Anthropic recently launched Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which excels in graduate-level reasoning, undergraduate-level knowledge, and coding proficiency. It also shows improvements in nuance, humor, and complex instruction comprehension. It has 2x the speed of Claude 3 Opus, making it ideal for complex multi-step workflows. As one example of its performance, it solved 64% of coding problems for internal evaluations, which is better than the 38% for Claude 3 Opus. It can write, edit, and execute code independently. It also excels in vision tasks and surpasses Claude 3 Opus in its understanding of charts, graphs, and transcribing text from imperfect images. It is considered valuable for retail, logistics, and financial services.

Endiatx, a medical technology company, has developed a robotic pill. Founded in 2019, Endiatx created the pill robot for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. The PillBot has cameras, sensors, and wireless communication capabilities that allow it to be used to visually examine the gastrointestinal tract. The PillBot is 13mm by 30mm and is designed for patients to swallow. It navigates the digestive tract and provides real-time high-resolution video at 2.3 megapixels per second. It is non-invasive, and it can be used at home instead of requiring hospital sedation.

Anthropic recently launched Claude 3.5 Sonnet, which excels in graduate-level reasoning, undergraduate-level knowledge, and coding proficiency. It also shows improvements in nuance, humor, and complex instruction comprehension. It has 2x the speed of Claude 3 Opus, making it ideal for complex multi-step workflows. As one example of its performance, it solved 64% of coding problems for internal evaluations, which is better than the 38% for Claude 3 Opus. It can write, edit, and execute code independently. It also excels in vision tasks and surpasses Claude 3 Opus in its understanding of charts, graphs, and transcribing text from imperfect images. It is considered valuable for retail, logistics, and financial services.

Endiatx, a medical technology company, has developed a robotic pill. Founded in 2019, Endiatx created the pill robot for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. The PillBot has cameras, sensors, and wireless communication capabilities that allow it to be used to visually examine the gastrointestinal tract. The PillBot is 13mm by 30mm and is designed for patients to swallow. It navigates the digestive tract and provides real-time high-resolution video at 2.3 megapixels per second. It is non-invasive, and it can be used at home instead of requiring hospital sedation.

Qualcomm held an AI workshop that demonstrated how broad the company’s approach to AI truly is. The company’s AI efforts span IoT, smartphone, PC, and automotive—the company’s four core product areas. I would’ve liked to see more on AI in modems and networking, which seemed to be missing from the discussion.

An upcoming Google event will focus on hardware and AI, and it will be interesting to see how Google’s recent reorganization will affect the future of Google’s hardware—and how the company will launch its software with its hardware.

No-code CRM Creatio reaches unicorn status with a $1.2 billion valuation based upon a $200 million investment round. Creatio is one of many new customer experience platforms attempting to disrupt market leader Salesforce. Creatio’s value proposition focuses upon ease of use via no-code programming tools, generative AI, and prepackaged workflows grouped by industry. Creatio’s easy onboarding and broad support for sales, marketing, and service use cases may not attract the biggest users of Salesforce but could be compelling for many organizations. Given the historic challenges associated with CRMs, the use of no-code and GenAI may be able to alleviate developer demand, especially for ad-hoc reporting and dashboards.

Oracle released an update to its MySQL Heatwave offering. The new release is available to all existing Heatwave users, and for new users can be easily accessed through the Oracle Cloud. The Heatwave team has focused their attention on making it easy to build AI-based applications, especially if a developer is not very AI savvy. Native support for vector databases (which is also available in the latest Oracle Database release) and embedded large language models are key features that enable a quicker time to value for GenAI-based applications. In addition, Oracle also claims that this tighter integration can also improve performance over other cloud-based database solutions. It’s an interesting approach and we’re excited to hear more about it.

A new development methodology embodied in the just-published book Impact Engineering made headlines this month when a related study was released that raises questions about the efficacy of agile development. While poking holes in a broadly adopted software development methodology is a good way to promote a book, the study did bring up many interesting points. However, I have also seen these points often cited when teams claim to use agile but aren’t strict about its implementation. Now that agile has been used for more than 20 years (yes, the Agile Manifesto came out 21 years ago), it will be interesting to see if more experts weigh in on “fixing agile” or other replacement methods.

Salesforce announced the general availability of its Life Sciences Cloud, a platform designed to help pharmaceutical and medical technology companies personalize patient and healthcare professional (HCP) engagement while streamlining clinical operations with data and automation. Life Sciences Cloud, powered by the company’s Einstein 1 AI platform, is an AI-driven solution that integrates teams involved in patient and HCP engagement. This should streamline clinical trials by enhancing patient recruitment, enrollment, onboarding, and communication—all of which have pain points that lead to attrition in clinical trials. Solutions such as Life Sciences Cloud could accelerate drug development and improve patient outcomes. Participant recruitment and the data cloud are currently available. AI enhancements and customer engagement components are expected to be released in phases throughout the rest of 2024 and 2025.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) continues reinforcing its brand as the CSP that embraces true multicloud. The company’s latest announced partnership with Google Cloud (GCP) sees Oracle Exadata with Autonomous Database and other Oracle Cloud Services deployed in GCP databases around the globe. The building of a secure high-speed interconnect with no ingress or egress fees associated with either cloud enables customers to move apps and data across their multicloud environment like it was their own datacenter.

This is the second such partnership OCI has established, the first being with Microsoft Azure. In the case of Microsoft, the two companies have further extended their partnership to include OCI support for OpenAI, supporting AI inference and other requirements as necessary.

While most CSPs talk about multicloud, OCI is actually building a multicloud platform—one that I believe will set market expectations for all cloud providers.

Is the AI training war over and won by NVIDIA? Undoubtedly, the company has built a strong position that is protected by its CUDA framework’s popularity. Perhaps in these early days, with the largest training clusters being deployed in the cloud and labs, NVIDIA will retain a sizable lead. However, as enterprise organizations deploy AI across the organization with smaller LLMs and SLMs, and AI infrastructure competes with other IT priorities, I expect AMD, Intel, and perhaps others to find a more competitive footing in the training market.

Further, AI inferencing, which will account for the lion’s share of the AI revenue pipeline, is wide open to established players and newcomers alike. It’s going to be a fun game to watch—stay tuned.

HYCU, Inc. aims to revolutionize data protection. For those unfamiliar with HYCU, it is a Boston-based company recognized for its data protection solutions across on-premises, public cloud, hybrid, and SaaS platforms.

While SaaS applications offer many benefits, they also present challenges for data management strategies. Discover how HYCU addresses these challenges with its R-Cloud platform, providing Data Protection as a Service (DPaaS).

https://moorinsightsstrategy.com/research-papers/research-paper-hycu-wants-to-revolutionize-data-protection/

Box has announced unlimited AI queries in Notes, Documents, and Hubs for its Enterprise Plus customers, along with upcoming enhancements including GPT-4 integration, image and spreadsheet support, and a metadata API. These updates aim to make it easier for businesses to use AI in their content management workflows. This move from Box provides some stickiness within its Content Cloud. It’s also another example of Open AI’s continued enterprise integration.

Mattel is getting all dolled up by using Adobe Firefly’s generative AI tool to change the design process for Barbie packaging. Mattel designers use Firefly to generate high-quality visuals, color palettes, and other creative elements, allowing for more experimentation and faster iteration. As the Firefly models become increasingly more advanced, it’s nice to see an approach from a brand such as Mattel that reports it enhances the visual appeal of Barbie packaging and significantly reduces the time and effort required in the design process.

Cloudera has introduced three new AI-driven assistants to enhance its hybrid platform for data, analytics, and AI. These tools are designed to help customers develop business applications more quickly. Cloudera’s ongoing innovation and differentiation are essential in a competitive market that includes Databricks and Snowflake.

By enhancing data accuracy and facilitating integration, these AI assistants help businesses optimize their operations, improve efficiency, and maximize ROI.

1. SQL AI Assistant — Simplifies the complexities of writing SQL queries using retrieval augmented generation (RAG) technology to generate and optimize queries. This helps with the challenges and barriers of SQL syntax, allowing enterprises to focus on extracting valuable data insights.
2. AI Chatbot in Cloudera Data Visualization — Integrated into Cloudera Data Visualization, this AI chatbot communicates using enterprise data to provide business insights. When users ask questions, the chatbot matches these queries with data and visuals for more actionable insights directly from Cloudera’s dashboard.
3. Cloudera Copilot for Cloudera Machine Learning — Uses LLMs integrated with 130 different pre-trained machine learning models and datasets from Hugging Face––a popular AI company known for providing a variety of models and datasets used for natural language processing and other AI tasks. These models and datasets can support various AI and machine learning applications, allowing developers to leverage these resources for text generation, classification, translation, and other tasks.

It seems that the jury is still out regarding the viability of enterprise networking as a service (NaaS) offering, based on my recent discussions with several infrastructure providers. Network operation teams still apparently favor the traditional procurement of connectivity infrastructure that entails self-deployment and management.

That is an interesting situation, given current inflationary pressures and the opportunity to treat infrastructure as an operational expense. However, companies such as Nile Secure could convince enterprises to reconsider NaaS, given bundled SLAs and GenAI features that augment assurance and resilience—and thereby free up IT teams to focus on more value-added activities for the lines of business they support.

AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3.1 is launching with many of Sony’s PlayStation PC titles, including Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and Spider-Man titles. FSR 3.1 should also deliver considerable performance boosts on handheld platforms with limited thermal headroom that can benefit from features including frame generation.

Meta has abandoned its own mixed-reality tools in favor of using LIV’s tools, and has announced a partnership with the company after many years of trying to compete with it or acquire it. I believe this is a net positive for the XR industry and points to Meta realizing it doesn’t need to do everything from a first-party perspective to succeed.

Meta pushed a recent update to the Ray-Ban smart glasses, which adds richer AI experiences and makes it possible to record longer videos—up to three minutes—which I believe could finally make these glasses helpful in shooting content. In fact, I’ve used them myself to shoot hands-on videos of some new Copilot+ PCs. (For samples of the photography that’s possible with the Ray-Ban smart glasses, check out the piece I wrote to chronicle how I used them to capture this season’s Opening Day for my beloved San Diego Padres.)

Verizon has changed its logo, and with that new branding has come new plans for fixed wireless access and for fiber bundled with streaming and cloud services. The company is once again trying to reinvent itself as more than just a big dumb pipe, and I’m concerned that it might not be any more successful than it was last time it tried such a strategy. Yes, Verizon’s network is much improved, but it’s still nowhere near as good as T-Mobile’s 5G network in terms of coverage or speeds.

Motorola has launched its new Razr and Razr+ foldable flip smartphones; the Razr+ features the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8S Gen 3 processor—the fastest any Razr has ever had. It also features an even larger outside cover screen to improve the flip phone experience. Motorola is using the MediaTek 7300X on the lower Razr model. The 7300X is the same chip that MediaTek launched earlier this year; we learned about it at the company’s Analyst Day but couldn’t talk about it until later. Moto features its own on-device AI capabilities while also partnering with Google to integrate Gemini on-device.

OpenAI has acquired Multi, a startup formerly known as Remotion, which focuses on screen sharing and collaboration tools for Mac users. Multi allows multiple users to work simultaneously on the same computer, enhancing remote collaboration. This is OpenAI’s second acquisition in recent weeks following the purchase of Rockset, a company specializing in real-time analytics databases. While the terms of the deal remain undisclosed, this strategic move suggests OpenAI’s ongoing interest in expanding its capabilities in collaborative tools and real-time data processing.

I have now taken possession of three different Copilot+ PCs and am genuinely impressed with both the performance and the battery life of these systems. One major thing to consider is standby power, which enables multi-day usage when not using the PC for a whole day. Not needing to carry a charging cable with you everywhere is a truly enlightening experience, and it is shocking when you realize that the device can last so long while still being so fast. The different designs and approaches of these PCs also lend well to the diversity of the PC ecosystem, in which the devices can be many different things to different people.

IBM and Pasqal, leaders in superconducting circuit and neutral atom-based quantum computers, respectively, announced a partnership to develop quantum-centric supercomputing and advance chemistry and materials science research. They aim to integrate quantum and classical computing, establishing next-generation supercomputers. The collaboration focuses on defining software integration architecture to manage computational workflows across various quantum and classical systems, leveraging open-source software and community involvement. This partnership represents a significant step in integrating quantum computing into high-performance computing, promising advancements in scientific applications and industry practices.

CDK Global was recently the victim of two cyberattacks that crippled thousands of car dealerships around the United States, preventing them from transacting new car sales and service. It demonstrates a newfound ability for bad actors to target small to medium-sized business disruption for personal gain. From my perspective, the incident is a wakeup call for businesses of all sizes to ensure proper security controls and not blindly rely on others to ensure proper safeguards.

Dell Technologies has released its FY2024 ESG Report, highlighting its commitment to sustainability, inclusion, transforming lives, and upholding trust. The company has made progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the use of recycled and renewable materials, and advancing digital inclusion. The report outlines the company’s ambitious 2030 goals, including achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in operations, using 100% recycled or renewable material in all packaging, and ensuring that 95% of product waste is reused or recycled. Dell continues to drive positive social impact through initiatives such as its Progress Made Real program, which focuses on advancing sustainability, cultivating inclusion, and transforming lives by providing access to technology, skills, and resources for underrepresented communities.

India recently held its first 5G spectrum auction in two years, and the results were lackluster compared to the $18 billion raised previously. It’s a somewhat perplexing issue given the country’s recent hyper economic growth. Many expected that mobile network operators would snap up spectrum to cash in on opportunities to modernize manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics with cellular connectivity.

However, it is apparent that the monetization of public 5G deployments in India has not come to fruition. The issue lies in the government’s unwillingness to replicate models such as CBRS in the United States to democratize enterprise access to licensed spectrum, and an unwillingness for operators such as Reliance Jio to focus on network slicing to deliver private networking to the country’s industrial base.