September 2018
What is 5G? We uncover the what, when and how
Driverless Cars
The future of autonomous motor technology
Relationship capital? Introhive’s EMEA team explains more
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ur September edition of Digital Innovation Magazine has a real emphasis on the kind of technology that future generations are likely to take for granted. In the same way that we make demands of our virtual assistants, take advantage of 3G and 4G wireless connections, and think absolutely nothing about using cruise control and assisted parking when driving, just consider how emerging innovations will be enhancing the lives of our children. In recent years, huge progress has been made in autonomous motor technology, so this issue, we ask how far are we away from seeing driverless cars on our roads (p6)? And with the arrival of fifth generation mobile networks, we answer all those questions you may have concerning the what, when and how of 5G (p38). Many thanks to the EMEA team at Introhive, who feature as our lead interview this issue. It was fascinating for me to learn how various relationships across a business can be exploited to increase sales and promote success. Turn to page 30 for more. Plus, we bring you our take on Apple’s recently-launched HomePod speaker (p20), a report on AI’s role in replacing animal testing (p48), as well as an insight into Lenovo’s revolutionary water cooling technology at the University of Birmingham – the first of its kind in the UK (p66).
Editor Anna McMahon
Managing Director Danielle Harris
editorial@digitalinnovationeu.com
d.harris@digitalinnovationeu.com
Senior Digital Designer Daniel May
Managing Director Tom Barnes
design@digitalinnovationeu.com
t.barnes@digitalinnovationeu.com
+44 (0) 203 890 1189 enquiries@digitalinnovationeu.com All rights reserved. Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of material published in Digital Innovation Magazine. However, the company cannot accept responsibility for the claims made by advertisers or contributors, or inaccurate material supplied by advertisers. Digital Innovation is a trading name of HBL Europe Ltd. Company Registration Number: 10933897. Company Registered in England and Wales
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Introhive’s role succe
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The future of 5G
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Driverless car technology
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Apple’s HomePod smart speaker 4
e in driving ess The growth of Global Public Cloud
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AI in lieu of animal testing
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Water cooling at the University of Birmingham 5
O N T H E ROA D
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A DRIVE FUTU
ERLESS URE? With car manufacturers making leaps and bounds in autonomous motor technology, we consider when we will be likely to see driverless cars on our roads.
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MOTOR COMPANIES HAVE BEEN D CAR TECHNOLOGY, ALONG WITH T AND UBER, FOR A NUMBER OF YE DRIVERLESS TECHNOLOGY IS STIL STAGE, PARTIALLY AUTOMATED TE WITH AUTOMATED PARKING AND
WATCH HOW IT WORKS
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DEVELOPING DRIVERLESS THE LIKES OF APPLE, GOOGLE EARS, AND WHILE FULLYLL AT AN ADVANCED TESTING ECHNOLOGY IS IN OPERATION, D REMOTE CONTROL FEATURES.
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ith heavy investment from around the world, as well as huge interest in driverless technology, it’s easy to assume that the launch of self-operating cars is imminent, but, in fact, we are much further away than one might expect. Following controversial driverless car crashes featuring autonomous auto-pilot functions in Tesla and Uber prototypes, we remain at level 2 of the levels of autonomous car technology, with level 3 in our sights. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) describes the differing levels of autonomy in driverless cars with a set of guidelines – level 1 being the most basic and level 5 being the most advanced.
Level 1 A single aspect is automated but the driver remains in charge This started in the late 1990s at Mercedes-Benz, with its pioneering radar-managed cruise control, while Honda introduced lanekeep assist on the 2008 Legend. Level 2 Chips control two or more elements but the driver is hands-on at all times Computers take over multiple functions from the driver, weaving speed and steering systems together using multiple data sources. The latest Mercedes S-Class is at level 2. It takes over directional, throttle and brake functions for one of the most advanced cruise control systems yet seen – using detailed satnav data to brake automatically
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for corners ahead, keeping a set distance from the car in front and setting off again when jams clear, with the driver idle.
hazards) improve accuracy. The need for the driver is no more, but the likelihood is this car will be limited to urban journeys.
Level 3 The car can boss safety-critical functions – the driver is still on standby, but can be hands-off for periods of time Highly automated vehicles are not far off. Level 3 is often referred to as ‘conditional automation’ – a specific mode which lets all aspects of driving be done for you, but the driver must be on hand to respond to a request to intervene. Audi calls its new A8 a level 3 ready autonomous car, meaning the car has the potential to drive itself in certain circumstances, where it will assume control of all safetycritical functions by refining maps, radar and sensors, and fusing this environmental data with ever-wiser and faster processors and logic.
Level 5 Fully autonomous, anywhere... Driver optional The difference between level 4 and 5 is simple – the last step towards full automation doesn’t require the car to be in the so-called ‘operational design domain’. Rather than working in a carefully managed (usually urban) environment with lots of dedicated lane markings or infrastructure, it’ll be able to selfdrive anywhere. How? Because the frequency and volume of data, and the sophistication of the computers crunching it, will mean the cars are sentient. It’s a brave new world – and one that Google’s Waymo car is gunning for, leapfrogging traditional manufacturers’ efforts.
Level 4 Fully autonomous in controlled areas, with a genuine hands-off driving approach At the start of the next decade, cars are expected to fully drive themselves in geofenced metropolitan areas, as HD mapping, more timely data, car-to-car comms and off-site call centres (to deal with unusual 10
The Google Car Since Google unveiled its self-driving car, it has spun off this part of the business into a separate arm under the name Waymo. The name comes from Google’s mission to find “a new way forward in mobility.” Autonomous vehicles rely on a range of sensors to interact with the world around them, with the Google
“MANUFACTURERS INCLUDING DAIMLER, BMW AND AUDI PAID $3.1 BILLION FOR THE NOKIA HERE MAPPING SERVICE, WHICH WILL BE USED AS A PLATFORM FOR A CONNECTED-CAR ENVIRONMENT” 11
Dmitri Dolgov, CTO and VP of Engineering at WAYMO
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“SINCE GOOGLE UNVEILED ITS SELFDRIVING CAR, IT HAS SPUN OFF THIS PART OF THE BUSINESS INTO A SEPARATE ARM UNDER THE NAME WAYMO. THE NAME COMES FROM GOOGLE’S MISSION TO FIND “A NEW WAY FORWARD IN MOBILITY”
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“TO BECOME A VIABLE SOLUTION, THESE SYSTEMS WILL BE REQUIRED IN EVERY VEHICLE, INCLUDING THOSE STILL USED BY HUMANS”
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Car prototype coming equipped with eight.
own limitations. Autonomous cars simply replace the human eye with a camera, leaving them vulnerable The most noticeable is the rotating to extreme sunlight, weather or even roof-top LIDAR – a camera that uses defective traffic lights. In current an array of either 32 or 64 lasers autonomous cars, the way this to measure the distance between selection of pixels is analysed could objects, building up a 3D map at a be the difference between a safe range of 200m, and allowing the car and unsafe journey. to ‘see’ hazards. The car also sports another set of ‘eyes’, a standard Connected Cars camera that points through the Many believe a connection between windscreen. This looks for nearby cars and traffic infrastructure is hazards like pedestrians, cyclists and needed to combat this problem. other motorists, as well as reading Christoph Reifenrath, senior road signs and detecting traffic manager in technology marketing of lights. Speaking of other motorists, Harman’s infotainment division, said, bumper-mounted radar, already “Car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure used in intelligent cruise control, communication is essential for tracks other vehicles in front of and enabling autonomous driving. For behind the car. example, as your car approaches a red light, we’ll give you information. Externally, the car has a rearHow can we provide this information mounted aerial that receives in every car at every red light? There geolocation information from GPS has to be a solution for that if you satellites, and an ultrasonic sensor want to enable autonomous driving on one of the rear wheels monitors in areas with traffic lights.” the car’s movements. Internally, the car has altimeters, gyroscopes and The German automotive industry a tachometer (a rev-counter) to give is one of the most powerful even finer measurements on the advocates of a connected carcar’s position, all of which combine traffic infrastructure. Manufacturers to give it the highly accurate data including Daimler, BMW and Audi needed to operate safely. paid $3.1 billion for the Nokia Here mapping service, which will be used Using these arrays, the Google Car as a platform for a connected-car can read the road like a human, environment. but these sensors come with their 15
A joint statement released by the consortium reads, “(Nokia) Here is laying the foundations for the next generation of mobility and locationbased services. For the automotive industry, this is the basis for new assistance systems and ultimately fully autonomous driving. Extremely precise digital maps will be used in combination with real-time vehicle data in order to increase road safety and to facilitate innovative new products and services.” To become a viable solution, these systems will be required in every vehicle, including those still used by humans.
injury involving the Google Car wasn’t due to a fault in its system, but human error. Hacking Autonomous cars will pack in a greater range of systems than ever, but the increased tech will also make them more vulnerable to hackers. Although it may seem an issue for the future, car-hacking is already happening. In an autonomous car – which relies entirely on computer systems – the effects could be devastating.
The Road Ahead As it stands, autonomous technology can be used for little The Human Problem more than parking or lane changing. Although autonomous cars will Connected car technology is need better, more connected essential for driverless tech and, infrastructure to function effectively, until it’s here, it won’t be safe for they still face a larger, more human-operated and autonomous unpredictable factor in humans. We cars to co-exist. However, the way present problems for autonomous driverless cars react to pedestrians cars as both drivers and pedestrians, is an even more critical issue, and and dealing with our unpredictable one that will take extensive research behaviour represents a significant and cost millions to get right. The challenge for the technology. current generation of self-driving AI is competent, but the moral The Google Car is one of the most judgement and behaviour of human experienced autonomous vehicles, drivers will be hard to replicate. Until and its interaction with human these problems are solved, fully drivers has exposed one of driverless autonomous cars will not be given cars’ main weaknesses. The first the green light. 16
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“The Digital Innovation team are incredibly professional and it was my pleasure to be part of the August 2018 edition. At each stage, Danielle and her team were highly prepared and very thorough. I was impressed with the level of diligence and attention to detail that they paid throughout the whole process. It was good to work with a team who had an extremely high level of contextual expertise in the industry in terms of breadth and depth, and they had clearly done their research properly. I wish them every success and it was a real career high to be involved with the project, and I’d like to thank the Digital Innovation team for everything they have done for me” – Jen Stirrup, Director – Data Relish
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L AT E S T T E C H
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The breakthrough HomePod smart speaker is Apple’s answer to the connected home.
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Apple’s connected home offers a seamlessly integrated and welldesigned system of software, hardware and networking, set to rival offerings from Amazon and Google.
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he company’s first popularised virtual assistant in the home, it comes years after the launch of Amazon Echo and Google Home, so is it worth the wait?
by Apple’s digital assistant, Siri, it is first and foremost a premium speaker, and Apple claims that the HomePod is designed to make a variety of music sound good. Under seven inches tall, it uses sound waves and spatial awareness to The first speaker to put an emphasis adjust its playback accordingly, on sound quality, it comes in at the based on the acoustics and higher end of the market. Powered available space in its surrounding
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environment. For example, placing it on a table near the wall will make it play music differently to putting it on the floor in the middle of the room. As well as carrying out functions that Siri already does on your phone, such as setting timers
and checking the weather, the HomePod has Apple’s connected home built in, making it compatible with light bulbs, thermostats and other devices that already work with your iPhone. It also works with an Apple TV as a speaker, and as a speakerphone for smartphone calls.
“With AirPlay, you can play m services and audio from various movie, news, sports, or y
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The HomePod speaker adapts to its location to deliver high-quality audio. Together with Apple Music and Siri, it will enable you to enjoy music at home like never before, as well as helping with everyday tasks and controlling your smart home.
Sound The purposely-designed speaker creates rich, nuanced sound that defies its small size. The HomePod combines custom Apple-engineered audio technology and advanced software to deliver precision sound that fills the room. The highexcursion woofer is positioned at
music from different streaming s sources, whether listening to a your favourite podcasts�
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the top of the speaker facing upward, ensuring a wide range of deep bass that surpasses any traditional speaker. A sixmicrophone array, along with an internal bass-EQ microphone, analyses and compensates for the effect of the room on the bass response, providing consistent sound. And a powerful motor drives the diaphragm a remarkable 20mm, so the bass shines through, even when the volume is low. Siri When you say, “Hey Siri”, advanced signal processing, together with echo and noise cancellation, allows the HomePod to hear you without the need to raise your voice. After recognising these words, what you say is then encrypted and sent anonymously to Apple servers without being tied to your Apple ID.
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Aesthetics The HomePod is wrapped in a seamless mesh fabric designed for its looks and acoustic performance. Available in white and space grey, it’s virtually transparent to the sound waves passing through it. Set-Up Simply plug in the HomePod and your iOS device will detect it. Equipped with spatial awareness, it automatically tunes itself to give you optimal sound – direct sound, including the main vocals and instruments, is beamed into the middle of the room, while ambient sound is diffused into left and right channels, and bounced off the wall, filling the entire space with rich, well-defined tones. Pair it with a second HomePod to create an unmatched stereo experience.
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Stereo Pair A HomePod stereo pair works in concert to instantly create wider, more immersive soundstage with a significantly bigger sweet spot than traditional stereo speakers. Each HomePod automatically detects its placement in the room and precisely adjusts the music in balance with the other, from the very first song it plays. A HomePod stereo pair not only offers more room-filling sound, but also provides great bass extension, with a deeper,
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more accurate reproduction of low frequencies. Multiple Rooms When you add the HomePod to multiple rooms, the speakers communicate with each other through AirPlay, so you can ask Siri to play jazz in the living room and a Disney song in the children’s room, or the same song throughout the house. As you move around, the music can go with you – just tell Siri to move the song from one HomePod to another.
“Whether you’re a music lover, a technology addict, or simply like to run an organised house, the HomePod is guaranteed to enhance your daily life” Apple Music With access to over 45 million songs, the HomePod is built to bring out the best in Apple Music. It will learn what you like and help you discover more music you’ll love, taking the listening experience to a whole new level. You can also stream music from your iTunes library right to your HomePod.
you want to know and do in your home. From getting the latest weather, to sending messages and controlling your smart home, Siri makes it easy to multitask with just your voice. While you’re getting things done around the house, you can stay in touch with texts, as well as scheduling, cancelling and keeping up-to-date with calendar appointments.
AirPlay With AirPlay, you can play music from different streaming services and audio from various sources, whether listening to a movie, news, sports, or your favourite podcasts.
So, whether you’re a music lover, a technology addict, or simply like to run an organised house, the HomePod is guaranteed to enhance your daily life.
Smart Home The HomePod is great at the things
For further information, visit www.apple.com/homepod/ 29
B U S I N E S S I N T E RV I E W
DRIVING BUSINESS OUTCOMES THROUG RELATIONSHIP CAPI
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GH ITAL
We speak to members of Introhive’s EMEA team, Alison Hodivala, Partner Channel Director, Serge Dushkin, Account Manager and James McLaughlin Account Manager, about their company’s role in supporting organisations to enhance their business development activities while delivering topline growth in the business to business arena. Written by Anna McMahon • Produced by Danielle Harris
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IN A COMPETITIVE AND CHANGING WORLD WHERE COMPANIES ARE UNDER PRESSURE TO TRANSFORM HOW THEY MARKET, SELL AND SERVICE THEIR CUSTOMERS, FORWARD-THINKING COMPANIES ARE STARTING TO LEVERAGE SPECIALIST AI, MACHINE LEARNING AND ADVANCED ANALYTICS CAPABILITIES TO AUGMENT THEIR SALES PROCESSES.
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hese applications are highlighting the multidimensional and dynamic nature of the business relationships occurring across an organisation, while revamping the business-to-business sales process. The way Introhive goes about this is through enriching an organisation’s full understanding of the business relationships they have with their clients and prospects. Introhive’s platform delivers a comprehensive understanding of “who knows who” between
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employees and customers, along with an automated summary of customer activity. This is uncovering insights into how well teams are servicing key accounts, providing early warning signals on potential issues before they arise and, ultimately, enabling more effective and efficient management of prospects and customers. Introhive was partly inspired by the frustrations experienced by the cofounders Jody Glidden and Stewart Walchli after their previous start-up was bought by Blackberry.
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Alison Hodivala picks up the story, “After being acquired, our co-founders found it difficult to leverage the established customer relationships from their parent company and identify the individuals who could help them expand their offering into those accounts. After talking to a number of their clients, they realised that managing contacts and relationships was a pervasive problem linked to the challenges of keeping data up-todate in company CRM systems.” The success of Introhive’s platform is not just dependent on surfacing relationship intelligence and insights – it is also concerned with ensuring the accuracy of the data that
resides within an organisation’s CRM system through automation. Since most CRM users do not log activity and contact data, there are significant data gaps in the system. The Introhive platform addresses an organisation’s dependency on clean and complete data by providing data automation tools to capture relevant contact and activity data that is not currently logged. In today’s competitive environment, two key trends are putting an organisation’s business relationships under closer scrutiny. Service experience is rapidly becoming a key competitive edge that is predicated on a 360
“THE PLATFORM IS ENHAN INDIVIDUALS WORK, ENSU THEY APPROACH A SPECIF THEY HAVE ALL THE INFOR FINGERTIPS TO ENABLE TH SELL AND SERVICE EFFECT Serge Dushkin, Account Manager
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AUTOMATE DATA SYNC TO CRM
RELATIONSHIP INTELLIGENCE, SCORING & MAPPING
PRE-MEETING INTELLIGENCE & ANALYTICS
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
LEARN MORE
degree view across the organisation of customer touchpoints, and an understanding of engagement levels and the relationship strength across those touchpoints. Coupled with this new information, Introhive is
NCING HOW URING THAT WHEN FIC COMPANY, RMATION AT THEIR HEM TO MARKET, TIVELY”
disrupting the selling process. Introhive’s James McLaughlin, says, “Relationships underpin the success of every organisation but, historically, they tended to be an outcome of business success. In today’s environment, relationships are driving success and being leveraged for competitive advantage. Examples would be a source of warm leads or through improved knowledge sharing in collaborative environments.” To achieve this, organisations need to be able to measure, nurture and manage their relationship capital. But, the good news is that they don’t have to look too far to find the information to help them do this. The Introhive platform automatically pulls in data from meetings, emails, calls and other company sources 35
to construct a dynamic view of an organisation’s relationship capital. It also scours external data sources – for example public social media feeds and websites - to enrich the information available. Automation capabilities ensures that this is captured back into the organisations CRM as appropriate. Accumulating over time, Introhive automatically measures the frequency and recency of relationship markers, tracking individual and firm wide changes over time. And, crucially, surfacing these insights to employees at the point that they’re most needed. As Serge says, “The Introhive platform is enhancing how individuals work, ensuring that when they approach a specific company, they have all the information at their fingertips
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“OUR G OUR CU RESPON INTERES THROUG AND EXP PARTNE
Alison Ho Partner Ch to enable them to market and sell effectively, providing the customer with a joined-up and seamless experience.” Introhive’s clients are looking to deploy a solution that can ultimately extract
GOAL IS TO BUILD ON URRENT SUCCESS NDING TO THE GROWING ST, BOTH DIRECTLY AND GH THE DEVELOPMENT PANSION OF OUR ER ECOSYSTEM”
odivala, hannel Director the value out of their CRM investment. What starts as a challenge to drive efficiency and usage turns into a campaign to directly impact business development through increasing the visibility of their relationships. One of Introhive’s customers saw a 40% increase in the number of client relationships identified!” Serge continues the story, “Being able to engage prospects through a trusted network increases your relevance as you are competing for their business. While many buyers
are beginning their process with a referral, Introhive allows you to quickly build trust without having to go past the network of your own corporation.” Introhive prides itself on its different mix of partners, from small referral organisations, to larger strategic partners such as PwC, which has led by example with its own digital transformation including Introhive’s products. Serge said, “The bottom line is, we are making a powerful impact. Companies are seeing the value of what we offer, proving the effectiveness of our solution at scale.” As for the future of Introhive in EMEA, Alison explains “We are sponsoring conferences in AI, technology, professional and financial services in areas from Hong Kong to Poland. Our goal is to build on our current success responding to the growing interest, both directly and through the development and expansion our partner ecosystem.“ The team would be delighted to tell you more about how they can help. To speak to them, please email: emea@introhive.com
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NETWORK NEWS
If you are wondering what the launch of 5G might mean for you and your company, then look no further.
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Everyone loves speedy internet, so it’s no surprise that telecom companies are looking to make it work even faster. In a world that increasingly relies on smartphones, homes, watches and cars having stable internet connections, there is now a requirement for an entirely new form of wireless signal.
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So, what is 5G? Similar to 4G and 3G before it, 5G is a wireless connection built to specifically keep up with the proliferation of devices that need a mobile internet connection. It is short for ‘fifth generation mobile networks’, building on the foundations created by previous generations. It is going to allow users to send texts, make calls and browse the internet as always, but it’s set to be far faster than its predecessors,
ensuring a new user experience. As well as making room for the thousands of internet-connected devices entering our everyday world, 5G will also make it easier for people to download and upload Ultra HD and 3D video. According to the Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA), to qualify for 5G, a connection should meet most of the following criteria:
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1. One to 10Gbps connections to end points in the field 2. One millisecond end-to-end round trip delay 3. 1000x bandwidth per unit area 4. 10 to 100x number of connected devices 5. (Perception of) 99.999 per cent availability 6. (Perception of) 100 per cent coverage 7. 90 per cent reduction in network energy usage 8. Up to ten-year battery life for low power, machine-type devices In sum, 5G brings three new aspects to the table – greater speed (to move more data), lower latency (to be more responsive), and the ability to connect a lot more devices at once (for sensors and smart devices).
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How does it work? In their most basic form, mobile phones are basically two-way radios. When you call someone, your phone converts your voice into an electrical signal and it transmits that signal to the nearest tower using radio wave. The tower bounces the radio wave through a network of further mobile towers until it finds the phone you are calling. 5G will be assigned a higher radio frequency, sitting on the frequency band up to 6GHz, thus moving information at a much faster speed. But, although higher bands are faster, they don’t carry information as far as lower frequencies, so multiple input and output antennae (MIMOs) will be required
to boost signals and capacity where 5G is available. Another change with 5G is that operators will be able to ‘slice’ a physical network into multiple virtual networks – they will be able to deliver the right slice of network depending on how it is being used, and therefore manage their networks better. For example, an autonomous car has different network requirements to a simple IoT device. In this way, 5G networks need to be much smarter than previous systems, with the ability to boost capacity by more than four times the current system by leveraging wider bandwidths and advanced antenna technologies.
Is 5G much faster than 4G? 5G connections are set to be considerably faster than 4G, delivering 20Gbps and have a latency that is mere milliseconds, but exact speeds will vary depending on the technology that ends up being implemented. Currently, 4G LTE transfer speeds top out at about 1Gbps, so it takes about an hour to download a short HD movie in perfect conditions. 5G will enable a full HD movie to be downloaded in a matter of seconds.
What are the advantages? Faster download speeds and lower latency will allow for higher
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“A he on 5G
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As 2020 approaches, we will be earing much more about the ngoing developments and how G is likely to enhance our lives�
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productivity across all capable devices, as well as giving rise to the ‘Gigabit Smartphone’ and a slew of innovative services and applications that require the type of connectivity that 5G can offer. Greater capacity offered by 5G will also make it possible to run more complex apps all at once, from connected cars and IoT devices, to VR experiences and simultaneous HD video streaming. All of this should add up to a stable connection wherever you are, with an influx of everyday devices becoming ‘smart’ and connected. Network operators claim that 5G isn’t simply another network upgrade, but represents a ‘revolution’ to benefit society as a whole.
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What are the disadvantages? Network operators have already spent billions on 4G networks, and until they have developed it, they will not know how much 5G will cost. The newest mobile phones will probably have it integrated, but other handsets could be deemed out-of-date. With the addition of 5G to the wireless spectrum, there is also the risk of overcrowding the frequency range. We are still seeing issues with using 3G and 4G, which doesn’t necessarily fill us with hope when it comes to our expectations for an immediate super-fast 5G connection.
When will it arrive? Some countries such as South Korea, Japan and the US are claiming they will launch 5G later this year, but most experts predict that it won’t be widely available until 2020.
Who is launching 5G? In the US, AT&T plans to launch mobile 5G later in the year, Verizon says it will roll out 5G for homes, and both T-Mobile and Sprint say they are looking at a launch date of early 2019. Phone company, OnePlus, has committed to releasing a 5G phone next year, while Apple and Samsung haven’t made any solid commitments to 5G devices. In the UK, Nokia and Ericcson have created 5G platforms aimed at mobile carriers rather than consumers, and a number of network providers
have also begun investing in their expected 5G rollout including EE, Vodafone, Orange and O2. Growing numbers of companies are also forming 5G partnerships, pledging money to continue research into 5G and its application. Qualcomm and Samsung have focused their 5G efforts on hardware, with Qualcomm creating a 5G modem and Samsung producing a 5G enabled home router.
Conclusion It is clear that there is plenty of activity surrounding 5G, although nothing is set in stone – standards are evolving, tests are ongoing, and phones are in the making. As 2020 approaches, we will be hearing much more about the ongoing developments.
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A RT I F I C I A L I N T E L L I G E N C E
AI to replace Animal Testing? A group of researchers has developed an algorithm that matches the accuracy of animal studies in predicting substance toxicity.
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Animal rights activists can breathe a sigh of relief, as we take a step towards switching to AI instead of testing on mammals.
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or decades, animal testing has played a huge role in modern-day drugs and chemical compounds development, but the results are often fatal for the animals concerned. However, new findings by John Hopkins University, led by toxicologist Thomas Hartung, suggest that it could be possible to predict the attributes of new compounds using the data we
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Thomas Hartung, Toxicologist
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“The power of means we can tool more pred many animal t Thomas Hartung, Toxicologist
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big data n produce a dictive than tests” already have about past tests and experiments. Hartung created a massive database containing information from previously conducted animal tests, and this AI system was trained to predict the toxicity of tens of thousands of unknown chemicals by comparing them to similar compounds and making predictions based on their properties. In total, Hartung’s team used information on 10,000 substances from over 800,000 animal tests to generate their algorithm. The researchers labelled different chemicals from various databases with attributes such as their individual corrosiveness, irritation level and contribution
to damaging the ozone layer. A statistical model was created using a mixture of unsupervised and supervised learning. This model groups chemicals based on similar chemical structures and toxicity. The unsupervised learning part was created using the ‘K-nearest neighbour’ algorithm, which results in vectors containing the number of times each label occurs between the chemicals. These vectors are then used to train a supervised learning model using logistic regression and random forest algorithms, which is able to label new compounds. This method imitates how a toxicologist would analyse a new substance, but in a manner facilitated by technology, and in some cases, the algorithm yields more accurate results than animal testing. Hartung said, “The power of big data means we can produce a tool more predictive than many animal tests.” As a single compound can yield different reactions in different animals, there is the argument that animal tests are inconsistent, paving the way for computer models to replace medical testing on animals. This information, together with 53
our moral responsibility, and the fact that AI testing would make the drug development process shorter and less expensive, mean campaigners are working hard towards switching to AI. Earlier this year, the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM), which coordinates US federal government evaluation of new, revised and alternative test methods, came up with a strategic roadmap for replacing animal use in toxicity testing. Pressure is increasingly to rapidly find an alternative to animal testing, but we are still very far from replacing it with AI. Mike Rasenberg, head of computational assessment at the European Chemicals Agency, said, “Scientifically, there is a lot
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“AI makes b designs abo make and te fewer exper and money
Andrew Hopkins, CEO at lead
of work to be done. No one wants animal tests, but we can’t yet do all toxicology with a computer.” Using AI in the drug development process is nothing new. In fact, with pharmaceutical companies and start-ups already spending
better designs and better out which compounds to est, ultimately leading to riments, saving both time y”
ding British drug design company, Exscientia
hundreds of millions to apply machine learning and other AI techniques to drug discovery, it would appear that the industry is ripe for an AI disruption. Andrew Hopkins, CEO at leading British drug design company, Exscientia, said that AI makes better designs and better decisions about which compounds to make and test, ultimately leading to fewer experiments, saving both time and money. He added, “It’s precisely because of the complexity of the decisionmaking that we should use AI. For example, Bayesian approaches are particularly applicable to messy data, where you can embrace
uncertainty in the data. AI doesn’t require perfect data for perfect predictions. It’s actually about how you use it in these imperfect, messy, complicated situations to find a signal amid all the noise.” So, while computer systems are ready to replace the vast majority of standard safety tests carried out on animals each year, there are still more complex and long-term effect tests like a drug’s impact on fertility or the risk of cancer that need to be considered. That said, the future has never looked brighter for animal rights activists, as well as consumers keen to reap the benefits of AI and machine learning in yet another field. 55
C L O U D U P D AT E
Global Public Cloud Just Keeps Growing Cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS) has grown 30 per cent year on year – with AWS holding half of the market.
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The global infrastructure as a service (IaaS) public cloud services market grew by almost a third last year to total $23.5 billion (£18 billion), according to the latest figures from Gartner, the world’s leading research and advisory company, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) securing more than half of the global market.
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he figures, which appear in the analyst firm’s latest market share analysis, put AWS clearly ahead, with Microsoft unsurprisingly in second place, yet Alibaba takes third place, with 4.6 per cent of global market share, ahead of Google and IBM. With 51.8 per cent of the total market, AWS remains supremely dominant in the eyes of Gartner, clocking up revenues of $12.2bn in 2017. Microsoft, at 13.3 per cent share and $3.1bn, pales into second. Yet Gartner argues
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Amazon did lose market share from 2016, where it held 53.7 per cent of the market, albeit with merely $9.8bn in revenues. Alibaba broke the billion-dollar revenue barrier in 2017 – therefore representing a reasonable return on investment from 2015 when the parent company invested $1bn to expand the international presence of its cloud computing arm. But, Microsoft remains the fastest growing out of all the major players, according to Gartner, with a 98.2 per cent yearly growth.
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“Cloud-directed IT spe more than 20 per c budget for organis
Sid Nag, research d
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ending now constitutes cent of the total IT sations using cloud�
director at Gartner
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Nag, research director at Gartner, said, “The top four providers have strong IaaS offerings and saw healthy growth as IaaS adoption is being fully embraced by mainstream organisations and as cloud availability expands into new regions and countries. Cloud-directed IT spending now Either way, the most recent financial constitutes more than 20 per reports from the hyperscalers show cent of the total IT budget for organisations using cloud. Many a market that continues to side of these organisations are now in their favour long after many using cloud to support production felt it had become saturated. Sid This is not quite the way Synergy Research sees the market. As Synergy posits, Alibaba is currently fourth in the market, behind Google and ahead of IBM, with AWS top on all geographies and Microsoft second, aside from APAC where Alibaba takes the silver medal.
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“The top four providers have strong IaaS offerings and saw healthy growth as IaaS adoption is being fully embraced by mainstream organisations� Sid Nag, research director at Gartner
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“As digital transformation more mainstream over th the European market is st high levels of growth” environments and business-critical operations.” That said, the overall global public cloud market has started to enter a period of stabilisation. With its growth rate having peaked, it is expected to taper off over the next few years. Sid said, “While some organisations are still figuring out where cloud actually fits in their overall IT strategy, an effort to cost optimise and bring forth the path to transformation holds strong promise and results for IT outsourcing (ITO) buyers. Gartner predicts that through 2020, cloud
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adoption strategies will influence more than 50 per cent of IT outsourcing deals.”
n becomes he next five years, till likely to see
He added, “Organisations are pursuing strategies because of the multidimensional value of
cloud services, including values such as agility, scalability, cost benefits, innovation and business growth. While all external-sourcing decisions will not result in a virtually automatic move to the cloud, buyers are looking to the ‘cloud first’ in their decisions, in support of time-to-value impact via speed of implementation.” As digital transformation becomes more mainstream over the next five years, the European market is still likely to see high levels of growth. It will be interesting to note how these figures are analysed in future reports.
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D ATA C E N T R E N E W S
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COOL IDEA Technology company, Lenovo, is implementing water cooling at the University of Birmingham – the first of its kind in the UK.
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THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM IS THE UK’S FOURTH LARGEST UNIVERSITY, SERVING AROUND 35,000 UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE STUDENTS, AND ITS COMPUTER CENTRE IS RENOWNED.
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atest work sees the university team up with international tech company, Lenovo, on a new Water Cooling Technology (WCT) project, in a bid to increase the computer power in its data centre, reduce its hardware footprint, and cut cooling costs. The university was in search of a successor technology to its iDataPlex deployment, and modern high-density solutions, coupled
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with a limited air cooling capacity per rack, meant they were looking at installing only two chassis per rack. They turned to Lenovo for a WCT solution, which allows six chassis per rack, saving valuable data centre floor space and reducing energy required to cool the systems. This increases efficiencies, both from an IT and facilities perspective, of the university by around 20 to 25 per cent! The project, which is the first of its kind in a UK university, is projected
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“the technology w used to power the private research c
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to reduce cooling energy by up to 83 per cent, compared to using air cooling alone, and adds only 4.5kW of heat per rack to the data centre. The water cooling system replaces the typical system fans with an internal and external manifold, and water is delivered directly into the rear of the server to cool it. This allows for a simple blind dock, a quick release mechanism for removing or installing the servers. Internally, water is pumped through attached heat-sinks on the CPUs,
Dual In-Line Memory Modules, on-board components, and IO, which transfers heat into the water before being pumped away. Water typically enters the system at up to 45°C. The subsequent heat transfer from the system components to the water typically results in a water temperature increase of approximately 10°C and, in doing so, reduces the temperature of the system. The system took nine months to develop from initial demonstration, system design, and testing to validate all hardware for use with warm WCT. It will eventually
will be university’s cloud deployment”
University of Birmingham 71
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be connected to the university’s central Birmingham Environment for Academic Research’s BlueBear high performance computing (HPC) service, and the technology will be used to power the university’s private research cloud deployment. The upgrade was co-developed by Lenovo and staff at the University’s
of unrecovered heat in the data centre. In addition, we are looking at adding a rear door heat exchanger to the system, which will capture this remaining heat and mean that we will need almost no air cooling for HPC research equipment. Although this has been a small deployment, we’ve been working with Lenovo
Research Computing Team, in partnership with Mellanox and OCF to deploy the project.
and Mellanox to qualify new technology into the systems to meet our requirements.”
Simon Thompson, research computing specialist at the University of Birmingham, said, “We’re constantly experimenting with new technologies to improve the service we deliver to users. This project will allow us to manage 85 per cent of the heat recovery from a single 30 kW rack, leaving just 4.5kW
This partnership has provided just the type of long-term solution that the institution requires – an innovative water-cooling system to not only increase their data centre’s cooling capacity dramatically, but also to reduce cooling costs and enable more compute when required.
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