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AI spending to rise as organisations eye competitiveness

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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AI spending to rise as organisations eye competitiveness
  • Global spending forecast to double over next four years, growing from $50.1b in 2020 to more than $110b in 2024.
  • Software and services will each account for a little over one-third of all AI spending this year with hardware delivering the remainder.
  • The US will deliver more than half of all AI spending, followed by Western Europe and China.

Dubai: Spending on artificial intelligence (AI) systems is set to accelerate over the next several years as organisations deploy artificial intelligence as part of their digital transformation efforts and to remain competitive in the digital economy.

According to research firm the International Data Corporation (IDC), the global spending is forecast to double over the next four years, growing from $50.1 billion in 2020 to more than $110 billion in 2024.

Ritu Jyoti, Program Vice-President for Artificial Intelligence at IDC, said that companies will adopt AI not just because they can, but because they must.

Two of the leading drivers for AI adoption are delivering a better customer experience and helping employees to get better at their jobs.

Automated customer service agents, sales process recommendation and automation, automated threat intelligence and prevention and IT automation will represent nearly a third of all AI spending this year.

Some of the fastest-growing use cases are automated human resources, IT automation, and pharmaceutical research and discovery.

Converting data into knowledge

Software and services will each account for a little more than one-third of all AI spending this year with hardware delivering the remainder.

The largest share of software spending will go to AI applications ($14.1 billion) while the largest category of services spending will be IT services ($14.5 billion). Servers ($11.2 billion) will dominate hardware spending. Software will see the fastest growth in spending over the forecast period.

Jyoti said that AI is the technology that will help businesses to be agile, innovate and scale.

“The companies that become ‘AI powered’ will have the ability to synthesise information (using AI to convert data into information and then into knowledge), the capacity to learn (using AI to understand relationships between knowledge and apply the learning to business problems), and the capability to deliver insights at scale (using AI to support decisions and automation),” she said.

As per IDC, retail and banking are the two industries that will spend the most on AI solutions throughout the forecast period.

The retail industry will largely focus its AI investments on improving the customer experience via chatbots and recommendation engines while banking will include spending on fraud analysis and investigation and program advisors and recommendation systems.

Discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing, and healthcare will round out the top five industries for AI spending in 2020. The industries that will see the fastest growth in AI spending over the forecast are media, federal/central government and professional services.

Enterprises saw a silver lining

Andrea Minonne, Senior Research Analyst for Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC, said that Covid-19 caused a slowdown in AI investments across the transportation industry as well as the personal and consumer services industry, which includes leisure and hospitality businesses.

Transportation industry as well as the personal and consumer services industry will be cautious with their investments this year as their focus will be on cost containment and revenue generation rather than innovation or digital experiences, he said.

On the other hand, he said that AI has played a role in helping societies deal with large-scale disruptions caused by quarantines and lockdowns.

In the short term, Stacey Soohoo, Research Manager for Customer Insights and Analysis at IDC, said the pandemic caused supply chain disruptions and store closures with continued impact expected to linger into 2021 and the outyears.

However, she said that enterprises have seen a silver lining in the current situation, an opportunity to become more resilient and agile in the long run.

“Artificial intelligence continues to be a key technology in the road to recovery for many enterprises and adopting artificial intelligence will help many to rebuild or enhance future revenue streams and operations,” she said.

On a geographic basis, the US will deliver more than half of all AI spending throughout the forecast, followed by Western Europe and China.

Apple to open online store in India for Diwali next month

TCN Bureau
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Apple to open online store in India for Diwali next month
  • iPhone maker sells its products in India through third-party vendors and e-commerce firms such as Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart.
  • Apple has plans to open one store each in Mumbai and Bengaluru next month.
  • Apple dominates India’s premium smartphone segment with a 49 per cent market share in the second quarter.

Bengaluru:  The world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer and the most valuable company – Apple – is set to open an online store in India next month.

The iPhone maker sells its products in the country through third-party vendors and e-commerce firms such as Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart.

Apple’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook had said earlier this year that Apple would open its first Indian retail store in 2021 but the company is preparing for the festive season – Diwali – in September.

The Cupertino, California-based company also plans to open a second bricks-and-mortar store in the technology hub of Bangalore, following an outlet in Mumbai that will be its first physical location in the country, according to a Bloomberg source.

Apple sees India as huge growth prospects for smartphone makers, as well as cheap labour to manufacture the devices.

Apple, which lobbied New Delhi for years to get around regulations that force foreign companies to source 30 per cent of components locally, had originally planned to start online sales within months after the government relaxed the rule last year but the plans were disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Selling through its own stores and via its website could help Apple control branding and win customer loyalty, while levelling the field with competitors like China’s OnePlus and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics.

Expanding retail footprint

Apple has expanded its retail footprint to 510 stores spanning 25 countries and regions, including 271 in the US and 239 combined in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Macao, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the UAE, and the UK. Apple is also rumored to expand its retail presence to India, Argentina, Chile, and Peru in the future.

The US company is expanding as it gears up for the launch of iPhone12 models in October.

In Singapore, Apple is set to open its third outlet and it will be the world’s first floating retail store at Marina Bay Sands.

Alongside the expansion of its retail presence in India, Apple has been assembling its newest handsets – the iPhone SE and the iPhone 11 – in the country through its manufacturing partners Foxconn Technology Group and Wistron Corp. Another assembly partner, Pegatron Corp, will set up its first plant in India.

Apple dominated India’s premium smartphone segment with a market share of 49 per cent during the second quarter, according to research firm IDC. The newer iPhone 11 and the iPhone XR together comprised 28 per cent of high-end shipments, indicating that demand for pricier iPhones is growing. That is in contrast to a couple of years ago, when cheaper and old models accounted for a big chunk of iPhone sales in that market.

Augmented humans: Would you be hiring them?

Mohammed Fahad
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Augmented humans: Would you be hiring them?

Bengaluru: Would you hire a superhuman who has enhanced his ability using artificial intelligence? Majority of the CEOs believe that augmented humans could soon be a reality, and are also open to hire such talent.

‘Augmented Humans’, as per Gartner is when some people – sometime in future – might opt to use technological body implants to acquire abilities beyond what is natural for a human.

The announcement comes even as Elon Musk plans to announce an important update from his company Neuralink – that’s trying to understand whats really going on in the brain and sort of enable it to incorporate artificial intelligence to attain superhuman intelligence.

The result of cognitive augmentation – which includes some technology in the brain augmentation category – for example will enhance a person’s ability to think and make better decisions, achieved through exploiting information and applications to enhance learning or new experiences.

In its annual CEO Survey 2020 which it termed as the Year of Recession, Gartner asked more than 400 global CEOs and senior business executives if they would be hiring for augmented human abilities and a majority of 59 per cent answered in the affirmative, while about 19 per cent said they were not aware of it.

Physical augmentation could either be sensory augmentation (hearing, vision, perception), appendage and biological function augmentation (exoskeletons, prosthetics), brain augmentation (implants to treat seizures) and genetic augmentation (somatic gene and cell therapy). 

Human augmentation

For example, the automotive or mining industries use wearables to improve worker safety. In other industries, such as retail and travel, wearables are used to increase worker productivity. 

“The technology is still part of fiction, but a large majority of CEO’s were open to the idea of hiring the ‘people of the future,” Mark Ruskino, a Gartner Fellow in the CEO and Digital Business Leadership research team said.

Gartner last year identified human augmentation as one of the key trends in 2020.

The 2020 CEO survey which was conducted before the Covid-19 pandemic set in also indicates some key trends that are quite significant, looking at the situation that has evolved over the past few months.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk is all set to reveal the latest updates of his brain-machine interface company Neuralink.

Tesla’s Neuralink

The company wants to develop a high-bandwidth, implantable brain-computer interface (BCI) and it wants to do it by the end of this year. That’s where the Friday’s announcement becomes significant.

Neuralink which was founded in 2016 is trying to develop a system for recording the activity of thousands of neurons in the brain.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX had announced about the update in a tweet in July.

Speaking during the Lex Fridman Podcast in July Musk had said that “Neurolink will definitely put a lot of information on how the brain works. Right now we have very limited information… In order to really know what’s going on in the brain we need to have high precession sensors that tell you what individual neurons are doing, and being able to trigger neurons to see what the response is in the brain, so you can see the consequences.”

“Wait until you see the next version vs what was presented last year. It’s awesome,” he wrote in February.

Wipro to roll out future proofed SIMM solution to financial institutions

TCN Bureau
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Wipro to roll out future proofed SIMM solution to financial institutions
  • The partnership with Standard Initial Margin Model (SIMM) vendor, Quaternion Risk Management will allow Wipro to offer cost efficiencies and seamless integration with clients’ internal systems, while maintaining full control over sensitive trade information.
  • It also offers independent model validation of a firm’s own internal SIMM solution, AANA (Aggregate Average Notional Amount) calculation, and Initial Margin exchange threshold calculation/simulation.

Bengaluru: IT consulting firm Wipro Limited will unveil SIMM-in-a-box to financial institutions covered under Uncleared Margin Rules (UMR) following its  partnership with Standard Initial Margin Model (SIMM) vendor, Quaternion Risk Management.

The offering will allow financial institutions to calculate trade sensitivities, generate CRIF (Common Risk Interchange Format) file and calculate initial margin in-house.

The solution simplifies compliance procedures by including back testing, benchmarking and preparing documentation required for regulatory approval.

It also offers independent model validation of a firm’s own internal SIMM solution, AANA (Aggregate Average Notional Amount) calculation, and Initial Margin exchange threshold calculation/simulation.

The partnership aims to provide cost efficiencies and seamless integration with clients’ internal systems, while maintaining full control over sensitive trade information.

For smart execution

Keyur Maniar, Senior Vice President and Global Head, Capital Markets, Wipro Limited said: “The uncleared margin rules offering from Wipro demonstrates our deep understanding of our clients’ business imperatives, and our ability to combine strong industry knowledge with global best-of-breed technology solutions for smart execution.

“SIMM calculation is a complex area with a significant role in regulatory compliance. Our compelling proposition and partnership with Quaternion promises to abstract away these challenges and let our clients focus on their core business.”

SIMM-in-a-box is a “future-proofed” SIMM solution that uses the same high-grade analytics as the world’s largest dealer banks.

The solution is built on Quaternion’s ORE XML that has evolved as the market-standard for non-cleared derivatives trade representation.

The partnership also leverages Quaternion’s established quantitative library to determine trade sensitivity for CRIF generation and SIMM calculation.

“As companies prepare to implement the final phases of the Uncleared Margin Rules, the combination of Quaternion’s deep experience building one of the industry’s most comprehensive derivative pricing libraries and Wipro’s unmatched expertise in IT consulting can alleviate many of the traditional ‘plumbing’ and middleware headaches associated with analytics integration.  Clients will achieve quick and cost-efficient benefits from a proven solution to SIMM compliance,” Scott Sobolewski, Principal at Quaternion said.

Group-IB detects financially-motivated attacks by Iranian newbie threat actors

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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Group-IB detects financially-motivated attacks by Iranian newbie threat actors
  • Hackers target companies in Russia, Japan, China and India.
  • Attackers use Dharma ransomware and a mix of publicly available tools.
  • Dharma has been distributed under a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model at least since 2016.
  • Operators scanned ranges of IPs for hosts with Internet-facing RDP and weak credentials.

Dubai: Cyber-security firm Group-IB has detected financially-motivated attacks carried out by Iranian newbie threat actors in June, targeting companies in Russia, Japan, China and India.

The attackers used Dharma ransomware and a mix of publicly available tools and all the affected organisations had hosts with internet-facing RDP and weak credentials.

Iran has traditionally been a land of state-sponsored attackers engaged in espionage and sabotage.

Group-IB researchers said the hackers typically demanded a ransom between 1-5 bitcoin compared to bigger hackers who usually ask for hundreds of thousands or millions of US dollars.

“The newly discovered hacker group suggests that Iran, which has been known as a cradle of state-sponsored APT groups for years, now also accommodates financially motivated cybercriminals,” they said.

Dharma, also known as Crysis, has been distributed under a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model at least since 2016. Its source code popped up for sale in March 2020 making it available to a wider audience.

During an incident response engagement for a company in Russia, Group-IB’s team established that Persian-speaking newbie hackers were behind a new wave of Dharma distribution.

“It’s surprising that Dharma landed in the hands of Iranian script kiddies who used it for financial gain. Despite that these cybercriminals use quite common tactics, techniques and procedures they have been quite effective. Therefore, we believe it’s important to provide some recommendations on how to protect against them and give a complete outline of the MITRE ATT&CK mapping,”  Oleg SkulkinOleg Skulkin, Senior Digital Forensics Specialist at Singapore-headquartered Group-IB, said.

Breaches via weak RDP endpoints

Even though the exact number of victims is unknown, the discovered forensic artifacts allowed to establish the geography of their campaigns and the toolset, which is far behind the level of sophistication of big league Iranian APTs.

It was revealed that the operators scanned ranges of IPs for hosts with Internet-facing RDP and weak credentials in Russia, Japan, China, and India.

To do so, they used popular software called Masscan — the same technique was employed by Fxmsp, an infamous seller of access to corporate networks.

Once vulnerable hosts were identified, the attackers deployed NLBrute to brute-force their way into the system and to check the validity of obtained credentials on other accessible hosts in the network. In some attacks, they attempted to elevate privileges using an exploit for CVE-2017-0213.

The researchers said the threat actors didn’t have a clear plan on what to do with the compromised networks.

Once they established the RDP connection, they decide on which tools to deploy to move laterally. For instance, to disable built-in antivirus software, the attackers used Defender Control and Your Uninstaller.

The latter was downloaded from Iranian software sharing website — the Google search query in Persian language “دانلود نرم افزار youre unistaller” was discovered in the Chrome artifacts. Other tools were downloaded by the attackers from Persian-language Telegram channels when they were already present in the network.

The Dharma source code has been made widely available and this led to the increase in the number of operators deploying it.

How healthcare sector can reap benefits from advanced connectivity?

Naushad K. Cherrayil
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How healthcare sector can reap benefits from advanced connectivity?
  • Improvements in advanced technology will add $250b to $420b to global GDP by 2030.
  • Governments must prioritise funding for innovations and insurers must implement clear reimbursement paths for digital offerings.
  • Remote patient monitoring, AI-enabled decision support and integrated command centres are top three use cases.

Dubai: Advanced connectivity has the potential to deliver big savings to the healthcare industry by improving productivity and outcomes that in turn will free up money to invest elsewhere in the business.

The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) and the McKinsey Centre for Advanced Connectivity (MCAC) estimate that the improvements will add $250 billion to $420 billion to global GDP by 2030, about 80 per cent of which can be realised with existing advanced connectivity.

For the past couple of decades, the emergence of electronic medical records, telemedicine, and big data have held the promise of revolutionising healthcare for both patient and provider, making it more efficient, effective, and affordable.

Yet so far, the payoff has been elusive, with technology arguably causing as many (if not more) headaches in the system as it cures.

McKinsey cites three use cases in particular—remote patient monitoring, AI-enabled decision support and integrated command centres—highlighting the massive potential value of advanced connectivity in healthcare.

Richard Bartlett, Associate partner in McKinsey & Company, said that these three use cases are just the most prominent examples of how advanced connectivity could dramatically benefit individuals’ healthcare, as well as health systems and even whole economies, within a decade.

“Connectivity-enabled remote patient monitoring and telemedicine will help people better manage long-term health conditions and gain access to preventative care. Advanced technologies will improve patient outcomes by delivering more accurate diagnoses or rapidly adjusted treatments while health systems will be able to deploy staff, coordinate patient care, and tap limited resources more efficiently,” he said.

However, he said that such achievements require more than advanced connectivity and smart devices.

Moving beyond traditional silos

Naomi Smit, Partner at McKinsey Digital, said that governments must prioritise funding for healthcare innovations, and insurers must implement clear reimbursement paths for digital offerings.

Healthcare systems need to hire a wide range of new roles, she said, including systems architects, data scientists and user-experience designers.

“Common data standards and governing regulatory guidelines will have to be set, just as clear, proven procedures for protecting patient data are paramount. Within and across countries, frameworks to guide investment in technology-driven healthcare services and to test and confirm the validity of connectivity-enabled use cases are essential,” she said.

However, she said that it is critical that all stakeholders—from providers and systems to payors, employers, and technology/connectivity providers—learn to collaborate, most importantly on solving the issue of interoperability across systems and solutions.

“Only by moving beyond their traditional silos and working together for the good of the entire system can all these varied players each reap the benefits of connectivity in healthcare while delivering the most crucial reward to patients themselves,” Smit said.

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