DRUID introduces Oxygen, its latest technology release to advance the conversational automation space by making AI-driven virtual assistants’ deployments dramatically faster and simpler for companies of any size. DRUID Oxygen also introduces a new, more straightforward way for clients to design their intelligent virtual assistant with the help of an intuitive graphic interface. Conversational experiences can be designed visually by dragging and dropping different conversational flows into one diagram, which shows how the conversation with the bot would evolve. At the same time, this makes the chatbot implementation equally fast for a multinational with distributed teams of thousands of people as a small company with a dozen employees.
DRUID intelligent virtual assistants use an advanced NLP engine and proprietary conversational technology to accept and take action on virtually any data or document request within an enterprise’s technology ecosystem. Available in more than 45 languages, on any communication channel, including MS Teams, Slack, WhatsApp Business, FB Messenger, WeChat, and more. DRUID also includes more than 500 predefined conversational templates, targeting specific roles and processes in Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, Telecom, Retail, Energy and Utilities, Logistics, and other industries.
Quantum Corporation announced a new release of ActiveScale object storage software they say reshapes the way organizations store, manage, and extract value from their growing stores of unstructured data. ActiveScale 6.0 software delivers unlimited scalability and consistent performance at any scale without compromising data availability, durability, and security. This software is now available as a subscription on qualified platforms including the new ActiveScale X200 platform, a simplified and converged system platform that delivers high-density, high-capacity storage in a small footprint. ActiveScale 6.0 software is also now available for purchase through Supermicro, giving customers more purchasing options and flexibility to deploy ActiveScale software on the platform of their choice.
With ActiveScale, organizations can expand compute, networking, and storage resources for consistent performance with no performance tuning or rebalancing required. The unique, two-layer software architecture optimizes flash and disk resources, employing real-time heuristics to dynamically place data across all system resources in parallel for maximum efficiency and balanced long-term performance. When scaling out with the new platform, capacity, performance and object count are unlimited, creating a unified system cluster that grows to exabytes of capacity and billions of objects. Current ActiveScale customers benefit with the ability to easily expand their existing ActiveScale clusters with the new platform.
Mirakl, an enterprise marketplace SaaS platform, announced it has joined the Adobe Exchange Partner Program as a Premier Partner. The new partnership builds upon the existing integration between Mirakl and Adobe Commerce, powered by Magento, and equips Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source customers with the technology, expertise, and ecosystem to build and operate enterprise marketplaces. Customers using Mirakl and Adobe Commerce or Magento Open Source together gain access to eCommerce solutions that, when combined, help them serve customers better and adapt their business to lead in the changing eCommerce landscape. Benefits include:
Accelerate time to market: Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source customers can leverage pre-built integrations to launch a Mirakl-powered marketplace in days and quickly onboard marketplace sellers.
Operate your enterprise marketplace at scale: The Mirakl Marketplace Platform enables Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source customers to quickly expand their online product offerings, reach new buyers, and develop customer loyalty through improved availability and broader assortment.
Tap into expertise developed through the implementation and optimization of 300+ enterprise marketplaces: Adobe Commerce and Magento Open Source customers that launch marketplaces powered by Mirakl gain access to Mirakl’s marketplace expertise and ecosystem of partners.
Kentico released Kentico Experience Refresh 2. The new release includes:
Sentiment analysis. A JS or C# integration with Azure Text Sentiment Analysis so marketers can use AI to analyze the sentiment of users’ comments and set up automated responses and notifications depending on the tone of the text. Also, they can measure the sentiment of their own texts directly in the text editor.
Copy-pasting widgets in Page Builder. Until now, if editors wanted to use the same widget on a different page, they had to create the same widget with the same settings in another template. Now, copy-pasting up to ten widgets saves time and prevent mistakes.
Form Builder Section Properties. New feature enables dividing forms into sections and setting different properties for each of them. Developers can define section properties and then, marketers can add titles, styles, descriptions, or even dynamic layouts anywhere in the form.
Creating clean multicultural URLs. Is a new solution for creating URLs of multicultural websites. Culture Alias Support for Dynamic Routing now allows system administrators to define their own culture aliases and use them in URLs for distinguishing different language versions. For example, instead of ‘en-US’, you can use ‘en’ or ‘english’.
This week we have articles by Tom Warren, Eric Seufert, Prukalpa Sankar, and news from Expert.ai, Contentsquare, Language I/O, LivePerson and Adobe, DataStax, and DataRobot.
We had a server glitch with two June issues causing some of you not to receive them. Here are links if you need them: June 2 and June 9.
Opinion / Analysis
Microsoft’s new Fluid office documents
Microsoft’s updated Whiteboard app. Image: Microsoft
The Fluid Framework was demonstrated at Build 2019, and at Build 2020 Fluid was previewed and made open source. Starting this summer we’ll see released versions of some Fluid functionality, including in the updated version of Microsoft Whiteboard shown above.
Fluid is interesting for two reasons. First, it’s a partial realization of the ambitious document computing models both Apple and Microsoft were building in the early 90s. Second, it has the potential for improving productivity in collaborative workplace, remote, and hybrid environments. But it is a big change, and how its various capabilities will actually be adopted and integrated into systems and workflows within Microsoft 365, in conjunction with other workplace tools, and with larger enterprise ecosystems, is TBD. The Verge’s Tom Warren has more on the current announcements.
Apple’s privacy controls are mostly a good thing for consumers and for Apple, less so for publishers, advertisers, and competitors. Unfortunately, Apple’s new Private Relay seems to have the effect of treating the open web more as a direct competitor to be weakened than a sometimes inconvenient public good to be supported. For all its problems an open web is a net good for everyone. It is unlikely that Apple wants anyone to think they have to choose between Apple privacy and the open web. Eric Seufert explains why Apple’s new Private Relay, in its current form, is something to be concerned about.
This is not just for beginners. Prukalpa Sankar has put together a really useful curated list of resources for anyone who needs to keep up with current data stack technologies and strategies.
The modern data stack is messy and complicated, and it’s changing every day. There’s tons of news about it, and it’s hard to separate the hype and noise from reality. Here’s how our team keeps in touch with the latest news and trends.
The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish recommended articles and content technology news weekly. We do not sell or share personal data.
Following an early access program launched in March, expert.ai announced the general availability of its platform for designing, developing, testing, deploying and monitoring scalable natural language solutions. The expert.ai Platform uses an exclusive hybrid AI approach honed from hundreds of real-world implementations. Comprehensive and easy to use, it combines symbolic AI and machine learning techniques to ensure the best possible accuracy for each individual use case with transparency of explainable AI. Easy to deploy and operate, the cloud-based expert.ai Platform helps organizations accelerate, augment and expand expertise for any job or process that involves language. By turning any text-based document into structured data, the platform supports knowledge discovery, process automation and decision making with the flexibility to design language models for any use case.
With the release of the new text variants suggestions feature, Berlin-based AI company Retresco, an expert in Natural Language Generation, provides a software function that uses artificial intelligence to automatically produce phrasing suggestions in the form of complete sentences. This function automates the creative writing process, shortens it, and increases text variance without user intervention, augmenting human creativity with AI.
Retresco’s NLG software (textengine.io) independently suggests high-quality texts based on a sample sentence entered within milliseconds and without complicated setup by the user. The automatically generated texts can be adopted either partially or completely and be revised at any time. Human and machine thus work hand in hand: the software generates data-based text suggestions, while the human user ultimately decides how to use them. The result: significantly greater text variance, more efficient processes in the creation of texts, a better user experience, and support for the most difficult aspect of writing: creativity. This feature is particularly relevant in cases where large volumes of versatile, high-quality text are required at frequent intervals and often under time pressure. In e-commerce, for instance, online stores need numerous product descriptions that, above all, have to be highly varied and SEO-optimized.
To help brands build better digital experiences and establish greater digital trust with customers, Contentsquare, a provider of digital experience analytics, announced a an analytics solution that allows teams to access critical revenue insights without any use of cookies. This announcement comes on the heels of a recent $500M Series E round led by Softbank. Contentsquare has never relied on third-party cookies, and instead aggregates and analyzes trillions of consumer interactions that demonstrate intent, such as mouse movements, touch and mobile interactions, to help brands deliver the best possible experiences to their customers. The solution will now give businesses the option to turn off both first and third-party cookies. This latest innovation extends Contentsquare’s privacy-first approach.
