SHANGHAI, CHINA--Networks will need to keep pace with increasingly connected societies and the need for deeper insights to improve service delivery and support digital transformation. With the Internet of Things (IoT) era beckoning, everything soon would be connected and data-driven and customers would no longer look to simply buy a platform or individual parts, said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, during his keynote at Huawei Connect 2016 held here this week. They would be looking for an experience and no activity would occur in isolation, he said. Intel describes the phenomenon as a virtuous cycle, in which all things that are connected including wearable devices, autonomous vehicles, and M2M systems will require connectivity to send data through to the cloud to be analysed and push back down the analytics so experiences can be changed. Supporting this continuous feedback loop also would require collaboration between multiple companies, since no one organisation would be capable of producing all the ingredients needed, Krzanich said.

First an AI wrote a screenplay, now IBM Watson has helped create a movie trailer. Film editors from 20th Century Fox have teamed up with IBM's AI system to create the trailer for the studio's upcoming film Morgan. Fittingly, Morgan is a sci-fi/horror movie about scientists who create an artificial humanoid whose powers grow out of control. According to IBM, trailers can be expensive and time-consuming to make, taking teams of people up to 30 days to complete. With the help of Watson APIs, IBM was able to cut that process down to one day, creating the first so-called "cognitive movie trailer".

It seems like there's more talk these days about Industry 4.0 -- or the fourth industrial revolution -- and robotics, along with other technologies that will play a role in this megatrend. Industry 4.0 is a confluence of trends and technologies that could reshape the way things are made. Industry 4.0 involves the heavy use of automation and data exchange in manufacturing environments, encompassing areas such as cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing, among others. With Industry 4.0, manufacturers will be able to operate "smarter" factories, in which they can more easily tailor products for specific customers. This new phase in manufacturing is so named because it follows the previous manufacturing phases of water/steam power, electric power, and computing power.

Google is making it easier for businesses to learn from their data, with a new automated insights stream within its Google Analytics apps for Android and iOS. The stream relies on machine intelligence to find trends "among the thousands of metric and dimension combinations that can be reported in Google Analytics," Google product manager Ajay Nainani wrote in a blog post. For example, Nainani said, the stream could help a retailer quickly find opportunities during the holiday season. The insights stream "can tell you which products are experiencing higher than normal sales growth, which advertising channels are driving the most conversions and the best returns, and on which devices customers engage with your brand." In addition to quickly surfacing trends, the new Google Analytics feature also makes it easier to share insights and offers tips on how a user can improve his Analytics data. It also should get smarter over time based on user feedback.

A driverless tractor could run around the clock. CNH Industrial unveiled an autonomous tractor concept at the 2016 Farm Progress Show in Iowa during the last week of August. Theses self-driving tractors would be able to work around the clock while also providing real-time data monitoring. Farmers would program the tractors to accomplish specific tasks. Then, instead of sweating in the fields, they could tend to livestock or even sit in an air-conditioned office and monitor the tractors from a tablet or computer. In essence, automated equipment could turn farming into a desk job.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is entering a new phase, driven by the ongoing splintering of enterprises. The discipline has been carefully crafted over the past couple of decades as a process-driven, well-documented exercise intended to develop a roadmap to prevent organizations from spending big money on technologies that don't produce value for the business. This model of EA worked well within established enterprises that viewed IT as a budget item that needed to be justified and monitored -- and constantly explained to executives. Nowadays, however, IT is integral to everything the business does, and is viewed as a strategic weapon. Tom Graves, a self-identified "enterprise architect, business-anarchist, confusionist,"whose work I greatly respect, says a major disruption is reshaping the role of EA and the mission of enterprise architects.

Target's marketing chief Jeff Jones is leaving the cheap-chic retail chain and heading to Uber. In a blog post, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said Jones is coming on board as Uber's president of ridesharing, replacing longtime Uber employee and board member Ryan Graves. Kalanick said Jones will head up Uber's people operations, marketing, and customer support efforts. He also provided a few more specifics on how he wants to see Jones revamp Uber's marketing strategy. "Over the last six months, Ryan and I have become increasingly convinced that our rapidly growing marketing efforts needed to be far more integrated with our city operations," Kalanick wrote.

One analyst argues that Oracle is about to see a surge in database upgrades, but it's unclear how much cloud and open source options are eating into the company's profit pie. The world's largest enterprise technology event, Oracle OpenWorld, is just a few weeks away. Oracle is holding off on making its biggest announcements until the event, but a look through the conference's voluminous online session catalog turned up some of the key highlights for customers and partners. Artificial Intelligence: AI has been all the rage in the IT industry this year, marked by a flurry of acquisitions and new product announcements. Netflix, Uber, and eHarmony are consumer services used every day to watch movies, drive from point A to B, and meet people, respectively.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced Tuesday the latest release of its Vertica analytics software, as well as new machine learning capabilities for Haven OnDemand. Vertica focuses on the analytics of structured information, such as data stored in rows and fields. As the latest iteration, Vertica 8, codenamed "Frontloader," introduces a unified architecture and new in-database analytics capabilities. As far and fast as cloud computing is embedding itself into the enterprise, there remain many cloud-resistant applications and services. HPE says Vertica 8 is designed to help businesses extract intelligence from data residing in multiple silos across the datacenter, including on-premise, private, and public clouds, and in Hadoop data lakes.

There are few industries artificial intelligence (AI) will not touch, but the security industry has only begun to scratch the surface of its potential. While unsure of the future applications of AI in the security world, Kurt Roemer, chief security strategist at Citrix, believes that AI needs to play a large role to keep on top of the issues that keep presenting themselves as a threat to the security industry. "AI is going to have a huge role in security and it ultimately has to because the security problem is extremely complex and it's much more than an individual or even a well established security team can keep up with," Roemer told ZDNet. "What AI can bring to bear is providing security professionals with actionable intelligence and with areas where they only need to make decisions," he said. "Workflows happen automatically and security according to plan happens in the background at all points in time without the humans in the loop."