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Cognos

Cognos – IBM Business Intelligence Performance Management Application.

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Cognos is an IBM business intelligence performance management application that enables technical and non-technical staff in any firm to analyze, extract, and generate interactive dashboards that help the company make important choices. The Cognos tool combines a number of products to allow for contact with a variety of third parties. SAPs, relational databases, and other systems are examples. Cognos is a business intelligence-gathering platform that offers a scalable and self-service analytical solution for company purposes. Because of its highly dynamic nature, it’s an excellent tool for building user-friendly dashboards and reports for any business.

About The Company

Cognos began as a consultancy firm in 1969, founded by Alan Rushforth and Peter Glenister, and eventually expanded into software sales. Cognos was acquired by IBM on January 31, 2008, and the software suite’s history was preserved. It originated as a consultancy firm for the Canadian government, and its first software product, QUIZ, was released in 1979. Cognos switched its concentration from consulting to software sales during the Canadian recession of the 1980s. In 1982, it changed its name to Cognos from Quasar Systems Limited. The word “cognos” is derived from the Latin word “cognosco,” which means “knowledge gained by personal experience.”

It’s a sophisticated business intelligence tool that can be used for data mining, data analysis, event monitoring, and metric visualization. It provides a powerful analytics medium for any firm to foresee market trends and take relevant steps ahead of time, allowing them to stay ahead of the competition. It’s a business intelligence application that lets you create interactive dashboards so you can make better business decisions by anticipating market developments. Almost every organization now employs Cognos for their analytical work, as making vital business decisions at the appropriate time is critical to surviving in today’s competitive market.

Cognos
Image source: newintelligence.ca

Cognos has made working for businesses and organizations a lot easier, and here are some of the ways it does so.

  • Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are used to fuel it, allowing it to generate future predictions and develop intelligent dashboards.
  • It employs pattern detection to uncover hidden patterns in data that would otherwise go unnoticed or unanticipated in regular situations.
  • Cognos’ ability to produce interactive dashboards in a variety of forms to meet corporate demands is one of its primary advantages. It allows stakeholders to study the charts in the way that they choose and aids in decision-making.
  • Natural language processing is a technique for extracting data from unstructured text and making intelligent predictions. Cognos uses AI that is powered by natural language to let people get intelligent answers to their questions.

Growth

With an estimated 8% wallet share in the BI and analytics software industry, it is one of the top three players. IBM Cognos Analytics continues to grow at a rapid pace, setting new standards for its competitors. Fortune 100 corporations prefer IBM Cognos, and it is used by some of the world’s most powerful organizations.

IBM Cognos has approximately 31400 clients in all major US regions, and BARC has dubbed it a market leader in integrated planning and analytics portfolios.

IBM Cognos provides significant capabilities for a variety of BI applications, including web-based OLAP analysis, structured reporting, ad-hoc reporting, and dashboards. IBM Cognos manages everything from data modeling and integration to exploration and visualization as an all-in-one platform. It’s an excellent solution for managing massive data volumes and supporting the needs of multiple users at the same time.

Rob Ashe- Ceo

Bridge Growth Partners’ Rob Ashe is an Executive Partner. He was the company’s previous President and Chief Executive Officer after joining in 1984. He was named President in 2002 and CEO in 2004, and he held both positions until IBM bought the company for $4.9 billion in 2007. After the acquisition, he worked at IBM as the General Manager of Business Analytics until 2012.

Mr. Ashe held many top executive positions at Cognos before becoming President and Chief Executive Officer, including Senior Vice President (“SVP”) of Application Development Tools, SVP of Products, SVP of Worldwide Customer Services, and Chief Corporate Officer, and Chief Financial Officer. He has served on Bridge Growth Partners LLC’s Technology Advisory Board. He has a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ottawa. Rob is a business visionary, a successful corporate leader, a community-minded influencer, and a proponent of higher education’s value and growth.

IBM

IBM Introduces the World’s First 2-nm Node Chip.

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Every decade checks the boundaries of Moore’s Law, and this decade is no exception. The complexities of multi-patterning techniques built on previous technology nodes can now be implemented with the finer resolution that EUV offers, thanks to the advent of Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) technology. This, along with other more technological advancements, could result in a reduction in transistor size, paving the way for the future of semiconductors. To that end, IBM announced today that it has developed the world’s first 2-nanometer node chip.

IBM 2-nm Node Chip

To be clear, though the process node is referred to as ‘2 nanometers,’ nothing about the transistor measurements resembles a conventional expectation of what 2nm would be. Previously, dimension was an analogous metric for 2D feature size on the chip, such as 90nm, 65nm, and 40nm. However, with the introduction of 3D transistor designs such as FinFETs and others, the process node name is now an interpretation of an ‘equivalent 2D transistor’ design.

IBM 2-nm Node Chip
Image Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Some of the features on this chip, such as transistor fin leakage safety layers, are likely to be in the low single digits in real nanometers, however, it’s crucial to remember the disconnect in how to process nodes are actually called. The debate often pivots to transistor density as a more precise measure, which IBM is sharing with us.

Density of the Transistors

According to a recent announcement, IBM’s 2nm development would boost efficiency by 45 percent at the same capacity, or 75 percent energy at the same performance, as compared to current 7nm processors. IBM is quick to point out that it was the first academic organization to demonstrate 7nm in 2015 and 5nm in 2017, the latter of which upgraded from FinFETs to nanosheet technologies that allow for greater customization of individual transistors voltage characteristics.

According to IBM, the device will fit ’50 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail.’ We contacted IBM to get feedback on the scale of a fingernail since we were coming up with numbers ranging from 50 square millimeters to 250 square millimeters internally. According to IBM’s press ties, a fingernail, in this case, is 150 square millimeters. This equates to 333 million transistors per square millimeter (MTr/mm2) for IBM.

Different foundries have different official names and densities. It’s worth noting that these densities are often classified as peak densities, for transistor libraries where die area is the primary concern rather than frequency scaling – the fastest sections of a processor are often half as small as these numbers due to power and thermal considerations.

GAA Transistors

Although IBM has not expressly announced the transition to Gate-All-Around / nanosheet transistors, photographs reveal that this new 2nm processor is using a three-stack GAA architecture. GAA will be introduced by Samsung at 3nm, while TSMC will wait until 2nm. Intel, on the other hand, we believe would implement some kind of GAA on its 5nm technology.

IBM’s 3-stack GAA has a cell height of 75 nm, a cell width of 40 nm, and discrete nanosheets that are 5 nm tall and 5 nm apart. The poly pitch of the gate is 44nm, and the gate length is 12nm.

According to IBM, its design is the first to use bottom dielectric isolation channels, allowing for the 12 nm gate length, and its inner spacers are a second-generation dry process design that aids in nanosheet production. This is supplemented by the first use of EUV patterning on the FEOL sections of the process, allowing EUV at all stages of design for essential layers.

Users may be perplexed as to why we are hearing that IBM is the first to develop a 2nm chip. IBM is one of the world’s leading research centers on potential semiconductor technologies, and while not having a foundry offering of their own, IBM produces IP for their manufacturing facilities in conjunction with others.

Back in 2014, IBM sold its manufacturing to GlobalFoundries with a 10-year collaboration commitment. IBM also deals with Samsung and recently announced a partnership with Intel. No doubt, the latter two would collaborate with IBM on some level to ensure the feasibility of this new invention in their own supply chain.

The chip was developed and manufactured at IBM’s Albany testing plant, which has a 100,000-square-foot clean space. The aim of this facility is to leverage IBM’s extensive patent and licensing portfolio for partner partnerships.

5g and ai

IBM And Red Hat to Launch New Services Unleashing the Power of Ai and 5g

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The evolution of computer programming has promised a better world for us with cutting edge technology. Today, the applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence are in great demand. They have opened a huge opportunity for every aspect of our world to grow. Not only they are useful to computer scientists but they can also help your business grow by understanding growth patterns.

With 5G network marching its way to the 21st century, the tech giants are looking for great inventions. Currently, 5G edge and AI are the two promising tools that can make a significant contribution to enterprise computing. So, the big companies are looking out for ways to capitalize on this by launching new products. Because, at the end of the day, driving customers towards the latest invention is the goal.

IBM’s collaboration with Red Hat

Today, at the Think Digital Conference, IBM and Red Hat have announced new services that will be jointly launched. The two companies backed by enormous investors will help enterprises step into the 5G era with edge computing. IBM has always focused on the working of enterprises and how to make it better with multi-cloud systems. On the other hand, Red Hat’s potential goes deep down in the open-source technology.

Together, IBM is planning to launch and make more efficient hybrid cloud technologies ditching the idea of the homogenous cloud. Many software solution companies provide homogenous cloud as a solution, but IBM wants to develop a much-differentiated service. Because the company thinks the working system of an enterprise should have hybrid cloud weaving all the sectors together.

A huge scope of development

With the advent of 5G telecommunication networks, there will be an increase in the speed of connectivity, reduction of latency, minimization of transmission delays, etc. So, IBM will be able to unlock its potential in many ways including emergency response, robotic surgery, road safety, etc. And, this will take place only because there will be no need to send the data to a centralized cloud.

What do the clients want?

James Whitehurst, President of IBM has explained to the media why their clients are better off without a homogenous cloud system. He has also said why the hybrid cloud is better than the homogenous cloud. Whitehurst sets a basic example of how one runs an entire factory. There is generally a mainframe that runs a set of transactional workloads. Now, every enterprise has a software sector, hardware sector, finance, etc.

So, there will be a certain set of applications that need to be run in a distributed environment. For doing so, data from one sector should be accessed by every other sector. For this purpose, a centralized cloud was used with showed latency. And, this problem can only be overcome by a hybrid cloud system. There will be no need to fit the workloads anymore in the public cloud.

Clients are looking for a more efficient and innovative user experience that is continuously available. With IBM’s multi-cloud hybrid offerings blended with Red Hat OpenShift, IBM will master edge computing and 5G network.

IBM’s new products

IBM is planning to launch new products to automate business planning, budgeting, and forecasting. With the implementation of AI, IBM is planning to build applications that will automatically run some routine tasks in an enterprise. It might minimize human labor as well. The company is also planning to develop tools for call-center automation. Precisely, IBM will launch IBM Edge Application Manager. It will be able to manage 10,000 edge nodes simultaneously. It will require only one administrator for this job.

IBM Telco Network Cloud Manager will be also released which runs on Red Hat OpenShift. Other AI-based applications include IBM Visual Insights, IBM Production Optimization, IBM Connected Manufacturing, IBM Asset Optimization, and many more. Apart from all these products, IBM will also be launching IBM Edge System. Through this platform, a set of ISVs and GSIs will help and support enterprises to understand and grab opportunities for edge computing.

Another important product of IBM in the series is IBM Telco Network Cloud Ecosystem. This will bring together a group of partners that will help the providers make use of their cloud system. These sets of partners include Cisco, Dell Technologies, Juniper Technologies, Intel, NVIDIA, Samsung, F5 Networks, etc.

IBM

IBM AND THE WEATHER CHANNEL ARE MAKING MORE CITIZENS AWARE OF COVID-19

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Mayhem has come down to the entire world. And, every nation is currently fighting off the same enemy, COVID-19. It was only yesterday that the total cases in India surpassed 600. The rise of panic is everywhere but it is a blessing than many patients are recovering from near death. The world has come together to find a cure for this infectious virus at the earliest. In the meantime, as a responsible citizen, we can only take precautions and stay home. But, it is also important to keep track of the number of cases globally. So, we have a right to know updated facts about this virus, for example, where it is spreading more, and the number of reported active cases. To help stay more informed about the statistics, IBM and The Weather Channel has launched new tools.

The New Tool and its use

It has become impossible for us to take a step out of your house. The Internet feels like a blessing in these days of quarantine mostly to keep ourselves updated. Given that we all use a smartphone, IBM has launched new tools that will help us keep a record of reported COVID-19 cases in our area. The mobile application is free and anyone from anywhere can access it.

The users can see the information from The Weather Channel app (an IBM business). The company has designed this new tool in a way that will help the users get all the information from trusted sources. The application also has a dashboard where the statistics will be displayed. Previously, many sites provided with updated information about COVID-19 like active cases, death cases, and total cases. But, it is easier to gain this information from a mobile app.

Features of the App                                            

The data we received so far was from the World Health Organization (WHO), Johns Hopkins University, and other official sources. This Weather Channel app will merge all these information. And, apart from these reports, it will show reported cases at both state and national levels. Combining all these data, the app will show it on an “incident map”.

In this incident map, reported cases will be color-coded to show different areas, states and at the national level as well. Not only the maps will be generated but also graphs will be provided the state-wise reported cases. This app will also provide the percentage increase of COVID-19 cases weekly.

Trend visualization and interactive mapping are the two best features of this app. The app will also provide news and videos related to this pandemic. This will be thoroughly looked into by The Weather Channel Editorial team. As one should be reported about the cases, the citizens of the U.S. will also be able to locate the nearest healthcare clinics and testing centers. IBM is trying its best to include as much informative and important data as possible.

Reaching out to more people

IBM has also announced that this same data will be used by officials, researchers, data scientists, media, and medical professionals. So, the citizens should not worry about the clarity and preciseness of the data. It is their responsibility to let people aware of the right details. The app will also provide fact-checking resources and a proper guideline in this period of crisis. It will consist of detailed guidelines about the preventive measures that should be taken by normal people. And, it is also for the people who have tested positive for COVID-19. Though the patients will be immediately taken under medical supervision, prevention is better than cure.

Spreading the right message

This new tool will help the U.S citizens both prevent and remain informed about COVID-19. The app will not only show statistics of the U.S but also the cases of global COVID-19. There are around 45 million active users of The Weather Channel App. So, people can ignore the use but they will surely stay tuned with an application, a very common feature of a smartphone. The company also said that apart from all the information it provides, the message of social distancing is the top priority. Because that is the most important and the only way to prevent COVID-19.

citrix

Citrix Systems: Architectural Designer And Virtualization Pioneer Ed Lacobucci’s Dream Company

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A multinational software company well-known as Citrix Systems enabled the best service in cloud computing, networking, and SaaS. Also, it offers services like desktop virtualization, networking, and many more. Ed Lacobucci is known as the virtualization pioneer set up the firm back in 1989. Today, 40000+ clients all over the world use Citrix System’s solutions. However, almost 99 percent of clients of the fortune 100, and 98 percent of fortune 500. Let’s see how the company acquired huge success in the IT world.

The Backstory

In 1989, Ed lacobucci a former developer at IBM set up Critix with USD 3 Million investment. Previously, the company headquartered in Texas. However, later on, he shifted the company to Coral Springs in Florida. Only five IBM teammates of Ed joined the company initially. As a matter of fact, earlier it recognized as Citrus. But it renamed Citrix after another firm with the same name as Citrus claimed trademark rights. In the starting days of the company, Roger Roberts served as CEO. After that, Ed Iacobucci took the position and served until he diminished.

Citrix Boomed as an Industrial leader

Basically, the company started production with a remote access product for Microsoft OS. Citrix Multiuser an OS/2 extension was its the first product. Since then Microsoft had a partnership with Citrix System. Soon, the company started building purpose-built devices and remarked the beginning as an industrial leader in thin client technology.

Thereafter, the firm acquired Sequoia Corporation as well as ExpertCity in 2001 and 2003 respectively. In fact, in a short period, it acquired several other companies. These acquisitions benefit the firm to expand the services further. Growth continues further and the result into a multi-user operating system launch called WinFrame. It is based on Microsoft’s Windows NT and it was the first thin client for Windows. 

Also read: Story of Lee Byung-Chul- Founder of Samsung

Ed Iacobucci- Citrix’s Founder

He was born in Argentina on 26 September 1953. However, Ed went to Georgia Tech to study systems engineering. In 1979, he started his career at IBM. At the start, he worked in architecture and design-related posts where most of the work is involved with PC OS/2. In short duration, Ed became CTO of a networking job there. Very few know that Ed shares a great contribution to IBM’s development systems’ Network Architecture. Also, he was highly involved in the NetView net management technology. 

The journey to start Citrix

Ed worked with IBM for a long time. After serving almost ten years at the same firm, he also got a job offer from Microsoft. Yes, in 1989, Ed had the chance to become a chief technical officer at Microsoft’s networking group. But as per his belief that every person has own belief about the future, Ed also had some different ideas. So, he left the job as well as refused a job proposal and plunged into entrepreneurship to start Citrix.  

Initially, it was a little bit difficult to start the actual working of the company. It took almost two years two create its first product. After that, under Ed Lacobucci’s guidance, the company never looked back. In 1997, Microsoft-Citrix signed a joint agreement related to multi-user capabilities in Microsoft’s Windows NT server. 

Awards and Recognition

He received the Ernst & Young “International Entrepreneur of the Year” award in 1998. Also, Ed served as a technology judge at the state and national level for the Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year Awards”.

Later Life

Ed Iacobucci had a great contribution to building the strong foundation of Citrix. Apart from that, he assisted in the DayJet Corporation’s establishment in 2002. DayJet was known for on-demand optimization technology to make jet travel affordable and accessible. Unfortunately, in 2008, the company had folded due to some reasons. Thereafter, Ed also helped in the VirtualWorks foundation in 2009. But due to the degrading health situation, he had to resign his position at VirtualWorks.

Iacobucci died on 21 June 2013 due to cancer at his home in Florida.

SAP SE

SAP SE – Inspiring Journey of the Company That Emerged Out Of Rejection

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It’s a tough task to manage the financials, logistics, HR and other business areas without the help of technological tools, especially for bigger companies. Such tools bring accuracy as well as transparency in the organization. The combination of various business processes is achieved through it. One of such Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is SAP SE.

SAP SE journey – a very basic version of the most celebrated software as per fortune 500 companies

In 1971, Xerox left the hardware manufacturing sector and asked IBM to shift its business systems to IBM technologies. That time five IBM engineers from the AI department were working on enterprise-wide systems based on the software to which IBM has given rights to, Scientific data systems (SDS) /SAPE software. They were told that the project they are working on is not of use. That time, they decided to leave IBM and start their own company.

So, in 1972, those 5 engineers – Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, Hans-Werner Hector, Klaus Tschira, and Claus Wellenreuther founded SAP SE. currently, their headquarter is located in Walldorf, Germany and regional offices all over the world in 170 plus countries with more than 425000 customers.

Further Exploration of SAP SE

In the beginning, they developed programs for payroll and office for their first client Imperial chemical industries. Their software was real-time, unlike IBM.

In 1973, they moved to a commercial product which was their first financial accounting system. (SAP R/1) It has centralized data storage and improved data maintenance. In 1979, SAP involved other areas like material management & production planning. (SAP R/2). This SAP R/2 version did not improve until 1990.  SAP R/3 was released in 1992 and was developed with new features in 1995.

By this time, it already achieved the mainframe computing trend and the concept of business process integration came into the picture. To accommodate all these changes, SAP R/3 was replaced with SAP ERP central component in 2004. The latest version is of 2016, SAP ERP 6.0. Till 2016, SAP was the world’s third-largest software and programming company. As per recent reports, it is on number one. Most of the fortune 500 companies use this software.

Five Co-founders, One Dream

The five founders have different stories before they were in IBM and have different journeys with SAP. Let’s have a short introduction to the life of masterminds behind SAP SE.

Dietmar Hopp

Starting with Dietmar Hopp, who grew up in Hoffenheim. He was a telecommunications engineering student and after that, he joined as a consultant at IBM. Then SAP was founded, and he was the CEO of SAP SE from 1988 until 1998, chairman of its supervisory board from 1998 until 2003 and member of the board from 2003 until 2005. When he left the board, he kept 10% of the company’s shares.

Hasso Plattner

Plattner has received many awards and recognitions for his commitment to economics and science ranging from Leadership Award for Global Integration to the “technology guru”. He was also estimated to be worth US$10.8 billion by Forbes in 2016.

Klaus Tschira

He got his Diploma in physics and worked at IBM before he founded this company, for which he was a board member From 1998 to 2007. He passed away on 31 March 2015 in Heidelberg. As well, he was a recipient of many honors in his lifetime including several doctorates.

Claus Wellenreuther

Wellenreuther studied business administration at the University of Manheim in operational research. He left the business in 1980 due to his health condition and got compensation of 1 million DM.

Hector

One of the founders, Hector, A trained mathematician successfully built up the North American market for SAP. Later, he was separated from the company in 1997 after a falling out with his partners.

CEO till 2019 – William R. “Bill” McDermott

Formerly William R. “Bill” McDermott was the CEO of SAP who is currently CEO of ServiceNow.  While he was the co-CEO and CEO, SAP’s market value increased from $39 billion to $156 billion. McDermott went to North-western University’s Kellogg School of Management where he earned his MBA. He joined SAP in 2002 as CEO and was designated to the SAP Executive Board in 2008. He did various roles in SAP.  On October 10, 2019, McDermott decided to leave SAP SE. In 2016, McDermott was named “Manager of the Year” by the German Business Daily. He also received the award as TOP CEO by Glassdoor.

Current Co-CEOs – Christian Klein & Jennifer Morgan

Presently, the duo Klein-Morgan handling the CEO position of the firm. Starting from Jennifer Morgan, she joined this company back in 2004. After serving for a long time, in 2017, she appointed in SAP’s Executive Board. However, she became the first female in America that first-ever appointed to the Executive Board. While Klein, the Co-CEO joined the company in 1999 as an intern. Thereafter serving at several positions he named as a CEO along with Jennifer.