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Startups Challenge Big Tech’s Hold on AI Personal Assistants

Thursday, September 8th, 2016

Designing intelligent personal assistants isn’t just a game for tech-sector titans anymore.

As The Verge reports, API, open-source tools and the ability to rent computing power are making it possible for more and more startups to leverage academic and industry developments — like natural language processing — to make apps tightly focused on a particular task.

X.ai is a startup based in New York City that’s raised almost US$35 million since starting in 2014. It makes a scheduling assistant, Amy Ingram. When ‘she’ is copied on an email, the software coordinates a meeting day and time.

EasilyDo, another AI-assistant startup, is specifically tailored to help with travel — an area already dominated by Apple’s Wallet and Gmail.

EasilyDo says its solution recognizes more travel companies than its biggest competitors, leading The Verge to ponder, “Does it matter if a startup is marginally better than Google or anyone else in a domain, when the bigger player is good enough?”

That question hasn’t stopped Viv, a startup founded by Dag Kittlaus, the maker of Siri. Viv’s AI can write its own programs, instead of relying on human coding. Kittlaus calls it a breakthrough in computer science: “It’s going to change the way programmers work with computers.”

Whether downloaded apps can replace baked-in personal assistants remains to be seen.

One thing’s for certain, though. As screen fatigue grows and more people seek out other ways of interacting with technology, intelligent personal assistants — whether it’s just a voice inside your smartphone or an actual robot — will be the future.

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‘Workday’ Migrates to the Cloud

Wednesday, September 7th, 2016

How quickly can an online enterprise go global? Just ask Pokémon Go developer Niantic.

While such immediate virality is rare, predicting user uptake is always a guessing game. Surprises on the upside can trigger an avalanche of negative reviews if the back-end infrastructure doesn’t support viral popularity in multiple markets.

Human resources and finance software company Workday recently cited global expansion as a reason for its decision to sign a seven-year contract with IBM to use the IBM Cloud platform for developing and testing new products.

Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri said IBM Cloud will enable his company to scale development and testing faster, and that they may use further services in the future. “Workday will use IBM Cloud to continue accelerating Workday’s internal development and testing efforts to support our ongoing global expansion,” Bhusri said.

IBM’s global cloud data infrastructure includes nearly 50 scalable and security-rich IBM Cloud data centers in 17 countries on six continents, according to a statement by Workday.

Fast Company notes, “The last thing you want is to start losing customers because your site crashes or some other part of your infrastructure isn’t up to the task.”

Learn more here about the Workday and IBM Cloud partnership.

To explore IBM Cloud infrastructure, click here.

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IBM Partners with MaRS Fintech Hub

Wednesday, August 31st, 2016

IBM is deepening its cooperation with Canadian fintech startups through Toronto-based MaRS, following up on pledges to help promising startups develop and commercialize their innovations.

The tech giant will join a network of corporate partners including CIBC, Manulife and payment processor Moneris in the MaRS C Suite, MaRS’ “corporate innovation district.” Partners provide startups with product feedback, advisory services and other forms of support.

“What we’re doing is saying: you have a great idea,” Patrick Horgan, VP, Manufacturing, Development & Operations at IBM Canada, said in an interview with TechPORTFOLIO in June. “You’re missing some ingredients to be successful. Let’s help you through that because we have some history of being able to get through all of those cycles and to the world market.”

As part of IBM’s partnership with MaRS, the company will provide technology and services, including access to IBM Cloud and cognitive computing (Bluemix and Watson), support for demonstration projects, data analytics internships, and “soft-landing export development opportunities.”

Fintech startups will also get assistance in opening new markets, completing international sales transactions, and connecting with new parties for collaboration.

“As IBM transitions into the physical building in the space, we’ll continue to expand the programming elements of the partnership,” Adam Nanjee, head of the MaRS fintech division, said in an emailed response to questions. “This type of collaboration tears down silos to accelerate the rate of innovation and leads to tangible, meaningful results.”

MaRS’ fintech hub aims to connect the financial services sector with startups developing next generation technology in emerging payments, financial services, peer-to-peer transactions, alternative lending and crypto-currencies.

IBM Resources:

  • Click here for a free IBM Bluemix trial.

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  • To apply to the IBM Global Entrepreneur program, click here.
  • To learn more about IBM Cloud, click here.

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Coworking in the Cloud

Wednesday, August 31st, 2016

Coworking shouldn’t be limited to former factories with exposed brick and chunky wooden beams. Shared resources should also be leveraged in the cloud, particularly for early-stage startups with limited access to funds.

Sometimes referred to as multi-tenancy, sharing space in the cloud can give startups more development flexibility, but users need to manage expectations around security, reliability, scalability and serviceability.

“Networks underpinning a cloud deployment need a higher degree of automation, programmability and multi-tenancy versus traditional non-cloud buildouts,” Andrew Lerner, Research Vice President at Gartner, said in a blog post last year. “Further, there are multiple paths to achieving automation, programmability and multi-tenancy … it’s not SDN or bust.”

As regulations around data security evolve in an age of near-daily headlines about hacking, developers, founders, CTOs and CIOs need to know what the cloud coworking options are.

For more on this, learn about the four key design considerations for a multi-tenant cloud.

IBM Cloud Resources

Click here for a free IBM Bluemix trial.

To apply to the IBM Global Entrepreneur program, click here.

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Tech Sector Sidesteps “Great Reckoning” for Startups

Monday, August 29th, 2016

Startups in the tech sector have defied expectations of a “great reckoning.”

Citing Evernote, Zirx, and Bannerman as examples, The New York Times explains how tech startups have largely responded to alarm bells set off by investors, with the following results:

  • Many companies have narrowed their focus to the most profitable customers.
  • More new enterprises are leveraging artificial intelligence, robotics and virtual reality, “creating potential areas of growth for Silicon Valley technologists to build on next.”
  • Elimination of some employee perks. For example, Evernote ditched free housekeeping services.

“The startup world did heed the warnings,” Max Levchin, chief executive of lending startup Affirm, told the NYT. Levchin was a co-founder of PayPal.

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DevOps Salaries Surge

Friday, August 26th, 2016

DevOps programmers are making bank.

The number of U.S. “IT practitioners” reporting annual salaries above $100,000 jumped by 11 percentage points, according to software engineering firm Puppet.

Released earlier this week, the 2016 survey results confirm just how valuable software and network engineers are. The percentage of IT practitioners making more than $100,000 rose to 58 percent this year after staying the same from 2014 to 2015.

The results help to back up assertions that software is eating the world and that tech is one of the few industries creating net job growth. Wages in the broader economy aren’t keeping up with the stand-out growth in tech salaries.

For example, Economic Policy Institute pegged overall private sector nominal wage growth in the U.S. at 3.5 to 4.0 percent in its most recent update. That’s down from the average growth rate of 6.3 percent, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, from 1960 to 2016.

Job titles in the Puppet survey’s IT practitioner category include “DevOps engineer,” “software developer or engineer,” and “cloud or infrastructure architect.”

Other highlights from the 2016 survey:

  • Highest earners: IT practitioners in the Australia/New Zealand region, the United States, and Canada.
  • Best industries: If you’re in the United States, our data shows that you’re more likely to make a better salary if you are a tech practitioner in technology, finance, or healthcare.
  • Lowest paid regions: Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Latin America/Caribbean region.

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Tech Stocks Approach Bubble-Era Valuations

Tuesday, August 23rd, 2016

Computer and software stocks account for more than a fifth of the value of the S&P 500 – a near-15-year high. Strong revenues make a replay of the 2000 dot-com crash unlikely.

A Bloomberg News report delivers the following insights:

  • “Tech is one of the only industries where earnings continue to expand.”
  • “Gains are built on earnings, driven by demand for products such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s web ads.” The S&P 500’s tech stocks are expected to expand profit by 2.8 percent in the third quarter.
  • “Information technology accounted for about one-fifth of the S&P 500’s operating earnings in the 12 months through March, almost precisely its market weight. 

Since 2015, investors have favored tech companies chasing revenues instead of user growth, which helps to differentiate today’s gains in the sector from the rally that ended with a crash in 2000.

“It’s healthy growth,” Bloomberg quoted Rich Weiss, a Los Angeles-based senior portfolio manager at American Century Investments, as saying. “I don’t believe we need to worry about a tech bubble here or in the near future.”

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WSJ: Facebook’s “Diversity Hire” Effort Fails

Wednesday, August 17th, 2016

Facebook has failed in its attempt to increase diversity in technical roles, the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

The company created incentives for in-house recruiters to bring in “diversity hires,” meaning prospects who aren’t white males or Asian males, but, as is the case with many tech companies the effort hasn’t necessarily led to offers from hiring managers.

“Former Facebook recruiters say they had mixed feelings about the extra-credit program,” according to the Journal. “Some were encouraged by the incentive, and identified a more diverse group of candidates. Still, they said it wasn’t enough to overcome a broader bias within Facebook and other tech companies for candidates who attended prestigious schools.”

Women and other “diversity hires” in tech have become a hot topic, and won’t go away soon because the industry has become such an important component of regional economies.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, high tech industries constitute 12 percent of all jobs, but produce 23 percent of all output.

Therefore, groups left out of tech industry opportunities face increasing economic marginalization.

Here’s Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an interview with Y Combinator about the genesis of Facebook and the company’s “innovation culture.”

 

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Survey Shows Harassment Still a Factor for Women in Tech

Tuesday, August 16th, 2016

The Mad Men are not as far behind us as we thought.

The Elephant In The Valley survey polled over 200 senior women in Silicon Valley, and found that 60 percent of them reported unwanted sexual advances at work.

Of that group, 65 percent said these advances were made by higher-ranking colleagues. Another 60 percent of those who had reported an incident were dissatisfied with the response.

An informal survey we ran on Twitter surfaced the same theme: 63 percent said they have experienced harassment in their workplace, according to combined results from two polls taken in June.

Mistreatment of women in the workplace is an economic as well as social problem because companies with women in the C-suite show better financial performance. When women are treated poorly in technology culture, they leave and don’t return to the industry.

Not that financial performance should be the first consideration in efforts to root out sexual harassment in the workplace.

Still, the situation isn’t completely bleak. Our poll about female founders and role models showed the largest proportion of respondents saying they could name at least two or three in the industry.

The existence of role models can contribute to increasing female participation in the workplace.

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Concierge Startups Tap Cognitive Technology

Monday, August 15th, 2016

Even concierge apps need a little help themselves to get their jobs completed.

Some are turning to artificial intelligence, a sensible solution given that significant VC funding is moving away from social media and towards businesses that utilize cognitive technology. Magic+ and Operator, personal assistant and personal shopper messenger services, use IBM Watson as an integral part of their stack.

Magic+, which received $12.5M of Series A funding in 2015 from Sequoia Capital, is an on-demand, scalable high-end personal concierge that claims to be capable of handling any task, regardless of size or scope. Users can send text messages that will help users with tasks such as arranging mutual meeting times and finding personal trainers. You can even order helicopter transport.

Requests are fulfilled through a combination of humans working as executive assistants paired with intelligent software. According to Magic, their “unique combination of humans and software is what enables us to consistently deliver an unparalleled level of service.”

Operator, set up by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, specializes in personal shopping. You can request items by text message in very specific detail from around the world. Among other things, it keeps records of your preferences. Operator was most recently funded by three investors in a $10 million Series A round.

The same machine learning and natural language processing technology that powers these startups via IBM Watson is available by signing up to IBM’s Global Entrepreneurship Program.

Through the Global Entrepreneurship Program, up to $120K of credits are available to spend on access to IBM services that these startups use, as well as go-to-market support, technical expertise, and business mentorship.

Here’s how to apply.

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