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Best IT Management Software Solutions 2021

Posted in: Enterprise Apps - Sep 14, 2021

The category of IT management software covers a wide range of offerings: remote management of computer systems, IT Service Management (ITSM), IT infrastructure management, Application Performance Management (APM), Security Information & Event Management (SIEM), and many other areas. Consequently, the tools covered in this guide span the gamut of management areas.

Each vendor has their own approach. Some entered the field via security, some via application performance, and others via Help Desk applications that needed to connect remotely into user systems. Regardless of their origins, they have all expanded into the wider world of IT management.

Best IT Management Software Solutions

CIO Insight evaluated multiple vendors operating in the IT management space. Here are our top picks, in no particular order:

TeamViewer

Value Proposition

TeamViewer Remote Management is a central IT management solution that keeps a company’s IT infrastructure healthy, stable, and secure. Features include active management, monitoring, and tracking of all remote devices and network devices. It also encompasses the central deployment of software and patches for managed devices to improve performance and increase overall IT security and efficiency.

Key Differentiators

Customizable to fit a company’s remote management policies and requirements
Regulate the intervals of automatic checks, real-time alerts, and automated responses
In-house IT teams can spend time on other areas of the infrastructure
Integrated functions that are scalable
Remote Access and Control can be accessed within the same management console
Remote Management offers endpoint protection
Leverages machine-learning to protect against malware and zero-day exploits
Automated backup
Offers the ability to monitor website uptime, page load speeds, and transactions

ReadyWorks

Value Proposition

ReadyWorks helps large enterprises with IT transformation, eliminating operational inefficiencies by automating and orchestrating complex IT programs. It is a digital platform conductor for all critical aspects of IT infrastructure management. It provides a unified view of underpinning technologies and their connection to applications, users, and services.

Key Differentiators

Collects, cleans, and analyzes data from all IT and business systems
Automates planning based on data and migration readiness
Orchestrates workflow execution for both people and systems
Provides reporting and real-time insights into the status of IT programs
Uses a library of connectors to collect, clean, and normalizes data
Connector ecosystem includes ServiceNow, Configuration Manager, InTune, Okta, and others
Bi-directional connectors allow orchestration of complex workflows across platforms
Automated communications and user scheduling
Enterprise-grade security and scalability
Adaptable platform allows for orchestration of nearly any infrastructure program

New Relic

Value Proposition

New Relic One is a data analysis platform for all software metrics, events, and logs. It also helps software teams detect anomalies, discover root causes, and optimize performance. Whether the architecture is microservices or monoliths, containers or VMs, cloud or data center, it can deploy, monitor, and scale services.

Key Differentiators

HIPAA-compliant observability platform for monitoring performance of systems containing PHI
Manages all telemetry data, including metrics, events, logs and distributed traces
Provides a single source of truth, offering full-stack analysis tools and applied intelligence capabilities in one place
Strong regulatory posture: SOC2, GDPR, FedRAMP, and HIPAA
Provides context from logs, infrastructure and applications, distributed tracing, and serverless functions
App performance at-a-glance summary gives the user insight into web transaction response time and transaction traces
Drill down to fix the problem at the root, optimizing app performance
Monitor all aspects of the business on one screen
No need to program pre-configured alerts
Automatically groups alerts and informs engineers based on time and frequency
Positioned by Gartner in the Leaders quadrant of the 2021 Magic Quadrant for APM

Splunk

Value Proposition

Whether on-prem, hybrid, or multicloud, Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring delivers real-time infrastructure monitoring and troubleshooting for all environments. It provides transparency into usage and the capacity to minimize operational and cloud costs. In addition, it can stop context switching and simplify operations with tools that work across systems, teams, and tools.

Key Differentiators

Monitors and provides observability of cloud environments
Provides a solution to visualize and analyze relevant performance metrics across infrastructure, services, and applications
Boasts a mean time to detect up to 80% faster than competitors
AI-driven alerts
Transparency and usage control provided by Splunk Service Bureau
Splunk IM applies analytics on metrics in flight
Search rapidly by any combination of dimensions
Enhanced offerings in areas such as real user monitoring and network monitoring
Splunk offerings also provide AIOps and automation functionality

ScienceLogic

Value Proposition

ScienceLogic discovers all components within the enterprise across physical, virtual, and cloud environments and stores the data in a data lake. It then helps IT to understand relationships between infrastructure, applications, and business services, using this context to gain actionable insights. The company claims 60% reduction in incidents, and a 25% improvement in time to recovery.

Key Differentiators

Consolidates big data from all IT tools and data sources into a real-time data lake
Exchange and optimize cross-ecosystem data for visibility
Auto-remediation of issues
Auto-mapping and tracking of relationships across infrastructure, clouds, applications, and business services
Multi-directional integrations to automate actions at cloud scale.

BMC Helix

Value Proposition

BMC Software has arranged its Helix IT Service and Operations Management suite in alignment with ITIL best practices. It includes modules for chatbot, digital workplace, discovery, ITSM, business workflows, and cloud-native microservices. It comes with built-in AI and machine learning capabilities.

Key Differentiators

Users can choose to deploy on-premise, SaaS, multi-cloud, and hybrid
ITSM module can run on choice of public clouds: AWS, Azure, IBM, or BMC
Resolve incidents faster with intelligent, context-aware, and proactive incident matching
ITIL 4-compliant best practices for service management processes
Guided processes on mobile and web, a drag-and-drop change calendar, and automated and contextual collision detection with impact analysis
Scalable service view configuration management for ITOM
Offers class structure, data and service models, federation, reconciliation and normalization, and agentless application and dependency mapping
Supports a variety of service request workloads at scale
Cognitive capabilities that automate classification, assignment, and routing of incidents, as well as cognitive email analysis and response.
Ability to track operating level agreements and contracts from external providers

Ivanti Service Manager

Value Proposition

Ivanti Service Manager evolved from the merger of HEAT and Landesk to offer IT management, chatbots, telephony support, third-party service integration, and contract management. It includes a workflow designer and engine that adapts to changes in the market and shifts in the business.

Key Differentiators

Run it as a single product or as one element of a suite
SaaS and on-premises options
Flexible incident management, including analytics to deal with inbound ticket requests from any channel
Problem management utilizes information from other elements within the enterprise for automated resolution processes
User configurable support of change workflow and business process
Service asset and configuration management enable the handling of IT changes quickly
Includes dashboards, reporting, knowledge management, mobility, and self service
Review events over selected time periods, track MTBF, and report service availability against SLAs
Ivanti was the original service desk solution in the 1980’s

EasyVista Service Manager

Value Proposition

EasyVista Enterprise Service Management Platform includes IT management, enterprise process automation, intelligent knowledge management, and micro apps technology for building apps, portals, and dashboards). It is available as SaaS and on-premise.

Key Differentiators

Automatic knowledge search locates any related known errors, knowledge articles, news or major incidents
Resolutions from knowledge can be copied to current incidents
Alerts can be received from third-party monitoring tools, analyzed, and then trigger events such as recording, notification, or creating an incident
Changes are categorized based on change catalog records that also define the related workflow
Impact analysis lets you understand the impact of a change based on the CMDB relationship
Assets/CIs are linked to define the dependency map; business services are tracked and linked to CIs
Request management starts with the service catalog; workflows are configured and associated to every service
Microsoft Cognitive Services are used to interpret user needs

Key Features of IT Management Applications

These days, IT management software solutions tend to adopt more and more predictive and preventive analytics capabilities. Another area common to most vendors now is extending their on-premises software with cloud-based versions and tools.

This had led to increasingly sophisticated management products that incorporate areas such as business workflows, artificial intelligence (AI), virtual agents, chatbots, machine learning, and ease of use.

Other areas that are often part of IT management include the following.

Incident Management

There are many types of incident that can occur in IT. Some are vitally important, many are not. Incident management should be able to help IT identify priorities with automation features that simplify the process.

Problem Management

Problem management exists to assist IT via processes and activities that manage the lifecycle of problems that could happen in an IT service. The purpose is to prevent problems from happening and resolve incidents rapidly.

Change Management

If changes are not tracked, a great many challenges are likely to result. For example, if a server virtualization project is initiated without detailing all the processes, services, storage connections, and dependencies involved, then chaos could erupt. The latest change management modules sometimes provide risk analysis to highlight potential issues in advance.

Service Asset/Configuration Management

Maintaining an accurate record of all information about the many configuration Items (CIs) is needed to deliver IT service.

Service Desk

The service desk provides a point of contact to ensure users receive help for requests. These can vary from the routine to full-blown emergencies.

The post Best IT Management Software Solutions 2021 appeared first on CIO Insight.

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What Does a CASB Do? Top CASB Solutions for 2021

Posted in: access controls, CASB, cloud access security broker, Security - Sep 13, 2021

Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) are a type of security tool that helps organizations manage and secure their cloud-based data. A CASB is essentially the middleman between you (the end-user) and the cloud providers. Here, we’ll discuss the functions of CASBs and list the top CASB solutions.

What Is a CASB?

Cloud Access Security Brokers are designed to manage the security of an organization’s applications, both internally and externally. It is a visibility and policy control point that sits between users and cloud providers. They provide visibility into unauthorized users on the network and block bad actors from gaining access to network resources.

With the right CASB, users can also control what data leaves and enters the cloud. A CASB can also provide proactive controls to mitigate cloud-based data breaches by detecting unapproved connections to repositories, identifying risky user actions, and generating alerts to notify the information security team of potential incidents.

The CASB offers a higher level of security by shielding sensitive data from any unauthorized access. Some key features of a CASB are:

Encrypting sensitive data in motion and at rest
Employing endpoint protection solutions to ensure that devices are secure
Providing visibility into all of your endpoints from a single console
Providing layers of protection against threats
Preventing inappropriate use of cloud services by enforcing rules

The primary role of cloud access security brokers is to maintain the integrity and confidentiality of a given virtual private server or cloud environment. They do this by providing the security necessary to protect data from unauthorized access.

Pros	Cons
IAAS, PAAS, and SAAS support are robust	The solution is not easy to use
Monitoring and Threat Protection tool	The console can be slow to load at times

Pros	Cons
It has a very clear and simple dashboard	Issues while implementing
The support is excellent	The Shadow IT process is very slow to load
Stable Solution

Pros	Cons
Policies against integrated SaaS applications	Integration issues
Visibility into cloud application usage and risk	Solution is expensive
Cloud Confidence Index

Pros	Cons
Extra layer of security for email on personal devices	Issues with integration for different MFA tools
It allows users to have DLP rules	Not suitable for large enterprise
Fast and easy setup procedures

Pros	Cons
Easily deployable, even by non-IT managers	Experts used to Linux clouds may find it restrictive
In-depth knowledge of the entire network	E5 subscription tiers might be extremely costly
The analysis is a simple concept
Effortlessly implementable data compliance tools

Why Is a CASB Important?

A CASB is an important part of cloud security strategy. As organizations begin to look towards the cloud for more mission-critical applications, CASBs will need to be explored as an option in order to keep data safe and secure.

CASBs are important because they ensure sensitive data remains safe from cyber threats.

There are many reasons why cloud security brokers might be beneficial to organizations. One is that they provide the reliability that is required in today’s world of cloud computing. For instance, if you are using the cloud to manage the inventory database for your company, the cloud provider will handle the secure storage and retrieval of that inventory data without you having to add any additional hardware, software, or training for IT staff.

A CASB allows an organization to use SaaS applications without the worry of compromising their IT security. The use of cloud security brokers offers the advantage of ensuring compliance with existing regulatory standards, as well as improved audit trails and decreased costs.

How Do You Choose What a CASB Does?

To determine what a cloud access security broker does for you, first identify the role it plays in your organization. If you want to use this method to gain access to data on another cloud, the cloud security broker will handle the access by adding firewall controls and other measures.

When deploying CASB, start with the most important cloud application in your enterprise. In order to use the cloud application’s API, you’ll need to identify a CASB that offers API support for that cloud application.

There are three ways CASB can be deployed: a proxy-like on-premise gateway, a host-based agent, and an API cloud-centric cloud service. In general, CASBs operate on four pillars, which are: visibility, compliance, threat protection, and data security.

Choosing the Right Cloud Access Security Broker

There are many CASBs available, but choosing the right one for your organization requires a lot of careful consideration. Look out for faster application delivery, better connectivity and scalability, tighter control, greater resiliency, and simplified management. Further, you’ll want easy integration with other applications and excellent technical support.

The post What Does a CASB Do? Top CASB Solutions for 2021 appeared first on CIO Insight.

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What Is Enterprise Change Management?

Posted in: change management, ECM, ECM software, IT Management - Sep 13, 2021

Change management appears simple, but change is often the most challenging thing to understand in business. In many cases, enterprise change management (ECM) is difficult to implement and maintain.

According to Webopedia, ECM is “the process, tools, and techniques required by an organization to manage the people side of change in the enterprise in order to achieve the expected outcome.” To properly implement change management, the key is simplifying the processes down to the core needs of the organization.

Types of Enterprise Change

There are several types of organizational change:

Traditional Change

Traditional Change usually occurs in smaller, more defined business units. For example, onboarding new CRM software involves Traditional Change. Traditional methods of change management work well in operational units, but lack the framework and scope to be applied to the business as a whole.

Evolutionary Change

The most common form of organizational change, Evolutionary Change usually begins internally, and takes time to fully manifest and understand.

Revolutionary Change

This change is rapid and usually starts outside the organization. When Revolutionary Change occurs, the power structure of the business radically shifts. It may end in complete reorganization or even closure of the company or business unit.

Directed Change

Directed Change is planning and trying to control events before an Evolutionary or Revolutionary Change happens. Two Directed Changes can occur within an organization, depending on the impetus:

Developmental Change: A reaction to perceived Evolutionary Change, this is the process of improving what the company is doing on an ongoing basis. The company commits to continuous improvements in operations, finance, and other areas.
Transformational Change: A reaction to perceived Revolutionary Change, this begins with a new vision, changes in the marketplace, new leadership, or an external event that creates a need to transform rapidly. This change often causes uncertainty and stress within the company, but if managed correctly it can be the most beneficial.

Change Management Software

Change Management software can be difficult for organizations to implement and adopt. Many business leaders believe an ECM application will simplify and mitigate common mistakes.

For the most part, an application can help understand the organization, but it is not a solution to everything. When used in conjunction with a solid change management system outlining the transformation in the business, ECM software will be a good ally in running an organization’s goals.

Read more on TechnologyAdvice: Here Are 6 Change Management Tools That Every Project Manager Needs In Their Life

The Reality of Change Management

Change management is complex by nature. Many businesses begin these efforts with the best intentions and want a tailor-made solution that will resolve everything. Unless the company wants to waste time and resources building a custom software application, the best it can wish for is a third-party solution.

Further, most large corporations have ECM teams; however, many smaller companies don’t. For any size of business, keep these things in mind to help in your change management efforts:

Simplify: Do not overanalyze the initiative. Many companies fall into a rabbit hole, especially when there are multiple business areas involved.
Divide the effort: Keep the effort manageable, dividing work and resource allocation into stages. If a third-party vendor is involved, ensure your internal team is strong enough to provide push back if needed to keep the work moving forward. There is no one-stop solution!
Communicate: Set up timely meetings to inform everyone how the effort is going, and maintain open lines of communication with all stakeholders.
Manage time: Remember, change management is a continuous process. New changes will always occur, so be adaptable and comfortable with this fact.

The post What Is Enterprise Change Management? appeared first on CIO Insight.

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Continuous Delivery vs Deployment: What Are Key Differences?

Posted in: automated continuous testing, continuous delivery, continuous delivery cycle, continuous delivery processes, continuous deployment, continuous development/continuous integration, IT Strategy - Sep 10, 2021

The terms continuous delivery and deployment can sometimes be used interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. Understanding continuous delivery vs deployment is critical to building high-performing digital products faster.

Here’s what you need to know about continuous delivery and deployment, the differences between them, and how to pick the right model.

What Is Continuous Delivery?

Traditional software development methods deploy once every three to six months (often with delays). Continuous delivery takes an old concept — continuous integration — and applies it to deployment.

With continuous delivery, organizations can take several approaches. Typically, they release daily or weekly. Continuous delivery doesn’t always mean deploying daily — rather, it implies companies will be able to easily roll back faulty releases should problems arise. This way, no matter how large or small a release may be, users continue to experience consistently high quality and enhanced functionality over time.

In contrast to other approaches that simply address issues after they arise, continuous delivery tries to prevent problems from happening in the first place by using automated processes and test-driven development models.

When something does go wrong in production, there’s not much left to fix.

Many companies use continuous delivery in conjunction with continuous deployment, so their employees only have to commit code during normal business hours — as opposed to during core hours, when programmers are less likely to be available.

Automated testing tools enable developers and business users alike to submit changes into repositories, which then automatically process changes for regression tests, unit tests, and functional tests across all environments. This includes live operations for better efficiency, accuracy, and confidence in shipping. When something does go wrong in production, there’s not much left to fix.

Delivering software continuously has numerous benefits for IT departments and end users. Developers save time because they’re not waiting for code reviews or handoffs between teams. Continuous delivery lets developers automate workflows to expedite deployments even further.

Continuous delivery allows developers and IT teams more flexibility when rolling out products and features to end-users. This flexibility allows customers to receive critical improvements within days rather than months, enabling businesses that adopt these strategies to keep pace with evolving customer needs more quickly than those that don’t.

Overall, continuous delivery helps IT teams deliver high-quality software faster and with less risk. Finally, continuous delivery provides faster access to bug fixes because new versions are automatically tested before being deployed into production environments.

What Is Continuous Deployment?

Continuous deployment is a software engineering approach in which teams push code to production multiple times per day. Proponents of continuous deployment say it allows them to build better software more quickly by delivering working code fast and often.

In a continuous deployment workflow, each check-in is verified by an automated build and/or test script, then automatically deployed into production. Each time new code is deployed, it is immediately available for use by users.

Each time new code is deployed, it is immediately available for use by users.

From a developer perspective, changes are committed to version control and then immediately moved into testing. Deployments often occur – usually more than once per day – but not so often that they become routine. With continuous deployment, developers can see how their changes will function in a live environment as soon as they make them.

This rapid feedback cycle means they can refine their solutions more quickly without introducing bugs, or risk impacting business operations. Users see only stable versions of software running between deployments, with no unintended behavior from earlier versions being run undercover.

Let’s take a look at some examples of continuous delivery vs continuous deployment.

Examples of Continuous Delivery and Deployment

A number of organizations have already adopted continuous delivery and deployment strategies. While each company has its own unique processes for getting code from developers to production environments, they all utilize some element of continuous delivery and in their process.

Etsy used Jenkins to set up a workflow that could automatically merge code into their main branch after successful unit tests were completed. Any developer can then deploy directly from that branch into production at any time.

Spotify also uses an automated build pipeline, with several deployments triggering off commits made to specific branches. Automated testing is then run on every commit before it’s deployed.

Companies like Facebook use continuous deployment extensively, because they make major changes several times a day, with small patches throughout each day. They do a rollback to ensure no regressions are introduced but rely on automated checks to do so.

Continuous deployment and continuous delivery allow developers to deploy code whenever it meets certain standards, instead of on a set schedule.

Traditional Deployment vs Continuous Deployment

One of the main differences between traditional deployment and continuous deployment is how you go about creating a deployable artifact. With traditional deployments, your code gets deployed to production at set intervals, such as once per week or once per month.

Continuous deployment isn’t appropriate for everyone or every situation.

Continuous deployment pushes code into production as soon as it’s ready, whereas traditional deployment requires an entire interval to lapse before deploying new code into production.

That said, continuous deployment isn’t appropriate for everyone or every situation. It requires close monitoring from engineers, who need to be on call regularly in case something goes wrong. If any problems occur, those engineers must put out fires quickly and seamlessly restore service to customers.

Why Opt for a Continuous Model?

It comes down to speed and predictability. With traditional deployment, you typically get a large batch of changes deployed all at once. That can lead to big issues if there’s a critical failure in any of those changes. Your whole system is broken until you can isolate and fix that one component. With the continuous model, you push smaller batches of change out more frequently, so there are always working pieces for your users.

Traditional deployments are not meant for agile development methods. Traditional deployments only allow you to fix one problem at a time. However, with continuous deployment, several issues can be fixed simultaneously, resulting in a better overall product over time.

The goal with continuous delivery and continuous deployment processes is rapid feedback. Continuous delivery aims to get changes into production rapidly while maintaining stability through practices like automated testing and built-in monitoring. Continuous deployment happens every time there are changes made to your code that are approved by QA.

The difference between continuous delivery vs deployment — and why developers might want to consider one or both techniques — is primarily found in how quickly your team gets new features into users’ hands.

The post Continuous Delivery vs Deployment: What Are Key Differences? appeared first on CIO Insight.

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AI Equity in Business Technology: An Interview With Marshall Choy of SambaNova Systems

Posted in: AI, AI equity, artificial intelligence, Covid-19, Digital Transformation, Innovation, Leadership, machine learning, Marshall Choy, ML, News & Trends, SambaNova Systems - Sep 10, 2021

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are quickly transforming business operations and customer experiences, but not all enterprises are keeping up with the AI trend. Some businesses lag behind because they lack the financial and human resources to develop these tools. Others haven’t yet developed a vision of the AI future, and the extent to which it could benefit their business models.

Regardless of where different businesses currently fall on the AI development spectrum, trends point to a future where businesses will need to accept AI innovations in order to survive. The concept of AI equity has recently entered into greater business technology conversations, with major tech companies discussing how AI can be made more equitable, accessible, and easily understood by the business community at large.

SambaNova Systems is a company that specializes in AI innovations. Marshall Choy, VP of Product at SambaNova Systems, recently shared his thoughts with CIO Insight about how AI development looks now, and how a drive toward AI equity can improve the business technology landscape.

Also Read: AI vs. Machine Learning: Their Differences and Impacts

AI Equity Q&A with SambaNova Systems Executive

The Current State of Enterprise AI Development

CIO Insight: What is the number one mistake you see companies make when they first try to integrate AI into their business model or product offerings?

Choy: A lot of companies should actually look at AI as a strategic initiative across the organization. Usually, they just dip their toes in with a pilot project, then all teams decide to do their own pilot projects, and then there are several disjointed projects.

AI is less effective with these silos of heterogeneity. So it’s important to develop a strategic initiative across departments in an organization.

CIO Insight: How is AI currently changing the world of business? What efficiencies and new solutions come from AI in business?

Choy: AI is revolutionizing business in much the same magnitude we saw the internet do in business technology nearly two decades ago. The nature of software development and IT has changed significantly with AI.

We’re crossing into this new world of machine learning and AI-driven technology. Enterprise resource planning, CRMs, all of those other systems will continue to exist, but there’s a whole new growth wave of tech that’s being driven by AI, like computer vision and natural language processing.

Also Read: CRM vs ERP: What Are the Key Differences?

Larger vs. Smaller Business AI Adoption

CIO Insight: Traditionally, larger enterprises have adopted AI technologies before smaller companies. Why is that the case, and what makes them more successful and quick to adopt these new technologies?

Choy: The tech giants, the industry leaders, the hyperscalers have all the resources from the financial and human resources perspective. And they also have the motivation to keep up with the latest technologies in their hyper-competitive scenario, because of the sheer volume of what they’re trying to accomplish. Their size also gives them a large amount of purchasing power, so they’re able to experiment with new technology and get more purchasing power as a result.

CIO Insight: Can you think of a specific example/use case in which a smaller company developed a successful AI solution? What do you think made them successful?

Choy: In many cases, we hear smaller companies saying ‘I’m a small player, let me pick out a smaller pilot project.’ The successful smaller companies I’ve seen continue to think like big players, and don’t necessarily accept the stratification of AI relative to their size.

A smaller manufacturing customer that we worked with had a particular problem in QA image detection. We worked with them to develop a high-resolution solution with a greater scope, and without manual intervention and additional know-how, their defect detection accuracy increased. This project also improved their end-user safety.

CIO Insight: What industries have traditionally been slow to adopt AI technologies? How do you think it hurts their business and/or their customers?

Choy: The reality is we’re in the early days of AI rollout, so we don’t totally have the data. The thing that I’ve seen that’s slowed down AI adoption is actually less tied to industry and more tied to the digital maturity of the organization. It’s going to be really hard to embrace AI if you’re still doing ERP on an Excel spreadsheet.

Banking and financial services are typically ahead of the curve, but it’s still not uniform across the industry … I think the main point I want to make here is that it’s not too late for anybody in any industry to get on this now, and maintain or gain a leadership position, or become a leader in an industry that has not yet arrived here.

What Is AI Equity?

CIO Insight: What is AI equity? What does it mean for the future of the business technology world, and what does it mean to you specifically?

Choy: It’s really about leveling that playing field. To me, it describes the end state of making AI more accessible to a broader user base; offering the AI capabilities of the tech giants without being a tech giant. AI equity means that AI access is not just for the Fortune 10, but for the Fortune ‘everybody else,’ and without the need for the same infrastructure and people resources.

Tech Vendors Driving Toward AI Equity

CIO Insight: How are you and SambaNova Systems currently working to create greater AI equity across industries and businesses?

Choy: The reality is that I can think of few industries that build things in piece parts and whose customers expect to self-integrate the solutions and build the end products themselves. Car companies don’t do that, other companies don’t do that, but for whatever reason, that has become the status quo in IT.

At SambaNova Systems, we offer Dataflow-as-a-Service so that organizations of all shapes and sizes can quickly use AI and machine learning services while reducing technical staffing requirements for the solution. We’re automating and integrating things into a single package.

One of the big areas of inequity is in the AI models themselves. The big tech giants have the stacks of PhDs and technical experience to understand these models, but most teams don’t. SambaNova Systems is staffed similarly and does that research, selection, and optimization on behalf of our customers.

CIO Insight: How can other technology vendors encourage AI adoption and greater equity within their customer base?

Choy: It’s all about making the technology easier to use, and maybe more importantly, easier to integrate into what they already have. Not just what’s in the data center, but what’s in the heads of their staff. Companies need to offer solutions that are less vendor-specific, helping their customers to avoid vendor lock-in. Open standards yield more flexibility and choice.

The Future of Business Tech With AI Equity

CIO Insight: How do you think that more widespread AI development could create positive global change? How has the pandemic affected AI and business technology?

Choy: AI is here to oversimplify and automate. Automation is efficiency … let’s take a look at the current pandemic situation. Many pandemic problems are being made slightly less devastating with AI and other patient outcome technologies realized in less time.

I think digital transformation has accelerated, and AI is a big part of that. We’ve talked about digital transformation for a decade now, and a lot of companies who were thinking about it achieved it in less than a year because of the pandemic.

More on COVID and Business Efficiencies: COVID’s Impact on Agile Project Management

CIO Insight: What do you think the consequences will be for companies that don’t begin to develop AI solutions in the next few years?

Choy: Just like with the onset of the internet, the companies that adopt AI correctly will be the kings and queens of their industry. And those that don’t could be left behind. The internet completely refactored how apps were written and run and connected people across the globe. Many major enterprises fell off because they were not quick to adopt the internet, and I think AI is going to have the same refactoring effect on future business successes.

Conclusions

CIO Insight: Anything else you’d like to add?

Choy: When [your company] is considering its AI strategy, think beyond the pilots and test drafts. Think beyond the short term toward the long term. Pilots should be experiments on how to use the tech in a broader sense. They should move beyond cross-organizational and application boundaries to get true enterprise-scale benefits … How can you really have a successful pilot if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve?

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity.

Read Next: AI Software Trends for 2021

About Marshall Choy

Marshall Choy, SambaNova Systems' VP of Product

Marshall Choy is Vice President of Product at SambaNova Systems, responsible for product management and go to market. Mr. Choy brings extensive experience leading global organizations to bring breakthrough products to market, establish new market presences, and grow new and existing lines of business.

Mr. Choy was previously Vice President of Product Management at Oracle until 2018. There, Mr. Choy was responsible for the portfolio and strategy for Oracle Systems products and solutions. He led teams that help deliver comprehensive end-to-end hardware and software solutions and product management operations. Prior to joining Oracle in 2010 when it acquired Sun Microsystems, Mr. Choy served as Director of Engineered Solutions at Sun. During his 11 years there, Mr. Choy held various positions in development, information technology, and marketing.

The post AI Equity in Business Technology: An Interview With Marshall Choy of SambaNova Systems appeared first on CIO Insight.

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Daman News and Events

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News

Best IT Management Software Solutions

Key Features of IT Management Applications

Incident Management

Problem Management

Change Management

Service Asset/Configuration Management

Service Desk

Table of Contents

What Is a CASB?

Top CASB Solutions

Why Is a CASB Important?

How Do You Choose What a CASB Does?

Choosing the Right Cloud Access Security Broker

Types of Enterprise Change

Traditional Change

Evolutionary Change

Revolutionary Change

Directed Change

Change Management Software

The Reality of Change Management

What Is Continuous Delivery?

What Is Continuous Deployment?

Examples of Continuous Delivery and Deployment

Traditional Deployment vs Continuous Deployment

Why Opt for a Continuous Model?

AI Equity Q&A with SambaNova Systems Executive

The Current State of Enterprise AI Development

Larger vs. Smaller Business AI Adoption

What Is AI Equity?

Tech Vendors Driving Toward AI Equity

The Future of Business Tech With AI Equity

Conclusions

About Marshall Choy