Bengaluru: Wipro Ltd, which launched its artificial intelligence (AI) platform Holmes 18 months ago, is now making its biggest push to embrace automation by allowing more of its managers to identify work which will not require engineers in each of the over 20,000 projects currently underway. This "bold" development, according to one executive who did not want to be identified will mean Wipro doesn't just save on costs (thereby arresting falling profitability), but fundamentally alters the traditional model of deploying armies of engineers to undertake maintenance work. To be sure, that could also mean that its current workforce needs to learn new technology skills swiftly to stay relevant. Wipro is in the process of appointing individual leaders in each of the six industry-serving segments (which the company calls strategic business units) and five solution offering verticals or practices, who will be entrusted with the job of automating mundane maintenance work. Until now, Wipro's chief technology officer K.R. Sanjiv, in consultation with various segment heads used to decide which projects could use Holmes.

The Spain-headquartered startup, which today is announcing $6 million in Series A funding, is using deep learning to help startups and larger companies recruit developers. Specifically, its AI tech is analysing the code of millions of developers via their open source contributions in order to match them to appropriate job openings. "We use this analysis to understand how good they are at any given language and framework and match them with companies looking for developers," is how Source{d} co-founder and COO Jorge Schnura explains it. He also says it isn't just about identifying code quality or a developer's ability, but also coding style and other nuances that differentiates one developer from another. "We can [find] people who are similar to your team," adds Schnura. "This is all unsupervised learning since we don't tell our algorithms which features to look for, it defines them itself".

Greetings and welcome to the PROS Holdings Inc Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. It is now my please to introduce your host Stefan Schulz, Chief Financial Officer. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us. With me on today's call is Andres Reiner, President and Chief Executive Officer. Before we begin, we must caution you that some of today's remarks, including our guidance, our strategy, our competitive position, future business prospects, revenue, bookings, market opportunities, as well as statements made during the question-and-answer session, contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on present information and are subject to numerous and important factors, risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the results implied by these or other forward-looking statements. PROS does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur, or circumstances that exist, after the date on which they are made. Additional information concerning risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ can be found in the Company's filings with the SEC. Also, please note that a replay of today's webcast will be available in the Investor Relations section of our website at pros.com. We encourage everyone to review this additional information. Finally, I would like to point out that in addition to reporting financial results in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, PROS reports certain financial results, as well as forward-looking guidance, on a non-GAAP basis. A reconciliation of each non-GAAP measure to the most directly comparable GAAP measure, to the extent available without unreasonable efforts is available on the press release distributed earlier today, and in the Investor Relations section of our website. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us on today's call.

Is artificial intelligence tech quickly becoming enterprise tech? Vendors are betting on it. Last week at IBM World of Watson, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty laid out her vision for the technology: Namely, that Watson will reach a billion users by the end of 2017, and that the technology will underpin every major personal and corporate decision. Last month, Salesforce rolled out Salesforce Einstein, an AI system that analyzes data to identify trends in marketing and sales. Having a clear-cut IT strategy is key establishing a competitive advantage over any competition.

All you hear these days is how machine learning and artificial intelligence are the next big things. Your fellow executives, managers, vice presidents and directors are all talking about the need to think about an AI strategy to build business intelligence and create a competitive advantage. Unless you are among a handful of sophisticated technology companies, machine learning and artificial intelligence are way beyond the level of your core competence. You don't have a neural network and wouldn't know what to do with one even if you did. Your IT department just finished (finally) setting up your cloud platform and migrating all of the old company resources to a fancy new public/private hybrid cloud that the executive team spent three years talking about.

A wealth of data can be powerful, as long as that data delivers actionable insights. UK-based airline easyJet implemented artificial intelligence (AI) technology to make sense of its data and streamline areas of its business, such as stocking airplanes with the right amount of food. Alberto Rey Villaverde, easyJet's head of data science, spoke to eMarketer's Maria Minsker about why the airline turned to AI and the different ways the information AI provides is being used. Alberto Rey Villaverde: We've been using artificial intelligence for a few years. For the last year, we've been exploring new areas where these technologies could give us a boost. For example, we've been trying to be less wasteful with the food in our planes.

Amazon is extending its big data cloud platform across Europe, and the online retailer has machine learning research groups in Bangalore, Seattle, Palo Alto and Berlin, The Wall Street Journal reported. CEO Jeff Bezos is obsessed with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence -- anything that can help Amazon to better forecast customer wants and needs before the trends ever become obvious to the casual observer. The Amazon Machine Learning platform also is available for customer use via Amazon Web Services. Facebook's Artificial Intelligence Research project (FAIR) focuses on "giving people better ways to communicate." Some of Facebook's top AI researchers are Microsoft veterans, and those experts have a habit of sharing Facebook's knowledge.

Enterprises today rely on data as the foundation of business success, whether the goal is to better understand customers, build new or better products and services, or manage cost and risk. Data is now the prime raw material for creating value; across all industries, it's the norm to hold vast stores of data. An issue that remains unresolved, however, is how well and how efficiently data can be applied. Firms are still wrestling with the challenge of making big data work for them, in use cases ranging from enterprise analytics, customer 360, and product personalization to revenue assurance and fraud detection. All the data in the world has no value unless it's accessible and actionable.

Toon said that Graphcore currently stands at 40 employees and that the $30 million raised in the recently announced Series A (see Graphcore gets big backing for machine learning) would be used to complete the first design and for some limited expansion. "We could have taken more but this is sufficient to get product out," said Toon. "We will keep the engineering based here in Bristol but there is scope for some customer support and business development roles in Silicon Valley, Seattle and China," he added. Toon acknowledged that there is one other major technology company, besides Samsung and Robert Bosch, that contributed to the Series A funding . He said that company has chosen not to go public on the investment. With regard to the Intelligent Processor Unit (IPU) Knowles commented: "We will release our technology in the second half of 2017. It is a brand new, from-scratch design."

Symantec Corp. (SYMC) recently announced its latest Symantec Endpoint Protection 14 technology. "Artificial intelligence fused with critical endpoint technologies deliver the most complete endpoint security on the planet," boasts the cybersecurity industry pioneer. As headline data breaches and cybercrime news reach organizations worldwide, Symantec is positioned well to benefit from its cuttingedge integrated cyberdefense prevention and detection. The firm's Endpoint Protection 14 marks the lightest and strongest endpoint protection Symantec has on the market, "providing everything from file reputation and behavioral analysis to advanced machine learning Al," the company says. Endpoint Protection 14 stands as the only solution on the market merging essential endpoint technologies with advanced machine learning and memory exploit mitigation in a single agent.