Image: StackCommerce The demand for skilled embedded systems engineers is rapidly growing, but the industry is severely competitive. Understanding how these intelligent systems function, how engineers design them, and how they connect is valuable, but it’s hard to learn on your own. If you want help, try the Embedded Systems Engineer Mastery Bundle to work through a comprehensive curriculum designed to give you practical skills that’ll help you excel in the field. It’s only $24.99 (reg. $490) right now. Course overview This bundle comes with ten hands-on courses covering the fundamentals of embedded systems and microcontrollers. A significant portion of the training focuses on C programming, a foundational language for embedded applications. The courses break down how to write efficient and effective code for resource-constrained environments. You’ll also learn how to interface microcontrollers with various peripherals, including sensors, displays, and actuators, gaining practical experience in hardware-software interaction. More advanced lessons show you more about designing and testing circuits, important for making embedded systems. Plus, it shows you how to create the physical boards (called PCBs) for these systems so you can turn your ideas into real things. All through the lessons, you’ll get to do hands-on work with virtual labs and projects to test your new expertise in realistic situations. These lessons are set up for learners with different amounts of experience, whether you’re just starting out or you already know the ropes and want to learn more. Get the 2025 Embedded Systems Engineer Mastery Bundle while it’s still on sale for $24.99. StackSocial prices subject to change. source

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Enterprises are spending time and money building out retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems. The goal is to have an accurate enterprise AI system, but are those systems actually working? A critical blind spot is the inability to objectively measure whether RAG systems are actually working. One potential solution to that challenge is launching today with the debut of the Open RAG Eval open-source framework. The new framework was developed by enterprise RAG platform provider Vectara in collaboration with Professor Jimmy Lin and his research team at the University of Waterloo. Open RAG Eval transforms the currently subjective ‘this looks better than that’ comparison approach into a rigorous, reproducible evaluation methodology that can measure retrieval accuracy, generation quality and hallucination rates across enterprise RAG deployments. The framework assesses response quality using two major metric categories: retrieval metrics and generation metrics. It allows organizations to apply this evaluation to any RAG pipeline using Vectara’s platform or custom-built solutions. For technical decision-makers, this means finally having a systematic way to identify exactly which components of their RAG implementations need optimization. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,” Jimmy Lin, professor at the University of Waterloo, told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview. “In information retrieval and dense vectors, you could measure lots of things, ndcg [Normalized Discounted Cumulative Gain], precision, recall…but when it came to right answers, we had no way, that’s why we started on this path.” Why RAG evaluation has become the bottleneck for enterprise AI adoption Vectara was an early pioneer in the RAG space. The company launched in Oct. 2022, before ChatGPT was a household name. Vectara actually debuted technology it originally referred to as grounded AI back in May 2023, as a way to limit hallucinations, before the RAG acronym was commonly used. Over the last few months, RAG implementations have grown increasingly complex and difficult to assess for many enterprises. A key challenge is that organizations are moving beyond simple question-answering to multi-step agentic systems. “In the agentic world, evaluation is doubly important, because these AI agents tend to be multi-step,” Am Awadallah, Vectara CEO and co-founder told VentureBeat. “If you don’t catch hallucination the first step, then that compounds with the second step, compounds with the third step, and you end up with the wrong action or answer at the end of the pipeline.” How Open RAG Eval works: Breaking the black box into measurable components The Open RAG Eval framework approaches evaluation through a nugget-based methodology.  Lin explained that the nugget approach breaks responses down into essential facts, then measures how effectively a system captures the nuggets. The framework evaluates RAG systems across four specific metrics: Hallucination detection – Measures the degree to which generated content contains fabricated information not supported by source documents. Citation – Quantifies how well citations in the response are supported by source documents. Auto nugget – Evaluates the presence of essential information nuggets from source documents in generated responses. UMBRELA (Unified Method for Benchmarking Retrieval Evaluation with large language model Assessment) – A holistic method for assessing overall retriever performance Importantly, the framework evaluates the entire RAG pipeline end-to-end, providing visibility into how embedding models, retrieval systems, chunking strategies and LLMs interact to produce final outputs. The technical innovation: Automation through LLMs What makes Open RAG Eval technically significant is how it uses large language models to automate what was previously a manual, labor-intensive evaluation process. “The state of the art before we started, was left versus right comparisons,” Lin explained. “So this is, do you like the left one better? Do you like the right one better? Or they’re both good, or they’re both bad? That was sort of one way of doing things.” Lin noted that the nugget-based evaluation approach itself isn’t new, but its automation through LLMs represents a breakthrough. The framework uses Python with sophisticated prompt engineering to get LLMs to perform evaluation tasks like identifying nuggets and assessing hallucinations, all wrapped in a structured evaluation pipeline. Competitive landscape: How Open RAG Eval fits into the evaluation ecosystem As enterprise use of AI continues to mature, there is a growing number of evaluation frameworks. Just last week, Hugging Face launched Yourbench to test models against the company’s internal data. At the end of January, Galileo launched its Agentic Evaluations technology. The Open RAG Eval is different in that it is strongly focussed on the RAG pipeline, not just LLM outputs.. The framework also has a strong academic foundation and is built on established information retrieval science rather than ad-hoc methods. The framework builds on Vectara’s previous contributions to the open-source AI community, including its Hughes Hallucination Evaluation Model (HHEM), which has been downloaded over 3.5 million times on Hugging Face and has become a standard benchmark for hallucination detection. “We’re not calling it the Vectara eval framework, we’re calling it the Open RAG Eval framework because we really want other companies and other institutions to start helping build this out,” Awadallah emphasized. “We need something like that in the market, for all of us, to make these systems evolve in the right way.” What Open RAG Eval means in the real world While still an early-stage effort, Vectara at least already has multiple users interested in using the Open RAG Eval framework. Among them is Jeff Hummel, SVP of Product and Technology at real estate firm Anywhere.re. Hummel expects that partnering with Vectara will allow him to streamline his company’s RAG evaluation process. Hummel noted that scaling his RAG deployment introduced significant challenges around infrastructure complexity, iteration velocity and rising costs.  “Knowing the benchmarks and expectations in terms of performance and accuracy helps our team be predictive in our scaling calculations,” Hummel said. “To be frank, there weren’t a ton of frameworks for setting benchmarks on these attributes; we relied heavily on user feedback, which was sometimes objective and did translate to success at scale.” From measurement to

The Project Kuiper payload is prepared for liftoff. Image credit: Amazon Amazon is moving ahead with its internet satellite initiative, the tech giant announced on April 2. Project Kuiper, a batch of 27 satellites set to launch on April 9, will compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink. First satellite launch will demonstrate Amazon’s space capability Project Kuiper’s satellites will provide internet access to virtually any location on the planet, Amazon said. The company initially signed the launch deal in 2022. On April 9, a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket will carry the 27 satellites from Cape Canaveral in Florida to a 280-mile low Earth orbit. This will be Amazon’s first full complete deployment of internet satellites. The company plans to eventually deploy a total of 3,200 satellites in batches of dozens at a time. “We’ve done extensive testing on the ground to prepare for this first mission, but there are some things you can only learn in flight, and this will be the first time we’ve flown our final satellite design and the first time we’ve deployed so many satellites at once,” said Rajeev Badyal, vice president of Project Kuiper, in a press release. Two prototype satellites were tested in October 2023 and successfully enabled a two-way video call over satellite internet. More about Innovation SEE: Amazon is among the tech companies shifting from a desirable, perk-heavy company culture to an environment of personal pressure and political upheaval. To prevent satellites from interfering with astronomers’ work, Amazon coated them with a dielectric mirror film to mask their reflected light. The launch is a milestone for the Atlas V; Project Kuiper marks the heaviest payload the rocket has ever flown. Future Project Kuiper launches will use a variety of vehicles, including the Atlas V, ULA’s Vulcan Centaur, and rockets from Arianespace, Blue Origin, and SpaceX. Internet satellite competitors woo the government market Satellite internet service from Starlink, today’s major provider, has touched over five million internet users across 125 countries, according to Reuters. T-Mobile has made Starlink its default connectivity in the U.S. for places without any other wireless coverage. Satellite internet has been pivotal for government, military, and intelligence operations. While Amazon doesn’t sell Project Kuiper routers yet, its web services infrastructure could eventually integrate into space-based communications. source

By Tom Zanki ( April 9, 2025, 4:44 PM EDT) — Special purpose acquisition company Titan Acquisition Corp. began trading Wednesday after pricing a $240 million initial public offering in pursuit of a merger with a fintech or related business, represented by Winston & Strawn LLP and underwriters’ counsel Ellenoff Grossman & Schole LLP…. 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

Here are my top hotel accounting software that can help The best hotel accounting software should do more than just track income and expenses. I look for tools that can handle the basics — like financial reporting and revenue management — while also offering extras that actually reduce workload. Built-in payroll, assisted bookkeeping, and integration with reservation systems can make a big difference, especially if you’re trying to keep operations lean and efficient. Best for overall hotel accounting software: Cloudbeds Best for back office automation: Otelier Best for hotels that need unlimited users: Xero Best for hotels that manage in-house payroll: QuickBooks Online Best for hotel-specific bookkeeping assistance: M3 Why you can trust TechRepublic At TechRepublic, we publish high-quality, independently researched reviews created by writers who are experts in the fields they cover. Our contributors include seasoned IT professionals, certified accountants, software developers, and industry consultants — people who have worked directly with the tools they evaluate. Every article is built on firsthand experience, in-depth testing, and a deep understanding of what businesses and tech teams actually need to make confident, informed decisions. Top hotel accounting software comparison Monthly pricing Number of users Accounting features Hotel-specific features Bookkeeping assistance Cloudbeds Custom Depends on quote Limited Yes No Otelier Custom Depends on quote Limited Yes No Xero $20 to $80 Unlimited Yes Limited No QuickBooks Online $35 to $235 1 to 25 Yes Limited No M3 Custom Depends on quote Yes Limited Yes Cloudbeds: Best for overall hotel accounting software Image: Cloudbeds Cloudbeds is a top pick for hotels that rely on online bookings and want everything in one place. It streamlines reservations, housekeeping, payments, and accounting through a single platform, cutting down on manual work and saving time across your team. If you’re looking for hotel accounting software that goes beyond the basics, Cloudbeds delivers real operational value. You can integrate with POS systems, compliance tools, and reporting platforms to build a setup that fits your workflow. For hoteliers focused on forecasting and real-time insights, this hospitality accounting software brings it all together. Otelier may offer more depth for budgeting, but Cloudbeds wins on day-to-day efficiency. Pricing Cloudbeds is quote-based. We recommend contacting Cloudbeds for pricing details. Features Dynamic pricing optimization with custom rules and real-time alerts Competitor price tracking with alerts for market changes Customizable dashboards with real-time, hospitality-specific insights Centralized multi-property reporting with filters and grouping options Streamlined reservation tools, including a drag-and-drop calendar and one-click actions Over 200 partner integrations and an open API for workflow customization Built-in payment processing to reduce manual entry and errors Cloud-based multi-property management with quick toggling between locations Pros and cons Pros Cons Has a booking engine Limited native accounting features compared to full-service platforms Offers features for reservations, payments, accounting, and housekeeping May require third-party accounting software for advanced financial reporting Has strong multi-property management and reporting features May be overbuilt for very small properties or those with minimal tech needs Otelier: Best for back office automation Image: Otelier Otelier is a smart pick for hotels that want to automate routine back-office work without losing control over the details. It reduces time spent on repetitive tasks like nightly reporting, income journaling, and OTA reconciliation while keeping everything organized in one place. For teams managing multiple locations, it’s a practical way to bring consistency and accuracy across the board. It earns a top spot in my list of best hotel accounting software for its operational focus. I also like how Otelier turns scattered hotel data into usable insights. Its dashboards help you spot trends, fine-tune budgets, and plan ahead with confidence. While it doesn’t offer full accounting functionality, it pairs well with hospitality accounting software like QuickBooks or Cloudbeds to fill in the financial gaps. Pricing Otelier is quote-based. We recommend contacting Otelier for pricing details. Features Standardize budgeting processes across multiple properties Automate data entry, forecasting, and financial tasks Reduce manual errors and prevent lost revenue Maintain accurate, transparent financial records Run what-if scenarios for smarter decision-making Aggregate data into unified, customizable dashboards Track revenue metrics and financial KPIs in real time Identify trends to optimize pricing and performance Collaborate securely using live, accurate data Adapt forecasts quickly with predictive analytics Pros and cons Pros Cons Designed specifically for hotel operations, not just generic business workflows Limited native accounting functionality; requires pairing with accounting software Is used by top hotels like Marriott and Accor May be too complex for smaller hotels or single-location operations Offers strong visibility across portfolios, ideal for multi-property operators Reporting setup and dashboard customization can take time to configure Supports collaboration between finance, ops, and ownership with shared data access Upfront implementation may require internal training and change management Scales well as hotel businesses grow in size or complexity Xero: Best for hotels that need unlimited users Image: Xero Xero is a strong fit for hotels that need full accounting functionality and flexibility for large teams. It allows unlimited users, making it ideal for operations where multiple staff need access to the books. What stands out is its built-in fixed asset tracking, which is especially useful in hospitality where properties manage everything from furniture to equipment. Among the best hotel accounting software options, I like Xero because it delivers the accounting depth that many hotel software often don’t have. It also integrates with a wide range of hotel-specific tools, including Cloudbeds, Little Hotelier, Preno, and RoomRaccoon. If your priority is clean, compliant financials with support for things like depreciation, expense management, and multi-property reporting, Xero checks all the boxes. That said, if you’re not focused on accounting-specific tools, hospitality accounting software like Cloudbeds might be a better fit for front-desk and reservation workflows. Read our Xero review. Pricing Early: $20 per month for unlimited users; 20 invoices and five bills only Growing: $47 per month for unlimited users, invoices, and bills Established: $80 per month for unlimited users, invoices, and bills Features Unlimited users with customizable permission levels Fixed asset tracking with depreciation schedules Automated

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced Tuesday that an outside party hacked its email system, with the attack large enough to qualify as a “major information security incident.” source

Using a VPN or a virtual private network may seem complicated at first, but it’s software that’s surprisingly easy to set up and use. Whether you’re part of a small business or a larger organization, integrating a VPN is a great way to secure important company information. In this article, we’ll provide a rundown of how to set up a VPN, how to use it and how you can maximize features for your organization. Semperis Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Small (50-249 Employees), Medium (250-999 Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees) Small, Medium, Large, Enterprise Features Advanced Attacks Detection, Advanced Automation, Anywhere Recovery, and more ESET PROTECT Advanced Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Any Company Size Any Company Size Features Advanced Threat Defense, Full Disk Encryption , Modern Endpoint Protection, and more NordLayer Employees per Company Size Micro (0-49), Small (50-249), Medium (250-999), Large (1,000-4,999), Enterprise (5,000+) Small (50-249 Employees), Medium (250-999 Employees), Large (1,000-4,999 Employees), Enterprise (5,000+ Employees) Small, Medium, Large, Enterprise 1. Choose a VPN While all VPNs encrypt the connection between a device and a network, each service brings its own flavor and special features. For example, ExpressVPN offers a clean and easy to understand interface, while CyberGhost VPN prioritizes having an extensive server network that’s spread across 100 locations. It’s important to know why you need a VPN. Do you want better security and privacy? Do you need it to unblock content? How many devices do you need protected through the VPN? The answers to these questions will inform what VPN will be best for your needs. CyberGhost’s focus on servers. Image: CyberGhost VPN Researching a VPN’s reputation and track record in protecting user data should also be part of the decision-making process. VPNs are expected to secure data from malicious actors, not sell or record them for their own benefit. A good indicator of this is if a VPN has a no-logs policy that’s been confirmed via a third-party audit. A no-logs policy states that a VPN doesn’t record any sensitive user data, such as browsing history or IP addresses. While many claim to be no-logs, having an independent audit verify this is key. If you need a headstart on choosing a VPN, you can check out our picks of the 4 Best VPNs for Small Businesses. For the sake of this guide, let’s use ExpressVPN as an example. ExpressVPN’s official website. Image: ExpressVPN ExpressVPN is one of the top VPN providers available and is well-regarded for its reliability and ease of use. 2. Purchase a VPN After deciding on a VPN, it’s time to sign up and pay for a subscription. Most VPNs offer multiple subscription options at monthly, annual, or two-year terms. The longer the duration, the lower the monthly price you pay. Generally speaking, I recommend going for an annual subscription, as it gives you a good balance between lower rates and a reasonable duration for the contract. I also encourage making the most out of VPN providers’ money-back guarantees. Many vendors allow 30 or more days after the initial sign up for customers to test out the software and ask for a refund within the allotted time if the VPN isn’t the right fit. ExpressVPN prices. Image: ExpressVPN In the case of ExpressVPN, you can choose between a one-month plan at $12.95 per month, a one-year plan at $6.67 per month, or a two-year plan at $4.99 per month. There are free VPN options available, but these usually come at the cost of lower security, slower speeds, and a lack of other features. 3. Set up VPN Once you pay for the VPN, the next step is to download and install the VPN application. If you’re downloading the VPN for your Windows or Mac, make sure you’re getting it from the VPN’s official website. After clicking download, the VPN’s installer file will appear in your downloads folder. ExpressVPN installer. Image: ExpressVPN Clicking on the installer file will take you to the VPN’s setup process. Just follow the presented instructions until the VPN is installed onto your system. 4. Use the VPN Fortunately, modern VPNs are relatively easy to use. Once installed, VPNs usually have a one-click connect/disconnect button and a list of servers you can connect to. By default, VPNs will connect to the fastest server in your area. This typically means connecting to a server location that’s nearest to where you are. You can, of course, pick a specific server location depending on your needs and preferences. With ExpressVPN, there’s a big power button in the middle that controls your connection, and the server menu is conveniently placed below it. ExpressVPN dashboard. Image: ExpressVPN Once you’ve chosen a server, you can click connect, and there you have it — you’re now using a secure VPN connection. Some people might be wondering if you need to manually connect to a server each time and the answer is no. Generally, most VPNs can be configured to launch at startup and automatically connect to a preferred server of your choice. ExpressVPN on Windows startup. Image: ExpressVPN It’s important to note that exiting a VPN desktop window usually doesn’t close the program completely. VPNs are software that run in the background, so you’ll have to close the VPN application either through Windows’ task manager or manually quitting the app on a Mac. If you find that the VPN isn’t functioning the way it’s supposed to, a good rule of thumb is to disconnect from the server and restart the application. If that doesn’t work, VPNs provide customer support either on their site or in the app itself. Quality VPN providers offer 24/7 live chat support to assist you when something goes wrong. If that’s not available, you can send an email using the VPN’s support page or ticket system. Best ways to use a VPN for your business VPNs have a variety of use-cases.

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Anthropic introduced a new high-end subscription tier for its Claude chatbot today, directly challenging OpenAI’s premium offerings and marking the latest escalation in the race to monetize powerful AI models amid soaring development costs. The new “Max” plan offers professionals two pricing options: $100 per month for five times the usage of Anthropic’s existing $20 Pro plan, or $200 per month for twenty times the usage. The move mirrors OpenAI’s $200 monthly ChatGPT Pro subscription but adds a less expensive middle tier for those who need more than the basic plan but not the full premium experience. This tiered approach shows Anthropic understands how AI is changing professional work. Many users now see Claude as a constant collaborator, not just an occasional tool. The $100 tier serves professionals who use Claude regularly but don’t need full enterprise access. The $200 tier is for those who rely on Claude throughout their workday. The launch comes as AI companies search for sustainable business models to offset the enormous costs of developing and running increasingly powerful large language models. The latest generation of AI systems, including Anthropic’s recently released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, requires vast amounts of computing resources both for training and everyday operation. Anthropic’s new tiered pricing structure includes a free option, the existing $20 monthly Pro subscription, and the new Max plan starting at $100 monthly, which offers up to 20 times more usage for power users. Credit: Anthropic Power users and premium pricing: The economics behind Claude’s $200 tier For the small but growing cohort of “power users” — professionals who have integrated AI assistants deeply into their daily workflows — hitting usage limits represents a significant productivity bottleneck. The Max plan targets these users, particularly those who expense AI tools individually rather than accessing them through company-wide enterprise deployments. The pricing strategy reveals a fundamental shift in how AI companies view their customer base. What began as experimental technology is rapidly stratifying into distinct market segments with dramatically different usage patterns and willingness to pay. Anthropic’s tiered structure acknowledges this reality: casual users can access basic capabilities for free, professionals with moderate needs pay $20 monthly, power users requiring substantial resources invest $100-$200 monthly, and enterprises negotiate custom packages. This segmentation creates a critical “missing middle” solution. Until now, there’s been a vast chasm between individual subscriptions and enterprise contracts, leaving small teams and departments without right-sized options. The $100 tier particularly fills this gap, enabling team leads to expense meaningful AI resources without navigating complex procurement processes. The $200 price point represents a significant bet on AI’s growing indispensability. Few professionals would have considered such an expense justifiable a year ago, but the calculus changes dramatically as these systems become embedded in daily workflows. For a marketer, developer, or analyst billing clients at $150+ hourly, Claude’s ability to accelerate projects by even 10% represents an obvious return on investment. Early access privileges: How Anthropic’s feature pipeline entices premium subscribers Beyond higher usage limits, Max subscribers will receive priority access to upcoming features before they roll out to other users. According to the company, this includes Claude’s voice mode, which is expected to launch in the coming months. This approach reveals Anthropic’s sophisticated product development strategy. Rather than simply charging more for existing capabilities, the company creates a premium experience combining higher capacity with innovation privileges. This mirrors strategies companies like Tesla use, which offers premium customers early access to new autopilot features, creating tangible status value beyond raw specifications. The voice mode tease is particularly significant. Voice interaction represents the next frontier in AI assistance, potentially transforming how professionals engage with Claude throughout their workday. The ability to verbally brief Claude on contexts, request analyses while multitasking, or receive spoken summaries while commuting could dramatically expand the assistant’s utility in professional settings. For Anthropic, this exclusive access model serves multiple purposes: it creates powerful incentives for upgrades, establishes a controlled testing environment for new features and generates valuable feedback from its most engaged users. The company essentially creates a revenue-generating beta program where customers pay for the privilege of shaping product development—a remarkably efficient approach to innovation. Perfect timing: Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s launch creates ideal runway for premium pricing The Max plan’s launch follows just weeks after Anthropic released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which the company describes as its “most intelligent model to date” and its first “reasoning model” — designed to use more computing power for more reliable answers to complex questions. This sequencing reveals Anthropic’s savvy product marketing strategy. By first demonstrating Claude 3.7 Sonnet’s superior capabilities — particularly in reasoning, coding, and complex information processing — the company created market desire before introducing the premium pricing that makes these advanced features economically sustainable. The reasoning model approach represents a significant technological advancement worth examining. Unlike traditional language models that balance performance across diverse tasks, reasoning models allocate additional computational resources to problems requiring structured thinking and logical analysis. This creates a qualitatively different experience for users tackling complex challenges — an experience Anthropic now argues justifies premium pricing. Dario Amodei, Anthropic’s CEO, alluded to the company’s growing revenue during a CNBC interview in January, though exact figures remain private. Industry sources estimate Anthropic’s annualized revenue hit approximately $1 billion in December 2024, representing nearly tenfold growth year-over-year. The company closed its latest funding round last month at a $61.5 billion valuation. For comparison, OpenAI reportedly told investors its annualized revenue grew by $300 million within just two months of launching ChatGPT Pro, according to documents viewed by TechCrunch. These figures suggest the market for premium AI services is expanding rapidly, with customers demonstrating clear willingness to pay for higher quality and greater capacity. Working with AI all day: How professionals are reimagining their workflows around Claude Anthropic has identified three primary use cases driving high usage: automating repetitive tasks, enhancing capabilities within existing roles, and enabling

Generative AI (genAI) and agentic workflows are roiling technology services markets, overturning the 15-year stability of the prevailing business model. The era defined by time-and-materials pricing, agnostic technology positions, and people-driven business growth is no longer viable. Since the peak growth seen in 2021, which followed years of consistency post-Great Recession, it has become an entirely different story. Starting in 2022, four powerful forces began converging to disrupt the services status quo, forcing providers toward radically different choices and reshaping the sector to deliver what enterprises need now. These forces are: Consolidation and scaling of the core. For 15 years, technology has expanded into every nook and cranny of business, often funded as standalone projects. Now CFOs are pausing discretionary projects and asking their organizations to get more value from existing tech investments. IT responds by transforming the core, scaling platforms, consolidating redundant unused systems, and retiring tech debt. This will lay the foundation for investments in technology-driven growth. For service providers, this shows up as strong “large deal” bookings and weak discretionary bookings. This force could drag on for years. Ecosystems, alliances, and solutions. Enterprises depend on technology partners. Rapid innovation, complex ecosystems, and talent gaps make in-house execution impractical. For service providers, this means that alliance partners are now critical contributors to success. They must develop deep specializations and integrate platforms into solutions. Accenture, Deloitte, and others have long had partner-centric businesses. Others are newly energized: IBM Consulting, which in the past rarely mentioned partners, said that partners were involved in 40% of its deals in 2024. This force will gain even more potency as firms invest in AI computing. The AI effect. As pure knowledge businesses, service providers are on the front lines of genAI-powered disruption. GenAI-powered digital assistants supplement service providers’ teams’ work, augmenting their knowledge, skills, and experience as well as automating their tasks. The impact is more work completed in less time with fewer people — a huge deflationary force in a business that charges by the hour. This force is pushing providers to invest billions in genAI tooling, renegotiate contract deliverables, and build solutions and managed services. Tech’s labor/capital imbalance. Machinery is more predictable and reliable than manual labor. But IT remains a people-constrained activity, where people and skills are gating factors to successful outcomes. In this context, service providers have high motivation to use machinery to make their employees more productive. They invest in reusable software, data, and model assets; preassemble solutions and platforms; and automate as much work as possible, thus shifting the balance away from people and toward capital. The rise of agentic systems and new services-as-software businesses will accelerate this trend. Only Bold Providers Will Survive: Embrace Context And Co-Innovation To compete and establish a new long-term value proposition, providers must cannibalize their existing time-and-materials commercial models, riding the cost curve down and reskilling their workforce while reinventing their offerings and business models for the era of AI computing. Providers with scale and strong balance sheets will thrive and reinvent themselves as post-AI service providers, reconstructed to thrive in the AI computing era; smaller or less nimble providers will struggle. Technology Executives Should Run A New Services Playbook As the ground shifts when it comes to the role and contributions of service providers, technology executives should begin playing by some new rules: Ask for lower costs and faster delivery for complex projects. Factor a provider’s delivery and operating platforms into your selection process. Ask procurement to investigate value-based pricing for service contracts. Retire tech debt and rationalize apps to fund your core transformations. For the in-depth report, click here. source

Is it time to consider a new IT specialty like automation engineering? Jobs site Indeed defines an automation engineer as someone who will “search for ways to simplify activities for employees, consumers and companies by automating specific systems and manufacturing processes, like store checkouts or assembly lines”. These individuals work alongside IT and department managers to develop automation plans and then implement automation into business processes. They use programming languages like Java, C# and Python, and they know how to work with machine actuators and sensors. Most importantly, they possess expertise in the application areas they are asked to automate. In other words, a retail automation expert might have skills in how to automate grocery checkout lines in stores, but they might not know much about how to automate a manufacturing company’s assembly line. In the area of robotics, many of the skills needed for automation engineers carry over for robotics engineers. A primary difference is that a robotics engineer is working on a robot. The goal is to program the robot with the necessary instructions for it to fit into an existing business process. Examples of how working robots are used include programming a robot so it can enter a nuclear facility to perform maintenance, or activating a warehouse robot that can store, pick, and deliver parts from bins throughout the warehouse while successfully navigating around obstacles on the floor. Related:How Today’s CIOs are Upskilling Robotics engineers use languages like C and C# and they commonly work on Linux platforms and must be familiar with the technologies of the particular robotics vendors they are using. Automation and robotics engineers are in high demand in business, although it costs considerably more to recruit an automation engineer (mid-100,000s salary range) than it is to hire a robotics engineer (the mid-point salary is around $80,000/year). Where Do These Engineers Report? Robotics and automation engineers must have the ability to cross-communicate with different departments when they implement solutions. They also need a thorough understanding of the different enterprise systems where the automation or robotics technologies will be deployed. It’s not much of a stretch to see that many of the system knowledge and cross-communicational requirements are exactly what one would find resident with an IT business analyst. The difference is that an automation or robotics engineer would have greater skills in programming, and in working with various mechanical and electronic interfaces. Related:Why IT Leaders Must Prioritize Leading Over Contributing to Projects As a CIO, I once had a project that required automation between our engineering CAD design database and the parts inventory, bill of material and work order systems on the manufacturing floor. There were too may disconnects between engineering and manufacturing. We wanted to eliminate this by integrating and automating information flows between the CAD system and the manufacturing systems. Engineering was running a standalone CAD system on an entirely different platform from what manufacturing was using to run its bills of material, inventory, and work orders. The initial decision was for IT to take the lead in this integration-automation project because IT touched all systems (except for engineering’s standalone CAD system). However, we found out quickly that engineering didn’t want to relinquish any control of its CAD systems for the automation project. We solved this by teaming an engineer from engineering with a programmer-analyst from IT and a manufacturing engineer from, and we got the project done. It wasn’t the easiest project that we ever did. Can IT Avoid Getting Involved? That project with engineering, manufacturing and IT came early in my CIO career, and I learned quickly that automation projects have many different pieces, engage many different departments, and can quickly become as politically charged as they are technically challenging. Related:How to Handle a Runaway IT Development Team I’ve talked to several other CIOs about how to get past politics.  Some are more than happy to just have the departments that want to automate retain their own consultants or hire in the people — and do the work themselves — but I’ve seldom seen this work. Why? Because invariably, the consultant or the engineer that a department brings in has a question about how to integrate with other enterprise systems that IT manages. One way or another, IT will be involved. Is There a Best Approach? From personal experience and from conversations I’ve had with other managers, an optimal approach to automation and robotics when IT works with engineering-oriented departments such as manufacturing, is to place the automation or robotics engineer in the engineering or manufacturing areas. Then the engineers can be savvy on the departments’ business processes as well as on the automation and robotics technologies that are needed. In this scenario, IT would be assisting primarily in system integration. However, if the company is in finance, healthcare, retail, or other non-engineering-oriented businesses, it’s likely that IT might be the best destination for a robotics or automation engineer, because the user departments won’t have the necessary skillset. In all cases, automation and robotics projects require strong collaboration and cooperation between departments and IT. In this way, everyone can be assured that they are moving into each project with a complete and comprehensive knowledge base of the business, the systems, and what they want to automate.  source