Category Archives: Automation

DUBAI // Increased automation and the introduction of artificial intelligence into the workplace will significantly change work, the World Government Summit heard, and governments must prepare citizens.

A panel of experts that included Elizabeth Rhodes, basic income research director at Y Combinator, which helps fund start-up businesses, and Jonathan Matus, founder and chief executive at Zendrive, a transport consultancy, discussed the downsides of technology on jobs that can be easily automated, such as driving.

"This is an area where we can make an important distinction. Driving on the highway is much easier than driving in the city," said Mr Matus. "So, the autonomy of driving in trucks can come faster.

"Instead of building trucks that will drive all the way from the warehouse to the destination, companies can use autonomy for highways and a human driver within the city.

"Conglomerates such as Walmart will embrace this, and in the next 7 years, robots will drive a massive number of miles."

With automation, political unrest will could increase, and governments will need to invest in training people on a long-term basis to prevent unemployment, said Mr Matus.

When machines replace jobs, there will be a real cost in educating people and filling the deficit of lost wages, said Ms Rhodes, who has been working on a pilot programme for a universal basic income for everyone.

"The idea to give people a basic income as one of their human rights has always existed and is considered as a great measure to curtail crime. We are studying how this move will affect labour supply. If we give people money for nothing, they may also just stop working. Therefore, we are researching the impact of universal basic income on the individual and macro-economic level."

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Artificial intelligence, automation 'will significantly change the way we work' - The National

Its called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Curiously, rapid developments happening in fields previously thought to be disjointed are now amplifying each other.

We are seeing this in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing, genetics and biotechnology. On a different tangent altogether, smart systems are able to address a diverse set of issues ranging from climate to supply chains. What must be underscored here is a sense of urgency. Perhaps less than five years is what we have to enable this transition.

A WEF (World Economic Forum) report which was released last year referred to an alarming piece of statistic65% of children entering primary school today will end up working in jobs that dont yet exist. Alarming if we dont prepare now, but it can be hugely rewarding if we do, as it provides an opportunity for humans to acquire better skills. This isnt a robotic apocalypse as some quarters would have us believe.

Its a time to AQT (pronounced act).

As an illustration, AQT is a popular automation framework developed by Tech Mahindra to deliver continuous increase in business efficiency (faster, cheaper, better) for our stakeholders and ourselves through intelligent automation. AQT is implemented using our AQT Toolkit to achieve year-on-year productivity improvement, straddling across task-driven to knowledge- driven (basic, robotic, autonomous and cognitive). A simple formula acts as the guiding principle here: A (automation) = Q (quality) / T (time).

Machines continue unabated in pursuit of mimicking humans, and seem to be making astounding progress. If we see from an Indian IT industry standpoint, automation of jobs has already led to decoupling of productivity and employment.

At the time industry revenue was $100 billion, there were three million people in direct employment. It is expected that the next 100 will require anything between 1-2 million people only.

Martin Ford, in his popular book, The Rise of Robots, has estimated the amount of data stored globally to be in the range of thousands of exabytes (an exabyte is equal to a billion gigabytes). And, Moores Law is very much applicabledata doubling every three years.

All this data comes from different sources and resides in unstructured form.

It is but inevitable that skills in data science/computer science will be in great demand, as we leapfrog towards data-based decision-making in business, including almost every other aspect of life.

The idea of machines and humans coexisting as co-workers to complement each another is arguably a more realistic one than AI replacing humans completely. Repetitive jobs, including those with a very high degree of predictability are likely to get replaced by machines. This may not be such a bad thing after all. It may actually free up humans to enable them to become knowledge creators or curators in pursuit of higher cognitive skills.

It is estimated that by 2020, in most occupations, at least a third of the desired core skill sets will be comprised of skills that are not yet considered crucial to the job.

With such powerful and complex technologies doing the rounds, there will be a distinct need for people with great persuasive skills who are able to put forward the value proposition cogently and clearly, in the minds of buyers. Perhaps EQ (emotional quotient) will have a greater appeal than what it has today?

The global tech spend in 2014 was approximately $2.7 trillion. By 2025, this figure is expected to touch $4 trillion or thereabouts. Now in 2014, all of 90% constituted traditional tech spend and only 10% was towards digital.

However, in 2025, it is widely believed that this ratio would be 60:40 in favour of digital. Is the talent pipeline robust enough to enable this shift? We dont want a supply side constraint.

There is a shortage in the market today of people who are equipped with the necessary skills to ace digital opportunities. Undeniably, the rate of obsolescence is very high. In the earlier industrial revolutions, it often took decades to put training systems in place.

Obviously, this one will not allow such leeway, and so it is essential that this challenge be taken up by stakeholders (government, industry and academia) in tandem by complementing one another, rather than outdoing each other through silos. The future will be about collaborative models which will aid differential approaches to sync together in a giant-sized jigsaw.

There is also a dark side to digital which continues to raise its ugly head through unending cyberattacks. Battlefields of the future will be in cyberspace, as keyboard warriors try to wrest control. At Nasscom, we believe cybersecurity to be a $35 billion opportunity by 2025, and there is a definitive charter to create 1 million jobs, and also spawn 1,000 start-ups in this domain.

However, behind every cloud is a silver lining. The Indian IT industry has ridden many disruptive waves in the past, and this time too, it will be no different.

The future will be tamed by those who are able to unlearn quickly, pick up new skills, work in flatter organizational structures, and collaborate effectively, as turnaround times reduce dramatically and go-to-market gets quicker.

Let us see this as an opportunity to re-skill ourselves to add value, stay relevant and move continually up the proverbial value chain that we keep referring to.

C.P. Gurnani is chairman of Nasscom and managing director of Tech Mahindra Ltd.

First Published: Wed, Feb 15 2017. 01 12 AM IST

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Re-imagining the automation disruption - Livemint

With new technological developments and their ability to capture the market in the next few years, Padamraj K Bagrecha decided to enter the field of home automation systems. After more than a decade of experience in this line, he developed his own product Digilux, a home automation system.

He founded the company in May 2016 and headquartered it in Bangalore.

Padamraj shares, "It was after extensive research and product testing of almost seven to eight years that the final product was launched in the market."

Mahaveer K Bagrecha: He has had experience in the semiconductor, electronics, e-surveillance, and hospitality industries. His background in finance and operations helped in the foundation of Digilux Automation Pvt Ltd.

Mr. MAK: He has experience in system architecture. He played a huge role in developing their automation solution.

Padamraj K Bagrecha: He has over a decades work experience in the fields of home automation, e-surveillance, security, and high-end AV solutions.

In total, Digilux is a 10-member-strong team today.

Digilux is into manufacturing of home automation systems. This system can be integrated with the IoT platform for energy monitoring and can be further used for feedback and data analysis.

It is a retrofit home automation solution to control an entire home through the touch of a few buttons on your mobile.

It consists of a touch-based switch control system with a handheld remote. A gateway for smartphone control is available.

IR, IP, and RS232 controllers for third-party device control.

RGB controller, energy monitoring, and apps for a smart living. It lets you integrate the product with any existing or new controllers as well. It works within a wide power range and hence can incorporated in different power conditions.

Below are the available functionalities in the Digilux home automation system

According to Padamraj, "Our revenue has steadily grown over the past few years. In the next three years, our forecast is to generate a revenue five times the current figure.

Builders providing home automation solutions to their home-owners comes as a huge market segment for them. Individual home owners and corporates for boardroom solutions are their target market.

Mahaveer adds, "With the increasing awareness of home automation, we see a surge in the market where 50-60 percent of new homeowners will go ahead with automating their homes."

60-70 percent of people renovating their existing homes can opt for this technology.

They intend to build a dealer/system integrator model where they tie up with SI's across India to provide the solution to end users.

For the intentional market, they plan to have a distributor network in place. They already have some experience centres present in Bengaluru, Goa, Mysore, Hassan, Mangalore, Bhubaneswar, and more.

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Digilux, a retrofit home automation solution to control your entire home through the touch of a few buttons on your ... - YourStory.com

The opportunities presented by the booming e-commerce market have prompted logistics player Bollore Logistics to invest $10 million in a new automation project.

It will tap on advanced technology and robotics to improve and mechanise various processes, from storage to picking and labelling, at its warehouse in Pioneer Turn.

The project - backed by the Economic Development Board - could increase the products being processed tenfold while requiring only half the number of people needed to carry out the same work now.

Bollore Logistics Singapore managing director Fabien Giordano also told The Straits Times it is expected to cut the time taken to process products by up to two days. "Technological changes like this are getting more relevant with the rising demand in e-commerce, as our customers look for shorter handling times," he said, adding Bollore has secured a long-term contract with an international cosmetic group over use of the new project, which begins operations next January.

The automation initiative - much aligned with strategies laid out in the Government's Logistics Industry Transformation Map - will let the firm move staff into higher-skilled roles with higher wages or to other parts of its business. Bollore hires 1,400 people in Singapore, out of its global workforce of over 28,000.

Central to its efforts to improve operations and raise competitiveness is talent, said Mr Giordano - which is why the firm beefed up its global team of engineers to focus on creating innovative solutions in logistics and freight."A lot of people still think of the logistics industry as 'old school' today. That's a mindset we need to change," he said.

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Logistics firm gets automation boost - The Straits Times

How To Beat Automation And Not Lose Your Job Forbes In my many years of career transition coaching, I have learned that if your job is predictable and rote, it will probably someday become obsolete. Job market changes started centuries ago with the creation of electricity and continued with the ...

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How To Beat Automation And Not Lose Your Job - Forbes

In my last installment, I discussed a few different areas where data center monitoring automation can not only make life in the data center more convenient but also become a force multiplier. I ran out of space, however, before I ran out of ideas (the story of my life). The one thing I didnt cover was the automation you can implement in response to an alert.

As a data center professional, you probably have a solid understanding of monitoring and alerting already, but to truly appreciate how automation can relieve an enormous burden, it may be helpful to review a few examples.

What follows are some clippings from my garden of automationalert responses that have had a huge impact on the environments where they were implemented.

Example 1: Disk Full

Disk-full alerting is a simple concept with a deceptively large number of moving parts. So, I want to break it down into specifics. First, get the alert right. As my fellow SolarWinds Head Geek Thomas LaRock and I discussed in a recent episode of SolarWinds Lab, simplistic disk alerts help nobody. If you have a 2TB disk, alerting when its 90 percent used translates to having204.8GBs of disk space remaining.

A good solution to this problem is to check for both percent used and also remaining space. A better solution is to include logic in the alert that tests for the total space of the drive, so that drives with less than 1TB of space have one set of criteria and drives with greater than 1Tb have another. These tests should all be in the same alert, if possible, because who wants to manage hundreds of alert rules? Nevertheless, you want to ensure you are monitoring disk space in a way that is reasonable for the volumes in question, and only create necessary alerts.

Next, clear unnecessary disk files out of various directories. For the purpose of this article, Ill just say that all systems have a temporary directory and that you can delete all files out of that folder with impunity. The challenge in doing so easily comes down to a problem of impersonation. Many monitoring solutions run on the server as the system account. As a result, performing certain actions requires the script to impersonate a privileged user account. There are a variety of ways to do so, which is why Ill leave the problem here for you to solve in a way that best fits your individual environment.

Once the impersonation issue is resolved, theres another challenge specific to the disk-full alert: knowing that the correct directories for the specific server are being targeted. The best approach is to use a common shared folder that maps to all servers and place a script file there. That script can be set up to first detect the proper directories and then clear them out with all the necessary safeguards and checks in place to avoid accidental damage.

Example 2: Restart an IIS Application Pool

Sadly, restarting application pools is often the easiest and best fix for website-related issues. Im not saying that running appcmd stop... and then appcmd start... from the server command line is a quick kludge that ignores the bigger issues. Im saying that often, resetting the application pool is the fix.

If your web team finds itself in this situation, waking a human being to do the honors is absolutely your most expensive option. But automatically restarting the application pool becomes slightly more challenging because one server could be running multiple websites, which in turn have multiple application pools. Or you could have one big application pool controlling multiple websites. It all depends on how the server and websites were configured and you have no way of knowing.

If your monitoring solution can monitor the application pool, it will provide the name for you. Most mature monitoring solutions do so already. Once you have the name, you can do the following:

Example 3: Restart IIS

Running a close second behind restarting application pools is resetting IIS. Doing so is, of course, the nuclear option of website fixes since you are bouncing all websites and all connections. Even though its drastic, its a necessary step in some cases.

As with restarting application pools, getting a human involved in this incredibly simple action is a waste of everyones time and the companys money. Its far better to automatically restart and then recheck the website a minute or two later. If all is well, the server logs can be investigated in the morning as part of a postmortem. If the website is still down, its time to send in the troops.

You can restart the IIS web server in a number of ways:

Example 4: Restart a Server

If restarting the IIS service is the nuclear option, restarting the entire server is akin to nuclear Armageddon. Yet we all know there are times when restarting the server is the best option, given a certain set of conditions that you can monitor.Assuming your monitoring solution doesn't support a built-in capability for this function, some options include the following:

Example 5: Restart a Service

Occasionally, services stop. They are sometimes even services that you, as a data center professional who needs to monitor your infrastructure, care about, such as SNMP.So, you are cutting dozens of service-down alerts. Have you thought about restarting them? In some cases, a restart doesnt really help much. But in far more situations it does. Computers are funny things. After all, Screws fall out all the time. The world is an imperfect place. (From The Breakfast Club.)

Sometimes, they just need a gentle nudge. If this is the case, you can do the following:

Example 6: Backup a Network-Device Configuration

Everything Ive gone over so far covers direct remediation-type actions. But in some cases, automation can be defensive and informational. Network-device configurations are a good example, in that they dont fix anything, but instead gather additional information to help you fix the issue faster.

Its important to note that between 40 and 80 percent of all corporate-network downtime is the result of unauthorized or uncontrolled changes to network devices. These changes arent always malicious. Often, the change simply went unreviewed by another set of eyes or an otherwise simple error slipped past the team.

So, having the ability to spontaneously pull a device configuration based on an event trigger is super helpful. To do so, you can use the following approach:

There are two general cases when you may want to execute this automatic action. The first is when your monitoring solution receives a config change trap. Although the details of SNMP traps are beyond the scope of this article, you can configure your network devices to send spontaneous alerts on the basis of certain events. One of these events is a configuration change. The second is when the behavior of a device changes drastically, such as when ping success drops below 75 percent or ping latency increases. In either case, often the device is in the process of becoming unavailable. But in some situations, its wobbly, and theres a chance to grab the configuration before it drops completely.

In both of those situations, having the latest configuration provides valuable forensic information that can help troubleshoot the issue. It also gives you a chance to restore the absolutely last-known-good configuration, if necessary. And if it leads you to think, Well, if I have the last known good configuration, why cant I just push that one back? Then you, my friend, have caught the automation bug! Run with it.

Example 7: Reset a User Session

Somewhere in the murky past, the first computer went online and became Node 1 in the vast network we now call the Internet. The next thing that probably happened, mere seconds later, was that the first user forgot to log off their session and left it hanging.

For any system that supports remote connectionswhether its in the form of telnet/ssh, drive mappings or RDP sessionshaving the ability to monitor and manage remote-connection user sessions can make running weekly, if not daily, restarts unnecessary. Or at least much smoother.

For Linux, use the who command to discover current sessions, or with greater granularity by remotely running netstat -tnpa | grep 'ESTABLISHED.*sshd. Once you have the process ID, you can kill it. For Windows, you get the active sessions on a system using the query session command and disconnect the session using the reset session command. Or you can use the PowerShell cmdlet Invoke-RDUserLogoff.

Example 8: Clear DNS Cache

At times, a server and/or application will misbehave because it cant contact an external system. This misbehavior is either because the DNS cache (the list of known systems and their IP addresses) is corrupt, or because the remote system has moved. In either case, a really easy fix is to clear the DNS cache and let the server attempt to contact the system at its new location.

In Windows, use the command ipconfig /flushdns. In Linux, the command varies from one distribution to another, so its possible that sudo /etc/init.d/nscd restart will do the trick, or /etc/init.d/dns-clean, or perhaps another command. Research may be necessary for this one.

Hopefully at least a few of things Ive shared here and in this series on automation as a whole have inspired you to give automation a try in your data center. If so, or if youre already well on your way to automating all the things. Id love to hear about your experiences and perspective in the comments section.

Leading article image courtesy ofLeonardo Rizzi under a Creative Commons license

Leon Adato,SolarWindsHead Geek and long-time IT systems management and monitoring expert, discusses all things data center in this ongoing series.

Automations Impace on Data Center Monitoring Alerts was last modified: February 13th, 2017 by Leon Adato

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Automation's Impace on Data Center Monitoring Alerts - The Data Center Journal

A UK specialist in electrical control systems, cable harnesses and sub-contract manufacturing solutions has launched a major promotional campaign to help it boost sales and target new markets in 2017.

PP Control & Automation, which employs 200 people at its state-of-the-art facility in the West Midlands, is looking to build on a record 20m turnover last year by looking to finalise exciting new opportunities domestically and overseas in Germany and North America.

The company has seen a massive surge in demand from machinery builders looking to outsource non-core capabilities and is expecting export sales to surge past the 35% mark over the next 12 months.

To support this expansion drive, the firm has invested in developing a new promotional video that takes you around its 40,000 sq ft factory, detailing its expertise in electronics, mechanical assembly, pneumatics and supply chain management.

We are starting to create a global reputation for delivering world class quality through world class connectivity and that is winning us new orders, explained Tony Hague, managing director at PP Control & Automation.

Over the last twelve months, we have worked really hard on our promotional material and in growing our digital activity through LinkedIn, Twitter and a host of new informational videos on YouTube. The website has been translated into German to help with growth over there and weve even hosted joint workshop with some of our key technology partners.

He continued: The new two-minute promotional video was the next step. It guides you through our capabilities, our 1m investment in automation and our in-house training school that delivers 200 hours training every year for each member of staff.

This year is set to be a significant year for PP Control & Automation, with the factory extension on course to be completed by the end of February.

This will give the company an additional 10,000 sq ft of production space, including a new logistics department and clean assembly area.

Thirty new staff are also in the process of being recruited for the first phase of expansion, with the control and automation specialist keen to invest in six new apprentices as part of this recruitment drive.

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PP Control & Automation launch new video to kick-start exciting plans for 2017 - Manufacturer.com

India would see the biggest impact on jobs due to automation, Infosys Chief Executive Officer Vishal Sikka said, quoting a research report, while addressing shareholders on Monday.

While most observers would have followed Sikka's address with regard to the recent tussle between the company's board and its founders, especially N R Narayan Murthy's allegations of a drop in corporate governance standards in India's second-largest software company, Sikka steered clear of the issue and merely dismissed media reports as drama and distraction.

Invoking Moore's Law, Sikka said that advances in computers' processing speeds would lead to exponential growth in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), which in turn would offer plenty of business opportunities.

BS Web Team

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Automation to impact Indian jobs the most: Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka - Business Standard

Postal automation system inside the Central Mail Centre Tokyo: NEC Corporation today said that it has introduced a function for reading and sorting addresses written in traditional Chinese characters to the postal automation systems operated by Hongkong Post, the postal administration of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.

In recent years, Hong Kong has witnessed a rise in the number of postal items addressed in traditional Chinese characters. This has in turn boosted the need for automated sorting and processing of addresses written in traditional Chinese characters in addition to those handwritten or printed in English.

This new function has been introduced to 15 systems delivered to Hongkong Post by NEC on several occasions since 2008 that are currently in operation at the Central Mail Centre in Kowloon Bay.

The introduction of this function enables the automatic sorting and processing of up to 564,000 postal items with addresses written in traditional Chinese characters per hour, thereby contributing to the improvement of Hongkong Post's operational efficiency.

NEC has been doing business with Hongkong Post for approximately 30 years since the postal operator's introduction of a postal automation system in the latter half of the 1980s. The introduction of this function was made possible by the high acclaim NEC has received over the years for its achievements and technological capabilities.

It began developing its postal automation system business in 1961, and has since then delivered systems to postal operators in more than 50 countries around the world. In Japan, domestic postal operators have utilized a function for reading and sorting addresses written in Chinese characters as part of postal automation processing since the 1980s.

The introduction of this function by Hongkong Post was made possible by applying the wealth of knowhow NEC has developed in Japan over the years in reading and sorting addresses written in Chinese characters. Moreover, it has resulted in increased efficiency and a reduction in the amount of time needed for processing.

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NEC updates postal automation system for Hongkong Post - ETCIO.com

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Hexadite, provider of the first agentless intelligent security automation platform, today unveiled custom playbook capabilities that allow organizations to strike the right balance between security automation and customization. The company also announced that the Hexadite AIRS platform has surpassed one million automated cyber investigations saving companies more than 800,000 man hours and nearly $39 million in less than two years since its commercial availability.

Weve proven a million times that Hexadite AIRS is the most powerful way for organizations to address the cybersecurity skills shortage by automating the tasks traditionally performed by tier 1 and tier 2 cyber analysts, said Eran Barak, co-founder and chief executive officer at Hexadite. Automating cyber investigation and remediation without requiring any human intervention is the hard part. And with that proven capability under our belt, it made sense to enhance our platform to meet customers wants and needs with more opportunities to customize their incident response activities.

Closing the Gap with Automation

Due to the crushing cybersecurity skills gap with over one million open cybersecurity jobs, and an alarming increase in cyber threats, companies are increasingly turning to automation. A recent report from Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) found that 99 percent of severe/critical alerts are never investigated at a majority of large organizations due to resource constraints. With high profile breaches like Target, Sony and Home Depot attributed to alerts that were received but not investigated, the risk is monumental for companies of all sizes.

Hexadite Automated Incident Response Solution (AIRS)is the first agentless intelligent security automation platform. By easily integrating with existing security technologies and harnessing artificial intelligence to automatically investigate every cyber alert and drive remediation actions, Hexadite AIRS is a force multiplier. It enables security teams to mitigate cyber threats in real-time by automating more than 90 percent of alert investigations.

"We've done the math and used very conservative figures to extrapolate the value provided in doingonemillion automated cyber investigations over the past two years," added Barak Klinghofer, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Hexadite.

Building on Hexadite AIRS

Following unprecedented customer growth, a strategic reseller partnership with HPE, and the launch of its Automated Security Alliance Program (ASAP), Hexadite continues to strengthen its leadership position in the security automation and orchestration space with todays announcement at RSA Conference 2017.

While other solutions claim to automate incident response by providing more information, allowing customers to write their own code to perform basic actions, or simply scoring alerts by their perceived priority, Hexadite AIRS automates the manual work performed by scarce security resources.Since providing customers with building blocks to develop their own solution just creates more work, and automation with no customization isn't flexible enough, Hexadite AIRS now enables organizations to find the right balance between automation and customization that fits their specific needs.

Adding to the platforms ability to automatically investigate alerts from nearly any detection system, the custom playbook functionality in Hexadite AIRS allows customers to define their own incident response process. Using a drag-and-drop visual playbook editor, customers can create their own workflows or modify what is available out of the box.

Hexadite will be exhibiting at RSA Conference 2017, taking place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from February 13-17. To learn more about Hexadite or to see Hexadite AIRS in action, visit booth #4703 in the North Hall. For more information or to schedule a demo during RSA, visit: https://www.hexadite.com/rsa2017.

About Hexadite

Hexadite is the first agentless intelligent security automation platform. By easily integrating with customers existing security technologies and harnessing artificial intelligence that automatically investigates every cyber alert and drives remediation actions, Hexadite enables security teams to mitigate cyber threats in real-time. For more information, follow @Hexadite on Twitter or visit http://www.hexadite.com.

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Hexadite Unveils Custom Playbooks Following One Millionth Automated Cybersecurity Investigation - Yahoo Finance