TechTouch Asia

Source: Dirac. The LIFEBOOK U9311 business laptop in black. Swedish digital audio pioneer Dirac has announced that Fujitsu’s LIFEBOOK U9311 and U9311X business laptops, produced by Fujitsu Client Computing and sold by Fujitsu Limited, include Dirac audio technology to deliver an immersive sound experience with upgraded sound quality for various use cases. The Dirac-enabled Fujitsu`s new LIFEBOOK models feature selectable audio modes for teleconferencing, music-listening, and movie-watching that enhance the audio experience of each use case.  “Laptops are like smartphones in that they’re used for multiple purposes and in many different locations,” says Erik Rudolphi, Dirac’s VP of Strategic Partnerships. “As an established leader in delivering high-quality audio to mobile devices, Dirac is now increasingly applying its audio expertise to the PC market, where audio quality remains a critical factor to the overall user experience.” “Dirac has been integrated into 500 million s...

Veeam Software, the provider of backup solutions that deliver cloud data management has expanded its public cloud support with the general availability of NEW Veeam Backup for Google Cloud Platform . With this annuncement Veeam now supports all three major public cloud providers, delivering a single platform to protect, secure and manage all applications and data – cloud, virtual and physical – enabling organisations to accelerate hybrid-cloud adoption. With the majority of organisations now running hybrid or multicloud environments and 72% of those using public cloud currently having more than one vendor in place*, Google Cloud is one of the top five-largest public cloud infrastructure providers worldwide**. “Veeam recognises the strategic importance of the cloud to our 400,000+ global customers and we are committed to providing broad platform support and choice,” said Danny Allan, CTO and Senior VP of product strategy at Veeam. “As we now expand public cloud support even ...

By Matt Young, Senior VP & Head of Asia Pacific and Japan at Nutanix   Like much of the world, Singapore has seen a significant advancement in technology use over the past year. But while we can almost see the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, technology trends show no signs of slowing.  The Singapore government recently announced its plans to harness science and technology to build a more resilient, sustainable, and digital Singapore; identifying artificial intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, quantum, trust technologies, and 5G as key drivers and dedicating an estimated S$25 billion to the cause. The government is thinking big: looking at creating a federated learning AI ecosystem to enable collaboration and knowledge sharing, and using Blockchain technologies to provide assurance of the supply and provenance of vital goods including food and medicine, among other initiatives.  The business opportunities presented by emerging technologies are tremendous. A...

by Geeman Yip, CEO, BitTitan The unprecedented spike in the use of business communication platforms like Microsoft Teams during the pandemic has helped colleagues seamlessly connect, collaborate and work more productively from home. In markets like Singapore where working from home was already established, IDC noted that adoption of video meetings, audio conference calls, and collaboration platforms took place faster than other parts of the region. After the pandemic, these tools are expected to remain an essential part of work. Research from Gartner suggests that nearly half of employees will work remotely at least some of the time compared to 30% before the pandemic. Maintaining employee productivity in this environment requires reliable, secure access to these tools and a plan for streamlining channels, chats and files to avoid sprawl. For IT departments, this acceleration of digitalisation has also come with some downsides in managing and optimising an expanding portfolio ...

Hong Kong-based Gammon Construction, one of Asia’s premier construction groups, has selected Veeam Availability Suite and Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 to safeguard critical data. As an industry trailblazer, Gammon has been pioneering new operational models in its drive to be digital. Speed and seamless collaboration are critical enablers of this with more than 4,000 Gammon employees across the region actively collaborating in the cloud, further spurred by increased remote working from COVID-19. With data growth surging, it was clear that critical data and business continuity were at risk as the native backup of Microsoft Office 365 (O365) could not guarantee that the data would be 100% restored during disaster recovery. In addition, its backup tools at the time would have required days or weeks for a full backup and restore. Gammon required a more comprehensive data protection strategy and subsequently adopted Veeam Backup for Microsoft Office 365 to optimise d...

Kofax, the supplier of intelligent automation software, has partnered with Coupa Software to help enterprises deepen operational efficiencies as they digitally transform their spend management processes. Kofax ReadSoft Online is now integrated with the Coupa Business Spend Management (BSM) Platform as a certified CoupaLink solution. The integrated offering allows organisations to automate invoice processing and payment processes. For instance, they can leverage document intelligence and machine learning from Kofax to extract data from invoices spanning multiple formats and languages, and then route extracted data into downstream spend management processes managed by Coupa. Users can significantly reduce invoice processing time and overhead, Kofax said, as this replaces the traditional paper-based processes for capturing, matching, approving and archiving supplier invoices. Although such paper-based processes lend themselves to automation, only 10% of accounts payable leaders desc...

By Pat Phelan, VP Market Research, Rimini Street A hybrid IT infrastructure has become the primary model for Asia Pacific enterprises environments as CIOs make strategic investments that move many applications, infrastructure, and systems to the cloud while extracting more value from existing assets. As enterprises adopt new technologies from multiple vendors, the IT architecture can become more complex and vulnerable to security issues if it isn't supported by proven processes. CIOs must adapt IT management strategies to their environment by standardising tools and protocols for handling duplicate capabilities and developing a roadmap for success.  Staffing for building and operating hybrid IT must also receive consideration and evolve to leverage the cloud and non-cloud components of the hybrid IT environment effectively. These best practices for addressing the functional side of transformation will support the hybrid infrastructure in driving business goals. Be strat...

Cloud and cloud-centric operating models are now integral components of the modern IT environment. With the COVID-19 pandemic, all cloud promises – elastic consumption, agile development, and global reach – are being put to the test, said IDC in a mid-January statement. “Cloud provides benefits such as flexibility, agility, reach and scalability; both in terms of being able to scale out quickly and scale down have become even more strategic and important to enterprises to adapt to changing business needs as we move forward towards a new normal under these pandemic impacted times,” said Daphne Chung, Research Director for Cloud Services and Software research at IDC Asia/Pacific. Cloud's promises have led to the technology becoming the most strategic and widely-adopted technology to support remote working and innovation initiatives amid the pandemic, IDC said, from software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that cover collabo...

Source: AppDynamics. The AppDynamics Secure Application dashboard with bad news. AppDynamics, a part of Cisco, has announced Cisco Secure Application , the industry’s first solution to drastically simplify vulnerability management, defend against attacks and protect applications. Co-innovated with the Cisco Security business, this new solution is built natively into the AppDynamics platform, and enables users to benefit from reduced alert fatigue, real-time threat detection, and automatic breach prevention. The result is business confidence in application performance without the fear of significant damage to brand reputation and customer trust. Organisations are increasingly reliant on applications to engage with and deliver services to customers, which leads to huge volumes of personal user data being housed within each application. As a result, organisations face increased vulnerability to cyberthreats and security incidents. This challenge is further exacerbated as employees ...

Barco, the professional visualisation technologies specialist, has launched the G100 series of projectors. This budget-friendly projector range meets Barco's high-quality standards while satisfying customer requirements in terms of brightness, technical versatility, and sustainability when it comes to media-based attractions, such as planetariums, theme parks, as well as events. “The G100 is developed for applications that require high brightness and powerful laser projection, similar to the high end projectors but at an affordable price,” said Gan Ta Loong, MD, Barco SEA and VP Immersive Experience, Barco Asia Pacific at Barco. “The G100 range models expands and diversifies Barco’s projector hardware options for venue owners across the region and empowers them to create new, innovative visual displays. It has enabled Barco to target an even wider spectrum of audience with varying budgets and thus, strengthening our position as a leader in the audiovisual industry.” The G100...

by Ravi Shankar, Senior VP, Denodo More than 59 zettabytes (ZB) of data have been created, captured, copied, and consumed in the world this year, fuelled in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to IDC. With the increase in digital activities and employees working from home, richer mixes of datasets have been created in tandem. But what happens to this data, does it degrade over time or are businesses optimising it to fuel business growth? While there is no shortage of data out there, the ability to access and act on it whenever, wherever, and however you need is something else altogether. Here’s where business intelligence (BI) modernisation comes into the picture. Against this backdrop, BI projects have risen in priority for many businesses at present, as they seek to empower better data-driven decisions and take informed actions. The adoption of BI and analytics tools, however, does not guarantee success for businesses seeking to become more data-driven. In fact, multiple...