IBM Software Labs is set to establish a state-of-the-art product engineering, design and development centre in Kochi to advance hybrid cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. The move comes in the wake of a virtual meeting Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had with Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India, and Gaurav Sharma, Vice President, IBM India Software Labs, in which the role of technology in accelerating the State's digital mission was discussed. Mr. Vijayan shared his vision of making Kerala a digital-knowledge economy, the changes introduced in the IT policy and the role of technology in helping various sectors reset and recover from the pandemic. The significance of collaboration between industries, the government and the academia to drive growth opportunities within the State was also discussed. Mr. Vijayan observed that Kerala was a talent hub for IT professionals and entrepreneurs, while expressing satisfaction about IBM's proposed expansion in the State.

Online supermarket Ocado has announced plans to open a London tech hub that will create 260 digital jobs as it plans to bolster the talent behind its smart platform. The Ocado smart platform will be sold to companies across the world to help them move online, the company has said. The London office, which will be based in Old Street, becomes the company's sixth development centre, with others in Hatfield, Bulgaria, Spain and two in Poland. "We're excited to be expanding our network of development hubs into London, a city renowned for being at the forefront of tech innovation and home to many talented technologists," said Ocado Technology chief executive James Matthews "As we are growing rapidly, we are always on the lookout for people who share our drive to innovate," Matthews added. "This London hub joins our network of development centres to offer exciting employment opportunities for ambitious, tech-savvy individuals."

Amazon has revealed plans to create more than 1,000 jobs in the UK in Manchester, Edinburgh and Cambridge. At least 600 "highly skilled" roles will be added in Manchester working on software, machine learning and AWS, its cloud computing business. The company will also create 250 and 180 jobs at its development centres in Edinburgh and Cambridge respectively. Doug Gurr, Amazon's UK country manager, described the new roles as "Silicon Valley jobs in Britain". Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, said the new positions were an "enormous vote of confidence in the UK".

Retail to cloud-computing giant Amazon plans to hire over 1,000 new staff across three sites in the UK, and will open a new office in Manchester next year. "These are Silicon Valley jobs in Britain, and further cement our long-term commitment to the UK." said Doug Gurr, Amazon's UK country manager. A new corporate office in Manchester, due to open next year, will be located in the Hanover Building in the Northern Quarter. The company said the six-storey, 90,000 square-foot site will house at least 600 new staff working on software development, machine learning and R&D. Amazon said it will also expand its development centre in Edinburgh, adding 250 new staff where it already has hundreds of software engineers, machine learning scientists and user experience designers.

Engineers have been spotted testing a prototype drone that should allow Amazon packages to be dropped off safely. The prototype was seen being lowered up and down by a huge crane as tests are carried out to ensure the drone can avoid obstacles and land safely in gardens. Seattle-based Amazon is believed to be testing its sophisticated'sense and avoid' technology at a secret location in the Cambridgeshire countryside. Seattle-based Amazon is believed to be testing its sophisticated'sense and avoid' technology This would enable the drones to eventually fly for ten miles at 400ft (121m) and carry packages of up to 5lbs (2.2kg) to people's homes in under 30 minutes. The size of the drones is unknown, with various shapes and sizes being tested, but some have been estimated as measuring between 17 and 25 inches wide.

Advances in cloud computing, hardware, open-source software and algorithms have made it possible to analyse data in ways that simply would not have been practical a few years ago. Much of this success comes from machine learning - a set of techniques that allow us to make sense of large quantities of data and make predictions about what will happen next. Breakthroughs in machine learning are powering advances in almost every domain, from personalised product recommendations and autonomous vehicles through to drug discovery in healthcare and fraud detection in financial services. Traditional approaches to solving problems use hardcoded rules, which describe the solution step-by-step. In contrast, machine learning systems are set a task, and given a large amount of data to use as examples of how the task can be achieved.

Amazon is continuing its fierce expansion in the UK, unveiling plans to hire 400 people for a new development centre due to open in Cambridge in autumn. The retail giant said on Thursday that it was recruiting "extensively" for machine learning scientists, knowledge engineers, data scientists, mathematical modellers, speech scientists and software engineers to staff the new facilities and work on products like the Kindle, Fire tablet, Fire TV Stick, Echo, Echo Dot and the new Echo Look. Once the new centre is open, an existing facility in Cambridge will largely be used for research and development related to Amazon's Prime Air – a delivery system which aims to get parcels to customers in 30 minutes or less using drones. Last week Amazon announced that it was creating 1,200 new jobs at a site in Warrington under plans announced in February to expand its UK workforce by 5,000, despite uncertainty stemming from Brexit. The UK has for some years been a major market for Amazon and in March the sprawling Seattle-headquartered group launched Amazon Business for the UK, aimed at doing for businesses what it already does for individual customers, by offering a marketplace where companies can buy everything from industrial machinery to paper clips and janitorial equipment, even in bulk.