Category: MENA

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Leading in Cloud Native, Huawei Cloud Unleashes Digital with 10 New Services

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 13, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — HUAWEI CONNECT 2022, themed “Unleash Digital”, kicks off in Dubai today. Industry leaders, experts, partners, and guests from the Middle East and Africa gather to share their thoughts on technological innovation, ecosystem collaboration, and digital transformation. Ken Hu, Rotating Chairman of Huawei, delivered a keynote speech under the conference theme and called for enterprises to “embrace cloud for leapfrog development” for digital transformation. Joy Huang, President of Huawei Cloud Computing Strategy & Industry Development, delivered a speech “Unleash Digital with Everything as a Service”.

oy Huang, President of Strategy & Industry Development, Huawei Cloud

Mr. Huang said that greener infrastructure, continuous innovation, and shared experience are the paths to digital transformation.

Huawei Cloud marks its presence with innovations in native technologies. At this event, three cloud native products are released globally: CCE Turbo for container engine and UCS for ubiquitous cloud native. CCE Turbo accelerates computing, networking, and scheduling to achieve ultimate scalability. For example, it helps Sina Weibo easily cope with traffic bursts by scaling out 3,000 pods in just one minute. UCS enables users to manage cloud native applications across clouds and regions with one consistent experience. GuassDB has been re-architected to become serverless, and now you can scale your GaussDB automatically in seconds. It’s part of our Backend as a Service plan.

Many enterprise applications have to process hybrid requests. For example, a financial application may need to process loans and analyze transaction data as well.

To unleash the real-world potential of AI, Huawei Cloud focuses on three core AI technologies: foundation models, solvers, and knowledge computing. Huawei Cloud worked with partners to develop the Pangu NLP model for the Arabic language that supports hundreds of billions of parameters. The semantic understanding accuracy reached 95%. The OptVerse AI Solver combines operations research and AI, improving the solution speed by 100 times and modeling efficiency by 30 times. The upgraded knowledge computing provides a faster path to combine industry knowledge with AI, and integrates knowledge acquisition, modeling, management, and application all in one place, greatly improving the efficiency of using AI.

Application modernization is a must for digitalization. To ease this process, Huawei Cloud launches four pipelines for software development, data governance, AI development, and digital content production. Huawei Cloud also dives deep into digital technologies and distills them into aPaaS services to customers. At this event, two new core aPaaS services are released: KooMessage and KooSearch.

As a constant innovator, Huawei Cloud hopes to support customer growth with the cutting-edge technologies.

Unleash Digital Productivity and Embrace Cloud

At the Huawei Cloud TechWave Summit held on the same day, Jacqueline Shi, President of Marketing and Sales Service of Huawei Cloud, delivered an opening speech. She pointed out that the key to unleashing digital is to embrace the cloud, and cloud native is the way to realize digital transformation.

Jacqueline Shi, President of Global Marketing and Sales Service, Huawei Cloud

Following the “Everything as a Service” strategy, Huawei Cloud builds full-stack cloud native services covering Infrastructure as a Service, Technology as a Service, and Expertise as a Service. Huawei Cloud shares localization experience gained from global services, as well as the insights into businesses and industries in major regions, all of which constitute advanced technologies and solutions to serve more customers in a wider range of industries. “The key to making the most of cloud is to think cloud native, act cloud native. Cloud native has the path to agile and modern applications.” said Jacqueline. To provide better local support, Huawei Cloud has built 70 AZs in 27 Regions around the world and rolled out 92 cloud services in the Middle East. Huawei Cloud is launching new Regions in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, another effort of Huawei Cloud to enlarge its global network and provide customers in the Middle East and Africa with more secure, stable, and low-latency networks.

Cloud Native 2.0 Architecture White Paper: https://www.huaweicloud.com/intl/en-us/about/cloudnative2_0/whitepaper.html

Drive Productivity with Digital Technologies

Human society is becoming digital and intelligent, presenting both challenges and opportunities. Frank Dai, President of Huawei Cloud Middle East, delivered a keynote speech “Inspire Innovation with Everything as a Service”, introducing Huawei Cloud’s approach to help customers in the Middle East make the most of cloud, improve digital resilience, and go further in digital transformation.

Frank Dai, President of Huawei Cloud Middle East

Cloud features efficiency, convenience, and scalability, much beneficial to digital transformation for enterprises. Frank said that countries in the Middle East have realized the value of cloud to digital economy. Building a digital infrastructure is essentially to make the most of cloud. Cloud once meant elastic computing resources to enterprises, who used IaaS services mostly. Now, cloud capabilities branch out to emerging fields such as AI, application development, and big data, with integrated development tools and consulting services accessible whenever needed. Huawei has shifted from helping you “migrate to a good cloud” to “make the most of cloud”.

The local ecosystem is an indispensable force to digital transformation. According to Mr. Dai, in the Middle East, Huawei Cloud will work with stakeholders to develop the local digital ecosystem in three aspects, including building industry-specific digital capabilities, cultivating digital talent, and providing support for SMEs.

Dr. Tian Qi, academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, IEEE Fellow, and chief AI scientist of Huawei Cloud, introduced Huawei Cloud’s innovations in Enterprise Intelligence (EI) services and described the value and potential of AI for scientific research, production, and daily life. Dr. Tian said, “AI for Science brings not only tech breakthroughs, but a total changeover in scientific research methods. It will help scientists overcome bottlenecks and leapfrog the technical gap.”

Dr. Tian Qi, Chief AI Scientist of Huawei Cloud

Full-Stack Architecture Innovation and Ubiquitous Cloud Native

Cloud native is becoming the preferred choice for enterprises to move to the cloud, previously by Internet companies and now enterprises in traditional industries. Cloud native is poised for full-fledged development.

William Dong, President of Huawei Cloud Marketing, pointed out that in the future, applications, data, AI models, and digital content will become the core assets of a digital and intelligent enterprise. Enterprises will develop, run, and manage these resources in a converged pipeline, and cloud native will be the technology to help businesses navigate uncertainty.

Based on its own technical innovations and practices, Huawei Cloud believes that enterprises are not just migrating to the cloud, but also building on the cloud. Therefore, cloud native covers not only microservices, Kubernetes, and containers, but also big data, AI, and media services. This is called Cloud Native 2.0. Huawei Cloud provides a full-stack cloud native solution with leading capabilities.William Dong, President of Huawei Cloud Marketing

Mr. Dong said that Huawei Cloud will dive deeper into cloud native and stay open to enrich its cloud native service portfolio. Huawei Cloud not only provides high-performance, stable, and reliable cloud native infrastructure, but also provides easy-to-use tools and pipelines easily accessible for application development, AI, big data, and digital content production during digital transformation. Huawei Cloud plays an active role in open source for cloud native development. In 2015, Huawei became the only CNCF founding member from Asia. Huawei keeps contributing to the community, ranking No. 1 in Asia and No. 6 in the world by committed code.

To extend cloud native to wherever customers run their services, Huawei Cloud, with its global layout and software-hardware synergy, overcomes geographical restrictions, abstracts away the differences of underlying IT resources, and eases global service deployment and management for customers. Cloud native is the path Huawei Cloud takes to realize Everything as a Service.

At the event, Huawei Cloud released the Cloud Native 2.0 Architecture White Paper, aiming to enable local customers with full-stack cloud native capabilities to take a quantum leap to the future.

By Local, For Local

In 2020, Huawei Cloud was launched in the Middle East. In 2021, Huawei Cloud launched a Region in Abu Dhabi. Huawei Cloud can now provide local support to quickly respond to customer needs. Currently, more than 50 governments and enterprises in the region are using Huawei Cloud services.

Huawei Cloud aims to build the cloud foundation for an intelligent world with ubiquitous cloud and pervasive intelligence. Empowering customers, partners, and developers with cloud native, Huawei Cloud stands ready to drive digital transformation for the local economy.

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McKinsey & Company Uses AI-Powered Intelligence to Deliver Customer-Centric Experiences with CustomerOne

CustomerOne extends the power of AI-powered decision-making, using its proven, comprehensive approach to help organizations drive up to 20% revenue growth

NEW YORK and LONDON, Oct. 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, marketing and sales teams have to connect with their consumers and buyers in entirely new ways. But disjointed data, complex tech stacks, and siloed work practices can derail those efforts.

That’s why McKinsey & Company is extending the power of CustomerOne’s proven, comprehensive approach. By driving personalization at scale, sales growth, and enabling data-driven pricing, organizations in any industry can achieve 10-20% revenue growth.

Powered by QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, CustomerOne uses a Hybrid intelligence approach, combining human understanding with machine and AI intelligence, to reveal customer insights, identify opportunities for growth, and deliver lasting impact at speed. It also delivers agile operating models and builds capabilities to transform critical insights into customer action.

Surface Actionable Insights with End-to-End Growth Transformations
Customer preferences, demands, and dynamics are rapidly shifting. For organizations with siloed functions and complex technology stacks, it is challenging to stay in lock step with their customers. The data boom, as well as the proliferation and convergence of sales channels, makes this challenge even harder. To capture the right moments across every channel, identify new growth horizons, and capture long-term value, these organizations need an end-to-end approach that aligns technology with deep expertise.

CustomerOne seamlessly integrates strategy, technology, AI-powered growth capabilities, and implementation accelerators. It drives top-line growth, creates long-term customer value, and helps marketing and sales teams achieve higher returns by optimizing efficiency and effectiveness across the entire sales funnel.

“We have seen a lot of seismic shifts in the way consumers and buyers are changing,” said Kelsey Robinson, Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company. “They have tremendous power. The ability for marketing and sales teams to succeed in this new world hinges on what they do with the incredible amounts of consumer-permissioned data to get closer to the customer, personalize experiences, and create ‘ignite’ moments.”

CustomerOne’s expanded set of domain capabilities includes: 

  • Personalization and Customer Value Management: Drives personalization at scale by integrating unified customer data, machine learning algorithms, and analytics, so marketers can derive the right insights and act on them. Outperforming companies achieve 40% more of their revenue from personalization than their peers.
  • Sales Growth: AI-powered capabilities enable sales teams to win new customers, increase customer retention, and drive loyalty. Companies that do this well drive 10-20% revenue growth.
  • B2B Pricing: Helps organizations analyze complex market dynamics, including customer willingness to pay, customer and product segmentation, and contract performance. CustomerOne uses the outputs to dynamically manage pricing and performance, and achieve above-market improvements. Companies that use data-driven pricing achieve 2-7% return on sales by expanding their margins.

“Successful change extends across the commercial organization. From the strategic decision on where and how to grow, to the insights that inform each customer interaction, most organizations struggle when it comes to putting the right talent, expertise, capabilities, and technology into one comprehensive approach to drive change. The extension of CustomerOne brings our capabilities together as one to drive faster end-to-end transformations for our clients across industries,” said Stuart Schardin, Partner at McKinsey & Company.

“Even in the best of times, growth is not easy. In fact, 25% of companies don’t grow at all,” said Jeff Hart, Partner, McKinsey & Company. “At the core of what we do is to help our clients across industries meet this moment with a proven, technology-enabled approach that makes it easier to consume insights and recommendations, and quickly unlock new growth opportunities. For example, a logistics company using this approach was able to expand its margins by 44%, while a chemical company achieved 2% return on sales in a matter of six weeks.”

To learn more about CustomerOne, click here.

About McKinsey Growth, Marketing & Sales
The mission of the McKinsey Growth, Marketing & Sales Practice is to help leaders of both consumer and business-to-business clients create Growth That Matters through meaningful transformations and marketing-driven profit. The practice helps our clients set their strategic direction, develop their marketing and sales capabilities, and connect their organization to realize the full potential of today’s omnichannel opportunities. Clients benefit from McKinsey’s experience in core areas of marketing, B2B and B2C pricing, customer experience, and sales and channel management.

For further information please contact:

US: Digennaro Communications
MaryLiz Ghanem – EL
McKinsey-DiGennaro@digennaro-usa.com
917-518-8422

UK: 3THINKRS
Ruth Jones / Becca Ross
mckinsey@3thinkrs.com
+44 208 0872843

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“World Reading Beijing”- Beijing Kid Literature Salon was successfully held in Tunis

TUNIS,Tunisia, Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — On September 29, 2022, the “World Reading Beijing” (Tunisia) – Beijing Kid Literature Salon, sponsored by Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles and co-hosted by China National Publications Import and Export (Group) Ltd. and Beijing Lao She Academy of Literature, was successfully held in Tunis. More than 40 Chinese and foreign guests, including Mr. Xing He, a Chinese science fiction writer and the author of Beijing Kid, and the translator of Arabic version of Beijing Kid, attended the salon. The salon focused on the discussion of creation background and story plots of Beijing Kid. This novel also presented to Tunisian readers with the development of Chinese science fiction influenced by Beijing’s history and culture. This aroused strong resonance among Arab readers.

The salon aims to help Tunisian readers with better reading and understanding Beijing, and to open the window for Tunisian readers to know more Beijing writers and works. The “World Reading Beijing” Literature Salon is a new brand activity launched by Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles in 2022 to promote the “Going Global” of Chinese literature. By inviting local readers, critics, publishers and translators, the event is to further their communication with Chinese writers. Within year 2022, a series of Literature Salon will be held for the Italian version of Star Fish (written by Zhou Xiaofeng), the Turkish version of Cat City (written by Lao She), the Spanish version of Freaking Food (written by Liu Heng) and the Romanian version of The Wheat (written by Liu Qingbang).

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LeddarTech Adopts an Automotive Software Business Model to Support ADAS and AD Solutions

The Globe and Mail Announces That LeddarTech Has Been Selected as One of Canada’s Top Growing Companies

LeddarTech®, a global leader in providing the most flexible, robust, and accurate ADAS and AD sensing technology, is pleased to announce its recognition among Canada’s Top Growing Companies for 2022 by the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business, where LeddarTech ranked 280 out of 430 eligible companies.

QUEBEC, Oct. 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — LeddarTech®, a global leader in providing the most flexible, robust and accurate ADAS and AD sensing technology, is pleased to announce it is adopting a business strategy that translates to greater financial and team resources dedicated to an automotive software business model.

For over a decade, LeddarTech has been at the forefront of developing sensing technology that has served the mobility, on-road and off-road markets worldwide. For several years, the company has invested heavily in developing a one-of-a-kind raw data sensor fusion and perception solution. This solution has received multiple awards and the attention of major global automotive Tier 1s and OEMs.

LeddarTech’s fusion and perception software solution, LeddarVision™, is a high-performance, scalable, sensor-agnostic and auto-grade solution that delivers highly accurate 3D environmental models. In addition, LeddarVision supports all SAE autonomy levels by applying AI and computer vision algorithms to fuse raw data from sensors employed in L2-L5 applications. LeddarTech’s use of raw data fusion detects very small obstacles on the road with better detection rates and fewer false alarms than legacy “object fusion” solutions. In addition, unclassified obstacles are also detected, providing an additional layer of safety to the vehicle.

“I am excited to announce the next stage of LeddarTech’s evolution as a leader in automotive software for ADAS and AD applications. “stated Mr. Charles Boulanger, CEO of LeddarTech. “We initiated our foray into automotive software several years ago, and our development has led to a unique award-winning solution that is highly regarded by an industry struggling to solve the challenges of accelerating the large-scale adoption of greater autonomy.” Mr. Boulanger continued, “The conclusions of market analysts and customers clearly support that we are in a unique position with a software solution that OEMs need to enhance ADAS and AD performance.” Mr. Boulanger stated, “The market’s need for a sensor fusion and perception solution that can be easily integrated and includes all the benefits of LeddarVision has never been greater, and our use of raw data fusion makes our offering even more attractive to customers.” Mr. Boulanger concluded, “The LeddarTech team is excited and eager to move ahead on our path and have dedicated ourselves and our technical efforts to the ambitious yet attainable goal of being the most adopted sensor fusion and perception software solution in the market.”

About LeddarTech
Founded in 2007, LeddarTech is an automotive ADAS and AD software company that offers comprehensive end-to-end raw data fusion and perception solutions enabling customers to solve critical challenges across the entire value chain.

LeddarTech’s automotive-grade software technology, LeddarVision™, is a flexible, robust, cost-effective, sensor-agnostic solution that delivers highly accurate 3D environmental models. In addition, this scalable software supports all SAE autonomy levels by applying AI and computer vision algorithms to fuse raw data from sensors employed in L2-L5 applications. LeddarTech’s use of raw data fusion detects very small obstacles on the road with better detection rates and fewer false alarms than legacy “object fusion” solutions. In addition, unclassified obstacles are also detected, providing an additional layer of safety to the vehicle.

LeddarTech is responsible for several innovations in cutting-edge automotive and mobility applications, with over 140 patents granted or applied for, enhancing ADAS and autonomous driving capabilities.

Additional information about LeddarTech is accessible at www.leddartech.com and on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

LeddarTech Has Been Selected as One of Canada’s Top Growing Companies

Contact:
Daniel Aitken, Vice-President, Global Marketing, Communications and Investor Relations, LeddarTech Inc.
Tel.: + 1-418-653-9000 ext. 232 daniel.aitken@leddartech.com

Investor relations contact: InvestorRelations@leddartech.com
https://investors.leddartech.com/

Leddar, LeddarTech, LeddarSteer, LeddarEngine, LeddarVision, LeddarSP, LeddarCore, LeddarEcho, VAYADrive, VayaVision, XLRator and related logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of LeddarTech Inc. and its subsidiaries. All other brands, product names and marks are or may be trademarks or registered trademarks used to identify products or services of their respective owners.

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Omdia: No dominant chatbot players on the horizon

LONDON, Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — The world’s most lucrative AI business – Chatbots/Virtual Digital Assistants — will remain a market served by a robust, diverse ecosystem of vendors. In a new report, Omdia suggests that contrary to a wide range of vendor assessments and traditional technology market trends, Chatbot/VDA solutions will not be dominated by a small number of big-name vendors.

“There are several reasons for a robust chatbot solutions market,” said Mark Beccue, Principal Analyst, Omdia, “One, there is persistent market demand for solutions which address a broad spectrum of complexity, from pro developer Do It Yourself (DIY) tools and no code SaaS to bespoke end to end solutions; two, it’s likely there will be new market disruptors because of evolving technology, particularly the potential emergence of affordable NLU and training from open-source Large Language Models (LLM), and three ,the total addressable market is very large and very complex, led by broad market drivers for CX and workflow automation. The market opportunity is nowhere near saturated or commoditized, leaving the door open for a variety of vendors to succeed and prosper.”

Omdia notes other market trends shaping the trajectory for Chatbots/VDAs, including demand for increasingly sophisticated roles for chatbots, the rising importance of BPOs and SIs in the ecosystem and the legitimacy of messaging channels. “Chatbots & Virtual Digital Assistants 2022: Market Trajectory, Forecasts“, examines all these issues and more. The report will help readers understand the rapidly shifting enterprise Chatbot/VDA market landscape by identifying key drivers and barriers, market trends, the dominant use cases, who the key players are, why they are so key, and what they see in the marketplace. It provides forecasts for Chatbot/VDA spend through 2026 with analysis by verticals and regions.

Mark Beccue and a team of Omdia analysts will be presenting and debating a wide range of upcoming IoT, AI and Quantum Computing issues and trends at The AI Summit & IoT World Austin, co-located with the Quantum Computing Summit 2-3 November 2022. Register for a media pass or request an analyst briefing  here .

ABOUT OMDIA
Omdia, part of Informa Tech, is a technology research and advisory group. Our deep knowledge of tech markets combined with our actionable insights empower organizations to make smart growth decisions. To learn more, visit www.omdia.com.

Media Contact
Fasiha Khan / T: +44 7503 666806 / E: fasiha.khan@omdia.com

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Ahli United Bank and Montran Corporation to Deliver Virtual Accounts Management to Ahli United Bank Corporate Clients

Ahli United Bank will enhance its value propositions for its various corporate client segments in the Middle East and North Africa via Montran’s next-generation solutions

AMSTERDAM, Oct. 11, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Ahli United Bank, a leading pan-regional financial services provider, today announced that it has selected Montran Corporation’s Virtual Account Management solutions to provide centralized treasury and cash management operations, across its diverse corporate client segments. Both companies commemorated the announcement with a signing ceremony at Sibos 2022 in Amsterdam.

Utilizing Montran’s multi-currency virtual account management platform will allow Ahli United Bank to help their corporate clients in the region to both simplify their cash and payment transactions and manage them more effectively.

“Our large corporate clients typically have a complex account structure that complicates unified, real-time visibility and reconciliation,” said Othman Hijazi, Deputy Group CEO, Corporate Banking, Ahli United Bank. “With the help of Montran’s Virtual Account Management solutions, we will be better equipped to empower said clients to simplify and streamline their bank account structures, gain a unified view and control of real-time liquidity positions, and drive greater efficiency across global liquidity reporting and management, as well as overall treasury operations.”

Alexander Esca, Chairman and CEO at Montran Corporation, said, “The versatility of Montran’s multi-bank Virtual Account Management solutions mean a fast and streamlined integration into Ahli United Bank’s existing infrastructure, with rapid client onboarding across the MENA region. Montran’s Virtual Account Management solutions enable a modern platform for Ahli United Bank to offer its various client segments sophisticated liquidity management capabilities. We are thrilled to announce this strategic relationship, and look forward to delivering the future-forward solutions that Ahli United Bank requires.”

About Ahli United Bank
Ahli United Bank B.S.C (AUB) is a leading pan-regional financial services provider, incorporated in Bahrain in May 2000. It offers a full range of retail, commercial, and private banking & wealth management services, both conventional and Sharia-compliant, across the MENA region and the UK. AUB operates through its Bahrain Head Office and its subsidiaries in Kuwait, Egypt, Iraq, and the UK as well as its associates in Oman and Libya; and a branch in the UAE (DIFC). For more information, visit www.ahliunited.com.kw.

About Montran
Founded in 1979, Montran Corporation provides Payment, Cash and Liquidity Management solutions and services to many of the world’s foremost financial and corporate institutions, enabling them to stay ahead in today’s increasingly challenging financial industry landscape. Having mission critical installations and operations in over 80 countries, Montran Corporation is a global leader in the financial technology arena. More information about Montran Corporation’s Products and Services can be found at www.montran.com.

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