“State of ITSM in Financial Services“ An InformationWeek Report | Sponsored by TeamDynamix Data from InformationWeek’s State of ITSM in Financial Services Report shows that there’s a wide range of maturity in how ITSM teams are dealing with the unique challenges of supporting technology stacks in today’s financial vertical. While application portfolios grow and tickets mount, ITSM teams remain fairly lean. But they’re not necessarily running efficiently, as they’re forced to cope with legacy ITSM platforms, a low level of automation, and inefficient project management capabilities. Key Findings: 40% of FS ITSM teams support 100 or more applications13% of these ITSM teams service 400 or more applications58% of FS firms manage more than 500 tickets per month40% of FS IT teams struggle with low ITSM maturity43% of FS IT Service Desks identify manual processing as top issue Download this report to see how you compare. Offered Free by: TeamDynamix See All Resources from: TeamDynamix Recommended for Professionals Like You: source

Pretty much all of the tech giants offer cloud storage nowadays. However, you can easily find yourself shelling out serious money to store your digital data. As a more affordable alternative, Koofr is earning some serious plaudits. This innovative platform lets you upload and access your files with no size limit, and you can even hook up your other online accounts. In a unique offer from TechRepublic Academy, you can pick up a lifetime 1TB subscription for only $119.97 with coupon code KOOFR40 to be used at checkout. That’s a massive 85% off. Cloud storage is really an essential tool in running any business. Whether it’s simple spreadsheets, promo videos, company logos or even customer data, having a secure online backup of your files is vital. Putting your files in the cloud also means you can work on any device. About Koofr Cloud Storage Koofr provides these benefits and more. This platform allows you to upload and view files on pretty much any device with a browser. This means you can log in on Windows, macOS, Linux and Chrome laptops along with iOS and Android mobile devices. You can even connect via WebDAV. Koofr’s desktop app makes it easy to manage your data, with smart features like duplicate removal and batch file renaming. The service uses absolutely no trackers, and you can easily connect other online accounts to import your files. Another useful feature for businesses is the ability to share files via custom branded links. This means you can easily go above the file size limit on your email, with the ability to share the same link over and over again. Order today for only $119.97 with code KOOFR40 to get your lifetime 1TB subscription, normally worth $810. Prices and availability are subject to change. source

AI startup Poolside has raised a whopping $500mn — and it still hasn’t even launched a product. Despite the barren release schedule, the company has become an investors’ darling. The new Series B round brings Poolside’s total funding to $626mn. Its valuation now stands at a cool $3bn. The cash magnet is a AI-powered coding. Poolside has developed its own language model, which promises to accelerate software development. The company also boasts two eye-catching co-founders. CEO Jason Warner helped create GitHub Copilot, while CTO Eiso Kant is a serial founder of AI startups. The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! At Poolside, the pair are building three things: foundation models, an API, and a coding assistant. According to Warner and Kant, the tech is currently undergoing “pressure-testing” in “the toughest” office environments. “The enterprise is the proving ground,” they said in a blogpost. “But our goal is over time to make Poolside accessible to anyone in the world who wants to build software.” Poolside is not the the only company with this objective. The market for AI coding assistants has become fiercely competitive, with Copilot at the lead and a range of challengers chasing. The emerging rivals are attracting major capital. August alone saw a $320mn investment in Magic, a $150mn round for Codeium, and a $60mn raise Anysphere. Replit, Augment, Supermaven, Cognition have also recently received big cash injections. Poolside’s Series A adds another eye-watering sum to the sector. The round was led by Bain Capital Ventures, Bloomberg reports. Additional funds came from HSBC Ventures, DST Global, StepStone Group, and Citi Ventures. You can learn more about Poolside first-hand at VDS, one of Europe’s premiere tech events. Poolside’s VP of Operations, Margarida Garcia, is speaking at the show, which takes place in Valencia on October 23 and 24. TNW is a strategic partner at the event. Update (11:00PM CEST, October 3, 2024): A previous version of this article referred to Poolside as a “Paris startup.” This was based on reports that the company had relocated to Paris. Poolside has now confirmed that it remains headquartered in San Francisco. source

Corals at Keppel Bay 珊瑚@吉宝湾 (D04邮区 港湾) From SGD S$1,638,000 简介：位于海滨，1 Keppel Bay Drive, Singapore 098012，俯瞰国王码头，Corals at Keppel Bay（吉宝湾珊瑚）以36个住宅单位分布在11个中低层建筑。 吉宝湾的珊瑚居民不仅可以轻松抵达CBD，乌节路和丰树商业城，而且非常靠近圣淘沙，拉布拉多公园，花柏山，直落布兰雅山公园，肯特里奇公园和霍特公园。 吉宝湾珊瑚岛是第一个具有完全集成智能家居管理系统的开发项目。 地图: 新加坡邮区分布图： 概况： 楼盘名称： Corals at Keppel Bay 开发商： Keppel Land Limited 产权：  99年 完成年份：  2016年 单位数量：  366 楼层数量： 起始总价： 新币 S$1,638,000 每平方英尺起始： 新币S$2,026 卖点：Corals at Keppel Bay的主要特色是它的海滨位置，7个街区可俯瞰风景如画的国王码头。 乘坐汽车和地铁也很容易到达CBD，而丰树商业城就在它的门口。 位于吉宝湾珊瑚湾的居民是亚洲第一个享有全面集成智能家居管理系统的住宅区。 他们的应用程序名为Habitap将把遥控各种家用设备的生活方式和管理私人聚会的宾客名单结合起来。 2公里内学校 拉丁马士小学（Radin Mas Primary School） 布兰雅坡小学（Blangah Rise Primary School） 圣婴女校(客乐)（CHIJ (Kellock)） 主力户型：1 Bedroom2 Bedroom3 Bedroom4 Bedroom4 Bedroom Penthouse1 Bedroom 1室 新币 S$ 1,638,000 起 A1D-Mirror户型 1室 570平方英尺／ 53平方米 25%首付：S$ 409,500/ 75% 贷款：S$ 1,228,500 30年贷款，2%利息，月供：S$ 4,541 2 Bedroom 2室 新币 S$ 1,989,000 起 B1a户型 2室 893平方英尺／ 83平方米 25%首付：S$ 497,250/ 75% 贷款：S$ 1,491,750 30年贷款，2%利息，月供：S$ 5,514 3 Bedroom 3室 新币 S$ 2,637,000 起 C1e户型 3室 1216平方英尺／ 113平方米 25%首付：S$ 659,250/ 75% 贷款：S$ 1,977,750 30年贷款，2%利息，月供：S$ 7,310 3室Deluxe 新币 S$ 2,835,000 起 C2e户型 3室Deluxe 1399平方英尺／ 130平方米 25%首付：S$ 708,750/ 75% 贷款：S$ 2,126,250 30年贷款，2%利息，月供：S$ 7,859 4 Bedroom 4室 新币 S$ D1a户型 4室 2573平方英尺／ 239平方米 25%首付：S$ / 75% 贷款：S$ 30年贷款，2%利息，月供：S$ 4室 新币 S$ D2e户型 4室 2960平方英尺／ 275平方米 25%首付：S$ / 75% 贷款：S$ 30年贷款，2%利息，月供：S$ 4 Bedroom Penthouse 4室阁楼 新币 S$ P1g户型 4室阁楼 4725平方英尺／ 439平方米 25%首付：S$ / 75% 贷款：S$ 30年贷款，2%利息，月供：S$ LinkedIn Email Facebook Twitter WhatsApp 非常媒體 Veri-Media 轉載請務必保留本文鏈接 source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More A pair of researchers at OpenAI has published a paper describing a new type of model — specifically, a new type of continuous-time consistency model (sCM) — that increases the speed at which multimedia including images, video, and audio can be generated by AI by 50 times compared to traditional diffusion models, generating images in nearly a 10th of a second compared to more than 5 seconds for regular diffusion. With the introduction of sCM, OpenAI has managed to achieve comparable sample quality with only two sampling steps, offering a solution that accelerates the generative process without compromising on quality. Described in the pre-peer reviewed paper published on arXiv.org and blog post released today, authored by Cheng Lu and Yang Song, the innovation enables these models to generate high-quality samples in just two steps—significantly faster than previous diffusion-based models that require hundreds of steps. Song was also a leading author on a 2023 paper from OpenAI researchers including former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever that coined the idea of “consistency models,” as having “points on the same trajectory map to the same initial point.” While diffusion models have delivered outstanding results in producing realistic images, 3D models, audio, and video, their inefficiency in sampling—often requiring dozens to hundreds of sequential steps—has made them less suitable for real-time applications. Theoretically, the technology could provide the basis for a near-realtime AI image generation model from OpenAI. As fellow VentureBeat reporter Sean Michael Kerner mused in our internal Slack channels, “can DALL-E 4 be far behind?” Faster sampling while retaining high quality In traditional diffusion models, a large number of denoising steps are needed to create a sample, which contributes to their slow speed. In contrast, sCM converts noise into high-quality samples directly within one or two steps, cutting down on the computational cost and time. OpenAI’s largest sCM model, which boasts 1.5 billion parameters, can generate a sample in just 0.11 seconds on a single A100 GPU. This results in a 50x speed-up in wall-clock time compared to diffusion models, making real-time generative AI applications much more feasible. Reaching diffusion-model quality with far less computational resources The team behind sCM trained a continuous-time consistency model on ImageNet 512×512, scaling up to 1.5 billion parameters. Even at this scale, the model maintains a sample quality that rivals the best diffusion models, achieving a Fréchet Inception Distance (FID) score of 1.88 on ImageNet 512×512. This brings the sample quality within 10% of diffusion models, which require significantly more computational effort to achieve similar results. Benchmarks reveal strong performance OpenAI’s new approach has undergone extensive benchmarking against other state-of-the-art generative models. By measuring both the sample quality using FID scores and the effective sampling compute, the research demonstrates that sCM provides top-tier results with significantly less computational overhead. While previous fast-sampling methods have struggled with reduced sample quality or complex training setups, sCM manages to overcome these challenges, offering both speed and high fidelity. The success of sCM is also attributed to its ability to scale proportionally with the teacher diffusion model from which it distills knowledge. As both the sCM and the teacher diffusion model grow in size, the gap in sample quality narrows further, and increasing the number of sampling steps in sCM reduces the quality difference even more. Applications and future uses The fast sampling and scalability of sCM models open new possibilities for real-time generative AI across multiple domains. From image generation to audio and video synthesis, sCM provides a practical solution for applications that demand rapid, high-quality output. Additionally, OpenAI’s research hints at the potential for further system optimization that could accelerate performance even more, tailoring these models to the specific needs of various industries. source

Impact on vendor trust and certification verification This case highlights the vulnerabilities that organizations face when relying on third-party certifications. The fraudulent certification raises serious concerns for CIOs and IT leaders who depend on certified data centers to ensure fault tolerance and security for critical data. “With this episode, organizations will have to go deeper to verify the reported credentials, including certifications, of a new vendor on the block. A cursory check and balance on the name of the certifying authority will help to know the likely authenticity of the certification claim,” said Abhishek Gupta, CIO at leading Indian satellite broadcaster DishTV. CIOs often rely on multiple sources when evaluating new data center partners. Client references, physical site visits, and informal validation through the CIO community are part of the process. “Even today, IT leaders try to evaluate the actual performance of a new prospect before onboarding as a data center partner,” Gupta added. “While certifications are important for evaluating the level of fault tolerance, additional measures, such as verifying the certifying authority’s legitimacy, are likely to gain more importance​.” “Tier certifications for data centers have long been used as a benchmark for reliability and resiliency,” said Saurabh Gugnani, director and head of cyber defense, IAM, and application security at Dutch professional services firm TMF Group.​ “However, if a certified datacenter fails to meet the promised levels of service or experiences a major outage, it could affect the credibility of these certifications.” The certification authenticity forms a smaller part of overall final decision-making, said Gupta. According to him, this episode shouldn’t change the evaluation methodology.  source

By Chris Villani ( October 24, 2024, 11:05 AM EDT) — Massachusetts’ highest court on Thursday found that website operators’ use of tracking software like Meta Pixel and Google Analytics does not violate the state’s wiretap law, drawing a sharp dissent from one justice who said the legislature will now need to “correct” the court’s mistake…. 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

Retail is a highly competitive business that increasingly uses technology to improve customer satisfaction and efficiency of internal processes. Robots, AI, data analytics, and more are enabling retailers to work smarter and faster, but their efforts aren’t perfect yet as evidenced by the amount of clearance and destroyed inventory that previous solutions were supposed to help avoid.   “Emerging technologies like AI-powered customer support, automation, and real-time data analytics have become game changers for retailers,” says Tim Peters, CMO at omnichannel customer experience solutions provider Enghouse Systems.   There’s also a positive impact on customer experience and loyalty when tech makes things run smoother and faster.  “As customers increasingly expect personalized experiences, emerging technologies like AI and machine learning allow retailers to predict customer preferences and deliver personalized recommendations,” Peters says. “A study by Salesforce found that 60% of consumers expect personalized experiences based on their past behavior. These technologies help retailers anticipate customer needs and improve loyalty by making the shopping experience more engaging and intuitive.”  But, of course, there are challenges. One of the main ones is integrating new technologies with existing systems.   Related:How AI is Reshaping Retail “While emerging tech offers significant advantages, the costs of integration and ensuring compatibility with legacy systems can be complex,” Peters says. “Additionally, scalability remains a challenge as the needs of retailers evolve with customer expectations.”  Another challenge arises when tech adds friction to customer experiences.  “While technology can streamline operations, an overreliance on automation without human touch can sometimes backfire,” Peters says. “Consumers still value human interaction, especially in complex support scenarios. It’s crucial for retailers to balance automation with human agents, particularly in areas that require empathy and nuanced decision-making.”  Competitive Advantages for All  Companies of all sizes benefit from greater organizational efficiency, and tech has been the fuel powering digital transformation. For example, Lowes uses AR for home improvement shopping while Sephora uses it for virtual make up try-ons. Walmart is stepping up automation in its battle against Amazon.  But smaller retailers are benefiting, too. For example, western footwear, apparel, and accessories brand Tecovas uses AI to improve their SMS targeting strategy and drive more revenue. Using AI tools from AI-powered SMS and email marketing platform Attentive, the company has been able to convert more site visitors, improving incremental revenue and realizing a 14X ROI improvement for the brand.  Related:5 Key Ways AI and ML Can Transform Retail Business Operations “I am a one-person CRM team, so anytime I can shift some of my resources to AI and ML, it is a win for me. For instance, building the correct segments is time-consuming and [prone] to error. Audience AI, a feature of AI Pro, takes the guesswork out of identifying and communicating with our customers how they want to receive messages and delivers the results we are looking for,” says Megan Edwards, senior manager, CRM at Tecovas, in an email interview. “We expect this to be a key success driver with the upcoming holiday season to cut through the noise by creating messages based on [the] individual rather than batch and blast tactics. We will be weaving AI into our holiday marketing strategy heavily this year, and we are looking forward to the results on the SMS channel.”  As with many small retail businesses, marketing tends to involve a lot of trial and error which translates to time and costs.   “We’ve been extremely pleased with the uptick in our site visits and incremental revenue since activating AI, and we didn’t have to spend a lengthy amount of time determining what raised our numbers,” Edwards says.  Related:’Tis the Season for Autonomous Retail KPMG considers GenAI a “game changer” in the consumer and retail sector. According to the company’s recent report, GenAI can drive commercial effectiveness, operational efficiency and cost optimization. It can also be used for price optimization, better ad targeting, more engaging product descriptions and a more personalized customer experience.  Accelerating Fulfillment and Delivery With AI  When Matt Naslund, vice president and head of solutions at Mytra worked for personal styling service provider Stitch Fix, one of the things they were able to deploy fastest were autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), though design time to deployment took two years and the robots could only operate on the ground floor. At large-scale automation solution provider Mytra, he and others at the company are accelerating deployment in distribution centers and warehouses with modular “cells” the size of pallets that can be automatically configured and moved. This accelerates fulfillment and delivery and addresses the problem of demand peaks and valleys.  “One of our customer’s last large-scale automation took them five years from the time they started the concept to deployment,” Naslund says. “For context, the pandemic, was four and a half years, and the amount of volatility that the supply chain saw over the four years was insane. We saw inventory gluts, inventory shortages, and panic buying. Then you saw a warehouse shortage capacity, everybody’s panicking to get warehouses. Then, they suddenly have too much space.”  The pandemic years were arguably the worst time for a long-term rollout, given the constant and dramatic changes happening at the time, from lockdowns to supply chain chaos.   Stitch Fix’s use of AMRs allowed the company to improve operational efficiency and expand into new markets with clothes for men and children, in addition to its traditional audience — women. Stitch Fix also launched in the UK.  “All of a sudden, our footprint, our landscape, our ordering, our inventory, everything looked completely different,” Naslund says.   The biggest benefits of automation are the ability to get products out the door faster, labor savings, real estate savings and higher accuracy levels.   Inventory management is still an issue, and there’s a demand for real-time visibility to minimize overstocking and understocking. A similar concept could be applied for workers so when there’s a spike in orders, workers can be dispatched quickly, such as to pick items to be shipped.  “If we start to have advanced learning and understanding, and then we start

La révolution de l’IA continue de se déployer à un rythme sans précédent, malgré un certain scepticisme cette année quant à la valeur commerciale qu’elle représente. L’attrait des gains rapides et d’un retour sur investissement immédiat des implémentations de l’IA ont conduit de nombreuses personnes à négliger la nécessité d’une stratégie commerciale globale à long terme et de pratiques efficaces de gestion des données. Mais selon l’étude State Of AI Survey, 2024 de Forrester, deux tiers des personnes interrogées estiment que leur organisation aurait besoin d’un retour sur investissement inférieur à 50 % pour considérer que leurs investissements dans l’IA sont couronnés de succès. Ceci nous ramène à la réalité. Les entreprises doivent élaborer une stratégie en matière de données et d’IA qui porte non seulement sur l’impact commercial et le retour sur investissement, mais qui se concentre également sur les principes de l’IA, la gouvernance, les talents, les opérations et l’activation des cas d’usage appropriés. En 2025, les leaders de l’IA devront prendre conscience qu’il n’y a pas de raccourci vers le progrès de l’IA et qu’il est impératif de s’y préparer. Notre nouveau rapport sur les prévisions sur l’IA souligne l’importance de conjuguer les stratégies de données et d’IA, de réunir l’expertise commerciale et technique, et de s’appuyer sur des partenaires pour atteindre l’excellence. Voici trois de nos prévisions sur l’IA pour 2025 : La plupart des entreprises focalisées sur le retour sur investissement de l’IA réduiront prématurément leurs activités. Malgré l’enthousiasme suscité par la transformation induite par l’IA, une remise à zéro majeure se profile à l’horizon. L’attente de retours immédiats sur les investissements dans l’IA verra de nombreuses entreprises réduire leurs efforts plus tôt qu’elles ne le devraient. Ce recul risque de freiner la croissance et l’innovation à long terme, car les dirigeants se rendent compte que le retour sur investissement de l’IA s’étalera sur une période plus longue que celle initialement prévue. Pour éviter cela, les leaders de l’IA ont besoin de cas d’usage différenciés et d’une stratégie solide qui s’aligne sur les aspirations de l’entreprise et équilibre les gains immédiats avec un retour sur investissement durable. Cela alimentera un cycle vertueux de réinvestissement des premiers succès dans les futurs projets d’IA. 40% des entreprises hautement réglementées combineront la data et la gouvernance de l’IA. La complexité de la gouvernance de l’IA, déjà intense en raison de l’innovation technologique rapide et de l’absence de modèles, de normes ou de certifications universels, devrait encore s’accroître. Avec l’entrée en vigueur de réglementations strictes en matière d’IA, en particulier la loi européenne sur l’IA (EU AI Act) en février 2025, ainsi qu’une demande croissante d’opérations d’IA transparentes, les entreprises hautement réglementées unifieront leurs cadres de gouvernance des données et de l’IA. Ce changement et cette convergence sont nécessaires, et cela va au-delà de la simple conformité. Ils représentent un changement radical vers une approche de l’IA plus intégrée, plus transparente, plus responsable et plus conforme à l’éthique. Trois entreprises sur quatre qui construisent elles-mêmes des architectures “agentiques” ambitieuses sont vouées à l’échec. L’IA agentique est la prochaine grande technologie émergente dans le monde de l’IA. Cependant, les entreprises qui ont l’ambition de construire elles-mêmes des architectures agentiques avancées se heurteront à des obstacles considérables. La principale difficulté réside dans le fait que ces architectures sont complexes, qu’elles nécessitent des modèles divers et multiples, des stacks de génération sophistiquées avec récupération et augmentation, des architectures de données avancées et une expertise de niche. Les entreprises matures reconnaîtront ces limites et choisiront de collaborer avec des fournisseurs de services d’IA et des intégrateurs de systèmes, en tirant parti de leur expertise pour élaborer des solutions agentiques de pointe. Les clients de Forrester peuvent consulter l’intégralité de notre rapport Predictions 2025 : Artificial Intelligence (en anglais) pour obtenir plus de détails sur chacune de ces prévisions, ainsi que deux autres prévisions bonus sur l’évolution du rôle du Chief Data Officer et le passage à l’IA prédictive. Planifiez une session d’accompagnement Forrester pour discuter de ces prévisions avec moi-même et les principaux contributeurs de ce rapport afin de planifier votre stratégie 2025 en matière d’IA, qui placera votre organisation sur la voie de la réussite. Si vous n’êtes pas encore client, vous pouvez télécharger gratuitement notre guide des prévisions (en anglais). Il présente nos principales prévisions pour 2025 dans les domaines de la technologie et de la sécurité. Vous trouverez d’autres ressources gratuites, notamment des webinaires, sur le hub Prévisions 2025. Note: Cet article a été traduit. Langue originale : anglais. source

 Welcome to the new episode of the TNW Podcast — the show where we discuss the latest developments in the European technology ecosystem and feature interviews with some of the most interesting people in the industry. In today’s special episode, we’re featuring an interview with Ilkka Paananen, co-founder and CEO of Supercell, recorded with live audience at the Italian Tech Week conference in Turin last week. Andrii and Ilkka discussed the history of the gamedev industry, the mistakes entrepreneurs make at the start of their journey, the unique culture and structure of Supercell, the changes AI is bringing to the ecosystem, and much more. And of course we’d got a bunch of great questions from the audience. The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! Here are the stories and things mentioned in the episode: Music and sound engineering for this podcast are by Sound Pulse. Feel free to email us with any questions, suggestions, and opinions at [email protected]. source