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Halliburton Chooses IBM Cloud to Help Cut Oilfield Development Costs

Wednesday, April 20th, 2016

Halliburton, the global oilfield services company that works with many of the world’s largest oil and gas players, has adopted IBM Cloud to run more detailed reservoir simulations, which may help struggling producers cut costs.

Record low oil prices, caused by strong output among oil producing nations amid weaker global demand, have put pressure on producers of the fossil fuel to lower extraction costs. Crude oil prices have fallen by more than half in the past two years, and talks between OPEC and Russia aimed at curbing production have stalled.

“Using high performance computing of the IBM Cloud, we can run very detailed simulation models and evaluate a wide range of field development options, which translates into better field development plans for our clients and a competitive advantage for our business,” Steven Knabe, a Halliburton Consulting director, said in an IBM statement.

The world’s biggest oil companies are expected to report their worst quarterly earnings in more than a decade because the industry’s cost-cutting efforts haven’t yet offset the decline in crude prices, Bloomberg reported. This adds pressure on producers to leverage technology to help plan reservoir development in a way that maximizes returns.

Like many industries, oil and gas companies are turning to technical advances available through cloud computing, data analytics, and machine learning to boost productivity.

And there is room for growth. “While some oil and gas companies have invested in their analytics capabilities, many struggle to get their arms around this powerful new opportunity,” consulting firm Bain & Company said in a report titled “Big Data analytics in oil and gas.”

Adopting IBM Cloud technology allows Halliburton to “quickly run hundreds of simulation cases to forecast the possible behavior of complex oil and gas fields,” according to the IBM statement, which doesn’t disclose terms for the company’s usage of IBM Cloud.

IBM markets a range of solutions for enhancing production, improving processing efficiency, and optimizing global operations for the oil and gas industry.

Halliburton Consulting specializes in formulating development plans for both new and mature fields.

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Cinemagraph Pioneer Flixel Hits a Milestone that Investors Prize

Tuesday, April 12th, 2016

Flixel, the Toronto startup recently selected as a Facebook partner for its living-photo technology known as cinemagraphs, is now funding growth through its own sales, a parameter that many investors want instead of growth-at-all-costs.

More paying customers allow Flixel, whose main product is Cinemagraph Pro, to split revenues between product development and marketing efforts channeled through Facebook.

“Since our pricing model allows us to acquire customers through targeted Facebook ads, we are able to have a healthy CAC/LTV (customer acquisition cost/ lifetime value) ratio,” says CEO and cofounder Philippe LeBlanc.

The Flixel startup story includes overcoming tough odds before finally getting their big break with the TV program America’s Next Top Model, and an investment from show’s host, supermodel Tyra Banks. The company’s success has since been propelled by the growing interest brands have in using Flixel’s cinemagraphs on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram. The visuals are more engaging than straight stills, LeBlanc says, adding that they’re also shorter and more cost effective than video.

The Facebook association will only deepen now that Flixel’s cinemagraphs have become a free option for profile photos on the platform that boasts about 1.6 billion regular users.

Prices Rise

Flixel sells software, hosting and licensing services for customers making their own cinemagraphs, and has a creative team producing them for brands including Netflix, Panasonic, and A&E. Flixel’s apps, both iOS and Mac, have been downloaded over 1 million times, according to a spokesperson. The company won’t provide further details about their revenues.

By raising the price of its mobile app 400%, Flixel is doubling down on revenue growth as its strategy as opposed to user growth. Because the processing power of the latest iPhones and iPads allow Flixel are on par, CTO Mark Pavlidis explains, Flixel has made its iOS app equal to the Mac app in terms of functionality. Flixel also sells a subscription version for $199 a year.

“We believe the price raise will have an increase in revenue both in terms of licensing sales, but more importantly in terms of tipping the scale to go the subscription route versus licensing each of our product lines separately,” LeBlanc says. “Raising money is always easier when a) you don’t need venture money b) you can show your revenue is growing and that additional money will only serve to accelerate this growth.”

Flixel’s customers are largely Adobe Creative Cloud users, including photographers, videographers, as well as creative directors at a wide range of marketing and advertising agencies. In addition to Tyra Banks, Flixel has been funded by a handful of private investors, as well as the Business Development Bank of Canada and the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

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Canada’s Big Banks Turn to Hackers for Innovation

Thursday, March 31st, 2016

Canada’s banking system emerged largely unscathed by the global financial meltdown that started in 2008, earning the country so much credit that the Bank of England drafted Mark Carney, the Bank of Canada’s governor throughout the crisis, to be its leader.

Prudent Canadian lending practices, however, haven’t translated into innovation. According to MaRS, the Toronto-based non-profit that commercializes home-grown tech, Canada’s financial center and largest city is ranked ninth globally for fintech innovation. Global investment in fintech ventures jumped to about $12.2 billion in 2014, according to a report from management consultancy firm Accenture, making it a key area for any city aiming to stand out as a tech ecosystem.

“The big banks are a little late to the game, but we have the major ingredients for a strong fintech ecosystem,” says Robert Antoniades, general partner and co-founder of Information Venture Partners, a Toronto-based venture capital firm.

Hackathon

Go Grassroots

One way for big institutions to engage with the next generation of innovators is through grassroots meetups. Scotiabank recently delved into hackathons for the first time, hosting their Debt Challenge, where 100 coders and designers crammed into the bank’s boardroom for a 40-hour competition.

“I met my team for the first time in the conference room,” says Mohit Kishore, a 23-year-old computer science student at York University in Toronto. Kishore had been to hackathons before with Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and coder meetups. “I prefer to work with new people,” he says. “Working with those you know doesn’t always produce new ideas.”

Mohit’s team created SCOTTY (Scotiabank Optimization Tool for You), a personal financial advisor built with Android, IBM’s Watson—which leveraged its powerful machine-learning capabilities—and their cloud platform Bluemix.

SCOTTY scored the team second place. Piggly, a Tamagotchi-like piggy bank where users have to spend real money to keep it alive, won the $15,000 grand prize.

 

hackathon2

“One of the guys on the team saw a similar concept discussed on Reddit,” says Cassandra Hui of the winning team, who developed the idea in advance. Hui even sat down with credit counselors to figure out how to gamify paying off debt. They’re now in talks with Scotiabank over how to potentially implement Piggly through the bank’s Digital Lab.

Be Aggressive

Hackathons are one way Canadian banks can innovate but they still need to share ideas and be more aggressive, says Antoniades.

“What I like is that each big institution now has an innovation strategy,” he says. “We’re still seeing banks wanting exclusivity.

“Banks need to be able to make quicker decisions with a technology. But it’s only a matter of time before that changes.”

Are you a developer looking to innovate? Try IBM’s Bluemix for free for 30 days.

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Jeopardy-Winning Supercomputer Could Be Toronto Raptors’ MVP

Thursday, March 31st, 2016

Big data and artificial intelligence have become game-changers for major league sports — an industry that drives more than $10 billion in economic value — by giving managers increasingly effective tools to bring their teams into the finals.

In “Big Data Analysis is Changing the Nature of Sports Science,” MIT Technology Review analyzed how those with the largest vested interests in sports are trying to use data “to gain a competitive advantage, whether in real time during the game or to help in training, preparation, or recruitment.”

As part of the data race in professional sports, the Toronto Raptors partnered with IBM to leverage the tech giant’s Watson technology platform. The computer – well known for its appearance on Jeopardy! – can parse huge amounts of unstructured data, and learn from these data sets, to answer questions accurately in a variety of fields. In the world of sports, Watson can collect statistics, medical records, video, and social network sentiment, and use them to help the team decide if a given player fits the team’s needs (physically or mentally), can stay healthy and looks likely to succeed.

Where scouts can analyze a player’s performance in the moment, Watson’s cognitive abilities can examine more of the intangibles — for example, if a player’s attitude aligns with the team’s competitive atmosphere. Big data can theoretically stop toxic player relations before they start.

Sponsorship Returns

Teams that perform well generate more viewer interest, and thus get a bigger cut of the $24 billion in TV broadcasting deals that the NBA clinched for the nine years starting in 2014. Sponsorship agreements with brands like Pepsi and Anheuser-Busch raise the stakes even higher.

The Raptors-IBM partnership is still in its early days, and Watson’s data may, in the future, include medical data — perhaps players will even use wearables to track their health in real time. The idea isn’t to completely replace coaching staff and other advisors; it’s to build on the human element.

Athletes, coaches and front office staff have in the past had difficulty communicating their needs, but big data seems to be changing that with easier-to-interpret and more meaningful data.

“The biggest transformation in the world of sports isn’t simply the fact that there is so much more data available — it’s the fact that it’s breaking down barriers between groups that were historically distinct and sometimes struggled to communicate,” sports analyst Dash Davidson wrote for VentureBeat.

Catch of the Year

Meanwhile, baseball fans now have more statistics to look at than ever, in a sport where statistics are king. In April 2015, MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) launched StatCast, which allows for deeper looks at every hit, defensive play and pitch, using an array of radars and hi-res optical cameras.

To herald the launch, MLBAM demonstrated StatCast’s abilities by analyzing the Blue Jays’ most jaw-dropping catch of the year, courtesy of outfielder Kevin Pillar. Last year, the Tampa Bay Rays’ Tim Beckham hammered a pitch deep into left field. Running out of room, Pillar used the left-field wall as a brace and sprung himself high enough to catch the ball. StatCast tracked Pillar’s top running speed (15.2 miles an hour), his distance covered (81.3 feet) and even his route efficiency (97.9%).

Since then, StatCast has given fans an endless array of data to further measure performance. It can give a deeper look at home runs, for example. On September 6, 2015, the Chicago Cub’s Kris Bryant hit the longest home run of the season. StatCast revealed just how impressive it was: It left Bryant’s bat at a scorching 111.5 miles per hour at a launch angle of 33 degrees and was projected to fly 495 feet.

StatCast’s petabytes of data can help general managers compare hits and defensive plays against players’ previous records. Players themselves, in turn, have better video to learn from.

On September 16, 2015, former Jays pitcher David Price wanted more insight into how Ryan Goins got an out on what looked to be an infield single from the Atlanta Braves’ Nick Markakis. Price asked StatCast on Twitter to analyze the play, and eventually analysis showed Goins took his first step just 0.24 seconds after the ball left Markakis’ bat. He covered 24.8 feet and threw the ball at 66.5 mph to achieve the out at first base.

Just as with the Raptors-Watson partnership, StatCast will no doubt become an important tool for front offices in their draft-pick decisions. Digital enhancements look to become as important as home runs and three-point shots.

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EU Struggles to Unlock Value of a Digital Single Market

Thursday, March 31st, 2016

The European Commission recently passed the halfway mark in a plan to help revitalize the region’s economy by allowing freer digital trade, an initiative the executive body claims could unleash €415 billion ($473 billion) in economic growth through streaming, online shopping, and cloud computing by the end of this decade.

Realizing “a true single market for online content and services,” also known as the Digital Single Market, is part of the Europe 2020 plan. Among other measures, the plan includes steps to harmonize some transaction levies, end roaming charges within the economic union, and simplify rules about the amount of personal information consumers must provide to buy online. More than halfway to the deadline, European cities hold only three spots in a top-20 ranking of the world’s startup ecosystems conducted by data benchmarking company Compass.

“The European Commission’s Digital Single Market strategy is a progressive move that is needed to stimulate technology entrepreneurship within the European Union,” Dr. Ben Sanders, a lecturer in computer networking and information security at the UK’s Anglia Ruskin University, said in an interview with TechPORTFOLIO. “Fragmentation and barriers that have been removed in the physical single market remain in the digital domain and only serve to impede growth in this sector.”

Net Neutrality

Europe isn’t standing still, though. In June 2015, the European Parliament and Justice Council agreed to end roaming charges for all EU mobile subscribers within the trading bloc by June 2017 and to strengthen net neutrality rules protecting the right of every European to access Internet content without discrimination. These measures will be completed by an overhaul of EU telecoms rules this year.

In spite of the policy supports and investments being made by the European Commission, startups in Europe still find themselves at a disadvantage relative to the U.S. In a Harvard Business Review analysis, author Larry Downes looked into what may be holding back European startups. Downes found that the U.S. provided important advantages around issues such as tax policy, legal risk and regulation. In particular, Downes noted the following:

“Another piece of Clinton-era wisdom is a U.S. law known as Section 230. Passed as part of the Communications Act of 1996, Section 230 insulates Internet companies, website hosts, and ISPs from legal liability stemming from content posted by users. It’s hard to imagine the social media revolution — think Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit — taking place without that background rule. Which is why none of those companies came from Europe, which has no such protections.”

The Wall Street Journal looked at another possible reason for why startups in Europe lagged those in the U.S.: the difference in appetite for risk. For example, European companies raised €2.6 billion ($3 billion) from venture capital funds in the first three months of this year. In comparison, U.S.-based companies raised $15.7 billion in the same time period.

“The United States of Europe”

“As of today you have two great centers: China and US. The choice is whether Europe wants to play the role of the third great center or a bunch of smaller ecosystems,” Federico Wengi, Venture Capital Associate at Berlin-based Paua Ventures GmbH, said in an interview. Wengi said he advocates something “even further” than the digital single market, “at best something that resembles the United States of Europe.”

Despite the challenges Europe is experiencing in its digital economy effort, or perhaps because of them, more substantial measures are slated to take effect soon. In January, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) passed a resolution urging the EU to table 16 Digital Single Market initiatives announced by the European Commission EC in May 2015 without delay.

Andrus Ansip, the European Commission’s vice president, who’s steering the Digital Single Market initiative has responded to doubts about its prospects. In a recent interview with re/code, Ansip said: “I would like to say very clearly: This commission does not have any plans to kill innovations or overregulate platforms. To provide more clarity? Yes. But to kill innovation, overregulating platforms? No way.”

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F&B Startup Hungry for Growth, Eyes Big City

Thursday, March 31st, 2016

7shifts, a mobile- and web-based restaurant scheduling company based in Saskatoon, has recently established a two-person sales team in Toronto — the company’s latest move in an effort to compete with industry leader, Austin-based HotSchedules.

In addition to the expansion into Toronto, which has the density of restaurants 7shifts requires for business development, CEO Jordan Boesch is bulking out his company’s Saskatoon development team to speed up integration of 7shifts with partner platforms including TouchBistro, an iPad-based point-of-sale solution for restaurants. Boesch is using the remainder of a round of angel investment 7shifts received in 2014 to add five more developers to the team, bringing the total to 14.

“We’re slowly nipping at [HotSchedules’] heels, and getting some good traction,” Boesch said in an interview. “Stuff we’re missing to become the greatest [restaurant scheduling platform] is in development right now, especially around reporting.”

‘Looking For Apps’

The growth of 7shifts, as it competes in the sector, reflects the economic benefit at the intersection of cloud-based connectivity and demographic change. Millennials are stepping into management positions in the food and beverage sector, and “they’re looking for apps,” Boesch said. Although tiny now, 7shifts might become a significant employer for Saskatoon and Toronto if the company gets out in front of HotSchedules.

Boesch is in talks with potential investors, seeking additional capital to improve the platform. Meanwhile, 7shifts continues to bring on additional customers, about 90% of which are in the U.S. The company recently signed 90 Burger King locations in Alabama, which would bring in revenues from US$2,250 to US$6,300 per month, depending on the level of service selected.

In an increasingly cautious funding atmosphere, where analysts are writing down the values of Netflix and Hootsuite for stressing user growth over revenues, 7shifts’ conservation of seed capital while taking on paying clients will be crucial in helping the company secure additional funding.

“Founders are realizing the need to rethink prior assumptions about prioritizing growth above all else, and are increasingly focusing on burn rate, profitability and the path toward self-sufficiency,” First Round Capital said in a letter to its partners in February.

“We’ve managed to hit good revenue targets, so we’re not burning a ton of cash, which puts us in a good place for raising more capital,” Boesch said.

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