B2B Tech Tuesday is our regular check-in here at Spreckley, where we share all the most interesting and useful B2B and enterprise technology news, innovations and trends.
This week, a new World Economic Forum survey finds business leaders bullish about enterprise tech adoption and development, telecoms giant Telefónica doubles down on its partnership with IBM to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption and BT partners with Glasgow-based startup iOpt to help local councils across the UK reach their net zero emissions targets.
WEF survey notes “tech mindset shift”
A new World Economic Forum-Ipsos survey this week reveals that most adults are uniquely optimistic about accessing tech, digital tools and digital training in 2021, despite a wider “general pessimism about other aspects of life, such as health, employment and climate change.”
“There has been a palpable mindset shift when it comes to technology,” the WEF reports. “Throughout the pandemic, technology has been a lifeline to survival – both personal and for businesses – and it is now seen to hold the key to recovery. But the pace of technology adoption and development, with its accompanying life-changing possibilities, has been disruptive, raising a range of ethical questions – about genetics, robots, algorithms – and what it means to be human.
“When it comes to technological innovation, business leaders are bullish – seeing technology and digitization as a means to succeed. But they recognize the challenges of AI ethics, inequalities of access, security and governance gaps.”
IBM and Telefónica’s hybrid cloud push
Computer Weekly reports this week that IBM and Telefónica are continuing to develop their partnership and pool resources “to accelerate hybrid cloud adoption in the enterprise”.
“This is through the roll-out of the next iteration of Telefónica’s hybrid IT-enabling Cloud Garden environment, which is designed to help its clients accelerate the modernisation of their application estates, while also letting them choose whether to run their workloads in on-premise or cloud-based setups.
“Cloud Garden 2.0, as it is dubbed, is built using IBM’s artificial intelligence-powered IBM Cloud Pak technology and Red Hat’s Kubernetes-based open source containersation platform OpenShift, and is already being put to use by Telefónica customers.”
IBM and Telefónica in a joint statement:
“Cloud Garden 2.0 speeds how clients can create next gen applications that improve quality and efficiency across core business operations, from customer-facing applications to mission critical back-end processes.
“By integrating IBM Cloud Pak, clients can also include a series of programs that help clients ease the transition to cloud native development environments, such as MongoDB, Red Hat JBoss, Red Hat AMQ, IBM WebSphere Liberty and Redis, among others.”
BT partners with Glaswegian start-up iOpt
Finally this week, Insider.co.uk reports that BT is partnering with Glasgow-based startup iOpt to help local councils across the UK meet their net zero emissions targets.
“The telecommunications giant will offer the products to local councils across the UK which are looking to adopt environmental monitoring and smart building solutions.
“The Internet of Things (IoT) platform provides real-time information and alerts on the condition of properties. Installed sensors allow key information such as damp, mould, and fuel poverty to be collated and tracked.
“By empowering local councils to take action to address such issues, iOpt’s solution can assist councils with social regeneration and deliver improved health and wellbeing outcomes for tenants. They can also lower preventative maintenance costs and cut down unnecessary travel to fix issues, reducing carbon emissions.”
Dane Ralston, managing director at iOpt, said of the latest partnership: “We always look to work with value add partners and BT is clearly one of the leaders in connectivity infrastructure which is critical to delivering the potential value we envisage in smart cities and local authorities.”