TechTouch Asia

Phillip Teschemacher, Asia Pacific (APAC) President, Kinaxis, spoke to TechTouch about what AI can do to enhance supply chain management. Q :  How has technology changed supply chains recently, and what’s next? Teschemacher : We’ve witnessed a massive shift in supply chains – the pandemic exposed significant gaps in supply chain planning operations for many companies, and the disruptions have since continued with geopolitical tensions, piracy, and increasing pressure for environmental responsibility. This shift in mindset has businesses ramping up their investment in supply chain resilience and has prompted many technology innovations. Discussions around AI and its advancements in recent years have shown the potential to deliver better outcomes while preserving the speed and agility needed to navigate modern supply chain challenges. We will continue to see further progress in AI and machine learning. It is, however, essential to recognise that AI is not a silver bullet for s...

Source: FCC Analytics. Front row, from left: Henry Yu, Chief Compliance Officer, Airstar Bank; Wallace Chow, Founder & CEO, FCC Analytics; and Ada Yuen, Chief Risk Officer, livi Bank. Back row, from left: Sunny Xu, Head of Financial Crime Compliance, Airstar Bank; Luke Ng, CTO, FCC Analytics; and Karen Kwok, Head of Financial Crime Compliance, livi Bank. Regtech firm FCC Analytics has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Airstar Bank and livi bank, two digital banks in Hong Kong, to adopt federated learning technology for anti-money laundering (AML). This initiative enhances the banks' ability to meet compliance requirements, strengthens the monitoring process, and reduces the operational costs associated with traditional AML methods. Wallace Chow, Founder and CEO of FCC Analytics said: “Our vision is to support banks in combating financial crime by driving a peer-to-peer federated learning network across the Asia Pacific for various collaborative purposes.” He...

Source: Synology. An ActiveProtect appliance. Synology introduced data storage and management solutions, a dedicated backup appliance with advanced security features, AI camera options, and AI-powered productivity tools at Synology Solution Day 2024 earlier this month in Singapore. The ActiveProtect series simplifies deployment and sizing challenges, enabling protection for up to 2,500 multiserver environments across multisite or multinational IT infrastructures. ActiveProtect appliances are purpose-built backup systems designed to protect business-critical infrastructure. These appliances are optimised for high performance and data-efficient backups, and come with features like scalable multisite management, data immutability, and air-gap support. Fast deployment options make it easy to integrate these appliances into both edge and data centre environments. Multiple configurations are available, allowing for seamless storage tiering with cloud or on-premises Synology storage soluti...

Tenable, the exposure management company, has released the Tenable Cloud Risk Report 2024 *, highlighting that organisations globally, including in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region, are unknowingly exposed to the “toxic cloud triad,” three cloud security risks that could lead to severe data breaches and financial losses.   The report underscores the challenges posed by misconfigurations, excessive permissions, and critical vulnerabilities that open doors to threat actors. The findings reveal that 38% of organisations have at least one publicly exposed, critically vulnerable, and highly-privileged cloud workload, forming the toxic cloud triad. “Any organisation that collects, maintains, and processes data regardless of size or industry, is at risk of a breach if data is not secured properly,” said Nigel Ng, Senior VP, Tenable APJ.  “The toxic cloud triad is the perfect storm for cyberthreats. Public exposure opens the door to unauthorised access, while critical vulnerabilit...

At Zoomtopia 2024 Zoom Video Communications unveiled new AI-first work platform innovations for Zoom Workplace and Zoom Business Services that will transform team communication, collaboration, and productivity and help customers get more done. Zoomtopia 2024 announcements include the Zoom AI Companion 2.0, a new add-on option to customise and personalise AI Companion, Zoom Tasks to help users take action across Zoom Workplace, and enhanced employee and customer experience innovations underpinned by AI. “At Zoom, we’re not just reimagining communication—we’re revolutionising the entire work experience. Our vision is to create an AI-first work platform for human connection that empowers teams to achieve more than ever,” said Eric S. Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom.  “With AI Companion already enhancing productivity, we are helping our customers transform the way they work. This is more than an evolution; it’s a complete overhaul of how we get things done in the digital age.” Z...

by Shawn McAllister, CTO and Chief Product Officer at Solace A large multinational enterprise typically comprises thousands of applications, with data inputs spanning hybrid/multicloud environments, Internet of Things (IoT)/mobile devices, and distributed operations.   These data events, by their very nature, happen in real-time – a customer places an order online; a supplier updates available inventory; a passenger scans a boarding pass; a sensor detects a sudden temperature change. These events are not synchronous, and they all trigger follow-on actions that ripple throughout different departments and operations across an enterprise. The vast volumes of information in play, all containing data critical to an enterprise’s day-to-day operations, is underscoring a dramatic shift in the way increasingly globalised business systems are integrated. The old integration ways cannot match the needs of today’s real-time business world Traditional methods such as integration platform ...

Kissflow, a platform that empowers process owners, otherwise known as citizen developers and IT developers, to automate middle office processes and applications, has found that 83% of respondents in a survey have active citizen development programmes.  Citizen development is a progressive step towards democratising technology use and embracing non-IT developers into the technology development process, Kissflow said. The company explained that citizen development empowers non-IT employees to design, build, and deploy departmental applications, processes and tasks using low-code/no-code platforms. This movement allows non-IT business users—known as "citizen developers"—to create solutions tailored to their specific needs without relying on IT departments. For the Citizen Development Trends Report 2024 , Kissflow polled CIOs from enterprises with over 5,000 employees, and found that many view citizen development as a pivotal strategy for achieving business goals.  Researc...