Today we’re thrilled to announce that Y Combinator and SignalFire-backed OneGraph is joining Netlify. We launched Netlify in 2015 to help developers move from legacy monolithic web architecture to Jamstack, where the web presentation layer is decoupled from backend logic. OneGraph will drive innovation in the Netlify platform to make it even easier to build and manage integrations across third-party services as well as access to your own internal services and data. OneGraph uses GraphQL as a modern standard for connecting these services, using great tooling that’s fast, extensible, and reliable. We’re excited for a future where developers have a unified way to access the APIs and services they choose on Netlify. OneGraph’s co-founders Sean Grove and Daniel Woefel will be leading API ecosystem strategy here at Netlify and an integral part of the engineering team.
While fully integrating OneGraph into Netlify will take some time, we’re excited to announce the first step in making multi-app service integrations easier – officially launching API Authentication, through Netlify Labs. With one-click in the Netlify UI, you can now generate and manage authentication tokens for a catalog of third-party APIs. The feature is available to all Netlify users from the Netlify Labs dashboard.
This week we have articles from Christine Vallaure and Simon Yuen. News comes from The Enterprise Knowledge Graph Foundation (EKGF), BA Insight, MediaValet and FFW, Kyndryl and Microsoft, and Lucid.
Opinion / Analysis
An era of digital humans
The process to create a digital human is extremely labor-intensive and manual. NVIDIA is researching tools and developing ways to accelerate and simplify digital human creation — and we believe AI and simulation is the key to doing this.
Simon Yuen leads NVIDIA’s Digital Human efforts and explains what they are doing to make digital humans more realistic and useful for a wide range of applications. There are also a couple of fascinating short videos.
Why designers should move from px to rem — and how to do that in Figma
If you are anything like me, you happily used Pixel (px) in Sketch and Figma during the past years without thinking much about it. It is the unit they gave me. Surely it is correct, and if not, the development team can fix that, no? Plus, there are a lot of people saying my design should be pixel perfect, right?
Christine Vallaure points out that designing only with pixels conflicts with accessibility requirements, and then provides a deep dive on why, and what can be done about it. She is writing for other designers, and developers, but the article will be illuminating for anyone interested in web design and/or accessibility.
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.
Snowflake announced at its Snowday event that data scientists, data engineers, and application developers can now use Python, in addition to Java and Scala, natively within Snowflake as part of Snowpark, Snowflake’s developer framework. With Snowpark for Python, developers will be able to collaborate on data in their preferred language. At the same time, they can leverage the security, governance, and elastic performance of Snowflake’s platform to build scalable, optimized pipelines, applications, and machine learning workflows. Snowpark for Python is currently in private preview. As a result of the recently announced partnership with Anaconda, Snowflake users can now access the popular ecosystem of Python open source libraries, without the need for manual installs and package dependency management. Additional Snowflake and Snowpark capabilities include:
Datadobi Software, provider of unstructured data management software, announced enhancements to its vendor-neutral unstructured data mobility engine with the introduction of DobiMigrate’s API. Version 5.13 will allow organizations to programmatically configure unstructured data migrations using the API.
Using the DobiMigrate API, customers and partners can now extend existing automated storage provisioning workflows with the necessary data migration steps. Organizations can first use the storage system APIs to provision a new group of on-premises or cloud storage and then use the DobiMigrate API to set up the NAS or object migration. Following the cutover to the new storage, the administrator can then again use storage systems APIs to deprovision the original storage.
Customers can also use the DobiMigrate API in conjunction with the Datadobi file system assessment service. The file system assessment service provides customers with insights into the state of the unstructured data estate. Characteristics of file systems from a global level through individual storage systems and sub-file servers/virtual file servers is provided in a detailed report, allowing customers to make informed decisions on how to organize and move their data. The DobiMigrate API can then be used to establish the required migrations of individual datasets between systems.
Enterprise Knowledge Graph Foundation released Version 1.0 of the Enterprise Knowledge Graph Maturity Model (EKG/MM), designed to promote best practices across the knowledge graph community. Version 1.0 was created in an ongoing collaboration between experts and practitioners, and the model can be accessed or downloaded from the EKGF Website. Founding organizational members include agnos.ai, eccenca, data.world, Global IDs, Cambridge Semantics, Ontotext, Stardog, and Wizdom.
EKG/MM is designed to be the industry-standard definition and guide for the capabilities required for an enterprise knowledge graph. Intended to harmonize data from disparate sources across organizations, it can be used by business leaders, project managers, trainers, HR, legal, compliance, and finance departments, data managers, technologists, and more. It establishes standard criteria for measuring progress and sets out the practical questions that all involved stakeholders ask to ensure trust, confidence, and flexibility of data.
EKG/MM covers four essential capability areas, called “pillars,” which are grouped by the main constituencies in an enterprise: Business, Organization, Data, and Technology, each of which includes standard evaluation criteria for measuring the maturity of the design, implementation, and maintenance of an EKG.
Together the companies will bring to market solutions built on the Microsoft Cloud that will accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, modernize applications and processes, support mission-critical workloads, and further enable modern work experiences for customers. The long-term partnership will open additional markets and new customers to Kyndryl across all industries and illustrates the speed and commitment the company is placing on forging strong relationships with enterprise technology innovators. Microsoft becomes Kyndryl’s only Premier Global Alliance Partner, increasing Microsoft’s access to the $500 billion managed services market where Kyndryl leads.
The companies will jointly bring customer solutions to market in the areas of data modernization and governance, AI-driven innovations for industries, cyber security and resiliency, and transformation of mission-critical workloads to the cloud. Kyndryl will lead with advisory, implementation and managed services for complex hybrid IT environments.
In addition, central to the partnership will be a focus on creating new solutions for customers and programs to advance skills. A co-innovation lab will be established to rapidly develop and bring to market new customer capabilities built on Microsoft Cloud. To strengthen and expand technical expertise, Microsoft will establish the “Kyndryl University for Microsoft” to rapidly scale skills for Kyndryl professionals.
BA Insight announced availability of two Amazon Web Services Marketplace offerings: BA Insight for Amazon OpenSearch Service and BA Insight for Amazon Kendra. These offerings provide customers the ability to easily subscribe to the BA Insight technology stack directly through their existing AWS accounts, taking advantage of all the capabilities provided via a BA Insight cloud service and integrated into Amazon OpenSearch Service and Amazon Kendra. BA Insight transforms the outcome of digital interactions through advanced, web-like search experiences that are relevant, personalized, and actionable. Our search software works within websites, customer portals, and enterprises; turning searches into actionable insights, regardless of where your content or users are.
BA Insight for OpenSearch Service integrates with the Amazon Web Services powered fully managed service that makes it easy for you to deploy, secure, and run OpenSearch cost effectively at scale.
BA Insight for Amazon Kendra integrates the Kendra intelligent search service, powered by machine learning, to ensure users get the right answers to their questions, when they need them, wherever they are.
This week we have articles from Scott Brinker, and Benedict Evans. News comes from Contentful and Vaimo, Liferay, Bridgeline and Luminos, and Microsoft.
Opinion / Analysis
Commerce is the latest (renewed) frontier in martech
Scott Brinker has a short post about how important digital commerce has become in martech stack near-term budget planning. As the chart above shows, digital commerce tools are at the top of the list at 43%. “The second most anticipated addition by 34% of respondents? Digital experience platforms (DXP), which, frankly, are often the engines through which commerce-related content and experiences are deployed.”. Note the chart also shows content management systems (CMS), largely the same vendors as DXPs, as the fourth choice at 25%. Content and digital commerce have a long history predating the dot-com crash, but the difficulty of integrating the necessary systems and organizations has held back progress. Scott also shares a Gartner chart showing a big jump coming in B2B procurement through websites. Looks like content and commerce have a big future in martech land.
The most popular link from last week’s issue was Ethan Zuckerman’s article on Facebook’s metamove, largely about the technical challenges of metaverses. Benedict Evans is no less skeptical, but because of the history of such large company reinventions.
… it seems to me that the real rebrand this week wasn’t Facebook to Meta but VR to Metaverse. VR is an old and pretty stale term – a dad brand – and Facebook wants to make VR into much more than just a headset and some games. It’s trying to make that happen through sheer weight of investment, effort and organisational mass – Moore’s law plus money and momentum will pull this into existence out of thin air (it hopes). Rebranding, reconceptualising, and relaunching might be part of that. The trouble is…
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.
