We learned that the emerging ecosystem of containers, microservices, cloud scalability, devops, application monitoring, and streaming analytics is not a fad. It's the future, already powering Silicon Valley's and Seattle's most advanced tech companies. Throw in machine learning and IoT and you have a comprehensive framework for the next phase of enterprise IT, with continuous improvement as its founding principle. At the same time, we became more aware of the widening gulf between this new world and most existing enterprise IT operations. That's why the hoary phrase "digital transformation" refuses to die -- the leap from legacy to modernity requires profound, multiphase, across-the-board change.

More cities are adding smart city features so that Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and other connected technologies can improve the lives of citizens and visitors. As everyone knows, technology moves fast and finding out what's in store next is crucial to stay in the game. Diabetics have been waiting for years for better technology to manage their condition. Some got tired of waiting and hacked together an open source hardware and software solution. The concept of a smart city has been around for more than a decade, but it was only recently that the phrase "smart city" became part of the modern lexicon.

Humanity has a major food problem. The world's population is expected to increase significantly over the next three decades, but our capacity for food production will struggle to keep pace. Although global fertility rates are actually falling, a general increase in life expectancy will mean a steady increase in headcount during our lifetimes. One 2015 UN DESA report claims the world's population will hit 9.7 billion by 2050 – an increase of some 2.3 billion over today. Of course, a general rise in life expectancy reflects a higher standard of living for more of the world, which is cause for celebration.

Two cucumber farmers in Japan have received an unusual boost to their business after their son adapted Google's powerful artificial intelligence software to carry out the arduous task of sorting vegetables. Makoto Koike returned to his parent's cucumber farm in 2015 after working as a computer systems designer in the automobile industry. While helping out on the farm, Koike realized that one of the most time-consuming processes could be overcome through automation. Taking inspiration from Google's powerful artificial intelligence computer program AlphaGo, Koike set about designing a sorting system using a $35 Raspberry Pi 3 computer and Google's open source deep-learning platform TensorFlow. "Each cucumber has different color, shape, quality and freshness," Koike said.

The world's largest hedge fund is building a piece of software to automate the day-to-day management of the firm, including hiring, firing and other strategic decision-making. Bridgewater Associates has a team of software engineers working on the project at the request of billionaire founder Ray Dalio, who wants to ensure the company can run according to his vision even when he's not there, the Wall Street Journal reported. "The role of many remaining humans at the firm wouldn't be to make individual choices but to design the criteria by which the system makes decisions, intervening when something isn't working," wrote the Journal, which spoke to five former and current employees. The firm, which manages $160bn, created the team of programmers specializing in analytics and artificial intelligence, dubbed the Systematized Intelligence Lab, in early 2015. The unit is headed up by David Ferrucci, who previously led IBM's development of Watson, the supercomputer that beat humans at Jeopardy! in 2011.

Today's customer relationship management (CRM) solutions offer a wealth of information and opportunities, if your people know how to access and use it. Businesses that apply machine learning to CRM are able to target their audience, identify buying behaviors, and breathe new life into sales. Learn how to put CRM data to good use and grow sales with intelligent CRM. Your sales representatives might have a'good feeling' as to which products customers are most interested in, and your marketers can have a'good feeling' about their next campaign; however, best guesses don't drive profits. Download the infographic, "7 Ways to Grow Sales with Intelligent CRM," for quick insight into what your prospects and customers are thinking, then leverage that insight to boost sales.

SVKM's NMIMS University is all set to organise International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare on 27-28th December, 2016 at its Shirpur campus in Northern Maharashtra. The conference aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on all aspects of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare. It also provides a premier interdisciplinary platform for researchers, practitioners and educators to present and discuss the most recent innovations, trends, and concerns as well as practical challenges encountered and solutions adopted in the fields of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare, says Dr R.S. Gaud, Chairman of the conference. The conference will be inaugurated by Dr Shailendra Saraf, Vice President of Pharmacy Council of India, New Delhi. About 12 speakers from the national and international universities and research centres will deliver their scientific lectures in the two-day international conference.

Humans have broken the Internet. Cyberbullying, harassment, social shaming, and sheer unpleasantness plague such sites as Twitter and Reddit, especially if you happen to attract the wrong sort of attention. Consider the way Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones and public relations executive Justine Sacco became targets for mass abuse. The companies that run online services are typically squeezed between charges of indifference to harassment and suppression of free speech. But now Google thinks it can use artificial intelligence to lessen this tragedy of the digital commons.

Well, here's something you might want to prepare yourself for. By the time wedding bells are ringing your new son- or daughter-in-law could very well be a robot. That's what Dr. David Levy believes, at least. You might recognize Levy's name, either because of his chess-playing prowess or his decades-long involvement with artificial intelligence research. Levy, who happens to be a very good friend of computing pioneer Clive Sinclair, says that humans and robots will be tying the knot "before, not after, the year 2050."

We are all witnesses that 2016 was the year when Digital Health technologies took off and developed actively. Such rapid growth was partly due to the emergence of numerous wearable tech devices, but also due to numerous breakthroughs in other IT-related business areas. Digital health improves the quality of life, increases the lifespan, and gives people an opportunity to learn more about their lifestyles and how their bodies work. Most importantly, digital health (or, more specifically, digital healthcare) changes and improves the quality of care for patients, by enhancing the instruments for surgeons and other medical staff. Let's find out what are the main trends in health information technologies (HIT) and how will they affect the development of the sphere as a whole.