Don't Forget the Ops: Build Operations into Your Cloud Many private cloud projects were built to deliver self-service access to development and test resources. While those clouds delivered faster access to resources, they lacked visibility, control and security needed for production deployments. In their session at 18th Cloud Expo, Steve Anderson, Product Manager at BMC Software, and Rick Lefort, Principal Technical Marketing Consultant at BMC Software, discussed how a cloud designed for production operations not only helps accelerate developer innovation, it also delivers the control that IT Operations needs to run a production cloud without getting in the way. Speaker Bios: Steve Anderson is a Product Manager for BMC's Cloud Lifecycle Management solution. This role involves working directly with customers to capture their requirements for a cloud management platform.

The Deloitte Technology, Media and Telecommunications Predictions 2017 report predicts that more than 300 million smartphones will feature some form of machine learning capability by the end of the year, as augmented and virtual reality technology becomes a more regular feature of everyday life. Artificial intelligence will also start appearing in drones, tablets, cars, medical tools and Internet of Things (IoT) connected objects, the report said, adding that many devices will be able to carry out machine learning chores without needing to be connected to the cloud. Deloitte said that 5G mobile networks will roll out this year and would result in much higher speeds, lower latency, and support for low-power low-bitrate IoT devices and sensors.

Today Intel announced record results on a new benchmark in deep learning and convolutional neural networks (CNN). Developed with ZTE, a leading technology telecommunications equipment and systems company, the image recognition technology is what many companies in Internet search and AI are trying to advance. Perception, such as recognizing a face in an image, is one of the essential goals of the ZTE 5G System," said Duan Xiangyang, vice president of the ZTE Wireless Institute. "Deep learning technology is very important as it can enable such perception in mobile edge computing systems, thus making ZTE's 5G System smarter." The test took place in Nanjing City, China, where ZTE's engineers used Intel's midrange Arria 10 FPGA for a cloud inferencing application using a CNN algorithm. ZTE has achieved a new record – beyond a thousand images per second in facial recognition – with what is known as "theoretical high accuracy" achieved for their custom topology. Intel's Arria 10 FPGA accelerated the raw design performance more than 10 times while maintaining the accuracy. The Arria 10 FPGA provides up to 1.5 teraflops (TFLOPs) single precision floating-point processing performance, 1.15 million logic elements, and more than a terabit-per-second high-speed connectivity. Such deep learning designs can be seamlessly migrated from the Arria 10 FPGA family to the high-end Intel Stratix 10 FPGA family, and users can expect up to nine times performance boost. Besides the impressive increase in performance, the team at the ZTE Wireless Institute sped design time with the use of the OpenCL programming language. With the Intel reference design, and using the Intel SDK for OpenCL to program the FPGA, our development time was greatly shortened," said Xiong Tiankui, chief engineer, ZTE Wireless Institute.

The good: Long battery life, Good camera with a wide range of controls, Easy to grip without a case The bad: Includes excessive apps, Not water and dust resistant, No virtual assistant at launch Who should buy: Android fans looking for a great large phone with long battery life. When Samsung recalled its Galaxy Note 7 last September, Android fans looking for a big-screened smartphone were left with few choices aside from Google's Pixel XL. Enter Huawei's Mate 9, which launched in the U.S. in early January. Huawei's device will also be the first smartphone to include Amazon's Alexa voice assistant built-in, which will be added through a software update promised to arrive during the first quarter of this year. With Alexa, Mate 9 will be capable of handling many of the same tasks as the Amazon Echo.

Three has made its Wi-Fi calling service significantly easier to use, which should help customers cut their monthly mobile bills. Previously, users could only take advantage of the feature through Three's additional inTouch app, which delivered a less-than-pleasant user experience. However, customers can now make calls and send texts over a Wi-Fi connection without the app. It's a handy service, allowing users to both save money and stay in touch with friends and family whenever a Wi-Fi network is available, even when signal is poor or non-existent. The giant human-like robot bears a striking resemblance to the military robots starring in the movie'Avatar' and is claimed as a world first by its creators from a South Korean robotic company Waseda University's saxophonist robot WAS-5, developed by professor Atsuo Takanishi and Kaptain Rock playing one string light saber guitar perform jam session A man looks at an exhibit entitled'Mimus' a giant industrial robot which has been reprogrammed to interact with humans during a photocall at the new Design Museum in South Kensington, London Electrification Guru Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart talks about the electric Jaguar I-PACE concept SUV before it was unveiled before the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S The Jaguar I-PACE Concept car is the start of a new era for Jaguar.

Compare broadband providers and find the best deal for you with our Best Broadband Deals page. Three has made its Wi-Fi calling service significantly easier to use, which should help customers cut their monthly mobile bills. Previously, users could only take advantage of the feature through Three's additional inTouch app, which delivered a less-than-pleasant user experience. However, customers can now make calls and send texts over a Wi-Fi connection without the app. It's a handy service, allowing users to both save money and stay in touch with friends and family whenever a Wi-Fi network is available, even when signal is poor or non-existent.

The telecommunications industry is highly competitive, which means that the mobile providers need a business intelligence model that can be used to achieve an optimal level of churners, as well as a minimal level of cost in marketing activities. Machine learning applications can be used to provide guidance on marketing strategies. Furthermore, data mining techniques can be used in the process of customer segmentation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of the C.5 algorithm, within naive Bayesian modelling for the task of segmenting telecommunication customers behavioural profiling according to their billing and socio-demographic aspects. Results have been experimentally implemented.

Nokia has announced two new services for operators to boost their efficiency with the use of AI and predictive analytics. Jumping on the digital assistant trend, MIKA (Multi-purpose Intuitive Knowledge Assistant) is a specialist helper for telecoms operators which provides quick access to detailed information. Based on Nokia's AVA platform, MIKA will improve the efficiency of engineers by connecting them with best practice solutions to problems. Nokia claims MIKA is the first assistant'trained' for the telecommunications industry and provides more concise help over the general information provided by other assistants. The automation it provides helps to save time spent looking for solutions on the internet or waiting to speak with someone who has knowledge of how to solve the issue.

Infosys, a global leader in consulting, technology, outsourcing and next-generation services, today announced that it has been awarded in the'Best in Show' category by TM Forum Live! Asia". TM Forum is a leading global industry association for digital business. The award was given for the'Cognitive Digital Agent' - a project championed by Globe Telecom, Philippines along with Infosys, Amdocs and Huawei. The project demonstrated the feasibility of using cognitive computing technologies aligned to telecom business processes to enhance customer experience in a more intuitive and natural fashion. To address changing consumer needs and demands in today's digital economy, Infosys, along with Huawei and Amdocs, established the Cognitive Digital Agent - a five-month project, led by Globe Telecom. This was aimed at creating the next generation of customer care services, leveraging artificial intelligence technologies. The core solution is driven by Infosys' expertise in natural language processing, machine learning and cognitive computing. The Cognitive Digital Agent has the capability to address complex queries and answer questions through omni-channel access including interactive voice responses (IVR), portals and wearables. The Cognitive Digital Agent creates a difference in situations where, if a call center is contacted, the responses are generated using natural language processing - making them more consumer friendly, or on social media platforms and in smart watches where the machine agent responds to queries 24x7. TM Forum recognized the project for some of these exceptional demonstrations of business outcomes across channels, and the inventive use of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI). "Our goal has been to explore the use of cognitive computing and artificial intelligence technologies such as natural language processing and machine learning to create the next generation of customer care services, which, in turn, enabled us to create this compelling project that can significantly improve customer satisfaction.

Virtually every major smartphone vendor, from Apple to Samsung to LG to Huawei, is expected to release devices featuring artificial intelligence this year. Industry sources tell DigiTimes that virtual assistants will once again play a large role in the mobile industry in 2017, and that significant upgrades are on the way. According to DigiTimes' sources, Apple is working on an "enhanced" version of its Siri virtual assistant for its next generation of iPhone devices. The report doesn't specify whether or not this new Siri will appear on the iPhone 8, but with all the talk of the sweeping changes and additional features Apple is planning to bring to the iPhone for its 10th anniversary, a more advanced Siri would make sense. The report also points to Apple's acquisition of machine learning and AI startup Turi last August, which it says will allow the company to "further strengthen the functionality, as well as the market share" of Siri, which is now competing with the likes of Cortana, Alexa and Google Assistant.