ForHorn announced it is collaborating with DELL EMC OEM solution to deliver end-to-end Industrial IoT (IIoT) edge computing solutions to the customers.

The announcement noted that FogHorn’s revolutionary Lightning edge computing technology will be integrated with solutions from Dell EMC. It will enable industrial and commercial customers to have access to preconfigured gateways and other devices that simplify IoT deployments. These “edgified” solutions allow clients to accelerate deployment of edge computing at various end-point locations wherever the power of edge computing is needed.

FogHorn has raised around USD $47.5M in capital to date.


Vice president and general manager for the Americas, Dell EMC OEM Solutions, Ron Pugh, said, “With more than 75 billion IoT connected devices predicted to be installed by 2025, making technology to manage and process the data collected from these devices is crucial. FogHorn enables our end-point and gateway products to become smart edge solutions by layering their edge intelligence directly into our hardware, driving insights at any point in their IoT deployments.”

Vice president of business development at FogHorn, Kevin Duffy, said, “By teaming up with Dell as a trusted leader for hardware in the IoT space, FogHorn positions itself as the go-to provider of edge intelligence for commercial and industrial IoT deployments. Customers now have access to a best-in-class solution to simplify and streamline their IoT deployments, which allows them to unleash the power of their data so they can get to results more quickly.”

Starting in December 2018, FogHorn’s edge intelligence solution will be available on Dell hardware through the Dell IoT Solutions Partner Program.

OzCode unveiled the industry's first Debugging-as-a-Service (DaaS). The service runs on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. OzCode’s highly visual and insightful service offers time travel production debugging to provide the fastest insight on how and why code fails.

OzCode is a startup that helps software developers in debugging more visual and insightful reducing debugging time from days or hours to few minutes. Thus increasing developer productivity.

The OzCode's Azure DevOps solution provides collaboration, root cause analysis, and unique (patent-pending) time travel. It helps software developers to pinpoint the exact moment of failure in a distributed cloud environment.

It was first created as an integrated development environment (IDE) extension for Visual Studio. The solution is now used by more than 1,000 customers and 5,000 developers. The future roadmap of OzCode’s Azure DevOps includes a release which will provide more robust production debugging capabilities and integrate with any developer, on any cloud.

PC: OzCode, With OzCode Debugging-as-a-Service, time travel to an iteration in a loop to find out when the faulty behavior started.

The production-debugging toolset includes:

• “Prebugging” allowing developers to see into the future and fix bugs before they happen
• Automatic redaction of personally identifiable information (PII) to comply with regulatory constraints
• “Live coding” to obtain instant verification of changes before re-deploying
• Fast, intuitive analysis of crash dumps
• Automated tests from production use-cases
• Full traceability that integrates into the existing bug tracking DevOps workflow

Executive Opinion:

Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of OzCode, Omer Raviv, said, “Studies show that roughly 50 percent of a software developer’s time is spent debugging. OzCode’s DaaS solution reduces that time significantly and makes it possible – for the first time – for coders to find the problematic source code easily and quickly. Our goal is to drastically reduce the amount of time spent on debugging, and thereby improve the lives of our fellow developers.”

Technical Fellow and Microsoft Azure MVP, Mattias Karlsson, said, “OzCode creates amazingly powerful debugging experiences that save countless debugging hours. It helps me as a developer gain a deep understanding of the root cause of every bug and makes sure that I can provide the best possible fix for it. I am excited to see them bring this new, much-needed innovation into the production debugging and DevOps space.”

VP and CIO at Rafael, Kobi Katz, said, “OzCode has clearly taken the DevOps experience to an entirely new level. By revolutionizing the role of the DevOps community and facilitating far better and more frequent software launches, OzCode puts the developer’s focus on innovation rather than the tedious task of fixing bugs. This ultimately produces direct and significant business results for OzCode customers.”

Managing Partner at TPY Capital, Guy Yamen, said, “During the due diligence process, we were thoroughly impressed with what the OzCode team has managed to achieve to date. With only little in the way of capital or human resources, the company had obtained a cult-like following of thousands of developers who’ve seen their daily routine dramatically improve by using OzCode’s technology,”

To support the production debugging product development, according to the announcement, OzCode has raised $3.5 million in seed capital in the latest funding round led by Israeli venture capital RDC (jointly owned by Elron and Rafael) and TPY Capital. Following the round, Yaron Elad and Kobi Katz from RDC, and Guy Yamen from TPY Capital will join OzCode’s Board of Directors.

Filament announced Automotive Blockchain Platform Blocklet for Trusted Vehicle Applications (TVA).

Filament claims that Blocklet TVA is the industry’s first end-to-end automotive blockchain platform. It helps and allows trusted vehicles to participate directly with blockchain, distributed ledger technologies (DLTs).

According to the datasheet, the hardware component is called the Blocklet™ Universal Serial Bus (USB) Enclave. It provides host systems with secure identity and authentication services. The device installs in a standard Type A USB 2.0 host port and interfaces to a host device driver for configuration and subsequent operational services.

It also includes Filament’s Blocklet technology, cellular connectivity, environmental sensing and access to vehicle diagnostics. Hence it helps automotive, freight and transportation companies to create new, large-scale connected-vehicle services. Smart contract applications can be also built on top of a trusted blockchain foundation.

Filament’s Blocklet Kit bundles Blocklet’s software development kit (SDK) and hosted services.

According to the announcement, Blocklet TVA includes below capabilities and included as is for ready reference.

• The blockchain-native chipset for secure vehicle data apps and diagnostics: Ability to securely collect, attest and transact vehicle data, such as parameters from the Engine Control Unit (ECU), as recorded directly from the vehicle data bus. Connects to an OBD-II port for passenger vehicles or a J1939 port for heavy-duty vehicles and construction assets.
• Connectivity, hosting and location services: Dedicated GPS combined with the latest LTE Cat-M1 cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity for secure blockchain transactions and smart-contract processing.
• 9-axis inertial motion sensor: Built-in 9-axis inertial sensor for recording acceleration, incline, vibration, G-forces and other detailed in-transit data on vehicle usage.
• Built-in environmental sensors: Sensors for barometric pressure, temperature and humidity all provide context to vehicle operating conditions.
• Hosted services provide flexible blockchain platform support: Supports BigchainDB and Ethereum as well as Hyperledger Fabric and Hyperledger Sawtooth frameworks.

Use Cases

The possible use cases that can be implemented with Blocklet TVA include creating dynamic leasing models where blockchain technology measures and validates vehicle usage to adjust lease rates, maintaining an immutable vehicle history with cryptographically verifiable service records on blockchain (DLT), applications that help determine an accurate value of pre-owned vehicles and support for smart-contract based business logic.

Supply chain use cases such as services for vehicle components, ensuring their provenance, usage history, maintenance activity and use of genuine replacement parts are also possible.

Executive Opinion

Chief Executive Officer, Filament, Allison Clift-Jennings, said, “The Internet of Things and blockchain are a powerful combination. We believe this is especially true in the rapidly changing automotive and transportation landscape. Blockchain technology gives connected machines including passenger vehicles, long haul trucks and construction equipment, a voice of immutable truth that goes well beyond data gathering. Blocklet TVA helps corporations with connected vehicles quickly understand and tap into the potential of transparent, edge-authenticated and distributed data which will enable the next generation of intelligent mobility.”

Filament builds comprehensive enterprise blockchain systems for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). They are unveiling and demonstrating Blocklet TVA at MarketWaves18 in Grapevine, Texas this week.

Atos launched its most efficient supercomputer the BullSequana XH2000 at SC'18, the High-Performance Annual Conference. The BullSequana XH2000 is a hybrid supercomputer and designed to accommodate and orchestrate modern workloads between on-premises, public and private Cloud environments.

AI-augmented HPC simulation

The BullSequana XH2000 designed for and capable of running converged workloads (HPC simulation, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning) simultaneously on the same one machine, at the same time. According to an announcement, the simultaneous workload will help organizations to overcome the limits of traditional simulations and explore new applications, accelerating business transformation and innovation.

More power to enable AI-augmented HPC simulations

As workloads expand to include AI, businesses need more computing power, and the BullSequana XH2000 provides this in a system that supports the latest CPU and GPU processor and accelerator architectures, including Marvell ThunderX2® Arm®, NVIDIA Volta V100, Intel® Xeon® processors and the latest AMD® EPYC Rome, for ultimate power, speed, and accuracy. This is the first Atos supercomputer that supports AMD processors. The next generation AMD EPYC processor, codenamed “Rome”, is expected to be available in Atos’ new BullSequana XH2000 liquid-cooled supercomputer by 2019. The BullSequana XH2000 allows a choice of system interconnect technologies, including InfiniBand HDR and BXI (Bull eXascale Interconnect) and Fast Ethernet.

Energy efficient

The BullSequana XH2000 consumes 10 times less energy than current systems. It is 100% water-cooled. It uses Atos' patented DLC (Direct Liquid Cooling) solution that minimizes global energy consumption by using warm water up to 40°C.

The Open Sequana architecture allows system upgrade and fully compatible with future computing glades and interconnect technologies, allowing to scale and making it futureproof. The BullSequana XH2000 is exascale-ready and capable of processing an exaflop (a billion billion operations per second) by 2020.

Executive Opinion

Chief Operating Officer, Big Data & Security at Atos, Pierre Barnabé, said, "With this announcement, the Atos Group confirms its strategic commitment to providing high-computing power to research centers and enterprises to carry out their research projects and to support their need for innovation."

Vice President HPC & Quantum at Atos, Agnès Boudot, said, “Atos is excited to reinforce the partnership with AMD with the planned launch of an EPYC Rome blade for our new BullSequana X2410 next year. The HPC market was waiting for a new compute engine, offering higher memory bandwidth to increase application performance efficiency. The EPYC family will greatly complement our solution’s portfolio.”

Corporate vice president and general manager, AMD datacenter products, Scott Aylor, said, “AMD welcomes the announcement by Atos of their upcoming BullSequana X supercomputing system with AMD EPYC processors. As a global leader in high-performance computing, Atos is perfectly suited to deliver on the promise of the EPYC product line and the industry’s first 7nm datacenter CPU coming to market from AMD next year.”

Availability of The BullSequana XH2000 will be from February 2019.

Google is probably the most advanced company in the world right now when it comes to Artificial Intelligence (AI) development, with some of their products surpassing human capabilities. However, AI is not readily available to every business out there. The tech giant is trying to change that with the introduction of the Google AI Hub.

These AI offerings are designed with three ideas in mind: make it simple, so as to make the adoption process easier, expand the number of ways it can be used, so an organization can use it easily, and make AI extremely fast, helping the business succeed quickly.

In the first half of 2018, Google announced AutoML to help firms with limited knowledge in Machine Learning (ML) to build their customized models. They have also invested in developing specialized training and certifications to help increase people ML skills rapidly.

The introduction of AI Hub

There is a general lack of knowledge when it comes to the development of resources in Machine Learning. Google's AI Hub plans on changing it completely. It provides plug and play ML content, including pipelines, Jupyter notebooks, TensorFlow modules, and more.

This is bound to offer benefits such as the development of high-quality resources by Google Cloud AI and Google Research. The second one is mainly for enterprises who want access to a private and secure hub where they can easily share their resources, making it extremely easy for them to use them in GCP or on various hybrid infrastructures which make use of the Kubeflow Pipeline System.

Kubeflow Pipelines, which is a component of Kubeflow, takes advantage of the company's advanced in-house developed TensorFlow Extended libraries, which provide a solution to problems such as model analysis data validation, training-serving skew, data drift, and more.

There are various scenarios in which AI is actively helping corporations help save valuable time. For example, Meredith Corporation, a media company, uses machine learning to automate content classification, applying a custom universal taxonomy with Cloud AutoML and Natural Language. Machine learning helps them make content classification more repeatable and scalable, saving time and improving reader experiences.

“At Meredith Corporation, we’re focused on creating compelling content across platforms and life stages for brands such as PEOPLE, Better Homes & Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, Allrecipes, and Food & Wine,” says Alysia Borsa, Chief Marketing & Data Officer, Meredith Corporation. “By using Natural Language and AutoML services to apply our custom universal taxonomy to our content, we’re able to better identify and respond to emerging trends, enable robust detailed targeting and provide our audience with more relevant and engaging experiences.”

Of course, ML and AI are the two prominent technologies which will help shape the future and help us understand and solve complex problems which we thought we pretty much unsolvable until now.
Google is taking one step at a time, helping every type of business gain access to these tools.

Seagate is one of the biggest companies when it comes to data storage, marking its presence all over the world. With enormous expansion comes various problems, and Seagate's greatest challenge is counterfeit products.

The presence of these fake hard disks on mainstream e-commerce platforms is something they cannot control, but their problem doesn't end here. There is something called the reverse supply chain, which exists because of customers returning defective products. The storage giant is unknowingly accepting many counterfeits back into its own supply. This fake hard drive business is valued at about $100 billion.

To overcome this shortfall, Seagate is closely working with IBM's blockchain since the past two months.“We found a unique way of tying the physical product to the virtual world, through the blockchain,” says Seagate managing technologist Manuel Offenberg, who is overseeing the project. “We think that’s where some of the novelty is, where we really can go from a physical product to the virtual blockchain world.”

According to the announcement, "To verify product authenticity, Seagate will update the IBM Blockchain Platform on the IBM Cloud with product authentication data based on the Seagate Secure™ Electronic ID (eID) at the point of manufacture. Each unique identifier (serving as an electronic fingerprint) can be used to verify the identity of a hard drive at any time during its product life cycle. Seagate’s Certified Erase employs cryptographic erasure technology to produce a digital certificate of data purge, which is electronically signed by the device under the Seagate Secure public key infrastructure (PKI) and stored on the blockchain for compliance management with emerging global data privacy laws."

The relationship between the two tech giants is not at all something new since Seagate has been supplying IBM with storage solutions as back as 2009 with the two companies finalizing their latest project back in June.

Since the companies supply chain consists of a massive number of middlemen, Offenburg thinks that IBM's blockchain will help the process of maintaining multiple databases easier. Also, Offenberg says some steps such as the process of actually checking a product is authentic are replicated by IBM, Seagate, and other counterparties, and could be reduced to a single action.

Seagate is, however, not relying only on the blockchain and will adopt other security features such as integrating electronic ID's (EID's) during the manufacturing process which will help identify each piece of hardware uniquely.

Speaking to Forbes Magazine Mr. Manuel Offenberg, Managing Technologist of Seagate, said, “Based on the information in the blockchain, we can also quickly verify the provenance of the device, in which case, we could cut out several step. The proof of concept will tell us more succinctly which steps can be removed.”

Forbes magzine article also qutoes, IBM global managing director of the electronics industry and head of strategy, Bruce Anderson, stating "The Cupertino based company plans to do a test run internally. Initially, the application will be used between Seagate and IBM as we use it inside of our own server production operations. We see that solving the counterfeiting problem as a customer of Seagate is definitely worth it. We also see this at an industry level that others are going to be asking about.”

This gives IBM a closer look into Seagate's supply chain process enabling them to end the problem altogether.

Though, this is just the beginning of the project and will likely take some time since both the companies have to tie up and integrate their teams. According to a controversial Bloomberg report, poorly managed supply chain might be the cause why China was able to infiltrate top US companies such as Amazon and Apple.

When asked about the same, Anderson declined to comment, while adding "We are looking at the bigger picture."

Indian's biggest private company, Reliance Industries, has recently conducted its first-ever trade transaction using the blockchain technology. The transaction took place between Reliance and a US-based chemical distributor, Tricon Energy.

The transaction was successfully executed using R3 Corda Blockchain technology. The Corda blockchain technology is being described by the press release as  "single shared application, rather than requiring multiple isolated digital systems across various counterparties located around the globe"

HSBC Bank and the ING Bank Brussels aided in giving the Letter of Credit, the guarantee given by a bank for the payment of the buyer. In a comparison to the usual time of 7 to 10 days taken for the processing of the export documents, the Blockchain technology can aid in completing the transaction within a day,

The press release further stated that "this transaction validates the commercial and operational viability of Blockchain as an alternative to conventional exchanges for paper-based documentation"

Signifying the "transformative importance" of the technology used in blockchain technology in trade finance, the head of HSBC India of global banking and markets said "The use of blockchain is a significant step toward digitizing trade. The overall efficiency it brings to trade finance ensures cost effectiveness, quicker turnaround and potentially unlocks liquidity for business"

Reliance explained, that in the current system, buyers and sellers use a paper-based letter for facilitating transactions and physical documents need to be sent to each party involved in the transaction through the post, courier or fax. The whole transaction in blockchain takes place digitally and reduces the amount of time and money involved.

Blockchain allows for a greater level of transparency since it is a decentralized database and all the stakeholders can view the progress in real time Various other banks such as ICICI Bank, SBI and Yes Bank are working on other similar solutions based on Blockchain since trade finance is one of the best use cases due to ability to reduce the time taken for processing the transaction.

The Corda application is being globally supported by HSBC and five other banks (Bangkok Bank, BNP Paribas, CTBC Holding, NatWest, SEB and Standard Chartered) seek to expand the network on an open source basis to increase the adoption rate of the technology through the industry.

Executive Opinion

Joint Chief Financial Officer, Reliance Industries, Srikanth Venkatachari, said, “We are
excited to partner with HSBC on digitalisation of trade finance. This reflects our continued
commitment to embrace emerging technologies and industry first initiatives. The use of
blockchain offers significant potential to reduce the timelines involved in exchange of export
documentation from the extant 7 to 10 days to less than a day. When adopted at scale, it
helps in significant optimisation of working capital. Further, use of blockchain in trade
finance enhances transparency, security and synergy across all the parties and stakeholders
involved.”

Head-Global Banking & Markets, HSBC India, Hitendra Dave, said, “The use of blockchain is a significant step towards digitising trade. It has a transformative impact on trade finance transactions and enables greater transparency and enhanced security in addition to making it simpler and faster. The overall efficiency it brings to trade finance ensures cost effectiveness, quicker turnaround and potentially unlocks liquidity for businesses. We’re delighted to partner with Reliance Industries and support enhanced digitisation in trade finance. We believe that the collaborative approach adopted to develop this technology has the potential to transform conventional trade finance.”

Apart from HSBC, many other Indian banks including ICICI, SBI and Yes bank are working on their own blockchain solutions and believe that trade finance is one of the key areas where the technology can make a significant impact.

The Energy Web Foundation (EWF) announced the release of a new electric vehicle (EV) charging toolkit to expand functionality of EW Origin.

EW Origin is an open-source decentralized application (blockchain-based) toolkit for verifying and tracking the ownership of green attributes associated with electricity generation and consumption.

The newly released EV charging toolkit determines the avoided marginal carbon emissions based on the timing of EV charging of electric vehicles, e-bikes, and other electric mobility solutions. It is an extension and adaptation of existing EW Origin toolkits offered by Energy Web Foundation (EWF). It will help in supporting the issuance, trading, tracking, and reporting for renewable energy certificates (RECs), guarantees of origin (GOs), and other certificates of origin that underpin renewables markets worldwide.

To demo the EV charging toolkit at European Utility Week in Vienna, EWF has teamed up with Affiliate Wirelane.

According to the announcement, "Wirelane is a full-service provider of electric mobility solutions, including software solutions for EV charging as well as advanced EVSE chargepoint hardware. Through Wirelane’s user interface, EUW attendees can see how kilowatt-hours of electric vehicle charging are paired with renewable energy certificates and avoided marginal emissions are securely tracked on the Energy Web blockchain. Greyp, a tech company that produces high-performance electric bicycles, generously donated an EWF-branded e-bike for the EUW demo."

Product owner of EW Origin at Energy Web Foundation, Jens Griesing, said, “Green energy and electric vehicle charging are a natural fit for each other as we move toward a low-carbon, electrified energy future. The new EV charging toolkit will allow application developers to build blockchain-based solutions that enable EV drivers to charge their vehicles with clean energy, and to confidently know the emissions-reduction benefits of their e-mobility.”

EWF is also inviting EV charging application developers, EVSE manufacturers and network operators, and EV drivers/owners to learn more.

Global Digital Finance (GDF) recently announced the release of its industry-led Code of Conduct and Taxonomy for Cryptographic Assets. GDF also announced that key leaders in crypto aka digital asset market have joined GDF to drive its strategy and to grow its community of member firms.

What is GDF?

GDF is a not-for-profit industry body driving the acceleration and adoption of next-generation technologies in finance. The GDF was co-founded by Lawrence Wintermeyer, Simon Taylor, and Jeff Bandman.

GDF is based in London, New York, and Hong Kong. It endeavors to drive efficient, fair and transparent crypto markets by building a knowledge base and best practice for “Truly Digital” finance and the benefits tokens can bring all market participants.

Who joined GDF?

The newly joined crypto leaders include Circle, Coinbase, ConsenSys, DLA Piper, Diginex, Hogan Lovells and R3 have joined GDF as Founding Members of the not-for-profit initiative based in London, New York, and Hong Kong.

GDF held a series of global mini-summits with its community in Asia, Europe, and the USA.
The industry-led Code of Conduct (the GDF Code) and Taxonomy for Cryptographic Assets is released after approval of the Code by the GDF community

GDF Code of Conduct

The GDF Code of conduct serves as industry-led “shared rulebook”. It will help companies to demonstrate to their customers, markets, and regulators, that they abide by ethical and professional standards in their conduct with clients, money handling, risk management, and market practice.

The Code of Conduct consists of three parts with Part I – Overarching Principles, Part II – Additional Principles for Token Sales and for Token Sale Service Providers and Part III – Additional Principles for Token Trading Platforms.

Regulators around the world have diverse opinions in the assessment and treatment of crypto assets. E.g. Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) which the US regulators have indicated should be offered or sold in accordance with US securities laws.

According to the announcement, GDF is engaged with global regulators, standard-setting bodies and non-governmental organizations.

Executive Opinion

CEO of Circle, Jeremy Allaire, said, "Building public trust is essential to Circle and to democratizing finance using crypto assets and blockchain technology. We are proud to be joining an organization that is helping ensure the industry upholds the high standards the public deserves."

GDF Co-Founder, Simon Taylor, said, “Customers want to know the firms they are doing business with are ethical and not breaking (international) laws. This extends from cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, wallet providers and exchanges, to firms offering investment products in tokens, securities, and funds.”

ConsenSys Legal & The Brooklyn Project, Patrick Berarducci, said, “The quality of the work the GDF team has produced in partnership with a large community of industry practitioners in 6 months is nothing short of outstanding. and includes a delivery pipeline which will continue to address additional participants within the space, such as funds and custodians.”

UK CEO of Coinbase, Zeeshan Feroz, said,“Individuals need to be able to distinguish crypto businesses that are trying to facilitate the safe transfer of digital assets, with a compliance-first approach, from those that may be pushing the boundaries of what may be considered legal in other areasBy adhering to the Code of Conduct, firms are making it clear to their customers that they take safety and security seriously.”

GDF Co-Founder and the former LabCFTC innovation head, Jeff Bandman, said, “Regulators have been hugely supportive of the development of GDF and the Code. digital assets are global and no one jurisdiction has authority over the entire sector. The Code provides industry adopters a supranational toolbox to demonstrate to global regulators that they are good citizens.”

Subscribing to GDF Code of Conduct

Companies will able to register with GDF from Q12019. It will allow them to attest to their organization’s adoption of the Code. The registration scheme is currently in development, led by DLA Piper and in consultation with global industry firms, the announcement said.