methods and tools, you’re apt to crash and burn. Just ask Icarus. Our curiosity with the sun has led us to work continuously to develop solar power and make harnessing the sun’s power a reality. Nowadays, you can use solar power to run your entire home. It can be used to clean water or power electric vehicles, trains and even spacecraft. It is even being used to power planes that can fly around the world. A sun-powered future is bright and sustainable Today, solar energy is one of the world’s cleanest, most sustainable energy resources. And decentralized solar power is currently the most cost-effective option for energy generation, compared to wind, gas, and coal.  That’s why SMA Solar Technology, a global energy solutions provider, is on a mission to help make this sustainable, secure, and cost-effective energy supply accessible to everyone worldwide.  Achieving this mission requires solar storage systems and digital solutions that balance energy generation and consumption so customers can share their electricity with other consumers. And rapid innovation is necessary for building these systems in the future. Blinded by the light as a result of aging and complex systems SMA’s manufacturing execution system (MES) was initially built in-house over 40 years ago. As the system continued to develop over the years, it became extremely complex, difficult to maintain, and inefficient. Production downtime resulted in frustrated employees, high logistics costs, unsatisfactory inventory management, and a lack of process transparency. The aging system posed a major challenge to the delivery of the latest solar technology innovations.  The forward-thinking technology company knew that if they were going to be successful in getting solar power into the hands and homes of more customers, they needed their business systems to be more agile and resilient.  Brilliant innovation requires digital transformation  PWC supported SMA in the selection of SAP solutions to achieve the client’s challenging goals. As an implementation and service partner, the SAP Cloud Success Services team supported SMA in its ambitious digital transformation and move to the cloud. Together, they built a comprehensive and scalable global digital business platform. With a cloud foundation that includes SAP S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition integrated with the SAP Digital Manufacturing solution, operations were overhauled and modernized. With the support of SAP’s Cloud Success Services team and PWC, SMA has adopted a flexible cloud roadmap to create a modern framework for the future. This secure framework will help SMA pave the way for the future of energy supply. Digital transformation lights up new horizons With their digital transformation fully underway, SMA is seeing impressive results, boosting supply chain productivity by 15%, improving supply-chain planning costs by 10%, and reducing inventory carrying costs by 10%.  The initiative will also help streamline transportation planning, curb freight spending, and establish a collaborative partner portal. Additionally, the platform’s real-time visibility can help improve order status transparency while supporting connected devices. These outcomes highlight an enhancement in operational efficiency across the organization.  Here comes the sun: Sustainable energy for all SMA now has the digital foundation it needs to support the global energy transition and decarbonization of the planet. They have the right software, processes, services, and data to enable customers to participate in the energy system of tomorrow and today. And they are doing it all in the most sustainable way possible. SMA Solar Technology is an SAP Innovation Awards 2024 finalist. To learn more about the SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Digital Manufacturing, download the pitch deck. source