NIKSUN Inc. is the global leader in developing real-time and forensics-based cyber security and network performance monitoring solutions. It announced today it has been featured as the cover story for Silicon India’s special Enterprise Security edition. In it, Silicon India, a leading proponent of global technology news since 1997, has named NIKSUN’s technology the “industry’s most comprehensive solution for securing and maintaining dynamic network infrastructure.”

The article discusses NIKSUN’s revolutionary product suite as a full end-to-end enterprise security solution that simultaneously captures, records, stores, analyzes and alerts on all data traversing the network in a single appliance. It also calls NIKSUN’s solution “highly scalable and flexible,” touting its ability to do all of this, with zero loss, at “unprecedented rates” over 100 Gbps.

As quoted in the article, “Rather than simply capturing threats and slowdowns that we know, NIKSUN’s solution lets you see everything that occurs on your network, presenting problems immediately and intelligently.”

The article depicts several of NIKSUN’s recent advances, including NIKSUN’s Supreme Eagle and the recently released NikOS Everest. NIKSUN’s Supreme Eagle is now deployed in the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and Department of Defense (DoD)’s Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS) initiative. According to Silicon India, “Supreme Eagle exhibits an outstanding performance by capturing all packets at more than 100 Gbps, with zero-loss, successfully keeping up with the full flow of data through JRSS gateways.”

The article also hails NIKSUN’s NikOS Everest as a “revolutionary intelligent data analytics platform,” calling it “a much simpler and smarter way to mine data.” NIKSUN’s NikOS Everest technology provides actionable and automated intelligence so that network security professionals do not have to sift through or drill down into mounds of data; rather, NikOS serves up the information automatically, dramatically reducing MTTR (mean-time-to-resolution). Silicon India reports that this “makes finding reports, filtering data, visualizing, exporting, and running analytics an effortless process, eliminating the need for ad-hoc special studies to obtain the required data.” Simply put, “NikOS Everest takes the guesswork out of discovering network performance problems or security breaches and threats, all within a single integrated platform, and without any compromise.”

Workday, Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise cloud applications for finance and human resources. Today the company reported that Dentsu Aegis Network, one of the fastest growing global media groups specializing in media, digital, and creative communications services, has selected Workday Human Capital Management (HCM) to help improve efficiencies and visibility into its employee base across the group’s global network of brands. Through Workday, Dentsu Aegis Network will empower its people to carry out HR-related tasks, access personal information, and provide its leaders with a single view of people-related information to better understand and manage talent across the business.

Headquartered in London and employing more than 35,000 people across 10 global network brands, and supported by additional specialist and multi-media brands, Dentsu Aegis Network provides some of the world’s leading marketers with best-in-class media, digital, and creative communications services. As the company expanded, Dentsu Aegis Network sought to replace a range of disparate technologies with a single, agile system that would foster better use of analytics and deliver actionable insights in the business for faster workforce decision-making, placing data at the heart of its people strategy.

With Workday, Dentsu Aegis Network expects to:

• Streamline efficiencies across the business making it clearer, quicker, and easier to get things done.
• Better leverage the skill sets and experiences of employees across brands and markets, opening up new opportunities in the digital economy for their clients.
• Build a high-performance culture, equipping leaders with direct access to insights into their teams.
• Better attract, develop, and retain talent with the ability to track and manage the entire employee lifecycle all in one people technology platform.

 “We were looking for a system that reflected where we are heading as a business, something digital and pioneering that embodies the way we do business for our clients and powers our growth,” said Caroline Mellor, director of HR effectiveness, Dentsu Aegis Network. “Workday HCM enables us to create simplicity and efficiency for our people with a technology platform built for the cloud.”

New research findings reveal that technology systems and client reporting improvements are key business priorities for asset managers in 2017. According to the report, technology systems improvements are a key priority for 75% of asset management companies surveyed. A similar proportion (74%) said that client reporting was in focus for them with one in three (33%) expressing dissatisfaction with their current client reporting capabilities.

The survey, by Osney Media and BackBay Communications, found that currently less than half (49%) of the asset managers surveyed provide real-time reporting, e-reporting or mobile reporting capabilities for their clients.

“Institutional and retail investors have greater choice and expect greater control over their investments than ever before,” said Jonathan Wiser, Director at Osney Media, which commissioned the study and organizes TSAM London. “Their behavior and needs have changed as a result and asset managers have to make sure they are able to meet these needs. Our research reveals fairly widespread dissatisfaction with current client communications and it’s no surprise that client reporting, with a focus on digital, is firmly in focus as firms look to provide the information their clients need and in the format they want in order to improve the overall experience.”

Data management improvements could play a significant role in this. While data management practices are seen to be well utilized in some parts of the business, such as investment decision-making where 75% say it is well used, satisfaction is lower when it comes to its usage in client reporting and marketing. Only 45% believe data is well used for marketing purposes; this increases to just over half (54%) for client reporting.

Bill Haynes, CEO and founder of BackBay Communications, the financial services marketing and communications consultancy that conducted the research, said: “The way investors consume information has changed radically over recent years, particularly with the growth of digital communications, and asset managers need to make sure they don’t get left behind. The survey shows that social media, content marketing and e-marketing are all widely recognized as effective channels for communicating with clients and prospects but that only about half think their efforts are currently well integrated. Making better use of data, along with closer integration with sales and client service teams, is key to ensuring communications are relevant and consistent.”

Other findings from the report, which explores operational issues across all aspects of asset management, reveal that environmental, social, and corporate governance issues are becoming a more important part of the investment decision-making process, with 73% saying that these considerations are playing a greater role. The survey also found that artificial intelligence is seen as having the greatest disruptive potential for the industry in the coming years with nearly half (49%) identifying it. By comparison, only 12% said that blockchain would be the leading disruptive technology.

The latest market report from technology mergers & acquisition advisory firm, Hampleton Partners, shows vertical, ERP and information management applications as the most sought-after enterprise software acquisition targets. Strategic and financial buyers are increasingly looking to new segments such as artificial intelligence as mergers and acquisition targets. 

The Enterprise Software M&A report, which covers mergers and acquisitions in the period between July 2014 and December 2016, reveals a 37 per cent boost to the total value of enterprise software M&A to $43.8 billion, even as deal flow during the second half of 2016 hit its lowest point in three years, falling to 412 deals, compared with 496 in the first half of the year. The trailing 30-day median revenue multiples remained steady at 3.1x while the median EBITDA multiple also remained strong, closing at 14.2x. 

Top acquirers

Out of 2365 transactions in the trailing 30-month period, activity in the vertical applications sub-sector accounted for 29 per cent of all deal making, followed by activity in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) space and information management with 28 per cent and 18 per cent of all transactions respectively. Californian fleet management and mobile asset tracking systems specialist Trimble Navigation was the sector’s top acquirer in the last 30 months, with a total of 12 deals. Followed by Hollywood-headquartered cloud services and digital media provider J2 Global and Chicago-based private equity firm, Thoma Bravo, with 10 transactions each, then Microsoft, IBM and Los Angeles’ Marlin Equity Partners with 9 apiece. Meanwhile, 2016's top buyer was Apple, announcing six transactions for the full year followed by j2 Global, Thoma Bravo, with five deals each.

Internet buyers and AI momentum grows

Traditional software vendors are being challenged as buyers in the enterprise software space by consumer and Internet companies looking to boost their business-to-business credentials. This is particularly evident in newer enterprise technology sectors such as artificial intelligence, where Apple's acquisition of Indian and US machine learning startups Tuplejump and Turi stands out. Meanwhile, Salesforce plans on accelerating investment in AI despite pledging an M&A slowdown this year following its prolific buying spree in 2016. 

Today Veeva Systems has announced new integration between Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Veeva CRM. As well as support for Salesforce Service Cloud with Veeva Vault. The companies are building upon their long-standing partnership to help life sciences deliver a more coordinated and consistent experience for healthcare professionals.

For the past 10 years, Veeva has been Salesforce’s preferred worldwide CRM provider for the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Over this time, the two companies have extended their innovation and leadership positions in cloud and together now have more than 250 joint customers.

“Veeva has been an outstanding partner over the past decade, and Peter has been an outstanding CEO," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO at Salesforce. “Our expanded collaboration is a great next step for our joint customers and we look forward to working with Veeva into the next decade to help move the life sciences industry forward.”

“Salesforce is a cloud pioneer that has transformed how companies connect with their customers,” said Peter Gassner, founder and CEO of Veeva. “We’re excited to build upon our 10-year partnership and, together, help life sciences companies develop deeper relationships with healthcare professionals and create a better customer experience.”

Built on the Salesforce Platform, Veeva CRM is core to Veeva Commercial Cloud, which brings together customer data, compliant content, and multichannel engagement for life sciences companies to deliver the experience healthcare professionals have come to expect. The integration of Veeva CRM and Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows information to be shared between the two cloud solutions so that sales and marketing teams can have a complete view of customer engagement.

Marketing activities and data from Salesforce Marketing Cloud are available in Veeva CRM, while all Veeva CRM data and multichannel interactions, including Veeva CRM Approved Email, Veeva CLM, and Veeva CRM Suggestions, flow directly into Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Now life sciences customers that use both cloud solutions can have full visibility into face-to-face and digital interactions so they can deliver a cohesive and consistent experience to healthcare professionals.

Express Logic Inc. is global provider of royalty-free real-time operating systems (RTOS) with over 5.4 billion deployments. Today the giant has revealed the X-Ware IoT Platform™, for fast, safe, secure, industrial-grade connectivity of deeply embedded IoT sensors, devices, edge routers, and gateways.

The X-Ware IoT Platform is built on top of Express Logic’s high-performance ThreadX RTOS and NetX Duo dual IPv4/IPv6 TCP/IP stack. The X-Ware IoT Platform leverages all the benefits of NetX Duo and introduces new IoT protocol support for IPv6 over Low Power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN), Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT), Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) and Lightweight M2M (LWM2M).

Like all Express Logic products, the X-Ware IoT Platform provides high performance, boasts a small footprint, and is created in-house (contains no open-source code). The X-Ware IoT Platform is designed for the smallest of IoT devices. For example, X-Ware IoT Platform support for an 802.15.4 radio device (using 6LoWPAN, IPv6, UDP, DTLS, and CoAP) requires only 25KB of flash memory. This gives embedded developers of safety- and security-critical IoT devices plenty of room to add NetX Secure TLS or DTLS to secure data at the socket layer or NetX Duo IPsec to secure data at the network layer.

For its part, NetX Duo has been precertified at the highest level for safety standards that include industrial safety’s IEC 61508 SIL 4, medical’s IEC 62304 Class C, automotive’s ISO 26262 ASIL D, and rail transportation’s EN 50128 SW-SIL 4, as well as consumer appliance standards UL 60730-1 Annex H, CSA E60730-1 Annex H, IEC 60730-1 Annex H, IEC 60335-1 Annex R, and IEC 60335-1 Annex R, 1998.

Through NetX Duo, the X-Ware IoT Platform is seamlessly integrated with Express Logic’s ThreadX, and both products are certified to the same SIL 4 and ASIL D levels. Both products also support all major commercial processors, providing a powerful platform for developing safe, secure, high-performance device-to-cloud solutions in a small footprint.

Insurance companies are facing unprecedented challenges and opportunities where digital is no longer just a new way to package and sell traditional concepts, but something that will redefine the industry at its core. 

The massive value of today’s $5 trillion global insurance market is impossible to ignore. Add to that over $1.63 trillion worth of new value to be unlocked if the industry is digitised by 2018 - and the industry becomes even more exciting. This is demonstrated in Cognizant’s recent report on the future of work in insurance, The Work Ahead – Seven Key Trends Shaping the Future of Work in the Insurance Industry. The report is part of a larger study for which Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work interviewed 168 insurance company executives worldwide on their digital and technological priorities, how they view the opportunities presented by digital transformation and its impact on future developments in their business. 

Insurance providers, traditionally focused mainly on their core business, should rethink what they do, and how they do it, in the face of change driven by data, automation and artificial intelligence (AI).

Digital is key

According to the research, approximately two-thirds of insurers (61%) believe that digitally-driven transformation is the key to their organisation’s commercial future. The data-driven insurance industry has much to gain from working with automation and machine learning that enhances the ability to analyse and create value through data.

For a corporation, being more strategic and specialised may mean targeting a micro-vertical niche, for example, bio-chemical research intellectual property protection, rather than continuing to pursue large, undifferentiated marketplaces. Furthermore, being more automated and technical may mean reducing costs in back-office business processes through the deployment of robotic process automation (RPA). Almost all respondents agreed with the statement that “the required skills to succeed in my industry are going to change significantly in the next three years”.

As such, by 2018, there will be five major business dynamics that will materially impact the future of work in insurance:

• Work will become more strategic than ever
• Work will become more specialised
• Work will become more automated 
• We will work more with machines that enhance what humans already do
• Work will become more technical 

In order to keep up with the competition, insurance companies should adapt to these dynamics and equip their employees with the relevant skills.

Data-based insights lay the ground for analytical skills

A significant number (68%) of insurance executives said that, in 2016, analytical skills were the most important. By 2020, this figure rises to 88%. Analytical skills will only grow in importance as businesses increasingly understand the power of data and data-based insights.

In contrast, 57% said “selling” was the second most important skill in 2016. By 2020, this figure will have remained relatively consistent and will only have grown to 61%. Respondents perceive selling remains very essential but that its importance will not grow substantially over the next few years. The ability to sell products and services will always remain relevant; however, other skills previously given less recognition, such as data analytics, are a key requirement for insurance companies, in a world increasingly driven by software.

Michael Clifton, Senior Vice President, global insurance strategy and ventures, Cognizant, comments:

“It is clear there is an industry consensus on the central role of data and analytics – both now and in the future – in shaping business models and commercial opportunities. In many ways, this is not a surprise, but the research confirms something profound: without a data-centric approach at the core of what an insurance company does and how it does it, some may struggle to maintain their current spot in a competitive industry – and unlock the trillions worth of new value in it.”

Streamlining systems and cutting costs through self-service

As retail banking goes through a period of unprecedented change, banks are looking more than ever to cut costs and streamline processes, while discerning customers continue to demand the highest standards in customer care. Self-Service Banking Europe 2017 provides a crucial forum for banks, independent deployers, solutions providers and industry experts to share knowledge and best practice, in order to navigate a course through this challenging but exciting time for the industry.

RBR’s Managing Director, Dominic Hirsch commented: “It has never been more important for retail banks to understand the needs of their customers and to learn about the latest technology at their disposal. This event provides the perfect opportunity for them and other industry stakeholders to learn, network, and share expertise.”

Vibrant speaker programme features visionary keynotes and expert insights

A packed two-day speaker programme features thought leadership addresses from some of the most important players in the banking and payments sectors, including the CEO of Diebold Nixdorf, Andy Mattes, on how to win customers in a connected commerce era, Microsoft on empowering financial services in the digital economy, Bank of America on designing a user-friendly self-service channel, and Google on the role of mobile payments in the emerging self-service ecosystem.

The programme also includes a wide range of bank case studies from across Europe and further afield, with leading institutions such as Barclays, Citibank, Santander and UniCredit sharing their experiences. Key themes include next-gen ATM transactions, digital transformation, ATM outsourcing, contactless, streamlining self-service operations, and machine learning.

Major expo showcases the newest self-service banking technology

In addition to its world-class speaker programme, the event features a sold-out expo area, with exhibitors* showcasing cutting-edge banking technology, from the latest ATM and self-service hardware and software to payments platforms and security solutions.