Strategic advice to leverage new technologies
Technology is at the heart of nearly every enterprise, enabling new business models and strategies, and serving as the catalyst to industry convergence. Leveraging the right technology can improve business outcomes, providing intelligence and insights that help you make more informed and accurate decisions. From finding patterns in data through data science, to curating relevant insights with data analytics, to the predictive abilities and innumerable applications of AI, to solving challenging business problems with ML, NLP, and knowledge graphs, technology has brought decision-making to a more intelligent level. Keep pace with the technology trends, opportunities, applications, and real-world use cases that will move your organization closer to its transformation and business goals.
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Various AI technologies, including ML, predictive analytics, NLP, and image recognition, are helping to reshape procurement operations. These developments are most apparent in the emergence of AI-powered cloud procurement platforms. This Advisor provides some example use cases of how AI is now utilized to automate and optimize procurement activities.
This edition of The Cutter Edge discusses how Agile Lineout can improve predictability, quality, and delivery; how LC/NC tools create solutions to everyday challenges and drives innovation, and more!
In recent years, researchers have turned to radically different computing paradigms, such as quantum computing, molecular computing, and nature-inspired computing. Of these, the most promising and advanced is quantum computing, based on the principles of quantum mechanics. This issue of Cutter Business Technology Journal (CBTJ) includes five articles that, together, provide an overview of quantum computing essentials.
Programmers routinely test their work as they write code, running programs to ensure they’re behaving as expected. But software today is significantly more complex than ever before. In this Executive Update we consider two questions about testing: (1) how do we know how best to perform that testing, and (2) how much testing is enough?
Muhammad Usman examines ongoing developments in quantum computing: hardware, simulations and error correction, algorithms and applications, and post-quantum secure communication. He also outlines anticipated progress in the quantum computing landscape and looks at the notion of quantum supremacy.
Mario Piattini outlines various quantum computing programming languages and the requirements of quantum software development environments. He also introduces quantum software engineering, identifies two of its key challenges, and discusses how they can be addressed. Piattini emphasizes the need for an integrated approach to quantum hardware and software R&D, quantum software education and training, and collaboration between industry and academia. As an example of such a collaboration, he describes an initiative called "aQuantum."
Threats to data and information security will continue to be a key concern in the digital era ahead. Quantum computing is both a solution to security and, in a distant future, a threat to it. Claudio Lima discusses the impact of quantum computing on cybersecurity and blockchain. He outlines potential threats to today's cryptography posed by quantum computing and highlights some emerging quantum cryptographic techniques.
Despite the progress in quantum computing and promising applications in several key sectors, many professionals and IT business executives are skeptical about its prospects and are not paying much attention to it. "Quantum computing is going to make a reality of the impossible sooner or later ... it very much seems like a question of time," observes Cutter Senior Consultant James Mitchell. He argues that it is imperative for IT professionals and executives to be aware of these types of upcoming computing capabilities and be prepared to embrace them.