AnitaB.org, the global non-profit focused on intersectional gender and pay parity in tech, today announced that internationally renowned human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Malala Yousafzai, will participate in the organization’s first-ever Grace Hopper Celebration in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). The event will take place virtually on May 25-27, 2021.

Malala Yousafzai will join AnitaB.org President & CEO Brenda Darden Wilkerson for a fireside chat on May 26. 

“We are thrilled to host Ms. Yousafzai as our missions to promote the education and empowerment of all women are so closely aligned,” said Darden Wilkerson. “The elevation of women’s rights, especially in technology, has never been more important. Ms. Yousafzai’s renowned power to reach and inspire through her words will bring our community’s network to the next level.”

Malala Yousafzai has famously fought for the education of girls in opposition to the Taliban’s influence. Her advocacy has now grown into an international movement and has earned her several international and Pakistani distinctions. At the age of 17, in 2014, she became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban. 

Malala Yousafzai kicks off the first of many keynotes and featured speakers, dozens of sessions and workshops, and peer networking taking place at the Virtual Grace Hopper Celebration EMEA. AnitaB.org will be unveiling the top visionaries and thought leaders to speak over the next weeks. 

Hosted and produced by AnitaB.org, Virtual Grace Hopper Celebration EMEA will be an all-digital experience focused on building community, celebrating common goals, and elevating the geographic diversity of women in tech. The Celebration’s goal is to provide support, career development tools, and technical training to allow women to excel in the workforce, while also equipping women in tech with access to potential employers.

The Virtual Grace Hopper Celebration EMEA will also inspire a new network of advocates and allies with whom AnitaB.org can work year-round to strengthen the capacity of the entire corporate, educational, and governmental technology ecosystem necessary for the success of EMEA women technologists.

In 1994, Anita Borg and Dr. Telle Whitney co-founded the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC), which has grown to become the world’s largest annual gathering of women technologists. In 2020, faced with the realities of COVID-19, AnitaB.org held its first ever Virtual Grace Hopper Celebration, attracting more than 30,000 virtual attendees from over 115 countries around the world with two keynote speakers – Serena Williams and Megan Rapinoe. Earlier this year, AnitaB.org also hosted Virtual GHC India, gathering more than 5,000 attendees from all over India.

Visit ghc.anitab.org for all Grace Hopper Celebration EMEA updates and to register to attend.

Maurizio Kaiser, co-founder of ikigai, comments on their Crowdcube launch: 

 

“Today we’re announcing our £1.2 million crowdfunding round on Crowdcube. 
As one of the first UK fintech to integrate wealth management and everyday banking into one app, we have already raised £2m to date via pre-seed investment, with the backing of angel investors. Now with Crowdcube, we’re opening up the chance for our community and peers to join us on this journey and be part of our growing success.  

ikigai is about empowering people, aligning their finances with their sense of self and purpose. It’s about engaging the young and affluent - the millions of millennials who are hitting their prime earning and spending years, but remain underserviced and overlooked by most of the current banks and wealth managers. We are confident that those wishing to invest will understand the historic opportunity we see in redefining the future of wealth and look forward to sharing our success with our community.

Investments of this nature carry risk to your capital and should be invested in as part of a diversified portfolio. Please Invest aware.”

Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that leading organizations from around the world are using Red Hat managed cloud services to build, deploy, manage and scale cloud-native applications across hybrid environments. As fully hosted and managed offerings, these services provide opinionated configurations based on years of experience and shift operational responsibility and support to Red Hat, enabling organizations such as Andreani, Audi, Japan Research Institute, Pelayo and VINCI Energies to drive new innovation, quickly scale to meet demand, reduce complexity and cost, and accelerate time-to-value.

Red Hat’s managed cloud services provide fully managed Kubernetes across leading public clouds. This enables Red Hat customers and partners to quickly respond to change, accelerate their move to the cloud and build an open hybrid cloud strategy—all based on Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform—regardless of infrastructure, cloud or operational staffing.

Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated, Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud, Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS and Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift are all available as jointly managed and supported OpenShift services, accessed as native cloud console offerings from the respective cloud providers.

These services are designed to reduce operational overhead and enable customers to quickly deliver applications that provide more value to the business. Leading organizations are already discovering the power of a managed services approach to better meet customer needs, including:

• Andreani: Andreani provides logistic services to the pharmaceutical, cosmetic, technology and telecommunications industries in Argentina and Brazil. Facing new challenges related to the growing demand for shipped goods as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the company turned to Red Hat to help accelerate its planned transition to the cloud. Andreani deployed Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift, a managed Red Hat OpenShift service jointly delivered and supported by Red Hat and Microsoft. Moving to a managed cloud service has enabled the company to effectively scale its operations to meet the surge in customer shipping demand, reduce the strain on IT management through automated monitoring and patching, and simplify its deployment process.
• Audi: As a central partner for all business divisions within the Audi Group, Audi IT is a major driver of digital transformation throughout the company, and provides support along the entire process chain in the development of intelligent, reliable and more secure IT solutions. The team's mission is to be at the forefront of enriching the developer experience, enabling businesses to scale their applications without relying on a physical infrastructure. To better support this mission, Audi IT worked with Red Hat to develop its Kubika O solution, a fully managed Kubernetes platform with operator capabilities. It is based on Azure Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, and supplies other platforms, applications and projects with multitenant Kubernetes endpoints as a service, including Audi Open Source Diagnostics, Group Measurement Data Management, and its CO2 Fleet Emission Optimization Service. With the managed platform in place, Audi IT has fully automated its workload provisioning system, and gained the ability to move between cloud platforms as needed without being bound by the operating dependencies of a native system.
• Japan Research Institute: Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Group (SMFG) is a Japanese banking and financial services organization that operates in more than 40 countries around the world. To support the group's overall business strategy and better enable future transformation and growth, SMFG and its IT subsidiary, Japan Research Institute, engaged with Red Hat Consulting to implement a managed cloud services offering that could help streamline operations and accelerate the development and deployment of new applications. The group adopted Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated,  enabling its developers to focus on delivering greater value through new or expanded services instead of spending time to configure and manage the supporting infrastructure.
• Pelayo: Pelayo is a Spanish mutual insurance company with more than one million customers. Monolithic application architectures were taking a toll on the company's ability to respond to market risks and opportunities quickly. The company developed a cloud strategy that would provide a more agile architecture, full continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) capabilities, and enable it to more easily grow and integrate with future data architectures. Additionally, the company wanted to use Java as the core programming language, and Kubernetes as its container management platform. Taking into account these objectives and requirements, the company chose Microsoft Azure Red Hat OpenShift, which enabled them to bring the solution into production quickly and with minimal impact on its operations team. Today, the company has a hybrid infrastructure in place, running its legacy systems on-premises, integrated into the new Azure Red Hat OpenShift environment, and has successfully accelerated its application deployment, increased developer productivity, and better scaled its business while keeping operational costs low.

Supporting Quotes

Sathish Balakrishnan, vice president, Hosted Platforms, Red Hat

"Being able to easily consume OpenShift as a managed cloud service is an important need for customers—not only so they can run OpenShift anywhere, but also to shift the expertise of running OpenShift to Red Hat while they focus on their business applications. With Red Hat's managed cloud services, customers are able to accelerate their ability to build next-generation applications, regardless of which cloud they run those apps on."

Sebastián Sarasate, Infrastructure Manager, Andreani Logistics Group

"The logistics industry at large has been through an extraordinary transformation in recent years as technology has played an increasingly important role in satisfying the growing demand of customers. This is particularly true of cloud technologies. Moving to a managed cloud solution has opened the door for us to further transform our IT systems into an area that adds value to the business. With Azure Red Hat OpenShift, we've been able to accelerate the implementation of new services and improve the flexibility and scalability of our operations, enabling us to better serve our customers throughout Argentina and Brazil."

Sebastian Kister, team lead and platform owner, Kubernetes and Public Clouds, Audi AG

"We believe Red Hat is uniquely positioned as a company who both helps build the infrastructure software, provide the platform and provide software packages. Working with a diverse partner has enabled us to fully automate our workload provisioning and adopt a cloud agnostic system, giving us the ability to move more seamlessly between cloud platforms without being bound by the operating dependencies of a native system."

Takdir Chowdhury, chief digital strategist, general manager, Digital Transformation Systems Department, The Japan Research Institute, Limited

"With Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated as our application development platform, SMFG and Japan Research Institute can quickly deliver new digital services and continuously update them with new features. We have adopted agile development methods as the standard way of delivering these services, which enables us to offer value-added solutions to customers while ultimately helping to promote the group’s future growth with the support of IT.”

Oscar Rivas Sendin, head of Architecture, Pelayo

“When we started our transformation project, we knew that it would be no small feat to move from a strictly on-premises infrastructure to a hybrid cloud environment. It is a decision that we did not take lightly, but one that we were able to make confidently, knowing that we had Red Hat and Microsoft behind us the entire time, ready and willing to provide the support and help we needed throughout the process. Azure Red Hat OpenShift has enabled us to focus our efforts on advancing business priorities and investing in innovation at a faster pace.”

Jan Govert Kemps, IT director, VINCI Energies Netherlands

"At VINCI Energies NL, we have been focusing on a 'cloud first' strategy for several years to help newly acquired companies to integrate quickly by connecting their local operational systems with our ERP system. By integrating local systems with the ERP system, they can continue their operational processes to serve local customers. With Azure Red Hat OpenShift, we are able to accelerate the implementation of these integrations without worrying about the underlying operations or management of our platform. The combined expert engineering and support from Microsoft and Red Hat give us confidence that we can scale efficiently and cost-effectively as our business continues to grow."

GFT and Vodeno, a fully cloud-based Banking-as-a-Service  provider, aim to accelerate clients’ digital transition to new cloud-native technologies. Together  they will enable banks to significantly reduce IT and compliance costs while also enabling banks  to be more responsive, improving customer experience. For this purpose, the two companies  have formed a multi-year, global strategic partnership. As part of the agreement, GFT will  support Vodeno’s expansion with development, QA testing and implementation services.  

GFT CEO Marika Lulay, said: “One thing is clear, the banking world is facing a digital paradigm shift.  New ‘born-in-the-cloud’ platforms like the Vodeno Cloud Platform make the transition from legacy to  next-generation technology easier and faster than ever before. It is now possible to cut the time for a  full digital transformation to less than six months. By combining Vodeno’s software with our deep  expertise in the banking market, we will help clients be at the forefront of this opportunity for a real digital  breakthrough.” 

“The Vodeno Cloud Platform can power any Retail and SME proposition through our suite of public  APIs. Together with GFT, we can help clients to be more productive by offering modern technology with  an ecosystem of over 80+ pre-integrated partners. All without the friction and cost of a traditional  technology transformation or green field launch. By enabling shorter times to market for new products  and features, clients can also be more responsive to their own customers’ wishes, supported by a team  with hands-on experience,” said Miroslaw Forystek, CEO of Vodeno.  

Vodeno’s core banking solution targets banks digitising their activities, fintechs who wish to extend their  services, or any company interested in entering the financial services market.  

“Our products and services are easy to tailor to a variety of propositions powered by our intelligent  system of smart contracts combined with the ability to white label our solutions to fit any customer’s  needs,” added Forystek. 

“The Vodeno Cloud Platform complements our current Digital Core Banking offering, which is why  having Vodeno as a partner is extremely valuable for us. We are convinced that Vodeno will enable  financial services institutions to further transform and to deliver banking-as-a-service,” said Chris Ortiz, Global Markets and Region Manager APAC and UK at GFT. 

The global rollout of 5G technology happens three to four times faster than any other connectivity transformation. Expected to grow at a CAGR of 29.4%, the 5G services market is projected to reach a volume of USD 249.2 bn by 2026. This vast development will soon ensure global hyperconnectivity, amplifying the demand for wireless and cloud solutions. Recognizing the vast potential in the next evolution of networks and infrastructure, Solactive launches together with BBVA the Solactive  BBVA Next Generation Networks EUR Index serving as the first output of BBVA’s newly incepted BBVA  Quantitative Thematic Series. 

In 2019, a significant milestone in interconnectivity occurred: for the first time in history, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices lied level with non-IoT-connected devices, only to surpass them merely one year later.  Research projects that, until 2025, 30.9 billion IoT-connected devices will be installed and active, three times as much as their non-networked counterparts. This surge in devices requires a solid infrastructure, and companies that are active in the field of providing these data highways will face an increasing demand for their services. 

The Solactive BBVA Next Generation Networks EUR Index unlocks the future of digital hyperconnectivity by selecting companies at the forefront of telecommunications technology deployment, i.e., building core infrastructure and cloud-computing software, ensuring wireline-wireless convergence, and developing end-user applications and equipment. The index selects its constituents from Developed Markets, China, Taiwan,  and South Korea and includes companies active in sectors related to the 5G & Next Generation technology. 

In the first step, companies exposing low liquidity and market capitalization are excluded from the index. In the second stage, exclusions are performed based on a geographic-based revenue screen according to FactSet’s RBICS Level 6 sectors.  

Timo Pfeiffer, Chief Markets Officer at Solactive, comments: “The progress of hyperconnectivity took place within less than a decade, starting with smartphones and soon ending up in connected cars and even connected household appliances. With this index, BBVA has proven itself to be an innovator in the thematic indexing space, a segment growing in popularity among contemporary investors. We are very happy to provide our services for such a renowned client, and we are looking forward to joining forces in future indexing  projects.” 

Pablo Suarez, Head of QIS Business at BBVA, comments: “The true potential of 5G lies in the increased densification of the network that will provide service to millions of intelligent devices for the Internet of Things  (IoT), in addition to the installation of new fibre-optic sections that enable the speed and response characteristics of the new network. We believe this will enable the development of new business verticals and  the creation of brand-new experiences making it an attractive long term investment opportunity.”

NYMBUS®, a leading provider of banking technology solutions, today announced it has completed a significant financing round to advance the development of its new credit union service organization (CUSO), Nymbus CUSO. Founded in March 2021 to help break through barriers to growth, its mission is to connect credit unions with trusted fintech offerings that both simplify technology delivery and enable new growth opportunities.

VyStar Credit Union—the 16th largest credit union in the U.S. with assets totaling $10.85 billion—avidly supports Nymbus CUSO’s mission and value and has invested $20 million towards its establishment.

“VyStar understands the challenges faced by the credit union industry, and we work diligently to identify the right partners like Nymbus that can deliver the disruptive solutions needed to help them thrive in today’s competitive environment,” said Chad Meadows, EVP / Chief Operations Officer at VyStar.

VyStar has a focus on partnering with fintech CUSOs through meaningful investments. Joel Swanson, Chief Member Experience Officer at VyStar, noted, “Today’s record investment speaks volumes to the confidence VyStar has placed in this new CUSO. Nymbus has come up with an entirely new approach for credit unions to innovate quickly for members that incorporates a truly sustainable growth strategy.”

“Based on the overwhelming response that Nymbus CUSO has already received in the market, we clearly address an overlooked opportunity for helping credit unions play to their strengths and make serious growth gains without breaking their technology budgets,” said Jeffery Kendall, Chairman and CEO of Nymbus. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with VyStar in the effort, which is now accelerated with this considerable investment.”

For more information on Nymbus CUSO and how to get involved, visit nymbus.com/cuso.

Scality® today introduced ARTESCA, the lightweight, true enterprise-grade, cloud-native object storage solution designed for the needs of the Kubernetes era. ARTESCA’s modern approach, built on Scality’s 10 years of experience serving the most demanding enterprises on the planet, delivers the speed and reliability required by emerging workloads. Supported immediately on a broad portfolio of HPE all-flash and hybrid intelligent data storage servers, ARTESCA addresses multiple use cases, from the edge to the core to the cloud, especially in cloud-native, AI/ML, big data analytics and in-memory applications.

Increasingly, object storage is deployed on flash-based systems and is now becoming the primary storage for modern applications. The cloud-native environment demands adaptability, portability and efficiency — attributes that traditional storage solutions struggle to match. ARTESCA is the industry’s first solution of its kind, purpose-built for developers while meeting the security demands of the enterprise.

With ARTESCA, application owners and DevOps staff can easily manage persistent data storage infrastructures from anywhere, without being forced into becoming storage experts. Unlike other storage solutions on the market, ARTESCA is: 

● Lightweight: ARTESCA is easy to install, doesn’t require any Linux skills and can start out as small as a single server and scale out.

● True enterprise-grade: ARTESCA is adaptive and sustainable across future platforms and technology innovations. A single pane of glass view enables control of multicloud data, workflow management, API and user-driven metadata search, and comprehensive storage analytics. Dual-layer erasure coding with minimum overhead ensures superior data protection.

● Cloud-native: ARTESCA powers an app-centric, cloud-native, modern world by supporting multiple Kubernetes distributions and bare metal servers from edge-to-core/core-to-edge or on-premises to public cloud.

● Modern object storage: Fast application-centric primary storage for new or emerging workloads delivers high performance with ultra-low latency and 10s of GB/s of throughput to meet the needs of AI/ML, big data analytics and edge applications. It is entirely API driven, so operations can be fully automated.

Scality is offering ARTESCA through a public cloud-inspired procurement model, with one, three and five-year subscriptions available, starting at £2,732 ($3,800) per year including 24x7 enterprise support. ARTESCA is available on the HPE portfolio through a six-month exclusive agreement and is also available as a cloud service through HPE GreenLake. Contact Scality and HPE sales representatives for availability.

Chris Powers, vice president and general manager, collaborative platforms and big data, HPE, said: “We are excited by what the new enterprise-grade yet lightweight object storage and data management solution co-designed by Scality and HPE can do for our joint customers. Combined with a new portfolio of six purposefully configured HPE systems, ARTESCA software empowers customers with an application-centric, developer-friendly, and cloud-first platform with which to store, access, and manage data for their cloud-native apps no matter where it lives — in the data centre, at the edge, and in public cloud.”

Randy Kerns, senior strategist and analyst, Evaluator Group, said: “Scality has figured out a way to include all the right attributes for cloud-native applications in ARTESCA: lightweight and fast object storage with enterprise-grade capabilities. This is challenging to accomplish and makes it an optimal storage solution for this new class of applications where performance demands are critical. The container-based design enables ARTESCA to fit into the Kubernetes ecosystem — a requirement for cloud-native applications.”

Jerome Lecat, CEO, Scality, said: “In today’s app-centric world, a fresh approach to data delivery is essential. ARTESCA is built on our 10+ years of experience supporting the world’s largest organisations and understanding their need to meet the demands of the 21st century. With our expanded portfolio, HPE and Scality will help more customers power their cloud native applications from cloud to core to edge. ARTESCA is a true enterprise-grade solution that is transforming how data is managed and delivered in a cloud-native world.”

Diginex Limited (Nasdaq: EQOS), a digital assets financial services company, announced today that it has entered into strategic partnerships with algorithmic trading firm Kronos Research, and institutional liquidity provider Parallel.

As part of the partnerships, both Kronos and Parallel will serve as liquidity providers on EQUOS, the cryptocurrency exchange platform of Diginex, and become shareholders in Diginex. Fees paid by both partners will also secure them EQO, the unique exchange token of EQUOS.

The addition of Kronos and Parallel as liquidity providers, follows an announcement made earlier this year, that Diginex had entered into an agreement with GSR to become a liquidity provider for EQUOS, and a  shareholder of Diginex. 

Richard Byworth, CEO at Diginex, said: “From the outset, we designed EQUOS to be transparent and fair. We do not market make on our own exchange and as such, it is very important to have long term partners to provide liquidity. Today’s announcement is a part of a continuing focus around increasing the depth of markets and broad liquidity that provides EQUOS users with best execution pricing.”

Earlier this month, EQUOS announced record total volumes of over US$1 billion in April month to date, with average daily volumes during the period increasing over three times compared to average daily volumes in the prior month. Volumes have been driven by the launch of EQO and a significant increase in participation by a number of institutional clients.  Parallel has played an important role in fuelling EQUOS’ recent volume growth. 

Timothy Tam, CEO of Parallel - one of the fastest growing liquidity providers in crypto, said: “We only partner with a few select companies in the crypto ecosystem and Diginex’s strong corporate governance as a Nasdaq listed entity, institutional-grade custody and state of the art exchange made it a natural choice.  We are proud to be a strategic partner of Diginex and look forward to being a significant contributor to EQUOS’ exponential growth.” 

Parallel and Kronos will provide liquidity on all markets on EQUOS, including recently launched BTC and ETH Perpetual Futures contracts, as well as supporting future listings. 

Jack Tan, co-CEO at Kronos Research, added: “We are delighted to partner with EQUOS and become a shareholder in Diginex. Both our missions align seamlessly. Our robust trading and research infrastructure which includes the Wootrade network can support the EQUOS focus on transparency and innovation. This means together we will be able to provide superior liquidity so investors can achieve their goals.”

B-cube.ai, a platform offering AI-driven bots for crypto trading, announces its partnership with Sumsub, an identity verification platform that covers KYC/KYB/AML needs. With this collaboration, B-cube.ai aims to secure investment with bank-grade KYC and accurate crypto monitoring technology.

B-cube.ai provides customers with innovative crypto trading bots. Built with the help of technical analysis, sentiment analysis, and complex mathematical models, these bots can monitor the market and trade on auto-pilot. 

B-cube.ai’s bots were created to make trading easy—even for those with little experience—helping new users set up accounts within 5 minutes. Although a relatively new project, B-cube.ai has already received multiple awards such as the EU’s Block.IS 2020 as well as the Graines de Boss 2020, supported by the Ministry of Economy & Finance of France. B-cube.ai is seeking to raise $3,075 million with their ICO to further enhance their service.

To make contributions to their ICO quick and easy, B-cube.ai uses Sumsub’s KYC solution. Sumsub has been able to tailor the user experience for B-cube.ai’s global investors, thanks to accurate verification that gets the job done in 4-5 minutes. Sumsub has also supplied B-cube.ai with crypto monitoring technology that ensures investments come from reliable sources and prevents any money-laundering attempts. With these fresh tools, B-cube.ai is now able to consolidate and automate their regulatory compliance and reduce the manual workload for legal research and reporting.

“Sumsub’s quick and easy solution for identity verification was just what we needed. We managed to provide our investors with enjoyable, lightning-fast onboarding, while fully automating our compliance routine. We can now easily generate reports for international regulators and spend close to no time on compliance. It has been a great experience so far.”—Guruprasad Venkatesha, CEO at B-cube.ai.

“Global companies are often suffocated by intricate regulatory demands and security concerns—all while trying to deliver the best user experience for their customers. We hope that our solution helps B-cube.ai keep regulatory concerns to a minimum while automating their verification and compliance routines, so they can focus all of their efforts into growth.”—Jacob Sever, Founder of Sumsub.