TechTouch Asia

Cloudera, the only true hybrid platform for data, analytics, and AI, today announced it has partnered with Mercy Corps, a global organisation working with communities in 40 countries affected by crisis, disaster, poverty and climate change to address urgent needs and develop long-term solutions. The collaboration, formed through Cloudera's participation in Tech To The Rescue's AI for Changemakers programme, leverages Cloudera’s new AI inference solution with NVIDIA AI on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable Mercy Corps to advance the precision and effectiveness of its aid distribution technology. Mercy Corps is present in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Myanmar. In regions like the Middle East and Africa, agricultural crises can quickly become humanitarian disasters, threatening millions of lives. Despite this urgency, humanitarian organisations often struggle to access timely, accurate data to anticipate and respond effectively to these crises and minimise...

Avanade has launched seven new Microsoft-powered AI services tailored to help mid-market organisations in Asia Pacific accelerate growth and emerge as market leaders. According to Avanade, mid-market organisations in Asia Pacific are poised to gain the most from AI but often constrained by limited resources for risk and implementation as well as strategic guidance to fully maximise the technology. Research from the company found that 84% of mid-market business leaders in Asia Pacific believe they are at risk of losing competitive edge through not moving fast with AI, and 95% of them have accelerated legacy modernisation plans because of AI.  This rapid embrace of AI comes with challenges, including a lack of resources and strategic guidance to fully leverage the technology. To help mid-market organisations realise the value of AI in Asia Pacific’s dynamic and diverse markets, Avanade has introduced a suite of new services that combines its industry and technical expertise with Mic...

Warrix, a Thai sportswear company, has teamed up with Salesforce to bring people and processes together on Slack . Founded in 2013 by Wisan Wanasuksrisakul, Warrix has built up a strong reputation for sportswear, and is renowned for manufacturing Thailand's national football team jerseys. Combining Thai craftsmanship and expertise in product development with an understanding of evolving customer needs, the company has since expanded into the science, health, and sports lifestyle sectors. As the company grew, Warrix found that its efforts to track information and coordinate teamwork became increasingly inefficient. Leveraging Slack has allowed the company to integrate communication and work processes into one platform, enhancing the way it collaborates. " Slack has transformed how we work. With a single, secure conversational interface for work, our employees across teams and locations can share critical information faster and collaborate more closely," said Wa...

CrowdStrike has launched CrowdStrike AI Red Team Services , which leverage the company's threat intelligence and expertise in real-world adversary tactics. Red teaming refers to trying to attack a company's defences to proactively identify and help mitigate vulnerabilities in AI systems, including large language models (LLMs). As organisations adopt AI at a rapid pace, new threats such as model tampering, data poisoning, sensitive data exposure, and more, increasingly target AI applications and their underlying data, CrowdStrike said. The compromise of AI systems, including LLMs, can result in a breach of confidentiality, reduced model effectiveness and increased susceptibility to adversarial manipulation, the company noted. CrowdStrike AI Red Team Services provide organisations with comprehensive security assessments for AI systems, including LLMs and their integrations, to identify vulnerabilities and misconfigurations that could lead to data breaches, unauthorised code...

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...